Tehran's streets erupt after a key cleric speaks- Rafsanjani's harsh rebuke of Ahmadinejad ...

Los Angeles Times ^ | July 18, 2009 | Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's harsh rebuke of Ahmadinejad supporters is followed by renewed violence, suggesting the discontent over recent election results is as strong as ever.

Reporting from Tehran and Beirut -- Security forces fired tear gas and plainclothes militiamen armed with batons charged at crowds of protesters gathered near Tehran University after a Friday prayer sermon delivered by the cleric and opposition supporter Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, his first appearance at the nation's weekly keynote sermon since before the election.

Rafsanjani, in a closely watched speech, lashed out at the hard-line camp supporting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, criticized the June 12 election results and promoted several key opposition demands. However, he failed to offer a solution to what has emerged as Iran's worst political crisis in decades.

His inconclusive speech and the Muslim Sabbath clashes between security forces and supporters of opposition figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi that followed suggested the political firestorm unleashed by the marred vote would continue and that the movement it had inspired was as strong as ever.

"We could have taken our best step in the history of the Islamic revolution had the election not faced problems," he told worshipers in and around Tehran University. "We are in doubt today. Today, we are living bitter conditions due to what happened after the announcement of the election result. All of us have suffered. We need unity more than any time else."

Even before Rafsanjani's speech began, security forces were stuffing young men into waiting police vans. Helmeted Basiji militiamen aboard motorcycles began pushing forward.

After the speech, downtown Tehran erupted in violence .....

[Texas Fossil]

هاشمی: کسانی که به این شکل دستگیر شدند باید آزاد شوند، این روش درست نیست Machine translation>----> Hashemi: This form of those who were arrested must be released, this method is not correct

[Texas Fossil]

Thanks for the link.

[califamily4W]

Thank you

[MattinNJ]

These protestors are getting played like violins. Someone gets them all fired up, the kids show up, the boys are executed and the women....Well, God be with them.

Effective trick. Chavez used it a while back. Remember when he "left" Venezuela. Flushed out his opponents for his return and then rounded them up. Gee, I wonder whatever happened to those guys? /Sarc.

[FARS]

Please share and pass around, identify the bad guys.

http://noiri.blogspot.com/2009/07/antimullah-request.html

[BigSkyFreeper]

Bump for later read

[GeronL]

civil war!

who will the army obey?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just posted this:

BBC: (Rafsanjani ) Call for Iran protesters' release

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Youtube:

Iran Tehran rafsanjani 17 July Protests Part 1

Iran Tehran rafsanjani 17 July Protests Part 2

Iran Protest Tehran 17 July rafsanjani Part 3 tear gas

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See Links above.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See updated links just above...

[Texas Fossil]

Thanks for the links. That is the most recent I have seen. My usual input sources have been very quiet today. Possibly they were in the streets.

[Marine_Uncle]

Just a thought. Perhaps plans are in place for Raffy to take over from the Supreme one should things continue to go south. One could think those that really head the Islamic movement in Iran do not want their powers to diminish, so they allow what on the surface appears to be tectonic shifts to occur, with the understanding they have plans to always keep a biggy in power (Supreme Leader). But they may be underestimating just what the growing masses really want.
Personal freedoms come to mind. Freedoms not restricted by tough Islamic law. Only a secular government free of Islamic influence will fill the billet.

[SunkenCiv]

thanks Ernest.

Rafsanjani says many Iranians have election doubts
Reuters | 07/17/09
Posted on 07/17/2009 4:50:12 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2294637/posts

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Berosus]

Wasn’t Rafsanjani a former president himself, from 1989 to 1997? Nobody seems to mention it anymore.

[FARS]

A very bloody one. He apparently, like an eunuch (one of his nicknames) cannot grow face hair so stands out in the very hairy, bearded society.

He sent out hit squads all over the world to assassinate opposition leaders and their entourage and if I remember correctly was behind the bombing of a Jewish building in South America.

His fingers were in every business pie for profit and kickbacks and he is now one of the richest men in the world and helped fund the Green movement to the tune of $100 million.

He fears that if the Mullah regime falls, he will be taken to task for the killings AND for financially raping the country. As so many other Mullahs have done and are doing.

And as the Revolutionary Guard is now doing with huge project overruns in no-bid projects in every aspect of industry and manufacture.

[PhilDragoo]

So, Rafsanjani, like Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard, has squandered the oil wealth.

Seventy per cent of Iranians born since the Revolution.

A growing realization perhaps that all the shuffling of the stage props (the "moderate" Khatami comes to mind) is merely a veil over repression and exploitation.

[PhilDragoo]

From your link at top:

If anyone but naive, totally inexperienced useful fool, pro-Mullah, Moslem Oba-Hussein-Khomeini were in charge of America at this point in time where the legitimacy of the Islamic regime government is in question it is the moment to set up an Iranian government in exile and have it recognized by major Western countries and thus enlarge the split among the clergy factions.

And set in motion a defensible political change of regime.

AntiMullah has been working on a simplified process to implement this course of action but it would fall on deaf ears with the current Oba-Hussein administration which appears to be going out of its way to defend and support the Mullah regime instead of the desperate seeking of freedom of the populace.

Or, hard to discard with the way Oba-Hussein has behaved, the Mullahs have something they can hold over his head and blackmail or extort him.

Perhaps some other Western countries will wake up, realize the dangers of the control their Moslem communities are fomenting from inside their borders and work on defanging Islamic Iran while they still can. Or face a nuclear, suicidal Hojatieh Islamic Iran!

Your article is full of fun facts:

50,000 Russian "advisors" in-country

A crowd of up to three million reported by the Obamedia as "ten thousand"

Chants against the Russians and against the ayatollah

Your speculation that the mullahs "have something" on Obama is likely true--

--particularly as the Russians are being so helpful providing the mullahs with intel.

What we here knew a year ago--the legend "Barack Obama" is a Marxchurian Candidate--is gaining acceptance.

As his popularity plummets on a parallel path with the economy.

Tehran demonstrations--T-parties for the overwhelming majority who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it any more.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!