The Latest from Iran (17 August): The Fundamentalist Attack on Ahmadinejad

1948 GMT: Oil Watch. An admission of challenges for Iran's energy industries? Minister of Oil Rostam Qassemi has reportedly said that he needs "special authorisations" to circumvent sanctions and that delays in oil and gas projects are a fundamental problem.

1915 GMT: Unity Watch. Digarban makes some provocative claims that the conservative/principlist quest for unity is not going quite as planned.

According to the site, Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, the head of the Expediency Council, has rejected the conditions of the Islamic Constancy Front --- propelled by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi --- for cooperation with the "7+8" unity front in the next Parliamentary elections.

In particular, Mahdavi Kani has resisted the elimination of representatives of Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani and Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer-Qalibaf representatives from the 7+8 Committee, named because of its expansion to 15 members to include different conservative and principlist factions.

MP Asadollah Badamchian has backed up Mahdavi Kani, saying that the Constancy Front has taken a strict position and will fail if it does not cooperate with the 7+8. Mohsen Yahyavi of the Islamic Engineers party said the Constancy Front "should estimate its abilities cautiously and make no mistakes" to move with the hardliners' project more easily.

And Habibollah Bourbour of the Community of Islamic Revolution Loyalists went even farther: he declared that the Constancy Front wants to eliminate popular figures from the 7+8 and is fed by a "deviant current".

1800 GMT: The Liberation of the People of Britain. Alireza Panahian, a member of the Ammar base of Iran's security, has told students: "You have to eat less, sleep less because big tasks are awaiting you. We have to solve all cultural problems of universities until next year, and develop plans for each British city because the West has reached the end of the line."

1727 GMT: Back from a break for a political prisoner update...

According to RAHANA, Blogger Hossein Ronaghi Maleki has been transferred from Evin prison to Taleghani hospital after he was severely beaten by IRGC members. According to Maleki's father,

“They wanted to drag my son to prison. The person who attacked Hossein was a Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) member. The IRGC has become so powerful that [its members] can do as they please with the prisoners. Hossein’s life is not safe in prison and ours is not safe outside prison. Hossein gets brutally attacked and beaten in prison and we are constantly threatened and harassed.”

He added, “I ask from all human rights institutions to pay attention to my son’s situation. I am desperately worried for my son’s life. His situation is extremely worrisome. His condition is very grim.”

Maleki suffers from kidney disease and has already undergone two operations in the last several months. He has been in prison since December 13, 2009.

1458 GMT: MP Mousalreza Servati stated today that, according to the Statistics Center, the inflation is currently 19.6%. He said that these numbers differed from the Central Bank of Iran's assessment that the inflation rate is 16.3%. He has demanded that the Statistics Center's data be published.

1426 GMT: Veterans Watch. Five hundred former prisoners of war have gathered in front of government office, demanding the payment of support that was reconfirmed by Parliament last year.

1423 GMT: Campus Watch. Several students of Kermanshah Razi University have been sentenced to six months' probation for protesting against the speech of former Minister of Culture Saffar Harandi.

1332 GMT: Currency Watch. Mehr reports that the Minister of Economy will be summoned by Parliament to report on the reasons for a sudden weaking of the Iranian toman against foreign currencies and subsequent inflation.

According to Mehr, the official rate is 1059 tomans to the dollar but the free market rate is 1177:1. Gold prices are also continuing to rise.

1330 GMT: Economy Watch. Mardomsalari reports that the Ardel industrial group, manufacturer of home appliances, has shut down after half a century, leaving its workers without employment.

1323 GMT: Oil Watch. Minister of Oil Rostam Qassemi has ordered the relaunch of the first phase of a $10 billion project in the Kish gas field, halted for 17 months because contractors opposed the plan of the National Oil Company.

NIOC asserts that it has full control of the project now.

1319 GMT: Reformist Watch. Mehdi Karroubi's advisor Esmail Gerami-Moghaddam has said there are "no conditions for healthy elections" in Iran at present. He noted that the office of Karroubi's Etemade Melli Party, raided and barred in September 2009 was still shut, and meetings were impossible.

1310 GMT: Revisiting the Election. It is common for conservative MP Ali Motahari to rebuke the Government, but an attack over the 2009 Presidential election is notable.

