The Latest from Iran (6 September): Stresses on Authority

2030 GMT: The Attacks on the Clerics. Rah-e-Sabz posts new details about the Qods Day attack on the Qoba Mosque in Shiraz (see 1655 GMT), claiming that parts were set on fire with gasoline and some Qur'ans were burnt

2005 GMT: Parliament v. President. Speaking of the economy, the Majlis may be drawing the line with Ahmadinejad in the battle over the 5th Development Plan.

Hossein Sobhani-Nia the Deputy Head of the National Security Commission, said that if the administration insisted on its request to withdraw the 5th Plan --- made because of dissatisfaction with Majlis amendments --- the Parliament will extend the 4th Plan of 2005-2010.

NEW Iran Exclusive: FM Mottaki Attempted to Resign over Ahmadinejad Foreign Policy
NEW Iran Witness: Political Prisoner Arjang Davoudi From Evin on Human Rights (2008)
NEW Iran Feature: Inside Rajai Shahr Prison (Bijnen)
Iran Feature: An Open Letter to Detained Activist Shiva Nazar Ahari (Vahidmanesh)
Iran Breaking: Uncertainty if Lawyer Nasrine Sotoudeh Arrested
Iran Special: How Do You Analyse a Non-Event? (Lucas)
The Latest from Iran (5 September): Cracking Down after the Disappointment

1955 GMT: Economy Watch. And in the non-nuclear world, the chairman of the Supreme Audit Court, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, has taken apart the Ahmadinejad Government over its development plans, privatisation, imports, and subsidy reform.

Fazli said in areas such as economic growth and control of inflation the administration had failed to achieve the goals set in its Fourth Plan (2005-2010), and the Fifth Plan (2010-15) is not completely based on the goals set out in plans and major policies endorsed by the Supreme Leader.

Fazli said the handover of the state companies to the private sector has not been carried out according to the requirements set in the Article 44 of the Constitution and that most of the firms have been handed over to semi-official companies, coding for entities such as the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. “The private sector has been involved in at most 15% of the transactions and handovers,” he stated.

The SAC chairman said that Iranian companies could not compete with foreign rivals even in the production of simple products, and he warned that the Ahmadinejad subsidy reform plan "will lead to a rise in prices”.

1939 GMT: Non-Story, Real Story. Prediction: tomorrow's press in the "West" will be full of over-the-top headlines on Iran's nuclear programme, pegged on today's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even though the IAEA's latest findings are pretty much the status quo --- there is no verifiable diversion of nuclear material by Iran to a military programme, but the Agency would like wider access to Tehran's facilities --- the nature of the game over Iran's uranium means there will be ominous headlines restating Nothing New as Very Dangerous.

(Five minutes after I typed the above paragraph, this in from David Sanger and William Broad of The New York Times: "Three months after the United Nations Security Council enacted its harshest sanctions yet against Iran, global nuclear inspectors reported Monday that the country has dug in its heels, refusing to provide inspectors with information and access they need to determine whether the real purpose of Tehran’s program is to produce weapons."

Eight minutes after I typed the paragraph, The Daily Telegraph headlines, "Iran on Brink of Nuclear Weapon, Warns Watchdog".)

Meanwhile, we think we have a far more important story. Through sources in Iran, EA has learned that Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki tried to resign over the President's appointment of four special envoys for international affairs. We put that within the context of new tensions between the Foreign Ministry and Presidency today.

1750 GMT: The Supreme Leader Takes the Podium. The head of the Friday Prayers Committee has said that Ayatollah Khamenei will lead prayers in Tehran this week on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr celebrating the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

1740 GMT: Karroubi Watch. A group of prominent political prisoners have reportedly written Mehdi Karroubi to praise his defense of rights and his courage in the face of pressure such as last week's siege of his home.

Those signing the letter included Mehdi Mahmoudian, Isa Saharkhiz, David Soleimani, Ahmad Zeidabadi, Masoud Bastani, and Majid Tavakoli.

The reformist Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution have also written Karroubi to condemn the attack on his home.

1719 GMT: Execution (Sakineh) Watch. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said he is willing to "do anything" to save Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, condemned to execution for adultery conviction.

Kouchner said the initial sentence for death by stoning was "the height of barbarism": "I'm ready to do anything to save her. If I must go to Tehran to save her, I'll go to Tehran."

1715 GMT: Political Prisoner Special. Alongside our feature today on conditions in Rajai Shahr Prison, we have posted a 2008 video message, filmed secretly and smuggled out of jail, from political prisoner Arjang Davoudi.

1710 GMT: Academic Corner. We noted on Sunday that it appeared students were amongst the primary targets of the regime's post-Qods Day crackdown. Advar News, noting the context of threats by Minister of Higher Education Kamran Daneshjoo against universities, offers more on the story.

1655 GMT: The Attack on the Clerics. RAHANA reports that, following last Friday's attack by a pro-regime crowd on the Qoba Mosque of Grand Ayatollah Dastgheib in Shiraz, there have been widespread arrests of those connected with the mosque.

1415 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The wife of Mohammad Nourizad, detained journalist and filmmaker, claims she is being kept in a complete blackout regarding over news on her husband.

Fatemeh Maleki said, "It is 20 days since my husband has retuned to Evin Prison but we have not been even told where he is being kept.”

1410 GMT: Academic Corner. Alireza Salimi, a member of Parliament's Committee of Education and Research, has expressed concern over the rush of "retirements" of heads of Universities and professors.

About 20 University heads have been replaced by the Government in recent months.

1400 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The death sentence on teacher Abdolreza Ghanbari has reportedly been commuted to a prison term.

Reformist politician Mohsen Safaei Farahani, who suffered a heart attack last week, has been returned to Evin Prison from Tehran's Cardiac Clinic.

1355 GMT: Transport News. Peyke Iran reports that bus ticket prices from Azadi Square to Tehran Pars have quadrupled, resulting in protests and clashes.

1350 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. President Ahmadinejad has told a Dutch television station that while dual nationality is recognised by Tehran, it has little significance in the case of Zahra Bahrami, a Dutch-Iranian woman detained since last December. "If the person is originally from the Netherlands, the Dutch Embassy obviously represent his or her interests, but an Iranian-born person is excluded."

Dutch officials have not been able to visit Bahrami.

1345 GMT: Propaganda of the Day. Keyhan reveals the truth: the person who masterminded the siege and attack on Mehdi Karroubi's home last week was...

Mehdi Karroubi.

1340 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Azeri civil activist Hassan Balaei was arrested by Ministry of Intelligence agents at his place of business on Saturday.

0945 GMT: We have posted a guest feature from Loes Bijnen, "Inside Rajai Shahr Prison".

0840 GMT: Execution (Sakineh) Watch. Houtan Kian, a lawyer for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, has said that his client is receiving 99 lashes for a photograph of a woman without a headscarf --- mistakenly identified as Ashtiani --- published in The Times of London.

Ashtiani's son, Sajad Ghaderzadeh, has said that he learned from other detainees that his mother --- who is sentenced to death for adultery --- had received the sentence. The claim, however, was disputed by a former lawyer for Ashtiani, Mohammadi Mostafaei, who is now in Norway.

Kian has not seen Ashtiani since 11 August but said a woman who had been held with her brought out the news that Ashtiani was being punished for "indecency".
0650 GMT: What Happened to Mousavi on Qods Day? Regular EA readers know why Mehdi Karroubi could not join Qods Day rallies on Friday, but there was silence on why Mir Hossein Mousavi did not make an appearance.

Tahavole Sabz offers an answer: all the roads around the residence of Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, were blocked.

0615 GMT: The Jannati Rumour (see 0510 GMT). The spokesman of the Guardian Council, Abbasali Kadkhodai, denied that the Council's head, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, has suffered a stroke, blaming the rumour on "counter-revolutionary elements".

0605 GMT: The Regime Line. In this video, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting criticises five detainees, including student activist Majid Tavakoli, journalist Heshmat Tabarzadi, and labour activist Mansur Osanloo, for writing to Carla Bruni, the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In the letter, the political prisoners expressed gratitude for Bruni's words on behalf of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death for adultery.

0524 GMT: My Favourite Website. Good news that www.barackobama.ir, with its special news and analysis, is catching on: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty posts a profile.

A bit more respect would be nice, however. The article snaps, "Dig a little deeper and the new website, which says it attracted some 100,000 visitors in its first week, begins to sound more like the news parody site TheOnion.com than it does a serious forum for discussion."

After all, we like The Onion, too.

0520 GMT: Reviewing the Crackdown. Deutsche Welle features an interview with student activist Said Razavi Faqih on matters from the Karroubi siege to to the attack on Qoba Mosque in Shirzaz to the failure of Ahmadinejad Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai to appear on Qods Day.

Headline-grabbing claim? "Plainclothes thugs are Khamenei's private army."

0510 GMT: Sunday's Top Rumour. Late Sunday, the website of former President Abolhassan Banisadr claimed that the head of the Guardian Council and long-time mainstay of the regime, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, had had a stroke and was in a coma.

We'll be looking for any confirmation or refutation of the claim.

0455 GMT: Amidst Sunday's continuing and sometimes accelerating intimidations by the regime, there were two interesting signs of a Government struggling for authority.

As the head of the Basij militia, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, was trying to pass off the siege of Mehdi Karroubi's home to Iran's enemies --- the US, Britain, and Zionists --- the Revolutionary Guard was effectively admitting that the criminals were home-grown. Of course, this was a "rogue element" not connected to the Guard or any other regime agency, but the admission still raised the question: given that the siege lasted five nights before culminating in gunfire, Molotov cocktails, injuries, and a direct assault on the Karroubi apartment, what exactly were the Guard and other security forces doing all that time?

On a more mundane but equally important front, the show of "unity" was exposed once more when President Ahmadinejad's representatives boycotted a Parliamentary commission discussing the 5th Budget Plan. The continuing dispute --- Ahmadinejad does not like Majlis amendments to the Plan and would rather withdraw the measures than implement them --- effectively means that, six months into the Iranian year, the Government does not have policies, let alone a strategy, for Iran's building economic problems.

One of the immediate issues is whether Ahmadinejad's subsidy cuts, an important feature of his economic stance, will be put into effect in October --- the latest declared timetable --- and, if so, whether they are related in any way to wider policies.

Iran Witness: Political Prisoner Arjang Davoudi From Evin on Human Rights (2008)

This morning we posted a feature by Loes Bijnen on the conditions inside Rajai Shahr Prison. One of the detainees she mentioned was Arjang Davoudi, an engineer, teacher, and poetwho has been detained since 2003.

Davoudi was given a sentence of 15 years in prison and 74 lashes for speaking to a Canadian reporter about the death of a Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi in detention in Iran. Davoudi is currently on a hunger strike of more than 50 days.

In this video from 2008, supposedly filmed secretly and smuggled out of Evin Prison, Davoudi talks about human rights and democracy:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl_oBaBI4W4[/youtube]

Iran Feature: Inside Rajai Shahr Prison (Bijnen)

UPDATED Iran Feature: Inside Rajai Shahr Prison (Bijnen)

UPDATE 1725 GMT: Human Rights and Democracy in Iran has posted the letter from Saeed Masouri on conditions inside Rajai Shahr.

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Loes Bijnen writes a guest feature for EA:

When I recently read that seven leaders of the Baha'i community in Iran were transferred from the Evin Prison in Tehran to the Rajaï Shahr Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, my heart forgot to beat for a moment. Do these innocent people have to remain there for twenty years? Amid murderers and rapists? And finally die there?

In the summer of 2005 I wrote an article for Rooz Online about the fate of political prisoners in Rajaï Shahr . I did this at the request of an Iranian contact in the US who urgently wanted to draw attention to some of his friends who were detained in that infamous prison. They were in a bad state, and the circumstances under which these political prisoners, some of them older than 50, were held were said to be gruesome. My acquaintance in the US was in direct contact with one of them, Arjang Davoudi, and he sent me information that came directly from the Rajaï Shahr.

Iran Witness: Political Prisoner Arjang Davoudi From Evin on Human Rights (2008)

I wrote in 2005:

Rajai Shahr is the place where political prisoners who are seen as a nuisance, are stowed away. Going to Karaj is a severe punishment. Once in there one stops to be a human being. One is put out of sight, even of human rights activists and the press. In Rajaï Shahr, political prisoners have to share cells with dangerous criminals like murderers, rapists and drug addicts who don?t hesitate to attack their cell mates. They have nothing to lose: many of them are condemned to death anyway. Murders or unexplained deaths are a regular occurrence.

Two of the detainees I noted were Arjang Davoudi and Amir Saran. Davoudi, an engineer, teacher and poet, was abducted in 2003 and condemned in 2005 by a Revolutionary Court to 15 years in jail, exile to a harsh climate, five years suspension of his civil rights, and 70 lashes of the whip. He spent 100 days in solitary confinement in the Rajaï Shahr prison and was severely tortured. Later he was exiled to the Bandar Abbas prison in the hot south of Iran. [Editor's Note: Davoudi is again in Rajaï Shahr where he reportedly is in critical condition after a hunger strikie of more than 50 days. A new court case against him is being pursued.]

