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National Review     |     By DAVID ZIMMERMANN     |     November 14, 2023

Iran has been conducting covert influence operations for years in the U.S. and abroad as part of a concerted disinformation campaign that is suspected to be espionage, a congressional briefing and corresponding report revealed Tuesday.

The 82-page report, titled “Iran: The Ayatollah’s Hidden Hand,” details how supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian regime use operatives in the Biden administration to influence U.S. policy involving the Islamic Republic, building on a Semafor article that was published in September. At the time, it was reported that at least three Iranian agents transitioned from soliciting Tehran’s talking points to working directly on policy under the purview of U.S. special representative for Iran, Rob Malley. In April, Malley’s security clearance was suspended over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“Having been provided with top-level security clearances, these Iranian agents had access to highly classified and sensitive information available only to senior U.S. officials, placing them in a unique position to mislead American policymakers while undermining policy toward Iran’s theocratic regime,” the newly published report states. “The actors allegedly collaborated with and took direction from senior Iranian officials while maintaining the appearance of working on behalf of the U.S. government.”

In addition to swaying foreign policy in favor of Iranian interests, the operatives also worked to subvert favorable opinions of the Middle Eastern nation’s leading opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), from Washington, D.C. Iran continues to demonize the MEK to this day, accusing the political group of terrorism primarily for its defiance of Ayatollah Khamenei.

“By brazenly targeting the highly effective dissident organization, the operatives hoped to leave U.S. officials with the false impression that there is no viable alternative to the ayatollahs — and certainly not one with a pro-democracy record that remains committed to toppling clerical rule,” the report adds.

Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan, associate dean at the University of Baltimore who authored the report, presented an overview of his findings to select congressmen, foreign policy experts, and the media on Capitol Hill, where he called on both chambers of Congress to organize investigations and hearings into the matter.

“The Iranian regime poses a direct national security threat to U.S. citizens and U.S. security interests,” Sheehan said. “The fact of the matter is that no organization who aligns themselves with a hostile state or serves as a foreign agent should wield influence over U.S. policy or have access to sensitive national security information.”

Representatives Tom McClintock (R., Calif.), Randy Weber (R., Texas), and ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield Jr., the former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs during the George W. Bush administration, introduced the professor’s research at the briefing.

While lauding the House’s actions to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, Sheehan advocated for Congress and decision-makers in Washington to be aware of the tactics that Tehran employs to “advance their broader, geopolitical agenda.” Early this month, the House passed a bipartisan resolution that declares a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable under U.S. policy.

Intimidation of U.S. officials is one of the many tactics listed in the book, Sheehan said, noting one of the key endorsers of his report was shot in Madrid, Spain, just five days prior to the Tuesday briefing. Professor and European statesman Alejo Vidal-Quadras, who fortunately survived, has reason to believe the Iranian regime was behind the failed assassination attempt. The Spanish police’s special terrorism unit is currently investigating the matter.

Sheehan posed questions to the audience, wondering whether the Iranian influence operations have officially become efforts of espionage and how much damage the covert campaign has caused.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/iran-conducting-influence-operations-in-the-biden-administration-report/

Semafor     |     Jay Solomon     |     Sept. 29, 2023

THE SCOOP

In the spring of 2014, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran’s image and positions on global security issues — particularly its nuclear program — by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers. They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.

The scope and scale of the IEI project has emerged in a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails reported for the first time by Semafor and Iran International. The officials, working under the moderate President Hassan Rouhani, congratulated themselves on the impact of the initiative. At least two of the people on the Foreign Ministry’s list were, or became, top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, who was placed on leave this June following the suspension of his security clearance. A third was hired by the think tank Malley ran just as he left for the State Department.

The documents offer deep and unprecedented new insights into the thinking and inner workings of Iran’s Foreign Ministry at a crucial time in the nuclear diplomacy — even as Tehran’s portrayal of events is questioned, if not flatly denied, by others involved in the IEI. They show how Iran was capable of the kind of influence operations that the U.S. and its allies in the region often conduct.

The emails were obtained and translated by Iran International, a Persian-language television news channel headquartered in London — which was briefly based in Washington due to Iranian government threats — and shared with Semafor. Semafor and Iran International jointly reported on some aspects of the IEI. Both organizations have produced their own stories independently.

The communications reveal the access Rouhani’s diplomats have had to Washington’s and Europe’s policy circles, particularly during the final years of the Obama administration, through this network. One of the German academics in the IEI, according to the emails, offered to ghostwrite op-eds for officials in Tehran. Others would, at times, seek advice from the Foreign Ministry’s staff about attending conferences and hearings in the U.S. and Israel. The IEI participants were prolific writers of op-eds and analyses, and provided insights on television and Twitter, regularly touting the need for a compromise with Tehran on the nuclear issue — a position in line with both the Obama and Rouhani administrations at the time. The emails describe the IEI being initiated following Rouhani’s 2013 election, when he was looking to find an accommodation with the West on the nuclear issue. According to the emails, Iran’s Foreign Ministry, through its in-house think tank — the Institute for Political and International Studies — reached out to ten “core” members for the project, through which it planned to liaise over the next 18 months to aggressively promote the merits of a nuclear deal between Tehran and Washington, which was finalized in July 2015.

“This initiative which we call ‘Iran Experts Initiative (IEI)’ is consisted of a core group of 6-10 distinguished second-generation Iranians who have established affiliations with the leading international think-tanks and academic institutions, mainly in Europe and the US,” Saeed Khatibzadeh, a Berlin-based Iranian diplomat and future Foreign Ministry spokesman, wrote to Mostafa Zahrani, the head of the IPIS think tank in Tehran, on March 5, 2014, as the project gained steam. Their communication veered between English and Farsi — which was translated by Iran International and independently verified by Semafor.

Khatibzadeh wrote again a week later, on March 11, and said that he had gained support for the IEI from two young academics — Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary — following a meeting with them in Prague. “We three agreed to be the core group of the IEI.”

Tabatabai currently serves in the Pentagon as the chief of staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, a position that requires a U.S. government security clearance. She previously served as a diplomat on Malley’s Iran nuclear negotiating team after the Biden administration took office in 2021. Esfandiary is a senior advisor on the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, a think tank that Malley headed from 2018-2021.

Tabatabai and Esfandiary didn’t respond to requests for comment on the IEI. Esfandiary’s current employer, the International Crisis Group, confirmed her participation in the initiative. But the Crisis Group, which promotes conflict resolution globally, said the IEI was an informal network of academics and researchers that wasn’t overseen by the Iranian Foreign Ministry and that it received funding from a European government and some European institutions, which they declined to identify.

The emails discussing the IEI were part of a trove of thousands of Zahrani’s correspondence that Iran International obtained. These include passport copies, resumes, invitations to conferences, airplane tickets, and visa applications. It’s not clear how complete or comprehensive the documents are concerning the IEI.

KNOW MORE

According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s communications, the IEI project ramped up after this initial outreach. On May 14, 2014, a kickoff conference was held at the Palais Coburg hotel in Vienna — site of the international nuclear talks. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was listed as an attendee, according to an email, as well as members of his nuclear negotiating team and eight representatives from Western think tanks. Lower-level Iranian diplomats had initially proposed the meeting be held in Tehran, but Zarif’s deputy advised against it for logistical reasons.

