Khamenei thinks an attack can save his dying regime.

At midnight on Sunday, March 13, news agencies reported that several rockets hit the city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, near the US Consulate. The Iraqi Kurdistan Counter-Terrorism Agency said 12 ballistic missiles were fired from outside Iraq; And the missiles were fired from inside Iran, Reuters quoted a US official as saying.
 
The Iraqi Prime Minister immediately condemned the attack, and the UN Office in Iraq denounced it as cowardly. Many other countries also strongly censured the attack, calling it an unjustified aggression.
 
Hours later, IRGC public relations officials claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, claiming that it had targeted an Israeli Mossad base.
 
But the probing question is what was the purpose of Khamenei’s missile attack on Iraqi Kurdistan and why did he take such an action in such a situation where the world is involved in the Ukraine crisis and what were his goals with this attack?
 
An IRGC spokesman claims the attack was in retaliation for the killing of two Revolutionary Guards Quds Force colonels in Syria last week in an Israeli airstrike. Iran claims a Mossad base in Erbil was the target of a missile strike. They also announced a number of fake names as Israeli agents who were killed and wounded in the attack. Of course, it is very clear that these names are all fictitious because according to local officials of the Kurdish government, no one was killed or injured in this attack.

In addition, the missiles hit the city of Erbil sporadically; for example, they hit the building of the local Kurdistan television, causing a lot of damage.
 
But the regime has been targeted by Israel for a long time and several so-called scientists involved in the regime’s nuclear projects, such as Fakhrizadeh, known as the father of the regime’s missile and nuclear projects, have been eliminated.  Moreover, several nuclear sites like the centrifuge facilities on the Natanz site, were destroyed by an explosion and a large number of centrifuges there were smashed. Last month, Israel also struck a major Iranian drone base in Kermanshah province, destroying a large number of drones.
 
On the other hand, a number of Revolutionary Guards in Syria have continuously been killed by Israeli attacks without Khamenei being able to react.
 
With the killing of the two colonels, who were some top commanders of the Quds Force in Syria, he had to do something to motivate his forces. Because, otherwise, with the present broken morale of the Revolutionary Guards, with few people willing to go to Syria, the morale would have shattered.
 
But because Khamenei had neither the power to invade Israeli territory, nor did he dare to do so, the best place to attack was Erbil. Kurdistan is controlled by Barzani’s Democratic Party which has not accepted Khamenei’s hegemony and has no good relations with Tehran. On the other hand, it has established good relations independently with the United States, Israel and Turkey. Barzani has also sheltered Iranian Kurdish forces opposed to Khamenei and allowed them to operate in areas under his control.

As a result, Khamenei fired missiles at Erbil, actually targeting several targets with an arrow.
 
First, he intended to boost the morale of his forces and pretended to avenge the deaths of his two colonels and the other blows he had received from Israel.
 
Second, he intended to warn Barzani that if he does not accept Khamenei’s hegemony and establishes friendly relations with the Iranian opposition, he can be targeted any moment.
 
Third, by holding the United States and European countries to ransom – countries that are currently involved in the Ukraine crisis and have reached a deadlock with Iran in the JCPOA negotiations – he has sent a message that if they do not accept his terms in JCPOA and recognize his hegemony and influence in the region, he can destabilize this region again, which will cause the price of oil to rise even more.
 
But did this missile attack really seem to have taken place from a position of power and shown Khamenei’s ability, or, on the contrary, it shows how Khamenei, like a drowning person, would cling to any straw to save his life? Khamenei thinks an attack can save his dying regime.
 
Because Iran is currently in the throes of an economic crisis and Iranian society, with more than 60% of the population below the poverty line, is on the verge of explosion. These days, protest rallies and demonstrations of different segments of the population are constantly seen in all cities of Iran. For the second year, more than half of the country’s budget is in deficit, which has led to the printing of unsupported money, which has pushed inflation above 50% and for some items above 60%.
 
If US sanctions continue, there is undoubtedly not much time left until Iranian society falls apart. But Khamenei thinks he can take advantage of the energy crisis created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine – which has put pressure on European countries – to impose his demands and cancel sanctions without completely shutting down his nuclear project.

