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.

The Latest from Iran (29 April): Preparations

2020 GMT: A Cleric's May Day Message. Grand Ayatollah Mousavi-Ardebili, meeting workers in advance of May Day, has said: “Today the problems are many and to solve them either no actions are taken or [the government] is incapable of taking any actions. The main issue is that solving these problems has been assigned to those who are not experts in these topics.”

Mousavi-Ardebili also touched on the charges of impropriety against the Government: “Our expectations from Parliament is to show more resistance against the unlawful actions [of the administration] because if, in the Parliament that is the house of the people and is where the laws are passed, these issues are ignored the situation would be worse in other places.”

NEW Iran Video and Summary: The Mousavi Statement for May Day/Teachers Day (29 April)
NEW Iran: The Establishment Frets Over the Supreme Leader
Iran Document: English Text of Mousavi-Karroubi Meeting (26 April)Iran: President Ahmadinejad’s Joke of the Day
The Latest from Iran (28 April): Making a Date

Mousavi-Ardebili added, “These days to solve the problems there is nothing left for us to do but praying, since when we give our inputs about an issue it is being ignored.”


1940 GMT: Political Prisoner News. Days before National Teachers Day and planned demonstrations, it is being reported that Alireza Hashemi, the Secretary General of the Teachers Organization, has been arrested.

1500 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. It's no longer fresh news that Italy's largest oil and gas company, Eni, is pulling out of Iran projects because of the prospect of tougher US sanctions on any firm dealing with Tehran (see Tuesday's updates). It is significant that the news is now being carried by Press TV.

1455 GMT: We've posted today's Mir Hossein Mousavi video, accompanied by a summary from Radio Zamaneh, as a separate entry.

1330 GMT: Writing About the Crisis. Our German Bureau reports that prominent Iranian poets and writers, including Simin Behbahani, Yadollah Royai, Esmail Khoi and Majid Naficy, have contributed to a new anthology,  "Protest of the Pen", published in Persian.

0945 GMT: Investigation or Cover-Up? Shadi Sadr offers her views on the enquiry into the Kahrizak Prison abuses, leading to the death penalty for two police officers and a prisoner:

Gentlemen! Enough magic! We know and you know that the story cannot vanish with the execution of three individuals; indeed, no injury can be cured by more death and execution. The only thing that can satisfy us is knowing the truth about all victims of Kahrizak; the truth about the death of Ramin Pourandarjani, the assigned physician at the facility; and the description of what transpired from the perpetrators of the crimes, on national television.

0940 GMT: Mir Hossein Mousavi has released a video statement for May Day and Iran's Teachers Day (2 May).

0935 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Green Voice of Freedom has a summary of recent arrests of students and the poor health of some detainees.

0925 GMT: Economy Watch. Voice of America claims that, of an estimated 8200 Iranian companies in Dubai, 400 have closed because of sanctions.

0920 GMT: Clerical Matters. Rah-e-Sabz offers an analysis of the President's relationship with senior clerics in Qom, claiming that there were tensions in Ahmadinejad's first term and that only a few marja are offering greetings for his second term.

0915 GMT: Labour/Political Prisoner Watch. Homayoun Jaberi, a member of the Syndicate of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, has been sentenced by the Revolutionary Court to a year in prison, suspended for three years (effectively a probation).

0835 GMT: Mr Verde is back, offering an analysis of the worries of the Iranian "establishment" over the position of the Supreme Leader.

0820 GMT: Corruption Watch (cont.). Elyas Naderan, the conservative member of Parliament who has been leading the campaign against the Government, has criticised the President for not waging a fight against corruption and for appointing questionable officials (for example, at Iran's Oil Commission), and (at NIOC etc.) because of political motivations.

0745 GMT: Corruption Watch. The drumbeat of criticism from conservative members of Parliament continues. Yesterday we noted Ali Motahari challenging underhanded dealings and nepotism in the judiciary; today we find Ahmad Tavakoli launching an even wider attack:

We have reached a state where political corruption is rampant, with some even trying to influence decision makers through bribes. This kind of corruption is much worse than economic corruption, because in economic corruption individuals pursue base and materialistic interest, but in political corruption it is possible that legal decisions would be made to facilitate certain people’s corrupt pursuits and lead to the interference of some in distributing the enormous oil proceeds.”

Political corruption is the involvement of politicians in economic corruption, whereby they buy and sell laws and regulations. This is a much more important disease that some are afflicted with now by trying to infiltrate the Majlis using bribes, threats or promises. Unfortunately we don’t have comprehensive laws dealing with political corruption.

If this problem is not dealt with today, tomorrow would be very late.

Tavakoli then gets specific, targeting the First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, accused of involvement in a major insurance fraud:"The judiciary is now facing a difficult test, because it has moved forward to investigate two important cases. One deals with an administration official and the other with a relative of a senior regime official. If the judiciary falls short of dealing with either case, in my opinion it would flunk the public opinion test and won’t have any standing left for combating corruption.”

0715 GMT: May Day. Rah-e-Sabz has now published the 15-demand declaration of the coalition of Iranian labour groups.

0645 GMT: So, after a flurry of statements from opposition figures (Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi) and groups (reformist parties, teachers, workers), we see if declaration will lead to action.

My interest is not in President Ahmadinejad's next move. Once more he is trying the foreign distraction, applying for and receiving a visa to attend the United Nations conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty next Monday. That is matched by a roll-call of statements from Government officials and supportive members of Parliament that it is the US who is the nuclear culprit --- see, for example, the assertion of Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Alathat Washington should apologize for its failure to abide by its obligations under international law and the NPT.

No, time will be better spent looking for ripples, as in public gatherings of workers, teachers, and other activist groups for the week around May Day. And then the question is whether there will indeed be another wave for 12 June, the anniversary of the election.

An opening teaser question: will Mousavi, who has repeatedly been kept away by Iranian authorities from mass demonstrations since last June, finally move from statement to open defiance by joining the marchers six weeks from now?