Germany Investigates Companies After Iran International Report

Touted by the state media as “souvenirs of president's US visit,” a total of 3,506 Achaemenid tablets were returned home by the plane carrying President Ebrahim Raisi, who addressed the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly during his visit to New York.

“The tablets of the Achaemenid Empire, which were being kept in the United States and the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago (CEAS) for 84 years, were repatriated to Iran. The tablets were originally set to stay there for three years for study purposes,” Raisi told reporters upon arrival at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport.

These tablets, on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago since 1935, were transported in nine 75kg boxes. The university had received approximately 30,000 tablets or tablet fragments, which were reportedly produced during the reign of Darius I, commonly known as Darius the Great. He served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BC until his death in 486 BC. These artifacts were discovered at the ruins of Persepolis, the capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (6th – 4th c. BC) in southern Iran.

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In August, Iran’s deputy cultural heritage minister announced that the United States had agreed to return over 20,000 Achaemenid clay tablets to Iran within months. Ali Darabi said, “More than 20,000 Achaemenid tablets belonging to Persepolis will be returned from the US by the end of this year.”

The last batch of these artifacts returned to Iran in 2019, consisting of 1,783 objects from Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. The fate of these ancient Persian artifacts was determined by a US Supreme Court ruling in 2018, which allowed Iran to have the tablets that were initially blocked due to a court case initiated by American survivors of the 1997 Hamas terror attack in Israel. However, the reimposition of US sanctions on the Islamic republic since August 2018 complicated the return of the antiquities to Iran.

A significant portion of the tablets was returned in three batches between 1948 and 2004, before the court ruling. The plaintiffs had demanded the seizure of the tablets and their sale in exchange for the $71.5 million that Iran was ordered to pay in the case.

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Following the delivery of the last batch, Matthew Stolper, Professor Emeritus at the Oriental Institute, emphasized the scientific significance of these works. He highlighted that the artifacts had contributed to a better understanding of “how (Achaemenid) society was organized and how basic institutions of control and support worked.” Stolper also mentioned that they had learned the names of some important individuals in the ruling class and gained insights into how they governed.

Currently, the regime seems reluctant to acknowledge the ancient Iranian empire – once the largest empire in the world – amid rising popular support for exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, the heir to Iran’s last royal dynasty that ruled for almost 54 years between 1925 and 1979, who has become a leading opposition figure in recent years.

Since 2017, the Islamic Republic has implemented security measures and even blocked roads leading to Pasargadae and Persepolis to prevent people from visiting these Achaemenid sites, fearing that visitors of these monarchist symbols might hold protests against the clerical regime. These measures have intensified since October 2016 when thousands of people gathered at the historical site and chanted antigovernment slogans, such as "Iran is our homeland, Cyrus is our father."

Since news about the clay tablets has emerged, a large number of Iranians are voicing concern online that the regime may auction off these pieces of Iranian national heritage or destroy them with mismanagement. The administration of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard are accused of the bagging carpets of Saadabad Palace in Tehran.

Canada’s Justice Minister and Attorney General, Arif Virani, along with several Canadian lawmakers, held separate meetings on Thursday with approximately 15 Iranian activists, including Hamed Esmaeilion, who lost his daughter and wife in the shooting down of Flight PS752 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 2020.

The primary topics addressed during these sessions included the designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, known as the IRGC, as a terrorist organization and the legal grounds for expelling agents and affiliates of the Islamic Republic from Canada.

Discussions also revolved around the plight of refugees, asylum seekers, and families impacted by the Islamic Republic's crimes, including victims of protests and persecuted minority groups such as the LGBTQ community. The activists urged Canada to establish a dedicated refugee program for over 500 Iranians seeking refuge from political persecution.

In a statement issued by the activists, it was noted, "Canada has, regrettably, been too willing to admit individuals with ties to the Islamic Republic but has been less receptive to asylum seekers."

“The IRGC is a murderous and corrupt organization that has killed many Canadians, carried out terrorist acts across the world, and stolen billions from Iran's public coffers,” added the document.

Furthermore, the activists called for continued legal efforts against the Islamic Republic's authorities regarding the PS752 case. Iran has consistently refused to cooperate with international investigations into the incident, which resulted in the tragic loss of 176 innocent civilians.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a $9.6 million settlement with 3M Company for 54 apparent violations of OFAC sanctions on Iran. The case is related to its subsidiary’s sale of reflective license plate sheeting to an Iranian entity controlled by Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces.

“Between September 2016 and September 2018, 3M East AG sold 43 orders of this product to a reseller with knowledge that it was destined for a customer in Iran,” the statement said and added, “OFAC determined that these apparent violations were egregious and were voluntarily self-disclosed.”

In a much smaller settlement, Emigrant Bank agreed to remit more than $31,000 to settle its potential civil liability for maintaining a Certificate of Deposit Account on behalf of two individuals located in Iran, for 26 years.

The low amount of this settlement, the Treasury said, reflected “OFAC’s determination that Emigrant’s conduct was non-egregious and voluntarily self-disclosed.”

In one of the largest such settlements, Italy’s top bank UniCredit SpA and two subsidiaries agreed in April 2019 to pay $1.3 billion to US authorities to settle probes of violations of US sanctions on Iran and other countries.

In 2017, ZTE Corporation agreed to enter a guilty plea and pay a $892 million penalty to the US for conspiring to illegally ship US-origin items to Iran.

To avoid public blame and anger the government is trying to redirect the responsibility to provincial officials, although the central government would remain the main decision maker.

Iran's economy minister Ehsan Khanzoudi said on Wednesday that provincial authorities are now authorized to decide the prices of various types of bread, always set nationally before, “based on local circumstances”.

