Khamenei Admits To Judiciary Malpractice In Rare Admission

The PIJ has established several armed cells and recruited dozens of gunmen in the northern West Bank, specifically in Jenin and Nablus. “The PIJ has become a dominant force in the northern West Bank, largely thanks to the financial aid it receives from Iran," a source told Israel's Jerusalem Post. “Islamic Jihad is using Iranian money to buy weapons and loyalty in the West Bank [and] the organization is paying high salaries to its members.”

Palestinian Islamic Jihad has stepped up its activity over the last year, largely thanks to extra funding from Tehran, including an incident in April in which dozens of rockets were launched in a cross border attack on Israel from Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Last August, the PIJ unleashed almost 2,000 rockets and mortars in three days of fighting.

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The PIJ, like Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, have become full-fledged Iranian proxies, receiving Iranian funding, training, sophisticated equipment, and, most importantly, Tehran’s instructions on their confrontation with Israel. Last year, then defense minister Benny Gantz claimed that the PIJ was receiving tens of millions of dollars from Tehran. This week the group's leaders met with President Raisi, among others, in a show of force against Israel.

The evolution from guerrilla-terrorist militias to armies results from a long process initiated by Tehran with the active assistance of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The escalating events in recent months have shown the ongoing coordination and consultation among the top leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and PIJ in Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran, with the aim of creating a united front facing Israel from Iran-supported Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank.

According to the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency, the two sides discussed security and law enforcement cooperation and holding of a joint security commission in Iran.

The release of Iranian fishermen and their boats, which Iran claims had entered the waters of Qatar due to ignorance of border limits, was raised, and the Qatari side agreed to their release. Bilateral solutions to tackling drug smuggling in the area were also discussed.

Iran and Qatar signed several bilateral deals last year during a visit by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Doha to attend the Gas Exporting Countries Forum. Raisi's visit was the first to Qatar by an Iranian president in 11 years.

Qatar has strong ties with Iran, with which it shares a giant gas field. Tehran supported Doha after Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies imposed a boycott on Qatar in mid-2017 in a dispute over its links with Islamist groups and with non-Arab Turkey and Iran.

Recent restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran signaled a new policy by the Persian Gulf Sunni Arab states for closer regional cooperation.

A deal brokered by China in March ended a diplomatic rift between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and re-established relations following years of hostility.

Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of IRGC navy, made the comments on Tuesday during a ceremony in the southern Khuzestan province.

“We, the soldiers of the Revolutionary Guards, perform our duty to defend the nation of Islamic Iran till the last drop of our blood,” he said.

His statements were made after senior officials from 22 nations and the GCC held a multilateral meeting in Bahrain this week to discuss the current maritime security environment and ways to further enhance that in the region which has seen numerous incidents as Iran flexes its muscles in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. 

After the meeting in Bahrain, the Spokesman of the US State Department, Matthew Miller said in a tweet on Tuesday that “the United States and like minded partners in the Middle East and from around the world are committed to enhancing maritime security in across the Middle East region and ensuring freedom of navigation through the region’s vital waterways.”

Earlier this month, the US Navy reported that Iranian military speed boats were "harassing" a commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC claimed to have assisted the vessel.

Iran has hundreds of fast attack boats that for years not only have harassed civilian vessels but, on many occasions, have come dangerously close to US and other warships in a show of force.

Iranian attacks on cargo vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping lane that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil, have increased over recent years and raised tensions between the US and Iran, in addition to other Western and Persian Gulf nations.

Saeed Hajjarian, known as the most senior theoretician of reforms in Iran has said in an interview with reformist daily Etemad that “the sooner the Iranian government resigns the better.” He added that “the presence of this government and the school of thought it represents is a major loss for the nation.”

He said: “I am not suggesting that [President Ebrahim] Raisi should be replaced by a reformist figure. What I am suggesting is that the same conservatives at the Majles and in the government should sit together and think of an efficient replacement.”

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Hardliners loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have pushed reformists out of the parliament (Majles) and the presidency since 2020, monopolizing all political power. However, as Iran’s economic situation has worsened partly because of US sanctions, reformists have become more vocal, demanding a chance to return to government positions.

“The Iranian opposition groups outside Iran are preoccupied with themselves. Instead of thinking of being an alternative to the current government, they are fighting with each other. On the other hand, they have been far from Iran for a long time and do not know the country’s problems, so their rhetoric sounds irrelevant,” he claimed.

While there have been disagreements among opposition activists, many in Iran still expect solutions from their compatriots who can freely engage in politics in Western countries. 

In fact, some opposition figures, such as exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi have notable following in Iran, although there are no reliable polls to judge the exact measure of his popularity. 

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As a key political figure who for the first time spoke about an alternative to the current political system, Hajjarian pointed out that the only choice is “absolute republicanism” with no adjective to characterize it. 

“I believe we cannot vote for an absolute monarchy or a hereditary form of succession or an Islamic Emirate. All of these are against the international human rights charter,” he claimed, ignoring the fact that many democratic countries are constitutional monarchies. He further pointed out that a benevolent dictatorship is like a poison for Iranians.

As a regime insider, it is not surprising that the former intelligence officer spoke against monarchy at a time when many Iranians look back with nostalgia to the pre-1979 period under the Pahlavi dynasty. 

Hajjarian also failed to mention that the Islamic Republic is based on the unquestionable rule of a cleric, the Supreme Leader. Also, the republicanism he is advocating is impossible to establish within the current Islamic constitution, which reserves the final say to the Supreme Leader.

In another part of the interview, Hajjarian characterized the government of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “rich populism” and described the Raisi administration as a populist government that does not have money. 

He said some of the outstanding problems in Iran such as the crisis of the pension fund and discrimination against women can create a political tremor and the government knows that it is incapable of coping with them. 

Hajjarian said that borderlines between reformism and other political groups are blurred and most of those known as reformists are pseudo-reformists who are simply trying to find a way out of the current impasse. 

Nevertheless, he argued that reformists are the only group with a plan, while critics say that they were in power for 16 years in the past 26 years and were not able to change the nature of the regime.

The former intelligence officer said Iran is in a state of suspension. If the situation worsens and the economic pressures become unbearable, Iran might show more flexibility toward the West.

Hossein Jalali made the claim on Tuesday while lawmakers are supposed to represent the people and not to be under the thumb of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Jalali’s statement is not news to most Iranians who over the years have witnessed numerous times how the legislature follows directives from Khamenei’s office on key issues.

The member of the cultural commission of the parliament further defended the performance of the 11th Islamic parliament saying although there were some mistakes, the overall performance of the current Iranian legislature was acceptable.

In recent months many commentators in Iran have slammed the hardliner-dominated parliament for being ineffective both in terms of legislation to help the economy and also for being weak in demanding accountability from the government.

Last month, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised the country’s “revolutionary parliament” for passing a bill in 2020 that complicated nuclear negotiations.

“From the beginning of this parliament [2020], based on information I had, I believed that it is a revolutionary parliament, and now after three years I reiterate that,” Khamenei told 290 members of the legislature.

The current parliament was elected in February 2020 in a controversial vote when the Guardian Council, loyal to Khamenei, banned hundreds of relatively moderate candidates and allowed hardliners to gain a strong majority in the legislature.