“Neda wanted freedom and freedom for all”
BBC Persia, June 22, 2009

(Translation provided by Huffington Post readers.)

Caspian Makan, Neda Agha-Setan‘s fiancee, was interviewed by BBC Persia, noting that Neda would have turned 27 this year. “Neda’s goal was not Mousavi or Ahmadinejad, it was her country and was important for her to fight for this goal. She had said many times that if she had lost her life or been shot in the heart, which indeed what happened, it was important for her to continue in this path,” he said.

Considering her young age she has taught a lesson to us all.

About the day of the incident, Mr. Makan said: “When the clashes were occurring, Neda was far away from the demonstrations, she was in one of the side alleys near Amir Abad. Thirsty and tired or being cooped up for about an hour in the car in heavy traffic with her music instructor, she finally gets out of the car and, based on the pictures sent in by the people, armed forces in civilian clothes and the Basiji targeted and shot her in the heart.”

“It was over in a matter of minutes, the Shariati Hospital was nearby, the people around her tried to bring her to the emergency room by car, but before that could even happen she died in her instructor’s arms.”

Mr. Makan added: “We got her body back finally yesterday with some diffculties. Of course, her body was not at the Tehran Coroner but at a one outside of Tehran. The medical examiners
wanted parts of her body, including a portion of her femoral bone but the chief medical examiner would not say why and no explanations were ever given.”

“Finally the family consented just so they could get her body back as soon as possible, since just this issue could have resulted in delaying the reception of the body. We buried the body in a small area in the Zahra Cemetery in the late afternoon of 31 Khordad [June 21]. Also, they had brought in other people who had been killed in the protests so it seemed that the whole event was scheduled to be such.”

About payment for releasing the remains, Mr. Makan had this to say: “No specific amount has been paid at this time, although hospitals, clinics, surgeons and medical examiners have been ordered by the Iranian security services, based on various orders, not to list ‘bullet wound’ as the cause of death on the death certificate in order to prevent the families from filing international complaints in the future. I haven’t seen the release notice of Neda’s remains yet, but I will obtain it from her father in the coming days.”

Mr. Makan regarding government ban of memorial service for Neda Agha Setan said: “We were going to hold her memorial Monday 1st of Tir [June 22] at 2:30 PM at a mosque at Sharyati street north of Seyed Khandan. But Basijis and mosque officials refused our request for her memorial service so to avoid further public confrontation and instability. They knew that Neda was an died innocently, and people in Iran and the international community are informed of that fact. So they decided to avoid a situation where a mass rally would take place. In any way, we do not have permission for a memorial service for now.”

However, many eye witnesses told BBC Persia that a large gathering took place with the intention of performing a memorial service at Al Reza Mosque at Nilofar square in Tehran. But the security forces intervened by throwing people out of the mosque and intervening with the service.

Mr. Makan also commented on fake pictures of videos claiming to be Neda at various sites:”I was looking at some sites including ‘iReport’. There was a picture of a young woman with green signs from previous calm demonstrations and had claimed it was Neda before being shot. These pictures have no relation to the event. It seems that Mr. Mousavi’s supporters are trying to portray Neda as one of his supporters. This is not so. Neda was incredibly close to me and she was never supportive of either two groups. Neda wanted freedom and freedom for all.”

BBC Farsi tried to contact Neda Agha-Sultan’s other family members but was told by a close relative of hers that, for reasons of their own, the Agha Sultan family could grant an interview.

Almost half Assembly of Experts want election annulled
Huffington Post, June 22, 2009

Forty senior clerics want election results annulled. The intense infighting among Iran’s clerical establishment appeared to play out in new dramatic fashion on Monday. Via reader Art, the news site Peiknet reported that Ayatollah Rafsanjani has a letter signed by 40 members of the powerful 86-member Assembly of Experts calling for the annulment of the recent presidential election results. [continued…]

Iranian clerics seek supreme leader alternative
Al-Arabya, June 22, 2009

Members of the assembly [of experts] are reportedly considering forming a collective ruling body and scrapping the model of Ayatollah Khomeini as a way out of the civil crisis that has engulfed Tehran in a series of protests,

The discussions have taken place in a series of secret meetings convened in the holy city of Qom and included Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq.

An option being considered is the resignation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president following condemnation by the United States and other European nations for violence and human rights violations against unarmed protestors. [continued…]

Iranian Revolutionary Guards issue warning as vote errors are admitted
By Nazila Fathi and Alan Cowell, New York Times, June 22, 2009

Hours after a warning from the powerful Revolutionary Guard not to return to the streets, about a thousand protesters defiantly gathered in central Tehran on Monday and were quickly dispersed in an overwhelming show of force by police who used clubs and tear gas.

The protesters, far fewer than the numbers who attended mass rallies last week, turned out despite the warning, on the Guards’ Web site, that they would face a “revolutionary confrontation” if they continued to challenge the results of the June 12 election and their country’s supreme leader, who has pronounced the ballot to be fair.

