Exclusive: Israeli Mossad Interrogated An IRGC Official Inside Iran

The Worldwide Baha’i Community said in a statement published on July 20 that Tehran has intensified its systematic campaign to suppress the religious minority in recent weeks. The persecuted Baha’is in July were citizens of Shiraz, Tehran, Yazd and Bojnurd, it said. 

According to the community, at least 44 Baha'is were detained, summoned to court, put on trial or given prison sentences, or had their homes searched in June.

Earlier in June, Radio Farda reported that 26 followers of the Baha'i faith, all of whom residing in the city of Shiraz in the southwestern province of Fars, were sentenced to 2-5 year in prison on charges of "conspiracy to disrupt internal and external security." 

The 1979 constitution of the Islamic Republic recognizes only Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Baha'ism, established as a new religion in Iran in 1863 by Baha'ullah, has always been deemed heretical by the Shia establishment and subject to intermittent bouts of political persecution.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has on several occasions called the Baha'i faith a cult and in a religious fatwa in 2018 forbade contact, including business dealings, with followers of the faith.

Baha'is, who number around 300,000 in Iran, say their rights are systematically violated and they are often harassed, forced to leave their homes and businesses, and are deprived of government jobs and university education.

State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday that “it was... striking to hear the supreme leader, in really no uncertain terms, essentially endorsing President Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.”

He said, “It was especially striking because Iran all this time had attempted to maintain a veil of neutrality," pretending to be opposed to the war. “It’s now clear that was entirely hollow.”

Price also said that Russia having to seek out UAV technology from Iran means that it does not have the indigenous ability to produce it because of the export controls and other measures that the US imposed, which indicates its isolation. “The fact that President Putin would need to run into the arms of one of the most heavily sanctioned, one of the most isolated countries in the world, I think, speaks to the dire straits Moscow currently finds itself in.”

Iran has a choice. It can continue to opt for a position of relative dependency on a country like Russia, or it can choose the path of diplomacy, and specifically it can choose to take up the deal that’s been on the table for some time now, to have an economic relationship with other countries around the world, Price said. 

Earlier on Wednesday, US defense officials as well as the head of US Central Intelligence Agency warned Iran against providing military drones to Russia.

Two days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s summit in Tehran with his Russian and Iranian counterparts during which both Moscow and Tehran urged Turkey against a new military operation in northern Syria, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said, "We exchanged ideas, but we never asked and we never ask permission for our military operations."

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told Erdogan that a new Turkish offensive would be “detrimental” to the region.

Highlighting Turkey’s disagreements with Iran and Russia over Syria, Çavuşoğlu said the two countries' support for the Syrian regime is unacceptable to Turkey. “What we say is important, what our president says is important," Çavuşoğlu said. 

He said Turkey had paused operations against the YPG/PKK in the east of the Euphrates because both the US and Russia had committed to clear them from this region, adding that “Since this has not happened so far, these terrorists have started to increase attacks against our own lands from there, as well as continuing the attacks against the Syrians, the opposition, our soldiers, and our police. What would the US do in such a situation now? What would Russia do?"

Turkey refuted Iraqi claims Wednesday that it had attacked a mountain resort in Zakho in northern Dohuk province, killing eight and wounding another 23 people. 

Turkey regularly carries out air strikes in northern Iraq and has sent commandos to support its offensives as part of a long-running campaign against outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militias. Ankara regards both as terrorist groups.

Following several postponements of the vote and a heated debate Wednesday, out of the 131 lawmakers present, 79 voted in favor while 41 rejected the treaty, and 11 abstained just after midnight. 

Critics fear that the treaty, which would permit Iranians convicted in Belgium to serve their sentences in Iran and vice versa, will pave the way for the release of Assadollah Assadi, a terrorist convicted for his role in a plot to bomb a gathering of Albania-based opposition group, Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) organization in Paris four years ago.

Several Belgian lawmakers shared concerns about why the treaty was rushed through parliament before the summer break, and said they were not able to consult enough external experts ahead of the vote.

Samuel Cogolati, a Green MP, said, “We had to be able to publicly express our reservations and deep concerns, and at the same time do our job as parliamentarians. We tried as much as possible to consolidate, to give guarantees for the rule of law, while ensuring the release of our Belgian compatriot in Iran.”

Meanwhile, Tehran has been holding Belgian humanitarian worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, in jail since February as leverage.

Belgium’s Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said on July the 6 that the assessment of the Belgian security service was that the failure to pass the bill would increase security threats.

Major Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, a Revolutionary Guard officer, was speaking in Mashhad in northwestern Iran, two days after the visit of Russia’s Vladimir Putin to Tehran, during which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei endorsed his invasion of Ukraine, calling it a “praiseworthy initiative.”

The United States has warned that Russia is trying to procure military drones from Iran to use in Ukraine, although Tehran has offered a half-hearted denial.

Bagheri said that the United States’ expenditure of “ten trillion dollars in West Asia” was fruitless and US power is on decline, as the world has entered “a new transition period.”

The top military commander’s remarks were yet another sign of a clear tilt in Tehran toward a policy of relying on Russia and China to defy the West. After almost 16 months of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, negotiations remain stalled.

Tehran, which is able to export more than 700,000 barrels of crude per day, despite US sanctions, is apparently counting on high oil prices and a rapidly expanding nuclear program to create a new reality.

President Joe Biden in his recent trip to the region pledged with Israel and Saudi Arabia never to allow Iran to produce nuclear weapons, but he still insists on following the diplomatic path to reach an agreement to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA and to put Iran’s nuclear program “in a box.”

However, his administration relaxed enforcement of US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump as it embarked on the diplomatic path in early 2021. China taking advantage of the reprieve found illicit ways to increase oil imports from Iran.

Bagheri claimed that Iran used “the superiority of opportunities to threats” to gradually destroy the “foundations of [US] maximum pressure.”

He also highlighted that Iran defeated “enemy plots” near its borders to create threats against the Islamic Republic. Tehran uses the term ‘enemy’ primarily to point at the United States, and often also at its allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

However, numerous attacks on Iranian nuclear and military installations and assassinations of key nuclear and military figures since mid-2020 point to a high degree of infiltration by what many believe is the Israeli Mossad. Tehran made significant personnel changes in its intelligence and counter-intelligence networks in June, after a high-profile assassination and other unexplained deaths among IRGC figures in May and June.

Nevertheless, Bagheri emphasized that the top priority of the armed forces to is establish deterrence. He told commanders of IRGC ground forces gathered in Mashhad that their job was important “as the fate of battles is decided on the ground, especially for a country that has no aggressive intentions and simply wants to defend security on its territory, although even in a foreign conflict, it is still ground forces that decide the final outcome.” He told the officers that “Your job is to prepare for an unequal battle with a superior foreign enemy, to fight terrorists and anti-revolutionaries…”

IRGC forces have been extensively used to suppress popular protests since 2017, with the most brutal crackdown in November 2019 when at least 1,500 protesters were killed.