The Latest from Iran (14 May): The Meaning of the Strike?

2035 GMT: Film Corner (cont.). Earlier we reported on the unclaimed chair for the Grand Jury at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival (see 0615 GMT)

The seat was to be filled by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who had to send this message:

I salute you from my narrow and dark cell in Evin Prison. Unfortunately it is only today that I heard of your valuable efforts [to release me] during the Festival of Cannes....I greet you from here and would like to express my gratitude to all festival organisers for their humanity and decency.

NEW Iran Analysis: The Economic Squeeze and the Real Sanctions Story (Colvin)
UPDATED Iran Video: Strike in Kurdistan (13 May)
Iran Special: Executions, Politics, and the Attack on Nazila Fathi and The New York Times
Iran Transcript: Mousavi “Do Iranian Mothers Have Rights?” (12 May)
Iran Document: A Letter from Majid Tavakoli About the Executed (11 May)
The Latest from Iran (13 May): Justice, Legitimacy, and a Strike in Kurdistan

2030 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that Bahman Khodadadi has been missing since Saturday, when he was summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence in Isfahan. The website also claims Azeri civil rights activists Reza Abdi and Alireza Hosseinzadeh were arrested Tuesday in Tabriz.


1945 GMT: The Executions and After. RAHANA offers a useful summary of "The Week in Kurdistan".

1820 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. Rah-e-Sabz reports that because of sanctions, lack of investment, and government mismanagement, oil production dropped by 750,000 barrels (almost 20%) to less than 35. million barrels per day. Sales fell by 450,000 barrels daily, as Saudi Arabia took up more of China's demand for imports.

1812 GMT: The Writing on the Wall. EA's German Bureau brings me this picture of graffiti in Iran. It is from January, but it has a current resonance, I think.

"Execution = End of Islamic Rule".



1750 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that Arash Saboonchi, a student activist and member of Mehdi Karroubi’s presidential campaign in Arak in northwest Iran, has been arrested and taken to an unknown location by plainclothes agents.

1725 GMT: Larijani, Nuclear Dealmaker? A whiff of a most important story in Khabar Online, the website connected with Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani. It uses purported remarks from Kazem Jalali of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission to play up Larijani's role as broker in talks on Iran's nuclear programme:

According to Khabar Online correspondent, [in] the hallway of the Majlis, Kazem Jalali commented on diplomatic positions expressed by Larijani and f negotiations at international summits: "A collective body monitored by the Supreme Council of National Security decides and authorizes the Parliament Speaker to take such measures, given that as a body corporate and senior member of the council, he has a mastery of the standards of the Islamic Republic's diplomacy....

In many instances the international negotiations conducted by the Parliament Speaker are more productive in breaking the impasses

Jalali supposedly added, "We have never excluded the issue of nuclear fuel exchange from our agenda. We are ready to receive fair proposals on the issue and it has been underlined by Iranian officials several times. But I believe that through their mediations Brazil and Turkey can play an important role to resolve the problem. Obviously we will welcome their contribution."

The significance, however, is not just the international dimension, with the further signal that a deal mediated by Brazil or Turkey is a possibility for Tehran. It is also internal: last October the uranium enrichment talks broke down in part because of opposition within Iran.

Larijani, speaking on his behalf or representing the Supreme Leader, was part of that opposition to the President's aspirations. If he is now portraying himself as a factor for a deal, it not only shifts the international equation but also the power equation vs. Ahmadinejad.

1500 GMT: Keep the Children at Home? Khabar Online claims that the children of administration officials are being stopped from studying abroad.

1450 GMT: The Executions and Pressure on Kurdish Teachers. RAHANA reports that Heydar Zaman, Mostafa Sarbazan and Ramin Zandnia, three activists of the Teachers Trade Union in Kurdistan, were summoned to Intelligence Headquarters in Sanandaj. The questioning took place a day after the execution of teacher Farzad Kamangar.

Four other activists of the union were arrested on Sunday and released after long interrogations.

1440 GMT: Friday Prayers Amended (No Sinful Earthquakes But Lots of Bad Hijab). Seems I judged today's Friday Prayer Speaker, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, too quickly (1300 GMT).

He did have a whip-'em-up line, much better than the G-15 summit and the Tehran Book Fair, for the audience. Apparently a "soft war" against hijab has started in the name of "freedom". Western officials of Satan, who once Reza Shah to get rid of the hijab, are carrying out their subversion by bringing women with "bad hijab" to Qom.

