Iran: The Ali-Mohammadi Funeral "The Stolen Coffin"

Ahmad Shirzad, a former member of Parliament, physicist, and friend of Professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, posted these thoughts on the funeral on his blog. Translated by Iran Rises:

Today [Thursday, 14 February], Massoud’s body was buried, but left a battlefield behind. The Hezbollahi (Party of God) brothers had mobilized from that morning and did not stop surrounding the body for an instant.

Iran: The Ali-Mohammadi Case “A Political Assassination”
Iran: Anger, Pain, & Fear — The Funeral of Professor Ali-Mohammadi
Latest from Iran (17 January): Setting Aside Diversions

Loudspeakers and electric generators and eulogizers and very high-power stereo systems and organized pickup trucks were all at their disposal. The family and its circle had practically no control and gave up on the program. From the day that Dr. Ali-Mohammadi was assassinated, the officers came and went and insisted that his body be buried during the Tehran Friday prayers. The only point that the family could get its way on was its insistence that the burial ceremonies be held on Thursday.

Massoud’s home was surrounded by a crowd from the early morning. The police had closed all the points of entry. The area was packed with anti-riot forces in uniform and a crowd of plainclothesmen who had not so much as heard Ali-Mohammadi’s name until that day. His family wished to keep the burial services non-political and as dignified as possible. Friends and acquaintances gradually assembled. The home had no space for them. They all stood in the streets outside. A large crowd of people carrying cameras were milling around looking for a vantage point to film the scene. Most of them were from our own official media. Apparently, the foreign media which had representatives in Tehran was being cautious, fearing a repeat of past experiences. Of course, foreign media or its representatives could be seen here and there, but not many.

The brothers from the government who held a constant presence in Massoud’s house during this past day or two had prepared a martial music band, a bus to transport the burial squad, a eulogizer, a grave-digger, an ambulance, and, in short, whatever they thought they needed. Little Massoud was so dear to these gentlemen! He thought of every kind of death except this one. How could anyone imagine that a military officer, a minister, the president of a university, and dozens of other petty and major officials, from the moment he was assassinated, would line up at their home so that the programs for the martyr would be done all properly and nothing deviate from the plan!

It was about eight or nine in the morning when a middle-aged gentleman stood atop the minivan and took the microphone. At first, he spoke calmly and did not chant slogans. Apparently they had promised Massoud’s family not to take partisan political advantage of the services. But “razor and beard” and all the other resources one could imagine were in their hands from the very start. They did as they pleased. The first thing Mr. Microphone did was to extol the martyrs given by the university. He spoke of Martyr [Ayatollah Morteza] Motahhari and Martyr [Kamran] Nejatollahi (a militant professor who was martyred in the course of the protests and occupation by the university students in 1979 in the Ministry of Education’s office), placing Massoud Ali-Mohammadi alongside them. Next, he took a few minutes to announce from the microphone that the brothers who were ready for the funeral ceremonies to raise their hands. About 150 to 200 scattered among the crowd raised their hands to show they were ready and the guy on the minivan apparently reached the conclusion that everyting was in order and that enough people were ready to start the show. The coffin was removed from the ambulance and carried into the house and they started chanting special slogans. They tightly controlled the area around the coffin and permitted no family or acquaintances to get under it.

In burying the body, one usually chants ordinary religious slogans like “There is no deity but God and Mohammad is His messenger.” But the chief slogans in this show were of the sort, “Death to Israel”, “Death to the Hypocrites”, “This trampled flower is a gift to the Leader,” and so on. At best I could say that during the entire several hours of this show in which the loudspeaker issued slogans, the ordinary slogan of “There is no deity but God and Mohammad is His messenger” was not used more than a minute or two. And even on the one or two occasions when the “There is no deity but God” was said, when those present were ready to say the second half, “America is God’s enemy” was added and they continued on in their line.

It is a tradition in most burial ceremonies that when the deceased is brought to his home and before he is buried, a few minutes of silence be observed for the household in general and the ladies in particular to bid farewell to their loved one and express what is in their hearts to their God in the language of weeping and mourning and ease their heartbreak over the body of their dearly departed. But in this show, the brothers were apparently so nervous about the details that they did let not the loudspeakers go silent for even a second and the eulogizers and the professional sloganeers played their role in this show so well with the help of their powerful stereos that no one could even hear the weeping of Massoud’s relatives. It was heard that once, one of the gentlemen even snapped at the widow! Apparently, Massoud’s friends and family had no choice but to give in. His family was anxious lest the services collapse and obstacles be created to holding the remaining programs, such as the memorial service [held after three days] and the unveiling of the tomb [held after a week] and so on. Those who loved Massoud had no choice but to offer tears and seek his elevation and forgiveness for his pure soul. They had no choice but to stand aside and surrender Massoud’s body to strangers to do the best they could. People took Massoud’s coffin whose sole acquaintance with him began when he was a blood-drenched corpse.

A bit further on, forty or fifty of the country’s physics professors and researchers looked on teary-eyed and followed the crowd, along with many ordinary people from Massoud’s neighborhood or family or circle, estimated at over one or two thousand. The people who would bury him were at a crossroad. On the one hand, they all wanted to respect Ali-Mohammadi’s soul and to bury his body in accordance with the common tradition. On the other hand, there was the show underway ahead of them, all partisan slogans and partisan participants, and few there were who wanted to appear in a picture with that mob. The photographers of the official media all surrounded the minivan leading this group in motion and steadily followed the figures who were guiding the special atmosphere which prevailed among them.

A few minutes later, something interesting happened. A crowd of a few hundred students from Tehran University, especially kids from the physics faculty, were assembled behind a picture of Dr. Ali-Mohamnmadi and were following it in silence, except when they would now and then offer a salavat. They gradually opened up a gap between themselves and the government burial squad and parted from the show which had been prepared in advance. The burial squad gradually noticed this crowd and mixed in with them and separated from the ranks of the brothers’ official show. It was an interesting scene. The gentlemen in front suddenly saw that they had been abandoned. There they were, all alone. One or two of them angrily came to snatch from the students’ hands the poster behind which they had assembled, but the crowd resisted.

Gradually, the slogan “There is no deity but God and Mohammad is His messenger” arose from the crowd and filled the street. It was so loud that the brothers’ very powerful loudspeakers could no longer be heard. As the painters say, an interesting contrast was created. On this side, there were tears and “There is no deity but God.” On the other, the exasperating blare of the loudspeakers and “Death to the Hypocrites” and “Death to the opponents of the velayat-e faqih.” On the one hand there were sighs of grief over the loss of a beloved professor whom the students adored like his children and who were now being deprived of even bidding good-bye to his lifeless corpse. On the one hand, there was there was the rage and confusion of those who were anxious about Massoud’s body falling into others’ hands and were protecting it as if it were war booty. On the one hand, there was pure love and a sincere funeral held by those who saw that they had lost Massoud. On the other hand, there were cameras and the violent domination of those who felt that they had seized Massoud. On the one hand, there was the silence of the long-suffering which was the only refuge of the eternal slogan, “There is no deity but God.” On the other hand, there were five or ten people chanting slogans of “Death” and “Infidel” which were, in practice, used to eliminate the other. As soon as the brothers saw that the situation was getting out of hand, they retreated to close the gap between themselves and the green crowd and once more take control. To do this, they even drove the minivan they had been donated in reverse, when one of the ladies shouted, “If you run someone over, don’t say that the minivan was stolen!”

Around this contrasting tableau, there was a black circle of black-clad riot officers with various equipment which had surrounded the crowd, and motorcyclists who were going to and fro. Fear and anxiety filled the air and no one knew if the services would come peacefully to an end. Our friends counted over a thousand anti-riot police. Along the way, a great mass of several hundred of them were being held at the ready in a sports arena.

After an hour of this dual burial ceremony, we learned that the gentlemen had removed the body from the ambulance to the burial site, i.e., the Ali Akbar Chizar Shrine. The participants gradually dispersed and they each tried to reach it however they could.

Around eleven in the morning, the streets around the shrine were filled with the crowd and anti-riot forces. Massoud’s corpse was like war booty in the gentlemen’s hands. There were not even any means to easily approach their crowd. At the same time, people were concerned about the likelihood of a violent confrontation with the gentlemen and did not want to mingle with them.

