Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

Iran Standard Time (IRST), GMT+3:30

6:10 p.m., 13 Dey/January 3 Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the chairman of the Islamic Republic's Expediency Discernment Council and the former president of the country, has been sentenced to six months in jail for "propaganda against the Islamic system." According to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency, she has also been barred from engaging in any sort of political, cultural, or media activity for five years.

Born in 1962, Hashemi represented Tehran in the Fifth Majles, from 1996 to 2000; during those same years, she published the daily Zan (Woman), until it was banned in a crackdown on the independent press. She has been an outspoken critic of the hardliners who control the Iranian regime and, as an advocate for women's rights, has stated that Islamic head covering, or hejab, should not be mandatory for women in Iran.

On June 20, 2009, she was arrested along with several friends during the demonstrations that followed the disputed election in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad retained the office of president. Last February 20, she was again arrested during the pro-democracy protests that were held around Iran in the wake of the Arab Spring. According to a report from IRNA, the state news agency, she was detained as she was "preparing to instigate unrest by making sharp comments and chanting provocative slogans."

This past March, her father -- regarded as a relatively moderate figure within Iran's current political scene -- was forced out of his influential position as chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which has the constitutional power to appoint the Supreme Leader. Rafsanjani served two terms as president, between 1989 and 1997. His own website has been blocked by the authorities since last week.

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[ blog ] Translator's note: During the past few months, progressives inside Iran have taken advantage of the Iranian government's anti-Wall Street rhetoric to hold several forums to discuss the significance of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Below are excerpts from two presentations that also offer different views of the nature of the current economic crisis. The first, by labor activist, author, and translator Mohsen Hakimi, was presented to the Iranian Sociological Association in Tehran. The second, by economist Mohammad Maljoo, was presented at a "Workshop on the Socioeconomic Analysis of the Occupy Wall Street Movement" at the University of Tehran's School of Social Sciences. -- Frieda Afary

All opinions expressed in these excerpts are the authors' own.

...I would like to begin my presentation by citing the Occupy Wall Street Movement's definition of itself. This description is posted on its website and acts as its manifesto:

Occupy Wall Street is [a] leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants. This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society. The only solution is World Revolution. [See occupywallst.org/.]

The Strengths of the Occupy Wall Street Movement

1. Based on the above statement, this movement can be called an anti-capitalist movement (and not merely anti-war or anti-imperialist or anti-globalization and the like) for the following reasons:

* Wall Street is the world's most important financial trade center. Openly stating that 99% of the population do not need Wall Street or the politicians signifies open opposition to capitalism.

* The active body of this movement mainly consists of the unemployed, women, college students, and dissatisfied and protesting artists.... Let me start with the unemployed. Unemployment is an effect of the capitalist system. A fundamental feature of this system is the effort to increase profit-making for the capitalist class in different ways. One of these methods, which is mainly used in advanced capitalist countries such as the U.S. and Europe, is to increase the productivity of labor through the use of the latest technological and scientific achievements. However, in the context of capitalism, the use of advanced technology and machinery leads to unemployment and the redundancy of workers.... This system uses advanced technology to increase profit. However, in doing so, i.e., by making living workers redundant, it deprives capitalism of the real source of profit, i.e., those very same living workers. Hence, it creates a tendency in capitalism that is called "the tendential fall in the rate of profit." The rise of crises in capitalism is the actual result of this very tendency. Whether this tendency is actualized or not, an inevitable outcome of capitalism is unemployment. In 2011, international capitalist institutions such as the International Labor Organization and the International Monetary Fund have declared that youth unemployment in the U.S. stands at 17.7%...

Women are another important pillar of this movement. Although women in the U.S. are legally equal to men, in reality they are subjected to prejudice and inequality. Women receive less pay for work equal to that of men.... Another form of oppression of women in the U.S. and the West in general is violence against women...

Finally, college students are another sector of the population that has created the Occupy Wall Street Movement. One of the main reasons for the active participation of college students in this movement is their inability to pay student loans obtained from universities...

* ...A unique feature of the Occupy Wall Street Movement is that it has further penetrated the depths of society. In addition to opposing finance capital and the politicians, it has turned the social problems of everyday life into another realm of the struggle against capitalism. Problems such as illness (for example AIDS or cancer), homelessness, and death resulting from illness and loneliness had been marginalized in previous movements under the leadership of parties and unions. By intervening on these issues, the Occupy Wall Street Movement seeks to challenge competition and prejudice in human relations and instead develop solidarity, cooperation, and equality among people...

* ...This movement has placed new sectors of the population within the ranks of the working class, sectors that were not seen as part of the working class before. This implies the acceptance of a new definition of the working class, a definition that has been buried under the debris of capitalist and specifically postmodernist or reformist or sectarian perspectives in the post-Marx period. For example, one of the perspectives propagated by postmodernist thinkers was that the industrial working class -- which in their opinion constituted what Marx meant by "the proletariat" -- had diminished and been replaced by the expanded service sector. Thus, postmodernist thinkers removed non-production workers such as sales clerks, transportation workers, teachers, nurses, and the like from the ranks of the working class and gave the working class a very weak and ever diminishing identity. Rescuing Marx's definition of workers from this debris, and confirming the fact that a worker is not only an industrial worker or a production worker but someone who has no other means of survival but selling her/his labor power to the owners of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, was a turning point, a great achievement, and a strong stroke against capitalism...

* Calling for "World Revolution" as the only solution to problems can only be meaningful in opposition to capitalism, because capitalism is not only the problem of this or that country but a global problem...

2. ...Another important strength of this movement is that it is not dominated by traditional parties and unions.... For leftist parties, the main issue has not been to guide a social revolution of the working class for the abolition of the social relation of capital and through the establishment and rule of anti-capitalist councils. Rather [their goal] has been to use workers' struggles in order to achieve political power and establish another form of capitalism, i.e., state capitalism. Labor unions have failed not only to elevate workers' struggles for reforms within the context of capitalism to the level of the struggle against the system of wage labor. Labor unions themselves have turned into the main agent for the domination of reformism within the working-class anti-capitalist struggle...

3. ...Prior to the rise of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the liberal opposition movement in Iran could present Western liberal democracy as the promised land that Iranian workers should struggle to reach. Now this inversion of reality is hardly possible. Now even the uncritical supporters of liberal democracy have no option but to admit to the problems that capitalism has created for humanity.... Now they will try to tell workers not to look for an alternative beyond capitalism and seek an escape route only within the confines of reformed capitalism.... In order to prove their claim, they point to the collapse of the alternatives counterposed to capitalism up to now (including state capitalism, which has called itself "socialism" in countries such as the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and the like).... It will be a big mistake if labor activists in Iran counter liberal capitalism's strategy of inversion by repeating the fatal experience of the past and presenting as an alternative to capitalism that which has been put into practice in the name of "socialism" and "communism" and has failed disastrously...

The Weaknesses of the Occupy Wall Street Movement

* This movement is still not organized, self-conscious, and connected to a movement of employed workers...

* The Occupy Wall Street Movement still considers capital not as a social relation but as merely a financial power concentrated in banks...

* The Occupy Wall Street Movement lacks a charter, a minimal set of demands...

11 Azar 1390 (December 2, 2011)

From the inception of the Occupy Wall Street movement, three themes have found increasing resonance: The deepening crisis of capitalism, the intensification of class struggle, and the organization of an alternative system...

On the question of the transition from capitalism to communism, orthodox Marxism had three claims concerning these very same themes:

Concerning the first theme, the deepening crisis of the capitalist system, orthodox Marxism spoke of the tendency in capitalism to sow the seeds of its own destruction. In other words, competition among individual capitalists would lead to the deskilling [of labor] and technological innovation, and therefore to laying off workers, an increase in the size of the reserve army of the unemployed, and a decline in wages, ultimately moving toward the crises of overproduction on the one hand and the tendential fall in the rate of the profit on the other.

Concerning the second theme, the intensification of class struggle, orthodox Marxism claimed that alongside the deepening of the crises, there would be a concentration of wealth at one pole of society and a concentration of poverty at the other pole. The polarization of society would lead to the intensification of class contradictions...

Finally, concerning the third theme, the organization of an alternative system, orthodox Marxism also claimed that the material conditions for the creation of communism were born in the womb of capitalism and that the realization of a communist order would require only a final act for the takeover of power...

In addressing the first theme, the deepening crisis of capitalism, Lenin essentially did not believe in [the idea] of a final crisis of capitalism. He believed that on the verge of the twentieth century, competitive capitalism had been replaced by monopoly capitalism, which had expanded itself in an uneven way around the world in the form of imperialism under the control of finance capital...

If [as Rosa Luxemburg claimed] the crisis of capitalism emanates from surplus capital or underconsumption, the capitalist system can overcome this problem in various ways through deepening the rule of the logic of capital in various geographical locations. An ever increasing commodification of social life in various societies and geographical locations creates both profitable opportunities for investing the surplus capital and an effective demand for overcoming the problem of underconsumption.

David Harvey reaches this very conclusion by increasingly introducing the element of geography into the process of accumulation of capital. The capitalist system will only logically reach its final limit when everything, in the exact sense of the word, has been commodified. In this respect, the capitalist system has not yet reached its final limit and can logically exit the deepest crisis with pride. At the same time, any crisis, no matter how superficial, can logically be the final crisis of the capitalist system.

The key point is this: The determinant for the survival or destruction of the capitalist system is not the depth of the crisis. The determinant is to be found in the second theme, the intensification of class struggle. If the capitalist system has been able to traverse all the crises and remain unharmed up to now, the reason is to be found not in capitalism's power but in the weakness of class struggles...

In following [György] Lukács, the Frankfurt School believed that instrumental reason essentially negated revolutionary subjectivity, even if the objectivity of revolution became ever more possible and urgent. [Antonio] Gramsci sought to develop the concept of hegemony in order to answer this question. In other words, he demonstrated how, in bourgeois civil society, meanings and values are produced that lead to the spontaneous satisfaction of various sectors of society with the status quo.

[Louis] Althusser spoke of ideological state apparatuses that actualized the process by which the exploited and the exploiters followed the dominant ideology. However, as [Michel] Foucault says, wherever there is power, there is also resistance.

Although Gramsci and Althusser offered convincing theories concerning capitalism's power to use ideology and politics to weaken class struggle, neither one offered a convincing theory concerning the counter-hegemonic project. It was up to Karl Polanyi to develop the counter-hegemonic project.

Polanyi showed how different classes and sectors in civil society spontaneously create a defensive countermovement from below against the capitalist system and defend themselves against the dangers inherent in this system. The point is the following: It is not the depth of the capitalist crisis that determines whether the final crisis of the capitalist system has arrived or not. The determinant is the balance of forces between the hegemonic and the counter-hegemonic projects. The stronger the counter-hegemonic side, the more likely the final crisis of capitalism, regardless of the depth and scope of the crisis itself. However, the moving force for strengthening the counter-hegemonic project and weakening the hegemonic project must be found in the third theme, i.e., questions about the organization of the alternative system.

Contrary to the predictions of orthodox Marxism, the material conditions for the organization of the alternative system have not yet been provided spontaneously in the womb of capitalism. If those conditions are not provided spontaneously, then two questions gain significance.

The first question concerns the nature of the alternative system. Is it the alternative of social democrats such as Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman? Is it the alternative of environmentalists such as James Lovelock? Is it the alternative of anarchists such as James Scott or Noam Chomsky? Is it the alternative of autonomists such as Antonio Negri and Felix Guattari or Michael Hardt? Is it the alternative of post-developmentalists such as Arturo Escobar or Maji Rahnema? Is it the alternative of socialists such as David Harvey? Or is it the alternative of communists such as Michael Lebowitz or Michael Albert?

The second question concerns the appropriate political pathway for achieving the alternative system. Is the pathway for achieving a socialist alternative to be found in parliamentary struggles, as Eduard Bernstein claimed? Or should the capitalist state first be destroyed and a new form of state constructed, as Lenin claimed?... Reform or revolution?... The main point is the following: If the emergence of the final crisis of capitalism is not dependent on the depth of the crisis but on the strength of class struggle, the motivating force for class struggle also arises from a certain minimal level of agreement on the type of alternative system and the appropriate political method for achieving the alternative system.

7 Azar 1390 (November 28, 2011)

Frieda Afary produces the blog Iranian Progressives in Translation. Homepage photo. Iranian regime supporters rally in Tehran in support of Occupy Wall Street. Above: Supporters of Iran's Green Movement join Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park, New York City.

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There's more than one way to disrupt the vital sea lane, and the result could be catastrophic.

[ opinion ] A significant consequence of the rising rhetorical hostility between the West and Iran has been speculation that Iran will attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz if it is attacked. In recent weeks, tensions have increased due to Iran's military maneuvers in and around the strait and reciprocal U.S. warnings. As the communications channels between Iran and the United States are very limited and poor, any misunderstanding of intentions and capabilities by either side could quickly lead to grave consequences for both countries, for the region, and for the global economy. It is thus imperative to reach a sober perspective on what the likely response of each player would be in the event of the conflict's escalation, particularly with respect to the Strait of Hormuz.

According to the conventional narrative of how escalation would progress, in response to the imposition of "crippling" sanctions -- such as full implementation of central banking restrictions -- some sort of oil embargo, or military strikes, Tehran would have the choice of either mining the strait so as to make commerce through it extremely hazardous or of forcefully imposing a full naval blockade, blocking passage between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The U.S. Navy, possibly with the aid of allied states, would in turn swiftly attempt to clear the strait. If the Iranians did not back down, all-out war would be the likely result. Those who regard Iranian threats to close the strait as a bluff base their view on two assumptions: (1) Iran would never close the strait due to its economic dependence upon the vital choke point, and (2) any attempt to close the strait would bring the weight of the world down on the Islamic Republic.

The Iranian rationale: Why do it?

Look at the issue through the Tehran prism, however, and both of these assumptions appear uncertain. To comprehend how Tehran could and would actually retaliate in the strait, one must first understand the Iranian rationale in dealing with the West. For Tehran, what is at stake is the concept of the modern global commons, in which states trade and otherwise interact with each other. Iran believes that international law is fundamentally incapable of protecting its interests, that due to the sway the Western powers maintain over international bodies, which they routinely use to advance their own foreign policy aims, the cards are stacked against the Islamic Republic no matter what it does.

For example, Iran sees itself as a victim of terrorism and thus does not take seriously the charge that it is responsible for promoting terrorism itself. For Iran, the logic of the nonproliferation regime, which supposedly protects the rights of states to peaceful nuclear technology, is also deeply suspect. Though every International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report concerning Iran has confirmed that there is no evidence of diversion of nuclear material from peaceful to potentially military use and though the IAEA has access to and cameras installed in all of the country's nuclear sites, Iran is still labeled an imminent nuclear threat by the United States and its allies.

