According to reports from Iran, residents of Salmanabad neighborhood in the northwestern city of Ardebil threw bricks and rocks at State Security Forces and municipality agents and their vehicles on Saturday, November 27, after clashes broke out between the two sides. Two government vehicles were destroyed and one of the SSF agents was wounded.

In a summary trial that lasted only a few minutes, some of the detainees, including two boys aged 11 and 12 and several women were sentenced to imprisonment and flogging.

The city of Ardebil was the site of another antigovernment demonstration last week as a group of residents chanting slogans against Khamenei and Khatami demonstrated in the city's main fruit and vegetable market and began marching toward the city center.

In a separate clash between residents and the combined forces of the SSF and the municipality in downtown Sanandaj last week, three municipality vehicles were damaged and an SSF agent was beaten up by the protesters.

Workers and employees in the thermoelectric power station in the port city of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf have been on strike for several weeks in protest against non-payment of their salaries and wages. They are continuing their strike and also refusing to eat in the plant's canteen.
 

Regime's Officials Doubt Quick Economic Recovery, Reuters, November 30

TEHRAN - Doubts are growing in Iran over quick economic recovery, amid parliamentary resistance to Mohammad Khatami's plan and apparent policy confusion in the Islamic republic.

Parliament, dominated by Khatami's opponents, recently blocked several key market-oriented elements in the Khatami's economic plan for the next five years and imposed provisions deemed contrary to the program's spirit.

A senior Khatami official said on Tuesday an earlier forecast annual six percent economic growth was beyond reach because of amendments to the plan, due to begin in March 2000.

Former PBO head Massoud Roghani-Zanjani blamed a lack of clear objectives for lagging economic recovery.

"We do not have a clear economic direction. Our regulations reflect a confused system of thought. If we are moving towards market economy, our laws must conform to our practice. We cannot have two different logic," he told the conference.
 

Singing in Exile, Associated Press, November 25

BAGHDAD - Banned by clerics from singing to her fans, Iranian star Marzieh kept her voice strong and supple by singing to the birds and trees on her farm outside Tehran. Always, she feared being overheard by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Now the 75-year-old diva of Persian traditional song sings freely, but far from home, dividing her exile between France and an Iranian opposition guerrilla camp near Baghdad.

The opposition force, the Mujahedeen Khalq, often features Marzieh in almost daily satellite television programs. The programs can be seen in Iran, but it's unclear how many Iranians have caught Marzieh, who sometimes performs dressed in a military uniform and standing on a tank.

The Iranian religious leaders who toppled the shah in 1979 "were at war with arts, with human feelings, with humanity as a whole," said Marzieh. "So I decided to fight back ... I had to fight back."

Marzieh at first stayed at her farm retreat. But in 1994, she decided she'd had enough of Iran's strict form of Islam.

She went at first to France, where she contacted members of the Mujahedeen Khalq. Her request to work for them was a propaganda coup for the Mujahedeen.

Marzieh has held concerts on Capitol Hill and in major European theaters. Iranian pop singers may be more popular, but Marzieh's tapes, including videos of her Mujahedeen TV performances, are passed around in secret in Iran.

Her home near Baghdad is in one of 17 camps where a total of more than 30,000 Mujahedeen Khalq members train... Mujahedeen leaders have promised to bring democracy and freedom to their homeland… Marzieh calls them "the real leaders of the revolution."

Living in their camps is as close as she can come to living in Iran, she said… She sat among her mementos wearing a long skirt and a yellow blouse. A blue shawl covered her shoulders, but her head, unlike those of other women with the Mujahedeen, was bare. In Iran, women must cover their heads and wear enveloping robes or coats in public.

"Now, I am free to sing again, but away from my original nest," she said. "You cannot stop a canary from singing, and I am a canary."
 

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