An independent Canadian report published on December 14 has questioned Iran’s investigation of its own military’s accidental downing of a Kyiv-bound passenger plane that killed 176 people.
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Turkish authorities say they have detained 11 people suspected of spying and abducting an exiled Iranian political dissident on behalf of Tehran.
Agents from Turkey’s MIT intelligence service arrested the Turkish nationals two weeks ago following Habib Chaab’s disappearance in Istanbul, the Turkish police said on December 14.
Chaab, the former leader of the separatist group the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), lived in Sweden and visited Turkey in October.
Turkish police said the suspects grabbed Chaab in Istanbul and smuggled him to the Iranian border region of Van before giving him up to Iranian officials.
A senior official was quoted as saying he was drugged and kidnapped by a network working “on behalf of Iran’s intelligence service” after being lured into flying to Turkey by an Iranian intelligence operative.
There was no immediate public comment from Iran.
Iran’s state media reported Chaab’s arrest in November by Iranian intelligence officers.
ASMLA said Tehran had kidnapped Chaab, also known as Habib Asyud, after “luring” him to Turkey.
The group, which has an armed branch and seeks a separate state for ethnic Arabs in Iran’s oil-producing southwestern province of Khuzestan, was named by Tehran as being behind a deadly 2018 terror attack on a military parade in the southwestern city of Ahvaz that left at least 25 dead, including civilians.
In recent years, a number of Iranian opposition activists have ended up in Iran under mysterious circumstances.
They include opposition journalist and activist Ruhollah Zam, a former exile in France who was seized while he was traveling in Iraq in 2019.
He was convicted of “corruption on Earth” and sentenced to death in June before being hanged last week, triggering international condemnation.
The announcement by the Turkish authorities follows a rare public spat between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and top Iranian officials.
During a visit to Baku on December 10 to attend a parade celebrating Azerbaijan’s resumption of control over parts of its Nagorno-Karabakh region and adjacent districts following a military conflict with neighboring Armenia, Erdogan read parts of an Azeri-Iranian poem that Iranian officials said supported separatism among Iran’s large ethnic Azeri minority.
Iranian authorities summoned Turkey’s ambassador to Tehran to complain about Erdogan’s “interventionist and unacceptable remarks.”
Turkey replied by summoning Iran’s ambassador to Ankara to protest the “baseless” claims.
Turkey and Iran have close political and trade relations but find themselves on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict and have other regional disputes.
Ankara is a close ally of Azerbaijan.
With reporting by Reuters and AFP
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Iran has sentenced British-Iranian anthropologist Kameel Ahmady, who studies child marriage and female genital mutilation, to eight years in prison.
The researcher’s lawyer, Amir Raesian, said on December 13 that his client had received an eight-year sentence for “collaborating with a hostile government.”
“We will present an appeal request against this ruling and we are still hopeful,” Raesian said on Twitter.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported a Revolutionary Court sentenced the academic to nine years in prison and ordered him to pay a $727,000 fine. It was unclear why the discrepancy over the duration of the prison sentence.
It was not immediately clear if Ahmady will begin serving the sentence now or will remain free pending an appeal.
Ahmady wrote on Twitter that he was already subject to 100 days of detention last year and denied access to his lawyer while being interrogated.
He accused Iranian authorities of targeting him for his research on “the most harmful traditions about children in disadvantaged minority areas of Iran.”
Tasnim reported Ahmady was charged with cooperation with European embassies to promote homosexuality, visiting Israel, cooperation and communication with hostile media, and providing false reports to the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Iran.
Ahmady, an ethnic Kurd whose research touched on sensitive issues in the conservative country, was arrested at his home in Tehran in August 2019. He was released in November 2019 on bail.
In addition to studying child marriage and female genital mutilation, he also researches minorities, gender, and temporary marriages practiced in Shi’ite Islam.
Ahmady is one of several dual nationals who’ve been detained by Iran in the past several years.
Critics say Iran arbitrarily detains dual nationals as part of hostage diplomacy to extract political concessions from Western countries.
With reporting by AP, Reuters, and Tasnim.
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Iran has sentenced British-Iranian anthropologist Kameel Ahmady, who studies child marriage and female genital mutilation, to eight years in prison.
The researcher’s lawyer, Amir Raesian, said on December 13 that his client had received an eight-year sentence for “collaborating with a hostile government.”
“We will present an appeal request against this ruling and we are still hopeful,” Raesian said on Twitter.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported a Revolutionary Court sentenced the academic to nine years in prison and ordered him to pay a $727,000 fine. It was unclear why the discrepancy over the duration of the prison sentence.
It was not immediately clear if Ahmady will begin serving the sentence now or will remain free pending an appeal.
Ahmady wrote on Twitter that he was already subject to 100 days of detention last year and denied access to his lawyer while being interrogated.
He accused Iranian authorities of targeting him for his research on “the most harmful traditions about children in disadvantaged minority areas of Iran.”
Tasnim reported Ahmady was charged with cooperation with European embassies to promote homosexuality, visiting Israel, cooperation and communication with hostile media, and providing false reports to the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Iran.
Ahmady, an ethnic Kurd whose research touched on sensitive issues in the conservative country, was arrested at his home in Tehran in August 2019. He was released in November 2019 on bail.
In addition to studying child marriage and female genital mutilation, he also researches minorities, gender, and temporary marriages practiced in Shi’ite Islam.
Ahmady is one of several dual nationals who’ve been detained by Iran in the past several years.
Critics say Iran arbitrarily detains dual nationals as part of hostage diplomacy to extract political concessions from Western countries.
With reporting by AP, Reuters, and Tasnim.
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Iran has summoned the German and French ambassadors to Tehran after the European Union condemned the execution of an Iranian journalist whose online work helped inspire anti-government protests in 2017, Iranian state media report.
According to the IRNA news agency, Iran’s Foreign Ministry told the envoys that Tehran rejects the EU statement as “an unacceptable interference in Iran’s domestic affairs.”
Ruhollah Zam, a former exile in France, was hanged on December 12, sparking a chorus of international outrage.
The EU condemned the journalist’s execution “in the strongest terms” and reiterated its “irrevocable opposition to the use of capital punishment under any circumstances.”
France called the execution a “barbaric and unacceptable act” and a “serious breach of free expression and press freedom in Iran.”
Zam, 47, was being held in Iran after Iranian intelligence services reportedly seized him while he was traveling in neighboring Iraq in 2019.
He was sentenced to death in June following what media watchdog Reporters Without Borders called a “grossly unfair” trial.
Zam was convicted of “corruption on Earth,” a charge often leveled in cases involving espionage or attempts to overthrow Iran’s government.
Germany expressed its shock about the circumstances of Zam’s sentencing and what it described as his “abduction from abroad” and forced return to Iran.
Zam’s website, AmadNews, and a channel he created on the popular messaging app Telegram had informed people about the 2017 protests, which began over economic hardship and spread nationwide.
The protests represented the biggest challenge to Iran since postelection mass unrest in 2009 and set the stage for similar turmoil in November 2019. More than 20 people were killed during the unrest and thousands were arrested.
AmadNews was suspended on Telegram in 2018 but later continued under a different name.
Based on reporting by AP, dpa, AFP, and Reuters
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said Moscow continues to reject U.S. sanctions against Iran, has put its money where its mouth is by increasing trade with Tehran, and that Moscow will continue to look for new ways to counter the punitive measures.
“We do not just refuse to recognize unilateral sanctions, but support Iran with specific measures,” Lavrov told Iranian state television in an interview on December 12. “Perhaps we are doing more than anyone else. In terms of figures, this amounts to billions of dollars.”
Lavrov said Russian trade with Iran grew by 8 percent in the first half of the year, and that “we do not have such indicators actually with anyone else, when trade is growing and not decreasing amid coronavirus restrictions.”
Russia’s top diplomat added that he was convinced that “we will be looking for new methods of ignoring the sanctions’ negative economic effect.”
