January, 2022

• 28 January

  HRW Urges Iran To ‘Immediately And Unconditionally’ Release Rights Defender Mohammadi

  

  FFL/RE – Human Rights Watch (HRW) has condemned a new prison sentence handed to prominent Iranian human rights defender Narges Mohammadi and called on Tehran to “immediately and unconditionally” release her. “Iranian authorities’ cruel detention and prosecution of Narges Mohmmadi only one year after she was released from an earlier prison term and then piling on more unfair prison sentences …

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• 28 January

  Iran Beats Iraq 1-0, Qualifying for Qatar World Cup

  

  Iranwire – Iran has qualified for the FIFA World Cup competitions in Qatar with a 1-0 victory over Iraq at home on Thursday, January 27. With the requisite number points secured, Team Melli’s upcoming games against the UAE, South Korea and Lebanon will now be mere formalities and the team is bound for Qatar. Even after a fantastic season for Iran, …

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• 28 January

  State TV Hacked by Iranian Opposition

  

  Iranwire – Iranian state TV was subjected to a rare disruption by hackers on Thursday in a strike attributed to opposition group the People’s Mojahedin Organization [MEK]. For about 10 seconds, broadcasts on the IRIB’s Channel 1 and Quran Channel were interrupted and replaced with pictures of the MEK’s co-leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. A crossed-out image of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei …

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• 28 January

  Rouhani-era Officials Cry Foul as Third Humanities Professor Sacked

  

  Iranwire — Sociology professor Mohammad Fazeli was widely reported in Iranian media this week to have been dismissed from his post at Shahid Beheshti University. Fazeli himself has since clarified that he lost his job in September 2021: the same month that Azad University philosopher Bijan Abdolkarimi was also fired for alleged pro-monarchy sentiments. Then this week, Arash Abazari, a professor of …

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• 28 January

  Iran’s Great Petrochemical Corruption Scandal, Part I: The Ones That Got Away

  

  Iranwire – The verdict in a massive corruption case involving the Iran Petrochemical Commercial Company (PCC) was announced on September 5, 2021. But nearly three years after proceedings first got under way, the details remained shrouded in mystery. We were told at the time that 15 named defendants had been sentenced to a total of 180 years in prison, linked to the …

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• 28 January

  Biden Greenlights South Korean Release of Funds to Politically Connected Iranian Firm

  

  fdd.org – The Treasury Department on January 6 issued a special license to authorize the South Korean government to pay $63 million that it owed to the Entekhab Group, an Iranian consumer electronics company. However, a closer look at the Iranian counterparty shows potential connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military force that Washington has sanctioned due to its …

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• 28 January

  Ex-UN officials, rights experts urge probe of Iran’s 1988 mass killings

  

  Al-Monitor – A group of former United Nations officials and experts have penned an open letter urging the United Nations human rights office to investigate Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi‘s involvement in the mass killing of political prisoners. “We believe it’s long overdue for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to investigate the 1988 massacre,” read the …

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• 28 January

  Top Iran security official retracts comments on talks with US

  

  AL-Monitor – Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani has said he will “never endorse direct negotiations with the United States,” according to the hard-line daily Kayhan. The paper reported Jan. 27 that the official had contacted its office to “explain” a controversial tweet he had posted on Tuesday. “Any exchange with the Americans, if needed, will be done through …

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• 27 January

  US Treasury Targets Repression and the Undermining of Democracy

  

  treasury.gov— Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating 15 actors across three countries in connection with serious human rights abuse and repressive acts targeting innocent civilians, political opponents, and peaceful protestors. As part of a whole-of-government commitment to democracy, Treasury is taking a number of actions aimed at promoting accountability for those …

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• 27 January

  Firings Of Iranian University Professors Stoke Fears Of New Purge

  

  RFL/RE – Mohammad Fazeli, a prominent Iranian sociologist, had taught at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti university for seven years before he was dismissed in September. Fazeli’s dismissal only became public in recent days when reports emerged of two other academics being fired.The firings have raised fears of a new purge of dissenting academics in Iran, where the clerical establishment has dismissed …

