The leader of Iran's ruling clerics must be made more accountable to reform demands and should shed some powers to break a "vicious circle" of control, said the most prominent dissident lawmaker and brother of the country's president.
Mohammad Reza Khatami -- who was deputy parliament speaker and among more than 2,400 candidates blacklisted from today's elections -- offered glimpses of a new high-stakes gambit: trying to pressure Iran's supreme leader and the power base that controls everything from foreign policy to the media.
"They have no accountability to any part of the government and to the people ... We have a vicious circle here," he said Wednesday at the headquarters of his party, the Islamic Participation Front.
The strategy of directly challenging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could win applause from many Iranians frustrated by stalled efforts for more political and social openness.
But it carries clear risks. The Islamic leadership has come down hard before on those perceived as threats to the system.
On Tuesday, Khatami and other pro-reform lawmakers made public a letter sent to Khamenei accusing him of allowing freedoms to be "trampled in the name of Islam."
The letter served as a parting salvo by banned reform candidates calling the elections a "parliamentary coup" and urging for a voter boycott. It also was a taboo-breaking missive against the country's top religious and political authority -- whose supporters say holds divine right to rule.
Khatami said Khamenei should dismantle some of his power structure to allow elected officials room to make key decisions.
"They know what the people want and, because of this, I think they should respond to this will of the people ... even if they don't like it," said Khatami, whose brother, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, has lost a great deal of appeal after backing down in his attempts to postpone the elections.
He added that reformers want to reach a point "for people to believe they could change the leader."
It would be a huge challenge.
Khamenei and his inner circle have vast and powerful resources, including militia forces and the judiciary. In recent years, conservatives have detained or intimidated hundreds of reformers and muzzled dozens of publications.
Late Wednesday, two reformist newspapers, Yas-e-No and Sharq, were ordered to suspend publication and top editors and staff were detained by judiciary agents for publishing portions of the reformers' letter to Khamenei, said Issa Sahakhiz, member of the Iranian branch of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
RSS