Posts Tagged ‘Mehdi Karubi’

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.

Links and Updates

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

flowers

Links
Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, Iran security forces retreat as huge numbers of mourners gather at cemetery

Elizabeth Rubin, The Cult of Rajavi (New York Times Magazine/July 13, 2003)

Updates
The updates will be preceded by (UPDATE July 30, 2009).

Twittering Tabriz

Rumors of the Uprising

Podcast
PRI’s The World interviews Borzou Daragahi

Videos
Click here to see the videos.

Jeremy R. Hammond, or Chief Inspector Clouseau in Iran

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Last night, someone posted a comment to a translation of an article I had posted about a month ago. The post read “Rubbish” and included a link to an article by one Jeremy R. Hammond. I replied that I would look into the matter. But I will deal with Hammond’s essay, “The Case of the ‘Fatwa’ to Rig Iran’s Election” rather than the one sent me in the “Rubbish” email.

Hammond’s essays belong to a genre of articles alleging that the resistance to Ahmadinejad is a CIA plot, that the millions of young people pouring into the streets resisting him were at best privileged youths angry at the mullahs for spoiling their fun and at worst supporters of neo-liberalism against the progressive/populist Ahmadinejad. Most of these authors know neither Persian nor Iran. Their main tool is reasoning by analogy: (Country name’s) government is making problems for America and America has poured millions of dollars into subverting it and a revolt breaks out which (threatens, topples) (country name’s) government; Iran’s government is making trouble for America and America has poured millions of dollars into subverting it and a revolt breaks out which threatens Iran’s government. Therefore America is responsible for the revolt in Iran.

Click here to see the rest of the article.

Rafsanjani’s Friday Prayer

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Ayatollah Rafsanjani, the Iranian clerical strongman, delivered Friday prayers as scheduled. There was a sense leading up to these prayers that everything was hanging on what he was going to say. Was he going to impose his solution on the crisis, effectively selling it out for his benefit? Was he going to stand against his political rivals and use his power and prestige as one of the few surviving early leaders of the revolution to drive them out of the political arena? We’ll return to these questions later.

Click here to see the rest of the article.

Conclusion

The speech was neither a call for revolution nor submission. But it should be said that the overwhelming majority of his talk was directed at the Ahmadinejad government. He called for an end to the persecution of the press, an end to silencing the grumbling clergy in Qom, the freedom of prisoners arrested in the confrontations which followed the elections, and a general opening of society. It was done in the classical language of sage counsel, with plenty of references to the Koran and the lives of the Prophet and the Shiite Imams. For example, he referred to how Imam Ja`far os-Sadeq, who can be considered the first Shiite scholar, did most of his writing either in prison or having been censored by the Ummayads. This comparison of the reformists to the persecuted Shiite imam and the government to the Ummayads is pretty strong stuff.

What the practical effects of this sermon will be is hard to tell. We will have to leave that to a future post. But on the whole, it has strengthened the hand of the reformists and shown the usurping government its limitations.