Iran's Security Forces Deploy In Esfahan Prior To Expected Protests

Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani was speaking to Defa Press, news agency of the armed forces, two days after he told the Basij Digital Content Creation event in Tehran that a “people's network in cyberspace…means that the Iranian nation has deployed technology in the battlefield.”

In September Soleimani said that an “era of hit-and-run in cyberspace" was over and that the Basij needed a more systematic approach.

Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which supervises the Basji, in a speech Wednesday warned Basij members of that the Islamic Republic is under attack and cultural “war…happening inside our houses and in the mobile phones in our pockets and our hands.” He called on them to "enter the battlefield."

Organized trolling has been for some time a feature of Iranian politics, helping to spread untruths and unsubstantiated allegations. Iranian authorities, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei refer to state-sponsored social-media activists as "cadets of the soft war.”

Iranian activists often allege that the IRGC and other state bodies sponsor organized trolls on social media to anonymously threaten, attack and discredit dissidents and to disseminate fake news.

The Basij has around 5 million members, according to leading academic authority Saeed Golkar, with around 200,000 cadres and special Basij, who can act as a paramilitary support to police and security forces. Thousands of members are active on social media to counter news, information and critical opinions disseminated on social-media including by Persian-speaking media abroad.

Besides maintaining extensive network of social media activists, the Islamic Republic also devotes an unknown measure of resources to control the Internet, block thousands of websites and ban foreign social media platforms such as Facebook, You Tube and Twitter. Almost every Iranian has to resort to VPNs and other tools to have access to blocked sites.

A recent study published by the Media Quarterly in Iran shows that the daily readership of Iranian newspapers and the audience of state television have plummeted dramatically during the past two years due to various factors including the loss of public trust, censorship and greater popularity of online media and social media as a source of news and information.

The Telegram messaging application, for instance − which is blocked but accessed through VPNs and anti-filtering software − has over 49 million users in Iran with at least 150 channels having, over 1 million subscribers. Instagram, which is not blocked, has a similar number of users. Many Iranian politicians and their supporters, including former principlist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as a range of activists, have popular channels on Telegram and Instagram accounts.

Reformist daily newspaper Sharq on Wednesday, November 24, quoted administration insiders as having said that Khandouzi is likely to be the first cabinet minister to be dismissed by Raisi. Individuals from inside the cabinet office say Raisi last week warned Khandouzi about the situation in Iran's stock exchange.

They said the president is likely to dismiss two of his cabinet ministers, but they did not name the second minister. Raisi had Twice warned Khandouzi on October 31 and November8 about problems in the operations of the Tehran Stock Exchange. On Wednesday, the moderate conservative news website also opined that "Khandouzi is no longer standing on solid ground."

Hardliners who now control both the executive and the legislature, promised people to act effectively and solve the long-running economic crisis that in reality was triggered by US sanctions. Now, they are quick to blame a single minister for the worsening situation while the sanctions remain in place, denying the government most of its foreign currency income.

The previous government encouraged people to invest in the stock market where government assets were offered at inflated prices. After a huge bullish run in 2020, the market dropped more than 30 percent, leaving many small investors without their savings.

It appears that it is not only Raisi who is unhappy about Khandouz's performance. The Iranian parliament (Majles) has at least twice warned Khamndouzi about the shortcomings in his performance and has in one case summoned him to Majles to explain the chaotic situation of Iran's capital market. Lawmaker Hossein Ali Haji Deligani, however, said that instead of explaining his policies or trying to solve problems, he started to lecture the lawmakers about macroeconomics.

Subsequently, the parliament warned Khandouzi that he does not have much time to solve problems. However, members of the parliament have said that they do not wish to impeach Khandouzi although they insisted that it is essential that he changes his policies. Khandouzi then published a two-page roadmap for Iran's economy in the next two years but critics reminded him that his roadmap is nothing new and that he had offered the same to the Majles in August.

Also during the past week, Khandouzi wrote an open letter to Raisi in which he complained about an unfavorable situation that prevented the implementation of his plans. In the letter, Khandouzi mentioned 15 reasons why Raisi's order about selling government assets to make up for the country's huge budget deficit was impractical. However, he did not mention that it was Khandouzi himself who had suggested the sale of assets in the first place. A leading economic website, Tejarat News, later described Khandouzi's plan as "a failed project."

On Wednesday, Raisi, who was apparently annoyed by "making the internal affairs of the cabinet public,"criticized Khandouzi for doing so.

Khadouzi, appears to be in serious trouble. Until a few months ago, he was an academic criticizing the Rouhani administration's policies and claimed to have the cure for all the country's ailments. He found his way to the parliament in February 2020. His ambitions led him to abandon the position he had won and join the Raisi administration as Economy Minister, although like most Iranians he knew that this was the most difficult job in the country.

Now, in his early 40s, he is out of his university lectern where his former colleagues spurn his economic policies, and out of the Majles, where his friends have turned into staunch foes, and he is likely to be out of the administration where he hoped his ambitious plans would take him even higher in the Islamic Republic's top political echelon.

The report by an association composed of mostly Canadian families of Flight PS752 victims challenges Iran's official findings that blamed a misaligned radar and an error by the air defense operator for downing the plane shortly after it took off from Tehran's Airport in early morning on January 8 2020. All 176 people aboard were killed.

Iran for three days denied that the airliner was shot down and claimed it was an accident. After it acknowledged that two missiles fired 30 seconds apart had brought the plane down, it refused an independent investigation and tried to withhold information from Ukraine and Canada.

Iran's civil aviation body, which had responsibility for investigating the crash, said the operator mistook the jet for a missile at a time when tensions were high between Tehran and the United States. Hours earlier, Iran had fired ballistic missile at US bases in Iraq and was probably expecting a response.

A Canadian investigation in June which condemned "those responsible" but found no evidence that the tragedy was premeditated, but critics say that the country’s top leadership decided to leave the civilian airspace open at a time of high military tension on that day..

"It is the belief of the association that high-ranking officials of Iran are responsible for the downing of Flight PS752 and not just a handful of low ranking...members as per the claims of the government of Iran," the association report said.

"At the highest levels of military alertness, the government of Iran used passenger flights as human shield against possible American attacks, by deliberately not closing the airspace to civilian flights," it said.

Association president Hamed Esmaeilion told a virtual news conference: "We think that the downing of PS752 was a deliberate act."

The Iranian foreign ministry was not immediately available to comment.

The association said it based its report on public information and recordings of "high-ranking Iranian officials" among its sources and was prepared with assistance from aviation and legal experts.

It is not an official air crash accident report, which is designed to focus not on liability but how safety can be improved in the future.

The report said the missile system operator was experienced and should have been able to distinguish the jetliner from a cruise missile.

The trial of ten lower-level military personnel opened in Tehran on Monday. Many families in Iran refused to recognize the trial and protested outside the courtroom.

A Canadian government spokeswoman said the country is analyzing the report, which calls for an international investigation. Many of the victims killed in the crash were Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly tweeted on Tuesday that the country "stands with Ukraine" in its decision to not take part in PS752 hearings at a military court in Iran, calling for "transparency in the criminal proceedings."

With reporting by Reuters

Protesters, many of whom have refused to leave their tents for over two weeks, said on social media the attack occurred at 3:00 AM while many other farmers and their supporters were gone. According to these reports, security forces then broke the metal frame of the tents anddrove a loader over the site to remove the remains. During the attack, protesters say, security forces shot blanks and tear gasto disperse them.

One of the protesters posted a video report that has been widely circulated on social media and shows a large groups of riot police advancing towards the camp in the dry bed of Zayandeh Roud river. The citizen-journalist speaking in the video says protesters have been ordered to leave and alleges that security forces set fire to the protesters' tents. "We only came here for water," he says.

In the video, a member of security forces is heard speaking into a loudspeaker who repeatedly asks protesters to evacuate the site "now that there are good agreements reached [regarding the water problem] and all [authorities] have offered you support".

State-run broadcaster (IRIB), however, in a report Thursday morning alleged that "opportunists" some of whom were arrested by security forces were responsible for burning the tents. The report claimed that the "opportunists" had prevented farmers from dismantling their tents after a statement issued by the farmers union which announced the end of their protest.

"They set fire to our tents," a protester says in a second video that shows smoke rising from burning tents in a distance. "They are Kuffar… they stole our water, now these [security forces] have come to their aid".

A protester is heard in the video comparing the security forces to Shimr, the villain in the Battle of Karbala between the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Husayn, and Yazid I in 680 AD. The Imam, his men, and his family were killed in the battle near the river Euphrates from which they were not allowed to get water and their tents were set on fire. The story of Karbala is an important foundation for the Shiites who mark the occasion every year as a great injustice toward ‘true’ Muslims.

"What are they going to do about Friday," he says.

Farmers have invited residents of Esfahan to join them in the dry riverbed on Friday where thousands of ordinary citizens joined their protest last Friday.

Authorities who blame this year's drought for the exacerbation of water shortage have kept promising to take action to resolve the long-standing shortage and to compensate farmers who have not been able to sow autumn crops.

Promises of water for Esfahan have fueled protests in Shahr-e Kord, the capital of the neighboring Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari Province, where people have been also protesting the mismanagement of water in the past four days.

The recent water protests took place as many Iranians marked the second anniversary of the bloody November 2019 unrest. In 2019 protests that quickly spread across the country were heavy-handedly suppressed by the security forces who killed hundreds of unarmed people. After two years, no one has been accountable, and the protesters have been accused of serving foreign interests and destroying property.

The newspaper of the state broadcaster quoted “an informed source” saying a cyber intrusion had disrupted the monitoring of water levels and general conditions in dams over the past two weeks.

The source said that employees exchanging data about dams had lost Internet-based communication, including applications like WhatsApp. The source dismissed denials issued by information network officials.

A security official at Iran’s ministry of energy also denied the claim, telling the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) that authorities had restricted certain employees’ access to the information system.

Iran has been the target of many cyberattacks and other sabotage since mid-2020, frequently attributed to Israel. Nuclear, military and industrial targets have all been hit with disruption, including explosions and fires.

In October motorists faced disruption at gas stations across the country when the payment system for cheaper, rationed gasoline broke down. It took nearly a week to fully restore the service. Iran’s railroad network was hacked in July, apparently as part of a wider strategy to target infrastructure.

Some cyberattacks have been claimed by unknown dissident groups, including the hacking and release in July of troves of security-camera footage and documents from Tehran’s Evin prison, including guards beating prisoners and confidential letters from and to the prison. The chief of Iran’s prisons was replaced in November, in a decision at least partly related to the hacking.

On Wednesday, the website of Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, Friday prayer leader in Mashhad and father-in-law of President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi), was hacked, according to the cleric’s communications chief. Alamolhoda is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative in Khorasan-Razavi, one of Iran’s largest and most important provinces.

Shargh newspaper in Tehran reported that the websites of the Assembly of Experts, a constitutional body tasked with choosing the Supreme Leader, was disrupted Wednesday by a cyberattack. The reformist newspaper also reported that the website of Tehran province courts had been disrupted, although it was not clear this was due to a cyberattack.