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Unconfirmed reports in Irans press suggest the country may take delivery of the first batch of Su-35 Flanker-E fighter jets it ordered from Russia in the coming weeks.

In an article that has since been removed, Irans official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that the jets, also known as Super Flankers, will soon arrive in Iran. In light of the articles deletion and past rumors that the aircraft began arriving in April, and statements, such as one affirming the jets would begin arriving in March, ultimately proving premature or outright false, one should take this news with a grain of salt.

Still, the arrival of the Super Flankers in the not-too-distant future will undoubtedly mark a milestone for Irans long-neglected air force, officially known as the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF). The IRIAF hasnt imported any new fighter jets in 33 years. But one has to go back 47 years to find a fighter procurement this significant for Tehran.

In 1976, Iran began receiving the first of 80 F-14A Tomcats it ordered from the United States in a historic deal. Tehran ultimately received 79 of them before the 1979 Islamic Revolution ended close ties between Washington and Tehran.

Despite a U.S. arms embargo and chronically unreliable TF30 engines, F-14As inherited by the IRIAF, and often flown by pilots previously imprisoned and tortured by the new Islamist regime, fought throughout Irans lengthy eight-year war with Saddam Husseins Iraq, downing many enemy jets.

Outfitted with the powerful AWG-9 radar and armed with the long-range AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile, which could hit targets up to 100 miles away, the Tomcat was a formidable opponent and a true air superiority fighter.

While the fourth-generation fighter, truly cutting-edge for its day, served Iran well, time has ultimately taken its toll. Irans rivals have acquired more advanced and modern jets in the intervening decades.

Iran bought a fleet of MiG-29A Fulcrum fighters from the Soviet Union in 1990. However, its F-14s out-flew the much newer Fulcrums, which was one reason the IRIAF did not buy large numbers of those Soviet jets.

The following year, Iraqi Air Force jets, including French-built Mirage F1s, flew to Iran to evade destruction by the juggernaut of the U.S.-led multinational coalition in the Persian Gulf War. Tehran confiscated them, putting most into service with the IRIAF. Iraqi Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes served in Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) air arm and were later returned to Iraq in 2014 to help Baghdad combat the Islamic State group.

Iran previously contemplated buying the Su-30 Flanker from Russia. There have also been intermittent rumors since at least 2016 that Tehran wanted to co-produce that fighter aircraft.

Following Russias fateful February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow and Tehran expanded their defense relationship to an unprecedented level. The latter supplied the former with hundreds of the single-use drones infamously used against Ukrainian cities. In return, Russia will provide Iran with at least two dozen Su-35s, most likely the ones initially built for export to Egypt in recent years in a deal Cairo is widely believed to have canceled.

Its unclear if Tehran will seek to import additional fighters or some co-production arrangement to assemble more in Iran. The Su-30 co-production rumor appeared again in early May, this time in Turkish media.

Su-35s in Russian service have proven lethal adversaries for their Ukrainian opponents. A well-known Ukrainian MiG-29 pilot recently told BBC that their biggest enemy is Russian Su-35 fighter jets.

While those super-maneuverable Russian jets are far more advanced than fighters in Ukraines current air force, which relies on early models of the Fulcrum and Flanker built in the 1980s, they are still limited in many ways. For example, the Su-35 is the only 4.5-generation aircraft that lacks an electronically scanned array radar (AESA) radar. That, along with many other potentially severe shortcomings, most likely means that the Su-35 will not enable Tehran to establish air superiority over the Persian Gulf, especially if it receives only 24. They will, on the other hand, bolster the IRIAFs aged fighter fleet and enhance Irans national air defense.

Whether they arrive in the coming weeks, months, or even in the next couple of years, the Su-35s will most likely become the most advanced fighter aircraft Iran has imported in the past half a century, something that, in and of itself, certainly is not insignificant.

I am a journalist/columnist who writes about Middle East military and political affairs.

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Tomcats To Super Flankers: Iran Might Soon Receive Its Most Advanced Fighter In Almost 50 Years - Forbes

Two French citizens detained by Iran were released on Friday on humanitarian grounds and made their way back to France, according to French and Iranian authorities.

One of the men, Benjamin Brire, a 38-year-old French tourist, had been held for three years. The other, Bernard Phelan, a 64-year-old French-Irish travel consultant, was arrested in October 2022. The two men left the prison in Mashhad, a city in northeastern Iran, where they had been kept and flew back to France, landing at an airport near Paris on Friday evening.

President Emmanuel Macron of France called their return a relief.

Free, finally, Mr. Macron said on Twitter, adding that France would continue to work for the return of our compatriots still detained in Iran.

