The Latest from Iran (12 February): Nuclear Games, Numbers Games
Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 6:19
1902 GMT: All-Is-Well Alert. Nasim Online features the reassurance of Tehran University academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi --- despite US sanctions, Iran --- with its self-sufficiency --- has become a model for Middle Eastern countries, as Tehran annoys "Western" powers.
1856 GMT: Unity Watch. Prominent MP Gholam Reza Mesbahi Moghaddam has said that it is beneath Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, the head of the Unity Front, to bargain with the Islamic Constancy Front.
The Constancy Front, led by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, has held out against merger with the Unity Front because of issues over represenatives of politicians like Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani and Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf.
1828 GMT: Food Watch. A special supervisors' squad, seeking to control meat prices, has been launched in Tehran in advance of Persian New Year.
About 40 shops have reportedly been shut.
1824 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. The negotiations with former Hashemi Rafsanjani, seeking his acceptance of President Ahmadinejad's ally Farhad Daneshjoo as the new President of Islamic Azad University, have ended without a resolution.
Last month Ahmadinejad appointed Daneshjoo, the brother of the Minister of Higher Education and Science, in the latest move in the struggle to control Iran's largest chain of private universities.
1818 GMT: Execution Watch. The Islamic Republic's revised penal law has removed the death penalty for minors and replaced execution by stoning with hanging.
According to the new code, capital punishment will not be applied to convicts under the age of 18 or those who have not reached “intellectual growth".
1815 GMT: Currency Watch. Mehr reports that the "unofficial" rate for the Iranian Rial continues to be above 19000:1 vs. the US dollar.
The "official rate, which is reportedly not being widely implemented, is 12260:1. The Rial's unofficial value has falled about 10% since the Central Bank's attempt to stabilise the currency last month.
The pre-sale price for gold coins remains around 936,000 Toman (9.36 million Rials or about $490).
1735 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Journalist and reformist activist Saeed Razavi Faqih, the Iranian journalist and reformist political activist, has been released from Evin Prison after a month in detention.
An informed said Razavi Faqih, seized on 13 January at Imam Khomeini International Airport as he arrived from Paris, was freed on bail on Thursday.
1720 GMT: Cyber-Watch. Back from a weekend break to find a dramatic illustration of the regime's squeeze on the Internet, possibly in advance of a national "clear" Intranet sealing off Iranians from parts of the Worldwide Web. Google's Transparency Report shows a sharp drop in traffic from Thursday, when authorities reportedly cut off access to Gmail, Google Reader, and other services to many Iranians.
Meanwhile, leading MP Ahmad Tavakoli --- a relative and ally of Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani --- has said the filtering is "annoying" and "cost heavy for the establishment".
And MP Ali Motahari has claimed that Parliament's Industry and Communications committtees will pursue the issue of disruption of E-mail services.
0820 GMT: Protest Watch. Morteza Tamaddon, the Governor of Tehran Province, has said that the call by the opposition for protests on 25 Bahman (this Tuesday) is "propaganda" to diminish the importance of yesterday's gathering and to discourage Iranians from participating in the Parliamentary election: "We are sure that it will not be welcomed by people."
Tamaddon continued,"Even though this is just propaganda, our security systems are prepared."
0810 GMT: Elections Watch. The final list of candidates for "Islamic Wisdom and Awareness", another principlist faction, has been published.
Led by Sayyed Shihab al-Sadr, the list features Morteza Agha Tehrani, who is also a leader of the Unity Front. The eye-opener, however, is the inclusion of Mehdi Hashemi as the third name in the list.
Is this the Mehdi Hashemi who is the son of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani? The Mehdi Hashemi has been targeted by the regime since 2009, when he was cited in the "Tehran Trial" for illegal financial activities to manipulate the election, and who is effectively in exile in Britain?
As a reader notes below in Comments, the explanation is probably not as dramatic. Another Mehdi Hashemi --- and the more likely possibility here --- is and ex-official in the Ministry of Interior in the Ahmadinejad Government and is currently at the Construction Engineering Organization.
0805 GMT: The Battle Within. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani used his Islamic Revolution anniversary speech to jab implicitly at the Government, saying that officials should be honest with the people and tell them the truth.
Larijani again emphasised that people must turn out for the Parliamentary election to preent "impolite and rude" candidates from getting into the Majlis.
0755 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. On Saturday we noted building tension within the establishment over former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Now Rah-e Sabz claims that weekly meetings between the Ayatollah Khamenei and Rafsanjani, which have taken place since Khamenei was named Supreme Leader in 1989, have stopped.
An EA correspondent adds the note that Khamenei, in a recent discussion with Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, the head of the Assembly of Experts, said about Rafsanjani: “This friend of ours only pays attention to his own words."
The correspondent continues that protests and slogans against Rafsanjani at Saturday's rally for the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution may be the start of the campaign to block his re-election as head of the Expediency Council. This is Rafsanjani's last major post within the system, after he was ousted as head of the Assembly of Experts last year.
Tabnak reports that the slogans against Rafsanjani yesterday included the claim that he was opposing the Supreme Leader, "Down with anti-Velayat Faqih", and a reference to "terrorist" opposition,"Death to Monafigh".
0745 GMT: Questioning the Supreme Leader. Dissident filmmaker Mohammad Reza Nourizad has marked the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution with another in his series of letters to Ayatollah Khamenei.
Nourizad wrote, "We have killed, not to uphold the rule of justice of Imam Ali [Shi'a's first Imam], but to keep ourselves in power." He continued:
We have killed innocent people with no reason....We have plundered. We have imprisoned, we imprison, we have caused people to flee their country....
Have you ever thought about what will be and what will become of your country after you are gone?
0735 GMT: Unity Watch. Alireza Zakani, one of the leaders of the Unity Front, has complained that separate lists of candiates among conservatives/principlists are "like rolling out red carpet for the deviant current and the fitna (sedition) movement".
The Unity Front had sought a single slate for the Parliamentary elections on 2 March, but the rival Islamic Constancy Front balked at this after months of talks. Several other lists have now emerged, including the breakaway group including MPs Ali Motahari, Hamidreza Katouzian, and Ali Abbaspour --- left off the Unity Front's list of candidates --- and a pro-Ahmadinejad faction.
0625 GMT: We catch up this morning with Saturday's set-piece celebration of the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
President Ahmadinejad used the occasion to boost his domestic position, three weeks before Parliamentary elections, first with a "surprise" appearance among the crowd, then with a speech to the audience at Azadi Square.
Two years ago, Ahmadinejad may well have saved his position with a rallying call, set in front of a large model rocket. This time, the stakes versus the Green Movement were not nearly as high, but the President was still working with the nuclear issue.
Reuters featured the President's opening to the "West" for renewed nuclear talks. That in itself is controversial inside Iran, given opposition from prominent politicians --- and possibly the Supreme Leader --- to any sit-down with the US.
So Iranian State media took the safe option of headlining the President's promise that Iran would soon unveil "major nuclear achievements", which is pretty much the same promise that he offered in last year's speech and in the 2010 version as well as a regular feature in declarations by members of his Government and the Revolutionary Guards.
Unsurprisingly, the same propaganda game was played over the numbers at the rally. Fars even brought this into the open, denouncing the Associated Press and other international outlets for claiming only "tens of thousands" in attendance when the true number was in the "millions".
While the "real" figure is up for grabs, the most striking move in the game came from Peyke Iran, which used the photographs of Mehr to make a point: however many were in Azadi Square yesterday, it was nowhere near the size of the rally on 15 June 2009, when those attending were not concerned about nuclear issues and were not there for President Ahmadinejad.
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