Day of Reckoning Looms for Iran

(Dec. 24) -- Anti-government protests escalated in Iran even as authorities issued tougher threats to shut them down, as a day of reckoning for a re-energized reform movement loomed this weekend.

The government on Thursday banned memorials for the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri that had been planned for the town of Kashan, south of Tehran, and warned that all public commemorations for the respected dissident cleric would be limited to the holy city of Qom and Montazeri's hometown, Najafabad.

The ban and warnings come a day after police used tear gas and pepper spray on demonstrators commemorating Montazeri's death in the city of Isfahan, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and other reformist groups, whose accounts of protests in recent months have usually been confirmed. Some 50 protesters were arrested, according to the reports, which accused security forces and the hard-line Basij militia of beating men and women. Foreign media and many Iranian journalists have been barred from covering protests, and the reports could not be independently verified.

The death from natural causes of the 87-year-old Montazeri has roused an opposition that had simmered since elections marred by fraud accusations last June. Amid a well-documented regime campaign of violence, mass arrests and torture, street demonstrations had generally quieted. But clerics in Qom, especially Montazeri – a founding father of Iran's theocracy who fell from grace when he opposed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s – became increasingly vocal in their criticism of Tehran and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Reports from the country suggest that older, more religious Iranians have been turning out to join the younger, more urban demonstrators who formed earlier protests. If the reformists have seized on Montazeri's death as an excuse to again take to the streets, the government and the Basij, with close ties to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seems determined to prevent the protests from spiraling out of control.

Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, Iran's chief of police, on Thursday went on state television to warn that police will take a "harsh approach" against those who commit "violations that lead to disorder," The Associated Press reported.

The biggest worry of the government seems to be demonstrations planned for Sunday to mark the seventh day of mourning for Montazeri. Sunday is also the Muslim holy day of Ashura – itself a commemoration of Shiite Islam's greatest martyr – and a time of religious assembly. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said some ceremonies set for Sunday had been canceled in the wake of Basij interference, but many more were set to take place.

The renewed tension in Iran is likely to stall any attempts by the Obama administration to reach out to Tehran over its nuclear program at a time when pressure is building in Washington and allied capitals for sanctions. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry offered to travel to Iran – as the highest-level U.S. envoy there since the 1979 revolution – and the Obama administration was considering the gambit ahead of its deadline for sanctions, a White House official told The Wall Street Journal. But Kerry told Foreign Policy magazine Thursday that while he "may go sometime in the future" he has "no plans as of now."