He thinks he can save his regime by reselling oil, which is currently above $ 100 a barrel.
 
This blatant aggression, with ballistic missiles from inside Iran, while they are engaged in the Vienna talks, proves once again that any concessions to this regime make the mullahs bolder and offer them a carte blanche for more terror, crisis and incitement to war in the world.
 
To sum up, as far as the international community is concerned, they must strongly condemn Khamenei’s rocket attack and ransom, and they must adopt a policy as decisive as possible to deny any appeasement. This will send a message to Khamenei that he cannot save himself in this way.
 
The international community should not pursue the short-term benefits of returning Iranian oil to the market in the face of the current energy crisis. Because by adopting such a policy, we can be sure that the Iranian regime will soon collapse from within, and this will be in the long-term interests of not only the Middle East but the whole world.

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator investigating the social issues and economy of the middle east countries in general and Iran in particular.

Kazem’s widow and orphaned children have no hope of justice or even any form of compensation for this crime…

Iranian regime security forces shot and fatally injured another apparently randomly targeted young Ahwazi man on Sunday, 27 June, while he was delivering foodstuffs to his grocery store. Even more brazenly, they then arrested him for complaining at this shocking attack, ultimately leaving him to bleed to death from his injuries in a police cell. This is the twelfth such killing by regime forces targeting members of the brutalised Ahwazis in Iran since January of this year.

Kazem Hazbawi, a 27-year-old shop owner, was shot at close range and seriously injured for no apparent reason by members of a regime security patrol as he drove through a regime checkpoint in the city of Muhammarah on the way to open his grocery store. When Kazem, a married father of four young children, bleeding heavily from his wounds, got out of his car and confronted the officers responsible, demanding to know the reason for shooting him, he was arrested for daring to challenge the absolute authority of the regime’s thuggish security forces.  Rather than taking Kazem, a widely respected and popular local figure, to a hospital for treatment of his injuries, the regime personnel drove the bleeding man to a local detention centre and left him in a cell where he died soon afterwards.

As is usual in these cases, Kazem’s widow and orphaned children have no hope of justice or even any form of compensation for this crime. Instead, Iranian regime police and security forces enjoy absolute impunity, more especially in targeting Ahwazis and other minorities, who are subjected to blatant systemic racism in addition to relentless persecution.  As Arabs, Ahwazis are singled out for persecution by the regime, with ‘No Arabs’ signs being common at medical clinics and other facilities in Iran.

In this case, as in the other killings of Ahwazi civilians since the start of the year, Kazem was unarmed and had committed no offence, much less any remotely dangerous action. Any complaints about such killings are met by regime authorities with claims that the individual failed to stop at a checkpoint or other invariably false accusations, presented as justification for the wanton use of deadly force by trigger-happy regime forces.   No investigations are launched into these racist murders. On the contrary, any effort to take legal action is overwhelmingly likely to result in the complainants being persecuted, harassed and possibly facing false charges and imprisonment themselves. Similarly, victims’ families are warned that any effort to raise international awareness of these crimes and of the regime’s persecution generally by communicating with human rights organisations overseas will see them arrested and imprisoned; this is no idle threat, but standard regime policy in an effort to silence any calls for justice and conceal the regime’s crimes from the world. 

One of the Ahwazi human rights activists working with DUSC has been talking with witnesses, as well as family and friends in an effort to document the events surrounding Kazem’s murder. He told us on condition of anonymity: “Kazem owned a grocery store and every week he’d travel to Abadan to purchase foodstuffs like dairy products, fruits and vegetables but when he was driving back to his home town in Muhammarah he was always stopped by the security soldiers at checkpoints. Several times they forced him to give some of his products to them for no reason. On the last occasion, Kazem was upset and said the security forces were stopping his vehicle and many other cars forcing them to pay a bribe or give some amount of whatever goods they had in their vehicles to let them go. These officers weren’t stopping Kazem and others for speeding or any traffic-related issues, but instead, they’re operating in reality as bandits disguised in security uniforms to extort bribes from poor Ahwazi civilians.”

