Iranian Elections (2009)

Update, 8:16 a.m. (from Gregg): Opposition Web sites are reporting (فارسی) a massive security presence in the streets: rows of riot police, some seven or eight deep, lining the streets along the route of the pro-government rally. Opposition groups are trying to organize rallies, but it sounds like (so far) they haven't been able to gather en masse. 

RAHANA, an Iranian activist site, is reporting dozens of arrests in Sadeghieh Square and other locations throughout Tehran. Sadeghieh Square is about one kilometer from Azadi Square, where the pro-government demonstrators assembled.

Over at Informed Comment, Juan Cole wants everyone to breathe deeply and think about whether Iran's latest nuclear announcement is really that threatening. Cole called "bizarre" remarks made on Sunday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who equated Iran and North Korea as both being "nuclear-armed" and "a real or a potential threat":

The US intelligence establishment continues to doubt that Iran has or wants a nuclear weapons program. Tehran does have a nuclear enrichment program, which is permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran allows United Nations inspections of it nuclear facilities. Although Iran is not as transparent as the UN International Atomic Energy Agency would like, there is no dispositive evidence of a weapons program. For the Secretary of State to frame Iran as she did is just muddled or dishonest.

How do Iranians actually feel about their government, the June 12 election, and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

We've lamented the lack of good polling data more than once on this blog. So I was intrigued by an event at the New America Foundation this afternoon, which presented a dozen pre- and post-election polls of Iranians -- most conducted by the University of Tehran. The polls aren't new (the most recent one was conducted in September), but it was the first time the data were collected in one place.

The Iranian judiciary plans to execute another nine prisoners -- convicted of "waging war against God" -- in the coming days.

Iranian state media say the group belongs to "anti-revolutionary groups." The regime executed two people last month -- Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani -- and recently started trials for another 16, five of whom could face the death penalty.

30 years ago, give or take two months, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his allies were marking the first anniversary of the founding of the Islamic Republic. (They did this, in part, by declaring the term "democratic" verboten, a "Western style," and by banning opposition groups and purging universities. It was a real party.)

Three decades later? The Revolutionary Guard is threatening violence against an opposition movement that has managed to defy the regime for nearly a year.

Two men whom Iranian authorities accused of belonging to opposition groups were hanged at dawn on Thursday, allegedly for participating in recent anti-government protests. The two were accused of being mohareb, or enemies of God, and with trying to overthrow the Iranian government.

They were identified as Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour. Rahmanipour's lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, told the AFP that she had only met her client once, for a few minutes, and was denied the chance to participate in any of his court hearings. Sotoudeh said Rahmanipour had nothing to do with the post-election protests in Iran and that he confessed to the charges "because of threats against his family," according to Al-Jazeera.

Robert Kagan makes some good points about Iran in his Washington Post op-ed this morning. He's right that a deal on Iran's nuclear program would only be a small and short-term step towards changing U.S.-Iran relations; he's also right that an Israeli airstrike on Iran would "provide a huge boost" to the regime in exchange for very uncertain benefits.

A parliamentary panel in Iran has blamed the former chief prosecutor in Tehran for the deaths of three anti-government protesters who were detained in Kahrizak prison following the controversial June presidential elections, according to the AP.

The prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, was promoted in August to a national position as the deputy state prosecutor in charge of combating smuggling. He had oversight over Kahrizak when he served in Tehran, the AP reported.

Some in the opposition Green Movement have claimed that detained protesters were also raped, but the government has not validated those claims.

Mortazavi personally conducted "dozens" of interrogations of opposition protesters, the AP said.

I'm a little tired, I must admit, of reading essays about Iran from the Leveretts, mostly because they make the same point over and over: The Iranian regime is here to stay, and Obama needs to negotiate with it.

Their op-ed today, as Evan noted earlier, asks three questions about the Iranian opposition movement: What does it want? Who leads it? And how will it overthrow the government?

Late last month, Gregg interviewed three Iranian opposition activists who told him of an emerging crack in the nascent Green Movement between the group's mainstream and those who had become more radicalized by the Iranian government's brutal crackdown. The movement had entered a crucial stage and needed a defined leadership and philosophy, they told him.

Robin Wright, a Washington Post reporter-turned-think tanker, believes the movement has remedied that problem, she writes in an op-ed today.

The release of an opposition "manifesto" - actually three statements from separate groups - signals the coalescence of the movement's philosophy, Wright says.

Iran's judiciary is holding its second day of closed-door trials for seven opposition figures detained during last weekend's Ashura protests.

The regime has released almost no information about the trials: the names of the defendants, the charges they face, or the evidence against them. Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, Tehran's chief prosecutor, said only that seven people have been indicted. The court rejected a request from lawyers to hold the trials in public.

