Iran International
Mowlavi Abdolhamid delivered yet another fiery sermon in southeastern Zahedan Friday while another Sunni imam, Mowlavi Gorgij, was put under house arrest in northern Iran.
“A government that does not listen to the voice of the people does not deserve to rule,” said Mowlavi Abdolhamid in his Friday sermon in Zahedan, capital of the restive Sistan-Baluchestan Province.
Thousands of Abdolhamid’s congregation took to the streets in Zahedan for the 16th consecutive week after his sermon and chanted “Down with the Dictator” and “Khamenei is a murderer, his rule is illegitimate”.
The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters and killed more than 80 protesters.
Similar protests were held Friday in Rask, another city in Sistan-Baluchestan, in support of Abdolhamid and Mowlavi Abdul Ghaffar Naghshbandi, another Sunni Baluch cleric. In the past four months Naghshbandi has been under pressure from the authorities for confirming that allegations of a police chief raping a fifteen-year-old Baluch girlwere not true.
A Revolutionary Guard commander, Brigadier General Mohammad Karami, was appointed as provincial governor three weeks ago. Security measures and restrictions in the province and particularly its capital Zahedan have escalated to an unprecedented level.
In his sermon this week, Abdolhamid also protested to the doubling of checkpoints in Zahedan. “Seven stop and search checkpoints have turned into fifteen,” he said.
The new measures include at least fifteenconcrete block stop and search checkpoints on roads leading to Zahedan to control the flow of cars into the city, with security forces demanding identification and often questioning passengers. Internet connection has also been heavily restricted in the province since protests began four months ago.
Abdolhamid also argued that the government’s unjustified security-driven attitude to Sistan and Baluchestan impedes development as it discourages investment and progress. “People will establish security themselves [if allowed],” he said.
By “security-driven attitude” Abdolhamid apparently meant the government’s and the Shia establishment’s general lack of trust in Sunni communities across the country. Some officials and Shiite clerics who see Iran's Sunni minority as a threat to the Shia establishment occasionally raise alarm over the growth of the Sunni population in Iran.
Over 1,300 kilometers north of Zahedan, in the northern Golestan Province where there are large Sunni Baluch communities living for decades, another Mowlavi (Imam), Mohammad-Hossein Gorgij, has reportedly been put under house arrest in Galikesh.
Gorgij who served as the Sunni imam of Azad Shahr, 35 kilometers from Galikosh, was dismissed as Friday Imam of the Sunni community of Azad Shahr in Golestan in December 2021 by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative in the province for protesting to Shiites slandering Sunni caliphs.
Khamenei’s provincial representatives have the power to appoint and sack not only Shiite but also Sunni imams.
“Authorities have told me that my participation in Friday prayers is not befitting. My presence at Friday prayers is people’s wish not my own,” Gorgij told his supporters who had rallied outside his home in Galikosh Friday. “A government that is not on people’s side is not worthy of ruling,” he said.
Sistan and Baluchestan is Iran's largest but least developed province where around two-thirds of the population live in extreme poverty. The northern part of the province, Sistan, is predominantly Shiite while the southern part, Baluchestan, is Sunni majority.
After the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed the resolution Thursday that may eventually lead to the designation of the IRGC, people on social media started to congratulate each other, describing it as yet another victory for their revolt against the clerical regime.
Since the beginning of the current wave of antigovernment protests ignited by a Iranian young woman – Mahsa Amini – the Iran’s government is becoming more isolated in the international community. So far, 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 in December. Another step was by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council’s decision on November 24 to launch an independent investigation into the regime’s deadly repression of protests that has killed around 500 civilians, including about 60 children. Several rounds of sanctions by the European Union, the US, Canada and others also targeted officials and entities involved in the crackdown.
According to social media videos, people in some Kurdish cities, including Saqqez – the hometown of Amini -- and Mahabad, came to the streets and rejoiced with fireworks following the approval of the resolution.
Videos sent to Iran International from different cities such as Qom – home to Iran’s biggest seminary -- and the southern city of Bandar Abbas show people distributing candies to celebrate the decision. In one video, someone said that they are watching the European Parliament’s session live on Iran International TV, adding that it is more exciting than the World Cup matches.
Meanwhile, Islamic Republic’s officials, who had started threatening Europe even before the vote, have intensified their rhetoric against European countries over the decision.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the reason for the designation of IRGC as a terrorist organization is that Europe is infuriated over the IRGC’s leading role in the fight against terrorism. “The reason behind the anger of the ‘global club of terrorists’ is crystal clear. The IRGC is the world’s largest counter-terrorism institution,” he wrote in a tweet on Friday.”
In a statement on Friday, the Army condemned the move, claiming that it exposed the enemies’ grudge against the Islamic establishment in Iran. “The measure of the European Parliament, which claims to be fighting terrorism, against an anti-terrorist institution is out of their desperation and failure in supporting recent riots in Iran,” read the statement.
Hardliner Iranian lawmaker Mohammad Esmail Kowsari, himself a former IRGC commander, said on Friday, "One should ask where the IRGC has committed terrorist acts. They conspired to overthrow the Islamic Republic and the IRGC foiled it." Vowing that the parliament will announce its retaliatory measures on Sunday, he asked, “What part of the IRGC is a terrorist group?”
Criticizing the motion, Speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said that “If the European Union makes such a decision and lists the Guards as a terrorist organization, it means that the European Union acts as a supporter of terrorism, because the IRGC is the biggest and most successful anti-terrorist entity.”
The whole argument of the Islamic Republic in defense of the IRGC – which has armed proxies in many countries across the region – is its limited role in the battle against the ISIS. But in fact, IRGC was building its own Shiite militant proxy network and to an extent fought against the Sunni extremist group.
The European Parliament cannot decide to designate the IRGC because the terrorists list is not a list decided by the Parliament itself but by the EU Council, comprised of ministers of each EU country. If the resolution garners enough support, it is then upon the national governments of the EU member states to make the final decision. The listing of the IRGC must have a unanimous vote by all 27 EU members in the EU Council.
Video footage from the December 29 inauguration ceremony of the new governor of the southeastern province, IRGC Brigadier General Mohammad Karami, contains parts of a speech by Supreme Leader’s representative Mostafa Mahami, and some lawmakers.
Mahami who also serves as the Shiite Friday Imam in the Sunni majority province capital, Zahedan, is seen in the video criticizing the government of President Ebrahim Raisi for economic hardships resulting from high inflation.
“Is it weakness [of the government], or God forbid, we are facing the mafia [of profiteers], or the ministers and authorities cannot stand against these mafias,” he said.
“I told the president that all governments have craftily made rosy reports, but we need to see the outcome in people’s subsistence,” Mahami said while asking officials to tell him that people’s problems will not be solved by mere “talking therapy” and saying things should happen without taking action.
Mahami also strongly criticized the foreign ministry for failing to resolve the dispute with the Taliban over Iran's share of the waters of Helmand (Hirmand in Persian) and revival of the Afghan-Iranian 1973 water treaty.
“The foreign ministry has been extremely useless in pursuing Sistan’s share of the waters,” he said. “You rattle sabers for the US but don’t have what it takes to secure your rights from Afghanistan?” he asked.
Tehran has for decades complained about not always receiving its fair share of the water. In 1999, for instance, the Taliban turned off the flow completely. In August 2021, a Taliban spokesman dismissed as "enemy propaganda" reports and a video circulating on social media showing waters flowing from the Kamal Khan Dam towards Iran, insisting the water was not for Iran.
Sistan is the northern, Shiite majority part of the province while Baluchestan refers to the southern, Sunni majority part. The province has suffered heavily from draught and seen hundreds of villages abandoned in the past two decades.
The new governor, Karami, who served as the commander of IRGC Ground Forces in southeastern Iran replaced Hossein Modarres Khiabani following the escalation of protests in the Sunni majority areas and particularly its capital Zahedan.
The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan and several other cities of the province every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters after prayers led by the popular cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid in Zahedan and killed more than 80 protesters.
This week locals have reported extra heavy security measures in Zahedan including check points on all roads leading to the city and around Makki Mosque where Abdolhamid delivers his fiery speeches every Friday to thousands of Sunnis, presumably in preparation for stopping the flow of worshippers to the mosque this Friday.
In his sermons Abdolhamid has protested to the “mass arrests on the streets” and accused the authorities of torturing detainees until they accept crimes that they never committed. He has also said he holds Khamenei responsible for the violence against Sunni Baluchis and other protesters.
The province, Iran's least developed where around two-thirds of the population live in extreme poverty, is located on a drug trafficking route from neighboring Afghanistan and is known for one of the highest counts of executions in the country which are often related to drug trafficking.
According to Baluch activists one-third of over 500 executions in the country in 2022 involved people of Baluch ethnicity.
According to videos on social media, truckers in some cities such as Tabriz in northwestern Iran and Zahedan in southeastern are stranded around gas stations apparently due to a lack of diesel fuel and compressed natural gas (CNG).
Gas supplies to homes, which the government tried to protect during past cold season crunches, have also been interrupted in some regions. While offices and schools in Iran have been closed for days due to a serious natural gas shortage, long lines have also been formed in the cities where people use gas in capsules for their daily needs.
Amid natural gas shortage due to the government inability to invest in production, a new wave of strikes by oil and gas industry workers has kicked off in the country.
On Thursday, workers of the Qeshm oil terminal joined the strikes which have already started with gatherings in Ahvaz, Asaluyeh, Dehloran, Shiraz, Ilam, Bandar Lengeh and Aghajari in the south and southwest of Iran.
The Qeshm oil terminal is a major oil export terminal being developed in the Qeshm Island that lies along the strategically important trade route of the Strait of Hormuz, off the southern coast of Iran.
Fadahossein Maleki, the representative of Zahedan in the parliament, said Wednesday that "There is no gas supply in many areas of Sistan-Baluchistan province.” Even bottled gas and kerosene that should be given to the people is scarce, he added.
Moineddin Saeedi, representing Chabahar, in the underprivileged province said at the parliament Wednesday that "In August, the oil minister predicted a harsh winter in Europe... Now we have seen that this did not happen there and unfortunately it happened in our own country." He added that gas has become a "luxury commodity" and access to it has become a dream for many people.
Similar problems have also been reported in other parts of the country such as the central province of Esfahan (Isfahan), northern provinces of Mazandaran and Golestan, and northeastern Khorasan provinces.
While Islamic Republic officials predicted a bad winter in Europe, offices, organizations, schools, and universities were shut down in many parts of Iran.
With natural gas shortage, Iran resorted to burning mazut at power stations, which is an extremely polluting fuel compared with cleaner diesel.
Iran has failed to invest in its gas production sector, although it has the world’s second largest reserves, while with extremely cheap prices for consumers, usage has been increasing ever faster. The distribution network also needs upgrades as more than 25 percent of the gas is lost during transfer.
Iran's gas production and extraction capacity is limited to around 800 million cubic meters per day. According to the ministry of energy, about 650 million cubic meters are consumed by domestic, commercial, and administrative users, however, the data has changed a lot in different years and contradict international estimates. The international energy organizations say less than 40% of Iran's natural gas is consumed at homes, but the Islamic Republic is trying to blame the shortage of gas on home users.