Iranian Official Responds to Berlinale Director's Invitation

Tehran Times | Dec 27

Iranian Deputy Culture Minister for Cinematic Affairs Javad Shamaqdari has rejected an invitation from Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick asking Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi to join the jury of the Berlin film festival in February.

The invitation, which had been submitted to the Iranian Embassy in Berlin, was delivered by the Iranian Foreign Ministry to Shamaqdari's office.

Due to his legal case and the court's verdict on the matter, it is currently impossible for Panahi to join the festival jury, Shamaqdari said in a press release on Saturday.

"If the festival managers desire, they can invite other prominent Iranian filmmakers such as (Abbas) Kiarostami, (Masud) Jafari-Jozani, (Shahriar) Bahrani, (Asghar) Farhadi, (Majid) Majidi, (Ebrahim) Hatamikia, (Mohammad-Ali) Talebi, (Rasul) Sadr-Ameli, (Mojtaba) Raei, and (Jamal) Shurjeh to join the jury," he added.

Last week, Panahi was sentenced by a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran to six years in prison, which is redeemable by paying a fine, and a 20-year ban on filmmaking activities.

He has been accused of holding gatherings, conspiracy and propagandizing against the Iranian ruling system.

As a supplementary punishment, he has also been banned from filmmaking, writing screenplays, traveling abroad and giving interviews to media outlets, both domestic and foreign, for 20 years.

Iran Sentences Israel Spy to Death

Press TV | Dec 26

Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi says Iran's Revolution Court has sentenced an individual convicted of spying for Israel to death.

"This spy, whose identity will be announced after the verdict is approved, has been sentenced to death," Jafari-Dolatabadi said on Sunday.

"This person who worked as a spy for Israel has been sentenced to death. The sentence will be carried out after judicial and executive processes," he added.

He went on to say that other cases of espionage were being investigated by the prosecutor's office, IRNA reported.

In October, Iran arrested seven individuals, who had collaborated with Israeli intelligence services, on charges of espionage.

Iranian officials say one of the spies was involved in counterrevolutionary activities, and one was working on issues pertaining to the country's domestic affairs.

Five others were arrested for infiltrating the country's administrative institutions and passing classified data to foreign countries.

These spies supplied the enemy with information on Iran's judiciary, military and space agencies, among other things, prior to their arrest.

Green Movement Activists Detained in Behbahan

RAHANA | Dec 26

Behbahan civil rights activists Hojjatoleslam Nokhostin and Javad Abouali are 2 civil rights activists who were detained in Behbahan and transferred to the Behbahan prison.

The 2 Mousavi supporters have been detained since 2 weeks ago. They have been charged with distributing the Kalameh newspaper and green movement CDs in Behbahan. After 2 weeks of interrogation, they have been transferred to the General Ward of Behbahan Prison.

After the student day, thousands of green movement CDs were distributed to support Majid Dorri and to persuade students to participate in the student day gatherings.

Prison authorities have told the activists to stop contacting Majid Dorri or they will have to face the consequences.

Majid Dorri has been transferred to the Behbahan Prison to serve his 6-year prison sentence in exile.

Fake Reporters Families Travel to Iran

Press TV | Dec 26

Family members of two German nationals arrested in Iran have traveled to the Islamic Republic hoping to see them, the German foreign ministry said.

Speaking to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said the meeting would likely take place "during the Christmas holidays" ending Sunday in Germany.

"I would like to express what I am expecting: a meeting with their families still during the Christmas period," Westerwelle said.

The "reporter's sister" and the "photographer's mother" will be accompanied by German Ambassador to Tehran Brand Erbel on their trip to Iran, the German Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.

The two Germans, who were posing as reporters, interviewed the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman convicted of complicity in the murder of her husband and adultery.

They were arrested after a person close to the family alerted Iranian authorities of their suspicious behavior.

Family Fails to Meet Detained Journalists in Iran

AP | Dec 26

Relatives of two German journalists detained in Iran since October were disappointed Sunday after traveling to Tehran in hopes of seeing them during the Christmas holidays, but the reporters' employer said Iranian officials had promised to arrange a meeting Monday.

Germany's mass-circulation tabloid Bild said late Sunday that the reporter's sister and the photographer's mother would finally be able to meet with the journalists at an undisclosed location in Tehran, the Iranian capital.

The newspaper said a meeting had been scheduled for Saturday, then for Sunday, but both were canceled. That prompted Germany's foreign ministry to issue a a statement that was unusually direct in its wording, saying the relatives had not been granted access "despite repeated promises by Iran."

Iran Fuel Consumption 'Falls after Subsidy Cuts'

AFP | Dec 27

Fuel consumption across Iran has fallen since the government began scrapping subsidies on energy goods, a top official said on Monday, adding the economic restructuring has been generally well received.

"In the first nine days of the launch of the subsidy removal plan, the energy consumption has fallen," Deputy Economy Minister Mohammad Reza Farzin told AFP in an interview.

"In the past nine days, our petrol consumption which was about 60 million litres (13.1 million gallons) a day is now at 55 million," he said.

"The oil ministry says that diesel consumption, which was at 54 million litres, is now at 40 to 41 million litres," he said, adding that cooking gas consumption had dropped by six percent and water by five percent.

Hike in Water, Power Prices Earns Govt 5b Dollars

Tabnak | Dec 27

The minister of energy stated that the government will make $4.9 billion revenues from the hike in water and electricity prices in the country.

Majid Namjou told the Mehr News Agency that the first stage of the implementation of the subsidy reform plan covers 25 percent of the true cost of water and 45 percent of the true cost of electricity.

He claimed that only 30% of the government's income in this regard will be returned to the energy ministry.

Market Oil Balanced, Prices Likely to Increase: Iran

Reuters | Dec 26

Iran's OPEC governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi said on Sunday that the oil market was stable and the crude prices could reach $100 per barrel, the Oil Ministry's website SHANA reported.

"It is unlikely that OPEC holds an emergency meeting ... There is a balance between supply and demand in the market ... It is possible that the price of crude reaches $100 per barrel," Khatibi said, SHANA reported.

Oil hovered around its highest levels in more than two years on Friday, supported by cold weather across the globe, appetite for risk assets and signals from OPEC it would not arrest the rally.

"In the opinion of the experts there is no need for an emergency OPEC meet under stable oil market conditions," Khatibi said.

OPINION & ANALYSIS

Iran's Subsidy Reductions: Upon Whom Will the Costs Fall?

Kevan Harris (Monthly Review) | Dec 26

[H]ere's the rub. When the government pays the difference between the actual costs of goods and their subsidized prices, it decommodifies a lot of the burdens of daily life. What is happening in Iran now is a re-commodification of life, and as we know from Karl Polanyi, the attempt to embed daily life in the market can lead to a "double movement" -- a reaction against the marketization of previously uncommodified social practices. What Polanyi never analyzed very well is the share of burdens of commodification of daily life: upon whom will the costs fall? The answer to that question is not a given -- it depends on the distribution of power in society.

According to witness accounts, people are going about their business. I would discount intermittent media reports of unrest, because (1) griping is an Iranian art form and (2) the outside media is operating in a particularly inane manner here. For instance, a BBC reporter in London who phoned in a report to NPR about Iranian woes due to subsidy reductions got two of his major facts wrong. One, he said that subsidies in Iran started in 1980, when in fact a subsidy of at least a few basic but important goods goes back to the Shah's time. The Shah was most likely emulating the more populist regimes of Egypt and Syria in the 1960-70s, which had rather generous subsidies for bread (ah, the good old days in the Arab world). Second, the current subsidy regime was originally a policy implemented as a reform of the strict rations and black-market corollaries of the 1980s Iran-Iraq War era. So this is not a policy the government has wanted to enact since 1980, but rather since 1989 once the era of reconstruction commenced. I would have hoped that a Brit, whose welfare system is basically a legacy of World War II, might see the similarities between his country's experiences under duress and the social policies that resulted in Iran as a result of the Iran-Iraq war and its legacies.

