Exclusive: Iran Executes Juvenile Offender

Prominent filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof met Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi after his release from prison over supporting anti-government protests.

The 33-year-old rapper is known for his protest songs directly criticizing the Iranian regime. He was arrested in October 2022 amid an intensified crackdown by the Islamic Republic on opposition figures, following the nationwide Woman, Life, Freedom protests, ignited by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.

After a year in prison, including 252 days in solitary confinement, Toomaj Salehi was released on bail on November 19.The award-winning filmmakers have also been free on bail since February.

Panahi was imprisoned early in July 2022 following a visit to the Evin prison to inquire about the whereabouts of Rasoulof, who was arrested the previous day.

Prior to the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests, Rasoulof was imprisoned after signing a petition calling for the Iranian security forces to cease their violent attacks on demonstrators in Abadan, southwest Iran.

Last spring, hundreds of residents of Abadan, the capital of Khuzestan in the southwest of Iran, took to the streets to protest the fatal collapse of an unfinished building. Their demands included the prosecution of those responsible for the accident, including the mayor and members of the city council.

Former chief of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani tweeted that the ceasefire proves Israel has been defeated in the conflict. “Hamas was not destroyed” and remains at its positions, he stated. “The military infrastructure of resistance, especially tunnels, are active,” he added and said, “This is an absolute failure for Netanyahu”.

Although Iran now fully takes credit for supporting Hamas throughout the past two decades by providing both financial and military assistance, it has so far tried to avoid direct military involvement in the war. It knows that any open act of aggression against Israel in current conditions could invite retaliation, even from the United States. Its most powerful proxy force, the Lebanese Hezbollah, has also shied away from a full-scale war, limiting itself to border skirmishes with Israel.

However, Tehran’s diplomacy has been in full swing. Together with its ally Qatar, to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, knowing that the longer the conflict lasts, the weaker Hamas will become, with the ultimate likelihood of its full defeat. For that reason, foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has been visiting Qatar and meeting with both Qataris and Hamas leaders residing in the Sheikdom trying to facilitate a ceasefire.

But the public rhetoric of Iranian regime officials has aimed at showing strength, not weakness. In his latest meeting with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Amir-Abdollahian congratulated him for “resistance and victory,” stating, "The practical consequences of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm shook the world, and although the human losses suffered by the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip were significant, bitter, and unpleasant, the dimensions of victory and achievements of the Palestinian people were much greater. It altered the strategic balances in various dimensions in favor of Palestine and to the detriment of the oppressive, invading, and criminal Zionist regime." 

Earlier this month, the commander of IRGC aerospace force Gen. Amirali Hajizadeh in an interview with local media, called a war with the United States “illogical.” Although he was speaking in the context of why the Islamic Republic did not launch a full attack against US bases in the wake of Qassem Soleimani’s targeted killing in 2020, but the message was clear. Tehran knows that it would sustain heavy losses in case it crosses certain red lines, while also facing the danger of domestic unrest.

Iran’s anti-Western and staunchly anti-Israeli ruler Ali Khamenei has delivered public remarks on several occasions in the past few weeks, but except praising Hamas, he has been careful not to make escalatory remarks.

However, his loyal clerics use religious sermons to praise the October 7 Hamas terror attack that triggered the Gaza war. On Friday, Tehran’s prayer Imam Kazem Sedighi boasted that the Palestinians have gone on the offensive, and this is a lesson they learned from Iran’s “spirit of resistance.” He then went on attacking Western leaders for supporting Israel.

“The physical presence of the irrational, heartless, ruthless leaders of Western countries, led by the absent-minded President of the United States [in the occupied territories], followed by the support of the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the President of France, demonstrated that not only the Zionist regime but all the powers are fragile snowmen, and if humans rely on the power of God against them, their emptiness and futility will be revealed to the world,” the cleric said.

Meanwhile, Revolutionary Guard top commanders make daily statements about deploying new weapons, or simply praise Iran’s military power and progress. Meanwhile, Iranians opposed to the clerical regime ridicule the IRGC and regime insiders on social media by asking why they did not manage to go to Gaza and do what they have promised for decades – fighting against Israel.

Nasser Kanaani, in a statement released on Friday, said the resolution approved by the European Parliament reveals “the confusion of some European parties regarding the reality of the Islamic Republic.”

European Parliamentarians adopted a resolution condemning the deterioration of human rights in Iran on Thursday.

