Interviews with Mohsen Sazegara

The first – big demonstration happened – on Monday, three days after the election day. June 15 – if I´m not wrong. And 3.5 million people came to the streets and– they– they– they made it silent demonstration. Nobody shouted anything. Just as a protest, they started to just march on the streets without saying anything.

Because– not Mousavi and Karoubi, but – many activists – invited the people for non-violent actions. For peaceful resistance. Peaceful protestors. And after that– you know, two big – demonstrations in that week. But – on Friday praying, the leaders started to threat the nation, and said that, “I don´t tolerate anymore. Everybody should go home.” And because that the day after, that Saturday – again was a demonstration on the streets, they opened fire to the people.

That´s the day that Nidal Sultan was killed. And – anyway, our estimation shows that totally we have lost about 200 lives on the streets. And – the prisoners toll is about 15,000. Some of them are released, but still we have about something between 4,000 to 5,000 prisoners in jail.

That was the strategy of regime. I mean, to create fear. And the strategy of the movement was to delegitimize the regime first, keep the unity of the opposition, stay on the non-violent tactics, and – after street protests – enough street protests, then going for the other tactics of non-violent movements.

Mohsen Sazegara is a former deputy prime minister of Iran and founder of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who now serves as a leading supporter of the Iranian Green Movement.

In the lead-up to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Sazegara served as a leading student activist against the Shah. After the Shah left the country in 1979, Sazegara traveled to Tehran from Paris with the Ayatollah Khomeini, joined the government of the Islamic Republic, and helped establish the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Sazegara then served as deputy prime minister and in several other senior positions.

Eventually, Sazegara became disillusioned with Khomeini’s regime and left government to study history. He came to the conclusion that Khomeini’s government was acting in ways that were incompatible with the principles of Islam. Following the publication of his numerous writings in reformist papers and his calls for a referendum on the Iranian constitution, Sazegara was arrested and imprisoned several times. He protested his imprisonment with hunger strikes, which severely affected his health. He eventually was allowed to leave Iran to seek medical treatment.

Sazegara now lives in the United States and is an active supporter of the Iranian Green Movement. He serves as president of the Research Institute on Contemporary Iran and as a visiting fellow at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.