Iran « IRAN RISES

Posts Tagged ‘Iran’

Mehdi Karroubi on Taraneh Mousavi

Monday, August 31st, 2009

I provide a translation of that part of Karroubi’s press conference dealing with the Taraneh Mousavi affair. The version published by Tehran Bureau often has more the character of a paraphrase. More seriously, there are major lacunae in it which are not indicated by ellipses. I use the same source Tehran Bureau used.
Click here to see the rest of the article.

A while back websites ran a story to the effect that Miss Taraneh Mousavi was seized just outside the Qoba Mosque ceremonies along with a number of others. Some time later, although a number of those arrestees were released, Taraneh Mousavi was not. They then announced that her family should come and take her body away.¹
At this point, instead of investigating this matter, some officials, faced with the foreign media’s hue and cry,² took it into their heads to plan a scenario to distort it here and abroad. And so, ingenious schemers and far-sighted managers wrote the scenario.
To execute this scenario, they were made aware, through an individual whose name I will not mention,³ that a family has a daughter-in-law named Taraneh Mousavi who lives in Canada. All that was necessary was that they set the stage and get this girl’s family to hold an interview in which it would say that their daughter was alive and living in Canada. And so, several individuals from military, security, and intelligence, well-known figures, went to this respected and noble family’s house and told this family that Taraneh Mousavi had been burned and in order to know whether or not it was their daughter-in-law, they should come and remove the body.⁴ The father of the family then said, “Our daughter-in-law does not live in Iran,” and since the family’s elders were not political people but clerical, they viewed the matter very simply. Just then, the father of the family telephoned his son, who is a clerical and political figure,[Shahmoradi] and told him what had happened and asked for another telephone number, of his son, Taraneh’s husband. His son [Shahmoradi] told him that his brother had gone to Canada to know what was going on⁵ and had not yet arrived and get in touch with him. Just then, the mother noticed that it was possible that such a thing might have occurred and collapsed and was sent to the hospital. When the father of the family noticed that this was a serious matter, he once more tried to contact his son so that he would see that this was not a passing issue, and so he [Shahmoradi] rushed to the house. He noticed that several people were in the house and that some of them were people who were present during the Sacred Defense [the Iran-Iraq war]. This reminds me of martyr Hamid Bakeri, who said, “May I achieve martyrdom at the front, for if I survive, it is not obvious what catastrophe would befall us and what group we would become part of.” When this gentleman, who had some political consciousness, spoke with them, he said, “Don’t say this sort of thing to me. I know the truth of the matter,” and even used the expression, “Don’t try to gyp a Gypsy.” When they, for their part, saw that he was on to them, they changed their tune and said it is proper to cooperate with them in order to protect the system and struggle against the foreign media’s sensationalism. Just then, members of the family said, “What do you want of us?” They said, “That you go before the camera and say that Taraneh is alive.”
Taraneh’s brother-in-law [Shahmoradi] at first refused and said, “This is wrong from the start. We are somewhat well-known figures.” And, of course, he asked them, “Insofar as such a thing be done, what would you do to the real Taraneh?”[i.e., the fake Taraneh] They answered, “That’s not your problem. Don’t worry.” Similarly, the family said, “The picture that you have is not of our daughter in law,” and they said, “That’s not your problem.”
Meanwhile, Taraneh’s brother-in-law, who was a clerical and political figure, relented and figured⁶ that by doing this, he would be keeping the foreigners from taking advantage of Iran’s condition. But he suggested that they should go and speak with Taraneh’s father and mother. In the meantime, they searched for their phone number, but Taraneh’s brother-in-law told them, “Since they had moved, we do not have their number and my brother has not reached his destination [Canada] so that I could get the phone number from him.” Taraneh’s father in law, for his part, said that perhaps his wife might have the number in her room, but since she had been sent to the hospital, the door to her room was locked and they did not have the key. Those present then decided to break open the door, but the family stopped them and faced them down. They told these people, “Go, we will ourselves try to find their telephone number.” Interestingly enough, before the members of this family were able to find Taraneh’s parents’ telephone number, they themselves [the security, etc. officials] found the number. Taraneh’s brother-in-law immediately contacted her parents and said to them, “Only say this much.” He then told these gentlemen [the security, etc., officials], “This family is not in the loop and only say this much to them.” And so it was that they put Taraneh Mousavi’s parents in front of the camera and they said that their daughter was alive and living in Canada. Of course, after the family noticed what the point of this was, they were very upset and wanted to investigate it, but this brother-in-law of Taraneh’s told them not to say a thing, otherwise, their fate would be uncertain.
[Comment in the source deleted.] These individuals stated that they had to put this family up to such a thing in order to protect the system’s basis. But from our point of view, to protect the system’s basis and strengthen the Constitution, the revolution’s values and His Eminence the Imam’s aspirations are important. To protect the system’s basis is to base one’s actions on the promises which we have made to the people. But I regret that we have retreated from the revolution and are gambling with the system’s honor.
[Another comment deleted.] As soon as the struggles of the Islamic Revolutionary movement began in 1341 [=1963], a series of unaware individuals connected with the government intended to stop the Imam’s movement by treating it like the Bohlul affair in the events at the Gawharshad Mosque.⁷ The Bohlul affair was as follows: A little while after the events at the Gawharshad Mosque arose, they published a picture of some cheerful fellow in the media and said that this was that same person who was responsible for the events at Gawharshad Mosque. But before the week was out, a fitting statement was published in Mashhad in which two pictures were printed. One of them was that of the fellow they claimed was Bohlul and the other was the real Bahlul, so that it be known that [the latter] had been imprisoned in Afghanistan for some time. This matter occurred some 48 years ago and this story was exposed in those days. How could it be that now these officials could expect that an event can occur in Tehran, and in this age of connectivity at that, and no one might notice?
[Comment deleted.] That same night that a film about Taraneh Mousavi was broadcast from television, before I understood the truth of the matter, I was impressed. But that same night, I went to a wedding ceremony in which a youth came up to me and said, “Do they think that the people do not know how many Taraneh Mousavis there are in Iran?” I was surprised by this and said to myself, “For all my age and experience, I doubted the matter, but this youth had absolutely no doubts.”⁸
[Comment deleted] I know how they found this Taraneh Mousavi and [my] source of information is trustworthy. If necessary, I will speak more clearly on this matter so that the extent of people’s roles can be specified.
During the years of the Serial Murders, the elections of 1376 [1997] had still not been held when it was said that that they have blown up the Shrine of the Imam (God’s mercy be upon him!) and that they intended to even plant a bomb in the Her Holiness the Immaculate [Fatima, Imam Ali’s wife and the Prophet of Islam’s daughter], but its perpetrator had been arrested. After a week, they even brought several girls in front of the television cameras and they, too, very cheerfully spoke before the cameras in such a way that they surpassed any expert spokeswoman. At the time, I laughed and said that this was ridiculous. Could it be possible that they might arrest someone and torture her until she confessed and then bring her before the television cameras so quickly and in such a condition and she confesses? The result of such operations led to the Serial Murders [of] writers and the assassinations of [Dariush] Farouhar and his wife [Parvaneh].
[Comment deleted.] I am not only taking a stand against such behavior, but, as you know, I am also taken a position regarding my friends and colleagues. I have played the greatest role in bringing success to the reformist movement, but as soon as differences emerged, this same great gentleman [Hojjatoleslam Sayyed Mohammad Khatami], in whose electoral victory I played such an effective role, has not supported me, and these same people have played the greatest role in the reformists’ defeat in 1384 [2005].⁹ [By boycotting the elections.]
[Comment deleted] You have now created a situation in which people no longer have the courage to speak out. But I say yet again that this behavior and intimidation and terror will not silence me. I will raise certain issues as needed.

After this press conference, Sayyed Hosein Shahmoradi, the very same brother-in-law of Taraneh Musavi, issued an open letter complaining about what Karroubi said on two grounds: oath-breaking and distortion. It was issued in the conservative newspaper Iran and picked up on another conservative website, Jam-e Jam. We quote it in full:[source]

Greetings, Your Eminence Karroubi,
It has been years that I have wanted to continue my studies and cultural work within, of course, my financial means. I am exhausted by the arguing and suffocated from chatter. Although in my youth I sat on the sidelines, my white hairs have left me in such a state that I even avoid sitting on the sidelines and stick to my bed and board. But these colorful days do not leave me alone and the media and its games and the ambitions of this side and the other even smite those who want to be left alone.
The first page of the latest issue of Etemad-e Melli and an article by an old comrade of the revolution and a great militant of the times of monarchist oppression brought me yet more consternation. I, who consider myself a minor student of the great revolution and am proud of being a student in the presence of the great ones, I, who consider myself a son of the revolution and a soldier of the velayat[-e faqih], was terribly perplexed as to what to do. Why? What had I done? Two difficult months passed and the media of Iran and the world, of every taste and tendency, took every arrow and put it in the bow of its tongue and took aim at the mouths of the patient and kind people of Islamic Iran. Thanks to this assault, the political atmosphere of the day is turbulent and intensified and made yet more exhausting the hot summer winds.
If bread is the goal, all means are excused, and there is no use complaining if the means are blatantly contrary to the principles upon which the Islamic Revolution was formed. The way of a seminary student has as its first step the learning of and insistence on good morality, on faith in God, on honest speech and behavior, on faith and integrity, on justice and asking for help from the One God in protecting human honor, but the times are so troubled that even some clerics have been drawn willy-nilly into the circle of losing justice and have made the people, particularly the youth, waver, putting the seminary students face to face with the question, Will we the clergy be passive and the bee without honey?!
Your Eminence Karroubi,
Two months have passed since the tenth [presidential] elections and its results are known and members of every group and every taste have forgotten the protection of the system, which His Eminence our guide [Khomeini] called the greatest obligation, and each bangs his own drum. The insistence continues on both sides and everyone uses everything at his disposal and resorts to every means, even if their way of framing the issues is imprecise and incorrect, to excite public opinion and damage the character of believers and the honor of men.
In the introduction to this letter, I said and I now repeat and emphasize that this son of the revolution and this minor seminary student has for years considered the doings of politics a vanity and is occupied with his own business. I do not know and do not say anything about your views or those of others. But I do know and say that one ought not and must not repeat everything and raise a racket in order to confirm ones views or restore ones political credibility.
Therefore, as a seminary student, I ask the scholars in attendance and you yourself, whose past of struggle and cooperation and sympathy with the revolution is clear to all, “Is this the result of religion and politics being side by side? What is the cost of achieving political ambitions? And does the goal and idea of the late Imam (God have mercy upon him!) in establishing this system and the great Leader of the revolution [Ayatollah Khamenei] and the giants of struggle and the achievement of a peaceful and successful society endowed with.”¹⁰ Islamic morality and the pure divine teachings have anything to do with the situation of these two troubled months? If the friends of the Imam and the revolution, with all their service and sincerity, have lost their patience, can one expect patience from others? And can one consider the system’s difficult political issues to be so simple?”
Your Eminence Karroubi,
In a visit, you realized that the television program about Miss Taraneh Mousavi had something to do with our family and asked me about it. I submitted that, in accordance with the issues and interests in which I believe, I have said nothing about this story to any of the major figures and never will, since I consider it a conspiracy of the foreign media. I suffered sedition from enemies and impatience from friends. You insisted. I remained silent. You promised that you are looking into this only for your own information and would not even say anything about it to the people around you. Your promise and the devotion of this merest one to the Imam, that wise guide who garbed me in clerical attire, broke the lock of my silence for you and for you alone for it to remain in your breast and your breast alone. I submitted that my intention was only to expose the enemies’ conspiracy and silence their sedition, and you listened.
But with utter astonishment and horror, on 26 Mordad, part of what I submitted was published on the front electronic page of Your Eminence’s newspaper with various embellishments and issued with your name and signature. How difficult it was for me to believe such oath-breaking. I read this in disbelief and my regret and sorrow mounted when I saw that what I had said you did not!
The water has flowed from the stream, the arrow has flown from the bow. Yet this question remains, Is your word balm or bane? Have you helped the revolution with this deed, or has this or that political current benefited from it? Has human honor been preserved or moral principles obeyed?
For me, who considers you a concerned friend of the system, even though I have not and do not share your positions, it was unbelievable and astonishing! What time is this time, a time in which honor has no value? Clerics ignore wisdom and oaths are forgotten. I easily raise my hands to the heavens and open my sealed lips and pray before the Merciful and Kind One’s Court for Islamic Iran.
Sayyed Hosein Shahmoradi

