“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
We’re learning more about the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA officers at a base in Afghanistan last week. It appears as though the man responsible for the worst losses in CIA history served both as a double agent for Jordanian intelligence and a webmaster for a popular and now-defunct jihadist forum.
In a September 2009 interview given to a jihadist journal published by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Fajr media, Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani revealed that his path to suicide bombing started with his time as extremist Internet troll.
In the interview, flagged and translated by the tireless terrorism sleuth and NEFA Foundation Senior Investigator Evan Kohlmann, Khurasani describes himself as having militant aspiration from a young age, saying that he was “raised to love Jihad and martyrdom since my youth.”
But it was in a post to the al-Hesbah online forum where Khurasni’s claims his involvement with organized militancy began to snowball. “My native place was the proud al-Hesbah [forum], and one day I wrote an essay about the failure of Baghdad plans in comparison to al-Falluja battle, and I added evidence from reality, so one of the administrators there confirmed my subject, and that motivated me to continue participation.”
Khurasani was later nominated as a moderator at al-Hesbah and became a prominent voice in the forum. Despite his success in the forum, however, Khurasani claims that the hypocrisy of pursuing “jihad in speech” without committing to “jihad with self” began to eat away at him.
“How can I encourage people to Jihad while I’m sitting away?” he asked. How do I sell them the beautiful musk while my smell is gross? How do I become a burning wick for others to have light? Can any sane person accept that, not me. Jihad in speech is needed, and Jihad with money is needed, but neither of them can replace Jihad with self.”
Though he offers praise for the writings of fellow posters, particularly the prominent al-Hesbah veteran Louis Atiya Allah, Khurasani’s characterizes his relationship with forum members as one of eventual contempt for similar failings.
Khurasani eventually left Hesbah for Afghanistan. “Here, I was newly born … O how great [the mujahideen] are and Allah will reward them. I used to write about them and when I arrived here the pen became silent. Everyday that passes, I speak less than the day before, as I have learned from them that silence is clearer than talk. This is a group half of whom are in paradise and the other half on earth waiting.” A few months later, he blew himself up.
HERE IS OUR DEFENDER OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND CHOSEN ONE IN FIGHTING "VIOLENT EXTREMISM"
It is being reported that a Jordanian doctor was the suicide bomber double agent for the Taliban. The implications for US security on the war on terror are profound. This should be a wake up call to amateur hour at the White House.
__________________________________
Taliban bomber wrecks CIA’s shadowy war Christina Lamb in Washington Times on Line
A middle-aged mother of three and a warm-hearted man called Harold are a long way from the image most Americans have of their top spies in one of the wildest regions of Afghanistan.
But they will be among the seven stars added this week to the 90 on the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, after a Taliban suicide bomber killed seven agents and wounded six at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan. The attack has thrown the CIA’s whole strategy into disarray.
The clandestine nature of the agents’ work means the stars carry no names. The few details that have emerged since Wednesday’s attack have, however, lifted the veil on the most shadowy aspect of the war in Afghanistan.
The bombing took place at Forward Operating Base Chapman in the volatile province of Khost, which borders Pakistan. The area is dominated by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, perhaps Afghanistan’s most deadly warlords.
Although Chapman was officially a camp for civilians involved in reconstruction, it was well-known locally as a CIA base. Over the past couple of years, it focused on gathering information on so-called high-value targets for drone attacks, the unmanned missile planes that have played a growing role in taking out suspected terrorists since President Barack Obama took office. The Haqqanis were their principal target.
“That far forward they were almost certainly from the CIA’s paramilitary rather than analysts,” said one agent.
The head of this intelligence-gathering operation was a mother of three. Although the Chapman base chief has not been named, she was described as a loving mother and an inspiration by a fellow CIA mum.
“She was a dear friend and a touchstone to all of the mums in CTC [counter-terrorism],” she said.
Another CIA official said the base chief had worked on Afghanistan and counter-terrorism for years, dating back to the agency’s so-called Alec Station. That unit was created to monitor Osama Bin Laden five years before the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Wednesday’s bomb wiped away decades of experience. Eight years into the war, the agency is still desperately short of personnel who speak the language or are knowledgeable about the region.