The secret trials are one of several anti-reformist steps taken by the Iranian regime over the weekend.

The British Daily Telegraph claims to have an account from an Iranian defector that details both amusing and disturbing personal anecdotes about Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man at the top of the often paranoid clerical regime.

Among the alleged revelations: Khamenei lives an "imperial" lifestyle among six palaces, including one former residence of the Shah and two with "reinforced concrete nuclear bunkers said to be capable of withstanding nuclear attack." He also suffers "regular bouts" of depression that he remedies, in part, by calling in a "mid-ranking mullah" for regular sessions of vulgar joke-telling.

Conventional wisdom on Mir Hossein Mousavi's statement on the Ashura protests is that he offered a bold rebuke of the Iranian regime's recent brutality.

That analysis isn't entirely wrong. Mousavi condemns the regime harshly for killing and beating and torturing demonstrators. In a savvy bit of rhetorical judo, he acknowledges that some demonstrators took "unacceptable" actions -- chanting anti-Khamenei slogans, for example, and tearing down street signs bearing his name -- but then argued the regime brought that behavior on itself.

We mentioned yesterday that Mir Hossein Mousavi had released a statement in which he declared his willingness to die for Iran's opposition movement. That line grabbed headlines -- but it was only a small part of a remarkably detailed missive from Mousavi, in which he condemns violence towards protesters and offers Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "a way out of this crisis."

We'll post some analysis of the statement soon, but for now, here's a complete translation (in English). You'll also find a PDF version of the original Farsi statement after the jump.

Witnesses in Tehran report loud chants of allahu akbar from the rooftops tonight, while down below, on the streets, the regime has deployed hundreds of police officers to prevent possible protests.

The regime was trying to preempt what it anticipated would become another day of street protests in the capital. We haven't heard any reports of demonstrations; whether that's because the show of force was effective, or simply because there were no rallies planned, I'm not sure.

Update 2: Sounds like Mousavi's camp has also denied the reports of "fleeing" Tehran, according to Enduring America.

Update: Parlemannews, an Iranian opposition Web site, says the reports aren't true, and that Karroubi is in Tehran.

Original story: Al-Arabiya is reporting (عربي) that Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have been placed under a sort of internal exile, "for their own protection." The report is sourced to Iranian state media, which says both men are being held in Mazandaran province in northern Iran.

There were also reports this morning that Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, was arrested by Iranian security forces. We'll update you on all of this when we hear more.

Thousands of pro-government protesters took to the streets this afternoon in Tehran and other Iranian cities.

The protests were organized by the regime. Demonstrators, dressed in black, chanted slogans like "Death to Mousavi" and carried portraits of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. AFP puts the size of the crowd in the "hundreds of thousands," and reports that some state-owned businesses bussed their employees to the rallies; public schools also sent students.

When the Iranian opposition first took to the streets, in the days and weeks after Iran's election, they had a clear demand: Protesters believed the election was stolen, and they wanted their votes to count; they demanded either a recount -- a real one, not the token recount allowed by the regime -- or a new election.

Six months later, it is hard to say what, exactly, the opposition wants. Its ostensible leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have modest aims. They want Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to step aside; they want democratic reforms within the framework of the Islamic Republic. But there is also a more revolutionary wing of the Green Movement, one that wants to topple the entire system -- and it's unclear how the opposition will reconcile those competing views.

The Iranian regime rounded up thousands of opposition figures during the last 24 hours -- including the sister of Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi -- and conservative MPs are demanding the judiciary apply "the maximum punishment."

The list of detainees has grown significantly since yesterday, when opposition Web sites were reporting only seven people in custody. More than 1,500 people are reportedly in custody, according to the New York Times.

Nooshin Ebadi, Shirin Ebadi's sister, was arrested after intelligence agents raided her house in Tehran. The regime also arrested Reza al-Basha, a 27-year-old Syrian journalist working for Dubai TV, and Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, an award-winning Iranian journalist.

Yesterday's arrests are clearly a response to this weekend's bloody protests in Tehran, which left at least 10 protesters dead and hundreds injured.

Clashes between opposition protesters in Tehran continued overnight; police have now killed at least ten people and wounded hundreds more, and the regime has rounded up a number of prominent opposition leaders, according to witnesses and opposition Web sites.

Police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters who continued demonstrating into the early morning hours. Opposition Web sites reported that yesterday's clashes extended well outside of Tehran; reformists reported demonstrations in Shiraz, Tabriz, Isfahan, Najafabad, and several other cities around the country.

Most of the deaths happened yesterday, when riot police opened fire on groups of protesters. The victims haven't been identified -- except for Seyed Ali Mousavi, the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Mousavi's family says it cannot hold a funeral for Ali because his body was mysteriously removed from the hospital.