Seddiqi did have to backtrack on his previous big hit of breasts=earthquakes, announcing that sin is not the only reason for natural disasters in the West.

No matter. Looks like Seddiqi's "bad hijab" routine is going down well with the critics: Ayatollah Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, has given it a round of applause.

1430 GMT: Where's Mahmoud? President Ahmadinejad has delivered a speech in which he announced that God has chosen the Iranian people to promote justice and monotheism on Earth.

1300 GMT: Your Friday Prayer Summary. Last time Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi took the podium for Tehran Friday Prayers, he became a global religious star with his warning that women's breasts can cause earthquakes.

He didn't shake things up as much today. His hook-line of Iran's prominence at the G-15 summit of non-aligned countries just didn't have the same appeal, and he had to fall back on a shout-out for five million people at the Tehran Book Fair showing the culture, civilization and ideals of Iran and its youth.

1155 GMT: The Executions. Nine expatriate and domestic parties and political organisations have called for rallies abroad this Sunday to protest recent executions. Those involved in the call are Republicans, Democratic Party of Kurdistan, Komeleh, Democratic Party of Iran's People, National Front Europe, Feddayin-e Khalq (majority and minority), Provisional Council of Leftist Socialists, and Movement of Democratic and Secular Republicans.

1145 GMT: Cultural Vaccination. Mahmoud Salari, the director of the Tehran Book Fair, has declared that books by famous authors such as Forugh Farrokhzad, Hushang Golshiri, and Sadegh Hedayat are like palm-reading (faal va kafbini). He declared that all books published before 2005 will be removed as a vaccination against "cultural disease", and he said that only religious thinking should be promoted to maintain the honour of the Iranian system (nezam).

It looks like Salari and the Book Fair organisers may have more serious worries than palm-reading, however. Khabar Online publishes a photograph of the state of the booths as the Fair formally opened.

1130 GMT: Interrogation. Kalemeh reports that reformists in Tabriz in East Azerbaijan have been summoned by authorities and questioned for up to four hours on subjects such as the alleged involvement of the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) in the opposition movement.

1005 GMT: Cultural Jeremiad. Grand Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi has pronounced that, with satellites, the vice of the Internet and its websites swashes from west to east and back. He declared that those moral vices have become political and social, and politicians of the world promote them for their goals.

1000 GMT: Karroubi Watch. Speaking with student activists and the family of the detained Majid Tavakoli, Mehdi Karroubi has declared, "Rest assured that the situation won't remain like this.

0950 GMT: The Executions and the Strike. Nazila Fathi reports in The New York Times:

Iranian Kurds staged one of their largest strikes in recent years, closing shops and bazaars in nearly all Sunni Kurdish cities and towns in eastern Iran to protest the executions of five people, including four Kurdish activists, on Sunday, according to opposition Web sites and witnesses....

Many analysts and opposition figures interpreted the executions on Sunday as a warning that the government would not tolerate protests next month on the election’s first anniversary.

Rah-e-Sabz has a lengthy account of the day in Kurdistan, with a heavy security presence and Kurdistan's largest city Sanandaj and many other towns mostly deserted.

0940 GMT: The Executions and the Opposition. Reporting from Tehran, Thomas Erdbrink of The Washington Post picks up on the political context of last Sunday's execution of five Iranians. He quotes Ali Shakorirad, a leader of the reformist Islamic Participation Front, "The government is trying to create a security atmosphere as a crucial month approaches," and gives the pro-Government counterpoint from "Amir Mohebbian, "Their [opposition] movement has lost steam, and its leaders are disillusioned and hopeless. Those executed were terrorists. They who sympathize with terrorists are terrorists themselves."

Erdbrink also quotes an office clerk, "Fahrzad", who says, "We have all tried to return to normal, but there are killings and arrests. Maybe some are smiling on the outside, but inside we are all still upset."

0745 GMT: Economy Watch. We've posted an analysis from Ross Colvin, "The Economic Squeeze and the Real Sanctions Story".

0625 GMT: The Executions and the Opposition. EA readers may have noted the recent attempt by to deride coverage of Sunday's executions, with the claim that The New York Times showed "pro-Green" bias with the analysis that the hangings might have occurred to deter the opposition from protests on 12 June, the anniversary of the election.

