Islamic Republic's Spending On Qatar Delegation Draws Ire

Ultra-conservative Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi said Thursday that the roots of the current protests lie in ideological and social defeats adding that “Despite having [control over] all the media, organizations, mosques and schools, we [the Islamic Republic] could not achieve the ideological goals.”

He went on to describe the recent protests across Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody as “an alarm before death.”

“When you neglect the wound the pain is felt and you need to take care of it,” added the Iranian official, implying that the regime needs to take difficult decisions to give concessions to the protesting people.

Since protests began against clerical rulers, many officials of the Islamic Republic have debated the root cause of the current situation in various speeches and writings.

Rahimpour Azghadi is regarded as a leading advocate of the ruling clergy and the ideology of a government controlled by the clergy in contrast with traditional Shiite thinking that favors keeping seminarians independent of the government.

Without an in-depth religious education, the conservative ideologue tries to mix conspiracy theories with theological assertions to support the establishment and its policies and provide it with a Shia ideological justification.

The user-initiated change which people began noticing on Wednesday is not unprecedented. In August 2015 the name of the bustling street, which runs nearly 18 km from the south of the capital to north, reverted to Pahlavi for a short time. The state broadcaster IRIB reported the incident at the time and called it “Google’s mischief”.

Similarly, the name of Vozara hotel-apartment on Tehran’s Vozara street, now shows as Mahsa Amini Hotel Apartment, presumably because it was at the morality police headquarters on Vozara street that she had a stroke caused by blows to her head while she was being arrested. On social media there have been many calls to rename the street after her.

Google, however, may have nothing to do with the change, which supporters of monarchy in Iran have hugely welcomed. Although individual users cannot change city, town, village and street names on the maps, names can be altered using Google’s feedback feature of the maps if a large group of users report the names are wrong and suggest alternative.

Google maps may have become a new battleground where the opposition demanding regime change and the authorities and their supporters fight over street and even city names. Both sides have the means to fight the battle, but who wins will remain to be seen.

100%

“This street was built by [Reza Shah] Pahlavi and its name will always remain Pahlavi,” one the many twitterati who welcomed the change wrote.

The boulevard, which is also the longest in the Middle East, has gone through several names since it was completed in 1933 after a construction period of eleven years. The tree-lined road with massive trees on both sides was originally called Pahlavi Avenue, after King Reza Shah Pahlavi, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty.

Like many other roads and even cities and towns, the street was renamed after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The first name chosen by revolutionaries was Mossadeq, after Mohammad Mossadeq, the former nationalist prime minister under the Shah who was venerated by many for nationalizing Iran's oil.

Two and half years after the revolution, when Islamists had consolidated their power in the country and completely driven nationalists to the sidelines, the road was once again renamed, this time to Valiasr, to reflect the change. Valiasr (vali-ye asr) refers to Imam Mahdi, an Arab descendant of Prophet Mohammad, who Shiites believers say has been in occultation since the 9th century AD.

In the coming years many other place names underwent similar changes. Most new roads, squares, and highways were named after historical and contemporary Islamic figures such as Sheikh Fazlollah [Nouri] (1843-1909).

Nouri was a Qajar period cleric and politician who was hanged as a traitor by revolutionaries during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911) for defending the old order and opposing constitutionalism and the establishment of a parliament. While the religious establishment venerates Fazlollah and calls him a shahid (martyr), to many ordinary Iranians to this day Fazlollah is a symbol of reactionary religious establishment because he supported the king’s coup against the constitutionalists and opposed modernization of the country.

Khorasan daily says the water storage of 10 important dams have decreased 25 to 75 percent in comparison to the past years.

Seventy days into autumn, statistics show that the level of precipitation has been extremely low in different provinces of Iran.

Amid popular protests and the ado for the World Cup a report on social media went unattended within the past few days: “Tehran’s dams only have water for a few days.”

Mohammad Baqerzadeh in a report on Etemad daily December 1 says if there is no drastic improvement in the situation, rationing of water would be implemented in some cities.

He says the water level at five major dams around Tehran have almost decreased 50 percent and now around half of people in the capital have turned to underground water extraction.

