The Latest from Iran (31 December): Selling the President's Car, Seizing the President's Election

1200 GMT: Your Tehran Friday Prayer Summary. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami's message from the pulpit today....

1. We defeated the "sedition" with our march on 30 December last year.

2. Subsidy cuts are excellent.

3. Help Pakistan's flood victims. (And, Pakistan, don't send us your terrorists.)

4. The ban on the hijab in Azerbaijan is very, very bad.

1140 GMT: Rafsanjani Sedition Watch. On the surface, it was just another ritual denunciation of the evil British. Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi told an audience in southern Tehran on Thursday, "One of the intelligence services that sought to overthrow the Islamic Republic since the advent of the Revolution, was British....[It] acted quite diligently with precise knowledge of our culture to influence individuals, and they learned that one of the ways to harm people was through their relatives.”

Go a bit farther, however, and you'll see that Moslehi had a target closer to home....

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Iran Video and Transcript: Revisiting The Opposition Case for an Illegitimate Election (21 June 2009)

During the Presidential campaign and election of 12 June 2009, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour was the head of the Committee to Protect the Vote. On 21 June, two days after the Supreme Leader had reaffirmed at Friday Prayers that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election, Mohtashamipour made a lengthy public statement in which he set out the case for a flawed ballot and set the conditions for a proper review.

Mohtashamipour's basic demand --- for an independent committee to enquire into the vote, as the Guardian Council, the Islamic Republic's body overseeing political matters, had been compromised by support of its members for President Ahmadinejad --- was quickly rejected. The Council conducted a limited recount of ballots and issued a report in July declaring that there was no irregularities in the election.

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Iran Mystery: So How Big Was This Week's Support for Ahmadinejad?

"I went to Ahmadinejad's big rally-and-fire-spitting extravaganza in Karaj today. It was probably the largest gathering he's had, so far as his provincial visits go. There were around 22,000 people present. It was also the first time in two decades Sepah, the Revolutionary Guards, provided security for a government rally in full uniform. There were about 250 officers I could count on the ground. Overall, there were about 3,500 security personnel -- Sepah, NAJA, Basij -- on rooftops, lining the street, at the stadium.

"We heard they had spent $100,000 on billboards and banners the previous week for an event that got cancelled for security reasons. They must have spent the same amount this week. That's a hefty sum in Iran."

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WikiLeaks, Iran, and the Green Movement: The Predictions of Iraq's President

Commenting a week after the demonstrations on 27 December 2009 and the regime's mobilisation of support three days later, Talabani assesses, "Tt was not that the Iranian regime was weak, but rather that the opposing side was strong....Whereas the demonstrations at first were attacking Iranian President Ahmadinejad, they have now shifted to being against Supreme Leader Khamenei."

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Iran Feature: Subsidy Cuts --- The Product of Ahmadinejad's Genius? (Farokhnia)

UPDATE 1100 GMT: An EA correspondent comments:

The premises of this article are all wrong - the author is attributing to ahmadinejad what is entailed by the subsidy scrap plans devised since the mid Nineties. The issue here is not whether these recipes are good or bad - they are positive, but there are serious doubts as to whether the Ahmadinejad clique is able implement any of them correctly, given its penchant to antagonise, as they proceed, the critical economists.

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The Latest from Iran (26 December): The Battle Against the President's Men

1935 GMT: Economy Watch. More on the Parliamentary report criticising the Ahmadinejad Government's handling of the economy (see 1640 GMT)....

The report claims the Government did not transfer $1.58 billion in interest from oil income to the Treasury in 2006 and withheld $2,3 millions interest from gas income to the Treasury in 2007.

1925 GMT: More "Justice". Yet more extracts from the press conference of Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi....

The prosecutor admitted what had already been suspected about the detention last week of economist Fariborz Reisdana: the "crime" of the expert was commenting to BBC Persian about the government's subsidy cuts, calling them a "hallucination" that would not benefit the Iranian people.

On a different front, Doulatabadi confirmed the judiciary's line on the corruption case of 1st Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi: the first set of findings has gone to court and the second is being prepared.

Doulatabadi insisted --- despite the declarations of Ahmadinejad aide Rahim-Mashai defying the judiciary --- that the President welcomed the investigation.

Leading MP Ahmad Tavakoli, an ally of Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, has repeated his claim that the judiciary is under pressure to drop the Rahimi case. Tavakoli's allegation is carried in Larijani's Khabar Online.

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The Latest from Iran (25 December): Awaiting a Hanging

2250 GMT: All-is-Well Alert (Overseas Edition). Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi has assured a conference, "All Iranians who live outside of the country are not in the opposition. The number of Iranian expatriates who are opponents of the system is limited."

Moslehi said, however, that there is still work to be done: "Foreign intelligence agencies have provided facilities and equipment to [the opponents] to help them make their voices widely heard."

2240 GMT: Execution Watch. Ayatollah Bayat Zanjani has commented on the imminent hanging of Kurdish prisoner Habibollah Latifi: "Even illicit Arabs stopped war and killing in [the religious month of] Moharram."

2225 GMT: All-is-Well Alert. The Deputy Minister of Commerce, Mohammad-Hossein Nekoui-Mehr, has said that the Government has taken special measures for decreasing food prices amidst subsidy cuts.

Nekoui-Mehr added that about 7,000 products are currently being monitored by the Ministry to stop any increase in the prices of general commodities.

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The Latest from Iran (24 December): An Execution and a Hero

2110 GMT: Sanctions Watch. The Reserve Bank of India will no longer arrange payments for Iranian crude imports.

India's central bank said future payments will have to be settled outside the existing Asian Clearing Union mechanism, which includes central banks of India, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Iran, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

1730 GMT: Execution Watch. Rawa News has published an interview with the sister of Habibollah Latifi, the Kurdish prisoner scheduled for execution on Sunday (now see the English text in a separate entry).

She says, "[The authorities] acted very cleverly. They delivered the sentence 1 1/2 hours before the close of office hours on Thursday. So we could not do anything. Today was a Friday [weekend in Iran]. Tomorrow is the last day [before the execution], unless a miracle appears. They have planned so that we can not actually do anything."

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The Latest from Iran (23 December): All is Well. Really.

2150 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Doctoral student Ali Arshadi, arrested last December during the Ashura demonstrations, has been freed from Evin Prison.

1440 GMT: An All-is-Well Break. EA staff will be at a party with friends and family today, so updates will be limited. As always, we invite readers to keep us on top of the situation with latest news and analysis.

1335 GMT: All-is-Well Alert (Scientific Edition). The Chancellor of Tehran University, Farhad Rahbar, says that "the growth rate in Iran's scientific research has been 11 times more than the world's average growth rate".

1330 GMT: It's All About Us. Press TV has a distinctive take on the US Congress' passage of the New START treaty with Russia. Ostensibly, the agreement is to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but the Iranian state outlet sees a different objective: "to put pressure on Iran over Tehran's nuclear program".

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Iran Special: A Plea to Western Media About "Sakineh", Political Prisoners, and Human Rights (Alinejad)

As we approach the anniversary of those who died in the demonstrations of 27 December 2009, I ask my Western colleagues not to be fixated by the Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani case. I ask them to look at the political prisoners languishing in Iran's jails and the pressures faced by families who lost their loved ones during the protest.

I ask them to notice those like renowned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who represented many of these families and political prisoners, who has now been detained for 3 1/2 months, who has gone on hunger strike not only to fight for her rights but for the rights of the all those who are imprisoned for dissent and pursuit of civil society.

I ask the Western media not just to see one 43-year-old woman fighting for her life. I ask the Western media to take notice of the thousands, inside and outside prison, who are fighting for their lives and those of fellow Iranians.

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