US court orders ICE to free Iranian bodybuilder held without deportation timeline

The officials named are Mohsen Karimi (Markazi Province commander), Ahmad Khadem Seyed al-Shohada (commander of Karbala Operational Base in southwest provinces), Mostafa Mohebbi and Hassan Akharian, all described as senior figures implicated in 'gross and systematic' human rights violations, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Anita Anand said the four are being listed under the Special Economic Measures (Iran) Regulations for facilitating and directing repressive policies in the Islamic Republic.

“Iranian security forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), continue to use excessive and lethal force to suppress protests, along with beatings, arbitrary arrests and torture, including in custody,” the statement said.

Ottawa formally listed the IRGC as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code last year, which Canada blames for human rights abuses and the 2020 downing of flight PS752.

“Canada will not hesitate to highlight Iran’s persistent disregard for the human rights of its own people and call for change," the statement said. "It is imperative that Iran investigate all violations in line with international law, ensure justice for victims, and make certain that its policies and practices uphold its human rights obligations."

Ottawa also introduced a new measure last week, requiring any transaction with Iran, no matter the amount, to be reported. The previous $10,000 reporting threshold has been eliminated in favor of a zero-dollar threshold for any financial transaction to or from Iran.

Canada shuttered its embassy and cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012 over what it called security concerns for its diplomats and Iran’s alleged support for terrorism and human-rights abuses.

Nazemi was detained during a memorial service in the northeastern city of Mashhad for Khosrow Alikordi, a former political prisoner and lawyer for dissidents whose sudden death left supporters suspicious of state involvement, which Tehran denies.

At the ceremony, security forces used force to dispersed mourners and arrested 39 people, including activists, lawyers and civil society figures.

Nazemi’s sister Mahshid told Iran International she was on a live video call with Pouran when security forces stormed the mosque where the commemoration was being held.

“The security officers opened the mosque’s doors and attacked the people with batons and knives,” Mahshid said. “They threw tear gas inside the mosque," Mahshid said.

Mahshid was able to record portions of the incident by capturing the live video call with her sister, though she was unable to document the alleged knife and baton attacks she described.

She did, however, provide photos showing what appear to be knife wounds and a bloodied scene.

Videos reviewed by Iran International show Pouran describing the crackdown in real time before the feed was abruptly cut. Screams and loud bangs were audible.

Mahshid said she watched plainclothes officers beat women inside the mosque and drag people away. “They attacked them very badly. We could only hear screaming and see the camera shaking,” she said.

Iran International was not immediately able to verify all aspects of her account of the raid.

Defiance, fear of death

“It was terrifying,” Mahshid said. “But I also felt proud because I saw a group of brave women, without the hijab, in a mosque, in a religious city, shouting ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘Woman, Life, Freedom."

The Woman, Life, Freedom movement marked one of the most serious challenges the Islamic Republic has faced, with protests erupting nationwide in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody and calling for an end to clerical rule.

Nazemi's sister says they still do not know where she is being held or which security body is responsible for her detention, though they fear the case may be under the authority of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“We don’t know which prison she is in or which organization is holding her,” Mahshid said. “And when there is no official information, the risk of torture and fabricated charges increases,” she added.

The family is also concerned about Nazemi’s health. She has a history of stomach cancer, severe respiratory problems and life-threatening anaphylactic reactions caused by medical negligence during a previous detention, according to her sister.

During an earlier imprisonment, Nazemi suffered allergic shock after being given an antibiotic she was known to be sensitive to while undergoing surgery, Mahshid said.

“Since then, her condition has never been stable. Now I don’t know if she is receiving any medication at all,” she told Iran International.

There is also an open case against Nazemi in the southeastern city of Kerman, which her family fears could be used to impose harsher charges.

“They have already given her 14 years in prison in one case,” Mahshid said. “They don’t answer us, they don’t give court documents, and they argue with our lawyers,” she told Iran International.

From memorial to mass arrests

Iranian authorities say 39 people were arrested during the memorial ceremony. Those detained included Alikordi’s brother Javad Alikordi, Mohammadi and human rights activists Aliyeh Motallebzadeh, Sepideh Gholian, and Hasti Amiri.

Several detainees have since made brief phone calls to their families, but relatives say information about their condition and whereabouts remains limited.

In a message relayed by her family, Mohammadi said she was severely beaten during her arrest, suffering repeated blows to the head and neck with batons, and was later accused of “cooperation with the State of Israel.”

Human rights groups say the arrests followed a violent crackdown on mourners at the memorial, which had become a flashpoint amid growing controversy over Alikordi’s death.

Alikordi, a lawyer known for defending political prisoners and bereaved families, was found dead in his office in Mashhad on December 5. Authorities say he died of a heart attack, but his family and colleagues have questioned the official account, citing the removal of surveillance cameras and inconsistencies in the investigation.

Calling on the international community to act, Mahshid urged governments and rights groups to demand accountability.

“When names and locations are hidden, people are tortured and silenced,” she said. “Be a voice. Raise the cost for the Islamic Republic and demand transparency — for my sister and for the suspicious death of Khosrow Alikordi,” she told Iran International.

