High Ranking Iranian Cleric: Protesters Should Be Executed
The protests and riots continue unabated in Iran. Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi – and of reforms that could very well lead to the end of the theocratic regime – refuse to give up, despite several threats from their ‘elected officials.’ Meanwhile, the regime has declared war on the dissidents, declaring them traitors, infidels, and more.
Today, a senior cleric – Ahmad Khatami, a member of the powerful Assembly of Experts – said that the judiciary should punish the ‘rioters’ hard. Their leaders, he said, should be “executed.”
“I want the judiciary to … punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson,” Khatami told worshippers at Tehran University on Friday.
“They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely,” he said. Under Iran’s Islamic law, punishment for people convicted as “mohareb” is execution.
What stuns me most about the protests is the confusion among the country’s religious and political leaders. I get the strong impression they have no idea what to do. They want to send the army in and start shooting people randomly, but they do not have the guts to do so out of fear that an Iranian Tianenmen will cause a full scale revolution.
For now, it seems that they opt for oppression, but not on the grand scale they’d like to, hoping that the protesters will just ‘go away.’ From the looks of it, this is not going to happen, however. The protesters smell blood, and are fed up with the extremists who have taken away their freedoms for three decades now. The extremist version of Shi’ism has failed. And both Iranians and their government know it.
Basij militia members are attacked regularly, Quite some of them have lost their lives.
Meanwhile, the pressure from especially conservative blogs seems to be paying off in America. President Obama finally condemned Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for stealing the elections, and oppressing their people. Although this is a welcome development, it is too little, and especially too late. He should have done this at the very moment Mousavi supporters revolted. Obama tried to hide, not lead. That’s a mortal sin for the most powerful man on earth; which is what the president of America is.
The world has to keep a close eye on what’s happening in Tehran: The unrest could change not just this country, but the entire Middle East.
I don’t recall Obama editorializing on the elections themselves, only the attacks on the protesters. Has he said something new since his last statement? Or maybe I missed that part.
Either way, I wonder what the reaction will be. I think Khatami may be acting as proxy to Khamenei, who likely would face full scale revolution if he said these things himself.
I agree Michael, his only comments in the last statement were a direct response to Ahmadnijad, and because of the tact he is taking he looks like the adult in that conversation, McCain and the others on the other hand looks like someone who goes off half cocked, like Ahmadnijad. The truth is that first, there is not much we can do about this situation and second, a positive outcome here would be best if it were home grown. The other thing to remember is that much of the conservative’s power (in Iran) stems from their ability to scapegoat the West. A hostile Western leader (read Bush) provides such regimes with the tension that keeps everything together for them. It was really the only thing that was keeping things together for Ahmadnijad, people in and out of government were pretty dissatisfied with him, there was even talk about impeachment at one point. Without an opponent in the White House for him to rail against, much of his purpose was in question. This was clear to a lot of people, not just Obama. I had had conversations with many people to the effect that Bush and Ahmadnijad needed each other for this purpose. Obama went out of his way to cut these lines of tension that were supporting the conservative position in Iran. In a way, Obama is partly to blame for the current mess in Iran, if they still had Bush in office to kick around, they could talk about external threats rather than have people think about the internal mess and smell weakness on the part of the conservatives. This is the way the conservatives here behave too.
can not agree more with this article. its a credit to the publishers. this is by far the nearest to the truth about the situation in iran and usa president where he decided to sit on the fence for the time being which i am sure will not be appreciated by those being beaten and murdered by the thugs in tehran streets and other cities.
this is the time to stand behind the iranians and support them full heartedly if the world wants to rid itself of this fascist regime that apparently has its own brown and black shirts.
history will judge western leaders.