radiofree.asia

Category: iran

  • Iran Talks Up Homegrown COVID-19 Vaccines In Show Of Self-Reliance

    Iran is boasting that its ability to make coronavirus vaccines exemplifies its self-sufficiency, with one top official comparing the feat to its ability to build missiles.

    “Just as we were forced to manufacture missiles ourselves, we produced a coronavirus vaccine,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on March 15, the semiofficial news agency ISNA reported.

    Despite Tehran posing as a vaccine-manufacturing hub, its coronavirus vaccine candidates are still undergoing trials and have not received official approval.

    Instead, the country has bought Russian, Chinese, and Indian injections amid a sluggish, opaque vaccination campaign launched last month with a small number of doses of Russia’s Sputnik V. Authorities say health-care workers and those with chronic conditions are currently being inoculated.

    The latest Iranian coronavirus vaccine to emerge with scant details about it is named Fakhra after the country’s late nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated near Tehran in November.

    Fakhra was reportedly first unveiled on March 16, when its first clinical trial was launched in a ceremony attended by senior officials, including Health Minister Saeed Namaki. The minister pledged that Iran would soon become a “world leader” in COVID-19 vaccine production.

    One of Fakhrizadeh’s two sons, Hamed Fakhrizadeh, became the first volunteer to receive a test dose of Fakhra, which was produced by the Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research. The department was previously headed by Fakhrizadeh, whose killing has been blamed on Israeli agents.

    A son of slain scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh receives a Fakhra coronavirus vaccine as Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami (left) and Health Minister Saeed Namaki (2nd left) look on at a staged event in Tehran on March 16.


    A son of slain scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh receives a Fakhra coronavirus vaccine as Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami (left) and Health Minister Saeed Namaki (2nd left) look on at a staged event in Tehran on March 16.

    An official claimed Fakhra was “100 percent safe” and the government said it had some 20,000 volunteers to officially test it.

    Optimistic Targets

    The Health Ministry has said it will vaccinate all Iranian adults by September, a goal that many find overly optimistic.

    Iran launched a human trial of at least two domestic vaccines last year that it hopes will be help curtail the spread of the pandemic, which Tehran has desperately struggled to stem since it emerged there more than a year ago.

    Some 1.76 million Iranians have contracted the virus and nearly 61,500 have died of COVID-19 as of March 16, according to official figures. The actual number of infections and dead from the pandemic is likely to be two or three times higher, officials and experts have said.

    Iranian officials say they have so far received 410,000 doses of Sputnik V, 250,000 shots of China’s Sinopharm, and 125,000 doses of India’s COVAXIN vaccine. Tehran has also accepted 100,000 doses of the unapproved Cuban Soberana-02 vaccine, which will be administered to 100,000 people in the third phase of its human trial.

    An additional 375,000 doses of COVAXIN are expected in the country by March 17, bringing the total number of imported shots to 1.26 million.

    Despite a ban on U.S. and British coronavirus vaccines by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian health officials said in early February the country will also receive more than 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine under the World Health Organization’s COVAX vaccine-distribution project.

    Use of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca shots are currently being shelved by several European countries after reports of health problems in people who had received the vaccine.

    Iranian officials have added that they eventually expect to import more than 16 million doses of vaccines from COVAX, which could inoculate nearly 10 percent of the country’s some 84 million people.

    Mostafa Ghanei, the director of the Scientific Commission in Iran’s National Headquarters for Combating the Coronavirus, said in an interview in February that the country will need 160 million doses of coronavirus vaccines in order to bring the pandemic fully under control.

    Speaking on March 15, Zarif blasted Western countries for hoarding vaccines “three times more than they need” and accused the United States of hampering Tehran’s access to vaccines through tough sanctions and financial restrictions imposed under ex-President Donald Trump.

    “Can those who prevented the transfer of our money for purchasing vaccines say that they learned a lesson in humanity and humility from the coronavirus outbreak?” Zarif asked, failing to mention Khamenei’s January ban on Western-made vaccines.

    That act by the supreme leader has been blasted as a politicization of the health and well-being of Iranians, who have been hit harder by the pandemic than any other country in the Middle East.

    Khamenei has called U.S.- and British-made vaccines “untrustworthy,” while his chief of staff, Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, recently falsely claimed that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had killed several people, with “some countries refusing to accept it.”

    Golpayegani made the comments while praising Iran’s main vaccine candidate, Barekat, which is being developed by Setad, a powerful organization controlled by Khamenei’s office that owns billions of dollars in property seized after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Intelligence Says Iran, Russia Carried Out Influence Operations During 2020 Election

    Russia and Iran both conducted misinformation operations to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, according to a U.S. intelligence report.

    The unclassified 15-page report, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on March 16, said there were no indications foreign actors attempted to influence technical aspects of the U.S. election, such as meddling with ballots or voter tabulation.

    But it assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the United States.”

    Unlike during Russian meddling in the 2016 election, U.S. intelligence did not observe Russian cyber-action to gain access to election infrastructure. Instead, the report said the Russian state and its proxies tried to impact U.S. public perceptions.

    Moscow’s strategy primarily revolved around using “proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives” to U.S. media, officials, and prominent individuals, “including some close to former President Trump and his administration,” the report said.

    Meanwhile, Iran also carried out “a multi-pronged covert influence campaign” to damage Trump’s reelection campaign, but did not actively promote Biden.

    The goal of Iran’s actions was to undermine confidence in the U.S. election and institutions and foster divisions within society, the report said.

    Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “authorized the campaign and Iran’s military and intelligence services implemented it using overt and covert messaging and cyber-operations,” the report said.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran-Born Singer Prompts Threats From Tehran With Video Clip Featuring Porn Star

    California-based singer Sassan Heydari-Yafteh, better known to fans as Sasy Mankan, has prompted threats and detentions by Iranian authorities who say his new music clip featuring a hard-core porn actress is obscene.

    The video, Tehran Tokyo, features sex star Alexis Texas dancing alongside the Iranian-American performer and at one point wearing — and then shedding — a head scarf.

    Head scarves, known as hijabs, are obligatory for women under Iran’s strict Islamic dress code and are a frequent target of protest by activists seeking reform of Iran’s discriminatory patriarchal system.

    Sasy’s video has also been criticized for exposing Sasy’s fans — including children and young Iranians — to the world of porn.

    The 32-year-old singer posted promotional snippets last week before releasing the full clip on March 11 despite a threat by Iranian authorities that they would take action against the singer through “international legal authorities.”

    Iranian media reported this week that two brothers who arranged the song — identified as Mohsen and Behroz Manuchehri — were arrested at their home in the southwestern city of Shiraz.

    It is unclear what charges are being levied against the two.

    The semiofficial Tasnim news agency affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) quoted Tehran’s guidance court as warning that anyone who collaborated on the song or even who lip-syncs it and publishes it online will face prosecution.

    A Tehran Tokyo promotional clip posted online on March 2 has been viewed over 18 million times, while a longer version has 2.6 million views on Sasy Mankan’s Instagram page, which has 4.7 million followers.

    The music video led to renewed calls by Iranian hard-liners for the blocking of Instagram, which remains the only Western social-media site that has not been filtered by Iranian authorities.

    “All parents are worried about cyberspace’s psychological harm to helpless children; this is the common denominator of all political thought. Others have taken serious steps to protect their children many years before us,” lawmaker Mojtaba Tavangar said via Twitter while tagging Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi. “Child protection requires everyone’s support. Mr. Minister, [and] we are ready to help resolve this issue.”

    Many people have countered that in order to protect children, authorities should take other steps that include protection against child labor and child marriages.

    “The thoughts of children realizing that [Alexis Texas] is a porn star and searching for her [name on the Internet] make me tremble,” said journalist Emily Amraee, adding that “due to [state] filtering, all children have access to anti-filtering tools.”

    “This song is more dangerous than child polio,” she said.

    Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a vice president under reformist President Mohammad Khatami two decades ago, said that while Sasy’s video clip “with its special guests” was being viewed by millions of Iranians, some people in the country also view women bicyclists as a problem.

    “What a deep [gap] between these thoughts and the reality of the society,” Abtahi said on Twitter.

    Sasy, who left Iran in 2012, declined an interview request by RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.

    “I don’t want to [comment]. In these cases, I usually let everyone do their thing,” he said.

    Sasy’s manager, Farshid Rafe Rafahi, CEO of Los Angeles-based EMH Productions, told The Associated Press that Sassy was not trying to create controversy.

    “It’s pretty crazy, she’s just dancing like any person in any ordinary music video. She’s not doing anything inappropriate in these scenes,” Rafahi, said. “Sasy’s mission isn’t to create havoc, it’s to make people happy.”

    In 2019, Sasy, who used to work as un underground singer in Iran, outraged Iranian authorities with a video clip, titled Gentleman, that became a hit among Iranians. Schoolchildren were shown dancing to the song in multiple videos posted online.

    Some officials later claimed the video clips were “fake” and that no dancing took place in Iranian schools.

    Iranian authorities, who interfere in most aspects of their citizens’ lives, have cracked down on public dancing, mainly by women, in recent years.

    In 2014, six men and women were detained for dancing in a YouTube video to the Pharrell Williams song Happy. They were later sentenced to suspended jail terms.

    Radio Farda broadcaster Mohammad Zarghami contributed to this story

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Reports ‘Terrorist Attack’ On Cargo Ship In Mediterranean Sea

    An Iranian state-owned company says one of its cargo vessels was targeted this week by what it called a “terrorist” attack in the Mediterranean Sea, state television reported on March 12.

    The report quoted Ali Ghiasian, spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines group (IRISL), as saying that the ship was en route from Iran to Europe when its hull was hit with an “explosive device” on March 10.

    Ghiasian said the blast set off a small fire that was quickly extinguished and that the ship, named Shahr-e Kord, would continue on its journey after assessing and repairing the damage.

    The report said there were no casualties in the blast. It did not blame anyone for the incident, which Ghiasian called a “terrorist action and an example of maritime piracy.”

    Reuters quoted two maritime security sources as saying that initial indications were that the container ship had been intentionally targeted by an unknown source.

