Iran’s Lead Nuclear Negotiator Quietly Visits Russia

In an article by economy writer Maryam Shokrani on Saturday [July 2], Shargh reported that China has already opened a letter of credit for the project and will complete the payment of the 15-billion-yuan loan until 2024.

The loan is scheduled to be repaid until 2029 and the interest charged will boost Iran’s debt to almost 22 billion yuan, or $3.2 billion.

The reformist paper, which is relatively independent from the government, although under the rules of censorship in Iran says that the project has little economic justification, as passenger rail service in the country is a money loser. Instead, vital economic railway projects in the north and in the south-east have been languishing for years.

As an example, the report mentions a planned railway connection between the Arabian Sea port of Chabahar and the city of Zahedan Sistan-Baluchistan province. Iran has been hoping that the port will boost transit of goods not only for its local market but also to other countries. India made investments in the development of Chabahar with the hope of avoiding Pakistan in shipping goods to Iran, Afghanistan and other countries to the north.

Shargh argues that as has been the case in many other less-developed countries, China is in the business of financing similar projects and if repayment in cash proves difficult, it takes oil and minerals instead.

Iran’s foreign and international trade policies have tilted toward China in the last decade, following a policy of ‘looking East’ espoused by the country’s ruler, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Tehran inked a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement with Beijing last year, which has proven controversial among some Iranians.

The issue is that Tehran has been quite consistent in following an anti-West and an anti-Israel foreign policy in the Middle East, supporting a variety of militant organizations, developing ballistic missiles and pursuing a nuclear program. This first brought about international sanctions from 2007-2015 and then United States crippling sanctions in 2018.

The restrictive measures have considerably weakened its economy and mostly eliminated infrastructure development projects.

A former Iranian railway official, Mahmoud Heshmati told Shargh that the Qom-Esfahan fast train project has no economic justification. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have launched limited speed trains, but they are countries that serve millions of foreign visitors, while international tourism in Iran is negligible.

Iran, which before the establishment of the Islamic Republic was a popular destination for Westerners in the 1960s and 70s, now has only small groups of international visitors. There are two major reasons. One is strict Islamic rules such as hijab for women, and a ban on alcoholic drinks and the other is years of arbitrary arrests of foreign visitors for purposes of exchanging prisoners with Europe, the United States, and even Australia.

Another former official told Shargh that the Qom-Esfahan project has a 16-year history, but successive government hesitated because of a host of technical challenges. There was no need to take a loan from China, which would be hard to repay with its high interest.

The former official argued that private Iranian capital played a major role in economic development in the United Arab Emirates and other regional countries, while it stays away from Iran. “The reason is that domestic investors are pressured in Iran,” he said. But for the Chinese, it is just the opposite.

The father of sixteen-year-old Ariana Lashkari shot her in the chest with a hunting rifle on Monday in Nourabad-e Mamasani, a small town in Fars Province. The young girl had fled to her paternal grandmother’s home after an argument with her father, Mohammad-Kazem Lashkari, over her behavior which her father considered as a disgrace to the family.

Ariana’s father said after his arrest that he had only meant to scare his daughter and killed her in a moment of rage.

Iran's Islamic Penal Code stipulates that fathers and paternal grandfathers cannot be sentenced to death for killing a child or grandchild. In such cases the perpetrator may be sentenced to prison and payment of blood money to the next of kin, that is the mother, if demanded. Mothers can also completely forgive the murderer and forego the blood money.

In murder cases, the judge has the power to hand out additional sentences "on behalf of the public" if the crime is particularly violent or harms society in some way.

Perpetrators of honor killings are often not brought to justice as most families do not demand harsh punishment for them, particularly if the perpetrator is the victim’s father.

Honor killings are prevalent in some parts of Iran mostly due to societal beliefs and the Islamic Republic’s lax laws and light sentences that encourage the behavior.

The head of Reyhaneh Women’s NGO said in January that about 60 women had fallen victim to honor killings in Iran in the preceding two years including some as young as ten years old.

Former President Hassan Rouhani’s administration in January 2021 passed a bill intended to help protect women against domestic and other forms of gender-based violence but the parliament which is dominated by hardliners has so far shelved the bill.

