More Details Emerge About Tehran’s Plot Against Iran International

In response to questions sent by Iran International, the State Department said that the US is particularly worried about violence in Mahabad, a Kurdish majority city in western Iran. Government security forces escalated violence against protesters in Kurdish majority cities in the region on November 16 and since then more heavily armed units have been deployed to the region.

“Iran's leaders are blaming so-called separatists, and they continue to blame the United States, for the protests unfolding across their country. In fact, Iran's leaders have no one to blame but themselves,” the State Department said in an email.

Since the protests began in mid-September, top officials of the clerical regime have been blaming foreign “enemies” for fomenting the uprising, the biggest since the establishment of the Islamic Republic 43 years ago. After government intelligence and security forces failed to end the unrest, the government began blaming “separatists” for encouraging and supporting the protests and particularly targeted Iranian Kurds.

But the State Department said, “The regime's brutal crackdown, along with years of denying Iranians their human rights and perpetrating state-sponsored violence against women, show that Iran's leaders seem incapable of listening to their own people.”

Activists have called for large protests Thursday across the nation to support the Kurdish cities targeted by military units. Already there have been protests in other cities to condemn the violence. A significant number of Kurds in Iran are Sunnis and this week a prominent Sunni religious leader, Mawlana Abdolhamid of the Sunni Baluch population in southeastern Iran voiced support for them. The Baluch have also also brutally targeted by government forces since September 30.

“We continue to pursue accountability for those involved and support the Iranian people in their pursuit of freedom,” the State Department said.

More uranium enrichment

On the question of Iran expanding its nuclear program by more uranium enrichment at a new atomic site, the department said the US is aware of Iran’s claims that it is enriching at 60-percent and already has a large stockpile of highly enriched fissile material “for which it has no credible civilian use.”

After 18 months of negotiations to revive the Obama-era nuclear accord known as JCPOA, talks came to an impasse in August, with the US dismissing Iranian demands that it said were outside the JCPOA framework.

Last week the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a resolution that censured Tehran for lack of cooperation with the UN watchdog. Iran responded by threatening “an appropriate response” and later announced it had started enrichment at its Fordow nuclear facility.

“Iran's apparent notion that it could somehow pressure the IAEA or its Member States on the issue of ongoing safeguards investigations into possible undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran by further escalating its uranium enrichment activities is deluded,” the State Department wrote to Iran International.

The dispute with the IAEA concerns undeclared nuclear activities two decades ago, but the international watchdog is demanding clear answers from Tehran. Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Thursday that Iran expects the IAEA to shelve its investigation before a deal is made to revive the JCPOA.

“As we have made clear, Iran's continued nuclear escalations are unconstructive, and they will not provide Iran with any leverage,” the State Department told Iran International.

Robert Malley, the US special envoy for Iran, said in a tweet Tuesday that a report by CNN describes “unspeakable acts of sexual violence by Iranian officials in detention centers. It’s a reminder of what is at stake for the Iranian people - and of the lengths to which the regime will go in its futile attempt to silence dissent.”

In an investigation published by CNN on Monday, covert testimony revealed sexual violence against protesters, including boys, in Iran’s detention centers since the start of the unrest.

In some of the cases CNN uncovered, the sexual assault was filmed and used to blackmail protesters into silence, according to sources who spoke to the victims.

In reaction to this report, State Department spokesperson Ned Price also harshly criticized the Iranian regime, saying that Washington continues to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Price said Tuesday that the US “is disgusted by the reports and eye-witness accounts of protestors, including minors, being sexually assaulted while in the custody of law enforcement.”

“Iranian authorities' use of sexual violence as a tool for protest suppression brings into stark contrast the bravery of Iran's protestors in the face of such reprehensible measures to intimidate them and end the protests,” added Price.

Condemning the brutality of the clerical regime, Price added that it appears no act is beneath the Islamic Republic's leadership in their attempts to silence dissent.

The Kurdistan Human Rights Organization in a report announced, "during the three days at least 14 Kurdish citizens have been killed in the cities of Javanrud, Piranshahr, Sanandaj, Dehgolan and Bukan” in western Iran.

Hundreds of people have also been arrested and a large number have been injured, it stated, adding that there is no information about the condition and whereabouts of many detainees.

On Tuesday, Hengaw Human Rights Organization stated that during popular protests in Kurdish cities from November 15 to 21, “at least 42 Kurdish citizens were killed by direct fire from government forces and over 1,500 people were injured.”

Last week protests were held to mark the anniversary of the November 2019 uprising in Iran as part of the ongoing nationwide protests to topple the Iranian regime, but demonstrations were met with more violence in Kurdish cities.

A series of nationwide protests in Iran, sometimes known as Bloody November, took place in 2019. Initially triggered by a 50 to 200-percent increase in fuel prices, the demonstrations quickly turned into calls for the overthrow of the government and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Oslo-based Iran Human Rights Organization in its latest report announced Tuesday that at least 416 people including 51 children and 27 women have been killed by security forces in the ongoing nationwide protests.

The Ministry of Defence in London tweeted that Russia had “likely conceived of the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] campaign to make up for its severe shortage of cruise missiles.” Reports of the Russian forces using Iranian drones, mainly Shaheed-136, surfaced in September, but were until November denied by Tehran.

Although the use of Iranian-made drones had met with “limited success” with most of those launched neutralized, the British ministry said Moscow would “probably seek resupply” as “Russia can probably procure UAVs from overseas more rapidly than it can manufacture new cruise missiles domestically.” The drones had been both one-way or ‘kamikaze’ and reusable UAVs, the ministry said.

