Iranian Parliament Adamant To Impeach Economic Ministers

Sharq newspaper and others reported Saturday that the Ramadan dinner, or Iftar, scheduled for Friday was cancelled after “99 percent” of artists, actors and film industry personalities declined invitations using various excuses, such as the Covid pandemic, travel or other reasons.

The government’s official news website IRNA strongly denied the reports as “complete fabrication”, insisting that the Iftar was cancelled due to high air pollution in Tehran. IRNA added that the dinner was supposed to be served in an open courtyard of the presidential complex but due to pollution it was decided to hold indoors, but the space was too small for accommodating 170 guests.

Sharq, however, emphasized that the real reason for the cancellation was the refusal of most invitees to attend.

The Iftar invitation by the president for artists and cinema figures has become an annual tradition in recent years. In 2018, many declined the invitation by then-president Hassan Rouhani, saying that he had not fulfilled his election promises.

Raisi’s leadership is being sharply criticized in the media, as Iran’s economic conditions deteriorate, and food prices continue to rise. Reports say that many working class people cannot afford even bread and buy it with a promise to bakeries to pay later.

Speaking to Iran International TV on Friday, Narges Mohammadi said Western sanctions have failed to weaken Iran's oppressive regime but led to a "disastrous weakening of the Iranian middle class as the driving force of democracy".

The sanctions failed, she argued, because they were not "targeted" and Western politicians did not have adequate knowledge of the Islamic Republic system.

"It appears that the West lacks a proper understanding of the hypocrisy of the Islamic Republic and that it is a dictatorial government with systemic financial corruption that can use various tools [of repression]," she told Iran International.

There has been huge social media controversy over Mohammadi's views over sanctions after a Washington Post opinion article Wednesday referring to interviews with her in which she said sanctions weaken Iran’s civil society.

Critics attacked Mohammadi accusing her of defending the lifting of US sanctions, and her approach benefits the regime and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) which is also under US sanctions.

The controversy gained more attention among Iranians because the Washington Post article coincided with Iran’s demand from the Biden administration to remove the IRGC from its foreign terrorist list as a condition for the revival of the 2015 nuclear agreement.

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Mohammadi told Iran International that in the interview with the Washington Post she had said that she considers the IRGC as an oppressive force and a violator of human rights and that it must be targeted by the international community by various means including sanctions but not all her comments had been included in the article.

Mohammadi also explained that she believes the international community has the duty to target "any person or group" in the Islamic Republic that violates human rights to support the Iranian people and civil society and one of the ways to target the violators is using sanctions.

Mohammadi added that the IRGC's "political, terroristic, and economic investments and activities", both inside and outside the country, result in oppression of the Iranian civil society and therefore it must be placed on the list of "targeted" international sanctions along with other entities of the Islamic Republic that violate human rights such as its Judiciary and Police.

Some harshly attacked her integrity and questioned her honesty as a regime critic, while others said she should have been more careful during the interview with the author of the Washington Post opinion article, Jason Rezaian.

Mohammadi has an eight-year sentence hanging over her head for supposed “crimes against national security”, for her activities as a human rights activist and may be hauled off to prison any moment to serve it.

Cofounder and chair of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, Mohammadi has been to jail several times over the past two decades. She was freed from Evin prison in September 2020 after serving five and half years when she had no contact with her husband and children for long periods of time.

But one of Mohammadi's supporters in a tweet Thursday said she could not understand why she was criticized so strongly. "She has said that sanctions destroy the civil society. Do you doubt this statement? wrote Banafsheh Jamali, a feminist activist. "People are not going to have any demands other than economic ones when they are in dire need of food to survive," she added.

Some argue that it is difficult to put in place effective sanctions that do not lead to economic pressure on the people, and mention the example of Russia. If the government is supposed to be pressured to stop a certain behavior, it must feel economic pressure, which invariably also impacts the people.

Others say that the civil society Mohammadi refers to has not been able to reform the Islamic Republic and has been badly suppressed, so sanctions are the remaining tool to bring about a change.

An Afghan immigrant attacked three clerics at the most important Shiite shrine in Iran April 5 in what President Ebrahim Raisi has called a “Takfiri” assault, referring to Sunni extremists.

Calling the incident " a terrorist attack", the Jomhuri Eslami said in its editorial on Thursday, this is only one of the negative consequences of the Iranian government's "easy approach" to the takeover of Taliban in Afghanistan.

The daily also claimed that "Taliban elements have brought all sorts of weapons to Iran and have prepared places to recruit Takfiri elements," and called all this part of a special plot to carry out the conspiracies hatched by the enemies of the Islamic Republic.

Demographic danger

According to Jomhuri Eslami, "some 8 million Afghans are living in Iran and every day at least another 10,000 Afghans arrive legally or illegally. The daily also revealed that Iranian officials issue up to 7,000 visas to Afghans every day while the borders are left open for immigrants to enter illegally.

If this estimate of the Afghan population in Iran is correct, it means around 10 percent of the country’s 83-million population is comprised of Afghan nationals. Some even argue that Iran’s actual population is much less than what the government claims, since millions have left the country for good.

The daily added that most Afghan immigrants are Pashtuns, and that up to 75 percent of births in hospitals in Tehran and its suburbs are registered by Afghans. The birth rate among Afghan women in Iran is between 4.7 to 5.2, the daily reported, adding that there are 600,000 Afghan students at government schools, while officials predict that this number will rise to 1.2 million next year.

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As a result, the daily warned, that the demographic combination of provinces such as Esfahan, Yazd, Kerman and Sistan-Baluchestan is changing and some 35 percent of the population in some areas are Afghans. This is evident around the Revolution Square, Azadi Square and the Persian Gulf Lake near Tehran.

Jomhouri Eslami further claimed that with the 2019 legislation granting Iranian citizenship to the children of Iranian women marrying foreigners, a tsunami of “buying Iranian girls and women” from poor families has started in Iran.

The daily warned that the combination of these changes will lead to an uncontrollablesocial catastrophe including insecurity in the near future.

Taliban Infilteration

The editorial noted that although the Taliban had committed many crimes in the first round of their takeover in 2001, including murdering two dozen Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i Sharif, Iranian officials welcomed the second Taliban takeover eight months ago, claiming that the Taliban have changed. The daily also warned that the Taliban is not an entity separate from the ISIS. "You cannot separate the Taliban from the ISIS, in the same way that you cannot separate the United States from Satan," the editorial said.

Earlier, even before the attack at the shrine in Mashhad, Iranian observers, including Jomhouri Eslami's editor Masih Mohajeri had warned that uncontrolled immigration of Afghans into Iran might lead to an infiltration by the Taliban and ISIS militants that will threaten Iran's security. The daily, as well as commentators in other media outlets in Iran had also warned that the influx of Pashtuns into Iran might lead to disputes and even conflicts between Iranian Shiites and Afghan Sunnis.

Iranians traditionally support the Hazarah and Tajik communitiess of Afghanistan who speak the same language as Iranians, but do not trust Pashtuns who live further down in southern Afghanistan.

The daily stressed that "The Taliban has not changed during the past 20 years and is still the same terrorist group." Jomhouri Eslami further called for replacing all the pro-Taliban Iranian officials at the Iranian embassy in Kabul and the Iranian Foreign Ministry. It also called on Iran's state television to replace its policy of “beautifying the Taliban” with real news dissemination. "Iran should be purged from Afghan infiltrators, the borders with Afghanistan should come under strict control and Iran should recognize only an Afghan government that comes to power through a free and fair election," the editorial concluded.

The eulogists likened Alamolhoda to Shiite saint Abbas, a brother of Imam Hussain, the third Imam of the Shiites, and described him as "A great interpreter of the holy Koran, a wise scholar, a revolutionary character and the flag bearer of the Islamic revolutionary front in Khorasan and a religious, cultural and political leader." It is difficult to find any indication at all of any one of those attributes in Alamolhoda's track record though.

These are lofty words of praise while Alamolhoda is present, listens to the eulogists and has no reaction.

