Iran: Massive protests in response to Ahmadinejad sweeping elections.

[Pintu]

Neda?s Death Highlights Women?s Role in Iran Protests (Update3) - Bloomberg.com

Neda’s Death Highlights Women’s Role in Iran Protests (Update3)

By Ali Sheikholeslami and Caroline Alexander

June 23 (Bloomberg) -- A young woman who was shot through the heart and died on the streets of Tehran has become the face of the opposition movement in Iran.

Neda Agha Soltan was killed by a Basij militiaman during a protest march on June 20, according to people who said they were eyewitnesses and posted videos of her death on the Internet. The videos on Facebook and YouTube show her collapsing, losing consciousness and dying.

Her death has resounded worldwide and become a symbol of the crackdown by Iranian authorities against demonstrations over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed June 12 re-election. Police used tear gas and batons to disperse about 1,000 people who had gathered in Haft-e Tir Square in central Tehran yesterday to mourn the university student.

“The violence of the regime has intensified. They are trying to create a regime of terror,” said Mohammad-Reza Djalili, an Iran expert at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva in a telephone interview. “The future will be marked by this horrible chain of events,” he said of Soltan’s killing.

Soltan was among countless women, of all ages and backgrounds, who have taken to the streets to demand a recount of the presidential vote they and others say was won by Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister. Mousavi made his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a feature of his campaign and promised to give women more rights.

34 Million

Iran’s 34 million women are demanding female cabinet ministers, the right to able to run for president and the revision of civil and family law, Rahnavard said earlier this month. The country’s population is 66.4 million.

President Barack Obama today said of Iran that Americans were “appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days.” Speaking at a press conference, he said, “Above all, we have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said in response to a question about whether he had seen the video. “Anybody who sees it knows there is something fundamentally unjust about that.”

At least four Facebook pages are dedicated to Soltan, and more than 50 members of the social networking site have changed their user names to Neda Agha Soltan. One page called “Neda” has more than 15,000 members and the group’s 55 officers come from countries as diverse as Canada, Kuwait, Haiti, Italy, the U.S. and Zambia.

Black Banner

Mourners were prevented from holding a remembrance ceremony in a mosque yesterday, and Soltan’s family was told to take down a black banner they had hung outside their home, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“Neda had said that even if she lost her life and got a bullet in her heart, she would carry on,” Caspian Makan, Soltan’s fiancé, told the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Persian Television by phone from Tehran. “She gave a big lesson to everyone even though she was very young.”

Seventeen people have been killed in the protests, Iranian state television reported.

Soltan was a 27-year-old philosophy student, according to the text posted with the video on YouTube. Heat and frustration led her and her music teacher to abandon their car when it was blockaded by the demonstration. Minutes later, she was shot. She died in just two minutes, according to the YouTube text.

Iranian bloggers paid tribute to the young woman, one writing about the melancholy of the “alley of loneliness” where she was shot. Photos of the flowers left in memory of Soltan are posted on the blog.

Fierce Impact

“He had a clear shot and could not miss her,” wrote a man who said he was a doctor and posted one of the videos showing Soltan’s death, referring to the gunman. “The impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest.”

The author Paul Coelho said on his blog that he was best friends with the doctor, and that his friend had tried to resuscitate Soltan. In the video, as blood pours from Soltan’s eyes, nose and mouth, screams are heard and a small crowd gathers around her limp body.

“Neda, don’t be afraid; Neda stay with me,” says a man standing nearby, who holds her in his arms and has been identified as her music teacher.

The killing took away any “vestige of respect” people had for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has called for an end to the protests and allied himself with Ahmadinejad, because “a spiritual leader should not be leading carnage,” said Haleh Afshar, a professor of politics and women’s studies at University of York.

Seeing the video of Soltan’s death has left Zahra Khedri, a 24-year-old Iranian postgraduate student at the U.K.’s University of Essex, feeling numb and shocked, she said.

“It could be me, simple as that,” said Khedri. The video “will help us with the support we need. Ahmadinejad must not be recognized.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Caroline Alexander in London at [email protected]; Ali Sheikholeslami in London at [email protected].
Last Updated: June 23, 2009 13:32 EDT

 

[Pintu]

Obama Condemns Iran Crackdown, Says World ?Appalled? (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

Obama Condemns Iran Crackdown, Says World ‘Appalled’ (Update2)

By Nicholas Johnston and Hans Nichols

June 24 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama used some of his strongest language yet to condemn Iran’s crackdown on protesters, reacting to the violent confrontations between the Iranian government and the opposition.

“The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days,” Obama said at a White House news conference yesterday. “I strongly condemn these unjust actions.”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today said Iran won’t bow to pressure over the disputed June 12 presidential vote, according to state-run Press TV. Opposition candidates have said the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rigged.

Obama said he’s waiting to see how the turmoil in Iran evolves before deciding how he might change his strategy of engaging the government there diplomatically to prevent the country from gaining a nuclear weapon, which he called a “core national security interest” of the U.S.

“We don’t know yet how this thing is going to play out,” he said. “It is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people.”

Demonstration Planned

Opposition supporters plan a demonstration outside Parliament in Tehran today in defiance of government orders to stay off the streets, Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported on its Web site. Any such event is “independent” and unconnected to defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi’s campaign, according to a statement on his Web site.

Obama said Iran’s crackdown on the protests is “obviously not encouraging” for any diplomatic breakthrough.

He also said the U.S. and other nations aren’t interfering in Iran’s internal affairs.

The U.S., the U.K. and Israel have come in for the Iranian leadership’s most vehement accusations of meddling by other countries since the protests began. Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli said today that demonstrators involved in unrest were financed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, an opposition group, the state-run Iranian Students News Agency reported.

Iran, which hasn’t had diplomatic ties with the U.S. since 1980, will consider downgrading its relations with Britain, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said today, according to ISNA. Iran and the U.K. each expelled two of the other’s diplomats this week.

Foreigners Held

Iranian authorities are holding seven foreigners in connection with the protests, including some with British passports, Press TV cited the intelligence minister as saying.

Iran is holding hundreds of opposition activists, who risk torture, human rights groups said. Many are being held incommunicado, without access to their lawyers or families and without being formally charged, the New York-based Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said in e-mailed statements late yesterday.

The deputy head of Iran’s judiciary, Ebrahim Raeisi, said a special court will be set up to try the detained opposition supporters and teach “a lesson to others,” the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported yesterday.

Mousavi’s Wife

Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi’s wife, demanded on his campaign Web site the quick release of those arrested during the protests. She was a major force in Mousavi’s campaign, the first time in the 30 years since the country’s Islamic Revolution that a candidate’s wife has had such a prominent role.

“Based on the constitution, gatherings and protests are accepted rights,” she said.

Another defeated presidential candidate, former Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karrubi, likened Ahmadinejad’s government to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“You know well that those who support Ahmadinejad are those who promote a backward, Taliban version of Islam, something that is against the views of Imam Khomeini,” Karrubi said in an open letter to Ezzatollah Zarghami, head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. The letter, which referred to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic Revolution, was published yesterday on Karrubi’s Web site.

Mousavi’s campaign released a report yesterday detailing allegations of fraud and demanding a “truth commission.” Included were accusations that ballots were printed the day of the election without serial numbers, and that ballot boxes may already have held votes before arriving at polling stations.

Arrests at Newspaper

Armed, plainclothes forces arrested 25 employees of the Mousavi-owned Kalameh Sabz newspaper on June 22. Alireza Beheshti, the paper’s editor-in-chief, told the Farsi service of German broadcaster Deutsche-Welle that the forces said they had a judge’s warrant, though they didn’t show it. The newspaper has been banned from publishing since June 14.

Another defeated candidate, Mohsen Rezai, an ex-commander of the Revolutionary Guards, withdrew his complaint over the disputed election, IRNA reported.

In a letter to the Guardian Council, which oversees the country’s elections, Rezai said the turmoil in the country was more important than the election result, according to the report.

Harder Tone

While Obama and his aides said the administration’s stance hasn’t changed, Obama’s tone has hardened since the eruption of the most serious unrest in Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Obama said June 16 he had “deep concern” about violence, and then on June 20 he called on Iran to “stop all violent and unjust actions” against protesters.

The latest statement is “a bit of a stiffening, a bit of increased rhetoric,” said Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a policy research group in Washington.

