November
4 , 2002 9:00 a.m. End
of the Road
Iran’s
Mohammed Khatami, on his way out.
ast Wednesday two leading members of the Iranian parliament were killed
when their automobile went off the road into a ravine north of Tehran.
You would be hard-pressed to find an informed citizen who thinks it was
an accident; and the Ayatollah Taheri, the now-celebrated cleric who resigned
as the leading religious hierarch of Isfahan, announced they had been
executed by the regime, and went on to denounce the Supreme Leader, Ali
Khamanei, and his band of thugs.
Taheri
has been a constant critic of the Khamenei tyranny for some time, but
had been left free because of his considerable prestige and support from
other leading ayatollahs. But this outburst was too much, and orders were
given to arrest him. However, when the police tried to carry out the orders,
they found the citizens of Isfahan — long considered the most-rebellious
city in the country — ready to fight in defense of Taheri, and the
police were forced to inform Khamenei that they were unable to arrest
Taheri. The uneasy and potentially explosive standoff continues.
The two dead parliamentarians
included Ali-Reza Nouri, the brother of a former interior minister, and,
like his brother, an outspoken opponent of the regime. Ali-Reza had been
a supporter of Iran's enfeebled president, Mohammad Khatami, but recently
announced his intention to demand Khatami's resignation, which might have
precipitated even greater public outcries and demonstrations against the
regime.
It is hard to see
how even such a timid and impotent figure as Khatami can remain in office.
He made a gesture of bravado last month by introducing two bills, both
passed by parliament, insisting that the religious leaders had no power
to overrule his actions. The most-revered religious figure in Iran, the
Ayatollah Montazeri — now in his sixth year of house arrest in Isfahan
— proclaimed that in fact Khatami was right, and the exercise of
such arbitrary power by the regime was not permitted by the Constitution.
But Khamenei and his henchmen have no interest in such legal niceties,
and continue to veto any and all efforts to introduce pockets of freedom
into the life of the Islamic Republic, and so far have demonstrated the
will to arrest, torture, and kill anyone who tries to challenge them.
Well-informed Iranians with whom I have spoken believe that the "accident"
that befell Nouri and his colleague was an explicit warning to Khatami:
If you dare challenge us further, you will end up the same way.
Meanwhile, the killing
continues relentlessly, with public hangings and stonings the order of
the day. And the silence of the West continues apace. Fascinating, isn't
it, that the human-rights establishment goes ballistic over the scheduled
stoning of one Nigerian woman, but says hardly a word about the three
recent stonings in Iran, with more in the works? And it's equally fascinating
that neither the Department of State nor the staff of the National Security
Council denounces the wave of repression under way in Iran. What can explain
the apparent indifference of Colin Powell and Richard Armitage in Foggy
Bottom, and Elliott Abrams at the NSC? Do they find Iranians less deserving
of human rights than Nigerians? And what can explain the interminable
silence of the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and
the New York Times, as well as the major news networks, to the
butchery of the Islamic Republic? At the time of the Khomeini Revolution,
journalists such as Robin Wright and Elaine Sciolino decried the shah's
sins. Why do they now blunt their pens?
In any event, the
regime now finds itself between many large rocks and innumerable hard
places, as demonstrated by the constantly self-contradictory statements
issued from the mouths of the mullahs. They punish anyone who suggests
it would be goo for Iran to have better relations with the United States,
yet they pursue improved relations themselves, most recently by sending
a new ambassador to the United Nations with a public mandate to woo American
officials and opinion makers. One day they promise to fight against any
American action against Iraq, and the next they promise not to intervene
if there is a U.N. resolution to that end. They issue a statement promising
to support a two-state "solution" to the Palestinian question
if the Palestinians accept it, and then swear eternal enmity to Israel
and denounce anyone who supports a two-state policy. They deny the presence
of al Qaeda terrorists on Iranian soil, and then leak the "news"
that a son of Osama bin Laden entered Iran, and was immediately expelled
to Pakistan, or maybe it was Saudi Arabia. But Western experts know that
hundreds of al Qaeda fighters and leaders have either transited Iran,
or remain there in safe havens.
Like the rest of
the terror masters, and their appeasers in Europe, the Iranians are trying
desperately to buy time, hoping against hope that President Bush will
lose his nerve and call off the revolutionary war. They will say and do
anything that gets them through another day, but they know that once the
war starts they are doomed.
Faster, please. Don't
let the war against terrorism turn into a replay of the Gulf War, with
the tyrants still in power.
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ast Wednesday two leading members of the Iranian parliament were killed
when their automobile went off the road into a ravine north of Tehran.
You would be hard-pressed to find an informed citizen who thinks it was
an accident; and the Ayatollah Taheri, the now-celebrated cleric who resigned
as the leading religious hierarch of Isfahan, announced they had been
executed by the regime, and went on to denounce the Supreme Leader, Ali
Khamanei, and his band of thugs.
