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Iran's Growing Suppression

Over the past couple of weeks two things have caught the attention of the world's media, and both are great examples of the rolling out of a much more suppressive Iranian regime. It seems that the country will not be governed by democratic choice, but by guiding the countries path, and the dictatorial leadership will use whatever means is at their disposal. Firstly they have begun to publicly tell those who opposed the official vote-count that they will be punished, and secondly, this new scandal involving the cabinet appointment of Ahmad Vahidi is purely designed to get some nationalist feelings invoked amongst the general Iranian public, in the hope of getting some of them back behind the 'Supreme Leader'. It will also helpfully divert attention away from the overall story here.... that they have still not allowed the public's votes to count.

September.02.2009 - George Valentine Corr, Blatant News Editor
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THE THREATS AGAINST OPPOSING VOICES
For a while it seemed like this would all be resolved by a new election in the very near future, and the jury was out as to whether that would be an open, honest and fair election, but there was atleast a chance of that happening. But now it seems that the Iranian leadership is not really prepared to hand over the presidential power to any of the opposition candidates, and the way in which Ahmadinejad has stepped up their suppressive campaign is proof of this. Last Friday he said that all of Iran's top opposition leaders should be prosecuted, and his hard-line supporters, along with the hard-line clerical leadership in the background, seem to be baying for blood. Led by the Iranian 'Supreme Leader', Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, these hardliners are attempting to paint all of the opposing voices, collectively, as a rogue band of foreign-supported secular extremists, who are focussed on trying to rid Iran of it's clerical and 'spiritual' leadership, and the opposition seem to be prepared to enter this winner takes all situation. While the divisions are growing even wider amongst the two sides, it is still unclear what percentage of support each camp receives, but there is sufficient numbers in the opposition to force Khamenei to indicate that their main leaders may not be arrested anytime soon, when he stated last week that he saw no evidence of them being under the direct control of foreign powers. But the message is still mixed, especially as Ahmadinejad now seems to be pointing at prosecutions for those that argued loudest against his election result, and saying that the leaders "have to be dealt with seriously". So far, over 100 people have been arrested following the post-election protests, but the future's of the main opposing voices - including Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mahdi Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami - still seems very precarious indeed.

The above screenshots appear to show a drop in the count of votes for Mohsen Rezaee, one of the candidates in the 2009 Iranian Presidential Elections. He released this pic on his website because at 9.47 it shows that he has 633,048 votes, but at 13.53 he has only 587,913 votes. This is the state-run IRINN network, which, if both of these figures were correct, shows state complicity. NOTE* This image is used under the 'fair use rationale' as it depicts allegations of state complicity in vote rigging during the 2009 Iranian presidential election, and it serves as the sole and primary evidence for the allegations, and is as such irreplaceable.

THE LATEST DRAMA: THE CHARGES AGAINST AHMAD VAHIDI
This latest chapter in the story of Iran's monumental Summer of 2009 appears to revolve around the appointment of Ahmad Vahidi as the defence minister-designate. His appointment has caused controversy because he is the alleged main suspect for the 1994 bombing of the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association Jewish Centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. Argentina and Israel both say that Vahidi was part of the overall plot and they want him extradited from Iran to face charges and Interpol had openly supported this viewpoint by issuing a 'red notice' in 2007 informing it's 187 member countries that a judicial warrent was out for his arrest for this crime, but this is not a full 'international arrest warrant' in itself. Iran's Quds Force, a special unit of it's military, was blamed on the attack, and Vahidi was a commander at the time, but since then he has got more involved in politics becoming the deputy defence minister in Ahmadinejad's last government, so this recent decision to appoint him as defence minister should not really come as a complete shock, but what it does do for the president, is awaken some national anti-Jewish/anti-Israeli feeling which he will no doubt attempt to develop, in an effort to take the heat off the post-election fiasco. This Vahidi incident is purely a stunt designed to further control his people, but in an international sense, it will give others an extra reason to see Iran once again as a true Pariah State. If the opposition do not twist the screw right now, and gain democratic control back from the hardliners, this could turn really nasty very soon.

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