Last night, seeking an answer to a question concerning Iran and the US, I sought counsel from the English-language website of the Institute of North American and European Studies at the University of Tehran. (Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi, one of the most prominent post-election commentators on non-Iranian media, is based at INAES.)
I got no joy, for INAES’ homepage reads simply: “This Account Has Been Suspended”.
2240 GMT: We close tonight by posting a video of the comments of Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, defending the regime’s approach in the Presidential election and against subsequent protests, on CNN.
2155 GMT: News from Evin Prison. Another demonstration tonight by families of detainees and their supporters — Peyke Iran reports hundreds present. The website claims 23 detainees have been released to the cheers of the crowd.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is looking at a bright future under the aegis of the visionary leadership of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and the support of a considerable number of devotees inside and outside the country…
“Ceremonies marking the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution will kick off this year at a time when Iran has made great progress in various fields of science and technology. The global powers, along with their supporters inside the country, desperately sought to undermine the principles of the Islamic Revolution.
So, Mr Firouzabadi, we pass over to you the EA All is Well Trophy Video:
2015 GMT: The speaker of the reformist minority group in Parliament, Mohammad Reza Tabesh, resigned to protest restricitons such as the filtering of the party’s website Parleman News and the banning of its reporter from the Parliament and preventing guests of MPs from entering the Parliament. (Those guests include family members of political prisoners. One delegation was turned away today.)
The Deputy Speaker and members of the party intervened and requested Tabesh to remain in his post.
An interview from Al Jazeera English in which a Tehran University academic declares that the executions of Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour were absolutely justified and then says, “I don’t know very much about this case.” Indeed, the academic says that one of the two was a member of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO); all Iranian officials, including the Tehran Prosecutor General, have claimed that both were “monarchists”.
(Note near the end of the interview the declaration by the academic that the father of one of the Kahrizak prisoners who died spoke to him and “is very satisfied with the way things have been conducted”. That “father”, Abdulhossein Ruholamini, launched a scatching attack on the Government’s conduct last week.)
2320 GMT: The Committee of Human Rights Reporters has issued a statement on recent allegations against its members, many of whom are detained:
The civil society’s endurance depends on acceptance and realization of modern norms and principles. When a ruling establishment with an outdated legal system tries to impose itself politically and ideologically on a modern society, the result will be widespread protests.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s top aide said Friday Tehran is concerned about the direction of the US administration after President Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union address.
“We have concerns Obama will not be successful in bring change to US policies,” Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, the senior aide to President Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff, said.
With respect, Esfandiar, I don’t think President Obama is your biggest concern right now.
2300 GMT: Yawn. Well, we started the day with a sanctions sideshow (see 0650 GMT), so I guess it is fitting to close with one. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in Paris:
China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the [Persian] Gulf, from which they receive a significant percentage of their own supplies….We understand that right now it seems counterproductive to [China] to sanction a country from which you get so much of the natural resources your growing economy needs….[But China] needs to think about the longer-term implications.
1. The White House is not even at the point of agreeing a sanctions package with the US Congress, let alone countries with far different agendas.
2. China is not going to agree tough sanctions in the UN Security Council. Really. Clinton is blowing smoke.
3. About the only outcome of this will be Press TV running a story on bad America threatening good Iran Government.
Iran: There’s a lot going on in and about Iran today – the trials are continuing; the Regime’s propaganda machine trundles on too! All the news, including links to our own stories and other news media, can be found on our live weblog.
In the light of the Ashura demonstrators’ trial starting this morning, and as they are charged with “Mohareb” (offending God and the prophet), Edward Yeranian assesses how this may hurt the regime.
We’ve got the video of the CNN interview in which Tehran University academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi lays out, in the guise of reporting and analysis, the strategy. (Apologies to those of you in the US whom CNN have blocked from seeing the video; the alternative, as laid out by our readers, is to download the video from CNN’s Amanpour website and play it back using QuickTime.)
Afghanistan: We have an evaluation from Juan Cole on this morning’s Taliban bomb attack in Kabul, which reportedly killed five and injured eight people. A video of the Esanech (Press TV) report on the attack can be viewed here.
Haiti: EA’s Josh Shahyrar has been producing an almost constant humanitarian liveblog since the Haiti earthquake disaster last Tuesday – read his latest posts (17-18 January) here.
Israel: EA’s Ali Yenidunya reports on the “strategic” relationship between Israel and Turkey, following Sunday’s 3.5 hour meeting in Ankara between Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. An Israeli official said the meeting was conducted “in a very friendly atmosphere”.
