Lawmaker Says Iran Looks Like A ‘Garrison’ With IRGC Taking Posts

Mehdi Zare’, Professor of the International Research Institute of Seismology said: “There are about 12 million marginalized people in Iran, and almost 10 million of this population are directly facing problems caused by the water crisis.”

In an interview with Hamshahri online, he said water scarcity and the subsidence of the earth have deteriorated in Iran and according to geologists, seven provinces now face dire situations.

One of these provinces is Isfahan, where land subsidence has reached the residential areas. Tehran province is also not safe from subsidence and in recent months, many cases of land subsidence were witnessed on highways around the city.

Iran ranks fourth in land subsidence in the world and 30 provinces of the country are involved in it. It is said that the land subsidence in Iran is more than five times the world average.

The main reason for land subsidence in Iran is the draining of underground water and the digging of deep wells since the 1060s, Zare explained.

Last month, Iran International obtained documents revealing that Iranian officials are aware of dangerous land subsidence but are unwilling to share it with the public.

A confidential letter revealed that about 550 square kilometers of land in and around the capital Tehran (about the size of the UK city of Manchester or the US city of El Paso, Texas) is sinking an average of over 13 centimeters (about 5.12 inches) per year.

According to another document, 380 cities and towns and 9,200 villages are at risk of land subsidence.

"When the government is perceived as a stranger, the society cannot tolerate its shortcomings." Hossein Valeh said in an interview with Roiuydad24 on Saturday. The government has lost trust because of its aversion to being inclusive, he added. 

What is worse is that "The regime has widened the gap between itself and the nation instead of trying to fill it." It has become less attentive to popular demands.

Pervasive political instability in Iran began in 2017, when after years of deteriorating relations with the West and international sanctions, the economy became stagnant. Anti-regime protests that started in December of that year in fact never stopped and in September 2022 millions of disenchanted people came out into the streets nationwide, posing the most serious challenge to the clerical regime in four decades.

Valeh, a former diplomat and a current assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, also told Rouiydad24: "Generally, when there is a divide between the government and the nation, the country becomes polarized." 

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"In such a situation, no one hears the voice of truth and instead, everyone will listen to those who reduce the other side to the level of an enemy," Valeh said, adding that each side perceives any positive news about itself as a fact and any negative statement as a lie without bothering to establish the truth."

The sociologist maintained: "The gap between the government and the nation is currently deep and wide. As a result, we tend to believe any fake news which supports our point of view or rules out the other side's opinion." He added: Maciavelli has taken over our collective unconscious."

Under these circumstances expectations from the government will rise. The people will minimize its achievements and maximize its shortcomings in their perceptions. 

He explained that there are accumulated divides in Iran based on religious versus non- religious, traditional versus modern and liberal versus despotic dichotomies. Valeh added that since the 18th century, this accumulated dichotomies have been the driving force of political developments while also creating social conflicts. 

The people's distrust of the government will increase the cost of governance and make progress difficult. It will eventually erode the government's legitimacy altogether. Meanwhile, in the absence of public trust, the government cannot make up for its inefficiency.

Particularly dangerous is the divide between the very young generation and the aging clerics supported by the Revolutionary Guard who try to keep the society within the bounds of their isolationist religious ideology.

Along the same line, highlighting the divide between the state and the nation, former government spokesman Ali Rabiei wrote in Etemad Online that it appears there is a tendency in the government to oppose people's happiness. "Regrettably the government has forgotten the events that took place during the protests in the fall of 2022, and that is dangerous. 

He pointed out that the government tends to ignore all the explanations and reasons that have been highlighted for last year's events, and it does not understand the people's concerns about the present and the future. The result, he said, is an unhappy and frustrated society.

Rabiei added: "The political depression reveals itself as lack of interest in political participation within the system and a tendency to protest."

Iranian lawmaker Ali Khezrian said Sunday that parts of a recent agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are contrary to the "strategic action" law ratified by the parliament in December 2020. 

Khezrian is an influential lawmaker belonging to the hardline Paydari group dominating the Iranian parliament.

He was referring to the bill passed by the parliament, dominated by hardliners, in December 2020, dubbed the ‘Strategic Action To Eliminate Sanctions and Defend Iranian Nation's Interests.’ 

The bill authorized higher-level uranium enrichment to force the United States to lift economic sanctions imposed in 2018, when former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear agreement. 

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The bill also mandated restrictions on nuclear monitoring by the IAEA. Since the passage of the law, Iran has further restricted international monitoring and inspections, adding to the complicated dynamics of renewing the JCPOA. 

The bill’s stipulation about higher levels of uranium enrichment was not an empty negotiating tactic. Iran actually began enrichment at 20 percent in early 2021, breaking the JCPOA limit of 3.65 percent. Subsequently, enrichment was increased to 60 percent during talks with West to revive the JCPOA. Tehran now has enough fissile material for at least two nuclear bombs, and it also gradually restricted IAEA monitoring access to its nuclear facilities, introducing another complicating factor into the JCPOA talks. 

