1730 GMT: Political Prisoner Update. Lawyer Massoud Aghaee was freed last night on bail. (http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109018)
1710 GMT: The Iranian Parliament has launched its 4th enquiry into the Kahrizak Prison abuses. (http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/feb/20/1244)
1655 GMT: Economic Projections. Key member of Parliament Ahmad Tavakoli has warned of possible zero growth or contraction in the economy in 2010-11. (http://www.peykeiran.com/Content.aspx?ID=13758)
1645 GMT: Grand Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi has declared that officials should serve the people and that if the people do not appear in public anymore, there will be great difficulties. (http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109009)
1640 GMT: Conservative Watch. Mohsen Rezaei, Presidential candidate and Secretary of the Expediency Coucil, has called on the Council to “apply corrections” to electoral laws. (http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109015)
1630 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Expediency Council, has declared at a Council meetint that “exclusion, elimination, and insulting” of figures in the Iranian system is a poison to domestic affairs and should be stopped.
Rafsanjani, reaffirming his position, declared that 22 Bahman invited Iranians to unity, following the Supreme Leader.
(http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109080)
1620 GMT: Afternoon Economy Watch. Bus drivers have gathered in front of the Social Security building in Tehran to protest against working conditions. (http://www.peykeiran.com/Content.aspx?ID=13750)
Iranian Labor News Agency warns that factories in many industrial sectors face closure. (http://www.ilna.ir/fullStory.aspx?ID=109010)
At least 1500 jobs have been lost in recent shutdowns. (http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/feb/19/1237)
Alireza Mahjoub, the head of a workers’ syndicate, has said the promise of 50 percent increase in oil prices in next year’s budget is “bizarre and inaccurate”. (http://www.ilna.ir/fullStory.aspx?ID=109089)
1120 GMT: This Month’s Twitter-Bash. This is almost as predictable as British weather: every few weeks, someone in the “thinking” press patches together faulty assumptions, a mis-understanding of social media, an Iran anecdote, and an “analyst” to claim that he/she has discovered: Twitter Had Nothing to Do With Post-Elections Events in Iran Whatsoever.
This month’s 15-second fame of Twitter-bashing is enjoyed by Mary Fitzgerald of The Irish Times. She is not as obnoxious or arrogant as Will Heaven, but the piece plumbs the same shallow waters of “analysis” that does no justice to social media or, more importantly, to those in Iran. (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0220/1224264860222.html)
1045 GMT: The Flag Flap (cont.). Well, I guess the issue of the magically changing colour of the Iranian flag — from red/white/green to red/white/blue — isn’t just a joke any longer.
At least not for the President’s office: it has issued a statement that “light reflection twisted the colour” of the flag at Ahmadinejad’s press conference this week. (http://bit.ly/crcDMW)
0905 GMT: Moscow’s Two-Faced Missiles. Russia, meanwhile, plays its own game with Iran. Having given Israel one message by holding up immediate delivery of S-300 missiles to Tehran, Moscow balanced with reassurance to Iran on Friday. Press TV quotes Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, “There is a contract to supply these systems to Iran, and we will fulfill it … Delays (with deliveries) are linked to technical problems with adjusting these systems.”
Iran has just sent a letter to the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, repeating its request for fuel to run a research reactor in Tehran that produces nuclear isotopes for medical purposes, according to U.S. and European officials.
They are readi
ng the letter as Iran’s latest, and perhaps final, rejection of an offer the United States and five other countries made last October to provide the fuel by taking low-enriched uranium out of Iran and enriching it for use in the research reactor…..
“We understand that Iran has recently sent a letter to the IAEA that simply repeats its request from last year for assistance to acquire fuel – a request the IAEA has responded appropriately to with its offer last October,” National Security Council spokesman Michael Hammer said.
“We see nothing new, and it would appear to reiterate Iran’s rejection of the IAEA’s proposal. Coupled with the IAEA’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program, this reinforces why our concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions are deepening.”
In other words, diplomatic stalemate. Tehran will continue to put forth its request for uranium through purchase or a swap inside Iran, while “the West” will insist on a swap in a third country. This could drag on for some time: both sides are getting public-relations value out of their positions.
1705 GMT: Establishment Battles Resume? Parleman News is claiming that supporters of President Ahmadinejad have tried — and failed — to unseat Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani as the head of the Principlist majority group. If true, this could be a sign that the temporary reconciliation of conservative and principlist factions, prominent at the start of September with the approval of the Ahmadinejad Cabinet, may be breaking down.
And that in turn raises the question: is this split being fostered by the imminence of a National Unity Plan which may seek to marginalise Ahmadinejad?
1640 GMT: We think Hashemi Rafsanjani’s statement, which we noted here earlier, is important enough to warrant a separate entry.
1625 GMT: The Unity Gesture? EA’s Mr Smith predicted that this step would occur in the Supreme Leader’s speech at the end of Ramadan on 20 September. Looks like he was only two weeks off: “Iran is to release on bail around 20 people accused of post-election violence, including top reformists and an Iranian-American scholar.”
According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, citing a source inside Iran’s judiciary, those who may be freed include former Vice President Mohammed Ali Abtahi, journalist Mohammad Atrianfar, reformist leaders Shahab Tabatabaei, Saeed Shariati and Abdollah Momeni, and Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh.
1430 GMT: Pointless Analysis of Day. A Jeffrey Kuhner, the declared President of the “Edmund Burke Institute”, is allowed to take up space in The Washington Times with this: “War with Iran is now inevitable. The only question is: Will it happen sooner or later?”
