Iran: Guardian Council Validates Election Results, Special Court to Try Election Protesters, Iran Punishes Team Melli, Obama & more

1. Guardian Council rules out vote nullification: “Iran’s Guardian Council rules out the possibility of nullifying the country’s June 12 Presidential election, saying there has been no record of any major irregularity.”

2. Today’s Strike: So there were rumors that a public strike was supposed to go into effect today but I haven’t received any news about it and I’ve looked all over. I’m assuming it didn’t go through. All sources, however, agree that a national day of mourning and protests will happen this Thursday.
3. Iran to create special court to try election protesters: “Ebrahim Raisi, a top official in Iran’s judiciary branch, said tribunals will be set up after a preliminary investigation to process hundreds of “rioters” and “thugs” caught in security sweeps during the unrest. ‘The judiciary will set up special courts for those cases which are passed on to the judiciary,’ he said in comments broadcast on state television. ‘Hopefully, they will receive their legal punishments and our dear people will be informed of their punishments.'”
4. Iran bans election protest footballers: A”ccording to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka’abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been ‘retired’ from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday’s match against South Korea in Seoul.”

5. Obama Succumbs to Right-wing Pressure: “Mr Obama said: “The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.’ He said: ‘The United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran’s affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society.’ Mr Obama said of the allegations of meddling: ‘This tired strategy of using old tensions to scapegoat other countries won’t work anymore in Iran. This is not about the United States and the West. This is about the people of Iran, and the future that they – and only they – will choose.’

6. Slight majority approves of Obama’s handling of Iran [before he buckled to right-wing pressure]: “According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, 52 percent give the president high marks for his response to the crisis in Iran while 36 percent disapprove. The poll is the first survey to come out in the wake of the country’s disputed election just over a week ago.”
7. In Iran, everyone thinks their view represents the view of the majority: “‘Look who supports Ahmadinejad, it’s just sectarian groups, a minority,’ said Parisa, a 26-year-old woman at a rally for Mr. Moussavi last week. At a rally the next day for Mr. Ahmadinejad, Muhammad Ali, a 49-year-old English teacher, said with equal sincerity: ‘Ahmadinejad belongs to all the people, not just one group. But Moussavi and the others, they are just from a narrow sector.'”

8. The UK-Iran Diplomatic Row: “In a fresh diplomatic move, Britain is expelling two Iranian diplomats in response to Tehran’s decision to order two UK diplomats to leave Iran following allegations UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called ‘absolutely without foundation’.”

9. iPouya on Reza Pahlavi… again: So Reza Pahlavi recently spoke about the uprising in Iran over the disputed presidential election at the National Press Club in Washington. If I was there, I would have thrown a shoe at him, especially when he put on a show by crying. I said this before and I’m going to say it again: “He has nothing to do with this movement and I have not seen a single image of him on the streets in Tehran. I’ve seen people hoisting up pictures of Mousavi and Khatami among the opposition and Ahmadinejad, Khomeini, and Khamenei among the regime supporters, but absolutely nothing of Pahlavi. Does he know that he’s doing more harm than good? People who want the protests to continue should not smear the demonstrators by tagging their constroversial and absolutely irrelevant selves to the movement.”
10. Professor As’ad AbuKhalil on the Washington Post’s Suicide Bombing Double-Standard: The Washington Post: “In an act fraught with symbolic significance, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the mausoleum of the father of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, while unrest continued across Tehran in defiance of a ban on demonstrations.” As’ad AbuKhalil: “I wonder if Palestinian bombings were ever described as ‘fraught with symbolic significance.’

11. Googoosh’s New Song in Solidarity with Protesters: See the music video for “Man hamoon Iranam” here.
12. Conan O’Brien on Iran’s efforts to legitimize the elections: Watch the entire video here.