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President Trump is among three dozen U.S. officials for whom Iran has issued arrest warrants in the Jan. 3 airstrike killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

President Trump is among three dozen U.S. officials for whom Iran has issued arrest warrants in the Jan. 3 airstrike killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

The government of Iran has issued an arrest warrant and has also requested assistance from Interpol in detaining President Trump as well as other U.S. military and political leaders in the killing of a prominent Iranian military commander this year.

Trump faces no real threat of arrest, but the new charges offer fresh evidence that tension between the U.S. and Iran shows no signs of subsiding.

Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was Iran's Revolutionary Guard commander who was revered in his country and known for being the mastermind behind many conflicts in the region and against the United States. He did not become widely known to most Americans until his killing by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3.

Iran's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported that the officials wanted in connection with Soleimani's killing "have been charged with murder and terrorism acts." It added, "At the top of the list is US President Donald Trump, and his prosecution will continue even after the end of his term."

With Trump included, NPR's Peter Kenyon reported, "Iranian media quote Tehran's prosecutor general as saying 36 people are being sought in connection with Soleimani's killing."

He also noted the arrest warrant had been forwarded to Interpol, along with a so-called red notice, which would disseminate the alert to law enforcement agencies around the world.

The French-based Interpol has not commented on the matter.

It is unlikely, however, that Interpol will act on the request given that the agency's constitution prohibits it from taking on "any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character."

The U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani was championed by Defense Secretary Mark Esper as a "decisive defensive action." He said at the time Soleimani was plotting attacks on U.S. diplomats and service members.

A retaliatory attack by Iran came on Jan 8, just days after the U.S. airstrike. Iran fired missiles on al-Asad air base in Iraq, where U.S. troops were stationed. As NPR reported, dozens of American personnel were later diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries in the attack.

The acrimonious relationship between the U.S. and Iran had deteriorated even further when the U.S. withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, more than two years ago.

The deal was reached in 2015 under the Obama administration and included China, France, Germany, Russia, the European Union and United States. It said in exchange for reduced sanctions, Iran would agree to limit its production of nuclear weapons materials.

"The fact is this was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever have been made," Trump said during a May 2018 announcement that the U.S. was withdrawing from the deal.

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Trump Tops Iran's List Of U.S. Officials Wanted In Killing Of Top General In January - NPR

MEK Supporters in Free Iran Grand Gathering Paris 2018

As the clerical regime in Iran is facing the most challenging crisis of its life and is fighting for its survival, in a desperate bid to tarnish the image of the democratic opposition, it is resorting to spreading of more disinformation about the main Iranian opposition movement Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI-MEK) and the coalition of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

The Iranian peoples uprising at the beginning of January 2018 heralded a new era in Iran both for the ruling regime and the resistance. The MEK resistance units played a significant role in organizing, fomenting, and directing the uprisings demands for regime change. The regimes Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei publicly blamed the MEK for its key role.

Another nationwide uprising emerged spontaneously in November 2019, with additional protests across multiple provinces the following January. In both uprisings, the youth repeated MEKs regime change slogans and again, MEK resistance units played a key role in spreading the protests across the country.

Now, the regimes officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, are warning that the regimes prior repression of dissent and its ongoing mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic could lead to still more intense public protests in the months ahead. As part of these warnings, Khamenei and others have singled out the MEK, for its pivotal role in the uprisings and the main threat to their existence.

That recognition seems, however, to be aggressively challenged by Iranian intelligence operatives and lobbyists in Western policy circles and international media. The associated campaign of demonization has been carried out over the years, with the regimes high point arguably coming in the form of the MEKs false designation as a terrorist group in the United States and Europe. However, that designation was ultimately challenged in court, leading to the groups conclusive exoneration and its removal from all relevant lists by 2012.

Nevertheless, false allegations continue to linger on, thanks to funding and manipulation by the regime, on the false grounds that this is an isolated non-representative group with allegations going as far as calling the MEK a sectarian movement

This happened most recently in the Hamburg Regional Court, following a challenge to theFrankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitungover an article that had been published on May 13. The judgment, in that case, identified three specific claims whose inclusion in the article constituted violations of basic journalistic standards. The judgment also indicated that FAZ could face financial penalties of up to 250,000 euros for each of the offending claims, which are to be removed from online archives of the article and withheld from any subsequent publication.

The proposed penalty and the general ruling are the same as those handed down in March 2019 againstDer Spiegel, in connection with another legal challenge from the NCRI in the same region. Both FAZ andDer Speigelconveyed allegations that the MEK had carried out torture of its own members at its compound in Albania.

The legal challenges to FAZ,Der Spiegel, and other outlets have helped to clarify the source of such fake news. Among the evidence presented to the courts were documents that established the connections between Irans Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and some of the sources cited in defamatory articles.

The MOIS has a long history of presenting its operatives and affiliates as former members of the MEK and thereby seeming to substantiate allegations of torture, terrorist training, and abusive control over the organizations members by its leadership. This deployment of misleading sources reportedly goes hand-in-hand with the recruitment of friendly journalists, a phenomenon that every time Iranian officials face a significant impasse, deploy them to demonize its main opposition in the Western media.

This is the impasse the regime has been facing since January 2018, at the latest. On the one hand, with continuous domestic unrest, and activities of MEK resistance units all across Iran, and more international isolation of the regime, the regimes highest authorities blame the MEK as the source of their problems, while on the other hand their lobbyists abroad claim it is nonrepresentative, insignificant, sectarian, etc.

The German court rulings are among indexes that show the mullahs need a change of tone toward the Resistance, especially with more unrest insight because of the grim social and economic situation.

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EDITORIAL: Iran's Regime Disinformation About Iranian Resistance and MEK - NCRI - National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)

In the minds of many Iranians, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Irans new speaker of parliament, is identified less with his political and military credentials than with corruption. A 58-year-old trained pilot from Irans northeastern province of Khorasan, Qalibaf has an arguably unrivaled track record of illicit public self-dealing. His tenures as mayor of Tehran, national police chief, and head of the national anti-trafficking headquarters were marked by some of the most high-profile corruption and embezzlement cases in the nations post-revolutionary history.One instance involved Qalibaf as mayor granting several close associates more than $500 million worth of estates and buildings in Tehrans affluent north at cut-rate prices. An investigation motion was tabled in the parliament but ultimately shelved after 132 lawmakers voted against it under intense lobbying pressure.

Even by the warped meritocracy standards of the Islamic Republic, Qalibafs ascent to the top of Irans legislature, given the risk it poses to the governments legitimacy, seems to require an explanation. It becomes more understandable when one realizes that Qalibafs politically calculated and ultimately state-serving corruption wasnt a hurdle to his rapid promotion but part of the very reason for it. Amid the Trump administrations maximum pressure campaign against Iran, the Iranian establishment has found the virtue of having its own crook in power.

Whatever his faults, nobody has ever doubted Qalibafs loyalty to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Like many other top Iranian power holders today, Qalibaf earned his early political credentials in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, when he served as commander of Imam Reza-21 Brigade and 5th Nasr Division, two military units consisting mostly of combatants from his home provincewhich happens to be where current supreme leader Ali Khamenei hails from. After the war, with Khameneis backing, Qalibaf was appointed deputy chief of the Basij (mobilization) militia force before being promoted to chief of IRGCs Khatam al-Anbiya headquarters in 1994 and commander of the IRGC air force in 1997.

Qalibaf has now been embraced by the Iranian leadership in the hope that he will play a central role in the creation of a more harmonious and homogeneous political system dominated by hard-line insiders and loyalists.Given the increasing strangulation of the Iranian economyon June 13, Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri admitted that Irans total oil revenue plummeted to $8 billion in 2019 from an average of $100 billion a yearand the likelihood of another four years of crippling sanctions or even war if U.S. President Donald Trump is reelected in November, Tehran seems to believe that it can weather the storm safely only if it acts in concert and harmony. And that means an incremental takeover of the government and the economy by hard-liners loyal to the countrys top military and clerical leadership. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh declared on June 9, in a ceremony featuring senior officials from the Iranian Ministry of Industry, Mine, and Trade, that the IRGC would be entering into the auto industrya reportedly $15 billion market traditionally controlled by moderates and their pragmatic conservative allies in Irans business community.

