Sullivan's Travels:  Keeping Watch on the Arab (and perhaps Iranian?) 1848

• Wouldn't it be a fanastic development if the uprisings throughout the Arab world rekindled the spirit of June 2009? Khamenei is obviously concerned it might:
• 'Iran has arrested opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, the opposition website Kaleme said on Monday. "Sources say that they have been arrested and transferred to Heshmatiyeh jail in Tehran," Mousavi's website Kaleme reported.' ("Tehran Begins To Panic?," The Daily Dish, 28 Feb 2011)
  

Movement within the Regime?

• A leading conservative rival to Ahmadinejad, lawmaker Ali Mottahari, warned that Iran was not yet out of the clear.
• "We cannot claim the crisis is totally over until both sides make up for their mistakes," he said in an interview with Khabaronline (in Persian), the news website affiliated with parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani. "The differences of opinion between the government and [the opposition] might have been eased to some extent, but they still exist. Our statesmen should not imagine that people's massive presence in the Thursday rally reflects the approval of their performance...."
• Mottahari recently called on opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi to stop calling for protests for a bit and let government insiders like him take care of Ahmadinejad and his ilk.
• In the interview he seemed to be auditioning to replace them, echoing their calls to restore civil liberties. "The government should respect social freedoms and stop its press bans," he said. "The government should also take action to secure the release of political prisoners and create a climate of friendship and affection."(LA Times. Babylon & Beyond, "IRAN: A day after 22 Bahman rally, a conservative Ahmadinejad rival opens fire," February 12, 2010)

(Note: Babylon & Beyond has a full post-mortem of the Iranian government's actions and those of the Green movement on 22 Bahman here.)

Friday-morning quarterbacking Iran

Juan Cole's assessment is pessimistic, but worth reading in full.

• What I would say is that coming off the Ashura protests, the Green Movement had the momentum and the regime was under pressure. The rallies had spread to a number of cities, including conservative ones like Isfahan and Mashhad. The crowds seemed to be turning on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
• After Thursday, the momentum is now with the regime. Either the Revolutionary Guards are getting better at countering the dissidents or movement members are tired of getting beaten up with no measurable political impact. As I said yesterday, the regime blocked the 'flashmobs' by interfering with electronic communication (google mail, Facebook, Twitter). They also thought strategically about how to control the public space of major cities, resorting to plainclothesmen rather than just uniformed police squads....
• The Green Movement cannot depend on being able to go on indefinitely mounting big public demonstrations, especially since the cost to the protesters is rising, with beatings, firing of live ammunition, mass arrests and executions. It also cannot continue to depend on informal networks to organize, since these can be fairly easily disrupted.
• Mir Hosain Musavi has said he refuses to form a political party. There are such parties or at least vague groupings in Iranian politics (former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani leads one), and they have members of parliament. By refusing to develop a grassroots political organization, Musavi may be making the same mistake as former president Abo'l-Hasan Bani-Sadr, who was toppled from the presidency in summer, 1981, because he declined to seek a mass organization, whereas his enemies had the "Hezbollah" popular militia and the Islamic Republican Party that grouped key hard line clerics. Ahmadinejad has his Alliance of Builders in Tehran, and is backed by the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij paramilitary, and other security forces. Musavi has the little flashmobs who couldn't, at least on Thursday. (Informed Comment, "How the Iranian Regime Checkmated the Green Dissidents on a Crucial Day," 12 Feb. 2010)
  

Also, I think we cannot discount the overwhelming force on that day.

Stability and Guidance in an Unstable Regime

Mir Hussein Moussavi: “The majority of people believed in the beginning of the revolution that the roots of dictatorship and despotism were abolished. I was one of them, but now I don’t have the same beliefs. You can still find the elements and roots that lead to dictatorship.” ("Opposition Hardens Line Inside Iran," by Nazila Fathi, New York Times, February 2, 2010)

Juan Cole on the murder of Mousavi

• The killing of Ali Mousavi, the 34-year-old nephew of former presidential candidate Mir Husain Mousavi, was also a violation of Shiite values. The Mousavis are putative descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, a sort of caste in Muslim societies called 'sayyid' or 'sharif.'
• In fact, in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, one of the complaints of the crowd was that the Qajar monarchy had had sayyids beaten. So if beating a scion of the House of the Prophet can help spark a revolution, what about shooting one? And, oppositional film maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf maintains that Mousavi was killed by a death squad that came for him in a van rather than just falling victim to random police fire.
• Killing a sayyid is a blot on any Iranian government. Doing so on Ashura, the day of morning for the martyred grandson of the Prophet, Imam Husayn, borders on insanity. (Monday, December 28, 2009, "Iran Roiled, Crowds Burn Banks, Police Station; Chanting against Theocrat Khamenei; But No Revolutionary Alternative Yet," Informed Comment)
  

More on Mousavi

• Seyyed Ali Mousavi, a 35-year-old engineer and a son of Mir Hossein Mousavi's sister, was killed today. He was among the demonstrators at Maydaan-e Enghelab (Revolution Square) when he was shot in the shoulder. He was taken to Ibn-Sina hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival. Mousavi, his wife, and his sister and his family, and a large crowd were reportedly still at the hospital.
• The hospital denied that anyone by that name had been admitted, even as dozens of police and a truckload of Basijis were reportedly guarding the hospital.
• Apparently a "large number" of opposition supporters gathered there, and according to Jaras, they have promised to continue protests into the night and over the following days. ("Ashura Updates," Frontline: Tehran Bureau, 27 December 2009)
• According to Mr Mousavi's website, Seyed Ali Mousavi was shot in the back as security forces fired on demonstrators.
• Correspondents say his funeral on Monday is likely to be a focal point for further protests. (28 December 2009, "Iranian protests spark fresh clashes in Tehran," BBC)
  

The Revolution will not be Televised...

or, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

This next set of blog entries is just me playing catch up. I think what I am heading towards is the fallout of, if true, the murder of Ali Mousavi, "nephew of the rightful president of Iran, murdered by the brownshirts of the military coup" (to quote Andrew Sullivan).

But perhaps we might begin with the burial of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri in Qom on Monday, 21 Dec. 2009.

• "There were reports of Basij attempting to beat Karroubi, however, it is said that the crowd shielded him against the attacks. After the funeral was over, Mousavi’s entourage was harassed by plainclothesmen. His car was chased and one of his companions was injured after the plainclothesmen broke a side window of the car he was traveling in. He did not receive any injuries himself. One plainclothesman also got injured in the attack." ("Full Report of Montazeri’s Funeral in Qom," by Josh Shahryar on Dec.21, 2009, Daily Nite Owl)

Just viewing from the outside, it seems someone has either give the Baseej a green light, or they are beginning to sense that they cannot control the streets.