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In a sign of the Iranian governments increasing openness over its involvement in Syrias civil war, state television will air a documentary during the Iranian New Year known as Nowruz praising the thousands of pro-Iranian fighters who died in Syria over the years.

The documentary is in 13 parts and will air for 13 days, corresponding with the 13-day celebration of New Year in Iran.

The documentary, which will present pro-Iranian fighters as the guardian of Zeinab shrine, a major Shiite holy site in Syria, will be aired on Irans official TV Channel, IRIB 2 in a show titled From Heaven.

Experts say that by airing the documentary during Nowruz, Iran wants to ensure that it reaches most of its citizens in the country, because television viewership increases dramatically during the holiday season in the country.

Schools and most organizations are closed for literally 13 days in Iran for Nowruz, and TV is a big part of that long holiday, said Majid Beheshti a British-based former TV producer at Iranian TV.

State TV traditionally airs New Years programming that highlights Nowruz festivals and stories of Iranian history and origin. But this year will mark a break with that tradition.

Iranian government has often glorified its military involvement in Syria, but this is the first time that a documentary about fallen fighters in Syria is going be aired on prime time at one of the three major TV channels of Iran, Nureddin Yousefi, a Tehran based TV and movie critic, said.

Defending the Shrine

Tehran claims its forces are in Syria only to protect the Zeinab Shrine in Damascus, a Shi'ite holy site.

But since 2012, Iran has acted as a major ally of the Syrian regime in Damascus, and backed Syrian troops in their war with rebel groups across the country.

The Iranian presence in Syria initially began with Iranian advisers going there, but later on, the country expanded its role by deploying elite forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has a strong footprint now on almost all front lines where Syrian government forces engage with the rebels.

Iran has been trying to justify the legitimacy of its presence in Syria and win domestic support for its continued involvement in the conflict on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad.

The new documentary seems to be part of those efforts to camouflage the Iranian military presence into defending a noble and religious cause in a foreign land.

State propaganda

But critics, like British-based former Iranian TV producer Majid Beheshti believe it will do little to achieve that goal.

Nowruz programs are mostly of happy themes and comedies when people can forget about routines and have some fun among families. Bringing a program with that propaganda theme on one of the most viewed Iranian TV channels in Nowruz prime time is not probably going to win peoples hearts and minds, Beheshti said.

Amir Khorshidi Fard, the producer of the show where the documentary about the shrine defenders will be aired, argued that it will present a clear picture of who the defenders are and will shed light on their diversity.

The show, which features the Iranian militias killed in Syria trying to figure out the identity of those martyrs will also tackle rumors about the high salary they receive to defend the shrine, Amir Khorshidi Fard told VOA.

Khorshidi added that focusing on family members of the fallen fighters in a documentary will give people a better understanding about shrine defenders and will humanize them.

Among shrine defenders in Syria, there are large number of foreign fighters as well, including Afghans and Pakistanis who are lured by various incentives to fight for Iran in support of Assad in Syria.

Western media outlets estimate the number of Afghans fighting in Syria to be between 10- and 12,000 fighters they are part of the Fatemiyon Brigade.

Iran also has recruited more than 1,000 Pakistan Shiites to fight alongside Iranian-backed fighters supporting government forces in Syrias civil war.

Pakistani fighters are part of the Zainabeyon Brigade.

Pakistani authorities recently banned a local humanitarian organization for luring and sending Shiite youths from several northwestern areas in Pakistan to Iran.

Shiite youths were reported receiving military training before their deployment to Syria.

For years since Irans military involvement in Syria began in 2012, funerals of the fallen foreign fighters were kept from public view. But recently Iranian authorities have begun to go public about them and glorify them.

Last month, Tehran municipality held a ceremony commemorating fallen Afghan fighters in Syria.

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Iran State TV to Air Documentary Glorifying Fallen Fighters in Syria - Voice of America

BBC News

UK woman jailed in Iran: government 'should condemn sentence' BBC News The family of a British-Iranian woman held in Iran has said the UK government should do more to support her. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained while trying to leave the country with her baby daughter in April 2016. Her sister-in-law, Rebecca Jones ...

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UK woman jailed in Iran: government 'should condemn sentence' - BBC News

Seyyed Ali Qazi-Askar, the representative of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in Hajj and pilgrimage affairs

A senior Iranian official says an agreement with Saudi Arabia enabling Hajj pilgrimage for Iranians this year came after the kingdom submitted to the Islamic Republics conditions.

Seyyed Ali Qazi-Askar, the representative of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in Hajj and pilgrimage affairs, was cited as making the remarks in a report carried by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcastings News Agency on Saturday.

The final agreement came about after several bouts of negotiations with the Saudi Hajj minister, which featured the stipulation of Irans straight and logical approach, he said. The accord, he said, enables dispatch of 86,000 Iranians on pilgrimage.

