The Latest from Iran (19 May): Fallout

2035 GMT: The Uranium Sideshow. President Obama issued a boiler-plate, stay-the-course statement at a press conference alongside President Felipe Calderon of Mexico (which happens to have a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council):

"[We agree] on the need for Iran to uphold its international obligations or face increased sanctions and pressure, including UN sanctions. And I'm pleased that we've reached an agreement with our P5-plus-1 partners on a strong resolution that we now have shared with our Security Council partners.

Obama did not mention, for he was not asked, why he had encouraged Turkey to pursue talks with Iran leading to the uranium swap agreement in Tehran on Monday.

1845 GMT:Political Prisoner Watch. Housewife Masoumeh Yavari has been given a seven-year jail term at Rajai-Shahr Prison in Karaj. Yavari had been accused of "mohareb" (war against God), and the prosecutor had asked for the death penalty.

Zahra Jabbari, married and the mother of one child, has been sentenced to 4 years in prison. Jabbari was arrested during Qods Day protests on 18 September.

Student Activist Mohammad Yousef Rashidi has been handed a one-year jail term.

NEW Iran’s Uranium: Why Can’t the US Take Yes for an Answer? (Parsi)
NEW Iran’s Uranium: Washington “Can’t Afford to Look Ridiculous”, Makes Ridiculous Move (Emery)
NEW Iran’s Uranium: US Shows a Middle Finger to Tehran…and Turkey and Brazil and… (Gary Sick)
NEW Iran Document: Iranian Labour Unions “This is Not 1979″
Iran Analysis: Washington and the Tehran Nuclear Deal (Parsi)
Iran Alert: Filmmaker Firouz Faces Deportation From UK
Iran Analysis: The Contest at Home Over (and Beyond) the Uranium Agreement (Zahra)
Iran Analysis: Assessing the Tehran Nuclear Deal (Gary Sick)
The Latest from Iran (18 May): Getting Beyond the Uranium Agreement

1700 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The Revolutionary Court in Tehran has sentenced student and women's rights activist Bahareh Hedayat to 9 ½ years in prison: six months for insulting the president, two years for insulting the Leader, five years for anti-state and anti-national security actions, and two years, previously suspended, for organizing a gathering in June 2006.


Milad Asadi, another senior member of the alumni organisation Advar-e Tahkim Vahdat, has been sentenced to 7 years in prison.

Bahareh Hedayat's statement for Iran's National Student Day in December 2009:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtUvxtH00Lc[/youtube]

1200 GMT: The Uranium Battle. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's atomic energy agency, has issued the highest-level reaction to the US pursuit of a sanctions resolution at the United Nations, "They won't prevail and by pursuing the passing of a new resolution they are discrediting themselves in public opinion."

0940 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Masoud Heidari, the former head of the Iranian Labour News Agency,was released from prison on Tuesday. On Sunday, Heidari had begun serving a three-month prison sentence.

0840 GMT: Alice-in-Wonderland Media Statement of Day. I guess the editors of The New York Times have not paid any attention to the events of the last 72 hours:

Brazil and Turkey should join the other major players and vote for the Security Council resolution. Even before that, they should go back to Tehran and press the mullahs to make a credible compromise and begin serious negotiations.

0830 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Tahereh Saeedi, the wife of detained film director Jafar Panahi, has told Rah-e-Sabz that her husband has been on hunger strike since Sunday.

Panahi has demanded access to his lawyer, visits by his family, and an unconditional release until a court hearing is held.

Six journalists and cultural activists --- Mahnaz Karimi, Hafez Sardarpour, Mehdi Zeynali, Nader Azizi, Mustafa Jamshidi, and Ramin Jabbari --- were arrested on Monday in Iranian Azerbaijan.

0820 GMT: Shutting Down the Inquiry. Parleman News writes that a reformist proposal to investigate Iran's prisons has been rejected by the Parliament. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani insists that the Majlis continues to observe prisons and has forwarded a report to the National Security Council.

0815 GMT: Claim of Day (No, It's Not about Uranium). Rah-e-Sabz claims new accusations of impropriety against Mohammad Javad Larijani, a high-ranking official in the judiciary. The website asserts that a deal has been struck: Ahmadinejad will not press a corruption case against Larijani, while the official and his powerful brothers will drop charges against First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi.

