Iran’s Regime ‘Wants More Afghans’ As Base Of Support
Maryam Sinaiee
Iran International
A news website in Iran has claimed that authorities are encouraging the growth of the Afghan population with incentives such as subsidized energy and food.
Iran International
A news website in Iran has claimed that authorities are encouraging the growth of the Afghan population with incentives such as subsidized energy and food.
In an unattributed commentary earlier this month, Aftab News in Tehran said millions of Afghan immigrants consume at least $5b of around $90 to 100 billion annual subsidies that the government is spending to keep fuel, other energy and food prices down. The website suggested that this is only one of the ways in which the authorities are encouraging Afghans to stay in Iran.
The article suggested that the Islamic Republic might be facilitating Afghan immigration as a remedy to the problem of population decline. “We should not start to import a big population that lacks national and religious [conformity with the Iranian population] under the pretext that the country’s population may decline within the next few decades,” it said.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei believes efforts to increase the country's population are among the most urgent duties and essential policies of the Islamic Republic as the main Shia government in the Muslim world.
Aftab News is a website close to former President Hassan Rouhani and the moderate conservative Moderation and Development Party.
“It is not difficult to understand that the presence of foreign nationals is highly beneficial to some segments of the state who can use these immigrants to serve their political and ideological interests, [particularly] in areas where Iranians are less inclined to participate,” the commentary said.
Iranian authorities usually refer to Afghan immigrants and refugees as ‘foreign nationals’.
“This is a very vague statement, but it is probably suggesting that authorities are hoping that immigrants, Shiite Afghans in particular, will fight for the regime should there be a war as some of them, the Fatemiyoun brigade, fought for the Revolutionary Guards in Syria, because recruiting Iranians to fight in such wars in becoming more and more difficult,” a political analyst who asked not to be quoted by name told Iran International.
Thousands of Afghans fleeing the economic hardships under the Taliban enter Iran daily from official border points or illegally from other areas along the 900 km border to find work in Iran to support their families back home or to continue their journey towards Europe.
In April 2021 Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said one million more Afghans had entered Iran since the Taliban took power in August the previous year, bringing the number of refugees and economic migrant to five million. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Only 780,000 of Afghans residing in Iran are recognized as refugees. Most other Afghans are considered economic migrants who have been an important workforce in Iran.
The article also claimed that the number of Afghans has uncharacteristically increased in several Iranian cities including Qom where it said Afghans have been given the right to legally purchase property. Qom in central Iran is home to Iran's largest religious seminaries where many foreign nationals including Shia Afghans study.
Allowing Afghans to buy property in Qom, it suggested, is proof that there is no resolve in related government agencies to control the Afghan immigration to Iran.
The article also alleged that lack of control at eastern borders of the country, issuing thousands of tourist visas every day when applicants do not intend to return to their home country, automatic renewal of tourist, pilgrimage and other types of visas, elimination or reduction of cash fines for illegal entry and stay, illegal immigrants’ easy access to various services including education and healthcare “indicate targeted planning.”
Speaking on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS program, Blinken announced that “We’re now in a place where we’re not talking about a nuclear agreement. We are very clearly making it known to them that they need to take actions to de-escalate, not escalate, the tensions that exist in our relationship across a whole variety of fronts.”
Iranian officials and government media have yet to react to Blinken’s statement. Official and semi-official government media were silent on Monday but a ‘reformist’ website in Tehran, not directly controlled by the government, published the news about his remarks with a clear distortion.
Speaking about long negotiations in 2021 and 2022 that came to a deadlock last September, Blinken told CNN that “An agreement was on the table. Iran either couldn’t or wouldn’t say yes.” However, Etemad Online translated the sentence to, “Iran has not made a decision yet.”
Blinken did not explain what de-escalation means from the Biden administration viewpoint. Clearly, high levels of uranium enrichment and stockpiling fissile material for nuclear bombs is the most provocative policy Tehran currently pursues. But is the administration also telling the Islamic Republic they have to also de-escalate in their provocations in the region, such as attacks on US forces and open incitement of terror attacks on Israel?
There is also the issue of Iran supplying kamikaze drones to Russia that the administration has said is one of its pre-conditions for resumption of full nuclear talks. So far, Iran has shown no inclination to de-escalate in any of these areas.
Blinken also did not say what the United States is promising Iran in return for de-escalatory steps. Certainly, Tehran would demand the lifting of at least some sanctions. Already, the Biden administration has not been rigorously enforcing existing oil export sanctions that has allowed Iran to increase its exports to as high as 1.5 million barrels a day. Before former President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement, Iran was shipping around two million barrels. One can argue that Iran has almost overcome the oil sanctions, although US banking sanctions are still deterring most banks in other countries from doing business with Iran.
But if we assume that de-escalation applies only to less enrichment or a cap of 60-percent uranium purity in exchange for lifting some critical sanctions, then that was Iran’s plan all along. In December 2020, the Iranian parliament passed legislation to enrich at higher levels to force the US to lift sanctions. In fact, the bill was called the ‘Strategic Action to Eliminate Sanctions and Defend Iranian Nation's Interests.’
That negotiating tactic was initiated a month earlier in November by parliament, when Joe Biden won the presidential election and Tehran was certain that his administration was determined to reverse Trump’s decision and revive the JCPOA.
Now, the administration just hopes for de-escalation while it knows that Iran will use every means of pressure to project power.
“We are continuing to work out, to develop, to flesh out every possible option for dealing with the problem if it asserts itself,” Blinken said.
Earlier this month Iran tried to seize to commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf and the US Navy intervened to prevent it. Immediately plans were put in motion to reinforce the US naval presence in the region, dispatching more warplanes and warships.
Iran will not confront the United States where a clear deterrent signal has been issued. It most probably will hit back elsewhere or use new tactics.
In a letter sent out from Tehran’s Evin prison, she noted that the compulsory hijab is a ploy devised by the religious and anti-women government to exert "control over women" and "remove" them from the public life.
Her remarks came in reaction to the return of the notorious hijab or ‘morality’ police, which had vanished from the streets following nationwide protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of hijab patrols last September.
Mohammadi stated that the world now witnesses the power of women's resistance, which has elevated them in Iranian society to a position never seen since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. “
“Iranian women have achieved power and a historical position in their struggle to create revolutionary and peaceful changes,” Mohammadi said.
The fight against compulsory hijab is “a matter of freedom and liberation from tyranny, an issue of justice against oppression, a means to achieve peace, democracy, and human rights, and breaking free from violence and discrimination."
Highlighting the regime’s "inability" to confront Iranian women who are fighting for their basic rights, she said, "The terrified regime is engaged in a fierce struggle to prevent its collapse, but it is clear that it has no hope of succeeding."
A lawyer often defending dissidents, Mohammadi has been imprisoned several times over the past two decades for her work fighting for human rights. She is the vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Association, the Chair of the executive board of the Peace Council of Iran, and a member of "Step-by-Step Abolition of Execution" campaign.
She was freed from Evin Prison in September 2020 after serving more than five years on trumped up charges, without due process of law. She was arrested again on November 16, 2021, released for a short time and one year later was detained again. Currently, she is serving a total sentence of 9 years and 8 months, along with 154 lashes and additional penalties in Evin Prison. She has also been denied access to medical care amid deteriorating health and was deprived for long periods of any contact with her husband and children who live abroad.
The return of morality police patrols’ has immediately led to online uproar as well as a few bouts of street protests, the biggest of which broke out in the northern city of Rasht.
As the anniversary of the Mahsa Movement in September approaches, the regime is worried about the possibility of unrest in universities spilling over to the streets.
“The enemy has not given up. They’ve said that universities are the first place where new riots should begin,” the official in charge of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representatives in universities across the country, Mostafa Rostami, said at a gathering.
People on social media have reacted to the resurgence of hijab patrols, saying if Iranians do not pour into the streets on Amini's death anniversary, the regime will further tighten the noose.
Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami also warned that the return of morality police may lead to the regime's overthrow by itself and social collapse. “It seems that the danger of self-overthrow, which has been talked about many times, stands out more than ever with the return of morality police."
Top officials of the regime refuse to take responsibility due to “concern over the upcoming elections," according to Tehran's leading reformist daily, Etemad. President Ebrahim Raisi's aides have advised him against implementing any plan that could provoke people until after the next presidential election in 2025 to secure his re-election.