The Latest from Iran (29 December): "Can You Show Us The Door To Heaven?"

1735 GMT: Tuesday's Executions. Fereshteh Ghazi posts a summary of her interviews with the family and lawyer of Ali Saremi.

1720 GMT: Un-Free Press. Chief investor Ali Khodabakhsh and editor-in-chief Ahmad Gholami of the reformist newspaper Shargh have been released on $10,000 bail each. The two were among six Shargh staff arrested during the week of 7 December, reportedly for an article on National Students Day.

1700 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Execution Edition). A nephew of Ali Saremi, who was executed on Tuesday, has reportedly been detained. Ali Saremi's widow Mahin said Mohammad Saremi was seized in Tehran after he displayed a picture of his uncle on the door of the family home as a sign of mourning.

Mahin Saremi said eight other relatives, as well as friends, who were detained on Tuesday outside Evin Prison where Saremi was hanged, have been released after giving written pledges not to gather again in front of the facility.

1500 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Allameh Tabatabei student Maisam Baigmohamadi and Ali Arshadi, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, have been released. Both were detained last December during Ashura demonstrations.

1435 GMT: Economy Watch. Khabar Online, via Saham News, reports that the price of fabric in Tehran's Grand Bazaar has doubled.

1425 GMT: Answering the Reformists (cont.). The onslaught continues against former President Mohammad Khatami for daring to set three conditions (see 0915 GMT) for participating in future elections. Javan, the outlet of the Revolutionary Guards, has no less than six articles criticising Khatami as a leader of sedition. One calls for him to be arrested.

1400 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. More arrests in Iranian Kurdistan: poet Rahim Loghmani and political activist Naseh Nakhshbani have been arrested in Sanandaj.

1355 GMT: Remembering. On Tuesday, students at Elm-o-Sanat University gathered to remember classmates who were killed a year earlier in the demonstrations on the religous day of Ashura:

1110 GMT: Subsidy Cuts Watch. More twists and turns....

MP Askar Jalalian has warned that, if the government does not support fishermen in areas such as Bushehr Province in southwest Iran, then the country will have to import fish. Mohammad-Hassan Aboutorabi-Fard, the Deputy Speaker, announced that some areas of agriculture sector will receive fuel with a 70% subsidy.

1010 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Detained student activists Bahareh Hedayat and Mahdieh Golroo have ended their hunger strikes due to the poor condition of their health.

Hedayat, seized in December 2009, is serving a 9 1/2-year sentence. Golroo has been given a term of two years and four months.

0955 GMT: Where's Mahmoud? President Ahmadinejad is continuing his public-relations tour in Alborz Province, using a meeting with families of those killed in the 1980s war with Ira1, to denounce "global powers" for their use of "weapons against humanity".

More intriguing were Ahmadinejad's remarks to intellectuals and managers, in which he declared, "We plan to set a system and develop an Islamic and Iranian model for planning...We don't want to become a country similar to Western states."

The President's invocation of "Islamic and Iranian" is a careful manoeuvre between clerics and his Government. His chief aide, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, has been harshly criticised by senior religious figures and politicians for his emphasis on an "Iranian" model for other countries to emulate.

0950 GMT: Still Fighting the Election. Addressing a crowd in Gilan Province in northern Iran, the Supreme Leader declared that Iran had put down the "big challenge" of "sedition" over the June 2009 Presidential election: "As the Iranian nation showed its initiative and bravery during the imposed war [with Iraq in the 1980s), it also defused the enemies' sedition in this eight-month soft war."

0925 GMT: The Attack on the Clerics. A punishment has finally been handed out for last September's assault on the Qoba Mosque in Shiraz, the base for Government critic Ayatollah Dastgheib.

Hojatoleslam Voldan, the head of the Policy-Making Office for Friday Preachers in Fars Province, has been fined and sentenced to three years exile from Shiraz and Fars Province. Voldan had been named, by Arshama3's Blog, as a leading figure amongst the 41 known participants in the attack.

0915 GMT: Answering the Reformists. Conservatives and "hard-liners" have issued sharp responses to former President Mohammad Khatami's three conditions --- freedom for political prisoners, observation of the Constitution, and freedom in the campaign and balloting --- for participation in future elections.

Alireza Zakani said there should be comment emphasising the 2009 fitna (sedition). Mohammad Nabi Habibi of the Motalefeh Party wants a declaration that there was no rigged Presidential election. Others said Khamati should face questions on his Government from 1997 to 2005.

0845 GMT: Film Corner. The Iranian Filmmakers Association, expressing its surprise about the heavy sentences handed down to directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, has asked the head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, for clemency.

Both Panahi and Rasoulof, arrested in a raid in March, have been given six-year prison terms.

0840 GMT: Media Oversight. Yesterday we noted that the Parliament had rebuffed, by a 104-94 vote, an attempt to investigate Iran's Audit Office during the 7th Majlis (2004-2008). The head of the office during that time was the current 1st Vice President, Mohammad Reza Rahimi. Elyas Naderan, the MP leading the call for an investigation, has accused Rahimi of using his position to make false charges.

Iran's Press TV also noted the Parliamentary vote. There was one omission in the story, however.

Rahimi's name.

0835 GMT: The President's Right-Hand Man. Tehran Bureau posts a selection of comments from activists, bloggers, and "people on the street" about President Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai. 

Rahim-Mashai's recent outburst over the media, "They lie and say I appoint ministers. The door of the website and magazine that spreads such lies opens to hell," brings this response from an anonymous reader:

"Can you show us the door to heaven?"

0830 GMT: Picture of the Day. Zahra Rahnavard, activist and wife of Mir Hossein Mousavi, visits the family of Meysam Ebadi, the youngest post-election victim:

The 16-year-old Ebadi was killed in June 2009. Ebadi's father told Rahnavard:

I just want them [the authorities] to identify and try my son's killer. They must tell me why my kid was killed or what he was guilty of. Should anyone who says "Where is my vote" be killed? My son wasn’t even eligible to vote; but even if he had said that, should he have been killed? I want to know why they killed a sixteen-year-old boy on the street and in broad daylight.