Free Republic

For the second day in a row, an Iranian opposition leader has publicly questioned a pillar of the Islamic Republic, a sign of increasing boldness on the part of Iran's so-called Green movement. Mehdi Karroubi called for an abolition of the Guardian Council's power to oversee elections, a direct swipe at the conservative body's leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who recently likened the opposition to defiant "Jews" who ought to be executed. "The Guardian Council's ugly arbitrary vetting process has to be abolished," Karroubi said Wednesday in a fresh statement posted to his website Sahamnews.org (in Persian). He reiterated his and...

TEHRAN — Opposition heads on Saturday implicitly called for demonstrations on the February 11 anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution, as the elite Revolutionary Guards warned that any such protest will be crushed. Iran, meanwhile, put on trial 16 anti-government protesters, two of them women, who were arrested in late December on the Shiite mourning day of Ashura, the official IRNA news agency reported. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who have spearheaded protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, met and invited supporters to demonstrate on the anniversary day, Karroubi's website Sahamnews.org said. The two opposition leaders said Thursday's hangings of two...

Though organizing opposition to the government is more difficult in smaller cities that don't afford the anonymity of Tehran, activists in the provinces say they're making progress. Reporting from Beirut - Mohammad knew he had to be careful in approaching his old classmate Hamed, the one from the conservative Iranian family. They come from a small city, after all, and word gets around. When they ran into each other last summer in their eastern Iranian hometown of Birjand, the pair hadn't seen each other for nine years. As they caught up on old times, the conversation turned to the country's...

-excerpt- Mir Hossein Mousavi today released a new statement denouncing the regime’s brutal tactics against the Green Movement ... -excerpt- While the statement is quite similar to other statements he has released in the past, several points on closer inspection stand out. -excerpt- ... Mousavi for the first time actually discounts his own influence and that of Mehdi Karroubi. He admits that even though people asked him to call for protests or at least lend his support, he did not do so in the case of Ashura. He also acknowledges the fact that people came out without him calling them...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said on Friday he was ready to die for his reformist campaign after a disputed election in June, defying hardline calls for his execution. "I'm not afraid of being one of the martyrs who lost their lives in their fight for their rightful demands since the vote," Mousavi said on his website, five days after his nephew and seven other pro-reform protesters were killed during a rally. Mousavi, whose allegation that the June presidential vote he lost to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rigged set off a wave of unrest, said in the statement...

Iran: opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi 'ready to die' for the cause Iran's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said the country is in 'serious crisis' and he is 'not afraid to die' for his cause. Published: 9:28AM GMT 01 Jan 2010 In a statement posted on his website on Friday , Mr Mousavi called for the immediate release of his supporters arrested after the disputed presidential vote in June and during protests earlier this week. "Arresting or killing Mousavi, [and another opposition leader Mehdi] Karoubi ... will not calm the situation," he said. "I am not afraid to die for people's demands...

The decision to unleash security forces with live rounds on unarmed protesters in Central Tehran on Sunday, shouted louder than any words from opposition leaders ever could have, that the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad feels materially threatened by the growing uprising in Iran. Gone was the pretense that this is a minority that could soon be whipped into line as first the security forces then the Iranian parliament gave the game away. (snip) Now Moussavi in response to Sunday's clashes has said that he is ready to die for the rights of the people. "I have no hesitation about...

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's opposition leaders faced new threats Thursday with the state prosecutor warning they could be put on trial if they don't denounce this week's antigovernment protests -- the worst unrest since the aftermath of the disputed June election. The warning came a day after crowds at progovernment rallies chanted calls for the execution of the opposition leaders and a group posted an online threat that suicide squads were ready to assassinate those leaders if the judiciary didn't punish them within a week. For a second straight day, government supporters staged a rally wearing white funeral shrouds to...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's state news agency IRNA said on Wednesday that two leaders of "sedition" in the country have fled to a northern Iranian province, but the opposition said its leaders were still in the capital. "Two of those who played a major role in igniting tension in Iran following the (June presidential) vote, fled Tehran and went to a northern province because they were scared of people, who demanded their punishment," IRNA reported.

December 30, 2009 Iran Oppostion Leader Mir Hossein Mousavi 'Flees Tehran' The leader of Iran's opposition was to have fled Tehran, state media reported tonight. Mir Hossein Mousavi, defeated in hotly disputed elections in June, was said to have left the Iranian capital on a day marked by pro-government rallies at which crowds chanted "Death to Mousavi". Another of the leaders, Mahdi Karroubi, was also said to have fled. The news comes three days after Mr Mousavi's nephew, Ali, was killed during a protest against the regime in which at least eight lost their lives. He was said to have...

Debka has an exclusive report on the Iranian uprising http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1416 covering the key players of the insurgency, the death tolls and the various sides. One question that comes to mind reading all of the information on the resistance movement (not Debka) is whether extremists are trying to hijack the resistance movement. After all, Mousavi was a Revolutionary leader of the last Ayatollah. From the Debka Report: "The current upsurge of violence across Iran is the most dangerous yet because for the first time demonstrators are turning round to attack security forces, the Revolutionary Guardsmen and Basijj paramilitaries.

December 28, 2009 Seven opposition leaders arrested as Mousavi nephew's body 'missing' Analysts have heralded the start of what could be a bloody endgame Times Online Iranian security forces today rounded up at least seven prominent activists amid reports that the body of the opposition leader's nephew, killed on Sunday as hundreds of thousands took to the streets, had gone missing Clashes had been expected at a funeral ceremony for Seyed Ali Mousavi, whose uncle Mir Hossein Mousavi was defeated in hotly disputed elections earlier this year. Instead police fired teargas to disperse Mousavi supporters who had gathered outside the...

A relative of Iran's opposition leader says the body of the leader's nephew has been removed from a hospital without the family's permission, a day after he was slain in an anti-government protest. Reza Mousavi said Monday that the body of his brother, Ali Mousavi, was taken from a Tehran hospital, possibly by authorities seeking to deter mourners from organizing more protests around his funeral. The slain man is the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Here is video of the nephew of Iranian opposition leader Ali Mousavi, reportedly laying on the ground shot in the back on Azadi Street, or Freedom Street, during clashes in which security forces reportedly fired on demonstrators. There were protests all across Tehran today against the thug Ahmadinejad's regime. A crowd in the Southern city of Sajin also fought police today to try and rescue two prisoners who were being hanged. . . . (VIDEO)

At least four Iranian protesters were reported to have been shot dead in Tehran today — including a nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi — during the fiercest protests in the capital since the immediate aftermath of June’s hotly disputed presidential election.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi appeared to urge his supporters on Saturday to take part in rallies on November 4 marking the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. If they gather in the streets on Wednesday, there may be clashes with police and government backers, as happened during annual demonstrations in Iran in support of the Palestinians on September 18. In a statement posted on a reformist website, Mousavi said he would press ahead with his efforts for political change in Iran following its disputed election in June, which he says was...

Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran - if one can still call it a republic - is at a crossroads. What has been manifesting itself on Iran's streets since the disputed presidential elections is not only the electorate's collective feeling of injustice and rage, but also the religious-political elite's underlying divide over the future of the velayat-e faqih and its entire political system. When Mohammad Khatami was president of Iran from 1997 to 2005, reformist hermeneutics largely centered on the notion of justice - a fundamental tenet of Shia jurisprudence - civil society and human rights.During his tenure,...

TEHRAN, Iran – Opposition political activists and protesters stood trial in Tehran Saturday on charges of rioting and conspiring against the ruling system in the country's first trial following the disputed presidential election, Iran's state media reported.

Baton-wielding Iranian riot police arrested mourners and drove away opposition leaders as they tried to stage a ceremony in a Tehran cemetery to commemorate protesters killed in anti-government demonstrations last month. Ignoring Islamic customs and traditions, the security forces beat and detained many of the 2000-odd people who came to mark the end of the 40-day mourning period at the grave of Neda Soltan, the young student who has become an icon of the opposition movement. When Mir Hossein Mousavi, the movement’s leader, arrived at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery on the baking plains south of the capital, he was mobbed...

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian police fired tear gas and beat anti-government protesters with batons to disperse thousands attending a memorial at the graveside of a woman whose killing made her an icon of the opposition movement.

If the Iranian mullahs expected the outrage over the rigged presidential election to dissipate, the latest from Mirhossein Mousavi will disappoint the hardliners.  The man who claims he was robbed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei promises to continue the public protests that have made the regime more reliant than ever on its military forces to maintain political power.  At the same time, they have even more problems with the man for whom they rigged the election in the first place: Iran’s opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said on Monday the pro-reform protests which erupted after the country’s disputed June presidential vote...

Mr. McCOTTER. Madam Speaker, the Iranian people's peaceful struggle for freedom continues despite the tyrannical regime's barbarous crackdown. In fact, in his Friday's sermon, former President Rafsanjani called into question the legitimacy of the present government and rebuked the regime for its crackdown on peaceful protesters and its cavalier rejection of the cries that the election was stolen. Finally, former President Rafsanjani called upon the regime to free and fully account for all those peaceful freedom seekers who have been arrested in the repression. Then, on Sunday, former President Khatami called for a referendum on the legitimacy of the Iranian...

The wife of Iran's opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, said on Thursday that her 62-year-old brother was among the hundreds arrested in Iran's post-election crackdown, as Mousavi warned that the country is becoming "more militarised" amid the turmoil Mousavi implicitly accused the security forces of exceeding their powers under Iran's constitution, suggesting that the "near-coup d'etat atmosphere" was a danger to Iran's Islamic Republic. Police, the elite Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia arrested more than 2,500 people in their heavy crackdown against protests that erupted in support of Mousavi after the disputed June 12 election. More than 500 of...

The main opposition leader in Iran, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has confirmed plans to form a new broad-based political front.Mousavi says the group will not be a substitute for popular protest Writing on his website, he said the front would have a charter and would give the opposition a legal framework. Mr Mousavi was the leading reformist candidate in the disputed presidential elections in Iran on 12 June. Meanwhile, his wife has confirmed that her brother was among those detained during protests against the presidential election. Mr Mousavi has made it clear that the new front will not be a substitute...

In reading the tweets of @oxfordgirl in the #iranelection tweet stream, I noticed her remarks about patience. She had responded to her followers to slow down, be calm and asked that they be patient in regards to what is happening in Tehran. In essence, she was saying revolutions take time. @oxfordgirl must be a student of history because she is absolutely correct. Let us look at the American Revolution which began with protests such as the Boston Tea Party in 1773. The Revolutionary War did not end until the American colonies and Great Britain signed the Articles of Peace on...

The past month in Iran has been harrowing for anyone who believes that human beings deserve freedom from tyranny. We have witnessed an election stolen by an old guard of conservative elements headed by the regime’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei (I call this group KhamCo for short), followed by a popular uprising unparalleled since the 1979 revolution. This old guard trampled roughshod over the will and aspirations of the people of Iran with impunity, thinking that they could use the fact that there was an 85% turnout of the electorate in the June 12th presidential to legitimize the regime without...

Tens of thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran yesterday to hear the country’s most influential powerbroker pronounce the Islamic Republic in crisis and as he called for the release of those arrested in recent pro-democracy demonstrations. Militiamen confront protestors outside Tehran University today In a devastating attack on the regime, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a leading cleric and former President, told a crowd at Tehran University that the Government had lost the people’s trust. Referring to the handling of last month’s disputed election, which President Ahmadinejad claims to have won, he said that the custodians of the Islamic...

DEFIANT opposition supporters have staged fresh protests in Tehran, witnesses say, after powerful cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called for detainees held in a post-election crackdown to be freed. Mehdi Karroubi, a defeated presidential candidate, came under attack from men in plainclothes on his way to the prayers, according to his son Hossein and Fars news agency. Thousands of supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, chanting "Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein!" and "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), demonstrated around Tehran University, where Rafsanjani led Friday prayers attended by the former premier and Karroubi, witnesses said. The demonstrations were held in defiance...

In 1979, the return to Iran of an exiled cleric marked the start of the Islamic Republic. The death in June of Neda Soltan may herald the long-overdue fall of this moribund regime.