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has continued to increase pressure on Iran in its last weeks of office before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Last week, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iran’s envoy to the Huthi rebels in Yemen in what was seen as an attempt to force the Tehran-backed militants to negotiate a peace deal to end an ongoing civil war in which Iranian archenemy Saudi Arabia is heavily involved.
Iran recently announced plans to increase its uranium-enrichment capabilities in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
In 2018 the United States abandoned the agreement, under which Tehran curtailed its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Based on reporting by TASS and AFP
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Iran has executed dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam, whose online work helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017.
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Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned Turkey’s ambassador on December 11 to protest remarks by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Azerbaijan.
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Iran and Afghanistan have officially inaugurated their first railway link, an achievement the two countries’ presidents said would help enhance trade across the region.
The 130-kilometer line running from Khaf in northeastern Iran into Rosnak in the western Afghan province of Herat is seen as providing a crucial transport link for the landlocked country where decades of war have hindered infrastructure development.
The link is to be eventually expanded by 85 kilometers to reach the city of Herat.
The $75 million Khaf-Herat railway project began in 2007, with Tehran funding construction on both sides of the border.
Speaking during the inauguration ceremony, held via videoconference due to the coronavirus pandemic, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said the project was important not only for Afghanistan and Iran but also for the entire region.
Iran’s President Hassan Rohani said it was “one of the historic days” in relations between the two neighbors.
The ceremony saw cargo trains depart from opposite ends of the line, a week after a shipment of cement was sent from Iran to Afghanistan by train, inaugurating the railway link project.
Iran seeks to become a regional transport hub, allowing Afghanistan and other landlocked countries in the region to ship goods to its ports on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
With reporting by AP, TOLOnews, and IRNA
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The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is urging Iran to cease jailing members of the press for their work after a 72-year-old journalist began a three-year prison sentence over his coverage of protests last year.
“Jailing an elderly journalist in the middle of a raging pandemic shows how much contempt the Iranian judiciary has for the press,” CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said in a statement on December 8, a day after authorities arrested Kayvan Samimi and took him to serve a three-year sentence at Tehran’s Evin prison.
Mansour said Samimi “must be released immediately and unconditionally, as should all of the journalists being held in Iran in retaliation for their reporting.”
Samimi was arrested in Tehran in May 2019 while he was covering labor protests for the Iran-e Farda magazine, where he worked as editor in chief.
He was freed on bail in June 2019 while facing charges of “colluding against national security” and “spreading antiestablishment propaganda.”
In April this year, a Tehran court tried Samimi in absentia, sentencing him to six years in prison.
Another court confirmed his conviction in May but reduced his sentence to three years, a decision that was upheld on further appeal in June.
Samimi previously served six years in prison over his coverage of the contested 2009 presidential election.
Since March, Iranian authorities have granted temporary release to tens of thousands of prisoners following concerns over the spread of the coronavirus in prisons in the Middle East’s worst-hit country. Many have since returned behind bars.
With reporting by Radio Farda
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The United States has included Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan on a list of 10 countries designated for “particular concern” over religious freedom.
The designation was issued under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 “for engaging in or tolerating systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a news release.
The United States also placed Russia and three other countries on a “special watch list” for governments that have engaged in or tolerated “severe violations of religious freedom.”
The United States “once again took action to defend those who simply want to exercise this essential freedom,” Pompeo said.
“The U.S. is unwavering in its commitment to religious freedom,” Pompeo added on Twitter. “No country or entity should be allowed to persecute people with impunity because of their beliefs. These annual designations show that when religious freedom is attacked, we will act.”
The countries designated for “particular concern” are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
The countries placed on the special watch list are the Comoros, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Russia.
Pompeo also said Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and the Taliban were among several militant extremist groups designated as “entities of particular concern.”
The announcement also said Uzbekistan and Sudan have been removed from the special watch list based on “significant, concrete progress” by their governments over the past year.
“Their courageous reforms of their laws and practices stand as models for other nations to follow,” Pompeo said.
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An Iranian official has rejected online rumors that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is gravely ill, saying that the 81-year-old cleric was going about his business as usual.
“By the grace of God and with the good prayers of devotees, the gentleman (Ayatollah Khamenei) is in good health and is busy vigorously carrying out his plans according to his routine,” Mehdi Fazaeli, an official with an office tasked with publishing the supreme leader’s works, tweeted on December 7.
The tweet followed reports by foreign news outlets that a visit between Khamenei and President Hassan Rohani had been canceled and the supreme leader’s duties handed over to one of his sons, 51-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei, who has no political position.
Ayatollah Khamenei was reportedly last seen in public on November 24, the date of his official Twitter account’s last post.
Khamenei is the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East, having been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989. Prior to his election to the position, which gives him a say in all matters of state, Khamenei was Iran’s president from 1981 to 1989.
In 2014, Khamenei underwent successful surgery for prostate cancer.
On December 7, the IRNA state news agency blamed a fall in Tehran’s bourse index on an unidentified “rumor.”
According to Iran’s Tasnim news agency, the rumor of Khamenei’s declining health started with a “fake” tweet in Arabic attributed to a “separatist individual based in London.”
State television has denied that a meeting of the Assembly of Experts, a body of clerics that is empowered with selecting the supreme leader, had convened.
Tasnim said that an image of the purported meeting circulating on social media was “fake.”
With reporting by AP and Reuters
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A machine gun equipped with a “satellite-controlled smart system” was used to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist, a senior official with the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has said.
Officials have blamed Israel for the brazen, daytime attack on November 27 in Absard, some 60 kilometers from the capital, Tehran, though it didn’t offer any evidence for the claim.
Israel, which has been blamed for the assassination of at least four other Iranian nuclear scientists, has not commented on the attack.
Photo Gallery:![The Black List: Assassinated Iranian Scientists]()
The Black List: Assassinated Iranian Scientists
The November 27 killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the latest in a string of killings of men allegedly linked to Iran’s nuclear program. Fakhrizadeh is at least the fifth Iranian scientist to have been assassinated or die in mysterious circumstances since 2007.
Speaking in Tehran on December 6, IRGC Deputy Commander Ali Fadavi said the smart system had “zoomed in” on Fakhrizadeh’s face using “artificial intelligence” while adding that Fakhrizadeh’s wife — who was only “25 centimeters away” — was unharmed.
Fadavi confirmed earlier reports that there were no assassins on the ground to carry out the killing.
He said the special weapon fired a total of 13 times, hitting Fakhrizadeh four or five times, including a shot to his spinal cord that caused severe bleeding and led to his death as he was being transported via helicopter to a Tehran hospital.
IRGC Deputy Commander Ali Fadavi (file photo)
Four bullets also hit the chief of Fakhrizadeh’s security detail, who had attempted to protect him by “throwing himself” on the nuclear scientist, Fadavi said. That confirmed media reports that one of Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards had been injured in the attack.
He also said that 11 bodyguards were accompanying Fakhrizadeh and that the explosion of a truck during the attack targeted the security team.
Fadavi’s account is the latest version of the assassination that has resulted in serious criticism of Iran’s security apparatus.
Initial reports immediately after the killing suggested that the scientist was targeted in a suicide attack, which included several gunmen. But media later only reported that the assault included gunfire and a truck explosion.
A filmmaker close to the hard-line faction of Iran’s establishment, which also includes the IRGC and other groups, said hours after the attack that 12 gunmen, including two snipers and a powerful car bomb, were involved in the ambush of Fakhrizadeh’s four-vehicle convoy.
Later, the IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency reported that there were no hitmen on the ground and that the attack was carried out by a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a pickup truck that later exploded.
Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani had also said there were no attackers on the ground while blaming Israel and suggesting the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organzation had played a role.
In an interview with state-controlled television, one of Fakhrizadeh’s sons, Hamed Fakhrizadeh, said his father had been warned by his security team on the day he was assassinated not to travel.
But the top scientist, who kept a low-profile, had said that, due to a class he was teaching as well as an “important meeting,” he needed to return to Tehran.
