Police Kill Leopard Stranded In Northern Iranian City

Students of the University of Science and Technology held a gathering and a march at their campus to protest the atmosphere of fear, intimidation and interference of morality guards to force them to comply with Islamic dress and other codes.

The rally took place four days after a member of the Islamic Association of the university was beaten while distributing a statement against the newly enforced measures by morality guards and and supervisors at the women’s dormitories.

The students chanted slogans against the measures and the morality guards and university authorities such as "Girls' dormitory is a prison cell" and "We do not want police-style guards".

Iran international reported on Friday that some universities in the capital Tehran have tightened dress code restrictions as the students have started to attend in person after over two years of virtual classes due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In an unprecedented move, morality guards of the University of Science and Technology and Amirkabir University began motorcycle patrols to force students comply with hijab and other Islamic regulations.

Other guards who are stationed at the gates of the university and its dormitories have also been unprecedently strict since universities reopened, students said, denying access to those whose appearance is not deemed "appropriate".

The university security is also tasked with watching over the social and political behavior of students and the new motorcycle patrols started to check if the students are always observing the hijab rules, and if male and female students sit and mingle together on the campus. If they saw anyone who didn’t comply with the regulations, they wrote down their student numbers, which means they could face more severe consequences if they repeat such behavior.

Similar measures have also been reported in other universities of the capital Tehran, with some students describing the unprecedented restrictions as similar to those imposed by the Taliban.

On Wednesday, students at the Iran University of Science and Technology wrote an open letter in protest to the new restrictions, saying “University is not a barracks, and the dormitory is not a prison”.

The Islamic Students Associations of the University of Tehran and Tehran University of Medical Science also wrote to the president of their universities in the past few days to criticize the new measures.

Students say after the re-opening of higher education institutions this year, the atmosphere has greatly changed. Authorities appointed after hardline President Ebrahim Raisi was elected, they say, are apparently finding it a good time to enforce an aggressive approach to Islamic discipline on students.

Since hijab became compulsory in Iran, within a couple of years from the Islamic Revolution of 1979, all government offices and universities have had special officers monitoring women's abidance by the rules of compulsory hijab and preventing those failing to meet their standards of modesty from entering the premises.

According to a report by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) on Saturday, the Iran-backed Lebanese group is manufacturing various kinds of mines, artillery shells, and missile in the workshops in the strategic Mahin area in the southeastern countryside of Homs.

The observatory added that many people from the town of Mahin are now working in the ranks of the local militias loyal to Iran, which helped the Syrian government forces take control of the area in early 2017, with Russian air support.

The SOHR cited its sources as saying that after Russian forces completely withdrew from Palmyra Air Base on the eastern outskirts of Homs and relocated to Tiyas Military Airbase, also known as the T-4 Air base, Palmyra Air Base came under the control of Hezbollah and the Afghan Fatemiyoun militia recruited and maintained by the Islamic Republic.

Early in 2022, the observatory reported that IRGC and Hezbollah had started construction work to expand two old military bases near the capital Damascus, saying they are turning the compounds into training and operations centers with underground facilities to store drones and weapons.

Iran International has learned that Israel is considering the possibility of a direct conflict with the IRGC in Syria and its proxies in Lebanon while Iran is settling Shiites in large tracts of land close to the Syrian Israeli border it bought in recent years.

"The ship was seized in the northern part of the Persian Gulf. Its eight crew have been handed over to legal authorities in the southern port city of Bushehr," Gholamhossein Hosseini told Fars news agency affiliated with the IRGC, without elaborating on the nationalities of the crew members.

The IRGC has announced several similar fuel seizures this month, but they have not provided information about the port of origin or the destination of the cargoes. The powerful Guards control most of Iran’s ports through their military and intelligence presence.

It is not clear why seizures or claims of seizures have increased in recent weeks.

Iran, which has some of the world's cheapest fuel prices due to heavy subsidies and the plunge in value of its national currency, has been fighting small-scale fuel smuggling by land to neighboring countries and by sea to Persian Gulf Arab states.

The volumes seized from ships are relatively small in comparison to average oil tanker capacity. The vessels are usually small vessels conducting local trade in the Persian Gulf.

The media office of the parliament's first deputy speaker, Hakem al-Zameli, said in a statement on Saturday that the deliberative meeting will also include Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and the senior undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry, Nizar al-Khairallah.

The session was planned upon an official correspondence submitted by the head of the Sadrist bloc, and more than 50 lawmakers also signed it.

Last Monday, Turkey carried out air and land operations -- dubbed Operation Claw Lock – against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq that targeted camps and ammunition stores.

The military action was part of a long-running Turkish campaign in Iraq and Syria against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, both regarded as terrorist groups by Ankara.

The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which in the past was mainly focused on southeast Turkey.

Iran also has armed Kurdish opposition in Iraq, although they are distinct from the PKK, which mainly operates in Turkey and Iraq.

On March 13, Iran itself attacked sites in the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan Erbil with a dozen ballistic missiles, with reports saying the unprecedented assault was meant to derail a plan to pump Kurdish gas to Turkey and Europe.

Iran says the attack targeted Israeli intelligence sites operating in the autonomous Kurdish region.

The former lawmaker said in a tweet on Saturday that Porto’s striker Mehdi Taremi breaking his fast in the middle of a sensitive match is a good advertisement for Islam.

He added that other Iranian players in Europe should be like this.

Motahari, whose father was a famous cleric, has been critical of political suppression in Iran in recent years, but he remains a religious conservative.

Motahari also referred to similar symbolic gestures such as a sajdah -- the act of kneeling and bowing to touches the ground with the forehead – by Egyptian footballer Mohamed Salah after scoring goals, and Real Madrid’s French player Karim Benzema breaking his fast only minutes before an important match against Chelsea.

His comment came as the Islamic Republic is trying to encourage people to observe Islamic traditions. Fewer people have been observing the Muslim fasting period in recent years but police arrest and fine anyone who breaks the rules in public.

As the fasting month of Ramadan started, Iran’s prosecutor-general called on the police to confront those eating and drinking in their cars during daylight.

Every year police enforce a national plan to deal with those who break Ramadan rules in public, and transgressors are sometimes sentenced to months of detention and lashes.