July 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/world/middleeast/02iran.html?_r=1&hpBy ALAN COWELL and STEPHEN CASTLE
PARIS — Iran courted new levels of post-election isolation from the European Union on Wednesday as European diplomats pondered whether to withdraw the ambassadors of all 27 members nations in a dispute over the detention of the British Embassy’s local personnel.
European diplomats said that no formal decision to order their envoys home had been taken but that the measure was an option under consideration as the European Union — Iran’s biggest trading partner — tries to work out how to defuse the dispute in a way that would shield other embassies in Tehran from similar action.
Withdrawing all 27 ambassadors would represent a rare and unusually forceful display of European anger at Iran’s behavior, and several diplomats said the European Union would prefer to avoid it. Diplomats in Europe said they could not recall such concerted action by the entire, expanded bloc.
The initial Iranian response seemed characteristically bellicose. A high-ranking military official demanded that the Europeans apologize for interference in Iran’s affairs, which, he said, disqualified European countries from negotiating on the fraught issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
In a statement quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency on Wednesday, Iran’s chief of staff, Hassan Firouzabadi, was quoted as saying that because of the European Union’s “interference” in “the post-election riots, they have lost their qualification to hold nuclear talks with Iran.”
“Before apologizing for their huge mistake,” he said, the European countries have “no right to talk about nuclear negotiations,” according to a Fars report quoted by Reuters.
It was the first sign that Iran might use its post-election dispute to cast further doubt over the stalled nuclear negotiations, buying time to continue a nuclear enrichment program which Tehran says is for peaceful, civilian purposes. Many in the west suspect that Iran is seeking the ability to build nuclear weapons.
Moreover, the statement seemed to add one more layer of complexity to Western assessments of how to deal with Iran.
Since the presidential vote on June 12, members of the European Union have taken a lead in condemning a subsequent violent crackdown on dissenters who have accused the government of manipulating the results to keep the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in power.
The Iranian authorities have especially sought to cast Britain as an instigator of the unrest. They arrested nine local employees of the British Embassy in Tehran over the weekend, though five were released by Monday night. The Iranian authorities accused the local employees of fomenting unrest.
Press TV, a television station financed by the Iranian government, announced that three of the employees were released Wednesday, leaving just one still in custody. That employee, Fars news agency said Wednesday, “had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes.”
As the dispute unfolded, the European Union said it would support Britain, but it has been unclear what form that backing would take.
Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, told reporters in Stockholm on Wednesday — the day his country took over the rotating presidency of the European Union — that it was in the interests of both the European Union and Iran to retain full diplomatic ties. But he did not specifically exclude the withdrawal of ambassadors, saying that “from the diplomatic perspective, all options are on the table.”
However, he added that the bloc has “an interest in maintaining full diplomatic relations” with Tehran and that he thought “it would be in Iranian interests that we retain diplomatic courtesies in a situation like this.”
“We are in a dialogue with the Iranian authorities to see if we can sort out the issue,” Mr. Bildt said.
The Swedish prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, said that the European Union had to strike a difficult balance in its relationship with both the Iranian authorities and those protesting for democratic rights. The aim was to do so without polarizing the relationship with Iran and thus offering the government there a pretext for repression by blaming foreign intervention.
In a statement on Sunday, European foreign ministers promised a “strong and collective response” to the diplomatic crisis in Tehran. That led to discussions among senior European diplomats in Brussels on Tuesday. Separate talks among European officials are set to take place in Stockholm on Thursday and Brussels on Friday, a European diplomat said.
European countries have not yet agreed on a course of action, with Germany, Iran’s biggest individual trade partner, and Italy taking a cautious position, while Britain pushes for a tougher and more radical response, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue.
Some Europeans believe the Iranians can be persuaded to avert a confrontation by quickly releasing the remaining British Embassy staff member.
But the Iranian response, invoking the question of nuclear negotiations that has dominated the relationship between Iran and the West, has illuminated broader implications for the Obama administration’s avowed hopes for a new dialogue with Iran.
In April, the administration said that it would start participating regularly with other major powers in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
At the time, the decision seemed to be a further step toward the direct engagement with Iran that President Obama had promised. It followed an invitation to Iran to join in a new round of talks, which would include Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. And it coincided with an unusual expression of conciliation toward the United States by President Ahmadinejad of Iran, who said that his government would welcome talks with the Obama administration, provided that the shift in American policy was “honest.”
In the past, the Bush administration largely shunned the European-led negotiations with Tehran, but, one year ago, it reluctantly sent a senior diplomat to a single round of talks that ended in stalemate.
Later in April, President Ahmadinejad said he was preparing a new proposal to resolve disputes with the West over Iran’s nuclear program, although he did not give details.
But the aftermath of the June 12 presidential election in Iran seems to have reset the clock. President Obama initially sought to refrain from criticism of the Iranian authorities. After he finally expressed outrage at Tehran’s crackdown, Mr. Ahmadinejad demanded an apology and said Mr. Obama was echoing the policies of the Bush administration.
The elections led to weeks of protest that presented the strongest challenge to the authorities in 30 years.
Late Tuesday, an opposition candidate again insisted he would not accept the outcome and challenged the legitimacy of President Ahmadinejad’s re-election. Mehdi Karroubi, a former Parliament speaker who came a distant fourth in the June 12 vote, said on his Web site that he did not recognize the legitimacy of the ballot.
“I will continue my fight using every means and I’m ready to cooperate with pro-reform people and groups,” he said on the site. Mir Hussain Moussavi, the runner-up, on Wednesday also reasserted his claim that the election was illegitimate, Reuters reported. In an apparent sign of the leadership’s edginess after the protests, Mr. Ahmadinejad canceled a planned overseas trip to Libya on Wednesday, news reports said. His government did not explain why.
In another apparent diplomatic upset, the sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said, was reported on Wednesday to have postponed indefinitely a visit to Tehran which would have been the first since the fall of the Shah in the 1979 revolution.
Alan Cowell reported from Paris and Stephen Castle from Stockholm. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo.
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
22 June 2009
Iranian Rally Is Dispersed as Voting Errors Are Admitted
There are 2 articles in this post. After the main news article there is an op-ed piece about the future of Iran's society.
June 23, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Hours after a warning from the powerful Revolutionary Guards not to return to the streets, about a thousand protesters defiantly gathered in central Tehran on Monday and were quickly dispersed in an overwhelming show of force by police who used clubs and tear gas.
The protesters, far fewer than the numbers who had attended mass rallies last week, turned out despite the warning, on the Guards’ Web site, that they would face a “revolutionary confrontation” if they continued to challenge the results of the June 12 election and their country’s supreme leader, who has pronounced the ballot to be fair.
Even so, Iran’s most senior panel of election monitors, in the most sweeping acknowledgment that the election was flawed, said Monday that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, according to a state television report.
The discrepancies could affect some three million ballots of what the government says was 40 million cast, giving the official victory to the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The authorities insisted that the discrepancies did not violate Iranian law. The Guardian Council, charged with certifying the election, said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the result, which placed Mir Hussein Moussavi — who contends the election was stolen from him — in a distant second.
He has urged his supporters to continue their defiance, but he could face arrest for doing so.
“Moussavi’s calling for illegal protests and issuing provocative statements have been a source of recent unrests in Iran,” Ali Shahrokhi, head of parliament’s judiciary committee, semi-official Fars news agency reported, according to Reuters. “Such criminal acts should be confronted firmly.”
He added: “The ground is paved to legally chase Moussavi.”
Mr. Moussavi, the more moderate of the candidates, used a posting on his Web site Sunday night to urge his supporters to demonstrate peacefully, despite warnings from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that no protests of the vote would be allowed.
“Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” Mr. Moussavi said.
In an apparent response, a Guards statement Monday told protesters to “be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces” if they took their protests into a second week, news reports said.
The Basij is a militia accused by the protesters of brutally repressing demonstrations that culminated in a day of bloodshed on Saturday that ended in the deaths of at least 10 protesters, according to the state television.
The Guards told demonstrators Monday to “end the sabotage and rioting activities,” calling their protests a “conspiracy” against Iran. The warning echoed remarks by a Foreign Ministry spokesman who blamed western governments and media for the unrest.
The official result gave Mr. Ahmadinejad 63 percent of the ballots — an 11-million vote advantage — to Mr. Moussavi’s 34 percent. Turnout was put at 85 percent.
At a news conference Monday, Hassan Qashqavi, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called the turnout a “brilliant gem which is shining on the peak of dignity of the Iranian nation.”
He accused unidentified western powers and news organizations, which are operating under extremely tight official restrictions, of spreading unacceptable “anarchy and vandalism.” But, he said, the outcome of the vote would not be changed. “We will not allow western media to turn this gem into a worthless stone,” he said.
Mr. Qashqavi drew comparisons with American election results.
“No one encouraged the American people to stage a riot” because they disagreed with the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, he said. Britain’s Foreign Office said Monday that because of the continuing unrest it would evacuate the families of staff members based in Iran. A spokeswoman, who spoke in return for anonymity under civil service rules, said the violence in Tehran “had a significant impact on the families of our staff who have been unable to carry on their lives as normal.”
Quoted earlier by Press TV, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the 12-member Guardian Council denied claims by another losing candidate, Mohsen Rezai, that irregularities had occurred in up to 170 voting districts.
“Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100 percent of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80 to 170 cities are not accurate — the incident has happened in only 50 cities,” Mr. Kadkhodaei said.
But he said that a voter turnout in excess of the registered voting list was a “normal phenomenon” because people could legally vote in areas other than those in which they were registered. Nonetheless, some analysts in Tehran said, the number of people said to be traveling on election day seemed unusually high.
The news emerged on the English-language Press TV Web site late Sunday as a bitter rift among Iran’s ruling clerics deepened. As increasingly violent protests have swirled through Tehran since the elections, Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered the Guardian Council to investigate the opposition’s allegations of electoral fraud. The council itself has offered a random partial recount of 10 percent of the ballot.
Mr. Kadkhodaei said the Guardian Council could recount votes in areas where irregularities were said by the opposition to have occurred. But “it has yet to be determined whether the possible change in the tally is decisive in the election results.”
The opposition has alleged a total of 646 electoral irregularities and is demanding that the vote be annulled. But in a sermon at Friday prayers last week Ayatollah Khamenei mocked the idea that the huge margin attributed to Mr. Ahmadinejad could have been won through fraud.
On Sunday, the police detained five relatives of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who leads two influential councils and openly supported Mr. Moussavi’s election. The relatives, including Mr. Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, were released after several hours.
The developments, coming one day after protests here in the capital and elsewhere were crushed by police officers and militia members using guns, clubs, tear gas and water cannons, suggested that Ayatollah Khamenei was facing entrenched resistance among some members of the elite.
Though rivalries have been part of Iranian politics since the 1979 revolution, analysts said that open factional competition amid a major political crisis could hinder Ayatollah Khamenei’s ability to restore order.
There was no verifiable accounting of the death toll from the bloodshed on Saturday, partly because the government has imposed severe restrictions on news coverage and warned foreign reporters who remained in the country to stay off the streets.
It also ordered the BBC’s longtime correspondent expelled and Newsweek’s correspondent detained.
State television said that 10 people had died in the weekend clashes, while radio reports said 19. The news agency ISNA said 457 people had been arrested.
In the network of Internet postings and Twitter messages that has become the opposition’s major tool for organizing and sharing information, a powerful and vivid new image emerged: a video posted on several Web sites that showed a young woman, called Neda, her face covered in blood. Text posted with the video said she had been shot. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the video.
The Web site of another reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, referred to her as a martyr who did not “have a weapon in her soft hands or a grenade in her pocket but became a victim by thugs who are supported by a horrifying security apparatus.”
Mr. Moussavi was not seen in public on Sunday but showed no sign of yielding. In his Web posting, he urged followers to “avoid violence in your protest and behave as though you are the parents that have to tolerate your children’s misbehavior at the security forces.”
He also warned the government to “avoid mass arrests, which will only create distance between society and the security forces.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from London. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo.
June 23, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Iran’s Children of Tomorrow
By ROGER COHEN
TEHRAN — They are known mockingly as the “Joojeh Basiji” — the “chicken Basiji.” These are the militia scarcely old enough to manage more than a feeble beard. Teenagers, brainwashed from early childhood, they have been ferried into the capital in large numbers, given a club and a shield and a helmet and told to go to work.
I saw them throughout downtown Tehran on Sunday, seated in the back of grey pick-ups. I saw them, sporting sleeveless camouflage vests, in clusters on corners, leaning on trees, even lolling shoeless on the grass in the central island of Revolution Square.
They were far from alone in a city in military lockdown. Elite riot police with thigh-length black leg guards, helmeted Revolutionary Guards in green uniforms and rifle-touting snipers composed a panoply of menace. The message to protesters was clear: Gather at your peril.
That threat had already been rammed home Saturday evening, when a student named Neda Agha Soltan was killed by a single shot. Her last moments were captured on video that has gone global. Martyrdom is a powerful force in the world of Shia Islam. Mourning on the 3rd and 7th and 40th days after a death form a galvanizing cycle.
Neda is already another name for the anger smoldering here, whose expression, in my experience, has been bravest, deepest and most vivid among women. She could become Iran’s Marianne.
Tehran, cradled in its mountainous amphitheater, is holding its breath. Sunday was quiet and Monday dawned quiet but between them the defiant cries of “Death to the dictator” and “Allah-u-Akbar” reverberated between high-rises once again.
In this pregnant lull, I keep hearing three questions: Will Mir Hussein Moussavi lead? How powerful are the internal divisions of the revolutionary establishment? And what is the ultimate goal of the uprising? On the answer to them will hinge the outcome of this latest fervid expression of Iran’s centennial quest for pluralistic freedom.
After the shootings Saturday that took several lives, Moussavi seemed absent. The bespectacled revolutionary leader thrust now into defiance was silent. People risking their lives craved guidance. Disappointed in 1999 and 2003 by the legalistic kowtowing of the reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami, they feared resignation redux.
Then, early Monday, Moussavi spoke. “Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” he said, referring to the preposterous manipulation of the June 12 election and laying down the gauntlet again to the once sacrosanct pronouncements of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader invested by the Islamic Revolution with an authority close to the Prophet’s. Last Friday, Khamenei said: “I want everyone to end this sort of action.”
Khamenei also said, “Trust in the Islamic Republic became evident in these elections.”
In fact I believe the loss of trust by millions of Iranians who’d been prepared to tolerate a system they disliked, provided they had a small margin of freedom, constitutes the core political earthquake in Iran. Moderates who once worked the angles are now muttering about making Molotov cocktails and screaming their lungs out after dusk.
