Groups Urge Canada Not To Issue Visas To Iranian Rights Violators

Our reporters in Israel have learned from reliable sources that the Israeli military is preparing a month-long exercise to gauge its readiness to fight Iranian forces and proxies on its borders with Syria and Lebanon.

Iran maintains its Revolutionary Guard Qods (Quds) forces in Syria as well as large contingents of Afghan and other militias who have fought for a decade under Iranian command to defend Bashar al-Assad’s rule. But since at least 2017, these forces have tried to position themselves at the border with Israel to open a front, similar to Hezbollah on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Israel has repeatedly warned in the past five years that it will not tolerate the entrenchment of Iranian forces in Syria, specially near its borders. It has launched hundreds of air raids against suspected Iranian targets, weapons depots, and arms shipments in Syria and from there to Lebanon.

Iran International has also learned that Israel is planning to hold the military drills in May to prepare for large-scale conflict and to confront possible attacks by Iranian forces in case of an Israeli strike against Tehran’s nuclear installations.

Israel has repeatedly said that the Vienna nuclear talks between Iran and the West do not provide the assurance it needs for preventing Tehran from pursuing a nuclear weapons option. It has said that it reserves the right to deal with the Iranian nuclear program through its own means, which would be a military strike to derail Iran’s uranium enrichment and other aspects of the nuclear program.

In case of such a strike, forces commanded by Iran would most probably retaliate against Israel from Syria and Lebanon. This would be a convenient option for Iran, instead of direct missile attacks against Israel that could expand the conflict into a full-fledged regional war, possible involving the United States.

Israeli officials and media have been discussing the real possibility of attacks from Syria and Lebanon in case of a strike against Iran. In such a scenario, Israelis have hinted at large-scale retaliation not only against aggressor forces but also at targets throughout Syria, including Syrian government assets.

Israel holds Assad’s government responsible for whatever takes place in territories under its control.

Although relations between Israel and the Biden Administration are as close as ties former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enjoyed with Donald Trump, but in recent weeks there have been signs of more military coordination and contacts.

Hossein Shariatmadari, whose newspaper Kayhan is believed to reflect Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s views, was speaking at an event in Hamadan, northwestern Iran on Thursday, on the 1979 Islamic revolution anniversary. Reformist Etemad Online also quoted Shariatmadari as saying that anti-Americanism is in the nature of Tehran's Islamic regime.

The hardliner editor said that once upon a time Iran was weak but now it is powerful and all of Europe is within the range of its precision-guided missiles.

He added, that there is a perpetual battle between the Islamic Republic, which represents "real Islam" and the "arrogance" of the United States, which can only end if Iran's government gives up Islam or the United States its 'arrogance'.

During recent days, while the Islamic regime has been celebrating its revolution's anniversary, other Iranian officials have also made controversial remarks.

IRGC Commander Hossein Salami who is known for his outlandish remarks, said on Friday"No world power is capable of confronting the Iranian nation.

Earlier this week, when former nuclear chief Fereidoun Abbasi called on the United States to officially recognize Iran as a world power, social media users mocked him by calling his remarks "delusional boasting" and commented: "How can a country whose military budget is less than 0.5% of the rest of the world and has no air force, a naval force fit for the oceans and cannot have financial transactions with the world be a world power?"

In another development on Friday, IRGC General Ahmad Zolghadr who is in charge of maintaining the Capital Tehran's security said he knows that Americans believe that Shiites have a gene in their body, which boosts their zeal and the United States wishes to inject that gene into the body of its soldiers.

Boasting about Iran's military power, Shariatmadari said that Iran defeated the Islamic State group in Syria and reiterated that "If we did not fight ISIS in Syria, we would have been shining their shoes in Iran today." Iran, throughout its decade-old military involvement in Syria, has protected Bashar Assad by fighting the Syrian opposition.

Meanwhile, the firebrand editor appointed by Ali Khamenei claimed there were some 50,000 US military advisers in Iran before the 1979 revolution. This comes while according to 1979 news reports there were around 40 thousand Americans in Iran at the time, who were mainly working with international companies, including their family members.

Speaking on negotiations with world powers in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, Shariatmadari, a well-known opponent of the JCPOA and relations with the West, said that the talks are meant to lift the 1,500 sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States but none of those sanctions have been lifted yet.

During the past two weeks, while the Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and dozens of Iranian lawmakers called for direct talks with the United States, Kayhan and its editor opposed negotiations with the United States and called on the foreign Minister and Iran's security Chief Ali Shamkhani to repent for their support of direct negotiations with the US. Shamkhani wrote an apologetic statement and denied his support for direct talks, but the Foreign Minister ignored Shariatmadari and his newspaper.

