The Iran Student Correspondents Association, a pro-government website, on 23/04/1387 [July 14, 2008] published a statement by the Revolutionary Guards’ public relations committee, who had just become the Commander in Chief of the Basij. He had been born in 1342 (1963/4). After his middle education, he became a seminary student. After studying in Tehran, Mashhad, and Qom, he reached a high degree (kharej) in Islamic jurisprudence. He had studied with, among others, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He joined the Revolutionary Guards in 1361 (1982/3). He began his work in Region 10 of Tehran and continued on to Qom and Mashhad. He was for some time the Revolutionary Guards’ coordinator with the Leader as well as the cultural commander of Imam Hosein College. He lost a brother in the Kerbala V operation and is married with three children.
The liberal website Fararu carried an article, “Who Is the Hasan [sic] Taeb?”1 said that he joined the Revolutionary Guards when it was involved in an all-out campaign to crush groups allied with the People’s Mojahedin and interrogate their captured members. He was eventually promoted to an aide to the counter-intelligence wing of the Ministry of Intelligence while Hashemi-Rafsanjani was president and Ali Falahian was the Minister of Intelligence. He was ordered to assemble a file against one of Rafsanjani’s sons, presumably by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was a bitter rival, and he was then discovered and expelled from the ministry. He then suffered a heart attack at a young age. He was soon given a position of coordinator between the Revolutionary Guards and the office of the Leader, i.e, Khamenei.
His promotion was based on his experience with an increasing emphasis on the cultural and ideological side of the Basij’s work. The report adds that he is considered unstable, inexperienced, ignorant, and unaware of the country’s true political situation, in short, generally incompetent.
Indeed, in an open letter published on 19 Mordad (August 10), Ali Motahhari, the son of the popular late Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari, blamed the violence which erupted after the elections on Taeb’s handling of the peaceful protests over the votes. He pointed out that when Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was the head of the security forces in Tehran and student protests arose, no one suffered so much as a bloody nose despite five days and nights of massive and turbulent demonstrations.
Taeb is believed by observers to be part of a purge of the all-important Ministry of Intelligence which began with the expulsion of cabinet ministers such as Intelligence Minister chief Gholam-Hosein Ejei, who, like many conservatives refused to go along with Ahmadinejad’s appointment of his in-law Esfandiar Rahim Mashai because of his soft attitude towards the Israeli state. According to an article dated 5 Mordad (July 27) posted on the opposition Mizan Press, “It has been heard in the course of … the resignation of [Gholam-Hosein] Ejei that all the security officials are in the hands of Ahmad Salek , the former representative of the Leader in protecting the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence, and Hosein Taef, the former commander of protecting the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence.” (Hojjatoleslam Salek is Khamenei’s representative in the Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force, among other things.) In the meantime, two aides to the Intelligence Ministry and several experts up through the level of General Manager either resigned or were forced to retire, with some twenty senior managers leaving the ministry. Rumors cited in this article have it that the resignations were over the conspiracy theories about a Velvet Coup. (This seems highly unlikely.) In addition, it was felt, according to these rumors, that the Revolutionary Guards were interfering in the Ministry’s internal affairs and was setting up a parallel intelligence service to undermine it. It was also said that five aides to this ministry warned that the appointment of Taeb and Mashai would destroy the ministry.
An article posted on Rah-e Sabz confirmed much of this, quoting the lawyer Hasan Yunesi (son of former Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Yunesi) to “an unprecedented purge of the Ministry of Intelligence.” Mizan Pressnotes that among those purged were prominent allies of Hashemi-Rafsanjani, and sees this purge at undermining the power of Ahmadinejad’s most powerful enemy among the clergy.
This is not the place to discuss how this analysis has played out. Here is an article in English from Rooz Online. Here is a very interesting article by Borzou Daragahi on precisely this subject. One aspect of this purge is the rise of loyalty over competence. This is explained here and here article by Mehdi Khalaji.
It remains to say that Taeb has become associated with the government’s arbitrary arrests and brutal treatment of detainees. Human Rights Watch, for example, has pointed to his position of responsibility as leadership of the Basij paramilitary in this regard. Recall that it was he who was singled out by Ali Motahhari, in the above-mentioned letter, for being responsible for the violence in Tehran.
Notes:
1 There is some confusion as to whether his name is Hasan or Hosein. Even his Wikipedia site lists both!
What seems to have become the accepted translation of Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Karroubi’s letter to Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani can be traced to a translation published in khordaad88 and picked up (unsourced) in Enduring America. The sense of the original generally comes through, but it is often more in the nature of a paraphrase than a translation, and an entire paragraph is dropped without ellipses. Let the reader read and judge. Given the historical importance of this document, I am submitting my own translation. My source is Aq Bahman, a reputable website.
