The Latest from Iran (30 April): The Heaviness of the Atmosphere

2200 GMT: Political Prisoner (Death) Watch. Back from a media break for the British election to find confirmation that death sentences have been handed down to Mohammad Ali Haj-Aghayi and Jafar Kazemi for mohareb (war against God), ties to the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq, and propagating against the regime.

Both men were arrested during the Qods Day demonstrations on 18 September.

NEW Iran Document: Mehdi Karroubi “The Green Movement is Growing in Society”
UPDATED Iran: Tehran, Defender of Rights (Don’t Mention Boobquake), Joins UN Commission on Status of Women
NEW Latest Iran Video: Shirin Ebadi on the Human Rights Situation (23 April)
Iran Video and Summary: The Mousavi Statement for May Day/Teachers Day (29 April)
Iran: The Establishment Frets Over the Supreme Leader
The Latest from Iran (29 April): Preparations

1825 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Student Abolfazl Ghassemi has been sentenced to three years in prison.


1815 GMT: Karroubi's High Profile. Mehdi Karroubi continues the push of opposition initiatives with a declaration to student activists, which we have posted in a separate entry, that the Green Movement is on the rise in Iranian society.

Karroubi has also issued a statement, on the eve of May Day and National Teachers Day, congratulating Iran's workers and teachers.

1450 GMT: Cyber-News (or Lack of It). Khabar Online reports that filtering is now affecting the blogs of "hardliners" and popular writers.

1440 GMT: Your Friday Prayer Summary. Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani wowing the faithful in Tehran today and it's all USA, USA, USA.

Emami Kashani downplayed "the enemy's plots" and said it "will not succeed in its attempt to halt Iran's peaceful nuclear activities through deception and trickery".

The cleric reiterated the remarks of the Supreme Leader that nuclear weapons as "illegal and haram (forbidden)" under Islam. "Despite this," he added, "We are witnessing that the enemy is leveling countless accusations against the country and is threatening us with sanctions....[These] will be rendered useless in the face of the Iranian nation's vigilance."

Despite the firm words against Western immorality, Emami Kashani made no reported reference to women's breasts and earthquakes.


1435 GMT: Labour Watch. After workers of a Bandar Abbas shipbuilder were dismissed, 300 employees protested against assignment to temporary employment agencies.

1400 GMT: Taking Notice. Another sign that the recent Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi initiatives are reviving the interest of "Western" media in the opposition: The New York Times posts an article on yesterday's Mousavi video, "Iran Reformist Tries to Enlist Labor and Teachers".

1355 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Amnesty International publishes its report, "Iran: Journalists Under Siege". The study, which says more than 70 journalists are detained (see our separate entry for 101 who have been held during the post-election crisis), asserts: "Iranian journalists and bloggers are increasingly under siege in one of the biggest crackdowns on independent voices and dissent in Iran's modern history."

1345 GMT: Back from a lengthy academic break to find a flurry of news. Rah-e-Sabz has summarised Mehdi Karroubi's phone conversations with two prominent detainees, student leader Abdollah Momeni and reformist politician Feizollah Arabsorkhi.

0910 GMT: Teachers' Corner. Following our reports of a crackdown on teachers in advance of National Teachers Day, including the arrest of the head of the Teachers Organization, Alireza Hashemi, RAHANA has an overview of the attacks on the headquarters of the teachers' unions and the homes of the members and the hacking and hijacking of websites.

0905 GMT:Economy Watch. Rah-e-Sabz posts a summary of the position of women workers, claiming that they face discrimination, insults, and dismissals and have no social security under the Ahmadinejad Government.

0800 GMT: Get-Tough Alert. I am wondering if we need to launch a "Mesbah Yazdi Watch". The cleric, as Mr Verde noted yesterday, has been quite vocal in recent days, and it seems he is going moving to the front of the "hardliners": "If we had treated post-election protest mildly like earlier governments, no one knows which catastrophe would have come about the country."

0750 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Saeed Soudmelli, arrested 31 December as he filmed traffic on his cellphone in Tehran, has been sentenced to a year in prison for "acting against national security".

Soudmelli’s relatives said he was interrogated through multiple-choice questions such as, “Which of the following people do you hold responsible for the recent events and your own arrest: A – Mousavi, B – Ahmadinejad, C – Yourself, or D – The Government?”

0745 GMT. Beyond Satire. In the week of Boobquake and Tehran's campaign to ban tanning salons, we've got an update in a separate entry: Iran has been voted onto the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

0705 GMT: What's Mahmoud Doing? Well, yesterday President Ahmadinejad opened a cement factory in Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchistan.


0700 GMT: Economy Watch. Credit to Patrick Barry in Foreign Policy who, picking up on news and signals we've been following for weeks, assesses the fragile state of Iran's economy. He has a stinger of a conclusion:

Based on the regime's track record of incompetence and the consequences of that incompetence for the Iranian economy, the U.S. would be wise to take a step back, allowing Iran to continue on its present course....Congress is searching for the most effective means to weaken the Iranian economy; the best approach may be for it to do nothing at all.

0620 GMT: Influence and Time Magazine. Last December, Time took the controversial decision of striking "the Iranian people",  despite their overwhelming victory in a poll of readers, from their finalists for Person of the Year.

Not sure if this is sufficient consolation, but Mir Hossein Mousavi has been named the most influential person in the world for 2010 in Time's online ballot, with almost twice as many votes as the runner-up, Chinese novelist Han Han.

0615 GMT: The Isolation of Ahmadinejad. Muhammad Sahimi offers his analysis of internal tensions, offering detail on the corruption scandals that challenge the President and looking at Iran's international position and the manoeuvres over its nuclear programme to conclude:

If Ahmadinejad's isolation held no potential for a lasting effect on the nation as a whole, it would not be so important. But the fact is that his isolation -- the consequence of electoral theft, violent crackdowns on peaceful protesters, rampant corruption, and the pursuit of a foreign policy simultaneously aimless and aggressive -- directly threatens Iran's national security and territorial integrity.

0600 GMT: We begin this morning with two features looking at repression and the discussion (or lack of it) inside Iran. With the help of Dave Siavashi of Iran News Now, we have the videos of last week's talk by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi on the human rights situation. And we post the reportage of Katherine Butler of The Independent of London, who was allowed into Iran to cover the Tehran conference on nuclear disarmament but seized the opportunity to do a few interviews with Iranians about the state of fear and tension.

Iran Document: Mehdi Karroubi "The Green Movement is Growing in Society"

From the Facebook page supporting Mir Hossein Mousavi:

A group of members of The Bureau for Consolidating Unity (Advar-e Tahkim Vahdat, the major reformist alumni and student organisation) and other student activists visited Mehdi Karroubi.

In this meeting Karroubi said: “When pressure is put on social movements, naturally the different classes of the society mature; people of the society mature and reveal their true essence. In the current situation we witness that, despite all the pressure that is put on the people, the growing trend of the [Green] Movement is clear in the society, and despite all the pressure people are getting more sensitive about the performance of the government.”


He also emphasised, “The concerns of the government about the current situation is proof that they are scared of future activities and events. Imprisoning those who had been released recently and insisting on not releasing others clearly show that ruling powers have great fear and panic from people and people’s movements.”

According to Karroubi,the Green Movement is the natural right of the people and the ruling powers should give in to this right. As long as this acceptance is delayed the cost for clerics, the system, and Islam would grow.

Karroubi emphasised, “In order to respond to the people, the promises that had been made in the early days of the revolution should be honoured. Although these days we witness that many of those who paid no costs for the revolution are in power, the background and history of some of these fellows show that their presence have roots in the revolution and they should be able to convince the public with regards to the slogans they were using before, as the people of Iran have a very good historic memory and still remember those slogans and promises.”

Karroubi added, “We should open dialogue with all the organisations that are in the system and are influential.”....

Mehdi Karroubi stressed, “Escaping from the law has become normal and typical for those in power these days. An obvious example is the shutting down of all the oversight organisations and ignorance of the reports that shows the weakness and ineffectiveness of the economic policies of the country. We see that Management Organisation, the Supreme Audit Court and other inspection organisations either don’t exist anymore or have lost their previous functions.”

He also pointed to the claims of one of the officials who said that Iran has become a big factory and said, “Unemployment has always existed in our society, but in the current situation it is being felt more than before. Every day we hear about the shutdown or bankruptcy of a company or a factory. Then these fellows claim that Iran has become a big factory?”

