Khamenei Urges Iranians To Receive Covid Booster Shot

In a letter 650 activists said the hunger strike has raised awareness about the conditions of the Iranian prisoners of conscience and garnered support by many human rights organizations from inside and outside of Iran.

The letter urged the prisoners to end their strikes as reports indicate their health is deteriorating.

Shakila Monfared is being held in Qarchak Prison, also known as Rey Women Prison, while Hamid Haj-Jafar Kashani, Sina Beheshti, Mohammad Abolhasani, and Saeed Tamjidi are in Great Tehran Penitentiary, aka Fashafuyeh.

They started their hunger strike four weeks ago to protest neglect by prison authorities and the death of poet and political prisoner Baktash Abtin, who succumbed to Covid-19 complications after he was denied timely treatment by officials at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

Tamjidi, one of the prisoners who was arrested during the November 2019 nationwide protests, along with his fellow hunger-striking prisoners, was beaten by guards and medical staff when they were feeling sick and taken to the prison infirmary in late January.

Earlier in January, a young political prisoner, Adel Kianpour, who was on hunger strike to demand a fair trial died in detention without receiving any medical care in the Sheiban prison in the southwestern city of Ahvaz in Khuzestan province.

Last week, former deputy Majles Speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar suggested to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to put an end to the embarrassing political impasse in Iran and allow strong political parties to compete for parliamentary seats.

Conservative politician and former lawmaker Hossein Kanani Moghaddam said in an interview with Nameh News website that the June 2021 election was probably Iran's last Presidential election and the current political system headed by a president is likely to be replaced by a parliamentary system that elects a prime minister from among the members of parliament.

Moghaddam agreed with Bahonar that Iran's current political system needs a revision. Earlier, Bahonar had suggested that Khamenei should allow forming an assembly to revise the constitution or order a referendum on constitutional changes. The idea, however, was first put forward by Khamenei himself in 2011 when serious differences emerged between him and -then- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Moghaddam said that more than three decades after the last revision, it is now time to reconsider it and give more opportunities to political parties.

The first revision of the assembly in 1988 was done shortly before Khomeini's death to prevent discord among the politicians after his death. It appears that the call for changes and the debates about how to make them follows the same rationale today.

Reformist politician Mahmoud Mirlohi agreed in an interview with ILNA, that the revision called for by Bahonar means a shift from the presidential system to a parliamentary one. Reminding that the first revision of the Constitutional Law was done under the first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, Mirlohi said that the Constitution needs a revision at least once every 10 years. However, he noted that reformists and various conservative groups might have different ideas about such a revision.

The idea could also be a solution to prevent a post-Khamenei crisis of leadership when the new leader would be possibly not as powerful as Khamenei and might face a challenge by a popularly elected president. In a parliamentary system the head of the government would have a weaker position than a president and can be voted out by parliament.

Iran International TV analyst Morad Veisi wrote in a February 6 tweet that while a majority of Iranians favor a secular government, calling for constitutional changes will lend further legitimacy to the dictatorship of Iranian Shiite clerics.

Meanwhile, in an article in Khabar Online on Monday, Columnist Mohsen Mandegari characterized the call for constitutional change as "a dangerous plot" and wrote that what has so far prevented such a revision is the divide between the ruling hardliners and reformists who have been largely pushed out of the core. The ruling conservatives are going to have the upper hand in a constitutional assembly.

Former lawmaker Mehrdad Lahouti also said that the situation is not ripe for attempting a revision of the constitution because a parliamentary system depends on strong and organized political parties, which Iran lacks.

On the other hand, lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai, a member of the Executives of Construction Party agreed with Bahonar that Iran needs a parliamentary system with two chambers., and Abolghasem Raoufian, the leader of the Islamic Iranzamin Party opined that the constitution is not the word of God, so it can certainly be changed.

Based on the current constitution, the members of a constitutional assembly should be determined by the Supreme Leader. After the assembly ratifies the changes, the Leader will call for a referendum to ratify the changes.

In a letter to speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf), the 61 complained that their motion had been “withheld” too long. They insisted any vote should be “transparent” and announced their own votes would be.

Mohammad-Hossein Asafari, a signatory, argued in Khabar Online that the parliament's presidium was obliged to call a vote on any motion backed by at least 50 lawmakers.

None of the 66 signatories was from the small reformist minority. Asafari said that opponents of the motion feared being taken to task by constituents or by rival candidates in future elections. He suggested many parliamentarians were particularly concerned they might be seen as voting against pay increases demanded by employees that the financially hard-pressed government cannot afford.

