The Latest from Iran (15 October): Cutting Through The Noise

Ali Motahari1810 GMT: Economy (Mismanagement) Watch. MP Musalreza Sarvati has claimed that Parliament is ignoring the Ahmadinejad Administration's $15 billion shortfall in the approvied budget. Sarvati also asserted that the administration has withdrawn $4.5 billion from the Central Ban, without depositing a compensating amount into the Treasury.

1805 GMT: The House Arrests. The three children of detained Mir Hossein Mousavi have met with Fatemeh Karroubi, who has also been under house arrest for eight months.

Mousavi's children said they have been denied phone contact with parents, whom they have not seen them in five weeks.

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Latest from Iran (1 September): A Defiant Mehdi Karroubi Found

1445 GMT: Environment Watch. Hojatoleslam Gholamreza Hassani, the Friday Prayer leader of Orumiyeh, has suddenly taken notice of the crisis of Lake Orumiyeh: he warned in his Eid ul-Fitr address that the lake will dry up in four years and that people's demands to deal with the situation are leagal and righteous.

An EA Correspondent notes sharply, "I guess Hassani got orders from the Supreme Leader's office to calm down the situation."

1435 GMT: Cartoon of Day. Maya Neyestani presents his vision of the drying-up of Iran's largest lake, Lake Orumiyeh, turning to salt because of drought, dams, misguided irrigation, and development:

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The Latest from Iran (24 August): Oil and Gasoline --- It's All the Way You Look at It....

2030 GMT: Trouble on the Russian Front. Mahmoud Reza Sajjadi, Iran's ambassador in Russia, has said that Tehran has filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice against Russia for not delivering S-300 missiles ordered by Iran.

Sajjadi also criticised Russia's Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of state-owned Gazprom, for a delay in developing Iran's oil reserves. He said Gazprom Neft has delayed the development of the Azar field for nearly two years since signing a tentative agreement with the National Iranian Oil Company in November 2009 to jointly develop its resources.

"Big damage has been done by Russian oil companies to the Iranian people," Saijadi said through a translator at a news conference. "I have already told the Russian side about the danger of this approach."

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The Latest from Iran (20 August): Regime's Cyber-Warriors "We Don't Get No Respect"

US citizens Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, shown with fellow hiker Sarah Shourd, who were convicted today of spying and sentenced to eight years in prison (see 1350 GMT)

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1422 GMT: Some People are So Ungrateful Watch. The head of State broadcaster IRIB, Ezzatollah Zarghami, has declared that he said to the "losing" candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi after the 2009 Presidential elections, "You got these 13 million votes only with the help of IRIB."

The official returns, challenged by millions of Iranians in the days after the ballot, showed President Ahmadinejad with 24 million votes v. Mousavi's 13 million.

Zarghami said IRIB, with the permission of the Supreme Leader, had shown campaign ads for Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, even though Karroubi's ads "crossed red lines" by showing "prohibited persons".

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Iran Special Analysis: 5 Points for Discussion of the "New Green Manifesto"

UPDATE 1920 GMT: insideIRAN has posted a copy of the Persian version of the "New Green Manifesto"
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"Cells" need outlets and actions to represent them not as isolated pockets of activists but as part of a large, widespread challenge to those who claim authority. Mousavi and Karroubi also put forth a self-serving naivete on this issue: "We are the Media" is an essential call, but it has to be connected to representatives --- students, politicians, lawyers, advocates of gender rights, unionists, and other activists --- who can put out a message with resonance. 

So far the "New Green Manifesto" is reliant on that wider appeal through an overseas site with a "niche" readership. And that for the moment --- as the representatives' latest statement highlights, with its narrow response to critics abroad --- limits any impact of the "several recommendations for the reform and strengthening of the Green Movement".