With the judiciary led by Chief Justice Ebrahim Raisi, known for his direct role in the 1988 mass executions of political prisonersand the legislature now in hard-liner hands, the next goal will be to control the executive branch. Qalibaf will probably face his first major political test in the 2021 presidential vote as he will likely be expected to help facilitate the election of a like-minded politician. In his first address as Majlis speaker, he accused the moderate administration of President Hassan Rouhani, his rival in the 2017 presidential elections, of managerial disarray and inefficacy and railed against its outward look. Hossein Allahkaram, a famed hard-line rabble-rouser, even went as far in a June 7 interview as to encourage efforts to deny anyone from the reformist camp the right to run for president in 2021.

In contrast to his predecessor, Ali Larijani, whose measured support for Rouhanis foreign policy of engagement with the West had proven pivotal in sustaining the 2015 nuclear deal, Qalibaf has described negotiations with the United States as pointless and pernicious, insisting instead on completing the chain of revenge for martyr [Qassem] Soleimanis blood and augmenting the power of axis of resistance. In a clear sign of shifting attitudes toward foreign and security policy matters, he appointed Mahdi Mohammadi, a hard-line member of Irans former nuclear negotiation team under Saeed Jalilisecretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 2007 to 2013 and currently Khameneis representative on itas his advisor on strategic affairs. A few days earlier on June 1, Jalili, who has set his sights on the 2021 presidential elections, urged the new parliament in a letter to Qalibaf to monitor the state affairs like a shadow and thus act as a shadow administration in confirming, completing and correcting policies of the executive branch.

Meanwhile, the widely publicized large-scale corruption trial of Akbar Tabariexecutive deputy to former Chief Justice Ayatollah Sadeq Larijanialong with vehement calls for Larijanis own prosecution by hard-line ideologues close to the Revolutionary Guard suggest a likely fall from grace for the powerful Larijani family, who were, until recently, in control of both the judiciary and the legislature. These calls, coupled with growing ties between Qalibaf and Jalili, could be symptomatic of efforts behind the scenes to undermine former Majlis Speaker Ali Larijanis chances of success if he decides to run for president in 2021.

A more conformist, centralized, and streamlined system of decision-making is also deemed necessary to guarantee a smooth leadership succession and transition of power to the next supreme leader upon Khameneis death. At the moment, Chief Justice Raisi stands as the prime candidate, having so far successfully marginalized his former boss and rival, Sadeq Larijani. If Raisi ultimately wins the leadership succession contest, Iran will be led by a member of the death commission tasked by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to carry out the mass execution of political inmates in 1988.

The state-led exclusionary homogenization is, however, not limited to politics and political decision-making. Backed by hard-liners in power, it is swiftly extended to social and media spheres, too. On June 21, Iranian security forces stormed the offices of the Imam Ali Popular Students Relief Society and arrested its directors. A widely popular nongovernmental charity with more than 10,000 members, the society was established in 1999 and has since earned a good reputation, especially over the past few years, for its effective poverty and disaster relief initiativesin sharp contrast to the often-corrupt and inefficient interventions of the government, including the Revolutionary Guard. Unsurprisingly, Tasnim News Agency, which is close to the IRGC, has accused the society and its founders of network-building in the guise of charitable measures to infiltrate and influence public opinion on various levels. It is also notable that the roundup came shortly after Gen. Hossein Nejat, a well-connected hard-line IRGC veteran, was appointed as deputy commander of Sarallah Corps, which is tasked with security in Tehran and protection of state bodies based in the capital. A former commander of Vali-e Amr (Supreme Leader) Corpsin charge of Khamenei and his households securityNejat excoriated the West after the November 2019 protests for striving to subvert the Islamic Republic by provoking the poor and low classes of the society, whom, he stressed, have been contaminated in the virtual sphere. Quite relevantly, the new parliament is now systematically pushing for greater state control over the unfettered online environment and the filtering of Instagram in particular, with Qalibaf himself warning of families exposure to a contaminated space.

