IRGC’s Quds Commander Says Iran ‘Has Humiliated Israel’

The Iranian film legend was due to be on the festival’s Un Certain Regard jury but along with scores of other celebrities and sports stars, is subject to a travel ban.

Other punishments levied by the regime to celebrities include bank account freezes and communications bans.

Rasoulof was temporarily released from Evin prison in February due to health issues, offering hope that he could attend the prestigious French film festival as a jury member.

However, when the festival announced the names of the jury members on Wednesday, Mohammad Rasoulof’s name could not be seen.

He has been under house arrest since 2017 when his film "A Man of Integrity" won the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section.

Due to his anti-regime content, he was given six years in prison in 2010 that was reduced to a year on appeal, and he was also banned from making films for 20 years.

He defied the ban and went on to make his drama There Is No Evil, capturing Iranian society under the Islamic Republic regime, which won the Berlinale Golden Bear in 2020.

Rasoulof and his colleague Mostafa Al-e Ahmad were arrested in July 2022 after signing an appeal along with dozens of other filmmakers and film industry workers. The appeal called on security forces to “lay down” their weapons.

Media in Tehran and other cities are reporting dozens of similar cases as no one actually knows how much the annual inflation rate is after the government stopped publishing its monthly statistics.

Aftab News, a website which dares to be more critical of the authoritarian regime, quipped Wednesday that President Ebrahim Raisi still insists, “The progress by Iran has angered the enemies,” meaning the United States and its allies.

Mehr News Agency, a conservative website and a supporter of Iran’s hardliners reported that families share rented apartments, as they cannot afford the soaring security deposit and monthly rent.

Others simply must move to cheaper and cheaper areas, getting farther than the cities and have to commute somehow if they do not own a car. Vehicles have also become unaffordable for many with the cheapest options costing billions of rials.

Ordinary Iranian salaries are less than $200 a month, while rents for simple apartments have soared to beyond $300. Couples must work two jobs just to pay the rent.

Although Iranians have been losing their purchasing power since 2018 when their currency nosedived, the situation took a turn for the worse last September as the rial began to fall further, losing half its value. The US dollar rose from around 260,000 rials last August to near 550,000 in late April.

The minimum monthly income needed for bare necessities for a family of 3.3 people remains at around $500 a month, but the rials a family earns buys much less each week.

The political leadership, however, continues its nuclear program and its anti-West policies, so far refusing to compromise with the United States.

Even some real estate agents will soon be forced to go out of business as they cannot sell properties overpriced for the impoverished population. Some agencies close just one deal a month and cannot even afford rent for their own office.

Etemad newspaper reported that people who just a few months ago were helping others in need are now unable to afford their own groceries. Prices for eggs, milk, meat and rice have doubled in less than a year.

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“Until a few months ago there were upper middle-class people who were quietly leaving some money with neighborhood stores so that they could give out food to needy customers who were asking to buy things on credit,” Etemad wrote, “but in the last 6-7 months these philanthropists have disappeared.”

One such person who went to the butcher to pay the debts of those who could not pay, realized that most people were buying only chicken skin and bones, the newspaper reported.

One kilogram of chicken fillet now costs 1.8 million rials, while an ordinary salary is around 70,000 rials. A few months ago, the same chicken meat was sold at 630,000 rials. Now, people are forced to buy the cheaper parts, such as skin or stripped bones.

In poorer Tehran neighborhoods, even butchers are opting to close shop and start another business as far fewer people can afford beef or chicken.

Desperate people try to barter homemade jams or pickles for protein foods.

As million of people are becoming impoverished, Aftab News quotes psychologists and doctors about the damage inflicted by malnutrition on children and adults alike. While mothers have to breastfeed babies with intake of nutritious food, adults face more health problems, such as cancer, that many say has spiked in recent years.

Department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, told reporters Washington has made clear to partners that it does not support others normalizing ties with Damascus.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi met his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Wednesday in the first visit by an Iranian head of state since Syria's war began in 2011, underlining close ties as Syrian relations with Arab states thaw.

Speaking to pro-Iran broadcaster al-Mayadeen on the eve of his visit, Raisi said the trip would "consolidate and develop" ties with Syria and other allies, including Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which also intervened in Syria on Assad's behalf.

Raisi's visit comes as Iran and regional rival Saudi Arabia rebuild relations after years of tensions, and as Arab states that shunned Assad - including Riyadh - rebuild ties with his government.

Assad, speaking alongside Raisi, welcomed "the development" of ties between Tehran and Riyadh.

Raisi and Assad signed a long-term strategic cooperation agreement, including a memorandum of understanding on oil industry cooperation, the Syrian state news agency reported.

Raisi praised Syria for resisting what he described as U.S. pressure and confronting "takfiris", a term used to describe jihadists such as Islamic State. "Iran will always stand by Syria ... and supports its sovereignty," he said.

Raisi and Assad signed a long-term strategic cooperation agreement, including a memorandum of understanding on oil industry cooperation, the Syrian state news agency reported.

Reporting by Reuters

According to the secret documents received by Iran International, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) had asked the government to let the agency import 800,000 tons of phosphate from the mines under the Islamic Republic’s control in Syria without paying the share of the administration.

One of the documents is a letter issued in January by Mojtaba Hosseinipour, a deputy at the president’s office, addressing Minister of Economic and Financial Affairs Ehsan Khandozi and Reza Fatemi Amin, the former Minister of Industry, Mines and Business who was sacked this week, as well as former head of Iran's Planning and Budget Organization Masoud Mirkazemi and Mohammad Dehghan, Raisi’s deputy in legal matters.

In the letter, the office of the president has asked the officials to decide whether or not they can give the green light to the nuclear agency for “the annual purchase of phosphates from Syria without paying the government’s share.”

In 2017, Tehran and Damascus signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in a phosphate mine in Syria’s Al-Sharqiya. Syria is among the world’s largest exporters of the rock phosphate, a raw material used in the production of phosphatic fertilizers. The main use of phosphate is production of fertilizers, but the rock is also an unconventional source to extract uranium, explained in another document attached to the letter.

While EU sanctions on Syria do not explicitly prohibit phosphate imports, they do ban deals with the Syrian minister of oil and mineral resources, who is in charge of phosphates. Cheap Syrian phosphate exports to Europe have boomed in recent years, The Guardian reported in January 2022, noting that European farmers are dependent on phosphate fertilizers. Anyhow, it seems that the Islamic Republic has found another way around sanctions to advance its nuclear program.

Another letter included in the bundle of documents is by the head of Iran’s atomic agency, Mohammad Eslami, who asked Raisi’s first deputy Mohammad Mokhber to allow the purchase of the product from Syria.

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“In order to supply part of the uranium needed for the country's nuclear industry, this organization (AEOI) is mulling a project to extract uranium from Syria’s phosphate mines, the exploitation of which is at the disposal of the Islamic Republic,” Eslami wrote.

“Due to the high grade of uranium in the phosphate soil of these mines, the extraction of the element and the preparation of yellowcake from it is technically more feasible than the extraction of uranium from low-grade radioactive mines of Iran,” he added, requesting the cabinet to give the go-ahead for the project without paying the government.

Yellowcake is used in the preparation of uranium fuel for nuclear reactors, for which it is smelted into purified uranium dioxide for use in fuel rods for pressurized heavy-water reactors and other systems that use natural unenriched uranium. It has both civilian use as well as application for weapons but it should be processed further. Highly enriched uranium can be blended down with uranium containing low levels of U-235 to produce low-enriched uranium -- less than 5% U-235 -- fuel for power reactors. Further processing can yield weapons-grade uranium with U-235 levels usually above 90%, suitable for nuclear weapons.

In an appendix attached to the letter, the nuclear agency said that there are two main sources for extracting uranium, but the Islamic Republic is barred from using the conventional sources under international sanctions.

It has been forced to resort to unconventional sources in which uranium is extracted as a byproduct, such as is the case for phosphate soil.Khunayfis mine in Homs Governorate with 300 million tons of phosphates is the better choice among the mines under contract with Iran because it has a higher amount of uranium, according to the document.

The presidents of Iran and Syria on Wednesday signed a long-term strategic cooperation agreement, including a memorandum of understanding on oil industry cooperation.

The signing came during a visit by Raisi to Damascus for talks with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, in the first such visit by an Iranian head of state since war broke out in Syria in 2011. Tehran is helping Syria rebuild its roads, airports, power stations and ports — potentially benefiting the Revolutionary Guards, which own the biggest construction firms in Iran.

In March, the E3, made up of France, Germany and the UK, issued a tough statement addressing IAEA Board of Governors, demanding immediate response to Iran’s 84-percent uranium enrichment.

While the US responded to the IAEA chief’s visit to Tehran with a cautious approach, waiting to see what the outcomes would be, the E3 said the enrichment at up to 83.7% U-235 is an “extremely grave escalation” which comes against the highly concerning backdrop of continued accumulation of high enriched uranium up to 60% and Iran continuing to expand its enrichment capabilities.

The drones were launched from Russian territory in the north and from the south on the eastern coast of the Azov Sea, Ukraine’s air force said.

Thirteen drones targeted Kyiv, but all were intercepted, the Kyiv City Military Administration said. Some wreckage fell on buildings and caused damage.

“Another massive drone attack on Kyiv,” Ukraine’s defense ministry tweeted. “It is obvious that the Russian military feels confident only when attacking peaceful cities.”

There is no reliable information where the five drones that evaded air defenses hit.

Russia has used hundreds of Iranian kamikaze drones since October to hit Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and to try to overwhelm air defenses during massive missile attacks.

The latest large-scale missile attack took place overnight on May 1, killing more than 30 civilians.

The United States and Europe have been supplying air defense weapons to Ukraine to prevent such Russian attacks and have sharply condemned Iranian supply of drones.

Iran first denied it had sent the weapons to Russia but in November Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian claimed the drones were shipped before the Russian invasion.

Ukraine has become more successful in shooting down the relatively slow flying Iranian drones. On December 5, the military said it had downed 60 of 70 Shahed drones, but it has been requesting more Western air defense systems.