    The incident comes less than two weeks after Israel accused arch enemy Iran of being behind an attack on an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman on February 25 — a charge denied by Tehran.

    In a March 12 report quoting U.S. and regional officials, The Wall Street Journal said Israel had targeted at least a dozen vessels bound for Syria that were mostly carrying Iranian oil since late 2019.

    It said Israel had used weapons including “water mines” to target the ships.

    Israeli officials have not commented on the report, but Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that the country “will continue to fight against terrorism and everything that helps terrorism, including its sources of revenue.”

    IRISL was blacklisted by the United States last year over what the State Department described as the transportation of items related to Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.

    With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Iran Envoy Boasted Of Causing Civilian Deprivation

    The Biden administration has named Richard Nephew as its deputy Iran envoy. As the former principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy for Barack Obama’s State Department, Nephew took personal credit for depriving Iranians of food, sabotaging their automobile industry, and driving up unemployment rates.

    Nephew has described the destruction of Iran’s economy as “a tremendous success,” and lamented during a visit to Russia that food was still plentiful in the country’s capital despite mounting U.S. sanctions.

    Nephew’s appointment to a senior diplomatic post suggests that rather than immediately returning to the JCPOA nuclear deal, the Biden administration will finesse sanctions illegally imposed by Trump to pressure Iran into an onerous, reworked agreement that Tehran is unlikely to join.

    The post Biden Iran Envoy Boasted Of Causing Civilian Deprivation appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Johnson Demands ‘Immediate Release’ Of British-Iranian Aid Worker

    British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has demanded the “immediate release” of aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other dual nationals detained in Iran.

    Johnson raised the case of Zaghari-Ratcliffe during a phone call with Iranian President Hassan Rohani, and said her “continued confinement remains completely unacceptable” and that she must be allowed to return to her family in Britain, a spokesman said on March 10.

    The charity worker, 42, had her ankle tag removed on March 7 at the end of her five-year sentence, but she faces a new court case against her, scheduled for March 14.

    She had been under house arrest in Tehran since being moved from jail a year ago due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    A project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained at Tehran airport after a family visit in 2016 and subsequently sentenced for plotting to overthrow Iran’s government — an accusation she denies.

    In November, she was notified in court of a fresh indictment of “spreading propaganda against the regime.”

    Prior to her arrest, she lived in London with her husband and daughter, who is now 6 years old.

    Iran has arrested dozens of foreign and dual nationals in recent years on espionage charges that they and their governments say are groundless.

    Critics say Iran uses such arbitrary detentions as part of hostage diplomacy to extract concessions from Western countries, which Tehran denies.

    With reporting by the BBC and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Acts with Impunity

    Recall the broad context.

    In March 2003, in the worst crime of the 21st century, a war-based-on-lies led by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the U.S. invaded and destroyed the modern country of Iraq, generating mass flight and civil war. Half a million people were killed and the suffering continues.

    Too soon do we forget the magnitude of the atrocity, including the cheerful murderous bombing sprees revealed by Wikileaks, the Abu Ghraib torture, the ignorant mishandling of Sunni-Shiite issues, the civil war and terror engendered by the criminal occupation. During the Trump years our attention’s been focused on one evil man, who happens to have actually pursued a policy of withdrawal from the Middle East. We forget how the man now president supported this war enthusiastically and praised his son Beau for his “service” in Iraq in 2008-9 when the oppressive, imperialist nature of the (de facto ongoing) occupation was perfectly clear.

    By October 2003 it was clear that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no appreciable al-Qaeda links. The secular regime had been replaced by an unpopular occupation provoking an insurgency. In October 2004 as the civil war between Sunnis and Shiites intensified (produced by the occupiers’ decision to eliminate the traditional Sunni vehicles of power including the national army and the Baath Party) the Jordanian Abu Musad Zarqawi established a militant group in Anbar Province that called itself Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. This group took root in Iraq, but was largely driven out into Syria, where it eventually established itself in the north as ISIL (aka the Islamic State, Daesh, ISIS). (So–flourishing first in Iraq due to U.S. destabilization, ISIL then flourished in Syria, again due largely to U.S. destabilization the the neighboring country.)

    In 2011 U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq in accordance with the agreement signed between the U.S.-recognized government and Bush. (Obama dearly wanted to retain forces in Iraq but balked at the Iraqi demand than any small force remaining be subject to Iraqi law. This demand was in response to popular revulsion against rampant U.S. war crimes. It is normal in U.S. military relations with other countries for Washington to insist on judicial extraterritoriality for U.S. forces. This is the case in Japan, Germany, Italy, and South Korea. That the Iraqi regime refused to concede on this point was an indication that the troops’ presence was truly despised and unwanted even by by the Iraqi regime it had brought to power, to say nothing of the Iraqi people.)

    In destabilized Syria, where U.S. forces invading the country were working with Kurdish separatists (not to promote their national cause but to undermine Bashar Assad), ISIL was able in January 2014 capture the regional capital of Raqqa. It then rapidly fanned out of Syria into northern Iraq, overwhelming Mosul, Ramallah, and Fajullah.  Alarmed at the prospect of Baghdad’s collapse (how embarrassing for the U.S. to have toppled the Saddam regime–having falsely accusing it of terrorist ties–only to watch the puppet regime and its panic-stricken U.S.-trained troops buckle before REAL terrorists: the al-Qaeda spinoff ISIL!). The U.S had to offer to return to assist in defending the Iraq state against the demonic Caliphate. The Iraqis were obliged to accept the offer, and to meanwhile create militia that could perform better than the U.S.-trained troops that had fled the battlefield. In 2014 the Popular Mobilization Forces (including Kitaib Hizbollah and Kitaib Sayyal al Shuhada) were officially established as part of Iraqi state forces, to fight ISIL terror.

    They are not all “Shiite militias,” by the way. The PMF include Sunni Arab militia, and there are many groups that include Christians and Yezidis. Their members’ morale may be higher than that of the regular (U.S.-trained) army soldiers, and there may be religious aspects to that. But to suggest these are more religious (“Shiite”) than other nationalist militants would be misleading.

    It is very likely that most members of most Iraqi militias oppose the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. They may acknowledge U.S assistance against ISIL (especially by the bombing of Mosul in 2017, something the U.S. is good at) but note that much of the heavy fighting was done by the militias, with some Iranian support. It should not surprise anyone that Iranians would want to unite with Iraqi coreligionists against the viciously intolerant Sunni forces of ISIL. But the U.S. has consistently depicted any Iranian involvement in the next-door country since 2003 as improper “interference” in its own state-building project 6000 miles from the U.S. West Coast.

    The head of Kitaib Hizbollah–which the Pentagon accuses of the attacks that prompted the 2/25 strike on Iraqis in Syria, to send Iran a message–was, until 3 January 2020, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes. You might recall that he was assassinated by a U.S. missile strike in a car on the road outside of Baghdad Airport with visiting Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. The general was on a diplomatic mission at Baghdad’s invitation when Trump killed them both, to the deep embarrassment of the Iraqi government which protested the egregious violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

    Two days later the Iraq parliament voted to expel all foreign forces from the country. Trump laughed at the demand, as usual threatening punishment should the Iraqis kick out U.S. forces–cruel punishment worse than any sanctions ever applied to Iraq! It would not be surprising if Iraqi militias lob missiles into U.S. bases, if they can. It is often unclear who is responsible for an attack; the attack in Erbil that killed a U.S. contractor last month was attributed by the Baghdad government to ISIL, which has much to gain from a U.S. confrontation with Iran.

    After Joe Biden’s election Iran publicly counseled Iraqi militias to refrain from attacking U.S. targets. Obviously Tehran was optimistic about a U.S. return to the Iran Deal and did not want to give the U.S. any pretext to tarry on the matter. Kitaib Hizbollah issued a statement declaring that Iran did not determine its policies and it would respond to the unwelcome U.S presence as it saw fit. But it is not clear that it is responsible for any of the recent attacks.

    On 2/25 the U.S. under new President Biden launched missile strikes on a site in SYRIA (where the U.S. has troops illegally operating, still attempting to effect regime change) to kill IRAQIS to (as Secretary of “Defense” Lloyd Austin explains it) send a “message to IRAN” that it “can’t act with impunity.” That is: the U.S. will interpret the actions of any Shiites in the world against its own (real or imagined) interests as  “Iranian” acts of impunity against itself. It will continue to stupidly conflate Iraqi Shiites, Syrian Alewites, Yemeni Zaidis and Iranian Twelvers swallowing the (Wahhabist Sunni) Saudi propaganda about a threatening “Shiite crescent” from the Mediterranean to central Afghanistan.

    U.S. news anchors and talking heads will continue to carelessly substitute “Iranian militia” for “Iraqi militia” not even noticing nor caring if they err. There is no law in this country of lies, in this season of lies, that prevents someone like CNN’s Richard Engel from constructing a story about Iranian provocation and leaving out all the points made above.

    What, you thought the lies were over with Trump gone? You thought Biden was going to be a straight-shooter, and would–while handling the burning issue of structural racism in this country–also end a century and a half of imperialist aggression based on lies? You thought maybe the critic of racism and police murder would become the critic of imperialism, regime change, and the sort of racist essentializing applied the Iran and Arab Shiites?

    Consider this: Gen. Austin thanked the Iraqi government for its cooperation in planning the attack to send the message to Iran. Never mind that Iran has actually since the U.S. election discouraged any actions against U.S. troops in Iraq. Never mind that the Iraqi government issued a denial of any consultations with the U.S. in the attack. (Pentagon press secretary Kirby had to acknowledge under questioning 2/26 that the Iraqis did not assist the U.S. with targeting.) Never mind that a force the Iraqis want out of their country killed an anti-ISIL Iraqi warrior helping the neighboring country of Syria rid itself of the hated ISIL. This is meant as a message to IRAN—to make it clear that the US. can act with impunity for the near term, anywhere it wants—under Biden just as it did under Trump.

    *****

    It appears Kitaib Hizbollah (which again is a leading force within the PMF, integrated into the Iraqi defense structure) has responded to the murder of their member in Syria by an attack on the al-Assad Air Field in central Iraq. A reminder that the Iraqi people have asked the U.S. to leave.

    Questions for Pentagon spokesperson Kirby:

    Have the Iranians poisoned the minds of Iraqis, with anti-U.S. propaganda? Did Iraqis need to learn from Iranians to hate people who (again) attacked them in a war killing half a million, based on lies? Following a decade of vicious sanctions that killed half a million kids?

    Does one have to imagine a specifically SHIITE linkage, between the various movements in the region that refuse to submit to U.S. imperialism? Do the mullahs in Tehran set the policies of Lebanon’s Hizbollah? Or Syria’s secular government?

    Observations:

    There is a good deal of racist essentialism here, ignorance combined with malice. It is as though the U.S. imperialists expect the Iraqis to say thank you for the destroying our country, installing a new government, training a failed army, and blocking our efforts to strengthen neighborly relations with Iran! Thank you for saving us from ISIL after you virtually created it by your cruelty and idiocy during the first year of your occupation! Thank you for standing by us even as you continue to insult the Iraqi people an state!

    But that’s not the message of the strike on al-Assad base. The message Biden needs to hear remains “Get out!” not double-down. Iraqis have ample reason to hate the presence of U.S. troops, who are NOT the “heroes” Biden paints them as routinely as he invokes God’s blessing on them (with all the sincerity with which a mullah blesses jihadis). They are unwelcome remnants of the crime of the century: the U.S. war to destroy Iraq as a powerful independent Arab country.

    On 2/25 Biden attacked three countries simultaneously to remind them that the U.S. “does not distinguish” between its Muslim foes but conflates Persians with Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites, terrorists and anti-terrorist militia. Primarily the attack was to intimate Iran, to signal to it that the U.S. is in no rush to revive the Iran Deal and wants more concessions before rejoining. But it was also a warning to all people of the region–that if they expected major changes in U.S. capitalist- imperialist impunity with a change of faces in the White House, they were optimistic.

    The post Biden Acts with Impunity first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • U.S. Urges Iran To Provide ‘Credible’ Information About ‘Abducted’ Ex-FBI Agent

    The United States is calling on the Iranian government to provide “credible answers” to what happened to a former FBI agent who was “abducted” while traveling in Iran in 2007.

    “The United States will never forget Bob Levinson,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a March 9 statement marking the 14th anniversary of his disappearance.

    Blinken also called on Iran to “immediately and safely release” all U.S. nationals “unjustly held captive” in the country, saying: “The abhorrent act of unjust detentions for political gain must cease immediately.”

    Levinson, who was born in March 1948, disappeared when he traveled to the Iranian Kish Island resort in March 2007. He was reportedly working for the CIA as a contractor at the time.

    The United States has repeatedly called on Iran to help locate Levinson and bring him home, but Iranian officials said they have no information about his fate.

    However, when he disappeared, an Iranian government-linked media outlet broadcast a story saying he was “in the hands of Iranian security forces.”

    In December 2020, the previous U.S. administration imposed sanctions on two Iranian intelligence agents believed to be “involved in the abduction, detention, and probable death” of the former agent.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Freed British-Australian Academic Says Iran Subjected Her To ‘Psychological Torture’

    A British-Australian woman jailed in Iran for more than two years on widely criticized espionage charges has said in a television interview broadcast on March 9 that she was subjected to “psychological torture.”

    Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a lecturer in Islamic Studies at Melbourne University, returned to Australia in November after serving 804 days of a 10-year sentence.

    Moore-Gilbert, 33, who was freed in exchange for the release of three Iranians held in Thailand, told Sky News that she was held in solitary confinement.

    “It’s [an] extreme solitary confinement room designed to break you. It’s psychological torture. You go completely insane. It is so damaging. I would say I felt physical pain from the psychological trauma I had in that room. It’s [a] 2-meter by 2-meter box,” she said.

    “There were a few times in that early period that I felt broken. I felt if I had to endure another day of this, you know, if I could I’d just kill myself. But of course, I never tried and I never took that step,” Moore-Gilbert added.

    She also confirmed that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had attempted to recruit her as a spy “many times.”

    Moore-Gilbert had written about the attempts in letters smuggled out of prison and published in British media in January 2020.

    Iran has arrested dozens of foreign and dual nationals in recent years on espionage charges that they and their governments say are groundless.

    Critics say Iran uses such arbitrary detentions as part of hostage diplomacy to extract concessions from Western countries, which Tehran denies.

    With reporting by AP and The Guardian

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Enriching Uranium With ‘More Advanced Centrifuges’ At Natanz

    In a further move away from the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran has started enriching uranium with a third cascade, or cluster, of advanced IR-2m centrifuges at its underground plant at Natanz, Reuters reported on March 8, citing a report by the UN nuclear watchdog.

    Monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on March 7 verified that Iran began feeding uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges, into the third cascade, the Vienna-based agency said in the report to its member states that was obtained by Reuters.

    The report said a fourth cascade of 174 IR-2m centrifuges had been “installed but had yet to be fed with natural UF6,” adding that a fifth cascade of IR-2m centrifuges “was ongoing.”

    Under the 2015 nuclear agreement, which aimed to restrict Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions, Tehran can only use first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, which refine uranium much more slowly, at Natanz.

    Tehran has gradually rolled back its commitment under the accord in response to a 2018 decision by former U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the pact and reimpose sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

    Iran has in past weeks accelerated its nuclear activities in what could be an attempt to pressure the new administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which has signaled its readiness to revive the deal but insists Iran first return to all its nuclear commitments.

    Meanwhile, Tehran says it first wants sanctions to be lifted.

    Based on reporting by Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ordeal in Iran may be reaching ‘endgame’

    There is hope that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ordeal is reaching the “endgame” as the British-Iranian woman was released from house arrest after serving a five-year sentence in Iran.

    A former top civil servant at the Foreign Office welcomed “good” progress in her case. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said he hopes it may be reaching the final stages, but cautioned:

    we might have many more months to go.

    The 42-year-old mother was detained in 2016 as Tehran made widely refuted spying allegations. She finished the latter part of her sentence under house arrest due to Covid-19. She had her ankle tag removed on Sunday, but her future remains uncertain, as she must appear before an Iranian court in a week’s time to face new charges.

    “This case has not yet ended”

    “Nazanin has completed her sentence, something good yesterday happened with the removal of the ankle tag but the final moves have still to take place – this case has not yet ended.”

    Ratcliffe, who was preparing to protest outside Iran’s London embassy with their six-year-old daughter on Monday, expressed cautious optimism over the prospects of his wife’s return to the UK after speaking last week with Dominic Raab. He said:

    I spoke last week to the Foreign Secretary who said, ‘listen, I can’t promise you it’s going to be this weekend but it feels like we’re close’. I’ve spoken to other former hostages and they say yes at the end it gets quite bumpy and this, to them, feels like the endgame. So fingers crossed it is but also we might have many more months to go.

    “Hostage diplomacy”

    Many have linked a long-standing debt running into hundreds of millions of pounds as central to the case, which has been dubbed “hostage diplomacy” by former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt.

    The UK is thought to owe Iran as much as £400 million over the non-delivery of tanks in 1979, with the shipment stopped because of the Islamic revolution.

    Lord McDonald insisted it was a “separate case”, but said work is under way to pay back what he said is accepted is owed to Tehran:

    We acknowledge it is Iranian money and does have to go back to Tehran. Problems in that case cannot complicate Nazanin’s release from Iran... One of the key complications is that Iran is subject to very comprehensive sanctions so how this money is repaid is a part of the story. But we are dealing with that.

    Richard Ratcliffe
    Nazanin’s husband Richard Ratcliffe (Aaron Chown/PA)

    Protest at the Iranian embassy

    Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker who was employed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has strongly denied the widely refuted allegations that she was plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic’s government.

    The mother, of north London, was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport while taking their daughter Gabriella to see her parents in April 2016.

    The fresh charges were unclear, but the Guardian reported that they include alleged involvement in propaganda activity against Iran, including attending a 2009 demonstration outside its embassy in London, and speaking to BBC Persian.

    Ratcliffe, Gabriella and his wife’s brother Mohamed will demonstrate outside the Iranian embassy in Knightsbridge from around midday on Monday.

    They will deliver a 60,000-signature Amnesty International petition to the embassy calling for his wife’s immediate release.

    The UK has been locked in a high-profile diplomatic tussle over her detention, during which she suffered time in solitary confinement and took part in hunger strikes.

    The government has afforded her diplomatic protection, arguing she is innocent and that her treatment by Iran failed to meet obligations under international law.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Ireland’s Foreign Minister Holds Talks In Iran

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • British-Iranian Aid Worker Released, But Summoned To Court Again

    British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her ankle tag removed after her five-year prison sentence expired, but it remains unclear if she can leave Iran.

    Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been summoned to court again on March 13, dashing hopes for her immediate return home.

    British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a statement that Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be released immediately so she can return to her family in Britain.

    Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained at Tehran airport after a family visit in 2016 and subsequently given a five-year sentence for plotting to overthrow Iran’s government.

    Her family and the foundation deny the charge while Amnesty International denounced the proceedings as a “deeply unfair trial.”

    Britain has demanded Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release and that of other dual nationals imprisoned in Iran. Tehran does not recognize dual citizenship.

    In November, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was notified in court of a fresh indictment of “spreading propaganda against the regime.”

    She was temporarily released from the capital’s notorious Evin prison and placed under house arrest in March 2020 owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Ready To ‘Immediately’ Take Measures If U.S. Lifts Sanctions, Rohani Says

    Iran says its prepared to take steps to live up to measures in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as soon as the United States lifts economic sanctions on the country.

    “Iran is ready to immediately take compensatory measures based on the nuclear deal and fulfill its commitments just after the U.S. illegal sanctions are lifted and it abandons its policy of threats and pressure,” Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on March 7.

    Rohani made the remarks as he received Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney amid diplomatic efforts to revive the landmark nuclear deal. Ireland is not party to the deal, but Dublin has the role of facilitator in the implementation of the nuclear agreement.

    Rohani criticized the European signatories of the deal – Britain, France, and Germany — for what he said was their inaction on their commitments to the agreement. He said Iran “is the only party that has paid a price for it.”

    U.S. President Joe Biden has signaled his readiness to revive the deal, but insists Iran first return to all its nuclear commitments.

