1. The Khamenei Sermon: The opposition has called off Friday’s rally to avoid clashes with a pro-government rally. For now, demonstrations are planned to continue on Saturday unless something significant develops at Khamenei’s Friday sermon, which is set to be the first time he publicly addresses the issue. It’s noontime right now in Iran so the speech could be well underway. I cannot stress the importance of this speech. Analysts have described 3 different scenarios: 1) He concedes and portrays himself as a champion of the people and calls for a re-vote. 2) He appeals for calm and asks the people to wait patiently for the outcome of the Guardian Council’s deliberations. 3) He hails Ahmadinejad’s victory and threatens against any future demonstrations. Analysts predict the 2nd scenario as an attempt by the regime to buy time.
2. Thursday: Thursday’s mourning processions for the 8 protestors that died earlier in the week went off without a hitch with more than 100,000 attending, according to the BBC. See the footage from the protest here. In all, reports suggest that 15 people have died thus far.
3. Rafsanjani’s Children Banned from Leaving Iran: “Two children of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a political opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been barred from leaving Iran, the semi-official Fars News Agency said on Thursday. Rafsanjani’s daughter Faezeh addressed supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi on Tuesday when they gathered near the state television building in Tehran in defiance of a ban on opposition protests. Fars did not give a source for its report. It said around 300 people demonstrated outside the Tehran prosecutor’s office on Thursday calling for Faezeh and her brother Mehdi to be arrested.”
4. Makhmalbaf and Satrapi Speak at the EU’s Parliament in Support of the Demonstrators: See the video here.
5. University Professors Resign in Protest: Professors are resigning in protest of Basij attacks at universities and university dorms.
6. The Communications Crackdown: There is significantly less information coming out of Iran since the government began its crackdown on Iran’s communications networks two days ago.
7. “Iran’s Titanic Struggle”: Read this outstanding article putting it all into perspective here.
8. Slogan: “Mousavi! Mousavi! Ray-e mano pas begir!” (“Mousavi! Mousavi! Get my vote back” – needless to say, it rhymes and sounds better in Persian)
Well he did hail the government, and of course Ahmadinejad (siimply because it was him who chose Ahmadinejad) and of course blamed it on Israel and he threatened to crack down. They are playing Middle Eastern Handbook on Politics word by word. Blame it on others, justify yourself as divine government, lable the opposition as foreigners, and of course at the end start killing until your run out of bullets. Typical Middle Eastern politics.
Arash, what you wrote also described Israeli politics.
Nazanin, how is that related to subject matter of this argument? Again, this is exactly middle eastern politics, bring Israel into the picture and try to distract the public. Plus when was the last time Israel ever and i mean EVER blamed its internal problems on forces outside of the country? When there was a protest in Robin square in support of peace, did Israel crack down on its citizens. When the groups inside Israel openly criticize the government, do they get shot, or killed or blamed to be spies of foreign agents. When was the last time Israel ever cracked down on its citizens. What kind of comparison is that Nazanin, but I can totally understand why you would like to think that way, but I am not going to get into it.
It has been trend of history, ANYTIME YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, you would see it: blame it on the Jews;
Arash, STOP monopolizing the debate! This is the last time Im warning you. You said this is all Middle Eastern politics, right? Israel is in the Middle East, right? And the comparisons are spot on! Israel always blames Hizbullah and Hamas attacks on foreigners like Iran! ALWAYS! And Israel always clamps down on Palestinians with brute force. There are endless youtube videos of Israelis ruthlessly beating Palestinians.
For example, see this all the way through:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bdbA2Ka3Bo
Arash is unaware of the crackdowns and brute force used by the police against its Arab citizens. Arash is also unaware that “sheeps” is not a word, bc “sheep” is already plural.
Of course, I assure you Zionist crimes are never ending:
http://www.imemc.org/article/60873
I think if anyone sees this video you can see certain elements deviated from the peaceful rallies by attacking the Basij Military compound, tried lighting it on fire and threw molotov cocktails at them for several minutes (casue), until they were forced to shot just to even protect themselves (effect). Otherwise the rally was entirely peaceful and nobody was touched up until these events that day. It is obvious these people wanted to elicit such a response in order to radicalize the crowds, because they realize the more “martyrs” they give, the more momentum the protests will pick up. This is exactly why the government has been very cauitous in much of its reponse thus far and violence has decreased lately. By the way for those living in US go attack a Marine compound and light it on fire and see what happens in response.
the video link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4vqWamoQgM
Mousavi states his case
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate challenging Iran’s authorities on the result of last week’s presidential elections, is a masterful tactician who wants to overturn the re-election of his rival, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, with allegations of a massive conspiracy that he claims cheated him and millions of his supporters.
These supporters, identifiable by the color green they have adopted, have taken to the streets in the tens of thousands and on Thursday were to stage a “day of mourning” for what they say is a lost election. This follows a “silent” march through the streets of the capital on Wednesday. To date, at least 10 people – some
Iranian sources say 32 – have been killed in clashes.
Mousavi has lodged an official complaint with the powerful 12-member Guardians Council, which has ordered a partial recount of the vote. The complaint’s main flaw is that it passes improper or questionable pre-election conduct as something else, that is, as evidence of voting fraud.
The protest, which seeks fresh elections, is short on specifics and long on extraneous, election-unrelated complaints. The first two items relate to the televised debates that were held between the candidates, rather than anything germane to the vote count.
