DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Two more suspects have been detained in connection with a satirical play deemed insulting to Islam, Iran's Intelligence Ministry said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The report said that following "a thorough cross-examination, the accused confessed to being guilty of the profane acts," according to IRNA, monitored in Dubai.

"The publication of the sacrilegious play, which coincided with the recommencement of the new Iranian academic year, seemed to be a premeditated plot," said the report, according to IRNA.

Authorities have been worried that the start of the academic year last Wednesday could have sparked trouble similar to July's pro-democracy student protests that swept several parts of Iran and raised tensions between the two ruling factions.
 

Editor of Banned Paper Summoned To Court, Agence France Presse, October 3

TEHRAN - The editor-in-chief of a recently banned Pro-Khatami daily underwent lengthy questioning by a judge of Tehran’s press court Sunday.

Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, whose Neshat paper was banned in September for "insulting the sanctity of Islam", said afterwards he had been summoned to answer charges, despite the fact that the court said earlier he was merely being called as a witness in the Neshat case.

Shamsolvaezin is to go back to the court next Saturday for a further session with the judge, Said Mortazevi.
 

Tehran Air Pollution Reaches Alarming Levels, Reuters, October 3

TEHRAN - Air pollution in Iran's capital, Tehran, has reached alarming levels over the past two days, prompting calls for the elderly and children to avoid going out unless absolutely necessary, state radio said on Sunday.

Tehran's air quality control agency told the radio that pollution levels in the capital had reached three times the accepted standards late on Saturday.

The pollution rise was attributed to a significant increase in the volume of traffic in the city of 10 million people and very low wind speeds.
 

Air and Sea Maneuvers On Strategic Oil Route, Agence France Presse, October 1

TEHRAN - Iranian forces launched a new phase of air and sea maneuvers Friday with all three of its Russian-built submarines in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Different units of Iran’s armed forces staged attacks against the submarines of "fictitious enemies," while the submarines simulated attacks against anti-submarine warships and helicopters, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The Kilo-class submarines have given Iran an important military presence in the Strait of Hormuz, the exit from the Gulf towards the Indian Ocean through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies pass, Western military sources say.
 

Mullahs’ Leader Admits Regime and "Revolution Need Unity" to Survive, The New York Times, October 2

TEHRAN - Iran's supreme religious leader moved decisively Friday to head off a fresh confrontation with the country's… president, instructing hard-line Muslim clerics and their loyalists in the police not to "take matters into their own hands" in a potentially explosive dispute involving university students.

Ten weeks after student protests touched off the worst rioting here since the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi in 1979… Ali Khamenei, a conservative cleric who wields paramount religious and political power in this nation of 70 million, used a major sermon to defuse tensions over a satire in a Tehran campus magazine...

Khamenei said he had met with "leading officials" of… factions within the government in recent days in an effort to reduce tensions, and claimed that his efforts had been successful. Failing to find common ground, he implied, could lead to both sides losing out to more radical elements who favor sidelining Islam.

"The country and the revolution need unity," he said. "The regime's two main forces, both faithful to the revolution, must reconcile themselves so as to isolate those who do not belong to us."…

But he coupled this with a demand for a policy change by the education and culture ministers, Khatami allies... "I expected more from the country's cultural managers," he said. "I do not want the cultural atmosphere to be such that a person feels he can offer insults with impunity, even where such insults occur through carelessness."

He added: "I seriously call on the cultural officials to rethink and revise their policies."…

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