Iran Intensifies Crackdown Against Greens
The Nation Magazine / Robert Dreyfuss
03-Mar-2011

Iran’s chief prosecutor, along with Iran’s ruling establishment, is saying, in effect: “No more Mr. Nice Guy.” You might think that the regime, besieged since June, 2009, when a disputed election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office sent millions of Iranians into the streets, has already been pretty tough. But Iranian Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei this week issued new warnings to the Green Movement and its allies: “Today, this movement has gone beyond sedition and turned into [a] counter-revolutionary [one]. Our policy in dealing with the [seditious] movement will be different from now on.”

He didn’t say what he meant, but according to the Iranian opposition, the movement’s two top leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have been arrested and taken away, or at least been placed under forcible house arrest. Earlier, there were calls for Mousavi, a former prime minister, and Karroubi, a former speaker of the parliament, to be executed, but Iranian officials have backed off such threats, perhaps fearing that the execution of two of the men who challenged Ahmadinejad in the 2009 election could spark an explosion. Even so, thousands of people took to the streets in the Iranian capital yesterday, and at least seventy-nine >>>

recommended by didani

Share/Save/Bookmark