The Latest from Iran (30 September): Confusion

NEW Iran: Mousavi Meeting with Reformists (30 September)
Iran: Karroubi Letter to Rafsanjani (27 September)
NEW Video/Transcript: “Will Israel Attack Iran?”
Iran Top-Secret: The President’s Gmail Account
Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Backs Himself into a Corner
UPDATED Iran: So What’s This “National Unity Plan”?


The Latest from Iran (29 September): The Forthcoming Test?

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2040 GMT: We now have an English translation of the Mousavi meeting with the reformists, posted in a separate entry.

1910 GMT: Parleman News has updated and extended its summary of the Mousavi meeting with reformist faction Imam Khomeini Line. The story reiterates the significant shift in Mousavi's approach that we have noted (1240 GMT, 1615 GMT, 1800 GMT).

1900 GMT: Overseas Mystery of Night. Why is Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Washington? I presume it's to visit the Smithsonian Institution and maybe the National Art Gallery, since the State Department denies he is seeing US officials.

The party line is that Mottaki, having been in New York for the United Nations meeting, is visiting the Iranian Interests Section at the Pakistan Embassy. No explanation, however, of what he has been doing in the several days after the UN gathering. (AP has an English summary.)

1815 GMT: Another Clue to the Plan? From Mehr News:

Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi has called for the establishment of a committee comprised of MPs and other prominent national figures that would be tasked with attempting to end the political disputes in society.

“A committee comprised of MPs and certain elite people outside the Majlis should… create friendship between political groupings so that these disputes end. The continuation of these deputes is not in our country’s interests,” he told seminary students and religious figures at meeting in Qom on Wednesday.

1800 GMT: This.  Could. Be. Huge. Consider this extract from Mir Hossein Mousavi's statement to reformists, posted on the Facebook page linked to him: "Forming a new party cannot add to countries existing capacities, while strengthening the cores of the social movement will create new capacities and improve the movement."

Throughout the summer, Mousavi talked of forming a new political movement (he didn't call it a "party", since that would have to be licensed by Iranian authorities). Even in his recent promulgation of The Green Path of Hope as a "social movement", he implied that it would have a political role challenging the Ahmadinejad Government.

Now he has abandoned that approach, one presumes, because he has chosen to work with the Plan promoted by institutions within the system that he was challenging up to this week.

1615 GMT: Quiet afternoon but this further summary of Mousavi's message to reformists sets off a bell: "Today, national unity is of outmost importance."

Now, of course, all politicians are going to make calls for unity but does this mean that, whether or not a National Unity Plan has been agreed, Mousavi is going to work with an "establisment" committee for a political accommodation?

1300 GMT: The reformist Imam Khomeini Line, which met Mir Hossein Mousavi yesterday (see 1240 GMT), will also be meeting Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. (But what about Karroubi?)

1254 GMT: The Movement Cannot Be Silenced. A reader kindly directs us to a blog by Persian Umpire on the spread of information inside Iran. Amidst interesting notes such as "BBC Persian is...gobbling up the Voice of America audience because of superior programming and better news coverage", the author sets out this important observation:

We see your tweets, pics, posts, leaks, walls, rumors, articles, flames, trolls, messages of support, slogans, comments, funnies, videos, and everything else you produce. Let us take Twitter which is actually an important source for us, especially for breaking news even if it is happening in Iran. Case in point: this week’s student protests. For those who do not have accounts, there are websites that broadcast the public tweets from any hashtag. Surprisingly some of these sites are not yet filtered. In cases where filtering is in place, we use proxies to get to this information. Also, there are RSS feed readers that we can use to get to your messages through web-based mail services and thus bypassing the filters in a different way. There is no way to block us in, other than cutting the internet altogether, and the government cannot do that easily as some of the crucial internal communications, such as banking, depends on it. If they ever decide to do this, it will take a campaign of outlawing and phasing out residential connections. Even in this case we still have internet at work, and in the end, long-distance dial-up. If I have to pay a $200 phone bill per month to read what you write, so be it.

He/she adds, "How does a minority crawling the nooks and crannies of the internet, let a majority know about it? Information gathered from websites is first disseminated through chat and email, and then word-of-mouth does what it does best."

1250 GMT: Nice to see that The New York Times hasn't been completely diverted by the nuclear issue. Nazila Fathi writes today about Tuesday's second set of universities protests, in particular the demonstrations at Sharif University.

1245 GMT: Reformist MP Darius Ghanbari has criticised the Parliamentary fact-finding committee for avoiding the issues of Kahrizak Prison and secret burials, as well as the points in Mehdi Karroubi's letter, in their unclassified report.

1240 GMT: The Plan in Action? Parleman News has published an account of a meeting between Mir Hossein Mousavi and the reformist Imam Khomeini Line. Mousavi's message? "Greens are now within the system."

