UPDATE 1355 GMT: We’ve got the latest developments in our LiveBlog. Current assessment? Based on the Supreme Leader’s speech this morning, we think the Green movement(s) are on a “final warning”. That would mean no immediate arrests of opposition leaders, but if there is protest during Moharram….
UPDATE 0800 GMT: Just after posting this, I noticed the English summary of the blog of the academic and journalist Alireza Nourizadeh, who lives outside Iran but claims good sources inside the country. He says that there was a three-hour meeting on Saturday night between the top commanders of security forces and the military, the Minister of Intelligence, and the Supreme Leader and his son Mojtaba. (Note: no President Ahmadinejad)
Nourizadeh asserts, “During the meeting the majority of participants requested the arrest of Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, Seyed Mohamad Khatami and the placing of Hashemi Rafsanjani under surveillance. Khamenei, however, postponed his final decision to tomorrow.
Nevertheless, according to a very reliable source it is very probable that the coup leaders take series of important measures including arrest of a number of opposition figures tonight.”
0730 GMT: We awake to sift through the chatter and rumours of more Government action against the reformists and Green Wave(s). Sparked by an entry in Mir Hossein Mousavi’s website Kalemeh and then accelerated by the repetition of the warning by other reformists websites such as Norooz and Mehdi Karroubi’s website Tagheer, the concern grew that Mousavi might be arrested.
Here is where we are this morning:
1. THE FAILURE OF THE KHOMEINI “ON FIRE” CAMPAIGN: Of course, there are a number of reasons why the regime might take the dramatic and dangerous step of detaining the most prominent Green leaders.However, the immediate catalyst seems to come from a Government stumble: the clumsy propaganda campaign using the alleged burning of Ayatollah Khomeini’s photograph by protesters. Read the rest of this entry »
1345 GMT: No Thanks on Nukes. Looks like Tehran will maintain a tough posture on talks on uranium enrichment. On Monday, President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the continuing Turkish effort to broker a third-party enrichment deal, but today the Iranian Foreignj Ministry spokesman said No, Thank You: “Turkey wants to play a role in solving the nuclear issue … But we don’t think our transparent views needed to be interpreted by other countries.”
1330 GMT: Peykeiran is reporting that several hundred students are protesting at Tehran University. The demonstration is occurring despite a warning from universities’ authorities that any protesters would be “dealt with”.
1200 GMT: The Tehran prosecutor’s office says 86 of the 204 arrested on 16 Azar have been released.
1015 GMT: Complementing our own discussion of the significance of 16 Azar, Nazenin Ansari writes on OpenDemocracy about “Iran’s Pre-Revolutionary Rupture”: “The continuing, defiant protest-wave in Iran accentuates the ferocious crisis of legitimacy at the regime’s heart. The epic events of 2009 are at a historic turning-point.” (hat-tip to an EA reader for bringing this to our attention)
0920 GMT: Students, Don’t Even Think About It. Fars News reports that Tehran University authorities have declared that any student gathering today is “illegal” and “will be dealt with”.
0915 GMT: Rumour of Day – Khamenei Disappears to “Secret Place”. Israel National News thinks it has an exclusive from “an activist in the global Iranian pro-democracy movement”:
I am told that Khamenei was taken to a secret place to monitor the situation and perhaps for his safety, and a helicopter was ready with a pilot in it to perhaps fly him out to Russia if the situation got out of hand. I am also told that prominent clergy went to meet with him hoping to force him to show leniency
0910 GMT: Karroubi on Students and Government Violence. Mehdi Karroubi’s Tagheer website carries an interview with the cleric in which he describes university students as the “thermometer“ of society and advises security forces to “refrain from getting entangled with the people, the students, and the valuable forces of society”. and get caught up in undesirable movements.” He emphasised that the political disputes within the country are “grave” and there is a “serious solution” for them.
Karroubi also criticized President Ahmadinejad’s reported remarks that there was that the US is trying to block the return of the 12th Imam of Shi’a Islam. This has tainted the “reputation of the system and the clergy”; the world should not regard Ahmadinejad as a representative of the Iranian nation but as “merely the head of the government”. Read the rest of this entry »
1915 GMT: Quiet Engagement. News is just emerging of five British nationals who have been held by Iran since their yacht Sail Bahrain strayed into Iranian waters on Wednesday.
The significance behind the headline is that the story was kept quiet for five days. That indicates that Britain does not want the matter to escalate into confrontation and that Iran, for now, does not want to use the detention for political advantage.
We could not find any logical reason for the Board of Governors’ decision. We cannot accept discrimination in international relations. Either there are rights or such rights do not exist. The age of discriminatory policies is over. This is the law of the jungle.
2240 GMT: Confirmation that Ebrahim Amini, of the Etemade Melli party and a close relative of Mehdi Karroubi, has also been released from detention.
2150 GMT: Dr. Ali Tajernia, former MP and senior member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been released after 140 days in detention.
2145 GMT: Human Rights Activists in Iran has a Farsi-language update on detainees, including the transfer of 95 people arrested on 13 Aban from detention centres to Evin Prison.
2130 GMT: Confirming indications we had received from EA sources in recent weeks, the Supreme Leader has reinstated Ezatullah Zarghami as head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting for five years.
Zarghami had been considered vulnerable because of regime dissatisfaction with IRIB’s output before and after the Presidential election, but a suitable replacement could not be arranged. Khamenei indicated this with a call for Zarghami to “take advantage of successful or unsuccessful experiences of the past five years to help this medium reach a better quality”.
