The Latest from Iran (11 October): Persistence

1900 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. As news emerges of the Supreme Leader's smack-down of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani over Islamic Azad University, Rafsanjani's brother Mohammed Hashemi has tipped off more worries. He declared that their party Kargozaran had committed no mistakes which would justify shutting it down, but "radical currents" could not bear parties like Kargozaran and want to eliminate them.

1830 GMT: Bazaar Strikes. Tagheer claims that the gold market in Mashhad is still on strike despite threats of prosecution of sellers.

1810 GMT: Today's All-is-Well Moment. First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, meeting province governors, has said people should believe that the government has more foreign currency and gold reserves than normal.

Rahimi added that subsidy cuts aim at just distribution of wealth, and there will be no inflation, as that is only a rumour spread by enemies.He claimed the challenge of sanctions will be met by activating projects in the South Pars gas and oil field, creating 1.1 million new jobs. 

Indeed, Rahimi is so confident that --- like the President --- he has filed a lawsuit against conservative MP Ali Motahhari and several other legislators.

1655 GMT: Propaganda Alert. Fars News claims that four members of the Mothers of Mourning have been arrested and confessed to Zahra Rahnavard, activist and wife of Mir Hossein Mousavi, having ties to the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq.

1630 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Ali Asghar Gharavi, one of seven leading members of the Freedom Movement of Iran, has reportedly been released from prison. 

The son and lawyer of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death for adultery, have been arrested as they were about to be interviewed by two German journalists.

The journalists, with the weekly Bild am Sonntag, were also detained as they began the filming of Ashtiani's son, Sajad Ghaderzadeh, and lawyer Houtan Kian.

The International Campaign against Stoning said, "The security forces raided the lawyer’s office where an interview was taking place and arrested all four. Their whereabouts are currently unknown and no news has been received of their situation since their arrests."

Iranian state media, quoting Iran Attorney General Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, reported that two foreigners were arrested Sunday while interviewing Ghaderzadeh but did not mention that he and Kian had been detained.

1300 GMT: Khamenei's "Definite and Final Opinion". Press TV coyly presents the news, which we had learned through correspondents, of the Supreme Leader's ruling on control of Islamic Azad University:

The final result was that the endowment has "major legal and jurisprudential problems,” Ayatollah Khamenei further said in his letter [to President Ahmadinejad and former President Hashemi Rafsanjani].

The problems concern the legitimacy of the endowment as well as the competence of the university's founders to do so, the Leader further explained.

The disputes surrounding the Islamic Azad University emerged after the Board of Trustees headed by Ayatollah Rafsanjani announced last year that it had endowed all movable and immovable properties of the university.

The article is too shy to note that the challenge to the Board came from the President's office, via the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution --- it notes the SCCR "changed a number of members of the founding board" without mentioning that the replacement were Ahmadinejad allies --- and it does not approach the political significance of the Supreme Leader's declaration.

We fill the gap with a snap analysis putting the developments in the context of the Supreme Leader's important political trip to Qom this week.

0800 GMT: Subsidies Watch. William Yong of The New York Times parallels our ongoing coverage of the dispute over subsidy cuts and its political effects:

After suppressing the political protests that followed last year’s disputed presidential election, Iran’s security forces are now on the alert for a new kind of domestic threat — strikes and civil unrest provoked by planned cuts in fuel subsidies.

Top police officials have issued a series of warnings this month against the threat of an overflow of tensions following the cuts, which some fear could set off a chain reaction of price increases and economic hardships in a country already stricken by high inflation and widespread unemployment.

0715 GMT: Universities Watch. After months of often heated conflict over the future of Islamic Azad University, Iran's largest system of campuses, the Islamic Republic News Agency reports that the Supreme Letter has sent a "definite and final opinion" to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who continues to play a  major role in its supervision, and President Ahmadinejad.

The Ahmadinejad Government attempted this summer, against the wishes of Parliament, to take control of the system.

We are trying to establish the significance of the Supreme Leader's opinion.

0645 GMT: Medicine Cabinet. Kalemeh reports turmoil in pharmacies because state insurance is not covering their costs. Patients are having to pay for drugs, even if they present prescriptions for free treatment. 

0635 GMT: A Revolutionary Guard Economy. Yesterday we reported on the launching of one of the largest transport projects in Iranian history, a motorway from Qom in the centre of the country to Mashhad in the northeast, overseen by Khatam al-Anbia, the engineering firm of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.

Today the news is that the President has ordered Khatam al-Anbia to arrange the largest water transport project in the Middle East. The IRGC firm will lay the infrastructure to move 500 million cubic metres of water per year from the Caspian Sea to Semnan in northern Iran. 

0630 GMT: Bazaar Watch. On the eve of the introduction of subsidy cuts, Ali Mojdehipour, the head of the government's enforcement (taazirat) organisation, has said, "We are ready to confront possible offenders in the Bazaar." 

0625 GMT: Another Right Removed? The Iran judiciary has abolished Article 18, passed in 2006 and granting the "right of appeal" to court decisions. Officials said this would "smoothen judicial procedures".

0530 GMT: We begin this morning with a special feature on two weekend interventions by political prisoners, a call by 14 journalists and activists for a national truth-finding commission about the 2009 elections and their aftermath and a letter from journalist/filmmaker Mohammad Reza Nourizad setting out 28 questions to the Supreme Leader.

Meanwhile, news comes through that labour activist Reza Shahabi has been released on bail after 120 days in detention.