The Latest from Iran (27 March): Rumours

2330 GMT: A Quick Note. We've taken the evening off to spend time with friends and unwind. We'll be back bright and early on Sunday.

Meanwhile, here's a new analysis for you: "Israel, Iran, and 'Existential Threat'".

1800 GMT: Public Funeral for Montazeri's Wife Blocked? Iranian officials have objected to a funeral procession for the wife of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who passed away today (see 1125 GMT), from the family house to the shrine of Masoumeh (the sister of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam of Shia) in Qom.

Ahmad Montazeri, the son of the Ayatollah, told BBC Persian that the officials limited the funeral ceremony to 150 metres from the burial site . The family objected, so the compromise is that the public can gather in the Masoumeh shrine where Grand Ayatollah Shobeyri-Zanjani will say the prayer.

The Latest from Iran (26 March): Break Time

1730 GMT: Temporarily Freed, Politically Active. Mostafa Tajzadeh, senior member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front and former Deputy Minister of Interior, continues to use his temporary release from prison to visit families of detainees and others who have been bailed but face long prison sentences. The last meeting is with key reformist thinker Saeed Hajarian, who was jailed for more than three months and put on trial after the June election.


1515 GMT: Academics and Political Prisoners. Students have sent an open letter to the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to protest the arrest of Abdollah Yousefzadegan, a law student at Allameh Tabatabai University and winner of the nationwide Olympiad of Literature. Yousefzadegan was detained on 15 March in Mashhad and has not yet been charged.

The letter condemns the harsh treatment of the academic elite and maintains that the arrest of Yousefzadegan “destroys the credibility of the judiciary and trust in the security institutions of the Islamic Republic".

1310 GMT: Rumour Denied. Mir Hossein Mousavi's website Kalemeh is denying the report, first circulated by Farda News, that Mousavi met Hashemi Rafsanjani on the first day of Nowruz.

1125 GMT: Rah-e-Sabz reports that the wife of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri passed away in Qom this morning. Her funeral will take place tomorrow 10:00 am local time.

Montazeri, the one-time successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, died in December.

1100 GMT: Nowruz Visits. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard saw the family of Amir Aboutalebi, a Mousavi advisor who has been detained since January. Despite the efforts of Aboutalebi's family, he was not granted temporary release for Iranian New Year. Aboutalebi recently had his first phone call with his family after 45 days of detention.

A group of pro-Green Movement students of Elm-o-Sana’at University, where Aboutalebi's children study, also sent their sympathy to the family. Aboutalebi was a political prisoner of the Shah, losing an eye during his detention and was also pursued by the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) after the Revolution.

0950 GMT: Reformist Challenge. Rasoul Montakhab-nia, the deputy head of the Etemade Melli party, has declared that the Government "cannot speak with language of force to people." Montakhab-nia say that this new year should be a year of forgiveness(for protesters, and that responsible political figures should try to involve all Iranians in the "nezam" (system) and Revolution of the Islamic Republic.

0940 GMT: Subsidy Fightback. The President's supporters are hitting back at Parliament's criticism of his economic manoeuvres (see 0755 GMT). Former Minister of Health Alireza Marandi says that the duty of the Majlis is to support the Government, while Lotfollah Forouzandeh asks the Parliament to take the burden off the Government's shoulders and accept the subsidy cuts and spending proposals.

0935 GMT: Friday Prayer Round-Up. Rah-e-Sabz has the highlights of prayer addresses throughout the country. An EA correspondent gives the top prize to Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi in Tehran with "the keys  God offered to the Supreme Leader" to solve Iran's problems.  Runner-up is  Ali Hajizadeh from Tabriz, who has discovered a "Velvet Revolution" in Iraq.

0925 GMT: Rumour of Day (2). The Iranian blog Che Mishavad (What Happens) blog claims that the Revolutionary Guard is laundering money, including revenues from drug smuggling, in Bahrain and Kuwait. The money is then placed through Ali Jannati, the son of Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, into a Swiss bank.

0915 GMT: Rumour of Day.  Rah-e-Sabz claims that the Supreme Leader promised Hashemi Rafsanjani that most political prisoners would be freed. However, when the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, tried to do so, the move was blocked by the "hard-line" Judge Abolqasem Salavati.

0755 GMT: The Subsidy Battle. Khabar Online keeps up the pressure on the President, featuring the claim of member of Parliament Hasan Qafouri Fard that Ahmadinejad is not authorised to call for a national referendum on his subsidy reduction and spending plans.

The Parliament approved an extra $20 billion in the Iranian budget from the subsidy cuts but has refused Ahmadinejad's $40 billion request.

