Iran: The Unseen Threats of Reviving the JCPOA
In a recent announcement, the Iranian regime has admitted that is considering building a new ‘research reactor’ at its nuclear site in Isfahan Province, with construction expected to start in the coming weeks.
While quoting the regime’s head of Atomic Energy Organization Mohammad Eslami in their latest publication, the state-new run news agency ISNA wrote, “This is an entirely domestic project that will close the chain of research, evaluation, testing, and production of nuclear energy in Iran.”
This is a clear fact that the regime intends to violate the context of the JCPOA. While the regime has constantly claimed that their nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, they have been enriching uranium to up to 60 percent purity, which is merely a watershed for purifying it up to 90 percent in a technical short step to weapons-grade uranium.
While expressing its concern about the regime’s nuclear progress, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that most of the regime’s enriched uranium is being transported to Isfahan’s Atomic Center. Therefore, there is a right to be concerned and sound the alarms about the regime’s ambitions to build a new site in Isfahan, even under the pretext of research.
It should be noted that according to the regime’s Fars news agency, as reported on July 26, the regime collected and wrapped cameras that were being monitored by the IAEA, the United Nations atomic watchdog.
The IAEA has warned many times that the regime is inching ever closer to producing a nuclear bomb, but the Western countries, especially the US government, continue to ignore such warnings. The only thing that Western governments have done in regards to controlling the regime’s malign activities is to continue sticking with their weak negotiating progress, which is on the cusp of a devastating failure for both the Middle East’s trembling security situation and global security.
This genuine concern, and the subsequent warnings, are not based on meaningless speculations, but on real facts of the regime’s violations of the JCPOA, which started soon after the initial agreement was made in 2015.
One year into the nuclear deal, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal office for the Protection of the Constitution, revealed that the regime has pursued a ‘clandestine’ path to obtaining illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies. At the time, Germany’s then-Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized the regime’s actions, showing the fragility of the JCPOA from the offset.
In January 2019, the regime’s then-head of Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi explained how the regime used deceptive measures to mislead the international community, saying, “For three years we have been saying we did not pour cement into the Arak heavy water reactor. If we had the Arak reactor would be destroyed.”
In response to a question from the regime’s TV moderator in regards to the pouring of cement in the nuclear pipes, Salehi added, “not the pipes you see here. We had purchased similar pipes, but I couldn’t announce it at that time. Only one person knows so in Iran, the highest senior official.”
He continued, “No one else knew. When our friends were negotiating, we knew that they would go back on their words one day. [Khamenei] has said be careful, they do not keep their promises. We needed to be smart. In addition, to not destroy the bridges behind us, we needed to also be building bridges, so that if we needed to return, we could return faster.”
On September 4, 2015, the National Council Resistance of Iran (NCRI) announced that “Tehran is working with North Korean experts to deceive the United Nations nuclear inspectors who are visiting suspected Iranian sites. According to the statement, the Iranian regime has been working for some time to find ways to hide the military dimension of its nuclear projects from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), seeking Pyongyang’s advice. Several North Korean officials have set up workshops in Tehran and have remained there even after the signing of the nuclear deal.”
Two days earlier, the NCRI disclosed that the Iranian regime’s secret committee had deceived the IAEA on PMD Probe. The Iranian Resistance examined an example of the regime’s deceptive plans in response to the IAEA, citing the regime’s scheme to address the so-called EBW detonators, by trying to pretend the explosive detonators were intended for the oil and gas industry.
These are just a few facts about the regime’s acts of cheating after signing the agreement. It is not just the weak agreement and appeasement policies with the regime that have put the international community in danger. Following the inception of the agreement, Lebanon has since become a more comfortable home for the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which is now armed to the teeth by the regime and has been instrumental in preventing the formation of any government in Lebanon in favor of the Iranian regime.
Thanks to the agreement, the regime was able to take the upper hand in Syria’s war, which has since displaced more than 6 million people inside the country and caused more than 5 million to seek refuge abroad.
With help of this war, the regime exported its terror activities to European soil under the pretext of refugees. The Iranian Quds Force is known to have conducted many covert assassination operations in the heart of Europe. The case of the regime’s diplomat-terrorist Assadollah Assadi, who tried to bomb the NCRI’s annual gathering in France in 2018, is at the heart of the regime’s terrorist network in Europe.