Zarif was fixated during the discussions in Vienna on elevating, or creating, a public figure who could promote Iran’s views on the international stage concerning the nuclear issue, according to the emails. He specifically mentioned an Iranian version of Robert Einhorn, an Obama administration diplomat and expert on nuclear proliferation, who regularly published scholarly pieces on Iran’s nuclear program and appeared at U.S. and European think tank events.

“You were very right by saying that it is a shame that Iran has not its very own Bob Einhorn — someone who can foster attention on Iran’s case the way Einhorn does for the US or the P5+1 for that matter,” Adnan Tabatabai, a German academic who attended the IEI meeting in Vienna, wrote Zarif in English five days after it ended. The P5+1 was the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, and the diplomatic bloc negotiating the nuclear deal with Tehran. Adnan Tabatabai is not related to Ariane Tabatabai.

Adnan Tabatabai also offered Iran’s Foreign Ministry to ghostwrite pieces on its behalf. “Our suggestion could be that we as a group, work on an essay (2000 words) regarding the ongoing talks,” Tabatabai told Zarif in the same email. “It could, for example, be published under a former official’s name, through the CSR or IPIS — of course after you and your team revised the piece.”

The foreign minister responded four days later, copying Zahrani. Zarif accepted the suggestion and recommended that “these articles or Op-Eds” be published under the names of various Iranian and non-Iranians abroad, as well as former officials. It’s unclear if, or how many, pieces were actually published through this process.

Adnan Tabatabai declined to comment about the IEI, saying the reporting by Iran International and Semafor was “based on falsehoods and factually wrong assumptions.” He also questioned the authenticity of the correspondence with Zarif. Iran International commissioned a forensic examination of the emails, and found no discrepancies in the metadata that would indicate they were inauthentic.

The IEI quickly pushed ahead with one of the initiative’s primary objectives — publishing opinion pieces and analyses in top-tier media in the U.S. and Europe, specifically targeting policy makers. Less than a month after the Vienna gathering, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, a close protégé of Robert Malley’s who is listed as part of the IEI, sent an article on defusing the nuclear crisis to Zahrani of IPIS, ahead of publication. “I look forward to your comments and feedback,” he wrote in Farsi on June 4, 2014, attaching a piece entitled, “The Conceptual Perils of Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran.”

The emails show that the article was shared by Zahrani with Foreign Minister Zarif the day it arrived. It was then published 12 days later in the National Interest, under the title, “False Dilemmas in the Iran Talks,” with some minor wording changes. It’s unclear if Zarif made any fixes as no reply email from him is in the chain. While many think tanks and media outlets have policies against sharing articles before publication, ICG said in a statement to Semafor that it routinely and actively solicits the views of the primary actors involved in a conflict and shares relevant text with policymakers.

Ariane Tabatabai, the current Pentagon official, on at least two occasions checked in with Iran’s Foreign Ministry before attending policy events, according to the emails. She wrote to Zahrani in Farsi on June 27, 2014, to say she’d met Saudi Prince Turki al Faisal — a former ambassador to the U.S. — who expressed interest in working together and invited her to Saudi Arabia. She also said she’d been invited to attend a workshop on Iran’s nuclear program at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. “I am not interested in going, but then I thought maybe it would be better that I go and talk, rather than an Israeli like Emily Landau who goes and disseminates disinformation. I would like to ask your opinion too and see if you think I should accept the invitation and go.”

Zahrani replied the same day: “All things considered, it seems Saudi Arabia is a good case, but the second case [Israel] is better to be avoided. Thanks.” Tabatabai answered a few hours later: “Thank you very much for your advice. I will take action regarding Saudi Arabia and will keep you updated on the progress.” There’s no evidence Tabatabai went to the conference in Israel, though her books and research reports suggest she’s interviewed a number of senior Israeli officials.

Ariane Tabatabai told Zahrani that she was slated to give testimony before the U.S. Congress on the nuclear deal. On July 10, 2014, she wrote that she had been asked to appear before multiple congressional committees alongside two Harvard academics — Gary Samore and William Tobey — whom she viewed as hawkish on Iran. “I will bother you in the coming days. It will be a little difficult since both Will and Gary do not have favorable views on Iran,” she wrote.

Tabatabai shared a link with Zahrani to an article she’d published in the Boston Globe that outlined the “Five Myths about Iran’s Nuclear Program.” The piece explained why Iran needs nuclear power and highlighted a fatwa, or religious edict, that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei allegedly issued forbidding the development of nuclear weapons as un-Islamic. Some Western officials have questioned the legitimacy of the fatwa.

THE VIEW FROM TEHRAN

The Iranian officials behind the IEI — Zahrani and Khatibzadeh — boasted to their superiors in internal emails about the initiative’s successes. They tracked how often the academics in the IEI wrote or were cited in the media during the week after a preliminary nuclear agreement was reached between Tehran and world powers on April 2, 2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The media data was shared with others in the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran.

“Following our phone conversation, I attached here for your review only a few of the most significant works some of our friends published during the week after the Lausanne framework agreement was reached,” Khatibzadeh wrote in Farsi. “We were in constant contact and worked vigorously around the clock. Some friends performed as resourceful as a media outlet all by themselves.”

On April 14, 2015, Khatibzadeh emailed Zahrani, who then forwarded the message to Zarif and one of the foreign minister’s deputies on the nuclear negotiating team, Majid Takht-Ravanchi. Khatibzadeh attached 10 separate Word documents to the email, each referencing the media footprint of each IEI academic. These included Ariane Tabatabai and Ali Vaez, who have both worked closely with Malley over the past decade, and Dina Esfandiary, who was hired during his time at ICG. (Malley publicly welcomed Esfandiary to his team at ICG on Twitter in January of 2021, but stepped down to join Biden’s State Department before she started.)

Khatibzadeh, the future Foreign Ministry spokesman boasted in the email: “These are in addition to hundreds of tweets, posts and…on the internet that were definitely unique and trend-sending in their own right. It should be noted that these works were not only published in English, but also in several other international languages.”

The list shared by Khatibzadeh showed that in one week, Ariane Tabatabai published four articles, including in Foreign Policy, and gave interviews to the Huffington Post and Iran’s Fars News agency, which is linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, mostly supporting Tehran’s views on the nuclear talks. In an article for the National Interest co-written with Dina Esfandiary, they argued that Iran was “too powerful” to be contained and that “Tehran doesn’t need any agreement to be empowered and to strengthen its foothold in the region.”

Ali Vaez was also extremely prolific in his media outreach. The ICG analyst was cited in virtually all of the U.S.’s major newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, from the initiation of the IEI in March 2014 to the finalization of the Iran nuclear deal in July 2015.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the IPIS think tank, and Zarif, Zahrani, and Khatibzadeh didn’t respond to requests for comment.

JAY’S VIEW

Covering Iran, either as an academic or a journalist, is a minefield. Access to both the country and Iranian officials is tightly controlled. And even opportunities come with serious caveats. During my visits to Iran as a reporter, I needed to provide my questions and story ideas to the Foreign Ministry ahead of arrival and hire a government-appointed fixer. This individual provided translations, but also clearly monitored my movements and meetings. I assumed Iran’s intelligence services were closely tracking me.

