The Latest from Iran (30 September): Confusion

NEW Iran: Mousavi Meeting with Reformists (30 September)
Iran: Karroubi Letter to Rafsanjani (27 September)
NEW Video/Transcript: “Will Israel Attack Iran?”
Iran Top-Secret: The President’s Gmail Account
Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Backs Himself into a Corner
UPDATED Iran: So What’s This “National Unity Plan”?


The Latest from Iran (29 September): The Forthcoming Test?

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

2040 GMT: We now have an English translation of the Mousavi meeting with the reformists, posted in a separate entry.

1910 GMT: Parleman News has updated and extended its summary of the Mousavi meeting with reformist faction Imam Khomeini Line. The story reiterates the significant shift in Mousavi's approach that we have noted (1240 GMT, 1615 GMT, 1800 GMT).

1900 GMT: Overseas Mystery of Night. Why is Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Washington? I presume it's to visit the Smithsonian Institution and maybe the National Art Gallery, since the State Department denies he is seeing US officials.

The party line is that Mottaki, having been in New York for the United Nations meeting, is visiting the Iranian Interests Section at the Pakistan Embassy. No explanation, however, of what he has been doing in the several days after the UN gathering. (AP has an English summary.)

1815 GMT: Another Clue to the Plan? From Mehr News:

Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi has called for the establishment of a committee comprised of MPs and other prominent national figures that would be tasked with attempting to end the political disputes in society.

“A committee comprised of MPs and certain elite people outside the Majlis should… create friendship between political groupings so that these disputes end. The continuation of these deputes is not in our country’s interests,” he told seminary students and religious figures at meeting in Qom on Wednesday.

1800 GMT: This.  Could. Be. Huge. Consider this extract from Mir Hossein Mousavi's statement to reformists, posted on the Facebook page linked to him: "Forming a new party cannot add to countries existing capacities, while strengthening the cores of the social movement will create new capacities and improve the movement."

Throughout the summer, Mousavi talked of forming a new political movement (he didn't call it a "party", since that would have to be licensed by Iranian authorities). Even in his recent promulgation of The Green Path of Hope as a "social movement", he implied that it would have a political role challenging the Ahmadinejad Government.

Now he has abandoned that approach, one presumes, because he has chosen to work with the Plan promoted by institutions within the system that he was challenging up to this week.

1615 GMT: Quiet afternoon but this further summary of Mousavi's message to reformists sets off a bell: "Today, national unity is of outmost importance."

Now, of course, all politicians are going to make calls for unity but does this mean that, whether or not a National Unity Plan has been agreed, Mousavi is going to work with an "establisment" committee for a political accommodation?

1300 GMT: The reformist Imam Khomeini Line, which met Mir Hossein Mousavi yesterday (see 1240 GMT), will also be meeting Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. (But what about Karroubi?)

1254 GMT: The Movement Cannot Be Silenced. A reader kindly directs us to a blog by Persian Umpire on the spread of information inside Iran. Amidst interesting notes such as "BBC Persian is...gobbling up the Voice of America audience because of superior programming and better news coverage", the author sets out this important observation:

We see your tweets, pics, posts, leaks, walls, rumors, articles, flames, trolls, messages of support, slogans, comments, funnies, videos, and everything else you produce. Let us take Twitter which is actually an important source for us, especially for breaking news even if it is happening in Iran. Case in point: this week’s student protests. For those who do not have accounts, there are websites that broadcast the public tweets from any hashtag. Surprisingly some of these sites are not yet filtered. In cases where filtering is in place, we use proxies to get to this information. Also, there are RSS feed readers that we can use to get to your messages through web-based mail services and thus bypassing the filters in a different way. There is no way to block us in, other than cutting the internet altogether, and the government cannot do that easily as some of the crucial internal communications, such as banking, depends on it. If they ever decide to do this, it will take a campaign of outlawing and phasing out residential connections. Even in this case we still have internet at work, and in the end, long-distance dial-up. If I have to pay a $200 phone bill per month to read what you write, so be it.

He/she adds, "How does a minority crawling the nooks and crannies of the internet, let a majority know about it? Information gathered from websites is first disseminated through chat and email, and then word-of-mouth does what it does best."

1250 GMT: Nice to see that The New York Times hasn't been completely diverted by the nuclear issue. Nazila Fathi writes today about Tuesday's second set of universities protests, in particular the demonstrations at Sharif University.

1245 GMT: Reformist MP Darius Ghanbari has criticised the Parliamentary fact-finding committee for avoiding the issues of Kahrizak Prison and secret burials, as well as the points in Mehdi Karroubi's letter, in their unclassified report.

1240 GMT: The Plan in Action? Parleman News has published an account of a meeting between Mir Hossein Mousavi and the reformist Imam Khomeini Line. Mousavi's message? "Greens are now within the system."

