Iran’s Khamenei Extols IRGC Ahead Of Protests Anniversary
Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei has praised the Revolutionary Guard while their loyalty and power to quash dissent will be put to test once again during possible protests.
Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei has praised the Revolutionary Guard while their loyalty and power to quash dissent will be put to test once again during possible protests.
In a meeting with a group of senior IRGC officers and Basij paramilitary leaders on Thursday, Khamenei described the Revolutionary Guard as “the largest counter-terrorist organization in the world,” while international calls to designate the group as a terrorist outfit have been echoing across the political landscape of many countries.
Reacting to Khamenei’s flattering words, hundreds of Iranians rushed to social media to point out that the statement is accurate as long as the prefix “counter or anti” is removed from the word terrorist.
Washington designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist group in 2019 and US lawmakers have made repeated calls to their allies to prioritize designating the group as such. In May, a bipartisan group of US congresspeople sent letters to the heads of US-allied nations -- the UK, Australia, Canada, and India – to reiterate calls to swiftly act and officially sanction the IRGC in its entirety.
Despite numerous pleas by politicians, diplomats, opposition leaders and activists, the UK and EU are still hesitant to proscribe the entity, which has proved to be the most destabilizing element in the Middle East region and a big threat to American and European citizens in the world, as well as the main suppression force in Iran.
During the meeting with his most important base of support, Khamenei warned of attempts to besmirch the IRGC and Basij forces, saying, "One of the important aspects of the enemy's activities is tarnishing the image of the IRGC. and the Basij; why? Because the Guard is awe-inspiring, the Basij is impressive, which makes them worried and anxious."
Elsewhere in his remarks, Khamenei emphasized that the US is the main enemy of the regime, saying that one of the past mistakes was not recognizing the US as ‘the enemy.’ “We must raise our voice against America,” he said.
The blandishment by the Supreme Leader came as many Iranians are planning to hold anti-regime protests to mark the anniversary of the Women, Life, Liberty movement, Iran’s biggest popular uprising sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in mid-September.
Khamenei depends on the IRGC and Basij to defend the main bastion of the regime as he cannot trust the traditional Army, which has been kept weak. However, minutes of a meeting of senior clerics and IRGC commanders with Khamenei, leaked to the media in March, indicated the negative impact of the protests on the morale of forces under the command of the IRGC and their burn-out, with several offering anecdotal accounts of insubordination.
“It is a well-equipped military organization. It is an efficient and independent organization capable of carrying out tasks that many of the world's major militaries cannot accomplish,” Khamenei stated during the Thursday meeting with the Supreme Assembly of Commanders of the IRGC.
IRGC’s extraterritorial Quds force leads activities of regime’s proxy forces against the United States, Israel, and other adversaries in the region and beyond. The IRGC is providing drones and missiles for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and is also involved in assassinations, kidnappings and cyberespionage operations across the globe.
The outfit is also behind drugs and arms trafficking and money-laundering and other cases of economic corruption both in Iran and abroad. The IRGC is also the main force to suppress any critical voice in Iran with its members unofficially exempt from due process in case of wrongdoing and corruption.
Over 500 Iranians have been killed by security forces, mainly consisting of the IRGC and its Basij militia, during the crackdown on the last year protests, which may resume throughout Iran in the coming weeks.
Numerous politicians across France, Germany, the UK, and other European nations are eager to push for the designation of the IRGC, asserting that it has been significantly delayed. Resolutions have also been adopted in their respective parliamentary bodies, underscoring the pressing need for the IRGC's designation. However, both UK and European governments perceive this step as a potential impediment to diplomatic engagement with the Tehran regime.
The two regional heavyweights seek to overcome past hostility and regional tensions, such as rivalry in Yemen or Iran’s attempts to establish military domination in the Persian Gulf..
"Relations between Tehran and Saudi are on the right track and we are witnessing progress," Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a joint news conference with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan, adding that "the talks were successful".
His visit to the kingdom comes months after Prince Faisal met with Iranian officials in Tehran in June on his first trip to Iran after a China-brokered deal between the regional rivals in March to resume ties.
Under the deal, Tehran and Riyadh agreed to end a diplomatic rift and reestablish relations following years of hostility that had endangered regional stability in the Persian Gulf, as well as in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia broke ties with Iran in 2016 after protesters attacked its embassy in Tehran in retaliation for Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
"We had good discussions over a broad range of issues during our meetings today," Amir-Abdollahian said.
Prince Faisal said the kingdom hoped to see Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi visit the kingdom following King Salman bin Abdulaziz's invitation, which he had communicated during the June visit. Raisi has said he would travel to the kingdom at the "appropriate time".
Prince Faisal said the kingdom was keen to follow through with all main points of the China-brokered deal whether economic or political, adding the countries' ambassadors will start in their positions in their respective embassies after their reopening.
In June, Iran officially reopened its embassy in Saudi Arabia and Iranian state media reported earlier this month that the kingdom's embassy in Tehran had resumed operations.
"We look forward to a new phase in our relationship based on our Islamic brotherhood and work towards common interests," Prince Faisal said, adding that he welcomed Iran's endorsement of Riyadh's bid to host Expo 2030.
The United States has been engaged in an effort to normalize ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel and expand the Abraham Accords launched under the Trump administration in 2020, when the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, close Saudi allies, established ties with Israel.
Iran, suffering from a serious economic crisis and isolation, has opted to release US hostages it has detained for years in exchange for Washington agreeing to free its frozen assets from Iraq and South Korea. Many observers believe that unblocking the assets goes further than a prisoner exchange deal and might be aimed at an informal arrangement whereby Iran refrains from escalating its nuclear program.
Reporting by Reuters
The health ministry’s food and drug administration website announced last week that it will no longer issue permits for production or imports of pregnancy associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) and free beta human chorionic gonadotropin (Beta-hCG) test kits.
Media have also reported that the ministry has been refusing to allow production or importation of enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests.
These tests usually carried out during the first trimester of pregnancies are used to identify and assess the risk of various congenital conditions such as Down Syndrome and fetal aneuploidy (chromosomal anomalies) such as trisomy.
When asked about the discontinuation of the production and imports of these kits on Monday, the ministry spokesman, Pedram Pak-Ayeen, claimed that there was no ban and fetal screening has only been “standardized”.
The spokesman’s denial of the ban does not seem to be convincing to many including genetics experts and women’s rights activists who say denying them to women to preclude possibility of abortion is interfering in people’s personal decisions and violates women’s right to their bodies.
Calling the ministry’s decision “shocking”, Dr Mohammad-Amin Tabatabei, a member of the board of directors of the Iranian Genetics Society, said Monday that Iranians will be facing a greater risk of babies born with congenital and genetic anomalies due to the ban.
Tabatabaei stressed that the ministry has not consulted the genetics society and that the society will officially protest to the decision soon and demand a re-evaluation and warned that the ban could result in illegal imports of “notoriously expensive kits of uncertain standards.”
“Until now we had underground abortions, now we are going to have underground screening too,” a medical professional, Dr Mohammad Mir-Mohammadkhan, said in a post on X (former Twitter) Sunday.
Abortions have always been illegal in Iran, but termination was allowed during the first 18 weeks of pregnancy if the fetus was diagnosed with genetic disorders or carrying the fetus to term threatened the mother’s health or life.
On April 17, Soleiman Haydari, an official of the health ministry, told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) that annually as many as 10,000 abortions were legally carried out.
In the past ten years the Iranian healthcare system has hugely limited screening tests and legal abortions and completely stopped its decades-old family planning programs.
Iran’s primary healthcare program had introduced several screening tests In 1991 that were routinely carried out as part of the existing mandatory premarital blood tests to prevent and control non-communicable diseases which have now been abandoned.
The government has also banned the sale of contraceptives and taken tough action against doctors and midwives who assisted terminations outside the healthcare system and shut down their clinics.
In July 2022 the health ministry announced that it had established a portal for medical professionals to register all pregnancies as a preventative measure against illegal abortions.
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 leading Shia country in the Muslim world and has repeatedly demanded that the population increase to 150 million.