Earlier in September Government Spokesman Ali Bahadori-Jahromi had said in a televised interview that “the government has no plans to increase the price of bread” but added that provincial authorities in the future would be deciding the price of bread with the “approval of the interior ministry.”

Khandouzi also confirmed that provincial authorities need the approval of the interior ministry for increasing the price of bread in their respective provinces and added that the government will “specifically supervise bread prices.”.

Since Iran reduced subsidies for food and medicine last year, the government had repeatedly vowed not to increase bread prices. In May 2022 Khandouzi had stated that an increase in the price of bread was “the President’s redline” and other officials had repeated his promise of keeping the price of bread steady.

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The government of President Ebrahim Raisi appears to be delegating the pricing of bread to provincial authorities to minimize criticism of its dismal economic performance including skyrocketing food prices analysts say. Prices rose as much as 100 percent in the past year for ordinary food items.

In early August after weeks of contradictory statements and denials, the government finally confirmed that bread prices had increased in 13 provinces by around 40 percent.

Analysts say the capital Tehran and Tehran Province, the most populous in the countrywith a population of over 13 million, were spared so far for political reasons including possibility of protests.

In the past few days, the price of Sangak, a popular flatbread weighing around 450g, rose by 50 percent from 20,000 rials to 30,000 (around 7 cents) in Tehran and surrounding regions due to a drop in the flour subsidy allocated to bakeries.

Bread prices in Iran might seem cheap by world standards, but any increase in the price of bread can hugely affect impoverished households given that bread is the main staple in Iranians’ diet.

Iranians are the second biggest bread consumers in the world with annually 160kg (350 lb) per person after Turkish consumers with 199.6 kg (440 lb) per person.

Bread consumption in Iran has risen by ten kilos in the past ten years due to higher cost of living that has made rice less affordable to many Iranians, particularly the three lowest-income percentiles.

Iran's food inflation rate, according to World Bank figures in June, stood at 78 percent, placing the country in the fifth place in the world after Venezuela (426%), Lebanon (350%), Argentina (115%), and Zimbabwe (102%). In April Iran had ranked fourth among the countries with the highest food inflation with a food inflation rate of 71 percent.

On May 1, 2022, the parliament voted to allow the government to scrape an annual $10-14 billion subsidy for essential food and medicine despite warnings of higher inflation, which already stood at around 40 percent, and hardship for the most vulnerable. This led to a ten-fold increase in the price of flour.

The government of President Raisi then introduced a “smart plan” to continue the bread subsidy and issued digital cards that have to be used at the time of purchase, arguing that the plan would prevent the smuggling of subsidized flour and bread to neighboring countries where they sold at much higher prices.

Earlier in June the Bakers’ Union revealed that subsidized flour allocations to some bakeries had dropped by more than half their quota. Bakers say despite the lower cost of subsidized flour, other production costs (labor, other ingredients including yeast and oil) have increased, and their sales have dropped so much in the past year that they are not able to make a profit even by using subsidized flour.

During an interview with CBS News on Wednesday, Blinken addressed concerns that the deal to release five Iranians in addition to $6 billion of the frozen assets in exchange for five Iranian-Americans who were held hostage could encourage further hostage-taking. 

“These proceeds from Iran’s oil sales, they’ve always been entitled to use. Just as a practical matter, they couldn’t. But the other thing is whether we like it or not – and we don’t like it – the Iranians have always found ways to use money, whether there are sanctions or not, for military purposes," Blinken said, describing the agreement as a hard decision. "These are hard decisions, hard decisions for the president to make.”

However, a few minutes earlier in the interview, he had claimed that “we made an arrangement with the bank in question – this is a bank in Qatar – to make sure that we would have clear visibility over the way the money is spent,” claiming that if it is not being spent for humanitarian reasons such as food and medicine, “it’ll get shut down.”

The top US diplomat reiterated that “From day one for our sanctions, this has always been exempt, being able to use money, including by Iran, for humanitarian purposes – it’s always been exempt from our sanctions.”

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Countless activists and politicians – mainly Republicans – have voiced opposition to the exchange, saying financial reward in a hostage situation will incentivize future hostage-taking. 

The sentiment was echoed by several editorial articles in the past few days, even by the Washington Post, whose editorial board has predominantly endorsed Democrats in various elections. 

The Post said the prisoner deal rewards noxious regimes and continues a miserable cycle of state-sponsored hostage-taking, “a barbaric practice that thrives on rewards and concessions from the United States and other nations.”

The daily pointed out that even if the Biden administration manages to step up monitoring on how the released money will be disbursed, the economic boost “will undoubtedly free up other funds to spend on more nefarious purposes, such as buying weapons.”

Highlighting that too many Americans remain unjustly held in Russia, Venezuela, Syria, and elsewhere around the world, the Post said these regimes view hostages as “a currency to be traded for future gain.” 

It argued that the best deterrent to end this vicious cycle would be for the United States and other nations to refuse to negotiate for the release of such hostages, otherwise, “Rogue states clang the jail door shut and wait for the next payoff, and they almost never suffer consequences for stealing people off the street.” “The harsh truth is that rewarding hostage-taking breeds more of the same.”

In another editorial highlighting somewhat similar concerns, The Wall Street Journal Tuesday delved into the question of how Biden could prevent future attempts at ransom grabs. It underlined that the Islamic Republic has paid no price for imprisoning Americans and has now been paid ransom for them, calling it “part of Tehran’s business model" which works fine for the regime.

The Journal calls it “insulting” that White House National Security Council official Brett McGurk claims that the funds will be spent “only on a limited category of humanitarian trade: food, medicine and agricultural products,” saying that McGurk may be technically right about those specific funds. “But that leaves the Tehran regime able to devote other funds they would have spent on those goods for such malevolent purposes as terrorism by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”