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Six women use the power of their camera lenses to illustrate the societal change in Iran since 1979. With a focus on what it means to be a woman living under an oppressive regime, Hengameh Golestan, Newsha Tavakolian, Shadi Ghadirian, Malekeh Nayiny, Gohar Dashti and Mitra Tabrizian use powerful images that play with color, setting and expression to give American viewers a look into Iranian life before and after that landmark year. The exhibit, entitled My Iran: Six Women Photographers, is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art until Feb. 9.

Golestan opens the narrative in March 1979, planting viewers right at the flashpoint of the Iranian Revolution, which saw a dramatic change in cultural life within Iran. Golestan, 27 years old at the time, depicts womens resistance to the imposition of policies that diminished their role and status in society.

An untitled photo from Golestans series, Witness 1979, depicts a dense crowd of impassioned women, just before they were legally required to wear hijabs in public, bracing the cold and the snow to express their defiance toward the revolution in protest. Caught mid-sentence with their fists raised, the energy of the crowd in the black-and-white image is palpable, compelling and remarkable as compared to the realities of life for Iranian women today, where their role in society is subjugated.

The explicit displays of freedom and civil disobedience that make up Golestans collection stand apart from the portrayals of modern-day Iran that Dadhti and Ghadirian have to offer, yet those portrayals also convey a degree of discontent and protest, albeit more subtly.

Ghadirians untitled series from 1999 creatively stages modestly dressed young women in the style of 19th-century portraits. The sepia tone and dated backdrops of the portraits contrast with the objects the women are holding, like a Pepsi can in one and a newspaper in another. These symbols of modernity contrast with the vintage, creating an eerie effect of a country stuck in the crossroads between two time periods.

Amidst the traditional elements of the portraits, little present-day props and signs of western influence cleverly indicate small acts of rebellion. Though obviously different in composition and mood from Golestans Witness 1979 images, the rebellious spirit within these artists has not disappeared.

Unlike Golestan and Ghadirian, Gohar Dashti was born after the Iranian Revolution, and the most historic and formative event of her lifetime was the Iran-Iraq War. Her work is centered on the persistent legacy of that conflict and introduces another layer of complexity to the exhibit with photo series such as Slow Decay and Iran, Untitled.

An untitled photo from Iran, Untitled in 2013 shows 11 women, head to toe in black, seated on a couch in the desert. The far-away shot expresses the desolation of the womens surroundings. Their expressions are somewhat unreadable; most are looking away from the camera, others faces are obscured by large sunglasses and a few look down to read the books in their laps. Each appears to be in her own world, highlighting the social isolation of women in Iran. With attention to these details, Dashti packs her photography with profound meaning and commentary.

Nearly 40 years later in the modern day, the most recent look at life for Iranian women is Tavakolians Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album. Tavakolians focus with her work is social documentary. Her portrayals of marginalization and resilience in photos like Somayeh resemble the themes conveyed in Dashtis photography. Somayeh depicts a young woman situated among gray, barren branches with a cold and impersonal-looking city in the far background.

Perhaps the most stylistically creative of the collections belongs to Nayiny, who uses digitization to combine photos from her own family albums with other images and different backdrops in abstract, visually dynamic ways. She combines old and new by injecting people from the past into modern settings. Nayinys approach looks admiringly to the past as compared to some of the others critiques in the exhibit of both the past and present.

My Iran, though focusing largely on the experiences of Iranian women, also gives attention to broad issues affecting Iranians both inside and outside of Iran, such as migration. Tabrizians Border expertly captures the pain associated with leaving ones homeland, even though staying would mean tolerating oppressive rule.

All six photographers present compelling images which work together to fill out a complete and multi-dimensional picture of their Iran, their home. They highlight moments in modern Iranian history that defined culture and society with attention to the experiences of women over time Iranians who have left their home and Iranians wistfully looking to the West as a better future. The narrative they collectively weave, though embedded with moments of pain and loss, ultimately expresses courageous resilience and hope for the future of women in Iran.