Honorable Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Respected Head of the Expediency Council, with greetings and respect.
After the tenth presidential elections were held, bitter events arose the detailed description of which have been related both by you and by various individuals, groups, and media,
of arbitrary arrests and beatings and woundings up to the martyrdom of this country’s children, of attacks on people’s homes through the bloody tragedy of Dormitory Alley and the violent and terrifying treatment meted out even to women in the middle of the city’s streets–which are unprecedented. These events are worth pondering and pursuing. The matter which is being raised now concerns some of the brutal behavior which, had I not heard it repeatedly from different people who have been recently freed, would be hard to believe, at least for you and me, who have seen so much of this world’s ups and downs this past half century.
of brutal and relentless treatment, beating peoples heads with clubs so much so that after some forty days, their condition is not normal and the marks can still be seen on their bodies.
There has been verbal abuse and insults and obscene cursing of people and the sacrifice of the honor of the arrestees and those who came to the Friday prayers. This is behavior which has no place in the religious and Islamic culture of any group, and shows that people have been employed for this work who have no acquaintance with even the plainest principles of Islam. And of course, there are also rumors circulating with which I will not presently deal.
As you are probably aware, I sent a letter on this matter some time ago addressed to the honorable president of the Judiciary and I raised these same issues with the recently-dismissed Minister of Intelligence, as published in the press on Saturday. But I have heard matters which still make me shutter. Sleep fled from me for two days after I heard this news. Around two a.m., while I was preparing to go to sleep, I went to bed, but, as God is my witness, without a particle of exaggeration, I could not sleep until at dawn, at 4 a.m., and I rose and read some Koran and bathed so that the water soothed me somewhat. I even recited the morning prayers, but could not sleep until sunrise.
People in sensitive positions in this country, ranking military men, a number of whom had even fought in the Sacred Defense [the Iran-Iraq War] told me of these matters. These people declared that things occurred in the prisons which, if even a single one of them was true, would be a tragedy for the Islamic Republic, turning the radiant and white Shiite clergy into a black and shameful thing which would make many a dictatorial government, including that of the monarchist regime, seem white by comparison.
I do not believe that the prisoners of the fifteen years of struggle before the revolution, who ranged from the Tudeh Party to the eclectic armed militant groups to the members of the Freedom Movement and the Coalition and the Islamic Nations Party which lived side by side in prison have seen or heard such a thing.1
I write to you about these matters and urgently wish you would take action on this matter and kindly raise it with His Eminence Ayatollah Khamenei and let it be pursued in earnest so that it be clarified. If no such thing occurred, and God willing it didn’t and I consider it unlikely that it has, let it be so announced, for it is being discussed in the media and websites in our society today and by the very youth who were arrested, and it is not known how the people of the future will judge its being exaggerated. Indeed, the Islamic Republic and the poor clergy will also be held responsible for this. Even if, God forbid, they had occurred, let their agents be speedily confronted, whatever their post, and their names announced, so that in the current circumstances, when the market for rumors is hot, no opportunity might be given the opportunists. It is therefore necessary to follow the policy of having these measures implemented by a high-ranking body so that the individuals in questions have the courage to tell the truth, for I have heard that they have been threatened that if if they state anything in this matter, they will be liquidated.
Your Eminence Hashemi,
I am prepared for the sake of Islam and, above all, the late Imam and all the sacrifices and martyrdoms and with the aim of coming closer to God and in spite of the fact that it is not my position and in spite of all the fires and tribulations and in spite of the fact that I know that my prestige will be damaged, to take on the responsibility for investigating and reviewing in order to determine the truth and falsity of these events and reports received and fulfill my obligation under the sharia and prepare a report without fear or favor and behaving with complete fairness.
As for the subjects being raised, they are as follows:
A number of arrestees have indicated that some individuals have violently raped arrested girls, leading to lacerations and tearing in their reproductive organs. On the other hand, individuals have have so savagely raped young imprisoned boys that some of them have suffered depression and serious psychological and physical problems and have crawled into a corner of their homes.
Given the importance of the matter, it is expected that these matters will be reviewed by an impartial and transparent body appointed by the president of the Assembly of Experts for the Presidency until the facts of the matter are determined, so that it will be a lesson for the future generations and that an opportunity not be given to thugs and goons so that the honor of the system and the Imam and the Islamic Republic not be destroyed and the clergy’s thousand years of service not be ruined.
In closing, allow me to note that two copies have been made of this letter, one of them signed and sealed and sent to your and the other kept by Your Servant.
In hopes of success,
Mehdi Karroubi
7 Mordad 1388 [July 29, 2009]
Note: 1 The Coalition (known by its Persian name Motalafeh) survived into the revolution. They are now militant supporters of Ahmadinejan. On the other hand, the Islamic Nations Party, which was composed largely of college students inexperienced in political organizing and advocated a pan-Islamic policy and a strategy of armed struggle, was quickly pounced on by the Shah’s secret service and liquidated in 1962 before it could accomplish anything. Its leaders were spared the death penalty but were condemned to life in prison. One of its leaders, Abol-Qasem Sarhadizadeh, survived into the revolutionary era and ultimately found his way into Hojjatoleslam Sayyed Mohammad Khatami, becoming president of the National Library under his presidency.
A story has been making the rounds on the internet about the alleged abduction and rape of one Taraneh Musavi (also spelled Mousavi). The story first appeared, as acknowledged by “Azar,” a blogger at Iranian-e Chap (Leftist Iranians) and key contributor to this story, in the blogs zeerzamin (Underground), cherikonline (Online Partisan), and Iranian-e Chap. They all three agreed to break the story together and an examination of the blog postings on this subject indicate a high degree of coordination between them.
I won’t summarize the story here, partly because to do so would mean choosing which of the several conflicting versions of the story was the correct one. Those who cannot read Persian but can read English can find a summary of it here. Shirin Sadeghi has written a rehash of it published on the Huffington Post.
Since the story broke on July 13, it has come under question. Mehdi Jami of Newsbann is the first person to have gone on record with a systematic explanation about why he considers the story dubious, in a posting he made on July 17. Among other things, he argues that the story has no clear witnesses named, indeed, no names appear in the story except that of the alleged victim. A picture is produced of the alleged victim, but it is unclear where the picture came from. Moreover, “It is not the common practice to publish news of a rape with a picture” of the victim, since “it is normal to preserve the victim’s privacy.” One detail which caught Jami’s eye was that the people who had been detained with the alleged victim were released that night. This is not the common treatment of those arrested in the course of the recent upheaval.
These doubts did not go unanswered. Azar left a comment in which she said that the photograph of Taraneh was “official” and that it was, in some unspecified way, clear how it was obtained. She declared it “unnecessary” to publish the other photos of the alleged victim, although “they were accessible to one of the publishers, who knows her personally.”
For his part, cherikonline issued a lengthy answer. The gist of it was that, operating underground in Iran as he is, he cannot conform to the journalistic practices of more open societies like those in the West, where Jami lives. In particular, it is impossible to cite named sources, as Jami was demanding. He then gets into the particulars. In reply to the issue of the prisoners being freed before the day was up, he said that in fact no such thing had been said, but rather, it was said that they had been transferred to another prison. This is indeed true of the version of the story published in zeerzamin . However, the other versions have some (habastegi–”solidarity,” another website which picked up the story) or possibly all (Iranian-e Chap) of the prisoners specifically freed before the day was up or possibly within a few days (again, Iranian-e Chap, according to which they were “released that night or the following days”).
Cherikonline compares the current case with that of Zahra Bani-Ya`qub, asking who can prove that she had been murdered by the regime. Of course, in her case we had a person whose identity was established and whose family called for a full investigation of her death, a campaign which won broad support, including a very large number of Iranian parliamentarians. The Ahmadinejad administration successfully stonewalled it, but by this very act exposed its culpability. The same can be said for the case of the other murdered Zahra, Zahra Kazemi.
Contradictions in the accounts
Bloggers, particularly those working under difficult circumstances, are not expected to achieve the level of consistency of polished print journalism, for better or for worse. Moreover, it is unfair to try to trip up journalists of any stripe with minor contradictions in their accounts. A story unfolds over time and it is inevitable that new elements will work their way into it. However, this wiggle-room itself has limits, limits which I believe the three blogs who have broken this story have passed. Here are some examples.
Her arrest:
In one place, Iranian-e Chap says, “According to reports, this young woman was arrested by plain clothes security forces at 6 pm after participating in the 7th [T]ir ceremony at Ghoba [M]osque.”
