Reports Of Sexual Abuse Force Iran Sports Minister To Order Investigation

Several Iranian hardliners have threatened the EU of repercussions inside Iran and in the region as well as in Europe if the EU designates the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

On Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on member states to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group. The overwhelming vote at the EU Parliament came after a massive rally by tens of thousands of Iranian expats in Strasbourg on Monday and condemnation of the IRGC's violent suppression of protesters in Iran.

Ironically, the hardliner officials and politicians who threaten the EU provide further proof of the IRGC's terrorist nature in their bellicose statements.

Ultraconservative lawmaker Mohammad Nabavian said on Wednesday that the Iranian Parliament will put Germany, France and the UK on Iran's terror list if the EU resolution goes any further. Meanwhile, he threatened that "the defenders of the resistance in the region" know very well how to treat those designated as terrorists by Tehran. By "resistance" forces, Nabavian was referring to Iran's proxy groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon including the Hezbollah, which have a proven track record of attacking US and EU interests in the region or taking hostages.

Nabavian further threatened that if Iran's interests are endangered by Europe, the interests of EU member states, their supporters, their companies, will be threatened no matter where they are located."

Ultraconservatives had also vandalized the British and French embassy buildings in Tehran during the past weeks. Nabavian further advised Europeans to "to take Iran's threats seriously."

Referring to former US President Donald Trump administration's designation of the IRGC as a terrorist group, Nabavian said it is not standard practice in the world to sanction the defensive forces of a country.

Meanwhile, IRGC General and hardliner lawmaker Esmail Kowsari warned EU member states: "You may not be able to tolerate the consequences of designating IRGC as a terrorist organization." Kowsari claimed that "The plan put the IRGC on Europe's list of terrorist organizations is a US-Israeli conspiracy and there is no logic behind it."

He suggested that "EU member states should preserve their independence from the United States and should oppose any action against the IRGC."Kowsari added that "Those who want Iran to return to the JCPOA know very well that these actions can put an end to any dialogue." He further warned that if the Eu wishes to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, it should consider the heavy repercussions of such an act."

This threat has some believers in the West, including the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell who is said to oppose designation the IRGC for fear of jeopardizing the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, or JCPOA.

Kowsari further warned that "The ITRGC is one of the world's most powerful military organizations. Designating it as a terrorist group will not restrict its actions but it might change the situation."

Meanwhile, in another development, Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of hardliner Kayhan daily in Iran threatened Sweden that IRGC security forces can easily abduct Swedish security officials and bring them to Iran for trial.

He made the outlandish statement while speaking about the trial of a former Iranian judiciary official convicted in Sweden on the charges of participating in killing thousands of dissidents in Iranian prisons in 1988.

In an interview with Eghtesad News, Shariatmadari mentioned other cases in which Iranian security forces abducted individuals from other countries for trial in Iran.

Hossein Salami said Saturday “Europe has not learned lessons from its past mistakes and thinks it can undermine the IRGC… with such statements,” he declared.

He made the comments after a meeting with the speaker of the Iranian parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf).

Salami also claimed that Europe owes its current security to the IRGC, saying “If it wasn’t for the efforts of the IRGC, especially the Quds Force and martyr Soleimani, the terrorism volcano created by the Americans would have engulfed the Europeans and the security that prevails in Europe today would have been destroyed.”

Ghalibaf and other Iranian lawmakers have also threatened European armed forces with a “terrorist” designation.

The Saturday meeting between the IRGC commander and parliament speaker, who is a former IRGC commander, was aimed at coordinating a potential response to the EU’s move.

The European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution Thursday calling on the EU and member states to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group.

The resolution demands Iranian authorities end the crackdown on popular protests that started last September after a 22-year-old woman was killed in hijab police custody.

It also demands that Europe should sanction the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and its president Ebrahim Raisi.

“A government that does not listen to the voice of the people does not deserve to rule,” said Mowlavi Abdolhamid in his Friday sermon in Zahedan, capital of the restive Sistan-Baluchestan Province.

Thousands of Abdolhamid’s congregation took to the streets in Zahedan for the 16th consecutive week after his sermon and chanted “Down with the Dictator” and “Khamenei is a murderer, his rule is illegitimate”.

The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters and killed more than 80 protesters.

Similar protests were held Friday in Rask, another city in Sistan-Baluchestan, in support of Abdolhamid and Mowlavi Abdul Ghaffar Naghshbandi, another Sunni Baluch cleric. In the past four months Naghshbandi has been under pressure from the authorities for confirming that allegations of a police chief raping a fifteen-year-old Baluch girlwere not true.

A Revolutionary Guard commander, Brigadier General Mohammad Karami, was appointed as provincial governor three weeks ago. Security measures and restrictions in the province and particularly its capital Zahedan have escalated to an unprecedented level.

In his sermon this week, Abdolhamid also protested to the doubling of checkpoints in Zahedan. “Seven stop and search checkpoints have turned into fifteen,” he said.

The new measures include at least fifteenconcrete block stop and search checkpoints on roads leading to Zahedan to control the flow of cars into the city, with security forces demanding identification and often questioning passengers. Internet connection has also been heavily restricted in the province since protests began four months ago.

Abdolhamid also argued that the government’s unjustified security-driven attitude to Sistan and Baluchestan impedes development as it discourages investment and progress. “People will establish security themselves [if allowed],” he said.

