Political Prisoners Call For Aid To Iran Quake Victims

Early reports indicate hundreds of people have died in Turkey and in Syria and the number of casualties is increasing as search and rescue crews search destroyed buildings.

Salman Navvab Nouri is quoted by the official IRNA news website as saying “The Islamic Republic of Iran will be beside the people of Aleppo as it was in the past and all will deploy all its capacities to assist the victims…”

Israel has offered assistance to Turkey that has declared a high-level alert, requesting international assistance.

The government in Tehran has not yet issued a statement offering aid, but it is expected that Iran will focus any assistance on Syria, its regional ally.

Tehran might face a difficult political question if it commits large resources to Syria, since the victims of an earthquake in northwest Iran last week are still in a desperate situation, complaining of lack of shelter and food amid winter cold.

Most Iranians are also critical of the Islamic government's decade-old military intervention in Syria and the expenditure of tens of billion of dollars in the war.

The offer by the Iranian diplomat to help Aleppo comes as the city was mostly destroyed in 2015-2016 when Russia and Iran used overwhelming and indiscriminate bombardment to force Syrian rebels out of the area. Thousands of civilians died in the battle.

The WSJ quoted officials from a country aligned with the US as saying that a high-level Iranian delegation traveled to Russia in early January to visit the site for the factory and decide on details to kick off the project.

The Iranian delegation was reportedly led by both sanctioned Brigadier Geneneral Abdollah Mehrabi, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization, and Ghassem Damavandian, the chief executive of Iran’s Quds Aviation Industry.

The Islamic Republic has already provided Russia with hundreds of drones it has used to hit military and civilian targets in Ukraine.

The officials say the drone factory is part of a $1 billion deal between the two allies. Moscow has provided Iran with weapons seized on the battlefield in Ukraine that they are trying to reverse engineer, the officials added.

The Biden administration has warned that Russia and Iran are developing a “full-fledged defense partnership.” The White House says Moscow was training Iranian pilots to fly Russian jet fighters, with the intent of providing Tehran with the fighters by year’s end.

They announced that "they will do their best to advance this proposal and a peaceful and non-violent transition to a completely democratic and developed Iranian structure."

Leading reformist politician, Mostafa Tajzadeh and the daughter of Iran former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Faezeh Hashemi, who are behind bars, are among the signatories.

“The only way out of the impasse for the government is to surrender to the right of the people to determine their own destiny,” reads he statement.

In a statement on Saturday, Mousavi, a presidential candidate in 2009, who has been under house arrest since 2011, said Iran needs “fundamental change” based on “Woman, Life, Freedom” and a referendum on the constitution.

Referring to government violence against protesters, he said the rulers of the Islamic Republic are not willing “to take the smallest step to meet the demands of the people.”

Mousavi in his statement implicitly repeated what exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi has been saying for years, and other opposition activists have echoed in the past five months – transition from the Islamic Republic.

Iranians have been hotly debating the need to form an opposition council to manage the protest movement and plan for transition to a new form of government. So far, there are no signs that prominent activists abroad are about to untie.

In a letter addressed to the heads of the three government branches published Sunday, Tavakkoli, who is a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, said that the measure is in obvious violation of the country’s constitution. 

He argued that this manner of running the government is similar to the behavior of a drug addict who cannot afford to buy his drugs and decides to sell off its belongings to support his addiction. 

"At the beginning of the addiction, the addict spends his income on buying drugs, but after the income is not enough, he starts selling his properties and furniture," Tavakkoli said. 

Tavakkoli, himself considered a regime insider, criticized the plan despite Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s full-fledged support for the scheme.

The Islamic Republic has recently embarked on a journey to raise capital by selling public properties, a move that has people, experts and politicians concerned about possible corruption. Similar past schemes implemented without proper rules and transparency have ended in scandals.

It involves the liquidation of billions of dollars of assets belonging to the government and its affiliated entities including banks under the supervision of a seven-man team with extraordinary powers and immunity from prosecution.

Khamenei has approved the plan, which is not a real privatization scheme. Well-connected and powerful buyers who are often secretive funds and endowments run by powerful officials are lined up to gobble up the prize.

Netanyahu told the weekly meeting of his cabinet that “At the center of our long conversation, I must say, was our common goal - to fight Iran's attempt to obtain nuclear weapons and a nuclear arsenal.”

Netanyahu further noted that he cannot recall a time when the two sides had been so close to an agreement regarding their positions on Iran.

However, he underlined that it is “not the same position, but the positions are much closer,” adding that the positions of Israel and the United States regarding Iran have also become closer.

Netanyahu, who traveled to France on his first official foreign trip after regaining power, met with Macron at the Elysee Palace February 2, and discussed Iran's nuclear threats and deterring this country's actions in the region.

After the meeting, in a statement released by the Elysee Macron called for “firmness in the face of Iran’s headlong rush, which if continued would inevitably have consequences.”

The French president also reiterated “that Iranian support for Russian aggression in Ukraine exposes Iran to sanctions and increasing isolation.”