    Former U.S President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew Washington from the agreement that aimed to restrict Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions.

    The Trump administration argued that the agreement failed to address Iran’s ballistic-missile program or its support for regional groups that Washington considers terrorists.

    After withdrawing in 2018, the United States reimposed sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran gradually and publicly abandoned the deal’s limits on its nuclear development.

    Based on reporting by AFP and AP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In Or Out Of Jail, Veteran Iranian Human Rights Defender Narges Mohammadi Won’t Be Silenced

    Despite being repeatedly threatened by Iran’s security apparatus, harassed, sent to prison multiple times, and prevented from seeing her children, the authorities have failed to silence Narges Mohammadi.

    One of Iran’s leading human rights defenders, Mohammadi has long campaigned against the death penalty and defended victims of state violence.

    While in prison, she has gone on several hunger strikes to protest the conditions there, attended a sit-in to condemn the security forces’ killing of several hundred protesters in November 2019, and spoke out about human rights abuses in open letters and statements smuggled out of her cell.

    Since her release in October 2020, the award-winning Mohammadi has remained in a defiant mood, speaking out publicly against state tyranny and injustice. “Despite the price I’ve paid, I remain hopeful, and I’m confident that our efforts will bear fruit, although not immediately,” she says.

    Mohammadi’s 10-year prison sentence on charges stemming from her human rights work was shortened due to concern for her health during the coronavirus outbreak in Iranian prisons and after calls for her release by the UN and rights groups.

    Punished For Not Backing Down

    A journalist and trained engineer, Mohammadi tells RFE/RL that despite everything she has endured, she remains positive and determined to keep fighting for better rights, freedom, and democracy in Iran.

    Mohammadi, the spokeswoman of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center co-founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, has been meeting with mothers whose sons were victims of the recent deadly state crackdowns while continuing to raise concerns about rights violations.

    In a video posted online last week, she highlighted violence against female detainees, including herself, saying she was subjected to force during her 2019 prison transfer from Tehran to the northwest city of Zanjan, some 300 kilometers from the Iranian capital. Mohammadi, who suffers from a neurological illness, has said the prison transfer was aimed at punishing her for protesting the killing of demonstrators.

    Mohammadi said she was physically assaulted by male guards and a prison director despite Islamic laws enforced in Iran that men should not touch women to whom they are not related. “How come you do not have to obey Islamic laws [in prison]? So what you’ve seen saying [about the need to uphold Islamic rules] was a lie,” she said.

    “I protest against assault by the Islamic establishment’s men against women and I won’t be silenced,” Mohammadi said in the video, where she also mentioned jailed environmentalist Niloofar Bayani, who has accused her interrogators of sexual threats and pressure.

    Narges Mohammadi (right) joins Behnam Mahjoubi's mother (center) and others protesting in front of the hospital in Tehran where he died.

    Narges Mohammadi (right) joins Behnam Mahjoubi’s mother (center) and others protesting in front of the hospital in Tehran where he died.

    In late February, Mohammadi was among the activists demanding accountability for the situation of jailed Sufi Behnam Mahjubi, 33, who fell into a coma after suffering from what authorities said was medicinal poisoning.

    In online videos, Mohammadi was seen asking hospital staff about Mahjubi, who later died amid accusations of medical neglect. She was also seen attempting to comfort Mahjubi’s mother outside the hospital where he was fighting for his life. She later criticized Mahjubi’s treatment in media interviews.

    Earlier this month, Mohammadi joined a group of civil society activists and rights defenders to file an official complaint against the use of solitary confinement while calling for the prosecution of officials who authorize it. Political detainees in Iran are often held in solitary confinement for weeks or months with no access to the outside world.

    Mohammadi, who has endured solitary confinement several times in prison, condemned the “inhuman” practice in a 2016 letter from Tehran’s Evin prison, where she called it “psychological torture” aimed at forcing prisoners to make false confessions.

    Mohammadi’s outspokenness could be difficult for the authorities to ignore, especially as they are in no mood to tolerate dissent amid a deteriorating economy and a deadly coronavirus pandemic that Tehran has struggled to contain.

    The prominent rights defender says she is well-aware of the risk she’s facing. “It’s not like I’m not worried, but the truth is that despite being concerned and despite the risk of arrest, I believe we have to keep working on issues that matter in our society,” Mohammadi tells RFE/RL.

    “The efforts that are being made will definitely bring results in the mid- or long term and help remove injustices and discrimination against our people in different areas — including in the economy, culture, politics, and women’s rights — and allow society to grow,” she says.

    Increasing The Pressure

    In December, Iran executed Ruhollah Zam, the manager of the popular Amadnews Telegram channel, who was convicted of inciting violence during the anti-establishment protests in late 2017 and early 2018.

    Scores of activists, academics and dual nationals have also been arrested, and a number have been sentenced to harsh prison terms. The authorities have also pressured a prominent NGO that fights against poverty, ordering its dissolution.

    Even after her release from prison, the authorities kept pressure on Mohammadi by banning her from traveling outside the country and by bringing new charges against her over her 2019 prison protest.

    She has said she will refuse to appear in court, saying her prison sit-in was a peaceful protest against “the repressive policies of the Islamic republic” and the “ruthless” crackdown on protesters two years ago who protested a large, sudden rise in the price of gasoline amid rising poverty in the country.

    “Iranian authorities’ persecution of human rights defenders often continues even after they are released from prison,” Human Rights Watch Iran researcher Tara Sepehrifar told RFE/RL. “Yet Narges, like several other Iranian human rights defenders, continues to show resilience and commitment to peaceful resistance against repression by speaking up and also building pressure by utilizing potential legal avenues open for challenging authorities’ abusive behavior.”

    Mohammad’s teenage daughter and son, Kiana and Ali, live in France with their father, political activist Taghi Rahmani, who left the country in 2012 to escape a jail sentence. Mohammadi remained behind, believing she could be more effective inside the country, and has not seen her children since July 2015.

    Mohammadi says the authorities have rejected her demand to be allowed to visit her twins, who took to social media in late January to condemn the travel ban against their mother.

    Even if the ban is lifted, Mohammadi is not planning to live in exile like many other activists who have been forced to flee Iran to escape state repression. “I told Tehran’s prosecutor that I want to be with my family for two months and then return. Unfortunately, they refused [my request] and I don’t plan to leave the country illegally,” she says.

    Standing with the people is the principle that has guided her throughout her life, she adds.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Doubts Expressed Over Scheduled Release Of U.K.-Iranian Aid Worker Jailed In Iran

    British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s five-year jail term in Iran expires on March 7, but her husband has said her release may be in doubt.

    Richard Ratcliffe told the BBC on March 6 that his wife’s detention has “the potential to drag on and on” and said that “it’s perfectly possible that Nazanin gets a new court case thrown at her.”

    Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation who is now 42, was detained at Tehran airport after a family visit in 2016 and subsequently given a five-year sentence for plotting to overthrow Iran’s government.

    Her family and the foundation deny the charge while Amnesty International denounced the proceedings as a “deeply unfair trial.”

    Britain has demanded Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release and that of other dual nationals imprisoned in Iran. Tehran does not recognize dual citizenship.

    In November 2020, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was notified in court of a fresh indictment of “spreading propaganda against the regime.”

    Ratcliffe told the BBC that the family has “never seen a copy of the charges on which she was sentenced” originally, and accused Iran of preserving “the space to make it up as they go along at every stage.”

    Nazanin was temporarily released from the capital’s notorious Evin prison and placed under house arrest in March owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Media have connected Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release to the outcome of negotiations between Iran and the United Kingdom over the release of hundreds of millions of dollars of Iranian funds frozen by London more than 40 years ago.

    Officials in both London and Tehran have denied that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is linked to a repayment deal.

    Based on reporting by the BBC and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Jailed Belarusian, Iranian Exile, Slain Afghans Among U.S. ‘Women Of Courage’ Honorees

    The U.S. State Department will honor 14 “extraordinary” women from Belarus, Iran, and other countries who have demonstrated leadership, courage, resourcefulness, and a willingness to sacrifice for others.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host the annual International Women of Courage (IWOC) awards in a virtual ceremony on March 8 to honor jailed Belarusian opposition figure Maryya Kalesnikava, as well as Shohreh Bayat, an Iranian chess arbiter who went into exile after violating her country’s strict Islamic dress code, the State Department said in a statement on March 4.

    Subscribe To RFE/RL’s Watchdog Report

    Watchdog is our curated digest of human rights, media freedom, and democracy developments from RFE/RL’s vast broadcast region. In your in-box every Thursday. Subscribe here.

    It said a group of seven other “extraordinary” women leaders and activists from Afghanistan who were assassinated while serving their communities will also receive an honorary award.

    The IWOC award, now in its 15th year, is presented annually to women from around the world who have “demonstrated exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment — often at great personal risk and sacrifice.”

    This year’s recipients include Kalesnikava, a ranking member of the Coordination Council, an opposition group set up after Belarus’s disputed presidential election in August with the stated aim of facilitating a peaceful transfer of power.

    The opposition says the election was rigged and the West has refused to accept the results. Thousands of Belarusians have been jailed during months of crackdowns on the street demonstrations against strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

    Kalesnikava was arrested in September and charged with calling for actions aimed at damaging the country’s national security, conspiracy to seize state power, and organizing extremism.

    Ahead of the presidential election, “Belarusian women emerged as a dominant political force and driver of societal change in Belarus due in no small part to” Kalesnikava, according to the State Department.

    The opposition figure “continues to be the face of the opposition inside Belarus, courageously facing imprisonment, it said, adding that she “serves as a source of inspiration for all those seeking to win freedom for themselves and their countries.”

    The State Department said Bayat will be honored for choosing “to be a champion for women’s rights rather than be cowed by the Iranian government’s threats.”

    Bayat, the first female Category A international chess arbiter in Asia, sought refuge in Britain after she was photographed at the 2020 Women’s Chess World Championship in Shanghai without her head scarf, or hijab, as her country mandates.

    “Within 24 hours, the Iranian Chess Federation — which Shohreh had previously led — refused to guarantee Shohreh’s safety if she returned to Iran without first apologizing,” the State Department said.

