IRAN: TRIAL INDICTMENT ALLEGES VAST CONSPIRACY AGAINST IRIG

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NOFORN
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 8/3/2019
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM IR
SUBJECT: IRAN: TRIAL INDICTMENT ALLEGES VAST CONSPIRACY AGAINST IRIG

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CLASSIFIED BY: Timothy Richardson, Acting Director, Iran
Regional Presence Office, DOS.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)

1. (C) Summary: The August 1 trial of more than a hundred
individuals arrested in the wake of the disputed presidential
election continued the IRIG's efforts to re-assert control via
repression. In a sprawling indictment, the IRIG linked US and
Iran-based NGOs, Israel, foreign media outlets, the MEK, human
and labor rights activists such as Shirin Ebadi, and Iranian
reformist figures, among others, in a vast conspiracy aimed at
toppling the IRIG. The trial highlighted the role that
reformers supposedly played in such plots and sets the stage for
their potential exclusion, writ large, from Iranian politics.
If the IRIG fully bans reformers from the realm of legitimate
competition, the government risks not only radicalizing an
entire faction of influential political actors, but a large
swath of the Iranian electorate as well. The trials are slated
to continue August 7. End Summary.



Trial Renews Assault Against Reformers




2. (C) Iran on August 1 began a trial of more than a hundred
political activists, journalists, commentators and alleged
rioters in the country's Revolutionary Court system, where the
government's hardliners typically mete out "justice" to
dissidents and political opponents. The prosecutor read a
sprawling indictment linking US and Iran-based NGOs, Israel,
foreign media, the MEK, human and labor rights activists and
Iranian reformist figures, among others, in a vast conspiracy
aimed at toppling the IRIG. Afterwards, high-profile defendants
read confessions describing their roles in the plot and
elaborate plans by the reformers to slander the June
presidential election should their candidates not prevail.
Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, a former First Vice President under Khatami
and a senior advisor to Mehdi Karrubi's presidential campaign,
alleged Rafsanjani and Khatami intended to use the election to
take revenge against Supreme Leader Khamenei. He stated that
there was no fraud in the election, arguing that vote
manipulation could not reasonably explain Ahmadinejad's victory
by a margin of 11 million votes.




3. (C) The Islamic Republic has long used manufactured
confessions and woven elaborate charges involving foreign hands
to discredit both activists with political aspirations and
apolitical critics of the ruling system. Public or written
confessions frequently accompany trials and are often a
pre-condition for the accused to leave prison. This indictment
also appears to represent the culmination of hardline fear
mongering of a velvet revolution and the reformers' involvement
in such schemes. The indictment is similar in both tone and
substance to editorials appearing in Keyhan, a newspaper close
to the Supreme Leader, accusations levied in state media, and
the IRGC's public commentary over recent years. Abtahi's
confession and particularly his assertion that the scale of
Ahmadinejad's victory is prima facie evidence of the election's
legitimacy echoes the argument the Supreme Leader made during
Friday Prayers in June. As such, the accusations and public
confessions are consistent with the IRIG's past practice.




4. (C) The scope of the accusations and the unprecedented number
of defendants, however, suggests hardliners in the IRIG are
upping the ante and likely using the trial as a means to bar
reformers from the political playing field entirely. Hardliners
have for years sought to marginalize reformers since their
heyday during Khatami's first term as president (1997-2001),
using their control over candidate vetting and the election
process to significantly reduce the number of reformers in
office, and their power over the media to restrict
reform-oriented journalists and publications. Now hardliners
are targeting key reformers and reformist bodies directly.
Every prominent reformist organization is named in the
indictment and many of those on trial hold key positions within
these groups. The indictment sets the stage for Iran to ban
these groups and exclude all reformers from politics; whether
the government does so will be a key indicator of its intentions
vis-a-vis the reformers. Such a step would be consistent with
the IRIG's apparent decision to maintain power and defuse unrest
by force of arms and repression rather than by offering
concessions.



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5. (C) The indictment also included Nobel Prize winner Shirin
Ebadi, who is currently in Europe. Ebadi has been under
increased pressure from the IRIG in recent years; her human
rights organization was shut down and a few of her employees are
now under arrest. Her inclusion in the indictment may be an
effort to dissuade her from returning to Iran. Other relatively
well-known critics of the government located outside Iran were
also named.



Reformers Denounce the Trial; Public Probably Not Convinced




6. (C) Rather than silencing dissent among key political
figures, however, the first show trial has provoked unvarnished
condemnation from Khatami, Mousavi, and Karrubi. The trial even
elicited criticism from defeated conservative candidate Mohsen
Rezai, who called on the government to forego additional trials
and focus instead on punishing members of the security forces
who attacked unarmed protestors.




7. (C) Predictably, contrived confessions and stage-managed
trials seemingly carry little weight with mainstream Iranians
beyond sympathy for the coercion endured by the defendants.
IRPO contacts and reactions registered on blogs indicate that
this trial is viewed as part and parcel of the fraud committed
by the government to re-install Ahmadinejad as president and
deflect blame away from the IRIG's leadership. Speculation
about the treatment of prisoners - to include allegations the
government drugged defendants to make them more compliant -
abounds. Yet there also seems to be a current of disappointment
in the defendants' willingness to publicly surrender. Abtahi
and Mohammad Atrianfar, another prominent reformer, in
particular are the subject of tentative criticism by Iranians
who did not expect them - in their capacity as long-standing key
figures of the reform movement - to offer such believable and
thorough confessions.



Comment:




8. (C) In setting the stage to potentially exclude all political
actors sympathetic to the goals of the reform movement, the IRIG
is substantially narrowing Iran's already modest political
playing field. If they fully ban reformers from the realm of
legitimate competition, the government risks not only
radicalizing an entire faction of influential political actors,
but a large swath of the Iranian electorate.
RICHARDSON