1230 GMT: We've posted the English translation of Mehdi Karroubi's second letter to Hashemi Rafsanjani. To say it's critical is an understatement; Karroubi is calling out the former President for not backing demands for justice and reform.

1050 GMT: It is reported that leading reformist Saeed Hajjarian was released this morning from Evin Prison.

1045 GMT: Police representatives have announced that 10 officers have been arrested in connection with claims of detainee abuse at Kahrizak Prison.

1030 GMT: The intrigue on the "National Unity Plan" (see our separate entry) gets stranger. Fars claimed last night that Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Haeri-Shirazi had denounced talk of a Plan being brought to the Assembly as a "lie". Haeri-Shirazi's office this morning issues a statement denying any such discussion. Fars News then brings out the transcript and the audio file of the conversation.

1000 GMT: Telling Half the Story. CNN splashes the headline, "IAEA: Iran broke law by not revealing nuclear facility", on an interview with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad El Baradei. He says:

Iran was supposed to inform us on the day it was decided to construct the facility. They have not done that. They are saying that this was meant to be a back-up facility in case we were attacked and so they could not tell us earlier on.

Nonetheless, they have been on the wrong side of the law, you know in so far as informing the agency about the construction and as you have seen it, it has created concern in the international community.

Here, however, is the El Baradei comment that does not get a headline and only
a reference near the bottom of the article:

Whether they have done some weaponization studies as was claimed is still an outstanding issue. But I have not seen any credible evidence to suggest that Iran has an ongoing nuclear program today.

0900 GMT: Confirmation of reports from earlier this week: post-election detainee Alireza Eshraghi has been sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for acts against national security by "insulting the Supreme Leader and President" and attending illegal gatherings.

0830 GMT: One other report which emerged last night. The Iranian Government is still considering the temporary closure of universities because of "swine flu".

0820 GMT: A morning to re-assess what has happened in the last 24 hours, especially with the purported "National Unity Plan". Latest indications are that the plan, which emerged last night, is actually an early draft, so it raises more questions than answers. We've got up-to-the-minute analysis in a separate entry.

The other event on the radar is tomorrow's meeting between Iran and the "5+1" powers in Geneva on Tehran's nuclear programme. Media fury continues in the US, but the Obama Administration is now far more cautious in its statements. In particular, it appears that the American attempt to "negotiate from strength" through the sanctions threat is running into difficulties. We've got the latest in another entry.

Finally, for those who prefer the "real" story, Enduring America has gotten access to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Gmail account.

The Latest from Iran (3 September): Ahmadinejad Gets His Cabinet

Latest Iran Parliament Video: "Rig the Vote and You Go to Kahrizak" (3 September)
NEW MediaFail: How (Not) to Approach Iran's Nuclear Programme
The Latest from Iran (2 September): The Votes on the Cabinet

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

1835 GMT: A reader writes to clarify the "first woman" Minister reference in the Reuters report (1645 GMT), and just now repeated by a CNN reporter: "Iran's first female minister, Mrs. F. Parsa, was appointed by the Shah to serve the Ministry of Education." Parsa was arrested by the new Islamic Republic in February 1980 and executed three months later.

1645 GMT: A bit of a lull as most of the Western media condense today's events to fit their agenda: 1) the approval of Cabinet should be linked to "an international dispute over Tehran's nuclear program"; 2) the Minister of Oil is a "relative novice"; 3) Iran has its first female Minister; 4) the Minister of Defense is wanted by Interpol for a 1994 attack in Argentina. (Reuters wins the prize for getting all of this into two paragraphs.)

But here's a wacky flashback from the morning (0808 GMT): remember the moment when an MP joked, ""If you say the confidence vote was rigged, we'll take you to Kahrizak [Prison, where presumably you will be abused like other detainees]!" Well, the video is now posted in a separate entry.

1240 GMT: A top reformist in the Mousavi presidential campaign, Abbas Mirza Aboutalebi, has been released from Evin Prison, almost two months after he was detained. Aboutalebi, a former MP, is the Deputy Secretary General of the Hambastegi Party..

1220 GMT: US MediaWatch on the Ahmadinejad Cabinet. The New York Times leads US media in the summary of today's developments in Parliament, "Ahmadinejad Wins Approval of Key Cabinet Slots". Michael Slackman, based in Cairo, has raised his reporting game recently, relying on the best US-based analysts, and today he picks up not only on "a victory to the beleaguered president who now has close allies overseeing key ministries of oil, interior and intelligence" but also an outcome which "appeared to serve the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, who has struggled recently to try to restore credibility to his tarnished leadership and government while also trying to put the brakes on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s desire to sideline conservative rivals and monopolize power".

