Singer Selena Gomez Expresses Support For Iranian Dancing Girls

Like in the previous weeks, Mowlavi Abdolahamid delivered a moving Friday sermon, saying that a single ideology cannot and should not be the only dominant view in the country. "One ethnic group and one religion cannot rule the country,” he stated. 

Iran is ruled by Shiite Islamic sect ideology and clerics since the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy.

Decrying the domination of a single religious view in the country as the cause of Iran's political deadlock, Abdolhamid said that “Iran is a rainbow of ethnicities, religions and pluralities,” suppressed by the ruling religious view for the past 44 years. The Islamic Republic has not been able to establish equality and balance among such a variety of views while ideas have failed the nation.

Implicitly calling for a secular democracy, Abdolhamid said that the Islamic Republic has limited the Iran’s potential with its narrow interpretation of religion in governing the country. 

He said that the regime has prevented meritocracy by preventing people of other ideologies from acquiring positions and important roles in the government. He pointed out that Sunni Iranians have no significant role in the judiciary and administration even at local level. 

“Our dear Shia friends also complain about such discrimination, saying that that qualified individuals, who are not very committed to religious practices but are capable academics, thinkers and worthy managers have been discriminated against,” he added. 

He emphasized that the "rainbow" is the right metaphor for the diversities in Iran, denouncing the dominant religious ideology for not creating equality for other ideas. 

"Today, a military and security point of view prevails throughout Iran, but no country whose ruling point of view is security and military will develop," he said. The view of the government should be comprehensive and national, not religious, because the religious view will fail, he noted. 

Comparing the current value of the national currency with that of the Pahlavi era before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he criticized the narrow and religious view of the ruling power of the country that has damaged the principles of Islam in the country.

The Iranian rial has dropped from 70 against the US dollar in 1979 to 470,000 currently. 

He condemned "torture, beating, killing and violation of people's rights," saying that the oppression of others is "worse than polytheism and disbelief.”

"The presence of police officers in the streets should be avoided,” he added. “In many countries, when security is high, there is no need for a visible police presence since the people's general trust in the government is strong."

Activists reported a large presence of security forces in the restive city as hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets, chanting "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom," "We don’t want the Islamic Republic" and "Political prisoners must be released."

Zahedan is the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan Province, home to Iran's Sunni Baluch minority of up to two million people.

Residents have been holding protest rallies every Friday since September 30 when security forces killed nearly 90 people, in the deadliest incident so far in the nationwide demonstrations triggered by the September death in custody of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini. 

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported Thursday that an Appeals Court in Markazi Province sentenced Mohammad Arman to 18 months in prison and a fine of 150 million rials (nearly 300 USD).

Arman received the sentence for “spreading falsehood,” added HRANA quoting an informed source as saying that Arman’s social media pages have also been removed.

This verdict was upheld while dozens of lawyers in Iran have been arrested by the security agencies in recent months amid the nationwide protests and some of them are still in prison.

These lawyers were representing political prisoners, and many of their families.

A few days earlier, the lawyer representing Mahsa Amini's family, the woman whose death led to mass unrest in Iran, was also arraigned by a revolutionary court for "propaganda against the state".

Saleh Nikbakht was summoned to the second branch of the Revolutionary Prosecutor's Office located in Evin prison in Tehran after he gave interviews with journalists abroad.

The Law Society Gazette, which is a British weekly legal magazine for solicitors in England says at least 66 lawyers have been arrested and detained in Iran since protests started last September, including 11 who have been sentenced, while 47 were released on bail.

Speaking to the Guardian on Thursday, Richard Ratcliffe criticized British officials, saying that they are losing interest in hostages after negative publicity surrounding his wife’s detention has subsided.

“One year on, I do find it upsetting how the government won’t say how many Brits are currently held hostage by Iran, that they tried to imply to parliament this week that states do not take hostages, and that since Nazanin’s case, they have not recognized the torture of any British citizen by a foreign government,” he added.

