A Brief History…

The Iranian regime has now taken to assassination of public figures in its attempts to control the growing rioting.

Seyed Ali Moussavi Habibi was witnessing a 4WD Neissan Patrol car running over a few people in front of his house before being shot and killed with the same people in the car. After running over a few people 5 people get off the car and one of them comes very close to Seyed ali Moussavi and shoots him with a gun in a way that the bullet passes through his chest and comes out from his back. Then all 5 get on the car and run away.

This man was the nephew of opposition leader Hossein Mousavi. MIchael Ledeen makes several good points.

if you study the videos you will see many many women in the front ranks. They have every reason to be there, as the Islamic Republic (as so many Islamic regimes) is built on the sludge of misogyny.

Remember the young woman murdered at a demonstration last summer ? There are lots of women in these demonstrations.

Second, the head of the regime, Kamenei, may be planning to escape to Russia with supporters if the regime collapses. This coming Sunday is Ashura, the greatest holy day in Shiite Islam. I expect a crisis this week. I am not the only one thinking of collapse.

SPIEGEL: Montazeri succeeded in recent months in uniting the religious and secular wings of the opposition. Has his death weakened the dissident movement?
Kadivar: The exact opposite is true. The mourning will actually strengthen the opposition’s determination. The Shiite Ashura (a religious holiday to take place on Sunday), which is symbolically about justice, will provide a further boost for the protest. The authorities are not able to ban this ceremony, which coincides with the seventh day after Montazeri’s death.
SPIEGEL: Do you expect a further escalation of state repression? Will the government dare to arrest the opposition politicians Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi?
Kadivar: You cannot rule out the possibility; at the same time, the rulers also fear any kind of escalation — and rightly so. The next level could be open rebellion. But things have not gotten that far yet. There is still a chance for a peaceful reform of the state.

Obama, of course, is clueless.

More from Michael Totten with a powerful analogy.

“The clock began to tick for Ayatollah Khamenei’s fall from today,” said one of Iran’s few former female members of parliament Fatemeh Haghighatjou. “Killing people on Ashura shows how far Mr. Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests. People are comparing him more with Yazid because they consider him responsible for the order to use violence against people.”

Ashura is a Shia religious holiday, and it is not joyous. It is a day of lamentation that marks the date when the forces of the Umayyad caliph Yazid killed Hussein, son of Ali and grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, during the Battle of Karbala in the year 680. It’s one of the most infamous episodes in the struggle for power that permanently ruptured the house of Islam into its warring Sunni and Shia halves. The Shia–the partisans of Ali and his lineage–have been at war with the Sunnis–those who took the side of Yazid–for thirteen centuries. That Khamenei’s security people would murder unarmed demonstrators on this day of all days, and that his opponents now denounce him as the Yazid of Iran, may very well set most of the religious conservatives against him for as long as he and his government live.

Tags: Iran

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