The Latest from Iran (3 December): A Phantom Bombing

2020 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Power Politics Edition). Keep your eyes on this story....

A group of 16 Iranian political prisoners, including prominent reformist politicians Mohsen Aminzadeh and Mostafa Tajzadeh and journalists Bahman Ahmadi Amoui and Mohammad Nourizad have written an open letter to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, describing their continued incarceration “in violation of the law” and in the “framework of settling political accounts”.

Addressing Rafsanjani in his role as head of the Expediency Council, the detainees said the treatment of political activists in the Islamic Republic today “bears no sign of the principles of the Revolution and its constitution". They maintain that their charges are fabricated and the “heavy sentences and restrictions that they have been handed are part of a political and security plan by the establishment to completely erase the political opposition”.

The prisoners compared the current situation to the political detentions before the 1979 Revolution, with officials forcing prisoners to give false confessions and then issuing sentences based on them: “The issued sentences in view of level and kind of punishment seem to indicate that they have been set by security officials based on their own ideas and personal preference, and relayed to the judges.”

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The Latest from Iran (5 November): A Disappointment?

1740 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Student activist Ali Gholizadeh has been arrested in Mashhad.

1640 GMT: The Medical University. Claimed video of a Thursday protest at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, closed last week by Government order. The students chant, "We will not go to class until we've reclaimed Iran."

1635 GMT: Clerical Intervention. Ayatollahs Bayat Zanjani, Dastgheib & Sadeghi Tehrani have condemned attacks on Gonabadi dervishes.

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Iran Feature: Revolutionary Guards Speak Out Against Ahmadinejad (Theodoulou)

Analysts suspect the [Revolutionary Guards'] magazine was encouraged to publish the [critical] article by the office of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. If so, however, this does not mean there is a major rift between the ayatollah and the president: it is more likely to be a warning shot aimed at reining in Mr Ahmadinejad, analysts said.

"It [the article] should not be turned into a narrative of withdrawal of support for Ahmadinejad and a sign of his imminent downfall," said Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii. "But it should give pause to those who keep explaining Ahmadinejad's success in maintaining power in terms of his base of support in the Guards."

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