1835 GMT: Report that Azar Mansouri, deputy head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been arrested after an interview with Norooz.
1735 GMT: Is Iran’s “Secret Nuclear Plant” Legal? The quick soundbite for Time from its interview with President Ahmadinejad is “”This does not mean we must inform Mr. Obama’s administration of every facility that we have.”
However, Ahmadinejad may have a point, one which is relevant to the current case. Iran notified the IAEA on Monday that it was constructing a new pilot enrichment plant. If Tehran has not put nuclear material into this facility, Iran is in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s Comprehensive Full Scope Safeguards Agreement, which requires it to a six-month notification period before nuclear material is put in the facility. (Iran withdrew from the more Subsidiary Agreement 3.1, which requires more detailed and timely notification, after the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran’s nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council.
So the case to prosecute Iran under the Non-Proliferation Treaty is not clear-cut. Of course, the US can and will rely upon the U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran cease all enrichment. Whether other countries (China, Russia) take the same line remains to be seen.
1730 GMT: President Ahmadinejad may have backed out of an encounter with the New York media, but he did give a one-on-one video interview to Time magazine. We’ve posted in a separate entry.
1700 GMT: President Ahmadinejad has replaced his New York press conference with an interview with Press TV.
1500 GMT: We’ve just posted Chris Emery’s shrewd analysis of the politics of the US revelation of the “secret nuclear plant” and the Obama statement: “This high-profile initiative by Obama was designed to get movement on engagement.”
1425 GMT: Amidst the continuing chatter on the Obama statement — no additional information, just the theme of “He was Really Tough” — news services drop in this interesting twist “Ahmadinejad cancels his 5 pm EST (2100 GMT) speech in NYC [New York City]“.
1245 GMT: The Obama Line. The President has just made his statement on the Iran “secret nuclear plant”. The message? This demonstrates Iran’s “continuing unwillingness” to meets its “international obligations” on development of nuclear capability. This showed the “urgency” of resolution at talks with Iran on 1 October in Geneva.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has backed this up by saying “everything must be put on the table”, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proclaimed this “the most urgent problem” of today.
This feels more and more like a scripted play. The “West” has known for some time that Iran was constructing a second uranium enrichment plant but had not announced this to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran figured out that the US had learned of the plant and was preparing a big setpiece, ahead of the 1 October talks, to reveal the Iranian duplicity. So Iran went to the IAEA on Monday to put its plans above-board. This, however, was not going to deflect the US-UK-France scheme to put Iran on the defensive in advance of the first direct discussions between Washington and Tehran.
2010 GMT: The buzz over Imam Khomeini’s grandson, Seyed Hassan Khomeini, continues. After his appearance yesterday at the Supreme Leader’s speech (analysed in a separate entry), the Islamic Republic News Agency has attacked him for his continued visits to the families of detainees (see 1510 GMT).
1535 GMT: Revelation of the Day. Rooz Online claims that the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps has ordered the Ministry of Health not to release the medical records of recently injured protesters, thus covering up the cause of their wounds.
Afternoon Update (1510 GMT): A New Act in the Crackdown? State TV has again put high-profile reformist detainees Saeed Hajjarian, Mohammad Atrianfar, and Saeed Shariati on air in a two-day roundtable to explain and analyse their transgressions, no doubt re-drawing the picture of foreign-directed attempts at regime change. The trio were featured in a roundtable last month after the first wave of Tehran trials.
Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Imam Khomeini, has continued his visits to the families of post-election detainees. The visits have been seen as symbolic of Khomeini’s challenge to the current Government and have resumed a day after his appearance at the Supreme Leader’s Eid-al-Fitr address.
Parliament Qualms? Deputy Speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar has again raised the prospect of a legislative clash with the President after the cease-fire that led to approval of the Ahmadinejad Cabinet. Bahonar has expressed qualms about the President’s power, saying he is worried that Ahmadinejad will start changing Ministers and declaring that Parliament will force Government to abide by laws.
There will be no less than five interviews with Barack Obama aired today, as each news network scramble to make its face-time “exclusive” on issues from health care to race to Afghanistan. NBC’s Meet the Press is the first to put its full interview on-line, with highlights on Afghanistan, health care, and race and political debate.
[Earlier commentaries and videos follow the extended 53-minute interview.]
I have been highly critical of the way NBC publicised and rolled out the earlier versions of this interview (see videos below), first in a “teaser” clip and then in the 6 1/2-minute extract featured on last week’s NBC Evening News. The extended version has finally gone out on MSNBC today. To be fair, I’ll refrain from further analysis until I’ve had a chance to give this full consideration.
2135 GMT: The Best Rumour of the Day (1745 GMT) is now Fun Fact of the Day. Iranian state television did show tonight’s football match in black-and-white, and we’ve got the video.
