2305 GMT: Back on the Road Again. Off for flight to UK and work in Liverpool so will be quiet for a while. Thanks to everyone for backing up EA on an eventful day.
2300 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Reports that student activist and weblog writer Fouad Shams has been released from prison after 96 days. Saeed Nourmohammadi, a member of the youth branch of the Islamic Iran Participation Front has been freed after 4 1/2 months in detention.
2255 GMT: Maintaining Control. Radio Zamaneh headlines, “Iran’s Supreme Leader May Approve Changes to Electoral Policies”, but the more you read, the more this is an assertion of Khamenei’s authority rather than reform.
Meeting members of the Assembly of Experts, the Supreme Leader said that he will approve the changes in “general policies of the elections” under discussion in the Expediency Council, headed by Hashemi Rafsanjani.
However, Khamenei added that the opinion of the Expediency Council regarding election policies is “debatable”, and once he is informed of their decision, he will enforce what he deems necessary. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Council’s moves for change…..
In his 17th statement, Mir-Hossein Mousavi made five specific points that he deemed necessary to start the political (and national) reconciliation process. The proposal lead to a noticeable uptick in the weeks leading up to 22 Bahman in talk of the need for national “unity” and also garnered much attention from Iranian intellectuals and dissidents. Ultimately, the regime’s more radical elements reemerged and silenced the chatter before the security apparatus prevented a strong opposition showing on the revolution’s 31st anniversary. But Mousavi’s “five points,” as they have come to be called, still carry much weight. Generally, they are:
Government accountability for post-election violations
Legislation of new election laws that would safeguard reform-minded candidates from regime’s current vetting process
Release of all political prisoners
Freedom of the press and political-neutrality on state-run IRIB television
Freedom to assemble, as guaranteed by the Islamic Republic’s constitution
Were these five conditions to be met, the Green movement would arguably have the breathing space it needs to mobilize and begin the long process of transforming Iranian society. For if anything became apparent in the weeks leading up to and after the June election, it was that Iran has undergone an awakening. It has simply been the repression that the above five grievances capture that has prevented the social movement’s aspirations from coming to fruition.
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.
2220 GMT: BBC Persian is reporting on the Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution. One interesting claim in the statement: anti-establishment monarchist slogans were encouraged by Government agent provocateurs in the Ashura crowd.
222055 GMT: The Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution, following the earlier endorsement of the Islamic Iran Participation Front of the Mousavi post-Ashura statement (1420 GMT), have issued their response to the declaration.
2000 GMT: The Regime’s Fist-Waving. Edward Yeranian of the Voice of America has a useful summary of today’s denunciations of protesters, invocation of “foreign agents”, and threats of prosecution from Minister of Interior Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar (1645 GMT) and the head of Iran’s judiciary, Sadegh Larijani. Press TV continues to play up the Larijani combination of assurance (“fair trial”) and warning (“investigate the events quickly and firmly”). Read the rest of this entry »
1930 GMT: Kill Them. Abbas Vaez-Tabasi, a member of the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts has declared on state television, “Those who are behind the current sedition in the country … are mohareb (enemies of God) and the law is very clear about punishment of a mohareb [execution].”
Today’s Show of Support for the Regime? If you believe Peyke Iran, it wasn’t much. The website reports that residents in Rasht ridiculed a demonstration of 300 plainclothes Basijis chanting slogans for the execution of reformists like Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mohammad Khatami, and Mehdi Karroubi.
1845 GMT: The Arrests Move Higher. Government forces have arrested Mir Hossein Mousavi’s chief aide Alireza Beheshti. Beheshti, the son of one of Iran’s most commemorated martyrs, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, was also detained briefly in September when the regime tried to disrupt preparations for Qods Day demonstrations.
