Iran Denounces Critical UN Report On 2022 Protests As Baseless

The demonstrations in London and Stockholm were held outside parliaments, with the protesters demanding that these counties hold Iran accountable for its human rights violations.

Designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization was the key demand in the gatherings. The IRGC is the main force for the crackdown on dissent by the Islamic Republic.

The demonstrators said that the IRGC has not only suppressed women during the 2022 uprising – ignited by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, but also put them under pressure, imprisoned them, and killed them over the past four decades for pursuing their basic rights.

In Gothenburg, another Swedish city, Iranians gathered to support women in Iran and to call for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

The protesters carried pictures of political prisoners such as Nasrin Sotoudeh and Narges Mohammadi, as well as pictures of some of those killed in the uprising.

In London, a group of Iranian women staged a silent protest in front of the parliament, wearing red dresses similar to the characters of the TV series "The Handmaid's Tale". The Handmaid's Tale is a series set in a dystopian New England, in which an authoritarian, totalitarian, religious and anti-women government as overthrown the United States government and victimizes its citizens, especially women.

The protesters outside the British Parliament told Iran International that Iranian women are the real victims of a religious and oppressive government as they grapple with the consequences of a gender apartheid, highlighting the similarities between the series and the real lives of women in Iran.

Consequently, they deployed military units specialized in combating armed groups, alongside security forces armed with military-grade weapons, authorized to use lethal force, torture, and terrorize civilians to suppress the uprising, stated Omid Shams, a lawyer and director at Justice for Iran, in an interview with Iran International.

Shams also noted that authorities deployed tanks and armored vehicles in several provinces. His organization identified at least twenty military units from the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the IRGC’s Basij militia force, and the police, along with 526 individuals directly involved in severe crimes against protesters.

The report highlights recurring suppression tactics, including the deliberate and indiscriminate firing on protesters, bystanders, and those documenting the attacks, reminiscent of previous protests such as those in 2019.

The protests erupted when Iran’s ‘hijab police’ arrested Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman in the street for improper attire and hours later she was transferred to hospital with severe head injuries and died three days later. Months of protests that followed represented the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979. Iranian authorities had used brutal force against protesters in the past also, the worst being in November 2019, when they killed at least 1,500 people in the streets.

Justice for Iran, a London-based non-governmental organization (NGO), focuses on human rights abuses in Iran. It maintains a database of political prisoners in Iran (The Atlas of Iranian Prisons) and organized the Iran Atrocities tribunal in London to mark the first anniversary of the November 2019 protests.

The organization's new 250-page report, titled "Waging War on Civilians: Exposing Iran's Repressive Units and Crimes Against Humanity," offers a comprehensive overview of the command structure responsible for the protester massacre, the forces involved, and the weaponry used.

During the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, which began in mid-September following Amini’s death, security forces reportedly targeted passing cars, public transport, residential and commercial buildings, medical centers, and hospitals, instilling fear among citizens.

Many protesters were systematically targeted in the face, resulting in numerous cases of blindness. Iran Human Rights (IHR) reported in September 2023 that women comprised 9 percent of slain protesters and 28% of those who suffered eye injuries.

Justice for Iran employed various methodologies, including open-source intelligence, expert interviews, and an in-depth analysis of visual evidence from its archive database of 35,000 videos, to assess the government's actions during the 2022-23 protests and identify serious human rights violations.

Based on its findings, the report argues that authorities treated the protests as an armed conflict, labeling protesters as combatants and deploying military units and security forces authorized to use lethal force, torture, and terrorize civilians.

In April 2022, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, called for a robust response to criticism and attacks against the Islamic Republic, advocating for the use of "hybrid warfare" to counter various forms of aggression.

Justice for Iran has shared its findings with relevant international rights organizations, including the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Iran, established in December 2022 after the brutal crackdown on protesters. The mission is set to release a preliminary report on March 8 and a comprehensive report on March 18.

“Iran is not paying a cost,” CENTCOM Commander Gen. Erik Kurilla told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

Repeated retaliatory strikes by US and UK forces – meant to limit the capacities of the Houthis to target ships – have so far failed to deter the militant group from hitting one of the world's busiest trade lanes.

This week alone, a Houthi missile attack killed three civilian seafarers on a merchant ship, marking the first deaths caused by the group's attacks on merchant vessels.

The Iranian regime-backed group started attacking ships in the Red Sea in November in what they say is a campaign in solidarity with Palestinians during the war in Gaza.

CENTCOM needs POTUS approval to sink Iranian ships

Republican Senator Sullivan questioned Gen. Kurilla on why the US hasn't escalated its response to these attacks by targeting Iranian spy ships, which provide intelligence used to harm American sailors.

The CENTCOM Chief maintained he is not authorized to take action against Iranian naval vessels – without permission from POTUS to do so.

In response to largely Democratic lawmakers raising the alarm of a confrontation with Iran and the risk of “escalation”, parallels were drawn several times to Operation Praying Mantis.

That military operation on April 18, 1988, saw the US retaliate for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War.

Republican lawmakers insisted that the US was able to destroy Iran’s naval capacity with that operation, without risking a wider war.

While Democratic Senator Jack Reed expressed optimism regarding a temporary pause in Iran-backed attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria, Gen. Kurilla maintained several times that Iran continues to be undeterred in its support to the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and factions in the West Bank.

Despite these concerns, forceful words on Iran were notably absent from President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech on Thursday night.

For numerous analysts, this mirrors the absence of a coherent US policy aimed at deterring Tehran from its malicious activities throughout the Middle East.

Former CENTCOM Chiefs critical of US approach

But, Republicans aren’t the only critics of the current strategy to contain Iran’s proxy attacks.