Obama’s top political adviser said the president’s words reflect the evolution of events in Iran. “His rhetoric has changed as events have changed there,” David Axelrod said in an interview on CNN. “Obviously, the thing has escalated.”

The president dismissed allegations by Iranian authorities that the U.S. is instigating protests, adding that “we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society.”

He brushed aside criticism from Republican lawmakers, who have been calling on him to take a stronger public stand. That debate isn’t of any consequence to the anti-government protesters, Obama said.

Capitol Hill

“What’s relevant to them right now is, are they going to have their voices heard,” he said. “A lot of them aren’t paying a lot of attention to what’s being said on Capitol Hill and probably aren’t spending a lot of time thinking about what’s being said here.”

Obama gave support to complaints of voting irregularities from backers of opposition candidates, including former Prime Minister Mousavi.

Obama said “significant questions” cloud the legitimacy of the election. “Ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States.”

Iran’s Guardian Council yesterday ruled out an annulment of the election. Security forces responding to the protests over the election have fired water cannons, shot tear gas and used clubs to disperse crowds.

Obama said he has seen a video of Neda Agha Soltan, a protester who was shot in the chest and died on the streets of Tehran during a march on June 20.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Obama said. “And I think that anybody who sees it knows that there’s something fundamentally unjust about that.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Washington at [email protected]; Hans Nichols in Washington at [email protected].
Last Updated: June 24, 2009 06:23 EDT

 

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AFP: White House sees no 'justice' in Iran

White House sees no 'justice' in Iran

1 day ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The White House Monday bemoaned the lack of "justice" experienced by protestors in Iran, and said President Barack Obama had been moved by scenes of demonstrators braving repression, especially women.

But officials said Obama's offer to open negotiations with Washington's arch-foe still stood, arguing that despite the crackdown on post-election demonstrators, US interests mandated talks on Tehran's nuclear program.

On Saturday, Obama called on the Iranian government to avoid "violent and unjust" actions towards its people, in his most robust statement yet on the crisis, after a week of trying to avoid charges of US "meddling" in the crisis.

"I think if you watch the images that are on television screens... I think that's clear, that justice has not been achieved," said Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs.

But despite US dismay with developments in Tehran, where riot police with steel clubs fired tear gas to break up an opposition protest on Monday, Gibbs insisted that Obama's offer for diplomatic talks remains on the table.

"Our long-term security interests, as it relates to the support of terrorism and their pursuit of a nuclear weapon, haven't changed," he said.

"But our focus right now is not on that."

The State Department meanwhile said that invitations still stood for Iranian diplomats to visit US embassy barbecues on the July 4 national holiday for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution .

"There's no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

"We have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran," Kelly said. "We tried many years of isolation, and we're pursuing a different path now."

The White House meanwhile said the president had been emotionally affected by footage of demonstrators braving a crackdown in the streets of Tehran.

"I think he has been moved by what we've seen on television, I think, particularly so by images of women in Iran, who have stood up for their right to demonstrate, to speak out and to be heard," said Gibbs.

He could not say however whether Obama had seen the graphic and now-famous footage of a young woman purportedly bleeding to death in the streets of Tehran after being cut down by a bullet during a protest.

The images, which were uploaded onto the Internet, have become a symbol of the violent response to demonstrations in Iran.

Obama's Republican opponents have accused the president of showing insufficient support for protestors who are daily risking their lives on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities.

"There is a monumental event going on in Iran, and you know, the president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world, not follow it," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told ABC News "This Week" on Sunday.

Gibbs though, repeated White House warnings that forces battling demonstrators in Iran after President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's election win wanted nothing more than an excuse to portray the United States as a common enemy.

"There are many in Iran that would love us to be the story, as the president's said and I have said," Gibbs said.

"They would love to take this debate that's happening within Iran by Iranians about the direction of their leadership and the direction of their country and instead take that out and put us in."

Obama has been getting regular updates from his national security advisors on the crisis, but has warned that any attempt by the United States, with its complex history with Iran, to intervene would be counterproductive.

 

[Pintu]

Neda Agha Soltan (1982- June 20 , 2009)

(Image Courtesy: Los Angeles News, Restaurants, more by Top Local Experts, available at : What Obama must know about Neda Soltan, Image credited to :AP Photo/Courtesy Caspian Makan by the website)

Caspian Makan , 37 Photo journalist , claims as Fiance of Neda released the Photograph to AP.

Neda Agha Soltan, 27, Iranian Student , shot dead during protest in Iran against the Controversial Election Result, Neda who was standing beside the road with her Piano instructor, waiting peacefully beside the street as their car was obstructed due to Protests , shot by Basji Sniper cold blooded, Neda collapsed immediately and died within moments. Her last word's were : I'm burning , I'm Burning (Wikipedia)

Neda Agha Soltan (Image Courtesy: Sydney Morning Herald - Business & World News Australia | smh.com.au, available at : Iran protests | Neda Soltan | Caspian Makan | Tehran | video | YouTube | Iran's Joan of Arc: dying seconds that last for ever, Image link :http://images.smh.com.au/2009/06/24/601742/neda-420x0.jpg, also this Photograph probably released by Caspian Makkan )

Killed cold blooded in Iran , she does not know why she had to die for , she was denied proper funeral by the Authorities, even prayer for her was also banned. (Wikipedia)

The messege by the doctor who who was an Iran-Iraq War veteran treated her immediately:

"At 19:05 June 20th Place: Kargar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father [sic, later identified as her music teacher] watching the protests was shot by a Basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St. The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me. Please let the world know."

Moments before Neda murdered :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf1wroSx2Q8

Last Moments of Neda:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTASOjm7OYY



Neda , rest in Peace, I pray to almighty to give your soul peace.

Regards

 

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The Associated Press: Mousavi wife: Iran under 'martial law'

Mousavi wife: Iran under 'martial law'

By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN – 21 minutes ago

CAIRO (AP) — The wife of Iran's opposition leader is comparing a government crackdown on protests to martial law.

Zahra Rahnavard campaigned beside her husband, Mir Hossein Mousavi. She says on one of his Web sites that his followers have the constitutional right to protest and the government should not deal with them "as if martial law has been imposed in the streets." She is calling for the release of all activists and others arrested at protests.

Mousavi, a former prime minister, saw his campaign transform into a protest movement after the government declared that hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the June 12 election. Mousavi says the result was fraudulent.

Iran's supreme leader has ordered demonstrations to cease and police have used force against protesters.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

CAIRO (AP) — Iran's supreme leader said Wednesday that the government would not give in to pressure over the disputed presidential election, effectively closing the door to compromise with the opposition.

Reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi's official Web site said nonetheless that a protest was planned outside Iran's parliament Wednesday afternoon. It distanced him at the same time, calling the demonstration independent and saying it had not been organized by Mousavi.

The mixed messages reflected the dilemma facing the unlikely opposition leader, a longtime supporter of Iran's government thrust to the head of a pro-democracy protest movement.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered protests to end, leaving Mousavi with the choice of restraining followers or continuing to directly challenge the country's ultimate authority despite threats of escalating force.

Mousavi, a former prime minister, saw his campaign transform into a protest movement after the government declared that hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the overwhelming winner of the June 12 election.

Mousavi said the result was fraudulent and Western analysts who have examined available data on the vote said there were indications of manipulation.

His supporters flooded the streets of Tehran and other cities after the vote, massing by the hundreds of thousands in protests larger than any since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Security forces initially stood by and permitted the demonstrations.

Khamenei ordered an end to protests on Friday and security forces beat protesters and fired tear gas and water cannons at rallies the next day. At least 10 protesters were shot, according to official tallies.

State media have said that at least 17 people have been killed in post-election unrest. Amateur footage of a 27-year-old woman bleeding to death from a gunshot on a Tehran street unleashed outrage at home and abroad.

In weighing the direction of the protests, Mousavi appeared to be trying a compromise approach: He has made no public appearances since Thursday but he has issued strongly worded statements calling for supporters to continue demonstrations.

The protest set for Wednesday could set the stage for new confrontation.

"On the current situation, I was insisting and will insist on implementation of the law. That means, we will not go one step beyond the law," Khamenei said on state television. "For sure, neither the system nor the people will give in to pressures at any price." He used language that indicated he was referring to domestic pressures.

He told opposition supporters to halt their protests and blamed the U.S., Britain and other foreign powers for instigating unrest.

