Sunni Cleric Kidnapped, Killed In Restive Sistan-Baluchestan

Momeni, an economist in Iran, said in an interview with reformist Jamaran News website, "use of force and resorting to shock-therapy to address economic problems will prevent interaction between society and the government." He added that attempts to shock the society will lead to a social catastrophe.

Although Momeni mentioned the economy, but the regime’s deadly violence against protesters and cold-blooded executions are part of the same strategy to shock the nation and pacify it.

Speaking at a conference about Iran's current problems and its outlook for the future, Momeni said: "We are facing multi-dimensional crises in all areas of our social life. Economic crises are however easier to understand and those who have an interest in concealing the problem find them difficult to hide."

He added that the first thing the government needs to do is to understand the current situation and its challenges. This comes while other academics have also said during recent weeks that the government is largely in denial of the country's problems.

Momeni further added that Iran is facing a participation crisis as the people are left out of the decision-making process. He said: "It is immature for a government to announce a decision without putting it to debate first."

Government's policies are against public participation. This policy, he said, eliminates people's motivation to cooperate with the government. Momeni concluded that with its current policies, Iran's government is likely to end up in a quagmire like the one Russia ended up under communism.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Khabar Online, Iranian academic Mohammad Reza Tajik, a presidential adviser in the reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), opined that the Islamic Republic of Iran may be moving toward widespread radicalism.

Offering his suggestion for a way out of the current Iranian crisis, Tajik said that "what Iranian politics lacked in recent years is the idea of moderation. Referring to the current nationwide protests in Iran, Tajik said there is no solution for the problem other than reaching out to the people." He added that as the government has failed to do so, the younger generation chose its separate ways and is experiencing a different kind of politics.

According to Khabar Online, when the government refuses to listen to the people and their demands, the doors to dialogue will be shut and subsequently, this leads to radicalization of political behavior. The website concluded that the street protests in the past months may be an outcome of such a situation.

Tajik told Khabar online that politics needs to be flexible like a driver in a road with several bends. If the road bends and the driver doesn't, this is likely to lead to a catastrophe. In such a situation, the government and the people become radicalized. In Iran, “we are sometimes facing a police state rather than a political institution.”

According to Tajik, the problem with many Iranian politicians including the reformists is that many of them live in their own cave built on rhetoric as captives and they are even annoyed when someone tries to show them the light of the day.

A very clear example of Tajik's allegoric example in the cave occurred in Tehran on December 6 as Tehran's Mayor Alireza Zakani utterly refused to listen to students when he showed up at a university to speak and told them, "You have been talking all these years. Now you should listen to me!" The result was, of course, humiliation for the ultraconservative mayor.

Western diplomatic sources told Iran International that the Islamic Republic has started negotiations with its Venezuelan allies to ensure they'd offer asylum to regime officials and their families should the situation worsen, and the possibility of a regime change increases. 

According to these sources, a delegation of four high-ranking regime officials visited Venezuela in mid-October for negotiations to ensure that the Caracas government would grant asylum to high-ranking officials and their families in case "the unfortunate incident" happens. 

In early-November, an unnamed source at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport told Kayhan-London that three flights a day were taking off with "a considerable amount of cargo" bound for Venezuela, adding that "these people get their suitcases out in hours, with fewer passengers and flights. This began about two weeks ago, and we see these movements about two or three times a day."

"Initially, my colleagues and I thought these were embassy employees, though we noticed their car number plates didn't belong to any embassy. We don't know what they are transferring, and whether they are leaving the country with all the luggage or not. Because they won't let us examine closely. We just know that in past weeks, every day there are three to four flights to Venezuela," the source said. 

According to another report by the website of UK’s Daily Express in October, top officials of the Islamic Republic were reportedly attempting to secure British passports for their families to exit the country amid the uprising against the regime following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was killed in police custody in September.

Citing an unnamed Iranian source, the Daily Express also claimed that officials have been chartering up to "five flights a day" for their families, adding that some sections of “Tehran’s main airport” have been taken over as a fast-track area for their own family and friends to escape the country.

