Iran Lawmakers Plan To Impeach Foreign Minister Over Sanctions – MP

Mowlavi Abdolhamid was speaking on Friday, as Iran’s Sunni minority celebrated the holiday, despite Supreme Leader Khamenei decreeing that Eid is on Saturday.

Addressing the devaluation of the rial, he observed that even government officials and members of the armed forces are unhappy with the current situation, saying: "It seems that the government is unable to solve this problem.

"People are tired of this situation. There is a need for big changes in the country, and people will not achieve their wishes with minor changes."

Abdolhamid, the unofficial voice of the country’s Sunni community – about 10% of Iran’s population of 88 million – announced Friday as Eid al-Fitr, celebrated by Muslims worldwide as the end of the month-long dawn-to-sunset fasting of Ramadan.

In Iran, in the last days of the month of Ramadan, several groups of experts representing Khamenei go to the different zones of the country to determine the date of the festival.

Although he did not mention Khamenei by name, Abdolhamid appeared to criticize the Supreme Leader, saying that "Islam should not be harmed by the behavior of the officials."

While stressing the importance of "territorial integrity" and "national security", he said that "protests and free speech are people's right.”

Although the coincidence could be the result of rivalry between various media outlets to come up with scoops, the question "Why now?" remains valid.

In the absence of official explanations about why these reports are being published now, some conspiracy theorists maintain that the publication of successive reports about the assassinations may be intended to scare regime insiders who occasionally criticize Khamenei and his hard-headed resistance to change while the country is in deep political and economic crisis. 

The latest revelation about an assassination attempt on former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani dates back to 2014 when he was the Chairman of Iran's Expediency Council. The allegation refers to the unpublished parts of Rafsanjani’s memoires saying that security officials arrested a man on charges of setting fire to the offices of two of his secretaries.

Rafsanjani’s family has access to the unpublished volumes of his memoirs.

Rafsanjani who had previously escaped an assassination attempt in 1979, asked the Interior Ministry months later why the case had remained inconclusive. The ministry said that the assassin was handed over to the relevant authorities.

Rafsanjani who was worried about a possible attempt on his own life after being disqualified from running in the 2013 presidential election, further chased the case, but he was told that the authorities cannot trust the assassin's confessions as he made them under duress.

According to memoirs, later, the IRGC changed the story and claimed that the man wanted to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Subsequently, the IRGC insisted on changing Rafsanjani's bodyguards. The former President opposed the idea, and asked Khamenei to intervene. Khamenei ordered the IRGC not to change Rafsanjani's bodyguards, but the IRGC went ahead and retired some of the bodyguards and replaced others, said Rafsanjani's son Mohsen.

Rafsanjani was Iran's President from 1988 to 1997. The media reported that his successor, the reformist Mohammad Khatami who was in office from 1987 to 2005, was also the target of an assassination attempt in 1999 that never happened. According to these reports, a member of his security team had planned to assassinate Khatami but when he sought a fatwa from Grand Ayatollahs for his murder, one of the clerics told the security agencies that a man was planning to kill Khatami.

The security team, instead of further chasing the case or interrogating the assassin, gave him leave of absence for some time, during which the man went to his hometown in Lorestan Province where he planted a bomb near a government office and was subsequently arrested and the courts began to investigate the assassination attempt on Khatami. According to -then- Deputy Intelligence Minister Saeed Hajjarian, the man was sentenced to just three years in jail.

However, Khatami ordered his office to lend financial assistance to his family members while he was in jail. Khatami later forgave the man and declared that he has no complaint against him, said Hajjarian.

Ironically, a few months later, another assassin attacked Hajjarian and left him physically impaired.

According to Etemad Online, Farshad Toolabi, the assassin who wanted to Kill Khatami later told reporters that he had considered many different ways to kill Khatami, but he finally decided to kill him during a suicide attempt by triggering an explosive vest as he pretended to hug Khatami. Toolabi said that at the time, he was a 30-year-old IRGC captain serving with the security team at the President's Office.

He also said that he was interrogated by intelligence agencies for 18 months before he was finally released from jail after Khatami intervened. He told reporters that he still wishes to see Khatami and thank him for facilitating his release.

The claim was made in an article published on Rouhani’s personal website Monday which also refuted that he had opposed seeking damages as a result of Donald Trump’s sanctions.

Rouhani’s hardliner opponents charged in March that the former president opposed demanding compensation from the US during talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Rouhani’s website alleged that the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi included the issue of compensation on the agenda of the talks in Vienna “as a new demand" or “possibly to claim [an extra] achievement for itself,” if it was accepted.

“The claim that Dr. Rouhani opposed seeking compensation from the US was made by the negotiating team’s media advisor [Mohammad Marandi] after the failure to include the topic in [the agenda of] talks or in the draft of the agreement,” the article said.

In late March in a video interview with London-based pro-regime activist Ali Alizadeh, Marandi claimed that Rouhani’s foreign minister, Mohammad-Javad Zarif,

had suggested to Rouhani that Iran should seek compensation but Rouhani opposed the suggestion and Zarif was offended.

“I personally, and others, told Dr. Zarif that we must ask the US for compensation. This does not mean the US would [actually] pay compensation. You say you should pay compensation so that you can score points elsewhere. Zarif did that but Mr. Rouhani said in a cabinet meeting that this was not required,” Marandi said, adding that Zarif told him his hands were tied because Rouhani was opposed to it.

A few days later, the reformist Jamaran News claimed that a “former member of the negotiation team” has denied any discussion of the payment of compensation between Zarif and Marandi.

“The former member of the negotiation team said seeking compensation from the US for withdrawing from the JCPOA was a failed plan by the current team which they are trying to blame the previous administration for,” Jamaran wrote.

“We don’t currently intend to speak about the damages we have incurred. Authorities of the country will follow up on that at its appropriate time,” Rouhani’s website quoted him as saying at a cabinet meeting on March 24 2021.

It also pointed out that this was “a repetition” of Khamenei’s own remarks in a speech on January 9, 2021 in which he said the United States’ return to the deal would only be meaningful if sanctions were lifted. “Albeit there is the issue of compensation which is among our demands and will be followed up in later stages,” Khamenei said in the same speech.

Rouhani’s website also quoted Zarif’s speech at the Mediterranean Dialogues Conference in July 2020 in which he mentioned the issue of compensation and again in February 2021 when he said in an interview with CNN’s Farid Zakaria that payment of compensation had never been a precondition for the talks but would be discussed after the restoration of the deal and the return of the US to it.

“The said stances prove that what Rouhani said in March 2021 corresponded to the stance of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution … Compensation meant seeking payment from the US for damages [incurred by Iran] following Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. [It was] not a precondition for negotiations with the 5+1 (France, Britain, Russia, China, the United States and Germany) or a plan devised by the negotiating team,” Rouhani’s website wrote.

The feared militia has launched violent attacks on women and schoolgirls for not wearing hijab.

But speaking on Thursday, Ahmad Mohammadizadeh, the Governor of Bushehr Province in the south, said that there should not be a single teacher in his province who is not in the Basij because the only successful teacher is the one who works with the mindset of the paramilitary force.

The Basij is mostly made up of young volunteers. Its members usually go through limited training to serve as an auxiliary force in local security and enforcing state control over society through suppressing demonstrations and gathering intelligence.

Last year, Iran's Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) announced plans to set up Basij bases in about 11,000 neighborhoods across the country by 2023.

The head of the Basij Organization, under the command of the IRGC, said that there are 50,000 neighborhoods in the country, therefore when the plan – dubbed Islamic neighborhoods – is implemented, Basij will have active presence in about one-fifth of the neighborhoods all over Iran.

In February, Basij plainclothes agents raided a language school detaining two teenage girls who had removed the hijab.

Violence against women, especially teenage girls, due to what the regime calls "improper hijab" has been going on for over four decades. During the uprising of the Iranian people in recent months the violence has intensified with the increase of women's civil disobedience against the mandatory hijab.

The Islamic Republic confronts such civil disobedience with heavy punishment for what it calls "removing hijab".

Vahid Beheshti has urged followers to join the protest in London on April 29.

That date will be the 65th day of his hunger strike, which began on February 23. Beheshti has been outside the UK Foreign Office since then calling for the British government to designate the IRGC a terrorist organization.

He said the 65 days will equal the hunger strike of Bobby Sands, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, before his death in 1981.

Beheshti hopes that Iranians turn out for the London rally in similarly large numbers to those for the epic protest in Berlin on October 22, 2022.

Beheshti has been battling the bitter winter outside the UK Foreign Office to raise awareness for the need to proscribe the IRGC which is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Iranian citizens since September. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his cabinet have not yet reacted to his hunger strike.

On Wednesday, April 19, Beheshti entered the 55th day of his hunger strike while he is forced to sit on a wheelchair due to his physical weakness.

Political figures, human rights activists and artists have visited Beheshti while he maintains his vigil and paid tribute to his resistance, but also urged him to end his hunger strike.

A number of other Iranians have also joined his protest action in the past weeks and have set up their tents for a sit-in in front of the UK Foreign Office building.

In an interview with Iran International, Beheshti called his hunger strike a protest action, but not one intended to harm himself.