Massoud’s friends and students were in practice deprived of reading prayers over his body or participating in the burial service. The gentlemen performed these services as they wished. While conducting the burial, the shrine’s gates were locked and we saw bits of the services from behind the far side of the walls surrounding it. Amir would say that this scene reminded me of the Baqi` Gravesite, which can only be peered into from behind lattice walls.

Even during the burial, the loudspeakers uninterruptedly issued slogans. No one could even hear the sound of the funeral of those few bereaved among Massoud’s relatives who had been able to approach the burial site. It was as if the gentlemen were nervous lest the previous scenario at the burial would be repeated and the mourners would say things which were not to their liking in the course of their weeping.

It was not yet noon when Massoud was buried and it all came to an end. The grieving students returned to their residences and the members of the burial squad each went his own way. By the time the call went up for the noon prayer, there was no sign of the zealots who were worried lest Massoud’s body wind up into others’ hands. Their anxieties were at an end and they could now breath a sigh of relief and leave. If only we could have seen how many of those who had clung so tightly to Massoud’s body showed up to the graveside to recite the Fatiha. Massoud was only away from us these two days after the moment of his martyrdom. From now on, the spiritual effect which remains of him will not belong to some of those who were only present next to his corpse. Massoud was ours for fifty years, and he is still ours. It was only for one day that his coffin was stolen from us, and that’s over.

The Tehran University physics faculty will witness Massoud’s absence tomorrow and the students, despite their tears and sorrows, will earnestly strive to keep the torch of learning blazing in the land of Iran. His family, too, must get used to living without him. What a hard task! Is it possible to forget someone whose presence was felt the whole time he was here and around whom the atmosphere was filled with his energy? But there is nothing for it. One must live. God be their succour.

Today in EA (12 January 2010)

Iran: News from Iran this morning concentrates on the booby-trap bomb explosion in Tehran that killed Professor Massoud Mohammadi. We have the latest, which includes indication that Mohammadi was not involved in Iran's nuclear programme, and a video of state media's presentation of the event.

Links to this and other top stories, from EA and other media, are available as always, in our weblog.

Amidst recent coverage of Iran and Twitter,  and following yesterday's contributions on this issue, we have a comprehensive analysis today from Christopher Parsons, which seeks to dispell some of the fear, uncertainty and doubt around the Iranian Government's use of digital surveillance techniques.

Scott Lucas considers, amidst recent statements by Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohamad Khatami, the way forward for the opposition: "The question may not be how the regime reacts to these statements  but how the Green movement(s) respond."

US/Israel: Israel media suggest that, behind the scenes, Israel's relationship with the Obama Administration is flourishing, despite Washington's recent sale of arms to four "moderate" Arab states.

Turkey/Israel: A meeting between Turkish and Lebanese Prime Ministers turned into a platform for sharp criticism of  Israel.

Today on EA (4 January 2010)

Iran: Leaks abound relating to Iran. Is Washington "genuis punditocracy" putting pressure on Israel relating to nukes and sanctions? EA's Scott Lucas' reaction is here : he wonders whether the policy may be "too clever by half" but guest writer Gary Sick praises President Obama's "strategic leaking".

We have a guest commentary from Babak Siavoshy of Georgetown University which defends Mir Houssein Mousavi's "5-Point Plan".  Meanwhile, five expatriateIranian intellectuals have followed Mousavi's statement with their own 10-point list of demands from the Iranian Government.

Saeed Habibi from the Committee of Human Rights Reporters is in hiding  in Iran. Britain's C4 News interviewed him last night, see have the video here.

All the latest news is on our timeline blog which also includes links to other stories from EA and other news media.

Israel: There was a hullabuloo in the Channel 1 studio last Thursday when Jamal Zahalka was removed following a heated argument with host Dan Margalit. See the programme video here. Zahalka subsequently accused the state media of "surrendering to the state".

Israel's Parliament has passed a bill on a  "loyalty oath" to the coalition leaders but, more importantly, rejected another proposing the state enforce equal allocation of land to Jews and Arabs.

