CNN’s Navarrette gets Iran wrong

The Huffington Post
Posted: June 22, 2009
By Sanjeev Bery

CNN.com columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. is the latest to join the chorus of voices calling on President Obama to get tougher with the Iranian government. While tempting, the CNN commentator’s words fail to consider the legacy of 25 years of U.S. intervention against Iranian democracy.

John Kerry on Iran

“The last thing we should do is give Mr. Ahmadinejad an opportunity to evoke the 1953 American-sponsored coup, which ousted Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and returned Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power. Doing so would only allow him to cast himself as a modern-day Mossadegh, standing up for principle against a Western puppet.”

U.S. Senator John Kerry

Opinion:  “With Iran, Think Before You Speak”
June 17, 2009;  The New York Times

Ayatollah vs. Ayatollah

McClatchy News is reporting that one of Iran’s most senior clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, has called the election rigged.  He has also criticized the government crackdown on Mousavi supporters.   Montazeri himself was a leader of the 1979 revolution and a one-time rival to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for the nation’s top position.

And yes, he has his own website.  Got Farsi?

Iran’s senior ayatollah slams election, confirming split

McClatchy Newspapers
Tue, Jun. 16, 2009

By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay

TEHRAN, Iran — Supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main rival in the disputed presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, massed in competing rallies Tuesday as the country’s most senior Islamic cleric threw his weight behind opposition charges that Ahmadinejad’s re-election was rigged.

“No one in their right mind can believe” the official results from Friday’s contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad.