The Latest from Iran (21 June): The Hunger Strikers

1910 GMT: At the Movies. Lebanese authorities have banned the screening of the Iranian film "Green Days" about the protests after the 2009 Presidential election.

The ban was implemented after a request by the Iranian Ambassador. When the organiser of the Beirut International Film Festival, asked Lebanese officials for a reason, they said, "This is not our decision, we are only carrying out orders."

The film was to be screened at the Festival's "Forbidden Films Festival". It is directed by Hana Makhmalbaf, 22, the daughter of prominent filmmaker Mohsen Makhamalbaf, who is close to opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Lebanese authorities also banned the screening of "Green Days" at a festival last October, at the same time that President Ahmadinejad visited Beirut.

1905 GMT: Press Watch. Photojournalist Maryam Majd has been detained while she was on her way to cover the Women's World Cup in football in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Majd has been involved in a campaign to allow #women into sports stadiums. She was also a contributor to the women's magazine Zanan Monthly, which was banned by the regime in 2008.

1900 GMT: The Battle Within. Asr-e Iran, close to Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, positions itself versus both the President and his conservative opponents by asking, "Where have government critics been in the past six years?"

1815 GMT: Propaganda of Day. The hard-line Kayhan has claimed that Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi tried to kill fellow activist Akbar Ganji while he was in hospital.

1800 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Rah-e Sabz publishes an account by Amir Khosrow Dalirsani about the last days of his fellow political prisoner Hoda Saber, who died earlier this month while he was on hunger strike.

1435 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Prominent reformist Mostafa Tajzadeh has returned to prison after a short furlough.

Tajzadeh, who has been imprisoned for almost all the period since the 2009 Presidential election, is serving a six-year sentence.

1415 GMT: Parliament v. Parliament. Khabar Online, the website linked to Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, kicks the President while he is down after two significant defeats today --- no one welcomed Ahmadinejad in the Majlis and MPs continued personal debates during his speech.

1410 GMT: Sanctions Watch. The US Treasury has imposed new measures on 10 shipping companies and three individuals linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, isolating them from US finance and commerce.

The measures targeted IRISL's operations in Britain, China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

1400 GMT: The Battle Within. More on the attack upon President Ahmadinejad by the Supreme Leader's representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour (see 1215 GMT)....

Zolnour has defended Revolutionary Guard and Basij intervention in the election process next year "to save the nezam (system)"

Earlier this week, it was reported that the Tehran Mayor's office had already contacts the Guards and Basij about election supervision for next year's Parliamentary vote.

1355 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch. MP Hossein Fadaei has alleged that the President could use subsidy cuts to divide society into rich and poor, gaining 200 of the 290 seats in Parliament in the 2012 elections.

1225 GMT: Parliament v. President. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani may have scored a double victory over President Ahmadinejad today, but he is not letting up --- he has warned that, despite the withdrawal of the nomination of Mohammad Hossein Malekzadeh as Deputy Foreign Minister, the Parliament may still proceed with the impeachment of Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.

Larijani said Salehi had to "convince" legislators why they should not continue the process.

1215 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch. Another volley fired at the President by the Supreme Leader's representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour....

Zolnour said Ahmadinejad and his much-criticised Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai are inseparable like the famous conjoined twins Laleh and Ladan Bijani. Zolnour then claimed that if the President had been impeached by Parliament during his 11-day boycott of Government service this spring, "he would have received the highest vote for impeachment in history".

1200 GMT: The Battle Within. Back to today's first defeat for the Ahmadinejad camp --- Mohammad Hossein Malekzadeh, used the withdrawal from his nomination as Deputy Foreign Minister for administrative affairs to snap at the President's critics, "Despite dastardly manipulations and plentiful injustices done against me, I can't accept that you suffer from unjust pressures because of me anymore."

AFP offers a good overview of the two setbacks for Ahmadinejad.

1150 GMT: Parliament v. President. A second significant defeat for President Ahmadinejad, as Parliament has rejected his nominee for Minister of Sport.

After a heated dispute over Ahmadinejad's criticism of the Ministry and of legislators, Parliament voted down the nomination of Hamid Sajjadi by 137-23, with 87 absentions.

0830 GMT: The Battle Within. Two recent pieces from Tehran observers on the political struggle --- Najmeh Bozorgmehr writes for the Financial Times on "Iran: A Widened Distance" between the Supreme Leader and the President, and Thomas Erdbrink reports for The Washington Post, "Ahmadinejad's Kitchen Cabinet Under Pressure".

0712 GMT: Economy Watch. Andrew Sullivan posts a letter from a reader with family in Iran:

The economy is in really bad shape, at least as far as my family is concerned. Now that the Iranian government cut so many subsidies, especially the gas one - everything else in Iran has increased in price quite dramatically. Even though Iran is oil rich, gas is as expensive there as it is in Europe. The cost of food staples like bread and meat (currently about $16/kilo) are way up. Salaries are down. The working class is getting its ass kicked - even some people employed by the government went unpaid for many months. Sales in my mother-in-law's fashion boutique are way down over the past year, and my brother-in-law, who is a businessman, says sanctions are not just hitting the elites, but making business harder for everyone.