TEHRAN, Iran – Tens of thousands of government opponents packed Iran's main Islamic prayer service Friday, chanting "freedom, freedom" and other slogans as their top clerical backer Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered a sermon bluntly criticizing the country's leadership over the crackdown on election protests.

Reporting from Beirut -- Iran's leading opposition figure and his wife emerged Tuesday night to pay their respects to the family of a 19-year-old man slain during recent weeks of violence, according to witnesses and reports on news websites. Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his popular wife, Zahra Rahnavard, visited the family of Sohrab Aarabi in Tehran, paying tribute to the teenager whose death and whose mother's desperate weeks-long quest to find her son have emerged as a symbol of the protest movement against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

BEIRUT -- The three top leaders of Iran's opposition joined forces on Tuesday and their supporters began a three-day national strike, signaling a resurrection of protests even as Iran's president announced to the nation that the postelection turmoil was over. Opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, joined by former President Mohamad Khatami, met to plot strategy and issued their first-ever joint statement, calling for an end to the government's arrests and what they called "savage, shocking attacks" on their advisers and supporters. Meanwhile, hundreds of opposition supporters quietly flocked to mosques or retreated to their homes to begin...

Iran's new government will suffer because it lacks credibility and protests against it will go on, opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi says. Appearing in public for the first time in nearly three weeks Monday, Mousavi did not call for street demonstrations against the disputed July 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but encouraged his backers to pursue change "within the framework of the law," The Washington Post reported. The newspaper said Mousavi made the remarks in front of about 200 guests at the Iranian Academy of the Arts during a holiday commemorating the Shiite saint, Imam Ali. A local journalist...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi made his first public appearance in a week Monday, vowing to continue his campaign against a government that he said lacks legitimacy.

'There were two days a couple of weeks ago when the call-ins stopped," says Menashe Amir, Israel Radio's Farsi broadcaster, whose shows have attracted millions of listeners in Iran for the past 50 years. "But then they resumed." The going-on-70-year-old, who officially retired five years ago, yet continues to transmit on a daily basis, attributes this to the courage of his former countrymen (Amir made aliya in 1959). In a September 2006 interview in these pages, Amir asserted that a majority of Iranians opposed their regime, yet were helpless in the face of the repression under which they were living....

The news from Iran may have died down, but that's a function of the mainstream media getting bored and the Presidents weak response, it does not, by any means, indicate that the revolt that began the day after the presidential election is over. The oppressive regime must be getting nervous as it is beginning to threaten the opposition candidates. In two editorials, the Iranian daily Kayhan termed Mousavi, Khatami and their followers a dangerous opposition, and called to put them on trial for treason, cooperation with foreign elements, and responsibility for the death of civilians during the recent protests. Source:...

Iranian newspaper says opposition figure should stand trial The state-owned paper says Mir-Hossein Mousavi is a foreign agent on 'a mission directed from abroad.' Meanwhile, a military commander says Iran may take over the British Embassy residence. By Borzou Daragahi July 4, 2009 Reporting from Beirut -- A right-wing newspaper close to Iran's supreme leader today accused the country's main opposition figure of being a dupe for Iran's foreign enemies who should face trial, as an military official said the "ground has been set" for a takeover of the British Embassy residence in north Tehran. A crackdown continues against supporters...

Iranian lawmakers pressed on Thursday for legal action against protest leaders accused of inciting post-election turmoil. "Those who hold illegal rallies and gatherings should be legally pursued," parliament member Mohammad Taghi Rahbar was quoted as saying by the Javan newspaper. It said he was among several lawmakers preparing to write to the judiciary complaining about defeated candidate Mirhossein Mousavi's activities after the disputed June 12 election. The student branch of the pro-government Basij militia, which helped police suppress street protests after the vote, has also urged the attorney-general to take Mousavi to court. The authorities have blamed Mousavi, a former...

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leading challenger to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has issued a fresh call to his supporters to maintain peaceful protests after the government confirmed the result of the disputed election.