The Saudis declared that they would take the responsibility and ensure comfort, esteem, dignity, and safetyfor the Iranian pilgrims while they are in the kingdom.

In September 2015, a deadly human crush occurred during Hajj rituals in Mina, near Mecca. Days into the incident, Saudi Arabia published a death toll of 770 but refused to update it despite gradually surging fatality figures from individual countries whose nationals had been among the victims of the crush. Unofficial sources put the death toll at almost 7,000 people. Iran said about 465 of its nationals lost their lives in the incident.

Earlier thatmonth, a massive construction crane operated by the Saudi Binladin Group conglomerate had collapsed onto Meccas Grand Mosque, killing more than 100 pilgrims, including 11 Iranians, and injuring over 200 others, 32 of them from Iran.

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Qazi-Askar said Iran hasinterviewed hundreds of witnesses, and prepared video footage and other instances of evidence tobe submitted to a fact-finding mission.

Concerning the crane crash incident, Qazi-Askar said it has been agreed that the Saudi Binladin group pay blood money to the victims' families in two tranches.

Asked if the Hajj agreement was to have any impact on ties between the two countries, he said pilgrimage is a religious obligation that hasnothing to do with the status of diplomatic ties.

Saudi Arabia unilaterally severed its diplomatic ties with Iran in January after protests outsideits diplomatic premises in Tehran and Mashhad against the execution by Riyadh of eminent Saudi Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

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'Deal reached after Saudis submitted to Iran's Hajj conditions' - Press TV

Some hardline myths about Iran never seem to die. One myth especially pertinent to U.S. policy is that revolutionary regime change in Iran is a significant possibility in the near future and that with a bit more of a push from the outside, the Islamic Republic will collapse and be replaced by something much more to our liking. This illusion was prevalent in much of the George W. Bush administration, which accordingly adhered to a policy of refusing to deal with Iran and instead of trying to isolate it and to inflict economic pain through sanctions. Several years of lack of results in the face of ever-increasing sanctions demonstrated the fecklessness of that policy. The sanctions became useful only when the next U.S. administration began to negotiate with Iran and sanctions were used as a bargaining chip to conclude an agreement that blocks all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon.

The myth often is connected to a faith in exile groups as instruments for quick transition to a completely different type of regime. Many of those hoping for regime change in Iran look in this way to the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a cult-cum-terrorist group that actually has almost no popular support within Iran. Some of the same people had placed a similar faith in Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, whose qualities as a huckster more than as someone who could father a new Iraqi republic became increasingly apparent after the U.S. invasion of 2003.

Today there evidently is another expression of the old myth about Iran, with talk about regime change, among Trump loyalists at the White House and National Security Council staff. According to these individuals, increased pressure and kicks from the outside can bring about positive results in Iran, rather than, as expert analysis both inside and outside the national security bureaucracy explains, merely eliciting hostile responses from a firmly implanted Islamic Republic. It is unclear whether holding of the myth represents genuine misbelief or instead is a rationalization covering other reasons the holders want to maintain Iran as a perpetually isolated bte noire. Either way, the myth leads to damaging and ineffective U.S. policy.

Iran is not at all close to any political upheaval that could be described as a new revolution or a counter-revolution, even with more pressure and pushes from the outside. Iranian politics certainly exhibits plenty of disagreement and controversy, with the possibility of significant policy change coming out of that political competition. Despite the substantial defects in the Iranian political system, there is a political robustness missing from, say, the Arab monarchies on the other side of the Persian Gulf. But most Iranians do not have an appetite for making a new revolution.

Both the regime and the people in Iran have demonstrated an ability to withstand hardship much greater than what U.S. sanctions can inflict. They did so during the extremely costly eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which Iran doggedly continued for some time even after Saddamwho started the warbegan seeking an armistice. Certainly if pressure or punishment from an outside power is involved, both the regime and the people exhibit determined resistance.

There already has been much evolution in the direction and nature of the Islamic Republic during its nearly four decades of existence, although probably not as much as there would have been without the ostracism. The large majority of Iranians today were born since the revolution. Hijabs have inched above hairlines, and domestic life has become looser and freer. Especially for the female half of the population, looking across the Gulf does not instill any ideas about better alternatives.

More important for U.S. and Western interests has been the evolution in Irans external policies. Any hopes within the regime in the immediate aftermath of the revolution for like-minded revolutions elsewhere in the region have long ago been dispelled, as the realization sunk in that such revolutions were unlikely and that Irans system would survive anyway. The most obvious form of Iranian state-conducted international terrorisma campaign of assassinating exiled dissidentseffectively ended years ago, partly because of the regime's desire to have normal and fruitful relations with Europe.