The Iranian approach to the Strait of Hormuz is linked to its general skepticism of international law. Iran feels that its economy, which has now been subject to sanctions for over three decades, is being singled out arbitrarily. It does not accept the argument that it is being sanctioned due to nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and human rights concerns, as it is surrounded by neighbors, some of them client regimes of the West, whose record in those areas it regards as markedly worse. If what Tehran perceives as the unfair denial of its access to the global economy reaches a certain level, it may well be provoked to disrupt access to a crucial geographical facilitator of that economy -- the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian response: "Somalia-ization" of the strait

Iran is fully aware that any blockade or direct attack on such a crucial choke point would incite massive retaliation by the international community, led by the United States. It understands that such a move would completely isolate it from its fellow OPEC members and invite a coalitional war on the country.

So is Iran bluffing when it claims that it will use oil and its transport as a weapon? Absolutely not.

In the event of an escalation of the Iran-U.S. conflict, the Iranians will avoid any semblance of the traditional narrative that involves an overt attempt to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, Iran could seek to create perpetual, low-grade instability in the strait, mostly through asymmetric means, with the objective of making it an aquatic "no-man's land," similar to what has transpired in the waters off the Horn of Africa. Rather than follow the example of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Suez Crisis, Iran can utilize highly advanced piracy and sabotage tactics, while looking to maintain plausible deniability.

This approach has three distinct advantages. The first is that it will still allow Iran to utilize the straits, with manageable consequences for its own economy. The most challenging aspect would be the adaptations required in transport strategy, but the country's long coastline would mitigate that concern. Second, it will provide Iran with regional and global leverage without the unified international opprobrium that would come with a naval blockade. Policy makers and military strategists among its adversaries might well know who was causing instability in the strait, but without an overt, conventional attempt to close the passage, would be unable to stop it. And third, perhaps most importantly, this enterprise could be extended indefinitely and in direct proportion to how long and to what extent the United States and its allies maintain heightened pressure on Iran.

The matter of what specific tactics would be employed remains speculative, contingent upon the regional and global strategic environment present at the time Iran's strategists decide to take action. They could run the gamut of sabotaging ships in all sorts of asymmetric ways to "soft" mining and obstruction tactics that could be blamed on "pirates." If regional exporting states collaborated with the United States on an Iran oil embargo, those measures could be accompanied by infrastructure sabotage, as seen in conflicts in southeast Turkey, Nigeria, or Egypt.

This strategy does not rely on Iranian ingenuity or a newfound method of warfare. But the fact that it has the most strategic coastline on the waterway and the region's largest navy (whose strategic doctrine has long placed a premium on asymmetric warfare) means it is well positioned to disrupt, on a low-level, continuous basis, the vital shipping corridor.

This asymmetric approach would not close down the strait. For Iran, the choice is not "to close" or "not to close," but rather to clog. A major global choke point, once considered safe, would no longer be so. In practical terms, vastly increased costs for shipping -- including security, insurance, and reinsurance for both cargo and crew -- along with permanent market instability, would be the new norm. For oil producers, particularly Iran, this would be a far more advantageous strategy than a full-on blockade.

Though an Iranian naval blockade would have severe economic consequences for the West, which would endure a drastic hike in petroleum prices, it would provoke a swift, multinational extrication of the naval wall, severe punishment for the Iranian regime, and eventual restabilization of oil prices. The asymmetric approach, if executed cannily, would mitigate the backlash, while allowing Iran to reap the reward of higher oil profits, thus curtailing the effect of the sanctions regime. The Iranians would count on the sustained stress on the global economy to ultimately force the United States to shift course.

U.S. counters to Iranian asymmetry both limited and costly

Could the United States, with the assistance of its European and regional partners, effectively combat the virus of instability that would result from asymmetric action by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz? Surprisingly, no. While America can effectively deal with a conventional threat by Iran or any other state actor on the strait's functionality, its options against attenuated, asymmetric threats to the passage are very limited, expensive, and likely to be self-defeating.

The United States would most likely respond by either establishing a large-scale, permanent presence of naval forces in or near the strait, or performing daily flyovers from regional bases, or some combination thereof to maintain an open corridor. While this would dissuade the Iranians from overt acts of aggression, it would most likely drive them underground and underwater -- figuratively and literally. And the United States will soon realize that it does not take a great amount of effort or imagination to cause instability, whether the saboteurs pose as fisherman or local commercial traders in traditional dhows or Iran's mosaic of speedboats.

Once that recognition comes, the American response will more likely amplify the impediments to transit through the strait than mitigate them. One can imagine a circumstance where the large U.S. naval presence in the strait would have to clear physical blockage of some kind and search and seize all suspect vessels, producing a deleterious impact on the local fishing industry and interstate shipping in the region.

As for regional states sympathetic to the U.S. cause, but fearful of Iran, they will probably avoid open expressions of sympathy with either side while urging restraint. Also, since most of them are oil producers and would benefit from a rise in petroleum prices because of sustained instability, the likelihood of them adopting an overtly anti-Iranian position, unless directly attacked by Tehran, would be lower still. In all likelihood, they will just sit back, watch the show, and collect substantially higher oil revenues.

No good options for any involved party

If the United States finds itself in a situation where the Strait of Hormuz is destabilized and its efforts to clear it are failing, it will be confronted with two choices, neither salutary: diplomatically resolve its issues with Iran, for which scant political will exists in America, or gamble on still further escalation, which has delivered few positive results to date.

The rising hostility between Iran and the West, particularly if open conflict results, will yield no victors. Despite its advantages over a strategy of total blockade, disrupting the strait's stability will keep Iran outside of the regional security architecture, which undermines its long-term potential. Such an approach is in no way a substitute for a integrationist strategy aimed at improving Iran's relationships with its neighbors and the global community. For the United States, the cost of its Iran obsession, particularly if open hostilities arise, will do far more damage to its long-term position as a global superpower than any small short-term gain it might reap from temporarily weakening the Islamic Republic.

If escalation continues in slow motion and stability within the strait gradually deteriorates due to the application of an asymmetric Iranian strategy as described here, the result will be almost entirely negative for Washington. The United States would be drawn into providing the manpower and bearing the exorbitant cost for removing the impediments to transport through the passage -- essentially becoming the janitor of the Strait of Hormuz. And this sort of engagement, of course, would vastly multiply the odds that one side or another, however nondeliberately, would commit an act that would spark a war.

For the Persian Gulf region, which has suffered years of war and in which every state is gripped by political uncertainty, if not outright revolutionary upheaval, mounting Iran-U.S. belligerence holds catastrophic potential. In countries where the traditional autocratic authority is disintegrating, the radicalization that would follow increasingly open conflict between Iran and the United States would likely bring to power elements prepared to act forcefully against American interests in the region. In states such as Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Pakistan with some tradition of reformist political figures favoring normalization of relations between the Islamic world and the West, those players would be completely pushed aside for the foreseeable future. And given the current instability in Europe, along with the fickle recovery around the developed world, an Iran-U.S. war could precipitate a global depression with ease.

Views expressed are the author's.

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Copyright © 2012 Johnny Mobasher

Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

Iran Standard Time (IRST), GMT+3:30

7:10 p.m., 14 Dey/January 4 The rate of exchange between rial, Iran's currency and the U.S. dollar has increased by more than 50 percent over the last few days, reaching a record high of around 18,000 rials to $1, although by Tuesday afternoon, it had fallen back to 15,850 rials for $1. The official rate is about 10,900 rials to $1. The rate of exchange between the rial and other major currencies, such as the euro, has also increased dramatically. Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani attributed the increase to "psychological effects," presumably referring to the rising tensions between Iran and the United States. There are also persistent reports of people withdrawing their savings from banks in order to purchase gold and silver, driving their prices higher as well. Another important factor in the increase of the exchange rate is President Obama's signing into law new sanctions on Iran's Central Bank, although Bahmani has dismissed them as "comical" and said, "The enemy is counting on psychological tension in the currency market." A popular website that posts the rate of exchange between the rial and other currencies, as well as gold, has been blocked.

Ahmad Tavakoli and Elias Naderan, two Majles deputies who are prominent critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked Majles Speaker Ali Larijani to convene an emergency session of parliament to discuss the rise in the rate of exchange. They blamed the Ahmadinejad administration's mismanagement and weak policies, as well as what they called "foreign elements," for the increase. Fars, the news agency run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, joined in the criticism of Ahmadinejad, asking rhetorically, "Where is the [U.S.] dollar that the president used to say is not worth even 9,000 rials?"

The housing market has also been affected by the devaluation of rial. The average price of residential units has increased by about 20 percent in Tehran over the past few weeks, and continues to rise.

Iran issues another Persian Gulf warning

On the last day of a major Iranian naval exercise, Major General Ataollah Salehi, chief of staff of the regular armed forces, said, "We warn [the United States] not to return its aircraft carrier, which we consider a threat against us, to the Persian Gulf." Although Salehi did not name a specific ship, he was presumably referring to the USS John C. Stennis of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which left the Persian Gulf last week after visiting Dubai's Jebel Ali port and passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Salehi added, "We are not in the habit of repeating our warnings.... We emphasize that we are not trying to incite anything irrational, but warn the carrier not to come back."

The Obama administration quickly reacted to Salehi's warning. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, "It is the latest round of Iranian threats and is confirmation that Tehran is under increasing pressure for its continued failure to live up to its international obligations. Iran is isolated and is seeking to divert attention from its behavior and domestic problems."

The U.S. Defense Department was also quick to react. Pentagon spokesman George Little said, "The deployment of U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf region will continue as it has for decades. These are regularly scheduled movements in accordance with our longstanding commitments to the security and stability of the region and in support of ongoing operations. The U.S. Navy operates under international maritime conventions to maintain a constant state of high vigilance in order to ensure the continued, safe flow of maritime traffic in waterways critical to global commerce. We are committed to protecting maritime freedoms that are the basis for global prosperity; this is one of the main reasons our military forces operate in the region."

Grand ayatollah condemns oppression

Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, one of the most progressive and popular Marjas (sources of emulation for the Shia masses), said that "one day the oppressors will not have any way out against the determination of nations to end dictatorship." Meeting with a group of university students from Tehran and Karaj, the grand ayatollah added, "On that day the oppressors will be trembling, as it is clear what the nations will do with them." He also said, "The person who directly helps the oppressor and oppression shares in the sin, and a person who is silent about the injustice done to others also shares the sin with the oppressor. Imam Sajjad [Shiites' Fourth Imam] has been quoted as saying, 'If a person is killed in the east and someone in the west is satisfied by it, it is the same as being the co-offender of the murder.'" He also said that concerning oppression, "Silence is not permitted. Opposing the oppressors is a religious duty."

Admitting the popularity of the Green Movement's leaders

Powerful cleric Ali Saeedi, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the Revolutionary Guards, said that it is not possible to put Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi on trial because "they have supporters." He added, "Just a few days ago the Gray Man said, 'I will not stop supporting these two. They are good people.'" Saeedi did not name the "Gray Man," but during his investigations of the Chain Murders, journalist Akbar Ganji referred to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as the "Gray Eminence."

Ahmadinejad backs down

A few days ago, Ahmadinejad announced the appointment of Mehdi Khorshidi, his 30-year-old son-in-law, as the new head of the National Institute of Standards and Industrial Research. The appointment was strongly protested by many, including some Majles deputies. The president relented and asked Seyyed Nezameddin Barzegari, whom Khorshidi was supposed to replace as institute chief, to remain in the post. Khorshidi has been an outspoken critic of his father-in-law's chief of staff and close confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

Seven new websites set up by Ahmadinejad's supporters

As reported by Tehran Bureau, after the confrontation between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei deepened, many websites and blogs that openly supported the president were blocked by the hardliners. New reports indicate that the president's supporters have quietly set up new websites, trying not to be too provocative, so that they can still be operating when the Majles elections are held on March 3. The new websites include Hemmat Negar, Sarih News, Zaman News, Hezar Sangar, Hamian-e Javan-e Dolat-e Eslami, Raha Press, and Meyar News.

Ahmadinejad-Rafsanjani alliance?

Nedaaye Enghelab, a hardline website close to the Revolutionary Guards, accused Ahmadinejad and his supporters of "preparing the groundwork for transferring power," presumably from Khamenei to the president. Borhan, another pro-Khamenei website, claimed that Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani have jointly decided to attack Khamenei with the goal of weakening the principlists who support the Supreme Leader. This is the first time that the hardliners have accused Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad of a tacit alliance.

"Ahmadi the idol breaker, break the great idol"

Last Friday, Ahmadinejad attended a meeting of his campaign team for the Majles elections. This was his second meeting with the team over the past month. During the meeting, the president's supporters shouted many times, "Ahmadi[nejad] the idol breaker, break the great idol!" Meyar News, one of the seven new pro-Ahmadinejad websites, reported that in response Ahmadinejad said, "The great idol breaker was Abraham. The idol of our era will be broken by Imam-e Zaman" -- Mahdi, the 12th Imam, whom Shiites believe will one day return from centuries of occultation. Apparently Ahmadinejad also made another provocative statement, saying, "Velaayat [rule of the Islamic jurist] belongs to humanity, and does not belong to a particular person" -- an implicit, but clear challenge to Khamenei.

It is not clear whom Ahmadinejad's supporters meant by the "great idol." The phrase was also used before the June 2009 presidential election, when it was clear that it referred to Rafsanjani. But according to Khabar Online, the website close to Speaker Larijani, "This person cannot be Rafsanjani, because in their confrontation with Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's team does not recognize any red line" -- that is, if they meant Rafsanjani, they would have named him explicitly. Many believe that "the great idol" is meant to be none other than Khamenei.

Meanwhile, Deputy Majles Speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar, who supports Khamenei, attacked the Ahmadinejad administration, declaring that the government's claim to have created one million new jobs in the current Iranian year is a "lie," because this would have required a $120 billion investment that the government doesn't have. Ahmadinejad has said, "I am embarrassed to say we have unemployed people."

Bushehr reactor to come online on anniversary of Revolution

Ali Zabihi, deputy minister of energy, said that the Bushehr light-water nuclear reactor will be completely online by the Fajr festival, the ten-day celebration in February that commemorates the victory of the 1979 Revolution. He said that the reactor is already operating at about half of its full capacity of 1,000 MW. Energy Minister Majid Namjoo has said that the final tests are being run on the reactor in order to bring it fully online. So far, tests to transmit 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 MW from the Bushehr plant to the national electrical grid have been successfully completed.

Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will soon send a team to Tehran, led by the agency's deputy director-general.

Juppe: Iran is making nuclear weapons

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé said, "Iran is pursuing the development of its nuclear arms, I have no doubt about it. The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency is quite explicit on this point." Actually, the IAEA report did not say that, but only that there are research aspects of Iran's nuclear program that have "possible military dimension." Juppé said that his country wants tougher sanctions "without closing off the path of negotiation and dialogue with Iran." French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed freezing the assets of Iran's Central Bank and sanctioning Iran's oil industry.

