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June 19, 2009
As Confrontation Deepens, Iran's Path Is Unclear
By NAZILA FATHI and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
TEHRAN — As another day of defiance, concessions and ominous threats transfixed jç fs capital, it was increasingly apparent on Thursday
that there was no clear path out of a deepening confrontation that has posed the most serious challenge to the Islamic republic in its 30-year
history.
The situation had all the hallmarks of a standoff. Hundreds of thousands of silent protesters flooded into the streets . They roared a welcome to
their champion, Mir Hussein Moussavi , the opposition candidate for president whose reported defeat by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in
Friday's election touched off the crisis.
With one hand, the government offered to talk to the opposition, inviting the three losing presidential candidates to meet with the powerful
Guardian Council . While that reflected a continuing retreat from the initial insistence by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , that
the election results were accurate, many Iranians saw the offer as an effort to buy lime and shield the ayatollah from public accountability. The
Guardian Council is loyal to him.
Even Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has kept a defiant if low profile, made an unusual public concession. After insulting the huge crowds that poured
into the street by dismissing them as “dust,” the president issued a statement on state television, according to The Associated Press:
“I only addressed those who made riot, set fires and attacked people. Every single Iranian is valuable. The government is at everyone's service.
We like everyone.”
With the other hand, the government continued to arrest prominent reformers, limit Internet access and pressure reporters to stay off the
streets, and security officials signaled their waning tolerance.
It was not clear whether Iran's government, made up of fractious power centers, was pursuing a calculated strategy or if the moves reflected
internal disagreements, or even uncertainty.
“Most analysts believe the outreach is just to kill time and extend this while they search for a solution, although there doesn't seem to be any,”
said a political analyst in Tehran, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “This will only be a postponement of the
inevitable, which is indeed a brutal crackdown.”
Important clues could emerge Friday, when Ayatollah Khamenei is scheduled to lead the national prayer service from Tehran University.
Political analysts said that they hope that the leader will reveal his ultimate intent, indicating a willingness either to appease the opposition, or
to demand an end to protests.
There was some speculation among Iran experts in the United States of a possible compromise, with reformers being given positions in a new
government. But it was unclear if that would be acceptable to the opposition, which understands that in Iran, positions do not necessarily
come with power. For eight years, the reform president, Mohammad Khatami , saw his program stifled by the conservative interests of the
religious leadership and its allies.
“There could have been a very easy political solution, and that would have been nullifying the election results, but they have refused to do that
so far,” said Mashalah Shamsolvaezin, a political analyst in Tehran. “Postponing the resolution means they want the military to find the
solutions,” he said, referring to the Revolutionary Guards , not the army.
On Thursday the opposition remained firm in its demand for a new election, and it was not immediately clear how it would respond to the
council's offer of talks, which could take place as early as Saturday. The meeting would include Mr. Moussavi and two other candidates, Mehdi
Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai.
Mr. Moussavi has indicated in the past that he does not trust the Guardian Council because some of its members campaigned on behalf of Mr.
Ahmadinejad before the election. State radio said the Guardian Council had begun a “careful examination” of 646 complaints about the vote.
Nor was it clear what role was being played by a former Iranian president, Mi Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani , who supported Mr. Moussavi and is
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Iran's leaders offered conciliation, while simultaneously wielding repression.
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in a power struggle with Ayatollah Khamenei. Today there were unconfirmed reports that two of his children had been banned from leaving
the country because of their role in helping the protesters.
The path to resolution is so cloudy because Iran's political system is not based on coalitions or compromise. It has evolved into a winner-
take-all contest, with each side holding competing views of what kind of country Iran should be: one in continuing opposition to the West,
where individual freedoms are tightly restricted, or one more open to engagement with the world and greater civil liberties.
“We don't have a consensus on who we are,” said a political scientist with close ties to Iran's leadership. “Here we have ideology and ways of
thinking that have nothing in common.”
In Iran's theocracy, the supreme leader has vast power over the military, the judiciary and broadcasting. He also appoints 6 of the 12 jurists on
the Guardian Council, which oversees Parliament and certifies election results, and so he exerts a profound influence on the organization.
The president and Parliament are elected by the people, and in recent years, popular demands have grown for social freedoms and economic
gains. That pressure was easier to resist with Mr. Ahmadinejad as president, because it meant that conservatives controlled all the levers of
power.
If Mr. Moussavi had been declared the winner, his victory would have broken the hard-liners' monopoly, and that possibility was seen as a
threat to the group's material interests and its ideological goals.
Not only would the conservatives have lost control of important ministries, but also the new government might have been more amenable to
talking with the United States. Opposition to the United States is a central component of the leadership's identity, and legitimacy.
As the streets filled with protesters for yet another day, Ayatollah Khamenei appeared to be arguing that even in this crisis, everyone
supported the system over which he holds ultimate power. “The friendly atmosphere that existed before the elections should not turn into an
atmosphere of conflict and confrontation after the vote because both groups of voters believe in the system,” he was quoted as saving in Iran
an English-language newspaper.
But the streets told a different story — not one of confidence in the system, but rage. Starting about 4 p.m., thousands of people began
gathering in Imam Khomeini Square in Tehran. The crowd quickly grew to hundreds of thousands, stretching beyond the borders of the
square, one of the city's largest, and filling the surrounding streets, witnesses said.
The protest seemed to grow larger than demonstrations on previous days. But it was not as big as Monday's rally; that outpouring involved
three million people, Tehran's mayor said Thursday, making it the largest protest since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
“These protests arc nothing short of magnificent, hundreds of thousands of people marching in peace and total silence,” said a witness to the
events in Tehran.
At one point, a car drove into the thick of the demonstration, and Mr. Moussavi, wearing a black shirt and suit, and his wife stood on top of
their vehicle to roars of approval.
As on previous days, the police kept to the sidelines. Although vigilante forces appeared, there were no immediate reports of clashes.
In a statement on his Web site, Mr. Moussavi had called on his followers to mourn those protesters killed in clashes with paramilitary forces
over the past several days, and protesters responded by wearing black and carrying black candles. Many held up their fingers in a V-sign for
victory.
Meanwhile, some protesters expressed growing fears that the government's tolerance of the persistent protests would soon wear out.
The Iranian authorities reported that at least seven people were killed in Tehran in the first days of unrest after the election. Student activists
say seven more people have died since then in attacks by government militia on student dormitories in Tehran and in the southern city of
Shiraz.
Iranian Web sites have carried reports of violence in some other cities, but given the press restrictions now in place, those could not be
verified.
According to news reports and a human rights group, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran , the latest detainees include
Ibrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister who leads an organization called Freedom Movement
Amnesty International issued a tally of detentions, saying 17 people had been detained in the northwestern city of Tabriz. It added that
students appeared to have been “particularly targeted.”
The opposition signaled that it would not let up the pressure. State television's Press TV reported on its Web site that Mr. Moussavi was
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already planning to address a rally on Saturday, called by a group of reformist clerics loyal to Mr. Khatami, the former president.
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Michael Slackman from Cairo. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris, and Neil
MacFarquhar and Sharon Otterman from New York.
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