1950 GMT: Criticising Khomeini. That’s right — days before the celebration of the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, 180 members of Parliament have signed a statement denouncing the Imam’s grandson, Seyed Hassan Khomeini. The dispute arose when Khomeini wrote the head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, Ezzatollah Zarghamai, complaining about “censorship” of his grandfather’s speeches.
1930 GMT: Conservative Mischief. Ayande Newsstirs the pot with a story claiming that Ahmadinejad Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai went to Switzerland recently, not only to promote a “uranium swap” on Iran’s Kish Island but also to pursue secret meetings on other issues, presumably with US officials. The paper, quoting French and Swiss newspapers, ponders what covert messages Rahim-Mashai brought.
No prizes here to guess the propaganda: the “conservative opposition” wants to stick Ahmadinejad, through his right-hand man, with the label of appeaser of Washington.
1925 GMT: After all our frustration with the media coverage of the Ahmadinejad nuclear moves this week, full marks to Borzou Daragahi and Julian Barnes of the Los Angeles Times for nailing the story: “In a possible move to deflect attention from Iran’s political woes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday ordered the nation’s atomic energy agency to begin enriching uranium from 3.5% to 20% purity to serve as fuel for a Tehran medical reactor.”
Enduring America’s Mr Smith, who has first-hand sources and knowledge of Professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, the physicist killed yesterday in the explosion of a booby-trapped motorcycle, assesses the consequences of the murder:
The murder of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi adds yet another mystery to the litany of violence, unexplained circumstances, and unpredictable twists that Iran has been witnessing since June 12.
Ali-Mohammadi was a mild-mannered academic who, like most of his colleagues, quietly supported reformist leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the run-up to the presidential vote and who became more vocal in its aftermath. However, his association with physics — he was among the very first scholars to emerge from the Islamic Republic’s universities with a Ph.D., made it easy for state media to link him to the nuclear field and for Western news organisations and Israeli analysts to quickly claim he was active in the nuclear programme of Iran. Read the rest of this entry »
2100 GMT: And for those looking for yet another account of the Karroubi-Mousavi meeting (see 1220 and 1350 GMT), here is the version from Mousavi’s website Kalemeh.
1930 GMT: We’ve posted video of today’s demonstration by families of detainees in front of the Tehran Prosecutor General’s offices (see 1150 GMT).
1835 GMT: And Then There’s the Nice Supreme Leader. Mehr News ignores the Khamenei challenge to the opposition, preferring the Supreme Leader’s exhortation to students, “The political insight and religious principles and concepts in the depth of the thoughts of the youth show that today’s younger generation cannot be stopped, and this pure reality is the guarantor of the continuation of the country’s progress.”
Only later in the article does Mehr sneak in the criticism of the Green movement, “The day after the election, some called that great election a lie without any reason or justification. Is it a minor offence?”
Press TV finally gets around to the harsh Khamenei attack on “certain people”, but they prefer to avoid the issue for several paragraphs, focusing instead on “foreign attacks”.
1810 GMT: Khamenei Intervenes. And the Supreme Leader’s message, after the Media Fair episodes, the Mousavi-Karroubi meeting, and the University demonstrations is: Enough is Enough.
Speaking to university staff and students today, according to state television, Khamenei made his sharpest direct attack on opposition leaders since early in the post-election crisis, saying “questioning [of] the basis of the election [was] the biggest crime”. He added, “Of course some people inside (Iran) may not be aware that they are moving in line with the enemies’ threats, but this issue will not change the truth.”
Khamenei claimed that he had sent a private message to opposition leaders, saying that they were starting would be used by enemy”. He then issued a not-so-veiled challenge over further moves, claiming, “A politician has to be like a chess player & predict their moves & their results in advance.”
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.
2000 GMT: Psychological Warfare. Unsurprisingly, the Fars News story that Mehdi Karroubi’s son Ali is the subject of an arrest warrant, due to a financial dispute with the mobile phone company Irancell, appears to be a bit of fiction to shake up the reformist movement.
The specific claim is that Ali Karroubi is connected with Persian Telecom, which failed to carry out advertising obligations for Irancell. However, Irancell has told Saham News, connected with Karroubi party’s Etemade Melli:
Mr. Ali Karroubi does not hold any shares in Persian Telecom….The two companies have a business association in the form of purchasing Irancell products and selling them and therefore no advertisement is done on behalf of Irancell by Persian Telecom. (Translation from Tehran Bureau)
1925 GMT: The Reformist Fightback. A series of reformist members of Parliament and clerics have been striking back at the comments of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps commander, General Ali Mohammad Jafari (see 1730 GMT), all day. The latest is Hojatoleslam Alikhani, a cleric and MP, who has emphasised that the military should not enter political issues.
1920 GMT: The Battle for the Universities (Cont.). Iranian newspapers and the Islamic Republic News Agency report, “The Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies [has been] tasked by the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council to revise the human sciences curriculum.”
The head of the Institute declared, “In our country a large part of the syllabus… is not in line with our Iranian-Islamic culture. This calls for a revision.” The syllabus will be revised
“based on the supreme leader’s recommendations.” (Agence France Press has an English summary.)
1730 GMT: Pursuing the Revolutionary Guard. Following up our last update yesterday, The Assembly of Combatant Clerics had responded to the claims of Revolutionary Guard Commander General Mohammad Ali Jafari, alleging that former President Khatami and other prominent reformists have tried to “unseat” the Supreme Leader and Government, by filing a formal complaint against Jafari and Keyhan newspaper for publishing lies and insulting several members of the Assembly.
1725 GMT: Responding to claims by Deputy Head of Judiciary, Ebrahim Raeesi, that he had not presented any evidence of detainee abuse in his meeting with the three-member panel investigating the claims, Mehdi Karroubi has described three documents that he presented.
2200 GMT: Another Reformist Fightback. Nasrullah Torabi, a reformist member of Parliament, has condemned the “desperate act” of the regime in applying pressure on the family of Imam Khomeini to cancel former President Khatami’s speech on Qadr Night and eventually the entire ceremony in the Imam’s shrine (the first cancellation in 20 years), saying that these kinds of behaviour will cause people greater concern and have negative consequences in society.
2010 GMT: Striking Back at the Revolutionary Guard. On Wednesday we noted the declaration of General Johammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, that former Khatami and other reformist leaders such as Mousavi Khoeniha, as well as Hashemi Rafsanjani’s son Mehdi Hashemi, had tried “to pull down the leadership at any cost”.
A reader points us to the story’s sequel. The Association of Combatant Clerics condemned Jafari’s assertions and asked for a judicial response: “Is it inappropriate to ask the prosecutor general to appropriately respond to this slander and lies, and other similar remarks, which have incited public opinion and are the groundwork for dangerous plans, particularly as the head of the judiciary has stressed that any violator regardless of the office he holds has to be confronted?”
Mohammad Ali Tabesh, the Secretary General of the minority reformist faction in Parliament, went even further, “Those who gave the IRGC permission to intervene in the elections and those who gave the Pasdaran the warrants to arrest and extract forced confessions, must be prosecuted, rather than those who have demonstrated they allegiance to the regime.”
Tabesh added to his warning, “I advise them to let us keep quiet. We have so far refrained from talking about many issues in order to preserve the regime and the revolution, and not allow the enemies to misuse such expressions under these conditions and do not intend to talk about them. So I hope these gentlemen do not do something that will result in posturing when some truths and realities will be made which will damage the regime.”
1950 GMT: Grand Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastgheib has condemned the post-election repression, asking how those who have been brutally confronting people can call themselves Muslims. He added that these vicious acts and crimes by coup agents have tainted the face of Islam in the world and made youth lose hope in Islam and convert to other religions.
1940 GMT: Mehdi Karroubi has said that he will defend the values of the revolution and the nation’s interests as long as he lives and will never give up on this effort. He emphasised that the continuation of the Government’s post-election approach is dangerous for the fate and future of the country, destroying the “Republic”, and emphasised continuing the resistance. Read the rest of this entry »
In the furour over the Presidential election, the most intriguing political contest may have taken place, behind the street scenes, in Iran’s religious centre, south of Tehran in the dusty city of Qom.
Within 72 hours of the 12 June vote, the clerics of Qom’s seminaries had taken their place on the political stage. Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani tried to mobilise them for a public challenge to President Ahmadinejad’s victory. That initial attempt failed; indeed it is a key reasons why Rafsanjani then kept a careful silence before an equally careful, “balanced” return to public life with his speech last Sunday. There would be no mass movement of the religious leadership behind any campaign. Instead, factions already aligned to particular political movements would reassert their positions. The Association of Combatant Clerics would ally itself with the efforts of former President Mohammad Khatami and, thus, Mir Hossein Mousavi; Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, prominent on the Guardian Council, would bolster Ahmadinejad’s position. Read the rest of this entry »
1925 GMT: Now Presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi has reacted to yesterday’s Guardian Council verdict: “This government is not legitimate.I’ll continue fighting in any condition and with any means.”
So, of the leading opposition challengers, only Mir Hossein Mousavi has been silent today. We think we know the reason but will wait until the morning to see if our analysis is right.
1900 GMT: In the category of “Well, He Would Say That, Wouldn’t He?”, President Ahmadinejad is quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency: “This election was actually a referendum. The Iranian nation were the victors and the enemies, despite their … plots of a soft toppling of the system, failed and couldn’t reach their aims.”
The significance is not in Ahmadinejad’s words, but in their low-key presentation. Both in a national broadcast the night after the election and in a press conference the day after that, the President was loudly celebrating his win, even taunting the opposition as “dust”. Now, the day after the Guardian Council has re-affirmed his victory, his public appearance is limited to a brief statement repeating the “foreign threat” theme.
Interpretation? After his over-enthusiasm in the first 48 hours beyond the vote, Ahmadinejad has been reined in by other leaders. The President’s “victory” is looking decidedly Pyrrhic in the wider context of the Iranian system.
2045 GMT: Kalemeh is reporting that more than 1000 students at Sharif University demonstrated today over detentions of their classmates.
2100 GMT: And for those looking for yet another account of the Karroubi-Mousavi meeting (see 1220 and 1350 GMT), here is the version from Mousavi’s website 
From an Enduring America correspondent inside Iran:
2000 GMT: Psychological Warfare. Unsurprisingly, the Fars News story that Mehdi Karroubi’s son Ali is the subject of an arrest warrant, due to a financial dispute with the mobile phone company Irancell, appears to be a bit of fiction to shake up the reformist movement.
2200 GMT: Another Reformist Fightback. Nasrullah Torabi, a reformist member of Parliament, 
In the furour over the Presidential election, the most intriguing political contest may have taken place, behind the street scenes, in Iran’s religious centre, south of Tehran in the dusty city of Qom.
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