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Biden or Khamenei, Who Is the Loser?

Jubin Katiraie
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Biden or Khamenei, Who Is the Loser?

Last week was a turbulent week for Iran-US relations. Relations between the United States and the Iranian government have undergone changes. The most sensitive issue on the table right now is the debate over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Will this ultimate path come to an end? And what impact will it have on the relationship between the United States and the Iranian government?

As far as the US government as a whole is concerned, from US President Joe Biden to the White House spokesperson to the US Secretary of State, all of them have the same word. They spoke from a specific device. They do this deliberately because they do not want the Iranian government to gain a political concession or make a wrong analysis. The United States has made it very clear that the United States will not enter into negotiations with Iran unless the Iranian government returns to its commitments to the JCPOA and fully complies with the 2015 nuclear deal.

On the other hand, we saw that Iranian government officials also make hopeless maneuvers this week. From Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, everyone entered the scene. This shows that the reality of the scene is much heavier for Tehran than for the United States. More importantly, the US Congress made its final say. The Biden administration cannot return to a new nuclear deal with Iran without the consent of the US Congress.

Registration of the resolution of the US Congress

Two things happened last week. One letter was sent to the White House by 120 US representatives on the nuclear issue and the Iranian government’s nuclear threat. They clarified their demands and position for the White House. On the other hand, was US House Resolution 118, which included not only the issue of the nuclear threat but also the US policy as a whole, dealing with the threat of terrorism and human rights abuses in Iran, and more importantly, defending a secular, non-nuclear democratic Iran. And that the Congress insists on Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi’s 10-point plan. This was put on the White House’s table by Resolution 118.

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The position of Senator Robert Menendez, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was crucial. The importance of this senator’s position is due to the fact that Senator Menendez will be the decisive senator in the coming months in terms of politics and US foreign relations. He said that he supports a diplomatic solution to the Iranian regime’s nuclear program that is both longer-term and stronger than previous commitments. This position was not only a threat to the Iranian government, but also a warning to the White House. That is, any political debate and political line on negotiations with Iran must go beyond the orbit defined by Senator Menendez, otherwise it will face a fundamental problem in Congress.

Khamenei in a deadlock

The government in Tehran is in an unsolvable impasse. It cannot make an escape for itself. When Zarif tried to return to the JCPOA at the same time last week, the government does not seem to have any interest in resolving this impasse. And they are emphasizing of their position and this is because of Iran’s behavior.

Look at the actions of the Iranian government last week. It announced it would continue atomic enrichment and produce uranium metal. They immediately heard the US position. Khamenei thinks that with the policy of intimidation and blackmail, he will put the United States in trouble and force the United States to return to the negotiating table. But America stands firm. In Biden’s interview with CBS, he heard Biden’s position firmly. All this sends a deadly message to Khamenei. For the political apparatus for which he had prepared himself. Now this policy has failed. All of this causes tensions within the government and the faction war will rise.

Will Khamenei stop blackmailing?

For the past four years, the Iranian government has been under Donald Trump’s policy of ‘maximum pressure’. By using the anti-Trump atmosphere, Khamenei tried to turn the atmosphere in his favor and show himself to be oppressed and portray his regime as a victim of a wrong American policy. He was trying to make some opportunities for himself. He expected that when the Biden government should come, a number of opportunities and privileges would be on the way. But what the Iranian government has been doing since December is that it fears that Biden’s political apparatus will not prioritize Iran. He tried to put himself at the forefront of US policy by pursuing a policy of threatening by capturing a South Korea ship, increasing enrichment to 20 percent, threatening to build an atomic bomb by Iran’s intelligence minister Mahmoud Alavi. But the US response even in the last State Department briefing on Friday was that they do not have a deadline. They do not have a specific schedule. Now the ball is in Iran’s court.

But the Iranian government does not shy away from extortion. They think this is the only way out. Because the pressure of the people and the pressure of the explosive society inside the country and the growth and victories of the resistance abroad have sounded such a death knell for Khamenei that he has been horrified. If these puzzles are put together, it turns out that the government is at a dead end and will not get any points.

Why does Khamenei insist on threatening politics?

Abbas Araghchi, Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, said:  “If the sanctions are not lifted before February 21, we have no choice but to implement the decision that has been made, referring to the deadline set by parliament. In this way, we can stop the Additional Protocol, and this means that the number of international inspectors in Iran will be reduced.”

This means that they will not back down from the policy of intimidation. Khamenei wants to prove the policy of threatening its survival.