Iran's budget for this fiscal year had given the sprawling paramilitary body new economic power by tasking it with selling nearly 600,000 barrels of oil per day to fund military expenditures.

The dramatic raid by Washington, which is the latest move in an escalating pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, now puts the shadowy trade buoying targeted economies in Caracas and Tehran in the crosshairs.

“The seizure underscores Washington’s escalating efforts to crack down on dark-fleet activity tied to Iranian and Venezuelan crude trades,” analytics firm Kpler said in a research note.

The Guyana-flagged ship, called Skipper, had loaded crude earlier this year at Iran’s Kharg Island terminal and has frequently shuttled between Venezuela, Iran and China—a top customer for the sanctioned powers.

Kpler notes that Skipper has been repeatedly linked to sanction-evasion tactics, including spoofing its location and mislabeled Iranian cargoes routed through Asia.

The tanker, formerly known as Adisa, was sanctioned on November 3, 2022 for transporting oil on behalf of the IRGC-Quds Force to Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon—both of which are deemed terrorist organizations by US authorities—as well as to Syria.

The US campaign targeting the dark fleet has intensified for months. In an October report, Kpler said that over 60% of the vessels that have loaded Iranian crude in the last 12 months are now sanctioned by OFAC, up from 38% one year ago.

Still, according to shipping analytics firm Vortexa, Iran's shadow trade to China appears to be operating at full tilt. Export volumes stood at around 1.5-1.7 million bpd so far in 2025, it said, up slightly from last year but a full 25% from 2023.

"This consistency underscores the maturity of Iran’s sanctions-evasion logistics," it wrote in an analyst note, adding that Iran's capacity to get its crude to Chinese markets was limited by the number of eligible vessels and muted buyer interest.

Impact on Iran's revenues

Venezuela is offering its sanctioned crude at a $14–15 per barrel discount, according to reporting by Reuters. Kpler previously estimated that Iran, too, has increased its discounts to around $8 per barrel.

Along with Russia, the sanctioned exporters are effectively in direct competition with one another to lure Chinese buyers by offering deeper discounts.

Complicating matters further, with the global market oversupplied, the baseline price of oil has fallen to around $62 per barrel.

Discounts of $11-15 dollars therefore wipe out a substantial portion of export revenues for the sanctioned trio — all of which remain under pressure to lower prices even more to retain Chinese clients.

Chartering a Very Large Crude Carrier the size of the Skipper typically costs around $100,000 per day, and much higher for sanctioned cargoes.

For Iran — now holding 200 million barrels on the water according to Vortexa, the pressure to sell quickly is immense.

To the costs of chartering and discounting must also be added the expensive sanctions-evasion operations: ship-to-ship transfers, falsified documentation to rebrand cargoes, intermediaries and non-standard insurance.

Kpler data indicates that Iranian crude discharge in Chinese ports has fallen to 1.2 million bpd in the last two months after hitting near 2 million bpd in September and October as Chinese buying pauses late into the trading cycle.

Along with global low oil prices, the combined pressures may hit at Iran’s oil revenues when its economy can tolerate it least. The Iranian rial has depreciated at an accelerating rate in recent weeks and inflation has surged.

The currency lost nearly 15% of its value in just the past month and hit a new low on Monday of 1.31 million to the dollar.

“There should be an independent, impartial and transparent investigation into his death,” Tatyana Eatwell, an international human rights barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London told Eye for Iran.

Eatwell has worked extensively on Iran-related cases including the detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman who was detained in Iran for six years on widely disputed charges while visiting family.

She later became one of the most high-profile cases of Iran’s detention of dual nationals, in a policy critics of Tehran have blasted as hostage diplomacy.

Alikordi’s body was discovered in his office in Mashhad on December 8, 2025.

Iranian authorities attributed his death to a cardiac arrest, citing alleged forensic evidence, even as unconfirmed reports emerged of head injuries, blood at the scene and the removal of security cameras.

Eatwell said the circumstances surrounding Alikordi’s death cannot be separated from the years of persecution he faced at the hands of Iranian authorities. He was a former political prisoner and had represented many dissidents throughout his career.

“Mr. Ali Kordi was imprisoned, he was disbarred from practice, subject to travel bans, simply for doing his job, for representing his clients without fear nor favor. This is part of our professional obligation," Eatwell told Eye for Iran.

“The first question one asks is whether in the light of allegations of state involvement, the state institutions themselves are sufficiently robust and independent to provide the family with the answers to the questions that they must have,” she said.

Alikordi was a prominent figure among Iran’s community of human rights defenders. He represented political dissidents, bereaved families and people arrested during the Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2002, including Fatemeh Sepehri, a well-known Iranian political activist and outspoken critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who has been repeatedly imprisoned for her opposition to the Islamic Republic.

A group of 81 lawyers inside Iran issued a public statement on December 9 demanding full transparency regarding the circumstances of Alikordi’s death and pledging support for his family in what they described as a necessary truth-seeking process, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Provincial officials in Razavi Khorasan in Northeastern Iran insist his death was natural, even as reports indicated a heavy security presence around the scene.

