Along with the international enthusiasm, Iranians got very excited when they heard about Obama's rational views and dialogue-based attitude towards Iran. This changed slightly after Obama won the democratic candidacy and, at the same time, changed his rhetoric. Perhaps the change of heart came to the popular senator partly because of the provocation of the conservative candidate, John McCain.

Yesterday, major reformist newspapers in Iran dedicated their front pages to Obama's landslide victory. "Change of History!", "America's New Face" and "The First Black Man in the White House" were just a few of the headlines. However, the conservative papers tried to underplay the monumental event. The hard-line Keyhan labelled Obama as "The Hawk Clad as a Dove", while English newspaper Iran Daily ingeniously called it a "Time for US Policy Change".
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Let me leave the conclusion to you. How do you think the Irano-American relations will develop over the next few months and years to come? Let us all have your prophecies.

The story of the new interior minister, Ali Kordan, his impeachment and his fake PhD doesn't seem to be reaching an end. He is due in the parliament on Tuesday to face a new vote of confidence, which is not going to be easy to claim. But the government team has gone through a dirty counter attack.

If you've seen William Wilberforce's fight against slavery in the film Amazing Grace or read about the old days of the British parliament, where MPs were offered horse racing tickets, you'll know where I'm coming from. In the Iranian version, cheques worth about £3,000 were handed over to the members of parliament, seemingly to help with the affairs of mosques in their constituencies.

What made one of the MPs suspicious was the two receipts that had to be signed. When he went back to the government office located in parliament to investigate, the poor secretary denied ever seeing more than one. And then it was his boss who could no longer keep the beans. The second receipt was not actually a receipt; instead it was a letter addressed to the Speaker of the Parliament withdrawing the impeachment. This led to some physical contact between the MP and the representative of the government in parliament.
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Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf (pictured with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), the mayor of Tehran, was selected as the world's eighth best mayor out of 800 according to WorldMayor.com. Nobody can deny he's worked hard; drive down a few streets and it won't be too long before you can feel fresh tarmac beneath your wheels. Many urban projects are either completed or close to it around Tehran. According to an Iranian proverb, the one who completes the job is the one who does the job. The just inaugurated Milad Tower is the most significant example, which has been ‘under construction’ for eleven years.

Qalibaf had a similar no-nonsense approach when he was commander-in-chief of the police. He was handed over the force after the 1999 student protests, where police were accused of brutal handling of the events, with tragic consequences. He began refurbishing the force on two fronts, both content and form.

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Those are the three things the world stands on, according to a Yiddish proverb. But since the oil price has fallen from nearly $150 per barrel to less than $60, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) estimates that revenues will be $54billion short at the end of this fiscal year. Oil money constitutes the majority of Iran's income and the government's expenditure relies on this heavenly source of "black gold", as some Iranians would name it.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who promised economic transformation and spreading the wealth down to the poor, will suffer from a serious drawback when he realises that there is not sufficient cash in the safe for his adventures. And I think it's quite likely that the peak of the problem will appear just a couple of months before the elections. Given this situation it is bizarre that, instead of listening to others and putting the wrongs right, he either ignores criticism or condemns it; while silencing the critics is not off the menu. The following are just a few examples:

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The northern part of the country, where the Caspian hails the land, is a leafy paradise. In autumn it turns to a gallery of warm colours: yellows and oranges and reds and browns, with the Chaloos Road at the centre of that beauty. But at the same time it is frightening. When I was coming back to Tehran on Friday, there were many instances that I was nearly devoured by the winding road and its wild inhabitants. The fact that I had every confidence in the skills of the driver beside me was not enough.

And what I’d feared for the whole of the journey finally happened; not to me but to somebody else. Sorry for the blurry photo, as I had to shoot in motion.
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Kofi Annan, Romano Prodi, Kjell Magne Bondevik (President of the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights and former Norwegian Prime Minster), and Federico Mayor (former UNECO Director-General) are currently among the guests of Mohammad Khatami, the former reformist Iranian president who introduced the idea of "Dialogue among Civilisations". Other guests include former presidents of Ireland, Switzerland, Bosnia, and former prime ministers of France and Sudan. They have travelled to Tehran to attend a two-day conference: "Religion and the New World".

Such high profile events do not happen on a regular weekly basis. And not everybody has the capability to gather so many former heads of state and chairmen under one roof to talk about peace (particularly if it is through faith and is based in Iran). Khatami's idea was initiated nearly ten years ago and turned out to be so popular that the United Nations called 2001 the year of "Dialogue among Civilisations".

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Ali Kordan, the Iranian Interior Minister, sent a letter to the President, admitting his PhD was fake. This, in itself, was surprising but inevitable, as this controversy has continued unrelentingly since August. I can't help but share this very amusing quotation from his letter:

    "Considering my experiences and after submitting a THESIS to the OXFORD UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, I received my degree through the university's representative in Tehran."

And now two trouble-free questions: Do you need to be tortured (i.e. asked to write a dissertation) for an honourary degree? Whereabouts in London is the University of Oxford? Perhaps to be "intitled" to such a prestigious degree, you do need to write it. And maybe we're just facing another creative interpretation of geography.

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Tehran has got its new symbol: the Milad Tower (pictured, left), which will be officially scratching the sky from today. The Municipality of Tehran has been working hard on a number of projects, from new BRT bus routes to refurbishing pavements. Apart from these completed works, many others are under way, with red lights which countdown to show the number of days to completion. There's no place in the city where this buzz cannot be felt.

Now, let me remind you that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the mayor of Tehran before his presidency. More interestingly, the current mayor, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, competed in the last elections for president (thinking to the last minute that he was favoured by the Supreme Leader and the Right camp).
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Is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad going to be re-elected next year? Any chance that former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, will enter the competition? These appear to be the hottest political questions inside Iran at the moment, but they're by no means the only ones.

Many undercurrents are flowing around: the tension surrounding the new Minister for Interior Affairs' honorary PhD degree from Oxford as some members of parliament call it fake (more on this in a separate post); the controversy of "we are friends with the people of Israel" uttered by a close ally of President Ahmadinejad and, on the other side of the spectrum, Khatami's surprisingly strong-toned defence of his foreign policy and his idea of dialogue among civilizations.

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