Link:
'My Iran' Spotlights 6 Women Photographers Telling the Story of Their Country - Georgetown University The Hoya

Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in 2019. Zarif recently renewed Irans threat of withdrawing from the NPT in the event that the UN Security Council reimposes multilateral sanctions against Iran. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

By all accounts, the approaching 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference will have to address new challenges on both the disarmament and nonproliferation fronts. These range from the failure of nuclear weapons states to disarm as the treaty requires to the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the uncertainties surrounding the future of New START after its expiration in early 2021, North Koreas relentless nuclearization, and Irans repeated explicit threats to quit the NPT ever since the United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018. Taken as a whole, these developments represent a big leap backward, imperiling international peace and security. Coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings, the upcoming NPT conference is a unique opportunity to address the root causes of the NPTs new crisis and to map out prudent steps toward crisis prevention, particularly in the volatile Middle East.

Irans leaders are considering whether to ditch their safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to withdraw from the NPT if confronted with new UN sanctions. Though up until now all of the sanctions have been unilaterally applied by the United States, renewed multilateral sanctions may follow the European decision to trigger the so-called dispute resolution mechanism of the 2015 agreement. Triggering this mechanism means that, unless the European countries take one of several off-ramps during the dispute resolution process, the matter will end up at the UN Security Council, which can snap back the muted UN sanctions on Iran. Although European diplomats may not have the intention of letting the issue reach the Security Council, their gamble is plagued with risks. Moreover, the snapping back of UN sanctions would compound the economic woes stemming from the Trump administrations relentless maximum pressure strategy against Iran.

Irans threat to exit the NPT was initially floated by President Hassan Rouhani in his May 2018 letter to the other signatories of the nuclear agreementChina, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdomfollowing Trumps announcement on the United States withdrawal. Since then, frustrated by European governments failure to implement their obligations under the deal, above all by providing access to European banks and financial systems and by purchasing Iranian oil, Iran has taken five incremental steps in reducing its compliance with the agreement. Nevertheless, Iran has maintained that these are reversible steps and that it will resume compliance only if the other parties honor their commitment, the argument being that, to paraphrase Irans Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Iran cannot be expected to be a unilateral party to a multilateral agreement.

Although it is difficult to know whether or when Iran will make good on its threat to exit the NPT, the West would be remiss not to take it seriously. In a precious few months, UN sanctions on Iran may be snapped back, triggering a tsunami of Iranian reactions under a firm conviction that Iran has been unjustly punished. Already, Iran is incensed that the US presidents extrajudicial assassination of Irans top general, Qassem Soleimani, has not drawn any UN condemnation, just as Washingtons unilateral exit from a UN-backed international agreement has received nothing more than statements of regret. Rubbing salt in the wounds, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have repeatedly issued false statements claiming that they have fulfilled their nuclear deal obligations, drawing terse responses from Iran. As a result, while the US assassination of Soleimani has closed all pathways for US-Iran diplomacy for the foreseeable future, Europes perceived common cause with the United States has caused a growing divide between Europe and Iranone that will boil over if triggering the dispute resolution mechanism yields a new round of UN sanctions in the proximate future.

What would an Iranian NPT withdrawal look like? It would spell the end of all IAEA inspections of Irans nuclear facilities and the dawn of a new era of complete lack of transparency on Irans nuclear activities. This would be a sharp departure from the policy under the nuclear agreement, under which Iran allows short-notice inspections and 24-hour surveillance by the IAEA. And to get a sense of what might happen beyond that, one need only to look at the case of North Korea, which withdrew from the treaty in 2003 and tested its first nuclear weapon three years later, in 2006.

One idea making the rounds in Iran is to preempt the European effort to snap back the UN sanctions by hitting the United Nations with a conditional notice of withdrawal from the NPT, stipulating that it will withhold its decision to quit the treaty only if the other signatories to the nuclear agreement uphold their commitments. The advantage of such a conditional notice of withdrawal is that, unlike North Koreas exit, Irans move would not be automatically connected to a pernicious nuclear weapons drive, but rather to Irans legitimate demand for fair play and the end of Western double standards exacting a heavy toll on Irans economy and the well-being of its population.

Without a doubt, Irans NPT exit would represent a severe blow to the global nonproliferation regime, irrespective of Irans stated intentions. This is all the more reason for the European governments to actively explore diplomatic avenues to prevent such an unwanted outcome, requiring serious policy adjustments on their part. Instead of unwisely following in the Trump administrations footsteps, European governments should use the dispute resolution mechanisms Joint Commission, take a firm stance vis--vis US withdrawal, and provide real meaning to their various countermeasures intended to offset the unilateral US sanctions. This might include a new blocking statute that forbids European companies from complying with US sanctions as well as a new financial mechanism to foster lawful humanitarian trade with Iran. Due to US opposition, these countermeasures have heretofore remained as merely commitments on paper.

Going forward, either Europe will need to retreat from its premature and unwise triggering of the dispute resolution mechanism and seek an off-ramp alternative or it must face the possibility of the dire consequences of Irans withdrawal from the NPT and all of its NPT-related IAEA obligations, which would in turn have serious repercussions for the international nonproliferation regime. This nightmare scenario, although a distinct possibility on the horizon, is not inevitable and, indeed, much depends on European smart diplomacy to avert it.

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Iran's impending exit from the NPT: A new nuclear crisis - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

A motion for Iran to quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was introduced in parliament on Tuesday, the assembly's news site ICANA reported, in a move that appears to raise the stakes in Tehran's confrontation with the West.

The report did not say when parliament might vote on the motion. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in the Islamic Republic, makes the final decisions regarding the country's nuclear policy.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said last week that Iran could withdraw from the NPT if European countries refer it to the U.N. Security Council over a nuclear agreement, a move that would overturn diplomacy in Tehran's turbulent relations with Western powers.

The 1968 NPT has been the foundation of global nuclear arms control since the Cold War, including a 2015 deal Iran signed with world powers that offered it access to global trade in return for accepting curbs to its atomic program.

The fate of the 2015 pact has been in doubt since U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of it in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. Iran has responded by scaling back its commitments, although it says it wants the pact to survive.

Britain, France and Germany declared Iran in violation of the nuclear deal two weeks ago and have launched a dispute mechanism that could eventually see the matter referred back to the Security Council and the reimposition of U.N. sanctions.

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Motion to leave nuclear proliferation treaty filed to Iran's parliament - Haaretz

There is a lot more to last weeks decision by the U.K., France, and Germany to trigger the dispute resolution mechanism in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran than meets the eye. The countries three out of the total six states that formed the P5+1 group that signed the JCPOA (the others being the U.S., Russia, and China) are working in line with pressure from the U.S. either to force Iran back to the negotiating table on the JCPOA or to exponentially increase its economic pain, as a senior source who works closely with Irans Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com. This time around, the U.S. is looking for Iran to make the decision: go back to the pro-West moderate policies of [President Hassan] Rouhani and all will be good or allow the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps] to tighten its grip and all will be bad, he underlined.

More specifically, whilst many of the European Union (E.U.) initiatives related to the impasse between Iran and the U.S. have proven to be largely ineffective in practical terms most notably, perhaps, the payment mechanism to facilitate trade between the E.U. and Iran the invoking of the dispute resolution mechanism has teeth. Thats because its part of the JCPOA itself, rather than some E.U.-only thing, with the reason for its being used basically being statements out of Iran that its increasing its level of uranium enrichment, and the P5+1 estimates of what the real figures are, said the Iran source. According to a comment last week from Rouhani, Iran is now enriching more uranium than it did before it agreed to the JCPOA in 2015, whilst Israel maintains its view that Iran has continued a secret nuclear enrichment programme throughout the entire time of the deal.