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The Latest from Iran (13 July): The Opposition Re-Marks Its Ground

1700 GMT: Economy Watch. Ayande News reviews the increasing price of basics, from 350% for oil to 180% for food.

An EA source said today that, in some parts of Tehran, the price of sangak flatbread has risen from 100 tomans (less than 10 cents) to 1000 tomans (about 90 cents). He confirmed that both unemployment and inflation were rising sharply.

1655 GMT: Supreme Leader Brother's Watch. Seyed Hadi Khamenei, the reformist brother of Ayatollah Khamenei, has asked, "How do you expect us to participate in elections?" He said there had been thousands of hours of insults against reformists which had not been possible to answer.

1650 GMT: Supreme Leader Watch. Ali Saeedi, the representative of Ayatollah Khamenei to the Revolutionary Guards, has said that people can change government but not the system of velayat-e faqih (clerical supremacy) --- "If they choose what God wants, it's OK."

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Iran Document: Former President Khatami Pulls Back from 2012 Elections

We should not have participated in any elections since [the presidential election of] 2005. Unfortunately, this was our mistake. If this time the conditions are not right, we will definitely not participate. This is my own personal view, and we should make a collective decision after consultation.

How can we ignore the people's rights? Even if the families of all those who have been killed in these events [since the 2009 presidential election] come forward and say that they forgive those who spilled the blood of their children, how can we ignore the legitimate rights of the people?

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Iran Document: A Discussion with Mostafa Tajzadeh on the Green Movement and Free Elections

Earlier this week the opposition site Kalameh published an interview with former Deputy Minister of Interior Mostafa Tajzadeh while he was on furlough from a nine-year prison sentence. 

The headline from the discussion about the current political situation was Tajzadeh's position on the reformist debate over participation in the Parliamentary elections next March. He stood firm on no involvement without the release of political prisoners and a confirmed free and fair proces, "There is no middle ground. The reformists will take part only in democratic elections." He added that the situation had changed with the disputed Presidential ballot in 2009 and the post-election challenge to Mahmoud Ahmadminejad's legitimacy: "The narrative of the Green Movement has changed the entire affair....Either the elections will be free, with all the parties and free press, or we should not participate and leave them [supporters of conservatives and principlists] to play out the conflicts among themselves."

However, that important statement was made in equally important contexts about the aims of the Green Movement, the challenges facing the regime, and the prospects for "freedom" in Iran.

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The Latest from Iran (12 July): Arresting the "Deviant Current"

1700 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Detained journalist Isa Saharkhiz has written to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur on Iran, "What is happening now in the Islamic Republic prisons is a crime against humanity and has nothing less than Stalin’s inhumane treatment of prisoners in the forced labour camps of Siberia."

Referring to the death of two political prisoners, Hoda Saber and Mohsen Dokmehchi, Saharkhiz wrote, "They are deliberately trying to destroy us and have prepared a silent death for us because they fear our survival even behind bars."

Hoda Saber, a political activist and journalist died 10 days into his hunger strike, while Mohsen Dokmehchi, a businessman arrested in the post-election protests of 2009 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, died last March from pancreatic cancer.

Saharkhiz, arrested in July 2009 and sentenced to three years in prison for "insulting the Supreme Leader and the regime", urged Shaheed to act immediately to inform the public of the prisoners’ plight, stressing that any delay will only result in more deaths.

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The Latest from Iran (10 July): Sifting the Claims on Khamenei v. Ahmadinejad

Mojtaba and Ali Khamenei1900 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Masoumeh Dehghan, the wife of lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, has been released on $30,000 bail after her detention last week.

1625 GMT: The Revolutionary Guards Do Politics. Yadollah Javani, the head of the political bureau of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, has followed up the declaration of the IRGC commander, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, by declaring that former President Mohammad Khatami, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Mehdi Karroubi are "leaders of fitna (sedition) and subversion".

Javani emphasised that the IRGC had a central role in stopping the reformists' scenario of sedition, with Jafari's words this past week as a continuing alert.

Amir Mohebian, the editor of the Resalat, has begged to disagree, however: calling Khatami "anti-revolutionary" is a damage to the Iranian system.

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