1230 GMT: We've posted the English translation of Mehdi Karroubi's second letter to Hashemi Rafsanjani. To say it's critical is an understatement; Karroubi is calling out the former President for not backing demands for justice and reform.

1050 GMT: It is reported that leading reformist Saeed Hajjarian was released this morning from Evin Prison.

1045 GMT: Police representatives have announced that 10 officers have been arrested in connection with claims of detainee abuse at Kahrizak Prison.

1030 GMT: The intrigue on the "National Unity Plan" (see our separate entry) gets stranger. Fars claimed last night that Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Haeri-Shirazi had denounced talk of a Plan being brought to the Assembly as a "lie". Haeri-Shirazi's office this morning issues a statement denying any such discussion. Fars News then brings out the transcript and the audio file of the conversation.

1000 GMT: Telling Half the Story. CNN splashes the headline, "IAEA: Iran broke law by not revealing nuclear facility", on an interview with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad El Baradei. He says:

Iran was supposed to inform us on the day it was decided to construct the facility. They have not done that. They are saying that this was meant to be a back-up facility in case we were attacked and so they could not tell us earlier on.

Nonetheless, they have been on the wrong side of the law, you know in so far as informing the agency about the construction and as you have seen it, it has created concern in the international community.

Here, however, is the El Baradei comment that does not get a headline and only
a reference near the bottom of the article:

Whether they have done some weaponization studies as was claimed is still an outstanding issue. But I have not seen any credible evidence to suggest that Iran has an ongoing nuclear program today.

0900 GMT: Confirmation of reports from earlier this week: post-election detainee Alireza Eshraghi has been sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for acts against national security by "insulting the Supreme Leader and President" and attending illegal gatherings.

0830 GMT: One other report which emerged last night. The Iranian Government is still considering the temporary closure of universities because of "swine flu".

0820 GMT: A morning to re-assess what has happened in the last 24 hours, especially with the purported "National Unity Plan". Latest indications are that the plan, which emerged last night, is actually an early draft, so it raises more questions than answers. We've got up-to-the-minute analysis in a separate entry.

The other event on the radar is tomorrow's meeting between Iran and the "5+1" powers in Geneva on Tehran's nuclear programme. Media fury continues in the US, but the Obama Administration is now far more cautious in its statements. In particular, it appears that the American attempt to "negotiate from strength" through the sanctions threat is running into difficulties. We've got the latest in another entry.

Finally, for those who prefer the "real" story, Enduring America has gotten access to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Gmail account.

Iran's Nuclear Programme: Obama Backs Himself into a Corner

Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Scott Lucas in La Stampa (English Text)
The Latest from Iran (29 September): The Forthcoming Test?

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Last week's high tide of politics over the Iranian "secret nuclear plant" still has some unpleasant backwash today, 48 hours before the US and other "5+1" powers meet Iran in Geneva. Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal takes the prize for meaningless swagger with his declaration of a neo-conservative resurgence: "A view of the world that understands that American power still furnishes the margin between freedom and tyranny, and between prosperity and chaos, is starting to look better all the time. Even in France."

Meaningless because, unless Mr Stephens is ready to lead the bombers over Iran, there's precious little he can do to back up the bluster. Far more importantly, the Obama Administration may be finding that it has talked itself into a high-profile corner.

The clue is the latest White House spin to the front-line newspapers. Yesterday's New York Times gives the game away. On the surface, it proclaims, "U.S. Is Seeking a Range of Sanctions Against Iran", but the more you read, the narrower that range becomes. Officials admitted, "The United States was not likely to win support for an embargo on shipments of gasoline or other refined fuel to Iran. The European allies...view this as a 'blunt instrument' that could hurt ordinary Iranians, inflame public opinion and unite the country behind the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

The initial flourish, offered after President Obama's statement last week, that even Moscow was in line with a tough approach has sagged limply: "Administration officials acknowledge it will be difficult to persuade Russia to agree to harsh, long-term sanctions against Iran, whatever the assurances that the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, gave last week to Mr. Obama. China, these officials say, is even less dependable, given its reliance on Iranian oil and its swelling trade ties with Iran."

So all that's really left in "the range" is the suggestion of barriers to investment in Iran's gas and petroleum industry and more restrictions on Iranian financial institutions, covered by the assurance, "The administration also is seeking to build a broader coalition of partners for sanctions so that it may still be able to act against Iran even if China and Russia were to veto harsher measures proposed in the United Nations Security Council."