To this, Karroubi responded as follows:

Dear brother Proof of Islam and the Muslims Shahmoradi
With greetings and honor.
You wrote a letter to me in the 28 Mordad 1388 Jam-e Jam complaining about what I had stated in enlightening public opinion about the Taraneh Mousavi affair. Of course, I am glad that you did not deny the essence of your conversation with Your Servant, but believed that Your Servant did not fully convey what you told me and, as you said, broke the lock of your silence about the Taraneh Mousavi affair in Your Servant’s presence. But it is necessary in this regard to submit a few things in this matter:

Your Eminence Shahmoradi, my dear brother, I don know whether or not you had been compelled under pressure to write such a letter to me so that a title could be chosen for it saying that you were sorry about Your Servant’s statements and actions, but when I read your letter, I was glad that you confirmed the heart of the matter and that the only criticism you had was why Your Servant was not faithful and conveyed matters which you told me about in confidence. And so I decided to answer your letter so that you, too, might be assured why Mehdi Karroubi, this minor soldier of the system could never be able to remain silent before a violation of the people’s rights, particularly when a number of people have decided to remain silent before the savage crimes which have occurred or blame them on others.

When Your Servant called you and asked to meet with you, it was to raise a matter which I had heard from someone else, whom you certainly know and whom we both trust.¹¹ So, if you will recall, at the same time that I asked you about this affair, I submitted to you who it was that conveyed this matter from you to Your Servant and you, for your part, know well that he is a reliable source. At this juncture, it is necessary to explain that Your Servant was aware of the essence of the matter and only requested a further explanation to ask you about this affair, and, in fact, that nothing new was told me by you in this matter for you to complain about me now concerning why I did not talk about what you said and declare that you were unbelievably sorry about the subjects raised.

On the other hand, you know best that Your Servant is not interested in making an exposé about the Taraneh Mousavi affair and did not want to put this matter in the media now or be published in the press. But regrettably, some of the country’s officers and Friday Imams have used every tribune to insult Your Servant and, without showing any inclination towards reviewing what Your Servant has posed, have pointed an accusing finger at me and called for Your Servant’s punishment. I witnessed how a group of Friday Imams and some of the press made an obscene effort to cover up the crimes which had been done to the people over the protests over the electoral results. And so, I decided that, in response to their gossip, to expose some issues, including the Taraneh Mousavi affair, in an interview so that these worthies might know that Mehdi Karroubi never speaks without documentation. But if you closely examine the issue which had been published, you will notice that I nowhere mention your name or that of that worthy who relayed the matter from you to Your Servant. I must mention that even Your Servant’s confidants are unaware of the names and stations of those who reported this news. In this interview, where it was necessary to mention someone’s name, I even refrained from mentioning your name so that no one would know it. But now, by writing this letter, you have provided a good reason for me to be able to mention his name. When you spoke to Your Servant, you declared that you are the son-in-law of His Eminence Proof of Islam and the Muslims Hoseini, Your Servant suddenly realized what person passed your home’s address and phone number to the security forces and how they knew that your family has a daughter-in-law in Canada named Taraneh Mousavi, since I realized that your family is clerical but does not enter into political circles, yet when you said that you are His Eminence Hoseini’s son-in-law, I noticed something, and I told you right there that I have found the missing link, since I realized Mr. Taeb is also the son-in-law of His Eminence Hoseini and said that you are the brother-in-law of Mr. Taeb, and you confirmed this. And so I noticed that Mr. Taeb was one of the planners of the Taraneh Mousavi show. You know better that your dear brother-in-law Mr. Taeb who had entered the field had in the past, too, had a record and some experience of this sort in the Ministry of Intelligence, since the president of the time had expelled him from the Ministry of Intelligence over just this behavior.

Your Eminence Shahmoradi, my dear brother, we cannot ignore the crime which has been committed against these people. It has been God’s will that these crimes be exposed so that its perpetrators be punished. You must know better than anyone what matters have arisen. This very past week when I went to visit three families who have suffered in these recent events. One family’s son had been killed and Your Servant is very sorry for what they have experienced. I went to a family who has a young girl in the house who had been brutally beaten so that the the marks on her face are visible after sixty days and whose hands have been broken in several places and who had hanging marks on her neck. I also went to a family of sayyeds whose child is in bed sick because his stomach had been cut open and is being fed in this way, and one of whose eyes have been lost and blinded and whose other eye is about to go blind. This youth’s head is full of lead pellets and has been operated on several times and must be operated on once more. When these families explained how they had suffered, I grieved over how this happened under the banner of the Islamic Republic. In your opinion, can someone remain silent on seeing such crimes? My dear brother, we cannot keep our silence about the truth on the excuse of protecting the system, since history will eventually reveal the truth. Of course, I will say this, too, that now Your Servant is not busy gathering votes to be present in the presidential elections or to get a post or position and so does not diligently pursue the people’s rights. Rather, my aim as a son of the revolution and a minor soldier of this system, to defend the people’s rights and tell them that what a number of stubborn agents and uneducated official did should not be generalized to the whole system.

It is worth mentioning that Jam-e Jam is also being asked to publish this matter in the same column in answer to him.

Notes:
1 This is not the story as it has unfolded on the internet. In Karroubi’s version, the body is evidently still in the prison and the parents are urged to collect it. In the standard version, it was discovered dozens of miles from Tehran in the wilderness and the parents, alerted to its location, come of their own accord to retrieve it.
2 Here, Karroubi is using the government’s characterization of the affair as a creature of noisy foreign news sources. Of course, these sources were almost entirely Iranian, albeit generally in the diaspora.
3 The reference is to Hojjatoleslam Taeb. Shahmoradi would doubtless have picked up on this cue and realized that Karoubi was aware of Taeb’s role, with predictable results.
4 It would be pointless to get them to tell these government agents that their daughter is alive. And since they were not admitting this on camera, it is hard to imagine what was being accomplished by putting the family through this ordeal.
5 Evidently Taraneh Mousavi was living separately from her husband. Why would he have gone to Canada to find out what was going on?
6 Dropping the second “ye” in “mikonid”.
7 In 1935, when the Shah started to forcibly Westernize clothing, a group of clerics protested. Their center was the Gawharshad Mosque in Mashhad. Reza Shah ordered his local general, who was wavering, to crush this protest with artillery, and so it was done. (Sepehr Zabih, The Iranian Military in Revolution and War, pp. 84-85), Ervand Abrahamian, History of Modern Iran, p.94. On Allameh Bohlul, see here.
8 Karroubi is chastising himself for doubting the Taraneh Mousavi story. This indicates that he tended to believe it.
9 Faced with a choice between Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad, many reformists decided to boycott the elections.
10 Reading motakhallaq for motakhallaf.
11 It seems impossible that this mysterious source who had tipped Karroubi off was Taeb, who was a mortal enemy of Karroubi’s and, in any case, only later appears on Karroubi’s radar screen. It is conceivable that this mysterious character is a pious fiction to shield Karroubi from Shahmoradi’s charges of oath-breaking, but this would leave him open to an angry rejoinder by Shahmoradi.

Tags: Darius Farouhar, Etemad-e Melli, Iran, Khomeini, Mehdi Karroubi, Mehdi Karubi, Rafsanjani, Sayyed Mohammad Khatami, Taeb, Taraneh Mousavi, Taraneh Musavi, Tehran
Posted in Clerical Opposition, Rape, Repression, Taraneh Mousavi | 7 Comments »

Hosein Taeb

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

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.

Click here to see the rest of the article.

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 Press notes 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!

Tags: Ahmad Salek, Ali Fallahian, Ali Khamenehi, Ali Khamenei, Basij, Borzou Daraghahi, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, Iran, Mehdi Karroubi, Mehdi Karubi, Mehdi Khalaji, Mohammad baqer Qalibaf, Qods Force, Qolam-Hosein Ejei, Rafsanjani, Revolutionary Guards, Taeb, Velvet Coup
Posted in Rape, Repression, Taraneh Mousavi | 2 Comments »

Karoubi’s July 29th Letter to Rafsanjani

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

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.

Click here to see the rest of the article.

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.