    “Fearing for her safety and unwilling to apologize for the incident, Shohreh made the heart-wrenching decision to seek refuge in the U.K., leaving her husband — who lacked a U.K. visa — in Iran.”

    In addition to the individual IWOC awards, Blinken will also present an honorary award to seven Afghan women whose “tragic murders” in 2020 underscored the “alarming trend of increased targeting of women in Afghanistan.”

    The women include Fatema Natasha Khalil, an official with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission; General Sharmila Frough, the head of the Gender Unit in the National Directorate of Security; journalist Malalai Maiwand; women’s rights and democracy activist Freshta Kohistani; and midwife Maryam Noorzad.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Washington Singles Out Growing Rivalry With ‘China, Russia, Other Authoritarian States’

    The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has singled out a “growing rivalry with China, Russia, and other authoritarian states” as a key challenge facing the United States.

    A White House document outlining Biden’s national-security policies, made public on March 3, describes China, the world’s second-largest economic power, as “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.”

    The 24-page document also warns that Russia “remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.”

    Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea are pursuing “game-changing capabilities and technologies, while threatening U.S. allies and partners and challenging regional stability.”

    Both Beijing and Moscow “have invested heavily in efforts meant to check U.S. strengths and prevent us from defending our interests and allies around the world,” according to the document, titled Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.

    It says that in the face of challenges from “an increasingly assertive China and destabilizing Russia,” the U.S. military would shift its emphasis away from “unneeded legacy platforms and weapons systems to free up resources for investments” in cutting-edge technologies.

    After four years of former President Donald Trump’s “America first” approach, Biden has vowed to confront “authoritarianism” in China and Russia while reengaging with allies and centering multilateral diplomacy.

    Washington and Beijing are at odds over influence in the Indo-Pacific region, China’s economic practices, and human rights in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang region.

    Moscow’s relations with Washington are at post-Cold War lows, strained by issues including the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, Russia’s alleged meddling in elections in the United States and other democracies, and the poisoning of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.

    In a foreign-policy speech at the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the U.S. relationship with China as “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century,” while several other countries also represent “serious challenges” for the United States, including Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

    “Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be,” Blinken said.

    The United States needs to “engage China from a position of strength,” which requires working with allies and partners, engaging in diplomacy and in international organizations, “because where we have pulled back, China has filled in,” and “standing up for our values when human rights are abused in Xinjiang or when democracy is trampled in Hong Kong.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pakistan’s Baluchis Protest Iranian Treatment Of Ethnic Brethren After Border Shootings

    Dozens of ethnic Baluch rights activists have staged a protest in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi to condemn the killing of their ethnic brethren by Iranian border guards last month.

    The protest comes amid reports of violent unrest and Internet blackouts in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province triggered after security forces killed cross-border fuel smugglers.

    Human Rights Watch last month said at least 10 people were killed at the Saravan border area near Pakistan on February 22, although the number of dead may be higher.

    In the wake of the killings, there have been reports of armed men attacking Iranian government buildings and security forces near the border, prompting a harsh crackdown.

    In Karachi, the protesters demanded of the Iranian government stop using violence against smugglers and protesters who have few other means of earning a living in the poverty-stricken region.

    They also demanded compensation for those who have been killed and injured.

    Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran’s poorest provinces, is a volatile area where drug smugglers and militant groups operate along a porous border with Pakistan, which also faces an ethnic Baluch separatist insurgency and a brutal state crackdown that has killed thousands of people since 2004.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pakistan’s Baluchis Protest Iranian Treatment Of Ethnic Brethren After Border Shootings

    Dozens of ethnic Baluch rights activists have staged a protest in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi to condemn the killing of their ethnic brethren by Iranian border guards last month.

    The protest comes amid reports of violent unrest and Internet blackouts in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province triggered after security forces killed cross-border fuel smugglers.

    Human Rights Watch last month said at least 10 people were killed at the Saravan border area near Pakistan on February 22, although the number of dead may be higher.

    In the wake of the killings, there have been reports of armed men attacking Iranian government buildings and security forces near the border, prompting a harsh crackdown.

    In Karachi, the protesters demanded of the Iranian government stop using violence against smugglers and protesters who have few other means of earning a living in the poverty-stricken region.

    They also demanded compensation for those who have been killed and injured.

    Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran’s poorest provinces, is a volatile area where drug smugglers and militant groups operate along a porous border with Pakistan, which also faces an ethnic Baluch separatist insurgency and a brutal state crackdown that has killed thousands of people since 2004.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Rockets Hit Iraq Air Base Hosting U.S. Troops Ahead Of Papal Visit

    The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq says at least 10 rockets have been fired at a military base that hosts American and other coalition troops.

    The missiles struck the Ain Al-Asad Air Base in the western province of Anbar at 7:20 a.m. local time on March 3, spokesman Colonel Wayne Marotto said.

    The Iraqi military said the attack did not cause significant losses and that security forces had found the launch pad used in the incident.

    AFP quoted Western security sources as saying the rockets were Iranian-made Arash models.

    “One civilian contractor died of a heart attack during the attack,” a high-level security source told the news agency, adding that he could not confirm the contractor’s nationality.

    The Ain Al-Assad base hosts Iraqi forces, as well as troops from the U.S.-led coalition helping Iraq fight the Islamic State extremist group.

    The attack comes after a February 16 rocket salvo on a military base in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

    It also comes two days before Pope Francis is due to travel to Iraq despite the deteriorating security situation in some parts of the country.

    The leader of the Roman Catholic Church said on March 3 that he would make the three-day trip — the first-ever papal visit to Iraq — because “the Iraqi people are waiting for us.”

    “One cannot disappoint a people for the second time,” Francis said, referring to Pope John Paul II’s aborted plans to visit the country in 2000.

    Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria

    Every power worth its portion of salt in the Levant these days seems to be doing it.  On February 25, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria.  The premise for the attacks was implausible.  “These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq,” claimed Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “and to ongoing threats to those personnel.”

    More specifically, the strikes were in retaliation for rocket attacks in northern Iraq on the airport of Erbil that left a Filipino contractor working for the US military dead and six others injured, including a Louisiana National Guard soldier.  The targets in Syria were facilities used by Iranian-backed militia groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada.  According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attack left up to 22 people dead.

    The Biden administration has resorted to tactics long embraced by US presidents.  To be noticed, you need to bomb a country.  The measure, more a sign of raging impotence than stark virility, is always larded with jargon and bureaucratic platitudes.  “We said a number of times that we will respond on our timeline,” explained Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reporters keeping him company on a flight from California to Washington.  “We wanted to be sure of the connectivity and we wanted to be sure about the right targets.”  He was convinced “that the target was being used by the same Shia militants that conducted the [February 15] strikes.”

    Seven 500-pound bombs were used in the operation, though Stars and Stripes initially reported that “the type of weaponry used” was not disclosed.  The Pentagon had been keen to push a larger range of targets, but Biden was being presidential in restraint, approving, as the New York Times puts it, “a less aggressive option”.

    Kirby insisted the operation had been the sensible outcome of discussions with coalition partners.  “The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel.”  Defying credulity, the spokesman suggested that the US had “acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”

    Congress, the people’s chamber, was left out in the cold, though not for the first time by this administration.  Press outlets such as the Associated Press had ingested the fable that this was “the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration”.  But on January 27, the New York Times reported that the US Air Force had killed 10 ISIS members near Kirkuk in Iraq, including Abu Yasser al-Issawi.  A spokesman for the US-led coalition against Islamic State, Colonel Wayne Marotto, was satisfied with the bloody result.  “Yasser’s death is another significant blow to Daesh resurgence efforts in Iraq.”

    Such casual non-reporting, even during the incipient stages of a presidential administration, should have received a tongue-lashing.  Instead, there were a good number in the press stable who could only see the figure of the previous White House occupant, and feel relief that Biden was being so sensible.

    The Daily Beast suggested, with little substance, that the airstrike lacked the recklessness of the Trump administration.  Bobby Ghosh for Bloomberg, also falling into error in claiming this as Biden’s “first military attack”, was convinced that the actions were sound in letting those naughty Iranians “know” that the president “wasn’t bluffing.”  Iran and its “proxies were caught completely off guard.  They had been lulled into a sense of impunity by the administration’s early reticence in attributing blame for the attacks in Iraq and the White House’s determination not to ‘lash out and risk and escalation’.”

    Ghosh even goes so far as to laud the February 25 military strike as a necessary antidote against paralysing and unproductive diplomacy, ignoring accounts suggesting that Iran has encouraged Shiite militias in Iraq to refrain from excessive violence.  The US, including its allies, Britain, France, and Germany, had initially embraced a posture of “studied calm”.  Thankfully, that period of studiousness was over: “Biden has now demonstrated that he can walk and chew gum at the same time.”  And so, a vigilante act in violation of a State’s sovereignty comes to be praised.

    Not all have sanitised the act as a necessitous one.  Mary Ellen O’Connell of Notre Dame Law School thought that the strike failed to meet the necessary “elements” of a necessary use of force.  “The United Nations Charter makes absolutely clear that the use of military force on the territory of a foreign sovereign state is lawful only in response to an armed attack on the defending state for which the target is responsible.”

    Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was also troubled by the strike, worried that it put “our country on the path of continuing the Forever War instead of ending it.  This is the same path we’ve been on for almost two decades.”  Maine Democrat Senator Tim Kaine turned to the role of Congressional power. “Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary military circumstances.”

    Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar also pointed out that the current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had herself criticised President Donald Trump in 2017 for authorising a strike in retaliation of a chemical weapons attack.  “Assad is a brutal dictator,” tweeted Psaki at the time.  “But Syria is a sovereign country.”  Another sentiment forgotten in an increasingly amnesiac administration.

    Unfortunately, war apologists tend to find ongoing justifications in the elastic imperial provisions found in the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).  The 2001 AUMF was focused on perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.  The 2002 AUMF was directed to Iraq.

    Their sheer broadness has irked the sole person to vote against them.  “Nearly 20 years after I cast the sole ‘no’ vote on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF),” stated Californian House Representative Barbara Lee, “both the 2002 and 2002 AUMFs have been employed by three successive Presidents to wage war in ways well beyond the scope that Congress initially intended.”

