Iran: Reading Khabar's "Conservative" Attack on Ahmadinejad

EA readers will know the attention we have given to Khabar Online, the website affiliated with Ali Larijani, as a possible outlet for a challenge to the Government. However, tonight --- less than 48 hours after the supposed victory for the President in the 22 Bahman rally --- the poking at Ahmadinjead seems more than blatant.

Follow this: yesterday Khabar featured an interview in which Larijani ally and high-profile member of Parliament Ali Motahhari (pictured) called on the Government, as well as the opposition, to admit mistakes and demanded freedom for all political prisoners and a cessation to bans on the press. Later on Saturday, the Los Angeles Times featured the interview.

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So did Khabar recoil in horror that one of the leading newspapers in the US --- you know, where the press is supposedly responsibility for the "foreign intervention" which the Government claims is threatening Iran --- had lifted its pieces to illustrate internal tensions? No, not at all. Instead, Khabar proudly features the LA Times piece.

And here's more. Khabar also highlights, without criticism, the statement of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front claimed that the large numbers at 22 Bahman rallies were due to the Green presence. It has a special feature noting that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is visiting Qatar only a few days after Qatari officials invited Ahmadinejad's right-hand man Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai to the country. The website surmises that Rahim-Mashai is in secret talks with the US --- despite Ahmadinejad's Friday posture that Iran would enrich its uranium without foreign help --- for a nuclear deal; it backs up that assertion with Motahhari's criticism that the President could be selling out Iranian interests to Washington.