Since he denounced rapes on prisoners -solely those of the Green Movement- around a week ago, Karrubi became the new champion of expression freedom under the mullahs’ regime. Foreign media is introducing him as a courageous dissident all the more that he is subjected to attacks from ultraconservative clergymen such as Ahmad Khatami.

But Ahmad Khatami doesn’t have any political weight. Karrubi can anytime make him shut up because he is a life member of the Expediency Discernment Council of the Interest of the Regime, a plenipotentiary organism that decides of every Iranian policy in any field and is allowed to promulgate without the Council of the Guardians of the Revolution’s notice laws that are not in accordance with the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. It’s impossible to be at the same time a dissident who denounces decisions that are taken on a high level and a member of the real organism that takes such decisions. If Karrubi would have chosen effectively dissidence, he would have been excluded immediately from the Expediency Discernment Council of the Interest of the Regime. Instead of that, he benefits from some publicity because of his fake dissidence with the ridiculous controversy that opposes him with Ahmad Khatami. Such controversy is deepened by every regime’s media through calls to hostile demonstration or support demonstration and at last through the ban of his son’s interview that was due to come out in the next issue although official press agencies published it a week ago.

To stick with the line of controversy deepening, the regime forbade this publication in the name of the article 6.2 of the press code that “forbids the distribution of texts or photos that encourage incitation to debauchery”. However many other articles could have been selected to justify such ban. But as usual the regime made the situation out to be darker. It victimizes excessively in order to increase the injustice feeling that is aroused by this procedure and then give rise to sympathy for the persecuted person who still disposes of a right of answer into media ! This is the basic procedure to create through media coverage fake dissidents.

As usual the goal of such procedure is to feign the existence of internal dissidence : some pluralism that would give the illusion of some lively and active opposition as it is the case in any democracy !

This current ludicrous 24 hours ban that benefited from over media coverage with the complicity of AFP’s very indulgent Iranian bureau shows that the regimes means to give a preponderant and very controversial role to Karrubi for the upcoming months into political arena and on the side of Mussavi, the feeble moralizer.

Actually the regime puts the finishing touches to the composition of the political landscape of the legal opposition to Ahmadinejad : it instills controversy into such opposition because its objective is to carry on with the scenario of contesting of the elected president’s legitimacy, a pretext initiated by the Green Movement to block nuclear negotiations with the Six.

This is the solution that was found by the regime to make up for the absence of popular support to the Green Movement that is from now on acknowledged by Iranians as a movement that betrayed their yearning to a regime change. At a time when each night they go up to roofs to shout “Death to the Islamic Republic” in order to counter the Allah Akbar shouts of militiamen, the regime renounced to mobilize crowds in its favor and imagined a scenario that would be greatly media-like and controversial with the help of old pranksters such as Karrubi.

The regime came back to more limited ambitions : but it didn’t get it over with Iranians. During their June uprising, they showed the world images of mobilization that makes dissidence rumors difficult to admit without Iranians’ physical presence in the streets to support the so-called dissidents.

Since last Saturday in order to grant Karrubi some credibility, every supporter of the Green’s hypocritical Movement have called for a massive demonstration in its favor on Monday in front its newspaper’s offices because they knew in advance that the regime would announce its ban on Monday !

As usual this didn’t fool our compatriots. And as usual we heard fake news from Mussavi’s supporters that mentioned some popular great gathering with “slogans that are hostile to Ahmadinejad and emphasized with Allah Akbar shouts”, confrontations, tear-gas throw and dozens of wounded : every little thing we don’t see on both videos that are supposed to show it.

© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG

© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG

© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG
The french version of this article :
 Iran : Karroubi, la figure montante des dissidents !
 (18 Septembre 2009)