New Covid Variants To Dominate Iran As Hospitalizations Triple – Epidemiologist

Responding to allegations that test questions were leaked and sold for huge amounts of money, Abdolrasoul Purabbas, head of the higher education ministry’s evaluation organization (Sazeman-e Sanjesh), swore in a program broadcasted by the state-run television (IRIB) on Saturday that corruption in holding the exams was not true.

Social media users posted images of test booklets half an hour after the exams started to prove that they had leaked out, but Purabbas insisted that nobody could have accessed the test questions. According to him 480 participants who had attempted to use digital equipment to receive the answers to the multiple-choice test questions from outside were arrested.

Around a million young men and women sat for the annual university entrance exams known as Concours from Wednesday to Friday to compete for available places in universities and colleges across the country but some of them, apparently, already had the questions and knew the correct answers.

A Telegram social media channel on Friday published the test questions half an hour after the exam started as proof that they had leaked. Many claim that the questions, and answers, had been sold to those who could afford paying between $10,000-20,000 to get placement in top universities. Those who fail, or are not accepted in their preferred universities, have to wait for another year to take the Concours again.

The figures mentioned in local media are huge sums in Iran where the middle class has become impoversihed due to years of 40-50 percent inflation. The scandal has further tarnished the image of the clerical government, which has already lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of the public.

The Concours (from French, meaning competition) which is held only once a year across the country is designed to test a candidate's ability to study in college, with questions based on Iran’s high-school curriculum. It is recognized by all Iranian state universities as well as the Islamic Azad University which has branches all over the country.

Allegations of corruption in holding the Concours are not new. This year authorities said they had taken extra measures, including shutting down the Wifi and mobile internet around the exam locations during the several-hour-long exams. Candidates were also searched before the exam and signal detectors were used to ensure they were not using digital equipment such as mobile phones or Bluetooth to cheat.

Several lawmakers have demanded a probe into the recurring issue of leakage and selling of Concours questions and graduate school entrance tests which are also held at a national level.

A member of the parliament’s education committee, Mehrdad Veys-Karami, told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) on Saturday that there are organized criminal groups that help candidates to cheat in return for huge sums. It is not clear who leaks the questions and how payment is exchanged.

Veys-Karami urged the authorities to take precautions such as frequent moving of those involved in the process of preparation and distribution of the test questions to prevent any chances of fraud.

The Concours is held in five major groups (mathematics and physics, experimental sciences, humanities, arts, and foreign languages). All participants are also required to sit for tests in Persian literature, Islamic studies and culture, as well as Arabic and English languages.

The supreme cultural revolution council decided last year that from this year the score in the Concours would make up 40 percent of the final score to be admitted to university, with the remaining 60 percent coming from the high school average grade point.

In response to a query by Iran International, the spokesman of the Belgian Federal public service of Justice, Edward Landtsheere, said on Sunday that the draft law, slated to be reviewed by the foreign affairs committee of parliament on Tuesday consists of three bills that stipulate a prisoner exchange agreement with India, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as well as Iran. 

Critics say the bill’s approval would pave the way for the repatriation of Asadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat serving a 20-year sentence in Belgium for “attempted murder and involvement in terrorism” for his role plotting to bomb a gathering of the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) near Paris in 2018.

The ministry’s response seemed an evasive answer to a question if Assadi will be freed as a result of the proposed bill. Obviously, the bill is not intended for a specific person but it could end in repatriating the convicted former diplomat to Iran where he will most probably go free.

Although some activists, such as Oxford-based human rights lawyer Kaveh Moussavi, are of the opinion that the bill will not lead to Asadi’s release because such a move will be against a dozen international treaties to combat terrorism, there are Belgian politicians, such as representatives Theo Francken, Michael Freilich and Darya Safai who have warned of the dangers of the deal. 

On Saturday, A US lawmaker also warned of “immanent dangers” of such a deal.

Mario Abdo Benítez said in a press conference on Friday that a “large number” of Venezuelan-Iranian crew of the plane immobilized at Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires over suspected connections with Iran's Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force have “links to international terrorism.”

"Since Paraguay informed and alerted the authorities, they were able to make enquiries and we saw that a large part of the crew [made up of Iranians and Venezuelans] had links to international terrorism," he said. 

He added that one of the Boeing 747’s crew members had "even had an operation to change his face in Cuba,” admitting that the allegation is like something out of “a film.”

