Iran Feature: The Activism of the Women's Movement (Mouri)

EA contacts have notified us of a new electronic journal on the Middle East and Iran, Muftah. One of its first articles is by Leila Mouri, an Iranian women's rights activist who works as a journalist with the first Iranian website on women’s rights, Women In Iran and blogs in Persian and in English.

Shiva Nazar-Ahari, a journalist and human rights defender who had already spent 9 months in Evin prison, was scheduled to appear in court on May 23, 2010 on charges of propagation against the regime for her work with the Committee of Human Rights Reporters (CHRR), as well as allegations of acting against national security because of her participation in gatherings on November 4th and December 7th, 2009. A member of the “One Million Signature” campaign for women’s rights, Nazar-Ahari was arrested at her home shortly after Iran’s June 2009 presidential election. She was released for a short time in September on $200,000 bail, but her freedom did not last long. In December 2009 she was again arrested, this time as she was on the way to attend the funeral ceremony of Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri.  Despite consistent pressure from Iranian authorities, she had denied all charges brought against her and had paid the price of defiance by spending most of her prison term in solitary confinement.

While Nazar-Ahari was arrested too soon after the election to participate in the June demonstrations, many women were involved in the uprising  and played a central role in the mobilization of the Green Movement.

A more recognizable symbol of women’s participation in the protests was the young university student Neda Agha-Soltan, whose shooting and gruesome death on the streets of Tehran on June 20, 2009 became aninternational rallying cry against the heavy-handed tactics of the Iranian government. Agha-Soltan became a symbol not only of the Green Movement, but also of all Iranians who were killed for opposing the regime.  In a heavily patriarchal society, her ordeal was a reminder of the crucial status of women in the social and political life of Iran.

Agha-Soltan and Nazar-Ahari are members of a new generation of politically active Iranian women, born and raised after the 1979 Revolution. Their struggle against the oppressive policies of the Islamic Republic has been well documented, but their situation has become especially harrowing over the last year. In the wake of the 2009 protests, and under the pretext of maintaining order and protecting national security, the Iranian regime has escalated its suppression of the women’s movement. Many women activists have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured and sentenced to long prison terms, while others have left the country in fear of their safety. As a result, there has been a troubling decline in the activities and influence of the women’s movement, which some observers have considered to be the most potent agent for change in the country.

The Re-Emergence of Women in the Islamic Republic

The death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, coinciding with the end of the Iran-Iraq war, marked the beginning of a new phase in the Islamic Republic. After eight years of war, Iran’s decimated economy was suffering from a lack of foreign investment and buckling under the pressure of Western sanctions. The regime responded by instituting a series of programs aimed at “reconstruction,” through economic growth, rational distribution of benefits and essential changes in human resource development. It was at this time that President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanajani established the first governmental department devoted to women’s issues. Dubbed the Bureau of Women’s Affairs, it was founded in 1992 to improve the situation of women and to promote their abilities and talents, in service to the future development of the country.

The ensuing years saw increased investment in women’s education, and in turn a higher level of university-enrollment, a development that had a significant impact on the status women in society. One major factor in this regard was the “Islamicization” of universities, a series of policies aimed at the transformation of the university environment and pursued from the early days of the Islamic Republic. With traditional families feeling more confident in the piety of Iran’s universities, women began attending classes at a higher rate than in previous generation, causing a dramatic increase in the number of female students. According to the 1994 census, 40 percent of university students were female. This proportion reached 60 percent in the 2003-2004 academic year and 64 percent in 2008.

Following graduation, many of these female students entered the job market only to be bitterly disappointed with their prospects. Faced with an ailing economy and a patriarchal culture unwilling to grant them equal rights, this educated group of women began demanding changes in attitudes and policies. At the same time, the influx of educated female candidates had a perceptible effect on the percentage of women employed in different economic sectors, such as industry and agriculture, with their numbers increasing substantially. The growing presence of women in the work force gradually led to the establishment of women’s trade unions in the late 1990s.

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The Latest from Iran (3 August): Explosive Words

2000 GMT: Defense Watch. The Ministers of Defense of Iran and Oman have agreed to "secure the Straits of Hormuz".

1950 GMT: Conspiracy Theory of the Day. Qassem Ravanbaksh, editor of Parto-ye Sokhan (linked to Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi), has declared that former President Mohammad Khatami visited Saudi Arabia before the June 2009 election to get money.