The activist added, “We are sure they killed Kazem just because he, like many other Ahwazi drivers and motorcyclists who were shot and killed, got fed up with extortion and the theft of his goods and risked not stopping, and they killed him.”

Following Kazem’s death, regime officials added insult to injury by spreading false claims that he was suspected of carrying contraband goods. This excuse is refuted by local people who were at the scene, who said Kazem car was carrying nothing but foodstuffs like yoghurt, fruit and bottled water.

Similar checkpoint shootings are routine, with regime forces shooting 31-year-old Hassan Nasari dead in the town of Jarahi near Ma’shour city on the night of 22 May. Again, he was unarmed and had committed no offence, with regime authorities claiming he had failed to stop at checkpoints.

Similarly, on 6 May, 32-year-old Latif Alboghobeish, also from Ma’shour city, was shot dead while driving home from a funeral; again regime security forces claimed they had shot him after failing to stop at a checkpoint.

Three months ago, on 26 March, two young Ahwazi men from the city of Susa (also known as Shush) in the Ahwaz region were fatally injured after being shot by Basij militia (non-uniformed regime-controlled militia infamous for their violence) affiliated with the regime’s so-called Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). While they were not imprisoned, both died shortly after their arrival at the hospital. Witnesses reported that both men were murdered in cold blood without warning or provocation. The murdered youths were identified as 17-year-old Ebrahim Atshani and 24-year-old Mostafa Hargani. Both were unarmed and had committed no discernible crime; their families reported that they were tortured in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, for which their relatives were arrested themselves and threatened into silence for fear of their own lives.

Even if the regime’s claims that their victims had failed to stop at checkpoints were true, regime forces have never explained why they automatically adopt a shoot-to-kill policy rather than, for instance, forcing their victims to pull over or shooting at their car or motorcycle tires to disable the vehicle, as is the case elsewhere in the world.

Activists who have painstakingly documented these extrajudicial killings note that the regime security forces have never presented any evidence to substantiate their claims that their victims are carrying contraband or had failed to stop when ordered to do so. Furthermore, the activists emphasise that in none of these cases have the victims been armed, been guilty of criminal offences or presented any threat to the regime security forces. In the end, as one activist told DUSC, the regime’s checkpoints are simply devices for extortion and persecution, and those who do refuse to stop are simply registering their anger at this blatant criminality. 

Aaron Eitan Meyer, an American attorney and researcher, condemned the latest round of killings. “This is an ongoing flagrant violation of international law, of human rights, and of even the most basic concept of morality. Calling Iran a vicious gangster state feels horribly inadequate. The regime is not incidentally racist, but fundamentally – pointedly – so, and should have long since been relegated to the dustbin of history where other tyrannical oligarchies disappear once they are finally called to account. This goes beyond mere extrajudicial killings, which are themselves flatly proscribed under international law. The regime is free to continue this campaign openly and without any real consequences is a blight on us all.

“Every aspect of this is no less than an affront to the rule of law itself. Every time a young Ahwazi is gunned down in the streets. Every time Ahwazis are kidnapped by regime security, whether in the dead of night or in broad daylight. For every Ahwazi who is tortured in the hellish unmonitored regime prisons, for those whose bodies are hidden so that the horrors of the brutality they have suffered cannot be seen by their loved ones, and for those who manage to survive and flee the medievalist nightmare bearing the scars neither their bodies nor minds can hide, for all of them and more, the rule of law is nothing more than a twisted joke, perverted and weaponised by a cynical and vicious regime. And if that does not enrage us seeing it from the outside, then it should shame us for not acting.”

Decades after the infamous 1988 massacre, international human rights organisations are finally calling for an investigation into it after Ibrahim Raisi parleyed his bloody hands into high office. So longs as young Ahwazis like Kazem are being openly gunned down in the streets, condemnation of massacres past is not going to be nearly enough.

Article first published on Dur Untash Studies Center.

Rahim Hamid is an Ahwazi author, freelance journalist and human rights advocate. He tweets under @Samireza42.

Women have confronted the regime after recognizing the misogynistic policies of Khomeini and his followers…

March 8 is International Women’s Day. Most countries in the world recognize International Women’s Day, commemorate women with celebrations and evaluate women’s achievements in their country over the past year.