As part of the resolution, European Parliament members called on the Iranian authorities to end immediately all discrimination against women and girls, including mandatory veiling, and to retract all laws discriminating against women and girls

The European Parliament members (MEPs) also urged the regime to release “victims of arbitrary detention and human rights defenders” such as Narges Mohammadi, Sepideh Gholian, Golrokh Iraee, Nasrin Javadi and Bahareh Hedayat.

Moreover, their demands included the immediate release of Iranians with dual citizenship and non-Iranians, such as Johan Floderus, Ahmadreza Djalali, Nahid Taghavi, Jamshid Sharmahd, and Massoud Mossaheb.

Finally, the resolution echoed the calls to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization and to sanction the President, the Supreme Leader and the Prosecutor-General for their human rights violations.

In a sermon delivered at the Friday prayer service in the Sunni-majority city of Zahedan in the southeast, Abdolhamid said the prayer rooms were "trouble-free", and "nothing was said against" the Shiite clerical government.

Since Mahsa Amini's death in mid-September 2022 and the nationwide uprising that followed, Zahedan has become the epicenter of protests against the Islamic Republic.

In recent weeks, tensions have increased between the Sunni Baluch minority in the region and Islamic Republic authorities.

As reported last week, security and law enforcement forces and "armored bulletproof military vehicles” were deployed at some crossing points in the Sistan-Baluchistan province before the weekly Friday sermon of Mowlavi Abdolhamid.

Currently, Iranian authorities are being criticized for failing to punish those responsible for Zahedan's 'Bloody Friday' on September 30, 2022, when security forces fired at protesters.

It is estimated that nearly 100 civilians, including women and children, were killed in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, when they peacefully protested against the government.

“Parliament strongly condemns the deterioration of the human rights situation in Iran, and the brutal murders of women by the Iranian authorities, including the 2023 Sakharov Prize laureate Jina Mahsa Amini,” a resolution adopted Thursday by European lawmakers by 516 votes in favor, 4 against, and 27 abstentions said.

Members of the European Parliament also urged the Iranian authorities to immediately end “all discrimination against women and girls, including mandatory veiling, and to withdraw all gender discriminatory laws.”

Arbitrary detention, withholding medical treatment to prisoners, police violence, torture, capital punishment, and the alarming rise in the number of executions was also “strongly condemned” by the European Parliament.

The resolution demanded the immediate release of all victims of arbitrary detention and human rights defenders, including Nobel Peace Laureate Narges Mohammadi, political activist Sepideh Gholian (Qoliyan), women’s right activist Golrokh Iraee, labor activist Nasrin Javadi and political activist Bahareh Hedayat all of whom are held at Tehran’s Evin Prison.

The European Union needs to launch a strategy to counter the Islamic Republic’s “hostage diplomacy”, the resolution said and demanded the immediate and unconditional releases of several EU citizens held in Iran including a Swedish EU diplomat and an elderly Austrian.

What has come to be known as the Islamic Republic’s hostage diplomacy involves the arbitrary arrest of foreign nationals and dual citizens to use them as bargaining chips in dealings with western countries.

Johan Floderus, a young Swedish EU diplomat, for instance, was arrested at Tehran airport in April 2022 after what was described as a private tourist trip with friends.

Iranian authorities have accused Floderus who is also being held at Evin Prison since then of espionage, a charge they often use to justify the arrest of foreigners and dual nationals.

Iran is also holding a Swedish-Iranian doctor, Ahmadreza Djalali (Jalali). Djalali who was arrested in 2016 during an academic visit to Iran was sentenced to death in October 2017 on charge of espionage for Israel.

In April 2022 Iran tried to ramp up pressure on Sweden to free Hamid Nouri who Sweden had put on trial over the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in July and August 1988, by threatening to execute Djalali. Nouri is currently serving a life sentence in Sweden.

The 73-year-old Austrian-Iranian businessman, Massud Mossaheb who is serving a 10-year prison term for vague national security offences is another EU citizen Iran has been holding since 2019.

Despite poor health prior to his imprisonment which required regular specialist medical treatment, Mossaheb has been denied access to adequate medical care and to specialist medical professionals outside prison. 

Members of the European Parliament reiterated their call in their resolution for the initiation of criminal investigations into “crimes committed by the Iranian authorities under universal jurisdiction” while demanding designation of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist organization and sanctions against human rights violators in Iran. These include Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi.

The European Parliament also urged the European External Action Service and member states to support the Iranian Sakharov and Nobel Prize laureates.

Prominent lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi jointly won the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize in 2012. Both have been prosecuted, imprisoned, and banned from leaving the country on charges such as “assembly and collusion [to overthrow the regime]” and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.

Prominent human rights defender Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in October this year while in prison "for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”