The Latest from Iran (2 October): Back to the Homefront

NEW Iran Video: Football & “Ya Hossein! Mir Hossein!”
Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Big Win for Tehran at Geneva Talks
Latest Iran Video: Nuclear Official Jalili on CNN (1 October)
Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Remarks on Geneva Talks
The Latest from Iran (1 October): From Geneva to “Unity”?

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1525 GMT: The student group Daftar-Tahkim-Vahdat has called for the freeing of 15 of their members, saying their arrests will not help the volatile atmosphere at universities: "Failure to release the students immediately is like putting a match to a warehouse of dynamite".

1410 GMT: Report that 15 members of the student group Daftar-Tahkim-Vahdat have been arrested at Jamshidiyeh Park.

1340 GMT: Little Politics, Big (Football) Politics. As the match ended 1-1, Esteglhal and Persepolis fans were chanting, "We don't want football full with politics!" Seems that there are suspicions, after the 7th draw in a row, that matches are being fixed to avoid conflict.

We've posted a short video of crowd chanting during the match.

1310 GMT: Protest and Football. Despite the heavy security presence at the Esteglhal-Persepolis match, the crowd broke out into chants of "Ya Hossein! Mir Hossein!" and flashed victory signs.

Latest score: 1-1.

1220 GMT: From the Esteghlal-Persepolis football match: "Impossible to chant during game. Security forces everywhere. Plainclothes mixed with ordinary supporters." There are reports of 15-20 arrests.

At halftime, the score was 0-0.

1135 GMT: Nothing but Defense Here. The line at today's Friday Prayers has been political and unsubtle: Iran's weapons are for its defense against evil enemies, and Iran will "never ignore its nuclear rights".

1125 GMT: Behzad Nabavi, a senior member of the reformist Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution party detained since June, has been hospitalised with complications from hernia and undergone surgery; he is now in intensive care.

1110 GMT: On the Iranian weekend, the news is slow. Arguably, the most important event today is not Friday Prayers but Iranian's biggest football match, the derby between Esteglhal and Persepolis. Hundreds of security personnel are reported to have been mobilised in Azadi Stadium.

0930 GMT: The Shouts from the Peanut Gallery. And now President Obama's biggest test --- bigger than his manoeuvres with/against Iran --- begins. The Wall Street Journal screeches, "Springtime for Mullahs".

Unlike our own concern over the effect of the talks on the internal situation in Iran, there is no substance behind the Journal's polemic, "This supposed fresh start in Geneva only gives them new legitimacy, and new hope that they can have their bomb and enhanced global standing too."

0840 GMT: Now This is Interesting. It is reported that, after he met with Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi to discuss the post-election situation,  Ayatollah Safi-Golpaygani has had separate meetings with the Mayor of Tehran, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, and Iran's Prosecutor-General, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie.

0740 GMT: After the days of built-up drama surrounding the Geneva talks (we've posted a special analysis, President Obama's statement, and last night's TV appearance by chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili), attention may return to Iran's internal situation today, although so far it has been a quiet morning for Friday prayers.

There is another move on the clerical front, with Ayatollah Bayat-Zanjani announcing his telephone conversation with Ayatollah Dastgheib, another prominent critic of the Government. This follows a face-to-face discussion, reported yesterday, between Grand Ayatollahs Safi-Golpaygani and Makarem-Shirazi.

It also appears that the Revolutionary Guard is in a spot of bother over its economic plans. It is reported that the consortium linked to the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps has not been able to put up the first payment for its purchase of 51% of Iran's state telecommunications company.

Palestinian Leaders Support Israel to Defer Vote on Goldstone Report

Israel-Palestine: Gazans in Poverty Triple

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On Thursday, Palestinian Authority agreed to delay until March a vote set for today at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. If the report had been endorsed by the Council, the UN Security Council would have been able to bring Israelis before the International Criminal Court at The Hague for prosecution of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Although support for the report was strong enough to get a general endorsement, six nations (US, Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, and Britain) could not find common ground on the text with the other 41 members.

The Palestinian ambassador to the UN , Ibrahim Khraishi, told The Jerusalem Post that the Palestinian side was interested in a compromise rather than a quickly-passed resolution from the Council: "It will help us to explain to the Israelis that the international community is with the Palestinians to achieve their hopes and their dreams." There are reports President Obama personally told the Palestinians that the peace process would be affected adversely by a vote for the Goldstone Report.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said:

I remind you that this very council has adopted more resolutions targeting Israel than resolutions targeting all other 180 countries in the world put together. If the council decides to endorse the Goldstone report it will deal a fatal blow to three major issues: Firstly, it will harm the war on terror, because it will legitimize terrorists who hide behind civilians and fire from their midst.

The second devastating blow will be to the UN's status and its prestige. It will take it back to its darkest days when absurd decisions were passed within its assembly and empty it of all meaning.

Thirdly, Israel will not be willing to take risks for peace if stripped of its right to self-defense.

Israel-Palestine: Gazans in Poverty Triple

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On Thursday, John Ging, the UN Relief and Works Agency's top official in Gaza, said that "the number of Gazans living in abject poverty has tripled this year to 300,000 - one in five residents". He called the rise in poverty a "predictable consequence" of the border blockade and added, "The suffering, the impoverishment, the misery of the people here in Gaza continues to rise because of a man-made crisis, a political failure."
Ging's statement casts light on "the West Bank success story" being trumpeted by Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren:

Imagine an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage. Where in today’s gloomy global market could one find such gleaming forecasts? Singapore? Brazil? Guess again. The West Bank.

