2310 GMT: Moving Towards Qom. More chatter on the post-funeral tension in Qom — Norooz claims people are moving from Isfahan and Najafabad to “defend” the house of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.
2300 GMT: Mahmoud Fights Back? On a day which began with our analysis that the President is scrambling to maintain any legitimacy, it appears he tried to send out a signal tonight with the dismissal of Mir Hossein Mousavi as head of the Arts Institute. Salaam News reports that Ahmadinejad flew back from Shiraz just for the meeting deciding on the sacking of Mousavi and will now return to Shiraz.
Then again, one wonders if that will be enough to show Mahmoud’s muscle. According to Peyke Iran, only 40 people were on hand to greet Ahmadinejad at Shiraz’s airport this morning.
2230 GMT: Back from break to find discussion still going on about possible paramilitary/security forces threat to Ayatollah Sane’i, with Rouydad saying that followers have declared their readiness to defend the cleric. Read the rest of this entry »
Enduring America, 14 December: “What can the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard do with a Sword which, for all the detentions and all the propaganda, dangles not as a sign of its threat but of (for now) its impotence?”
Even by the standards of this post-election conflict, the last 48 hours have been extraordinary for their rhetoric. At one point, there were no less than five regime officials (head of judiciary Sadegh Larijani, Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi, Supreme Leader representative Mojtaba Zolnour, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, Tehran Governor Morteza Tamedon) throwing around threats of arrests. Yet the opposition was even more spirited and even more high-profile: both Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mehdi Karroubi met the threats with defiance and more than a little humour (both were quite concerned about Yazdi’s health, physical and mental), MPs offered public support, Mir Hossein Mousavi’s Alireza Beheshti challenged the regime’s continuous “lies about imperialism”, and Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, held up the Green Movement as the representative of the ideals of Imam Khomeini.
And the outcome today, on the eve of the holy month of Moharram? A regime, nervous and possibly a bit frightened, which can neither swing its Sword of Damocles nor keep it steady.
1945 GMT: Khatami on Moharram. Illustrating the analysis in Mr Azadi’s “Beginners Guide to Moharram”, former President Mohammad Khatami put out a message linking the commemoration of the third Imam, Hussein, with today’s challenge in Iran:
The Islamic society has one major goal and that is to reform the society contentiously; It could be either by reforming the government by establishing a suitable government or by reforming the way government rules and the methods it interacts with the society. Imam Hossein said that he did not fight to gain power but he did fight for reform in the Islamic society….Before the revolution the goal of the reform was to establish a new government but now that the Islamic Republic is established, reform must continue to strengthen it.
1900 GMT: So Is Raf Ready for the Fight? He’s sure talking like it. Following his advice to Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, “Get Help” (1730 GMT), he’s taken on other critics: “Some people make their reputation by slandering others and the appropriate response to such people is silence.”
Rafsanjani advised regime officials to strengthen “society’s trust” in the system by executing the provisions of the constitution and respecting peoples’ rights. No amount of Government restrictions could prevent the legitimate demands of the Iranian population: “With the dismantling of media monopolies, today’s generation are well-informed and they’ll only be more so in the future.” Read the rest of this entry »
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?
1945 GMT: During a relatively slow period in Iran news, have been following an interesting discussion at Anonymous Iran, sparked by Josh Shahryar’s “Green Brief”: “they are well written and structured, and even better, they report from a “grass-root” level so that I’m able to get a better “feel” and emotional picture of what really is happening. However, does the method used in gathering this information hold up to established journalistic standards?”
1900 GMT: The Significance of the Event, not the Message. Mir-Hossein Moussavi said Wednesday that protests would continue until all demonstrators are released.
That is distinctive not because of the statement, which is merely a reiteration of what Mousavi said to families of detainees on Monday, but because of the audience. Mousavi was speaking to journalists, a significant relaxation of the restrictions put on his movements and access to media by the Iranian Government in recent weeks.
1525 GMT: Ayatollah Bayat-Zanjani, responding to questions from a “concerned person”, has issued a fatwa regarding the inauguration of President Ahmadinejad
If the individual [claiming to be president] has attained his position illegitimately and fraudulently, the inauguration ceremonies and investment of power done by the supreme leader will are not sufficient to confer legitimacy [upon the aforementioned president] because [the act of] performing these ceremonies is not the main foundation upon which [presidential legitimacy is built upon] . These ceremonies can only invest power if the president has reached his position through an honest election process.
(New York) – The Iranian authorities are using prolonged harsh interrogations, beatings, sleep deprivation, and threats of torture to extract false confessions from detainees arrested since the disputed June 12 presidential election, Human Rights Watch said today. The confessions appear designed to support unsubstantiated allegations by senior government officials that Iran’s post-election protests, in which at least 20 people were killed, were supported by foreign powers and aimed at overthrowing the government.
“The Iranian government is desperate to justify its vicious attacks on peaceful protesters,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “What better excuse does it need than confessions of foreign plots, beaten out of detainees?” Read the rest of this entry »
2310 GMT: Moving Towards Qom. More chatter on the post-funeral tension in Qom — Norooz claims people are moving from Isfahan and Najafabad to “defend” the house of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.
1945 GMT: Khatami on Moharram. Illustrating the analysis in Mr Azadi’s “Beginners Guide to Moharram”, former President Mohammad Khatami 
1805 GMT: Another Move for the Nuke Deal. Looks like the Ahmadinejad-military axis has put down another marker with 
1945 GMT: During a relatively slow period in Iran news, have been following 
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