USA: We have the video and a transcript of President Obama's weekly address to the American people on 2 January concentrating on the "War on Terror".

Latest Iran Video: Maziar Bahari on Britain's Channel 4 (4 January)

Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, detained in Iran from June until October, has given another interview on his experiences and thoughts on the political conflict --- this discussion follows his November reflections on US television with CBS and with CNN.



Latest Iran Video: The Bahari Interview on CNN (Part 2)
Iran: How Washington Views the Green Opposition — The Next Chapter
Iran Video & Text: Maziar Bahari on His 118 Days in Detention
Iran Video: Maziar Bahari Tells CBS of His Detention and Post-Election Conflict
The Latest from Iran (4 January): Watching and Debating

Iran: The Genius of Washington's "Strategic Leaking" on Nukes & Sanctions

Gary Sick has offered the following reading of latest US policy, with private manoeuvres and public "spin", on Iran's nuclear programme and sanctions.

My own reaction is that this is "too clever by half", not on the part of the author but as attributed to Washington. As I wrote Sick, "Could it be that there there are two factions still battling within the Administraton? One faction, probably coming out of the State Department, is not as keen on aggressive sanctions. Linked to this is a wish to move the debate to the human rights rather than nuclear focus. The other faction, probably in the National Security Council and Department of Defense, is keener on a sanctions-first, nuclear-first focus. So they use New York Times as the ventriloquist's dummy for their line. I'm not sure Obama is a central player in this battle."

Sick's concise response: "One of the great benefits of strategic leaking is that it conceals the real intentions of the leakers, thereby leaving interpretation up to the observer."

Pretend for a moment that you are the president of the United States and you have gotten yourself into a bit of a hole with your Iran policy.

The Latest from Iran (4 January): Watching and Debating

First you offered to negotiate with Iran over nuclear (and potentially other) issues without the Bush preconditions. But there were powerful political forces that felt this was an example of your inexperience and even appeasement tendencies. So you unwisely accepted a six month deadline for the negotiations to show that you meant business. You tried to soften that by saying you would take another look at the issue at the end of the year, but everyone ignored that and let you know that January 1 was the drop-dead date to solve all the negotiating problems with Iran.

In the meantime, the most serious internal revolt in 30 years exploded in Iran. It was not clear how this would affect the behavior of the regime on international issues. Some said the regime was weakened and vulnerable and so would more readily yield to pressure; others thought Iran’s rulers would become more belligerent internationally to compensate for their internal weakness.

You had a couple of rounds of meetings with the Iranians and jointly came up with a fiendishly clever ploy. Iran would ship out quite a lot of its low enriched uranium (LEU), thereby reducing its stockpile that might be turned into a bomb, and Russia and France would provide them with more highly enriched fuel to be used in their research reactor that makes medical isotopes. Everybody wins. But when the Iranians took this home, they were savaged by their own political opposition for buying a pig in a poke. In disarray, they backtracked and started looking for a face-saving alternative, specifically to conduct the swap on Iranian soil or, later, in Turkey.

This situation was complicated by the discovery (or Iranian announcement, we’re not quite sure) of a previously unannounced uranium enrichment site, which was immediately inspected by the IAEA. Some think that this was Iran’s Plan B, to have a separate enrichment capability if the primary site at Natanz was bombed by Israel or the US; others think the site was intended as a covert production line to produce a bomb. The punditocracy decides that it was a covert bomb production line.

Moreover, the punditocracy, which had already decided on the deadline of January 1, now decides that the Iranians negotiated in bad faith and the negotiations were at a total dead end. The congress, which had reluctantly stayed quiet on the subject, now returned to its usual political game of looking tough by bashing Iran. Sanctions bills threatening interdiction of gasoline shipments to Iran were passed overwhelmingly in the House and were due to pass with equal margins when the Senate returned in January.

Your critics (who wanted merely token negotiations followed by crippling sanctions and, if possible, war) rubbed their hands in anticipation. A leading neoconservative gleefully remarked that everything was proceeding according to script. AIPAC issued a triumphant declaration as gasoline sanctions rolled through the Congress.