Criticism of Alamolhoda's complacency while listening to eulogists in Mashhad was so fierce, that he had to issue a belated statement on April 6, thanking the eulogists and the people for their support and saying that in fact the eulogists' praise for him was a sign of support for the prophet, mindless of the fact that putting himself in the same league as Muslim saints would entail further backlash.

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However, this and another video posted on Iranian websites, are only two of several indications showing a propaganda campaign perhaps to groom the fundamentalist cleric for a position still unknown to the public. In yet another video, a cleric warns critics that "Alamolhoda is our red line. Please do not make us angry."

Pictures also surfaced on social media showing Iranian army's air force personnel saluting Alamolhoda exactly in the same way they showed up to welcome Khomeini in 1979 a week before the Islamic revolution.

Khomeini and also current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei used the show of respect by air force personnel to prove that they had support among the armed forces. Social media users have pointed out the similarity between these pictures and Khomeini’s 1979 publicity photos.

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Also on April 6, 17 lawmakers from Khorasan Province wrote a letter to Khamenei in which they praised Alamolhoda for preventing women's entry into a stadium in Mashhad on March 29 where the Iranian and Lebanese soccer teams faced each other. Apparently at Alamolhoda's order, security forces prevented hundreds of women from entering the stadium to watch the game and attacked them with tear gas and pepper sprays, leaving several women injured.

Although Alamolhoda might be eying the position of Iran's next Supreme Leader, some Iranian social media users opined that he might be trying to garner support as a presidential candidate in the next election. The latter looks more realistic as the eulogists described Alamolhoda's virtues while addressing Khamenei, and the members of the parliament also addressed Khamenei in their letter.

Some Iranian media outlets including Rouydad24, however, have noted that the publicity stunt by Alamolhoda's camp could be a reaction to supporters of Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. They won the Mashhad City Council election last year and one of them, Khalil Movahed has been criticizing Alamolhoda in public gatherings in the city since January 2018 when a major nationwide anti-government protest started from Mashhad.

Alamolhoda, who is the father-in-law of President Ebrahim Raisi, is known for banning a lot of social and cultural events in Mashhad. The news website Entekhab has summarized the bans in an infographic which shows concerts, playing electronic games, wearing certain type of clothes, riding bicycles and motorcycles and mountaineering by women are among the activities he banned in Mashhad. A social media user who has posted the infographic, wrote: "Thank God that breathing and going to toilet are still not banned!"

‌Because of his arbitrary rulings, some of Almolhoda's supporters nicknamed him the Sultan of Khorasan, but social media users objected by saying, albeit in not polite words, that "Khorasan is part of Iran and no one should indulge in the illusion of being the province's sultan."

Twitter said it is applying new rules -- which came into force on Tuesday -- to any country that limits access to online services while engaging in interstate warfare. The popular social media platform initially only limited more than 300 official Russian government accounts, including those of President Vladimir Putin, official ministry and embassy profiles, as well as the accounts of high-ranking Russian official accounts.

Head of Site Integrity at Twitter Yoel Roth said, “When a government that's engaged in armed conflict is blocking or limiting access to online services within their country, while they themselves continue to use those same services to advance their positions and viewpoints - that creates a harmful information imbalance”.

Twitter is not banned in Russia but has been severely slowed down to the point of inoperability. The platform is completely banned in Iran while there are many Iranian officials and organizations that use it frequently.

So far, there has been no new move by Twitter to restrict access to Islamic Republic officials. Iranian users have been tweeting if the new policies would impact Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who has multiple accounts on Twitter.

In the aftermath of Iran’s controversial 2009 presidential election, the government blocked Twitter fearing protests being organized.

In January, Twitter blocked an account linked to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after it published an animated video depicting the assassination of former US president Donald Trump.

In February, Twitter and Facebook suspended pages and profiles of an Iranian disinformation unit that was targeting nationalist and ultra-religious Jews in Israel.

Iran has restricted access to the internet for two decades, including 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.

After hardliners captured both the parliament and the presidency, they have proposed new legislation to further restrict access to the Internet and particularly to foreign-based social media platforms.

Currently only Instagram is accessible in Iran and it has become a major platform for commerce, keeping tens of thousands of small businesses afloat amid a serious economic crisis.