The Latest from Iran (5 January): The Longer Game

2225 GMT: Arguing Over the Mousavi Statement. Habib-allah Askaroladi, a leading principlist politician, has declared, "Today it is important not to allow the extremists to change the national scene into a battlefield.”

That's not a surprising statement. This, however, raises an eyebrow: Askaroladi breaks from Presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei in recommending Mir Hossein Mousavi's recent statement as a possible route to conciliation: “Nowhere in Mousavi’s statement is an about-face seen.”

2155 GMT: Diplomatic Protest. The Iranian consul in Norway has resigned in protest at his Government's treatment of the Ashura demonstrators. He is also reported to have sought asylum.

A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy would not comment on what he called lies and rumours.

2100 GMT: We've posted video of Monday's CNN interview with the former member of Parliament Fatemeh Haghighatjoo and Tehran University academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi. There's also the transcript of the thoughts of former Obama Administration official Ray Takeyh.

1705 GMT: A Victory for the Government. After months of wrangling, Iran's Parliament has ratified President Ahmadinejad's economic bill aimed at gradually cutting energy and food subsidies. Of 243 members, 134 votes for a reform subsidy organization to enforce the plan.

NEW Latest Iran Video and Transcript: Haghighatjoo and Marandi on CNN (4 January)
NEW Iran: How Outside “Help” Can Hurt the Green Movement
Latest Iran Video: Maziar Bahari on Britain’s Channel 4
Iran: Five Expatriate Intellectuals Issue “The Demands of the Green Movement”
Latest Iran Video: Interview with Committee of Human Rights Reporters (3 January)
Iran: In Defence of Mousavi’s “5 Proposals”
Iran: The Genius of Washington’s “Strategic Leaking” on Nukes & Sanctions
The Latest from Iran (4 January): Watching and Debating

The breakthrough came with a compromise on oversight, insisted upon by Parliament, The Supreme Iranian Audit Court, charged with supervising "financial operations and activities" of organizations which benefit from the state budget, will monitor the organization and submit reports on its performance twice a year.

1635 GMT: Patrolling the Cyber-Revolution. Iranian authorities have reiterated that access to filtered websites is a crime, complementing the declaration by the Ministry of Intelligence yesterday of criminal activity for any association with more than 60 "foreign groups", such as Yale University, accused of fomenting insurrection.

1630 GMT: Apologies for no update service for most of today, as Internet access has been impossible out of my location in Beirut.

0555 GMT: Jackson Swayze, Neda...Ahmadinejad/Khamenei? Austin Heap reports the message that went up when the President's website was hacked:

Dear God, In 2009 you took my favorite singer –-- Michael Jackson, my
favorite actress –-- Farrah Fawcett, my favorite actor –-- Patrick Swayze, my
favorite voice –-- Neda.

Please, please, don’t forget my favorite politician – Ahmadinejad and my
favorite dictator – Khamenei in the year 2010. Thank you.

0530 GMT: Another Jail Sentence. Journalist Bahman Ahmadi Amoui, arrested in June, has been sentenced to seven years and four months in prison and 34 lashes.

0525 GMT: The Letter of the Professors. A story we saw on Sunday but let slip because we were not sure of the significance --- by last night, it was the lead Iran story in Western media such as The New York Times.

Almost 90 academics on the Technical Faculty of Tehran University signed an open letter to the Supreme Leader calling for the end of violence against protesters: “Nighttime attacks on defenseless student dormitories and daytime assaults on students at university campuses, venues of education and learning, is not a sign of strength. Nor is beating up students and their mass imprisonment.”

0520 GMT: Still No Cyber-Mahmoud. The President hasn't been able to blog from his travels in Tajikistan/Turkmenistan, as his website is still down.

0510 GMT: It is becoming clear that the Green movement is in a phase of regrouping and maintaining a lower public profile. There are no immediate markers for protest before the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution on 22 Bahman (11 February), although there was some chatter yesterday about a "40th day" memorial on 7 February for those killed on Ashura last week.

