Iran Special: The Significance of the "Universities Crisis" (Verde)

UPDATE 0600 GMT: Nooshabeh Amiri, writing in Rooz English, offers a powerful opinion piece on last week's demonstrations, "Shut the Majlis, oh Brother!"

---

Mr Verde writes for EA:

"Crisis" in a country is not usually associated with a debate over higher education. The military, the police, radio and TV, the courts, elections: these are the battlegrounds that come to mind.

Make no mistake, however. The current dispute in Iran over Islamic Azad University is important. It is significant not just because Ahmadinejad and Co. want to oust former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and his allies from the university's management. It is an indicator of other possible trouble within the regime.

First, the beginner's guide to the current dispute:

- The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, headed by Ahmadinejad in his capacity as President, decides to overturn last summer's decision of the Azad University Board to make itself into a trust. The SCCR also said it would appoint new trustees.

- Azad University takes legal measures, and a court issues an injunction against the SCCR decision.

- The following day, the Parliament votes for legislation that will in effect block attempts by the SCCR to hand over the management of Azad University to the Government.

- There is a demonstration by a small number of regime-organized "students" outside the Majlis. The demonstrators shout slogans against the Parliament, the MPs, and the Speaker Ali Larijani. Some of the signs they are carrying are regarded as so rude that the Iranian Students News Agency blurs out the slogans. It is reported that one of the speakers at the gathering threatened that they would bombard the Majlis (as the Russian Colonel Liakhov had done on behalf of Mohammad Ali Shah in 1908).

- The following day the Parliament votes to annul its previous decision, even though the original bill is still in the process of being vetted by the Guardian Council. During the debate MPs insult each other and Ali Motahari claims that the pro-Ahmadinejad Koochakzadeh (who is close to Ahmadinejad) is of Russian descent and has changed his name from Koochakov. Motahari later claims that, during the debate, Koochatzadeh/Koochakov physically attacked him.

- After a request from Iran's Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, orders another court to review the injunction against the Council.

A bit of background:

The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution was created by the Islamic Republic in the early 1980s, as part of the Cultural Revolution that shut universities for a few years. Since then, both Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei have said that the the decisions of the SCCR should be considered as the law of the land and that the other state organs, including the Majlis, should not contradict these decisions.

The Supreme Leaders' declarations stand against the Constitution, under which the Majlis has the authority to pass laws on all matters. The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution is not even mentioned in the Constitution.

Conclusion? The judge who ordered the injunction, in his interpretation of the Constitution, defied Ayatollah Khamenei’s standing orders regarding the decisions of the SCCR.

On the day the Parlaiment was debating the original law, one MP, citing the Supreme Leader’s views about the SCCR’s powers, tabled a motion to stop debate. MPs voted against the proposal.

Some more background:

When legislation is passed by the Majles, it has to be vetted by the Guardian Council. The Council will return legislation that it deems to be against the Constitution and/or Sharia law. At this stage the legislation is returned to Parliament.

If the Majlis tries to accommodate the views of the Council, the legislation is vetted again. If Parliament refuses to accommodate the Council, the legislation goes to the Expediency Council. In such a case, the Expediency Council’s decision will become law.

One issue that stands out:

At the present time, two laws have been pass by the Majles within two days, with the second negating the first. This does not look like confidence. It looks like chaos and crisis.

The demonstration in front of the Majlis:

Was Ayatollah Khamenei behind the demonstration, its slogans, and speeches, or at least supportive of it? He certainly did not condemn it, as he has the post-election demonstrations including millions of Iranians.

Why resort to the embarrassing, costly, chaotic, and illegal tactic of organizing the demonstration outside the Majlis? Why not ensure that the Council of Guardians rejects the legislation, returns it to Parliament, and then ensure that the Majlis votes in the way the Government wants?

Surely the regime should be able to rely on the trusted Council of Guardians. And the current Parliament has been filtered through two elections, with the Guardian Council weeding out the candidacy of almost all reformist “troublemakers”. (Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani said that this is Khamenei’s Majlis. Note that he forgot to mention that the Majlis is supposed to belong to the people.)

Yet it appears that, despite this supposed control of the legislative process, even a heavily-sanitized Majlis is no longer reliable, so rent-a-thugs have to be paraded in front of the Majlis and insult their own MPs.

