Iran’s Greens seek to fire up support.

By Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Monavar Khalaj in Tehran

Iran’s opposition Green Movement is seeking to capitalise on the youth protests that ended the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak to re-energise its supporters by calling for a rally on Monday to express solidarity with Egyptians.

Iran’s rulers have strongly backed this year’s uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt by labelling it an Islamic movement against western-backed dictators and likening it to the 1979 revolution in Iran

However, the Islamic regime in Tehran, which faced the biggest unrest against its rule after a disputed presidential election in June 2009, is seeking to block Monday’s demonstration and has labelled it a conspiracy by its opponents.

Hossein Hamedani, a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard, said his forces would crush any possible protests on Monday. Kayhan, the hardline newspaper, threatened the Green Movement supporters with death.

The judiciary has vowed to practise no tolerance and urged all Iranians to join Friday’s rally on the 32nd anniversary of the revolution. Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president, said in a speech, it was Egyptians’ “right” to be “free” and choose their rulers. He insisted that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt would lead to a “new Middle East” where the US and Israel had no place.

Iran’s regime has embarked on arrests and threats in a move to prevent any revival of street protests after Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two main opposition leaders, urged the government last week to issue a permit so Iranians could rally in support of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Mr Karroubi has been under house arrest since Thursday, unable even to see his children with limited access to telephone, according to opposition websites.

There were no reports on any new restrictions on Mr Moussavi other than the semi-house arrest he has been enduring for months.

At least eight reformist politicians and journalists, including a former minister of welfare who is also the brother-in-law of Mr Moussavi, have been detained since Wednesday.

It has been about a year since the last major post-election street protests in Iran. Tehran responded to seven months of protests with a brutal crackdown that saw thousands arrested and dozens of people killed.

Supporters of Mr Moussavi and Mr Karroubi on their blogs, Facebook and Twitter posts have started encouraging people not to be scared of any crackdown. Iran’s reformists regret that they faced much more brutality in Iran in comparison with Egyptians and Tunisians.

Mr Karroubi said “the worst and most brutal methods were adopted against Iran’s opposition but the violence in Egypt was normal for a dictatorial regime”.

The US has rejected Iran’s official stances toward Egypt. “For all of its empty talk about Egypt, the government of Iran should allow the Iranian people the same universal right to peacefully assemble and demonstrate in Tehran that the people are exercising in Cairo,” the White House said on Thursday

IRG warn opposition against rally

TEHRAN — The Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday warned opposition leaders not to stage a rally after the anniversary of Iran’s Islamic revolution, as a top official said the planned event aimed to sow division.

Iran’s judiciary chief said opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi were walking free only because their arrest after the disputed June 2009 presidential poll would have made them appear to be “saints.”

Their plan to stage a rally next Monday was a ploy by Iran’s “enemy,” as happens each at around the time of the revolution’s anniversary, which falls on February 11, said Guards commander Hossein Hamedani.

“The seditionists (opposition leaders) are nothing but a dead corpse and we will strongly confront any of their movements,” Hamedani told the state news agency IRNA.

“We definitely consider them as anti-revolutionary and spies, and we will strongly confront them,” he said of protesters against the election results.

The warning from Hamedani, whose division was in charge of Tehran’s security during the unrest after the election, comes after Mousavi and Karroubi sought permission to hold a rally in support of Arab uprisings.

But critics have termed the rally a ploy to stage fresh protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, of the kind unseen on Tehran streets since last year’s Islamic revolution anniversary.

Apart from planning the rally, Mousavi and Karroubi, once seen as pillars of Iran’s Islamic regime, also launched a scathing attack on the regime, saying the nation was being ruled by “hooligans”.

In a joint statement posted on their respective websites on Tuesday, they said the Islamic republic has been “most hurt” by the “anti-religion and oppressive behaviour of the regime itself.”

They called for “an end to the rule of hooligans and to instil meritocracy.”

But the country’s prosecutor general, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, said the aim of the two leaders in trying to organise such a rally was to divide the Iranian people.

“This is a political act. These people have separated their path from that of the people and they want to divide the people of Iran,” Mohseni Ejeie said, quoted by ILNA news agency.

Mohseni Ejeie said if the two leaders want to support the Arab uprisings they should join a government-endorsed rally on Friday marking the anniversary of Iran’s 1979 revolution.

“If anybody wants to side with the wishes of the people’s of Egypt and Tunisia, they should come along with the establishment and people on 22 Bahman (February 11) and take part in the rally,” Mohseni Ejeie said.

Iranian officials have expressed support for Egyptian protesters, with the nation’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calling for the establishment of an Islamic regime in the Arab world’s most populous nation.

Iran’s judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, meanwhile, said the fate of the two opposition leaders was in the hands of Khamenei.

“In the case of sedition leaders … taking a decision is not only up to me, but … on the vali e-faqhi (supreme leader) and it is beyond the judiciary’s decisions,” he said.

“If we had confronted the heads of sedition, they would have become saints. The arrest of sedition leaders is not a special case but we follow the expediency of the system and we will take action at the right time.”

Khamenei, who has the final say on all national issues, has regularly attacked Mousavi and Karroubi and even accused them of being supported by Iran’s Western foes.

Most of the top aides of Mousavi and Karroubi have been arrested in the aftermath of the election, with many sentenced to harsh jail terms. The two themselves have reportedly been intimidated by hardliners on several occasions.

The election unrest which erupted in 2009 sparked one of the worst crises in the Islamic republic’s history, with dozens killed in clashes between protesters and security forces, hundreds wounded and thousands detained.

Mousavi and Karroubi, who contested the poll against Ahmadinejad, maintain the hardliner was re-elected by massive fraud.

2011 AFP

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