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 (4 February): The Relay of Opposition

2200 GMT: To close the day, a video --- courtesy of The Flying Carpet Institute --- of a workers' demonstration in Arak on Wednesday:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri7KDzSP5n0[/youtube]

2155 GMT: The Amir Kabir student website, a valuable source of information throughout the post-election crisis, has been attacked by the Iranian Cyber Army.

2135 GMT: Brother, Where Art Thou (cont.)? Davoud Ahmadinejad, the brother of the President, has declared that he is ready to prove that the beliefs of Presidential Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, clash with Islam. Once again, the attack appears in Khabar Online, the publication close to Ali Larijani.

2125 GMT: Journalists and press managers have requested the freedom of Ali Ashraf Fathi, clergyman and writer of the Tourjaan weblog (named after the location where Fathi's father was killed during the Iran-Iraq War), who was arrested last week during the "40th Day" memorial for Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.

NEW Latest Iran Video: What Does the Iranian Public Really Think? (4 February)
NEW Iran Analysis: The Missing Numbers in the Economy
NEW Iran Analysis: How Turkey Can Break the Nuclear Stalemate
NEW Iran Spam, Spam, Lovely Spam: Mass E-mails, Old Polls, and “Analysis”
Iran Special: Full Text of Mousavi Answers for 22 Bahman (2 February)
Iran Snap Analysis: “Game-Changers” from Mousavi and Ahmadinejad
The Latest From Iran (3 February): Picking Up the Pace

2110 GMT: Crackdown and Blackout. So the regime's strategy of breaking up any mass movement on 22 Bahman continues. Iranian activists and websites such as Reporters and Humanrights Activists in Iran continue to document arrests, and there is even a claim that three members of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters --- Mehrdad Rahimi, Saeed Haeri, and Shiva Nazar-Ahari --- have been charged with "mohareb" (war against God).

Reports continue to circulate that Internet service has slowed significantly and even been halted in parts of Iran. Official explanations have included disruptions because of the loss of a major cable and "developments and expansions in the Tehran-Mashad corridor".


1930 GMT: We started the day with a sceptical post about a set of old polls being pushed to argue for the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad Government. We've now posted full video of Wednesday's two-panel seminar at the New America Foundation which featured those polls, "What Does the Iranian Public Really Think?"

1730 GMT: We've posted an analysis from Persian2English, of the latest numbers (and missing numbers) on the Iranian economy.

1700 GMT: Domestic Case of the Day. Ayande News claims that Mahdi Kalhour, the President's Media Advisor, was called into a police station after beating up his ex-wife, Masumah Taheri, last night. Taheri, claiming an injured neck, has decided to sue Kalhour; the court hearing will begin on Sunday.

A few months ago, Kalhour's daughter sought asylum in Germany.

1500 GMT: Greetings from Beirut. 90 Lebanese intellectuals have issued a statement of support for the Green Movement.

1420 GMT: Kalemeh is reporting that the Qoba Mosque in Shiraz, which is led by Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastgheib, a critic of the Government, was attacked again last night. Last month, Dastgheib's offices were temporarily closed after pro-Government groups took over the mosque. There is also an English-language summary on the Facebook page supporting Mir Hossein Mousavi.

1400 GMT: The Ashura Trial. An Iranian activist has posted a translation of Wednesday's proceedings for the "first defendant", student at Damghan University:

1st defendant was charged with Moharebeh (war against God), being a corrupting agent & collusive acts against national security, propagandizing against the Islamic Republic & insulting high ranking officials.

1st defendant admitted to chanting "Death to Dictator", saying it was aimed at the President. He testified that he participated in four different protests. The 1st protest was the 40th (Day) memorial ceremony of the martyrs (30 July?). He went to 7 Tir Square, stayed for about 20 minutes, chanted "Death to Dictator", "Death to the Deceptive Government", & Allahu Akhbar. He was surprised to hear the more radical chants.

1st defendant said, at the Friday Prayers presided [over] by Ayatollah Rafsanjani, he along with his father & younger brother went to Qods street & video taped & took pictures of the crowd. 1st defendant also testified that he participated in Qods Day (18 September) protests, chanted pro-Ayatollah Sane'i slogans. He also said he chanted the slogan, "Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran I will sacrifice."

He also participated in Ashura protest & video taped the crowd. After police used teargas, the crowd scattered at first & than gathered again & set a trash bin on fire. PPL were throwing stones at the police . He said at that time he was only video taping the scene. He then participated in throwing stones at the police who were standing far from the crowd. Once the crowd started to dissipate he went inside a home, stayed there for 20 minutes then left. On his way back home he saw a few injured people. Along with others he helped the injured & took them to the hospital. He than proceeded to go home.

