The Latest from Iran (1 July): The Opposition Regroups

The Latest from Iran (2 July): The “Gradual” Opposition

NEW Iran: Text of Mousavi’s Statement to Supporters (1 July)
Iran: The Post-Election Challenge from the Clerics of Qom
NEW Iran Audio and Text: The “Ghaffari Tape” Criticising the Supreme Leader
The Latest from Iran (30 June): Opposition, It’s Your Move

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2130 GMT: Orwell Would Be So Proud. From an Iranian source on Twitter:

For the 2nd consecutive night reps of prosecutor general & Cultural Ministry were present in publication house demanding alteration of some pages of the Etememad Melli paper. Those reps asked for omitting the interview of the paper's manager as well as [an] analysis of Iran election. The interview was about the reasons for which the paper's publication was prohibited yesterday.

2050 GMT: According to reports, the pro-Karroubi Etemad Melli was only one of six newspapers banned today.

2045 GMT: We've added English-language extracts to the audio of Ayatollah Hadi Ghaffari's denunciation of the Supreme Leader.

2000 GMT: After a three-week blackout, SMS is again working in Tehran. No interruption of the "Allahu Akhbars": "God is Great" is being shouted from the rooftops of Tehran tonight.

1945 GMT: Lara Setrakian of ABC News (US) is also watching Qom, "Keep hearing 2 watch what the clerics say in this phase of #iranelection ex Ayat. Taheri just called this gov illegitimate." (Ayatollah Jaleleddin Taheri is not "ex" but resigned his position as prayer leader in Isfahan in 2002, protesting against the leadership of Iran.)

1925 GMT: More on the Clerical Divide. Mohammad Sahimi of Tehran Bureau is also considering the "differences between hard-liners and leftists [that] go back to 1988", but he adds, "What has been surprising is the reaction of moderate clerics and the silence of clerical hard-liners."

While the Supreme Leader may now have the upper hand over the opposition, Sahimi notes, I think perceptively:

By coming down most definitively on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s side, Ayatollah Khamenei may no longer be considered to be above the fray, or even feign impartiality. He has now become just another politician subject to criticism. This is damaging, not only to the concept of Velaayat-e Faghih, but also to the whole concept of Mahdi, the hidden 12th Imam, who is supposed to come back some day to save the world from injustice, corruption and chaos. How can the “deputy” of the hidden Imam be as fallible as the next politician?

1520 GMT: That was fast. Fintan Dunne has already posted our 45-minute conversation (see 1510 GMT) about the current political situation in Iran.

1510 GMT: I just finished two interviews, an hour-long discussion to be broadcast later on the Islam Channel's Politics and Beyond programme on "Western Media and Iran" and a conversation with freelance Fintan Dunne on the political conflict and possible accommodation between the different Iranian parties.

On his website, Mr Dunne raises the possibility that a compromise was possible on Monday morning between the Guardian Council and Mir Hossein Mousavi, only hours before the Council closed off the election as fair and final.

1448 GMT: Etemad Mellinewspaper was shut down today by Iranian authorities when it tried to publish a statement from Mehdi Karroubi. It will be allowed to publish tomorrow.

1445 GMT: Press TV is reporting that three of the four Iranian employees of the British Embassy who were detained have been released.

1430 GMT: Another question from Mir Hossein Mousavi, "How can we ask people to spend their religious faith trusting us when they're being blatantly lied to?" He concludes, "It's our historic mission to continue our protest and not abandon retrieving people's rights."

1345 GMT: Just like yesterday, the morning quiet has been replaced by late-afternoon manoeuvres. The Islamic Iran Participation Front has declared, "The election was the result of a year long coup d'etat...that harmed the establishment's legitimacy inside and outside Iran....We openly announce that the result is unacceptable."

And on his website, Ghalam News, Mir Hossein Mousavi has issued his 9th statement to supporters, asserting that the Government is "illegimate". He has called for the release of detainees. And, cleverly, he has turned the regime's pretext of "foreign interference" back upon the Government: "We're worried that this government due to its multitude of intrinsic and extrinsic weaknesses [may be on the] verge of granting advantage to foreigners."

Mousavi asks, "How can people trust a regime which imprisons its friends, colleagues and children?"

1300 GMT: In the category Funny If It Wasn't So Horrible: "Javan newspaper [linked to the Revolutionary Guard] wrote that Mohammad Ghoochani [the chief editor of Etemad Melli] confessed....[that he] traveled to an Arab country to train for ''soft subversion'. Ghoochani does NOT have a passport and has not traveled abroad in the past two years."

1230 GMT: Remember what we said yesterday about President Ahmadinejad's "Pyrrhic victory"? (We had called the President a "lame duck", but an Iranian colleague said he doubted that Ahmadinejad knew what a lame duck was.)

Here you go....

Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called off a trip to Libya for an African Union summit on Wednesday. A spokesman at Ahmadinejad's office said the Libya visit had been canceled. He gave no reason....Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi later told state television Ahmadinejad was too busy to go.

This cancellation is in sharp contrast to Ahmadinejad's show of triumph, four days after the election, when he went to Russia for a Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting.

Now the question: is the setback for Ahmadinejad "external", with other countries seeing Iran as unsuitable for close contact, or is it "internal", with other leaders putting a leash on the President?

1215 GMT: Very little political movement, but Lara Setrakian of ABC News (US) brings a disturbing report that the paramilitary Basiji have asked Iran's chief prosecutor for an investigation into Mir Hossein Mousavi's role in protests, laying nine charges, including disturbing security, against him. The "crimes" carry a possible jail sentence of up to 10 years. The initial story came from Iran's Fars News Agency.

0935 GMT: The Washington Post offers details on the public "confession" of detained Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, which we noted yesterday. Bahari told local news media that he had covered "illegal gatherings" and promoted a "color revolution" on the model of those in Central and Eastern Europe in the last decade. "The activities of Western journalists in news gathering and spying and gathering intelligence are undeniable," he said.

Continuing the Iranian authorities priority on Britain rather than the US as the chief enemy, Bahari was described as a "former BBC reporter".

0925 GMT: More on the debate amongst the clerics of Qom, which we're covering in detail today, this time from the pro-Government side: "The influential head of a Shiite seminary decreed that 'opposing the view of the Guardian Council is not legal, religious or socially acceptable.' Ayatollah Morteza Moghtadai called for a continued clampdown on opposition demonstrations, saying that 'the view of the leadership is the last word, and everybody in the country must obey it,' Fars reported."

0820 GMT: Michael Slackman's story in The New York Times, "Iran Seeks to Close Door on Further Protests", notes a troubling incident to add to the hundreds (thousands?) of detentions:

One of the most recent arrests, of Bijan Khajehpour, an independent political economist, sent a chill deeper yet into Iran’s civil society because he had not been involved in the opposition demonstrations, political analysts said. Mr. Khajehpour had been detained at the airport coming into the country from Britain, and like many others, has disappeared into the notorious Evin prison, raising concerns over the scope of the crackdown and the prospect of a political purge, the analysts said.

“Bijan was perhaps the last independent-minded analyst living in Tehran who continued to travel to Europe and the U.S. and give open lectures about Iran,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He always believed that if he was totally transparent, the government would understand he was not doing anything wrong.”

0745 GMT: We just posted our morning features, an analysis of the post-election debate amongst clerics in Qom and the leaked audio of the criticism of the Supreme Leader by Ayatollah Hadi Ghaffari. Moments later, we learned of the latest statement by the philospher and cleric Mohsen Kadivar, a long-time critic of the Iranian leadership, on the "inherent contradiction" between a republic and the iranian system of clerical authority, Velayat-e-Faqih. The Supreme Leader, Kadivar writes, has three options: religious despotism, removal from the Constitutional, or a new form of constitutional leadership.

0515 GMT: There is a regime confidence, rolled out in Press TV English this morning, that it is beyond the election crisis. Interview upon interview with pro-Government Members of Parliament declared: 1) "no one in Qom", referring to clerics, "is talking about the election anymore"; instead 2) there should be a focus investigating and "repair[ing] the damage" caused in the last 18 days (a not-so-veiled attempt to pin responsibility on the "reformists" and, more subtly, a justification of the detentions); 3) it's foreign operatives who caused all this trouble. The last point received the most attention, with a student journalist (message: some of them are on our side) giving the history of outside intervention, supported by footage of CNN set next to images of the 1953 overthrow of the Iranian Government.

A senior advisor to President Ahmadinejad, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, was then interviewed, "President Obama had a very good start" with his promises to change US policy on Iran, the Middle East, and Guantanamo Bay"; however, "he has made many claims and we are still waiting for his action....he is under pressure ....from the neo-conservatives and the Israeli Lobby....We think that the President must be more powerful and must comply with [his] principles."

Yet, for all these bold declarations (there is now even a mention of President Ahmadinejad being sworn in "within the next three months"), the rumbles of political challenge continue. Both President candidate Mehdi Karroubi and former President Mohammad Khatami issued statements yesterday that protest would not stop, and their words were supported by reformist parties and the Association of Combatant Clerics. In Qom, which supposedly is not talking about the election, several clerics have come out in the last 72 hours with scathing criticism of the Government.

And, while the public show of defiance receded yesterday amidst the heavy security presence, we have indications that the silence is not a capitulation but a sign that the demonstrators are planning the next move. In particular, we're watching to see if this information stands up: Mir Hossein Mousavi was silent on Monday, but there will be a significant show of resistance in the next 48 hours.