The Latest from Iran (23 January): Hibernating While The Currency Falls

1944 GMT: Sanctions Watch. Fars, citing an "informed source", dismisses today's sanctions adopted by the European Union, which included a ban on oil imports starting 1 July and an immediate tightening of restrictions on deals with Iran's Central Bank.

"One of the sanctions announced recently was blocking the Central Bank's assets in the European countries, while the CBI does not have even one single Rial (Iran's currency unit) in Europe," the source said.

Fars, reflecting the regime line that the dollar can be bypassed (see 1325 GMT), insists, "During the last two years, Iran has been replacing dollar with other currencies in its trade with the outside world."

Iranian officials have said that arrangements have been made for trade with Russia in rubles and the Iranian Rials, and Tehran is pursuing exchange with India in yen as well as rupees.

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The Latest from Iran (21 December): It's The Economy, Mahmoud

See also Iran Snap Analysis: The Currency Falls --- What Does It Mean?
The Latest from Iran (20 December): The Strains Within

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1705 GMT: Oil Watch. A bit of good news for Tehran amidst the economic pressure on the regime, including the possibility of a European Union ban on supplies of oil from Iran....

Turkey's biggest crude oil importer Tupras has renewed its annual deal to buy crude oil from Iran for 2012, at almost the same volumes as this year, according to industry sources.

China's top refiner Sinopec Corp said that buy less than half the crude it normally imports from Iran in January.

1655 GMT: Najmeh Bozorgmehr of The Financial Times offers valuable interpretation of the currency crisis:

The managed float mechanism has collapsed for much of this year. The central bank’s adoption of a multiple-rate system has also failed to bring back stability to the market and to foil the impact of international sanctions aimed at Tehran’s nuclear programme. Sanctions have caused the cost of financial transactions to increase, by forcing them to go through numerous back channels, and have hit foreign currency markets by reducing the supply of cash.

But there are also domestic dynamics at play. While the market remains anxious about the possibility of a European Union oil embargo and the US imposing sanctions on the central bank, local media have accused the government of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, president, of engineering a deliberate devaluation to boost the rial value of its oil income in the final months of the fiscal year to March.

Economists and parliamentarians have predicted this year’s budget deficit could be as high as $30bn, or 7 per cent of the country’s GDP.

The government is due to present its budget bill to parliament soon and some analysts believe the government is allowing the rial to weaken to reset the official exchange rate to the dollar in the budget, which has traditionally sat around the 10,000 mark.

But Iran’s minister of economy and finance, Shamsoddin Hosseini, on Wednesday denied any such intention. “The government has had no, [absolutely] no deliberate plan to strengthen the dollar rate,” he said, and promised to announce “a plan to manage the market” soon.

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The Latest from Iran (22 June): A Bad Day for Ahmadinejad

1810 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch. Website supporting the President are hitting back....

Didgah News claims all political tensions have arisen "from the graves of monopolists who hide behind the Supreme Leader". Bultan News declares that "bad MPs who interfere in govt matters" will weaken the Government and the Majlis.

1740 GMT: The Supreme Leader's Men. Iranian media are reporting that Mojtaba Zolnour, the Supreme Leader's representative to the Revolutionary Guards, is leaving his post. The reason is unclear. Hafte Sobh, the website linked to Presidential Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, says he has been dismissed for slander, while Fars claims Zolnour is running for Parliament next year.

In recent weeks, Zolnour has been an outspoken critic of the "deviant" current around President Ahmadinejad, including Rahim-Mashai (see 1500 GMT).

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The Latest from Iran (23 May): The Net Closes on Ahmadinejad's Inner Circle

1530 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Mousavi campaign activist Reza Safavi has been arrested in a raid of his home by six agents, with his computer and other items confiscated.

1515 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch (cont.). More on the unusual interview in which the President's son-in-law tears apart the President's advisors....

Mehdi Khorshidi says that the leader of "deviant group" --- presumably Presidential Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai --- never studied theology but dares to comment on religious matters. Indeed, Rahim-Mashai is so arrogant that he challenges Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who is esteemed by the Supreme Leader and has 30 years of experience.

Khorshidi continues that Rahim-Mashai has endeavoured to sabotage and eliminate useful people around Ahmadinejad, replacing them with his cronies.