And Amir Saran? In March 2009, he died of a stroke in the gruesome conditions of Rajai Shahr.

Since my piece in 2005 the situation in Iran has worsened. Hundreds if not thousands of innocent Iranians spend their days in prisons in solitary confinement. They are being interrogated for long periods day and night until they are broken down and will sign any document.

However, this reality does not seem to reach the world media. A letter from a prisoner with a life sentence was recently smuggled out of Rajai Shahr:

I want to paint a picture of Rajai Shahr prison. Though large in the eyes of the citizens of Karaj, in reality it is a very small prison because of overcrowding. This is a different world, much like the Hell depicted in movies, full of fire and smoke. A world filled with burnt, black, dishevelled faces, naked bodies covered with sweat and red marks from the sting of lice. A world filled with torn trousers, scraps of which are used as belts; bare and filthy feet; clothes worn inside out and covered with lice; torn, mismatched slippers. A world in which you are exposed to polluted air, the extreme smell of putrid waste, overflowing sewage from toilets, the toxicity of dry vomit, infectious phlegm, and the body odour from bodies in close proximity, rarely given the opportunity to bathe --- all coming to a climax with the smell of urine by those who are unable to control themselves.

All this against the backdrop of the tremendous uproar and cries of prisoners who seem to spend their entire day in lines. Prisoners standing in lines holding plastic bottles that have turned black and serve as tea cups; standing in multiple, long, packed lines to use a bathroom, to take a shower.

It is in this prison that an internationally prominent journalist, Isa Saharkhiz, one of my own acquaintances, has to spend his days. Even more incomprehensible is that seven innocent, civilised and highly-educated Bahá'í leaders have been brought to Rajaï Shahr. They are the voice in Iran of the most peace-loving religion in the world.

How long will they survive there?

What can the world community do to rescue these political prisoners and hundreds of others from the dungeons in Evin in Tehran, Adel Abad in Shiraz, Vakil Abad in Mashhad, Karoun in Ahvaz, Dastgerd in Isfahan, and other, often secret, prisons? Speak out, of course. But first of all the international media has to be awakened. With a SCREAM.

I look at Le Monde, The Washington Post and The New York Times, at El Pais, The Zürcher and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and at NRC Handelsblad. I look at Obama, at Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. And also at [Dutch Foreign Minister] Maxime Verhagen. Help the Bahá'ís and all the other hundreds of innocent prisoners in Iranian prisons.

US Politics: How Can Obama Deal with a World after Iraq? (Cohen)

Roger Cohen writes for The New York Times:

Europe adjusted long ago, but not without pain, to its diminished place in world affairs. After Suez for the British, after Algeria for the French, even the most stubborn post-World War II illusions evaporated. The baton had passed to America. European nations set their minds to a war-banishing Union.

I don’t think the Iraq and Afghan wars constitute for the United States what Suez and the Algerian conflict were for Britain and France: points of irrevocable inflection. But, inconclusive and ill-managed, they have set new limits to U.S. power. President Obama is focused on reducing American expectations for “an age without surrender ceremonies.”

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That’s how he defined our epoch in an address winding up the seven-year U.S. war in Iraq. It was a quintessential Obama speech — intelligent but not stirring, firm and sober and rather solemn, altogether in the image of his refurbished Oval Office with its risk-averse muted neutral tones.

As with the office so with the speech: You can admire the clean lines but your heartbeat sure won’t quicken.

The main subject, it must be said, hardly lent itself to hurrahs. In Iraq, brief triumph subsided through criminal incompetence into fractured mayhem, leaving more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead and concluding in the fluid uncertainty of sporadic violence and democratic deadlock. No intellectual contortion — even with important stirrings of political give-and-take in Iraq — can ever inscribe Operation Iraqi Freedom in the annals of U.S. victories.

An age without surrender ceremonies is just that: an age without clear winners, an opaque time.

Obama put the situation this way: “One of the lessons of our effort in Iraq is that American influence around the world is not a function of military force alone. We must use all elements of our power — including our diplomacy, our economic strength, and the power of America’s example — to secure our interests and stand by our allies.”

Power, in this Obama doctrine, is not for winning the day, vanquishing the enemy. Its purpose is more modest: the pursuit of America’s interests or those of its friends.