The reality is somewhere in between, according to senior sources in Iran spoken to by OilPrice.com last week. The JCPOA limits Irans stockpile of enriched uranium to 300 kilograms (kg), less than half of Irans stockpile before the 2015 JCPOA was signed. At the same time, the JCPOA caps the uranium enrichment level at 3.67 per cent before 2015 it was at around 21 per cent. The general rule for uranium-based nuclear weapons is that the more enriched the uranium, the less is needed for a weapon. So, at 20 per cent Uranium-235 enrichment, the critical mass is about 400 kg, but at 90 per cent enrichment the critical mass drops to about 28 kg. In any event the overarching aim of the 2015 JCPOA was to extend the breakout time that Iran would need to produce enough of this material for one atomic bomb from when it actually decided to do it - to at least a year from the worst (French and Israeli) estimates of just three months.

Related: Oil Prices Head Lower Despite Small Crude Draw

Last July 2019, though, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that Iran had breached both the stockpile limit and the enrichment limit. In November it added that the stockpile was at 372.3 kg and that its enrichment level was around 4.5 per cent. Shortly thereafter, the Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said that Iran would enrich uranium to 5 per cent at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (a site specifically prohibited for use in the JCPOA) and added that the country had the capability to enrich uranium to 20 per cent. Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for the Agency, later that month stated that the capability figure was actually 60 per cent. However, according to various senior Iran sources exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com just last week, the actual uranium enrichment capability figure is now 75 per cent, sustainably and with relative ease.

Consequently, the key aim of the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany - the first three also being Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), and Germany being the +1 of the P5+1 group who signed the JCPOA with Iran is to get a new version of the JCPOA agreed by Iran. The specific version that they want agreed is very close to the one that U.S. President Donald Trump wanted in the first place, OilPrice.com understands from political sources in Tehran and Washington. These includes four key things that were in the original draft put by former President Barack Obama to the Iranians before 2015 but which were objected to by the Iranians and withdrawn from the final agreement, plus one addition.

Story continues

The first of these is that long-range (over 1250 kilometre range) missile and nuclear weapons programs are acknowledged by Iran as being inseparable for the purposes of adherence to the agreement and thus banned, and that Irans development and testing of other missiles should be subject to severe limitations. Second, Iran is to allow random inspections at all sites requested by international inspectors, including those sites that Iran says are no longer in operation (such as Fordow). Third, Iran must never come close to possessing a nuclear weapon. Fourth is that these provisions must have no expiration date. The additional clause is that Iran is to cease all support financial, technological, expertise, personnel and all others of any and all proxy groups, specifically including the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

The way the U.S. with the co-operation of the U.K., France, and Germany intends to push this is via the dispute resolution mechanisms progress through international legal channels. The next step is that they [U.K., France, and Germany] refer the issue to a commission that is made up of representatives of the JCPOA signatories [including the other two UNSC Permanent Members, Russia and China] at which point, ultimately, Iran either answers and/or resolves any of the commissions queries and findings or the commission officially writes to the UNSC, the Iran source told OilPrice.com. The UNSC which includes Russia and China, of course then decides whether to keep the current status quo or to re-impose all of the previous UN sanctions, which are even more widespread and hard-hitting than the U.S. ones, he added. OilPrice.com understands from various sources in Moscow that Russia intends to threaten to veto any U.N. vote to implement further sanctions on Iran but will vote in favour if the U.S. drops all of its current sanctions against Russia (including those subsequent to the Crimea takeover, the poisoning of the Skripals, and relating to Nordstream 2) and ceases all of its objections to the finalisation of the Nordstream 2 build-out.