    Biden does not even go so far as to cite such authorities, instead stating that the strikes were “consistent with my responsibility to protect United States citizens both home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.”

    Overly stretching his argument, Biden opined that his action was also consistent with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, acknowledging a state’s right to self-defense.  Not even Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama or Trump had bothered to push the international law line for such thuggish intervention, confining themselves to domestic sources of power.  But such virtue signalling did evoke some praise, notably from former legal adviser to the State Department, John B. Bellinger III.  The President’s inaugural war powers report was “a model of war powers practice and transparency.”

    Congress has made a few efforts in recent years to restrain the Commander-in-Chief for overzealous commitments.  The War Powers Resolution sought to end US participation in the Yemen conflict.  In 2020, members of Congress resolved to modestly shackle Trump from commencing a full blown war with Iran.  But the February 25 attacks show that the misuse and abuse of US military might by the imperial executive remains a dangerous orthodoxy, and one that continues to have its defenders.

    The post Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • If Biden Wants to Protect Troops, He Should Bring Them Home — Not Bomb Syria

    President Joe Biden walks alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Miller and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as he arrives at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 2021.

    The United States has bombed Syria more than 20,000 times over the past eight years, so last week’s attack on a border post in northeastern Syria, which killed 22 militiamen and apparently no civilians, may not seem surprising to some. However, taking place barely five weeks into his presidency, it is nevertheless disappointing that President Biden appears determined to continue the failed policies of his predecessors, regardless of their illegality.

    Some members of Congress challenged Biden’s authority to order such an attack, which contravenes both international law and the U.S. Constitution. Virginia senator and 2016 vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine stated that Americans deserved to know the “rationale” for the strikes and the “legal justification without coming to Congress,” noting that, “Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional, absent extraordinary circumstances.”

    Similarly, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) tweeted: “We ran on ending wars, not escalating conflicts in the Middle East. Our foreign policy needs to be rooted in diplomacy & the rule of law, not retaliatory airstrikes without Congressional authorization.”

    Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) condemned the strike as an attack on “a sovereign nation without authority.”

    However, Biden found strong support from such right-wing Senate stalwarts as Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).

    The targeting of the Iraqi Shia militia on the Syrian side of the border, several hundred miles away from U.S. forces, seemed to be more of a political decision than a strategic one. Since these militias operating inside Iraq are nominally part of the Iraqi armed forces, bombing them inside the country would have created a huge popular backlash. By contrast, Washington cares little for what Syrians think.

    The Biden administration charges that these militiamen were smuggling Iranian arms from Syria. However, this claim doesn’t make much sense, since such weaponry could come directly from Iran, which shares a much longer border with Iraq.

    It’s true that these militias are proxies for Iran (unlike the Yemeni Houthis, where the alleged Iranian role is exaggerated, or the opposition movement in Bahrain, where the actual Iranian role is quite minimal). They place their allegiance to the ayatollahs above Iraqi national interests. In Syria, in addition to fighting Salafist extremists, they have also assisted the brutal repression of other opponents of the Assad regime and have participated in war crimes. Similarly, in Iraq, they have engaged in atrocities against members of the Sunni minority and have murdered peaceful pro-democracy activists protesting the corrupt U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad.

    Legally, however, these militias are present in Iraq and Syria at the request of those countries’ governments. By contrast, the Syrian government has demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and the Iraqi parliament has called for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

    Ironically, despite reports of atrocities, a number of these Shia groups were initially encouraged by the United States to fight Baathists, other nationalists, and various Sunni groups fighting the U.S. forces and the U.S.-installed government in Baghdad during the height of the counterinsurgency war which soon followed the U.S. invasion. More recently, the U.S allied with them in the fight against ISIS (also known as Daesh). Following the defeat of ISIS, now limited to a handful of scattered units without control over any Iraqi territory, it was presumed U.S. troops would leave, However, 3,500 American soldiers remain in northern Iraq, and U.S. planes and missiles are poised to strike at any time.

    The United States began bombing these ancient lands 30 years ago, at the start of the Gulf War. The U.S. has continued bombing Iraq and neighboring countries on and off ever since. Each time, we have been told that doing so would protect American interests and help bring peace and stability to the region. Yet each period of airstrikes has brought more suffering, more violence, less security and greater instability.

    In Syria, Washington keeps changing targets: Initially, the U.S. targeted facilities belonging to the Syrian government; next, the U.S. bombed ISIS forces, by far the most common target; now, the U.S. is going after Shia militia. For Washington, it seems that whatever the problem is, the answer is bombing.

    The Biden administration defends the ongoing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq as necessary to fight the remnants of ISIS as well as the Shia militia. What bears noting is that both ISIS and the Shia militia were a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion, occupation and counterinsurgency war in Iraq. Under the old regime, there were virtually no armed Salafist and pro-Iranian groups.

    Indeed, back in 2002, a number of prominent Middle East scholars (including myself) had wanted to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prior to the Iraq War authorization to warn that a U.S. invasion could result in the rise of just such extremist groups. However, then-chairman Joe Biden — a strong supporter of the invasion — blocked our testimony.

    Even some opponents of the initial decision to invade now argue that the United States should nevertheless keep troops in Iraq to help “clean up” the messes we created. However, we must seriously ask what difference our troops are making in curbing extremist violence, given the risk of provoking a wider war as a result of their continued presence. Indeed, such hostilities brought us extremely close to an all-out war with Iran in January of last year.

    As we have seen from Lebanon to Somalia, other hostile countries filled with competing armed groups, the major purpose of maintaining a U.S. troop presence appears to have evolved into simply protecting themselves from attack. At such a point, it begs the question of: Why the hell are U.S. troops still there?

    Instead of bombing a neighboring country, if Biden is really concerned about protecting our troops, why not just bring them home?

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Christiane Amanpour, Jeff Kaufman and Jason Rezaian talk about the film Nasrin

    Washington Post Live on 2 March 2021 published a fascinating insight into the making of the film Nasrin [see https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/12/16/new-film-nasrin-about-the-iranian-human-rights-defender/]. Nasrin Sotoudeh is one of the most recognised human rights laureates in the Digest with 7 major awards: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/848465FE-22DF-4CAF-928F-7931B2D7A499

    The transcript is verbatim and long, so you would have to follow the link at the bottom of the post to get the full story. Here just some excerpts:

    MR. IGNATIUS: So, we have with us Christiane Amanpour, the international anchor for CNN; Jeff Kaufman, who is the producer and writer of this film; and my colleague, Jason Rezaian, who is our Tehran bureau chief.

    MR. IGNATIUS: If I could ask Jeff to begin by telling us a little bit about Nasrin, her career as a human rights activist, how you came to make this documentary about her.AD

    When we first reached out to Nasrin about doing a documentary about her life and work, there was a trust-building process through friends, and one of the things that she shared with us was a strong interest in having her story really be a story about so many others. We had known Nasrin’s work for years, and one of the things I loved about Nasrin is she is a Muslim woman who often reached out on behalf of other faiths and other backgrounds to support people in need. And I thought that that was such a powerful message for our own country as well. As a matter of fact, I think everything about Nasrin is a powerful message for democracy and mutual respect in this country and around the world.

    So, when Nasrin said yes, we could do a film with her, she worked out sort of a complicated process. I couldn’t go to Iran because of past work I had done, and it wouldn’t have made sense to have a big American crew show up in Tehran anyway. So, we worked with these really remarkable, talented, and courageous individuals who followed Nasrin around from both working with at-risk clients, to protests, to art galleries, theaters, bookstores. It was a thrill for us to sort of be there with them, and we are so happy to be able to bring her story to you.

    MR. IGNATIUS: Jeff, if I could ask, one of the most powerful things about this film is the footage from inside Iran. Did the people who were shooting this footage for you run personal risks? And I worry that some of them may have, themselves, been subject to arrest or difficulties with the authorities.

    MR. KAUFMAN: No one has been subject to arrest or difficulties with authorities because of the film itself, but because they are also activists and believed that their work can push society forward, they have put themselves, on occasion, at risk for that.

    We–Marcia and I, so often throughout the production of this film, would say to Nasrin and her husband, Reza, you know, we will stop at any moment if you feel this puts you or anyone else at risk. That was always our largest concern. And we did the whole film in secret, didn’t even fundraise in public, because we wanted to keep as much privacy for them as possible during the process. And even when we were editing, we said to Nasrin and Reza, “Hey, we will stop now if you think this is a concern.” But they felt–you know, Nasrin has this wonderful quote. She says, “Our children must not inherit silence.” And she will say over and over again, as do other human rights advocates, that repressive governments, they use pressure and force and intimidation to make people quiet, and Nasrin refuses to have her voice muffled. So, we are proud that the film can help amplify that voice.

    I just want to add that I got a message from Nasrin’s husband this morning. I had asked if there was a message from Nasrin. And he said two things. He said that the cell she is in now, just so you know, is an 8-foot by 13-foot cell that has 12 beds in it, bunkbeds. And it is a low ceiling, there’s no windows, and very little access to clean water. So that is the conditions that she is living in right now.

    MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask Christiane. Christiane, I think you have interviewed Nasrin in the past and you have interviewed many other courageous men and women who have taken these risks to stand up for human rights. What it is that motivates a special person like Nasrin, in your experience?

    MS. AMANPOUR: Well, you know, I’m shaking my head because I am just so horrified at what her husband, Reza, has described as her latest terrible conditions inside a political prison, where she is not a political person. And I think this is what also really, for me, has been emblematic of all the human rights defenders who I have interviewed around the world. I haven’t had the pleasure of interviewing Nasrin, but I have had the pleasure of interviewing Shirin Ebadi, who as you remember also was a human rights lawyer in Iran. She also cannot go back to Iran. She was the first Iranian to win the Nobel Prize, and I covered the stories that she, and the cases that got her that Nobel Prize. And I know the risk that comes with it, and I know that they are not strictly speaking party political.AD

    And I think this is one thing that came across in Jeff and Marcia’s film, and we talked about it when we did the interview. She is not being political. She is not talking about tearing down the regime or wanting any kind of regime change. She is just talking about basic, fundamental rights for the people of Iran, mostly in her case women and children, but some young men as well, under their own constitution. It is not like she is going out saying and taking cases to court that she is trying to try under Western law or whatever. It is under their own constitution. And this is what makes everybody, and certainly me, so angry that this is what has happened to her, this incredible woman.