Firouz Qasemzadeh, a Spokesperson of Iranian Water Industry says in comparison with the long-term average of the past fifty years, there has been a 16% decrease in rainfall across Iran.

An inefficient agricultural sector, over-grazing of rangelands and forests, aggressive over-extraction of groundwater resources, and most importantly the regime’s mismanagement are among the main causes of water bankruptcy in Iran.

Prosecutor General of Tehran Ali Alghasi-Mehr said on Wednesday that the probe into the cyberattack against Fars news, a cultural propaganda machine with close links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is because a significant database of personal information of journalists and employees has been leaked.

However, it seems that the investigation has been launched because the authorities are not sure what has been hacked and what database has been breached.

A new word has been coined to refer to the large amount of data leaked from the hack: Farsgate.

A 123-page document, a copy of which Iran International obtained, is among the material the hacktivist group Black Reward uncovered. The document which includes both hearsay and excerpts from domestic and foreign-based Persian media was made in one copy only for the eyes of the IRGC chief commander Hossein Salami. Earlier in the week, Black Reward also released some audio files from a meeting between Qasem Qoreyshi, the deputy commander of the paramilitary Basij and media representatives.

100%

Black Reward announced on Friday, November 25, that it had attacked the database of Fars News Agency claiming that it deleted nearly 250 terabytes of data from all the servers and computers of the website and obtained confidential bulletins sent by the news agency to the office of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The report revealed a lot of recent orders by Khamenei about the ongoing protests that have engulfed the country since mid-September following the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini in the custody of morality police. Now, after several batches of information were leaked to the media, the authorities have started a damage control campaign to seize back the narrative, as most of the data prove that the Islamic Republic is frustrated and weary over its inability to end the protests.

The secret reports also revealed that most Iranians are getting ready for a revolution in the country as the popularity of the regime has dwindled, even among those considered supporters of the Islamic Republic. According to the documents, the level of dissatisfaction is so high that Khamenei has ordered some fundamental change in the structure of the regime in order to prevent a collapse.

The reports came as the protests in the country show no sign of ending and the movement has been spreading at universities and turning into strikes of employees in the industrial and services sectors, such as truckers.

While Iranian universities have turned into a battleground for antigovernment protests, students and professors in more than 150 universities around the world held events in support of the protests in Iran.

Meanwhile in Iran, Rasoul Jalili, the president of Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, said on Wednesday that the university has increased its security staff by recruiting forces from private security companies. The measure is probably aimed at silencing those who criticize the university for allowing government security forces – especially the IRGC’s Basij paramilitary forces – to enter the campus to crack down on student rallies and sit-ins. If the measure proves successful, it can serve as a model for other universities to clamp down on students.

While Iranians have planned to hold three days of nationwide protests next week – 5-7 December – strikes by employees of industrial factories and truckers have injected fresh blood to the uprising.

Truck drivers and owners in several cities such as Esfahan, Bandar Abbas, Qazvin, and Kermanshah as well as many other western cities refrained from moving goods in support of the protests and strikes by industrial workers. Many people on social media describe the strike by the truckers as a significant blow to the Islamic Republic since it has the potential to cripple the economy. Some people say, “the truckers are leading the revolutionary uprising.” 

Iran’s Mizan News Agency, which is affiliated with the Judiciary, said Wednesday that the four, who had been arrested back in June, have been “destroying private and public property and obtaining fake confessions.”

The Islamic Republic has long accused arch-enemy Israel of carrying out covert operations on its soil. However, it has not provided evidence to prove its claims against those who received the death penalty. Iran’s judiciary never holds such trials transparently and it is not clear if such trials have indeed been held.

Throughout the years, due process has not been implemented during political and security trials while the Islamic Republic often accuses Israel and the West of having spies in the country.

This time the identities of the accused have been announced, alleging that “with guidance from the Israeli intelligence service, this network of thugs” were committing crimes.

Israeli is believed to have been behind assassinations and acts of sabotage against Iran’s nuclear facilities, but no one was ever put on trial for these incidents.

On Wednesday, three other people were handed prison sentences of between five and 10 years for alleged crimes such as acting against national security and possessing illegal weapons.

International community and human rights organizations have repeatedly expressed concerns about Islamic Republic’s detentions, sham trials, and the death sentence for people.