Iran Government To Set Firmer Restrictions On Journalists
By Mike Thomas on February 21, 2011, 7:37 pmDAILY NEWS PULSE
In this Cold War, Mubarak’s Egypt was on the same side as Israel. The deposed president loathed Iran, and almost certainly wouldn’t have allowed Iran to send ships through the Suez, as Egypt’s new military leaders have done despite Israel’s pleas. “Beware of Egypt’s wrath,” Mubarak publicly warned in 2009 after state media announced the arrest of 49 people Egypt said were agents of Hizballah. An Israeli intelligence source said the captured operatives had “built a very big infrastructure” in Egypt that included apartments and speedboats on, yes, the Suez. The source said Egyptian security services captured, “at least two high level Hizballah operatives” carrying false passports.Reporters Banned
The numbers are difficult to ascertain in Iran where all but state-approved reporters are banned, but most agree that in Tehran the protesters were in the thousands spread out in different spots of the city. The clamp down was brutal, with the use of motorcycle forces with clubs, security forces shooting tear gas canisters and vans ready to take away the many arrested. There was one reported death at 7th Tir Sq. and many injured and arrested in Tehran. The arrest, for a brief period, of Faezeh Hashemi, the former president Rafsanjani’s daughter, according to state run media for leading crowds with ‘provocative’ chants, gave the day an added stature showing that the protest may be as broad in scope as it had been in 2009 when Faezeh Hashemi was first harassed for her vocal criticism of ‘vote rigging’ by the government. On days when going out on the street bear terrible risk anyone who joins the protest aquires revolutionary stature. If Mousavi and Karoubi were loyal reformist opposition before 25th Bahman, there is no doubt that their call for protest and subsquent house arrest has turned them into revolutionaries. Others like Rafsanjani himself and Mohsen Rezai, the conservative candidate who showed showed some fleeting signs of dissent after the 2009 elections, once again showed their colors by voicing their allegiance to the regime.
News Agency
Even as the Fars news agency was reporting a warning on Saturday that the Mujahedeen Khalq planned to incite violence in Tehran, a number of former American officials intensified their efforts to have the group removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, because it has regularly supplied American spy agencies with information about The recent visit by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to Tehran defused the plots hatched by certain western countries to isolate Iran, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Consular, Parliamentary and Expatriates Affairs Hassan Qashqavi said.