Khezrian, who is the spokesman of the parliament’s Article 90 Committee, made the remarks as he was talking about a recent meeting of the Committee and the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mohammad Eslami and his deputies.  

The committee is supposed to deal with complaints against the President, Parliament or the Judiciary.

Khezrian said that after Eslami briefed the committee on the agreement reached with the IAEA in March, the lawmakers were unanimous that it violates the "strategic action" law as well as the orders of the Supreme Leader. 

He said that re-installing IAEA monitoring systems at Esfahan (Isfahan) nuclear site was beyond the Safeguards Agreement and based on the additional protocol to the IAEA-Iran agreement, which cover basic requirements of cooperation with the IAEA under the NPT. He added that two EMDs (Environmental Monitoring Devices) were also installed at Natanz and Fordow nuclear sites to oversee the enrichment lines, calling them even beyond the JCPOA. 

According to Khezrian, “the EMDs were installed without obtaining legal permits from the relevant authorities, which is not only against the law approved by the parliament, but also beyond the JCPOA obligations, because in the JCPOA, the OLEM (the On-Line Enrichment Monitor) device is mentioned for measuring the level of enrichment, so it should be clarified what are the differences between these two devices.” 

Earlier in June, Iran said it reinstalled 10 cameras of the UN nuclear watchdog in one of its installations that were removed last year when the UN watchdog’s board of governors in June 2022 censured Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the agency. 

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Following his criticism, several lawmakers close to the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi – and members of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee -- rejected Khezrian’s claims, emphasizing that the recent measures are in line with the law. 

MP Shahriar Heidari said that the ‘strategic action law’ had been written and approved with the aim of canceling sanctions, adding, “If the other side accepts the lifting of sanctions, cooperation between Iran and the IAEA is bound to increase according to the clauses of the Law.” 

Echoing similar views, lawmakers Fada-Hossein Maleki and Yaghoub Rezazadeh said that the measures adopted by the country’s nuclear agency are “completely in line with the law of strategic action.” 

All these remarks were made a few days after IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed concerns about Iran's nuclear program and the regime’s sluggish cooperation with the agency. "Iran's continuing enrichment activities, it's raising concerns,” he said. 

The recent movements in the Iranian political landscape seem to be a reaction to reports that European diplomats have informed Tehran they plan to retain EU ballistic missile sanctions set to expire in October under the defunct 2015 Iran nuclear deal. 

According to a report published by the Guardian on Sunday, the UK and other European powers are expected soon to announce plans to breach the 2015 Iran nuclear deal for the first time. The justification cited by EU and British diplomats included Iran’s own breach of the accord. 

The political commentator, whose statements about the nuclear negotiations have received a lot of mixed reactions over time, was sacked upon reported differences with the dean.

Shargh daily Sunday quoted Marandi as saying that the reason for his dismissal was his objection to "the sale of degrees and Tehran University's loss of reputation".

Marandi was the dean of Tehran University's World Studies Center. However, academics in Tehran say the center no longer exists. That could explain Marandi's official title as "Former head of the university's World Studies Center."

Marandi was ridiculed by some Iranian commentators in recent months for having said last summer that "a hard winter in Europe" will force European powers to come back to the negotiating table. Marandi had predicted: "The winter is coming, and the EU will have to face a paralyzing energy crisis."

A few months later pundits in Iran scorched Marandi over his prediction while Iran itself faced energy shortage in winter.

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, an outspoken critic of the government in foreign policy, said predictions by Iranian officials that Europe would plunge into cold, and they would run back to nuclear negotiations with Iran have turned out to be "illusions."

Marandi was born in the US in 1966. He is the son of Alireza Marandi who is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's family doctor. When he first came to Iran after his father was appointed Health Minister, Mohammad was only 13.

The hardline website on Sunday demanded that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs deal with the diplomats who do not obey the Islamic dress code.

Fars published photos of three tourists in a car with diplomatic license plates in Khorramabad, western Iran, saying these people included a man wearing short pants and two women without headscarves.

“Removing hijab by the ambassadors and their wives is not unprecedented. For example, during Nowruz this year, the envoys of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark broke the laws of our country by walking with their wives who were not covered with veils on Valiasr Street in Tehran and then published the pictures on social media,” added Fars.

Frank Molen, the Netherland’s Ambassador to Tehran, published some photos of his excursion in the Iranian capital along with some colleagues in March.

Fars called such moves "mischievous" behavior that are "in non-conformity with diplomatic rules" claiming that they are supporting the “riots” in Iran.

Fars also launched a petition asking its audience to sign to put pressure on the foreign ministry to deal with the issue.

Four decades after the Islamic Republic made hijab mandatory, women are increasingly appearing in public in regular clothing such as colorful dresses and with no headscarf covering their hair.

Since the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police and the protests that engulfed the country for months many women have discarded their headscarves altogether and vowed never to wear it again.