Iranians Trust Foreign-Based Media For News On Iran - Survey

Halvash, which specializes in news from Sistan and Baluchestan Province where the massacre of dozens of civilians happened last year, suggested that Iranian security forces are seeking the assistance of trusted and influential local figures for the potential meeting in a bid to quash further unrest.

The tentative date for the meeting is rumored to be September 11 in Tehran, according to Mostafa Mahami, a representative of Khamenei in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, with the government using promises of compensation and security to encourage participation.

During the suppression of the September 30 protests, known as Bloody Friday, at least 123 citizens, including women and children, lost their lives due to direct gunfire from military and security forces, with many succumbing to head and chest injuries.

The Sunni Friday Prayer Imam of Zahedan, Mowlavi Abdolhamid, persistently called for an investigation into the massacre and the prosecution of those responsible. However, to date, no one has been charged or tried in connection with the incident.

As the first anniversary of the nationwide uprising against the Islamic Republic, sparked by the government's killing of Mahsa Amini, approaches, the government has intensified pressure on families of victims seeking justice to stay quiet and refrain from further protest.

The aviation news website ch-aviation, revealed that Mahan Air successfully imported the Airbus A340-200, with the registration EP-MJA (serial number 75), to Iran, raising questions as to its procurement.

The 28-year-old Airbus A340, adorned with Mahan Air's livery, was seen at Tehran Mehrabad Airport in early August, although it has not yet been put into active service.

This latest addition marks the tenth A340 in Mahan Air's fleet. The airline, nominally a privately-owned entity, maintains close affiliations with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-Quds Force), which resulted in Western sanctions.

In 2011, the United States imposed sanctions on Mahan Air, accusing the airline of aiding the Quds Force in covertly transferring weapons and personnel to various regions, including Syria.

Mahan Air currently operates six A340-300s and three A340-600s, making it the second-largest operator of the A340 globally, trailing behind Lufthansa (LH) based in Frankfurt International Airport.

Dutch sources reported earlier this year that the aircraft sold to Mahan Air previously belonged to the French Air Force. It was also reported that Mahan Air had not provided details regarding the purchase amount of the aircraft, citing the severe sanctions imposed on Iran's aviation industry as a possible reason for the lack of transparency.

Parvin Shokri, an Iranian protest organizer based in Helsinki, was returning from an anti-regime demonstration on April 24, when her cellphone was seized by a stranger in the street. She was streaming live on Instagram, something the snatcher was not aware of. As the footage shows, he grabbed the phone, ran away for nearly a minute and while panting took a peek at the phone screen, making his face seen by Shokri’s followers.

Upon seeing his face on the phone screen, the snatcher decided to bury the phone in a nearby lawn in eastern Helsinki, where Shokri would ultimately find it via geolocation, she told Iran International.

The protester, who has been an active organizer of anti-regime events in Finland, immediately reported the matter to the police, triggering an an ongoing investigation. She also started spreading the word by talking to Finnish and Persian media, saying that the man, who appeared on her Instagram Live video, is actually Behrouz Hosseinpour, an imam connected to Resalat Islamic center in Helsinki.

Shokri said that she “did not even know” the man before the incident, and that she learned of his identity through other anti-regime activists after releasing the footage on social media.

Upon these revelations, Resalat Islamic Community released a statement on its Telegram channel on September 1, admitting that it was indeed Hosseinpour, a “guest speaker,” who grabbed Shokri’s phone. The regime-linked Islamic Community cited her “threats” against members of the mosque as well as attempts to record video of religious events “without permission” as reasons that prompted the imam to act. 

After reviewing the recorded video, Shokri noticed that Hosseinpour and another man had been following her prior to the attack and she believes they must have tracked her by following her 11-year-old daughter, who was supposed to meet her at a flea market in eastern Helsinki following the protest.

Shokri, who is originally from the southern Iranian city of Izeh, an epicenter of protests in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, told Iran International that her daughter also recognized the snatcher as the man who had been following her to and from school for a while. 

The Iranian diaspora in Finland has been calling for a shutdown of the center, arguing that similar to many other so-called Islamic centers such as the ones in Frankfurt or London, it is funded by Iran’s regime to track and bully Iranian dissidents.

Resalat Islamic Center said in its statement, published in both Finnish and Persian, that Hosseinpour “notified us later,” of the incident, indirectly claiming that it had no prior knowledge of the assault on Shokri. Resalat said that it is a victim of “baseless harassment and threats” by Islamophobes and right-wing activists, who frequently vandalize its premises and intimidate its members. 

The statement also described Hosseinpour’s phone grabbing as an attempt to delete videos and photos that the protester had shot to “destroy his character”. Shokri said that her 42-minute live streaming, whose footage is still available on her phone, was merely about the flea market in Helsinki and had nothing to do with the mosque. She also said that this is not the first time she has been assaulted by people allegedly linked to the mosque.

The Islamic center claims that it is independent but has also shrugged off calls by Finno-Iranians to condemn violence perpetrated by Iran’s regime against protesters and activists. According to Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's largest subscription newspaper, Resalat founder Madjid Bahmanpour has “said in several interviews that the mosque received funding from ayatollahs in Iran and Iraq.”

Bahmanpour, whose son, Abbas, is an imam at the Islamic center, is a former member of the Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. Majid and Abbas Bahmanpour, who are quite well known among the Iranian diaspora in Finland, have been at the helm of the center since 2001 and managed to recruit some 1,500 members, who are mostly first-generation immigrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

While an investigation into the matter continues, the Islamic center is also busy holding events in and outside of the mosque, which occasionally draw ire from the Iranian community in the Helsinki area.

Ever since Mahsa Amini’s death in custody of hijab police in Iran on September 16, 2022, Finnish Iranians have held several protests, some in front of the Resalat mosque, calling on the Finnish government to support the movement and shut down the Islamic center. Protests against Iran’s regime in Finland have taken place not only in the capital, but also in much smaller cities, where the number of resident Finno-Iranians is not necessarily large.

In a message on X social network, MEP Neumann along with Cornelia Ernst, Bart Groothuis, and Dietmar Köster, expressed their concerns, stating, "We have some questions regarding the hostage-taking case of Johan Floderus."

Johan Floderus, a 33-year-old member of the EU diplomatic corps, has been held covertly in Iran for over 500 days as part of Iran's hostage diplomacy, as reported by The New York Times. Floderus was arrested at Tehran airport in April 2022, during what was described as a private tourist trip with friends.

MEP Neumann said the issue raises concerns for the safety of other EU citizens. "Any European in Iranian captivity is one too many. However, with the arrest of Johan Floderus, the Iranian regime is escalating the situation further and worsening already strained relations. This incident is outrageous and requires prompt clarification," she said.

The letter directed to Josep Borrell seeks answers to critical questions, including how long the EU has been aware of the Swedish citizen's imprisonment in Iran, reasons behind the lack of public communication on this matter, and the measures undertaken by the EU to secure the release of Floderus.

Members of the European Parliament have pressed Josep Borrell for answers, urging him to respond to the inquiries urgently.

Reza Salehi Amiri, who previously held key positions in the Ministry of Sports and Youth and chaired the National Olympic Committee, was among those affected. Meanwhile, Brigadier General Hossein Alai, a former commander of the Navy of the Revolutionary Guards, and a former Deputy Minister of Defense, also faced restrictions.

Further exacerbating concerns to academic freedom, reports from human rights media indicate that two professors, Maham Mighani from the Faculty of Drama at the University of Tehran and Sara Malekan from the Faculty of Management at Amir Kabir University, have been expelled from their positions. Mighani had halted his classes in protest against the detention of his students last year, while Malekan had been critical of security measures at her university.

The purge of dissident professors in Iran has gained momentum since the protests associated with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement which began in September. The situation escalated when Professor Ali Sharifi-Zarchi, a member of Sharif University of Technology's bioinformatics and AI Faculty, announced his expulsion on August 26. Sharifi-Zarchi had supported dissident students during nationwide protests that followed Mahsa Amini's tragic death in custody on September 16.

Observers speculate that these dismissals may be a preemptive measure to quell potential campus protests on the upcoming first anniversary of Amini's death.