Cleric’s Funeral Becomes Protest of Iran Leaders

Image by Gary Burge via Flickr

By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The funeral of a prominent dissident cleric in the holy Iranian city of Qum turned into a huge and furious antigovernment rally on Monday, raising the possibility that the cleric’s death could serve as a catalyst for an opposition movement that has been locked in a stalemate with the authorities.

As mourners carried the body of the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, tens of thousands of his supporters surged through the streets of Qum, chanting denunciations of the leadership in Tehran that would have been unthinkable only months ago: “Our shame, our shame, our idiot leader!” and “Dictator, this is your last message: The people of Iran are rising!”

Although the police mostly stayed clear during the funeral procession, some skirmishes broke out between protesters and members of the hard-line Basij militia. As the mourners dispersed, security forces flooded the streets, blocking all roads around the ayatollah’s house, and some militia members tore down posters of him, witnesses said.

The funeral of Ayatollah Montazeri, who died in his sleep on Sunday at the age of 87, appears to have put Iran’s rulers in a difficult position. They had to pay public respect to a senior religious scholar who helped build Iran’s theocracy and was once the heir apparent to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Yet they are also keenly aware that his mourning rites could set off further protests, especially as Iranians commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, on the Ashura holiday this Sunday.

More broadly, the continuing protests underscore a deadlock between the opposition and the government, which wants to avoid the cycle of martyrdom and mourning for dead protesters that helped create Iran’s revolution, analysts say.

“The demonstrators can’t dislodge the government, and so far they have not been able to build a broader national movement,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But the government is also stuck: they don’t want to shoot people or move to a broader crackdown, so they’re left hoping this all fizzles out.”

If the protests become larger or more violent in the next week, he added, the government may well take a more aggressive and riskier approach, arresting opposition leaders like Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

Both Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi were in Qum for the funeral, and as Mr. Moussavi was returning to Tehran a group of Basij members on motorbikes repeatedly cut off his car and then attacked it, according to the Rahe Sabz Web site. The attackers smashed one of the car’s rear windows, injuring one of Mr. Moussavi’s bodyguards and provoking a fight with other guards. Mr. Moussavi was not hurt, the Web site said.

The government made some conciliatory gestures Monday, including a respectful statement of condolence from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that was read aloud at the funeral. The statement hailed him as a “well-versed jurist and a prominent master” and said “many disciples have benefited greatly from him,” according to state-run Press TV.

But the statement also described Ayatollah Montazeri’s break with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 as a mistake. That line provoked jeers and shouts of “Death to the dictator!” — shouts that were audible in video posted on the Internet. In one clip, protesters could be seen shaking their fists and chanting, “We don’t want rationed condolences!”

“Words cannot describe the glory of the funeral,” said Ahmad Montazeri, the ayatollah’s son, in a telephone interview on Monday night. But he added that 200 to 300 Basij members had partly disrupted the ceremony, and that by evening Basij members and security forces had filled the streets and occupied the grand mosque of Qum, preventing the family from holding a planned mourning ceremony there.

The government jammed phones and Internet service through much of the day, and the BBC’s Persian service, a crucial source of information for many Iranians, suspended broadcasts, saying the government had been jamming it since Ayatollah Montazeri’s death on Sunday.

There were also protests in Najafabad, Ayatollah Montazeri’s birthplace. Videos posted on the Internet showed large crowds of people chanting “Dictator, dictator, Montazeri is alive!” and “Oh, Montazeri, your path will be followed even if the dictator shoots us all!” Banners in the bright green color of the opposition movement were visible.

The protests in Najafabad, which began Sunday, were apparently set off in part by disrespectful reports about Ayatollah Montazeri’s death on right-wing news sites, including Fars News, which initially referred to him without the title “ayatollah.”

Iran’s hard-liners have long spoken dismissively of Ayatollah Montazeri, who was under house arrest from 1997 to 2003 for his antigovernment critiques. In the months since June’s disputed presidential election, he had unleashed a series of extraordinary denunciations of the government crackdown on protesters, declaring that the government was neither democratic nor Islamic and that Ayatollah Khamenei was unfit to be the supreme leader. He also dismissed the results of the election, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won officially by a landslide, as fraudulent, echoing the claims of opposition leaders.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s criticisms carried a special weight because of his status as Iran’s most senior cleric. And despite the fact that many younger opposition supporters are generally hostile to clerics, his advocacy was meaningful to them.

“It was important that the most senior cleric, politically and religiously, came out and supported the people,” said Mohsen Kadivar, a former student of Ayatollah Montazeri who is now a visiting scholar at York University in Toronto.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s defense of Iran’s opposition also helped to unite its religious and secular wings, some analysts say. And he may turn out to be more influential in death than he was in life.

“His death has become a pretext for the movement to expand,” said Fatimeh Haghighhatjoo, a former member of Iran’s Parliament who is now a visiting scholar at Boston University. “He was the only cleric who gave up power and supported human rights, the characteristic that earned him respect from various political factions.”

Robert F. Worth reported from Beirut, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto.

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Iran's dissident Grand Ayatollah Montazeri dies

One of Iran's most prominent dissident clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri, has died aged 87.

Hoseyn Ali Montazeri was a moving spirit in the 1979 revolution which created Iran's Islamic state, and was at one stage set to become its leader.

One of Shia Islam's most respected figures, he was also a leading critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The BBC's Jon Leyne says the death comes at a crucial time in a standoff between the government and opposition.

Iran's rulers will now fear the opposition may attempt a big turnout for his funeral on Monday and other ceremonies marking his death, especially in the run-up to the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura on 27 December, our correspondent says.

Mourners gather

Large crowds have gathered outside Montazeri's home in the holy city of Qom, following his death on Saturday evening.

He will be laid to rest at the shrine of Hazrate Masoumeh, one of the most revered female saints in Shia Islam, his office told AFP news agency.

Thousands of people from Isfahan, Najafabad, Shiraz and other cities are on their way to Qom to attend Monday's ceremony, according to one report.

The cleric's son told the BBC that his father had died of natural causes.

He was quoted by Ilna news agency as offering "condolences to... all people who seek freedom and justice, to those who fight in the path of God all over the world," reports AFP.

Illness

Montazeri's doctor told state television the cleric was a diabetic who also had lung problems and asthma.

"In fact he was suffering from several diseases," he said.

DEFIANT CLERIC

Born into provincial family in 1922 and educated at a seminary

Arrested and tortured for leading protests against Iran monarchy

Designated successor to Islamic Republic's founder, Khomeini

Fell out with Khomeini in 1989 over Iran's human rights record

House arrest in 1997 for criticising current Supreme Leader

Issues a fatwa against President Ahmadinejad after 2009's election

A thorn in the establishment's side, Montazeri issued a fatwa condemning President Ahmadinejad's government after June's disputed election.

But that was not his first clash with authority - he repeatedly accused the country's rulers of imposing dictatorship in the name of Islam and said the liberation that was supposed to have followed the 1979 revolution never happened.

