Iran

Review of: MY LIFE AS A TRAITOR: AN IRANIAN MEMOIR, by Zarah Ghahramani

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $14, 256 pages, Reviewed by Iason Athanasiadis

ISTANBUL -- The confession she was urged to sign made Zarah Ghahramani out to be "a sort of Mata Hari, part spy, part whore." But all this teenage student at Tehran University was guilty of when she stumbled through a harrowing imprisonment in Tehran's Evin Prison was participating in the greatest civil unrest in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A spokesman for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the head of Iran’s opposition "Green Movement," blamed the Islamic Republic for the killing of the former presidential candidate's nephew on Sunday. The spokesman alleged it was a targeted assassination.

For a foreign correspondent, private life always seems to take a back seat to work. Though I have conveniently solved the problem by effectively abolishing my own private life, these Christmas holidays have been a particularly trying time as Iran's crisis — a story I have covered since its first stages in June — reaches melting point.

The mourning ceremonies of Ashura are some of the most spectacular traditions surviving Iran's Islamic antiquity. Although I am a Greek Orthodox Christian, the commemoration ceremonies marking the killing of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's grandson in 680 AD are as reminiscent of Easter as they are alien and otherworldly.

Iran saw its deadliest day of protests in six months on Sunday as hundreds of thousands of people clashed with security forces on the streets of major cities at the climax of a Shiite religious festival.

At least four people were reportedly killed in incidents where regime forces shot live gunfire into crowds, according to those identifying with reformist groups.

Iranian police opened fire on demonstrators Sunday, killing the nephew of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and several others and creating new martyrs and momentum for Iran's opposition on the holiest day for Shi'ite Muslims.

Witnesses and opposition Web sites said that clashes took place in Tehran and at least two other cities and were the most massive in several months. Among the dead was Seyed Al Hossein Mousavi, 35.

Press TV, an English-language channel run by the government, said Mr. Mousavi was killed by "unknown assailants."

Please follow the link below to view the video.

http://cspan.org/Watch/Media/2009/11/30/HP/A/26629/Woodrow+Wilson+Center...

The grave of Neda Soltan, the Iranian demonstrator whose murder, captured on a cellphone video, became an international symbol for resistance to the Ahmadinejad regime, has been desecrated, according to eyewitnesses in Tehran.

Neda Agha Soltan was killed at the height of the anti-government protests that rocked Iran during the post-election unrest in June. Within hours of her death on the streets of central Tehran, a shocking video of her death went viral, making her the most iconic victim of the Iranian conflict.

Please follow the link below to view the video.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/deathintehran/view/

Iran escalated its standoff with the West as it put a French academic on trial Saturday and confirmed that it had transferred to Tehran three Americans detained on the Iran-Iraq border.

Beyond the power struggle playing out on the streets of Tehran is a complex battle for control of Iran's intelligence ministry -- a pivotal institution in the regime's repression of dissent.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who began a second term this week, fired Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei late last month after Mr. Ejei objected to the president's efforts to name an in-law as first vice president.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came out flailing at the West during his inauguration on Wednesday as a White House spokesman touched off a diplomatic crisis with Iran by retracting an earlier statement referring to the controversial Iranian leader as that country's "elected leader."

"Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "I denoted that Mr Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran … Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that, and we'll let them decide about that."