The childbirth rate in Iran has been steadily declining over the past few decades. In the early 1980s, the population growth rate reached 4.8 percent. This rate has dropped to below one percent in the past decade.
Iran's population has doubled from around 40 million in the early 1980s to 84 million, but a declining birth rate means the median age at 32 is about the same as Saudi Arabia at 31.8, but higher than Iraq at 21.
"It is really a battle, because the people benefiting from this situation and those harmed (by the new measures) will try in various ways to continue their illegal activities," Allaq told Reuters, referring to implementing US dollar supply restrictions on Iraq to prevent smuggling of banknotes to Iran.
Allaq did not mention Iran by name and said he did not have data on how much of Iraq's dollars has been smuggled to Iran or other neighboring countries, including Turkey and Syria, before the United States tightened regulations in November.
Muhammad Nuri Aziz, a member of the Iraqi parliament, said on a television show last week that Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and the country’s central bank are aware of the schemes Iran uses to get hold of US dollars it desperately needs amid US sanctions. The lawmaker noted that the smuggling started during Mustafa Al-Kadhimi's term as prime minister and still continues. Without providing any context or details, the Iraqi lawmaker alleged that Iran prints Iraqi dinars in Argentina, exchanges the money to US dollars in Iraq, from where it is smuggled to Iran by trucks.
Reuters’ Timour Azhari said in a report, “Iraq's government is reliant on Washington's continued goodwill to ensure oil revenues and finances do not face US censure, but it came to power with the support of powerful, Tehran-backed groups and so cannot afford to alienate Iran. The latter groups have accused the US of meddling in Iraq's internal affairs and creating a currency crisis, as businesses either struggling or unwilling to abide by the new measures sourced dollars from exchange shops, driving down the value of the Iraqi dinar.”
Iraq has more than $100 billion dollars in reserves, Allaq said, but could not freely intervene in the market to bring the rate down due to the restrictions.
Late in July, 14 Iraqi private banks sanctioned by Washington as part of a wider crackdown over helping to siphon US dollars to Iran said they were ready to challenge the measures and face audits and called on Iraqi authorities to provide assistance. The credibility of the Iraqi banking system has been tarnished due to the Islamic Republic's influence, and US financial restrictions have tightened on Baghdad because evidently all Iraqi banks have had interactions with the Islamic Republic.
The US barred the Iraqi banks from conducting dollar transactions as part of a wider crackdown on dollar smuggling to Iran. The latest sanctions, along with earlier ones, have left nearly a third of Iraq's 72 banks blacklisted, two Iraqi central bank officials said. The dinar has been falling against the dollar since the New York Federal Reserve imposed tighter controls on international dollar transactions by commercial Iraqi banks in November to halt the illegal siphoning of dollars to Iran.
Allaq said that action related to transfers from 2022, before a new platform that aimed to improve transparency went live. He said the central bank was undertaking a review of the banking sector and introducing new regulations that he said would likely see some banks close.
"It would be very normal in the coming period to see a reduction in the (number of private banks)," he said. "There are always side-effects, but at the same time we have a responsibility to protect the country's interests by trying to find the necessary means for monitoring and oversight so as not to expose the country to any issues on this front," he said.
'TRANSFORMATION'
The US measures have targeted Iraq's so-called dollar auction, where the central bank requests dollars from the US Federal Reserve before selling them to commercial banks, which in turn sell the funds to businesses in the highly import-dependent economy.
US and Iraqi officials have said the auction allowed large sums of money to be illegitimately acquired by groups who would provide fake invoices and then either transfer or physically smuggle the funds to neighboring countries, chiefly Iran.
A feature of a highly informal economy, the system was also used by thousands of small businesses that are not registered with the state, Allaq said, a widespread phenomenon in Iraq that allows them to dodge taxes and customs fees.
Since January the central bank has asked banks to provide detailed information on senders and recipients of transfers via an online platform.
When companies began trying to use the platform in January, less than 20% of requests were approved by US authorities, Allaq said. That number had now risen to around 85 percent, signaling growing ease with the new regulations, he said.
"It is not just an electronic platform, it will lead to a total reorganization of trade and the movement of money, and control on a lot of avenues for suspicious activity."
(With Reporting by Reuters)