“It’s a devastating blow,” said Michael Scheuer, a former agent and head of Alec Station. “We lost an agent with 14 years’ experience in Afghanistan.”
A CIA investigation is under way into how the bomber was able to circumvent security at the base, apparently passing unchecked through an outer perimeter manned by Afghan contractors to enter the gym and detonate his explosive vest. He was said to be wearing Afghan army uniform, but the Afghan Ministry of Defence has denied he was a member of the security forces.
What is clear, given the number of CIA agents at the meeting, is that he was considered an important informant. One agent had flown in specially from Kabul.
The only victim to have been publicly identified was Harold Brown, a 37-year-old father of three, whose mother Barbara thought he worked for the State Department.
“He wanted to make the world a better place,” she said, recounting how he would take clothes outgrown by his two-year-old and give them to Afghan children. She added that he often told her: “My most important things in life are God, my family and my country.”
The attack has left the agency in a quandary, according to Gary Berntsen, a CIA officer for 23 years who led a team to Tora Bora to try to capture Bin Laden.
“The job is gathering human intelligence and for that you have to meet people whether it’s on or off a facility,” he said.
“In the old days when we were running Russian operations, if you had a double agent the worst that happened was he feeds you false information. These days if you have a double agent he detonates in your face.”
The attack raises fresh doubts about coalition plans to turn over security to Afghans to enable western troops to leave.
“This calls into question the whole strategy of using Afghans to guard the perimeter of camps,” said Scheuer.
Both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban have claimed credit for the attack. The Afghan Taliban said one of their men had infiltrated the Afghan army; the Pakistani group said the bomber was a CIA informer who had switched sides.
One military official said the bombing may have been retaliation for a US push against the Haqqani network. American officials have been putting pressure on Pakistan to send troops to take on the Haqqanis, but the Pakistani military has refused to comply.
The Haqqani network is also thought to have been behind Friday’s bombing at a volleyball match at Shah Hassan Khel in Pakistan in which 96 villagers were killed. The attack is believed to be in revenge for the formation of an anti-Taliban militia. More than 600 people have died in bombings in Pakistan since last October.
_____________________________
Jordan spy among 8 killed at CIA Afghan base: report WASHINGTON : Monday, 04 January 2010 11:58 Malaysian Mirror
WASHINGTON - The eighth man killed in a suicide bomb attack on a secret CIA base in Afghanistan last week was a captain in the Jordanian spy service known as the General Intelligence Department (GID), The Washington Post reported.
The official Jordanian news agency Petra identified the man as Ali bin Zeid, saying that he was killed "on Wednesday evening as a martyr while performing the sacred duty of the Jordanian forces in Afghanistan."
The agency provided no further details about his death in the bombing that also claimed the lives of seven US intelligence operatives. But the US newspaper said it provided a "rare window into a partnership" between the US and Jordanian intelligence service, in which Jordan is playing an increasingly vital role in the fight against Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Jordanians are particularly prized for their skill in both interrogating captives and cultivating informants, owing to an unrivaled "expertise with radicalized militant groups and Shia/Sunni culture," Jamie Smith, a former CIA officer who worked in the border region in the years immediately after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, is quoted by The Post as saying.
"They know the bad guy's ... culture, his associates, and more about the network to which he belongs," he said.
Current and former US intelligence officials said the special relationship with Jordan dates back at least three decades and has recently progressed to the point that the CIA liaison officer in Amman enjoys full, unescorted access to GID headquarters, according to the report.
The close ties helped disrupt several known terrorist plots, including the thwarted 2000 "millennium" conspiracy to attack tourists at hotels and other sites, the paper pointed out.
Jordanians also provided US officials with communications intercepts in summer 2001 that warned of terrorist plans to carry out a major attack on the United States, The Post said.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Jordan agreed to create a bilateral operations center with the CIA and helped in interrogations of non-Jordanian suspects captured by the US Central Intelligence Agency and transferred to Jordan in now-famous "rendition" flights, the paper noted.
By STEVEN ERLANGER NY Times Published: January 3, 2010
SANA, Yemen — The United States shut its embassy in Yemen’s capital on Sunday, citing unspecified but “ongoing threats by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” the regional branch responsible for the failed Christmas Day effort to blow up an airliner headed to Detroit.
