2135 GMT: Rumour of Day. Kalameh alleges that prisoners held in cellblock 209 of Evin Prison have been commanded to fill in forms about their views on election fraud and whether the protest leaders are connected to foreign countries.
2100 GMT: Dr Mohammad Maleki, the former head of Tehran University, has reportedly been released after 191 days in detention. Maleki, 76, suffers from prostate cancer.
2055 GMT: United4Iran has a profile of Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, former advisor to Iran’s Minister of Interior in the Khatami Presidency, who was released on 24 February after spending more than eight months in prison. According to another released prisoner, Khanjani was under pressure to confess and was constantly moved from general confinement to solidarity confinement.
On Friday, the leading reformist group, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, wrote to the head of Iran’s judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, seeking answers over the executions of Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Ahmadipour.
Dear Mr. Larijani, the honorable Head of the Judiciary,
The news of the execution of two prisoners accused of being Moharebs warriors against God) created a spark of surprise and astonishment amongst the nation of Iran. During a time when the political atmosphere is one of fervent hope to wipe out the dark clouds of hatred and vengeance, this faulty action by the judiciary system was only further proof that there is no willingness and desire to create calm in the country’s political atmosphere.
The judiciary, already accused of political maneuvering and ignoring justice and fairness because of its illegal and doubtful behavior towards reputable political forces arrested and jailed unfairly after the elections, will now be questioned even more after issuing suspicious death sentences for nine people and hastily executing two others.
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 »
Many thanks to readers and EA colleagues who gave valuable feedback and criticism on yesterday’s analysis of the meetings between clerics and Hashemi Rafsanjani discussing moves for a National Unity Plan manoeuvring between the Ahmadinejad Government and the Green opposition.
A basic but, I think, important start to a reply: there is a big difference between questioning whether meetings took place and questioning whether those meetings will be effective.
Almost all the reaction has focused on that second question. Some readers noted, quite rightly, that Nasser Makarem-Shirazi is the only Ayatollah who has gone public, and then in general terms regarding “unity” rather than in reference to the meetings. That’s a fair point, even though we have information that other senior clerics have been involved in the discussions.
Some readers have questioned whether any Plan can get the approval of the Supreme Leader or, alternatively, the Revolutionary Guard.
Again, that is a necessary challenge, but any Plan is likely to be a tactical move against the authority of the President rather than a strategic approach for re-alignment or major change in the Iranian system. The question then becomes not whether Ayatollah Khamenei will defy any proposal revising velayat-e-faqih but whether he will side with the “third way” against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (I agree that, if the Revolutionary Guard rather than the Supreme Leader are in charge that even this is problematic, but I don’t start from that assumption at this point.) Read the rest of this entry »
2030 GMT: We’re still waiting for an English translation of today’s Mir Hossein Mousavi newspaper with Jamaran, the newspaper of the Khomeini family (see 1015 GMT). The headline is Mousavi’s declaration that Iran is “vulnerable” in the current political situation: “People who entered the scene of the Revolution did not do it to suffer such difficulties. They came to secure their freedom and welfare, and if the system fails to deliver, it will lose its legitimacy for certain.”
2020 GMT: An EA reader has sent us the petition, printed in full in the comments below, to the head of Iran’s judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to commute the death sentence of Ehsan Fatahian, a 28-year-old Kurd who is scheduled for execution on Wednesday. Fatahian was initially given a 10-year prison term for “plotting against national security” but this was changed to a death sentence by an appeal court when the charge “waging war against God” was added.
2000 GMT: Back from a break to find excellent material from readers. With university demonstrations continuing today, we’ve posted four clips from a rally at Azad University, Khomeini Shahr, outside Isfahan.
Tomorrow (10 November) at 12:00 CET she will present a film, Women in Shrouds, and hold a Q&A about human rights in Iran. If anyone here would like to ask her a question through me, please post it here in these comments.
1645 GMT: Daftar-Tahkim-Vahdat, the main reformist student and alumni organisation, has issued a statement announcing that it will withstand the oppression of “coup agents” with all of its organisational power, even as almost half of its key members are imprisoned or sought by the security forces.
1955 GMT: The Youth and Student Section of Mehdi Karroubi’s reformist Etemade Melli party have condemned the acts of the judiciary and security forces with the arrest of Mousavi’s and Karoubi’s advisors. The section declared that these actions in the run-up to Qods Day (18 Sept.) not only will fail to cause fear in people but will encourage them to attend the epic demonstration on that day.
1735 GMT: Still don’t believe there is a foreign-directed effort at “velvet revolution” in Iran? Well here, courtesy of Raja News, is the super-duper, multi-colour chart (with arrows) to prove it.
1730 GMT: Norooz, which was down earlier today because of an “Internal Server Error”, is back online.
2135 GMT: Rumour of Day. Kalameh alleges that prisoners held in cellblock 209 of Evin Prison have been commanded to fill in forms about their views on election fraud and whether the protest leaders are connected to foreign countries.
1945 GMT: Khatami on Moharram. Illustrating the analysis in Mr Azadi’s “Beginners Guide to Moharram”, former President Mohammad Khatami 
2030 GMT: We’re still waiting for an English translation of today’s Mir Hossein Mousavi newspaper with Jamaran, the newspaper of the Khomeini family (see 1015 GMT). The headline is 
1955 GMT: The Youth and Student Section of Mehdi Karroubi’s reformist Etemade Melli party 
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