A follow-up to the executions from Kayhan, the "hardline" Iranian newspaper (hat-tip to an EA reader):

The leaders of the recent plots have supported the five terrorists whose hands were stained with the blood of innocent people, and who were executed in Evin prison on May 10th. This shows that these people cannot be expected to retreat, and it would be very naive to believe that they would repent. It is all over now, and no phrase can better describe the plotters’ situation than "some people have joined the anti-Revolution and terrorists camp".

0620 GMT: Subsidy Cuts. President Ahmadinejad has said that his subsidy reduction plan will begin in the second half of the Iranian year, i.e., from late September 2010.

Previous reports said some reductions would be implemented from 21 May.

0615 GMT: Film News. As the 63rd Cannes Film Festival opened, one of the nine chairs for jury members was unclaimed.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi, detained in March, remains in Evin Prison.

0600 GMT: Kurdistan Funeral. A copy of a flyer has been posted which indicates that the service for Farzad Kamangar, executed on Sunday, will be in Mohammad Rasoolollah Mosque tomorrow from 9 to 11 a.m.

0555 GMT: Thursday's Top Comment. "Dissected News" on Twitter: "Only the ghosts of Iran's martyrs seem to be on the (Kurdish) streets."

0545 GMT: The Executions...Aftermath. RAHANA reports that the house of Shirin Alamhouli is surrounded by security forces, who are denying entry to relatives. Iranian authorities reportedly are refusing to let the family bury Alamhouli n a Muslim cemetery because she was a "mohareb" (warrior against God).

0530 GMT: Beyond a doubt, the major story yesterday was the stoppage in Kurdistan, a response to Sunday's execution  of five Iranians, four of them Kurdish. The logistics meant that confirmed news was slow to come out, but the reports, the pictures, and even the videos emerged.

We had asked earlier this week whether the anger and  dismay expressed outside Iran over the executions would be matched by public reactions within the country. We now have an answer --- we will watch how far that answer extends with responses beyond Kurdistan.

Persian2English features a further report, with photos, on yesterday's events.

Iran First-Hand: Assessing Life and Opinions in Tehran (Majd)

Hooman Majd, a prominent US-based analyst of Iran, recently returned to Tehran for a visit and wrote this account for Foreign Policy. An EA correspondent evaluates:

"Majd doesn't address the core political issues. His claim that one should judge a 'military dictatorship' on the basis of the number of armed personnel on the streets is laughable.
I am sure that you won't find men in boots in the headquarters of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps consortium which control Iranian telecomnucations now or in the engineering arm of the IRGC. They have gone deep into the economic and political fabric
and are altering it steadily."

The Latest from Iran (9 May): Not Going Away

Memo to Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton: Iran is neither a military dictatorship nor or a police state. Yet. There is no visible military presence at the international airport, where despite a European ban on flights to and from its capitals in mid-April when I arrived, jumbo jets discharged and loaded thousands of passengers a day arriving and leaving for points east and west. Tehran's sleek and bustling Imam Khomeini international airport reminded one that an Icelandic volcano had temporarily managed to do to Europe what no American administration has succeeded in doing to Iran: isolating it --- though not for lack of effort.



There is also no visible military presence in the sprawling city of some 12 million souls and at times it seems an equal number of cars --- save for the occasional hapless-looking, newly shorn, and unarmed young army conscript in fatigues, begging a ride on the back of a motorcycle or in a shared taxi, a presence that has always been visible in any city in Iran, even in days of the monarchy. The mind-numbing traffic congestion, complete gridlock, on the newly transformed one-way Valiasr Avenue, the broad boulevard that runs from the south of the city all the way to the foothills in the north, the Sunset Boulevard of Tehran and the scene of many past marches and demonstrations in support of the Green Movement that sprang up after last year's disputed election, is as it always was.

Drivers --- men, and often mal-veiled and heavily made-up women --- listen to loud pop music of the sort frowned upon by religious authorities, just as they always did, ignoring traffic laws and even the entreaties of the occasional traffic cop. The restaurants and cafes are bustling; weekly, and sometimes nightly, salons at the homes and offices of the elite continue unabated in a city where public entertainment is limited, the conversations usually fearlessly political in nature. Taxi drivers, reliable barometers for the average Iranian as they include everyone from professional working class drivers to the highly educated unemployed, and moonlighting office workers, continue to offer wisdom on everything from the political situation to social ills and the state of the economy.

