2120 GMT: Not Worried at All (cont. — 0925 GMT). Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Hamedani has commented on the proposed march for 25 Bahman (11 February), “The seditionists (opposition leaders) are nothing but a dead corpse and we will strongly confront any of their movements. We definitely consider them as anti-revolutionary and spies, and we will strongly confront them.”

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Iranian Ambitions

by Reza Molavi and K. Luisa Gandolfo
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2010, pp. 61-68

In the 30-year reign of Iran’s Islamic Republic, there have been few controversies as serious as the one surrounding the 2009 elections. The votes that brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power for a second term have been challenged, not just on paper, but by citizens taking to the streets in angry protests that have only been quelled by brute force on the part of the establishment.

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The government of Mr. Ahmadinejad remains unwilling to acknowledge any culpability in the destruction of any property or the killing of more than ten or so protestors in the last few days of mourning processions, including the shooting of one of the opposition leader’s nephew. “The killing of Musavi’s nephew in the Ashura incidents is being investigated and the result will be announced soon,” Tehran police chief Azizollah Rajabzadeh told the ILNA news agency. The official line is that anti-regime terrorists carried out the killings in order to discredit the regime.

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It’s a long way from Iran to north-east England, but anger about the crushing of opposition protests by the Islamic regime has generated a furious row at Durham University, where one academic has condemned the British government for turning “the slaughter of innocent teenagers in Iraq and Afghanistan into an art form”.

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UK Border Agency: The Qashqai website, accessed on 1 December 2009, noted that the Qashqai are also known as the Qashqaai, Qashqa’i or Ghashghai. Information on the website stated:

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The Western-backed Shah, who grandly styled himself as the “King of Kings”, was overthrown by the people power when they took to the streets to call for his removal. The Islamic Republic of Iran was born 30 years ago when every man, woman, young and old expressed their dismay in unison, in their total and utter disgust with the social, economic, and political situation under the Shah. They came from all walks of life: those from the fringes of urban areas to the rural population joined hands with the technocratic, academic, industrialists, students, women and children to shout out that the Shah must go. What they had not thought about was who should replace the one they wanted to see the back of. Read the rest of this entry →