The reader poses this provocative question, "Could the Green Movement protesters have won if they had not just silently marched to Azadi Square the week after the election, but occupied it and held it the way the Egyptians held Tahrir?"

0710 GMT: Parliament v. President. It appears the Ahmadinejad camp has given way in the battle over the nomination of Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh as staff and finance manager of the Foreign Ministry (see 0615 GMT).

Malekzadeh's nomination has been withdrawn. In return, Parliament has halted impeachment proceedings against Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.

0700 GMT: Parliament Watch. Khabar Online lists the MPs who may be threatened by a proposal to require that all legislators have at least a Master's degree.

0650 GMT: Attack of the Day. Shafaf News, a supporter of the Supreme Leader, makes a significant shift in its coverage of the Ahmadinejad camp.

Critics of Ahmadinejad have been emphasising the need for him to detach from the "deviant current" around Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, but Shafaf News writes of the President as part of the problem: "Separating Rahim-Mashai from Ahmadinejad is dangerous; people do not believe all government mistakes can be attributed to him."

The website continues, "If all [disputed] appointments get attributed to Rahim-Mashai, what has Ahmadinejad to say in government?"

0645 GMT: Press Watch. Digarban reports that the conservative newspaper Hezbollah has been banned and its website filtered.

0640 GMT: Parliament v. President. And now the battlefront of the Ministry of Sport....

President Ahmadinejad has softened his language over the nomination of Hamid Sajjadi as the new Minister, pulling back from his criticism of Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani.

Ahmadinejad had provoked the anger of legislators when, in his letter nominating Sajjadi, he set out a list of complaints about the Ministry, which Parliament wants to merge with the Ministry of Youth.

The vote of confidence in Sajjadi is now underway in Parliament.

0635 GMT: Analogy of the Day? Khabar Online, the website linked to Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, features the "Rise and Fall" of Abolhassan Bani Sadr, the President who was impeached, threatened with assassination, and forced to flee Iran in 1981. He was "a President who said I'm the best and different from others".

I am sure that this article is completely historical and is not intended to make any point about contemporary politics in Iran.

0630 GMT: The Hunger Strikes. In connection with the demands of 12 political prisoners on hunger strike (see 0500 GMT), Green Voice of Freedom lists 18 detainees who allegedly died from prison abuse between 2003 and 2001.

0615 GMT: The Battle Within (Don't Blame Me Edition). The Parliament v. Ahmadinejad fight takes an interesting turn this morning, in this case over the controversial appointment of Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh to a key position in the Foreign Ministry (see Monday's LiveBlog).

According to Fars, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has distanced himself from Malekzadeh, who is seen as a close ally of Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai:

Malekzadeh was not appointed on my recommendation. The ministry is occupied by people committing sabotage....Subversive forces began to get their hands on the ministry by appointing Malekzadeh. I am not empowered to make decisions there.

Salehi even welcomed the effort by critical MPs to remove him from office, "As I am not competent to make decisions at the ministry, it would be better if the parliament declares me impeachment."

More than 30 MPs have signed a motion to begin proceedings against Salehi.

0500 GMT: We begin this morning by noting the 12 political prisoners who started a hunger strike on Saturday.

The hunger strikers are protesting the deaths of activists Hoda Saber and Haleh Sahabi and the general situation of detainees.

Sahabi died on 1 June after a confrontation with security forces who tried to disperse the funeral procession of her father, long-time opposition figure Ezzatollah Sahabi. Saber was one of six political prisoners who went on hunger strike to protest Sahabi's death. He died on 10 June from a heart attack; 64 fellow prisoners have signed a letter claiming he ws denied medical care and was beaten by a member of the security forces.

Maryam Shafiee, the wife of one of the strikers, activist Emad Behavar, explained, “They want the officials to bring about change in the status of political prisoners. They are deprived of the rights guaranteed to ordinary prisoners such as phone calls, visitations, furloughs, and they and their families are subject to demeaning treatment. They said that they will pay any price until they attain their goal and their situation changes.”

Shafaiee said that despite the request of supporters including Firouzeh Saber, Hoda Saber’s wife, 
to stop, the prisoners “will not end their strike, and will continue until they get a reaction from judiciary 
officials. Emad said with this act they want the world to hear their pleas".

The prisoners on hunger strike are: Behavar (head of the Freedom Movement’s Youth 
Branch); Ghorban Behzadian Nejad (advisor for Mir Hossein Mousavi); Bahman Ahmadi Amoui (journalist); Abdollah Momeni and Hassan Asadi Zeidabadi (Central Council of the alumni association Tahkim-e Vahdat Alumni Association); Amir Khosrow Dalirsani (Nationalist-Religious Coalition); Abolfazl Ghadyani and Feizollah Arabsorkhi (Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution Organization); Mohammad Javad Mozaffar (publisher and Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners in Iran); Mohammad Reza Moghisseh (journalist and member of the Mousavi/Karroubi post-election fact-finding committee); Mohammad Davari (Chief Editor of Saham News); and Mehdi Eghbal (Islamic Iran Participation Front).

Journalist Emaduddin Baghi, who also began a hunger strike on Saturday, was released from prison yesterday.