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Showing posts from April, 2022

Tehran in Meltdown as Israel Decapitates Hamas and Hezbollah

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  By Struan Stevenson Conflagration engulfs the Middle East, with the Israel-Hamas war having gone on for more than a year now, and many Israeli hostages are still being held in deplorable conditions by Hamas terrorists. In Northern Israel, constant missile and rocket attacks by Hezbollah led to the mass evacuation of more than 70,000 Israelis from their homes in 2024 and to the inevitable military retaliation by the Israel Defense Forces, as they crossed the border into Southern Lebanon. Israeli missiles are raining down on key Hezbollah targets in Beirut. The assassination of Hezbollah’s terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, a seismic event, shattered his close friend and ally Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader and Hezbollah’s main sponsor. Nasrallah’s successor, Hashem Saffieddine, was also killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut within hours of being nominated for the Hezbollah leadership role and before the funeral of his predecessor had even taken place. Es...

Noury’s trial marks a milestone for Iran’s Justice Movement

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By  Matin Karim Swedish prosecutors have requested a life in prison sentence for  Hamid Noury , an Iranian regime torturer who has been on trial in Stockholm for crimes against humanity and the torture and execution of thousands of Iranian political prisoners in 1988. The prosecutors stressed that according to international law, Noury was involved in war crimes, which justifies life in prison. During the 1988 massacre of political prisoners, Noury was one of the prison authorities in Gohardasht prison, Karaj. During the court proceedings, Noury denied the 1988 massacre as well as his presence in Gohardasht prison against all the presented evidence. He tried to frame the killing of thousands of prisoners as “lies and propaganda by the MEK and communists.” He tried to portray himself as a minor actor who did not take part in the executions. But numerous witnesses who testified in the Swedish court gave harrowing accounts of how Noury and other regime authorities sent prisoners t...

The World Should Start Listening to What Khamenei Says

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  Written by   Shahriar Kia Despair, frustration, and disappointment, are the words any political observer would hear while listening to speeches of top officials in the Iranian state hierarchy. For some, it might be translated as the country’s leadership warning against a natural social disorder reflecting the economic hardship that has followed international sanctions but those who care enough to connect the dots would see the consistency in the chaos-driven milieu of Iran’s politics. On a provincial trip to Qazvin province on April 28, the Iranian regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi said  during his speech : “Today, we should not disappoint people by abandoning good actions and doing wrong things, because the greatest sin is to disappoint people.” “My first advice to you students is to avoid hopelessness and despair. Be careful. It means to take care of yourself, take care of your heart, be careful not to be passive, do not be disappointed,” the Iranian regime’s Supreme L...

Iran ratchets up tensions with Israel

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  By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh The Iranian regime’s challenges are rising both domestically and globally. And as the Islamic Republic is attempting to expand its regional meddling, it is escalating tensions with its chief rival, Israel. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security last week announced that it had arrested three individuals on charges of spying for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. Their identity and the evidence that led to the allegations against them were not revealed. It is worth noting that the Iranian regime has a long history of using charges such as espionage and “collaborating with hostile states” to justify harsh sentences for political detainees. This impulse has accelerated in recent weeks, as Tehran has been trying to expand its regional meddling as a hedge against the likely collapse of talks to renegotiate its 2015 nuclear agreement with the P5+1 world powers. Opposition to Israel’s very existence has always been a central focus of the clerical ...

London Conference: “No to Belligerence and Fundamentalism” on the Eve of Eid Al-fitr

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  Written by   Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) Maryam Rajavi: Islam Is a Messenger of Freedom and the Overthrow of the Absolute Rule of the Clergy On Thursday, April 28, 2022, on the eve of Eid al-Fitr, a conference entitled “No to Belligerence and Fundamentalism” was held in London, with the presence of Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Several political and religious dignitaries from various countries also spoke at the conference, some via video. Members of the  Mujahedin-e Khalq  (MEK/PMOI) in Ashraf 3 in Albania also participated in the conference online. Representatives and political figures from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria, Sudan, Ukraine, and Britain participated in the conference, including Riyad Yassin, Former Foreign Minister and Yemen’s Ambassador to France, Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, former Lebanese Minister of Justice (2014-2016); Tareq Mehdi Abdoltawab, f...

Iran: Prosecutors on Noury’s 87th Session Confirm the 1988 Massacre

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  Written by   Mansoureh Galestan Tuesday marked the 87 th  session of  Hamid Noury’s court . He was apprehended in 2019 in Sweden for his role in the 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners in Iran. Noury worked as the deputy prosecutor of the notorious Gohardasht prison. The victims were mostly members and supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). During Tuesday’s session, prosecutors presented their full indictment against the defendant and underlined his role in the 1988 genocide. Prosecutors first emphasized that Noury confirmed last week during cross-examination that despite his initial denial of the executions, even if they happened, they were based on previously issued sentences. Noury had cited  Ebrahim Raisi , the regime’s current president and a known perpetrator of the 1988 genocide, acknowledging that the victims were condemned to death, the Supreme Court had confirmed the verdict, but it did not happen. In their...

Iran: Khamenei’s Speech Revealed His Fear of Domestic and International Dangers Ahead

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  Written by   Sedighe Shahrokhi On April 26, on the same day when the Iranian regime’s Judiciary confirmed the 16-year jail sentence for two award-winning elite students for activism against the entire ruling establishment, the regime’s  Supreme Leader organized  a meeting with a crowd he called “students and members of student organizations” to warn his followers about what is going on in the country’s universities. Recalling the very first days after the 1979 revolution and contradicting the events that turned most Iranian students into political dissidents, Khamenei said: “From the very beginning, two completely opposite views, namely, ‘the view of the revolution led by Imam Khomeini’ and ‘the view of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary movement’ confronted each other in our universities. The revolution saw the university as a center to produce science and scientific growth and thus a provider of national power, but the counter-revolutionary movement wanted...

Soaring Housing Prices in Iran, Perhaps Another Ticking Bomb?

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  Written by   Mansoureh Galestan Official  statistics in Iran  indicate that housing prices in Tehran have risen sevenfold since 2017. Despite promises to fight inflation, drop the prices, and build four million homes, according to the  Central Bank of Iran , housing prices in Iran have soared sharply since Ebrahim Raisi took over the government. The price of each square meter of land in Tehran has increased from 300 million rials in August 2021 to over 350 million rials in March 2022. This represents an increase of 50 million rials per square meter of land in Tehran in nearly seven months, while the price of each meter of land from 2017 from 50 million to 350 million rials in 2021 shows a sharp upturn by 600%. Another reason for the dramatic increase in housing prices has been the sharp drop of the state currency in recent years and months. The value of the US dollar vs. Iranian Rial increased 15% in one year, which has had an immediate impact on housing price...

New strikes by Iran’s petrochemical workers poses security risk for the regime

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 By Mahmoud Hakimian Numerous oil petrochemical sites in different cities of Iran witnessed workers launching new strikes on Monday, April 25, protesting their low paychecks and demanding better working conditions. These latest measures resulted in sites, such as the Bushehr petrochemical complex, coming to a complete halt. The protesting workers are blaming their officials and contractors for refusing to deliver on previous promises. In recent days, similar protests have been reported from other cities, including Asaluyeh, southwest Iran. Many workers are complaining of lacking job security and any protest over their degrading working conditions leads to contractors expelling them from their only source of income. This includes even simple requests for safety procedures being provided for in their dangerous working environments. Food rations are very little, and the quality is poor, furloughs are short, and their dormitories lack adequate ventilation despite the scorching 40- to 5...