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 subscribe to this daily newsletter, e-mail [email protected].

 (E) = Article in English 

Politics

• Iran Statistics Chief Mohammad Madad contracts claims that there are 51 million eligible voters in the forthcoming presidential elections. 

• With less than 49 days until the presidential elections, statistical information on the number of eligible voters is disputed by experts, politicians, statisticians and the press.

o    According to the State General Registry [Sabt-e Ahval] Office, there are 46.2 million eligible voters, as does the Interior Minister.

o    The reformist press claims the number of eligible voters is as high as 51.3 million.

o    Tabnak News, mouthpiece of former IRGC chief Mohsen Rezai, claims irregularitieswith regard to the total number of voters. 

• Dismissed Interior Minister Ali Kordan present at the cabinet meeting.

• Mohsen Rezai, speaking at the Department of Social Sciences at Tehran University:

o    "I don't like playing with sentiments of the youth. If problems such as unemployment are solved there may not be any need for moral police patrolling the streets. What we need is decisive youth policy and cultural planning. Whether or not to have a moral police patrol is not a fundamental or important issue." 

• Public Relations Office of the Expediency Council says Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezai has not yet decided to run for president. 

• Former Student Basij leader and SAIPA car manufacturer Director General Mehrdad Bazrpash is appointed to an unknown position at the Social Security Organization. 

Economy

• Mehdi Karrubi at a press conference: "My criticism of the government is criticism, not character assassination. I am asking why we have had four Central Bank Director Generals during the past four years? I am asking why there are more than 2000 cases of irregularities on the national budget and the missing $1.5 billion? Recently I have heard that a good number of our capitalists have lost their permission to leave the country. Such stories are all accounts of economic mismanagement..." 

• Economy and Finance Minister Shams al-Din Hosseini promises 10 percent inflation by March 2010. 

• Mir-Hossein Mousavi: "One should not humiliate the people by distributing alms. According to our religious teachings alms must be distributed in secret so that dignity of the people does not suffer. This is what was done during the revolution." 

Trade

• Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nowzari: "Iran's cooperation with France’s Total will continue." 

• Iran to increase export of petrochemicals to Europe. 

Religion, Society, and Culture

• Two columns at an Achaemenid imperial palace in Susa collapes. According to Aftab-e Yazd, the columns had been used by drug addicts building a fire and warming of the marble stones has led to their collapse.

• Urban development in vicinity of Ahwaz to be coordinated with Mehr [Love] Foundation. 

Media

• Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad-Hossein Saffar Harandi: "If a journalist desires to work for the BBC network, there is no problem, but if the journalist desires to work for BBC Persian he is treading on an illegal area." 

Military and Security

• IRGC Deputy Chief Mohammad Hejazi:
  • "Existence of the Revolutionary Guards was declared by the Council of the Revolution in order to organize the [Revolutionary] Committees...In the beginning there were several Guards. On was controlled by the late Martyr Montazeri, and a second supervised by Martyr Kolahdouz. There was also a Guards formed by armed groups engaged in the struggle against the Pahlavi regime which was organized under the name of Mojahedin of the Revolution. Individuals who had returned to Iran from abroad also organized Guards. Also the transitional government attempted to organize Guards which was located at Pasdaran Street at the former SAVAK Headquarters. In other words we see that at the beginning of the revolution in practice we had several Guards...

  • Therefore His blessed Holiness Imam Khomeini ordered the Council of the Revolution, and more specifically Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani to organize them [the various Guards] and move them towards unity. Back then the transitional government was insisting on the Guards being subjected to the government, but the Council of the Revolution, belived that the armed forces should be subjected to the Armed Forces Commander in Chief. They also did not match with the transitional government intellectually. They were of the belief that the Guards should not be subjected to the transitional government, and that it should be independent, be supervised by the Council of the Revolution and report to His Holiness Imam Khomeini.

  • After discussions at several sessions of the Council of the Revolution on April 22, 1979, they decided to unify the Guards...Back then the Guards would engage in any work which the revolution needed..."

  • Hejazi also assures that the Basij and the Guards will not intervene in presidential elections. 

• Mohammad Karami-Rad, former IRGC Commander and Member of the National Security and Foreign Policy of the Parliament, praises the role of the Guards, warns "the Zionist enemy."      

• Three parliamentarians criticize the Foreign Ministry for paying $300 million to Pakistan despite Pakistan's "lack of cooperation with regard to terrorists." 

