Iran: Feisty Opposition Starts New Protest Campaign

By Robin Wright

Phase 2 has begun. Six weeks after millions took to the streets to protest Iran's presidential election, their uprising has morphed into a feistier, more imaginative and potentially enduring campaign.

The second phase plays out in a boycott of goods advertised on state-controlled television. Just try buying a certain brand of dairy product, an Iranian human-rights activist told me, and the person behind you in line is likely to whisper, "Don't buy that. It's from an advertiser." It includes calls to switch on every electric appliance in the house just before the evening TV news to trip up Tehran's grid. It features quickie "blitz" street demonstrations, lasting just long enough to chant "Death to the dictator!" several times but short enough to evade security forces. It involves identifying paramilitary Basij vigilantes linked to the crackdown and putting marks in green — the opposition color — or pictures of protest victims in front of their homes. It is scribbled antiregime slogans on money. And it is defiant drivers honking horns, flashing headlights and waving V signs at security forces. (See pictures of Iran's presidential election and its turbulent aftermath.)

The tactics are unorganized, largely leaderless and only just beginning. They spread by e-mail, websites and word of mouth. But their variety and scope indicate that Iran's uprising is not a passing phenomenon like the student protests of 1999, which were quickly quashed. This time, Iranians are rising above their fears. Although embryonic, today's public resolve is reminiscent of civil disobedience in colonial India before independence or in the American Deep South in the 1960s. Mohandas Gandhi once mused that "even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled." That quotation is now popular on Iranian websites.

Its impact varies, but Phase 2 has begun to exact a price from those who ignore the popular will. Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of parliament, told me that some companies have cut back on TV advertising, and some stores have dropped advertised brands. A new boycott of text messaging could be costing a state company more than $1 million a day. "There is optimism that protests will continue one way or another," says Farideh Farhi, an Iranian analyst at the University of Hawaii, "because people who are normally not rabblerousers are finding ways to counter the government crackdown."

The new camaraderie of resistance was visible at the July 17 Friday prayer sermon given by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani at Tehran University. Nonreligious Iranians turned up for political reasons. The devout showed them how to carry out the rituals, with strangers handing out newspapers as substitute prayer mats for overflow crowds. Men and women prayed together, a regime taboo. When Rafsanjani referred to detainees, the crowd interrupted by roaring, "Political prisoners must be freed!" Calling for support of Iran's Supreme Leader, who backed the crackdown, another prayer official intoned, "We are all your soldiers, Khamenei! We await your orders!" But supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi shouted back, "We are your soldiers, Mousavi! We await your orders!" And when told to shout "Down with America!" the crowd instead chanted "Down with Russia!" — whose leaders had congratulated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election and hosted him four days later. (See pictures of people around the world protesting Iran's election.)

The protests tap into a long Iranian tradition. The seeds of the 1905-11 Constitutional Revolution — which produced Iran's first parliament and constitution — were planted in the Tobacco Protest of the 19th century, when even women in the royal harem stopped smoking their water pipes to protest an exclusive concession given by the Shah to a British company. Protests, strikes and boycotts prevented Iran from becoming a British protectorate in 1920, secured the reappointment of reformist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1952 and — most significant of all — ended 2,500 years of dynastic rule in 1979 and ushered in the Islamic Republic.

The current uprising is nowhere near as widespread as that of 1979. Yet the activism is creating a new political space in Iran. The public is defining its own agenda, with Rafsanjani, Mousavi and other opposition figures responding to sentiment on the street rather than directing it. After meeting on July 20 with the families of people detained following the election, Mousavi warned the power structure, "You are facing something new: an awakened nation, a nation that has been born again and is here to defend its achievements."

As Iran's second phase of protests takes shape, the regime's future may depend on whether it heeds that warning.

Jakarta Blasts Renew Security Fears

By TOM WRIGHT

JAKARTA -- The explosions that ripped through Jakarta's JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels on Friday raised new concerns about the growing sophistication of terrorists in Asia and the possibility that suicide bombers may have been purposefully targeting a meeting of largely Western businessmen.

Police are still investigating the nearly simultaneous suicide attacks, which killed nine people and injured 53 others after the bombers apparently smuggled bomb parts into the hotel disguised as laptops. Although police haven't officially named any suspects, intelligence experts, analysts and investigators say that Noordin Mohammad Top, a 40-year-old member of the al- Qaeda-backed Jemaah Islamiyah network, or terrorists linked to him, are now the leading suspects in masterminding the attacks.

The Associated Press Sunday cited reports that the Indonesian government was intensifying efforts to find Mr. Noordin and had enlisted help from authorities in Malaysia, where Mr. Noordin lived until earlier this decade.

The attack had many of the hallmarks of a Jemaah Islamiyah operation, analysts said, and Indonesian police said an undetonated bomb found in room 1808 of the JW Marriott -- which police believe the bombers used as their base -- was almost identical to a cache of bombs found recently at a house owned by Mr. Noordin's father-in-law in Cilacap, central Java. The Marriott room was booked under the name Nurdin Azis, which is similar to aliases Mr. Noordin has used in the past.

