2225 GMT: Arguing Over the Mousavi Statement. Habib-allah Askaroladi, a leading principlist politician, has declared, “Today it is important not to allow the extremists to change the national scene into a battlefield.”

That’s not a surprising statement. This, however, raises an eyebrow: Askaroladi breaks from Presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei in recommending Mir Hossein Mousavi’s recent statement as a possible route to conciliation: “Nowhere in Mousavi’s statement is an about-face seen.”

2155 GMT: Diplomatic Protest. The Iranian consul in Norway has resigned in protest at his Government’s treatment of the Ashura demonstrators. He is also reported to have sought asylum.

A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy would not comment on what he called lies and rumours.

2100 GMT: We’ve posted video of Monday’s CNN interview with the former member of Parliament Fatemeh Haghighatjoo and Tehran University academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi. There’s also the transcript of the thoughts of former Obama Administration official Ray Takeyh.

1705 GMT: A Victory for the Government. After months of wrangling, Iran’s Parliament has ratified President Ahmadinejad’s economic bill aimed at gradually cutting energy and food subsidies. Of 243 members, 134 votes for a reform subsidy organization to enforce the plan.

NEW Latest Iran Video and Transcript: Haghighatjoo and Marandi on CNN (4 January)
NEW Iran: How Outside “Help” Can Hurt the Green Movement
Latest Iran Video: Maziar Bahari on Britain’s Channel 4
Iran: Five Expatriate Intellectuals Issue “The Demands of the Green Movement”
Latest Iran Video: Interview with Committee of Human Rights Reporters (3 January)
Iran: In Defence of Mousavi’s “5 Proposals”
Iran: The Genius of Washington’s “Strategic Leaking” on Nukes & Sanctions
The Latest from Iran (4 January): Watching and Debating

The breakthrough came with a compromise on oversight, insisted upon by Parliament, The Supreme Iranian Audit Court, charged with supervising “financial operations and activities” of organizations which benefit from the state budget, will monitor the organization and submit reports on its performance twice a year.
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Tags: 22 Bahman, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Bahman Ahmadi Amoui, CNN, Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, Habib-allah Askaroladi, Iran, Iran Elections 2009, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mohsen Rezaei, New York Times, Ray Takeyh, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Tehran University

NEW Iran: Maziar Bahari on His 118 Days in Detention
Video and English Text: Mousavi Interview with Kalemeh (21 November)
The Latest from Iran (21 November): Mousavi, Khomeini, and Ahmadinejad

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2125 GMT: Activists on Twitter are reporting the arrest of blogger/journalist Sasan Aghaei.

1940 GMT: Karroubi’s Latest Letter. Mehdi Karroubi has written to Iran Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie and Habib-allah Askaroladi, the secretary general of the conservative Mo’talefe party, posting the letter on his Tagheer website.

The letter is a renewal of Karroubi’s campaign for the truth on reports of abuse of detainees, responding to the attempts of Mohseni-Ejeie and Askaroladi to cast doubt on his claims and motives. He repeats his earlier account of meetings with the three-member judiciary panel that was appointed to consider the charges. In particular, he states that, while he raised the case of Saeedeh Pouraghai but warned that it might be false. (The claims that Pouraghai had been raped and killed by security forces are now discounted. Some believe the case was “manufactured” by the regime so it would discredit the opposition when the falsehood emerged.)

Karroubi also challenges Askaroladi’s claims that the Green movement is financed by millions of dollars from the US Government and demands that Mousavi and Karroubi “must be dealt with”.

1740 GMT: The Visits Begin. Former President Mohammad Khatami has visited Mohammad Ali Abtahi in his home.

1625 GMT: Rumour of Day “Mortazavi in Evin Prison”. Norooz claims that Saeed Mortazavi, who was Tehran’s Prosecutor General in the early part of the post-election crisis, has been spotted in prison garb at Evin Prison. The website claims that Mortazavi has not been seen in public in two months and raises the possibility that he will disappear via “suicide”, just like Kahrizak prison doctor Ramin Pourandarjan. (Norooz also sees parallels with the case of Said Emami, the intelligence operative and deputy minister found dead in his cell a decade ago. He was blamed for a series of murders after his death.)

1610 GMT: Abtahi Freed. The picture of former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi provides happy confirmation of his release on bail after 160 days in detention (see 0735 and1405 GMT).
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Tags: Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Ali Larijani, Ali Zakani, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastghaib, Ayatollah Bayat-Zanjani, Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, Expediency Council, Fars News, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie, Habib-allah Askaroladi, Hashemi Rafsanjani, International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran, Iran Elections 2009, Khaje Nasir University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mo'talefe, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Mohammad Khatami, Mohsen Rezaei, Mohsen Safai-Farahani, Mowj-e-sabz, Norooz, Ramin Pourandarjan, Saeed Mortazavi, Saeedeh Pouraghai, Sasan Aghaei, Tehran University