In contrast Gaza faced, as Richard Goldstone told CNN on Wednesday, and "the delibarete address of Israeli bombs on factories", "Some of the killing…was certainly intentional. There was no mistake in bombing factories. The Israeli intelligence has very precise information."

With the economic situation in Gaza worsening day by day, what kind of settlement can rest on an "economic breakthrough" within the boundaries of the West Bank?

Iran's Nuclear Programme: Big Win for Tehran at Geneva Talks

LATEST Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama’s Balance Wobbles
Latest Iran Video: Nuclear Official Jalili on CNN (1 October)
Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Remarks on Geneva Talks
The Latest from Iran (1 October): From Geneva to “Unity”?

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First Things First. We may have underestimated the significance of yesterday's discussions between Iran and the "5+1" power when we wrote (1640 GMT), "The Iranians have achieved their primary objective, which is to avoid an immediate condemnation and the threat of sanctions from a “breakdown” of today’s discussions."

The biggest signal of a breakthrough at the talks was not the declaration, from all sides, that Iran would invite the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the second enrichment facility at Qom "in the next couple of weeks" (1715 GMT). That was always the likely Iranian concession to "the West": contrary to the exaggerations in the US and British media, Qom is not that significant a plant, serving at this point as potential back-up to the main enrichment site at Natanz. So Tehran can accept inspections, provided its sovereignty is also maintained in an agreement, with the assurance that there's nothing illegal to be seen at the second facility.

No, here was the white smoke of a larger deal: "the Western media continues to miss the announcement, enthusiastically proclaimed by Press TV, that officials from Iran and the “5+1″ powers will have technical talks on 18 October on 'third-party enrichment'" (1935 GMT). A couple of hours later, McClatchy News Service put out the news:

Iran agreed in principle at high-level talks here to ship most of its enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be refined for exclusively peaceful uses, in what Western diplomats called a significant, but interim measure, to ease concerns over its nuclear development.

Under the tentative deal reached here, Iran would ship what a U.S. official said was "most" of its approximately 3.300 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia where it would be further refined. French technicians would then fabricate it into fuel rods and return it to Tehran, to insert into a nuclear research reactor that is used to make isotopes for nuclear medicine.

This morning, The New York Times headlines, "Iran Agrees to Send Enriched Uranium to Russia", and The Washington Post also picks up on the development. Perhaps most importantly, President Obama slipped the news into his statement last night, "Taking the step of transferring its low-enriched uranium to a third country would be a step towards building confidence that Iran’s program is in fact peaceful."

Of course, this is far from a done deal. The head of Iran's delegation, Saeed Jalili, was cautious when he appeared on CNN last night, saying that the matter would not have to be discussed by the "experts" in the IAEA, rather than the 5+1 Powers. Press TV's website, in contrast to the network's excited declaration of the technical talks on 18 October, is now silent on the matter.

Yet make no mistake. At this point the outcome is a victory for the Ahmadinejad Government. A week ago, President Obama, flanked by the British and French leaders, was loudly declaring that the US would be punishing Iran economically if Tehran did not concede on the "secret nuclear plant". The White House scrambled last night to keep the stick on the table, with Obama putting out boilerplate warnings, Talk is not substitute for action. Pledges of cooperation must be fulfilled....Our patience is not unlimited." An official added the specific caution to The New York Times, "[This] would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit. If Iran has secret stockpiles of enriched uranium, however, the accomplishment would be hollow."

Now, however, that stick would have to be waved in the face of not one but two tracks of conversations. There are the technical talks, and there is the next meeting of the 5+1 powers with Iran, flagged up for the end of October. So, unless the US is prepared to pull the plug suddenly on both processes (or unless the Iranian Government is foolish enough to abandon the discussions), there is no pretext for further sanctions before the end of the year, even if Tehran draws out the talks with the IAEA over access to the second enrichment facility.

And even then, Washington's stick has been a limp one. Juan Cole enthuses this morning, "Barack Obama pwned Bush-Cheney in one day, and got more concessions from Iran in 7 1/2 hours than the former administration got in 8 years of saber-rattling," but the Obama Administration probably could have had the same result that it got yesterday had it kept its collective mouth shut last week. Instead, the President and his advisors raised the stakes with threats and then found, in the 72 hours leading up to Geneva, that they could not deliver if necessary: neither Russia nor China was on board, and the European Union as well as the IAEA signalled their preference for genuine discussions.

This alone would be excellent reward for Tehran, but President Ahmadinejad's victory --- and this will be the unnoticed side-effect of the discussions --- is even greater. For over the last week, the "Western" powers have given him the legitimacy for which he has struggled at home. Have no doubt: the President and his advisors will be proclaiming loudly that they have defended Iran's sovereignty, upheld the rights of other peoples with their insistence on discussion on wider political and economic issues, and forced the US, Britain, and France to back down. Last night Jalili was already denouncing the "media terrorism" which tried to humiliate Iran and refusing to acknowledge a question from an Israeli reporter.

In other words --- I doubt you can find many non-Iranian commentators who will note this, although The Guardian has noted somewhat clumsily, "An Islamic regime involved in rape...is more of an issue in Tehran than the nuclear one" --- the Geneva discussions were the second theatre for the Ahmadinejad Government. What it needed, even more than the disappearance of the sanctions threat and space for its nuclear programme, was the drama and spectacle of recognition to take back home.

The President and his advisors may have been playing to the Western galleries, but they recognise that the primary theatre is still at home. So now the question arises: can the regime use the nuclear talks to push aside the challenges to its authority or will other issues --- detentions, abuses, Constitutional manipulations --- now return to centre stage?

Latest Iran Video: Nuclear Official Jalili on CNN (1 October)

Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Remarks on Geneva Talks
The Latest from Iran (1 October): From Geneva to “Unity”?

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