Palestine: After Israel’s Foreign Minister said on Sunday that it would make no further “gestures” towards the Palestinians, Palestinian Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas has called on Washington to “Draw Red Lines”.
2205 GMT: And Here’s Another One. Looks like the campaign against Hashemi Rafsanjani hasn’t stopped. Someone in the regime has ensured that he will not be leading the ceremony at Imam Khomeini’s memorial on 11 Bahman (1 February), the start of celebrations of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
2200 GMT: Political Teasers. While I’ve been out, EA readers have been sending in a series of interesting stories on the manoeuvres inside the establishment — we’ll have the best of them, with an analysis, to start Tuesday morning. Meanwhile….
Ayande News continues its campaign against former 1st Vice President and Ahmadinejad aide Esfandiar Rahim-Mashi. The newspaper features the claim that several Rahim-Mashai relatives have been appointed to the board of the state automobile company Saipa, taking a controlling interest.
Rahim-Mashai’s son, Reza, has become managing director of Saipa’s investment branch while his nephew is now the company’s head of business development.
2150 GMT: More on the assassination of prosecutor Vali Haji Gholizadeh, shot dead in front of his home in Khoy City in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, bordering Turkey and Iraq. A police official says, “A special unit has been formed to identify those behind this assassination.” Read the rest of this entry »
An interesting interview on CNN with Tehran University academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi over the Parliamentary report into detainee abuses, notably the violence and deaths at Kahrizak Prison. Below the analysis we have the video of CNN’s report on Kahrizak and Mortazavi, accompanied by an extract of the Marandi interview.
Note how quickly Marandi invokes the name of Abdolhossein Ruholamini, the medical professor and advisor to Presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei, to declare “satisfaction” with the report and investigations by the Government, including the role of Ayatollah Khamenei. It was the death of Ruholamini’s son Mohsen in Kahrizak that spurred “conservative/principlist” pressure for the closure of the facility, which was ordered by the Supreme Leader this summer, and then for an enquiry. Read the rest of this entry »
1925 GMT: A (Pick the) Number of Protesters Will Be Tried Sometime in the Future with War Against the Regime (and Maybe God). Press TV trots out the latest press release to show Justice Will Be Done over the protests of Ashura (27 December):
Iran’s judiciary says it has forwarded the cases of sixteen individuals indicted in connection with the Ashura riot in Tehran to the Revolution Court.
The Tehran Prosecutor’s office said in a statement that one of the defendants could be charged with being “mohareb” (enemy of God) — a crime punishable by execution.
The fifteen [other] suspects were charged with “conspiring against national security and carrying out acts against the establishment,” the statement added.
This is the latest in a series of public set-pieces. A couple of weeks ago, “seven” defendants appeared in Revolutionary Guard. Then there was the announcement that “five” demonstrators would be charged as “mohareb”.
All of this, in contrast to the public show of the Tehran trials in August, seems just a bit haphazard.
1840 GMT: Mir Hossein Mousavi has offered condolences to the family of Professor Ali-Mohammadi.
1825 GMT: Professor Ali-Mohammadi and Sweden. There has been a lot of chatter around the theory that Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was killed by regime loyalists, in part because he was going to take up a fellowship at Stockholm University in Sweden. We’ve done some checking:
1. We can establish nothing beyond the claim of the physicist’s colleagues that “he had been in touch” with Stockholm about a one-year research grant. That’s not necessarily “taking up” a fellowship, since in many cases, an application is made to a funding body, e.g., the European Union’s research support programmes, for a Visiting Scholar.
The claim, without further evidence, was exaggerated on prominent blogs into Ali-Mohammadi definitely leading the country.
2. It is not necessarily an anti-regime step to take up an overseas fellowship. I personally know academics who support the regime who have held such fellowships.
3. There is nothing to indicate that Ali-Mohammadi’s research fellowship would have turned into a defection.
4. There’s a contradiction in the theory. If Ali-Mohammadi was in fact a particle physicist who had little or no connection with Iran’s nuclear programme, why would there be a risk for the regime in his taking up a fellowship, since he would have no sensitive information to disclose?
Last night, seeking an answer to a question concerning Iran and the US, I sought counsel from the English-language website of the Institute of North American and European Studies at the University of Tehran. (Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi, one of the most prominent post-election commentators on non-Iranian media, is based at INAES.)
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