By “security-driven attitude” Abdolhamid apparently meant the government’s and the Shia establishment’s general lack of trust in Sunni communities across the country. Some officials and Shiite clerics who see Iran's Sunni minority as a threat to the Shia establishment occasionally raise alarm over the growth of the Sunni population in Iran.

Over 1,300 kilometers north of Zahedan, in the northern Golestan Province where there are large Sunni Baluch communities living for decades, another Mowlavi (Imam), Mohammad-Hossein Gorgij, has reportedly been put under house arrest in Galikesh.

Gorgij who served as the Sunni imam of Azad Shahr, 35 kilometers from Galikosh, was dismissed as Friday Imam of the Sunni community of Azad Shahr in Golestan in December 2021 by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative in the province for protesting to Shiites slandering Sunni caliphs.

Khamenei’s provincial representatives have the power to appoint and sack not only Shiite but also Sunni imams.

“Authorities have told me that my participation in Friday prayers is not befitting. My presence at Friday prayers is people’s wish not my own,” Gorgij told his supporters who had rallied outside his home in Galikosh Friday. “A government that is not on people’s side is not worthy of ruling,” he said.

Sistan and Baluchestan is Iran's largest but least developed province where around two-thirds of the population live in extreme poverty. The northern part of the province, Sistan, is predominantly Shiite while the southern part, Baluchestan, is Sunni majority.

The firebrand Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of the flagship hardliner newspaper -- which is funded by the Supreme Leader – condemned the European Parliament’s resolution, which was passed overwhelmingly on January 19, calling on the EU to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. 

“The European Union does not know that this action will backfire and make the armed forces of the Islamic Republic’s attacks on the military of the EU member states legal and legitimate,” he said. 

Shariatmadari, who often speaks for Ali Khamenei, added that if the EU council acts on the resolution by the parliament and designates the Guards, the Islamic Republic will retaliate and designate "the forces of the European Union member states as terrorists".

Known for his repeated calls to close the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf in response to any punitive measure against Iran by the international community, Shariatmadari said "In this case, we will deal with them as we deal with other terrorists."

He emphasized that “EU-affiliated forces have been present in the region and are available to us."

The regime’s saber-rattling had started even before the vote but has intensified since the Thursday session. 

Malek Shariati, the spokesman of the Parliament's Energy Committee, also threatened that if the IRGC is officially listed as a terrorist group in Europe, "their forces will be terrorists in our opinion, and the entire European commercial transit route in the region will no longer be safe."

Video footage from the December 29 inauguration ceremony of the new governor of the southeastern province, IRGC Brigadier General Mohammad Karami, contains parts of a speech by Supreme Leader’s representative Mostafa Mahami, and some lawmakers.

Mahami who also serves as the Shiite Friday Imam in the Sunni majority province capital, Zahedan, is seen in the video criticizing the government of President Ebrahim Raisi for economic hardships resulting from high inflation.

“Is it weakness [of the government], or God forbid, we are facing the mafia [of profiteers], or the ministers and authorities cannot stand against these mafias,” he said.

“I told the president that all governments have craftily made rosy reports, but we need to see the outcome in people’s subsistence,” Mahami said while asking officials to tell him that people’s problems will not be solved by mere “talking therapy” and saying things should happen without taking action.

Mahami also strongly criticized the foreign ministry for failing to resolve the dispute with the Taliban over Iran's share of the waters of Helmand (Hirmand in Persian) and revival of the Afghan-Iranian 1973 water treaty.

“The foreign ministry has been extremely useless in pursuing Sistan’s share of the waters,” he said. “You rattle sabers for the US but don’t have what it takes to secure your rights from Afghanistan?” he asked.

Tehran has for decades complained about not always receiving its fair share of the water. In 1999, for instance, the Taliban turned off the flow completely. In August 2021, a Taliban spokesman dismissed as "enemy propaganda" reports and a video circulating on social media showing waters flowing from the Kamal Khan Dam towards Iran, insisting the water was not for Iran.

Sistan is the northern, Shiite majority part of the province while Baluchestan refers to the southern, Sunni majority part. The province has suffered heavily from draught and seen hundreds of villages abandoned in the past two decades.

The new governor, Karami, who served as the commander of IRGC Ground Forces in southeastern Iran replaced Hossein Modarres Khiabani following the escalation of protests in the Sunni majority areas and particularly its capital Zahedan.

The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan and several other cities of the province every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters after prayers led by the popular cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid in Zahedan and killed more than 80 protesters.

This week locals have reported extra heavy security measures in Zahedan including check points on all roads leading to the city and around Makki Mosque where Abdolhamid delivers his fiery speeches every Friday to thousands of Sunnis, presumably in preparation for stopping the flow of worshippers to the mosque this Friday.

In his sermons Abdolhamid has protested to the “mass arrests on the streets” and accused the authorities of torturing detainees until they accept crimes that they never committed. He has also said he holds Khamenei responsible for the violence against Sunni Baluchis and other protesters.

The province, Iran's least developed where around two-thirds of the population live in extreme poverty, is located on a drug trafficking route from neighboring Afghanistan and is known for one of the highest counts of executions in the country which are often related to drug trafficking.

According to Baluch activists one-third of over 500 executions in the country in 2022 involved people of Baluch ethnicity.