European Lawmakers Meet To Further Discuss IRGC Designation

Prosecutors have charged three members of an Eastern European criminal organization with ties to Iran's government with conspiring to assassinate a journalist and activist who is an American citizen, Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday.

Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Khalid Mehdiyev were charged with murder-for-hire and money laundering for their role in the thwarted Tehran-backed plot, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

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"The victim publicized (the) Iranian government's human rights abuses, discriminatory treatment of women, suppression of democratic participation and expression and use of arbitrary imprisonment, torture and execution," Garland said.

Garland did not name the alleged victim, but Mehdiyev was arrested last year in New York for having a rifle outside the Brooklyn home of journalist Masih Alinejad, a longtime critic of Iran's forced hijab laws who has promoted videos of women violating those laws on social media.

Alinejad has also emerged as a prominent representative of the protest movement that has posed the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic in its 44-year history.

The female activist was the target of an earlier plot in 2021, when US law enforcement informed her of an Iranian plot to kidnap her and take her to Venezuela for eventual transfer to Iran, where she should have faced certain execution.

"This is the second time in the past two years that this Office and our partners at the FBI have disrupted plots originating from within Iran to kidnap or kill this victim for the ‘crime’ of exercising the right to free speech, to independent political thought, and to advocating for the rights of the oppressed and disenfranchised inside Iran," US Attorney Damian Williams said.

Iran has assassinated or kidnapped hundreds of opponents abroad in its four-decade history. Germany, France, Turkey and Iraq were among countries where Iranian intelligence conducted many deadly operations against opponents.

Amirov was arrested on Thursday and will have a pretrial hearing in federal court in Manhattan later on Friday. Omarov was arrested in the Czech Republic earlier this month.

The drill, dubbed Juniper Oak 2023 was widely seen as a message to Iran, although US officials said the live-fire exercise did not include mockups of Iranian targets, but large American bombers did take part.

US and Israeli military ties have been expanding in recent months, as both Washington and Jerusalem pledge not to allow the Islamic Republic to acquire nuclear weapons. Negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal came to a deadlock last September, as Tehran continues to enrich uranium and is said to have enough fissile material for 3-4 bombs.

IDF chief Herzi Halevi said “Israel and the US share the same values, and the IDF and CENTCOM share the same outlook on the threats facing this region,” adding that the drill “raised our level of planning and implementation of combined operations.”

“Israel is capable of defending itself, but it’s always good to have our greatest partner beside us to learn from one another. This operational partnership strengthens our ability to deal with a wide range of security challenges in the region,” Halevi said in remarks published by the IDF.

“Today the partnership between CENTCOM and the IDF is stronger and continues to grow,” said General Michael Kurilla, the commander of CENTCOM. “Our partnership is a key pillar of our commitment to expanding regional security cooperation,” he added.

Fars news website affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard quoted police chief as saying, “This individual today morning entered the Azerbaijani embassy with a gun opened fire and in this incident one person was killed and two were injured.”

He added, “With quick police action the individual was arrested, and an investigation is under way. The person entered the embassy with his two small children. He has indicated that he had personal and family difficulties.”

Other reports say the individual who was armed with an AK-47 assault rifle gained access to the compound when an embassy employee was entering the building.

The Azerbaijani foreign ministry issued a statement saying, "The attacker broke through the guard post, killing the head of security with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.”

It added that an "anti-Azerbaijani campaign" in Iran had contributed to the attack.

In a strongly worded statement, the Azeri ministry also accused Iran of long ignoring Baku's calls to bolster security at its embassy in Tehran.

"Unfortunately, the latest bloody terrorist act demonstrates the serious consequences of the failure to give the necessary attention to our constant appeals in this regard," it said.

Both Iranian and Azerbaijani officials say further information will be issued as the investigation reveals more details.

As hundreds of people demonstrated near the central bank headquarters in Baghdad on Wednesday to protest the devaluation of the Iraqi dinar against the dollar, which has triggered a rise in prices of imported consumer goods, an informed source told Iran International that representatives from the Iraqi government are scheduled to go to US next month to investigate the smuggling of dollars from Iraq to Iran.

People from different Iraqi regions waved Iraqi flags or carried banners demanding government intervention to stop the dinar's decline to around 1,620 to the greenback from 1,470 in November. “Stop the neighbors stealing our dollars,” one banner read, alluding to Iran. The protesters demand that the government must intervene to stop the decline of dinar value because people are suffering from high prices in local markets.

According to Iran International’s source, who asked not to be named, it is not clear whether Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani will head the delegation or not. The visit could take place in early February.

The dinar went into a tailspin against the dollar after the New York Federal Reserve imposed tighter controls on international dollar transactions by commercial Iraqi banks in November to halt the illegal siphoning of dollars to neighboring Iran, which is under tough US sanctions.

