Iranian Democrats Establish a United Front

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

WASHINGTON – After years of bitter internal divisions and a series of crackdowns from the Islamic republic, the Iranian democratic opposition in the last two weeks has organized a united front to push for a referendum on the powers of the supreme leader.

In an interview with The New York Sun, a founder of the new front, which comprises the major student groups as well as leading lawyers and activists inside the country, said organizers this week began fanning out across the country to collect the names of fellow citizens for a petition supporting changes to the constitution to allow a referendum.

“We think this is a good step that all the opposition groups are united in one direction, the direction of the referendum,” Mohsen Sazegra said in a telephone interview from London. “As far as I know, this is a unique event. All groups from monarchists to republicans, from left to right are now behind us and they support the referendum movement.”

Mr. Sazegra is a founder of what in Farsi is called Tahkimeh Vahdat, which is translated into “strongest unity.” The organization includes many of the reformists who had tried to work within the system with President Khatemi, as well as supporters of the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlevi.

Perhaps most important though, the new unified front includes the Islamic student organizations active in the country’s universities. These groups originally supported the 1979 Islamic revolution but in recent years have demanded more political freedoms for the Iranian people. Indeed, activists led by one such leader, Abdollah Momeni, shouted down Mr. Khatemi yesterday in one of their boldest acts of defiance before the international press in recent months. In the middle of a speech at Tehran University, the onetime reformist president was heckled with taunts of “Shame on you,” and “Where are your promised freedoms?” according to a dispatch from the BBC and wire services. Mr. Khatemi, who was reported to be visibly flustered, responded by saying, “My period is going to be over soon but I do not owe anyone,” the Reuters news agency quoted him as saying. “Those power-seeking fanatics who ignored the people’s demands and resisted reforms…the ones who destroyed Iran’s image in the world, they owe me.”

The confrontation between a group of students and Mr. Khatemi could go a long way in dispelling the notion in the West that Iran’s democratic opposition has been demoralized after hard-line clerics prohibited most reformers from running for the elected assembly and have recently intensified efforts to arrest anti-regime bloggers and shut down critical newspapers.

For years, Iran’s opposition movement was driven underground and was said to lack a unifying leadership. Often, Western reporters would not print the names of the anti-regime rebels because of a fear of repercussions from the state, which has jailed and in some cases tortured and killed leaders of demonstrations in the country. Furthermore, there was little agreement among the Iranian opposition on the regime’s repression.

For many activists in the country, Mr. Khatemi’s reformers represented an opportunity to change the system from within. But Iran’s Guardian Council last February put an end to the reform movement when hundreds of legislators associated with Mr. Khatemi were barred from standing for election. In the months before the Iranian hard-liners rigged the election to the Majlis, Mr. Khatemi’s allies in that body pushed for a referendum on the powers of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

While Mr. Khatemi has been recognized abroad as the head of government of the Islamic republic, the real power there still resides in the unelected hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and other like-minded clerics who control the military and intelligence services and vet those individuals deemed suitable to stand for elected office. If the democratic opposition succeeds in getting its referendum and the regime recognizes the results, it would, for all intents and purposes, end the Islamic theocracy that has ruled over the country since the 1979 revolution.

Mr. Sazegra told the Sun yesterday that Tahkimeh Vahdat sought to gather handwritten signatures for the referendum petition inside the country to post on their new Web site, www.60000000.com, a site that hopes to eventually get 60,000,000 supporters for the referendum.

“We have received in the last two days already 350 e-mails containing the names of whole families, in some cases with 50 names each. This shows that the referendum is supported by the youth and their parents.” In the last two weeks, the Web site says 19,000 people have registered their support for the national vote. So concerned have the mullahs been about the Web site, that they have blocked access to it inside the country, borrowing a tactic from communist China.

“It’s fine that they want to block the Web site. We are just going to get the people to participate through the email,” he said. Mr. Sazegra said his organization planned to present the names of Iranians who sought the referendum to the United Nations and other international bodies. “We want to show the international community that this is the will of the Iranian people.”

Mr. Sazegra arrived in London in March for surgery on his ailing heart, a condition worsened when he was in an Iranian jail and led a 79-day hunger strike. He told the Sun he intended to return to Iran in the coming months, where the regime says he must spend another year in jail for his opposition activities. “If they send me to jail again, I will start another hunger strike.”

Unlike many in Iran’s exile opposition, Mr. Sazegra was originally a close ally of Ayatollah Khomenei. He was an early member of the Revolutionary Guard, the elite military force that has facilitated terrorist activities against America and Israel.

“In those days, we thought we were afraid of foreign attacks. I thought if we could have a militia to organize the people in an army then we could protect the country. I thought it was a good idea in those days. After three months after establishing it, I found out that I was not suitable for military action and went into radio and television. The revolutionary guard became something else. Now the revolutionary guard commanders intervene in politics,” he said.

Tahkimeh Vahdat also includes the lawyer for the families victimized by the chain murders of the 1990s, Nasser Zarafshan, who has been in prison since 2002; a former president of Tehran University, Mohammed Maliki; as well as a human rights lawyer who was arrested for attending an opposition conference in Berlin in 2001, Mehrangiz Kar. Ms. Kar is now a professor at Harvard University. From the ranks of student activists inside the country, the organization includes Ali Afshari, Reza Delbary, and Akbar Atri. The new group is also significant because it has enlisted support from Iran’s expatriate community in Europe and America.

Mr. Sazegra said that he was interested in enlisting support from Western democracies, including America, the country he fought against in 1979 when he was a member of the Revolutionary Guard.

“We need America to defend the democratic rights of the Iranian people. We want this right to vote in a referendum, we don’t want the current constitution, we want to change it,” he said. “We need practical help to defend Iranian people. If the Americans can use international policy and sanctions, not against the Iranian people, but against the officials of the regime, this would be good. The people of Iran would like to see the bank accounts frozen for the regime officials. If they publish the bank accounts, the Iranian people will be very happy.”

Mr. Sazegra also said he would like to see the State Department publicly call for the release of journalists and bloggers arrested in the last month.


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