Exclusive - IRGC Barring Former Oil Officials From Leaving Iran

According to a report published by Haaretz on Tuesday, six Israeli drones struck the base in Mahidasht region near the western city of Kermanshah in a covert operation that may be the motive for Tehran's Sunday missile attack on Erbil, along with the recent airstrike near Damascus that killed two IRGC officers.

The report said the mid-February attack caused major damage to the Islamic Republic’s drone fleet, with some estimates saying that hundreds were destroyed.

Until recently, neither country had gone public about years of covert drone war between the two archrivals.

Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen, with links to both Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic, reported the Israeli attack for the first time on Sunday, saying the bombing of the Kermanshah drone site prompted the retaliatory attack in Erbil, which claimed it targeted a secret Israeli intelligence base.

Press TV quoted the secretary general of pro-Iran Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba as saying that the Kurdistan region authorities “provide Mossad agents with refuge” which makes it allowable for any party to target the “Zionist spies.”

Some Iran-backed sources said the Erbil attack had several casualties but according to official reports no one was killed but the missiles damaged some residential buildings.

Hojjat Kermani expressed hope on Tuesday about her release within the next few days, saying, "I am hopeful that we will have good news soon”.

Negotiations over the release of the imprisoned charity worker who’s been detained by Iran since 2016 have seen progress, Kermani said.

UK MP Tulip Siddiq tweeted, “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been given her British passport back.” “She is still at her family home in Tehran. I also understand that there is a British negotiating team in Tehran right now,” she added.

The news can be seen as a sign that prisoner swap negotiations underway in parallel with the Vienna nuclear talks with Iran might have moved in the right direction.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in February that a prisoner swap was on the agenda in parallel with the nuclear talks.

Britain is also understood to have agreed to repay a £400 million debt it owes Iran relating to an abortive deal to export British armaments in the 1970s.

Iran is holding several Western prisoners in what human rights organizations have dubbed hostage diplomacy, accusing the Islamic Republic of holding dual-nationals as bargaining chips for money or leverage in negotiations with the West, something Tehran denies.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe served five years in prison after being taken into custody at Tehran's airport in April 2016 and convicted of plotting the overthrow Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters and rights groups deny.

Bahonar, who served in parliament (Majles) for 28 years as a conservative, acknowledged that there is a gap between the revolutionaries' slogans and realities on the ground. To fill this gap, it is now time for the revolutionaries to confess that they have made too many mistakes. We need to take what Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called "the second step," and that is what I call "the second republic," Bahonar told Jamaran website in an interview on March 13, republished by other media in Iran.

Bahonar does not hold any office now as ultra-conservatives and neo-conservatives have swamped the parliament and the government, but he is an influential voice.

The second republic is about a roadmap. He said the Islamic Republic has borrowed democracy from the West and it is based on the people's vote. We cannot separate "Islamic" from "Republic." But unfortunately, we have not adopted democracy in full. Iran desperately needs three or four real and powerful political parties.

Bahonar had first raised the issue of constitutional change and establishment of political parties in early February when he called for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s support. He proposed his idea of "the Second Republic" and stressed that Iran needs to facilitate the rotation of elites to reach this goal and it should set up strong political parties.

The quintessential insider, however argued that political parties should exist and compete but not stand against the regime, adding that "you cannot be part of the system and at the same time act as an opposition to the same system. No regime can allow political parties to clash with the values and principles of the system."

Iran’s clerical system has to over-arching principles: The supremacy of religious laws as interpreted by those clerics who are in power and the un-elected office of the Supreme Leader.

Asked if the presence of a supreme leader is against the party system, he said, "No. The Supreme Leader determines the general policies of the regime," while the parliament and the parties can decide about the day-to-day matters.

However, Bahonar's idea contradicts the fact that Khamenei has weakened the parliament and the government to such an extent that in fact he makes all the decisions and leaves the legislative and the executive branches to be accountable for the fallout.

The most prominent case is the issue of Iran’s foreign policy. Khamenei has stood behind an offensive regional policy, a controversial nuclear program and anti-Western foreign polcy, leaving presidents to struggle with an economy often besieged by sanctions.

Bahonar said when there is no party system, several prominent surgeons and engineers get elected, but we do not need doctors and engineers at the Majles. What we need are individuals who can plan for the country's future and such people are normally trained by political parties.

Asked what the regime’s biggest problem is, Bahonar said: People's participation. "When you have a 48 percent turnout in elections, that means 52 percent have a problem with the way the country's affairs are being managed. They have economic and political problems. I cannot believe we have reached this point in terms of political participation in 40 years."

Meanwhile, he insisted on the need for a change in the constitution to save the Republican nature of the regime and to make things work. "We can amend the constitution and call for two rather than one parliament. Or we can increase its term to 6 years. Only the Supreme Leader needs to agree with this change."

Hackers posted on the website photos of leaders of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Maryam and Masoud Rajavi, as well as a photo of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei with a large red X, drawn on his face.

The MEK website claimed "rebel groups" that support it had defaced 62 portals, 77 servers, 280 computers of the ministry and wiped out 30 terabits of dataincluding backup files of all servers of the ministry in Tehran and in several provinces. The report said the ministry sent all employees home until further notice due to the systems damage.

While Masoud Rajavi is widely thought dead, the MEK insists he is merely in hiding waiting his return to Iran. The MEK allied to Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iran war and helped the Iraqi dictator put down the 1991 risings in Iraq, when tens of thousands died.

In 2003, MEK, according to the United States army’s official account, fought with Iraqi troops against the US-led invasion, but despite Iraqi calls for the group to be held accountable over human-rights violations the US relocated the MEK in 2013 from bases in Iraq to Albania, where they run a well-financed media and social media operation.

In January, a MEK spokesman said a ten-second hacking of several television and radio channels of Iranian state broadcasting might have been done by supporters in Iran. The hackers put up pictures of the Rajavis, and one of Khamenei in a gun sight. The Iranian leader was badly wounded in 1981 in one of many bombings attributed to the MEK.

On February 1, the web-based streaming platform of IRIB, Telewebion, was hijacked in the middle of a live broadcast of the Iran-United Arab Emirates soccer match, broadcasting calls to rebellion as “the regime’s foundations are rattling.”

In August 2021, a mystery hacktivist group calling itself Tapandegan (Palpitations), previously known for the 2018 hacking electronic flight arrival and departure boards in Mashhad and Tabriz, released security camera footage from Tehran's Evin prison. Tapandegan said the images came from hackers called Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice) and were being circulated to draw attention to prisoner abuse.

In October 2021, gas stations in Iran were hit by an attack disrupting payments, leading to long queues for two days that prevented customers using the government-issued electronic cards for subsidized fuel. ‘Predatory Sparrow’ claimed responsibility, but Iranian officials blamed outside forces, widely taken to refer to Israel.

The MEK was listed by the US from 1997 to 2012 as a ‘foreign terrorist organization,’ but was subsequently removed from the list. The group has cultivated links with many politicians in the US and Europe, paying large sums for attendance or speeches at MEK rallies.

Iranian state television said an Israeli officer first contacted a neighbor of an employee of the uranium enrichment plant and managed to recruit them both after paying them in cash and digital currency.

Revolutionary Guards security agents were monitoring the network and were able to break it up before the sabotage could be carried out, arresting an unspecified number of people, the television said.

The state news agency IRNA said a new agency called Revolutionary Guards Nuclear Command, which it said had been set up to oversee defense and security matters at nuclear installations, was involved in the operation to stop the planned sabotage.

Iran has accused Israel of carrying out several attacks on facilities linked to its nuclear program and of killing its nuclear scientists over the past years. Israel has neither denied nor confirmed the allegations.

Iranian security agencies in the past have claimed arrests of spies and “terrorists” but have not produced any evidence and or follow up information about trials and possible sentences.

Israel confirmed reports late Monday that several websites, including its government site, were disrupted by a "broad cyberattack". The Iranian IRGC cyber army has attacked Israeli websites in the past.

With reporting by Reuters