Iran International
Thousands took to the streets in several Iranian cities Sunday to protest the death of a young woman in religious police custody that has shaken the country.
In Sanandaj, capital of Iran's Kordestan (Kurdistan) Province, and Saqqez, a city of around 170,000 in the same province, thousands took to the streets for a second night. Protesters in Sanandaj chanted “Kordestan, Graveyard of Fascists” and “Down with the Dictator”, in Kurdish and Persian.
The 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, known as Zhina to family, originally from Saqqez, collapsed at a detention center two hours after her arrest by a hijab police patrol in Tehran. She passed away Friday afternoon at Kasra Hospital in northern Tehran. Hospital staff told Iran International that she was brought in near death in a coma with what appeared to have been multiple blows to her head.
According to some reports nearly 40 protesters in Saqqez Saturday evening were wounded by security forces who used shotguns and tear gas against protesters with at least two young men in critical condition.
On Sunday, Police used tear gas and water canons to disperse protesters in Sanandaj and fired with shotguns at protesters again, reportedly wounding at least ten people, and arrested over a dozen.
People also took to the streets in Gohardasht district of Karaj, capital of Alvand Province only half an hour from the capital Tehran and in Mahabad, a city of around 170,000 in West Azarbaijan Province, with a majority Kurdish population.
According to Hengaw Human Rights Organization, a Kurdish rights group, security forces shot at protesters in Sanandaj, wounding at least nine people including two women.
In the capital Tehran, dozens of students marched inside the campus of Tehran University Sunday and chanted “Iran Is Bleeding, from Kordestan to Tehran”. Some students carried placards with “Women, Life, Freedom” and. “I Don’t Want to Die” written on them.
Many female protesters have been removing their headscarves in defiance of compulsory hijab and some women have posted photos and videos on social media showing them cutting their own hairor burning their headscarves.
President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday made a phone call to the family of Mahsa Amini and told them he considered their daughter and “all Iranian girls” as his own children and had ordered a thorough investigation of the incident.
Authorities have so far denied any wrongdoing and not taken any responsibility for the young woman’s death. Police say she died in custody from a “heart attack” but have had very little success in convincing millions of Iranians who know violence against women arrested for hijab is quite common.
Mahsa’s father has told the media that other women arrested at the same time as his daughter say she was beaten but do not dare to come forward.
Kurdish activists and political groups have urged people in Kurdish regions of western Iran to shut their shops on Monday in protest to the violence against women. According to Hengaw, security forces have threatened most businesses in the large western city of Kermanshah, not to join the strike called in the neighboring Kordestan Province.
Various rights and political groups have issued statements over the incident which many consider “state violence”.
“The murder of our daughter, Mahsa, is a manifestation of the gradual killing levied on all of us on a daily basis and at a societal level,” a group of workers of Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Complex in southwestern Iran which has one of the most organized and active labor rights groups in the country, said in a statement on their Telegram channel. “The state’s murder of Mahsa won’t remain without res
The spokesman of the ministry Nasser Kanaani told reporters in Tehran that agreements have been worked out between the sides “and now it is the decision of America whether this deal is implemented or not.” He was responding to a question whether the prisoner exchange scheme has been delayed because nuclear talks with the United States are stalled.
Kanaani did not give details of the prisoner exchange agreement he referred to.
Although both Iran and the United States have claimed that a prisoner exchange deal is not directly tied to the revival of the 2015 nuclear accord, the JCPOA, but indications are that the two issues are intricately connected.
In August, Iran International reported that Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri-Kani had given an off-the-record briefing to local reporters in Tehran about the outlines of a nuclear agreement drafted after 17 months of negotiations in Vienna.
He reportedly said that when a nuclear agreement is signed, and its implementation period begins Iran will release all US prisoners (hostages) once $7 billion worth of its assets frozen in South Korea are released. In fact, the issue of the $7 billion held by two South Korean banks due to US sanctions on Tehran, has been tied to the issue of hostages at least since last December.
Bagheri in his briefing also told reporters that Iran and the US had earlier agreed on this, but Washington reneged on its promise, assuming that the money will give Iran financial breathing room to raise new demands in the nuclear talks.
This does not sound too much off the mark, since US officials have been in frequent talks with South Korean diplomats since 2021, when the fate of the nuclear talks were still uncertain.
In early January, Choi Jong-kun, first vice foreign minister of South Korea visited the venue of the nuclear talks in Vienna and held meetings with various delegations in what was an attempt to untie knots in the talks. Seoul has no involvement in the nuclear dispute, except the $7 billion of Iranian money it holds. Other countries also have frozen Iranian funds.
South Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyundong visited Washington on Friday and met with top State Department officials, including US Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley. The US envoy tweeted, “We thank the Republic of Korea for their close partnership, including their efforts to help ensure the return of our wrongfully detained citizens in Iran and to reach a deal on JCPOA.”
It is not clear if the visit of the high-ranking Korean diplomat was mainly related to the Iran issue or the meeting with Malley was just one part of his visit, while other international issues such as tensions with China and the war in Ukraine were the main points of agenda for his visit.
The Biden Administration is under pressure to arrange the release of six American citizens and permanent residents held by Iran as of July. In addition there around 20 Western European citizens and residents also taken hostage since the JCPOA was signed in 2015.
But given widespread criticism of the administration’s policy to lift sanctions in order to restore some limits to Iran’s nuclear program, a hostage deal giving Iran $7 billion before a nuclear agreement would be politically costly for the Biden White House.
The EO evoked the 1976 National Emergencies Act and empowered the Secretary of State to “publicly or privately designate or identify officials of foreign governments who are involved, directly or indirectly, in wrongful detentions,.”
In an interview with ‘Washington Post live,’ Sherman, a deputy secretary of state, highlighted as an example of the ‘emergency’ Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s introduction of the ‘D’ notice as a warning to travelling Americans.
Sherman said the notice was applied to a country that was “using the detention, unjust detention of Americans as leverage, economic leverage, geopolitical leverage.” She insisted the Biden administration was committed to “bring Americans home who are wrongfully detained.”
Families of those detained in US allies like Egypt or Saudi Arabia have saidthe US approach – the ‘D’ notice applies to Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela – is based on politics rather than concern for detained Americans. One relative told the Guardian newspaper in June that Blinken was guilty of “hypocritical cherry-picking.”
Sherman, however, said the ‘D’ indicator was attached to “countries that unjustly detain Americans over a period of time or in numbers.”
“It’s not every American who might be jailed, because sometimes Americans do things that are illegal, that are crimes, and it is not an unjust detention,” she explained.“But we look at things like have they gotten a fair trial, a fair judicial process…”
International human rights organizations and UN experts have repeatedly said that Iran engages in systematic unlawful imprisonment of foreigners and dual-nationals as hostages to gain leverage against Western countries. Usually, Tehran demands the release of people convicted for terrorism or other unlawful acts benefitting the Islamic Republic.
‘Brutal meetings’
Sherman said that her contact with relatives of four Americans detained in Iran had been “brutal meetings,” as it had been with Christine Levinson, the Central Intelligence Agency contractor who disappeared in Kish Island, Iran, in 2007 and who Washington believes is dead.
As Irans' President Ebrahim Raisi is scheduled to arrive in New York soon to attend the United Nations General Assembly, two former hostages in Iran and an ex-political prisoner have announced they will launch a civil lawsuit againt him in the United States.
Sherman, who during the administration of President Barack Obama was actively involved in negotiations leading to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, defended the current administration’s approach to reviving the agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
Repeating the US assessment that Iran had given “a pretty tough response” in its latest input to negotiations mediated by the European Union, Sherman said President Joe Biden would “continue to look for ways to move forward as long as we believe that it makes sense to do so.”
The administration was “planning for any eventuality,” Sherman said. “Whether the deal happens or the deal doesn’t happen, the president still believes it is in our interest to pursue the deal, and we’ll continue to do so as long as that is the case.”
The deputy secretary of state insisted that efforts to bring home American detainees from Iran was “a very high priority, the highest priority in many ways.” It was not dependent on whether the JCPOA was revived or not, she said.