All Blog Posts from World Watch

Witnesses tell news agencies that Iranian police have arrested at least four people and prevented Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi from attending a ceremony Thursday afternoon at a Tehran cemetery marking the 40 day anniversary of 27-year-old Neda Agha Soltan's death.

Unidentified witnesses told the Associated Press that hundreds of police surrounded Mousavi as he tried to approach the grave of Soltan, whose widely publicized shooting amid postelection violence fueled the opposition movement. The AP reports that Mousavi was forced to leave the cemetery but hundreds others gathered to mourn Soltan and others killed in the violence were allowed to stay.

Web sites affiliated with the opposition movement reported earlier Thursday that Mousavi and fellow presidential opposition candidate Mehdi Karoubi would attend the gathering at Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, which coincides with other planned memorials and "silent wave" demonstrations across Iran.

The gathering at a Tehran cemetery, which is coincides with other planned memorials and "silent wave" demonstrations across Iran, is also meant to honor the other victims of the unrest in the Islamic Republic following the contentious June 12 election which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reelected in an apparent landslide.

Opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, who reportedly plan to attend the ceremony at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, insist the election results were based on wide-spread fraud and rigging — with the collusion of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Mousavi and his backers applied last weekend for a permit to hold the cemetery memorial on Thursday — the anniversary of Neda's widely publicized death — but there was no indication the government had consented, setting the stage for yet another possible confrontation between Iranian security forces and opposition supporters.

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Iran's elite military force, the Revolutionary Guard, has become the spine of a "military security government with a facade of a Shiite clerical system," according to an expert interviewed by The New York Times.

Rasool Nafisi, an Iran expert who recently co-authored a study on the Guard for the RAND Corporation, argues that the military wing has greatly extended its power in Iranian politics and society amid the chaos following the contested June 12 presidential elections.

At left: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accompanied by Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, right, and Chief of the Revolutionary Guard's general staff Ali Akbar Ahmadian, left, listen to the national anthem as he arrives for a meeting of Revolutionary Guard commanders in Tehran in a Sept. 11, 2007 file photo.

The Times article says the Guard is much more than a division of Iran's military — it has control over the country's missiles and at least some control over the nuclear program, but it also generates huge wealth through business enterprises ranging from laser-eye surgery to black market trading.

And the Guard is a great benefactor of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (a former member himself), who opposition leaders claim stole the election through massive, organized fraud.

Since he took office, according to The Times report, the Guard has won some 750 government contracts — none of which are subject to oversight by Iran's Parliament.

The Guard's fast-growing tentacles, which touch every aspect of Iranian life, combined with its lead role in the post-election crackdown on opposition voices, "has led many political analysts to describe the events surrounding the June 12 presidential election as a military coup," according to the paper.

Iranian opposition protesters clashed with security forces in Tehran Friday in largest showing of strength since the regime cracked down on election demonstrations last month.

Sparked by the sermon of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful cleric widely believed to be sympathetic to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered, chanted and marched through Tehran's streets.

Here are some images and videos of the day's events:

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Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the senior dissident cleric in Iran's religious establishment, has issued his harshest condemnation of the Islamic Republic's leadership since the disputed June 12 election.

Mondtazeri never names Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei directly in his remarks, but he has long been an outspoken opponent of both Khamenei and the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Montazeri says "those who have lost, religiously and reasonably, the credibility for serving the public, are automatically dismissed, and the continuation of their work has no legitimacy."

The Grand Ayatollah also says Iranians have a religious right and duty to protest their leaders, if those leaders violate the tenets of Islam by usurping power.

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Protesters against the recent Iranian election are calling for marches tomorrow, the 10th anniversary of a bloody confrontation in which thousands of students, protesting the regime's shutdown of a popular reformist newspaper, were attacked, beaten and arrested.

The clashes began on 18 Tir (July 9) in 1999 when government security stormed a university dormitory. Several students were reportedly killed; scores more were beaten and hospitalized.

In the days following as many as 10,000 students marched in protest of the crackdown (left), with skirmishes between protestors and conservative factions erupting in Tehran and other cities. At least 1,000 students were reportedly arrested in what was up to then the largest demonstration of unrest since the 1979 Revolution.

To mark the 10th anniversary, the Web site yekiran.com lists rallies scheduled to be held on Thursday in 30 Iranian cities.

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Iran's state-controlled media are waging an all-out propaganda assault to cast post-election unrest in the Islamic Republic as a futile attempt by "the West" to interfere.

It has been a classic one-two punch from Iran's hard-line rulers: first they hit on the streets with batons, tear gas and arrests of opposition leaders. Now, in the newspapers and television broadcasts, they're striking with their own version of the truth.

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The pictures of determined Iranian protesters no longer lead our newscasts, but the protesters haven't given up.

Every day, somehow, some way, (mostly) young people try to gather and march. Yesterday, there was a brave effort to form a human chain along the length of Vali Asr, Tehran's main north-south avenue.

Here is what happened in the words of someone who was there:

“Beseiged by Basij. I have never seen so many thugs in one street. I am not exaggerating when I say that for every three to five civilians, there was one paramilitary, militia or storm trooper."

“The sidewalks were quite crowded but as soon as more than five people tried to huddle, the groups were broken up. In downtown and midtown (toward the southern end of Vali Asr) I heard people tried to walk in unison but they were beaten by batons and clubs."

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Reports that Iran's ruling regime has put the country's most feared, hard-line prosecutor in charge of interrogating arrested protesters and journalists have raised the ire of human rights groups and the Canadian government.

Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's prosecutor-general since 2003 and a judge previously, has been implicated by several inquiries in the death that year of a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who was arrested, tortured and then killed in custody.

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Track The Latest Coverage Of Iran's Election Upheaval.

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There are reports that Iran's clerical establishment is weighing the option of replacing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a panel of religious officials over his contentious role in the election dispute.

Britain's International Business Times, citing Al Arabiya TV, says the country's powerful 86-member Assembly of Experts is split in its support for Khamenei and current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The report suggests the Experts have met secretly in Iran's holy city of Qom to discuss a political compromise to the week-and-a-half old political unrest which followed the announcement of disputed presidential election results. Khamenei has backed Ahmadinejad as the land-slide winner of the vote, but opposition candidates claim the election outcome was rigged.

The Business Times says the clerics are considering a complete change in the structure of the 30-year-old Islamic Republic's government — replacing the supreme leader with a panel of senior clerics, and forcing President Ahmadinejad out of power.

That would be a decidedly dramatic upheaval, and CBS News' Elizabeth Palmer explains that a more likely outcome might see a deal struck which allows Ahmadinejad and Khamenei to hold onto their seats — at least for now.

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