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.

Iran, Meet Kafka: The Web of Internet Censorship Catches All (Farokhnia)

Hamid Farokhnia writes for Tehran Bureau:

In 2008, the Iranian government boasted of censoring five million Internet sites deemed potentially improper or immoral. The number of restricted sites has skyrocketed since the birth of the democratic movement in 2009. With more than 24 million Internet users by official count, a figure that grew 49 percent in the past year, Iran is second after Israel in the Middle East, making cyberspace a major target of censorship for the Islamic Republic.

Cyber censorship has been so pervasive and indiscriminate that even the regime's supporters have not been immune. Recently, several well-known hardline weblogs were caught in the censor's dragnet, prompting righteous howls of indignation from contributors and readers alike. In a bizarre twist, Mehdi Sarami, the man nominally in charge of "Internet filtering," admits he is largely powerless to ensure that pro-government sites do not continue to run into censorship trouble.



On April 9, the far right website Raja News broke the news of how several hardline blogs had been mysteriously blocked by orders from the government. The site's bewildered correspondent interviewed some of the affected bloggers, who seemed equally flummoxed. Omid Hosseini, whose weblog Ahestan was a top winner in the Revolutionary Guards-sponsored extravaganza "Eight Months of Cyber War" last year, speculated that perhaps his unique style of reporting had incurred the displeasure of the censors. "I don't know on what basis the 'filtering committee' is operating every night and day of the week," he complained.

Ahestan wasn't alone in this predicament. According to Raja News, the other victims included such stalwarts of the right as Esmail News, Madreseyema, and Khateratjebhe. The article implied that several less prominent rightist blogs and other sites had also been blocked quietly in recent months.

Raja News tried to get to the bottom of the mystery by interviewing Mehdi Sarami, the official in charge of Internet censorship. Sarami, a 30-year-old electrical engineer from Sharif University, is a full-time representative of the Guidance Ministry on the Cyber Crimes Committee, a sort of high command for Iran's censors. In the interview, Sarami deplored the closure of the rightist blogs and shifted the blame to other agencies. "We don't close down any blogs," he said. "We only sent our findings to the public prosecutor and they are the ones who decide what to do about various sites."

Sarami also revealed that many privately owned ISPs routinely engaged in censorship of their own. "The ISPs must be pressured to remove their parallel filtering. The mechanisms which have been improperly used by them must be eliminated once and for all -- unless of course, they are used on direct orders of the judiciary."

Asked why his office often expressed ignorance of the blocking of certain sites, Sarami explained that a judge can directly order a block in response to private complaints. "That judge is normally obligated to inform our task force of his decision," he said, implying that this communication does not always happen.

The Raja News reporter asked why the opening page that pops up in lieu of a blocked site looks different at times from the official blockpage. Sarami explained that it was likely due to the "parallel filtering" practiced by some of the country's unruly ISPs. He said that the procedure evidenced by such pages was illegal and needed to be addressed by the Internet regulatory agency.

Sarami gave a second interview two days later, this time to the influential Talabeblog, a portal for young clerics and seminarians. He elaborated on the issues he had already addressed and offered new revelations -- while providing further insight into the workings of a censor's mind.

He first differentiated between "filtering" (or "blocking") and "shutting down." The former, we learn, is what has taken place when the official pop-up page of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance appears on your computer screen. When the latter occurs, nothing appears in place of the site -- supposedly a stronger form of punishment. He referred Talabeblog readers to Samandehi.ir, where the full list of 50 Internet offenses are listed for users' edification.

The interviewer wondered why it was that young, politically correct Muslims should suffer the same punishment supposedly reserved for counterrevolutionaries. Sarami responded with an analogy:  sometimes, just one or two burglaries in a neighborhood over an entire year will prompt residents to call for round-the-clock policing. He went so far as to discourage extensive blogging by young hardliners. As an alternative, he pointed out, "There are useful social networks that people can refer to available on the mofidnet.ir site."

It was important to use the recommended mofidnet sites, Sarami said, because "the U.S. government had arrogated itself the right to pry into other communication systems. The U.S. State Department "disseminates software that enables it to monitor the private data and information of users," he said, adding that "Gmail has a secret agreement with the U.S. government" for this purpose.