During his lifetime, the cleric was transformed from a pillar of the Islamic revolution to one of the most vocal critics of its leadership.

He had been designated to succeed the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but the pair fell out over Iran's human rights record a few months before Khomeini died of cancer in 1989.

In 1997 he famously clashed with Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom he outranked in the religious hierarchy, after questioning the powers of the Supreme Leader.

This led to the closure of Montazeri's religious school and an attack on his office in Qom. He was placed under house arrest for six years.

After his detention, state-run media began referring to him as a "simple-minded" cleric, references to him in schoolbooks were erased and streets named after him were renamed, but he remained defiant.

Born into a provincial family and educated at a seminary, Hoseyn Ali Montazeri came to prominence as one of the early backers of Khomeini.

Tortured

Prior to the overthrow of the Iranian monarchy, he organised public protests in support of Khomeini, following the latter's arrest.

As a result he was repeatedly detained himself and tortured in jail.

While Khomeini was in exile in Iraq, Montazeri was nominated as his representative in Iran, and after the revolution, he was designated as successor.

But he was marginalised after questioning decisions taken by the Supreme Leader and calling for a transparent assessment of the revolution's failures.

In his opposition to President Ahmadinejad, he became an unlikely inspiration for Iranian reformists.

Despite his old age and failing health, Hoseyn Ali Montazeri backed the opposition's claims that the 2009 election result, which gave President Ahmadinejad a landslide victory, had been widely rigged.

The cleric had often said his opinions were guided by his "sense of religious duty".

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In Wake of Election Protests, Iranian Officials Canceling Major Ramadan Events - washingtonpost.com

Image by Nariman-Gh via Flickr

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 7, 2009

TEHRAN, Sept. 6 -- Iranian officials have canceled or downgraded major Shiite religious events during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, suggesting fear that the opposition might use them to stage protests.

A typically massive evening celebration scheduled for next weekend at the South Tehran mausoleum of the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was canceled "due to problems," the site's public relations department said in a statement.

A traditional speech by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, marking the end of Ramadan, meanwhile, was changed from a large venue to one that is much smaller, the Ettemaad newspaper, which is critical of the government, reported Sunday.

And in Qom, the nation's center for religious education, several famous clerics who silently support the opposition were told they had been barred from speaking at an event Wednesday in the city's most important shrine, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported.

Although there have been no mass demonstrations since July, the cancellations and venue changes show that Iranian leaders are still worried about protests by followers of the defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

The two men and their supporters say President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory in the June 12 election was rigged, an allegation the government denies. Protests in June and July badly shook the government, but a massive crackdown has kept streets relatively quiet for more than a month.

In a statement released Saturday, Mousavi urged his followers to take on the "cheaters," while Karroubi has called for Iranians to protest on Sept. 18, when official demonstrations against Israel are planned.

"On Quds Day you will once again see the power of the people and realize which side the people support," he said last week, invoking the official name of the yearly demonstration, according to the Sarmayeh newspaper.

Former president Mohammad Khatami, a supporter of Mousavi, was scheduled to speak during religious ceremonies starting Wednesday at Khomeini's tomb, but has been barred from doing so. According to Ettemaad, millions of people were planning to attend. The event is organized annually by Khomeini's grandson Hassan, a 37-year-old cleric who supports Mousavi. He is the official custodian of the shrine.

Ahmadinejad's supporters among Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, prayer leaders and hard-line lawmakers have repeatedly called for the arrest of Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami, who they say are the leaders in a foreign-backed plot to bring down the government.

On Wednesday, in the most direct attack on Khatami to date, the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammad Ali Jafari, accused the former president of being one of the organizers of the protests and said they were targeted at Khamenei, the supreme leader. Jafari quoted what he said was the transcript of a phone conversation involving Khatami. "If we win," Jafari quoted Khatami as saying, "we reach a regime with a weakened, or without, a supreme leader." Jafari also said his forces had had information about a plot six months before the election.

On Sunday, Khatami struck back. "We are against those who, in the name of opposing Western liberalism, are trying to force people down their own preferred path with fascist methods and totalitarian ideas," Khatami said, according to Parlemannews, which is affiliated with the parliament faction controlled by his supporters. "I warn all the system's supporters to rebuild public trust before all chances are completely lost."

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Iran Tries to Suppress Rape Allegations

By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran’s clerical leadership on Friday stepped up a campaign to silence opposition claims that protesters had been raped in prison, with prayer leaders in at least three major cities denouncing the accusations and their chief sponsor.

The accusations of rape — usually a taboo subject in Iran — have multiplied and provoked strong reactions in the days since a reformist cleric and presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, broached the subject last weekend. His allegations added fuel to an already volatile debate about prison abuse in the wake of Iran’s disputed June 12 election.

Also on Friday, a group of reformist former lawmakers issued an extraordinary statement on opposition Web sites in which they denounced the government’s harsh tactics and appealed to a powerful state body to investigate the qualifications of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Although it was not clear who had endorsed the statement, or even if all of the lawmakers were in the country, it appeared to be the most direct challenge to the supreme leader’s authority yet in the unrest following the election.

With a renewed volley of opposition accusations in the air, a fundamentalist cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, called Mr. Karroubi’s claims of prison rape a “total slander against the Islamic system” and demanded in a sermon at Tehran University on Friday that Mr. Karroubi be prosecuted. “We expect the Islamic system to show an appropriate response to this,” he said.

Prayer leaders in Qum and Mashad delivered similar diatribes. Friday Prayer sermons usually reflect talking points given out by the office of Ayatollah Khamenei.

The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, had already dismissed Mr. Karroubi’s claims as “sheer lies” this week, saying an inquiry ordered days earlier had found no evidence that protesters detained in the demonstrations that followed the election had been raped.

Even before the rape claims emerged, hard-line political figures and clerics had been calling for the arrest of Mr. Karroubi, along with the leader of the opposition, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and former President Mohammad Khatami. In the course of a mass trial of reformists that began earlier this month, prosecutors have accused all three men of being linked to a conspiracy to topple Iran’s government through a “velvet revolution.”

But Mr. Karroubi appeared to be undaunted, and he pressed ahead with more claims of jailhouse sexual abuse in a statement posted on his party’s Web site late Thursday. He said he had received testimony from former prisoners that they had seen other detainees “forced to go naked, crawling on their hands and knees like animals, with prison guards riding on their backs.” Others told of watching as fellow prisoners guilty only of marching and chanting slogans were beaten to death, Mr. Karroubi said.

“Insults and criticism won’t make me silent,” Mr. Karroubi said, after dismissing Mr. Larijani’s quick investigation of the abuse claims as meaningless. “I’ll defend the rights of the people as long as I live and you can’t stop my hand, tongue and pen.”

The statement by the reformist former lawmakers appeared to be the strongest public attack yet on Ayatollah Khamenei. Long unquestioned, Ayatollah Khamenei’s status as a neutral arbiter and Islamic symbol has suffered since he prematurely blessed the election that many Iranians believe was rigged. In recent weeks, some protesters have begun chanting “death to Khamenei” — a phrase that was almost unimaginable before — and the same words have appeared in graffiti on buildings in Tehran.

