Iran Events

A special report of the FreeIran2018 convention of Iran’ian who are following the overthrow of the mullahs regime and seeking freedom by The Washington Times Special Sections Department.

A special report of the #FreeIran2018 convention of #Iran'ian who are following the overthrow of the mullahs regime and seeking freedom by The Washington Times Special Sections Department.#IranRegimeChange #IStandWithMaryamRajavi@SecPompeo @NCRIUShttps://t.co/ZJe2QKBLuU pic.twitter.com/eQur3j6adP

— Iran Freedom (@4FreedominIran) July 19, 2018

Iran: Crackdown on Student Activists

Iranian authorities have increased their crackdown on student protesters with prison terms and restrictions on their peaceful activities, Human Rights Watch said today.  After authorities repressed the protests that broke out in December 2017 and January 2018, Intelligence Ministry authorities have arrested at least 150 students and courts have sentenced 17 to prison terms.

As of mid-July 2018, reliable sources reported that revolutionary courts had sentenced at least eight student protesters from universities in Tehran and Tabriz to prison sentences of up to eight years and banned some of them from membership in political parties or participating in media, including social media, for two years.

“Instead of enabling a safe environment for peaceful activism, Iranian authorities have gone back to their favorite response: cracking down on peaceful dissent,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “While encouraging students to participate in public discourse, the authorities in practice prosecute them for peaceful assembly.”

Protester shot in near HQ of Iranian-backed militia in south Iraq

A man was killed Friday in a new day of protests in Iraq, a medical source said, as authorities struggle to contain social unrest which has reached the capital Baghdad.

The latest death brings the number of people killed in protests to nine as Iraqis hit out at a litany of social and economic woes.

The man killed was aged around 20 and died after being shot in the southern city of Diwaniyah, a medical source said, as hundreds of people gathered outside the local headquarters of an armed group.

EU Should Cut Diplomatic Ties With Iran Regime, Says Former VP

Alejo Vidal-Quadras, former vice-president of the European Parliament and current president of the Brussels-based International Committee In Search of Justice (ISJ), wrote: “The EU’s eagerness to further unconditional engagements with Iran seems to have only made Europe more vulnerable to state-sponsored terrorism, as Iran has used its ease of access to the European Union countries for espionage and terror plots that jeopardize the lives of European citizens. The EU needs to wake up. We should follow up the brave actions of our intelligence and police services with firm and decisive political action. We could respond by downgrading our diplomatic relations and expelling agents that are linked to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry in order to prevent more terrorist attacks on European soil.”

We should also remember that this type of action is not new. The past 30 years are littered with assassinations or attacks on Iranian dissidents by the Regime on European soil, including:

• 1989 – Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou in Vienna
• 1990 – Dr Kazem Rajavi, NCRI representative in Geneva and former Iranian ambassador in the UN
• 1997 – Berlin Mykonos restaurant assassinations of four Iranian-Kurdish dissidents
• 1998 – Mohammad Hossein Naqdi, NCRI envoy and former diplomat murdered in Rome
• 2018 – The Netherlands expel two Iranian diplomats for involvement in the murders of Iranian dissidents in 2017

Iran Regime’s Intelligence to Infiltrate the Opposition, Focusing on PMOI and NCRI

Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) in the Nordrhein-Westfalen province in Germany, in its 2017 report released this week, emphasized on the focus of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) against the opposition, in particular the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI,) and also its attempt to infiltrate the Iranian opposition in Germany. The report further added that the terrorist Quds Force has intensive activities throughout Germany.

The last year’s report by the BfV had also reiterated that: “The official headquarters of the Iranian Regime’s Ministry of Intelligence at its embassy in Berlin had an important role in reconnaissance activities of the secret service.”

Turkey’s TÜPRAŞ reduces Iranian crude purchases as US sanctions loom

Turkey’s biggest oil importer TÜPRAŞ has cut back purchases of Iranian crude since May, when the United States said it would re-impose sanctions on Tehran, and analysts say TÜPRAŞ is likely to stick to lower volumes in coming months.

Most analysts still think the sanctions will significantly reduce Iran’s crude oil exports, with some forecasting as much as a two-thirds drop to 700,000 barrels per day (bpd).

US officials warned Turkish businessmen not to do business with Iran

Turkish officials have met U.S. anti-terrorism financing officials in an attempt to defend their country’s interests against a re-imposition of sanctions on Iran, Turkish state news agency Anadolu said.

A delegation of U.S. officials lead by Deputy Treasury Secretary Marshall Billingslea met with Turkish representatives with the aim of seeking to avoid losing out from the sanctions, according to diplomatic sources.

VOA reported that the American officials also met with Turkish businessmen during the visit and warned the private businesses owners that if they do business with Iran, they cannot do business with the American firms and they will be isolated from US markets.