However, this is not the case in Iran. The clerical regime does not recognize women’s rights and does not honor women on International Women’s Day. During the 42 years since the 1979 revolution in Iran, women have been oppressed more than men despite their role in the revolution that brought down the Shah.

From the very first day after the revolution, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini began his campaign of repression, discrimination, and inequality against women.

According to the clerics’ misogynistic point of view, a woman’s place is in the home for housekeeping and childbearing. The regime started its oppression against women by imposing the obligatory hijab, which then led to restricting the number of women in various occupations while enforcing gender cleansing. Women were banned from actively taking part in social and economic activities and were even banned from various universities courses deemed unsuitable for women.

If left up to them, Iran’s misogynist clerics would ban women from leaving their homes. Under the pretext of religion, the clerics turned many of their backward beliefs into official law and have been enforcing them under the name of Islam. In Iran, men are unilaterally allowed to divorce their wives whenever they want, but women do not have such a right. Women are not allowed to travel abroad without their husbands’ permission. Most recently on February 17, Samira Zargari, the head coach of Iran’s Women’s Alpine Skiing team was prevented from leaving with her team to Italy because her husband banned her from leaving the country.

Iranian women are not even allowed to go to stadiums to watch men’s matches. These gender segregations have been applied even in city buses and subways. Women must stay in the women’s section even when they are travelling with their male family members and cannot sit next to them in busses or in subways.

Currently, despite the poverty and economic hardship, the ratio of women to men in the labor market is less than 17%, although most of the women have university degrees. Increasing pressure and restrictions on Iranian women and numerous barriers on employment and social activities, marriage laws and growing poverty have caused widespread depression and frustration among women and have led to an increase in female suicide rates in Iran. Iranian women rank first in “self-immolation” in the Middle East.

They have been left vulnerable in the face of institutionalized misogynistic law and policies of the country. Instead of removing institutionalized and discriminatory barriers and creating equal economic opportunities, the regime is consolidating laws and regulations that encourage discrimination against women and increasingly marginalize them. In these laws, women are given to men as captives or sex slaves, and in many cases, women eventually commit suicide during family disputes. According to the regime’s laws, the legal age for marriage for girls is 13, and below this age, a father can force his daughter to marry with the approval of a judge. This has increased women’s inclination towards addiction, so that in the last 15 years this tendency has doubled.

But this is not the end of the story. It is noteworthy that despite all these pressures in the past 42 years, Iranian women have never succumbed to the backward and reactionary demands of the mullahs. From the very beginning, women have confronted the regime after recognizing the misogynistic policies of Khomeini and his followers. During this time tens of thousands of women, including 13-year-old girls and 70-year-old women, have been imprisoned, tortured, or executed by the regime. During the term of President Rouhani, who claims to be moderate, 114 women have been executed since 2013.

Women have also played a key role in recent nationwide protests in Iran. During the November 2019 protests, Iran’s Interior Minister Rahmani Fazli said that the protesters were organized in teams of 4-5 people and usually had a woman among them as a leader who invited people to participate in the protests. This indicates that although women have been subjected to the most severe repression under the mullahs, their struggle has never stopped but has grown exponentially.

The Iranian regime is the top executioner of women and holds the record on per capita executions in the world.

Annual report on the death penalty in Iran, October 2019

Iran top per capita executioner

Hundreds of people in Iran are sentenced to death annually. October 10, the World Day against the Death Penalty, reminds us of the thousands of death row prisoners lingering in jails in Iran.

Iranian regime officials have never heeded to the International community’s calls to abolish the death penalty.

Iran’s deliberate use of capital punishment has been a constant source of international outrage and condemnation. According to several independent international bodies, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran and Amnesty International, Iran is the leading state in executions per capita, second only to China in terms of figures. Iran also tops the charts in the number of executions of minors and juvenile offenders.

Iran Human Rights Monitor has recorded the execution of more than 200 individuals since the beginning of 2019 in Iran.

At least eight juvenile offenders and 10 women were executed, and 12 executions were carried out publicly.

There are six political prisoners among those executed.

The Iranian regime uses execution as a tool to suppress and silence a disgruntled public the majority of whom live under the poverty line, are unemployed and deprived of freedom of expression.

In March 2019, the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, appointed a former notorious judge responsible for mass executions as the head of judiciary to keep a lid on social unrest.

Since then Ebrahim Raisi, who has participated in “death commissions” that ordered the 1988 massacre of thousands of prisoners, at least 173 people have been executed across Iran.

At least nine women have been executed in a period of slightly over eight months, while in a year-long period from 2016 to 2018, the number of women executed by the Iranian regime in the whole year ranged between 6 and 10. At the same time, the execution of drug-related prisoners escalated.

On March 5, 2019, the U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino denounced Raisi’s appointment as the head of Iran’s all-powerful judiciary calling it a “disgrace” and a “mockery of legal process” since Raisi is responsible for the deaths of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s, including the 1988 massacre.

Palladino tweeted (both Farsi and English): “Ebrahim Raeesi (Raisi), involved in mass executions of political prisoners, was chosen to lead Iran’s judiciary. What a disgrace! The regime makes a mockery of the legal process by allowing unfair trials and inhumane prison conditions. Iranians deserve better!”

Executions carried out in prisons across Iran:

Executions in Iran contrary to international law

Death penalty violates the most fundamental human rights, the right to life and the right to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

160 countries across the world have either abolished the death penalty or at least called a moratorium on its use.

The Iranian regime has not only refused to abolish the death penalty, but it executed:

• 12 people in public
• Eight juvenile offenders
• Mentally disabled
• 10 women
• 33 people on drug related charges
• People convicted of vague charges such as “waging war on God” or “corruption on earth”
• People on other non-violent crimes such as financial offences and ape

Furthermore, because of the clerical regime’s failure to categorize murders according to their degrees, anyone committing murder is sentenced to death, regardless of their motives.

At least 10 women hanged

At least 10 women were executed since the beginning of 2019.

On September 26, 2019, Leila Zarafshan was hanged in the Central Prison of Sanandaj.

An unidentified woman was hanged along with seven male prisoners on September 25, 2019, Raja’i Shahr Prison of Karaj.

A 38-year-old woman was executed in Mashhad Central Prison, on August 25, 2019.

Four women were executed in eight days in July. They include Maliheh Salehian hanged in the central prison of Mahabad, Zahra Safari Moghadam, 43, hanged in the Prison of Nowshahr, and Arasteh Ranjbar and Nazdar Vatankhah who had already spent 15 years in prison, hanged in the Central Prison of Urmia.

The Iranian regime is the top executioner of women and holds the record on per capita executions in the world.

Many of the women convicted of murder in Iran are themselves victims of domestic violence against women and have committed murder in self-defense.

The inhuman verdicts of execution particularly for Iranian women are carried out at the end of a non-standard and illegal due process.

Iran execute eight child offenders

At least eight people have been executed in Iran in 2019 for offences allegedly committed when they were children.

In a flagrant violation of international human rights, the Iranian regime in April flogged and executed two teenage boys without notifying their family or lawyers.

Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, two 17-year-old cousins, were executed on April 25 soon after being transferred to Adelabad prison in the southern Fars province. Both were arrested in more than two years ago, when they were 15 years old, and convicted on rape charges.

The boys’ families were granted a visit to the prison the previous day but were not told that it was in preparation for their execution, the human rights group said.

The families reportedly learned of the news when they received telephone calls from Iran’s Legal Medicine Organisation.

Both bodies were reported to have been laden with lash marks, indicating that they had been flogged before their deaths.

Amnesty International said in a statement on April 29.”The Iranian authorities have once again proved that they are sickeningly prepared to put children to death, in flagrant disregard of international law.”

International law strictly prohibits the use of capital punishment in all cases in which the accused was under 18 at the time of the crime.

Iran is a signatory of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids use of the death penalty. 

In 2013 changes to the penal code designed to protect minors in Iran’s criminal justice system were introduced allowing judges to use discretion in sentencing for capital punishment crimes. 

