News from Iran? Good? Bad? Who knows?

[KRonn]

I just posted the first few paragraphs. Government is cracking down but still protesters come out. Then perhaps the more govt cracks down heavily the more it loses legitimacy, especially given the split among the ruling groups and leaders.


http://www.newsweek.com/id/202979

Newsweek analysis: Blow to theocracy in Iran

We are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy in Iran. I don't mean by this that the Iranian regime is about to collapse. It may—I certainly hope it will—but repressive regimes can stick around for a long time. We are watching the failure of the ideology that lay at the basis of the Iranian government. The regime's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, laid out his special interpretation of political Islam in a series of lectures in 1970. In this interpretation of Shia Islam, Islamic jurists were presumed to have divinely ordained powers to rule as guardians of the society, supreme arbiters not only on matters of morality, but politics as well. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic of Iran, this idea, velayat-e faqih, rule by the Supreme Jurist, was at its heart. Last week that ideology suffered a fatal blow.

When the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "divine assessment," he was using the key weapon of velayat-e faqih, divine sanction. Millions of Iranians didn't buy it, convinced that their votes—one of the key secular rights allowed them under Iran's religious system—had been stolen. Soon Khamenei was forced to accept the need for an inquiry into the election. The Guardian Council, Iran's supreme constitutional body, promised to investigate, meet with the candidates and recount some votes. Khamenei has realized that the regime's existence is at stake and has now hardened his position, but that cannot put things back together. It has become clear that in Iran today, legitimacy does not flow from divine authority but from popular will. For three decades, the Iranian regime has wielded its power through its religious standing, effectively excommunicating those who defied it. This no longer works—and the mullahs know it. For millions, perhaps the majority of Iranians, the regime has lost its legitimacy.

Why is this happening? There have been protests in Iran before, but they always placed the street against the state, and the clerics all sided with the state. When the reformist president Mohammad Khatami was in power, he entertained the possibility of siding with the street after student riots broke out in 1999 and 2003, but in the end he stuck with the establishment. The street and state are at odds again—the difference this time is that the clerics are divided. Khatami has openly backed the challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, as has the reformist Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri. Even Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, not a cleric himself but a man with strong family connections to the highest levels of the religious hierarchy, has expressed doubts about the election. Behind the scenes, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—the head of the Assembly of Experts, another important constitutional body—is reportedly waging a campaign against Ahmadinejad and even possibly the Supreme Leader. If senior clerics dispute Khamenei's divine assessment and argue that the Guardian Council is wrong, it would represent a death blow to the basic premise behind the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would be as though a senior Soviet leader had said in 1980 that Karl Marx was not the right guide to economic policy.

[KRonn]

It sounds like she was shot in the lounge; the blood on her face and mouth are from her coughing it up, and I've read enough about the photo that it seems genuine.  There's a lot of confusion in the scene, too, which in my mind also makes it seem more likely to be genuine.  The angles are too awkward, the look on her face too...confused.  It is probably among the worst things I've ever seen in my life, I'll never forget it.

This was terrible. I didn't want to watch it at first. I could only think of a father and daughter, the woman being gunned down by some bastard. Such a heartache.

Others have been killed but this seemed worse, maybe because all of it was all caught on video. The video is all over the web now.

[Martinus]

I think someone should make a video of the riots to Dylan's "The Times, They Are A-Changing" or of the Khomeini's Tomb being bombed to the "1812" overture by Tchaikovsky.

Yeah, I'm a sucker for pop culture references.

[Ed Anger]

I think someone should make a video of the riots to Dylan's "The Times, They Are A-Changing" or of the Khomeini's Tomb being bombed to the "1812" overture by Tchaikovsky.

Yeah, I'm a sucker for pop culture references.

Johnny Cash's The man comes around.

[Lettow77]

The musical accompaniment I had in mind was Al Stewart's Shah of Shahs, myself.

[Valmy]

The Iranian-backed Lebanese militia, Hezbollah was just defeated in parliamentary elections. The group's Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, expressed recently his full support of in Ahmadinejad and promised that "nothing has changed in Lebanon" and "no winds of change will be blowing from Iran."
Nasrallah dismissed Iranian divisions and advised Arabs to avoid commenting on the issue because he said they're ill-informed.

"No one in the Arab world understands how Iran operates" he blasted in a recent speech.

Sweet so I guess we don't have to listen to what you have to say then Hezbollah.

[Savonarola]

This. "True colors" and all that jazz; it would let us drop the pretense of having to be friendly to Iran if they're exposed in large-scale vote fraud and violent suppression.

I'm not so sure; we're still friendly with Chicago.

[KRonn]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31488552/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

Video turns woman into icon of Iran unrest
Amateur footage appears to capture the woman's death after shooting

updated 18 minutes ago

CAIRO - Amateur video of a young Iranian woman lying in the street — blood streaming from her nose and mouth — has quickly become an iconic image of the country's opposition movement and unleashed a flood of outrage at the regime's crackdown.

The footage, less than a minute long, appears to capture the woman's death moments after she was shot at a protest — a powerful example of citizens' ability to document events inside Iran despite government restrictions on foreign media and Internet and phone lines.

The limits imposed amid the unrest over the disputed June 12 election make details of the woman's life and events immediately preceding her apparent death difficult to confirm. She has been identified in the video clips as 'Neda' but it's impossible to confirm her name, or even if the widely distributed video was taken in Tehran during the unrest.
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Yet clips of the woman are among the most viewed items on YouTube — with untold numbers of people passing along the amateur videos through social networks and watching them on television.

The images entered wide circulation Saturday when two distinct videos purporting to show her death appeared separately on YouTube and Facebook.

'Don't be afraid, Neda dear'
They show people trying desperately to treat the woman, who is clad in blue jeans, white sneakers, a black jacket and the headscarf required by Iran's Islamic dress code. Her eyes roll back and blood squirts from her nose, pouring across her face as those trying to help her scream.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Neda dear, don't be afraid," a white-haired man in a striped shirt repeats throughout the longer of the videos, his voice escalating throughout.

People posting the video say the woman was shot by a member of the pro-government Basij militia. That information could not be independently verified: Reporters for foreign news organizations have been barred from reporting on the streets of Tehran, and the Iranian government has not released any information about her death.

An acquaintance of her family said Neda worked part-time at a travel agency in Iran and that the government barred the family from holding a public funeral Monday. The acquaintance spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared government reprisal. The Iranian government has banned all public gatherings, though there was no specific information about funerals for those killed in recent clashes.

Imagery could have impact on opinion
Although the Iranian government has blocked many Web sites including Facebook and has jammed satellite television signals, the videos of the woman's death have been circulating inside the country. People have used anti-filtering software to download them. Some Iranians have uploaded the footage to their cell phones and used Bluetooth technology to share it.

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Republicans call Obama timid on Iran

The bloody imagery alone could have an important impact on public opinion in Iran, where the idea of martyrdom resonates deeply among a populace steeped in the stories and imagery of Shiite Islam, a faith founded on the idea of self-sacrifice in the cause of justice.

The deaths of protesters during the 1979 Islamic Revolution fueled a cycle of mourning marches that contributed to the overthrow of the U.S.-backed dictator, Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Thousands of people inside and outside Iran have written online tributes to the woman, many condemning the government and praising her as a martyr. Some posted photos of a gently smiling woman they said was Neda, some calling her "Iran's Joan of Arc."

[Grallon]

...

Republicans call Obama timid on Iran

...

What would they have him do ?  Another war ?   

Why lift a finger and risk having the people fall behind the tottering regime when Khameni and his puppet are digging their own grave under our very eyes?




G.

[Valmy]

The Republicans are just trying to use this to their political advantage.  However, we already saw how much a black eye it was for Bush to say anything during the unsuccessful coup in Venezuela.  No reason to make the same mistake twice.

Besides, as I said before, never interrupt your opponent while they are making a mistake.  Shooting those protestors is a boneheaded move by Iran, they are looking like...well...like Iran for all the world to see.  We need to keep this about them and not about us.  Even if they survive this they have severly damaged their legitimacy both at home and abroad.

[derspiess]

The Republicans are just trying to use this to their political advantage.  However, we already saw how much a black eye it was for Bush to say anything during the unsuccessful coup in Venezuela.  No reason to make the same mistake twice.

Yeah, pretty bone-headed by the GOP to make this into an issue.  I can almost see why they feel they need to do it-- hit Obama where he's soft-- but I don't see this giving the GOP any lift politically. 

This is all on top of the fact that I agree 100% with Obama's approach on this particular Iran issue

[PDH]

Politics is not about reason.  In fact, it is about the opposite.

[The Brain]

Reason never prospers.

[Admiral Yi]

However, we already saw how much a black eye it was for Bush to say anything during the unsuccessful coup in Venezuela.  No reason to make the same mistake twice.

The famous statement was made by the Undesecretary of State for Latin America, not Bush.

[Razgovory]

I wish the US could do something constructive but I can't think of anything that could help.