Iran News Round Up

A selection of the latest news stories and editorials published in Iranian news outlets, compiled by Ali Alfoneh and Ahmad Majidyar. To receive this daily newsletter, please subscribe online.

(E) = Article in English

Politics

• Digarban quoting Raja News discloses the names of former Ahmadinejad ministers who wrote to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to suggest creation of a nongovernment body in order to correct the government’s missteps. 
• Ya Lasarat al-Hossein stops print edition but continues online. 

Diplomacy

• Non-Alignment Movement summit in Tehran:

• Ahmadinejad receives foreign ministers attending the NAM summit in Tehran.
• [E] Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar described political and diplomatic solution as the best possible option to settle the nuclear standoff between Tehran and the West. 
• [E] A member of the Iranian parliament stated that participation of the representatives of 120 countries as well as the UN Chief, Ban Ki-moon, in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Tehran proves failure of the US diplomacy. 

Military and Security

• Farda News releases another part of the Andisheh-ye Pouya interview with Intelligence Ministry co-founder Said Hajjarian:
  • "At the time of the revolution, I returned to military service but found out everyone had deserted. They suggested that I be the commander of the Gendarmerie Corps of Engineers, but I said I did not want engineering and joined the [Revolutionary] Committee of Naziabad... The kids at the Esteqlal Committee asked why I had done so and invited me to join the Joint Force Command, so I joined the [Revolutionary] Committee at the Second Bureau of the Army [Intelligence]... In the Army we would identify those who had people the people during the martial law and would send them to the court. Was it wrong? Was it wrong to deal with those who had killed the people...? It was [Prime Minister Mehdi] Bazargan who officially made me an intelligence official. He issued a decree for me [to join] the Navy Counter Intelligence. I enrolled in the Army Counter Intelligence towards the end of 1979, even before receiving the decree from Bazargan... I was not interested in intelligence work, but the truth is that we sat with the kids from the Mojahedin-e Enqelab [faction] and analyzed the threats to the revolution. We asked from which quarter the revolution could be dealt a blow. From which place would there be the threat of a coup d'état? The Army Joint Command? Which unit within it? We had to study the files in the Second Bureau of the Army to see who could possibly engage in a coup and we could identify them. Our intelligence work aimed at safeguarding the revolution. In the beginning of the revolution everyone had gone somewhere. There were those who were looking for money. They went to the palaces. There were those who craved guns, they went to the garrisons and stole G3. There were those who were looking for files. They stormed the SAVAK to erase their own footprint. [This is what] Tudeh and Hojjatiyeh [Charitable Society] members did. Mojahedin-e Enqelab kids went to the Second Bureau of the Army, because of the analysis which I mentioned."

Economy

• [E] An Iranian official underlined failure of the U.S. and E.U. ban on Iranian crude supplies, announcing that the country has increased daily exports to over 2 million barrels this week. 

Religion, Society and Culture

• Iranian television censors the Jigar character in the popular puppet show Kolah-Qermezi [red hat] because of its "negative educational impact" on children. 

Photos of the Day

• Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran.