June 27, 2009

Iran’s president lashes out

at Obama

By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer

EDITOR’S NOTE: Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.

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Iran’s hardline president lashed out anew at the United States and President Barack Obama on Saturday, accusing him of interference and suggesting that Washington’s stance on Iran’s postelection turmoil could imperil Obama’s aim of improving relations.

“We are surprised at Mr. Obama,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in remarks to judiciary officials broadcast on state television. “Didn’t he say that he was after change? Why did he interfere?”

“They keep saying that they want to hold talks with Iran … but is this the correct way? Definitely, they have made a mistake,” Ahmadinejad said.

Obama was strongly criticized at home and by many abroad, for his initial measured response to opposition allegations that Ahmadinejad was re-elected by fraud in the June 12 balloting and to the harsh crackdown on protesters. The Obama administration wants to improve contacts with Tehran, especially because of concern that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Since the election, opposition protesters repeatedly have clashed with security forces who beat them with batons, fired tear gas and water cannons and arrested hundreds of people. At least 17 people have been killed, in addition to eight members of the pro-government Basij militia, officials have said.

The crackdown has pushed protesters off the streets, ending days of unprecedented demonstrations that saw hundreds of thousands of people demanding the election be canceled and held again.

Many supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been shouting “God is great!” from the roofs of their homes — a practice dating to the 1979 Islamic Revolution — to register discontent with the regime.

Members of the Basij have been raiding homes and beating residents in an attempt to stop the chanting, Human Rights Watch said Saturday. The group also said that authorities were seizing satellite dishes to prevent citizens from seeing news broadcast from overseas. Iranian officials have blamed the BBC, Voice of America and other news channels for fomenting unrest on behalf of Western governments.

“While most of the world’s attention is focused on the beatings in the streets of Iran during the day, the Basijis are carrying out brutal raids on people’s apartments during the night,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s Middle East director. “Witnesses are telling us that the Basijis are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes trying to stop the nightly rooftop protest chants.”

On Friday, Obama hailed the demonstrators in Iran and condemned the violence against them.

“Their bravery in the face of brutality is a testament to their enduring pursuit of justice,” Obama said. “The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous. In spite of the government’s efforts to keep the world from bearing witness to that violence, we see it and we condemn it.”

In a separate show of defiance of international opinion, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi was quoted by the official news agency IRNA as accusing the Group of Eight countries — including the United States — of “intervening and hasty remarks.” G-8 foreign ministers on Friday called for an end to the violence in Iran and urged the authorities to find a peaceful solution.

The Foreign Ministry also summoned Sweden’s ambassador to protest a break-in by demonstrators at Iran’s embassy on Friday, IRNA reported

Meanwhile, opposition supporters, faced with a senior cleric’s demand that protest leaders be severely punished or even executed, enter the third week of their campaign against the election results in increasingly tight straits.

Mousavi, who claims he actually won the vote, says he will seek official permission for any future rallies, effectively ending his role in street protests.

The opposition may have little opportunity to keep momentum going within the limits of the law, and the international attention that appeared to bolster their morale could be waning. Also, Mousavi’s Web site, his primary means for communicating with supporters, remained down on Saturday; an aide told the Associated Press Friday that the site had been hacked.

Mousavi said he would seek official permission for any future rallies, effectively ending his role in street protests organized by supporters who insist he won the election.

“The problem is we have no one to lead us,” a 30-year-old resident of Isfahan told AP on Saturday on condition of anonymity because he feared government reprisal. “We are waiting for a new message, but Mousavi does not want to continue, because after all he is part of the system.”

“People are angry and afraid,” he said. “They are afraid of the future and angry because they failed to achieve change with their ballots.”

People continue to resist the government oppression, he said, although very few dare to defy the government on the streets due to massive police presence.

But they continue to shout from the rooftops at night in Tehran and Isfahan, he said. The shouting was particularly loud after ruling clerics accused protesters Friday of challenging and opposing God with their dissent.

Mousavi alleges he was robbed of victory through widespread and systematic fraud. The regime rejects the claim, refusing to consider new balloting, and on Friday, the Guardian Council — Iran’s top electoral body — proclaimed the vote the “healthiest” held since the revolution.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ruled out a revote.

Since the election, opposition protesters repeatedly have clashed with security forces who arrested hundreds of people, including journalists, academics and university students. At least 17 people have been killed, in addition to eight members of the pro-government Basij militia, officials have said.

The demonstrations petered out this week under an ever-intensifying crackdown. Mousavi, meanwhile, has sent mixed signals to supporters, asking them not to break the law while pledging not to drop his challenge.

Amnesty International called the prospect of quick trials and capital punishment for some detainees “a very worrying development.” It said Iran was the world’s No. 2 executioner after China last year, with at least 346 known instances of people put to death. The group also called on the regime to release dozens of detained journalists it said faced possible torture.

