The Latest from Iran (25 April): Build-Up

2020 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that detainees in the women’s ward of Evin Prison staged a sit-in and asked the head of the ward to respect the Regulations Law which requires the separation of prisoners.

According to RAHANA, the head of the ward threatened the prisoners and claimed she needs prosecutor’s orders before separating the inmates. The political prisoners have stated that they will continue their sit-in until they achieve their goal.

NEW Iran Special: Tehran, Defender of Women’s Rights (P.S. Don’t Mention Boobquake
NEW Iran: The Green Movement and the Labour Movement (Assadi)
NEW Iran: Hyping the Threat from Tehran (Walt)
Iran: The List of 101 Journalists Who Have Been Jailed
Iran Document: Mousavi on the Green Movement’s Strategy and Goals (22 April)
The Latest from Iran (24 April): Speaking of Rights

1555 GMT:Corruption Watch. Reihaneh Mazaheri, writing for Tehran Bureau, sets out a detailed summary of the corruption allegations against the Ahmadinejad Government.


1550 GMT: Morality Will Be Observed. Tehran Police Chief Ahmad Reza Radan has assured that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance's moral police will soon restart controls for better security.

1535 GMT: Media Corner. Journalist Zaynab Kazemkhah, arrested on 7 February, was fired by Iranian Students News Agency upon her release from Evin Prison. Her boss allegedly told her that she was "a traitor to the country".

1525 GMT: Mousavi Speaks Again. No doubt about it: both Mehdi Karroubi (see 0600 GMT) and Mir Hossein Mousavi are making a renewed push against the Government. Mousavi told a group of war veterans today, "The only way for Iran to get out of the crisis would be for you (the rulers) to change your approach. May God end the crisis in favor of the nation."

Mousavi again declared that the Government is working against the values of the Islamic Republic, "Islam would not beat anyone, would not take anyone into incarceration ... and would not keep anyone in prison....We can not accept closure of newspapers and jailing those who talk of freedom and people's right. This is against Islam."

The Presidential candidate assured the audience that the opposition has not been vanquished despite the Government crackdown on dissent, "Do not think that the reform movement does not exist anymore. Such measures can not block the reform path."

1520 GMT: Rumour of Day (2). Rah-e-Sabz claims that staged television confessions of reformist prisoners are planned for the eve of the anniversary of the election, 12 June.

1310 GMT: Culture and Political Prisoners. Ten prominent Iranian writers and poets, including Simin Behbahani, Ali Ashraf Darvishian, Shams Langroodi, and Moniro Ravanipour, have published an open letter demanding the release of journalist Masoud Bastani and other political prisoners.

1230 GMT: Boobquake Watch. Protecting Iran from earthquakes by pursuing immorality, Tehran police have reportedly banned tanning salons.

1210 GMT: Another Larijani Warning. Speaker of ParliamentAli Larijani has told President Ahmadinejad that the Majlis' laws should be implemented. The Khabar Online article supplements the warning has lots of detail on the government's alleged mismanagement, especially missing reports on the budget and on state broadcaster IRIB.

1205 GMT: Rumour of Day. The Sunday Telegraph of London claims, "Iran has struck a secret deal with Zimbabwe to mine its untapped uranium reserves in a move to secure raw material for its steadily expanding nuclear programme."

It was this agreement that underlay President Ahmadinejad's visit to Harare this week.

Caution is needed here: the Sunday Telegraph has been known to peddle exclusives based on suspect sources and/or speculation. This story rests on a "government source" and, rather unusually, "a senior official in the Iranian embassy" in Zimbabwe.

1200 GMT: All is Well Update. Minister of Interior Mustafa Mohammad Najar has declared, ''During nine months' efforts (since the 12 June Presidential election), police forces across the country slapped the enemy's conspiracy."
He said, ''Due to proper instruction, police forces used proper contact with people and the forces used less amount of shooting (than in the past).''

1035 GMT: Nuclear Breakthrough? Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has met the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, to discuss the uranium swap proposal. Mottaki told Iranian state television that he expected the discussions to be "decisive and detailed".

1030 GMT: We have posted a very special analysis linking Iran's suddenly-announced candidacy for the International Commission for Protection of Women’s Rights to the "Boobquake" episode.

(Just a thought, however. The Supreme Leader has his own Facebook page and has recently pronounced on Iran's defense of women's rights, so shouldn't he be informed of the Boobquake movement?)