But the incremental hard-liner takeover is generating both popular discontentwhich a more uniform system of governance would be better positioned to tackleand, far less commonly, increased dissatisfaction among sidelined insiders within the establishment. Nowhere can this be seen more ostensibly today than in the high ranks of Irans regular army (Artesh), a professional military force that has traditionally been treated as a junior partner to the Revolutionary Guard. In a rare interview, deleted an hour after its publication May 24, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, a highly venerable veteran of the Iran-Iraq War and coordinating deputy chief of the army, implicitly criticized the Guards interventions in economy and politics, as well as attempts, mostly by IRGC-affiliated politicians and filmmakers, to portray the regular army as an unreliable and spineless force still beholden to the pre-revolutionary Pahlavi government.

Is the army some sort of fridge, construction, or camera factory whose every move should be publicized in the media? Sayyari pointedly asked, suggesting that such achievements are a matter of national security and should not be hyped up. His obvious dissatisfaction with lack of kindness to the armyparticularly apparent in pro-IRGC narratives of the Iran-Iraq Warand the need for armed forces to steer clear of politicization and public spectacle echoed clear warnings by members of Irans Ministry of Intelligence about the security consequences of the celebrity status built around slain Quds Force commander Soleimani.

High-level objections to state discrimination against Artesh are not unprecedented, however. In June 2000, then-commander-in-chief of the army Gen. Ali Shahbazi resigned reportedly in protest against the top leaderships unfair favoring of the IRGC air force during a legal dispute with the army over possession of a military base in the southern city of Shiraz that originally belonged to the latter. Interestingly, Qalibaf was chief commander of the Guards air force at the time.

Qalibafs rise to power is part of a grander scheme to ensure the long-term survival of the Islamic Republic as is at its most precarious juncture, marked on the one hand by a methodology of governance whose unsustainability has never been laid bare more clearly and on the other by foreign threats whose gravity have rarely been more formidable since the 1979 revolution.

This does not mean, however, that the Islamic Republic is anywhere near collapse, as Iran hawks inside and outside of the Trump administration seem to hope. As the Iranian nuclear dossier gradually returns to the international security agenda, thanks to Trumps maximum pressure campaign and Irans retaliatory nuclear escalation, the incremental hard-liner takeover in Tehran just means that the Islamic Republic will do whatever it takes to stay in power, and this does not bode well for the future of democracy and prosperity in Iran, nor for the prospects of peace and stability in the Middle East.

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Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf Is Speaker of Iran's Parliament Because He's a Crook - Foreign Policy

Struan Stevenson: The Truth is Out About Irans Economic Meltdown

On June 29, Mr. Struan Stevenson, the coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change and a former Member of the European Parliament, wrote an article on the United Press International (UPI) website.

In this article, Mr. Stevenson examines the dire economic situation of the Iranian regime and addresses the crises facing the regime. He touches on the crisis of widespread poverty of tens of millions of Iranians and the increase of the coronavirus outbreak in Iran and the crisis of devaluation of the national currency. But in this situation, the regime continues to waste the nations resources on expensive missile tests while the Iranian society is in an explosive condition.

The full text on this article is below:

June 29 (UPI) The Iranian economy has collapsed. The ayatollahs can no longer afford to pay the wages of government employees, as the triple whammy of U.S. sanctions, the coronavirus pandemic and rampant corruption reduce their budget to chicken feed.

As international vultures hover over the clerical regimes rotting corpse, the mullahs have ramped up their provocative testing of ballistic missiles and illegal nuclear activities in a costly, last-ditch bid to cling to power. They can ill afford to divert their dwindling resources to militaristic posturing, while 70 percent of the Iranian population is starving, trying to survive on less than the recognized international poverty line of $1.90 per day.

The Iranian currency the rial fell a further 14 percent in June to its lowest level ever. In a country that boasts the worlds second-largest gas reserves and fourth-largest crude oil reserves, the Iranian regimes economic disintegration has become a byword for incompetence, avarice and greed.

Iran, despite its rich, civilized and open culture, has become an international pariah, its religious fascist regime condemned for human rights abuse and the export of terror, while its 80 million impoverished citizens, over half of whom are under 30, struggle to feed their families against a background of COVID-19 raging across the nation. The mullahs tell the world that only around 10,400 people have died from the disease, but the true figures are believed to be in excess of 62,000, as the contagion spirals out of control.

Supplies of drugs, personal protective equipment and ventilators have been sent to hospitals for the elite or sold on the black market by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the regimes Gestapo. Meanwhile, President Hassan Rouhani has ordered the population back to work in an attempt to reboot the economy, resulting in a second, deadly wave of coronavirus contagion.

The Iranian people have long known that the regime is more toxic than the virus. The mullahs are now terrified that their theocratic system will come tumbling down, as the destitute masses rise up in fury and cast them into the garbage can of history. They have redoubled their repression and tyranny in an effort to prevent a new revolution, arresting, torturing, flogging and hanging young political protesters who are routinely accused of supporting the Mojahedin e-Khalq democratic opposition movement. Eight death sentences for corruption on earth have been approved for young protesters who were arrested following the November uprising.

Meanwhile, there is smoldering fury that the ayatollahs have spent $30 billion propping up Bashar al-Assads murderous Syrian regime and squandered looted resources on their extremist proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza. But, starved of resources, the theocratic regimes international adventurism is grinding to a halt. There are signs of military withdrawal in Syria and even Irans strategic allies in Iraq and North Korea say that U.S. banking sanctions have made it impossible to circumvent President Donald Trumps maximum pressure campaign, to provide a lifeline to the ruling dictatorship.

Now the truth about Irans economic meltdown is out. Rouhani has acknowledged that international economic pressure has cost his government over $200 billion in lost revenues. At a session of the Iranian Majilis (parliament) in early June, Abdolnasser Hemmati, the head of the Central Bank of Iran, acknowledged that the countrys banking system had been seriously disrupted.

Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, head of the Planning and Budget Organization, told the Majilis that it had become almost impossible for Iran to sell crude oil, the countrys main source of income. Nobakht went on to say that the government could no longer rely on oil revenues, but warned that raising taxes was not an option due to the recession.

In such circumstances, governing the country is very difficult, he told MPs. He continued by telling the Majilis that providing at least $2.47 billion of the 2020-21 budget bill is impossible. He said the government needs around $1.76 billion just to pay its employees and to continue operating. He admitted that the money is not available.

Nobakhts statement caused an outcry in the parliament. The newly elected hard-line MP from the city of Mashhad Javad Karimi Qoddussi claimed that Rouhani had personally authorized the then-governor of the Central Bank of Iran Valiollah Seif to give $36.1 billion and 80 tons of gold to three gangs involved in the smuggling of goods, foreign exchange and drugs in the Iraqi Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, while it was under the control, according to Qoddussi, of the Americans and Saudis.

Qoddussi is a sycophantic devotee of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a close ally of the newly appointed speaker Brig. Gen. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who is intent on implementing the supreme leaders master plan to sweep aside Rouhanis government and to replace it, in Khameneis own words, with a Young Hizbollahi government.

Accusing Rouhani of corruption will be seen as a great irony by the Iraqi population, who know that the supreme leader and the speaker are among the most venally corrupt people in Iran. But the parliamentary outburst by Qoddussi has provided a strong signal of the infighting that has splintered the clerical regime.

