Academic Urges Iranians To Ignore The Regime, Help One Another

“The money has been spent on issues like pensions for elderly clerics and support for the retirement of seminary students," the report released by MEK-affiliated Telegram account Uprising till Overthrow said.

Iranian media had reported in January that the budget for religious organizations would increase by 130 percent, reaching $500 million, while at least 20 million more Iranians are now considered poor compared to two years ago.

Religious organizations, including seminaries, play the role of propagandists for the regime.

The group released a trove of secret and top-secret documents on May 30 that it said were obtained by hacking the government’s servers.

Since the 1979 revolution, the clergy have gained increasing power, but discontent against them has risen in recent years, particularly amid waves of protests over economic, political, and civil rights issues.

Several Iranian clerics have come under attack by angry Iranians recently as rising prices and constant protests have led to a tense environment in the country.

In recent months, while the government was keen to enforce compulsory hijab as women defied the imposed lifestyle and took to the streets, many clerics, particularly those in the government, used vulgar words about Iranian women.

Iran's top Sunni cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid said Friday that clerics and religious seminaries must not be funded by the government to remain independent and critical.

In his address to the pro-Israel advocacy group AIPAC on Monday, he said, "If Iran rejects the path of diplomacy, then, as President Joe Biden has repeatedly made clear, all options are on the table to ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon."

He did not elaborate on what Iran should do exactly that can be construed as rejecting the path of diplomacy as Tehran has been enriching uranium to over 60% purity and its proxy militia have attacked US forces in the region at least 83 times since 2021.

Admitting that there was no danger that Israel faces "that is graver than the one posed by the Iranian regime,” Blinken voiced Washington's "iron-clad" commitment to Israel's security.

“That regime routinely threatens to wipe Israel off the map, continues to provide weapons to terrorists and proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas, who reject Israel's right to exist,” he said, adding that the Islamic Republic “exports its aggression throughout and even beyond the region, including by arming Russian forces with drones that are being used to kill Ukrainian civilians and destroy its infrastructure.”

Blinken also highlighted the US “three-pronged approach of diplomacy, economic pressure, and deterrence, which also includes strengthening Israel's military capabilities,” saying that “it puts us in the strongest possible position to address the Iranian nuclear threat just as we take on the many other challenges posed by the Iranian regime.”

The bill is sponsored by dozens of Ukrainian parliamentarians, including the head of the Verkhovna Rada’s foreign affairs committee, Oleksandr Merezhko.

Israel and the US have been urging their allies to list the IRGC as a terrorist group. In mid-May, a bipartisan group of US congresspeople urged Washington’s allies– namely the UK, Australia, Canada, and India -- to swiftly act and officially join Washington in labeling the IRGC in its entirety.

The move in Ukraine has been lauded by several Israeli officials, such as the country’s ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, who said, “Iran poses a clear threat to Ukraine, Israel, and the whole world.”

Washington designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist group in 2019 under the Trump administration as relations with Iran plummeted following Washington’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran responded at the time by designating the US military as a terrorist group.

The Ukrainian action came only a few days after the Swedish parliament unanimously voted to designate the IRGC. It swiftly followed the execution of Swedish-Iranian Habib Chaab (Asyud) which saw Sweden's Ministry of Foreign Affairs summon Iran's chargé d'affaires in protest of the execution, one of hundreds since the start of the year.

Earlier on Monday, the UK Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update that during May 2023, Russia launched over 300 Iranian Shahed suicide drones against Ukraine, describing it as“its most intense use of this weapon system to date.”

Hossein Jalali said: "Today, hackers enter the systems...steal our information and cause sabotage in some centers such as factories, organizations, and petrochemical facilities."

Advocating stronger preventive action, he added: “We must note that hackers enter any organization which is available; so, we have to see what the countries that are not attacked by hackers are doing. Hackers have not yet succeeded in penetrating China's systems. That’s because China has a national internet, so Iran's Internet should become like China."

The member of the Cultural Commission of the Iranian parliament also added that the hackers set some facilities on fire.

The hacktivist group ‘Uprising till Overthrow' claimed on May 29 that it breached 120 servers at the presidential office, getting access to internal communications, meetings minutes, President Ebrahim Raisi’s online conference platforms and about 1,300 computers inside the office.

In the cyberattack, the group is said to have gained access to “tens of thousands of confidential documents” but is releasing them in daily batches.

Earlier in May, the group, affiliated with the Albania-based opposition Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) group -- People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, hacked into the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry servers, disabling 210 sites and online services and leaking another large batch of documents.

The US on Friday sanctioned Iran-based tech firm Arvan Cloud, its co-founders, and an affiliate UAE-based company over helping the regime censor the Internet in Iran.

The Iranian government has regularly used Internet restrictions and the throttling of Internet speeds to suppress dissent, surveil and punish Iranians for exercising their freedom of expression and assembly both online and offline.

These numbers show that Iran's non-oil exports to the European Union member countries have reached 725 million dollars in 2022, from about 2 billion in 2008.

According to the Navad-e Eqtesadi website, in addition to Britain's withdrawal from the European Union in 2020, the drop in Iran's exports to the European Union began after the withdrawal of the United States from the nuclear agreement in 2018.

Iran is also on FATF ‘blacklist’ for not adhering to several international financial conventions. The designation virtually cuts off the violators from the international banking system.

FATF is a Paris-based inter-state organization following the observance of international financial rules against money laundering and financing of terrorism.

European countries were supposed to trade with Iran through a special financial channel known as INSTEX, but the United Kingdom, France and Germany known as the E3 decided to shut down the mechanism, launched in 2019.

The INSTEX shareholders – Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK – voted in favor of the dissolution at the extraordinary general assembly on March 9 considering Iran’s persistent refusal to engage with the facility.