0740 GMT: The relative quiet in Iran continues, as global attention focuses on the elections next door in Iraq. Press TV's top domestic headline is "Iran wins 3rd Sitting Volleyball World Championships".

There is a bit of a show for the first International Nowruz Celebrations in Tehran and Shiraz, as President Ahmadinejad tries to boost the image of international legitimacy. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon, and Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov are in Tehran for the two-day event, and Iranian state media reports that they will be joined by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek.

A useful story from the Carnegie Council, which gets behind all the sanctions huffing-and-puffing to identify the key development, "U.S. Pressures Oil Companies to Leave Iran". This passage deserves attention and repetition:

Since the start of 2010, oil giant Royal Dutch Shell stated it would no longer sell gasoline to Iran, along with Glencore (Switzerland), Vitol (Switzerland), and Trafigura (Amsterdam). British Petroleum and Reliance (India) stopped selling to Iran in 2009. With this series of departures, Iran now imports its oil from only five sources: Total (France), Lukoil (Russia), Petronas (Malaysia), Independent Oil Group (Kuwait), and Chinese companies. [Lukoil declared just this week that it, too, would divest.]

Iran: Reading Mousavi & Karroubi "The Fight Will Continue" (Shahryar)

Josh Shahryar writes for EA:

After the protests on 11 February and a lull over the past month, the two most important opposition figures have spoken yet again to cement their commitment to the movement seeking to topple President Ahmadinejad. While the rhetoric is much the same and clear strategies or plans of action are non-existent in both their speeches, there are several important points which, on closer inspection, speak volumes about the maturing of the movement since its inception.

UPDATED Iran Document: Full Text of Mousavi Speech on “Patience and Perseverance” (15 March)
The Latest from Iran (18 March): Uranium Distractions

The first signal that the Green Movement is alive and well, perhaps going through a process of change, comes from Mir Hossein Mousavi's speech to the Islamic Iran Participation Front:

My feeling for the future is that this movement is irreversible. We will never go back to the position we were in one year ago. I'm very hopeful of the future. We have to transfer patience and hope to people. We have to welcome them to patience and endurance. We will insist on the objectives of the Green Movement until they come to fruition.

In the first part of his speech, Mousavi turns his attention to the reform movement. While he accepts that the movement has faced and continues to face serious challenges, he also declares that the movement will continue. This is a slap in the fact for a government that has pretty much exhausted every tactic in a dictator's book to silence an opposition seeking change. At the same time, it is a reminder to the opposition movement that this change takes years to come about and that giving up now is not an option.

In other words, this is a marathon; not a sprint. Hold your horses, regroup and live to fight another day.

Mousavi then turns his attention to outside observers. While the Iranian Government has been backed repeatedly by China and Russia, Mousavi wants a clear break from the current policy of rebuking the West.

We want to regulate our foreign relations based on national interests, instead of winning so many enemies and leaving not a single friend with every speech. We should not be so adventuristic. Independence is a benediction the Islamic revolution bestowed upon us and we should not lose it. We have some problems with the US and Europe, but we should set our relations based on our national interests, security, safeguarding territorial integrity and national development and growth. Our foreign policy should not be adventurist, nor should it create tensions. We don't have reliable friends to count on in difficult conditions.

In other words, the current policy of the Iranian government is flawed and when the Green Movement succeeds, it will seek to repair ties with the West. With this, Mousavi has put the ball in the West's court while, at the same time, circumventing the mention of China and Russia as friends of the people of Iran.

Finally, Mousavi charters a new course for the Green Movement. It is no longer feasible to just get the educated and urban class to follow the opposition. The movement must look beyond them to find more allies.

If the movement intends to race ahead, it has to spread among people. We have to explain to people that the only option to alleviate economic pressure, reduce soaring divorce and resolve many other problems is to return to the Constitution.

Under the present circumstances, we should not limit our interactions to the elite and we should reach out to other influential groups, including teachers and laborers. We have to explain the ongoing conditions to them in order to win more hearts and minds. We have to have our voice heard by all classes

In other words, if change is slow and time-consuming, what better way to use the duration than to win more allies by working steadily and changing minds among the less affluent classes? Mousavi seems to be alluding to the way Imam Khomeini operated more than three decades ago --- by making alliances and spreading the movement among the populace.

If Mousavi decided not to criticize the government as harshly as the opposition might have expected, Mehdi Karroubi, also speaking to the Islamic Iran Participation Front, took charge and made matters quite clear. He first took apart Ahmadinejad and Co. for criticizing the BBC and alleging that foreign media outlets were helping the Green Movement, asking asked why were there no criticisms against BBC when it was "assisting the Revolution". Karroubi reminded his detractors that Ayatollah Khomeini took advantage of all news agencies and media in his political struggles against the monarchy and no one in the Islamic Republic would accuse him of having foreign ties.

At the end of his speech, Karroubi said what many in the Green Movement were waiting to hear. In his harshest criticism of the system so far, Karroubi claimed that the Islamic Republic which the people voted for in the beginning of the Revolution "is not the Islamic Republic that we now have".

Both statements are more candid and bolder than those made by Karroubi and Mousavi earlier in the crisis. Perhaps the Green Movement is indeed moving into a different direction after 11 February.

The Latest from Iran (14 March): False Strategies, Real Conflicts

1910 GMT: More on the Universities Purge (see 1145 GMT). The Revolutionary Guards get in on the act, with Yahya Rahim-Safavi, the former commander and current advisor to the Supreme Leader, declaring, "The universities aren't in good shape today, missing from them are revolutionary forces and experts who are beholden to the Imam, the Supreme Leader, and the Constitution."

Rahim-Safavi, speaking at a conference organized for the "cultural experts" of the IRGC, said, "The goal of soft war is to change the culture, values and beliefs of the youth....Our weakness is in this very issue of culture, which our enemies have identified before we did. Therefore we must battle against and overcome the attacking culture with our soft and cultural power."

NEW Iran: The Opposition’s Campaign in the US — Sequel With Revelations and A Lesson
NEW Iran: Connecting the Dots — 5 Signs of Regime Trouble
NEW Iran Letter: “I Am Still Alive to Tell the Story” (Shams)
Iran Special: Zahra Rahnavard on Women’s Rights and The Green Movement
Iran: The Opposition’s New PR Campaign in the US
Iran Analysis: Rafsanjani’s “Finger in the Dike” Strategy
The Latest from Iran (13 March): Settling In

1830 GMT: Let's Make Up a Cyber-War. More regime propaganda --- the Revolutionary Guard has briefed the Parliament on the nefarious cyber-plot of the opposition around Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, bringing in names like the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and human rights activist Ahmad Batebi. (There's a video as well.)

After the briefing, the head of Parliament's National Security Committee said Human Rights Activists in Iran had fabricated a list of killed protesters and passed it to Mir Hossein Mousavi.


1725 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch --- One Who Did Not Remain Silent. Emad Bahavar, head of the youth branch of the Freedom Movement of Iran, has been re-arrested.

Bahavar was arrested earlier this year and released after a short period. However, instead of refraining from criticism of the regime, he wrote a long, incisive analysis of "The Hardliners' Project".

On Wednesday, after Bahavar had appeared in court to defend his case, security forces raided his house without a warrant, threatened his family, and confiscated personal possessions. Bahavar was re-arrested when he went to court to protest the illegal behaviour.

1705 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The former Chief Executive Officer and founder of Persian Blog, Mehdi Boutorabi has been arrested.

1700 GMT: We've posted an update and an analysis of this weekend's "opposition campaign", which proved to be far less than a campaign, in the US.

1530 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi has confirmed that Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh has been released for 15 days on $800,000 bail.

1525 GMT: Really, They Are All US-Sponsored "Cyber-Terrorists". Fars continues the propaganda overload attacking human rights activists with an "analysis" claiming that the Bush Administration and the CIA launched a $400 million campaign in 2006 for a cyber-battle against Iran.

This is a convenient pretext for Fars to lump together all the "bad guys" --- the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, monarchists, Baha'is, and human rights activists --- as traitors. Named groups includes Human Rights Activists in Iran, Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi's Center for Defense of Human Rights, and the Human Rights Committee and the One Million Signatures campaign for women's equality.

1515 GMT: Stopping the Fire Festival. As our readers have noted, the Supreme Leader has turned on one of Iran's national ceremonies, Chaharshanbeh Souri, as an event “void of religious roots and cause of great harm and corruption".

Chaharshanbeh Souri, which takes place on the eve of Iranian New Year, is an ancient Iranian pagan festival with the building of bonfires and symbolic gestures and chants. These summon the fire to burn all sickness and lend its energy to a healthy new year.

1500 GMT: Back from a family break (Happy Mother's Day to all those celebrating in Britain) to go on Rafsanjani Watch.

Looks like the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has continued his careful prodding of the Government, this time with attention to state media. He urged Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (Seda va Sima) not to operate as “a gang”, warning that it would lose the trust of the public if it did so. He added that IRIB needs to assume a more “national” approach and pay more attention to people.

1145 GMT: Purge the Universities!

Press TV, from Islamic Republic News Agency, reports that up to 130 Iranian members of Parliament have written the Minister responsible for higher education, Kamran Daneshjoo, calling for strict action to be taken against proponents of secularism in universities throughout Iran.

