The Latest from Iran (9 November): Assessing the Government

NEW Iran: An Eyewitness on 13 Aban “Protest An Inseparable Part of People’s Lives”
NEW Iran's Nuclear Programme: Washington's Unhelpful Misperceptions
Latest Iran Video: Mehdi Karroubi on the 13 Aban Protests
NEW Iran: An Opposition Renewing, A Government in Trouble
Iran: Question for the Regime “What’s Your Next Punch?”
NEW Latest Iran Video: More from 13 Aban & from Today (8-9 November)

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2030 GMT: We're still waiting for an English translation of today's Mir Hossein Mousavi newspaper with Jamaran, the newspaper of the Khomeini family (see 1015 GMT). The headline is Mousavi's declaration that Iran is "vulnerable" in the current political situation: “People who entered the scene of the Revolution did not do it to suffer such difficulties. They came to secure their freedom and welfare, and if the system fails to deliver, it will lose its legitimacy for certain.”

2020 GMT: An EA reader has sent us the petition, printed in full in the comments below, to the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to commute the death sentence of Ehsan Fatahian, a 28-year-old Kurd who is scheduled for execution on Wednesday. Fatahian was initially given a 10-year prison term for “plotting against national security” but this was changed to a death sentence by an appeal court when the charge “waging war against God” was added.

2000 GMT: Back from a break to find excellent material from readers. With university demonstrations continuing today, we've posted four clips from a rally at Azad University, Khomeini Shahr, outside Isfahan.

An EA reader describes, in a comment below, today's  ceremony awarding the Human Rights Defenders Tulip to Iranian lawyer and human/women’s rights activist Shadi Sadr in The Hague.

Tomorrow (10 November) at 12:00 CET she will present a film, Women in Shrouds, and hold a Q&A about human rights in Iran. If anyone here would like to ask her a question through me, please post it here in these comments.

1645 GMT: Daftar-Tahkim-Vahdat, the main reformist student and alumni organisation, has issued a statement announcing that it will withstand the oppression of "coup agents" with all of its organisational power, even as almost half of its key members are imprisoned or sought by the security forces.


The significance beyond this general assertion is that when the organisation issued a statement of defiance on the eve of 13 Aban, the regime arrested three of its leading members. So renewing this show of resistance is a clear signal that, less than a month before the next mass rally on 16 Azar (7 December), the students will not be cowed into silence.

1630 GMT: Hillary Responds and Iran's State Media Takes Note. No surprise that Secretary of State Clinton would offer a boiler-plate response to the news of the charging of the three hikers:

We believe strongly that there is no evidence to support any charge whatsoever. And we would renew our request on the behalf of these three young people and their families that the Iranian government exercise compassion and release them so they can return home. And we will continue to make that case through our Swiss protecting power, who represents the United States in Tehran.

More interesting, perhaps, that the statement would be prominently featured on Press TV's website.

1440 GMT: The Story Beyond the Headline Story --- 3 US Hikers Charged with Espionage. Western media will be dominated for the next 24 hours by the breaking news that three Americans who strayed across the Iraq-Iran border will be charged with spying, according to Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi.

Here's the unreported dimension of the event. The news came through only hours after the US representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Glyn Davies, offered Washington's olive branch in the nuclear talks:

"There have been communications back and forth. We are in extra innings in these negotiations. That's sometimes the way these things go....We want to give some space to Iran to work through this. It's a tough issue for them, quite obviously, and we're hoping for an early positive answer from the Iranians."

Davies' kind words appear to be tied to the new Iranian counter-proposal (see separate entry), which in visit may be linked to Russian intervention through the visit of its Deputy Foreign Minister to Tehran this weekend.

So is the Iranian Government playing a cunning game where it can engage the US with one hand and strike at Washington, via its citizens,  with the other? Or are we now seeing a schizophrenic Government in which one group is pursuing negotiations while another is going for intimidation?

1225 GMT: Ahmadinejad and the CIA. The politics around the President's "engagement" with the US, given the regime's simultaneous post-election use of "velvet coup" to crack down on opponents, is getting very confusing.

