According to Mohsen Makhmalbaf film director and international spokesman for Mirhossein Mousavi the Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi is under 24-hour guard by secret police and no longer able to speak freely to supporters.
"he has security agents, secret police with him all the time. He has to be careful what he says." He said in an interview with the
Independent "The regime, arguably, is losing ground, not the protests, Ordinary Iranians are openly rejecting the legitimacy and power of Ayatollah Khamanei. That is entirely new, unheard of."
Mr Makhmalbaf is touring Europe to try to explain events in Iran to the media. He denied that he had been formally appointed as a spokesman for Mr Mousavi outside Iran. "I am simply speaking on behalf of all the people who are protesting and dying on the streets of Iran," he said. He explained that Mr Mousasvi's means of communication had been cut off, or confiscated, just after the disputed election, Mr Makhmalbaf had been asked informally to make sure that a true picture of what was happening in Iran reached the outside world.
Mr Mousavi had urged his supporters not to confront the regime directly but to "adopt the tactics of Gandhi, the tactics of non-violent protest and civil disobedience". "The problem is that the more people that are killed, the more angry people will be, the more protesters will want to come out onto the streets." Mr Makhmalbaf said
The film director dismissed all hope of some form of negotiated agreement. "Within the last ten days, there has been a meeting between Mousavi and Ayatollah Khamanei," he said. "Nothing came of this meeting. I do not know of any further dialogue which is now going on."
If Mousavi was to become president, he said, Iran would invest in "improving the economy for ordinary people, not creating nuclear weapons or supporting conflicts abroad". Secondly, he said, there would be an end to the "constant harassment of young people which means that virtually every young person in Iran has been beaten up by the security forces."
Mr Makhmalbaf, said that there were reports from Iran that some of the militia deployed to suppress protest were "speaking Arabic". "That is unconfirmed but it suggests that the regime is unable to trust its own security forces to repress the Iranian people," he said. "It suggests that people are being used from abroad”
Nothing more to add to this. Mousavi was never going to lead the people of Iran dancing into the Elysian fields but his presidency would surely have been a little better than what is being offered to the people by Khamenei. I won't say Ahmadinejad, That sock puppet seems to be locked away in a drawer.
Marjane Satrapi