The bill was proposed a few months after thirteen-year-old Romina Ashrafi was beheaded by her father Reza Ashrafi in northern Iran for eloping with an older man.

Romina and her lover were detained after her family filed complaints with the police, and a court handed her back to her father despite her pleas not to send her home because she said her father was a temperamental and would kill her for her disobedience.

Iranian media said before killing his daughter, Romina’s father had investigated the legal punishment before committing the crime and killed his daughter knowing that the maximum sentence for killing one's child was ten years in prison.

In February, a young man beheaded his 17-year-old wife, Mona Heydari, with the help of his brother and displayed the head around the streets in the southwestern city of Ahvaz when the young wife was brought back from Turkey. Mona who had traveled to Turkey to get away from her family had been persuaded by her own father, her husband’s uncle, to return to Iran.

Iran is one of the four countries that have not joined the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Videos shared on social media showed fire and smoke billowing from the base.

Iranian official media and websites affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard have remained silent on the incident.

Since May, there have been several attacks and mysterious incidents against Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) officers. One key commander was assassinated in Tehran on May 22 in broad daylight, while another was said to have fallen from the roof of his house and died a few days later. Iran has blamed Israel, in what has damaged the reputation of Iran’s intelligence and security organizations.

In a statement, the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) claimed the attack was carried out by “revolutionary cells”, a term it often uses to characterize anti-regime acts and protests in Iran. The group which used large-scale violence in the 1980s and 1990s in its fight against the Islamic Republic, later distanced itself from armed attacks.

In early June, an Iranian hacktivist group reportedly affiliated with the Albania-based MEK, named ‘Uprising till Overthrow’ hacked into and deactivated over 5,000 surveillance cameras and 150 websites and online services of Tehran Municipality.

The MEK was listed by the US from 1997 to 2012 as a ‘foreign terrorist organization,’ but was subsequently removed from the list. The group has cultivated links with many politicians in the US and Europe, paying large sums for attendance or speeches at its rallies.

A magnitude 6.1 earthquake hit Iran’s Hormozgan province, with the area hit soon after by two strong quakes of up to 6.3 magnitude.

Some 24 tremors, two with a magnitude of 6.3 and 6.1, followed the 2 a.m. local time quake that flattened the village of Sayeh Khosh near Iran's Persian Gulf coast. The most recent tremor occurred around 8 a.m., officials told state TV.

"All of the victims died in the first earthquake and no-one was harmed in the next two severe quakes as people were already outside their homes," said Foad Moradzadeh, governor of Bandar Lengeh country, quoted by the state news agency IRNA.

Emergency services spokesperson Mojtaba Khaledi told state TV that half of the 49 people injured had been discharged from hospitals.

Saeid Pourzadeh of the Kish island crisis task force said shipping and flights in that part of the Persian Gulf had not been affected by the quakes.

State TV said 150 quakes and tremors had struck western Hormozgan over the past month.

Major geological fault lines crisscross Iran, which has suffered several devastating earthquakes in recent years. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 quake in Kerman province killed 31,000 people and flattened the ancient city of Bam.

The audio interview with Hawza News, the news agency of Qom’s seminaries, was released on Friday in reaction to a Wednesday report by the New York Times claiming that Naseri was arrested a month ago on charges of spying for Israel. 

He said in the file that he is doing his job despite the allegations but did not mention where in the IRGC he is serving since he was removed from his post at the Guard’s counter-intelligence unit. The fact that there is no video footage of him or any recent reports about his activities as part of the IRGC, strengthens the speculations that he may be in fact in detention as Iran is notorious for extracting confessions and statements under duress.

The Times described Nasiri as “a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard’s Protection of Information Unit, tasked with oversight and supervision of the organization’s work,” although the paper sourced this to an April 21, 2019 story from Radio Farda that Naseri had been replaced in that position. The Iranian Students News Agency also reported at the time that Naseri had been removed.

There had been suggestions at the time that Nasiri had fled the country, with the Washington Free Beacon claiming he had defected to an Arab state in the Persian Gulf taking with him secret documents.