2040 GMT: An Important Note to Close (For Now). I was going to hold this until morning, but as a reader has noted on the discussion thread, it is far too important a development to be treated lightly.
Advar reports what we have been observing since yesterday: there are worrying signs that the Internet is being strangled inside Iran, with slowing speeds. An EA correspondent adds reports from Iran that other services, such as Yahoo Messenger and Gmail, are unreachable and anti-filter mechanism are also almost completely down. He asks, “Could this be the start of the Government’s [next] crackdown?”
2006 GMT: I’m Going to Tell You One More Time, New York Times (1155 GMT). Your headline writer has his priorities wrong: “Amid Large Protests, Iran Leader Calls Holocaust a Lie”.
Here’s your rewrite: “Despite President’s Israel Diversion, Large Protests Challenge Government”.
(I swear that I wrote this seven minutes before reading this from the National Iranian American Council, “The NYT editors need some help today. Their coverage shouldn’t be entitled, ‘Amid Large Protests, Iran Leader Calls Holocaust a Lie’. The real headline should be ‘Thousands Protest at Rallies Despite Threats’.”)
1950 GMT: A Good Mystery to End the Night: Why Did Ali Larijani Meet the Clerics?
Our readers, who are a pretty sharp bunch, might have noticed that I was none too happy when I posted the video and transcripts of the Sunday interviews with the Obama Administration’s Dynamic Duo on Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and the US Ambassador to Kabul, General Karl Eikenberry.
In part, that was because of the insipid set-up questioning of CNN’s John King and the asinine opener of NBC’s David Gregory, “Have the American people lost the will to fight this war?”. In part, it was because Mullen and Eikenberry were hopeless once they got beyond their scripted talking points (to Gregory’s credit, he exposed the limitations with the challenge, “We’re rebuilding this nation?….Is that what the American people signed up for?”).
But, mainly, I’m angry, concerned, resigned because the strategy of Mullen was so blatant: “You know, let’s just aside this complicated politics stuff and throw in some more soldiers.” Read the rest of this entry »
We commented earlier on the Obama Administration’s double act selling the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, on CNN. As disturbing as this appearance was, this one might be worse.
Like the CNN interview, this exchange started not with consideration of Afghanistan’s political situation but with the question of how many troops the US should put into the country. And to set that up, host David Gregory asked a fatuous, leading question about weak-willed US public opinion to which Mullen invoked both Al Qa’eda and 9-11.
To give Gregory some credit, he did get to the serious issues of Afghanistan’s political and economic development and whether the US was “nation-building”. When he did, Mullen and Eikenberry floundered helplessly. Granted I am not a fan of the Obama policy, but even a supporter of the US effort should have concerns after this performance.
DAVID GREGORY: first, in addition to waging political battles at home, the President is faced with two ongoing wars abroad. Read the rest of this entry »
National Security Advisor James Jones is doing overtime today as the Obama Administration’s foreign policy salesman. He’s been interviewed on three of the top Sunday morning politics chat shows: Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday (transcript in a separate entry), and Face the Nation (transcript in a separate entry). The topics covered are the same: this week’s release of two American journalists from North Korea, the possible assassination of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, and engagement with Iran.
And it’s a triple dose of nothingness, with little of significance being said. To be fair to Jones, that’s because of the appalling simplistic media narrative. On North Korea, it’s sentimental “Yay, We Got Americans Out of an Evil Place” vs. “Oh, No, We Cut a Deal to Get Americans Out of an Evil Place”. The Mehsud case becomes a Boy’s Own story of daring American operations (even though no American would have been physically present, even in the air above, when the unmanned drone fired its missile), obscuring the problems in Pakistan that will last beyond — and possibly be magnified — by the killing. And Iran? Both the media and Obama Administration are in the side alley of the nuclear programme issue.
DAVID GREGORY: General James Jones, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.
GEN. JAMES JONES (RET.): Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.
MR. GREGORY: Big news; North Korea, the two American journalists back home. This was the scene as it played out in Los Angeles on Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton accompanying the two journalists back home. He has since come back east and you have been able to fully debrief him. What can you say you have now learned about North Korea and specifically Kim Jong Il? Read the rest of this entry »
1835 GMT: Report that Azar Mansouri, deputy head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been arrested after an interview with Norooz.
2135 GMT: The Best Rumour of the Day (1745 GMT) is now Fun Fact of the Day. Iranian state television did show tonight’s football match in black-and-white, and 
Our readers, who are a pretty sharp bunch, might have noticed that I was none too happy when I posted the video and transcripts of the Sunday interviews with the Obama Administration’s Dynamic Duo on Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and the US Ambassador to Kabul, General Karl Eikenberry.
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