But, back to the present, I am concerned that the subsidy reductions as currently demarcated will lead to increased inequality in an already polarized middle-income country. The bottom line is this: if the point of this plan is to get people to consume less of these goods, then the government will achieve its goal. Economist Saeed Laylaz is telling the Los Angeles Times that traffic will be less congested in Tehran -- the silver lining for sure, and something that also occurred after the summer of 2007 when gas rationing and price tiering was first introduced. But if the point of the plan is to "get the prices right" and kindle economic growth, the government will be sorely disappointed. Furthermore, the fact that everyone in Iran is together experiencing this seemingly arbitrary act of the state could form a powerful collective grievance if anything goes wrong in its implementation. Unfortunately, our analysis of the state capacity in Iran is dominated by hearsay and axe-grinding, not sober empiricism, so don't expect much from the experts.

Post-Subsidy Iran: The Rising Oil Prices

Nader Uskowi (Uskowi on Iran) | Dec 26

The rising oil prices in recent weeks have created heightened optimism on part of Ahmadinejad administration about their chances of pulling off their subsidy reforms despite misgivings by the Majlis and a growing public anger at rapidly rising prices, estimated at 15-20% for household necessities. The government economists expect the oil prices to continue its rise past the $90 mark achieved in recent days to settle at around $100 in 2011.

The massive and ambitious reforms target highly subsidized energy and food products. In removing those subsidies, the government has chosen a radical path, "a surgery," as Ahmadinejad has put it. The gasoline prices were quadrupled and on average the prices of targeted products rose by 270%. The approach was necessitated by the government's shrinking treasury unable to meet the financial burden of massive subsidies, estimated by the government at some $100 billion annually. (Although this figure could not be the real cost to the government, but probably the opportunity cost based on FOB prices of energy products in the Persian Gulf.)

To ease the hardship on ordinary people, the government began to handout $40 a month to 80% of the population, a figure less than the rise in prices, hence the public resentment of the reforms during its first week of implementation. The $100 oil will give the government the ability to continue its $40 monthly handouts (a total of $2.4 billion a month) and even raise it, or "double" it as recently mentioned by Ahmadinejad. The hope would be that after two years of maintaining these payouts the market forces and the ensuing economic growth would raise people's income, no longer requiring the monthly handouts.

The strategy is of course risky. There is no consensus among economists that the oil prices would be on the rise. The $100 figure was first suggested by Goldman Sachs few weeks ago. There are contrarian views of declining oil prices in the coming years, for example, due to unexpectedly higher efficiencies achieved in transport sectors globally.

Jafar Panahi's Reward for Bringing Cinematic Glory to Iran? Jail

Hamid Dabashi (Guardian) | Dec 24

A spectre is haunting the Islamic Republic of Iran -- the spectre of freedom. All the powers of the old guard have entered a holy alliance to exorcise it: the ayatollahs and their warlords, Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, hanging judges and paramilitary vigilantes.

To try to exorcise that spectre, the custodians of the sacred terror will go to any lengths. But have they gone just a bit too far this time?

What exactly does it mean to condemn a globally celebrated film-maker who has done nothing but bring credit to his profession and glory to his homeland, to six years in prison, and on top of that to ban him from making a film for 20 years, from writing any script, from attending any film festival outside his country, or giving any interview to any journal or magazine, published inside or outside his homeland?

Jafar Panahi is 50 years old. He is at the top of his creative powers. Banning him from making films for 20 years is worse than a death sentence.

It is worse than blowing up the Buddha statues of Bamyan in Afghanistan. The Taliban destroyed works of art and piety that the world had already seen, but these custodians of fanaticism have forbidden the world to see what was yet to be created.

