News from Iran? Good? Bad? Who knows?

[Faeelin]

Zahra Rahnavard demands apology from Iran's President Ahmadinejad
Zahra Rahnavard
Martin Fletcher in Tehran
A diminutive 64-year-old grandmother who refuses to be bound by the rigid constraints imposed on women in Iran proved more than a match for the President of the Islamic Republic yesterday.

Zahra Rahnavard had already broken all precedent by actively campaigning for her husband, Mir Hossein Mousavi, a relative moderate who is President Ahmadinejad's strongest challenger in Friday's presidential election. Yesterday she went a step further by summoning the domestic and international media to a press conference at which she tore into the President for lying, humiliating women, debasing his office and betraying the principles of the revolution.

What sparked her fury was Mr Ahmadinejad's televised debate with her husband last week in which he challenged Dr Rahnavard's considerable academic qualifications, suggesting that they were earned not on merit, but through the patronage of a corrupt political elite.

"He wanted to destroy his rival through lies," she declared in a 90-minute finger-wagging tour de force, and she vowed to sue the President if he did not issue a public apology within 24 hours.

It was a more forceful attack than any of Mr Ahmadinejad's three male challengers have managed, and would have been remarkable in any election, let alone in male-dominated Iran. It also injected more uncertainty into a race that already has an outcome impossible to call. Dr Rahnavard's boldness is likely to enrage conservatives, but should delight the women and young urban Iranians who must vote in great numbers if Mr Mousavi is to unseat the incumbent.

Dr Rahnavard offered further inducements. She promised that her husband, if elected, would appoint women to Cabinet posts for the first time, and name many female deputy ministers and ambassadors. He would end discrimination and ensure that women were no longer treated as second-class citizens. He would release women's rights activists from prison and abolish the "morality police" who, during Mr Ahmadinejad's first term, cracked down on women deemed to be dressed inappropriately. She even suggested that women should not be forced to cover their heads.

Dr Rahnavard, a writer and sculptor whose works adorn some of Tehran's squares, enjoys some protection from conservative attacks because of her own revolutionary credentials. In the last years of the Shah, she was close to Ali Shariati, a dissident Islamist philosopher, and fled to the United States after his arrest. She returned just before the revolution in 1979 and helped to develop the new republic's cultural and political programmes.

She later served as a political adviser to Mohammad Khatami, the reformist President from 1997 to 2005, and as chancellor of al-Zahra university for women in Tehran — until she was removed by Mr Ahmadinejad's Government in 2006 because she had invited Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights activist and Nobel laureate, to give a lecture.

In recent days she has lent sparkle to the campaign of her distinctly low-key, uncharismatic husband, introducing him at rallies, addressing meetings solo and writing newspaper articles. She sends unmistakable signals to reformist voters by wearing a floral headscarf and open black chador that reveals colourful clothes beneath, and appearing hand-in-hand with her husband on the election posters that festoon Tehran.

She has even been likened to Michelle Obama — a comparison that she rejected in halting English yesterday. "I am not Michelle Obama. I am Zahra Rahnavard. I am a follower of the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, who has the same name," she said. Mr Ahmadinejad's wife is never seen and few Iranians could even name her.

With his wife's help, Mr Mousavi, a former prime minister, is gaining momentum, and his supporters — clad in green — are out in force on the streets of the capital. On Saturday he was about to address 15,000 people in Kharaj, a town west of Tehran, when the electricity was cut in what Dr Rahnavard suggested was an act of sabotage. "Were angels involved, or devils?" she asked pointedly.

Dr Rahnavard's aides made sure that plenty of foreign journalists were present at yesterday's press conference, lest the state-controlled media sought to ignore it.

Scarcely visible behind a bank of microphones, she accused Mr Ahmadinejad of humiliating not just her, but all Iranian women, and of seeking to block their progress and deny them higher education. She said that he had violated his constitutional duty to defend the rights of all Iranians, and brought shame on his office. "I will not relax until I teach him a lesson," she declared.

Many liberal Iranians are reluctant to vote lest they legitimise the regime, but Dr Rahnavard implored them to turn out on Friday.

"My dear friends, if you don't vote, this minority, this destructive team, will win again," she said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6451868.ece

[Sheilbh]

The whole Presidential debate sounded pretty remarkable, I can't find the article but it sounds like it got very testy.  Ahmedinejad naming and shaming people who are corrupt (to be fair, he did include Rafsanjani so he may not be entirely off the mark) and Mousavi denouncing him for bringing shame on the Presidency for attacking them and his wife when they weren't on the stage to defend themselves.  And far more.

[Fireblade]

Yeah, I hear from my Iranian friend that the election is a massive clusterfuck of a circus. She told me that she really wishes I knew Farsi, so I could follow the election. And judging by what she tells me, I wish I could speak that beastman language too.

[garbon]

[Solmyr]

Is that Steven Spielberg?

[Warspite]

Is that Steven Spielberg?

No, Max Fisher.

[PDH]

His non-union Iranian replacement, Steven Ahminajabspielbergilani.

[KRonn]

The Iranian outcome will be interesting. I wonder if the challenger has a chance, or if things are just more visible than any meaning any real changes could happen. A related story on the Lebanese election results in the link below tries to make a case that Iran could see some similar changes from voters.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31181303/

In Lebanese vote, hopeful signs for U.S.
American-backed victory could mark regional shift ahead of key Iran vote

[Josquius]

I'm optimistic.
Ahmajiathingys winning last time was a fluke and Iran hasn't exactly prospered under him.
We'll see how things work out though- see the US 2004 election for instance...

[Valmy]

Are the anti-Western fundy forces losing hearts and minds?  Perhaps the Middle Easterners are remembering that our assholes are the lesser of two evils.