Iran also said that it was considering downgrading ties with Britain, which it has accused of spying and fomenting days of unprecedented street protests over the vote.

The government accused Britain of using spies to foment the unprecedented street protests and Iran expelled two British diplomats Tuesday. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that two Iranian diplomats were being sent home in retaliation.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was asked about the option of reducing diplomatic relations with London after a Cabinet meeting in Tehran.

"We are studying it," Mottaki said, according to state television.

 

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ANALYSIS - Iranian moves against Britain reflect old suspicions | World | Reuters

ANALYSIS - Iranian moves against Britain reflect old suspicions
Wed Jun 24, 2009 5:13pm IST

By Adrian Croft

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran's expulsion of two British diplomats suggest Tehran is trying to use deep-rooted suspicions of the British to deflect blame for bloody protests over a disputed presidential election.

The move, which Britain responded to by ordering two Iranian diplomats to leave London, marked a further downwards lurch in relations, already strained over Britain's energetic support for tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.

The expulsions also underscore Iran's anger over a new Persian-language BBC satellite television channel, funded by the British government, which is broadcasting news of the post-election protests into Iran.

"I think it's a lot to do with trying to create national unity by creating a common external enemy which is traditionally the British," Claire Spencer, head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the Chatham House thinktank, told Reuters.

Iran has accused Western powers of interfering in its affairs after official results of the June 12 election gave a landslide victory to hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sparking protests in which at least 17 people have been killed.

Iranian suspicions of London date back to its imperial rule in the Middle East and its support for a U.S.-engineered coup that toppled popular Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had nationalised the Anglo-Iranian oil company, a forerunner of BP.

British influence in the region has long since been eclipsed by Washington, and a British politician said Iran was acting against Britain because it wanted to find a foreign scapegoat without directly confronting the United States.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said America was prepared to extend a hand of peace to Iran if it "unclenched its fist", and has been careful to avoid appearing to meddle in its affairs. He toughened his criticism of Iran on Tuesday, calling scenes of death in Tehran "heartbreaking".

"To rebuff Obama as early as this would not be very sound politics," Mike Gapes, chairman of the British parliament's Foreign Affairs committee, told Reuters.

REVIEWING TIES

Iran's intelligence minister said on Wednesday some people with British passports were involved in post-election violence, and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran was reviewing whether to downgrade ties with Britain.

Iranians' obsession with the British was satirised in a popular 1970s Iranian novel and television series "My Uncle Napoleon", which pokes fun at how Iranians see everything that goes wrong as a British conspiracy.

Iran broke off relations with Britain 20 years ago after revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill British author Salman Rushdie for blasphemy in his book "The Satanic Verses".

Relations were upgraded to ambassadorial level in 1999, but the Rushdie affair has remained a source of tension.

Britain's support for the U.S.-led invasion of neighbouring Iraq in 2003 and the recent launch of the BBC Persian channel, fuelled Iranian suspicion of British meddling, Rosemary Hollis, Middle East expert at City University in London, told Sky News.

The BBC's Persian TV service was launched in January, funded with 15 million pounds ($24.7 million) a year from the British government. The BBC increased the number of satellites carrying the service after Iran interfered with transmission.

Iran expelled the BBC's correspondent in Tehran, Jon Leyne, over the broadcaster's election coverage, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week called Britain the "most treacherous" of Iran's enemies.

Trade between the two countries has been depressed by sanctions in recent years. But, according to the British-Iranian Chamber of Commerce, British exports of goods to Iran rose by 1 percent in the first 11 months of 2008 to 363.4 million pounds. British imports from Iran rose 3 percent to 63.9 million pounds.

Britain does much less business with Iran than other European countries such as Germany, Italy and France, however.

"Anglo-Iranian relations are going to take a deep turn south because they (Iran) need a scapegoat," said Ali Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

(Additional reporting by Avril Ormsby)

 

[Pintu]

PENPIX - Influential figures in Iran's disputed vote | World | Reuters

PENPIX - Influential figures in Iran's disputed vote
Wed Jun 24, 2009 6:11pm IST

TEHRAN (Reuters) - The following are influential figures in Iran's disputed June presidential election, which has convulsed the country in the most serious unrest since the overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah in 1979.

SUPREME LEADER AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI

Iran's highest authority since 1989, Khamenei has thrown his weight behind hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blaming the protests on hostile Western powers and "terrorists" and saying they will not make him shift his position.

The leader, is, in theory, answerable to the directly-elected Assembly of Experts which has the power to dismiss him and supervise his performance. In practice, the assembly has never publicly criticised Khamenei.

PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD

The former Revolutionary Guardsman, whose anti-Israel rhetoric and defence of Iran's nuclear programme cause alarm in the West, faces fierce domestic resistance over his re-election.

Defeated moderate candidates accuse his interior ministry of election rigging. Ahmadinejad has said the election was "clean and fair" and "posed a great challenge to the West's democracy".

OPPOSITION LEADER MIRHOSSEIN MOUSAVI

Moderate candidate declared second with 34 percent of the vote compared with Ahmadinejad's nearly 63 percent, Mousavi is an establishment figure, who served eight years as prime minister in the first turbulent decade of Iran's clerical rule.

During campaigning he sought to win over conservative voters by urging a return to the "fundamental values" of the republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

A veteran of the Islamic revolution, Mousavi has become a champion of reform by posing the biggest political challenge to the authorities in the past three decades.

Mousavi's supporters took to the streets in their tens of thousands to protest official results of the vote. He formally asked Iran's top legislative body to annul the election. The Guardian Council ruled that out.

Mousavi is backed by two former presidents, reformist Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

DEFEATED CANDIDATE MEHDI KAROUBI

A moderate cleric and strong critic of Ahmadinejad, Karoubi joined the reformist camp when fellow-cleric Mohammad Khatami was president from 1997 to 2005. However, while he was parliament speaker from 2000 to 2004, he sometimes buckled to pressure from religious and security hardliners who blocked Khatami's reforms.

Karoubi, who was declared to have come in fourth in the June 12 vote, says the election should be annulled.

FORMER PRESIDENT AKBAR HASHEMI RAFSANJANI

Pragmatic dealmaker who leads the Assembly of Experts and is closer to the reformist camp as he seeks to prevent hardliners from monopolising power. Rafsanjani's daughter Faezeh was detained for a few hours after taking part in post-election protests during which authorities said 10 people were killed.

The presidential election result could spell the end of Rafsanjani's political power after three decades of being widely considered to be Iran's second most powerful figure after the supreme leader.

Ahmadinejad was the surprise victor in the 2005 presidential race after a second-round vote against Rafsanjani, Iran's president for much of the 1990s.

FORMER PRESIDENT MOHAMMAD KHATAMI

The mid-ranking cleric's tough statement on post-election protests left no doubt about which side a man whom many feel is too nice for the cut-throat world of politics has chosen.

Khatami warned the establishment on Sunday of the "dangerous" consequences of banning street protests. Many of Khatami's allies have been arrested in a crackdown on pro-reform camp since the election.

GRAND AYATOLLAH MONTAZERI

Iran's most senior dissident cleric, Hossein Ali Montazeri called for three days of national mourning for Iranians killed in street protests over the disputed presidential vote.

An architect of the revolution, he is among moderate Iranian clerics who has accused the authorities of election rigging, in clear defiance of the country's leadership.

Increasingly angry rhetoric between moderate and conservative clerics has sparked speculation about a possible rift inside the establishment over the vote.

 

[Pintu]

AFP: Israel keeps anxious eye on Iran turmoil

Israel keeps anxious eye on Iran turmoil

By Djallal Malti – 1 hour ago

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel is keeping an anxious eye on the turmoil in Iran for any signs on what the crisis may mean for its arch-enemy's nuclear drive, which the Jewish state sees as the top threat to its security.

"What is happening in Iran has a direct influence on every Israeli," said Ely Karmon of the Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.

"For many years Iran has supported most of the terrorism against Israel" and threatens "to destroy Israel, to raze it from the map," he said.

Israel, the region's sole if undeclared nuclear-armed state, believes -- as does the West -- that Iran is seeking to acquire a nuclear arsenal, despite Tehran's repeated denials.

Israel also regularly accuses the Islamic republic of supporting the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip.

The idea that these movements could be given some kind of "psychological nuclear umbrella" is particularly worrying to Israel, said Shlomo Aronson, an Iran expert at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The Mossad spy agency believes Iran will have a ready-to-launch nuclear bomb within five years -- unless its nuclear programme is interrupted -- while Israeli officials have not ruled out using the use of military force.