Motahari harshly criticised post-election violence, saying the rally of more than a million people on 25 Khordad (15 June 2009, three days after the vote) was people's normal reaction. It was a mistake to ban the gathering.

Speaking on current events, Motahari said some hardliners do not accept freedom of speech as mandated by Iran's system of clerical supremacy, And talking specifically, he asserted the case of the death of activist Haleh Sahabi, who died during a confrontation with security forces at her father's funeral, was still open.

1255 GMT: Economy Watch. MP Mousalreza Servati said Parliament's Economy Committee had met the head of Iran's Statistics Center, who revealed inflation is now 19.6% --- rather than the 16.3 % put out by the Central Bank.

Prominent MP Ahmad Tavakoli and other legislators are insisting that the Statistics Center must publish all data for the public as well, but they say the head of the center believes that presenting the information to Parliament is sufficient.

1250 GMT: Corruption Watch. MP Fazel Mousavi, a member of Parliament's Article 90 Commission supervising Government activity, has repeated that the fraud and corruption file of 1st Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi is not closed and is still under investigation.

Mousavi said four complaints against President Ahamdinejad should be addressed, and Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has said that he will discuss them if the Supreme Leader gives his approval. 

1140 GMT: Today's Liberation of the People of Britain. Almost 240 of Parliament's 290 members have published a statement demanding that the United Nations take a serious position against the oppression of the British people.

1130 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Former President has put out another of his slightly-coded challenges to the Government --- and, one may argue, the Supreme Leader ---  saying that "clinging to power with slander, lies and injustice is not the way of Imams".

Rafsanjani added, "Injustice and lies are not excused by a holy goal."

0649 GMT: Nuclear Front. Meeting a Russian official in Tehran on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that Iran welcomes Moscow's move to establish closer bilateral ties.

The comment, after a discussion with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, was in the context of Russia’s proposal on 13 July for a “step-by-step” plan on Iran’s nuclear program, with Tehran's moves on co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency matched by a partial removal of sanctions.

Salehi, however, was cautious in his language on the specific proposal, expressing hope that the commitments in the plan would be set out in such a way that both sides could implement them.

The Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, also met with Patrushev on Monday and Tuesday.

He said, “We welcome the Russians’ proposals for holding negotiations with the aim of cooperation.”

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters on Tuesday that Iran will study Russia’s proposal when it is given the full details: “We have not received the plan officially and completely.”

0646 GMT: Family Matters. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly dismissed his brother Davoud as Representative of the President and Secretary of the Passive Defense Committee.

0640 GMT: Scott Lucas writes in from the road...

While Iranian politics in recent days has been dominated by the dispute over hijab --- with a leading pro-Ahmadinejad newspaper accused of waging a "liberal" campaign against it --- it is helpful to recall that the battle within the establishment is being fought on a wide front.

Mohammad Mohammadi, a leading member of the editorial board of Kayhan helps us with the task. Speaking to the political movement Ansar Hezbollah, Mohammadi said President Ahmadinejad's team was trying to eliminate "fundamentalism" with structural changes in the Islamic Republic regime.

Mohammadi alleged that "the most important program of the deviant current was to be close to America and to negotiate" with the US.

While the deviant current believed the Iranian people supported this, its "most important mission" was "to deface fundamentalism" with "the most important project" of changing the structures of the internal politics, giving Ahmadinejad the greatest possible freedom of action. This would be complemented in the cultural arena with a liberalism defacing the values of the Islamic Republic, replacing these with "new invented" values.

Mohammadi added a provocative explanation, in the context of this supposed mission, for Ahmadinejad's 11-day "retreat" from politics this spring after his failure to dismiss the Minister of Intelligence.

Mohammadi claimed that, with Ahmadinejad's seclusion, "the deviant current" was sending a message to those in the middle class who had voted for Mir Hosein Mousavi in the 2009 Presidential election: "If you are looking for someone who opposes the regime, you will not find any figure better than Ahmadinejad."

To those who voted for Ahmadinejad in 2009, the message was "we want to work for you but the regime restricts us and does not allow us to work more for you", while to foreigners, the President's camp was saying, "We are the absolute decision-makers in Iran and we are not influenced by the decisions of other authorities."

Mohammadi concluded, "We are at a two-year distance from the 2009 sedition, but in terms of political and social realities, we still live with the same seditions."