The closure came a day after a quiet visit to Yemen’s President by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American regional commander, who hand-delivered a message from President Obama of support for Yemen’s unity and counterterrorism efforts.
In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama blamed the Al Qaeda branch for the bombing attempt and said that those responsible “will be held to account.”
Mr. Obama said he had made it “a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government, training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike Al Qaeda terrorists.”
The streets outside the embassy looked normal on Sunday, a working day here, with no visible addition to the normal boundary security provided by the Yemeni military and police. Nor were the streets closed off near the embassy, which is surrounded by a large wall and is set back some distance to prevent bomb damage.
In September 2008, Al Qaeda attacked the embassy with a car bomb, and 19 people were killed — including an 18-year-old American woman, Yemeni security forces and six militants. It was after that attack that the United States began to step up its military and security aid to Yemen, with some $70 million spent in 2009, a figure that General Petraeus said would more than double in 2010.
On the embassy website, a statement said that “The U.S. Embassy in Sana is closed today, January 3, 2010, in response to ongoing threats by AlQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to attack American interests in Yemen.”
An embassy official refused to comment further on any specific threat or whether the embassy would reopen again on Monday. On Thursday, the embassy sent a warden notice to American citizens in Yemen urging them to be vigilant and practice security awareness.
Last January, gunmen in a car exchanged fire with police at a checkpoint near the embassy, hours after the embassy received threats of a possible attack by Al Qaeda, according to The Associated Press. No one was injured. And in July, security was upgraded in Sana after intelligence reports warned of attacks planned against the embassy.
In December, the Yemen government said that it had attacked Al Qaeda meetings in which the group had been planning an attack on the British Embassy here.
On Saturday, Yemeni officials said they had sent more troops to fight Al Qaeda militants in the provinces of Abyan, Al Bayda and Shabwah.
Britain announced on Sunday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Mr. Obama had agreed to back a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen to tackle the rising terrorist threat. There is already significant counterterrorist training for the police and it was not immediately clear what Mr. Brown had in mind.
Britain is also to host a high-level international conference Jan. 28, in parallel to a long-scheduled conference on Afghanistan, to discuss international strategy and aid to counter radicalization in Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world.
___________________________
Barack Obama is vulnerable on terror – and he knows it Barack Obama is playing politics over the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack and Republicans sense he is weak on the issue, writes Toby Harnden in Washington
Barack Obama said both human and systematic failures allowed the foiled Christmas Day attack on Northwest flight 253 to take place.
In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Barack Obama patted himself on the back for having "refocused the fight - bringing to a responsible end the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks". He then told people to remember that "our adversaries are those who would attack our country, not our fellow Americans", before decrying "fear and cynicism" and "partisanship and division" - the code phrases for horrid Republicans used during his 2008 election campaign.
Complacency, faux moralising and partisan shots at Republicans. It was a neat summary of where Obama is going wrong after the Christmas Day debacle when the Nigerian knicker bomber managed to waltz onto a Detroit-bound flight.
For a man who campaigned denouncing the politicisation of national security under President George W Bush, it is worth noting how intensely political Obama's treatment of what might henceforth be known as Underpantsgate has been.
His White House recognised its political vulnerability more readily than it comprehended the level of danger faced by Americans.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father had courageously contacted the American Embassy in Abuja in November and met the CIA station chief to tell him that his son was involved with fundamentalist elements in Yemen. American intelligence had also intercepted discussions in Yemen about a possible attack by "the Nigerian".
The Obama administration knew most, if not all, of this by last Sunday, 48 hours after the attack was thwarted. But the priority in Obamaland was to play things down and take pot shots at the Bush administration.
Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security chief – who prefers the term "man-caused disasters" to "terrorism" - blithely stated that there was "no indication that it is part of anything larger". She then insisted that the "system is working".
Although Napolitano has taken a lot of flak for these comic utterances, she was not "misspeaking" but trotting out the agreed talking points of the day.
Robert Gibbs, Obama's chief mouthpiece, also stated that "in many ways this system has worked" and would say nothing about a possible wider plot.
In Hawaii, where Obama was holidaying, Gibbs's deputy Bill Burton told the press that "we are winding down a war in Iraq that took our eye off of the terrorists that attacked us" and that Obama was reviewing "procedures that have been in place the last several years" (i.e. Bush instituted them). He added, without apparent irony, that "the President refuses to play politics with these issues".