And even then promise of multilateral action is further constricted today. The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House will still face numerous challenges matching its rhetoric on sanctions with real international action, said U.S. and European officials involved in the process. That makes "the U.S. Treasury -- and not the United Nations -- the main focus of the West's financial campaign against Iran for now...The Treasury has pursued dozens of unilateral sanctions against Iranian banks, government officials and defense companies in recent years in an attempt to pressure Tehran."

The US Treasury? As far as I can tell, the American effort has gone from a united international front against Iran's threat to a "coalition of one".

There's still some blowing of smokes in places like Tuesday's Washington Post with the declaration, "The Obama administration is laying plans to cut Iran's economic links to the rest of the world if talks this week over the country's nuclear ambitions founder." Once again, however, it only takes a few paragraphs to see through Sanctions' New Clothes: "The administration has limited options in unilaterally targeting Iran, largely because it wants to avoid measures so severe that they would undermine consensus among countries pressing the Iranian government."

When rhetoric finally arrives at the obstacle of action, steps mentioned include making it more difficult for foreign firms to get adequate insurance for investments in Iran. But, surprise, surprise, the US has been pursuing that effort for years, so there is nothing new in the measure. Nor is it clear how much more punishment can be meted out by the suggestion of tightening restrictions on Iranian financial institutions.

And none of this can obscure the inconvenience that, as noted in The New York Times, major investors like Russia and China are likely to keep investing and trading. Credit to Simon Tisdall of The Guardian for stating the blunt facts:

Iran provided 10% of China's crude oil needs last year; its market share is expected to grow. Chinese companies and middlemen are supplying one third of Iran's refined petroleum requirements as western companies back off. Earlier this year the China National Petroleum Corporation signed a $1.7bn investment deal with the National Iranian Oil Company. The overall Chinese energy stake in Iran is said to be worth $100bn.

Speaking before crucial nuclear talks in Geneva, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu urged the US, Britain and other UN security council members to eschew confrontation. "We believe that all sides should take more steps to ease tensions and resolve problems, not the opposite," she said. Beijing's meaning was plain. Even if it supported sanctions in principle (which it does not), it was not disposed to support measures that would harm its national economic self-interest.

It appears that the US plan was to show up at the Geneva talks with a loaded gun. An article in Sunday's Washington Times revealed:

President Obama's decision to confront Iran with evidence of a secret nuclear production site Friday was the culmination of a deliberate strategy over the past nine months to gain maximum impact from the disclosure by building up to it with other steps on the world stage.

A high-ranking administration official [said] that while the White House knew about Iran's construction of a second uranium enrichment plant before Mr. Obama took office in January, it waited to drop the bombshell until U.S. officials had conducted extensive diplomatic advance work.

Even when Iran disrupted the plan by telling the International Atomic Energy Agency of its second enrichment plant, the Administration kept a grip on the holster; indeed, by the time Obama made his statement, he was waving a pair of six-shooters.

Only one thing. If you're going to bring a gun to the table, you best make sure you've got enough bullets. And the Administration is beginning to discover, very late in the day, that it may not have even one in the chamber.

No amount of bluster, not even of Stephens-esque proportion, does not remove that difficulty. Indeed, it only bears out the ill-judged strategy of speaking loudly and carrying a very small stick.

Afghanistan: Obama v. Petraeus (Part 379)

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At the start of the year we closely tracked the political battle between the White House and military commanders, notably General David Petraeus, over the deployment of additional US troops to Afghanistan. This was nominally resolved at the end of March by a "compromise" agreement (even though the military got almost all of the troop request) in which Obama announced a new strategy of military measures supporting non-military measures to build up the country.

The situation was not resolved, either inside Washington or in Afghanistan, and we are back in another cycle of reports, spin, and power moves over another escalation in the US military commitment. One curious absentee, however, is Petraeus, who has not been far from media-shy in the past. Tom Englehardt digs beneath the surface for the story:

How Top Generals May Trap Obama in a Losing War

Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley "Stan" McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose "classified, pre-decisional" and devastating report -- almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster -- was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael "Mike" Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a "deteriorating" war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. ("I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan... or sending a message that America is here for the duration.")

On the other hand, here's someone you haven't seen front and center for a while: General David Petraeus.

He was, of course, George W. Bush's pick to lead the president's last-ditch effort in Iraq. He was the poster boy for Bush's military policies in his last two years. He was the highly praised architect and symbol of "the surge." He appeared repeatedly, his chest a mass of medals and ribbons, for heavily publicized, widely televised congressional testimony, complete with charts and graphs, that was meant, at least in part, for the American public. He was the man who, to use an image from that period which has recently resurfaced, managed to synchronize the American and Baghdad "clocks," pacifying for a time both the home and war fronts.

He never met a journalist, as far as we can tell, he didn't want to woo. (And he clearly won over the influential Tom Ricks, then of the Washington Post, who wrote The Gamble, a bestselling paean to him and his sub-commanders.) From the look of it, he's the most political general to come down the pike since, in 1951 in the midst of the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur said his goodbyes to Congress after being cashiered by President Truman for insubordination -- for, in effect, wanting to run his own war and the foreign policy that went with it. It was Petraeus who brought Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) back from the crypt, overseeing the writing of a new Army counterinsurgency manual that would make it central to both the ongoing wars and what are already being referred to as the "next" ones.

Before he left office, Bush advanced his favorite general to the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the former president's Global War on Terror across the energy heartlands of the planet from Egypt to Pakistan. The command is, of course, especially focused on Bush's two full-scale wars: the Iraq War, now being pursued under Petraeus's former subordinate, General Ray Odierno, and the Afghan War, for which Petraeus seems to have personally handpicked a new commanding general, Stan McChrystal. From the military's dark side world of special ops and targeted assassinations, McChrystal had operated in Iraq and was also part of an Army promotion board headed by Petraeus that advanced the careers of officers committed to counterinsurgency. To install McChrystal in May, Obama abruptly sacked the then-Afghan war commander, General David McKiernan, in what was then considered, with some exaggeration, a new MacArthur moment.

On taking over, McChrystal, who had previously been a counterterrorism guy (and isn't about to give that up, either), swore fealty to counterinsurgency doctrine (that is, to Petraeus) by proclaiming that the American goal in Afghanistan must not be primarily to hunt down and kill Taliban insurgents, but to "protect the population." He also turned to a "team" of civilian experts, largely gathered from Washington think-tanks, a number of whom had been involved in planning out Petraeus's Iraq surge of 2007, to make an assessment of the state of the war and what needed to be done. Think of them as the Surgettes.

As in many official reassessments, the cast of characters essentially guaranteed the results before a single meeting was held. Based on past history and opinions, this team could only provide one Petraeus-approved answer to the war: more -- more troops, up to 40,000-45,000 of them, and other resources for an American counterinsurgency operation without end.

Hence, even if McChrystal's name is on it, the report slipped to Bob Woodward which just sandbagged the president has a distinctly Petraeusian shape to it. In a piece linked to Woodward's bombshell in the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung wrote of unnamed officials in Washington who claimed "the military has been trying to push Obama into a corner." The language in the coverage elsewhere has been similar.

There is, wrote DeYoung a day later, now a "rupture" between the military "pushing for an early decision to send more troops" and civilian policymakers "increasingly doubtful of an escalating nation-building effort." Nancy Youssef of McClatchy News wrote about how "mixed signals" from Washington were causing "increasing ire from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan"; a group of McClatchy reporters talked of military advocates of escalation feeling "frustration" over "White House dithering." David Sanger of the New York Times described "a split between an American military that says it needs more troops now and an American president clearly reluctant to leap into that abyss." "Impatient" is about the calmest word you'll see for the attitude of the military top command right now.

Buyer's Remorse, the Afghan War, and the President

In the midst of all this, between Admiral Mullen and General McChrystal is, it seems, a missing man. The most photogenic general in our recent history, the man who created the doctrine and oversees the war, the man who is now shaping the U.S. Army (and its future plans and career patterns), is somehow, at this crucial moment, out of the Washington spotlight. This last week General Petraeus was, in fact, in England, giving a speech and writing an article for the (London) Times laying out his basic "protect the population" version of counterinsurgency and praising our British allies by quoting one of their great imperial plunderers. ("If Cecil Rhodes was correct in his wonderful observation that 'being an Englishman is the greatest prize in the lottery of life,' and I'm inclined to think that he was, then the second greatest prize in the lottery of life must be to be a friend of an Englishman, and based on that, the more than 230,000 men and women in uniform who work with your country's finest day by day are very lucky indeed, as am I.")

Only at mid-week, with Washington aboil, did he arrive in the capital for a counterinsurgency conference at the National Press Club and quietly "endorse" "General McChrystal's assessment." Whatever the look of things, however, it's unlikely that Petraeus is actually on the sidelines at this moment of heightened tension. He is undoubtedly still The Man.

So much is, of course, happening just beyond the sightlines of those of us who are mere citizens of this country, which is why inference and guesswork are, unfortunately, the order of the day. Read any account in a major newspaper right now and it's guaranteed to be chock-a-block full of senior officials and top military officers who are never "authorized to speak," but nonetheless yak away from behind a scrim of anonymity. Petraeus may or may not be one of them, but the odds are reasonable that this is still a Petraeus Moment.

If so, Obama has only himself to blame. He took up Afghanistan ("the right war") in the presidential campaign as proof that, despite wanting to end the war in Iraq, he was tough. (Why is it that a Democratic candidate needs a war or threat of war to trash-talk about in order to prove his "strength," when doing so is obviously a sign of weakness?)

