The United States has once again denied a claim by the Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian over an agreement regarding the exchange of prisoners.
Amir-Abdollahian, who visited Lebanon on Friday, alleged in a press conference that the Islamic Republic and the United States had agreed to exchange prisoners "13 months ago".
"They introduced an English diplomat lady as a representative. Regarding how to exchange prisoners, an agreement was signed," added Amir-Abdollahian.
However, hours later, the Deputy Spokesperson of the US Ministry of Foreign Affairs said he had no new update to offer in this regard.
“Any comment by Iranian officials …is inaccurate. I would say that most things that come from the Iranian regime I would take with a grain of salt,” Vedant Patel told a press briefing late on Friday.
The Biden administration officials in March also categorically denied Iranian claims that a prisoner swap deal had been reached.
“Statements from Iranian officials that a deal regarding the exchange of prisoners has been reached are another especially cruel lie that only adds to the suffering of their families,” State Department former spokesperson Ned Price told CNN.
A prisoner exchange deal always seemed to be intertwined with a nuclear agreement with the US, but long negotiations in 2021 and 2022 to restore the JCPOA accord limiting Iran's nuclear program failed to reach fruition.
Iran has been accused by Western governments and human rights organizations of detaining Western citizens as hostages to extract concessions.
Strikes have spread in Iran this week, with workers in more than 100 businesses and plants demanding better pay and work conditions, as Iran’s economy reels under US sanctions, government mismanagement and corruption.
Khamenei, who is the ultimate authority in deciding about an agreement with the United States over Iran’s nuclear program and end sanctions, emphasized the urgency of boosting employment and ending corruption.
However, under tough financial pressures, due to US oil export sanctions, Khamenei’s call for lowering unemployment remains more of a slogan. The same applies to corruption, when under his watch the Revolutionary Guard and religious foundations have monopolized the economy and overwhelming government control has led to the emergence of embezzlements and nepotism by officials.
“I have reached the conclusion that the cause of most [social] ills is unemployment. Addiction, corruption, crime, divorce, and the destruction of families are related to unemployment,” the 83-year-old autocrat said.
His enumeration of Iran’s deep social problems was also a rare admission by Khamenei, who usually praises the achievements of the Islamic Republic, ruled by him for 34 years of its 44-year existence.
While praising workers as the backbone of the country and insisting that they are loyal to the regime, his security forces Friday arrested at least nine labor and teachers activists.
Several teachers’ union activists were meeting at the home of their spokesman Mohammad Habibi when security agents stormed the residence and arrested them. They were taken to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, where most political prisoners are kept.
Habibi himself was arrested April 5, just two months after he was released from a previous detention.
He has been persecuted for years, with agents storming his home in 2017 and confiscating his electronic devices. In recent years, he has been twice terminated from his teaching position under the pretext of “unjustified leaves of absence,” while he was in prison.
Khamenei railed against corruption in his speech, saying that if an official does not have the courage to fight corruption, he also does not have will to stand up to “foreign bullies.”
In another rare admission, he said some workers’ protests were justifiable. “Protests against late payment of wages, protests against wrong privatization…these are helpful in informing the regime and the government,” about the prevailing condition in the country.
Khamenei not only faces labor unrest, but also the wrath of many Iranians who see him as ultimately responsible for rising poverty and more restrictions on individual freedoms. Protesters who occupied the streets in 2022 often shouted harsh slogans and even insults at Khamenei.
His hardliner loyalists who control all three branches of government since 2021 have proven inept in making a dent in the economic crisis and the rising political opposition to the regime. Khamenei must know by now that his regime’s legitimacy has been badly damaged.
In an attempt to show that he is on the side of ordinary people, Khamenei said not paying wages on time “is oppression of workers.” Similarly denying them health insurance and job security are also acts of oppression.
He praised the workers for their loyalty to the regime, but reiterating his usual argument about a foreign conspiracy, he said that “foreign ill-wishers” tried to pit the workers against the regime, “but they stood against that, and this is very important.”
Raisi, who arrived in the province on Thursday,tried to use his trip to Khuzestan as a publicity stunt but popular anger at the government's poor economic performance and repression led to a backlash.
According to media channels affiliated with the Haft-Tappeh complex, Raisi was snubbed by the workers who are among thousands who are on strikes across the country.
Strikes by Iranian energy, petrochemicals and steel workers as well as other sectors are gaining momentum with new plants joining the nationwide industrial action this week.
Strikes are nothing new for the Haft-Tappeh workers as they have staged numerous rounds of action after the privatization of the complex in 2015. Workers have been protesting for deteriorating working conditions and late payments of wages since 2017, leading to periodic weeks-long strikes in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 over unfulfilled promises by officials.
Workers at the once thriving sugar mill reportedly boycotted Raisi's visit. Turnout for his reception ceremony was so low that authorities had to transfer security forces and members of Basij – a paramilitary volunteer force working under the Revolutionary Guards – from the nearby cities such as Shush to create a crowd for the president, journalist Roozbeh Bolhari cited a channel of Haft-Tappeh workers.
The efforts turned out to be ultimately in vain as the city’s officials could not gather enough people to be able to take wide angle shots from the ceremony and were forced to use closeup images at the end.
The company has at least 5,700 formal and contract staff but in the photos and videos of Raisi’s speech among the workers there are hardly more than 50 people apart from the security forces and the president’s entourage, which included more than 10 ministers of his cabinet as well as several deputies. According to the worker' social media channel, about 20 young people who were not employed in the company were lured into the crowd with promises of employment.
State media tried to portray the visit to Khuzestan as Raisi’s response to letters by the workers of the company who had called for better work conditions and salaries at par with the rising prices.
The aim of the visit was obviously propaganda as Raisi toured industrial centers in the province, telling people that he is there to see whether or not his orders given during the previous visits have been implemented. It was the seventh time that Raisi visited the province since he took office in 2021, and he said during his speeches in the provincial capital Ahvaz that “If necessary, I will travel to the province 70 times to solve its problems.”
Addressing the people of Andimeshk, he said, “Today, you people should know that despite all the sanctions and threats by the enemy, with your help, the movement towards progress and independence of the country, especially economic independence, continues.”
However, a large number of the province’s citizens criticized the visit on social media, trending a hashtag that is roughly translated as the province is thirsty for action, implying that they are fed up with propagandistic gestures.
The grievances of the people include lack of drinking water in the province, suffocating air pollution, projects that have been inaugurated but never fully implemented, and general poverty in a province that produces almost all of Iran's oil.
A large number of users sarcastically tweeted that “Mr. President, welcome to the most polluted city of the world!”
In reaction to Raisi’s visit, Zaynab Molaei-Rad, the mother of ten-year-old Kian Pirfalak, who was shot dead by plainclothesmen during protests on November 16, 2022, in one of the cities of the province, slammed the president. "This is the land of the brave. It takes a big heart to step here. Lest a vulture enter here on false pretext and promise, we will clip its wings," she said on Instagram.
The family car carrying Kian, his parents, and three-year-old brother Radin was targeted by plainclothesmen in Izeh, a town of around 100,000 in the east of the oil-rich province. Kian’s father was also seriously wounded in the shooting and is still in hospital. Authorities claim the family car was attacked by “terrorists”.