But elsewhere, in the Persian original, from which the previous quote is translated, her friend is quoted as saying that “she was absolutely not participating in the meeting or the clashes.” On the same page, her friend, in an interview, is quoted as saying, “she wasn’t participating in the rally.” This is the story followed by most sources, and we can agree that the translation was somehow in error. Again, another report says that she had participated in the 7 Tir ceremonies in the Qoba Mosque.
Her imprisonment:
Iranian-e Chap gives an interview with “Sh” who, it seems, witnessed her arrest. The interview is marred by questions which anticipate the answer. (“Was Taraneh arrested on 7 Tir around the Qoba Mosque?” “Did Taraneh give her phone number to someone else while she was there?” etc.) In any case, Sh seems to have also witnessed her condition in captivity as well. Thus, Sh says, “Yes, they took her with about forty other boys and girls blindfolded to a secret detention center, which is a building with high walls on Revolutionary Guards Street.” In neither case does Sh explain where his/her information is coming from, even in the most general terms. Was Sh an eye-witness? Or did s/he hear about through a friend? Or read about it in Iranian-e Chap and simply repeat it?
This same source says that, apparently sensing that she was in significantly more trouble than her fellow-detainees, Taraneh gave them her phone number and asked them to call home. As a result, they called her family. But the narrative breaks down here. Her family was dead-set against any publicity into her case. So they also called her friends, despite the fact that, according to this narrative, they neither knew her friends’ names nor phone numbers. In any case, it is only her family which pursues the matter. zeerzamin does better here, saying that she gave the number of her family and a friend.
The anonymous call about Taraneh being in the hospital:
According to the interview with Sh, her family was told that “a body with her features … had been found in the wastelands between Karaj and Qazvin, but her family was sternly threatened not to say anything about the circumstances of her daughter’s arrest.” This is peculiar for a number of reasons. First, these people who notified her parents were obviously government people. Why would they deliver the body that the government was trying to hide, having gone so far as to incinerate it and carry it hundreds of miles out of town? Second, the government, according to the same interview, had insisted that Taraneh had not been arrested. Why then was it warning her parents not to discuss a non-existing arrest’s circumstances? Third, the body was incinerated. What identifying marks of Taraneh’s did it have? Were Taraneh’s dental records that well known in Iran? Was there an APB out for her body’s whereabouts that someone might have been keeping Taraneh’s distinguishing features in mind?
cherikonline and Iranian-e Chap reported she had been hospitalized “[a]ccording to an anonymous individual who stated, upon contacting her family, her womb and anus had been torn.”
Compare to Iranian-e Chap elsewhere, where her friend Sh said that “she wanted to throw herself in front of a car to commit suicide because her womb and anus had been torn.” However zeerzamin says that the anonymous caller said she had been hospitalized after having been in an accident. According to this story, her mother argued that she had been told her daughter had been arrested during the Qoba Mosque events. The anonymous voice told her, “Taraneh had nothing to do with the Qoba Mosque events, but rather, it is likely that she had a problem with her private parts, for she tried to hang herself with some serum tubing. He mentioned her womb and anus being torn as the reason she was hospitalized.” This would seem to be an insurmountable contradiction. Either she was hospitalized because she was in a traffic accident or because her private parts were wounded. (In a previous posting, zeerzamin says that the anonymous voice had told her that she was hospitalized because her womb and anus had been torn.)
cherikonline alone carried the rather ingenious story that “according to witnesses,” Taraneh’s family had been threatened to go along with the story that her charred body had been found in an air accident’s wreckage.
Miscellaneous issues:
It is not clear how this rather delicate and private news, complete with details about the injuries she sustained to her private parts, was transferred from her elderly religious parents who were, in addition, under tremendous pressure by the authorities, according to the bloggers, to dummy up. They would have to have told either the bloggers or the bloggers’ friends. Neither of these seems conceivable.
The bloggers argue that they broke the story because Taraneh belongs to everyone, that they posted Taraneh’s picture against the wishes of her parents because they thought it might save her life. Arguably, they were caught between campaigning to protect someone from physical harm and to protect her and her family’s privacy. But had they had this in mind, wouldn’t they have issued an appeal for this missing individual and a desperate public call for people to turn in whatever information they had about her whereabouts? No such appeal, not even the hint of such an appeal, appeared on their blogs.
Early in the story, Taraneh’s family residence’s street and her father’s profession are given, presumably in a bid to give the story an air of verisimilitude. This is quietly dropped in other posts.
All sorts of friends of Taraneh’s appear to be interviewed or give information, but only to these three blogs. It never occurs to these friends to contact Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch or sympathetic members of the Iranian Majlis or women’s groups (such as Feminist School), for example.
