ICYMI: Iranian 'Greens' sought Obama's support in '09 - he refused them
Iran's 'Green' movement reached out to the Obama administration seeking support during their 2009 mini-revolution. Obama had his priorities, and they have not changed (via The Corner).
But the ranks of reformists in Iran have been depleted. Many
activists are angry at the Obama administration for failing to support
them six years ago in a rebuff that hasn’t been previously reported.
Iranian opposition leaders secretly reached out to the White House in
the summer of 2009 to gauge Mr. Obama’s support for their “green
revolution,” which drew millions of people to protest the allegedly
fraudulent re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The demonstrations caught the White House off guard, said current and
former U.S. officials who worked on Iran in the Obama administration.
Some U.S. officials pressed Mr. Obama to publicly back the fledgling
Green Movement, arguing in Oval Office meetings that it marked the most
important democratic opening since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Mr. Obama wasn’t convinced. “‘Let’s give it a few days,’ was the
answer,” said a senior U.S. official present at some of the White House
meetings. “It was made clear: ‘We should monitor, but do nothing.’ ”
The president was invested heavily in developing a secret diplomatic
outreach to Mr. Khamenei that year, sending two letters to the supreme
leader in the months before the disputed election of Mr. Ahmadinejad,
said current and former U.S. officials.
#ThanksObama. And thanks all you stupid Jews who supported him.
Leader of Iranian green movement won't even shake hands with a Jew
Some of you might recall that in 2009, I kept asking all the Iranian greens I was following where they stood on Israel. If they weren't open to having diplomatic relations with us, I would ignore them. A curse on both their houses. I couldn't get a straight answer. I kept getting told it's not relevant now.
Now, I know for sure why I got that answer. Here's an English translation of the caption of the picture above.
“This is Iran’s deceased Ayatollah Montazeri (d. December, 2009) in the photograph where he rejected shaking the hand of a fellow Jewish Iranian. He declined the handshake because he did not want to become dirty (najis) and his cleanliness despoiled for his “Salaat” preparation (for prayer, as a Muslim), by contacting the (najis, infidel) Jew.” (thanks to S for the translation)
So yes, Ahmadinejad kissed the Neturei Karta nutjobs who showed up for his Holocaust denial conference. But they're a different kind of Jew.
While the U.S. and the EU do not advocate regime change in Iran, sanctions could breathe life into Iran’s struggling pro-democracy movement. Contrary to popular belief, robust economic sanctions have not unified the population against the West. Since Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rigged the elections of June 2009, the Iranian government has been increasingly unpopular, and the people widely blame it for the country’s worsening economic situation.
The millions who took to the streets of Tehran in the aftermath of that election arguably constituted the first full-blown Middle Eastern reform movement. Since that time, despotic regimes have fallen in Tunisia and Egypt, and others — like Bashar Assad’s dictatorship in Syria — are on the ropes, but the Iranians have had no such luck. The unprecedented U.S. and European sanctions will not work overnight. By early summer, it will be clearer whether or not they’re changing Iran’s behavior.
Given Chinese and Russian resistance to a seventh round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran, the U.S. and its allies will likely have to continue working outside the U.N. The U.N. Charter provides for a comprehensive embargo against a country that violates U.N. resolutions, so the Security Council could issue a “complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.” But the Russians and the Chinese will surely prevent the U.N. from doing anything of the kind.
It is a vexing predicament for the U.S. and the EU. Apart from Israel, the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands are the only three countries that have declared their refusal to live with a nuclear Iran. If these latest sanctions, crushing as they are, prove ineffective, this fall will bring hard decisions.
Well, maybe.
As we have seen in Egypt and Libya, and to a lesser extent in Tunisia, one of the questions we must ask is who will replace Ahmadinejad and Khameni. One of the flaws of the 'green movement' was that it, too, insisted on continuing to pursue the nuclear program, and there are no guarantees that it would not pursue nuclear weapons as well.
Sure, a dictatorship that holds a nuclear card is much harder to contain when it's also apocalyptic, but we don't really know where the green movement stands and whether it's the answer.
The magnetic bomb which was planted by an unknown motorcyclist under the car of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a professor at Tehran's technical university, also wounded two other Iranian nationals in Seyed Khandan neighborhood in Northern Tehran.
Ahmadi Roshan, 32, was a graduate of oil industry university and supervised a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province.
No more details have been revealed about the blast.
The blast took place on the second anniversary of the martyrdom of Majid Shahriari, a well-known Iranian nuclear scientist on January 11, 2010.
Curiously, in Israel it is not yet being reported that Ahmadi Roshan was a nuclear scientist. Israel Radio just reported that his field is not yet known.
The semi-official FARS news agency cited witnesses as saying a motorcyclist stuck a bomb on the side of the car which then exploded, killing one and injuring two people inside. FARS identified the victim as Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan. State-run Press TV said he was a university professor.
...
The United States and Israel have both denied involvement in any of the deaths, despite both countries' disapproval of Iranian nuclear ambitions, and threats to take action should Tehran refuse to cease nuclear development.
Heh.
I have seen some very good claims that these killings are actually being carried out by the Iranian opposition. That may well be the case. Or the Mossad and/or the CIA may be working with the opposition. Or....
Michael Ledeen writes that according to his sources in Iran, the recent sabotage of Iranian installations is being carried out by Iranians involved in the revolution, and not by Israelis or Americans.
Before we get to the whys and wherefores, a bit of detail: the huge detonation at Karaj, which, as I have explained, surprised the attackers and distorted our understanding. The operation was aimed at the Revolutionary Guards Corps, specifically at General Hassan Tehrani Moghadam, who was both the architect of the national missile program and one of the nastiest officials in that legendarily nasty organization. The attackers did not know that there was a large quantity of rocket fuel on the base that day (which was the reason Moghadam was there). The special fuel came from North Korea, and it was supposed to double tne range of Iran’s missiles. The explosion that killed Moghadam and scores of his comrades ignited the rocket fuel, with dramatic results. To date, 377 dead have been reported to the supreme leader’s office. Among the dead are the attackers–they couldn’t escape the big explosion–and at least four North Korean officials, who were there for the celebration.
The attackers came from the internal opposition, and so far as I know they had no ties to any foreign anything, not a foreign intelligence service, not a foreign military organization, not a foreign government.
Of course, as always with things Iranians, you’ve got to caveat what you think you know. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been misinformed. But, on the other hand, I’ve been a lonely voice for quite a while, saying that the opposition (call it the Green Movement, for lack of an updated logo) would become more violent, that the movement was, if anything, more powerful than it was at the time of the big demonstrations a year and two years ago, and that the regime was full of opposition sympathizers and collaborators.
Because it’s obvious that whoever’s blowing up Iran, they’ve got a lot of help from some very important insiders. Don’t take it from me; ask Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He knows that if his enemies can blow up those installations, they can blow up most anything. Of late, Khamenei hasn’t been particularly active in public events. Like his buddy, Hezbollah chief Nasrullah, he’s keeping his head down and his profile low.
US Defense Secretary and former CIA director Leon Panetta told television interviewer Charlie Rose on Tuesday that an Iranian revolution is 'a matter of time.'
"I think we saw in evidence of that in the last election in Iran that there was a movement within Iran that raised those very same concerns that we're seeing elsewhere," Panetta said.
"And I think in many ways, it's a matter of time before that kind of change and reform and revolution occurs in Iran as well."
Iranian security forces crushed mass protests in the wake of Iran's disputed June 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Panetta acknowledged the difficulties supporting such protests given the potential for backlash.
"We should try to take every step to try to support their effort but at the same time, we've got to analyze each situation to make sure that we do nothing that creates a backlash or that undermines those efforts," he said.
...
"I think the reform movement in Iran is learning one hell of a lot from what's happened in Tunisia and Egypt and Libya and Syria," Panetta said.
Supporters of Iran's opposition Green movement are watching the Arab uprisings with a mixture of admiration, regret for their own movement's failure and concern about what might replace fallen regimes.
"One of the issues we were looking at when Tunisia and Egypt happened is ... what sparked this? What made this all happen?" Panetta said, listing factors including social media and populations of youth who lacked hope for the future.
"The fact is when people decide that that moment has come, that's a moment when tremendous change is about to happen," Panetta said.
