[(E) signifies English link]

Diplomacy

Nuclear Issue

Economy

  • Egg prices rise in the Iranian market, now 14,500 rials per kilo.
  • Executive director of the Islamic Republic Electricity Company explaining electricity black-outs says “No one told us there would be drought.”
  • Alef News Agency discusses the growing gap between imports and exports over the past two years.
  • Ali-Reza Mahjoub, general secretary of House of Labor and Tehran parliamentarian, says the policies of the Ahmadinejad government aim at securing “momentary satisfaction of the electorate” and warns against populist policies.
  • Mahjoub also warns against optimist miscalculations and unrealistically high expectations of the Ahmadinejad government with regard to price of oil in the world market and says the entire foundation of the Economic Reform Scheme of Ahmadinejad government will disintegrate as a result of the current downward trend of the world market price.
  • Mahjoub also predicts that the government’s reform schemes will end in a system where the government both distributes oil dividends and subsidies to control prices, which will necessitate even greater imports and empty the foreign exchange reserve.

Trade

Politics

  • Rafsanajni stresses importance of attending to public health in Iran.
  • Allegations against Interior Minister Kordan expand as his claims of membership of the Scientific Board of Azad University are questioned.
  • Parliamentarians Zakani and Naderan ask Minister of Higher Education to report news whether or not Interior Minister Kordan’s doctoral degree from Oxford University is real or fake.
  • Former cultural and social affairs deputy Ali-Akbar Tahayee is appointed Qazvin general governor.
  • Rasoul Montajab-Nia, number two of the National Trust party, says Khatami will not run for presidency: “I find it highly unlikely that the two gentlemen [Khatami and Karrubi] will run against each other.”
  • Former President Khatami meets former Prime Minister Ali Mousavi to discuss the presidential elections. Khatami has held a similar meeting with his interior minister, Abdollah Nouri.
  • Former president Mohammad Khatami says “the cause of reform is not limited to the reformist faction” and urges the public not to talk of who will run for presidency but rather to discuss what the candidates would do in office. Khatami also warned against those “who want to monopolize the cause of Islam and their grip on power,” and, in a vague reference to Ahmadinejad, complained about “those who harm the cause of the Islamic Republic with harsh slogans.”
  • (E) Rowhani for president?

Military and Security

  • The Revolutionary Guards Ground Forces chief says “Enmity with Israel and the USA is a divine blessing.”
  • Commander Mir-Feisal Baqerzadeh, head of the Center for Preservation of Works and Values of the Sacred Defense [Iran/Iraq war 1980-1988], says each day of the week commemorating the war will have its own name, that his center will dig 5,000 graves as a symbol of the destiny of the enemies of the Islamic Republic.
  • He urges members of the Islamic Republic Armed Forces with photos of then-president Ali Khamenei at the front to send it to the center to document active presence of the current Supreme Leader in the war.

Religion, Culture, and Society

  • Association of the Professors at the Theological Seminaries in Qom publishes Qabileh-ye Hile [The Tribe of Impostors] in refutation of those saying they are close to the Imam of the Era.

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