Tehran also aggressively pushes its information operations overseas, sometimes with success, sometimes not. An Iranian academic and permanent U.S. resident who used to contact me with his insights on Tehran’s nuclear program, a man named Kaveh Afrasiabi, was arrested in a Boston suburb in 2021 for allegedly working as an unregistered agent for the Iranian regime. He’s allowed to return to Tehran as part of the prisoner-swap agreement reached this month between the Biden administration and Iran, though Afrasiabi said he plans to stay in the U.S.

UPDATE: Afrasiabi, whose case was in the pre-trial stage before he was pardoned, contacted me after the publication of this story and denied ever acting as an agent advancing Iran’s interests. “I strongly object to such unfair and false characterizations that have seriously marred my reputation,” he wrote in an email. “My part-time international affairs consulting for Iran’s mission under the UN guidelines had absolutely no bearing on my wealth of books and articles…These include numerous articles clearly at odds with and critical of Iran.” He added: “I was a national security asset to US, and never a threat.”

The Iranian regime is also factionalized, and navigating these fissures is hazardous for diplomats and journalists. The Iran Experts Initiative was born from a Rouhani administration eager to end Tehran’s pariah status following eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency in which he courted Holocaust denial and promoted the eradication of Israel. Rouhani’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had developed extensive ties to Western politicians and academics during his earlier tenure as Tehran’s ambassador to the United Nations. Participants in the IEI, as well as most Western governments, saw Rouhani’s tenure and Zarif’s ascendence as an opening to try and integrate the Islamic Republic into the global economy and end the nuclear crisis. The Obama administration used both overt and covert channels to do this.

But Rouhani never represented the Islamic Republic’s more radical or hardline face, particularly the Revolutionary Guards, or IRGC. And the election in 2021 of President Ebrahim Raisi, who’s been sanctioned by the U.S. for human rights abuses, largely closed the window on these channels. In fact, Raisi’s government has turned on Robert Malley and some IEI members in recent weeks, accusing them in state media of seeking to incite racial and ethnic unrest in the country. The Tehran Times, an English-language media outlet associated with Raisi’s office, has reveled in Malley’s suspension: It’s claimed in a string of columns that the diplomat’s disciplinary action is tied to the very types of outreach to Iran he and some of his colleagues pursued.

“Malley’s suspicious interactions with his aides of Iranian descent contributed to his downfall,” the Tehran Times wrote in a column published last month. The State Department has declined to comment on the reasons behind his suspension. The FBI is also investigating Malley, suggesting the diplomat’s actions may be more serious than just the mishandling of classified information.

Malley is hardly the first U.S. official to be ensnared in the machinations of the Islamic Republic. The opacity of Tehran’s system and the expansive work of its intelligence services can mask the government’s true intentions. The IEI emails offer a unique look into the Iranian system.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

None of Malley’s associates whom Iranian diplomats cited as being part of the Iran Experts Initiative spoke directly to Semafor. But Vaez’s and Esfandiary’s current employer, the International Crisis Group, has a significantly different understanding of the IEI and Tehran’s role in it.

Elissa Jobson, Crisis Group’s chief of advocacy, said the IEI was an “informal platform” that gave researchers from different organizations an opportunity to meet with IPIS and Iranian officials, and that it was supported financially by European institutions and one European government. She declined to name them.

“To spell it out a bit more, it was a means to facilitate research discussions and not a more formal entity where participants could be directed by anyone,” she said. “The fact that participants were from a host of different think tanks demonstrates that it was merely an informal platform.” ICG also notes that all the work its staff publishes is vetted and agreed upon in-house; they dispute that Iran — or any government — could have directed any members of their team to take a position at odds with the organization’s official view.

Another European think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, confirmed that one of its senior fellows, Ellie Geranmayeh, also took part in the Iran Experts Initiative. An ECFR spokesman said a European government backed the IEI, but didn’t identify it, and stressed that that the think tank always covers the “core costs” of its staff’s research trips. “As part of its efforts to inform European policy, ECFR regularly engages with experts and think tanks across the world, including through research visits and workshops,” the spokesman said.

Malley didn’t respond to requests for comment. Both the State Department and Pentagon declined to comment on the substance of the correspondence related to the IEI, but said they support Ariane Tabatabai and the vetting process involved in the approval of her security clearance. “Dr. Tabatabai was thoroughly and properly vetted as a condition of her employment with the Department of Defense. We are honored to have her serve,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

https://www.semafor.com/article/09/25/2023/inside-irans-influence-operation

Amnesty International     |     September 21, 2023

Reacting to the news that Iran’s parliament has passed a new bill that would impose further draconian penalties severely violating women’s and girls’ rights as well as increasing  prison terms and fines for defying Iran’s degrading and discriminatory compulsory veiling laws, Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa said:

“This bill is a despicable assault on the human rights of women and girls that will further entrench violence and discrimination against them in Iran. If approved by Iran’s Guardian Council, it will further exacerbate the already suffocating surveillance and policing of women’s bodies and require the Islamic Republic’s various political, security and administrative arms to obsessively observe compliance with compulsory veiling laws and control women’s and girls’ lives.

“The Iranian authorities are doubling down on punishments against women and girls who claim their human rights to freedom of expression, religion, belief and bodily autonomy. This all-out assault is part of the authorities’ ongoing efforts to crush the spirit of resistance among those who dared to stand up against decades of oppression and inequality as part of the ‘Woman Life Freedom’ popular uprising.

“States must urgently call on the Iranian authorities to revoke the bill and abolish all degrading and discriminatory compulsory veiling laws and regulations. They must also pursue legal pathways at the international level to hold Iranian officials accountable for ordering, planning and committing such widespread and systematic violations against women and girls.”

“The Iranian authorities are doubling down on punishments against women and girls who claim their human rights to freedom of expression, religion, belief and bodily autonomy.”

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International

Background:

On 20 September, Iran’s parliament approved the “Bill to Support the Culture of Chastity and Hijab”. The bill needs to be approved by Iran’s Guardian Council to become law. It would expand the powers and capabilities of intelligence and security bodies including the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij force and the police to control and further oppress women and girls.

The law equates unveiling to “nudity” and provides for prison terms of up to 10 years for anyone who defies compulsory veiling laws. The law also makes “insulting or ridiculing the hijab” a criminal offence punishable by a prison sentence, travel ban and/or fine and encourages ordinary people, businesses, and pro-government vigilantes to enforce compulsory veiling.

In May 2023, the authorities presented the “Bill to Support the Culture of Chastity and Hijab” to parliament. In August 2023, parliamentarians voted for the revised bill, which was not made public at the time, to be adopted in a closed special internal committee, in order to expedite its passing, further evading transparency and public scrutiny. On 20 September, the special internal committee approved the text of the bill, which was then sent to the Guardian Council for final approval.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/iran-compulsory-veiling-bill-a-despicable-assault-on-rights-of-women-and-girls/

State Department says it has been ‘assured’ Albanian government did not violate any human rights

By Caitlin McFall    |   Fox News     |     6/20/2023

The State Department has found itself in a precarious position after dozens of Iranian dissidents seeking safe haven in Albania were reportedly injured Tuesday and one allegedly killed in a camp raid by state police after the inhabitants were accused of plotting cyberattacks against the Albanian government.

An alleged 1,000 Albanian police officers from the Special Prosecution against Corruption and Organized Crime unit descended upon the Ashraf-3 and Ashraf-4 camps located in Maneza in western Albania, which is home to at least 3,000 Iranian oppositionists from the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) – an Iranian resistance group that supports the establishment of a new government in Tehran.

According to reporting by the Albanian Daily News, the situation was initially described as “calm” as police officials looked for people they suspected of being “infiltrators of the regime of Iran.” But the situation apparently turned violent after the Iranian inhabitants refused to hand over personal computers and devices to the authorities. The police officers turned to tear gas and pepper spray against the camp residents and began breaking down doors to people’s homes before confiscating or destroying personal computers, according to a statement by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an Iranian political organization that is based in France and Albania.

The group called the raid “criminal and repressive” and claimed that some 100 camp inhabitants were injured in the attack, though Fox News Digital could not independently verify this account and local reporting put the number of those injured around three dozen. The individual killed was 65-year-old Ali Mostashari, an activist during the Iranian revolution and a senior MEK member, according to Ali Safavi a member of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee based in Paris. The circumstances around Mostashari’s death remain unclear.

“He escaped death several times when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the clerical regime’s security forces tried to apprehend him in the early 1980s. By murdering him, the Albanian police has done what the Iranian regime could not accomplish,” Safavi told Fox News Digital Tuesday.

The MEK and NCRI have called on the U.S., the U.N. and the European Union – which Albania applied for membership to in 2009 and was granted “candidate status” in 2014 – to condemn the raid and hold Albania accountable for human rights violations as defined under international treaties like the Refugee Convention, the World Declaration Human rights and the European Convention.

In a comment to Fox News Digital a State Department spokesperson said Washington had been assured “all actions were conducted in accordance with applicable laws, including with regard to the protection of the rights and freedoms of all persons in Albania.”

“We support the Government of Albania’s right to investigate any potential illegal activities within its territory,” the spokesperson added without commenting on how this could affect the U.S.’s ties to the Iranian dissidents there. The U.S. sits in a precarious position when it comes to the aggressive raids Tuesday as it has supported the Iranian dissidents abroad since at least 2009 when it led efforts to remove the oppositionists from Iraq after the Iraqi government became hostile toward the MEK.

At the time, the U.S. still designated the MEK as a terrorist organization over its militant campaigns that opposed the U.S.-backed shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, along with the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s, followed by an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. But by 2012 the State Department removed the MEK from its designated terrorist list over the group’s renouncement of violence and open cooperation with the U.S. in Iraq.

Some 2,700 MEK members were then transferred to Albania at the request of the U.S. beginning in 2014, according to EuroNews. The U.S. has also been a top supporter of the Albanian government and, following a July 2022 cyberattack, the U.S. Cyber National Mission Force organized an operational “hunt” to “identify, monitor and analyze adversary tactics, techniques and procedures” relating to the “malicious” assault.

Tehran was blamed for the attack and diplomatic relations were severed.

But the tensions between Albania and Iran over the cyberattack have also put pressure on the dissident community residing within Albanian borders. Albanian Minister of Interior Bledar Cuci on Tuesday rejected any accusation of wrongdoing and claimed the actions taken were in line with a decision made by Albania’s Special Court against Corruption and Organized Crime.

“The Court’s decision is a consequence of actions that openly violate the agreement and commitments made by the MEK group since 2014 when they were settled in Albania solely for humanitarian purposes,” he said in a statement first reported by EuroNews. “Unfortunately, this group did not adhere to these commitments and violated the agreement.”

“The actions of the State Police to enforce the law have been carried out as in any other part of the territory of the Republic of Albania.”

The minister also denied there were any fatalities or injuries as a result from the day’s raid and said that, according to state police officials, “there was resistance within the camp against the work of the State Police, which goes against the procedural framework of law enforcement.”

https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden-admin-walks-tightrope-albanian-police-raid-iranian-dissidents-killed-one-injured-dozens

Amnesty International     |     June 1, 2023
The Iranian authorities are carrying out a horrific state-sanctioned killing spree under the guise of judicial executions. Those executed include people convicted of drug-related offences, protesters, political dissidents, and members of oppressed ethnic minorities. Call for states to urgently intervene to pressure the Iranian authorities to halt all executions now.  

What is the problem? 
The Iranian authorities are ruthlessly carrying out an execution spree. Prisons across the country have become sites of mass state-sanctioned killings under the guise of judicial executions. Since the start of 2023, authorities have implemented hundreds of death sentences. In the month of May alone, authorities executed three people a day on average. This arbitrary deprivation of people’s lives must stop.

Authorities have executed individuals in relation to drug-related offences, protesters and political dissidents. The death penalty is also used to target oppressed minority groups. This year, members of Iran’s Baluchi ethnic minority account for around 20% of recorded executions while making up only about 5% of Iran’s population.

In the first five months of this year, executions of people convicted of drug-related offences tripled compared to the same period last year, and are predominantly affecting the most impoverished communities. The authorities also executed individuals for their social media posts and for sexual relations between consenting adults.

The Iranian authorities are intensifying their use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression. They are using this ultimate cruel and inhuman punishment to torment and terrorize people in Iran and impose silence and subservience through brute force.

What can you do to help?
Sign the petition and urge states to immediately call on Iran to impose an official moratorium on all executions, send representatives to visit prisons holding people sentenced to death and seek attendance at trials of those charged with capital crimes. Given the crisis of impunity for mass arbitrary executions, states must also pursue meaningful pathways for holding Iranian officials to account.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/stop-the-execution-spree-in-iran/

The Washington Post     |     Babak Dehghanpisheh     |      April 26, 2023

It was 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday when the teacher began receiving frantic calls. There had been a gas attack on the girls elementary school where she taught, in the Kurdish region of western Iran.

She had not been in class that April morning but rushed to the school and found a chaotic scene: Students and a few of her fellow teachers were having difficulty breathing and said their eyes were burning. Some of the teachers had been beaten by furious parents and were crying, she said. Agents from the Ministry of Intelligence had arrived to investigate.

The teacher spoke to The Washington Post on the condition that her name and the location of her school not be revealed, fearing retaliation from the government.

In recent months across Iran, about 300 suspected gas attacks have hit more than 100 girls schools, according to Amnesty International. Deputy Health Minister Saeed Karimi said last month that 13,000 students had been treated for symptoms of suspected poisoning, according to the Shargh daily newspaper. No deaths were reported.

The attacks began in November in the holy city of Qom. A lull occurred when schools were closed for Nowruz, the Iranian new year, in late March. But the attacks appear to have picked up again over the past couple of weeks as schools reopened, sparking widespread panic and confusion.

“The parents are really scared, and a lot of them won’t send their kids to school anymore,” the teacher said in a telephone interview. “Some parents have said they are willing to have their child held back a year at school just to keep them out of danger.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in early March that those behind the attacks must be brought to justice. Soon after, the Ministry of Interior announced that more than 100 people in 11 provinces had been arrested. “Among those arrested are individuals with hostile motives with the goal of creating fear and panic among the people and students and to close schools and create a negative view toward the authorities,” the ministry said in a statement in the publication Hamshahri.

No charges appear to have been filed against those arrested.

The head of the Iranian parliament’s education committee, Alireza Monadi, said last month that tests conducted by the Ministry of Health had detected nitrogen gas in schools in Qom. But there has been no official government statement identifying what gas or gases may have been used.

“These have been very organized and coordinated attacks. It can’t be random people doing that,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based organization Iran Human Rights. “It’s either groups with the blessing of the authorities or forces within the authorities.”

A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comment.

The teacher in the Kurdish region said her colleagues reported smelling bleach and rotten fruit before falling ill. After the suspected attacks, schoolgirls have been hospitalized with symptoms including heart palpitations, vomiting and numbness in their limbs, according to Amnesty.

Two weeks ago, a 65-year-old man took his elderly mother to a hospital in the northeast city of Mashhad and found the lobby filled with about a dozen schoolgirls who he said were coughing and panting. He filmed the scene on his phone and shared the video with The Post.

The man said in an interview that he talked to one of the girls, who described sitting in class when she smelled something like sewage before feeling dizzy and short of breath.

Women and girls have been at the forefront of the anti-government uprising that erupted in September after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict laws on female dress and died in the custody of Iran’s “morality police.”

As the protests spread, hundreds of girls took off their headscarves at school and chanted anti-government slogans. In one video widely shared on social media in October, dozens of schoolgirls, many of them without the hijab, confronted a Ministry of Education official in the city of Karaj and chased him off the campus.

Women burning their headscarves became a defining image of the demonstrations, which have died down in recent weeks amid an increasingly brutal government crackdown. At least 530 people have been killed by security forces and nearly 20,000 detained, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. But some women and girls continue to protest the hijab law more casually — refusing to cover themselves in public while going about their daily activities.

“The issue of hijab and women is an Achilles’ heel for the leaders of the Islamic republic,” Mohammad Habibi, a spokesman for the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association, told The Post in an interview from Tehran last month.

“The setting aside of forced hijab and the visibility of this at the social level was definitely not acceptable for the authorities, especially religious and extremist elements,” he added. “They could not accept this open social atmosphere.”

Habibi was arrested on April 5 and taken to Evin prison, his wife Khadijeh Pakzamir tweeted. On April 11, she tweeted that phone communication with him had been cut off.

Organized attacks against women have happened before in Iran. In 2014, at least four women were sprayed in the face with acid in the city of Isfahan in what many suspected was a campaign by religious extremists to enforce conservative dress codes. At the time, the government came under similar criticism for not pursuing the case more aggressively. Although arrests were made, no one was charged in the attacks.

The government has tried to point to other possible causes for the illnesses at girls schools, according to activists and health-care workers. Official meetings have been organized at hospitals to inform medical personnel about the Ministry of Health’s protocols for dealing with suspected poisoning cases.

Doctors have been told they should console the victims and their families and tell them it is a stress-related issue, a psychiatrist who attended two recent meetings at a hospital in northern Mazandaran province said in an interview. They also spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity, fearing backlash from the authorities.

The World Health Organization told The Post that it “has offered support to [Iran’s] Ministry of Health in the management of these events from a public health perspective” and that an expert team “is on standby for deployment should this be requested.”

The teacher at the elementary school in the Kurdish region said that two of her colleagues were hospitalized after the suspected gas attack. She said one of them told her last week that she was still experiencing terrible headaches and numbness in her hands and feet.

Intelligence agents have returned to the school several times, she said, interviewing administrators and confiscating CCTV footage. The principal of the school told her that agents appeared to be looking for footage of parents, some of whom chanted anti-government slogans and argued with them.

“Many people suspect the government is responsible,” said the teacher. “They say that the government is trying to discourage girls from coming to school or that the government doesn’t want the ‘woman, life, freedom’ movement to start up again.”

Panic spreads in Iran after new suspected poison attacks on girls schools

CHILD DETAINEES IN IRAN SUBJECTED TO FLOGGING, ELECTRIC SHOCKS AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN BRUTAL PROTEST CRACKDOWN

Amnesty International     |     March 16, 2023

Iran’s intelligence and security forces have been committing horrific acts of torture, including beatings, flogging, electric shocks, rape and other sexual violence against child protesters as young as 12 to quell their involvement in nationwide protests, said Amnesty International today.

Marking six months of the unprecedented popular uprising in Iran, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, Amnesty International reveals the violence meted out to children arrested during and in the aftermath of protests. The research exposes the torture methods that the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij, the Public Security Police and other security and intelligence forces used against boys and girls in custody to punish and humiliate them and to extract forced “confessions.”

“Iranian state agents have torn children away from their families and subjected them to unfathomable cruelties. It is abhorrent that officials have wielded such power in a criminal manner over vulnerable and frightened children, inflicting severe pain and anguish upon them and their families and leaving them with severe physical and mental scars. This violence against children exposes a deliberate strategy to crush the vibrant spirit of the country’s youth and stop them from demanding freedom and human rights,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The authorities must immediately release all children detained solely for peacefully protesting. With no prospect of effective impartial investigations into the torture of children domestically, we call on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction over Iranian  officials, including those with a command or superior responsibility, reasonably suspected of  criminal responsibility for crimes under international law, including the torture of child  protesters.”

Since the start of Amnesty International’s investigations into the Iranian authorities’ brutal crackdown on the uprising, the organization has documented the cases of seven children in detail. The organization obtained testimonies from the victims and their families, as well as further testimonies on the widespread commission of torture against scores of children from 19 eyewitnesses, including two lawyers and 17 adult detainees who were held alongside children. The victims and eyewitnesses interviewed were from provinces across Iran, including East Azerbaijan, Esfahan, Golestan, Kermanshah, Khorasan-e  Razavi, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Mazandaran, Sistan and Baluchestan, Tehran, and Zanjan.

Amnesty International has removed any reference to identifying details, such as the ages of the children and the provinces in which they were detained, in order to protect them and their families against reprisals.

MASS DETENTION OF CHILDREN

Iranian authorities have admitted that the total number of people detained in connection with the protests was above 22,000. While they have not provided a breakdown of how many of those detained were children, state media reported that children comprised a significant portion of protesters. Based on testimonies of dozens of detainees from across the country who witnessed security forces detaining scores of children, coupled with the fact that children and youth have been at the forefront of protests, Amnesty International estimates that thousands of children could have been among those swept up in the wave of arrests.

Amnesty International’s findings indicate that arrested children, like adults, were first taken, often while blindfolded, to detention centers run by the Revolutionary Guards, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Public Security Police, the investigation unit of Iran’s police (Agahi) or the Basij paramilitary force. After days or weeks of incommunicado detention or enforced disappearance, they were moved to recognized prisons. Plainclothes agents abducted others from the streets during or in the aftermath of protests, took them to unofficial places such as warehouses, where they tortured them before abandoning them in remote locations. Such abductions were conducted without any due process and were intended to punish, intimidate and deter children from participating in protests.

Many children have been held alongside adults, contrary to international standards, and subjected to the same patterns of torture and other ill-treatment. A former adult detainee told Amnesty International that, in one province, Basij agents forced several boys to stand with their legs apart in a line alongside adult detainees and administered electric shocks to their genital area with stun guns.

Most of the children arrested over the past six months appear to have been released, sometimes on bail pending investigations or referral to trial. Many were only released after being forced to sign “repentance” letters and promising to refrain from “political activities” and to attend pro-government rallies.

Before releasing them, state agents often threatened children with the prosecution on charges carrying the death penalty or with the arrest of their relatives if they complained.

