The Latest from Iran (27 June): Situation Normal. Move Along.

The Iran Crisis (Day 16): What to Watch For Today
The Latest from Iran (26 June): It’s (No Longer) A Thriller

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UPDATED Iran: A Tale of Two Twitterers

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2230 GMT: Reports circulating that "persiankiwi", one of the key Iranian sources on Twitter for information and comment (see separate entry), has been arrested.

2200 GMT: Reports tonight that a group of women's rights activists, assembling in Laleh Park to light candles for Neda Agha Soltan and others killed in post-election protests, were violently dispersed by security forces. News agencies supporting the Government took pictures with telephoto lenses, and extra female officers were on hand to deal with the demonstrators.

1730 GMT: More manoeuvring ahead of the Guardian Council's attempt on Sunday to close off any discussion of the election outcome. Mir Hossein Mousavi has written to the Council (link in Farsi), requesting a legal and religious body of arbitration accepted by all candidates". This is a clear attempt to build on notions that the Council is far from neutral, a concern raised by "establishment" figures like Ali Larijani last week.

Presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi has reiterated his current position in a meeting with the National Security Council, saying he will pursue through "legal means" an annulment of the vote.

1540 GMT: Reuters has confirmed the news, which emerged yesterday, that the head of Mir Hossein Mousavi's media office, Abolfazl Fateh, has been barred from leaving Iran. Fateh is a doctoral student in Britain.

1430 GMT: The Islamic Iran Participation Front, the reformist organisation of former President Mohammad Khatami and high-profile detainees such as Saeed Hajjarian, Mostafa Tajzadeh, and Abdollah Ramezanzadeh has issued a statement declaring that any "staged confession" is "illegal". It is warning of the "intoxication of power" of State authorities and their further plans for the opposition.
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1340 GMT: A hitch in the Iranian regime's plans for confirmation of a Guardian Council "recount" (see 1215 GMT). Gerami Moghadam, the speaker of Mahdi Karroubi's Etemad Melli Party, has said that Karroubi will only send a representative if two members of the special group attending the recount are changed.

1330 GMT: Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of Mir Hossein Mousavi, has issued a statement on the Mousavi website denying her detention, "I haven't been arrested, I continue my academic duties, I remain opposed yet committed to the law."

1215 GMT: While all remains quiet for today, here's a look at the regime's scenario for Sunday:

Guardian Council declares, after a "recount" of 10% of the ballot boxes, that the Presidential election result is valid. Representatives of all campaigns, attending the session, accept the outcome, ending the immediate battle against President Ahmadinejad.

Why would the representatives of candidates such as Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi agree?

Hundreds of detainees, including the top people from the opposition campaigns, in Iranian jails, few if any of whom are released before the official vote count is endorsed.

0915 GMT: The US-Iran Sideshow. Press TV's website reports on a Washington poke-in-the-eye for Tehran. US authorities denied visas for Iran's First Vice President, Dr. Parviz Davoudi, and the rest of the delegation to attend a United Nations conference on the world economic crisis on Friday.

While this is a far more notable rebuke than the non-story, seized on by the media, that the US Government had withdrawn invitations for Iranian diplomats to eat hot dogs at 4th of July parties at American embassies, it's a token wrist-slap for Iran. Still, it's enough to rankle the Iranian Ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, and Press TV, which also wins today's award for Wide-Eyed Innocence:

It remains unclear...whether [the visa denial] had anything to do with the United States' position on the outcome of Iran's recent presidential elections.

0715 GMT: The lockdown on significant information from Iran is almost complete. Non-Iranian media, browbeaten by Tehran's authorities, have now moved to other stories (to its credit, Al Jazeera has picked up on the escalating problems in Iraq rather than joining the Michael Jackson procession). The opposition leadership's newspapers have been shut down and its websites curbed. The flow of videos from citizen journalists has all but stopped.