The Iranian Labor News Agency features an interview with conservative activist Mojtaba Shakeri, who says that  some of the journalists and scholars who met with Ahmadinejad, presumably during the President's trip to New York, were undoubtedly CIA operatives. Shakeri says this is common US practice and occurred in previous encounters with Presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami.

For Mir Hossein Mousavi's Kalemeh, the interview is enough to become the sensational revelation that the President has met CIA officials. That, of course, is part of the current opposition campaign to question the President's duplicity in negotiating with the Obama Administration while denouncing the evils of the US.

1145 GMT: We have received a moving and thoughtful e-mail from an EA reader, offering an eyewitness summary of the importance of 13 Aban. It is posted in a separate entry.

1110 GMT: Saeed Mortazavi, the former Tehran Prosecutor General who organised the first post-election trials and has been linked to the abuses at Kahrizak Prison, may be moving post for the second times in three months. Mortazavi became Iran's Deputy Prosecutor General but may now become head of the economic crimes division of the Justice Ministry.

1015 GMT: Green Publicity. Mir Hossein Mousavi has spoken with Jamaran, the newspaper of the Khomeini family, about the need for unity through adherence to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. This is the second major interview Jamaran has featured in 72 hours, having spoken with former President Mohammad Khatami this weekend.

0945 GMT: Why are Bread Prices Rising? EA correspondent Mohammad Khiabani, who specialises in analysis on the Iranian economy, has a look at the recent increase in bread prices (see yesterday's updates), "This is not completely unrelated to subsidy removals, since merchants often increase prices in future expectation of inflation, which of course leads to inflation." This from the US Open Source Center:

In its November 8 issue, Hemayat said that the two traditional breads including Barbari and Sangak were being sold for 600 and 2,000 tomans, respectively (approximately 1,000 tomans = US $1). The newspaper said that, coming before the announcement of the new rates for bread, evidence shows that the increase in prices is more than what was officially declared. Officials had declared new rates for the traditional bread in the first week of November. Under this scheme the price per bread for unsubsidized Sangak is 400 tomans and in subsidized bakeries it is 175 tomans.

Jomhouri Eslami headlined: "New wave of expensive bread". The report pointed out that the offenders are overcharging while the authorities are only giving warnings. Jomhuri Islami reported the cost of bread in various Tehran neighborhoods. In southern Tehran Barbari costs 150 tomans, Pasadaran (northeast) 200 tomans, Saadatabad (northwest) 250 tomans, Shahrake Gharb (northwest) 300 tomans, Shahrake Omid (northeast) 500 tomans, Ketabi Square (north) 600 tomans.
As for the Sangak, which uses a more expensive flour and baking process, it was sold in Pasdaran for 1,000 tomans, Saadatabad 700 tomans, and Shahrake Gharb for 2,000 tomans.

0900 GMT: Iran's Telecommunications Privatised. Press TV reports:

An Iranian consortium has signed a deal to buy 50 percent plus one of the shares of Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) for around eight billion dollars. According to the deputy of Iran's Privatization Company, the related contract was signed Sunday with an Iranian consortium named Etemad Mobin Development that includes three firms.

"The historical deal was signed after an article was added to the $7.8 billion text of the contract according to which the buyer will be committed to the charter of TCI," said Mehdi Oghadaei.

0805 GMT: The muddle inside Iran on the nuclear negotiations and a useful but disturbing New York Times article this morning prompt us to offer an analysis, "Iran's Nuclear Programme: Washington's Unhelpful Misperceptions".

0640 GMT: Unsurprisingly, Iranian state media are playing up the meetings of President Ahmadinejad with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul. No details are offered, though Erdogan has recently been supportive of Iran's line on its nuclear programme, criticising its Israeli counterpart.

0610 GMT: An EA reader sends in a piece of interesting information about Internet trends inside Iran. The search volume for Mohsen Sazegara, a founder of the Revolutionary Guard who is now a fervent opponent of the regime from his exile in the US, is twice that for Mehdi Karroubi.

Not sure of the significance of this; any ideas would be welcome.

0600 GMT: We'll be trying to put the pieces together on where the Iranian Government is heading, even if those involved don't know where they fit.

President Ahmadinejad is in Ankara for the meeting of the economic committee of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which raises the possibilities of the Government going into a holding phase or (more likely) others manoeuvring while Ahmadinejad is away.

One of the events which may or may not be significant in those calculations continues to be debated today. We initially speculated that Speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, travelled to Najaf in Iraq to see senior clerics because of the internal discussions in Tehran. EA correspondent Josh Mull has been putting the alternative that Larijani saw Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and others to encourage passage of the law for Iraqi elections in January, and other observers also back that view.

On the opposition side, there is a lot of Internet chatter this morning about Mehdi Karroubi's webcast yesterday, recounting the events of 13 Aban and criticising the Government's manipulation of the issue of relations with the US. And discussion is picking up over a planned demonstration at Shiraz University today.

Iran's Nuclear Programme: Washington's Unhelpful Misperceptions

The Latest from Iran (9 November): Assessing the Government

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In The New York Times this morning, David Sanger publishes an article, "Iran Is Said to Ignore Effort to Salvage a Nuclear Deal", which gives half the story on the current tangled state of the negotiations over uranium enrichment.

Half the story because Sanger's story is effectively a US Government press release. Here is the narrative of unnamed officials:

The Obama Administration...has told Iran’s leaders in back-channel messages that it is willing to allow the country to send its stockpile of enriched uranium to any of several nations, including Turkey, for temporary safekeeping....But the overtures, made through the International Atomic Energy Agency over the past two weeks, have all been ignored....Instead....the Iranians have revived an old counterproposal: that international arms inspectors take custody of much of Iran’s fuel, but keep it on Kish, a Persian Gulf resort island that is part of Iran....

That proposal had been rejected because leaving the nuclear material on Iranian territory would allow for the possibility that the Iranians could evict the international inspectors at any moment. That happened in North Korea in 2003, and within months the country had converted its fuel into the material for several nuclear weapons.

This version of events intersects not only with developments around El Baradei's latest proposal --- Turkey takes Iran's reprocessed uranium from Russia and reshapes it into metal plates --- but also the reports that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was in Tehran pushing a deal. The article is also notable for revealing the Kish proposal, which had not surfaced before.

The downside of the article, however, is that it misses the other half of the narrative. Yesterday Tehran's officials put out a counter-proposal for reprocessing outside Iran, in a two-stage delivery to Russia. Each shipment of uranium would be 400 kilogrammes; the total of 800 kilogrammes is about half of Iran's stock. That proposal, which could be a response to Ryabkov's intervention, may just be a case of the Iranian Government spinning out the discussions, but it is a far cry from an outright rejection.

Indeed, it is troubling that Sanger's article is riddled with distorting exaggerations. His claim that US officials "had now all but lost hope that Iran would follow through with an agreement reached in Geneva on Oct. 1 to send its fuel out of the country temporarily" overstates the situation --- Tehran's officials did not accept a plan but agreed to further technical talks in Vienna. Thus his follow-up, "Iranian officials told the energy agency on Oct. 29 that they could not agree to the deal that their own negotiators had reached", is an unhelpful simplification.

That would not be a major problem if this was just loose reporting. The worry is that this is also the perception of US officials:

“If you listen to what the Iranians have said publicly and privately over the past week,” one senior administration official said Sunday, “it’s evident that they simply cannot bring themselves to do the deal.”

Even the most casual of EA readers would have picked up by now that there is not a single Iranian view on the negotiations. Instead, there is a heated debate within the regime on how to conduct the talks with the US. The Washington narrative in Sanger's article misses this, ignoring for example that President Ahmadinejad is pressing for a continuation of discussions despite hostility from within the Iranian Parliament and possibly from the Supreme Leader's office.

If true, this misperception carries the consequence that it may be the Obama Administration rather than Tehran which breaks off the talks. This does not mean that it is giving up a likely agreement --- again, Ahmadinejad's primary objective may be to stay at the table rather than signing a deal --- but it will lead to Iran blaming Washington for the collapse (and there will be supporters for this view, such as Erdogan in Turkey) and undercut the possibility of China and Russia supporting the harsh sanctions that the US Congress will demand.

Yet even this is secondary to the wider significance of the Administration's fuzzy view. Simply put, if the statements in Sanger's piece are accurate, Obama officials have a poor understanding of the internal dynamics in Iran after 12 June, with little comprehension of the fault-lines within the Establishment. In the end, they fail to understand that the nuclear issue is, first and foremost, a pawn in a much bigger chess match inside Iran.