1830 GMT: The Karroubi Family Speaks Out (Cont.): Mehdi Karroubi’s son Taghi has added to the criticisms by Karroubi’s wife and son Hossein of regime restrictions on his father. He said that Government-provided security has stopped protecting Karroubi when he leaves the house. This is effectively a ”quasi-house arrest’.’
Despite (or possibly because of) the muted public response by the US Government to the 15-year sentence handed down to Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh, the campaign for his release has picked up steam in the last week. On Sunday we featured an article by Karim Sadjadpour, and fellow scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who was detained for months with Tajbakhsh in 2007, has blogged for The New York Review of Books.
Gary Sick, a former US Government official who has been named in the regime’s indictments as a “foreign operative” working with Tajbakhsh, has also offered his thoughts. Without forgetting that hundreds of others remain in post-election detention, we post this to link Tajbakhsh’s case to a wider analysis of the Iranian Government’s accusations and tactics in its portrayal of “velvet revolution”.
Last week, an Iranian-American colleague of mine, Kian Tajbaksh, was sentenced in Tehran to 15 years in prison. The indictment included the charges that (1) he was in contact with me; (2) that he was part of the Gulf/2000 network that I manage; and (3) that I am an agent of the CIA. Read the rest of this entry »
1810 GMT: Recognise Us Because We’re Really Nice. There have been signs this week that the Ahmadinejad Government would be more flexible in its position on the nuclear programme, and today this came from the Associated Press, via unnamed diplomats:
Iran has lifted a ban and allowed UN inspectors to visit a nearly-completed nuclear reactor. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the reactor in Arak after a year-long ban…Iran agreed last week to expand uranium enrichment monitoring of the site.
1735 GMT: Ahmadinejad and the IRGC Factor. As we wait for the fallout from the President’s televised speech on his Cabinet selections, here’s how American anlaysts get it right. And wrong.
The appointment of Ahmad Vahidi as Minister of Defense has been noticed because he was commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps in the late 1980s/early 1990s. So, it is said, Vahidi’s appointment indicates a consolidation of the relationship between the President and the IRGC in the face of opposition not only from “reformists” but from “conservative” and “principlist” elements.
Right.
And, the analysts continue, this indicates that Ahmadinejad plans to continue and maybe accelerate Iran’s material support for pro-Iranian parties and militias in the Middle East.
Wrong.
This, of course, may be a consequence over time of Vahidi’s appointment but to assert — without any evidence — that the external dimension is more important than the President’s manoeuvres in an internal crisis smacks of a view that revolves around Washington, rather than Tehran.
1725 GMT: Worst. Claim. Ever: It’s All Hillary’s Fault. Iran’s police chief of police Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam has said that the “confessions” of political detainees must be authentic because their mastermind, Hillary Clinton, has openly revealed their plans: “Some say that the police has extracted confessions by force, but I tell them: No-one has extracted confession out of Mrs. Clinton, yet she reveals all issues freely.”
While Ahmadi-Moqaddam’s statement should be called out as a crass cover-up of the state’s treatment of prisoners, it does point to the lack of wisdom in Clinton’s posturing — motivated primarily to counter domestic charges that the Administration had stood back from post-election events — when she told CNN earlier this month that the US Government did much “behind the scenes” for Iranian protesters. Read the rest of this entry »
2305 GMT: Back on the Road Again. Off for flight to UK and work in Liverpool so will be quiet for a while. Thanks to everyone for backing up EA on an eventful day.
2220 GMT: 
1930 GMT: Kill Them. Abbas Vaez-Tabasi, a member of the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts 
Despite (or possibly because of) the muted public response by the US Government to the 15-year sentence handed down to Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh, the campaign for his release has picked up steam in the last week. On Sunday we featured an article by Karim Sadjadpour, and fellow scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who was detained for months with Tajbakhsh in 2007, 
1810 GMT: Recognise Us Because We’re Really Nice. There have been signs this week that the Ahmadinejad Government would be more flexible in its position on the nuclear programme, and today 
Entries (RSS)