1500 GMT: The Gathering of National Unity, a largely Sunni organisation which emerged in 2011 in response to the protests challenging the regime, is holding a rally today in front of the Al Fateh Mosque:
The problem with harsh sanctions is the speculative nature of the exercise of implementing often inhuman measures on entire populations for the deeds of their undemocratic, unelected, and dictatorial rulers. Suppose these sanctions are implemented. We do not have an example to show that a country like Iran will halt its nuclear programme. However, we do have a North Korea, hobbled by sanctions for years and attempting to become economically self-sufficient, where the regime chooses to make its people suffer to attain nuclear weapons.
Abdulhadi Alkhawaja may or may not die. His daughter and Nabeel Rajab may or may not be released. Other activists may or may not join them.
I can't predict what will happen, but I can say this about the likelihood of events going one way or the other. The regime is gambling that it can tighten the screw of repression without paying a price in its contracts and links, if not its reputation, in the international community. Silence from that community raises the likelihood that the gamble --- despite the continued protests --- will pay off.
Reuters' report on the execution of Majid Jamali Fashi
Majid Jamali Fashi did not seal his fate by speaking with the US Embassy in Baku in August 2009, only for his words to appear publicly months later. That fate may have influenced by an Iranian official who made inaccurate guesses about the source in the original WikiLeaks document or who thought that, regardless of the truth, it could be a prop for Jamali Fashi's arrest, trial, and execution. Given the absence of public evidence in this case, we will never know.
But then, at least for me, there is the bigger story, which is similar to that of others in the Islamic Republic. Majid Jamali Fashi lost his life as an act in the continuing political theatre, both for the domestic script and for that of Iran's relations with Israel and the US. When Iranian officials needed to establish that they were doing something about the slayings of the country's scientists, he played his part as the confessing suspect. When they needed to show their continuing strength and determination, amid the pressure of sanctions and US and Israeli rhetoric, the kickboxer was sentenced to die. And when the Islamic Republic needed to show that its version of justice would be done, in the face of the "enemy", he was hung.
1948 GMT: The Bahrain Card. More about the regime's propaganda offensive based on the (now dormant) Saudi initative for "union" with Bahrain....
One of the Tehran Friday Prayers leaders, Ayatollah Emami Kashani, has said that the Bahraini people, "thanks to their alertness", will not allow the US "and its mercenaries" to implement the union.
Far more colourful is the declaration of the head of the Basij militia, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, “Al Khalifa and Al Saud regimes should come to realize that their American masters are simply looking for new lackeys in the region. What happened ultimately to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Saddam Hussein, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak and other dictators, now awaits them.”
1939 GMT:Syria. It has been another bloody day in Syria. Nationwide, 27 people were killed by security forces, according to the LCCS:
9 martyrs in Homs, 7 martyr in Idlib, 3 martyrs in Hama, 2 martyrs in Daraa. 3 martyrs in Damascus Suburbs "Douma- Beit Taima- Hamoria", 2 martyrs in Aleppo, and a martyr in Damascus.
At this hour there are even more reports of violence. There is heavy gunfire reported in Deir Ez Zor and al Bukamal, there are reports of heavy gunfire in Azaz (north of Aleppo), and there are reports of heavy fighting between the FSA and the Syrian army in northwest Idlib - this video shows gunfire in Sarmada, Idlib, near the border with Turkey:
Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 10:43 | 