On the way home he saw scenes that looked like war scenes. He video taped the war scenes. He did not send the videos to anyone, only showed them to friends. He testified that in 2008 he joined the Islamic Society, he & his family had reformist tendencies. He continued explaining that the elites claimed there was cheating in the election, he emphasized the point that many of the elites were absent from the President's confirmation ceremonies, then they announced there is a political coup. They asked us to come to the streets to protest & take our rights back.

The judge asked him about throwing stones on Ashura. The defendant explained because he had believed there was cheating in the elections, he went to the streets to protest the results. The judge than asked him about the flyers he distributed at Damghan University. He said he signed two petitions that demanded Ahmadinejad to resign.

At this point the defense attorney gave his short defense & asked the court for leniency for his client.

Judge than asked the 1st defendant to give his last defense. 1st defendant said he was capable of making decisions admitting that he made two mistakes, the first one leading to the second mistake. He said his first mistake was not to have researched the news sources & some groups. Second mistake was that even though he believed in Imam's path but, as the interrogator reminded him, he had forgotten Imam said "Support Velayat-e-Faqih (the Supreme Leader) so no harm can come to the country".

1st defendant continued to apologize to the Leader & asked for forgivness.

1210 GMT: Arrests and Sentences (cont.). Rah-e-Sabz has a round-up, including the detention of journalist Noushin Jafari, who covers cultural affairs for Etemaad newspaper.

1205 GMT: The Regional Diversion. Meanwhile, the US-Iran game of power-posing plays out. Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, has responded to the US declaration that it is providing anti-missile capability to four states on the Arabian peninsula:

They don't want to see good and growing relations between Iran and its neighbors in the Persian Gulf and thus started a psychological war....It is not new for us ... we were informed when they were installed, including about their exact locations ... Patriot missile could be easily deactivated by using simple tactics.

1200 GMT: Breaking Activism. AUT News summarises part of the regime's strategy to "win" on 22 Bahman (11 February), the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution: in recent days, 15 former and current student activists have been arrested throughout Iran.

1030 GMT: Ahmadi's Nuke Gambit. Finally, some white smoke from the Islamic Republic News Agency, which runs a supportive article for the President's proposal to swap Iran's uranium abroad. An "unnamed senior diplomat" explains that the initiative shows Iran's "flexibility" in negotiations on the issue.

0945 GMT: An EA source from Iran reports that Omid Mehregan, a translator and intellectual in Tehran, was arrested last night. Soon after the election, Mehregan and Morad Fardhadpour wrote for the British periodical Red Pepper: "Misguided western leftists may have their doubts about the Iranian mass movement against President Ahmadinejad’s disputed election ‘victory’. They should put them aside in the face of the new politics of revolt."

0905 GMT: Student activist Maziar Samiee has been arrested.

0900 GMT: On the International Front. We've posted an analysis, from colleagues at Politics3.com, of how Turkey might be able to break the deadlock in nuclear talks between the "West" and Iran.

0800 GMT: Arrests and Sentences. Reporters and Humanrights Activists in Iran is providing regular updates, such as the four-year prison term for author and literary journalist Javad Maherzadeh.

0735 GMT: We've posted an article --- half in fun, half in academic horror --- at a mass e-mail and five-month-old (dubious) poll passing itself off as confirmation of the current legitimacy of the Iran Government.

(I might have let this go without comment --- why give more publicity to poor analysis? However, I noticed last night that Joshua Holland of AlterNet, a blogger whom I respect very much, subsequently wrote, "Polls Suggest Everything You Think You Know About Iran’s 'Tainted' Election Is Wrong".

I should add that Holland was on an advance press list, rather than a generic list of recipients, for the material on the polls and that he has interviewed the polling group on several occasions, for example, over their work in Iraq. Still, my worry was that a very shaky exercise would be refreshed as confirmation that the Ahmadinejad Government is on solid ground and faces little resistance.)

0600 GMT: It did not bring as much attention outside Iran as Mir Hossein Mousavi's statement on Tuesday or President Ahmadinejad's declaration of a shift in Tehran's position on its nuclear programme. Mehdi Karroubi certainly did not prompt the fevered reactions to his comments of the previous week, but make no mistake: his proclamation on Wednesday on the protest of 22 Bahman as a necessary if calm response to the abuses of the Government was the event of the day. It consolidated the latest rhetoric from leading opposition politicians and clerics, as The Los Angeles Times --- which, to its credit, was the US newspaper that recognised the declaration's importance --- signalled in this lengthy extract:

We are approaching the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution at a time when both the Islamism and republicanism of the regime have been seriously questioned. The 10th presidential election was tainted with fraud. Peaceful protests were met with violence and suppression, and finally the walls of trust between people and the establishment collapsed.

People's demands have to be taken seriously into account. Repression, mass detention of political activists, journalists and students, show trials, execution and heavy punishments and security crackdowns cannot contain the prevailing crisis.

Those in power should reconsider their methods, and keep in mind that neither silence nor retreat on our part, nor threats, intimidation and violence on their part, can resolve the problems.

