The Latest from Iran (26 February): Uncertainties

2000 GMT: Closing Thoughts. A quiet evening, so we will end by noting a couple of thoughtful pieces....

Dave Siavashi of Iran News Now looks at the regime's efforts to crush opposition with house arrests to bring out a phrase that we like to use, "A Marathon, Not a Sprint":

The people of Iran have suffered under a tyrannical and cunning regime for 32 years. The regime is extremely entrenched, with a power-base that is diffuse, distributed and ideological. It is a monster, but one that has begun to lose its grip.

The marathon to be rid of it is well under way.

And "A Contributor" at Tehran Bureau writes:

This has been a period of self-reflection, developing consciousness of and responsibility for the current situation. The people have understood who and what they are dealing with and this is extremely important....While the traditional joys of Tehrani life were nowhere to be seen, while all its lightness was burdened down, if you looked very closely, you could detect in the depths the churning of a long-awaited tide of transition.

We will be back early Sunday morning.

1740 GMT: The House Arrests. Ayatollah Dastgheib, in a letter to the Assembly of Experts, has called on them to end the "illegal" and "unreligious" house arrests of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi immediately.

Former President Mohammad Khatami has declared, "People of the world will ask [about the house arrests]: is this the outcome of the Revolution's deviance and corruption?

1720 GMT: Sedition Watch. Mardomak has more on the declaration of Minister of Higher Education and Science Kamran Daneshjoo that those who back the Green Movement's sedition are counter-revolutionary (see 1325 GMT). The website sees this as a threat to academics and students not to support the opposition.

1355 GMT: An Appeal for Discussion. Ahmad Montazeri, the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, has written to the Supreme Leader to call for a meeting with Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani. Montazeri said "direct dialogue and friendship" would solve many problems and put hope in people's hearts.

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who died in December 2009, was the one-time successor to Ayatollah Khomeini but was pushed aside just before Khomeini's death and later placed under house arrest.

1325 GMT: Sedition Watch. More beating of drums about the evil of the opposition, this time from Minister of Higher Education and Science Kamran Daneshjoo: those who back the Green Movement's sedition are counter-revolutionary.

1315 GMT: Thinking of the Next Demonstration. Activist Ahmed Batebi puts out a video message linked to the plans for Tuesdays of Protests. Arguing that the regime has made several mistakes in its attempts to quash the opposition, Batebi says that the house arrests of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have move opposition planning abroad, with Karroubi advisor Mojtaba Vahedi (in the US) and Mousavi advisor Ardeshir Amir Arjomand in France) using their circles to organise rallies.

Batebi also jabs at the Government: if Mousavi and Karroubi are spies for the US and Israel, why die Ayatollah Khomeini rely on them? He declares that Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi, in his Thursday night TV appearance, had nothing new to say and no proof for his accusations.

1120 GMT: Budget Watch. Reformist MP Mohammad Reza Tabesh has claimed that the Government's 2011/12 Budget lacks $8 billion for support payments to cover the effects of its subsidy cuts.

1055 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. In this shakily-taken video, a group of men appear to be harassing Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, calling her a "slut".

1040 GMT: The Political "Third Way". There appears to be a concerted move by a significant bloc in Iranian politics to position itself between the Ahmadinejad-led Government and the opposition.

Former Presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri has defended former President Hashemi Rafsanjani by saying, "We should not make the circle of people under the Revolutionary umbrella too narrow."

Rafsanjani has been facing a serious challenge from the Government, both through Ahmadinejad allies challenging his re-election as head of the Assembly of Experts and through intimidation and threats of prosecution of his family, including his son Mehdi Hashemi and his daughter Faezeh Hashemi (see 1055 GMT).

While trying to hold their ground against the Government, both Rafsanjani and Nategh Nouri have also put up a public face of joining regime celebrations and opposing recent demonstrations, such as the march of 14 February. As we noted yesterday, Nategh Nouri was at this week's session of the hard-line Association of Theological Teachers of Qom Seminary, which emphasised its "utter repugnance with the seditionists".