Moussavi is trying to calm their rage and coax the multiple security forces to his side. Restraint was the core appeal of his Monday statement. He urged his followers to avoid violence and adopt parental forbearance before the “misbehavior” of security forces — an appropriate reference given all the teenage thugs out there.
I think Moussavi is right to avoid extreme positions even as Khamenei has deliberately radicalized the conflict. He’s right because his moderation fans internal divisions that seem rampant. Any counterrevolutionary stance, at least at this point, would have the opposite effect.
Which brings me to the fight within. On Sunday, I saw Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of the establishment’s embittered éminence grise, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He told me his father, who despises President Mahmoud Adhmadinejad, is fighting a furious rearguard action to have the election annulled by the Guardian Council, the 12-member oversight body that will pronounce this week on the election’s legality.
The ruling had seemed a formality, given Khamenei’s summary dismissal of a recount and the loyalist composition of the body, but the Council is now talking about irregularities in 50 cities and discrepancies that could affect 3 million votes. Out of a total of 40 million votes, that’s a significant number.
There are rumblings from the influential parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, who is close to Khamenei but not Ahmadinejad. With Rafsanjani, Khatami and the defeated conservative former Revolutionary Guard leader, Mohsen Rezai, the dissenting front has breadth. Rezai, who officially won 680,000 votes, says more than 900,000 voters have written to him with their ID numbers saying they cast their ballot for him.
The third question — the strategic goal of the uprising — is increasingly fraught. Khamenei said, “The dispute is not between the revolution and the counterrevolution,” and that all four electoral candidates “belong to the system.” He was right, if his words had been spoken the day after the vote.
Ten days on, however, the brutal use of force and his own polarizing speech have drawn many more Iranians toward an absolutist stance. Having wanted their votes counted, they now want wholesale change. If Moussavi wants to prevail, he must keep his followers tactically focused on securing a new election. That’s essential because it’s the one position the opposition within the clerical establishment will go along with.
Whatever happens now, all is changed utterly in Iran. Opacity, a force of the Islamic Republic, has yielded to a riveting transparency in which one side confronts another. The online youth of Iran will not be reconciled to a regime that touts global “ethics” and “justice” while trampling on them at home.
I received this from an anonymous Iranian student: “I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to be killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow!”
And she concludes: “I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so that they know we were not just emotional under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mogols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children.”
I bow my head to the youth of Iran, the youth that is open-eyed, bold and far stronger and more numerous than the near-beardless vigilantes.
June 23, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Hours after a warning from the powerful Revolutionary Guards not to return to the streets, about a thousand protesters defiantly gathered in central Tehran on Monday and were quickly dispersed in an overwhelming show of force by police who used clubs and tear gas.
The protesters, far fewer than the numbers who had attended mass rallies last week, turned out despite the warning, on the Guards’ Web site, that they would face a “revolutionary confrontation” if they continued to challenge the results of the June 12 election and their country’s supreme leader, who has pronounced the ballot to be fair.
Even so, Iran’s most senior panel of election monitors, in the most sweeping acknowledgment that the election was flawed, said Monday that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, according to a state television report.
The discrepancies could affect some three million ballots of what the government says was 40 million cast, giving the official victory to the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The authorities insisted that the discrepancies did not violate Iranian law. The Guardian Council, charged with certifying the election, said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the result, which placed Mir Hussein Moussavi — who contends the election was stolen from him — in a distant second.
He has urged his supporters to continue their defiance, but he could face arrest for doing so.
“Moussavi’s calling for illegal protests and issuing provocative statements have been a source of recent unrests in Iran,” Ali Shahrokhi, head of parliament’s judiciary committee, semi-official Fars news agency reported, according to Reuters. “Such criminal acts should be confronted firmly.”
He added: “The ground is paved to legally chase Moussavi.”
Mr. Moussavi, the more moderate of the candidates, used a posting on his Web site Sunday night to urge his supporters to demonstrate peacefully, despite warnings from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that no protests of the vote would be allowed.
“Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” Mr. Moussavi said.
In an apparent response, a Guards statement Monday told protesters to “be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces” if they took their protests into a second week, news reports said.
The Basij is a militia accused by the protesters of brutally repressing demonstrations that culminated in a day of bloodshed on Saturday that ended in the deaths of at least 10 protesters, according to the state television.
The Guards told demonstrators Monday to “end the sabotage and rioting activities,” calling their protests a “conspiracy” against Iran. The warning echoed remarks by a Foreign Ministry spokesman who blamed western governments and media for the unrest.
The official result gave Mr. Ahmadinejad 63 percent of the ballots — an 11-million vote advantage — to Mr. Moussavi’s 34 percent. Turnout was put at 85 percent.
At a news conference Monday, Hassan Qashqavi, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called the turnout a “brilliant gem which is shining on the peak of dignity of the Iranian nation.”
He accused unidentified western powers and news organizations, which are operating under extremely tight official restrictions, of spreading unacceptable “anarchy and vandalism.” But, he said, the outcome of the vote would not be changed. “We will not allow western media to turn this gem into a worthless stone,” he said.
Mr. Qashqavi drew comparisons with American election results.
“No one encouraged the American people to stage a riot” because they disagreed with the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, he said. Britain’s Foreign Office said Monday that because of the continuing unrest it would evacuate the families of staff members based in Iran. A spokeswoman, who spoke in return for anonymity under civil service rules, said the violence in Tehran “had a significant impact on the families of our staff who have been unable to carry on their lives as normal.”
Quoted earlier by Press TV, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the 12-member Guardian Council denied claims by another losing candidate, Mohsen Rezai, that irregularities had occurred in up to 170 voting districts.
“Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100 percent of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80 to 170 cities are not accurate — the incident has happened in only 50 cities,” Mr. Kadkhodaei said.
But he said that a voter turnout in excess of the registered voting list was a “normal phenomenon” because people could legally vote in areas other than those in which they were registered. Nonetheless, some analysts in Tehran said, the number of people said to be traveling on election day seemed unusually high.
The news emerged on the English-language Press TV Web site late Sunday as a bitter rift among Iran’s ruling clerics deepened. As increasingly violent protests have swirled through Tehran since the elections, Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered the Guardian Council to investigate the opposition’s allegations of electoral fraud. The council itself has offered a random partial recount of 10 percent of the ballot.
Mr. Kadkhodaei said the Guardian Council could recount votes in areas where irregularities were said by the opposition to have occurred. But “it has yet to be determined whether the possible change in the tally is decisive in the election results.”
The opposition has alleged a total of 646 electoral irregularities and is demanding that the vote be annulled. But in a sermon at Friday prayers last week Ayatollah Khamenei mocked the idea that the huge margin attributed to Mr. Ahmadinejad could have been won through fraud.
On Sunday, the police detained five relatives of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who leads two influential councils and openly supported Mr. Moussavi’s election. The relatives, including Mr. Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, were released after several hours.
The developments, coming one day after protests here in the capital and elsewhere were crushed by police officers and militia members using guns, clubs, tear gas and water cannons, suggested that Ayatollah Khamenei was facing entrenched resistance among some members of the elite.
Though rivalries have been part of Iranian politics since the 1979 revolution, analysts said that open factional competition amid a major political crisis could hinder Ayatollah Khamenei’s ability to restore order.
There was no verifiable accounting of the death toll from the bloodshed on Saturday, partly because the government has imposed severe restrictions on news coverage and warned foreign reporters who remained in the country to stay off the streets.
It also ordered the BBC’s longtime correspondent expelled and Newsweek’s correspondent detained.
State television said that 10 people had died in the weekend clashes, while radio reports said 19. The news agency ISNA said 457 people had been arrested.
In the network of Internet postings and Twitter messages that has become the opposition’s major tool for organizing and sharing information, a powerful and vivid new image emerged: a video posted on several Web sites that showed a young woman, called Neda, her face covered in blood. Text posted with the video said she had been shot. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the video.
The Web site of another reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, referred to her as a martyr who did not “have a weapon in her soft hands or a grenade in her pocket but became a victim by thugs who are supported by a horrifying security apparatus.”
Mr. Moussavi was not seen in public on Sunday but showed no sign of yielding. In his Web posting, he urged followers to “avoid violence in your protest and behave as though you are the parents that have to tolerate your children’s misbehavior at the security forces.”
He also warned the government to “avoid mass arrests, which will only create distance between society and the security forces.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from London. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo.
June 23, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Iran’s Children of Tomorrow
By ROGER COHEN
TEHRAN — They are known mockingly as the “Joojeh Basiji” — the “chicken Basiji.” These are the militia scarcely old enough to manage more than a feeble beard. Teenagers, brainwashed from early childhood, they have been ferried into the capital in large numbers, given a club and a shield and a helmet and told to go to work.
I saw them throughout downtown Tehran on Sunday, seated in the back of grey pick-ups. I saw them, sporting sleeveless camouflage vests, in clusters on corners, leaning on trees, even lolling shoeless on the grass in the central island of Revolution Square.
They were far from alone in a city in military lockdown. Elite riot police with thigh-length black leg guards, helmeted Revolutionary Guards in green uniforms and rifle-touting snipers composed a panoply of menace. The message to protesters was clear: Gather at your peril.
That threat had already been rammed home Saturday evening, when a student named Neda Agha Soltan was killed by a single shot. Her last moments were captured on video that has gone global. Martyrdom is a powerful force in the world of Shia Islam. Mourning on the 3rd and 7th and 40th days after a death form a galvanizing cycle.
Neda is already another name for the anger smoldering here, whose expression, in my experience, has been bravest, deepest and most vivid among women. She could become Iran’s Marianne.
Tehran, cradled in its mountainous amphitheater, is holding its breath. Sunday was quiet and Monday dawned quiet but between them the defiant cries of “Death to the dictator” and “Allah-u-Akbar” reverberated between high-rises once again.
In this pregnant lull, I keep hearing three questions: Will Mir Hussein Moussavi lead? How powerful are the internal divisions of the revolutionary establishment? And what is the ultimate goal of the uprising? On the answer to them will hinge the outcome of this latest fervid expression of Iran’s centennial quest for pluralistic freedom.
After the shootings Saturday that took several lives, Moussavi seemed absent. The bespectacled revolutionary leader thrust now into defiance was silent. People risking their lives craved guidance. Disappointed in 1999 and 2003 by the legalistic kowtowing of the reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami, they feared resignation redux.
Then, early Monday, Moussavi spoke. “Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” he said, referring to the preposterous manipulation of the June 12 election and laying down the gauntlet again to the once sacrosanct pronouncements of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader invested by the Islamic Revolution with an authority close to the Prophet’s. Last Friday, Khamenei said: “I want everyone to end this sort of action.”
Khamenei also said, “Trust in the Islamic Republic became evident in these elections.”
In fact I believe the loss of trust by millions of Iranians who’d been prepared to tolerate a system they disliked, provided they had a small margin of freedom, constitutes the core political earthquake in Iran. Moderates who once worked the angles are now muttering about making Molotov cocktails and screaming their lungs out after dusk.
Moussavi is trying to calm their rage and coax the multiple security forces to his side. Restraint was the core appeal of his Monday statement. He urged his followers to avoid violence and adopt parental forbearance before the “misbehavior” of security forces — an appropriate reference given all the teenage thugs out there.
I think Moussavi is right to avoid extreme positions even as Khamenei has deliberately radicalized the conflict. He’s right because his moderation fans internal divisions that seem rampant. Any counterrevolutionary stance, at least at this point, would have the opposite effect.
Which brings me to the fight within. On Sunday, I saw Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of the establishment’s embittered éminence grise, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He told me his father, who despises President Mahmoud Adhmadinejad, is fighting a furious rearguard action to have the election annulled by the Guardian Council, the 12-member oversight body that will pronounce this week on the election’s legality.
The ruling had seemed a formality, given Khamenei’s summary dismissal of a recount and the loyalist composition of the body, but the Council is now talking about irregularities in 50 cities and discrepancies that could affect 3 million votes. Out of a total of 40 million votes, that’s a significant number.
There are rumblings from the influential parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, who is close to Khamenei but not Ahmadinejad. With Rafsanjani, Khatami and the defeated conservative former Revolutionary Guard leader, Mohsen Rezai, the dissenting front has breadth. Rezai, who officially won 680,000 votes, says more than 900,000 voters have written to him with their ID numbers saying they cast their ballot for him.
The third question — the strategic goal of the uprising — is increasingly fraught. Khamenei said, “The dispute is not between the revolution and the counterrevolution,” and that all four electoral candidates “belong to the system.” He was right, if his words had been spoken the day after the vote.
Ten days on, however, the brutal use of force and his own polarizing speech have drawn many more Iranians toward an absolutist stance. Having wanted their votes counted, they now want wholesale change. If Moussavi wants to prevail, he must keep his followers tactically focused on securing a new election. That’s essential because it’s the one position the opposition within the clerical establishment will go along with.
Whatever happens now, all is changed utterly in Iran. Opacity, a force of the Islamic Republic, has yielded to a riveting transparency in which one side confronts another. The online youth of Iran will not be reconciled to a regime that touts global “ethics” and “justice” while trampling on them at home.
I received this from an anonymous Iranian student: “I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to be killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow!”
And she concludes: “I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so that they know we were not just emotional under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mogols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children.”
I bow my head to the youth of Iran, the youth that is open-eyed, bold and far stronger and more numerous than the near-beardless vigilantes.
19 June 2009
Ruling Cleric Warns Iranian Protesters
Below this article are the first hand accounts from readers of the NYT blog,so keep on scrolling for more info!
June 20, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/world/middleeast/20iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — In his first public response to days of mass protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opposition supporters on Friday to stay off the streets and raised the prospect of violence if the defiant, vast demonstrations continued.
Opposition leaders, he said, will be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if they do not stop further rallies.
He said he would never give in to “illegal pressures” and denied their accusations that last week’s presidential election was rigged, praising the officially declared landslide for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”
He spoke somberly for more than an hour and a half at Friday Prayer to tens of thousands of people at Tehran University, with Mr. Ahmadinejad in attendance. His sermon was broadcast over loudspeakers to throngs in the adjoining streets, and the crowds erupted repeatedly in roars of support. Opposition supporters had spread the word among themselves not to attend.
“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to a rendering by the BBC. “This questions the principles of election and democracy.”
There was no immediate response from opposition leaders.
The ominous speech sharply increased the confrontation between Iran’s rulers and supporters of the main opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who have accused the authorities of rigging the vote and called for or encouraged the huge silent marches in Tehran for the last four days. No rally was planned for Friday, and opposition supporters did not appear to be gathering impromptu.
