The Latest from Iran (12 March): Assessments

2015 GMT: Apologies to all, but the fatigue monster grabbed me as soon as I walked through home's front door. Back to normal service in AM --- best wishes and thanks to everyone for your support this week.

1650 GMT: Why Are Detainees Being Released? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty ask the question we've been pondering and get interesting answers....

Former reformist legislator Fatemeh Haghightajoo says it is the result of an understanding reached “at the highest levels of the Iranian establishment. I believe [former President] Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the so-called pragmatic conservatives have played a prominent role."



Paris-based reformist journalist Seraj Mirdamadi sees a show of strength, “The establishment is trying to show itself as having the upper hand following the engineered state demonstrations marking the anniversary of the 1979 revolution and demonstrate that it has reached victory.”

Mirdamadi adds that others will be kept in prison as a warning to would-be protesters. That is especially true for those who have used tough words against the Government and the Supreme Leader, with student activists Ahmad Zeidabadi and Majid Tavakoli and refomist journalist Issa Saharkhiz likely to remain in jail. (http://www.rferl.org/content/Why_is_Iran_Releasing_Some_Postelection_Detainees_/1982200.html)

1610 GMT: Economy Watch. Reuters offers a summary of companies who have recently ceased or altered business dealings with Iran.

* Royal Dutch Shell has stopped gasoline sales to Iran
* Oil trading firms Trafigura and Vitol are stopping gasoline sales to Iran
* Ingersoll-Rand, a maker of air compressors and cooling systems for buildings and transport, said it will no longer allow subsidiaries to sell parts or products to Tehran.
* Oilfield services company Smith International said on 1 March it was actively pursuing the termination of all its activities in Iran.
* Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment, said on 1 March it would prevent foreign subsidiaries from selling equipment to independent dealers who resell it to Tehran. [ID:nN01245727]

* German insurers Munich Re and Allianz said in February they had halted all remaining insurance business in Iran.
* Reliance Industries stopped gasoline sales to Iran from its giant refining complex in May 2009. (However, Malaysian state oil firm Petronas was said in February to be shipping a gasoline cargo produced by Reliance into Iran.)
* German engineering conglomerate Siemens said in January it would not accept further orders from Iran.
* Glencore ceased gasoline supply to Iran in November 2009
* British Petroleum stopped supplying Iran in 2008

1545 GMT: Back from academic work and finally on way home.

While I've been away, Iranian authorities have assured that the "death penalty is essential 2 public security and applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings". A drug trafficker was hung in public in Ahwaz on Friday. (http://bit.ly/9S2wSe)

Reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former Deputy Minister of Interior, received a hero's welcome after his temporary release from detention for Iranian New Year. (http://tinyurl.com/yj8rh83)

Rah-e-Sabz claims that Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh, jailed for 15 years last autumn, may be released on $500,000 bail. (http://bit.ly/bUQRdn)

0755 GMT: Very Significant. Reporters Without Borders have awarded the first Netizen Prize to the Iranian creators of the website Change for Equality, established in 2006 to campaign for changes in laws that discriminate against women.

Not Very Significant. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says on national television, “The name of the Persian Gulf is so irrefutable that it is non-negotiable."

0725 GMT: Opening thoughts this morning on the significant and the peripheral...

There is a valuable discussion amongst readers in our separate entry on Gender Issues and the Green Movement; however, I also find myself distracted, as I've noted in a brief post, by the focus on discussion in Washington on the nuclear issue.

The peripheral pops up this morning, again from Washington, in a muddled piece in Foreign Policy which proclaims, "It's hard to sign up with the folks who seem all too willing to bomb Iran, but the neoconservatives...have a well-grounded view of the Iranian regime," but has little consciousness of Tehran beyond its supposed "leadership".

So it's back to the significant, if blackly comic, news that an Iranian football journalist, Abdollah Sadoughi, has been released after seven weeks. His crime? He had published posters supporting the Iranian-Azerbaijani football team, Traktor Sazi, in Tabriz; for the Iranian authorities, this became "acts against national security" and "supporting "Pan-Turkism". (EA readers may recall a video we posted months ago of a protest against an Ahmadinejad speech in Tabriz with the chants of "Traktor! Traktor!")

Three members of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters --- Saeed Haeri, Mehrdad Rahimi, and Saeed Kalanaki --- have been released on bails of around $100,000.