Majles link to $3 billion embezzlement case

Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, Iran's prosecutor-general and special prosecutor for the embezzlement case involving nearly $3 billion that has roiled the regime, said that the son of a Majles deputy, whom he did not name, has been arrested in the case. He added that the charges against him are "heavy," but that he is not, contrary to wide rumors, a son of a member of the parliamentary leadership group. He also said that a piece of jewelry that belongs to the wife of one of the shareholders of Amir Mansoor Aria group, the holding company said to be behind the embezzlement, has been confiscated. Ejei said that the value of the jewelry is estimated to be $3,700,000. He added that it has been discovered that at least $6,250,000 worth of jewelry was purchased for the same woman.

Meanwhile, there are persistent rumors in Tehran that 16 Majles deputies have been told privately that they should not run in the upcoming elections, because their qualifications will be rejected by the Guardian Council. Many believe that the 16 may have been involved in the embezzlement. It is known that at least five Majles deputies -- Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Arsalam Fathipoor, Mohammad Dehghan, Jaabar Kouchakizadeh, and Samad Marashi -- have been interrogated in the case. Boroujerdi, chairman of the Majles National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, was arrested and detained for one day. Others that have been charged include Mahmoud Reza Khavari, the Bank Melli director who fled to Canada; Hamif Pour Mohammadi, deputy governor of the Central Bank; and Mohammad Jahromi, director of Bank Saderat.

Human rights reports

Saeed Naeimi, a senior member of the Organization of University Graduates, was released from prison. After 235 days of incarceration, he was set free after posting bail of about $45,000.

The website that reflects Rafsanjani's views has been blocked. The website is published by Rafsanjani's oldest son, Mohsen Hashemi; Mohammad Hashemi, Rafsanjani's younger brother and chief of staff, is also influential in what is posted on the website. The website had been warned not to post what the security officials consider "provocative." It was recently ordered to remove 60 items, in particular Rafsanjani's sermon during the last Friday Prayer that he led in Tehran in July 2009 in which he called for freedom of press, free elections, and release of political prisoners. When the order was rebuffed, the website was blocked. Prosecutor-general Mohseni Ejei confirmed that the website has been blocked due to "the offenses that it had committed."

Fatemeh Alvandi, mother of imprisoned journalist Mehdi Mahmoudian, was arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence, interrogated, warned, and then released. Mahmoudian, a member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the most important reformist party that has been outlawed by the hardliners, was one of the first journalists to report on the crimes that took place at the Kahrizak detention center after the post-election protests in 2009, in which at least four young protestors were murdered and a large number tortured. Sentenced to five years of incarceration, he is severely ill, but judiciary officials refuse to grant him any furlough to seek medical treatment and rest. There has been no news about Mahmoudian for some time, and his family is very concerned.

Reports indicate that Feyzollah Arabsorkhi, senior member of the Organization of Islamic Revolution Mojahedin -- a leading reformist group that has been outlawed by the hardliners -- is in very poor health. He has been under pressure to withdraw his signature from a statement by 39 leading political prisoners calling for a boycott of the upcoming Majles elections, due to which he is not allowed to seek medical treatment outside prison. Two other prominent political prisoners, journalist Masoud Bastani and human rights activist Jafar Eghdami, are also in poor health and have no access to medical treatment.

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Follow the petrodollars...

[ comment ] I think there are fundamental structural problems in the Iranian economy caused by some of the policies of the Ahmadinejad administration. What you have in Iran is not a lack of cash, but rather a huge amount of cash floating around. Let's call it the liquidity stream. This huge stream of money moves in search of interest, interest higher than inflation.

In the past, this stream was locked in by the offering of rial-based savings accounts and participation bonds that offered interest higher than inflation. But when Ahmadinejad vetoed the raising of interest rates -- part of his broader policy of prioritizing growth over inflation concerns -- that flow of liquidity went wild.

The Central Bank of Iran first tried to contain it by selling large amounts of cheap gold, but then the price of gold collapsed. The housing market is dead, so there is no outlet for the stream there.

The only place left for that liquidity flow, then, is foreign currency. We are talking about billion-dollar speculative flows being forced to turn to the purchase of U.S. dollars, because there is no other outlet to secure your assets against inflation.

Separately, the administration proposed and got a fantasy budget passed for the current Persian year, 1390, which began last March. Its "total" budget, including spending for state-owned enterprises, grew by some 40 percent over the previous Persian year. That's huge. Now it faces a major budget deficit, in the range of $10-30 billion -- the estimates vary widely.

The administration and the Majles agreed to base that budget, largely financed by oil revenues, on an exchange rate of 1,050 rials per dollar. Iran gets paid for its oil in dollars. So how do you get more rials for dollars?

You let the rial loose, and you start selling petrodollars for free market rates way above the official rate of 1,050 rials. You let it go so far that the CBI, in a desperate attempt to close the gap between the official rate and open market rate, has turned to raising the official rate.

Voilà! You've suddenly got that budget deficit of yours plugged up (the administration has until end of February to fill it).

With the Majles elections coming up on March 3, we can expect more developments. Ahmadinejad will make a strong move to boost the rial's value just before the polls. Meanwhile, he has allowed his many former friends turned foes to profit immensely from the dual exchange rate, hopefully enough to keep them satisfied to not bite at him or pluck off his candidates like feathers.

Ultimately, I think, the rial will settle around 1,300-1,400 per dollar by the beginning of the new Persian year, March 20, probably at a unified exchange rate. That higher exchange rate will allow Ahmadinejad to boost his budget even more for the coming year.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with sanctions on the CBI. They haven't even started. It's a shame to see every single iran "analyst" out there blaming this on the sanctions. The cherry on top is that ordinary people blame Obama for all this while Ahmadinejad is busy filling his government's coffers.

There are rumors that certain candidates whose connections give them access to dollars at the official exchange rate are selling those dollars on the open market for huge profits, which they are using to fund their campaigns for parliament. Just rumors...I guess.

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

Iran Standard Time (IRST), GMT+3:30

11:50 p.m., 14 Dey/January 4 European Union diplomats announced today that the union's governments have agreed in principle to ban purchases of Iranian crude oil, which could constitute a substantial blow to the economy of the Islamic Republic. Bloomberg reports,

EU foreign ministers are aiming to announce harsher sanctions on Iran's energy and banking industries at their next meeting on Jan. 30 after Greece lifted its objections to an oil embargo.

"We want to tighten sanctions on Iran -- the things that have been mentioned are the oil sector and the financial sector," EU spokesman Michael Mann said by telephone in Brussels today.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé said in Lisbon today that he hopes a decision about an embargo on Iranian oil exports may be adopted at the Jan. 30 meeting of foreign ministers.

Reuters describes the final steps in reaching the agreement and its potential effect on both Iran's vital petroleum industry and world oil prices:

Diplomats said EU envoys held talks on Iran in the last days of December, and that any objections to an oil embargo had been dropped -- notably from crisis-hit Greece which gets a third of its oil from Iran, relying on Tehran's lenient financing. Spain and Italy are also big buyers. [...]

The embargo will force Tehran to find other buyers for oil. EU countries buy about 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iran's 2.6 million bpd in exports, making the bloc collectively the second largest market for Iranian crude after China.

Prime Minister Mario Monti said Italy was ready to back an oil embargo as long as it was imposed gradually and deliveries to repay Tehran's debts to Italian energy firm ENI were exempted.

The news caused a spike rise in oil prices, with Brent crude peaking at nearly $114 a barrel in intraday trading, up nearly $2 from Tuesday's close.

As described here, the Iranian rial has severely weakened in recent days against the dollar, due at least in part to increasingly strict international sanctions. If the E.U. does impose an oil embargo, the impact on the rial and inflation in Iran could be drastic.

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[ blog ] This documentary by Kianoush Ayari captures some great scenes from the summer after the 1979 revolution. The title, Tazeh Nafasha -- fresh breath, literally -- describes the revolutionary euphoria of the early days. Mehdi Bazargan was prime minister, women were not yet forcefully veiled, and a bright future seemed possible.

The documentary begins with scenes from the early postrevolutionary days when every group was free to advocate its views. Books were sold and pamphlets distributed on the sidewalks of Tehran. One mans shouts, "The cause of people's general hatred of Marxism!"; another hawks books by Ayatollah Morteza Motahari -- who was killed soon afterward -- and Mehdi Bazargan.

There is a heated discussion about what the government had promised Iranians -- 750 tomans per month (about $110 at the time) -- and how not everyone is getting it. Some defend the government, while others complain.

Yasser Arafat was popular in that era. One entrepreneur tries to make money off him: a person can get done up to look like a Palestinian fighter, stand next to an image of Arafat, and take a picture with him.

Three plays follow, all about the Revolution. Miri, a leading comedian, plays the lead in the first, which is about how some counterrevolutionaries tried to leave the country with suitcases full of money, but were caught. The counterrevolutionaries attempted to fake a wedding and then leave on their "honeymoon."

The second play concerns the Shah's military court in Shiraz. A leftist -- on the left, possibly played by Faramarz Gharibian -- and a Muslim -- on the right, played by Mohammad Varshochi, who recently passed away -- are condemned to death. Revolutionaries rescue them, although the Muslim one is martyred.

The third play is about the demonstrations that took place during the Revolution. The woman with long hair is Shahnaz Tehrani. The actors shout "Either death or freedom!"

Next we see a sort of street theater in a park. A young man mimics the famous singer and showman Fereydoon Farrokhzad. He tries to sing one of Farrokhzad's popular songs, but just repeats one line over and over again, mockingly: "It was night, it was the desert, it was winter." (Farrokhzad was assassinated in 1992 in Germany.) A second performer mimics Soli, another well-known singer of the era. Two Majles deputies under the Shah, Mazaheri and Bani Ahmad, are mocked; another singer, Jamal Vafaei, is mimicked; and then someone imitates the Shah himself -- fairly well -- describing how he had to flee the country.

The following section shows the poor areas in south Tehran that will supposedly benefit from the Revolution and the narcotics addicts who will supposedly be taken care of.

A speech by Abolhassan Bani Sadr follows (only his voice is heard), in which he talks about the reasons that Iran's economy has been dependent on the West.

Then, once again, various groups argue in front of the University of Tehran. At the gate, a woman loudly condemns the United States and Israel.

The film ends with images of campaign literature for the first election after the Revolution, for the Assembly of Constitutional Experts, empowered to draft the new Islamic Republic's constitution.

Text Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

Iran Standard Time (IRST), GMT+3:30

1:05 a.m., 16 Dey/January 6 Iranian-born human rights activist and former Miss World Canada Nazanin Afshin-Jam has married Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay in a private ceremony held in Mexico. The bride, born in Tehran in 1979, the year of the Revolution, immigrated with her family to British Colombia two years later. The groom, a native of Nova Scotia, was the last leader of the Progressive Conservative Party before its 2003 merger with the Canadian Alliance that created today's Conservative Party.

The National Post reports that after she was runner-up at the 2003 Miss World pageant, Afshin-Jam

went on to receive worldwide fame during her successful effort to save from execution a young Iranian woman who at age 17 had stabbed a would-be rapist to death. She then co-founded Stop Child Executions, a group dedicated to ending capital punishment of children in Iran.

Afshin-Jam, who holds international relations and political science degrees from the University of British Columbia, also serves on the board of directors of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. She previously served as a global youth educator with the Red Cross.

MacKay's personal life has frequently made headlines in recent years.

In a September 2006 article, the New York Times took stock of his "star appeal" and cited rumours that MacKay and former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice were getting close to each other. The article described the defence minister as "the closest thing to eye candy on the diplomatic circuit."

In the first of the videos that follow, Afshin-Jam speaks at the "Stop Iran Now" rally in defense of Iranians' human rights, which was held outside the United Nations headquarters in New York in September 2008. The second is a CTV report from April 2009 about her successful effort to win asylum for Azita and Ahmad Shafaghat, who were persecuted and jailed by the Islamic Republic's authorities after their conversion to Christianity. In it she explains, "That's the reason why I even entered Miss Canada in the first place -- because I wanted a platform, so I could have a stronger voice and I could speak about these types of issues."

Photo above: Afshin-Jam and the Dalai Lama at the Vancouver Peace Summit, 2009.

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[ Q&A ] The daughter of the former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been sentenced to six months in prison on charges of "spreading propaganda against the ruling system." The trial of Faezeh Hashemi took place behind closed doors in December 2011. Hashemi is a former member of the Iranian parliament. In an interview, Yasmin Alem, an independent Iran analyst, gives her interpretation of the trial and conviction.

Why was Faezeh Rafsanjani charged?

Hashemi is the most politically active of former President Rafsanjani's children. She is a prominent social activist and leading Islamic feminist. A supporter of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in the 2009, she participated in a number of opposition rallies after the disputed poll. Ms. Rafsanjani was arrested and briefly detained by security forces on two occasions and barred from traveling abroad. But her conviction on Jan. 2, 2012 stems from an interview with Rooz Online, an opposition online newspaper. The interview was conducted after she was harassed by plainclothes security agents in April 2011. She told the opposition news website that "thugs and hooligans" were running the country. She was subsequently accused and convicted of "insulting Islamic Republic officials." She was sentenced to six months in jail and banned from membership in any political organization as well as taking part in online and media activities for the next five years. Hashemi is likely to file an appeal. While she may be able to get her jail sentence overturned, the ban on her political activities is unlikely to be lifted.

Her sentence reflects the longstanding rivalry between two of the Islamic Republic's founding fathers: former President Rafsanjani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The two men have jockeyed for the upper hand--and the country's political direction--since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Hashemi's conviction is another way for the supreme leader to pressure his political rival at a time when Rafsanjani is already at the nadir of his power.

How has the regime's pressure on former president Rafsanjani increased in recent months?

Ayatollah Rafsanjani's political clout has diminished significantly since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in 2005. The campaign against him increased further after the controversial 2009 election. His son Mehdi Hashemi was forced into exile after being charged with corruption and named as a major instigator of the post-election unrest. His other son, Mohsen, was pushed to resign from his post as the director of Tehran's metro in 2011.

The Supreme Leader has gradually stripped Rafsanjani of his official positions. The former president was first barred from leading Friday Prayers in Tehran in 2009. In March 2011, he lost his position as the head of the Assembly of Experts, an elite clerical institution responsible for selecting and supervising the Supreme Leader. A few months later, Khamenei ordered the establishment of a five-member "arbitration committee" to resolve disputes among the three branches of government. The creation of this committee was widely interpreted as an attempt to further isolate Rafsanjani, who heads the Expediency Council, a body constitutionally mandated to resolve disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council--basically the same purpose.

In December 2011, Rafsanjani's personal website was blocked and later completely shut down. Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Ejeii said that the website was filtered based on the Islamic Republic's internet crimes regulations.

On Jan. 2, 2011 Iranian media reported that the passports of his family members were confiscated at the Tehran airport, further evidence of the regime's squeeze.

Why now? Is her sentence related to the parliamentary election in March?

The regime has ratcheted up pressure on the opposition ahead of the pivotal elections. The move against Hashemi may also be designed to compel the former president to publicly endorse the forthcoming poll and side with the supreme leader's loyalists--effectively political blackmail. So far, Rafsanjani had not taken sides.

