The Latest from Iran (15 September): So What Happens to the US Hikers?

2040 GMT: The Battle Within. Mehr --- a conservative, not a reformist, website --- has posted in English the news we reported earlier: Ali Saeedi, the Supreme Leader's representative to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, has met President Ahmadinejad and criticised him for not living up to his ideals.

Advising the President to readjust his attitude, Saeedi said Ahmadinejad's sympathisers are displeased with some of his actions and behaviour. He added that the President still has time to make up for his past.

2020 GMT: Claim of the Day. He has been criticised by leading economists, the reformist opposition, by conservative MPs, and by Government officials, but that is not going to stop President Ahmadinejad from loudly repeating an unsupported claim.

In a speech today, Ahmadinejad said, "With the support of the Iranian nation and by mobilizing all capacities, 2.5 million jobs will be created annually for [each of] two years to solve the unemployment problem." He said the challenge would be "no more difficult" than the development of Iran's nuclear programme.

And his critics who say the Government has not even created the 1.6 million new positions it claims, let alone five million new jobs? "When a revolutionary measure is to be taken, some people here and there express pessimistic views that nothing can be done. But I emphasize that creating 2.5 million jobs is not impossible for the Iranian nation."

2010 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Leading reformist Feizollah Arabsorkhi was unexpectedly released from prison on Tuesday night.

Arabsorkhi, a senior member of the Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution, was arrested in December 2009. He was sentenced to a six-year sentence in February 2010. Released for health reasons in July, he was summoned back to prison last December.

1638 GMT: James Miller hops in to make an update.

Most internet users in Iran have to contend with government filters that limit which websites people can visit or, worse, compromise the identity of internet users. Many activists in Iran get around this by using a piece of anti-filtering anonymity software called Tor. According to the Tor blog, yesterday the Iranian government effectively blocked Tor.

However, in what the folks over at Tor call the "arms race," they were able to counter the move and have Tor up and running in less than 24 hours. Apparently, if the Iranian government is going to block Tor, they are going to have to outsmart some very smart folks.

1050 GMT: The US Hikers. Masoud Shafiee, the lawyer for imprisoned US hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, says he has filed all necessary paperwork for their release on bail, but he does not expect judges to act before Saturday.

1000 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The Guardian also carries the story, reported in EA yesterday, that an appeal courts has set the prison sentence of prominent defence attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh at six years, with a 10-year ban on legal practice.

Sotoudeh was sentenced in December 2010 to 11 years in prison and a 20-year ban on professional activity.

Potkin Azarmehr writes about Ph.D. student Somayeh Tohidlou, who was given 50 lashes today, 27 months after she was arrested in a raid by eight men on her home.

Tohidlou, a supporter of Mir Hossein Mousavi, was seized the day after the disputed 2009 Presidential election. She was sentenced to one year in prison and fifty lashes for "insulting the President" but was finally released on a $200,000 bail.

Tohidlou wrote on her blog after the flogging, "Be happy, for if you wanted to humiliate me, I confess that I feel my entire body is suffering with degradation."

An appeals court in the southern city of Shiraz has reportedly upheld a one-year prison sentence for Pastor Behrouz Sadegh-Khanjani of the Protestant Christian group, the Church of Iran, and five other church members for “propaganda against the regime”.

0950 GMT: The Battle Within. An interesting report of a meeting between the Supreme Leader's clerical representative, Ali Saeedi, and President Ahmadinejad.

Saeedi supposedly said after the meeting that he told Ahmadinejad that he was "a carrier of values, ideals, and aspirations that could establish his name as that of a hero in Iranian history" but that "unfortunately, the route had been changed". Saeedi continued, "The opportunity to compensate for your past remains."

0650 GMT: Corruption Watch. With the US hikers pushed to the back, the prominent story in Iran is the tension over the £2.6 billion fraud engulfing several major banks and privatised companies.

On Wednesday, President Ahmadinejad once again declared a red line against accusations against his inner circle: “We will keep silent again for the sake of the Supreme Leader; however, this unifying silence will not last too long.”

Ahmadinejad, who said the Government would hold an "honest enquiry" into the fraud, said his Cabinet was “the cleanest government in history”, facing politicians and organisations who “in recent months are trying to strike at the government and accuse it of just about anything".

Critics have said the main suspect in the case, Amir Mansour Khosravi, is linked to the President's Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai. Ahmadinejad's office hit back yesterday with a lengthy letter --- ostensibly responding to the reformist newspaper Shargh --- rejecting the allegations that funds were embezzled and then used to purchased privatised State companies, including a major steel producer.

0630 GMT: After a day when the in-fighting within the Iranian regime was put on public display, the fate of US hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer is in limbo this morning.

On Tuesday, President Ahmadinejad had told both NBC News and The Washington Post, "I am helping to arrange for the release [of Fattal and Bauer] in a couple of days so they will be able to return home. This is of course going to be a unilateral humanitarian gesture." On Wednesday, Iran's judiciary --- which clashed with Ahmadinejad last year over the issue, blocking Fattal and Bauer's release while their companion, Sarah Shourd, was freed on $500,000 bail --- knocked back the President, saying that it was still considering the cases of the two Americans.

The situation has dropped off the front pages of most of the Iranian media this morning. The pro-Ahmadinejad State news agency is playing up the President's two-day tour of Ardebil Province in the northwest, highlighting his meeting with scholars and clerics this morning. Fars, one of the channels for the judiciary's fightback, limits itself to a one-paragraph summary of Ahmadinejad in Ardebil.

However, Khabar Online, linked to Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, does keep the issue alive. One of its most-read stories is its report, taken from US outlets, that an Omani aircraft has come to Iran in the hopes of taking Bauer and Fattal out of the country.