0740 GMT: We have posted two features: an analysis of the Green Movement and labour movement by Jamshid Assadi and an assessment of the international "threat" from Iran by Stephen Walt.

0735 GMT: The Parliament Front. Another intervention by the Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani in the contest with the Ahmadinejad Government: he has criticized administration officials who have reacted angrily to reports released by the Supreme Audit Court (SAC).

The Supreme Audit Court, overseen by Parliament, is mandated to control the financial operations and activities of all ministries, institutions, state companies, and other organizations which receive Government funding.

0650 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Student activist Milad Fadayi has been sentenced to a year in prison for “propaganda against the system”. Fadayi was detained on 2 December in his home by plainclothes agents.

Mohammad Hossein Agassi, the lawyer for Amir Reza Arefi, has said that Arefi's death sentence for "mohareb" (war against God) has been reduced to a 15-year prison term. Arefi was condemned to death in February.

However, RAHANA reports that Habibollah Golparipour has been sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in Iranian Kurdistan.



0600 GMT: We are watching the signs that the opposition, inside and outside Iran, is seeking a renewed challenge leading up to the anniversary of the Presidential election. According to his website, Mehdi Karroubi has told the German magazine Der Spiegel, "Although tranquillity has been restored, society is awaiting a spark....People should know that we will continue the campaign. The campaign is not against the [Islamic] republic. On the contrary, it is aimed at observing the constitution in which freedom of conscience and democracy has been clarified."

Some other bits and pieces to start the day....

Clerical Downgrade

A second cleric in Qom has been stripped of his status by a court. Hojatoleslam Mir Ahmadi was sentenced to forced exile from the city for ten years and banned from clerical activities.

Ahmadi was arrested by security forces days after a memorial service in February for the 40th day of the death of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. Ahmadi had debated a student who criticised Montazeri and post-election turmoil in the country. The next day, he was arrested and later released.

Seyed Ahmad Reza Ahmadpour, who recently began a one-year prison sentence, also faces a ban on wearing the traditional clerical robe.

No Foreign Talk, Please

The Islamic Republic News Agency claims that the Deputy Minister for Cinema Affairs has directed that no foreign words be used in Iranian movie titles. According to the agency, a letter to officials declared, “Based on an approval by the cabinet to ban foreign words in banners, advertisements, etc…from now on, Iranian movies are not permitted to use foreign words in titles. This ban applies to films currently in production as well.”

International Rumour of Day

Ayoub Kara, Israel's deputy minister for development in the Negev and Galilee, has told a public meeting that an academic with ties to Iran's nuclear programme recently asked for asylum in Israel after it helped him to defect.

"It is too soon to provide further details," Kara said, adding only that the unidentified academic was "now in a friendly country."

The claim follows the resettlement of Iranian physicist Shahram Amiri in the US in March.

Iran: The Green Movement and the Labour Movement (Assadi)

An interview by Gozaar journalist Mohammad Tavahori in Paris with Professor Jamshid Assadi, an analyst of political economy and member of the opposition group United Republicans of Iran:

Tahavori: In assessing the breadth and depth of the Green movement over the past ten months, many political analysts and observers have pointed to the lackluster role of the labor movement. Mir Hussein Mousavi, in a recent meeting with members of the Sazman-e Mojahedin-e Enqelab-e Eslami (Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution), stressed the need for the Green Movement to band together with the labor movement and to voice the demands of workers, teachers and other social classes. In your view, why has the labor movement failed to have a strong presence in the Green Movement so far?

Iran: A View from the Labour Front (Rahnema)

Assadi: That depends on how you define the Green Movement. If we look at it as a civil-social movement that is rooted in the public’s soaring, long-rooted discontent, but which flared up in a violent reaction to the blatant rigging of the June 12, 2009 elections and spread from there, then we’d conclude that the Green Movement is at core a wide-ranging movement encompassing diverse social groups, such as youth, women, workers, teachers, journalists, Muslims, atheists–in other words, a majority of society’s citizens.



With this definition in mind, the labor movement has never been excluded or disjointed from the Green Movement. There’s no need to wait for workers to be invited to “join” the Greens; the labor movement has always been an active component of the Green Movement.