Once in office, Obama compounded the damage by doubling down his bet on the war. In March, he introduced a "comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan" in his first significant public statement on the subject, which had expansion written all over it. He also agreed to send in 21,000 more troops (which, by the way, Petraeus reportedly convinced him to do). In August, in another sign of weakness masquerading as strength, before an unenthusiastic audience at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, he unnecessarily declared: "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity." All of this he will now pay for at the hands of Petraeus, or if not him, then a coterie of military men behind the latest push for a new kind of Afghan War.

As it happens, this was never Obama's "war of necessity." It was always Petraeus's. And the new report from McChrystal and the Surgettes is undoubtedly Petraeus's progeny as well. It seems, in fact, cleverly put together to catch a cautious president, who wasn't cautious enough about his war of choice, in a potentially devastating trap. The military insistence on quick action on a troop decision sets up a devastating choice for the president: "Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure." Go against your chosen general and the failure that follows is yours alone. (Unnamed figures supposedly close to McChrystal are already launching test balloons, passed on by others, suggesting that the general might resign in protest if the president doesn't deliver -- a possibility he has denied even considering.) On the other hand, offer him somewhere between 15,000 and 45,000 more American troops as well as other resources, and the failure that follows will still be yours.

It's a basic lose-lose proposition and, as journalist Eric Schmitt wrote in a New York Times assessment of the situation, "it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal." No wonder the president and some of his men are dragging their feet and looking elsewhere. As one typically anonymous "defense analyst" quoted in the Los Angeles Times said, the administration is suffering "buyer's remorse for this war... They never really thought about what was required, and now they have sticker shock."

Admittedly, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 51% of Americans are against sending in more troops. (Who knows how they would react to a president who went on TV to announce that he had genuinely reconsidered?) Official Washington is another matter. For General Petraeus, who claims to have no political ambitions but is periodically mentioned as the Eisenhower of 2012, how potentially peachy to launch your campaign against the president who lost you the war.

A Petraeus Moment?

In the present context, the media language being used to describe this military-civilian conflict of wills -- frustration, impatience, split, rupture, ire -- may fall short of capturing the import of a moment which has been brewing, institutionally speaking, for a long time. There have been increasing numbers of generals' "revolts" of various sorts in our recent past. Of course, George W. Bush was insistent on turning planning over to his generals (though only when he liked them), something Barack Obama criticized him for during the election campaign. ("The job of the commander in chief is to listen to the best counsel available and to listen even to people you don't agree with and then ultimately you make the final decision and you take responsibility for those actions.")

Now, it looks as if we are about to have a civilian-military encounter of the first order in which Obama will indeed need to take responsibility for difficult actions (or the lack thereof). If a genuine clash heats up, expect more discussion of "MacArthur moments," but this will not be Truman versus MacArthur redux, and not just because Petraeus seems to be a subtler political player than MacArthur ever was.

Over the nearly six decades that separate us from Truman's great moment, the Pentagon has become a far more overwhelming institution. In Afghanistan, as in Washington, it has swallowed up much of what once was intelligence, as it is swallowing up much of what once was diplomacy. It is linked to one of the two businesses, the Pentagon-subsidized weapons industry, which has proven an American success story even in the worst of economic times (the other remains Hollywood). It now holds a far different position in a society that seems to feed on war.

It's one thing for the leaders of a country to say that war should be left to the generals when suddenly embroiled in conflict, quite another when that country is eternally in a state of war. In such a case, if you turn crucial war decisions over to the military, you functionally turn foreign policy over to them as well. All of this is made more complicated, because the cast of "civilians" theoretically pitted against the military right now includes Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who is the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Douglas Lute, a lieutenant general who is the president's special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan (dubbed the "war czar" when he held the same position in the Bush administration), and James Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, who is national security advisor, not to speak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The question is: will an already heavily militarized foreign policy geared to endless global war be surrendered to the generals? Depending on what Obama does, the answer to that question may not be fully, or even largely, clarified this time around. He may quietly give way, or they may, or compromises may be reached behind the scenes. After all, careers and political futures are at stake.

But consider us warned. This is a question that is not likely to go away and that may determine what this country becomes.

We know what a MacArthur moment was; we may find out soon enough what a Petraeus moment is.

The Latest from Iran (27 September): Is There a Compromise Brewing?

