Iran's Sunni Leader Calls Continued Oppression 'Provocative'

The secretary general of the party, Sadegh Mahsouli, and the chairman of the party’s central council, Morteza Aghatehrani, have not made any public comments about the war raging in the Middle East. Considering that they are close allies with many top officers of the Revolutionary Guard, the reason for their silence remains a mystery.

The Paydari party has its tentacles in all government institutions including the parliament where their members form a very influential minority that often takes a leading role amid the weak presence of established conservative and reformist parties.

Paydari, which has always expressed maximum hostility towards Israel, however, in a statement earlier this month called the Hamas attack on Israel a “triumphant” operation and congratulated the “Palestinian resistance groups’ command”.

Mahsouli and Aghatehrani’s silence is particularly notable, as many other politicians -- including reformists such as the former President Mohammad Khatami whose rhetoric against Israel is generally very mild in comparison with hardliners -- have extensively condemned Israel in the past two weeks.

Mahsouli, a former Revolutionary Guard officer and a business tycoon who served in the government of the hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as minister of interior and minister of welfare and social security, has been the party’s leader in the past three years.

Many believe Mahsouli, then interior minister, was the man behind the alleged rigging of the 2009 elections which secured a second term for the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is among the officials of the Islamic Republic designated by the European Union.

Aghatehrani who is the chairman of the parliament’s cultural committee this week spoke to the media about the upcoming elections of the parliament and Assembly of Experts in March.

The Assembly, a constitutional body, is tasked with selecting the Islamic Republic’s next supreme leader. Reformists allege the party is planning to manipulate the assembly’s elections to suit its own interests.

Aghatehrani is known for having been a protégé of Ayatollah Mohhammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. The sixty-six-year-old cleric studied at Canada’s McGill; a university very popular with Mesbah-Yazdi’s circle in the early 1990s.

Aghatehrani then obtained a US Green Card while studying for a PhD in Middle East Studies at the State University of New York at Binghampton. There, he founded the Islamic Institute of New York and Razi Islamic school in Woodside.

Aghatehrani returned to Iran and to Mesbah-Yazdi’s famous Imam Khomeini Institute, a seminary in Qom, in 2004. A year later when Ahmadinejad was first elected to presidency, Aghatehrani was invited to join his government as the cabinet’s “ethics teacher”.

The party, and Aghatehrani as a lawmaker, are said to be behind a drive to purge government institutions of all rival factions and “Islamization” of the Iranian society including imposing tighter control on universities and other educational institutions, strict enforcement of compulsory hijab, and controlling the media and the cyberspace.

The drive to establish Paydari’s monopoly in the government and higher education came to be known as “the purification project.” Former parliament speaker and moderate conservative Ali Larijani, who among others oppose hardliners and are seen as centrists in Iranian politics, coined the term in May indirectly attacking the Paydari.

Paydari members had circulated a rumor that Larijani was trying to head an electoral block for the March parliamentary elections. “There is no talk about the elections or a nationwide slate, nor is there any consultation with other [political groups]. Therefore, the purification [-seeking] current need not worry,” Larijani responded in a brief letter and added that his ultra-hardliner rivals who blocked him from running in the presidential elections of 2020 could not expect to “create fake rivalry” and interest in the parliamentary elections.

Security forces also seized her electronic devices, according to her father during an interview with Ham-Mihan newspaper, the latest in a long line of arrests made of journalists accused of anti-regime sentiment and threatening state security.

The official reason for Maryam's arrest has not been publicly disclosed as of now. However, the Emtedad Telegram channel has indicated that it is somehow linked to the case of Mehdi Yarahi, a protest singer.

Yarahi garnered attention for releasing multiple songs in support of nationwide protests in 2022 and for his active presence on social media platforms. He was arrested on August 28, following the release of his song "Roosarito" (Your Headscarf). Yarahi was released from Evin Prison on bail last week.

Maryam's father, Abbas Abdi, also has a history of demanding more media freedom. He served as a member of the editorial board for the daily publication Salam and faced an eight-month imprisonment in 1993 due to his critical writing published within the newspaper. Notably, in July 1999, Salam daily faced a temporary ban imposed by the Special Court for the Clergy after it published a confidential ministry report. The event led to six consecutive days of student demonstrations in Tehran.

