Telling Truth A Crime In Iran, Journalist Tells New York Award Ceremony

Thousands of people gathered on the dry bed of the iconic Zayandeh Roud river and on the 400-year-old bridges linking the two parts of Esfahan to demand action by the government. Friday’s protest was one of the largest demonstrations in the city in recent years, coming on the anniversary of the November 2019 bloody protests, which carries the risk of unrest spreading to other cities.

Government-controlled media surprisingly published photos of the protests but tried to say that the event is not a "political protest", and reported that Vice-President Mohammad Mokhber will visit the city on Friday and deliver a speech.

Zayandeh Roud – which starts from the Zagros Mountains, whirls through Esfahan and disappears in wetlands east of the city – has been completely dry most of the year for two decades. Esfahani farmers who have been intermittently protesting since 2017, have camped in the city for nearly two weeks as their livelihood has been destroyed by the dry river.

Although a long-running drought has brought many regions in Iran and in the Middle East to a point of crisis, matters have gotten much worse in Iran where people blame government mismanagement, harmful dam building and politically motivated diversion of rivers have devastated agriculture and drinking water sources.

Iranians who also have to cope with a serious economic crisis and 50-percent inflation rate see government mismanagement as the main reason for all kinds of issues.

Protesters on Friday continued chanting slogans, as they have been doing all along. They chanted "Flowing Zayandeh Roud Is Our Indisputable Right," a play on the slogan "Nuclear Energy Is Our Indisputable Right," often chanted at state-sanctioned rallies. "Give Back Our Zayandeh Roud, Give Back Esfahan Its Breath.”

There has also been land subsidence in the city and at the city airport due to water scarcity. Photos posted to social media show cracks in the ground around the airport, and hollows and cracks in and around Esfahan’s historical buildings and monuments.

This has brought the issue more forcefully to Esfahan’s urban residents who have been upset over the dry river. Every time the authorities allow a little bit of water to flow into the river, people congregate along its banks and celebrate.

In June, water protests erupted in the oil-rich Khuzestan province that ended with the forceful intervention of police and the Revolutionary Guard. More than ten people were killed and hundreds detained.

Fararu, a prominent pro-reform website Thursday published an article by Mohammad Mehdi Hatami, the website's economic correspondent, that Iran is thinking of using its influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to build a highway to connect Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea via Iraq and Syria.

Iran has even given a name to the highway: The Resistance Highway. However, Fararu's economic correspondent argued that this is not a task to be accomplished easily as it can change the geopolitics of the region.

Fararu also noted that that Iran is now seriously thinking of building the highway as Iran and Saudi Arabia's rivalry over supremacy in the region is almost at its peak.

Iranian military commanders and hardline politicians have never concealed the Islamic Republic's interest in the Mediterranean region. Many of the pro-regime media and officials take it for granted in their rhetoric that Iran needs to have or already has a foothold in Syria's Mediterranean shores.

Iran is revealing the ambition at a time when US sanctions have ruined its economy, its influence in Iraq and Syria is debatable partly for the same reason and its influence in Lebanon is effectively challenged by Saudi Arabia.

Iranian website Khabar Online in September 2019 quoted IRGC news sourcesas saying that "Iran's access to long-range ballistic missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers has left no safe place for US warships from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean." The website added that "Foreign players, particularly the United States have received Iran's message that the Mediterranean region is within reach of Iran's missiles."

In late October, Defa (Defense) Press, a news outlet linked to the Iranian military forces, quoted Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a former commander of the IRGC, who is currently Khamenei's top military adviser, as saying: "Iran's strategic depth is stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea."

Even a year before that, IRGC's acting commander in Lorestan province, General Habibollah Tavakoli saidthat Iran's Western borders are no longer next to Iraq, but they are located in the Mediterranean Sea where Tehran's enemies have been stopped.

All these claims about Iran's strategic depth are in defiance of sanctions and international isolation that have paralyzed and shrank Iran's economy, Fararu noted in an unusually candid tone for a publication operating under Iran’s strict state control. The website’s editor, Mohammad Hossein Khoshvaght is said to be a relative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

This comes while other regional players are also eying a new emerging situation in the region. Fararu says the emergence of the Taliban and the recent meeting between the United Arab Emirate Emirate's Foreign Minister and Syrian leader Bashar Assad are the signs of this emerging situation.

Iranian officials often complain that despite spending blood and treasure in Syria, the Islamic Republic is not benefitting economically from its presence there and Russians control the lion’s share of influence. There are speculations that the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad might try to reduce Iran’s presence.

