Iranian Figures Caution Against ‘Israeli Trap’ After Embassy Attack

In its latest quarterly report, the non-profit organization which monitors and documents press freedom in Iran, says Tehran is continuing its systematic and targeted suppression of media and journalists.

Twelve journalists and media activists were also arbitrarily arrested – with three journalists transferred to prison and nine journalists summoned by judicial and security authorities.

The home of one journalist was raided by the regime’s security forces, while the property of another was confiscated.

A news agency also expelled its news photographer for criticizing government officials, the report said.

During this period, 24 journalists and media executives were sentenced to a cumulative 14 years and seven months in prison – and fined a total equivalent of over 15 million US dollars.

The sentences also included travel, work and social media bans for many of the journalists.

In nearly 100 instances, media professionals have been denied family visits and access to a lawyer, experienced confiscation of personal belongings without legal judgment, and subjected to extrajudicial imprisonment in solitary confinement.

During the first three months of 2024, the most common accusation against journalists and media activists in Iran has been "publishing lies to disturb public opinion," comprising 64% of legal cases.

The organization says this is emblematic of the Islamic Republic’s systematic effort to discredit journalists and non-governmental media outside the bounds of criminal law.

Earlier this week, the Persian-language site of the International Federation of Journalists released its annual report on the suppression and pressure on Iranian journalists over the past year.

That report, cites that at least 27 journalists and media activists were detained, 27 journalists were summoned, and 21 others were sentenced to punishments including imprisonment.

Other issues such as expulsion from the workplace, deprivation of employment for some journalists, and the detention, suspension, closure, and revocation of publishing licenses for some newspapers, were also cited in that report.

"Undoubtedly, this [Israel] regime and its supporters will face the consequences of this terrorist and brutal crime, and the punishment of the perpetrators of the crime is definite and irreversible," stated Raisi during a phone conversation with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Asad on Tuesday, as reported by IRNA.

Raisi's remarks come in the wake of an Israeli attack on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus, which resulted in the death of seven Revolutionary Guards, including two generals on Monday.

The bombing represents an unprecedented escalation of hostilities that began on October 7, when Iran-backed Islamist militia Hamas invaded Israel, resulting in the death of 1,200 mostly civilians and the capturing of 250 or more hostages.

"Unfortunately, the inaction and weak position resulting from the fear of some Arab countries have prevented the adoption of a unified Islamic stance against the Zionist regime and have made the regime more audacious in committing crimes," he added, in an attack directed at the Muslim world.

Tehran has particularly openly slammed countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for their diplomatic ties with Israel, which resulted from the US-brokered Abraham Accords of 2020.

Tensions have spread throughout the Middle East since the commencement of the Gaza conflict. Thus far, Tehran has avoided direct clashes with Israel while backing proxies involved in assaults on Israeli and US interests.

Iranian authorities often employ aggressive rhetoric, and chants of "Death to Israel" persist as a regular occurrence at state-sponsored gatherings.

The precision strike successfully took the lives of half a dozen members of the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) top brass.

The culprit? According to the Syrian Defence Ministry, an Israeli F-35 Jet fired several missiles towards the building from the direction of the Golan Heights. Many commentators and pundits have been opining over the past 24 hours that Israel and Iran may very well be on the verge of plunging the entire region into unprecedented turmoil.

No headline could perhaps better encapsulate such sentiments than that of the Wall Street Journal: “Israel-Iran Conflict Threatens to Spill into Open Conflict.”

The key phrase in the game being “Open Conflict”. Despite the solemn promise of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei to exact revenge, it is doubtful that “open conflict” between Iran and Israel would escalate into “total war.”

In fact, “the shadow war” between Iran and Israel may very well continue but at the cost of taking many lives of those who fight on behalf of many chapters of Iran’s Shia Imperium.

Although such an escalation may engage Israel in a total war with Hezbollah and Iran’s proxies in Syria, it is the Syrian state and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad that could be pushed to the cliffhanger of annihilation if cool heads do not prevail.

Indeed, Syria, which was created per the 1919 Paris Treaty that “ended” WWI, might as well cease to exist should the conflict between Iran and Israel become the very “open conflict” that many fear. Whilst not discounting the possibility of the outbreak of a total war between Hezbollah and Israel, one cannot be sure if the Iranian regime is ready, or willing, to engage the Israeli troops head on. History, in fact, shows that the Iranian mullahs are traditionally loath to engage the Israelis directly.

Certainly, the rise of the Islamic regime of Iran in 1979, just after Egypt had signed a peace treaty with Israel, introduced an unprecedented dynamic into the Arab Israeli conflict. But the Shadow War between the revolutionary Mullahs and Israel predates the Mullahs’ 1979 power takeover in Tehran.

When the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared war on the Western-backed Shah of Iran in 1960-1963, his sermons were filled with anti-Israeli and anti-semitic rhetoric. Khomeini’s definitive anti-Israeli stance forms the doctrinal core of the Iranian regime’s sacrosanct raison d’être and no one in power has so far dared to question it over the past 45 years.

In the 1980s, at the heat of the Iranian regime’s war with Saddam’s Iraq, Israel collaborated with the US to transfer to Iran weapons hoping that it could sway the Tehran Mullahs to Israel’s side. Yet, the Iranian regime’s ruling clerics never wavered from their efforts at sowing the seeds of Israel’s destruction in Lebanon and beyond (Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the US; 114-117).

In the Iranian regime’s anti-Israeli schemes, Syria has always played a key role both as a partner and a keen facilitator. The oral history of the founding of Hezbollah, however, offers a mixed picture of Iran-Syria partnership.

According to Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour (1947-2021), Iran’s then-ambassador to Damascus (1982-1986) and a godfather of Hezbollah, Khomeini was wary of Iranian troops engaging the IDF directly. Mohtashamipour recounts how Khomeini countermanded IRGC top brass’ operation to deploy troops in Syria and Lebanon against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Ostensibly, Khomeini invoked the foremost need for such troops in war against Saddam’s Iraq but the main reason for Khomeini’s objections was the fact Iran did not have direct access to Syria. However, it may very well be true that Khomeini was wary of a direct confrontation with the Israelis.

Over a decade after Khomeini’s death, the Islamic Republic did manage to get direct land access to Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah through Iraq, thanks to President George W. Bush’s ouster of Saddam Hussein. As the United States failed to establish a strong central government in Iraq. The Iranian regime’s praetorian guard, the IRGC, helped create a dozen proxy militia groups and marked the first major turning point in the establishment of Iran’s Shia Imperium.

Syria became a bridge between these proxy militias and the Hezbollah of Lebanon. As Mohtashamipour and IRGC top brass were advocating for direct confrontation with Israel in Lebanon, they did also run into opposition from then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

It was as if Khomeini and Assad had conspired to restrain their anti-Zionist zeal. Assad, like Khomeini but in his own way, sought to prevent Syria plunging into direct confrontation with Israel on the account of becoming Iranian troops’ staging ground. Contemporary observers in 1986 vividly grasped the fact that Assad believed his Russian and Iranian allies had cost him and his regime dearly in his relations with (rich) conservative Arab states.

The same observers noted at the time that Hafez al-Assad, the father of present Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, viewed Lebanon as "instrumental" in Syria’s struggle for hegemony in the region and its ongoing conflict with Israel, but he did not allow anyone to undermine Syria’s primacy.

In that context, as long as the elder Assad was at the helm in Syria, he never allowed Hezbollah to become more than a proxy partner of the Islamic Republic with a defined role as a militant arbiter in Lebanese politics. In the meantime, Hafez al-Assad sent Syrian troops to fight alongside the US and Arab allies to expel Saddam from Kuwait in 1990 and entered a quasi détente with Israel.

Eleven years after Hafez al-Assad’s death, the 2011 Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise of ISIS transformed the balance of power in the Middle East forever. With Saddam’s Iraq out of the picture and Egypt in turmoil, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey rose to an unprecedented pre-eminence in the region.

The younger Assad, Bashar, desperate to preserve his government in Damascus against a surging muting in the ranks of his army, appealed to the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran’s IRGC, and Russia for assistance.

The success of the combined Hezbollah, Iran’s IRGC, and Russia’s Wagner have restored much of Syria back to Assad regime but at the high price of the solid control of Iranian proxy militant groups and Hezbollah.

The Assad regime, for all intents and purposes, rules only in name and exists only at the pleasure of Iran’s IRGC and the Hezbollah of Lebanon.

In fact, even though one could be accused of “conspiratorial speculations”, there could be a “tacit pact” between Bashar al-Assad and the Israelis aimed at eliminating the Iranian militia and their IRGC masters in Syria, so that the Assad clan can regain its historically righteous place.

This speculation, which I risked uttering in an interview with Iran International on Saturday March 30th, was part of an analysis that I offered on Israel’s precision strike against such militants and their Hezbollah handlers in Aleppo on Friday 29 March.

According to this analysis, Syria’s becoming a battleground between Iran, its proxies, and Israel can effectively end its existence as a state and with it Assad's rule.

Despite Syrian government’s strenuous objections against Israel’s strikes, and reports of its agreement to give Hezbollah advanced Russian made S-300 air defense system, Bashar al-Assad’s regime needs peace and funds to rebuild the territory that it controls.

In fact, giving Hezbollah advanced Russian air defense could be a desperate maneuver to discourage Hezbollah from diversifying its sources and opening a second major front against Israel through Syria.

It is such a reconstruction that can restore Assad’s sovereignty and enable it to govern Syria free from the control of the Iranian proxies. The funds, insofar as the post-Civil War ruined urban and rural Syria is concerned, can only come from rich Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

No country, even Syria’s conservative Arab brothers, would dispense a penny in a country that is anything but a battleground in the Iranian Israeli conflict.

In the lead up to the 1978 peace accord with Israel, Anwar Sadat famously said: “Russians can give you arms, but only the United States can give you a solution” – though he uttered these words when Russia and the US were the sole superpowers of the Cold War.

In the multi-polar world of today where a hesitant and isolationist United States and its allies are grappling to help Ukraine against Russia, and have been incapable of deterring Yemeni Houthi from disrupting free and safe international maritime in the Red Sea, Bashar al-Assad of Syria may be desperate to find a solution before Syria is ravaged beyond recognition by yet another war.

According to reports from the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), the billboards, featuring images of Israeli military leaders, were placed in front of ten foreign embassies in Tehran, including those of Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, France, Turkey, the UK, Germany, Azerbaijan, India, and Russia.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Tuesday vowed to "punish" Israel for the attack, which resulted in the deaths of seven IRGC members, including two generals. The sentiment was echoed by other senior Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, who all promised “severe” repercussions.

The recent bombing marks a significant escalation in the ongoing hostilities between Iran and Israel, which began with an invasion by Iran-backed Hamas militia group that resulted in over 1,200 mostly civilian deaths and 250 hostages.

Iran's authorities in February unveiled a mural in Tehran's Palestine Square, featuring threats directed at its archenemy, Israel.

The mural, adorned with images of missiles and phrases in Persian and Hebrew, sent a message: "We are stronger and more determined than ever", amidst a proxy war which since October has seen Iran's militias across the region launch attacks on both Israel and its ally, the US.

It followed a similar display in January, accompanied by a warning of a "severe response", referring to the bombardment of Gaza. Just hours after the October 7 atrocities, posters also adorned public squares in Iran in celebration of the attacks.

Despite the regime's persistent anti-Western and anti-Israeli rhetoric, there are signs that support for such propaganda among Iranians is dwindling. Many Iranians now express opposition to the government's stance, indicating a growing disillusionment with the regime's policies and priorities.

In a tweet, the Washington-based NGO said the attack “highlights the very real dangers that hound many journalists reporting from exile”.

Iran International TV host and journalist Pouria Zeraatia was stabbed several times by unidentified individuals outside of his home in Wimbledon last Friday. He has since been released from hospital.

Describing the attack on Zeraati “awful” the NGO also called for those responsible to be held “fully accountable”.

This week, Metropolitan Police confirmed that the three individuals suspected of being involved in the stabbing have left the UK.

Citing its own research on transnational repression, Freedom House said at least 26 governments have “reached across borders” to target exiled journalists – including Iran.

The NGO also highlighted the threat faced by two other Iran International journalists, who were targeted in an Iranian regime plot to assassinate them, writing that the plot was the regime’s attempt to disrupt coverage of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Titled “A Light That Cannot Be Extinguished”, Freedom House’s December 2023 report mentions the Islamic Republic among governments known for targeting journalists working abroad.

The report also points out that China, Turkey, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have targeted journalists beyond their borders, either through physical attacks or attempts to silence them.

Between 2014 and 2023, the NGO says, there have been at least 112 instances of state-sponsored physical repression against journalists – including physical assault, detention, abduction, and unlawful expulsion.

These governments try to stop the dissemination of truth, using intimidation tactics targeting journalists' families, including summoning and detaining them. They also often use online harassment and smear campaigns to threaten and suppress journalists.

Freedom House points to various pressures exiled journalists, particularly on women, face in performing their work – and in particular, the threats Iran International faces as a news network.

In 2023, the report says, the UK police alerted Iran International to a serious, urgent, and specific threat against journalists and the network's offices in London – which prompted the temporary relocation of its studios to Washington, DC.