He described the Iranian censorship situation in general as comparing favorably with that in the United States and other countries. "We are witness to a more pervasive form of filtering in the United States. Over there, every single Internet user and the way they operate is closely monitored. The moment they use an illegal site or email to that site, there is a criminal investigation opened against that person. It is a sort of eavesdropping.... It is called the Patriot Act." He continued, "Friends who are studying abroad tell me that they can not email certain kinds of information, that there is a reign of fear there."

Finally, Sarami addressed the question of whether there is an unaccountable "shadowy group" behind the filtering system and if anything could be done to rectify the situation. Describing the higher public profile of the committee on which he sits, he replied, "Perhaps until about six months ago that might have been the case, but our lines of communication have grown dramatically since then.... It may interest you to know that much of the filtering was effectively done by the people themselves, through complaints they lodged against these sites which were then directed to our task force for investigation."

Filtering Galore

It is clear that outside the authorized filtering system, there is a good deal of parallel filtering going on by commercial ISPs in Iran. But rather than a sign of rogue behavior by private firms, this activity is the inevitable consequence of draconian laws that hold ISPs accountable for their clients' content.

In December 2001, the inter-agency Committee in Charge of Determining Unauthorized Sites (CCDUS) was set up under directives of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution. It was tasked with drawing up criteria for the official blocking of websites, previously left to the discretion of the individual censors. The new committee was made up of representatives from the ministries of Intelligence, Guidance, and Communications, as well as the judiciary. The Ministry of Communications was assigned to develop or obtain the most advanced filtering devices in the world. Ultimately, SmartFilter, a product developed by the American firm Secure Computer, was procured. In November 2006, proposed regulations governing censorship and punishment for web content violation were submitted to the Majles. The conservative-controlled parliament quickly voted them into law.

Under the regulations, a significant legal burden was placed on Internet data carriers. Commercial ISPs were now subject to fines and dissolution should their clients be caught breaking the newly restrictive censorship laws. And it was clear that the government took the matter seriously. Not long before the new Cyber Crimes Bill was implemented, a group of 21 bloggers had been arrested and charged with national security offenses ranging from undermining of the state to fomenting social strife to criticizing the Supreme Leader. One of them, Yaghoob Mehrnahad, was executed for alleged ties with the Baluch armed group Jondollah. In November 2005, several IPSs in the city of Karaj were permanently closed down by the local Cyber Crimes Unit involving the public prosecutor, the Communications Ministry, West Tehran Intelligence, the Naja, and the Basij.

A year and a half ago, Enhanced Punishment of the Disrupters of Psychological Security, a bill orchestrated by the Revolutionary Guards and brought to the floor of the Majles by hardline representatives, was approved. It stipulates the death penalty for advocating "corruption, prostitution, and apostasy" on the Internet, placing such activity on a par with smuggling, kidnapping, armed robbery, and the like. This law has made Iran the world's leading violator of cyber rights. Small wonder that commercial ISPs routinely engage in ad hoc censorship.

A few days after Raja News ran the story of the hardline website blockages, it provided the basis for an expose that appeared on BBC Persian. In a perfectly ironic act of self-censorship, mirroring the tortuousness of Iran's electronic highways, Raja News responded by taking down its own article.

The Latest from Iran (8 May): Back to the Politics

2045 GMT: One to Watch. Khabar Online reports that Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini and a cleric with uneasy relations with the current Government, will speak before Tehran Friday Prayers this week.

2025 GMT: More Rahim-Mashai. President Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, having declared that his boss is "the teacher of all Presidents of the world", is now insisting that he has no additional posts. Unfortunately for him, Khabar Online accompanies the denial with the list of 16 offices that Rahim-Mashai heads.

2020 GMT: Setting Limits? Mohammad Javad Larijani, a high-level official in Iran's judiciary, has responded to talk of a prolongation of the Ahmadinejad presidency: "It is against the nezam , and I strongly object."

NEW Iran: The Green Movement and “Moral Capital” (Jahanbegloo)
Iran: Ahmadinejad’s Chief Aide “Not Too Many People in the Prisons”
The Latest from Iran (7 May): The Original Post-Election Muddle

2010 GMT: Maintaining Hope. Grand Ayatollah Sane'i, meeting with academics, said: “One should not lose hope; because the Almighty’s will is for eliminating oppression. The day will come that those standing against people’s rights and all those hurt people will be fed up with their own actions, and I am hopeful that their moral and spiritual conscience will wake up and they will stop these actions. It is your responsibility to spread awareness among people and expand this awareness so that the deceivers and violators of people’s rights realize that people are aware of their deceptions and also are opposed to their deceptions, but you should spread awareness based on Islamic and religious teachings.”


1650 GMT: Not-Sycophantic-At All Remark of the Day. The President's Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai commenting on his boss: "He is a teacher to the Presidents of the world".

1610 GMT: The Oil Ultimatum. Minister of Oil Masoud Mirkazemi has repeated the threat that Iran will expel foreign firms for delaying development of the South Pars gas field, replacing them with domestic companies: "We have recently told some foreign firms which have delayed some phases for several years that we would not negotiate with them and domestic firms will be given these projects to implement."

Mirkazemi did not name any foreign company, but South Pars officials have recently insisted that Royal Dutch Shell and the Spanish company Repsol commit by the end of May to development of sections of the field. Shell, citing the prospect of Western sanctions, has suspended any operations in South Pars.

1555 GMT: Trouble for the Rafsanjani Family? An appeals court has upheld the prison sentence of Hamzeh Karami, accused of propaganda and embezzlement.

The decision prompts speculation that pressure, including the prospect of criminal prosecution, will increase upon Mehdi Hashemi, the son of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. In the mass Tehran trial last August, Karami's "confession" accused Hashemi of misusing funds to carry out inappropriate activity during the Presidential campaign.

1545 GMT: Karroubi Watch. In a discussion on another website, an EA reader frets that we are "especially enthralled with [Mehdi] Karroubi, who is treated with saint like reverence".

Heaven forbid that we should appear biased, so here's Karroubi's latest acts of deviousness, duplicity, and devilishness.

The cleric, visiting the family of Alireza Beheshti Shirazi, the detained journalist and senior adviser of Mir Hossein Mousavi, has criticised Iran's authorities for continued arrests of dissidents and urged them to show greater tolerance. He said, “The Revolution and the Islamic Republic is not what these gentlemen are carrying out and it is our duty to return the Islamic Republic to its right path.”

Karroubi also carried out the despicable act of visiting Ahmad Motamedi, the Minister of Communications in the Khatami Government, in hospital. Motamedi was stabbed early this week in his office at Amir Kabir University.

Motamedi's wife, Fatemeh Azhdari, threatened to reveal “the truth” if "wrongful" reports regarding the attack on his husband’s life continue. Se claimed that authorities are trying to reduce the “assassination attempt” against her husband to a crime with “personal motivations”.

1400 GMT: War on Culture (cont.). It's not just the regime favourite Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami getting tough on cultural infiltration (see 0730 GMT). Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi has urged the formation of a Ministry of Virtue: "A ministry to call upon virtue and ban vice must be formed to deal with moral issues in schools, universities and media."

Makarem-Shirazi said the root cause of society's ills was a lack of supervision on moral issues: "When importance is not attached to moral issues, political and economical problems arise and decadence spreads in the form of lack of hejab and an increase in drug abuse."

1355 GMT: Getting the News. EA colleagues have pointed out the portal for Iran news (in case EA is on a break, of course), Kodoom.

1150 GMT: Nuclear Chatter. Iranian officials continue to put out signals that Turkey and/or Brazil could broker a deal on uranium enrichment. Following Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's visit to Ankara, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, "New formulas have been raised about the exchange of fuel....I think we can arrive at practical agreements on these formulas."

1145 GMT: And the Imprisoned Students. Radio Zamaneh follows up on the published list of 32 detained students, which we noted earlier this week. According to the site, 24 of the detained students have been handed a total of 71 years in prison, one has been sentenced to execution, and the situation of the rest is unknown.

Mahmoud Molabashi, the Deputy Minister of Science, told reporters last week that only a “very limited number of students” are currently in prison.