The regime has also expanded its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, preventing the formation of any government and as a result, the country has now been pushed back into its turbulent past. In Iraq, the regime sponsored its militias, the famous Hashd al-Shaabî, and others, to infiltrate and undermine the Iraqi Security Forces to jeopardize Iraq’s sovereignty. Just like Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, Iraq greatly lacks a competent government.
The same case goes for Yemen. The regime’s support for the Houthis has destabilized many countries in the Middle East and the terrorist group continues to starve the Yemeni people and hold them under the threat of terror. The list of the regime’s malign activities is long, and these examples are just a snippet of their misdeeds.
The regime’s assets unfrozen by the JCPOA have provided the ground for such destruction. What we have not mentioned is the ongoing increase in the regime’s repression of Iran’s people, because the JCPOA does not include the regime’s human rights violations. Therefore, any new deal or the reviving of the 2015 deal will only worsen the situation and set up a more hostile regime in the future.
Iran Regime and Its ‘Sweet Cake’ for the People
In a so-called ‘ceremony of honoring’, introducing the commander of the Sarallah Corps of Kerman province, the Iranian regime’s second highest commander of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Ali Fadavi spoke about the contradiction of two current fronts, introducing the regime as being on the right side of this war.
He said, “The fight between the right front of the Islamic revolution and the evil front of the world is never-ending, and these two fronts will never come together.”
He revealed the regime’s year-long malign activities in the Middle East and its support of global terrorism, adding, “In the 80s with fought in our home, but in the 2000s we are fighting 1000 km away from home.”
Fadavi also spoke about the current situation of the country’s youths, which greatly contrasts with the real situation, stating, “The new generation of the revolution, although they had not seen the war and the Imam (regime founder Khomeini), the victory of the Islamic revolution, the story of Kurdistan and the West, when they were to be tested, they were like those who had seen the revolution, the Imam, the war, and the martyrs.”
What we witness on a daily basis is the Iranian youths’ growing hatred against the regime. This was majorly reflected in the past nationwide protests in December 2017 and November 2019.
During his speech, Fadavi absurdly proclaimed that the world should see and taste the sweetness of the Islamic Republic. Therefore, it is not a bad idea to have a look at the composition of this regime’s ‘sweet cake’ which has left nothing for the people of Iran, has destroyed many countries in the Middle East, and taken millions of lives over the past four decades.
The regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini considered the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s a blessing and he intended to continue it for as long as possible, as he saw peace as the burial of Islam. During this 8-year-long war, one million people lost their lives on both sides, and cost about one trillion dollars, as the regime claimed. Official statistics claimed that there were two million people left dead or disabled on the Iranian side, and the war caused the destruction of five provinces and one trillion dollars in damage, before finally ending with no result.
Since the 1980s, there has been an existential massacre of political prisoners, with no official statistics to indicate the true scale of how many have lost their lives at the hands of the regime. In the summer of 1988, according to the documents of the Iranian opposition, around 30,000 prisoners were massacred in less than 3 months.
According to a state-run news agency, from 2001 to 2020, the annual average of the absolute poverty line across the country has increased more than 27 times. The statistics indicate that during this period about 33 percent of the population has fallen below the multidimensional poverty line. At present, nearly 60 percent of the country’s population is severely poor.
The statistics of cardboard sleepers in Tehran indicate that in the country’s capital alone, more than 24,000 people are homeless. The number of homeless people across the entire country is rampant, and with social networks reporting shocking news on a daily basis about these people, the scale is out of control. The situation is so dire that many people are even forced to live in empty graves and pits.
During the uprising of November 2019, unemployed youths came to the streets to protest the hunger and unemployment crises. In response, the regime attacked them with bullets, killing more than 1,500 people and putting thousands behind bars. The protests of the mothers of the victims are still audible to this day and cannot be silenced.
The best ‘sweet’ for the regime in the past two years was the expansion of the coronavirus pandemic across Iran, which was exacerbated deliberately by the regime to prevent any new protests. Due to their tactics, the regime killed more than 500,000 people. Iran was the only country in the world that prevented imports of globally approved vaccines. The regime even prevented the state-run media from giving accurate statistics about the casualties in order to hide its crime.
Terrorism and meddling in the internal affairs of the countries of the region is another destructive policy of the Islamic regime, which has brought nothing but death and destruction to the people of the region. From the destructive war in Syria to the support of the Yemeni Houthis, Kataib and Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the regime has been at the heart of the chaos and shows no signs of stopping any time soon.
Concluding that, this was just a glimpse of the ‘sweetness’ of the Iranian regime delivered to Iran’s people and the entire region.
Iran: Poverty Will Increase Protests Despite Regime’s New Repression Plans
These days, the Iranian regime is faced with rallies and strikes of different unions related to livelihood challenges, from the teachers’ unions to the retirees, on a daily basis. According to the regime’s officials, following the 2019 protests, the regime has lost its credibility among the people, and an indicator of this is the endless protests.
Regime experts have said that due to the increasing inflation, public poverty, and the failure to reach an outcome in the JCPOA negotiations, the regime is likely to face much larger and more dangerous protests in the near future.
Morteza Ofoghe, one of the regime’s experts, said that “if the politicians continue the same trend, they will face new and more challenging political and social issues between the people and the rule.”
Some economic experts have recently warned the regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi and their weak government that there is a huge distance between reality and what this group has claimed about their economic changes. Raisi and his economic ministers have been routinely mocked for continuing to give hollow promises rather than improving the economic situation, which is just worsening the problem.
The truth of the matter is that Mohamad Mokhber, the first vice president, is completely unknowledgeable when it comes to the economy, and the regime’s head of the budget planning organization and the head of the Central Bank have not studied economics at all. None of them have a clue about how to solve the issues that the regime has created.
They thought that they could turn the country’s economy upside down, but, because of the huge corruption in the government, changes have become impossible, despite their claim that the economic problems are in relation to the uncertainty of the JCPOA.
This failure in curbing the economic problems is the reason why the regime has increased the number of executions, intensified its repression of Iranian citizens, raised the issue of compulsory hijab, and launched a major crackdown. Despite the regime’s imagination that these tactics will secure them from major protests and nationwide uprisings, many of its experts and officials have warned about the consequences their decisions will cause.
Abbas Abdi, another one of the regime’s experts, wrote on his Twitter account, “Regarding the behavior of the Ershad (Guidance) patrol with teenage girls, I can say and think that sooner or later one of these encounters will unintentionally lead to an unpleasant situation. I think it is necessary for the police force to get a serious assessment of this issue and the possibilities ahead, maybe these encounters must be reconsidered.”
While warning the regime not to enforce mandatory hijab, Fayaz Zahed, a regime journalist, said that the creators of the hijab plan are committing malicious actions to divert people’s attention because they are unable to solve the main problems within society.
In his interview with the state-run daily Etemad on July 23, he added, “The experience of 2018 (protests) showed how dangerous these artificial crises (such as the hijab plan) could be and become a weapon against the system. Iranian society is angry. Don’t mess with people’s girls.”
The former oil minister of the regime, Mohammad Gharazi, admitted to the increase in repression, which is aimed at curbing the explosive situation in society. He warned the regime of its social consequences in his interview with the state-run daily Mostaghel on July 25, saying, “What has happened in the country is that governments have always misused public rights in favor of a special group. That is, instead of respecting public rights, they have imposed the rights of political power. Some politicians believe that the gap between the government and the people has increased, and this has cost the system a lot.”
He concluded, “What factors do you think caused this gap? Instead of sticking to the government, the political power should consider the rule of the society. For example, inflation is against the administration of the country. Inflation has reached skyrocketing numbers, shrinking the livelihoods of people. What is the solution? Inflation is really heavy.”
Iran: Estehban Flood, Warning of Disaster in Other Provinces
Iran is currently facing many natural disasters due to the Iranian regime’s destruction of the country’s natural environment. One such disaster is major floods. Last Friday, as the seasonal rain soaked the regions around the counties of Estehban and Darab in the Fars province, a terrible flood formed.
That day, many people had traveled to the countryside to enjoy their weekend near the Rudbal river, which later turned into a nightmare. No one expected such a flood would occur while the sky had been clear for most of the day and, as usual, none of the regime’s organizations gave warnings of the dramatic change in weather.
Reports stated that at least 31 people, including three children, lost their lives in the flood. If there hadn’t been sacrifices made by the people living and working in the region, the number of deaths would have likely exceeded those published by the regime’s media.
Despite the regime’s officials evading any responsibility and attributing the cause of the floods to unpredictable events, meteorological data indicates that summer rainfall in southern Iran has the potential to cause monsoon floods.
Flooding of the Sarbaz river and other rivers of Baluchistan during the summer months is not an unfamiliar phenomenon. Due to the changes in the weather, the regime should be prepared to anticipate such a situation and think of necessary measures to put in place to protect Iran’s citizens.
This issue requires the repair and reconstruction of infrastructures or the creation of new infrastructures. Forecasting and warning systems should be improved and increased, and people should be trained for such critical events.
The catastrophic flood of Shiraz in March 2020 showed that the infrastructure of the country had been destroyed in astronomical dimensions due to the regime’s policies. However, the regime did not take any new measures to solve the problems because the budget for renewing the infrastructures was relocated to the regime’s nuclear, missile, and malign regional activities.
Developed countries generally invest 10 to 20 percent of the generated wealth in the field of safety and risk reduction, as well as public health. In Iran, this has never been and is unlikely ever to be the case while the country is under the rule of the tyrannical regime.
For example, 60 years ago, a sea storm occurred off the coast of the Netherlands and spread inland, killing at least 2 thousand people. Following that incident, the Dutch government spent 20% of the country’s gross national product (GNP) on the huge Delta project to protect the country and its citizens from sea storms.
Around the same time, there was a typhoon in Japan that killed 5,500 people, and after that, a series of laws were passed that greatly helped to reduce human casualties in natural disasters. As a result, compared to the last 40 years, the ratio of the number of casualties in Japan to the population has greatly decreased from such disasters.
35 years after the terrible floods of Golab Dareh and Darband in 1987, which led to the death of more than 300 people, the flood forecasting and warning system of these two basins has still not been launched in the most important parts of the capital. In the event of a flood like in 1987, and if water enters the Tajrish metro, a great disaster with a huge number of casualties is likely to occur.
In many cases across the country, the construction budget of Raisi’s government has been basically eliminated or considered to be at a minimum. Along with Fars province, the provinces of Kerman, Hormozgan and Sistan, and Baluchistan are also exposed to potential floods.
Kamran Emami, one of the regime’s experts and the head of the comparative flood management working group in the ICID Commission, spoke about the Estehban flood, saying, “Unfortunately, in Iran, flood management discussions and methods of reducing casualties and damages are not addressed very seriously, and with every flood, several lives are taken, and the public’s attention is attracted for a while, and then everything is forgotten until the next flood. One of the reasons for this neglect is that we have become a short-term society.”
The only thing that Raisi’s government has improved is the number of executions and their guidance patrols to repress the country’s women in the hope they will divert the minds of the people from the country’s environmental and economic crises. Not long after the flood rampaged Estehban, the regime executed Iman Sabzekar, a construction worker, in public, along with a further ten inmates in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.
Meaningless Iran Regime and Russia’s Economic Relations
The Iranian regime has considered Russia’s President’s latest visit as an influencing trip on the regime’s problems, especially in the field of international challenges and its nuclear case. However, the events and remarks following their meeting have shown that the international community has expressed their growing concern about the meeting and the regime’s decision to hand over the killer drone to the Russian government for support in their Ukraine invasion.
After eight rounds of talks on revitalizing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) over the past year, the latest indirect talks between the regime and the US government in Doha, mediated by the European Union, ended without compromise, and now the prospect of an agreement seems dimmer than ever.
Nearly 18 months into Joe Biden’s presidency, despite indicating a desire to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, there have been no signs that a breakthrough is imminent. Instead of canceling the sanctions against the regime, the US government threatened to intensify the sanctions and even imposed some new sanctions.
On a daily basis, Western countries continue to warn the regime that the time to revive the JCPOA is coming to an end and the regime will face severe consequences if no agreement is met. This should be considered a turning point for the regime’s decision to invite Putin as a vanishing point to curb its increasing economic crisis, which is only fueling the fire of the Iranian people’s dissatisfaction.
This type of diplomatic interaction can have a direct effect on the economic interactions of the two countries, but in the case of the regime and Russia, it seems that this was not the correct discussion.
The reality is that in the past few years, there was interest in expanding cooperation between the two countries. Both sides were constantly talking about the need to expand cooperation at the political level, but practically there has been no significant leap in the economic relations between them.
In part, it refers to the capacities and facilities that two countries must supply each other, while the other part refers to the economic structure of the two countries. The current situation is that the Iranian regime is facing a totally collapsed economy, and they are desperate for help.
The capacities and facilities that both sides can provide to each other are very limited. In addition, in the financial field, the financial exchange conditions between the two countries would still face obstacles, due to the regime’s banking sanctions.
The projects and agreements that have been announced will not be fulfilled due to the regime’s political and international conditions, and it is likely that many of the plans for cooperation will be abandoned or forgotten. The latest discussion is about Russia’s investment in the regime’s gas industry, but this too is just an illusion.
The truth about the regime is that its economic plans, and efforts for economic cooperation with other countries, do not originate from the country’s needs and the people’s needs, but instead are subject to political goals, especially in the field of the regime’s support of international terrorism.
Therefore, this meeting should be considered as the regime’s political clamour to present its circumstances as ‘progressive’. With the help of Russia, it will be able to end any deadlock, and that is the reason why the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has shown strong support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Trilateral Astana Summit, Multiple Covert Conflicts
In recent weeks, the Iranian state-run media have been boasting about the ‘Trilateral Astana Summit’ that took place on Tuesday, July 19. However, the participants of the conference showed their divisions more than their unities.
Syria and Turkey’s Concerns
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asked Russia and Iran to back Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria during the summit. The Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei explicitly declared his objection to the assault, while the Russian President also opposed Erdoğan’s plan. However, the Turkish army is continuing to scope out Syrian areas in defiance of the Astana Summit, showing that the talks have detached ties between the countries instead of fastening them. Tehran and Moscow, and their allies in the region, all raised their condemnation against Turkey’s attack despite their smiles and inking collaboration accords during the summit.Tehran-Moscow Military Ties
On July 13, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan revealed that the Iranian regime plans to send hundreds of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] to Moscow. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has apparently rejected the contract, but the facts speak louder. The Times reported, “US intelligence believes that Iran will provide President Putin’s army with several hundred drones that were originally intended to help rebels in Yemen to fight the Saudi-backed government there.” In a White House briefing, Sullivan stated, “Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use these UAVs.” On July 16, CNN reported that a Russian delegation had visited an airfield in central Iran at least twice in the last month to examine weapons-capable drones. Their broadcast stated, “Iran began showcasing the Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 drones, also known as UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, to Russia at Kashan Airfield south of Tehran in June. Both types of drones are capable of carrying precision-guided missiles.” Of course, this is not the whole story. Behind the scenes, there are severe clashes between Tehran and Moscow. However, both countries are trying to conceal them to save their view at the international level. In an interview with the semiofficial Sharq daily on July 18, the Russian Ambassador in Iran Levan Dzhagaryan revealed that Tehran owes over hundreds of billions of euros to Moscow. According to Dzhagaryan, this considerable debt is related to Bushehr nuclear plant. However, he refused to leak further details. He said, “Iran owed us and had yet to pay for building the Bushehr plant. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also discussed this issue with the Iranian foreign minister.” The daily also questioned the ambassador about the Bushehr nuclear plant situation. One reporter asked, “Why is this plant incapable of providing power even for Bushehr?” In response, Dzhagaryan said, “You don’t know many things, and I cannot say details. There are some things I don’t want to expose unveil. However, it is obvious that Iran has a multi-hundred-billion-euro debt to us and refuses to settle it.”Further Distinctions Between Iran-Russia
The differences are not limited to debts alone. There is also severe competition between Tehran and Moscow in financial and trade aspects. On July 16, the Wall Street Journal revealed, “Iran and Russia are engaged in a fierce competition for sales of oil, refined crude products and metals in India, China and across Asia, as Moscow sells at prices that are undercutting one of its few supporters during the Ukraine invasion.” WSJ Benoit Faucon wrote, “‘It’s murderous,’ an Iranian trader said of the $30 a ton discounts that Indian and Chinese buyers wanted to match Russian steel prices. ‘They are destroying the market,’ said Hamid Hosseini, the spokesman for the Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters Union, speaking of Russia.” In conclusion, not only did the Astana Summit fail to reduce the rifts between the three participants, but it also revealed profound and complicated distinctions. However, only Tehran has addressed its vulnerability versus the international community and ongoing public protests, which have severely challenged the entire ruling system in recent months. Meanwhile, US Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley, who played a crucial role in closing the nuclear deal with the mullahs, has now expressed disappointment over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. In an interview with CNN on July 20, he said that the “window to revive nuclear deal is rapidly closing.” He added, “Iran has a choice now. It can opt for a position of relative dependency on Russia—Russia itself has been isolated internationally and have a very narrow economic opportunity with Russia which really can’t go very far, or it can choose to come back into the deal. If it chooses the path of not getting back into the deal, of greater isolation and then having to turn to Russia, having to sell armed drones to Russia, that’s a choice that is not a particularly attractive one.” On July 19, US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said, “With each passing day it is– we’re not just treading water, but we’re losing ground. And Iran is sending a signal to us and to the rest of the world that it has no interest in mutually returning to compliance with the JCPOA. If Iran makes clear that it has no intention of doing so and the deal that’s on the table is obviated by Iran’s continuing advancements in its nuclear program, we will pursue another path.”400 Dangerous Projects Destroy Iran’s Nature
In all civilized nations preserving the environment is a must. Still, when it comes to the Iranian regime, this does not apply, and the regime itself is the source of the destruction of the environment.
The most significant environmental resources that the regime has destructed over the past years are the country’s water resources, lakes, and forests.
The destruction of these resources is not just damaging herbal and animal health; it is causing demographic changes, social crises in the surrounding area of these regions, and decreasing national security.
In a recent article, the state-run Etemad daily referred to the regime’s corruption in macro projects, which are a danger to the environment, writing, “According to statistics, there are more than 400 large infrastructure projects in the country that lack the necessary environmental permits. Naturally, such unlicensed projects should be stopped by the environmental organization. But these projects not only have not been stopped to date but according to wrong procedures, large budget allocations have been made for them so that their owners can continue their destructive activities.”
They added, “This is even though in the end, these projects lead to the destruction of the environment and destroy intergenerational wealth.”
Regarding the environmental organization of the regime, we face unprofessional officials, who are one of the main factors of decades of ecological destruction and have caused severe and irreparable damage to Iran’s environment.
The drying up of Lake Urmia, located in the northwest of the country, is one of the clear examples of environmental destruction in Iran. During the last four decades, this lake has largely been deprived of its natural water resources due to numerous non-scientific and non-expert activities in agriculture. This has created a dangerous, polluting crisis in this region.
With the gradual drying up of Lake Urmia, the following serious damages have been inflicted on the region and will grow over time:
- The decrease in population and the changing of the settlement pattern on both sides of the lake
- Natural hazards such as the loss of agricultural land, destruction of orchards, reduction of pasture, and salt-carrying winds.
- Mass migrations, ethnic tensions, and continuous popular protests
- Occurrence of incurable diseases
Belgian Treaty Offers Major Concession, Ignores Real Prospects for Regime Change
This week that the Belgian parliament ratified a treaty that is expected to set the stage for the exchange of an Iranian terrorist for a Belgian national who is being held hostage in the Islamic Republic. Olivier Vandecasteele was taken into custody by Iranian authorities in February, approximately one year after a Belgian court handed down a 20-year sentence for the Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, for his leadership of a plot to bomb an Iranian opposition gathering near Paris in 2018.
The timing of the arrest left little question about Tehran’s intention to link the cases, and opponents of the treaty for “Transfer for Sentenced Persons” are understandably concerned that Assadi’s release could give the Iranian regime clear incentives to accelerate its practice of hostage-taking. Awareness of these concerns no doubts influenced the Belgian government’s decision to keep the treaty a secret until it was presented to parliament at the end of last month. It was reportedly negotiated roughly four months earlier, following bilateral meetings between the Iranian and Belgian foreign ministers on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
As Iranian state media described it, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian presented his Belgian counterpart with the regime’s “position and views” on the Assadi case during those meetings and reiterated longstanding demands for his immediate and unconditional release. Ever since his arrest, Assadi and his handlers in Tehran have been repeating the argument that because his activities took place under diplomatic cover, he is entitled to blanket immunity, regardless of the location or severity of his crimes.
The Belgian-Iranian treaty effectively provides that immunity after the fact, by allowing for an Iranian citizen in the Belgian prison system to be returned to his homeland, where authorities are explicitly vested with the power to grant him amnesty upon arrival. Tehran’s persistent narrative about this case should leave no doubt that that is exactly what the regime will do if the treaty is fully implemented.
Despite yea votes from 79 of the Belgian parliament’s 131 members, that implementation is still not a foregone conclusion. Perhaps the principal source of lingering doubt is the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s assurance that it will continue to pursue challenges and political action to prevent Assadi’s transfer.
“Any relocation of criminals that are responsible for terrorism and human rights violations, without serving legally mandated punishment, is to encourage and offer a ransom for terrorism and human rights violations and a breach of international laws,” said Maryam Rajavi, leader of the NCRI coalition and the person designated to serve as transitional president in Iran following the current regime’s overthrow.
Endorsement of that coalition generally presupposes serious frustration with existing policies toward the Islamic Republic. NCRI officials have variously accused Western nations, both individually and collectively, of “appeasing” the theocratic regime in hopes of encouraging its internal reform. Outrage over the Belgian treaty is one of the strongest recent examples of this phenomenon, insofar as it highlights appeasing gestures as they relate to what could have been the worst terrorist attack on Europe by a foreign entity.
The trial of Assadollah Assadi confirmed that he had not been acting as a rogue agent but had been directly ordered to target the NCRI and Mrs. Rajavi specifically, by officials at the very top of the ruling system. As a result, Assadi procured 500 grams of high explosives and a detonator from the regime and smuggled it into Europe on a commercial flight, using a diplomatic pouch, before handing it off to two co-conspirators.
Experts testified that the explosives in question had the potential to kill hundreds of people in the initial blast, which would have no doubt sparked a stampede that could have raised the death toll into the thousands. The 2018 Free Iran World Summit was estimated to have been attended by around 100,000 people, including many of the aforementioned American and European supporters.
It is easy to understand the NCRI’s criticism of any policy that seems to downplay the significance of such a plot, and that is exactly what the Belgian treaty does by setting the stage for Assadi’s release just four years into his unquestionably well-deserved 20-year sentence. Others have argued and will continue to argue that his release is necessary to free Vandecasteele, a Belgian aid worker, from conditions that have already had a serious impact on his health and well-being. But there are other means of accomplishing that aim, which unfortunately remains little-explored by Western policymakers.
The NCRI and its supporters have long maintained that comprehensive pressure on regime institutions is the only way of impeding malign activities such as hostage taking. But regime change is the only means of halting those activities once and for all.
Iran Regime’s Economic Promises Led to Growing Poverty
Despite the promises of the Iranian regime that they would prevent increasing prices after they decided to remove the subsidized currency of essential goods in the name of the so-called ‘economic surgery,’ prices are again growing steadily.
In a surprising claim, while the number of people living under the poverty line is increasing, the regime has said it will decrease the inflation rate in the coming month.
Producers have stated that the decrease in the purchasing power of consumers and the sharp increase in production costs, along with the imposition of mandatory prices by the government, have destroyed all economic incentives for production, and they predict that the situation will become even worse.
Iran’s economy has become so unstable that producers suggest that the Iranian people buy their necessities as soon as possible, as no one can predict the prices of the goods in the coming months.
There have been goods that have witnessed a price increase of up to 200 and 300 percent in recent months. This has happened in the market for basic goods and other areas, and almost all goods have experienced multiple increases in price.
In recent days, as the price of a box of 30 eggs reached 100 thousand rials, a video of Javad Sadati Nejad, the regime’s Minister of Agricultural Jihad, was republished and widely viewed on the internet, where he said his government would deliver chicken at 20 thousand rials per kilo and a box of 30 eggs at 43 thousand rials to the Iranian people at their homes.
Just two months after this promise, the preferential currency of eggs was removed, and its price suddenly exceeded 75 thousand rials. As a result, poverty is increasing rapidly.
The latest official statistics on poverty in Iran are related to 2019. The 57-page report ‘Monitoring poverty in 2019’ can be considered the most documented report in this field if we trust the regime’s statistics. The report was prepared and published in May 2021.
This report confirms that the people of Iran are living in a dire situation as it read, “The inflation rate during a year, while incomes are constant, repeatedly reduces the purchasing power of the household and causes the household to achieve less well-being with previous incomes.”
It continued, “Also, in the years when the inflation rate is higher than the country’s long-term average rate, usually the incomes, especially the incomes of the low-income groups, do not grow according to inflation, and as a result, the purchasing power and well-being of the low-income groups decrease year by year.”
It added, “In fact, compared to the previous year, citizens have paid 48% more for basic goods, durable goods, and services. Therefore, if their income is stable or does not increase with the inflation rate, this group of citizens has become poorer than last year.”
The report added that unemployment is one of the main factors making some households fall below the poverty line. In its conclusion, the report confirmed that about 5.26 million people in Iran are living below the poverty line, in a situation where we could trust the regime’s statistics.
But that is not all. A recent article published by the state-run daily Bahar News on July 17 stated that a rampant increase in rental rates has heavy consequences for city dwellers and the urban environment. One of these consequences is shared rental houses. The number of these shared houses is increasing rapidly, and the demand for roommates to reduce costs has intensified.
IRIB, Sixth Force of Iran Regime’s IRGC Is Declining
Usually, the media is held in high regard in the modern world, considered the indicator of democracy and the freedom of speech in a country. In most countries where democracy is established, the freedom and independence of the media play an important role in guiding and managing public opinion, especially the improvement of the thinking of future generations.
However, in Iran under the rule of the Iranian regime with reactionary thoughts, things are very different, and like in any other dictatorship the media is used as the regime’s propaganda apparatus. It should be noted that the IRIB’s main duty is protecting the regime, in some cases even more than any other institution, in balance with the regime’s Revolutionary Force (IRGC).
Under the regime’s current constitution, this organization is one of the subsets of the regime’s leadership, the Velayat-e Faqih, parallel to other major organizations and mouthpieces of the regime like Kayhan and the IRGC. This has made the regime’s media unrivaled, leaving no space for independent media to have the chance to grow.
Another main constant duty of IRIB is the concept of the sodoure enqelab (the export of revolution), which is one of the main clauses of the regime’s constitution. The regime started its Arabic Service following its establishment in 1980. These days, the IRIB world service runs fourteen satellite TV channels, three internet TV channels, and thirty-two radio stations, of which several are broadcasting in Arabic.
When it comes to international security and peace, the Iranian regime’s propaganda machine is a serious security threat, while its Arabic-language media, encompasses more than two hundred entities. Domestically, however, the regime’s media is facing a dramatic decline in audiences.
On July 17, the state-run Khorasan daily published an article highlighting some miserable statistics about the decline in the IRIB’s audiences, which is proof of the people’s ongoing hatred of the regime.
The daily wrote, “Yesterday, IRIB’s Public Relations published the results of two surveys of this organization’s research center about TV series and programs. On Thursday, in a report titled ‘Radio and TV Polls in the Dark Room’ published on this same page, we pointed out the lack of clarity in the polls of TV programs, and now in the results of the new poll, the statistics of only four popular TV programs were announced. And there are countless TV shows whose audience statistics have not been published for a long time.”
Highlighted in the IRIB’s non-transparent survey it states, “According to this survey, ‘Asr Jadid 3’ is the most watched television program in May 2022 with 44.4 percent of viewers, and ‘Khandewane’ is the second most watched program with 39.2 percent of viewers. Therefore, no TV program has reached the 50% audience mark, which shows the relative weakness of television these days.”
The daily added, “The sad thing is the number of viewers of TV series. The figure of 15% viewership for any series was considered a low figure, but in the recent survey of series which belongs to the first half of July 2022, Channel One’s ‘Mastooran’ with 15.4% of viewers has been announced as the most popular TV series these days! Meanwhile, the situation of the rest of the series is much worse.”
The Khorasan daily concluded, “The audience of 10% for most TV series shows that the TV series of recent months is on the border of crisis; A crisis that may lead to the decline of the next series (which may be better) by the abandon of the audiences from the evening broadcast of the IRIB.”
It should be noted that the Iranian people frequently introduce the IRIB as one of the main enemies in their protests, chanting slogans of ‘shame of state TV and Radio’.
