Ali Khamenei

[Rasputin]

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced a rare backlash from some of the country's most powerful officials today after a furious television debate in which he labelled many of his critics corrupt.

In the most significant development, Ahmadinejad appeared to have irked the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over his performance in Wednesday night's debate with Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main opponent in next week's presidential election.

"One doesn't like to see a nominee, for the sake of proving himself, seeking to negate somebody else," Khamenei said in a speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of the Iranian revolution's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. "I have no problem with debate, dialogue and criticism but these debates must take place within a religious framework."

Khamenei has previously given Ahmadinejad his public backing and his support is considered essential if the president is to win a second term. Ahmadinejad may have been relieved to note that the supreme leader also found fault with his rival's rhetoric, particularly a segment where Mousavi criticised the incumbent for his "extremist" foreign policy.

"I do not accept the sayings of those who imagine that our nation has become belittled in the world because of its commitment to its principles," Khamenei said, adding "this path will continue until final victory".

Ahmadinejad's accusations of corruption prompted a string of senior figures – including former president Hashemi Rafsanjani – to demand a right of reply.

Apparently trailing in the opinion polls, Ahmadinejad attempted to link Mousavi – the main reformist candidate – to the past governments of Rafsanjani and the reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatam, which he said had been guilty of widespread graft. Among others, he singled out Rafsanjani's sons as well as Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, the current head of the supreme leader's inspectorate.

Khamenei's criticisms echoed those of Mousavi, who told Ahmadinejad during the debate: "This is a sin. We are Muslims, we believe in God. We cannot name people like that and accuse them."

The most remarkable part of an acerbic encounter came when Ahmadinejad held up a file apparently referring to Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, and questioned her qualifications. "Can I speak about the education background of a lady with you – shall I," Ahmadinejad said in a goading tone. He accused Rahnavard, who has been campaigning with her husband, of gaining two degrees illegally and starting a PhD without sitting an entrance exam.

He also said she had become a university lecturer and chancellor without the necessary qualifications.

Mousavi, taken aback, replied by telling viewers that they should vote for him "if you want to change this atmosphere of so easily accusing other people".

After the debate, pro-Mousavi students took to the streets of Tehran chanting: "Ahmadinejad, impolite person, shame on you. Leave this country alone."

One Mousavi supporter was reported to have died in clashes with Ahmadinejad's followers in the eastern city of Mashhad.

Tensions have been rising ahead of the election. A bombing in a mosque last week killed 25 people in the south-west and another bout of unrest left five more dead on Monday. Khamenei has rebuked the west for meddling in Iranian affairs, and yesterday said that foreigners were trying to undermine Iran ahead of the vote, by insinuating that results would be falsified and the vote would not be competitive.

"During the past two or three months, foreign radio programmes have been tarnishing the elections, making people pessimistic," he said, accusing foreign media of "confiscating the hope of the Iranian people."

[Rasputin]

امروز خامنه ای می خواهد همان چرندیات و مزخرفات چند روز قبل را تکرار کند . دوباره شرکت شکوهمند و اکثریتی را برای حضار از راه دور آورده شده , بلغور کند و آن را در تاریخ سیاه جمهوری اسلامی یک نقطه عطف بداند و تاییدی بر فرد متقلب کند و رسما پایان جمهوری را اعلام و حکومت خلفایی - اسلامی را در بوق کند . امروز خامنه ای آنقدر دشمن دشمن خواهد کرد , آنقدر کلمات آشوبگر و اغتشاش گر را تکرار خواهد کرد , حتی کسانی را که به دستور خود وی و به دست سگهای درنده بسیجی و سپاهی اش کشته شدند شهید می نامد , این همه مردم را مورد شماتت قرار خواهد داد که از قانون تبعیت نمی کنند , البته قانونی که هرگونه خیانت در امانت و جنایت و تقلب را در پناه دین اسلام برایشان مجاز می داند , و نهایتا می خواهد بگوید که این منم که هستم . این نیز بگذرد . هیچ واهمه ای از این تهدیدات وی نباید داشت . همین الله اکبرهایی که شبها بر بالای بام ها گفته می شود , همین راهپیمایی ها بخصوص روز شنبه که از انقلاب شروع خواهد شد , برای به لرزه دراوردن پشت دیکتاتور اسلام کافی است .

