Iranian elections - Tag Search

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.

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.

The Iranian regime continues to clamp down on protests in the wake of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri's death, with security officials reportedly banning most memorial services across the country.

Two opposition Web sites, Parlemannews and Rah-e Sabz, report that authorities have banned all cities outside of Najafabad, Montazeri's birthplace, and the holy city of Qom. Rah-e Sabz says ceremonies in many cities, including Isfahan and Zahedan, have been canceled.

Isfahan was the site of a violent clash between mourners and uniformed security forces earlier this week.

The BBC's Jon Leyne did a sit-down interview this week with Mehdi Karroubi. Unfortunately, most of the BBC's roughly 6-minute segment on the interview is devoted to Leyne's narration; we only hear from Karroubi a few times.

Nonetheless, Karroubi makes a few interesting points. He stands by his claims that Iranian security forces raped detainees in the days and weeks after the election.

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.

The Iranian regime continues to tighten the noose around reformists: Iranian police issued a stern warning today, their second in three days, that only anti-U.S. protests will be tolerated on the 13th of Aban (tomorrow).

The regime also handed down a four-year jail sentence for Hossein Rassam, a British embassy employee arrested after the election, and closed down another opposition newspaper, Sarmayeh. No details on why the paper was closed, though it has reportedly been critical of Ahmadinejad's economic policies.

3:18 p.m.: The flow of news from Iran has slowed considerably -- makes sense, because it's almost midnight in Tehran. #iranelection is still trending on Twitter, but there's very little new information being shared.

We'll keep an eye on the situation throughout the evening (U.S. time) and keep you posted.

Here's the White House's reaction to Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denying speech:

The president's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that by denying that the Holocaust took place was "ignorant, hateful and would isolate Iran further from the world."

"Obviously, we condemn what he said," Mr. Gibbs told reporters.

I'll post some wrap-up thoughts on the protests later tonight.

1:08 p.m.: Not Qods Day-related, but Ahmadinejad plans to bring all five of Iran's religious minority MPs to the U.N. General Assembly meeting next week. Iran has Jews! And Christians! (No gays, though.)

12:54 p.m.: Tehran Bureau explains how the regime kept protesters away from Tehran University, where Friday prayers were being held:

To prevent the Green Movement's supporters from penetrating Tehran University, public buses had been used to block all the streets around the campus. Security forces, the Basij militia, and plainclothes agents used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the demonstrators.

Friday is Qods (Jerusalem) Day in Iran, an annual day of solidarity with the Palestinian people. My Iranian sources tell me it will be a big day for the opposition, which plans to use the annual rally as a vehicle for launching another anti-regime protest.

And that has the regime increasingly worried. You'll remember that Khamenei used his Friday prayer sermon last week to warn the regime against staging any protests. And now Robert Worth reports on a last-minute clerical change in Tehran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is beginning his rehab tour: He's agreed to do his first Western media interview since the election with... Ann Curry.

I don't want to be too hard on Ann; she's the only person who makes the Today Show remotely watchable. But there's a reason Ahmadinejad is doing an interview with her and not, say, Robert Fisk or Robert Worth.

Oh well. Could be worse. I honestly expected Ahmadinejad to pull a Chris Brown and do his first interview with Larry King.

The Americans, the Brits, the Israelis, and now... the Arabs? A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry says Arab media outlets are running "Zionist" propaganda about Iran's stolen election.

Show trials resumed in Iran today. Foreign journalists were barred from the proceedings, so the only reports come from mouthpieces like the Fars news agency. And the proceedings were quite predictable: One student activist, identified only as A.M., apologized and asked for a pardon.

"Prior to the election, we were talking about issues like fraud and were also advocating massively against the officials of the regime. We also staged a rebellion against the regime... the election was just a pretext to hit at the symbol of the regime, the (supreme) leader," he said.

The regime plans to hold its fifth round of show trials tomorrow. As many as 140 people will be prosecuted in what AFP calls a "mass trial."

Foreign media will be barred but "some reporters" for Iranian media will be admitted -- presumably not those journalists who work for, say, Etemad-e Melli, though.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that an Iranian judicial committee says Mehdi Karroubi's claims of prison rape are "baseless."

The NYT's Nazila Fathi looks at the committee's ruling, plus the recent arrests of top reformists, and speculates that the regime is close to arresting Karroubi and Mousavi -- a question we pondered last month.

Khamenei did the honors today, and he focused on two things: Iran's nuclear program, and the upcoming Jerusalem Day. This is Khamenei's first Friday prayer sermon since he delivered an ultimatum one week after the election in June.

Mehdi Karroubi sat down for a rare interview with the Los Angeles Times' Borzou Daragahi (who has been doing excellent work in Iran, by the way). Karroubi has some interesting thoughts about the post-election protests -- he pushes back against the idea that they were sparked by "Western interference" -- and offers some goals for the future.

He was not specific about the opposition's strategy, but sketched out goals for the coming months: loosened news media restrictions, freedom of assembly, an end to trials of opposition figures and revised laws to prevent the hard-line Guardian Council from having the final say on elections.

Other Iran news today: Mousavi posted a statement on his Web site warning supporters of "more horrendous events to come" and urging them not to let the regime provoke them.

The Iranian regime closed Mehdi Karroubi's office and arrested two of his top aides, according to Al-Arabiya, which describes the moves as "turning the screws" on Iran's reformists. That seems an apt description.

Karroubi has been a particular target over the last few weeks: His newspaper, Etemad-e Melli, was closed last month, and regime officials have recently called for his arrest and lashing.

The New York Times says (via the BBC Persian service) that Mohammad Davari, the editor of Karroubi's Web site, was arrested at the office. Another aide, Morteza Alviri, was arrested at home.

A.Q. Khan's short-lived freedom is gone -- at least temporarily.

Khan is the Pakistani nuclear scientist who sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He's been under a sort of house arrest since February, required to tell authorities about his travel plans and any guests he invites to his home.

A judge in Lahore ordered those restrictions last week. But the Lahore High Court overturned the ruling yesterday, following an appeal from the Pakistani government; another hearing on the case is scheduled for Sept. 15.

No word on whether the U.S. played a role in this latest decision -- though it's safe to say the American government pressured Pakistan to keep Khan under tight restrictions.

One thing I've wondered over the last few weeks is the extent to which the Iranian regime is trying to build a case against its main enemies (Mousavi and Karroubi). I agree with Laura Secor that the regime's show trials have utterly failed to frighten the Iranian public. But maybe that's not their purpose; maybe the real goal is to gather false confessions and other "evidence" to use against the big targets.

Against that backdrop, two items caught my eye this morning. The first is this interview (فارسي) with "reformist mullah" Mohammad Zareh-Fomeni from the state-run IRNA.

Zareh-Fomeni claims that reformists, including Karroubi, "discussed the goal" of overthrowing the Supreme Leader "in meetings" before the election. He also suggests that Western powers (including the CIA and Mossad, of course) had a role in shaping Iran's post-election "chaos" -- a theory which Khamenei himself rejected earlier this week.

Ahmadinejad delivered the sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran today, and he used it to call for punishments for the leaders of post-election protests -- the first time he's made such a demand.

"Serious confrontation should take place with the leaders and main instigators of the incidents. Those who provoked, organised and implemented the enemy's line should be confronted firmly."

Ahmadinejad went on to say that "those from lower ranks" and "the ones who were deceived" should be treated with "Islamic compassion." The crowd responded by chanting "riot leaders should be executed," according to wire reports.

Ahmadinejad also criticized protesters for "beating up" Basij militiamen who were "protecting people's rights." These are the same Basij, of course, who played such a key role in stifling protests after the election.