Pigs fly and al-AP publishes a good story on the recent clampdown on dissent in Iran. It’s written by one Michael Weissenstein. He contrasts Ahmadi-Nezhad’s promises of “total freedom” with the mass arrests of student demonstrators and women whose criminal activity consists of soliciting signatures on a petition that calls for women’s constitutional rights to be enforced. And then he quotes the regime’s apologists:
Restrictions in Iran are far from absolute. Iranians criticize the government in public, and ignore a wide array of social regulations at home.
Defenders of the system point out that is more open than many nations in the region, including some of America’s allies. And some restrictions have loosened in recent months: two reformist newspapers have been allowed to publish again.
All of which is true. But he could have pointed out that this is the way a regime behaves when it knows that most of its subjects hate it. So the mullahs walk a narrow path, trying to use enough terror to deter the big acts of protest that will bring it down, and grant a small quantum of freedom to trick the gullible and also identify their most dangerous enemies.
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Alireza:Plot is getting thicker day-by-day
It is amazing to watch how number of simultaneous news
Jun 23, 2007 - 6:43 pm Winston:are all coming out, as IR regime is dancing to different tunes. This morning
(6/23/07) I read the Farsi
section of BBC that basically the EU plans in tightening the sanction on
Iran. According to this article, if EU TRULY does what this news article says,
then IR will fall into DEEP trouble.
Per this article, in addition to commercial ships not
allowed into EU, any freight airlines to/from Iran will be banned, as well as
all diplomatic officials from Iran will be banned coming to EU!!!!!! This would
simply mean most of diplomatic offices of Iran would be closed, due to this
policy.
I think this serious news; along with fuel import sanction
would cause serious damage to this regime, which causes the internal opposition
groups to jump-start their work. And that is why they changed face in a matter
of hours and they are willing to somehow work out a plan with EU per this
news. But no one should hold their breath that anything would come out of
it.
As far as regime is tightening its control on people,
this always happen when they are getting weak internally to show off their muscle
to restless Iranians. Like all of a sudden they set up checkpoints in the middle
of popular roads in Tehran to just scare the young people.
So the bottom line is IF and WHEN EU decides to do what
mentioned above, you’ll see how mullahs and Ahmadinejad start having speech
problem. Khamenei and alike get their energy from petro dollars. NOTHING ELSE
is making them this generous to spend billions in Lebanon, Iraq and other places.
So as it has been said for so many years, if EU decides
seriously causing this regime to behave, they can do it in matter of weeks.
So the challenge is how this new policy could be implemented with laser accuracy
that hurts the regime, but make sure the regular people are not hurt as bad
as the regime. I think this is an art of policy making and how smart they can
play this chess with mullahs. As Larijani said while back, they have plans for
any possible move that West makes. So I think lots of the creative moves, less
the Iraq, is in the EU hands to play.
Banning Iranian diplomats and government officials not allowed in other countries,
while making sure regular Iranian citizens could travel would indeed cause damage
to this regime that no 5,000 Lb. bomb could do. The first thing is that they
will shamed and ridiculed in public eyes of Iranians, just like Rafsanjani being
sought by Intl. police.
And we know so wel, when a regime loses its respect among its people in the
broad day light, things starts reversing fast.
It’s getting worse day by day inside Iran….
Jun 24, 2007 - 5:06 am