Implications:

We are witnessing the use of regime demonstrators against an increasing number of people and institutions. That indicates, that for some reason, the regime’s internal structures are failing. Amidst what appears to be a serious crisis within the Islamic Republic,its institutions are unable to resolve it; at times they seem to be making it worse.

We are seeing increasingly angry speeches by Khamenei, directed at regime insiders, and comical announcements such as:

- It was announced aid ships were being sent to Gaza and escorted by the Revolutionary Guards. Then it was announced that no escort would be provided. Then it was announced that no aid ship would be sent, ostensibly to avoid war with Israel. Then it was announced that the ships did not go because Egypt had refused them permission to pass through the Suez Canal, only for Cairo to deny Tehran's claim.

- We have wildly varying timescales about self sufficiency in production of petrol: from 24 hours to more than two years. (The list is long and tiresome)

If all of this does not indicate a crisis, what would?

The Latest from Iran (29 June): Grading the Supreme Leader

2000 GMT: The Burning of Baha'i Houses. Radio Farda and BBC Persian Service report that the houses of dozens of Bahais were demolished and/or set ablaze in Mazandaran Province in northern Iran.

Radio Farda has an interview with an eyewitness, and the Baha'i spokeswoman in Geneva, Diane Allai, confirmed the story in a live interview with BBC Persian.

NEW Latest Iran Video: Harassment of Karroubi in Mosque (29 June)
NEW Iran: Can the Green Movement Ally with Workers? (Maljoo)
NEW Iran Snap Analysis: Waiting for the Crumbling?
Thinking Human Rights: Citizens, Technology, and the “Right to Protect” (Mazzucelli)
The Latest from Iran (28 June): Remembering 7 Tir?

1945 GMT: Threat of the Day. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says Britain has a “thick file of biased action” against Iran, so the Foreign Ministry is in agreement with complete severing of all cultural and educational relations with Britain.

Surprisingly, the news has not caused a mass outbreak of fainting and gnashing of teeth in the United Kingdom.

1930 GMT: Today's All is Well Alert. It comes from the head of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company, Farid Ameri, who says Iran sees no risks to its gasoline imports.

Up to 10 foreign oil companies have cut shipments to Iran, but Ameri insisted, "Under any conditions we are able to supply the country's gasoline needs and there is no problem in producing or importing gasoline."

1900 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Amir Kabir University student activist Behzad Heydari, detained on 22 Khordaad (12 June), has been freed after 15 days in solitary confinement.

Mahboubeh Karami, a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, will appear in Revolutionary Court on 28 June , 120 days after her arrest. Association for Women's Rights in Development has further information.

1800 GMT: The Battle over "Neda". The Los Angeles Times picks up on last week's story, noted on EA, of the "official" Iranian state media documentary on the death of Neda Agha-Soltan. The Times summary of Tehran's approach is complemented by Green Correspondents' dissection, in Persian, of the claims (Neda killed by mystery woman, Neda killed by "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq, Neda killed as part of "Western" plot, and so on).

1730 GMT: We have posted claimed video of Basiji harassment of Mehdi Karroubi --- and Karroubi's reaction --- at a mosque in Tehran today.

1400 GMT: Ahmadinejad  to Rafsanjani "Go". Curious story of the day comes out of the President's latest news conference: he allegedly said, when asked his reaction to Hashemi Rafsanjani's declaration that he was ready to retire, Ahmadinejad replied, "Very grateful".

1210 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that journalist Mahboubeh Khansari has been released on bail after four weeks in detention.

Mokhtar Asadi, a teacher’s union activist, was detained yesterday in Karaj.

1200 GMT: Labour Front. We've posted an assessment by Mohammad Maljoo of the relationship between the Green Movement and workers.

Rah-e-Sabz, via Peyke Iran, claims that about 10o oil refinery workers in Abadan held a protest; two were arrested.

0815 GMT: Watching the Diplomats. An important line buried in a Wall Street Journal article on former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian, who is now a visiting scholar at Princeton University....

"Javad Zarif, a pro-engagement former ambassador to the U.N., is under virtual house arrest in Tehran, said Western officials."

