2120 GMT: Mahmoud Goes to the Country? OK, it’s not just Internet chatter. EA readers bring me up to speed: in a televised statement on Friday night, President Ahmadinejad set out the possibility of a referendum on his proposal to control $40 billion from subsidy reductions (the Parliament only gave him $20 billion).
And Ahmadinejad wasn’t pulling punches: he said that his “conservative” opponents in Parliament were verging on “treason” with exaggerated statements of the inflationary potential of his plan. Fortunately, he reassured, their economic estimates were not correct.
2110 GMT: Containing the Poet. Another story to pick up — National Public Radio has a profile of 82-year-old Simin Behbahani, the poet who is so dangerous that Iranian authorities seized her passport as she was about to board a flight for an awards ceremony in Paris.
Student activist and weblogger Foad Shams was recently released after three months of detention. Far from acknowledging his release by keeping silent, however, he has posted these thoughts on his weblog. Translated by Persian2English and posted by Street Journalist:
I am still dreaming.
Ninety seven days of being half awake on the hills of Evin brought nothing to me but dreams. The most beautiful children of the sun and the wind during the last cold days of autumn and winter have been on the hills of Evin; the same hills that have for decades been the meeting point of freedom lovers. The tall walls that are part of the large gate of civilization are reminders of what remains of a political greatness [referring to the time before the 1979 revolution, throughout Iran's history of 2,500 years]. Yes, for years a feast takes place on the hills, and the “Godfathers” are the hosts. I was fortunate enough to be with everyone in this feast during the second half of this year.
Zhila Baniyaghoub and her husband Bahman Ahmadi Amoui, both well-known journalists, were arrested by the Iranian security officials after last June’s Presidential election. Baniyaghoub was released some months ago, but her husband is in Evin Prison. On Sunday, her open letter was published on the RAHANA website:
Bahman! Why did the interrogator release me, but not you?
I had always thought that I know you very well until only very recently when I realized that I had never really known you this well before! Looking at your calm, serene and tranquil face, I can now see and admire your true persistence, patience and perseverance. Every time our eyes meet from behind the glass in the visitation room at Evin Prison, I get so calmed, reassured and relieved just by the way you look at me: so deep, powerful and soothing . It’s as if you can see right through me, you can fight away all my worries; and all of a sudden all the pain I’ve been feeling due to your absence disappears.
2135 GMT: Rumour of Day. Kalameh alleges that prisoners held in cellblock 209 of Evin Prison have been commanded to fill in forms about their views on election fraud and whether the protest leaders are connected to foreign countries.
2100 GMT: Dr Mohammad Maleki, the former head of Tehran University, has reportedly been released after 191 days in detention. Maleki, 76, suffers from prostate cancer.
2055 GMT: United4Iran has a profile of Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, former advisor to Iran’s Minister of Interior in the Khatami Presidency, who was released on 24 February after spending more than eight months in prison. According to another released prisoner, Khanjani was under pressure to confess and was constantly moved from general confinement to solidarity confinement.
2110 GMT: Khamenei v. Khomeini. Radio Zamaneh has more on the criticism of Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandson, Seyed Hasan Khomeini, by the Supreme Leader’s representative in the Revolutionary Guards, Ali Saidi.
The conflict was sparked when the head of the Institute of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Publications, Mohammad Ali Ansari, wrote to Saidi to remind him of the Khomeini’s insistence on no military intervention in politics, Ali Saidi then criticized Hassan Khomeini’s decision not to attend the August inauguration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He alleged that the Ayatollah’s grandson was standing against “the system and the Leader”.
2100 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Mehrdad Bal Afkan, a senior member of the Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution party and Mir Hossein Mousavi’s campaign, was arrested in Isfahan on Thursday.
2100 GMT: Law and Order Story of the Week. After the court session for Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Kayhan, the newspaper’s journalist Payam Fazli-Nejad was reportedly “heavily beaten, barely escaping his death”, and Ahmadinejad right-hand man Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai has become “mamnou ol-tasvir” (his photos forbidden) on Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
2040 GMT: War on Terror, I Tell You. I’m sure it is entirely coincidental in light of current events — announcement of arrest of Jundullah leader a week after it occurred, Ahmadinejad declaring that it is Iran not “the West” that is fighting terrorism (1745 GMT), declaration of 100 arrested on 22 Bahman as “terrorists” (1435 GMT) — but this just in from the Ministry of Intelligence:
2220 GMT: Student activist Majid Tavakoli returned to Revolutionary Court today, 2 1/2 months after his detention on 7 December. There are no details of the hearing.
2105 GMT: On the Academic Front. Dr Mohammad Sattarifar has been expelled from his post at Allameh Tabatabei University.
2055 GMT: What Are Mahmoud (and Ali) Doing Today? Trying to out-do each other in the bashing of the West, it seems.
Ahmadinejad used a meeting with the speaker of Azerbaijan’s Parliament to declare, “The so-called powerful countries are merely after their own interests. They are willing go so far as to sacrifice other countries and nations for their interests….The weakening of the so-called powerful countries will completely change the state of affairs on the regional and international scale.”
Larijani’s audience was the Parliament, as he warned President Obama about following the polices of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and declared that the 22 Bahman rallies had thwarted the US-Iran “plot” against Iran.
2010 GMT: Drawing a line. Peyke Iran claims that Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has convinced lawmaker Mostafa Kavakebian not to press his plan for further examination of detention centres.
Yesterday we posted a concise, moving blog of Shadi Sadr, lawyer and human rights activist, in our updates, but I want to re-post it as a featured entry. Let me explain why.
SLAVIN: An Iran that had a more representative Government was less paranoid and fearful, that didn’t have to throw hundreds, thousands of people in jail would be a better Government, not just for us to deal with but for the Iranian people. It sometimes seems to me that you just don’t care what happens to these people….
LEVERETT: What I care about, Barbara, are American interests, and I think that American interests at this point require us to pursue serious strategic engagement with the Islamic Republic of Iran as it is, not as some might wish it to be.
2120 GMT: Mahmoud Goes to the Country? OK, it’s not just Internet chatter. EA readers bring me up to speed: in a televised statement on Friday night, President Ahmadinejad set out the possibility of a referendum on his proposal to control $40 billion from subsidy reductions (the Parliament only gave him $20 billion).
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