Senior Clerics Warn Iran’s Government About Widespread Corruption

The spokesman of the airport, Javad Salehi, however, rejected the reports of a cyberattack, saying the incident that created long queues of passengers at the airport’s terminals was caused by a technical glitch.

Emphasizing that penetrating the system was impossible, he said the technical issue was due to a problem between the online and offline servers of the system.

Salehi claimed the airport system is not connected to the Internet so it cannot be attacked or hacked, saying the system is based on a very secure intranet.

Colonel Mohammad Haydari, the manager of the airport’s Aerial Border Control, said the incident caused a brief delay of about 15 minutes in flights.

Also on Saturday, an Iran Air jetliner, which departed from Tehran for the Iraqi city of Najaf, had to make an emergency landing in the central city of Esfahan due to a technical failure. It was the third such incident of the airliner in about a week.

On Thursday, a largescale cyberattack by an Iranian hacktivist group calling itself ‘Uprising till Overthrow' targeted over 5,000 surveillance cameras and 150 websites and online services of Tehran Municipality, deactivating the cameras and putting anti-regime content on the websites.

Hossein Shariatmadari said in an interview with Fars news, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, that several sabotage operations against Iran's nuclear facilities and assassinations of the country's nuclear scientists have been carried out using information gathered by Mossad and CIA spies under the cover of IAEA inspectors.

He referred to a 2015 article by Joshua Rovner from the Brookings institute that had said, “Not only will intelligence agencies benefit from inspection reports dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, but they will be free to explore other areas of Iran’s scientific and associated industrial infrastructure.”

Criticizing the recent visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi to Israel ahead of the IAEA Board of Governors’ meeting, Shariatmadari said the UN watchdog must explain whether Iran is dealing with the agency or Israel in the nuclear issue. 

Grossi was in Israel in advance of a meeting of the IAEA board scheduled for June 6-10, set to discuss Grossi's report saying that Tehran has failed to give satisfactory responses to agency queries over its nuclear work before 2003. On Friday, Iran described the visit as one of the "Zionist" plans against the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The Israeli premier last week issued documents from 2004-05 purporting to show that Iran used confidential IAEA files to mislead agency inspectors. This fueled reports that the United States or European states might move a resolution critical of Iran at next week’s meeting.

Following a report from the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency this week expressing dissatisfaction at Iran’s answers to queries over its pre-2003 nuclear work, the US and E3 – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – have been discussing moving a resolution at the 35-member IAEA board meeting June 6-10.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian Friday that Moscow was in “definite opposition” to such a move The Iranian foreign minister told Lavrov that such a resolution would contradict the diplomatic process wherebyTehran and Washington exchanged notes over the past two months through Europeans.

Echoing a Chinese view expressed Thursday, Lavrov said that such a resolution would have “no positive impact” and that “issues of cooperation between IAEA and Iran should be resolved within IAEA’s technical path.”

Over the past year, the US and E3 have held back from moves critical of Iran’s co-operation with the IAEA so as not to undermined negotiations in Vienna over reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which the US left in 2018.

But questions over Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear work, and alleged lack of transparency over it, were recently revived by documents from 2004-5 released by Israel purporting to show Iranian efforts to hoodwink IAEA inspectors using information gleaned from purloined agency documents. This has blurred the distinction between the supposed ‘technical’ issues dealt with the agency and the ‘political’ process of JCPOA renewal.

‘Shrinking’

The administration of President Joe Biden, which came to office committed to re-joining the JCPOA as a means to gain cap Iran’s nuclear program, has insisted that not all US sanctions put in place by the previous administration of President Donald Trump contravene the 2015 agreement. Reports have suggested the 2019 listing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ is a particular sticking point.

Joseph Borrell, the European Union foreign affairs chief, tweeted Saturday after a phone-call to Amir-Abdollahian that while the chance of reviving the JCPOA was “shrinking,” it could still be done “with an extra effort.” Borrell wrote he would “stand ready any time to facilitate a solution to the latest outstanding issues.”

US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said May 31 that the JCPOA revival was “absolutely within reach” and that the US would continue efforts to revive the deal as long as this held out clear non-proliferation benefits. But Iran’s accumulation of uranium enriched to 60 percent, the most serious violation of its JCPOA limits since 2019, has strengthened domestic criticism of Biden, both from JCPOA critics and from those arguing Biden needs urgently to revive the agreement.

Price Friday cited Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking with Oman’s Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr al-Busaidi to thank him for efforts to mediate both over the current truce in Yemen and to discuss Iran.

Ayoob Entezari, who held a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Tehran’s Sharif University, died last week with some reports mentioning food poisoning as the cause of his death, Iranian and Israeli media reported on Saturday. He reportedly took part in several projects at the Yazd Institute of Technology.

The circumstances surrounding his death are shady as some people on social media say the Iranian scientist was killed and Mossad is also mentioned in some reports as being responsible but no official source has yet spoken out about his death.

The reports came a day after Iran confirmed the death of another colonel from the Quds Force, Ali Esmailzadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the second in two weeks from the unit which allegedly oversees terror operation abroad.

Iranian government and IRGC media said that Col. Esmailzadeh died “in an incident in recent days” at his home without mentioning any details after Iran International quoted sources in Iran as saying that the IRGC killed him over suspicions of espionage. Officials of the Revolutionary Guard told Esmailzadeh’s family that the reason for his death was suicide.

He was a close colleague of Colonel Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei, the acting commander of the elite Qods Unit 840, who was earlier shot dead behind the wheel of his car outside his home in Tehran on May 22 by two gunmen who fled the scene on a motorbike.

In an exclusive interview with CBS News on Friday, Sharghi’s wife and two daughters said they have requested a meeting with Joe Biden "numerous times," including as recently as ten days ago, but has so far not received a response from the White House.

"Really what we would like is to sit in front of the president and tell our story and beg him — because he is the only one that can make the decision to bring Emad and the other hostages home," said Bahareh, Emad's wife.

"We really hope that the administration puts patriotism over politics and brings these Americans home," said Emad's 25-year-old daughter Ariana. 

In April, which marked four years since Sharghi’s detention, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley called on Iran to release Sharghi and stop its policy of holding people as political pawns.

The 56-year-old businessman has been sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of espionage and collecting military intelligence but had attempted to flee while on bail awaiting the result of an appeal.

Foreign governments and human rights organizations have accused Iran of detaining foreigners and dual nationals on trumped up charges to use them for getting concessions from Western countries.