On August 4, 1999, the newspaper received a five-year ban, and its publisher, Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, was barred from engaging in journalistic activities for a three-year period.

Abdi has been a member of the central council of reformist party the Islamic Iran Participation Front and presently serves as the chairman of the Association of Iranian Journalists.

"If the fingers on the trigger were Hamas’s, the strings were being pulled from Tehran," he said, calling for the UK to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which controls Iran's many proxies across the region.

The UK's counter-extremism commissioner, Robin Simcox, also had a similar stance, saying that continued legal support for the IRGC would not be sustainable. The IRGC has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the US State Department since April 2019, but the UK has yet to do so.

Fox criticized the UK for failing to list the IRGC as a terrorist group, despite the fact that "£100 million of investment goes from Tehran to Hamas terrorists" annually and called for closing Iranian banks that operate from the City of London and stopping Iran Air flights from Heathrow.

The UK has imposed sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities since Mahsa Amini's death in September 2022 as a response to human rights violations committed by the regime's IRGC forces. But, proscription would have made belonging to the group, funding it, or expressing support for its activities in the UK criminal.

The British government exacerbated sanctions, pledging to step up protection for Iranian journalists based in the United Kingdom, following the suspension of Iran International's UK operations due to continued threats to its employees and based on advice from the London Metropolitan Police.

The Iranian government has repeatedly threatened Iran International and other Persian broadcasters based abroad.

The refusal to proscribe the IRGC has caused sharp political criticism, as the opposition Labour Party calls for its proscription under the 2000 Terrorism Act.

In a statement released on Monday, the association branded the sentences for the two journalists imprisoned for their groundbreaking story of the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody as "harsh" and reflective of the challenging environment for professional journalism in Iran, which is coming increasingly under fire.

Hundreds of journalists have been punished and imprisoned for daring to propagate anti-regime sentiment, worsening since the uprising which followed Amini's death, the biggest challenge to the regime since its founding in 1979.

The Iranian Judiciary, on Monday, announced that Elaheh Mohammadi, a journalist affiliated with Ham-Mihan who covered Amini's funeral, had been sentenced to six years in prison for "collaborating with the United States," in addition to a five-year term for "conspiring and colluding against national security." An extra year of imprisonment was added for "promoting activities against the state."

Niloufar Hamedi, known for her iconic photograph of the grieving parents of Mahsa that sparked protests, and a correspondent for the Iranian reformist newspaper, Shargh, received a seven-year prison sentence for "collaboration with the United States government" and an additional five-year term for "conspiring and colluding in acts against national security." She was also handed an extra one-year sentence for "engaging in propagandistic activities against the state."

If the verdicts are upheld by the appellate court, Mohammadi will serve a total of six years in prison, and Hamedi will serve a total of seven years.

Meanwhile, the Office of the US Special Envoy for Iran released a statement on the X platform, condemning the severe sentences imposed on the two women The message read, "Niloufar and Elaheh should never have been jailed, and we condemn their sentences. The Iranian regime jails journalists because it fears the truth."

Though he asserted that the decision is not his to make, the talks of action on Israel's northern front, following Hamas' declaration of war against Israel on October 7, it will be further warning that all civilians in Israel remain at risk as Iran's largest proxy Hezbollah gears for war.

“Some consider a direct missile attack on Haifa to be the most practical course of action. We will carry out this task without hesitation if it is necessary and required," said Fadavi. "However, I am not the one who determines the assignment.”

He made the remarks at a gathering of students supporting Gaza at the Tehran University Mosque, though last week also threatened of “another shockwave” if Israel does not end "atrocities" in Gaza, referring to the bombardment of Israeli air strikes beating down on the strip after Hamas' massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7.

Since Hamas' surprise assault on Israel which saw over 1,400 civilians slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, plus hundreds more soldiers, Iran's threats did not outline a clear detailed plan of action. However, the acting IRGC Commander has stated a very direct warning on Israeli lands, threatening to activate its proxies not only on Israel's borders, but as far afield as Yemen. Just days ago, the US intercepted Houthi missiles from Yemen on their way to Israel, showing the Iranian proxy network is on full alert.

The Iran-allied militias have also begun attacking US troops' bases in Iraq and Syria as the conflict begun by Hamas spreads further afield.