Yesterday, Mohammed Taqi Khalaji was arrested. The father of Washington Institute for Near East Policy scholar Mehdi Khalaji, Khalaji père is a reformist cleric in Qom who was close to the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri and Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei.
The detention is of a piece with the increasingly fascistic ruling style of the Islamic Republic, viz. mass arrests including the arrest of people entirely outside the political arena, such as Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi’s sister Noushin Ebadi; profligate killings, including the murder of Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi’s nephew last week; and the bizarre blacklisting of think tanks and media organizations.
The regime has always embraced what Bernard Lewis has memorably described as the “Nazi-Fascist style of dictatorial government”—picking people up and then releasing them soon after promises to keep their noses clean. And the Basij has always been ready for extra-judicial killings in a pinch. But this was an adjunct to the governance of Iran, it was not always the essence of its government. That is no longer the case.
It’s time to gear up more aggressively for the prisoners of conscience and the innocents who are being swept up in order to intimidate expatriate Iranians working to free their country. Do what you can to help—get news to Radio Farda, The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, the Boroumand Foundation, or other groups. Contact your favorite reporter or member of Congress.