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The Latest from Iran (7 August): The Opposition Bounces Back

NEW Iran: The Battle for the Ministry of Intelligence Continues
The Latest from Iran (6 August): Getting Past Ahmadinejad

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1855 GMT: One More Prayer Twist. Fars News, showing its allegiances, does not even put the Tehran address of Emami-Kashani on its front page. Instead it gives comfort to the President by featuring the Qom prayer statement of Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli, a fervent supporter of the Government and fervent critic of Hashemi Rafsanjani: "If differences continue, the country will suffer irreparable problems."

1830 GMT: #CNNFail. Trying to see if any "mainstream" media outside Iran noticed the warning to Ahmadinejad, only two days after his inauguration, from a "conservative" cleric, Emami-Kashani. Here is CNN International's current Web story on Iran: "Security tight as Iran's Ahmadinejad sworn in".

1800 GMT: How Bad are the Signals for Ahmadinejad? Not much coverage of Ayatollah Emami-Kashani's address at Friday prayers in Tehran, but there doesn't need to be to see the bad news for the President. From Press TV's website:

As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepares to begin his second term in office, a leading cleric says the Iranian people deserve better treatment.

Tehran's Interim Friday Prayers Leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Imami-Kashani, urged the reelected Iranian President to pursue an agenda that would serve national interests.

“The Iranian people are kind-hearted and good, it is not right to cause them pain and distress,” said Ayatollah Imami-Kashani. ”The government should do everything in its power to be honest and truthful with the public.”

There was more standard rhetoric from Emami-Kashani in his admonition that the Islamic and the Republican cannot be separated in Iran's system, but the immediate message was clear:

Mahmoud, you better watch your step.

0700 GMT: Amnesty International has released a list of 24 Iranian Army officers detained in the post-election conflict.

0620 GMT: Thursday's Token Concession. Press TV's website reports:

After speaking to prisoners and sources at the recently shut down Kahrizak prison, the Iranian police force has come to the conclusion that violations of detainee rights along with dereliction of duty have been evident at the notorious detention center.

The police are quick to explain that "the harsh living conditions" arose from the need to establish a temporary facility "for the correction of detained ruffians". However, "the dereliction of duty and breaches by a number of the center's managers, officers and staff has become manifest....The limited capacity of the detention center and the addition of the July 9 detainees made the wings overcrowded and led to unsuitable living and hygiene conditions [for the detainees] and caused them much suffering." 

Morning Update (0515 GMT): After a fairly quiet day on Thursday, marked by the Government's attempts to stifle dissent through arrests and possibly cyber-warfare, the opposition picked up against last night. A series of evening gatherings escalated into protests across Tehran, with some footage emerging of car horns blaring and chants of "Death to the Dictator". The Green movement outlet Mowj-e-Sabz carries an eyewitness account of protests "half the night" in Vali-e Asr Square.

The Facebook pages of the opposition movement are also back to life after they were suspended most of Thursday by technical difficulties or more devious activity. Mir Hossein Mousavi's page features a statement by his chief advisor, Alireza Beheshti:

[It is] the silly have the command today....Whoever talks about something logical, they will accuse him of being disloyal to the Supreme Leader. By using these tactics they are avoiding logic. It has been two months since the election: which one of their actions solved the crisis?

Meanwhile, dedicated watchers of the Establishment will have a lot to decode later today when Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani leads Friday prayers in Tehran. Emami-Kashani is considered a "conservative" cleric but, as we noted on Wednesday, he spoke critically last week not only of the Government but of the Supreme Leader. His address could offer the first post-significant clues of how deep the divisions are within the regime.

And today's prayer speech will only heighten the mystery over next week's drama. We closed last night with the revelation that the head of the Friday prayers committee is now casting doubt on the earlier report that Hashemi Rafsanjani will be addressing worshipers in Tehran on 14 August. Is this a case of the regime trying to curb one of its leading challengers or was the initial news exaggerated? No further indications have come out this morning.

Having stirred up trouble within his own "conservative" ranks two weeks ago, President Ahmadinejad is still making his own plays for power. Remember the affair of the First Vice Esfandair Rahim Mashai, who supposedly resigned amidst the anger caused in the Cabinet, the Parliament, and the offices of the Supreme Leader? Well, he hasn't gone away. Instead, he has simply re-claimed the administrative territory and powers of the 1st VP as Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff.

