Dissident Placed in Solitary Confinement for Prison Food Price Protest

The US State Department issued a statement warning Iran of its response. “The report issued today by the IAEA makes clear that Iran aims to continue expanding its nuclear program in ways that have no credible peaceful purpose. These planned actions further undermine Iran’s claims to the contrary. If Iran implements these plans, we will respond accordingly.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report on Thursday saying Iran has responded to last week's UN nuclear watchdog censure resolution by expanding its uranium enrichment capacity at two underground sites. Iran has rapidly installed two more cascades, or clusters, of uranium-enriching centrifuges at its Fordow site and begun work on more while also planning others at its underground plant at Natanz.

"On 9 and 10 June ... Iran informed the Agency that eight cascades each containing 174 IR-6 centrifuges would be installed over the next 3-4 weeks in Unit 1 of FFEP (Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant)," the confidential International Atomic Energy Agency report sent to member states on Thursday said.

"On 11 June 2024, the Agency verified at FFEP that Iran had completed the installation of IR-6 centrifuges in two cascades in Unit 1. Installation of IR-6 centrifuges in four additional cascades was ongoing," the report said, referring to one of one of Iran's most advanced centrifuge models.

The IAEA Board passed a resolution a week ago calling on Iran to step up cooperation with the agency and reverse its recent decision to bar visits by inspectors.

The resolution was tabled by Britain, France and Germany, which the United States reportedly opposed but later endorsed. Only Russia and China voted against the measure.

The US statement further stated: Iran must cooperate with the IAEA without further delay to fully implement its legally binding safeguards obligations. Until Iran does so, the IAEA Board of Governors will continue to hold Iran to account. We remain in close coordination with our partners and allies and are prepared to continue to increase pressure on Iran should its non-cooperation with the IAEA continue.

Ali Shamkhani, a senior aide to Iran's Supreme Leader, who has been reportedly put in charge of Iran's nuclear negotiations, had warned that Iran would deliver a "serious and effective response" if European nations pursue the resolution.

Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 60% purity in the past two years has no credible civilian use and is viewed as a steppingstone to 90% weapons grade enrichment. The time needed to produce the fissile material for a bomb by further enriching from 60 to 90 percent is just a few weeks, putting Iran in the position of an early nuclear threshold country.

The 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers had capped enrichment to less than 5% for more than a decade, but former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement known as the JCPOA in 2018 and imposed sanctions on Iran. He argued that that 2015 deal was weak and had a limited restraining life span, demanding a tougher agreement.

Iran’s response during the remaining two years of the Trump term was relatively limited, increasing enrichment to just 5%. However, after President Joe Biden’s election and his declaration to strive for the restoration of the Obama-era agreement, Iran hardened its position, demanding the lifting of US sanctions and accelerating enrichment first to 20% in early 2021, and then 60% later.

Multi-lateral negotiations lasting 18 months to restore the JCPOA failed once Russia invaded Ukraine and Iran began supplying drones to Moscow in mid-2022.

“This ongoing malicious and reckless behavior by the Iranian-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” stated US Central Command (CENTCOM).

The Houthis, an Iranian proxy group, began targeting maritime commercial traffic in mid-November following a call by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for Muslim countries to blockade Israel. Initially confined to the Red Sea, these attacks have since extended to other crucial waterways, including the Indian Ocean.

“The Houthis claim to act on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza, yet they are targeting and endangering the lives of nationals from third countries who are unrelated to the Gaza conflict,” said CENTCOM.

According to Yahya Saree, the Iran-aligned group's military spokesman, the Houthis attacked the Verbena in the Arabian Sea as well as the Seaguardian and Athina in the Red Sea.

The attack on the Palau-flagged cargo ship Verbena resulted in a fire and severely injured one crew member, as reported by CENTCOM.

The rebels also launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles from a Houthi-controlled area in Yemen into the Red Sea. However, CENTCOM confirmed that these missiles caused no damage or injuries.

The United States and Britain have bombed Houthi military installations several times since January, but the Iran-backed group has accelerated attacks in the past two weeks, as Israel continues operations in Gaza and attacks Iran-backed Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

The Houthi campaign has disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa. It has also stoked fears that the Gaza war - in which the local health ministry says over 37,000 have been killed - could spread and destabilize the wider Middle East.

“No candidate in this election or others can succeed without integrating AI,” Mohammadreza Ghasemi asserted in an interview with state-affiliated IRNA news on Thursday.

Although there are no reliable polls about the electorate's mood ahead of the June 28 snap election, the trend in the past three national elections in Iran has shown a declining turnout.

With the regime handpicking which candidates are allowed to run, a large segment of the public has lost interest in voting.

