Khamenei Says Iran’s Nuclear Infrastructure Cannot Be Negotiated

On the other hand, reformist clerics suggested that the government had better stop putting religious pressure on citizens to “guide them to heaven.”

The Imam in Tehran, Mohamad-Javad Haj-Aliakbari, said that "the enemy" is spreading nihilism in Iran, adding that "In a year when we are getting close to the Majles [parliament] and Assembly of Experts elections, the enemy is trying to sow despair and heresy in Iran."

The term enemy, regularly used by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his loyalists, refers to the United States. By making this statement the Friday Imam was attributing Iranian women's defiance to compulsory hijab to a conspiracy by the United States. 

Iranian clerics and regime officials invariably attribute their failures in various cultural, political and economic areas to the United States or the pre-revolution government that was replaced by the Islamic Republic 44 years ago. 

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The Tehran Imam said the West is waging a cultural onslaught against Iran to stop the country's progress in areas such as missile development. Meanwhile he accused Iranian women of not being chaste enough as they follow the West's teachings. 

In another development Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday Prayers Imam of Mashad said: "The Islamic revolution's aim was not simply feeding the people and improving the economy. We did not simply want to give political control to the pious and expel US mercenaries from Iran. The aim was to allow the people to live freely." 

However, Alamolhoda. a staunch supporter of compulsory hijab and one of the biggest defenders of clerical rule in Iran did not explain how the Islamic Republic or his own ideology would let people live freely. Meanwhile he praised the Islamic Republic's "achievement" in developing a “supersonic missile” that can reach Israel in less than 10 minutes.

Alamolhoda is the father-in-law of President Ebrahim Raisi and enjoys some influence with Khamenei.

As if he was responding to Alamolhoda,Sunni Leader Mawlana Abdolhamid, who led the Friday prayers in Zahedan, said, "Good for you if you can make missiles, but you need to feed the people first." His comment was a reference to Iran's economic crisis that has been pushing millions of Iranians under the poverty line particularly during the past two years.

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Meanwhile, Iran's former reformist President Mohammad Khatami criticized the government's approach to hijab and hardliner clerics such as Alamolhoda's insults against Iranian women who brand women without hijab as "unchaste." Khatami said: "Hijab and chastity are two different things," adding that hardliner "clerics should not impose the hijab on the Iranian society." 

He pointed out that hijab is a matter of choice, and it should not be imposed on women. He suggested that hardliners should avoid imposing "backward" ideas on the society. He added that "Islam should respond to the needs of the modern world." Khatami further stressed that "Women need to be respected if we wish to move toward a better future."

Khatami said: "You should be a human being first and then decide whether you want to be a religious person." He reiterated that there should be no difference between men and women in terms of freedom and dignity and we understand that there will be no limit to our growth." 

Meanwhile, Khatami's former chief of staff, Mohammad Ali Abtahi said: "The affairs of the state cannot be furthered by forcing the people and pushing them into paradise, but some of the country's decision-makers believe that this is a good way of running the country and anyone against it should be suppressed." He called on the government to respect the preferred lifestyle of young Iranians. 

The hacktivist group produced documents in May showing that it breached 120 servers of the presidential office, getting access to internal communications, meetings minutes, President Ebrahim Raisi’s online conference platforms and about 1,300 computers inside the offices.

The MEK-affiliated Telegram account Uprising till Overthrow has been releasing the documents on its social media accounts. The latest report shows that 190 hectares of government-controlled land in the southern city of Khorramshahr on the Persian Gulf was given freely to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization claimed in a letter to First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber that in order to "accelerate the process of exploration and extraction of uranium ore throughout Iran", the government laws should be changed in this regard.

In one of the documents, the security chief of Fordow nuclear plant -- an Iranian underground uranium enrichment facility located 20 miles (32 km) northeast of the Iranian city of Qom – had asked for about 150 hectares of public land to be given to the nuclear facility to increase its security buffer zone as work continued to expand Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Earlier in May, the group Uprising till Overthrow also hacked into the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry servers, disabling 210 sites and online services and leaking another large batch of documents.

In the new cyberattack, the group is said to have gained access to “tens of thousands confidential documents” but has so far released some of them. The number of the published documents is still so large that analyzing them will take weeks.