The authors of the statement made their appeal to the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that has the power to appoint the supreme leader and, in theory, to dismiss him. The statement is unlikely to have much impact beyond angering conservatives, who control many seats in the 86-member Assembly.

The former lawmakers praised Mr. Karroubi for publicizing the rape accusations and angrily dismissed the mass trial of reformists now under way as a Stalinesque show trial. They also echoed opposition complaints about the brutality of the crackdown that followed the protests.

A day before the statement appeared, one member of the Assembly of Experts, Ali Mohammad Dastgheib, wrote his own letter calling for the group to hold an emergency meeting, opposition Web sites reported.

“I am calling honestly and for the benefit of the country that the Assembly of Experts should convene an open meeting and look into people’s complaints, as well as those of Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi,” Mr. Dastgheib wrote.

Robert F. Worth reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto.

Conservatives Warn Ahmadinejad Not to Defy Ayatollah on Cabinet Picks

By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a sign of persistent divisions in Iran’s hard-line political camp, a coalition of major conservative parties issued an unusually blunt open letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday, warning him not to disregard the supreme leader and other senior figures as he chooses his new cabinet.

The letter, coming two days after Mr. Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term, makes clear that he faces a serious challenge in uniting his own supporters, even as a broad opposition movement continues to maintain that his landslide re-election on June 12 was rigged. The group that issued the letter, which includes 14 conservative parties and leaders influential in Iran’s traditional businesses, endorsed Mr. Ahmadinejad in the election.

The letter is the latest repercussion from a fracas last month in which Mr. Ahmadinejad shocked conservatives by ignoring a command from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to rescind the controversial appointment of a top presidential deputy. The deputy, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, finally withdrew from that position, and Mr. Ahmadinejad promptly reappointed him as his chief of staff.

The letter issued Friday told Mr. Ahmadinejad that the public, the clergy and the political elite found “shocking” his decisions regarding Mr. Mashaei, whose daughter is married to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s son, and warned him to change his approach.

“If, God forbid, you fail to consult with supporters of the revolution and pursue a path that is not in line with the leadership, if you become too confident with the people’s vote, you may lose people’s confidence and we fear that you might inflict unprecedented damage on the establishment and jeopardize cooperation with Parliament and the judiciary,” the letter said, according to copies provided to Web sites and Iranian news agencies.

The letter urged the president to “avoid this turmoil” by being more sensitive than before in making cabinet choices and consulting with senior figures.

In his inauguration speech on Wednesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad hinted that he saw the record voter turnout in the election as a popular mandate to pursue his policy goals more aggressively.

Other conservative groups have criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad harshly over his promotion of Mr. Mashaei, who said last year that Iranians were friendly toward “people in every country, even Israelis.” One group suggested that Mr. Ahmadinejad could be removed from office.

Analysts say Mr. Ahmadinejad was trying to project political strength in his promotion of Mr. Mashaei, who is part of a group of advisers and loyalists he has relied on since his early days in politics. But many Iranians were baffled by the president’s willingness to defy Ayatollah Khamenei, who wields final authority on matters of state and who has provided Mr. Ahmadinejad with crucial political support.

The Iranian police issued a statement to reporters on Friday saying that the people responsible for mistreating prisoners at the controversial Kahrizak detention center, where some protesters were tortured and killed, would be dismissed and punished, Iranian news agencies said. The police statement appeared to undercut a parliamentary investigation of abuses at the detention center, which was closed last month by order of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Also on Friday, Amnesty International said it had recorded an “alarming spike” in state executions in Iran since the election. Iran is second only to China in executions annually.

Robert F. Worth reported from Beirut, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto.

The 20 Most Powerful People in Iran

Power and public discourse in the Islamic Republic are dominated by fewer than two dozen heavyweights, ranging from ayatollahs to entertainers (and one TV network).

NEWSWEEK

Published May 23, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Jun 1, 2009

1. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - Supreme Leader
Watch his actions, not his words. Having made his name as a pragmatist before taking over as Iran's top holy man, he tries to reconcile the two roles: he tends to take the more popular side in every debate, while spouting radical rhetoric.

2. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - President
Favored to win another four-year term as Iran's second-most-powerful man. The Supreme Leader can always overrule him but until recently has tried to avoid direct confrontation. Khamenei is said to have particularly enjoyed his performance during nuclear negotiations.

3. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - Eminence Grise
As head of the Expediency Council the ex-president is in charge of settling disputes between Iran's Parliament and the Council of Guardians. A Khomeini confidant, he knows all the skeletons in the regime's closet and may play a quiet role in U.S.-Iran talks.

4. Mohammad Khatami - Ex-President
After 18 years of conservative rule, Iranians were stunned by the reformist's 1997 upset victory: their votes counted! Although he proved unable to keep his lofty promises, many young people still see him as the best hope for change. They took it hard when he quit this year's race.

5. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati - Oversight Chief
The Council of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution is a panel of six clerics and six lawyers that oversees all legislative bills and decides who can run in parliamentary and presidential elections. Its 83-year-old chief is an enthusiastic Ahmadinejad supporter.

6. Ali Larijani - Majlis Speaker
The national legislature's pragmatic leader is the well-heeled son of an influential cleric, as well as Iran's former nuclear negotiator. He remains close to Khamenei. Ahmadinejad defeated Larijani in the 2005 presidential race, and their disputes since then have become a public spectacle.

7. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari - Revolutionary Guards Commander
Specialized in guerrilla missions and unconventional warfare during the war with Iraq. He's said to owe his current post to his popularity with young troops and his up-to-date plans for defense against possible threats from Israel and America.

8. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf - Mayor of Tehran
A former Revolutionary Guards commander and security chief, he stepped into Ahmadinejad's old job as mayor after a failed bid for the presidency in 2005. Supporters praise him for fixing the mess they say Ahmadinejad left behind, and they hope he'll do the same for Iran in 2013.

9. Ayatollah Abbas Vaez-Tabasi - Holy Estate Director
Controls what is arguably the country's wealthiest single institution, the Holy Estate of Imam Reza, which owns hundreds of companies, mines and farms. Every year millions of pilgrims visit the shrine of the Shia saint, the only one buried in Iran.

10. Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi - Radical Scholar
The plugged-in director of the Imam Khomeini Education & Research Institute is one of the most hardline and influential interpreters of Islamic teachings in Qum. His students are among the city's brightest and most politicized.

11. Seyyed Javad Shahrestani - Sistani's Envoy
Despite 30 years of political Islam in Iran, many Shiites still see Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani as their religious leader, or marja ("object of emulation"). The resolutely apolitical Shahrestani is Sistani's son-in-law, as well as his representative in the Islamic Republic.

12. Saeed Mortazavi - Prosecutor General of Tehran
Has been responsible for closing dozens of newspapers and sentencing journalists and activists to lengthy jail terms. Human-rights groups accuse him of harsh interrogation methods. He recently organized a group of lawyers to prosecute alleged Israeli crimes in Gaza.

13. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi - Head of Judiciary
Born in Iraq, he was a leader in the fight against Saddam's dictatorship before fleeing the country in 1979. Has made impressive progress on court reform since Khamenei named him top judge in 1999, but many judges remain beyond his jurisdiction.

14. Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi - Campaign Manager
Friends with Ahmadinejad since childhood, and an architect of his political rise, Samareh has been called an Iranian Karl Rove. He recently resigned from his post as a senior presidential adviser in order to devote himself full time to Ahmadinejad's bid for reelection.

15. Mir Hossein Mousavi - Ex–Prime Minister
Dark-horse presidential candidate and an enigma to just about everyone. Older Iranians remember him as prime minister and a close Khomeini ally in the 1980s, but he's spent the past 20 years painting and designing buildings. Now he's wooing young voters as a reformist.

16. Mohsen Rezaei - Khamenei Adviser
The former Revolutionary Guards commander and secretary of the Expediency Council is a close and loyal adviser to the Supreme Leader. He's a devout traditionalist but more pragmatic than the current president, and is hoping to unseat him in the June 12 elections.

17. Hossein Shariatmadari - Newspaper Editor
Khamenei's top man at Kayhan, the leading conservative daily. His editorials, special reports and "Hidden Half" feature (devoted to the darker side of public figures he dislikes) read like a cross between intelligence reports and an Iranian version of Fox News.

18. BBC Persian Service - Illegal TV Network
The ban on satellite dishes is widely ignored: Iranians want news they can trust, not state TV. The Persian Voice of America is too pro-Washington for some. Since early this year, many have turned instead to the BBC and popular anchors like Farnaz Ghazizadeh (above).

19. Adel Ferdosipour - Sportscaster
Easily the country's most popular TV host. When angry sports officials tried to get him fired recently for criticizing them on his weekly show (Iranian soccer, a national passion, is in crisis, beset by scandal and poor play), more than 3 million loyal fans sent text messages to keep him on.

20. Mehran Modiri - Social Satirist
Has survived 20 years by choosing his battles. Today his television comedies rule Iran's airwaves, with audiences so big that broadcast executives don't balk at his lampoons of Iranian life. Reformist politicians crave his endorsement, but he wants to stay in business.

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/199145

Influential Allies Censure Ahmadinejad Over Delay in Deputy's Dismissal

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 26, 2009

TEHRAN, July 25 -- Influential supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized him Saturday for initially refusing to drop his choice for vice president as ordered by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a week ago.

Ahmadinejad confirmed that he had dismissed Esfandiar Rahim Mashai as vice president. But the head of the armed forces and an influential member of parliament questioned why it had taken Ahmadinejad so long to heed the supreme leader's instruction.

"The Iranian nation didn't expect the ink on the leader's letter to dry out while it was not yet implemented," said Maj. Gen. Seyed Hassan, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported Saturday.

"The expectation from Ahmadinejad was that he would implement the leader's order immediately after receiving his letter on the 18th of July. Mashai's appointment should have been revoked and annulled, as the leader said," said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the parliament's national security and foreign policy commission, who generally supports Ahmadinejad's policies.

The pro-government Fars News Agency reported late Saturday that after dismissing Mashai, Ahmadinejad promoted him to the key position of head of the president's office, a move expected to infuriate critics.

In a letter to Mashai, the president wrote: "Since you are a faithful, devoted and trustworthy person, I will appoint you as the adviser and the head of the president's office."

Mashai, whose son is married to Ahmadinejad's daughter, sparked controversy last year when he declared, "The Iranian people are friends with all the people of the world . . . even those of Israel."

Khamenei, the supreme leader, publicly criticized Mashai for his statement, saying it was wrong.

Replying to the leader's edict only after it had been read on state television Friday, Ahmadinejad sent an unusually informal letter to him on Saturday. Ahmadinejad's sober reply, devoid of most customary honorifics, ended a rare, open conflict between him and Khamenei, who have publicly aligned since the disputed outcome of the June 12 presidential election.

"Salaam aleikum," or "peace be with you," Ahmadinejad wrote to Khamenei, refraining from the flowery language and praises usually used when addressing the country's top authority. "The copy of the resignation letter . . . dated the 24th of July from the first deputy position has been attached. . . . Yours, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," the Iranian Students News Agency reported.

Ahmadinejad's decision came amid a fresh round of protests against his government in the capital, Tehran.

Witnesses said a couple thousand people silently crowded an area around northern Vanak Square, some flashing the victory sign.

"There were no slogans, but many cars were blowing their horns. Riot police on red motorcycles did not intervene but were present all around," one witness said. "All shops were closed on orders of the security forces."

Two other witnesses said authorities fired tear gas and made arrests at the protest.

Similar demonstrations were reported Friday in the nearby town of Karaj.

Leading Ahmadinejad opponents issued a letter Saturday urging senior clerics to speak out against arrests and repression since the election. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the unofficial leader of the movement calling for an annulment of the vote, joined other opposition figures in asking the country's grand ayatollahs to warn the government.

There are about 20 of these top Shiite clerics worldwide. Many of them have hundreds of thousands of followers but steer clear of politics. Some have spoken out against the postelection violence in Iran, asking for the people's will to be heard.

Even though they often have no positions, the grand ayatollahs wield political clout in a system based on clerical rule.

"How can we be silent against all this violence and beastliness and claim that this system is divine and follows the prophet's teachings?" the politicians asked in their letter, which was published on the Parleman News Web site.

"We request you sources of imitation to warn the responsible authorities on the negative results of their illegal activities, and to caution them on the increase of injustice in the Islamic Republic System."

Also Saturday, the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guard Corps said Iran would strike Israel's nuclear facilities if the Jewish state attacked, state television reported.

"We are not responsible for this regime and other enemies' foolishness. . . . If they strike Iran, our answer will be firm and precise," state television quoted Mohammad Ali Jafari as saying.

Israeli leaders have threatened to destroy Iran's nuclear program, which it says poses an existential threat to their country. Iranian leaders say that the program is meant only for energy production and that nuclear weapons are against Islam.

Jafari denied reports that Iran was planning a nuclear test, calling them "sheer lies."

"Iran does not seek to conduct a nuclear test or any other similar tests," he said.

Ayatollah Tells Ahmadinejad to Drop Choice for Top Iranian Deputy

By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a sign of persistent fissures within Iran’s conservative ranks, Iran’s supreme leader has told President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to reverse his decision to appoint a top deputy, according to comments reported by Iranian news agencies on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, scattered opposition rallies took place in Tehran, the capital, and other cities, with a heavy presence by the police and members of the Basij militia apparently discouraging many from taking to the streets to protest Iran’s disputed June 12 election.

A senior member of Parliament said the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had sent a letter to Mr. Ahmadinejad telling him to dismiss the deputy, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whose appointment was announced Friday, according to news reports.