SABINA AMIDI, Special to The Jerusalem Post As the Iranian authorities warned the opposition on Tuesday that they would tolerate no further protests over the disputed June 12 presidential elections, a report emerged of the hangings of six supporters of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. Speaking after Iran's top legislative body upheld the election victory of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sources in Iran told this reporter in a telephone interview that the hangings took place in the holy city of Mashhad on Monday. There was no independent confirmation of the report. Underlining the climate of fear among direct and even indirect...

As the Iranian authorities warned the opposition on Tuesday that they would tolerate no further protests over the disputed June 12 presidential elections, a report emerged of the hangings of six supporters of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. Speaking after Iran's top legislative body upheld the election victory of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sources in Iran told this reporter in a telephone interview that the hangings took place in the holy city of Mashhad on Monday. There was no independent confirmation of the report.

PRESS RELEASE IHRDC Calls on the World to Prevent Iran from Executing Prisoners Arrested in Connection with the June 12 Presidential Election FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 29, 2009 NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT – Today, ILNA, an official Iranian news outlet, announced the creation of a special commission to “determine the fate of recent arrestees.” If history is any barometer, the creation of this commission and the men appointed to it, are ominous signs that the regime intends to severely punish, and execute, demonstrators and other human rights activists. The world cannot stand by and watch. Ayatollah Shahroudi, the Head of the...

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has rejected a government proposal to conduct a partial recount of presidential election votes - again insisting that the results be annulled. In a statement on his Web site, Mr. Mousavi questioned the impartiality and fairness of the proposed panel that would conduct the recount. Iran's Guardian Council had offered to randomly recount 10 percent of the ballots from the June 12 vote that members of the opposition allege was rigged.

Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, are bracing themselves for a purge if, as expected, he returns to office following the country’s bitterly disputed presidential election. His defeated rival, Mir Hos-sein Mousavi, who came a distant second in a poll he insists was rigged by the regime, has continued to defy what he has called “huge pressures” to halt his campaign for a new vote. Last week his communications with the outside world were severely restricted, his web page was taken down and his newspaper was closed, with 25 of its employees arrested. Supporters said they feared Mousavi could...

Here are the important happenings that I can positively confirm from Saturday, June 27 in Iran. 1. Mousavi has rejected the Guardian Council's decision to look into discrepancies in only 10% of the vote. Mousavi has said that as he mentioned in two letters before to the GC, there are simply far too many irregularities for them to accept the election. A new one must be held in order to give people their voice back. 2. A prominent supporter of Mousavi was forced to confess on national TV that protests were pre-planned and that they have broken laws. However, reports...

Even if the Iranian authorities succeed in suppressing the large demonstrations, the opposition might adopt other forms of protest - such as manifestos, strikes and mass resignations by university professors. That is the assessment of Ervand Abrahamian, a professor of history at the City University of New York and author of several books about Iran, most recently "A History of Modern Iran" (Cambridge University Press, 2008). "There is talk about the opposition trying to encourage its supporters to go out into the market places and prevent commercial activity," he told Haaretz last Wednesday in a phone conversation from New York....

VIDEO: Iran Protest Tribute (Michael Jackson)"They don't really care about us"

-snip- The opposition website Rooz Online carried what it said was an interview with a man the government had shipped in to Tehran to quell the demonstrations. He said he was being paid 2m rial (£122) per day to assault protesters with a heavy wooden stave, and that other volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces, were being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran. With the independent media banned from covering street protests, the reports could not be verified. There were also unconfirmed reports tonight that Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, had been...

TEHRAN, Iran — Defying an official ban, hundreds of people held a graveside tribute Thursday for the woman who's become a symbol of the Iranian opposition after she was killed while protesting the country's disputed election. Witnesses said the crowd gathered around 5 p.m. Thursday at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, an hour's drive south of Tehran, for a memorial service for Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old woman who allegedly was shot dead by a member of the pro-government Basij militia during a massive protest in the capital on June 20. "Her grave was covered with white and red roses," said a young...

“This was the heyday of [Ayatollah] Khomeini’s theocratic vision, when Iran thought it really could export its revolution across the Middle East, providing money and arms to anyone who claimed he could upend the old order.” He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Mousavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s, personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and dispatched...