In at least two cases documented by Amnesty International, despite the threat of reprisals, victims’ families filed official complaints before judicial authorities, but none were investigated.

RAPE AND OTHER SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Amnesty International’s documentation also reveals that state agents used rape and other sexual violence, including electric shocks to genitals, touching genitals, and rape threats as a weapon against child detainees to break their spirits, humiliate and punish them,

and/or extract “confessions.” This pattern is also widely reported by adult women and men detainees.

State agents also hurled sexual slurs at detained girls and accused them of wanting to bare their naked bodies simply for protesting for women’s and girls’ rights and defying compulsory veiling.

One mother told Amnesty International that state agents raped her son with a hosepipe while he forcibly disappeared. She said:

“My son told me: ‘They hung [me] to the point that I felt like my arms were about to rip off. I was forced to say what they wanted because they raped me with a hosepipe. They were taking my hand and forcibly making me fingerprint the papers’.”

BEATINGS, FLOGGINGS, ELECTRIC SHOCKS AND OTHER ABUSES

Security forces regularly beat children at the time of arrest, in vehicles during transfer, and in detention centers. Other torture methods recounted include floggings, administering electric shocks using stun guns, the forced administration of unidentified pills, and holding children’s heads underwater.

In one case, several schoolboys were abducted for writing the protest slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” on a wall. A relative of one of the victims told Amnesty International that plainclothes state agents abducted the boys, took them to an unofficial location, tortured and threatened to rape them, and then dumped them semi-conscious in a remote area hours later. The boy told the relative:

“They gave us electric shocks, hit me in my face with the back of a gun, gave electric shocks to my back and beat me on my feet, back and hands with batons. They threatened that if we told anyone, they would  [detain us again], do even worse and deliver our corpses to our families.”

Victims and families told Amnesty International how state agents also choked children, suspended them from their arms or from scarves wrapped around their necks, and forced them to perform humiliating acts.

One boy recounted:

“They told us [over a dozen people] to make chicken noises for half an hour – for so long that we ‘lay eggs’.  They forced us to do push-ups for one hour. I was the only child there. In another detention center, they put 30 of us in a cage made for five people.”

State agents also used psychological torture, including death threats, to punish and intimidate children and/or compel them to make forced “confessions”. State media has broadcast the “forced confessions” of at least two boys detained during protests.

The mother of a girl who was detained by the Revolutionary Guards told Amnesty International:

“They accused her of burning headscarves, insulting the Supreme Leader and wanting to overthrow [the  Islamic Republic], and told her she will be sentenced to death. They threatened her not to tell anyone … They forced her to sign and fingerprint documents. She has nightmares and doesn’t go anywhere. She can’t even read her schoolbooks.”

Children were also held in cruel and inhuman detention conditions, including extreme overcrowding, poor access to toilet and washing facilities, deprivation of sufficient food and potable water, exposure to extreme cold and prolonged solitary confinement. Girls were held by all-male security forces with no regard for their gender-specific needs.  Children were also denied adequate medical care, including for injuries sustained under torture.

https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/child-detainees-in-iran-subjected-to-flogging-electric-shocks-and-sexual-violence-in-brutal-protest-crackdown/

Bipartisan House Resolution Rejects Monarchic, Religious Dictatorship, Endorses a Republic in Iran

Townhall     |     Majid Rafizadeh     |     Feb 15, 2023

As we marked the 44th anniversary of the 1979 revolution in Iran, we were reminded of the transformative power of people’s movements to bring about change. The overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy and the establishment of a republic in Iran held great promise for the people, but it was quickly subverted by Khomeini and his reactionary mullahs, who have since been responsible for unimaginable human rights abuses, terrorism, regional destabilization, and the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Since September, the Iranian theocracy has faced a wave of social upheaval and mass protests demanding democratic change. Women, young people, and scores of others have taken to the streets to call for a secular republic that respects their individual rights and freedoms. These calls have not gone unheard, as evidenced by a significant conference held on Capitol Hill this month, where several US lawmakers introduced House Resolution 100, calling for a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic in Iran.

The resolution currently has an unprecedented number of 165 bipartisan cosponsors, and it strongly condemns the violations of human rights and state-sponsored terrorism of the Iranian regime. Furthermore, it rejects both the Shah’s deposed monarchy and the ruling theocracy, and voices support for a democratic and secular republic in Iran.

A senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Tom McClintock, said the measure expresses the united support of the American people for the Iranian people in their struggle for a better future. It is also noteworthy that the resolution strongly condemns the violations of human rights and the state-sponsored terrorism of the Iranian regime.

Moreover, it rejects both the Shah’s deposed dictatorship and ruling theocracy, and voices support for a democratic and secular republic in Iran.

Addressing the congressional conference, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Maryam Rajavi, rightly pointed out the significance of Congress’s move, adding that it sends a clear message to the people of Iran that they are not alone in their fight for freedom and democracy.

The Iranian people’s passion for freedom and their commitment to liberating their homeland is an inspiration to all who know them. Congress has done the right thing by joining voices with a growing chorus calling for liberty and justice in Iran.

This resolution is a significant step forward in the fight for democracy in Iran, and it sends a message to the regime in Iran that the world is watching. The people of the United States and the international community stand firmly behind the protesters and the people that Tehran is oppressing and killing.

Despite its ebbs and flows, the ongoing revolution in Iran is destined to succeed because there are numerous signs that the people are rejecting all forms of dictatorship, including the Shah’s monarchy that devastated the country’s socio-political progress until 1979. Iranians are now looking only to the future, which will see the establishment of a democratic republic based on the separation of religion and state, and gender equality.

It is time for the regime in Iran to change. This is a regime that has responded to peaceful protests with violence, massacres, torture, and imprisonment. It must be held accountable for its crimes against humanity, including the massacre of political prisoners in 1988. Otherwise, the regime’s murder machine will continue to outpace international condemnations.

Some 10,000 Iranian supporters of the NCRI who rallied in the street of Paris this past Sunday echoed the same message, calling on the European Union to end its appeasement of Iran and support a democratic, secular republic in Iran. They were joined by John Bercow, the former Speaker of the British Parliament, and Ingrid Betancourt, former Columbian Senator and Presidential Candidates, who voiced support for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran.

The world cannot stand by and watch as the people of Iran are denied their basic rights. Adopting the example of the US Congress, the world must take action to support the people of Iran in their fight for freedom and democracy. Not the just the future of Iran, but that of the entire region and the world is at stake. A democratic Iran will benefit everyone. The scourge of the mullahs should end, not tomorrow, but today.

https://townhall.com/columnists/majidrafizadeh/2023/02/15/bipartisan-house-resolution-rejects-monarchic-religious-dictatorship-endorses-a-republic-in-iran-n2619584

Activists say prisoners chanted antigovernment slogans;
Parliament clears police in Mahsa Amini’s death.
The fire Saturday at Evin Prison in Tehran, which the U.S. says is a political prison for dissidents and foreigners and is known to hold demonstrators from recent protests.

WSJ     |     By Benoit Faucon and David S. Cloud      |      Oct. 16, 2022

The protest movement sweeping Iran spread to a Tehran prison known as a symbol of political repression in a new challenge to the Islamic Republic, with detained dissidents chanting antigovernment slogans before violence erupted and a deadly fire engulfed the facility, activists said.

Authorities said the fire killed four inmates and blamed a planned escape attempt on Saturday for the mayhem at Evin Prison, a complex in north Tehran erected by the shah five decades ago that serves as a political prison for dissidents and foreigners. A large fire was visible at Evin from the densely populated neighboring communities, and loud bangs were heard through much of the night.

The melee started in a ward of the prison that houses inmates convicted of financial crimes and other criminal offenses but quickly spread to areas where political prisoners and dissidents are held, prompting guards to bring in reinforcements and firefighters to put down the protests and extinguish the fire, according to officials and human rights activists.

By Sunday morning, authorities said they were back in control, but the unrest marked another indication that the country’s Islamic leadership is facing one of the gravest tests in its 43-year existence. The protests that first focused on the country’s mandatory hijab, or head covering, for women have morphed into something larger, calling for the end of the strict Islamic governance ushered in with the country’s 1979 revolution. While authorities said the prison violence had nothing to do recent protests, witnesses and advocates for the prisoners said the extraordinary incident at Evin was another sign that the leaderless movement was spreading beyond the government’s control.

Protests continued across Iran over the weekend, according to footage verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. In Ardabil, a town in northwest Iran, there were demonstrations after a teachers’ association said a schoolgirl was beaten to death after a pro-regime event turned into an anti-government protest. The government has denied responsibility, saying she had died from a heart condition.

By the accounts of both activists and the government, the violence at Evin began on Saturday.

In the women’s ward of the prison, some inmates broke down the door of the two-story building housing around 45 prisoners, and moved into the staff area of the prison yard, where they started chanting antigovernment slogans, said Atena Daemi, a human-rights activist in Tehran who was released from Evin eight months ago after seven years imprisoned there. She said she had heard accounts of the riot from eight families, who received brief calls Sunday from prisoners in Evin’s women’s ward.

A prison guard warned the women, some of whom weren’t wearing mandatory headscarves, that they would be killed unless they went back into the building, Ms. Daemi said, citing the accounts told by the families.

Guards fired tear gas and threw “something like a grenade,” Ms. Daemi said she was told. Women also reported seeing guards armed with rifles aiming at them with laser sights, which project a visible beam.

Two women prisoners—Sepideh Kashani, an environmental activist, and Zahra Safaei, a political activist—were overcome by the tear gas and needed treatment, Ms. Daemi said, citing accounts from the families. None of the women imprisoned in the ward were arrested during recent protests, she said.

“They said everybody in the women’s ward is safe, but the situation is tense,” Ms. Daemi said. “Due to the large amount of tear gas used in the prison, some of them have burning eyes and shortness of breath.”

The government has arrested hundreds of protesters, jailing the most politically active ones in Evin, said members of the protest movement and human-rights activists. They include six students at the Sharif University who were arrested when the elite Tehran institution was surrounded by police two weeks ago, say students who escaped the raid. Another affected ward held political prisoners, according to accounts gathered by the Free Union of Iranian Workers, the main umbrella of trade unions, which has many members held at Evin. Some Evin prisoners had gathered in the courtyard and chanted slogans against the government on Friday, the union said.

Then on Saturday, prison officials tried to intimidate the prisoners, who later protested and rioted, the union said. When family members went to the prison to check on their relatives’ safety, they were initially told Sunday that they wouldn’t be allowed to talk with prisoners, Ms. Daemi added. But when the families protested, they were allowed to have brief conversations.

On Sunday morning, families of detainees could be seen outside the prison seeking news of their jailed relatives. More than 15,000 inmates are said to be held at the sprawling complex on the outskirts of Tehran. Authorities said Saturday’s melee began in Ward 7, which is supposed to be for inmates convicted of financial crimes. The inmates set fire to a sewing workshop, according to Iran’s state media, adding that some prisoners had blades and tried to escape the prison. When prisoners from Ward 7 broke out of their building, they freed prisoners in Ward 8, Ms. Daemi said.

Among those in Ward 8 was Emad Shargi, an Iranian-American incarcerated at the prison on what the U.S. has called false charges, according to his sister, Neda Sharghi. She talked to him briefly Saturday night by phone, she said, hearing shooting and yelling in the background. Later he was moved to another ward, she said.

“He was moved from where the riots were,” she said. “We haven’t been able to get much more information.”

By early Sunday morning, Iranian state television aired a video showing that the prison was calm, though damaged by the fire. State media said the unrest had involved only prisoners convicted of theft and financial crimes, a claim disputed by human-rights activists.

Four inmates died of smoke inhalation and 61 were injured, state news agency IRNA said.

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American imprisoned on espionage-related charges rejected by Washington as baseless, has been detained at Evin for seven years. His lawyer, Jared Genser, said Mr. Namazi was placed in solitary confinement after the riots Saturday and told it was “for his own protection.” He was briefly furloughed earlier this month then returned to Evin.

Some prisoners were without water and food Sunday, according to Ms. Daemi, citing conversations with families of men incarcerated there. She said 45 prisoners had been transferred from Ward 8 since the melee, and an additional 14 who had been injured were returned without treatment.

Azin Mohajerin, the lead human-rights officer at Miaan Group, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization focused on human rights in Iran, said Evin and the rest of the prisons system in Iran is “overcrowded, above its maximum capacity after the large number of arrests during the protests.” Mr. Mohajerin, who is compiling a list of detainees and their conditions, said that Iran’s prisons are so full with detained protesters that arrested female high-school students are now mixed with adults in crowded cells.

Evin Prison and its management were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2018 for human-rights abuses. “Prisoners held at Evin Prison are subject to brutal tactics inflicted by prison authorities, including sexual assaults, physical assaults, and electric shock,” the Treasury Department said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-protests-spread-with-uprising-at-prison-11665932021

Thousands Rally at the UN, Voice Support for Iran Uprising, Condemn Raisi’s Presence

OIAC      |     September 23, 2022

New York, September 23, 2022 – Capping a weeklong series of exhibitions and daily picket lines, some 3,000 Iranian Americans from across 40 U.S. states held a major rally at New York’s Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to denounce Raisi and stand in solidarity with the ongoing nationwide protests in Iran calling for regime change.

According to the latest reports by the main Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), dozens have been killed by the Revolutionary Guards in protests in 100 cities and 30 provinces in Iran.

The participants in the NY rally heard from high profile former Senators Joe Liberman (D-CT), Robert Torricelli (D-NJ), and Ambassador Sam Brownback (R-KS), as well as Ukrainian lawmaker Kira Rudik. Speakers and the rally participants condemned the presence of Iranian regime’s President Ebrahim Raisi at the UN and called on the international community to prosecute him for his role in the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners and other crimes against humanity in Iran.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), addressed the rally via a video link.  “From Saqqez, Sanandaj, and Divandarreh, to Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan, Mashhad, Rasht, and other cities of Iran, brave protesters have shaken the pillars of Khamenei’s oppressive rule with their chants of “From Kurdistan to Tehran, Iran is drenched in blood,” “Khamenei is a murderer, his rule is illegitimate,” and “Death to the oppressor, be it the Shah or the (mullahs’ supreme) leader,” Mrs. Rajavi said in her remarks.