Zarif was the key Iranian diplomat in talks, broken off by the Bush Administration in spring 2003, between Tehran and Washington. At one point, he was supposed to join the staff of Tehran University's Institute of North American and European Studies --- now headed by Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi --- but the post never materialised.

0805 GMT: Regime Spinning. Iranian state media has used comments of Iran's Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, to declare that the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq "is at the end of its line".

But the better entertainment value comes out of the Revolutionary Guard's Javan, which warns, "3000 corrupt tourists from East Asian states heading for Iran".

0745 GMT: The International Front. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has again drawn Washington's lines on Iran and its nuclear programme.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Mullen said he believes Iran will continue to pursue nuclear weapons, despite sanctions, and that its achievement of that goal would be "incredibly dangerous". However, he asserted that a military strike against Iran would be "incredibly destabilizing" to the region.

0740 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Ali Tabi, a member of Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign, has been released from detention.

0730 GMT: Labour Front. Rah-e-Sabz reports on a rally of dismissed and unpaid workers of Tehran's Pars Metal in front of the President's office.

0710 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. Khabar Online takes note of the 10 foreign companies who have halted gasoline exports to Iran.

0655 GMT: Execution Watch. Zahra Rahnavard has issued a statement expressing her hope that reports of the imminent execution of Zeinab Jalalian, a Kurdish woman sentenced to death for membership of the separatist PKK, are just rumours.

0645 GMT: Budget Front. Reports indicate that a Parliamentary commission will finally approve the details of the President's 5th Budget Plan.

So will that stop the sniping against Ahmadinejad by a number of high-profile MPs?

0530 GMT: We start this morning with a quick analysis of signs of stagnation and even crumbling in the Iranian regime.

Meanwhile, more signs....

Secularism and the Supreme Leader

Two articles to note from the opposition Rah-e-Sabz. The website ventures into new ground with a commentary from Arash Naraghi, on the question, "Is it possible to be a secular Muslim?" The reply: "Yes, secularism is an appropriate condition for a good Muslim in a civil society."

And, in a rare English article, Rah-e-Sabz turns from secularism to Iran's top religious figure. It reports that a poll of readers shows 82% marked the Supreme Leader's performance as "very bad" (77.56%) or "bad" (4.52%) while only 4% thought he had been "good".

Keyhan and the CIA v. The Green Movement

Rah-e-Sabz also features a notable and "cheeky", as the British would call it, intervention by Ataollah Mohajerani, a minister in the Khatami Government and ally of Mehdi Karroubi.

Turning the regime's standard argument of foreign support for regime change,Mohajerani links the "hard-line" Keyhan to none other than the Central Intelligence Agency. He notes a provocative editorial by former CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht in The New York Times and claims, "Gerecht and those like him [including former Presidential candidate John McCain] support the Green Movement in order to hurt it."

Parliament v. President

The fallout from the dispute over control of Islamic Azad University, complete with demonstrations in front of Parliament, continues. MP Akbar Aalami asserts that the retreat of the Majlis retreat in front of uproars "is a novelty".

The Government Warns Its Own Officials

An advisor in the President's office has declared that officials who are challenging the Government, by creating blogs and not working enough, will be identified.

Earlier this spring, Government outlets said a special unit would be established to monitor officials for inappropriate behaviour.

Khabar Online adds that the main sites for Ahmadinejad supporters are www.valatarin.net and www.nasrclub.com.

Iran: Can the Green Movement Ally with Workers? (Maljoo)

Mohammad Maljoo writes for Middle East Report Online:

It is the custom of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to devise a name for each Persian new year when it arrives. On Nowruz of the Persian year 1388, which fell in March 2009 Gregorian time, he proclaimed “the year of rectifying consumption patterns”. But Iranians would not be content to mark 1388 simply with thrift. That year of the Persian calendar turned out to be the most politically tumultuous since the revolution that toppled the Shah, as the loosely constituted Green Movement mounted massive street protests against election fraud.

Undeterred, Khamenei has dubbed the year 1389 “the year of doubling ambition and doubling work”, telling Iranians that, having moderated how much they consume, they must now outdo themselves in how much they produce. On the eve of May Day 2010, however, a group calling itself the Iranian Celebration Council of International Workers’ Day posted an online statement heralding a work force “pregnant with strikes” soon to be born. The Celebration Council was not widely known before this statement, but its words spread like wildfire through the network of websites sympathetic to the Green Movement. Is it possible that the Supreme Leader has badly misnamed the annum for the second time in a row? Could the current year of the Persian calendar turn out not to double work but to halve it, as Iranian workers walk off the job in support of the last year’s political ferment?

