Two Iranian police officers, including a conscript, lost their lives when gunmen targeted their station in the city of Taftan, located in the restive Sistan and Baluchestan province in southeastern Iran.
The Iranian government labeled this attack as an act of terrorism while the gunmen responsible remain at large.
The Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Ministry of Intelligence issued a joint statement claiming the act was carried out by a network involved in "disruptive activities."
The statement, while lacking specific names or evidence, asserted that they had identified and targeted several members of the network, which it claimed had "financial support purportedly from the US Department of State.”
It also claimed members of the network had been providing free online training to activists in the women's and civil society sectors, both within and outside Iran, though there was no clear evidence given.
Furthermore, the intelligence organizations alleged that the group had recently conducted a training workshop for women's sector activists in May at a university in England with more planned this month, targeting civil activists and women in the online sphere with the intention to create more domestic uprising.
There have been reports of numerous attacks on military and government forces in the province in the past and since nationwide protests broke out in September 2022. The provincial capital Zahedan was the scene of a government massacre when around 90 citizens were gunned down during a protests September 30.
The upcoming election, following a year of dissent and unrest, has left most voters indifferent, disheartened by disillusionment. There's a lack of clarity even among conservatives and hardliners about the number of seats they aim to secure. For instance, the Islamic Coalition Party intends to nominate 400 candidates for the 290 Majles seats, reflecting the overall apathy towards the election.
Hardline Conservatives have repeatedly said that they are keen to win the entire parliament, and reformists and moderates have often complained that the system does not allow them to run for the Majles or Presidency.
Although ultraconservative Paydari Party is doing everything to win the majority, Hamid Reza Taraqqi, a leading member of the Islamic Coalition Party said in an interview with Khabar Online that five different conservative coalitions have been formed ahead of the elections.
To make the situation look even more complicated for observers and the conservatives aiming for a full power grab, Taraqqi added that these five coalitions represent 10 different narratives. The main narrative, however, is to turn the Iranian political landscape into an all-conservative playground. All other sub-narratives try to prove that there are individual parties such as Paydari, which favor a non-elected Islamic government rather than the current Islamic Republic, or coalitions such as Sharian (Persian acronym for the Strategic Network of Friends of the Islamic Revolution) that wish to monopolize political power and financial privilege in Iran.
Sharian, led by Roads and Transportation Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash and former lawmaker Hamid Rasaei, seems to serve as an alternative route to the Majles for Paydari should their pro-Russia stance or lack of results in the current parliament render them unelectable.
Another group led by ex-Paydari politicians, including former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his aides Esfandiar Rahim Mashai and Hamid Baqaei is aiming to contest the Majles. Ahmadinejad himself is apparently preparing to run for the 2025 Presidential election. He has recently been criticizing the government's policy on hijab and purging dissident university professors.
Besides these three ultraconservative groups, there is Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's neo-con group, moderate conservative Ali Larijani, former Speaker, with his own list of candidates, and the traditional conservative Islamic Coalition Party. Disputes arise due to the refusal of these groups, except for the moderate-conservatives possibly joining reformists, to entertain power-sharing or compromise, adhering to the all-or-none approach within Iran's conservative camp.
This inflexible view leads to conflicts among the six groups. Differences between figures like veteran politician Haddad Adel and Bazrpash are evident. Additionally,
a report by the centrist Ham Mihan newspaper, which was also carried by many Iranian websites, indicates fierce competition between Ghalibaf and Bazrpash over who is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's favorite. According to Ham Mihan, three months ago Ghalibaf warned other conservatives not to mudsling against him as he was Khamenei's favorite.
And all this is happening while critics and even some insiders say that the Majles has lost its authority as most major decisions on domestic and foreign policies are made or endorsed by the heads of the three powers or the Expediency Council. Only 290 seats of debatable importance for so many parties and groups remind one of the Persian proverbs, "One raisin to feed 40 vagabond dervishes."
Parvin Shokri, an Iranian protest organizer based in Helsinki, was returning from an anti-regime demonstration on April 24, when her cellphone was seized by a stranger in the street. She was streaming live on Instagram, something the snatcher was not aware of. As the footage shows, he grabbed the phone, ran away for nearly a minute and while panting took a peek at the phone screen, making his face seen by Shokri’s followers.
Upon seeing his face on the phone screen, the snatcher decided to bury the phone in a nearby lawn in eastern Helsinki, where Shokri would ultimately find it via geolocation, she told Iran International.
The protester, who has been an active organizer of anti-regime events in Finland, immediately reported the matter to the police, triggering an an ongoing investigation. She also started spreading the word by talking to Finnish and Persian media, saying that the man, who appeared on her Instagram Live video, is actually Behrouz Hosseinpour, an imam connected to Resalat Islamic center in Helsinki.
Shokri said that she “did not even know” the man before the incident, and that she learned of his identity through other anti-regime activists after releasing the footage on social media.
Upon these revelations, Resalat Islamic Community released a statement on its Telegram channel on September 1, admitting that it was indeed Hosseinpour, a “guest speaker,” who grabbed Shokri’s phone. The regime-linked Islamic Community cited her “threats” against members of the mosque as well as attempts to record video of religious events “without permission” as reasons that prompted the imam to act.
After reviewing the recorded video, Shokri noticed that Hosseinpour and another man had been following her prior to the attack and she believes they must have tracked her by following her 11-year-old daughter, who was supposed to meet her at a flea market in eastern Helsinki following the protest.
Shokri, who is originally from the southern Iranian city of Izeh, an epicenter of protests in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, told Iran International that her daughter also recognized the snatcher as the man who had been following her to and from school for a while.
The Iranian diaspora in Finland has been calling for a shutdown of the center, arguing that similar to many other so-called Islamic centers such as the ones in Frankfurt or London, it is funded by Iran’s regime to track and bully Iranian dissidents.
Resalat Islamic Center said in its statement, published in both Finnish and Persian, that Hosseinpour “notified us later,” of the incident, indirectly claiming that it had no prior knowledge of the assault on Shokri. Resalat said that it is a victim of “baseless harassment and threats” by Islamophobes and right-wing activists, who frequently vandalize its premises and intimidate its members.
The statement also described Hosseinpour’s phone grabbing as an attempt to delete videos and photos that the protester had shot to “destroy his character”. Shokri said that her 42-minute live streaming, whose footage is still available on her phone, was merely about the flea market in Helsinki and had nothing to do with the mosque. She also said that this is not the first time she has been assaulted by people allegedly linked to the mosque.
The Islamic center claims that it is independent but has also shrugged off calls by Finno-Iranians to condemn violence perpetrated by Iran’s regime against protesters and activists. According to Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's largest subscription newspaper, Resalat founder Madjid Bahmanpour has “said in several interviews that the mosque received funding from ayatollahs in Iran and Iraq.”
Bahmanpour, whose son, Abbas, is an imam at the Islamic center, is a former member of the Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. Majid and Abbas Bahmanpour, who are quite well known among the Iranian diaspora in Finland, have been at the helm of the center since 2001 and managed to recruit some 1,500 members, who are mostly first-generation immigrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
While an investigation into the matter continues, the Islamic center is also busy holding events in and outside of the mosque, which occasionally draw ire from the Iranian community in the Helsinki area.
Ever since Mahsa Amini’s death in custody of hijab police in Iran on September 16, 2022, Finnish Iranians have held several protests, some in front of the Resalat mosque, calling on the Finnish government to support the movement and shut down the Islamic center. Protests against Iran’s regime in Finland have taken place not only in the capital, but also in much smaller cities, where the number of resident Finno-Iranians is not necessarily large.