(Thanks to Ali Alfoneh for his assistance compiling)

Politics

  • Former nuclear negotiator, and head of the Strategic Studies Center of the Expediency Council, Hassan Rowhani uses Moharram to attack the Ahmadinejad government. Referring to the government’s poor crisis management in the face of extreme weather he asked: “What is the greatest sin? Not attending the prayers, or lack of expertise in important affairs?” Rowhani added in another veiled reference to the optimistic employment statistics of the Ahmadinejad government: “What is the goal and what are the means we use? Why deliver false statistics, when we know we have to be held accountable at the day of doom?”
  • Rumors of “resignation” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his replacement by Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, the top advisor to Ahmadinejad.
  • Government spokesman dismisses rumors.
  • An opinion poll shows considerable approval of Tehran Municipality’s crisis management during the extreme weather.

Diplomacy

Economy and Trade

Religion, Society, and Culture

  • Alef reports that Law Enforcement Forces have confiscated 400 machetes from mourners of Moharram in Isfahan. But the mourners practicing self mutilation, Alef reports, are of “foreign origin.” There is also a report of clashes in southern Tehran between mourners and the Law Enforcement Forces.
  • A Cultural and Islamic Propagation Bureau of Qom province film and book claim that self-mutilation during Ashura marches stems from “British conspiracies,” and was first observed “at the behest of the British ambassador to Baghdad.”
  • Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi resigns from the leadership of the Imam Khomeini Research and Educational Institute in Qom because of a “migraine” which also “prevented the Ayatollah from travelling along with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Yazd.” Ayatollah Mesbah’s institute was established in 1973, under the name of “Rah-e Haqq [The Path of God]” in order to “fight against the deviations of Marxism.” Today, the institute boasts of 800 theological students, and is considered one of the most advanced centers of higher learning in Qom.

Human Rights and Labor

  • Mahmoud Salehi, Saqez labor leader and activist, is in the cardiac intensive care unit of Towhid Hospital due to persistent heart problems, but no further information has been released about his condition.
  • Advar reports on the fate of 5 political prisoners from Zanjan in Evin prison. According to Advar, the group counts the brothers Said and Reza Matinpour, Jalil Ghanilou, Behrouz Safari and his wife Leyla Heydari. Mrs. Heydari was arrested when she showed up at the Intelligence Bureau of Zanjan to ask her husband’s status.
  • Iranian bloggers declare solidarity with imprisoned student activists.
  • Mohammad-Saleh Nikbakht, lawyer of the Lotfallahi family says Iranian law student, Ebrahim Lotfallahi, who according to Iranian authorities committed suicide while in prison, has never been a student activist. Further, Nikbakht says that the family does not accept the claim that Lotfallahi committed suicide; they wish to exhume the body to learn the cause of death.
  • Human Rights Watch demands an investigation into suspicious deaths of Zahra Bani-Yaqoob and Ebrahim Lotfallahi.
  • Akhbar-e Rooz reports of “unknown fate of imprisoned Turkmen in the prisons of the Islamic Republic” following incidents between the Revolutionary Guards and a young man, Hesam al-Din Khadivar, whom the Iranian authorities accuse of poaching in the Caspian Sea.
  • Family of student activist, beg the Islamic Republic authorities for attention to the case of student activist Nader Ahsani, who has been kept in isolation for 49 days.

Picture of the Day