NEW Iran’s Nukes: Did Gates Just Complicate the Obama Position?
NEW Transcripts: Secretary of Defense Gates on CNN, ABC
Iran's Nuclear Program: Gary Sick on the US Approach after the "Secret Plant"
Iran’s “Secret” Nuclear Plant: Israel Jumps In
Iran: The “Die Zeit” Article on Opposition and Change
Iran Video: Ahmadinejad Interview on CNN’s Larry King
The Latest from Iran (26 September): The False Flag of the Nuke Issue

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2100 GMT: Back to Compromise? After a day of tough signals, this paragraph on Press TV's website from President Ahmadinejad return-from-US press conference in Tehran jumps out: ""By his change of rhetoric, Obama has signaled a strong commitment in the presence of the General Assembly. If the American government is seriously pursuing the path of change, Obama's speech can be considered a start."

2045 GMT: Mir Hossein Mousavi's website Kalemeh is down, and Mehdi Karroubi's Tagheer is still suspended 72 hours after announcing it was going off-line for construction.

1830 GMT: Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi Giving Up Key Position? Tabnak offers the intriguing report that Ayatollah Yazdi, a firm supporter of President Ahmadinejad, is resigning from the Secretariat of the Assembly of Experts.Yazdi will retain his membership of the Assembly and his Vice Chair post, but his withdrawal from the Executive diminishes a key challenger to Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Yazdi was absent from the recent Assembly of Experts meeting.

1545 GMT: An Economic Victory for the Republican Guard. An Iranian consortium in which the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps is reputed to be a major actor has bought a 51 percent stake in the State telecommunications firm in the biggest privatisation in Iran's history.

1445 GMT: Another Ministerial Fraud? After the criticism of the Ministers of Interior and Science for dubious doctoral degrees from British universities, now it is the Minister of Transport Hamid Behbahani who faces allegations of false credentials. An article in the French daily newspaper Libération, claims Behbahani plagiarised parts of a work of the Professor Christophe Claramunt, his Chinese colleagues, and the Canadian academic Gerry Forbes for a 2006 publication in a Lithuanian journal.

1440 GMT: Your Latest Proof of the "Velvet Revolution". A Revolutionary Guard offical has said that the television signals of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting were jammed during the election campaign. Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali claimed that "enemies of the country" had tried to jam the transmission during a Presidential campaign debate.

1200 GMT: Report that student activists Ali Rafai and Mohsen Jafari have been released from detention.

1045 GMT: The New York Times Gets the Story Wrong...Big-Time. EA's Mr Smith picks up on this morning's article by , NewDavid Sanger and William Broad, which opens:

The Obama administration plans to tell Iran this week that it must open a newly revealed nuclear enrichment site to international inspectors “within weeks”, according to senior administration officials. The administration will also tell Tehran that inspectors must have full access to the key personnel who put together the clandestine plant and to the documents surrounding its construction, the officials said Saturday.

The story asserts that, while "Iranian officials have...said the facility near Qom is for peaceful purposes, they have not explained why it was located inside a heavily guarded base of the Revolutionary Guards".

Mr Smith notes:

This is incorrect. In remarks yesterday to Iranian Television, [Iran's top nuclear offcial Ali Akhbar] Salehi said that they felt like they needed to build a plant for uranium enrichment with maximum security to avoid 'stopping the production of enriched uranium for peaceful purposes'. I think everyone agrees that Natanz [Iran's first enrichment plant] isn't that secure, built as it is in open air. Therefore you would have to think that Iran is getting pushed in going underground with its nuclear plants because of the never-ending military threats, mostly from Israel but also, incessantly, from the US.

So I wonder what would have happened if the hawks in Tel Aviv and DC had actually kept quiet rather than waving the military scarecrow all the time.

The US can say whatever it wants, but the heart of the matter is that, unless the IAEA proves that Iran has been feeding uranium into these plants, there is no violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Now, we can discuss ad libitum what the real aims of Iran are, as Sick has valiantly done, but everyone is, so far, putting intentions on trial, rather than actual, hard evidence on violations by Iran. True, Iran has been lying and is not reliable in its disclosures. But does this amount to legal violation? It doesn't appear so...

0835 GMT: This is More Like It. A day after Iran's nuclear negotiator offered Iran's willingness to consider International Atomic Energy Agency access to the second enrichment facility, its ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, puts on a show of defiance: "I categorically reject that there have been any concealment or any deception."

As we predicted, Soltaniyeh rests Iran's legal case on the second plant on the claim that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty did not force revelation of the facility's construction, only its imminent capacity for enrichment: "It is a pity that none of these three leaders have legal advisers to inform them that according to comprehensive safeguards we are only obliged to inform six months before we put nuclear material [into the plant]."

The ambassador adds the flourish that it is Washington, Paris, and London who are the nuclear rule-breakers:

Those three countries in fact have violated for the last 40 years NPT articles. The United Kingdom has [a] secret program of [Trident] nuclear submarines...[costing more than £30 billion.... France is also working on the nuclear weapon programs continuously. Americans are working hard on the nuclear weapon posture review. These are all deceptions and concealment.