The legislators warned Daneshjou of the activities that were carried out in universities by "certain individuals who are hostile toward the Islamic system". They insisted, "The cultural message of the [1979] Islamic Revolution is the most important topic that university professors and the elite must seek to promote....Activities of individuals, who feel enmity toward the Islamic establishment, are unacceptable. What is more, nowhere in the world are resources and opportunities generously handed out to those who seek to bring down the establishment and the principles that society is governed by."

Of course, the demand of the MPs for "serious and decisive" action against "the enemies of the Islamic establishment," "proponents of secularism," and "those who work to weaken the government" is a political set-up for the regime to get rid of unacceptable professors and limit scholarships and overseas education to only "proper" students. Last week Daneshjoo used a speech to denounce "deviant" academics.

0920 GMT:~Khomeini in the Cold. Looks like the regime is going to continue treating the family of the late Ayatollah Khomeini as too dangerous to acknowledge, given their criticisms of the Government. The memorial service for Khomeini's son Ahmad has been cancelled due to "mausoleum repairs". Most ceremonies at the Khomeini site since June 2009 have been postponed.

0915 GMT: Two Sunday Specials for You. We feature a defiant weblog from released detainee Foad Shams, "I Am Still Alive to Tell the Story", and Mr Verde has an analysis of 5 Signs of Regime Trouble.

0910 GMT: A Lament for the Election. Eshagh Jahangiri, the Minister of Industries and Mines in the Khatami Government, has declared that, after the Presidential vote on June 12, the chances of progress were lost for Iran.

OK, he would say that as he's a reformist, right? Yes, but the location of the criticism...the not-so-reformist Khabar Online.

0900 GMT: No More Satire --- Iran's Changing Flag. Remember a couple of months ago that we posted a comedy story about the apparent changing of the colours in Iran's flag, removing Green for Blue?

Well, look likes we might have to replace our satire warning for a label that this is Very Serious. From Khabar Online:

At the last session of Iran's Guardian Council in the current Iranian year (ends on March 20) held today, the speaker of the entity, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, answered the questions raised by the journalists.
He said that if a trustable evidence is provided on the national flag color change at the recent state ceremonies, the council will probe the issue."

"The rules are transparent on this case and must be abided by all executive bodies. If it's true, those organizations which have committed such act should be questioned," he maintained.

Recently at some ceremonies held by the government, the green stripe on the Iranian flag had changed to blue or black, including one attended by the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad staged a in Tehran for the head of the state-funded Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). At the ceremony in a graphic design behind Ahmadinejad, the green stripe of the country's national flag had turned to blue.

0650 GMT: I thought at one point on Saturday that the main story might be an opposition initiative to sway American opinion, with a purported spokesman for Mehdi Karroubi holding forth to US journalists in a press conference and private talks.

That proved a fizzle, however, as the "former senior aide" primarily offered a distracting thesis of an Ahmadinejad-Khamenei split and got little coverage from a nuclear-focused (obsessed?) US media. The New York Times, for example, prefers a tangential thinkpiece by David Sanger, and The Washington Post is also off on a Tehran and the Bomb story.

Still there's an important lesson for the Green Movement here in the diversion and possibly damage of those claiming to be "spokesmen" for the opposition, when they are in fact expressing primarily personal opinions, and how they could built up as Green representatives by a media started of significant information from inside Iran. We'll have an update later today.

So what were the real stories? Well, there is what appears to be a regime strategy to break the opposition through the "revolving door" of releasing some detainees --- with the threat that they go back to prison if they step out of line --- and taking new prisoners with declarations of terrorists front groups and agents for the US.

On Saturday, a number of high-profile prisoners, notably journalists and the Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh, were reportedly freed. At the same time, the campaign to break human rights organisations was declared with the propaganda of media like Fars and Kayhan, with their announcements of dozens of arrests of campaigners linked to the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq and Washington, and the attack on the websites of Human Rights Activists in Iran.

The latest statement from the Revolutionary Court declares that those arrested belong to a group called “Iran Proxy,” which is accused of
“downloading national databases, infiltrating and sabotaging internet sites, resisting government filtering efforts, creating secure spaces for users of internet networks, creating secure telephone lines and data for interviews with Radio Farda, Radio Zamaneh and television networks of Voice of America”. The Court alleges, in a reference to a campaign to distribute anti-filtering software so Iranians can access the Internet, “Members of Iran Proxy in Iran were in receipt of significant salaries in Iran in order to distribute over 70 thousand proxies through the internet.”