The source said things are moving fast at the airport, noting that “It started more than two weeks ago. The regime changed all security details at the airport. They were moving civilians (friends and family) from the back entrance of the airport directly to the airplanes for international flights.”

Social media users are reporting regular money transfers abroad by high-ranking officials of the regime. According to one account, former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s wife is said to have transferred €4 million to an ABC Bank account in Shanghai through some agencies in Dubai.

There are also unconfirmed reports that officials are transferring their assets to friendly countries and there are official reports that many high-priced and luxurious homes in the capital Tehran are being sold below market value, strengthening speculations that some of the rich are in a hurry to leave the country. A recent report by the government’s official news agency, IRNA, confirmed the sale of many apartments cheaper than their estimated prices, describing it as the result of lower purchasing power due to the economic crisis.

In an interview published on Wednesday, Khatib slammed Western leaders, especially Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for supporting Iranian protesters, and at one point implicitly called Macron a “clown”.

Iranian officials faced with the biggest popular protests in 43-year history of the Islamic Republic have been weaving a conspiracy theory that Western governments plotted to trigger protests in Iran, with the aim of weakening “the victorious” Islamic Republic.

Khatib, a hardliner cleric, ranted against the French president and claimed that Macron repeated whatever he was told by Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, calling her an “addict” and a “woman of the street.” He also described Alinejad as a low-ranking agent of the US intelligence agency CIA, and claimed that she “dictates” Macron’s positions about the protests and how to express them. 

Khatib was referring to a November meeting between Macron and Iranian female activists, in which the president hailed the antigovernment protests as a “revolution”. Macron has been one of the first presidents who recognized the uprising as a revolution. According to the Elysee, the delegation of exiled female Iranian rights activists included US-based Alinejad, Shima Babaei, and Ladan Boroumand, the co-founder of a Washington-based rights group. Earlier in the month, Marcon and US President Joe Biden reiterated in a joint statement their “respect for the Iranian people, in particular women and youth.”

Iran’s intelligence minister also claimed that Macron's stance against the Islamic Republic has another reason, and that is the "identification and arrest of two French intelligence agents" by his ministry, referring to Cécile Kohler, an educator who heads the teachers’ union National Federation of Education, Culture and Vocational Training (FNEC FP-FO) and her husband Jacque Paris. In a video of forced confessions aired by state media in October, Kohler said they were in Iran to “prepare the ground for the revolution and the overthrow of the regime of Islamic Iran.”

Iran’s state media are infamous for purported confessions by prisoners in politically charged cases. Such prisoners are held without due process of law and usually cannot choose their own defense attorney. The Islamic Republic has detained at least seven French nationals on different charges including “spying for foreign intelligence services.”

Human rights organizations accuse Iran of a systematic policy of hostage taking over four decades from the earliest period of the Islamic republic after the ouster of the Shah, starting with the 1979-1981 siege at the US embassy in Tehran. Tehran denies any policy of hostage taking and insists all foreigners are arrested and tried according to legal process. However, it has frequently shown readiness for prisoner exchanges and participated in swaps in the past. 

Earlier in the week, Macron denounced “lies” by Iranian authorities in face of the “unacceptable” imprisonment of French nationals.

Khatib also spoke out against Trudeau for saying that 15,000 people in Iran face the threat of execution, calling him an “immature” official for believing such allegations. However, the Canadian premier’s remark was a reaction to a call by Iranian lawmakers who urged the judiciary to sentence the arrested protesters – who were estimated to be about 15,000 at the time – to death. Although Trudeau deleted the tweet about the death sentence, the threat can still be regarded valid as leaked data indicate that authorities are really considering executing many protesters. About 80 people are facing charges that can lead to the death penalty. The number of the arrested protesters has increased to over 18,000. 

Khatib said such politicians “are no longer those independent and powerful leaders of first-class European countries,” adding that they are dependent on the US and Israel and follow their policies. 

“This means that the Americans have practically taken Europe, especially France and Germany, hostage,” Khatib said, claiming that his statement "is not only an analysis of obvious observations, but also based on secret information.”

Mehrdad Bazrpash, who was approved by the Iranian parliament as Minister of Road and Urban Development on Wednesday, said building four million housing units in four years with cost $80 billion at $20,000 per unit.