“Without any delay, the removal or acceptance of Mashaei’s resignation must be announced by the president,” the deputy speaker of Parliament, Mohammad-Hassan Aboutorabi-Fard, told the ISNA news agency.

The appointment had provoked a storm of criticism from conservatives, who were angered last year when Mr. Mashaei reportedly said that the Iranian people were friends with all other peoples, including Israelis.

As late as Tuesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad had defended Mr. Mashaei — whose daughter is married to his son — and said he would keep him on. Cabinet appointments do not require the approval of the Iranian Parliament. Mr. Mashaei tried to defend himself, saying he meant that Iranians were friends of those who suffered under Zionist oppression in Israel and that his comments were “a psychological warfare against the Israeli regime.”

But what appeared to be the intervention of Ayatollah Khamenei, who wields final authority on affairs of state, would seem to seal the matter. Conservatives largely closed ranks after the presidential election, which set off the worst internal unrest since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. But as Mr. Ahmadinejad begins appointing his new cabinet, splits among conservatives have surfaced again.

On Tuesday evening, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported that Mr. Ahmadinejad might make as many as 19 changes to the cabinet, including the key posts of foreign minister, finance minister and intelligence minister.

The cabinet changes are being closely watched for signs that Mr. Ahmadinejad might be making conciliatory gestures toward some of his critics. Many in the conservative and the reformist ranks have called for such signals, observing that the election has deepened a serious political and social rift in Iran.

Supporters of the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, say that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s landslide election was rigged. Their protest movement, largely quelled by a heavy police crackdown, has gained new energy since Friday, when an influential former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, delivered a speech urging the government to recognize a broad lack of public confidence in the results.

Opposition Web sites had issued calls for widespread demonstrations on Tuesday, the anniversary of a day in 1952 when huge street protests took place to reinstate Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a national hero in Iran.

There were scattered protests in Tehran, Shiraz and other cities on Tuesday, according to reports by witnesses and video clips posted on opposition Web sites. But they appeared to have been quickly suppressed by the police. In Tehran, witnesses said the police and the Basij militia used sticks and tear gas to disperse protesters in Haft-e-Tir Square in the center of the city.

Revolutionary Guards Crush Dissent and Widen Control in Iran

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — As Iran’s political elite and clerical establishment splinter over the election crisis, the nation’s most powerful economic, social and political institution — the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — has emerged as a driving force behind efforts to crush a still-defiant opposition movement.

From its origin 30 years ago as an ideologically driven militia force serving Islamic revolutionary leaders, the corps has grown to assume an increasingly assertive role in virtually every aspect of Iranian society.

And its aggressive drive to silence dissenting views has led many political analysts to describe the events surrounding the June 12 presidential election as a military coup.

“It is not a theocracy anymore,” said Rasool Nafisi, an expert in Iranian affairs and a co-author of an exhaustive study of the corps for the RAND Corporation. “It is a regular military security government with a facade of a Shiite clerical system.”

The corps has become a vast military-based conglomerate, with control of Iran’s missile batteries, oversight of its nuclear program and a multibillion-dollar business empire reaching into nearly every sector of the economy. It runs laser eye-surgery clinics, manufactures cars, builds roads and bridges, develops gas and oil fields and controls black-market smuggling, experts say.

Its fortune and its sense of entitlement have reportedly grown under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since 2005, when he took office, companies affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards have been awarded more than 750 government contracts in construction and oil and gas projects, Iranian press reports document. And all of its finances stay off the budget, free from any state oversight or need to provide an accounting to Parliament.

The corps’s alumni hold dozens of seats in Parliament and top government posts. Mr. Ahmadinejad is a former member, as are the speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, and the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. And the influence of the Revolutionary Guards reaches deep into the education system, where it indoctrinates students in loyalty to the state, and into the state-controlled media, where it guides television and radio programming.

“They are the proponents of an authoritarian modernization, convinced that the clergy should continue supplying the legitimation for the regime as a sort of military chaplains, but definitely not run the show,” said a political scientist who worked in Iran for years, but asked not to be identified to avoid antagonizing the authorities.

They are so influential partly because they present a public front of unity in a state where power has always been fractured. By contrast, clerics have many different agendas and factions. Nonetheless, there are glimmers of fractures under the corps’s opaque and disciplined surface.

Political analysts said that behind the scenes there were internal disagreements about the handling of the election and the demonstrations against disputed results that gave a second term to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“I have received reports, at least part of the top commanders in the Revolutionary Guards are not happy with what is going on,” said Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California, who says he has a network of contacts around the country. “There are even reports of some who have protested.”

Even a former commander in the corps, Mohsen Rezai, who served for 16 years, decided to challenge the status quo by running for president this year, and he openly complained of the government’s failure to investigate accusations of vote-rigging.

One political analyst said that many of the rank and file were known to have voted for Mohammad Khatami, an outspoken reformer, when he was first elected president in 1997.

The corps is not large. It has as many as 130,000 members and runs five armed branches that are independent from the much bigger national military. It commands its own ground force, navy, air force and intelligence service. The United Nations Security Council has linked its officials to Iran’s nuclear program. The West suspects Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons, an allegation the government denies.

The corps’s two best-known subsidiaries are the secretive Quds Force, which has carried out operations in other countries, including the training and arming of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon; and the Basij militia. The Basiji, who experts say were incorporated under the corps’s leadership only two years ago, now include millions of volunteer vigilantes used to crack down on election protests and dissidents.

Members of the Revolutionary Guards and their families receive privileged status at every level, which benefits them in university admissions and in the distribution of subsidized commodities, experts said.

Mr. Nafisi, the RAND report co-author, said a former commander in the corps estimated that all the corps and Basiji members, together with their families, added up to a potential voting bloc of millions of people. “This new machinery of election was quite important in bringing Ahmadinejad forward,” Mr. Nafisi said.

Within this bloc is a core of military elites who have displaced — and at times clashed with — the clerical revolutionaries who worked beside Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in founding the Islamic republic. They are the second generation of revolutionaries, ideologically united and contemptuous of first-generation clerics like former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and of reformers and those eager to engage with the West. The corps has even trained its own clerics.

In an essay describing the rise of the Revolutionary Guards phenomenon, Professor Sahimi drew a portrait of the new elite: leaders in their mid-50s who as young men joined the corps and fought two wars: one against Iraq in the 1980s and another to force out the Mujahedeen Khalq, which the United States considers a terrorist organization and which is now based in Iraq.

The corps then split into two groups. One believed that Iran needed a chance to develop politically and socially; the other, which emerged the victor, was intent on maintaining strict control. Mr. Nafisi said Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was close to that second group.

“He went to the war front several times, more than any other commander,” Mr. Nafisi said. “He made personal contact with many commanders, got to know them and earned their loyalty. Now all the people in charge were basically assigned to him at the time of war.”

Today, the corps has expanded its role and reach. Its financial interests have, for example, been linked directly to the government’s foreign policy. Iran may well have remained silent on the attacks on Uighur Muslims in China this month in part because Beijing is one of the main trading partners with the corps.

Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war, Mr. Rafsanjani, then the president, encouraged the corps to use its engineers to bolster its own budget and to help rebuild the country. Since then, a Revolutionary Guards company, Khatam al-Anbia, has become one of Iran’s largest contractors in industrial and development projects, according to the RAND report. Its contracts with the government, including projects like the construction of a Tehran subway line, hydroelectric dams, ports and railway systems, are carried out by the company’s subsidiaries or are parceled out to private companies.

What is less quantifiable is the corps’s black-market smuggling activity, which has helped feed the nation’s appetite for products banned by sanctions, while also enriching the corps. The Rand report quoted one member of Iran’s Parliament who estimated that the Revolutionary Guards might do as much as $12 billion in black-market business annually.

In his will, Ayatollah Khomeini asked that the military stay out of politics, and senior Revolutionary Guards officials have been careful to defend themselves against accusations of political meddling after the June 12 election. But Gen. Yadollah Javani, director of the corps’s political arm, warned the public that there was no room for dissent.

“Today, no one is impartial,” he said, according to the official news agency IRNA. “There are two currents: those who defend and support the revolution and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it.”

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

Britain Replacing U.S. as Iran's Favorite Target

By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 17, 2009

For the past three decades, the United States has been Iran's "Great Satan." Schoolchildren learned to chant "Down With U.S.A." Conservative clerics sermonized against America. Anti-American murals depicting images such as a skull-faced Statue of Liberty dotted Tehran.

But since Iran's disputed presidential election last month, another Satan has gained ground: Great Britain.

Since Iranians took to the streets to protest the official vote results, the government has expelled two British diplomats, kicked out the longtime British Broadcasting Corp. bureau chief, and arrested British Embassy staff members, accusing them of fomenting the unrest. Last week, an adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Britain "worse than America" for its alleged interference in Iran's post-election affairs.

Although complaints about British meddling are enjoying a resurgence, they are hardly new. For many Iranians, especially those whose memories go back several decades, the British reach is long and deep.

"To the older generation of Iranians, it's as if the sun has never gone down on the British Empire," said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, director of Middle Eastern studies at Syracuse University. "They are considered the masters of political intrigue, and players such as the U.S. are considered to be novices, new kids on the block."

Suspicion of Britain heightened under Iran's current administration, said Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "Ahmadinejad's government has always been very Anglophobic in its approach," he said, noting a 2007 incident in which Iran took 15 British marines and sailors into custody, saying they had violated Iranian waters. "They're really obsessed with Britain in a way that even previous Iranian governments, even in the Islamic republic, haven't been."

Ahmadinejad and those in his government have little political experience outside Iran, analysts said, and are often unsophisticated in their dealings with other nations, relying on local folklore that goes back a century -- to when Britain had great influence in the region.

Iranians found both good and bad in that history. Britain supported Iranians who pushed for a constitution in 1905, but it left them feeling betrayed when it joined with Russia to divide Iran into "spheres of influence" and attempted to create what effectively would have been a British protectorate.

When oil was discovered in Iran in 1908, the British built refineries there, turning the country into an oil producer for the first time. But resentment grew as Iran received only a fraction of the profits and Iranian workers lived in miserable conditions.

British influence was seen to be behind Reza Shah Pahlavi's 1921 ascendance and, 20 years later, his fall from power. Scholars debate London's influence on these events, but Britain, along with the United States, has admitted to helping oust Iran's democratically elected prime minister in 1953.

The United States gained more influence after World War II, but Britain's behind-the-scenes role remained ingrained in the popular Iranian imagination. Some, including the deposed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, believed the British orchestrated the 1979 Islamic revolution. "In fairness to the Iranians, the British have been manipulative," Boroujerdi said. "But, in my view, they have been given way too much credit in terms of their actions in Iran."

Even U.S. foreign policy was sometimes interpreted as directed from London. "There were a couple of members of Parliament that got up and said [President George W. Bush's 2002] 'axis of evil' speech was written by the British as a speech to read out," Ansari said. "They said the Americans weren't capable of this, they weren't intelligent enough to think of this."

In every Iranian crisis, the BBC has come in for blame, perhaps in part because of its history in Iran. "BBC Persian service has a very specific position in Iran -- it was created in 1941 to help with the overthrow of Reza Shah," Ansari said. By the late 1970s, however, "it played a role that was at odds with the British government. . . . It gave Khomeini a lot more airtime than they thought was useful or helpful," he said, referring to the late ayatollah and leader of the revolution.

Still, many in Iran find it hard to separate the BBC from the British government. The station's popularity there has stoked suspicion, as has its recent introduction of Farsi-language satellite television service.

"Because the BBC is seen as having been so important during the revolution, with the fact that the BBC is opening a new channel of communication, there's a feeling that perhaps the BBC is gearing up for a new revolution," said Dick Davis, a professor of Persian at Ohio State University.

Ervand Abrahamian, a history professor at the City University of New York's Baruch College, agreed, adding that by blacking out local media now as in 1978, today's rulers "are doing the same thing the shah was doing."

In this case, however, the focus on the BBC and the British government could also be part of a broader political strategy by Iranian leaders, some analysts said. After years of antagonism, the United States would be a key player in any future negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, and blaming America for the current crisis could hurt those prospects.

"The U.S., after all, is the big prize that the Iranians are after," Boroujerdi said, "and they basically neglect the Europeans because they feel that the U.S. is the big kid that they have to talk to."

President Obama's international popularity could also be a factor. "I think they have real problems with Obama," Abrahamian said. "He has offered major concessions, and they haven't really replied to that."

But even if the U.S. role as the Great Satan is being played down, that does not mean it has lost the title, Boroujerdi said.

"Great Britain seems to be the flavor of the month right now. . . . But I don't think that anyone can take comfort that the flavor of the month has changed; it can change again at a moment's notice."

Former Iranian President Criticizes Hard-Liners in Sermon

By Edward Yeranian Cairo 17 July 2009

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivers his sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University in the Iranian capital, 17 Jul 2009

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered a blistering Friday prayer sermon at Tehran University, before a crowd of thousands, warning those in high places to abide by the will of the people and to heal the wounds of the recent crisis.

Thousands of people chanted as they listened to former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani deliver his much-anticipated Friday prayer sermon, and key figures of the opposition movement, including defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Mohammed Khatami, attended in a calculated show of force.

Former President Rafsanjani delivered a scathing attack against those in power, arguing that "if the people are not content with the government, it loses its legitimacy." He said this was the "way of the Imam, [Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Khomeini]" and also the "way of the Prophet [Mohammed]."

The former president also peppered his sermon with anecdotes of his years alongside the founder of Iran's Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini noting that the Ayatollah withdrew his support for (former Prime Minister Mehdi) Bazargan, after he had lost the support of the people.

In a clear allusion to the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president Rafsanjani argued that the Prophet (Mohammed) warned one of his followers that "if the people aren't happy with you, then you cannot rule over them."

