Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman who has been detained in Tehran since 2016, had her house arrest orders lifted as her sentence ended on Sunday, but her return to London remained uncertain as she faced new charges. Over the past five years, Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case has deepened a diplomatic rift between Britain and Iran and drawn international condemnation. But exactly what will happen next is still unclear — a common state of affairs during much of her time in custody, a period filled with raised expectations and dashed hopes for her family and supporters.
The world tends to look at Iran in the context of pre-revolution and post. But according to former Iranian diplomat Mehrdad Khonsari, there is a neat 100-year mark useful for evaluating the country in terms of where it stands and where it should or could be. Taking advantage of corrupt and incompetent leadership in the winter of 1921, the military took control of the country in a coup that led to the installation of the Pahlavi dynasty. Khonsari says the battle cries today in Iran are strikingly similar to those at the time.
At least a dozen people and possibly up to 23 have been killed in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province where Revolutionary Guards and security forces have used lethal force against fuel couriers from ethnic minorities and protesters, the United Nations said on Friday. Iran is investigating an incident in which at least two Iranians were shot dead this week at the border with Pakistan, and Islamabad has handed over the body of one of the victims, the Iranian foreign ministry said a week ago.
Xiyue Wang, a Princeton graduate student who was wrongfully imprisoned by Iran’s regime between 2016-2019, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday he met an Iranian Jew in Tehran’s Evin prison who was incarcerated for his stay in Israel. Wang said the Iranian Jew who “went to Israel” was “given a 10 year sentence” when he returned to the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic proscribes travel to Israel a crime. Wang said the Iranian Jew lived for “5 or 6 years in Israel” and “did not like Israel.”
The United Nations said Friday that as many as 23 people were killed in Iran’s impoverished Sistan-Baluchistan province when authorities opened fire on fuel porters and protesters last month. In an effort to crack down on the cross-border fuel trade, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards reportedly use live ammunition on a group of people transporting fuel across the Iranian border with Pakistan. Citing local monitoring groups, Human Rights Watch said shooting on Feb. 22 left at 10 Baluchi people dead and five injured in the town of Saravan.
The UN’s highest human rights body has condemned Iran’s “systematic intentional use of lethal force” against the country’s minorities, following a violent crackdown last month by security forces in Sistan-Baluchistan province. “We condemn use of force violations in recent weeks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and state security forces against unarmed fuel couriers and protesters belonging to the Baluch minority,” said Rupert Colleville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The oligarchic rule of the Iranian regime has constructed a hell for the people from poverty, hunger, water shortage and drought, among calamities, Iran watchers say. Mohammad Reza Badamchi one of the regime’s MPs, said in the parliament on April 4, 2020: “In these 40 years, two trillion dollars of foreign capital has entered the country, but what did we do? From the grief of the unemployed youth and, female-headed households, to the tragedy of the homeless people and the pain of homeless children and a thousand great sufferings of Iranians.”
February saw the state crackdown on protests by fuel traders in Sistan and Baluchestan that started in Saravan, southeastern Iran. The protests erupted on February 22 when Baluch fuel carriers gathered near an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) base on the border in Saravan to protest the border closure. The Guards, who had dug large holes on the border to prevent fuel carriers from passing, gunned down the protesters, killing and wounding dozens of people.
An Iranian opposition group that first exposed Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions in 2002 claimed this week to have uncovered new evidence of yet another undeclared nuclear site that has since been scrubbed clean. At a news conference Tuesday, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) gave more information on the site located in Iran’s Abadeh region. It claimed the site was sanitized in July 2019 and was overseen by the recently assassinated chief nuclear scientist, Moshen Fakhirzadeh. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors were only allowed into the site in late August.
Iran projects strength abroad, often acting like a mafia don running the Middle East, threatening countries to pay for protection or get attacked. But inside the regime’s territory, all is not well. Last Thursday, someone attempted to hijack a plane that was departing Ahvaz, a southwestern city with a large Arab minority, en route to Mashhad. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps stopped the hijacking. They have armed men on many flights in Iran to stop scenarios like this, according to reports.
Despite being repeatedly threatened by Iran’s security apparatus, harassed, sent to prison multiple times, and prevented from seeing her children, the authorities have failed to silence Narges Mohammadi. One of Iran’s leading human rights defenders, Mohammadi has long campaigned against the death penalty and defended victims of state violence. While in prison, she has gone on several hunger strikes to protest the conditions there, attended a sit-in to condemn the security forces’ killing of several hundred protesters in November 2019, and spoke out about human rights abuses in open letters and statements smuggled out of her cell.
Simultaneous with the uprising and mass protests by the rebellious youth and the people of Sistan and Baluchestan, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI) supporters and the Resistance Units posted banners and wrote messages of the Resistance’s Leadership in solidarity with the Baluchi compatriots and their uprising and its calls on the general public to rise in support of the uprising everywhere. The people of Saravan and other cities in Sistan and Baluchestan rose up in protest to the repression and massacre of fuel carriers and freedom-loving youth of Saravan, Zahedan, and other cities and regions of the Province.
In late January, the Islamic Republic executed a second young Iranian wrestler as part of its campaign against dissent. Mehdi Ali Husseini, who was just 29 years old, was killed only four months after the execution of Navid Afkari, 27, another wrestler, who’d participated in the nationwide protests in 2017-2018. Both men might have been saved by the international athletic community, but tragically the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and United World Wrestling (UWW) failed to pressure Iran’s clerical rulers.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) exposed new details of one of the Iranian regime’s nuclear sites on Tuesday and elaborated upon the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest disclosures regarding Iran’s undeclared prior nuclear activities. Struan Stevenson, a former Member of the European Parliament, also attended this event and urged the EU countries to put pressure on the regime for its nuclear activities and its state-sponsored terrorism. Ambassador Joseph talked about the American approach.
در پی تجمع اعتراضی شماری از بازنشستگان تأمین اجتماعی در تهران و ۱۸ شهر دیگر، نیروهای امنیتی با خشونت فراوان و ضرب و شتم، شماری از معترضان را دستگیر کردند و مانع ادامه تجمعات شدند. در پی این تجمعها، اتحادیه آزاد کارگران ایران گزارش داد تعدادی از معترضان در تهران بازداشت شدهاند. هنوز از تعداد و نام افراد دستگیر شده اطلاع دقیقی در دست نیست. ایندیپندنت در صورت دریافت اخبار جدید، آن را اعلام خواهد کرد.
بازنشستگان تأمین اجتماعی معتقدند که باتوجه به افزایش شدید قیمتها و گرانی نیازهای اولیه، حقوق بازنشستگی و مستمری آنان نیز میبایست متناسب با سبد معیشت افزایش یابد. در تبریز، شوش، اراک، رشت، اهواز، یزد، خرم آباد، قزوین، شیراز و برخی دیگر از شهرها نیز تجمعهای مشابهی شکل گرفته است.
وزیر خارجه بریتانیا در نخستین واکنش به گزارشها از آزادی نازنین زاغری ردتکلیف شهروند ایرانی بریتانیایی، خواستار اجازه به او برای بازگشت به بریتانیا شد وگفت که برخورد دولت جمهوری اسلامی با وی «غیرقابل تحمل» است. دومینیک راب وزیر خارجه بریتانیا یکشنبه در توئیتر با استقبال از بازشدن پابند الکترونیکی خانم زاغری نوشت: برخورد دولت جمهوری اسلامی با خانم زاغری «غیرقابل تحمل» است. وی گفت باید هر چه زودتر اجازه بازگشت فوری خانم زاغری به خانوادهاش در بریتانیا داده شود. همزمان بوریس جانسون نخستوزیر بریتانیا هم گفته که ادامه حبس خانم زاغری قابل قبول نیست.
بازنشستگان تأمین اجتماعی در اعتراض به شرایط بد معیشتی خود، امروز در دست کم بیست شهر ایران تظاهرات کردند. تصاویری که در شبکههای اجتماعی منتشر شده نشان میدهد که تجمع آنها جلوی وزارت کار در تهران با دخالت نیروهای امنیتی به خشونت کشیده شد. گزارشها از بازداشت عدهای از آنها حکایت دارد. در ماههای اخیر، بازنشستگان بارها دست به اعتراض زدهاند. کاوه مشکات گزارش میدهد.