Iran To Continue Social Media Ban, Grant Access To Regime Insiders

During a weekly press briefing, Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Masoud Setayeshi said those newly detained individuals have been accused of “conspiracy and collusion”.

However, he did not mention how many more arrests have been made and what countries the foreign nationals are from.

“In this case, other arrests have been made and the chain of information is about to be completed and will be announced as soon as it is finalized,” noted Setayeshi.

Paris lashed out at the clerical regime earlier this month accusing Tehran of the practices of “worst dictatorial regimes.”

France called the forced confession of two French nationals, arrested in May, on Iranian state TV “shameful, revolting, and unacceptable,” and demanded their immediate release.

“Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris have been arbitrarily detained in Iran since May 2022, and as such are state hostages ... the staging of their supposed confessions is shameful, revolting, unacceptable and contrary to international law,” said a foreign ministry statement.

Iran’s state media are infamous for purported confessions by prisoners in politically charged cases. Such prisoners are held without due process of law and usually cannot chose their own defense attorney.

In a video aired earlier this month, one of the two French nationals - Cecile Kohler - said they were in Iran to “prepare the ground for the revolution and the overthrow of the regime of Islamic Iran”.

France says five of its nationals are currently held in Iran. Fariba Adelkhah, an Iranian born woman, was arrested in 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison for “undermining national security.” Benjamin Briere was also arrested in May 2020 and sentenced to eight years and eight months for espionage, without due process of law.

After the outbreak of protests following the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of ‘morality police,’ Iran said in late September it had detained nine foreign nationals linked to unrest, including those from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, several foreigners visiting Iran have disappeared, confirming earlier reports that the Islamic Republic is taking foreign citizens hostage.

Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was jailed in Iran for over 800 days from 2018 to 2020, said on Monday she “can confirm that the two New Zealand travel bloggers, Topher Richwhite and his wife Bridget Thackwray of 'Expedition Earth,' are missing, believed to be arrested in Iran.”

Earlier in the day, The Associated Press reported that a Spanish man trekking from Madrid to Doha for the 2022 FIFA World Cup has not been heard from since the day after he crossed into Iran three weeks ago.

Tehran denies any policy of hostage taking and insists all foreigners are tried according to legal process. However, it has frequently shown readiness for prisoner exchanges and participated in swaps in the past.

UN experts and international human rights organization say that the Islamic Republic takes foreigners hostage to extract concessions from the West.

Addressing the Haaretz Democracy Conference on Monday, Zelensky said that the Islamic Republic would have not been able to send equipment to Russia if Israel had not decided to stay neutral in the Ukraine war.

“In eight months of full-scale war, Russia has used almost 4,500 missiles against us. And their stock of missiles is dwindling. Therefore, Russia went looking for affordable weapons in other countries to continue its terror. It found them in Iran,” noted Zelensky.

The Ukrainian president further noted that “I have a question for you – how does Russia pay Iran for this, in your opinion? Is Iran just interested in money? Probably not money at all, but Russian assistance to the Iranian nuclear program. Probably, this is exactly the meaning of their alliance.”

Although Zelensky did not offer any evidence, Russia has built Iran’s sole nuclear power plant in Bushehr and has a contract to expand the plant with the addition of two new reactors at a cost of $10 billion.

Zelensky’s comments come as the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Intelligence Directorate said Monday that Russia's mobilized soldiers are being provided with Iranian-made body armors and helmets, and new groups of “advisers” are also arriving in Russia to train them on the use of a new and more lethal type of drones, Arash UAVs.

Major General Kyrylo Budanov stated that “Russian forces have used most of their cruise missile arsenal and only have 13 percent of their pre-war Iskander, 43 percent of Kaliber, and 45 percent of Kh-101 and Kh-555 pre-war stockpiles left.”

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Budanov added that with the supply of cruise missiles dwindling Russian military relies on Iranian drones, but Tehran can send 300 drones per shipment as it takes a long time to manufacture the drones.

In remarks reported Monday, Iran’s foreign minister appeared to accept as possible, despite past denials, that Moscow had used Iranian drones in Ukraine.

“If it is proven to us that Iranian drones are being used in the Ukraine war against people, we should not remain indifferent,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, as reported by Reuters.

The Iranian foreign ministry website and official news agencies last Friday reported Amir-Abdollahian denying claims at a European summit last week that Iran had supplied Russia with military drones deployed in the Ukraine war.

Last week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba officially asked for air defense systems and training from Israel’s Foreign Ministry in the face of attacks launched by Iranian Shahed drones. Yet, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz stressed “that we are not selling weapons to Ukraine.”

