Iran Live Coverage: Please Vote (P.S. --- We Did Not Rig the Last Election)
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 at 10:33See also Syria and Iran Feature: 2130 Civilian Prisoners To Be Released in Exchange for 48 Iranian "Pilgrims"
Iran Audio Feature: How Serious is the Oil Crisis? --- Scott Lucas with Monocle 24
Tuesday's Iran Live Coverage: The Regime Admits the Oil Squeeze
2055 GMT: Engineering Elections Watch. Back to our opening story....
The Supreme Leader's representative, Ali Saeedi, may have set off a political storm with his remark that it is the duty of the Revolutionary Guards to "engineer" the elections --- even if the Guards tried to soften that comment by saying it referred only to ensuring security for the vote.
That's because President Ahmadinejad chose to run with the possibility of inappropriate intervention by the Guards: "Whoever wants to manage people's votes will be managed by the people."
A Guards spokesman responded that the President's remark was "astonishing".
1955 GMT: The House Arrests. Leading conservative politician Habibollah Asgarouladi has pulled back on his recent statements that detained opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi are not "seditionists".
Asgarouladi had said that the problem was that Mousavi and Karroubi were surrounded by seditious elements, but he told Mehr, in an interview published today, "I never said [they] are not seditionists, I said they are not at the top of the sedition."
Asgarouladi continued, "I've said clearly that they stood against the establishment and the people, and they have to be held responsible."
The politician's initial comments raised speculation that the regime might lift the 23-month house arrests of Mousavi and Karroubi, both candidates in the disputed 2009 Presidential election.