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• 27 January

  In Sign Of Deepening Ties, Taliban Increases Afghanistan’s Water Flow To Iran

  

  RFL/RE – Iran helped the United States topple the Taliban’s brutal regime in Afghanistan in 2001.But more than 20 years later, after U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban regained power, the once sworn enemies have become allies.Differences remain between Afghanistan’s Sunni Taliban rulers and Iran’s Shi’ite clerical regime. Tehran, like the rest of the international community, has yet …

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• 27 January

  Iran Arrests 17 Over Social-Media Video Pranks

  

  RFL/RE – Iranian police say they have arrested 17 people suspected of filming candid-camera pranks that boosted their social-media followings but incited panic in the streets of Tehran. Those arrested allegedly “amused themselves by playing on people’s nerves and the peace and security of the public by filming candid-camera footage of horror gags on the streets of the capital,” Tehran …

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• 27 January

  Thirty More Iranian Officials Accused in London of November 2019 Crimes

  

  Iranwire – A second round of hearings in a landmark “people’s tribunal” examining potential crimes against humanity in the November 2019 protests will take place in London next weekend. The Aban Tribunal, an initiative led by by Iranian rights groups in the diaspora and international legal experts, held its first hearings in November 2021. A panel of distinguished lawyers heard evidence from tens …

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• 27 January

  Anousheh Ashouri’s Hunger Strike: “This Time it’s Different”

  

  Iranwire – Barry Rosen’s recent hunger strike in Vienna inspired a new campaign of activism. Among those inspired to show solidarity with the former American hostage was Iranian-British citizen Anousheh Ashouri, currently held in Evin Prison on charges of espionage. Rosen, who was one of 52 Americans held hostage in the United States embassy in Tehran in 1979, began his strike on January 18, protesting …

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• 27 January

  Mounting Charges and Phone Bans: What Atena and Family Endured

  

  Iranwire – Civil rights activist Atena Daemi was released from Lakan Prison in Rasht on the evening of Monday, January 24, 2022. Daemi’s campaigning has focused largely on children’s rights, and particularly the rights of child laborers, but she also has a wide knowledge about and experience of working on other issues, including the rights of Baha’is, education, and justice for the mass …

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• 27 January

  As Iran Nears Uranium Breakout Capacity, US Mulls Bomb-Making Scenarios

  

  VOA – With the United States warning that Iran is just weeks from developing the capacity to make a nuclear weapon, there is disagreement among Washington experts on the likelihood of Iran rushing to build such a weapon, and how the U.S. and its allies should deal with that risk. “[Iran] is getting to the point where its breakout time, …

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• 27 January

  Iran denying medical care to political prisoner with COVID-19 symptoms

  

  Iran-HRM – Political prisoner Payam Shakiba has been denied access to proper medical treatment despite contracting Covid-19 at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. The activist was arrested on January 3, after apearing before the Implementation Unit of Evin Prison’s Court, and was transferred to the prison to start serving a 13-month prison sentence. In September 2021, Shakiba was sentenced by Branch …

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• 27 January

  Iran’s 40 year legacy of executing athletes

  

  Iran-HRM – In stark contrast to developed countries where athletes are honored, their situation in Iran is way below the minimum international standards. The Iranian regime ruling Iran mistreats, arrests, and executes Iranian athletes. In the regime’s dark record of human rights violations, there are numerous cases of executing athletes and national champions. No regime in human history has committed …

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• 27 January

  Iranian press calls direct talks with US a ‘trap’

  

  Al-Monitor – After Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian opened the door for the possibility of direct Iran-US talks if there is a “good deal,” Iranian and Western media outlets have been rife with speculation. The Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, even weighed in with a tweet on the possibility of direct Iran-US talks. However, shortly …

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• 26 January

  Call the Houthis What They Are — Foreign Terrorists

  

  gatestoneinstitute.org – Following last week’s Abu Dhabi attack, Biden said he will consider reversing the decision. That would be the right move and he should do it immediately. Biden’s moves were a classic example of the failure of appeasement. Inevitably, the Iranian ayatollahs were not won over by these and other US placations. Instead they have become increasingly hard-nosed, demanding …

