Iran's IRGC Intelligence Chief Removed In Major Move

During an interview with a New York Times columnist on June 21, Bennett said when Iranians “hit us through proxies or directly, they will pay a price in Iran.” 

Describing what he calls his “Octopus doctrine,” he said Israel hits Tehran at the head of the octopus rather than its tentacles that have spread across the region.

Bennett added, “It turns out these guys are more vulnerable than they seem. The Iranian regime is rotten, corrupt — and incompetent.”

Bennet accused Tehran of “violating fundamental requirements” of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and seeking to strike Israel directly using unmanned aerial vehicle.

Late in May, the New York Times quoted an Israeli intelligence official as saying that Tel Aviv has informed American officials it was responsible for the killing of Colonel Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei -- a member of IRGC’ Quds Force in Tehran, adding that the Israelis killed him as a warning to Iran to halt the operations of a covert group within the Quds Force known as Unit 840, tasked with abductions and assassinations of foreigners around the world, including Israeli civilians and officials. Israel later denied the country took responsibility for the assassination.

Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, which is part of the international affairs department of the judiciary, said on Thursday that the verdict was issued by Branch 55 of the Tehran Legal Court over Washington’s violations of international obligations through its support and assistance for Israel in committing “terrorist acts against nuclear scientists.”

IRNA said the lawsuit was filed by “the martyrs' families” over the physical, psychological and financial damage that they endured due to the killings.

According to the court ruling, $2.150 billion was due to the material and moral damages inflicted on the plaintiffs, and the same amount has been considered as punitive measures. The ruling, as reported by state media did not name the plaintiffs.

The move can be a belated reaction to many civil lawsuits in the United States seeking damages for Iran by those whose family members were killed in various acts of political violence, in which Iran had a direct or alleged role.

Until 2016, US courts had awarded plaintiffs a total of $56 billion to be paid by Iran or Iranian entities. A few more billions of dollars have been awarded since 2016.

Some have argued, that this large amounts of pending judgements against Iran is a factor in Iran’s calculations to reach a nuclear agreement to lift US sanctions. The monetary judgements could be a factor in deterring companies from investing in Iran or doing business with it even after sanctions would be lifted.

The defendants in the case are 37 American individuals and entities, including the US government, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the US National Security Agency, former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Assistant Secretary of State Brian Hook, and former Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter.

But the defendants have no assets under Iranian jurisdiction to be seized, and the move by the Tehran court, under the government’s political control, could be a bargaining ploy or simply a propaganda act for domestic audiences.

The US has played an effective role in “establishing, strengthening and supporting Israel as a terrorist regime,” and each year donates hundreds of millions of dollars in direct economic and military support to the regime, the court ruling read.

Over the past years, several Iranian nuclear scientists have been the target of assassinations, which Iran blames on Israel. Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists — Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Ahmadi Roshan — were assassinated, while another, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an attempted murder. Roshan was the head of a department at the Natanz nuclear facility and was assassinated by a magnetic bomb.

In the latest case, Iran blamed Israel for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, said to be Iran’s top nuclear man, in November 2020 in a highly complicated operation east of the capital Tehran involving a remote-controlled one-ton automated weapon that had been smuggled into the country in pieces.

Iran has also accused Israel of sabotage operations against its nuclear facilities including an explosion in April 2021 that inflicted major damage to the Natanz uranium enrichment site.

Israel has never officially taken responsibility for any of these assassinations and sabotage operations but also has never denied involvement.

The report says Iran's steel production declined 17.6% year-on-year in May to 2.3 million tons.

In April also, the figure plunged 20.7 percent to 2.2 million tons, according to this report.

Iran is the 10th largest steel producer in the world just behind Brazil. China is the undisputed producer with close to 100 million tons of monthly output. Production of all the top ten suppliers declined in the first 5 months of 2022, except India that had an increase of 6.5 percent. But Iran had the highest drop. An 8.7 percent reduction in China could be due to strict Covid lockdowns.

Production loss in Iran, however, was not related to the pandemic. There were no lockdowns in 2022, as cases dropped dramatically after a vaccination drive. Iran's Shargh daily newspaper quoted Iranian steel industry officials in mid-May as saying that Russia was pushing Iran's steel exports lower by dumping its products in Asia after losing its Western markets due to sanctions after its invasion of Ukraine.

Reza Shahrestani, a member of the Board of Directors of Iran Steel Producers Association told Shargh Daily that Russia is dumping its steel products by giving 15 to 20% discount: Iran's traditional markets including China, South Korea, Taiwan and Afghanistan are buying Russian steel now.

At the same time, Tejaratnews Daily reported that Iran's direct reduced iron (DRI) export plunged to zero in the first month of the current fiscal year (March 20-April 21).

After the media raised concerns, Omid Ghalibaf the spokesman of Iran's Ministry of Industry, Trade and Mines claimed that the country's steel exports increased by 10% during first two months of the current fiscal year (March 20-May 21) to 1.06 million tons.

However, this figure and the growth in steel exports claimed by the spokesman are questionable because Iran usually exports above 33% of its steel output to international markets. The country produced 4.5 million tons of steel during the period mentioned by Ghalibaf's. Therefore, Iran should have exported at least 1.5 million tons of steel, not 1.06 million tons.

The decline in Iran’s crude steel production in April and May impacted its overall number for 2022. While its production level was normal until end of March, the reduction in that month turned its balance sheet negative for 2022. It produced 11.4 million tons of raw steel in January-May 2022, about 10.8% less than the same period of 2021.

