Reading between the lines
By Shervin Nekuee
voteforiran.com
Ata’ollah Mohajerani, maybe the most important representative of the Green Movement living abroad, gave an important speech on the 19th of October at Montgomery Collage near Washington DC. He illustrated 4 major issues:
1. The Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei must be held accountable for the state crimes that happened since the presidential election on the 12th of June. Ahamdinejad cannot be seen as the only one responsible, Mohajerani said. Apparently, there is a consensus among the top figures of the movement that the critique of the regime should increase and there should be more focus on criticizing the Supreme Leader himself.
Video- Key Figure of the Green Movement speech at Montgomery College (available on YouTube):
A week ago on the18th of September, massive participation by the Green Movement in major cities of Iran turned Qods day demonstrations into an expression of civil rights. The combination of a demand for civil rights and a sense of patriotism brewing for years in the collective Iranian consciousness came fully to the surface. The message, “Not Gaza, not Lebanon: I will only sacrifice my life for Iran” was chanted in the streets of Tehran, Mashhad, Gorgan, Esfehan, Tabriz, Ahwaz, and many other places in Iran. Even in places where people didn’t dare to say it, the chant was surely in their minds. So how did a day meant to show solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and Lebanon’s Hezbollah turn into an expression of patriotism? To understand this, we need to take quick look back in history. Read the rest of this entry »
voteforiran.com
Weekly comment by Shervin Nekuee
Supreme Leader and Head of Judiciary Versus President and Head of IRGC: Different Messages or Different Styles?
It all started on Thursday the 27th duing a speech by Ayatollah Khamenei the supreme leader, to a gathering of representatives from the student division of the paramilitary Basij. Again, the supreme leader insisted on the legitimacy of the election, exactly as he had been since the day after the results were announced. Later, he made two points that can give some space for criticism of the hardliners. First, he talked about “crimes that had been committed in prisons and in the streets by governmental forces,” and he explicitly demanded punishment for those responsible. This was the first time that Khamenei openly and in a publicly referred to harsh violence used by governmental (military and security) forces and explicitly called it a crime. Second, he rejected the accusation that the leaders of the pre-election protests were agents of United States or England. “These accusations have not been proven,” he said. This announcement contradicts the many accusations that the hardliner disciples of Ayatollah Khamenei have been making in the state-run press, in parliament, and even in the trials against the reformists. Former presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani along with the two reformist candidates Mousavi and Karroubi have been repeatedly accused being under the influence of foreign forces. In addition, there has been an increasing demand from hardliners to charge them as the key figures of the protests. The words of Ayatollah Khamanei were interpreted as a first step towards reconciliation with the reform leaders. Read the rest of this entry »
