Iran clerics declare election invalid, condemn crackdown - The Times
By Michael de Laine, The Copenhagen Voice, 6 July
While Iran’s biggest group of clerics declares President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to be illegitimate and condemns the subsequent crackdown, US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden say the accelerating crackdown on opposition leaders in Iran in recent days will not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations.
Iran’s biggest group of clerics has declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to be illegitimate and condemned the subsequent crackdown, The Times said today on its website, Timesonline.
The statement by the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom is an act of defiance against the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has made clear he will tolerate no further challenges to Ahmadinejad’s “victory” over Mir Hossein Mousavi.
“It’s a clerical mutiny,” said one Iranian analyst. “This is the first time ever you have all these big clerics openly challenging the leader’s decision.” Another, in Tehran, said: “We are seeing the birth of a new political front.”
Professor Ali Ansari, head of Iranian Studies at St Andrews University, said: “It’s highly significant. It shows this is nowhere near resolved.”
The association’s statement also shows how deeply the political establishment is divided, and the extent to which the Supreme Leader now derives his power from military might, not moral authority. It makes it much harder for the regime to arrest Mousavi and other opposition leaders.
At the weekend a top aide to Khamenei demanded that Mousavi and other opponents be tried for “terrible crimes”, and the elite Revolutionary Guards accused them of “trying to overthrow the Islamic establishment”.
In the US, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr, in separate interviews this weekend, said that the accelerating crackdown on opposition leaders in Iran in recent days would not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations, The New York Times said.
In an interview with The New York Times, a day before his scheduled departure for Moscow on Sunday, Obama said he had “grave concern” about the arrests and intimidation of Iran’s opposition leaders, but insisted, as he has throughout the Iranian crisis, that the repression would not close the door on negotiations with the Iranian government.
“We’ve got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community,” Obama said.
Biden echoed the same themes in an interview conducted in Iraq and broadcast Sunday on the ABC News program “This Week.” But in a rare foray into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, the vice president argued that the United States “cannot dictate” Israel’s decisions about whether to strike the plants at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program. He said only Israelis could determine “that they’re existentially threatened” by the prospect that Iran would gain nuclear weapons capability.
The emphasis was different in a separate appearance by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who warned that any military strike on Iran “could be very destabilizing.” Asked to choose between military action and permitting Iran to gain nuclear weapons capability, he said both would be “really, really bad outcomes.”
Sweden, which currently holds the rotating Presidency of the European Union, said yesterday, "The Presidency strongly condemns the executions in Iran during the past few days, in particular the execution of 20 persons in Iran on 4 July, in the city of Karaj.
"The Presidency continues to call on the Iranian authorities to abolish the death penalty completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions as urged by United Nations General Assembly resolutions 62/149 and 63/168."
Click here to read the full story on Timesonline.
Click here to read the New York Times story, 'Despite Crisis, Policy on Iran Is Engagement'.
While Iran’s biggest group of clerics declares President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to be illegitimate and condemns the subsequent crackdown, US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden say the accelerating crackdown on opposition leaders in Iran in recent days will not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations.
Iran’s biggest group of clerics has declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to be illegitimate and condemned the subsequent crackdown, The Times said today on its website, Timesonline.
The statement by the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom is an act of defiance against the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has made clear he will tolerate no further challenges to Ahmadinejad’s “victory” over Mir Hossein Mousavi.
“It’s a clerical mutiny,” said one Iranian analyst. “This is the first time ever you have all these big clerics openly challenging the leader’s decision.” Another, in Tehran, said: “We are seeing the birth of a new political front.”
Professor Ali Ansari, head of Iranian Studies at St Andrews University, said: “It’s highly significant. It shows this is nowhere near resolved.”
The association’s statement also shows how deeply the political establishment is divided, and the extent to which the Supreme Leader now derives his power from military might, not moral authority. It makes it much harder for the regime to arrest Mousavi and other opposition leaders.
At the weekend a top aide to Khamenei demanded that Mousavi and other opponents be tried for “terrible crimes”, and the elite Revolutionary Guards accused them of “trying to overthrow the Islamic establishment”.
In the US, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr, in separate interviews this weekend, said that the accelerating crackdown on opposition leaders in Iran in recent days would not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations, The New York Times said.
In an interview with The New York Times, a day before his scheduled departure for Moscow on Sunday, Obama said he had “grave concern” about the arrests and intimidation of Iran’s opposition leaders, but insisted, as he has throughout the Iranian crisis, that the repression would not close the door on negotiations with the Iranian government.
“We’ve got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community,” Obama said.
Biden echoed the same themes in an interview conducted in Iraq and broadcast Sunday on the ABC News program “This Week.” But in a rare foray into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, the vice president argued that the United States “cannot dictate” Israel’s decisions about whether to strike the plants at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program. He said only Israelis could determine “that they’re existentially threatened” by the prospect that Iran would gain nuclear weapons capability.
The emphasis was different in a separate appearance by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who warned that any military strike on Iran “could be very destabilizing.” Asked to choose between military action and permitting Iran to gain nuclear weapons capability, he said both would be “really, really bad outcomes.”
Sweden, which currently holds the rotating Presidency of the European Union, said yesterday, "The Presidency strongly condemns the executions in Iran during the past few days, in particular the execution of 20 persons in Iran on 4 July, in the city of Karaj.
"The Presidency continues to call on the Iranian authorities to abolish the death penalty completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions as urged by United Nations General Assembly resolutions 62/149 and 63/168."
Click here to read the full story on Timesonline.
Click here to read the New York Times story, 'Despite Crisis, Policy on Iran Is Engagement'.
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