ALL OUT CAMPAIGN TO DIVERT PUBLIC ATTENTION FROM AFGHANISTAN
By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor
PARIS 8 Jan. (IPS) In order to deviate Iranians from paying attention to the ongoing events in neighbouring Afghanistan, the conservatives, instructed by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the Islamic republic, are deliberately creating a state of chaos and domestic turbulences by opening new fronts against the so-called reformers.
Iranian analysts are unanimous in this view that the new Afghan leaders, most of them practising but "modernist, tie wearing" Muslims, ideologically close to Iranian nationalist-religious and Iran Freedom Movement, tagged by the conservatives as "American Islam" because of their believe that Islam is compatible with democracy -- hence their being declared outlaw by the leader-led Judiciary --, present a major challenge for the Iranian theological system by becoming its "Achilles Heel".
According to the analysts, even the recent declaration by Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the regime’s number two man menacing Israel with nuclear attack was a calculated statement aimed at heightening the climate of fear and insecurity among the population.
As usual, the signal for the new assaults was given by the hard-line evening daily "Keyhan", edited by Mr. Hoseyn Shari’atmadari, a high-ranking intelligence officer specialising in interrogating political and intellectual dissidents, appointed as the paper’s editor by Mr. Khameneh’i.
In an interview with the Persian service of the Prague-based Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, Hojjatoleslam Ahmad Qabel confirmed that not only Mr. Khameneh’i is personally behind the recent wave of attacks by the Judiciary against both the Legislative and the Executive, but he himself lead the campaign.
"I can say without any fear that the leader is responsible for the Judiciary’s offensive against the Majles and reformist deputies, for, without his personal blessing, the Judiciary would never dare to insult the Majles and arrest lawmakers", Mr. Qabel told the station one day before being arrested on order from the leader-led, controversial Clergymen’s Special Tribunal.
Under a front-page provocative article, "Keyhan" claimed in its Wednesday issue that some sixty deputies, most of them outspoken reformists have received bribes from Mr. Shahram Jazayri, a young millionaire businessman, arrested on corruption and bribery charges.
Though the paper did not name anyone, but it gave enough details about the accused ones, one of them Mr. Behzad Nabavi, a former Heavy Industries minister and prominent leader of the pro-reform the Organisation of the Islamic Revolution Mojahedeen (MIRO), the most important partner of Second Khordad Coalition that supports the embattled President Mohammad Khatami and his promised, but not implemented reform promises.
Warning about
a "new scenario" aimed at discrediting reformists MMs and shutting the Majles, Mr. Nabavi said Keyhan’s article is the salvo for the start of what he termed as "Berlin Conference II" in reference to the famous meeting that was organised in Berlin in April 2000 by the German government with the participation of 17 leading Iranian reform-seeking personalities of all walks and served as a pretext for the "bundle closure" of some fifty pro-reform and independent publications as well as the arrest of a number of reformers, including most of the people who attended the conference.Reacting angrily to Keyhan’s allegations, Mr. Nabavi, observing that the leader had trusted heads of the three powers to lead the fight against corruption, asked Majles Speaker Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Karroobi if he knew of the list of the people Keyhan had accused of taking bribe from Mr. Jazayeri and if not, were the paper had got the information? AFQANESTAN IRAN CONSERVATIVES 8102