So, Mr. President, here you are on January 1. The “deadline” is upon you. Your allies and your opponents in congress are ready to hit you with a dilemma — either impose crippling sanctions or look like an appeaser. Yet you know that gasoline sanctions are perhaps the worst idea to come out of the congress since they opposed the purchase of Alaska. The sanctions would enrich and empower the Revolutionary Guards, undercut the Green opposition, identify the US as the enemy of the ordinary citizen in Iran, and possibly start us down the slippery slope to another disastrous war in the Middle East. But it looks great on a bumper sticker, and Glenn Beck [of Fox Television] will savage anyone who dares oppose it.

So what to do?

Well, Mr. President, you have some cards of your own up your sleeve. You know that Israel is not really going to attack Iran. They can’t do anything significant without US help, and George Bush already told them not to expect that. But they have invested so much in their campaign to convince the Israeli population and the entire world that Israel’s survival as a nation is imminently in peril that they can’t be seen to back down. They might welcome some help to get them off their own sticky wicket.

You also know that the Iranian nuclear program is nowhere near a bomb and has actually made little progress in that direction for years, regardless of the punditocracy consensus to the contrary in defiance of the facts. There is plenty of time if you can just calm the domestic political furor.

It’s time for some strategic leaking.

First, give an exclusive interview to The Washington Post just before the New Year’s “deadline” that makes two major points: (1) The administration’s policy of engagement has succeeded in creating turmoil and fractures within Iran’s leadership, i.e. the policy has been a success, not a failure; and (2) the administration is planning for highly targeted sanctions that will hit the Revolutionary Guards rather than the average Iranian citizen. That sends a clear signal to the congress that its infatuation with petroleum sanctions is not replicated in the White House, for all the reasons listed above, and to the uber hawks that there will be no rush to war with Iran in the new year. At the same time, launch a major rhetorical campaign by the president in support of the civil and political rights of the Iranian opposition.

It works. The increasingly hawkish Washington Post editorial board commends the president for his “shift” on human rights (though piously calling for more) and ignores the sanctions game in congress.

Of course, having fed the Washington Post, the New York Times is jealous and needs its own exclusive. Provide that over the New Year holiday by letting as many as six top administration officials meet privately and anonymously with two NYT reporters to let them in on some more secrets: (1) In another cunning success, the administration has outed the covert Iran bomb production facility at Qom thereby rendering it useless; (2) hint that the administration may be responsible for sabotaging Iran’s centrifuges, which accounts for the fact (completely unacknowledged until now, despite being reported for the past two years by the IAEA) that Iran is not actually using about half of its installed centrifuges; (3) reiterate that the coming sanctions are to be aimed at the Revolutionary Guards, not the average Iranian citizen, and are likely to succeed because the regime is so weakened internally; and (4) declare unequivocally that the Iranian “breakout capability,” i.e. its ability to shift from nuclear energy to actually building a bomb, is now years away.

This also works. The two NYT reporters, though apparently a bit confused about this U-turn in threat assessment from only three months ago, dutifully report what they have been told. The administration is credited with several successes, and the reporters seem convinced that the White House is showing toughness and skill in derailing the Iranian nuclear rush to the bomb. In the meantime, the reporters scarcely note that the administration is not declaring the negotiations dead after all and is pursuing the Turkish option of a uranium swap. No mention of a deadline.

Finally, the NYT reports that the Israelis have been persuaded that the targeted sanctions now being discussed are worth trying “at least for a few months.” That was attributed to a senior Israeli official on the basis of back channel talks, but it had actually been announced by Prime Minister Netanyahu to the Knesset a week earlier in a speech that received almost no attention in the U.S. No more talk of deadlines, crippling sanctions or air strikes.

In short, Mr. President, you have taken what appeared to be a losing hand and, with a few well-placed leaks, transformed it into a victory over Iran. You have converted a lose-lose proposition of crippling sanctions vs appeasement into an Iranian nuclear collapse. The imminent threat of Iran has become an indefinite delay of its breakout capability. The huffing and puffing of the congress has been rendered irrelevant even before it hits your desk. A deadline has become a new beginning of negotiations. And you brought the Israelis along with you, without a peep of complaint. As for the punditocracy, so far so good.

Not bad for a beginner, Mr. President!