‘Full-Blown War Zone’
Hamed Fakhrizadeh described the scene of the assassination, which he came to shortly after the attack, as a “full-blown war zone.”
His brother, Mehdi Fakhirzadeh, said in the same interview that his father was shot at a close range of four or five meters and that their mother, who he said had sat on the ground next to Fakhrizadeh, was unhurt.
“She said ‘I don’t understand how the bullets didn’t hit me. I went there so that the bullets would not hit [Fakhrizadeh],’” he quoted his mother as having said.
The comments could either confirm Fadavi’s account regarding a “satellite-controlled” weapon equipped with facial-recognition technology or suggest that snipers shot and killed the nuclear scientist.
Fakhrizadeh’s assassination and the various accounts of how it was carried out have raised many questions, including the possible presence of “infiltrators” within Iran’s security apparatus who would have precise information about the movement of the country’s leading nuclear scientist, who was mentioned by name in a 2018 presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
If the official account regarding the remote-controlled killing is true, it is clear that the attack was well-planned and that someone had installed the alleged “remote-controlled” gun and a bomb on the truck before driving it to the site of the assassination. Some reports said the owner of the Nissan pickup truck had left Iran shortly before the attack.
One major question is how the special equipment needed for the sophisticated attack was smuggled into Iran.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh
It is also not clear why Fakhrizadeh — who knew that he was a wanted man due to his role in the country’s nuclear program and who, according to officials, had survived previous failed assassination attempts — had decided to get out of his vehicle during the attack. It’s especially strange because several media accounts say his vehicle was bullet-proof.
Fakhrizadeh’s sons confirmed earlier reports that their father left his vehicle because he thought it had broken down after hearing the bullets hitting the car.
But it is unclear why he didn’t ask someone on his security team to find out what was happening instead of putting himself at risk by leaving the vehicle.
Officials have vowed to avenge Fakhrizadevh’s killing, which came nearly a year after the U.S. assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, who led the IRGC Quds Force in charge of the group’s regional activities. Soleimani was killed in a drone attack near Baghdad in January in an attack that the U.S. claimed responsibility for.
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Iran’s Supreme Court has said it will review the cases of three young men sentenced to death over links to anti-government protests in November 2019.
“The case will be reviewed in another tribunal,” the court’s website said on December 5, without providing further details.
The men were sentenced earlier in 2020, after being found guilty of “collusion to endanger national security” and “destroying and setting fire to public property with the aim of confronting the political system of the Islamic republic,” according to their lawyers.
But in July, Iran’s judiciary suspended the men’s executions, amid public anger and condemnations.
The men, identified as Amirhossein Moradi, Mohammad Rajabi, and Saeed Tamjidi — all in their 20s — were arrested during the protests over gasoline price hikes that quickly turned political, with protesters demanding that top officials step down.
Human rights advocates had said the death sentences initially handed to the three men had been aimed at intimidating future protesters.
Rights groups said at least some 300 people were killed and up to 7,000 were detained during the protests that rocked more than 100 towns and cities across Iran. They accused Iranian authorities of brutally cracking down on demonstrators.
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
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New Iranian legislation requiring officials to boost uranium enrichment within the country’s controversial nuclear program is seen as an attempt to hurt moderates and sabotage President Hassan Rohani’s efforts to deal with the incoming U.S. administration.
The law — which was passed by parliament on December 1 and quickly ratified by the powerful Guardians Council — comes amid an intense power struggle after the November 27 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which Tehran has blamed on Israel.
Rohani has opposed the bill, saying it is detrimental to diplomatic efforts. His aides said the country’s Supreme National Security Council is in charge of the nuclear dossier, not parliament.
“Let those who have experience, those who have been successful in diplomacy, deal with these issues,” Rohani said at a cabinet meeting on December 3. “Don’t be sad if the government resolves this issue and finishes it,” he added.
Rohani chief of staff Mahmud Vaezi said the legislation is aimed at preventing the government from reaching a breakthrough on the problems plaguing the landmark nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers in 2015, which was severely weakened after Washington withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
“They constantly attack [us] so that they can win the June [2021 presidential] vote,” he said on December 4.
Photo Gallery:![The Black List: Assassinated Iranian Scientists]()
The Black List: Assassinated Iranian Scientists
The November 27 killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the latest in a string of killings of men allegedly linked to Iran’s nuclear program. Fakhrizadeh is at least the fifth Iranian scientist to have been assassinated or die in mysterious circumstances since 2007.
Just hours after Fakhrizadeh’s assassination near the capital, Tehran, hard-liners staged protests at which they blasted the government’s diplomatic outreach and called on Iran to leave the 2015 deal, which Rohani’s team negotiated with Barack Obama’s administration. Some even blamed Rohani for Fakhrizadeh’s killing, saying he had allowed the UN nuclear agency to interview the scientist, a claim denied by the government.
A few days after he was killed, the conservative-dominated parliament approved the controversial bill that also requires the government to halt UN inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites by early February 2021 if harsh U.S. sanctions are not lifted, giving Rohani only days to reach a deal with Biden’s incoming U.S. administration, which takes office on January 20, 2021.
The legislation directs the government to enrich uranium to 20 percent immediately and says government officials who refuse to implement the required steps in the law could face punishment.
Centrifuge machines in Iran’s Natanz uranium-enrichment facility.
Iranian analyst Reza Alijani says Fakhrizadeh’s killing has provided Rohani’s opponents with a “golden opportunity” to sideline Rohani, who is believed to have ambitions of becoming the successor of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is 81 years old.
Hard-liners who took control of parliament in February amid a mass disqualification of candidates and the country’s lowest-ever turnout, now have their eyes set on the presidency.
“It is part of [the hard-liners’] attempt to conquer [the presidency] and more importantly to pave the way for the next [supreme] leader,” Alijani told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda in an interview from Paris.
Rohani did not say if or when the controversial legislation will be enforced amid speculation that he’s likely to attempt to delay it, including by reaching out to the country’s top security body.
In Tehran, political analyst Saheb Sadeghi said the parliament’s move has three goals: to give the parliament a say in the country’s nuclear policy; prevent diplomacy between Rohani and Biden — who has pledged to rejoin the nuclear deal if Tehran returns to strict compliance; and allow hard-liners to take credit for a potential agreement with Biden.
“The long-term goal is to return to the nuclear deal [without any sanctions from the United States] during the presidency of the conservatives,” Sadeghi said on Twitter.
Parliament speaker Mohamamd Baqer Qalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander who stood against Rohani for the presidency in 2012 and 2016 and who is tipped to run again in June, said the strict new law sends the message to Iran’s enemies that the “one-way game is over.” He added that it would result in the lifting of U.S. sanctions that have crippled the economy.
Experts warn that the legislation, which could potentially reduce the time Iran needs to produce a nuclear weapon, complicates diplomacy for the upcoming White House.
“Enriching to near 20 percent would accelerate the crisis because by that stage, nine-tenths of the enrichment work required to reach weapons grade [is done]. And while there is a civilian use, Iran has no rational need to produce 20 percent-enriched uranium for any reason other than to try to gain negotiation leverage,” former U.S. diplomat Mark Fitzpatrick told RFE/RL.
“Moving to 20 percent enrichment or, even worse, suspending inspections as called for in the bill, would make diplomacy much harder for the incoming Biden administration. Biden is already under pressure to extract additional concessions [from Tehran] before returning to the [nuclear deal known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or] JCPOA,” said Fitzpatrick, an associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Fitzpatrick added that “If Iran takes provocative steps, the political will in Washington to compromise will evaporate. But if Iran is patient, there is a decent prospect for both sides returning to the nuclear deal simultaneously, then working on other matters of concern.”
In an interview with The New York Times published this week, Biden confirms that he intends to return to the 2015 nuclear deal before addressing other areas of concern that Washington has with Tehran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that although the new legislation will be implemented soon, the steps can be reversed.