But on Saturday, a group of reformist clerics loyal to the former President Mohammed Khatami planned to demonstrate against the election results, saying they had been given rare official permission. Some news reports, however, said that the gathering had been banned.
Ayatollah Khamenei instructed dissenters to pursue their complaints about the June 12 ballot through legal channels, insisting that the turnout — officially put at 85 percent — showed it to be a reflection of the national will.
Reiterating his Saturday affirmation of the official election results, he said that the participation, as officially reported, had shown “the hand of the Lord of ages supporting such a great development.”
“This is a sign of God’s mercy for this nation. The fate of the country should be decided in ballot boxes, not on the streets,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, framing his position as a commitment to the law and the orderly functioning of government.
“If we break the law, we will have to do it in every election and no election would be immune,” he said. “This is wrong. This is the beginning of dictatorship.”
He said that the margin of victory — 11 million votes — accorded to Mr. Ahmadinejad in the official tally was so big that it could not have been falsified.
“How can 11 million votes be replaced or changed?” he said. “The Islamic Republic would not cheat and would not betray the vote of the people.”
Some Iranians, who spoke in return for anonymity for fear of official reprisals, said the sermon showed that Iran was in the grips of what one person called “an all-or-nothing showdown” between the authorities and reformists.
Iranians had been looking to the ayatollah’s appearance for clues as to whether the authorities were prepared to bend to opposition demands. But he showed no readiness to countenance their demands that the election be annulled or to veer from the line he has taken since he endorsed the vote almost as soon as the results were made known last Saturday.
Ayatollah Khamenei blamed “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for seeking to show divisions between those who supported the Iranian state and those who did not, while, in fact, the election had shown Iranians to be united in their commitment to the Islamic revolutionary state.
“There are 40 million votes for the revolution, not just 24 million for the chosen president,” he said, referring to the official count that gave Mr. Ahmadinejad more than 60 percent of the ballot.
He said the election “ was a competition among people who believe in the state.”
He also spoke of the religious roots of “our revolutionary society.”
“Despite all the diversions, our people are faithful,” he said, but urged young Iranians to lead more spiritual lives. “The youth are confused. Being away from spirituality has caused confusion. They don’t know what to do.”
He accused what he called arrogant Western powers, particularly Britain and the United States, of showing their hostility to the Iranian Islamic revolution in remarks casting doubt on the election. And he warned them not meddle in Iran’s affairs, accusing them of failing to understand the nature of Iranian society.
The British government, which the supreme leader singled out as the “most treacherous” of the Western powers, responded swiftly, summoning Iran’s ambassador in London to the Foreign Office to complain. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, cautious until now in its comments on the Iranian election, stepped up his public criticism.
“We are with others, including the whole of the European Union unanimously today, in condemning the use of violence, in condemning media suppression,” he told a news conference after a European Union summit in Brussels.
“It is for Iran now to show the world that the elections have been fair...that the repression and the brutality that we have seen in these last few days is not something that is going to be repeated,” Mr. Brown said, Reuters reported.
Throughout the week of protests, Iran’s leaders have offered conciliation, while simultaneously wielding repression.
On Thursday, for instance, the government offered to talk to the opposition, inviting the three losing presidential candidates to meet with the powerful Guardian Council.
But the government’s offers of modest and reluctant concessions have been accompanied by continued arrests of prominent reformers and efforts to stifle the flow of information by limiting Internet access and pressuring reporters to stay off the streets.
It was not clear whether Iran’s government, made up of fractious power centers, was pursuing a calculated strategy or if the moves reflected internal disagreements, or even an uncertainty not apparent in Ayatollah Khamenei’s address.
“Most analysts believe the outreach is just to kill time and extend this while they search for a solution, although there doesn’t seem to be any,” said a political analyst in Tehran, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “This will only be a postponement of the inevitable, which is indeed a brutal crackdown.”
It was not clear what role was being played by a former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who supported Mr. Moussavi and is in a power struggle with Ayatollah Khamenei. There were unconfirmed reports Thursday that two of his children had been banned from leaving the country because of their role in helping the protesters.
Ayatollah Khamenei devoted a section of his sermon on Friday to rebutting what he said were accusations of corruption leveled against Mr. Rafsanjani. But, he said, he believed President Ahmadinejad’s approach to foreign and social policy was “closer to what it should be.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo, and Neil MacFarquhar and Sharon Otterman from New York.
June 19, 2009, 7:56 am
Friday: Updates on Iran’s Disputed Election
By Robert Mackey
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/friday-updates-on-irans-disputed-election/
To supplement reporting by New York Times journalists inside Iran on Friday, The Lede will continue to track the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election online, as we have for the last several days. Please refresh this page throughout the day to get the latest updates at the top of your screen (updates are stamped with the time in New York). For an overview of the current situation, read the main news article on our Web site, which will be updated throughout the day.
Readers inside Iran or in touch with people there are encouraged to send us photographs — our address is: pix@nyt.com — or use the comments box below to tell us what you are seeing or hearing.
Update | 11:08 a.m. Since opposition leaders decided to call off a planned protest during Friday prayers, some Iranian bloggers are pointing to video and photographs shot earlier this week to keep their momentum going online. One blogger uploaded this photograph to TwitPic on Friday of a Farsi-language placard the blogger translates as: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. Mahatma Gandhi.”
Other bloggers who seem to be writing from inside Iran point to this video, showing highlights from Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, which has been subtitled for English speakers:
Update | 11:02 a.m. A blogger who seems to be writing from Iran noted in two updates an hour ago on the Twitter feed Oxfordgirl that speculation is widespread that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and former president of Iran, may not have appeared at Friday prayers in Tehran because he is working behind the scenes to overturn the election results:
Who not at Friday Prayers: Rafsanjani.
Where is Rafsanjani? He is organising the demise of Ahmadinejad.
Update | 10:52 a.m. In an article for The New Republic earlier this week, Abbas Milani, a professor of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, looked more closely at the power struggle that seems to be unfolding inside Iran’s clerical establishment. Mr. Milani wrote that the country’s Supreme Leader may come to regret throwing his support so firmly behind Mr. Ahmadinejad:
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — whose rule has been absolute and whose words have been the law of the land–is facing the most public challenge to his authority. His two decades since succeeding Ayatollah Khomeini have been defined by a tendency to keep his options open, a verbal dexterity that allowed him to skirt tough political positions, and an appearance of impartiality in Iran’s fierce factional feuds. His caution has been the key to his success and survival.
But Khamenei has thrown this caution to the wind by unabashedly favoring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Four years ago, his support was instrumental in getting the little-known Ahmadinejad elected president. Even as criticism of the president has been on the rise in the country over the past year, Khamenei reportedly promised Ahmadinejad and his cabinet four more years at the helm.
Mr. Milani added:
What makes this moment different from past incidents of confrontation between the regime and the people is that, this time, many pillars of the regime are part of the opposition. Aside from Mousavi, who was prime minister for eight years, Rafsanjani, former president Mohammad Khatami, former speaker of the parliament Mehdi Karubi, and many other past ministers and undersecretaries are now leading the movement demanding new elections. Moreover, since the demonstrators come from all walks of life, it is more difficult than in the past to accuse them of immaturity or youthful impertinence, or of falling prey to the designs of the “Great Satan.” [...]
The regime still has the capacity to contain the disgruntled demonstrators and maybe even co-opt their leadership. But the majestic power of large peaceful crowds, tasting the joys of victory embodied in acts of civil disobedience, and brought together by the power of technologies beyond the regime’s control, is sure to beget larger, more confident, and more disciplined crowds. When people defied Khamenei’s orders by gathering en masse on Monday, the regime’s armor of invincibility–so central to the regime’s authoritarian control–was cracked. Without it, the regime cannot survive, and reestablishing it can come only at the price of great bloodshed.
Update | 10:23 a.m. On the BBC’s dot.life technology blog, Rory Cellan-Jones posts this interesting look at how, and why, Iran’s Internet service may have been slowed but not stopped entirely.
Update | 9:59 a.m. Not all of our readers support the opposition, or our effort to report on events in Iran. Here is what a reader named Siyamak wrote in the comments thread below after Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday morning:
I heard Khamenei speak and I liked what he said which I found fair and balanced. Stop interfering with Iran!
Update | 9:55 a.m. One of our readers asks if The Times, by passing on messages about plans for opposition rallies is helping the Iranian authorities to block them. Obviously we have no first-hand knowledge of whether that is the case or not, but there are plenty of reports that suggest that Iran’s government is directly reading (and perhaps even writing) messages posted on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook by bloggers supporting the opposition movement in Iran. We also know that the rallies seem to have been organized, in part, through the use of these social-networking tools. It is also clear that each day some of the first and most powerful news of the rallies has come from the photographs and video posted online by anonymous users of these services.
The larger point, however, is that Iranian bloggers may be posting this information, often in English, on these sites precisely so that they can be easily picked up and reported by news organizations outside the control of Iran’s government. Whatever the thinking is, it is a fact that, given the nature of the Web, no information posted on these Web sites is private, whether it is described or reported on by news organizations or not. What we do know is that the people posting these messages on their anonymous social-networking accounts are making them public by doing so, and that they frequently ask that the messages be passed on. In a sense “re-tweeting” is a kind of reporting.
Importantly, we also have not seen any messages at all from bloggers who appear to be inside Iran asking that their text messages, photographs of video not be reported by news organizations. A reader of The Lede points out that one blogger writing on Twitter, under the alias Oxfordgirl, wrote earlier today in an update: “u can use my name in RTs.”
It would seem likely that if Iran’s opposition bloggers wanted to keep this information secret they would not post it online at all.
With that in mind, here is a message sent to us this morning by one of our readers, who uses the alias gb and says that he has been in touch with his family in Shiraz:
I talked to my mom today about yesterday’s sit-in in Shahe Cheraq.
She said the main problem is that it’s really hard to get the word out about where and they are meeting. She said she really didn’t know where untill an hour before and some people were arriving when the whole thing was ending.
They are going to meet tomorrow in Daneshjoo Square (formerly Alam square).
Here is video and a photograph of that protest on Thursday at the Shah-e-Cheraq shrine in Shiraz.
Update | 9:21 a.m. Since the Supreme Leader again stated on Friday that a partial recount of ballots is all that is required to settle this dispute, while the opposition says the whole process was tainted and demands a new vote, it might be worth looking at who will be doing the recount.
The New Republic pointed out this week that this man, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati Massah, “leads the Guardian Council, which runs elections and maintains the power to veto any parliamentary action it views as violating Islamic law.”
According to the New Republic’s description of him, it is not hard to understand why the opposition has little faith in a review led by him:
A hard-liner, he has called for America’s destruction multiple times, as well as George W. Bush’s decapitation. He formally endorsed Ahmadinejad, and he will run the Guardian Council’s election recount.
That information comes from a useful slide show on The New Republic’s Web site, which includes photographs and information on some of the key figures in Iran’s complex power structure who may right now be engaged in a struggle for control inside that labyrinth.
Update | 9:16 a.m. Two hours ago the blogger Persiankiwi, who has had consistently good information on the protests this week, reported via Twitter that another opposition rally is planned for Saturday:
Confirmed - Saturday Sea of Green rally - Enghelab Sq - 4pm - Mousavi, Karoubi and Khatami will attend -
Ten minutes ago the same source added:
confirmed - the Gov has refused to issue a permit for Sea of Green march at 4pm on Saturday in Tehran
Update | 9:10 a.m. The same YouTube channel that has the video of the singing at Thursday’s rally in Tehran also includes these two video clips of Mir Hussein Moussavi among his supporters:
Update | 9:07 a.m. As the opposition in Iran tries to remain united, they will point to video like this, apparently shot at Thursday’s mass rally in Tehran’s Imam Khomeni Square, of the crowd singing a patriotic song:
The YouTube user who uploaded this video says that points to this translation of the song’s lyrics on Wikipedia.
Update | 8:58 a.m. In an interview with Foreign policy magazine on Thursday, the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who is speaking for Mr. Moussavi’s campaign in Europe, made this interesting comparison between the events of 1979 and 2009 on Iran’s streets:
There are some similarities and some differences. In both situations, people were in the streets. In the [earlier] revolution, there were young people in the streets who were not as modern as the people are today. And they were in the streets following the lead of a leader, a mullah — in those times Ayatollah Khomeini. Now, the young people in the streets are more modern: They use SMS; they use the Internet. And they are not being actually led by anyone, but they are connected to each other.
In an e-mail message sent to BBC Persian on Friday, subsequently translated from Farsi and posted online, an anonymous reader of that Web site who says he is one of the opposition protesters in Iran seemed to endorse Mr. Makhmalbaf’s reading:
Whether Mir Hossein Mousavi wants it or not, we will take our vote back. This is a youth movement, it’s our movement and we will not have these men [ie all the politicians] take credit. They are threatening us with violence and they are holding Mir Hossein [Mousavi] responsible. If one drop more blood is shed from anyone, the leader of the nation will be responsible.
Update | 8:54 a.m. Here is what one student in Tehran, identified only as Behrooz, told the BBC in response to Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday:
We all know that Mr Ahmadinejad did not get 24 million votes. But Ayatollah Khamenei has just repeated that statistic as true. There’s clearly a power struggle going on between Mr [Hashemi] Rafsanjani [a former president and head of an influential body which elects the supreme leader] and Mr Khamenei. I think in the end this can only be good for us, although I think today’s speech makes it more dangerous for us to protest.
We just have to keep the demonstrations so big that they cannot attack us. If the crowd is just 2,000 strong, they can scare us with 200 soldiers. But if we are a million, what can they do?
I don’t think the Guardian Council will agree to a new election. They don’t want to lose prestige. They will agree to a recount which gives the same result.
I voted for Mr [Mehdi] Karroubi because he was the one with the best plan to change this rotten system. Maybe nothing will change for now, but I do think this is the start of some sort of revolution. Hopefully not a destructive one like in 1979. As long as we are in the street, people will know we are not satisfied.
For the moment Mr Rafsanjani is silent, and we don’t know what he’s doing. But he’s a very powerful man. He’s the leader of the Assembly of Experts which selects supreme leader. He brought Khamenei to power, so he will be the one who brings him down.
Another response, on the BBC’s Web site, comes from computer programmer in Mashhad, identified as Arash, who said:
People are being beaten up in Mashhad. There have been no demonstrations in the past two days. People wait until night to go on the roofs and shout “Allahu akbar” ["God is great] to show their support for the opposition. People from here go to Tehran to demonstrate, to be part of the bigger, safer crowds.