Then, however, there is the news of pressure on the Government, not through manufactured rings of secret US-backed agents but through members of Parliament. The  story of the battle between the Majlis and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the President's budget and subsidy reform plan seems to have attracted little notice. But, after the President appealed to the Supreme Leader and then gate-crashed the Parliament and still lost the vote on his proposal, it is a sign of Ahmadinejad's authority in jeopardy.

The Latest from Iran (13 March): Settling In

2250 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Rah-e-Sabz has published a list of 192 detainees in Section 240 of Evin Prison. Activists have noted that the list is incomplete.

2240 GMT: Human Rights --- The Regime's Breakdown Strategy. But if the Iranian Government on the one hand is offering release from prison if detainees (including a number of prominent journalists and political activists) are silenced, it is also moving aggressively to break apart the human rights movement.

NEW Iran Special: Zahra Rahnavard on Women’s Rights and The Green Movement
NEW Iran: The Opposition’s New PR Campaign in the US
NEW Iran Analysis: Rafsanjani’s “Finger in the Dike” Strategy
UPDATED Iran Document: The Hardliners’ Project — Full Text (Bahavar)
Iran: An Opening Thought on the Disconnection in Washington
Video: “Iran at a Crossroads” Conference (10 March)
The Latest from Iran (12 March): Assessments

The propaganda strategy of tarnishing human rights activists has been re-doubled tonight with Kayhan joining Fars in declaring that 25-30 activists have been arrested because they serve as "cover" for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq and US-sponsored cyber-warfare.


Human Rights Activists in Iran's websites are still hacked and redirected to gerdab.ir (a website reportedly run by the Revolutionary Guard) this evening.

2230 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch --- The Regime's Release Strategy.

One of the two big stories this evening is of a flurry of releases from Evin Prison. According to BBC Persian, prominent journalists Lili Farhadpour, Vahid Pourostad and Somayyeh Momeni have been released, all on personal bail (someone else is ready to go to jail if the terms of bail are broken) or small monetary bails. However, other prominent reporters such as Akbar Montajabi, Ehsan Mehrabi and Emad Baghi, are still behind bars.

An EA source also reports that Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh, who had been imprisoned for 15 years, has been released. The terms are unknown.

1810 GMT: Cyber-War on Human Rights. Ahmad Batebi, a spokesman for Human Rights in Iran, confirms that all HRA websites have been hacked and visitors redirected to the regime's "cyber-war" site gerdab.ir.

1800 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. While his ally Hassan Rohani attacks the Government (see 1340 GMT), Hashemi Rafsanjani continues his political balancing act with a statement that students should not remain silent in political matters but should communicate their demands in a “logical” manner in order to achieve reform.

Rafsanjani advised students to evaluate the current situation so they did not create excuses for people who are trying to use "security" as pretext to take control of society. He expalined added, “The atmosphere needs to remain logical and wise...[so those who] are expressing good ideas will ultimately triumph.” Students should speak in a manner so their enemies could not “take advantage” of them.

1755 GMT: The Attack on Human Rights Activists. The website of Human Rights Activists News Agency, on the same day that HRA was accused of being a cover group for terrorism and cyber-warfare (see 1735 GMT), has been hacked by Iranian authorities. The site re-directs to gerdab.ir, which activists claim is a location which tracks its visitors.


1750 GMT: Football and Politics. The latest YouTube video claiming that football has been used as a vehicle for protest comes from a match in Tabriz. Confirmation of the slogan being chanted by the crowd would be appreciated.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH1rP-f90Hw&feature=youtu.be&a[/youtube]

1735 GMT: Propaganda (or Worse) Item of Day. Fars News has claimed that Human Rights Activists in Iran is a cover group for the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) with links to the US Government in a cyber-war against Iran. Naming (in other words, targeting) some of the members, Fars claims that 30 people who provided anti-filtering software have been arrested. It adds that Iranian authorities have asked Interpol to arrest HRA members outside Iran.

1730 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Azar Mansouri, a senior member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been sentenced to three years in prison. She was convicted of "disturbing public order while participating in gatherings, issuing propaganda against the regime, spreading lies and plotting to harm national security".

1340 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch (and This is Definitely Worth Watching). Tehran Times have now posted an English version of Rafsanjani ally Hassan Rohani's attack on the Government (0940 GMT) and, even in translation, it is striking:

*Speaking at a ceremony to mark the first death anniversary of the late Imam Khomeini’s wife, Rohani...said, “We should not allow a group to make attempts to eliminate another group.”

Interpretation: The Government should back off attempts to "break" or contain Rafsanjani through pressure on his family. Could Rohani be also be warning against an attempt to break reformist leaders?

