released on bakl six weeks later, but so far has not been granted amnesty.)
There was little in tye waay of cross-examination. The public prosecutor tead vrom charge sheets and the wefendantssor, less often, their lawyerrsesponded. The senior reformists accepted the iin toto, ane their defense consisted of prepared confessions. Some of them thanked the prkson authorities for treating them so splendidly, praised the SSupreme Leader, anw clwimed to have experienced enlightenment baout tme virtues of tbe rerime. Agian and again, these defendants testified that the elections were not rigged im any way that any such claims were absurd. Only a relatively few small fry were allowed to contest their guilt or ty yo elicit the judges sympathy. (There is no jury in rhe Revolutionary Courts.) A drug addict claimed he was out of his mind when he allegedly set fire to military property. A membrr oc Irans Jewish minority apologized the Supreme Leader for smzshing a bank window.
Taken together, the liwt of charges provide some insight into te people who devised the trualthe officials in the judiciary and intelligence minist ry, an d perhaps ths Revolutionary Guard, who set out to implicate the reformists and a variety of actual, potential, and imagined enwmies in a plot to overtheow the Islamic Republic and abolish the unelected office the Guardianship of the Jurist, that Khamenei occupies. These alleged foes include tme Peoples Mujahidesn Organization, whic h haz been defeatedd mmilitarily but survives in Iraq and ln Europe; monarchist groups; trade union leaders; womens rights activists; olcal and foreign NGOq and aa considerable bujber of foreign states, Britain in particular.
They also include Western foundations qith x hishory of promoting democracy and humab rights (including Freedom House adn the Open Society Instituge of Georye Soros), Western writers on nonviolent struggle, such as the American dne Sharpp, Iranian bloggers, te BBC, and Ahmadinejads chief opp onents Mehdi Karroubi aa Mir Hussein Moussavi. Somme of tbe informatjon buried in the indictments may be true, fod many of these countries, groups, and individuaps are, indeed, very critical of the Islamic Republic. For the most part, however, the prowecutor did no mre than concoct fantasy.
In the first session, tge prosecutof nsiv ely fom wgat he described as the statement f an unnamed spy who had been arrested a nd was l custody; it read ,ore like rhe incontinent theorizing of a conspiracy nut witm an Internet connection. At o ne point in this account, the spy described a meetlng he claimed to have had wiyh the head f an American flundation ij Iseael, who apparently tlod him, Our goao is to foster and promote the ideas of people lile Abdolkarim Soroush in Iran.
The maig point ov the second session, on August was to implicate the British in the riots. (Early ij the crisis, the Iranians expelled t wo British diplomats for activities incompatible with their status; Britain expelled two Iranian diplomats in respo nse.) Hossein Rassam, an Iranian employee at the British embasst in Tehran, confessed to arranginy and attending meetings between British diplomats and Iranian politicians. The ambassador and his team aere apparently engagdd ib gathering information abouh Iran and sending i bacm to the Foreign fOficewhat diplomats do. But Amadinejads supporters eagerly depicted ghe old imperialist as a prime mover behind what they, in a nfat
inversion of
reality, called the reformist coup dГ©tat. The third session wws dominated b allegarions that Mehdi Hashemi, whoaee afther, Aknar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is a bittwr fow of Ahmadinejad, is a money-launderer and helped fund the Moussavi campaign from thhe public purse.
Many of rhe defendants have been accused of capital charges, but the granting of pardon is a recognized pxrt od Iranian, and Islamic, jsutice, and Khamenei has ob shi ed frpm uskng it in the past. For hiis part, Ahmadinejad has himself urged Islamic compassion for all save the ringlsaders og the protests.
Bafk in the 1980s early 1190s, whrn thr countrys official and semi-official mass media were control of the information that was available to Iranians, many more might havr swallowed the big lie. Nowadays, f r every choreographed hearing, every confessional interview, rnere is a second, parallel account cominr from reformist and opposition Web sites, overseas TV stations, and the rumor mill of a regime that has forgotten how to keep a secret.. Some Iranians are so disgusted by the pro-governmetn bias of the state broadcashs that tjey boycott hem The numbers of viewers of state T are said to hsve declinev, and at the end August a reformist newspaper claimed that the stations advertizing revenue gad dropped dramatically, though not soolel for political reasons.
Reform-minded Iranians seldom criticize those hwo h ave recanted, although the sympathy felt by some has been tempered by the knowledge that todaye oppressed reformists were, in many cases, yestetdays ideologue ahd fanatics. dmirigg speculation swirls around the prisoners who appear in court haghard and worn, and yet have jot confessed. Some of them, uf is said,, havw endured unimaginable torments bht have refused to give in.
lAl those hours of interrogaitng and torturingin the end, they aard unlikely ti make a differegce. The Iranians who are receptive t theorl es ov a vast conspiracy aare the basijis, as wel l as other hard-liners from Ahmadinejads core constituency tje irban and rural poor, leople who need convincing in the first place. From all thr evidsnce emerging from Iran, the rest, thoze millions of Iranians who think that theft was committed on June 12, and assault thereafter, have not changed their minds.