The Foreign Office minister, David Rutley, told the foreign affairs select committee on Monday that the UK did not believe a state could act as hostage taker, and instead uses the term “arbitrary detention for diplomatic leverage”.

Liam Byrne, a Labour MP said that hostage families needed a single point of contact who had a reporting line to the UK prime minister “to knock the proverbial heads of government together”.

However, the Foreign Office stated, “The UK will never accept our nationals being used as political leverage and we continue to press Iran to end this abhorrent practice.”

Ratcliffe raised his criticism on the first anniversary of the release of Nazanin Zaghari, who had earlier criticized London for the process of her release.

The motion, which passed by 516 votes in favor, five against and 14 abstentions on Thursday, vehemently condemned “this atrocious attempt to silence women and girls in Iran,” and expressed “its deep solidarity with the Iranian students poisoned in the incidents and with their families.”

According to reports by state media and Iranian officials, more than 1,300 pupils, mostly girls, have fallen ill after "suspected poisonings'', with some politicians blaming religious groups opposed to girls’ education. Some activists have accused the regime of orchestrating the poisonings as revenge for the active role by schoolgirls in the protests ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last September.

Urging authorities to ensure girls have non-discriminatory access to education, MEPs called on the Islamic Republic to repeal any legislation that discriminates against girls and women, saying that since the wave of attacks started in November 2022, thousands of girls and women across Iran have been poisoned with toxic chemicals to prevent them from attending school. 

It called on the Iranian authorities to grant full access to the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Reiterating its condemnation of “the regime’s anti-women and anti-girls policies,” the European Parliament reaffirmed “its absolute support for Iranian women’s and girls’ demand to abolish all systemic discrimination.”

The resolution also decried the regime’s months-long failure to act on the serial poisonings, as well as its deliberate suppression of credible reports of systematic toxic attacks. Denouncing any politically motivated legal proceedings against those reporting on the poisonings, the resolution called for the immediate unconditional release of all those imprisoned or prosecuted.

The parliament also repeated its call on the Council of Europe to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – IRGC -- as a terrorist organization and to expand the EU sanctions list under the EU Global Human Rights sanctions mechanisms to include Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi, and Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri for their role in rights violations. 

The nine-point resolution also urged EU member states to facilitate the issuance of visas, asylum and emergency grants to those who need to leave Iran, "particularly women and girls". However, a point that was included in the proposed resolution but did not pass was a call “for the European institutions to reflect on the deeply rooted protest movement of Iranian women.” It sought to urge Europe to acknowledge “that this movement goes beyond the defense of women’s rights, advocating for a democratic state in Iran instead of a violent and reactionary theocracy.”

The Iranian government, police and judiciary have not issued a transparent and definitive report on the chemical attacks, vaguely claiming that dozens of arrests were made, without any sign of court action against alleged perpetrators.

Alinejad said in a tweet on Thursday that she urged Mark Rutte during their meeting to isolate the Islamic Republic and instead of meeting with regime officials, meet with the coalition of opposition forces.

“We the people of Iran deserve to have a secular democracy like the one you have in Netherlands. Our demand is simple: democratic countries should support pro-democracy movements instead of trading with our killers,” added Alinejad.

She went on to say that she informed Prime Minister Rutte of the torture and rape of minors in the prisons of Islamic Republic.

In another tweet she stated, “I hope all democratic leaders support the pro-democracy movements. A secular democratic Iran will make the world a much safer place. We have to stop the Islamic republic from raping, torturing and killing teenagers for demanding Freedom.”

In response, the Dutch prime minister told Alinejad that many countries in the EU are in favor of sanctioning IRGC and that he is working on the matter.

Despite the adoption of a resolution in the European Parliament to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group. The Revolutionary Guard, which is a military and intelligence force, playing the main role in suppressing Iranians, is not still recognized by the European Union as a terrorist group. The United States designated the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019.