To the Streets

The Green Movement has its origins in the deep splits within the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite at the juncture of the 30th anniversary of the revolution, the last occasion when the Iranian street reigned supreme. The undemocratic structures in the post-revolutionary state have since withstood numerous pushes, inside and outside parliament, for substantive change. Iran’s “reformist moment” of 1997-2004 was notable for the inability of parliamentary reformers to rally popular forces, whose demands were often too radical for the Islamist politicians. The 2009 upheavals were qualitatively different, as millions marched in support of one post-revolutionary state insider, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, against another, the hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Not long before his death that December, Mousavi’s newfound ally, the key revolutionary leader Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, made an unforgettable prognostication: “In the end the state will have no choice but to capitulate to the Green Movement.”

The intra-elite division is rooted in clashing political-economic interests, specifically the attempt of the narrow claque supporting Ahmadinejad to consolidate the levers of power in its own hands. Since Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005, his administration has largely ruled from behind closed doors, only rarely seeking to achieve its political goals through democratic procedure or even minimal consensus among other elements of the Islamic Republic. This move toward consolidation has been apparent in the economic domain as well, such as in the expansion of Revolutionary Guards business interests and the November 2009 statement by administration spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham that “the Basij militia should do its best to take over the industrial sector in Iran.”

The deepest split of all may be in attitudes toward the very institution of elections. On one side, the reformists and others who value the republican traits of the Islamic Republic have tended to consider elections to be the best way for the elite to settle internal disagreements. Within the limits imposed by the Islamic Republic, the faction whose ideas the people like best will be in charge. On the other side, the hardliners have showed less and less respect for the concept of popular participation in politics, manipulating the voting in their own favor and then demanding that the official results be accepted. For them, elections are a rubber stamp. For the first faction, . The Green Movement -- demanding a credible system for determining “Where’s my vote?” -- feeds the antipathy between the two wings of the elite because it is focused on their main bone of contention.

Meanwhile, the hardliners’ shenanigans have brought their rivals within the state together with forces in the street. In the course of the mid-2000s, the reformist clerics and even moderate conservatives have lost the right to be elected, at least in practice, while Iranian citizens have been further divested of their already restricted choices in elections. There is an economic side to the partnership as well. The Green Movement is largely (though not entirely) made up of middle-class urbanites whose aspirations are tied to the greater liberalization that the reformists generally supported. They are technocrats where the hardliners’ backers are less-educated political loyalists; they want Iran to be more open to global commerce in goods and ideas; they are often pious, but they wish Iran could shed its puritan image and dispense with some of the more oppressively “Islamic” aspects of the post-revolutionary republic. In the late 1990s, it looked like such change could be achieved gradually through the ballot box, but no longer. With this alliance of interests forged, the institution of elections turned from a site of political struggle into a subject of political struggle.

The new site of struggle became the street. For eight months after June 12, 2009, date of the disputed presidential election, the confrontations in Tehran avenues went through numerous ups and downs, generating all manner of predictions of rapid political transformation. After a time, however, it appeared that a balance of street power had been struck. Neither side had achieved its goal and neither had retreated from its initial position: The Greens continued to demand that the state revisit the official election result and the state continued to refuse.

February 11, marked every year as “victory day” for the Islamic Revolution, was widely anticipated as the day when the Greens would reassert their dominance in the street. The state sponsors large rallies on this occasion, and the Greens believed they could humble the hardliners with enormous counter-demonstrations. Unexpectedly, however, it was the hardliners who stole the stage, sending hundreds of thousands into the streets to outnumber the Greens, whose ranks had been thinned by an intensive police crackdown. The stalemate endured on June 12, the first anniversary of the disputed election. Protesters lined major boulevards, but the sheer number of police and Basij paramilitaries deployed by the hardliners prevented the pro-Green forces from claiming the streets as their own.

Pinning Hopes on Labor

Since February 11, one reaction to this state of affairs has been to pin hopes on the Iranian working class. The idea is that workers, presumably the primary targets of Khamenei’s Nowruz pronouncement, will follow the middle class onto the scene of mass politics to create a new site of struggle at the point of production. This notion has been particularly attractive to those active in the labor and left movement before and during the 1979 revolution. Saeed Rahnema, for example, “The regime will be in serious trouble when workers and employees in the major industries and in social and government institutions start a strike as they did in the time of the Shah. Strikes are the most important aspect in my view. The regime will not change with street demonstrations alone.”

Iran has witnessed several spirited labor actions in recent years, well-known examples being the wildcat strikes of Tehran bus drivers and schoolteachers. But these actions have not crystallized into what can be called a coordinated, militant labor movement. Furthermore, militancy has not yet appeared in the most sensitive sectors of the economy, oil and transportation of freight. Hossein Bashiryeh, for example, has reported that in 2001 Iranian workers embarked on 303 labor actions across the country, less than six percent of which took place in the oil and transport sectors. Over 45 percent of these 303 strikes were called in protest of delays in pay, and most others also concerned bread-and-butter issues; . These trends of diffusion of protest and relatively small-bore economic demands have held during the Ahmadinejad presidency.

Having said that, the working class has certainly not been absent from the hurly-burly of politics nor from the Green Movement to date. In May, the Center to Defend the Families of Those Slain and Detained in Iran published the names of ten workers who have been killed in post-election street protests, and there is much other evidence that the post-election dissidents include many people without university educations. The hope of Rahnema and others, however, is that workers will go beyond joining the protests and paralyze factories and oilfields by refusing to work. , when a coalition of pro-revolutionary white-collar and blue-collar workers in the public sector emerged to facilitate the final steps on the path toward overthrowing the Pahlavi regime.

The expectation that the working class will save the Greens nevertheless seems to rely implicitly on an invisible-hand analysis, conveying the impression that the economically disenfranchised will join the struggle en masse as if by spontaneous combustion. More than anything else, Ahmadinejed’s plan to phase out price subsidies for such staples as gasoline, bread, water and electricity has lent this analysis its allure. Subsidy reform is predicted to have hyperinflationary consequences, combining with international economic sanctions to hit the working class especially hard. , “Iran is entering a severe economic crisis that increasingly will worsen the condition of the working class. [Ahmadinejad’s] coup d’état government is unable to manage this crisis. We will witness an expansion of working-class struggle that will ally itself with the Green camp.”

Hope Against Hope

But the invisible-hand analysis of Green Movement supporters suffers from at least two flaws. It is not so clear, firstly, that the working class is eager to join hands with the Greens despite the unprecedented level of worker dissatisfaction with the establishment. Mir-Hossein Mousavi refers broadly to social justice themes in his own remarks about the economy, but the core of the Green Movement leadership is devoted to an Iranian version of trickle-down economics, according to which the masses will eventually enjoy the good life but only if the elites prosper first and furiously.

The Green Movement has offered little in terms of a redistributive vision that could motivate the working class to flex its muscles. From the viewpoint of the working class, the current battle is one between one faction that wishes to spread the country’s wealth around the various precincts of the elite and another that aims to monopolize it. The working class would just as soon cast a pox on both houses.Secondly, there is reason to question a linear narrative whereby increasing economic pressures necessarily lead to the entrance of workers into the struggle and successful political action.

Read rest of article....

UPDATED Iran Snap Analysis: Waiting for the Crumbling?

UPDATED: An EA reader responds to our thoughts with a second account from Iran: "Our family are rural. This is EXACTLY what my relative found on the economy. 'They' [Iranian authorities] are terrifed of the sanctions."

For me, the most striking statement on Monday came not from a President or a Supreme Leader, not from a Mousavi or Karroubi, but from a phone call from Tehran, summarised by an EA reader:

"A friend reported rising unemployment and prices for food and other commodities: meat costs 12 Euro/kg (about $6.50 per pound), i.e., the price has doubled within a year. He also said that the people have adopted a policy of passive resistance, watching the economy crumble, so that the regime cracks down."

Only one report and, of course, it could be exaggerated or even wishful thinking. But on 7 Tir --- yesterday's anniversary of the 1981 bombing that killed many in Iran's leadership, leaving martyrs such as Ayatollah Beheshti --- there was little to counter that message.



