TEHRAN - Khamenei blasted the foreign media following his personal decree banning the new reformist parliament from debating a motion to ease curbs on the press.

"Any moves aimed at satisfying Iran's enemies are faced with certain failure," Khamenei said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency late Wednesday.

"The foreign media, which embody the means for international plunderers and dominators and are a tool of Zionist intentions, have not been able to hide their anger and hopelessness towards parliament's move," he said.

Khamenei added that parliament's rapid acceptance of his decree made it "clear that certain interpretations by the regime's enemies about the (parliament) are far from reality."
 

Eye on Presidential Elections Through Crackdown, Agence France Presse, August 9

TEHRAN - Relentless pressure by the conservatives on their rivals, using their control of the courts notably to silence pro-Khatami newspapers, is aimed at winning next year's presidential elections, in the view of analysts here.

They scored a major triumph on Sunday, when Khamenei, whose powers are almost unlimited, ordered parliament not to try to overturn harsh laws on the press voted in the last days of its predecessor.

As well as closing a score of newspapers the various tribunals, including the Press Court, the Revolutionary Court and the Special Court for Clergy, have targeted individual journalists and other supporters of Khatami.
 

After All They All Follow Khamenei In Blasting US, [State-Controlled Daily] Tehran Times, August 10

TEHRAN -The first reaction of the Iranian Parliament to the U.S. interference in its internal affairs showed that all factions and groups have a unanimous stance when it comes to the Iran-U.S. tie.

Head of the National Security and Foreign Relations Commission of the Parliament Mohsen Mirdamadi said on Wednesday that other countries have nothing to do with Iran's internal affairs. Mirdamadi made the remark in response to the U.S. State Department's statement about the latest developments in Iran.

The Parliament is dominated by the reformists, a journalist said, adding, but it does not mean that they will compromise their national interests for the sake of appeasing the U.S. No, not at all, he said, adding, the first reaction by the chairman of National Security and Foreign Affairs Commission indicates that there is full harmony among various factions when it comes to national interests.

All of them follow the Leader is such cases.
 

Eventuality in Iran: Revolution, The National Post, August 9

Iran in the throes of its counter-revolution -- and what one should perhaps call its Counter-Reformation --presents a somber spectacle to a Western world that has long since learned the need to separate Church and State…

Claiming the authority of God's will, they confronted the counter-revolution…

The ayatollahs already control all radio and television outlets (not to mention the police and the armed forces) and already, using the arbitrary machinery of restrictive press laws passed by the last parliament, they have shut down 20 newspapers this year -- in effect, the entire reformist press…

The Iranian political scene has been a grim dance of destiny since the unexpected election of Khatami in 1997…

The latest move by Khamenei and his die-hards to thwart their will can only contribute to the powerful head of steam that is building up across the country, and especially in the universities. Past student protests have been quickly and ruthlessly put down by the police and their militant auxiliaries, the thuggish Basiji, or Revolutionary Guards, while dissident intellectuals who have dared to write or speak out have been murdered by secret policemen whom the authorities have been shamed into labeling "rogue elements."

How long can this state of affairs continue before there is a popular explosion? When the late Shah of Iran was similarly stifling dissent in the 1960s and 1970s -- enjoying U.S. and British moral and material support as "a friend of the West" -- informed opinion was that he was far too firmly entrenched to be overthrown.

It took a charismatic if forbidding leader-in-exile…to draw the masses of all classes into an irresistible tidal wave that swamped the security forces and the system they upheld…

But history -- and recent history, at that -- tells us that, whatever the odds, repressive regimes eventually give way to the mass will, either by evolution or revolution.

The key word is "eventually."

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