After an intense phase of discussion of the Mousavi statement on Sunday, there was less to note politically yesterday. Much of the Internet attention was on the "10 demands" of the five expatriate Iranian intellectuals, although it is still unclear how much impact their statement will have inside Iran.

Less news also from the regime. There was the flutter that "foreign nationals" had been arrested on Ashura, but nothing further emerged during the day. Less news of arrests as well --- perhaps because the Government is running out of targets to detain --- so last night was led by the seriousness/black comedy of the "blacklist" of 80/62/60 foreign organisations that are off-limits to Iranians.

The Latest from Iran (4 January): Watching and Debating

2330 GMT: Mahmoud Down. Signing off tonight with this news --- looks like the latest victim in the cyber-war is President Ahmadinejad's blog.

2320 GMT: Another Rights-First Shot from the Obama Administration. Despite (possibly because of) the recent sanctions-related rush of spin in US newspapers, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a moment to focus on Iran's political conflict today, criticising the regime's “ruthless repression” of protesters: “We have deep concerns about their behavior, we have concerns about their intentions and we are deeply disturbed by the mounting signs of ruthless repression that they are exercising against those who assemble and express viewpoints that are at variance with what the leadership of Iran wants to hear.”

2220 GMT: Have You Made "The List"? Fars News has published the names of the 60 organisations and media outlets "outed" by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence as unacceptable for contact by Iranians.

There are a lot of familiar faces, given that many of these dangerous groups were listed in indictments in the Tehran trials in August: Georges Soros' Open Society Institute is here, as is the Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Center, whose scholar Haleh Esfandiari was detained by the Iranians in 2007. Both the National Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute get a mention. So doe the Council on Foreign Relations, the Hoover Institute in California, Freedom House, and of course the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The National Endowment for Democracy, funded but not run by the US Government, also gets a citation, and Human Rights Watch is a definite no-go area.

Looks like we've missed out --- in the United Kingdom, the conference centre at Wilton Park, where foreign agents must gather to plan regime change, is mentioned as is the "Centre for Democracy Studies".

Just one question, if anyone at the Ministry of Intelligence is on Overnight Foreigner Watch: why does Yale get to be the one university to receive the Great Satan's Helper prize? (And, yes, we're already getting furious e-mails from our Harvard friends.)

2200 GMT: Have just arrived in Beirut, where I will be learning from the best specialists on the Middle East and Iran this week. Thanks to EA staff for finding journalist Maziar Bahari's interview with Britain's Channel 4. We've now posted the video of Bahari, who was detained for four months after the Presidential election.

2000 GMT: Britain's Channel 4 News has just broadcast a moving interview with journalist Maziar Bahari who was held in Evin prison for 119 days. We'll post a link when it becomes available. Chief political correspondent Jon Snow also referred back to his exclusive interview with President Ahmadinejad which took place in Shiraz just before  Christmas. Ahmadinejad denied troops were intimidating opponents and warned the West not to assume his country was weak.

NEW Latest Iran Video: Maziar Bahari on Britain’s Channel 4
NEW Iran: Five Expatriate Intellectuals Issue “The Demands of the Green Movement”
NEW Latest Iran Video: Interview with Committee of Human Rights Reporters (3 January)
NEW Iran: In Defence of Mousavi’s “5 Proposals”
NEW Iran: The Genius of Washington’s “Strategic Leaking” on Nukes & Sanctions
Iran: Authority and Challenge — Bring Out the (Multi-Sided) Chessboard
The Latest from Iran (3 January): Re-positioning

1540 GMT: I'm en route to a conference in the Middle East (more news tomorrow) so updates may be limited today. The EA team is minding the shop so keep sending in information and analysis.

