Change is Brewing in Iran

Posted by johnhouk on Jul 01, 2009
 The inside information in Iran is becoming interesting. It is becoming apparent that the path of open belligerence is becoming wearisome to the Iranian people and certain elements within the Iranian ruling elite.

Hopefully President Barack Hussein Obama is wise enough to forsake the open appeasement agenda with Iran and utilize Intelligence services to undermine President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Read two articles that provide some insight into the dishevelment proceeding within Iran.

JRH 7/1/09 (Hat Tip: United Against Islamic Supremacism)
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Satelite TV: Iran's Revolutionary In L.A.

By Dirk Smillie
Published: Saturday, 27 June, 2009 @ 6:36 AM in Beirut
YAH LIBNAN

Since last fall, Shahram Homayoun has turned the audience of his satellite TV channel into a militia of activists. He's the founder of the "Ma Hastim" (We Exist) Iranian human rights movement, which grew out of meetings at Tehran bakeries organized by announcements on his satellite channel.

Talk about flour power: Some 50-400 people began gathering at city bakeries each Thursday at 6 p.m. "We would tell them to buy some bread, then meet outside," says Homayoun through a translator.

When government agents began breaking up these meetings, the movement went underground. It would reemerge after this month's contested presidential election. "For months we have known that the government would steal this election and that the people would rise up," says Homayoun.

Channel One headquarters is nowhere near Tehran--its TV studios sit above a dental office in a Los Angeles strip mall. To document the bloody tactics Homayoun expected Iran's militias would employ, he sent 10,000 camera pens to Tehran for distribution to Ma Hastim members. In the last two weeks, Homayoun says he has sent another, larger shipment of smaller, wearable cameras--devices he does not want to identify--to Tehran. The images snapped by protesters armed with the earlier shipment of tiny cameras now arrive as attachments to as many as 1,000 e-mails a day.

Last week, when an image arrived of a man shooting at unarmed protesters from a rooftop in Tehran, a Channel One staffer enlarged the face of the shooter and aired the image for audiences to see back in Tehran. There, neighborhood residents recognized the man with the gun, found and cornered him, then set him on fire in retaliation, says Homayoun's chief aide, Maryam Azizi. Such retribution is bringing accountability to those attacking peaceful protesters, she says. Other violent acts by members of militias or Revolutionary Guards are photographed and sent back to Los Angeles, winding up on YouTube or on Homayouen's own broadcast that evening.

Aside from its activist agenda, Channel One also chases leads like a typical news organization. It is investigating a tip it has received that 5,000 members of Lebanon's Hezbollah recently arrived in Iran to help put down the rebellion. "We have confirmation they are there," says Azizi.

Nine-year-old Channel One has a $3 million budget drawn from donations by a little over 20,000 contributors, says Azizi. How many are watching? Hard to gauge. Azizi says its 60-person staff broadcasts Channel One around the clock to as many as 10 million Iranians. Audience size depends in part on how aggressively the Iranian regime jams its signal, which comes from the transponder of a French-owned satellite.

Homayoun and his staff will be moving to a larger studio next month, partly due to the stream of incoming threats. "We are coming to behead you," stated one caller. The LAPD and FBI have come by lately, warning staffers that a strip mall is probably not the safest place for them. Azizi doesn't appear rattled. "Tehran would be worse," she says.

Forbes
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Battle for Iran shifts from the streets to the heart of power

Peter Beaumont and a special correspondent in Tehran
The Observer
Sunday 28 June 2009

The power struggle inside Iran appears to be moving from the streets into the heart of the regime itself this weekend amid reports that Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani is plotting to undermine the power of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Rafsanjani's manoeuvres against Khamenei come as tensions between the speaker of the parliament, Ali Larijani, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also appeared to be coming to a head.

Mass demonstrations on the streets against the election results have been effectively crushed by a massive police and basiij militia presence that has seen several dozen deaths and the arrests of hundreds of supporters of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. But the splits within Iran's political elite are deepening.

In the past few days, Larijani - who was fired by Ahmadinejad as chief negotiator on nuclear issues with the west - has announced his intention of setting up a parliamentary committee to examine the recent post-election violence in an "even-handed way". In response, Ahmadinejad supporters within the parliament have discussed the possibility of impeaching Larijani.

In a move with even greater potential significance, according to several reports Rafsanjani has been lobbying fellow members of the powerful 86-strong Assembly of Experts, which he chairs, to replace Khamenei as the supreme leader with a small committee of senior ayatollahs, of which Khamenei would be a member. If Rafsanjani were successful, the constitutional change would mean a profound shift in the balance of power within Iran's theocratic regime.

"Although Hashemi Rafsanjani is not a popular politician in Iran any more, he is the only hope that Iranians have ... for the annulment of the election," said an Iranian political analyst who asked not be named. "He is the only one who people think is able to stand against the supreme leader."

The membership of the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to appoint the supreme leader, is split between those supporting Rafsanjani and those who have gravitated around the highly influential ultra-hardline cleric Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, who is widely seen as both a supporter of Ahmadinejad and the president's religious mentor. Yazdi is also believed to have his own ambitions to succeed Khamenei as supreme leader. Like Ahmadinejad, he is fiercely opposed to the push by reformists for more democratic representation in Iran.

Yazdi is also understood to have a large following among both the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the basiij militia, both also sources of support for Ahmadinejad.

Rafsanjani has long been a proponent of weakening the power of the supreme leader. He is understood to be arguing in favour of replacing Khamenei with a leadership council of three or more senior clerics.

The splits in the Assembly of Experts - the least visible aspect of the present crisis - will be critically important to its eventual outcome. Even avowed conservatives are reported to have sided with Rafsanjani against Yazdi and his faction, suggesting that there are real limits to the power it has been exercising in the past few weeks.

The complexity of the present political manoeuvres has meant Iran's elites have been made to take sides, reflected in the decision by almost half the members of the parliamentary assembly to boycott the celebration dinner called by Ahmadinejad to mark his "re-election".

The largely behind the scenes moves have come as Iranians opposed to the regime have been forced to go underground with their protests, despite the threats of Khamenei and the brutal attacks of the Revolutionary Guards and basiij militia.

The challenge to the street protests entered a new phase last week when Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called for the execution of protest leaders at Friday prayers in Tehran in a further move seen as intending to intimidate the opponents of Ahmadinejad.

Despite that, the nightly defiant cry of "Allah-o-Akbar" (God is great) has increased since Khatami's warning.

In a further sign of defiance, large numbers of people have switched from wearing green to black, to mourn those killed by the security forces during demonstrations.

"Before this, black was an ordinary colour; now it has a different meaning," said Soheil, a 22-year-old student. "It means that you are angry with the government and you want re-election."

Others keep their car headlights on, also in protest. "It's not important for me whether the riot police destroy my car or not; the important thing is to continue my protest despite the huge censorship on the internet and SMS networks and TV channels," said 45-year-old Mina, as she drove - lights ablaze - through Tehran yesterday. "This is the only way I can show my protest."
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 Satelite TV: Iran's Revolutionary In L.A.
© Ya Libnan 2008 (sic) | All rights reserved

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Battle for Iran shifts from the streets to the heart of power
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

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