"The Israelis want two main targets: first is stopping Iran from having the bomb and second to stop Iranian support for terrorist organisations," said Menashe Amir, head of Israeli radio's Persian-language service.

During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first four-year term, the combative president put Iran on a collision course with the West, defying UN Security Council calls for a halt to uranium enrichment despite three sets of sanctions.

He also triggered fear in Israel and outrage in the West over his calls for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map and repeatedly calling the Holocaust a myth.

While Ahmadinejad' defeated rival Mir Hossein Mousavi is regarded as more moderate, with calls for Iran to improve its relations with the outside world, he has said he would pursue the nuclear drive.

"There is no big difference between Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi because Mousavi declared very clearly... he would continue the nuclear programme," Amir said.

In any event, strategic decisions including nuclear policy remain in the hands of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has openly supported Ahmadinejad's re-election.

But Amir said that if Mousavi, a post-revolution era premier behind widespread protests at vote-rigging in the June 12 election, eventually emerged as president: "It may give European countries the wrong impression that Iran will stop the nuclear programme."

Israel is seeking to rally international opinion against Tehran and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently on his first official trip to Europe, where he is pressing for a tightening of sanctions against Iran.

"I think the true nature of the Iranian regime has been unmasked," Netanyahu told Germany's Bild newspaper.

"This is a regime that represses its own people, supports terrorism worldwide and openly denies the Holocaust, while calling for the elimination of Israel."

Israel's Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv said: "Even had Mousavi been elected he would have continued to lead Iran's nuclear programme and the hostile attitude towards Israel.

"Therefore, Israel has a certain advantage in Ahmadinejad's re-election. With Ahmadinejad as president, it is easier to explain the significance of the Iranian threat," he said.

A Tel Aviv University opinion poll showed 81 percent of Israelis believe Iran will acquire the bomb, 51 percent favour an immediate attack against Iranian nuclear sites, while 49 percent believe in the use of diplomatic means.

 

[Pintu]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/w...bl&ex=1245988800&en=948520d3f4de6dd5&ei=5087

Fresh Clashes as Ruling Cleric Says Iran Will Not Yield

By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
Published: June 24, 2009

TEHRAN — Hundreds of protesters clashed with waves of riot police and paramilitary militia in Tehran on Wednesday, witnesses said, as Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisted that the authorities would not yield to pressure from opponents demanding a new election following allegations of electoral fraud.

Office of the Supreme Leader, via
Associated Press

This photo released by the official
website of the Iranian supreme
leader's office shows Iranian supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a
meeting with Iranian parliamentarians in
Tehran on Wednesday.

It was impossible to confirm the extent of the new violence in the capital because of draconian new press restrictions on coverage of the post-election mayhem. But the witnesses reached by telephone said the confrontation, in the streets near the national Parliament building, was bloody, with police using live ammunition.

Defying government warnings, hundreds, if not thousands of protesters, had attempted to gather in front of the parliament on Baharestan Square, witnesses said. They were met with riot police and paramilitary militia, who struck at them with truncheons, tear gas and guns. One witness said he saw a 19-year-old woman shot in the neck. Others said the police had shot in the air, not directly at demonstrators.

Some opposition supporters said that presidential candidate and opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi had been scheduled to address the crowd, but initial reports indicated that he had not appeared.

The violence came as additional details emerged about the sweeping scale of arrests that have accompanied the nation’s worst political crisis since the 1979 revolution. A New York-based human rights group, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, listed the names Wednesday of 240 detained in the crackdown. Iranian state media have reported 645 arrests, but the total number of detained may be as high as 2,000, the organization said, citing human rights activists in Iran.

Among them are people arrested in a Monday night raid of a campaign office for Mr. Moussavi in Tehran, Press TV, state television’s English-language satellite broadcaster, reported Wednesday. The government said the office was being used as “a headquarters for psychological war against the country’s security,” and claimed that evidence had been found of “the role of foreign elements in planning post-election unrest.”

Also detained are 102 political figures, 23 journalists, 79 university students and 7 university faculty, the human rights organization said. By official reckonings, at least 17 demonstrators have been killed.

Earlier Wednesday, Ayatollah Khamenei told legislators that he “insisted and will insist on implementing the law on the election issue,” according to accounts in the state-run media. “Neither the establishment nor the nation will yield to pressure at any cost.”

Coupled with the clampdown on the new demonstration, arrests and other developments, the Ayatollah’s comments reinforced the impression that the authorities have resolved to use all levers of power to choke off protest.

The coalition opposed to the election results suffered a setback Wednesday when one candidate formally withdrew his complaints of vote-rigging, opening a rift among those who had challenged the outcome of the June 12 election.

Some opponents maintained their defiance, calling for continued protests and the release of detainees. Despite efforts to silence dissent and despite an appearance of disarray in opposition ranks, Zahra Rahnavard, Mr. Moussavi’s wife who has played an influential role in the opposition, issued a call Wednesday for the immediate release of Iranians detained in election protests, his Web site reported.

“I regret the arrest of many politicians and people and want their immediate release,” Ms. Rahnavard declared. “It is my duty to continue legal protests to preserve Iranian rights.”

The candidate who withdrew his complaint of election fraud, Mohsen Rezai, had initially complained that while the official count gave him 680,000 votes, he had evidence that 900,000 people voted for him. But on Wednesday, Press TV reported, he decided to abandon the complaint, saying the current “political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase which is more important than the election.”

Trailing Mr. Moussavi and the former Parliament speaker, Mehdi Karroubi, Mr. Rezai was the most conservative of the losing candidates and had been under strong pressure from Iran’s rulers to pull back from the confrontation.

Mr. Rezai was quoted as calling the ballot a “clear sample of religious democracy,” sharing language with a powerful defense of the ballot in a sermon last Friday by Ayatollah Khamenei.

Mr. Rezai’s decision to withdraw, regional analysts said, represented an incremental but significant step back for the opposition, since his status as being part of and loyal to the system adding credibility to the overall electoral challenge.

The electoral controversy continued to boil, spilling over Iran’s own borders, as President Obama issued on Tuesday his harshest condemnation of events there yet, saying he was “appalled and outraged” by the attacks on civilian protesters.

“I strongly condemn these unjust actions,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference at the White House.

Iran’s leadership pressed its own charges that foreign powers had meddled in its internal affairs and instigated the widespread protests. State television showed people identified as protesters saying they had been influenced by foreign news media, Reuters reported.

“I think we were provoked by networks like the BBC and the Voice of America to take such immoral actions,” one young man said.

The government has also worked to underscore that it is under attack by terrorists seeking to take advantage of the post-election turmoil. Press TV, quoting the national intelligence minister, said Wednesday that dozens of alleged terrorists have been arrested in the past week, including suspects in the alleged bombing last Saturday of the shine of Ayatollah Imam Khomeini in Tehran that wounded three.

The arrested were linked with “the Zionist and non-Zionist regimes outside the county,” the intelligence minister, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, was quoted as saying. Britain announced it had expelled two Iranian diplomats in a tit-for-tat response to Iran’s decision a day earlier to expel two British diplomats. Iran also lashed out at the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, for his call to end “arrests, threats and use of force.”

Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said on Wednesday Tehran was reviewing whether to downgrade ties with Britain, which Iran has accused of interference in its disputed presidential election, the ISNA semi-official news agency said.

“We are reviewing this issue,” Manouchehr Mottaki said, according to ISNA. He was also quoted as saying Iran would not participate in a meeting of the G-8 countries this week in Italy to discuss Afghanistan with regional powers. The G-8 brings together industrialized nations including the United States and Britain along with other western countries, Japan and Russia.

Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran and Alan Cowell from London. Michael Slackman and Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo, and Sharon Otterman from New York.

 

[Pintu]

AFP: Iranian riot police block demonstrations: witnesses

Iranian riot police block demonstrations: witnesses

By Jay Deshmukh – 9 hours ago

TEHRAN (AFP) — Riot police blocked protesters from gathering in Tehran on Wednesday, witnesses said, as Iran's supreme leader warned he will not back down in the face of unrest following the disputed presidential vote.

"In the recent incidents concerning the election, I have been insisting on the implementation of the law and I will be (insisting). Neither the system, nor the people will back down under force," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said.

