The Latest from Iran (13 February): Re-assessment, Renewal

2125 GMT: Reports have emerged that two more journalists, Mohammad Ghaznavian and Hamid Mafi, have been detained. They join more than 60 others in Iran's prisons.

2120 GMT: We have posted a snap analysis of what appears to be a serious challenge by Khabar Online, the website linked to Ali Larijani, to President Ahmadinejad. If we are on the mark, then in light of this week's suppression of Ayande News, it will be intriguing to see the Government's response to another location of "conservative" criticism.

2025 GMT: We have posted the text of Mehdi Karroubi's first interview after 22 Bahman.

1955 GMT: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has written the academic colleagues of imprisoned Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh, "The espionage charges leveled against Dr. Tajbakhsh are groundless. The State Department is using every available diplomatic tool to achieve Dr. Tajbakhsh's release."

Tajbakhsh was jailed for 15 years in October on charges of espionage. Clinton said in her letter that Kian Tajbakhsh has not been allowed to meet with Swiss diplomats, who serve as the United States' diplomatic representatives in Iran, because Iran considers Tajbakhsh an Iranian citizen.

NEW Iran: Reading Khabar’s “Conservative” Attack on Ahmadinejad
NEW Iran: Mehdi Karroubi’s 1st Interview After 22 Bahman (13 February)
NEW Iran: Desperately Seeking Sensible US Comment about 22 Bahman
NEW Iran: “Allahu Akhbar from the Rooftops” — The 2009 Photo of the Year
Iran Video Special (2): Decoding the 22 Bahman Rally in Azadi Square
Iran Video Special (1): The 22 Bahman Attack on Karroubi?
Iran: 22 Bahman’s Reality “No Victory, No Defeat”
Iran Analysis: The Regime’s Pyrrhic Victory
Iran: The Events of 22 Bahman, Seen from Inside Tehran
Iran on 22 Bahman: Ahmadinejad “Wins Ugly” (This Time)
Iran: Greening YouTube — An Interview with Mehdi Saharkhiz
The Latest from Iran (12 February): The Day After 22 Bahman

1940 GMT: A Friday Prayer for All. Neday-e Sabz Azadi reports, via Radio Zamaneh, that the Friday Prayers leader of Zahedan, Molavi Abdolhamid, described the Islamic Republic as a system that gives equal freedom to both pro- and anti-Government groups and allows voices of opposition to be heard: “The people of Iran brought the Revolution to victory to achieve its goals and now they demand the reviewing and realization of those goals.”


1817 GMT: Re-Assessment (cont.). The Los Angeles Times has a wide-ranging, sometimes sprawling review of 22 Bahman. At its heart, however, is an interview with a female journalist in Tehran pondering the next steps for the Green Movement:

Our response was better than getting angry and violent and paying a lot of costs and not gaining anything. I think it was a wise choice to just show the government that we disagree, and not to pay too much of a cost, and not hurry to overthrow the system, and to just consider [the day] as a step in the path that we are on and will continue.

If the government believes that the green movement is finished, they are mistaken. Actually, I don't think that they are that stupid.

1810 GMT: Student activist Vahid Abedini has been released from detention.

1615 GMT: Re-assessing. Setareh Sabety's assessment of the way forward after 22 Bahman, which we featured on Thursday, has now been extended for The Huffington Post.

1610 GMT: More on the Karroubi Attack (see 1452 GMT). The account in Saham News claims that Ali Karroubi, son of Mehdi Karroubi, was taken to Amirolmomenin mosque after his arrest, beaten severely, and threatened with rape.

1600 GMT: Like Rah-e-Sabz, the Green website Tahavol-e-Sabz is on-line on a different address after it was taken down by a cyber-attack on Friday. And Mir Hossein Mousavi's Kalemeh is also now back in operation.

1452 GMT: The 22 Bahman Attack. Fatemeh Karroubi, the wife of Mehdi Karroubi, has written to the Supreme Leader to complain about the physical abuse of her son Ali when he was arrested on 22 Bahman  during an assault on the Karroubi entourage. A picture in Karroubi's Saham News shows a bruised Ali Karroubi.

1432 GMT: On the Labour Front. The Flying Carpet Institute passes on an English translation of a Radio Farda interview with the leader of a recently-formed labor organisation at the Isfahan Steel Factory.

1430 GMT: We've posted a separate entry considering US "expert" reaction to the events of 22 Bahman.

1300 GMT: The reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front has issued a statement about the events of 22 Bahman.

1145 GMT: And More Clarification. An EA correspondent checks in:

Rah-e-Sabz reports that, contrary to popular perception, Ayande News is run by an ally of Mohsen Rezaei (Secretary of the Expediency Council and Presidential candidate) and not of Hashemi Rafsanjani. The entire editorial team was indeed arrested on 11 February, and the current notice regarding the arrest of the editor-in-chief, Fouad Sadeghi, was placed there because of pressure by the intelligence forces. Rah-e-Sabz speculates that Sadeghi is resolutely opposed to the transfer of Iranian uranium abroad, which is why the Government might have arrested him.

1125 GMT: Important Correction. Ayande News is not operating "as normal" after the reported detention of all of its staff, including editor-in-chief Fouad Sadeghi, just before 22 Bahman (see 0920 GMT). The site has not been updated since Wednesday, when it noted the detentions and suspension of operations.

1025 GMT: Sure, Sure, Whatever. Political posturing all around this morning. Iranian state media bangs out the "self-sufficient" beat: "Iran's nuclear point man Ali Akhbar Salehi says that much to the West's surprise, Tehran will produce nuclear fuel plates within the next few months."

And American not-really-state-media (The New York Times) serves as Obama Administration "get tough" spokesperson:

With tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions hitting new levels, the United States is mounting a diplomatic full-court press in the Middle East, sending four top diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to confer with Arab and Israeli leaders.

The envoys’ visits to Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were planned separately in recent weeks, but they now have a common purpose, administration officials said: to reassure Iran’s neighbors that the United States will stand firm against Tehran, and to enlist other countries in a global effort to put pressure on the Iranian authorities.

0925 GMT: Toeing the Line. Former Presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri has declared, "Even one foe in the Government is too much."

0920 GMT: Claim of Day. If this is true, it is a huge story. Iran Green Voice is asserting, from sources, that all staff of Ayande News were detained on the night of 22 Bahman. Ayande is not "reformist" but affiliated with Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Ayande is on-line as normal this morning. (see 1125 GMT)

0915 GMT: Free Them. A group of international organizations, journalists, writers, and publishers have written an open letter to the Supreme Leader demanding freedom for at least 60 imprisoned journalists and writers in Iran.

0910 GMT: More Numbers. Ebrahim Nabavi writes, "According to eye-witnesses, the government insists on the fact that four million loudspeakers participated in 22 Bahman."

0845 GMT: The Numbers on 22 Bahman. The Newest Deal, using Google's eye-in-the-sky imagery of Azadi Square on Thursday, offers a concise, effective repudiation to the official claims of "millions" supporting the regime on the day.

0755 GMT: On the International Front. Arms for Iran, sent by a Russian export company,have reportedly been confiscated at Frankfurt Airport in Germany.

Following the European Parliament resolution challenging Iran over internal abuses and its nuclear programme, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has sharply condemned human rights violations in Iran and demanded harsher sanctions.

And speculation continues as to why Saeed Jalili, Iran's Secretary of the National Security Council and key figure in nuclear talks, had trip to Moscow cancelled last week.

0740 GMT: We began yesterday by looking for reactions to Thursday's demonstrations, especially political re-alignments within the Iranian regime and political re-assessments within the opposition and Green movements.

We got both.

On the "conservative" side, the fightback against President Ahmadinejad's declared victory came late, but it was clear and strong in the statement of the member of Parliament and Larijani ally Ali Motahhari. His interview, published in the Larijani-allied Khabar Online, was a forthright challenge for "both sides" to acknowledge mistakes. That has been standard rhetoric for Motahhari for weeks; what was distinctive was his specific challenge to the Government to stop banning the press and to release all political prisoners.

Yet it was the re-assessment on the opposition side that was most striking on Friday. The let-down of Thursday slowly gave way to a more balanced reaction. That was supported in part by the emerging evidence --- which we had projected in our analyses late on Thursday and early on Friday --- that the support for the regime on 22 Bahman was not as large as first believed and certainly was not as enthusiastic.

Beyond that, however, was an even more important conclusion: hopes for 22 Bahman had been inflated and the opposition approach to the day had been very, very wrong, but this was a tactical failure, not the demise of the Green movement. Tehran Bureau, which had been striking in its pessimism late Thursday, now features an analysis by Muhammad Sahimi which swings back to long-term determination: "There is a new dawn in the struggle of the Iranian people for democracy and the rule of law. The Green Movement must develop the necessary organization and adjust its tactics dynamically in order to make further progress during this turbulent era."

More importantly than any statement from an organisation on "the outside", activists inside Iran have made that assessment. So to the next phase of this crisis.

The Latest from Iran (8 February): Staying with the Real Story

2045 GMT: But There are Limits. One leading international media organisation is proclaiming that it has mobilised itself to cover Thursday's events in Iran. It has even set up a dedicated Twitter account for Iran, announced throughout today in a series of tweets.

Only problem is that this broadcaster/website hasn't quite got the hang of using Twitter for gathering latest news rather than for self-promotion. Total number of Twitter accounts it is following? 7, all of whom happen to be its own staff.

NEW Iran Document: Khatami Statement for 22 Bahman (8 February)
NEW Iran Special: The 57 Journalists in Iran’s Prisons
NEW Iran Advice Video: Palin to Obama “Bomb and You Get Re-Elected”
Iran Special: The Weakness of the Regime “It’s Deja Vu All Over Again”
Iran: The “Reconciliation” Proposals of Karroubi’s Etemade Melli Party
Iran: “Conservative Opposition” Offer to Mousavi “Back Khamenei, We Sack Ahmadinejad”
Iran Space Shocker: Turtle-Astronauts Defect to West
The Latest from Iran (7 February): Tremors

2020 GMT: 22 Bahman is Back! The "Western" media, which only 12 hours ago seemed to be oblivious to anything Iran-related  unless it had the word "nuclear", has re-discovered the internal events and tensions. Numerous services are carrying the report of the Associated Press on the Supreme Leader's speech (1245, 1420, & 1940 GMT), while The New York Times picks up on Reuters' summary of the statements of Mir Hossein Mousavi (1635 GMT) and Mohammad Khatami (separate entry). Even America's ABC News has taken notice, catching up with Saturday's interview of Mehdi Karroubi in a German magazine.

And CNN, declaring that it was going to cover Iran closely before and on Thursday, has launched a special section on its website.

2015 GMT: Shutting Down the News. Pedestrian follows up on the arrest of photographer Amir Sadeghi, the creator of the excellent Tehran Live, and the detentions of both sisters of blogger Agh Bahman.

1940 GMT: We Are Number One (and We Will Punch You). More on the Supreme Leader's tough talk today (see 1245 GMT), one in which he did not walk out because of an inconvenient question (see 1420 GMT):

Today, there exists no system like the Islamic establishment in the world that can stand unshakably in the face of heavy, hostile propaganda, political and economic pressures and sanctions....[Because of our] reliance on God...whenever the people fear for the Revolution and sense threats and animosity, huge crowds of people, spontaneously and without convocation, take to the streets across the country.

1935 GMT: Blocking the Airwaves. An Iranian activist has reported that Voice of America Persian can no longer be received in Tehran.

1655 GMT: This Just In. Heading off to an academic commitment, but had to note this statement by the US Government and European Union, released by the White House:

The United States and the European Union condemn the continuing human rights violations in Iran since the June 12 election. The large scale detentions and mass trials, the threatened execution of protestors, the intimidation of family members of those detained and the continuing denial to its citizens of the right to peaceful expression are contrary to human rights norms.

Our concerns are based on our commitment to universal respect for human rights. We are particularly concerned by the potential for further violence and repression during the coming days, especially around the anniversary of the Islamic Republic's founding on 11 February.

We call on the Government of Iran to live up to its international human rights obligations, to end its abuses against its own people, to hold accountable those who have committed the abuses and to release those who are exercising their rights.

1635 GMT: Summary of Mousavi's Statement. Mir Hossein Mousavi told a group of youth and student activists today:

Disgracing and insulting people and the freedom of thought has nothing to do with Islam. I believe that the nation knows what is best for it and the collective wisdom is the superior wisdom and that is why the Islamic Revolution happened. If we want to save Islam as an asset for the nation, our own interests should not endanger the interests of Islam....

The only demand of the force that has come to the scene today is to return to the main laws and values of the Islamic Revolution, but it is being falsely accused. The Green Movement of the nation of Iran is independent, rational and peaceful. We are not opposed to Basij, the Revolutionary Guards or the police; but rather we are opposed to violence, beating and killing.

1630 GMT: Claim of the Day. The Los Angeles Times, citing a source inside Tehran's police headquarters, claims up to three million opposition protesters may be on the streets on Thursday. The source compared that number to 500,000 pro-Government demonstrators who were out in Tehran on 30 December. The article also claims that about 12,000 Basiji militiamen will be moved into the capital from around the country.

1445 GMT: We've just come out of a discussion of EA's coverage for 22 Bahman to see the English translation of today's statement by former President Mohammad Khatami. We've posted in a separate entry.

1420 GMT: Challenging the Supreme Leader. Khodnevis reports that, during Ayatollah Khamenei’s recent meeting with academics, Hojatoleslam Javadi-Amoli (the son of Ayatolah Javadi-Amoli), asked a pointed question about the President. Javadi-Amoli referred to an encounter between his father and Ahmadinejad, in which the President claimed that, during a speech to the United Nations General, he was covered by a halo of light. The video of the President's account was posted on YouTube but, during the 2009 campaign, Ahmadinejad claimed the story was lies made up by the enemy.