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However, Israeli Prime Minister told Jerusalem Post on Sunday that Tel Aviv is increasingly concerned by the “dangerous closeness” between Moscow and Tehran over the supply of Iran-made drones to attack Ukraine.

Lapid said Israel is holding daily assessments to review its position on the conflict, adding that “It’s not something we are going to ignore or do nothing about… so what we need to do is reassess on a daily basis and react.”

Meanwhile, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Monday that Iran was making the world less safe by supplying Russia with drones to be used against targets in Ukraine.

The US has been “trying for a while now to have a nuclear agreement with Iran so that we can make the world a safer place and now they're going off aiding the Russians and making the world a less safe place,” added Pelosi.

With the long suspension of negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, Iran is now accused of involvement in the Ukraine war. On the other hand, Tehran’s crackdown on domestic protests is also drawing attention from the international community raising the possibility of more isolation and sanctions for Iran.

An Iranian daily on Tuesday said that the developments of the war in Ukraine are in an alarming way to the detriment of Iran.

Aftabnews warned the Iranian government that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an aggressive move to occupy an independent UN member state and the governments that support the aggressor will be considered violators of international law.

“It is said that the United States and three European countries have interpreted the provision of drones by Iran as a violation of UN Resolution 2231. If proved after investigations, it will justify and legitimize the activation of the snapback mechanism against Iran in the JCPOA agreement,” Aftabnews added.

If the snapback mechanism would be triggered, Iran will return to Chapter Seven of the UN Charter and all sanctions in place before the 2015 nuclear deal would be automatically reimposed on Iran.

Private sector trade officials have repeatedly warned about the massive damage that the six-week-old government internet disruption is causing to the production cycle and its destructive effect on the livelihoods of millions.

Deputy Chairman of Iran Chamber of Commerce Hossein Selahvarzi told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) last week that production of many commodities including dairy products, medicine, textiles, and steel has been affected. “It’s naïve to think that disruption of the internet and filtering of so many websites, [online] programs, and platforms will only affect small businesses,” he added.

Selahvarzi explained that many operations including logistics as well as marketing and sales, financial transactions in foreign currencies are impacted and that the disruption will cause a drop in sales and profits. This will force companies to lay off workers in an already depressed economy.

According to Selahvarzi, the current unrest and lack of access to the internet has also resulted in the cancellation of visits and cooperation plans by foreign trade officials and businessmen.

There are many reports on social media about the scarcity of pharmaceutical products such as intravenous solutions, antibiotics, and even simple over-the-counter painkillers in most parts of the country.

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He added that recurrent unrest since 2009, when a disputed election drew huge crowds of protesters to the streets, has resulted in a drop in investment, economic growth rate, and unemployment.

From the very early days of the protests, social media users reported serious damage to a host of small and home-based businesses. These businesses relied on the internet, social media, and messaging applications for advertising and selling their products.

These small businesses, particularly those run from homes by women or small farms in rural areas, heavily relied on Instagram for advertising and WhatsApp for communication with potential customers. The government has specifically blocked these two apps used by protesters.

The number of these businesses exponentially grew after the Covid pandemic.

Larger e-commerce companies such as online retailers, hotel and transportation bookings and food delivery services have business and there are reports of many companies having serious difficulties in paying salaries and instalments of loans.

The government has been using the so-called “kill-switch” since antigovernment protests and civil disobedience began six weeks ago to stop the flow of information and footage of protests as well to disrupt communication among protesters. The use of VPNs and anti-filtering software has increased by 30-fold since the unrest began following the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of morality police.

Despite the toughest curbs that have been put into force, both information and footage have trickled out as young and tech-savvy protesters persevere, sometimes spending hours to post a single short video.

Authorities insist that foreign enemies take advantage of social media and messaging applications to incite “riots” against the government and insist that Iranians should use the National Information Network (NIN), a very tightly controlled intranet, and domestically developed applications such as Rubika and Rubio.

Experts say these applications are specifically developed to allow censorship and are very unsafe as they allow authorities to trace and identify users who do not abide by the censorship rules.

“If it is proven to us that Iranian drones are being used in the Ukraine war against people, we should not remain indifferent,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, as reported by Reuters.

The Iranian foreign ministry website and official news agencies last Friday reported Amir-Abdollahian denying claims at a European summit last week that Iran had supplied Russia with military drones deployed in the Ukraine war. The European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States all last week introduced sanctions against three Iranian military commanders and a defense company over the reported supply.