Several high-ranking former senior armed forces officials have gone on record with their criticism for the lack of accountability the regime in Tehran faces.

Retired Vice Adm. John Miller, who oversaw all US naval activities in the Middle East until 2022, told POLITICO that his country is “not taking this seriously” and “not deterring anybody right now”.

Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie, who commanded US forces in the Middle East during both the Trump and Biden administrations, also told the same news outlet recently, that Iran perceives the absence of a robust US military reaction to the recent Houthi attacks as encouragement to persist in its aggressive actions.

“We’ve given them no reason not to continue [attacking],” he said of the Houthis.

In an interview with Breaking Defense, Gen. Joseph Votel voiced his view that problems started when the US administration under President Barack Obama decided to “pivot” to Asia and reduced its involvement in the Middle East region.

The former US Central Command chief said that the administration focused only on brokering an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, which neglected the growing threat of its proxy groups in the region.

Meanwhile, the leader of Yemen’s Houthi militia seemingly bragged about his group’s missile striking capabilities in a televised speech on Thursday.

“In [Wednesday’s] strike, there was amazement at the precision of the attack and the power of damage,” Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said.

“Discovering ships and hitting them with such precision using ballistic missiles for the first time is an achievement in every sense of the word”, he said.

Since early January, the US dollar has risen from 500,000 rials to more than 600,000, a 20-percent rise against the Iranian currency.

Since early 2018, the rial has fallen 15-fold as the United States imposed economic sanctions when it withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear deal.

Media in Tehran reported on Friday that real estate prices are rising to be on par with the dollar. Real estate is treated as capital investment by Iranians, who are not willing to sell cheaper when the rial falls against major currencies.

The same also applies to gold, cars and imported merchandise. The US dollar was trading at 600,800 rials on Friday as the euro rose to 666,000 and the British pound to 780,000 rials. Friday is a weekend day in Iran and most markets are closed.

Media reports say that as the new week begins on Saturday, the rial can take another hit. One news website reported that the government is auctioning gold at much higher prices, signaling that the rial can sharply fall in the coming days.

Official annual inflation hovers near 50 percent, but the rial’s fall can directly impact prices and push the inflation rate to near hyper-inflation levels in the coming months.

The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) was established by the UN human rights council in November 2022, two months after the Woman, Life, Freedom protests swept the country in response to the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The mission published its first report on Friday after 18 months of investigations with help from experts, witnesses and victims, who will be corroborating the report's findings on a panel at the UN in Geneva later in the year.

The FFM concluded that Iran is responsible for the “physical violence” that led to the death of Amini in September 2022. The clerical regime has denied being responsible for her death or that she had been beaten, with authorities blaming a medical condition Amini had from childhood after a surgery. The UN report dismissed that as a cause of her death, confirming “the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini’s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.”

“Credible figures suggest that as many as 551 protesters were killed by the security forces, among them at least 49 women and 68 children. Most deaths were caused by firearms, including assault rifles,” according to the report.

The violations and crimes include extra-judicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution, the mission said. "The Mission found cases of women and girls subjected to rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including gang rape, rape with an object, electrocution of genitalia, forced nudity and groping,” the UN said.

It added that the regime carried out widespread and sustained human rights violations, which broke international laws and disproportionately targeted women and girls as well as children and members of ethnic and religious minorities. “The Mission found that gender persecution intersected with discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and religion.”

The report also confirmed that Iranian security forces used shotguns, assault rifles and submachine guns against demonstrators “in situations where there was no imminent threat of death or serious injury” to them, “thereby committing unlawful and extrajudicial killings.” It also found a pattern of protesters being shot intentionally in the eye, saying that “A pattern of extensive injuries to protesters’ eyes caused the blinding of scores of women, men and children, branding them for life.”

“These acts form part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Iran, namely against women, girls, boys and men who have demanded freedom, equality, dignity and accountability,” said Sara Hossain, chair of the Fact-Finding Mission. “We urge the Government to immediately halt the repression of those who have engaged in peaceful protests, in particular women and girls.”

The mission also said the Government arbitrarily executed at least nine young men from December 2022 to January 2024 after summary trials based on torture-coerced confessions. “Dozens of individuals, remain at risk of execution or receiving a death sentence in relation to the protests.”

“We urge the Iranian authorities to halt all executions and immediately and unconditionally release all persons arbitrarily arrested and detained in the context of the protests, and to end the repression of protesters, their families and supporters of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement,” said Shaheen Sardar Ali, a member of the mission.

Authorities are doubling down on their repression of families of victims, journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, medical doctors and many others simply for expressing their views, supporting the protesters or seeking truth and justice for victims, the mission underlined.

In addition to crackdown on journalists at home, the mission has further established that Iran harassed, threatened and intimidated journalists and other media employees working outside the country, including those at Iran International, the BBC Persian service and others.

“The Iranian authorities summoned, threatened and in some cases arrested, detained and charged the family members of those journalists and media workers in an apparent effort to exert pressure on them and prevent them from reporting on the country.”

In October 2022, Iran sanctioned the BBC Persian service and Iran International television, and imposed asset freezes on their staff. Journalists also received serious threats, including to their lives and personal safety, leading to the involvement of the police in some countries.

In February 2023, Iran International TV had to temporarily relocate its offices in London to Washington DC, after the UK’s security forces determined it could no longer keep the staff safe following assassination attempts by Iran’s IRGC. However, the network reopened its offices in September 2023 at a new location amid tighter security.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has the obligation to uphold the rights of women and children, and to ensure the right to truth, justice, and reparations of all victims,” said Viviana Krsticevic, another member of the Mission. “Given our findings, this would entail, among other measures, an overhaul of criminal and civil laws, a reform of the justice system, and measures for accountability.”