The Week in Iran

13 January 2011 | 23:46 Code : 9697 Tehran’s Daily Newspaper Review

Iranian politics, December 11th-17th.

The assassination of two Iranian nuclear scientists—a few weeks after John Sawers, head of British intelligence service MI6 had blatantly claimed that diplomacy was not enough to stop Iran’s nuclear program, Simon Gass’ remarks about Iran’s domestic affairs, and the heavy-handed crackdown in London against students protesting the tripled university tuition fees—gave Hezbollahi students in Tehran, and their hard-linter supporters in Majles an opportunity to gather in front of the UK embassy in Tehran on Sunday and call for its closure. The students also threatened to seize the embassy just as their predecessors did on the eve of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Hamid Rasa’i, radical lawmaker and a supporter of Ahmadinejad was among the protestors. Speaking to the students, he accused the British embassy of carrying out espionage missions on behalf of the United States and supporting leaders of the 2009 post-election unrest.

Last week’s news bombshell was, of course, the impromptu dismissal of Iran’s minister of foreign affairs, Manouchehr Mottaki, on Monday, while he was on a mission in Senegal—the African country recently at odds with Iran over the controversial arms cargo discovered by the Nigerian police and claimed to be headed for Senegal’s neighbor, Gambia. Ahmadinejad is of course a man of abrupt decisions, but this one may have gone too far. Mottaki’s successor is the incumbent head of Iran’s Organization of Atomic Energy and MIT graduate Ali-Akbar Salehi, who also served as Iran’s representative to IAEA and is known as a technocrat diplomat. The long holiday last week—as Shi’as commemorated the martyrdom of Imam Hussein (AS), grandson of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)—resulted in toned down reactions to Mottaki’s dismissal.

For the citizens of Chabahar, Iran’s southeastern-most city in the volatile province of Sistan-va-Baluchestan, Wednesday gave them twofold reasons to mourn: Tasou’a, 9^th of Muharram in the Islamic lunar calendar, the day before martyrdom of Hussein (AS) and his companions, and a suicide bombing among a mourning crowd the claimed about 40 lives and left tens wounded. The pan-Baluchi separatist group of Jundullah (The Army of God) –whose leader Abdulmalek Rigi was arrested and hanged by the Islamic Republic in early June- took responsibility for the attack. Western countries, the United Nations, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia condemned the blasts. Iran’s Ministry of Interior directly stated that the three bombers appointed to the mission were dispatched from inside Pakistan (one was arrested while trying to return to Pakistan and another was shot dead before managing to detonate his explosive belt).