[Rasputin]

Khamenei tells Mousavi to toe the line over election or be cast out

The moderate Iranian leader who says that he was robbed of victory in last week’s presidential election faces a fateful choice today: support the regime or be cast out.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has told Mir Hossein Mousavi to stand beside him as he uses Friday prayers at Tehran University to call for national unity. An army of Basiji — Islamic volunteer militiamen — is also expected to be bussed in to support the Supreme Leader.

The demand was made at a meeting this week with representatives of all three candidates who claim that the poll was rigged, and it puts Mr Mousavi on the spot. He has become the figurehead of a popular movement that is mounting huge demonstrations daily against the “theft” of last Friday’s election by President Ahmadinejad, the ayatollah’s protégé.

Mr Mousavi, 67, is a creature of the political Establishment — a former revolutionary and prime minister who would like to liberalise Iranian politics but has never challenged the system in the way his followers are doing. It was unclear last night what he would do or even whether the protests would die away if he backed down. Yesterday tens of thousands of demonstrators packed into the Imam Khomeini Square in Tehran — named after the founder of the Islamic Republic — for another massive rally, this one to mourn protesters killed in Monday’s clashes with pro-government militias.

Men, women and children from all backgrounds came dressed in black, with green wristbands, the colour of the Mousavi campaign, and staged a two-hour vigil. Some held banners bearing the names or pictures of the dead, and placards proclaiming “My martyred brother, we will get back your vote” or “We have not had people killed to compromise and accept a doctored ballot box”.

There was near silence until Mr Mousavi arrived with his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, and the throng broke into chants of “Mousavi! We support you!” With almost ecstatic fervour, the traditional lament for Shia Islam’s most important martyr, “Ya Hussein! was answered by the defeated presidential candidate’s forenames “Mir Hossein!

Mr Mousavi was accompanied by Mehdi Karoubi, another of the defeated candidates. He attempted to speak from the top of a car using a loudhailer, but few could hear him.

As the protesters departed just before dusk they left behind little shrines of black candles placed around photographs of the dead. “It encourages us to follow their path, fighting for the vote,” one woman said.

It was the sixth day of demonstrations and first to be held in the poorer south-central district, an apparent effort to dispel notions that the protesters are middle-class or pro-Western.

The Guardian Council, a body of 12 senior clerics whom the Supreme Leader has asked to investigate claims of electoral fraud, said it had received 646 complaints of irregularities. It has invited Mr Mousavi and the other two candidates challenging Mr Ahmadinejad — Mr Karoubi and Mohsen Rezai — to set out their grievances tomorrow and will decide on Sunday whether to order a recount. Nobody believes that it will. The Supreme Leader controls the council and is widely believed to have asked it to investigate as a way to play for time.

Mr Ahmadinejad defended the vote, telling a Cabinet meeting yesterday that “the ideals of the Islamic Revolution were the winners”.

[donsaeid]

ali dalghak ba harfaye jome khodesho az mellat yekbar baraye hamishe joda kard. hatta on tako toki ke omidi be on dashtan omideshono az dast dadan. tanha rah az in be baad az rishe kandane. in regim reform besho nist!

[Rasputin]

Even before G8 planners started adding first five, then a dozen, and now double that number of governments to the guest list, the shrunken time frames and swollen agendas of G8 summits had long ceased to offer much scope for deep thinking — indeed, any thinking at all.

Carefully choreographed formal proceedings traditionally oblige each leader to zip through the “to do” list — how to save the global economy, save free trade, save the planet, feed it; and, finally, ah yes, though we’re not sure how, how to stop North Korea and Iran going nuclear.

In the expanded G8+ sessions there is no way to buck convention but in the session on foreign policy with which they kick off today, eight powerful politicians should break with tradition and do some real thinking. Binning their prepared remarks, they should concentrate, with what Barack Obama loves to call “the fierce urgency of now”, on a single question.