*It should not be allowed that some elements dare to make every improper and derogatory remarks against Imam’s household and companions, he emphasized.

Interpretation: Stop attacking Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the Imam's grandson, who has been critical of the Government and supportive of the opposition.

*The cleric added some figures believe that the country can be governed by a particular group, but according to Imam’s teachings all people should be engaged.

Interpretation: If a Government is not legitimate, then....

*He also noted that Imam used to attach high importance to the people’s votes and even put the name of the Islamic Republic to the vote.

Interpretation: Well, in the context of June 2009 and "Where is My Vote?", what would you think?

If Rohani is speaking on behalf of Rafsanjani, this is a powerful signal that the former President is now going to let Ahmadinejad rest easy.

1300 GMT: Iran Nuke Update --- Larijani Yes, Ahmadinejad No. You really can't get much more blatant than this from Khabar Online:

Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani paid his last foreign visit in the current Iranian year to Japan. As he earlier has made notable diplomatic achievements through his trips, many local analysts believe the diplomacy adopted by Parliament Speaker reveals the flops and drawbacks of governmental diplomacy.

Larijani's diplomacy consisted of putting forth the proposal for Japan to serve as the 3rd country in a deal to enrich Iran's uranium overseas.

1250 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Kurdish writer Susan Mohammadkhani Ghiasvand has been arrested at her home in Karaj.


1245 GMT: Student Protests. Students at Mazandaran University have carried out a two-day hunger strike to protest pressure from university officials. About 15 students had been summoned by the university's disciplinary committee.

1230 GMT: Economy Watch. Opponents of the Ahmadinejad economic strategy are warning that workers' "real wages" will drop 50% in this Iranian year. Labour organisations are demanding a guaranteed minimum wage.

1215 GMT: Women's Rights and the Green Movement. We have posted an extensive, illuminating interview with Zahra Rahnavard: "-It is impossible to expect that the general political movement — in this case, the Green Movement — will be able to successfully eliminate inequality and violence against women without help from an established and independent women’s movement."

1010 GMT: Qalibaf Attacks. An interesting intervention from Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who has kept a low profile but has still been linked to an anti-Ahmadinejad group within the conservatives. In an interview, he has pronounced that Iran has "no time for errors" because "for 14 months no serious work has been done in this country". Qalibaf say dissidents should be invited to share revolutionary goals through hard work.

0940 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Hassan Rohani, a member of the Expediency Council and an ally of Hashemi Rafsanjani, has  sharply attacked the Government. He said some people want to govern the country with a gang, but Iranians should not allow society to fall into superstition and petrification.

0930 GMT: Rafsanjani Blackout? Rah-e-Sabz has published what it claims is a memorandum from management of the Islamic Republic News Agency, ordering staff not to publish the image of Hashemi Rafsanjani.

0830 GMT: Parliament Slaps Down Ahmadinejad? Have to admit that I missed this while I was on the road....

The latest chapter on the battle over the President's budget has been written over Ahmadinejad's insistence on being able to spend $40 billion of the savings from his subsidy reform plan; Parliament had authorised only $20 billion.

The week began with a meeting between Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani and the Supreme Leader, a day after Ahmadinejad requested Khamenei's help. It ended yesterday when the President showed up at the Majlis to make a speech (he has done this before in the post-election crisis, even though it is a technical violation of Parliamentary rules). Ahmadinejad insisted, “I don’t believe in inflation, and inflation will decrease next year.”

The speech and the President's personal lobbying were not enough: the Parliament voted 111-105 against the $40 billion proposal.

0825 GMT: We've posted a separate entry on what appears to be a new push by Iranian opposition leaders, through representatives, to sway US political opinion.

0745 GMT: Rumour of Day - Khamenei and Ahmadinejad Split? Tehran Bureau reports the claim of "a senior aide to opposition cleric Mehdi Karroubi that Iran's supreme leader has cooled his support for president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad". The assertion was made to journalists at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Friday.

Beyond the headline, it's not much of a story. The senior aide "who worked with [Karroubi] for more than 25 years" is not actually in Iran but living in exile (while he is anonymous in the TB story, skilled Iran-watchers will identify him easily). The claim --- at least as reported in the article --- has no specific evidence but echoes a number of points (such as the incident over Ahmadinejad's close ally Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai) that we have noted since last summer.

What is far more significant is that this is a renewed Green Movement push to get support in the US. Putting forth the vision of a Khamenei-Ahmadinejad rift tries to shift a US Government which is based solely on "engagement"; it may even accept that Washington can work with the Supreme Leader while boycotting the President.

Even more important, but tucked away in the TB story, is this assertion from the senior aide: "The end goal is to have transparent, free and fair elections....Once that happens, you can be certain the Iranian people will elect [a president] who will secure peaceful and friendly relations with the world."