Even so, Iran’s most senior panel of election monitors, in the most sweeping acknowledgment that election was flawed, said Monday that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, according to a state television report. [continued…]

Mousavi’s new revolutionary manifesto
By Gary Sick, The Daily Beast, June 21, 2009

Although [Mousavi] denounces the “lies and fraud” of the leadership, particularly in the recent election, he views the fraudulent election as only as the symptom of something far more serious. He describes a revolution gone wrong, a revolution that was originally based on attention to the voice of the people but has resulted in “forcing an unwanted government on the nation.”

This moment is “a turning point,” he says, and he defines the movement that is forming around him as having a “historical mission” to accomplish nothing less than “renewing the life of the nation” according to its own ideals.

He acknowledges, interestingly, that his own voice at the beginning was less “eloquent” than he would have wished and that the people were ahead of him in turning the movement green. But now he accepts the “burden of duty put on our shoulders by the destiny of generations and ages.” [continued…]

Theocracy and its discontents
By Fareed Zacharia, Newsweek, June , 2009

We are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy in Iran. I don’t mean by this that the Iranian regime is about to collapse. It may—I certainly hope it will—but repressive regimes can stick around for a long time. We are watching the failure of the ideology that lay at the basis of the Iranian government. The regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, laid out his special interpretation of political Islam in a series of lectures in 1970. In this interpretation of Shia Islam, Islamic jurists were presumed to have divinely ordained powers to rule as guardians of the society, supreme arbiters not only on matters of morality, but politics as well. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic of Iran, this idea, velayat-e faqih, rule by the Supreme Jurist, was at its heart. Last week that ideology suffered a fatal blow.

When the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “divine assessment,” he was using the key weapon of velayat-e faqih, divine sanction. Millions of Iranians didn’t buy it, convinced that their votes—one of the key secular rights allowed them under Iran’s religious system—had been stolen. Soon Khamenei was forced to accept the need for an inquiry into the election. The Guardian Council, Iran’s supreme constitutional body, promised to investigate, meet with the candidates and recount some votes. Khamenei has realized that the regime’s existence is at stake and has now hardened his position, but that cannot put things back together. It has become clear that in Iran today, legitimacy does not flow from divine authority but from popular will. For three decades, the Iranian regime has wielded its power through its religious standing, effectively excommunicating those who defied it. This no longer works—and the mullahs know it. For millions, perhaps the majority of Iranians, the regime has lost its legitimacy. [continued…]

The Supreme Leader
By Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, June 20, 2009

Again and again over the past year, and against the advice of many of his own supporters, Khamenei has linked his own fate to Ahmadinejad’s. Last August, according to Rooz Online journalist Hossein Bastani, who is now living in France, the Supreme Leader met with Ahmadinejad’s cabinet and sang the praises of the president in no uncertain terms. Ahmadinejad, he said, did not apologize for Iran’s actions or go on the defensive; he took the offensive, and that made him better than his two immediate predecessors. About a month before the election, in a trip through the Kurdish areas of the country, Khamenei said flatly that he favored the kind of candidate who fights superpowers, lives simply and is fearless. He didn’t name Ahmadinejad, but he might as well have been reading talking points from his campaign. “From then on,” says a reformist politician who was close to Khamenei in the past, “the election was not about Ahmadinejad and Mousavi anymore. It was a referendum about the legitimacy of Mr. Khamenei’s rule. He brought on the situation we are in now.”

The treacherous crosscurrents inside the regime are fed by the pressure from the street but date back long before many of today’s protesters were born. An old photograph of Khamenei as a young seminarian shows a beardless youth in a turban who already wears thick glasses; behind them, the expression in his eyes is of a boy looking inward, lost in thought. A photograph of his fellow seminarian Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from that same period in the 1950s suggests, beneath the white turban, a Type A personality who might, in an American context, be running for class president. Both of those young men committed themselves to making revolution as followers of Ayatollah Khomeini in Qum before his exile, and as activists inside the country—and often inside its jails—after Khomeini had been forced to leave. The relationships that took shape among the young mullahs then have continued to shape Iranian politics ever since Khomeini’s revolution triumphed in 1979. Through the bloody consolidation of power, and the eight-year war against Iraq, they shored up their positions, sometimes in competition, sometimes in support of each other. The aging Khomeini continued, truly, to be the Supreme Leader to whom all turned for approval. And he rewarded fealty. “The revolution will be alive as long as Mr. Hashemi [Rafsanjani] is alive,” said the Imam. And, “I’ve raised Mr. Khamenei myself.” [continued…]

The evolution of Iran’s revolution
By Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2009

For a century, Iranians have been political trailblazers in the 57-nation Islamic bloc. During the 1905-1911 Constitutional Revolution, a powerful coalition of intelligentsia, bazaar merchants and clergy forced the Qajar dynasty to accept a constitution and Iran’s first parliament. In 1953, the democratically elected National Front coalition of four parties led by Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh pushed constitutional democracy and forced the last Pahlavi shah to flee to Rome — until U.S. and British intelligence orchestrated a coup that put him back on the Peacock Throne. And in 1979, yet another coalition of bazaaris, clergy and intellectuals mobilized the streets to end dynastic rule that had prevailed for about 2,500 years.

So the angry energy unleashed this week from the northern Caspian coast to southern Shiraz is the natural sequel, spurred on by 21st century technology and the Internet. Each of the first three phases left indelible imprints on Iranian politics. The fourth will too.

The 1999 student protests failed because they involved only one sector of society; it was a body without a head or a strategy. But the current green-swathed uprising involves an emerging coalition that includes students and sanctions-strapped businessmen, taxi drivers and former presidents, civil servants and members of the national soccer team. [continued…]

Krauthammer’s projections
By Daniel Luban, Lobelog, June 19, 2009

Charles Krauthammer’s most recent column on Iran offers a concise distillation of neoconservative pathologies about the Middle East, and a demonstration of why the Iranian protesters’ self-proclaimed best friends in the U.S. may prove to be their worst enemies. In the course of excoriating Barack Obama for his alleged abandonment of the protesters, Krauthammer displays a deep indifference to the actual wishes and needs of the protesters that is extremely common among those pushing for more robust American interference in the Iranian crisis.

“The demonstrators,” Krauthammer informs us, “are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.” As it happens, Obama has offered many words of support for the protesters’ right to peaceful demonstration, but has stopped short of the full-throated denunciation of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad that Krauthammer evidently wants. Regardless, what is striking about Krauthammer’s assertion is that he does not deem it necessary to offer a shred of evidence to support it. He simply takes for granted, in the face of a fair amount of evidence to the contrary, that Iranians want a more aggressive U.S. intervention into the crisis. In this respect Krauthammer is representative of right-wing commentary on the Iran situation, which has been primarily concerned with striking the requisite “Churchillian” and “Reaganite” poses while displaying a remarkable disinterest in what actual Iranians might want or think. After all, why let the wishes of our intended beneficiaries get in the way of a fine opportunity for self-congratulatory moral posturing? [continued…]

Larijani criticizes Guardian Council, IRIB
Press TV, June 21, 2009

Iran’s Parliament (Majlis) Speaker Ali Larijani suggests that some of the members in the Guardian Council have sided with a certain candidate in the June 12 presidential election.

Speaking live on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Channel 2 on Saturday, the speaker said that “a majority of people are of the opinion that the actual election results are different than what was officially announced.”

“The opinion of this majority should be respected and a line should be drawn between them and rioters and miscreants,” he was quoted as saying by Khabaronline — a website affiliated with him. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Is Larijani trying to split the protest movement or save it? He’s certainly making a direct challenge to Khamenei’s endorsement of the election result.

If a mass protest devolves into a succession of running street fights, it seems likely that eventually the security forces will win. New tactics are called for.

Fighting over the revolution
By Laura Secor, The New Yorker, June 20, 2009

The Islamic Republic, by contrast, was born in a people’s revolution and built on faith in a religion that is deeply held by most Iranians. The state’s ideology is not the hollow construct of political elites, as communism was by the time it collapsed in much of Eastern Europe. Rather, Iranian Islamism was forged over decades, in long struggle with the despotic regime of Mohammad Reza Shah, and from the potent raw materials of Iranian nationalism and Islam. Although the country’s constituency for democracy is vast and growing, the regime has a constituency, too, and it is passionately loyal and heavily armed.

The purpose of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij is the defense of the Islamic Revolution and the Supreme Leader. Rarely have the true believers in the militias been forced to consider the possibility that these two functions might come into conflict. Such a moment may have arrived. It is one thing to unleash brutal force on crowds that insult the Leader or Islam. That was how the members of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij could defend their assault on demonstrators at Tehran University in 1999. But now, in the name of Ahmadinejad’s controversial presidency, they are being asked to violently disperse fellow Iranians who are chanting religious slogans, carrying Korans, and calling for the lawful counting of their votes. Whether or not the rumors of splits at the top of the Revolutionary Guards’ hierarchy are true, the rank and file is not necessarily monolithic. [continued…]

Her name was Neda
By Lisa Derrick, La Figa, June 21, 2009

The global community has been galvanized by the tweets, Facebook logins, cellphone pictures and reports from Iran. Now comes this video of a young a woman shot in Tehran by Basiji police force, which I came across after seeing “neda” and “#neda” on Twitter, where the words kept showing up in in the Tehran and Iran threads. “Neda” means “call” or “proclamation” in Farsi, an odd and chilling coincidence. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — The Basijis’ tactics at this point appear brutal and calculated. There will be no Tiananmen-style mass slaughter. Instead, snipers will pick easy targets in order to send a message. Then at night when YouTube loses much of its force, the Basijis go on the rampage, destroying property and terrorizing neighborhoods.

Larijani: Critics separate themselves from rioters
Press TV, June 21, 2009

Ian’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani urges ‘politicians and candidates’ to separate themselves from rioters and seek legal channels to prove their claims.