And Khorshidi's reference to the "deviant group" splashing out money on "problematic" people such as actors? Well, in January, Hojatoleslam Mohammad-Taqi Rahbar, the head of the clerical faction in Parliament, noted Rahim-Mashai’s meeting with an Iranian actress, Hedyeh Tehrani, at the Presidential office:

Anyone with a bit of Principlist zeal will not approve of the lowly acts of the Head of the Presidential office. All Principlists especially the President’s true supporters are ashamed that such a character is running the office of the president.....I don’t know what an actress’s [photograph] exhibition has to do with the head of the presidential office that he has to fund it with $80,000 from the Treasury. These loans are handed out by him [Mashai] at a time when many farmers are struggling with repeated droughts and are starving. Yet the government refuses to give them a $1,000 loan.

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The Latest from Iran (22 May): An "Advance" in the House Arrests

Mehdi and Fatemeh Karroubi2115 GMT: The House Arrests. A further note on the statement from 130 clerics calling for the release of Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi and Fatemeh Karroubi from house arrest (see 1810 GMT)....

Most of the signatories are followers of the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, the former heir-apparent to Ayatollah Khomeini who was ostracised and then put under house arrest by the regime from the late 1980s. Ahmad Montazeri, the Grand Ayatollah's son and one of the signatores, called upon Iranian leaders to implement reforms "before it is too late".

2045 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Baha'i Edition). Security forces have shut down a science and research centre operated by the Bahai’i Institute of Higher Education (BIHE) at Iran’s Open University and arrested at least 12 staff and faculty members.

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The Latest from Iran (8 May): Watching the Cabinet

1920 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch. So, after a week of high political crisis, how does a President end his speech at a critical Cabinet meeting?

He congratulates the National Tae Kwon Do Team on its victory in the world championships.

1915 GMT: Cabinet Watch (Bin Laden Conspiracy Edition). So now that Ministre of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi has been allowed back into Cabinet meetings by the President, what does he have to say?

Iran’s Minister of Intelligence has accused the U.S. of fabricating its account of Osama Bin Laden’s death, alleging that Bin Laden had died much earlier from health complications....

[Moslehi said] Iran is in possession of “accurate information and reliable and significant documents” regarding Bin Laden’s death. He did not expand on the contents of thesaid documents....

“If the U.S. military and intelligence have truly arrested or killed Bin Laden,” Moslehi said, “why do they not show him to the world? Why do they dispose of his remains at sea?”

“We are of the opinion that the U.S. and its media dictatorship are trying to overshadow the regional uprisings with such news,” Moslehi said. “Furthermore, they are also trying to resolve internal problems such as their economical woes.”

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Iran Feature: Ahmadinejad Floored By Bugs, Spirits, And Djinns (Tait)

Whenever cornered, Mahmud Ahmadinejad always seems to come out swinging. But Iran's notoriously abrasive president appears in danger of suffering a knockout blow over his political attachment to Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, a man widely seen as a threat to the country's clerical-based political system.

What had been a long-rumbling but low-intensity row has now become so rancorous that it appears Ahmadinejad has lost the political support of his onetime patron, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who has the final say on all state matters.

And dislike of Rahim-Mashaei, the president's chief of staff whom he is believed to have anointed as an eventual successor, has grown so visceral and widespread that some believe it has reduced Ahmadinejad to a lame duck and may even prevent him completing his second term.

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The Latest from Iran (22 April): More Questions About Intelligence

1805 GMT: our Tehran Friday Prayer Update --- Part 2. Ayatollah Emami Kashani, unlike other Iranian figures like the President, dared to mention this week's dispute over the "resignation" of the Minister of Intelligence.

The Ayatollah said the uproar was all due to "Western media": “Through such acts they intend to suggest there is division and conflict in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

1800 GMT: Your Tehran Friday Prayer Update. Ayatollah Emami Kashani steps up to the podium today to pronounce on the Islamic and popular nature of the recent revolutions in the Middle East, explaining saying that violence will not stop the uprisings.

The cleric condemned the silence of Arab leaders over "massacres", “Those who are among the Muslim nations, instead of preventing the killing of the Muslim people of Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and other countries and supporting the people, talk nonsense."

There is no report that Emami Kashani said the word "Syria" in his address.

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