Tehran Municipality Supports Vandalism On UK Embassy In Tehran

Tasnim website quoted Sunday Abbas Badrifar, a counselor at the Embassy of the Islamic Republic in Kabul, as saying that Hassan Kazemi Qomi, a known IRGC Quds Force operator, has replaced Bahador Aminian as the ambassador in Afghanistan.

Badrifar claimed Aminian’s term had come to end, but earlier reports said that Aminian was expelled after the disclosure of his comments against the Taliban following the hacking of the Fars news agency by a hacktivist group.

Last month, “Black Reward” group hacked internal documents of Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, and published the full text of its findings on a Telegram channel.

Part of these files was the transcript of a speech by Bahador Aminian, the then-ambassador of the Islamic regime to Kabul.

Aminian himself had noted that if his comments would be published and be heard by the Taliban, he would not be able to return to Kabul.

Aminian, in the file, had described the Taliban as “a disaster for Afghanistan, the region and the world,” claiming that Tehran has no choice but to use this opportunity “to civilize them.”

However, Iran’s embassy in Kabul denied the statements and described it as a conspiracy to create crisis in the region.

Kazemi Qomi, who has now replaced Aminian, has been working as President Ebrahim Raisi's special representative in Afghanistan since the beginning of his term.

With Burns a former ambassador to Russia and as Deputy Secretary of State a key player in behind-the-scenes talks that led to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, many expected President Joe Biden to assign Burns a diplomatic post. His appointment to head the Central Intelligence Agency raised some eyebrows in Washington.

Two years into the job, Burns Friday gave an interview to PBS where he expressed pride in the CIA’s work at a “moment of profound transformation on the international landscape.” A revolution in technology was “transforming…the way the intelligence profession works,” he said, while emphasizing “the rise of major power competition with China and with Russia.”

Burns argued that Iran’s supply of military drones to Russia marked “at least the beginnings of a full-fledged defense partnership… with the Russians beginning to look at ways in which, technologically or technically, they can support the Iranians.” This, he said, could “have an even more dangerous impact on the Middle East [than in Ukraine] …if it continues.” Without elaborating, or being asked to, Burns added that the US took the matter “very, very seriously.”

The Ukraine war, he argued, was exposing Russian weaknesses, for example in its troop mobilization and inability to match the weapons being supplied to Ukraine. Some Washington analysts have highlighted as ‘good news’ evidence of ships travelling from Iran to Russia turning off tracking devices to hide shipments – ‘good news’ in the sense it signals the success in the US strategy of eroding Russia’s military capacity.

But Burns acknowledged the consequences of the war and sanctions not just on Moscow’s war effort but within Russia itself. The Russian economy has suffered long-term damage,” he said. “Most of the progress that the Russian middle class has made over the last 30 years is being destroyed.”

CIA ‘struck’ by Iran protests

Turning to Iran, Burns said CIA analysts had been “struck” at “the duration and scope of current protests,” which reflected “a growing number of Iranians… fed up with economic decay, with corruption, with the social restrictions that especially affect Iranian women.”

Protests have slowed economic growth as Iran struggles in the fifth year of US ‘maximum pressure sanctions with 40 percent inflation and the authorities expanding money supply to meet a fiscal challenge. But Burns did not express the view, or hope, held by some US conservatives, that this would lead soon to dramatic political change.

“I don’t think the Iranian regime perceives an immediate threat to its grip,” he said. “It still has some very practiced habits of repression and brutality that it’s continuing to employ.”

The diplomat in Burns resurfaced as he acknowledged China’s “reluctance” to supply weapons requested by Russia, and of both Chinese President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in “raising their concerns about use of nuclear weapons.” But this did not distract the CIA director from his main concern. “We have no higher priority at CIA,” he said, “than not just Taiwan, but the longer-term geopolitical challenge that Xi’s China poses.”

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a statement Friday “The hypocritical approach of sponsors of this resolution in exploiting international institutes to exert pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran is a clear example of abusing sublime human rights concepts and values to pursue short-sighted political objectives.”

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a series of resolutions on December 15, with one condemning serious rights violations by Iran.

The resolution titled, “Situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran” passed by a recorded vote of 80 in favor and 29 against, with 65 abstentions.

Iran’s spokesman reiterated claims that this is part of the efforts of Western countries to maintain the “Iranophobia project” and “psychological war” against the Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, several Iranian Friday Imams called the United Nations a “victim” of goals pursued by the United Sates in their sermons on Friday.

The resolution expressed serious concern at the significant increase in use of the death penalty in Iran; disproportionate application of the death penalty to persons belonging to minorities; and continuing disregard for protections under Iranian law or internationally recognized safeguards relating to the death penalty.

It strongly urged Iran to eliminate all forms of systemic discrimination and other human rights violations against women and girls; ensure women’s and girls’ equal protection and access to justice, including by prohibiting so-called honor killings and child, early and forced marriage.

The resolution further called on the regime to lift restrictions on women’s and girls’ equal access to primary and secondary education; and remove legal and cultural barriers to women’s equal participation in the labor market and all aspects of economic, cultural, and political life.

The Assembly also expressed serious concern that the enforcement of the hijab and chastity law and its violent implementation by the Iranian morality police fundamentally undermines the human rights of women and girls.

It strongly urged Iran to cease the use of excessive force against peaceful protestors, such as in the aftermath of Mahsa Amini’s arbitrary arrest and subsequent death while in custody.

Further, it called on Iran to eliminate all forms of discrimination based on thought, religion, or belief, reiterating the importance of independent investigations for all allegations of human rights violations, including excessive use of force, arbitrary arrest, detention and torture.

The Assembly also called on Iran to cooperate fully with the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, including by accepting repeated requests to visit the country.

The new draft resolution comes just days after the Islamic Republic was voted out from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for policies contrary to the rights of women and girls.

On Wednesday, members of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) adopted a US-drafted resolution to "remove with immediate effect the Islamic Republic of Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women for the remainder of its 2022-2026 term" over the regime’s bloody crackdown on protests ignited by the death of a young woman in custody of hijab – or the so-called “morality” -- police.

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Out of the 54-member body, 29 members voted in favor of the resolution while eight voted against and 16 countries abstained. The Islamic Republic itself, Palestine, Syria, Cuba, China, Russia, Eritrea, Belarus, Zimbabwe, and North Korea voted to keep Iran in the body.

The vote was the first time in United Nations history that a country was expelled from the commission.

In an article published by Bloomberg December 15, headlined ‘A Democratic Iran is Coming and it will lead the Middle East,’ Robert Kaplan suggests that “nothing has the potential to change the region as much as a more liberal regime” in Iran.

Named by Foreign Policy magazine in 2011 and 2012 as ‘one of the top 100 global thinkers,’ Kaplan supported the 2003 US-led Iraq invasion on the basis that it would unleash what he told NPR in October 2002 was a “secular, urbanized developed tradition”. However, he was not alone in that optimistic assessment. Most of the US Congress and media were also believers in removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Unlike many Arab countries, Kaplan argues, Iran’s borders are not “artificial…drawn by Europeans.” This, he claims, Iran shares with the Persian Gulf emirates and kingdoms – although Saudi Arabia dates only to 1932.

Whatever his views about ‘democracy’ or ‘liberalism,’ Kaplan is firmly a realist. He notes “Saudi Arabia may understandably offend Western humanitarians” and expects the US to broker a future Iranian ‘normalization’ with Israel.

Noting Iran’s rich energy reserves, currently hemmed in by US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Kaplan admires the doyen of the realist school, the US Secretary of State who saw Iran’s Pahlavi shah as a US ally against adversaries Iraq and the Soviet Union.

“Henry Kissinger told me that had the Pahlavi dynasty remained in power, Iran, given its strong state and civilizational richness,” Kaplan writes, “would have evolved into a constitutional monarchy with an economy comparable to South Korea’s.”

Kaplan’s commitment to real politic rather than ‘humanitarianism’ opens him to the possibility of a “post-clerical” Iran asserting itself regionally, perhaps “developing even stronger ties” with China than “Germany now has.” And Kaplan is also aware that a “somewhat chaotic, less centrally controlled” Iran might grapple with “large Kurdish, Azeri, Turkoman and Baluch minorities.”

A century of politics

The priority of Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, writing in the Wall Street Journal December 12, is disputing the assessment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that current unrest in Iran “poses no threat to the regime.”

Gerecht, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former ‘Iranian-targets’ CIA officer, championed, like Kaplan, the Iraqi and Afghan interventions. In March 2003, he signed a statement that US intervention in Iraq would help the “democratization of the wider Middle East.”

The problem was that most optimists on Iraq were simplifying the environment in the Middle East and not considering the Islamic Republic’s long-held policy of exporting its Shia ideology and playing the role of a spoiler.

WithTakeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Gerecht argues that the CIA has been misled by the “disappointing results of the Arab Spring and of Western military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Iran differs from the Arab world in its history since the 1905-11 Constitutional Revolution, Gerecht and Takeyh write, with a century of Iranians’ “involvement in politics” under both Shahs and since 1979 the Islamic Revolution.

Iranians’ “critiques of authoritarianism,” they continue, have increased with the “massive expansion” or Iran’s “educational infrastructure” since 1979 with now “nearly six million university students, almost 60% of whom are women.”

Hence Iranians “are unlikely to fall victim again to the allure of a secular strongman or militant mullah, having seen the damage such leaders cause. The Arabs who revolted against tyranny a decade ago didn’t have the advantage of decades of trial and error. Self-criticism isn’t a Middle Eastern forte, but Iranians have come far in placing the blame for their own predicament on themselves.”

Gerecht and Takeyh rule out dangers of ethnic fragmentation and look forward to a “post-Islamic Iran…[with] a far bigger Western fan club that did the elected Islamists of North Africa.” Presumably evoking the Egyptian military regime that receives the second biggest chunk of US foreign aid after Israel, the pair cite Samuel Huntington – he of the ‘clash of civilizations’ – to note that US support for “nascent democracies increases the chance of their survival.”

NBC News reported Friday that Tiandy Technologies firm has used its facial recognition software to help Chinese authorities identify Uyghurs or other ethnic minorities. It has also provided Iran’s IRGC with the technology as well.

The Commerce Department sanctions against Tiandy restrict American firms from exporting components to the company.

The processors for Tiandy’s video recording systems were provided by California-based semiconductor giant Intel Corporation. However, Intel had removed references to Tiandy from its website before the decision was announced by the Biden administration, added NBC News.

Intel Corp. spokesperson Penny Bruce told NBC News Thursday that the company ceased doing business with the Chinese company “following an internal review.”

Tiandy is a private firm based in the northern city of Tianjin, which ranks among the top video surveillance companies in China and the world.

An industry survey says the annual sales revenue of Tiandy was more than $800 million in 2021, but it has branches in over 60 countries.

The Financial Times also wrote Thursday that Washington is set to put the chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies on a trade blacklist, in its latest efforts to target Chinese technology companies that it believes threaten the country’s security.

It comes two months after the Biden administration unveiled harsh export controls that made it more difficult for Beijing to acquire and produce advanced semiconductors.