TEHRAN, 12 July 2003 — A wave of recent protests and unrest has only served to strengthen the position of Iran’s government, powerful ex-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in his Friday prayer sermon. “The recent riots have helped the regime become stronger,” he said, branding as “infantile” the 10 days of protests last month as well as Wednesday night’s demonstration around Tehran University marking the fourth anniversary of pro-democracy riots.
“US politicians were so excited: they thought the government has reached its end,” Rafsanjani said. “But these incidents were so infantile, and police controlled them with minimum effort.”
“The government did not even have to resort to a massive eight million-strong Basij force or even the Pasdaran,” he added, referring to the volunteer Islamist militia and the elite Revolutionary Guards. Rafsanjani, still a powerful figure in Iran as head of the country’s top political arbitration body, warned students and young people “not to be deceived” and be “more alert and careful and cause no more trouble for the Iranian nation.”
“They can criticize and voice their requests, but must bear in mind that people can distinguish between treason and doing a service,” he warned. On Wednesday night, tens of thousands of people defied a huge police deployment by filling an area around Tehran University in their cars to mark the anniversary of student riots in 1999, when at least one student was killed and hundreds arrested or injured.
Quoted by the student news agency ISNA, a deputy governor general of Tehran province, Rezaee Babadi, said “around 250 people were arrested on Wednesday night”, but added that many had since been freed.
That protest, which saw people take to their cars and honk their horns in defiance, came hot on the heels of last month’s 10 days of anti-regime demonstrations, marked by clashes and the chanting of virulent slogans targeting Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but also embattled reformist President Mohammad Khatami. The accompanying crackdown last month saw 4,000 people arrested, the hard-line judiciary said.
Rafsanjani also said that the United States deserves the mounting death toll faced by its troops in Iraq, adding Washington was only reaping what it had sown in the country. “The United States helped the Iraqi Baathist regime, and now their troops are being sent home in body bags or are facing other problems, because the Iraqis are seeking their freedom and this promise has not materialized,” Rafsanjani said.
“The memories that the 250,000 US soldiers are taking home are of dead people in body bags and the injured in ambulances. And in the United States, there is only weeping and crying,” he added. “The Americans are in a deep swamp. They did nothing for Iraq, and after promising freedom they only brought insecurity, poor health and lust for oil.” The former president said US troops had conducted themselves “so poorly that each one is a target”.