0825 GMT: Two new pieces on the Iran nuclear programme. Ali Yenidunya takes a look at Israel's intervention (rhetorical so far) while Gary Sick assesses how the "secret plant" story shapes US strategy and tactics in talks with Tehran.

0655 GMT: Acting Tough. In a move about as surprising as the Pope's endorsement of Catholicism, Iran has announced that it has test-fired two short-range missiles in a missile exercise called "Great Prophet IV". And there will be more launches as the exercise is planned to last several days.

The signal to the "West" --- We Won't Be Pushed Around --- will poke US and UK media into headlines of how this demonstrates Tehran's threat in the context of the furour over the second enrichment plant.

0615 GMT: And a Deal on the International Front? US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton moved quickly to welcome the comment of Iran's lead official on the nuclear programme, Ali Akhbar Salehi, that Iran would permit visits by the International Atomic Energy Agency, under the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to its second enrichment plant (a "defensive facility"). Clinton said:

It is always welcome when Iran makes a decision to comply with the international rules and regulations, and particularly with respect to the IAEA. We are very hopeful that, in preparing for the meeting on October 1, Iran comes and shares with all of us what they are willing to do and give us a timetable on which they are willing to proceed

Hmm.... Salehi's remark appears to have been a holding statement while the Ahmadinejad Government considers its next move, and Clinton's welcome --- unsurprisingly --- fits into a US strategy to back Tehran into a corner of acceptance. The Los Angeles Times reports this morning:

The U.S. and its allies plan to demand that Iran provide "unfettered access" to scientists and information regarding an underground uranium enrichment plant suspected of being part of a secret nuclear weapons program, an Obama administration official said Saturday. A deadline for the access has not yet been determined, but Iran probably would have to comply within weeks.

0600 GMT: Relatively little breaking in Iran this morning, as we look for further signals that there is a compromise plan, led by or involving Hashemi Rafsanjani, making its way through the Iranian system.

What little has come out points more to the continued fencing between opposing camps. Reports are circulating of more official complaints against Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign, while Mehdi Karroubi's Etemade Melli party website has published information about the abuse and rape of another detainee.

The most interesting claim is that Sardar Khorshidi, the father of President Ahmadinejad's son-in-law and a decorated commander during the Iran-Iraq War, has said he personally witnessed vote-rigging in the June election. He also points to the fragility of the regime: ""If each protester had a stick on Qods Day, the Army wouldn't have withsood them."

The Latest from Iran (25 September): The Nuclear Distraction

NEW Video: Ahmadinejad Interview with Time Magazine
NEW Transcript: Obama and Sarkozy Statements on Iran Nuclear Programme
NEW Iran: Obama's "Get-Tough" Move for Engagement
Iran: Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad, and the Multi-Sided Chess Match
Latest Video: Full Speech of Ahmadinejad at UN General Assembly
Iran: English Text of Letters between Mousavi and Montazeri (13 and 22 September)

1835 GMT: Report that Azar Mansouri, deputy head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been arrested after an interview with Norooz.

1735 GMT: Is Iran's "Secret Nuclear Plant" Legal? The quick soundbite for Time from its interview with President Ahmadinejad is ""This does not mean we must inform Mr. Obama's administration of every facility that we have."

However, Ahmadinejad may have a point, one which is relevant to the current case. Iran notified the IAEA on Monday that it was constructing a new pilot enrichment plant. If Tehran has not put nuclear material into this facility, Iran is in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's Comprehensive Full Scope Safeguards Agreement, which requires it to a six-month notification period before nuclear material is put in the facility. (Iran withdrew from the more Subsidiary Agreement 3.1, which requires more detailed and timely notification, after the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council.

So the case to prosecute Iran under the Non-Proliferation Treaty is not clear-cut. Of course, the US can and will rely upon the U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran cease all enrichment. Whether other countries (China, Russia) take the same line remains to be seen.

1730 GMT: President Ahmadinejad may have backed out of an encounter with the New York media, but he did give a one-on-one video interview to Time magazine. We've posted in a separate entry.

1700 GMT: President Ahmadinejad has replaced his New York press conference with an interview with Press TV.

1500 GMT: We've just posted Chris Emery's shrewd analysis of the politics of the US revelation of the "secret nuclear plant" and the Obama statement: "This high-profile initiative by Obama was designed to get movement on engagement."

1425 GMT: Amidst the continuing chatter on the Obama statement --- no additional information, just the theme of "He was Really Tough" --- news services drop in this interesting twist "Ahmadinejad cancels his 5 pm EST (2100 GMT) speech in NYC [New York City]".