Related: The Electricity Grid Of The Future Is Being Built Here

The other option for Iran, of course, as highlighted in my new book on the global oil markets, is that such a course of events will simply allow the IRGC to tighten its grip over the country, offering as it does a hard-line resistance political and economic doctrine to which Iran became entirely accustomed during the last long-running sanctions environment. From the moment [end of 2017] that senior members of Rouhanis [moderate, pro-West] government started saying that the IRGC should give up its business interests in full and should be integrated into the regular Iranian army rather than be a separate unit, the IRGC has done everything to undermine the countrys drift towards political moderation and the West, the Iran source told OilPrice.com last week.

It was the IRGC that deliberately defied the requests of Rouhani at the beginning of 2018 not to engage in further ballistic missile testing and did just that, which pushed Trump into pulling out of the JCPOA in the first place, he added. Moreover, after the 14 September attacks on Saudi Arabias Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities, the IRGC has been busily working away at modifying what was essentially 1969 missile technology from Russia to produce missiles with a much longer range than many medium-range missiles. These are extremely mobile as they can be launched from adapted lorries, and have a real-time remote control handling system that makes them both incredibly difficult to shoot down and incredibly accurate. The IRGC has also unveiled a new guidance system upgrade, called Labeik, which would be compatible with the Fateh-110 series of rockets, and with Zelzal heavy artillery rockets.

The IRGC in effective power in Iran is perfectly compatible with the geopolitical plans of Irans long-running sponsors, China and Russia. China has been trying since the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA to quietly roll out plans that effectively make Iran a client state, via both extensive oil and gas deals and infrastructure build-out plans. Russias hold over the Islamic Republic, meanwhile, has allowed it access to the best Iranian oil and gas fields, enormous political and economic leverage in Irans own neo-client state Iraq, and to dictate new and unfavourable terms over its massive Caspian resources, among other objectively terrible deals for Iran. Right now, Iran is at a watershed moment as important as in 1979 just before the Revolution that will dictate its course in the world for the next forty years at least, the Iran source concluded.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

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Iran Faces Threat Of Full Global Sanctions - Yahoo Finance

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) The Ukrainian jetliner stood ready for takeoff at Irans main international airport bound for Kyiv, packed with passengers and so many bags on one of the cheapest routes to the West that the ground crew rushed to unload some luggage to make its weight for flight.

Nearly an hour late, Tehran air traffic controllers finally cleared Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 for takeoff, carrying a newlywed couple, Iranian students bound for universities in Canada and others seeking a better life abroad.

The plane would be shot down only minutes later by Irans paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

Up until the moment soldiers fired missiles at the Boeing 737-800, Iran had faced decisive moments on how to respond to the world around it amid tensions with the U.S. Those decisions ultimately doomed the flight and all 176 people aboard, and also led to the public being lied to for days afterward, in the words of the countrys foreign minister.

What Iran decided then and later also reflects beyond the immediate tragedy, offering a glimpse inside of the country more than 40 years after its Islamic Revolution.

The downing of the jetliner highlights the limits of the civilian arm of Irans government against the absolute power held by the nations Shiite theocracy and the paramilitary forces beneath it. The anger that followed shows the choices Iranians make in the countrys sanctions-crushed economy and the unabated rage still lurking on its streets.

How Iran responds as a whole will affect a coming year that appears poised for further tensions. Tehrans nuclear deal with world powers hangs on a single thread, one that permits international inspection of its atomic sites and is already threatened. President Donald Trump, facing an impeachment trial and an election campaign, promises to impose ever-harsher sanctions. Meanwhile, more economic protests in Iran remain a threat as well.

The regime understands that Iranian society is a powder keg right now and that if its not careful, itll lose control of the situation really quickly, said Ariane Tabatabai, an Iran analyst at the U.S.-based RAND Corp. So, its using every tool at its disposal to avoid losing control.