    I think what makes them take those risks, David, is that they truly believe in human rights. They truly believe in the dignity of each and every individual, and–this is important–they truly believe and want to hold their own governments accountable to the promises that those governments made. As I said, Nasrin defends cases based on the Islamic law in Iran, of the Islamic Republic, based on the promises that that regime made to the people 40 years ago, when the revolution started. And you can see that they have completely reneged on those promises, and that is why people like her are so utterly important.

    MR. IGNATIUS: Jason, you were imprisoned in the same prison where Nasrin is being held today. As Christiane said, the reports from her husband, Reza, her conditions are horrifying. You have been there. Maybe you could just describe for our audience a little bit of what that prison is like, what it feels like to be there, the feelings that go through the many, many dozens, hundreds of people who are being held there unjustly.

    MR. REZAIAN: Well, thank you for the question, David, and for the opportunity, and thank you to all three of you for taking part in this, and for David and Christiane for supporting me and my family while I was locked up in Evin Prison, which is a big reason why this film has been so important for me to get involved with.

    I think that the reality of the political prisoner system in Iran, Christiane makes a very important point. I wasn’t a political prisoner, either. I was just a reporter doing my job. But our arrests and our detentions are very much politicized events.AD

    The intention of our jailers is to really break us, to make us hopeless, to disassociate ourselves from society, and in Nasrin’s case, they have failed miserably. I did have the opportunity to interview Nasrin once, in 2013. It was a couple of months after Hassan Rouhani was elected president, and there was the hope that there would be more moderate attitude from the leadership in Tehran.

    And ahead of his first trip to the UNGA, they released Nasrin, and my wife and I, who was working for Bloomberg at the time, visited Reza and Nasrin and their children in their home, on that very first day that she was released. And although she was relieved and happy to be back with her family, she made it clear that she was not at all satisfied that she had been released, because so many of her colleagues and friends and other innocent people were being held in prison.

    And I think for someone like her, I imagine one of the most frustrating things about her experience would be that she understands the laws that she is trying to uphold much better than the people who are implementing them and using them against her, and I think that for that reason she is an incredible example and hero to so many.AD

    And I just think that, you know, I want everybody to understand that Iranian woman are the backbone of that country. There is no doubt about it. They really, really are. Unlike women in many parts of the Islamic world, the Iranian women have been very strong, very mobilized, very much part of society, as you can see. Nasrin and Shirin and the others don’t just emerge out of nowhere. It is a long, long tradition. And I think it is great that Jeff is showing this, and I think it’s great that the world needs to understand it. And if I might just say also, you know, the first female to win a field mathematics medal was an Iranian-American.

    So, there is a huge amount of success by Iranian women around the world, and that is why I think it is really important to show what Iranian woman are trying to do for their own girls and women and for their rights in their own country, and what an incredible hard, hard job it is, and how much personal risk they take.

    And I also want to pay tribute to the journalists, as Jeff said. At the beginning of the film, he said, “I pay tribute to all the camera people and the crews, who I cannot name.” He explained why. But it is really important to understand that this story is being told despite the massive crackdown, and I think that is fantastic….

    MR. IGNATIUS: So, Jeff, I want to ask you about one of the really moving parts of this film, and that is the footage of Nasrin’s husband, Reza, who has stood by her unflinchingly, supporting her, believing in her. He seems like a remarkable person. The fact that you were in touch with him today is especially moving to me. Tell our audience a little bit about Reza, Nasrin’s husband, and why he has been such a supporter of his wife’s cause and commitment.

    MR. KAUFMAN: I will. I am so glad you asked. One of the reasons we wanted to do this film, besides profiling Nasrin, was because we wanted to fight back on the demonization of Iran and the demonization of Islam, that is being used too often for political purposes in this country, and no one has a better way to do that than Nasrin and Reza.

    I think this film is an example that we can overcome obstacles from great distances, and even technological imitations, but sometimes it’s difficult.

    I asked Reza, Nasrin’s husband, if Nasrin had any message to share for this conversation, and I got a note from him this morning. These are Nasrin’s words through Reza. Nasrin said, “What occupies my thoughts the most is those who are on Death Row here in Gharchak Prison. Right now, there are 17 women on Death Row facing imminent execution.” And she closed by saying, “I am hoping for an end to the death penalty across the world.”

    So, you know, there’s Nasrin facing enormous pressure and difficulties, but as usual she is not thinking about herself. She is thinking about others and she is trying to push her country forward.

    Jason, let me ask you, as someone who was imprisoned unjustly, whose cause was taken up by your newspaper and by many, many thousands of Americans, what difference you think that public pressure from the United States, from world public opinion, made in your ultimately being released?

    MR. REZAIAN: So, I think it made a huge amount of difference in my case. And oftentimes when we are talking about foreign nationals being held hostage in Iran, usually they are dual nationals, and, you know, Iran tries to suppress this information of our second nationality as much as possible. For me, it became clear, as my case was being brought up more and more, my treatment by my captors got better and better. And I realized, at some point during the process of going on trial in Iran’s Revolutionary Court, I don’t think I need to tell anybody that’s in the conversation with me but maybe some folks at home listening should know that if you ever find yourself on trial in a court with “revolutionary” in its name, you don’t have a good chance of winning.

    But I realized that my real case was in the case of international public opinion, and the more people who kind of pushed for my release, the more involved the U.S. government got, and so much of that started, first and foremost, with my family, very early on with my imprisonment. My mom went on Christiane’s show and talked about my situation. And our colleagues at The Washington Post, who didn’t let a day go by without raising my case.

    So now, you know, when I’m contacted by the families of people who are being held in prison in Iran, unfortunately there are five Americans being held at this very moment, and I’m in touch with every one of those families, I tell each one of them, make as much noise as you possibly can, and when your loved one gets out, they will thank you for it. And time and again, when people have been released, that I have written about, they contact me and say, “Thank you for making sure that I wasn’t forgotten about.” And my attitude is, what kind of hypocrite would I be if, after getting all the support that I got, that I didn’t pay it forward by helping people who have had their voices silenced?

    MR. IGNATIUS: I hope we made a little noise today on Nasrin’s behalf. We are unfortunately out of time, but I want to close by thanking our guests, Christiane Amanpour from CNN, Jeff Kaufman, in particular, who made this extraordinary film, and my colleague, Jason Rezaian. You can watch “NASRIN,” this powerful, upsetting film, in the USA and Canada now on demand. International audiences can stream the film starting in a week, on March 8….

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2021/03/01/transcript-nasrin-conversation-with-christiane-amanpour-jeff-kaufman-jason-rezaian/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Biden Jeopardizes Nuclear Talks With Iran by Bombing Militias in Syria

    Biden Jeopardizes Nuclear Talks With Iran by Bombing Militias in Syria

    The Biden administration is facing intense criticism from U.S. progressives after carrying out airstrikes on eastern Syria said to be targeting Iranian-backed militia groups. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports at least 22 people died. The Pentagon called the assault a response to recent rocket attacks on U.S. forces in northern Iraq. Those attacks came more than a year after Iraq’s parliament voted to expel U.S. troops — an order ignored by both the Trump and Biden administrations. “Very quickly the Biden administration is falling into the same old patterns of before, of responding to this and that without having a clear strategy that actually would extract us from these various conflicts and actually pave the way for much more productive diplomacy,” says Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. We also speak with California Congressmember Ro Khanna, who says President Biden’s recent airstrikes in Syria lacked legal authority. “This is not an ambiguous case. The administration’s actions are clearly illegal under the United States’ law and under international law,” says Khanna.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to Syria. The Biden administration is facing intense criticism after U.S. Air Force fighter jets bombed eastern Syria Thursday. The Pentagon claimed the strikes targeted Iranian-backed militant groups. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports at least 22 people died.

    Biden ordered the airstrike on the same day he spoke with the king of Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch rival in the region. According to the White House, Biden committed on the call to helping Saudi Arabia defend its territory from Iranian-aligned groups.

    The Pentagon called the assault a response to recent rocket attacks on U.S. forces in northern Iraq. Those attacks came more than a year after Iraq’s parliament voted to expel U.S. troops — an order that’s been ignored by both Trump and Biden.

    On Friday, Biden was asked about the airstrikes.

    REPORTER: Mr. President, what message were you sending to Iran with your first military action?

    PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You can’t get — you can’t act with impunity. Be careful.

    AMY GOODMAN: Still with us is Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California. We’re also joined by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the new think tank, the Quincy Institute. His most recent book is titled Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy.

    Trita Parsi, can you respond to the attack, the U.S. bombing of Syria?

    TRITA PARSI: Yes. The Biden administration, I think President Biden himself specifically, felt strongly that because of the attacks in Iraq earlier, that a response was warranted. But what I think many people are fearing is that very quickly the Biden administration is falling into the same old patterns of before, of responding to this and that without having a clear strategy that actually would extract us from these various conflicts and actually pave the way for much more productive diplomacy.

    The idea that this actually would help us with the diplomacy with Iran, for instance, seems really difficult to understand, mindful of the fact that we are now in a situation in which the Iranians have rejected the offer from the Europeans to come to the talks precisely because of these attacks, because of other measures that have been done, which means that these first two months of the Biden administration, that could have been used for really productively laying the groundwork for new talks, seem to instead have been used to just fall into the old patterns. And this is quite concerning, because, at the end of the day, reviving the JCPOA is another promise that the Biden administration gave during the campaign and said that it would pursue diligently.

    AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised by these attacks? And explain exactly where they took place in Syria.

    TRITA PARSI: Took place in eastern part of Syria. These are various groups that the Biden administration describes as pro-Iranian, certainly seem to have a degree of support from Iran. Whether they’re under the command of Iran is not as clear.