Last October, when a senior aide to Karroubi appeared at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, US journalists criticised the Green Movement's speaker for refusing to declare acceptance of Israel and renunciation of Iran's nuclear programme. In this article, no mention of the Israelis or the Bomb and thus no cause for a dismissal of the Greens.

Instead, the senior aide said that the Obama Administration's nuclear-first approach, at the expense of ignoring Iran's human rights violations, is "exactly what Ahmadinejad wants....If the U.S. reverses this approach and focuses on pressuring Iran for its human rights abuses...this is what the Iranian government fears most." he said.

And another point to notice:

Karroubi's aide recommended the use of "smart sanctions", targeted financial sanctions against members of the Revolutionary Guard. "For such sanctions to be truly 'smart', we need only to look at the multitude of companies set up in Dubai in the past 3-5 years," he said, hinting that much of import traffic to Iran from the UAE happened under the auspices of the Guards....

"As an Iranian, I'd hate to see our citizens suffer. But even if they are hurt in the short term, whatever shortens the life of this government is in the interests of the [Iranian] people."

0720 GMT: A US Rights-Based Strategy? While the panellists at Wednesday's NIAC conference were all focused on a nuclear-first approach to Iran (and I haven't forgotten that I owe you an analysis of the event), there are signs that the US Government is pursuing a more nuanced strategy.

On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley issued a statement of Washington's "increasing concern" about Iran's "ongoing persecution" of religious minorities, including Baha'is, and called on Tehran to protect human rights at home.

Crowley noted that at least 25 Baha'is have been detained recently and as many as 60 are now imprisoned in Iran "solely on the basis of their religious beliefs". He also asserted that Iranian authorities had detained more than a dozen Christians, "some of whom are being held in custody without substantiated charges".

Crowley's statement follows Thursday's State Department release ofits annual review of human rights conditions around the world, which including a sharply-worded section on Iran. The report claimed Iran is continuing to restrict freedom of expression and assembly, with 70 people killed and 4,000 more detained since June 2009.

0710 GMT: After five days on the road, a chance to catch breath and review the latest in Iran....

We begin with a separate analysis, as Masoud Shafaee considers the manoeuvres of Hashemi Rafsanjani: "While Rafsanjani’s current primary concern may be preventing Ahmadinejad from tearing Iran’s already-polarized political landscape asunder, that may in time prove to be lead to his grander scheme: he was the boy who saved the city from ruin."

A new website publishes (in Persian) details of 109 victims of post-election conflict.

An open letter by activists calls for immediate assistance for more than 5000 Iranian refugees displaced by the post-election crisis and living in Turkey.

Iran Analysis: Rafsanjani's "Finger in the Dike" Strategy

Masoud Shafaee writes at The Newest Deal:

As the Persian Nowruz New Year fast approaches and Iran's post-election crisis enters its ninth month, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani remains as mercurial a figure as ever in Iranian politics. True to his nickname of Kooseh, or "The Shark", Rafsanjani has been paying lip-service to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei while simultaneously signaling (if only tacitly) solidarity with Iran's Green opposition movement. With his reputation as an incredibly calculating figure, it is hard to believe that this contradiction is coincidental. In fact, Rafsanjani's high level of influence in the system may be paradoxically inhibiting him from more closely aligning with the Green Movement.

In many ways, Rafsanjani's position resembles that of the boy who stuck his finger in the leaking dike in Hans Brinker's classic tale.



In the story, the boy's plugging of the hole with his finger was not an attempt to solve the problem at hand, but rather, to prevent an immediate and far more dangerous outcome from occurring. Had the boy gone to fetch help to repair the dike, the levee would have broken and the city would have been flooded. By staying at the dike all night -- not fixing the problem, but preventing it from worsening -- the boy bought time until others discovered him the next morning and were able to make necessary, lasting repairs.

Rafsanjani may find himself in similar circumstances and equally incapable of making a significant move. Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard have shown no intention of curbing their quest to completely control the Islamic Republic. What started out as a President hand-in-hand with the Supreme Leader (with his undoubted blessing of plans to rig the June election) has grown into something far greater. Only one month after the election, Ahmadinejad publicly disobeyed Khamenei by failing to immediately withdraw Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai as his top deputy after the Supreme Leader voiced his disapproval. A month later, he showed up unannounced in the Majlis parliament flanked by his armed bodyguards. Constitutional rights have been discarded in countless instances. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement that "Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship" appears troublingly accurate.

