The Latest from Iran (24 January): Two More Political Executions

Jafar Kazemi2040 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Prominent reformist Ali Shakouri Rad has been released from detention.

Shakouri Rad was arrested last month after he said in a public debate that the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, had congratulated Mir Hossein Mousavi on his "victory" on Election Day in June 2009.

1945 GMT: Claim of Day. President Ahmadinejad speaking in Gilan Province in northwest Iran: targeted subsidy cuts are the work of the 12th (Hidden) Imam.

1940 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Journalist and blogger Siamak Ghaderi has been sentenced to four years in prison for “propaganda against the regime”, “disturbing public opinion”, and “spreading lies”.

Ghaderi jailed in early August after security forces raided his home.

1805 GMT: The Nuke Talks. It's now 48 hours --- and two EA analyses --- since the end of the Istanbul discussions on uranium enrichment, but The New York Times still can't get the full story. Fed by Western diplomats, the newspaper reports:

At the talks between Iran and six major powers in Istanbul over the weekend, Iran said it was 'no longer interested' in a fuel-swap deal proposed to it by Washington and the others....

After she laid out the proposals, [Catherine] Ashton, the head of the delegation of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, told journalists, "I made it clear that they should consider them and come back to us.” Asked if [Iranian negotiator Saeed] Jalili agreed to do so, she said that he listened, but “He didn’t say, ‘Oh, O.K., I will.”’...

The senior Western diplomat...[said] that Mr. Jalili told Ms. Ashton and the other powers that "Iran was no longer interested in the Tehran reactor,” because it had found its own source of uranium and could produce the fuel itself.

OK, all that matches up with the half of the story that the Iranians stuck to preconditions and would not consider substantive proposals for "third-party enrichment". But the Times reduces the other half --- the actual proposal made by the 5+1 Powers --- to "a revised offer to swap most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium for fuel rods".

It wasn't "most" of Tehran's uranium. It was "almost all". And the "revison" was a toughening of the conditions on Iran, compared to the proposal of autumn 2009.

1740 GMT: Parliament v. Government. Khabar Online summarises the state of play in the Majlis' scrutiny of Ministers: 13 of 21 have been summoned for questioning, and five are on a "yellow card" warning that there could be further enquiries and even impeachment.

But the immediate disputes will likely be over the budget and the contest for control of the Central Bank. The President has lashed out at the Majlis, judiciary, and Expediency Council, writing that they want to harm the Government and change the Constitution.

Leading MP Ahmad Tavakoli has fired back that Ahmadinejad has tried to cover up social and economic problems with his subsidy cuts, which have only led to a decrease of production.

1315 GMT: Parliament v. President. Press TV has a short, understated but significant article this afternoon:

Iran's Majlis (Parliament) Presiding Board has decided to ask the government in a letter to submit the country's next Iranian fiscal year's budget bill to the parliament as soon as possible. The shortage of time and the government's delay in sending the budget bill, has prompted Majlis' Presiding Board to make the decision.

What Press TV does not mention are the disputes over the 2010 Budget and President Ahmadinejad's 5-Year Plan (2010-2015). Nor does the website bring out the significance, given other disputes between the Majlis and Ahmadinejad, of this sentence, "The approved budget will be then sent to the country's Guardian Council, whose approval is needed for the bill to become law."

Indeed, Press TV does not even mention that "as soon as possible" is, in fact, a deadline set by the Majlis for submission of the budget: one week.

0930 GMT: The President's Right-Hand Man. Iranian Diplomacy offers an overview of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff and confidante, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai. The title says it all: "Chronology of Controversy".

0928 GMT: Challenging the Government. The Minister of Transportation, Hamid Behbahani, has been summoned to the Parliament to address 11 questions.

Behbahani has come under increasing pressure after a series of air crashes, including one earlier this month in northwest Iran that killed more than 70 people.

0925 GMT: Coming Out. The opposition site Rah-e-Sabz, reporting on the Supreme Leader's visits yesterday with the families of two assassinated nuclear scientists, has referred to him simply as "Mr Khamenei".

0920 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. More than 130 Swedish women activists have published an appeal for the release of detained attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, sentenced to 11 years in prison.

0915 GMT: Sedition Watch. The custodian of Imam Reza’s shrine in Mashhad, Ayatollah Vaez Tabasi, has denounced opposition figures as “leaders of the sedition”: "The rejected event that we call fitna and its leaders have strived for three important goals: fighting Islam, return to ignorant (pagan) values, and combating the Supreme Religious Leader and Imam of the nation.”

0745 GMT: In light of Dave Siavashi's sharp insights this morning on social media, posted in a separate entry, we were going to lead with this item in the updates before the news of the execution suddenly emerged:

Iran on Sunday officially launched its cyber-police unit to confront Internet crimes and counter social networks that spread "espionage and riots," police chief Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghaddam said.

The country's first web watchdog team was now operational in the capital, Tehran, while police stations throughout the country would have their cyber units by the end of the Iranian year, March 21, he was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

Ahmadi Moghaddam said the cyber police would take on anti-revolutionary and dissident groups who used Internet-based social networks in 2009 to trigger protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Through these very social networks in our country, anti-revolutionary groups and dissidents found each other and contacted foreign countries and triggered riots," he said.

My initial reading of this was going to be both fodder for the Net-pessimists (Look! The Iranian authorities are repressing the Web again) and the Net-optimists (but if the regime has been entirely successful, why do they need to keep making this statement over and over?).

However, a slightly different note now. It was social media that has been following the Kazemi and Haj Aghaei cases and publicising them. And even though activists have been unable to stop the executions, I suspect they may be using social media to highlight the hangings and maintain their campaign, inside and outside Iran.

0705 GMT: Iranian state media are reporting this morning that Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei have been hanged. Press TV declares, "Iran Executes 2 MKO Terrorists".

The execution of Kazemi and Haj Aghaei had been anticipated by activists for weeks. The regime accused both of being members of the People's Mojahedin of Iran, the political wing of the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO). Iranian media are adding this morning that the two men worked with "agents in Britain" and asserting, "The two terrorists...were hanged on Monday for distributing placards and photos of the terrorist group, making videos and images during the post-election unrest in Iran in 2009 and chanting slogans in favor of the MKO."

In an interview posted on EA 11 days ago, Kazemi's wife said the "crime" of her husband, a lithographer at Amir Kabir University, was that he had visited their son in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, home to many PMOI members.

The pressure by activists had brought some international attention, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling last August for the release of the two men.

Earlier this month, stories circulated that the cases of Kazemi and Haj Aghaei had been sent to officials for confirmation of execution. Activists renewed efforts to halt the implementation, as had occurred with Kurdish detainee Habibollah Latifi in December. However, this morning, the Tehran Prosecutor's office announced, "Two elements of the Monafeghin (hypocrites) cell named Jafar Kazemi... and Mohammad Ali Hajaghaei...were executed early today."