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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, ultraconservative Saeed Jalili qualify for Iran runoff election
2024-07-01
[NEWARAB] Iran's sole reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian and ultraconservative Saeed Jalili have qualified for a runoff presidential election after leading in the first round, an official said on Saturday.

Pezeshkian got more than 10,400,000 votes and Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, has more than 9,400,000, said Mohsen Eslami, spokesman of Iran's election authority.

"None of the candidates could garner the absolute majority of the votes, therefore, the first and second contenders who got the most votes will be referred" for the second round, scheduled for next Friday, Eslami told a press conference.

Out of around 61 million eligible voters, some 24,500,000 voters headed to the polls, he added, with a turnout of around 40 percent - the lowest yet in the history of the Islamic republic.

Out of Iran's 13 previous presidential elections since the Islamic revolution in 1979, only one has led to runoffs in 2005.

Conservative parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf received about 3,383,340 votes and Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a conservative cleric, had 206,397 votes.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Former advisor to Zarif latest Iranian official to be infected by coronavirus
2020-03-03
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A senior Iranian politician and former advisor to current Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
...Persian foreign minister, Mouthpiece of Mullahs, good friend of John Kerryand similar exemplars of Merkin values...
has reportedly been infected with coronavirus.Hossein Sheikholeslam has been infected with coronavirus and is currently hospitalized in Tehran’s Masih Daneshvari hospital, the editor-in-chief of the state-run news website Entekhab, Mostafa Faghihi, tweeted on Monday.

Sheikholeslam was a senior advisor to Foreign Minister Zarif and had previously served as Tehran's ambassador to Syria.

Several officials have contracted the virus in Iran, which has the highest corpse count in the world outside of China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

Expediency Council member Mohammad Mirmohammadi died from coronavirus, state media reported on Monday.

Iran's Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi was reported as having coronavirus by the semi-official news agency ILNA on February 25.

On Thursday, former Justice Minister and Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi was hospitalized with coronavirus symptoms.

On Saturday, Masoumeh Aghapour Alishahi became the latest Iranian member of parliament to announce that she has been infected with coronavirus.
Related:
Javad Zarif: 2020-02-19 Sen. Murphy: I Secretly Met With Zarif in His Hotel Suite Because its Dangerous Not to Meet With Adversaries
Javad Zarif: 2020-02-18 Iran Says Citizen Held in Germany at U.S. Request Freed
Javad Zarif: 2020-02-17 Pro-Mullah Dem Senators Secretly Meet w Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, Seek to Thwart US Foreign Policy
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Corruption, lack of transparency major challenges for post-sanction Iran
2016-02-11
Iran’s oil-dependent economy has been recently freed from the pressure of international sanctions, thanks to the July 2015 nuclear deal, but it seems the country will suffer the negative effects of embargos for a long time.

During the sanctions period, some people and entities made big money bypassing international sanctions on Iran, leading to intensification of corruption in the country, which has already been suffering from lack of transparency.

Iran’s Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi has recently said that lack of transparency in economy and business environment, which was significantly obvious during the sanctions era, remains one of Iran’s economic problems.

“The Iranian administration now makes efforts in the areas of transparency, anti-corruption and legal protection of people and entrepreneurs, as well as the promotion of business environment,” Pourmohammadi told reporters in Tehran Feb. 10.

A day earlier, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, in a similar statement, called for taking measures to counter corruption in the country. He also criticized corruption in an organization without revealing its name.

“When we want to produce, a corrupt organization, which I don't want to name or how it can smuggle [goods into country], does not allow the country to grow,” said the Iranian president.

Rouhani noted that ending monopoly and allowing competition will boost the economy.

It is not the first time that the issue of smuggling by some governmental organizations in Iran comes into the agenda.

Earlier in 2011, Iran’s then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a controversial statement that the “smuggler brothers” were using the navy docks in southern Iran to conduct their business.

Many experts agreed at the time that the term “smuggler brothers” was a reference to the IRGC commanders.

Earlier, Ahmad Tavakkoli, a senior Iranian MP, warned that systematic corruption is threatening the future of the Islamic Republic.

“Not military aggression, neither military coup, nor even velvet revolution can have any impact on the Islamic Republic, but corruption is a certain threat,” Tavakkoli said December 2015.

He also said Iran has reached a state of systematic corruption, which means that the institutions tasked to battle corruption in the judiciary branch, the security forces and parliament are themselves corrupt to some extent.

Following months of negotiations with six world powers, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear activities, in exchange to removal of the international sanctions. Last January, the US and the EU lifted their nuclear-related sanctions, as the deal, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, aka nuclear deal) came into force.

Although the “sanctions story” is already over, it apparently will be used in the future as a tool by Iranian officials to cover the economic shortcomings in the country, including the outstanding corruption.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
IAEA and Iran agree to draw up action plan
2007-06-24
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday he and Iran's chief negotiator had agreed to draw up a "plan of action" within two months on how to resolve questions about Iran's disputed nuclear program. International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei described the two-hour meeting with Ali Larijani as "quite satisfying." "I hope we should be in a position in the next weeks to move forward and break the stalemate where we have been in for the last few months," ElBaradei told reporters. He said they were drawing up "a plan of action which I hope we should be able to conclude within two months" and then start implementing.

Larijani also spoke of "good progress," but they reported no breakthrough in the core dispute -- Iran's defiance of U.N. demands to stop uranium enrichment.

Diplomats say that about a year ago, Iran agreed with the IAEA to come up with a plan for resolving outstanding issues within three weeks, but never followed through. Larijani is due to meet EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Lisbon on Saturday, seen as the last chance to overcome a stand-off over Tehran's nuclear defiance before world powers start drafting tougher sanctions against it.

Solana has been exploring a face-saving way to allow the Islamic Republic to stop enriching uranium. "I believe our talks with Mr. ElBaradei today will be quite helpful with the process that Mr. Solana is working on to reach an understanding and a solution," Larijani said after the meeting.

The United States, Britain, Russia, France, Germany and China are discussing a third round of penalties against Iran over concerns it is secretly trying to build atomic bombs.

Ratcheting up the pressure on the Islamic state, a British draft for a new U.N. sanctions resolution proposed that Iran's airlines and ships could be denied landing and transit rights and two or more of its banks could have their assets frozen. Britain also suggested banning new arms contracts with Iran, barring senior Iranian security officials from air travel and halting work by Russia on Iran's nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, according to the draft, obtained by Reuters. "Even if the U.N. threatens Iran with more sanctions, the country will not stop its uranium enrichment activities," Larijani said, according to Iran's official news agency, IRNA.

Iran has refused U.N. demands to halt enrichment, which yields fuel for power plants but can also be used for weapons if the uranium is refined to a much higher degree. Tehran says its goal is the peaceful electricity generation.

The latest meetings come amid IAEA concern about increasing Iranian restrictions on access for agency inspectors, imposed in retaliation for existing sanctions. Since February, Iran has rapidly expanded a centrifuge operation at its Natanz enrichment complex in a bid for "industrial-scale" fuel production.

ElBaradei has urged Iran to answer IAEA questions about its program, including suspected military links, and to reconsider a decision to stop providing advance design information about planned nuclear installations to the agency.

Tehran has insisted the U.N. Security Council must first return authority over its file to the Vienna-based IAEA, which would end sanctions pressure -- a nonstarter for Western powers. Instead of freezing all enrichment-related activity, as the Security Council has demanded, Iran has accelerated the program and says it has passed the point of no return. "When the world saw that the (Iranian) nation is pursuing this goal with unity, the world surrendered," Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying. "We have passed the dangerous moment."

The Security Council has already imposed two rounds of limited sanctions on Iran over its refusal to stop enrichment. Iran has about 2,000 centrifuges installed as of early June, most of them enriching uranium, and is likely to reach the 3,000 threshold by the end of July, diplomats have said. Three thousand could produce material for one bomb within a year if run nonstop at supersonic speed. Iran has yet to demonstrate such capability and probably remains a few years away from being able to build a bomb, analysts say.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iranian gov't back away from 'temporary marriage'
2007-06-09
The hard-line government is backing away from a plan to relieve the sexual frustrations of young Iranians by promoting the Shi'ite tradition of temporary marriage, an official spokesman said Friday. Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a mid-ranking cleric, sparked an uproar last week when he told a clerical conference in the holy city of Qom that Iran should promote the obscure practice in order to meet the sexual desire of youths who are financially unable to marry.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Ahmadinejad sez oil being sold below value
2006-04-20
Wading into oil politics for the first time, Iran's hard-line president said Wednesday that crude oil prices — now at record levels — still are below their true value.

In statements likely to rattle world oil markets, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said developed countries, not producing countries like Iran, are benefiting the most from the current high prices.

"The global oil price has not reached its real value yet. The products derived from crude oil are sold at prices dozens of times higher than those charged by oil-producing countries," state-run Tehran radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

"The developed nations are the biggest beneficiary of the added value of oil products," he said.

The president, who is embroiled with the West and the
United Nations over Tehran's nuclear program, stopped short of saying Iran would use oil as a weapon, a tactic much feared by his antagonists on the nuclear issue. Nor did he say what oil prices should be.

Oil prices leapt above $72 a barrel Wednesday, settling at a record high for the third straight day.

"The products derived from crude oil cost over 10 times the price of oil sold by producing states. Developed and powerful countries benefit more from its value-added than any party," Ahmadinejad said.

Oil prices should be determined on the basis of market supply and demand, the Iranian leader said.

"Oil is the major asset of nations possessing it. Its price should not be lowered on the pretext that it will prove harmful to developing states, thus permitting the world powers to benefit the most from it," he said.

George Orwel, an analyst at the New York-based Petroleum Intelligence Weekly said he thought Ahmadinejad was playing the oil card to resist pressure over Iran's nuclear program.

"They are using the oil as a political football. Every time there's an issue with Iran, the oil market freaks out," he said in a telephone interview.

Earlier this week, as oil prices pushed above $70 a barrel, ABN Amro broker Lee Fader said the trigger was heightened fear about U.S. military action against Iran, which has said it would go ahead with plans to enrich uranium in defiance of the United States, Europe and the U.N. nuclear agency.

Iran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, but the West fears it is intent on arming itself with nuclear weapons.

If the United States were to attack Iran, Tehran might try to cripple the world economy by putting a stranglehold on the oil that moves through the Strait of Hormuz — a narrow, strategically important waterway running to Iran's south.

While discounting Ahmadinejad's seriousness in his Wednesday comments about the value of oil, Orwel conceded the oil industry could not do without the 2.5 million barrels that Iran exports daily.

"Ahmadinejad is trying to show his muscle so that the Bush administration can realize the consequences on the oil market of further confrontation with Iran," Orwel said, adding that he fully expected Iran to threaten to cut off oil if the confrontation with the West continued.

While Ahmadinejad did not say he would use oil as a weapon in his dispute with the West, Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said last month the oil card was in play.

"If (they) politicize our nuclear case, we will use any means. We are rich in energy resources. We have control over the biggest and the most sensitive energy route of the world," he said, referring to the Straits of Hormuz.

In keeping with Iranian leaders' tendency of late to contradict themselves, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki later denied Iran would adopt such a policy.

Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil-producing country and the second in OPEC.

Ahmadinejad urged oil-producing countries — within and outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — to establish a fund to help alleviate the pressure resulting from high oil prices on Third World nations.

Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit said he considered it unlikely that Iran had any intention of cutting off its oil, the lifeline of its economy.

Gheit noted, however, that there was some truth in Ahmadinejad's comment on developed countries benefiting most from increased oil prices, though the statement would likely be seen as an attempt at "fanning the flames" of a red-hot oil market.

"What he's saying makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the source of the comment is going to send jitters in the market," Gheit said.

"The street value (of oil) is triple what OPEC is making," Gheit added, referring to the value of a barrel of gasoline versus the value of a barrel of oil.

Gheit estimated that in London, where the retail price of gasoline is about $6 a gallon, about $150 worth of gasoline can be made and sold from every $50 barrel of oil.

"That is why Exxon Mobil and all the rest make so much money," he said.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran: Nukes for Oil Threat
2006-03-11
Iran on Saturday explicitly warned for the first time that it could use oil as a weapon if the U.N. Security Council imposes sanctions over an Iranian nuclear program that the U.S. and others suspect is trying to produce atomic bombs.