1500 GMT: The Foreign Menace (see if you are on the list). The Islamic Republic News Agency has just published a long interview with the Deputy Minister for International Affairs in the Ministry of Intelligence ministry. He lists 62 foreign research centres and media outlets, with which all contact by Iranians is considered forbidden. The list includes Yale University, Brookings Institute, Saban Centre, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, New American Foundation, various Iran human rights groups, BBC, Voice of America, and RaheSabz.net.

1415 GMT: Regime Spokesman of Day. Hats off to Kaveh Afrasiabi, who at no point lets analysis get in the way of his re-presentation of the Mousavi statement, "Iran: From Confrontation to Reconciliation" in Asia Times.

Afrasiabi, who has been a loud proclaimer of President Ahmadinejad's legitimacy since 12 June, wears the shoes of Presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei in announcing a Mousavi "retreat" (perhaps needless to say, he does not consider the actual statement). He is pleased to report that many figures, including former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, are now behind "unity" So expect "a qualitative turn-around from the tumult of the past seven months".

And those who haven't read Afrasiabi's script? No worries, for the Green movement, given "an opportunity to drum up its democratization demands" with the death of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri", has been stopped by "a serious miscalculation" with its resort to violence on Ashura

1340 GMT: Engagement Revised. A delegation from the European Parliament has postponed its trip to Iran.

1330 GMT: Reuters is reporting from Iran state television the assertion of Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi: "Several foreigners are among those who were arrested on the day of Ashura....They were leading a psychological war against the system....They entered Iran two days before Ashura."

1020 GMT: Irony Defined. Press TV's website features this headline, "Iran deplores French crackdown on protesters".

Still not convinced of our definition? Here is the opening sentence: "Iran's Foreign Ministry has lashed out at France over resorting to violence in dealing with protesters in the country, describing it as violation of human rights."

0930 GMT: A Platform for the Green Movement? Five Iranian intellectuals abroad --- Abdolkarim Soroush, Akbar Ganji, Mohsen Kadivar, Abdolali Bazargan, Ataollah Mohajerani --- have put out a statement of objectives. We are summarising in a separate entry.

0920 GMT: Where's Mahmoud? President Ahmadinejad is focusing on Iran's regional ties, especially in areas like energy and transportation. He is in Tajikistan before moving to Turkmenistan.

0910 GMT: We've posted the video of an interview with Saeed Habibi, a senior member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters who is in hiding in Iran.

0720 GMT: The Clerical Opposition? We are looking for further information on the tantalising report, offered late Sunday, that Ayatollah Bayat-Zanjani has met separately with Ayatollah Mousavi-Ardebili and with Ayatollah Sanei in Qom.

0710 GMT: Another low-key start to the political day in Iran, as it appears that the regime ponders --- amidst its threats --- how to deal with the persistence of protests, the Green opposition gathers itself --- amidst arrests --- for the next big show of resistance, Mir Hossein Mousavi watches the response to his 5-proposal statement, and conservative/principlist politicians and clerics look for support for their alternative approach.

We have two guest analyses. Babak Siavoshy puts forth a defence of Mousavi's statement, while Gary Sick praises the "strategic leaking" of Barack Obama amidst domestic pressure for US sanctions against Iran and its nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, a Sunday testimony both to Iran's ascent up the US news agenda and the problems, as well as the possibilities, that this brings. One of the showpiece Sunday talk shows, ABC's This Week, turned over part of its Roundtable to a discussion of recent protests in Iran.

Unfortunately, after paying token attention to the internal developments --- "Every time this cycle happens, the Iranian opposition seems to come back stronger and stronger" --- David Sanger of The New York Times promoted his Sunday article (see yesterday's updates) and declared, "The first priority is the nuclear programme." Cue another round of chit-chat among the talking heads on sanctions and the reduction of Iran's political battle to "Is it more or less likely for the Iranian regime to want a deal with the West?"