Javadi-Amoli asked the Supreme Leader, “We see many times in religious texts that the ruler of Islamic countries, in order to protect the interests of his country’s people, is permitted to hide parts of the truth, but he cannot say that his own saying is a lie and attribute it to the ramblings of a sick mind. Can one expect justice from such a ruler?”

At that point Khamenei says that he did not have time and left the meeting.

1300 GMT: The reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front has issued its call for Iranians to accompany Green and opposition figures in the 22 Bahman rally.

Green movement activists in Ahvaz have also put out a statement.

1255 GMT: Another Media Detention. Amir Sadeghi, photographer for Farhange Ashti, has been arrested at work.

1250 GMT: We Will, We Will Rock You. The Tehran commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, General Hossein Hamadani, has declared again that the Revolutionary Guard will "deal severely" with any protesters on Thursday.

1245 GMT: We Will, We Will Punch You. That is the Supreme Leader's latest line for Thursday, as he told Air Force personnel, "The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (of Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman in a way that will leave them stunned."

Using the foreign agents gambit to rule out legitimate protest, Khamenei said that the "most important aim of the sedition after the election was to create a rift within the Iranian nation, but it was unable to do so and our nation's unity remained a thorn in its eyes".

1135 GMT: The Next 22 Bahman Move? A group of youth and student activists have met with Mir Hossein Mousavi today, declaring that they will march on Thursday with Green symbols to seek justice and freedom and announcing "to the totalitarians" that sooner or later they will free the Islamic Republic from oppression. We are awaiting a text of Mousavi's remarks.

1125 GMT: Another High-Profile Sentence. Former Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Aminzadeh has reportedly been given a six-year prison term for "disturbing" national security and spreading propaganda.

1110 GMT: Targeting Mortazavi. 57 members of Parliament have written to the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, and President Ahmadinejad to demand the immediate dismissal and trial of Presidential aide Saeed Mortazavi for his alleged role in the Kahrizak Prison abuses.

1100 GMT: Khomeini v. The Regime. Ezzatollah Zarghami, the head of Islamic Republic of Iran Republic, has replied sharply to the complaint of Seyed Hassan Khomeini about IRIB's "censorship" of the speeches of his grandfather, Ayatollah Khomeini: "If only you had written a protest letter to condemn the shameful events after the election...."

0940 GMT: Million-Dollar Defendant. After 216 days in detention, Feizollah Arab Sorkhi, a senior member of the reformist Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution party, finally stood trial on Sunday. Proceedings are ongoing; Arab Sorkhi’s bail has been set at more than $1 million.

Meanwhile, journalist Emadeddin Baghi remains in solitary confinement despite the end of his interrogation.

0935 GMT: A New Voice. The Green Voice of Freedom website, from which we are pictured up some latest news items, has launched an English edition.

0930 GMT: Freed. Amidst the dominant news of arrests, a belated notice of released: last week 10 students from Elm-o-Sanat University, detained on and after Ashura, were let out of prison.

0920 GMT: And Now the Real News. Following the complaint from Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the Imam's grandson, to the head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, Ahmad Montazeri --- son of the Grand Ayatollah, who died in December --- has sent a letter of protest.

The issue is an IRIB interview with former Minister of Intelligence Ali Fallahian, who launched a fierce criticism of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.

0910 GMT: It Gets Worse. The BBC's top radio programme, Today, having done a muddled but creditable effort to get beyond the misleading headlines on Iran (see 0715 GMT), threw it all away with an appalling interview an hour ago.

The fault lay not with the interviewee, Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, but with the interviewer, Evan Davies, whose obsession was to establish that Iran might soon have The Bomb. That distortion was only corrected at the end of the discussion, when Fitzpatrick --- moving from theory and fantasy to reality --- noted that Iran does not have the technical capacity to maintain its current civilian programme, let alone establish weapons capability.

Meanwhile, the Green Movement made a fleeting appearance as the device to get a "more acceptable regime" in Iran on the nuclear issue.

Across the Atlantic, Juan Cole does an effective job taking away Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "scare" rhetoric in her interview with CNN on Sunday and then putting the Ahmadinejad declaration in appropriate context.

0820 GMT: And This is Just Silly. Reuters reports, without blinking an eye, Salehi's declaration, ""Iran will set up 10 uranium enrichment centers next year."

Hmm.... At least that's not quite as extravagant as President Ahmadinejad's snap announcement last autumn that Iran would build 20 centres (an event that EA readers recalled yesterday). Reuters might also want to note, beyond its sentence, "Analysts have expressed skepticism whether sanctions-bound Iran, which has problems obtaining materials and components abroad, would be able to equip and operate 10 new plants", that Iran cannot even keep one centre, Natanz, functioning at more than 50 percent capacity.

