Iran Events
Iran: Investigation Into Financial Corruption
It has been reported in Iranian media that Samen al-Hojaj Finance and Credit Institution is being investigated by a court in Tehran. Samen al-Hojaj is just one of many institutions that had been offering investors interest rates that are unusually high. The institution ended up being unable to offer the promised interest rates and funds were mishandled.
The managing director of the institution has previously been in the headlines for pulling a gun on the governor of the Central Bank Valliollah Seyef in an attempt to intimidate him into designating Samen al-Hojaj a legitimate financial organisation.
Regime’s Leader Ali Khamenei finally and under immense public pressure ordered the Judiciary and the government to look into the issue and to deal with the companies that duped the people out of their hard-earned money.
However, will this move really change anything? Will the investigation help the government gain the trust of the people again? definitely not. The investigation will do nothing more than confirm what the people now already know – that Samen al-Hojaj is corrupt, has been operating outside the law and has stolen huge sums of money off the people.
US delegation to discuss Iran sanctions with Turkish officials
“A US delegation currently holding talks in India will be visiting Ankara on Friday regarding sanctions against Iran,” the foreign ministry official told Reuters.
“The delegation will meet with related institutions, including from the foreign and finance ministries.”
A US Embassy spokesman confirmed that the talks would take place on Friday and would focus on Iran sanctions.
Two months ago President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a 2015 nuclear pact with Iran reached by his predecessor Barack Obama and other world powers and ordered tough US sanctions on Tehran.
Cotton Introduces Iran Hostage Act
Washington, D.C. – Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today introduced the Iran Hostage Act, legislation that would sanction Iranian officials responsible for holding American hostages. It would also bar these officials’ family members from coming to the United States for any reason.
“Anyone who takes an American hostage has no right to come to the United States and enjoy its freedoms. Until the Iranian regime respects Americans’ basic human rights, they and their relatives will not be welcome in this country,” said Cotton.
Iran Regime Tries to Evade Sanctions With Cryptocurrencies
It appears that the Iranian Regime will be taking an unusual path to evade incoming US sanctions, according to a senior Iranian lawmaker, namely cryptocurrencies.
Mohammad Reza Pour-Ebrahimi, chairman of the parliamentary Economic Commission, recently told the state-run Mizan News Agency that this matter would soon be reviewed in the Iranian parliament, noting that digital currencies would remove the hegemony of the dollar in international trade.
Pour-Ebrahimi said: “Today, many countries like Russia, China and Brazil have already turned to mutual or multi-national money treaties which facilitate trade transactions.”
The Iranian economy is already failing due to years of mismanagement and corruption by the mullahs, but incoming US sanctions will push it over the edge and explode the volatile economic situation. That would spark further protests and spell the end of the Regime, which is why the mullahs are desperate to find any way they can to stop the sanctions and stabilise the economy.
Iran Says It’s Continuing To Increase Uranium-Enrichment Capacity
Iran says it is continuing to acquire uranium and is close to finishing a plant where it can build more centrifuges to enrich uranium.
The announcement on July 18 comes a day after Iran filed a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the United States in response to President Donald Trump’s decision in May to pull his country out of the 2015 nuclear accord and reimpose sanctions on Tehran.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other hard-liners in Iran have questioned whether Iran should continue honoring its obligations under the landmark deal with world powers after Trump’s decision.
Under the terms of the 2015 agreement — which also was signed by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union — Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions.
Khamenei last month announced his country was preparing to increase uranium-enrichment capacity at its Natanz nuclear facility.
Iranian Teachers’ Monthly Salary Down From $900 to Under $300
While Iran’s economic fluctuations and sharp increase in the value of foreign currencies has put its heavy financial pressure on the country’s wage earners, there’s been a maximum 10 and 20 percent increase in teachers and workers’ salaries, respectively. But in a situation in which cost of living has skyrocketed due to sharp foreign currency appreciation, such small pay rises won’t be able to reduce people’s livelihood issues even a bit.