One of the lawyers who signed the statement told the Center for Human Rights in Iran that a key aim was to create a safe environment for Alikordi’s family.

A source familiar with the situation in the eastern, holy city of Mashhad said security agents warned civil and political activists arriving in the city not to give speeches at Alikordi’s funeral.

Following Alikordi’s burial, his brother, lawyer and academic Javad Alikordi said he had been summoned by the Mashhad Revolutionary Court.

Protests erupted on December 11 at Alikordi's memorial marking the seventh day since his death.

53-year-old 2023 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Narges Mohammadi and at least 39 other people, according to local authorities, were arrested and remain in custody.

Eatwell said Alikordi’s persistence in continuing to practice law despite sustained pressure stood out, saying that lawyers who defend dissidents and protesters operate in an increasingly hostile environment.

“The impact that it’s designed to have is to discourage other lawyers from practicing in this way, to discourage people from speaking out, to discourage people from asking questions,” she said.

Eatwell said Iran’s repeated failures to conduct credible investigations make it unlikely that Alikordi’s family will receive answers through domestic channels alone.

She said the international community must be prepared to act, pointing to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, established in 2022 to investigate serious human rights violations.

After the 1979 revolution, the holiday replaced the pre-revolution tradition of observing Mother’s Day on December 15 as well as March 8, International Women’s Day.

The official website of Iran’s Supreme Leader published a message praising Fatimah as a model of “piety, justice-seeking, jihad, guidance, wifehood and motherhood.”

Across the country this year, state schools and government offices held ceremonies honoring Fatimah’s virtues and celebrating mothers and women, complete with religious speeches. The Social Security Organization also distributed a small cash gift—worth roughly $10—to women covered by retirement support programs.

But many women — and some men — responded to the government’s pageantry with sharp criticism.

'Absurd without rights'

A woman named Homa Dokht challenged the very premise of the day, pointing to Fatimah’s childhood marriage in a video posted on X.

Congratulating Mother’s Day on Fatimah’s birthday is absurd, she argued, because it is tantamount to endorsing child marriage, referring to accounts that place Fatimah’s marriage at age nine and childbirth around age ten.

“In a country where women and girls are deprived of their most basic rights, congratulating this day is foolish,” she added, highlighting systemic legal inequalities faced by Iranian women.

“For the smallest things — like enrolling children in school, opening a bank account for them, or even getting their exam results — only the father is qualified (legally),” she said. “And if a child needs surgery, only the father’s or paternal grandfather’s signature is valid.”

For activists, the contrast between state-sanctioned celebrations and daily lived realities encapsulates a central grievance: symbolic reverence for motherhood does not translate into legal equality.

Iran mandates women wear the Islamic face veil, even as enforcement had slackened in recent year. A young woman named Mahsa Amini whose death in morality police custody stoked mass protests in 2022. The unrest was quashed with deadly force.

Iranian law, which Islamic authorities say is based on religious precepts, systematically prioritizes men in criminal, family and financial cases.

Gender equality activist Leila Forough Mohammadi wrote on X: “On a day named for women, a single woman, a divorced woman, a woman without children simply does not exist — as if she is incomplete.

"Here, the system defines the woman only as spouses, and bestows the highest status on a woman whose reproductive role serves the population policy,” she added.

Iran ranks 143 out of 146 countries in the latest World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report.

Amnesty International has documented systemic gender discrimination in Iran in its 2024 report, including up to 74 lashes for defying hijab rules and frequent impunity for honor killings.

Mansoureh Hosseini Yeganeh, a women’s rights activist based in the UK, wrote: “We want not just Mother’s Day, but child custody rights, the right to obtain a birth certificate for our children, the right to leave the country, government support, citizenship respect, and all the things mothers enjoy in other civilized countries. And we want gifts too!”

“What Mother’s Day?” journalist Maryam Shokrani asked: “when mothers and women in this country are deprived of their most basic rights, when you don’t even include their names on their children’s birth certificates, when they have no custody … You should be ashamed!”

Men in solidarity

A post on X by Khamenei this month highlighting income inequality between women and men in the West stoked criticism by users who pointed to the Islamic theocracy's record on women's rights.

The nearly 50-year-old system over which Khamenei presides views the veil as an emblem of Islamic identity and chastity.

Some Iranian men voiced support for the current holiday amid the criticism.

Mehrshad Ahmadian, CEO of a steel company, wrote: “Go sit with your father after you’re done congratulating Mother’s Day, ask him why your mother has no right to divorce? Why doesn’t she have custody of the child she gave birth to? Why does she need permission to obtain a passport?”

Supporters of the government’s agenda defend the official celebrations and the religious framing.

“Whenever we speak of women in the Islamic view, we speak of dignity, not a show," a user on X asserted.

"Islam defines women by the Fatimah model, not by the standards of capitalist markets. Today’s Iranian woman is an example of this great truth.”