Tags: Ali Khamenehi, Ali Khamenei, Aq Bahman, Assembly of Experts, Elections, Freedom Movement, Iran, Islamic Nations Party, Mehdi Karroubi, Mehdi Karubi, Motalefe Party, Rafsanjani, rape, Tudeh Party
Posted in Clerical Opposition, Misinformation, Rape, Repression, Saideh Pouraqayi, Taraneh Mousavi | 4 Comments »

The Complete Text of the Indictment of the Second Group of Accused in the Project for a Velvet Coup

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

According to an article by Fereshteh Qazi published in the 18 Mordad 1388 [August 9, 2009] Ruz , the following were accused in an indictment issued on 17 Mordad 1388 [August 8, 2009] by Judge Abdol-Qasem Salavati, head of Section 15 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court:

Clotilde Reiss, the French citizen whose case is well known in the West, and Nazak Afshar, a staff member of the cultural section of the French Embassy, along with Hosein Rasam, a senior analyst of the political section of the British Embassy. In addition, “political and journalistic activists” Dr. Ahmad Zeidabadi, Dr. Ali Tajernia, Hedayat Aqayi, Shahab od-Din Tabatabai (a prominent leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front leader), and Mohammad Javad Emam were present for this indictment. Ahmad Zeidabadi had been the leader of the students’ section of the Strengthening Unity Circles’s wife wrote an open letter in which she declares that her husband had been driven to the point of insanity by his mistreatment. in prison. He had been arrested on 31 Khordad and dispatched to an unknown location and held in an isolation cell, according to this letter.⁰

Click here to see the rest of the article.

According to the Reporter for Fars News Agency, the following is the complete text of the accused in the velvet coup:

“Lord, For that which you have favored me, I will never aid the criminals.” (Koran, al-Qasas: 17)
Honorable president of the 15th branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran.
As you have been apprised, after the maximal presence of the God-loving and proud people of Islamic Iran in the tenth presidential elections and their answering the appeal of the Supreme Leader (May his lengthy shadow lengthen!) in renewing the covenant with the aspirations of the late Imam (May God have mercy on him!) in the thirtieth year since the Islamic Revolution’s victory, which has confirmed in the world a golden page in religious democracy and an unprecedented record of the presence of the people, a refractory current is trying to sow sedition and blacken this great source of pride and undo society’s order and security and upset public opinion and utilitize opposition media and opportunist individuals and have relationships with foreigners and use the capacities of counter-revolutionary groups which have for years sought an opportunity to deal a blow to our Islamic country’s security and, through planning a conspiracy and a deceptive scenario, claim fraud and falsification in the elections to try to turn one of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s political system’s greatest sources of political pride into a security battle and a propaganda weapon for a coup against the system.
During yesterday’s session, in the first introduction to the Tehran court’s charges, the indications that these riots had been planned in advance and the documents proving the recent organized and planned crimes were presented to the court. During this session, the planning, including planning by foreign countries opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran, with the intention of collapsing [the system] and staging a soft coup in Iran and intervening in the post-presidential election events [and] operations by the counter-revolutionary and terrorist grouplets and their role in the events after the elections and the recent riots will be presented.

A) Planning by foreign countries opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran with the intention of staging a soft coup in Iran and their intervention in the events after the elections to the presidency.

The victory of the Islamic revolution and the threat to foreign imperialist interests domestically and in the strategic region of the Persian Gulf has resulted in the rise of the West’s hostility against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and for just this reason and in various periods, the execution of numerous political and intelligence plots to confront the [Islamic Republican] system were put on their agendas.
On the other hand, the difficulties of the West, led by America, in quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Zionist regime’s defeat in the 33 day war with Hezbollah and the 22 day war in Gaza reduced the likelihood and ability of using military force against the Islamic Republic of Iran and for this very reason put the creation of a structural change in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s sacred system through new intelligence and secret and soft measures on the West’s agenda. Along these lines, the issue of cyberspace, satellite media, etc. were used by foreigners as effective and new tools to change opinions and, according to the West’s culture of espionage, changing opinions will in turn lay the basis for changing behavior and, ultimately, changing the country’s structure.
Along these lines, the new policies of the West, particularly the United States and Britain, to confront the Islamic Republic of Iran are based on three principles:

Democratization (democracy for Western aims and interests);
Keeping the [Islamic Republican] system preoccupied domestically by creating domestic insecurity and intensifying conflicts;
Reining in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regional power;

It has been confirmed that in order to achieve these goals, utilizing the media, public diplomacy, create populist [mardomnahad] organizations and networks and oppositional organizations with the goal of inciting civil disobedience and rolling out a project of non-violent struggle will play the most important roles and enormous budgets and new means of communication have been set aside for this. On the other hand, Western spy agencies were not negligent in taking advantage of all domestic opportunities and resources afforded by the opposition, which is considered to be their operational and executive arms, and the above-mentioned groups, including the illegal group the Freedom Movement, are playing the role of perpetuating insecurity and embroiling the system in strife and playing the role of pawns and the enemy’s fifth column.
Along the same lines, the Hypocrite grouplet [the Organization of People’s Mojahedin of Iran--OPMI] and the separatist and ethnic currents, led and supported by foreigners, create political and ethnic differences and an atmosphere of crisis, are hastening to implement anti-security programs during the days of the presidential elections. An example of their aims and efforts can be considered the effort to assassinate a candidate for the presidency and blame it on the system in order to create an accusation against the system’s authorities, spread differences, and create doubt in various social layers.
Methods to destroy the Islamic Republic:
In order to advance these policies, the enemies of the system (of the sacred Islamic Republic of Iran—comment in the original) put the planning, sketching, and execution axes of the methods of destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran’s in the hands of spy agencies and dependent institutions, some of which are:

Propaganda about and spreading word of the necessity for political regime change;
International support from labor unions, craftsmen, groups which so-called defended human rights and civil organizations which opposed the Islamic Republic;
Actions for economic boycotts against the Islamic Republic of Iran;
Secret financial support to oppositional forces in the system;
Identifying, attracting, and strengthening effective centers and individuals and layers in society such as women, youth, NGOs, etc., to achieve specific ends;

Noting the time table on the country’s calendar for holding the 2009 presidential elections, the program for executing the above ends [sic] through foreigners via opportunists among the existing liberals for staging a soft coup in the Islamic Republic of Iran under the cover of public diplomacy and covert action entered the stage of execution.
Soft coup and covert action:
A soft coup which is disguised and is referred to as public diplomacy in order to make it appear normal in public opinion has the following special qualities:
From the point of view of a Western intelligence institution:
“Public diplomacy pursues the following goal: to protect our national security and interests in other country’s through knowledge, awareness, and influencing the people of other countries and through a dialogue between our citizens and their foundations and colleagues abroad.”
A soft coup from the Western perspective is the same as imposing the values and frameworks of thought which govern Western societies on other societies that they might thereby automatically make the system of that country a target of influence and align it with the ruling system’s policies.
The goal of the West’s public diplomacy is “nations” and its course and ultimate aim is to exert influence with the intent of easing policies conducive to covert operations and overthrow. Along these lines, covert actions in the context of public diplomacy require the employment of the most intricate aggressive psychological operational techniques.

Getting the government to take positions which they want by exerting popular pressure;
Creating an atmosphere of distrust concerning the system’s officials and disrupting the means of decision-making;
Distracting society’s public opinion from the system’s interests and principles and spreading means the means it has in mind in society by sowing doubts in the system’s values;
Creating differences in various trends of society and dissension and division between the people and the government by accusing the system’s leaders and officials of lying;
[Creating] dissent in intellectual, ethnic, religious, etc. groups with the aim of disrupting national unity;

In expressing the importance of this part of the secret measures, a Western countries’ foreign minister declared, “At the present time, our efforts in the field of public diplomacy are much more important than other measures, so that these efforts are inseparable from our foreign policy faced with oppositional governments.”
The West’s national security strategy after the collapse of the former Soviet Union has been planned and rebuilt to conform with international developments. It has determined its duties for those countries’ various security establishments for the effective execution of this strategy and has compiled security-leadership reports on this matter.
A point worth noting in the agendas of these reports is the orientation of their measures towards covert action and their negative view of military war and their proposing “a soft war” or “internal collapse” in the case of the Islamic Republic.
The policies planned against Iran speak to the West’s strategy against the Islamic Republic and within the framework of public diplomacy and the importance of utilizing it is to such an extent that these reports might be named the West’s Covert Action Manifesto against the Islamic Republic.
One of the West’s senior security officials declared, in expressing the importance of employing strategies known as public diplomacy against Iran, “Iran, due to the vastness of its territory, the quality of its population, the character of its human resources, its military means, its abundant natural resources, and its distinguished geographical position in the Middle East and the region’s heartland has become an unparalleled power which can no longer be overthrown by military attack.”
The important axes of the reports, which emphasize the necessity for using public diplomacy tactics, speak of a program which the West’s politicians have in mind as public diplomacy against the Islamic Republic:

Exploiting internal differences within Iran;
Utilizing a soft coup instead of military measures;
Inciting civil disobedience in university organizations and NGOs and trade organizations as important tools to exert pressure on Iran;
The need to emphasize the presence of international supervision over the elections;
Demagogic support for human rights and democracy in Iran;
Setting in motion and strengthening numerous radio and television networks with the intent of denigrating and deceiving the people;
Supporting the domestic opposition;
Easing the activating of NGOs aligned with the West;
Easing the granting of visas for people who are groomed by the West and support its goals;
Inviting young Iranian activists with the intention of participating in seminars outside the country to attract and tendentiously educate them as they did in countries like Serbia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Chile, the Ukraine, etc.;

On the other hand, part of its security doctrines includes:
“We will perhaps not be faced with a challenge from any country more serious than from Iran. We have other concerns regarding Iran which are as important as the nuclear issue. Our concerns will ultimately be solved when the Iranian government makes the leadership decision to change is policies and open its political system and give its people freedom. This is our ultimate aim. Our policy is to spread interaction with the people of Iran. In order to do away with oppression and increase democracy, we will use all the political, economic, diplomatic, and other tools at our disposal, including

Exposing cases of violations of human rights;
Supporting reformists through holding meetings in our State Government and embassies;
Assigning a budge to give financial support to activities favored by the West in Iran;
Imposing boycotts with the aim of creating divisions between the people and the government;

On the basis of the existing documentation, the project of a soft coup or, as they call it, public diplomacy, is on the agenda of Western politicians in various ways, depending on the internal, regional, and international conditions of the Islamic Republic, the most important of which are:

Helping and training NGOs and publishing Persian-language pamphlets on democratic values and civil activities towards this end;
Training reporters to form news source networks towards the end of gathering information and analysis;
Training and organizing human rights activists in Iran to present an unfavorable view of it;
Creating websites and training for holding elections and presenting full information’s on the 2009 electoral candidates;
Dispatching students, artists, and professions and training them to form a cadre for sensitive key and appropriate posts in the future;

