Robin Wright -- In IlBn, Mohsen MiMamadi Is a Target of His Own Re , ,, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp.dyn/oontent/artioleI2009/08/07/AR...
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ceshingtonpost.com > Opinions > Outlook & Opinions
In Iran, a Hostage-Taker Is Now Hostage _____________
By Robin Wright
Sunday, Augu 9, 2009
Last week Iran's theocracy widened its crackdown from
suppressing an opposition movement to putting on trial
the very revolutionaries who launched the Islamic
republic. This new purge may be more profound
politically than the campaign against the followers ofMir
Hossein Mousavi: The Iranian revolution is eating its
children.
Mohsen Mirdamadi saw it all coning He warned me
about it five years ago. The only thing he didn't foresee
was his own role. Last week, he sat in a revolutionary
court, dressed in gray prison pajamas, as one of its
victims.
I've followed Mirdamadi since the 1979 U.S. Embassy
takeover. In 1981, I stood below the plane that brought 52
American diplomats to freedom in Algeria and wondered
about the type of people who seized, interrogated and
brutalized hostages for 444 days. Mirdamadi was one of
three ringleaders. Former hostage John Limbert remembers
him as “particularly nasty.” I met him a decade ago.
A surprisingly small man, Mirdamadi
took the powerful chairmanship of
parliament's national security and foreign
relations committee, a platform he used
to advocate political openings, freedom of
assembly and speech, women's rights,
and an independent press, albeit within _________
the boundaries of Islamic propriety. He
launched the newspaper Norouz - - or ___________ _____
New Year -- which advocated the rule of ____________ ______
law and challenged authority. Ultimately,
the authorities charged him with libel,
subversion, “encouraging hooligans to
Like many early revolutionaries, Mirdamadi had evolved over the intervening two decades from
a scruffy student radical into a balding, pinstnpe-suited realist. In 2000, he ran for parliament as
a reformer.
“Our emphasis originally was on winning independence from foreign influence and creating an
Islamic state,” he explained at the spartan headquarters of the Islamic Iran Participation Front,
just two blocks from the old U.S. Embassy. “But today our emphasis is on freedoms Our
tactics have shifted, too. Before, we carried out a revolution. Today, we're trying evolution.”
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8/10/2009 10:5 1 AM
Robin Wright -- In IlBn, Mohsen MiMamadi Is a Target of His Own Re , ,, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp.dyn/oontent/artioleI2009/08/07/AR...
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Mirdamadi came to represent the forces
that carry revolutions into their final
phase, what Crane Brinton in his classic “The Anatomy of Revolution” called “the
convalescence.” But he apparently went too far. When he registered to run for reelection in
2004, he was disqualified by the clerical Council of Guardians despite his fame. Dozens of
incumbents and some 2,500 others were also disqualified. Mirdamadi led a mass resignation of
124 parliamentarians, almost half the total, in protest. It was the beginning, he told me a few
months later, of what he feared would become a “bloodless coup.”
In 2006, he became leader of his party, the largest reform faction. In 2008, he backed Mousavi
for president. And in June, he was among the first arrested when Iran's uprising erupted. While
Mirdamadi was in parliament, Amnesty International issued 13 “urgent action” appeals asking
supporters to write him demanding the release of political prisoners. Last month, it issued an
appeal about him -- as a political prisoner.
Mirdamadi sat in court last week with 100 others, including a former vice president, cabinet
members, presidential advisers and spokesmen. An Iranian news agency said some may face
charges of being “mohareb,” or God's enemy, which can carry the death penalty. The best-ease
seenano is that, after more “confessions,” they are pardoned but banned from politics and their
parties dissolved.
The irony -- one of many in the current crisis -- is that the purge taking place to prevent an
allegedly foreign-backed “velvet revolution” may in fact spur one. President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's inaugural speech Wednesday was full of inane bluster. “We must play a key role
in the management of the world,” he told parliament.
But the regime only looks more desperate with each passing week. Tens of thousands of
security forces had to be deployed in Tehran to preserve order on inauguration day, yet
YouTube snippets still showed Iranians on crowded subway escalators shouting “death to the
dictator” for all to hear. The widening polarization of society will make it difficult for
Ahmadinejad to rule during his second term.
“The goals of the revolution are being forgotten as this government becomes more of a
dictatorship,” Mirdamadi said, predicting the current turmoil. “But people still want change.”
eontaet ( robinwright.net
Robin Wright, aformer Washington Post reporter and apublic policy scholar at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars, is the author offour books on Iran.
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