Back to Brief on Iran
In a speech this morning, Ali Khamenei, the mullahs' supreme leader, said that "the enemy's hand is directly or indirectly at work" in the recent murders. He described these killings as "another supplement to the conspiracies of Western Arrogance" and a "plot by the enemy to purport that the country is insecure." He implicitly blamed the Mojahedin for the recent killings.
Also today, Khatami attributed these murders to "ominous schemes of the enemies of independence and freedom of the Islamic state." Yesterday, 140 members of the clerical Majlis put the blame for these murders on the "Mojahedin" and the "foreign intelligence services."
These lies demonstrate that in a coordinated campaign, all of the regime's factions are attempting to conceal the true identity of the perpetrators and masterminds of these crimes, who are none other than the highest officials and agents of the clerical regime.
They are preparing the grounds for air strikes, missile attacks and terrorist operations in Iraqi territory and other countries, against the biggest threat to their existence, namely, the Mojahedin and the Iranian Resistance.
Secularist Writers Said To Be In Hiding, Reuter, December 14
TEHRAN - Several Iranian secularist writers have gone into hiding after a string of mystery deaths and disappearances among their colleagues.
Firouz Gouran, editor of the banned monthly Jame'eh Salem, or Healthy Society, said on Monday many of his colleagues had either left their homes or adopted special security measures.
"This has spread panic everywhere," Gouran told Reuters by telephone.
The bodies of three secularist intellectuals have been found in recent days in what friends and family members say were suspicious circumstances. A fourth is missing and feared dead.
These deaths, and the earlier stabbing murders of the leader of a fringe opposition party and his wife, have unnerved Iranian society and raised doubts over Khatami's ability to deliver on his promises of social and political reform.
Despite pledges of prompt action and high-level inquiries, no one has been charged in any of the deaths.
"These murders are organized, they could not be spontaneous," said Gouran. "I think these people are in one way or another connected to some of the many branches of the (political) factions."
Gloves Come Off in Iran's Political Struggle, Reuter, December 10
TEHRAN - In a series of public statements and press commentaries, the conservatives blasted Khatami's question-and-answer session on December 7 before a university crowd hungry for social and political reform, accusing him of playing partisan politics and defaming the divine values of the Islamic Revolution.
Several analysts said the commentaries signaled an increasingly confrontational stance by the conservative establishment.
Habibollah Asgaroladi, secretary of the traditionalist Islamic Coalition Society, on Thursday condemned the president for not reining in students' demands.
'We are giving advice to the president with good will…The president's answers to some insulting questions were not appropriate...His remarks have caused concern among religious people, scholars and the press," he said.
An editorial in the hardline daily Resalat was more direct, declaring: "Mr. Khatami, you must know that you are the president of 60 million people who love Islam and the Revolution. You must not let a political faction, with guidance from foreign radio services, degrade you to the level of an opposition leader."
The heated rhetoric comes at a time of rising social and political tensions in Iran, inflamed by murders of secularist cultural and political figures, the recent attack on a busload of visiting U.S. businessmen, and other muscle-flexing by hardline elements and their shadowy patrons.
While Pollution Is Killing, Mullahs' Merely Issue "Warnings", Agence France Presse, December 14
TEHRAN - Dozens of heart and respiratory patients have died as a result of the high levels of air pollution in the Iranian capital, Etelaat newspaper reported Monday.
"The level of dangerous pollutants has reached six times the permitted level and even gone beyond the danger level," it said.
The education ministry ordered all elementary schools closed on Monday, while the traffic control office tightened travel rules for downtown Tehran.
Pollution has been on the rise in many Iranian cities, where vehicles are often old and not equipped with smog-control devices.
Newspapers have pressured the authorities to come up with a solution to the worsening pollution.
"The only thing the authorities do is merely to issue warnings or advice, and they have not come up with a way to reduce circulation," Etelaat daily charged.