Iran and the Facebook-Twitter Cyber-Attacks

A source close to Enduring America offers the compelling hypothesis that the recent attacks on Facebook and Twitter may have been aimed at the Green Movement.

“Judging by my past IT experience and the way things developed yesterday, it appears that Facebook administrators put the pages of Karroubi, Mousavi, Zahra R, etc offline in order to stabilise the flow of the entire system, as the DDOS would ostensibly cease once the sites were seemingly knocked off air. This is why FB did not entirely go off air – the pressure on it abated once the reformists page were suspended. Twitter on the other hand was a free for all target, and had to withstand more damage. Another thing that lends credence to this theory is that fact that none of the the suspended pages have lost content or have been defaced. However, all this is speculation until FB and Twitter officially announce what went on yesterday.”

Edit: Facebook have subsequently confirmed to the BBC that the strike was actually aimed at a pro-Georgian blogger known as Cyxymu. In an interview with The Guardian, Cyxymu blamed the Russian Government for instigating the cyber attack.

Five Bombs Blasted in Iraq: At Least 42 Killed!

GMT - 21.32: CNN reports that the death toll of these four attacks against Shiites increased to 36 and the total number of the wounded to 124. However. the fifth attack against a Sunni target took 6 lives and wounded 30. At the end of five attacks, 42 people were killed and 154 were wounded. 

GMT - 18.40: At least 26 people were killed and 94 wounded in four separate bombings in Iraq on Friday. A Shiite mosque in Mosul, a bus carrying pilgrims and a car in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, and another vehicle carrying pilgrims in Baghdad were the targets on a religious holiday for Shiites, the end of a celebration of the birth of Imam al-Mahdi,.

Iran: The Battle for the Ministry of Intelligence Continues

The Latest from Iran (7 August): The Opposition Bounces Back

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Last week we posted an exclusive analysis on the battle to control the Ministry of Intelligence and its wider political significance: "The irony is that any notion of an outside 'velvet revolution” has been overtaken by an inside bureaucratic war. How far this war spreads could define the next phase of the post-election challenge to the Iranian system.

 Iason Athanasiadis has an intriguing follow-up in Thursday's Washington Times, "Power struggle hits Iran intelligence agency". Inevitably, a lot of the piece is rumour and speculation but the hard facts are worthy of consideration.

The theories behind President Ahamdinejad's sacking of the Minister of Intelligence, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie, such as "failure to press for convictions on espionage charges of former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian and two Iranian-Americans, scholar Haleh Esfandiari and journalist Roxana Saberi" are peripheral (the immediate reason for Ejeie's firing could just as easily have been thew Cabinet bust-up over the appointment of the First Vice President, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai). Instead, the significant signal of the power struggle is here:
[blockquote]
Mr. Ejei was present on Monday when Ayatollah Khamenei presided at a ceremony confirming Mr. Ahmadinejad's second term: "Ejei came for the supreme leader, not for Ahmadinejad, because he derives his credibility from [the leader]."
[/blockquote]Just as important are the sources of the rumours for Ejeie's dismissal, as well as the firing of two Vice Ministers and more than 20 other officials: pro-Ahmadinejad activists quoted in the "conservative" Baztab and the "reformist" Mizan News. And there is the President's own reference to the "failings" justifying his changes at the Ministry:

Two weeks before the riots started, the Foreign Ministry reported that it was very suspicious that a significant number of people were traveling to Iran from Britain. But the intelligence ministry did not pursue this matter. The ministry also did not act as it was expected in the recent unrests, and there were blatant cases of negligence. 

Is the President now running the Ministry via its interim head, Majid Alavi, taking supervision away from the Supreme Leader?  Is he, as the 20+ dismissed officials have warned in a letter to the Ministry, erasing security files relating to his allies, including the former
First Vice President Rahim-Mashai? And are there manoeuvres behind these manoeuvres in which the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is ensuring that it is the power behind this regime?

None of this is any clearer now than when the crisis broke more than two weeks ago. What has been established is that this is a system which is battling forces within as much as it is the opposition outside.