However, according to Amnesty International the changes had not been meaningfully implemented, allowing the authorities to “whitewash their continuing violations of children’s rights and deflect criticism of their appalling record as one of the world’s last executioners of juvenile offenders.”

More than 90 other juveniles remain at risk of execution. Many of them have spent prolonged periods on death row – in some cases more than decade.

Executions on political grounds

Iran has executed several people on vague charges with little transparency or due process.

At least eight prisoners convicted of “waging war on God” or “corruption on earth” has been executed in 2019.

They include Seyyed Jamal Haji Zavvareh, Maliheh Salehian, Abdullah Karmollah Chab, Ghassem Abdullah, Hamid Derakhshandeh, Behrouz Abdipour, Hossein Roshan and Mohsen Kounani.

At least 40 inmates convicted of similar charges are on death row in Iran.

Iran is also notorious for executing people for crimes that do not meet the basic international standard of limiting capital punishment to the most serious offenses.

In a recent case, the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced a supporter of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) to death.

According to the sentence, the PMOI activist Abdullah Qasempour was sentenced to death and eight years of prison on charges of “enmity with God by membership in, endorsement of and cooperation with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran”.

The Court accused 34-year-old Abdullah Qasempour of filming the incident and sending the video to media affiliated with the PMOI/MEK.

The judiciary’s long record of violating detainees’ rights and applying of the death penalty without due process have raised grave concerns.

Two prisoners Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah, from Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority, were executed on August 4, following months of torture during which both were forced to make false confessions.

In August Iranian authorities executed Hamidreza Derakhshandeh, a man who had killed the regime’s Friday Prayer Leader in Kazerun.

Friday Prayer leaders are mullahs who directly represent Ali Khamenei, the Iranian regime’s supreme leader, in different cities, which makes them much hated among the Iranian population who are fed up with the repression and corruption of regime officials.

Last year, Kazerun was shook by popular protests by thousands of citizens who were enraged by the regime’s policies to change the municipal divisions of the city, which would pave the way for more embezzlement by regime officials and result in lower services to the city’s inhabitants.

Popular protests across Iran regularly target Iranian regime officials, including Friday Prayer leaders, for their role in government corruption.

In comments following the killing of the regime’s Friday Prayer leader in Kazerun, Derakhsan had said, “Dear people of Iran, I love all of you, I love the poor people of Iran, those who don’t have bread to eat at night, those who have become sick of having to borrow money to make ends meet…

“I had heard and seen cases of injustice. Hundreds of these cases. There’s only so much I can do to buy and give to the poor. I saw these crimes. I’m not a criminal. This was my first time. My friends know me. I’m not a criminal.”

Targeting opponents of the death penalty

On June 18, 2019, the Revolutionary Court of Tehran examined a new case filed against Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee and Atena Daemi for their protest while in detention to the executions of three Kurdish dissidents.

The court sentenced them to 1.5 years’ imprisonment for “propaganda against the state” and to 2 years and one-month imprisonment for “insulting the leader (i.e. Ali Khamenei).”

Amir Raissian, lawyer of Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, told the press on September 5, 2019, that the same verdict had been upheld in the revision stage without being examined by the Revision Court.

They have been sentenced to 1.5 years in prison on the charge of “propaganda against the state,” and to 2 years and 1 month for “insulting the leader (Ali Khamenei).” Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee was released from prison in April after more than three years in jail.

In September 2019, on the first anniversary of the executions of Kurdish political prisoners Zaniar Moradi, Loghman Moradi and Ramin Hossein Panahi, Atena Daemi sent an open letter out of Evin Prison emphasizing her opposition to death penalty.

In part of her letter, she referred to her new sentence, writing, “What an honor to receive another prison sentence for my opposition to death penalty and for defending humane living.”

Call for the elimination of the death penalty

On the eve of October 10 which marks the World Day against the Death Penalty, Iran Human Rights Monitor urges all international human rights organizations, especially the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, journalists and the media, to condemn horrendous executions in Iran and take immediate action to stop these medieval crimes being carried out in the twenty-first century.

We want an Iran, free of any executions.

Article first published on Iran Human Rights Monitor.