More tangibly, Khatami has been fined $300 over an unspecified speech because of a complaint by Ahmadinejad Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai.

1945 GMT: Basij Disruption. Basiji paramilitaries have disrupted a memorial service for former member of Parliament, Ismail Tatari, at a Kermanshah mosque because they thought Mehdi Karroubi might be present.

1905 GMT: Taking On the President. Leading MP Darius Ghanbari has joined the criticism of President Ahmadinejad, from across the political spectrum (see 1700), for the conference of the Iranian diaspora. Ghanbari also charged the Government with the wrong strategy as it "chased" elite Iranian and foreign investors.

1900 GMT: Meeting Mousavi. A group of Iranian journalists have posted a report on Rah-e-Sabz of a discussion with Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard.

NEW Iran Analysis: Saharkhiz & Abtahi Dent the Government’s “Fear Factor” (Shahryar)
NEW Iran Feature: Did Ahmadinejad Chief of Staff Reveal the Bomb?
NEW MENA House: “Iranian” Rockets Used in Attacks on Israel and Jordan
Iran: Secularists, Reformists, and “Green Movement or Green Revolution?” (Mohammadi)
Iran Analysis: Hyping the War Chatter — US Military Chief Mike Mullen Speaks
The Latest from Iran (2 August): The Campaign Against Jannati

1853 GMT: No Debate. In the least surprising news of the day, the Obama Administration has rejected President Ahmadinejad's call for a public discussion with Barack Obama at the UN General Assembly in September. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "We have always said that we'd be willing to sit down and discuss Iran's illicit nuclear program, if Iran is serious about doing that. To date, that seriousness has not been there."

1845 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The trial of film director Jafar Panahi, arrested in March for criticism of the regime, has been postponed to late September because the judge and prosecutor did not appear in court yesterday.

1840 GMT: Sanctions Watch. As EA readers have already noted, the US has formally imposed sanctions on 21 firms it claims are front companies for the Iranian Government.

The claimed fronts included two Belarus-based banks, two Germany-based investment firms, and mining and engineering companies in Japan, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, and Iran.

The news has been noticed inside Iran, with Press TV headlining the development.

1700 GMT: The Battle Within. Alef has asked the President to "please observe national dignity", criticising Ahmadinejad's "strange" challenge to Barack Obama to a debate in the US.

1539 GMT: Viewing Iran. Our colleague Lara Setrakian of ABC News has launched a new site, The MidEast Memo. Included in its opening entries are a look at the case of the three Americans still detained a year after hiking into Iranian territory and a review of sanctions and Iran's attempts to get around them.

1535 GMT: Economy Watch. Fereydoun Khavand, an economist at the University of Paris, claims in an interview that Iran's unemployment rate is at its highest point in six years.

1530 GMT: So You Want a Debate, Mahmoud? An interesting twist in the story of President Ahmadinejad's call on President Obama to hold a public discussion with him in the US....

Five imprisoned journalists, including Isa Saharkhiz, Masoud Bastani, and Mahdi Mahmoudian, have challenged Ahmadinejad to debate them publicly about his Government's performance.

1315 GMT: Ahmadinejad Today. Another speech by the President, this one to Iran's conference on international media: no apparent talk of Zionist assassination plots but lots of condemnation of the United Nations' "anti-Iran" position. Ahmadinejad referring back to the 1980s, said that "certain people who forced Imam Khomeini to 'drink poison'" and accept the UN resolution ending Iran-Iraq war are still active.

The President also gave his audience an intense rhetorical assault upon the Western media.

1255 GMT: Political Prisioner Watch. The death sentence of Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei, arrested in post-election protests, has been upheld. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the appellate court did not hold a hearing and confirmed the sentence verbatim.

0950 GMT: International Front. Looks like Iran is to going to skip diplomacy --- a move to talks on uranium enrichment with Washington, as well as other countries --- for grandstanding. The Foreign Ministry has followed President Ahmadinejad's call-out of his American colleague for a public discussion: "If US President Barack Obama expresses his readiness, the UN General Assembly [meeting in September] would be a good opportunity for face-to-face transparent talks.”