He stressed "The people are the backbone of the Islamic Republic," and he said,"we have an Islamic system, but we are above all a republic, which rests on the will of the people, and all of our officials are elected by the people."

The former president insisted that the only way out of the current crisis, which began with the disputed June 12 presidential election, was for "everyone to follow the law, including the president, the parliament and [the other] branches of the [republic]."

Only Iranian radio broadcast Friday's prayer sermon, however, in an apparent display of hostility by the pro-Ahmadinejad faction which controls Iranian TV.

Iranian TV, instead, focused on a speech by embattled President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the city of Mashhad, Thursday, in which he launched his usual attacks against the West.

Al Arabiya TV reported that those in charge of the official Iranian Broadcasting Corporation (IRIB) had been warned at the beginning of the week "not to televise the Rafsanjani sermon," and also "not to film the crowds in attendance."

The former president Rafsanjani also lashed out at the Iranian media for being biased in its coverage and insisted that the official government TV must "be a place where the people can debate their ideas," demanding that its airwaves be opened to everyone.

In the sermon, the appeal for a free media was followed by an appeal for the release of all prisoners who are now being held by the government in the wake of weeks of unrest following the disputed presidential election.

Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani Sadr, who lives in exile in Paris, however, thinks that Rafsandjani's remarks reveal that he has submitted to the will of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:

He says that Rafsanjani did what was expected of him, since he's a man of the regime. He's submitted to the will of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and will accept Mr. Ahmedinejad as president. In exchange, Rafsanjani didn't ask for much, he complains: the freeing of prisoners, compensation for those who were killed, and a small measure of free speech. It remains to be seen, he argues, if Mousavi accepts the deal, and if he does, then, this part of the saga is over. But, he notes, the people of Tehran are still chanting "down with the dictator," and they don't accept the proposal; they want their freedom.

Eyewitnesses say tens of thousands of supporters of Mr. Mousavi demonstrated in parts of the Iranian capital, after Friday prayers.

Mousavi Details Alleged Election Fraud in Iran

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 5, 2009


TEHRAN, July 4 -- Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate in last month's disputed election, released documents Saturday detailing a campaign of alleged fraud by supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that assured his reelection, while an adviser to Iran's supreme leader accused Mousavi of treason.

Hossein Shariatmadari, a special adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Mousavi of being a "foreign agent" working for the United States and a member of a "fifth column" determined to topple Iran's Islamic system of governance. The accusation of treason was the highest and most direct issued by an Iranian official since the June 12 election.

Many in Iran say that government forces are laying the groundwork for arresting Mousavi, who has not been seen in public in more than a week.

In a 24-page document posted on his Web site, Mousavi's special committee studying election fraud accused influential Ahmadinejad supporters of handing out cash bonuses and food, increasing wages, printing millions of extra ballots and other acts in the run-up to the vote.

The committee, whose members were appointed by Mousavi, said the state did everything in its power to get Ahmadinejad reelected, including using military forces and government planes to support his campaign.

The disputed election led to massive demonstrations in the streets of Tehran as the opposition demanded that the results be annulled. An ensuing government crackdown on protesters, which resulted in several deaths, was widely condemned abroad.

Last week, the Guardian Council, Iran's top electoral supervisory body, dismissed the fraud allegations, describing the election as "a golden page . . . of Iran's democratic history." On Saturday, Ahmadinejad blamed what he called Western efforts to "divert" Iranian public opinion during the demonstrations.

"They wanted to break our dignity and independence," the ILNA news agency quoted him as saying.

The government had previously denied the allegations and branded Mousavi, who is supported by another challenger, cleric Mehdi Karroubi, a bad loser.

The report released by Mousavi pointed out that the Interior Ministry, which counted the votes, is headed by Sadegh Mahsouli, a longtime friend of Ahmadinejad. The secretary of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, had publicly supported Ahmadinejad, as had six others on the 12-member council despite a law requiring them to remain impartial, according to the report.

"The law here was completely broken," said Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a top Mousavi campaign official. "What these documents prove is that the two entities that organized the elections were biased and in favor of one candidate."

Mousavi and his supporters say that commanders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps played an instrumental role in the election by campaigning for Ahmadinejad. The report pointed to interviews with Guard Corps publications in which commanders allegedly implied that they would not accept victory by any candidate except Ahmadinejad.

In an editorial, Shariatmadari, who is also editor in chief of the state newspaper Kayhan, identified Mousavi's main supporters as the United States, Israel, the European Union, Iranian foreign-based opposition groups and domestic "plunderers."

"That corrupt movement has been implementing a foreign mission in order to encourage unlawful activities, kill innocent people, create a rebellion, plunder public property and weaken the power of the Islamic system," he wrote.

Shariatmadari said Mousavi was trying to cover up his "crimes" after saying Wednesday that he still fully backs Iran's system of governance.

"His aim is to escape from definite punishment for the murder of innocent individuals, inciting riots and rebellions, hiring some thugs and ruffians to attack the lives, property and honor of the people, clear collaboration with foreigners, performing the role of the fifth column inside the country, and scores of other undeniable crimes," Shariatmadari wrote.

He called for an open trial of Mousavi and former president Mohammad Khatami, one of Mousavi's main supporters, saying, "They must be tried in an open court in front of the eyes of the oppressed people who demand that the blood of their loved ones should be avenged."

Meanwhile, resistance to the disputed elections continued among religious figures.

Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Saanei, who has supported politicians close to Mousavi and advocates more freedoms for young people, women and ethnic minorities, said Friday that many Iranians remain unconvinced that Ahmadinejad's victory was legitimate and urged authorities to safeguard rights.

"I remind you that no instruction or command can be a permission or excuse to violate people's rights, and this could be a great sin," he said.

Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.

Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution “training courses” outside the country. Alef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully “welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public. Ayatollah Khamenei is supreme religious leader.

The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners. Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people have been detained.

They fear the confessions are part of a concerted effort to lay the groundwork for banning existing reformist political parties and preventing any organized reform movement in the future. “They hope with this scenario they can expunge them completely from the political process,” said Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group. “They don’t want them to come back as part of a political party.”

The confessions are used to persuade a domestic audience that even cultural and academic outreach by some of the nation’s top academics is really cover to usher in a velvet revolution, human rights workers and former prisoners say.

“If they talk about the velvet revolution 24 hours a day people don’t care,” said Omid Memarian, a former Iranian journalist who was arrested and forced to issue his own confession in 2004. “But if reformers and journalists say they are involved in it, it makes the point for them. Once my interrogators said, ‘Whatever you say is worth 100 times more than having a conservative newspaper say the same thing.’ ”

Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the confession of a Newsweek reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the bidding of foreign governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a newspaper run by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader. And at Friday Prayer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted.

In addition to Mr. Abtahi, other prominent reformers being held include Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami’s spokesman, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister.

In 2007, Iran produced a pseudo-documentary called “In the Name of Democracy,” which served as a vehicle to highlight what it called confessions of three academic researchers charged with trying to overthrow the state. “They don’t like new ideas to get to Iran,” said a researcher once investigated about his work, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They don’t like social and cultural figures in Iranian society to become very popular.”

