Filmmaker: I Speak For Mousavi

By Steve Hynd

As only a tiny fraction of previous day's protesters turn out in Tehran - and are brutally supressed - via Joe Gandelman comes an article in the Guardian by filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, writing that Mousavi has been silenced while his closest associates have been arrested and claiming to be Mousavi's voice.

The article is headlined "I speak for Mousavi. And Iran. The man Iranians want as their leader has been silenced. This is what he wants you to know." It continues:

I have been given the �responsibility of telling the world what is happening in Iran. The office of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who the Iranian people truly want as their leader, has asked me to do so. They have asked me to tell how Mousavi's headquarters was wrecked by plainclothes police officers. To tell how the commanders of the revolutionary guard ordered him to stay silent. To urge people to take to the streets because Mousavi could not do so directly.

The people in the streets don't want a recount of last week's vote. They want it annulled. This is a crucial moment in our history. Since the 1979 revolution Iran has had 80% dictatorship and 20% democracy. We have dictatorship because one person is in charge, the supreme leader � first Khomeini, now Khamenei. He controls the army and the clergy, the justice system and the media, as well as our oil money.

...Some suggest the protests will fade because nobody is leading them. All those close to Mousavi have been arrested, and his contact with the outside world has been restricted. People rely on word of mouth, because their mobile phones and the internet have been closed down. That they continue to gather shows they want something more than an election. They want freedom, and if they are not granted it we will be faced with another revolution.

...People say that Mousavi won't change anything as he is part of the establishment. That is correct to a degree because they wouldn't let anyone who is not in their circle rise to seniority. But not all members of a family are alike, and for Mousavi it is useful to understand how he has changed over time.

Before the revolution, Mousavi was a religious intellectual and an artist, who supported radical change but did not support the mullahs. After the revolution, when all religious intellectuals and even leftists backed Khomeini, he served as prime minister for eight years. The economy was stable, and he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt.

In order to neuralise his power, the position of prime minister was eliminated from the constitution and he was pushed out of politics. So Mousavi returned to the world of artists because in a country where there are no real political parties, artists can act as a party. The artists supported Khatami and now they support Mousavi.

Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he's a reformer. Now he knows Gandhi � before he knew only Che Guevara. If we gain power through aggression we would have to keep it through aggression. That is why we're having a green revolution, defined by peace and democracy.

It's a strange article in many ways. No-one has confimed Makhmalbaf's claim to speak for Mousavi that I know of, and there are no confirmed reports of all Mousavi's aides being rounded up or of Mousavi being restrained by security forces. On the other hand, Grand Ayatollah Kamenei did make it pretty obvious yesterday that Mousavi along with Rafsanjani and Khatami, risked ostracism from Iran's political elite, perhaps even arrest, if they didn't keep quiet. Still, isn't "I speak for Mousavi...To urge people to take to the streets because Mousavi could not do so directly" a bit of a dead giveaway to Khamanei if true?

I'm also puzzled by the whole Che to Ghandi transformation shtick, especially the line about "he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt." If this is supposed to be an official spokesperson for Mousavi acting as a conduit to Iranians and the world, then he's got to know he's playing dangerously there. As commenter Randal Cousins notes at the Guardian:

Did he just leave all that to the Information Ministry then?

In 1988, the Iranian government summarily and extrajudicially executed thousands of political prisoners held in Iranian jails. The government has never acknowledged these executions, or provided any information as to how many prisoners were killed. The majority of those executed were serving prison sentences for their political activities after unfair trials in revolutionary courts. Those who had been sentenced, however, had not been sentenced to death. The deliberate and systematic manner in which these extrajudicial executions took place constitutes a crime against humanity under international law.

Iran-Contra 1985-6. Did Iran's Prime Minister have any involvement in that? Not that there was anything wrong with Iran getting arms from anywhere during the war, but it would be interesting to know just what intermediaries and were involved. I expect the execution of the whistleblower Mehdi Hashemi in 1987 was someone else's responsibility, as well.

Funny how a man who was Prime Minister (with a reputation as a hardliner) of the much demonised Islamic Republic for 8 years during a time of war and represson, somehow emerges squeaky clean as a born again hero of liberal democracy 20 years later.

Must have been terrible for him, all those awful things being done by people around him, and him desperate to stop it and powerless to do so or even to resign in protest!

There's something oddly off here. Why isn't this statement in every major outlet instead of just the Guardian if the Iranian filmmaker's status is just as he claims? Until I see some confirmation, I'm taking the article with a huge pinch of salt.

There's also something oddly off with the report of a suicide bomb at Khomenei's shrine. I'm with Juan Cole on that one:

Hard to interpret, since I don't take the reformist camp for seedy terrorist types. My guess, if its true, is Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK or something very like it (which, if true, would be bad publicity for the reformers, since MEK is universally hated in Iran.)

Interesting times for Iranians, who have suffered more than most. At the moment, though, I see this situation gradually peterring out rather than growing into a full-fledged, color-coded, revolution. As Carnegie Endowment Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour writes:

The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei's people have privately sent signals to him that they're ready for a bloodbath, they're prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this, and is he willing to lead the people in the streets to slaughter?

Mousavi is not Khomeini, and Khamenei is not the Shah. Meaning, Khomeini would not hesitate to lead his followers to "martyrdom", and the Shah did not have the stomach for mass bloodshed. This time the religious zealots are the ones holding power.

The anger and the rage and sense of injustice people feel will not subside anytime soon, but if Mousavi concedes defeat he will demoralize millions of people. At the moment the demonstrations really have no other leadership. It's become a symbiotic relationship, Mousavi feeds off people's support, and the popular support allows Mousavi the political capital to remain defiant. So Mousavi truly has some agonizing decisions to make.

Rafsanjani's role also remains critical. Can he co-opt disaffected revolutionary elites to undermine Khamenei? As Khamenei said, they've known each other for 52 years, when they were young apostles of Ayatollah Khomeini. I expect that Khamenei's people have told Rafsanjani that if he continues to agitate against Khamenei behind the scenes, he and his family will be either imprisoned or killed, and that the people of Iran are unlikely to weep for the corrupt Rafsanjani family.

I dont see either Mousavi or Rasanjani risking their elite status and perhaps even their lives against Khamenei's willingness to play hardball.

Update: Mousavi hasn't been all that silenced as yet, so Makhmalbaf seems to have just been fanciful about his own roll. But Mousavi says he isn't backing down either so we'll have to wait and see if he calls his supporters back to the streets, something he hasn't yet done:

"In a public address in southwestern Tehran, Mousavi said he was ready for martyrdom and that he would continue his path," a Mousavi ally, who asked not to be named, told Reuters by telephone from the Jeyhun street in Tehran.

A witness to the address said Mousavi, centre of protests unprecedented in the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic, appeared to anticipate action against him.

"Mousavi called on people to go on national strike if he gets arrested," the witness told Reuters.