Meanwhile, the White House was working overtime to build a case against Bush. A source in the White House counsel's office told The American Spectator of memos frantically seeking information that would "show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could".
Republicans smell blood. There is a pattern in the Obama administration of dismissing Islamist terrorist attacks as regrettable random acts. In his radio address after Major Nidal Hassan's slaughtered 13 at Fort Hood, Texas, Obama made no mention of terrorism or militant Islam, instead blandly promising that the "ongoing investigation into this terrible tragedy" would "look at the motives of the alleged gunman".
Hassan was a committed Islamist who had corresponded with the fanatical Yemeni imam Anwar al-Awlaki. In June, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert being watched by the FBI and who had previously travelled to Yemen, murdered a US Army recruit in Arkansas. That rated only a tepid statement by Obama about a "senseless act of violence".
But the violence wasn't senseless, it had a calculated objective - just as Abdulmutallab was not, as Obama described him, an "isolated extremist". No wonder many Americans want to grab Obama by the lapels and scream: "It's the Jihad, stupid." Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, clearly struck a nerve when he charged last week that Obama was "trying to pretend we are not at war".
The White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer eagerly descended into the political fray, responding to Cheney with the obligatory jibe about Iraq and also a litany of examples of Obama's "public statements that explicitly state we are at war".
It's a sure sign that you're losing the argument when you have to research quotes from your boss's speeches to prove that he gets it that America is at war. The problem for Obama is that people are now judging him by his actions as well as his words.
The incompetence of the US intelligence bureaucracy is not the only thing that makes Underpantsgate so damaging for Obama. More serious is his failure to understand or acknowledge the nature of the enemy - and to view war as mere politics.
Go to 2:40 and see where foreign Islamists are returning from to Somalia: DENMARK
It seems we have more than our share of Somalis here in the good old USA.
The Refugee Act of 1980 required the Office of Refugee Resettlement to begin reporting to Congress annually. In the first ten years 10 years, 4413 Somalis were admitted as refugees to the US.
1983-93: 4413
1994: 3508
1995: 2524
1996: 6440
1997: 4948
1998: 2952
1999: 4321
2000: 6002
2001: 4940
2002: 242
2003: 1708
By 2003 we had admitted a total of 42.017 Somalis to the US. In those 20 years each Somali family was having on average 6 children.
Here is what the Danes got from one of their Somalis:
A Somali axeman who tried to murder the Danish cartoon artist responsible for controversial drawings of the Prophet Mohammed had links to al-Qaeda, police said.
Somali axeman who tried to murder Danish cartoonist 'linked to al-Qaeda'
By Colin Freeman, Chief Foreign Correspondent Published: 5:12PM GMT 02 Jan 2010 Telegraph
The 23-year-old man, who broke into Kurt Westergaard's home late on Friday night, was shot and wounded by armed police called to the scene by Mr Westergaard pressing a panic button.
Yesterday, as he appeared in court charged with two counts of attempted murder, Jakob Scharf, head of Denmark's PET intelligence agency, said the attack had been "terror related".
Judge warns Muslim extremists: 'If you choose to live in this country, you live by its rules.' "The arrested man has, according to PET's information, close relations to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab and al-Qaeda leaders in eastern Africa," Mr Scharf said.
"The attack again confirms the terror threat that is directed at Denmark and against the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in particular."
Mr Westergaard has been the target of numerous death threats since his 2005 illustrations depicting Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban. They sparked anti-Western riots throughout the Muslim world, where images of the Prophet are seen as idolatrous.
Yesterday the 75-year-old artist told how he fled into a specially-made "safe room" after hearing his assailant breaking into his house shouting "Revenge!" and "Blood!"
"I got into the safe room and raised the alarm to the police while he energetically tried to bash down the door with a hammer or something," Mr Westergaard said.
"But he wasn't able to get in. I don't remember what he said, but it was very bad language. He spoke broken Danish and promised that he would come again."
Mr Westergaard's grand-daughter Stephanie, 5, was in the house at the time, and was in the sitting room as Westergaard was forced to take refuge in the safe room.