Karroubi, addressing the ruling powers, said: “ It has been 30 years since the people have made all sorts of sacrifices for the Islamic system, so why do the ruling powers not admit to their mistakes and apologise to the people?”

New, improved comments system coming soon (hopefully...)

Following Wednesday's temporary loss of comments, some of our readers may already know we're going to trial the Disqus commenting system on our site. While the original plan was to introduce this on the new site we're working on, we've decided to give it a go here.

What's going to happen?

I'll be switching Disqus on at some point over the weekend, when activity on our site is usually lower. If all goes to plan all existing comments will sync with Disqus and the only difference you'll see will be that blog comments look a bit different. If I have any problems, comments may be unavailable for a time.

Why is this happening?

The advantages of introducing Disqus to our current site are:

1) We can all get used to the new commenting system before switching to the new site, giving us one less thing to think about when we do make the switch.

2) Importing comments to the new site has been one of our biggest headaches. We're hoping that using Disqus will remove this problem (more on this another time).

Assuming the switch is a success I'll put up another post explaining what the benefits of Disqus are. I'll also try to keep everyone updated on my progress using Twitter.

Middle East: Washington Caught in a Lebanon-Syria-Israel-Iran Rectangle (Yenidunya)

After the Syrian Foreign Ministry blamed Israel for preparing a military strike by accusing Damascus of supplying Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon with long-range Scud missiles, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, "There is no truth to the suggestion that Israel is planning a military move against Syria."

Is Syria Arming Lebanon’s Hezbollah?

The following day, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates returned to the allegations: "Syria and Iran are providing Hezbollah with so many rockets that they are at a point where they have more missiles than most governments in the world."


Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi then said, during a visit to Damascus on Thursday, that "Iran and Syria are united against the internationally-backed enemies of Palestine." Syria's reaction was slightly different: Presidential advisor Buthaina Shaaban said that Israeli allegations that Damascus is supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles are aimed at undermining the country's improving relations with the United States.

Washington offered another quick response. The Obama administration warned Iran and Syria that America's commitment to Israel's security is unshakable and that they should understand the consequences of threats to the Jewish state. Spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters, ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's address to the American Jewish Committee, "We are concerned about the broader issue of the nature of Syrian support to Hizbullah involving a range of missiles, including that one [the possibility of Hezbollah's having Scuds]."

Despite accusations from Lebanon's Foreign Ministry and Hezbollah that a visit by a US security team to the Lebanese-Syrian border on Wednesday was a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the US Embassy said the trip was planned months ago and took place in coordination with the Lebanese Government.

Speaking to a Kuwait-based news channel, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that Israel would be taking a great risk if it decided to open war on Lebanon. He also added that "that kind of war would change every parameter in the Middle East."

Israel-Palestine: The Golden Key to Proximity Talks? East Jerusalem (Yenidunya)

Soon after Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said, "It's time that [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] decides to sit with Israel and conduct real negotiations whilst Jerusalem is out of any talks and is Israel's eternal capital," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared that proximity talks would be launched in two weeks.

However, as Haaretz reported that there is a de facto freeze in the eastern sector of Jerusalem; Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat insisted that construction in East Jerusalem will continue. He continued:

We are going to build, we are not going to stop it, it's illegal to stop it. And we'll continue to do the best and the right thing for the city of Jerusalem.

Israel-Palestine: Netanyahu’s “Gestures” After Talks with Mitchell (Yenidunya)

In this atmosphere, the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee will convene next Tuesday, its first gathering since it affected the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden with its approval of new building. It will discuss general plans and then consider a small number of housing units in the eastern part of the city, although it is yet unknown whether the units are meant for Arabs or Jews.



Meanwhile, Jordan's King Abdullah II again warned,  ahead of a meeting this weekend of the Arab League in Cairo, that the situation in the Middle East could "explode" due to Israel's building of settlements in East Jerusalem. Abdullah had said two weeks ago:

If we hit the summer and there's no active [peace] process, there's a very good chance for conflict, and nobody wins when it comes to that.

On Saturday, the Arab League's Monitoring Committee for the Arab Peace Initiative is scheduled vote on US proposals of Washington. The League has already stated that there would be no approval of proximity talks if there was no freeze in East Jerusalem.