Following the founding of an Iranian Affairs Office in Dubai (set up in the American consulate) by the American State Department which was copied from the base in Riga, Lithuania, during the Cold War era with the aim of collapsing the former Soviet Union, this office had on its agenda activities concerning attracting Iranian leaders and influencing their ideas and impressions with the intention of encouraging them to act against the Islamic Republic of Iran’s national interests. Along these lines, the spokesman for the then-Secretary of State declared,
“The American government will collaborate with NGOs and Iranian media through its embassies in the countries along the Persian Gulf and other countries neighboring Iran. We will increase travel agencies between Iran and America and spend five million dollars for visits of professors and teachers and other professionals from America.”
On this very basis, the Iranian Affairs Office in Dubai, in the course of the past two years, on the excuse of holding training sessions and sending numerous groups from various layers to America, is hurrying to prepare the grounds needed to establish relations with various social layers and society’s leaders and the invitees travel to America without enduring the usual stages of obtaining a visa with the aid of the official of the Office of Iranian Affairs in the American consulate in Dubai (Messrs. Jillian [?] Barns [?], Ramin Asgard [?], Timothy Richardson) to deliberately influence them and, after returning, as someone in charge of forming new groups and send them to America.
The defeat of America’s plans against Iran which occurred with the arrest of some of their domestic agents [anything specific?], convinced the Americans to execute a new plan and idea, titled Project Exchange.¹ In its framework, the sending of individuals and groups to America was initiated through the expenditure of vast sums through bases they had created against Iran (in Dubai, Istanbul, Baku, London, and Frankfurt).
The stages of America’s measures within the framework of American public diplomacy in Iran are composed of:

1) Executing the Soros Foundation’s regional initiative.
2) Project Exchange.
3) Bilateral exchange.
In this project, the travel of individuals and leaders from various layers of society in groups of fifteen to various states in America were planned. All the stages of obtaining visas, their expenses (airfare, hotels, visits, and purchases, the program for their presence in America, etc.) was executed under the leadership and management and planning of this country’s State Department and under the cover of foundations such as the Meridian, Peace [?], Aspen, etc. (Let it be noted that this project remained unsuccessful due to the blow which the Ministry of Intelligence inflicted on its agents in 2008. [?])
Among the desirable characteristics indicated for these individuals to be considered was their youth, certainty that they would return to Iran, higher education, relations with government institutions and centers, a lack of a bad political record, etc.
America’s political and intelligence Project Exchange were:

The establishment of relations with different groups of society and the creation of effective relationships with specialists;
A change of perspective and point of view of the participants towards America;
A change of perspective in Iranian society with the goal of the necessity of the Iranian government’s establishing relations with America through pressure from below;
Obtaining analyses and viewpoints of the participants in Project Exchange;
Influence in social layers and planning towards reviving America’s lost interests in Iran;
Pressure on the government to change its behavior;
Weakening the government’s bases and weakening and ultimately collapsing the system;
Making America out to be Iran’s only savior;
Intensifying the division between the nation and the government;
Disturbing the country’s decision-making system;
Creating currents and exerting influence in the guise of protest meetings and assemblies;
[Accusing S]ociety’s elite [of] abuse of security;
Inciting ethnic movements;
[Effecting] desired legal changes towards a Western legal system;
Creating changes in the country’s electoral system on the excuse of the need for international oversight over the electoral arena.

In comparing the conditions governing Iran with those of countries like the Ukraine or Georgia, the Western countries have found elections to be an appropriate venue for advancing their corrupt ends and creating the changes they have in mind, and went to implement their programs by utilizing human potential without direct foreign intervention and pressure from outside and through non-violent methods of struggle and transforming social demands to political ones and [utilizing] cyberspace and internet sites as the most important tools and apparently legal components.
On the basis of results obtained from investigations made and the confessions of the accused, the most important measures of the foreigners, and above all the Americans and the British, towards activity against the Islamic Republic of Iran in this arena was based on the following techniques:

Holding terms of education outside the country;
Activating internet sites and networks with the goal of spreading intelligence [sic] and molding opinion based on approved-of goals and programs. (Along these lines, the American State Department has entered chatrooms and weblogs by founding the Digital Outreach Team and has directly established relations with the people and has taken responsibility for a form of systematizing relations between the peole of Iran and the American government. Along these lines, American political circles have pursued a policy of creating division between the government and the people of Iran and creating similar tactics through relations with Iranian youth.);²
Activating satellite channels (particularly in Persian);
Choosing groups from various social layers (legal, medical, artistic, student, professors, clergy, etc.) to sent to America and participate in programs of visits and training;
Planning to change opinion and behavior with the aim of effecting a change in the sacred structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran;
Laying the basis for increasing [feelings of] insecurity about the future and executive programs in the country and strengthening tendencies perspectives towards America;
Activating European intelligence and research foundations for the establishment of connections with people they have in mind and creating relations with domestic centers under cover of institution-building;
Preparing educational stipends for people they have in mind and returning them after making them intellectually receptive;
Instrumentalizing English under the excuse of identifying and recruiting members of the elite and setting in motion NGOs and sending desired people to enter the country;
Holding journalistic training sessions in Holland and England;
Utilizing local staff towards establishing unofficial relations;
[Holding i]ntelligence exchanges and cooperation with other spy agencies with the aim of utilizing their intelligence and resources;
Instigating and guiding people with the intent of spreading the scope of protests;

Foreign intelligence operations in the tenth presidential elections:

Reviewing and studying the potential in the existing atmosphere in the country with the aim of creating disturbances in relations between the people and the elite with the Supreme Leader and the Velayat-e Faqih;
Efforts towards diminishing popular support for the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran (domestically or abroad) and defeating the Islamic Republic of Iran’s perspective with the aim of preventing Iran from becoming a successful model for other countries of the world;
Utilizing human potential with the intent of gaining goals they have in mind, such as creating distrust and fanning the flames of popular protest, strengthening ethnic currents and the domestic opposition, implementing democratizing projects in Iran with the aim of changing opinions, behavior, and, ultimately, the system’s structure;
Efforts towards exacerbating the divide between the people and the government, exploiting internal differences and existing capacity in this field, particularly in circles related to parties, political currents and officials, and ethnic and religious differences;
Encouraging some Iranians living abroad to engage in activity against the Islamic Republic of Iran and utilize propaganda from societies and their protests;
Organizing, leading, and providing material, political and media support for terrorist groups and cooperation between the domestic and foreign opposition and discontented social groups;
Preparing the basis for the implementation of a soft coup project and the formation of educational terms in various countries (such as the Emirates and Holland) under cover of themes like human rights and non-violent struggle;
Creating and providing material and moral support to NGOs with the intent to create currents in various social layers and to take advantage of their potential and resources according to the dictates of the circumstances;
Activating projects to create domestic crisis (particularly in social circles) and pursuing plans of pressure from without and change from within;
Focusing on psychological operations, spreading rumors, creating currents and propaganda about the Islamic system’s incompetence through Persian internet sites, satellite channels, particularly the Voice of America and the BBC Persian service and other [sic] fugitive, counter-revolutionary news channels, the monarchists, the Hypocrites [OPMI], and other means of networking;
Leading NGOs and currents opposing the system with the perspective of having supervision led by the Americans over the electoral process;
Emphasizing the emergence of fraud and uncertainty concerning the soundness of Iran’s electoral process (about ten days before the votes were counted) and efforts towards raising this topic through sites related to the State Department. (Among the issues are: cutting off the sending of ballots, reducing internet speed, the emergence of difficulties regarding the presence of candidates’ supervisors in vote-counting posts, etc.). It is necessary to explain that the official of Mr. Musavi’s office’s Committee for the Preservation of Votes said that this was an indication that the elections were fraudulent while discussing this matter a week before the elections. (15/3/88 = June 5, 2009);
Provocations and preparing the grounds for domestic violent movements and civil disobedience and setting the stage for the appearance of street rioting and creating insecurity and destruction and chaos;
Efforts towards creating accusations and psychological warfare against the Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly in the matter of violating human rights, with the aim of escalating the Islamic Republic of Iran’s isolation in the international arena;

Some of the measures of the Western countries and their spy agencies which are appropriate to the above-mentioned goals and which were implemented by embassies and dependent media before the elections are as follows:

The British embassy’s effort to get closer to political parties in Iran, the first contact of which occurred in Azar 1387 [November-December 2008] with one of the well-known figures and it was announced to them that the embassy intends to establish relations with some political parties of Iran and it was announced right there that we will search for these parties after you. (This effort was faced with defeat at that very stage through intelligence’s readiness.);
Towards the end of 1387[the end of the winter of 2008-2009], an 18-point agenda on the elections in Iran was issued by the British government which, while apportioning the work on the tenth presidential elections, concerned the role of various circles of the system they were interested in and issued an agenda of news and intelligence-gathering;
Numerous travels by British diplomats to various cities of Iran, particularly Qom, establishing contacts with some of the candidates’ electoral offices in the provinces, the active presence of British diplomats on election day in various centers, etc, which speaks of general active efforts of the embassies on the elections;
A widespread use of local staff by the British embassy in intelligence gathering on the city level and political activists and social conditions. Along these lines, the use of local staff with higher education (doctorates) and high political perspective and their use in establishing relations with elements who have access to intelligence and obtaining their specialized analyses along with their valuable intelligence during the elections. Some of the embassy’s efforts were:
Widespread British intelligence activity in gathering intelligence on disturbances and riots after the elections in such a way that they have practically constantly assigned their local staff to be present in conflicts and pursue gathering [intelligence] while instructing their local staff to be in contact with political parties and gather and report their analyses and perspectives;
Relatively focused activity by the BBC Persian service on electoral affairs in Iran in the period leading up to the elections insinuating that they were not enthusiastic, they were phony, a destructive focus on the government’s foreign policy to destroy the government’s image, etc.;
Announcing that British diplomats expect unanticipated and bloody events;
Relations of the Cultural-Educational Council [British Council] (BC) with the social framework with the intention of preparing relationships by granting scholarships, holding language training, etc. By these means, the British tried to tour the Iranian government and, in addition to identifying and pointing out individuals they had in mind, put the minimum funds at the disposal of influential people at critical conditions; [?]
Identifying knowledgeable people by holding English classes (ILETS [International English Language Testing System]). Using this method, the British embassy would try to identify influential people and prepare the way to exploiting them under critical conditions;
Creating a VIP section in the visa division with the intent to exploit people who had access in various circles of the country and getting close to them on the excuse of holding private interviews;
The embassy’s diplomatic measures for establishing relations with ethnic and cultural leaders with the intent of identifying and attracting them to further desired goals;
The presence of embassy diplomats in various regions of the country under the cover of students of the Persian language and establishing relations with the people of the region;
Laying the basis for attracting political-cultural individuals in England to further desired interests. (Ataollah Mohajerani);
Connections of British intelligence-research institutions with intelligence-research institutions within Iran in order to exert influence (Chatham House and IISS);
Activating England as America and Israel’s intelligence arm in order to compensate for a lack of American and Israeli presence in Iran;
Establishing relations with some leaders, parties, and political figures with the intent of gathering intelligence and preparing them to cooperate with the [intelligence] service of that country;
Contacting proprietors of media and press with the intent of having an impact on society;
Towards the end of Farvardin[the beginning of April] , a term of training was held in Germany in the presence of five people from the center of representatives on the subject of the rights of citizens and cybercrime and the above-mentioned individuals began to form working groups to watch out for electoral violations upon their return;
Planning to send groups of reporters to America to prepare the necessary training to have the supervision of the elections to the presidency under American leadership;
Statements of some officials of foreign representatives in Iran based on the expectation of unanticipated events in Iran after the presidential elections;
The publication of false news on the portable telephone wiretapping system in Iran and its strength. On this issue, the Nokia Sims, which has sold the wiretapping system to Iran, made an operation to prepare false information about Iran’s wiretapping system’s capacity;

The foreigners’ measures against the Islamic Republic of Iran after the glorious 22 Khordad [June 12] elections were:

To weaken the velayat-e faqih’s status. This is part of the foreigners’ priority deeds and goals against the Islamic Republic of Iran and a lack of attention by some political currents to the commands and guidance of the Supreme Leader (particularly after the historical sermons of the Friday prayers of 29/3/88 [June 19, 2009]) presented an appropriate opportunity for the foreigners to fan the flames of this issue. Along these lines, the disgraceful efforts based on insinuating a division between the views of the Supreme Leader and that of His Eminence the Imam (Peace be upon him!) were made by the enemies’ propaganda aparatus;
Creating division in the united ranks of the nation and weakening popular support for the Islamic Revolution’s principles and goals;
Spreading an atmosphere of difference between political currents, parties, and individuals;
Dragging the Islamic Republic of Iran’s system’s legitimacy into conflict and posing claims on the matter of the system and its officer’s enjoyment of popular support;
Efforts towards confirming the system’s ineffectualness in creating democracy, holding sound elections, confronting the latest crisis, and observing human rights;
Emphasizing the need for the presence of foreigners and elector observers in the Islamic Republic of Iran for guaranteeing the soundness of the elections held. (This issue was seriously on the agenda of countries such as America and Britain and dependent grouplets like the Freedom Movement.);

Some of the interventionist declarations of American political and intelligence positions after the elections were:

The former head of the CIA’s saying that goons and thugs and economic and social difficulties had the desired potential to create domestic crisis;
Emphasizing the need to invalidate the elections on the excuse of “the need to pay attention to the protesters’ demands and observe the principles and requirements of democracy in elections;”
Laying out the line for making a pattern of the role of youth in the course of the Islamic Revolution’s victory of 1979 and reconstituting the conditions for utilizing this potential to confront the system;
Sending and activating its agents under the excuse of honorary and freelance reporters after the return of foreign reporters;
Training in civil disobedience through internet sites (like the site Gozar, http://www.gozaar.org/ tied to Freedom House http://www.freedomhouse.org/ http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html and the CIA);
Support of some American and European officials to the street fighting;
Issuing a statement by the American Congress in support of the rioters and condemning the system;
Activating media and internet networks and creating cyberspace to spread desirable stories, provoking the people to be present in illegal meetings and riots and spreading forged and false stories on the number of killed;
Insisting on calling the rioters protesters and setting them up against the system;
The relationship of one of the active elements of Staff 88 (the accused Reza Rafi’i) with the special Office of Iranian Affairs in Dubai and Ms. Jilian Barnes as an American intelligence officer; the sending of news and reports related to the riots through internet sites and cooperation with the intelligence services of one of the region’s Arab countries. This person, while establishing relations with American media foundations, hurried to obtain analyses relevant to the activities of foreigners and opposing the principles of the revolution from one of the country’s former figurers and information about the impact of the boycott as problems relating to the running of the elections in the hands of Ms. Nazi Beglari of VOA [Voice of America]; [?]
After limitations on satellite networks, the stream of intelligence moved towards the internet and in order to easy the use of internet subjects, they placed advanced software for translating English to Persian and vice versa into the hands of Iranian operators for public use in such a way that by using this software, they could translate matter on English sits to Persia and study them. These measures were meant to make a maximum of information in English (particularly the BBC) related to the crisis available to Iranian operators, although they have serious weaknesses;
Offering the most advanced software resources so that one can view a film through [يك رايانه] with a telephone line and a modem and a slow internet connection so that those who are connected can themselves, with a minimum of resources, can use the films they have in mind about the riots;
Hacking sites belonging to both currents in the country and, similarly, sites related to the system’s officials, sites belonging to some candidates, etc., through foreigners in order to exacerbate the domestic atmosphere of pessimism. Along these lines, in some instances, there were efforts to hack through domestic internet [?] (Shatel Company, etc.) so that foreign agents’ hands will not appear and it will be completely converted to a domestic conflict;
Activating the American company Facebook to ease relations between operators in Iran and those of other countries concerning Iran. This company has presented its Persian version based on the fact that many of the people of the world use Facebook to exchange information about the fate of the elections in Iran, so the Persian-speakers can use it in their mother tongue;
During the period of disturbances, some sites connected with the foreign issued telephone numbers, names of operators, and passwords for free for their operators so that if internet service is completely shut down in Iran, those who were connected and individuals could the internet via dial up;
Regarding the rise of information for training, information related to violent and peaceful struggles, there has been a massive amount of training in Persian posted on the internet during the days of disturbances. Along these lines, there are two hands [دو دسته] of subjects available:
1. Subjects related to teaching violent means of protest—constructing remote control bombs and time bombs and ways to struggle with anti-riot forces, ways to beat the police, preparing tear gas at home, gathering and publishing complete information about members of the basij;
2. Subjects relating to teaching means of peaceful protest such as preparing CDs or Blue Tooth of desired material, spreading green over government pictures and propaganda, turning on car lights and in the early hours of dusk as a sign of protest, advise about writing slogans on roofs;
3. The presence of a German lawyer related to the Lawyer’s Center in Iran and his taking residence in a hotel in located in a center of disturbances;
4. The direct presence of some diplomats in illegal street meetings (such as some of the ambassadors of European countries and Britain) gathering intelligence through some of those connected with the ambassadors present in illegal gatherings as well as the presence of disguised aides to the French ambassador in electoral centers, as documented in existing files;
5. Financial cooperation and support to the rioters and counter-revolutionary grouplets by some European countries such as Britain and granting visa and asylum to rioting elements;
6. The use of local employees through some European embassies for gathering intelligence and desired information;
7. Activating two local employees to gather signatures with the aim for the UN General Secretary’s visiting Iran;
8. Efforts to launch a strike in Iran;
9. Presenting to local employees in Germany specialized training for gathering news;
10. Gathering intelligence in the form of a channel through the accused Ms. Clotilde Reiss (a French citizen) of riots and expressing to one of the orators the need for a strike, according to her confession of 10/4/88 [July 1, 2009];
11. Supporting protest meetings outside the country by some European countries;
12. European threats to recall their ambassadors to exert pressure on the country and public opinion;
13. Threaten to step up the boycott of the Islamic Republic;
14. Placing limitations on issuing visas for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s statesmen;
15. During the time of disturbances, the Zionist regime’s intelligence services summoned its sources and announced that it intended to hold talks with them about the elections. In addition to these matters, during the disturbances, two influential individuals tied to Israel’s intelligence services intervened at the scene of a clash and participated in setting buses on fire. To influential individuals were present at the scenes of the disturbances every night of the disturbances until the last hours of the night, gathering intelligence;
16. The foreigners political measures, particularly those of Britain, America, and some European countries completely oriented to intensifying the riots and giving them prominence and creating home in the continuing the riots and protests and speeding them;

Along these lines, notable measures which are unacceptable from a diplomatic perspective, the main ones being

Public support to rioters with announcements that the doors of the European embassies of some of the governments were open to agents of the rioters;
Issuing statements and organizing demonstrations by some European political parties and efforts towards uniting the political demonstrations against the Islamic Republic among the European countries;