Update | 8:42 a.m. In his sermon on Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei attacked what he called attempts by foreign governments to stir up opposition to the election results. He seemed to be saying that reports by foreign media outlets are actually veiled attempts to overthrow his regime. Reporting on what was in part an attack on the corporation itself, the BBC, which maintains an active Farsi-language news service, explained:
He said the election was a “political earthquake” for Iran’s enemies - singling out Great Britain as “the most evil of them” - whom he accused of trying to foment unrest in the country.
“Some of our enemies in different parts of the world intended to depict this absolute victory, this definitive victory, as a doubtful victory,” the Supreme Leader said.
In its own way, the BBC was quick to strike back - passing on reaction to the Supreme Leader’s speech from users of its Web site who claimed to be inside Iran.
Update | 8:38 a.m. In a post on Bits, the New York Times’s technology blog, Miguel Helft reports:
“There is a huge amount of interest about the events in Iran,” said Franz Och, principal scientist at Google, who has been leading the development of Google Translate. “We hope that this tool will improve access to information in Iran and outside,” Mr. Och said in an interview. [...]
In a blog post, Mr. Och warned that the service is not perfect, so mistakes are possible. It is optimized to translate between Persian and English, but Google is working on improving translation between Persian and the other languages in Google Translate.
Update | 8:30 a.m. The automatic translation tool introdcued by Google on Friday was quickly used by supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi. One hour ago, Mousavi1388, a Twitter feed maintained by opposition supporters, reported:
Mousavi’s official news site GhalamNews in now available in English thanks to @GOOGLE, see http://is.gd/16b2j
In reference to reports from Twitter that we cite, we should note that, after consulting several experts, The Times has decided to include the user names for the Twitter posts that are quoted here and elsewhere on NYTimes.com. We concluded that the user names would better allow readers to judge the source and value of the posts that are quoted. The user names are already publicly available on Twitter and accessible, along with all content created on Twitter, through Twitter’s search index and on any number of third-party search engines.
Update | 8:20 a.m. Iran’s authorities are no doubt hoping that images broadcast on Iranian state television this morning, of the Supreme Leader speaking to a large number of loyal followers at Tehran University — including incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — will give many Iranian citizens the impression that the opposition protests are doomed to failure. Largely shut out by state television, and barred from speaking to the foreign press, the opposition will continue to rely on citizen journalists within the movement to get word of its protests out to other Iranians and the world through the Internet.
To that end, their efforts may be aided by the introduction of two new tools from Google and Facebook, announced on Friday. Google has sped up the release of automatic translation software that will help with translations of Internet messages to and from Farsi. On Google’s official blog, the company explained:
Today, we added Persian (Farsi) to Google Translate. This means you can now translate any text from Persian into English and from English into Persian — whether it’s a news story, a website, a blog, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message. The service is available free at http://translate.google.com.
We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyone’s access to information.
Pointing to the importance of their social-networking site in Iran, Facebook announced that they have made the entire site available to users who speak no English:
Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared has been in Persian—the native language of Iran—but people have had to navigate the site in English or other languages.
Today we’re making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian, so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.
If your browser is set to Persian, you should automatically see the Persian version of Facebook.
Update | 8:11 a.m. According to a Reuters report, there were tens of thousands “gathered in and around Tehran University to hear Khamenei’s Friday prayer sermon.” The news agency added:
People chanting slogans and holding posters of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, the father of the 1979 Islamic revolution, packed streets outside the university.
Update | 8:00 a.m. Iran’s Press TV, an English-language satellite channel financed by the Iranian government, reports that the nation’s Supreme Leader made no concessions after days of massive street protests:
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said high turnout in the election, which witnessed more than 40 million Iranians casting their votes, was a great manifestation of people’s solidarity with the Islamic establishment. Addressing Friday prayers congregation, Ayatollah Khamenei said that last Friday’s election indicated a ‘common sense of responsibility’ of the Iranian nation to determine the future of the country. [...]
The Leader said the high voter turnout in the election was a ‘political quake’ for the enemy and a ‘real celebration’ for the friends of the country. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will by no means betray the votes of the nation,” the Leader said, adding the legal system of the election will not allow any ballot rigging in Iran.
Ayatollah Khamenei, however, maintained that the Guardian Council, the body tasked with overseeing the election, would look into the complaints of the candidates who are unhappy with the election results.
The Leader also added that the establishment would never give-in to illegal demands, urging all presidential candidates to pursue their complaints through legal channels. Ayatollah Khamenei called for an end to illegal street protests aimed at reversing the result of the election.
Update | 7:54 a.m. The BBC has this video of Ayatollah Khamenei’s stern rebuke to the protesters on Friday, which was broadcast by Iranian state television.
Update | 7:51 a.m. As Nazila Fathi reports from Tehran, Iran’s ruling cleric took a firm stand against the opposition protests during a televised sermon on Friday:
In his first public response to days of protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opponents Friday to stay off the streets and denied opposition claims that last week’s disputed election was rigged, praising the ballot as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”
In a somber and lengthy sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, he called directly for an end to the protests by hundreds of thousands of Iranians demanding a new election.
“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “This is challenging democracy after the elections.” He said opposition leaders would be “held responsible for chaos” if they did not end the protests.
June 20, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/world/middleeast/20iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — In his first public response to days of mass protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opposition supporters on Friday to stay off the streets and raised the prospect of violence if the defiant, vast demonstrations continued.
Opposition leaders, he said, will be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if they do not stop further rallies.
He said he would never give in to “illegal pressures” and denied their accusations that last week’s presidential election was rigged, praising the officially declared landslide for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”
He spoke somberly for more than an hour and a half at Friday Prayer to tens of thousands of people at Tehran University, with Mr. Ahmadinejad in attendance. His sermon was broadcast over loudspeakers to throngs in the adjoining streets, and the crowds erupted repeatedly in roars of support. Opposition supporters had spread the word among themselves not to attend.
“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to a rendering by the BBC. “This questions the principles of election and democracy.”
There was no immediate response from opposition leaders.
The ominous speech sharply increased the confrontation between Iran’s rulers and supporters of the main opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who have accused the authorities of rigging the vote and called for or encouraged the huge silent marches in Tehran for the last four days. No rally was planned for Friday, and opposition supporters did not appear to be gathering impromptu.
But on Saturday, a group of reformist clerics loyal to the former President Mohammed Khatami planned to demonstrate against the election results, saying they had been given rare official permission. Some news reports, however, said that the gathering had been banned.
Ayatollah Khamenei instructed dissenters to pursue their complaints about the June 12 ballot through legal channels, insisting that the turnout — officially put at 85 percent — showed it to be a reflection of the national will.
Reiterating his Saturday affirmation of the official election results, he said that the participation, as officially reported, had shown “the hand of the Lord of ages supporting such a great development.”
“This is a sign of God’s mercy for this nation. The fate of the country should be decided in ballot boxes, not on the streets,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, framing his position as a commitment to the law and the orderly functioning of government.
“If we break the law, we will have to do it in every election and no election would be immune,” he said. “This is wrong. This is the beginning of dictatorship.”
He said that the margin of victory — 11 million votes — accorded to Mr. Ahmadinejad in the official tally was so big that it could not have been falsified.
“How can 11 million votes be replaced or changed?” he said. “The Islamic Republic would not cheat and would not betray the vote of the people.”
Some Iranians, who spoke in return for anonymity for fear of official reprisals, said the sermon showed that Iran was in the grips of what one person called “an all-or-nothing showdown” between the authorities and reformists.
Iranians had been looking to the ayatollah’s appearance for clues as to whether the authorities were prepared to bend to opposition demands. But he showed no readiness to countenance their demands that the election be annulled or to veer from the line he has taken since he endorsed the vote almost as soon as the results were made known last Saturday.
Ayatollah Khamenei blamed “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for seeking to show divisions between those who supported the Iranian state and those who did not, while, in fact, the election had shown Iranians to be united in their commitment to the Islamic revolutionary state.
“There are 40 million votes for the revolution, not just 24 million for the chosen president,” he said, referring to the official count that gave Mr. Ahmadinejad more than 60 percent of the ballot.
He said the election “ was a competition among people who believe in the state.”
He also spoke of the religious roots of “our revolutionary society.”
“Despite all the diversions, our people are faithful,” he said, but urged young Iranians to lead more spiritual lives. “The youth are confused. Being away from spirituality has caused confusion. They don’t know what to do.”
He accused what he called arrogant Western powers, particularly Britain and the United States, of showing their hostility to the Iranian Islamic revolution in remarks casting doubt on the election. And he warned them not meddle in Iran’s affairs, accusing them of failing to understand the nature of Iranian society.
The British government, which the supreme leader singled out as the “most treacherous” of the Western powers, responded swiftly, summoning Iran’s ambassador in London to the Foreign Office to complain. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, cautious until now in its comments on the Iranian election, stepped up his public criticism.
“We are with others, including the whole of the European Union unanimously today, in condemning the use of violence, in condemning media suppression,” he told a news conference after a European Union summit in Brussels.
“It is for Iran now to show the world that the elections have been fair...that the repression and the brutality that we have seen in these last few days is not something that is going to be repeated,” Mr. Brown said, Reuters reported.
Throughout the week of protests, Iran’s leaders have offered conciliation, while simultaneously wielding repression.
On Thursday, for instance, the government offered to talk to the opposition, inviting the three losing presidential candidates to meet with the powerful Guardian Council.
But the government’s offers of modest and reluctant concessions have been accompanied by continued arrests of prominent reformers and efforts to stifle the flow of information by limiting Internet access and pressuring reporters to stay off the streets.
It was not clear whether Iran’s government, made up of fractious power centers, was pursuing a calculated strategy or if the moves reflected internal disagreements, or even an uncertainty not apparent in Ayatollah Khamenei’s address.
“Most analysts believe the outreach is just to kill time and extend this while they search for a solution, although there doesn’t seem to be any,” said a political analyst in Tehran, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “This will only be a postponement of the inevitable, which is indeed a brutal crackdown.”
It was not clear what role was being played by a former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who supported Mr. Moussavi and is in a power struggle with Ayatollah Khamenei. There were unconfirmed reports Thursday that two of his children had been banned from leaving the country because of their role in helping the protesters.
Ayatollah Khamenei devoted a section of his sermon on Friday to rebutting what he said were accusations of corruption leveled against Mr. Rafsanjani. But, he said, he believed President Ahmadinejad’s approach to foreign and social policy was “closer to what it should be.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo, and Neil MacFarquhar and Sharon Otterman from New York.
June 19, 2009, 7:56 am
Friday: Updates on Iran’s Disputed Election
By Robert Mackey
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/friday-updates-on-irans-disputed-election/
To supplement reporting by New York Times journalists inside Iran on Friday, The Lede will continue to track the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election online, as we have for the last several days. Please refresh this page throughout the day to get the latest updates at the top of your screen (updates are stamped with the time in New York). For an overview of the current situation, read the main news article on our Web site, which will be updated throughout the day.
Readers inside Iran or in touch with people there are encouraged to send us photographs — our address is: pix@nyt.com — or use the comments box below to tell us what you are seeing or hearing.
Update | 11:08 a.m. Since opposition leaders decided to call off a planned protest during Friday prayers, some Iranian bloggers are pointing to video and photographs shot earlier this week to keep their momentum going online. One blogger uploaded this photograph to TwitPic on Friday of a Farsi-language placard the blogger translates as: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. Mahatma Gandhi.”
Other bloggers who seem to be writing from inside Iran point to this video, showing highlights from Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, which has been subtitled for English speakers:
Update | 11:02 a.m. A blogger who seems to be writing from Iran noted in two updates an hour ago on the Twitter feed Oxfordgirl that speculation is widespread that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and former president of Iran, may not have appeared at Friday prayers in Tehran because he is working behind the scenes to overturn the election results:
Who not at Friday Prayers: Rafsanjani.
Where is Rafsanjani? He is organising the demise of Ahmadinejad.
Update | 10:52 a.m. In an article for The New Republic earlier this week, Abbas Milani, a professor of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, looked more closely at the power struggle that seems to be unfolding inside Iran’s clerical establishment. Mr. Milani wrote that the country’s Supreme Leader may come to regret throwing his support so firmly behind Mr. Ahmadinejad:
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — whose rule has been absolute and whose words have been the law of the land–is facing the most public challenge to his authority. His two decades since succeeding Ayatollah Khomeini have been defined by a tendency to keep his options open, a verbal dexterity that allowed him to skirt tough political positions, and an appearance of impartiality in Iran’s fierce factional feuds. His caution has been the key to his success and survival.
But Khamenei has thrown this caution to the wind by unabashedly favoring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Four years ago, his support was instrumental in getting the little-known Ahmadinejad elected president. Even as criticism of the president has been on the rise in the country over the past year, Khamenei reportedly promised Ahmadinejad and his cabinet four more years at the helm.
Mr. Milani added:
What makes this moment different from past incidents of confrontation between the regime and the people is that, this time, many pillars of the regime are part of the opposition. Aside from Mousavi, who was prime minister for eight years, Rafsanjani, former president Mohammad Khatami, former speaker of the parliament Mehdi Karubi, and many other past ministers and undersecretaries are now leading the movement demanding new elections. Moreover, since the demonstrators come from all walks of life, it is more difficult than in the past to accuse them of immaturity or youthful impertinence, or of falling prey to the designs of the “Great Satan.” [...]
The regime still has the capacity to contain the disgruntled demonstrators and maybe even co-opt their leadership. But the majestic power of large peaceful crowds, tasting the joys of victory embodied in acts of civil disobedience, and brought together by the power of technologies beyond the regime’s control, is sure to beget larger, more confident, and more disciplined crowds. When people defied Khamenei’s orders by gathering en masse on Monday, the regime’s armor of invincibility–so central to the regime’s authoritarian control–was cracked. Without it, the regime cannot survive, and reestablishing it can come only at the price of great bloodshed.
Update | 10:23 a.m. On the BBC’s dot.life technology blog, Rory Cellan-Jones posts this interesting look at how, and why, Iran’s Internet service may have been slowed but not stopped entirely.
Update | 9:59 a.m. Not all of our readers support the opposition, or our effort to report on events in Iran. Here is what a reader named Siyamak wrote in the comments thread below after Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday morning:
I heard Khamenei speak and I liked what he said which I found fair and balanced. Stop interfering with Iran!
Update | 9:55 a.m. One of our readers asks if The Times, by passing on messages about plans for opposition rallies is helping the Iranian authorities to block them. Obviously we have no first-hand knowledge of whether that is the case or not, but there are plenty of reports that suggest that Iran’s government is directly reading (and perhaps even writing) messages posted on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook by bloggers supporting the opposition movement in Iran. We also know that the rallies seem to have been organized, in part, through the use of these social-networking tools. It is also clear that each day some of the first and most powerful news of the rallies has come from the photographs and video posted online by anonymous users of these services.