The hacker group also published a document that contains information about the request of the Atomic Energy Organization to import 35 vehicles with an engine capacity of more than 2,500 cc.

Hassan Rouhani, President Raisi's predecessor, had banned the import of Completely Built Units (CBUs) in July 2018, allowing only Completely Knocked-Down (CKDs), which are imported in parts rather than assembled.

Any official organization needs to receive foreign currency from the government and permission to import vehicles or machinery, but cars are particularly tightly regulated, because of the cost for the government in hard currencies.

The difficulty with obtaining US dollars or euros for imports became acute after former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed tough sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, the main source of its revenues.

With French automakers withdrawing from the Iranian market after the imposition of the US sanctions, CKD imports of a variety of Chinese vehicles have flooded the market since then.

The group also claimed that their access to the internal systems of the president’s office was so vast that they sent e-mails to the office’s recipients address list with photos of the leaders of MEK and photos of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Raisi with red crosses over them as well as slogans of “Death to Khamenei” and “Hail to Rajavi”, the current leader of the opposition group.

The president’s office immediately reacted, denying that “the official website of the president” was down due to any attack.

Among the released documents, there is correspondence between the president’s office and the office of the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) under besmirched chief Ali Shamkhani, confirming rumors that the regime's top security chief was forced out after the President said he had failed to do enough to quash riots, despite killing over 500 civilians and arresting more than 20,000.

“Despite some negotiations in New York, there is no impending agreement soon because of US obstructions,” Mojataba Tavangar tweeted on Saturday.

Tavangar is a ‘principlist’ Iranian politician, which means he can be considered a hardliner, although on some issues he has exhibited flexibility in the past. Unlike many other hardliners dominating the parliament, Tavangar is a more educated politician having spent years as a researcher.

“America is trying to get more concessions from Iran in nuclear matters, in exchange for releasing frozen funds, a policy violating the law and in contradiction to Iran’s interests,” Tavangar added.

Iran International reported in January that US special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley had held three meetings with Iran’s UN ambassador Saeed Iravani in New York in the closing weeks of 2022. The State Department never denied this report, and said Washington had many channels to relay messages to Tehran.

The reports of more meetings resurfaced in June, when the Financial Times and others reported that meetings have taken place in New York and perhaps in Oman, which has long acted as a mediator between Tehran and Washington.

The State Department did not directly deny the latest reports either. Asked about the media reports, deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said, “I don’t have anything to announce on this front.”

He added, “As you’ve heard me say previously, we have the means to communicate with Iran and deliver messages to them that are in America’s interest to do so. We’re not going to detail the contents of those messages or the means of those deliveries. I don’t have anything additional to add there.” He refused to comment further.

The Iranian lawmaker Tavangar in his tweet also claimed that the United States is pushing Iran toward direct talks, and even regarding American prisoners (hostages) in Iran is not negotiating seriously. He described media reports about secret talks and progress toward a deal as “media hype” saying that Washington’s goal is to highlight Iran’s economic problems and inflict “a shock” on the market.

Tavangar’s statements could well be an indirect message by the regime to its domestic audience, as the news about a possible deal has led to some premature hopes. The Iranian rial has risen against the US dollar in the past week, and any negative diplomatic news could push the battered currency toward a steep fall.

It is worth noting that many media outlets in Tehran, under tight government control, widely reported on Tavangar’s tweet.

Iran International also reported May 27, that talks on the release of Tehran’s frozen assets could result in a deal soon, based on a source with direct knowledge of the talks. Apparently, the talks were focused on funds held in Iraq and South Korea. The money in Iraqi banks could be as much as $10 billion or more by most recent estimates mentioned by Iranian officials. Iraq imports natural gas and electricity from Iran but is barred by US sanctions to make dollar transfers to Tehran.

The funds in South Korea could be exchanged for the release of three US dual nationals held hostage in Iran.

ILNA news website in Tehran reported Saturday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the issue of the funds blocked in Iraq with his Iraqi counterpart during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia. Apparently Baghdad is urging Washington to find a solution, the website said.

According to Babak Negahdari, women in the Islamic Republic can preside in family court and draft the verdict, but the final ruling has to be signed by a male judge.