“We will implement it because it [will be] the law of the land…[but] it is not irreversible,” Zarif told the Rome MED 2020 conference.
In an interview published on November 29, Zarif said hard-liners were attempting to derail Rohani’s foreign-policy efforts by reaching out directly to Biden’s team.
Radio Farda broadcaster Mehrdad Ghasemfar contributed to this report.
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Iran plans to install more advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges at an underground plant in breach of its troubled deal with major powers, Reuters reported on December 4, citing a UN nuclear watchdog report.
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The United States is partially withdrawing some staff from its embassy in Baghdad as tensions with Iran and Iraqi militia groups spike.
U.S. Ambassador Mathew Tueller confirmed on December 3 a “temporary reduction” in staff at the mission following recent media reports of the change.
In a video posted on the U.S. Embassy’s Facebook page, Tueller said he and a core team of diplomats and military advisers would continue to carry out duties for the “foreseeable future.”
It was unclear how many of the several hundred diplomats at the largest U.S. Embassy had been pulled out.
The drawdown comes as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Iran ahead of a transition to President-elect Joe Biden, who has said he will try to revive diplomacy with Tehran upon entering the White House in January.
Biden is expected to try to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord that Trump quit in 2018 and work with allies to strengthen its terms, if Tehran first resumes compliance.
Tension have spiked across the region following last week’s assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran. Iran has blamed Israel and, indirectly, the United States, raising the possibility that Iran or one of its regional proxies will retaliate.
U.S. officials have also voiced concern that Iran or allied Iraqi militia may carry out retaliatory action on the first anniversary of a U.S. drone strike that killed a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, and senior Iraqi militia leaders near Baghdad’s airport on January 3.
The partial withdrawal from the embassy is taking place against the backdrop of the Trump administration last month ordering a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq from 3,000 to 2,500 by mid-January.
In September, the Trump administration warned Iraq that it would close its embassy in Baghdad in response to repeated rocket and other attacks by Iranian-backed militias on American and allied interests in the country.
With reporting by AP and AFP
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Israel’s government is warning that Israeli targets abroad could come under attack by Iran, citing threats issued by Tehran following the killing of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist last week.
“In light of threats recently coming from Iranian officials and in light of the involvement in the past of Iranian agents in terror attacks in various countries, there is a concern that Iran will try to act in such a way against Israeli targets,” according to a December 3 statement issued by the prime minister’s National Security Council.
It advised against travel to nearby countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), and Bahrain, as well as the Kurdish area of Iraq and Africa.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was at the heart of the country’s past covert nuclear program, was killed on the outskirts of Tehran on November 27.
No one has claimed responsibility, but Iranian officials have blamed the killing on Israel, an exile opposition group, and Saudi Arabia.
A top adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that Iran will give a “calculated and decisive” response.
Israeli officials have declined to comment on the killing, while the Iranian opposition group and Saudi Arabia have denied any involvement.
Elliott Abrams, the top U.S. envoy on Iran, said on December 3 that Iran is unlikely to retaliate over the assassination before the inauguration of Joe Biden as U.S. president on January 20, 2021, in case it jeopardizes any future sanctions relief from the United States.
“If they want sanctions relief, they know that they’re going to need to enter some kind of negotiation after January 20, and it’s got to be in their minds that they don’t want to…undertake any activities between now and January 20 that make sanctions relief harder to get,” Abrams told Reuters.
Iran and its proxies have targeted Israeli tourists and Jewish communities in the past.
Israel in recent months has signed U.S.-brokered agreements establishing diplomatic relations with the U.A.E. and Bahrain.
With reporting by AP and Reuters
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Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has nothing to worry about as the man who will directly handle America’s foreign policy in the Middle East is a loyal friend of Israel. Crisis averted.President-elect, Joe Biden’s appointment of Antony J. Blinken as his Secretary of State was a master stroke, according to the Biden Administration. Blinken is a State Department veteran, a strong believer in a US-led Western alliance and a true friend of Israel.
The immediate message that Biden wished to communicate through this particular appointment – and also the appointment of Jake Sullivan as the US’ new National Security Adviser – is that the United States will edge back to its default position as a global leader, and away from Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy agenda.
While the Europeans are excited to have their American benefactors back, Blinken’s appointment was geared mostly to appease Israel.
The defeat of Trump in the November elections led to much anxiety in Washington and Tel Aviv. The Israelis were nervous that Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’, which was essentially American acquiescence to all of Israel’s demands, would come to a halt. The Biden Administration, on the other hand, remains wary of the contentious relationship that Netanyahu had with the last Democratic administration under Barack Obama.
The selection of Blinken to fill the role of America’s top diplomat must have been considered within several political contexts: one, that Israel needed an immediate American reassurance that Biden will carry on with Trump’s legacy; two, that the new Secretary of State needed to match the love of Israel expressed by departing Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and three, that the Iran nuclear program file has to be handled with the utmost sensitivity.
Not only did Biden succeed in making the most opportune selection, but the Israelis are also absolutely delighted. Comments made by Israeli leaders from all main political parties have welcomed Biden’s gesture, declaring unanimously that Blinken is ‘good for Israel’.
Pro-Netanyahu politicians are particularly happy and eager to engage with a Blinken-led US foreign policy. Dore Gold, a close Netanyahu associate who also served as Israel’s Foreign Ministry director-general, told the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, that he was “impressed” with Blinken and “found him to be very professional and a good listener”.
Unlike the “simply difficult” attitudes of other officials in the Obama Administration, Gold found Blinken to be “very open”, without any “any kind of anti-Israel undertone”.
The meeting that Gold was referring to took place in the US State Department in 2016, when the top Israeli official concluded that Blinken “was a really good guy,” leading to the current opinion that Blinken “can be a very positive influence”.
Blinken left the meeting with similar amity. “In the face of unprecedented regional threats, affirmed ironclad support for (Israeli) security with Israel Foreign Ministry Director-General, Dore Gold,” Blinken tweeted at the time.
Other Israelis share the same sentiment as Gold, reflecting a collective understanding that Biden will not reverse any of the steps taken by his predecessor. Former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, also expressed her optimism regarding the direction of US-Israeli relations. Like most Israelis, she had no qualms with the Trump-Pompeo generosity, and is now certain that the Biden-Blinken duo will be equally benevolent with Israel.
According to Haaretz, Livni believes that “Biden and Blinken will embrace and build on the steps taken by Trump that were ‘in accordance with Israel’s interests’.”
Since all pro-Israel measures taken by the Trump Administration were classified under the ‘Deal of the Century’, and remembering that Biden will unlikely reverse any of these measures, it follows that Trump’s political agenda will also be championed by the upcoming administration. While Israelis are reassured by this realization, the Palestinian leadership seems oblivious to it.
After speaking to Palestinian officials, TIME magazine summed up the Palestinian Authority’s expectations as merely technical and diplomatic gestures, such as the reopening of the Palestinian mission in Washington, the establishment of the US Consulate for Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the restoration of funding.
The Palestinian inability to appreciate the nature of the challenge was also reflected in the political discourse of Arab-Israeli politicians. Ayman Odeh, the leader of Israel’s large Arab political coalition, arrived at the conclusion that “Biden will take off the table the Deal of the Century,” although Odeh rightly points out that Biden will not put any pressure on Israel.
While it is true that Biden will unlikely borrow any of Trump’s divisive terminology, he will, most certainly, keep the spirit of the ‘Deal of the Century’ alive. The ‘Deal’ consisted of specific US measures aimed at validating Israel’s illegal claims over Occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and the delinking of Arab normalization with Israel from the subject of the Israeli occupation. None of this is likely to change even if the term ‘Deal of the Century’ is scrapped altogether.
This conclusion should not completely dismiss the possibility of a future clash between Tel Aviv and Washington. If a disagreement does take place, it will not be over Israel’s illegal actions in Palestine but over the likelihood that the US will restart talks with Iran regarding its nuclear program.
Regarding Iran, Netanyahu’s message to Biden is decisive and undiplomatic. “There can be no going back to the previous nuclear agreement,” the Israeli Prime Minister warned on November 22. That warning in mind, Blinken will find it extremely difficult to quell Israeli fears that, by diplomatically engaging Iran, the US will not be abandoning Israel. The American assurances to Israel are likely to come at the expense of Palestinians: a free Israeli hand in expanding illegal settlements, yet more cutting edge American weapons and unconditional US support at the United Nations.
Biden’s foreign policy is likely to be a continuation of Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’, though under a different designation. It is baffling that the Palestinian leadership is unable to see this, focusing instead, on steering the US back to a failed status quo, where Washington blindly supported Israel while paying Palestinians off for their silence.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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All too often, events occur that make me feel that I am living in ‘Bizarro World’. The recent talk and extensive US corporate media coverage about whether or not the US and/or Israel will soon attack Iran is one of these occasions. The alleged rationale for such an attack is the possibility that Iran might pursue the development of a nuclear weapon. This rationale ignores the religious ruling or fatwa issued by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei against the acquisition, development and use of nuclear weapons.
In its reporting on the possibility of the US or Israel attacking Iran, the US corporate-controlled media usually fails to mention that these threats are illegal under international law. Of course, illegality is not an issue for the media when these two countries are involved.
In addition, also seldom mentioned is the fact that the US is the only nation that has dropped atomic bombs on another country. The US is also a country that many nations claim has not complied with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Moreover, Israel is a country that has not even accepted the NPT and also has nuclear weapons. Also generally ignored is the fact that the US and Israel routinely violate international law with their unprovoked attacks on other nations. These are the two nations threatening Iran over the possibility that it might develop nuclear weapons. Such incredible hypocrisy and the media fails to call it out!
Note that Iran has gone the extra mile to demonstrate its willingness to reach a diplomatic resolution, but that is not enough for the US under President Trump and Israel under Prime Minister Netanyahu. For example, in 2015 Iran agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an agreement with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the US. This deal, also endorsed by the UN Security Council, restricted the development of Iran’s nuclear program. During the next few years, Iran was in full compliance with the agreement.
Even more bizarre, despite Iranian compliance, in 2018 the US pulled out of the agreement. The US then reimposed sanctions and imposed new sanctions on Iran. In an attempt to destroy the Iranian economy, the US also threatened nations that traded with Iran. These illegal and barbaric US sanctions, still in effect during the covid-19 pandemic, have tremendously harmed the Iranian people and the US image. Despite all of this, Iran continued to honor the agreement for a full year after the US withdrawal.
Note the US National Intelligence Estimate has repeatedly concluded Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program. Many former high-ranking Israeli intelligence and military officials agree that Iran is not an existential threat to Israel. Thus, in a sane world, wouldn’t there be international pressure being placed on the US and Israel over their nuclear weapons and over their war crimes? Instead, in this ‘Bizarro World’, because the US and Israel demand it, the focus is on Iran and its attempted development of a nuclear energy option.
In addition, given this background of no credible evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program nor of an existential threat to Israel, maybe the real motivation for the US and Israel is not about an Iranian nuclear weapon. Perhaps the goal is for a change in leadership in Iran to someone more compliant with US and Israeli plans. The US has used its illegal unilateral sanctions to cause suffering among the Iranian people in a misguided effort to get them to reject the current Iranian leadership. Despite overwhelming evidence that this approach doesn’t work, the US continues to use this barbaric, illegal and flawed tactic.
Why do the US and Israel continue to play the risky game of needlessly provoking Iran? One possible reason is that Netanyahu would like to see Iran respond in order to draw in the US into a military conflict with Iran. His thinking may be that the US would so weaken Iran, something that Israel cannot do without using its nuclear weapons, that Iran could no longer prevent Israel from achieving hegemony in the Middle East. Perhaps the revenge motive drives Trump and the US neocons. They cannot forgive Iran for overthrowing the Shah and humiliating the US in 1979 as well as for Iran following its own interests.
The recent provocations may also serve domestic considerations for Trump and Netanyahu even if they don’t lead to a military conflict. For Netanyahu, this focus would distract from his criminal trial for fraud, bribery and breach of trust. For Trump, the provocations would make it more difficult for President-Elect Biden to rejoin the JCPOA. Who knows for sure in ‘Bizarro World’?
One crucial concern for the US and Israel is the relationship among Iran, Russia and China. How would Russia and China react if the US and Israel were to attack Iran? Might such an attack lead to a much larger conflict that could escalate to a nuclear war? Thus these needless US and Israeli provocations may be more risky than the dangerous duo of Netanyahu and Trump want to admit.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh is back in prison less than a month after she was granted temporary release, her husband says.
“We were told today that Nasrin has to go back to the Gharchak Women’s Prison” in Tehran, Reza Khandan wrote on Twitter on December 2.
“Nasrin has returned to prison this evening,” he later told AFP.
The judiciary has ignored the doctors’ instructions, who extended her detention leave by two weeks, according to Khandan.
The 57-year-old Sotoudeh was released from the Gharchak prison on November 8 after being granted a temporary leave of absence.
She then tested positive for the coronavirus, Khandan said on November 11.
Human rights groups in October warned that her health severely deteriorated in prison following a seven-week hunger strike she had launched to seek the release of prisoners during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The lawyer, who has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory headscarf, was arrested in 2018 and charged with spying, spreading propaganda, and insulting Iran’s supreme leader.
Sotoudeh, who denied the charges, was sentenced to a total of 38 1/2 years in prison and 148 lashes.
The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2012.
Since March, Iranian authorities have granted temporary release to tens of thousands of prisoners following concerns over the spread of the coronavirus in prisons in the Middle East’s worst-hit country. Many have since returned to prison.
The Iranian health authorities have registered nearly 49,000 deaths in connection with COVID-19 and over 989,000 infections since the beginning of the pandemic.
With reporting by AFP
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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An Iranian constitutional watchdog has approved a law requiring the government to suspend United Nations inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities and step up uranium enrichment beyond the limit set under the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers if sanctions are not eased in one month.
The Guardians Council approved the legislation on December 2, a day after it was passed in parliament in what was seen as a show of defiance after the killing of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist last week.
Iranian President Hassan Rohani criticized the law as “harmful” to diplomatic efforts aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear deal and easing U.S. sanctions.
The stance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all strategic decisions made by Iran, is not publicly known.
The 2015 nuclear agreement scrapped sanctions against Iran in return for curbs to the country’s nuclear program.
But the United States unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018, and started imposing crippling sanctions on Iran, and Tehran has gradually reduced its compliance with the accord in response.
However, inspectors of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), continue to monitor Iranian nuclear sites as part of the 2015 pact.
Under the new law, the government is required to suspend IAEA inspections if Western powers that are still signatories to the 2015 nuclear accord — Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia — do not reestablish Iran’s access to world banking and oil markets within a month.
It also calls for Iran to resume enriching uranium to 20 percent purity “for peaceful uses.”
Iran currently enriches a growing uranium stockpile up to around 4.5 percent, above the deal’s 3.67 percent cap, but below the 20 percent Iran had achieved before and the 90 percent purity considered weapons-grade.
Tehran has always denied pursuing nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear program was strictly for civilian purposes.
The bill was first tabled in parliament in the summer but gained new momentum after the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was at the heart of the country’s past covert nuclear program, on the outskirts of Tehran on November 27.
No one has claimed responsibility, but Iranian officials have blamed the killing on Israel, an exile opposition group, and Saudi Arabia.
Israeli officials have declined to comment on the killing, while the Iranian opposition group and Saudi Arabia have also denied any involvement.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The attack that targeted Iran’s top nuclear scientist took place in broad daylight not far from the capital, Tehran.
Within a few minutes Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — who was at the heart of the country’s past covert nuclear program — was dead.