The larger point, however, is that Iranian bloggers may be posting this information, often in English, on these sites precisely so that they can be easily picked up and reported by news organizations outside the control of Iran’s government. Whatever the thinking is, it is a fact that, given the nature of the Web, no information posted on these Web sites is private, whether it is described or reported on by news organizations or not. What we do know is that the people posting these messages on their anonymous social-networking accounts are making them public by doing so, and that they frequently ask that the messages be passed on. In a sense “re-tweeting” is a kind of reporting.
Importantly, we also have not seen any messages at all from bloggers who appear to be inside Iran asking that their text messages, photographs of video not be reported by news organizations. A reader of The Lede points out that one blogger writing on Twitter, under the alias Oxfordgirl, wrote earlier today in an update: “u can use my name in RTs.”
It would seem likely that if Iran’s opposition bloggers wanted to keep this information secret they would not post it online at all.
With that in mind, here is a message sent to us this morning by one of our readers, who uses the alias gb and says that he has been in touch with his family in Shiraz:
I talked to my mom today about yesterday’s sit-in in Shahe Cheraq.
She said the main problem is that it’s really hard to get the word out about where and they are meeting. She said she really didn’t know where untill an hour before and some people were arriving when the whole thing was ending.
They are going to meet tomorrow in Daneshjoo Square (formerly Alam square).
Here is video and a photograph of that protest on Thursday at the Shah-e-Cheraq shrine in Shiraz.
Update | 9:21 a.m. Since the Supreme Leader again stated on Friday that a partial recount of ballots is all that is required to settle this dispute, while the opposition says the whole process was tainted and demands a new vote, it might be worth looking at who will be doing the recount.
The New Republic pointed out this week that this man, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati Massah, “leads the Guardian Council, which runs elections and maintains the power to veto any parliamentary action it views as violating Islamic law.”
According to the New Republic’s description of him, it is not hard to understand why the opposition has little faith in a review led by him:
A hard-liner, he has called for America’s destruction multiple times, as well as George W. Bush’s decapitation. He formally endorsed Ahmadinejad, and he will run the Guardian Council’s election recount.
That information comes from a useful slide show on The New Republic’s Web site, which includes photographs and information on some of the key figures in Iran’s complex power structure who may right now be engaged in a struggle for control inside that labyrinth.
Update | 9:16 a.m. Two hours ago the blogger Persiankiwi, who has had consistently good information on the protests this week, reported via Twitter that another opposition rally is planned for Saturday:
Confirmed - Saturday Sea of Green rally - Enghelab Sq - 4pm - Mousavi, Karoubi and Khatami will attend -
Ten minutes ago the same source added:
confirmed - the Gov has refused to issue a permit for Sea of Green march at 4pm on Saturday in Tehran
Update | 9:10 a.m. The same YouTube channel that has the video of the singing at Thursday’s rally in Tehran also includes these two video clips of Mir Hussein Moussavi among his supporters:
Update | 9:07 a.m. As the opposition in Iran tries to remain united, they will point to video like this, apparently shot at Thursday’s mass rally in Tehran’s Imam Khomeni Square, of the crowd singing a patriotic song:
The YouTube user who uploaded this video says that points to this translation of the song’s lyrics on Wikipedia.
Update | 8:58 a.m. In an interview with Foreign policy magazine on Thursday, the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who is speaking for Mr. Moussavi’s campaign in Europe, made this interesting comparison between the events of 1979 and 2009 on Iran’s streets:
There are some similarities and some differences. In both situations, people were in the streets. In the [earlier] revolution, there were young people in the streets who were not as modern as the people are today. And they were in the streets following the lead of a leader, a mullah — in those times Ayatollah Khomeini. Now, the young people in the streets are more modern: They use SMS; they use the Internet. And they are not being actually led by anyone, but they are connected to each other.
In an e-mail message sent to BBC Persian on Friday, subsequently translated from Farsi and posted online, an anonymous reader of that Web site who says he is one of the opposition protesters in Iran seemed to endorse Mr. Makhmalbaf’s reading:
Whether Mir Hossein Mousavi wants it or not, we will take our vote back. This is a youth movement, it’s our movement and we will not have these men [ie all the politicians] take credit. They are threatening us with violence and they are holding Mir Hossein [Mousavi] responsible. If one drop more blood is shed from anyone, the leader of the nation will be responsible.
Update | 8:54 a.m. Here is what one student in Tehran, identified only as Behrooz, told the BBC in response to Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday:
We all know that Mr Ahmadinejad did not get 24 million votes. But Ayatollah Khamenei has just repeated that statistic as true. There’s clearly a power struggle going on between Mr [Hashemi] Rafsanjani [a former president and head of an influential body which elects the supreme leader] and Mr Khamenei. I think in the end this can only be good for us, although I think today’s speech makes it more dangerous for us to protest.
We just have to keep the demonstrations so big that they cannot attack us. If the crowd is just 2,000 strong, they can scare us with 200 soldiers. But if we are a million, what can they do?
I don’t think the Guardian Council will agree to a new election. They don’t want to lose prestige. They will agree to a recount which gives the same result.
I voted for Mr [Mehdi] Karroubi because he was the one with the best plan to change this rotten system. Maybe nothing will change for now, but I do think this is the start of some sort of revolution. Hopefully not a destructive one like in 1979. As long as we are in the street, people will know we are not satisfied.
For the moment Mr Rafsanjani is silent, and we don’t know what he’s doing. But he’s a very powerful man. He’s the leader of the Assembly of Experts which selects supreme leader. He brought Khamenei to power, so he will be the one who brings him down.
Another response, on the BBC’s Web site, comes from computer programmer in Mashhad, identified as Arash, who said:
People are being beaten up in Mashhad. There have been no demonstrations in the past two days. People wait until night to go on the roofs and shout “Allahu akbar” ["God is great] to show their support for the opposition. People from here go to Tehran to demonstrate, to be part of the bigger, safer crowds.
Update | 8:42 a.m. In his sermon on Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei attacked what he called attempts by foreign governments to stir up opposition to the election results. He seemed to be saying that reports by foreign media outlets are actually veiled attempts to overthrow his regime. Reporting on what was in part an attack on the corporation itself, the BBC, which maintains an active Farsi-language news service, explained:
He said the election was a “political earthquake” for Iran’s enemies - singling out Great Britain as “the most evil of them” - whom he accused of trying to foment unrest in the country.
“Some of our enemies in different parts of the world intended to depict this absolute victory, this definitive victory, as a doubtful victory,” the Supreme Leader said.
In its own way, the BBC was quick to strike back - passing on reaction to the Supreme Leader’s speech from users of its Web site who claimed to be inside Iran.
Update | 8:38 a.m. In a post on Bits, the New York Times’s technology blog, Miguel Helft reports:
“There is a huge amount of interest about the events in Iran,” said Franz Och, principal scientist at Google, who has been leading the development of Google Translate. “We hope that this tool will improve access to information in Iran and outside,” Mr. Och said in an interview. [...]
In a blog post, Mr. Och warned that the service is not perfect, so mistakes are possible. It is optimized to translate between Persian and English, but Google is working on improving translation between Persian and the other languages in Google Translate.
Update | 8:30 a.m. The automatic translation tool introdcued by Google on Friday was quickly used by supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi. One hour ago, Mousavi1388, a Twitter feed maintained by opposition supporters, reported:
Mousavi’s official news site GhalamNews in now available in English thanks to @GOOGLE, see http://is.gd/16b2j
In reference to reports from Twitter that we cite, we should note that, after consulting several experts, The Times has decided to include the user names for the Twitter posts that are quoted here and elsewhere on NYTimes.com. We concluded that the user names would better allow readers to judge the source and value of the posts that are quoted. The user names are already publicly available on Twitter and accessible, along with all content created on Twitter, through Twitter’s search index and on any number of third-party search engines.
Update | 8:20 a.m. Iran’s authorities are no doubt hoping that images broadcast on Iranian state television this morning, of the Supreme Leader speaking to a large number of loyal followers at Tehran University — including incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — will give many Iranian citizens the impression that the opposition protests are doomed to failure. Largely shut out by state television, and barred from speaking to the foreign press, the opposition will continue to rely on citizen journalists within the movement to get word of its protests out to other Iranians and the world through the Internet.
To that end, their efforts may be aided by the introduction of two new tools from Google and Facebook, announced on Friday. Google has sped up the release of automatic translation software that will help with translations of Internet messages to and from Farsi. On Google’s official blog, the company explained:
Today, we added Persian (Farsi) to Google Translate. This means you can now translate any text from Persian into English and from English into Persian — whether it’s a news story, a website, a blog, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message. The service is available free at http://translate.google.com.
We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyone’s access to information.
Pointing to the importance of their social-networking site in Iran, Facebook announced that they have made the entire site available to users who speak no English:
Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared has been in Persian—the native language of Iran—but people have had to navigate the site in English or other languages.
Today we’re making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian, so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.
If your browser is set to Persian, you should automatically see the Persian version of Facebook.
Update | 8:11 a.m. According to a Reuters report, there were tens of thousands “gathered in and around Tehran University to hear Khamenei’s Friday prayer sermon.” The news agency added:
People chanting slogans and holding posters of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, the father of the 1979 Islamic revolution, packed streets outside the university.
Update | 8:00 a.m. Iran’s Press TV, an English-language satellite channel financed by the Iranian government, reports that the nation’s Supreme Leader made no concessions after days of massive street protests:
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said high turnout in the election, which witnessed more than 40 million Iranians casting their votes, was a great manifestation of people’s solidarity with the Islamic establishment. Addressing Friday prayers congregation, Ayatollah Khamenei said that last Friday’s election indicated a ‘common sense of responsibility’ of the Iranian nation to determine the future of the country. [...]
The Leader said the high voter turnout in the election was a ‘political quake’ for the enemy and a ‘real celebration’ for the friends of the country. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will by no means betray the votes of the nation,” the Leader said, adding the legal system of the election will not allow any ballot rigging in Iran.
Ayatollah Khamenei, however, maintained that the Guardian Council, the body tasked with overseeing the election, would look into the complaints of the candidates who are unhappy with the election results.
The Leader also added that the establishment would never give-in to illegal demands, urging all presidential candidates to pursue their complaints through legal channels. Ayatollah Khamenei called for an end to illegal street protests aimed at reversing the result of the election.
Update | 7:54 a.m. The BBC has this video of Ayatollah Khamenei’s stern rebuke to the protesters on Friday, which was broadcast by Iranian state television.
Update | 7:51 a.m. As Nazila Fathi reports from Tehran, Iran’s ruling cleric took a firm stand against the opposition protests during a televised sermon on Friday:
In his first public response to days of protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opponents Friday to stay off the streets and denied opposition claims that last week’s disputed election was rigged, praising the ballot as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”
In a somber and lengthy sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, he called directly for an end to the protests by hundreds of thousands of Iranians demanding a new election.
“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “This is challenging democracy after the elections.” He said opposition leaders would be “held responsible for chaos” if they did not end the protests.
17 June 2009
New Protest Builds as Iran Expands Its Crackdown
June 18, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and SHARON OTTERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/world/middleeast/18iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Tens of thousands of protesters massed in central Iran again Wednesday to demonstrate against the disputed presidential election, as the government expanded its crackdown on journalists to try to block their coverage of opposition activities.
The protesters marched silently down a major thoroughfare, some holding photographs of the main opposition candidate in Friday’s vote, Mir Hussein Moussavi. Others lifted their bare hands high in the air, signifying their support for Mr. Moussavi with green ribbons tied around their wrists or holding their fingers in a victory sign.
The scope and description of the demonstration was provided by participants who were reached by telephone, as well as photographs taken by participants and journalists, despite warnings by the authorities against reporting on the event. All accredited journalists in Iran have been ordered to remain in their offices.
It was the fifth day of unrest since election officials declared a landslide victory for the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents American interests in Tehran, to complain of “interventionist” statements by American officials, state-run media reported. America and Iran broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
President Obama said a day earlier that it would be counterproductive for the United States “to be seen as meddling.” But he has also said he was “deeply troubled by the violence” in Iran and that democratic values needed to be observed.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, without being specific about which comments they were reacting to, expressed displeasure, the official IRNA news agency reported. The Canadian chargé d’affaires was also summoned.
Despite the government’s attempts to block communications among the opposition, calls for more mass defiance continued.
In a message on a Web site associated with him, Mr. Moussavi called on his supporters to rally again on Thursday, and to go to their local mosques to mourn protesters killed in the demonstrations, officially numbering seven. His call directly challenged Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had urged Mr. Moussavi to work through the country’s electoral system in contesting the election results.
Iranians using the Internet messaging service Twitter had already spread the word about the silent demonstration Wednesday.
The sense of threat against the opposition was growing. Reuters reported that Mohammadreza Habibi, the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be executed under Islamic law.
“We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution,” Mr. Habibi said, according to the Fars news agency. It was not clear if his warning applied only to Isfahan, where there have been violent clashes, or the country as a whole, Reuters said.
The government’s new restrictions were directed at blocking communications between opposition supporters and any news coverage of their activities.
The Associated Press reported that the powerful Revolutionary Guards threatened to restrict the digital online media that many Iranians use to communicate among themselves and to send news of their protests overseas. In a first statement since last Friday’s vote, the Revolutionary Guards said Wednesday that Iranian Web site operators and bloggers must remove content deemed to “create tension” or face legal action, The A.P. said.
In Paris, Soazig Dollet, a spokeswoman for Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group, said at least 11 reporters had been arrested since the elections and the fate of 10 more was unclear since they may either be in hiding or under arrest.
On its Web site, the organization said Aldolfatah Soltani, a lawyer and human rights activist, had been detained along with “10 or so opposition activists, politicians and civil society figures” in Tehran and three other cities — Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz.
On Tuesday, the government revoked press credentials for foreign journalists and ordered journalists not to report from the streets. On Wednesday, government officials telephoned or sent faxes to reporters in Tehran working for foreign news organizations ordering them not to venture outside to cover events being held without an official permit. That included rallies by supporters of Mr. Moussavi and news conferences or other public events held without the government’s approval, reporters in Tehran said. At least one newspaper has stopped printing.
Government officials told journalists that they were at risk on the streets following an incident on Tuesday when a photographer was stabbed and wounded while covering a rally. Two well-known analysts, Sayeed Leylaz and Mohammad-Reza Jalaipour, were detained Wednesday and were likely to be held for several days, associates and family members said.
Defying the restrictions, new amateur video surfaced outside of Iran on Wednesday, apparently showing a government militia rampaging through a dormitory area of Tehran University late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Support for the protests came from some unusual quarters. Five Iranian soccer players, including the captain, Ali Karimi, wore green wristbands in an apparent sign of support for Mr. Moussavi at a World Cup Asian qualifying match in South Korea, The A.P. said, quoting state television.
The Fars news agency also reported that the partial recount of votes ordered Tuesday by the Guardian Council, the 12-member body of jurists which supervises elections and holds veto power over legislation in Iran, had begun. A recount of votes in Kermanshah, a Kurdish province, showed that “there has been no irregularity,” the news agency reported.
The recount, intended as a effort to meet the opposition’s concerns, has failed to halt the unrest. On Tuesday, a large protest by thousands of supporters of Mr. Moussavi stretched for miles along a major thoroughfare in Tehran. The marchers, dressed largely in black and green, marched mostly in silence, some carrying signs in English asking, “Where is my vote?”
Despite the media crackdown, extraordinary accounts about the protests in Tehran and other cities have reached the outside world. On Tuesday, many Web sites posted a wrenching video that purported to show the shooting death of a student in Isfahan in a shooting by pro-government militia members. Other videos showed limp and bleeding demonstrators in Tehran after the unprecedented protests of hundreds of thousands on Monday.
Worry over the future of Iran, a country crucially important for its oil, its proximity to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, its nuclear program and its ties to extremist groups, spilled over its borders.
In Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations atomic energy watchdog, said in a BBC interview that he believed Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons technology “to be recognized as a major power in the Middle East.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran and Sharon Otterman from New York. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.
By NAZILA FATHI and SHARON OTTERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/world/middleeast/18iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Tens of thousands of protesters massed in central Iran again Wednesday to demonstrate against the disputed presidential election, as the government expanded its crackdown on journalists to try to block their coverage of opposition activities.
The protesters marched silently down a major thoroughfare, some holding photographs of the main opposition candidate in Friday’s vote, Mir Hussein Moussavi. Others lifted their bare hands high in the air, signifying their support for Mr. Moussavi with green ribbons tied around their wrists or holding their fingers in a victory sign.
The scope and description of the demonstration was provided by participants who were reached by telephone, as well as photographs taken by participants and journalists, despite warnings by the authorities against reporting on the event. All accredited journalists in Iran have been ordered to remain in their offices.
It was the fifth day of unrest since election officials declared a landslide victory for the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents American interests in Tehran, to complain of “interventionist” statements by American officials, state-run media reported. America and Iran broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
President Obama said a day earlier that it would be counterproductive for the United States “to be seen as meddling.” But he has also said he was “deeply troubled by the violence” in Iran and that democratic values needed to be observed.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, without being specific about which comments they were reacting to, expressed displeasure, the official IRNA news agency reported. The Canadian chargé d’affaires was also summoned.
Despite the government’s attempts to block communications among the opposition, calls for more mass defiance continued.
In a message on a Web site associated with him, Mr. Moussavi called on his supporters to rally again on Thursday, and to go to their local mosques to mourn protesters killed in the demonstrations, officially numbering seven. His call directly challenged Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had urged Mr. Moussavi to work through the country’s electoral system in contesting the election results.
Iranians using the Internet messaging service Twitter had already spread the word about the silent demonstration Wednesday.
The sense of threat against the opposition was growing. Reuters reported that Mohammadreza Habibi, the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be executed under Islamic law.
“We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution,” Mr. Habibi said, according to the Fars news agency. It was not clear if his warning applied only to Isfahan, where there have been violent clashes, or the country as a whole, Reuters said.
The government’s new restrictions were directed at blocking communications between opposition supporters and any news coverage of their activities.
The Associated Press reported that the powerful Revolutionary Guards threatened to restrict the digital online media that many Iranians use to communicate among themselves and to send news of their protests overseas. In a first statement since last Friday’s vote, the Revolutionary Guards said Wednesday that Iranian Web site operators and bloggers must remove content deemed to “create tension” or face legal action, The A.P. said.
In Paris, Soazig Dollet, a spokeswoman for Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group, said at least 11 reporters had been arrested since the elections and the fate of 10 more was unclear since they may either be in hiding or under arrest.
On its Web site, the organization said Aldolfatah Soltani, a lawyer and human rights activist, had been detained along with “10 or so opposition activists, politicians and civil society figures” in Tehran and three other cities — Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz.
On Tuesday, the government revoked press credentials for foreign journalists and ordered journalists not to report from the streets. On Wednesday, government officials telephoned or sent faxes to reporters in Tehran working for foreign news organizations ordering them not to venture outside to cover events being held without an official permit. That included rallies by supporters of Mr. Moussavi and news conferences or other public events held without the government’s approval, reporters in Tehran said. At least one newspaper has stopped printing.
Government officials told journalists that they were at risk on the streets following an incident on Tuesday when a photographer was stabbed and wounded while covering a rally. Two well-known analysts, Sayeed Leylaz and Mohammad-Reza Jalaipour, were detained Wednesday and were likely to be held for several days, associates and family members said.
Defying the restrictions, new amateur video surfaced outside of Iran on Wednesday, apparently showing a government militia rampaging through a dormitory area of Tehran University late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Support for the protests came from some unusual quarters. Five Iranian soccer players, including the captain, Ali Karimi, wore green wristbands in an apparent sign of support for Mr. Moussavi at a World Cup Asian qualifying match in South Korea, The A.P. said, quoting state television.
The Fars news agency also reported that the partial recount of votes ordered Tuesday by the Guardian Council, the 12-member body of jurists which supervises elections and holds veto power over legislation in Iran, had begun. A recount of votes in Kermanshah, a Kurdish province, showed that “there has been no irregularity,” the news agency reported.
The recount, intended as a effort to meet the opposition’s concerns, has failed to halt the unrest. On Tuesday, a large protest by thousands of supporters of Mr. Moussavi stretched for miles along a major thoroughfare in Tehran. The marchers, dressed largely in black and green, marched mostly in silence, some carrying signs in English asking, “Where is my vote?”
Despite the media crackdown, extraordinary accounts about the protests in Tehran and other cities have reached the outside world. On Tuesday, many Web sites posted a wrenching video that purported to show the shooting death of a student in Isfahan in a shooting by pro-government militia members. Other videos showed limp and bleeding demonstrators in Tehran after the unprecedented protests of hundreds of thousands on Monday.
Worry over the future of Iran, a country crucially important for its oil, its proximity to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, its nuclear program and its ties to extremist groups, spilled over its borders.
In Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations atomic energy watchdog, said in a BBC interview that he believed Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons technology “to be recognized as a major power in the Middle East.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran and Sharon Otterman from New York. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.
15 June 2009
Top Cleric Calls for Inquiry as Protesters Defy Ban in Iran
June 16, 2009
By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/world/middleeast/16iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran’s disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance that appeared to be the largest anti-government demonstration in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
The march began hours after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for a inquiry into opposition claims that the election was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The ayatollah’s call — announced every 15 minutes on Iranian state radio throughout the day — was the first sign that Iran’s top leadership might be rethinking its position on the election. Mr. Khamenei announced Saturday that the election results showing a landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad were fair, but on Sunday he met with Mir Hussein Moussavi, the former prime minister and moderate who was the main opposition candidate, to listen to his concerns.
As evening fell, Iranian state television reported that shots had been fired at protesters, and Reuters, quoting an Iranian photographer, reported that the gunfire had apparently come from a compound used by the pro-government Basij militia. At least one person was reported to have been killed.
It was impossible to independently confirm these reports, which came after a day during which government security forces stood by at the edges of the avenues, allowing the demonstrators to stream past.
The silent march was a deliberate and striking contrast with the chaos of the past few days, when riot police sprayed tear gas and wielded clubs to disperse scattered bands of angry and frightened young people. In Isfahan, south of the capital, more violence broke out on Monday, with police attacking a crowd of several thousand opposition protestors with sticks and tear gas, and rioters setting fires in parts of the city.
The broad river of people in Tehran — young and old, dressed in traditional Islamic gowns and the latest Western fashions — marched slowly from Revolution Square to Freedom Square for more than three hours, many of them wearing the signature bright green ribbons of Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, and holding up their hands in victory signs. When the occasional shout or chant went up, the crowd quickly hushed them, and some held up signs bearing the word “silence.”
“These people are not seeking a revolution,” said Ali Reza, a young actor in a brown T-shirt who stood for a moment watching on the rally’s sidelines. “We don’t want this regime to fall. We want our votes to be counted, because we want reforms, we want kindness, we want friendship with the world.”
Mr. Moussavi, who had called for the rally Sunday but never received official permission for it, joined the crowd, as did Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former president. But the crowd was so vast, and communications had been so sporadic — the authorities have cut off phone and text-messaging services repeatedly in recent days — that many marchers seemed unaware they were there.
“We don’t really have a leader,” said Mahdiye, a 20-year-old student. “Moussavi wants to do something, but they won’t let him. It is dangerous for him, and we don’t want to lose him. We don’t know how far this will go.”
The protestors said they would continue, with another major rally planned for Tuesday. But it was too soon to tell whether Mr. Khamenei’s decision to launch a probe, or the government’s decision to let the silent rally proceed, would change the election results. Many in the crowd said they believed the government was simply buying time, and hoping the protests would dissipate, as smaller protest movements have in 1999 and 2003.
“Anything is possible,” said Hamid, a 50-year-old financial adviser who, like many protesters, declined to give his last name because he feared repercussions. “If the people insist on this movement, if it continues here and in other parts of Iran, the pressure will build — and maybe Ahmedinejad will be forced to resign.”
In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, said the United States is “deeply troubled” by the unrest in Iran and is concerned about allegations of ballot fraud. But he stopped short of condemning the Iran security forces for cracking down on demonstrators and said Washington does not know whether the allegations of fraud are, in fact, true.
In Moscow, meanwhile, an official at the Iranian Embassy said that Mr. Ahmadinejad had delayed a visit to Russia that was to have started Monday. The meeting, in Yekaterinburg, is of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that includes Russia, China and four Central Asian countries. He now plans to travel on Tuesday, the official said.
As concern about the vote spread among Western governments, the European Union’s 27 member states planned to issue a joint call on Iran to clarify the election outcome, Reuters reported. The French government summoned the Iranian ambassador to register concern about the fairness of the vote, and Germany planned to follow suit.
The Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, told reporters in Luxembourg, “There is a need to clarify the situation and to express our concern that a sector of the population are having difficulties in expressing its opinion.” In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called for a “transparent examination” of reports of irregularities.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he had been “closely following the situation” and welcomed the announcement that there would be some manner of investigation. “The genuine will of the Iranian people should be fully respected,” he said.
Earlier, Reuters said stick-wielding supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad clashed with marching backers of Mr. Moussavi. Other reports said some of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s followers paraded outside the British and French Embassies in Tehran following remarks by political leaders in London and Paris casting doubt on the Iranian leadership’s conduct.
There were reports of considerable violence overnight on Sunday, as opposition Web sites reported that security forces raided a dormitory at Tehran University and 15 people were injured. Between 150 and 200 students were arrested, by these accounts, but there was no immediate confirmation of the incident from the authorities. There were also reports of official action against students in the cities of Esfahan, Shiraz and Tabriz.
Iran’s Interior Ministry announced on Saturday that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won about 63 percent of the vote, after a hard-fought election campaign and the rise of a broad reform-oriented opposition that clearly had rattled Iran’s ruling elite. Opposition leaders have catalogued a list of what they call election violations and irregularities in the vote, which most observers had expected to go to a second-round runoff.
Opposition members from all the major factions were arrested late Saturday and Sunday and included the brother of a former president, Mohammad Khatami, opposition Web sites reported. Some were released after several hours.
In a press conference on Sunday, Mr. Ahmadinejad had dismissed the protestors as soccer hooligans who had lost a match, in a comment that appears to have stoked their determination.
“People feel really insulted, and nothing is worse than that,” said Azi, a 48-year-old woman in an elegant yellow headscarf who participated in the massive Monday rally. “We won’t let the regime buy time, we will hold another march tomorrow.”
At nightfall, as people moved off the streets amid reports of violence, large numbers of Tehranis took to their roofs for a second night, chanting “God is great!” and “Death to the dictator!” in neighborhoods across the city.
Reporting was contributed by Clifford J. Levy from Moscow, Alan Cowell from Paris, Sharon Otterman from New York, Victor Homola from Berlin, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/world/middleeast/16iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran’s disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance that appeared to be the largest anti-government demonstration in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
The march began hours after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for a inquiry into opposition claims that the election was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The ayatollah’s call — announced every 15 minutes on Iranian state radio throughout the day — was the first sign that Iran’s top leadership might be rethinking its position on the election. Mr. Khamenei announced Saturday that the election results showing a landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad were fair, but on Sunday he met with Mir Hussein Moussavi, the former prime minister and moderate who was the main opposition candidate, to listen to his concerns.
As evening fell, Iranian state television reported that shots had been fired at protesters, and Reuters, quoting an Iranian photographer, reported that the gunfire had apparently come from a compound used by the pro-government Basij militia. At least one person was reported to have been killed.
It was impossible to independently confirm these reports, which came after a day during which government security forces stood by at the edges of the avenues, allowing the demonstrators to stream past.
The silent march was a deliberate and striking contrast with the chaos of the past few days, when riot police sprayed tear gas and wielded clubs to disperse scattered bands of angry and frightened young people. In Isfahan, south of the capital, more violence broke out on Monday, with police attacking a crowd of several thousand opposition protestors with sticks and tear gas, and rioters setting fires in parts of the city.
The broad river of people in Tehran — young and old, dressed in traditional Islamic gowns and the latest Western fashions — marched slowly from Revolution Square to Freedom Square for more than three hours, many of them wearing the signature bright green ribbons of Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, and holding up their hands in victory signs. When the occasional shout or chant went up, the crowd quickly hushed them, and some held up signs bearing the word “silence.”
“These people are not seeking a revolution,” said Ali Reza, a young actor in a brown T-shirt who stood for a moment watching on the rally’s sidelines. “We don’t want this regime to fall. We want our votes to be counted, because we want reforms, we want kindness, we want friendship with the world.”
Mr. Moussavi, who had called for the rally Sunday but never received official permission for it, joined the crowd, as did Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former president. But the crowd was so vast, and communications had been so sporadic — the authorities have cut off phone and text-messaging services repeatedly in recent days — that many marchers seemed unaware they were there.
