BF2S Forums Iran: Revolution in the works?

TEHRAN, Iran – Protesters set fires and smashed store windows Sunday in a second day of violence as groups challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election tried to keep pressure on authorities. Anti-riot police lashed back and the regime blocked Internet sites used to rally the pro-reform campaign.

Ahmadinejad dismissed Tehran's worst unrest in a decade as "not important," comparing it to passions after a football match. He insisted Friday's vote was "real and free" and the results showing his landslide victory were fair and legitimate. Along Tehran's Vali Asr street — where activists supporting rival candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi held a huge pre-election rally last week — tens of thousands marched in support of Ahmadinejad, waving Iranian flags and shouting his name.

Mousavi sent a letter to the Guardian Council — a powerful clerical group — calling for the election to be canceled. He has claimed that he was the real winner.

"Fraud is evident and review and nullification is requested," said the letter posted on Mousavi's Web site. Mousavi also met Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to discuss his fraud allegations. Shahab Tabatabaei, a prominent activist in Mousavi's pro-reform camp, said Mousavi called on Khamenei to order cancellation of the election results.

Mousavi earlier released a statement said canceling the election is the only way to restore public trust. He urged supporters to continue their "civil and lawful" opposition to the results and advised police to stop violence against protesters.

The violence has pushed Iran's Islamic establishment to respond with sweeping measures. They have deployed anti-riot squads around the capital and cut mobile phone messaging and Internet sites used by Mousavi's campaign.

There is little chance the youth-driven movement could immediately threaten the pillars of power in Iran — the ruling clerics and the vast network of military and intelligence forces at their command. But their discontent raises the possibility that a sustained and growing backlash could complicate Iran's policies at a pivotal time.

President Barack Obama has offered to open dialogue after a nearly 30-year diplomatic freeze. Iran also is under growing pressure to make concessions on its nuclear program or face possible more international sanctions.

Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday he has doubts about whether the election was free and fair. He said the U.S. and other countries need more time to analyze the results before making a better judgment.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his country is "very worried" about the situation in Iran and criticized authorities' "somewhat brutal reaction" to the protests.

Mahdi Karroubi, a moderate former parliament speaker who also ran in the election, also challenged the election result.

"The results for the election are illegitimate and the government lacks national dignity and social competence," he said in a statement. "So I do not recognize Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran."

In a second day of clashes, scores of young people shouted "Death to the dictator!" and broke the windows of city buses on several streets in central Tehran. They burned banks and set first to trash bins and piles of tires, using them as flaming barricades to block police.

Riot police beat some of the protesters with batons while dozens of others holding shields and motorcycles stood guard nearby. Shops, government offices and businesses closed early as tension mounted.

Ahmadinejad called the level of violence "not important from my point of view," speaking at a news conference.

"Some believed they would win, and then they got angry," he said. "It has no legal credibility. It is like the passions after a football match. ... The margin between my votes and the others is too much and no one can question it."

"In Iran, the election was a real and free one," said Ahmadinejad. "The election will improve the nation's power and its future," he told a packed room of Iranian and foreign media.

About a mile away from Ahmadinejad's news conference, young Iranians set trash bins, banks and tires on fire as riot police beat them back with batons.

Ahmadinejad accused foreign media of launching a "psychological war" against the country, repeating a charge he also made on Saturday.

Iranian authorities have asked some foreign journalists — in Iran to cover the elections — to prepare to leave.

Nabil Khatib, executive news editor for Dubai-based news network Al Arabiya, said the station's correspondent in Tehran was given a verbal order Sunday from Iranian authorities that the office will be closed for one week. No reason was given for the order, but the station was warned several times Saturday that they need to be careful in reporting "chaos" accurately.

Iran restored cell phone service that had been down in the capital since Saturday. But Iranians could not send text messages from their phones, and the government increased its Internet filtering in an apparent attempt to undercut liberal voices. Social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter were also not working.

The restrictions were likely intended to prevent Mousavi's supporters from organizing large-scale protests. But smaller groups assembled around the city. About 300 Mousavi supporters gathered outside Sharif University, chanting "Where are our votes?"

About a dozen riot police used batons to disperse about 50 Mousavi supporters standing outside his campaign quarters.

On Saturday, Mousavi, a 67-year-old former prime minister, released a Web message saying he would not "surrender to this manipulation." Authorities responded with targeted detentions, apparently designed to rattle the leadership of Mousavi's "green" movement — the trademark color of his campaign.

The detentions include the brother of former reformist President Mohammad Khatami and two top organizers of Iran's largest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front: the party's secretary-general and the head of Mousavi's youth cyber campaign. Mohammad Reza Khatami and the two party activists were released Sunday.

Several others linked to Mousavi's campaign remained in custody, but the full extent of the arrests were not known.

Tehran deputy prosecutor, Mahmoud Slarkia, told the semi-official ISNA news agency that fewer than 10 people were arrested on the charge of "disturbing public opinion" through their "false reports" on Web sites after the election. He did not mention any names.