Iran: Five Expatriate Intellectuals Issue "The Demands of the Green Movement"

Five Iranian intellectuals living overseas --- Abdolkarim Soroush, Akbar Ganji, Mohsen Kadivar, Abdolali Bazargan, and Ataollah Mohajerani --- have followed Mir Hossein Mousavi's recent 5-point statement with a declaration of 10 demands to be met by the Iranian Government:

1. Resignation of Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, renewal of the election under the supervision of the independant organs. Cancellation of the Guardian Council's oversight and establishment of an independant election
commission.

The Latest from Iran (4 January): Watching and Debating

2. Release of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. Prosecution of those involved in murders and torture of recent months in a public court of law with retribution to the victims and their families.

3. Freedom of press and all audio-visual media. Cancellation of censorship, banning of newspapers, filtering of internet. Expansion of satellite services and acceptance of private TV channels. Expulsion of those who
put out fraudulent lies over recent events.

4. Recognition of the activities of political parties, student movement, women's movement, non-government organisations and civil society, and labor unions, with the right to assembly.

5. Independence of universities and their administrations. Expulsion of military forces from the campuses. Purge of the illegal Cultural Revolution Council.

6. Persecution of torturers and murderers for recent crimes.

7. Independence of the judiciary, with its head an elected official. Cancellation of all illegal special courts.

8. Expulsion of all military forces and law enforcement from the political, economic, and cultural scene.

9. Independence of the religious establishment from the government and administration.

10. All high level positions in the country to be elected by the people, with term limits and accountability.

The Latest from Iran (3 January): Re-positioning

2220 GMT: BBC Persian is reporting on the Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution. One interesting claim in the statement: anti-establishment monarchist slogans were encouraged by Government agent provocateurs in the Ashura crowd.

222055 GMT: The Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution, following the earlier endorsement of the Islamic Iran Participation Front of the Mousavi post-Ashura statement (1420 GMT), have issued their response to the declaration.

NEW Iran: Authority and Challenge — Bring Out the (Multi-Sided) Chessboard
Iran Video of Week: Ahmadinejad 0, Tractor 1
Iran: The Non-Violent “Watershed” of the Mousavi Statement (Shahryar)
Iran: A Gut Reaction to Mousavi’s “Martyrdom v. Compromise” Statement (Lucas)
Iran Document: Mousavi’s “5 Stages to Resolution” Statement (1 January)
The Latest from Iran (2 January): The Ripples of the Mousavi Statement

2000 GMT: The Regime's Fist-Waving. Edward Yeranian of the Voice of America has a useful summary of today's denunciations of protesters, invocation of "foreign agents", and threats of prosecution from Minister of Interior Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar (1645 GMT) and the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani. Press TV continues to play up the Larijani combination of assurance ("fair trial") and warning ("investigate the events quickly and firmly").

1800 GMT: Green 88 members Mohammad Rafati and Mohammad Keighobadi have been arrested.

1645 GMT: Your Daily US-UK-Israel-MKO Announcement. It's Minister of Interior Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar reciting the litany today: "The rioters are encouraged and supported by Britain, the US and the Zionist regime. The involvement of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), enemies and those who seek to take revenge on the Islamic establishment during the past 30 years is quite clear."

Can't say this wins award for originality, although Mohammad-Najjar's promise that some MKO members will soon appear in court --- reportedly some Ashura detainees went on trial today --- has an ominous hint of a new scene in the staged drama.


1625 GMT: More Tough Shows for the Media. On a day when Governments in Washington and Tehran have been spinning tales away from the central front of the internal conflict in Iran, it did not take long for this one to get a headline.

This morning Press TV gave up space to a bit of tough puffery from the Iranian military, with Brigadier General Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan announcing a large military exercise next month to "improve the force's defensive capabilities" and "boost the region's security".

No big prizes for breaking the political code in this move: facing diplomatic pressure and possibly more sanctions on the nuclear issue and looking more than a bit shaky at home, Tehran puts up a show of strength against the ever-present "foreign enemies". CNN has already obliged, recycling the Press TV report and immediately putting it in the context of the US and Israeli portrayal of "time running out" to address Iran's "threat".