Mr. Brire and Mr. Phelan had been accused of spying on Iran and acting against its security interests, charges that the two men and French authorities strenuously denied. The men had gone on intermittent hunger strikes to protest their detention, weakening them and worrying their families, who had urged Iran to free them.

They were provided with medical care immediately after their release, Catherine Colonna, the French foreign minister, said in a statement on Friday.

Ms. Colonna said that in a phone conversation with her Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, she had reiterated Frances determination that the other French citizens still detained in Iran should also regain their full freedom quickly and enjoy their right to consular protection.

Four French citizens are still in Iranian custody, according to French authorities. A fifth person, Fariba Adelkhah an academic who holds an Iranian passport as well as a French one was arrested in 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison; she was released in February but has not yet been able to leave Iran.

Iran has detained several foreigners and dual citizens since 2018, when President Donald J. Trump withdrew the United States from a nuclear deal with the country and reimposed sanctions.

Western and European countries have accused Iran of using detained people as diplomatic bargaining chips or to press for the release of Iranian prisoners abroad.

In 2020, for instance, the French government secured the release of an academic who had been held on national security charges, as part of a prisoner swap.

It was not immediately clear whether the release of Mr. Brire and Mr. Phelan had been secured by a similar deal. On Friday, French, Irish and Iranian authorities made no mention of one.

IRNA, Irans state-run news service, said that the two men were released on humanitarian grounds, while Irans embassies in Paris and Dublin said on Twitter that it was a humanitarian and friendly gesture.

Saeid Dehghan, one of the four Iranian lawyers for Mr. Brire, said that he had become extremely weak and frail because of his hunger strike.

If the release wouldnt have happened by now, Benjamin would be at a major life risk, Mr. Dehghan said.

Mr. Phelan, Irish-born but based in Paris, was in Iran consulting for a tour operator when he was arrested during a wave of antigovernment protests and accused of disseminating anti-regime propaganda and taking pictures of security services, according to his family. Mr. Phelan, who according to his family has hypertensive heart disease and chronic bone and eyesight issues, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in March.

Caroline Mass-Phelan, Mr. Phelans sister, told Agence France-Presse in January that he was an innocent man who loved Iran, who is 64 years old, who is sick, who just wants to go home.

Michel Martin, Irelands minister for foreign affairs and minister of defense, said in a statement on Friday that the last seven months have been a very difficult ordeal for Bernard and for his family.

Many people have worked tirelessly for this outcome over many months, he added.

Mr. Brire was arrested in May 2020 in northeastern Iran and accused of taking photographs in a prohibited area with a drone, leading to charges of espionage, which is punishable by death. He was also facing a propaganda charge because he had asked in a social media post why head scarves were required for women in Iran but optional in some other predominantly Muslim countries.

Mr. Brire was sentenced to eight years in prison but was then acquitted in February by an appeals court, though he was not released from prison at the time.

After almost 1,000 days of harrowing captivity, Benjamin Brire is finally free, Philippe Valent, Mr. Brires lawyer in France, said in a statement, adding that Mr. Brire now needed time to physically and mentally recover.

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.

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Iran Releases 2 French Citizens From Detention - The New York Times

Iran

Videos released of Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaqoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi confessing, which families say were torture-induced

Fri 12 May 2023 10.44 EDT

A recent spate of executions in Iran looks set to continue after authorities released videos of three protesters confessing to the killing of three security officers in the so-called Isfahan House case.

The men have already been found guilty of the murder and have no further grounds for appeal. More than 60 people have been executed in Iran since late April, some for drug offences and many from the region of Balochistan, where the protests have been most intense.

In a further sign of a crackdown, about a dozen human rights lawyers were also summoned to attend a meeting at the prosecutors office in Evin jail in Tehran to be told to curtail their activities, according to Sharq newspaper.

One of those summoned, Ali Mojtahedzadeh, said: If we are looking to create peace in the country, why should a lawyer who is always in the prosecutors office be summoned to the prosecutors office as an accused? At least one of the lawyers active on social media has been told she will face charges of propaganda against the regime.

The three defendants in the Isfahan House case, Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaqoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi, have been found guilty of warfare, a more serious offence than murder. They were arrested on 21 November and accused of killing three Basij police officers in Isfahan five days earlier. Their family claim they are innocent, and the only evidence against them is torture-induced confessions.

The latest official videos broadcast on state TV, in which the men incriminate themselves and one another, could be seen as an attempt to prepare the public for their execution. One of the men said he had been influenced by Instagram, and he was grateful to the government for filtering it.

