Iran after the elections: 14 July (23 Tir)

First, some more updates to note from the National Iranian-American Council's blog yesterday:

- After Montazeri's fatwa issued against Ahmadinejad, a newspaper supporting Ahmadinejad claims that he has been sick for a while and this is the reason why. Montazeri's son says that's ridiculous.
- Bit of a scuffle over Mousavi forming a new party. Mousavi's side says they definitely will, the Kayhan newspaper (that's the one that accused him of treason) says it's illegal.
- Ayatollahs Shirazi and Golpegayani have criticized the government for not criticizing the crackdown of Uyghurs by the Chinese government, while they were very glad to criticize Italy for its security during the G8 conference.

Progress on the huge green banner saying "Ahmadinejad is not Iran's president" can be seen here, and here are two of the photos:


Notice there's a slight difference in spelling president between the two - رئیس جمهور and رییس جمهور. Both are used. I've noticed that BBC Persian uses the former whereas Deutsche Welle in Persian uses the latter. احمنی دژاد رئیس جمهور ایران نیست

The banner on the bottom in Swedish looks just like English: Ahmadinejad är (think "are") inte (not) Irans President.

A good writeup on the boycott of SMS messaging can be seen here, and includes the estimate that Iran Cell is losing $250,000 a day as a result. It's noted that people are forced to use the telephone a bit more in order to communicate due to this boycott, but also note that previously SMS messaging was used a lot for some pretty superfluous reasons (jokes), so it's not simply people replacing one medium with another but rather cutting down on needless use of the services as well. I would also imagine that people are using the phone simply to chat less than before.

Green Brief #27 is out now. Perhaps the oddest story from yesterday is Ahmadinejad demanding sanctions against Germany for an Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death in a courtroom. The death is a tragedy and obviously security needs to have a thorough review, but calling for sanctions is simply nutty. It may also be an attempt to change the story as Ahmadinejad has been in the news in Egypt recently due to two lawyers that are attempting to prevent him from visiting.

Also check out page two of this article from the Washington Post yesterday on the nonexistence of Iran's "mega-embassy" in Nicaragua. The most interesting part is that of loans to Nicaragua from Iran: Ahmadinejad's government has claimed that the Koran does not permit them to renegotiate Nicaragua's debt. This is symbolic of the lack of economic expertise found in his government - apparently it also inflated the housing bubble more than it should have due to a dislike of usury, which kept interest rates artificially low when they should have been raised.