The Latest from Iran (8 November): Challenge Renewing?

NEW Latest Iran Video: Mehdi Karroubi on the 13 Aban Protests
NEW Iran: An Opposition Renewing, A Government in Trouble
Iran: Question for the Regime “What’s Your Next Punch?”
NEW Latest Iran Video: More from 13 Aban & from Today (8 November)
Iran’s New 13 Aban: An Eyewitness Account “I Have Never Seen as Much Violence”
Iran: Josh Shahryar on the Significance of 13 Aban
The Latest from Iran (7 November): Regrouping

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2215 GMT: On? Off? Well, I guess for a day that started with a projection of Government uncertainty, it is appropriate that it should end that way. Having said on Saturday that Iran could reject the Vienna enrichment deal, top lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1016801/1/.html on Sunday, "Our first option is to buy fuel of 20 per cent (enrichment). But if we cannot buy it we could make a limited exchange on condition that first we get fuel of 20 per cent."

So is Boroujerdi shifting in recognition that pro-deal forces have pressed ahead (see 1640 GMT)? Or is he just manoeuvring for a better position, working with allies, to hold out against any agreement?

2030 GMT: Another day with some releases from prison and some cases going to trial. The file of Mohsen Aminzadeh, Deputy Foreign Minister in the Khatami Government, has been sent to the Revolutionary Court.

1930 GMT: An Iranian blogger reports that Mohammad-Hossein Saffar-Harandi, the former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, was met by sustained protests when he visited Gilan University in northern Iran today and left to shouts of "Murderer, Get Out!". We have video in a separate entry.

1850 GMT: Three Iranian judges have reported been fired because of their connection with the Kahrizak Prison, infamous for alleged abuse of detainees.

1640 GMT: Nuclear Deal On? Yes, the Ahmadinejad Government is pressing ahead, despite objections from within the establishment.

"Diplomats close to nuclear negotiations" say that Iran will offer a two-stage delivery of uranium to be enriched in Russia. Each delivery will consist of 400 kilogrammes. The total of 800 kilogrammes, or just over half of Iran's current stock of uranium, compares with a single delivery of 1200 kilogrammes in the proposal from October's Vienna talks.

The revelation of Iran's counter-offer may have been prompted by the gathering flurry of voice in Iran's state media saying no deal was possible (see yesterday's updates and 1300 GMT). Or it may be connected with a visit, reported in Fars News, of Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to Tehran.

1620 GMT: Presidential Confusion. Here's the latest explanation for why Ahmadinejad did not appear last night. He was going to speak about his subsidy reform bill but then decided not to appear, since this might pre-empt Parliament's discussion on the measure today. The director of his Public Relations Department now says, "The interview is slated for next week." He added:

Such a relation [between postponement and Parliament's subsidy reform discussions] cannot be denied but other issues may also be involved. However, what Fars news agency has issued is not what we announced and they have offered their own comment. Actually it will be disrespectful to people if we declare that the interview was not conducted due to the president's other engagements.

Understand that? I don't. Accept it? No again.

1605 GMT: For What It's Worth. Parliament's National Security Commission has announced that it will investigate the events of 13 Aban.

1545 GMT: Correction on the Bread Story. An EA correspondent checks in to clarify the economic situation in Iran:

The rising bread prices in Tehran are not a result of the subsidy plan, which has not even been ratified by the Majlis [Parliament] or the Guardian Council. The changes in Tehran's bread prices stem from the Government's experiment with higher-quality wheat in the bread. For this they have to charge more, even with the subsidized price, to bakers. They first did this in Karaj (a suburb of Tehran) after the election. No bread riots there, even though it is a poorer area. Then they expanded it through Tehran slowly.

1535 GMT: Rafsanjani Surfaces. The former President has met members of Parliament from the Western Provinces. He has once again called for a constructive social and political dialogue. Implicitly criticising  post-election coverage by state media, he said concerns must be heard and the creation of unity through due legal process and avoidance of extreme and divisive actions is a necessity.

