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The Latest from Iran (12 November): Ahmadinejad Moves for Nuclear Deal

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1805 GMT: Another Move for the Nuke Deal. Looks like the Ahmadinejad-military axis has put down another marker with the statement of the head of Iran’s armed forces, Major-General Hassan Firouzabadi, supporting the uranium enrichment agreement: “We will not suffer a loss from the exchange of fuel. Rather, in obtaining fuel enriched to 20 percent as needed by the reactors, nearly one million of our people would take advantage of its medical possibilities annually….The quantity of 3.5 percent enriched uranium [to be shipped out] is not so large as to cause damage to Iran’s supply.”

1605 GMT: What’s Happening at the Revolutionary Guard? Radio Fardi summarises the changes in higher commander at the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, including the head of the Tehran command. I’ll have to leave it to others to assess whether these are “normal” changes in the organisation or whether there is a political story behind them.

1515 GMT: Confidence or Concern? Reuters has now picked up the statement of Mojtaba Zolnour, a representative of the Supreme Leader in the Revolutionary Guard, that the Assembly of Experts cannot remove him from office.

Zolnour told a gathering of Khamenei’s representatives in Iranian universities, “The members of the assembly…do not appoint the Supreme Leader, rather they discover him and it is not that they would be able to remove him any time they wish so.”

Now is Zolnour saying this because he is feeling good that the Supreme Leader is secure in his seat of power or is his warning prompted by fears that members of the Assembly, who raised the possibility of removal in August/September, may not be pacified?

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Tags: Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi, Alavi Foundation, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Goal.com, Guardian Council, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Hassan Firouzabadi, Hassan Salamat, Iran, Iran Elections 2009, Islamic Republic News Agency, Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, Los Angeles Times, Mehdi Hashemi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mohammad Khatami, Mojtaba Zolnour, New York Times, Nuclear Proliferation, Persian2English, Press TV, Reuters, Shapour Kazemi, Zahra Rahnavard