On Friday, Iran's Police Chief Brigadier General Hossein Ashtari called on the parliament, the judiciary, and the ministry of justice for amendments to current laws.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf promised to consider it immediately and ordered a draft of amendments to be prepared.

The move to ease the use of firearms by police was prompted after a police officer was killed by knife stabs on his neck and body in a confrontation with a criminal in Fars province on Wednesday.

According to current law, police can use firearms in at least 10 situations, including for self-defense or defense of others. In such cases, officers should give verbal warnings before firing warning shot. Then they can shoot at the lower body, and if necessary, shoot at the upper body.

It is not clear which part of the law will be amended but many fear that it is can be used to let police use guns whenever they want, especially during protests that have been frequently taking place in Iran.

In the past, the government has shot protesters labeling them ‘thugs and criminals.’

In October 2021, the UN Special Rapporteur for Iran said that police often use lethal force against protesters and international human rights organizations have accused Iran of killing hundreds of protesters since late 2017, using military ammunition.

In a detailed article on Friday, IRNA again raised the issue of subsidies, this time the cheap energy the Islamic Republic has been providing to businesses and individuals for more than 40 years, costing the government hundreds of billions of dollars.

The ultra-conservative government of President Ebrahim Raisi that assumed power last August has been hammering on the issues of food and fuel subsidies amid United States sanctions that have drained its coffers. His administration is in a position to raise the issue, since ultra-conservatives are in full control of both the executive and the parliament, without fear of any organized opposition.

IRNA says that in total Iran paid almost $30 in indirect energy subsidies in 2020, as it sold gasoline, diesel, electricity and natural gas eight times cheaper to its people than minimum prices in the Persian Gulf region, which already has low prices.

The result was that compared to world total of $181 billion in energy subsidies, Iran was the biggest single provider with more than 16 percent of the world total. If we look at the breakdown, the government offered indirect subsidies of $5 billion in oil products, $12.5 billion in electricity and $12.2 billion in natural gas.

Iran’s share of global natural gas subsidies is 33 percent and for gasoline 35 percent.

A gallon of gasoline is sold to people for a little over 20 US cents, while in the Persian Gulf region bulk gasoline prices are over two dollars a gallon.

No one really can say why the government has kept selling energy so cheaply for the last 33 years, after wartime emergency ended when the Iraq-Iran eight-year conflict came to a close in 1988. The revolutionary Islamic government that came to power in 1979 promised free electricity and water to the population and then war broke out in 1980, which forced the new regime to guarantee the essential amount of food and necessities to a shell-shocked population.

After the war, as a new government somewhat liberalized the economy, no one seriously dealt with the problem of energy subsidies, although some occasionally raised the issue. But overtime the low rate for electricity and gas resulted in extremely high usage by consumers, to the extent that Iranian households have one the highest rates of gas consumption in the world.

Iran is third after Russia and the United States in per capita gas consumption, to the extent that as the holder of the second largest gas reserves in the world it is barely able to satisfy domestic consumption, with little left for export to Iraq and Turkey.

Still, the $30 billion spent to provide cheap energy cited by the government would be much higher if the Iranian currency had not lost its value eightfold since 2017. The subsidy amount converted into dollars is much less than the $45 billion mentioned a few years ago as annual energy subsidy cost. In 40 years, the total for energy subsidies would be more than one trillion dollars, a huge amount for a country that has lagged in investments into its oil and gas sector.

Although the Raisi administration seems to be more than willing to reduce subsidies, the regime as a whole is not ready for the possible political risks involved. In November 2019 when the government raised gasoline prices, unrest engulfed the country and ended with hundreds dead as security forces used military weapons to fire on protesters.

Zabihollah Azami-Sardoui, a member of parliament’s agriculture committee, told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) that Brazil was a suitable match as it needed petrochemical products, especially nitrogen-based fertilizers, and could in return supply corn, soybean meal, and meat.

Iran has expanded barter to circumvent United States ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, which threaten punitive action against any third party buying Iranian oil or dealing with Iran’s financial sector. Bartering oil for of imports animal feed and agricultural products has proved particularly viable.

Barter can be effective where there is a rough trade balance, but is less practical where trade is imbalanced. Azami-Sardoui said challenges in bartering were being overcome.

Some have criticized the practicalities of such arrangements. "We had not signed clear agreements with China for bartering,” Masoud Daneshmand, a business representative in Tehran, told ILNA in January. “We gave them oil and told them to pay in kind. In such circumstances, they give us all their inferior quality products including the pesticides that have caused so much damage to our agricultural exports.”

Daneshmand also took issue with an agreement to receive tea from Sri Lanka as ‘payment’ for a nearly decade-old $251-million oil debt. At least until US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions were introduced in 2018, Iranians were among the top ten drinkers of Sri Lanki tea.