0745 GMT: Nuclear Kabuki. Tehran keeps up the sideshow this morning, with Iranian state media headlining the declaration of the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akhbar Salehi, "We have written a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to announce our intention to enrich uranium to 20 percent. We will send this letter to the world's atomic watchdog on Monday and then start enrichment on Tuesday in the presence of inspectors and observers from the IAEA."

Dramatic? No. This is no more than a restatement of what Iran is allowed to do under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, since the 20-percent level is for civilian rather than military uses. Indeed, that is (and has been for months) the real uranium issue: whether soon Iran runs out of fuel for its medical research reactor.

0715 GMT: The gap between image and reality has widened overnight in coverage of Iran. The "Western" press, with few exceptions, have now done their lemming jump into a simplistic portrayal of President Ahmadinejad's Sunday media stunt: his declaration that Iran would immediately start producing 20-percent enriched uranium so it can ensure self-sufficiency if there is no "swap" deal with the West.

This morning, BBC's top radio programme has one of the better stories, noting both the obvious (that Ahmadinejad's expectation is "unrealistic", given the technical issues with Iran's nuclear programme( and the important (that the move, in large part, comes from domestic pressure). Even so, the piece opens with the overall declaration that this is "yet another step" in "Iran's nuclear confrontation" with Western powers, which is a bit curious since --- less than a week ago --- the Iranian President was reviving the possibility of a "swap" of enriched uranium outside Iran.
And, beyond that, the bigger picture of the post-election challenge to the Iranian Government and possibly the Iranian system fades.

CNN, for example, is making a big noise on Twitter that it is launching in-depth coverage for the demonstrations of 22 Bahman, Thursday's anniversary of the 1979 Revolution. Yet its feature story is solely devoted to Ahmadinejad's Sunday proclamation, with the internal situation distorted into two concluding paragraphs:

Sunday's announcement of the new enriched uranium plans falls within the 10-day period marking the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah.

Celebrations commemorating the overthrow began last week and will culminate on February 11.

The immediate damage is that the important developments inside Iran escape notice. This morning, for example, we have published a list of 57 journalists who are detained, amongst hundreds of other political prisoners.

The wider significance of such blinkered and sensational visions is that it is unlikely that the complexities of the contest for power will not be understood on Thursday. Instead, 22 Bahman will suddenly leap into the media frame as a breathless and somewhat confused story of "What are the numbers?", "Where is the violence?", and "Where is the video?", with little appreciation of the real pressure on President Ahmadinejad.

That pressure is coming from inside the Iranian establishment, as well as outside it. Perhaps more importantly, Thursday could be a marker of whether that pressure builds on other parts of the regime, including the position of the Supreme Leader.

22 Bahman is three days away.

The Latest from Iran (6 February): Eyes on the Real Prize

2200 GMT: And The Pace Accelerates. Hard to keep up tonight --- Mehdi Karroubi's Etemade Melli party has now made another move for 22 Bahman, following up the cleric's declarations today with a list of proposals for reconciliation. We have posted them in a separate entry.

2100 GMT: An Extraordinary Offer? We have posted what we think might be a significant move by the "conservative opposition" to the President: an open letter to Mir Hossein Mousavi with the offer, "Back Khamenei and We Can Move Against Ahmadinejad".

1950 GMT: Another Attack on Ahmadinejad's Camp. Ayatollah Safi Golpaygani has effectively asked for the President's Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, to be put on trial. Once again, the challenge is circulated through the pro-Rafsanjani Ayande News.

NEW Iran: The “Reconciliation” Proposals of Karroubi’s Etemade Melli Party
NEW Iran: “Conservative Opposition” Offer to Mousavi “Back Khamenei, We Sack Ahmadinejad”
NEW Iran Space Shocker: Turtle-Astronauts Defect to West
NEW Iran Document: Karroubi’s Open Letter for 22 Bahman (6 February)
NEW Iran: Quick! Look Over There! The Nuclear Distraction
NEW Iran Document: Iranian Journalists Write Their Overseas Colleagues About 22 Bahman
NEW The Netherlands: Court Throws Out Ban on Iranian Students
Latest Iran Video: Claimed Protest in Southern Iran (1 February)
Latest Iran Video: What Does the Iranian Public Really Think? (4 February)
Iran Analysis: The Missing Numbers in the Economy
The Latest from Iran (5 February): Into the Tunnel

1800 GMT: We're taking a break for a while, so we have posted a Saturday Special: "Iran's Turtle-Astronauts Defect to West".