Some former Iranian military sources were quoted elsewhere as saying that the country can produce around 20 drones a month, which is well short of Russian’s needs.

Both sides in the Ukraine war have deployed drones, with Ukraine utilizing Turkish-made Bayraktars along with US-supplied Switchblade drones. The Russian-backed governor of Crimea province said Tuesday that five attacks, including one targeting the Balaklava power station and three on Russian naval ships, had been repelled.

The British Ministry of Defence in its tweets Wednesday said Moscow had used Iranian-made drones “largely…against tactical military targets and the Ukrainian electricity grid.” France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have condemned Russia’s deployment of Iranian drones as an alleged violation of arms-trade provisions in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Iran ‘Sticking to its positions’

Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Tuesday that Tehran had “sold very few Iranian drones in the framework of defense cooperation with Russia 11 months before the start of the Ukraine war.” Amir-Abdollahian said Iran and Ukrainian military officials had met in a third country to discuss the issue, and that “we are continuing our investigations.”

Amir-Abdollahian appeared to suggest that the Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba had told him by telephone that a drone captured by Ukrainian forces had Russian markings but “looks like an Iranian witness drone,” a model rendered in English as ‘Witness-136.’ This, Amir-Abdollahian argued, was “proof that Iran is sticking to its positions.”

The foreign minister said Iran was committed to diplomatic solutions both to the Ukraine war and the current stand-off in talks aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Amir-Abdollahian reiterated Iran’s view than the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should shelve its enquiry into unexplained uranium traces found in sites not declared as nuclear-related.

‘Exchange of messages should continue’

Amir-Abdollahian suggested that while efforts continued to revive the JCPOA, differences with the US remained on three issues, on which the three European JCPOA signatories were lining up with Washington. “One of these issues is solving the remaining issues of the agency [over the uranium traces], and the other issue is related to economic guarantee,” he said, referring to Iran’s expectation of being cushioned against the economic effects of the US again leaving the JCPOA and imposing sanctions, as it did in 2018 under previous president Donald Trump.

The foreign minister said that “the exchange of messages [with the US] should continue.” American officials have in recent weeks suggested that their focus is no longer on JCPOA restoration, and along with the three European states and the European Union have imposed new sanctions on Iran over military links with Russia and its response to domestic unrest.

Mohammad Esmail Kowsari representing Tehran in the parliament who was a commander of the IRGC’s Sarallah Headquarters tasked with the capital’s security, claimed in an interview Wednesday that “Kurdish separatist groups, especially the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), Komala, and Pejak (the Free Life Party of Kurdistan)” have been stationed in the Iraqi Kurdistan region and sought to take control over some areas in Iran’s Kordestan province.

Kowsari claimed that the presence of Kurdish groups is the reason behind the deployment of ground force to the western parts of the country, so that they can overcome them and establish security at the borders.

Tuesday night, an officer from the Border Guard Force of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region confirmed to Iran International that the IRGC ground forces have closed the Haj Omran Border Crossing, stationed a large number of troops equipped with heavy weapons there, and were preparing for ground operations inside Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Islamic Republic calls Iranian Kurdish armed groups in sheltering in Iraq, "terrorist groups" or "anti-revolutionary" but these groups say that the goal of their armed campaign is "defending the rights of the Kurds".

Generally, the Kurdish parties − including Komala and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) − favor Kurdish autonomy within a federal Iran. Pejak (the Free Life Party of Kurdistan), an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, formed in Turkey but also based in northern Iraq, has generally favored a unified, independent Kurdistan uniting Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran.

Since last week, the Islamic Republic has intensified its repression of Kurdish-majority cities and towns in western provinces of the country following reports that parts of some small towns have fallen into the people’s hands. The majority of Iran's 10 million Kurds live in the western parts of the country. On Tuesday, the IRGC again hit a base that it claimed belonged to "separatist terrorists" in Iraq using missiles and kamikaze drones.

The regime stepped up attacks against Iranian Kurds sheltering in Iraqi Kurdistan on the pretext that “separatist” Kurdish groups are fanning the flames of conflict in Iranian Kurdish cities by supporting the protesters, leading to a global outcry that is gaining a new momentum following the European Parliament’s announcement on Monday that it would not keep direct contact with the Islamic Republic authorities.

In a statement on Tuesday, US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price condemned the Islamic Republic’s “repeated and brazen violations of Iraq’s territorial integrity,” adding that “Iran’s violations of Iraqi territorial integrity continue with lethal attacks carried out against the Iraqi Kurdistan Region from November 20 through 22.” The US also called on Tehran to refrain from further threats and violence.

Meanwhile, Turkey has also renewed its attacks on Kurdish targets in Iraq and Syria, a week after a bombing in Istanbul which it blamed on Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, as well as Syrian Kurdish groups affiliated with it, an allegation denied by those groups.

Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi, himself an IRGC commander, held a conversation with his Turkish counterpart earlier in the month, voicing support for “a stable and strong Turkey.” He said that Iran and Turkey have common enemies, calling for more serious cooperation in dealing with “those who make the two countries unsafe.”

Also on Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani also denounced the Turkish and Iranian attacks, saying “The attacks were launched without taking Iraq’s permission, that’s why we decry these attacks whether carried out by Turkey or Iran.”

A member of the Iraqi Parliament told Iran International Wednesday that the Parliament will once again hold a session on Thursday to discuss the missile and drone attacks of Iran and Turkey. The parliament has held at least two sessions on the issue in the past three days.