Banning him from making any films for 20 years is far more than a piece of banality in the Iranian judicial system. It is the damning of an entire art, the vengeance visited upon an entire people -- the murdering of their very urge to create, their desire for beauty and truth.

A Bank That Proudly Does Business in Iran

Jennifer Rubin (Washington Post) | Dec 26

The international bank HSBC says it is pulling an ad that juxtaposes a plug for the bank's ability to find "potential in unexpected places" with a factoid about Iran: "Only 4% of American films are made by women. In Iran it's 25%."

A reader e-mailed me about the ad last week. The implication that Iranian women -- who are tortured, beaten, murdered and imprisoned for exercising rights of free speech -- are better situated than their American counterparts was simply preposterous.

When I contact HSBC on Thursday, spokesman Robert Sherman denied that the ad suggested the bank was exploring investment opportunities in Iran. "The ad makes no such statement," he claimed via e-mail. Why bring up Iran then?

As for the comparison of women filmmakers in Iran and the U.S., Sherman offered this justification:

HSBC offers no opinion on the lives of artists in any country. This is not a topic that's germane to an ad campaign for a global bank. The ad needs to be considered in the context of our "Unlocking the World's Potential" campaign. As with our prior "Values" campaign, this campaign intentionally makes no judgment. The intent is only to emphasize surprising facts based on geographic diversity, as a way to facilitate a conversation about the world's potential. Other surprising facts featured in this campaign: Holland earns more exporting soy than Japan; USA has more Spanish language newspaper readers than Latin America.

Josh Block, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and a principal at the consulting firm Davis-Block (also a long-time advocate of sanctions against Iran), had this response to my inquiry about the ad:

It defies logic and common decency that HSBC would engage in this outrageous pro-Iran, anti-American propaganda at a time when the regime in Tehran is the leading human rights violator and state sponsor of terror in the world. I wonder what the noted Iranian human rights dissident Shirin Ebadi, or Sakineh Ashtiani -- who was sentenced to death by stoning in Iran, or the mothers of those who the regime has murdered in its torture dungeons at Evin Prison and other hell holes we never even heard of, would think about this ad? When HSBC Bank says "we find potential in the most unexpected places" they are obviously quite serious. I think they are likely provoking outrage in some highly expected places with this ad, as well. Namely all across the United States of America, and in particular at the Treasury Department and up on Capitol Hill.

A day after I contacted HSBC, I received a follow-up e-mail from Sherman that read: "The ad was meant to encourage debate and discussion, and we certainly did not intend to cause offense. Subsequent to hearing some recent concerns, we are removing the ad from our global campaign."

DOCUMENTS & DECLARATIONS

Rajai Shahr Prisoners Protest Execution Order for Habibollah Latifi

Statement by Khaled Khordani and three others (Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners via Persian2English) | Dec 25

According to the Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners, a statement was issued by a number of political prisoners in Rajai Shahr 'Gohardasht' prison today to condemn the orders for execution of Kurdish political prisoner [and student] Habibollah Latifi and demand a fair trial for him.

By constantly violating the principles of human rights over the past three decades of its rule over Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran government has made it clear that it is not committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Unlawful executions, violent crackdowns on peaceful protesters, and the torture of political prisoners (which continue to be carried out) make the Iranian regime's human rights record more shameful.

We, the undersigned, who are political prisoners from Rajai Shahr prison, despite our hard and unbearable conditions and our deprivation of the basic requirements guaranteed in the constitutional rights for every prisoner, hereby strongly condemn the death sentence for Kurdish political prisoner Habibollah Latifi. We demand that the sentence should not be carried out and we require a fair and transparent trial for Habibollah Latifi and all other prisoners.

We also ask the UN officials to meet with us during the upcoming visit of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to Iran so we can have a chance to explain how we were mistreated and detail our court procedure."

Khaled Khordani, Reza Sharifi Boukani, Ali Saremi, and Karim Maroof Aziz