Iran's deputy police chief, Ahmad Reza Radan, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that about 170 people have been arrested for their involvement in Saturday's protests. He said 10 of those arrested were "main planners" and 50 were "rioters." The others were arrested for being at the site of the clashes, he said. Some of the detained were active in Mousavi's campaign headquarters or had relations with foreign media, he said.

"Police will not allow protesters to disturb the peace and calmness of the people under the influence of foreign media," Radan said on state television, which showed footage of the protests for the first time Sunday.

Mousavi's newspaper, Kalemeh Sabz, or the Green Word, did not appear on newsstands Sunday. An editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the paper never left the printing house because authorities were upset with Mousavi's statements.

The paper's Web site reported that more than 10 million votes in Friday's election were missing national identification numbers similar to U.S. Social Security numbers, which make the votes "untraceable." It did not say how it knew that information.

"Don't worry about freedom in Iran," Ahmadinejad said at his news conference after a question about the disputed election. "Newspapers come and go and reappear. Don't worry about it."

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has closed the door for a possible compromise. He could have used his near-limitless powers to intervene in the election dispute. But, in a message on state TV on Saturday, he urged the nation to unite behind Ahmadinejad, calling the result a "divine assessment."

Few doubt that the results presented by the interior minister are rigged. In fact, there are increasing questions as to whether the votes were ever even counted. If this were really a landslide in favor of Ahmadinejad, where are those 63 percent of the people right now? Shouldn't they be celebrating their victory on the streets?

Clearly, the anti-Ahmadinejad camp has been taken by surprise and is scrambling for a plan. Increasingly, given their failure to get Khamenei to intervene, their only option seems to be to directly challenge -- or threaten to challenge -- the supreme leader.

Here's where the powerful chairman of the Assembly of Experts, Mousavi supporter Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, comes in. Only this assembly has the formal authority to call for Khamenei's dismissal, and it is now widely assumed that Rafsanjani is quietly assessing whether he has the votes to do so or not.

It may be that the first steps toward challenging Khamenei have already been taken. After all, Mousavi went over the supreme leader's head with an open letter to the clergy in Qom. Rafsanjani clearly failed to win Khamenei's support in a reported meeting between the two men Friday, but the influential Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, who heads the vote-monitoring committee for Mousavi and fellow candidate Mehdi Karroubi, has officially requested that the Guardian Council cancel the election and schedule a new vote with proper monitoring.

Last night in London after appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, I got an email from a well-connected Iranian who knows many of the power figures in the Tehran political order asking to meet me. I told him that the only place possible was Paddington on the way to Heathrow -- and there we met.

He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."

But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.

He predicted that the so-called reformist camp -- who are not exactly humanists in the Western liberal sense -- may try and animate efforts to decapitate the regime and "do away with" Ahmadinejad and even the Supreme Leader himself.

Last edited by Masques (2009-06-14 11:52:07)

imortal wrote:

I found this quote pretty interesting!

But Marshall emphasised there are many countries who are pleased with the result.

"I don't think what the outside world says makes much difference and if we talk about the outside world Venezuela is very close to Iran, Hugo Chavez has sent his congratulations. I think the Russians have as well, Hamas have, Hezbollah has and they are all saying what a great result," he said.

source (sky news)

I love the list of people approving of it.  Seems a bit telling.

Turquoise wrote:

Hugo really enjoys being a douchebag, doesn't he?...

TEHRAN, Iran – Protesters battled police over Iran's disputed election and shouted their opposition from the rooftops Sunday, but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the unrest as little more than "passions after a soccer match" and drew his own huge rally of support.

Just after sundown, cries of "death to the dictator" echoed through Tehran as thousands of backers for Ahmadinejad's rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, heeded a call to bellow from the roofs and balconies. The deeply symbolic act recalled the shouts of "Allahu Akbar," or God is Great, to show opposition to the Western-backed monarchy before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The scenes summed up the showdown over the disputed elections: an outwardly confident Ahmadinejad exerted control, while Mousavi showed no sign of backing down and could be staking out a new role as powerful opposition voice.

His charges that Friday's vote was riddled by fraud brought sympathetic statements from Vice President Joe Biden and other leaders. Mousavi made a direct appeal with Iran's ruling clerics to annul the result, but the chances were considered remote.

With his wide network of young and middle-class backers, Mousavi could emerge as a leader for Iran's liberal ranks and bring internal pressure on Ahmadinejad and Iran's theocracy to take less confrontational policies toward the West.

But the struggle Sunday was on the streets in the worst unrest in Tehran since student-led protests 10 years ago.

Demonstrators were back on the streets with the same tactics: torching bank facades and trash bins, smashing store windows and hurling rocks at anti-riots squads in Tehran. Police responded with baton-wielding sweeps — sometimes targeting bystanders — and the regime shut down text messaging systems and pro-reform Internet sites.

There was no official word on casualties.

Authorities detained top Mousavi aides, including the head of his Web campaign, but many were released Sunday after being held overnight.

Iran's deputy police chief, Ahmad Reza Radan, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that about 170 people have been arrested. It was not known how many remained in custody.