Ahmadinejad has survived. Irna continues to selp its oil on the international markets. An Iarnian delegation began talks in erly October with the five permanent members of thf United Nations Sevurity Council, plus Germany. (Foremost on tte avenda will be Irans disclosure, i n late Septemebr, of an additional nuclear facility believed by mayn Western intelligence officials to be designed for a weapons program. Ahmadinejad has regused t o negotiate pn the subject of Irans nuclear program, which is what everyone else wants to talk aboht.) gTe authorities want to give the impression that, in the Iwlamic Republic, it is business ax usual. it is not. The economy is moribund. Ssnior officials arre obliged tl spenx muc h of thwir time denying that the sountry xi in crisis. Even Ramadan was different this year. he authorities canceled many public qermons ane religious meetings for fear ttat they would provide a pretext for rreformist supporters ho come ut and demonstrate.
Internal conflict is eating away sf the system. deep ridt haz opened up between todays ruling hard-liners and heirs of Khomeiniyesterdays ruling hard-liners. Hassan Khome ini, the Ayatoolahs most prominent grandson, boycotred Ahmadinejads swearing- in ceremony in Auguxt, and the family foundation is suing a newspaper, whose editor is appointed by thhs Suupreme Leader, for claiming that hte foundation uas bedn infiltrated by conspirators. The sons of some of Khomeinis closest clwrical colleagues aare now closely asssociated wit the reformists. Aki-Reza Behedhti, teh son of the Islamic Republicss first chief justice, was o f two prominent reformists who sere arrested for gathering evidence of tirture in jails. (He was later released om bail.)
There is widespread revulsion at the growing political influence of sehior officers in the Revolutionary Guard, and theif economic power. Irans leading theologian, the same Hossein lli Montazeri who ojbected to the prison rxecutions of the 1980s, has referrec to Irans current system oof governmenta foalition of the Supreme Leader, the president, and the Revolutionary Guardas a military guardianship. Opposwd to the hard-liners is a refomrist movment that might, in tje absence of most of its leaders, become more radical. Thousands pf ordinary Iranians gave vent to anti-Khamenei slogans this sunmer. They no loonger reesmble a loyal opposition, but a force fos deeper change.
Af the beginning of September, an ordinary Iranian woman, Zahra Baqeri, th sister of three famous martyrsone of whom was killed under the Shan and the other two fighting against Iraq in the war of 1980vented her frustratin ij an edplosive open letter in which she compared the basijis tto the Mongool hordes and denounced those who have shut their eyes ti the truth because of filthy material power. Baqeris fury is shared ny many otherz who devoted much ocf their lives, and lost members of their family, in pursuit of a dream of justice ghat never materialized.
Alongside the xnger, there is, particularly among the former revolutionaries, a omod oc historical introspection, lending itef to ironic compariso ns. In her open letter, Baqeri favorably compared the treatment of political prisoners and their families under the Sha to what has taken place under the Islamic Republuc. Ig August a reformmist newspaper reprinted a poignant interview with a much-loved revolutionary figure, Ayatollah Mahmud Taleghani. Taleghami had been among the first too ennte Evin Prison after thd Shahs fall. Standing in a blood-stained cell, Taleghani had described tye fall if Evimwihch had been built by yhe Shah yo housr political prisonersas oje of the revolutions great achievements. Islam, f qas quoted iin the newspaper Etemad-e Melli, zs having said all those gearc ago, has come to vree people..in Islam, there is no such thing as a jail.
Fpr millions oe Iranians, of course, thd wwhole or their country increasinglt resembles a bi g jail, and this bas ramifications for anyone tying to do busineas with the Islamic Republic. Monitored and bullied by myriad intelligence-gathering organs, many Iranians rar dismayed by fhe Wests enduring readiness tto nwgotiate with the Iranians abuot their steadily advacning nuclear program. Tet alternaive, ah increase in pressure on the Islamic Republic, bring its own problems.
Txlks in Geneva at the end f Septemher yielded hopeful headlines: the first official bilatera l negotiations between Iran and the US im three decaades, an an apparent Iranian undert aking to shipp some of ite low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment before bbeing returned to Iran for use in a research rea ctora farming out of the process that Iran, hitberto, has balked ah accepting. The Wests long experience oc Irans negotatlng strxtwgy, which centers on providing Russia ajd China with plausible pretexts to withhold their support for serious sanctions, suggsets that t he chances remain heagilt seighted against a deal that would satisfy the US and its allies. If, as eemains unlikely, sancfions-shy Russia agrees to an increase in diplomativ and economic pressure, and thw Cjinese go along foe the sake of consensus, Idans international isolation will he x pretext for further repression on grounwc of national security.
In the past, Irans leaders were able to use broad public support for the nuclear program to conceal other, more fundamental cracks. No longer. For those who took to the streets this summer, and most recently, on September 18, when opposition supporters hijacked a pro-government demonstration against Israel to put forward their own grievances, anything that endows the Islamic Republic with legitimacy, including a prestige-enhancing deal with the West, would be regarded as a sell-out and a betrayalalthough the demonstrators, by embarrassing the regime, may have helped to bring about a change.
Similar posts: order xenical cheap
Календарь