In a released phone call from inside jail to his fiance, Kazemi subsequently said: We were told to say these things in court all of it under torture. I did not have any gun or do anything. After the publication of his recorded denial, and with a cousin active in Australia protesting his innocence, he was moved out of the public ward. The men were found guilty in hearings that lasted only four days.

Lengthy contemporary police radio recordings do not appear to back up the prosecution claims that they shot police while on motorcycles.

Last week, the UN human rights chief, Volker Trk, called on the authorities in Iran to halt all executions and abolish the death penalty.

Trk said more than 10 people were being put to death each week in Iran, making it one the worlds highest executors. Since 1 January 2023 at least 209 people had been executed, he said, adding that the figure was likely to be higher due to the lack of government transparency. Trk noted this number included a disproportionately high number of minorities.

Iran shocked Sweden a week ago when it executed the Swedish-Iranian man Habib Chaab on the charge of corruption on earth, stemming from his role in a deadly attack on an Iranian military parade in Ahvaz in 2018. Iranian agents arrested Chaab in 2018 in Turkey.

Jamshid Sharmahd, a German-Iranian national who was also reportedly arrested outside Iran, is also at serious risk of execution after Irans supreme court upheld his death sentence on 26 April. His daughter has been campaigning tirelessly for his life.

Iran on Friday confirmed it had released Bernard Phelan, a 64-year-old French-Irish citizen sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail two months ago in Iran, along with the French national Benjamin Brire. In a phone call after the release, the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, told his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was Irans red line, a reference to the likely Iranian reaction of any EU move to proscribe it.

The Iranian foreign ministry also claimed it had received assurances from the Irish foreign ministry that it recognised the IRGC as a force fighting terrorism. There was no confirmation of this by Ireland.

The crackdown comes as Iran is selected to head the social forum of the UN Human Rights Council, a move described as deeply worrisome by the US.

Member states have been told the social forum on 2 and 3 November at the UNs headquarters in Geneva will be chaired by Ali Bahraini, the Iranian ambassador to the UN in Geneva. The director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, Hadi Ghaemi, described his appointment as shocking ethical blindness.

In the now-daily battle to impose the compulsory hijab, the authorities have been ridiculed for putting up banners at the Tehran international book fair with fake quotes from famous authors praising the hijab. One banner quotes the Russian novelist Tolstoy as saying: The reason for the increase in divorce in Europe is corrupt civilisation, sexual disorders and the lack of hijab.

Another poster quoted Victor Hugo as writing that the face combined with dignity and chastity gives a woman such power that the strongest men cannot resist her and makes men submit and bow before a woman.

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Iran expected to execute three protesters over killing of police officers - The Guardian

Miranda Sawyer on podcasts and radio

Paul Caruana Galizia studies the dangers of being Iranian in the UK; a British version of the hit US show tries too hard, Jeremy Bowen probes BBC impartiality and more

Londongrad: Irans Hit Squads | Tortoise Media Pod Save the UK | Crooked Media Frontlines of Journalism (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds The Greatest Hits of Abba (Greatest Hits Radio) | Planet Radio

Paul Caruana Galizia is the son of the murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, and as such has a more than casual interest in corrupt authorities hiring assassins to get rid of problematic journalists. His mother, an investigative reporter who had exposed links between the Maltese government and dodgy businessmen, was killed in 2017 by a car bomb. Since then, Paul and his brothers, Matthew and Andrew, have worked hard not only to keep their mothers name alive, but also to try to track down her murderers (listen to Wonderys Who Killed Daphne? or Pauls own My Mothers Murder, on Tortoise).

Paul, who is based in the UK, has been carving out his own career as an excellent investigative journalist. Last year he researched and presented the darkly fascinating Londongrad podcast series. This looked at the links between the Lebedevs (Alexander and son Evgeny) and the UKs Tory government, particularly during the Boris Johnson era. With the second series, Paul turns his dogged mind and instantly recognisable voice to Iran in Londongrad: Irans Hit Squads. His argument is that, until recently, the biggest terrorist threat to the UK came from organisations such as Islamic State or al-Qaida; now it is from rogue states such as Russia and China and especially Iran. And London is the place where many of these crimes are being attempted.

The director general of MI5 confirms that there were at least 15 plots to kill or kidnap British or UK-based individuals by Irans intelligence services last year. Rana Rahimpour, a BBC presenter, describes how her life has changed since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after being taken into custody by Iranian authorities for not wearing her hijab (headscarf) correctly; Aminis death triggered the recent protests in Iran. Rahimpours reporting of it has made her and her family targets. My life in London, which I used to think was safe, is no longer the same, she says. Iran International, a TV station based in west London, has been forced to move to the US because of threats.