“We don’t really have a leader,” said Mahdiye, a 20-year-old student. “Moussavi wants to do something, but they won’t let him. It is dangerous for him, and we don’t want to lose him. We don’t know how far this will go.”
The protestors said they would continue, with another major rally planned for Tuesday. But it was too soon to tell whether Mr. Khamenei’s decision to launch a probe, or the government’s decision to let the silent rally proceed, would change the election results. Many in the crowd said they believed the government was simply buying time, and hoping the protests would dissipate, as smaller protest movements have in 1999 and 2003.
“Anything is possible,” said Hamid, a 50-year-old financial adviser who, like many protesters, declined to give his last name because he feared repercussions. “If the people insist on this movement, if it continues here and in other parts of Iran, the pressure will build — and maybe Ahmedinejad will be forced to resign.”
In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, said the United States is “deeply troubled” by the unrest in Iran and is concerned about allegations of ballot fraud. But he stopped short of condemning the Iran security forces for cracking down on demonstrators and said Washington does not know whether the allegations of fraud are, in fact, true.
In Moscow, meanwhile, an official at the Iranian Embassy said that Mr. Ahmadinejad had delayed a visit to Russia that was to have started Monday. The meeting, in Yekaterinburg, is of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that includes Russia, China and four Central Asian countries. He now plans to travel on Tuesday, the official said.
As concern about the vote spread among Western governments, the European Union’s 27 member states planned to issue a joint call on Iran to clarify the election outcome, Reuters reported. The French government summoned the Iranian ambassador to register concern about the fairness of the vote, and Germany planned to follow suit.
The Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, told reporters in Luxembourg, “There is a need to clarify the situation and to express our concern that a sector of the population are having difficulties in expressing its opinion.” In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called for a “transparent examination” of reports of irregularities.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he had been “closely following the situation” and welcomed the announcement that there would be some manner of investigation. “The genuine will of the Iranian people should be fully respected,” he said.
Earlier, Reuters said stick-wielding supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad clashed with marching backers of Mr. Moussavi. Other reports said some of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s followers paraded outside the British and French Embassies in Tehran following remarks by political leaders in London and Paris casting doubt on the Iranian leadership’s conduct.
There were reports of considerable violence overnight on Sunday, as opposition Web sites reported that security forces raided a dormitory at Tehran University and 15 people were injured. Between 150 and 200 students were arrested, by these accounts, but there was no immediate confirmation of the incident from the authorities. There were also reports of official action against students in the cities of Esfahan, Shiraz and Tabriz.
Iran’s Interior Ministry announced on Saturday that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won about 63 percent of the vote, after a hard-fought election campaign and the rise of a broad reform-oriented opposition that clearly had rattled Iran’s ruling elite. Opposition leaders have catalogued a list of what they call election violations and irregularities in the vote, which most observers had expected to go to a second-round runoff.
Opposition members from all the major factions were arrested late Saturday and Sunday and included the brother of a former president, Mohammad Khatami, opposition Web sites reported. Some were released after several hours.
In a press conference on Sunday, Mr. Ahmadinejad had dismissed the protestors as soccer hooligans who had lost a match, in a comment that appears to have stoked their determination.
“People feel really insulted, and nothing is worse than that,” said Azi, a 48-year-old woman in an elegant yellow headscarf who participated in the massive Monday rally. “We won’t let the regime buy time, we will hold another march tomorrow.”
At nightfall, as people moved off the streets amid reports of violence, large numbers of Tehranis took to their roofs for a second night, chanting “God is great!” and “Death to the dictator!” in neighborhoods across the city.
Reporting was contributed by Clifford J. Levy from Moscow, Alan Cowell from Paris, Sharon Otterman from New York, Victor Homola from Berlin, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
24 April 2009
Action Alert: Journalist Jailed in Iran
Please join feminists and human rights activist worldwide in urging the Iranian government to commute the sentence of journalist Roxana Saberi.
Saberi was initially arrested in February, purportedly for working without press credentials. In March, she was charged with espionage and being an American spy. She was sentenced to 8 years in prison after a one day, closed-door trial.
Iran's Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi will defend Roxana Saberi during her appeal. We must stand behind Dr. Ebadi and Saberi at this critical time!
No evidence against Saberi has been released by the Iranian government. It is increasingly evident that the charges against her are baseless and reports indicate that she may have been forced to make incriminating statements while imprisoned.
Write to urge Iran's reversal of Saberi's sentence and her immediate release from prison.
We have asked for your help before to seek the release by the Iranian government of Dr. Shirin Ebadi's secretary, Jinus Sobhani. Your messages made a difference and Sobhani was released. We are asking you to help again.
Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene immediately to free Roxana Saberi from prison and commute her unjust sentence.
Saberi was initially arrested in February, purportedly for working without press credentials. In March, she was charged with espionage and being an American spy. She was sentenced to 8 years in prison after a one day, closed-door trial.
Iran's Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi will defend Roxana Saberi during her appeal. We must stand behind Dr. Ebadi and Saberi at this critical time!
No evidence against Saberi has been released by the Iranian government. It is increasingly evident that the charges against her are baseless and reports indicate that she may have been forced to make incriminating statements while imprisoned.
Write to urge Iran's reversal of Saberi's sentence and her immediate release from prison.
We have asked for your help before to seek the release by the Iranian government of Dr. Shirin Ebadi's secretary, Jinus Sobhani. Your messages made a difference and Sobhani was released. We are asking you to help again.
Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene immediately to free Roxana Saberi from prison and commute her unjust sentence.
17 March 2009
Action Alert: Jinus Sobhani Released from Prison
Good news! Iran's Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi's secretary, Jinus Sobhani, has been released from prison on bail. Sobhani had been detained in solitary confinement since January 14 without access to a lawyer. Now we must make sure 60-year-old Alieh Eghdamdoust is freed. She was recently imprisoned for her participation in a peaceful protest against Iran's discriminatory laws towards women some three years ago. She was among seventy women arrested for this "crime" and is now having to serve a three-year prison sentence.
This news comes after alarming series of attacks against women's rights and human rights leaders by the Iranian government. Join feminist activists worldwide in urging Iranian leaders and the United Nations to pressure the Iranian government to stop harassing women's rights activists.
Late last year, Dr. Ebadi's Center for the Defense of Human Rights, where Sobhani worked, was forcibly closed. Following this, Ebadi's personal property was seized, her home was vandalized by an angry mob and Sobhani was arrested.
Help put an end to this harassment. Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene now to free Eghdamdoust from prison and to re-open Dr. Ebadi's center immediately!
This news comes after alarming series of attacks against women's rights and human rights leaders by the Iranian government. Join feminist activists worldwide in urging Iranian leaders and the United Nations to pressure the Iranian government to stop harassing women's rights activists.
Late last year, Dr. Ebadi's Center for the Defense of Human Rights, where Sobhani worked, was forcibly closed. Following this, Ebadi's personal property was seized, her home was vandalized by an angry mob and Sobhani was arrested.
Help put an end to this harassment. Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene now to free Eghdamdoust from prison and to re-open Dr. Ebadi's center immediately!
10 July 2008
Report: Iran test-fires more missiles
Rice warns Tehran that U.S. will not renege on pledge to protect Israel
MSNBC News Services
updated 6:21 a.m. ET, Thurs., July. 10, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran test-fired more long-range missiles overnight in a second round of exercises meant to show that the country can defend itself against any attack by the United States or Israel, Iranian state television reported Thursday.
The weapons have “special capabilities” and included missiles launched from naval ships in the Persian Gulf, along with torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles, the broadcast said. It did not elaborate.
A brief video clip showed two missiles being fired simultaneously in the darkness.
‘We will defend American interests’
The launches come hours after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran that Washington will not back down in the face of threats against Israel.
“We are sending a message to Iran that we will defend American interests and the interests of our allies,” Rice said Thursday in Georgia at the close of a three-day Eastern European trip.
“We take very, very strongly our obligation to help our allies defend themselves and no one should be confused about that,” Rice said after meeting Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Among the missiles Iran said it tested Wednesday was a new version of the Shahab-3, which officials have said has a range of 1,250 miles and is armed with a 1-ton conventional warhead.
That would put Israel, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan all within striking distance.
Wednesday’s missile tests were conducted at the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about 40 percent of the world’s oil passes. Iran has threatened to shut down traffic in the strait if attacked.
Iranian state TV and radio said that Thursday's missile tests took place during the night into Thursday.
“Deep in the Persian Gulf waters, the launch of different types of ground-to-sea, surface-to-surface, sea-to-air and the powerful launch of the Hout missile successfully took place,” state radio said without giving further details of the missiles.
Iranian satellite channel Press TV said Hout was a torpedo.
Oil prices jumped on news of Wednesday’s tests, rising $1.44 to $137.48 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25617591/
MSNBC News Services
updated 6:21 a.m. ET, Thurs., July. 10, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran test-fired more long-range missiles overnight in a second round of exercises meant to show that the country can defend itself against any attack by the United States or Israel, Iranian state television reported Thursday.
The weapons have “special capabilities” and included missiles launched from naval ships in the Persian Gulf, along with torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles, the broadcast said. It did not elaborate.
A brief video clip showed two missiles being fired simultaneously in the darkness.
‘We will defend American interests’
The launches come hours after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran that Washington will not back down in the face of threats against Israel.
“We are sending a message to Iran that we will defend American interests and the interests of our allies,” Rice said Thursday in Georgia at the close of a three-day Eastern European trip.
“We take very, very strongly our obligation to help our allies defend themselves and no one should be confused about that,” Rice said after meeting Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Among the missiles Iran said it tested Wednesday was a new version of the Shahab-3, which officials have said has a range of 1,250 miles and is armed with a 1-ton conventional warhead.
That would put Israel, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan all within striking distance.
Wednesday’s missile tests were conducted at the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about 40 percent of the world’s oil passes. Iran has threatened to shut down traffic in the strait if attacked.
Iranian state TV and radio said that Thursday's missile tests took place during the night into Thursday.
“Deep in the Persian Gulf waters, the launch of different types of ground-to-sea, surface-to-surface, sea-to-air and the powerful launch of the Hout missile successfully took place,” state radio said without giving further details of the missiles.
Iranian satellite channel Press TV said Hout was a torpedo.
Oil prices jumped on news of Wednesday’s tests, rising $1.44 to $137.48 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25617591/
08 July 2008
Iran: Attack us and U.S. interests will 'burn'
BREAKING NEWS
updated 55 minutes ago
U.S., Czech Republic sign missile agreement
Countries agree defense shield will be based in the former Soviet territory
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The United States and the Czech Republic have signed an initial agreement to begin basing part of a U.S. missile shield in the former Soviet territory.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday in Prague that the shield is a good deal for the Czech Republic and for Poland, where the United States hopes to place another part of the system, though Warsaw hasn't yet agreed.
Rice said the next American president will have to decide whether and how to go forward with the missile defense system, but she made the case that the threat from Iran is growing and it is hard to imagine any administration giving up an effective deterrent.
Aide to top cleric warns that Tel Aviv, American ships will also be targeted
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25580681/
Reuters
updated 5:37 a.m. ET, Tues., July. 8, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran will hit Tel Aviv, U.S. shipping in the Gulf and American interests around the world if it is attacked over its disputed nuclear activities, an aide to Iran's Supreme Leader was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
"The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning down its vital interests around the globe," the students news agency ISNA quoted Ali Shirazi as saying in a speech to Revolutionary Guards.
"The Zionist regime is pressuring White House officials to attack Iran. If they commit such a stupidity, Tel Aviv and U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf will be Iran's first targets and they will be burned," Shirazi was quoted as saying.
Shirazi, a mid-level cleric, is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the Revolutionary Guards.
'Jihad and martyrdom'
"The Iranian nation will never accept bullying. The Iranian nation is a nation of believers which believes in jihad and martyrdom. No army in the world can confront it," he added.
In Jerusalem, Arye Mekel, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, declined to comment on Shirazi's remarks.
Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, has vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb.
The United States says it wants to resolve the dispute by diplomacy but has not ruled out military action.
Iran says its nuclear activities are only to produce energy for civil use, not to make bombs.
Meanwhile, Iran started war games on Monday and its president rejected a demand by major powers that it stop enriching uranium as "illegitimate".
Missile units of the elite Revolutionary Guards' naval and air forces began war games, Iranian news agencies said, hours after the U.S. Navy said it had begun exercises in the Gulf.
Speculation about an attack on the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter over its nuclear program rose after a report last month said Israel had practiced such a strike. Fears of military confrontation helped send world oil prices to record highs.
Covert weapons program?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday his country would not stop enriching uranium, work which Tehran says is aimed at generating power but which the West fears may be part of a covert nuclear weapons program.
It was Ahmadinejad's first comment on the dispute since Iran delivered its response on Friday to a package of incentives offered by world powers seeking to curb its nuclear activities. Details of the response were not made public.
"They offer to hold talks but at the same time they threaten us and say we should accept their illegitimate demand to halt (enrichment work)," Ahmadinejad told reporters in Malaysia, where he was attending a summit of eight developing countries.
"They want us to abandon our right (to nuclear technology)," the president said.
'New environment'
By contrast, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki spoke during the weekend of a "new environment" for diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program.
The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany demand that Iran suspend its enrichment work before formal talks can start on their revised package of incentives, which includes help to develop a civilian nuclear program.
Tehran has repeatedly refused to stop producing enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants, or, if refined much more, can provide material for nuclear weapons.
The offer of trade and other incentives proposed by the world powers was presented last month by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Iran has put forward its own bundle of proposals aimed at resolving the dispute and has said it was encouraged by common points between the two separate packages.
So far the Iranian government's formal response to the latest offer has not been made public and there have been mixed signals in statements by its senior officials.
updated 55 minutes ago
U.S., Czech Republic sign missile agreement
Countries agree defense shield will be based in the former Soviet territory
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The United States and the Czech Republic have signed an initial agreement to begin basing part of a U.S. missile shield in the former Soviet territory.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday in Prague that the shield is a good deal for the Czech Republic and for Poland, where the United States hopes to place another part of the system, though Warsaw hasn't yet agreed.
Rice said the next American president will have to decide whether and how to go forward with the missile defense system, but she made the case that the threat from Iran is growing and it is hard to imagine any administration giving up an effective deterrent.
Aide to top cleric warns that Tel Aviv, American ships will also be targeted
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25580681/
Reuters
updated 5:37 a.m. ET, Tues., July. 8, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran will hit Tel Aviv, U.S. shipping in the Gulf and American interests around the world if it is attacked over its disputed nuclear activities, an aide to Iran's Supreme Leader was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
"The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning down its vital interests around the globe," the students news agency ISNA quoted Ali Shirazi as saying in a speech to Revolutionary Guards.
