Iranian Opposition Schedules New Protests

WSJ, Iran's opposition announced a plan for nationwide street protests every Tuesday for the next three weeks as a way to increase pressure on the government.

The Green Movement's Organization Committee, which is based abroad and organizes protests via the Internet, said Thursday that the plan for "Tuesdays of Protest" was a result of consultations with advisers and suggestions from supporters inside Iran who wanted to keep the protests' momentum going.

A statement published on opposition websites said that protests would continue and move to other phases such as sit-ins, strikes, boycotts and civil resistance.

Iran's opposition has appeared invigorated in recent weeks amid the wave of Arab pro-democracy uprisings. The collapse of the governments in Tunisia and Egypt, and the unrest in Libya, has stirred many Iranians to push for change.

"People want to witness what happened in Tunisia and Egypt in Iran as well," said prominent film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a member of the opposition committee, in a video message to Iranians on Thursday. "Protesting every week will challenge the regime and in the future these weekly protests will turn into daily events."

The Iranian government has enhanced security in anticipation of unrest and as a warning sign. Tehran residents said that most of the capital's main squares were packed with dozens of antiriot police and security forces, stopping cars and checking the identification cards of passersby.

Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, along with their wives, have been under strict house arrest for more than a week, effectively confining them without a judicial process or the public backlash that a trial might generate.

Intelligence agents, working under a ministry directly supervised by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have taken over security for Messrs. Mousavi and Karroubi, according to Mr. Karroubi's family. They have entered Mr. Karroubi's house and locked him and his wife in two separate rooms, according to a statement by their children. The agents provide and prepare both leaders' meals, the statement said, raising concerns that the leaders could be poisoned.

In the past few days, conservative government news agencies have called for a clerical court to prosecute Mr. Karroubi for treason, a charge that carries the death penalty, and to defrock him, a symbolic punishment for clergy in Iran.

The opposition has said it is calling the Tuesday protests partly to oppose the treatment of the leaders and demand an end to their house arrest, and also to bring attention to a string demands ranging from freeing political prisoners to free elections.

The U.S. stepped up its pressure on Iran's human-rights record on Wednesday, sanctioning two senior officials responsible for the post-election crackdowns in 2009 and 2010.

The U.S. State Department said it will block assets in and prevent travel to the U.S. for Tehran's prosecutor general, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, and the commander of Iran's Basij paramilitary force, Mohammed Reza Naqdi.

"The steady deterioration in human-rights conditions in Iran has obliged the international community to speak out time and again," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday.