Diplomacy
- Ahmadinejad says the international sanctions regime against Iran has benefitted the Iranian economy, and tells the international community, “Your resolutions have neither legitimacy nor effect. You have miscalculated… The Iranian economy is progressing, and even malicious deeds become a source of blessing if God wants it so.”
- Mashhad Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Alam al-Hoda calls Obama the “Black Satan” and says U.S. strategy is one of “soft regime change.”
- Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets Lebanon’s president.
Politics
- Finance Minister Shams al-Din Hosseini, in the cabinet for less than four months, has told an assembly of student activists that on “three occasions,” he has presented a letter of resignation to Ahmadinejad because of his opposition to the Ahmadinejad’s economic reform scheme. He adds: “If I was not in the cabinet, even worse decisions might have been taken…”
- Seyyed Reza Akrami, member of the Combatant Clergy Association, urges the public to take Rafsanjani’s warnings seriously and states, “Problems such as inflation and unemployment that the society faces today are due to mismanagement and the chaos is getting worse by the day… Wise and balanced individuals should run the country.”
- Parliamentarian Assadollah Badamchian answers Rafsanjani’s criticism of Ahmadinejad’s provincial trips: “The provincial trips are positive. They claim the president is prone to give too many promises. Is making promises wrong? He gives promises, and even if ten to twenty percent of such promises are fulfilled it is good.”
- Agah-Sazi praises Rafsanjani and says Ahmadinejad has Agah-Sazi also documents that president Ahmadinejad, in his criticism of Rafsanjani, has “twisted” Rafsanjani’s argument.
- Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani urges authorities not to air internal divisions in public.
- IRGC co-founder and former Defense Minister Shamkhani says he will not run for president.
- Former presidential candidate Mostafa Mo’in says Khomeini had prohibited the armed forces from intervening in politics.
Economy
- Khosh-Chehreh, a former Ahmadinejad supporter, says, “The class gap has reached a new post-revolutionary peak during the Ahmadinejad government… Rising basic food prices have led to further impoverishment of the poor while the rich get even richer… Naïveté and simplicity characterize the economic decision-making of the government….”
- Deputy Trade Minister Mehdi Ghazanfari predicts $3-4 billion decline in Iran’s non-oil exports.
- Finance Minister Hosseini leaves a meeting in Qazvin at which the local Friday prayer leader Hojjat al-Eslam Adel-Pour attacks the economic policies of the government.
- Ahmdinejad tells Central Bank employees that the priority of the government is: “Increased interest free lending [Gharz al-Hassaneh], especially in underdeveloped regions…”
- Presidential candidate Hojjat al-Eslam Hassan Rowhani slams Ahmadinejad’s agricultural policies and says these policies do not secure self sufficiency, but “increased dependency.”
- Central Bank Director Mahmoud Bahmani says the Central Bank has provided the public with unauthorized credits and loans.
- Alef News reports black marketeering of gasoline and oil in Iran.
- Petro-Iran executive director Ali Beheshtian says Iran’s rivals extract “nine times more oil than Iran” from Persian Gulf oil fields.
Military and Security
- (E) Iran arrests three Israeli spies.
- (E) U.S. staging bomb attacks in Iraq.
- Ahmadinejad says more than 950,000 individuals are Basij members in Khuzistan province and urges “all the intellectuals and philosophers of the world” to “return to Basiji culture for salvation of the world.”
- Ahmadinejad praises the role of the Basij in securing society at the anti-riot war games.
- The Law Enforcement forces to start the “Social Discipline Scheme” in public spaces in Tehran.
- Mashhad Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Alam al-Hoda urges the Basij to crush “creeping secularism at universities.”
- Lebanon’s president tells Iranian defense minister that Lebanon welcomes defense cooperation with Iran.
- IRGC chief Mohammad-Ali Ja’fari says the Basij has initiated a “sacred Jihad which began with the Islamic Revolution and will continue to the emergence of the Imam of the Era.”
- Hojjat al-Eslam Sa’idi, representative of the Supreme Leader in the Revolutionary Guards, warns against increasing superstition in the society and says its manifestation in “practice of geomantics, fortune telling, snake taming, claimants of the Imam of the Era, and seeing the Imams in dreams” a “soft regime change strategy of the enemy.”
Religion, Culture, and Society
- Reformist theoretician Aghajari says “some elements desire to transform the university into a garrison but they will not succeed…The Shah’s regime failed to control the university.”
- Iranian director Hatami-Kiya says he may make an updated version of Azhans-e Shisheh-i [The Glass Bureau] about war veterans in society.
- Remains of five unknown Iran-Iraq war soldiers buried in Tehran’s Bahman Park.
- Parliamentarian Javad Arian-Mansh urges authorities to crack down on 4.5 million illegal satellite dishes to prevent Western cultural onslaught.
- Iranian religious innovator Abdol-Karim Soroush lectures at the home of former interior minister Abdollah Nouri.
- Kerman parliamentarian Gholam-Reza Karami defends the track record of the Azad University and says those criticizing the university [who condemn its close relationship to Rafsanjani] are harming the interests of the country.
Human Rights and Labor
- (E) Iran condemns two Kurds to death.
Photo of the Day
- Fars News Agency remembers the U.S. Embassy takeover.