My driver at the airport, an eager man in his forties who jumped out of his car with a smile, rather than the more normal scowl, to stow my suitcase, was likely from the professional class of cabbies -- for the airport trade is strictly controlled -- and it didn't take him long to explain his latest theory. "Business is bad, huh?" I first asked him, as he took off at an unsafe speed, barely missing a family struggling to load their private car with a mountain of luggage, presumably containing Western consumer goods from Dubai. "Yeah," he said, "there are no flights from Europe." I mentioned something about the travel ban potentially contributing to Iran's economic stagnation. "I hear Europe could be cut off for days, even weeks!" he excitedly replied. "But you know, Allah always finds a way to punish the wicked, doesn't He? England is the worst country in the world and what happens? Their airports are shut down by God."

I laughed. "England is evil," he continued. "What if their airports don't reopen for a month, or forever! What if Allah decides the volcano will continue to erupt forever? England will finally go down the drain, and we'll be standing!" My driver's dislike of the UK, and his suspicion that Britain is behind all of Iran's (and the world's) woes, is actually shared by many Iranians, even middle and upper-middle class Iranians, although perhaps not to his extent. But Britain, particularly since the Iranian presidential election of 2009 and in the age of a likeable Barack Obama, has to some degree replaced the US as the Great Satan (it was always labeled the "Little Satan", along with Israel) for Iranian supporters of the Islamic system. As if reading my thoughts, though, the driver then said, "Of course, I'm not saying we don't have problems here in Iran; not at all."

Indeed, all is not well in the Islamic Republic, not by long shot. Iran continues to suffer the same economic woes it has for some time, and there is a palpable, simmering discontent in the capital over the state of affairs. Inflation, unemployment, the lack of investment, anemic business opportunities, and looming sanctions all contribute to a malaise among the population that the government will have a difficult time curing.

I spent an evening with a friend, someone who spent 150 days in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison in 2009, charged with sedition. He was arrested in his apartment soon after the election and during the first series of protest marches and disturbances. Fingered as a neighborhood leader by a local shopkeeper, himself arrested and presumably bartering names for clemency, my friend, a music teacher and guitarist, spent much of his time in solitary confinement and was among the first group of four detainees whose court appearances were televised live in the summer. He was not physically abused and suffered no torture beyond that of incarceration in what is Iran's Alcatraz, but was subjected to frequent, lengthy interrogations --- sessions he actually began to look forward to as relief from the monotony of life in his cell.

The people, he told his interrogator, don't care who is President; what they care about is how their government will solve their problems. How will their government deal with the fact that 17-year-old girls are willing to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their families, or even just to buy a $30 handbag? He would tell the interrogator, a man from the intelligence division of the Revolutionary Guards --- anonymous and unwilling to let prisoners see his face --- that the people were fed up and thought they had voted for change, but were not agitating for revolt. He still believes, though, that if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government is able to make significant progress in relieving economic pressures, and to some extent social pressures, it will not be an unpopular one.

My friend, an artist who was never politically active, surprisingly doesn't hold a grudge against either the system or his jailers; he also told me the warden of his unit, section 2A, less infamous than section 209 but for prisoners of the Guards, phoned him after he was released (and charges against him dropped) and said he hoped he did not take his arrest and detention "personally". Surprisingly, he doesn't. Both for the jailers and the jailed, the politics inside Evin evidently mirror the streets of Tehran and other cities.

Iranians --- both the 4000 or so arrested since last June, according to some estimates, and everyone else --- recognize that the government has been spectacularly successful in curbing overt political unrest, but some say it is too early to tell if Iran's Green Wave of 2009 was more akin to the Prague uprising or the Paris riots of 1968. Either way, Iran is changed --- there is no question that civil rights have become an issue that the government and the opposition will do battle over for some time --- but not necessarily in ways the Obama Administration would like.

Iran is not in a revolutionary, not even pre-revolutionary state and the emperor is, unlike the Shah of old (whose nakedness was revealed for all when he proclaimed in November 1978, on live national television, that he had "heard the people's revolution,"), still very much clothed. "We can only pray for the health and life of the rahbar," I heard many times in Tehran; people from all walks of life (including staunch reformists) agreeing that without the Supreme Leader firmly in control, the stability of the country was seriously at risk, or that a small and extremist group of politicians might accomplish what Clinton warned of, a military dictatorship, back in February.

