The Latest from Iran (21 April): The Ping-Pong of Power

2015 GMT: Rumours of the Day (President's Right-Hand Man Edition). Mashregh News says Ahemadinejad confidante Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai is in hospital for diabetes. Fars says he is in good health.

Bottom line: Rahim-Mashai was not with the President on Ahmadinejad's trip to Kurdistan yesterday and today. Any significance?

1400 GMT: International Front. Kuwait's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Salem al-Sabah has told Al Arabiya that an alleged Iranian spy cell had explosives to bomb "strategic" facilities: "We are talking about a cell whose task was not only to monitor and record the (US) military presence that is in their view hostile --- the American forces presence on Kuwait lands --- but it exceeded that."

The Foreign Minister claimed the cell, revealed last year, "had explosives and the intention to explode vital Kuwaiti facilities. They had names of officers and they had extremely sensitive information. This indicates bad intentions to harm Kuwaiti security."

have arrested eight persons allegedly involved in killing and injuring three people, including a police officer, a week ago in Ahvaz in southwestern Iran.

Police commander Abdollah Nazarpour said, "Eight members of the Khalq-e Arab terrorist group were apprehended early this morning in a joint operation by the police and intelligence agents." They allegedly shot dead the police officer last Friday near a checkpoint.

Iranian media have also claimed the Khalq-e Arab group was involved in deadly expolosions in Ahwaz in 2005 and 2006.

1220 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Saber Abbasian, a member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front and campaigner for Mir Hossein Mousavi in Shiraz, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

1130 GMT: A Matter of Intelligence. Peyke Iran claims that the Minister of Intelligence, Heydar Moslehi, did not accompany Cabinet on a trip to Kurdistan today.

1020 GMT: The President's Right-Hand Man. Khabar Online, the site associated with Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, features a series of articles striking at President Ahmadinejad's close advisor Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai.

Prominent MP Gholam-Reza Mesbahi-Moghaddam charges that the Rahim-Mashai camp is using public funds for the 2012 Parliamentary election and that his supporters and those of Ahmadinejad believe they can select all of the hard-liners' candidates.

Ali Larijani makes a personal appearance to jab at the "Iran School", associated with Rahim-Mashai, saying that the School has no logical base and is not a real or just concept.

And Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of Parliament's National Security Commission, has weighed in on the controversy over the Ministry of Intelligence, saying that it should remain. He added that it should not be transformed into an "Intelligence Organisation", which would likely be under the control of the President's office.

1010 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. In an interview with Rooz Online, Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, declares, "The country is in the hands of thugs."

1000 GMT: Second Thoughts. Last week, we posted the video of Ayatollah Mohammad Saeedi, the Friday Prayer leader of Qom, declaring that when the Supreme Leader was born, he called out the name of Imam Ali, the first Imam of Shi'a.

Looks like Saeedi is not quite comfortable with the reaction to the video, spread widely throughout Iran --- he has said that he should not have told such stories about Ayatollah Khamenei's birth.

0900 GMT: The Ping-Pong of Power. Thomas Erdbrink of The Washington Post has picked up on the dispute over the Minister of Intelligence, noting the Supreme Leader's public letter trying to resolve the dispute. He also notes the wider context:

The controversy over the key ministry post has flared against a backdrop of public tension about what high-ranked officials described as the growing influence of Ahmadinejad’s closest aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, in the country’s affairs. Semiofficial news media have reported that the 52-year-old aide played a central role in Moslehi’s dismissal.

0810 GMT: Book Corner. An official of the Tehran International Book Fair official has opposed a ban on British publishers, in retaliation for Britain’s refusal to issue visas for several Iranian publishers who planned to participate in the London Book Fair.

Mohammadreza Vasfi, the director of the international section of the Tehran Fair, to be held in May, said, "Taking such an action is a self-sanction."

The British Foreign Office refused to issue visas for Iranian publishers for the London Book Fair from 11 to 13 April, claiming it was unsure if the publishers would have enough money to come back home.