The quick reaction of The Los Angeles Times is surprisingly weak and even misleading. The lead sentence of "Iran's hardliners united behind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today" sweeps away tensions and nuances in the struggle for power, not only with the unhelpful "hardliner" tag and the implications that all divisions are now resolved. (Compare that with our analysis, "Those conservative and principlist MPs who have problems with the President were not prepared, in the end, to make their stand over the Cabinet....The fights, if they are to take place, will now return to the system of detentions and trials, rather than a direct clash over the Ministers overseeing them." --- see 0845 GMT.)

The Associated Press really doesn't care about the internal situation, preferring, "President Mahmoud Ahamedinejad vowed Thursday that Iran would not bend to Western deadlines for nuclear talks after his new government won broad backing from parliament."

And CNN's website? Still nothing (see 1030 GMT).

1045 GMT: Rooz Online claims, from an "informed source", that the Ministry of Intelligence has established a team "to identify the leaks and whistle blowers that led to the revelations that some of the people who had been killed in the aftermath of the June 12 disputed presidential elections were secretly buried".

1030 GMT: We've posted a separate story on how Al Jazeera English let down its usually-high standard of coverage with an example of how not to discuss the Iranian nuclear programme.

However, this slip-up is nothing compared with CNN International's continuing (non-)coverage. One of its top on-air personalties has just tweeted, "Will have more on #Iran lawmakers approving all but 3 of Ahmad's 21 cabinet nominees."

More? I could cut off nine fingers and still be ahead of the total number of words on CNN's website about the Cabinet discussions since Sunday.

1010 GMT: An EA correspondent adds information and analysis to the demand by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a key ally of President Ahmadinejad, that Islamic Azad University be "cleaned up" so it can be "Islamic" (0520 GMT).

The Islamic Azad University was the first private university established after the Revolution and its establishment was promoted by Hashemi Rafsanjani and executed by [his brother-in-law Abdullah Jafar Ali] Jasebi, the current head of the university. The limited capacity of state-run universities caused the IAU to become an extremely lucrative cash cow, bringing Rafsajani a lot of money and influence. Nowadays almost any town with a population of more than 150,000 people has an IAU branch.

Needless to say, Ahmadinejad and company want to appropriate the revenue and influence of the IAU, and I am convinced that all the issues of "bringing the IAU back to the main path, etc." is really just a money grab. Mohammad Hashemi-Rafsanjani [brother of Hashemi Rafsanjani] and Jasebi have tried to prevent this power grab in their recent attempt to re-define the IAU as an endowment associated with a religious beneficiary, provoking the ire of Fars News and other Ahmadinejad supporters.

0930 GMT: Media Alert. Is this the beta version of Mehdi Karroubi's proposed new television station?

0925 GMT: Journalist Isa Saharkhiz, in a two-minute phone call to his family, has advised them that his detention has been extended another two months.

0915 GMT: Some Post-Vote Confusion. There were conflicting reports over whether Mohammad Aliabadi was confirmed or rejected as Minister of Energy (see 0840 GMT), but situation has now been clarified. Although the vote was in his favour 137-117, the number of Yes ballots was less than 1/2 of the total of 286 MPs. So he's out, and it's 18 of 21 Ministers confirmed.

The wider story, which we'll track down, is why Aliabadi was the only male nominee to take a fall.

0910 GMT: On Another Front. The Assembly of Combatant Clergy, have strongly condemned the recent accusations by Revolutionary Guard commander General Mohammad Ali Jafari (see yesterday's updates) that former President Khatami and other prominent reformists sought the overthrow of the Supreme Leader and the Government. The clerics said they expect the new Prosecutor General to show the "proper reaction" to these lies.

0900 GMT: Tabnak has posted a summary of the vote totals (use Google Translate for the English version).

0845 GMT: The Verdict? There will be a big smile on President Ahmadinejad's face, with 19 of 21 nominees receiving votes of confidence. The only two rejections were of women: Sussan Keshavarz (education) and Fatemeh Ajorloo (welfare). The 3rd woman, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi (health), was confirmed.

Interpretation? Those conservative and principlist MPs who have problems with the President were not prepared, in the end, to make their stand over the Cabinet. The two rejections are politically "safe" --- to be blunt, it will be easy to frame that as a discrimination against women, rather than a smack at Ahmadinejad, and even then, Dastjerdi (to the surprise of many, I suspect) came through. Other opportunities for rejection were by-passed, even when these could have been portrayed as doubts about individiuals, rather than a fight with the President. Mirkazemi and Aliabadi survived uncertainties over the Government's approach on energy, Mehrabian was not punished for his court scandal, and Daneshjoo's recent stumble over a suspect Ph.D. was not relevant.

Whether that was because they did not want to be seen as allied with "reformists" in blocking Ministerial choices, because of the Supreme Leader's intervention, or because tensions over Ahmadinejad's post-election actions have eased remains to be seen.