It was the latest indication that the clerical regime will not brook dissent over the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad despite a wave of public demonstrations and complaints that the June 12 election was rigged.

And in a sign security forces are wasting no time to put down protests, a large presence of riot police and Islamist Basij militiamen stopped a crowd of several hundred people trying to assemble outside the Iranian parliament building, according to a witness.

Another witness near parliament reported seeing police charge at passers by, who dispersed into nearby streets.

Later in the evening a big squad of riot police remained deployed in the area, a source said.

In the latest diplomatic backlash over what Iran has branded Western meddling, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran may downgrade ties with Britain.

His comments came after the two governments expelled diplomats in a tit-for-tat move, with Tehran increasingly pointing the finger at London over the street violence that erupted in the aftermath of the election.

Tehran has accused Britain -- described by Khameini as the "most evil" of Iran's enemies -- of plotting against the election and seeking to stabilise the country.

It has expelled the BBC correspondent in Tehran and arrested a British-Greek journalist working for a US newspaper, one of at least two foreign reporters detained by the authorities.

Iran's interior minister also took aim at the United States, saying rioters were being funded by the CIA and the exiled opposition group the People's Mujahedeen.

Iran has refused to overturn the results of the poll but Khamenei -- who has ruled over the Islamic republic for 20 years -- has extended by five days a Wednesday deadline to examine vote complaints.

The authorities have also intensified a crackdown on opposition leader and defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, with the arrest of 25 staff at his newspaper and vitriolic attacks from the hardline press.

Another defeated candidate, former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezai, has withdrawn his protest about election irregularities, in a blow to the opposition.

"(Iran's) political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election," Rezai said in a letter to the Guardians Council, the top election body.

Mousavi, who was premier in the post-revolution era, has urged supporters to keep demonstrating but to use "self-restraint" to avoid further bloodshed while another defeated candidate Mehdi Karroubi has called for a mourning ceremony on Thursday for slain protesters.

The Revolutionary Guards, the elite force set up to protect the Islamic republic, has warned of a "decisive and revolutionary" riposte to any further protests.

The last opposition rally on Monday was crushed by hundreds of riot police armed with steel clubs and firing tear gas.

The foreign media is banned from reporting from the streets under tight restrictions imposed since the unrest was unleashed, but images of police brutality have spread worldwide via amateur video over the Internet.

At least 17 people have been killed and many more wounded in the worst unrest since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago which has jolted the pillars of the clerical regime.

US President Barack Obama, who has called for dialogue with Iran after three decades of severed ties, said on Tuesday there were "significant questions about the legitimacy" of the poll but insisted Washington was not interfering.

"The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days."

Many hundreds of protesters, prominent reformists and journalists have been rounded up by the authorities, including some people close to top regime officials such as former president Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The Guardians Council, a 12-member unelected body of Islamic clerics and jurists, insisted on Tuesday the election results would stand.

"We witnessed no major fraud or breach," spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai said. "Therefore, there is no possibility of an annulment taking place."

However, Mousavi's campaign office released a report listing "electoral fraud and irregularities" in the poll that gave him just 34 percent of the vote to 63 percent for Ahmadinejad.

It denounced what it said was "large-scale" official support for Ahmadinejad and spoke of ballot papers being printed on polling day without serial numbers, doubts about whether ballot boxes were empty when they arrived at polling stations and candidates' representatives being banned from vote centres.

Hans-Gert Poettering, president of the European parliament said he hopes to lead a delegation of European deputies to Iran to study an election which appears to be "a massive fraud".

"I will recommend to the European parliament political groups to send a delegation of the European parliament as quickly as possible to Tehran," Poettering said after meeting Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

 

[Pintu]

AFP: Iran cleric for tighter controls on foreign media

Iran cleric for tighter controls on foreign media

46 minutes ago

TEHRAN (AFP) — Hardline Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami urged the government on Friday to "better control" the foreign media, accusing them of fomenting the protests over this month's presidential election.

He also suggested that anyone who resorted to violence during the demonstrations should be considered a mohareb -- someone who fights against God -- and face the ultimate sanction.

"The American, the European and the British media have shown their perversity in this story. They added oil to the fire," he said in his sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers in Tehran which was broadcast nationwide.

"I expect the government to control them. How can they be allowed to wander round the country with their satellite phones giving information that provokes people to take to the streets?"

Iranian authorities have already clamped down on foreign media since the protests erupted over the re-election of incumbent hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a vote his main challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi has described as a "shameful fraud".

Iran expelled BBC correspondent Jon Leyne earlier this week and detained Greek-British journalist Jason Fowden working for the Washington Times.

Canadian-Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari working for US weekly Newsweek has also been detained.

Khatami suggested that any demonstrator who resorted to violence during the protests should face the death penalty.

"Anyone who takes up arms against the people is a mohareb and Islam has prescribed the toughest punishment for such offenders," he said.

At least 17 people have been killed in the unrest that erupted in Tehran over the disputed official results of the June 12 election.

 

[Pintu]

Iranian cleric says rioters should be executed | International | Reuters

Iranian cleric says "rioters" should be executed

Fri Jun 26, 2009 8:48am EDT

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A hardline Iranian cleric on Friday called for the execution of "rioters," in a sign of the authorities' determination to stamp out opposition to the June 12 presidential election result.

(EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.)

Iran's top legislative body, the Guardian Council, said it had found no major violations in the election, which it called the "healthiest" vote since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The council had already rejected a call for the annulment of the vote by moderate former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, who has led mass protests since he was declared a distant second in the election behind incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"I want the judiciary to ... punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson," Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Tehran University.

Iranian state television said on Thursday eight Basij militiamen were killed by "rioters" during the protests. State media previously said 20 people were killed in the marches.

The Group of Eight foreign ministers, meeting in Italy, said they "deplored" the post-election violence and called on Iran to settle the crisis soon through democratic dialogue and peaceful means.

"The crisis should be settled soon through democratic dialogue and peaceful means on the basis of the rule of law," said a final draft statement by the G8 ministers. "We call on the Iranian government to guarantee that the will of the Iranian people is reflected in the electoral process."

HARSH PUNISHMENT

Iranian authorities have accused Mousavi of being responsible for the bloodshed, while the moderate former prime minister says the government is to blame.

Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, said the judiciary should charge the leading "rioters" as being "mohareb" or one who wages war against God.

"They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely," he said. Under Iran's Islamic law, punishment for people convicted as mohareb is execution.

Mousavi's supporters plan to release thousands of balloons on Friday with the message: "Neda you will always remain in our hearts," in memory of Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman killed last week who has become an icon of the demonstrations.

Khatami said Neda was killed by the rioters themselves for propaganda purposes. "By watching the film, any wise person can understand that rioters killed her," he said.

Britain's Times newspaper quoted Dr. Arash Hejazi, an Iranian who appeared on Internet videos helping Neda, as echoing opposition charges the 26-year-old music student was killed by a government militiaman.

"She was just a person in the street who was against the injustice going on in her country, and for that she was murdered," he said. Hejazi said that after the protest he left Iran for Britain, where he is resident, fearing arrest.

The authorities have used a combination of warnings, arrests and the threat of police action to drive large demonstrations off Tehran's street since Saturday with small gatherings dispersed with tear gas and baton charges.

Russia, which along with China congratulated Ahmadinejad on his re-election earlier this month, said on Friday it was seriously concerned by the use of force in Iran.

"We naturally express our most serious concern about the use of force and the death of civilians," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying on the sidelines of the G8 meeting.

Russia was among countries at the G8 anxious not to slam the door on possible talks with Iran, the world's fifth largest oil exporter, over its nuclear program.

"I think there is unity here that it is for the Iranian people to choose their government but it is for the Iranian government to protect their people," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said after the foreign ministers' meeting.

The 12-man Guardian Council's statement leaves little scope for more legal challenges to the election result, short of an attack on the position of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has expressed strong support for Ahmadinejad.

"The Guardian Council has almost finished reviewing defeated candidates' election complaints...the reviews showed that the election was the healthiest since the revolution ... There were no major violations in the election," said Abbasali Kadkhodai, spokesman of the council.

Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a Mousavi ally, chairs the Assembly of Experts which has the constitutional power to depose Khamenei. The assembly has never tried to do so and Rasfanjani is seen as unlikely to take such a radical step.

