The Latest from Iran (16 June): Halting the Slide

2010 GMT: Public Service Announcement. I will be on the BBC's The World Tonight just after 2130 GMT, discussing the current political battle within Iran.

2005 GMT: Parliament v. President. MP Mohammad Dehghan has confirmed that Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani will lead a Parliamentary committee meeting with President Ahmadinejad next week over the merger of ministries.

1955 GMT: Two Years Later. More on the open letter from Tehran University's Islamic Association to the head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, demanding punishment for those who attacked university dormitories two nights after the 2009 Presidential election (see 1110 GMT)....

The Association notes that students who were detained in the raid are serving prison sentences while those who "ordered and carried out the attack" have not been brought to justice.

Plainclothes agents, riot police, and special units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps raided the dormitories. Iran's largest reformist student group claims five students were killed, but Iranian authorities have only said that "100 to 120 students were injured".

The exact number of students arrested and of casualties has never been officially released.

1935 GMT: Justice Watch. Masih Alinejad reports on how the families of 43 post-election victims are struggling to get justice.

1610 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Opposition activist and blogger Akbar Rohani was arrested in Qom on Sunday by plainclothes agents who raided his home and business and seized computers and documents. His family have been unable to establish where he is being held.

1600 GMT: Clerical Intervention. Ayatollah Mahmoud Amjad, a renowned professor of morality at a Qom seminary, has said, "I find no answer to killings, rape, and injustice."

Ayatollah Amjad told families of political prisoners in January, "People are fed a lot of wrong and one-sided information and that many decisions are made based on such information. But some people have closed their eyes to the truth, and some pious people also believe such information."

1550 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Mostafa Daneshjoo, a lawyer for the Gonabadi dervishes, has been fined and sentenced to seven months in jail. He has been transferred from Sari Prison to a camp for drug addicts.

The Gonabadi dervishes are Sufi Muslim ascetics, known for their austerity.

1305 GMT: Economy Watch. Peyke Iran claims that 50% of cow and hen farms have been shut down because of subsidy cuts, leaving many people unemployed.

1220 GMT: All the President' Men. According to the daily newspaper Tehran Emrooz, the Minister of Science and Higher Education Kamran Daneshjoo has said that the Ph.D. of 1st Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi is not valid.

Earlier this week a conservative MP critical of the Government alleged that Rahimi's supposed Ph.D. had been bought from an on-line American university.

1150 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Rah-e Sabz claims that security forces have prevented a memorial ceremony for Hoda Saber, who died last weekend after a hunger strike in prison, in his sister's home.

1140 GMT: Foreign Affairs (Syrian Front). Not all media are toeing the regime line of Syria's President Assad facing down "terrorism" backed by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. An EA correspondent passes us this editorial from the reformist paper Mardom Salari:

If the security and army forces continue to suppress the people under Bashar al-Asad's command, Syria's future will undoubtedly be filled with problems. Shutting people's mouths, the use of force, and the mobilization of military forces to every part of the country may temporarily maintain the present position of Damascus, but experience has shown that these roads never lead to positive outcomes. If the United States, Israel, and Britain are to be confronted and fought against, the solution is not harsh treatment of the people and giving carte blanche to military forces for their suppression. Surviving the present crisis and bringing about reforms will only be possible by reducing the gap between the nation and the government, an open confession of mistakes by the politicians, a guarantee of civil liberties, the observance of citizens' rights, and an honest reconciliation with the Syrian nation.

1110 GMT: Two Years Later. The Islamic Students Council of Tehran University has asked the head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to sentence those responsible for the raids on university dorms two nights after the disputed 2009 Presidential election.

1105 GMT: Rumour of Day. State news agency IRNA claims that Abbas Amirifar, the leader of Friday Prayers in the President's office, was released after 40 days solitary confinement but immediately re-arrested by a clerical court for his involvement with a controversial CD about the imminent return of the Hidden Imam.

1100 GMT: Conspiracy of the Day. Payam Fazlinejad, writing for the hard-line Kayhan has declared that President Ahmadinejad's right-hand man Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai will end up in prison.

Fazlinejad explains that Rahim-Mashai is involved in a Freemasonic plot which also includes Richard Frye, a noted scholar in Iranian Studies, and the philosopher Richard Rorty, as well as the CIA centre at Harvard University.

0925 GMT: Clerical Intervention. Ayatollah Dastgheib, in a weekly interpretaton of the Qur'an, has declared that receiving money for beating and threatening people is "haram" (forbidden).

0910 GMT: Declaration of the Day. Saeed Qassemi of the Basij, explaining that more than 30 members of the militia were killed in post-election clashes, said that victory over the unrest was even greater than the historic liberation of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

Qassemi also admits that the post-election tension and the rise of the Green Movement caused "problems" within families.

0900 GMT: The Battle Within. The Supreme Leader's representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Ali Saeedi, has reportedly issued another warning to the Ahmaadinejad camp: the Guards will not "sit silent" if national income is looted to consolidate power.

A different warning from Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of the Basij militia: confronting the system of velayat-e faqih (clerical supremacy) is worse than "drinking alcohol". 

0845 GMT: Currency Watch (Green Edition). As if the Central Bank was not busy enough these days (see 0450 GMT), it is being asked by Bultan News to collect and destroy old banknotes. Apparently, some of them have inscriptions such as "Death to the Dictator":

0800 GMT: To Infinity and Beyond. State media have been focusing on Iran's launch of a second satellite.

Rassad (Observation) is a 15.3-kilogram micro-satellite, taking images of earth at an altitude of 260 kilometres (160 miles), orbiting 15 times every 24 hours.

Iran launched its first domestically-produced satellite Omid (Hope) in 2009, becoming the ninth country to achieve satellite capability.

0735 GMT: Nuclear Front. The start of operations at Iran's first nuclear power plant at Bushehr has been delayed yet again, this time for an indefinite period.

The reactor was formally opened, after political and technical issues held it up for years, last autumn.

0550 GMT: A Biblical Moment? Following reports of dust storms this week, Tehran and the northern province of Mazanderan now face the arrival of millions of locusts. The insects have already gone through Golestan Province in eastern Iran.

0450 GMT: We begin this morning on the economic front, with the Central Bank announcing further measures in an attempt to halt the slide of the rial, Iran's official currency.

Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani announced that domestic interest rates would be raised, more bonds would be issued, and a sales tax on gold would be abolished. The steps are an attempt to get Iranians to invest in something other than the US dollar and "strong" foreign currencies.

On Tuesday, Bahmani said the bank would inject up to $3 billion per month in US dollars into the market to stabilise the rial. Last week, the bank devalued the rial by 11%. 

The decision to allow higher interest rates is a reversal of the bank's position in April, when it slashed the rates from 26-28% to 14-17%. Although this level was just at April-May's official inflation rates of 14.2%, many Iranians believes the "real" inflation rate is much higher.