“The issue can not be taken forward by shouting fraud, stirring the mood, and dragging the issue to the streets,” Larijani said in a Saturday televised interview.

“We must separate those who have burnt people’s shops in the streets and harmed the police and Basij (volunteer militias) forces, who are the guardians of the country, from the critics of the election results,” he added. [continued…]

Iran TV reports 10 killed in Saturday protests
By Robert Tait, The Guardian, June 21, 2009

At least 10 people were killed and more than 100 injured during yesterday’s protests in Tehran, state-run television said today.

The news came as Iran braced itself for the possibility of further post-election confrontations. Unconfirmed reports suggested the death toll could be much higher.

State television said the deaths happened during clashes between police and “terrorist groups”. [continued…]

Reporters’ log
BBC, June 20, 2009

We have this daily cry now from the roofs of Allahu Akhbar – God is Great – it’s an opposition protest and night after night it seems to get louder and longer.

Tonight was the loudest and longest I’ve heard, and that really symbolises and shows you the mood of the opposition here.

Whatever happens, whatever the government is putting up against them, they seem more and more determined to press on. [continued…]

‘Five Hashemi-Rafsanjani relatives arrested’
Press TV, June 21, 2009

Iranian security forces have arrested five close relatives of Iran’s Expediency Council head Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, including his daughter Faezeh Hashemi.

Last night, five members of the former president’s family were arrested, Iran Newspaper on Network reported.

The five include Faezeh Hashemi and her daughter, as well as Hossein Mar’ashi’s wife, daughter, and sister-in-law — Mar’ashi is a cousin to Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s wife. [continued…]

Repression stepped up yet again as Iran becomes world’s biggest prison for journalists
Reporters Sans Frontiers, June 21, 2009

The Islamic Republic of Iran now ranks alongside China as the world’s biggest prison for journalists. The crackdown has been intensified yet again following Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s endorsement of the result of the 12 June presidential election and the opposition’s decision to call another demonstration on 20 June.

Iran now has a total of 33 journalists and cyber-dissidents in its jails, while journalists who could not be located at their homes have been summoned by telephone by Tehran prosecutor general Said Mortazavi. [continued…]

Preliminary analysis of the voting figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election
By Ali Ansari, Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul, Chatham House, June, 2009

Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, and from the 2006 census as published by the official Statistical Centre of Iran, this paper offers some observations about the official data and the debates surrounding the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election. [continued…]

Obama says ‘justice’ is needed for Iranians
By Helene Cooper, New York Times, June 21, 2009

President Obama ratcheted up his language against Iran’s leadership on Saturday, in a statement that invoked the American civil rights movement as an analogy for what was unfolding on the streets of Tehran.

“Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’ ” Mr. Obama said in a statement released after security forces in the Iranian capital clashed repeatedly with protesters. “I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian people’s belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

Mr. Obama’s remarks came after intense debate and multiple meetings all day Saturday at the White House, administration officials said, and reflected growing concern within the administration that the violence in Iran could continue to escalate. [continued…]

Twitter fraud? Embassy stories of taking in injured protesters “flawed”
By Steve Clemons, The Washington Note, June 21, 2009

Yesterday and today, there has been a great deal of Twitter traffic about embassies that were taking in injured protesters. The Canadians were under attack on Twitter for not taking in protesters until it was reported, again on Twitter, that the Canadians were looking for doctors to be able and help.

A high quality map of Tehran-based foreign embassies taking in those who needed help was distributed. I posted the link on my blog here at The Washington Note.

And then a counter campaign also appeared warning those injured to stay away from Embassies because the basij were waiting for them at the embassy entrances.

I now must publicly question the entire exchange over twitter. I did get my link to the embassy roster and map — not from twitter — but from a friend who is an Iranian diplomat that has been stationed in an Asian country. I don’t think he maliciously sent be bad information, but I do think he may have recycled other material that was being pushed out through the new media. [continued…]

Update – Live blogging from Nico Pitney, Andrew Sullivan, and niacINsight.

From niacINsight:
Iranian state media reportedly lying about what Obama is saying:

This morning a friend of NIAC who gets Iranian Satellite TV here said that state-run media showed President Obama speaking about Iran this morning. However, instead of translating what he actually said, the translator reportedly quoted Obama as saying he “supports the protesters against the government and they should keep protesting.

Assuming this report is correct, it shows the Iranian government is eager to portray Obama as a partisan supporting the demonstrators.

Editor’s Comment — Obama’s rationale for maintaining a carefully studied neutrality is becoming weaker by the minute. Everything he says the United States would be accused of if it did anything that can be interpreted as meddling, it is being accused of in any case. The political and diplomatic nuances of Obama’s carefully parsed statements are not merely getting lost in translation — they’re being resisted by a propaganda campaign that suffers from no factual constraints. Those Iranians willing to belief what their intelligence ministry is telling them, are being led to understand that John McCain and George Soros are the masterminds behind a regime-change operation run from inside the White House!