President Ahmadinejad once again focused on (took refuge in?) the "international", making the pointless declaration that Iran would "punish" the West for sanctions by refusing to hold uranium enrichment discussions until late August. The Supreme Leader's office, hoping to obscure the doubts about Iran's judicial process, issued a tangential statement denouncing the "propaganda" of the opposition and foreign media.

That was about that. The only public gathering that was noted were "hundreds" of Iranian who made a synchronised appearance in front of the French embassy to chant against foreign perfidy and the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, who carried out the 1981 attack.

Meanwhile, throughout the day, the drip-drip-drip of  economic and political news, pointing to erosion and division, continued....

The Latest from Iran (28 June): Remembering 7 Tir?

1835 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. In a decree issued on Monday,the Supreme Leader gave amnesty to 708 prisoners,based on the recommendations of the Iranian judiciary. No indication that any of those whose sentences were commuted were political prisoners.

1800 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. Finally, information arrives of French oil company Total's cessation of supplies to Iran (see 1020 GMT). "I can confirm that we have suspended [gasoline] sales to Iran," said spokesman Paul Floren.

1745 GMT: Loss of Expertise in State Department? Laura Rozen reports that John Limbert, the first ever Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran Affairs, is leaving his post in July.

NEW Thinking Human Rights: Citizens, Technology, and the “Right to Protect” (Mazzucelli)
Shanghai Power Politics: China Shuts Out Iran (Shan Shan)
The Latest from Iran (27 June): Grumbles

Limbert was distinctive in the Department because he was a fluent Persian speaker and held a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies. He was one of 52 Americans held in the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979-81.

Limbert is saying that he is stepping down because he has only a one-year leave of absence from his academic job at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.

1435 GMT: Karroubi's 7 Tir Moment. Meeting families of those killed in the 1981 bombing, Mehdi Karroubi dec;ared, “Recent events and the attacks on the members of the Parliament and other senior and prominent political figures prove that those who are in power today are after eliminating and isolating the figures and revolutionary fellows. [They are after] not only a certain political party but even the independent individuals from the country and the scene of the Revolution."

Karroubi added, "Unity will never be achieved by words and slogans. Unity will never be achieved by applying pressure and force, arrests, long detentions, insults and disrespect of senior religious figures, intimidation and threats, unjust disqualifications, shutting down the press, preventing the activities of political parties, and using these kinds of ridiculous methods. Unity will not be achieved by calling the great nation of Iran 'dust and dirt'."

Karroubi concluded, "Comforting the families of victims, release of political prisoners, identifying and firm and legal confrontation with those who use violence against the people, lifting the ban on media and legal activities of the political parties, freedom of speech, tolerance and listening to the opposition as long as they don’t use weapons, and the return to the principles of the Constitution and the high values of Imam [Khomeini] and the Revolution can be the essential steps toward establishing unity in the society.”

1430 GMT: Larijani the Nationalist. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani may be feuding with the President, but he is also trying to match Ahmadinejad phrase-for-phrase for Iranian defiance of the West. He has used a speech to a crowd in western Iran to address "the West": "You will have to bury your wish for shutting Iran's nuclear activities. The era that you could change conditions in Iran has ended. Today the (Iranian) people protect their national achievements and lay emphasis on them."

1325 GMT: The Universities Row. Rooz is claiming that, at the first meeting of Azad University trustees since the Parliament v. President argument over control, Ahmadinejad's appointed representatives were not allowed into the meeting. And Mir Hossein Mousavi was an invited guest.

Javan Online, linked to the Revolutionary Guard, is claiming that Rafsanjani and Mousavi have met to plot over the issue.

1310 GMT: Ahmadinejad "We Will, We Will Punish You". Unsurprising news of the day --- the President has chosen on 7 Tir to devote his attention to foreign challenges.

In an announcement which will no doubt bring much gnashing of teeth in Washington (or not), President Ahmadinejad told a news conference that Iran was prepared to return to uranium enrichment talks but only by late August, during the second half of the Muslim festival of Ramadan.

"It's a punishment to teach them a lesson to know how to have a dialogue with nations," he said. And he added the chest-pumping frosting on the cake with a warning to any power thinking of inspecting Iranian ships: "If they make the slightest mistake we will definitely retaliate."

