Iran: The Latest on Mehdi Karroubi

Iran: Karroubi Responds to Government Threats “Bring. It. On.”
The Latest from Iran (14 October): Watching Karroubi, Rafsanjani, and the Supreme Leader’s Health
The Latest from Iran (13 October): Government Threatens Karroubi

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

From an Enduring America correspondent inside Iran:

Karroubi's many offices have all been closed down. The only way to meet him now is to go to his house in a northern neighborhood of Tehran, but this is a problem as well since the house is being watched 24/7 and only immediate family and house workers can go in and out freely. This does not mean that he is under house arrest, but there are some unwritten restrictions in effect.

Karroubi is going to be sued by the government for things that he said with regards to the post-election victims of rape, but this will not put an end to the speculations about the abuses, nor will it end the support that he enjoys from the rest of the Green movement. His moves should be considered in relation to those of others, such as the second letter sent by the Association of Combatant Clerics to the head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, warning him not to be ignorant toward the truth about the claims over the Government of President Ahmadinejad.

Karroubi is not a man to give in to threat. The advantage that he has over [Mir Hossein] Mousavi, for example, is that he is a cleric wearing the famous clothing which makes it more difficult to discredit him. Karroubi was the only person that Imam Khomeini trusted with the authority over all his assets and belongings; it is not an easy task to tip over such a trustworthy individual.

The Latest from Iran (12 October): Green Shoots?

NEW Iran: The Politics of the Death Sentences
NEW Iran: English Text of Mousavi-Karroubi Meeting (10 October)
Iran: The Washington-Tehran Deal on Enriched Uranium?
Iran: So Who Controls the Islamic Republic?
The Latest from Iran (11 October): The Mousavi-Karroubi Meeting

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

1930 GMT: The reformist Assembly of Combatant Clergymen, paralleling the statements of Mohammad Khatami, have written an open letter to the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, warning about the consequences of the current lawlessness and stressing that the judiciary should be held accountable for crimes, violation of law, and injustices. Among these violations are detentions in solitary confinement and uncertainties about charges:

Our fear and concern is because of the reduction or even destruction of the peoples trust and faith in the judiciary system. How can it be that, with a simple gesture, a newspaper is closed down and thus the artery of information of a party or group is blocked instantly; however, hundreds of newspapers and [Government] media with different kinds of accusations and convictions in their evidence become richer in their unbounded cheek and still the judiciary system is unable to dispense justice and only casts some general conclusions about the reproach of lies?

1910 GMT: A Very Gentle Day. Gentle by post-election standards, with the big domestic news Parliament's approval of Government cuts in food and gasoline/petrol subsidies. Reuters is only now catching up with Saturday's Karroubi-Mousavi meeting, loosely translating Mousavi as claiming, "It seems some people are trying to take us back to the Inquisition era."

1340 GMT: Posturing. After the flurry of political movement over the weekend, relatively quiet today. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is making an appearance in Shiraz, hoping that he doesn't face too many demonstrators. Mohammad Khatami is celebrating his 66th birthday with friends.

Meanwhile, the Iranian Government continues the ritual tough-talk two-step with its US partner, covering up the private movement towards accommodation. Responding to Hillary Clinton's finger-shaking that "the world will not wait indefinitely" for Iranian movement on the nuclear issue, the spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry blustered on Monday, "So far, western powers have achieved nothing by using the language of threats and sanctions against Iran. The West, itself, knows that this language is useless. We have always announced that we advocate negotiations."

0905 GMT: We've posted a special analysis of the politics surrounding the four death sentences handed out by the regime in recent days. And we've updated our feature on "Who Controls Iran?".

0900 GMT: A new poster (left) for the 4 November demonstrations is circulating. It repeats the slogans of previous flyers and adds, "United, we will be on the streets.
Join our million-strong green crowd on 13 Aban [4 November] in support of freedom in Iran. Stay in your car in silence in the areas where people are sitting in."

