The polished “confession” video of Iranian opposition leader Habib Chaab looks similar to many produced over the years by Iran’s spy services. But how Mr. Chaab was abducted abroad and spirited back to Iran in October is part of an increasingly used – and relatively successful – tactic that Iran is employing to demonstrate its “offensive” intelligence reach abroad, as it absorbs a spate of recent intelligence failures at home.
A recent survey by Pew Research Center shows 82 percent of Republican citizens and 70 percent of Democrat citizens in the United States have a negative view of the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to this survey, among some European countries, including Sweden, Denmark, and Spain, public opinion is even more negative. According to the Pew survey, many countries in the world do not have a favorable view of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
On 12 December 2020 an execution took place in Iran that was like no other, even for a country that has the second highest known number of state-sponsored executions in the world. Everything about it – who the victim was and how and why he was apprehended, tried and hanged – holds critical insights for foreign policymakers in the US, as well as the European nations who wish to resume relations with the governing Islamic Republic of Iran.
Amnesty International is urging the Iranian government to call off plans to execute a man for a crime that took place when he was a teenager and whose trial the rights group said was grossly unfair. The family of Mohammad Hassan Rezaiee was informed on Thursday that his execution would be carried out “in a week” following his transfer to solitary confinement inside Lakan Prison in the northern Iranian city of Rasht.
Iranian authorities have damaged the gravesite of a wrestler-turned-opposition activist whom they executed in September, in the latest escalation of what an informed source describes as a government harassment campaign against the wrestler’s family. In a Friday interview with VOA Persian from Iran, the source close to the family of executed wrestler Navid Afkari said authorities in Sangar village in the southwestern province of Fars used heavy equipment to destroy two walls around Akfari’s gravesite the day before.
Iran’s regime appears to be on an execution spree. It murdered wrestler Navid Afkari in September and hung journalist Ruhollah Zam this month after kidnapping him from Iraq. Iran’s regime is not afraid to kill people: It gunned down some 1,400 protesters last year. What the regime is showing through the high-profile executions is that it can kill journalists and athletes, people who should be protected by modern human-rights laws, and it can do so publicly and openly.
A glance at Iran’s state-run media shows the regime’s fear of another uprising and the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). They also acknowledge society’s restiveness and people’s economic crisis due to the regime’s mismanagement. In a new report, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United Kingdom’s House of Commons urged the British government to designate the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist organization and condemned human rights violations in Iran.
Mahmoud Amjad, a cleric and Shiite theologian in the religious city of Qom in Iran who had condemned the execution of social media journalist Ruhollah Zam as a “murder” has come under attack by the city’s seminarians. Earlier in the week, following the execution of Ruhollah Zam, Amjad also blamed Khamenei for the “murder of Zam and all those who have been killed after the disputed presidential election in 2009.” Amjad also called on Khamenei to repent for his wrongdoings as the man “directly responsible for all the political crimes and murders after 2009.”