The unexploded bomb showed "strong indications" that Mr. Noordin or terrorist cells linked to him were involved in Friday's events, said Ansyaad Mbai, head of counterterrorism at Indonesia's Coordinating Ministry for Political and Security Affairs, in an interview on Saturday. "The bomb in the Marriott was similar to ones we found in Cilacap," he said.

Indonesian police have yet to identify the perpetrators of the blasts at two Jakarta hotels, but police said Monday the regional militant group Jemaah Islamiah could be behind the attacks. Video courtesy of Reuters.

Attempts to identify the two suicide bombers, who were among the nine dead, were continuing, with police believing at least one of them was Indonesian. Both of their bodies were decapitated in the blasts, making it difficult to verify their identities.

Whatever the investigation reveals, the terrorists' success in smuggling bomb parts into the JW Marriott underscores their growing ability to beat tactics employed by security experts in recent years to keep them at bay. Because of past bouts with terrorism in Indonesia, including bombings in Bali in 2002 that killed more than 200 people, major Jakarta hotels have some of the tightest security in the world, with airport-style metal detectors and heavily guarded driveways with roadblocks.

The bombers appeared to have no trouble getting past those security measures, though, smuggling bomb parts into the hotel disguised as laptops, police said. The ability to assemble bombs inside hotels is "definitely a step up in their tactics," said Paul Quaglia, an analyst in Bangkok at PSA Asia, a security consulting company that has done an audit for the Ritz Carlton in Jakarta. "It's definitely something that was well planned."

Fears were also rising that the bombers were targeting elite businessmen specifically. Noke Kiroyan, an Indonesian citizen and former local chairman of mining company Rio Tinto PLC, was one of 19 executives breakfasting in a small lounge in the JW Marriott, which a local consulting group hires each Friday for its meetings. Mr. Kiroyan, who lost part of his right ear in the attack, said he believes that the bomber who hit the hotel would have chosen the main restaurant on the other side of the JW Marriott's lobby, where most guests were breakfasting and which was the target of a 2003 attack on the same hotel, if they had wanted to inflict the maximum number of casualties. "I think we were targeted," he said.

Other Western executives in Jakarta repeated concerns over the possible targeting of business elites, which they said may lead foreign businesses to be more cautious about how they operate in Indonesia and possibly recalibrate expansion plans. In recent years, Indonesia has made strides in arresting terrorists, making Westerners feel more secure. ExxonMobil Corp. and other foreign resource companies had recently planned to increase the number of expatriate staff in Indonesia.

Just before the blast, early Friday morning, the hotel's closed-circuit television caught images of the suicide bomber, wearing a backpack on his chest and wheeling a suitcase, turning left in the lobby and walking purposefully toward the lounge.

The bomber was challenged by a hotel security guard as he approached the room but was waved through after saying he was delivering a package to his boss, local media reported. Moments later, while at the entrance of the lounge, which was cordoned off with rope, he detonated his bomb, which police said was packed with nails.

Mr. Kiroyan was sitting at a conference table with his back to the lounge's entrance and was partly shielded by a pillar. The last thing Mr. Kiroyan remembers before the blast is reading a long message from his wife on his mobile phone. "Suddenly there was a loud bang and a blinding flash," he said. "My first thought was that my mobile phone exploded. You hear stories about mobile phones exploding. But then I realized it couldn't be that."

Suddenly, Mr. Kiroyan was lying on the floor in pitch darkness with his clothes soaking wet. What he at first took to be blood turned out to be water from the hotel's emergency sprinkler system. People were crying out that they couldn't see.

Mr. Kiroyan then made his way out of the room, where he was met by two hotel staff and guided outside to wait for an ambulance. "I feel angry but relieved that I am alive," Mr. Kiroyan said.

Although he didn't directly observe the suicide bomber, Mr. Kiroyan said other colleagues at the meeting later recounted that some of the people in the room remember seeing an unknown Indonesian man at the entrance just before the explosion.

The four foreigners who have so far died in the Marriott explosion -- three Australians and a New Zealander -- were all sitting at the far end of table from Kiroyan, nearest the entrance. An Indonesian waiter and the suicide bomber also were killed in the explosion.

Indonesian terrorists have failed in recent years to kill a large number of Westerners in suicide bombings. The 2002 Bali nightclub attacks killed 202 mainly Western tourists through two bombs, one in a car and the other carried in a backpack by a suicide bomber. But an earlier attack on the JW Marriott in Jakarta in 2003, by a car bomb, killed 12 people, two-thirds of them Indonesians, and injured more than a hundred. Attacks against the Australian embassy in 2004 and again in Bali in 2005, killed mainly Indonesians.

Foreign expatriates living in Jakarta said none of the previous attacks so directly targeted foreign business interests. The idea that the meeting Friday may have been a focus was "a scary thought" said William Reed Rising, a U.S. citizen who works in real estate and normally attends the briefing but was absent last week.

—Patrick Barta contributed to this article.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com