Exiled Queen Hails Iranian Women For Struggle Against Oppression

Morteza Mousavi, the deputy police commander of Alborz province close to the capital, said on Friday that the assault happened Thursday evening. He was taken to the hospital and is now in stable condition. 

The attacker was only identified as an Iranian and a self-proclaimed follower of Muhammad al-Mahdi, believed by the Twelver Shiites to be the last of the Imams and the eschatological Mahdi, who will emerge in the end of time to establish peace and justice and redeem Islam.

Several Iranian clerics have come under attack by angry Iranians recently as rising prices and constant protests have led to a tense environment in the country.

Earlier in July, a congregational prayer imam was injured in an assassination attempt by an assailant on a motorcycle in the city of Esfahan.

In early June, the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader in the central city of Esfahan was attacked by a young man carrying a knife. And in April, a man stabbed three clerics in Iran's largest Shiite shrine in Mashhad, killing two of them.

Earlier in the year, a senior Islamic scholar said that clerics and seminary students are avoiding their usual garb for fear of being insulted in public, as the people in Iran blame the clergy for the current hardships they experience, including high prices and corruption. Another well-known cleric also talked about the growing hatred and grudge towards the clergy in January, warning of a crisis unfolding in society.

Fars news website, with close links to the IRGC, published a video this week of a woman, identified as Elham Farshad, who confessed that she was angry, and insulted a clergyman who was admonishing her over her hijab. In the video she was remorseful and expressed regret. 

According to information obtained by Iran International, agents of the Intelligence Ministry arrested Farshad at his home on July 13, and transferred her to the Ward 209 of Evin Prison, a detention center controlled by the ministry. After ten days, she was released from prison with a bail of 5 billion rials (about $17,000), after they filmed her confessing to wrongdoing under duress. 

An informed source told Iran International that the woman who was forced to confess in the video was not Rashno and that the video is the confessions of another woman on the bus who got into a fight with the hijab enforcer and got her hand injured.

Iran’s security organs have also started arresting women who participated in a nationwide civil disobedience campaign against hijab on July 12 and sent videos to US-based women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad.

Following a call by women’s rights activists for civil disobedience with the hashtag of ‘No2Hijab’ social media exploded with dozens of videos and photos of women unveiling in public.

In the past few weeks, the government has increased harassment of women for their insufficient hijab and many have been detained by special police patrols.

Iran’s Supreme Leader claimed Wednesday that the anti-hijab movement is nothing but a Western plot, much like his depiction of all problems as plots by enemies.

In a tweet on Thursday, Deborah Lipstadt said, “We denounce this continued, egregious antisemitism,” adding that “This rhetoric is unacceptable – not to mention dangerous – especially from a head of state.”

Calling on the Islamic Republic to end its antisemitic stance towards the world, she said, “It must cease.”

She was replying to a tweet by Khamenei’s official account who said a day earlier, July 27, that described the Western powers as “mafia,” noting that “At the top of this mafia stand the prominent Zionist merchants, and the politicians obey them. The US is their showcase, and they’re spread out everywhere.”

His remarks came as tensions have been simmering between Iran and Israel in the recent weeks with Israel making alliances with the regional countries against the Islamic Republic and Tehran claiming that it has dealt severe blows to Israel without mentioning any concrete event. 

Earlier in the week, Israel’s envoy to the United Nations Gilad Erdan told Iran International that Iran is enriching uranium almost to military-grade, noting that “This is a clear threat to the security of our region and to the whole world. It needs to be addressed by this Security Council, and this Council is silent.”

According to local media the ground collapsed at 7:40 in Sepah Ave in central Tehran. Chief of Tehran police information center, Ali-Asghar Sharifi, told the media that police and other authorities were working at the scene to secure the area and redirect traffic. The incident had no casualties.

There have long been concerns about earthquakes in Tehran as it sits on tectonic fault lines. Ground subsidence, however, resulting from drought and excessive extraction of water which is likely to become more serious in the future adds a new concern and danger to the densest population center in Iran.

Ground subsidence in urban areas can result in power outages, bursting of gas pipes, deformation of rails, emergence of sinkholes, tilting of buildings, and appearance of cracks and ditches in roads and even loss of human life.

Mohammad Aghamiri, chairman of Tehran City Council’s development committee on Thursday described ground subsidence as a time bomb ticking under the city and criticized the authorities for only watching idly without taking any measures to prevent disaster from happening.

This is not the first instance of ground subsidence in Tehran where smaller fractures and cracks are quickly becoming common in some areas of the city, particularly south and southwest.

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According to the latest official data by Iran’s Geological Organization, the rate of subsidence in the plains around Tehran was between 17 and 24 centimeters per year. The deputy chairman of the environment committee of Tehran City Council, Mehdi Babaei, said recently that ground has subsided by as much as 20 centimeters (8 inches) a year near Shahriyar in southern Tehran.

Ali Saberi, a geologist told local media in 2021 that one million hectares of land in the country is affected by subsidence and the main cause is unlimited extraction of ground water.

Intel Lab intelligence and imagery consulting firm in July 2021 said a brief study it had conducted based on a dataset of 14 pairs of satellite images showing various areas of Greater Tehran indicated a maximum average subsidence rate of 4 centimeters/year.

Huge cracks and hollows that resemble meteor craters have appeared in other parts of the country. In urban areas subsidence has caused cracks in walls and in roads.

One of the most affected areas is the historical city of Esfahan in central Iran where the damage to monuments and the international airport have been cause of much concern.There are photos on social media of huge cracks in the ground around the airport, and of hollows in and around Esfahan’s historical buildings.

Iran has been experiencing consecutive droughts for more than a decade in addition to what many lawmakers and journalists have called years of water mismanagement. Illegal deep wells drilled all over the country for irrigation of agricultural land have depleted underground water reserves in many areas.

Alireza Shahidi, head of Iran’s Geological Organization said in March that land subsidence is a “silent earthquake” that can lead to political and security crises.

Former political prisoner and civil rights activist Arash Sadeghi said on Wednesday that the sentence the prisoner who was tried for theft was executed in Evin prison infirmary. 

The sentence was reportedly carried out with a guillotine-like device in the presence of the prosecutor and judicial officials.

This is the second amputation sentence in the prison in less than two months. In June, four fingers of another prisoner were cut off with the guillotine reportedly installed at the infirmary a month earlier to carry out such sentences. 

Earlier in July, the chief prosecutor of Iran’s Khorasan Razavi province said several cases of amputations for robbery are currently at the execution stage, and called on judges not to hesitate to issue death and amputation sentences. 

Late in June, the head of the Iranian association of surgeons, Iraj Fazel, called on the judiciary not to sanction the amputation of fingers to punish thieves, describing the practice as "worrying and horrifying."

According to Islamic Sharia law, punishment for theft can be amputation of fingers or hands.

Iran’s judicial system is repeatedly criticized for ignoring standard human rights while right groups say the country has embarked on an execution spree at a “horrifying pace” with at least 251 deaths since the beginning of 2022. 

On Wednesday, four people were executed while one of them – identified as Mohsen Safari and charged over drug trafficking – was suffering from bipolar disorder, a condition that can make one act on impulsive decisions with no regard for consequences.