Ahmadinejad's most notable reference to the internal situation was to claim, in the face of tougher US and UN sanctions, "If we decide today, we can halve our gasoline consumption overnight without damaging our economic growth."

1150 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that heavy prison sentences have been handed down to four student activists in Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign.

1040 GMT: And Now Khamenei.... The supposed highlight from today's statement by the Supreme Leader: "One of the big dangers is that political propaganda by various parties, newspapers, and foreign media will affect the right channel of judgment and legal proceedings."

1030 GMT: Posing for 7 Tir. Ahh, here we go. "Hundreds" of Iranians have gathered outside the French Embassy in Tehran in response to a demonstration in Paris last week by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

The NCRI is the overseas political committee for the People's Mohajedin Organization of Iran and the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO). The MKO carried out the bombing on 7 Tir (28 June) in 1981 that killed 73 leading officials of the Islamic Republic.

1020 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. A spokesman for Spain's largest oil company Repsol has confirmed that it is withdrawing from a contract to develop part of the South Pars gas field in Iran. Repsol's partner, Royal Dutch Shell, has declined to confirm whether it is withdrawing, although a spokesman said it will comply with any international trade restrictions.

(This is all window-dressing. Repsol and Shell suspended plans months ago, and Iran has already moved to give the projects to Iranian companies, including firms connected with the Revolutionary Guard.)

Britain's Financial Times is also putting out a report that France's Total is halting gasoline/petrol sales to Iran but, curiously, has no source for the claim.

0854 GMT: In Case You're Wondering. Why have I not been posting updates on the on-again, off-again, maybe-someday statements about an Iranian aid flotilla to Gaza? Well, because I never thought this was an initiative likely to come off, amidst the politics of Tehran and other countries.

For those keeping score, the latest report is that the Iranian Red Crescent has cancelled the sailing of a ship, blaming Egypt as well as Israel for preventing passage.

0850 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch (cont.). More on Hashemi Rafsanjani's statement for 7 Tir (see 0720 GMT). ...

The pro-reformist Radio Zamaneh publishes extracts and has no doubt that Rafsanjani is aiming at those in power: “The enemies have diversified and enemies disguised as friends have infiltrated our ranks....Divisiveness is called honesty, insult is called candour, lies are called tact, slander is called boldness and slogans are called insight.”

0745 GMT: The Regime and 7 Tir (So Far). There are no significant headlines in Fars News marking the 1981 bombing, and the Islamic Republic News Agency's reference is defensive, to say the least: a "member of the Assembly of Experts" says that the memory of Ayatollah Beheshti, slain on 7 Tir, does not belong to any one group.

0730 GMT: Economy Watch. Iranian state media are headlining the opening of a new phase of a major steel complex in Natanz, with President Ahmadinejad attending the ceremony.

Not-so-happy news, carried by Iranian Labor News Agency, is that malnutrition amongst children has risen 3 percent during the Ahmadinejad Government.

0725 GMT: Larijani Watch. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, continuing his manoeuvres against President Ahmadinejad, has asserted that "the independence of judiciary"" has not yet been seen.

Larijani's brother Sadegh is the head of the judiciary.

0720 GMT: Rafsanjani's Statement. Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has said, in a meeting with the families of the martyrs of the 1981 bombing, that today anyone who causes division among the people --- even if it claim good intentions --- is making a great and strategic mistake: “Today in a situation that we need unity more than before some visible and invisible hands are playing the division drum.”

As always, those who cause division are not specifically identified by Rafsanjani; however, he did give an important signal by strongly condemning the attacks against senior clerics and the family of the late Ayatollah Khomeini by pro-government groups.

0700 GMT: Today is the 29th anniversary of the bombing in Tehran that killed 73 leading officials of the young Islamic Republic, including the head of judiciary, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti.

We'll be having a look to see how the day is commemorated, but early signs are that it will be accompanied, if not overshadowed, by the tensions within the current Republic. The Beheshti family, in a pointed protest, have already cancelled a memorial ceremony, and reformist groups and opposition groups have pointed to 7 Tir as a reminder of the betrayals of the Government. As the family of the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri declare today, "It is not the Revolution that eats its children, but rather the opportunists that were opposed to the Revolution in the past, who change colour and destroy the children of the Revolution.”

Meanwhile....