Back to Brief on Iran
Sunday, August 8, an intense clash broke out between a group of Tehran residents and the State Security Force which lasted five hours in the Park-e Mellat (Nation's Park), in northern Tehran.
The confrontation erupted at 7 p.m. when the State Security Force attempted to arrest a young couple, but faced a strong protest by the local people and shopkeepers from the nearby market. People attacked the State Security Force and prevented them from arresting and taking away the girl.
The growing crowd chanted slogans like
"death to the State Security Force," and "death to the Revolutionary Guards,"
expressing their abhorrence at the clerical regime. Fearing the spread
of the protest to nearby streets, the State Security Force and the Bassij
opened fire on the demonstrators whose numbers exceeded 1,000. Dozens of
people were arrested and many wounded in these clashes.
Parliament Upholds Screening of Candidates, Agence France Presse, August 11
TEHRAN - Iran's conservatives tightened their hold on the political process here Wednesday after parliament upheld the right of the conservative-dominated Council of Guardians to screen all candidates for public office.
The move is a setback for supporters of Mohammad Khatami ahead of next spring's key parliamentary elections.
Pro-Khatami MPs agreed to a compromise under which rejected candidates would be able to demand a written explanation of the reasons from the Council, although it was unclear if such a move was in their interests.
Under the new rules the Council could then make public its written rejections, meaning popular candidates blocked from standing could be publicly denounced as ideologically suspect.
Wednesday's vote is a blow to Khatami's
supporters ahead of next February's elections.
"Students Provoked Our Personnel With Slogans", Reuters, August 11
TEHRAN - Iranian security forces have arrested 98 policemen for their role in a brutal raid on a student dormitory which led to riots in the capital last month, Iran's police chief said in remarks published on Wednesday.
General Hedayat Lotfian, Iran's police
chief, defended the right of his force to enter the dormitory last month:
"The students had provoked our personnel with insulting slogans. So they
got angry and attacked the dormitory."
Factional Infighting In the Heart of Clerical Establishment, The Wall Street Journal, August 11
QOM, Iran -- If Iran is locked in a struggle between Islamic clerics and secular reformers, there should be little doubt which side this holy city is on ...
But Iran's Islamic conservatives do have something to worry about: Here in this Shiite power center, a growing number of clerics are trying to break the hard-liners' control ...
Some "leftist" mullahs are openly campaigning against the long house arrest of top religious figures who criticized the country's conservative religious leadership. Two ayatollahs boldly say that a recent police raid on a student dormitory in Tehran was worse than anything the Shah did before the Islamic revolution ousted him in 1979.
The hard-liners are fighting back. A parade of "left-wing" clerics who oppose the hard-liners have been beaten, jailed or hauled into court in recent months ...
The mullahs' power struggle helps explain Iran's turbulence, but also suggests its limits. No mullahs, and probably few Iranians, want to topple the government. Leaders of both clerical factions have made private assurances they'll join hands if a new revolution is in the air ...
The trouble has more to do with political factions within the clergy dating to the revolution. One faction comprised traditionalists with ties to Iranian businessmen. The other group was made up of "leftists," proud of their advocacy of Iran's poor, their intimacy with Ayatollah Khomeini, and their seizure of the U.S Embassy.
The "leftists" included a gang of radical mullahs who organized Islamist guerrillas in Lebanon, and were known for their zeal in executing political prisoners in the early 1980s.
Now, some of the same mullahs are the backers of Mr. Khatami's "open society" and "dialogue of civilizations." They explain the change by noting that Iran is more stable in the 1990s than it was in the 1980s. But some skeptics wonder if the leftists, who lost power in a 1992 purge, simply adopted the language of political have-nots ...