Israel Will Pay For Attacks On Damascus, Aleppo – Syria

Many Iranian-Canadians whose family members were killed in a wave of prison executions in 1988, gathered on Wednesday at Queen's Park in Downtown Toronto, Ontario. In 2013, the Canadian parliament condemned the killing of about 5,000 dissidents, and proclaimed September 1 as Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Iran Day in remembrance of the victims.

The participants called on the international community to hold the Islamic Republic accountable for its crimes against humanity as well as its crackdown on dissent. 

Demanding justice for the victims of the 1988 mass executions and an end to impunity for Iranian leaders, including President Ebrahim Raisi, they echoed calls by several US politicians that have urged President Joe Biden to deny a visa to the Iranian president, who plans to travel to the UN in New York in September. Raisi is accused of being a member of a death commission that ordered the summary executions.

Raisi’s election as president last June sparked interest in his role in the executions. Agnes Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, immediately demanded that the United Nations Human Rights Council investigate him for crimes against humanity.

Most of the approximately 5,000 prisoners executed in 1988 were members or sympathizers of the Albania-based exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) serving their sentences, with a lower number of executions of leftists. The MEK has claimed 30,000 members died, and in 2019 launched a booklet Crimes Against Humanity naming 5,000.

During a Thursday ceremony to commemorate the occasion of Iran’s Air Defense Day, Ahmad Vahidi -- himself a Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) general -- said the Islamic Republic is among the top countries in the world in terms of its air defense capabilities.

He said Iran is so advanced in radar systems that can detect and destroy all the enemies’ flying objects, and that in the missile sector, the country is again in the top tier in long, medium and short-range missiles, noting that “all these equipment are indigenous and domestically produced."

Similar remarks about the country’s air defense systems were made by the top brass of the military, including Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, the Army’s Commander-in-Chief Abdolrahim Mousavi, and IRGC’s chief commander Hossein Salami, as well as Ghader Rahimzadeh, the commander of the joint air defenses headquarters of the Army and IRGC.

Salami said some top powers in the world have purchased military and defense equipment from Iran and are now using them.

The remarks came as Russia has faced "numerous failures" with Iranian-made drones acquired from Tehran last month for use in Ukraine, and many people are still irate about the downing of Flight PS752 in 2020.

The airliner was shot down by two air-defense missiles fired by the IRGC as it took off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. All 176 passengers and crew, including 63 Canadians and 10 from Sweden, as well as 82 Iranian citizens died in the disaster.

According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), security forces stormed a small gathering at the home of one of the Baha’i families in the city and detained them. 

Late in August, UN experts and Amnesty International expressed deep concern over Iran’s persecution of Baha’is and urged an end to pressure on religious and other minorities.

The Shia clergy consider the Baha’i faith as a heretical sect. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has on several occasions called the Baha'i faith a cult and in a religious fatwa in 2018 forbade contact, including business dealings, with followers of the faith.

Bahai’s, who number around 300,000 in Iran, cannot hold jobs in the public sector and are sometimes sacked from their jobs in the private sector under pressure from authorities. They are also deprived of higher education.

Informed sources told Iran International earlier in August that at least 90 Baha'i students have been barred from universities this year due to a secret government policy.

In early August, security forces laid siege to Roshankouh, a village in Mazandaran province, and started demolishing houses and farms belonging to members of the persecuted Baha’i faith.

Several countries including Canada, the United States, and Britain have expressed concern over the Islamic Republic’s systematic prosecution, harassment, and discrimination against the Baha'i minority.

According to security officials, at least four people were killed in the center of Basra, Iraq's main oil-producing center, in the latest bout of violence as the country is struggling with a political crisis that pits followers of the influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr against Iran-aligned parties and paramilitary groups.

According to Iran International’s correspondent, among those killed overnight was an Iraqi army commander who was shot dead by the militias of the Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq forces, affiliated with the Islamic Republic.

Urging the Iran-backed group to control their forces, Sadr’s spokesman warned Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq against reckless behavior.

Violence erupted in Iraq this week as armed supporters of Sadr fought with security forces and Iran-aligned gunmen in Baghdad in the fiercest street battles the capital has seen for years. Relative calm had been restored after Sadr urged all his supporters to leave the streets following the clashes that killed about 30 people. The unrest initially broke out on Monday, August 29, hours after Sadr announced he was quitting politics.

An intractable political deadlock between the two rival Shiite camps has left Iraq without a government since an October election, in which the Sadrist bloc won the most seats but was unable to gain its share of political power after months of haggling that has failed to produce a new administration. The Sadrists withdrew from parliament June 13, prompting supporters to storm the building in July and remain encamped outside ever since.

Syria’s state news agency (SANA) reported material damage at the airport, saying, "At around 20:00 hours (17:00 GMT), the Israeli enemy targeted Aleppo International Airport with missile fire, causing material damage at the heart of the facility.” 

The UK-based war monitor, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that four Israeli missiles had targeted the runway and depots at the airport.

According to Syrian military sources, air defense systems near Latakia, located southwest of Aleppo, were activated in an attempt to intercept the missiles headed towards Aleppo. Shortly after the strike in Aleppo, Israeli airstrikes targeted sites near Damascus International Airport and other targets south of Damascus, with Syrian air defenses downing “a number of missiles.”

Sabereen News, a channel close to Iran-backed forces in Syria reported that Israel targeted Aleppo airport to prevent a US sanctioned Iranian plane – belonging to the Yas Air cargo airline -- from landing as it appeared to be descending, adding that the plane changed course to Damascus so the Israeli aircraft returned and bombed Damascus airport. 

Pouya Air – also known as Yas Air – is an Iranian cargo airline that has been owned by Pars Aviation Services Company (PASC), which the UN Security Council has identified as an entity affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). According to the US Department of the Treasury, it has transported illicit cargo to Iranian proxies in the region on behalf of the IRGC Quds Force (IRGC-QF).

The Wednesday attack was the first alleged Israeli airstrike to target the Aleppo airport since 2019 and the second time Israel targeted a Syrian airport this year. On June 10, Israel bombed the Damascus International Airport, causing the airport to go completely out of service for a period of two weeks.

The airstrikes come less than a week after similar airstrikes targeted the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in Masyaf, located southwest of Aleppo, reportedly destroying more than 1,000 Iranian-made missiles. The Observatory for Human Rights said the attack targeted a missile warehouse in the SSRC complex that stored thousands of medium-range, surface-to-surface missiles assembled under the supervision of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s “expert officers.”

The observatory added that 14 Syrian civilians sustained injuries with varying levels of severity during the Masyaf airstrike, in addition to casualties reported among Iranian-backed militias guarding the research center– which was heavily damaged during the attack.

In addition to the strikes attributed to Israel, the United States also engaged in a string of tit-for-tat attacks last week against Iranian militias in northern Syria who had targeted US forces with rockets and drones.

Iran-backed militias established a foothold in Syria while fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad during Syria's civil war.

The airstrikes came just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke with US President Joe Biden about the continuing efforts by the US, EU and Iran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. During the conversation, Lapid also welcomed recent US strikes on Iran-backed militias in eastern Syria.