ANOTHER IRANIAN DEFECTION
- FEBRUARY 25, 2011
Notable & Quotable
As Libya boils, Iran’s Green movement claims another regime defector.
Anne Jolis writing in the Journal’s Political Diary e-newsletter, Feb. 23:
News of the mass protests—and government and military defections—that are threatening to topple the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya has dominated headlines for days. But over the weekend, another defection from yet another Middle Eastern dictatorship went relatively unnoticed. Ahmad Maleki, head of Iran’s consular office in Milan, resigned his post on Sunday to protest Tehran’s “barbaric actions against the Iranian nation,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports, adding that he now plans to join Iran’s pro- democracy Green Movement.
Egypt’s and Tunisia’s uprisings have breathed new life into the Iranian resistance. . . . After a year of lying low, tens of thousands of Green Movement protesters marched through Iran’s streets on Sunday and last Monday. Whereas in 2009 they called for fresh elections, they are now calling to overthrow their government and to end the country’s “religious dictatorship.”
Tehran has responded with swarms of armed guards, firing into the crowds and beating protesters with steel batons and chains, witnesses tell The Wall Street Journal. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest for more than a week. . . . Mr. Maleki, who previously served Tehran in Portugal and Kenya, tells RFE/RL that there are “many others in the [Iranian Foreign Ministry] who are unhappy with the government.” Mr. Maleki is the fourth Iranian diplomat to resign in the past year, after Iranian envoys stepped down in Norway, Finland and Brussels.
