For “Quds Day” (Jerusalem Day) in the streets of Tehran to turn into an opportunity for the regime to gather against a small group of opposition members in the streets of Iranian cities, instead of its attention being directed to celebrating the occasion introduced by Imam Khomeini to keep the occupied city in memory and as a focus of concern, only indicates the extent of the obsession which opposition forces have come to represent for this regime, despite its claims that it has successfully overcome the test of the last presidential elections. They lost their minds in Tehran yesterday at the occasion of “Quds Day”: assaulting former President Mohammad Khatami and insulting him among his followers; preventing former President Hashemi Rafsanjani from delivering his sermon on the last Friday of Ramadan, as he has for the past thirty years, despite having declared his allegiance to the Supreme Leader and washed his hands of the opposition's criticisms; expelling Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi from among those gathered to celebrate Quds Day, with the aim of asserting the sole supremacy of Ahmadinejad's supporters on the street. There is another aspect to what took place in Tehran yesterday, one of the utmost significance. Indeed, raising the banner of Jerusalem, which was once sufficient to gather the Iranian masses around it, considering that the defense of Palestine is one of the main “functions” of the Iranian revolution, no longer lures most Iranians away from the silence over the other functions they demand from this regime, among them improving the living conditions of citizens, lifting the burden of the economic crisis from them, and preventing them from being subjected to the new sanctions which the West is expected to impose on them. This means that distracting the interior with foreign problems is no longer the magic wand that tickles most Iranians and drives them to gather around it. Indeed, despite a few Palestinian keffiehs seen adorning heads during yesterday's demonstrations, some slogans were also heard, chanting: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, we want to live in Iran”. Such slogans bear great significance particularly at this time, when the confrontation between Iran and the West is being raised to a high level, under the pressure of set dates for future meetings between Iran and the group of six countries, and after the Obama Administration announced the modification of the strategic defense system in Europe, known as the missile shield, as such defense would be directed at facing the Iranian threat and not just supposed threats from Russia, as was previously believed. All of this makes leveling accusations against members of the opposition of being “foreign instruments” quite an easy matter. Such accusations have not included Ahmadinejad's competitors in the elections, at least so far, after Khamenei settled the issue, denying that these candidates were followers of those foreign forces. Yet other opposition members have not been spared, the Iranian President having said yesterday that it was Israel that incited them against him. Using foreign issues to distract the interior is nothing new, and if the Iranian regime does this, it copies the desperate experiences of Arab regimes that found in foreign issues (and particularly in that of Israel) the best help in the face of its domestic problems. Thus internal silence become required to allow the regime to devote itself to its foreign work tools, which are usually little more than raising slogans and gathering demonstrations, where campaigns against members of the opposition mix with calls for storming the borders of Israel and liberating it, as the regime succeeds in the first and rarely achieves any step forward in the second. Yet one must recognize that Ahmadinejad has surpassed all others. Indeed, slogans of “wiping Israel off the map” and “the lie of the Holocaust” arouse mockery abroad and provide further ammunition to gather enemies against Iran. Yet they represent a profound source of concern for members of the opposition, as every time such a tone rises, there is an increase of official zeal to toss them in the basket of conspiring with foreign powers (and in this case specifically Israel). This leaves them faced with two options: retiring or going to jail, which is exactly the choice remaining before Mousavi and Karroubi… and perhaps Khatami as well.
