Lots more protests today in Iran:
One eyewitness estimates crowd more than a million, filling streets from Tehran University to Vali Square.
Pro-government militiamen fired tear gas at opposition demonstrators as anti-riot police looked on behind them during a rally in front of Tehran University on Friday.
BY ROBERT F. WORTH and ALAN COWELL
As thousands of opposition protesters chanted in the streets of Tehran, the former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Friday assailed the government’s handling of the post-election unrest, saying it had lost the trust of many Iranians and calling for the release of hundreds of protesters and democracy advocates arrested in recent weeks.
Speaking to a vast crowd at Tehran University that included the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi and many of his supporters, Mr. Rafsanjani called for unity and reconciliation in his prayer sermon. But he also used religious language hinting that he, like the protesters, believed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory on June 12 was achieved through fraud.
Mr. Rafsanjani, a powerful insider who supported Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, did not directly question the election results, which have been blessed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But he made clear that he believed Mr. Khamenei, who has laid the blame for the unrest on foreign powers and called for an end to protests, should take a more conciliatory stance.
Calling the election aftermath a “crisis,” Mr. Rafsanjani urged that restrictions on the press and on free speech be removed, in addition to the freeing of those detained since the election.
“A large group of Iranians say they have doubts about the election,” Mr. Rafsanjani said. “We should work to address these doubts.”
The election results led to the worst political turmoil since the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to challenge the election result, and a state crackdown followed.
Videos here:
Interesting commentary worth noting…
How Obama Killed the Iran Election Protests
Sadly, for ten days, Obama could not muster even a rebuke. When the crisis deepened and political pressure forced him to take a stand, the criticism he delivered was followed with an immediate concession of Iran’s sovereignty and a promise not to meddle in its internal affairs. While men and women were being brutalized and gunned down in the streets, the message sent by this administration is that there were “irregularities” in the election process, which needed to be investigated.
The call for an investigation was a travesty. What would such an investigation bring? In America, where limitation of powers was a founding principle, corrupt politicians such as Blagojevich and Tom Delay are shunned and brought to justice. In Iran, internal investigations are as contrived as the election was.
[..]
Obama’s timid response was worse than silence. Rather than validate and inspire the opposition, the leader of the free world bestowed the Islamic Republic with a veneer of legitimacy. This legitimacy serves as a powerful weapon in international debate, and is decidedly undeserved. So long as he continues to evade the danger of a nation such as Iran, which aims to violently spread Sharia law to the rest of the world, Obama will lend sanction to a very dangerous regime.
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