There is also some innuendo, such as a claim that Ahmadinejad used state-owned means of transportation to campaign around the country, overlooking that there is nothing unusual about incumbent leaders using the resources at their disposal for election purposes. All previous presidents, including the reformist Mohammad Khatami, who is a main supporter of Mousavi, did the same.
Another complaint by Mousavi is that Ahmadinejad had disproportionate access to the state-controlled media. This has indeed been a bad habit in the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic, but perhaps less so this year because for the first time there were television debates, six of them, which allowed Mousavi and the other challengers free space to present their points of view.
With respect to alleged specific irregularities, the complaint cites a shortage of election forms that in some places caused a “few hours delay”. This is something to complain about, but it hardly amounts to fraud, especially as voter turnout was a record high of 85% of the eligible 46 million voters. (Ahmadinejad was credited with 64% of the vote.)
Mousavi complains that in some areas the votes cast were higher than the number of registered voters. But he fails to add that some of those areas, such as Yazd, were places where he received more votes that Ahmadinejad.
Furthermore, Mousavi complains that some of his monitors were not accredited by the Interior Ministry and therefore he was unable to independently monitor the elections. However, several thousand monitors representing the various candidates were accredited and that included hundreds of Mousavi’s eyes and ears.
They should have documented any irregularities that, per the guidelines, should have been appended to his complaint. Nothing is appended to Mousavi’s two-page complaint, however. He does allude to some 80 letters that he had previously sent to the Interior Ministry, without either appending those letters or restating their content.
Finally, item eight of the complaint cites Ahmadinejad’s recourse to the support given by various members of Iran’s armed forces, as well as Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki’s brief campaigning on Ahmadinejad’s behalf. These are legitimate complaints that necessitate serious scrutiny since by law such state individuals are forbidden to take sides. It should be noted that Mousavi can be accused of the same irregularity as his headquarters had a division devoted to the armed forces.
Given the thin evidence presented by Mousavi, there can be little chance of an annulment of the result.
Arash, stop making assumptions about me. My support for Ahmadinejad (many Jews voted for him, by the way) in this election was based on a comparison of two records. One man’s involved dangerous opportunism, which hasn’t ceased even after the body count has gone up. Mousavi is a corrupt bastard who may have been planning this all along. Maybe he’s trying to repent for what he has done in the past, but the reward and benefit shouldn’t come at the cost of asking these kids to run in the streets and put themselves at risk. If you think I want an oppressive regime, you’re also wrong. I happen to think that gradual change will be much better for Iran in the long run. I’m not an expert, but it’s my opinion.
The comment I made about Israeli politics was just a joke which I suspected would get you steaming. Shocker here you are defending Israel and preparing to ride a tank and get rolling. Anyway, Israeli politics (never mind foreign policy for a second here, just domestically) is nothing to be so proud of either. Corruption and opportunism abound there, just as in ANY other country. Swallow some pride Arash. It’s good for you and it doesn’t have any calories 🙂
A Thermidorian reaction
No doubt, the turmoil has an intellectual side to it. Obama being a rare politician gifted with intellectuality and a keen sense of history would know that what is at stake is a well-orchestrated attempt by the hardcore conservative clerical establishment to roll back the four-year-old painful, zig-zag process toward republicanism in Iran.
Mousavi is the affable front man for the mullahs, who fear that another four years of Ahmadinejad would hurt their vested interests. Ahmadinejad has already begun marginalizing the clergy from the sinecures of power and the honey pots of the Iranian economy, especially the oil industry.
The struggle between the worldly mullahs (in alliance with the bazaar) and the republicans is as old as the 1979 Iranian revolution, where the fedayeen of the proscribed Tudeh party (communist cadres) were the original foot soldiers of the revolution, but the clerics usurped the leadership. The highly contrived political passions let loose by the 444-day hostage crisis with the US helped the wily Shi’ite clerics to stage the Thermidorian reaction and isolate the progressive revolutionary leadership. Ironically, the US once again figures as a key protagonist in Iran’s dialectics – not as a hostage, though.
Imam Khomeini was wary of the Iranian mullahs and he created the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as an independent force to ensure the mullahs didn’t hijack the revolution. Equally, his preference was that the government should be headed by non-clerics. In the early years of the revolution, the conspiracies hatched by the triumvirate of Beheshti-Rafsanjani-Rajai who engineered the ouster of the secularist leftist president Bani Sadr (who was Khomeini’s protege), had the agenda to establish a one-party theocratic state. These are vignettes of Iran’s revolutionary history that might have eluded the intellectual grasp of George W Bush, but Obama must be au fait with the deviousness of Rafsanjani’s politics.
If Rafsanjani’s putsch succeeds, Iran would at best bear resemblance to a decadent outpost of the “pro-West” Persian Gulf. Would a dubious regime be durable? More important, is it what Obama wishes to see as the destiny of the Iranian people? The Arab street is also watching. Iran is an exception in the Muslim world where people have been empowered. Iran’s multitudes of poor, who form Ahmadinejad’s support base, detest the corrupt, venal clerical establishment. They don’t even hide their visceral hatred of the Rafsanjani family.
Alas, the political class in Washington is clueless about the Byzantine world of Iranian clergy. Egged on by the Israeli lobby, it is obsessed with “regime change”. The temptation will be to engineer a “color revolution”. But the consequence will be far worse than what obtains in Ukraine. Iran is a regional power and the debris will fall all over. The US today has neither the clout nor the stamina to stem the lava flow of a volcanic eruption triggered by a color revolution that may spill over Iran’s borders.
Dear Nazanin, just ignore him , he is sick zionist.