Mousavi said he was determined to keep challenging the election results despite pressure to stop. He called on his supporters to continue "legal" protests and said restrictions on the opposition could lead to more violence.

 

[Pintu]

BBC NEWS | Middle East | US hits back at Ahmadinejad claim

US hits back at Ahmadinejad claim

The White House has accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of seeking to blame the US for unrest following Iran's disputed election.

The US replied one day after Mr Ahmadinejad was sharply critical of President Barack Obama for condemning Iranian violence against protesters.

Tehran's leadership has accused foreign governments of fuelling the protests.

The Group of Eight foreign ministers, meeting in Italy, said they "deplored" the post-election violence in Iran.

In a statement, they urged Iran "to respect fundamental human rights" and settle the crisis "through democratic dialogue and peaceful means".

Earlier, Iran's Guardian Council said it had nearly finished examining the allegations of vote-rigging and had found no irregularities.

"We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had," the electoral body's spokesman, Abbasali Kadkhodai, told the Irna news agency.

"I can say with certainty that there was no fraud in this election."

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen in Tehran says the comments are yet another sign that the Guardian Council's definitive verdict about the alleged election fraud - due on Sunday - will be a formality.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has already said several times that the result is fair and will stand.

Meanwhile, another senior Iranian hardline cleric said in his Friday sermon that the leaders of the protests should be dealt with "severely and ruthlessly".

"I want the judiciary to... punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson," Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Tehran university in comments broadcast nationwide.

War of words

In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Iran's president was attempting to deflect attention from events at home.

"There are people in Iran who want to make this not about a debate among Iranians in Iran, but about the West and the United States.

"I would add President Ahmadinejad to that list of people trying to make this about the United States," Mr Gibbs said.

He was speaking in response to an angry statement made by Mr Ahmadinejad on Thursday in which Mr Obama was told to avoid "interfering in Iran's affairs".

"Our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously [former US President George W] Bush used to say," Mr Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.

Despite the increasingly pointed rhetoric, the substance of the Obama policy towards Iran remains unchanged, says the BBC's Richard Lister in Washington.

The US regards its main priority as addressing Iran's nuclear programme and its support for militant groups, and Mr Obama has made clear repeatedly that the offer of talks with Tehran is still on the table, our correspondent adds.

Compromise statement

Some Western nations are continuing to criticise Iran's handling of the crisis.

Tensions between Iran and the UK are already strained after Tehran accused Britain of inflaming the protests - charges London denies.

"We deplore post-electoral violence which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians," the statement from the meeting of G8 foreign ministers in Trieste said.

"We call on the Iranian government to guarantee that the will of the Iranian people is reflected in the electoral process," it went on.

The BBC's Duncan Kennedy in Trieste said it took many hours of discussions to find the right choice of words acceptable to all the ministers.

The strength of the wording was more muted than some had hoped for because of opposition from Russia, who said Iran should not be isolated.

In Iran itself, defeated presidential candidate and protest figurehead Mir Hossein Mousavi on Thursday accused those behind the alleged "rigged" elections of being responsible for the bloodshed during the protests.

He complained of "complete" restrictions on his access to people and a crackdown on his media group.

At least 25 people - including eight members of the pro-government Basij militia - are reported to have been killed and dozens more wounded in the protests since the disputed election on 12 June.

The figures cannot be verified due to severe reporting restrictions inside Iran.

 

[Pintu]

The Associated Press: Iran: new audience for US scholar's protest guide

Iran: new audience for US scholar's protest guide

By SEBASTIAN ABBOT and KATARINA KRATOVAC – 36 minutes ago

EDITOR'S NOTE: Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.

___

Iranian protesters wondering what to do next are being encouraged to consult a source that helped drive a decade of nonviolent revolutions in Eastern Europe: a how-to guide to toppling dictatorships written by a retired American scholar who is little known outside of activist circles.

But the Iranian regime definitely knows about 81-year-old Gene Sharp.

His name and references to his 1993 book have buzzed around opposition Web sites and social networks. Last year, Iran released a fictionalized video warning that he and others, including Sen. John McCain and billionaire George Soros, were planning a "velvet revolution" in the country, alluding to the 1989 ouster of the Communist government of then-Czechoslovakia.

Iranian officials have leveled the same charges against supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims the June 12 election was stolen by vote rigging and fraud to re-elect President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Sharp denies playing any role in driving Iran's worst internal turmoil since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But he said he would be pleased if his work helped Iranians wage peaceful resistance.

"The more they learn that there is a nonviolent alternative to both violence and passive submission, the more chances they are to take a wise course of action rather than a stupid one," Sharp said in a telephone interview from Boston.

There are multiple references to Sharp's seminal text, "From Dictatorship to Democracy," on Twitter and Internet chat rooms, which have become the Iranian protest movement's lifelines as the government clamps down on media coverage, pro-Mousavi Web sites and other outlets.

"Seems the protesters have no way of organizing themselves. Any ideas?" said one anonymous posting this week on WhyWeProtest.net, a Web site bathed in green — the color that Mousavi and his supporters have adopted for their pro-reform movement.

"These books have freed millions," said an anonymous response, pointing to Farsi translations of Sharp's guide and a similar manual written by Serbian activists who claim they used the American's ideas to help topple Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

Sharp said the Farsi translation of his guide has been downloaded thousands of times from the Web site of the Boston-based center he founded in 1983 to study nonviolent resistance, The Albert Einstein Institution. A shorter introduction to peaceful struggle, written by Sharp, was legally published in Farsi in Iran in recent years, he said.

Sharp, who held a research position at Harvard University for almost 30 years, originally wrote his guide for Burmese dissidents waging an anti-government struggle from the jungle. It eventually made its way to activists in Eastern Europe, where it was cited during the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine earlier this decade.

Sharp has said his group receives no U.S. government funding, but it could become part of Iranian accusations that the United States and other countries are behind the protests.

The roughly 80-page book lists 198 different nonviolent methods that protesters can use to pressure authoritarian regimes, ranging from adopting symbolic colors to staging mass strikes. Less conventional methods include skywriting and "protest disrobings." A portrait of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi sits prominently in Sharp's Boston office.

"The use of a considerable number of these methods — carefully chosen, applied persistently and on a large scale ... is likely to cause any illegitimate regime severe problems," advises the guide.

Sharp and other experts on nonviolent resistance say Iranian protesters need to diversify their methods away from just street marches, which attracted hundreds of thousands shortly after the election but have whittled down to hundreds as security forces tighten their grip.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has rejected Mousavi's demand for a new election, and the country's feared Revolutionary Guard force has vowed to crush any further protests. At least 17 people have been killed in the unrest, in addition to eight members of the regime-backed militia force, the Basij, according to state media.

"If this movement is defined as street demonstrations against the police that may or may not turn violent, then the opposition will lose," said Peter Ackerman, the founder of the Washington-based International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which held two confidential workshops in Dubai in 2005 for Iranian activists, some of whom were arrested when they returned home.

Srdja Popovic, one of the founders of Serbia's student resistance, said Iranian protesters have to be prepared for the long haul and come up with "low-risk" tactics. He pointed to calls on Twitter for protesters to turn on car headlights and stand across from security services holding the Quran as a good start, but said they need to do more.

He lauded some of Iranian protest tactics: wearing green — the symbolic color of Islam — and chanting slogans from the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

"You can't export nonviolent struggles against non-democratic regimes. Cultural and situational environments are too different," said Popovic, who now runs the Belgrade-based Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, or Canvas. "But the principles are the same."

The refusal of security forces to crack down on protesters was critical to the success of the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, but the cohesion and harsh tactics of Iran's security forces raise doubts about the future of Mousavi's "green movement."

"Ukraine's ruling elite was split apart and opposition activists faced no danger," said Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky. "Violence and repression, lack of access to mass media and unity of the ruling elite leave little chance for Iranian protesters."

Thousands of Ukrainians protested for days in 2004 to force the government to hold a new presidential vote after the incumbent's victory was marred by fraud allegations. The pro-Western challenger, Viktor Yushchenko, eventually prevailed.

Analyst Soso Tsintadze in Georgia, where protesters forced President Eduard Shevardnadze to resign in 2003 and brought a pro-Western opposition leader to power, also was pessimistic.

"Iranian leaders are no Shevardnadze, whose power was really weak," Tsintadze said. "They are strong people who control the situation, and the military did not rebel, while in Shevardnadze's case the mutiny in the military was a crucial step."

Mousavi has refused to give up, however, and has urged his backers to maintain protests but avoid violence.

"The seed of change is obviously growing among the Iranian youth," said Popovic, the Serbian activist. "It will be impossible for conservatives to cancel this process, even if they can suppress actual protests and install Ahmadinejad as president for another term."

Lech Walesa, the famed leader of Poland's Solidarity movement and the country's first democratically elected president following Communist rule, counseled perseverance.

"Lead your struggle in a wise way but do not hit your heads against the wall," said Walesa. "If not this time, you will win next time."

Abbot and Kratovac reported from Cairo. Associated Press Writers Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland; Mansur Mirovalev in Moscow; and Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili in Tbilisi, Georgia, contributed to this report.

 

[Pintu]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/magazine/28fob-q4-t.html?ref=magazine

Questions for Reza Pahlavi

The Exile

By DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: June 26, 2009

You are said to be a leader of the Iranian exile groups working to overthrow the regime whose clerics and mullahs overthrew your father exactly 30 years ago in the Islamic Revolution and forced your family out of the country. What do you do on a day-by-day basis, exactly?
I am in contact with all sorts of groups that are committed to a secular, democratic alternative to the current regime. We believe in a democratic parliamentary system, where there’s a clear separation between church and state, or in this case, mosque and state.

Has the American government aided you?
No, no. I don’t rely on any sources other than my own compatriots.

But presumably you’re working with American agents in the C.I.A. or elsewhere who have been trying to destabilize the Iranian regime for years.
Your presumption is absolutely and unequivocally false.

How did you end up settling in Bethesda, Md., with your wife and children?
It happens to be circumstantial. To me, it’s a temporary place to live.

Why would you call your decades of living near Washington “temporary”?
Because my desire has always been to permanently return to my homeland.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed victory over Mir Hussein Moussavi in an election that was widely condemned as fraudulent. What do you make of him?
The cry for freedom you hear in the streets of Iran right now is well beyond the fact of whether it’s one candidate versus the other. It’s about the fact that for 30 years they have been denied their most basic rights.

Many people believe that Moussavi would be more a more moderate president than Ahmadinejad.
The same argument was made during the Soviet era, where one would argue that one person would be supposedly more moderate than the other. But at the end, they all represented a Communist, totalitarian system. I think that anyone the Iranian regime prescreens would not be a true representative of the nation.

What do you make of Ahmadinejad’s rants against Israel?
Of course it’s troubling, and it’s connected again to the viral, violent message embedded in the ideology that was brought about by Khomeini himself at the time of the revolution.

Did you see the speculation from Iran that Ahmadinejad has Jewish roots? Do you think the claim is true?
Look, we hear a lot of things, but the big picture here should not be forgotten. If we say Jewish roots, aren’t we all the children of Abraham if you come to think of it?

What religion are you?
That’s a private matter; but if you must know, I am, of course, by education and by conviction, a Shiite Muslim. I am very much a man of faith.

What do you say to those who associate your father’s rule with the violation of civil rights? He ran a brutal secret police.
I leave this judgment to history. My focus is the future.

Some say the media clampdown in Iran and censorship of the foreign press are tactics Ahmadinejad learned from your father. You don’t feel obligated to acknowledge your dad’s misdeeds?
The current regime is, by any measure, the standard-bearer and global poster child for militancy, brute autocracy and corruption. If they are in fact students of my father, his ultimate act of refusing suppressive bloodshed in favor of exile should be their test.

When your father fled Tehran and went into exile, he reportedly took a lot of money with him. Would you describe yourself today as a billionaire?
Those are the recycling of 30-year-old propaganda by the clerical militants of the time. If you were to learn of my net worth, you would be more than surprised.

Do you feel bitter about not getting to be shah?
This is not a personal matter. This is not about me.

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

 

[Pintu]

The Associated Press: Iranian cleric urges executing some protesters

Iranian cleric urges executing some protesters

By WILLIAM J. KOLE – 18 minutes ago

EDITOR'S NOTE: Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.

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A senior cleric on Friday urged Iran's protest leaders to be punished "without mercy" and said some should face execution — harsh calls that signal a nasty new turn in the regime's crackdown on demonstrators two weeks after its disputed election.

Hard-liners have ordered long sentences and hangings before, and some fear those awaiting trial by a judiciary whose verdicts reflect the will of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could face the most severe punishments the Islamic system can dish out.

"Anyone who takes up arms to fight with the people, they are worthy of execution," Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, a ranking cleric, said in a nationally broadcast sermon at Tehran University.

Khatami said those who disturbed the peace and destroyed public property were "at war with God" and should be "dealt with without mercy."

His call for merciless retribution for those who stirred up Iran's largest wave of dissent since the 1979 Islamic Revolution came as Mir Hossein Mousavi, the nation's increasingly isolated opposition leader, has been under heavy pressure to give up his fight and slipped even further from view.

Mousavi said he would seek official permission for any future rallies, effectively ending his role in street protests organized by supporters who insist he — not hard-line incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — won the June 12 election. And an aide said Mousavi's Web site, his primary means of staying in touch with supporters, was taken down by unknown hackers.

Mousavi alleges he was robbed of victory through widespread and systematic fraud. The regime rejects the claim, refusing to consider new balloting, and on Friday, the Guardian Council — Iran's top electoral body — proclaimed the vote the "healthiest" held since the revolution.

Since the election, opposition protesters repeatedly have clashed with security forces who arrested hundreds of people, including journalists, academics and university students. At least 17 people have been killed, in addition to eight members of the pro-government Basij militia, officials have said.

President Barack Obama, joined at the White House by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hailed the demonstrators in Iran and condemned the violence against them.

"Their bravery in the face of brutality is a testament to their enduring pursuit of justice," Obama said. "The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous. In spite of the government's efforts to keep the world from bearing witness to that violence, we see it and we condemn it."

Obama scoffed at accusations of U.S. meddling in Iran by Ahmadinejad, who on Thursday called for "repentance" from the U.S. leader. Obama added that Mousavi has "captured the imagination or spirit" of those in Iran who are "interested in opening up."

The demonstrations petered out this week under an ever-intensifying crackdown. Mousavi, meanwhile, has sent mixed signals to supporters, asking them not to break the law while pledging not to drop his challenge.

Amnesty International called the prospect of quick trials and capital punishment for some detainees "a very worrying development." It said Iran was the world's No. 2 executioner after China last year, with at least 346 known instances of people put to death. The group also called on the regime to release dozens of detained journalists it said faced possible torture.

Khatami's call for harsh penalties and even death for those who are found to have defied the Islamic system "is certainly an attempt to instill fear in people," said Ann Harrison, an Iran researcher at Amnesty.

Whether the regime will actually follow through — or need to — was unclear. After Iran's 1999 student uprising, the regime sentenced scores to death, but many of those eventually were commuted to prison terms.

Either way, detainees face a fearsome, cleric-controlled judiciary. Courts often convene behind closed doors, rights groups complain that defendants sometimes have little access to lawyers, and the world learns of their fate only if a verdict happens to be announced on state TV.

"Any chances of a trial that meets standards of due process would be very slim," said Aaron Rhodes, spokesman for the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

"What the regime is really saying is that any Iranian citizen who has dared express views which aren't consistent with the views of a small hard-line clique is at risk of the most severe punishment the system can deal out," he said. "They are really at the mercy of the system at this point."

In his sermon, Khatami asked the judiciary to "confront the leaders of the protests, leaders of the violations, and those who are supported by the United States and Israel strongly, and without mercy to provide a lesson for all."

He reminded worshippers that Khamenei, the supreme leader, rules by God's design and must not be defied.

The cleric also lashed out at foreign journalists, accusing them of false reporting, and singled out Britain for new criticism. Earlier this week, Iran expelled two British diplomats, prompting the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats by Britain.

"In this unrest, Britons have behaved very mischievously and it is fair to add the slogan of 'down with England' to the slogan of 'down with USA,'" he said.

In Trieste, Italy, foreign ministers of the Group of Eight countries called for an end to the violence in Iran and urged the authorities to find a peaceful solution.

Also Friday, more than 150 demonstrators attacked the Iranian Embassy outside the Swedish capital of Stockholm, throwing stones, breaking windows and injuring one worker, police said. Officers evicted the few demonstrators who climbed in through broken windows and arrested one person, said police spokesman Ulf Hoglund.