[Ed Anger]

Fuck the Iranians. Revenge for '79.

[PDH]

Fuck the Iranians. Revenge for '79.

And it pisses off Spellus to diss everything about the Persians.

[Queequeg]

Interesting blog from Jeffery Goldberg http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/06/clawson.php

One of the smartest people I know on questions relating to Iran is Patrick Clawson, the deputy director for research of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I asked him four questions about the just-past Lebanese election, and the upcoming Iranian election, and the possibility of renewed war between Iran's proxies and Israel. Here is our exchange:

Jeffrey Goldberg: When it comes to Iran's nuclear program, does it matter who the country's president is, or is the nuclear program in other hands?

Patrick Clawson: Iran's Leader -- or as he insists on being called, "Supreme Leader" -- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the one who has both the constitutional authority and the power in practice to call the shots on foreign and security policy.  Iran's presidents are more cheerleader-in-chief than commander-in-chief (Khamenei controls the armed forces, among his many other powers).  The nuclear issue is firmly in his hands.  That said, the choice of president is important.  Not because the president has much authority on the issues we care most about, but because the choice says much about the Leader's intentions.  When the Leader is confident that the Islamic Republic can ignore the West, he sanctions the elections of a hardliner like Mahmood Ahmadinejad.  When the Leader is persuaded that Iran has to sound more conciliatory - to blow smoke in our eyes instead of spitting in them - he allows a reformer" to win.

JG: Will Hezbollah's semi-defeat in the Lebanese election make it more conciliatory, or will it send it back to its jihadist roots?

PC: Unhappy that it and its allies lost the recent Lebanese elections, Hezbollah may well take up arms to insist that it retains its powerful role in Lebanon's government - a good example of how the principal victims of Iran's proxies are Arabs rather than Israelis.  Even before the election, Hezbollah was claiming that no matter what the election results, Hezbollah was still entitled to enough cabinet seats - a "blocking third" - to prevent the cabinet from taking positions of which it disapproved. Hezbollah had sent its militia to occupy all of Beirut, including the Christian-majority East Beirut, to demand this "blocking third." While the reform March 14 movement agreed to this under duress, that agreement - the Doha Accords, negotiated by the Qatari government - was to expire with this last election, but Hezbollah insists the Doha Accords formula will remain valid.  So the friends of Lebanon are likely to soon to confront the question: if Hezbollah picks up arms to reverse the election results, what can the West and moderate Arab states do to shore up Lebanon's democratic forces?

JG: When do you expect the next eruption in violence between Iran's proxies and Israel?

PC: Just as Hezbollah is more of a threat to Lebanese democracy than it is to Israel, Hamas in Gaza has killed more Fatah supporters than Israelis. Similarly, the various insurgent and militia groups that Iran helps in Iraq kill many more Iraqis than Americans.
Iran's proxies have not done well fighting Israel.  Hamas' standing in Gaza has not been helped by its poor showing in last winter's fighting against Israel nor from the continuing suffering since then.  And for all its bravado during the 2006 war against Israel, Hezbollah is no more popular in Lebanon today than it was before that war.  It is seen by many Lebanese as a tool of Iran, one reason it and its allies did poorly in the recent elections. So, with any luck, Iran's proxies will exercise considerable caution before they take on Israel again.

JG: There are clearly large numbers of people in Iran, the urban elites and the young most particularly, who seem unhappy with their government's priorities. Do you think we could be on the cusp of something new and different, and, from the Western perspective, better?

PC: The majority of Iranians are profoundly unhappy with the government of the Islamic Republic, but that does not necessarily mean that change is imminent. What keeps the regime in power is its support from a dedicated minority of true believers, which is at least ten percent if not twenty percent of the population.  The regime can count on its fanatical backers to use force - deadly force, if need be - to stop protests and keep the public in check. Those unhappy with the current system have overwhelmingly dropped out of politics, convinced that real change is not possible.

But Iran's Supreme Leader is worried about the vulnerability of the regime.  The main focus of his public speeches is about the danger of "soft overthrow" from "Western cultural invasion."  Khamenei warns that the West is plotting a "velvet revolution" like that which overthrew the Czechoslovak communist government in a mere one week's time.  He is so terrified that the  Islamic Republic could be quickly swept away that he has the security forces lock up journalists (like NPR reporter Roxanne Saberi), civil society activists promoting people-to-people exchanges (like the Wilson Center's Haleh Esfandiari), and physicians active in scientific exchange.  Presumably Khamenei knows something about his own country, and he worries that the regime is vulnerable.  Let us hope he is correct.

Moussavi could play a similar role to Gorbachev; a supposed reformer who is not reforming fast enough for his people while his country's economy and government collapses like a toothpick Taj Mahal.

[garbon]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090612/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_election

Iranians packed polling stations from boutique-lined streets in north Tehran to conservative bastions in the countryside Friday with a choice that's left the nation divided and on edge: keeping hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power or electing a reformist who favors greater freedoms and improved ties with the United States.

Turnout was massive and could break records. Crowds formed quickly at many voting sites in areas considered both strongholds for Ahmadinejad and his main rival, reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi, who served as prime minister in the 1980s and has become the surprise hero of a powerful youth-driven movement. At several polling stations in Tehran, mothers held their young children in their arms as they waited in long lines.

...

Iranians around the world also voted. In Dubai, home to an estimated 200,000 Iranians, the streets around the polling station at the Iranian consulate were jammed with voters overwhelmingly favoring Mousavi.

"He is our Obama," said Maliki Zadehamid, a 39-year-old exporter.

That said, let's hope that their voting isn't for naught.

[Jaron]

Yes they can!