As the protests dwindle amid intensifying official pressure, the opposition may suffer from a decline in international attention. The protests and violence dominated Western news broadcasts for nearly two weeks, with the reports substantially bolstered by videos gleaned from Internet sites and by commentary from social networking sites.

Such sites were a key pipeline for the opposition amid the tight restrictions on foreign media in the country.

But along with the diminished action on the streets in Iran, other stories have arisen to siphon away attention — especially the death of pop star Michael Jackson.

Television coverage of Iran’s turmoil has fallen since Jackson’s death Thursday; on the Twitter micro-blogging site, Iran remained among the most discussed topics, but fell below Jackson and comments about the movie “Transformers 2.”

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Heintz reported from Cairo; Associated Press writer Shaya Tayefe Mohajer in Cairo and Barbara Surk in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed to this report.

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June 27, 2009

Quiet crackdown drains

force from Iran dissidents

By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, Associated Press Writer

The Iranian government has seized and detained several hundred activists, journalists and students across the nation, in one of the most extensive crackdowns on key dissidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Even as unprecedented protests broke out on the streets after the June 12 disputed presidential election, the most stinging backlash from authorities has come away from the crowds through roundups and targeted arrests, according to witnesses and human rights organizations. They say plainclothes security agents have also put dozens of the country’s most experienced pro-reform leaders behind bars.

The Iranian government says only that unspecified figures responsible for fomenting unrest have been taken into custody.

The arrests have drained the pool of potential leaders of a protest movement that claims President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the election by fraud. They also point to the potential for high-profile trials — and serious sentences — before a special judicial forum created to handle cases from the unrest.

With the main reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi under constant police surveillance, protests demanding a new vote have withered. Many of those rounded up during demonstrations have been released within days.

But most of those detained in raids against potential opposition remain in custody. That has spread fear among Mousavi supporters and left the opposition movement reeling.

“We heard some news about people who are arrested at night and we are worried if it could happen to us,” a Tehran resident active in the protests wrote in an e-mail Friday, asking for anonymity for fear of government retaliation.

The targeted arrests appear to have begun the day after the election. Several of Iran’s best-known reformist politicians were taken into custody, including the brother and several close allies of former President Mohammad Khatami.

Since then, at least 230 more students, professors, journalists and reformists have been arrested, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. At least 29 are known to have been released, the New York-based organization said in a list released Wednesday, although it acknowledged that the numbers were constantly changing.

The crackdown appears to have grown bolder as the government escalated its use of force on the streets.

Security agents arrested nearly the entire staff of Mousavi’s newspaper, The Green Word, Monday night, seizing 25 people in a raid on its offices, according to a statement on Mousavi’s Web site. Four or five who were out of the office during the raid remain free, according to the paper.

On Thursday, authorities arrested 70 reformist university professors after they met with Mousavi, his Web site said. At least 66 were later freed, said Hadi Ghaemi, spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

Among the most prominent reformists detained was Ebrahim Yazdi, 78, who was a key aide of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and served as foreign minister after the 1979 revolution. Yazdi was hospitalized with a bladder problem when agents walked into his room on June 17, had his intravenous tubes disconnected and took him to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.

“They did not show any judicial or legal papers, nothing,” Yazdi told The Associated Press by telephone from Tehran. “Even in prison they didn’t interrogate me. Nobody came to tell me why they were arresting me.”

Yazdi said he was treated respectfully and released the next day. But many other members of his Freedom Movement of Iran remain in prison along with leaders of other reformist parties, some of whom served in Khatami’s government.

They include Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a former government spokesman under Khatami; Saeed Hajjarian, an adviser to Khatami who was paralyzed in an assassination attempt in 2000; and human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, who was arrested in his office by security forces posing as clients, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

Officials even briefly arrested the daughter and four other relatives of one of Iran’s most powerful men, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. The detentions were seen as an official warning to Rafsanjani, a former conservative president who many believe now favors the opposition.

Observers say the crackdown is the largest since Khatami’s 1997 election and the birth of the modern Iranian reform movement.

“The people that they have arrested represent a wide spectrum of the political orientation,” Yazdi said. “It is much broader than in the past.”

State television has begun broadcasting purported confessions of street protesters who say they acted on behalf of Britain and other Western nations in a bid to destabilize the government.

“These kinds of arrests usually are undertaken in order to produce some kind of a show trial,” said Ahmad Sadri, a sociology professor at Lake Forest College in Illinois who writes a column for the reformist Iranian daily Etemad-e-Melli, or National Confidence.

The editor-in-chief of Etemad-e-Melli, which is owned by reformist presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi, was taken into custody last week, according to the Committee to Protest Journalists, which says roughly 40 journalists have been arrested. Among them was Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari, a dual Iranian-Canadian citizen, and Iason Athanasiadis, a Greek national reporting for The Washington Times.

Arrests of foreign reporters without family ties to Iran have been rare in recent years. The Greek government said Athanasiadis, who lived in Iran from 2004-2007, was taken into custody last week on an alleged visa violation. Iran has said little about the case.