Khatami alleged that the icon of the opposition, slain protester Neda Agha Soltan, was killed by demonstrators, not the Iranian security forces. Soltan, 27, was killed by a shot to the chest last week, on the sidelines of a protest.

In London, an Iranian doctor who said he tried to save Soltan as the young woman bled to death, told the BBC she apparently was shot by a member of the Basij militia. Protesters spotted an armed member of the militia on a motorcycle, and stopped and disarmed him, said Dr. Arash Hejazi.

In quelling protests, Basij militiamen have broken up even small groups of people walking together to prevent any possible gathering. Still, dozens of friends and relatives of Soltan managed to pay tribute Friday, arriving at Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in groups of two and three, uttering brief prayers and placing flowers on her grave, witnesses said.

Kole reported from Cairo; Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer in Cairo, Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, and Ben Feller in Washington contributed to this report.

 

[Pintu]

Link New York Times of US President Barak Obama's reaction :

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/world/middleeast/27iran.html?ref=global-home

Regards

 

[Pintu]

Al Jazeera English - Americas - Obama rejects Iran apology call

News Americas

Obama rejects Iran apology call

Obama and Merkel held talks on Iran in
Washington on Friday [AFP]



Barack Obama, the US president, has rejected a demand by his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he apologise for condemning Iran's protest crackdown.

At least 19 people have been killed and many more imprisoned in the protests against alleged fraud in Iran's June 12 presidential election, which Ahmadinejad won.

"I don't take Mr Ahmadinejad's statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran," Obama said during a news conference on Friday in Washington with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

He reiterated his criticism of Tehran, saying the government had "moved outside of universal norms" over its treatment of protesters.

Obama said Ahmadinejad's chief rival, Mir Hussein Mousavi, had "captured the imagination" of Iranians.

Merkel, on her part, pledged an effort to identify the victims of violence of Iran, saying: "Iran cannot count on the world turning a blind eye."

Earlier on Friday, members of G8, the group of the world's largest economies, said at a conference in Italy that they "deplore" the post-election violence in Iran and urged the Islamic republic to "respect fundamental human rights".

Nuclear talks impact

Obama admitted that dialogue with Iran over its nuclear programme could be affected by the fallout from the elections.

In depth

The latest on Iran's post-election unrest


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"There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks and we don't yet know how any potential dialogue will have been affected until we see what has happened inside of Iran," he said.

World powers have called on Iran to halt its nuclear programme amid fears that it could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran insists that its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes.

Ahmadinejad had compared Obama to his predecessor George Bush in an escalation of the war of words between Tehran and Washington.

"Why do you speak so impolitely with this great nation?" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a petrochemical complex's inauguration ceremony in south Iran on Thursday.

He said in the speech broadcast on Iranian state television: "I hope you will avoid interfering in Iran's affairs.

"This is our friendly advice; we don't want to see the big disgraces of the Bush era to be repeated in the new US era."

 

[Pintu]

AFP: Hopes for Iran talks hit by violence: Obama

Hopes for Iran talks hit by violence: Obama

By Stephen Collinson – 7 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President Barack Obama admitted Friday Iran's crackdown on demonstrators had dented his hopes for direct talks with Tehran, but said international multilateral nuclear talks would go on.

In another stiffening of tone on Iran, Obama also sharply dismissed demands for an apology from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his previous comments on Tehran's suppression of political dissent.

"There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks," Obama said after talks at the White House with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"I think we're going to have to see how that plays itself out in the days and weeks ahead," said Obama.

Obama said however that the talks compared by the international P5-plus-1 group over Iran's nuclear program would likely continue.

He argued that despite speaking out with a "unified voice" on the violence in Tehran, the world needed to recognize that the prospect of Iran with nuclear weapons was a "big problem."

"My expectation would be ... that you're going to continue to see some multilateral discussions with Iran."

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana has been authorized by UN Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany -- to discuss the issue with Tehran.

Obama also offered a personal riposte for Ahmadinejad's demands for an apology and accusations that the US president, despite a measured early response to the crackdown, had meddled in Iran's internal affairs.

"I don't take Mr Ahmadinejad's statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran," said Obama.

"I'm really not concerned about Mr. Ahmadinejad apologizing to me.

"I would suggest that Mr. Ahmadinejad think carefully about the obligations he owes to his own people.

"And he might want to consider looking at the families of those who've been beaten or shot or detained ... that's where I think Mr. Ahmadinejad and others need to answer their questions."

Obama's comments were his first public response to Ahmadinejad's tirade against the United States and the West on Thursday, partly prompted by the US president's hardening tone on violence in Iran.

"I hope you (Obama) will avoid interfering in Iran's affairs," Ahmadinejad said, accusing the US leader of using words similar to those of his predecessor George W. Bush who took a hard line against the Islamic republic.

"Will you use this language with Iran (in any future dialogue)? If this is your stance, there will be nothing left to talk about," said Ahmadinejad.

Obama responded to Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election with a measured approach, but hardened his tone on Tuesday following a crackdown on mass demonstrations supporting a rival candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Merkel bemoaned the "horrifying scenes" that she had seen from Iran. "We will not forget those," she said, and vowed to do everything to find out the number and identities of victims of the government crackdown.

"In this day and age of the 21st century, Iran cannot count on the world community turning a blind eye to this," she said.

Merkel referenced her own upbringing in communist East Germany, saying it was important for victims to know the people of the world were aware of their plight.

She also called for a "diplomatic solution to prevent Iran from gaining possession of a nuclear weapon."

 

[Pintu]

Iran's Arab allies relieved to see crisis easing | Reuters

Iran's Arab allies relieved to see crisis easing
Fri Jun 26, 2009 11:22am EDT

* Tehran's Arab allies relieved as see crisis ending

* Alliances won't change in foreseeable future-analyst

* Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah urges Iran to "bandage wounds"



By Laila Bassam

BEIRUT, June 26 (Reuters) - Iran's allies in the Arab world are breathing sighs of relief in the belief that the Islamic Republic is through the worst of a crisis triggered by its disputed presidential election.

"The concern about what is going on Iran is legitimate but does not reach the extent of fear for the regime," a senior Lebanese Shi'ite politician said.

Tehran's support has been vital to Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, armed factions that oppose U.S. policy in the Middle East. Likewise, Syria's alliance with Iran is central to its strategy for confronting Israel, which has occupied Syrian territory since the 1967 Middle East war.

Tehran's allies to the west have been following as closely as anyone the fallout of the June 12 election, including protests that have defied the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"Sayyed Khamenei is still in control," the politician said. "We look with relief to the containment of the situation because we are talking about something of concern to Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian affairs."

The demonstrations, the biggest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, have largely been forced off the streets by a combination of the security forces, warnings and arrests.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas have harnessed Iranian support in their struggle against Israel, but also in confrontations with domestic rivals backed by the United States and its conservative Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Syria, whose alliance with Iran is almost as old as the Islamic Republic, recently sent a delegation to Tehran in a show of solidarity, a political source said. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said this week that "anyone betting on the Iranian regime falling will lose".

Suleiman Taqieddin, a columnist with Lebanon's as-Safir newspaper, said: "The relationship between these forces and Iran will not change at all in the foreseeable future."



KHAMENEI CLASSMATE SAYS IRAN NEARLY OUT OF "EXAM"

Khamenei has thrown his weight behind hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His victory in the election has been disputed by defeated opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, who had stated his support for better ties with the West.

The Guardian Council, Iran's top legislative body, has rejected his calls for the annulment of the election.

Iran's Arab allies are quick to point out that their ties to the Islamic Republic are determined not by the president but the Supreme Leader, who has the final say in foreign affairs.

Hezbollah, a Shi'ite Islamist group, considers Khamenei its spiritual guide. It was founded in 1982 by Iran's Revolutionary Guards to fight Israeli forces occupying Lebanon at the time.

Sheikh Naim Kassem, the group's deputy leader, this week backed the Iranian authorities' view that Western states were involved in the unrest. "These matters are controllable and therefore the Islamic Republic is solid," he said.

Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, once a classmate of Khamenei in the Iranian holy city of Qom, said the country was "on the verge of emerging from its internal examination".

Speaking at Friday prayers in Beirut, he urged the Iranian nation to unite "to set out in an operation to bandage its wounds by sensing the gravity of the foreign attack on it". (Writing and additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut; Khaled Oweis in Damascus; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)