Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Teheran for a large-scale peaceful protest Thursday on behalf of Iranian opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Iranian opposition head Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Photo: AP [file]
But for this occasion, the people were wearing black to honor the "martyrs" killed in the post-election violence. In 1979, all those who "died at the hands of the dictator [the Shah]" were called martyrs and mourned in a similar way. Revolutionary symbolism continues to thrive at such rallies, as protesters Photoshop the reelected president's face onto a Pahlavi military uniform.
Mousavi's "green team" has spread rumors, through pamphlets, about Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cunning preparations to "rig the people's vote." According to the unsigned pamphlets, Akbar Hashemi Rafjansani's reputation was destroyed in the weeks leading up to the election, in order to derail the reformist's demand for a limitation on the years the supreme leader can serve and to redistribute power among the parliament.
Former terror squad revolutionaries like Mousavi are now viewed as "liberals" and "the people's servants." Unfortunately, the reformists have fooled the vulnerable Iranians by wearing their "liberal" turbans at the rallies.
The legitimacy of the Revolution is now called into question by two of the men who helped create it. Mousavi and Rafsanjani have joined forces against their ruling system. The dynamic duo is again ready for revolutionary action; the boys are up to their old tricks.
In the holy city of Qom, after the "landslide" results were published last Saturday, they quickly began to gain support from other senior dissident clerics willing to speak up against the elections.
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri declared that "no sound mind" would accept the results. "A government that is based on intervening in (people's) votes has no political or religious legitimacy," said Montazeri, who had once been set to succeed Khomeini as supreme leader but was ousted because of criticisms of the revolution.
The protests are now being carefully nurtured by influential clerics in the establishment. Their rhetoric against the system's "irregularities" has brought into the streets not only the Iranian youth, but also the revolutionary children of 1979. First-generation and second-generation recruits.
Even though the hardliners have the military capability to suppress the demonstrations, the reformists have built a loyal following. Once again, members of the old Revolutionary Guards are using people as human shields for their own political agenda and protection.
Refusing to be cornered by Khameini and his reelected watchdog, Mousavi and Rafsanjani are giving "old school" a new meaning by taking the Iranian people back 30 years, to when they wanted to be freed from the "dictator." Luckily for Mousavi and Rafsanjani, a significant portion of the population hate Ahmadinejad even more.
The "reformists" have been waiting for this moment since Ali Khameini transformed the parliament into a 70-percent conservative majority in 2004. Rafsanjani and Khatami remained silent while Mousavi was getting in touch with his artistic side.
Khameini and Ahmadinejad might win this battle, as the "reformists" are fully aware, but some members of the parliament who bear witness to their colleagues' arrests and disappearances might not wait around to be the regime's victims. Khatami, Mousavi and Rafsanjani have remained dormant over the years and finally decided to "protect the people's votes" - after Rafsanjani was forced to resign, Khatami's brother was arrested, and Mousavi at one point was nowhere to be found.
This trio is riding the wave as long as they can, and will do or say anything to keep up the hype among supporters.