Too early, for me, to declare a reconciliation within the Establishment. My preferred interpretation is that the fights, if they are to take place, will now return to the system of detentions and trials, rather than a direct clash over the Ministers overseeing them.

0840 GMT: Nominees for Ministries of Housing, Interior, and Labour have been confirmed. The nominee for Minister of Oil, Masoud Mirkazemi, scraped through 147-117, and a similar result for Minister of Energy Mohammad Aliabadi (137-117).

0835 GMT: The nominee for Minister of Welfare, Fatemeh Ajorloo, has been rejected 181-76.

Ali Akbar Mehrabian, who has provoked some controversy after being found guilty of patent fraud in a recent court case, won approval as Minister of Mines and Industry 153-103. Similarly "Dr" Kamran Daneshjoo, despite the changing, dubious status of his Ph.D. from some British university (see separate entry), has become Minister of Science after a 186-75 vote.

0830 GMT: The nominee for Minister of Education, Sussan Keshavarz, has been rejected 209-49. Keshavarz was one of three women nominated.

Reza Taqipour has been confirmed as Minister of Communications 197-62. Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi was approved 194-67, and Minister of Economy Shamsodin Hosseini was confirmed 224-41. The current Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, has also received a vote of confidence, as has the new Minister of Justice, Morteza Bakhtiari.

0829 GMT: The Speaker of the Parliament, Ali Larijani, began the announcement of results by thanking the Supreme Leader, whose remarks had "helped" the voting process.

0825 GMT: Parliament has voted confidence in the proposed Minister of Defence, Ahmad Vahidi.

0820 GMT: Yes, Mahmoud Did Say That. Interpret this as you will, from Iranian Labor News Agency. Ahmadinejad told the Majlis, as they prepared to vote on his Cabinet: "Parliament and government are responsible for the country and should not put this responsibility on Supreme Leader and other clerics."

Oh, yes, and "I think the members of parliament should give [foreign powers] a decisive response. A United vote to propose Cabinet is a strong punch in enemy's mouth.''

0808 GMT: Bad-Taste Parliamentary Comment of Day. One member of Parliament "joked" to a colleague, "If you say the confidence vote was rigged, we'll take you to Kahrizak [Prison, where a number of detainees have died]!" State television quickly cut the nearby microphone off.

0805 GMT: Ayande News has published more details of the purported letter from the Supreme Leader calling on members of Parliament to give a full vote of confidence in the Ahmadinejad Cabinet: Khamenei declared his desire for a Yes vote to all of the President's selections, but this was not an obligation for MPs.

0800 GMT: Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi has called for investigations of alleged crimes in Kahrizak Prison and in raids against University dormitories, with punishment of those found responsible.

0745 GMT: Did The President Really Say That?: According to an activist monitoring the Parliamentary discussions, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised that his Cabinet will meet with MPs every two to four weeks.

Here, however, is the statement that raises eyebrows: "We should take responsibility for running country off the shoulders of Supreme Leader." Perhaps it's a change of meaning in translation --- would the President really want to push Ayatollah Khamenei to the sidelines?

0625 GMT: Another Event to Note. The "40th Day" memorial for Mohsen Ruholamini, who died in detention in Evin Prison, will be from 2-3:30 p.m. local time (1030-1200 GMT) at Vali-e Asr Mosque in Tehran.

0615 GMT: Thanks to the Internet, you can watch the live, televised coverage of state-run IRIB 1  of today's Parliamentary discussions of the Ahmadinejad Cabinet.

0520 GMT: The Parliamentary votes of confidence in President Ahmadinejad's Cabinet should finally take place today. The last two nominees to speak, Masoud Mirkazemi (oil) and Mohammad Aliabadi (energy), have presented their cases to the Majlis.

Despite the delays and dramatic stories such as the Supreme Leader's alleged letter asking for full support for Ministers, the general situation appears to be the same as on Sunday. Up to seven Ministers, and in particular the three female nominees, may not be confirmed.

Even this story, however, will be a distant second today if a rumour spread by Javan newspaper, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, proves to have substance. The report claims that there will be an end of Ramadan "present", with leading reformists Saeed Hajjarian, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Mohammad Ali Abtahi,  and Mohammad Ghoochani to be released from detentions, although others such as Behzad Nabavi, Mostafa Tajzadeh, and Mohsen Aminzadeh will remain in jail. The article adds that the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, is unhappy with televised confessions and the "current trend" will be suspended.

President Ahmadinejad's religious advisor, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, is not thinking of any concessions. Instead, he has said that the private Islamic Azad University, has lost its “true way” and should be brought back to the “main path”, "clean[ing it] up" so it becomes “Islamic". (It is probably far from coincidental that Mehdi Hashemi, the son of Hashemi Rafsanjani, is one of the leading officials of the university.)