Tehran Metro Turns Into Hijab Battleground

At one of the world’s leading organizations specializing in civil rights law, Pahlavi made the powerful address in Washington, slamming the regime's campaign of oppressing women and minorities.

Pahlavi, a viable alternative to the regime in the eyes of the Iranian people, spoke of the current women led movement to topple the regime. “Iranian women quickly became the foremost target of the revolutionaries and their new government. They were publicly beaten, harassed, and segregated from the early days of the revolution,” he said, underlining that for four decades women have been systematically disenfranchised by the regime.

He cited that “most notably [women are] legally considered to be worth half of a man” according to the Islamic Republic’s interpretation of Islamic law or sharia, and spoke of the regime’s campaign of bigotry against its minorities.

While he acknowledged the deep anti-semitism and holocaust denial intrinsic to the regime, the hatred does not stop with the Jewish people, Pahlavi also referring to the Islamic Republic’s campaign of bigotry against religious minorities including members of the Baha’i faith as well as Sunni Muslims, who constitute about 10 percent of Iran’s 88 million population.

“Members of the Baha'i faith are punished for their religious beliefs, face government-mandated discrimination in schools and workplaces, and experience property confiscation and desecration of their cemeteries. Sunni Muslims were denied the right to worship in their own mosques. Christians were forced into secretive house churches.”

He also referred to his recent trip to Israel, in which he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu among other leading figures and community members. He said: “I visited Israel to stand up against the Islamic Republic's antisemitism, and to stand in solidarity with victims of the Holocaust in the face of the regime's Holocaust denial.”

“I went to mourn with the victims of the regime-sponsored terrorism, but I also went to Israel to stand up for my people, so that there will be no further victims of hate and bigotry,” he added.

He called the historic trip “a new vision for our region, a vision that is not bogged down in the forced ideological divisions of recent decades but instead based on ancient ways of our lands and connections between our people”.

Peace in the region will only be sustainable when a secular democratic Iran joins its ranks, he said.

At the event, marking the 75th anniversary since the founding of the State of Israel, Israel's President Isaac Herzog delivered a virtual message to the attendees about the threats posed by the Islamic Republic to Israel and other countries of the region.

ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt -- who served as a special assistant to former president Barack Obama and director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation -- spoke of his sympathy for the Iranian people who are suffering from “brutality and oppression of the Islamic regime”.

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He went on to speak of Iran’s destabilizing influence across the Middle East and beyond through its proxies. "It is an extremist regime with an ideology as dangerous as Al-Qaeda, because it is unwilling to reconcile societies,” he said. “Indeed, Iran is the leading state sponsor of terror around the world and a country whose number one export is antisemitism.”

Greenblatt hailed Pahlavi, seen by many as a legitimate alternative to the regime, a “catalyst for a free, democratic, and secular Iran; one at peace with its own people, at peace with Israel, and at peace with the world”.

Earlier in the day, Pahlavi slammed a letter by 32 Knesset members to Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, threatening Iran's territorial integrity. Describing the letter as “completely unacceptable and a service to the interests of the anti-Iranian Islamic Republic regime,” he called it “in total conflict with the positions communicated to me by Israeli leaders and senior government officials.”

Insiders say political prisoners are being deprived of the minimum rights and have not been able to contact their families for two weeks.

In addition, prisoners do not have beds to sleep in and no place to heat their food. The inmates have access to just one telephone line which is tied up most of the time.

Informed sources say there is no canteen for them to buy snacks or essential items.

“The prison food is of a very low quality and as a result inmates suffered stomachache and many other problems,” the source said.

Sources say there are no training courses and gyms, and the detainees routinely take pills to fall asleep.

Political prisoners have been threatened that if they protest, they will be sent to other wards where prisoners of crimes related to drugs, robbery, or murder are locked up. All phone conversations are also being tapped to exert more pressure.

The reason for these pressure tactics can be of a deterrent nature, to intimidate activists and would be protesters from engaging in anti-regime activities. It could also have coercive purpose to extract confessions or cooperation from prisoners.

Prison authorities refuse to provide medicine and proper treatment to political prisoners and seek to make the conditions more difficult by creating psychological stress.

They also harass the political prisoners of Ward 15 refusing to allow them to have face-to-face visits, and the inmates can visit their families every two to three months.

Some of the prisoners in the ward are those arrested in the case of the killing of Basij agent Ruhollah Ajamian in November.

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Ruhollah Ajamian was killed in Karaj, near Tehran, a group of men the regime called “rioters”. The member of the Basij militia of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) was stabbed, beaten, and stripped naked by a group of men and died of his injuries later.

The Islamic Republic has already executed Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Mohammad Hossein over Ajamian’s death.

14 protesters were also jailed in connection with the killing, with five of them receiving long-term prison terms of 10 and 15 years earlier this month.

Jurists and human rights activists have described the trials as “unfair” and questioned the verdicts.

The judiciary of Alborz province claimed that the charges leading to the verdict were not "intentional murder" but "corruption of the earth" and "moharebeh", or “waging war against God”.

