Iran: Protesters turn to less visible tactics of dissension

TEHRAN - Iran's hardline leadership seemed to have gained the upper hand yesterday, with riot police and Basiji militia combining to keep opposition demonstrators from Tehran's squares and Mir-Hossein Mousavi reportedly under 24-hour guard.

The Iranian film director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who is acting as an informal spokesman abroad for the protest in Iran, said Mousavi was no longer able to speak freely to reporters.

Iran's rulers also turned their fury towards the outside world yesterday, starting tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions with Britain and accusing the head of the United Nations of "meddling" in the country's affairs.

At the same time there was a significant hardening of position from United States President Barack Obama who said that the "US and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days ... and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost".

Inside Iran, the regime continued with its draconian measures against the opposition. It announced the setting up of special courts for arrested protesters and rejected outright demands to annul the election.

There were no reports of violent clashes between Mousavi supporters and the security forces yesterday, suggesting the regime's crackdown was working.

Protesters were said to be opting for less confrontational tactics: honking their horns, turning on their car headlights and holding up posters.

Indeed, the only protesters seen in any great numbers were about 100 students outside the British Embassy in Tehran. They burned US, British and Israeli flags and pelted the building with tomatoes, voicing their anger at what they said was international meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

Speaking from Paris, Makhmalbaf, the director of the 2001 film Kandahar and a friend of Mousavi for 20 years, denied suggestions the protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were losing steam.

"The regime, arguably, is losing ground, not the protests. Ordinary Iranians are openly rejecting the legitimacy and power of Ayatollah Khamenei. That is entirely new, unheard of."

In Tehran, authorities vowed that "rioters" held in the worst unrest since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 would be taught a lesson, with a special court set up to study the cases against them.

Official results from the June 12 election gave Ahmadinejad 63 per cent of the votes, almost double Mousavi's share, but there have been widespread allegations of vote rigging.

Iran's state television reported yesterday that the Guardian Council, the country's top legislative body looking into the complaints, had been granted a request for an extension until June 29.

It was not clear why the council needed the extra days. Its spokesman had earlier ruled out any possibility of the election being annulled and said discrepancies in the vote-counting were statistically insignificant as far as the final result was concerned.

With the domestic situation apparently under control, Iran's leadership turned its ire on the international community. It expelled two British diplomats from Tehran and lambasted the UN for interfering in Iran's affairs at the behest of London and Washington.

The clampdown on journalists continued. Iason Athanasiadis, a Greek national reporting for the Washington Times, was the latest confirmed to be in detention.

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders put the number of detained at 34, while the Committee to Protect Journalists, in New York, said 13 were still in custody.

The opposition must now decide what to do next. Mousavi, who was Prime Minister during the Iran-Iraq war, is part of the establishment and has said he does not want to undermine the Islamic Republic.

Asked to explain where the opposition might go from here, Makhmalbaf said Mousavi had urged his supporters to "adopt the tactics of Gandhi, the tactics of non-violent protest and civil disobedience".

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