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The United States is ready to help its Gulf allies establish a "defense umbrella" if Iran does not back down over its nuclear program, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday.

we will take action, as I've said time and time again, crippling action, working to upgrade the defense of our partners in the region,"

"If the US extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf, it is unlikely Iran will be any stronger or safer," Clinton said.

Tehran Bureau: Faulty Election Data The best evidence for the validity of the arguments of the three opponents of the President for rejecting the results declared by the Interior Ministry is the data the Ministry itself has issued. In the chart below, compiled based on the data released by the Ministry and announced by Iran’s national television, a perfect linear relation between the votes received by the President and Mir Hossein Mousavi has been maintained, and the President’s vote is always half of the President’s…. Statistically and mathematically, it is impossible to maintain such perfect linear relations between the votes of any two candidates in any election — and at all stages of vote counting. This is particularly true about Iran, a large country with a variety of ethnic groups who usually vote for a candidate who is ethnically one of their own.

But, just a few hours later, a center that had been set up by Mr. Mousavi in Gheytarieh (in northern Tehran) for monitoring the election and vote counting, was attacked by armed security agents. They ransacked the center, destroyed computers, and attacked the staff. Supporters of Mr. Mousavi intervened and arrested 8 security agents. The police was called to take them to prison, but the police released the attackers.

Mr. Makhbalbaf then declared that, “I have been authorized by Mr. Mousavi’s campaign to officially declare that a political coup has taken place, in order to declare Mr. Ahmadinejad the victor.”

Dozens of reformist political leaders were arrested on Saturday night in Iran

Also arrested were Mohsen Mirdamadi, leader of the Iran Islamic Participation Front, the largest reformist party; Zahra Mojaradi, his wife; Saeed Shariati, a member of the party; Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, spokesman in the previous reformist government; and Ahmad Zaidabadi, a senior reformist journalist.Mostafa Tajzadeh and Behzad Nabavi of the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organisation, another reformist party, were also taken into custody.

Also arrested were Mohsen Mirdamadi, leader of the Iran Islamic Participation Front, the largest reformist party; Zahra Mojaradi, his wife; Saeed Shariati, a member of the party; Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, spokesman in the previous reformist government; and Ahmad Zaidabadi, a senior reformist journalist.

Iran’s economy is facing at least three large imbalances. The most acute is in the balance of payments.

Already some candidates are whispering that they favor lowering the exchange rate (increasing the value of the rial relative to other currencies) in order to fight inflation. These candidates would lead voters to believe that they can have their cake and eat it too

In these times of frozen international credit markets and economic sanctions against Iran, the second option of foreign borrowing is less likely than it was in the 1990s, but the risk of state-owned enterprises racking up foreign debts using short-term credit from eager overseas suppliers is not altogether gone. This is precisely what they did in the early 1990s, which deepened the post-oil boom slump and halted Rafsanjani’s reforms. Anticipating devaluation and government bailout, these enterprises incurred $10 billion in new short term debt alone between 1991 and 1993. Their actions forced the highly anticipated devaluation of the rial by a factor of 27 during the same period and forced the government to accept this debt as its own.

The gap between rural and urban incomes has been widening because the rural areas appear to have missed the recent boom or President Ahmadinejad’s redistribution.

Some of the gap is spurious because of the lower cost of living in rural areas (mainly housing), but the change is probably not.  

The rural-urban gap has been one of the main drivers of changes in inequality, especially in the last four years (more on this in a future post).     The gap narrowed under Mr. Moussavi’s watch, and widened during the Rafsanjani and Khatami’s administrations.  In the last three years of President Khatami’s government rural expenditures were rising faster than urban expenditures and the gap closed somewhat.  

Mr Mousavi applied to authorities for his own newspaper licence after his self-nomination in March, but he has yet not been awarded one.

At 25 rials (one fils) per copy, Andishe Nou costs much less than the cheapest newspaper in circulation. State-sponsored papers cost about 500 rials while privately produced publications can cost up to 5,000 rials.

Despite his new methods, Mr Mousavi’s campaign mainly relies on support from ordinary individuals and does not have a big campaign operation.