Word: mousavi
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Already on that Sunday, there were signs on the streets of Tehran that a harsh public campaign against Rafsanjani, Khatami and Mousavi was being orchestrated. Stacks of copies of the ultraconservative newspaper Kayhan blasted the headline "Evidence of Mousavi's Betrayal of Iran Exposed!" The newspaper, a favored mouthpiece for Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, went on to call for the trial of Khatami and Mousavi for "acting against God," a crime punishable under Shari'a law by death. An expanding witch hunt would be reminiscent of a massive purge of dissidents in 1988, when thousands of leftist political prisoners...
...intertwined with the Shi'a clergy that Iran experts spoke of the "bazaar-mosque" alliance as the main reason for the toppling of the Pahlavi monarchy. But is that alliance still holding strong in the wake of the largest protests in Iran since 1979? Could opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi persuade the bazaaris to strike in support of him? (See pictures of the turbulent aftermath of Iran's presidential election...
...section of the bazaar falling off sharply since June. But Iranians still fill the covered passages of the bazaar to buy everything from designer chadors to Chinese-made rice cookers. One shop owner estimated that about 70% to 80% of the bazaaris - owners, managers and workers - quietly sympathize with Mousavi. The remainder, though, loudly voice their support for Ahmadinejad. (See pictures of President Ahmadinejad...
...Mousavi's supporters are trying to get the bazaar on his side. One of the marches in the weeks after Iran's June election went from Imam Khomeini Square past Tehran's main bazaar. According to a witness, thousands of bazaaris closed their shops so they could stand outside and watch hundreds of thousands of green-clad protesters silently walk by. In fact, the route had been designed to draw Iran's merchants and workers into the growing opposition coalition to make it seem as if it had the support of Iran's commercial sector...
While Ahmadinejad had his tax run-in with the bazaar, Mousavi does not have a positive record with many bazaaris either. Older bazaaris can still remember Mousavi the firebrand leftist, who as Prime Minister in the 1980s was associated with price controls and food cooperatives during the Iran-Iraq war. But younger managers and workers generally express support for Mousavi, even though, as one pointed out, "Mousavi never visited the bazaar before the election." Bazaaris felt slighted by the snub, and since the bazaar's merchants are still a main conduit to Iran's smaller towns and rural areas, this...