The reason for insisting on the threat policy is rooted in the internal situation of the Iranian government. Widespread social discontent, the role of the Resistance Units of the domestic opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK).

Looking at this situation, Khamenei sees nothing in the future but destruction and overthrow. So, he wants to use these levers. The lever of intimidation or ransom or nuclear threat, the lever of terrorism, most of all the lever of repression.

Therefore, he cannot lose these levers. Several times this, a debate took place within the government. Several times Khamenei entered the scene, openly saying that he was not willing to give up the levers that kept his regime afloat. Khamenei cannot back down from the levers of repression, executions, arrests, and torture.

What will Biden’s America do?

Biden has repeatedly stated that he will not allow the regime to acquire an atomic bomb. When they talk about new negotiations, they say stronger and longer. They know that the 2015 JCPOA was a weak JCPOA and if they return to the negotiating table, it will have a stronger and longer JCPOA. Biden has said several times that I am ready to defend the United States and my allies.

This is a warning to the regime. It is clear to the Biden administration that the maximum pressure exerted on the Iranian government during the Trump era has provided the Biden administration good opportunities, which are the sanctions. In other words, they see the regime at its weakest point. This is what they are arranging with Tehran.

“Today, the enemy is trying to get the maximum points for what it has not been able to achieve with maximum pressure, with a minimum reduction,” Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said.

The need for decisive policy

This is a process that the Biden government has sufficient authority over. In the last five years, one thing has been specified in the US government’s policy for those who were at the US negotiating table with the regime during the 2015 JCPOA, and who are now in office. The government of Tehran understand one think and that is the decisive policy.

Out of all the political compliments they make to each other, they know that a decisive policy is the answer to the Iranian government. If during the Trump era, when the maximum pressure policy was used against the regime, the regime wanted to attract the press by showing itself the oppressed and using the anti-Trump atmosphere, now that lever is no longer in Iran’s hands. Now the picture is much, much brighter. And for Biden’s government in particular, this picture is very clear.

Is Poverty in Iran the Result of Sanctions or Plundering?

Pooya Stone
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0
Is Poverty in Iran the Result of Sanctions or Plundering?

The living and economic situation of the Iranian people is so bad that these days it has become the talk of the town in the state media and among government figures and experts.

But when it comes to the causes of this issue, at least within the country’s executive system, the root of the problem is sought outside the system, and specifically the global and US sanctions. Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani has said many times that whatever you shout, shout on the White House.

What is the reality and how much of the problems of the Iranian people are due to sanctions? If there were no sanctions, would the Iranian people not have economic problems? Before these sanctions, where the Iranian people living in luxury?

The issue of the sanctions plan has become so controversial that government officials have repeatedly admitted that the main problem is internal and resulting from looting, because theft and looting is a special feature of the entire clerical system.

In the current situation, that the infightings have escalated before the presidential election, its internal factions expose each other’s thefts every day and shed crocodile tears for the people.

An example of this is a statement by the Speaker of the Parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who himself is one of the richest and corrupt people in Iran.

In a dispute with Hassan Rouhani, he admitted to blatant theft from the annual budget and said: “Our budget structure is flawed. You see, this year the budget structure is as we have made a record in the budget bill, which means that the gap between the increase in revenues is 46 percent, i.e., the costs, and the revenues are 10 percent, that means that there is a gap of 36 percent.” (State TV Channel 5, January 24, 2021)

Qalibaf sheds crocodile tears for the people in a situation where one of his deputies named Issa Sharifi has been sentenced to 20 years in prison these days, but why?

The state-run website Khabar Fori on January 24 wrote: “Issa Sharifi court verdict was issued. The verdict to investigate the financial violations of Issa Sharifi, the deputy of Qalibaf in Tehran Municipality, based on the rejection of property worth 480 billion Tomans and 20 years of imprisonment has been finalized.”

He stole 5 trillion Tomans, but returned only 480 billion Tomans, which means that less than 10 percent of what he stole was taken back from him.

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90 percent of the looted money remains in the hands of this thief, let alone that 10 percent is moved from one thief to another in this government.

Issa Sharifi has been Qalibaf’s deputy for 16 years and has been a senior IRGC Air Force commander for many years. The 5 trillion Tomans that he has stolen is equal to the salaries of 2.5 million workers who receive a monthly salary of 2 million Tomans, or it is equal to a one-year subsidy for all 9.26 million people receiving subsidies in Iran.

But really, how much of the misery of the Iranian people is due to the theft and taking of people’s property by the clerical government, and if we add up these thefts, how much of the economic problems that the people are facing would be solved?

Is it true that 70 percent of economic problems are caused by so-called mismanagement? And if it is real, what is the percentage of it being real?

It is clear that these questions remain unanswered in this regime, but the reality is that the cause of all the economic problems of the people is due to the plundering and the looting of the wealth of the Iranian people.

The issue of mismanagement, which is raised in the factional feuding, is to deprive the integrity of the government from this guilt.

When it comes to the regime’s economic, social, security and other activities, the use of terms such as mismanagement and misconduct reduces the burden of the predatory and criminal actions of the regime’s leaders.

In order to get a small picture of the looting of people’s property by the leaders and members of this system, it is necessary to point out some of the embezzlements and thefts that have been revealed so far.

What has been revealed in the media about these embezzlements so far, sum of these embezzlements since 1993 is an amount of $30.167 billion. But this is not the entire sum and the real number is far more.

Akbar Turkan, a former deputy oil minister, admitted that when oil prices rose, the ninth and tenth governments’ oil revenues reached $531 billion. The media admitted that in 2018 alone, Rouhani sold more than $40 billion in oil. None of this money was spent on the people.

The exact amount of $30.167 billion mentioned is as follows:

  • Embezzlement of 123 billion Tomans by Mohsen Rafiqdoost.
  • Corruption of 3 trillion Tomans by the Minister of Labor of Ahmadinejad’s government and members of parliament.
  • More than 3.25 trillion Tomans of embezzlement and financial corruption of former prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi.
  • Corruption of Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Ahmadinejad’s first deputy.
  • Corruption of 18 trillion Tomans by Babak Zanjani and some of Ahmadinejad’s ministers, whose corruption was also directed at Khamenei’s office.
  • The 8 trillion Toman financial corruption of the Martyr Foundation, as the members of the parliament said about this disgrace, that we cannot raise our heads that so much embezzlement has taken place in the Martyr Foundation.
  • The disappearance of oil rig and the role of the son of Ataullah Mohajerani, former Minister of Culture and Guidance.
  • Embezzlement of 8 trillion Tomans in the Cultural Reserve Fund and the case of the 23 billion Tomans of astronomical loans.
  • Astronomical properties worth 2.2 trillion Tomans.
  • Embezzlement of 100 billion Tomans in the Ministry of Oil of the Rouhani government.
  • Corruption of the Revolutionary Guards and its cover company in concluding contracts of Tehran Municipality in the amount of 52.11 trillion Tomans during the Qalibaf era.
  • Corruption of one trillion Tomans of the Ministry of Industry of Rouhani’s government.

The above-mentioned thefts do not include institutions affiliated with Khamenei’s house, including the Revolutionary Guards. The Revolutionary Guards, through the Khatam al-Anbiya base, has all the important economic projects in the country, and in this regard, it plunders a lot of property from the resources of the Iranian people.

A small example of the corruption of the Revolutionary Guards is its role in the contract of 52.110 trillion Tomans of the municipality in Tehran.

So, in fact, the main cause of the people’s livelihood and economic crises is the government, and if the sighs and groans of the government and its leaders are loud about the sanctions, it is precisely because of the impact of the sanctions on the institutions and foundations, especially those affiliated with Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards.

Missed Future for Iran’s Children

Jubin Katiraie
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Missed Future for Iran’s Children

Since the beginning of their rule in Iran, the ayatollahs are responsible for millions of deaths inside and abroad. The high intensity of words and phrases like execution, suicide, immolation, organ selling, and sleeping in cars, roofs, graves, and appliances’ cardboard, as well as ongoing news about the death of children, display how the rulers see the people.

In other words, these realities reveal that not only does the Iranian government violate the opponent’s fundamental human rights, but it does not care about people’s livelihood and welfare. Rampant poverty, high prices, inflation, expanded gap between society and state show the government drives the country to misery and backward.

The Islamic Republic founder Ruhollah Khomeini led millions of people, including teenagers and minors, to an eight-year war of erosion with Iran’s western neighbor Iraq. Khomeini and his eulogists, like current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and former President and Propaganda Minister Mohammad Khatami, incited children to sacrifice their lives for opening minefields.

They exploited teenagers’ religious beliefs in order to continue the war. Then-commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Mohsen Rezaei called innocent children “one-time use soldiers.” Once, he spoke about between 360,000 to 400,000 school and college students who the attended war fronts. Since the end of the war in 1988, the Islamic Republic occasionally parades those children’s remaining bones to deceive others and gain a social base.

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However, the real number of children who fell victim to the government’s goals is far higher. In addition to the war’s victims, Iranian officials have destroyed the lives of millions of children by spreading poverty and misery among citizens. Dropouts of school and child laborers, vendors, and garbage-collectors are seen in almost all of Iran’s provinces. Furthermore, suicide among minors is the flipside of these social phenomena.

In its February 17 edition, Aftab-e Yazd daily pointed out an ongoing catastrophe in Ahvaz city, Khuzestan province’s capital. “Danial’s death for which sin?” the daily titled, attracting attention to the dire condition of Ahvaz’s infrastructure.

“There is no end for the tragic death of Ahvaz’s children. Children soon bid farewell to their world due to the officials’ indifference about the sewage problem. Two-year-old Danial Navaseri from Darvishieh area in Kut-Abdollah district has just lost his life to fall in open sewage runnel,” wrote the daily.

“There is an open sewage system in this area, and it had not built a standard system for sewage. In August 2020, one-year-old girl Sedigheh Heydari fell into the open sewage system and lost her life. Before her, children like Mohammad Sadegh Zargani, in March 2016, one and half-year-old Mohammad Erfan Abidavi, in May 2018, and three-year-old Ali Baravieh, in August 2018, had died of the same way,” said Gholamreza Safarnejad, chief of Ahvaz’s Water and Sewage Organization.

Social media activists reflected on this ongoing drama. “This boy would be with his family if we had a sewage system,” posted an activist.

“I remember my little brother when his head was tainted with blood and sewage. The pain is that these sewage wells are getting victims after 20 years,” wrote another activist. “Is there anyone to provide four lids for these wells?” posted an activist. “This is the official’s imprudence that kills innocent children,” another activist added. “No one would realize what is going on in Ahvaz and how ridiculously this city is being governed!” wrote an activist.

Notably, President Hassan Rouhani promoted former Khuzestan Governor Gholamreza Shariati as the head of Standard Organization on February 14. This promotion shows a perfect view of the Islamic Republic’s system and how imprudent officials gain significant positions.

Now, Shariati’s standard seems to engulf the country, and Iran would face many more dilemmas under the shadow of Rouhani’s new appointee. Surprisingly, the new Standard Organization’s head was involved in the mass killing of dozens of protesters in Khuzestan province during the gas protests in November 2019, which sounded alarms about more deaths and misery in various cities.

Iran To Further Breach Nuclear Deal

Pooya Stone
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0
Iran To Further Breach Nuclear Deal

Iran has announced plans on Monday to further violate its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the Iranian Resistance says is perfectly in step with the mullahs’ nuclear extortion campaign.

The regime said, according to Reuters, that “it will block snap inspections by the [United Nations] nuclear watchdog from next week if other parties to the 2015 nuclear deal do not uphold their obligations”.

It should be said that the five remaining signatories to the deal have bent over backwards to meet obligations given the international sanctions on Iran, but Iran have been openly violating the deal for over a year and the US pulled out in 2018 citing Iranian non-compliance and the deal’s failure to cover other malign actions by Iran.

The signatories thought that the deal would end Iran’s nuclear ambitions but, in reality, they left some glaring loopholes that the regime could exploit. This led National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) President-elect Maryam Rajavi to say in 2015 that if the world powers had been more forceful that Iran would have no choice but to end its nuclear weapons programmes.

The NCRI actually revealed Iran’s nuclear weapons programme in 2002, prompting international sanctions and leading to the 2015 deal.

In 2017, the US Representative Office of the NCRI revealed that the nuclear programme was continuing at the Research Academy in the Parchin complex, something that Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi confirmed in an interview with the state-run Fars News Agency.

He said: “Nuclear activities, as well as research and development on the nuclear fuel cycle, uranium conversion, and enrichment are being carried out without any restrictions.  Enriched uranium production and stockpile are now as high as pre -JCPOA period, heavy water storage is being carried out without any restrictions the process of building the Arak heavy water research reactor is advancing in cooperation with foreign parties and the use of related equipment.”

In response to this, Rajavi noted that the regime never gave up on trying to build a nuclear bomb and still “continues the deception and concealment. The regime uses all the facilities and concessions that the nuclear deal has given to pursue terrorism, foreign warfare, and domestic repression”.

The NCRI advised that Europe ends its appeasement policy, which is only encouraging the mullahs, and instead take a firm stance against Iran’s terrorism and nuclear extortion.

New Revelations Expose Iranian Propaganda After Terrorist-Diplomat’s Conviction

Pooya Stone
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0
New Revelations Expose Iranian Propaganda After Terrorist-Diplomat’s Conviction

Early this month, a Belgian court convicted the Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi of planning a deadly terrorist attack on European soil. The plot in question was thwarted in the summer of 2018, but the ensuing investigation and trial helped to expose a much larger underlying threat. When Assadi was arrested by German authorities, documents were recovered from his car which showed that he had been in contact with a network of operatives spanning at least 11 European countries. Many of those operatives received cash payments from Assadi while he was serving third counsellor at the Iranian embassy in Vienna.

The nature of those cash payments remains to be determined, and critics of the Iranian regime have urged Western governments and multinational bodies to undertake more serious investigations of the full range of activities that figures like Assadi had been pursuing around the world.

There’s little question that the network associated with Assadollah Assadi has a role to play in both these aspects of Iran’s foreign strategy: direct attacks on its adversaries and disinformation campaigns aimed at smearing it as either ineffectual or dangerous to Western interests. Fortunately, that narrative has been widely rejected within American and European policy circles, as evidenced by the presence of political dignitaries from all major political parties at the event that Assadi attempted to bomb in 2018. Unfortunately, though, it has not been rejected entirely by the governments in which those parties are represented.

We should hope that this situation will not last much longer, now that Assadi and his three co-conspirators have been convicted, and their network exposed. Paying attention to Iran’s propaganda at this point would needlessly downplay the effects of far-reaching infiltration by institutions like the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). It would also lend false credibility to the very claims that motivated the 2018 plot in the first place.

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State-Run Media Highlights Iran Terrorism

According to the Belgian National Security Service, that plot had not been undertaken on Assadi’s own initiative but had been ordered from high up in the Iranian regime. And according to the NCRI, the decision stemmed from discussions involving both the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. It marked a notable departure from the regime’s usual modus operandi, in that the activity was not channeled through proxy groups but was placed directly in the hands of a high-ranking diplomat. This hands-on approach reflected the perceived importance of the operation, which was reportedly intended to kill NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi, in particular.

About three months prior to the Free Iran rally at which she delivered the keynote address, Mrs. Rajavi urged activists in Iran to make the just-begun Iranian calendar year a “year full of uprisings.” That in turn was motivated by a protest movement that had broken out in more than 100 Iranian cities and towns at the end of 2017, then continued through much of January 2018. The movement exposed previously hidden vulnerabilities in the clerical regime and, more to the point, revealed the domestic popularity and organizational strength of the MEK, which even regime officials credited with leading the protests.

By the summer of that year, the regime was desperate to counter direct challenges to its rule and also to reassert the propaganda that portrayed the MEK as an ineffectual cult and helped to prevent Western governments and international bodies from supporting those challenges. A devastating attack on the powerfully symbolic Resistance gathering might have accomplished both of these aims, but unfortunately the failure of that attack only thwarts one of them. The regime’s propaganda has not been amplified in its wake, but it has not been uprooted, either.

This is because talking points that target the Resistance have been spreading through international media for many years, as the result of an increasingly sophistication system of international warfare carried out by networks like the one associated with Assadollah Assadi. On one hand, Assadi’s conviction helped to alert Western governments to the existence of these networks, potentially putting them on a path toward confronting them. But on the other hand, the networks’ mere existence is not enough to convince American or European policymakers that they or their colleagues have been deliberately misled about the situation in Iran.

Just this week, the NCRI announced the release of a letter than had been sent to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from a former collaborator with the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, expressing regret over his dissemination of false claims points about the Resistance movement. “For four years I fell into a trap set by the Iranian regime’s Ministry… and its Iranian embassy in Albania,” said the author, Hadi Sani-Khani, before going naming specific agents, tactics, and operations the regime used in an effort to poison the international press against the MEK and forestall any Western support for its democratic aims.

Among other things, the letter explained the genesis of a 2019 article in Der Spiegel that parroted false claims about the MEK’s community in Albania – an article that later became the subject of a lawsuit that resulted in a court order for the retraction of those claims. That article was not the only one of its kind to face a successful legal challenge, and this phenomenon should go a long way toward demonstrating the legitimacy of the Sani-Khani letter and the underlying claims regarding an Iranian influence network dedicated to disinformation and character assassination in Western media.

As the international community sets out to further investigate the contents of the letter, policymakers should also be making plans for how to address the relevant phenomena when they prove to as real and as dangerous as the NCRI claims. No doubt most serious critics of the Iranian regime will offer the same advice they have already offered in response to Assadi’s conviction, namely that European nations should consider closing Iranian embassies, downgrading diplomatic and trade ties, launching investigations into Iranian institutions that currently operate in their territory, and pursuing indictment or other consequences for all those who have contributed to the spread of terrorism or information warfare in the name of the Iranian regime.

Iran Executes Seven on Wednesday

Jubin Katiraie
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0
Iran Executes Seven on Wednesday

The Iranian regime executed seven prisoners at dawn on Wednesday in Rajai Shahr Prison, a.k.a. Gohardasht Prison, bringing the total number of executions in February to 13. 

This included six men and one woman, all convicted of murder. However, it should be understood that Iran does not separate murder by degrees, so many people convicted of murder may have killed by accident (i.e., manslaughter) or in self-defence. Many women who are victims of abuse may be executed for killing their abuser. 

In fact, the woman executed, Zahra Esmaili, was a domestic violence victim who killed her husband in self-defence. The 42-year-old, who is the 114th woman executed during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, was regularly beaten by her detective husband. 

On Monday, the mother of two was moved to solitary confinement in Qarchak prison in Varamin, where she’d been serving her sentence, before being moved to Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj on Tuesday.

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In recent weeks, the Iranian regime has executed three other women in prisons in Ardabil, Sanandaj, and Karaj. The regime, which is the world leader in executions per capita, is also number one in executions of women. Most of these executions are handed out for offences where international law prohibits the death penalty, including in the many murder cases that should be tried by lesser degrees. 

In the seven-and-a-half-year rule of Rouhani, a supposed moderate, over 4,300 people have been killed. Although, as always, it’s important to note that the regime carries out many executions in secret, so the number many be much higher. 

The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has published a list of all the women executed under Rouhani, which is based on reports from the state-run media and the Resistance’s network of supporters inside Iran.  

In a post on Wednesday, they reiterated their call to ban the death penalty in Iran, something that is covered in their 10-point plan for a Free Iran. 

The Iranian regime uses executions and other repressive measures to intimidate the public against taking part in popular protests. 

Th UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Human Rights Council, and other human rights groups should take immediate action to save Iranian prisoners on death row. Human rights organizations such as Iran HRM have also called for the regime’s human rights violations dossier to be referred to the UN Security Council and for regime officials to face justice for crimes against humanity. 

Iran-EU Trade Summit Should Be Cancelled

Jubin Katiraie
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0
Iran-EU Trade Summit Should Be Cancelled

On March 1, the Iran-Europe prospects for economic relations summit, hosted by the International Trade Centre, will begin, following the postponement from December. 

Why was the event postponed? Unlike most things postponed in 2020, the answer is surprisingly not the pandemic. 

The reason is that Iran executed French resident and journalist Ruhollah Zam after luring him to Iraq under the false pretence of a story and kidnapping him. At that point, just days before the event was due to start, European participants began withdrawing and the event was postponed officially. 

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Now, if you’re wondering why they would still hold the event two-and-a-half months later and questioning how serious the EU’s condemnation of this politically-motivated execution  was, hold on tight, because that is only the start. 

Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi was found guilty of terrorism in a Belgian court this month and sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempting to blow up a Free Iran rally in France in 2018, with the intention of killing opposition leader Maryam Rajavi and as many more people as was possible. At the rally, Rajavi was surrounded by hundreds of dignitaries from across the world and tens of thousands of Iranian Resistance supporters. 

Assadi commanded three operatives in this attack, which Belgian prosecutors said was directed by the ruling mullahs, including Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, but stands accused of running a terror network across Europe based on evidence found in his car by German police upon his arrest. 

Given this, why would Europe hold any summit with Iran, let alone one where Zarif is a keynote speaker alongside EU foreign policy head Josep Borrell 

The Resistance wrote: “It could hardly be clearer that for many leading policymakers, the issue with the originally scheduled event was not its invitation to open dialogue with a world-leading human rights abuser but rather its proximity to the most recent and most internationally recognized such abuse. The new date for the summit simply reflects an assumption that the dust has settled enough for the EU to carry on with business as usual in hopes of retaining access to Iranian markets and avoiding the political challenge of confronting Iran’s theocratic regime.” 

Many lawmakers across Europe have urged the EU to abandon the summit and make all relations with Iran contingent on the ending of Iranian terrorism in Europe and the improvement of the human rights situation. They’ve also argued for scrutiny of Iran’s embassies and cultural institutions. 

The Resistance wrote: “If the Business Forum goes forward under current circumstances, it will only inspire a stronger sense of impunity among Iranian authorities by giving them the impression that the EU intends to pursue Iranian trade relations without prior conditions.” 

Fundamental Violations of Human Rights in Iran

Pooya Stone
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0
Fundamental Violations of Human Rights in Iran

The arrest of Ahmad Saedi and breaking his grandmother’s hand by the IRGC:

Intelligence agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) broke the hand of his grandmother when they arrested a young man in Hamidiyeh, Ahvaz. Revolutionary Guards intelligence arrested the second member of Saedi’s family in Ahvaz. On Monday, February 8, IRGC agents raided Ahmad Saedi’s house and took him to an unknown location.

Ahmad Saedi
Ahmad Saedi, arrested by Iran’s IRGC intelligence

Violence by IRGC intelligence

Ahmad Saedi is an Iranian Arab civil activist and poet of the time. He is 26 years old and married. The reason for his arrest has not yet been announced.

Ahmad Saedi had previously been arrested in 2018 for collecting public donations for flood victims in Dasht-e Azadegan, along with a number of other popular committees.

Three months ago, his brother, Abbas Saedi, was also arrested for unknown reasons and transferred to Sheiban Prison. Abbas Saedi is currently being held incommunicado in Sheiban Prison.

According to reports, when Ahmad Saedi was arrested, his grandmother was injured in the shoulder by the IRGC and is currently in hospital.

Ahmad Saedi's grandmother in the hospital
Ahmad Saedi’s grandmother in the hospital

IRGC hostage-taking

Another report states that before Ahmed was arrested, the father of the family was taken hostage. He was held in prison until Ahmed was arrested.

The wave of arrests of Ahvazi activists continues. On February 10, three people were arrested by intelligence in Susangard. The detainees are Ayub Sharifi, 29, married, Hassan Halafi Sharifi, 23, married, and Yousef Sharifi, 26, married. All of them were detained by intelligence agents and transferred to Tehran, and their status is unknown.

Marjan Eshaghi, a political science student, has been sentenced to five years in prison

Marjan Eshaghi, a student at the University of Tehran, was reportedly sentenced to five years in prison on appeal. Ms. Eshaqi, a political science student at the University of Tehran, was arrested on charges of participating in the November 2019 uprising. Earlier, she was sentenced to one year imprisonment and four years suspended imprisonment in Branch 15 by the Revolutionary Court of Tehran.

Marjan Eshaghi
Marjan Eshaghi

This sentence was issued by the Tehran Court of Appeals and was recently notified to her. Ms. Eshaghi was sentenced to four years suspended imprisonment and one year imprisonment on charges of conspiracy against national security. The court declared her participation in the student protests of November 2019 as an example of these crimes.

Execution of a Baluch prisoner without a death sentence in Birjand

Reports from Birjand prison in Iran indicate that a Baluch prisoner has been executed and five more are likely to be executed. On February 13, an Iranian Baluch citizen named Jamal al-Din Barahui was suddenly executed in Birjand prison. Additional information indicates that 40-year-old Jamal al-Din Barahui, son of Khodadad from Sefidabeh village of Nasrabad district of Zabol, was executed in Birjand prison. He was executed on drug charges.

Jamal al-Din Barahui
Jamal al-Din Barahui

Jamal al-Din was sentenced to 27 years in prison

Jamal al-Din was arrested about two years ago at the Salabad checkpoint in Birjand, according to an informed source. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison. But suddenly this prisoner was transferred to the prison quarantine ward on Thursday for execution, and he was executed on Saturday, February 13.

The news says that the family of this Baluch citizen went to visit their loved one for the last time on Friday. They were able to meet him.

State-Run Media Highlights Iran Terrorism

Pooya Stone
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State-Run Media Highlights Iran Terrorism

The reaction from Iranian state-run media over the recent conviction and imprisonment of their diplomat Assadollah Assadi on terrorism charges in Belgium highlights how the regime is actually responsible for state-sponsored terrorism.

The state-run Mizan news agency accused Europe of “politicizing” the case and called for the regime to retaliate. The outlet, associated with the Judiciary, then admitted that retaliation was in fact the reason that they stopped the South Korean ship last month, even though they promised at the time that this was not true.

The outlet wrote: “After [South Korea] refused our demand to pay its debt, we stopped the Korean ship under the pretext of polluting the Persian Gulf and the environment.”

This debt is actually being held because of international sanctions on Iran that bar other countries from providing it with assets held in other countries.

The terror plot

In June 2018, Assadi smuggled 500 grams of explosives into Europe in his diplomatic luggage. He drove to Luxembourg where he handed the bomb and detailed instructions to a Belgian-Iranian couple, telling them to bomb the Resistance’s “Free Iran” rally in Paris on June 30.

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Western Policymakers Ignore Iran-Al Qaeda Relationship at Their Peril

The plot was foiled by European police and countless lives were saved. Assadi’s three accomplices – another was waiting at the rally to report on the explosion – were arrested hours before the bomb was due to go off and he was arrested the next day.

The regime has always claimed that Assadi had diplomatic immunity and that he was being framed, which are contradictory statements, but they never disavowed him. Belgian prosecutors have consistently said that Assadi was working at the behest of the regime, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

(Also, he didn’t have diplomatic immunity because he was arrested in Germany and not Austria, where he was stationed, and Austria could have rescinded the immunity based on the crime he was accused of.)

The Resistance wrote: “Due to the Iranian regime’s 40 years of state-sponsored terrorism, Assadi’s conviction and his case, although very important, is not shocking. The surprising and rather appalling fact is that European leaders continue having a dialogue with the regime.”

For example, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell intends to continue the “maximum diplomacy” strategy and take part in the “Europe-Iran Business Forum” with Zarif next month. (The event was postponed in December after Iran executed a French resident.)

How can this be right following Assadi’s conviction and given that European prosecutors hold the regime responsible? Given that the UN recently condemned the Iranian regime for human rights violations for the 67th time?

The Resistance wrote: “They should hold the regime accountable for its terrorism and human rights violations, not providing it with more incentive packages. Any financial help to the regime will result in more terrorism and human rights violations. The European Union should make all relations with the regime contingent on its absolute halt of terrorism and human rights violations.”

West Should Side With the People, Not Iran’s Government

Jubin Katiraie
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West Should Side With the People, Not Iran’s Government

Iranian agents attempted to bomb an opposition rally in France in 2018, with the goal of assassinating Resistance leader Maryam Rajavi. All four agents were arrested over the course of two days and the attack was foiled.

Following a two-and-a-half-year investigation, Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi and his three co-conspirators were found guilty at a court in Belgium earlier this month and given long prison sentences.

But the Belgian court and other European authorities said repeatedly that Assadi was working on behalf of the regime, so the Iranian Resistance warned Western lawmakers from regarding the matter as settled and insisted that the West was still very much in danger from Iranian terrorism, so long as they appease the mullahs. After all, German police found evidence that appears to place Assadi at the head of a terrorist network across Europe.

The Resistance wrote: “In the wake of Assadi’s conviction, it is essential that the European Union and the entire international community revaluates their approach to dealing with the Iranian regime and considers new measures that could be employed to mitigate the terrorist threat in the short term and uproot it over the long term.”

Sadly, Josep Borell, the EU foreign policy chief seems set on pursuing a “maximum diplomacy” strategy and even participating in the “Europe-Iran Business Forum” next month with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who is Assadi’s boss. (This event was postponed in December after Iran executed a French resident.)

Read More:

Turkey Arrests Iranian Diplomat for Murder

Luckily, there are hundreds of lawmakers from all across the political spectrum who believe that the right thing to do is actually support the democratic Resistance, which advocates for individual freedoms and the institution of democracy.

Apart from this, other policies necessary for ending the regime’s terrorism include:

  • making relations contingent on the dismantling of Iran’s terrorist network and assurances that it will end its support for terrorism
  • investigations of Iranian embassies and cultural groups
  • holding regime leaders, including Zarif, accountable for the terrorist acts they ordered

After all, this brazen attack just shows how the regime was threatened by the Resistance in Iran following the nationwide uprising that took place in December 2017, just six months earlier. The regime hoped that by destroying Rajavi, they would regain control, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The Resistance wrote: “It is incumbent upon Western governments to take the threat of Iranian violence seriously both for the sake of their own security and for the sake of the Iranian people. These two objectives go hand-in-hand because inevitably if the Iranian regime fails to crackdown on dissent in one venue it will turn its attention to the other. Furthermore, it is only by protecting the Iranian people in their fight for a democratic future that the EU and the US can hope to permanently remove the Iranian terror threat from the world.”

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