Rafsanjani stripped of titles by state media

TEHRAN: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, once widely known as Iran’s number two man, has had his religious and political titles reduced by the Islamic republic’s official news agency after stinging attacks from several high–ranking hardline clerics.

Mr Rafsanjani, a former president, powerful cleric and opposition member, has been targeted after he gave a speech in the holy city of Mashhad earlier this month in which he accused Iran’s rulers of being intolerant and had “closed the door on constructive criticism”.

The speech came on the eve of the annual Students Day protests in Tehran and several other cities against the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won June’s disputed election.

The state-run IRNA news agency issued the directive telling the agency’s editors to refer to Mr Rafsanjani only as chairman of the Expediency Council rather than his more important role of chairman of the Assembly of Experts. The directive also said he must be referred to with the title of hojjatoleslam instead of ayatollah – the title he has commonly been referred to for nearly two decades and one which signifies a much higher religious status.

Fararu, a moderate conservative news portal, published on Sunday the undated text of the directive signed by the IRNA’s news editor Abdolreza Davar. The directive said the change was “to maintain consistency in referring to Mr Rafsanjani in news articles”.

The IRNA directive has already been put into action in news articles about Mr Rafsanjani that the agency releases.

Neither Mr Rafsanjani nor his office have yet reacted to the directive.

But the order appears to be the latest in a series of moves by hardliners to sideline the former president who backed the moderate Mir Hossein Mousavi in June’s presidential election over his rival Mr Ahmadinejad.

More at the National

Iran: Probe opens into opposition leader Karroubi

By NASSER KARIMI

Iranian authorities have opened an investigation into former presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi, a report said Tuesday, in a possible first step toward unleashing the hard-line judiciary on the opposition's top leaders.

No formal charges have been filed, but the probe signals that Iran's Islamic leadership could use the courts against the most senior dissenters — whose claims include widespread vote fraud in June's disputed presidential elections and abuses by security forces against protesters in the violent aftermath.

The powerful Revolutionary Guard and other pro-regime groups have urged for charges against the top opposition figures, including Karroubi, fellow reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami.

More than 100 activists and political figures have already been tried on charges that include seeking to overthrow the Islamic system.

The official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying an investigative file has been opened on Karroubi and the case is under review by a special cleric court.

Dolatabadi said "some individuals have already been summoned" as part of the inquest in Karroubi — a Shiite cleric and former parliament speaker — and added that 10 more people would go on trial on charges related to the postelection turmoil. But the report gave no names or further details.

Iran's judiciary is firmly under control of the ruling Judicial authorities and could not be immediately reached for comment.

But it's likely the investigation would include Karroubi's explosive accusations of abuses by security forces. Karroubi has led claims of rape and torture against protesters detained during the demonstrations and clashes following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.

Karroubi has demanded high-level investigations into the abuse claims. Karroubi's newspaper, Etemad-e-Melli, was banned by authorities in August.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has denied the allegations of rape and abuses by security forces, saying a parliament probe into the allegations had found no truth in the reports.

The judicial probe could be an attempt at further pressure to muzzle opposition. Any effort to bring charges would open a new front by authorities to destroy the top ranks of the opposition movement with possible serious charges of "propagating against Islamic system" — which can bring long prison terms.

The Special Cleric Court operates in heavy secrecy and its proceedings are closed to the public.

Iranian authorities have faced international condemnation for the crackdowns following the June election, but attention has greatly shifted to the regime's negotiations with Western powers over its nuclear program. Another round of talks is planned for later this month

Source: AP

Iran's Imperial Presidency

BY JAMSHEED K. CHOKSY

As the fallout continues from the June election, Ahmadinejad is working to consolidate power in his secular executive branch, and away from the mullahs. But what happens if his play backfires?

Taking advantage of the chaos following June's civic protests, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is moving to consolidate authority in the executive office -- and to wrest it away from the clerical wing of the Iranian government, particularly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran's revolutionary leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had established a guardianship of Islamic jurists headed by a supreme leader to oversee the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of Iran's government.

Khamenei, who became supreme leader in 1989, was a mentor to Ahmadinejad and during June's protests, quickly endorsed his presidential candidacy to keep their relationship smooth.

Although Ahmadinejad had begun centralizing authority during his first presidential term, he usually deferred to Khamenei if there was a divergence of opinion.

But Ahmadinejad and his cohorts, junior members of the 1979 revolution who are just now coming into their own politically, are not themselves clerics. And though they claim deep religiosity, they are best described as secularists, as their primary aim is consolidating political power in their own hands.

Since the recent election, members of the executive branch are openly disregarding revolutionary or activist mullahs -- knowing full well that most clerics are quietists who prefer not to be directly involved in politics. Even Ahmadinejad's famous incident of kissing Khamenei's shoulder or characterizing their relationship as "like that of a father and son" is just etiquette, not a sincere sign of deference.

Ahmadinejad's secular political expansionism is made possible by the schisms and weaknesses that have emerged among fundamentalist clerics in the wake of this summer's election protests.

Most threatening for Iran's religious system of governance, the protesters' focus expanded from the rigged presidential election to the more basic question of why Iran needs a faith-based supreme leader.

The idea of cutting out the theocratic branch, while retaining the executive, legislative, and judicial ones, has gained considerable popularity.

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Source: Foreign Policy

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