Iran Tries To Quell Scandal Over Official’s Same-Sex Video

The addition of the high precision Abu Mahdi missiles to the naval fleet will extend Iran’s ability to counter electronic warfare in the region. According to Iran's Defense Minister Mohammad Reza Ashtiani “the missile system has been outfitted with cutting-edge artificial intelligence in its command-and-control systems.”

At a ceremony to mark the acquisition, which was attended by senior military officials, Ashtiani said the Abu Mahdi missile enables Iran “to counter electronic warfare tactics and adeptly evade radar systems, while also enabling it to autonomously chart its optimal flight path.”

The missile, which is domestically manufactured, is named after former Iraqi militia commander, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, who was killed in a US raid outside Baghdad's international airport in January 2020 along with former IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani.

It is designed on basis of Kh-55 cruise missiles that Iran purchased from Ukraine 20 years ago, according to military analysts.

Iran has long sought to maintain its missile program independent of US and global sanctions tied to its nuclear program. However, recent geopolitical developments, notably the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have brought the perceived threats of Iran's missile program into sharper focus for the West.

The regime continues to provide military support, including drones, to Russian forces and its proxies across the region. Iran, nevertheless, claims that its missile program is entirely geared towards deterrence, with the aim of upholding regional stability.

The announcement comes amid ongoing tensions between the countries over the Nagorno-Karabakh region and the critical Lachin corridor, which serves as the sole communication route between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Speaking at the press conference alongside his Armenian counterpart, Ararat Mirzoyan, who was on an official visit to Tehran, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian emphasized the significance of transit routes between Iran and Armenia. He said "Iran and Armenia recognize the importance of the historical transit route, and both nations seek to maintain and strengthen its functionality."

Furthermore, the Iranian foreign minister welcomed the continued peace talks between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan. He said "We are closely following the peace process in the region and are committed to promoting stability and cooperation among our neighboring countries".

However, the Baku authorities have not yet issued a statement regarding President Ilham Aliyev's reported “assurance” to Tehran about the non-closure of the transit routes.

Iran has been deeply concerned about Azerbaijani moves to establish a corridor through Armenia territory to a piece of its territory to the west. While an Azerbaijani military threat exists to force such a corridor, Iran will lose its historic land connection with Armenia.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan has persisted for more than three decades, resulting in numerous military confrontations.

Tensions over the transit road have led to military exercises conducted by the Iranian armed forces near the border with Azerbaijan in recent years.

Iranian opponents of the Islamic Republic on Monday accused the Hanover-based International Neuroscience Institute of expunging the patient record of the “hanging judge” Hossein-Ali Nayeri who was involved in the massacre of hundreds of political prisoners in 1988. 

Germany’s largest paper, the mass circulation Bild, reported that INI deleted Nayeri’s medical record in apparent move to avoid a new pro-Iran regime scandal. The director of the INI, Dr.Madjid Samii, scrambled to deny the allegation that he was caught again treating a regime official responsible for severe human rights abuses.

“There are currently no patients from Iran at the INI. These allegations damage our reputation, and not for the first time,” said Samii, according to the regional paper HAZ.

Samii, who was born in Tehran in 1937, faced widespread outrage in 2018 for providing care to Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi at INI. Shahroudi headed the Islamic Republic’s opaque judiciary from 1999 to 2009 and imposed executions on 2,000 people, including adolescents. Germany’s government permitted Shahroudi to leave the country after his treatment.

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Samii told the HAZ that “As a doctor, I have an obligation to treat every patient, even it is Putin.”

Jason Brodsky, policy director of the US-based United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), tweeted a report from the German paper Die Welt that said “According to eyewitnesses, two vehicles with license plates of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran were in the parking lot of the clinic [INI]last Friday.”

The Iranian-German dissident, Dr. Kazem Moussavi, told Iran International that Samii is a “well-known friend of the mullahs” and also treated former Iranian regime judge Gholamreza Mansouri in 2020. Mansouri incarcerated 20 journalists during his tenure. The regime-controlled Young Journalists Club reported at the time that Mansouri “is said to be hospitalized in Professor[Majid] Samii's hospital in Germany.”

Moussavi added, “As an Iranian member of the opposition and spokesman for the Green Party of Iran in Germany, I sharply criticize the Federal government and Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock for regrettably turning Germany into a secret place of treatment for the mullahs' death judges. He [Nayeri] is being treated in a German city of all places, in Hanover, where the Germanpolitical hostage awaiting his execution in Tehran, Jamshid Sharmahd, lived with his family.” 

Moussavi said the German “Federal government must end its appeasement policy” toward Iran’s regime and called for the immediate arrest of Nayeri. 

The Bild paper also took the German government to task for its policies that reportedly placate Tehran’s rulers. “Sweden shows that there is another way: Hamid Nouri, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and Nayeri’s assistant, was arrested [in Sweden] in 2019. Despite protests from Tehran, Nouri was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2021 for torture and murder.”

Moussavi said that Nayeri ”has served as chief adviser to the Islamic Republic's death judge, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, since Ebrahim Raisi's presidency. Both are directly responsible for the political prisoners and those executed in the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests in Iran.”

The Bild reported that Iranians, who live in Germany and were victimized by Nayeri, filed criminal complaints against the cleric and judge. The human rights activist Mina Ahadi told the paper “Many of his traumatized victims are here in Germany, you meet them everywhere.”