1650 GMT: Not Us. Both Iran's head of police, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam and his Tehran counterpart Ahmad-Reza Radan have declared they had no role in the Kahrizak Prison scandal.

1645 GMT: A Less Upbeat Approach for 22 Bahman. The Kargozaran Party, fostered by Hashemi Rafsanjani in the 1990s, has put out a different, pessimistic criticism of the Government, noting that the revolutionaries of 1979 are either without hope or in jail. It states that these are difficult times for the country and the people, whose rights are ignored, and difficult times for political parties who are under pressure. They have restated Ayatollah Khomeini's slogan "Islamic Republic, not a word less or more".

1640 GMT: No Conciliation from Khamenei. Reformist websites are featuring the claim that the Supreme Leader turned down a request from Ayatollah Mousavi-Ardebili to free top Mousavi advisor Alireza Beheshti, saying that he would not interfere in the case and was leaving it to Iran's judiciary.

1630 GMT: For What It's Worth. I suspect that --- at this point --- this is no more than posture, but Iran's Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei has announced that a second group of members of Parliament has sued Mir Hossein Mousavi.

And another warning from Sobh–e-Sadegh, the magazine of the Revolutionary Guard, which has condemned the Green movement leaders and asked them to repent before 22 Bahman or face being "confronted and punished harshly". (English-language summary)

1610 GMT: We have now posted Mehdi Karroubi's open letter, published today: "The common face of this movement is holding to the right to vote, free elections, a free press, the unconditional freedom of political prisoners, the reform of the work of governing and legislating and respect for the people’s civil rights."

1550 GMT: And From the Other Corner. After 72 hours of relative quiet, the "reformist" opposition has revved up today. Former President Mohammad Khatami has made another call for 22 Bahman (original in Parleman News):

We should not think that after the victory of the Islamic Revolution on 11 February everything is done, but the fact is that 11 February is only a beginning of the hard efforts of the people in order to achieve the goals and demands of the revolution.

Reform is nothing separate from this path and that is why we believe that it has deep roots and cannot be eliminated.

And here comes Mehdi Karroubi with a double declaration: we are about to post the full text of his latest statement on his website Saham News. Meanwhile, he has given an interview to the German magazine Der Spiegel, restating his defense of protest and condemnation of the Government in recent weeks:

The political prisoners must be set free, we need freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, our electoral law must be changed and a free election must take place. But then the current government would hardly be able to hold on to power.

1540 GMT: Now This is Getting Interesting (cont.): First there is Speaker of Parliament's Larijani assault on the President, then there is his deputy Mohammad Reza's Bahonar's criticism, as he warned Ahadminejad supporters, "At least for the sake of your own benefit do not condemn the previous Presidencies."

And there's more: Bahonar claimed that the Presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) was the "best and most productive time for the country since the Revolution". eras.

1525 GMT: Larijani Fights Back Against Ahmadinejad. Now this nuclear business is getting interesting. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, speaking at Tehran University, has put out a series of criticisms of talks on uranium enrichment: the claim of the "West" to be concerned about Iran's nuclear programme is just "political fraud"; its manoeuvres are “double-sided and prejudicial”; “Iranians are not so gullible" as to believe the negotiations are genuine.

A heads-up, however, to Western news agencies who headline: "Iran's Larijani Blasts West Over Nuclear Deal". It's not the West who is his primary target, but the one Iranian who is too "gullible" in this affair: a Mr. M. Ahmadinejad.

1205 GMT: Once Again, With Feeling. Iran's police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam has issued another warning that protest on 22 Bahman will be put down:

Now that the different dimensions of the sedition are clear, we won't show any more tolerance. Police will act firmly to defend the society's security and those who break the law will be dealt with severely.

Moghadam also returned to his declaration that Iran's police would take control of the Internet and mobile-phone texting to break the demonstrations: ""The new technologies allow us to identify conspirators and those who are violating the law, without having to control all people individually."

1155 GMT: Back in Iran. Ahh, here comes the fight-back on Ahmadinejad's nuclear move. Ayande News passes on the objections of the "hard-line" Kayhan to any swap of Iran's uranium stock outside the country.

1125 GMT: And the Sideshow. Almost all media are now jumping the nuclear cliff, jumping into the phase of "Western" reaction to Foreign Minister Mottaki's statement last night. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates takes the soundbite lead, "I don't have the sense we are close to an agreement" (watch to see if the Turks, whom Gates was meeting in Ankara, are as dismissive). The BBC adds more cold water from the German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, and the European Union's head of foreign policy, Catherine Ashton.