Many lawmakers might also be concerned that constituents can find out that they vote against their own campaign promises.

But Asafari said “transparency” was nonetheless just as important in parliament as in ministries, the judiciary, and the over-150 state councils that regulate in various areas. "Some of the regulations ratified by them can potentially be a source of economic rente (privilege resulting from undue influence) for certain groups," he alleged.

The term "Vote Transparency Motion" was used in 2017 when the reformist Mohammad-Javad Fathi proposed to amend parliament's procedural regulations but was unable to persuade the conservative-dominated presidium to allow a parliamentary vote despite supporters arguing that Article 69 of the Constitution ruled out secret ballots other than in emergencies, and required parliamentary sessions to be “open, and full minutes of them made available to the public.”

They also said transparency in voting would allow people to evaluate the performance of their representatives and hold them accountable and would also reduce corruption.

"The parliament is the wrong place for the lawmaker who is not brave enough to take responsibility for his vote," Fathi told Tabnak news website back then. The presidium registered a diluted version of the motion, raised by Hossein-Ali Haji-Deligani, in 2018.

But this motion took over two years to reach the parliamentary floor, where it was defeated in February 2021 as the 153 of 234 members present voting in favor was just short of the required two-thirds majority of those present.

That motion called for voting records to be announced unless, in extraordinary circumstances, a motion to the contrary was brought by 15 lawmakers and passed by a simple majority of those members present.

Hacktivist group Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice) sent the videos along with some files and classified prison documents to Iran International on Monday to prove they also hacked the computers of Ghezel Heassar prison located in the city of Karaj some 20 kilometers northwest of the capital Tehran.

The video shows security guards' reactions as their camera feeds were being cut off.

The documents received by Iran International include a list of hundreds of prisoners who were arrested during the November 2019 protests and their charges.

Many were sentenced to long term prison sentences and lashes on charges such as taking photos from the protests, parking their cars where the protests were held, having PDF version of forbidden books in their phones, or shouting slogans against the leaders of the Islamic Republic.

Another document, attributed to the judiciary and signed by Tehran’s deputy prosecutor Mir-Mostafa Seyyed-Ashrafi, was about proposed strategies to counter trials and tribunals about Iran’s human rights violations that were held in Europe, including the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK.

The document contained details about the Stockholm trial of Hamid Nouri (Noury) as a judge and torturer in the 1988 wave of prison executions, and the Iran Tribunal about the mass executions of the 1980s in The Hague, as well as Iran Atrocities Tribunal that probes the 2019 protests that were the bloodiest in Iran’s history.

The document said although the verdicts of such trials are symbolic and non-binding but they can pave the ground for the arrest of Iranian officials abroad, adding that during the tribunals there were calls for President Ebrahim Raisi’s arrest for his role in the mass executions.

The document also mentioned the Albania-based opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and rights activist Masih Alinejad as evidence that the United States is also involved in these tribunals “behind the scenes.”

Last week, the group had also interrupted a website for the online streaming of Iran’s state television and broadcasted a video with a strong opposition message, calling on people to come out to protest.

Edalat-e Ali also released a “highly confidential" document on Twitter Wednesday, which was apparently the minutes from a November meeting of IRGC's ‘Livelihood-Based Security Crises Prevention Taskforce,’ saying the political situation in the country was dangerous.

The group had released a similar media package from security cameras of Evin Prison in August 2021 and claimed responsibility for hacking several Iranian government entities in the past three years.

Bennett made the remarks a day after the two leaders spoke on the phone at length.“President Biden conveyed his unwavering support for Israel’s security and freedom of action, emphasizing his administration’s full support for replenishing Israel’s Iron Dome system,” said the White House readout of the call. Iron Dome is a surface-to-air defense against short-range missiles and shells.

Bennett portrayed US assurances as far wider. “I was happy that he (Biden) clarified explicitly that Israel will maintain its freedom to act in any situation, which is true, whether or not there is a deal... It’s important in relation to Iran.”

Israeli governments have opposed the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA, and have supported US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

With Vienna talks due to restart this week, Israel's national security advisor Eyal Hulata said Monday the “danger in returning to the nuclear deal and losing the tools for the US to force a ‘longer and stronger’ agreement, as the Americans call it,” was “imminent.”

Hulata, a former head of external intelligence agency Mossad due in Washington Tuesday to meet US national security advisor Jake Sullivan, said Israel needed to “prepare for every scenario, whether there is a return to the [nuclear] agreement or not”.