1130 GMT: The Detained Filmmakers. A Street Journalist features Amnesty International's call for the release of the detained film directors Mohammad Ali Shirzadi and Jafar Panahi.

1000 GMT: Stirring Discontent. Parleman News reports that Hojatoleslam Ravanbakhsh, a supporter of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, "insulted" Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Sane'i during a talk at Kerman University, angering professors and students.

0940 GMT: More Pressure. Seyed Reza Akrami of the Combatant Clergy Association has called for all budgets of the Iranian system (nezam) to be transparent and published.

0803 GMT: Reformist Economics. Reviewing the approach to privatisation of the Iranian economy, member of Parliament Mostafa Kavakebian declared that the Government has "fattened itself" rather than becoming lean. Mohammad Reza Khabbaz said that the regime's slogan of "shares of justice" (equal distribution) should be "shares of injustice".

0800 GMT: Morning Analysis. We've posted a special feature with the views of Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo on the Green Movement and "moral capital".

0730 GMT: A quiet Friday weekend in Iran, after both the Ahmadinejad show in New York and the internal politics earlier in the week....

Ahmad Khatami Fights Culture

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami did liven up the day a bit with his Tehran Friday Prayer. We noted yesterday his religious lesson of "a punch in the mouth" for other countries who troubled Iran. Rah-e-Sabz has a different snapshot, with Khatami claiming that the regime has defeated the opposition but warning of "the effects of [an] invasion in the areas of film, theater, sports, and some media".

The website also summarises other Friday Prayers throughout Iran.

International Front: Opening the Door to the US?

An interesting analysis in Rah-e-Sabz, which suggests that the Ahmadinejad trip to New York was designed to maintain the possibility of discussions with the US Government over the nuclear issue. The website concludes, however, that the final decision on the strategy is up to the Supreme Leader.

Of course, Rah-e-Sabz is an opposition website, but this reading matches up with our interpretation from last autumn, when Ahmadinejad was backing the effort for a deal on "third party enrichment" of uranium. That effort stalled in late October, in part because of internal divisions in Iran, and our analysis was that Ayatollah Khamenei had balked at an agreement.

Getting It Wrong on the Economy

Aftab News reports that the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, made "confused statements" at a national workers' meeting in Mashhad. Sheikholeslami alllegedly claimed that unemployment was due to the vagaries of science and did not bother to consider the workers' problems.

Iran: The Green Movement and "Moral Capital" (Jahanbegloo)

Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo, based in Canada, talks with Radio Farda:

Mr. Jahanbegloo, during the past year, Iran's name has been associated with a new term: the "Green Movement." I know that you have been working on the Iranian movement for the past couple of months. Are there any particular characteristics that you find significant in this movement?

Well, I think what happened in Iran during the past months has introduced two principal characteristic in terms of the movement's image, both for the Iranians and worldwide. One is the aspect of "truth seeking" or, in other words, the notion of reevaluating the truth, which is very important. The other aspect is avoiding violence.

The reason that I brought up the notion of truth seeking is that, in my opinion, the main players of Iran's civil society—which would be students' movement, women's movement, labor activists, rights activists and so on—have set their objectives in combating the immoral policies of falsehood. And this is being done in an approach which deploys a nonviolent method. The aspect of combating falsehood and lie is very interesting, and in my opinion it marks the birth of a new civil maturity in Iran. This is what I call "moral capital." Up to this moment we have been talking about the social and political capitals. But now what I see in Iran is a moral value which eventually, with the current nonviolent approach, would be able to build the future democracy of the country.

So do you think that the Green Movement has the elements of a stable and long-lasting movement?



I do believe this is a long-lasting movement. Why? Because the demands it is seeking are long-lasting demands. During the past 100 years, since [Iran's] constitutional revolution at the beginning of the century, political figures and parties have always looked at violence as a vertical phenomenon, meaning that it is applied from the upper layers of power hierarchy to the base of the society—which is people. Therefore they have always tried to challenge the violence, through toppling the regime or the core of power through what we might call "retribution in kind." Whereas the current civil movement in Iran, which of course is still being developed, casts doubt over violent methods of power transition and sticks to the civil rights movement. This approach has called into question the legitimacy of the very essence of violence. From this perspective I think that the recent movement of Iran has created a sort of moral and civil code which is unprecedented for the country.