Later in the day, diplomats said Russia is pushing for a new round of international talks to be held away from U.N. headquarters, apparently hoping to head off a showdown in the council.

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi raised the possibility of using Iran's oil and natural gas supplies as a weapon in the international standoff and also noted Iran's strategic location at a chokepoint for a vital Persian Gulf oil route.

"If (they) politicize our nuclear case, we will use any means. We are rich in energy resources. We have control over the biggest and the most sensitive energy route of the world," Pourmohammadi was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Iran is the No. 2 producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries after Saudi Arabia. It also lies on one side of the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for most of the crude oil shipped from the Persian Gulf nations.

Pourmohammadi's statements were the most specific yet in a series of threats issued by Iranian officials as the Security Council discusses how to cajole Iran into reimposing a freeze on uranium enrichment and fully cooperating with a U.N. probe of its suspect nuclear program.

Iran's government denies it is trying to develop atomic weapons, saying its program is intended only to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that generate electricity.

Tehran insists the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty gives it the right to enrich uranium for reactor fuel, even though the process also can produce the fissile material needed to make atomic bombs.

Russia, which has economic and political ties to Iran, has been trying to mediate a settlement and avoid U.N. sanctions. It is thought to fear Iran could spurn negotiations entirely at a time when the West fears the Islamic state is determined to obtain atomic weapons.

In Vienna, Austria, a Western diplomat told The Associated Press that the Kremlin is trying to arrange talks March 20 among the five permanent Security Council members - the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France - and Germany.

The meeting is envisioned for Vienna because Russia wants to take the focus off the council's deliberations in New York, said the diplomat, who agreed to give details of the confidential discussions only on condition of anonymity.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov floated the idea of multilateral talks on Iran earlier in the week but did not suggest a date or venue. On Friday, John Bolton, America's ambassador to the Security Council, also said continuing consultations made "a lot of sense."

But the Western diplomat suggested Washington wants the main focus to remain on the Security Council, emphasizing that route was approved in January by Lavrov and the foreign ministers of the other permanent members.

The five permanent council members considered proposals Friday on how to get Iran to answer questions about its nuclear program, abandon uranium enrichment and stop construction on a reactor.

The five planned another meeting Monday morning to look at a revised draft of a resolution involving Iran, the Western diplomat said.

Another diplomat who had seen the draft told AP it calls on Iran to halt construction of its heavy-water reactor and stop all uranium enrichment, but does not contain any threat of punishment against the Iranians.

The lack of a threat is a clear effort to get Russia and China on board. If that does not happen, Bolton and other senior U.S. officials have suggested Washington might try to rally its allies to impose their own targeted sanctions.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Hojjatieh, the secret society that now controls the Iranian government
2006-02-06
Yet another long-running organization with plans for world domination. Be interesting to see how they fit together the Supreme Council of Global Jihad that al-Hawali seems to be running for Binny. Given our luck, we're probably still only like half-way up the ladder till we finally reach the Eddorians.
When mild-mannered former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami lashed out in a post-election sermon at the "powerful organization" behind the "shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness" currently running the country, it became clear that Iran's political establishment is worried by the ideology propelling the government of new hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Khatami's attack coincides with mounting evidence that a radically anti-Bahai [1] and anti-Sunni semi-clandestine society, called the Hojjatieh, is reemerging in the corridors of power in Tehran. The group flourished during the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah and installed an Islamic government in his place, and was banned in 1983 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution.

Khomeini objected to the Hojjatieh's rejection of his doctrine of velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) and its conviction that chaos must be created to hasten the coming of the Mahdi, the 12th Shi'ite imam. Only then, they argue, can a genuine Islamic republic be established.

"Those who regarded the revolution, during Imam Khomeini's time, as a deviation, are now [wielding] the tools of terror and oppression," Khatami was reported as saying at a speech in the conservative northeastern town of Mashhad, the same location chosen by Ahmadinejad to convene the first meeting of his cabinet.

"The shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness now have a powerful organization behind them," he said, in what was interpreted as an indirect reference to the Hojjatieh society.

Khatami's sharp comments followed an outburst by Ahmad Tavassoli, a former chief of staff of Khomeini. Tavassoli claimed that the executive branch of the Iranian government as well as the crack troops of the Revolutionary Guards had been hijacked by the Hojjatieh, which, he implied, now also controls Ahmadinejad.

