Green Pharaons: New Names for Mousavi and Karoubi

Immediately after Mir-Hossein Mousavi published his statement on the developments in the Middle East, pro-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad news sites in Iran responded with verbal attacks and viewed it as acknowledgement of the accusations that the principlists (a group supporting Ahmadinejad) have leveled against the leaders of the Green Movement in Iran, which one news site called “the green Pharaohs.”

In his last statement, the leader of Iran’s opposition of the Green Movement compared the recent events in Egypt and the protesting movement in the region to Iran’s protesting movement, and called the events in the Middle East the continuation of the path that the Greens had launched in 2009 in Iran.

Secularism is the Common Bond

Mousavi’s statement was widely covered both in the Iranian media and international news outlets such as CNN and the BBC. And the response by Iran’s official news outlets was swift

Raja News closely tied to Ahmadinejad which has established itself as the leader in attacking leaders of the Green Movement wrote, “Perhaps Mousavi views the sedition (a term Iranian officials use for the massive public protests over the 2009 presidential elections in Iran) and these events (the protests in Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries) to be similar, but the real differences in the nature of these events, i.e., Iran in 2009 with what is going on in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordon and Yemen, will help understand where the political future of the region is going to.”

In his statement, Mousavi wrote that what has been taking place in the streets of Tunis, Sanaa, Cairo, Alexandria and Suez began in Tehran with the multi-million man demonstrations and protests on June 15, 18 and 30^th in 2009.

The Raja News writer discounted Mousavi’s comparisons and wrote, “The protestors to the June 2009 presidential election in Iran were intellectually pro-Western and their leaders had close and friendly ties to Western countries, which is why after the failure of the green sedition some of them fled to London to take refuge against the wrath of the millions of Iranians while others went to the US. In contrast, what has brought out the wrath of the Arab people who have risen in revolt is the Westernized direction of their rulers.”

The revolts in Tunisia a few weeks ago resulted in the flight of the country’s leader Zine al-Abidine. In Egypt, Jordan and Yemen street demonstrations continue as people have now taken over the streets of some of the Egyptian cities such as Cairo and Alexandria.

The article in Raja News asserts that, “The groups that guided the revolts had one point in common: they were secular. The National Front, Iran’s Freedom Movement, royalists and American-type reformists, and even the Bahais and People’s Mojahedin demonstrated their unity through secular calls for an Iranian republic. In contrast, the main group opposing Mubarak is Muslim Brotherhood which is an Islamist-based movement.”

This claim that Muslim Brotherhood is the leading opposition in Egypt is made as all news reports coming out of Egypt indicate that the opposition movement there is in fact made up of a range of groups that include non-religious ones. Many protesting groups have elected Mohammad el Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner as their leader. Furthermore, the transition government that he is leading has been accepted by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Setting Trash Cans on Fire

Jahan website affiliated to Alireza Zakani, a principlist Majlis deputy also attacked Mousavi’s statement. He called Mousavi’s comparison of the two events a caricature. “Mousavi has compared the overthrow of the dictatorial Arab regimes and the popular movement of Egyptian youth in a caricature manner with the trash cans burnings in Tehran,” he wrote. Jahan news, which is commonly referred to as the site of the IRGC intelligence agency, writes that Mousavi is known for his “big lie of 2009.” The site continues, “The pro-freedom and pro-justice people of Egypt will undoubtedly deal with Arab dictators the way Iranian people dealt with the green Pharaohs,” spin on the Green Movement in Iran that was born in protest to the fraudulent 2009 presidential election.

Iran network is the third principlist site that attacked Mousavi’s statement and accused him of acting to overthrow the regime. It also claimed that Mousavi’s statement implicitly acknowledges this accusation. “In his statement Mr. Mousavi references the wide demonstrations in Arab countries such as Egypt and Tunisia but does not mention the affiliations of the rulers of these two countries with their Western supporters while confining itself to merely acknowledging the people’s revolutions there,” it wrote.

Like the other pro-Ahmadinejad news sites, this one too called Mousavi’s comparisons of the Iranian protest movement and those of the Arab countries to be “claims” and called those who have been protesting against Ahmadinejad in Iran “street mobs.”

“While evidence that includes express and even financial support of Western and Zionist regimes for Mousavi and Hosni Mubarak has rejected Mousavi’s claims of similarities between the protestors in Iran and those in the Arab countries, but his implied acknowledgement of what has been the key accusation against him in his statement is noteworthy,” the Iran wrote.

According to this news source, Mousavi has refrained from accepting the “exceptional elections of 2009 and the vote of 40 million people”  and then “engaged in a plan that is said to be engineering by the US and the Zionists whose goal has been to overthrow the Islamic republic.” The article even claimed that Mousavi’s lack of support for Mubarak was a façade to hide “his agreement with the White House.” This site, among others, claims that Mousavi has received financial support from the White House.

This author concluded his story by writing that “Mousavi has conceded to the accusation against him which is efforts to overthrow the Islamic republic at a time when the security and political officials of the country have repeatedly stressed that the events of last year in Iran were perfect examples of a Western plot to overthrow the regime.”