Hashemi's conviction may also foreshadow a move to take away her father's last leadership post, chairmanship of the Expediency Council. The five-year term of the council's current members is due to expire in February. The prospect of Rafsanjani's reelection for another term is widely seen in Iran as improbable.

The move against Rafsanjani's family may be an effort to ensure that the former president fades quietly into oblivion.

What does this mean about tensions between Khamenei and Rafsanjani?

Tensions between the supreme leader and the former president, colleagues for a half century, may have deteriorated beyond repair in recent years. Differences between the two men came to surface during the 2005 election when Rafsanjani competed again for the presidency against then Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After the disputed 2009 election, the supreme leader publicly broke with Rafsanjani and said his views were "closer" to Ahmadinejad's.

For the past two years, Rafsanjani has in turn basically ignored Khamenei's orders that the regime's elite disavow the opposition Green Movement. Rafsanjani has repeatedly advocated national reconciliation, refusing to adopt the bellicose rhetoric of Khamenei's loyalists against the so-called "seditionists" of the Green Movement.

Rafsanjani's further isolation could facilitate Khamenei's proposal to change Iran's political system from presidential to parliamentary. Rafsanjani initiated changing the constitution in 1989 to create an executive president. He has recently challenged the return to the old system on grounds that it would undermine the Islamic Republic's popular legitimacy. If Rafsanjani is marginalized, Khamenei would effectively appropriate most levers of power.

Yasmin Alem, an independent Iran analyst, is the author of Duality by Design: The Iranian Electoral System published by the International Foundation of ElectoralSystems. This article is presented by Tehran Bureau, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as part of the Iran project at iranprimer.usip.org.

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[ Q&A ] Iranian officials grabbed global headlines in recent days by threatening to close the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's traded oil passes. Iran sought to back up its threats by holding a 10-day military exercise in the Persian Gulf and warning the recently-departed USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group not to return to the area. The United States and European Union have brushed aside Iran's warnings, vowing to maintain freedom of navigation in the Gulf and proceeding with plans to impose sanctions on Tehran's oil trade. This heated back-and-forth has roiled global oil markets and led to heightened speculation about a U.S.-Iran military confrontation. The following is an interview with Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute and a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, about the rising rhetoric.

Could Iran actually close the Strait of Hormuz?

It is unlikely that Iran could close the Strait for a meaningful period of time. Any Iranian effort to seize control of the Strait would meet swift and determined resistance from the U.S. Navy, with the support of U.S. allies in the region and beyond. Iran's regular navy and air force are no match for their U.S. counterparts; both would almost certainly be dispatched quickly in any outright confrontation. Recognizing this, Iran is more likely to use the asymmetric warfare capabilities of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy to disrupt shipping through the Strait and to harass U.S. forces. The Revolutionary Guards could use small boats (either individually or in "swarms"); influence mines (which do not require that a ship run into them); midget submarines; anti-ship cruise missiles; and even divers. These tactics could be a nuisance, but they are also unlikely to shutter the Strait. Yet they would probably provoke a strong U.S. response.

What would be the consequences of an Iranian attempt to close the Strait?

Iran is unlikely to try to close the Strait for several reasons. The regime surely recognizes its military disadvantage; it is also cognizant of its own dependence on the Strait. About 70 percent of Iran's budget revenues are generated by oil exports, all of which must transit the Strait. This fact alone would make a preemptive effort to close the Strait self-defeating.

If Iran nevertheless sought to close the Strait -- say, in response to an oil embargo rather than preemptively -- the consequences would extend well beyond the mere military setback of the United States then forcibly reopening the passage. Global oil prices may sharply increase, though the extent and duration of this increase would depend on the scope and intensity of the conflict and the speed with which the United States could assert dominance in the Gulf.

The United States, the presumable target of an Iranian move against the Strait, would probably suffer like the rest of the world from the effects of rising oil prices. But U.S. oil supplies would not be meaningfully imperiled. The United States imports 49 percent of the petroleum it consumes, and only 25 percent of those imports come from the Persian Gulf, far less than is available in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. China, however, is heavily dependent on Gulf oil sources, particularly from Saudi Arabia. China also happens to be Iran's largest oil customer and provides Iran with critical support in the form of weapons sales and diplomatic cover at the United Nations. Iran can ill afford to anger Beijing.

Iran would also need to consider the likelihood that United States and its allies would not stop at reopening the Strait in response to an Iranian attempt to close it; they might also target nuclear and military installations on the Iranian mainland and perhaps even seek to topple the Iranian regime. The impediments to a preemptive U.S. attack -- including uncertainty about the aftermath, worries about oil markets, and the desire for diplomatic support -- would be rendered largely moot by an Iranian offensive in the Gulf.

As a result of these factors, an Iranian effort to close the Strait of Hormuz would likely have devastating strategic consequences for the Iranian regime.

What is Iran's aim, then, in threatening to close the Strait and attack U.S. forces?
The Iranian regime -- like the North Koreans and others -- understands that rattling a saber can be more beneficial than actually using it. Iran's bellicose rhetoric and behavior are aimed at both domestic and international audiences.

Inside Iran, the regime has struggled with internal divisions, a growing (if temporarily suppressed) opposition and, perhaps most urgently, a crumbling economy. The regime may calculate that provoking tensions externally can divert domestic attention from these crises. If this is its aim, however, there is little evidence that it is succeeding. Indeed, these actions may prove counterproductive domestically, as they provide the regime's opponents with ammunition to accuse it of increasingly reckless and damaging policies. Some observers speculate that hardline groups in Iran -- for example, the Revolutionary Guards -- may want an actual (albeit limited) conflict to consolidate their domestic control. But so far, the regime has preferred leveling threats and working through proxies to maintain plausible deniability.

Externally, Iran may hope that its actions will produce several responses that will prove useful. First, it is relying on the United States to demonstrate restraint to avoid conflict. Iran has engaged in brazen provocations in recent years--including mock attacks on U.S. vessels, the seizure of Western hostages, and attacks on U.S. targets--that have provoked limited Western response. This restraint -- along with the uncertainty about the U.S. regional posture after withdrawal from Iraq -- may prove counterproductive by feeding Iranian commanders' sense of impunity.

Second, the Iranian regime almost certainly understands that Western countries are worried about an increase in global oil prices at a fragile time for the global economy. Tehran's actions are meant to sharpen these fears by increasing oil prices in the near-term and holding out the prospect for sharper increases down the road. The regime's hope, presumably, is that oil-dependent countries -- both consumers and producers -- will focus on defusing the current crisis rather than on Iran's nuclear program and may delay plans to sanction Iran's oil exports or even urge the United States to reduce its military posture in the Gulf. But the United States and European Union have thus far refused to play along, brushing off Iran's threats and moving forward with oil sanctions.

This article is presented by Tehran Bureau, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as part of the Iran project at iranprimer.usip.org.Follow Tehran Bureau on Facebook and Twitter.

Documentary on American basketball player in Iran nears completion.

[ film ] Seconds remain to the final whistle. As the tall, dark American player stands ready to take the free throw that will decide the fate of the basketball game, you can hear the crowd quiet down as if they're in the Colosseum about to witness the final blow of a gladiator's sword. He takes a deep breath, aims, and shoots. Even before the ball falls through the net, the arena thunders with roaring fans: "Kevin! Kevin! Kevin!..." His fellow players mob him as the crowd grows even wilder. You start to hear them speak their native language -- Persian. Kevin Sheppard is the hero of A.S. Shiraz, a team in Iran's elite Basketball Super League.

And the incomplete reels of The Iran Job have much more to offer than just sports. The brainchild of the husband-and-wife team of Till Schauder and Sara Nodjoumi, the documentary about the life of an American playing professional basketball in Iran is set to be completed soon. Even as a work in progress, it is powerful enough to force you into hysterical laughter and move you to tears within a span of seconds. As dramatic as it all sounds, the story of how the documentary came to be made is equally filled with intrigue.

Sara's first visit to Iran was in 2000, more than two decades after she and her family left. Till's was in 2004. "I love basketball," he says, adding "I have a vested interest in Iran." By 2007, after a few more visits, they had made up their minds to make a documentary about the experiences of an American playing in the Super League. But even before they had identified an individual to focus on, their plans were complicated by the arrival of their first child. Instead of both going to test the waters, Till had to leave Sara and their newborn baby behind when he packed up for Tehran in May 2007. While he found excited team managers, it took another year until they met a suitable candidate.

By the fall of 2008, Till and Sara had almost given up on making the movie because they hadn't been able to find a player they were interested in following through an entire season. Their luck changed when they found out about Kevin Sheppard. Thirty seconds of Skype chat later, they felt he might be their guy. A two-day visit to Tehran confirmed that the cinema gods had indeed listened to their plight. Till believes the movie simply wouldn't be as charming and touching without him. "To make a such a film, you need a special person. Kevin is documentary gold." And he may be right.

Still, making the movie wasn't an easy task, even before the antigovernment protests in mid-2009 that drastically affected working conditions throughout the country. Till wasn't given a journalist visa. Instead, he had to get a tourist visa and work cautiously so as to not raise alarms. "I had a small backpack. I told myself, my camera, my cable, and my microphone and my batteries need to fit in this backpack," Till says. That gave him the peace of mind to believe that if he was ever questioned, he could claim to be just an unassuming tourist. Things went smoothly from that point on...for a while.

Viewers may be shocked to see how well Kevin, who hails from the American Virgin Islands, meshes with the citizens of a country routinely described as his homeland's enemy number one. On the other hand, he finds himself in situations that he can relate to about as much as an alien could relate to our planet. Then there's the scene where a restaurant worker dances like a chicken just to make sure that's what his foreign customer wants.

Till took three trips and spent almost three months in Iran to shoot the hour-and-a-half-long documentary. "We ended up shooting three to four hundred hours of footage," the German-born director says. But his nervousness about the length evaporated when he got to the editor's table. "I thought I had shot too much, but the editor was totally relaxed. He told me people come to them with upwards of 1,000 hours of footage."

Those 300 to 400 hours include gripping moments of Kevin winning the hearts of crowds with his hoop skills. While he fights to get his team into the playoffs, he befriends characters as complex as himself. While he's surrounded by men, he manages to make friends with three Iranian women who open his eyes to the reality of life in the country and the resentment and anger much of the population feels toward the government. All the while, he has to bear witness to anti-U.S. graffiti on walls and the prying eyes of onlookers who are curious to know what an African American is doing among his supposed enemies.

After he was detained at the Tehran airport in the spring of 2009, Till had to stop his visits. "They took me to a room and held me there for 24 hours," he says. "The TV in the room was playing the 1982 World Cup final between Germany and Italy over and over again." The game, one of the German soccer team's most painful defeats, was almost too much to bear for Till. "They were using Chinese torture methods to crack me!"

Back home in New York City, Sara and Till are at work finishing the final cut of the film. Interest has been huge, with support coming from countries all around the world. A Kickstarter campaign to fund the completion of the documentary has already raised over $67,000 and counting. They are eyeing a premier within a few months, ending their five-year-long journey. "Let's put it this way," Till says, "when we first started this film, we had no kids. Now we have two!"

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The rescue occurred about 175 miles southeast of Muscat, Oman. More from NBC:

The U.S. Navy on Friday rescued 13 Iranian seamen who were being held captive by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Oman.

A Navy helicopter from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, responding to a distress call from a merchant ship under attack by pirates, chased the pirates to their "mother ship," an Iranian-flagged dhow that had earlier been hijacked.

The rescue came at a time of rising tensions between the United States and Iran. Earlier this week, the Islamic Republic warned the USS John C. Stennis not to return to the Persian Gulf following its departure last week for the Gulf of Oman and North Arabian Sea. Responding to planned U.S. sanctions against Iran's central bank, Tehran also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping gateway for 20 percent of the world's oil.

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

Iran Standard Time (IRST), GMT+3:30

10:40 p.m., 17 Dey/January 7 After many months of struggle between a group of Majles deputies who have wanted to summon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning and the parliamentary leadership, which has prevented the move, the president has finally been called to appear before the Majles -- at least, technically. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said that Ahmadinejad has been asked to participate in a meeting of the commission on Tuesday to respond to deputies' questions concerning two unspecified matters. He added, however, that the president can send a representative to the meeting, instead of participating in it himself. Cleric Hassan Ebrahimi said that the two issues deputies want to discuss are Ahmadinejad's attempts to remove Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi from office, and his firing of former Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki while Mottaki was visiting Senegal in 2010.

Twenty-four Majles deputies will not run again

The deadline to enroll with the Interior Ministry to run in the upcoming Majles elections, to be held on March 3, has expired. Of the current 290 deputies, at least 24 -- most of them reformists -- have decided not to run again. The best known of the reformists who will not seek reelection is Jamshid Ansari, who represents Zanjan, about 150 miles northwest of Tehran. Among the few principlist deputies who will not run again, the most important are Mousa Ghorbani, who represents Ghaenat in South Khorasan province; Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, the reactionary cleric who represents Isfahan; and cleric Seyyed Reza Akrami, who represents the greater Tehran area.

Karroubi's party calls for boycott of Majles vote

Esmail Gerami Moghaddam, spokesman for the Etemad-e Melli (National Trust), the political party founded by Mehdi Karroubi, announced the party's official position regarding the upcoming Majles elections. He declared that because senior officials of the party have clearly stated that they will not participate in the elections, Etemad-e Melli will not nominate anyone. Gerami Moghaddam also criticized the attempts of some conservatives to style themselves as reformists and to speak on behalf of all the true reformists.

Mesbah Yazdi, a democrat?

Bibak News, the website published by the reactionary cleric Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, posted a remarkable article which claims that Imam Ali, the Shiites' first Imam and the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, was put in power by people's vote. Mesbah Yazdi has always said that the Imams and Faghihs (such as Khamenei and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) were selected by God, and the people only "discovered" the selection. He has also previously stated that elections are "décor" for an Islamic government, since he believes that the regime gets its legitimacy from God, not the people. According to the article, "Thus, as you can see, Islam has the highest respect for people's votes."

Another Bibak News article condemned "making revelations about Muslim politicians," implicitly opposing the attacks by Ahmadinejad and his supporters on Rafsanjani. It appears that the articles represent a new campaign tactic by Mesbah Yazdi and his supporters. Mesbah Yazdi is the leader of the Jebheh Paaydaari Enghelab-e Eslami (JPEE, or Durable Front of the Islamic Revolution), which supports Ahmadinejad. The JPEE is concerned that its candidates may be disqualified by the Guardian Council, which has vetting power over candidates for all important elections and which supports Khamenei in his power struggle with Ahmadinejad. Five clerical students of Mesbah Yazdi -- Morteza Agha Tehrani, Mohammad Naser Saghaye Biria, Mamoud Nabavian, and Hossein Jalali -- intend to run.