Initial reports suggested Fakhrizadeh’s motorcade was driving in Absard, some 60 kilometers from Tehran, when it was ambushed by a Nissan truck that exploded. Then several gunmen in an SUV, others on motorbikes, opened fire, killing the scientist and injuring at least one of his bodyguards.
But according to the latest version of events reported by the Fars news agency, which is affiliated with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the assassination was carried out using a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a Nissan pickup truck and there were no attackers on the ground.
Fars said Fakhrizadeh, 59, left his bulletproof vehicle after hearing gunshots. He was then sprayed with bullets from the pickup reportedly parked some 150 meters away.
According to the report, he was hit by three bullets, including one that severed his spinal cord. It said that seconds later the Nissan truck exploded.
Fakhrizadeh was flown by helicopter to a Tehran hospital but efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. His wife, who was with him during the attack, survived.
Regardless of the details — which are impossible to verify due to Iran’s tight media censorship and opaque system — the brazen attack sent shock waves through the country, highlighting a major security lapse.
“They keep telling us how powerful they are and they keep making announcements about arresting spies but they failed to protect the country’s most important nuclear scientist, whom they knew was at risk,” a Tehran-based observer who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue told RFE/RL.
The authorities quickly blamed Israel, which is also believed to have been behind a series of assassinations in the past 13 years of at least four nuclear scientists and the failed murder of a fifth about a decade ago.
Photo Gallery:![The Black List: Assassinated Iranian Scientists]()
The Black List: Assassinated Iranian Scientists
The November 27 killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the latest in a string of killings of men allegedly linked to Iran’s nuclear program. Fakhrizadeh is at least the fifth Iranian scientist to have been assassinated or die in mysterious circumstances since 2007.
Yet Fakhrizadeh’s assassination was still shocking, raising questions about the possible penetration of foreign intelligence agencies into Iran’s security apparatus.
The attack followed a series of other incidents blamed on Israel, including a July sabotage act at the underground Natanz uranium-enrichment facility in the central province of Isfahan, and the August assassination of Al-Qaeda’s second-highest leader in Tehran, reportedly carried out by Israeli operatives.
In late April 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it public that the Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency had stolen “Iran’s secret nuclear archive” from a warehouse in Tehran, naming Fakhrizadeh as a key operative and telling journalists to “remember this name.”
Raz Zimmt, an Iran analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, says Fakhrizadeh’s assassination and other recent incidents indicate that foreign intelligence services — mainly the CIA and Mossad — maintain “high-quality operational and intelligence capabilities” in Iran.
“It is very unlikely that all those operations could have been possible without a deep and continued intelligence and operational infiltration into the Iranian security apparatus,” Zimmt told RFE/RL, adding that nonstate actors, including Iranian opposition groups, lack the capability to conduct such operations.
Ariane Tabatabai, an expert on Iran at the Washington-based German Marshall Fund, said the attack highlighted Iran’s vulnerability. “And this despite the regime pouring a lot of effort — or resources and effort — into having a fairly robust security system,” Tabatabai said in a November 27 interview.
IRGC commander Major General Hossein Salami attends Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s funeral in Tehran on November 30.
‘Catch Fewer Professors, More Spies’
Inside the country, some suggested the security apparatus that has in recent years increasingly cracked down on environmentalists, academics, and dual nationals, needs to change its focus.
“Iran’s security strategy must return to finding Mossad spies and infiltrators,” said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president under former reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
“Find the real spies and Israel’s infiltrators,” Abtahi, who was jailed following the disputed 2009 presidential election, added on Twitter.
“I’m [angrier] at the security system that arrests university professors, lawyers, and journalists. But the wolves are committing assassinations in broad daylight,” lawyer Sharareh Dehshiri tweeted.
Hossein Alaei, a former commander of the IRGC naval force, said the sophisticated attack suggested that Israel was conducting its operations inside Iran based on “precise information.”
“Regardless of Israel’s goals of conducting such attacks, we have to see what weaknesses exist in the structure of the security apparatus that Israel’s operations are successful despite the probability of the assassination of people like Fakhrizadeh, who had been provided with bodyguards,” he said.
‘Completely New, Advanced, And Sophisticated Method’
Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, appeared to dismiss criticism of the security apparatus, telling journalists on November 30 that “the enemy had for 20 years unsuccessfully sought [to kill Fakhrizadeh].”
Shamkahni said that due to the frequency of reports in the past two decades about possible attempts to kill Fakhrizadeh, a plot to assassinate him was not taken seriously enough.
“This time they succeeded,” he said, adding that the operation to kill Fakhrizadeh was “very complicated” and confirming a Fars report that there were no assassins on the ground.
Shamkhani claimed the security services knew the attack was coming.
“[Our] intelligence services and networks have received the information that he would be targeted — they had even known that an [assassination] attempt would be made against him on the same spot where he eventually reached martyrdom,” Shamkhani said. “His protection was even intensified. But this time the enemy utilized a completely new, advanced, and sophisticated method.”
Shamkhani also named the entities he believes are responsible for the killing.
“The person who designed the operation is known to us. We know who they are and what their background is,” he said, without providing details. “Definitely, the hypocrites (a reference to the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq) had a role in it. Definitely, the criminal element of this action is the Zionist regime and Mossad.”
In a statement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK) dismissed “Shamkhani’s rage, rancor, and lies” against the group, while claiming credit for past revelations on Iran’s nuclear program and previously secret sites.
Israel has not commented on the killing, seen by many as a move to disrupt Tehran in any effort to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.
Israeli ‘Trap’?
In an interview with state television, Fereydun Abbassi, who survived an assassination attempt in Tehran in 2010, defended the performance of the security-intelligence apparatus, saying they had managed to prevent previous assassination attempts against Fakhrizadeh and several others.
“Twelve years ago a terror squad had seriously come for him and since then he had a team of bodyguards who were with him during [the November 28 attack],” he said.
“But the enemy changes its assassination methods,” Abbassi, the former head of the Atomic Energy Organization, added.
Fakhrizadeh’s killing comes in the final weeks of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has waged a campaign of “maximum pressure” against the Islamic republic that has devastated its economy.
In January, the United States used a drone attack to kill Qasem Soleimani, who headed the IRGC’s elite Quds Force. Tehran responded by carrying out a large missile attack against U.S. facilities in Iraq.
It is still unclear how and when Tehran will respond to Fakhrizadeh’s killing.
Iranian government officials, including President Hassan Rohani, have warned that the country should not fall into Israel’s trap, which they believe is to provoke Tehran into undermining the chances of diplomacy with the future administration of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The November 27 killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the latest in a string of killings of men allegedly linked to Iran’s nuclear program. Fakhrizadeh is at least the fifth Iranian scientist to have been assassinated or die in mysterious circumstances since 2007.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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An Iranian government spokesman said diplomacy is still possible, even as others in the country called for revenge after the targeted assassination of nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Government spokesman Ali Rabiei on November 29 said that “we should definitely not fall into this trap [of early military action or giving up on diplomacy].”
Earlier, Iranian President Hassan Rohani stressed that the country will seek its revenge in “due time” and not be rushed into a “trap.”
Rohani is considered by many to be among the more moderate figures in the country and likely to be looking toward possibly returning to the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement that Iran signed with six world powers, including the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has taken a hard line against Tehran, in 2018 pulled out of the accord and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran, accusing it of continuing to seek nuclear weapons and of funding extremist activity in the region — allegations Iran has denied.
The nuclear deal was signed under the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the recent presidential election and will take office on January 20, was Obama’s vice president when the deal with signed.
Meanwhile, an opinion piece published on November 29 by a hard-line Iranian newspaper called on the country’s leadership to attack the Israeli port city of Haifa if it is determined that Israel carried out the Fakhrizadeh killing.
The Kayhan newspaper suggested that an assault be carried out in a way that destroys facilities and “also causes heavy human casualties.”
The comments came a day after Iran’s supreme leader called for retaliation for the assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientist, raising concerns about a new confrontation between Iran and Israel or the United States.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for “following up on this crime and certainly punishing those responsible,” in a post on his official website on November 28.
President Rohani on November 28 accused Israel of acting as a “mercenary” for the United States in connection with the assassination near Tehran.
No country has claimed responsibility for the targeted killing, seen by many as an effort to disrupt Tehran in any effort to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.
Israel has not officially commented on Fakhrizadeh’s killing.
But it says Fakhrizadeh was the head of an Iranian military nuclear program, and he was subject to sanctions by the United States in 2008 for activities linked to Iran’s atomic activities.
Meanwhile, many states condemned the targeted killing, including countries often seen as rivals to Iran.
The United Arab Emirates on November 29 called the killing a “heinous crime,” but it added that it calls “on all parties to exercise self-restraint to avoid dragging region into new levels of instability and threat to peace.”
The condemnation comes weeks after the Persian Gulf nation signed a deal to normalize ties with Israel.
Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi told his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif that Oman condemned the act and said it ran counter to humanitarian and international laws.
A statement on November 29 from the European Union described the incident as killing “an Iranian government official and several civilians,” although it was not clear if others were killed in the attack.
Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency said the November 27 assault occurred in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran.
Iranian state television said an old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood blew up near a car carrying Fakhrizadeh.
As Fakhrizadeh’s sedan stopped, at least five gunmen emerged and raked the car with rapid fire, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency said.
With reporting by AFP, AP, dpa, and Reuters.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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White House senior adviser Jared Kushner will travel to Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week amid rising tensions following the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist near Tehran by unknown attackers.
A White House official said on November 29 that Kushner is to meet separately with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Saudi city of Neom and with the emir of Qatar in that small Persian Gulf nation.
The statement said Kushner — who is also President Donald Trump’s son-in-law — will be accompanied by Middle East envoys Avi Berkowitz and Brian Hook. Adam Boehler, chief of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, will join them.
Kushner and his team have been instrumental in negotiating normalization deals between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), and Sudan since the start of the summer.
U.S. administration officials said the team is attempting to reach further such deals before Trump’s term is set to end on January 20.
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia is a bitter rival of Shi’ite-led Iran as two nations battle for influence in the Middle East.
Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in an ambush near Tehran on November 27, in a brazen attack that threatens to escalate tensions between Iran and the United States and its close ally Israel.
Iranian President Hassan Rohani on November 28 accused Israel of acting as a “mercenary” for the United States in connection with the assassination. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, which many saw as an attempt to slow Iran’s progress toward developing nuclear weapons.
Based on reporting by Reuters and Axios
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Israel denies being behind the assassination of top Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and the US is keeping quiet. But the fact remains, Iranian scientists have been continuously and mysteriously murdered for at least a decade now. Who do you think is doing it?
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Australia’s ambassadorial offices and political leaders have a consistent record of ignoring their citizens in tight situations. David Hicks, Mamdouh Habib and Julian Assange are but a few names that come to mind in this inglorious record of indifference. In such cases, Australian public figures and officials have tacitly approved the use of abduction, torture and neglect, usually outsourced and employed by allies such as the United States.
Australian diplomacy, to that end, is nastily cheap. It comes at heavily discounted prices, when it comes at all. To then see the extent of interest and effort in seeking the release of Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert from Iranian captivity, is as interesting as it is perplexing. A work ethic in Canberra has come into being. Nothing was spared securing the release of Moore-Gilbert, where she had been imprisoned for espionage charges and spent 804 days in detention. Fears for her wellbeing spiked with her transfer to Qarchak women’s prison, not known for its salubrious facilities. She had previously spent time at Tehran’s Evin prison.
Efforts were made by Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, who raised Moore-Gilbert’s detention in four meetings with her Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. As she confirmed, the release “was achieved through diplomatic engagement with the Iranian government.”
Iranian authorities put it to the Australians that they wanted three of their covert operatives – Saeid Moradi, Mohammad Kharzei and Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh – released. The three men in question had been held in Thailand for planting explosive devices in Bangkok in an effort to assassinate Israeli diplomats in 2012. Whatever the skills of these operatives, bomb making was evidently low on the list. An accidental explosion holed their rented Bangkok villa. Moradi was sentenced to life for his attempt to kill a police officer. The police officer survived; Moradi’s legs did not, lost when a grenade he tossed bounced back and detonated. Kharzei received 15 years for possessing explosives.
With the list handy, the Australian government approached Thai contacts. Moore-Gilbert’s release had, Payne claimed, become a matter of “absolute priority”. Israeli government officials were also engaged. A secret agreement was reached, involving what was effectively a prisoner exchange.
Whatever else is said of her case, the issue of the effort and labour put in is significant. Throw in the cliché of being an academic with Middle-Eastern expertise working in foreign climes, and you have a recipe rather richer than is advertised.
The heavily scripted nature of the affair is screamingly evident. Media coverage of Moore-Gilbert’s release, and the circumstances of her detention, has avoided much in the way of analysis. The tone is very much that of the official press release. What we get, instead, are the anodyne statements from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, supposedly “thrilled and relieved” by the outcome. “The tone of her voice was very uplifting, particularly given what she has been through.” We also get notes of worry. Amber Schultz of Crikey expressed concern about the prolonged “ordeal” that would continue to face Moore-Gilbert upon her return to Australia.
That Moore-Gilbert’s release was, in fact, brokered as part of a broader prisoner release is not laboured over. The prime minister is cryptic in his statement. “If other people have been released in other places, they are the decisions of the sovereign governments. There are no people who have been held in Australia who have been released.” Skirted over, as well, is Moore-Gilbert’s relationship with an Israeli, which, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, led to “baseless claims that she was a spy for Israel.”
Iran’s Young Journalist Club has its own serve on the subject, making mention of the release. Moore-Gilbert “was swapped for an Iranian businessman and two other nationals incarcerated abroad on delusional accusations, Iranian news agencies reported.” It notes a report by the IRNA news agency claiming that the academic “had passed a two-year special training course for her spying mission.” She attained fluency in Persian “and was prepared to perform espionage activities in Iran.” What interested the IRNA was her second visit, when “she entered Iran on the recommendation of the Zionist regime [Israel] on the lunar calendar month of Muharram”. Details are sketchy on what Moore-Gilbert supposedly did. She “travelled to different cities as part of her mission and gathered information.”
For her part, Moore-Gilbert, in letters smuggled out of Evin prison, denies ever being a spy. “I am not a spy. I have never been a spy, and I have no interest to work for a spying organisation in any country.”
The standard concern by some in the media stable is that such exchanges are common instruments in Tehran’s foreign policy arsenal. The Australian director of Human Rights Watch, Elaine Pearson, suggested “a clear pattern by Iran’s government to arbitrarily detain foreign and dual nationals and use them as bargaining chips in negotiations with other states.” The executive director of the Australian Israel and Jewish Affairs Council Colin Rubenstein saw the practice of using hostages in exchanges “for terrorists is typical of the tyrannical Iranian regime.” Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow with the Middle Eastern program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes “hostage-taking as a tool of statecraft for four decades now. The Revolutionary Guards are blatant about it and believe it delivers results.”
Such concerns are legitimate and consistent, though the circumstances for each situation varies. Attention should be paid to the quarry being traded. The Iranian Republic has a striking appetite for detaining academics and researchers. French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmadreza Djalali, have all been the subject of Tehran’s ire. Djalali, also accused of spying for Israel, faces execution.
The question not being asked is why Moore-Gilbert was that valuable so as to warrant the release of three Iranian agents. Afshon Ostovar, an academic based at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Department of National Security Affairs, sees little in the incongruence; Iran negotiation strategy, he more than implies, lacks proportion. “It seems rather puzzling that Iran’s imprisonment of an innocent foreign grad student [sic] should lead to the release of three of its covert agents jailed for failed explosive attacks in Thailand but that’s how the Islamic Republic does business.”