0920 GMT: We have posted an analysis by Josh Shahryar, "Saharkhiz & Abtahi Dent the Government’s 'Fear Factor'."

0825 GMT: The Supreme Leader's Next Fatwa. His "I am the Rule of the Prophet" declaration may still be disputed, but Ayatollah Khamenei has reportedly moved to his next topic: the danger of music.

On the same day that Iran's legendary singer Mohammad Nouri was buried, Khamenei supposedly replied to a follower: "Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic."

Fars said the fatwa was given to a 21-year-old follower who was thinking of starting music lessons. Khamenei answered, "It's better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music."

We are checking if the fatwa is on Khamenei's official website.

0815 GMT: Do You See a Theme Here? Four of Press TV's last eight stories: "Iran trivializes US war threat"; "Iran rejects reports of US war threat"; (my favourite) "Iran prepares 'enemy-crushing' plans"; "Iran warns Israel against new ME war".

0805 GMT: The Mousavi-Karroubi Statement (A Reaction). Despite the rather limited nature of the Mousavi-Karroubi declaration on the way forward, EA's Ms Zahra is hopeful: "I have the impression that Moussavi is slowly passing over his red lines, his latest statement reads rather democratic, although recurring to religious expressions like a 'Pharaonic' regime."

Ms Zahra also notes former President Mohammad Khatami's most recent speech with its emphasis on the experience of Iran's Constitutional Revolution as a "democratic revolution".

0800 GMT: The Mousavi-Karroubi Statement. Radio Zamaneh summarises yesterday's meeting between Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, headlining criticism of both the Iranian Government and the international pressure on Tehran.

Indeed, Mousavi and Karroubi linked the two, stating, "Uncalculated remarks and decisions of the government have humiliated Iran and led to multilateral sanctions and threats”. They added that the Government was lying about the economic situation, as the sanctions “burden workers, farmers and the impoverished strata of the society, and they could lead to inflation, economic decline and rise in unemployment.”

Mousavi also urged the judiciary to deal with "disturbing news" on political prisoners, and both men said government plans to establish 7000 Basij paramilitary bases across Iran show how the Basij hasbeen transformed into “a military-political party to oppress people, students, dervishes and their civic demands and also to engineer the elections".

Mousavi and Karroubi urged Iranians to “establish social networks to produce truthful content and statistics regarding the situation of the country.”

0740 GMT: Propaganda and "Sedition". Gozaar has a lengthy analysis, with background from the 1990s, of the campaign of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting against Iranian intellectuals and activists through the series Fitna.

0725 GMT: We open this morning with a separate feature on the reported statement of the President's Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicated last year that Iran is approaching capability for a nuclear weapon.

That is not the only explosive --- sorry for the pun --- declaration coming out of Iran, however. There was a flurry of non-military activity on Monday pointing to further conflict, from the opposition's challenge to the head of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Jannati, to the revelation of former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi of last summer's Tehran "show trial" to criticism of the President from his "conservative" adversaries in Parliament. There was a legal twist, with Ahmadinejad apparently filing a lawsuit against one of his Parliamentary nemeses, Ali Motahari.

Even the attempted deflections from these conflicts merely added a layer of political humour. The Government's attempt to showcase its support from Iranians abroad, through a gathering of 1300 of them in Tehran, was hindered by "hard-line" criticism that the exercise was a waste of money and even included a "CIA associate".

And Ahmadinejad's speech to the conference moved from the significant --- an indication that Iran was ready for direct talks with Washington --- to the diversionary, with his declaration of readiness to speak publicly ("debate") with President Obama in the US in September and his claim that Zionists were trying to assassinate him.

UPDATED Israel-Lebanon: Border Clash Kills At Least 4 Soldiers, Journalist (Al Jazeera)

UPDATE 1525 GMT: Israel Defense Forces have confirmed that Lieutenant Colonel Dov Harari was killed in today's skirmish. A platoon commander, Captain Ezra Lakia, has been seriously wounded.

Al Jazeera reports:

At least three Lebanese soldiers have been killed by Israeli forces during an exchange of rocket and gunfire along the border between the two countries.

A journalist was also killed, and five more Lebanese soldiers wounded in the Israeli shelling on Tuesday.