Raisi promised to build one million apartments per year during his presidential campaign in 2021, without much consideration to the cost involved.

Asking parliamentarians how this large amount of money can be resourced, he said it is almost twice the amount of the country’s budget this year.

He also mentioned that around 240 thousand previously built government housing units remain unfinished, and the parliament should think of a resource to complete them.

Driven by former President MahmoudAhmadinejad’s populist vision, a project called Mehr was launched more than decade ago seeking to enable homeownership for the economically “oppressed”. The project proved to be a failure do to bad planning and mismanagement.

The scheme caused prices to soar, enabled corruption and profiteering, and made affordable housing out of reach not only for the poor, but also for the relatively well-off.

Reports say the ministry has not built even one housing unit so far, after Raisi and ex-minister Rostam Ghasemi took office.

From the beginning when the proposal was made, many experts did not take it seriously, arguing that Iran would need nearly $15 billion a year to construct one million units, money it simply does not have amid economic crisis and sanctions.

Students have reported on social media that university security and government security forces vigilantly vetted students before allowing them to attend the speech which uncharacteristically was not broadcast live by state media. They claim members of the paramilitary Basij were brought in from other universities and elsewhere to fill the event hall with supporters.

At the same time, students in a dozen universities held protest rallies amid pressures by security forces and Basij vigilantes.

Surrounded by bodyguards and security forces, Raisi also walked through the campus to give a message of “normality” to the event. In his speech and in response to questions from the constantly cheering vetted audience, Raisi praised his own government’s “achievements”, made promises of economic improvement, accused protesters of “enmity with the country”, and claimed the opposition wanted to wage a civil war in Iran, like in Syria.

In the past three months, over 200 Tehran University students were arrested and 20 are still in detention. Some students have been sentenced to prison terms, others have been put on a list of non-grata students or have been banned from attending classes and using dormitories. According to students, the university released a new list of non-grata students ahead of Raisi’s visit.

“One had to sign up and provide a lot of information beforehand [to get the entrance permit], apparently some were denied, for unspecified reasons, even after signing up in advance,” a tweet said.

Another tweet said someone from among the vetted audience had protested to Raisi for not giving a high position to the ultra-hardliner former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalil. “As if what protesting students want is [a position for another regime loyalist]”, the tweet said.

Raisi’s speech on Wednesday was preceded by a noisy appearance at Tehran’s Sharif University Tuesday where students, including a female student who had defiantly taken her hijab off, grilled the capital’s hardliner mayor Alireza Zakani about corruption, the Islamic Republic’s support for the Taliban, backing the Lebanese Hezbollah and other controversial issues.

Sharif students booed the mayor when he blamed foreign countries for fomenting protests in Iran, staged a protest on the campus, and saw him off with chants of “Death to the Dictator”, “Death to Khamenei”, and “Rascal”.

Raisi said he had been advised not to attend Student Day events at universities, “or at least Tehran University”, presumably due to the current climate in the country, but had nevertheless decided to deliver his speech there. Apparently, he made his decision after vetting those in attendance.

Presidents’ Student Day speeches at Tehran University, the country’s oldest university, and how they are received by students, has considerable significance in Iran's political scene.

On the first anniversary of his election in 1997, reformist President Mohammad Khatami delivered a speech at Tehran University to highly enthusiastic students during which he warned about hardliners’ use of religion to restrict citizens’ freedoms. It is religion that will eventually be crushed if it is pitched against freedom, he said.

In December 1999, however, he had a difficult time with angry students whose campus had been attacked and ransacked by vigilantes and security forces loyal to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who arrested scores and killed several students in July of the same year.

In a Student Day message Monday, Khatami from his retirement praised the “Women, Life, Freedom”, the trademark slogan of the current protests, expressed sorrow for the “shed bloods”, warned that freedom should not be trampled in the name of establishing security, and criticized the arrest of students and pressure on their teachers.

His successor, hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, never made an appearance at Tehran University for Student Day speeches. Moderate Hassan Rouhani also had a hard time at Tehran University in 2016 when Basij militia students assailed him even told him not to think of a second term of presidency.