Iran’s protest movement has entered a new phase
The DailyStar-Last week, six months after Iran’s June 12 presidential elections, thousands of students protested against the government in universities across Iran – a strong signal that Iran’s domestic crisis is far from over, and moreover, entering a new phase.
Six months ago, the major focus of the hundreds of thousands of protesters who marched the streets of Tehran was to show their anger and dissatisfaction with the election results, which many believed were rigged and resulted in not only Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, but also beliefs that this pre-planned coup was orchestrated with the support of the Revolutionary Guards, the para-military Basij, and the military intelligence.
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December 16, 2009 Leave a Comment
Iran’s Leaders Battle Over Khomeini’s Legacy
TIME, By Robert Baer and Omid Memarian- Are the wheels coming off the Iranian regime bus? On July 26, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fired the country’s Intelligence Minister, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, a man who customarily reported directly to the Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, rather than to the President. The move came a day after Khamenei had forced Ahmadinejad to drop Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie as his candidate for Vice President. But in an act of flagrant defiance of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad appointed Mashaie as his chief of staff. All this suggests that a political brawl is raging within the corridors of power, the likes of which the world has not seen since Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989.
July 28, 2009 Leave a Comment
Iran on the move
OpenDemocracy.org-Iran has experienced of one of the most exciting presidential elections since the Islamic revolution of 1979. All of the four candidates who appear on the ballot-paper in the first round of voting on 12 June 2009 may be handpicked by Iran’s Guardian Council, and each can be considered either a father or a child of the revolution. But two are reformists who embrace progressive agendas, and whose popular campaigns suggest that millions of Iranians - 70% of whom are under 30 years old - believe that Iran needs reform.
For Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. The leader elected in June 2005 expected an easy contest from opposition candidates who could be easily discredited for past failures or outflanked on nationalist rhetoric. Instead, he has been forced to grapple with harsh criticism of his economic policy, foreign policy and human-rights record - and is resorting to extreme denunciation of his rivals as a way of shoring up his core support. Read more
June 11, 2009 1 Comment
Iran: Saberi is no spy
25Apr09 – The imprisonment of Roxana Saberi for ‘espionage’ is the act of a government obsessed with controlling the media, says Omid Memarian
American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was sentenced to eight years in Iran’s notorious and feared Evin prison last weekend. She had been arrested in January by Iranian authorities. Her family was initially told it was for buying a bottle of wine, illegal under the country’s Islamic laws. It later emerged she did not hold a valid press card, required by law and issued by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The charge was then changed to espionage, of which she was found guilty. Read more
April 25, 2009 1 Comment
Op-Ed:”U.S. must change Iran policy”
(San Francisco Chronicle)-President Obama has promised to restore the United States’ moral authority in the world. In order to do so, the new administration should revise U.S. foreign policy that has proved a political failure and undermined respect for international human rights.
Topping the list is the U.S. policy of regime-change toward Iran. The policy has failed to bring any tangible changes in the Iranian regime’s behavior. Instead, the policy has harmed the Iranian people’s demands for the rule of law and respect for human rights. Read more
January 29, 2009 Leave a Comment
Proposed Iraq security pact calms Iran’s concerns, too
While Americans might have been satisfied when Iraq’s Cabinet approved a proposed security agreement on Sunday, Iranian leaders will be thrilled with the consolidation of the Iraqi Shiite government in Baghdad.
Next door to Iraq, Iranians, who had opposed an agreement to withdraw American forces from Iraq by the end of 2011, now are assured that Iraq will not be used to attack them. Even though Iraq is not a Shiite theocracy like Iran, the Iraqi Cabinet’s decision was significantly affected when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric, signed off on the deal. Read more
November 25, 2008 2 Comments