Rahim Mashaei's 96 foreign trips

Majles deputy Ahmad Tavakoli said that parliament may question Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi about trips that Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Ahmadinejad's chief of staff and close confidant, has taken abroad over the past several years. According to Tavakoli, Rahim Mashaei has made 96 trips to foreign countries, most of them as the head of the Organization of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. The deputy asked, "Where did he go, why did he go, and why were the trips necessary?" Tavakoli, a prominent critic of the president, claimed that during one of the trips Rahim Mashaei also met with a former Israeli ambassador to an unnamed country.

Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad

Raha Press, one of the seven new websites that support Ahmadinejad, claimed that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is trying to "finish off" Ahmadinejad. It claimed that Rafsanjani, Majles Deputy Speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar, and several other conservatives intend to pressure Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to "topple the tenth administration [after the 1979 Revolution]." According to the website, "Some high-ranking officials of several political parties have concluded that Khamenei's silence about the 'perverted group' [the hardliners' epithet for Mashaei and his inner circle] will not last and, therefore" -- here the site employs an extended soccer metaphor -- "they should 'score the golden goal' [getting rid of the president] before 'extra time' arrives, because Bahonar has said that Khamenei's silence about the 'perverted group' is shaky and he may support the leader of the 'perverted group' after 90 minutes." Raha Press has claimed that Bahonar made the statement after meeting with Rafsanjani. The speculation is based on the sudden posting of a letter that Rafsanjani wrote to Khamenei a few days before the June 2009 presidential election in which he warned Khamenei about the consequences of Ahmadinejad's "reelection." The letter was posted on the website that reflects Rafsanjani's views, which was recently blocked.

Ahmadinejad ignores Khamenei's orders

Abbas Salimi Namin, head of the Center for Compilation and Study of Iran's History, said that Ahmadinejad has been ignoring Khamenei's orders to participate in the meetings of the Expediency Discernment Council, headed by Rafsanjani. Speaking to a group of pro-Khamenei university students, Salimi Namin said, "The Leader has emphasized many times to Ahmadinejad that he must participate in the meetings of the council, but he ignores them." He added that, "Ahmadinejad wants to polarize the society, which is against the Leader's wishes."

Some European countries want to postpone Iran oil embargo

Dr. Mehrdad Emadi, an economic adviser to the European Union, said that several European countries have requested that the union postpone the implementation of the planned embargo of Iranian oil. Some countries, such as Greece, receive oil from Iran at a discounted price and have requested the union make up for the higher costs they will have to bear. At the same time, the E.U. needs to learn whether Saudi Arabia will be able to compensate for the cutoff of Iranian oil by increasing its own oil production. He added that a postponement of as many as six months has been requested.

Iran will not stop uranium enrichment

In a conversation with Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that Iran will never stop uranium enrichment. "Our nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, and is our national right," he added, emphasizing that in the next round of negotiations that may soon take place between Iran and the 5+1 group -- the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany -- "Iran will not say anything about setting aside its peaceful nuclear program."

Referring to the U.S. spy drone that was recently captured by Iran, Mehmanparast said, "The United States is well aware that the number of its spying aircrafts that our security and defense forces have controlled is more than one, and we will decide at the appropriate time to show them in public." He also claimed that the United States is employing human spies to gather intelligence on Iran as well. Mehmanparast denied that there is any direct link between the new round of sanctions that have been imposed on Iran by the United States and its European allies and the wide fluctuations in the rate of exchange between the Iranian rial and major Western currencies including the U.S. dollar. He observed that the new U.S. sanctions have not even been imposed yet and will take several months to be implemented.

Iran "not concerned" about sanctions

Foreign Minister Salehi said that Iran is not concerned about the new sanctions imposed by the United States and its European allies. Speaking at a news conference with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu who is visiting Tehran, Salehi said, "The sanctions will have no effect. Given the experience of the Islamic Republic of Iran with sanctions over the past 32 years, we are ready to counter such economic enmities and are not concerned about them. The necessary plans [to counter the sanctions] have been made. Just as we have weathered such difficulties over the past 32 years, we will do so again." He reiterated that Iran is prepared to negotiate with the 5+1 group, and said that, in a recent conference in Bonn, he had talked to Catherine Ashton, the European Union high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, about resuming the negotiations.

West wages "economic war" on Iran

Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi said that Iran is in an "economic war" with the West. Visiting Kharg Island, where Iran's largest oil terminal is located, Ghasemi said, "Given the vital role of Kharg Island in Iran's economy, the island is the main base and at the forefront of the national economy and the staff working at Kharg are like the soldiers [at the front]." Ghasemi urged the quick completion of several projects on the island, including new terminals and a liquefied natural gas facility, and emphasized that there is no problem in providing the necessary funds for the projects, as they have the highest priority.

Ahmadinejad promoted to associate professor

Before he was elected president in 2005, Ahmadinejad was an assistant professor in the Civil Engineering Department at Iran University of Science and Technology, where he received his degrees. Despite the fact that over the last seven years he has been too busy to be really involved at IUST, he was recently promoted by the university to associate professor. This has provoked protests by students and some faculty members who say that he has not been active in research for many years, a main criterion for promotion. In 2009, Kamran Daneshjoo, Ahmadinejad's minister of science, research, and technology, who was an assistant professor at IUST, was promoted to full professor (skipping over the intermediate position of associate professor), even though he has similarly not been active at the university for four years, due to his work at the Interior Ministry and as governor-general of Tehran province.

Ahmadinejad visits Intelligence Ministry

Nine months after he forced Intelligence Minister Moslehi out of office, only to see him reinstated by Khamenei, Ahmadinejad visited the Intelligence Ministry headquarters, where he met with Moslehi and some staff members. According to the reports, Ahmadinejad never mentioned last year's episode, but talked about what the ministry should do, including "being ahead of the curve when it comes to the development's in the region," and "having a world view" of the developments.

Center Bank governor threatens to resign

After being subjected to strong criticism in the Majles over the dramatic increase in the rate of exchange between the rial and U.S. dollar, Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani has apparently threatened to resign. He has reportedly said that he will stay in his job only if all the related governmental organs work with him to control the chaotic currency market and he is given complete freedom in his job.

U.S. warns Latin American countries about Iran

Next week, Ahmadinejad will visit Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Ecuador. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the trips indicate that Iran is desperate for friends: "As the regime feels increasing pressure, it is desperate for friends and flailing around in interesting places to find new friends. We are making absolutely clear to countries around the world that now is not the time to be deepening ties, not security ties, not economic ties, with Iran." The countries Ahmadinejad plans to visit next week and the rest of the international community must make it clear to Iran that it has a "choice," Nuland said. "It can remain in an international isolation, or it can comply with its obligations and start cooperating and rejoin the community of nations."

List of 101 people secretly executed

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has published a list of the names of 101 people who it says were executed secretly in Vakil Abad Prison, near the northeastern city of Mashhad. The Campaign called on the Majles and judiciary to immediately institute a moratorium on executions and to move swiftly to abolish the death penalty. "Unfortunately, many of these executions happen behind closed doors, without the involvement of lawyers or awareness of the victim's family, and without access to a fair trial," said Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi. She added, "The Iranian judiciary and government know that the death penalty is not a suitable solution for fighting crime, particularly drug-related crimes. The basic question is this: why does the Iranian government use this type of punishment with such enthusiasm? The issue is that these executions only create fear and intimidation and serve only a political purpose. All of the statistics show that while the number of executions have increased the number of drug-related crimes have not decreased at all." The campaign's list counter judiciary chief Sadegh Amoli Larijani's statement of December 21: "I categorically deny any secret mass executions.... All executions are announced to my office...if anyone has information about executions anywhere that have been secret and without families' knowledge, let us know and we will investigate it."

Beating of two political prisoners

Reports indicate that journalist Mehdi Mahmoudian, who was one of the first to report on the crimes committed in the Kahrizak detention center in the aftermath of the June 2009 presidential election, has been transferred to Ward 2-A of Evin Prison, which is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and been beaten badly. Mahmoudian, who suffers from heart disease, is a member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the country's largest reformist party, which has been outlawed by the hardliners. He had been incarcerated in Gohar Dasht Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran. At least four young demonstrators were killed in Kahrizak, and dozens more were tortured. Mahmoudian, who was arrested in September 2009, wrote a letter to Khamenei from prison in which he detailed what had happened in Kahrizak.

Another political prisoner, human rights advocate Ali Ajami, who is incarcerated in Rajaei Shahr Prison near Karaj, was slapped by a security guard so severely that his ear was wounded and he had to be transferred to the prison's medical center.

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

Iran Standard Time (IRST), GMT+3:30

11 p.m., 19 Dey/January 9 The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) has called for the immediate reversal of the death sentence imposed on Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, the American convicted by an Iranian court on charges of spying for the CIA. The statement released by ICHRI today provides more details on the case involving the former U.S. Marine:

A source close to the family told the Campaign that the US citizen entered Iran for the first time on 15 August 2011 to visit with his family members. He was arrested on 29 August 2011 on charges of espionage.

"When Amir supplied his background and applied for his passport processing at the Iranian Interest Section of the Pakistan Embassy in Washington DC, he was assured that his prior employment with the US government was not going to impede his trip to Iran nor cause him any problems," the source added.

Four months after his arrest in August 2011, Hekmati's first court session was held on 27 December at Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court. Presiding Judge Abolghassem Salavati denied Hekmati the lawyer hired by his family to represent him. Instead, a court-appointed lawyer represented him during the trial without ever seeing him beforehand.

Judge Salavati is one of Iran's most notorious judges, well known for the unlawful and harsh sentences he has delivered to dozens of political prisoners during the post-election show trials. He has sentenced more than one hundred political prisoners, human rights activists, and peaceful demonstrators to lengthy prison sentences as well as at least nine execution sentences, earning the moniker "The Judge of Death." [...]

The source close to the family told the Campaign that over the course of Hekmati's arrest, Iranian authorities pressured them not to talk with the media, assuring the family they would release Hekmati soon. During his arrest and subsequent detention, Hekmati was never allowed to contact his family in the US.

According to state-operated Fars News Agency, Hekmati allegedly entered Iran with the aim of penetrating the country's intelligence system. Further examination, according to a report by the Judicial-Legal Director of the Intelligence Ministry's Espionage Unit, indicated that his goal was to accuse Iran of involvement with terrorism. His indictment alleged that Hekmati was recruited by the CIA in May 2009 to carry out espionage missions in Iran.

The family asserts that what was said in the indictment regarding Hekmati's background, his prior service in the US military and his prior employment with the US government, is in the public record and he never hid what he did in the past. All the information regarding his background could be obtained from his passport application, as well as from his resume, easily accessible from his confiscated laptop.

In an email to the Associated Press, his mother, Behnaz Hekmati, wrote that she and her husband are "shocked and terrified" by the verdict, which they believe was "the result of a process that was neither transparent nor fair." She continued, "Amir is not a criminal. His very life is being exploited for political gain.... We pray that Iran will show compassion and not murder our son, Amir, a natural born American citizen, who was visiting Iran and his relatives for the first time."

9:30 p.m., 19 Dey/January 9 "My son is no spy. He is innocent. He's a good fellow, a good citizen, a good man," said Ali Hekmati, father of Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, on Monday. In an interview with ABC News, the elder Hekmati, a professor of biology at Mott Community College in Michigan, continued, "I am absolutely afraid to death.... I don't know what they're going to do with him." ABC also reports that service records reveal no evidence that the former Marine ever received any intelligence training while a member of the U.S. armed forces:

Hekmati enlisted in the Marines after graduating high school in Flint, Mich., in 2001 and joined the infantry, completing basic training at Camp Pendleton in California. The 28-year-old briefly attended the Defense Language Institute for the Marines in Monterey, Calif., and his father told ABC News he worked as a translator, but records show Hekmati was officially a rifleman only. A Marine spokesperson said it was possible he could have served as a translator for his Marine unit in a more informal capacity.

Hekmati was deployed abroad where he was awarded a Combat Action Ribbon, which is given to Marines that at some point were in direct combat with the enemy, the records say.... [H]e completed his service in 2005 as a sergeant with a Good Conduct Medal.... Not a single time do the records mention any training in military intelligence.

The Obama administration meanwhile reacted sharply to the announcement of Hekmati's death sentence. "Allegations that Mr. Hekmati either worked for, or was sent to Iran by the CIA are false," said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor. "The Iranian regime has a history of falsely accusing people of being spies, of eliciting forced confessions, and of holding innocent Americans for political reasons."

4:12 p.m., 19 Dey/January 9 Iran's Revolutionary Court on Monday sentenced to death a 28-year-old former U.S. Marine on charges of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Iranian media. Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, born in Arizona to Iranian parents and raised in Michigan, was accused of moharebeh -- being an enemy of God.

During his trial, in late December, the prosecutor referred to Hekmati's trip to the U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan, and his access to classified information, and then his trip from Afghanistan to Iran. He also alleged that Hekmati had "confessed," which he reportedly repeated before the court. "The CIA told me to go to Bagram to collect information and then go to Iran and give it to the ministry and receive money for it," he said. "'After you return [to Washington], we will give you another mission.'"

Behnaz Hekmati, his mother, said that her son had gone to Iran to visit his grandmothers and has confessed only under pressure. His family said he had received permission from the Iranian Interest Section in Washington, D.C., to travel to Iran for the first time in his life. The family also said Iranian officials "urged our family to remain silent with the promise of an eventual release."

On December 18, Hekmati was shown on Iranian state television allegedly confessing to being part of a plot to infiltrate Iran's intelligence services for the CIA. Confessions form a central part of Iran's political and judicial system, according to the BBC. But human rights organizations strongly question their validity. Hekmati has 20 days to appeal.

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A glorious career, a generous soul, and a mysterious death.

[ profile ] Certain popular figures live on for centuries in Iranians' minds and hearts, from the legendary Rostam, Sohrab, and Esfandiar of Abolghasem Ferdowsi's epic Shahnameh (Book of Kings), to the ancient Persian king Cyrus the Great, to Mirza Taghi Khan Amir Kabir (1807-52), chief minister to Naser al-Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty and one of the first true Iranian reformers.

Perhaps no such figure has been more popular over the past several decades than Gholamreza Takhti, the most famous wrestler in Iranian history. He was renowned for his chivalrous behavior and sportsmanship, but everyone also knew that he was a nationalist, a member of the National Front opposition to the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and an ardent supporter of Iran's national hero, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. January 7 was the 44th anniversary of his death, which shocked the nation not only because the beloved Takhti was just 37, but also because his death was, and still is, shrouded in secrecy. The Shah's government announced that Takhti had committed suicide, but almost no one believed it. I will never forget my own shock when I saw the headlines in the two leading newspapers, Ettelaat and Kayhan, that my father brought home every day.

Early life

Takhti was born on August 27, 1930, to a pious Muslim family in Khani Abad, a poor neighborhood on the southern edge of Tehran. Years later, he would frequently go to Mashhad in northeast Iran and visit the shrine of Imam Reza, Shiites' Eighth Imam. He always professed his love and respect for Imam Ali, the First Imam and cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. As a consequence of his religious beliefs, he always led a simple, squeaky-clean life.

