Iran News Round Up

A selection of the latest news stories and editorials published in Iranian news outlets, compiled by Ali Alfoneh, Ahmad Majidyar and Michael Rubin.  To receive this daily newsletter, please subscribe online.
 
(E) = Article in English

Diplomacy

• Ali Saeedlou, vice president for foreign affairs, received Syria's deputy prime minister in Tehran, and called for expansion of trade between the two countries.  
• Energy Minister Majid Namjou told Syria's deputy prime minister that Iran was ready to export electricity to Lebanon if Iraq provided the necessary infrastructure to transfer energy through its territory.
• The Student Basij slams presence of a Bahraini delegation at the Non Aligned Movement summit in Tehran: "A bunch of devils plan to travel to Tehran in the coming days and Iran is hosting them. For months, the voice of the Bahraini Muslims has been silenced with Western bullets just because they say 'Each Bahraini, one vote...' The Khalifa regime's entrance at the Imam Khomeini Airport will be the beginning of a complicated nightmare for the heads of Arrogance..."

Military and Security

• Reports on chicken riots in Iran:
  • People in Nishapur demonstrate in front of the main mosque to protest against scarcity of chicken at state controlled prices. Khezrollah Mousavi, Nishapur prosecutor general, warns the demonstrators against rallying against the regime, and says "the revolution was not for the sake of bread and water." The news story is now removed from the Friday Prayer Headquarter’s website. 
  • People line up in front of stores that sell chicken at state controlled price.
  • Tehran Governor General Morteza Tamadon asks the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Commerce to distribute the greatest part of imported chicken in Tehran. 
  • According to Hojjat al-Eslam Qassem Ravanbakhsh, the Ahmadinejad government is to blame for the rising prices. Ravanbakhsh adds that the government is trying to blame Supreme Leader Khamenei in order to avenge the reinstatement of Intelligence Minister Hojjat al-Eslam Heydar Moslehi by the leader.

Nuclear Issue

• Khamenei urges people to be frugal to deal with economic hardships, and stresses that Iran will not change its nuclear policy:
  • "At a time when the vocabulary of our authorities was sycophantic towards the West and the United States [reference to the Khatami era], an individual who was personified evil allowed himself to call the Islamic Republic of Iran the axis of evil... Back then, the Westerners became so emboldened that when our authorities were happy only with three centrifuges, they opposed it. But today, 11,000 centrifuges are active in the country... Had those retreats continued, most certainly there would not have been any nuclear progress, enthusiasm and scientific initiative in this country... Current economic pressures against the Islamic regime are just like a phase which the country will pass through. In the long term, they [the sanctions] would not be in the interest of the Western countries..."
  • Hamid-Reza Taraqi, Moetalefeh Society international deputy, comments on the Supreme Leader's criticism of the Khatami government's nuclear policies: 
    • "The reformists presented their proposals to the Supreme Leader through the Supreme National Security Council..." 
    • "The reformists thought that the West had stopped the fight against Islamic Iran... and paid therefore a lot of attention to the position of the Westerners, but the Supreme Leader always stressed to them that the West had not changed its position and would not back off... In one of his speeches at the United Nations, Khatami called Abraham Lincoln a martyr and almost accepted the demands of the Westerners... In that juncture... the West dictated a letter to our Foreign Ministry in which the Foreign Ministry had promised to take steps to disarm Hezbollah and [stop] acts of resistance by Hamas..."

Photos of the Day

• Qassem Suleimani listening to Khamenei.