Amnesty International classified the 1988 massacre as a “crimes against humanity” in which the regime slaughtered at least 5,000 political prisoners. Nayeri issued summary executions to hundreds of political prisoners at Evin and Gohardasht prisons.

The Iran People’s Tribunal on Monday wrote on its website that it filed a case against Nayeri at the Berlin Prosecutor’s Office. Four witnesses are part of the Tribunal’s case who were taken to Nayeri’s “Death Committee” in 1988. The Tribunal said the Berlin Prosecutor forwarded the case to the Hanover Prosecutor who assigned the police to investigate. The police said Nayeri had not been admitted to the INI.

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Mizan, an Iranian regime-controlled news agency affiliated to the judiciary, denied that Nayeri visited Germany.

Sheina Vojoudi, an Iranian dissident in Germany, termed Germany’s conduct toward admitting Iranian regime officials accused of grave human rights violations a “double standard.” 

She said, “How can Germany express its concern about human rights violations in Iran, yet let the human rights abusers who are responsible for thousands of innocent lives be hospitalized in Germany while there is no way for the persecuted Christians or political activists to apply for a German visa.”

She continued, “These ayatollahs who have been treated on German soil issued thousands of death sentences to innocent Iranians. Arresting these human rights abusers for their crimes against humanity is the least expected when they enter a democratic country.”

Vojoudi, an associate fellow for the Gold Institute for International Strategy, argued that “Iranian refugees in Germany fled to save their lives from the same Ayatollahs who always come to Germany for the best treatment.”

Iran International sent numerous press queries to the INI and the German Foreign Ministry.

Last month, the United States issued a sanctions’ waiver allowing Baghdad to pay over $2.7 billion of the $11 billion it owes Tehran for importing electricity and natural gas. Last week, Washington announced a change in the method of disbursing the funds, by transferring the money to third-country banks and then allowing purchases of goods such as food and medicine.

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller in his Monday briefing announced that the third country selected for the new payment method is Oman. “As we’ve said for some time, we thought it was important to get this money out of Iraq, because it is a source of leverage that Iran uses against its neighbor,” he said, without elaborating.

Late last year, the Biden administration started to tighten controls over dollar transactions by Iraqi banks, seeing evidence that there were banking violations potentially enabling Iran to illegally acquire US dollars. In February this year news emerged that Washington further tightened regulations over dollar transfers to and from Iraqi banks.

The leverage the US has in this matter is that Iraqi oil export proceeds are cleared by its banking system. Iraqi requests for cash dollar shipments and banking transfers are scrutinized by US federal agencies to make sure that illicit activities are prevented.

Since the Trump administration exited the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed banking sanctions on Iran, it has periodically issued waivers allowing Iraq to make funds available to Iran for purchase of non-sanctionable goods, but to control all the transactions and Iranian attempts to syphon money out of Iraq has been hard.

Whether shifting the funds to Oman will ensure a tighter control over the process is yet to be seen. Clearly, Iran’s attempts to pressure all parties involved in slackening controls will continue. It is not clear if the change is not the result of an Iranian plan to gradually weaken the impact of US banking sanctions on its dealings with Iraq. Iran’s next move could be to further pressure Iraq to ask the United States to lift restrictions on how the funds are disbursed, enabling Tehran to withdraw cash dollars. The current Iraqi government has closer ties with Tehran than its predecessor.

State Department’s Miller, however, insisted that all funds “will still be subject to the same restrictions as when the money was held in accounts in Iraq, meaning that the money can only be used for non-sanctionable activities such as humanitarian assistance, and that all the transactions need to be approved by the United States Treasury Department in advance.”

There have also been multiple media reports that Washington and Tehran have been negotiating over the release of four American held hostage in Iran in exchange for $7 billion frozen by South Korean banks due to US sanctions. The decision to shift Iraqi funds to Oman could also be related to these secret talks.

Miller was asked Monday about the prisoners, but he refused to provide details.

“It’s obviously a very sensitive matter with respect to these detainees,” he said.

But critics who are suspicious of the Biden administration’s secret dealings with Tehran are wary of attempts to give financial rewards to the Islamic Republic in return for the hostages or a limited nuclear understanding, that has been reported by the media.

The meeting comes after Syria's neighbors got a pledge from Damascus in May to cooperate with their efforts to rein in Syria's flourishing drug trade in exchange for helping end its pariah status after a brutal the civil war.

"The meeting discussed cooperation in confronting the drug danger and its sources of production and smuggling and the parties that organize and execute smuggling operations across the border," the Jordanian foreign ministry said.

Syria is accused by Arab governments and the West of producing the highly-addictive and lucrative amphetamine captagon and organizing its smuggling into the Gulf, with Jordan a main transit route.

The kingdom is concerned about lawlessness in the strategic southern region where it echoes Washington's accusations that pro-Iranian militias protected by units with the Syrian army run the multi-billion dollar smuggling networks.

The West blamed Syria's government for the production and export of the drug, naming Maher al-Assad, the head of the army's elite Fourth Division and the president's brother, as a key figure.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government denies involvement, or complicity by Iranian-backed. Iran says the allegations are part of Western plots against the country.

Jordan, impatient with what it says are broken promises to curb the drug war, made a rare strike in May inside Syrian territory where an Iran-linked drugs factory was demolished.

In the last few weeks, Jordan's army downed two Iranian operated drones coming from Syria with one the army said carried weapons.

Jordan requested more US military aid to bolster security on the border.