1510 GMT: Appearing in Revolutionary Court, Behzad Nabavi, a senior member of the reformist Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution party, has denied all charges against him.

1310 GMT: Mediaflash --- Iranian Politics Makes Washington Post Columnist's Head Explode. It's not just the headline of David Ignatius' column, "Iran's 'Great Satan' addiction", that indicates ill-informed stereotype and hysterical pseudo-analysis is to follow. There is his ignorance of any aspect to the Iranian post-election crisis other than the "nuclear issue" and his reduction of Iran's politics to Ahmadinejad v. the Reformists (and then Khamenei Jumps In).

What really gives offence is that Ignatius won't admit that the "Great Satan" problem lies not with the Green movement but with his own inability to appreciate 1) that opposing the regime does not necessarily mean giving up a claim to Iran's sovereignty over nuclear energy and 2) that opposition to Ahmadinejad's tactics of negotiation with the US has more to do with criticism of the President's quest for legitimacy than it does with anti-Americanism. Thus this well-connected Washington columnist throws out the Green opposition as a movement tainted with an incurable Iranian disease:

Rather than speak up for dialogue with the United States, many of the reformists gathered around former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi decided instead to score political points against Ahmadinejad. The past month has been a reminder that the very existence and legitimacy of Khamenei's regime are interwoven with a defiant anti-Americanism. This legacy infects even the reformers who protest against Khamenei.

1300 GMT: Nuclear Deal Off?A "well-informed" Iranian source has rejected the compromise "third-party enrichment" proposal of Mohammad El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Only yesterday Iranian state media were featuring El Baradei's suggestion Turkey to replace France as the third country with Russia and Iran in the enrichment plan, but the source claims, "It seems the IAEA chief is trying to take advantage of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Turkey to gain media coverage on a closed issue."

It remains to be seen whether the source is part of the Ahmadinejad camp, indicating that third-party enrichment is now dead as a negotiating possibliity, or whether he is connected to Iranian politicians trying to undermine the deal (and possibly the President).

1255 GMT: An Ahmadinejad Victory. Amidst the apparent turmoil within the Government, the President did pick up a big win on Sunday when the Parliament approved proposals to redistribute money saved from subsidy cuts. The Parliament, however, retains a say in the plan, as the cash in the state budget where the legislators have oversight powers.

1145 GMT: Press TV is now featuring news of Ali Larijani's meeting with senior Iraqi clerics, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Unsurprisingly, there are no indications of whether the talks focused on Iranian or Iraqi politics, only general platitudes such as Larijani "underlin[ing] the importance of religious authorities' viewpoints in resolving various issues among Muslims".

0910 GMT: We have posted Mehdi Karroubi's video statement on 13 Aban.

0835 GMT: With news coming in of the Karroubi video and uncertainty over Ahmadinejad's moves, we've split off our initial update as a separate analysis, "An Opposition Renewing, A Government in Trouble".

0825 GMT: Yes, Challenge Renewing. Mehdi Karroubi has just released a video statement on the 13 Aban protests. He declares that the Government has failed to put down the opposition with force and points to the Ahmadinejad hypocrisy of backing anti-US protests while negotiating with Washington.

0815 GMT: Busted! Ahmadinejad's Cancelled Speech and the Trip to Ankara. And here is the revelation that the President's 2nd postponement of his post-13 Aban speech is a sign of a Government in trouble. From the Chinese news service Xinhua:

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will depart to Turkey on Nov. 8 to take part in the economic summit of Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in the country, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday.

So Ahmadinejad knew he was going to Turkey 48 hours before 13 Aban. And that exposes his excuse, more than 48 hours after 13 Aban, that he had to cancel his Saturday speech because he suddenly noticed he was going to Ankara.

0750 GMT: Will Russia Shift on Sanctions? As those opposed to the enrichment deal sent out their message yesterday through MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev declared, in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, that Iran must abide by international rules and not hide its nuclear facilities. He added that it would be better to avoid sanctions, but they cannot be excluded if there is no progress in the talks.

It should be remembered that Medvedev offered a similar statement after the "revelation" of the second enrichment facility in September and that Der Spiegel has a tendency towards sensationalism in its coverage of Iran. So this feels more like a bit of pressure from Moscow for Iran to keep negotiating on an enrichment deal, rather than a threat of imminent sanctions.

0735 GMT: A Symbol? Today's update picture (left) is of an empty University classroom. The inscription on the wall, "Death to Khamenei".

Iran Video: Mr Ahmadinejad Speaks with His Wonderful, Brightly-Coloured Charts

Latest Iran Video: Mehdi Karroubi on the 13 Aban Protests

The Latest from Iran (8 November): Challenge Renewing?

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To ease our disappointment at the non-appearance of President Ahmadinejad's Saturday night speech, cancelled so he could go to Turkey in his role of Leader of the Islamic World, we return to the national address that ensured his victory in the 12 June Presidential election.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKpRk1eS0CM[/youtube]

Iran: An Opposition Renewing, A Government in Trouble

Iran: Question for the Regime “What’s Your Next Punch?”
NEW Latest Iran Video: More from 13 Aban
Iran’s New 13 Aban: An Eyewitness Account “I Have Never Seen as Much Violence”
Iran: Josh Shahryar on the Significance of 13 Aban
The Latest from Iran (8 November): Challenge Renewing?

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Yesterday we began with two tasks: 1) to see if the regime was really in disarray over its response to the latest challenges of 13 Aban, and 2) to watch for signs of the Green opposition's next move after the marches, given 48 hours of near-silence. Well, we are getting a response to the second question.

Former President Mohammad Khatami resurfaced with a strong statement challenging the legitimacy of the Government and later met Mehdi Karroubi. Today Mir Hossein Mousavi has appeared for the first time since 13 Aban, visiting --- like Khatami did on Friday --- Karroubi advisor Morteza Alviri, who was recently released from detention. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri has been interviewed again, criticising detainee abuses and questioning the legal basis of confessions.

Early in the crisis, an EA reader suggested that the Green movement was operating tactically with Mousavi as the political leader, Khatami as the respected figure making criticisms of the Government, and Karroubi as the charismatic cleric who could mobilise the energy of the opposition. Given the difficulties with communication and organisation, as well as the ongoing debate over the next moves of the movement (again, see the excellent discussion amongst our readers), that depiction is probably an aspiration rather than a coordinated approach.

Yet I sense that, far from sapping the strength of the movement, 13 Aban has renewed it. Part of that strength comes from anger at the violence and detentions of Wednesday. But at least part of it is coming from the belief that defeat will not come from the Government's heavy fist. The discussion about "What is to Done?" is being fuelled, I think, by the perception of the opposition that its fate now lies in its own hands, rather than the actions of a Khamenei, an Ahmadinejad, or the Revolutionary Guard.

And that is where Saturday's answer to our first question enters. To be blunt, the President did not address the nation Saturday night. He had not spoken, as initially promised, on the evening of 13 Aban (remember, he decided not to compete with the under-17 World Cup match between Iran and Uruguay). Now, after 24 hours of build-up,  he was stepping away from the podium again, allegedly because of a trip today to Turkey.

But, while Ahmadinejad silenced himself, the disputes continued. The Government is now in an internal fight over not only the nuclear talks but its approach to foreign policy: will engagement with the US be sacrificed, as it appears key conservatives/principlists and possibly the Supreme Leader want, to re-establish the supposed strength of the regime? Parliament is still causing some trouble over the economic programme, and the first signs of the consequences of subsidy reform --- a rise in bread prices --- emerged Saturday. The Revolutionary Guard seems to be in a continued distraction in the aftermath of the Baluchestan bombing.

All of which led to a curiosity of mixed signals yesterday on how to meet the opposition challenge. Having pursued mass detention on Wednesday, the Government appeared to be backing away on Saturday. While prosecutors and police chiefs could not give accurate figures on the number of those arrested, all their public statements points to a softening of position, with the declaration of releases of most of those detained.

And last night, almost unnoticed, confirmation came that two leading reformists, Ali Tajernia and Ebrahim Amini, had been released after months in detention. That overshadowed any announcement of the trials that were supposedly taking place in the Revolutionary Court on Saturday.

I'm now looking for the vapour trails from the President's flight to Ankara. If I don't see them, watch for another update. One that (very cautiously) considers that the President may be in the greatest spot of bother he has encountered since the end of June.