1010 GMT: The Main Event. Despite Iranian Foreign Manouchehr Mottaki's attempt to put attention on the nuclear issue (see separate entry) at the Munich Security Conference, the post-election crisis made the agenda during Mottaki's public discussion with Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

Mottaki insisted that most Iranians accepted the result of the June Presidential election "except a very few people who started violations, who did crimes, who burned houses and buses and damaged anything in the streets". He challenged the audience, "Are you tolerant in your countries to violations and crimes?"

Bildt asked Mottaki for a promise that nine political prisoners condemned to death would not be executed ---"that would clearly have the most detrimental effect on the other aspects of the (EU-Iran) relationship" --- but Mottaki returned to the refrain of an 85 percent turnout in the election and an Ahmadinejad victory by 11 million votes. The remark brought hisses and boos from the audience.

(This exchange was noted by The Earth Times. We're still looking for a sign that Western "mainstream" media, led by the nuclear issue, have taken any notice. Meanwhile, credit to the German television station which did put forward questions on the internal situation, as well as the nuclear matter, to Mottaki in an interview.)

0945 GMT: Where's Mahmoud? We apologise: it's not all nukes for the Iranian Government today. President Ahmadinejad visited a girls' school today to declare that more than 1200 educational and sports projects have been launched around Iran.

0940 GMT: The Committee on Human Rights Reporters updates on prominent writer and literary critic Khalil Darmanki, detained for almost 40 days in ward 209 of Evin Prison.

0935 GMT: We've split off our first update --- noting the Iran Government's effort, using a "deal" on the uranium enrichment issue, to turn eyes away from the forthcoming 22 Bahman protests --- as a separate entry.

0925 GMT: The International Human Rights Campaign in Iran highlights the case of seven students arrested after a protest at Tehran University, condemning the execution of Ehsan Fattahian, on 16 November. The whereabouts of Pakhshan Azizi, Amanj Heidari, Leila Mohammadi, Ahmad Ismaili, Sarveh Veisi, Abdullah Arefi, and Hajhar Yousefi are still unknown. Sources say three of the students have been on hunger strike amidst torture, intimidation, and threats of rape by Ministry of Information agents.

0915 GMT: 40 Nobel Prize laureates have taken out an advertisement in The New York Times denouncing "the repression of the Iranian people" by the Ahmadinejad Government.

0855 GMT: No! Look Over Here! More from Iran's state media: Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi opened two new missile production plants on Saturday, just three days after Iran fired a rocket carrying live animals into space."

0840 GMT: Non-News of the Day (So Far). Despite heated and anxious rumours across the Internet, the regime did not carry out the executions of nine political prisoners (four pre-election, five post-election) sentenced to death for mohareb (war against God).

0835 GMT: Some of the News that the Iran Government Would Prefer You Not Notice. We've posted an open letter from Iranian journalists to their overseas colleagues, urging them to cover the most important stories --- rather than the State set-pieces --- on 22 Bahman (11 February).

Amnesty International has published a statement, "Unite for Human Rights in Iran on February 11th", declaring:

Since blogs and websites like Twitter and YouTube were virtually the only way the Iranian people could expose the horrific treatment being inflicted on them in the days following the contested Presidential election, we expect that Iranians will turn to the Internet once again to carry their messages. That is why we are asking everyone to show their solidarity online on February 11th – whether it’s on your blog, website, or social networking profile.

Afghanistan: Did The Way Forward Come Out of London Conference?

Writing for Foreign Policy, Gilles Dorronsoro looks over the political and military strategy discussed at last week's London Conference between Afghan leaders and "Western" powers and comes away unimpressed:

Washington, Paris and Berlin made their best efforts to keep up appearances during last week's Afghanistan conference here, but the gap between official rhetoric and reality could not have been wider. Participants called for reintegrating members of the Taliban who accept the Afghan constitution, enacting measures against government corruption, and building more regional cooperation.

Afghanistan: America’s Secret Prisons

Yet the coalition is systematically undermining what's left of the Afghan state. The New York Times reports that the Shinwari tribes have agreed to fight the Taliban -- in exchange for about $1 million. What's lesser known and less understood is that Washington didn't even feel obligated to notify the Karzai government of this decision.


Since last summer, the United States has supported all manner of militias in Afghanistan, creating fragmentation and a dangerous degree of competition in the security sphere. Critics rightly observe that this is a formula for an even weaker government in Kabul. In a number of cases, the U.S. is dealing directly with armed groups that are beyond the control of the central government,including the group that was reportedly responsible for the killing of the Kandahar police chief in 2009.

In restive provinces like Helmand and Kandahar, rallying the foot soldiers of the insurgency is simply never going to work, because they are fighting in defense of values -- such as Islam, and freedom from foreign occupation -- that they see under attack. Even if the coalition achieves limited tactical successes, the Taliban will quickly replace the fighters it loses, and it can easily target the "traitors." These coalition tactics are not new and have never worked before. Why does the White House think they'll work now, with the insurgency stronger than ever?