Pointing to ‘say no to your payroll’ online campaign launched by teachers, state-run ILNA news agency on July 17, 2018, has quoted Reza Moslemi, member of Hamedan Teachers Trade Union, as saying “the spontaneous move is teachers’ rational reaction to an unprecedented decrease in their purchasing power over the past few months. While teachers expected the government to at least keep their living standards unchanged, they are all of a sudden faced with a situation in which the government, that once boasted achieving a one digit inflation rate, has lost control of the economy, causing many low-income population, including teachers and workers, who were already below poverty line, to fall deeper to the bottom of the absolute hunger well.”
Hundreds Of Dervishes Given Harsh Sentences
Tehran’s prosecutor Jafari Dolatabad says verdicts have been issued against 258 Iranian dervishes of the Gonabadi order, state-run news agency IRNA reported July 17.
Ten dervishes of the same order had earlier been sentenced to “69 years in prison, 444 lashes, and fourteen years of exile,” according to a website close to the dervish religious order, Majzooban-i Noor (Enchanted by Light).
Dolatabadi described the condemned dervishes, who are adherents to a minority Sufi Muslim faith, as the “elements of last February’s turmoil,” a reference to several days of protests by dervishes in February in Tehran that saw hundreds arrested and at least five dead.
Enchanted By Light has also reported that 46 dervishes of the Gonabadi order had been sentenced to 171 years.
Furthermore, a dervishes’ rights activist, Ms. Fa’iza Abdipour, tweeted, “23 dervishes have been sentenced to exile, lashes and a total of 119 years behind bars.”
Malaysian Company Sanctioned for Dealing With Iran Regime’s Mahan Air
A Malaysian travel agency has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for its links to Iranian airline Mahan Air. The United States administration is trying to tackle the Iranian regime’s financing through a financial war that has the aim of crippling its economy. The Malaysian travel agency is now on a list of companies that the international community is now banned from doing business with.
This is no doubt a warning to other companies around the world that the United States is keeping its word with regards to those that continue to deal with Iran.
Mahan Air is a so called privately owned Iranian airline headquartered in the country’s capital. It operates flights across the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe and was Iran’s first ‘private’ airline. In 2011, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that the airline has been providing “financial, material and technological support to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF)” and was thus designated as a terrorist organisation. It has been subjected to sanctions for its violation of international laws and for transporting weapons and personnel to terrorist organisations including Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Iran Regime’s Escaping Forward Following the Defeat of Terrorist Plot
Following the Grand Gathering of the Iranian Resistance in Paris and the failure of the mullahs’ terrorist plot and the arrest of regime’s agents, including a terrorist diplomat, the regime’s Supreme National Security Council held a meeting upon Khamenei’s order and commissioned the relevant bodies such as the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guards intelligence, and the state-run media to work to minimize the consequences of this big scandal.
The government apparatuses and authorities were obliged to pin the blame on the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) to cover this scandal. This is a well-known trick of escaping forward by which they attempt to portrait the arrest of the terrorists in Belgium and France and the arrest of a terrorist diplomat in Germany as a stage-setting to frame the regime on the verge of Rouhani’s visit to Europe, claiming that the PMOI had trapped that terrorist diplomat.
Sons of Iranian Canadian Who Died in Evin Prison Sue State Broadcaster For Slander
Ramin and Mehran Seyed-Emami have sued Iran’s state-run TV, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), for slandering their father Kavous Seyed-Emami, who died under suspicious circumstances in Tehran’s Evin Prison in February 2018.
IRIB has a long history of working with Iran’s hardline judiciary and security forces to smear defendants facing politically motivated charges, including by broadcasting forced confessions.
Typically well-staged productions, the confessions and pseudo “documentaries” produced by IRIB are used to defame dissidents, intellectuals, and other individuals whom the authorities wish to discredit, legitimize their prosecution, and amass public support for their sentences.
Four IRIB officials have been named in Seyed-Emami lawsuit, including its director Abdol-Ali Aliaskari, who was appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