DAY OF RECKONING

I speak for Mousavi. And Iran
By Mohsen Makhmalbaf, The Guardian, June 19, 2009

I have been given the ­responsibility of telling the world what is happening in Iran. The office of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who the Iranian people truly want as their leader, has asked me to do so. They have asked me to tell how Mousavi’s headquarters was wrecked by plainclothes police officers. To tell how the commanders of the revolutionary guard ordered him to stay silent. To urge people to take to the streets because Mousavi could not do so directly.

The people in the streets don’t want a recount of last week’s vote. They want it annulled. This is a crucial moment in our history. Since the 1979 revolution Iran has had 80% dictatorship and 20% democracy. We have dictatorship because one person is in charge, the supreme leader – first Khomeini, now Khamenei. He controls the army and the clergy, the justice system and the media, as well as our oil money.

There are some examples of democracy – reformers elected to parliament, and the very fact that a person like Mousavi could stand for election. But, since the day of the election, this ­element of democracy has vanished. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won, and that whoever opposed this will be suppressed – a position he affirmed speaking today in Tehran. People wanted to have demonstrations within the law, but the authorities would not let them. This is the first time we have seen millions on the streets without the permission of the supreme leader.

Now they are gathering to mourn those who have died. The people of Iran have a culture that elevates martyrdom. In the period running up to the revolution, when people were killed at demonstrations, others would gather again in the days following the death. This cycle carried on for six months, and culminated in the revolution. Today they are gathering in Tehran for those who were shot on Tuesday, and if there are more killings, this will continue. [continued…]

“Tomorrow is a big day, maybe I’ll get killed tomorrow!” wrote an Iranian blogger (translation provided by niacINsight)

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”

The woman speaking in the video says (translation provided by niacINsight):
Tomorrow Saturday is very important; Day of destiny.
Tonight the screams of “God is great” [Allah-o Akbar]
is louder than on any other night.

It is Iran.
It is my home land and your home land.
It is Iran.

Iran’s turning point: The Supreme Leader’s ominous sermon
By Howard Chua-Eoan, Time, June 19, 2009

Iranians knew that Friday Prayer in Tehran on June 19 would be a turning point. For those tuning in to watch, its significance could be approached visually, like the old May Day parades in Moscow under the Soviet Union. You scan the faces of the people present to see who is there and who is not, attaching meaning to attendance. Among those there to hear the pronouncements of the Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, were most of the top leadership, including powerful personalities like Ali Larijani, the Speaker of parliament, and one of his predecessors, Gholam-Ali Hadad Adel (who also happens to be related to Khamenei through the marriage of their children). The President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was there too, as was one of his election rivals, Mohsen Rezaei. But dramatically absent were two other candidates for the presidency: Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Also invisible was Ahmadinejad’s true nemesis: Ayatullah Hashemi Rafsanjani.

But Kremlinology was dispensed with once the Supreme Leader began speaking — and the country began to parse his words. He spoke of how “the enemy” had been plotting to declare the elections fraudulent even before the vote took place. He spoke of the illegality of street protests. The recent election, he said, was the most significant in the history of Iran apart from the vote in 1979 that created the Islamic republic. Iranians, he said, should remember that their country represents a third way, the best way, between dictatorships and the false democracies that populate the rest of the world.

Khamenei dismissed accusations that the election was stolen. He said cheating occurs by way of small numbers, a vote here or there, a few thousand or ten thousand. He indicated that an 11 million margin could not be manufactured. Still, he said, the Guardian Council, which must certify the results, would recount ballots with representatives of all candidates present. In the meantime, he declared that the way of the law, rahe qanun, had to be respected and the violence in the streets brought to an end. He condemned the violent excesses of both the Basij, the volunteer paramilitary that supports Ahamdinejad, and the green-garbed backers of Mousavi. [continued…]

Shadowy Iranian vigilantes vow bolder action
By Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, June 19, 2009

The daytime protests across the Islamic republic have been largely peaceful. But Iranians shudder at the violence unleashed in their cities at night, with the shadowy vigilantes known as Basijis beating, looting and sometimes gunning down protesters they tracked during the day.

The vigilantes plan to take their fight into the daylight on Friday, with the public relations department of Ansar Hezbollah, the most public face of the Basij, announcing that they planned a public demonstration to expose the “seditious conspiracy” being carried out by “agitating hooligans.”

“We invite the vigilant people who are always in the arena to make their loud objections heard in response to the babbling of this tribe,” said the announcement, carried on the Web site Parsine.

The announcement could be the first indication that the government was taking its gloves off, Iranian analysts noted, because up to this point the Basijis, usually deployed as the shock troops to end any public protests, have been working in stealth. [continued…]

Iranians to Obama: hush
By Azadeh Moaveni, The Daily Beast, June 17, 2009

… in conversations with friends and relatives in Tehran this week, I’ve heard the opposite of what I had expected: a resounding belief that this time the United States should keep out. One of my cousins, a woman in her mid-30s who has been attending the daily protests along with the rest of her family, viewed the situation pragmatically. “The U.S. shouldn’t interfere, because a loud condemnation isn’t going to affect Iranian domestic politics one way or the other. If the supreme leader decides to crackdown on the protests and Ahmadinejad stays in power, then negotiations with the United States might improve our lives.”

