LATEST Iran Video (6 July): The Father's Day Protest

ARCHIVE Video: “Keeping the Peace” (30 June-2 July)
ARCHIVE Video: Rally at Qoba Mosque, Resistance, Violence (24-28 June)ARCHIVE Video: The “Neda” Footage and Protests (20-23 June)
ARCHIVE Video: The Protests in and Beyond Tehran

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6 July: The Father's Day Protest in Front of Evin Prison, Tehran

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ieKzx0XHE&feature=channel[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0AxAZgyplc&feature=channel[/youtube]

In Case You Missed It: Saudi Permission for Israel Attack on Iran?

LATEST Iran: Joe Biden’s “Green Light” and an Israeli Airstrike

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Editor's Note: In my focus on US Vice President Joe Biden's statements on Sunday about Israeli sovereignty and possible attack against Iran, I set aside the other big signal, which came out of Israel's favourite British PR firm, The Sunday Times of London. Thanks to Ali Yenidunya for reviing this.

Although Israel and Saudi Arabia have no formal relationships, theSunday Times reported that Saudi officials tacitly confirmed the use of its airspace in case of a possible Israeli air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. It is claimed that the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, held secret talks with Saudis earlier this year. According to a diplomatic source quoted by the British newspaper, "The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia."

Publicly, the story was denied both by the Netanyahu Government and by Saudi officials. The Israeli Prime Minister’s office issued a statement on Sunday: “The Sunday Times report is fundamentally false and completely baseless."

Meanwhile, John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, stated that Israel's use of Saudi airspace was “entirely logical”. He added: “None of them [several Arab leaders he talked to during his recent visit to the Persian Gulf] would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success.”

The Latest from Iran (6 July): Covered in Dust

The Latest from Iran (7 July): Sitting Out a Storm

UPDATED Iran: Solving the Mystery of The “Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom”
UPDATED Iran: Joe Biden’s “Green Light” and an Israeli Airstrike
The Latest From Iran (5 July): Treading Water

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2145 GMT: The death toll in Tehran may be far higher than official figures suggest. Fintan Dunne has posted this English rewrite of an article in Le Figaro:

One of a pair of Iranian doctors, who fled the capital to France says an unofficial tally by medical staff at Tehran area hospitals counted 92 violent deaths related to conflicts with security forces. The death toll is considerably at variance with an official figure of 17 deaths.

1700 GMT: An Iranian website is reporting on a meeting that Mir Hossein Mousavi held with "friends and acquaintances" on the occassion of Imam Ali's birthday. Mousavi said that the election had shown the problems of the Iranian system and repeated that the State faced questions over its legitimacy at home and abroad. He declared, on the issue of protest, "The movement will continue," but this would be within a legal framework.

1635 GMT: The Regime Wins One? Mehr News Agency reports that the Speaker of the Parliament, Ali Larijani, has finally congratulated President Ahmadinejad on his "victory". Larijani had caused some friction for the post-election procession with his querying of the neutrality of the Guardian Council and his demand for an enquiry into the raids on the dormitories of Tehran University. (hat tip to Nico Pitney)

1555 GMT: But here's the real significance of the Khamenei statement: yes, there is an fight going on within the rgime. According to Press TV, Khamenei "pointed to the internal disagreement among Iranian officials", although he then "explained that despite such disputes these officials stand united against the enemy". That's the point to remember amidst his bluster, "In the event of enemy intervention, the Iranian nation, despite differences of opinion, will unite and become an iron fist against them." 

1550 GMT: Look! Over There! The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has again brought out the foreign menace. Speaking on Monday, he warned Western countries against "meddling" in Iran's internal affairs: ""Such governments should be careful with their hostile approach and remarks. The Iranian nation will react." Khamenei also referred to protesters as a "depressed" and "distressed" minority.

1545 GMT: Expect a standstill in developments tomorrow. Confirmation that Tehran will be "shut down" for 24 hours tomorrow because of dust pollution.

1515 GMT: The LA Times is carrying confirmation of Mousavi's apparent decision to launch his own political party (which we reported yesterday).

1300 GMT: Another Lemming Jumps. The Wall Street Journal runs with Sunday's inaccurate and misleading New York Times story, plus a lot of general background, to try and catch attention with a Clerics v. The Regime story.

1240 GMT: Rumour of the day: a significant portion of the Revolutionary Guard have turned against the Supreme Leader. Twitter user MikVerbrugge claims the source of this information is an Iranian officer they are in contact with.

1230 GMT: Another British embassy worker has been freed, leaving one member of staff still in detention.

0920 GMT: And a nice reminder of the political tension behind the scenes. The German service Deutsche Welle reports that Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a staunch supporter of President Ahmadinejad, sent a stern letter to the Speaker of the Parliament, Ali Larijani, warning him to "obey" the Supreme Leader.

0915 GMT: Press TV's website also features the comment of police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam that "two-thirds" of those arrested in post-election conflicts had been freed or released on bail. The missing detail? Neither the police chief nor Press TV mention how many people were detained.

0845 GMT: Last night we began received reports of a large duststorm moving across Iran from the west, reaching Tehran today.

That's an apt metaphor for the current political situation. There's been an uneasy settling of conflict over the last few days but the sense that, even though public activity was reduced, there could soon be another clash. Ironically, even though there is almost no breaking news coming out of Tehran, that sense is heightened this morning.

On the clerical front, there is enough intrigue to fill several crises. That intrigue has been elevated (and, indeed, exaggerated) by Sunday's misleading New York Times story of a dramatic challenge to the Supreme Leader from Iran's "most important" clerical faction, the "Association of Teachers and Researchers of Qom".. We've sorted out fact from fiction in a separate post.

On the political front, both the regime and the opposition are manoeuvring ahead of the planned demonstration on Thursday. Protest will continue today, "Father's Day" in Iran, as relatives of detainees gather in front of Evin Prison. On the other side, the Islamic Revolution's Guard Corps (Revolutionary Guard) used a Sunday conference to put out warnings. The political head, General Yudollah Javani declared:

Today, no one is impartial. There are two currents; those who defend and support the revolution and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it. Those who wanted to topple the revolution made a mistake in their calculations. They had ignored the awareness of the people and the role of the Leader.

The Commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, added, “We are convinced that the IRGC must play a deciding role in the preservation and continuation of the revolution.” (He added that this should in no way be interpreted as “meddling” by the IRGC in politics.)

Iran's Chief of Police, Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam, chipped in with a public statement keeping the foreign menace alive: "The BBC and the British Embassy, spearheaded efforts aimed at provoking unrest and incited people to commit civil disobedience and go on strike." It is still unclear whether any local staffers of the British Embassy will stand trial for "endangering national security".

Enduring America On the Road: The Clinton Institute Summer School

I will be joining our partners at the Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin, for their annual (and one-of-a-kind) Summer School in American Studies. Part of the chat will be about US foreign policy and how information/analysis is changing because of new media and blogs like Enduring America.

While I'm away, Mike Dunn will be watching the shop. Iran is still keeping us occupied, but I hope to return with a close look at the latest (often unreported) developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

UPDATED Iran: Solving the Mystery of The “Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom”

Iran and the Clerics: Who are the “Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom”?

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Less than 48 hours after the statement of the "Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom" condemning the Iranian Government as "illegitimate", less than 24 after The New York Times declared that this was a challenge from the most important clerical group in Iran, and less than 12 after we tried to sort out the mystery of both the clerical and political situation....

It looks like we are in the midst of a major media foul-up, one that can only be sorted out by some serious investigation and thinking.

Far from checking the Times story, broadcasters and newspapers have rushed like lemmings off a cliff behind the headline. CNN pronounces, "Iranian clerics disputes election results", The Guardian declares, "Senior Iranian clerics reject re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad", and The Times of London shouts, "Iran’s biggest group of clerics has declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to be illegitimate and condemned the subsequent crackdown." (The New York Times, incidentally, runs away and doesn't say a single word about its misleading article that started all this unsupported "journalism".)

The conversion of a statement into a head-on clerics v. Supreme Leader/President crisis (which I suspect, as a reader noted on our last post, owes much to "wishful thinking") makes it even more important to sort out what is occuring in a complex situation.

It appears that the "Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom" is led by Ayatollah Hosein Musavi-Tabrizi. In March 2008, Musavi-Tabrizi was blocked by the Guardian Council from running for the Iranian Parliament because of his "lack of belief in the Constitution and in Islam", even though he had been allowed to take up a seat on the Assembly of Experts.

Fast forward to 25 June of this year. Musavi-Tabrizi, identified as "the General Secretary of the Scholars and Seminarians of the Qom Scholarly Center", told a pro-Ahmadinejad website, "[The] Guardian Council had violated its impartiality in the elections several months ago and that it cannot judge what is true or false in reviewing the electoral results." He then made a sharp, provocative comparison between the Iranian Government in 2009 and the Shah of Iran's regime in 1979:

The revolution emerged from precisely such talk [of demonstrators as rioters]. The Shah, too, would call them rioters. I know what happened during the events of February 19 [1978] in Tabriz. I initiated the events in January 9 [1978] in Qom. When the people came out in Tabriz, the Shah, [then-Prime Minister Jamshid] Amuzegar, and his Majlis [Parliament] said that they came from abroad, they are rioters.”

The General Secretary continued, “The Shah’s regime was taghuti [satanic, a favoured term of Ayatollah Khomeini to describe the Shah and his advisors] precisely because it said such things. Had it not said such things and gave the people what they merited, it would not have been taghuti. It makes no difference. Anyone who swallows up the people’s rights is taghut."

The New York Times apparently did not check up on this background (which, I must confess, only took a few minutes once I had Musavi-Tabrizi's name). Instead it confused the "Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom" with another, longer-established faction, the "Society of Qom Seminary Teachers and Researchers" (in Farsi, "Jame’eh-e ye Modarresin-e Howzeh-ye Eliyeh-ye Qom").

As an Enduring America colleague puts it succinctly, the Society, "along with the Society of Combatant Clergy (JRM) and the allied Islamic Society (Mo’talefeh), was and probably still is the backbone of the conservative right". It was started in the 1960s by Ayatollah Azari-Qomi, who also launched the Resalat newspaper, a key outlet in the "conservative" movement. In the 1990s, however, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, took control, expelling Azari-Qomi.

So The New York Times, picking up on a statement from the "Association", confuses it with the "Society", which has had a long-time influence in Iranian politics. And that is how suddenly a relatively minor intervention (given the dizzying movement of statements and speeches amongst the clerics as they decide how to react to Ahmadinejad's supposed re-election and the subsequent protests) became "an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment".