January 10, 2020
Former Prime Minister Mir-Hossain Musavi has com-pared Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi’s response to No-vember’s protests to the way Mohammad Reza Shah responded to protests against his rule in 1978.
Musavi, who has been under house detention for almost seven years, since February 2013, was presumed to be referring to the use of gunfire against protesters.
The comments were published by the foreign-based Kalameh website that has been the outlet for Musavi since his disputed election loss in 2009 led to the widespread Green Movement protests that security forces put down.
Musavi’s remarks suggests the opposition leader views the demonstrations that began November 15 and the crackdown that followed as a potentially similar last-straw moment for Iran’s Shiite theocracy, as the 1978 killings represented for the Shah.
“It shows people’s frustration with the country’s situation. It has a complete resemblance to the brutal killing of people on the bloody date of September 8, 1978,” Musavi said, referring to the so-called Jaleh Square massacre. “The assassins of the year of 1978 were representatives of a non-religious regime, but the agents and shooters in November 2019 were representatives of a religious government.”
Musavi, 77, and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, remain under house arrest in their home down an alleyway near Khamenehi’s official residence in Tehran. However, the Kalameh website occasionally publishes statements from Musavi, who earlier served as Iran’s prime minister during most of the 1980s and the Iran-Iraq War.
Musavi offered his condolences to those slain in the November crackdown and warned, “This wound on the nation’s body and soul” would not heal until there are public trials of their killers.
“The bullying and talking about how we are in the middle of a world war are not a convincing answer for the people and it will not heal the people’s wounds,” Musavi said.
Musavi is not the only one to compare the November crackdown to the time of the Shah. Days earlier, Majlis Deputy Mohammad Gol-moradi, who represents Mahshahr in Khuzestan addressed the Supreme Leader and reportedly asked, “What did you do that the Shah didn’t?”