I heard these sentiments, remarkably thoughtful for such a passionate moment, echoed from many quarters. President Barack Obama’s outreach to Iran, and his offer of a mutually respectful dialogue, has raised the possibility of better relations for the first time in years, and many Iranians worry that a false step might jeopardize that prospect altogether. A friend of mine who studies public relations in Tehran noted that other American allies in the Gulf, Arab dictatorships with no pretence of democracy, are thriving economically. “In the end, a dictatorship that doesn’t face U.S. sanctions is better off than one that does,” she said. “Now that after 30 years it seems that we have a chance to negotiate with America, it would be a shame if we lost the chance.”

Other friends I spoke with cited various reasons why the United States should maintain its discrete posture. “If Obama’s position until now has been to respect Iran, then he really has no choice but to watch first how things unfold. Mousavi hasn’t produced any facts yet, no one has produced evidence of fraud,” said my friend Ali, a 40-year-old photographer. “That’s what is needed before Obama takes a major stand.” [continued…]

(Part one of this interview with Pepe Escobar can be seen here.)

Thursday’s rally to mourn the dead in Iran
By Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin, Washington Post, June 18, 2009

The march in teeming South Tehran, the poorest part of the capital, was intended to show a broad base of support for the opposition, which Ahmadinejad and his backers have denounced as reflecting the interests of more affluent Iranians in North Tehran. Witnesses said the marchers included people from all walks of life, from impoverished laborers to well-off businessmen. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — While the Washington Post went with the headline “Thousands rally in Tehran in protest of election results,” The Guardian‘s correspondent, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, reckoned there might have been as many as one million people there.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Press TV said:

“The government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says ‘the enemies of the nation’ are fomenting post-election riots across the country.

“Our enemies and their media have hired some opportunist and mischievous elements and have misused the simple-mindedness of some people to cause unrest,” the government said in a Thursday statement.

It further accused the Western foreign media of ‘spreading lies and rumors’ to create doubts over the health of Friday’s presidential election.

As Robert Tait reports, Ahmadinejad’s simple-minded opponents are apparently quite adept in throwing back his insults.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s taste for contemptuous putdowns has rebounded against him and energised his opponents after he dismissed those protesting against his re-election as “dirt and dust”.

The description has entered the folklore of street demonstrations against the official outcome of last Friday’s poll and inspired at least two pithy slogans throwing the president’s words back in his face.

“Dirt and dust is you, it is you who are the enemy of Iran,” one chant goes.

Another frequently heard slogan is: “We are not dirt and dust, we are Iran’s nation.”

Among those outside Iran who still express skepticism that the opposition to Ahmadinejad’s government stretches far beyond North Tehran, it’s noteworthy to see the size of the protest in Esfahan (200 miles south of Tehran) on Wednesday.

Iranian protesters’ slogans target Khamenei as the real enemy
By Robert Tait, The Guardian, June 17, 2009

Given the turmoil unfolding around him, the soothing call for peace and harmony seemed to belong to an alien planet. But if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sensed anything untoward in his words, he didn’t show it.

“Everybody should be patient,” he told a televised gathering yesterday evening convened to discuss last week’s disputed presidential election. “Tolerance is very difficult, whether for he who has won, or the one who is defeated. Increase the capacity for defeat in yourself.” [continued…]

Relatives: Iranian activist pulled from hospital bed, arrested
CNN, June 17, 2009

A former Iranian deputy prime minister who headed a group supporting increased freedom and democracy was pulled from his hospital bed and arrested Wednesday in Tehran, his granddaughter told CNN.

Ibrahim Yazdi, who is about 76 years old, is secretary-general of the Freedom Movement of Iran, said Atefeh Yazdi of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has suffered from prostate cancer, and his condition must be closely monitored, she said. [continued…]

Iran arrests reformers as huge protests continue
By Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2009

Iran’s Interior Ministry ordered a probe into an attack late Sunday night on Tehran University students in a dormitory reported to have left several students dead and many more injured or arrested. Students say it was carried out by Islamic militia and police. Iran’s English-language Press TV said the ministry urged Tehran’s governor’s office to identify those involved. Iran’s influential speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, condemned the attack.

Students’ Web sites reported mass resignations by Tehran University professors outraged over the incident. One medical student said he and his roommate blocked their door with furniture and hid in the closet when they heard the militia’s motorcycles approaching. He heard the militia breaking down doors, and then screams of anguish as students were dragged from their beds and beaten violently.

