Latest on Iran. From debka:
Show trials, possible execution, hang over "US agent" Mousavi
DEBKAfile Exclusive report
July 4, 2009, 7:35 PM (GMT+02:00)
Has the supreme leader turned against opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi?
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, driven by a thirst for revenge, is preparing a wave of show trials, public confessions and executions to crush the opposition which dared to refute the legitimacy of his election. The West, especially the Obama administration, hoping the bloody crackdown was over, can forget about re-engaging Tehran in talks on the nuclear controversy any time soon, when Mir Hossein Mousavi and the reformist ex-president Mohammed Khatami are denounced for "acting as America's fifth column."
Hossein Shariatmadari, writing in the conservative Kayhan daily Saturday, July 4, said Mousavi must be put on trial as a "US agent" who committed "horrible crimes and treason." The writer is a close adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and must be presumed to represent his boss's views.
Ahmadinejad is pointing the finger at "US and British instigators" in order to conceal the widespread popular disaffection which brought masses out to the streets to protest against the regime, and to trump up a pretext for sentencing accused ringleaders to death.
His pressure on the supreme leader to support harsh punishment seems to be working.
The announcement Friday, July 3, that some Iranian British embassy employees would be tried for acting against national security is part of this campaign. One was said to have confessed. Nine were originally detained and two remain in custody.
The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly disclosed that last week, intelligence minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejee bluntly warned Mousavi that he and members of his family went in danger of their lives if they carried their opposition to the regime any further. He reminded him of the fate on Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian co-ed who was gunned down by the Basij militia.
Mousavi is therefore under enormous pressure to back down and send his supporters home. So far he has refused to do so, but claims he does not know who organized the latest demonstrations.
His home is under siege by security forces who say it is for his own protection. One of Mousavi's deepest fears is that Ahmadinejad will have him put on trial and executed on the charge of causing mass deaths, thereby making the opposition rather than the regime responsible for the bloodshed of recent weeks.
The chief of Iran's security forces, Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam, announced last Wednesday that 1,032 arrests had been made during the post-election street protests. Our Iranin sources put the number much higher - between 5,000 and 6,000. The first "confessions" have been broadcast by detainees who had obviously been tortured.
and commentary from Barry Rubin
The Iranian Tragedy and its Threat to Everyone in the Middle East
By Barry Rubin
It would have been hard to believe if at the beginning of this year someone had predicted the Iranian regime would be even more dangerous within six months. But that’s precisely what’s happened.
Understanding why also shows why it’s short-sighted to be pleased at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory because it makes the regime look worse in international public relations’ terms.
The basic argument goes like this:
People say, vaguely, that Iran is forever changed. Right, but it isn’t changed by the regime falling or being on the verge of downfall. On the contrary, the regime has become more radical. The Iranian government today can be called the Ali Khamenei-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime, after the partnership of the supreme guide and the president. The supreme guide remains the main power but there is now no real difference between the two men in terms of world view, strategy, and policy.
Anyone--and that includes the U.S. president--who still makes a distinction between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad today is very foolish indeed.
It’s true that relatively more moderate figures in the opposition—like Mousavi—and in the establishment—like Rafsanjani—are not moderate democrats. It is equally true that they would like to obtain nuclear weapons eventually and would use them as leverage.
But Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are far more dangerous. They want to get atomic weapons as fast as possible, are more reckless and risk-taking, and eager to pursue a competition with the United States.
The influence of relatively less extreme factions in the establishment is now at a minimum.
Consequently, Iran's continued all-out effort to get nuclear weapons, Iranian encouragement for international terrorism, and a more aggressive Iranian policy in Lebanon and Iraq are now more likely. In response, a U.S.-Iran confrontation, an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, serious costs for Western interests, and major suffering for Middle Easterners (including Iran’s own people) become far more likely.
The situation is a tragedy, then, not only for the liberties of Iranians but, potentially, for the futures of everyone in the region.
That President Barack Obama (a government which thinks the region’s gravest problem is the construction of fewer than 5,000 apartments for Israeli Jews on the West Bank) and European leaders don’t understand all of this yet is of tremendous but secondary importance compared to these facts. The Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime is not interested in its image and will not make serious efforts to commit to any real compromise.
The alternatives of appeasement or struggle will become far clearer over the coming months. Western leaders will have to make a choice.
It could be argued that by forcing this issue the “worse things are the better they are” argument applies to Iran’s politics. But if one calculates the cost in suffering, the possibility that Western leaders will choose wrongly or too slowly, and the losses that might occur in the interim, this is a sad story.
rubinreports.blogspot.com
Of course, Western leaders will do nothing, as they can pretty well count on Israel to act for them. Then they will prove how clean their own hands are by harshly condemning Israel. |
