Iran Official Says COVID Equipment Imported In Diplomatic Pouch

A statement issued by the Department said the End-User Review Committee (ERC), composed of representatives of the Departments of Commerce (Chair), State, Defense, Energy and, the Treasury makes determination if a company has inappropriately diverted US technology for purposes that are harmful to US interests.

A senior administration official had said earlier in the day the Commerce Department and Treasury Departments would announce a series of actions on Thursday targeting Chinese companies that Washington says use biotechnology and surveillance to abuse human rights.

Aside from China, the Commerce Department also took action against entities from Georgia, Malaysia, and Turkey for allegedly "diverting or attempting to divert U.S. items to Iran’s military programs."

A document released said several companies are being designated “for actions contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States. Specifically, these companies have supplied or attempted to supply U.S.-origin items that could provide material support to Iran’s advanced conventional weapons and missile programs...”

Teachers have been holding protests and demanding the implementation of a previous legislation, which would bring salaries and pensions in line with of other civil servants, and would benefit around 750,000 educators.

Parliament voted to appropriate a little over one trillion rials a month to finance new pay scales for teachers, but Mohammad Habibi, spokesperson of the teacher’s union said after the vote that “What was approved today in parliament was an improvisation,” not the enactment of a real pay scale.

The money approved by parliament would be added to salaries immediately, but calculated in US dollars, on average each teacher will receive just $11 dollars a month in extra pay, which would not help much in dealing with the current annual inflation rate of 45 percent. The poverty line in Iran is now around $400 a month income for a family of 3.3 people, and most teachers are getting much less than that. Even with the extra pay, around 80 percent would earn less than the minimum salary needed.

Food prices have risen by more than 60 percent this year, on top of high inflation in the previous three years. Government figures released in recent days showed that prices for 83 percent of basic food staples have reached a critical level. People living on salaries have cut back on consumption of nutritious food, such as meat, fruits and dairy products.

What seems to have prompted parliament to act quickly was a nationwide protest of tens of thousands of teachers on Monday [Dec. 13]. With rising pieces and growing poverty, the government is sensitive to new protests, concerned that any economic grievance can trigger general nationwide unrest, similar to bloody protests in November 2019, when security forces killed hundreds of unarmed people.

Tehran is also engaged in nuclear talks with world powers in Vienna and any large protests might weaken its position in the negotiations, that from Iran’s perspective is aimed at removing US economic sanctions that have battered its economy since 2018, when former president Donald Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear agreement known as JCPOA.

On Thursday, hundreds of teachers demonstrated in the western city of Hamedan, rejecting parliament’s decision. They also demand the release of union activists arrested over the years and charged with a variety of security offenses. They are practically political prisoners, like many journalists and civil society activists, who do not receive a fair trial and are accused of trying to overthrow the regime.

Iran's conservatives who call themselves "Principlists" formed a coalition with Raisi in June and helped him win the presidential election. At least three rival conservative candidates have now major posts in the government: Vice President Mohsen Rezaei, martyrs Foundation Chief Amir Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi and Mayor of Tehran Alireza Zakani. Nonetheless, Raisi insists that he was an independent candidate.

Now, most of the criticism by conservatives who are not part of the administration is about Raisi's ministerial cabinet choices. Many, particularly those in the parliament have lashed out at Raisi for nepotism and giving key jobs to well-connected individuals with little or no qualifications.

Other conservatives argue that six months is not long enough time for passing judgement on Raisi and his ministers' performance. However, eye-catching shortcomings in his performance and his failure to carry out some of his promises, have prompted many conservatives to believe that their support for Raisi may damage their reputation.

Raisi’s worst intractable problem is controlling runaway inflation that is impoverishing millions of working-class citizens. He made lofty promises during his campaign, but independent observers knew that without an agreement with the United States and lifting of sanctions, Iran had no chance to resolve its economic crisis even partially.

Rasoul Salimi a journalist at Khabar Online, a moderate conservative website has observed, that Raisi’s weak performance has left Iran's conservatives with three choices - "unconditionally supporting" Raisi, lending some kind of "critical support" to the president, or changing their position from supporters of Raisi and his team to their "critics."

According to Salimi, making this choice is particularly important because once Raisi's failure is established and dissatisfaction over his administration's performance becomes widespread, it will be extremely difficult for conservatives to deny their support for the winner of the June election. They supported Raisi because they thought he can solve the country's economic problems having a conservative parliament, judiciary and military behind him.

It was a coalition of four political forces including the right-wing Society of Combatant Clerics, the young conservatives who had won the 2020 parliamentary elections, the former supporters of populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the entire fleet of conservative media in Iran risked their credibility when they joined hands to send Raisi to the Presidential Office.

All of these groups have already risked their voter base and have occasionally come under attack by their young supporters who think they have been misled to support a president and an administration that are not competent enough and at times have caused embarrassment.

The frustration by young conservatives became apparent during a ceremony at a university earlier this month, when a leader of an Islamist student group harshly criticized Raisi in his presence, saying he is not a freely-elected president.

“We are speaking to you not as a president elected with the free vote of the people in a free election. We are speaking to you as a representative of the ruling system,” the student lamented.

Syrian government media announced a soldier was killed but an Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment to Reuters on the report.

Israel has mounted frequent attacks since 2017 against what it has described as Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces including Lebanon's Hezbollah have deployed over the last decade to support President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's war.

Citing a military source, Syrian state news agency SANA said, "the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression", firing missiles from the Golan Heights, territory Israel captured from Syria in 1967.

An air attack attributed to Israel took place on December 7against the Syrian port of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Warehouses and shipping containers thought to be Iranian shipment of weapons were hit.

While Israel has carried out many attacks throughout Syria, the air raid on Latakia was a rare occurrence, said to be designed to send a strong signal to Tehran amid Israeli threats to target Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is it feels a strategic threat.

The hackers have tried to exploit a flaw in the commonly used Java-based logging tool Apache Log4j. The flaw has been fixed but hackers might have already established foothold in some networks.

The Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point has said the Iranian group involved that tried to attack Israeli entities is the familiar Charming Kitten or APT35. “Check Point has blocked these attacks, as we witnessed communications between a server used by this group and the targets in Israel,” the firm announced.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, also issued a guideline for companies to report suspected malicious activities on their networks related to the latest threat dubbed the Log4j vulnerability.

A cybersecurity expert, John Hultquist, said that Iranian state hackers are particularly aggressive in exploiting the latest flaw and want to use it in ransomware operations, not so much for financial gain but to cause widespread disruption.

Iran’s intelligence organs, particularly the Revolutionary Guard operate one of the world’s most dangerous cyber-threat state operations and APT35 is thought to be linked to this network.