When he came out after the militia had left, friends and classmates lay unconscious in dorm rooms and hallways, many with chest wounds from being stabbed or bloody faces from blows to their heads, he said. The staff of the hospital where the wounded students were taken, Hazrat Rasoul Hospital, was so shocked that they went on strike for two hours, standing silently outside the gate in their white medical uniforms. [continued…]

An insider turned agitator is the face of Iran’s opposition
By Robert R Worth, New York Times, June 18, 2009

His followers have begun calling him “the Gandhi of Iran.” His image is carried aloft in the vast opposition demonstrations that have shaken Iran in recent days, his name chanted in rhyming verses that invoke Islam’s most sacred martyrs.

Mir Hussein Moussavi has become the public face of the movement, the man the protesters consider the true winner of the disputed presidential election.

But he is in some ways an accidental leader, a moderate figure anointed at the last minute to represent a popular upwelling against the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is far from being a liberal in the Western sense, and it is not yet clear how far he will be willing to go in defending the broad democratic hopes he has come to embody. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — The problem with casting Mousavi as an insider is that insiders are invariably loyal to their own interests. The key line in this article comes from a relative who says: “Mr. Moussavi says he has taken a path that has no return and he is ready to make sacrifices.”

Iran election turnouts exceeded 100% in 30 towns, website reports
By Robert Tait, The Guardian, June 17, 2009

Turnouts of more than 100% were recorded in at least 30 Iranian towns in last week’s disputed presidential election, opposition sources have claimed.

In the most specific allegations of rigging yet to emerge, the centrist Ayandeh website – which stayed neutral during the campaign – reported that 26 provinces across the country showed participation figures so high they were either hitherto unheard of in democratic elections or in excess of the number of registered electors.

Taft, a town in the central province of Yazd, had a turnout of 141%, the site said, quoting an unnamed “political expert”. Kouhrang, in Chahar Mahaal Bakhtiari province, recorded a 132% turnout while Chadegan, in Isfahan province, had 120%. [continued…]

Iran election fraud: Moaddel on Ballen and Doherty
By Mansoor Moaddel, Informed Comment, June 18, 2009

In the June 15, 2009 issue of Washington Post, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty wrote that “The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin — greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.”

However, scrutiny of the data posted at Terror Free Tomorrow (www.terrorfreetomorrow.org) fails to support Ballen and Doherty’s interpretations. Their findings, from a telephone survey conducted four weeks before the election, are based on the responses of only 57.8% of the 1,731 people who were successfully contacted by telephone from outside of Iran. Among these, 34% said they would vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 14% for Mir Hussein Mousavi, 2% for Mehdi Karoubi, 1% for Mohsen Rezaie, and 27% did not know. (These figures add up only to 78% in the Ballen report.) In other words, of 1,731 people contacted, well over half either refused to participate (42.2%) or did not indicate a preferred candidate (15.6%) While we cannot guess at the political preferences of this nonresponding/ noncommitting group, we do know from these data that just 19.7% of all those contacted indicated they planned to vote for Ahmadinejad. This polling figure is very low for an incumbent – particularly for a self-described populist candidate – and cannot be responsibly interpreted as representing a clear harbinger of election victory. [continued…]

Iran’s rural vote and election fraud
By Eric Hooglund, Tehran Bureau, June 17, 2009

I just heard a CNN reporter in Tehran say that Ahmadinejad’s support base was rural. Is it possible that rural Iran, where less than 35 percent of the country’s population lives, provided Ahmadinejad the 63 percent of the vote he claims to have won? That would contradict my own research in Iran’s villages over the past 30 years, including just recently. I do not carry out research in Iran’s cities, as do foreign reporters who otherwise live in the metropolises of Europe and North America, and so I wonder how they can make such bold assertions about the allegedly extensive rural support for Ahmadinejad.

Take Bagh-e Iman, for example. It is a village of 850 households in the Zagros Mountains near the southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz. According to longtime, close friends who live there, the village is seething with moral outrage because at least two-thirds of all people over 18 years of age believe that the recent presidential election was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

When news spread on Saturday (June 13) morning that Ahmadinejad had won more than 60 percent of the vote cast the day before, the residents were in shock. The week before the vote had witnessed the most intense campaigning in the village’s history, and it became evident that support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s candidacy was overwhelming. Supporters of Ahmadinejad were even booed and mocked when they attempted rallies and had to endure scolding lectures from relatives at family gatherings. “No one would dare vote for that hypocrite,” insisted Mrs. Ehsani, an elected member of the village council. [continued…]

Mossad head: Iran riots won’t escalate into revolution
By Yossi Melman and Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz, June 18, 2009

Mossad chief Meir Dagan on Tuesday told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the riots in Iran over the election results will die out in a few days rather than escalate into a revolution.

“The reality in Iran is not going to change because of the elections. The world and we already know [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. If the reformist candidate [Mir Hossein] Mousavi had won, Israel would have had a more serious problem because it would need to explain to the world the danger of the Iranian threat, since Mousavi is perceived internationally arena as a moderate element … It is important to remember that he is the one who began Iran’s nuclear program when he was prime minister.”