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The move blocked more than 80 percent of Iraqi bank transfers. Under the curbs that took effect this month, Iraqi banks must use an online platform to reveal their transaction details. But most private banks have not registered on the platform and resorted to informal black markets in Baghdad to buy dollars.

This has created dollar shortages as demand has outstripped supply and accelerated the dinar's descent against the greenback. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the intensification of pressure on the Islamic Republic has caused the value of Iraq's currency to drop.

Sudani replaced the central bank governor on Monday as he had not taken effective steps to tackle the consequences of the new Fed regulations and their impact on the dinar.

Late in December, an informed source in Baghdad told Iran International that Washington has received reports on Iraq conducting trade with Iran using US dollars despite US sanctions. This source added that the names and bank account numbers that have secretly interacted with Iran have not yet been revealed, but the Biden administration has found out that a large amount of US dollars has been transferred from Iraq to some countries, including Iran.

The Islamic Republic needs Dollars to stabilize its deteriorating economy hit hard by US sanctions imposed since 2018 after then-US President Donald Trump ditched Tehran's nuclear deal with six world powers. Iran's troubled currency has lost more than 30% of its value since nationwide protests following the death in police custody of a young 22-year-old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, on September 16, 2022 that have further isolated the country.

For years, the clerical establishment has used front companies from Iraq to Turkey to obtain the dollars it needs for international transactions and funding its proxy militia forces across the Middle East.

In a face-to-face with our correspondent Arash Alaei, Dennis Ross said that the Islamic Republic has lost its chance to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with making extra demands, noting that now the only move that may kickstart the talks is a halt in Tehran’s uranium enrichment to over five-percent purity. 

Iran should not be enriching to 60 percent or even 20 percent, he said, adding that the Islamic Republic is crossing thresholds that may push the Biden administration to a path that it would not like to pursue, he said. The Biden administration might say “what was on the table is no longer on the table. You had a chance to do the JCPOA and you chose to try to get more,” he added. 

He said that the administration sought a longer and stronger deal since the beginning, speculating that if they want to agree on a deal, it will not be going back to the JCPOA. “The deal has to apply for much longer; it has to be stronger, then there would be readiness to talk about a deal,” he said, foreseeing that Washington would ask Tehran to give up more if it wants to potentially get more.

Ross was the director of policy planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia -- which includes Iran -- to the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

Referring to the recent round of Western sanctions on the Islamic Republic officials, Ross said that this is a message to Tehran that “we are collectively hardening our approach because of the behavior of the Iranian regime.” He added that slapping the Revolutionary Guard with the terrorism label by the Europeans has never been really considered. Ross mentioned the coordination among the US and its allies to close the loopholes so that Iran cannot sell its oil as another measure that showed the world is standing against the regime.

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All of these indicate that “the Islamic Regime needs to understand that life is going to become more difficult for them if they stay in the path they are on,” he underlined. 

The West on Monday stepped up pressure on Iran over its crackdown on protests and arms supply for the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the US, the European Union and United Kingdom imposed fresh sanctions on Tehran. However, the EU stopped short of designating the IRGC a terrorist outfit, as the European Parliament had voted last week to urge the block to do.

He said that the regime is enriching uranium to the levels that have no civilian use, elaborating that Iran “continues to move ahead with its nuclear program. It has 16 cascades of advanced centrifuges – the IR6s -- that are enriching to 60 percent, for which there is no justifiable civilian purpose.” “When you enrich uranium, you can rationalize it saying we’re going to use it to generate electrical power. When you enrich to 60 percent, you have one purpose in mind.” 

The Islamic Republic “has probably four bombs worth of enriched material to 60 percent,” adding that “60 percent is not weapons grade but it’s close to weapons grade,” Ross said. It means it takes very little time for them to turn the fissile material into bombs, he added. “You still have to take that fissile material and take it to weapons. There is a big difference between enrichment, which is taking place in large facilities and the process of weaponization, which can be taking place in facilities that we wouldn’t be aware of,” Ross warned. 

The Middle East expert believes that Iranians are playing with fire. If the Biden administration says, “we will prevent you from having a nuclear weapon, they are pushing the Biden administration towards what will be a military action, even if that's not what the Biden administration would prefer to do.” 

About the joint military war games by the US and Israel -- their biggest so far with thousands of forces, a dozen ships, and 142 aircraft, including nuclear-capable bombers – he said the nature of this maneuver is unprecedented as they have integrated every domain. “They are doing it in space, they are doing it in air with aircraft, they are doing it in cyber, they are doing it on the ground, and they are doing it with naval. All these separate domains, all these separate forces are being integrated between the two and they include suppression of air defenses; it includes B52 bombers,” he added. The scope of such war games “involves a kind of action the US and Israel would be taking if there was a decision to carry out the use of force against Iran’s nuclear program.” He described the drills as a rehearsal or preparation for such an action against Iran, he highlighted.