Election Of Critic At Chamber Of Commerce Angers Iran MPs

Nada Al-Nashif, UN Deputy Human Rights Chief, presented a report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday saying that the situation in the Islamic Republic aggravated against the backdrop of continuously worsening socio-economic conditions and sanctions.

The report examines developments since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on September 16which sparked widespread protests throughout the country.

According to the report, there has been a spike in death sentences and executions during the period.

“In 2022, 582 people were executed”, noted the Deputy High Commissioner of UN human rights office OHCHR.

“That is a 75 per cent increase compared to 2021 during which 333 people were reportedly executed. There were three children among those executed in 2022. Of the total number of executions, 256 were for drug-related offences.”

This year alone, that number is already in the hundreds. However, while the UN voices concern for human rights in Iran, it has appointed Iran's UN ambassador Ali Bahraini to the chair of the UN Human Rights Council 2023 Social Forum, drawing global outrage.

Around 20,000 people are estimated to have been detained during the protests, added the report.

“Thousands of children are estimated to have been among those arrested during the protests, while at least 44 children, including 10 girls, were reportedly killed by security forces using lethal force.”

“There have been numerous allegations of torture and ill-treatment of individuals by security forces during arrest and interrogation to extract forced confessions as well as allegations of sexual and gender-based violence committed against women, men and children, especially in detention,” said Al-Nashif.

She also noted that as of March 2, more than 1,000 students, the majority of whom are female, had reportedly been affected by suspected poisoning across 91 schools in 20 provinces.

Lahbib especially is under scrutiny for having approved visas requests while Iran and Russia are under international sanctions and only three weeks after Belgian NGO worker Olivier Vandecasteele was released from an Iranian jail. He was exchanged in a controversial move with a former Iranian diplomat convicted in a Belgian court of leading a terror plot in Europe and serving a long prison sentence.

De Croo and Lahbib said they didn't want to risk a diplomatic row with Iran close to the release of Vandecasteele and three other Europeans, but lawmakers from opposition as well as coalition parties contest that reasoning.

When in Brussels, the Iranian delegation filmed Belgo-Iranian lawmaker Darya Safai and Iranian opposition members, Belgian national broadcaster RTBF reported.

Safai, who was a prominent activist in Iran before fleeing to Belgium in 2000, said she no longer felt safe in Belgium.

Tehran' mayor, Alireza Zakani, is known as a hardline Iranian politician, who was a member of the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij militia.

The opposition has called for Lahbib's resignation, while extreme-right opposition party Vlaams Belang also asked for De Croo's resignation.

State secretary for external relations of the Brussels government Pascal Smet resigned on Sunday over the all-expenses paid trip.

Reporting by Reuters

The controversy ensued when at the conclusion of talks between bin Farhan and his Iranian counterpart on June 17, the venue of their joint press conference was suddenly changed.

While the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman and the state television insisted that changing the room was "due to a technical problem," Iranian reporters on social media insisted that the Saudi delegation refused to sit in a room where a big portrait of former IRGC Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani was posted on the wall. 

Foreign policy analyst Diako Hosseini wrote in a tweet: "The Foreign Ministry should have been intelligent enough to predict the Saudis' sensitivities. Now that the ministry was not intelligent enough, the minister should have cancelled the news conference." 

An Iranian commentator in Paris, Mohammad Javad Akbarin tweeted: "In 2019 Soleimani wanted to bring Syrian Leader Bashar Assad to a meeting with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to attract media attention. Instead, it was [foreign minister] Zarif's threat to resign that became the day's news. Now, the general's picture has undermined all the achievements of the visit by the Saudi delegation. Dead or alive, Soleimani has always brought about a loss for the country's diplomacy and national interests."

Zarif was apparently caught off guard when Assad showed up in Tehran and was not even invited to the meeting with Khamenei.

At the same time, prominent Saudi columnist Mohammed Alsulami wrote in a series of tweets in both Arabic Persian that "Trust between the two countries is fragile and comments made by some political figures close to Iran shows how difficult is rebuilding mutual trust." He further called on Iranians to avoid using sarcastic language about the Iran-Saudi ties as the Saudis are not interested in “factional rivalries in Iran.”

At the same time, foreign policy analyst Ali Bigdeli told Nameh News website in Tehran that "Not all the problems between Tehran and Riyadh will be solved with a visit to Tehran by bin Farhan. He added that "Some Iranian officials have said that America’s hands will be cut off from the Middle east following the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but this is not true."

He added: "We still do not have full diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. The Iranian ambassador to Riyadh has still not received his credentials from the King." He said in another part of his interview that Saudi promises of investing in Iran may not materialize as long as US sanctions against Iran are in place. 

Bigdeli argued that Iran should follow a dynamic policy like Saudi Arabia and maintain healthy ties with both East and West rather than pinning all its hopes on the East. 

Meanwhile, moderate news website Entekhab wrote in a commentary that two years after President Ebrahim Raisi declared Iran's policy of expanding ties with China, Iran's "looking east policy" has not been as successful as Saudi Arabia's relations with China. 

The website wrote that despite signing a 25-year cooperation agreement with China, Iran's share of trade with Beijing only amounted to half a percent of China's international trade in 2022. 

Generally, the total trade volume between Iran and China was less than $16 billion while Saudi Arabia maintained an annual trade of $106 billion with China in 2022, Entekhab maintained. 

With Russia using hundreds of Iranian-made suicide drones in Ukraine since October 2022, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was grilled in parliament about the report by the Jewish Chronicle earlier this month.

“We take all allegations of breaches of export controls seriously and my understanding is that officials in the Department for Business and Trade are currently now investigating the allegations made in the recent press article cited,” Sunak said.

“We will not accept collaborations which compromise our national security,” he said, pointing to stepped-up controls on academic collaborations in technology.

Alicia Kearns MP, chair of the Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs had earlier said: “This is a horrifying collaboration, one that I fear risks breaching sanctions in place around sensitive and dual-use technologies.”

According to the Jewish Chronicle, Tehran funded researchers in Britain working on improving drone engines in a project that boosted altitude, speed, and range.

In addition to its ban on military and "dual-use" technologies being exported to Iran, the UK has recently imposed new sanctions against Iranians supplying Russia with kamikaze drones that are being used in Ukraine.

At least 11 British universities, including Cambridge, Cranfield, Glasgow and Imperial College London, were named by the Jewish Chronicle as taking part in studies with potential Iranian military applications.

The killing happened near the West Bank settlement, Eli, in what Hamas called a response to a major Israeli operation in nearby Jenin.

Emergency services reported that four other people were wounded, including a minor, when the gunmen opened fire at a roadside restaurant and a gas station near Eli settlement.

After the attack, Israel said it was beefing up its forces’ presence in the West Bank.

Authorities said the two gunmen belonged to Hamas' armed wing. One was killed by a civilian at the scene and the other by Israeli security forces.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and has a network of fighters across the West Bank, described the attack as a "heroic" response to Monday's Israeli operation in Jenin and said it may be followed by more actions against Israelis "that will shatter their fragile state and turn the lives of their soldiers and settlers into a nightmare".

Israel blamed Iran for a large-scale military confrontation in early April when Palestinian groups aligned with the Islamic Republic launched hundreds of rockets against Israel from Gaza and Lebanon.

The Iranian regime as a Shiite Muslim political force has limited appeal with Sunni Muslims and its reach is mainly among Shiites in Middle Eastern countries, such as Iraq and Lebanon. However, it directs billions of dollars a year to finance an array of militia forces and their political networks.