THE FIGHT AND THE FLIGHT

Even before Trump entered the White House, he campaigned on a promise to tear up Irans 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. That agreement saw Tehran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Reached under Trumps predecessor Barack Obama, the deal kept Irans atomic program under constant surveillance by international inspectors and unable to produce enough material for a nuclear bomb if Tehran sought one.

Trump, however, unilaterally withdrew America from the arrangement in May 2018, saying it didnt go far enough in limiting Irans program, its ballistic missile stockpile and its influence through proxies in the wider Middle East.

Iran waited a year before beginning to break limits of the accord, each move slightly narrowing the estimated year it would need to have enough fissionable material for a nuclear weapon. Tehran insists it doesnt seek an atomic bomb, although the U.N. nuclear watchdog says evidence shows the Islamic Republic once had an organized weapons program that it ultimately abandoned in 2003.

Through the summer, tensions steadily rose with mysterious oil tanker attacks that the U.S. blamed on Iranian mines, as well as drone and missile assaults on oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. Iran denied involvement in those assaults, although it did acknowledge shooting down a U.S. military surveillance drone and seizing tankers.

Then came the December death of a U.S. contractor in Iraq, following by an American airstrike on Iranian-backed forces allegedly behind the attack. Iranian-backed militias violently protested and attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The crisis reached a fever pitch Jan. 3 as a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed the prominent Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who oversaw Irans proxies in the region. Trump later threatened to bomb 52 sites in Iran, including those important to the Iranian culture if Tehran retaliated.

Iran vowed revenge, and early on Jan. 8 it launched ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq housing American troops, causing injuries but no fatalities among soldiers there. Iranian officials informally warned journalists and others that any American retaliation would bring missile strikes on Dubai and Haifa in Israel.

Yet commercial planes kept flying through Iranian airspace. Before the Ukrainian jetliner, nine other flights left Tehrans Imam Khomeini International Airport. The airplane was delayed nearly an hour to remove luggage from the overweight flight, investigators say.

Some have questioned how the flight could even be allowed to take off, as the Guard insists it suggested commercial aircraft be grounded amid the tensions.

But Iran isnt alone, as the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight No. 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 shows. Pakistan remains the sole recent country to close its airspace over the risk of war as it did in 2019 amid tensions with India.

Countries cannot be relied upon to close risky airspace, nor issue damaging guidance on their own territories, wrote Mark Zee, the founder of the air-safety organization OPSGROUP. Governments have more pressing motivations: Trade, tourism, commerce. This will not change.

Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 took off at 6:12 a.m. Its flaming wreckage would fall from the sky only six minutes later.

RECIPE FOR DISASTER

Just northwest of the airport, a Revolutionary Guard base among Tehrans arid foothills hid so-called coffin launchers ballistic missiles tilting skyward. Defending that base was at least one Tor-M1 anti-aircraft system, a Russian-made tracked vehicle whose spinning radar detected the flight. Its turret turned toward the flight, a secondary radar now tracking to get its position.

An operator inside would be able to see the flight as a blip on its radar screen, showing its speed and altitude. Commercial airliners broadcast their location by transponder, but it remains unclear what information those in the Tor had, said Jeremy Binnie, the Middle East editor of Janes Defence Weekly. Its also unclear if jamming or some sort of communications breakdown affected the troops thinking.

What is clear, however, is that the Guard, known for its aggression in confronting U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf, controlled that areas air defense. Iranian forces already stood at a high-alert level, fearful of American retaliation for the ballistic missile strike on the Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops hours earlier.

And that Tor unit, with an effective range of 12 kilometers (7.5 miles), fired one missile at its maximum distance toward the aircraft, according to a later briefing by the Guard. Surveillance video later obtained by The Associated Press showed that the missile streaked across the darkened sky and exploded.

The missile went off like a massive shotgun shell, pelting the airliner with a cloud of shrapnel. A piece of the fuselage and the cockpit later recovered showed its windows smashed and the metal scorched.

Ten seconds after the first explosion, the Tor crew fired another missile. It struck near the plane, which turned into a ball of flames before crashing in the rural town of Shahedshahr.