Amid United States' sanctions on Iran's oil exports, steel is one of the main exports earning foreign currency for the governmetn, which faces a serious financial crunch. A report this week revealed above 50-percent inflation for Mya-June compared to the same perios last year, with food prices jumping more than 80 percent.

In a message from the notorious Qarchak Women’s Penitentiary to the PEN Melbourne which on Tuesday held a gathering in solidarity with Iranian imprisoned writers, human rights defenders Narges Mohammadi and Alieh Motallebzadeh, warned about the social, political, and economic situation in Iran.

“As a religious dictatorship and anti-women regime, the Islamic Republic has created numerous crises for the country and its people. Extensive and systematic economic corruption of the regime, plundering the wealth of the nation, and costly international policies of the regime have paralyzed the economic foundations of the country and social and political suppression has weakened the civil society,” they said in their message.

They stressed that Iranian civil society activists have for decades fought to establish lasting democracy and social justice. “We expect you and the international community to support the efforts made by the Iranian civil society and its activists in any way possible,” they wrote.

Mohammadi and Motallebzadeh, both of whom are cofounders and chairs of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, say judicial authorities have been holding them at Qarchak Penitentiary with ordinary criminals including those serving time for murder and drug trafficking.

Health and sanitary conditions at Qarchak, located forty kilometers to the south of the capital Tehran, are very poor in comparison with prisons such as Evin where most political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are usually held.

The message was read at the event along with works of Iranian. literary figures. In the past few years PEN Australia has held several events in solidarity with Iranian writers.

The gathering also heard a message from imprisoned journalist Keyvan Samimi, head of the banned Association for Freedom of Press, sent from Semnan Prison, about 210 km from Tehran. The 74-year-old Samimi is currently the oldest political prisoner in Iran.

Iranian authorities have increased their pressure on civil society and political activists in recent months. They often harass or arrest family members of activists to pressure them to silence them.

In several tweets on Wednesday blogger and freedom of speech activist Hossein Ronaghi said security agents had stormed his father’s house and arrested his father and brother for a few hours. Ronaghi said their electronic devices were confiscated. “You have my address and know where I am. I am not going to escape or leave. Why are you harassing my family then?” he asked.

“In a country like Iran, death comes very cheap to intellectuals, freedom-loving people, and those who fight for freedom of expression … We, with total knowledge of the risks, will emphasise our obligation, which is to fight for freedom of expression and against censorship. But we expect all our friends, writers, intellectuals, and those who fight for freedom of expression around the world to support us,” prominent dissident Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin said in an interview with PEN Sydney in June 2020.

Abtin died in January 2022 after contracting COVID-19 for the second time at Tehran’s Evin Prison. PEN International said it held the Iranian authorities fully responsible for Abtin’s death.

The meeting of the House of Commons subcommittee was held on Tuesday and attended by several political and human rights activists – including the spokesman of the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims, Hamed Esmaeilion.

Kasra Aarabi, a senior analyst in the Extremism Policy Unit at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, who specializes in Iran and Shiite Islamist Extremism, said that currently Revolutionary Guard officers have key administerial roles in the government of President Ebrahim Raisi, which seeks to consolidate the Islamic Republic’s grip across the Middle East. “Raisi is mandated to purify the regime,” he said, adding that the IRGC is the force behind this change.

He mentioned Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi – an IRGC general wanted by Interpol for his suspected role in the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Argentina that killed 85 people and injured over 300 – and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian – for his alleged affiliation with IRGC’s Quds Force – as examples of such appointments.

“Domestically, the IRGC is preparing to unleash a new wave of Islamization on the Iranian people to eradicate Western and Persian aspects of the Iranian society,” he said, noting that the majority of Iranians want a secular government, manifested on the streets with protests “growing in size and scale.”

“The 1999 unrest took place in three cities and seven people were killed. In 2009, protests were in 10 cities and around 100 people were killed. Iran’s protests in November 2019, however, saw protests in over 100 towns and cities and as many as 1,500 civilians were killed in just a few days,” he added. “Canada can and should support the Iranian people,” he concluded.

Author Maral Karimi said social instability in Iran is going to get worse in the foreseeable future, highlighting that “Canada’s commitment to democracy within its borders and beyond make it a moral and political imperative to support the organic and democratic movements” such as protests by Iranian teachers, drivers, laborers, and other sectors of the society.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an academic previously jailed in Iran for over two years, also recounted her ordeal at the hands of IRGC in Islamic Republic’s prisons, as well as gross violations of human rights towards Iranian political prisoners.

Ali Ehsassi, a member of the House of Commons, underlined that the Revolutionary Guards are responsible for many horrific developments in the Middle East and the repression of civil society in Iran.

Another member of the House, Arnold Viersen, also criticized the government for not designating the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization and not taking any specific action to hold it accountable for its crimes, including the intentional downing of the Ukraine Airlines Flight PS752.

The airliner was shot down by two air-defense missiles fired by the IRGC on January 8, 2020, as it took off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport.

Esmaeilion, who lost his wife and daughter in the plane crash and has been campaigning for justice for the families of the victims ever since, said that 30 months have passed since the IRGC committed this “heinous crime over the skies of Tehran”, criticizing “Canada’s tepid and cautious approach to pursuing justice against the government of Iran.”

Not only has the Islamic Republic refused to cooperate to shed light on the incident, but also “it has systematically lied and misled to successfully impede the emergence of the factual matrix that led to this crime,” he said.

"Apart from deliberately obfuscating [the investigations], the Iranian government and the IRGC have subjected the relatives of the victims to crushing psychological pressure,” Esmaeilion said.