G7 Communiqué Shows Iran Could Face Strong Western Pushback

On the fifth day of the festival, Iranian filmmakers displayed images of three protestors who were recently hanged in Esfahan (Isfahan).

Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaghoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi were executed on Friday over the death of two IRGC’s Basij militia members and a police officer in protests of November last year, in what Persian media have dubbed the ‘Esfahan (Isfahan) House’ case.

The participants kept silent for a minute to pay respect to the hanged protesters.

Zar Amirabrahimi, a well-known actor, Kaveh Farnam, a producer, Sepideh Farsi and Milad Alami, directors, Asal Bagheri, a researcher, and Sahar Bagheri, one of the managers of the French department of Amazon Company, took part.

They talked about the current conditions of Iranian cinema, censorship, the impact of recent protests on Iranian filmmakers, and the conditions of filmmakers outside Iran to express the untold narratives of Iran in their works.

Referring to the current situation in Iran, the cinematographers also discussed the difficulties of making films in accordance with the current reality in Iran and passing through censorship. They called for the support of the cinema world and events such as the Cannes Festival to consider the plight of Iranian filmmakers.

The 76th Cannes Film Festival began on May 16 and will end on May 27.

The lawmaker, Shahryar Haidari, did not name his source, but said face-to-face negotiations is the new US approach. He added that Washington wants to get more concessions from Tehran during direct negotiations.

Haidari said: "Iran's condition for taking part in direct negotiations with the United States is that Washington should apologize to Tehran for its mistakes during the past 44 years." He added that "Iran might restore its ties with Washington if America offers the apology."

However, Haidari added that Iran cannot trust the United States although the US has been calling for direct negotiations for two years. He further emphasized that there is no need to discuss the 2015 nuclear deal any further as Iran has already answered all the questions the Western side has asked. 

Haidari accused the United States and the "Zionist lobby" in America of obstructing a deal. However, he added that the renewed US calls for direct talks is one of the outcomes of Iran's rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. 

Meanwhile, foreign relations expert Mehdi Motaharnia told Fararu website in Tehran that "the United States has a complicated roadmap to harness Iran while the JCPOA is dying." He said that the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is part of an agreement between superpowers. 

Motaharnia added that based on this agreement, Iran will lose its regional leverage after making peace with Saudi Arabia while it will still remain isolated in the region. 

Fararu quoted a Bloomberg report which claims there has been a significant reduction in international inspections of Iran's nuclear program which is the world's most closely watched. Fararu highlighted that the claim is based on statements by Rafael Grossi, director of the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA. This comes while Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami has recently said that "negotiations between Iran and the IAEA have been progressing positively." Fararu also claimed, EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell has also said that there have been "positive progresses" in the IAEA's inspection of Iran's nuclear program. 

According to Motaharnia, Iran’s relations with the IAEA are affected by domestic politics including last year's nationwide protests, as well as regional and international developments including the rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. However, Motaharnia maintained that Riyadh's approach to Iran has not changed. "Saudi Arabia speaks softly, but its tough stances have become even tougher."

"Outside the region, however, the West is planning to gradually isolate Iran," Motaharnia said. "As an example, Sweden's parliament has designated the IRGC as a terrorist group despite opposition by that country's foreign minister. On the other hand, both US Democrats and Republicans are trying to increase pressure on Tehran ahead of Iran’s 2024 parliamentary elections, in a bid to further isolate Tehran," he maintained. 

He added that all this come while China and Russia are reluctant to pay a price to strongly support Iran. In such a situation, he said, positive reports about the "progress" of Iran's ties with the IAEA are nothing more than words. Meanwhile, Motaharnia reiterated on his long-held view that the JCPOA “is dead.”

In another development, reformist daily Sharq on May 18, summed up IAEA and EU officials' statements on Iran's nuclear program as "a waste of time." In a report entitled "Time-Killing Diplomacy" the newspaper insisted that according to some diplomats, Europe is seriously against the revival of JCPOA and that the EU has gone as far as calling for reviving international sanctions against Iran.

The gathering of protesters started in Australia and New Zealand and continued until Saturday evening in dozens of other cities in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Finland, Holland, Austria, among many others. Cities in the western parts of the US and Canada were the last where people held rallies.

Iranians are outraged and frustrated over the hangings; frustrated that protest gatherings outside the prison where they were held failed to halt the executions and outraged that calls by the international community did not stop the Islamic Republic's execution machine.

During rallies in Norway, Masud Gharahkhani, the Iranian born politician who heads the Norwegian parliament, sent a video message to protesters in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, saying, "In Iran, young people are imprisoned and executed, journalists do not have freedom and security, and the country's oil money is not spent for the people, but wasted on corruption.”

Alireza Akhondi, Swedish-Iranian member of the Swedish parliament, told Iran International during the rallies that the gathering of expatriates around the globe in the past few months prompted several resolutions in Western against the Islamic Republic.

The rallies were planned before the regime hanged Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaghoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi Friday morning over trumped up charges after extracting forced confessions, in a case described as a travesty of justice. Human rights campaigners say they were tortured into confessions, and there was no reliable evidence against them.

They were convicted over the death of two IRGC’s Basij militia members and a police officer during protests in November last year, in what Persian media have dubbed the ‘Esfahan (Isfahan) House’ case. The three had been arrested in an Esfahan (Isfahan) neighborhood called “Esfahan House,” thus the name of the case.