    And at the end of the day, you know, the fact that this was said the same day as the Biden administration decided not to pursue sanctions on MBS, again, seems to suggest that the Biden administration is more concerned at this point of making sure that it doesn’t upset certain allies in the region, doesn’t pay a political cost at home, for pursuing compromise with Iran over the nuclear issue, which I think sends a very, very concerning message, because, at the end of the day, in order for the JCPOA to be revived, both the Iranians and the U.S. side have to give compromises, and they’re going to have to pay a political price at home. The Obama administration did so. The Rouhani government did so. There is no escaping from that. But if at already this stage we’re signaling that we’re not ready to do so and we’re too concerned about those political costs, that really sets a question mark as to whether the political will exists for seeing these negotiations on the nuclear program come to completion.

    AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Ro Khanna, your response to the bombing of Syria?

    REP. RO KHANNA: Well, this is not an ambiguous case. The administration’s actions are clearly illegal under the United States’ law and under international law. We do not have any authorization of military force to go into Syria. In fact, President Obama tried and then backed off in getting that authorization. We do not have any authorization of military force to attack Iran. The idea that this was an imminent attack on U.S. self-defense is simply not borne out by the facts. And under international law, for self-defense, we have to go to the United Nations. The administration did not do that. So, my concern is that this president ran on ending endless wars, ran on respecting the United States’ and international law, and these actions clearly violate both.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, Trita Parsi, if you could talk about the European Union, Iran rejecting an offer by the EU to hold direct talks with the U.S. on the nuclear deal after the U.S. attack on eastern Syria? The significance of this?

    TRITA PARSI: It’s a very unfortunate decision by the Iranians. I mean, I think it would have much better if they accepted this invitation.

    But at the same time, it is not a surprising decision. In fact, one of President Biden’s own senior officials, Wendy Sherman, who is now going to be confirmed next week or having hearings to become the deputy secretary, said — she was a lead negotiator under Obama for the nuclear deal — said, in 2019, that the idea that the Iranians would come to the table and talk to the United States without some sanctions relief, meaning that the United States would continue to violate the JCPOA and yet the Iranians would come, was extremely unlikely. It’s not clear to me why the Biden administration has chosen a strategy that some of its own senior officials earlier on had deemed to be extremely unlikely to succeed.

    So it’s not surprising. It’s very negative. And now we’re in a worse situation. There’s going to be a fight potentially today at the IAEA Board of Governors about whether to censure Iran for some of its reductions of obligations under the JCPOA, while the United States continues to completely disregard all of its obligations.

    So, these are all the type of wrong measures and steps that should be taken at this stage of diplomacy. At this stage, there should be goodwill measures, there should be positive signals of intent, in order to create the best possible circumstances for diplomacy to start. Now we’re having the opposite.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain, Trita, Iran’s demand that the U.S. end sanctions before returning to negotiations? Explain what the U.S. sanctions against Iran are and how they’re affecting the people there.

    TRITA PARSI: Well, the Iranians have now suffered tremendously under sanctions that President Trump put in place in 2018 and 2019 and onwards. These have been devastating to the Iranian economy. In fact, President Trump intensified those once COVID broke out, seeing the pandemic as a way to further enhance the impact of sanctions. And this means including blocking Iran’s ability to get IMF loans for the purpose of fighting the virus. So, the Iranians have suffered tremendously under these sanctions for the last couple of years.

    I think part of the reason why they’re fearful of going to the table without getting some indication — not all sanctions need to be lifted, from their perspective, but some indication that the U.S. is going to lift sanctions, is that, otherwise, they fear that the talks may not succeed, they will get blamed for the breakdown of talks, they will be seen as being at fault, even though the United States, under Biden, has not changed Trump’s position of maximum pressure. So the U.S. doesn’t even come back into the deal but manages to shift the blame onto the Iranians. I think this is part of their fear.

    I think, at the same time, demanding that all sanctions be lifted, which they did earlier on, is completely unrealistic. What is happening right now is that the Iranian demand is that the U.S. side promises that once the U.S. is inside of the deal, it will lift sanctions. But it’s also very difficult to see how the U.S. could reject that, mindful of the fact that once it is inside the deal, it has to lift the sanctions; otherwise, it will be in complete violation of the deal.

    AMY GOODMAN: Ro Khanna, if you can talk about the timing of this attack? All week, the buildup to the release of the report on the murder of Khashoggi and the clear connection to MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, so all of that was building. Then President Biden says he’s speaking with the king, and they talk about defending Saudi’s borders. And just before the release of the report, they bomb Syria, and they talk about attacking Iranian-backed militias, the major enemy of Saudi Arabia. Can you respond to this, this idea that they are releasing a report that proves the murder of Khashoggi is the crown — behind it is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, but then they do Saudi Arabia’s bidding?

    REP. RO KHANNA: Well, Amy, this is why the Constitution says that before a president takes these actions, they have to come to Congress, because those issues would have been debated in Congress. Questions would have been asked: Is this in any way in response to conversations with the Saudis? Why do we need to take this action now? Why is it that suddenly we feel that there’s an imminent threat? Is this action going to be escalatory? They’re saying that the action is deescalatory. I haven’t understood how. How is a military strike deescalatory?

    And the main point here is that the maximum pressure campaign has not worked. Iran’s enriched uranium was about 102 kilograms when President Trump took office. It is 2.5 tons now. It is 25 times more. So, repeating this continued strategy not only has implications for our staying entangled in the Middle East, it actually has not worked in the objectives. And the challenge is a naive view in the United States that somehow our actions are going to force regime change in Iran. If anything, they’re entrenching the regime. We need a totally different approach. And I actually think the American people want a totally different approach.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Trita Parsi, thank you for joining us, with the Quincy Institute. I also want to thank Ro Khanna and ask you to stay with us, because a lot has happened in the House, where you’re a member from California. We want to ask you about the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. The House has included the $15-an-hour minimum wage, but it will be stripped out. Get your response to that and other issues. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Venezuela And Iran Deepen Alliance With ‘Perfect Trips’

    The Venezuelan government is shipping jet fuel to Iran as part of cooperation to tackle its gasoline and diesel shortages in the South American country.

    According to Reuters, state oil company PDVSA and its Iranian counterpart NIOC have agreed to a swap deal that sees Tehran ship gasoline to Caracas, with the vessels carrying jet fuel in the opposite direction. Venezuela currently has a glut of the latter, with air traffic all but ground to a halt during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The agreement is described as a “perfect trip” in the maritime industry as the tankers travel fully loaded in both directions.

    Oil export monitor Tanker Trackers reported that Iran’s handysize Forest tanker docked in El Palito refinery on February 20 and unloaded 44 million liters of gasoline, approximately 277,000 barrels.

    The post Venezuela And Iran Deepen Alliance With ‘Perfect Trips’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not The Diplomacy He Promised

    The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly-formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing “Iranian-backed militias” who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-a-vis Iran, why hasn’t the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts?

    According to the Pentagon, the U.S. strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member. Accounts of the number killed in the U.S. attack vary from one to 22. 

    The post Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not The Diplomacy He Promised appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel’s Netanyahu Blames Iran For Explosion On Cargo Ship

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of carrying out an attack on an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman last week.

    “This was indeed an operation by Iran. That is clear,” Netanyahu told state radio Kan in an interview aired on March 1.

    “Iran is the greatest enemy of Israel. I am determined to halt it. We are hitting it in the entire region,” Netanyahu said in response to a question about whether Israel would retaliate.

    The MV Helios Ray, a vehicle carrier, was traveling from the Saudi port of Dammam to Singapore when it was struck by an explosion on February 25.

    Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on February 27 that Iran was likely behind the explosion that hit the vessel above the water line.

    “The location of the ship in relative close proximity to Iran raises the belief that Iran was responsible, but it must still be verified,” Gantz told Kan television. “Right now, at an initial assessment level, given the proximity and the context, that is my assessment.”

    Iran blamed Israel for the assassination of its top nuclear scientist in November and vowed to retaliate.

    Gantz said it was known Iran was looking to target Israeli infrastructure and citizens.

    The explosion did not cause any casualties but left two 1.5-meter-diameter holes in the side of the vessel, the ship’s Israeli owner, Rami Ungar, told Kan on February 26.

    The Bahamian-flagged vessel, registered in the Isle of Man, is currently docked in Dubai, where an Israeli team has been sent to investigate.

    With reporting by AP and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Rules Out Informal Meeting With U.S., EU On Reviving Nuclear Deal

    Iran has rejected holding an informal meeting with the United States and European powers to discuss ways to revive its 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, insisting that Washington must lift all its unilateral sanctions.

    “Considering the recent actions and statements by the United States and three European powers, Iran does not consider this the time to hold an informal meeting with these countries, which was proposed by the EU foreign-policy chief,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said, according to Iranian media.

    Iranian officials have said Tehran was studying a proposal by European Union foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell to hold an informal meeting with other parties to the nuclear pact and the United States, which reimposed sanctions on Iran after former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018.

    Iran and the new U.S. administration of President Joe Biden have been at odds over who should take the first step to revive the accord. Iran insists the United States must first lift sanctions while Washington says Tehran must first return to compliance with the deal, which it has been progressively breaching.

    Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Turkey Summons Iranian Envoy To Protest Iraq Dispute

    Turkey has summoned Iran’s envoy to Ankara to demand support in the fight against “terrorism,” escalating a dispute over Turkey’s presence in Iraq.

    The state news agency Anadolu reported that Turkey’s Foreign Ministry summoned Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Farazmand on February 28.

    Anadolu quoted Turkish officials as telling Farazmand that Ankara expected Iran to be on its side in the “fight against terrorism.”

    Iran and Turkey are rivals in some parts of the Middle East and Central Asia.

    But both have carried out operations against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq.

    Earlier in February, Turkey accused Kurdish militants of killing 12 Turks and an Iraqi who were being held hostage in northern Iraq,

    The incident prompted Iranian envoy to Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, to warn that Turkish forces should not “pose a threat or violate Iraqi soil.”

    “We do not accept at all, be it Turkey or any other country, to intervene in Iraq militarily or advance or have a military presence in Iraq,” Masjedi said on February 28.

    But Turkey’s Baghdad envoy, Fatih Yildiz, quickly responded, writing on Twitter that Iran’s ambassador was “the last person to lecture Turkey” about respecting Iraq’s borders.

    Based on reporting by Anadolu and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.