In June, Gerardo Milman, an Argentine lawmaker, told Iran International that Iranians aboard the Venezuelan plane planned “attacks on human targets.”

Contrary to Iran’s claim June 13 that the plane was not owned by an Iranian company and that any Iranians aboard were instructors, Milman said the pilot was “a senior official of Qods (Quds) force,” Tehran’s extraterritorial intelligence and secret ops outfit listed as a terrorist organization by the United States. 

Earlier in June, Paraguay's intelligence agency said Captain Gholamreza Ghasemi did not merely share a name with a member of the group but is in fact the same man.

The hacking group, reportedly affiliated with the Albania-based opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) group, said on Sunday that they put photos of the leaders of the group Massoud and Maryam Rajavi on the organization’s website.

The website of the organization, run under the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, is down at the moment, therefore it is not clear for how long it was displaying photos of the MEK leaders and slogans in support for the group. 

The hacktivist group said that it has also disabled six websites and systems, 44 servers and two internal administrative systems of the state organization. 

In a video released by the hackers, they claimed they have obtained 200,000 documents, including letters and directives from secret correspondence with the president’s office, identities of the organization’s employees abroad, and list of the incomes of its personnel. 

In early June, the group hacked into and deactivated over 5,000 surveillance cameras and 150 websites and online services of Tehran Municipality.

Last week, a hacking group called Predatory Sparrow targeted three of Iran’s major steel plants by a cyberattack, purportedly forcing one of them to halt production.

The Sunday cyberattack came a few days after Israel -- which is widely believed to have waged cyber war against Iran's nuclear facilities and other infrastructure -- confirmed that an Iranian hacker group has recently targeted several travel booking sites of an Israeli company and stolen personal information of more than 300,000 Israelis.

Mansour Haqiqatpur, a self-styled “principlist” or hardliner told ILNA that " We should allow people's hatred of Israel to manifest itself."

He added, “Whether we make agreements or not, our contradictions with Israel will remain in place. We certainly had problems with them and will continue to have,” the former member of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds (Qods) Force, turned politician said.

But what reflected the true thinking of hardliners in Iran, loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his ideology was Haqiqatpur’s statement that “If one day we come to feel we have no problems with Israel, that day will signify the decline of the Islamic Republic.”

Since its establishment in 1979, the clerical regime in Iran has kept one policy consistent, and that is its anti-Israel and anti-US ideology, the politician’s statement shows. On many occasions, Iranian officials have called for Israel’s destruction and have marshalled huge resources to build a network of militant allies and proxies to threaten the Jewish state. However, the domestic rationale for this policy is often not understood.

Khamenei almost in every one of his 1,800 speeches since assuming power in 1989 has used the word “the enemy”, meaning first Israel and then the United States. The concept of permanently facing an enemy or enemies justifies the perpetuation of an authoritarian political system that now increasingly resembles a totalitarian regime.

Haqiqatpur went on to say that “We should be ready for an all-out confrontation with soft power, semi hard power and hard power with Israel. The leader of the revolution [Khamenei] has announced a date for Israel’s fall and we should try to meet that deadline.”

A few years ago, Khamenei said Israel must be destroyed in 25 years and the government even set up a countdown clock in Tehran. Many Iranian make fun of the anti-Israel rhetoric and the clock, but the regime remains serious in repeating its threat.

Asked about what the Islamic Republic should do at this point, the former IRGC officer said that everyone should know Iran is in a cyberwar with Israel and all entities and institutions should reinforce their cyber defenses.

Israel is believed to have started a covert war against the Islamic Republic that intensified in July 2020 with a mysterious attack on its top=secret nuclear facility in Natanz where an explosion destroyed a building producing uranium enrichment centrifuges.

The attacks continued with the highly complex assassination of Iran’s top nuclear operative Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020, using a remote-controlled heavy gun near Tehran.

Mysterious attacks have continued against nuclear and other sensitive targets. Since May several Revolutionary Guard officials have been killed ot died mysteriously in Iran, prompting officials to accuse Israel of running a covert campaign.

This has led to an unprecedented reshuffling and firing of top-level intelligence officials, including the chief of a special force protecting Khamenei and his family. Top leaders have admitted that Israel has infiltrated Iranian government institutions and have vowed to retaliate by cyberwar and any other means.