(Thanks to Ali Alfoneh for his assistance compiling)

Politics: March 2008 Parliamentary Elections

  • Registration for candidates standing in March 2008 parliamentary elections to begin Saturday.
  • Rumors on former foreign minister Ali-Akbar Velayati’s candidacy for the Iranian parliament.
  • Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, vice president under Khatami, criticizes the reformist choice of parliamentary candidates: “Candidates who were deemed suitable 26 years ago are no longer suitable candidates.”
  • Supreme Leader warns against mudslinging.

Politics: General

  • In an indirect attack against former president Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Qasem Ravan-Bakhsh says those with a poor record of controlling inflation have no right to criticize the Ahmadinejad government.
  • Ahmadinejad to visit province of East Azerbaijan.
  • Representative of the Supreme Leader in the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij Resistance Force: “The Guards and the Basij are not standard bearers of political groupings and parties.”

Diplomacy

  • Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: “Severing of relations with America is a fundamental policy, but we have never said that this relationship will be severed for all eternity. But the conditions of the U.S. government mean that establishment of relations is not to the benefit of the nation now, and we shall naturally not follow such a policy… The U.S. government is the personalization of Satan, or the hegemon which has met an obstacle in the shape of the awakened nation of Iran.”
  • Concludes: “Awakening of the Muslim community of believers in our age is the equivalent of the entire Muslim awakening of 100 years. This is thanks to Iran.”
  • English summary of his talk.
  • Supreme Leader: U.S. ties detrimental to Iran.
  • Foreign Minister: U.S. not genuine in desire for rapprochement.
  • Former State Department official Richard Murphy, speaking on Iran’s Arabic language service, calls for the U.S. to engage in unconditional talks with Iran.
  • Bahraini parliamentarian Jasem al-Sa’idi, angers Iranian officials by referring to “the Gulf,” rather than “the Persian Gulf.”
  • Iran and Iraq to hold talks about ‘cleaning’ the Shatt al-Arab.
  • Saudi newspaper Al-Watan: “Iran is worse than Israel… the next war in the Middle East will be fought between Arabs and Iran.”
  • Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to visit Pakistan.
  • Dutch university bans Iranian citizen students.

Security

  • A counter espionage agency exhibits espionage methods of various countries. The exhibition also claims the most intensive espionage takes place in the holy Shi’ite city of Qom and in the northwestern provinces.
  • Tensions rise in Bandar Turkaman after death of an 18-year-old Turkmen fisherman caught fishing illegally.
  • Iranian governor complains that [U.S.] forces in Iraq stationed too close to Iranian border.

Society, Culture, and Religion

Economy and Trade

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