Newspapers In Iran Criticize Raisi For Inefficiency, Lack Of Planning

The newspaper revealed on Wednesday that the airliner signed a contract through an intermediary company to buy three Airbus A319s at $44.3 million dollars in 2019, but when their documents were registered by banks their value was estimated to be $25.5 million. 

Airbus A319 is a member of the Airbus A320 family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger twin-engine jet airliners manufactured by Airbus, and its list price for a brand-new model can reach up to $100 million. Since the Islamic Republic is not allowed to buy new airplanes due to US sanctions, it has to buy used ones via brokers or intermediaries, which makes the pricing process an issue vulnerable to corruption by middlemen. 

According to Alireza Barkhor, the deputy chairman of the Association of Iranian Airlines, more than 50 percent of Iran’s passenger planes are idle due to lack of spare parts, particularly engines.

The United States sanctions, which banned the sale of aircraft and parts to Iran in 1995, have practically made it impossible for most manufacturers to sell parts to Iran.

When the 2015 nuclear agreement went into effect, sanctions on purchases of Western aircraft were lifted and Iran began talks to buy aircraft from Boeing and Airbus. A few airbus planes were delivered but the Trump administration never approved sale of US planes until Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions.

According to information received by Iran International, IRGC officials were present at the funeral service while military hymns were performed. 

Videos surfaced on social media on Monday of a shooting in Qom, which resulted in one death. Initial reports claimed that the person who was killed during the standoff was an IRGC officer but the Guards denied it, saying the viral video belonged to a recent exchange of fire between the police in Qom province and drug traffickers. 

The IRGC had also said the person who was shot dead by the traffickers was an ordinary citizen who was the driver of a car at the scene, and had no affiliation with the IRGC. 

The news came as an Israeli website reported the death of another Iranian scientist -- Kamran Mollapour, who was reportedly working at Natanz nuclear facility in central Iran -- on Monday, but the report cannot be confirmed by Iran International.

Conflicting reports are still circulating about the death of Iranian aerospace scientist Ayoob Entezari -- who held a PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering -- with some calling it an assassination and government saying he died of food poisoning.

Reports about Entezari’s fate came days after the deaths of two colonels from the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ali Esmailzadeh and Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei.

Mehdi Chamran made the remarks on Tuesday in reference to the Thursday attack that deactivated over 5,000 surveillance cameras and 150 websites and online services of Tehran Municipality. An Iranian hacktivist group named ‘Uprising till Overthrow' took responsibilty.

“Detailed planning was carried out by the Mossad and the “hypocrites” and the cooperation of the two with all the counterrevolutionaries and those who oppose the Islamic Republic,” he said. Iranian officials always refer to the exiled MEK as 'hypocrites'.

His comments came as most of the services are still offline and the authorities have warned all municipal employees against turning on their systems, suggesting that the municipality has not yet figured out how their systems were breached. 

During the same session, Asghar Ghaemi, a member of the Council, said, "We should apologize to the people of Tehran for this cyberattack,” expressing hope that the damages to the municipality will be compensated and services will be back online. 

The hacktivist group, reportedly affiliated with the MEK, put photos of the leaders of the group Massoud and Maryam Rajavi as well as insults at Khomeini, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and President Ebrahim Raisi on the websites of Tehran Municipality. The MEK released a video clip showing the websites defaced with a graphic with an image of Khamenei with a red 'X' over his face, while calling for an “uprising until overthrow.”

"The revolutionary court sentenced him to death ... and his lawyer has appealed. The case has been sent to the Supreme Court," judiciary spokesperson Masoud Setayeshi told a news conference carried live on a state-run website.

Officials said the attacker was Abdullatif Moradi, a 21-year-old ethnic Uzbek from Afghanistan with radical Sunni views. He was arrested after the stabbings at Iran's largest Shi'ite Muslim religious complex in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

Top officials and clerics had reacted strongly to the incident and called for a speedy trial in the case.

Attacks on clerics and government officials have been rare in Iran after authorities tightened security measures and cracked down on opposition groups following a string of attacks and bombings that killed dozens of officials and clerics following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

However, a senior conservative cleric was slightly hurt after being attacked by a man with a knife after Friday prayers last week in the central city of Isfahan.

There have been weeks of unrest in Iran after a jump in food prices and amid public anger with government leaders and powerful clerics over a deadly building collapse last month that was widely blamed on corruption and lax safety measures.

With reporting by Reuters

Khamenei says in the 3:30-minute tape that in 1989 when Khomeini was determined to oust his deputy Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri, a group of top leaders held a private meeting with the dying leader and told him that without Montazeri Iran will have no leader after his death, but Khomeini turning to Khamenei said: "You be the next leader!"

This corroborates in part with quintessential kingmaker Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's anecdotal account of Khmomeini's suggestion that Khamenei can be the Islamic Republic's next leader. Rafsanjani made the comment to encourage Assembly of Expert members to vote for Khamenei. All but 14 of them did in fact vote to elect Khamenei in June 1989.

The website says the contents of the tape is being revealed for the first time, but journalists in Tehran knew about it for a long time. The voice in the tape is that of Khamenei, telling someone about what transpired in the meeting with Khomeini. His website says the audio was recorded at a private meeting, but it does not say where and when.

In the recording, Khamenei says others who were present in the meeting with Khomeini were then- Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, Chief Justice Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili, Khomeini's son Ahmad and Majles Speaker and deputy chairman of Assembly of Experts Rafsanjani. At the time Khamenei was Iran's President.

Election as Supreme Leader

"I did not take it seriously at all," says Khamenei in the tape, adding a few more times that he never took Khomeini’s suggestion it seriously. "And I was determined not to accept this position if they insisted after Imam’s death," Khamenei continued.

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In fact, when the Assembly of Experts was discussing his nomination as the next leader, Khamenei delivered a brief speech in which he said he was against the idea of his nomination "because of religious and legal problems," apparently alluding to the fact that he was not a religious "source of emulation" at the time which was a key requirement for the post.

He said on the election day, a day after Khomeini's death: "One should pity a nation who would have him as their leader. My words will never be as influential as those of the Imam." Nonetheless, Rafsanjani insisted that Khamenei is the nation's best choice for a leader and added more anecdotal evidence about why Khomeini liked Khamenei to be his heir.

In fact, in 33 years since Khamenei’s ascendance to the top of leadership, his critics have always pointed out his weak claim to be Supreme Leader. Immediately after Khomeini’s passing, top clerics were discussing the formation of a leadership council, until Rafsanjani engineered Khamenei’s election in the Assembly of Experts.

Timing for releasing tape

The fact that Khamenei now publishes the tape to convince the nation of Khomeini's endorsement is significant. A series of nationwide protests since 2017 during which demonstrators called for his death or resignation, as well as the country's backbreaking economic crisis that has led to more protests, acknowledgement by officials that young Iranians no longer care for the values propagated by Islamic Republic, and Iran's weakness in terms of security while Israeli agents steal its secrets and attack Iranian nuclear sites, show that Khamenei's career is at its weakest point since 1989. These events have eroded his self-confidence, as many observed after his speech on June 4.

It is this weakness that has probably persuaded him to produce some evidence that Khomeini endorsed his leadership. However, Khomeini’s daughter Zahra Mostavafi and Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardabili who was present in the meeting with Khoemeini have said in the past the founder of the Islamic Republic did not single out Khamenei as possible Supreme Leader, and he referred to all three clerics present in the meeting as his possible heirs.