Takhti's grandfather, Haji Gholi, owned a supermarket in Khani Abad. He would sit on an elevated seat, called takht in Persian and was thus known as Haji takhti. When in the 1920s the government of Reza Shah, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, decided to issue all Iranians birth certificates and identity cards, everyone had to have a family name, and Takhti became the last name of Haji Gholi. Takhti's father, Rajab Khan Takhti, was an unsuccessful merchant, to the point that he had to mortgage his home to support his family. When he could not pay back his debt, they were thrown out. Takhti himself said years later that they were forced to live on the street for three days. They finally rented two rooms in a house in the neighborhood. The elder Takhti passed away when Gholamreza was very young, leaving his wife (pictured) and five children -- three sons and two daughters, Gholamreza the youngest of the five -- in relative poverty. This had a deep effect on Takhti, and years later he used his fame to help poor Iranians.

Takhti graduated from Hakim Nezami Elementary School and went to Manouchehri High School. Due to his family's financial difficulties, he was able to attend only through the ninth grade before he had to drop out. He first worked for the National Iranian Oil Company in Masjed Soleiman, in oil-rich Khuzestan province. After returning to Tehran, he was drafted into the army in 1948, and was also employed by Iran's national railroad.

Wrestling career

Takhti began learning wrestling and what is called in Iran varzesh-e zurkhaneh (literally, house-of-strength sport), which combines lifting, wrestling, aerobics, and other strenuous exercises. His first trainer was Seyyed Ali Haghshenas Kamyab (1906-73), known as Pahlavan Seyyed Ali, who was considered the most powerful athlete in Tehran in the era preceding World War II. Beginning in 1950, Takhti began going regularly to Poulad Club on Shahpour Street in south Tehran. There, he attracted the attention of club president Hossein Rezizadeh, who perceived that Takhti had considerable wrestling talent. That same year he became a member of the national wrestling team. At the 1951 world championship competition, he won a silver medal, launching an illustrious wrestling career. Mahmoud Mollah Ghasemi also won silver, while Abdollah Mojtavabi and Mehdi Yaghoobi took bronze medals, marking the beginning of Iran as a world wrestling power, which it remains to this day.

At the 1952 Olympic Games, also held in Helsinki, Takhti again won a silver medal, after six victories and only one defeat. At the 1954 world championships, Takhti was unexpectedly defeated by a Swedish opponent in the semifinals. At the championships in Warsaw the following year, he took silver yet again. And then, at the Melbourne Olympic Games of 1956, he at last won a gold medal.

In the 1957 world championships, held in Istanbul, Takhti was eliminated early, simply because he was too light compared to his competitors in the 87-kilogram class. In 1958 and 1959, after defeating the late Hossein Nouri, Takhti was acclaimed as Iran's Pahlevan (most powerful man). At the 1958 Asian wrestling championships in Tokyo, Takhti won the gold; later that year, at the world championships in Sofia, he took silver. At the 1959 world championships, held in Tehran, he won gold. The next year, at the Rome Olympic Games, saw him win another silver medal. The greatest triumph for Iran's wrestlers came in 1961 at the world championships in Yokohama -- the team won five gold medals, including one by Takhti, along with a bronze.

The next year, at the world championship games in Toledo, Ohio, Takhti took the silver medal, but only because he was heavier than his opponent from the Soviet Union, Alexander Medved, by a mere 200 grams. He was also very ill, and was immediately taken to New York after the competition for surgery. Medved, who had become Takhti's fiercest competitor and would later be recognized as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, always praised Takhti. He was particularly touched by the fact that, when they wrestled for gold in the 1962 finals, Takhti knew that one of Medved's feet was injured, but he never tried to attack it. The two subsequently became close friends. In his final Olympic appearance, at the Tokyo Games of 1964, Takhti ranked fourth in his weight class.

Even though he was ready to retire from wrestling, his immense popularity among his countrymen persuaded him to accept a spot on the national team for the world championships of 1966, again held in Toledo. By then, he was active in the political opposition to the Shah, and the Pahlavi regime was concerned about him. The government repeatedly raised obstacles to his training regimen, which became common knowledge. On the day of his departure for the competition, thousands of people showed up at Mehrabad, Tehran's old airport, to see him off. Having been unable to properly train, Takhti was swiftly eliminated, and retired.

Takhti was immensely popular, not only because of his illustrious career, but more importantly, due to his connection with common Iranians, his kindness to them, and in particular to poor people. He was once asked by a journalist which of his medals was the most important to him. "The highest and best trophy that I have received is not a gold or silver medal," he said. "A human's heart is worth thousands of gold medals, and I know that thousands of my compatriots have devoted a small part of their kind hearts to me."

Along with Emam Ali Habibi Goudarzi (who now lives in Texas) and Abdollah Movahed (who now lives in California), Takhti is in the Hall of Fame of FILA, the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles.

Social and political life

Takhti married Shahla Tavakoli in November 1966. They had one son, Babak Takhti, who was born September 2, 1967, only four months before his father's death.

Even 44 years after his death, Iranians still shares tales about Takhti's caring for the poor and needy. On September 1, 1962, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook Bouin Zahra, a large village west of Tehran. More than 12,200 people were killed and 21,000 homes were destroyed, leaving many thousands of people homeless. The government called on citizens around the country for assistance, but the response was not very strong. But when Takhti called on the people to help, the response was huge. He led a long line of trucks carrying aid for the people in the earthquake-ravaged areas. As a result, he became even more popular than ever.

Takhti was also politically conscious. He joined the oil nationalization of 1951-53, and was an ardent supporter of Prime Minister Mosaddegh. After the CIA-sponsored coup of 1953 that overthrew the Mosaddegh government, Takhti was said to be very depressed and did not want to appear in public. In the summer of 1961, after he returned from Yokohama as world champion, he announced his membership in the Second National Front, which supported Mosaddegh. After the June 5, 1963, uprising, Takhti was elected to the Central Committee of the Second National Front. From then on, he was known as a member of the opposition, not only to the people, but also to the SAVAK, the Shah's security apparatus, which repeatedly summoned him for intimidatory questioning. After Mosaddegh passed away on March 5, 1966, under house arrest in the village of Ahmadabad outside Tehran, Takhti was among the prominent figures who participated in his funeral, despite repeated threats from SAVAK agents. He reportedly told them, "Arrest me."

On one occasion when students at the University of Tehran staged a strike and sit-in, the campus was surrounded by security forces who prevented anyone from entering. Except for Takhti, who was allowed to bring in food for the striking students, which he continued to do until the sit-in ended.

Death

On January 7, 1968, the government announced that Takhti had committed suicide and that his lifeless body had been found in Tehran's Atlantic Hotel. Almost no one believed the official account. How could a pious, kind man like Takhti kill himself only four months after the birth of his son? The renowned author Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-69) wrote of Takhti's funeral, "In that vast crowd, no one was thinking about the possibility of suicide even for one moment." Speculation continues about the real cause of his death. (The last two days of his life have been chronicled here.)

His funeral, organized by Hossein Towfigh, editor-in-chief and publisher of the satire magazine Towfigh, was attended by hundreds of thousands. Towfigh devoted a special issue to Takhti's death in which he was depicted as an angel, flying high above the throngs of mourners at his own funeral. The caption read, "Do not cry for me, cry for your own plight" -- a direct reference to the Shah's dictatorship and repression of the Iranian people. Towfigh also coined a memorable phrase, "Takhti raa khodkoshi kardand" (Takhti was killed, but they said he committed suicide). The magazine was barred from publishing by the Shah for several months.

Takhti is buried at Ebn-e Babooyeh Cemetery in south Tehran, near Rey, in the mausoleum of Shamshiri, the owner of a famous restaurant in Tehran, also believed to be a member of the opposition. Decades after his death, he is still commemorated every year by his fans. Ali Hatami, the renowned film director, began work on a movie about him, Jahan Palevan Takhti (World Champion Takhti), before he passed away in 1996. The movie, which examines some of the theories about Takhti's death, was finished the following year by director and screenwriter Behrooz Afkhami. Siavash Kasraei, Mehdi Soheili, and Mehdi Akhavan Sales have composed beautiful poems in Takhti's memory. His son, Babak, who has no direct recollection of Takhti, has written a book about him, In Search of My Father.

When the news of Takhti's death spread, the Iranian nation went into mourning. At least seven people killed themselves due to their sadness. One, a butcher in Kermanshah, left a note saying, "A world without the world's champion is not a place to live." A boxer in Rey, where Takhti visited frequently, had heard that Takhti had ended his life due to problems with his wife, which had prompted him to attack her. After he found out that Takhti had actually mentioned her in his will very respectfully, and had said that in his absence she should raise young Babak, the boxer was so ashamed that he killed himself. His grave is only a short distance from Takhti's.

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Stressed monetary markets prompt rank speculation, threaten rampant inflation.

[ dispatch ] The first sign of trouble appeared in the gold market. There has always been a strong demand for gold and gold coinage in Iran, as Iranians have traditionally saved in the precious metal. "I never lose money buying gold," said Simin, a 50-year-old retired teacher and mother of four grown children. "Even during the war, I registered for Bahar-e Azadi coins [the Islamic Republic's official gold coins]. They are easy to hide and easy to trade. When I need cash, all I need to do is go into the first jewelry store and sell them at market price." Few became alarmed as gold prices began to increase in Tehran; after all, the gold market was on the upswing globally. According to an economist at the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), "Gold was rising everywhere, and it was only natural to see prices increasing in Tehran. Although sometimes the price of gold in Tehran was more expensive than its price in the global market, sometimes it was lower."

But as the price of gold continued to climb, many more started to invest in it. Laleh, a 32-year-old artist and designer, was one. "I used most of my savings to buy gold in the summer of 2010," she said. "Since then, it has gained almost 50 percent in value." That sort of return, which few investments can hope to offer, triggered even greater demand. As demand shot up, the CBI tried to stem it. Central Bank President Mahmoud Bahmani announced on several occasions that there was enough gold for everyone. These proclamations seemed only to fan the flames. Finally, last May, the CBI announced that it would sell no more than five Bahar-e Azadi coins to each citizen; the transaction would be noted in their national ID cards. This too failed to restrain the market, and prices kept rising. People began to queue in long lines to purchase their five coins. Entrepreneurial types were on the scene too, hiring others to stand in line for them. "Renting someone," as the practice came to be called, became very common and the term entered everyday parlance.

At one point this past December, Khabar Online, a news website associated with economic conservatives, reported, "The price for one's place in the line is up to 40,000 tomans" -- 400,000 rials, or $35 at the time. Banks currently sell each gold piece at 60,000 tomans below market price. "One can make up to 300,000 tomans by staying awake and standing in line for the whole night," Noosha, an accounting major, told me. "See, it is easy to make money. Who needs a job in this country?" She said that she and her mother had made about three million tomans in this fashion.

But it had its dangers. "When the bank employees tried to close the doors, yelling 'tamoom shod' [sold out], people would yell back 'na, nashodeh' [no, it's not]. Then the people closest to the door would start to fight and beat each other up," she said, describing the tense atmosphere. There were stories of people getting stabbed in these quarrels.

Some economists suggested that the government should sell gold certificates to calm the market. Right before Christmas, the CBI announced that it would offer gold prepurchase certificates for sale, hoping it would quell the public hunger. But again the announcement did little to stabilize the market.

"People trust the real thing, not the promise of it," explained Mohammad, an economic analyst with a private bank in Tehran. "Paper [documents] and certificates do not do well in Iran -- the market is too volatile. Plus, ordinary people are not very familiar with papers and bonds. So they prefer to have the real thing." Besides, people in Iran do not trust government promissory scrip. Of course, CBI gold certificates are being purchased on the market, but still the price of gold keeps rising.

For now at least, the government is more concerned with another market: hard currency.

To understand Iran's currency exchange market, one must recall what the Iranian economy was like in the 1980s. For a decade, the Iranian government kept the official exchange rate for the U.S. dollar at 10 percent of its black market value. Many government agencies sold their allocated dollars on the streets of Tehran to make ends meet. According to Mohammad, the bank analyst, "In the '80s, Iranian households learned how to find ways to benefit from the opportunities created by the government's meddling in the market and its subsidies." At one point during the following decade, Iran had three different official dollar exchange rates: one for industries, one for tourists, and one for government agencies. It was no small achievement when the administration of President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was able to introduce a single exchange rate for the dollar. This policy was upheld under Mohammad Khatami.

Khatami's successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wanted to maintain a fixed exchange rate, however, so this single-rate regime became untenable. As early as 2010, Iranian economists warned about the growing gap between the government's official exchange rate and the dollar's true market value, and the consequent profit-making opportunities. Still, the growing demand for hard currency did not destabilize the market for a time. This eventually changed in response to political developments.

As the United States led its allies in an effort to curb the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions, the Iranian economy came under siege from increasingly severe sanctions. The targeting of its oil industry has restricted its market, and the country now often receives commodities instead of hard currency in return for the oil it sells. Banking sanctions have drastically complicated many international financial transactions; their cost has soared and many Iranian businesses have been forced to use third parties to transfer money.

"Emirate banks started to tell us they cannot open accounts or lines of credit for us Iranian businesses," said Mehdi, who operates an export-import office out of Dubai. "This has made us miserable, since we can't send funds to either our partners in Iran or abroad." And that was just the beginning. As regulations continued to tighten, Mehdi and his colleagues grew ever more fearful of the day they would find their accounts shut down all together. His company reduced its dealings with Iran and sought less risky opportunities elsewhere. The supply of paper money began to decline in Tehran shortly after sanctions were imposed on Iran's banking sector, with a domino effect on Iranian consumers.

Muhammad said, "There is always a strong demand for paper money in Iran; it is caused by demand for foreign travel and imported products, as well as household demand for savings in hard currency." Any shortage of paper money in the market can trigger a spike in the exchange rate, and this is exactly what happened. As the market became more aware of the shortage of paper money and the growing force behind the sanctions, average Iranians started to realize something: "The dollar's real value is much more than its nominal value," in Muhammad's words.

Many began to purchase dollars through official channels with the intention of selling them on the streets of Tehran to make some extra income. Some spirited individuals gather passports and purchase tickets for the passport holders from travel agencies so they can collect their allocated dollars at the official price. Mina, a saleswoman at a Tehran travel agency, has seen many such transactions. "One day a gentleman came in to buy 40 tickets for a Tehran-Yerevan flight, and then he came back three days before the flight to cancel them all. He paid a cancellation fee for each. Still, he made a good profit collecting those passengers' allocated dollars." Mina's observation is not unique. Iranian consumers have long learned to take advantage of such opportunities to make ends meet.

As more people turned to the exchange market for speculation purposes, the sanctions further reduced the supply of paper money. The CBI had to prioritize and the government set allowances for individuals with different needs: $500 for foreign ground travel, $2,000 for foreign air travel, up to $12,500 per semester for Iranians studying abroad. Hamed, a student who came to Tehran for his Christmas holiday, spent most of his time standing in lines in front of the Ministry of Higher Education. "I do not need the cash, since I have an assistantship, but I can receive my tuition at the government rate. Down the street they give me 30 percent more than what I have to pay the ministry in rials. It is good business!" I asked him about the ethics of what he was doing. "Are you kidding?" he exclaimed. "Everybody goes for it. Why should I bother when the government has approved this?"

