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Iranian Government contains unrest

Atul Aneja

DUBAI: After wresting control over the streets of Tehran, the Iranian government is working on two tracks - keeping the door open for talks with the opposition and sharpening its accusations of a foreign hand behind some of the worst violence the country has experienced in 30 years.

Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and a defeated presidential candidate, has already backtracked from a possible confrontation with the establishment. He has withdrawn his complaints questioning the fairness of the June 12 polls. According to official results, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the elections for a second successive term, defeating by a wide margin his nearest rival Mir Hosain Mousavi.

On Thursday, another outspoken critic of the poll results, Mehdi Karroubi, had also raised the white flag. Mr. Karroubi, who had also participated in the presidential elections, said he continued to contest the legitimacy of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory. However, he would, henceforth, pursue his complaints only through legal channels.

Our right has been violated and we will legally pursue the matter, Iran’s state-run Press TV quoted him as saying. Mr. Karroubi also held the Interior Ministry rather than the supervisory Guardian Council, an institution close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responsible for the post-election chaos.

Faced with the heavy crackdown, Mr. Mousavi has continued to express his defiance through statements posted on his website. But without a structured organisation at his command, the limitations of a spontaneous revolt that his electoral defeat had generated are beginning to show.

In the absence of street demonstrations that have been quelled, a larger number of opposition supporters continue to climb on to rooftops each night and engage in anti-regime sloganeering. On Friday, protesters were to release thousands of green and black balloons in deference to the memory of those who had been killed during the protests.

As the focus shifts away from Tehran streets, the extended silence from the highly influential former President, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - a supporter of Mr. Mousavi - has triggered speculation about fervent behind-the-scenes activity and its possible results. According to some analysts, a compromise appears to be in the works and could be announced shortly.

Senior cleric Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, who pulls considerable weight in clerical circles, has also issued a call for national conciliation. Definitively, something must be done to ensure that there are no embers burning under the ashes, and [to ensure] that hostilities, antagonism and rivalries are transformed into amity and cooperation among all parties, he observed.

In its new offensive to link some of the violence to foreigners, the Iranian daily Javan and another website, supposedly close to Mr. Ahmadinejad, alleged that expelled BBC correspondent Jon Leyne, had hired hooligans to kill Neda Agha-Soltan, the emotive video of whose death has been widely circulated on the Internet. During his Friday sermon, senior cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami denied that the government had a hand in Ms. Soltan’ s death.

Forces of the government do not shoot at a lady standing in a side street, he said. Ayatollah Khatami said the government should punish leaders of the riots, who were supported by Israel and the U.S., strongly and with cruelty.

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