In the latest round of protests against Ahmadinejad administration’s impartiality and attempts to cleanse the Ministry of Intelligence of the old guard, Tabnak website,” affiliated with former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezaei, published an interview with an intelligence expert blasting the administration’s “hurried decisions to fire or force into retirement a considerable percentage of the intelligence community’s experienced, expert and elite forces.”
One intelligence expert tells Rooz, “After enduring through several crises starting with the chain murders, the reform government [1997-2005] succeeded, to the extent possible in the Islamic Republic, in breaking the absolute monopoly of radical right-wingers over the control of the Ministry of Intelligence. However, since the coming to power of the ninth administration, it was predictable for the ministry to take harsher positions in confronting opposition political parties and critics of the principalist (as conservative ideologues are called) block’s total control, particularly civil society activists.”
This expert notes the “intelligence community’s great concern is that about the invitation by the current administration to bring back those officers and agents who were removed from the ministry of intelligence by president Khatami following the chain murder of dissidents.” He adds, “This security organization’s open intrusion into the field of violent confrontations with social movements and the increasing attempts to push this ministry into full-fledged confrontation of political opponents is a clear sign of the presence of such forces in the ministry of intelligence.”
According to this expert, “In addition to social activists, the ministry of intelligence quickly became a tool in the hands of Ahmadinejad to influence political developments such that, in the case of Hossein Mousavian (a former member of Iran’s National Security Council who was involved in international talks over the country’s nuclear program), which was orchestrated by Ahmadinejad and his allies to take revenge from two-time president and two-time Majlis speaker and current head of the state Expediency Council Hashemi Rafsanjani, this ministry and its minister assumed the leading role in advancing allegations in the case, to the point that they put the ministry of intelligence face to face with the judiciary, openly threatening to publish the contents of this secret trial to undermine the judiciary’s verdict.”
Tabnak website accuses Ahmadinejad’s administration of “forcing into retirement and expelling a considerable percentage of experienced intelligence officers,” some of whom “have served as intelligence officers for more than 20 years in the Islamic Republic.” According to some experts, the administration’s move is a foundational change in an organization that, despite the rise of several parallel security and intelligence organizations, continues to be the country’s largest intelligence organization with a hefty annual budget.
The website’s reference to the retirement of a majority of the ministry of intelligence’s experienced officers is true; because many of them entered intelligence operations during the first decade of the Islamic Republic’s existence and gained experience in the past two decades.
However, Tabnak notes that the Ahmadinejad’s administration is willing to take any measure to gain control over the ministry. The website points to the creation of “livelihood problems” for officers not aligned with the administration, and quotes its intelligence expert, “The creation of livelihood problems for forces whose worth for the nation’s security cannot be measured in monetary terms will bring nothing but damage to our nation.”
In recent weeks conservative seventh Majlis deputies (who will be leaving the legislature soon) who are not aligned with the administration have presented legislation to limit the ministry of intelligence’s role in providing information that could lead to disqualification of candidates running for office. Initially, the legislation failed to gain majority support in the Majlis, but it was revised and forwarded to the National Security Committee for further examination.
If this piece of legislation is passed, the ministry of intelligence will only be able to provide information regarding a candidate’s criminal history and spying for foreigners. Also, local investigations will be limited to ensuring that a candidate is not notorious.
Fifty members of the seventh Majlis, including some prominent deputies from Tehran, have signed this legislation. The legislation gained 118 favorable votes to be brought to the Majlis floor, which demonstrates the dissatisfaction of many of seventh Majlis deputies who previously supported the Ministry of Intelligence’s role in disqualifying reformist candidates, but now favor limiting the ministry’s role, fearing Ahmadinejad’s administration complete control of the organization.
Rooz
What we have said here is only a brief listing of academic violations and denial of right to education in Iranian universities today. Students are determined to continue their legal and rightful struggle to promote independence of universities and uphold academic freedoms, although many are sacrificed down this path.
Iran is a state party to both the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (without reservation) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), both of which prohibit the execution of persons under the age of 18 at the time of their offense. In ratifying the CRC, Iran declared an extremely broad reservation, “not to apply any provisions or articles of the Convention that are incompatible with Islamic Laws.”
one must not forget that one aspect of “security” cases is the image that they carry for the groups that advance such issues. Therefore, before fake charges take to the news-media and become public, those who have had a hand in arresting the students must be weakened. Otherwise, after the severe charges are made public, repeated and are tied to the image of the actors, even the intervention of the head of the judiciary (as history demonstrates) cannot be of much help to the detainees.
How can we tell the judiciary officials of Iran that according to law juveniles can stay alive and continue to live with appropriate and suitable punishment? How must one make this request from the judiciary a public and wide-spread demand and point out that killing a juvenile who has not wholeheartedly committed an act does not solve any of the real problems facing the country?
Thousands of university students in an Iranian city have held a protest against the attempted sexual harassment of a female colleague by a top university official, the press reported on Monday. About 3,000 students at the university in the northwestern city of Zanjan staged the sit-in protest over the weekend at a sports hall on campus, the reports said.
