A Portrait of Iran’s Shah, in Shades of Grey

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Jan 17, 2011 (IPS) - In “The Shah”, a prominent Iranian author and scholar at Stanford University in the United States offers new insights into Iran’s modern history, including the 1953 coup, the revolution a quarter century later, and the current repressive political situation.

“If you understand why the shah of Iran fell in 1979, we understand why the Iranian government is unstable today and based on that, predict what the future of the country will be,” Abbas Milani told IPS.

Drawing on more than 400 interviews and newly released documents by the U.S. and British embassies, “The Shah” traces the rise and fall of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who died less than a year after his ouster. Read more

January 17, 2011     102 Comments

Iranian Royal Family’s Suicide Tragedy

The Daily Beast- The shah of Iran’s son took his life Tuesday, a decade after his sister died from an overdose. Omid Memarian and Roja Heydarpour on the family heartbreak and what it means for Iran. Plus, Stephen Kinzer reports on the death of the prince.

There is nothing worse for a mother than the death of a child, except, perhaps, the death of two children who took their own lives. That is what the former queen of Iran must endure now that her son, Ali-Reza Pahlavi, 44, was found dead in his home in Boston from a gunshot wound he inflicted on himself early Tuesday morning.

It isn’t the first time Farah Pahlavi has had to grieve a child who committed suicide. Just 10 years ago, former Princess Leila Pahlavi, whose young daughter suffered from anorexia and depression, took a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates, and died in her sleep at 31. Read more

January 5, 2011     62 Comments

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Brutal Artist Crackdown

The Daily Beast. December 25, 2010- The harsh sentencing of a world-renowned director prompted protests from Martin Scorsese and other artists this week. Omid Memarian on escalating repression in Iran.

When world-renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison earlier this week, the verdict reverberated both inside and outside Iran.

Not only did authorities in Tehran hand down an exceptionally harsh sentence, they also decreed that the 50-year-old Panahi will be banned from filmmaking, screenwriting and traveling abroad for the next 20 years. According to his relatives, Panahi has also been banned from talking to the media.

Along with Panahi, Muhammad Rasoulof, another filmmaker involved with Panahi’s movie, was also sentenced to six years in prison. Read more

December 25, 2010     107 Comments

Minister’s Sacking Shores Up Ahmadinejad’s Power Base

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Dec 14, 2010 (IPS) - While Iran gears up for a second round of nuclear talks with Western countries next month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s abrupt dismissal of his foreign minister on Monday indicates a new power struggle with moderate conservatives that could alter the tone and face of Iran’s foreign policy machinery in the years to come.

Manouchehr Mottaki is the seventh cabinet minister dismissed by Ahmadinejad over the past five years, while two others have resigned. Ahmadinejad sacked Mottaki while he was on an official trip to Senegal.

Mottaki had held the portfolio since 2005. Read more

December 14, 2010     Leave a Comment

So Long, Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in trouble. Recently, the Iranian president faced an insurrection among lawmakers, who are seeking his impeachment for various law violations. Pro-democracy politicians, reformists, moderate conservatives and even Ahmadinejad’s former allies are still calling for reform. Key religious leaders have repeatedly shown their dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad, who has had to travel to the holy city of Quom several times during the past few months to heal the divide. And observers within Iran believe that, due to multilateral sanctions and the government’s economic policies, the president’s powerbase is eroding.

Ahmadinejad’s “domestic political aggression might lead the country into social and political instability—similar to or even worse than what the country went through after the 2009 Presidential elections,” Ali-Akbar Mousavi Khoeini, a former Iranian lawmaker told The Daily Beast in an interview Thursday. “The move by the Iranian parliament to question and to [try to] eventually impeach Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicates a serious divide amongst the conservatives in power.” Read more

November 25, 2010     2 Comments

Iran Primer: The Youth

by OMID MEMARIAN and TARA NESVADERANI[ primer] Iran’s youth have been politically active since the 1953 ouster of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The death of three students in protests against Vice President Nixon’s 1953 visit — to support the shah after a CIA-backed coup against the elected government — is still a national holiday. The young were key players in the 1979 revolution. Today, their strength is also in numbers. A baby boom after the revolution almost doubled the population from 34 million to 62 million in the first decade. Iran is now one of the youngest societies in the world, skewing politics, the economy and social pressures. The demographic bulge is one of the biggest threats to the status quo.

The youth bloc has been shaped by political and military crises. In the 1980s, they were the majority of combatants in the eight-year war with Iraq; even pre-teen Basij volunteers became human minesweepers. In the 1990s, Iranian youth demanded their post-war due in politics, the economy and society. By 1997, their growing numbers helped elect reformist President Mohammad Khatami. But as he failed to produce change, the young pulled back. The partial youth boycott of the 2005 presidential election was key to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election. Their reentry into politics in the 2009 election seriously altered Iranian politics. Read more

October 1, 2010     63 Comments

Iran’s “Blogfather” Gets 20-Year Prison Sentence

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 28, 2010 (IPS) - A week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told heads of state gathered for the U.N. General Assembly in New York that his government does not jail its citizens for expressing their opinions, Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Hossein Derakhshan, an internationally known Iranian-Canadian blogger, to 19 and a half years in prison.

On Monday, the conservative website Mashreq announced the verdict issued by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts.