"And I think it's true, not only in the Middle East. It's going to be true in Iran as well."
Iran might have had a revolution already had the Obama administration backed the 'green movement' in 2009 or 2010. But unlike US ally Hosni Mubarak, whom Obama called upon to resign, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been treated with kid gloves by the Obama administration, which has also allowed Iran to continue the development of nuclear weapons.
It's a matter of time until there is regime change in Iran alright. Sometime after there is regime change in the United States. The real question is whether the Iranians will develop nuclear weapons in the interim.
Iranian regime murders daughter at father's funeral
In an earlier post, I reported that the Iranian opposition had urged a big turnout for the funeral of Ezzatollah Sahabi (or Sehabi), a former regime official who had been on the outs with the Islamic rulers in Iran for some thirty years.
Iranian security forces disrupted the funeral, and struck and killed Haleh Sahabi, Ezzatollah Sahabi's 57-year old dissident daughter.
Dr. Haleh Sahabi, daughter of Ezatollah Sahabi, who passed away on Monday, died when security forces attacked the funeral of her father. According to Mizan Press, a website close to nationalist-religious groups, when Ezatollah Sahabi's body was brought out of his home to be taken to the cemetery, security forces attacked Haleh Sahabi to prevent her from overseeing the funeral. A heated argument began, and the security forces forcefully took the elder Sahabi's body away. According to Yahya Shamekhi, Haleh Sahabi's son, that moment his mother collapsed. Doctors said that she died from cardiac arrest.
Haleh Sahabi was 57 years old. Convicted of anti-state charges after participating in the protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election, she was serving a two-year prison sentence and had been released temporarily to participate in her father's funeral. She was a researcher of Qur'anic verses and a member of the Mothers of Peace Society.
The security forces put tremendous pressure on the Sahabi family to immediately bury Haleh Sahabi as well. According to the website Melli Mazhabi -- the official site of the Religious-Nationalist Coalition, which Ezatollah Sahabi headed -- the family relented and took her body to the Lavasan cemetery, where her father had just been interred. Shamekhi told the pro-Green Movement website Rahe Sabz that his mother will be buried at night in the dark.
Ahmad Montazeri, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, told Rahe Sabz, "I was only a few meters away from her. The security forces tried to take away a large poster of Ezatollah Sahabi that his daughter was carrying. After she resisted it, the security agent hit her with his elbow, causing her to fall down and faint. She was taken to a hospital, but unfortunately she passed away there." Montazeri added, "There were a number of security and plainclothes officers that were shouting, laughing loudly, and trying to disturb the funeral. In particularly, their commander insulted the people. They were set on inciting chaos and violence. I was present while they were washing the late Sahabi. The security forces entered there and began shouting, insulting and provoking the people. But because no one was interested, they became angrier." He said that at least 11 people were arrested, including his own son.
Mansoor Sahabi, Haleh's uncle, told Rahe Sabz that the reason she passed away was that she was hit in her chest and abdomen, which caused her to have a heart attack. When told that the pro-government media have claimed that she was not attacked, Mansoor Sahabi responded that they attacked her with great force. He added that a well-known security agent was involved and that there are photographs that show the attack. He said that Dr. Habibollah Peyman, who heads the Movement of Militant Muslims and is a member of the Religious-Nationalist Coalition, was with her when they took her to a hospital, but apparently he has been arrested. According to Mansoor Sahabi, 30 people were arrested. IRNA, the state news agency, claimed that the figure was only five people.
Mansoor Sahabi also said that, to people's astonishment, the security forces grabbed Ezatollah Sahabi's corpse and threw it into a pickup truck. If they treated the deceased in that manner in the presence of the mourners, he observed, who knows what they did elsewhere. He added that the security forces prevented the mourners from saying the prayer for the dead, which was supposed to have been led by Ahmad Montazeri. He described how his own sister, already in tears, was attacked and thrown onto the sidewalk. According to him, up to ten people would attack a single person. Fereydoon Sahabi, Ezatollah's brother, confirmed that the security forces attacked the people.
But the Obama administration and the G8 are too busy worrying about the 'Palestinians' to worry about this sort of thing.