Leaked audio from police radio chatter from the night the three regime agents were killed indicates that they were killed by friendly fire of plainclothes forces. The victims had even alibis for the time the agents were killed, with the family of one of the victims saying there is CCTV video footage of their son at work.

In reaction to the “grossly unfair trial that bore no resemblance to meaningful judicial proceedings,” Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said on Saturday, “These executions are designed by the Iranian authorities to send a strong message to the world and the people of Iran that they will stop at nothing to crush and punish dissent. In the absence of a robust international response, the authorities will continue to revel, unabated, in their impunity with lethal consequences for people in Iran.”

“Governments must urgently denounce these executions, in the strongest possible terms, through public statements and demarches. However, in the face of the Iranian authorities’ unrelenting use of the death penalty, this is not enough. People in Iran don’t have the luxury of time – they are being arbitrarily deprived of their lives at a horrific rate under the guise of judicial executions,” she said, urging all states “to exercise universal jurisdiction over all Iranian officials against whom there is sufficient admissible evidence of criminal responsibility for torture and other crimes under international law.”

Several neighborhoods in the capital Tehran and in Esfahan as well in a few other cities were scenes of protests against the regime’s executions. Students at universities across Iran also staged demonstrations.

Three more prisoners were executed for drug-related offences on Saturday as protesting families were shot at and tear-gassed outside the jail.

Friday's executions brought to at least seven the number of protesters hanged since the beginning of the nationwide protests last September, which turned into one of the boldest challenges to the clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution. The protests were ignited by Mahsa Amini's death in the custody of Iran's morality police.

Hassan Raghfar said the main problem is that the authorities are unable to increase the welfare provision for the 50% or more of the population now in desperate need.

The Al-Zahra University professor said that although the government is supposed to present a plan to the parliament with the aim of curbing inflation and production growth, he fears it will only result in worsening conditions still further.

His analysis comes after a member of the Expediency Council, Ali Aqa Mohammadi said 19.7million Iranians lack basic life facilities such as housing, employment, education, health, food and clothing.

With Iran enduring inflation of more than 40% for several consecutive years, salary earners whose wages have enjoyed annual increases of only a few percent have seen their real purchasing power plummeting by half, according to economist Albert Beghouzian.

Islamic Republic authorities keep promising to control inflation. In his New Year speech on March 21, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei promised what he said would be “the year of bringing inflation under control”. The pledge was echoed by President Ebrahim Raisi in his speech, but is all too reminiscent of what proved to be empty slogans in previous years.

The majority of Iranians have fallen into what government officials describe as poverty and can no longer afford meat and even fruit and vegetables, with consumption dropping by half.

Abroshan warned the Iranian government that trust in the ruling establishment cannot be restored by decrees and orders. While corruption and favoritism have enriched a small minority, poverty has risen to unprecedented levels.

The sociologist asked: "How can young Iranians trust the government while most of them do not have a job?" He argued that "The distrust is rooted in the country's crisis of management. In order to solve this problem, the government needs to appoint qualified individuals with the right kind of specialization to key jobs, and make knowledge and rationality govern the country's institutions."

Abroshan was referring to statements by Iranian officials including President Ebrahim Raisi, who promised repeatedly during the past two years to create one million jobs annually for young Iranians but broke their promise. Raisi has even claimed that those jobs have been created!

Also in some cases, officials make outlandish promises without thinking of the implications of what they say. On Wednesday, Telecommunications Minister Isa Zarepour promised that his ministry will make sure Internet speed increases by 80-fold this year.

The astonishing promise was made while people suffer from extremely low Internet speed and the banning of nearly all social media platforms on which many small businesses and more than 10 million families depend for a living. 

In another example, Iranian academic Mostafa Mehraeen complained that young Iranians simply want to live a normal life but as soon as they criticize the authorities’ impolite treatment of the youth, security forces attack them and the officials accuse them of being drug addicts.

Abroshan also said that social capital (government legitimacy) is the spirit of the nation. People learn about it during the process of their socialization. It lends meaning to human communication and boosts solidarity and social participation. He added that mutual trust between the people and government is one of the most important factors of social capital which makes cooperation between various parts of the society possible. 

Trust will be enhanced if the people see that the government meets their expectations, Abroshan said, adding that otherwise the people come to believe that the country's economic and social institutions do not represent their views and expectations. As a result, distrust of the government builds up and the ruling establishment loses all legitimacy. 

Explaining the situation of trust in government, Abroshan said, "when the police do not respect citizens and treat them with violence as we have seen, the situation triggers anger and leads to behaviors such as attacking and overturning police vehicles." He added that when he, as a sociologist, criticizes the situation out of sympathy for the people and the government, officials accuse him of portraying a disparaging image of the social situation. 

He reiterated, "Mutual trust between the people and government no longer exists. "The government constantly calls on the people to fulfil their social responsibilities, but at the same time, constantly undermines their citizenship rights." He added: "The distribution of wealth in the Iranian society is unfair and inequality has polarized the society."

Abroshan further pointed out: "Currently Iranian citizens and the government refuse to recognize each other. As a result, any event that hurts the people's feeling can trigger a social