I'm a big believer that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have ripple effects throughout the region. It will increase the chances of peace between Israel and its other neighbors (Lebanon and Syria); it will take away a major terrorist recruiting tool, and a distraction that oppressive regimes use to avoid discussing their own problems.
But when I hear things like this, from Jordan's King Abdullah, I cringe.
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.
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.
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.
I've seen some scattered stories in the past couple of days that the family of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is considering moving to Iraq in the face of renewed regime-sponsored violence against the opposition movement.
Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst writing for Tehran Bureau, says that the Khomeini family was particularly troubled by the basij attack on former President Mohammad Khatami's Ashura Day speech, which occurred in the northern Tehran neighborhood of Jamaraan, formerly home to Khomeini himself.
Javedanfar cites a story posted on the Tehran-based Parsine news Web site (فارسي), which in translation (I don't speak Persian) says that Hojatoleslam Hassan Khomeini, the late Supreme Leader's grandson, has decided to leave with other family members for Najaf, though it's unclear if the move will be permanent.
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.
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.
Iranian opposition Web sites are reporting heavy clashes between security forces and reformists in Isfahan.
"Large crowds" gathered at the Sayyid mosque to pay their respects to the late Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, according to Rahesabz.net (فارسى). Before the ceremony started, though, uniformed security forces reportedly entered the mosque and started firing tear gas at the mourners. The street around the mosque has now been closed to traffic.
Protesters reportedly held signs criticizing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and vilayet-e-faqih, or "guardiandship of the jurists," the Iranian system of government.
Sources in Iran say riot police are massing in Qom, the home of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, the senior Iranian cleric and longtime regime critic who passed away this morning.
The timing of Montazeri's death is potentially significant for the Iranian opposition: Yesterday was the first day of Muharram, a month that has several major Shi'a mourning ceremonies. The most important is Ashura, a ceremony commemorating Husayn's martyrdom at the Battle of Karbala. It falls on December 28 this year.
Opposition leaders could use the Shi'a ceremonies, and mourning for Montazeri, as a pretext to launch more protests. The regime cannot crack down too strongly during a major Shi'a ceremony.
We heard reports last week that Student Day protesters in Tehran had taken the unprecedented step of burning portraits of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Demonstrators have torched photos of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before; even Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current supreme leader, has been a target. But Khomeini -- the founder of the Islamic republic -- has long been sacrosanct.
Update, 10:56 a.m.: Iranian police have fired warning shots at protesters, according to Reuters. It sounds like today's protest has been rather more violent than previous demonstrations.
Update, 10:39 a.m.: Two more videos of protesters are available here and here. (Not going to embed them because there's already a lot of media on this page.)
One thing that occurs to me: Many of the images I've seen today, and many of the reports we've received from inside Iran, talk about students and protests on university campuses. It seems like -- much moreso than previous protests -- today's unrest is largely student-driven. The folks over at Enduring America make a similar point, noting that today's protest hasn't achieved the kind of popular support that previous demonstrations did.
A couple of Iranian contacts tell us that Internet access has been greatly restricted in Iran ahead of tomorrow's expected pro-democracy protests. E-mail services, in particular, have been targeted, with many Iranians forced to use proxy servers to get around the restrictions. Reformist Web sites have also been blocked.
Internet access will be totally shut off tomorrow, as will mobile phone service, according to a telecommunications ministry official who spoke to Reuters.
The BBC reports that foreign press permits have been revoked from Dec. 7-9; reporters are barred from leaving their offices on those days.
Reformist Web sites in Iran have been buzzing lately about the bizarre case of Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani, a doctor who treated victims of torture at Tehran's notorious Kahrizak detention facility (which was closed in July by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for failing to meet even his minimal standards).
Pourandarjani died on Nov. 10. Authorities initially claimed he died in his sleep, of a heart attack. They changed the cause of death to poisoning a few days later. And on Monday authorities revised their story again, saying they have no idea what killed Pourandarjani.
A reader forwarded me Eli Lake's Trita Parsi hit piece, which ran in the Washington Times on Friday. (NIAC issued a response here.)
The piece is extremely muddled. There's not really a narrative thread; instead, Lake strings together a bunch of out-of-context e-mails and quotes, which suggest that the National Iranian-American Council maybe, possibly, crossed the line from "educational organization" to "lobby."
A quick note before I crash: Opposition protesters have, as planned, taken to the streets in Iran in an effort to subvert the 30th anniversary of the U.S. embassy takeover - a celebratory day of sorts for hardliners in Iran - to show their displeasure with their own Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
This morning, Gregg wrote about Mahmoud Vahidnia, a math whiz and sophomore at Iran's Sharif University of Technology who publicly criticized Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to his face, after Khamenei made a speech at the university on Wednesday.
The story of Vahidnia's audacity was, curiously, first reported on Khamenei's official Web site. Yet concerns lingered over whether Vahidnia, reportedly harassed by "security forces" after his 20-minute critique, had been arrested. The Los Angeles Times' Babylon & Beyond blog gave us news on Monday (which I'm just now seeing) that Vahidnia was not arrested and is doing fine. New video and quotes from Vahidnia, after the jump.
Speaking of Iran, Jeffrey Goldberg, already in a ditch over his comments about Trita Parsi, keeps on digging.
On the larger question of whether Trita Parsi functions as a lobbyist for the Iranian regime, based on what I know, I'd have to say yes: He has argued consistently against any sanctions against Iran, and an end to sanctions is obviously what the Iranian regime wants. So he is working on behalf of a stated interest of the Iranian government.
To illustrate how bad this argument is, let's consider another example: Jeffrey Goldberg is on the record as opposing an Israeli attack on Iran. The Iranian government also (presumably) does not want Israel to attack Iran. Does that mean Goldberg is "working on behalf of a stated interest of the Iranian government"?
Parsi has argued against sanctions, in part, because he thinks they would strengthen the regime's grip on power. It's hard to see how that makes him a lobbyist for Khamenei.
