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.]

The Latest from Iran (26 March): Break Time

1935 GMT: We Will, We Will Rescue You. It's Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi taking Tehran's Friday Prayers, and he's a man with a mission:

We should focus our efforts on freeing Americans from under the yoke of the two ruling parties in the United States. We want to save the West and spread morality in the world. We should concentrate our efforts on the international revolution and rescuing nations from the rule of arrogant powers.

Seddiqi also criticised President Obama for supporting Iran's "civil rights activists".

(So Seddiqi is denouncing the US Government's intervention in another country's affairs but calling on the Iranian Government to...intervene in another country's affair. Well, that seems logically consistent.)

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The Latest from Iran (25 March): Lying Low

1930 GMT: Opening Communications. The United Nations' communications agency, the International Telecommunication Union, has called on Iran on Friday to end jamming of foreign satellite broadcasts.


The statement follows a similar announcement by the European Union earlier this week.

1920 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch.  A story to treat with caution, but interesting if true: Rah-e-Sabz is claiming, from a source close to Hashemi Rafsanjani, that the former President has said that people should continue their protests to insist that their demands are met. Rafsanjani allegedly pointed to the end of the Nowruz holidays on 12 Farvardin (next Thursday, 1 April) as an occasion for public demonstrations.

1320 GMT: Nowruz Visits. Mostafa Tajzadeh, former Deputy of Minister of Interior and senior member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, has used his temporary release to visit families of political prisoners who were not freed for the holidays. Amongst those seen by Tajzadeh and his wife were the families of Mohammad Nourizad, the filmmaker and former editor-in-chief of Kayhan, Davood Soleimani, member of Islamic Iran Participation Front, journalist Emadeddin Baghi.

1145 GMT: Iran Nukes No, Pakistan Nukes OK. How far will the US go to keep economic pressure on Tehran? This from Asia Times Online:

In 2008, after several years of negotiations, nuclear-armed India and the United States signed a civilian nuclear deal that in essence allowed India access to civilian nuclear technology and fuel from other countries even though it is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Pakistan, which like its neighbor India has a nuclear arsenal and is not a signatory to the NPT, has long been rankled by India's deal, wanting one of its own with the US. This topic featured high on the agenda of a top-level Pakistani delegation that held talks in Washington this week with senior US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Washington, with some reservations, has been receptive to Pakistan's wishes, especially as Islamabad has emerged as a key strategic partner in the efforts to bring the war in Afghanistan to a conclusion, and in dealing with al-Qaeda and militancy in general in the region.

There will be a price: the US, according to analysts who spoke to Asia Times Online, wants Pakistan to walk away from the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project.

Last year, Islamabad and Tehran finalized a US$7.5 billion deal to transfer gas 2,775 kilometers from fields in Iran to terminals in Pakistan, and this month they signed an operational agreement on the project, despite US opposition.

The US, as it seeks to isolate Iran and impose sanctions on it over Tehran's nuclear program, is a vocal critic of the pipeline project, which was initially to have included a third leg going to India. India dropped its participation in the project, ostensibly over pricing disagreements; there is widespread belief that it did so to secure the nuclear deal with the US.

1040 GMT: The Bunker-Busting Bomb Iran Story. This is one that won't go away: Abdul-Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of Al Arabiya TV, writes in Asharq al-Awsat, "The perplexing question: Will a war be launched on Iran if the economic sanctions fail?"

The evidence is the revelation of the move of bunker-piercing bombs to a US base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Office. I can only repeat what I have posted in comments as this issue has percolated. This move would have been made irrespective of the current crisis with Iran: it is part of a "force projection" plan by the US military in the region, with a view not only to asserting an image of superiority vis-a-vis Iran but also in cases such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

0935 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that Mitra Aali, a graduate student at Sharif University was detained by the Ministry of Intelligence on 10 March and her whereabouts are now unknown.

RAHANA also reports on other political prisoners, including Behrooz Javid Tehrani, who are being held in solitary confinement and inhumane conditions at Evin Prison.

Aali, detained on two previous occasions since the June election, had been asked by the Ministry to come in for a "follow-up" and to receive her confiscated possessions.

0925 GMT: Remembering. A new video tells the story of Ramin Ramezani, who was killed during the 15 June demonstrations.

0750 GMT: Parliament v. President. Continued fighting over the Ahmadinejad subsidy reduction plan --- former Minister of Health Massoud Pezeshkian has said the President "has no excuse" and "must follow laws", a claim echoed by reformist MP Majid Nasirpour. Reformist Mostafa Kavakebian insists the decision about the usefulness of subsidy cuts is with the Majlis not Ahmadinejad.

0745 GMT: Economy Watch. Is this a sign of the President trying to tighten his control over Iran's energy industry? Rah-e-Sabz claims that Minister of Oil Massoud Mirkazemi has been replaced as head of the Government's "oil group" by First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi.

0710 GMT: With a week left in Iran's Nowruz holidays, political news continues to be slow.

On the international front, the Obama Administration seems to be moving away from its toughest proposed sanctions amidst renewed "5+1" talks on Iran's nuclear programme. Still, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has launched another warning about Tehran's military threat. Gates asserted that Iran's unmanned aerial vehicles --- "drones" --- could cause problems for the US in theatres like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American pressure is still caught up in a complex international game, however. Russia continues with a dual approach, offering signals that it might support some further sanctions while reassuring Iran that the Bushehr nuclear plant will go on-line in 2010.

Fereshteh Ghazi prefers to concentrate on the threat inside Iran. She offers a summary article of the just-concluded Iranian Year 1388 as year for Evin Prison and interrogators.