1240 GMT: Good Cop, Bad Cop. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has provided the critical counterpoint to the positive signals from this morning’s briefing by IAEA head Mohammad El-Baradei (0905-0920 GMT):
The [IAEA] is an international authority which should supervise all nuclear activities of states, but the agency’s records indicate that it was not successful in this regard for political reasons. The agency acted successfully with regard to nuclear activities in certain places like Japan, but it bowed [to pressure] where it faced political barriers and proved unsuccessful.
The head of Iran’s nuclear programme, Ali Akhbar Salehi, sounded a different tune after his press conference with El Baradei. Confirming the late October inspection date for the second enrichment plant and discusions on “third-party enrichment”, he said, “As far as safeguards are concerned, Iran’s nuclear issue has been fully resolved.”
1200 GMT: Report that two members of the reformist student group Daftar-Tahkim-Vahdat (Unity Consolidation Bureau) are still in Evin Prison, with 16 released yesterday. Original reports were that there were 15 detainees, and all were freed.
0920 GMT: El Baradei calls for Iran to rejoin the Subsidiary Protocol (Code 3.1) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which provides a stricter framework for inspection and monitoring. Iran left the Protocol in 2007 after a dispute with the IAEA over access to information on military programmes as well as the nuclear facilities.
We were very critical this morning about The New York Times’ exaggeration of extracts from an International Atomic Energy Agency report, assessed by the Institute for Science and International Security, on Iran’s nuclear programme. Although the NYT article mentioned the ISIS study, posted Friday, it quoted only a few words, preferring to rely on the “interpretations” of Government officials.
Writing in the trade publication Nucleonics Week, Mark Hibbs describes a debate taking place within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding the extent to which the Agency should publicize its findings regarding potential weaponization activities by Iran. This debate is also described in a September 17, 2009 article by Associated Press journalist George Jahn, which revealed excerpts from internal IAEA documents assessing the veracity of the allegations about Iran as well as the Agency‟s assessment on Iran‟s current capability to make nuclear weapons. This report contains further excerpts from what ISIS understands to be a working document and not necessarily a final report. Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE 2 September, 0900 GMT: In an interview with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad el Baradei has said, “Somehow, many people are talking about how Iran’s nuclear program is the greatest threat to the world. In many ways, I think the threat has been hyped….The idea that we’ll wake up tomorrow and Iran will have a nuclear weapon is an idea that isn’t supported by the facts as we have seen them so far.”
UPDATE 29 August, 0920 GMT: An EA correspondent has pointed out, in response to my judgement, “These conclusions could be, almost word for word, the conclusions of reports from 2008″, that there is a subtle difference from the IAEA’s June 2009 report: “The section on possible military dimensions is considerably longer and more detailed…and also entails a subtle change of tone.” In particular, the IAEA emphasizes that documentation “derived from multiple sources over different periods [is so] generally consistent and sufficiently comprehensive and detailed that it needs to be addressed by Iran”.
This should not be read as a declaration that Iran has moved towards nuclear weapons capability. Rather, it is an amplification of the IAEA’s frustration at not getting full access to Iranian facilities to verify the state of research and development.
As we expected, such subtleties are beyond the US press. The New York Times, confused that “Iran Has Bolstered Ability to Make Fuel but Slowed Its Output”, gives up and puts out the panicky conclusion, supported by far-from-neutral “outside experts”, “If Iran’s current stockpile of low-enriched uranium was further purified, it would have nearly two warheads’ worth of bomb fuel.”
—
We reprint below the conclusions of the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s Nuclear Programme. The full report is available on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security.
As we noted earlier this week, there has been and will be a rush of propaganda around this report. Those who wish to put pressure on Iran, including tougher economic sanctions, will bring out the finding that Iran “has not suspended its enrichment related activities”. More ominously, they will convert the IAEA’s “remaining issues of concern which need to be clarified to exclude the possibility of military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme” into the conclusion that Iran is definitely pursuing nuclear weapons. (The US State Department has already put out the statement, “Based on what we have seen in press reports … it seems clear that Iran continues to not cooperate fully and continues its (uranium) enrichment activities.” Ha’aretz has trotted out the Israeli line, “The report states that Iran may be working towards acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.”)
On the other side, Iranian officials will claim, with the finding of “the non-diversion of declared nuclear material” that they are in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Or in the objective summary of Press TV, “the UN nuclear watchdog has confirmed that the country is improving its cooperation with the agency while it continues to enrich uranium in spite of UN Security Council resolutions”.
All of this will overshadow the real significance of the report, which is that almost nothing has changed over the last year. Indeed, these conclusions could be, almost word for word, the conclusions of reports from 2008. This is a limbo in which Iran is neither culpable of definite violations of the NPT through pursuit of weaponry rather than civilian energy nor exonerated with full inspections of the IAEA of its research and production facilities.
Implementation of the NPT [Non-Proliferation] Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008), and 1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Report by the Director General
….
26. The Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Read the rest of this entry »
Update (2:45 p.m.): The lead story on CNN International’s website, “Experts: Iran ready to build nuclear weapon”, is not a “scary interpretation” of the IAEA report: it is an outright distortion. Rather than quote from the report or the officials who compiled it, they refer to the “Institute for Science and International Security”, who have “interpreted” the report.
Thus we get the scary side that “Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon but does have enough low-enriched uranium for a single nuclear weapon without any of the explanation, details, and caveats offered by United Nations officials. Or, for that matter, other “experts” who might have offered the appropriate context for the report.
1730 GMT: Political Prisoner Update. Lawyer Massoud Aghaee was freed last night on bail. (http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109018)
We were very critical this morning
UPDATE 2 September, 0900 GMT: In an interview with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 
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