But on June 7 a group of Internet activists hopes to give Iranian voters a taste of what an open election feels like by launching an alternative election featuring 20 candidates. The candidates not only include the officially approved eight, but 12 more, ranging from people who failed the official vetting process to reformist leaders and political prisoners.
Radio Free Europe features other stories on Iran’s upcoming elections, of course, but still it’s good to pass along information that indicates interest in more authentic representative government.
Iran’s official elections take place next Friday (June 14, 2013).
“No one has a bureau in Tehran,” he said, explaining why he thought there was a dearth of in-depth reporting from my motherland. “No one has a full-fledged bureau in Iran.”
So it was that a classmate and I set out to create one. But the more we looked into it, the more it made sense not to actually be there — not initially anyway, even if we could.
This bloc led the Green Movement protests following Iran’s 2009 election — but now with its leaders under house arrest or barred from running in the upcoming election, they find themselves trying to weather this period of even greater conservative dominance.
“Almost every public move made by the Iranian regime is designed to stymie any hope for change,” one Iranian intellectual told me in an email. “And I can say, from a very personal perspective, that the regime has been successful.”
As you see, the effort to establish Tehran Bureau found voice around 2009 and here in 2013 the idea has been established and found support beneath the wings of The Guardian.
As the Aussies say, “Good on ye, Kelly Golnoush Niknejad.
The web has a waterfront too, and even at the speed of light, one cannot cover it all, so it seems I’ve missed this portion of coverage of Iran. However, responding to this week’s protests and looking for an update, the only relevant piece — the only piece not related to Iranian-Turkish rivalry, NATO, Syria, and Russia — was the second cited, “Iran’s Struggling Protest Movement.”
A gem.
More from Tehran Bureau:
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been a dominant player in Iranian politics since the revolution. Its broad-ranging influence transcends that of an exclusively military institution. The organisation does not directly dictate policy or single-handedly choose presidents, but it has enough power within the regime to block major initiatives and promote its own hardline agenda.
The protesters chanted slogans against the government and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for the “death to the dictator.” Among other slogans, they chanted “The political prisoners must freed” and “Mousavi and Karroubi must be freed,” referring to the leaders of the reformist green movement who are under house arrest in Tehran.
Thousands of Iranians attending the funeral of a dissident ayatollah broke into chants against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and called for the release of political prisoners, opposition websites have reported.
Amateur videos said to be from the June 4 funeral appear to confirm the reports. RFE/RL cannot verify the authenticity of the videos.
The video appears authentic, according to The Associated Press, with the news service saying it first appeared on an Iranian website before being uploaded to YouTube.
The AP said interviews and analysis it conducted verify the video.
In 2013, the regime has already witnessed signs of discontent even before the vote. On June 4, thousands reportedly turned the funeral for Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri into an anti-government demonstration in Isfahan. Taheri had been the Friday Prayer Leader in Isfahan. He had earlier criticized the regime for corruption, eventually resigning from the post. He also called the 2009 election “invalid.”
Iran has also helped the Assad regime crack down on social media. In February 2011, Syria allowed access to social media websites such as Facebook and YouTube for the first time since 2007. At the time, some viewed this as a positive attempt at reform in order to allow freedom of expression. By May there was a 105 percent increase in the number of Facebook users in Syria, but it also became clear that the regime was using social media to track dissidents.16 US officials reported that in
addition to providing weapons, riot gear, and training, Iran was also supplying sophisticated surveillance equipment to the Syrian government. The Syrian regime used it to track down leaders of the protest movements and arrest them.
What one may see on the web of Syria’s civil war may belie what either the Assad regime or the collection of rebel forces, group by group, have kept hidden even though the standards for propriety as regards online publishing could not be lower.
While Matthew Levitt’s report reaches back to the 2003 arrest in Iran and subsequent torture of journalist Zahra Kazem to provide its most graphic description of the kind of pain meted out by way of the regime’s paranoid fantasia, it may leave to YouTube and the future to describe what horrors behind the curtains became the lot of captured Syrian dissidents in recent times.