0810 GMT: And There's Always a "Terrorism" Story. Press TV features a summary of its interview with Abdolmalek Rigi, the captured leader of the Baluch insurgent group Jundullah: "While in Morocco, suspected Israeli or US agents had given him a list of people to assassinate in Tehran."

0755 GMT: Evaluating the Uranium/Sanctions Story. We have three analyses of the US response to the Iran-Brazil-Turkey agreement: Trita Parsi asks why Washington cannot take Yes for an answer, Chris Emery suggests it is because the US feels it "cannot afford to look  ridiculous", and Gary Sick thinks Washington just showed the middle finger not only to Tehran but to Turkey, Brazil, and a lot of other countries.

The Washington Post has posted a copy of the sanctions resolution introduced by the US into the United Nations Security Council.

0635 GMT: Nuclear Spin of Day. Peyke Iran tries an different angle to attack the Iran-Brazil-Turkey agreement. The website claims that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip is angry about his reception in Tehran: he and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were offered an Iranian breakfast of sangak bread, Bulgarian white cheese, walnuts, and inferior dried fruit.

0630 GMT: Mousavi's Bodyguard. More manoeuvring over Monday's arrest of Mir Hossein Mousavi's head of security, Ahmad Yazdanfar. Khabar Online claims that Yazdanfar "withdrew" from his position, and the story that he was detained is a fiction of the "leaders of sedition" and foreign media.

Opposition outlets have responded that Yazdanfar is not "political" at all but a simple security officer. Through his arrest and the kidnapping, terror, and torture of others, the Government is slowly becoming a terrorist group.

0615 GMT: Iran's Debate on the Tehran Deal. The Government is still facing some opposition to the Iran-Brazil-Turkey agreement. From the conservative wing, Ahmad Tavakoli (and possibly, through indirect means, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani) made challenges on Tuesday. On the reformist side, Darius Ghanbari asked why Iran had waited seven months and expended so much capital in its foreign policy, only to move towards an agreement it could have had in October.

The response of pro-Government politicians is that this is only a "declaration", not a "treaty", so Tehran has not entered any binding commitments. Or, as Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, "If the Vienna Group (US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China) accepts Iran’s terms and conditions...both parties commit themselves to the implementation” of the deal."

(Which means that Washington's response --- throwing out any consideration of the agreement in favour of a sanctions-first approach --- has sheltered the Ahmadinejad Government against its internal opponents.)

0530 GMT: For many observers, the nuclear sideshow will remain the main event today. The Obama Administration pretty much guaranteed that when, despite the Iran-Brazil-Turkey agreement on a procedure for a uranium enrichment deal (and despite the small fact that President Obama appears to have encouraged the Turks to pursue the deal --- more on that later), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton loudly and not very politely announced that the US was proceeding with a sanctions resolution in the United Nations.

The resolution was submitted in the late afternoon, so now we will be treated to a lot of posturing on all sides, possibly obscuring this bottom-line assessment, courtesy of the National Iranian American Council: "This is an unbelievably stupid move on the part of the Obama administration. Not only are we rejecting our own terms of the agreement, but we are doing so in as tactless and diplomatically insulting way possible."

Meanwhile, on the centre stage of Iranian politics....

Containing Mousavi

Muhammad Sahimi offers a concise summary of the latest steps by the Government to intimidate Mir Hossein Mousavi ahead of the election anniversary on 12 June, including the arrest of Mousavi's top bodyguard.

The Labour Front

We have posted, in a separate entry, the statement of the Network of Iranian Labor Unions setting out its view of opposition to the Government, "This is Not 1979".

Iran Labor Report posts an overview of recent workers' protests.

Comments

[M. Ali]

Its amusing to finally see the true colors of some of you...

[Ange-Paris]

My true colors : "lying, killing, raping, torturing , stealing .. are BAD and "JUSTICE" exists, meaning "God" exists leading us on the path of the thruth.
My true colors : Green, white and red, the colors of our flag.
My country : the great Iran.
I am a fan of my people, I love them and I hate somebody who kills, rapes and tortures them, somebody who harrasses and steals them. I am a fan of our youth, our martyrs and our movement; I am a fan of freedom, democracy, arts and creativity; I am a fan of happiness, serenity ; I am a fan of life, which after the events and crackdown in "my" country, has become nothing and I am living to see again this happiness in the eyes of my people; is it enough Mr Ali ??
God save our people; ma bishomarim mister Ali, under ground ( two senses ) or on the ground. Green color is everywhere.That's all .