But allow me to pose a question on the apparent lack of presence of workers among the Greens: Has Mr. Mousavi presented any strategy and roadmap going forward for his supporters whom he believes constitute the main active body of the movement, for him to voice concern about the absence of the labor class? In my view, the labor movement’s inclusion in the Green Movement is less a cause for concern than the performance of prominent Green figures in roles of leadership and providing guidance for the road ahead.

Tahavori: The question, though, is why the role and presence of workers is not visible [in the Green Movement] despite their long record [of social activism]?

Assadi: How is it not visible? Have workers at Haft Tapeh sugar factory and members of the Vahed Bus Company Union not been active in recent years? Has Mansour Osanlou, the president of Vahed Bus Company Union’s executive committee and one of Iran’s most prominent trade activists, ceased his resistance for a single moment in the past few years?

Let me offer some examples of labor movement activities during Esfand 1388-Farvardin 1389 [February-March 2010]. In this period, workers at Simin and Milad factories (subsidiaries of Qaemreza Industries) in Isfahan, the Telecommunications Industries (ITI) in Shiraz, Qaemshahr Textiles in Mazandaran, Alborz China in Qazvin, as well as workers in several other cities convened and staged demonstrations protesting unpaid wages in front of the Governor’s office and other official institutes in their districts.

Also bear in mind that the persecution of trade activists has continued during this period --- Homayoun Jaberi and Qolamreza Khani, two Tehran Bus Company Union members, are two examples. The elected representative of Kian Tires has also refused to sign a letter of agreement with the Ministry of Labor. These are cases that have occurred in the last 40 days --- I can cite more!

Tahavori: Actually, that’s just the question: with such a shining record, why does the labor movement play such a weak role in the Green Movement?

Assadi: The point is that when the movement takes on a social and civil form, the primary, national slogans replace the demands of specific groups, including trade unions. This is not a bad thing.

Like the student, women’s, and teachers’ movements, the labor movement has embraced the common demands and slogans of the past ten months. Given the conditions of this struggle, instead of articulating group-specific demands, workers have also voiced these public demands. This is why we don’t hear worker-related slogans chanted during Green protests.

Do young people --- who comprise the large part of this movement --- voice slogans for student demands? Do women, who have been frontrunners in popular movements in the past 30 years, chant slogans for gender equality? These groups founded the Green Movement, without raising their group-specific demands at this point in time. This is a plus, not a minus --- that the labor movement not focus on exclusive demands and instead, alongside other social movements, champion the mantra of seeking freedom for all Iranians.

Of course, the process of prioritizing demands and slogans is not limited to the Greens in Iran. All over the world, when a social movement emerges and takes shape, the common denominator of demands --- namely: freedom, justice, democracy, human rights --- become pivotal. In Poland, labor unionists were the pillar of the struggle, but they did not elevate their trade demands above the public’s common demands. Indeed, the strength of social movements lies in the fact that group demands give way to core national demands.

Tahavori: I don’t think anyone is saying workers are not a part of the Green Movement. A look at the list of "Green martyrs" reveals the names of workers among them. But looking at the picture from another angle, we see that workers could have played a stronger role. For instance, consider that the neighborhoods where “Allah-u Akbar” (God is great) was chanted at night, such as Shahrak Qarb and Ekbatan, were actually not working-class districts. Besides, the main question is: how can the Green Movement foster stronger ties with social classes across the board -- including the labor class?

Assadi: To answer your question, allow me to note two things. First, the Green Movement, like mass movements everywhere, because it is a social and civil movement, has not chosen group-specific demands as the banner for its struggle. As I mentioned, I believe this is a strength of the movement, not a weakness.

Now to the second point: before inviting workers to join in the movement, Mr. Mousavi must clarify what way forward he is proposing. Let’s imagine no worker so far has been involved in the Green Movement: on what account must they heed Mr. Musavi’s call to join the Greens? What strategy has Mr. Musavi put forth on the kind of presence the labor movement should display within the Green Movement? What strategies has he proposed for those who do currently support him, for that matter?

Say workers do join the movement at Mr. Mousavi’s behest. Great—what’s the next step? Let’s say workers not previously involved in the Green Movement now join the ranks of supporters of the wartime prime minister. The invite is not to drink tea—what are they supposed to do? Should they, as Mr. Mousavi proposes in his Nourouz message, take up the path of “patience and perseverance” at their factories and workshops? Or, as he has suggested elsewhere, should every worker transform himself into a local “leader” for the movement? If that’s the case, why not leave the choice of whether to participate or not, or how to participate, in the movement up to these “autonomous leaders”?