Qoddussi went on to blame Rouhani for the nationwide uprisings that exploded across the country in December 2017 and again in November 2019, when the IRGC gunned down thousands of unarmed protesters. Mocking Rouhanis attempts to have appeared as the hero who had crushed the protests, Qoddussi claimed that Rouhanis tactics had backfired, provoking even greater anti-government unrest.

Qoddussi said, We witnessed two instances of [Rouhanis] heroism in inciting the people during the events in 2017 and in 2019 and the people who were killed then, and in the fall of the national currency value. Rouhanis term of office does not end until 2021 and Khameneis desperate effort to get rid of him before then is perhaps the strongest indication yet that the mullahs no longer believe they can survive for another year.

Struan Stevenson is the coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change. He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliaments Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an international lecturer on the Middle East and is also president of the European Iraqi Freedom Association.

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Struan Stevenson: The Truth is Out About Iran's Economic Meltdown - NCRI - National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)

Female human rights activists imprisoned in Iran are facing a slew of new charges to prevent them from being temporarily released because of the Covid-19 epidemic, rights groups say.

Since Covid-19 spread rapidly through the country in early March, Iranian authorities have been under pressure to release all prisoners who pose no risk to society. Around 85,000 prisoners were temporarily released under a furlough scheme earlier this year in response to the coronavirus outbreak, half of whom were believed to be political detainees.

Yet dozens of womens rights activists remain in prisons across the country, with groups including the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) accusing authorities of deliberately rendering them ineligible for release by bringing new charges. Those considered security prisoners with sentences of more than five years were automatically denied furlough.

Narges Mohammadi, one of Irans best-known womens rights defenders, was jailed for 16 years in 2015 after she campaigned to abolish the death penalty. Mohammadis family and the GCHR say that she has been denied furlough and charged with dancing in prison during the days of mourning to commemorate the murder of the Shia Imam Hussein a charge the family dismissed as absurd.

It is feared that Mohammadi could face another five years in prison and 74 lashes as a result of the new charges, which include collusion against the regime, propaganda against the regime and the crime of insult.

Atena Daemi, 32, a womens rights activist and anti-death penalty campaigner, was expected to be furloughed on 4 July, but is facing additional charges that make her ineligible for the scheme.

Already serving a sentence for disseminating anti-death penalty leaflets, she now faces a further 25 months in prison for writing a letter criticising the execution of political prisoners. Her family say that she is also facing additional charges for disturbing order at Evin prison by chanting anti-government slogans, a claim she denies.

Saba Kord Afshari, 22, who was jailed for nine years in 2019 for not wearing a headscarf, has had her sentence increased to 24 years.

Its no surprise that intelligence agents and judicial officials in Iran are zealously working to put womens rights activists behind bars and keep them there for as long as possible, said Jasmin Ramsey of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran. Women are on the frontlines of struggles for rights and equality in Iran, as shown by the multiple political prisoners who continue to speak out for the rights of others from inside jail cells.

By going so far as to alter the judicial process with the hopes of muzzling these prisoners under lengthy jail sentences, Iranian judicial and intelligence officials are revealing how desperate they are to prevent women from taking on more leadership roles.

Nassim Papayianni, Amnesty Internationals Iran campaigner, said that adding fresh charges is commonly used to silence detainees, particularly when they have campaigned from behind bars.

Increasing numbers of female activists have been arrested in recent years and given lengthy sentences for criticising or challenging state policies by advocating human and civil rights.

US-based journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who started the White Wednesdays campaign against mandatory veiling, said the increasing number of charges levelled against female activists like Afshari proved how desperate the Iranian state had become.

For years and years, we had the fear inside us. And now women are fearless. They want to be warriors and that scares the government, she said.

In the Islamic Republic, we dont have freedom of expression, we dont have free parties or free media or free choice. They can shut down NGOs and political parties and newspapers but they cant go after every person who becomes an activist or a movement themselves, who become their own saviours instead of waiting for someone to save them.

Originally posted here:
Iranian authorities move to block release of female rights activists - The Guardian