Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei warns 'meddling' Western leaders

Martin Fletcher | July 07

THE Iranian Supreme Leader, assailed by some of his country's most prominent clerics and detested by millions of his ordinary citizens, has received a boost from an unlikely quarter: Joe Biden.

One day after the US Vice-President said that the US would not stop Israel bombing Iran's nuclear plants, Ayatollah Khamenei launched a fierce attack on "meddling" Western leaders, designed to rally his fractured people.

"We warn the leaders of those countries trying to take advantage of the situation: beware! The Iranian nation will react," the Ayatollah declared in a televised speech yesterday.

"The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosy meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic Republic, must know that even if the Iranian people have their differences, when your enemies get involved, the people ... will become a firm fist against you."

Tehran has backed the warning with action against foreign interests in Iran: a locally hired employee at the British Embassy, Hossein Rossam, has been arrested and faces charges of threatening Iranian national security.

Yesterday the French Foreign Minister confirmed that a French woman academic had been arrested last week on spying charges.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that interventionist comments by outside countries would have a "negative impact" on future relations with Iran; a not-so-veiled threat at a time when the West is anxious to resume negotiations to halt the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

In recent days a succession of powerful clerics - the Grand Ayatollahs Yousof Sanei, Hossein Ali Montazeri and Jalaleddin Taheri, the former President Mohammed Khatami and the defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi - have openly challenged the Supreme Leader by refusing to accept the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

On Saturday the influential Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom challenged the "victory" over Mir Hossein Mousavi. Yesterday the association's leader, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi, urged Mr Mousavi to form a political party to fight for justice. Analysts expect more clerics to speak out now they have been given a lead.

Plenty of hardline clerics still back Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr Ahmadinejad, and they control key bodies such as the Guardian Council - but the dissident clerics do matter.

Many were close to the late Ayatollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic Republic, and have impeccable revolutionary credentials. They can mobilise hundreds of thousands of followers. Their statements raise the morale of the battered opposition and further erode Ayatollah Khamenei's legitimacy.

"This is the first time so many clerics have refused to accept the leader's word," said one Iranian analyst. "His legitimacy has been destroyed, and he either has to rule by force alone or lose face and back down."

Ayatollah Khamenei, 69, was President from 1981 to 1989, and was the compromise candidate to succeed Khomeini when the Supreme Leader died in 1989. He has increasingly allied himself with hardliners and backed Mr Ahmadinejad in the presidential election of 2005 in the hope that he could be easily controlled.

"The Supreme Leader is supposed to remain above the political fray, but Mr Khamenei has shown himself to be partisan - at considerable cost to his office and himself," said the analyst.

Source: The Australian

Iran clerics declare election invalid and condemn crackdown

July 6, 2009 | Martin Fletcher

Iran’s biggest group of clerics has declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to be illegitimate and condemned the subsequent crackdown.

The statement by the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom is an act of defiance against the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has made clear he will tolerate no further challenges to Mr Ahmadinejad’s “victory” over Mir Hossein Mousavi.

“It’s a clerical mutiny,” said one Iranian analyst. “This is the first time ever you have all these big clerics openly challenging the leader’s decision.” Another, in Tehran, said: “We are seeing the birth of a new political front.”

Professor Ali Ansari, head of Iranian Studies at St Andrews University, said: “It’s highly significant. It shows this is nowhere near resolved.”

The association’s statement also shows how deeply the political establishment is divided, and the extent to which the Supreme Leader now derives his power from military might, not moral authority. It makes it much harder for the regime to arrest Mr Mousavi and other opposition leaders.

At the weekend a top aide to Mr Khamenei demanded that Mr Mousavi and other opponents be tried for “terrible crimes”, and the elite Revolutionary Guards accused them of “trying to overthrow the Islamic establishment”.

In other developments, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday that he expected the eighth of the nine British Embassy employees arrested ten days ago to be released soon but a lawyer representing the ninth — a political analyst named Hossein Rossam — said he would be charged with threatening national security.

Mr Miliband expressed “cold anger” at the way the nine had been treated.