Athanasiadis’ parents have appealed for his release, calling him a reporter, photographer and filmmaker with “a particular love of Iran, and a deep respect for its cultural and religious traditions.”

Arrests have taken place not only in Tehran but in smaller cities like Hamedan, Zanjan and Shiraz, rights groups said. The numbers of detentions outside Tehran could not be verified independently.

“It causes mass paranoia that nowhere’s safe; you can’t be in your home, you can’t be in the hospital,” said Afshon Ostovar, who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Iran’s security forces at the University of Michigan.

The targeted roundups allow authorities to suppress dissent while avoiding the flood of amateur videos and photographs that have documented police or militia confrontations with demonstrators. The most famous showed music student Neda Agha Soltan bleeding to death from a gunshot wound on a Tehran street.

“It’s much easier to arrest people at night than crack heads in the daylight,” Ostvar said. “There’s no camera, there’s no proof, there’s no pictures.”

Iranian officials appear to have identified some protest leaders by monitoring cell phones, e-mail accounts and Internet activity. The fear of official surveillance has forced some opposition supporters into self-censorship.

“In any demonstrations we turn off our cell phones and remove its battery because we heard they can search people by the phones even when it’s off,” the Tehran protester who insisted on anonymity wrote in his e-mail.

Many fear the government can track down opponents by tracing their computers if they visit certain Web sites.

Sadri, the professor in Illinois who regularly visits Iran, said he has begun couching his criticism of the government in his newspapers, taking an indirect approach to avoid angering the government.

“It is much more writing in allegory and symbols,” he said.

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June 28, 2009

Iranian police clash with up

to 3,000 protesters

AP – In this photo taken on Monday, June 15, 2009, a woman passes Iranian police officers, as they stand guard …

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer William J. Kole, Associated Press Writer – 20 mins ago

Witnesses in Iran say police have clashed with up to 3,000 protesters near a mosque in north Tehran.

They say security forces fired tear gas to disperse the crowd, and some demonstrators fought back, chanting: “Where is my vote?”

Witnesses at the scene tell The Associated Press that some protesters claimed they suffered broken arms or legs in Sunday’s clashes around the Ghoba Mosque.

They say some young demonstrators screamed at police and then attacked them after the officers allegedly beat an elderly woman.

The reports could not immediately be independently verified because of tight restrictions imposed on journalists in Iran.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

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Iranian authorities have detained several local employees of the British Embassy in Tehran, a move that Britain’s foreign secretary Sunday called “harassment and intimidation” and reflected a hardening of the regime’s stance toward the West. The European Union condemned the arrests.

Iranian media said eight local embassy staff were detained for an alleged role in postelection protests, but gave no further details. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said “about nine” employees were detained Saturday and that four had been released.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Corfu, Greece, issued a statement Sunday condemning the arrests and calling for the immediate release of all those still detained. The 27-nation bloc also denounced Iran’s continuing restrictions on journalists.

“They make clear to the Iranian authorities that harassment or intimidation of foreign or Iranian staff working in embassies will be met with a strong and collective EU response,” the statement said.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has alleged massive fraud in the June 12 presidential election and says he is the rightful winner, not President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran has accused the West of stoking unrest, singling out Britain and the U.S. for alleged meddling and for expressing concern about the ferocity of the regime’s crackdown on protesters. Last week, Iran expelled two British diplomats, and Britain responded in kind. Iran has also said it’s considering downgrading diplomatic ties with Britain.

On Sunday, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported that the embassy staffers were detained for what was described as a “significant role” in postelection unrest.

The British Foreign Office says the embassy has a staff of more than 100, including at least 70 locally hired Iranians. Last week, Britain sent home 12 dependents of embassy staff because the protests had disrupted their lives.

Miliband, in Corfu for the EU meeting, said Britain lodged a protest with the Iranian authorities over the detentions. He described the step as “harassment and intimidation of a kind that is quite unacceptable.”

“The idea that the British Embassy is somehow behind the demonstrations and protests that have been taking place in Tehran. … is wholly without foundation,” he said.

In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said any further harassment of British Embassy employees would be met with “a strong and united EU response.” She declined to comment on whether Britain was considering recalling its ambassador in protest or for consultations.

Iran’s government has tried to discredit opposition supporters by alleging they have been directed by the West.

On Friday, a senior Iranian cleric, Ahmed Khatami, lashed out at Britain in a nationally televised sermon. “In this unrest, Britons have behaved very mischievously and it is fair to add the slogan of ‘down with England’ to the slogan of ‘down with USA,’” he said.

Britain, a colonial power in the region with a long history in Iran, has been a prominent target. Britain and the U.S. were behind the 1953 coup that toppled Prime Minster Mohammad Mossadegh, who nationalized Iran’s oil industry. Britain had almost complete control over Iran’s oil industry for decades.

The British have also drawn fire because of the BBC’s prominent role as a trusted broadcaster in Farsi inside Iran.

