Iran-Backed Militants Fire Missiles At US Base In Syria
Amid heightened Middle East tensions, Iran-backed militants have targeted the US troops stationed at a base in Conoco gas field in northeast of Syria.
Amid heightened Middle East tensions, Iran-backed militants have targeted the US troops stationed at a base in Conoco gas field in northeast of Syria.
According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the Iranian proxy forces fired more than six missiles on the base in northern Deir ez-Zor (Deir Ezzor) countryside, where smoke plumes were seen rising from the targeted site. US forces in the region are in a state of high alert in anticipation of attacks by Iran-aligned forces after the US and UK conducted airstrikes on Houthis in Yemen, another Iranian proxy, in the early hours of Friday local time in response to the group's repeated attacks on the Red Sea shipping.
According to reliable SOHR sources, some of the missiles hit civilian facilities in Al-Azbah village near the gas field, causing material damage.
The war monitor said that it has documented 88 attacks carried out by Iranian-backed militias on Coalition bases in different areas across Syria since October 19, less than two weeks after Islamist militia Hamas invaded Israel, killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostages into Gaza. Iran denies involvement in the October 7 attack but almost its proxies have intensified attacks on US and Israeli targets in the region as well as commercial vessels at their reach.
Appearing before an immigration panel on Thursday, Majid Iranmanesh, who was a director general at Iran's Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology, asked the court to allow him to leave the country voluntarily without a deportation order, which he said would interfere with his research in different countries.
“I would like to return to my country,” he said, claiming that he would leave Canada next week. Although his employment ended in 2020, he is still an Iranian government contractor.
Iranmanesh is one of nine alleged senior members of the Iranian regime who face possible deportation. He said in the hearing that he arrived in Canada on May 29, 2023, with the intention of conducting research at the University of Victoria for one year. The Canada Border Services Agency has said it was investigating 141 such cases. Thirty-eight have been closed without action.
Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada did not provide details on how Iranmanesh secured a visa to enter the country. Canada Border Services Agency referred his case to the Immigration and Refugee Board for hearings in November.
He is found inadmissible to Canada because he is a senior official, and if the Refugee Board concurs, a deportation order will be issued under sanctions adopted in November 2022 that banned senior members of the Iranian regime from Canada.
In his testimony, he acknowledged working for the Iranian government since 2017. He admitted that he was the director general of administration of information technology at the Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology until 2020, and since then he has been a consultant working on contract.
The Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology oversees operations of the Centre for Innovation and Technology Cooperation (CITC), which has been sanctioned by the United States and United Kingdom for supporting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. “The Center for Innovation and Technology Cooperation is in a position to support a range of Iran’s weapons of mass destruction and military procurement objectives,” according to the US Treasury.
Iranmanesh, a 53-year-old mathematician, claimed that he has “been active in positions only for the benefit of humankind.”
Earlier this month, Iran’s former deputy interior minister under president Hassan Rouhani, Salman Samani, also appeared before the Refugee Board in Toronto. His case is scheduled to be reviewed in February.
According to Bill Blair, the Minister of National Defense, “When individuals have been involved in activity that would make them ineligible to be in this country, we’ll do everything we can to keep them out. And when they do get into this country, we’ll do everything we can to remove them.”
The deportations are in line with sanctions, imposed after Iran's morality police killed Mahsa Amini for defying hijab laws in September 2022. Amini's death garnered international condemnation and became a poignant symbol of resistance against the repression of women under Iran's clerical government.
In response, Canada classified Iran's government as a regime involved in "terrorism and systematic and gross human rights violations," leading to the effective exclusion of tens of thousands of Iranian officials and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members from entering the country.
Canada’s ban applies to “a wide array of individuals in a regime that has perpetrated crimes against the people of Iran and other nations,” the government said when the policy was announced. “It includes: heads of state, members of the Cabinet, ambassadors, senior diplomats, members of the judiciary, senior military and intelligence officials and senior public servants.”
Canada severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012 due to concerns related to its pursuit of nuclear weapons and support for terrorist organizations including Hamas.
In an event to mark four years since Iran’s Revolutionary Guards downed Flight PS752 earlier this week, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government is looking at ways to label the IRGC a terrorist organization. Canada has been wrestling with designation of the IRGC as a terrorist entity for years, but calls grew louder after the Flight PS752 incident. Canada’s federal government has referred to the IRGC as a terrorist organization, described its leadership as terrorists, announced measures to make its senior members inadmissible to Canada, and has listed the outfit’s extraterritorial expeditionary division Quds Force as a terrorist entity.
Rouhani criticized the government for discouraging a majority of eligible voters from going to the polls in the 2020 parliamentary elections. In that election, the hardliner-dominated Guardian Council ruthlessly barred nearly all the reformist and moderate candidates from running by rejecting their credentials.
He also pointed out that people's participation was also minimal in the 2021 Presidential election, as a result of biased vetting of candidates, and disqualifying the most prominent contenders. As a result, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s hand-picked choice, Ebrahim Raisi, cruised to victory in another low-turnout vote.
Rouhani told the Guardian Council, and possibly Khamenei: You said that [my] government lacked popularity. But why did you disqualify everyone who supported [my] government.
He went on to emphasize, "It was painful to witness the smallest-ever turnout of eligible voters in Iran during those elections." In the 2020 and 2021 elections, the voter turnout in the most active constituencies ranged from 20 to 40 percent. However, in regions with significant dissent, such as the industrial townships near Karaj, close to Tehran, the turnout plummeted to as low as 2 percent.
The former President attributed Iran's current political impasse in part to the absence of the former President and Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who passed away in January 2017. He expressed his concern about the situation, emphasizing that, as a follower of Rafsanjani, he understands the importance of stepping forward and working to solve problems during challenging times like these.
This was possibly another message to Khamenei, who isolated Rafsanjani in the latter years of his life, although the politician had played an instrumental role in convincing senior clerics to select the junior clergyman as Supreme Leader in 1989.
Rafsanjani died under suspicious circumstances and some, including his two daughters Fatemeh and Faezeh strongly believe that he might have been killed. Faezeh Hashemi on Thursday presented some strong evidence in the Iranian press, suggesting that her father might have become the victim of political rivalry by hardliners who thought his presence in the post-Khamenei period could deprive them of political power.
She stated that intelligence officers had met with her a few weeks before her father's death and had discussed the possibility of his assassination in a manner that could be made to appear as if he died of natural causes.
Rouhani said that hardliners carried out five major operations, including the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in 2016, to tarnish Iran's foreign relations and stop the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program from succeeding.
Meanwhile, he claimed that the United States was certain that his government was popular based on its analysis of a video of Rouhani's visit to Esfahan in February 2015, and wanted to further nuclear negotiations with his administration.
Returning to the topic of the upcoming elections, Rouhani stated: "The ruling minority does not desire competitive elections and a high turnout. They prefer a lackluster election to secure the continuation of their power."
In Khamenei's camp, individuals of doubtful popularity are desperately trying to encourage the people to take part in the elections. Khamenei's representative to hardline daily Kayhan, Hossein Shariatmadari has warned that "Islam will be isolated if people refuse to vote.” His representative in Kermanshah, Friday Prayers Imam Habibollah Ghafouri has said that every vote is like a missile that targets the enemy's heart." These are, however, slogans that most Iranians find too banal and far from the realities of their hard lives.
