Now that the opposition has been crushed, Iran clerics can afford to be magnanimous toward the opposition... and get on with those no-precondition talks with the Obama administration.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Softens Tone on Reformists CAIRO — Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appears to have undercut President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s attempt to convict dozens of former government officials, journalists and academics of collaborating with the West to overthrow the government, saying a connection had not been proved.
But Ayatollah Khamenei has stood by the government’s position that foreign forces orchestrated the postelection protests that gripped the country after Mr. Ahmadinejad claimed a landslide victory in the disputed presidential election in June.
“I don’t accuse the leaders of the recent incidents of being affiliated with foreign countries, including the U.S. and Britain, since the issue has not been proven for me,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with a group of university students in Tehran on Wednesday, according to Iranian news services. “But there is no doubt that the events were planned, no matter whether their leaders knew it or not.”
The comments, while appearing to throw the brakes on the most damaging charges against those under arrest, fit neatly with Ayatollah Khamenei’s track record of moving to reinforce his authority by cultivating divisions between factions. It also appeared to be a first step toward trying to reclaim a position as the fair arbiter, a standing badly damaged by his handling of the election dispute, political analysts said.
While he has shown no support for rescuing the reform movement from its current political impotence, he has alternated allegiances within the hard-line factions, nurturing tension between various arms of the state.
He appointed Sadeq Larijani, a member of the hard-line camp who is an adversary of the president, as head of the judiciary. He appointed a cleric, Kazem Sedighi, who is also a rival of the president, as a new leader of Friday Prayer. And on Thursday, there were more unconfirmed reports that Ayatollah Khamenei had fired the Tehran prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, who was close to the president and was responsible for orchestrating the mass trials of those accused of plotting a so-called velvet revolution.
“Khamenei has always ruled from a position of insecurity,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He’s wary of capable, independent-minded people who could one day challenge his authority, and has tried to insure his pre-eminence by selecting subordinates who are absolutely loyal to him but opposed to one another.”
Ayatollah Khamenei’s comments were the latest in a series of small, if significant, steps that appeared aimed at slowing Mr. Ahmadinejad’s drive to consolidate power and define members of the reform movement as enemies of the state. There is even the suggestion, some political analysts said, that the supreme leader has begun to grow weary of Mr. Ahmadinejad, especially after the president resisted his demand not to appoint Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei as vice president. Mr. Mashaei was eventually appointed the president’s chief of staff.
In his comments, Ayatollah Khamenei suggested that the protest leaders were duped, rather than conspirators, and in so doing signaled that, for now, he would not go along with calls for arresting top reform leaders like Mir Hussein Moussavi, Mehdi Karroubi or Mohammad Khatami, a former president.
“His confrontation with Ahmadinejad did not leave a good taste in his mouth, over the appointment with Mashaei,” said Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University. “He is stuck with Ahmadinejad, and he is stuck with the Revolutionary Guard and their daily demands to arrest Moussavi. He is trying to calm them down.”
The leadership on Thursday appeared to be moving to blunt some of the more serious charges against it — including that prisoners were treated badly, tortured and even raped — while amplifying the leader’s notion that reform figures were pawns in the postelection crisis and therefore should be pardoned.
A former vice president, Muhammad Ali Abtahi, whose noticeable weight loss has raised concerns over his treatment, was allowed for the first time since his arrest to post remarks on his popular blog. It said that the election was clean and that the protests were organized by outsiders.
“This is a crisis which in my opinion torments the spirit of the political prisoners,” Mr. Abtahi wrote. “I hope that the decision makers will understand this point and release this group quicker so by being free they can present this perspective in society.”
Mr. Abtahi also wrote about his personal anguish — missing his daughter’s college graduation and his granddaughter’s first steps. “Loneliness,” he wrote, “is very painful.”
Iranian Web sites also carried what they said was a blog post written by Saeed Hajjarian, the prominent reformist intellectual and former deputy intelligence minister whose confession was read in court and who appeared to be in poor health.
There was no way to verify the account, in which Mr. Hajjarian said that he was being well cared for in a facility with Internet and a swimming pool. It also said that his interrogator, Haj Ali, had treated him like family, cooking for him and even drying his hair when he came out of the pool.
At one point the post said that the interrogator was so distraught by public charges that Mr. Hajjarian had been tortured that he began to cry. “As he was crying, he said, ‘Why do they lie like this? Aren’t they afraid of God?’ ” asked the interrogator, the blog post read.
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