Amid talk that the recent election was a silent coup carried out by elements of the hardline Revolutionary Guard after eight years of reformist rule, Western embassies have been scrambling to understand what the Hojjatieh stands for and to what extent the influence of its teachings will be felt in the new government's domestic and foreign policies.

Asia Times Online spoke last week with European and North American diplomats in Tehran who are trying to identify which of the new government's ministers have sympathies with the Hojjatieh or a part in the organization.

After its banning in the 1980s, the Hojjatieh's members faded into the ranks of the bazaar-based Islamic Coalition Society (Mo'talife). Reports in the past few years that the society is reviving have stressed that the neo-Hojjatieh are not so much anti-Bahai as "fanning the flames of discord between Shi'ites and Sunnis", according to the August 28, 2002 edition of the Hamshahri daily.

Ahmadinejad himself is said to have sympathies with the Hojjatieh, if he was not a member outright at some point in his career. The Islamic society he belonged to at Alm-u Sanat University where he attended was an extreme traditional and fundamentalist group that contained a large number of students from the provinces and maintained grass-roots links with the Hojjatieh. The society's anti-leftism also chimes with reports that Ahmadinejad was pushing for a takeover of the Soviet Embassy alongside or instead of the US compound in Tehran during the 1979 revolution.

Of the 21 new ministers in Ahmadinejad's cabinet, three are said to have Hojjatieh backgrounds, including Intelligence chief Hojatoleslam Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehyi, a graduate of the Hojjatieh-founded Haqqani theological school with a long background in the intelligence services. Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a hardline Shi'ite cleric who is said to have issued a fatwa urging all 2 million members of the bassij Islamic militia [2] to vote for Ahmadinejad in the recent presidential elections, is also associated with that university.

The hardline minister of the interior, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, is another Haqqani alumnus with suspected Hojjatieh sympathies. His appointment was greeted with outrage by some Iranian politicians. Tehran member of parliament Emad Afruq was reported by Islamic Republic News Agency on August 24 to have challenged Pourmohammadi's appointment on the basis of his questionable human rights record while at the Ministry of Intelligence: "You must recognize that when someone comes from such a ministry, with this past and the absence of supervisory mechanisms, our reaction is that we shudder with fear in the public arena. And have we not shuddered? Have we not felt insecure in the past?"

A few days after the new cabinet was revealed, a dinner party in North Tehran's exclusive Elahiyeh neighborhood was buzzing with talk of Hojjatieh involvement in the new government. One Iranian working as a political analyst for a Western embassy fingered the controversial Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi as the main reason behind the transformation of an initially anarchist movement that rejected any form of government, especially an Islamic one, into a key actor influencing the policies of the Ahmadinejad administration.

The powerful cleric is said to be Ahmadinejad's marja-e taqlid (object of emulation) and the ultimate proponent of an elite theory of government best summed up in his once saying: "It doesn't matter what the people think. The people are ignorant sheep."

"There is no doubt that Mesbah and the new crew, whether formally Hojjatieh or not, are more attached to core Shi'ite identity and values," said Vali Nast, a professor of Middle East politics at the Department of National Security Affairs. "But an equally important faction, especially in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Council, is simply anti-Ba'athist. These are people who fought in the Iran-Iraq war and that may also be important in deciding attitudes towards Saudi Arabia and Iraq."

At a time of rising Sunni-Shi'ite tensions in the region, and as Iraq increasingly turns into a proxy battleground for its neighbors, it is not surprising that a Shi'ite supremacist government in Tehran, whether related to the Hojjatieh or not, should reemerge.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are battling it out in Iraq as both seek to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis, the majority of whom are Shi'ites. While Iran is believed to have a better intelligence presence in the country and a more organized military capability, Saudis account for a large percentage of the suicide bombers active there.

In an August Newsweek article, former Central Intelligence Agency agent Robert Baer quoted a high-level Syrian official telling him that of 1,200 suspected suicide bombers arrested by the Syrians since Iraq was invaded in 2003, 85% have been Saudis. Baer went on to quote Iran's Grand Ayatollah Saanei reacting to the news by describing Wahhabi suicide bombers as "wolves without pity" and saying that "sooner rather than later, Iran will have to put them down".

