Iran Live: Nuclear Talks Resume in Kazakhstan

Iran Analysis: 5-Point Beginner's Guide to Today's Nuclear Talks
Iran Feature: Talking Tough --- How the US and Tehran Mirror Each Other's Rhetoric
Thursday's Iran Live: Tehran's Positive Signals for Nuclear Talks

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1430 GMT:Nuclear Watch. Joanna Paraszczuk surveys reaction in the Iranian press to today's talks in Kazakhstan....

ISNA gave a neutral report on Friday afternoon, noting that Iran's nuclear negotiating team had a new member, Mehdi Safari, the former ambassador to China.

ISNA also reported that the spokesman for the lead negotiator of the 5+1 Powers, Catherine Ashton, said they were not going to put any new offers on the table in this round of talks, and that Tehran needed to prove its nuclear programne had no military dimension.

Fars News, close to the Revolutionary Guards, focused on Iran's position. It repeated comments by Ali Bagheri, Iran's deputy negotiators, that Tehran had come up with specific recommendations for cooperation with the 5+1, and that those proposals had been presented in Moscow last June.

Iran believed the proposals were a "confidence building step, i.e. actions that both sides have to agree to do as part of a comprehensive solution", Bagheri said.

Hardline Mashregh News, meanwhile, criticised comments by Ashton's spokesman Michael Mann as "strange".

Mashregh noted that Mann had tried to respond to an Iranian journalist's question about why Europe had not made "the slightest effort to stop Israel's nuclear activities", and why the 5+1 were talking about Iran's nuclear program and not West Jerusalem's.

The journalist added that world powers ignored the fact that two-thirds of non-aligned nations supported Iran's nuclear programme.

Mann responded that the "discussions about resolving Iran's nuclear programme must be completed and it is not possible to set a deadline for that", according to Mashregh.

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The Latest from Iran (12 September): The Nuclear Front

2105 GMT: The Battle Within. Yasaman Baji offers an overview of the political tensions as conservative and principlist factions vie for position:

Intense competition among different wings of forces claiming absolute loyalty to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, has created a muddled political environment, making it difficult to speculate about the direction of the country after the term of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expires in 2013.

The March elections to the Majlis could be a bellwether. In the past, parliamentary elections held right before the president's second term is over have been significant in hinting the future direction the country under the next president.

Today, increasingly acrimonious competition among devoted supporters of the Islamic Republic, known as Principlists, has the country wondering about whether there are plans to continue the country's hard-line direction without Ahmadinejad or whether instead the more- moderate conservative elements within the Principlist camp will take the reins and steer the country in a more centrist direction.

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