My point, in effect, is that before we start thinking about the nature of the involvement of various groups in the Green Movement, we must think about the leadership of such a social movement. As long as the movement’s leaders and strategies are unclear, there can be no talk of getting various groups in society to actively take part in it and fight for its victory.

Additionally, Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami are mistaken in thinking they can reduce the costs of the current struggle by venerating Ayatollah Khomeini and the [Islamic Republic] constitution. Of course, if they truly believe in such values, I’m not suggesting they forsake their beliefs. They are entitled to their view, and every person fights for the ideals that he believes in.

The point, however, is that for the regressive-minded ruling clique, the sole qualification for remaining a “regime insider” is loyalty and unconditional surrender to the hardliner Guards and Ayatollah Khamenei (which of them controls the other is another story!). By this token, there is not much difference between Mousavi and Karrubi, who openly declare their loyalty to Khomeini’s ideals and the Islamic Republic’s constitution, and diaspora opposition groups such as Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son, or the United Republicans of Iran.

Who has treated the establishment, the constitution, and the Supreme Leader more respectfully in these years than Mr. Khatami? What was his fate? An important point to note is that these [Reformist] statesmen’s lovely words—although they show commendable resistance and deserve appreciation—are not enough; they must break existing taboos with outspoken courage and thus fulfill their roles as the movement’s true leaders by guiding the way forward.

Tahavori: Mr. Mousavi says this year the Green Movement must focus on attracting the labor and teachers’ movements and other social classes. Isn’t that showing leadership and setting a general path for the movement?

Assadi: That’s not leadership; that’s stating the obvious. The role of a leader is to mobilize and organize forces, set effective strategy and provide a plan for the struggle. A leader who strategizes and guides the way, says, for instance, “People, we will march on so-and-so date to state our demand and nonviolent mission for free elections. If the government does not respond, we will increase our demands in the next demonstration.”

To claim that the Green Movement must bond with other movements but to leave it vague that after such bonding takes place, who does what and which strategies will be implemented, is certainly not leadership. In circumstances of severe repression, lovely words appear to symbolize resistance and courage, but they are insufficient and will never lead the movement to victory.

Tahavori: As a political activist and an economist, what strategy would you suggest the labor movement should follow?

Assadi: I’d need more time to answer that! But I can say that under the present conditions, the labor, students, and women’s movements will never achieve their demands until they part ways with the tyranny of the ruling regime. As long as the balance of powers are titled to the advantage of corrupt and dictatorial hardliners, no social demands will ever be met.

The labor movement is no exception. Today, workers are up against a regime that is unresponsive and ignores the wants of its people.

Let me add a last point. A vital condition for the success of the Greens is for them to impose the rules of the game on their opponent. They will lose the game if resistance figures continue to self-censor based on the pretext of “lessening the toll of the struggle”--to the point that they refrain from naming specific names in the dictatorial regime. Aren’t these leaders tired of having to prove to the regime’s ruling bullies day after day that they do not oppose the Islamic Republic and its constitution, and that they are not foreign stooges?

Tahavori: The question remains, how can workers continue the struggle at present? As you mentioned, the labor movement has been quite active in recent years. But due to the government’s fears that the Green Movement will return to the streets, workers and teachers will no longer be allowed to have their own peaceful protests. It even seems improbable that the state-sponsored march for Labor Day, which was organized by the Workers’ House [the official labor unions] every year, will be held this year.

Assadi: That’s a great question and it reflects what I’ve been saying. Your question illustrates the fact that while the balance of power rests with the hardliners, workers will not even be able to celebrate May Day—much less have the freedom to form unions to protect their rights and receive their wages on time!

In any case, I believe all defenders of freedom should march on May Day to demand freedom and to symbolically show their support for the demands of workers in the framework of the larger struggle for democracy. The first of May, May Day (International Labor Day), should be recorded in history as another successful day for the Greens, even better than Nov. 4 and Student’s Day … why not!

It is also important for the Iranian diaspora to mark this day. They should work to raise awareness among international labor organizations about the widespread repression of workers in Iran, and thereby give Iran’s labor movement hope for a better tomorrow.