Iran's Parliament Speaker In Hot Water After Corruption Allegations

"Raisi, Ghalibaf, This is the last call. Teachers' movement is prepared for an uprising", teachers chanted in protests in Shiraz, Fars province (video), and Shahr-e Kord in Chahr Mahal province (video), as well as Ilam in Ilam province, and around 50 other cities.

The same slogan appeared on banners and posters in all rallies, including Tehran where teachers protested in front of the parliament.

There were also chants against the state broadcaster (IRIB), which has not covered earlier protests. "Enough Oppression and Injustice. There's Nothing on Our Tables" and "The Country Has Become A Thieves' Den. Sanctions Are Only an Excuse," chanted protesters in Najafabad in Esfahan province, dismissing any notion that Iran’s economic troubles were anything to do with United States ‘maximum pressure’ imposed in 2018.

A female teacher in Anzali (video), Gilan province, lambasted Iran’s authorities for teachers’ ills. "We weren't the ones who looted the Melli (National) Bank, we weren't the ones who pillaged the Teachers' Savings Fund, we weren't the ones who looted the Development Fund. We don't own villas and gardens in Canada [like some former officials]. We weren't the ones who smuggled important national documents out of the country. We are right here, beside you. We are easy to find, we are in schools, classes and with your children, brothers, and sisters.”

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And it didn’t stop there. "Taking the teachers by the neck, dragging them on the ground, kicking them, is nothing you could be proud of,” she opined. “You must take the looters and pillagers if order in the country is important, if security in the country is important.” A teacher in Esfahan said in her speech Tuesday who also said that after thirty years of service she now must work as a cab driver to make ends meet.

Equal pay with other civil servants

This was the fifth nationwide protest by teachers in the past two months as they demand implementation of decade-old legislation that would bring the salaries and pensions of 750,000 teachers in line with other civil servants.

The budget bill that President Ebrahim Raisi presented to parliament December 12 proposes a 14-percent increase in the education ministry's budget but does not earmark resources for a teachers’ pay rise.

Food prices have risen by more than 60 percent this year, on top of high inflation in the four years since a jump from 9.6 percent in 2017 to 30.2 percent in 2018 and around 40 percent in 2021.

Some scuffles were reported during the demonstrations on Tuesday and security forces arrested at least two more teachers, Solmaz Feyzollahzadeh in Karaj in Alborz Province and Ali Hasan-Bahamin in Shiraz in Fars Province.

Teachers, whose rallies are organized by the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Union, also demanded the release of colleagues arrested in earlier protests. Shabnam Baharfar, a teacher arrested in Karaj Saturday, is still in custody but others arrested the same day have been released. Some scuffles were reported during the demonstrations on Tuesday.

The bill, ironically titled Legislation to Protect Cyberspace Users’ Rights, was passed by the so-called Joint Siyanat Committee on Tuesday.

Instead of voting in a general session, the bill was sent for final approval to the committee, as has been the case with many recent controversial legislations.

Many internet users and some media outlets in Iran have said that the implementation of this plan has practically started in in recent weeks as the authorities reduced bandwidth and slowed broadband as a means of censorship.

Reza Taghipour, former communications minister and a Tehran representative, who heads the committee on cyberspace, said on Tuesday that foreign companies should abide by the new Iranian law to remain active in the country.

The new law would require foreign and domestic social-media networks and messaging applications to register with a regulatory and supervisory board, including representatives of the intelligence ministry and the intelligence organization of the Revolutionary Guards.

The ministry of communications and information technology would be charged with blocking social networks and messaging applications that failed to gain approval.

Iran has restricted access to the internet for two decades and popular social media platforms such as Facebook and You Tube for the past ten years. An overwhelming majority of Iranians routinely use circumvention software to go around government blockages.

Arani has warned of a plunge in the rate of data transfer (bandwidth) allocated to Instagram, the only major social media platform not filtered, and a reduced general speed of mobile and fixed broadband.

According to Arani, an expert in informational technology, reduced bandwidth slows access to Instagram, by prolonging the ping time and preventing the page to load as if blocked. Instagram, owned by Meta platforms, formerly called Facebook, has over 47 million users in Iran.

On Monday check-host.net data showed a ping server time of 85.4 milliseconds (ms) for Instagram from IP addresses in Tehran, 16.5 ms from Istanbul, 1.0 ms from Paris, and 54.4 ms from Karaganda, Kazakhstan.

Unlike Instagram, WhatsApp messaging applications is filtered but nearly every Iranian with a smartphone has installed anti-filtering software that allows access to filtered applications and websites. Anti-filtering software, however, will time out if the internet speed is low. Nonetheless, with over 50 million users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging and social media platform in Iran.

Shargh, the reformist newspaper, said Monday its investigation showed serious disruption in Instagram traffic over two months. According to Shargh, the disruption happened every day after 5:00 pm – which would make Instagram obsolete if continued.

World Speedtest rankings

Iran now ranks 77th, two places behind Israel, six behind Ireland, and two ahead of Ethiopia in the Speedtest Global Index for mobile internet. Fixed broadband speed is 141st, almost at the same level as Benin, the Western Sahara, and Nigeria, while 18 places ahead of Lebanon, which has suffered years of civil war and instability. Afghanistan was last of 179 countries in the list.

Two months ago Iran ranked 70th in mobile internet speed and it has dropped by 7 points. Social media users complain that the speed of mobile internet and fixed broadband has dropped and their access to social media and messaging applications has noticeably diminished in the past few weeks.

Some businesses relying on Instagram now say they fear bankruptcy, with online meetings impossible despite the Covid pandemic. Taxis and cars are getting lost because their GPS devices fail to function. Students who have to study online, with classes and exams disrupted, are frustrated.

Maryam Shokrani, journalist with 23,000 Instagram followers, shared a screenshot on Twitter Monday flashing "Session not found" as an example of how her online activities were curtailed.

"We are kicked out of online sessions all the time, the sound comes and goes, and at the end we don't know what happens in the session,” she wrote. “Now the minister of communications, Isa Zarepour, says those who complain about low speed are making a fuss!"

"The clandestine filtering of Instagram and WhatsApp through gradual reduction of bandwidth is much more unethical than official filtering because it is a sign of deceit, weakness, irresponsibility," Roozbeh Alamdari, editor of Jamaran, a reformist news website, tweeted Monday.

Iranian Judiciary Spokesman Zabihollah Khodayian said on Monday Hossein Mousavian was an advisor in a €2-billion case in the Persian Gulf island of Kish in the 2000s.

According to Khodayian, Mousavian brokered a deal to give 200 hectares of the island and 100 thousand square meters of its territorial waters to a third party but the resort project was never carried out.

Earlier in January, his remarks in a documentary to mark Qasem Soleimani’s second death anniversary led to controversy when he gloated about how Iran’s threat to avenge Soleimani killing frightened the wife of Brian Hook, Washington’s special envoy for Iran at the time.

Advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) has also called on Princeton “to dismiss him from any association or affiliation with the university without delay”, noting that “Mousavian’s affiliation with Princeton is a stain on the university’s reputation and credibility”.

UANI described him as “an agent of the Iranian regime” who is currently employed as a Middle East and nuclear policy specialist at the university.

Late in December, an American academic who was imprisoned in Iran for 1,216 days, said Mousavian is sympathetic to the Iranian regime, claiming that he stymied efforts to free him from prison.

Mousavian, who traveled to Iran to attend the funeral service of Soleimani, was Tehran’s ambassador to Germany when four Iranian dissidents were assassinated at Berlin's Mykonos restaurant in 1992.

The letter, which was signed by Western-based secular and liberal groups opposed to the Islamic Republic, addressed the leaders of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, calling on them to end “the failed and catastrophic policy of negotiating with and appeasing the Islamic Republic”.

They told Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson, and Olaf Scholz that the regime with which they are engaged in talks “is the same fundamentalist regime that since its inception 43 years ago, has had terror, hostage-taking, and sabotage, as an integral part of its ideology and nature, and its most important tools for blackmailing the free world”.

Diplomats have said that nuclear talks, which began last April to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA), have made significant progress and a final deal is imminent soon. In case agreement is reached, Iran is set to receive billions of dollars of blocked funds and massive sanctions relief.

The signatories highlighted that the “Islamist revolutionary regime has carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks around world”, emphasizing that it has engaged in killings, bombings, and hostage taking, as well as issuing fatwas (decrees) for murder of innocent people.

This is “the same inhumane, misogynist, and anti-LGBTQ oppressive regime that, despite decades of attempts at dialogue and resolutions by the international community, still enforces medieval Sharia law,” which includes stoning, amputation, and flogging, the letter read.

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The opposition groups stressed that the clerical government “carries out large-scale executions and imprisonments, often with the aim of suppressing and silencing political opponents”.

The Islamic Republic soon after its establishment cracked down on opposition and independent groups and has continued to ban civil society initiatives. Practically all opposition has been sent into exile or imprisoned.

They criticized the policy of the West, especially Europe, towards “this anti-Semitic regime,” saying “appeasement and the payment of ransoms in order to normalize and attempt to change the behavior of this inherently abnormal regime” have only emboldened it “in its terrorist activities, criminality, and nuclear and military ambitions”.

The signatories highlighted Iran’s track record of “insolence on the international stage and criminal suppression of the people”, stating that “Nearly two decades of counterproductive negotiations and flawed deals such as the JCPOA have only given the Islamic Republic a chance to buy time. By deceiving the international community, it has brought its nuclear and ballistic missile programs to an irreversible stage”.

Then opposition groups called for action, urging the three European powers “to put aside, once and for all, the failed and catastrophic policy of negotiating”, saying that now when the Islamic Republic is at the lowest level of popular legitimacy in its history it “is the time to choose another policy: Maximum support for the Iranian people to end more than four decades of medieval rule and replace it with a secular democratic system that serves Iran's national interests through peaceful coexistence and cooperation with neighbors and all countries in the world”.

“This is the only way to prevent the world's largest terrorist state from achieving the atomic bomb -- a catastrophe that will plunge the entire region into a nuclear arms race”, they wrote.

They asked the European leaders that instead of the Vienna talks they should “enter into a serious and effective dialogue with the democratic and national opposition of Iran, which wants a free and secular Iran”.

“Sooner or later, the Islamic Republic will be overthrown by the brave and courageous people of Iran, and the day after liberation, the Iranian people will remember who stood by them in difficult times and who aided their oppressors”, they concluded.