A working-class acquaintance from South Tehran, one who told me last spring that Ahmadinejad would win the election even though he has boycotted every election in the Islamic Republic, was particularly dismissive of any talk of revolution or toppling the government. "Those on the other side of the water," he said, referring to Iranians in the United States, "exhort us to spill onto the streets and confront the system. For what? They want me to revolt on behalf of those who drive $300,000 Benzes on the streets of Tehran? Never."

The nuclear issue looms large here in Tehran -- there has never been as much talk and even anxiety over the possibility of a military assault on Iran, not even during George W. Bush's days -- but the issue seems to have become a distraction that impedes progress on all fronts, and not the weak point for the regime. My airport cab driver reminded me, as we were going around a traffic circle at an early-morning breakneck pace that he would be unable to repeat later in the day, that despite the ills of society and the political differences in Iran he recognized weren't disappearing as fast as the anti-government street demonstrations, Iranians had one thing in common. "We Iranians have namoos," he said, "and if anyone even thinks of ravishing her, our gheirat will take over. Iran is our namoos." Namoos is a man's wife, his woman; her chastity his responsibility to protect, and gheirat is pride and dignity -- concepts both Persian and Islamic and one reason women, "sisters" in the Islamic Republic, wear the hijab and many did even under the secular shah. What the driver meant was that if Iran were attacked, Iranians, and he presumably thought me as well, would defend her with their lives.

Tehran's nuclear summit in mid-April, dubbed "Nuclear Energy for All; Nuclear Weapons for None" and timed to contrast with Obama's own summit in Washington (to which Iran was not invited), was, despite a paucity of media coverage in the West, successful in laying out Iran's stated nuclear agenda -- non-proliferation as well as complete disarmament -- for a domestic audience and sympathetic listeners in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the developing world. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's opening address to the conference, read by his top foreign-policy advisor Ali Akbar Velayati, in which he emphatically proclaimed weapons of mass destruction haram, strictly forbidden in Islam, went a long way in convincing at least the pious that Iran is not developing nuclear arms (although it begged the question of whether nuclear and Muslim Pakistan, present at the conference, is a sinner state, a question the Japanese representative put to Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency and a moderator at one panel I observed).

But Iranians seem to also know that no summit, fatwa, or public proclamation by their officials will convince the United States that Iran is not hell-bent on building a nuclear bomb and then either deploying it against Israel, handing it over to terrorists, or using it to threaten the world at large (none of those scenarios appearing to be particularly plausible to the average citizen or even to citizens of the region). There are no scientific polls that can accurately gauge public support for Iran's nuclear posture, but here in the capital it is hard to find an Iranian who doesn't agree with at least the concept that Iran deserves to enjoy the same rights as other states when it comes to nuclear energy, even as many may find Ahmadinejad's diplomatic tactics distasteful. In that sense, the military parade in Tehran on the second day of the nuclear summit and the Revolutionary Guards' maneuvers in the Persian Gulf a week later were simply expressions of the national gheirat, particularly in light of escalating threats emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv.

Two days before the start of the Tehran nuclear summit, former President Mohammad Khatami, the founder of the reform movement and a leader of today's reformists, Green and otherwise, was barred from leaving the country to attend yet another nuclear conference in Hiroshima, Japan, where he was due to speak out, like his one-time colleagues in Tehran, against the evil of nuclear weapons (but not of the Ahmadinejad government, for the opposition leaders' nuclear policy is entirely in sync with the supreme leader). Although there was much chatter in Iran about the unprecedented act of denying a former president the right to free movement, guaranteed every free citizen under the constitution, genuine outrage was muted and the government subsequently denied that Khatami had been forbidden from traveling abroad.

Why? Perhaps it's because the population is weary of opposing a state apparatus that has shown itself capable of suppressing any outright dissent (or sedition, as it claims), or because the population is turning apathetic toward opposition leaders who seems to have been rendered impotent at a time when there are other pressing domestic issues, or perhaps because the state can act to hinder the opposition with relative impunity whenever the nuclear crisis threatens to boil over. Perhaps, despite the unrest of the past year, it's because the polarized society that Iran has become has not yet come together to decide exactly what it is that it wants, nor even exactly what it is that it doesn't. Talk to 20 people in Tehran on any given day and one might hear 20 different ideas of what, exactly, Iran is and what it should be. The ranks of the apathetic have grown since protests have died down. "These people [the ayatollahs] can give lessons to the Devil himself," one low-income person told me. "They will be in power another 50 years, at least. And if they can guarantee me one million toman [$1,000] a month, I'll support them 100 percent."

Khatami himself was unperturbed by the dishonor of being mamnoon-e khorooj, forbidden from travel, struggling as he is to continue his work while fending off accusations that he is subverting national security or is opposing not just the lack of civil liberties (and a free vote) but the very foundations of the state. He told me, though, that he didn't expect to be banned from travel in the future, or to be restricted from activities beyond what he is now, and he's probably right. Khatami is still enormously popular and despite the current period of relative quiet, his messages do not go unnoticed, either by the government or by the population at large.

In a car with a friend driving in the mountains north of Tehran one day, we stopped to give a ride to three hitchhikers -- young women who, unlike upper-class North Tehran youth, were properly and fully enveloped in black hijab and said they were on their way to pray at a Imamzadeh, the tomb of a relative of one of Shiite Islam's 12 saints. They were eager to engage in conversation, one of them asking what we thought of Ahmadinejad. "He's not good, is he?" she said, to my surprise. "I mean, things were better under the Shah."

I replied that she couldn't be old enough to remember the days of the shah, over 30 years ago. "Well, we've heard," she said with a shrug. "What about the days of Khatami?" I asked. She and her friends all smiled. "Khatami gol bood!' they said in unison. "Khatami was a flower!" It is one of the paradoxes of Iran that many of its youth, however religious, romanticize an era they know nothing of while still idolizing a cleric that helped usher in a radically different one.

April, normally a month when the weather turns hot, was not just mild but rainy, making Tehran almost free from its usual choking pollution. The almost unprecedented weather in the arid foothills of the Alborz mountain range to the north of the city wasn't attributed to global warming, as it undoubtedly would be in the West, but to forces unknown. Perhaps for that reason, devastating earthquakes, another force of nature often visited on Iranians, were also the talk of the town during my stay. President Ahmadinejad had declared just before my arrival that he had had a premonition of a large earthquake striking Tehran in the near future, and floated the idea that five million residents might consider leaving the city permanently to avoid the kind of calamity that would ensue. Hojjatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, the hard-line interim Friday Prayer Leader of Tehran, subsequently said in a sermon that the earthquakes were the inevitable result of the sin, vice, and corruption prevalent in Iran, particularly the vice of loose women dressed inappropriately, and steps should be taken to correct the problem.

Iranians by and large mocked the idea, and even cab drivers were aware of the "boobquake" campaign on Facebook, but not a few Iranians told me the earthquake fears were suddenly real among government officials because a large earthquake in Tehran, which might do to the city what Haiti's did to Port-au-Prince, would almost certainly bring down Ahmadinejad's government, if not the entire regime. Tehran, sitting on major fault lines, is remarkably unprepared for a quake larger than say, seven points in magnitude. That the hope of some Iranians -- even some who've participated in marches and demonstrations against the government -- for real change rests with an act of God or nature might be disturbing to those promoting regime-change from abroad, but it also speaks to the hopeful attitude some have that a government they view as incompetent might be readily discredited, and lose all the support it has among the religious and the working classes, by a mere spark, or a rumble.

From Tehran, despite the ambiguity of what the future holds, of what the Green Movement might be or become, or how the government will deal with the fundamental problems it faces, it is evident that neither debilitating sanctions nor military action (nor continued threats) will accomplish the Obama Administration's stated and unstated Iran policy goals -- to induce Iran to alter its nuclear course, or to lend support to an opposition that even if successful in bringing about change in the leadership, might not do so.

Most Iranians believe their country is powerful, and unlikely to bend to any Western threats. "The rahbar basically told Obama to go fuck himself, didn't he?" said my South Tehran friend, a little admiringly. "And what happened? Nothing. No one can touch these guys." Iran's nuclear program is entrenched as important, legal, and valid in the minds of most Iranians, and many of them with whom I've spoken find it hard to believe that there is no solution to the crisis short of armed conflict, fewer still believing that the U.S. military would even win a war.

