Sunday, August 23

Zombies of Tehran (4#) -

Iran's Green Velvet Plot -

On Friday, Haleh Esfandiari described at the WaPo how she was arrested in Iran and incarcerated in early 2007, at the age of 67, for "attempting to foment a 'velvet revolution' to overthrow the Iranian government."

She makes a couple of very good points in her Op-Ed:

The "vast conspiracy" is predicated on the fallacy of a monolith which actually consists of disparate organizations which disagree on too many issues to join together. And the protesters were calling for reform, not revolution.

But, much more to the point at hand, this much vaunted fairytale Green Velvet Plot was already on the shelf and ready to be used long before the recent election - and is independent of the election. [wapo]

# Buried Alive: Writer Ahmad Zeidabadi has been kept in a small coffin-like box during his solitary confinement and was told that everyone else had been released from prison already, leaving him all alone and forgotten. There have been other reports emerging of other prisoners being put into deeply-dug holes on prison grounds to simulate being buried alive. Whoever is responsible for this belongs in the dock at The Hague.

# Amir Taheri comments on Ayatollah Janati's Friday sermon at Tehran U, calling for the arrest of the top level leaders of the "plot."

# At the LAT a warning about that prospect:

"But reformists close to the security forces have warned that such a move would cross a "red line" that would trigger dire consequences. For now, the calls to arrest Mousavi and Karroubi appear to be attempts to silence them and their supporters, who continue to speak out."

Ramadan begins in Iran.

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