New power struggle erupts in Iran

BBC ^ | Sunday, 11 January, 2004 | uncredited

[FormerACLUmember]

Reformists walked out of parliament on Sunday Hundreds of reformist candidates in Iran have been barred from standing in general elections next month by an unelected conservative body. Reformists walked out of parliament on Sunday to protest against the ruling - they also plan to hold a sit-in.

Up to half the candidates registered were reportedly disqualified by the Guardian Council.

They include the brother of President Khatami, who is head of the country's largest reform party, the IIPF.

If this decision is upheld, there will not be elections but designations

The 12-member Guardian Council, made up of six clerics and six Islamic lawyers, is empowered to ensure parliament's actions comply with Islamic principles.

Prominent Iranian reformist MP Mohsen Mirdamadi accused Tehran's hardliners of staging a "coup d'etat" by "non-military means".

"If this decision is upheld, there will not be elections but designations," he said.

Two other senior members of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Behzad Nabavi and Fatemeh Haqiqatjou, and well-known womens' rights activist Elaheh Koulaiee, have also been told they cannot stand.

The BBC's Jim Muir, in Tehran, says President Khatami is under pressure from reformers to resign if appeals against the council's decision fail.

Iran's parliament - the Majlis - is dominated by the reformists who have won all major national elections since 1997.

But it is the 12-member Guardian Council, a highly conservative body, that has the power to decide who can and cannot stand for public office - a power parliament has tried and failed to end.

The council is under pressure from right-wing quarters not to back down and allow another reformist-dominated parliament to emerge, our correspondent says.

No official announcement has been made about the exact number of disqualifications as would-be candidates are being informed individually.

But local press reports said that just over half the people who presented themselves in the Tehran constituency have been turned down.

The Speaker of parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, whose application has been approved, expressed regret at the disqualifications.

He said he and President Khatami had been engaged in many contacts with the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with the Council of Guardians itself and other leaders to try to avert a crisis.

President Khatami said earlier that, if there were a large number of questionable disqualifications, he would use his constitutional powers to try to redress the situation.

But those who have been turned down still have the right to appeal to the Guardian Council itself, so the final list of candidates will not actually be known until early February.

[FormerACLUmember]

The Axis of Evil mad mullahs just delivered a (temporary) blow against the war on terror.

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[FormerACLUmember]

bttt

[livius]

How? This sounds like they're planning on reinforcing their power.

[FormerACLUmember]

The reformists would get rid of the mad mullahs, al Queda, and all other support for terrorism. Hence the removal of the reformists from the Iranian ballot is a blow against President Bush's War on Terror.

[Montfort]

We have our own "Guardian Council" of unelected folks in black robes.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

This is great news. The sooner the Mullahs push this issue the sooner the country will flip and overthrow the Mullahs.

[Billthedrill]

This is eerily familiar to students of the French revolution. That one didn't end too well for the aristos...

[livius]

Oh, I see! Sorry, I thought you meant that the reformists were assisting the mad mullahs.

Sometimes, it's just hard to keep those mad mullahs straight!

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

Have the reformists ever read America's Declaration of Independence?

Maybe they should hold their own national election and set up a different government.

From what I read, there's not enough room in Iran's prisons for 75% of the population.

[L`enn]

But, this gives and issue to galvanize the populace against the theocracy. May be in the long run a good thing.

[Eala]

Care to weigh in on this? ping.

[FormerACLUmember]

We have our own "Guardian Council" of unelected folks in black robes.

Our exploitative unelected mad mullah tyrants infest the 9th Circuit and sometimes 4 out of 7 in the Supreme Court.

[FormerACLUmember]

We shall see how much IslamoFascism the Iranian people can tolerate. I suspect their tolerance is about ready to crack..

[nuconvert]

Sure.
Thanks

[bert]

SNAP!!

Was that the sound of a breaking camel's back?

I think it might have been!

[nuconvert]

The Guardian Council has always decided who the people could vote for. This is nothing new. I don't understand the "outrage" from reformists. Did they all just crawl out from under a rock? Hmmmm......well, yes they did, but you know what I mean....... I suppose the "outrage" is a ploy to get votes. (I'm shocked, shocked that there's gambling going on...") Still, if it makes the news, GOOD.

[FormerACLUmember]

I suspect that the CIA is busy in Iraqn these days.

[DoctorZIn]

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[nuconvert]

Guardian Council at it again pong

[DoctorZIn]

Please consider a hypothetical analogy of the IRI constitutional power setup in American terms*...

This analogy is based on the notes on Iranian Government Structure at http://www.netiran.com/.

Suppose that, according to the US Constitution, every potential candidate for President, the Senate or the House of Representatives had to receive the approval of a 12 man committee appointed by the ACLU before he could actually run for office.

Suppose that any legislation coming out of the Congress had to be ratified by an ACLU committee before it could become law and that this committee indeed had total veto authority.

Suppose that the ACLU had the constitutional authority to dismiss the President and/or the Congress if he saw fit.

Suppose that the heads of all armed services, police forces, broadcast media and the Supreme Court were appointed directly by the ACLU.

Suppose that ACLU, not the President, was the Commander in Chief of the armed forces.

Now suppose that the next ACLU-approved Republican Presidential candidate ran on a platform calling for greater religious freedom.

How much would you trust him to keep his campaign promises?

* This analogy was adapted from:
http://www.pcpages.com/ani/pages/gov/analogy.htm

[RaceBannon]

bumpus

[FormerACLUmember]

bump

[MJY1288]

When the students are in the middle of that struggle, than it will be good news, but I think the reformers are just playing politics, what do you think?

[RobbyS]

You mean that all we have to do is to grab 12 guys and they government will collapse?

[Guillermo]

Can't "reform" an already bankrupt system.

They need a revolution, not a reformation.

[FormerACLUmember]

They need a revolution, not a reformation.

And a revolution is coming thanks to President Bush. The days are numbered for the mad mullahs and their Axis of Evil number two.

Tic. tic, tic....

[monocle]

Two questions. When is the military in this political conflict? How many civilians own small arms?

[McGavin999]

This may be what the students have been looking for. They were going to boycott the elections anyway, but this is even more promising as an issue.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Prison isn't really the islamists' style. They'll just hold mass executions. An islamofascist regime gets the respect of the people by executing a few hundred thousand of them. The other islamist countries hold up the executions as a wonderful way for a government to operate.

[DoctorZIn]

Private ownership of firearms is illegal and the country's military is underarmed and under trained because the regime does not trust them. The regime has various armed groups the latest being Arab security forces who have little concern for Iranian citizens.

[RobbyS]

The US military have the locations of Iranian military units marked on their maps.

[Imal]

"Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!"

[FormerACLUmember]

An apt description of IslamoFascism:

"Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble! Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake: eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, for a charm of pow'rful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

[gdc61]

More like a fatal chess move.

[Old Student]

No, I think not. I think they've just upped the ante. Iran should come to a slow boil, at least. They've been simmering for a while, now, If you'll forgive the mixed metaphors. What Iran needs is another revolution.

[Old Student]

"When is the military in this political conflict?"

Sitting it out, I expect.

The Army sided with the Mullahs in 1979, and didn't get executed right away, while the Air Force mostly sided with the Shah, and did, from what I hear.

One of my classmates at the Photojournalism school was Iranian Air Force, and went home expecting to die on the ramp outside the airplane when he got off. I don't know what happened to him, and may never find out. His name was Ali Mohebian, although I may not have spelled it correctly. It was his country, and he was going home, if it killed him. God bless him.

[The Old Hoosier]

I think they're digging their own grave here. A full-scale walkout could de-legitimize their rule. It could all come down to the loyalty of the army.

[CurlyBill]

The 12-member Guardian Council, made up of six clerics and six Islamic lawyers, is empowered to ensure parliament's actions comply with Islamic principles.

What a joke! I think this is the same group that ordered segregated busses for men and women several years ago. They were concerned about men and women brushing up against one another as they passed in the aisles. They considered even the most innocent and incidental of contact to be "sinful." I recall that this Council said that the move "would save millions of sins per year" ...... what a joke these damn fools are!!!

[freedom44]

There are three groups in Iran.

Khatami's reformers, Khamenei's hard-liners, and the majority of the population belonging to the 'third force'- a secular group.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iran/tl04.html

Twenty-five years of Islamic theocracy have left increasing numbers of Iranians starving for change. Ordinary citizens are taking to the streets, demanding democracy and secular government in place of the rule of religious law. The future of Iran now hangs in the balance, as a burgeoning opposition movement confronts the fundamentalist clerical regime.

President Khatami was re-elected in another landslide victory in June 2001, but disillusionment with government "reform" was widespread, and young voters insisted that their support for the president was conditional on substantial change. Their expectations were now higher, and the situation more volatile.