And now the Twitter sources are dropping off. Two of the most important observers, whom we profiled earlier this week, are again silent, and others just cannot find or get out the information that is needed. (There are still a few important, vital exceptions, whose work you'll see in our updates. Fingers crossed that they can continue in their efforts.)

How Not to Cover Iran's Elections: The Awards Ceremony

On Tuesday, we profiled our first entry in the competition to write the worst story about Iran's Presidential election: Colin Freeman's effort, for The Daily Telegraph of London to turn the campaign into a "a rock gig moshpit" and "a World Wrestling Federation grudge match" and to make over President Ahmadinejad as a member of The Sex Pistols.

We could not have anticipated the flood of entries that would follow. Each time, we thought the bottom had been reached, an intrepid reporter or commentator would take the bar lower. So, without further ado, the ultimate in Bad Election Journalism:


HONOURABLE MENTION

The Washington Post: Any Label Will Do

Friday's piece by Thomas Erdbrink is OK in its profile of the campaigns of President Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi. That is, until he and his headline writers try to put the voters and their candidates into easy-to-open boxes: "[This] is a confrontation not just between Iran's haves and have-nots, but between the old revolutionaries who seized power from the shah and a new cadre of radicals seeking to dislodge them."

All right, who are "the old revolutionaries" here? Mousavi? Former President Rafsanjani? And who is the "new radical"? Ahmadinejad? But wait --- Ahmadinejad is already in power. So is he seeking to dislodge himself?

And the people on the streets? If they support Ahmadinejad, are they automatically "have-nots"? A student wearing green for Mousavi becomes a "have"?

Hours later, we can't decide if this entry is Zen-like or just Lost in Confusion.

BRONZE MEDAL

Assorted Newspapers: Iran's Michelle Obama

Apparently it's not enough to put Tehran under the spell of "The Obama Effect". You have to carry out a metaphormosis into the Great Man, or at least his nearest and dearest.

So in the last 72 hours Zahra Rahnavard suddenly became, in The Boston Globe, Der Spiegel, The Huffington Post,  "a no-nonsense university dean who has been compared to Michelle Obama".

So who in Iran had anointed Professor Rahnavard as the American First Lady of the country? Well, no one actually. That is, apart from Reza Sayah of CNN, who topped a profile of Rahnavard "Iran's Michelle Obama".

Unfortunately for "the Obama effect/transformation", Rahnavard refused to play along at a press conference on Sunday: ""I am not Iran's Michelle Obama...I am a follower of Zahra (the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad)."

Which makes us wonder: if Mousavi becomes President of Iran, will someone be bold enough to call Michelle Obama's "America's Zahra Rahnavard"?

SILVER MEDAL

The New York Times: Release the Bush Hounds

It is one thing for the editors of The Wall Street Journal, seeking the Mother of all Counter-Revolutions, to feature John Bolton's call for the Israeli bomb to replace the ballot. It's another for the flagship of US newspapers to wheel out Elliott Abrams, years after he tried and failed as a George W. Bush Administration official to knock off the Iranian Government:

The Lebanese had a chance to vote against Hezbollah, and took the opportunity. Iranians, unfortunately, are being given no similar chance to decide who they really want to govern them.

GOLD MEDAL

The Daily Telegraph's Colin Freeman: It's All Rubbish Anyway

Still, at the end of the day, you can't keep a bad journalist down, or rather raise him up. The World's Worst Tehran Correspondent followed his initial entry with this content-free "profile" of the campaign:

Instead of being seen as a respected statesman and upholder of the Islamic regime, the man rubbing shoulders with the Supreme Leader may be known popularly as either "Ahmadinejad the Liar", "Karoubi the Corrupt", or "Mousavi the Illiterate US Stooge" – epithets endorsed by their own colleagues. Those, surely, are not the kind of people a regime that brooks no real opposition would ideally want as figureheads.

Which I guess means that, at least, we won't be calling the eventual winner of this contest --- be he "old revolutionary" or "new radical" --- "Iran's Barack Obama".