2205 GMT: Claim of the Night. An opposition website asserts, "The word 'Bahman' has been filtered in Iran Farsi Google search."
2145 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Mohammad Housein Mehyimni, the son of the former Governor of Golestan Province, has been arrested.
2130 GMT: A New Role. What better way to end 22 Bahman than with a feel-good story?
The Basij militia are providing the dowries of needy brides.
A few weeks ago a WikiLeaks cable emerged in which an Iranian source, talking to a US diplomat, said President Ahmadinejad had been slapped across the face by the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari.
Nobody paid much attention then, but in the last few days, with websites looking to fill space in the holiday season, Mahmoud's slap-down has raced around the Internet.
Only one problem: like many good tales, it may not be true.
The events of 22 Bahman (11 February 2010) were a significant disappointment for the Iranian opposition. In the weeks before the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, there was an excitement that protests against the Government and regime --- which had continued despite repression and made a notable impact in the Ashura demonstrations of 27 December --- would build, possibly to a critical point.
On the day, the opposition was unable to mount a co-ordinated public protest while the regime was able to mobilise support for its official ceremonies.
In that light, the cable below from the Iran Watchers" post at the US Embassy in Baku in Azerbaijan is telling: the Embassy's sources were all predicting a significant opposition turnout on 22 Bahman to challenge a fracturing regime: "Iran Can't Go On Like This".
Today we post Part 2 of the analysis of the situation in Iran by the US Consulate in Dubai in January 2010. (The first cable was published on EA on Friday.)
It is a must-read document, but it is still an incomplete assessment. The challenge to the regime has never been one of an all-or-nothing contest between Government and Green Movement. The Consulate's attempted analogies with Iran 1978/1979 and Poland in the 1980s are distracting, rather than illuminating.
Instead the current possibilities of change have come through the dynamic between the space for resistance opened up by opposition movements and the space exploited by those manoeuvring within the Iranian system.
That is still true today.
We have now added a special analysis to our posting of Part 2 of the US Consulate in Dubai's analysis in January 2010 of the Green Movement and Iran's political situation. The revised post is at the top of the homepage.
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 22:42