One person not exactly cheering the prisoner swap is Israel’s former ambassador to Thailand, Itzhak Shoham. On Israel’s Channel 12, he vented. “I don’t know anything about this deal beyond what was published. Of course it saddens me to see the pictures as [the Iranians] celebrate instead of rotting in prison, if they haven’t already been executed.” Rather abstractedly, Shoham had one consolation: that the former chief of Iran’s Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani, was killed in January in a US drone strike.
This prisoner exchange is also odd in another respect. Such instances are usually occasions of much fanfare for Tehran. Iranian television anchors tend to be at hand, noting the names of the released figures and their return to families. “The reason for Iran’s refusal to name those freed remains unclear,” states the cautious Times of Israel. “However, Tehran has long denied being behind the bomb plot and likely hopes to leverage the incoming administration of US President-Joe Biden to ease American sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump.”
The nagging question remains: Why did the Australian government regard Moore-Gilbert’s case as exceptional?
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Protesters burn U.S. and Israeli flags flags in Tehran after the killing of Fakhrizadeh. (Credit: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA, via Shutterstock)Israel used all four years of Trump’s presidency to entrench its systems of occupation and apartheid. Now that Joe Biden has won the U.S. election, the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, likely by Israel with the go-ahead from the US administration, is a desperate attempt to use Trump’s last days in office to sabotage Biden’s chances of successful diplomacy with Iran. Biden, Congress and the world community can’t let that happen.
On Friday November 27, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in the Iranian city of Absard outside of Tehran. First, a truck with explosives blew up near the car carrying Fakhrizadeh. Then, gunmen started firing on Fakhrizadeh’s car. The immediate speculation was that Israel had carried out the attack, perhaps with the support of the Iranian terrorist group the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (MEK). Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted that there were “serious indications of [an] Israeli role” in the assassination.
All indications indeed point to Israel. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu identified this scientist, Fakhrizadeh, as a target of his administration during a presentation in which he claimed that Israel had obtained secret Iranian files that alleged the country was not actually abiding by the Iran Nuclear Deal. “Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh. So here’s his directive, right here,” Netanyahu said.
Fakhrizadeh was far from the first assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated—Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. Though Israel never took official credit for the extrajudicial executions, reports were fairly conclusive that Israel, working with the MEK, were behind the killings. The Israeli government never denied the allegations.
The assassination of Fakhrizadeh also follows reports that the Israeli government recently instructed its senior military officials to prepare for a possible U.S. strike on Iran, likely referring to a narrowly averted plan by President Trump to bomb Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. Furthermore, there was a clandestine meeting between Netanyahu and Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman. Among the topics of conversation were normalization between the two countries and their shared antagonism towards Iran.
Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear activities are particularly galling given that Israel, not Iran, is the only country in the Middle East in possession of nuclear weapons, and Israel refuses to sign the International Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Iran, on the other hand, doesn’t have nuclear weapons and it has opened itself up to the most intrusive international inspections ever implemented. Adding to this absurd double standard is the intense pressure on Iran from the United States—a nation that has more nuclear weapons than any country on earth.
Given the close relationship between Netanyahu and Trump, and the seriousness of this attack, it is very likely that this assassination was carried out with the green light from Trump himself. Trump has spent his time in the White House destroying the progress the Obama administration made in easing the conflict with Iran. He withdrew from the nuclear deal and imposed an unending stream of crippling sanctions that have affected everything from the price of food and housing, to Iran’s ability to obtain life-saving medicines during the pandemic. He has blocked Iran from getting an IMF $5 billion emergency loan to deal with the pandemic. In January, Trump brought the US to the brink of war by assassinating Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, and in an early November meeting with his top security advisors, and right before the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, Trump himself reportedly raised the possibility of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
After the news broke of the assassination, Trump expressed implicit approval of the attack by retweeting Israeli journalist and expert on the Israeli Mossad intelligence service, Yossi Melman, who described the killing of Fahkrizadeh as a “major psychological and professional blow for Iran.”
Iran has responded to these intense provocations with extreme patience and reserve. The government was hoping for a change in the White House and Biden’s victory signaled the possibility of both the U.S. and Iran going back into compliance with the nuclear deal. This recent assassination, however, further strengthens the hands of Iranian hardliners who say it was a mistake to negotiate with the United States, and that Iran should just leave the nuclear deal and build a nuclear weapon for its own defense.
Iranian-American analyst Negar Mortazavi bemoaned the chilling effect the assassination will have on Iran’s political space. “The atmosphere will be even more securitized, civil society and political opposition will be pressured even more, and the anti-West discourse will be strengthened in Iran’s upcoming presidential election,” she tweeted.
This assassination will have a chilling effect on Iran’s political space; the atmosphere will be even more securitized, civil society and political opposition will be pressured even more, and the anti-West discourse will be strengthened in Iran’s upcoming presidential election.
— Negar Mortazavi (@NegarMortazavi) November 27, 2020
The hardliners already won the majority of seats in the February parliamentary elections and are predicted to win the presidential elections scheduled for June. So the window for negotiations is a narrow one of four months immediately after Biden’s inauguration. What happens between now and January 20 could derail negotiations before they even start.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said that US and Israeli efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program “have now morphed into Trump & Netanyahu sabotaging the next US President. They are trying to goad Iran into provocations & accelerating nuclear work—exactly what they claim to oppose. Their real fear is US & Iran talking.”
US & Israel efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program have now morphed into Trump & Netanyahu sabotaging the next US President. They are trying to goad Iran into provocations & accelerating nuclear work-exactly what they claim to oppose. Their real fear is US & Iran talking
— Jamal Abdi (@jabdi) November 27, 2020
That’s why U.S. members of Congress, and President-elect Joe Biden himself, must vigorously condemn this act and affirm their commitment to the US rejoining the nuclear deal. When Israel assassinated other nuclear scientists during the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the murders, understanding that such illegal actions made negotiations infinitely more difficult.
The European Union, as well as some important US figures have already condemned the attack. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy pointed out the risks involved in normalizing assassinations, how the killing will make it harder to restart the Iran Nuclear agreement, and how the assassination of General Soleimani backfired from a security standpoint. Former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes tweeted that it was an “outrageous action aimed at undermining diplomacy,” and former CIA head John Brennan called the assassination “criminal” and “highly reckless,” risking “lethal retaliation and a new round of regional conflict,” but rather than putting the responsibility on the U.S. and Israel to stop the provocations, he called on Iran to “be wise” and “resist the urge to respond.”
I have not yet been briefed on this incident, but: Every time America or an ally assassinates a foreign leader outside a declaration of war, we normalize the tactic as a tool of statecraft. The risk is that the security benefit can be very short lived. https://t.co/vn3mbEWmhB
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 27, 2020
This is an outrageous action aimed at undermining diplomacy between an incoming US administration and Iran. It’s time for this ceaseless escalation to stop. https://t.co/ix6LpeVpcQ
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) November 27, 2020
This was a criminal act & highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict.
Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits. https://t.co/0uZhyBTM3S— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) November 27, 2020
Many on Twitter have raised the question of what the world response would be if the roles were reversed and Iran assassinated an Israeli nuclear scientist. Without a doubt, the U.S. administration, whether Democrat or Republican, would be outraged and supportive of a swift military response. But if we want to avoid escalation, then we must hope that Iran will not retaliate, at least not during Trump’s last days in office.
The only way to stop this crisis from spiraling out of control is for the world community to condemn the act, and demand a UN investigation and accountability for the perpetrators. The countries that joined Iran and the United States in signing the 2015 nuclear agreement —Russia, China, Germany, the UK and France—must not only oppose the assassination but publicly recommit to upholding the nuclear deal. President-elect Joe Biden must send a clear message to Israel that under his administration, these illegal acts will have consequences. He must also send a clear message to Iran that he intends to quickly re-enter the nuclear deal, stop blocking Iran’s $5 billion IMF loan request, and begin a new era of diplomacy to dial back the intense conflict he inherited from Trump’s recklessness.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.