Saudi Arabia is also reported to be active in Iran, especially in the ethnically Arab, oil-rich south of the country, where it is whispered that Riyadh is offering financial incentives for locals to convert from Shi'ite to Sunni Islam. News of this strategy has reached Qom, the clerical heartland of Iran.

In an April 2004 article, Persian-language Baztab news website that is written by well-connected insiders and read by Iran's political elite, published a piece alleging that the Hojjatieh had adopted a strategy of trying to sharpen domestic tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites through launching a propaganda campaign against the minority religious group inside Iran (Sunnis). The report alleged that some Hojjatieh-aligned publishers have been issuing books in Arabic that are critical of Sunnis. The books have been distributed in Qom, but are fictitiously marked "Published in Beirut" to give them further credibility and mask the fact they are Shi'ite propaganda.

This is a potentially dangerous move with grave foreign policy implications for Iran. Iran's Sunni minorities live in some of the least-developed provinces and are under-represented in parliament, the army and the civil service. Iran's Kurds, who are Sunni, have been rioting in the north, while the ethnic Arab south is another location that has suffered riots and a bombing campaign in the past six months.

But whether the Hojjatieh is being resurrected by its former adherents or is being used as a battering ram by those Iranian politicians opposed to the current government, its reappearance coincides with a Shi'ite resurgence across the region and a new era of conservative factional infighting in Tehran.

"This particular form of mud-slinging that had disappeared a quarter of a century ago - when the secular left accused the religious establishment of having clandestine Hojjatieh affiliations - is gaining currency again in the new battle of Titans: the traditional right-wing versus the revolutionary right-wing clerical establishment - over ideological hegemony in Iran," concluded Mahmoud Sadri, a US-based Iranian academic.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran claims foul play in plane crashes
2006-01-27
Iran has said it had information that the United States, Britain and Israel had a role in two deadly military plane crashes in the last two months.
That's be agents 96, 009, and Aleph-41, of course. It's usually them.
It was the latest accusation by Tehran against the West in their sharpening confrontation. A day earlier, Iran blamed the United States and Britain for two bombings that killed at least nine people in the southwestern city of Ahvaz. Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi told reporters on the sidelines of a police seminar that "the information we have says that the US, Britain and Israel's intelligence agents intended to create insecurity in Iran".
We can only hope...
"Even my evaluation says that the crash of our C-130 and Falcon planes was done by their design, or maybe electronic interference."
Employed the old Zionist death ray, did they? That figures. We're insidious that way...
... all that money we gave Halliburton, we should get something for it ...
Pourmohammadi did not elaborate and did not give any evidence.
There is no evidence. The witnesses are all dead.
In early January, an Iranian military flight carrying a commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guards and 10 others crashed while trying to make an emergency landing, killing all aboard.
Yeah, that was a good 'un. Took over the controls using a secretly implanted device with no serial numbers and crashed it. The secretly implanted device — known as a "gizmo" — self-destructed on impact.
On 6 December 2005, a military transport plane crashed into a 10-storey building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport, killing 115 people. The plane, a US-made C-130, had suffered engine trouble and the pilot was returning to the airport when the aircraft suddenly lost altitude and slammed into the apartment building. Most of the passengers were Iranian journalists.
That was a similar device, of course. It's known as a "thingummy," and it's less than two inches long. Placed anywhere near an aircraft engine, it causes it to fail on command, then slurps all the aerodynamic characteristics out of the plane, replacing them with those of a brick. It can be operated from a ground station or from outer space. Naturally, it self-destructs on impact.
Do not tell them about widgits ...
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran to tighten security on borders
2006-01-08
Iran intends to tighten security on its borders, especially in the southeast, to help its citizens lead a tranquil life, said a top official here on Saturday.

Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi told reporters that anti-security factors on the borders, particularly along the borders of southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province, have been growing, prompting officials to adopt extensive measures to guarantee security in the area.