Heightened tensions exploded in October 2001 when hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets for weeks, clamoring for democratic freedom and engaging in violent clashes with police. The demonstrations were significant not only for their size but also for the participation of ordinary citizens, whose presence signaled the broadening of the opposition. Strikes by teachers, workers and nurses, attended by thousands, throughout 2001 and 2002, further reflected that resentment toward the regime was no longer confined to the students.

Even more significant was the movement's break from Khatami. Public criticism of the president intensified throughout late 2001, culminating in calls for his resignation in November 2002 during several weeks of protests when the regime sentenced a pro-reform professor to death. With its rejection of Khatami, the opposition became known as the Third Force, an independent movement outside of the official political camps of the reformists and the conservatives.

[Clint Lippo]

Is it just me, or did anyone else notice how the leftest BBC keeps refering to the bad guys in this article as conservatives and right wingers?

[Stultis]

Why is this news? Doesn't this same thing happen (huge numbers of candidates disqualified by the mullahs) every time there's an election in Iran?

[balrog666]

Is it just me, or did anyone else notice how the leftest BBC keeps refering to the bad guys in this article as conservatives and right wingers?

Perhaps "fundamentalists" would be a better choice.

[Stultis]

The reformists would get rid of the mad mullahs

That's not at all clear. The "reformists" (by and large) have yet to display the testicular fortitude to stand up to the mullahs in such manner as to force a potentially decisive confrontation. The students and other pro-democracy protesters gave up on the "reformists" over a year ago. They called for a boycott of the last election.

Khatami can only redeem himself at this point by resigning over this. In fact only mass resignations can do any good. The "reformists" are not doing anything with their offices except that, by holding them, they are legitimating the rule of the mullahs.

Whatever their intent, the "reformists" are functionally puppets of the mullahs. It is time for them to cut the strings and walk away. They are only propping up the cruel fiction of "islamic democracy" in the police state of mullahcratic Iran. They must stand aside and force the mullahs to govern alone if they can.

[DoctorZIn]

...Why is this news? Doesn't this same thing happen (huge numbers of candidates disqualified by the mullahs) every time there's an election in Iran?...

True, except that this time they are turning away a huge number of existing members of the Parliament.

This is certainly designed to force a showdown or at least the appearance of one.

[My Dog Likes Me]

What? They want to violently overthrow an oppressive, backward regime and replace it with their own oppressive, backward regime? We've been here before folks.

[Stultis]

This is nothing new.

Exactly

I don't understand the "outrage" from reformists. Did they all just crawl out from under a rock?

They might as well have. See my preceding. No one holding office in Iran, whatever their intent, should be called a "reformist". The purpose of the elected government in Iran is not to reform or even to govern. It's purpose is to function as a buffer between the people and the tyrannical mullahs -- to insulate the mullahs from anger, blame and responsibility. Members of the elected government are, at this point, only helping the mullahs by holding their offices, and thereby legitimating the whole system of tyranny and oppression.

REFORMISTS RESIGN. Let the mullahs sweep the streets. Let the mullahs make the trains run on time. If the mullahs want the power, make them also accept the full and undiverted responsibility.

[Stultis]

this time they are turning away a huge number of existing members of the Parliament.

This is certainly designed to force a showdown or at least the appearance of one.

So, if colleagues of disqualified parliament members do not themselves resign then they have signaled their subservience to the mullahs, and the mullahs have purged the worst of the troublemakers. This is good for the mullahs. But what if there are mass resignations? Is this a possibility? Are the mullahs prepared for this? What will they do?

Don't the mullahs need apparent malcontents -- so called "reformists" -- in the parliament? If the parliament is filled with obviously subservient "hacks," doesn't this focus the issue even more starkly on the mullahs' own legitimacy? Are the mullahs overreaching or being shortsighted here?

[DoctorZIn]

But what if there are mass resignations?...

The hardliners will have a much more difficult time maintaining foreign investment.

So either this move of theirs is an elaborate ruse to prompt popular support for the reformists (and thus prompt active participation in the illegitimate elections) or it is the most threat to the "reformists" ever.

The reaction of the reformists should show us which is the case.

Don't the mullahs need apparent malcontents -- so called "reformists" -- in the parliament? ...

Yes

If the parliament is filled with obviously subservient "hacks," doesn't this focus the issue even more starkly on the mullahs' own legitimacy? ...

Absolutely!

Are the mullahs overreaching or being shortsighted here?...

We will find out soon!