IRAN: Opposition seeks permit to march in support of Egyptian uprising

Iran's two main opposition leaders have called on Tehran's hard-line rulers to walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. 

Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have asked the Interior Ministry, which is controlled by an acolyte of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to allow for a march at Tehran's Azadi Square on Feb. 14 in support of the Egyptian uprising and the Tunisian revolution. 

Iran's hard-line authorities won't approve a permit for the march, especially at the same site where up to 3 million anti-government protesters staged a rally on June 15, 2009. 

These days, only rallies by supporters of the Iranian government, often bused in and handed free food, are allowed.

But the audacity of the request suggests how the political contagion wending its way through the Arab world may affect Iran, a non-Arab Muslim country that nonetheless maintains strong connections to its neighbors. 

Khamenei, who has been either president or supreme leader of Iran as long as Hosni Mubarak has been the man in charge in Cairo, has praised the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings as an "Islamic awakening" similar to Iran's 1979 revolution.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the country's main Islamic opposition group, quickly dismissed the characterization, and the White House likened the uprising to Iran's 2009 revolt against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed reelection. 

But Mousavi, a former prime minister, and Karroubi are asking authorities to let Iranians show their support for the fight against tyranny, according to Kaleme, Mousavi's website (in Persian). 

"In order to show solidarity with the popular movements in the region and specifically the freedom-seeking movement embarked on by Tunisian and Egyptian people against their autocratic governments," says a letter addressed to the Interior Ministry, "we hereby request permit to call for a rally –- as Article 27 of the constitution authorizes – on Monday, Feb 14, 2011, at 3 p.m. from Imam Hossein to Azadi Square."

-- Los Angeles Times

Photo: Hundreds of thousands of supporters rally in Tehran for then-presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi on June 15, 2009. Credit: Ben Curtis / Associated Press

 

Comments

[Netgk]

Jared Israel, you are one messed-up moron. The Muslim Brotherhood was late to the party. Most of the protesters were NOT in the MB. EVERYBODY prays over there! All muslims are NOT in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Khamenei is a scared little man who has been hiding behind the Iranian flag and the Koran. He's afraid to let people protest and tell the world what the think of him.

[Jared Israel]

Regarding Mousavi's challenge to Khamenei to let him hold a mass demonstration to support the Egyptian protesters, I think it is a betrayal of the Iranian movement on two scores.

First, the Western media’s one-sided coverage notwithstanding, the Egyptian and Iranian movements are opposites. Iran's is rooted in people's desire to be free from clerical suppression. Egypt's, despite Facebook, has been overwhelmingly a Muslim Brotherhood affair – hence the pictures of EVERYONE praying at rallies.

The Brotherhood is the close ally of Hamas and Hezbollah, which provided the vanguard of the thugs that beat Iranian protesters in 2009/10. By equating the Iran and Egypt protests, Mousavi obscures what is unique about Iran: that people under the thumb of Islamic clerical fascism heroically rebelled against it. The Brotherhood wants to institute precisely the type of regime the Iranians are fighting.

Second, Khamenei's public euphoria, saying Egypt heralds the dawn of the Islamic Age, threw a monkey wrench in the Western drive to force Mubarak to resign and open the door to the Muslim Brotherhood, the IRI's close ally.

Immediately Khamenei’s statement was translated and posted by Al Jazeera, Clinton and Obama backpedalled.

On Jan. 31, the administration said the Brotherhood had to be part of a future government (adding, humorously, that of course it had to eschew violence, as if the Brotherhood were not a past master of such doubletalk!), and on Feb. 1, Obama said Mubarak had to resign *now*. (The next day his spokesman said "Now means yesterday!") With these combined demands, Obama appointed himself Supreme Leader of Egypt.

But Khamenei’s statement scared lots of people, forcing Clinton to say 'participation of the Brotherhood in the Egyptian government is an open question’ and -- amazingly --suddenly the US was declaring that Mubarak was needed for the US-ordered transition. These changes were aimed at ending the US government's exposure as the hidden ally of the IRI, which exposure Khamenei’s statement brought on. (Note that Egyptian leaders have broadly hinted at just such an alliance attacking them.)

Besides Clinton's backpedalling, I believe two other measures, in the way of damage control, have been taken.

First, the Brotherhood and its Facebook front men have started denouncing Obama for interfering in Egypt -- as if, absent his interference, they would have been meeting with Egypt's VP! Not to mention not being jailed for burning down half the government.

Their attacks on the US are needed to undercut the impression, created by Khamenei, of US-IRI-Brotherhood collaboration.

And second, Mousavi requested the demonstration permit.

You see, now that Mousavi has made this request, media like the N. Y. Times that refused to report Khamenei’s statement can gush over the evidence of supposed all-Iranian support for the so-called protesters, saying see, *all* parts of the Iranian spectrum support the protesters in Egypt, thus negating the affect of Khamenei's revealing comments.

So Mousavi is helping to pull Mr. Obama's irons out of the fire by obscuring the truth that Khamenei exposed: that in essence, the IRI is a subordinate ally of the West, which in turn means that despite Khamenei’s (and Chavez's, et al) babble about anti-imperialism, IRI Islamism = neocolonialism, not one word more or less.

Jared Israel
Emperor's Clothes

[potkin azarmehr]

A double edged sword. If the rally is not permitted, no Egyptian should doubt the insincerity of the government in Tehran.

[ALIMSC]

Dear Andres and ail, green wave is a democratic movement and they should take a democratic decision (not revolution). Iranians don't like to die in streets again.

[mark]

IRAN IS NEXT ... IRAN WILL DO IT .... IRAN IS STRONG ... IRAN WILL BE, WHAT IT ALWAYS WANTED TO BE ... AZADI ZINDABAD....

all the love, from a ''white canadian'' named marc....

keep strong IRAN....

[Houman Mohareb Irani]

FOR FREEDOM, THERE IS NO PERMIT ISSUED. IT IS GOD GIVEN RIGHT

the poeple Need to get up and dipose the SATANIC BARBARIC Islamist terrorist occupiers of IRAN and FREE THE WORLD AND IRANIANS FROM THEM

POWER TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAN, LONG LIVE FREEDOM HUMAN RIGHTS FOR IRAN

[alimostofi]

The Greens love Islamic Republican. Iranians love Iran. Big difference!

[Andreas Moser]

ASKING for a PERMISSION to protest? How ridiculous is that? That pretty much explains what is going wrong with the Iranian opposition: http://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/why-tunisia-but-not-iran/