Referring to the kidnapping of Iranian border guards in the southeastern parts of the country, Pourmohammadi said based on information at hand, the kidnapped individuals are kept in an area 50 kilometers from the border and negotiations are underway for their safe return home.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Kidnapped Iranian troops being held in Pakistan
2006-01-05
A little-known Sunni rebel organisation said it would kill kidnapped Iranian soldiers if Tehran failed to free 16 jailed members of the Sunni Muslim group within three weeks.

Al Arabiya television aired a video from the Organisation of God's Soldiers for Sunni Mujahideen (Holy Fighters) today which showed what it said were eight Iranian soldiers identifying themselves before pleading with the government to comply with their captors' demands. ''We give the Iranian authorities three weeks to comply with our demands or we will kill these hostages,'' Al Arabiya quoted the group's spokesman as saying. ''And we warn all the forces from coming to this area''.

The same video was shown earlier in the day but without the demands reported. It showed men standing in a row and speaking to the camera, but their voices were not audible. The tape's authenticity could not immediately be verified.

Iran on Sunday said that nine of its soldiers had gone missing from their post close to Iran's border with Pakistan. There was no immediate explanation for the apparent discrepancy in the number of missing.

Yesterday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the hostages were thought to have been taken to Pakistan.

Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi was upbeat about securing the soldiers' release. ''We have made every effort to resolve the kidnapping peacefully ... In the next few days we will hear good news,'' he told the official IRNA news agency today.

In July, Al Arabiya aired a video from the same group which said it had beheaded an Iranian security agent after threatening to kill him if the Iranian authorities did not free its imprisoned members within three weeks.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran lawmakers veto four proposed cabinet ministers
2005-08-25
TEHERAN - Iran’s parliament on Wednesday rocked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fledgling government by rejecting four of his cabinet nominees, including the proposed new oil minister for OPEC’s second-largest crude producer.

The parliamentary confidence vote was a rude awakening for Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative who took office earlier this month promising to root out corruption and redistribute the Islamic state’s vast oil wealth to the poor. The vote suggested Ahmadinejad would not always enjoy a smooth ride from parliament and pointed to rifts developing in the conservative camp which has driven reformists from all branches of power in the last three years.
Gee, I didn't know the Iranians knew the Kabuki dance.
Oil Ministry nominee Ali Saeedlou, a close Ahmadinejad ally who lawmakers said lacked oil industry experience, garnered just 101 votes from the 284 lawmakers present, well short of the simple majority required.

Lawmakers, the majority of whom are conservatives like Ahmadinejad, endorsed 17 of the president’s ministerial picks, putting well-known hardliners in charge of the ministries of intelligence, interior and culture. Along with Saeedlou, the nominees to head the ministries of higher education, cooperatives and social welfare failed to get sufficient votes.

Parliament Speaker Gholamali Haddadadel said Ahmadinejad had three months to propose alternative nominees. “Parliament had expected more important and better candidates to be assigned for these posts,” he told reporters.

The rejection of Saeedlou was a particular blow to Ahmadinejad, who has pledged to root out corrupt “mafias” inside the oil ministry and to “put the country’s oil wealth on people’s tables”. Ahmadinejad defended Saeedlou, who served as his financial deputy when he was mayor of Tehran until June. “He’s a caring, hard-working, serious and strong manager,” Ahmadinejad told lawmakers before the vote, highlighting Saeedlou’s degree in geology.

Over four days of debates examining each nominee, lawmakers picked holes in the track records of several proposed ministers. Ahmadinejad said he had deliberately chosen to “break the traditional circle of old managers” who had run the country under previous governments. “With this coordinated team I will be able to implement my commitments to the people,” he said.

Speaking against Saeedlou, lawmaker Teimourali Askari said: ”The country has suffered a lot of damage through lack of experience.”
"My fellow lawmakers, look at the damage our country has suffered already with the mullahs in char ..." [THUMP]
Earlier, conservative lawmaker Emad Afrough had spoken out strongly against proposed Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who was deputy intelligence minister during the mid-1990s. “You must realise that when someone comes from such a ministry ... our reaction is to shudder with fear,” he said, pointing to alleged human rights abuses, including the murder of dissidents, by Intelligence Ministry agents in the 1990s.
The mullahs didn't consider that to be a bug ...
Pourmohammadi was, nevertheless, approved and will form part of what analysts say will be a hardline core of ministers dealing with domestic politics and foreign affairs.
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