According to Dagan, “Election fraud in Iran is no different than what happens in liberal states during elections. The struggle over the election results in Iran is internal and is unconnected to its strategic aspirations, including its nuclear program.” [continued…]

The narrow strategic thinking of pro-Ahmadinejad Israelis
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, June 17, 2009

The prize for this week’s most stupid remark has to go to the officials, officers and experts who described Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the candidate Israel prefers to win the election in Iran, and were even happy he did. It is hard to think of a more blatant manifestation of the narrow horizons of Israeli strategic thinking.

The claim of pro-Ahmadinejad Israelis goes like this: The president in Iran is a puppet of the real powers – the religious leaders, led by Ayatollah Khamenei. Iran’s nuclear plans have advanced and will continue no matter who is president and what that person’s positions are. Therefore, it is better for us that Iran’s most prominent spokesperson to be a Holocaust-denier who threatens to destroy Israel; that way it will be easier to garner support from around the world for pressure on Iran. [continued…]

Iran’s power struggle
By Gareth Smyth, Tehran Bureau, June 16, 2009

As he surveys the aftermath of the rioting in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be assessing the crisis he faces. Referring the complaints from defeated presidential candidates for a ten-day enquiry — just 48 hours after detecting a divine hand in the result — may stymie protests and gain time.

But the deeper challenge facing Iran’s supreme leader is to assuage or break up a coalition against Mr Ahmadinejad that has taken shape since the first year of his presidency. The events of the past week have widened the division between the president and his opponents, making it harder for Ayatollah Khamenei to defuse the situation through finding common ground.

The anti-Ahmadinejad coalition began in 2006 as a group of reformists and pragmatic conservatives alarmed at the new president’s foreign policy pronouncements, which they felt imperiled Iran’s international position. The group was also concerned at the president’s reflationary economics — and the harm inflicted on businesses by tougher western sanctions they blamed in part on Mr Ahmadinejad’s bellicose approach.

The three co-ordinators of this group were Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the revolutionary veteran who holds important state positions, Mohammad Khatami, the former reformist president, and Mehdi Karrubi, the former parliamentary speaker. [continued…]

The leaders of Iran’s ‘election coup’
By Muhammad Sahimi, Tehran Bureau, June 14, 2009

The rigged presidential election in Iran — a coup d’etat, according to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a spokesman for the main reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi and other analysts — has prompted protests both inside and outside Iran. There is, however, little understanding about the ideology and motivation behind the operation.

The coup leaders represent the second generation of Iran’s revolutionaries. They tend to be in their early to mid-fifties, so they were young at the time of the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979. They all supported the Revolution, and most of them joined Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) almost immediately after the Revolution that toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime in February 1979. They fervently supported the young revolutionary government, and then fought two fierce wars in the 1980s under the command of their clerical masters — Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Hojjatol-eslams Ali Khamenei (the present Supreme Leader) and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (the former President), and others. [Hojjatol-eslam is a clerical ranking lower than an ayatollah.]

The young revolutionaries fought against far better financed Iraqi forces for eight years, expelled them from all of the Iranian territory occupied by Saddam Hussein’s forces, and ended the war in a stalemate, which was a great achievement for Iran considering its international isolation while Iraq was supported by the West and the Soviet Union. [continued…]

The meaning of the Tehran spring
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, June 16, 2009

Today’s rally in Tehran in support of Mousavi

It is 1979 in Tehran all over again. From Saturday to Sunday, the deafening sound deep in the night across Tehran’s rooftops was a roaring, ubiquitous “Allah-u Akbar” (God is great). Then, in 1979, to hail the Islamic revolution; now, in 2009, to signify what appears to be the hijacking of the Islamic revolution. Then, the revolution was not televised; it was via (Ruhollah Khomeini) radio. Now, it is being broadcast all across the world.

Let’s cut to the chase: what Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi qualified as “this dangerous charade” and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “the sweetness of the election”, or better yet, a “divine assessment”, has all the non-divine markings of intervention by the Iranian Republican Guards Corps (IRGC). This follows President Mahmud Ahmadinejad officially gaining 64% of the vote in defeating Mousavi in what in the days before Friday’s vote had widely been called as a very close race.

Scores of protesters equating Ahmadinejad with Augusto Pinochet in 1973’s Chile might not be that far off the mark. Call it the ultra-right wing, military dictatorship of the mullahtariat.

This is emerging as a no-holds-barred civil war at the very top of the Islamic Republic. The undisputed elite is now supposed to be embodied by the Ahmadinejad faction, the IRGC, the intelligence apparatus, the Ministry of the Interior, the Basij volunteer militias, and most of all the Supreme Leader himself. [continued…]

Echoes of the revolution
Tehran, June 9, 2009

“On the rooftops in Tehran, people sounding out into the night ‘God is Great,’ the same chant that sparked the revolution in 1979, only now with a decidedly different subtext.” — National Iranian American Council blog

Note: This video was made three days before the election.