While delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University, former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said that Iran was in crisis. Referring to the political chaos following the disputed Iranian presidential election, Rafsanjani also called for the release of those protesters arrested by the Iranian government during the upheaval. His sermon included direct criticism of the Guardian Council for not acting swiftly enough to resolve the controversy and also indirect criticism of the government's security forces, calling for them to act within the law.
Among those attending the sermon was defeated Presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in his first public appearance since the 12 June vote. Witnesses have reported that Iranian security forces fired teargas into the crowd of demonstrators that gathered outside the university during the sermon. A number of protestors have been beaten and some have been arrested.
The ToD verdict: Rafsanjani is enormously influential in Iran. His credentials as a former president are bolstered by his current roles as Chair of both the Assembly of Experts, which has the theoretical power to dismiss the Supreme Leader, and the Expediency Discernment Council, which moderates disputes between the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) and the Guardian Council. His comments today represent a direct challenge to the re-elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of whom he is often critical.
His sermon makes clear that, although the protests that broke out after the election have subsided, the factional infighting at the highest levels of Iran's byzantine political structure have not. Although President Ahmadinejad and his most important ally, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei, appear to have survived the civil upheaval almost unscathed, it is apparent that disquiet and ill-feeling still persists among Iran's top decision makers.
Bombs strike Jakarta
On Friday at least nine people were killed in two separate bomb attacks in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. The attacks, which are suspected to have been suicide bombings, targeted two luxury hotels, the Ritz-Carlton and the JW Marriott. Up to fifty people have been wounded in the incident, which Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has castigated as a "cruel and barbaric attack". But the president went on to say that at this point it was unknown as to who carried out the attack, with no group having yet admitted responsibility. New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key has confirmed that a New Zealand national was among the dead.
UK Army Chief calls for higher war spending
General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the British General Staff, has called for an increased commitment of funding from the British government to match increased operational demands following a renewed offensive against Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. In what some will regard as a controversial suggestion, General Dannatt said that if additional funds were not forthcoming from the UK Treasury, the Ministry of Defence should reallocate some of the £34 billion currently earmarked for other projects to war fighting contingencies.
General Dannatt's comments come less than a week after the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to defend the Afghan offensive, after 15 British soldiers died in ten days, making the British death toll in Afghanistan higher than that in Iraq. Speaking on Sunday, Gordon Brown said that the offensive was "making progress" and "showing signs of success". The Labour government has faced repeated criticisms that British troops are woefully under equipped, with key equipment such as helicopters in critically short supply.
In other news from Afghanistan, civilians have again been tragically caught up in the crossfire between coalition forces and the Taliban insurgents in two incidents on Wednesday and Friday. On Wednesday night, at least five civilians were killed with 13 wounded when a US patrol called in an air strike in response to a Taliban attack, according to local villager and officials. The United States military has so far declined to confirm reports of casualties.
The attack occurred near the village of Tawalla, in the Shah Wali Kot district which is considered to be Taliban-controlled territory. The district is in Kandahar province, the original base of the Taliban movement in the early 1990s. The patrol itself was said to still be engaged in battle against Taliban forces on Thursday afternoon. These deaths come just two weeks after the new NATO commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, called for efforts to reduce civilian casualties in an attempt to win back the hearts and minds of the Afghan population. A specific directive, issued on 2 July, ordered the curtailing of air strikes against civilian compounds likely to cause the deaths of non-combatants.
On Friday, 11 people, including five children, were killed in Kandahar when a roadside bomb hit a passenger vehicle in Spin Boldak district. Senior border police official General Saifullah Hakim blamed Taliban fighters for the incident. Over recent years, roadside bombs and Improvised Explosive devices (IEDs) have become a staple of the insurgents' arsenal, marking the Taliban's move away from conventional assaults to more sophisticated guerrilla tactics.