Meanwhile, the media's set-up of a case for more sanctions on Iran continues. The New York Times advertisement for the pro-sanctions forces in the Obama Administration (see 0840 GMT), who are working with pro-sanctions forces in Israel, has turned into a magic media circle, with Israel's Haaretz citing the article and bolstering the line: if there are more sanctions, then no Israeli military action.

1455 GMT: The Exam Strike. For the second day in a row, students at Amir Kabir University in Tehran have protested by refusing to sit their examinations.

1425 GMT: A Victory for the Regime. Amidst the political and religious challenges it is facing, the Iranian authorities have succeeded in curbing Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastgheib. After days of attacks on the Qoba Mosque in Shiraz, the Government has confiscated Dastgheib's offices and restricted the cleric's movements.

1420 GMT: Boosting the Mousavi Initaitive. The reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front has issued a statement of enthusiastic support for the Mousavi five-point resolution in the post-Ashura statement.

1245 GMT: Regime Divisions (cont.). Ayande News criticises the attempt by Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, in the name of the Qom Seminary Teachers Association, to denounce the marja (eminent cleric) status of Ayatollah Sane'i (see yesterday's updates).

Ayande has also launched a full-blooded attack on the editor of Kayhan, the "hard-line" Hossein Shariatmadari, accusing him of past duplicity (opposing Ayatollah Khamenei) and current misinformation (minimising the number of anti-regime demonstrators in protests).

Now here's the intriguing part: Ayande has been claimed to be linked to the Presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei, who just wrote the Supreme Leader asking for reconciliation with a "retreating" Mir Hossein Mousavi. Is this the other part of the initiative, an assault upon those, including allies of President Ahmadinejad, who would block such a deal?

1230 GMT: Breaking the Freedom Movement. Iran's authorities have detained three more senior members of the party: Amir Khorram, Mohsen Mohagheghi, and Sara Tavassoli (daughter of the director of the Freedom Movement's offices).

1200 GMT: Let's Crush Them (But Do It Fairly). Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is featuring a story of the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, speaking about "fair trials" for those who have caused "fitna" (secular sedition).

1150 GMT: More Media Follies. This time it's Paul Harris of The Observer of London who goes Nuclear Critical. His attention to Iran is part of a wider piece on the challenges for President Obama, but the headline points to Tehran Emergency: "Barack Obama talks tough on terror as Iran raises nuclear stakes". Harris bases this diplomatic Red Alert on:

--- "A deadline for Iran to accept a UN-brokered deal passed on Thursday and raised the prospect of a fresh round of sanctions against Tehran" (as we noted months ago, the Obama Administration was going to let any deadline slip because it has not declared a break-down of the nuclear discussions);

--- "A senior Iranian figure said the west had just one month to come up with a better deal for it to swap its low-enriched uranium for nuclear fuel" (as we noted yesterday, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's "ultimatum" was more a rhetorical defence against likely sanctions and an intervention in the domestic crisis, trying to boost the Government with "nationalist" sentiment)

--- "Many experts, however, think any resolution to the situation is unlikely." (no names, no details)

What "distinguishes" Harris' analysis, however, is not an omission of Iran's domestic situation but a distortion of it. He makes a point of noticing "last week, tens of thousands of supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime demonstrated in Tehran in organised protests against foreign interference in Iran's affairs" --- you see, this is not only a Iranian Government on the verge of nuclear weapons, but one with popular support --- but he never mentions the anti-regime protests that took place only three days earlier.

1140 GMT: The Domestic Troubles. Testimony to our New Year analysis about the complex challenges to the Ahmadinejad Government --- "Iran's parliament rejected on Sunday the government's request to withdraw a bill aimed at gradually cutting energy and food subsidies".

