Commander Says Iran Will Destroy Israel And Attack The US

Prominent civil and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who has been transferred to the Women’s Ward of Tehran's Evin Prison after a recent open-heart surgery, said Thursday that some of the inmates have tested positive for Covid while several others have developed symptoms but have not been tested.

“Self-isolation is impossible given the high number of inmates and the small size of the women’s ward,” Mohammadi wrote in a letter from Evin which was published on her Instagram page.

“It is the duty of human rights activists and organizations not to remain silent about the violation of prisoners’ basic rights, to defend the legal rights of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience and their right to health, and to force the government to abide by human rights,” Mohammadi wrote.

She also added that currently there are over 50 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience at the Women’s Ward of Evin and the number keeps increasing. “These many inmates with various political and ideological affiliations are unprecedented in the history of the prison … This indicates increasing suppression by the government,” Mohammadi said in her letter.

Mohammadi has been to jail several times over the past two decades. She was freed from Evin Prison in September 2020 after serving more than five years when she had no contact with her husband and children for long periods of time. She was arrested again and sentenced to eight years in jail and 70 lashes by the Revolutionary Court on trumped-up political charges again in a five-minute trial in late January.

Ill-treatment of political prisoners and activists at Evin and other prisons such as Qarchak is not limited to denying them necessary healthcare. Sepideh Rashno, an anti-hijab protester who is reportedly held at a ward run by the IRGC at Evin, had to be taken to hospital to check for internal bleeding symptoms resulting from torture before her ‘forced confession’ was aired on state-run television last week.

In a message from the notorious Qarchak Women’s Penitentiary to the PEN Melbourne in June, Mohammadi and another rights activist, Alieh Motallebzadeh, urged the the international community to support efforts by Iranian civil society activists to establish democracy in the country.

Mohammadi and Motallebzadeh, both of whom are cofounders and chairs of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, say judicial authorities have been holding them at Qarchak Penitentiary with ordinary criminals including those serving time for murder and drug trafficking.

In another message from prison in June, Mohammadi called on right organizations to put pressure on the Islamic Republic for its crackdown on popular protests and said the international community should condemn the “killing of people on the streets” similar to pressure on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The most recent protests in Iran began on May 6 as the government drastically raised food prices, leaving tens of millions of Iranians in danger of facing hunger as inflation surpassing 40 percent has depleted their means to buy basic food.

Crackdown on protesters and persecution of human rights and political activists including women’s rights and anti-hijab activists and ill-treatment of prisoners has been on the rise since hardliner president Ebrahim Raisi took office last August which consolidated hardliners’ power over all the three branches of government.

Speaking to reporters at the venue of the talks at hotel Coburg in the Austrian capital Vienna, Mora told Iran International’s correspondent that he also read about the deadline in a Bloomberg report, saying someone had said the deal would be revived “in 72 hours or nothing.” “I read that in Bloomberg but I don’t know who said that.” 

He confirmed that the negotiations will “absolutely” continue after the rumored 72 hours, adding that the talks will go on after Monday but “the weekend can be useful.” 

Talks over Iran’s atomic program seem to continue beyond Friday as United States and Iranian negotiators tackle European proposals to bridge gaps.

Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani met Friday with Mora, the official acting as a go-between with a US team led by special envoy Rob Malley, and with Wang Kun, China’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as Iran has refused to meet the American face-to-face.

EU officials have argued that a text circulated by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in late July should be a basis for the US and Iran to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which the US left in 2018 prompting Iran after 2019 to expand its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits.

Taysir al-Jabari, a commander of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, -- a militant outfit designated a terrorist organization by the US, EU, and UK – was killed in an air raid on an apartment in the Palestine Tower in the center of Gaza City. 

Islamic Jihad said in a statement that a member of its military council was also killed in Israel’s latest Gaza operation, named “Breaking Dawn.” The Palestinian health ministry said at least eight people were killed, including a five-year-old girl, and another 40 were injured.

During the week, Islamic Jihad’s leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah held meeting with several senior Iranian officials in Tehran including Supreme Leader's adviser Ali Akbar Velayati, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and Kamal Kharrazi, the head of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, as well as President Ebrahim Raisi. 

A "special situation" has been declared in areas around Gaza, in anticipation of retaliatory attacks, as the group said, "The enemy has begun a war targeting our people, and we all have the duty to defend ourselves and our people, and not allow the enemy to get away with its actions which are aimed at undermining the resistance and national steadfastness."

Israel closed roads around Gaza earlier this week and sent reinforcements to the border as it braced for a new wave of airstrikes following the arrest of a senior member of the Islamic Jihad militant group in the West Bank town of Jenin on Monday, August 1. 

This is the second mass congregation for Friday prayer by supporters of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- who seeks to curb the influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Iraqi politics. The protests are a show of force by the firebrand cleric whose party won the highest number of seats in the October 2021 elections but withdrew after failing to form a government with Sunni and Kurdish allies in Iraq's hectic power-sharing system.

Iran-backed parties have dominated many state institutions for years. 

Protesting against corruption and political mismanagement, hundreds of followers of Sadr occupied the country's parliament on Saturday, July 30, after mounting concrete barricades on roads leading to Baghdad’s Green Zone, which houses government buildings and foreign embassies.

The protesters stressed the need for an independent government in Baghdad, emphasizing that they do not want an Iranian-linked government or a subordinate one. They especially rejected a Tehran-backed prime ministerial nominee. On Monday, July 25, the Coordination Framework -- a coalition of Shiite parties close to Tehran -- nominated Mohammed al-Sudani as the prime minister, a decision opposed by Sadr. 

According to Iran International correspondent in Baghdad Truske Sadeghi, Sadr also held a meeting with Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the special representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, to break the months-long deadlock.

Sadr, reportedly, has also agreed to meet with Hadi al-Amiri, the head of a Shiite political party and military organization close to Tehran and the de facto leader of Iran-backed Shiite militia Hashd al-Shaabi, to talk about an early election in the country. 

Two Western security officials told The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity on Thursday that the satellite, dubbed “Khayyam” after a 12th-century Persian polymath, will greatly enhance Tehran’s ability to spy on military targets across the Middle East, including near-continuous monitoring of sensitive facilities in Israel and across the Persian Gulf. 

Russia's Roscosmos space agency has announced August 9 as the launch date of the satellite by a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur space station in Kazakhstan to fulfill a deal negotiated with Iran over nearly four years. Russia agreed to build and launch the Kanopus-V system but Iran may not be able to take control of the satellite right away as Moscow has told Tehran that it plans to use the satellite for several months, or longer, to enhance its surveillance of military targets for its invasion of Ukraine. 

The pending launch is the latest indicator of increased military and political cooperation between Moscow and Tehran. 

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned twice in July that Moscow appears to be looking at buying Iranian drones and Russian officers even visited a drone base in Iran’s Kashan to review their options.

The developments come as talks have resumed in the Austrian capital Vienna in what some officials describe as a last-ditch effort to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear accord. The Biden administration is pressing Iran to return to compliance with the deal, which Tehran essentially abandoned after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018.