Good business, indeed, still it seems that speculators have maneuvered the government into a corner. Just this week, the CBI reduced the foreign air travel allowance to $1,000. And Bank Mellat has stopped selling dollars to students. The imposition of sanctions on the CBI roiled the market. The exchange rate skyrocketed to 1,800 tomans (18,000 rials) per dollar. "That was a shock," says the CBI economist. "The market could stabilize around 15,000 rials per dollar. The problem is our prospects do not look too good and the market knows this." There is little doubt that the currency exchange market will remain volatile.

What does this means for Iranian businesses? Yasser, who sells electronics, cellphones, and computer parts in central Tehran, knows that the days ahead will be difficult. "We rely on imports, and imports are going to be costly.... An increase in the value of the dollar always signals an increase in the cost of household items. We rely on imports for everything: food, technical parts, and clothing." He predicts, "All prices will go up in a few months, maybe sooner. Then people will be frustrated and under even heavier pressure than before to make ends meet." Who can blame Tehran housewives for buying gold and dollars? They know that they might soon have to sell them to put bread on the table.

The government has been subjected to heavy criticism for these developments. The Majles summoned Ahmadinejad and some deputies have asked for the CBI president's resignation. Ahmadinejad has told angry legislators, "Honestly, our economy is doing fine." It seems he is the only one who thinks so. He has to act so, at least, what with the upcoming parliamentary elections. His hardline rivals will not hesitate to blame him for the country's economic woes. The stakes for average Iranians are high as it is, but for Ahmadinejad this might be the last battle.

Ali Chenar is a pen name.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

Iran Standard Time (IRST), GMT+3:30

9:30 p.m., 20 Dey/January 10 In an article in the newspaper Ettelaat, Hossein Alaei, a former high-ranking officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, made an implicit comparison between Iran during the revolutionary era of 1978-79, and what happened in the aftermath of the June 2009 presidential elections. The article appeared on the 34th anniversary of the bloody demonstrations that took place in Qom on January 9, 1978, the day after Ettelaat published an article by an unknown author with the pseudonym Ahmad Rashidi Motlagh that insulted Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Alaei (seen here in an image from the 1980s) wrote that before that event and in its immediate aftermath, ordinary Iranians did not target the Shah directly, but "the continuation of the violent crackdown on the people's protests forced people to directly oppose the Shah himself.... After those events, people began addressing letters to the Shah, and he was correctly identified as the main culprit and responsible for the state of the nation. People then decided to prevent anyone from ruling over them permanently." Alaei then posed several hypothetical questions that the Shah could have asked himself:

"Would the problem have ended had I allowed the people to demonstrate peacefully and not accused them of confronting the government?"

"Would I have not gotten a better outcome had I ordered the security forces not to shoot at the people and just try to calm them down?"

"Would I have had to leave the country had I not put some of the statesmen and political activists under house arrest and not exiled others, and instead opened discussions with them?"

"Would I have had to take refuge in a foreign land had I not insulted the people's collective wisdom and not called them agents of foreign countries?"

"Would I have not lasted longer in my rule had I not accused the people of acting against the nation's national security, accepted the opposition, and even recognized their right [to oppose me]?"

Alaei concluded with a well-known Qur'anic verse: "Thus, learn your lesson you who have eyes."

Though he never mentions Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it is clear that Alaei is comparing Khamenei and his rule with the Shah and his regime.

This is a very significant article from a well-positioned figure who has always been loyal to the Islamic Republic. Alaei was one of the top Revolutionary Guard commanders during the Iran-Iraq War, and the first commander of the Guard navy when it was founded in 1985. He also served as Guard chief of staff, deputy defense minister, and head of the Defense Ministry's aerospace division. He is now on the faculty of Imam Hossein University, which is linked to the Guards, and managing editor of the monthly Sanaa-ye Havaaei (Aerospace Industries). In his 15th letter to Khamenei, journalist and documentary filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad, who used to be an ardent supporter of the Supreme Leader, praised Alaei and asked him to write a letter to Khamenei. Alaei's article seems to be his response to the request.

Interestingly, commemorating the same occasion, an item in the newspaper Jomhouri-ye Eslami, whose editor-in-chief, Masih Mohajeri, is close to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, discussed in detail the recent events in Egypt, before and after the downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak. The article ended with a declaration: "Dictators must learn the lesson from what happened to the Pharaohs."

IAEA confirms uranium enrichment underway at Fordow

"The International Atomic Energy Agency can confirm that Iran has begun enriching uranium at Fordow enrichment facility," said agency spokesman Gill Tudor. "All the nuclear materials at this facility are safeguarded and under control by the IAEA." The Fordow facility, near Qom, has been built under a mountain, presumably to protect it from bombardment and other forms of military attack.

Iran has not officially announced that it has begun enrichment activities at Fordow. Speaking at a ceremony marking the beginning of an exhibition of the progress of Iran's nuclear industry at the University of Hormozagan in southern Iran, Dr. Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, the president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said, "Wait for a few weeks for good nuclear news." He also said that the Fordow facility "will soon officially open," and will be able to produce uranium at 3.5, 4, and 20 percent enrichment. Al-Arabiya, the website that reflects the views of Saudi Arabia, was the first to report that the enrichment had already begun. Reacting to the subsequent international media coverage, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's permanent representative to the IAEA, said that all of Iran's nuclear activities are being monitored by the agency. In a separate interview with ISNA, the Iranian Students News Agency, Soltanieh said that the international reaction to the news has been "exaggerated." He added that the IAEA was notified about Fordow more than two years ago, and the agency's inspectors are present at the facility and monitor everything "24 hours a day."

Iranian media outlets have largely silent about the issue. Aftab News, the website that is close to Rafsanjani, reported that according to Reuters, quoting Al-Arabiya, the enrichment activity had begun. Mashregh News, the website with links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also only referenced the Reuters report.

Abbasi also said that no date has yet been set for the planned visit of a team of IAEA officials and experts to Iran, that the first batch of fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor produced within Iran will soon be used, and that "the enemy" is trying "to terrify our youth by assassinating our nuclear experts and scientists."

Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Iran is laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons someday, but is not yet building a bomb. He called for continued diplomatic and economic pressure to persuade Tehran not to take that step. He also cautioned against a unilateral strike by Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities, saying the action could trigger Iranian retaliation against U.S. forces in the region. "We have common cause here" with Israel, he said. "And the better approach is for us to work together."

Potential successors to Central Bank governor

As noted here, Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani has threatened to resign unless he is given much greater freedom to do his work. There is considerable speculation in the Iranian media about his possible successor, should he resign. Shafaf, the website close to Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has suggested two potential successors. One is Hamid Baghaei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vice president for executive affairs, who is despised by the hardliners and has been accused of corruption. The second is Mohammad Reza Farzin, currently deputy economic and financial affairs minister and secretary-general of the Commission for Targeted Subsidies, formed last year to manage the elimination of subsidies on basic food items and energy.

Bahmani, who was appointed to his post in September 2008, has been under tremendous pressure by the hardliners, due to the wide fluctuations in the foreign currencies market and the lack of oversight by the Central Bank, which they believe has led to widespread corruption. He recently said, "We should run the nation in a way that we can preserve ourselves for two years. It appears that we have been trapped in Shoab abi Taleb." This is a reference to the site where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad and his supporters were surrounded for three years and grew so hungry that they beat their abdomens with rocks.

Khamenei predicts big turnout for Majles elections

In a meeting with clerics from Qom, Khamenei claimed that the turnout for the Majles elections, to be held on March 3, will be large and "will break the enemy['s back]." Speaking on Monday at a commemoration of the Qom demonstrations of 1978, he said, "Since quite some time ago, the enemy and its foot soldiers and minions, both in Iran and outside, have been trying to minimize participation in the elections." He predicted that 65 percent of those eligible will cast votes. Khamenei also rejected Bahmani's warning about the dire state of the economy, and suggested instead that the Islamic Republic is under the same conditions that Muslims were during the Prophet's era at the time of the Badr and Kheibar wars, in which Muslims were victorious.

One day earlier, Basij commander Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, said that Rafsanjani has met with Khamenei to persuade him to allow the reformists to run in the Majles elections, but the Supreme Leader responded that he will not work with the reformists under any circumstances. Meanwhile, every reformist group in the country has called for a boycott of the elections; in fact, for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, there is virtually unanimous agreement in the opposition, both inside Iran and in the diaspora, about the necessity of a boycott.

On Sunday, an Intelligence Ministry official claimed, "Four people who had been organizing [social] networks and carrying out anti-security operations against the elections have been identified and arrested. The arrested people had received sophisticated instruments from the enemy for secret communications and were organizing networks to create disturbances in the country."

Arrests of journalists and political activists continue

The arrests of three well-known activists and journalists have been confirmed. Dr. Saeed Madani, member of the central committee of the Nationalist-Religious Coalition (NRC), was first arrested in March 2001, together with several other members of the NRC. After spending 12 months in prison -- five of those in solitary confinement -- he was finally released after he posted $250,000 bail. Reports indicate that his wife might have also been arrested. He had been threatened over the past several weeks by the security forces. Unconfirmed reports indicate that Dr. Madani's nephew has also been arrested in Isfahan.

Ehsan Houshmand, 43, another member of the NRC, has also been arrested. In his work Houshmand has emphasized relying on Iranians' national identity, the need to protect Iran's territorial integrity, and the problems with Iran's ethnic minorities. He was first arrested in January 2010, but was released after a while. Reports indicate that he was arrested by Iran's drug enforcement administration, but the reason for such an arrest is not clear. Read an interview with him here.

Over the past 30 months, the pressure on the nationalist-religious activists has increased dramatically. Nationalist-religious journalists Dr. Ahmad Zeidabadi, Keyvan Samimi, and Dr. Alireza Rajaei have been imprisoned. Emad Bahavar, head of the youth division of the Liberation Movement of Iran, has been in jail since 2010. Mohammad Tavasoli, head of the NRC's central committee, was arrested in November 2011, as was his son-in-law Farid Taheri. Tavasoli's daughter, Leila Tavasoli, has also been in prison since early 2010. Masoud Pedram, another nationalist-religious activist, is in detention as well.

Also arrested is journalist Fatemeh Kheradmand, wife of journalist Masoud Lavasani. It has been speculated that she was arrested because of her work organizing the families of political prisoners. Lavasani was arrested in the aftermath of the June 2009 presidential election and sentenced to two years of incarceration. He was released only recently after serving his sentence.

In addition to Madani, Houshmand, and Kheradmand, Dr. Mehdi Khazali, blogger, dissident, and son of the reactionary cleric Ayatollah Abolghasem Khazali, was arrested on Monday. According to his wife he was arrested at his work. Security agents attacked him, broke a bone in his hand and his teeth, and then took him away.

Mahmoud Dardkeshan, a political activist who was close to the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, is also under arrest. He has been arrested five previous times and has spent many years in prison.

Human rights news

Distinguished journalist Isa Saharkhiz has been hospitalized for nearly a month, but his family has been under pressure not to talk publicly about his hospitalization. He suffers from blood pressure fluctuations and severe pain in his back and neck, to the point that he has been forced to use a wheelchair.

Prominent attorney and human rights advocate Abdolfattah Soltani, who has been in prison since September 10, 2011, refused to defend himself during his trial. The reason, according to his daughter Maedeh Soltani, was twofold. First, he has demanded his trial to be with a jury and open to the public, in accordance with Article 168 of the Constitution, and second, he believes that his arrest has been unlawful.

Javad Lari, a political prisoner who spent five years in jail in the 1980s for allegedly supporting the Mojahedin-e Khalgh Organization, has been sentenced to death again. He was arrested in September 2009 and sentenced to death by the notorious judge Abolghasem Salavati. That sentence was nullified by the Supreme Court, but Salavati has now sentenced Lari to death a second time. It has been reported that his interrogator in the 1980s has met with him in jail and has told him that he has lived "20 extra years," and that he will soon be executed. Lari is in his 60s.

Dr. Ghasem Sholeh Sadi, professor of international law at the University of Tehran and former Majles deputy, is on the verge of becoming paralyzed from waist down, due to lack of medical attention in jail. He wrote an open letter in 2002, after which it was arrested and sentenced to 30 months of imprisonment for "insulting the Supreme Leader." He was arrested last year again by the security forces in order to enforce his sentence.

Labor and university activist Meysam Nejati Aref was arrested on January 3, and it is still not clear where he is being held. He is a student at Islamic Azad University in Karaj and also works at Saipa, Iran's second largest car manufacturer.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

Iran Standard Time (IRST), GMT+3:30

11 a.m., 21 Dey/January 11 Iranian state and semiofficial media outlets are reporting that a car bomb blast this morning in Tehran killed nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. According to a Fars News Agency report:

An Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist was killed in a terrorist bomb blast in a Northern neighborhood in Tehran on Wednesday morning.

The magnetic bomb which was planted by an unknown motorcyclist under the car of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a professor at Tehran's technical university, also wounded two other Iranian nationals in Seyed Khandan neighborhood in Northern Tehran.

Ahmadi Roshan, 32, was a graduate of [Iran's] oil industry university and supervised a department at [the] Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province. [...]

The blast took place on the second anniversary of the martyrdom of Majid Shahriari, a well-known Iranian nuclear scientist, on January 11, 2010.

The [...] bombing method [in today's attack] was similar to the 2010 terrorist bomb attacks against the then university professor Fereidoun Abbassi Davani -- who is now the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization -- and his colleague Majid Shahriari, who were [targeted] in separate terrorist bomb attacks here in Tehran with the latter killed immediately [by] the blast.

Another Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, was also assassinated in a terrorist bomb attack in Tehran in January 2010.

(In addition to the killings mentioned by Fars, this past July an Iranian scientist -- variously identified as Dariush Rezaei Ochbelagh or, more plausibly, Dariush Rezaeinejad -- was shot to death at close range by motorcycle-riding gunmen in front of his Tehran residence. That assassination victim's possible connection to the Iranian nuclear program remains uncertain.)

Mehr News Agency specifies Ahmadi Roshan's position as "deputy director of commercial department of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility." According to Mehr, he studied chemical engineering at Sharif University, from which he graduated in 2002: "Sharif University issued a statement expressing condolences to the Iranian people over the martyrdom of Roshan by elements of countries hostile to the Islamic Republic."

Press TV reports that eyewitnesses "say they saw a motorcycle attach a sticky bomb to a car near a college of Allameh Tabatabaei University." (See video)

IRNA reports that the two other victims were passengers in Ahmadi Roshan's car, a Peugeot 405, and that the incident took place in Ketabi Square (about one half mile north of Seyed Khandan Bridge). According to the state news agency, "A security official told IRNA that the incident looked like previous terrorist attacks on nuclear scientists by agents of the Zionist regime."

