Another Iran Ex-Official Facing Deportation From Canada

A twin bombing in the city of Kerman on January 3 killed around 90 people and injured hundreds who were attending the fourth anniversary of former IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani’s death in a US airstrike in Baghdad.

The Islamic State group in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for the large terror attack, putting Iranian officials on the defensive regarding their intelligence and security failure.

In a speech on Thursday, Khatib praised alleged successes by officials to thwart security threats but admitted that in this case their efforts were not sufficient.

"We witnessed this heartbreaking tragedy and this sedition and enemy conspiracy, which brought shame upon us in front of the Supreme Leader, the people, and the families of the martyrs,” the intelligence minister stated.

The Iranian regime frequently boasts about its ability to maintain public security and its strength in deterring threats from hostile foreign forces. Nevertheless, a series of unexplained incidents in recent years, including sabotage at sensitive sites and assassinations, have cast doubt on this self-portrayal.

Critics mocked security and intelligence organs for their failure to prevent the bombings, especially after they claimed that many similar plans were discovered in the weeks leading up to the Kerman incident. Others charged that the regime’s security forces pursue women and young girls in the streets to enforce hijab, while failing in their main duty to protect the public.

A Friday report in The Telegraph has revealed the aggressive recruitment drive that has seen thousands joining the ranks in recent weeks, tapping into Yemen's vulnerable population, where over 80% live below the poverty line.

“The money offered to fighters is dwarfed by the $1,300 (£1,020) a month Iran pays to members of Hezbollah’s military wing in Lebanon,” the report said, noting that “the disparity has triggered discontent within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which controls the funding and training of foreign militias.”

Citing a November speech by leader of the Houthis’ Supreme Revolutionary Committee, Mohammed al-Houthi, The Telegraph said 10,000 Yemenis had been recruited to support Hamas in its war on Israel. “But in recent weeks, thousands more have been taken on for the new battlefront.”

The report came within hours of large-scale airstrikes by the United States and the United Kingdom on Houthis in response to the group's repeated attacks on commercial vessels.

The Houthis have been targeting cargo ships of different nationality since mid-November, after Israel began its onslaught on Gaza, effectively closing down a major maritime route and disrupting the global flow of goods. The attacks began after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called for blockading Israel.

Rouhani criticized the government for discouraging a majority of eligible voters from going to the polls in the 2020 parliamentary elections. In that election, the hardliner-dominated Guardian Council ruthlessly barred nearly all the reformist and moderate candidates from running by rejecting their credentials.

He also pointed out that people's participation was also minimal in the 2021 Presidential election, as a result of biased vetting of candidates, and disqualifying the most prominent contenders. As a result, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s hand-picked choice, Ebrahim Raisi, cruised to victory in another low-turnout vote.

Rouhani told the Guardian Council, and possibly Khamenei: You said that [my] government lacked popularity. But why did you disqualify everyone who supported [my] government.

He went on to emphasize, "It was painful to witness the smallest-ever turnout of eligible voters in Iran during those elections." In the 2020 and 2021 elections, the voter turnout in the most active constituencies ranged from 20 to 40 percent. However, in regions with significant dissent, such as the industrial townships near Karaj, close to Tehran, the turnout plummeted to as low as 2 percent.

The former President attributed Iran's current political impasse in part to the absence of the former President and Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who passed away in January 2017. He expressed his concern about the situation, emphasizing that, as a follower of Rafsanjani, he understands the importance of stepping forward and working to solve problems during challenging times like these.

This was possibly another message to Khamenei, who isolated Rafsanjani in the latter years of his life, although the politician had played an instrumental role in convincing senior clerics to select the junior clergyman as Supreme Leader in 1989.

Rafsanjani died under suspicious circumstances and some, including his two daughters Fatemeh and Faezeh strongly believe that he might have been killed. Faezeh Hashemi on Thursday presented some strong evidence in the Iranian press, suggesting that her father might have become the victim of political rivalry by hardliners who thought his presence in the post-Khamenei period could deprive them of political power.

She stated that intelligence officers had met with her a few weeks before her father's death and had discussed the possibility of his assassination in a manner that could be made to appear as if he died of natural causes.

Rouhani said that hardliners carried out five major operations, including the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in 2016, to tarnish Iran's foreign relations and stop the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program from succeeding.

Meanwhile, he claimed that the United States was certain that his government was popular based on its analysis of a video of Rouhani's visit to Esfahan in February 2015, and wanted to further nuclear negotiations with his administration.

Returning to the topic of the upcoming elections, Rouhani stated: "The ruling minority does not desire competitive elections and a high turnout. They prefer a lackluster election to secure the continuation of their power."

In Khamenei's camp, individuals of doubtful popularity are desperately trying to encourage the people to take part in the elections. Khamenei's representative to hardline daily Kayhan, Hossein Shariatmadari has warned that "Islam will be isolated if people refuse to vote.” His representative in Kermanshah, Friday Prayers Imam Habibollah Ghafouri has said that every vote is like a missile that targets the enemy's heart." These are, however, slogans that most Iranians find too banal and far from the realities of their hard lives.

According to a report in The Times this week, Wikipedia entries related to Iranian human rights abuses have been systematically altered in line with Tehran’s propaganda. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world.

In addition to downplaying Iranian atrocities and targeting its critics, the edits seek to present government publications as impartial sources.

Specific instances involve the removal of details about mass executions in 1988 and the fact that current senior officials in the regime were involved in ordering the hanging of thousands of political prisoners.

Another example is misinformation about human rights activist Vahid Beheshti, who has been campaigning to put pressure on the UK government to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) as a terrorist group. Mattie Heaven, Beheshti’s wife, said four attempts were made to set up a page on the topic because there was so much misinformation online about her husband, but the text was repeatedly removed so the page could not function. “We believed it was the Iranian cyber army,” she said.

Other deletions included references to the jailing of Iranian official Hamid Nouri, a key figure implicated in the 1988 massacre, in Sweden in 2022, and the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from Albania in 2018 due to their alleged involvement in a bomb plot against dissidents.

“Online misinformation is also a key tool for the regime," The Times wrote. The campaign is in line with Supreme Leader’s Ali Khamenei’s call on supporters to come up with recounts of the global current affairs that benefit the regime, what he has dubbed “vindication jihad.”

The strikes took place after repeated warnings to the Iran-backed militant group to cease their attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. However, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Naser Kanaani called the US and UK action “a breach of international laws, regulations, and rights.”

Iran has been providing military support to the Houthis for at least a decade, supplying sophisticated weapons such as drones, and ballistic and cruise missiles.

The Yemeni group began targeting international shipping in mid-November after Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei called for blockading Israel.

Kanaani, however, did not refer to the attacks on international shipping and said that the strikes by the United States and the United Kingdom was to support Israel in its war against Hamas.

Iranian government-controlled media, including those affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, were largely muted on Friday, simply reporting the strikes with their usual rhetoric. However, more rhetoric is expected to follow in the coming hours and days.

While the Biden administration acted against the Houthis after two months of almost daily attacks against commercial vessels, critics say that lifting US sanctions against the militant group in 2021 was a mistake. Some argue that strikes should be more sustained and aim to dismantle the military capabilities of the Houthis in order to re-establish deterrence in the region.