Mr. Jahanbegloo, you said you believe that the Iranian people have achieved a "civil maturity." This was actually one of the issues that I wanted to discuss as well. Can we consider the recent movement as a new stage of social evolution, or is it just a short-term reaction to the actions of the government?

See, reactions have always been there. Through Iran's history of both pre-revolution [1979] and post-revolution eras, we have observed a wide range of reactions to the repressive policies of governments. But this time there is another story; it is not just the matter of reacting. This time, you can see a sense of sympathy for moralities, a sense of general solidarity, and new demands which are aroused not only about the current policies, but the very ethics of the politics as well. The range of protests includes denouncing the issue of falsehood and the whole "technology of power." You can trace them in the nature of the slogans which are being chanted. Apart from the moral capital that I mentioned previously, the other serious matter which is being pursued is a sense of responsibility about the future of Iran. And the important point is that the civil society is not expressing these demands in an ideological fashion; they are pursuing the goals in the shape of a civil movement, and through civil protest methods. I believe that it is a very serious movement, and a promising one, too.

Now let's focus a little more on the mechanism of this movement. Many people, including yourself, have considered the Green Movement as a nonviolent movement. According to your studies and researches, what similarities are there between Iran's events and what happened in Eastern Europe, or India for instance?

In my opinion there are a lot of similarities. The thing is that all the nonviolent protests across the world benefit from an old tradition which is rooted similarly in different cultures and religions throughout history. We can even see a lot of similarities between the civil rights movement in the U.S. during the 60s or the Gandhist movement of India with the current movement of the Iranian people. There are similarities in the mechanism of protesting, the involvement of national cultural aspects, and the restraint they show in the face of violence. You can even find a lot of similarities between Iran's movement and the movement of Philippines, which apparently are from very diverse cultural backgrounds. The point is that it's a global essence. When in a society the political power utilizes pressure and force in order to curb people's rights, the citizens who do not possess an equal power, choose to react in a totally different manner, which is protesting in masses and denouncing the violence.

That leads me to the next question; there have been different governmental reactions to different nonviolent movements around the world. The response of the Islamic Republic to Iran's protests might be among the harshest that we have seen so far. Now, why has this violence not led to radicalization of the Green Movement?

Because in my opinion Iran is going through a "post ideological" period, a period in which many of the past ideological leaders and parties have now been denounced by the people for the violence that they have applied. Now it's the parties and groups which are following people. They cannot tell people to accept or follow their ideologies like before. The heroes of today's Iran are civilians and victims like Neda Agha Soltan, not the political elite. This is a new social and political development. The moral legitimacy that these heroes have established in the country is a kind of moral capital that Iran's civil movement had not experienced before.

I also wanted to ask your opinion about the issue of leadership in this movement. So far it seems that Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have been acting more like opposition candidates than leaders of a movement. For instance, most of the gatherings and demonstrations have been organized by people communicating through social media and not by any invitation from the opposition. Now, do you think this kind of people's collective leadership is a positive point, or would it be better if the movement had a classic leadership?

I think the aspect of being self-esteemed should be considered as an advantage for the movement at this point. Of course maybe if the movement had the capacity of ascending a leader such as Mandela or Gandhi, it could be an important inspiration for its followers. But the point is that this movement is a post-charismatic movement, which is something quite new for Iran. Almost all of the movements during the history of the country have been dependant on a charismatic character, but this time what you see as the symbols of the movement are the members if it—ordinary members who are young, innocent and nonviolent. kids like Mohsen Roohol Amini or Neda Agha Soltan, who have been victims of brutality, while all they wanted was truthfulness and respecting the ethics of democracy. For instance, it was very interesting to hear the remarks of that young boy who said he was raped in the prison [by security guards, after he was arrested during the protests]. He said, although, after divulging what happened, he would be ashamed of going back to his family, he still wants everyone to know what he went through in Kahrizak [detention center in Tehran]. This notion of seeking the truth among young protesters is very much interesting for me. Their passion for fighting the falsehood is so intense that they are willing to break any taboo over it. You see, the issue for them is not just a shift of power anymore; it is condemnation of the violence which has gotten solidified in the society. They want to break out of the vicious circle of violence. I think if we closely study such details, we would reach the assumption that we are walking towards a new phase of the civil society.