Arrested in October 2008, Derakhshan had been charged with “cooperation with hostile states” and “propagating against the regime”, among other counts, the site said. In addition to the lengthy prison term, he was fined and banned from membership in political parties and work in the media for a period of five years. Read more

September 28, 2010     135 Comments

Activists Warn of Rights Crisis Ahead of Ahmadinejad Visit

NEW YORK, Sep 17, 2010 (IPS) - Speaking at a press conference in New York Friday, Shirin Ebadi, a highly-regarded Iranian attorney and the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, warned that the human rights situation in Iran is deteriorating, particularly for the many journalists and civil society activists considered political prisoners.

“If Mr. Ahmadinejad claims that Iran is a free country, he should let Physicians Without Borders go to Iran and visit the prisoners in bad health condition,” Ebadi said ahead of the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to address the U.N. General Assembly Sep. 23.

The event was organised by two New York-based rights groups, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and Human Rights Watch, as well as the Nobel Women’s Initiative. Read more

September 18, 2010     199 Comments

Ahmadinejad Was Freed Hiker’s Captor, Not Saviour

IWPR- By Omid Memarian - 17 Sep 10The release this week of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans held for more than a year on spying charges, has been presented as an act of clemency by the Iranian regime. But by claiming the credit for freeing Shourd, the government reveals serious inconsistencies with its own account.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has portrayed himself as Shourd’s benefactor, but it was his intelligence service that held her for 14 months. He was thus directly responsible for her detention without trial.

Shourd was freed on September 14, just a week before Ahmadinejad was due to travel to New York to attend the 56th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Read more

September 17, 2010     Leave a Comment

Mysterious Letter Exposes Iranian State Secrets

The Daily Beast, August 7 2020- A letter rumored to be written by opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi 20 years ago has resurfaced and is lighting up Iran’s blogosphere. Omid Memarian on why the letter could open decades of dark secrets and bitter rivalries.

Hidden away for more than 20 years, a mystery letter suddenly reappeared last week.

The letter, supposedly written by a Tehran insider turned opposition leader, was explosive: it alleged that Iran sponsors terrorism abroad.

Like a middle manager ignored by his bosses, the letter writer expressed frustration that he was kept in the dark about Iran’s involvement in events that he described as “operations abroad.”

“If they were to engage about the validity of the letter’s contents, skeletons would come tumbling out of the closet, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone in power.” Read more

August 7, 2010     23 Comments

Poll Finds Dwindling Support for Govt

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Jul 28, 2010 (IPS) - A recent poll conducted by a credible Iranian university centre concerning the post-election events of 2009 has found that 56 percent of participants believe President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s popularity has declined over the past year, while just 22 percent believe it has increased.

Opinions of Ahmadinejad in the capital Tehran declined, despite the fact that the president’s cabinet enjoys a monopoly over state television and radio stations.

Over the past two years, dozens of reformist publications have been shuttered, and journalists and political activists critical of the government’s policies have been arrested and imprisoned. Read more

July 28, 2010     25 Comments

Worries Mount over Sanctions’ Ripple Effect

WASHINGTON, Jul 8, 2010 (IPS) - Although the United States and its allies insist that the latest round of U.N. sanctions against Iran targets high-level government officials rather than the general population, interviews with a number of analysts, activists and journalists in Tehran reveal a growing concern over the impact on the country’s middle class.

“The government will use the oil money to prevent pressure on the lower classes, but the main pressure will be on the middle class, the majority of whom are anti-government,” a former governmental official told IPS on the condition of anonymity. Read more

July 9, 2010     77 Comments

Iran Lobbies Over Rights Forum

26 Feb 10 -Denying rights abuses could prove costly for Tehran, both economically and politically.
Iranian activists have viewed with anger and dismay the outcome of a United Nations review of human rights in Iran and the country’s rejection of its recommendations.

Iran attracted criticism from the West over a lack of freedom of speech and assembly and the position of religious minorities like the Bahais at the routine session in Geneva on February 15 of the UN Human Rights Council. In its reaction to the session, Iran accepted some recommendations but rejected a range of calls to clean up its record and to allow UN human rights and torture inspectors to visit. The UN has no powers to adopt resolutions or enforce any measures raised at the session, called a Universal Periodic Review, UPR. Read more

February 26, 2010     64 Comments

Can Iran’s Opposition Find Montazeri Replacement?

IWPR Institute (Mianeh)- The death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s most outspoken critic late last month came as a blow to the opposition movement in Iran. But the void left by the loss of Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri may yet galvanise other senior Shia clerics into vocal criticism of the regime, thus shifting the equation in the opposition’s favour.

Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who died on December at the age of 87, effectively served as both spiritual leader and unifying force for Iran’s reform-minded opposition. Uniquely, he enjoyed popularity among secular activists and the intellectual elite as well as the devout. Read more

January 9, 2010     4 Comments

Q&A: Attack on Karrubi Was a “Coordinated Effort”

BERKELEY, California, Jan 8 (IPS) - Hussein Karrubi, the son of Iranian opposition figure Mehdi Karrubi, whose car was struck by two bullets on Thursday in Qazvin, a city near Tehran, tells IPS the Islamic Republic is trying to silence and intimidate his father. Many analysts believe that the escalating attacks by security forces on opposition figures could push the popular protests, which have been ongoing since the disputed Jun. 12 elections, to a new level. Read more

January 9, 2010     6 Comments

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