But why is no one being prosecuted? Because the British government doesnt want them to be. Iran has long been a state that Britain thinks can be flipped from an Islamic theocracy into something more palatable to the west. Caruana Galizia, a man who searches out truth like a laser, does not accept this argument.

This series isnt as easy a listen as the original Londongrad. The characters arent as flamboyant, the parties not as silly. Gone are the tales of Katie Price attending a Lebedev dinner that included Boris Johnson and flashing her boobs at him, saying, Theyre like granite. Instead, we have the mundane setting of a light industrial estate in Chiswick. Still, as with the first series, Caruana Galizia takes the shine off Londons glitz and exposes it for what it is. If I were writing a modern James Bond, this would be the series Id listen to, for background on todays international bad guys. Know your enemy.

More contemporary political shenanigans with the launch of Pod Save the UK, the new British spin-off of the immensely successful Pod Save America. The latter was started in 2017, just after Trump was elected, by four policy wonks from the Obama administration. It quickly established itself as a star in the podcast firmament and is now one of the most popular. In Trumpian times I used to listen a lot, though I gradually fell out of love with it. Everyone agreed with each other too much; it could feel a little smug.

The UK version, only a couple of episodes in, is hosted by comedian Nish Kumar and journalist Coco Khan. Neither, then, have the inside government info that the US version has, making this more of a straightforwardly funny-but-serious leftwing political show. Of the two hosts, Khan is much the better; quick-witted and well informed, though slightly too loud. Kumar is, sadly, just loud. Still, last weeks show the second was far stronger than the first.

The topic was republicanism what would Britain look without the monarchy? and featured Professor Amelia Hadfield, who was informed and interesting. Later, Labour MP Clive Lewis was fluent and funny. A stronger edit would be great more than an hour is about 20 minutes too long and the show suffers from that must-laugh-at-everything mania that can happen with new podcasts. No doubt this will lessen as everyone relaxes.

Pod Save the UK is a good example of how we like our political journalism these days: casual, funny and overtly biased. In Radio 4s Frontlines of Journalism, BBC veteran Jeremy Bowen tries to unpick ye olde Beeb approach: essentially, impartiality. These days, news is often reported differently. Can the BBC keep up? Should it change its reporting style? These are interesting questions. Its unfortunate, then, that the series is stodgy, dull-ish fare, unlikely to convince fans of Piers Morgan or James OBrien that the BBCs approach is best.

Just room, in this week of Eurovision, for a nice spot of Abba. Greatest Hits Radio has a four-part Sunday series, The Greatest Hits of Abba, about the super Swedes, slickly hosted by Mark Goodier. Naturally, this is a banger-packed listen, perfect for banishing any end-of-weekend fear. It will culminate with an interview with Bjrn Ulvaeus on 28 May. How can we resist ya? Etc.

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The week in audio: Irans Hit Squads; Pod Save the UK; Frontlines of Journalism and more - The Guardian

The family of a Frenchman released this week after he had been jailed by Iran said on Saturday he was "relieved" to be back in France.

On Friday, Benjamin Briere, whose ordeal in Iran lasted three years, and French-Irish citizen Bernard Phelan, held since October, were freed from their prison in the northeastern city of Mashhad, the French foreign ministry said.

There had been grave concerns about the health of the men, both of whom had been on hunger strikes to protest their conditions.

'Relieved'

Briere, 37, was first detained while traveling in Iran in May 2020 and later sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage.

"We were able to hold him in our arms at 1930 (1730GMT) on Friday, May 12, after three years of hell," Briere's family said in a press release.

"He is, like all of us, relieved, calm, and he is trying to realize that he's really here, with us," they said. "He is, however, very weak, physically and morally, a return to normal life will be long and certainly difficult, but now he is in good hands."

Dozens of foreigners jailed

The pair were among some two dozen foreigners jailed in Iran, who campaigners see as hostages held in a deliberate strategy by Tehran to extract concessions from the West.

Four more French citizens, described previously as "hostages" by the French foreign ministry, are still in prison by Iran.

A fifth individual, French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah was released from prison in February but appears still unable to leave the country.

Several U.S., German, British, Swedish and other European citizens, such as Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele who was arrested in February 2022 also remain detained.

"All our thoughts now turn toward the five other French hostages still held in Iran," Briere's family said.

"Our thoughts are also with other families of European hostages held in Iran, with whom we share this heavy and painful battle," they said. "We send them strength and courage, and we continue to fight alongside them," they added.

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Frenchman 'Weakened' by Iran Prison Ordeal - Voice of America - VOA News