1035 GMT: The House Arrests. Conservative MP Ali Motahari has challenged the regime's cut-off of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, declaring not only that house arrests should be lifted but that they should be allowed on State TV to put their views.

Motahari said, "We must hear the voice of opponents and critics, and (they) should have the right to peaceful demonstration." He said the Green Movement should have had the opportunity to protest from the start, i.e., just after the disputed 2009 Presidential election.

1030 GMT: Economy Watch (Revolutionary Guard Edition). Peyke Iran claims that two new pipeline projects, worth $2.6 billion, have been allocated to the Khatam al-Anbia engineering group, part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, without a call for bids.

1015 GMT: CyberWatch. The Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Reza Taghipour, has proclaimed that Iran will launch a “Clean Web” and offer it to the world: “The clean web is an idea, and scientists and thinkers and experts on Information Technology (IT) should offer their views on this idea to us."

Press TV offers no detail on the Clean Web beyond the note that it is 2pitted against un-clean web characterized by unethical and immoral content which currently abounds on the Internet".

0800 GMT: A Bit of "Positive". President Ahmadinejad has tried to meet the challenge of a positive display from the regime (see 0620 GMT) in a Thursday speech on the "National Day of Engineering". He announced that the Iranian nation would make a scientific breakthrough next year, thus "preparing the grounds for being the pioneer of global civilizations".

0700 GMT: The House Arrests. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reports from "an informed source" that the two political dissidents are no longer under house arrest and have been moved to a “safe house”, controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, in an area close to Tehran. Presumably, if the story is true, Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard and Karroubi's wife Fatemeh have also been moved.

A Karroubi neighbour told ICHRI that security forces who were present on Karroubi’s street are gone: “I am certain that [the Karroubis] are no longer inside their home. All the windows are broken and nobody is home."

Mousavi and Rahnavard's daughters have said that lights have not been turned on in the house for several evenings and an eyewitness says there is no sign of activity near the residence in the Pastor neighbourhood of Tehran.

0640 GMT: The Next March? A reminder to follow up our morning thoughts on the politics and protest ahead --- last night we posted the English translation of the opposition's call to march on Tuesday.

0620 GMT: A curious phase in Iranian politics continues.

The regime has appeared this week to be at a bit of a loss what to do. On the international front, the nuclear issue, which has been used to rally the public behind the Government, has been eclipsed by the dramas of the Arab uprising, even as the State outlet IRNA tries to headline "Iran's peaceful nuclear activities". Tehran's strategy of claiming those movements continues --- almost all the "domestic" news on Press TV's website yesterday was on the topic, as the Tehran Prayer Leader declared that those from Egypt to Bahrain had inherited the legacy of Ayatollah Khomeini --- but with the effort making little headway in politics outside Iran, it is stuttering.

"Positive" initiatives on the domestic front have also been muted. The celebrations of 22 Bahman (11 February), which seemed a bit flat, have not been followed by another drive for legitimacy. With President Ahmadinejad's economic programme of subsidy cuts awaiting results and the 2011 budget caught up in tensions with Parliament, there is little beyond a feel-good story claiming Chinese investment in an oilfield. 

Instead, it appears the regime may be caught up with its concern over an opposition which dared show itself in public this month. The Minister of Intelligence's appearance on Thursday night on national TV may have been bumbling and even humourous, but it marked the ascendancy of "sedition" on the Government's agenda. And this morning continues to be distinguished by chatter about what may have happened beyond house arrest to opposition figures Mehdi and Fatemeh Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Zahra Rahnavard.

The opposition, meanwhile, faces its own challenge of uncertainty. Trying to follow up its success of getting tens of thousands on the streets in the last two weeks, activists are looking for a march next Tuesday. However, with Mousavi and Karroubi shut away and their advisors operating outside Iran, the question of whether another public move can be organised hovers in each pronouncement.