The authorities take no step in favor of the people and give childish and bizarre images of the current bitter realities.

State corruption and discrimination are rife in the country. The leaders are incapable of dealing with simple domestic affairs, but they claim to be able to run the world.

Rigid-minded hard-liners continue to utter baseless accusations against the pillars of the regime and the faithful confidants of the late imam [Ayatollah Khomeini].

All articles of the constitution have to be fully implemented. All political prisoners have to be released unconditionally. Press restrictions have to be scrapped and criticism should be tolerated. The current climate of intimidation and fear has to change. These are the demands of the opposition movement.

In contrast, the regime --- while noting that it still has the far-from-minor weapon of sweeping up activists and putting them in prison, as it continued to do on Wednesday --- was caught up in another spate of indecision. After the posturing of the rocket launch yesterday morning, officials had to figure out what to do next with President Ahmadinejad's announcement, backed up by his Foreign Minister, that Iran would allow a "swap" of uranium stock outside the country to ensure 20% uranium for its civilian reactors.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, tried to hold the line, "The discussions are still being conducted, and we will inform the nation of any final agreements," in the face of questions. Pressed who might host the "third-party enrichment", "he cited an Asian country, but would not specify which one". (Answer: it's Turkey.)

Further evidence that Ahmadinejad had spoken loudly but now had to back up the words by getting agreement from those within the regime came from Press TV, which could merely report last night, "The West has urged Iran to submit a formal offer to the UN nuclear watchdog after the Iranian president said his government was ready to negotiate over a fuel swap deal."

A Response: Why Venezuela Isn't Iran

The folks at The Flying Carpet Institute respond to Josh Shahryar's article, "Venezuela: Twitter Revolution’s Next Stop?":

Some pundits have recently tried to compare the recent upper middle-class mobilizations against the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to the ones occurring in Iran since last summer’s Presidential election. As proof of the similarities, the author notes the technological aspects of the mobilization, such as activity on Twitter. He furthermore notes that Venezuela is "a population subjugated to ill-planned economics, a strongman unwilling to leave power, and a government ever more keen to restrict its citizens' rights to freedom of speech".

Venezuela: Twitter Revolution’s Next Stop?

This is a very superficial analysis of events that can be overturned with a range of empirical evidence. However, I will confine myself to some obvious facts. For instance, the Chavez Government hasn’t resorted to executions of opposition members like the Islamic Republican regime in Iran. The "curbed free press" of Venezuela isn’t actually that curbed. In no other country in the recent years has the ruling class shown its teeth so openly against a popular reformist government, through "Chilean" methods like assassinations, employer lock-outs, and pot-beating upper middle-class housewives. What Western media reports also fail to show are the (even if somewhat modest) attempts of the Chavez Government to support the growth of communal radio programmes that are intended to challenge the corporate media monopoly.

Let us now turn our heads to Iran. Here, the neoconservative Ahmadinejad regime, elected by the narrow confines of the system of Velayaat-i-faqih (ultimate clerical authority), has followed a policy not unlike the one followed by neoliberal governments throughout the rest of the world: it has privatized enterprises and tried to crush unionized labour by introducing contract labour. At the same time it has tried to cushion the results of its policies with populist measures. In Iran, those populist measures are called "free potatoes", in the US and elsewhere they are called "No more taxes!" or "charity".  Chavez was instrumental in forming the UNT trade union federation, the backbone of the Left in the Chavista movement. Ahmadinejad on the other hand, was responsible for the severe crackdown on organizations like the Tehran Bus Drivers´ Union.

So what does bring Venezuela and Iran together? One can and should criticise Chavez´s praises of Ahmadinejad. They have no relation to reality and are based on a completely absurd understanding of the situation. Ironically, they resemble the West’s depiction of Ahmadinejad as an uncompromising "radical", something that is far from the truth.  Islamic Iran has shown that it is able and willing to cooperate with the US and Israel on a number of issues when this suits its interest (Iran-Iraq War, Afghanistan, Iraq).

But it’s not the similarities of the systems that brought the two countries together. It’s the fact that they are both faced by an American onslaught. The Obama administration has shown its real colours by silently embracing the Honduran coup against Manuel Zelaya, making obvious that it is prepared to follow the same ends in Latin America as the previous Bush administration but with different means. Meanwhile, not a week goes by that doesn’t see verbal threats of sanctions (the US) or the possibility of an upcoming war in Lebanon (Israel) to finish off the Iranian challenge.

One should not forget that the US --- or anybody else in the West --- isn’t diametrically opposed to the concept of political Islam. Instead, what any imperial hegemon fears most is the concept of resistance, irrespective of its colours. To equate Venezuela with Iran is false. It implies that the Islamic regime is a consistent anti-hegemonic regime that empowers organized labour and supports forms of democratic self-organization, while enjoying genuine popular support among the mass of people.