The Government put forth the subsidy reduction plan as a key plank in its economic programme last autumn. In November, however, the Parliament linked any cut to the overall budget, requiring the Government to put the money into a special account for public spending.

At that point, Ahmadinejad called for the withdrawal of the entire proposal. He got his answer --- economically and politically --- today.

1025 GMT: Handling the Mousavi Statement. A bizarre article from Press TV's website, "Mousavi's statement draws varied reactions" --- instead of considering the political responses that we have noted in our analyses, the article opens with this clumsy attempt at belittling the opposition leader: "The Tehran Municipality has been clearing the Iranian capital of graffiti containing negative comments about defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi."

The last paragraphs do try to set out a party line, but even this is uncertain: "Some, such as Mohsen Rezaei, another defeated presidential candidate, described the declaration as a "retreat" from the position of denying the legitimacy of Ahmadienjad's administration. Others however, condemned the statement, repeating their earlier calls for judicial action against the "leaders of Fitna (Arabic for anarchy)."

1020 GMT: Iranian television is reporting that the first trials, held in Revolutionary Court, of those arrested on Ashura (27 December) have begun.

1010 GMT: Latest Arrests. Journalist Rouzbeh Karimi and his wife, lawyer Forough Mirzaee, have been detained.

0840 GMT: US Sanctions and the Nuclear-First Approach. After weeks in which the White House seemed to shift to a rights-first vision of Iran, a faction in the Obama Administration appear to have re-staked the "All about Nukes, All about Sanctions" ground.

An article by The New York Times' David Sanger and William Broad, the go-to reporters for the nukes/sanctions officials, bluntly opens with the statement that the recent internal tension and demands of the Green movement are again pawns in the nuclear game:

As President Obama faces pressure to back up his year-end ultimatum for diplomatic progress with Iran, the administration says that domestic unrest and signs of unexpected trouble in Tehran’s nuclear program make its leaders particularly vulnerable to strong and immediate new sanctions....

Although repeated rounds of sanctions over many years have not dissuaded Iran from pursuing nuclear technology, an administration official involved in the Iran policy said the hope was that the current troubles “give us a window to impose the first sanctions that may make the Iranians think the nuclear program isn’t worth the price tag.”

Beyond the relegation of the internal conflict in Iran to a supporting role in other campaigns, what is bizarre about this public-relations piece is that it promotes sanctions even though the possibility of any supposed Iranian nuclear weapon has diminished in recent months:

Obama administration officials said they believed that the bomb-development effort was seriously derailed by the exposure three months ago of the country’s secret enrichment plant under construction near the holy city of Qum....

In addition, international nuclear inspectors report that at Iran’s plant in Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges spin to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, the number of the machines that are currently operating has dropped by 20 percent since the summer, a decline nuclear experts attribute to technical problems. [Note: EA pointed this out in the autumn; Sanger and Broad ignored the technical issue until the article today.]

The illogic and the (cynical?) political manoeuvring is beside the main point, however. This articles and others, such as a recent piece in The Washington Post that Israel was quite happy to go with the sanctions route, all point to the Administration's acceptance of sanctions measures that will be passed by the US Congress within the next month.

0820 GMT: As the drama of public conflict recedes for the moment --- although the regime continues to arrest activists, journalists, and key organisers ---and is replaced by the political manoeuvres both inside and outside the Iranian establishment, we have posted an analysis, "Bring Out the (Multi-Sided) Chessboard".

Iran Video of Week: Ahmadinejad 0, Tractor 1

At the President's recent speech in Tabriz in Iran's East Azerbaijan, the crowd was asked to shout, "Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad". Apparently they responded, "Tractor, Tractor".

(It should also be noted that Persian Azari for Tractor is "Tiraxtur" and Tiraxtur Tabriz is a professional football team. So this response may not be as surreal as befits a Video of the Week.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3BAEw3CXEE[/youtube]

The Latest from Iran (2 January): The Ripples of the Mousavi Statement