Washington's gravest error, however, is its manifest lack of interest in shoring up the Afghan central government. Whatever the official word about fighting corruption, the international coalition is bypassing Kabul in favor of local strong-men, on whom it is growing more and more dependent for protection and logistics, especially in the south. Worse, the population rejects the militias, which are often brutal toward civilians, and do little to increase support for Karzai or the coalition.

The so-called "tribal policy" has been tried before in the eastern provinces, with no results, between 2006 and 2008, when the Taliban were much weaker than they are today. Even inside the Afghan legal system, the coalition is choosing its partners at a local level, skirting the political center. NATO's Provincial Reconstruction Teams act with total independence from Kabul, which is often not even informed of their actions.

The big problem the London conference failed to tackle is the Karzai government's lack of credibility with the Afghan people, especially since the flawed election of August 2009. Working with essentially the same networks, and more and more alienated from Washington -- which has repeatedly and unceremoniously criticized him in public -- Karzai will not deliver on his political reforms.

And the return of the old Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom the coalition opposes but who supported Karzai in the latest election, signals that Karzai will become even more independent from Washington. As Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal have said, the U.S. cannot shoot its way to victory in Afghanistan, so with no prospect of building Afghan institutions for the foreseeable future, the coalition has less of an exit strategy each day.

The real game now is negotiating with the Taliban leadership in Quetta. Karzai and the Afghan government are trying to open some negotiations with the head of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Omar, as is the U.N., through special representative Kai Eide. The U.S. should also pursue direct negotiations, as it has very direct interests in a larger agreement with the Taliban -- namely, a guarantee that al Qaeda does not return to Afghanistan. If the U.S. cannot reach such a resolution, who else will?

The London conference, sadly, gave little confidence that NATO is moving any closer to its objectives in Afghanistan. A few days before leaders met here, we learned that the Afghan National Army and Police forces will be substantially increased: from 97,000 to 171,000, and 94,000 to 160,000, respectively, by the end of 2011. The security of a growing number of provinces will also come under the responsibility of the Afghan army after 2011. It all sounds nice on paper, but these policies are not remotely realistic, and as Anand Gopal reported in the Christian Science Monitor in April 2009, they have all been tried and found wanting already.

The number of ANA troops who are capable of combat is about 60,000, and turnover is reported to be as high as 25 percent per year. Given the insufficient number of Western military trainers, NATO will almost certainly miss its target numbers for the ANA. The key problem is training officers, which requires a lot of time the coalition doesn't have. And it is extremely difficult to build an army when the structures of the state are crumbling around it on all sides.

U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has become almost bewilderingly self-destructive. The White House has constantly slapped Hamid Karzai in public, demanding that he make reforms that would be difficult at the best of times, while performing an end run around him that diminishes his standing even further.

At this rate, when it withdraws, Washington may leave nothing behind in Afghanistan but warring factions -- a mess not unlike the one that precipitated the Taliban's rise to power in the first place.

Iran: Quick! Look Over There! The Nuclear Distraction

Five days before 22 Bahman, the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, but it appears the Ahmadinejad Government would prefer that folks look away.

Friday Prayers in Tehran, the last before the marches of 11 February, were very quiet, with the least-known of the prayer leaders (Emami Kashani) giving a relatively muted statement. And this morning, the State line is all Nukes, Nukes, Nukes.


CNN declares in excitement that Iranian Foreign Manouchehr Mottaki said Friday at an international security conference in Germany, "The amount of [Iran's] uranium [to be swapped abroad for higher-enriched uranium] is negotiable. But I am confident that a solution can be found." The New York Times trots alongside with more from Mottaki, “We are approaching a final agreement that can be accepted by all parties. I personally believe we have created conducive ground for such an exchange in the not very distant future."

This is not just a case of the Western media bigging-up a story and missing what is happening inside Iran. CNN took its lead from Press TV, which repeats on its website that Mottaki told the Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, in a set-piece late-night meeting, "The most important point is the political will. Personally I feel this will is there." Equally important, Press TV has a second story, boosting Bildt's encouragement to Tehran to deal, "Go to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]. "Schedule a meeting as soon as possible according to what was agreed (at the Geneva meeting with the "5+1" powers) on October 1."

The Ahmadinejad Government's move is significant --- and coordinated --- enough for the Islamic Republic News Agency to get a quick story out on its English-language website (usually IRNA takes at least 24 hours to recycle stories from its Persian homepage), "Iranian FM upbeat on reaching a nuclear fuel swap deal."