The role of British political, intelligence, and media institutions in the events which occurred after the tenth presidential elections:
Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the British who from the perspective of influence in the government and precise knowledge of the structure and political behavior of the new statesmen suffered a blow and a palpable poverty in intelligence, made widespread efforts for the past thirty years to increase their information. They, who considered themselves the great inheritors of Britania’s empire, after the decline of the past golden age, now consider themselves a superpower, indeed, a central power in world politic with a new role which, considering the British Foreign Ministry’s new events and greater attention to the Middle East in general and Iran in particular and took broad measures in espionage and lording it over the socio-political situation and spread its sphere of influence.
Although the bases for relations between these two countries were not deeply evolve compared to before the revolution, the English still tried to maintain their presence and influence in various pillars and levels in the Islamic Republic of Iran as an important and influential country in the Middle East and pursue its political, cultural, and economic interests.
Britain so-called officially and superficially rejected any policy of hard regime change, but on the other hand, in hidden zones it tried to make the appropriate preparations to utilize a strategy of a soft coup by establishing relations with various groups in society. Indubitably, the elections in Iran were one of the most important situations of which the British knew the details so that, given the exigencies of the situation, it might put into action the necessary plans to intervene and take advantage of the weak points and internal wounds towards the end of changing opinions and behavior for its various policies.
Britania’s Cultural-Educational Council [British Council], which operates as the British embassy in Iran’s cultural section has a record of having a presence in the country from the time before the Islamic Revolution (under the title of the Iran-British Society), and in the new period, from 2000-2001 resumed work under the name of the English Cultural and Educational Council. The British Cultural Council was an independent organization and has branches in over a hundred countries and its center is in London. But in Iran, it is considered the cultural branch of the British embassy. Among the BC’s numerous activities one can point to its holding general and specialized training in the English language, cooperative education, granting scholarships in various fields of higher [?] education, as well as leaders, researchers, professors in universities and centers of higher education, officials, employees in various institutions, journalists, and the like. On the other hand, the leadership of scholarly educational, research, and artistic projects with the participation of Iranian and British centers, joint university projects, and numerous other such were within the sphere of this center.
Although these activities seemed in and of themselves ordinary matters, it is important to note that this British center, under cover of these projects, pursued other goals, such as identifying and attracting scientific and university leaders, plans and projects of the country’s centers of higher education and research, gathering intelligence in various fields under the guise of opinion polling of present sources, holding public and private consultation meetings for individuals who intend to study or travel abroad, and numerous other matters.
This council, in cooperation and coordination with the British embassy in Tehran, under the pretext of the British Foreign Office’s Chewning Scholarships, sends a number of the best students and graduates of Iran’s universities to continue their studies in graduate fields of study or allow then opportunities to do research and complete projects of self-discovery, and by holding interviews about sending them, disincline some of them to return to Iran after they complete their term of study.
As for other forms of scholarship grants of the BC, one can mention short-term scholarships and aid funds specifically for studies for some of the university professors and members of various universities in Iran. They enjoy help from its central office in London for trips to Britain.
BC makes great efforts to have those who are sent to Britain on various excuses, to maintain their connects after they return to Iran and use them in various ways to secure British interests. In other words, such individuals they make them the BC’s connections in various internal organizations. They even invite them with various excuses to participate in the British embassy’s and BC’s ceremonies and occasions so that in the course of such ceremonies, senior diplomats assigned to British intelligence activities could obtain full intelligence about these individuals, such as their jobs and positions in the government’s centers.
In any case, the basis of British work in general and BC in particular is to identify and attract individuals in various institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran so that they could go into action by utilizing them for their intelligence aims in Iran.
It is by holding courses through the support of the British Consulate and the cooperation of British and Iranian circles within Iran that they put into operation the final stages of their projects for which they paid all these expenses (travel, residency, study, etc.). One important point is that some of these projects because of the importance they assign them among the national projects and the research connected with some of them through their cooperation with BC or other British centers prepares the way for them to be exploited by the foreigners.
With the approach of the time for the elections and the serious presence of the candidates in the country’s political campaigning field, the embassy’s political department went into action in the earnest presence and organized disguise which the local and powerful employees of this section formed, from the end of Farvardin 1388 [March-April 2009] with organization and a division of duties, for the sake of gathering intelligence and news on matters such as: The system’s officials’ perspectives, Friday prayers, Voice and Vision, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij and the views of the superior commanders, the mosques, political circles, journals and newspapers and internet sites, economic indicators, the bazaar and trade and presence in rural meetings. On this basis, the Political Division organized twice-weekly meetings to categorize the intelligence and news which had been gathered in the presence of the division chief and Mr. Thomas Bern [?] and a classification of final reports was prepared. Along these lines, some measures of this country [Britain] to pursue and provoke the recent riots consist of:

The British Embassy hurried to watch the news of reporters, blogs, popular views, the students, the clergy, officers at Voice and Vision, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, in order to review Iran’s daily developments, and as the elections approached, the diplomats and local employees began to take trips to the provinces to survey the views of the various Iranian ethnic groups towards the candidates they were interested in;
Widespread intelligence activity by the British to gather information about disturbances and riots after the elections so that the virtually constantly dispatched local employees to the scenes of the fighting and pursued intelligence-gathering, while these local employees were instructed to get in touch with political parties and gather their analyses and perspectives and report on them;
After the results of the elections were determined, the British embassy hurried to outline the publication of false reports about electoral fraud, and while announcing that they were falsified and that ballots were forged, they made riots and illegal meetings out to be protests and the right of the people. Holding a meeting by the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the presence of oppositional grouplets (such as the Hypocrites [Organization of People’s Mojahedin]) in London after the riots were formed, in which it was determined that the following strategy would be put on the agenda of the protesters and the opposition:
1. The continuation of the riots and illegal gatherings (particularly after the holding of the Friday prayer of 29/3/88 [June 19, 2009]);
2. Open non-participation of the opposition grouplets; [?]
3. Distinguishing the protesters from the line of violence (under the title of civil disobedience);
The participation of all the British embassy diplomats in illegal marches and assemblies after the elections;
One of the accused in the recent events confessed under the interrogation of about his illegal presence along with his wife in a meeting supporting Mr. Karubi in Saadatabad, his presence in illegal meetings of Mir Hosein Musavi’s supporters in Saadatabad and Gisha and in the presence of Lex Penfield, the First Political Secretary, and Thomas Bern, the Second Political Secretary, who was expelled from the country after the recent events. On 24/3/88 [June 14, 2009] in Sanai street, during a fight and a riot around Motahhari and Shariati Streets during the riot and arrest of some of the protesters, the presence of Samuel Morgan, a diplomat of the Public Relations Section in 25/3/88 [June 15, 2009] in Revolution Street in an illegal march, the participation of Paul Blami [?], aid to the Visa Section (expelled from the country) on 28/3/88 [June 17, 2009] in Ferdawsi Square and photographing rallies of that day, the presence of Samuel Morgan on 27/3/88 [June 16, 2009] in Karim Khan Street during an illegal march were confessed to. (Hosein Rasam, interrogation of 6/4/88 [June 27, 2009], pp. 12 and 13);

Similarly, a number of the accused openly confessed that Alex Penfield, the embassy’s First Political Secretary asked them to go to the Beharestan Square and report their observations in the course of Mr. Musavi’s illegal meetings at the Beharestan. (Arash Momenian, Hosein Rasam)
The British ambassador asked local employees to review and report the situation in the other cities.
Before the elections, Alex Penfield and one of the local employees of the Political Section met with several members of the Central Office of one of the protesting candidates as well as with several individuals tied to parties and officers of some NGOs. After the elections, too, on 4/4/88 [June 25, 2009], Mr. Penfield met with one of the individuals who made the reformists’ political plans [?] in the embassy’s VIP consular section (while obtaining a visa) and discussed the candidates for the election and the events after it and the historical Friday prayer sermons of 29/3/88 [June 18, 2009]. (Hosein Rasam, interrogation of 9/4/88 [June 30, 2009], pp. 17 and 18)

Setting aside a budget of 300 pounds to pay domestic NGOs.
Helping these NGOs could organize a coordinated channel of NGOs to benefit from the crisis conditions.
Identifying elements accessible through ILETS. In this way, the British embassy tried to identify influential individuals and prepare the means to exploit them in critical times.
Efforts towards distributing films in the embassy which did not have permission for distribution with the intention of attracting film directors and producers to be able to exploit them when needed.
Creating a VIP section in the Visa Section in order to exploit individuals who have access to various circles in the country and to get close to them on the excuse of holding visa interviews.
The embassy’s diplomatic efforts to establish relations with ethnic and cultural leaders in order to identify and attract them for the sake of desirable goals.
The presence of embassy diplomats in the country’s various regions under the cover of students of Persian and establishing relations with the people of the region.
Preparing the grounds for attracting political-cultural personalities in Britain for the sake of interests under consideration. (Ataollah Mohajerani)
British intelligence-research institutions’ establishing relations with domestic intelligence-research centers to exert influence. (Chatham House, IISS)
Filling America’s and Israel’s intelligence vacuum through the British in order to compensate for the absence of America from Iran.
Establishing relations with political leaders, parties, and personalities with the intent of gathering intelligence and preparations with the intent of cooperating with that country’s [Intelligence] Service.
Contact with network and press proprietors with the aim of exerting influence on the framework of society.

The role of the state news channel the BBC in the events after the presidential elections:
The state news agency BBC, which works under the supervision of the World Service and whose budget is secured by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has for two years, by choosing and dispatching reporters and ordinary people under the cover of the [BBC] Trust, begun to dispatch these individuals in various groups to Turkey and Dubai to give them specialized training and, through this training, be able to spread so-called citizen journalism³ and, by selecting talented people from among these individuals, choose the forces they need for other branches of the BBC and, ultimately, guide and utilize individual with connections within the country.
The Trust’s budget, which is secured by a number of European countries through the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has reached 30 million dollars. The BBC has started to found a Persian-language television station after it began its activities and in order to create widespread change. It began its activity in Dey last year (1387) [December 2008-January 2009]. Most of the people chosen to work on this station have passed through terms of training in this Trust and are reporters of media which criticizes the system.
The BBC Persian service, with the purposeful measures that it pursued, began to establish widespread relations with some domestic document forgers and they gathered their works which lacked permission and worth for distribution. Then, with the program Your Turn, whose principle leader was someone who had been arrested during the disturbances of 18 Tir [July 9] and is a primary party to the [BBC] Trust who spent some time in prison, it began to create strife and difficulties in the country and exaggerate domestic difficulties and political difficulties.
Before the elections, BBC Persian television made special preparations to set the tone for coverage of the anniversary of Tir 18 [July 9] to provoke the people and the students and in this way create disturbances. On the even of the presidential election’s being held, BBC Persian sowed the seeds of sedition and talk about electoral fraud by inviting some recalcitrant and problematic elements and paying them for a month’s stay in London as well as money for holding political roundtables.
In the field of the presidential elections, even before BBC Persian television was launched, the question of whether it was possible to send reporters to Iran was repeatedly raised by that news channel, how it could be disguised, etc. The result of all these plans on the one hand and the special conditions which arose before the elections on the other caused the BBC to prepare itself to take interventionist measures in the Islamic Republic.
By making widespread preparations on the day of the election, BBC Persian television ran its program 24 hours a day and established relations with problematic people in the country to transfer news reports moment by moment.
The guidance announced by foreigners on continuing the protests over the tenth presidential electoral results were:

Emphasizing the continuation of the protests and not accepting the election’s outcome until they yielded the desired results;
Calling the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij elements of a military coup and stating the necessity to drive these forces from the scene. (It will be noted that the statements of various countries about violations of human rights, the need for international observers, etc. should be evaluated in this context and eliminating the popular Basij forces from the scene has been emphasized in the reports guided by the American intelligence and security forces.);
Creating distinctions between religious and non-religious spheres;
Exaggerating differences between various social layers and emphasizing the lack of support of some leaders of the electoral results;
Emphasizing the support of the opponents and protesters by some leaders and celebrities;
Intensifying pressure with the aim of getting the president to resign;