Ghasemi noted that countries like the US and Russia, amid their power struggles, employ AI tools to sway public opinion. “Managing public opinion is a crucial aspect of AI application,” he emphasized.

“AI in elections involves managing public opinion. Suppose we fail to coordinate the management of big data within social networks and influence algorithms shaped by society's general understanding”. In that case, the official added, “We will not succeed in the elections.”

He didn't elaborate on what he meant by "succeed in the election," but it likely refers to mobilizing voters for the upcoming snap elections. Following former president Ebrahim Raisi's death, the ruling establishment must re-engage an electorate disillusioned by recent elections.

Official statistics show that 40.6 percent of eligible voters participated in the first round of parliamentary elections on March 1. In Tehran, only 24 percent of the population voted, marking the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history.

Even lower turnout was recorded in the recent run-off elections, with only seven percent of eligible voters in Tehran casting their ballots.

Ghasemi also pointed out that despite Iran’s "significant challenges with AI", the seminary's "robust capabilities that candidates should leverage". “Presidential candidates should harness the unique AI strengths of seminaries, which are key national players,” he stated.

"AI will significantly impact future global management and is a strategic, power-creating technology," the official added.

Ghasemi also urged candidates to reveal their AI strategies, stressing that the seminary, as a “proactive institution in AI technology,” will “hold them accountable.”

The seminary tech official predicted that the world will soon be divided into AI users and developers, reducing the relevance of geographical boundaries.

He also mentioned AI's drawbacks, particularly the spread of fake news, which he attributed to 30% of the protests in 2022.

“AI reflects real news, but it also plays a role in creating, distributing, and engineering fake news,” he added.

In 2022, the nationwide protests, known as Woman Life Freedom, sparked by Mahsa Amini's death in police custody, resulted in over 550 deaths and severe social crackdowns. Women and minorities continue to face severe persecution, with executions reaching record levels.

In March, the UN's fact-finding mission concluded that Amini's death in the custody of Iran's morality police was unlawful and caused by violence and that Iranian women still suffer systematic discrimination.

According to the fact-finding mission, there were extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, torture, and ill-treatment, as well as rapes and sexual violence during the protests which followed.

In October 2022, during Iran's nationwide protests, one of the country's largest independent anti-poverty charities reported that many minors were recruited to attack protesters in exchange for essential food supplies. Over 500 members and supporters of Imam Ali's Popular Student Relief Society (IAPSRS) stated that authorities employed children as part of their forces against anti-government protesters.

During the peak of the uprising, as the Islamic Republic’s repressive forces faced fatigue and shortages, it became increasingly evident that impoverished children were recruited to suppress the protests. Images of children, some not even wearing shoes and teenagers in anti-riot uniforms of the Basij and Revolutionary Guards surfaced on social media, sparking widespread outrage among users.

At the same time, the Association for the Protection of Children's Rights issued a statement condemning the use of children to suppress street protests, as well as the killing and arrest of children and teenagers during the nationwide uprising in Iran.

Garbage Collecting Mafia and Child Labor in Iran

Many working children are taken advantage of by organized crime groups in the streets to do dirty and odd jobs for small compensation.

Speaking at a meeting in Tehran on the role of public awareness in ending child labor, held on the eve of the World Day Against Child Labor, Farshid Yazdani, a children's rights activist, criticized Iranian authorities for wrongly emphasizing that child laborers are involved in "gangs and mafia." He stated, "Our studies show that the maximum level of coordination is that child laborers do these jobs [garbage collecting], as a family," as reported by Hammihan on Tuesday.

In this meeting, Reza Shafakhah, the secretary of the children's rights committee of the human rights working group of the National Union of Bar Associations, emphasized that child labor is a phenomenon that does not have a mafia, but garbage collection has a mafia.

Shafakhah added: "Even if it is a mafia, it still does not reduce the duties of government organizations."

Inaccurate Government Statistics of Child Laborers in Iran

In another part of this meeting, Yazdani discussed the government's varying and inaccurate statistics on the number of child laborers and stated: "In 2018, we identified about 4,800 garbage-picking children in the city of Tehran.

At the meeting, Mohammad Saleh Noghrehkar, head of human rights at the Bar Association, cited former Minister Ali Rabiei's claim at a Child Labor Convention in Brazil during Hassan Rouhani's presidency that "We don't have child scavengers in Iran." Noghrehkar countered, noting that the IAPSRS had identified 120,000 child scavengers that same year.

Shafakhah further stated that there are 19 million marginalized people in Iran and emphasized that the latest official number of working children is "three million."

According to him, IAPSRS had 44 centers that covered 6,000 children all over the country before its dissolution.