1245 GMT: The Obama Line. The President has just made his statement on the Iran "secret nuclear plant". The message? This demonstrates Iran's "continuing unwillingness" to meets its "international obligations" on development of nuclear capability. This showed the "urgency" of resolution at talks with Iran on 1 October in Geneva.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has backed this up by saying "everything must be put on the table", and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proclaimed this "the most urgent problem" of today.

This feels more and more like a scripted play. The "West" has known for some time that Iran was constructing a second uranium enrichment plant but had not announced this to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran figured out that the US had learned of the plant and was preparing a big setpiece, ahead of the 1 October talks, to reveal the Iranian duplicity. So Iran went to the IAEA on Monday to put its plans above-board. This, however, was  not going to deflect the US-UK-France scheme to put Iran on the defensive in advance of the first direct discussions between Washington and Tehran.

1220 GMT: By the way, there was a Friday Prayer address today. After the drama of recent weeks, this one, by hard-line Government supporter and head of the Guardian Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, went almost unnoticed.

Nothing much new here. Jannati talks about triumph over "the enemy" through the political, military, and regional power of Iran and invokes the Holy Defense of the 1980-1988 war against Iraq. Like the Supreme Leader, he portrayed the demonstrations of Qods Day and Eid-ul-Fitr as Iranian support for the world's oppressed, and he condemned the tragedy of the assassination of the Kurdestan member of the Assembly of Experts.

1210 GMT: And Here's You Obama Administration  Line. A "senior Administration source" uses one of the reliable channels (i.e. will put out the message as presented, will not look behind or beyond it), ABC's Jake Tapper: "[Obama] to express 'great and increasing doubts about the strictly peaceful nature' of Iran's nuclear program"

1200 GMT: NBC's Ann Curry nails the politics on the "secret nuclear plant" story, and she only needs 1 Tweet to do it: "Remember the US and Iran about to negotiate. The West has an interest in increasing the pressure now."

1145 GMT: The Iran State Line. Press TV, in an article posted this morning, does not address the "secret nuclear plant" story but refers to French and British allegations of an Iranian nuclear progamme, made during the exchanges at the United Nations this week, as "totally baseless and untrue". The Iranian UN mission added that remarks by French President Nicolas Sarkozy were a "futile attempt aimed to cover up [French] non-compliance with its international disarmament obligations".

1050 GMT: So the story of Iran's "secret nuclear plant" (which isn't secret, since Tehran informed the International Atomic Agency of the construction of the uranium enrichment facility on Monday) is going to dominate the news cycle, as every US and many international outlets rush lemming-like to the tale and President Obama makes a statement at 1230 GMT.

If only someone takes a step back to note this comment from CNN's Fareed Zakaria, made after President Ahmadinejad's UN speech: "Ahmadinejad has been on a campaign over the last few weeks to change the subject. His great fear was that he would come to New York and the subject would be the Iranian regime and his massive repression of the Iranian democracy movement, the street protests, all the allegations being made by Iranians of what is happening in Iran --- rape, torture, abuse. What he wanted to do was to talk about anything but that."

0900 GMT: Ahmadinejad's Useful US Idiots. I was going to write the following analysis for Saturday, but events prompt me to offer a preview:

Ahmadinejad was on verge of major mis-step by playing New York trip as sign that all now resolved at home. 'West', however, played into his hands by raising Iran (and Ahmadinejad) to iconic threat on nuke issue. And Netanyahu gives kiss of death to opposition by praising their supposed aim of regime change. So the President gets to do his aggressive defend-Iran thing, getting more legitimacy out of West than he has many of his own people.

Five minutes after jotting this down, I read the Administration's latest strategic masterpiece in The New York Times, courtesy of David Sanger (who seems to have no recognition that he is a messenger-boy);

President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France will accuse Iran Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying it has hidden the covert operation for years from international weapons inspectors, according to senior administration officials.

Well done, guys. Instead of keeping your mouths shut and letting Ahmadinejad return to political complications at home, you've given him the ideal platform to pose as defender of Iranian sovereignty. And watch how your PR stick, wielded just before talks with Iran on 1 October, is turned into a stick by the President, his allies, and his supportive State media to bash "foreign-directed" reformists and the Green movement at home.

Idiots.

0650 GMT: Catching up, indeed. Even though the EA roadtrip was less than 72 hours, there appears to be a month's worth of incidents to consider. Forget the Ahmadinejad sideshow in New York; the events in and around the Assembly of Experts offer a plethora of possibilities. We've attempted an analysis,
"Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad, and the Multi-Sided Chess Match", this morning.

Of course, state media features Ayatollah Khamenei's address to the Assembly of Experts, but it also keeps playing up President Ahmadinejad's defiance of the "West", from his warning against sanctions to his explanation that "Down with the US" refers to the "ugly behavior" of the American Government.