The Latest from Iran (19 September): While the President's Away....

1920 GMT: Striking Back. Mehr News posts responses from eight members of Parliament, ranging from conservative to reformist, on the President's recent remarks about his office and the Majlis. The summary --- "A number of lawmakers have criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent claim that the executive branch of government is more important than the legislature" --- is far milder than the comments summarised. 

An example? Key MP Ali Motahari's statement, "Among the three branches of government, the parliament is still on top of affairs and has the authority to impeach the president and remove him from office."

1850 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Student activist Majid Tavakoli, detained since December, has reportedly met his family for the first time in two months.

Tavakoli's sentence of 8 1/2 years in prison was confirmed last week by an appeals court. Last month, he and 16 other political prisoners went on hunger strike; one of their demands was the restoration of visits with relatives.

1650 GMT: The Conservatives Strike Back. Seriously, take your eyes away from New York and look back to Iran....

In Isfahan, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has hit back hard at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declarations that the President rules and not the Parliament. Larijani declared that the legislative and executive branches are separate in Iran and that Ayatollah Khomeini had insisted on the important of legislative power to prevent the government's oppression of the people.

1645 GMT: Watching Ahmadinejad. In a summary paralleling the analysis on EA, Maziar Bahari of Newsweek considers the political situation of the President, "How to Alienate Your Allies".

1640 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Saeed Haeri, a leading member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters, has been given a 2 1/2-year prison sentence and 74 lashes.

0853 GMT: The Conservatives Rumble. A first sign of what we have been anticipating since the President's "I Rule" speech and interview on Friday and Saturday....

Ali Motahari, a key member of the Parliamentary faction challenging Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has denounced the President's emphasis --- with a comparison to contemporary Iran --- on the Persian monarch Cyrus the Great: "Although there are some positive points in the Human Rights Charter of Cyrus (the Cyrus Cylinder), the actions of Cyrus were not in line with the prophets' teachings....When Cyrus captured Babylon, he did not abolish idolatry in the name of freedom of thought."

Motahari's wider attack is on the privileging of a nationalist "Persia/Iran" rhetoric over the model of Islam. That emphasis on Persia/Iran is associated with Ahmadinejad's key advisor Esfandiar Rahim- Mashai.

Motahari said Ahmadinejad should be aware that he is obligated to promote Islam and not ancient Iran: if he fails to fulfill his obligation, he will lose the support and trust of the Iranian nation.

0850 GMT: The Ahmadinejad Road Show. Video has been posted of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's arrival in New York --- keep your eyes open for Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and for the President's right-hand-man Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai --- and his first interview with Iranian media.

0805 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Saleh Noghrekar, the former head of public relations for Iran's judiciary, nephew of Zahra Rahnavard, and head of Mir Hossein Mousavi's judicial committee, has received a one-year suspended sentence. 

0800 GMT: The Regime is Listening. Fereshteh Ghazi continues to bring out key extracts from a leaked 110-page report of the Government's measures against the Iranian opposition. The latest article features extracts from the surveillance and wiretapping of reformists.

0745 GMT: The President Puts Out the Message. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's has launched his first volley from the US, courtesy of the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Nothing too surprising in the President's reiteration, from his Friday nationally-televised speech, of the errors of the International Atomic Energy Agency as it tries to inspect Iran's nuclear programme. 

More interesting, given the criticism levelled by Hashemi Rafsanjani over the President's dismissal of Western sanctions, is Ahmadinejad's re-assertation that the measures "will have no effect" on Iran.

And more interesting is a bit of a fall-back by the President, in the face of international pressure, on the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Ahmadinejad insisted that she had never been sentenced to execution by stoning.

0700 GMT: Mahmoud's Convert. Looks like President Ahmadinejad's publicity offensive, for all the problems that it is trying to obscure, has won over one US analyst. Juan Cole writes:

Ahmadinejad comes to New York, not as a wounded leader under internal and external siege, but as the confident representative of a fiercely independent Iran, the hydrocarbon treasures of which allow it to withstand Washington’s mere sanctions and opprobrium....Mahmoud the Great?

0630 GMT: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in New York. That's the message on most Iranian media this morning, and it's likely to take up the oxygen throughout the week as the President makes his play --- to the international community and to his constituents back home --- that he is a leader who deserves to be respected (internationally) and followed (domestically).

EA, however, will take another direction for the moment. We have a special analysis looking at what may be a dramatic challenge to the President: "Karroubi's Letter -- Who Acts and What Happens Next?"

(Green Voice of Freedom carries an English translation of the original BBC Persian report of the Karroubi letter, and Karroubi's Saham News has the full Persian text.)

We'll be watching closely today for any ripples within the establishment.

Meanwhile....

Execution (Sakineh) Watch

The leading Turkish paper Zaman has an incisive commentary on the significance of the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian women sentenced to death for adultery. Ashtiani's execution by stoning has been suspended, as the legal process continues, but she has been put on national television twice in recent weeks to "confess". Zaman comments:

The real truth of the matter is that Iranians are now worried that death by stoning and other similar events are doing serious damage to the nation’s image. However, the Iranian regime is stubborn in its refusal to take steps back in response to the current international campaign under way for Ashtiani. While the regime has made statements about setting aside Ashtiani’s punishment for now, it seems to see no harm in allowing Ashtiani to be punished in different ways. 

The US Makes a Play

An interesting shift of strategy by the Obama Administration, to be deployed in a televised interview of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today.

The advance summary of Clinton's interview, to be aired on ABC's "This Week", highlights a linkage between the "international" dimension of the claimed Iranian threat and the "domestic" political dimension, with Clinton "urging the people of Iran to reject what she says is an expansion of the Iranian military's role and power".

Clinton summarises, "The early advocates of [the 1979 Islamic Republic] said this would be a republic. It would be an Islamic republic, but it would be a republic. Then we saw a very flawed election and we've seen the elected officials turn for the military to enforce their power," she said.

And then Clinton puts out this message, similar to our analysis this morning of Mehdi Karroubi's letter and the Iranian system ("Will not someone rid me of this troublesome....?"):

"I can only hope that there will be some effort inside Iran, by responsible civil and religious leaders, to take hold of the apparatus of the state."