Further evolution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its policies in the years ahead will correlate directly with the extent to which it has normal political and economic interaction with the rest of the world. Isolation and punishment would strengthen Iranian hardliners arguments that there is neither a possibility of, nor a payoff to be expected from, such interaction. Bolstering of the hardline position in turn would mean diminished prospects for further liberalizing political change in Iran. Conversely, increased commerce, foreign investment, and the economic development that go with them would strengthen the political position of those favoring normality in foreign relations, would increase the Iranian stake in even more peaceful normality, would loosen the grip of those in Iran whose economic and political power depend on isolation, and would increase Iranian exposure to ideas and examples of still more change.

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Evolution, Not a New Revolution, in Iran - The National Interest Online (blog)

by Eric Randolph and Ali Noorani - AFP on March 19, 2017, 5:01 pm

Iran pre-nups land thousands of men in jail

Tehran (AFP) - When Sadegh married his college sweetheart, he never thought he'd end up as one of those Iranians facing ruin and even prison because of huge sums demanded by his wife's family.

But the "mehrieh" ("affection") system, in which future husbands agree to pay a certain number of gold coins to the bride in the event of divorce, has left thousands of men in Iran languishing in jail and many more destitute.

"Our mehrieh was high, around 800 gold coins, but when we were planning the wedding, we didn't think about how it might end," said Sadegh, who was divorced last year after eight years of marriage.

Each gold coin is worth around 10 million rials ($300). A worker on Iran's average wage would need 50 years to earn 800 gold coins.

"Even when the problems started and we talked about separation, it was supposed to be mutual and no mehrieh was going to be paid," said Sadegh, who spoke to AFP on condition that his full name not be used.

But then his wife's family got involved, and suddenly Sadegh found himself in court where he was told to pay 110 coins immediately or go to jail.

"The thought of ending up in prison for this, like in the movies, seemed ridiculous," he said.

"Mehrieh is good as a financial support for women in a patriarchal society like Iran, but it has become a business."

Pleading he was broke, the judge brokered a deal in which Sadegh agreed to pay the equivalent of 120 coins, one per month.

That meant a decade of payments, each taking just under half his photographer's salary.

Then, five months in, he lost his job.

- 'Sword over man's head' -

It could have been even worse. At last count, the judiciary said some 2,297 men were in jail for failing to pay their mehrieh after a divorce.

A glimmer of hope surfaced this week in Tehran, where a ceremony was held to celebrate the work of donors who pay off the debts of prisoners as a show of Islamic charity.

They have freed 1,700 mehrieh-convicts over the past year.

"Unfortunately, today competition among families has led to ever-increasing mehrieh," said Hadi Sadeghi, a cleric and judiciary official who helps coordinate the releases.

He said mehrieh, whose level is negotiated by the families at the time of a couple's engagement as per ancient Islamic custom, had lost its simple traditional function as a form of dowry for the newly-weds to buy furniture.

Now the payment is usually delayed and brandished against men as a threat in case of divorce, or even worse, is used by unscrupulous families for extortion.

"The worst case is when families turn it into a business. Boys need to be careful not to be deceived," said the cleric.

"Using mehrieh as a sword over the man's head is wrong too. It only leads to more arguments and divorces."

Officials agree that mehrieh has in recent decades degenerated into a status symbol, and that families are often just too stubborn to back down when a marriage falls apart.

"Many families, when they go to wed their girls, their first question is mehrieh," said Alireza Afsary, who runs a foundation supporting prisoners.

"Some laws need to be amended and some cultural and social issues need to change."

The courts have tried to intervene, saying they will only force husbands to pay a maximum of 110 gold coins, but even this is beyond the means of many Iranians.

- Way to redress balance -

Still, many women see mehrieh as a way of redressing the balance for divorced women, who are often shunned by society.

Some exchange mehrieh for promises they will be allowed to work or study, or have child custody in the event of a divorce.

"A woman who gets married is always afraid of not having real rights at the time of separation, so she tries to guarantee her rights through mehrieh," said Safi, a married woman in her 20s.

But all agree it has done nothing to slow soaring divorce rates in Iran as the country modernises and women enjoy increased freedoms. There were more than 165,000 this year, up 15 percent compared to five years ago.

"If they are looking for ways to support women, and for men to show loyalty to their families, they should have new rules... for example giving them a legal right to half the man's property," said another young woman, Shima, 28.

As for Sadegh, he is trapped, still having to come up with 10 million rials a month despite being unemployed. He missed the last payment. The threat of prison hangs heavy over him.

"We were classmates and were together for a year or two before marriage. Her family said they have a tradition of high mehrieh and couldn't reduce it. My family tried to refuse, but I loved her so we didn't insist.

"We thought everything was going to go on smoothly forever."

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Iran pre-nups land thousands of men in jail - Yahoo7 News