Obama is a realist in the image of Britain’s 19th-century statesman Lord Palmerston, who once declared: “We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

What inhabits Obama is the conviction that the United States “is still the biggest power but not the decisive power,” said Jonathan Eyal, a British foreign policy analyst. “And Americans will only accept that with time and with bumping against buffers.”

This is not the stuff of heroic American narrative, of shining citadels or beacons to mankind. Obama, subtly but persistently, is talking down American exceptionalism in the name of mutual interests and mutual respect, two favorite phrases. He is downsizing American ambition — the eventual Afghan exit is now pre-scripted along neither-defeat-nor-victory Iraqi lines — in the name of American rebuilding.

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Israel-Palestine Talks: So What is a Settlement? (Stone)

This weekend a friend suggested that, when her interest and that of others returned to the Middle East because of developments such as the launch of Israel-Palestine direct talks, it might be helpful to provide essential background information.

Her wish is our command. Andrea Stone, in AOL News, offers a handy guide to the key issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem:

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Neighborhoods. Colonies. Facts on the ground. Suburbs. Unauthorized outposts. Jerusalem.

Whatever you call Jewish areas outside of Israel's 1967 border, the peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that opened at the White House will have to confront what to do with a half-million Israelis living in disputed territory that Palestinians want for their new state.

There are other intractable core issues, such as refugees and security, that must be worked out before a peace deal can be signed. But the question of settlements, which are seen by some Israelis as bargaining chips in a future land-for-peace agreement with the Palestinians, may be the most difficult to tackle. And they could end talks even before they seriously begin.

A 10-month moratorium on settlement construction, imposed in November under pressure from an Obama administration eager to set favorable conditions to restart peace negotiations, runs out Sept. 26. Netanyahu has said he won't extend the freeze even though Abbas has made clear he'll walk out if construction resumes.

Never mind that construction never really ended: Projects that had already been approved or started were grandfathered in. Schools, community centers and other public buildings were exempted from the moratorium, as was East Jerusalem. And when violations are added to the concrete mix, there has been no actual let-up in the pace of construction.

"Negotiating over the future of the West Bank while still building settlements is akin to two people talking about splitting a pizza pie while one of the parties is nibbling on the pie," said Ori Nir of the group Americans for Peace Now. "It is nibbling away at a future Palestinian state."

But Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., told AOL News this week that the Palestinians should not "demand our concession on a core issue as a precondition for negotiating," noting that "we believe that the settlement issue is part of the borders issue, which is a core issue to be discussed only in direct talks."

So, on the eve of direct negotiations between the two sides, here is a primer on this most vexing of issues:

What is a 'settlement'? Like most things in the Middle East, there is no simple answer.

Before the United Nations voted to partition Palestine in 1947, the word settlement, or yishuv in Hebrew, referred to Jewish communities established before the state of Israel came into being.

The word took on a different meaning after the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights from neighboring Arab states. Jewish Israelis soon moved across the border, or Green Line, to build residential areas they called settlements but the Arabs called colonies.

Kfar Etzion, which had been a Jewish community before 1948 and was destroyed in Israel's war of independence, was the first settlement in late 1967. The next year a group of religious Zionists moved into a hotel in Hebron, the vanguard for a population that would come to include four settlers killed by Hamas this week.

Where are the settlements? Throughout the West Bank. They range from dense urban neighborhoods to isolated hilltop trailers to small villages to sprawling new cities.

Two of the three largest settlement blocs, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion, lie close to Jerusalem and are viewed by many Israelis as suburbs they hope to keep in a land swap with the Palestinians. A third bloc, Ariel, sticks into the northern West Bank like a finger and is more controversial. Its new cultural center is the target of an actors' boycott.

Also close by the Green Line are several recently built ultra-Orthodox cities, including Modi'in Illit. They have attracted religious settlers in search of more affordable housing for families that typically can have 10 or more children.

Since the 1990s, about 100 illegal outposts have sprung up in isolated areas of the West Bank. Unlike other settlements, they have not been authorized by the Israeli government, although a 2004 report found officials often look the other way.

How many settlers are there? According to the group Peace Now, which keeps the most comprehensive database based on government information and its own research, there are about 290,000 settlers in 120 settlements in the West Bank. In addition, there are another 190,000 Israelis living beyond the Green Line in east Jerusalem.

Israel does not count Jerusalem residents as settlers because it annexed the eastern part of the city and some adjoining areas in 1967 and considers itself to have sovereignty there. The international community and the Palestinians, who want the eastern half of the city for their capital, don't recognize the annexations.

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