Abdollahian was last Friday reported as saying Tehran was “strongly opposed to war and to the arming of any warring side.” The minister said Iran had “told the Ukrainian officials to show any evidence they have that would prove the use of Iranian drones in the Ukraine war.”

Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani reiterated early on Monday that Tehran had not supplied Moscow with munitions for the war in Ukraine despite “defense cooperation.”

Volte-face?

Amir-Abdollahian’s latest remarks suggested a shift if not a volte-face. But it was unclear if he was implying “Iranian drones” might have reached Russia without any official sanction, or without the specific knowledge of the foreign ministry. Alternatively, some analysts have long argued Iran often employs a tactic of ‘plausible deniability.’

US officials began claiming back in July, without offering conclusive evidence, that Iran had agreed to supply drones to Russia. Security analysis have said they could offer Moscow a cheaper, if far less effective, alternative to missiles.

Iranian officials have denied these claims, but they have talked up the Iranian-made weapons. Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a military adviser to Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei, claimed October 18 that 22 countries had expressed an interest in buying Iranian military drones.

‘Giving them to X and Y’

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself in a tweet October 19 compared past western dismissal of Iranian drone-manufacturing with their current fears: “A few years ago they questioned the authenticity of photos of Iranian-made advanced drones & missiles and claimed they’re photoshopped. Now they’re saying Iranian drones are dangerous, why are you selling & giving them to X & Y.”

The issue of drones was also taken up last week at the United Nations Security Council, where France, the United Kingdom, and the United States presented a letter arguing that it would contravene a provision in UNSC Resolution 2231, which in 2015 endorsed the Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). The controversy at the UNSC adds a further challenge in the frozen talks aimed at reviving the JCPOA.

In a further political twist, Ukraine is highlighting Iran-Russia links as a way of justifying its arguments that the US and EU should supply it more advanced weapons.

The Islamic Republic’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman claimed Monday that relations between Iran and Russia are not against any party and do not violate the international legal framework.

Naser Kanani told a news conference that “those who accuse Iran of supporting one side of the war are sending weapons to a warring side themselves,” implicitly referring to large Western military assistance to Ukraine.

Ukraine, the United States and Western countries say Iran has supplied military drones to Russia that are being used to attack civilian and infrastructure targets, and have begun imposing sanctions on Tehran.

Kanaani also rejected accusations that Iran has sent forces to Russian-occupied Crimea saying that “this is a media war to distract minds from the destructive role of Westerners in the Ukraine war.”

The US had earlier said that Iranian experts were in Crimea helping the Russians use Iranian supplied drones.

His comments come as Iran’s Supreme Leader in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin back in July clearly expressed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

While describing war as “brutal and hard,” Iran’s leader suggested that had Russia not “taken the initiative, the other side, with its own initiative would have created a war anyway.”

In that meeting Khamenei said “NATO is a dangerous creature [that] didn’t recognize any limits or borders. If you cannot stand up to them in Ukraine, then a little while later, with the excuse of Crimea, they would have started this war anyway.”

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Elsewhere in his remarks, Kanani accused US officials of “telling lies and being hypocritical” regarding the talks over reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.

“If the Americans say the negotiations have stopped, why do they send messages through intermediaries?” reiterated Kanani, adding that “it is clear Washington wants to return to the agreement but not pay its costs.”

His allegations come as US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, on October 19 said reviving the 2015 nuclear deal is “not our focus right now.”

“Nothing we’ve heard in recent weeks suggests they have changed their position. And so right now our focus is on the remarkable bravery and courage that the Iranian people are exhibiting through their peaceful demonstrations,” he stated.

During his Monday statements, the Iranian spokesperson also claimed that the West is supporting anti-regime protests in Iran saying, “If Americans have bet on the domestic developments of Iran these days, they have made a mistake.”

Tehran routinely blames the West and Israel for negative events in Iran, not willing to admit that many of its citizens oppose clerical rule.

He also criticized recent sanctions by the European Union and the United Kingdom imposed for the brutal crackdown on protesters in Iran, stating that “supporting disorder, insecurity and instability is an illegal behavior. It is an irresponsible act to support rioters and those who have a history of terrorist activities.”

This comes as the Islamic Republic is designated by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984 for supporting and organizing militant groups around the region.

In another part of his comments, Kanani claimed that relations between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are on the right track and the sides are having “constructive ties.”

However, Wall Street Journal correspondent Laurence Norman says there has been zero significant contact between Iran and the IAEA recently calling the claims “a heap of falsehoods”.