Madam Rajavi highlighted the fact that, “Khamenei is himself in the throes of death. The public’s enormous hatred toward Ebrahim Raisi, as well as the decay and decline of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), signal the clerical regime’s end. Khamenei and Raisi drag their dying regime from one day to the next through the monthly executions of dozens of people…In contrast, the struggle and sacrifice of the MEK and Resistance Units give people hope and encourage them to prepare for the final uprising to bring down the mullahs.” Mrs. Rajavi called on the current session of the United Nations General Assembly to take immediate action regarding the clerical regime’s crimes against women, especially the crimes and daily killings by the mullahs’ guidance patrol.” Of note since the rally, the United States has placed sanctions on Iran’s “morality police.”

In his remarks, former Vice-Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman said, “I am proud again to stand with you today against Raisi, against Khamenei, and for freedom for the people of Iran. History is full of examples where regimes that nobody thought would be toppled have been overthrown.” Today he added, “this murderer is speaking to the organization that was founded to protect the peace. The protests are growing. The people of Iran, led by the resistance of Iran, supported by the NCRI and MEK, continue their protests.”

The choice is clear, Mr. Lieberman noted, “There is an alternative. It’s time to acknowledge that the regime in Iran will not change. It is time for us to change the regime and free the people of Iran. The resistance within the country bravely grows stronger, supported by the NCRI.”

Former Senator Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) told the crowd, “Raisi can call himself a president. We call him a murderer. Raisi wasn’t elected. He was chosen.” He alluded to Iranian regime terror operations in Europe and the U.S. and said, “What is the regime he represents? His government sent a diplomat with a bomb in a diplomatic pouch to plant it in a peaceful gathering to take out lives. Raisi is the head of that regime. That is the person who just spoke to the General Assembly. We are gathered because we will never forget what Iran was and we will never stop fighting for what Iran must become. We say to the world, what is right for Ukraine is right for Iran.” Senator Torricelli directed his remarks at the rulers in Tehran and said, “Joining me today to speak to you is Senator Lieberman and Senator Brownback. To the regime, take note of who they are and what they represent. Democrats and Republicans, we as Americans are united…we are as united for a free Iran as we are for a free Ukraine.”

Ambassador Sam Brownback, the former Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, and former Governor and Senator said in his remarks, “The people of Iran are rising to claim their rightful place as a free people.” Raisi he said, “doesn’t deserve to address the UN. He deserves to be tried for the crimes he committed against his own people.” He added, “It is time to declare freedom for the people of Iran. That’s what we are for. We declare the end of the dictatorship over Iran. That’s what the people want.” With the growing protest and opposition movement he added, “the boiling point has been reached. The desire for change can no longer be contained.”

Ms. Kira Rudik, a leading Ukrainian parliamentarian said, “We are here to support each other as the free nations of Ukraine and Iran, People of free Iran. During these seven months [since the invasion of Ukraine], there were tough times when we didn’t know if there was hope. During these times, I told myself what Mrs. Rajavi told me: We can and we must.”

A number of distinguished Iranian Americans also addressed the rally. 

Dr. Siamack Shojai, an Economist, Educator, and Administrator said, “To the policymakers in the US and UN and EU capitals: regardless of which party is in the White House, I request that you look at history and see that the policy of appeasement will not stop the mullahs from acquiring nuclear weapons and will endanger the lives of millions of Iranians. We need regime change. Honorable Secretary-General of the UN General Assembly, clean your hands again and again. Because you shook the hands of the murderer Raisi who killed thousands of the best Iranians who stood for freedom. He should be prosecuted, not welcomed to the UN.”

In his remarks, Professor Kazem Kazerounian reiterated that, “The cries of anger that we hear in Iran today is not the voice of a mourning nation. It is the manifestation of a nation risen for change. This is the result of more than 40 years of persistence and resistance in the toughest of times. It is a resistance movement that has a plan, organization, leadership, and more importantly, has made sacrifices… We mark this year as the year of freedom, resistance, and equality. Our exams will be in the streets and squares of Iran.”

Former political prisoner Mrs. Sheila Neinavaei, who spent eight years in Iran’s prisons and came face-to-face with Raisi at the “Death Commission” in 1988, said in her remarks, “Last week, we witnessed the brutal murder of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the regime on bogus charges of violating hijab rules and killed a few hours later. For years, the regime became more violent. On the other hand, the members of the resistance became more resolute, to the point that the regime became desperate. The regime decided to eliminate the problem from the root.” Today she added, “the regime’s president is one of the key players of the 1988 massacre. It is a shame for the UN that Raisi is here today. But this will be the end of the regime.”

In his speech, Doctor Firouz Daneshgari, a renowned Professor and Surgeon at Case Western Reserve University said,  “I am addressing you as a former political prisoner who has been tortured and witnessed the murders committed by Raisi. He is a murderer who has no place among world leaders. He must be arrested and tried for his crimes against humanity. Khamenei appointed him to continue his brutality to suppress protests.” The ongoing uprisings he added, “will overthrow the regime. Hail to all the protesters across Iran.”

Ashraf Zadshir, MD, a California based researcher and physician also stated, “The conditions in Iran have caused a brain drain in Iran. As you know, many students are under the cruelest torture in Iran’s prisons, including Ali Younesi and Amirhossein Moradi.  She then decried Mahsa Amini’s senseless murder in the hands of IRGC security forces and said, “But Mahsa is not dead, Mahsa has become the spark for the current uprising for regime change.” She credited Maryam Rajavi and leadership of women in the Iranian resistance with inspiring a new generation of women and girls who lead the movement for democratic and secular republic in Iran.

In his remarks, Bishop Robert Stearns, the Founder and Executive Director of Eagles’ Wings, said, “We care about what’s happening in Iran because their issues touch our entire world. It’s an issue of freedom and human rights. The time for change is now.  People from many different faiths and religions can unite around this. It is time for the tyrant Raisi to go…We say Maryam Rajavi’s ten-point plan is the path to freedom. All of history teaches us that eventually evil falls and good triumphs. I know that change is coming very quickly in Iran. I believe that we will see very soon see the walls of evil fall and freedom come to the people of Iran.”

Reverend Dr. Marcus Miranda, President/CEO f New York State Chaplain Task Force said in his speech, “We’re closer to achieving freedom of equality, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion in Iran. Raisi continues to use execution to silence the majority in Iran. But the uprisings have begun and will not stop until freedom rings in Iran.” He said, “If the US wants stability in the Middle East, it must sit at the table with Mrs. Rajavi. Mrs. Rajavi should be addressing the UN, not Raisi.”

Seena Saiedian, a student at UC Berkeley and a member of the Organization of Iranian-American Communities’ young professional chapter reminded rally participants that, “Iranian society is so explosive than anything can trigger another major uprising and nationwide protest. And Mahsa’s death did just that. Iranians all across the country are risking their lives in the streets protesting her killing and calling for the downfall of the dictatorship.” Our message to these protesters is clear he aded, “we hear you, we stand by you, and we urge the international community to stand with you in rejecting the entirety of the regime.”

Kiana Afshar, a graduate of the University of Virginia and Member of OIAC’s Young Professionals said, “Chants denouncing the brutality of the government ring across the cities of Iran, clearly showing the collective despair and anger of the Iranian people against Raisi, Khamenei and the Mullahs.” ”My message to my brothers and sisters in Iran,” she added, “is that we are all here with you, until Iran is free again. And that day is not too far.”