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On the importance of always changing, and never backing down.

[ interview ] Abdi Behravanfar was born in 1975 in Mashhad, Khorasan, in northeastern Iran. By most standards, he began pursuing a career as a musician rather late in the day, but he quickly acquired an avid following among Iranian youth with a sound that melds popular Western styles -- rock, country, and blues -- with the rich heritage of Iranian folk music. His audience is a generation hungry for music that breaks with the past, understands the common frustrations of the time, and eschews the gaudy frivolity of the Tehrangeles pop scene.

This interview provides insight into Behravanfar's development as a musician, including his years of collaborative work with singer Mohsen Namjoo; it also charts the trials and tribulations of Iranian musicians and the underground music scene. Struggling under hostile conditions in an environment rife with censorship, such artists continue to undertake daring and potentially subversive work, even while striving to make ends meet.

The following is an edited translation of an interview originally conducted in Persian.

When and where did you first get seriously interested in music?

I was 23 years old when I bought a guitar. The reason I bought it was the result of a number of bitter events that had occurred in my personal life. I was after something that would save me from the tragic state of affairs in which I found myself. All those bitter and traumatic events that I wished to [push to] the background occurred during my years as a university student, and led to my giving up my degree in industrial engineering at Azad University in Tehran. Financial hardship and my emotional well-being at the time caused me to return to my hometown of Mashhad. It was during those dark days that I became acquainted with a man by the name of Mr. Farhadi, an encounter that changed the course of my life. He was a professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and had a profound familiarity with Western music. After a short time we became very close and spoke a great deal about music. One day, during just such a conversation, Mr. Farhadi in complete seriousness said to me, "Abdi! Instead of studying engineering, you must buy a guitar!"

So before this encounter you hadn't considered playing the guitar or becoming a musician?

Well, I had. From my childhood, I wanted to play guitar but my mother in particular had a problem with this instrument and was never prepared to buy one for me. She didn't have an issue with the keyboard or other musical instruments, but she didn't like the guitar. In any case, after meeting Mr. Farhadi and his insisting I buy one, I gathered together some 50 or 60,000 tomans and bought a second-hand, rickety guitar.

So after buying the guitar you immediately started to work and practice?

In truth, no. The guitar gathered dust for a year and I would only look at it. I was preoccupied with my own personal afflictions, which compelled me to put my studies to one side. During my time as a student in Tehran, I got to know a man by the name of Fleming Khoshghadami, who was a professor of music. Khoshghadami would play three instruments simultaneously: guitar, harmonica, and the tambourine strapped to his leg. Before the Revolution, he would play street music...

In a video posted online, you appear to be playing one of your famous songs, "Sar beh Sar," in the street. Was this due to the influence of Khoshghadami?

Yes, we played that song under Esteghlal Bridge in Mashhad. When I got to know Fleming he made children's music, but his real interest lay with country blues. At that time I still didn't know the difference between the acoustic and classic guitar. I told Fleming I wanted to learn the blues and soon began learning from him and we became good friends.

You said that because of the personal problems you underwent, you were unable to finish you studies and you returned to Mashhad. Upon your return, how did you pursue your music career?

After I abandoned my studies, I returned to Mashhad and brought my guitar with me. Those were difficult days. I had no financial security and had to somehow hang on. I was alone in a large, empty house, without a penny to my name and a broken guitar. During this time it occurred to me to start copying my massive CD archive. My archive included everything from 1923 to 2000 -- rock, metal, blues, et cetera -- and I would copy and sell CDs for those people in Mashhad who were serious about music.

In the conservative and religious environment of Mashhad, this couldn't have been an easy task. Were there sufficient customers for your CDs?

You might find it hard to believe, but I always had customers in Mashhad who were serious about music. There was a whole underground distribution network for CDs. It was also in this way that I came to know most of the musicians based in Mashhad. I would also find customers for myself. For instance, if there was someone who was a fan of Marc Anthony who purchased CDs from me, I would then go on to introduce and sell them the various other different types of music I kept in my archive.

You mentioned that by means of this underground distribution CD network, you first got to know musicians in Mashhad. Did these acquaintances result in any group or shared ventures?

Many of the musicians in Mashhad regarded my house as their hangout. There virtually wasn't a musician in Mashhad who didn't know that house. I fought and was harassed a lot because of that house and faced a lot of hardship to keep it alive as a hangout.

What kinds of problems did you face? Did you have issues with your fellow musicians or with the closed atmosphere of Mashhad?

No, I had serious problems with the police and the neighbors. Our neighbors had no understanding of our difficulties and the limitations we faced, and because of the noise would report us to the police. Imagine, in the middle of practice, the police would ring the door and storm the house. One of our neighbors was intelligence, and upon returning home from work reported on our house. The police, under the impression that we had established a subversive political cell, raided us. It took a while until I finally found a way to avoid the attention of the police. They were normally after two things: alcohol and the mixing of boys and girls.

They never found what they were after and so didn't have an excuse to arrest us. I remember during one of these skirmishes the policeman said, "Pack up your stuff, let's go!" I replied, "Let's go, mister." He then looked around and said he didn't have any evidence a crime had been committed. It came to nothing and they left. I didn't have any money with which to bribe the police and they themselves realized after a while that there was nothing going on and nothing to be found in the house. Because of this, they eventually left us alone and entirely to our own devices...

That house after a while was no longer my home, but my domain and turf. I had fought for that turf and even fought people with a shovel and pickax to hold on to that house. Many called me psychotic for holding on to that house. Later on, one of the names of a piece of music I coauthored with Namjoo was called "Chronic Psychosis." To continue to hold on to that house I was forced to argue with a hundred different people and as a result was often in a hysterical state. I had to play my music, make money, and fight with people. After a while, my music archive was stolen, which was another major disaster. But despite all these difficulties, bitterness, and limitations, I continued to play my music and refused to give up. When we jammed was the only time we felt liberated from all the difficulties and restrictions around us. Sometimes we wouldn't eat for two days, and we were hungry all the time; we would just jam and forget our hungry stomachs. For my friends who came to the house and me, playing guitar was a way of distancing ourselves from the wretched surroundings in which we were struggling.

It seems from this candid portrayal of your bitterness that in a certain respect there weren't any obstacles or restrictions preventing you from speaking through your music when needed.

Look, I can't escape from my being an Iranian with a Muslim identity. My name is Abdollah. Wherever I go in the world, whatever deal I wish to make, till I mention my name, I'm unconsciously tied to an identity, a heritage, and geography that I didn't have a choice in deciding myself. In opposition to this force of fate in which I'm caught, I certainly can't remain silent. Insofar as the president is an ordinary person of the country, I can address him in my work, in a way that isn't political maneuvering. [Behravanfar has written a song, "Love," in which he addresses President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.] I never considered myself a political person and I don't want to be political. When I address so-and-so in the country through my music, I don't think specifically about the person occupying a specific office. I think he's part of me. I myself and many like me had a hand in elevating him to where he is. My point is that we made the misery in which we are today embroiled; a single person isn't responsible. Some might think that song obscene or avant-garde, because many of those around us don't want to accept the current obscene and abhorrent realities. We repeatedly recoil and reject them.

What year did you officially form your first band?

Our first group, Uranus, was formed in 1999-2000. Our first gig was in the technical faculty at Ferdowsi University in Mashhad. There were three members in the band: a drummer, guitarist, and someone playing the baritone horn. That gig didn't prove very successful and the members of that group changed over time. I first met Ali Baghfar, who played in a metal group, Barbod. I later met Navid, who was a 14-year-old bass player, who overflowed with raw talent. These two guys became the permanent members of the group until I left Iran. We worked together then and continue to work together.

What is the story behind your meeting Mohsen Namjoo?

I first met Mohsen Namjoo through Reza Khakshur around 2000. At that time, Khakshur bought CDs from me. One day he told me he wanted to introduce me to someone and we went to Namjoo's house together. That day was the first time I saw Namjoo play the setar. Until that time my style of music was another style altogether -- guitar, drums, keyboard, and the baritone, but I hadn't worked with traditional musical instruments all that much. Mohsen played setar for me and sang "Az Hush Miravam" and "Begu Begu."

That night I felt awful and still when I recall it, I feel terrible. My whole life appeared before me like a flashback, because of the image that sat before me: Mohsen with his tattered military fatigues [Namjoo was doing his mandatory military service at the time], playing setar and reciting such poetry had a transformative impact on me. I had brought my guitar and played the songs "Sar beh Sar" and "Jangal." The next day Mohsen called my house and gradually starting coming to our hangout. We began with Iranian folk singing and later Mohsen brought his setar and after a while our group was established, comprising a guitar, setar, drum, et cetera. Another one of the group members, Saman Rajabi, who sold tiles for a living, also joined us and played guitar. He also played the keyboard.

This group you speak of is the same group known as MUD?

Yes, it's the same group. Later its name became MUD.

Why did you choose the name MUD? The tribe Mud or "mud" in the English sense of the word?

In order to get legal authorization, our group needed a name. For instance, one of these names was "Dish Dish," which is the name of a really dilapidated and rundown part of Mashhad. One of the names was MUD, which has the [second] meaning you stated. The miserable condition we were living in had filled our minds. We played a lot.

Which were the first pieces you performed with MUD?

We performed the pieces "Shayad," "Duzakh," "Vang Vang," and "Jangal," which we worked on until our first concert at the Golestaneh Hall in Mashhad in 2002. There was also the song "Dar Gozar," which isn't on the album, and "Sug," which come out on the album Kokheo Kalakhet.

Our second gig was in 2003 at the Helal Ahmar Hall in Mashhad; because of an attack by the Ansar-e Hezbollah [a hardline fundamentalist vigilante group], the second night was canceled. "Vagh Vagh-e Sag" and "Jereh Baz" in the second part of the program were among our best performances. I'm still obsessed with that performance and it continues to have a special place in my heart. To think that Ansar-e Hezbollah and the security forces were staring right through us while we performed "Vagh Vagh-e Sag." It was a surreal experience!

After that MUD was banned from performing for three years and this devastated and depressed the members of the group to no end. The one thing Namjoo did after this incident was to make it possible to record "Vagh Vagh-e Sag" in the New Wave Studio over the course of some four hours. This is the only thing remaining from that period. After the attack and prohibition on performing I returned to Tehran. The prohibition on our performing caused a great deal of buzz around MUD. We tried to arrange a performance in Birjand, but again they didn't give us permission to perform. After that and due to a great deal of psychological strain, the members of the group got into arguments with one another.

The piece "Vagh Vagh-e Sag" at the time it came out was perhaps among the most avant-garde songs around. Could you explain a little further, if possible, how you wrote this song?

I myself, Mohsen, and Mostafa Yavari wrote the song "Vagh Vagh-e Sag" together. Here I need to digress and explain about Mostafa. We met Mostafa in 1992. He was a poet. The poetry of "Bagh-e Vaba Gerefteh" and "Faryad-e Feshordeh" [songs from Behravanfar's first solo album, Shalamroud] was Mostafa's. I still have some of his poems and sing them. In 2003, after the cancellation of the concert, because of depression he died a tragic death. From 2002 until 2003, our music was really under the influence of Mostafa's poetry and personality. The darkness and bitterness of his poems exuded the very darkness and bitterness of his being. Mostafa was very alone and a genuine poet. He was ahead of all of us in this respect. He had a profound understanding of classical poetry and rock and heavy metal. He first joined the group with the intention of singing. But after a while he wrote and we played. Even now I've kept three or four of Mostafa's poems that I've sung for my new album [still unreleased].

What effect did the experience of your two years in Armenia [beginning in 2006] have on your music?

I experienced a calmer and more peaceful environment during the time I was in Armenia. I went to the Armenian Conservatory, which was seeking a standard jazzman; since that wasn't what I was after, I put the idea of working with them to one side...

While there I became familiar with the Armenian Institute, headed by John Hodian and his wife, Bet Williams, who worked on country music and blues. I gave them a copy of Shalamroud and implored them to listen to it. Ten days later, we spoke again. They were very happy to hear this genre of music inside Iran. Hodian told me that from your wailing it's obvious that you're protesting, but after listening to this album it's still not clear where in Iran this music comes from. It was interesting that I'd never really seriously considered that where I came from must comprise part of my music. I told him I came from Mashhad. He recognized the music of Khorasan and told me to go and impart the color and scent of Khorasan to my music so that my place of birth comes through to him.

After I returned to Iran, through Reza Khahshur, who had seriously researched the music of Khorasan and had also introduced Namjoo to Hajj Ghorban [a famous classical musician and vocalist], I met Ali Gholamrezaei, known as Almajughi, who lived in the village of Almajugh in Ghuchan. I learned the dotar [a traditional two-stringed lute], but after a while I used to go just because I wanted to chat with him. Almajughi is 74 years old, and has memorized 37 uncensored ancient Iranian tales. From hearing these stories, I came to realize our lives from thousands of years ago until this day have been censored. One of my wishes is to introduce Almajughi and speak about his work before his death.

What led to your decision to leave Iran?

In Iran, it wasn't so much the ruling system or government or anyone in particular that provoked my decision. I was enthusiastic about local music, but it just wasn't possible to work with the many restrictions and prohibitions. The atmosphere had become polluted. The closest people to me had become those farthest away. I couldn't comfortably speak. Half of the work I wanted to do came to nothing. Eventually I decided to leave and take the most important things I was working on with me. One of the most important of these is the introduction of the 3,000-year-old music revived by Almajughi, which nevertheless has very modern elements to it...

Do you have any new music coming out?

A few songs of Almajughi that we began working on a year ago are due to come out on CD. Its compilation began in Iran and will soon be finished. There are also a few Khorasan love songs that I've reworked with jazz, as well as a six-hour story from Almajughi that I want to work on and some poems I wish to compose songs out of.... I also have some solo tracks along with some songs I did with Ali and Navid.

Do you think over time that your leaving Iran will dissipate the spirit of rebellion that pervades much of your music?

Yes, totally. But I had no choice. I struggled to stay and work within the country. For instance, I would play in coffee shops, with all the headaches it would cause. You have to perpetually put up with being insulted. The atmosphere was also increasingly suffocating by the day. I knew beforehand that my absence from the country will bring about what you're saying. But I'm bringing some of that protest and anger along with me because it has deposited itself within me. It was the same when I went to Armenia. I thought to myself a lot as to what I can do, and how to endure that atmosphere, but I didn't see any other choice...

The style of underground music that became famous was the product of a few people, and even when we were in Iran we were changing. For example, the music of Mohsen Namjoo inside Iran was in a state of constant change. Change is part of the artist's being. It's important that the person doesn't back down; where he finds himself isn't all that important. The nature of the change may differ and depend on whether the artist is inside or outside of Iran, as you say, but heeding the current circumstances is something inescapable.

Fatemeh Shams is a doctoral student in Modern Middle East Studies at Wadham College, University of Oxford.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi is a doctoral student in Modern Middle East Studies at Queens College, University of Oxford.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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