Free Republic

For the second time in less than a month, senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard officers have been killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria. Iran's unofficial Mehr news agency said, "The Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief, his deputy, and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel." Updated reports say that five IRGC officers, plus some of their Syrian counterparts, were killed in the attack. The icons are already circulating. The intelligence chief, Sadegh Omidzadeh, was a close associate of Brigadier General Sayyed Reza Mousavi, the IRGC commander in Syria, who, along with...

An Israeli airstrike in Syria took out a top Iranian commander Monday, prompting Iran to ominously warn Israel that it will “pay the price,” according to Tehran’s state media. Seyed Razi Mousavi, an adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who helped coordinate Tehran’s ties with Syria, was killed by an Israeli missile in Sayyida Zeinab, a Damascus suburb not far from a Shiite shrine, IRNA, Iranian state media said. Iran vowed to retaliate. “This act is a sign of the Zionist regime’s frustration and weakness in the region for which it will certainly pay the price,” Iranian leader Ebrahim Raisi said,...

As the families of U.S. hostages currently held in Iran have struggled for years to rally the determination to bring their loved ones home, newly released emails from the former secretary of State reveal the infuriating truth that those with connections get their case raised to the top. In 2009, Iason Athanasiadis was covering the protests of the disputed election win of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir-Hossein Mousavi for the Washington Times. The Greek citizen was detained by Iranian authorities on June 17, 2009, as he tried to fly out of the country. Athanasiadis was thrown in Evin prison and released...

An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed by a remote-controlled bomb in Tehran today. The victim was identified as Professor Massoud Mohammadi, who worked at Tehran University. He was killed near his home in a northern part of the capital by a booby-trapped motorcycle. A senior Interior Ministry official, Mehdi Mohammadifar, said the motive for the bombing was under investigation. "Apparently this man was a university professor who was killed close to his home this morning in an explosion," Mr Mohammadifar said. The official IRNA news agency said it was not yet clear how many people were killed in the blast,...

The children of Iranian opposition leaders have issued separate letters expressing grave concerns regarding the well-being of their parents. The daughters of Zahra Rahnavard and MirHosein Mousavi have not seen their parents in two weeks, and their last contact with them was February 14. In the letter published on Iranian opposition websites, they write that they have attempted to visit their parents several times, but the security forces have aggressively turned them away and prevented them from entering their home. They say they have often remained in the vicinity until late into the evening and noticed that after dark no...

TEHRAN — Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main Iran opposition leader whose rebellion against the government has rocked the Islamic republic, is now completely cut off from the outside world, his website reported Friday. Kaleme.com reported that Mousavi's previous guards have been replaced by new ones and that a van containing masked men was parked at the entrance to the street in Tehran where his house is located. "The house arrest of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard (his wife) which began on 25th of Bahman (February 14) is fully effective as of 27 Bahman (February 16)," Kaleme.com reported. "With the...

TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Iranian judiciary official on Wednesday pointed to the Iranian nation's massive and strong call for the trial of the leaders of recent unrests in the country, and said that the judiciary will definitely try sedition masterminds Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. "The judiciary will definitely fulfill its duty with regard to the trial of Mousavi and Karroubi," Deputy Chief of the Judiciary for Legal and Judicial Development Hojjatoleslam Ali Razini told FNA. Asked if the judiciary would issue orders for detaining sedition leaders, Razini pointed out that when it comes to the trial of suspects, judiciary...

Iran's chief prosecutor has insisted that opposition leaders who ran in the disputed 2009 presidential election will be put on trial over anti-government protests that sparked widespread unrest in the wake of the vote. Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi's statement came weeks after the government issued a travel ban for former candidates Mir Hossain Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi on allegations of being "mohareb" - a term meaning they are 'fighting against God'. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country in support of Mousavi after the presidential poll, alleging that president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had won the election by...

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has called for a referendum on the policies of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 'Who gave you the authorisation to leave Iran at odds with the whole world through your adventurist and dictatorial policies?' the opposition website kaleme.com quoted Mousavi as saying

Iranian security forces have raided the office of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, his website has reported. Agents entered the premises late on Wednesday and took away computers and some of his belongings, it said. The statement described the attack as a "new phase of restrictions". The Iranian government has not commented. Mr Mousavi lost last year's presidential election to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a vote that he and other opposition figures say was rigged. "With the attack by plainclothes security agents on the office of Mr Mousavi, it seems that another phase of restrictions has started," the statement on Kaleme.com...

A letter rumored to be written by opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi 20 years ago has resurfaced and is lighting up Iran's blogosphere. Omid Memarian on why the letter could open decades of dark secrets and bitter rivalries. Hidden away for more than 20 years, a mystery letter suddenly reappeared last week. The letter, supposedly written by a Tehran insider turned opposition leader, was explosive: it alleged that Iran sponsors terrorism abroad. Like a middle manager ignored by his bosses, the letter writer expressed frustration that he was kept in the dark about Iran's involvement in events that he described as...

Zahra Rahnavard, wife of opposition leader, MirHosein Mousavi said in a meeting with Karaj political activists that a faction of the Iranian establishment considers women as a “new threat.” Kaleme website reports that Rahnavard claimed Iranian women were harassed “on the streets, in prisons and the media.” In the course of the controversial presidential election of 2009, the video clip of the Iranian woman, Neda AghaSoltan shot to death during the Tehran street protests was posted on You Tube arousing international outrage. Women’s presence in the election protests was highly pronounced and many of them were arrested and killed in...

On April 29, 2010, Ms. Shohreh Aghdashloo (Iranian Actress) wrote a short tribute for the 2010 Time 100 praising Mir Hossein Mousavi, Islamic republic's presidential candidate for "bringing hope to all generations of Iranians but especially to our youth." Either, Ms. Aghdashloo is out of touch with political situation in Iran by believing that Mir Hossein Mousavi could have been the one to bring freedom and democracy to Iran , or she is simply being disingenuous. Her comparison of Mr. Mousavi known as the Butcher of Beirut to Dr. Martin Luther King is indeed an affront to the world community...

TEHRAN -Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi Saturday called for the staging of a fresh anti-government rally in Tehran to prove depth of support for his so-called Green Movement among disenchanted Iranians. Opposition attempts to hold anti-government protests on February 11, when the nation marked the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution, were crushed by security forces and eclipsed by regime-sponsored mass rallies. "I and Mr (Mehdi) Karroubi think that the Green Movement be allowed to stage a rally... in order to put an end to all speculation," Mousavi said, referring to Iran's other main opposition leader. The supporters of the...

Iranian forces beat the son of an opposition leader for five hours after events marking the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic. The bearded men in plainclothes who grabbed Ali from a crowd of anti-regime protesters and hauled him to a nearby mosque had no idea who they had arrested. It wasn't until the regime thugs had finished beating him and the 50 or so other young men they had rounded up that they checked his identity papers.

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...