You can see how guys at that level of autonomy, high tensions and not clearing these civilian aircraft out of the airspace is a recipe for disaster, Binnie said. They just cant go on like that.

DAYS OF DENIALS

The Guard, answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, knew their missiles downed the flight when news broke of the crash. It remains unclear when they told Khamenei.

The 80-year-old cleric has final say on all state matters, faces no real check on his power and hasnt commented publicly on what he knew when.

But air-crash investigators, Iranian diplomats and others strongly denied that a missile shot down Flight 752, even as images from the crash site showed shrapnel damage to the plane and one image appeared to show the remains of a Tor-fired missile.

The head of Irans Civil Aviation Organization, Ali Abedzadeh, also mocked comments by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. officials saying they believed a missile brought down the plane.

Scientifically speaking, their statements are not valid at all, Abedzadeh said.

The next day, Irans regular armed forces announced that the Guard unintentionally downed the aircraft as a result of human error. Iranian officials apologized, with at least two of the Guards top commanders publicly saying they wish they had died. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif went as far as to say the Iranian public were lied to for days.

But comments by Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani suggest Irans elected leaders initially knew nothing about the Guard shooting down the aircraft.

Its highly likely that most, if not all of the Rouhani government, were not aware of the same facts that were available to senior members within the Guard, said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior fellow focusing on Iran at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

This split in power between Irans civilian government and the theocracy has been on display since 1988, when then-Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi resigned. In a letter to then-President Khamenei, Mousavi criticized foreign policy and extraterritorial operations that took place without the knowledge and orders of the government.

There is talk everywhere about the foreign policy of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, without the government knowing about these policies that are mentioned everywhere in the country and the world, Mousavi wrote. After an airplane is hijacked, we get news about it. When a gun is fired in the streets of Lebanon, and the word gets around everywhere, we become aware of the situation. After explosives are found on our pilgrims in Jiddah, I learn about this affair.

Mousavi added: Unfortunately, despite all the harm and damage that these actions have caused the country, still operations similar to these can take place in the name of the government at any second and any hour.

This time, however, the operation saw Iranians killed inside the country itself by those supposed to be protecting them.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Iran put down street protests by students and others over the downing of the flight. But those demonstrations pale in comparison to recent unrest faced by Iran, particularly protests over government-set gasoline prices spiking in November. That unrest saw at least 300 people killed, according to Amnesty International.

While an earlier round of nationwide economic protests struck at the end of 2017, things only have gotten worse with the sanctions re-imposed on the country by Trump withdrawing from the nuclear deal, particularly those blocking Iran from selling crude oil abroad. Without that crucial source of government funding, Irans government struggles to make ends meet.

So far, Trumps administration has vowed to continue its maximum pressure campaign on Tehran. Trump himself has used the killing of Soleimani, whom he described as a terrorist monster, as part of his stump speeches at campaign rallies.

With Iran losing as much as $4 billion in revenue every month due to U.S. energy sanctions, it will not be easy for Tehran to hold out for the possibility of a new U.S. president being elected in November 2020, wrote Niamh McBurney, an analyst at Verisk Maplecroft.

Meanwhile, Britain, France and Germany instituted the so-called dispute mechanism of Irans unraveling nuclear deal, opening the possibility of international and U.N. sanctions returning.

My sense is that basically the Islamic Republic currently is a pressure cooker, Geranmayeh said. We will have periodic and probably escalatory ... protests in the country. A lot of what happens depends on how the security apparatus responds to these protests.

However, any major threat to the government could see the Guard employ the same bloody tactics it used in Syrias long war.

If there is a similar threat to their own power inside Iran as Bashar Assad faced, my sense is that they will use an infinitely more amount of force to push back to secure their own power, Geranmayeh said.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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Downing of jet in Iran reveals Islamic Republic's wider woes - The Associated Press