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Manufacturing Consent in Iran
FrontPage Magazine ^ | Jacob Laksin

Posted on 02/13/2010 4:27:29 AM PST by Michael van der Galien

Iran – or more accurately the Iranian government – this week celebrated the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution. In preparation for the tightly orchestrated event, the government unleashed the full might of its security forces – including riot police, the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij, the civilian militia corps – to suppress the opposition protestors who have poured onto Iran’s streets since last summer’s fraudulent election.

Armed with live ammunition, knives and teargas, the security forces set upon anyone identified as opposition protestors. When not resorting to violent repression, the government tried to thwart the opposition by disrupting internet, telephone and text messaging service inside the country. For propaganda purposes, the government also staged its own mass rally in Tehran’s Freedom Square, an occasion capped by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s defiant declaration that Iran is now a “nuclear state,” capable of producing its own weapons-grade uranium.

To discuss this week’s events and the state of the Iranian opposition movement, Front Page turned to exiled Iranian dissident Amir Abbas Fakhravar. Jailed for five years in Iran’s notoriously brutal Evin Prison after participating in anti-government student riots in 1999, Fakhravar now heads the Confederation of Iranian Students, an organization committed to non-violent regime change in Iran.

(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: fakhravar; greenmovement; iran; mahmoudahmadinejad; middleeast

1 posted on 02/13/2010 4:27:29 AM PST by Michael van der Galien
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