Saudi Coalition Says It Attacked 'Secret' IRGC Targets In Yemen

Saeed Farhadinia, special prosecutor in the international crimes division of Iran’s judiciary told local media on Monday that Soleimani’s case file remains open and is based on several legal principles, including international conventions against terrorism.

He also cited a friendship treaty between Iran and the United States from the 1950s, when Tehran was Washington’s ally. The Trump administration abrogated the agreement in 2018.

Former president Donald Trump ordered Soleimani’s killing citing threat of terror attacks against US forces and interests in the Middle East. Soleimani was Iran’s top military and intelligence operator in the region.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other officials have repeatedly called for revenge for the assassination and Trump has been mentioned as target number one.

Farhadinia said that Iran has no way of bringing the suspects it has identified to trial. Although he did not mention any names, the indicted individuals are assumed to be mostly US and Israeli officials.

The Islamic Republic upholds the eight-year war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a symbol of its success and the religious devotion of Iranians, while many veterans live in poverty and complain of being ignored by a large government bureaucracy formed to serve them.

A video published on social media and some websites in Iran show hundreds of injured veterans protesting outside the Foundation for Martyrs and Veterans protesting for the late payment of their pensions. A speaker is heard asking the head of the Foundation, a government department, to resign if he cannot do his job.

The speaker also referred to powerful groups who present themselves as veterans and receive all sorts of government privileges, including business opportunities. Protesters were holding a banner that said, “It is enough to build power for yourselves on the bones of the martyrs”.

Many of the current leaders of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) have reached high ranks and status because they served in the Iran-Iraq war.

Etemad Online quoted the IRGC-linked news agency Tasnim as having reported that Ghaffari was seen off in Damascus after leading those forces for six years "following some developments in Syria," but did not elaborate on those developments. However, Tasnim acknowledged that according to "foreign news sources," Ghaffari was forced by the Syrian government to leave Syria after a visit to Damascus by the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan's on November 9.

While Tehran has been portraying the development as an ordinary event, The Times of Israel on November 11 quoted Saudi sources as saying that Ghaffari was expelled from Syria as he was "accused of ‘major breach of Syrian sovereignty’ after attacking US forces, and deploying Iranian weapons to unapproved places."

According to the Times, It was reportedly Syria that shunned Iran's Qods Force Commander Javad Ghaffari for "nearly starting a war with Israel," and "almost causing an unwanted regional war."

The report published by the Times of Israel said that acting “contrary to instructions,” Ghafari led “a number of activities against the United States and Israel that almost led to the entry of Syria into an unwanted regional war, including the attack on American targets in Syria on October 20 by Iranian-backed militias.” The report said the move against Ghafari was taken by high-ranking officials in the Assad regime, after “months of disputes.”

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reported that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was behind the ousting of the top commander of the Iranian forces in Syria. The Post named Al-Arabiya news agency as its source for the report. The Jerusalem Post added that sources at the Syrian Presidential Palace had said that the palace deemed Ghaffari's behavior as a "violation of Syrian sovereignty."

Ghaffari was the third commander of the Iranian forces in Syria since 2011 when Iran began to intervene in Syria's civil war. He started his career in Syria as one of the commanders at the Iranian forces' headquarters in Damascus and later became the commander of the forces in Aleppo where he recently led Iranian forces as well as their Lebanese Hezbollah and Afghan mercenaries, the Fatemiyoun, Etemad Online reported in Tehran.

In an apparent attempt to undermine the news about Ghaffari’s expulsion, political commentator Massoud Assadollahi claimed in an interview with Etemad Online that Iran's presence in Syria has been more political than military in recent months. He also claimed that Ghaffari's mission to Syria had ended in 2020 but the killing of Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani delayed his return to Iran.

Meanwhile, Assadollahi characterized Ghaffari as a military adviser. This comes while during his mission to Aleppo, Ghaffari was nicknamed "the butcher of Aleppo," a title utterly far from being advisory. The commentator claimed that Ghaffari's role in Syria was one of "solving the Syrian people's problems," and that he was "a popular figure" in Aleppo.

Assadollahi further denied that Ghaffari was expelled from Syria, adding that according to diplomatic protocols he would have been given 48 hours to leave Syria if he was expelled, but he stayed in Syria for a month after the end of his mission. Some reports said that Ghaffari had his own private business in Syria.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the Saudi news channel Al-Hadath reported that the Syrians blamed the Iranians for taking advantage of Syria's natural and economic resources for their own gain and for evading tax payments to the Syrian regime.

Furthermore, Al-Hadath also revealed that Ghaffari admitted that he had stationed Iranian forces in places that were not approved by Syria.

Minister of Communications and Information technology, Issa Zarepour, who supervises Iran’s space program told local media that the project to reach the high orbit was planned to be accomplished in 10 years, but Raisi asked to speed up the program. The president pledged all the assistance needed to help Iran’s Space Agency.

Although some of Iran’s attempts to launch satellites have failed, it currently has four satellites in low orbit. In April 2020, a military satellite called Nour 1 was launched.

In February, the defense ministry said it tested a new satellite carrier rocket for an orbit of less than 500 km.

The United States and other countries are concerned that Iran’s satellite program is a cover for developing ballistic missiles that can exceed the current 2,000 km range of Iranian missiles.

Zarepour also said that Raisi emphasized the need to commercialize Iran’s rocket and space capabilities by exporting expertise and engineering knowhow.

Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani was speaking to Defa Press, news agency of the armed forces, two days after he told the Basij Digital Content Creation event in Tehran that a “people's network in cyberspace…means that the Iranian nation has deployed technology in the battlefield.”

In September Soleimani said that an “era of hit-and-run in cyberspace" was over and that the Basij needed a more systematic approach.

Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which supervises the Basji, in a speech Wednesday warned Basij members of that the Islamic Republic is under attack and cultural “war…happening inside our houses and in the mobile phones in our pockets and our hands.” He called on them to "enter the battlefield."

Organized trolling has been for some time a feature of Iranian politics, helping to spread untruths and unsubstantiated allegations. Iranian authorities, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei refer to state-sponsored social-media activists as "cadets of the soft war.”

Iranian activists often allege that the IRGC and other state bodies sponsor organized trolls on social media to anonymously threaten, attack and discredit dissidents and to disseminate fake news.

The Basij has around 5 million members, according to leading academic authority Saeed Golkar, with around 200,000 cadres and special Basij, who can act as a paramilitary support to police and security forces. Thousands of members are active on social media to counter news, information and critical opinions disseminated on social-media including by Persian-speaking media abroad.

Besides maintaining extensive network of social media activists, the Islamic Republic also devotes an unknown measure of resources to control the Internet, block thousands of websites and ban foreign social media platforms such as Facebook, You Tube and Twitter. Almost every Iranian has to resort to VPNs and other tools to have access to blocked sites.

A recent study published by the Media Quarterly in Iran shows that the daily readership of Iranian newspapers and the audience of state television have plummeted dramatically during the past two years due to various factors including the loss of public trust, censorship and greater popularity of online media and social media as a source of news and information.

The Telegram messaging application, for instance − which is blocked but accessed through VPNs and anti-filtering software − has over 49 million users in Iran with at least 150 channels having, over 1 million subscribers. Instagram, which is not blocked, has a similar number of users. Many Iranian politicians and their supporters, including former principlist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as a range of activists, have popular channels on Telegram and Instagram accounts.