The regime freed Iason Athanasiadis, an Anglo-Greek journalist arrested on June 19. However, a lawyer for Maziar Bahari, a Canadian-Iranian journalist working for Newsweek, said he faced charges of “instigating riots and acting against national security”. The Association of Researchers and Teachers is based in Qom, the clerical nerve centre of Iran, and includes many leading ayatollahs with impeccable revolutionary credentials and big personal followings.

The association did not support a candidate in the election, but has now lined up firmly behind Mr Mousavi. In a rebuke to the regime it declared on its website: “Candidates’ complaints and strong evidence of vote-rigging were ignored . . . Peaceful protests by Iranians were violently oppressed . . . Dozens of Iranians were killed and hundreds were illegally arrested . . . The outcome is invalid.”

It called on other clerics to speak out, demanded the release of all those arrested in the past three weeks, and directly challenged the authority of the Guardian Council, a body of 12 senior clerics that has openly backed Mr Ahmadinejad and his patron, Mr Khamenei. “How can one accept the legitimacy of the election just because the Guardian Council says so?,” it asked.

On Wednesday, a day after the Guardian Council said that the election result was final, Mr Mousavi talked of forming a new political grouping to fight an illegitimate government.

With the popular former president Mohammad Khatami and Medhi Karoubi, another defeated candidate, challenging the Government’s legitimacy, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, another former president, pointedly meeting the families of those killed in street demonstrations, that coalition is beginning to take shape.

“The fact that anyone dares to condemn the election when people were calling for Mousavi and Karoubi’s heads is remarkable,” said the analyst in Tehran. “It shows there is depth to Mousavi’s support. They have not been bullied into silence, there are factions forming and this is not over.”

Mr Mousavi issued a 25-page paper detailing election abuses ranging from the printing of 14 million extra ballot papers to bribes to ballot boxes containing not a single vote for him even in his hometown.

Mr Miliband expressed fury at Mr Rossam’s detention. The charge that he had helped incite the protests had “absolutely no basis”. Mr Rossam, 44, was “an honourable, patriotic Iranian, who has been working in a completely open and transparent way for the UK”.

The European Union’s member states have protested to Iran and will consider tougher measures if Mr Rossam is not released this week. British officials are also hoping for a strong statement from Wednesday’s G8 summit.

Source: Times Online

'Meddling' embassy staff released

From correspondents in Tehran, Iran | June 29

IRAN says it has freed five of the local British embassy staff it arrested on accusations of stoking post-election unrest, a move that further threatened tense ties with London.

"Eight people were arrested. Five were freed and three are still being interrogated,'' ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi said at a press conference in Tehran today.

Earlier, English-language state television Press TV had spoken of a total of nine arrests.

Mr Ghashghavi also said that Iran, which has accused Western nations, particularly Britain and the US of "meddling,'' has no current plans to close embassies or downgrade diplomatic ties with foreign nations.

"There is no plan at the moment to close any embassy or downgrade ties with them,'' Mr Ghashghavi said when asked if Tehran planned to close the British embassy.

The Fars news agency, announcing the arrests yesterday, said the British embassy staffers were accused of playing a "considerable role'' in the unrest that swept Iran after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie accused the British embassy of sending local staff "undercover among rioters in order to push its own agenda,'' the official IRNA news agency reported.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said yesterday that London had protested strongly over the arrests, which he described as "harassment and intimidation'' and dismissed claims the embassy was behind the demonstrations.

EU nations also vowed to respond to any harassment of diplomats in Iran with a "strong and collective response'', Mr Miliband said at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Corfu.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki - who has previously said Tehran was considering downgrading its ties with London - urged Britain and the EU not to take rash action over the arrests.

"Don't continue with this losing game because this is neither in the interests of the British people nor the two countries' relations that have (already) been damaged because of the British Government's behaviour,'' he said.

He also called for European countries and officials to "revise their stand'' towards Iran, after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused European and American officials of making "idiotic comments'' about the country.

Britain and Iran have already expelled diplomats in tit-for-tat moves last week.

Source: The Australian