Many Iranians can forgive Obama for his hesitancy to enter into serious negotiations with Iran in the aftermath of the elections of 2009, but given what they know now -- that barring a major natural calamity the government is here to stay --- it seems the U.S. president's only real option is to negotiate with Iran in good faith and reach an agreement that satisfies Western concerns about its nuclear program while also satisfying Iran that its rights as a sovereign nation have not been eroded. Perhaps only then might Iranians turn to seriously addressing domestic concerns; economic concerns about the gaping inequalities between the privileged and working classes, as well as political concerns about civil rights and the nature of the regime, which Iranians are perfectly capable of doing without outside interference. And only then will we be able to better judge whether Iran is turning into a reflexively anti-American military dictatorship, or is on the path to fulfilling the needs and wants, economic and otherwise, of its people.

UPDATED Iran: Tehran, Defender of Rights (Don't Mention Boobquake), Joins UN Commission on Status of Women

UPDATED 1 MAY: There have been numerous public statements denouncing the vote for Iran's membership of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Two examples:

Mission Free Iran: "While hundreds of our sisters suffer in prison because they stood up for their own rights, the UN Commission on the Status of Women dares to stand against them by allowing the Islamic regime a seat at the table."

How Iran News is Made: Adultery, Earthquakes, and the BBC
The Latest from Iran (30 April): The Heaviness of the Atmosphere

Iran Human Rights Documentation Center: "The women of Iran and the rest of the world deserve better. The United Nations and the
world must not let Mr. Ahmadinejad and the government he leads continue to violate the human rights of Iranians.

UPDATED 30 APRIL: The incomparable Tom Lehrer said that, when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, "It was the day satire died."

Well, satire may have been slain again. From Wednesday's report of the United Nations Economic and Social Council:

The Council elected 11 new members to fill an equal number of vacancies on the Commission on the Status of Women for four-year terms beginning at the first meeting of the Commission’s fifty-sixth session in 2011 and expiring at the close of its fifty-ninth session in 2015. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Zimbabwe were elected from the Group of African States; Iran and Thailand were elected from the Group of Asian States; Estonia and Georgia were elected from the Group of Eastern European States; Jamaica was elected from the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States; and Belgium, Netherlands and Spain were elected from the Group of Western European and Other States.

In the category of You Really Couldn't Make This Up:

Iranian authorities have confirmed reports of their withdrawal from membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council and announced their candidacy for the International Commission for Protection of Women's Rights. [This is probably a reference to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.]

Beyond the implication of "Well, if we're not allowed to represent humans, we'll take the second-best of representing women", Iranian officials might ponder the juxtaposition of applying for the ICPWR when dozens of women's rights activists are being protected through detention in Iran's prisons.

In making their application, they might consult Shirin Ebadi (living in exile, threatened with confiscation of her Nobel Peace Prize and closure of her Centre for the Defence of Human Rights), Shadi Sadr (defense lawyer of Shiva Nazar Ahari, human rights activists and member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters,who has been detained since 14 June), or Zahra Rahnavard (surrounded and attacked by plainclothes forces on 11 February), or Bahareh Hedayat (nominated for the 2010 Students Peace Prize but sitting in Evin Prison).

Still, this is far from the first proclamation of the Iranian regime that it is the true protector of women. When Tehran realised that activists and groups inside and outside Iran were making statements for International Women's Day (8 March) that inconveniently mentioned not only equality but also justice and rights, the Supreme Leader belatedly brought out a Valentine card, recycling his statement of 14 February on "women's rights and role in society".

So perhaps Iran can offer bona fides for its new campaign with an endorsement of Boobquake. The humourous Facebook response to the messages by Hojatoleslam Seddiqi and Ayatollah Jannati at Tehran Friday Prayers --- immorality causes earthquakes; what immorality? why, wearing inappropriate dresses, leading on young men, encouraging sinful thoughts --- has now escalated into rallies on Monday from New York City to Washington DC to West Lafayette, Indiana.

That's a long way for the Supreme Leader to travel, and I've heard it's a bit difficult getting a permit to march in Tehran these days. But perhaps Ayatollah Khamenei might put on a fetching "Boobquake 2010: Who Says Science Has to Be Boring?" T-shirt (50% of profits to the International Red Cross; 50% to the James Randi Educational Foundation). Or maybe noted wordsmith President Ahmadinejad can offer a quip about "weapons of mass destruction".

But at least, the Iranian officials who are sharpening up that application for the UN might add this to their dossier: how many "immoral" women do you think will be detained and held without charge on Monday?