2125 GMT: Iran’s Internal Nuclear Dispute. Press TV’s website is now featuring the anti-talks line taken by high-profile MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi (see 0845 GMT).
Almost 36 hours after the 13 Aban demonstrations, all is relatively quiet on the surface in Iran. In different ways, both sides threw big punches on Wednesday, and both may be re-assessing before deciding on the next punch.
On 13 Aban, the regime’s attempted knockout was to beat and detain. We are now getting a fuller picture of the violence of the security forces, and more than 400 Iranians were taken to detention centers and prisons. Yet we also know that the demonstrations continued late into the night. And the opposition’s communications are still running, albeit having to cope with restrictions and disruptions: both the Mousavi website Kalemeh has re-established itself, and the Karroubi website Tagheer was back up after an outage on Friday.
So what is a Government to do? Friday’s clue to a response, albeit a hesitant and (it appears) uncertain one, was the Friday Prayer of Ahmed Khatami. Significantly, his normal big rhetorical stick was accompanied this time by the carrot of leniency and “freedom” if protesters repented. That offer was matched during the day by the again hesitant and confused signals from the Tehran Prosecutor’s office. While still unable or unwilling to give the number of people detained on Wednesday, Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi declared that “many” had been released and, in particular, noted foreigners who had been freed.
At the same time, the regime was announcing a set of trials, starting today and continuing to Monday. of high-profile reformists detained since the election. So, if there is a coherent strategy, it appears to revolve about splitting the Green movement by giving partial amnesty to those who give up the cause and coming down hard on the “leaders”.
The difficulties only need a milli-second to emerge. Have a look at the discussion amongst our readers, some of whom are inside Iran, across various threads. It is fascinating and will give you more information than any mainstream analysis. The debate amongst the “rank-and-file” is not whether to give up, accepting a quieter and less fraught life, but what methods to adopt: civil disobedience or a show of force against the regime’s oppressions? In such conditions, the signal of Khatami that some may be forgiven is a whistle in a growing opposition wind.
And there are the leaders. Rafsanjani has now retreated from public views to consider his tactics. Mousavi may indeed be bottled up — for how long, time will tell. Khatami is cautious. But Karroubi? My growing sense is that he feels he has nothing to lose. And a cleric with charisma and nothing to lose poses a problem that no Government threat can easily remove.
So step up, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Tonight the President could try to change all the calculations above with an address to the nation after 9 p.m. The limited previews, however, give no indication that he will not make a direct response to the events of the last 72 hours. Instead, he will try to take the nation’s eyes to the “nuclear question” and offer the vision of information technology. Caught up in a different battle, this one with Parliament over his subsidy reform proposals, he may try reassurances and make demands on the economy.
All of which makes sense but still would be an attempt to work around rather than deal with the challenge. For, if there is a takeaway line from 13 Aban, it is this:
The opposition — whatever the threats, whatever the inducements — will not go away.
2000 GMT: We’ve posted video of tonight’s protests at Sharif University in Tehran.
1840 GMT: Meanwhile, despite Larijani’s harsh and perhaps troublesome intervention, the Government strategy — as signalled by the President — unfolds. The Islamic Republic News Agency is quoting an “unnamed source” that Iran has not given an “answer” to a specific deal on third-party enrichment. Instead, “The Islamic republic only announced its positive view to the negotiation and has said it is ready to have negotiations based on its technical and economic considerations regarding how to procure fuel for the Tehran reactor.” (English summary in Agence France Presse article)
Translation? Iran is trying to take the proposal for shipment of 80 percent of stock off the table, beginning from scratch on the questions of timing and amounts to be delivered to Russia. That in effect undoes three months of talks on the US-led plan while maintaining Tehran’s claim that it is still committed to discussions.
1835 GMT: Larijani the Hard-Liner. What is Iran’s Speaker of the Parliament playing at?
2105 GMT: Mehdi Karroubi’s website Tagheeris back on-line (see 1438 GMT).
1945 GMT: We cannot corroborate but it is being reported that flyers of Karroubi’s webcast statement (see separate entry) are being put up across Tehran.
1935 GMT: Families of political prisoners have announced that they will demonstrate on Wednesday, protesting the continued imprisonment of their relatives. If the authorities do not heed the protest, the families will continue demonstrations and begin a mass hunger strike.
1925 GMT: Kalemeh, the website associated with Mir Hossein Mousavi, has published its account of the appearance of Mousavi advisor Alireza Beheshti at the Tehran Media Fair yesterday. Beheshti was with his wife and daughter, as well as supporters, when they were surrounded by 50 to 60 people who began yelling loudly against Beheshti. Kalemeh invokes the memory of Beheshti’s father, the assassinated Ayatollah, claiming that many were reminded of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq’s chant of “Down with Beheshti”. (English summary on Mousavi Facebook page) Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE 1355 GMT: We’ve got the latest developments in our LiveBlog. Current assessment? Based on the Supreme Leader’s speech this morning, we think the Green movement(s) are on a “final warning”. That would mean no immediate arrests of opposition leaders, but if there is protest during Moharram….
1915 GMT: Quiet Engagement. News is just emerging of five British nationals who
2240 GMT: Confirmation that Ebrahim Amini, of the Etemade Melli party and a close relative of Mehdi Karroubi, 
Almost 36 hours after the 13 Aban demonstrations, all is relatively quiet on the surface in Iran. In different ways, both sides threw big punches on Wednesday, and both may be re-assessing before deciding on the next punch.
2000 GMT: We’ve 
2105 GMT: Mehdi Karroubi’s website Tagheer 
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