And do you believe this new path would lead to any result in future?

Yes, I think that it would succeed if it turns into a sort of social and political behavior, if the civil values take stronger roots in the society, and if the movement keeps human rights as its priority. Such capabilities can sustain the existence of the movement and step-by-step broaden the demands. Of course the most vital condition is that it would not turn into an ideological path, and stay nonviolent.

The Latest from Iran (7 May): The Original Post-Election Muddle

1415 GMT: Hunger Strike. Students at Azad University in Shahrekord in western Iran have entered the third day without food to protest limitations imposed by authorities on student activists.

1400 GMT: We Will Punch You in the Mouth (without Irony). Your Tehran Friday Prayers update....

One of our favourites, tough-talking Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami laying down the religious law today, especially to other nations: A senior Iranian cleric on Friday warned the world powers that if their threats continued, "If you threaten or attack our nation and religion, we will reply and you will get yourself a punch in your mouth and jeopardize all your world."

Khatami spun his clerical six-shooters and continued, "These people of ours are not afraid of sanctions and threats and the language of force against such people is irrational and futile. Whether you like it or not, Iran is already in the nuclear club and it would be better to acknowledge it."

Having calKhatami called on the world powers to adopt a "polite and logical dialogue" with Iran rather than using threats and intimidation.

1215 GMT: Nuclear Deal or Just Posture? After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's flutter earlier this week about Brazil mediating a deal on uranium enrichment --- denied by the Brazilians --- Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said he will pay a surprise visit (which I guess is no longer a surprise) to Istanbul to discuss an arrangement for a uranium swap with his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu.

0850 GMT: Banning Books. We reported earlier this week that the stall with the works of the late Ayatollah Beheshti, a key figure in the Islamic Revolution, had not been allowed at the Tehran Book Fair because of the views of his son, Mir Hossein Mousavi's advisor Alireza Beheshti.

Now Rah-e-Sabz claims that the works of Grand Ayatollah Sane'i and the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri were also barred.

NEW Iran: Ahmadinejad’s Chief Aide “Not Too Many People in the Prisons”
Mahmoud’s Iran Wonderland: Ahmadinejad Says “I’m in Favour of Protestors”
Iran Snap Analysis: Ahmadinejad’s Nuclear Roadtrip
The Latest from Iran (6 May): Rattling the Cage

0845 GMT: A New Website and New Information. The "Center to Defend Families of Those Slain and Detained in Iran" has established an on-line presence.

Rah-e-Sabz has posted a list of names of 32 students detained in Evin Prison.



0840 GMT: A Hospital Visit. Former President Mohammad Khatami has seen Ahmad Motamedi, a Minister in Khatami's Government and now professor at Amir Kabir University. Motamedi was stabbed earlier this week in his office.

0830 GMT: A Clerical Jibe. Ayatollah Javadi Amoli has declared that, if bribery is eliminated from Iran's judiciary, the country will prosper. He added, in a reference to an Ali Khamenei, "a certain cleric was Hojatoleslam, but became an Ayatollah when he got an office".

0745 GMT: After a night covering the British General Election and writing the assessment that it's all a big mess, it's kind of a relief to get back to the relative clarity of post-election Iran.

We open this morning, however, not with clarity but with fantasy. We've posted extracts from an extraordinary interview with Ahmadinejad right-hand man Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, who declares, "There are not too many people in the prisons."

The International Front: "Have Some Food"

To put forward Iran's case on its nuclear programme, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has hosted diplomats of other countries at a dinner in New York, amidst the United Nations conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And, yes, an American official showed up.

Fighting for the University

Rooz Online has an interesting article about manoeuvres for control of Iran's private system of universities, Islamic Azad, reading them as  "a coming battleground [for the 'hardliners'] against [former President Hashemi] Rafsanjani".