Iran on the verge of a nervous breakdown

Iran has entered a new and dangerous period as opposition protests escalate and the Government reacts with a fierce crackdown. No-one can say with any certainty what will happen next. As Richard Silverstein says in Al Jazeera, Iran could either be at the stage of Eastern Europe just before the Berlin Wall fell or just as likely, as China was before the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Silverstein takes the China comparison further and says the death earlier this month of Ayatollah Montazeri is equivalent to the death of Chinese reformer Hu Yaobang that unleashed the Tiananmen protests. While end result of Yaobang’s death was unsuccessful, Silverstein sees hope in Iran’s more fragmented and chaotic leadership. “I doubt there is a unified Iranian command that can overwhelm the opposition in much the same way the Chinese government did after the massacre,” he said.

But there is little doubt that the Iranian Government is cracking down hard on the second round of protests since the disputed 12 June re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir Hossein Mousavi. Yesterday it issued an ominous warning that "Trying to overthrow the system will reach nowhere ... designers of the unrest will soon pay the cost of their insolence." They are also facing down foreign critics. Foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, threatened Britain with "a slap in the mouth” for encouraging the latest round of protests.

While no-one know what exactly Mottaki meant by this sabre-rattling, what is more certain is the Iranian regime that has been on the receiving end of several slaps lately. The country had been relatively peaceful for months after the traumatic events that saw hundreds killed in post-election riots. But protests have been on the rise again since the 87-year-old Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali-Montazeri died earlier this month sparking massive wide-spread demonstrations. Montazeri was a former leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution who Khomeini was grooming to replace him as Supreme Leader. He fell out of favour in 1989 after he called for a more open political system. He was demoted after Khomeini died and later held under house arrest for four years. But he remained a thorn in the side of the theocracy right up to his death on 19 December. Two days later thousands attended his funeral in Qom with reports of clashes between supporters and security forces for three days afterwards.

Protesters ignored the bans on further protests until the Government used the climax of Ashura, Shia’s holiest festival, to strike a decisive blow. Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn ibn Ali, who was killed in battle by the sovereign Yazid. The symbolism of the day and the Iranian Government’s reaction has not been lost on protesters. Burnt-out cars, motorbikes and other debris littered the streets of Tehran after the rioting. Hundreds were arrested and at least 15 people were killed by authorities.

One of those who died on Sunday was Mir Hussein Mousavi’s 43-year-old nephew Seyed Ali Mousavi. According to one account a 4WD vehicle smashed through a crowd near his home and five occupants got out. One approached Mousavi and shot him in his chest. The men then sped away. Mousavi died before reaching hospital. Government authorities removed his body from the hospital without explanation and without a family burial.

Meanwhile dozens of key opposition figures were arrested during the crackdown. Among those detained were three of Mir Hussein Mousavi’s top aides, two advisers to the reformist former President Mohammad Khatami, and the human rights campaigner Emadeddin Baghi. Also arrested was Opposition leader Ebrahim Yazdi. Yazdi was secretary general of the outlawed but tolerated Iran Freedom Movement and served as foreign minister at the start of the Islamic revolution. A neighbour told his American-based son Youseph Yazdi he was arrested at his home at 3am on Monday. Also arrested was Nooshin Ebadi the sister of Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. Ebadi said her sister, a professor of medicine, had not been involved in any social, human rights and political activities.

Ahmadinejad theatrically blamed the US and Israel for the troubles his own election created. "Americans and Zionists are the sole audience of a play they have commissioned and sold out,” he said. “A nauseating play is performed.” But Ahmadinejad is orchestrating his own nauseating performance. Iranian authorities have urged its own supporters to take to the streets in a show of force against the opposition which it called "pawns of the enemies." It has called for a counter-demonstration “against those who have not respected the values of Ashura”.

Writing in The Drum, Iranian expatriate journalist Arash Falasiri says the major difference between the earlier protests and the current ones is that the focus of anger has openly shifted from Ahmadinejad to the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He says that while the main slogan in the first two weeks after the election was "Where is my vote", it has now been changed to "Death to Khamenei". But Khamenei could yet unleash much death of his own before he is forced to stand aside. Iran successfully tested a medium-range missile earlier this month. And now Israel has announced it believes Iran will have nuclear capability by early 2010. Dangerous times lie ahead before the world can tell if it has another Berlin Wall on its hands or just blood.

Ahmadinejad wins Iranian presidential election

Early results from the Iranian presidential election are showing a comprehensive victory for incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir Hossein Mousavi. Turnout was heavy as 34 million people voted and the polls stayed open an extra four hours to cope with the traffic. With 80 percent of the vote counted, the election commission say Ahmadinejad leads by 65 to 32 percent. The other two candidates Mohsen Razai and Mehdi Karroubi have taken less than two percent of the vote.

Ahmadinejad needs 50 percent of the total to avoid a runoff election. His campaign manager said the distance between Ahmadinejad and his rivals is so great that “any doubts cast on this victory will be treated as a joke by the public." State news agency IRNA has declared Ahmadinejad the definite winner. "Doctor Ahmadinejad, by getting a majority of the votes, has become the definite winner of the 10th presidential election," it reported. According to Al Jazeera “he not only won, he blew Mousavi away."

