The Latest from Iran (12 December): Messages, "Confessions", and Those Behind Bars

2035 GMT: Economy (Oversight) Watch. Kalemeh reports that the Central Bank has not published data on economic growth for 28 months.

Economist Mohsen Renani, in comments published in the conservative Aftab, has alleged that academic studies on effects of subsidy cuts are censored and media are not allowed to publish data. He asserts that subsidy cuts will stop development for several generations and cause social crisis.

MP Hassan Ghafourifard chimes in, warning the Govt does not know how to implement subsidy cuts.

2030 GMT: The Battle Within. Meanwhile, even as Ayatollahs Mahdavi Kani and Mesbah Yazdi declare that unity will emerge amongst principlists, the feuding within the establishment continues. Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi has lashed out at former Minister of Justice Gholam-Hossein Elham, who criticised the prosecutor for supporting sedition. Doulatabadi responded that "obviously a new fitna movement is taking shape" within the system.

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Iran Snapshot: Will Rafsanjani Use Political Prisoners to Make a New Move?

>A group of 16 Iranian political prisoners, including prominent reformist politicians Mohsen Aminzadeh and Mostafa Tajzadeh and journalists Bahman Ahmadi Amoui and Mohammad Nourizad have written an open letter to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, describing their continued incarceration “in violation of the law” and in the “framework of settling political accounts”.

Is this the prelude to a renewed Rafsanjani initiative?

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The Latest from Iran (3 December): A Phantom Bombing

2020 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Power Politics Edition). Keep your eyes on this story....

A group of 16 Iranian political prisoners, including prominent reformist politicians Mohsen Aminzadeh and Mostafa Tajzadeh and journalists Bahman Ahmadi Amoui and Mohammad Nourizad have written an open letter to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, describing their continued incarceration “in violation of the law” and in the “framework of settling political accounts”.

Addressing Rafsanjani in his role as head of the Expediency Council, the detainees said the treatment of political activists in the Islamic Republic today “bears no sign of the principles of the Revolution and its constitution". They maintain that their charges are fabricated and the “heavy sentences and restrictions that they have been handed are part of a political and security plan by the establishment to completely erase the political opposition”.

The prisoners compared the current situation to the political detentions before the 1979 Revolution, with officials forcing prisoners to give false confessions and then issuing sentences based on them: “The issued sentences in view of level and kind of punishment seem to indicate that they have been set by security officials based on their own ideas and personal preference, and relayed to the judges.”

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The Latest from Iran (28 November): Politics Does Not Stop

1625 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The names of four of the seven activists detained in Marivan in Iranian Kurdistan have been published.

1550 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. The Supreme Leader's represetnative to the Revolutionary Guard, Mojtaba Zolnour, has renewed the allegation that the children of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani --- Mehdi Hashemi and Faezeh Hashemi --- were involved in the 2009 "sedition".

The regime has elevated its threats in recent weeks to arrest Mehdi Hashemi, who is currently in London.

1510 GMT: Press Watch. The managing directors of the conservative newspapers Fararu and Tabnak have been convicted of charges in a Tehran court.

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The Latest from Iran (7 October): "We Have No Political Prisoners"

1935 GMT: Clash in Kurdistan. According to Iranian state media, five people, including four policemen, were killed and nine others wounded when two gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan.

Deputy provincial police commander Ebrahim Kazeminejad said,"At 5:10 pm two assailants from anti-revolutionary groups fired on a patrol and passers-by in Azadi Square of Sanandaj in which four policemen and a passer-by were martyred. In this terrorist act also five policemen and four passers-by were wounded."

1930 GMT: Academic Corner. According to Rah-e-Sabz, Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hosseini has told pro-government academics, "Hopefully all universities will be purged."

1920 GMT: Breaking the Reformists (cont.). Another voice challenging the supposed ban on the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front: Ayatollah Mousavi Tabrizi has said the dissolution of the party is illegal and cannot be done without a full court hearing and appeal.

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Iran: How the Government Created a Rafsanjani-Led "Conspiracy" with Wiretaps (Ghazi)

Last week we noted a remarkable article in Rooz Online by Fereshteh Ghazi about a 110-page report from the Revolutionary Guard, ordered by President Ahmadinejad in summer 2009 and approved by the Supreme National Security Council in March 2010. The document outlined a "conspiracy", using the June 2009 Presidential elections, to topple the Government and remove the Supreme Leader. The "evidence" included lengthy extracts of statements obtained by surveillance and wiretapping.

This English version of Ghazi's report does not have the extracts, but it is still a dramatic testament to how far the Government will go to defend the Ahmadinejad "victory" of 2009 and to tarnish the opposition. Indeed, there are important lessons even beyond Ghazi's account.

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