This is a reversal from the way the state and publicly funded BBC was perceived in the run-up to the Iranian Islamic Revolution. At the time, the BBC was widely listened to because it extensively covered anti-Shah demonstrations and activities of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile in France.

Iran’s leaders have countered Western condemnation with increasingly angry rhetoric. The confrontation appears to be dashing hopes for a new dialogue, as initially envisioned by President Barack Obama when he took office.

Obama wants to engage Iranian leaders in talks over the country’s suspect nuclear program which the U.S. and other western countries worry is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Iran defends its nuclear program as civilian in nature. On Sunday, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the bloc would “like very much” to restart nuclear talks with Tehran despite the rising tensions.

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod played down Ahmadinejad’s accusations against the U.S., saying Sunday they aren’t credible and are meant for domestic consumption. “This is political theater,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Iran’s rulers have unleashed club-wielding militiamen to crush street protests and arrested hundreds of journalists, students and activists.

On Sunday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for national unity, appealing to both sides in the dispute, even though he has come down firmly on the side of Ahmadinejad.

“I admonish both sides not to stoke the emotions of the young or pit the people against each other,” he said in comments carried on state TV. “Our people are made of one fabric.”

Mousavi signaled he is not dropping his political challenge.

In a new statement, he insisted on a repeat of the election and rejected a partial recount being proposed by the government. However, Mousavi’s challenge seemed largely aimed at maintaining some role as an opposition figure.

The latest statement by Mousavi, who has been increasingly isolated, appeared Sunday on Ghalamnews, a Web site run by supporters. Mousavi-related Web sites have frequently been blocked by the government, and one was shut down by hackers last week.

Iran’s top electoral body, the 12-member Guardian Council, has proposed recounting 10 percent of the votes. On Friday, the council offered to bring in six more political figures to oversee a partial recount, presumably to give the effort greater legitimacy in the eyes of the challengers.

However, Mousavi reiterated his demand for nullification as “the most suitable solution to restore public confidence.” He called for independent arbiters to settle the dispute.

Another defeated candidate, Mahdi Karroubi, also expressed doubt that a fair review is possible.

“How is it possible to answer controversies through counting some ballots?” he wrote in a letter to the Guardian Council, published Sunday in his newspaper, Etemad-e-Melli.

A third candidate, Mohsen Rezaei, said he would only send a representative to the council, for observation of a re-count, if the other two candidates did the same.

Laub reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer and William J. Kole in Cairo, Shawn Pogatchnik in London and Elena Becatoros in Corfu, Greece, contributed to this report.

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June 28, 2009

New clashes in Iran as

standoff worsens with West

AP – In this citizen photograph taken Sunday, June 28, 2009, a supporter of pro-reform leader Mir Hossein …

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer

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Several thousand protesters — some chanting “Where is my vote?” — clashed with riot police in Tehran on Sunday as Iran detained local employees of the British Embassy, escalating the regime’s standoff with the West and earning it a stinging rebuke from the European Union.

Witnesses said riot police used tear gas and clubs to break up a crowd of up to 3,000 protesters who had gathered near north Tehran’s Ghoba Mosque in the country’s first major post-election unrest in four days.

Some described scenes of brutality, telling The Associated Press that some protesters suffered broken bones and alleging that police beat an elderly woman, prompting a screaming match with young demonstrators who then fought back.

The reports could not be independently verified because of tight restrictions imposed on journalists in Iran.

North Tehran is a base of support for opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has alleged massive fraud in Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election and insists he — not President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — is the rightful winner.

Sunday’s clashes erupted at a rally that had been planned to coincide with a memorial held each year for Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, who came to be considered a martyr in the Islamic Republic after he was killed in a major anti-regime bombing in 1981.

Witnesses said the protesters also chanted, “Ya Hussein, Mir Hossein,” linking Mousavi’s first name with a highly revered Shiite saint, Imam Hussein — the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and a symbol of personal sacrifice for a cause.

Witnesses who spoke with the AP said they did not spot Mousavi at the rally. But one of his close assistants addressed the crowd through a loudspeaker and other opposition figures also appeared, including reformist presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi.

Later, after the situation calmed, police set up patrols and cordons.

It was Iran’s first election-related unrest since Wednesday, when a small group of rock-throwing protesters who had gathered near parliament was quickly overwhelmed by police forces using tear gas and clubs.

Iranian authorities say 17 protesters and eight members of the volunteer Basij militia have been killed in two weeks of unrest, and that hundreds of people have been arrested.

The Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights said its information suggests at least 2,000 arrests have been made — “not just (people) arrested and later released, but who are locked up in prison,” the group’s vice president, Abdol Karim Lahidji, told the AP.

He said his information came from members of human rights groups in Iran and other contacts inside the country.

Iran’s diplomatic battles also intensified Sunday after authorities detained several local employees of the British Embassy in Tehran — a move that Britain’s foreign secretary called “harassment and intimidation.” The EU condemned the arrests.

Iranian media said eight local embassy staff were detained for alleged roles in post-election protests, but gave no further details. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said “about nine” employees were detained Saturday and that four had been released.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Corfu, Greece, issued a statement condemning the arrests and calling for the immediate release of all those still detained. The 27-nation bloc also denounced Iran’s continuing restrictions on journalists.

On Sunday, Iranian Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseini Ejehi accused some British embassy staff of mingling with protest crowds to encourage unrest.

Miliband, in Corfu for the EU meeting, said Britain lodged a protest with the Iranian authorities over the detentions, which he called “quite unacceptable.”

“The idea that the British Embassy is somehow behind the demonstrations and protests that have been taking place in Tehran. … is wholly without foundation,” he said.

A senior Iranian cleric, Ahmed Khatami, had lashed out at Britain on Friday in a nationally televised sermon. “In this unrest, Britons have behaved very mischievously and it is fair to add the slogan of ‘Down with England’ to the slogan of ‘Down with USA,’” he said.

Iran’s sharpening anti-Western rhetoric threatened to dash hopes for the new dialogue President Barack Obama initially envisioned when he took office.

Obama wants to engage Iranian leaders in talks over the country’s suspect nuclear program which the U.S. and other western countries worry is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Iran defends its nuclear program as civilian in nature. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Sunday the bloc would “like very much” to restart nuclear talks with Tehran despite the rising tensions.

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod played down Ahmadinejad’s accusations against the U.S., saying they aren’t credible and are meant for domestic consumption. “This is political theater,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for national unity, appealing to both sides in the dispute, even though he has come down firmly on the side of Ahmadinejad.

“I admonish both sides not to stoke the emotions of the young or pit the people against each other,” he said Sunday. “Our people are made of one fabric.”

Mousavi, meanwhile, signaled anew he won’t drop his political challenge.

For the first time since the election, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani spoke publicly about the unrest, claiming that “suspicious hands” were trying to open rifts between the people and the Islamic system.

He also praised Khamenei for giving the Guardian Council, Iran’s top electoral body, more time to evaluate charges of vote-rigging. That was significant because there had been growing speculation that Rafsanjani could be at odds with the supreme leader — setting the stage for a possible high-level power struggle.

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Kole reported from Cairo. Associated Press Writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer in Cairo, Jamey Keaten in Paris, Shawn Pogatchnik in London and Elena Becatoros in Corfu, Greece, contributed to this report.

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June 29, 2009

Iran recount seen as bid

to placate opposition

AP – In this citizen photograph taken Sunday, June 28, 2009, supporters of pro-reform leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, …

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer

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Iran began recounting some of the votes cast in its disputed presidential election Monday in an apparent attempt to placate opposition protesters, and the government dismissed the idea of downgrading relations with Britain despite accusing that country of stirring up unrest.

As the partial recount got under way, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked Iran’s cleric-controlled judiciary to investigate the killing of Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman who became an icon of Iran’s opposition after gruesome video capturing her bleeding to death on a Tehran street was circulated worldwide.

The regime’s standoff with the West over its crackdown on demonstrators sharply escalated Sunday. Britain denounced the detention of nine local employees of its embassy in Tehran, and the European Union condemned what it called Iranian “harassment and intimidation.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told a news conference broadcast on state television Monday that five of the Iranian embassy staffers had been released and the remaining four were being interrogated.

Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseini Ejehi claimed he had videotape showing some of the employees mingling with protesters, and said the fate of those who remain in custody now rests with Iran’s judiciary, which is tightly controlled by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But Qashqavi played down the dispute, saying Iranian officials were in written and verbal contact with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who called the allegations “wholly without foundation.”

“Reduction of diplomatic ties is not on our agenda for any country, including Britain,” Qashqavi said.

Iranian officials earlier had said they were considering downgrading ties with Britain, which expelled two Iranian diplomats last week — a retaliatory move after Iran ousted two British envoys.

The escalating diplomatic dispute came as riot police clashed with up to 3,000 protesters — some chanting: “Where is my vote?” — near the Ghoba Mosque in north Tehran on Sunday. It was Iran’s first major post-election unrest in four days.

Witnesses told The Associated Press that police used tear gas and clubs to break up the crowd, and said some demonstrators suffered broken bones. They alleged that security forces beat an elderly woman, prompting a screaming match with young demonstrators who then fought back.

The reports could not be independently verified because of tight restrictions imposed on journalists in Iran.

North Tehran is a base of support for opposition Mir Hossein Mousavi, who insists he — not Ahmadinejad — won the disputed election.

The Guardian Council, Iran’s top electoral oversight body, said it planned to complete the recount of a random 10 percent of ballots by the end of the day.

Yet it was unclear what purpose the recount would serve. Khamenei and the Council already have pronounced the results free of major fraud and insist that Ahmadinejad won by a landslide, and Mousavi has insisted the government nullify the results and hold a new vote — steps it flatly refuses to consider.

State TV said Mousavi representatives met with a Guardian Council election review panel, but it ended in a stalemate and officials decided to proceed with the recount.

Witnesses who spoke with the AP said they did not spot Mousavi at Sunday’s rally. But one of his close assistants addressed the crowd through a loudspeaker and other opposition figures also appeared, including reformist presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi.

Local news site Rooz Online said Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, were supposed to attend the protest — but when they couldn’t reach the scene, Mousavi addressed supporters via a telephone held up to a megaphone, and spoke of “the importance of the people’s vote and peace.”

Ahmadinejad’s Web site said Soltan was slain by “unknown agents and in a suspicious” way, convincing him that “enemies of the nation” were responsible.

The regime has implicated protesters and even foreign intelligence agents in Soltan’s death. But an Iranian doctor who said he tried to save her told the BBC last week she apparently was shot by a member of the volunteer Basij militia. Protesters spotted an armed member of the militia on a motorcycle, and stopped and disarmed him, Dr. Arash Hejazi said.

Iranian authorities say 17 protesters and eight Basijis have been killed in two weeks of unrest, and that hundreds of people have been arrested.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted Basij commander Hossein Taeb — whose militiamen have played a key role in the government’s effort to quash protests — as saying that authorities arrested several people who dressed in police and Basiji uniforms and smashed car windows.

He said his information came from members of human rights groups in Iran and other contacts inside the country.

Iran’s increasingly acrimonious relations with the West complicated President Barack Obama’s hopes of engaging the regime in dialogue over its nuclear program. Iran insists its program is peaceful and geared solely toward generating electricity; the U.S. and its allies contend that Tehran is covertly trying to build a nuclear weapon.

U.S. officials said Sunday that the administration remains open to discussions on Iran’s nuclear ambitions despite questions about the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad.

“It’s in the United States’ national interest to make sure that we have employed all elements at our disposal, including diplomacy, to prevent Iran from achieving that nuclear capacity,” Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

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Kole reported from Cairo. Associated Press Writer Shaya Tayefe Mohajer in Cairo contributed to this report.

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June 28, 2009

Iran’s crackdown quiets streets

but not anger

By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer

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Each evening, the protest cries still come from rooftops in Tehran. They began weeks ago as a display of defiance and unity. Now they echo something else: a chorus that bemoans the suffocating crackdown but also signals that the confrontations with Iran’s Islamic regime may be far from over.

A month that began with the world watching the giddy all-night campaign parties for Mir Hossein Mousavi is closing with Iranian forces in full lockdown mode — blanketing the streets, censoring the Web, detaining Mousavi’s backers and showing few hints of compromise after the worst internal unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

But — like the nightly shouts of opposition and prayer — the crackdown cannot easily stamp out the anger and frustration left by claims that fraud handed the June 12 election to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Many predict it won’t end here. The groundswell of opposition was too great, experts say, and the Islamic regime is left too embattled to keep the lid on indefinitely.

Another flare-up came Sunday when police used tear gas in clashes with up to 3,000 protesters near a mosque in north Tehran, witnesses told The Associated Press. The gathering came during commemorations for a prominent cleric who was killed in a major 1981 bombing. It was the first public demonstration in Tehran since Wednesday.

Within hours of the clashes, police had set up patrols and cordons outside the mosque.

“The regime hasn’t won just because there are fewer people on the street,” said Reza Aslan, an analyst on Iranian and regional affairs.

For the third time in a decade, serious unrest flared against Iran’s establishment and was put down by force. This time, however, was nothing like the student-led skirmishes before. The ruling clerics have watched the fallout from the disputed elections mushroom into a size and scope they have never confronted.

What unsettles the regime is probably less about the violence and more about the broad cross-section of protesters: Middle-class shopkeepers and conservative chador-covered women marched alongside fist-pumping hipsters with Che Guevara T-shirts and fake iPhones. Ironically, the last time such a wide coalition of demonstrators joined forces in Iran was the Islamic Revolution.

And, perhaps even more startling, were the taboo-shattering denunciations of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose hard-line followers believe is only answerable to God.

It all suggests a sweeping reordering of what it means to challenge the system. The protest tent has expanded to cover people who normally wouldn’t stand alongside the liberal ranks of activists and students. The goals, meanwhile, could become bolder to directly question the highest levels of the theocracy.

The huge rallies — drawing more than 1 million marchers through Tehran over a few epic days — also rattled the regime-promoted myth that dissent was mostly limited to campuses and the liberal enclaves in north Tehran. The same factors that made Mousavi the surprise hero of reformists also fed the backlash after disputed balloting: grumbling about Iran’s sinking economy and angst over Ahmadinejad’s bombastic style and Iran’s increasing international isolation.

“I think a crisis was waiting to happen and it was triggered by the election, which we can assume was flawed,” said Robert Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and head of Middle East affairs in the Carter administration. “I think a lot of people said, ‘Enough is enough’ — not because they wanted Mousavi but because they were fed up.”

But the theocracy, too, has stressed it’s in no mood for challenges. One of its top envoys, Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, said during Friday prayers that protesters should receive harsh sentences, including execution for those linked to deaths. The official death toll is at least 17 protesters and eight security officials, but restrictions on street reporting block foreign media from independently checking the tally.

Khamenei tried to cool the rhetoric Sunday by calling on both sides “not to stoke the emotions of the young.”

Many are left reeling by emotional whiplash — from sky-high hopes for Mousavi’s “green” movement to a deep gloom after protest marches were crushed. Mousavi, too, disappointed backers by saying he will now seek official permission for any further rallies. On Sunday, Mousavi again demanded that the election results be nullified.

It seems a futile gesture. The theocrats have endorsed the result and say Ahmadinejad will be sworn in for a second term as early as July 26.

A prominent Farsi blogger, Roozbeh Mirebrahimi, wrote shortly before the election that “the process of change has already begun in Iran.”

Then an entry after security forces smothered the remaining street protests last week:

“These days are hard days.”

Despite the stunning post-election outrage, it still buckled the same way as past flare-ups in Tehran University in 1999 and around various campuses in late 2002.

Security forces — including the powerful Revolutionary Guard and its network of civilian vigilantes — have hammered down hard in every case. Protesters, meanwhile, still have no serious counterweight on their side. The regular police or military have never shown an inclination to break ranks with the forces directly controlled by the ruling clerics.

There also is very little stomach among demonstrators to put themselves on the line without a clear leader and goal.

Mousavi has not stepped up in that role. Despite his momentary flash as the reformist icon, he always has been a man of the system since serving as prime minister for much of the 1980s. He said he has no interest in directly battling the Islamic status quo.

The question now looms: Does anyone? No one with any national credentials has offered to take the baton from Mousavi. Instead, the aftermath has tapered to internal political intrigue with most eyes on former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is both fabulously rich and deeply influential.

Rafsanjani heads a cleric-run group, the Assembly of Experts, that has the power to remove the supreme leader. Such an act is still considered improbable, but it could give him considerable leverage over Khamenei — who has the last word in all major policy decisions. Rafsanjani is considered a moderate who could see advantages in President Barack Obama’s offer for groundbreaking dialogue.

But the protesters of the past month seem left out in the cold.

“We have no one to lead us,” said a 30-year-old man from Isfahan who took part in the demonstrations. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals.

“People are angry and afraid,” he continued. “They are afraid of the future and angry because they failed to achieve change with their ballots.”

The legitimacy of the Iran’s election system has been reduced to a punch line on Twitter jokes and blogs for many Mousavi supporters.

“Anyone can make one mistake,” says a message next to a calendar page of Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005.

“But only fools repeat their mistake” — next to the date of the June 12 election.

The next moves are anyone’s guess. Some experts who have studied civil unrest movements, however, foresee a long and simmering opposition that could splinter into various forms of dissent — such as seeking more political allies, appeals to Germany and other Western nations with financial stakes in Iran and nonviolent disobedience such as sit-ins and general strikes.

“In order to succeed, Mousavi’s followers almost certainly need to take their protests and opposition activities outside Tehran into other Iranian cities where they can outflank security organizations,” said Eric Rosenbach, executive director at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

A well-known Iranian poet, Simin Behbahani, offered verse that touched both the sense of smoldering resentment and the threats that it’s not going to fade.

One of the lines say: “Stop this extravagance, this reckless throwing of my country to the wind.”

It ends:

“You may wish to have me burned or decide to stone me.

“But in your hand, match or stone will lose their power to harm me.”

___

Murphy reported from Cairo. Associated Press Writers Barbara Surk in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Shaya Tayefe Mohajer in Cairo contributed to this report.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

June 29, 2009

Iran says partial recount

shows election valid

AP – In this citizen photograph taken Sunday, June 28, 2009, supporters of pro-reform leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, …

By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer

___

Iran’s election oversight body on Monday declared the hotly disputed presidential vote to be valid after a partial recount, rejecting opposition allegations of fraud that have set off an extraordinary wave of protests.

State television reported that Guardian Council Secretary Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati presented the conclusion in a letter to Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli, following a recount of a randomly selected 10 percent of the ballots cast June 12. Press TV said “few or no errors” were found.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi claims he, not incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was the rightful winner and has called for a new election.

Mousavi supporters repeatedly took to the streets in protest after the election, outraged by official results that gave Ahmadinejad the victory by a roughly 2-1 margin. Police and the feared Basij militia took increasingly harsh measures against the demonstrators, prompting widespread international criticism.

The recount conducted Monday had appeared to be an attempt to cultivate the image that Iran was seriously addressing fraud claims, while giving no ground in the clampdown on opposition. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Council already had pronounced the results free of major fraud and insisted that Ahmadinejad won by a landslide. And even if errors were found in nearly every one of the votes in the recount Ahmadinejad still would have tallied more votes according to the government than Mousavi.

