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The Latest from Iran (11 October): The Mousavi-Karroubi Meeting

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1930 GMT: The reformist Assembly of Combatant Clergymen, paralleling the statements of Mohammad Khatami, have written an open letter to the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, warning about the consequences of the current lawlessness and stressing that the judiciary should be held accountable for crimes, violation of law, and injustices. Among these violations are detentions in solitary confinement and uncertainties about charges:

Our fear and concern is because of the reduction or even destruction of the peoples trust and faith in the judiciary system. How can it be that, with a simple gesture, a newspaper is closed down and thus the artery of information of a party or group is blocked instantly; however, hundreds of newspapers and [Government] media with different kinds of accusations and convictions in their evidence become richer in their unbounded cheek and still the judiciary system is unable to dispense justice and only casts some general conclusions about the reproach of lies?

1910 GMT: A Very Gentle Day. Gentle by post-election standards, with the big domestic news Parliament's approval of Government cuts in food and gasoline/petrol subsidies. Reuters is only now catching up with Saturday's Karroubi-Mousavi meeting, loosely translating Mousavi as claiming, "It seems some people are trying to take us back to the Inquisition era."

1340 GMT: Posturing. After the flurry of political movement over the weekend, relatively quiet today. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is making an appearance in Shiraz, hoping that he doesn't face too many demonstrators. Mohammad Khatami is celebrating his 66th birthday with friends.

Meanwhile, the Iranian Government continues the ritual tough-talk two-step with its US partner, covering up the private movement towards accommodation. Responding to Hillary Clinton's finger-shaking that "the world will not wait indefinitely" for Iranian movement on the nuclear issue, the spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry blustered on Monday, "So far, western powers have achieved nothing by using the language of threats and sanctions against Iran. The West, itself, knows that this language is useless. We have always announced that we advocate negotiations."

0905 GMT: We've posted a special analysis of the politics surrounding the four death sentences handed out by the regime in recent days. And we've updated our feature on "Who Controls Iran?".

0900 GMT: A new poster (left) for the 4 November demonstrations is circulating. It repeats the slogans of previous flyers and adds, "United, we will be on the streets.
Join our million-strong green crowd on 13 Aban [4 November] in support of freedom in Iran. Stay in your car in silence in the areas where people are sitting in."

0720 GMT: Iranian state media is trying to keep President Ahmadinejad firmly in the international arena rather than within internal difficulties. The President's latest statement was the reassurance that Iran, not "the West", was setting the agenda for the next round of talks on Tehran's nuclear programme:

We have already agreed to discuss Iran's latest package of proposals. I don't think there will be any problems in the next round of talks but if someone wants to cause problems, they will fail. And if they succeed to do so, they will harm themselves.

Meanwhile the Iranian military is putting out its own tough reassurances, with a Brigadier General asserting, “Updating the defense systems is moving on an excellent progressive trend at present and (Iran’s systems) can compete with hi-tech systems of the world. Now we are in our best conditions of defensive preparedness."

0600 GMT:  Are we seeing an opposition revival? Consider that in the last 48 hours:

*Mohammad Khatami has made a high-profile appearance in Yazd Province and issued one of the strongest criticisms of the Government to date: “Be sure that people will never back down."

*Mehdi Karroubi, in a letter sent in his son's name, used the call for fairness from Iranian state broadcasting to attack the Iran judiciary's handling of his claims of detainee abuses;

*Karroubi has also re-established his web presence with the re-launch of Tagheer;

*Mir Hossein Mousavi, after seeing senior clerics on Thursday about his "social network", had a lengthy meeting on Saturday with Karroubi. In the summary of the meeting, both in Farsi and in English, their emphasis is on a renewal of pressure against the Government over electoral fraud, "legal" injustices, and abuses.

Add to this the re-appearance of Mousavi chief advisor Alireza Beheshti after the attempt to silence him through detention. Yesterday he issued a sharp response to Ahmad Khamati's Friday Prayer, deriding the cleric's claims of a US-sponsored "velvet revolution" (given that the Iranian Government had just sat across from US delegates at the Geneva talks) and calling for "rights" and "respect" for all Iranians.

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1955 GMT: More on The Friday Prayer. State media's rather sanitised version of Ahmad Khatami's remarks is now being supplemented by other accounts summarising his attack on post-election protesters. He claimed that, on Qods Day, the foreign media focused on a "few thousand Republicans", who were enemies of Islam, rather than the millions of supporters of the Government and regime.

1655 GMT: A Friday Prayer Diversion. Ahmad Khatami's turn to give the address, and he (or at least the state media summarising him) continued the Ahmadinejad approach of looking overseas to avoid looking at home. He declared, "The meeting [at Geneva on Iran's nuclear programme] was a great victory for the Islamic Republic of Iran to such an extent that even the Western and Zionist media had to admit defeat."

1445 GMT: Flashback: The "Confession" That Means Death. We're posting the Press TV report from mid-August on Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, the post-election protester sentenced to death earlier this week.

1230 GMT: Karroubi's Back. The reformist leader has written a sharp letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, refuting claims made by President Ahmadinejad on US television and asking for time to present the evidence of detainee abuses. We've posted the English text.

And, on the day that the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, we've revived our entry on the drive to name Karroubi as the 2010 recipient.

0915 GMT: Urgent Correction. Readers have let us know (and thanks to all of you!) that the date for the major protest is 4 November, not 3 November as we originally reported, and that the occasion is Iran's Heritage Day as well as the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy.

0825 GMT: A Quick Reply on 4 November Demonstrations. It took only a few minutes for readers to confirm the information on Iran's streets about the forthcoming protest (see 0745 GMT). The poster (on left) has the following caption:

Join, my dear. On 13 Aban [4 November] we will greet the anti-riot police and security forces with flowers. And sitting down on the streets in silence, we will turn night into day and day into night with our unity

Invitation by the Student Society, Office of Strengthening Unity (Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat), University of Tehran, the People & Students’ Green Movement

0745 GMT: 25 Days and Counting? A reader notes our statement "no major gatherings scheduled" (0630 GMT) and replies, "Do you know about the demonstrations being planned by the Sea of Green for 13 Aban (November 3), anniversary of the taking of US hostages in 1979?" [N.B.: Other readers later corrected this --- the date is 4 November, Iran's Heritage day.]

I have noticed references to this but have been awaiting further information on whether intentions have turned into plans. Any assistance from readers most welcome.

0730 GMT: A University Correction? We linked yesterday (1845 GMT) to a Government document which ordered the closure of a University newspaper after it implied that the Holocaust had been a historical event. A sharp-eyed reader has noted that the date on the document is Iranian Year 1387 --- last year --- rather than 1388.

0645 GMT: Credit to Michael Slackman of The New York Times. Yesterday he published a full review not only of the Revolutionary Guard's involvement in a coalition bid for 51% of Iran's state telecommunications company but also background cases such as the Guard's takeover of the management of Imam Khomeini Airport, the current Parliamentary investigation of the telecom deal, and "concerns in Iran over what some call the rise of a pseudogovernment".

Although the story is weeks old, it hasn't been noticed much in the Western media, and the Revolutionary Guard's role in the Iranian economy is one of the most important long-term aspects of this political crisis. The only clanger in Slackman's piece is his necessity to put in an irrelevant comment from Flynt Leverett, a former US National Security Council official: “In a strategic sense, I don’t think Iran is in a fundamentally different place than it was before elections, not in the way it approaches negotiations or the way it looks at its foreign policy."

If Slackman really wanted to establish significant in that quote from Leverett, which belongs in a piece on US-Iranian relations, he would link it to the former NSC official's continuing attempt to establish the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad Government. For it is that legitimacy that it is at the political heart of possibly illegitimate moves by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps.

0630 GMT: On Monday it will be four months since votes for President were counted/misaltered/manipulated in Iran, and the anniversary is being welcomed with one of the quietest phases in the post-election conflict. With no major gatherings scheduled, and with politicans and some clerics focused more on private talks than public statements, this is wait-and-see.

The anticipated Parliamentary fireworks have not materialised, and President Ahmadinejad is trying to stay out of trouble by not mentioning alleged abuses, his Ministers' records, or the Iranian economy. One interesting on the last of these: Iran state TV reported yesterday that the quota of subsidised gasoline/petrol for each person will be cut by 45%. Some US-based specialists interpreted this as a reaction to anticipated tighter sanctions from Washington; the simpler explanation is that the Iranian Government needs to cut costs.

Now into the Iranian weekend. No chatter yet about Friday Prayers --- we'll have a look now to see who's leading them. Expect instead more murmurs about detentions and punishment; slowly the death penalty passed on protester Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, and some activists are also raising cases such as the trial, with possible death sentences, of seven member of the Baha'i faith.