HRW Condemns Activist's Sentence, Asks World Powers To Press Iran

The Friday Prayer sermons were focused on Yemen on January 28, with clerics representing the Supreme Leader Ali Kamenei calling for an end to the Saudi attacks on Houthi held territories in Yemen.

A representative of Yemeni students in Iran even delivered a speech in Tehran before Friday Prayer leader Ahmad Khatami took the stage to reiterate the Islamic Republic’s public policies about the war in Yemen.

Iran supports the Houthis – officially known as the Ansarullah movement – and reportedly provides them with weaponry and military assistance in their fight against the Saudi-led coalition.

Following the prayers on Friday, people were led to the streets for a demonstration rally against Saudi Arabia.

The contents of Friday Prayer sermons delivered by Khamenei's local representative in various cities are dictated by two state bodies close to Khamenei's office, officially known as "The Policy-making Council for Friday Prayer Imams" and the "Friday Prayer Headquarters," both dominated by hardliner clerics.

Saudi Arabia has recently intensified its attacks in Yemen following two drone and missile strikes by Houthis on coalition partner the United Arab Emirates, in which three people were killed and some fuel tankers exploded.

A coalition airstrike killed about 14 people in a building in Yemen's Houthi-held capital Sanaa, the deadliest since 2019.

Ali Salehabadi, Central Bank governor, told the Seventh Islamic Financial Conference January 17, that the Money and Credit Council had approved such a currency. Mehran Moharramian, a Central Bank deputy governor said January 18 that a pilot phase would begin soon as the bank considered “several potential impacts of the new technology on the state, citizens and economic indices.”

Khamenei's December fatwa ruled that "buying, selling, and producing digital currencies" should follow Iranian laws and regulations, though he did not use the term halal (‘permitted’). Several Shiite sources of emulation in Iran − including Ayatollahs Hossein Nouri-Hamedani, Naser Makarem-Shirazi and Hossein Vahid-Khorasani − have instructed followers to avoid crypto-currency dealings.

While crypto-currencies are digital, the term “digital currency” is usually reserved for those that are centralized and regulated by an entity such as a bank. ‘Crypto-currencies’ are usually taken to mean those that are decentralized, with their regulations governed by the majority of those using them.

Use of both crypto-currencies and digital money – the terms are often confused – has been useful for Iran in facing United States ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, introduced in 2018 and threatening punitive action against any third party dealing with Iran’s financial sector.

A study published last May showed around 4.5 percent of all global bitcoin mining, worth then around $1 billion, took place in Iran. Crypto-currencies have played some role globally in the declining use of the dollar, with Russia-China dollarized trade falling from 90 percent in 2015 to below 50 percent in early 2020.

"By recognizing the industry, officials hope that they can use crypto-currencies in foreign trade to circumvent [US] sanctions," Donya-ye Eghtesad economic daily wrote January 22.

But as yet Iran has no laws on digital currencies, despite some media urging parliament to address the matter urgently. Some parliament members in July proposed a bill that would require the government to ban all digital-currency payments in Iran other than those nationally regulated.

To what extent ordinary people would trust a digital rial and use it would be an issue, especially that the currency itself is extremely weak and volatile. It has lost its value eightfold since 2017.

In May, the then central bank governor, Andolnaser Hemmati, announced that a primary version of a digital rial had been developed “in form of a stable crypto-currency… anchored to the existing traditional paper rial.”

Arash Ghanbarzadeh, a crypto-currency market expert, told Donya-ye Eghtesad that the “crypto-rial” would probably be centralized and regulated by the central bank, and would therefore not offer opportunities to miners to create it in the same way that they mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Since cryptocurrencies are exchanged outside the regular banking channels in decentralized manner, they are a good way to evade control by governments. As a result, they have been used for illicit trades and evading sanctions, as well as normal exchanges and online trading for goods.

Digital currencies can be controlled by their creators. For example, the Iranian central bank can have knowledge of transactions in digital rial while outsiders might not be able to trace them. A digital rial can also ease trading across borders with neighboring countries such as Afghanistan, since no banking transactions or paper currency exchanges would be necessary.

According to a statement released by the Department of Justice on Thursday, Saber Fakih, 46, a UK citizen pleaded guilty Tuesday in a federal court to violations of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations while another indictment was unsealed charging four other individuals with related offenses arising from the same scheme.

The UK man worked with Canadian citizen Bader Fakih, a United Arab Emirates citizen Altaf Faquih and Iranian nationals Alireza Taghavi and Jalal Rohollahnejad to ship a counter-drone system and an Industrial Microwave System (IMS) from the United States to the Islamic Republic in 2017 and 2018.

The IMS is a high-powered, microwave-based directed-energy weapon system and technology that can be used to take control of an aerial drone.

The indictments allege that Rohollahnejad and Taghavi presented themselves of Rayan Roshd Afzar Company, which has been linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

DOJ, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Commerce cooperated in this case to prevent US technology with military applications from falling into the hands of the Iranian government.

Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler Jr of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division said, “For over 40 years, Iran has continuously attempted to obtain sanctioned items that could be used against Americans or our allies”.

Iran utilizes complicated procurement networks to acquire sensitive dual use items for potential military purposes, said Special Agent in Charge Nasir Khan of the Department of Commerce.

A police source said an out-of-use Iraqi Airways plane was damaged in the attack.

Iraq's state news agency reported, citing the country's aviation authority, that there was no disruption to travel.

The US air base, known as Camp Victory, is located around the perimeter of Baghdad's civilian airport.

Rocket attacks have regularly struck the complex in recent years and are blamed by US and some Iraqi officials on Iran-aligned Shi'ite militia groups who oppose American military presence in the region.

On January 5, Katyusha rockets hit Iraqi military bases hosting US forces near Baghdad's international airport and west of the Iraqi capital.

A series of attacks this month, some of which the United States blames on Iran-aligned militia groups, have targeted bases or installations hosting US military and diplomatic personnel but have caused no US casualties.

Iranian political and military leaders have repeatedly demanded all US forces to leave Iraq and have vowed that their militia proxies will accomplish the goal. They have also promised revenge for the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani who was killed in a US drone attack at the Baghdad airport in January 2020.

Reporting by Reuters

US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Foreign Minister Ahmed Nasser al-Mohammed al-Sabah made the remarks during the fifth US-Kuwait Strategic Dialogue in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

The two sides discussed threats in the region, including the interference of the Islamic Republic in the domestic affairs of its neighboring countries, and reviewed ways to strengthen their defense and economic partnership.

Kuwait reportedly stopped issuing visas to Iranians for business trips in December.

“The United States appreciates Kuwait’s support for a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement, because it’s the most effective way to ensure that Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon”, Blinken said.

He also expressed appreciation for Kuwait’s close coordination through venues like the GCC Iran Working Group to stop Iran’s destabilizing actions.

Blinken and al-Sabah said in a statement that the US and Kuwait “stand together against Iran’s destabilizing influence” in the region.

They underlined the importance of a stable Iraqi government free from malign foreign influenceand reiterated the need for full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254 (2015) to end the Syrian conflict and bring lasting stability there.