The Latest from Iran (13 June): Back to the "Normal" of In-Fighting

1755 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Saber Edition). The wife of journalist Hoda Saber, who passed away after a hunger strike in Evin Prison, claimed on Sunday: ""My husband died two days ago, but we were unaware of his death until today when someone in the hospital informed one of our friends."

1750 GMT: Corruption Watch. Iran Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei has confirmed that leading MP Ahmad Tavakoli is formally accusing 1st Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi of corruption. Mohseni-Ejei said judicial deputies had met with President Ahmadinejad to discuss the matter.

Rahimi has been accused by critics of involvement in a massive insurance fraud.

1730 GMT: Warning of the Day. A writer for http://digarban.com/node/1314" target="_blank">the hardline Raja News claims that supporters of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, formerly an ally of the President, have warned the Ahmadinejad camp: "When you trespass the red lines, we will act."

1725 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Latest arrests include student Nima Pouryaghoob and journalist Somaz Ikdar, both detained at today's funeral for journalist Hoda Saber.

1715 GMT: The Anniversary Protests. Radio Farda quotes a demonstrator, "We started walking on Vali Asr Street. As [expected] special forces were deployed on both sides of the street like a human wall. But people ignored them and continued walking on the sidewalks without chanting."

Tehran Bureau has posted another first-hand account from Sunday's silent protests:

I started on Vali Asr Avenue from south of Vali Asr Square. That was around 4 p.m. There was hardly any security presence anywhere in that area apart from some courier-motorists who were supposedly just loitering but in fact were Intel Ministry agents masquerading as workers --- this is done to report unusual activities inconspicuously. These [guys] are easy to spot. They have intense looks on their faces and don't talk to anyone around them.

I sat down in a café to wait till six near Daneshjoo Park. Sure enough, right after five, large numbers of people started walking up toward Vali Asr Square. Suddenly hundreds of security people appeared from nowhere. I walked up to the square around 5:45 p.m. At the square, it was like an armed camp. There were so many uniformed and plainclothes cops, it was unbelievable. The crowd was swelling and it was clear the security personnel would move against us soon even though no one chanted.

I went around the square three times very slowly. In one corner, a van was full of detained people. A woman in her 20s was being pulled by two undercover agents. They were quite bulky and she was crying inconsolably. We couldn't do anything to help her. We just walked away.

It was way too dangerous at the square so I moved north toward Motahari. The crowd was increasing by the minute. So were the cops. Large bike formations of NAJA [state police] would go by often without doing very much other than showing their presence. Once in a while the Basijis on bikes would appear, with their bikes roaring loudly to terrify people. From Vali Asr to Motahari, I counted seven or eight people getting arrested and pushed into the police cars.

Near Motahari, another major node of people had formed. I smelled tear gas and some people started running as they were being attacked and beaten. I made it to one of the side streets along with a couple dozen others running in an easterly direction. But ahead of us, on the streets connecting Motahari and Beheshti, there were a great number of undercover cops and NAJA and Basijis. I started walking rather than running. It took a while to maneuver my way out of the concentration of forces unmolested. They beat many people and arrested those with telephones.

I hopped in a cab going north toward Vanak Square. There was a terrific traffic jam all around. It took 30 minutes just to cover a kilometer. The driver said for many, many kilometers in every direction, traffic had come to a near halt. That was about 7:30 p.m. This meant it has been a successful day. Everybody now would learn that the Green Movement is alive and well and they can't pretend nothing happened today.

Overall, I saw about 11 people in detention or getting arrested within three hours. That means hundreds in all were arrested. We all knew the risk but couldn't not go out. June 12 is and will always be our day to remember.

1710 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Saber Edition). More than 60 prisoners from Ward 350 of Evin Prison have written an open letter declaring that journalist Hoda Saber, who died of a heart attack yesterday, was beaten on the eighth day of his hunger strike in an infirmary, allegedly by security forces.