In 2001, Ali Afshari was arrested for his work as a student leader. He said he was held in solitary confinement for 335 days and resisted confessing for the first two months. But after two mock executions and a five-day stretch where his interrogators would not let him sleep, he said he eventually caved in.

“They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults, psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall, keeping me in solitary confinement for one year,” Mr. Afshari said in an interview from his home in Washington. “They eventually broke my resistance.”

The problem, he said, was that he was not sure what he was supposed to confess to. So over the next several months, he said, he and his interrogators “negotiated” what he would say — and, more ominously, whom he would implicate. Once his confession was complete, he said, he practiced it for 7 to 10 days, and then it ran on state-run television.

Three years later, Mr. Memarian, the journalist and blogger, was arrested in another security sweep. He said that his interrogator at first sought to humiliate him by forcing him to discuss details of his sex life, and that when he hesitated, the interrogator would grab his hair and smash his head against the wall. He said the interrogator asked him about prominent politicians he had interviewed, asked if they ever had affairs, and asked if he had ever slept with their wives.

“I was crying, I begged him, please do not ask me this,” said Mr. Memarian, who is in exile now in the United States. “They said if you don’t talk now you will talk in a month, in two months, in a year. If you don’t talk now, you will talk. You will just stay here.”

The pressure was agonizing, he said, as he was forced to live in a small cell for 35 days with a light burning all the time and only three trips to the bathroom allowed every 24 hours. He was forced to shower in front of a camera, he said. At one point the interrogators threatened to break his fingers.

“They came up with names, and topics,” he said. “They gave me a three-page analysis and said read this and include it in your confession. My interrogator once said, ‘You have written seven years for the reformists; it’s O.K. to write for us for two months.’ ”

Mr. Memarian said that even in 2004, his interrogators were most interested in several leading reformers, including Mr. Abtahi, who at the time was an adviser to the president. When he was finally released, and after his confession was published by Fars, he was asked to testify before a committee led by the reform government investigating confessions, which included Mr. Abtahi. Mr. Abtahi, who has not been heard from since his arrest on June 16, understood even back then just how vulnerable he was, Mr. Memarian recalled.

“Abtahi said, ‘We cannot guarantee anyone’s security,’ ” Mr. Memarian said. “ ‘We know what happened to you guys. When you leave this building we do not know will happen to you, or what can happen to us in this committee.’ ”

(An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a conservative Web site that referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformer. The Web site is Alef, not Atef.)

Iran Cleric Says British Embassy Staff to Stand Trial

By JOHN F. BURNS and STEPHEN CASTLE

LONDON — A high-ranking Iranian cleric said Friday that Iran planned to put some of the detained British embassy staff members on trial, a move that could provoke a tightening of European sanctions against Iran, including the withdrawal of ambassadors.

The cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the influential Guardian Council, told worshipers at Friday Prayer in Tehran that the embassy employees had “made confessions” and would be tried for their role in inciting protests after last month’s disputed presidential election.

In London, the Foreign Office said it was urgently seeking clarification from the Iranian government as to whether the cleric’s remarks represented official policy.

“We are confident that our staff have not engaged in any improper or illegal behavior,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement. “We remain deeply concerned about the two members of our staff who remain in detention in Iran.”

He said he planned to speak to the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.

Of the nine staff members seized Sunday, five were released Monday after the first British and European protests, and Iranian state media said Wednesday that three more had been freed, leaving one in custody. British officials, however, said that two remained under arrest.

As local employees of the embassy, those arrested did not have diplomatic immunity. None are British citizens.

Although the Foreign Office has denied that it had any role in stirring the ferment in Iran, officials in London have said that the embassy in Tehran had not forbidden its local employees to participate in the protests as individuals. The Iranian authorities say they have video evidence of some embassy employees at the protests.

Hours after the threat of trials, the European Union seemed to hold back from an out-and-out showdown, resolving to summon Iranian ambassadors in all 27 of the group’s countries to send “a strong message of protest against the detention of British Embassy local staff and to demand their immediate release,” said a European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, following the group’s rules.

Other graduated measures — like a slowdown in issuing visas to Iranian officials seeking to visit Europe and a potential withdrawal of all European ambassadors — would be considered, the diplomat said. He said Iranian diplomats would be told that the arrest of the embassy employees and the threat of trials were considered a threat to all European Union diplomatic staff members in Iran.

The Iranian authorities accused the employees of fomenting and orchestrating the protests that drew tens of thousands of Iranians into Tehran’s streets after the June 12 election. The demonstrations provoked a security crackdown that had largely ended the public protests but not the political ferment over the elections. The hard-line incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been officially declared the winner by a landslide, but his main opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, has vowed to continue his campaign to have the official result declared fraudulent.

Ayatollah Jannati, who is an ally of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not say how many of the detainees would be tried or on what charges, news reports said. But, in unofficial translations provided by news agencies, he said that the British Embassy had a “presence” in the postelection unrest and that “some people” had been arrested. It was “inevitable” that they would face trial, he said.

The Guardian Council is an influential panel of 12 clerics whose responsibilities include vetting elections. On Monday it certified Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory, a step that emboldened hard-line officials to warn of a harsher crackdown if protests continued.

Britain has sought diplomatic help from the European Union, which is thought to hold more sway with Iran. But some European countries, led by Germany, have been reluctant to risk worsening ties with Iran, particularly at a time when European diplomats have been pressing it for concessions over its nuclear program. They have argued that a withdrawal of envoys, a step urged by Britain, would leave few diplomatic options if the crisis deteriorated further.

But there were signs that the threat of trials had stiffened resolve in other countries.

“Our solidarity with Britain is total,” said President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, adding that France favored tightening sanctions.

The Iranian authorities have frequently blamed foreigners for the turmoil, but they have singled out the British as instigators. They cited Britain’s covert role in past political upheavals, including the toppling in 1941 of Reza Shah Pahlavi, suspected of having pro-German sympathies during World War II, and the ouster in 1953 of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after his government nationalized Iran’s British-dominated oil industry.

At the same time, Tehran has sent mixed signals about the fate of the embassy employees.

Hassan Qashqavi, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Monday that Iran was eager to maintain normal diplomatic relations with the European Union, its biggest trading partner. “Reduction of ties is not on our agenda with any European country, including Britain,” he said.

But on Wednesday, the semiofficial Fars news agency said that one of the embassy employees, who was not identified by name, “had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes.”

While Ayatollah Jannati is not a member of the government or the judiciary, his words as the head of the Guardian Council and a close associate of the supreme leader carry some weight.

At Friday Prayer — a forum Iran has often used to convey significant political messages — he accused Britain of trying to provoke a “velvet revolution.” As long ago as March, he said, the British Foreign Office had said street riots were possible during the June elections. “These are signs, revealed by themselves,” he said.

John F. Burns reported from London, and Stephen Castle from Brussels. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.