“I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, hereby expand the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13338 of May 11, 2004, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13399 of April 25, 2006, and in Executive Order 13460 of February 13, 2008, finding that the Government of Syria’s human rights abuses, including those related to the repression of the people of Syria, manifested most recently by the use of violence and torture against, and arbitrary arrests and detentions of, peaceful protesters by police, security forces, and other entities that have engaged in human rights abuses, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and I hereby order . . . .”
The “Government of Syria” described in executive orders between 2004 and 2011 is the same as that supported by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
It would appear the ghosts of the Cold War continue to haunt the politics in the Middle East.
“By blocking websites and bringing Internet access to a crawl, Iranian authorities are saying their own citizens don’t deserve information about the election,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Coordinator. “What kind of an election is it when journalists are tossed into prison and voters are denied access to the news?”
Through the Cold War / Soviet Era, the boundaries and mischief provided by Soviet –> Syrian –> Iranian bonds and similar arrangements produced both enmity with the west and a bulwark against it even though the basis for, say, Soviet and Iranian existence would be wildly different (but not so different with the Soviet : Baathist relationship elsewhere). The ghosts of the Soviet Era have play in Syria’s disaster today: in essence, post-Soviet, post-KGB Russia seems to have maintained its business and military relationships with Syria without influencing or updating the political and social arrangements of the earlier state of affairs, except to better enable the capital interests of a ruling class. Enter Colonel President King and Stakeholder Putin today: how would you have him now address the Assad family (keep in mind he has his own “kleptocratic” track record within key Russian industries), Maher Al-Assad (who has launched jets against the innocents of whole communities and rather only haphazardly found the armed elements arrayed against the family), and fend off the de facto acquisition of another Chechnya?
I happen to think, perhaps alone in this, that Obama has been trying to goad Putin into intervening in Russia’s client state, but neither Obama or the U.S. have “true interest” in Syria: the focus of activity in Syria is (Shiite) Iran, and into that space KSA, with ample investment in U.S. capitalism (with Big Defense contracts, it’s we who are working for them), has handily played its rivalry with Iran for regional influence.
From both humanist and political perspectives, no one knows how to “sort” the collection of civil and religious interests engaged in conflict within Syria, and no one from outside, including bordering state armies like Suleiman’s wishes to step into the furnace (not the best analogy coming from a Jew, but it seems to work). Instead, we would rather have UNHCR beg for $1 billion through the end of the year to address the civilian tragedy attending Syria’s civil war and unresolved hatreds and threats attending western identity and interests.
Syria is Putin’s problem, and while he can and has, I think, embarrassed Obama with it, he hasn’t rolled out a good strategy yet for his modern, post-Soviet state.
One more thing: Putin may have himself for a problem as regards his own narcissistic universe and the at least partial detachment of that from human suffering within his reach. Syria is a hard problem for him, and it’s important the unfolding story of the state’s themes do not serve to dishonor or embarrass him in history.
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Some interests are known: Obama’s mom-and-apple-pie bid for a new Syrian secular democracy; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s interest in establishing greater autocratic Sunni-based influence in the region; Israeli reduction in Iranian-backed capability and hostility in general.
What we do not know are post-Soviet Russian interests in Syria today beyond continuing the archaic economic system chaining funding from Iran –> Syria –> Russia.
That system is up and running.
The old motivations are down and the current set are plainly absurd.
Russia, wary of its experience with Chechnya, has zero interest in otherwise supporting or strengthening Ayatollah Khamenei. In essence, President Putin and the Russians have come to a crossroads in Syria, and they can’t go back, unless perhaps to the age of the czars minus the validation of religion for doing so (but mountains of cold hard cash may suffice for validation these days), and going forward, they’re a bit uncomfortable with us Yanks and perhaps lots of others on the Continent.
The longer Putin peers down the new routes available to him without stepping forward, the more he may contribute to the New World Disorder so signaled by the failure of the Assad family’s Syria to secure their citizens lives (casualties so far: 82,000; combined IDP and refugee figures: 3.4 million homeless).
Hi, X — the “Sunni world” has deep investments in the west and in western trade and concomitant cooperation with the west, so on that broad basis, I believe, it proves itself the better partner in addressing Islamic expansion. The Ayatollah, Hamas, and Hezbollah — the active sworn enemies of Israel and the west — have cursed Shiite Islam in light of western interests as well as global interests in peace.