"The Israelis fired four rockets that fell near a Lebanese army position in the village of Adaisseh and the Lebanese army fired back," a Lebanese security official in the area said.

MENA House: “Iranian” Rockets Used in Attacks on Israel and Jordan

Hezbollah's Al Manar television station said a high-ranking Israeli soldier was also killed in the border incident. The report could not be independently verified, and the Israeli army refused to comment.

Lebanese news sources reported that the journalist killed was Assaf Abou Rahhal, from the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.

Lebanese witnesses said that Israeli shells are continuing to hit Adaisseh village.

The clashes erupted after Israeli soldiers reportedly attempted to uproot trees on the Lebanese side of the border.

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Video & Analysis: Obama "Iraq Withdrawal" Speech Covers Up Shift on Afghanistan

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOkayW8BG0U[/youtube]

LATEST Iraq Video and Transcript: President Obama Declares End of US Combat Mission (31 August)

The headline from Barack Obama's speech on Monday to a war veterans' organisation is that he reaffirmed the commitment to "withdrawal" from Iraq: "I made it clear that by Aug. 31, 2010, America’s combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing, as promised and on schedule.” The official US troop level will be 50,000, compared to 144,000 in January 2009.

Afghanistan: Deeper into Stalemate? (Randall/Owen)

On the surface, the President's statement is a reassurance that he will stick to his campaign promise to get the US out of its ill-advised "war of choice". A more cynical assessment would be that his Administration is also carrying out a double sleight-of-hand.

One of the manoeuvres is to take attention away from an American military presence which will persist in Iraq. Obama's statement did not deal with the 50,000 troops who stay on in US bases that were constructed not for a short-term conflict but for a long-term "projection of power". And, as Jeremy Scahill has pointed, the number of "private" US contractors and support units in the country is increasing.

Even more importantly and immediately, Obama's re-affirmation on Iraq tucks away a major change in US policy on Afghanistan. The recent commitment of NATO countries to maintain military forces until 2014 --- despite the pullout by some participants such as Holland --- was also an effective, though unstated, move by the US to set aside its mid-2011 "deadline" for withdrawal of combat forces.

The New York Times points to this linkage in its report but gets the Obama strategy all wrong: "President Obama on Monday opened a monthlong drive to mark the end of the combat mission in Iraq and, by extension, to blunt growing public frustration with the war in Afghanistan by arguing that he can also bring that conflict to a conclusion." In fact, "conclusion" in Iraq is being used to mask what is a longer-term, if not open-ended, commitment to Afghanistan.

The President did not ignore Afghanistan and Pakistan in his speech. To the contrary, he repeatedly used his now-standard invocation of "extremists" and "Al Qa'eda" --- even though there are few "Al Qa'eda" in Afghanistan --- who will plot and carry out another attack on the United States. He assured that the US was going on the offensive against the enemy and he restated the declaration --- increasingly thread-bare --- of a civilian front in which good governance would be achieved and corruption would be defeated. But he never moved from this general portrayal to define what this means on the ground, not just next year but beyond.

Some will argue that this was Obama's promise all along, with the campaign statement of trading in Iraq's "bad" war for the "good" fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan against "extremists".

Wrong. This was a President who said, as he stepped into the White House, that US fighting units would be out of both conflicts by 2011. The sleight-of-hand in this speech is that this commitment has now been erased.

Iran Feature: Did Ahmadinejad Chief of Staff Reveal the Bomb?

President Ahmadinejad's controversial Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai gets us off to a dramatic start today. Rooz reports that, meeting advisors of the Ministry of Education on Saturday, Rahim-Mashai said that the President had spoken last year of the “possibility of uranium enrichment to 100 percent”. This statement, made during a visit to an exhibition on the achievements of a centre for laser science and technology, referred to the manufacture of a nuclear bomb but “not a single foreign media outlet created an uproar on this.”

Rahim-Mashai continued, “They are not concerned the nuclear bomb and Dr Ahmadinejad used this sentence to test them to see how concerned they really are about Iran producing a nuclear bomb.”

Rahim-Mashai's declaration was noted only by Mehr. Other official outlets such as the Islamic Republic News Agency and Fars carried the general remarks but did not quote the chief of staff or mention the words “enriching uranium by 100 percent”.