Israel Matzav: Iranian opposition leaders kidnapped, West silent

Monday, February 28, 2011

Iranian opposition leaders kidnapped, West silent

The two leaders of Iran's Green Movement and their wives were kidnapped on Thursday night, and are being held at an undisclosed location, possibly awaiting a show trial. The West is silent.

Yes it is true, not exactly as any one source has been reporting, but the two top leaders of the Green Movement, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, were kidnapped on Thursday night — when the streets of Tehran were full of armed men. It was a typical Mafia-style snatch. The two men — already under house arrest — were beaten and bloodied, and then were led out of their homes in blindfolds and handcuffs, stuffed in the trunks of the cars of their captors from the Revolutionary Guards and, along with their wives, taken to a location in Tehran, then, on Friday, to another in Parchin, and finally to a third location, a heavily protected private residence.

So far only a few voices, most notably that of Ayatollah Dastgheib (sorry for the link in Persian, but I can’t find a translation online yet), have been raised to denounce the action and call for the release of the hostages. Needless to say, no Western leader has done anything yet, and nobody should expect any tough talk from Western capitals. After all, Mousavi and Karroubi were never contacted by any Western leader after the electoral hoax of June, 2009, although at least some of those Westerners sent intermediaries to negotiate with representatives of the Iranian regime.

Terror works, you see.

I do not know if we will see Mousavi or Karroubi alive. For the moment, I imagine they are being interrogated and tortured in an effort to extract “confessions” of their obedience to foreigners. Indeed, the very evening of the kidnapping, Intelligence Minister Moslehi — whose name is on a list of Iranians under EU consideration for being sanctioned for their role in grave human rights violations — gave a late evening interview on national television in which he spoke extensively of the “foreign hand” behind Iranian protests, and the next day he was quoted in a national news service as identifying yours truly as the inspiration behind at least some of the dissidents (again, it’s in Farsi, but in compensation there’s a flattering picture of me). He claimed that an Iranian arrested as a CIA agent was somehow inspired by my writings to work against the regime.

Actually it’s the other way around. It’s the courage of the Iranian opposition, and the hope that one day this evil regime will be removed, that inspires these blogs. And to judge by Moslehi’s rant, it’s doomed, because he has real trouble with information. For all the attention and vitriol these fanatic buffoons direct at me, their Intel Minister does not even know where I work. He and his vaunted network can’t manage to find out that I have been at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies for two and a half years, which is pretty amazing when you consider that they have obviously been reading Pajamas Media.

One has to wonder what Iran's Greens have to do to get the West to notice. That's not to say that I'm enamored with them because I believe they will stop the nuclear weapons program. You all know that I am not. But at least with them, there might be something about which to negotiate rationally. And maybe they won't have the apocalyptic desire to bring about the coming of the 12th Imam by bombing Israel, like Ahmadinejad has.

Labels: Iran elections, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi