The Latest from Iran (16 January): Economic Jitters

Ashgar Farhadi's Nader and Simin: A Separation wins Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globe Awards last night --- in his acceptance speech, Farhadi says simply, "Iran is truly a loving people"

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2103 GMT: All-Is-Well Alert. Mohsen Qamsari, the head of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, has insisted that Iran is maintaining the sale of oil to Asian countries despite US pressure for tightened sanctions.

Qamsari said, "The one-year contract with Korean companies to buy our oil has been renewed since the last two months."

Earlier this month, officials said refiners in South Korea --- which buys about 10% of its crude from Iran --- were looking for alternatives.

Asked whether Japan had reduced its oil imports from Iran, Qamsari said, "It is not true. The time for renewal of contracts with the Japanese is around March and they are buying 240,000 barrels from us per day."

The official also denied any problems doing business with India, even though there have been problems over payment arrangements for more than a year.

2056 GMT: Elections Watch. MP Ali Motahari, a leading critic of President Ahmadinejad, has said that --- even if the Guardian Council rejects his candidacy --- "I will participate in the elections because I believe in the nezam [Iranian system]."

Motahari's application for the Parliamentary vote in March was turned down by the Ministry of Interior last week.

2048 GMT: Currency Watch. Khabar Online posts a chart with the ihcrease in gold prices --- old coin is 12,000 Toman in a day to 692,000 Toman (about $405); new coin is up 13,000 Toman to 681,000 Toman (about $400)

2040 GMT: Energy Fight. Khabar Online, linked to Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, summarises the dispute between Parliament and the President over energy prices --- the Majlis has passed a bill freezing the costs until the end of the Iranian year in mid-March; the Government has said that it does not accept the legislation.

1910 GMT: The House Arrests. Opposition Ardeshir Amir Arjomand has said that Zahra Rahnavard, under strict house arrest with her husband Mir Hossein Mousavi, has lost much weight and suffers from trembling hands. Arjomand added that no independent doctor is allowed to visit her.

Hossein Karroubi, the son of detained opposition figure Mehdi Karroubi, has said, “Since the day that Mr. Karoubi sent a message via my mother, Fatemeh Karoubi, regarding the upcoming pParliamentary election, calling it a rigged election, they have banned my mother’s weekly visits with my father. Furthermore, they have stopped giving him the two daily newspapers that, for a short period of time, they had been providing as reading material. My father now lives in a small apartment in solitary."

Fatemeh Karroubi, who is also under house arrest but has had limited visits, put out a similar message earlier this month.

1905 GMT: Oil Watch. The Supreme Leader's senior advisor Ali Akbar Velayati has swept aside worries about sanctions, saying there is high demand for Iranian oil.

Velayati also commented on the letter from President Obama to Ayatollah Khamenei, warning against a closure of the Straits of Hormuz, saying "there was nothing new" in it.

1850 GMT: At the Movies. The reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, congratulating director Ashgar Farhadi for his Golden Globe, has condemned the dissolution of the House of Cinema by the Ministry of Culture.

The Ministry tried to shut down the House of Cinema, Iran's largest professional organisation for those in the film industry, amidst detentions of filmmakers for alleged links with BBC Persian. After heated protest inside and outside the Iranian establishment, the Ministry said it would await the decision of a court on the ban.

1846 GMT: He's My Man. President Ahmadinejad has made a spirited public defence of his controversial Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, praising Rahim-Mashai's time as head of Iran's Culture, Heritage, and Tourism Organization.

1838 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Arash Sadeghi, a student activist at Allameh Tabatabai University and a member of the Mir Hossein Mousavi campaign, has reportedly been seized by plainclothes officers and detained again.

Sedighi was arrested in September 2009 and spent almost all of the next 27 months in detention. He was freed on 14 December 2011.

1748 GMT: The Tehran Bomb. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has said that suspects are held over last Wednesday's killing of scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan: "[We] discovered some clues and arrests had been made."

Larijani, without giving further deetials, said the suspects were being interrogated and that investigations were ongoing over the assassination of Roshan, a Deputy Director for Procurement at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.

1740 GMT: Foreign Affairs Watch (Syrian Front). An unnamed source, speaking with Al Arabiya, has said that the Quds Force, an elite division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corpse, would intervene in Syria if foreign nations tried to interfere in Syria's internal affairs. The most interesting line, however, is the denial that Tehran has already intervened in the conflict: "The unnamed Iranian source insisted that Iran --- one of Syria's strongest allies --- has "not yet" interfered in Syrian affairs in the ten months of conflict between opposition groups and government forces."

Throughout last summer, in operations in Idlib Province and near Hama, there were claims of Iranian units operating in Syria.

(Cross-posted from Syria Live Coverage)

1452 GMT: Barbie Watch. Reuters has more on our story (see 0753 GMT) of a police crackdown on sales of Barbie, the iconic American doll. A shopkeeper in northern Tehran say, "About three weeks ago they (the morality police) came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies."

"My daughter prefers Barbies. She says [officially-approved dolls] Sara and Dara are ugly and fat," said a 38-year-old mother, adding that she cannot find Barbie cartoon DVDs and was told they were also banned from public sale.

A Tehran toy shop manager said, "We still sell Barbies but secretly and put these [dolls in long black veils] in the window to make the police think we are just selling these kinds of dolls."

1432 GMT: Economy Watch. The Government is now 41 days overdue with the submission of its 2012/13 budget to Parliament. With the start of the Iranian year just over two months away, the possbility is increasing that Parliament will pass a short-term bill to cover Government operations.

Meanwhile, prominent MP Gholam Reza Mesbahi Moghaddam has warned the Government of prosecution and a Parliamentary vote on misconduct if it does not present financial sources for its support payments for subsidy cuts.

The Government has failed, for a second time, to sell 55% of the shares in State airline Iran Air.

1412 GMT: Warning the Supreme Leader. Over the last week, we have featured the escalating story of former Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Alaei, who appeared to give an implicit warning to the Supreme Leader of repression by citing the Shah's failure to suppress dissent after the uprising of 9 January 1978 in Qom.

Alaei faced harsh criticism from current Guards commanders, who called him an agent of the "enemy", and a crowd outside his home who chanted derisory slogans and daubed graffiti on the walls (see separate EA feature).

Now a note has been posted on Iranian news websites in which Alaei apparently says said that his piece was misinterpreted as an allegory for contemporary Iran: "Unfortunately, some of the domestic media, with their own interpretation, paved the way for foreign media to say whatever they wanted and analyze the article based on their own guesses."

Alaei concluded by saying that support for the concept of velayat-e faqih --- clerical supremacy --- preserves Iran from any harm.

Some analysts, however, do note believe that Alaei is climbing down. One told Radio Free Europe, "He pays respect to the Islamic Revolution and gives lip service to the velayat-e faqih, but he repeats his point --- albeit softly."

An EA source from Iran agrees: "Nowhere in the letter can you find a word praising or flattering Khamenei."

1404 GMT: Tough Talk of Day. From State news agency IRNA: "[The] Supreme Leader's Senior Advisor for Military Affairs, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, said Iran will use every means to defend its national interests if it feels endangered in any way."

1354 GMT: Currency Watch. Confusion over the open-market rate --- the "real" rate, not the artificial one set by the Central Bank, disregarded by exchange offices and vendors --- of the Iranian Rial against the US dollar.

The website Mesghal has made a small change for the first time since Thursday, saying that the Rial has strengthened slightly to 16900:1. State news agency IRNA presents an even stronger Rial at 16650:1, while Khabar says it has weakened and is trading at 17000:1 to 17300:1. ISNA puts the rate on the streets at 17000:1.

There is one development on which all sites, even IRNA, agree --- the price of gold continues to soar. IRNA puts the price at 692,000 Toman (about $405) for oil coin and 680,000 (about $400) for new.

1350 GMT: Economy All-is-Well Alert. Agha Mohammadi, the Economic Deputy to the Vice President, has announced that interest rates --- recently raised to 20% amidst the currency crisis -- will not increase. He maintained that the second phase of subsidy cuts, despite the objections of Parliament, would start before the end of the Iranian year in mid-March.

1341 GMT: At the Movies. Back from an academic break to find contrasting reactions to the Golden Globe awarded to director Ashgar Farhadi for Nader and Simin: A Separation....

Fars criticises Farhadi for shaking the hand of actress Angelina Jolie; in contrast, a room of young people erupt in joy as Farhadi's name is announced by Madonna:

0821 GMT: The Tehran Bomb. More than 230 Iranian activists have “strongly” condemned last Wednesday's assassination of scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, deputy director at the Natanz nuclear facility: “As anti-war activists, we strongly condemn the assassination...just as we condemn any terrorist attack. These tactics are in contrast to the official policy of negotiations and talks, which can produce valuable results and reduce the risk of war. Terror is deplorable, and regardless of the goal it seeks, it neutralises acts of peace and creates justification and pretence for reciprocal acts of violence and terrorism.”

The signatories, including prominent journalists and intellectuals and from across the range the political opposition, also criticised the regime: “Iran’s intelligence forces, which have directed all their efforts at suppressing domestic adversaries and stifling the voice of protesters and the media, have proven incapable of dealing with these [security] threats. Regime officials, especially the Intelligence Minister, must be held accountable for the slackness shown in protecting the lives of Iranian experts and researchers.”

