Iran's Riaisi Appoints More IRGC Commanders To Civilian Positions

General Bagheri said that Iran has always had cooperation with Russian armed forces, and in recent years the cooperation has expanded.

“I have been invited by the Russian defense minister and in addition to bilateral military issues that need follow-up, Afghanistan is among special issues that both sides will discuss,” Bagheri maintained.

He added, “Events in Afghanistan definitely have impact on regional counties, including the Islamic Republic, the Russian Federation and others and we will talk about these.”

Iran and Russia are military allies in Syria since 2015, when Russia deployed its air force in the war-torn country to defend the rule of Bashar al-Assad. With ground forces Iran supplied and with Russian air power, the anti-Assad armed opposition was largely defeated.

Bagheri also spoke about defense cooperation with Russia since the lifting of a United Nations arms embargo on Iran last October and said Iran has plans of weapons purchases from Russia. He also stressed the need to continue cooperation in Syria.

General Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij, a paramilitary wing of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said Sunday that his organization will construct 100,000 residential units. President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) has promised to build one million units a year during his four-year term, a huge project that would need billions of dollars a year, although the government has not presented a budget or a clear plan.

Soleimani did not mention how much the Basij would charge the government for the project. The IRGC is the largest economic force in the country, having dozens of companies in all sectors. Its business involvement has been a controversial issue among Iranians.

Iran’s government faces a deficit equal to 35-50 percent of its overall budget, as US sanctions have cut off most of its oil export revenues. It also has to cope with a falling currency and near 50 percent annual inflation.

A previous housing project during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was never completed although it was carried out during high oil prices and up to $100 annual oil exports.

"Which of the country's authorities is Ghalibaf really addressing and what it is bothering him?" asked an unsigned commentary in the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), charging that as a high-ranking official for many years, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) bore some responsible for the country’s state of affairs.

Ghalibaf's criticisms, rampant during the previous administration of President Hassan Rouhani, have continued since President Ebrahim Raisi took office in mid-August, highlighting divisions within the principlist camp.

The ISNA commentary argued that during the Rouhani administration, when the president pushed for market-oriented reforms and achieved the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Ghalibaf's criticisms were based on politics and policy differences.

"But do his criticisms not reflect back on him and his political faction now that an administration close to his political faction is in office and when some of his close associates are in management posts?" ISNA asked. The article suggested that Ghalibaf's continued criticisms might illustrate "a rupture" between influential principlists.

While Ghalibaf has generally avoided directly criticizing Raisi's government, some lawmakers have claimed that he secretly tried to influence parliamentarians into not voting approval for some of Raisi's nominations as ministers.

"Wrong beliefs and inefficient managers are two problems in our governance,” Ghalibaf said last week. “The problem is not lack of money and resources. We must invest time and energy for these things.”

The ISNA commentary argued that with Raisi's election as president, loyalists of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in control of all three branches of government – presidency, parliament, judiciary – might join forces to address people's problems rather than indulging in "a ping pong of criticism from behind podiums."

The commentary suggested Ghalibaf's continued carping about the country’s management might substantiate an argument, often used by reformists, that having all branches of government in the hands of a single faction might lead to disputes, and harm rather than benefit Iran.

Under Ghalibaf’s leadership, the parliament passed a law in December that complicated Rouhani’s efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), after Joe Biden won the November United States presidential election committed to restoring the deal. The law obliged the government to step up Iran’s nuclear program further beyond the limits set by the JCPOA and to reduce Iran’s cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The former officer was named as Mehrdad Abdarbashi, a major and air-force helicopter pilot who had been living as an asylum-seeker in Van, eastern Turkey.

Speaking to Iran International via video-link Saturday, Abdarbashi said a woman working for Iranian intelligence contacted him pretending she wanted to learn about foreign currency exchange.

Abdarbashi said he always alerted Turkish intelligence when anyone contacted him and they had bugged the woman’s cell phone and discovered her contact with the Iranian security forces. He said he did not know which intelligence body, the intelligence ministry or the Revolutionary Guards intelligence organization, had sent the "swallow,” as Iranians usually refer to women used to entrap men.

Turkish intelligence tapped her cellphone and found out what was going on.

"Her plan was to lure me to the city's outskirts under some pretext so that they could capture me and take me back to Iran, but I did not consent to go,” Abdarbashi told Iran International.“The Turkish intelligence was well aware of everything. They told me to accept her invitation to dinner [on the night of the operation] and promised to protect me so I accepted.”

Turkish intelligence knew, said Abdarbashi, that Iranian agents had given drugs to the woman to lace his dinner so they could remove him from her home when he fell unconscious, pretending they were taking him to a hospital.

Ankara on Thursday revealed that its National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and police had arrested an Iranian − whom they said was an intelligence operative − and seven Turks September 24 over a plot to abduct an ex-Iranian military officer in Van and render him to Iran but did not give the full name of the alleged victim.

Speaking to Turkey's Türkiye newspaper Saturday, Abdarbashi said he had fled Iran and sought asylum after refusing a mission to Syria.

"I am in a safe place now but obviously my life is still in danger after that foiled [abduction] attempt,” he told Iran International, appealing for help from human rights and international organizations.

In 2019 a honey-trap was allegedly used to Ruhollah Zam, who ran a social-media channel on Telegram, to Iraq where he was abducted by Iranian agents. Zam was executed in December 2020 after confessions aired on state television.

Türkiye, a right-wing conservative newspaper in Turkey reported on Saturday that the individual is a military pilot named Mehrdad Abdarbashi. Turkish intelligence, which revealed that a plot was foiled in September and several people detained, had named the target with his initials, M.A.

Turkey's official news agency Anadolu (Anatolia) reportedthat the country's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and police had arrested an Iranian and seven Turks in Van, a city in south-east Turkey on September 24.

Abdarbashi told Türkiye that after using excuses not to be sent for a mission to Syria he decided to flee Iran. He told the newspaper that a female agent of Iranian intelligence invited him to his house, and he alerted Turkish authorities. After she drugged him and others were preparing to abduct him, Turkish agents raided the house.

Iranian intelligence has killed or abducted and rendered hundreds of dissidents and opposition activists abroad in the past 40 years.