Another cause for skepticism is that of the three blogs, zeerzamin was founded only shortly before the story was broken, and is therefore something of a “sock puppet,” while cherikonline has a long record of just plain rumor-mongering. Thus, it circulated a very dubious letter by Revolutionary Guard commanders to Mohsen Reza’i calling for him to continue to protest the electoral fraud; pushed the story on his own authority that Revolutionary Guard commander Ali Fazli has been arrested for refusing to turn against the people (although this blog later walked that position back); claimed again on its own authority that large numbers of drafted members of the security forces were refusing to fight; claimed yet again on its own authority to know of a government plot to have basijis massacred in an explosion to force the people to come together in mourning them for a week. (And this, in the month of June of this year alone!)
Of course, the story might turn out to be true, if awkwardly handled. But I remember the Tawana Brawley affair and the confusion and disorientation caused by it.
(UPDATE July 21, 2009)
Taraneh Musavi has now become a prop for a right-wing American Thaddeus McCotter. This, in and of itself, does not discredit the Taraneh Musavi story. Indeed, he had earlier used, who was, of course, a very real person who suffered a real tragedy, to shed his crocodile tears over.
(UPDATE July 22, 2009)
zeerzamin admits that it was founded to perpetrate the Taraneh story. File under sock puppet.
برخي از مخاطبان بحث هايي را عنوان کرده اند مبني بر اين که وبلاگ زيرزمين که به انتشار اين خبر اقدام کرده، به تازگي راه افتاده است. اين جا بايد بگويم وبلاگ زيرزمين به منظور انتشار خبرهاي ترانه راه اندازي شد ولي اين بدان معنا نيست که اين وبلاگ اخبار ديگر اين روزها را منتشر نمي کند.
“Some have said that zeerzamin, which has published this news [the Taraneh Musavi story] was just launched [i.e., in order to publish this story]. Here, I must say that zeerzamin was launched in order to spread the news of Taraneh, but this does not mean that it does not publish other news these days.”
(UPDATE August 10, 2009)
Here is a twenty minute segment published by the Islamic Republic’s media.
It has rightly met with scorn among Iranians. They raise various issues:
The idea that in the whole country (really, in the whole world) there are only three Taraneh Musavis is entirely unlikely.
It is impossible to believe that both the mother and the regime’s “Taraneh Musavi” did not know about the story swirling around her, especially since her daughter is living outside Iran and has free access to the internet.
If the story is a hoax, as the Islamic Republic’s propagandists claim, why would the hoaxsters use a real Taraneh Musavi? If I were making up a story about a drug dealer, say, would I use the name of a real human being?
Do the parents have no photographs of their daughter whom they had sent to Canada? This would have clinched the argument and would have been very easy to provide, but the interviewer does not even make this minimal effort to prove his case.
There was no effort to contact the Canadian “Taraneh Musavi”. This would, of course, take some planning and logistics, but it would have shredded the case beyond redemption and utterly discredited the people who peddled the story. But of course there is no such Taraneh Musavi living in Canada.
Any one of these arguments shows the regime’s propagandists to be flat-out liars. Put together, they demolish the regime’s hoax within a hoax.
(UPDATE August 12, 2009)
More charlatanry:
A crackpot website Les dessous de l’information mondiale-Downside World News stole my article and added its own headline, “US-UK WEST Hoax about Iran”. Of course, I nowhere say that the US or the UK had anything to do with the story and believe no such thing. Visitors are encouraged to leave a comment expressing their protests of such methods. It hasn’t published my own protests of this plagiarism, but maybe you will have better luck.
For Persian-readers, here is another blog which makes many of my points.
This blog's proprietor is Evan Siegel. He is a professor of mathematics. He has been a student of Iranian history, culture, and politics since the seventies. Click here to see his resume.
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The Iran Student Correspondents Association, a pro-government website, on 23/04/1387 [July 14, 2008] published a statement by the Revolutionary Guards’ public relations committee, who had just become the Commander in Chief of the Basij. He had been born in 1342 (1963/4). After his middle education, he became a seminary student. After studying in Tehran, Mashhad, and Qom, he reached a high degree (kharej) in Islamic jurisprudence. He had studied with, among others, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He joined the Revolutionary Guards in 1361 (1982/3). He began his work in Region 10 of Tehran and continued on to Qom and Mashhad. He was for some time the Revolutionary Guards’ coordinator with the Leader as well as the cultural commander of Imam Hosein College. He lost a brother in the Kerbala V operation and is married with three children.
