Top Stories
- Eritrean opposition claims Eritrea has provided the Assab base on the Red Sea to Iranian submarines.
- Ahmadinejad in live television interview: “The Western and capitalist bloc is going through an unprecedented crisis. Their managers and theoreticians are hopeless. According to their most optimistic forecasts, the crisis will continue for three, and according to others, six years… The nature of capitalism is to blame for the current crisis… Also the socialist economies have been afflicted with the disease of capitalism… This is what happens when you don’t abide by what is religiously permissible and religiously impermissible…”
- Bread prices in Tehran and other major cities of Iran rise dramatically.
Economy
- Ahmadinejad in live television interview: “The Western and capitalist bloc is going through an unprecedented crisis. Their managers and theoreticians are hopeless. According to their most optimistic forecasts, the crisis will continue for three, and according to others, six years… The nature of capitalism is to blame for the current crisis… Also the socialist economies have been afflicted with the disease of capitalism… This is what happens when you don’t abide by what is religiously permissible and religiously impermissible… Thanks to the long term planning of our executives and managers, we have not been digested into the world economy which today is a benefit for us. We suffer least from the global financial crisis… Some pressure is expected in the oil sector, but it is manageable… I thank those countries sanctioning us. It has resulted in self-sufficiency in our country…We will calculate with $30 oil in next year’s budget…”
- Bread prices in Tehran and other major cities of Iran rise dramatically. Sangak bread costs 4,000 rials in southern Tehran and 15000 rials in northern Tehran. Lavash costs 1,000 rials, barbari costs 4,000 rials and Taftoun has reached 3,000 rials.
- Ahmadinejad, speaking to the employees of Iran Insurance, claim Iran is among the seventeen great economies of the world.
- (E) Iran can do without oil.
Trade
- (E) Iran, Iraq to establish three free trade zones.
Military and Security
- Eritrean opposition claims Eritrea has provided the Assab base on the Red Sea to Iranian submarines.
Diplomacy
- In a radical change of opinion, Hojjat al-Eslam Saidi, representative of the Supreme Leader in the Revolutionary Guards, says “The security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq is a secret divine blessing… In the entire history of the U.S., it is the first time that the Americans have recognized such an agreement… On the other hand, we are facing a dangerous and idiot enemy who may be fooling us….”
- Mashhad Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Alam al-Hoda, commenting on Obama says “one must not be fooled by friendly signals from the enemy.”
- Mosharekat reformist faction member and former parliamentarian Ali Tajer-Nia attacks Ahmadinejad’s German born advisor Mohammad-Ali Ramin: ”Was the Holocaust issue the issue of the day when the president started the discourse? There was absolutely no doubt that by putting forward such an issue we could not mobilize the world opinion. By occupying Palestinian lands Israel had generated enough trouble for itself and the region and there was no reason to raise such an issue.”
- Former spokesman of the government Abdollah Ramezanzadeh says the stupidity of Holocaust denial is more visible when one thinks of Vice President Mashayi’s extended hand of friendship towards the people of Israel and adds that the government’s positions are extreme.
Politics
- Hezbollah faction general secretary claims Rafsanjani is the “Moddarres of today” and says “those mudslinging against Ayatollah Rafsanjani are extracting from the same intellectual source as Reza Khan [founder of the Pahlavi dynasty].”
- Salimi-Namin, former executive director of Tehran Times and current director of the Iranian History Research Compilation, speaking at the Islamic Student Association of Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin, sparks a scandal at Azad University: “During the tenure of [Azad University dean] Mr. Jasbi, he has picketed at the mouth of the parliament and has bribed the Student Basij with 600 million rials, and has given a Ph.D. to the former Student Basij chief [Mohammad-Reza Mardani]. In such manner Mr. Jasbi has avoided a critical parliamentary investigation of the university…Today there are a good number of parliamentarians from East and West of the country who have privileged access to scholarships at the university and become Jasbi’s agents in politics. People like the Sheikh of power [Karrubi or Rafsanjani?] and Badamchian from the right are in the service of Jasbi…”
- Iran Freedom Movement’s Ebrahim Yazdi may run for president.
Religion, Culture, and Society
- Urbanization trend.
- Hassan Abbasi, head of the Transnational Doctrinal Research Institute: “The West has moved from the stage of cultural ego centrism to the phase of Satanism. In our country we have moved from humanism to the self.”
- Abbasi also claims the United States has started a “sexual revolution.”
- Imam Khomeini Relief Committee starts a dating bureau to find husbands for unmarried ladies.
- Coffee shop owners stage a demonstration in front of the parliament protesting cancelled licenses and a ban on water pipe smoking.
Human Rights and Labor
- (E) Imminent execution of labor activist Kamangar.
Media
- (E) Iran lifts ban after nine months on celebrity magazine.
Photo of the Day
- Firing missile during Iranian naval wargames.
