The Latest from Iran (6 January): Spying Fantasy, Death Sentence Reality

2100 GMT: Sanctions Watch. The Financial Times reviews the Washington-led effort to shut down the operations of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, "US Takes Aim at Iranian Shipping".

2055 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Two activists from the Tehran Bus Workers Union in Iran, Morteza Komsari and Aliakbar Nazariis, have been released in prison. Four others --- Gholamreza Gholamhosseini, Ebrahim Madadi, Mansour Osanloo, and Reza Shahabi --- remain in detention.

1720 GMT: Striking at the Lies. Alireza Beheshti, Chief of Staff to Mir Hossein Mousavi during the 2009 campaign, has written an open letter challenging the regime's line of "sedition" around the Presidential election as a "flood of slander and insult".

1715 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Morteza Haji, Minister of Education in the Khatami Government, has been arrested.

Haji was also detained for 16 days in January 2010.

1645 GMT: Brit-Bashing. I was interviewed this morning by Iranian state radio. The topic....

The death sentence on Zahra Bahrami? The subsidy cuts? Political tensions between the President and leading conservative politicians?

No. The vital issue was "The Liberal Democrat Party, Tuition Fees, and Has Violence Against Student Protest Affected Britain's International Reputation?"

Completely by coincidence, Kazem Jalali of Parliament's National Security Commission has predicted that the plan to cut Iran’s ties with Britain will soon be discussed in the Majlis.

1545 GMT: Welfare Not Faring Well. Rah-e-Sabz, drawing from the Iranian Labor News Agency, claims the National Welfare Organization is on the verge of closure because of unpaid government debts of 20 billion toman (about $20 million).

1540 GMT: A Show of Support. In the past three months, Iranians have filed 70,000 complaints against government offices.

1530 GMT: Spreading the Word. Golnaz Esfandiari reports that last week, at a reception in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tehran’s Allameh Tabatabai University, about 400 participants found printed copies of the online opposition newspaper Kalemeh on their seats.

A lecturer of political sociology said he was surprised when he found the newspaper on his seat and initially tried to hide it. However, he saw that others did not seem surprised: some put the leaflets in their pockets, and some said they already had the issue and offered it to others.

The lecturer said:

I was amazed by seeing these leaflets. Especially when what you see on the Internet is about new arrests of students, political activists, and journalists, when what you see on television is nothing but the overall victory of the state over its opposition.

But the reality on the ground is that this general dissatisfaction exists among certain sections of the public. And after a year and a half of severe repression, it is only seeking new ways to project itself and pursue its demands.

A Ph.D. student at the reception added, “Whenever there is a public gathering, something which is quite rare these days in Tehran, especially inside universities or other cultural centers, you just see that in the public’s mind and heart, the demand for change in nearly every aspect of society is as powerful as it used to be."

1245 GMT: Financial Management Watch. Rahmani Fazli, the head of Iran's Audit Office, claims that income from oil sales is $100 billion but the country's liquidity is only $300 million.

1240 GMT: Political Battlefield (2) --- A. Tavakoli v. E. Rahim-Mashai. Leading MP Ahmad Tavakoli has presented document claiming to show how the President's chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, has "infiltrated" the operations of the Foreign Ministry and oil companies.

1230 GMT: Political Battlefield (1) --- S. Larijani v. pro-Ahmadinejad MP. Hamid Rasaei, a staunch supporter of the President, has been summoned to court over an alleged $1.8 million book voucher fraud when he was the head of the Ministry of Culture in Qom in 2008.

Rasaei, who was verbally attacked by fellow MPs in the Majlis, staged a sit-in Tuesday night in his Parliament office to protest against the conduct of the case by the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani.

1225 GMT: Cyber-Watch. The headline from Deutsche Welle is blunt: despite the declaration of the Iranian Government that it is going to develop alternative search engines, networks, and websites --- thus avoiding dependence on the "West" --- "Iran's Development of Broadband in Coma".

0910 GMT: Suggestion of the Day. Joel Brinkley, who apparently once won a Pulitzer Prize, has a solution for Iran and the Middle East:

One reason the United States has not bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities is the fear that the populace might rally around the government, angry about an attack by “the great Satan.”

But an airstrike by the neighbors would carry a different political message. Most Iranians would probably welcome it. So what are the Gulf states waiting for?

0900 GMT: We open today with two features which juxtapose the regime-boosted spectre of the "foreign threat" and the reality of detentions and punishments, to the point of death.

We offer a message to the media who are getting excited about the tale from one Iranian newspaper of "American Woman Spying Through Her Teeth". Alongside that, we feature the case --- which has not generated much excitement --- of Iranian-Dutch national Zahra Bahrami, who was sentenced to death on Sunday.

Fereshteh Ghazi interviews the lawyer for Bahrami about the case.