[Gunniy]

Ali the Taliban - are you looking for your lost fundamental religious believings?
http://enduringamerica.com/2010/05/16/the-latest-from-iran-16-may-one-week-after-the-executions/#comments" rel="nofollow">http://enduringamerica.com/2010/05/16/the-lates...

[Megan]

So did you, Mullah Ali.

At least our true color is Green, the color of life and hope. Your true color is back, the color of death and destruction.

[Gunniy]

Megan

Do you think we should call him Mullah Ali, the Taliban?

[Catherine]

RE M. Ali
"Its amusing to finally see the true colors of some of you... "
I just don't think M.Ali has been paying much attention, that's all. None of the posters above his comment (or below, for that matter) have said anything either out of character or inconsistent with the views they have expressed here at least since I've been around (last summer), myself included.

[Bill Davit]

Catherine,

I can somewhat agree with the point but the Leverett's simply forget who the US is dealing with. They also forget Obama at times has thrown policy, diplomacy, and public sentiment aside to pursue some goals. Health care is an example. He believed in it so strongly he went against the public. Afghanistan is another case in point in which he went against the grain resolving to do something many thought he wouldn't.

I simply see this action as someone who has a strong position and recognizes the Iranian angle has and always will be a delay game. Yeah he may have looked like a fool but he did what he thought was right based on the information he has(most likely a lot more than you or I will ever know.) Frankly I sometimes see him as a man of principal who will act regardless of what others think. He was simply being decisive, regardless of what others thought, and willing to pay the price to do so. Unlike health care I think he is pursuing the correct course because Iran has shown time and time again they will keep taking and taking with giving very little in return. In summary I see this as a checkmate move on his part in which he frankly doesn't care what anyone else thinks because he believes Iran constitutes an threat to world wide security. Comprise only works if the other party is truly working towards a win win situation which Iran has demonstrated time and time again they are only concerned with their win.

Thx
Bill

[Bill Davit]

Barry,

"If YOU were Hilary Clinton, what would you do?"

Why she would ask Bubba to ask for Monica Lewinsky's expert opinion on it!!! Come on man everyone knows who runs that household!!! :) HA

Thx
Bill

[Bill Davit]

Scott,

As I stated to Catherine above I think Obama has simply thrown aside diplomacy, public sentiment, and foreign relations to pursue something he believes in. This is nothing more than a checkmate move on his part. He has correctly deduced the regime is only after a delay and he is calling their bluff on it. The regime has shown time and time again it will only act when forced to. When your dealing with that type of entity and give in it only enables them. Obama has said enough and he is telling the world I don't give a rats behind what you think. When your dealing with serious issues like this the reality is sometimes you need to go against the grain especially when dealing with Islamists. I don't know about you but I don't mind the ruffled feathers if it ensures Iran has no chance to pursue nuclear weapons even if we are not entirely sure they are--not a politically correct statement but none the less a prudent one concidering the grave security concerns of nuclear proliferation.

Thx
Bill

[Catherine]

Hi Bill,
On several occasions here I have expressed my doubts about the sincerity of the Obama administration regarding the fuel swap deal. Now, BOTH Iran and the US ended up politicising Iran's original request to the IAEA to arrange for the TTR to be refuelled or to be allowed to purchase the fuel itself. They both used this circumstance as a means to start a ball rolling in the eventual, long term direction of their own (rather divergent) national interests: stopping Iran from enriching uranium (US) and doing a grand bargain including lifting sanctions (Iran). But in the short term, the goal was to do this swap deal and establish trust. However, I don't think the US ever believed Iran would accept the P5+1 October terms in the first place and had decided to use the lengthy haggling they knew would ensure over these terms simply as proof that an attempt had been made to negotiate with Iran, so they could start asap down the long road towards getting Russia and China on board for UN sanctions. My suspicion is that they had made more progress than expected with Russia and China and decided to go for the familiar (tread by previous administrations) and domestically much more popular territory of UN sanctions than the open waters of actually doing a deal with Iran, that would lead in principle to doing even more deals with Iran. As Ms Zahra points out in another thread, Turkey and Brazil may not have been able to get the Iranian leadership to go as far as the Obama admin. wanted, ie accept the October P5+1 deal terms. Which bring us back to the issue of sincerity and (lack) of good faith. The same can be said of the Iranians. The last time the TTR and its patients were a concern to anyone was in June 2009.