But Ahmadinejad’s pro-reform rival Mousavi is not accepting the result and has asked Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to intervene. Mousavi complained of a number of voting irregularities and is accusing the authorities of fraud. He told a news conference overnight that that he was the clear winner and won by a substantial margin. Hundreds of his supporters marched on the streets of Tehran chanting "If there is rigging, Iran will be like judgment day!" Meanwhile Global Voices claims several reformist sites such as Norooznews were “filtered” today in advance of the election and there were also reports of blocked phone and internet access.

Steve Clemons at The Washington Note says Ahmadinejad’s election results “are just about impossible to believe”. Clemons says he expected him to win but says this is unsubtle election rigging. “To be up front, I never thought that Mousavi's strategic policy course would differ substantively from his now unlikely predecessor Ahmadinejad,” he said. “But a change in optics and posture, which Mousavi would have offered, might have yielded significant new opportunities down the road.”

While even Clemons admits that such an outcome was not assured, what can be stated with certainty is this has been the most polarising election in the thirty year history of the Islamic Republic. Mir Hussein Mousavi’s appeal across the political boundaries made him a real threat to unseat Ahmadinejad. Mousavi launched a vigorous attack on the president’s record since his election victory in 2005. He accused Ahmadinejad of creating a culture of dictatorship and cronyism and of “encouraging” government departments and employees to vote for him.

Ahmadinejad hit back in a fiery presidential debate last week. In his 10-minute opening statement, he said his government had been the target of unprecedented slander from Mousavi and from previous Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. He said these three had led Iran away from the path of the 1979 Islamic revolution, and were part of a current "that saw itself as the owner of the nation, of the revolution, rulers of the people.” Ahmadinejad claimed he was the first President since the revolution to have secured Iran against US intervention.

However, as German Spiegel Online International reminds us, the Iranian presidency is only the second most important position in the country. Iran is ruled under Velayat-e Faqih, or "Rule by the Supreme Jurist". The real power lies with the Supreme Jurist Ayatollah Khamenei. He decides foreign and nuclear policy and is effectively the president’s boss. It quotes Die Tageszeitung which stated: “The republican institutions in Iran serve to balance the interests of the regime's various fractions. However, the basis of the political system is the late Ayatollah Khomeini's doctrine. The 'Islamic Republic' is not just a flowery phrase."

Bloggers get behind Mir Hussein Mousavi’s Iranian Presidential campaign

One thousand bloggers have announced their support for former Prime Minister Mir Hussein Mousavi’s bid for the Iranian presidency. The bloggers have published their names and websites on www.mirhussein.com (in Farsi) which proclaims itself as a forum created by “a big group of bloggers supporting Mousavi.” The bloggers publicly backing Mousavi come from a wide variety of viewpoints ranging from reformist to fundamentalist.

Mousavi’s appeal across the political boundaries makes him a real threat to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 12 June election. However it the reformists who have most hopes in Mousavi. His position as the leading challenger firmed in March when he was endorsed by former liberal president Mohammed Khatami who pulled out of the election to avoid splitting reformist supporter votes. Mousavi’s campaign received another boost yesterday when former Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar also announced she was quitting the race and supporting him. Meanwhile Ahmadinejad's popularity has slumped badly as Iran suffers in the global recession with chronic unemployment and double-digit inflation.

Mousavi has subsequently gone on to label Ahmadinejad as an extremist and attack him for his mismanagement of the economy. Last month the New York Times reported Mousavi wants a more positive relationship with the US although, like his opponent, refuses to back down on Iran’s nuclear program. “Weaponisation and nuclear technology are two separate issues, and we should not let them get mixed up,” he said. Mousavi also said he was in favour of freedom of speech and relaxing media restrictions including changing the law that bans private television stations.

But it is Ahmadinejad’s economic record that remains the focus of Mousavi’s campaign. Addressing his supporters in the town of Qarchak near the capital Tehran, he criticised the government for the “expansion of poverty under the excuse of administering justice” and claimed the government was making promises it was unable to keep.

The 68 year old Mousavi does have good economic credentials. He was admired for his management of the economy when he was Prime Minister under during the difficult days of 1980s war with Iran. The then president Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now the Islamic Republic's supreme leader, changed the constitution to eliminate the role of Prime Minister when Mousavi resigned in 1989 and he (Mousavi) has not held a government position since then.

Mousavi then kept a self imposed silence until he re-emerged to announce himself as a presidential candidate. His current online support is significant as blogs were one of the few places where Iranians could find public dissent of Ahmadinejad’s recent stand-off with western powers. Some Iranian bloggers have paid a high price for taking a stance against the government and religious hierarchy according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The CPJ labelled Iran as the second worst country in the world (behind Burma) for bloggers who must all register their Web sites with the Ministry of Art and Culture. Hussein Derakhshan has been detained since November 2008 because of comments he allegedly made about a key cleric while another blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi committed suicide in prison in March. Mirsayafi was serving 30 months in prison for insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Mirsayafi was not a political blogger. Most of his articles were about traditional Persian music and culture. His lawyer told Reporters Without Borders that Misayafi’s death was “a sad reminder of the fact that the Iranian regime is one of the harshest in the world for journalists and bloggers”. In the press conference when he announced his candidacy for the president Mousavi told 90 reporters his opposition to the government’s plan ‎to boost moral security, which includes monitoring the behaviour of Iran’s youth. ‎Mousavi said, “if I am elected president, I will put an end to inspections by the morality ‎police.” ‎It was this promise, more than any other, that has probably earned him the support of the country’s bloggers.