0740 GMT: The Ping-Pong of Power. Hamid Farokhnia, writing in Tehran Bureau, offers a wide-ranging overview of the dispute over Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi, taking the story from President Ahmadinejad's dismissal of Moslehi's predecessor Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei in 2009 to today:

There is no knowing what the immediate future holds for the badgered ministry, but one thing is for certain: Given the prevailing conditions -- a lame-duck and apparently disliked minister at the helm, a ruthless and power-hungry rival, its emergence as a target for factional political abuse, and the general degradation of its duties per the dictates of an unpopular and brutal regime -- the Intelligence Ministry will witness only further erosion and decline.

0640 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Journalist Hassan Zohouri, a specialist on cultural heritage, has been returned to prison.

Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, spokesman for the Khatami Government, has been acquitted for the second time of insulting President Ahmadinejad.

First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi had brought the complaint, claiming that a 2008 speech by Ramezanzadeh criticising those who "want to run the country with lies" had been a criminal slander of the President.

Ramezanzadeh, arrested a few hours after the 2009 Presidential election, has been sentenced ot six years in prison.

0630 GMT: Opposition Watch. Speaking with the opposition television outlet RASA, Mir Hossein Mousavi's Paris-based advisor Ardeshir Amir Arjomand discusses human rights violations in Iran.

Arjomand considers news of the physical condition of political prisoners behind bars in Rajai Shahr prison and Evin Prison's ward for female detainees. Specifically, he talks about reports of the deteriorating physical condition of senior reformist figure Mostafa Tajzadeh. Arjomand asserts:

Those individuals who remain captive to the judiciary, the security forces, and semi military forces and claim that the responsibility lies with the authorities within the judiciary and the security forces, rendering them powerless, are by no means relieved of their responsibilities towards our nation. Their lack of action will leave a negative mark on their service to the nation and their judicial and political history, for not only will they be viewed as individuals incapable of handling their own responsibilities but also as projecting their negative motivations, thoughts and ideas on others. Someone must ask the important question of "Who is responsible here? If those in charge of the judiciary are not responsible, then whom?"

0615 GMT: The Ping-Pong of Power. Ayatollah Vaez Tabasi tries to draw a line under the dispute over the Minister of Intelligence: all appointments and dismissals are with the Supreme Leader, and no one else has the say in these matters.

0610 GMT: Subsidy Cuts Watch. Mehr reports that, in an apparent pull-back of the President's economic plans, subsidies for bread will be increased by 25%.

The news comes as the Government institutes a third stage of support payments, providing about $45 per person to cover rising prices after the subsidy cuts.

0600 GMT: Campus Watch. Radio Farda reports on protests by Tehran University students over the extensive presence of security forces and surveillance cameras on the campus.

"We will not tolerate such offensive, humiliating attitudes and will not keep silent before those who turn universities into garrisons," the students said in a statement published on the Daneshjoo News website on Saturday. 

Segregated buses for male and female students have reportedly been introduced on the campus.

0500 GMT: After a turbulent, confusing 72 hours in Iranian politics, the easiest starting point is to admit my uncertainty. The Supreme Leader's one-paragraph public letter keeping Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi in office, taking Moslehi's resignation --- probably forced by President Ahmadinejad's office --- off the table, but demanding that the Ministry do its job effectively: was this a rebuke of Ahmadinejad, a reprimand of Moslehi, or a balancing act between both the President's office and its critics?

Arash Bahmani does his better with a one-line summary: "Khamenei Wrote the Letter, But Fighting Continues".

Indeed, Khamenei's public intervention and the episode take their place within wider contests and questions. Given that Ahmadinejad right-hand man and probable 2013 Presidential candidate Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai was behind the move to push out Moslehi, what clue do we now have about his prospects? Kaveh Ghoreishi, writing for Inside Iran before the Moslehi affair, was already declaring, "Mashai Political Future Now in Doubt". One paragraph of his review of Iranian political opinion stands out:

Javan Online, a news website close to the Political Office of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), called Mashai’s removal [as head of Ahmadinejad's office] a “hoax” and wrote, “The deviant faction among ‘principalists’ that has begun its campaign to take over the parliament next winter has a new plan to win the votes of their critics,” implying that Masha’s departure was supposed to silence Ahmadinejad’s critics.

"Deviant faction" --- where have I seen that phrase? Ah, yes, it was in Javan's description of the group putting out the claim of Moslehi's resignation.

Let's turn it over to Nikahang Kowsar to illustrate the situation, with the help of Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Moslehi: