Latest from Iran (1 September): A Defiant Mehdi Karroubi Found

1445 GMT: Environment Watch. Hojatoleslam Gholamreza Hassani, the Friday Prayer leader of Orumiyeh, has suddenly taken notice of the crisis of Lake Orumiyeh: he warned in his Eid ul-Fitr address that the lake will dry up in four years and that people's demands to deal with the situation are leagal and righteous.

An EA Correspondent notes sharply, "I guess Hassani got orders from the Supreme Leader's office to calm down the situation."

1435 GMT: Cartoon of Day. Maya Neyestani presents his vision of the drying-up of Iran's largest lake, Lake Orumiyeh, turning to salt because of drought, dams, misguided irrigation, and development:

1420 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch (Easy Come, Easy Go Edition). Radio Zameneh notes that even as Iranian authorities were granting three-day furloughs to prominent reformist political prisoners Mostafa Tajzadeh, Ghorbanali Behzadannejad and Javad Emam, the regime was punishing three other activists.

Women's rights activists Mehrnoosh Etemadi and Hayedeh Tabesh, members of the One Million Signatures Campaign to End Discrimination, were given nine months in prison, suspended for three years, for “propaganda against the regime". And student activist Saeed Jalaifar has been sentenced to three years in prison for propaganda against the regime and interviews to foreign media outlets.

1410 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Peyke Iran sees significance in the absence of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani from the Supreme Leader's official iftar at the end of Ramadan, claiming also that Rafsanjani did not attend the latest meeting of the Expediency Council which he chairs.

1350 GMT: Unity Watch. The Los Angeles Times has picked up on the Supreme Leader's speech on Wednesday for Eid ul-Fitr at the end of Ramadan.

Whereas our analysis in Wednesday's LiveBlog focused on Khamenei's open reference to political tensions within the establishment and his warning against conflict in the 2012 Parliamentary elections, the Times goes for the "half-full" reading of the speech: "Khamenei Urges Reconciliation", both with his appeal to Government officials and his follow-up to the reformists after the amnesty of almost 100 political prisoners last weekend.

And the Associated Press goes for a completely different angle, ignoring the internal dimensions of the Supreme Leader's remarks and focusing on issues outside the country: "Iran's top leader warned the Arab world Wednesday not to allow Western powers and Israel to 'confiscate' the region's pro-reform uprisings, in comments that appear to reflect the Islamic republic's unease about their standing in a profoundly altered Middle East."

The AP piece cites this quote from Khamenei:

Muslim nations in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen or other countries need vigilance today. They should not allow enemies confiscate the victories they've achieved. They should not forget that those who have come to the scene in Libya (U.S. and NATO) today and consider themselves owners of the uprising are the same people who used to sit and drink with those who once suppressed the Libyan nation.

1340 GMT: A Split in the Revolutionary Guards? Digarban is putting great stock in a statement by Fakhr-Ali Gholizadeh, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander in Orumiyeh in northwest Iran that the "relationship between the 1st and 2nd generation [in the IRGC is not adjusted because of differing views".

Gholizadeh says the generational gap is "normal" because of work problems and the burden of missions, but Digarban believes the commander is confirming rifts within IRGC that have been developing since the crackdown on dissent after the 2009 Presidential election.

0540 GMT: Yesterday, Al Jazeera English was claiming (without a named source) that Mehdi Karroubi had been moved to solitary confinement. However, Karroubi's outlet Saham News is reporting today that the cleric's family saw him for the first time in seven months. The family said that he was fine, in good health, and in good spirits.

Hossein Karroubi [the cleric's son] made the following statement regarding the visitation with his father: "I had not seen my father for almost 7 months, since the very first day when he was put under house arrest. Today security agents suddenly agreed to allow me, my family and my mother to visit with my father and we saw him at the building where he has been kept for the past month at around noon."

According to the report, Karroubi is still refusing to give up a single political position, despite the regime's tactic of placing him, his wife Fatemeh, fellow opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard, under house arrest. Karroubi still maintains that the 2009 President election was rigged, and he restated that those who oppress the people should be held accountable:

The regime and its intelligence forces have become very well acquainted with my spirit and fully understand my position and my opinions. As a result, they realize that they are not in any position to provide me with any guidance or suggestions, let alone demand that I engage in such things as writing a confession letter.

Security officials also claimed that they will move Karroubi to a "better place" within 2 weeks, possibly allowing his wife to join him there. This indirectly confirmed what we have been reporting since the first day of Ramadan, that Karroubi and his wife had been separated and he had been moved to a new apartment, where he is fed meals by the Ministry of Intelligence. An EA Correspondent remarks, "Must be a kind of "safe house", without a courtyard, etc. --- unbelievable how they treat a former Speaker of the Majlis...

Updates will be scarce for a few hours, with Scott Lucas on the road and James Miller asleep, but we'll be monitoring this situation when we start up again. As always, thanks for leaving news in the comments section.