Among the defendants, Hamid Qarahasanlou, who was previously sentenced to death, received the longest prison term and was given 15 years in prison. He and his wife Farzaneh Qarahasanlou are set to serve their sentence in the religious city of Mashhad in the northeast.

These are only some of the lengthy sentences handed down by the Iranian regime to countless protesters in the widespread demonstrations that followed the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last September.

Protests broke out in scores of cities across Iran, with crowds demanding justice for Mahsa and calling for an end to the regime’s oppressive policies.

Pressure increased on teacher and worker union activists ahead of International Workers Day, but rallies took place in Tehran and other cities mostly by retired workers.

Security agents have warned labor activists they are forbidden from attending May Day gatherings on Monday.

The Free Union of Iranian Workers announced that two members of its board of directors, were threatened and interrogated by intelligence agencies.

According to Hengaw Kurdish-Iranian human rights monitoring group, at least eight other labor activists have been summoned in the Western Kurdish city of Sanandaj.

The summons issued while calls for holding a rally to commemorate May Day have been published by the labor activists.

Meanwhile, the Writers' Association of Iran has called for the unconditional release of all labor activists, including Keyvan Mohtadi and other political prisoners.

The Council of Retirees of Iran also published a statement to slam the economic policies of the regime which have “destroyed the life of workers”.

On the eve of the international day of protests, the Central Council of Iran's National Front released a statement claiming “Iranian workers are increasingly under economic pressures facing the most severe livelihood problems”.

On Sunday, a group of 15 trade unions and civil rights groups issued a statement on the eve of International Workers' Day to voice support for the ongoing protests and strikes in Iran.

The company that offers insight into mobile threats has been tracking a spyware named BouldSpy since March 2020, which configures the tool’s command and control (C2).

Since 2023, security and intelligence researchers have described the malware as an Android botnet and ransomware.

Lookout researchers evaluate that BouldSpy includes ransomware code, but it is unused and nonfunctional, indicating ongoing development or misdirection by the actor.

“BouldSpy has victimized more than 300 people, including minority groups such as Iranian Kurds, Baluchis, Azeris, and possibly Armenian Christian groups,” said Lookout in a statement.

It appears that the spyware was also used to monitor and counter illegal trafficking activities related to weapons, drugs, and alcohol.

To further monitor the target after release, FARAJA likely installs BouldSpy on devices obtained during detention, adds Lookout.

Many of the malware's activities took place during protests following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

“The first locations exfiltrated from the victims are, with few exceptions, concentrated near Iranian provincial police stations, Iranian Cyber Police stations, Law Enforcement Command facilities, and border control posts. Based on this, we theorize that a victim’s device is confiscated once detained or arrested, and then subsequently physically infected with BouldSpy.”

It is still not clear how many people were detained during the nationwide protests in Iran. While thousands of young and teenage protesters were arrested in street demonstrations, hundreds of political activists, journalists and writers or artists have also been detained.

The Sunday statement issued on the occasion of May Day underlined that the Islamic Republic "neither deserves to survive nor it is capable of surviving.”

Decrying the “bloody crackdown” by the regime during the current wave of protests ignited by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the statement said that people from all walks of life including "teachers, workers, filmmakers, artists, and civil and political activists” are against the Islamic Republic.

They noted that the "revolutionary” uprising of the Iranian people is “still alive and moving" forward and no day passes without rallies and acts of protests calling for change.

Referring to the sexual discrimination against women in Iran and the chemical attacks on schoolgirls, they said "Women are deprived of their most basic human rights."

The civil rights groups and labor unions also said the regime "is not able to control rising prices and inflation even for a single week and has plunged a community of 90 million people into poverty and misery in a rich country."

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The Council for Organizing Oil Contract-Workers' Protests, which has been one of the main organizers of the current wave of strikes, and workers of the Haft-Tappeh Sugarcane complex – who recently snubbed President Ebrahim Raisi -- were among the signatories of the statement.

The statement came as workers in more than 100 oil, gas, petrochemical and other plants across the country have been staging strikes since April 22, protesting poor working conditions, low wages and rising cost of living. Almost all the striking workers in oil, gas, steel, petrochemicals and other industries, are not officially hired by the country’s oil company or relevant ministries and are working on temporary contracts, risking their only means of livelihood by joining the strikes.

Authorities claim that the strikes are being organized by anti-regime groups, a charge the Islamic Republic often makes to de-legitimize the demands of the workers who earn less than $200 a month. An official at South Pars gas field on the Persian Gulf stated that 4,000 protesting workers will be replaced by new ones.

Earlier in the day, three prominent Iranian labor activists condemned the recent detention of workers calling it "organized brutality" by the regime.

More than 1,600 labor rallies and strikes have been held in the past year across Iran. The Islamic Republic’s security and judiciary apparatus have summoned, arrested and imprisoned dozens of labor activists to stifle dissent.

In their Labor Day statement, the signatories also called for "immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners,” and also cautioned the authorities against “criminalization of political, trade union, and civil actions."

In recent years, as the Iranian National Oil Company has ceded many operations to quasi-private companies, most of the work is done by temporary contract workers with little pay and no benefits.

The so-called private companies are controlled by military or other state entities, or by well-connected regime insiders who quash labor demands by using government security forces.