Iran’s Crackdown on NGOs and Children’s Rights Activists

In 2020 Iranian security forces detained the founder and director of IAPSRS Sharmin Meymandinejad and two of the managers of IAPSRS following a complaint filed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Susequently, the Ministry of Interior of the Rouhani government filed a complaint with the judiciary, requesting the dissolution of this organization by the judicial authorities.

The court hearing of the IRGC complaint was held on 2 March 2021, and in a rare move, a day later, on 3 March 2021, the court issued a ruling to dissolve IAPSRS.

The Rouhani government's Ministry of Interior requested the dissolution of this organization, citing accusations such as "issuing political statements during critical times in the country and engaging in anti-religious activities."

Shafakhah, heading the legal team of IAPSRS, stated that the indictment presented to the court regarding IAPSRS and its members began with the assertion that "NGOs are seeking a velvet and colorful revolution."

In the indictment, civil activists were referred to as "informers of international organizations" because "in international forums and UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, they provide statistics about Iran's social harms that lead to the approval of resolutions against Iran."

Iran has rapidly installed two more cascades, or clusters, of uranium-enriching centrifuges at its Fordow site and begun work on more while also planning others at its underground plant at Natanz, a UN nuclear watchdog report seen by Reuters said.

"On 9 and 10 June ... Iran informed the Agency that eight cascades each containing 174 IR-6 centrifuges would be installed over the next 3-4 weeks in Unit 1 of FFEP (Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant)," the confidential International Atomic Energy Agency report sent to member states on Thursday said.

"On 11 June 2024, the Agency verified at FFEP that Iran had completed the installation of IR-6 centrifuges in two cascades in Unit 1. Installation of IR-6 centrifuges in four additional cascades was ongoing," the report said, referring to one of one of Iran's most advanced centrifuge models.

While non-binding, resolutions by the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation Board of Governors anger Tehran, which typically responds by accelerating its nuclear activities.

Eighteen months earlier, Iran responded to a similar resolution by enriching uranium to up to 60% purity—close to weapons-grade—at a second site and announcing a significant expansion of its enrichment program.

Reuters cited unnamed diplomats as saying Wednesday that this time Tehran plans to install more cascades, or clusters, of centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium, at both its underground enrichment sites.

"It's not as much as I would expect," one Vienna-based diplomat said, referring to the scale of Iran's escalation. "Why? I don't know. Maybe they're waiting for the new government," they said, referring to the death in a helicopter crash last month of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The presidential election is due to be held on June 28.

The IAEA Board passed a resolution a week ago calling on Iran to step up cooperation with the agency and reverse its recent decision to bar visits by inspectors.

The resolution was tabled by the Britain, France and Germany, which the United States reportedly opposed but later endorsed. Only Russia and China voted against the measure.

Ali Shamkhani, a senior aide to Iran's Supreme Leader, who has been reportedly put in charge of Iran's nuclear negotiations, had warned that Iran would deliver a "serious and effective response" if European nations pursue the resolution.

Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami claimed earlier this month that Tehran is adhering to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agreements, but is “in the process of reducing its nuclear obligations” under the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The E3 maintains that Iran has signed and ratified the NPT Safeguards Agreement but has not adhered to its legally binding obligations.

In 2018, then-US President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, arguing that the agreement did not sufficiently prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Consequently, the US re-imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran's economy.

Reuters sources did not go into specifics on the number or type of centrifuges being added or what level they would enrich to, though one diplomat said they would not be used to quickly expand Iran's production of uranium enriched to up to 60%, close to the 90% required for production of atomic bombs.

The diplomats said they would wait to see what the IAEA said Iran had actually done but they were aware of Iran's plans. The move is "at the lower end of expectations and something we're pretty sure they were going to do anyway", one diplomat said, meaning it would have happened even without the resolution.

Iran did not fully follow through on its November 2022 announcement of a tough retaliation after the previous resolution. While it installed all the centrifuges it said it would at its underground enrichment plant at Natanz, 12 cascades of one advanced model, the IR-2m, are not yet in operation.

Iran is only enriching to up to 60% at an above-ground pilot plant at Natanz and its Fordow site, which is dug into a mountain. In November 2022 it started enriching to up to 60% at Fordow but it has yet to install all the additional cascades it said it would.

IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi acknowledged last week that the agency has lost continuity of knowledge regarding the production of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water, and uranium as Iran continues to expand its nuclear program.

In response to a question by Iran International’s Ahmad Samadi about the censure resolution by the European countries, Grossi stated that the member countries must express their opinions on the matter and that the Agency is only required to comply with the resolution if it is approved.