Mousavi has urged his supporters to channel their anger into peaceful acts of dissent. But the official clampdown on the Internet links blunted the reach of the message. At the same time, Mousavi went to the pinnacle of power to try to reverse the election decision.

In a letter to the Guardian Council — a powerful 12-member clerical body closely allied to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — he claimed "fraud is evident."

The letter, posted on Mousavi's Web site that is accessible outside Iran, didn't specify his allegations but claimed that his envoys were unfairly blocked from monitoring polling stations. Iran does not allow outside or independent election observers. The Guardian Council must certify all election counts.

Mousavi later met Khamenei — who has almost limitless power — to press his appeal, said Shahab Tabatabaei, a prominent activist in Mousavi's pro-reform camp.

It was likely a long-shot mission by Mousavi, 67, who served as prime minister in the 1980s. Khamenei has already given his blessing to the election outcome and it would be extraordinary for him to publicly change his position.

In a news conference, Ahmadinejad called the level of violence "not important from my point of view" and likened it to the intensity after a soccer game.

"Some believed they would win, and then they got angry," he said. "It has no legal credibility. It is like the passions after a soccer match. ... The margin between my votes and the others is too much and no one can question it."

"In Iran, the election was a real and free one," he told a room packed with Iranian and foreign media.

But Ahmadinejad also accused international media of launching a "psychological war" against the country.

Iranian authorities have asked some foreign journalists who were in Iran to cover the elections to prepare to leave. Nabil Khatib, executive news editor for Dubai-based news network Al Arabiya, said the station's correspondent in Tehran was given a verbal order Sunday from Iranian authorities that the office will be closed for one week.

No reason was given for the order, but the station was warned several times Saturday that they need to be careful in reporting "chaos" accurately.

A sustained and growing backlash to Iran's power could complicate the country's policies at a pivotal time.

President Barack Obama has offered to open dialogue after a nearly 30-year diplomatic freeze. Iran also is under growing pressure to make concessions on its nuclear program or face possible more international sanctions.

On NBC television's "Meet the Press," Biden said: "Is this the result of the Iranian people's wishes? The hope is that the Iranian people, all their votes have been counted, they've been counted fairly. But look, we just don't know enough" since Friday's vote.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his country is "very worried" about the situation in Iran and criticized the "somewhat brutal reaction" to the election protests.

But both U.S.-backed governments flanking Iran — Afghanistan and Iraq — issued congratulations.

In Tehran, the day was marked by competing protests from both sides.

Less than a 10-minute walk from Ahmadinejad's news conference, protesters raged through streets and lit piles of tires as flaming barricades to block police. About 300 Mousavi supporters gathered outside Sharif University, chanting "Where are our votes?"

By mid-afternoon, tens of thousands of Ahmadinejad supporters filled Vali Asr Street — the same place a massive pre-election rally was held by Mousavi last week. Ahmadinejad's forces waved Iranian flags and green Islamic banners, an obvious response to Mousavi's campaign that adopted green as its trademark color.

Ahmadinejad even donned a green scarf and noted its traditional Islamic references as the favored color of Prophet Mohammad.

"Ahmadinejad is a hero," said a 34-year-old supporter Mohammad Chegini. "He cares for the poor. He is brave and stands up to the West. It is Ahmadinejad who made uranium enrichment a reality in this country."

After dark, came the cries from the rooftops across Tehran.

Using Web chat lines, phone calls and word of mouth, the message was passed for Mousavi's backers to shout "death to the dictator" and "Allahu Akbar." The historical connection of the act was hugely significant for Iranians. It was how the leader of the Islamic Revolution, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, asked the country to unite in protest against the monarchy and was used later to mark its anniversary.

In one neighborhood, anti-riot police tried to disperse people joining in the cries from a street corner, but the crowds threw rocks at the officers and they withdrew.

Mousavi's newspaper, Kalemeh Sabz, or the Green Word, did not appear on newsstands Sunday. An editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the paper never left the printing house because authorities were upset with Mousavi's statements.

The paper's Web site reported that more than 10 million votes in Friday's election were missing national identification numbers similar to U.S. Social Security numbers, which make the votes "untraceable." It did not say how it knew that information.

"Don't worry about freedom in Iran," Ahmadinejad said at the news conference after a question about the disputed election. "Newspapers come and go and reappear. Don't worry about it."

ghettoperson wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

And yeah, there is going to be one heck of an insurgency that develops in Iran now, which we should fund.  Slowly but surely, we can weaken their government until it is either overthrown from the inside, or things get so messy we'll be able to get some international support for an invasion.

You guys don't learn do you?

Lisik wrote:

Election/legitimate!!! Nothing new that majority of Iranians support Ahmedinejad.

Kmarion wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

I, for one, find it amusing how the security crisis in Iran is going. The U.S. didn't have to drop a single bomb for it to go a tad bit crazy there.

That's because as it turns out all Iranians aren't mindless drones, aka religious fanatics.

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's state television says the supreme leader has ordered an investigation into claims of fraud in last week's presidential election.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is ordering the powerful Guardian Council to examine the allegations by pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims widespread vote rigging in Friday's election. The government declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner in a landslide victory.