US Special Envoy Urges Release Of Nobel Laureate And Other Prisoners

Abolfazl Eghbali emphasized the unique responsibilities of artists in adhering to the Islamic Republic's norms and laws, cautioning that they could face more severe penalties for violations.

"Their penalties in this bill are tougher and more severe because they are not ordinary citizens, and their behavior entails a series of social consequences," he told Dideban Iran news website on Saturday.

The bill, officially titled "Protection of Family Through Promotion of Hijab and Chastity Culture," secured parliamentary approval in September but encountered an unexpected setback. The Guardian Council, vested with ultimate legislative authority, rejected the bill, citing formal deficiencies and calling for revisions to clarify ambiguous terms.

Speculation is rife regarding the reasons for the rejection, with some attributing it to procedural issues and others suggesting the Council's cautious approach amid potential public discontent ahead of the upcoming March parliamentary elections.

The development unfolds against the backdrop of protests that followed the tragic death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. Actresses and female artists expressed solidarity by sharing images without hijab during the protests. The act of defiance led to tensions with the state broadcaster, resulting in the removal of the actresses from TV shows and movies or the discontinuation of the shows altogether.

Celebrities have been under increasing government pressure since the 2022-2023 anti-regime protests. Measures such as pay cuts, bank account freezes, and work bans have been imposed, with some personalities opting for exile after openly supporting the Women, Life, Freedom movement.

A teachers’ group reported that residents launched a peaceful demonstration in the village of Qarah Qeshlaq on Wednesday to protest the environmental repercussions of the construction of a salt factory affiliated with the IRGC.

On the same day, government agents raided the village and arrested dozens of protesters on the orders of the intelligence department of Salmas district.

The female detainees were subjected to verbal abuse and threats of sexual violence by the regional director of the intelligence department, the report said.

Residents have voiced concerns about the construction of the IRGC-affiliated salt factory and the subsequent discharge of industrial wastewater into local water sources. They argue that these activities could have adverse consequences on the region's environment, leading to the destruction of pastures and gardens and rendering agricultural lands unusable.

In an interview with Iran International in August, Nikahang Kowsar, an environmental analyst, called the IRGC “an environmental menace willing to destroy Iran’s water resources just to line its own pockets,” citing the building of dams “to finance the Quds Force budget.”

In an article for Middle East Institute, Kowsar branded the IRGC as Iran’s “water mafia” and added, “This is how the cost of building a dam like Gotvand [south of Iran] can increase from $1.5 billion to $3.3 billion, and nobody even dares to ask where all the money has gone when the contractor did such a poor job.”

The strike on Houthis Thursday night came after the group shrugged off all warnings and demands to stop attacking vessels in the Red Sea. There were more strikes Friday night, albeit on a much smaller scale, according to US officials.

Five people were killed and six injured in the earlier overnight operation that President Biden said aimed to degenerate the Houthis’ capability to launch more attacks in the Red Sea.

“I don’t think there’s any civilian casualties,” Biden said defending the Friday strikes conducted by warplanes, US Navy destroyers and even submarines, “that’s another reason why it’s a success.”

Asked by a reporter if he had a message for Iran in the light of the attack, Biden said “I've already delivered the message to Iran. They know not to do anything."

Iran and its regional militant proxy forces –from Iraq to Yemen and Lebanon– have been targeting American and Israeli forces or interests for two months, claiming obligation to support Palestinians in the face of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

Reacting to the US/UK attack, the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Nasser Kanaani, said such attacks only “divert” attention from the crimes in Gaza and “ have no result other than fueling insecurity and instability in the region”.

Some countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, are concerned that US strikes on Houthi capabilities would only aggravate, not deter, the group and lead to an all-out regional war or direct confrontation with Iran.

Asked about such a possibility Friday, President Biden only said “Iran doesn’t want a war with us.”

Biden’s chief spokesperson John Kirby reiterated his words.

“We’re not looking for conflict with Iran,” he said in an interview with MSNBC Friday. “We’re not looking to escalate and there’s no reason for it to escalate beyond what happened over the last few days.”

The second strike early on Saturday, which the US said targeted a radar site, was launched by the guided missile destroyer Carney, which used Tomahawk missiles "to degrade the Houthis' ability to attack maritime vessels, including commercial vessels," the US Central Command said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

Media outlets in Tehran affiliated with various regime entities were mostly silent on Saturday morning about the second strike on Houthis and Biden's remarks.

But the Houthis seem to have other ideas.

“All American-British interests have become legitimate targets,” the group’s Supreme Political Council said Friday, as ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Yemenis rallied in the capital Sanaa to show support for Palestinians and condemn the overnight attacks.

Turkish President Recep TayyipErdogan seconded the sentiment.

“It is as if they aspire to turn the Red Sea into a bloodbath,” he said, accusing the US and Britain of using excessive force. “Yemen, namely the Houthis, say they have given and will continue to give the necessary response to them.”

The attack on Houthis in Yemen is no doubt an escalation of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. But the US and British governments have defended it as a “necessary and appropriate” response to the Houthi targeting of commercial vessels that has all but closed a major maritime route.

Many US lawmakers are not convinced though, especially since their word had not been sought on the matter as required (in their view) by the US constitution.

“The United States cannot risk getting entangled into another decades-long conflict without Congressional authorization,” wrote Rep. Mark Pocan on X. “The White House must work with Congress before continuing these airstrikes in Yemen.”

According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), most of the sentences ranged from four to 16 years for different charges, including “propaganda against the system,” “blasphemy,” and “conspiracy against national security.”

All of them have also been banned from residing in the capital, Tehran, for two years, along with various other social restrictions, including a prohibition on participating in political activities.

Although they are not famous dissidents, almost half of them had previously been detained and sentenced due to their civil and political activism. The ten men and one woman were arrested in a three-month time span from August to November. The sentences were issued during a joint court session in December.

Some of the prisoners, such as Payam Bastani Parizi, were first arrested in the peak of 2022 nationwide protests against the Islamic Republic, ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. Some of them, such as Ali-Asghar Hasanirad, were already in prison when the protests engulfed Iran.

Some had been pardoned through the Supreme Leader's amnesty last year. In February 2023, Ali Khamenei granted amnesty to tens of thousands of prisoners, including many who had been detained during the Women, Life, Freedom protests. However, a significant number of the released protesters were later summoned again and handed new sentences.

According to human rights organizations, at least 551 protesters, including 68 children, were killed during the uprising, the most serious challenge the clerical regime has so far faced. At least 22 individuals lost their lives under suspicious circumstances or due to suicide, and hundreds more suffered eye injuries. Over 22,000 people were arrested.

Two Iran-Iraq war veterans showed up at the university where Fatemeh Hashemi was teaching. They warned her that there were those who wanted to kill her father, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and kill him in such a way that everyone would believe it was a natural death.

“I asked them why should some people want to kill my father? They said because they are worried about [what would happen] after Mr. Khamenei,” the eldest daughter said in an interview with the reformist Etemad daily that was published Thursday.

Mystery still surrounds Rafsanjani's death, a relatively pragmatist revolutionary cleric. The influential politician's body was discovered in a swimming pool near his office on January 8, 2017. Officially, his death was attributed to drowning following a cardiac arrest, with no witnesses present at the time.

Rafsanjani's family has repeatedly raised concerns that he might have been murdered. They point to several suspicious circumstances, including delays in getting him to the hospital, the lack of access to CCTV footage from the swimming pool and his office, the absence of a post-mortem examination despite their requests, a rushed burial, and the disappearance of highly confidential documents, including diaries and his last will and testament, from his office safe shortly after his death.

In 2019, Fatemeh Hashemi had spoken of the visit of the two men whose identity she said was unknown to her but had never suggested that the alleged murder of her father had any connection to the leadership challenges in the regime. She had also said that she reported the warning to her father and after his death, to the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), which she said, did not follow up on the matter.

At the time of Rafsanjani’s death, two others were considered potential challengers to leadership after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s death: The ultra-hardliner Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi and Khamenei’s own son, Mojtaba, who some pundits speculated was being groomed to succeed his father. The elusive Mojtaba has long been referred to by hardliners as an Ayatollah to denote his high clerical rank.

Mesbah-Yazdi, who was a fundamentalist ideologue advocating the absolute rule of the jurisconsult (Velayat-e Faqih, or Supreme Leader), passed away in January 2021 at the age of 83. He enjoyed much influence among the top brass of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and political hardliners.

Mesbah-Yazdi and Rafsanjani were both members of the Assembly of Experts, an eighty-eight-member clerical body responsible for appointing a new Supreme Leader and supervising his activities. However, this constitutional provision has largely remained inactive over the years, as Khamenei has filled the assembly with loyalists.

Rafsanjani lost much of his former influence in the assembly after 2009 and was replaced by another high-ranking cleric, Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi-Kani when he withdrew from the elections in 2011.

Rafsanjani had played an instrumental role in the accession of Ali Khamenei to leadership in 1989 by convincing the Assembly of Experts that being a religious source of emulation (marja’-e taghlid) -- a qualification that Khamenei lacked -- was not considered as a leadership requirement. He also claimed that the late leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, had once suggested Khamenei’s name as his successor.

Khamenei and Rafsanjani, however, had a significant falling out when Khamenei publicly endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidential candidacy in 2009, going against all other rival candidates, including Rafsanjani. In a significant speech, Khamenei expressed that Ahmadinejad's views were "closer" to his own than those of any other candidate, including his "friend of fifty years," Rafsanjani.

“After 2016 [Rafsanjani] openly said here and there that he had made a mistake in choosing Khamenei [as leader],” Berlin-based political analyst Mehdi Mahdavi-Azad told Iran International, pointing out that according to people close to Rafsanjani, including his daughters and his advisor Gholam-Ali Rajaei, around the same time pressures had increased on him and there had been warnings of a threat to his life.

Mahdavi-Azad also highlighted a Khamenei speech on the day that Rafsanjani died, which could be interpreted as an attack on him and questioning his revolutionary credentials.

Playing with Rafsanjani's first name, Akbar, which means bigger or older, Khamenei suggested that the Islamic Republic could be harmed if a “reprobate or misled brother” turned out to be the “bigger Satan” and played the role of the real Satan in misleading the people. “We must be vigilant, this person is our enemy, too,” he said.

During the funeral prayers for Rafsanjani, Khamenei's omission of a sentence that traditionally attests to God that the deceased had displayed nothing but "benevolence and goodness" during his life attracted significant attention.

Mahdavi-Azad told Iran International that based on the evidence of a cover up and allegations made by the family, who insist Rafsanjani could not have died a normal death, Khamenei should be held responsible for ordering his killing.