Monday’s declaration of the election’s validity sets the stage for continued tensions, with the opposition seething with frustration while the government portrays itself as a victim of foreign pressure and even intrigue.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday questioned the recount’s utility.

“They have a huge credibility gap with their own people as to the election process. And I don’t think that’s going to disappear by any finding of a limited review of a relatively small number of ballots,” she told reporters in Washington. Asked if the United States would recognize Ahmadinejad as Iran’s legitimate president, she said “We’re going to take this a day at a time.”

___

Heintz reported from Cairo. Associated Press Writer Shaya Tayefe Mohajer in Cairo contributed to this report.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

July 3, 2009

Iranian cleric: British Embassy

staff to be tried

AP – An Iranian female worshipper holds a poster of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during a Friday …

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer

___

A top Iranian cleric said Friday that some of the detained Iranian staffers of the British Embassy in Tehran will be put on trial, and he accused Britain of a role in instigating widespread protests that erupted over the country’s disputed presidential election.

The announcement by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati alarmed European nations and fueled calls for tougher action against Tehran. Britan is pressing for members of the European Union to pull their ambassadors out of Tehran to protest the arrest of its embassy staffers last week — a step that the EU so far has hesitated to take.

After Jannati’s comments, French President Nicolah Sarkozy on Friday expressed backing for Britain, saying “our solidarity with our English friends is total.” He said France backs sanctions “so that Iranian leaders will really understand that the path that they have chosen will be a dead end.”

The United States and Europe have been wary of reacting too harshly in Iran’s post-election crisis, even as the government cracked down heavily on protests that erupted following the declaration of a landslide victory for incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June 12 presidential election. The West has been hoping to keep open prospects for future dialogue with Tehran — particularly over its controversial nuclear program.

Jannati, a powerful hard-liner who is close to Iran’s supreme leader, told worshippers during a Friday prayer sermon at Tehran University that the detained staffers “made confessions.”

“In these events, their embassy had a presence,” he said, referring to the post-election turmoil. “Some people were arrested. Well, inevitably, they will be put on trial.”

He did not say how many staffers will be tried or on what charges. Earlier Iranian officials said all but one of the nine embassy personnel originally arrested had been released, but European Union officials said they believed more than one was still being held.

In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said of Jannati’s comments that British officials are “very concerned about these reports and are investigating.”

In Sweden, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said “it’s not acceptable to file charges against the ones released or the ones still in custody,” though he added that the report had not yet been confirmed. On Thursday, EU countries demanded the release of the staffers, but held off on any sanctions for the time being.

Jannati does not hold a position in the government or judiciary, but is the head of the Guardian Council, a powerful body in Iran’s ruling clerical hierarchy that stands above the elected government.

The council oversees elections, and it carried out a partial recount which was ordered after Ahmadinejad’s pro-reform rival Mir Hossein Mousavi cried fraud and said he was the victor. The recount ultimately upheld Ahmadinejad’s election victory. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared the results would stand, and ruling clerics promptly called the elections “pure” and “healthy.”

Iranian authorities have since depicted the widespread protests that erupted after the election as the work of outside enemies of Iran.

Jannati told the thousands of worshippers that the British “had designed a velvet revolution … In March, they said (in their Foreign Ministry) that street riots were possible during June elections. These are signs … revealed by themselves.”

He also said those involved in protests “need to repent and ask God to forgive them.”

Giant protests erupted in Tehran and other cities over the results, but they were quashed in a tough crackdown after Khamenei declared unrest would no longer be tolerated. Iran’s police chief has said 20 “rioters” were killed during the violence. During his sermon, Jannati said seven or eight members of the paramilitary Basij militia were also killed. Basijis took a leading role in putting down the protests, often clashing with demonstrators.

There have been no street protests since Sunday, but Mousavi appears driven to maintain his opposition and even to raise the stakes. In a defiant statement on Wednesday, he said he considered the government illegitimate and demanded political prisoners be released. Still, he has been laying low, making no public appearances for days amid calls by many hard-liners for him to be prosecuted.

Jannati took a tough line, indirectly accusing Mousavi of treason.

Though he did not name Mousavi directly, Jannati pointed out that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, once said that “anyone disrupts unity has not only committed a sin but also has committed treason against the Islamic Republic and the system.”

Jannati demanded that those involved in the protests “repent and ask God to forgive them.”

____

Keath reported from Cairo. Associated Press correspondent Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cedar Creek Voice

SPECIAL REPORT – continued: Post-Election Turmoil in IRAN

Iran’s president lashes out

at Obama

Quiet crackdown drains

force from Iran dissidents

Iranian police clash with up

to 3,000 protesters

New clashes in Iran as

standoff worsens with West

Iran recount seen as bid

to placate opposition

Iran’s crackdown quiets streets

but not anger

Iran says partial recount

shows election valid

Iranian cleric: British Embassy

staff to be tried

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