Word: iranians
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Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower
...what could be a sign of fissures beginning to develop within the Iranian government, the consul of the country's embassy in Norway resigned suddenly on Wednesday over the regime's bloody crackdown on antigovernment protesters during the Shi'ite holiday of Ashura last month - the worst violence the country has seen since the unrest that erupted following last June's disputed presidential election...
...Mohammed Reza Heydari told the Norwegian broadcaster NRK that his decision to step down was tied to the crackdown, during which security forces fired directly into crowds. At least eight people were killed, including the nephew of the opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi. "It was the Iranian authorities' treatment of demonstrators over the Christmas period that made it clear to me that my conscience forbids me from continuing my job at the embassy," Heydari was quoted as saying by NRK. (See pictures of people around the world protesting Iran's election...
...according to Rahman Saki, chairman of the Norwegian-Iranian Support Committee - an aid group - Heydari is considering asking Norwegian authorities for political asylum. "There is no way he will return to Tehran. If he goes back, it will undoubtedly mean imprisonment and torture," Saki says. According to the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan, Heydari will take a couple of days to figure out his plans, and during that time he will not give any interviews. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that it had yet to be contacted in the case. (See pictures of terror in Tehran...
...Heydari applies for asylum, it will mark a significant defection for Iran - especially at a time when the Iranian people and the rest of the world are watching for cracks to appear in the government following last month's violence. Davoud Hermidas Bavand, a scholar and former diplomat in Iran, told the Los Angeles Times that such a defection would be huge: "If it is true, then it is going to be a precedent, because it has not happened since the beginning years of the [1979] revolution, when some of the appointed postrevolutionary diplomats defected and sought asylum. This case...