Iran’s shipments of rockets to Syria (for relay to and use by Hezbollah as well as Assad) signals a bump in Iran’s genocidal war on the “Zionist Entity”. In the experience of the Jews, this is the work of God pulling Israel into a defensive but active position: i.e., the people have once again been threatened with annihilation, the enemy is powerful, and it has shifted from stubborn Big Talk to “arming up” on Israel’s border — and Israel, which has every right to defend herself, will not only do so, but probably, as it has for thousands of years, change the course of history a little bit for the better.
I’ve mentioned many times, Usman, that there were no good guys within the Syrian “battle space” — and the “guys” outside of it, Putin and Obama, add non-Hezbollah Lebanese and then the Israelis, haven’t had a way toward dealing with any of the parties involved! In a very real sense, Syrians have been lost for a while and the effects of Saudi vs. Iran rivalry in the region have been making themselves felt.
If Syria’s rebel forces could both overrun the Assad regime _and reject the establishment of a hard Sunni line and its backers_ then Syrians might recover their state and stand for themselves instead of as proxies to NATO / Sunni / Saudi power as well as Russian / Iranian / Shiite power.
Sound impossible?
Ninety percent of the bloodshed has to do with the content of minds, and I believe minds can and will turn themselves in a good direction, but it might take some assistance to get them there.
* * *
From the moment Maher al-Assad set loose an army absent of any apparent rules of engagement, Syria embarked on a war that could have no other end then to keep the state embroiled in conflict.
The civilian cry for justice and revenge alone would forestall peace with the state as constituted.
Of course, there’s more to the story than that posed by civil war against a despotic family.
Russia’s post-Soviet neglect of its client for all but business and defense concerns contributed to Syria’s “weak link” status in the middle east. The odd political bedfellow with an Iran beneath the Ayatollah’s black wing has only added to the Assad’s isolation. The family hasn’t really been in power in support of religious fanaticism, but that other fanatic passion for “Jew hate” has nonetheless sufficed to partially position the state as an Iranian proxy, and that in turn, plus population, has made the state a contemplated morsel for the House of Saud.
All around, Syria serves as the latest emblem of a weak state to be battered between superpowers and eaten alive by jackals.
For diplomats and professional war game enthusiasts, one might suppose that Iran’s smuggling rockets to Israel fits with some wise Pentagon planning, a conceit I would wish not the least bit true.
For the religious, this confluence of malignant forces — of grandiose messianic ambition in the person of Ayatollah Khamenei, of unsurpassed ambition and greed on the part of what my correspondent called “Sunni Islam” (which I read as Saudi Arabian ambition, expansion, and regional rivalry), of tangent involvement by Russia, the United States, and NATO — one may look to God perhaps arranging one more defensive war for the Jews and all of an Israel that with God will not tolerate in its enemy’s camps the presence of accurate and deadly rockets within range of her children.
The AlJazeera video only glances a reference, about four seconds, at the the shipping of arms between Iran and Syria. If it were an honest outfit, it would have reported on arms trafficking between Iran and Syria first, then the relationship that has made Syria partially dependent on Iranian financing and military support, and then, perhaps this is asking too much, the common bonding in Jew hate and the hatred of the “Zionist entity” that primarily serves to mask the essential impotence of the leadership of both states, an impotence etched into permanent consciousness by the blood and suffering of their own people at their own hands — a thing observable from Evin Prison to Maher al-Assad’s casual firing into passersby on an opposite street corner.
When I was a little iddle boy, debates like the one at the address above would have fallen into the category that is “thinking about the unthinkable”. These days, that unthinkable has to be thought about around the world, not only on the Korean peninsula or around Kashmir in the completely absurd India vs. Pakistan debacle or other now old nuclear armed regions but in the middle east as well, and there not only Israel (perhaps) vs. Whoever (this playing the anti-Semites line of rant) but Whoever vs. Whoever.
During the above debate, those who tune in will hear description of the thinking that would be at work in a “poly-nuclear”middle east.
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