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• 26 January

  Scientific Report: Governance, not Climate Change, the Root Cause of Iran’s Water Bankruptcy

  

  Iranwire – A recently-published report examining decades of water resource management in Iran has made the most convincing argument yet that the political structure in Iran – not global warming, sanctions or the behaviour of Iranian citizens – is what’s stopping the country from resolving the water crisis. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Sustainability, University of Maryland researcher Mehdi Ketabchy’s Investigating the Impacts …

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• 26 January

  Taliban Tight-Lipped Over Iranian-Born Activist’s Murder

  

  Iranwire – The bullet-riddled body of Saadi Khaledi, a Kurdish political activist and vocal critic of the Islamic Republic, was found on Saturday, January 22 in Afghanistan’s Baghlan province. He was buried in Kabul days later. His family told IranWire they are convinced the Iranian regime was behind the killing. The plot to assassinate Khaledi was initiated on January 20. A car …

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• 26 January

  ‘Get Under the Table’: Guards’ Sadism at Shapur Detention Center

  

  Iranwire – Prison Narratives is a collection of reports based on the testimonies of current and former prisoners. The narrators are both prisoners of conscience and people who have been detained for “ordinary,” non-political crimes. They talk about their lives in prison and guide the reader through the environment and the people they encounter. This report is from Shapur Detention Center, a …

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• 26 January

  Dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi sentenced to prison and fine

  

  Iran-HRM – Toomaj Salehi, a dissident rap artist said that a court has handed down a fine and six months suspended imprisonment for him on charges of “insulting the leadership and propaganda against the regime.” He did not elaborate on his sentence in a tweet he posted on January 24, but wrote that his prison sentence is suspended for a …

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• 26 January

  Hostage Benjamin Briere’s “Price” Raised as Judge Imposes Eight-Year Prison Term

  

  CHRI – The manner in which an Iranian judge sentenced French national Benjamin Briere to eight years imprisonment is “against the law,” a member of Briere’s legal team told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). “The way this case was handled makes it clear that Briere is a hostage in Iran whose fate is tied to how much Iran can extract from …

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• 25 January

  Iran’s Palestinian Proxy: Jihad against Israel and America

  

  gatestoneinstitute.org – The Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second largest and hugely influential group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, does not believe that the conflict with Israel is over Jerusalem, settlements, borders, checkpoints or Palestinian prisoners. Qattati’s article shows that PIJ and its masters in Tehran consider not only Israel as the “enemy,” but the US too. This …

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• 25 January

  The Houthis Must Be Relisted as a Terrorist Group

  

  gatestoneinstitute.org – Attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to the poverty-stricken people of Yemen appear to have been blocked by the Houthis themselves, as well as by the United States, which has withdrawn support for Saudi Arabia, while giving the Houthis a free pass. The Houthi strategy, it appears, is to use the dire living situation of the civilians under its …

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• 25 January

  Senior U.S. Envoy Leaves Negotiating Team Trying To Revive Iran Nuclear Deal

  

  RFL/RE -A senior U.S. envoy working to revive the Iran nuclear deal has left the negotiating team amid a report of differences of opinion on the way forward as the attempt to restore the deal intensifies.Richard Nephew is “no longer serving” as deputy special envoy for Iran, a senior State Department official said in a statement e-mailed to RFE/RL on …

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• 25 January

  Iran Will Consider Direct Nuclear Talks With U.S. For ‘Good Agreement,’ Hints At Prisoner Swap

  

  RFL/RE — Iran says it would negotiate directly with the United States in ongoing nuclear talks aimed at reviving the moribund 2015 nuclear accord with world powers if a “good agreement” can be reached. Speaking at a press conference in Tehran on January 24, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian rejected reports that Iran and the United States are directly negotiating in …

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• 25 January

  Campaigner Welcomed Home After Years in Prison

  

  Iranwire – Civil rights activist and political prisoner Atena Daemi was finally released on Monday, January 4 after seven and a half years of arbitrary detention. Pictures of the 33-year-old embracing her family were widely shared on social media last night. Daemi’s sister Ansieh posted a video of her climbing the stairs to embrace her shocked mother and father, clutching a bouquet …

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