Isolation, Not Arrest for Iran Opposition Heads

The day after the February opposition protest in Iran, supporters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei staged their own demonstration at which they shouted for the arrest and execution of opposition leaders

“Death to Mousavi and Karroubi and Khatami!” they chanted, naming their three least favourite politicians – Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, both of whom stood against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the controversial presidential election of 2009, and former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami.

Despite such calls for retribution, the decision-makers in the regime did nothing of the sort, opting for discretion rather than open confrontation with their opponents.

The head of the judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, who has previously told hardline critics he takes his orders from Khamenei alone, said confronting Karroubi and Mousavi would elevate them into “saints”.

Larijani did, however, promise to stop the opposition leaders from putting out information. His view was supported by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, secretary of the Guardian Council, which oversees the legislative process.

“Their communications with people must be cut off,” Jannati said in a Friday prayers sermon on February 18. “The doors of their houses must be closed. Their movements must be restricted so they are unable to disseminate or receive messages. Their telephone and internet must also be cut off.”

This is what has now happened. Karroubi and Mousavi have been confined to their homes since February 16. Eyewitnesses say metal barriers have been put up at the entrance of the cul-de-sac where Mousavi’s house is located, and the family is being prevented from receiving newspapers. Even their food is being delivered by the security services.

House arrest has not been enough to satisfy the hardliners, who are still calling for the execution of the “leaders of sedition”.

The Green Movement, for its part, seems unable to decide how to react. Residents of Khatami’s home town, Ardakan, staged a demonstration in his support, chanting, “Khatami will be our master as long as there is blood in our veins”. But nothing similar was reported from Mousavi’s birthplace, Khameneh, or Karroubi’s home town Aligoudarz.

Some Green Movement members have called for street protests to force the regime to end the blockade of its leaders, with suggestions for a demonstration on Mousavi’s birthday on March 2.

The authorities clearly believe their limited response – house arrest but not prosecution – will be enough to curb the opposition by disrupting contact between rank-and-file members and their leaders.

At this point, the evidence for this view is mixed. Opposition supporters did manage to stage a second day of street protests in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Rasht and other towns on February 20, even though internet and phone services had been cut. But these were scattered gatherings, not nearly as impressive as the February 14 protests.

Some commentators say people failed to turn out in large numbers because the security forces were out in strength, while others argue the main reason was that Mousavi and Karroubi, by now in seclusion, had not explicitly asked them to come.

The call for the second demonstration came from a recently emerged group called the Green Path of Hope Coordination Council. The only identifiable member of the council is Mojtaba Vahedi, Karroubi’s spokesman abroad, and a local activist says most of the others are people who left Iran after the government crackdown on protests in 2009, and are aware that claiming to direct the opposition from abroad would not go down well in Iran.

Nor is it clear what the regime will do next. A political activist in Tehran who spent months in prison following the 2009 unrest argues that officials will carefully watch reactions to the house arrests both inside Iran and in the international community, and calibrate their response accordingly.

“The way they deal with the Green Movement leaders next depends entirely on the nature and intensity of these reactions,” she predicted.

“Executing Mousavi and Karroubi could ignite the whole country. I think that even imprisoning them would be dangerous for the regime,” she said. “No one knows what might await them in detention – they might be slowly poisoned, and there are other possibilities too; the regime has all these infamous methods.”

In this uncertain situation, everyone is looking to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a political heavyweight and former Iranian president who manages to combine chairing two powerful organisations, the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council, with frequent criticism of President Ahmadinejad.

Conservative supporters of Supreme Leader Khamenei suspect Rafsanjani of covertly backing the opposition, and have challenged him to come out with a clear condemnation.

Addressing hardline regime supporters at their February 15 rally, Mojtaba Zolnour, the Supreme Leader’s deputy representative in the Revolutionary Guards Corps, attacked Rafsanjani without mentioning him by name.

“He has given life to sedition with his silence over 20 months,” he said. “This is the last chance to take a clear stand on the leaders of sedition.”

During the demonstration, chants of “Death to Hashemi” were heard, and significantly, this footage was broadcast on state television.

Hardliners are now working to prevent Rafsanjani being chosen again as head of the Assembly of Experts when the post comes up for election in March.

For the moment, it remains unclear what further action might be taken against Rafsanjani or indeed Karroubi and Mousavi, beyond keeping the latter two away from their supporters.

Nor is it clear whether the tactic will succeed in stifling an opposition force reinvigorated by protests all across the Middle East. Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastgheib, known as the “Green Ayatollah” for his support of the opposition movement, clearly does not believe it will. Drawing a striking parallel for his religious students, he said, “Pharaoh too believed that if Moses was killed, the waves he had summoned would recede.”

Sahar Namazikhah is an Iranian journalist based in Los Angeles. She was previously editor of several daily newspapers in Tehran.