After the 1979 revolution, in addition to the hijab, the Islamic republic forced all female employees of the court system out of their jobs.

Women were only given supportive roles and no leadership positions in the governmental institutions after the revolution.

“During the following years, parliamentarians made amendments to the law on the conditions for the selection of judges and passed the family protection bill, making it possible to attract and employ women as advisory judges in family courts, but they did not give women the right to sign verdicts,” added Negahdari.

There are no definitive figures on the number of women working anywhere in the Iranian judiciary today.

On the other hand, it was estimated that eight out of every 100 judges are women. In the past few years, fewer than 30 percent of participants in the judges' exams have been women, for what little roles remain available to them. Putting these scattered statistics together, it is evident that women have no place in the top echelons of Iran’s judiciary.

Zarif who was the main speaker at a five-hour long audio discussion on the social media app Club House earlier this week, defended his diplomatic approach of negotiations to reduce Western pressure on Iran.

The former foreign minister has long been a target of Iran’s hardliners as the supposed architect of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal and allegedly as a man inclined to forge better ties with the West. But in June these attacks intensified as Zarif began to tweet after a long silence.

The Raisi administration-owned daily Iran newspaper wrote Thursday that former Foreign Minister Zarif and former President Hassan Rouhani's foreign policy was nothing more than "begging the West for attention." The daily also charged that their policies were "marked by ignorance, confusion and naivety."

The daily added that Zarif and Rouhani's policies made the Iran's situation and its ties with other countries more complicated than ever. However, the newspaper did not specify its accusations with examples.

The daily wrote that their priority was redefining Iran's relations with the world, but their vision was limited to Europe and the United States. The statement was, of course, mindless of the fact that Iran's 25-year cooperation contract with China was signed under Rouhani with Zarif.

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Iran daily also charged that Zarif's foreign policy was limited to furthering the talks over Iran's nuclear program. The daily further charged that Iran's ties with its neighbors were downgraded under President Rouhani.

In fact, it was Iran’s aggressive regional political and military policies and interventions in Syria and Yemen that soured it ties with Sunni Arab states. These policies were part of a grand strategy devised or at least approved by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and not at the presidential level.

While under attack from the conservative camp Zarif said on Thursday that he has no plans whatsoever for the elections and added that he is not the kind of man who would run for the parliament, Zarif said that the controversy over his Clubhouse presence is rooted in the conservative's fear of his possible plans to run for President in 2025. He added that he has no plan to run for the post or to campaign for other politicians.

In the meantime, the editor of Jomhouri Eslami newspaper, Masih Mohajeri suggested that Zarif and his predecessor at the foreign ministry, Ali Akbar Salehi who later played a part in forging the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement, should take part in an open debate with the leading hardliners aligned with the current government who have been obstructing the nuclear talks for many years.

Mohajeri wrote that Iranians have a right to know what has happened to the talks and the nuclear program and such a debate can shed light on many ambiguities and show clearly who is right and who is lying about the other sides foreign, economic and domestic policies.

Also defending Zarif on Thursday was the centrist daily Ham Mihan, which attacked the Raisi administration and wrote that the current government portrays a disparaging image of its predecessor and characterizes its performance as "treasonous", while making a lot of fuss about its own meager achievements.

Ham Mihan wrote that the ruling politicians take advantage of the silence of the officials of the previous government and pass unilateral judgements about the Rouhani administration's track record without giving him and his aides a chance to freely respond to the accusations. Ham Miham further lashed out at the Raisi administration for lying about its "achievements" and not tolerating any criticism. The daily claimed that Raisi and his supporters hold more grudges against their political rivals than foreign enemies.

Foreign Policy expert Ghasem Mohebali defended Zarif by saying that what he said showed the difference between two approaches to national interests and the nuclear talks, adding that Zarif's approach was an example of efficiency while the new government's track record has all the signs of inefficiency.

Expediency Council member, moderate conservative politician Mohammad Sadr, on the other hand, defended Zarif and praised his performance regarding the nuclear deal, and attacked Raisi: "I have told Raisi that he is personally responsible for the economic problems resulting from the inconclusive situation of the nuclear talks under his government."