"The Zionist regime is pressuring White House officials to attack Iran. If they commit such a stupidity, Tel Aviv and U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf will be Iran's first targets and they will be burned," Shirazi was quoted as saying.
Shirazi, a mid-level cleric, is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the Revolutionary Guards.
'Jihad and martyrdom'
"The Iranian nation will never accept bullying. The Iranian nation is a nation of believers which believes in jihad and martyrdom. No army in the world can confront it," he added.
In Jerusalem, Arye Mekel, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, declined to comment on Shirazi's remarks.
Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, has vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb.
The United States says it wants to resolve the dispute by diplomacy but has not ruled out military action.
Iran says its nuclear activities are only to produce energy for civil use, not to make bombs.
Meanwhile, Iran started war games on Monday and its president rejected a demand by major powers that it stop enriching uranium as "illegitimate".
Missile units of the elite Revolutionary Guards' naval and air forces began war games, Iranian news agencies said, hours after the U.S. Navy said it had begun exercises in the Gulf.
Speculation about an attack on the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter over its nuclear program rose after a report last month said Israel had practiced such a strike. Fears of military confrontation helped send world oil prices to record highs.
Covert weapons program?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday his country would not stop enriching uranium, work which Tehran says is aimed at generating power but which the West fears may be part of a covert nuclear weapons program.
It was Ahmadinejad's first comment on the dispute since Iran delivered its response on Friday to a package of incentives offered by world powers seeking to curb its nuclear activities. Details of the response were not made public.
"They offer to hold talks but at the same time they threaten us and say we should accept their illegitimate demand to halt (enrichment work)," Ahmadinejad told reporters in Malaysia, where he was attending a summit of eight developing countries.
"They want us to abandon our right (to nuclear technology)," the president said.
'New environment'
By contrast, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki spoke during the weekend of a "new environment" for diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program.
The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany demand that Iran suspend its enrichment work before formal talks can start on their revised package of incentives, which includes help to develop a civilian nuclear program.
Tehran has repeatedly refused to stop producing enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants, or, if refined much more, can provide material for nuclear weapons.
The offer of trade and other incentives proposed by the world powers was presented last month by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Iran has put forward its own bundle of proposals aimed at resolving the dispute and has said it was encouraged by common points between the two separate packages.
So far the Iranian government's formal response to the latest offer has not been made public and there have been mixed signals in statements by its senior officials.
30 May 2008
Life in Iran, Etched With Suspicion and Humor
By KAREN ROSENBERG
Decades before Marjane Satrapi drew the first frame of her celebrated comic book memoir “Persepolis,” the Iranian satirist Ardeshir Mohassess, now 69, was making black-and-white drawings whose blend of humor and reportage made him a cult figure for artists and intellectuals in his country. With rich allusions to Persian miniatures, Western artists like Goya and episodes in Iranian history, Mr. Mohassess has depicted life in Iran before, during and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The drawings have a fanciful yet descriptive line quality, comically exaggerating facial expressions while giving full weight to bullet holes and severed limbs. Some of the meanings may be lost on American viewers, but the artist’s deep suspicion of religious and political authority comes across clearly.
Now some 70 of Mr. Mohassess’s works are on view at the Asia Society and Museum in a show, “Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran,” assembled by the artists Shirin Neshat and Nicky Nodjoumi. The timing could hardly be better, given Iran’s high profile in the American political debate during this presidential election year.
Ms. Neshat and Mr. Nodjoumi, who were born in Iran and now work in New York, first saw Mr. Mohassess’s drawings in Iranian newspapers before the revolution. They say they felt the need to reintroduce him to Western viewers after the Museum of Modern Art mounted the 2006 exhibition “Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking,” a group show that presented Ms. Neshat, Ms. Satrapi and other artists from the Islamic world alongside the Americans Bill Viola and Mike Kelley and was widely criticized for making superficial connections between cultures.
Ms. Neshat, whose films and photographs explore women’s place in Iranian society, is particularly fond of Mr. Mohassess’s drawings of women. In an untitled work from 1978, a rose grows out of a chador; the end of the stem disappears into the opening where the woman’s face should be. A similarly arresting image, “Mother’s Day” (about 1980), features a thorny branch in place of the flower. Both works suggest resistance to the muffling of women’s voices.
Mr. Nodjoumi, a painter who works in a figurative style with plenty of political symbolism, says he admires the broad visual and historical literacy of Mr. Mohassess’s satire, in which references to Daumier and the Qajar dynasty are equally at home.
Unlike a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammed, Mr. Mohassess’s drawings have not inspired any riots. But they did attract the attention of the shah’s dreaded secret police in the 1970s. After receiving several warnings from the Iranian authorities Mr. Mohassess relocated to New York in 1976. The move was intended to be temporary, but the revolution of 1979 prompted a change of plans.
The exhibition effectively begins with the series “Life in Iran” (1976-78). This group of more than 30 drawings is ostensibly set in the Qajar dynasty (1833-1925), but it clearly satirizes the reign of the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1941 to 1979). Royal figures in elaborate Qajar dress quash uprisings with acts of intimidation and brutality.
Artists, writers, teachers and free thinkers are among the oppressed. Ironic captions — “The convict’s execution coincided with the king’s birthday ceremonies,” for example, or “Members of a birth control seminar take a memorial picture” — pick up where Mr. Mohassess’s pen leaves off.
In one of the largest and most powerful works, a wedding has been interrupted by an oil truck crashing through the wall. The guests, some in chadors and others in Western clothing, seem to have been immobilized by this turn of events. The scene is farcical except for the bodies of the toppled bride and groom and the nooses dangling overhead.
Mr. Mohassess often works from photographs, lending his scenes of executions and “accidents” a grim authenticity. In an interview in the small exhibition catalog he admits to collecting “photographs of murderers and murdered people, a habit I have had since I was 7 or 8 years old.” He also collects images from the Qajar period, a source for the feathered and jeweled headdresses and embroidered tunics worn by the loutish royals and lackeys in his art.
Several drawings that Mr. Mohassess made after the revolution imbue single figures with disturbing symbolism. In “A Letter From Shiraz” (1982) a turbaned figure draws a picture of his own amputated feet; the upturned stumps of his legs serve as pedestals for them. The garden setting signifies “paradise on earth” in traditional Persian miniature painting; here it unites creation with self-mutilation.
In the ’80s, after a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Mohassess started creating collages from black-and-white photocopies of his earlier works, particularly those based on Qajar sources. He also adopted a simpler style, outlining clusters of small figures. In these works his pen, though shaky, depicts hangings and torture scenes in unnerving detail.
Given that his work is found in newspapers and magazines as well as on gallery walls, Westerners might tend to think of Mr. Mohassess, in the simplest terms, as Iran’s answer to Saul Steinberg. His drawings have been published in The New York Times as well as in the Nation and Playboy. Yet they are more ambiguous than typical op-ed illustrations and more subtle than most political cartoons. In Mr. Mohassess’s works, the coded beauty of traditional Persian art comes face to face with the ugliness of successive autocratic regimes.
“Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran” is on view through Aug. 3 at Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/arts/design/30sati.html?ref=arts
23 May 2008
Shirin Neshat & Others
Did anyone see this show in 2006? Has anyone seen Neshat's new movie? If anyone has the catalogue and are interested in selling it let me know!!!
Non-Western artists have made quite a breakthrough in recent history, as far as becoming a part of the mainstream art world. Five years in the making, the Museum of Modern Art's exibition proves that the canvas has definitively become even more culturally diversified. The following is MoMA's description of their current exhibit from their website. A photo slide show essay follows from Slate magazine, offering some insightful criticism of this complex and intriguing exhibition.
Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking
February 26–May 22, 2006
Art on left by: Shirin Neshat (b. 1957 in Qazvin, Iran, lives and works in New York)
Untitled
1996
RC print and ink, 67 x 48" (170.2 x 121.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York. © Shirin Neshat. Photograph: Larry Barns. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York
The Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA-NYC) has a write up on the Exhibit which appears below:
An ever-increasing number of artists, such as Mona Hatoum, Shirin Neshat, and Shahzia Sikander, have come from the Islamic world to live in Europe and the United States. Without Boundary brings together some of these major contemporary voices. The exhibition features the work of artists of diverse backgrounds—Algerian, Egyptian, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Pakistani, Palestinian, and Turkish—across a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, animation, photography, carpet and textile, and comic strips.
The exhibition seeks to emphasize diversity by questioning the use of artists’ origins as the sole determining factor in the consideration of their art. To examine the various ways in which these artists’ works diverge from popular expectations, the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue examine the visual treatment of texts and miniature painting on one hand, and issues of identity and faith or spirituality on the other. The intention is not to imply uniformity based on a collective identity but rather to highlight complex, idiosyncratic approaches. Works by Mike Kelley and Bill Viola, two American artists, are included to prevent simplistic conclusions based purely on origin. Other artists featured include Jananne Al-Ani, Ghada Amer, Kutlug Ataman, the Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horne, Emily Jacir, Y.Z. Kami, Rachid Koraïchi, Marjane Satrapi, Shirana Shahbazi, and Raqib Shaw.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Fereshteh Daftari and Homi Bhabha (Harvard), with a prose piece by novelist Orhan Pamuk.
Here is an excerpt from Slate Magazine:
The conception underlying the show is confused and self-contradictory. Yet most of the art itself—including [this image] (shown above) by photographer Shirin Neshat—is powerful, original, stunning. It might seem captious to criticize a curatorial framework that brings mind-opening work to a wider public. But unfortunately, the show's context will shape perceptions of the art within it. The show's curator, Fereshteh Daftari, describes the exhibition's premises like this: "We often think of artists in terms of their origins. … This is problematic with artists from the Islamic world, particularly in light of the intense attention currently devoted to Islam from the West." Daftari points out that the Islamic world in fact "stretches from Indonesia to the Atlantic coast of Africa," adding that "Without Boundary sets out to look at the work of a number of artists who come from the Islamic world but do not live there. Only active consideration of this kind will slow down the race toward simplistic conclusions and binary thinking." Let me try to explain why, for all the curator's doubtlessly good intentions, the show's muddled premise does a disservice to its art. No doubt, as Daftari writes, there has never been a better time to use an art exhibition to prove the diversity of Islamic culture. The dichotomy of a "clash of civilizations" that shapes American foreign policy is inaccurate and crude. The hope would be that such a show might reveal the delicate spirituality of Islamic art and that this disclosure might soften the impression of militancy and fanaticism as the sole qualities of the Muslim world. Alas, "Without Boundary" lacks the thoughtful complexity that would illuminate such tangled issues.
The complete slide-show essay compiled by Slate on this Exhibition can be viewed in its entirety here: East Meets West: Why MoMA's new show doesn't help us understand Islam. (by Lee Siegel).
http://boundlessmeanderings.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/new-art-exhibition-at-moma-islamic-or-not/
Non-Western artists have made quite a breakthrough in recent history, as far as becoming a part of the mainstream art world. Five years in the making, the Museum of Modern Art's exibition proves that the canvas has definitively become even more culturally diversified. The following is MoMA's description of their current exhibit from their website. A photo slide show essay follows from Slate magazine, offering some insightful criticism of this complex and intriguing exhibition.
Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking
February 26–May 22, 2006
Art on left by: Shirin Neshat (b. 1957 in Qazvin, Iran, lives and works in New York)
Untitled
1996
RC print and ink, 67 x 48" (170.2 x 121.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York. © Shirin Neshat. Photograph: Larry Barns. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York
The Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA-NYC) has a write up on the Exhibit which appears below:
An ever-increasing number of artists, such as Mona Hatoum, Shirin Neshat, and Shahzia Sikander, have come from the Islamic world to live in Europe and the United States. Without Boundary brings together some of these major contemporary voices. The exhibition features the work of artists of diverse backgrounds—Algerian, Egyptian, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Pakistani, Palestinian, and Turkish—across a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, animation, photography, carpet and textile, and comic strips.
The exhibition seeks to emphasize diversity by questioning the use of artists’ origins as the sole determining factor in the consideration of their art. To examine the various ways in which these artists’ works diverge from popular expectations, the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue examine the visual treatment of texts and miniature painting on one hand, and issues of identity and faith or spirituality on the other. The intention is not to imply uniformity based on a collective identity but rather to highlight complex, idiosyncratic approaches. Works by Mike Kelley and Bill Viola, two American artists, are included to prevent simplistic conclusions based purely on origin. Other artists featured include Jananne Al-Ani, Ghada Amer, Kutlug Ataman, the Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horne, Emily Jacir, Y.Z. Kami, Rachid Koraïchi, Marjane Satrapi, Shirana Shahbazi, and Raqib Shaw.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Fereshteh Daftari and Homi Bhabha (Harvard), with a prose piece by novelist Orhan Pamuk.
Here is an excerpt from Slate Magazine:
The conception underlying the show is confused and self-contradictory. Yet most of the art itself—including [this image] (shown above) by photographer Shirin Neshat—is powerful, original, stunning. It might seem captious to criticize a curatorial framework that brings mind-opening work to a wider public. But unfortunately, the show's context will shape perceptions of the art within it. The show's curator, Fereshteh Daftari, describes the exhibition's premises like this: "We often think of artists in terms of their origins. … This is problematic with artists from the Islamic world, particularly in light of the intense attention currently devoted to Islam from the West." Daftari points out that the Islamic world in fact "stretches from Indonesia to the Atlantic coast of Africa," adding that "Without Boundary sets out to look at the work of a number of artists who come from the Islamic world but do not live there. Only active consideration of this kind will slow down the race toward simplistic conclusions and binary thinking." Let me try to explain why, for all the curator's doubtlessly good intentions, the show's muddled premise does a disservice to its art. No doubt, as Daftari writes, there has never been a better time to use an art exhibition to prove the diversity of Islamic culture. The dichotomy of a "clash of civilizations" that shapes American foreign policy is inaccurate and crude. The hope would be that such a show might reveal the delicate spirituality of Islamic art and that this disclosure might soften the impression of militancy and fanaticism as the sole qualities of the Muslim world. Alas, "Without Boundary" lacks the thoughtful complexity that would illuminate such tangled issues.
The complete slide-show essay compiled by Slate on this Exhibition can be viewed in its entirety here: East Meets West: Why MoMA's new show doesn't help us understand Islam. (by Lee Siegel).
http://boundlessmeanderings.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/new-art-exhibition-at-moma-islamic-or-not/
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