1700 GMT: Intelligence Operation of the Day. Back from a teaching break to find the regime trying to refine its propaganda spectacle, presented on State TV last week, that Mohammad Reza Mahdi was not really a defector from the Revolutionary Guards but 1) was a dupe of Washington or 2) was a double agent exposing a US plot for a "shadow" Iranian government....

Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi claims that his service "converted" Madhi to infiltrate the expatriate opposition.

Well, that should make everything clear, with Mahdi supposedly meeting Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in his travels. However, now that his face has been splashed all over Iranian media, it may be that his infiltration days are over.

1545 GMT: James Miller makes this update on our Arab Spring liveblog:

Anita McNaught reports from the Turkey-Syria border that refugees are massing on the border, sodliers are defecting, and Iranian agents may have been deployed as snipers in Syria.

1325 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Saber Edition). Authorities at Evin Prison >have denied that activist and journalist Hoda Saber, who died on Sunday from a heart attack, was on hunger strike.

Saber, who was buried today amidst heavy security, was reportedly on the strike with five other political prisoners, in protest at the death of activist Haleh Sahabi on 1 June.

1315 GMT: All The President's Men. Presidential Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai has appeared alongside Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a photograph after Sunday's Cabinet meeting.

Rahim-Mashai had been absent from a series of Government meetings --- one report claimed 14 in a row --- leading to rumours that he was under house arrest.

Iran Analysis: What We "Know" About Sunday's Protest, Two Years after the Election
Iran Feature: The State of the Nation, Two Years Later (Peterson)
Iran Cartoon of the Day: A Cry for Freedom (Neyestani)
The Latest from Iran (12 June): Two Years Ago Today....

Further questions have been raised, however, by today's statement by Iran Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossen Mohseni-Ejei that "a number of Ahmadinejad associates have been arrested, but we cannot announce their names".

1205 GMT: The House Arrests. The head of the conservative Motalefeh Party, Mohammad Nabi Habibi, has declared that Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi should not be released from strict house arrest as their actions, allegedly fomenting sedition, are "unforgivable".

Nabi Habibi's statement is a sharp rejection of former President Mohammad Khatami, who has called for the freeing of the two men as part of a "reconciliation" between the regime and the Iranian people.

1155 GMT: Currency Watch. The governor of the Central Bank, Masoud Bastani, has given assurances that calm will return to currency markets, even as the value of the Iranian toman slides.

The toman is now at 1245 to the US dollar, a slip from the weekend market rate of 1205. The fall in value is already jeopardising the Central Bank's attempt to stabilise the currency last week with a formal devaluation of 11%, moving from 1065 tomans to the dollar to a rate of 1175.

1140 GMT: Mardomak has posted some of the clearest footage to date of the build-up of security forces at key points in Tehran on Sunday.

1035 GMT: Fashion Watch. RAHANA reports that Iranian authorities are imposing prison terms of 10 days to two months for not wearing acceptable hijab.

1030 GMT: The Battle Within. Meanwhile, this bit of interesting and perhaps signficant news from Parliament....

More than 200 of the 290 legislators have signed a bill requiring the Government to wait three years before implementing the merger of ministries.

The Government had been obligated under the 5th Development Plan (2010-2015) to reduce the number of ministries from 21 to 17, but President Ahmadinejad's implementation has provoked heated controversy, from his alleged failure to consult Parliament to the naming of himself as caretaker Minister of Oil while that ministry was merged with the Ministry of Energy.

1015 GMT: The Annniversary Protests. "A Correspondent", writing for Tehran Bureau, offers a first-hand account which complements our own sources:

It was rush-hour on Valiasr Street. Shopkeepers peeked out from behind half-shuttered doors as armed guards swelled the streets and impeded traffic, making the city's main thoroughfare all but impenetrable. Though frazzled by the blockades and high police presence, several busloads of demonstrators made their way to the announced route between Vanak and Valiasr squares, once again taking advantage of the fact that halting public transportation on a weekday afternoon is something Tehran's authorities try to avoid at all costs.

When a legion of motorcycle basijis swarmed past one of the buses, the entire women's section exploded with lamentations. "God forgive you!" they shouted. "May your legs be broken for kicking our sons!"

After nearly an hour of eyeing each other warily and half-audibly cursing the guards outside, the men in the front of the bus gradually joined in. Reinforced by each other's company, they began cracking jokes about the display of force around them. "Run them over," one said to the laughing driver as five basijis on motorcycles swerved in front of his bus. "Ten points if they're on a motorcycle, five if they're on foot."

On this 22 Khordad, the two-year anniversary of President Ahmadinejad's disputed June 12 reelection, few expected a high turnout at the Tehran demonstration. In the face of sophisticated crowd control, overwhelming security and a high chance of arrest, most protesters were simply hoping that others would join them. "Given the price that the people have paid already, I wasn't expecting everybody to go out and kill themselves," said one avid 26-year-old participant. "I was just happy that other people came out, and that they were very angry. It let everyone know that they were not alone."

For the foot soldiers of the Green Movement, 22 Khordad provided a much-needed morale boost --- the muted, several-thousand turnout notwithstanding. With their main leaders effectively neutralized and their foreign-based coordinators struggling with organization and coherence, local Green Movement supporters have felt increasingly isolated since the last round of Arab-inspired demonstrations fizzled out three months ago. Disillusioned by the recent deaths of high-profile activists and simultaneously piqued by rifts within Iran's ruling structure, the opposition's objective was simply to keep their dynamic alive, activists said.

0915 GMT: All-is-Well Alert. Raja News not only notices Sunday's opposition protests; it devotes a lengthy article to the destruction of them.

The website claims that the attempted demonstration was the outcome of a plot between Mir Hossein Mousavi's advisor Ardeshir Amir Armojand and BBC Persian. It sneers that there was "no effect" from "scattered protests", and it claims that last week's State TV documentary on a "foreign plot" for a shadow Government in Iran fatally discredited the opposition.

0820 GMT: The Anniversary Protest. A bit more information....

Rah-e Sabz features a first-hand account from the demonstration at Vanak Square, and The Guardian of London has this nugget in a phone interview with a protester:

Demonstrators mainly marched on the pavement, and – as requested by the organisers – did not shout any anti-regime slogans.

"People were pretending that they were in the streets for a walk but it was obvious that they were out in protest to mark the rigged election in 2009," he said.

"They were silent but their numbers were ten times more than an ordinary day in Vali-e-Asr street, I think around 30,000 people were out there in total."

0800 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Journalist Farid Salvati was arrested in a raid on his home yesterday.

0755 GMT: Opposition Watch. Green Correspondents summarises the press conference of opposition advisor Ardeshir Amir Arjomand in New York.

0745 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Saber Edition). We await news of the funeral of activist Hoda Saber, who died on Sunday. Meanwhile, Iranian state media continues to minimise the death of the imprisoned journalist, who passed away from a heart attack which may have brought on by a hunger strike.

The Iranian outlets are saying that Saber died of "chronic heart disease". In an implicit rejection of claims that he was denied timely care in prison, they are claiming that he expired while receiving quality care in a Tehran hospital. They are also making no mention of the hunger strike, which six political prisoners started in protest over the death of activist Haleh Sahabi almost two weeks ago.

Muhammad Sahami has more context on Saber's death.

0600 GMT: We begin this morning with an analysis of Sunday's events, on the second anniversary of the 2009 Presidential election, as thousands (how many thousands?) defied the regime to protest silently in Tehran and dozens (how many dozens?) were seized by security forces.

Those events will be denied by the regime and its media outlets today, as they are declaring that all is normal. That "normal", however, entails more division within the establishment. 

Just one example to start the day: Ebrahim Raissi, the Deputy Head of Iran's judiciary has challenged the President: Ahmadinejad's silence towards the "deviant current", i.e., his advisors, is a mistake and he must comment on the threat.