"I knew he wouldn't hurt her and I wouldn't have been able to do anything if I had tried," he added. "It was terrifying. The most important thing is that I remembered to think and go for safety. But it was close. Really close."
The Somali, whose identity has not been released by the Danish authorities, had previously granted asylum in Denmark, Mr Scharf said.
He added that he was suspected of involvement in terror-related activities in east Africa, and had been under PET monitoring. He is now being treated for gunshot wounds to the knee and hand, which police said were not life-threatening.
In a Nov. 20 letter obtained by the Post, Erroll Southers told key senators that he had accepted full responsibility long ago for having made a "grave error in judgment" in accessing confidential criminal records about his estranged wife's new boyfriend.
The security of the United States of America for the past year has been under Barack Hussein Obama. Three current stories question the competence and control of that security:
Obama has selected one Erroll Southers to head the TSA. What do we know about Erroll? This is a man who misused his authority, when in a position of authority and violated federal privacy acts. Of all the people in US law enforcement, brother Errol is Obama's choice.
It turns out the biggest single loss of CIA personnel, at the hands of a suicide bomber, was invited into the CIA compound in Afghanistan and was not searched! Wednesday's attack on a U.S. compound in Afghanistan devastated what has been a hub of counterterrorism and intelligence operations for the spy agency. Seven Central Intelligence Agency officers and contractors were killed and six others wounded in the suicide bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman. CIA Director Leon Panetta said Thursday was the second-largest single-day loss for the spy agency in its history.
The "underwear bomber" made a call to his father that he found so alarming, the father approached Nigerian officials who took him directly to the CIA's station chief in the Nigerian capital. The CIA did not quite find the time to get that information to the TSA or the TSA did not think it important.
Now I ask you, would the US press and the American public have put up with this under George W. Bush?
__________________________
TSA nominee gave conflicting accounts of privacy incident
Erroll Southers says he inappropriately accessed federal records in the late 1980s. Inconsistencies in his descriptions of what happened were inadvertent, he says. LA Times
Washington - The White House nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration gave Congress misleading information about incidents in which he inappropriately accessed a federal database, possibly in violation of privacy laws, documents obtained by the Washington Post show.
The disclosure comes as pressure builds from Democrats on Capitol Hill for a quick January confirmation of Erroll Southers, whose nomination has been held up by GOP opponents. In the aftermath of an attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day, calls have intensified for lawmakers to install permanent leadership at the TSA, a crucial agency in enforcing airline security.
Southers, a former FBI agent, is now the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence. He has described inconsistencies in his accounts to Congress as "inadvertent" and the result of poor memory of an incident that dates back 20 years.
In a Nov. 20 letter obtained by the Post, he told key senators that he had accepted full responsibility long ago for having made a "grave error in judgment" in accessing confidential criminal records about his estranged wife's new boyfriend.
His letter to Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and ranking Republican Susan Collins of Maine, which has not been publicly disclosed, attempts to correct statements about the episode that he made in a sworn affidavit on Oct. 22.
Southers did not respond to a request for an interview.
He first described the episode in his October affidavit, telling the Senate panel that two decades ago he asked a San Diego Police Department employee to access confidential criminal records about the boyfriend. Southers said he had been censured by superiors at the FBI. He described the incident as isolated and expressed regrets about it.
The committee approved his nomination on Nov. 19. One day later, Southers wrote to Lieberman and Collins saying his first account was incorrect. After reviewing documents, he recalled that he had twice conducted the database searches himself, downloaded confidential law enforcement records about his wife's boyfriend and passed information on to the police department employee, the letter said.
It is a violation of the federal Privacy Act to access such confidential information without proper cause. The law says that "any person who knowingly and willfully requests or obtains any record concerning an individual from an agency under false pretenses shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000."
In his letter, Southers said he simply forgot the circumstances of the searches, which occurred in 1987 and 1988 when he was worried about his wife and their son. The letter said, "During a period of great personal turmoil, I made a serious error in judgment by using my official position with the FBI to resolve a personal problem."
Southers' nomination has already been delayed by partisan bickering. Though two Senate committees have endorsed him, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) held up his approval because of concern that Southers would support the unionization of TSA workers.
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro defended Southers and said the changes in his account should not affect his nomination. Lieberman and Collins also voiced support.