One factor that has arguably prevented a complete takeover of the regime from already occurring is the enormous weight that Rafsanjani carries inside of Iran. A father-figure of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, head of two constitutional branches of government, and a man of considerable wealth and influence, Rafsanjani has in many ways served as a buffer to Ahmadinejad's megalomaniacal ambitions. And while by no means himself a democratizing figure, Rafsanjani's perceived loyalty to the Supreme Leader (and the ruling theocracy) has gone to ensure that he remains a formidable presence in the country's politics, thereby creating space for the Green Movement to breathe, evolve, and grow. Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani's recent remarks labeling "those who want to exclude Rafsanjani" from the system as "irrelevant" speaks of just this clout.

This public backing of Khamenei came as recently as two weeks ago, when Rafsanjani reaffirmed his support for the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih. “Our focal point is clear and that is the constitution, Islam, the principle of the office of the jurisprudent and supreme leadership,” he said. Statements such as this are far more calculated than simply supporting the Supreme Leader for the sake of winning political capital. Indeed, Rafsanjani is essentially forcing Khamenei to own the very mess that he created. This was just the case when he stated back in December and again earlier this month that the Supreme Leader is “the only one” capable of unifying the country out of the current crisis. While elevating the position of the Supreme Leader with false praise, Rafsanjani’s words actually directly clash with the regime’s official line that there is in fact “no crisis in the country" to begin with.

This obviously does not mean that the Supreme Leader will lead the country out of crisis, nor would it excuse his actions were he to do the unthinkable and actually reverse course and unify the country. Rather, it points to Rafsanjani’s maneuvering within the system. He is not with the Greens per se, but he is taking steps that ultimately help their cause. He is not fixing or replacing the dike; he is plugging the hole until help arrives.

But just as Rafsanjani has been cautious to not stray too far from the conservative camp, he has also been equally cognizant of the need to reassure the Greens that he shares many of their same concerns. His daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, has phrased it less ambiguously,claiming that her father's demands "are the same as the Green Movement." When asked of the possibility of political reconciliation, she went even further, stating that any compromise would be "out of the question" if it did not take into account the gross violation of people's rights. The fact that the Iranian judiciary has now filed charges against Faezeh Hashemi (and her brother Mehdi) for "fomenting riots" in Tehran only adds to the credibility of the Rafsanjani name within Green circles.

Whether Rafsanjani is technically a 'Green' or not, comments posted on his website following his Khobregan [Assembly of Experts] address are unmistakably similar to some of the criticisms coming from the leaders of the Green Movement. Comparing the current crisis to the events surrounding the 1906-1911 Constitutional Revolution, Rafsanjani said that certain individuals, while conspiring against the regime, pretend to be supporting the ideals of the Islamic Revolution. With the proper historical context, his message is less veiled: much like how the country's very first National Assembly collapsed, leading to the coup d'etat of Reza Shah in 1921, the regime faces similar dangers today from those who carry the regime's banner but stray from its ideals. Mir-Hossein Mousavi made a similar assessment when he told Kalemeh in a post-22 Bahman interview that the refusal to listen to the people's demands "is a sign of tyranny and a distortion of the ideals of the Islamic Revolution."

And while "the Shark" has kept a relatively low profile during the last few months  -- at least when compared to the increasingly pointed rhetoric of both Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi -- his maneuvering within the Islamic Republic's framework points to a strategy to align with some of the more immediate goals of the Green Movement. Just as Mousavi called for the reform of electoral laws in his 17th statement, the Expediency Council  -- a constitutional body which Rafsanjani chairs -- began considering a proposal that would take away the Guardian Council's vetting role, and instead give it to a new "National Election Committee." The committee, not coincidentally, would be under Rafsanjani's supervision at the Expediency Council. It should also be noted that Rafsanjani himself alleged election fraud following his defeat in the 2005 presidential election to none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Yet it would be remiss to neglect mentioning that Khamenei ordered the new election plans to be drawn up two years ago. The plans, in other words, outdate post-election developments. Irrespective of their origin, there is no chance that the regime, facing its greatest crisis since its inception, will suddenly decide to make itself more democratic, and inevitably, more vulnerable.

Rafsanjani's intentions should not be seen in an altruistic or nationalist light. If he is indeed scheming to help the Greens, then he is surely being driven in part by his own political ambitions. For this was Ayatollah Khomenei's right-hand man, a two-term (and almost three-term) president, and still the head of two powerful constitutional bodies. He is Iran's de facto number-two. Helping the Green Movement's cause ultimately helps his cause: more power.

While Rafsanjani's current primary concern may be preventing Ahmadinejad from tearing Iran's already-polarized political landscape asunder, that may in time prove to be lead to his grander scheme: he was the boy who saved the city from ruin.