Among the signatories were blogger Omid Memarian, Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, activist Hasan Shariatmadari, satirist Ebrahim Nabavi, and cleric Ahmad Montazeri, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. They asserted, “The people’s real interests are guaranteed only when the country’s politics and governance turn from isolationism, suppression of internal [dissent] and a foreign [policy] that is confrontational, while [at the same time] moving towards reducing the number of enemies; adding to the number of friends; a meaningful and peaceful participation in the region; and opening up the internal political sphere and allowing Iran’s economy to breathe and to have ties with the rest of the world.”

0815 GMT: Corruption Watch. Fars reports on a new corruption case, claiming that an unnamed MP has embezzled 100 billion Toman (about $60 million) from social welfare funds.

0758 GMT: Elections All-is-Well Alert. The head of State broadcaster IRIB, Ezzatullah Zarghami, has said its programmes for elections will be different because of the high number of candidates, with the broadcaster present competition amongst them.

MP Emad Afrough, a former supporter of President Ahmadinejad, is not so upbeat, saying on TV: "We have forgotten that we are the people's representatives, not their custodians."

0753 GMT: Bye Bye Barbie. Etedaal reports that police have halted sales of the iconic American doll.

0750 GMT: Currency Watch. The leading currency website Mesghal has not updated its exchange rate --- 16950 Iranian Rials to 1 US dollar --- since last Thursday. Is this just a suspension of updates or does it reflect the halt of trading by official foreign exchanges?

0745 GMT: Sentencing All the President's Men. Some clarity is emerging from the confusion over the prison sentences handed down on President Ahmadinejad's senior advisor, Ali Akbar Javanfekr.

Sentenced to one year in prison and a three-year ban on media activities last autumn for an issue of his Iran newspaper, Javanfekr was given another one-year sentence and a five-year ban on political and media activities on Sunday. The crime of "insulting the Supreme Leader" appears to have been committed through Javanfekr's remarks on his personal blog.

Reacting to the sentence, Javanfekr appears to have made an implicit threat: "Sentencing me to prison does not take into account the interests of regime."

0735 GMT: Picture of the Day. An EA reader points us to this image from last Friday's Tehran Prayers --- is this a sign of a generational divide in the Islamic Republic?

0725 GMT: Oil Watch. Yesterday we posted a useful chart from CNN of the destinations of Iran's oil exports. An EA readers points us to further, easy-to-understand graphs from Reuters.

0555 GMT: One cannot accuse President Ahmadinejad of showing nerves in his defiant speeches, yet it is becoming hard to hide the gap between his pronouncements and the concerns on the ground in Iran.

This weekend offered a series of illustrations. Parliament made the sale of currency outside banks and foreign offices, but the measure only highlighted the difficulty over the falling Iranian Rial: while official exchange offices suspended business, the unofficial vendors --- according to Mehr --- continued to trade on the street. The Majlis, trying to redress the $2.6 bank fraud in which Iranian-Canadian executive Mahmoud Reza Khavari, passed legislation banning dual nationals from holding important economic posts. The Government announced, without giving any idea of how the declaration would be implemented, that prices for goods and services would be frozen from 21 January to 20 March.

And beyond the weekend, Bazar Dispatch adds this critique of the problem of unemployment:

Ebrahim Alizadeh, in a report for the Jahan Sana'at daily in Tehran,has written that in the past year one million jobs have been lost in Iran. His report prompted me to check the original [figures] from the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI).  The latest report which covers the Iranian calendar year of 1389, from March 2010 to March 2011, includes these summary statistics:

• The Iran labor force, [aged] 10 years and older, was 23,875,023 with a participation rate of 38.3%(men's participation rate at 62.1% and women's participation rate at 14.1%)....The participation rate has declined 0.6% since the previous year.... 
• In 1388 (March 2009 to March 2010), the SCI reported that 21,000,079 were employed in agriculture, service, and industrial sectors. In the following year, this number is 20,656,621. This means 343,458 jobs lost on a year-to-year basis. 
• Looking at seasonal data, however, we see in the winter of 2010 the number of unemployed rises to 3,420,836, with labor force falling to 23,367,266. This means a total employment of 19,946,430. This means a loss of 1,053,646 jobs. [Even if] winter does reduce activities in agriculture and construction, ... 343,458 is a rather large number. 

Unemployment has increased by 1.6% from 11.9% in 1388 to 13.5% in 1389. Given that the participation rate is falling, I believe that we are witnessing the effect of discouraged workers in Iran. Thus I agree with Jahan Sana'at conclusion that the government claim of success in combating unemployment is actually a misconception. The data shows the supply of labor has been falling and not its demand.