Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari and a number of reformist leaders in Iran are to face trial accused of “acting against national security,” their lawyer Saleh Nikbakht told AFP on Saturday. |
“Bahari is accused of acting against national security, and I still have not been able to meet him despite going to the prosecutor’s office several times,” Nikbakht said. |
He is also representing a number of reformist leaders detained in the aftermath of the June 12 presidential election, and said that all of them face the same charge. |
Nikbakht said he is also representing former deputy foreign minister Mohsen Amizadeh, ex-government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, former deputy economy minister Mohsen Safai-Farahani and former vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, all of whom served under reformist president Mohammad Khatami. |
Behzad Nabavi, former deputy speaker of parliament between 2000 and 2004 when it was reformist-controlled, is another of his clients. Read more at rawstory.com |
Obama Blocks New Iran Sanctions
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| CAIRO — The US administration of Barack Obama is opposing a new set of sanctions planned by the Group of Eight against Iran over post-election unrest, Haaretz reported on Saturday, July 4. |
| US diplomatic sources told the daily that administration officials are working behind the scene to block slapping a new set of sanctions on Tehran by the G8. |
| The Obama administration is worried that slapping new sanctions could backfire and steer Tehran away from engagement with the West, said the sources. |
| The American move follows calls by G8 countries to impose new sanctions on Tehran over handling the post-election protests. |
| Iran sanctions were expected to top the agenda of G8 next week summit. |
| “The general leaning [among G8 leaders] is toward sanctions,” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said earlier this week. |
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Iran: 34 people hanged in less than a week; 22 today |
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 NCRI – The state-run Fars news agency reported that 20 people were hanged this morning in Rajai-Shahr prison west of Tehran. In addition, the state-run Etemad daily reported today that two other prisoners were hanged in the city of Shiraz, southern Iran.
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The hangings today follow 12 other executions which took place earlier this week in Tehran and Qom, south of the capital. |
The new wave of hangings in Iran comes as millions of Iranians are taking part in a nationwide uprising which was sparked by the mullahs’ sham election on June 12. Read more at ncr-iran.org |
| For many people in the West, especially the United States, a democrat is simply a person who is “our son of a bitch”. There are opinion makers and leaders wedded to the view that rulers in developing countries are fit to be deposed if they do not toe the Western line. What else can explain the persistent demonizing of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regardless of the fact that he is a democratically elected leader, who won by a landslide in 2005. |
| Sure, the June 2009 elections in Iran were flawed, but in no way can you compare them to the rubber stamping that is the norm in countries like Kuwait, Egypt and Pakistan, the thuggery of Georgia’s Michael Saakashvili or most shockingly the 2000 electoral fraud that allowed George W. Bush and his cabal into the White House.Read more at www.opednews.com |
Iran’s British stooges are staring right at you |
Zahra, an Iranian woman studying at an English university, is in a state of
terror. Her husband, an activist in the cause of the defeated Iranian
presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, was arrested a fortnight ago,
and has not been seen since. Zahra, whose eyes are lined in green, the
colour of the country’s reformist opposition, told the BBC: “Why should he
be in jail? What was wrong with what we did in Tehran? It was the basic
right of all Iranians to take part in the election.” She went on: “They
don’t let my husband call me . . . this is torture.”
Read more at www.timesonline.co.uk |
| The unclosed Iran dossier and us |
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| The “Iran dossier” is not closed. Protests shaking the fundamentals of the oppression regime are on hold, for now. The Iranian Constitutional Court, half of its 12 members were appointed by Ayatollah Khamenei, ruled the recount of 10 percent of total votes cast. And the June 12 election results were approved once again. The case is closed but not the “Iran dossier”. |
We learn this from a statement posted on Hussein Mousavi’s Web page after a long period of silence. In it, he declares the government illegitimate and invites people to find “creative methods” to “continue resistance”. |
Mousavi calls for the release of the “Children of the Revolution” and warns that the “struggle shouldn’t aim for the elimination of the Islamic Republic” but also points out the danger that the “government has left no other choice for them”. Read more at www.hurriyet.com.tr |
Foreign Office travel advice website is “proof” of anti-Iranian plot |
Iran has seized on an item of routine travel advice from the Foreign Office’s website as evidence of the alleged political plot for which an employee of the British Embassy in Tehran is to face trial. |
Hossein Rassam, 44, who is the embassy’s chief political analyst, was named on
Saturday as the man accused of being a British agent provocateur
behind last month’s post-election street protests.
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Britain has denied that its staff contributed in any way to fomenting a “Velvet
revolution”. But Iran has claimed that a Foreign Office warning that
the elections might lead to street disturbances shows that Downing Street
was intent on meddling from the outset.
Read more at www.telegraph.co.uk |
They say in Urdu that the first victims of a revolution are always its own people. Watching the apocalyptic events unfold in Iran over the past couple of weeks, one has often been reminded of this piece of wisdom. Has Iran’s Islamic Revolution turned on its own people? The scenes of young men and women standing their ground and bravely defying security forces are eerily familiar. |
The last time they had similar protests in Iran was more than three decades ago. And we all know where those protests ended. Shah Aryamehr Raza Shah Pahlavi, who claimed to represent a 3,000-year old dynasty, had to flee like a common thug with his family. Read more at www.campaigniran.org |
How Could Iran’s Hard-Liners Choose The Next Supreme Leader?
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The Islamic Republic of Iran has only had two supreme leaders in its 30-year history. |
For the first 10 years, the Islamic Revolution’s founder, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei, was the supreme leader and was unquestionably accepted as such by the ruling clerical establishment. |
For the last 20 years, the supreme leader has been Ali Khamenei, a man who has never enjoyed that unquestioned status. |
Khamenei’s problems stem from the fact that he was an unlikely choice from the beginning. He did not have the religious preeminence that underpinned Khomeini’s central concept for an Islamic state: that it be led by the country’s most learned Islamic jurist. |
And his announcement as successor came only after the Khomeini’s death, making him appear to be a last-minute choice. Read more at www.rferl.org |
“I am disgusted by the current regime in Iran” ( i am too!) Confusion over Iran’s Demonstrations |
I am disgusted by the current regime in Iran, and for over 30 years have wanted nothing more than the removal of the theocracy. They have murdered Iranians, stolen every element of liberty in Iran, plundered Iran’s wealth, given away literally Trillions of dollars in land and sea rights in Caspian Sea to British and American Oil Companies, controlled and rigged Iranian elections, tortured, maimed … you name it. As far as governments go, they really do not come much worse than Iran’s theocracy.
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So like everyone else, I was very happy to see the regime challenged “from the inside” if you will. Mousavi was clearly connected with the regime. He served as a Prime Minister, and has great revolutionary credentials. He is supported by a number of clergy, among them Mr. Karoubi (who was actually competing with him in the elections) and Mr. Rafsanjani (who has remained quietly in the background waiting to pounce).
Read more at www.iranian.com |
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Nw .reporter faces trial in Iran