Nevertheless, according to Fararu, the plans for building the highway are outlined by a think tank at the Imam Sadeq University in Tehran where most of the Raisi Administration's cabinet ministers come from. However, it is difficult to differentiate between practical ideas and wishful thinking, particularly because the same think tank has failed to solve any of Iran's problems.

The US also sanctioned six Iranian officials for their roles in the alleged plot.

Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Musa Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad Kashian 27, are each facing charges that they obtained confidential US voting information from at least one state election website.

They are also accused of sending threatening emails to intimidate voters and sending a video that contained disinformation about purported election infrastructure vulnerabilities.

The indictment alleges they also gained access to a US company's computer network in a plot to disseminate false claims about the election, but their plot was foiled thanks to intervention by the FBI and the company, which the indictment did not identify by name.

Secreatry of State Antony Blinken said, "Designation of Iranian cyber actors represents the collective efforts of the US Treasury, State Department and the FBI. The US government took decisive action against those seeking to interfere with the sanctity of our elections."

“This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the electoral system and to sow discord among Americans,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen.

Two weeks before the November election, top intelligence officials in then-President Donald Trump's administration alleged that both Russia and Iran were attempting to interfere in the election and had gained access to some US voter registration data.

Report by Reuters

Zahedi who lived in Switzerland was 93 years old and was born into a powerful family in 1928 in Tehran. His father, Fazlollah Zahedi, was a general who served as prime minister and played an instrumental role during political upheaval in Iran in 1953 when he led a military coup that brought Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi back to power.

Zahedi who attended an American School in Beirut continued his education in Utah State University and graduated as an agricultural engineer. After returning to Iran, he became a senior official in the Point Four assistance program launched by US President Harry S. Truman in 1949.

Zahedi served as ambassador in Washington from 1960-1962 and again from 1973 until the 1979 revolution. He was foreign minister from 1966-1971.

In the final years of his life Zahedi adopted controversial positions, including his praise for Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani who was killed by a US drone attack in Baghdad in January 2020, ordered by former president Donald Trump.

Saeed Khatibzadeh, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Thursday that the resolution by the General Assembly's Third Committee was "based on weak and scattered international votes" and alleged that many countries voting in favor had been subject to "various political pressures and threats".

The spokesman called on Canada to accept responsibility for its complicity in Israeli “crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people.”

Iran often responds to allegations of human rights abuse by claiming the double standards of the accuser. When asked in June about his role in the 1988 prison executions in Iran, President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) accused the Mujahideen-e Khalq of violence, the opposition group whose members made up the bulk of those executed in 1988.

Human Rights Watch recently said the Canadian government, which refuses to accept the International Criminal Court considering alleged Israel crimes in occupied territory, supported “draconian military rule over Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.”

The resolution by UN Thrid Committee on Iran expressed concern at the “alarmingly high frequency" of the imposition and carrying-out of the death penalty, including executions based on forced confessions or for crimes that do not qualify as the most serious crimes, were overly broad or vaguely defined. It passed at the UN General Assembly committee Wednesday 79-32, with 64 abstentions. The Iranian representative successfully requested a recorded vote.

The General Assembly allocates to its Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee, commonly referred to as the "Third Committee", agenda items relating to a range of social, humanitarian affairs and human rights issues that affect people all over the world.

The MEK immediately called for “the clerical regime, including [Supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei, Ebrahim Raisi, and Gholam-Hossain Mohseni Ejeii [the judiciary chief],” to be “prosecuted by international tribunals.”

Torture and cruel treatment

The resolution expressed serious concern at the imposition of the death penalty against those under 18 at the time of the offence. "Torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," which the resolution said could include sexual violence, were also highlighted.

The resolution called for the release of anyone detained for exercising human rights and fundamental freedoms, including anyone detained solely over peaceful protests, including any in November 2019 and January 2020.

Iran was urged to "end reprisals against human rights defenders, peaceful protesters and their families, journalists and media workers covering the protests, and individuals who cooperate or attempt to cooperate with the United Nations human rights mechanisms."

Truth and reconciliation

Zahra Ershadi, Iran's ambassador and deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, in a statement read to the UN Third Committee, called the resolution "insincere and indefensible political." She said it “replete with factual errors…and unmasks the deliberate hostile policy of incitement to Iranophobia.”

Ershadi accused Canada of genocide over the 215 bodies of indigenous children unearthed in May at one of Canada’s largest residential schools for native Canadians and in its policies of forced assimilation. She said the wider West has been remained silent.

Canada’s delegate at the UN assembly said Wednesdaythat Canada has established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canadians were "horrified and ashamed" at how Canada had behaved and promised remedial action. A Canadian federal court in September upheld a 2016 ruling ordering the government to compensate indigenous children forced into foster care.