The International Radical Party held à conference at the United Nations European Headquarters in Geneva. Speakers at the conference condemned human rights violations and increasing executions in Iran.
They discussed the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran, as well. Speakers called for a UN probe into these crimes, since the conference coincided with the 34th UN Human Rights Council session.
Iranian Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan said on Thursday that the United States is an unwelcome intruder in the Middle East and warned that it needs to leave the region immediately.
According to numerous state media outlets, Dehghan, the Minister of Defence of Iran, said: “What is the U.S. doing in the Persian Gulf? They better leave this region and not harass the regional countries.”
When he was 19 years old, Sina Dehghan was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The arrest took place in October 2015 while he was on guard duty at military barracks where he had been enlisted. He was only four days away from ending his military service.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran said that Dehghan and two other men were charged with “posting anti-Islamic content on social media”, “insulting the Prophet” and “insulting the Supreme Leader of Iran”.
Iran is getting ready to elect its next president in May. Although the president of the country has an inferior position to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, these upcoming elections may be significant given his deteriorating health.
There could be a transition to double leadership in Iran and it is important to turn our attention away from the country’s capital and towards border areas. We are used to hearing about hardliners versus moderates in Iran, but this is only applicable to Tehran.
A spokesman for the Tunisian president has denied the remarks attributed by Iranian regime’s media to Tunisian president al-Baji Qaed al-Sebsi during his meeting with the regime’s Minister of Culture and Guidance.
Regime’s official news agency had falsely quoted al-Sebsi as saying “Iran is supporting the Islamic world against the Zionist regime.”
The Iranian parliament has voted for a large increase in funding for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Politicians have also voted for an increase in funding for the country’s missile development program.
Iranian state media confirmed that two military bills were approved. The first one provides $7.4 billion to the IRGC’s defence budget – an increase of almost 25 percent. The other bill outlined a development plan for the next five years regarding the country’s missile program. It requires the government to guarantee a minimum of 5 percent of the budget to defence.
Academia in the West has named the Western sense of superiority over the Eastern countries as “orientalism”. This concept encompasses stereotypes and distorted views of the Middle East.
Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist and expert of Iran and US foreign policy Dr. Majid Rafizadeh points out that orientalism shaped the outlook of academics who began to view, from the seventies onwards, the Middle East as a victim of the West. He said: “They started criticizing their own Western governments for imperialism, colonialism and suppression of Easterners, and for not respecting the cultural and religious authenticity of the Middle East. Soon, people avoided making comments that would characterize them as orientalist. Calling someone orientalist became an insult.”
An internet campaign has been set up with the aim of getting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to leave Syria. It was set up by activists from both Syria and Iran.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, Iran has been involved. Over the years its involvement has increased as the opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad got stronger. When Iran realised that there was a chance that Assad could be overthrown, it started to send in large numbers of troops to prop the Syrian president up.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 38 year-old British-Iranian charity worker was arrested at Tehran airport on 3rd April last year following a visit to her family in Iran. She was with her daughter – Gabriella – at the time of her arrest. Gabriella is currently stranded in Iran, leaving her without access to her father in the United Kingdom because her passport was confiscated. Her grandparents (from her maternal side) are looking after her in Iran.
The Iranian authorities have said that Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was plotting to topple the government and in September she was sentenced to five years in prison. Maintaining her innocence, she launched an appeal but it was rejected in January. Her official charge is unknown, even to Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe herself, but media in Iran is reporting that “one of the chief members of networks of adversary institutions, who – with the direction and support of foreign media and espionage services – has committed her criminal acts over the past few years”.
Iran is starting to feel the pressure of the new US administration after two terms of President Obama’s rapprochement and appeasement. During these 8 years of the Obama administration, the Iranian regime could relax in the comfort of silence regarding is export of terrorism, its nuclear activities and its human rights abuses.
But now with President Trump’s administration firmly in place, the rulers of the Islamic Republic are faced with harsh rhetoric and warnings that the current administration is not going to take the same approach as the previous one. Trump has described the Islamic Republic as the leading state sponsor of terrorism.
