Iran Live Coverage: Ahmadinejad's All-Is-Well Economic Message

See also Monday's Iran Live Coverage: Engineering June's Presidential Election

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1905 GMT: Labour Front. Workers of the Tehran Steel Company have protested for the second day over 2 1/2 pages of unpaid wages.

1805 GMT: Censorship Watch. Looks like some pictures of Ayatollah Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, have disappeared from the Fars website.

The site still has plenty of photographs of Jannati's visit to Iraq, but this is not one of them:

Could the problem be the royal implications of Jannati on a would-be throne?

1550 GMT: Protest Watch. Detained senior reformist Mostafa Tajzadeh, writing from Evin Prison, has declared, "Our strategic slogan is 'free elections'."

The remark is a direct challenge to the regime that has imprisoned Tajzadeh with a six-year sentence: in January, the Supreme Leader said anyone who uses the phrase "free elections" is aiding the enemy.

1530 GMT: Insurgents Kill Revolutionary Guards. Did State broadcaster IRIB just take a swing at President Ahmadinejad?

Digarban reads this week's documentary --- on the "infelicitous fate" of President Abolhassan Bani Sadr, impeached and forced to flee Iran in 1980 --- as a signal to Ahmadinejad.

1355 GMT: Insurgents Kill Revolutionary Guards. A recently-formed Iranian Sunni insurgent group, Jaish ul-Adl ("Army of Justice") has claimed responsibility for the killing of several Revolutionary Guards officers in an attack in Saravan in southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province.

The group said fighters from the “Martyr Sheikh Ziaie” brigade had planted a roadside bomb in Saravan on the morning of 27 February that killed the officers and wounded several more as they passed by in cars.

Jaish ul-Adl warned the Guards to leave the region, and threatened more attacks.

In January, the same group claimed it had killed a Basij officer in an ambush in the Sarbaz area.

1230 GMT: Nuclear Watch. Joanna Paraszczuk updates on the Foreign Ministry statement from Iranian State media....

In his weekly press conference, Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that, in the recent high-level talks in Kazakhstan, the 5+1 [US, UK, Germany, France, China, and Russia] responded to some of the proposals Iran put forward in the Moscow summit [of June 2012].

The talks were "moving in a positive direction" whereby it could be possible to reach a final consensus, Mehmanparast said. Noting that the talks were ongoing, he added that the new orientation of the 5+1 is such that the proposals will be reviewed and evaluated.

The spokesman added that the 5+1 "had not accepted all of Iran's proposals but could move toward them and could come to a more complete understanding", with a "clear vision".

Regarding Iran's discussions with the International Atomic Energy, Mehmanparast said Tehran would "continue to discuss its cooperation… in the same framework as before", resolving all concerns about Iran's nuclear activities within that framework.

The spokesman also said he was surprised that while press reports from most countries had emphasised the positive aspects of the talks, some Western countries --- including France --- had tried to put a negative spin on matters.

Iranian media are also paying close attention to Western statements, with ISNA reporting that the 5+1 Powers have moved away from the rigid demands of "their Stop, Shut and Ship policy" over 20% enriched uranium.

1046 GMT: Nuclear Watch. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has put out a hold-the-line statement about the nuclear discussions with the West, two weeks before technical talks in Istanbul.

Mehmanparast said last week’s high-level negotiations with the 5+1 Powers (US, Britain, Germany, China, Russia, and France) had “positive results", despite subsequent “negative” remarks by some Western officials.

Mehmanparast said the negotiations could reach a “mutually acceptable conclusion, gradually".

0956 GMT: All-Is-Well Update (Syrian Edition). Hossein Sheikholeslam, a senior advisor to Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, has declared that insurgents and their foreign supporters have been driven to negotiations by their failure on the ground:

They made every effort to overthrow the government of Syria by beating the drums of war. But when they could not achieve their objectives, they tried to enforce their schemes through negotiations and a political solution.

On Monday, insurgents took control of most of al-Raqqa, Syria's sixth-largest city.

0600 GMT: Economy Watch. Trying to claim leadership on the economy after the presentation of the 2013/14 Budget, President Ahmadinejad was full of good news on Monday.

A day after the Cabinet met to discuss measures to deal with inflation --- officially at more than 30% --- Ahmadinejad told bank executives that the "unique capabilities" of the Iranian people had defeated enemy sanctions.

The President then made a specific claim: "The country's foreign exchange reserves are higher than any other time in history."

Ahmadinejad did not give a figure for the reserves, estimated at $80 billion at the end of 2011 but undisclosed for years by the Government. Nor did he explain how the reserves could have grown in the past year, given the halving of Iran's oil revenues,  the decline in production and manufacturing in many sectors, and the amount injected into the market to prop up an Iranian currency that fell by 70% against the US dollar.

The President also spoke of "some flaws in the structure and regulation of banking activities" and "the need to reform the system" --- without referring to the $2.6 billion banking fraud, still being prosecuted by the courts, that hit the financial sector in autumn 2011.