B) Measures by the counter-revolutionary and terrorist grouplets and their role in the events after the recent elections and disturbances.
Since as a result of the historical letter of His Eminence the Imam (God’s mercy be upon him!), the Freedom Movement grouplet was driven from the country’s political sphere to the margins and its threats against the Islamic Revolution’s foundations have become more remote, but this grouplet has from the beginning of the revolution to this day struggled in its various ups and downs to destroy the fruit of the blood of thousands of martyrs and self-sacrificing people by insisting on their own policies of overthrow. The above-mentioned grouplet has, with its more active entry into the country’s political sphere in the course of the past two years, tried to make itself out to the foreign countries as well as domestic recalcitrant groups to be an important successor to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s government in such a way that in this period, the grouplet’s General Secretary made trips to America, Germany, etc. In the following, we point out some of the Freedom Movement’s positions taken and measures of the past two years:

The Freedom Movement’s positions after the trip of Mr. Ebrahim Yazdi (the organizational head of the illegal grouplet) to America (from 30/11/86 [February 19, 2008] to the end of 5/3/87 [May 5, 2008]) adopted a sharper tone so that after years of meetings in the grouplet’s political office, he clearly posed “a strategy of regime change”, albeit “peacefully”, as Yazdi adds, thus making it a soft coup;
Mr. Yazdi, after his return from America, brazenly and exaggeratedly took aim at the principle pillars of the system and has put a strategy of attacking the velayat-e faqih with the goal of breaking the system’s sanctities on its agenda. In an interview dated 23/3/87 [May 23, 2008] on the news site Rooz, he stated, “Now is the time to evaluate the record of the system based on the velayat-e faqih system. We believe that Iran’s basic problem is in the system of the velayat-e faqih.
Last Mordad [July-August], the Organization of the Mojaheds of the Revolution invited leaders of the Freedom Movement grouplet to participate in and speak at its Twelfth Congress, and Mr. Ebrahim Yazdi stated in the weekly organizational meeting in this regard, “Your Servant had been invited to the congress and I even gave a message and it was read in the meeting. We must learn from the past to be able to agree to advancing reforms.”
Mr. Ebrahim Yazdi said on the joint bonds between the Freedom Movement and the Organization of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution and the Participation Party, said, “We are glad that political groups are calmly approaching reality. Groups which ten years ago had created lines between themselves and the rest have now come to the conclusion that these boundaries are not realistic. The Kargozaran of today are different from the one of ten years past … There was a time when the Mojaheds of the Islamic Revolution were not in a situation where they could sit down with the Freedom Movement. But in their congress of this year, they invited us and we participated.”
This grouplet, for its part, in its message to the Participation Party considered organized political participation, the development and growth of political parties and organizations to be needed to strengthen the call for democratization in the country. “The totalitarians’ multilayered and convoluted plans can only succeed when political parties have not the possibility to discuss and come to an understanding on how to cooperate with each other.”
The Participation Party’s youth branch, too, invited Mohammad Tavassoli (president of the Freedom Movement’s Political Department) to speak in this party’s meeting hall. Tavassoli said in 1386 [2007-2008], “One must work more on political currents. For example, we must invest in participation so that it will have a broad effect.”
In a consultation meeting of oppositional currents of Azar 1386 [November-December 2007] which hosted the Freedom Movement grouplet and was held in the presence of representatives from illegal grouplets, the Clubs for Strengthening Unity, the Office for Strengthening, influential counter-revolutionaries, elements indicating similar policies, Abdollah Nuri, [Head of the Sixth Majlis Commission Article 90 Hosein] Ansarirad, etc. , the following issue was emphasized: The problem in the country today is not [Mr.—author] Ahmadinejad, but the principle of the velayat-e faqih, and the focus of our attack must be on it. It was similarly posed in this meeting that some of the system’s leaders were cooperating with them in this course;
The Freedom Movement grouplet actively participated in the recent elections as opposed to previous terms and, by supporting Messrs. Musavi and Karubi, they expressed their expectation of effecting fundamental change in the country through these individuals.
Along these lines, the Freedom Movement, after holding meetings with officials of Messrs. Musavi and Karubi’s staff, while finishing agreements of cooperation, ordered many of its elements in Tehran and the provinces to be present in Mr. Mir Hosein Musavi’s staff so that it could thereby, in the presence of Emad Bahavar, the president of the group’s youth branch, in Staff 88 of Mr. Musavi indicated that he, to, had employed many elements of the members of the youth branch in this staff.
In addition to the Freedom Movement, other counter-revolutionary eclectic groups claiming to support human rights held activities intent on preparing the grounds for creating and spreading riots after the elections in cooperation with Western countries.

Statements by some counter-revolutionary leaders and grouplets:
Some of the counter-revolutionary leaders and grouplets tried during the days of electoral rivalry, by making insinuations about fraud and an electoral coup, to set the stage for disturbances after the elections so that in the meantime one might point to the leadership of the Freedom Movement grouplet and Keyvan Samimi (member and a founder of the self-declared Committee for the Defence of Free, Sound, and Just Elections [http://www.humanrights-ir.org/php/view_en.php?objnr=270]).
In the military fields, armed counter-revolutionary grouplets, from the groups of the communist and socialist left to the eclectic currents and the cruel-hearted Hypocrites [OPMI] and separatist ethnic currents with their support of their Western masters have poured the blood of thousands of individual people on the ground.
An interesting point concerning the Hypocrites is that this grouplet was removed from the list of list of terrorist groups in a premeditated move and in an agreement between the Western governments and the Hypocrites. This move was in fact a step towards legitimizing them and giving them room to maneuver to carry out their regime change policies in the context of the tenth term of presidential elections for the Islamic Republic of Iran. An important point in this regard is that the first country to take this step and remove the Hypocrites from the list of terrorist groups was Britain, whose fingerprints can be seen here and there in the recent troubles.
The terrorist grouplet, the Hypocrites, once more feel into gross error as in years past due to its stubborn opposition to the sacred Islamic system and lack of acquaintance with the country’s internal situation. This grouplet gained influence in the electoral staffs of Messrs. Mir Hosein Musavi and Karubi after great effort. (semi-classified file 570/85/88) Similarly, they laid plans for months before to organize craftsmen’s protests of electoral rivalry and to intensify the differences between the candidates’ supporters. But the pride-inspiring participation of 85% of the wise people of Islamic Iran in the elections foiled the Hypocrites’ plots and schemes.
Elements of the Hypocrite grouplet, by exerting all its might, sen in trained teams to create chaos and ride the wave and encourage demonstrations to take violent measures and terrorism. This grouplet, by issuing one statement after another by its leaders and their widespread publication through satellite channels and the internet, tried to spread the scope and continue the disturbances and riots. In this connection, consider the grouplet’s leaders’ message issued on 27 Khordad and 18 Tir 1388 [June 17 and July 9, 2009]:

Yes, now you, woman and man, have fought and have risen up in every street and alley and cry out, just as [Hypocrite leader Maryam Rajavi—author] announced, one must strongly greet the annulment of the elections of this regime. Free elections must be held under the United Nations on the basis of the principle of government by the people … 27 Khordad 1388 [June 17, 2009].

[There must be l]ightning demonstrations at all times and in every place, particularly in sensitive points and points empty of the enemy’s repressive forces. Even under circumstances in which there is no possibility to rally, nuclei of nine people, five people, or even nuclei of resistance of only three young revolutionaries can divide, tire, and exhaust the enemy’s repressive forces. Small nuclei are the driving motor and path-breakers for bigger gatherings. The separate nuclei and teams should not neglect preparations and [ترابرى] and medical aid and communications, to the degree possible. (18 Tir 1388 [July 19, 2009])

Similarly, the above-mentioned grouplet gave some of its contacts, which had previously seen terrorist training in Camp Ashraf in Iraq and had been sent into the country with specific purposes, an agenda of carrying out terrorist measures including setting fire to buses, banks, [and] telephone kiosks and attacking the security forces’ military and Basij forces’ centers. Along the same lines, one of the most basic bases of the terroristic grouplets, the Hypocrites stationed in Britain (with telephone number 00442032398487), was to take charge of leading teams for domestic terror and riot and, while announcing a line of armed struggle and creating chaos in the country and provoking the protesters to raise extreme slogans against the authorities and basic pillars of the system and by spreading distrust of the system among the people, prepare the way for creating division between the authorities and the people and to ignore any way of actually achieving these goals. The important statements of classified file 11597/88 dal tet has this to say on the matter:

From Mehr 1386 [September-October 2007], via one of the supporters of the group I established contact with them (the Hypocrites) and in Dei [December 2007-January 2008] of that year I was illegally smuggled by that grouplet’s contacts to Iraq and received various kinds of training, such as computer work, propaganda operations, recruiting forces, ideological classes, intelligence-gathering, terroristic operations, etc., in that camp and was illegally dispatched to enter the country to execute my missions and returned. During this period, they deposited into my account a sum of a million four hundred thousand tumans for me to carry out the operations and my contact deposited it. Among the foci of my mission in the elections was to gather information and intelligence from electoral stations and get pictures and films and send them to the Hypocrites. After the riots began, they emphasized that I be present on the scenes of the fighting. On 27/3/88 [June 17, 2009], my contact, named Zohreh, contacted me from number 00442032398487 and said, “All the people of Iran have personal problems … but what is the root of the problems? … They must be uprooted … Now I think it is the time. One must not sit hands folded … We are ready to help you. So armed warfare is our cry of the day … Go to your friends and set something on fire, somewhere where the Basij is. Gather five or six of you and go stealthily and set their base on fire. Carry gas and throw a [Molotov] cocktail and ignite the gas pumps near them, the same with public buses … Get the people to come down and then set the middle of the road on fire … [بعد وسط خيابون آتش بزنيد]

In this connection, a number of the grouplet’s contacts who were lead by the Hypocrites and on the scene to create chaos and make trouble and were killed or wounded during the clashes, the Hypocrites, in accordance with their hypocritical nature, in order to take over some of the demonstrations for their own benefit, held mock memorials for them in Camp Ashraf on 3/5/88 [July 25, 2009].
It is necessary to mention that agents of sedition, intent on gathering intelligence within the country, while paying sums each month to some individuals, worked to deceive them through establishing contacts under such covers as news agencies like Homa News Agency or Iran News Agency, and, similarly, the Committee for the so-called Defense of Human Rights and Political Prisoners, etc.
By the True One’s kindness and generosity and the day and night efforts of the Imam of the Age’s forgotten soldiers, a number of the principle contacts of the grouplet who played an active role in the street fighting have been identified and arrested and the efforts of the Hypocrite terrorists to damage the sacred Islamic system have remained unsuccessful.
The ethnic and separatist groups, for their part, which have struggled for years to ruin this land under the leadership of this country’s sworn enemies, have not remained idle during the presidential election period and have taken it upon themselves to execute other scenarios.
According to documents and the accused, these currents have had on their agenda a variety of terroristic operations under the leadership of the enemy’s intelligence services to create and spread disturbances, but have been arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence before every operation. Below, we indicate some of their operations and programs:
They have gathered in Mr. Karubi’s electoral staff with the intention of gathering intelligence and exerting influence and towards intensifying differences between the candidates’ supporters and inciting riot and planned to set off an explosion during Mr. Mir Hosein Musavi’s speech in the stadium in Tabriz.
It is worth mentioning that two weapons and twenty bombs were found on the accused in this file.
In the cultural sphere, the agents of the enemy’s Cultural NATO, by exploiting their empire of media, are trying to execute coup plans and programs so that in this context, one could point to the activities of Western media in its efforts to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran by exploiting the chaotic atmosphere and the disturbances after the elections for the tenth term of the presidency. The following are worth noting in this regard:
The media operations and psychological operations of Britain and America have made the greatest effort to spread chaos. Between them, the British role is the greater and the most effective. One might dare say that BBC Persian was the most active of the agents provoking the disturbances and this channel’s psychological operations were on a higher level compared to other satellite channels. In reviewing this media’s activities during the days before and after the riots, two completely different aspects of the BBC can be seen. During the days before the disturbances and the days of the electoral rivalries, this channel tried to display the electoral enthusiasm in Iran as well as present the different political viewpoints which existed in the country in order to attract spokesmen. This measure prepared the way for the execution of the next stage of this network’s plan.
In the next stage, during the beginning of the riots, this change was transformed into the rioters’ media and while exaggeratedly presenting news, films, reports, interviews, etc. devoted to the disturbances, launched a psychological war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The BBC Persian tried in this part of the program for psychological operations to, while raising the issue of electoral fraud, by presenting an atmosphere of epic and emotion, encouraged the viewers to participate in the riots.
This channel, as ever, tries, by broadcasting archive photos related to the riots or whatever new pictures it has, to depict the country as chaotic.
Among the American channels, VOA [Voice of America] has played the greatest role in fanning the flames of riot. This channel, which is, of course, at a lower level and is less professional than the BBC, has pursued two goals by before the electoral competition, has two goals on its agenda by choosing destructive methods:

Destroying the credibility and legitimacy of the elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran by depicting them as anti-democratic;
Destroying the president’s image and credibility;

After the elections and with the beginning of the riots, this network also worked, by presenting tendentious news, to hold interviews with fugitive counter-revolutionary elements, etc., and depict the rioters’ movement as a popular movement in order to overthrow the Islamic system.
In addition to the above-mentioned networks, there are the networks tied to the counter-revolutionary grouplets which, through the Western country’s financial and technical support, are engaged in activity and compliment the role of the BBC and the VOA.
The Western countries, in addition to activity in the television networks, are also active in the realm of the internet and have presented [internet] services to the rioters, some of which are as follows:

Contributing for public use software to translate English to Persian and vice versa.
Presenting advanced software for viewing films related to the riots on low-speed internet;
Presenting filter-breaking programs appropriate for the Iranian network structure;
Providing service by the Twitter Company for Iranian spokesmen. (This American company delayed its day of service upgrading, which required it to be down for several days on June 20, 2009, with the aim of supporting and providing service for the rioters;
Activating the American company Face Book in order to ease contacts between Iranian users and those of other countries. This company provided its own trial version in Persian on the occasion of the riots so that the rioters could use it better;

Spread the grouplet’s media channel by using television and internet space;
Eliminating religion from the thoughts of the viewers, listeners, and contacts with the aim of their confronting the religious and divine government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and converting these individuals into the enemy’s pawns to overthrow the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran;
Presenting military and intelligence training to individuals they have attracted to create and increase an operational ability against the Islamic Republic of Iran;
Utilize attracted elements to carry out intelligence operations for the sake of the aims of the enemy’s intelligence services as well as the grouplet’s aims and programs;
Identify and carry out intelligence operations against elements and forces supporting the system with the object of assassination;
Planning to execute terrorist operations;
Creating panic and terror in the country by carrying out terrorist operations of mass murder with the aim of leaving a maximum of killed in these actions and creating an irreparable crisis in the country;
Planning the assassination of political figures and thinkers and theoreticians, etc. in society
The Royalist Society grouplet, based on the afore-mentioned policies, planted a bomb and carried out terroristic operations in the Hoseinia of His Holiness the Lord of Martyrs in Shiraz in Farvardin 1387 [April 2008]. In this operation, fourteen ritual mourners in the Hoseinia were martyred and over two hundred were wounded. Some of the martyrs were even infants and invalids.⁵
Among this Royalist Society grouplet’s operations the was the use of the electoral atmosphere to advance the grouplet’s regime-change goals in the context of America’s, Britain’s, and Israel’s strategy on this matter, which has the following program put on its internal agenda by the enemy’s intelligence services and the leaders of the grouplets:
1. Gather intelligence on the electoral atmosphere of the tenth presidential elections.
2. Gather intelligence on Islamic Revolutionary Guards and the Basij.
3. Identify important and crowded centers with the aim of planting bombs.
4. Identify and execute necessary operations to prepare planting bombs and carrying out terroristic operations in two crowded centers for casting votes, the Tehran Hoseiniye Ershad and the Narmak’s an-Nabi Mosque.
5. Planting bombs in crowded centers such as the Hazrat Ali Akbar (Upon whom be peace!) Chizar Shrine and the Zaid (Upon whom be peace!) Shrine in the Tehran Bazaar.
6. Planting bombs in the Hoseiniaye Fatemiyun in Mojahedin Street.
7. Using chemical and poison bombs in crowded centers.
8. Identifying sensitive government centers for planting bombs.
9. Identifying important fuel and food depots.
10. Planning to pollute Tehran’s water supply with highly powerful toxins.
11. Present training to the rioters so they can expand the scope of the riots as follows:
  1. Training in forming nuclei of struggle;
  2. Training in the principles of intelligence;
  3. Training in making bombs and hand-made grenades;
  4. Training in confronting the anti-riot police;
  5. Training in partisan warfare;
  6. Training in making electronic shock devices;
  7. Training in making teargas sprays and the means of resisting them;
  8. Training in eavesdropping and countering eavesdropping;
  9. Training in getting around filtering and countering ways of being identified online;
  10. Training in evading jamming devices;
  11. Training in pursuing and countering being pursued;
  12. Training in working with weapons;
The above-mentioned items speak of how the terroristic Royalist Society grouplet has, over the past two years, acted towards the overthrow of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran and how the members of this grouplet, aware of the situation, have acted in accord with the goals of the intelligence services of the enemy and leaders of the grouplet.
Similarly, existing indicators show that this grouplet entered the field to urge on the rioters during the post-election riots on the basis of a plan laid by the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a piece of the puzzle for a velvet coup as one of the powerful arms of the regime-change current to bring the strength of the system of the Islamic Republic of Iran into question and create a widespread and irreparable crisis. We can take, for instance, the plan to explode a bomb in His Holiness the late Imam’s shrine in 30/3/88 [June 20, 2009] by someone named Bizhan Abbasi, who was killed through the officers’ alertness before he could approach the sacred grave of the Imam (God’s mercy be upon him!) and died in the explosion.
The most important foreigner[s] in the case of the Royalist Society are:
1. Jamshid Sharmehr. He was one of the grouplet’s leaders and was based in Los Angeles, America. He was the contact between the CIA and the Royalist Society and played an essential role in the grouplet;
2. Emanuel Afar. He was originally Jewish and an officer in Mossad and lives in America and Israel;
3. Dardaneh Manuchehr. He is based in London, England and is the grouplet’s contact with the British Intelligence Service;⁶
It is necessary to note that after the explosion in the Hoseinia of the Lord of Martyrs in Shiraz, a red alert was sent out by the [dastgah-e faza'i] and presented to the international police. Unfortunately, the American an British police (despite their participation in terrorist acts and the acceptance of this matter in the media), they did not offer any cooperation in arresting and turning in the accused:
An explanation of the charges of each of the accused is reflected in the file and their indictment the proofs of the charge and the degree of culpability of each of them in the recent sedition is enumerated.
Assistant to the Revolutionary Public Prosecutor

Notes:
0 For background on the PressTV
and Mohammad Sahim at Tehran Bureau Tehran Bureau.
Coverage by Enduring America continues to be excellent.
We always aprreciate a thumbs up from our friends at the National Iranian-American Council, especially if it comes with some good commentary on our posts. Thanks.

1 It is unclear to what program he is referring. The weakness of these exchange programs has been deplored in different venues. Here are two examples.

2
Here are several illuminating discussions of this issue. Here about this program.
3 There have been many discussions of this project of the BBC’s. See here and here. The author of the indictment “forgets” that this budget was zeroed out right before the elections. See also this one.4 There is little evidence that such a society exists.5 The allegations attributing this to a monarchist group seems dubious; at the time, no mention was made of monarchists. The Wikipedia article echoes this claim, but the sources it sites on this make no mention of it, either. A Google search turns up nothing about this shadowy outfit.6 A Google search on these names only turn up the recent charges against them.

Source:
http://www.farsnews.net/newstext.php?nn=8805170594

Comments:
Stay tuned.

Tags: Ali Khamenei, Aspen Institute, Ataollah Mohajerani, Basij, BBC, Britain, British Council, British intelligence, Camp Ashraf, Chewning Scholarships, CIA, citizen journalism, Dardaneh Manuchehr, Dubai, Ebrahim Yazdi, Elections, Electoral Fraud, Emad Bahavar, Emanuel Afar, Executives_of_Construction_Party, Freedom House, Freedom Movement, Gaza, Gozar, Hosein Ansari-Rad, Hosein Rasam, Human Rights, internet, Iran, Iranian Affairs Office, Islamic Participation Party, Islamic Republic, Israel, Jamshid Sharmehr, Lebanese Hezbollah, Mehdi Karroubi, Mehdi Karubi, Meridian Foundation, Mir Hosein Musavi, Mojahedin, Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution, Mossad, Nazi Beglari, NGO, Non-Governmental Organization, public diplomacy, Revolutionary Guards, Royalist Society, Said Mortazavi, soft coup, Soros Foundation, velayat-e faqih, Voice and Vision, Voice of America
Posted in Repression | 2 Comments »

IRAN RISES

Posts Tagged ‘Iran’

Mehdi Karroubi on Taraneh Mousavi

Hosein Taeb

Karoubi’s July 29th Letter to Rafsanjani

The Complete Text of the Indictment of the Second Group of Accused in the Project for a Velvet Coup

Pages

Archives

Categories