Nuclear Issue

• Mehdi Karrubi at a press conference: "There is no doubt that achieving nuclear energy is our inalienable right, but I believe that our position must be based upon trust building measures and not confrontational [ones]...We must in such a way to achieve our goals without being an enemy with the entire world. I believe that many of our problems with regard to achievement of nuclear technology are not only because of sabotage and enmity of the West. A part of the problem is also the discourse and postures of Ahmadinejad. Recently I also heard that some of those postures in our foreign policy have also has a negative effect among the Palestinians..." 

• (E) Mottaki urges Clinton to study peacefulness of Iran’s nuclear program.

• Ahmadinejad speaking in Varamin: "America should have shown up at the Anti-Racism summit in Geneva and declared its opposition with the Zionist regime...When they walked out of the venue, I was laughing at their ignorance. They have done so much injustice all over the world and today they expect the people to listen to what they have to say."
• Ahmadinejad speaking at the Summit of Public Prosecutors of Islamic Countries: "Political, economic and cultural unity of the Islamic world is one of the pillars of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic and Point 16 of the Constitution stresses the support of the dispossessed of the world...

o    Crimes which have taken place in Gaza and Palestine are among the most terrible international crimes during the last decades. This is because other tragic crimes have been sanctioned, such as the war crimes of World War II, Yugoslavia and Rwanda have been scrutinized by the Security Council but the crimes of the Zionists in the realm of occupied Palestine has been ignored by legal and political institutions of the world order...Crimes of the Zionist regime in Palestine is not only limited to encirclement and massacre of defenseless people of Gaza. The black history of this usurping regime is full of crimes against human rights and bloody misdeeds..." 

o    (E) Ahmadinejad calls for breaking “Idol of Zionism.”

• Ahmadinejad speaking in Persian Gulf Stadium in Islamshahr:
  • "In the Western world, an idol has been made of Zionism in order to control the nations...Wherever we travel and in which ever assembly we are present, they ask us 'what are you going to speak against?' Against the U.S., Europe, the world war, the Vietnam War and Korea you can speak, but don't talk about the Zionists...

  • The Westerners have made up an issue called Holocaust and Zionism and they have sanctified it to the level of the most sacred issues. This is what they agree upon. By raising the banner of Zionism, they want to control the world by bullying, violating, conspiring, and through Zionist crimes...

  • When we tell them that in your countries you allow insults against divine prophets who are among the most sacred of the sacred issues of the world and they answer us this is freedom of speech. But when it comes to the Zionists they ask us to be silent, not to speak. They have created an idol called Zionism and they worship it. They want to force all the nations to accept worship of this idol. I hereby declare that the idol of Zionism must be smashed for the salvation of mankind..." 

Iran in the Afghan Media

• Afghan border guards gun down Iranian police officer in Nimroz.

o    Afghan Provincial Governor Gholam Dastagir said: “Iranian soldiers entered Afghan territory and did not stop moving forward despite warning shots by the Afghan police.”

• Iran expelling Afghan refugees.

o    The Islamic Republic has forcefully repatriated 13,000 Afghan refugees over the past one month.

o    According to the head of refugee affairs department in the western Afghan province of Heart, Iran expels 750 Afghan refugees on a daily basis.

o    Afghan refugees complain that Iranian police insult and persecute them.

o    Afghan authorities claim that Iran force out Afghan refugees with legal resident documents as well.

• Hasht-e Sobh expresses surprise at U.S. ‘cool response’ to imprisonment of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.

• Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, has called for cooperation between Iran, Afghanistan and the international community to eradicate drugs in Afghanistan.

• Qanuni on official visit to Tehran.

o    Speaker of Afghanistan parliament’s lower house, Mohammad Yunis Qanuni, met President Ahmadinejad and sought his government’s increased assistance in Afghanistan’s security and economic recovery efforts.

o    Highlighting that the Afghan nation will not abandon its culture and religion, Qanuni told Ahmadinejad that Afghanistan today welcomed investment and presence of Islamic countries.

o    Qanuni also held meetings with Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, Manouchehr Mottaki, the minister of foreign affairs, and Aladdine Brojerdi, the head of Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee.

Human Rights and Labor

• Imprisoned Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi's case to be investigated by a legal committee. 

• Result of legal process against corruption critic Abbas Palizdar to be announced soon. 

• The mother a jailed Tehran University student told Radio Farda that authorities are refusing to tell her what charges he faces. [listen in Persian]

• After five labor activists from the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Factory were sentenced to one year in prison, the group's lawyer told Radio Farda that the sentence "is illegal and based on unsubstantiated reports from the Intelligence Ministry." [listen in Persian]

Photo of the Day

• Mine-clearing.