December 4th, 2009 by Jason

Tehran Bureau reports that Tehran’s Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi warned the government will crack down on any illegal gatherings on December 7, National Student Day, a threat echoed by the Iranian Police Command. The opposition plans to use National Student Day to protest in the streets. While Jafari-Dolatabadi expressed that criticism of the government is not banned, he warned that “insulting” the government’s leaders will have legal consequences. Tehran Bureau also reports that President Ahmadinejad has defied Ayatollah Khamenei’s expressed order to attend meetings of the Expediency Council, an unprecedented sign of disobedience.

Andrew Apostolou observes the main dilemma for the Tehran regime: “with no [internal] purge, instability will continue, but with a purge, the regime can undermine itself in a way that no real or imagined CIA plot ever could.”  In a reprint of Apostolou’s article, Tehran Bureau embeds a video in Farsi (partial translation here) contrasting Ahmadinejad’s criticism of Mir Hosein Mousavi with praise for him from Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei.

Arash Aramesh at insideIran reports that the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohsen Rezai, has conducted an interview revealing the rifts within the conservative establishment. Such evidence has led Michael Allen to contend that Iran’s international assertiveness masks their domestic vulnerability.

Citing a Wall Street Journal article that reports that Iran is now targeting the opposition worldwide, niacINsight observes the regime has learned the lesson from the 1979 revolution in that the diaspora cannot be allowed to voice their opposition to the regime with impunity. Finally, Hamid Dabashi argues that while the CIA-supported coup of 1953 “is the central trope of modern Iranian historiography,” the growing strength of the Reform movement has caused the coup to lose “its grip on Iranian political culture.”

Posted in Freedom, Human Rights, Iran, Islam and Democracy, US foreign policy |