Hoping to use a large turnout for political gain, Iran's opposition has called for opposition members to attend the funeral of Ezzatollah Sehabi, an 81-year old opponent of the regime who died of a stroke on Tuesday.
Opposition websites carried statements urging broad participation in Sahabi's funeral, which will be held in Lavasan on Wednesday. They said there was already a heavy security presence in the northeastern city in anticipation of the event.
Sahabi served as budget chief in the administration formed after Iran's 1979 revolution. He was also elected to the first post-revolutionary parliament but was sidelined by the powerful Islamic clergy in the 1980s.
A longtime activist, Sahabi was jailed both before and after the revolution and spent a total of 15 years behind bars on various charges including efforts to overthrow Islamic rule.
His daughter, Haleh Sahabi, is one of many Iranian activists arrested following a spate of protests in Iran in 2009. She is serving her two-year jail sentence.
Benjamin Weinthal reports from Berlin that Germany considers its trade relations with Iran to be more important than protesting Iran's continuing development of nuclear weapons or its horrific human rights record (full article here for those without access to the Wall Street Journal).
How were German taxpayer euros spent for the six-day trip? The legislators, which apart from Mr. Gauweiler included also Monika Grütters of Mrs. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, Luc Jochimsen from the Left Party, Claudia Roth from the Green Party, and the Social Democrat's Günter Gloser, met with Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's parliament. That's the same Larijani who at the 2009 Munich security conference caused for uproar when he said his country has "different perspectives on the Holocaust." The German law makers also met Ali Larijani's brother, Mohammad Javad Larijani, who is the head of the Iranian human-rights council. It did not seem to upset the Germans that Mohammad Larijani in 2008—during a German Foreign Ministry-sponsored event close to Berlin's Holocaust memorial, no less—denied the Holocaust and called for Israel's destruction.
The German law makers also talked to Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who delivered a key speech at Tehran's 2006 Holocaust denial conference. Another dialogue partner was Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the head of Iran's parliamentary cultural committee, who famously supported Iran's fatwa calling for the murder of British novelist Salman Rushdie.
Mr. Gauweiler and his fellow travelers though found no time to publicly criticize the regime's oppression of religious and ethnic minorities, women, gays or trade unionists. There was no word of support for the Bahai, who are being persecuted for the crime of following their peaceful religion. German law makers apparently also found it impolite to publicly draw attention to the planned execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani for alleged adultery.
...
It appears that for Berlin, promoting its flourishing trade relationship with Tehran and preserving the "historical treasure of the German-Iranian friendship" trump concerns for human rights and nuclear proliferation.
One would think that this kind of approach might appeal to President Obama, if he could get his nose out of Ahmadinejad's rear end long enough to think about it (Hat Tip: Daily Alert).
As Washington assesses how to deal with Iran's nuclear challenge, it must widen its canvass and consider its approach to the slow, simmering political change unfolding there. Given the alienation of the population and the fragmentation of the elite, the regime will not be able to manage a succession crisis. For all his faults, Khamenei is the glue that keeps the Islamic Republic together. Should the elderly supreme leader pass from the scene, the system is too divided and lacks a sufficient social base to easily choose another successor. In the process of consolidating his power and ensuring the fraudulent election of his protege, Khamenei has all but ensured that his republic will not survive him. All this suggests that a transactional relationship with Iran whereby carrots and sticks are traded for modest nuclear concessions is unwise.
History has shown that human rights do contribute to dramatic political transformations. The Helsinki Accord of 1975 invigorated the moribund opposition groups behind the Iron Curtain and ensured a smooth transition to a post-communist reality. More so than arms races and arms control treaties, those accords defied the skeptics and cynics by contributing to the collapse of the mighty Soviet empire. An emphasis on human rights today can not only buttress the viability of the Green Movement but also socialize an important segment of the security services, clerical estate and intelligentsia to the norms to which a state must adhere in order to become a member of global society. The successor generation of Iranian leaders would then be more sensitive to their obligations to citizens and the international community. By linking its diplomacy to human rights behavior, the United States could mitigate Iran's nuclear ambitions and pave the way for a peaceful transition from clerical autocracy to a more responsible and humane government.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