That question is how to exert pressure on Iran’s Islamic dictatorship, now that the political landscape has been transformed by the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad electoral coup and above all by the Iranians’ refusal to take it lying down. What is happening is no “mere” popular burst of indignation, brutally suppressed. The upheaval reaches deep into the heart of the regime, pitting factions of the clerical and political establishment fiercely against each other and even calling into question the moral authority of the Supreme Guide, the keystone of rule under divine guidance.

In open defiance of Ayatollah Khamenei’s order to unite under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, groups of Iran’s most revered mullahs have denounced the new Government as “illegitimate”, and two thirds of the members of the Majlis, Iranian’s parliament, boycotted the President’s “victory” party. In the fight between two Irans, one obscurantist and belligerent, the other increasingly sophisticated, youthful and weary of isolation, Ayatollah Khamenei was never neutral. With his fateful decision to step off his pedestal and demand that heads be cracked, he can no longer even pretend to be so. A taboo has been broken.

The international interest in an Iran that behaves like a “normal” country thus coincides with Iran’s anguished national mood. Whether Mr Obama’s offer of unconditional talks with the regime ever made sense is open to question — all he got in exchange were demands that America “repent”, drop sanctions and dissociate itself from Israel. To keep that “pathway” open now would be anything but a neutral act: it would confer legitimacy on a regime that has forfeited Iranian trust, demoralise Iran’s opposition and confirm hardliners in their conviction that the Obama Administration is in retreat.

Further, and much to the point, to talk about talks now is just talk: negotiations, even were Iran to take up the offer, would not achieve the goals of ending Iran’s lethal mischief-making in Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, still less its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Carrots do not work with either Ayatollah Khamenei, or with Mr Ahmadinejad, who since stealing the election has declared the nuclear programme non-negotiable. What then? The sticks of economic sanctions are notoriously difficult to aim against elites without hurting people who, in Iran’s case, are already hard hit by unemployment, inflation, rank inequality and mismanagement. They also take time to work, and time, on the nuclear front, is short.

But increased economic pressure now would chime with the accusations, levelled at Mr Ahmadinejad by his main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, that mismanagement and “adventurism” have led to economic misery and international disrepute. Since Iran depends on Europe for 40 per cent of its imports, mainly from Germany, Italy and France, a sharp temporary trade freeze would be devastating — particularly if it included petrol, which Iran imports for lack of refining capacity. Sanctions would hit the wealth of Revolutionary Guard commanders, who control vast tracts of the economy. They would also reveal Mr Ahmadinejad’s North Korean-style “self-sufficiency” rhetoric for the economic rubbish it is.

The Europeans, however, will not move unless they can be convinced that sanctions form part of a coherent Obama strategy. The L’Aquila summit needs at the least to convince them that the US is getting its ducks in a row.

Public diplomacy towards Iran also needs drastic overhaul. A basic Western misunderstanding has been that, 30 years after Khomeini’s revolution, Iranians are still brainwashed by his aggressively messianic message. This misconception underpinned the West’s pathetic eagerness to be seen not to “intervene” in Iran’s drama, a sacrifice of principle for no reward since the regime blamed satanic meddling anyway. Even at the height of Khomeinist fervour, the massed black-clad rallies were far from the whole story — some five million Iranians have spent time in jail since 1979 — and experience has inoculated most Iranians against permanent Islamic revolution.

Their courage has more than earned Iranians the right to be treated as adults. At least a third are plugged into the information revolution by satellite and mobiles. And they are in a mood to listen. They have been told that their nuclear programme is peaceable, and it is as such that it has massive support. Detailed evidence that the regime has lied to them is worth laying out, clearly and repeatedly, together with an explanation of the links between non-compliance and sanctions, and the rewards on offer for Iranian co-operation.

The Big Lie about the elections haunts every corner of Iranian life, colouring everything the regime now does. Pussyfooting by the West has never been more inexcusable, or truth-telling more likely to find a receptive Iranian audience.