'Underwear Bomber's' Alarming Last Phone Call Abdulmutallab Called His Father to Say It Would Be Their Last Contact By DANA HUGHES and KIRIT RADIA ABUJA, Nigeria, Dec. 31, 2009 ABC
The accused "underwear bomber" made a dramatic final call to his father that he found so alarming, the father approached Nigerian officials who took him directly to the CIA's station chief in the Nigerian capital, sources told ABC News.
What did he say that prompted the bomber's father to alert the CIA?
Current and former officials of the Nigerian government, including a source close to the suspect's family, say Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, called his father from Yemen with the warning that it would be his last contact.
It has previously been reported that the man's father, prominent Nigerian banker Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, went to Nigerian and American officials Nov. 19 to warn them that his son had been radicalized by Islamic militants in Yemen.
Details have emerged about Abdulmutallab's final phone call that highlight President Obama's statement that there were "systemic failures" of the country's security system.
ABC News' sources said that during Abdulmutallab's final call, he told his father the call would be his last contact with the family. He said that the people he was with in Yemen were about to destroy his SIM card, rendering his phone unusable.
I don't know why they keep referring to these guys as Islamic Fundamentalists. That implies they are parallel to Christian Fundamentalists, who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. A literal interpretation of Sura 4:29-30 says that suicide is forbidden.
[4:29] O you who believe, do not consume each others' properties illicitly - only mutually acceptable transactions are permitted. You shall not kill yourselves. GOD is Merciful towards you.
[4:30] Anyone who commits these transgressions, maliciously and deliberately, we will condemn him to Hell. This is easy for GOD to do.
So it seems that this new Islamic death cult is a radical, liberal interpretation of the Quran, one that completely "spiritualizes away" this clear command from Allah.
I DEFY ANYONE TO WATCH THIS VIDEO OF IRANIANS TRYING TO RESCUE THESE MEN AND NOT BE MOVED BY WHAT CAN BE DONE BY FREEDOM LOVING PEOPLE.
Reza Pahlavi, Iran's former crown prince and the son of the last Shah of Iran.
The Iranian government ordered and staged demonstrations in support of the government. The"crowd" dutifully and robtically complied.
"I am not afraid to die for people's demands ... Iran is in serious crisis ... Harsh remarks ... will create internal uprising ... the election law should be changed ... political prisoners should be freed," said Mirhossein Mousavi .
Iran appears to be nearing the tipping point. The opposition is getting bolder and is persistent. The response from the government is violence against those in the street. We have seen this before.
Baton swinging cops become targets of the crowd. The government that once led by acclamation now has only the dismal answer of more cops, more violence and more killing. One day the police will not return. They will drop their helmets and side with the crowd. It happens fast.
Perhaps this is wishful thinking, perhaps not. I predict this will be the last year for the mullahs. _______________ BACKGROUND
June 13 - Authorities say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, has won the election with nearly 63 per cent of vote. Mir Hossein Mousavi, who polled 34 per cent of the vote, describes the result a "dangerous charade" and thousands of protesters clash with police. June 14 - Mousavi asks the powerful Guardian Council, which has the power of veto over government legislation and can bar candidates from elections, to annul the results.
June 15 - At least seven people are killed during a march by Mousavi supporters in Tehran, state media says. Protests break out in other cities.
June 16 - Thousands of pro-Mousavi demonstrators march in northern Tehran. Authorities ban foreign journalists from leaving their offices to cover the street protests.
June 19 - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, says that the protest leaders will be held responsible for any bloodshed if demonstrations over election continue. He says Ahmadinejad won the polls fairly by 11 million votes.
June 20 - Riot police are deployed to disperse groups of several hundred Iranians who have gathered across Tehran.
A suicide bomber blows himself up near the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, in Tehran, Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency reports.
State television says 450 people are detained during clashes in the capital in which 10 people are killed, including Neda Agha-Soltan. Graphic footage of her death is seen around the world on the internet and she becomes a symbol of the opposition movement.
June 23 - Guardian Council again rules out annulment of the poll, saying there have been no major irregularities. Riot police and Basij militia in Tehran prevent planned protests.
Barack Obama, the US president, says the United States is "appalled and outraged" by Iran's crackdown on opposition supporters.
Britain expels two Iranian diplomats after two of its own are expelled from Iran.
June 26 - Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, an elected body which appoints and monitors the performance of the supreme leader, calls for the execution of leading "rioters".
June 28 - Authorities detain several local British embassy staff for alleged involvement in the unrest. Britain calls the arrests "harassment and intimidation" and demands their release.
July 17 - Clashes erupt between police and opposition protesters for the first time in weeks in Tehran after Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, declares that Iran is in crisis.
July 20 - Mohammad Khatami, another former president, calls for a referendum on the legitimacy of the government.
July 30 - Clashes erupt after hundreds of Mousavi supporters gather to mourn Neda Agha-Soltan at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. Hundreds of police fire teargas to disperse protesters from nearby streets.
August 1 - Iran puts a number of prominent individuals on trial charged with trying to overthrow the religious establishment.
August 3 - Khamenei formally approves the second term presidency of Ahmadinejad.
August 5 - Ahmadinejad is sworn in by parliament.
August 8 - A court charges a French woman, two Iranians working for the British and French embassies in Tehran and dozens of others with spying and aiding a Western plot to overthrow the system of religious rule.
August 25 - A prosecutor demands "maximum punishment" for Saeed Hajjarian, a senior reformist activist, accused of acting against national security.
September 3 - Parliament approves most of Ahmadinejad's cabinet.
September 9 - Mousavi says on a website the detention of Alireza Hosseini Beheshti and Morteza Alviri, two senior reformists, was a "sign of more horrendous events to come".
September 11 - The Etemad-e Melli website says Mohammad Ozlati-Moghaddam, a member of Mousavi's campaign headquarters staff ahead of the election, has been detained.
October 18 - Mousavi pledges to press ahead with efforts to change Iran despite a crackdown on protests, his website reports.
October 28 - Khamenei says it is a crime to cast doubt on the June election, which the opposition says was rigged.
November 4 - Police clash with Mousavi supporters in Tehran on the 30th anniversary of the storming of the US embassy.
November 22 - Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist former vice-president, who was arrested after the election, is sentenced to six years in jail, Iranian newspapers report. He is released on bail pending an appeal.
December 19 - Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Iran's most senior dissident cleric, dies. The opposition holds demonstrations as he is buried.
December 23 - The home of Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei, a senior reformist cleric, is attacked, an opposition website reports.
December 24 - Iran bans memorial services for Montazeri with the exception of those in his birthplace and Qom.
December 27 - Police confirm that five people are killed in clashes between police and protesters which coincide with the religious event of Ashoura. There are reports that Seyyed Ali Mousavi, the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, is killed.
December 30 - Tens of thousands of Iranians take to the streets across Iran for a series of state-sponsored rallies designed as a show of strength following the pro-opposition demonstrations. Aljazeera
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said Iran was in "serious crisis" and called for the immediate release of supporters arrested after the June presidential vote, his website reported on Friday.
"Arresting or killing Mousavi, (another opposition leader Mehdi) Karoubi ... will not calm the situation," Mousavi said in a statement published by his Kaleme website.
"I am not afraid to die for people's demands ... Iran is in serious crisis ... Harsh remarks ... will create internal uprising ... the election law should be changed ... political prisoners should be freed," his statement said.
Anti-government protests erupted in Iran after its disputed June 12 presidential election, which secured President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.
The continuing protests have plunged Iran into its worst internal crisis in the Islamic Republic's 30-year history.
Opposition leaders say the presidential vote was rigged. The government denies this.
The hardline authorities have intensified their crackdown on the opposition since Sunday, when eight people -- including a nephew of Mousavi -- were killed in fiery protests on the day of the Shi'ite Muslim ritual of Ashura.
Hardline leaders have accused opposition leaders of fomenting unrest and called for them to be punished.
A representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that opposition leaders were "enemies of God" who should be executed under the country's sharia, Islamic law.
Authorities have arrested at least 20 pro-reform figures, including three senior advisers to Mousavi, his brother-in-law and a sister of Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.
Iran's police chief has warned Mousavi's supporters they will face harsh treatment unless they halt their "illegal" rallies.
(Writing by Parisa Hafezi, Tehran newsroom, editing by Tim Pearce)