0720 GMT: Iranian state media is trying to keep President Ahmadinejad firmly in the international arena rather than within internal difficulties. The President's latest statement was the reassurance that Iran, not "the West", was setting the agenda for the next round of talks on Tehran's nuclear programme:

We have already agreed to discuss Iran's latest package of proposals. I don't think there will be any problems in the next round of talks but if someone wants to cause problems, they will fail. And if they succeed to do so, they will harm themselves.

Meanwhile the Iranian military is putting out its own tough reassurances, with a Brigadier General asserting, “Updating the defense systems is moving on an excellent progressive trend at present and (Iran’s systems) can compete with hi-tech systems of the world. Now we are in our best conditions of defensive preparedness."

0600 GMT:  Are we seeing an opposition revival? Consider that in the last 48 hours:

*Mohammad Khatami has made a high-profile appearance in Yazd Province and issued one of the strongest criticisms of the Government to date: “Be sure that people will never back down."

*Mehdi Karroubi, in a letter sent in his son's name, used the call for fairness from Iranian state broadcasting to attack the Iran judiciary's handling of his claims of detainee abuses;

*Karroubi has also re-established his web presence with the re-launch of Tagheer;

*Mir Hossein Mousavi, after seeing senior clerics on Thursday about his "social network", had a lengthy meeting on Saturday with Karroubi. In the summary of the meeting, both in Farsi and in English, their emphasis is on a renewal of pressure against the Government over electoral fraud, "legal" injustices, and abuses.

Add to this the re-appearance of Mousavi chief advisor Alireza Beheshti after the attempt to silence him through detention. Yesterday he issued a sharp response to Ahmad Khamati's Friday Prayer, deriding the cleric's claims of a US-sponsored "velvet revolution" (given that the Iranian Government had just sat across from US delegates at the Geneva talks) and calling for "rights" and "respect" for all Iranians.

Iran: So Who Controls the Islamic Republic?

The Latest from Iran (11 October): “Media Operations”

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

UPDATE 12 October 0845 GMT: EA's Mr Smith offers his reading of the Foreign Affairs analysis:

"I do not see what this adds to what we knew already. Besides making the silly mistake of identifying Mesbah Yazdi with Mohammad Yazdi, and stating that the former was head of Iran's judiciary (in reality his real influence and authority are, until proven otherwise, rather limited to "spiritual guidance" of Ahmadinejad), the rest are allegations that have been fed to him after having floated on the Web for months. The Taeb-Jalili-Khamenei trio was floated by Roger Cohen [of The New York Times] in one of his dispatches from Tehran.

The only tidbit that would be interesting, if verified, is the purge of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps and the removal of pro-Mousavi Guardsmen before the elections. That would make sense, and it would be interesting to have real statistics on that.
--
Earlier this week Foreign Affairs published an article by Jerry Guo on "the rise of a new power elite" of "the Revolutionary Guard and its allies" in Iran. The article raised points which have been discussed by Enduring America readers for several weeks, considering politics, the military situation, and the battle for control of key sections of Iran's economy. In addition to Guo's attention to the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, notice his inclusion of Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council, and the Supreme Leader's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, amongst the "coalition of power".

Letter from Tehran: Iran's New Hard-Liners

The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a grand staircase, in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. From here, the IRGC orchestrated the crackdown that followed Iran's disputed presidential vote in June, beating protestors on the street and torturing those behind bars. More ominously, the IGRC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government, carving out their own power base in a regime that is becoming increasingly insular, reactionary, and violent.

So far, much of the analysis of the emerging Iranian power struggle has focused on the clash between the country's conservatives and reformers, pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his patron, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two thwarted presidential candidates, and Mohammad Khatami, a former president. (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and seasoned kingmaker has eased toward the reformists in the election's aftermath.)

The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran's opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution.

In the reformist era of Khatami, and to some extent during Ahmadinejad's first term, the country's conservative theocrats and technocrats -- such as Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, and Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, the ousted intelligence minister who criticized the state's use of forced confessions -- held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches. Although they were entrenched status quo forces, these pragmatists believed in the dual nature of the Islamic Republic's statehood -- a country with religious and political legitimacy.

