Hang Mousavi?

Show trials, possible execution, hang over "US agent" Mousavi

DEBKAfile Exclusive report

July 4, 2009, 7:35 PM (GMT+02:00)

Has the supreme leader turned against opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi?

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, driven by a thirst for revenge, is preparing a wave of show trials, public confessions and executions to crush the opposition which dared to refute the legitimacy of his election. The West, especially the Obama administration, hoping the bloody crackdown was over, can forget about re-engaging Tehran in talks on the nuclear controversy any time soon, when Mir Hossein Mousavi and the reformist ex-president Mohammed Khatami are denounced for "acting as America's fifth column."

Hossein Shariatmadari, writing in the conservative Kayhan daily Saturday, July 4, said Mousavi must be put on trial as a "US agent" who committed "horrible crimes and treason." The writer is a close adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and must be presumed to represent his boss's views.

Ahmadinejad is pointing the finger at "US and British instigators" in order to conceal the widespread popular disaffection which brought masses out to the streets to protest against the regime, and to trump up a pretext for sentencing accused ringleaders to death.

His pressure on the supreme leader to support harsh punishment seems to be working.

The announcement Friday, July 3, that some Iranian British embassy employees would be tried for acting against national security is part of this campaign. One was said to have confessed. Nine were originally detained and two remain in custody.

The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly disclosed that last week, intelligence minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejee bluntly warned Mousavi that he and members of his family went in danger of their lives if they carried their opposition to the regime any further. He reminded him of the fate on Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian co-ed who was gunned down by the Basij militia.

Mousavi is therefore under enormous pressure to back down and send his supporters home. So far he has refused to do so, but claims he does not know who organized the latest demonstrations.

His home is under siege by security forces who say it is for his own protection. One of Mousavi's deepest fears is that Ahmadinejad will have him put on trial and executed on the charge of causing mass deaths, thereby making the opposition rather than the regime responsible for the bloodshed of recent weeks.

The chief of Iran's security forces, Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam, announced last Wednesday that 1,032 arrests had been made during the post-election street protests. Our Iranin sources put the number much higher - between 5,000 and 6,000. The first "confessions" have been broadcast by detainees who had obviously been tortured.

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Iran can't win on this,

they can only tune the speed of the revolt.

They can just let it plod along at its own speed or

push the revolution into over drive with executions.

Gerald

Anthropologist

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