But now such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran's security apparatus known as "the New Right." They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran. These neo-fundamentalists call for the "re-Islamization" of the theocracy, but their true agenda is to block further reform to the political system in terms of reconciling with both domestic opponents and the West.

This coalition includes Hassan Taeb, the commander of the Basij, the paramilitary branch of the IRGC; Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council and the country's chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's second son, a man so feared that his name is not often uttered in public.

Hard-line figures such as the younger Khamenei and the IRGC leadership are granted religious legitimacy through the support of the most radical mullahs in the theocratic establishment: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, the committee that certified the election tallies, and Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, a former head of the judiciary and Ahmadinejad's spiritual adviser. Yazdi is affiliated with an underground messianic sect called the Hojjatieh Society, which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse. Democratic reforms, the Majlis (parliament), and elections are mere annoyances under this radical Islamic worldview.

It is not surprising, then, that Yazdi issued a fatwa shortly before June 12 that gave authorities tacit approval to fudge the vote. Indeed, the clerics seem to have gotten the intended result: after the election, a number of employees at Iran's Interior Ministry released an open letter stating that "the election supervisors, who had become happy and energetic for having obtained the religious fatwa to use any trick for changing the votes, began immediately to develop plans for it."

Yazdi's influence on Ahmadinejad became pronounced in the early days of the president's first term, when Ahmadinejad declared that the return of the apocalyptic 12th imam would come within two years. Now, his second term will likely be marked by even more radical behavior: in a meeting with Yazdi in June to discuss his domestic agenda, Ahmadinejad promised to Islamize the country's educational and cultural systems, declaring that Iranians had not yet witnessed "true Islam." Then, in August, amid calls to purge reformist professors, a presidential panel began investigating university humanities curricula deemed to be "un-Islamic." Several progressive students told me that they have been barred from returning to campus this semester, including a top law student at Tehran University. "I was going to continue the protests with my law degree in a more effective manner," he said. "But now I am just a simple pedestrian."

But ideology remains secondary in the struggle to maintain and consolidate control within the fractured regime. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and his associated faction of neo-fundamentalists no longer aim to take on the mantle of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary ideals. As Khamenei's representative to the IRGC put it, "Some people are sticking to Imam Khomeini's ideas ... [but] the situation has changed." Accordingly, religion and revolutionary ideology have become convenient means to an end, but not the end themselves. Purges of un-Islamic faculty and students are meant to target the organizers of mass protests; the arrests and subsequent trials of political opponents, meanwhile, act to shield the financial interests of the IRGC and its hard-line partners.

Read rest of article...

Iran: English Text of Mousavi-Karroubi Meeting (10 October)

Iran: So Who Controls the Islamic Republic?
The Latest from Iran (11 October): “Media Operations”

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

Translated on the Facebook page associated with Mir Hossein Mousavi:

Yesterday (Oct 10, 2009) Mir Hossein Mousavi visited Mehdi Karroubi in his home to talk about the post-election events. In this meeting both presidential candidates by pointing out the efforts of the IRIB (the state-run TV and radio channels) to diminish the reform movement, emphasised on their legal rights and demanded to appear on TV/radio to defend themselves and reply to the false accusations made against them on the “national” stage.

At the beginning of this meeting Mehdi Karroubi said that the recent presidential election was a great opportunity, and the establishment could have used this opportunity to strengthen its position in the international community. Noting that the behaviour of the government after the election was far from the status and ideas of the system that was founded by Imam Khomeini, Karroubi strongly criticised the illegal arrests of Alireza Beheshti, Morteza Alviri and Ebrahim Amini (senior advisors to Mousavi and Karroubi) as well as the other political prisoners who have sacrificed a lot for the revolution and the country.

Karroubi, the Secretary General of the Etemade Melli party, called the treatment of the students and revolutionary figures by the government as “odd and strange” and by reminding the events that happened during Shah’s time when the military forces attacked the university, called these kinds of behaviours obscene and that after all these years there was no one who could defend such acts and that he considered these as signs for all the officials to be careful with their actions so that so that future generations would have a good memory of them.

Mehdi Karroubi pointed out the recent letter by the Tehran Governor’s office that prohibits the members of Tehran’s City Council from comforting and meeting with the family members of the victims of the recent events, calling this behaviour “very uncivilised”. Karroubi also  pointed out the recent remarks made by Mohseni-Ejei (the new Prosecutor General) in which he had said that the country was in a combat situation, Karroubi stated that these words were to create fear from the revolutionary courts (show trials) and asked why these kinds of statements are made: why one should pretend that the country is in the military mode and everyone should keep quiet and be silent? Noting that some of the military leaders such as the General Commander of the Revolutionary Guards are accusing the reformists of providing topics for the foreign media, Karroubi asked them who is truly providing topics for the foreign media. “Is it us or you? Do we make harsh statement or you? Who is behaving roughly, you or us?”

Karroubi also pointed out the Qods Day rallies. He stated that the position regarding Israel has not changed and that the Qods Day is a day to support the people of Palestine and condemn the violation of their rights by Israel, but he added:

We should be thankful to the many people who attended these rallies. Most of those who participated in these rallies in response to our invitation were chanting slogans about Iran and their country and were concerned about their fate. We cannot ask people to be ignorant about their country, and although the main propose for this day was Palestinian people, I ask the authorities to explain what has happened in the country that suddenly on Qods Day people are split in two groups and some express their concerns in the slogans they were chanting.

At the end of his remarks, Karroubi stressed that some are talking about the presidential elections as if nothing has happened and are telling people that there has been no fraud in the election. He asked, "Why are the Government telling people these lies as if people don’t know what has happened to them? If that is true then what are all these protests?"

Karroubi added that the authorities are claiming that Ahmadinejad had 300,000 votes in 10,000 ballot boxes, while Karroubi did not even have a single vote in those boxes....

This is despite the fact that some of the observers at the polling stations say that in a ballot box I had 100 votes but they counted only one for me. At least say something that people won’t laugh at you over it. If you are telling the truth then in response to tens of hours of denying the fraud on the “national” media and putting pressure on the innocent detainees to obtain false confessions from them, give us some airtime too so that we also present our evidence and reasons.

Mehdi Karroubi believes that the public opinion and their trust is the greatest resource of the system. Karroubi said:

The greatest resource of Imam [Khomeini] was the public trust and had said so himself several times. Therefore the trust in the system should not be destroyed and no one should move in that direction. Some of these gentlemen knowingly or unknowingly are moving in that direction and are constantly preparing material for the foreigners. Let’s make a right move to come out of this situation. Let’s announce the real statistics. IRIB, which has become a biased and destructive media with every day destroying its credibility more, should follow the right course and should try to win the trust of the people again.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, pointing out the events after the election, strongly criticised the behaviour of the government. He said that it is a bitter irony that the revolutionary figures who were active from the very beginning of the revolution are today in prisons: “I don’t know why these events are happening and why they are doing this to the religious and revolutionary figures.”

Mousavi believes that these actions are causing wounds to the people’s souls and spirits that will not be easily treatable in future. He pointed out the show trials for the reformists, staged with a lot of propaganda, and asked: “What did you gain from this show? Are you seeking to hold inquisition courts? Do you understand the downfalls of such actions in the society?”

Mousavi referred to the great number of revolutionary figures who have been pushed aside and said:

In the past four years, many wrong actions have taken place that have made the revolutionary figures either go to the sidelines or lose their enthusiasm for working. Have a look and see how many ministers, members of the Parliament, and revolutionary figures were eliminated. The sidelines of our revolution have now become greater and more important than its core. How many Presidents we have, how many ministers we have [who have been marginalised]. We have members of the Parliament, managers, leading intellectuals who have all been pushed to the sidelines. Why are all these talents eliminated?

Pointing out his warnings over the past year, Mousvi expressed sorrow over the abuse of the county’s financial resources by some of the power centers, such asthe questionable transfer of telecommunications to the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps and the methods of financing the $8 billion cost.

Mousavi then referred to the accusations [by the Government] of "velvet revolution" and said: “Unfortunately these days from every podium, there is a remark being made to destroy the revolutionary figures. The holy podium of the Friday Prayer is now specific to a party and the hardliners are using any means to eliminate everyone who has a different opinion from them.”

Mousavi, pointing out the history of Russia and the Communist period, said that in an era some people took power that tried to eliminate those who were active in that revolution by removing the images of them from books and pictures and by forging the history to deceive their people and the people of the world, but [eventually] their government was overthrown and historians wrote the real history. He emphasised:

The few should not think that the events of the beginning of the Revolution and the years after that are gone from people’s minds. Recently, one of the gentlemen who had a position in my cabinet and then resigned over some differences has made comments that make you wonder. It is three or four months that he is spreading lies at IRIB and his media against me, Mr. Karroubi, and people who have supported us and tried to destroy our characters. Don’t we have the right to defend ourselves on “national” TV too?

Recalling the meeting with Ayatollah Hashemi-Shahroudi (the former Head of the Judiciary), Mousavi said:

Mr. Shahroudi called me and asked if I could go to his office. I went there. Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani (the Head of the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council) was there too, but I was not originally informed about his presence. We talked about the events that happened after the election and then Mr. Shahroudi asked me what I would do. I said that we were clear and that they should give us time so that we could also defend ourselves in live broadcast from the national media in that environment of destruction. Prior to that Mr. Larijani had also asked me if I would go to the television and I said yes. In the meeting with Mr. Shahroudi, he suggested a legal gathering and I accepted. Right then he called the High Commission of National Security, they spoke and they agreed too. Then they told us to write a request. We prepared a request [for a gathering] signed by me and sent it. A few days later we received a note from the High Commission of National Security that they had rejected our request according to some article and it was also signed by some managers.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, criticising the extent of lying among some officials, added:

They are constantly giving false information to the public and think that people will believe them. How many times have the number of people killed after the election changed? Then they claim that the fraud in election is a lie. There are people who are determined to pretend that there was no fraud in the election. This was repeatedly propagated from the television.

Well, if you are certain of your action, why are you worried of our presence on television or why are you preventing the presence of our experts there? If you are truthful, then establish a roundtable with the presence from our experts so that both sides could put their views.

Mousavi, pointing out the restricted vironment that has been created, said: “Today the environment is in such a way that no one can criticise the administration. Anyone who says something [against the administration], even if he is one of their own people, is linked to the enemy, is said to be against Imam [Khomeini], and will have false accusations made up against him.”

Mousavi reiterated: “I asked them why you, who voided 700 ballot boxes during the sixth parliamentary election so that you could get one specific figure elected to the parliament, don’t open a hundred ballot boxes in a live television broadcast so that people can see how many ballot papers without a serial number are in there?”

At the end Mousavi expressed hope that the devotees of the system think and resolve the problems that have been created. In his opinion it is impossible to ignore the public’s awareness and to ask the students to be quiet, as they are sons and daughters of this people and demand an answer.

The Latest from Iran (10 October): The Death Sentences

NEW Nobel Peace Prize Shock: Ahmadinejad Wins!
Iran’s Power Politics: A Warning To Moscow
Iran: Karroubi Reply to Ahmadinejad’s Appearance on US TV (9 October)
Now, for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize: Mehdi Karroubi
The Latest from Iran (9 October): Almost Four Months

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

1920 GMT: A Bit of Official Hesitation? Press TV's website posts an article confirming the death sentences on three post-election detainees: "two are responsible for a deadly bombing and the remaining convict is a member of a terrorist organization". It names only Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani.

Some of the article is repetition of the very thin pretext for conviction: Zamani and the other member [Arash Pour-Ramani] of the "Iran Royal Association" are not tied to any criminal incident; however, "the group is responsible for a deadly bombing in the southern city of Shiraz back in April 2008, in which 13 people were killed and hundreds were wounded". The third detainee [Naser Abdul Hosseini] will die simply because his alleged membership in the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization, the armed wing of the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran.

Yet, if you read closely, there are a couple of chinks in the article's open-and-shut case. You'll notice in the headline, "In Iran, three 'terrorists' are placed on death row", the quote marks of uncertainty. And the text notes that Ali Zamani's case has been highlighted by Amnesty International.

1630 GMT: A report by AUT News names the three post-election detainees sentenced to death: "monarchists" Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Pourrahmani (both of whom are in the mid-August "confession" video run by Press TV, posted in a separate entry) and Naser Abdol Hosseini, alleged to be a member of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran.

1530 GMT: Yahoo! Makes It into State Media. It looks like the allegation over Yahoo! passing 200,000 usernames to Iran authorities will now die down, as there is no verification of the Iranian Students Solidarity Organization's claim of a source inside the Iranian Government. Still, the Islamic Republic News Agency gave the story several paragraphs today.

1520 GMT: Radio Netherlands has posted an English summary of the condemnation by the Dutch Foreign Minister (noted in comments below) of the death sentence for Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani.

1505 GMT: Minutes after we told a BBC radio reporter of the death sentences for post-election detainees, the BBC website adds, from the judiciary official who spoke to the Iranian Students News Agency, that "MZ" (probably Mohammad Ali Reza Zamani) and "AP" had been convicted for ties with the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, a banned monarchist group, and "NA" for links with the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran, which has sought the overthrow of the Islamic government since 1979.

On Thursday, an Iranian reformist website reported that Mr Zamani, 37, had been sentenced to death. It is unclear whether he is the "MZ" mentioned by Isna.

1445 GMT: Parleman News reports that Mir Hossein Mousavi met Thursday with the representative of Grand Ayatollah Mousavi-Ardebili in Tehran. The description of the discussion is vague, saying that it apparently centred on senior clerics' input into Mousavi's plans for a "social network" for the Green Path of Hope.

1435 GMT: The original Iranian Students News Agency report says only that three post-election detainees have received death sentences. The three cannot be named, according to the newspaper, because appeals are ongoing.

1410 GMT: More Death Sentences? Al Jazeera English, claiming information from Iranian Students News Agency, says a total of three post-election detainees, including Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, have been sentenced to death by the Tehran Revolutionary Court.

Caution is needed here. We've been following this assertion, first posted by Twitter activists, for several hours. Those reports say three death sentences in addition to Ali Zamani. With the help of readers, we have now found the original ISNA story (see 1435 GMT), but there is no other verification.

0920 GMT: The Persian2English blog has published the English text of a new post-election movement, The Green Thinkers’ Network. Considering "What Is True Freedom For Iran?", the Network writes, "Are we liberal democrats? Is it even necessary to label ourselves with these names? Each name has a history. Why should we carry the history of liberalism on our shoulders? Maybe we can have new customs. In our custom we have religion, but also freedom."

0755 GMT: The Washington Post's alternative to Barack Obama for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize? Neda Agha Soltan.

0630 GMT: Another quiet start after a relatively gentle Friday, but no doubt that there is one development of significance.

Mehdi Karroubi's letter, posted in the name of his son, to the head of Iran state broadcasting may not seem that dramatic. On the surface, it restates Karroubi's charges of detainee abuse, made since late July, to counter the message of President Ahmadinejad put out on American television. It returns to the battleground of the "enquiry" by the three-member judiciary panel, which unceremoniously threw out Karroubi's claims last month.

But there is a broader message here, both symbolic and very practical. Ahmadinejad might be posing himself on the international stage as Iran's leader, but Karroubi's letter is a reminder that the President has very clay feet. And it comes after weeks in which the Government appeared to have cut off Karroubi's communications. The Etemade Melli newspaper was closed and the website of Karroubi's reformist party was taken down, shutting off the daily drip-drip of allegations that was wearing away the Government authority.

Now the cleric is back, with a resurrected website and the certainty that he is still noticed. He is not mincing words --- Ahmadinejad's "[US] interview was pure lies"; "traitors have viciously attacked me" --- and telling the authorities that he will not be stopped: "The late Imam [Khomeini] said that he would sacrifice his life for the people of this nation."

And the last line of the letter contains pages of meaning, after all the Government attempts to bottle up the opposition in a vacuum of news: "Despite all the efforts, borders have been broken and people have access to information."