Oscars Invites Renowned Iranian Filmmaker Bahram Beyzai to Join Academy
Bahram Beyzai
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited acclaimed Iranian filmmaker, playwright, and screenwriter Bahram Beyzai, and award-winning Iranian director Maryam Keshavarz to become members of the Academy.
This invitation is part of the Academy's announcement on Tuesday that 487 artists and motion picture executives worldwide have been selected for membership.
”We are thrilled to welcome this year’s class of new members to the Academy,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang in a joint statement. “These remarkably talented artists and professionals from around the world have made a significant impact on our filmmaking community.”
Beyzai has been selected to join two branches including the Writers and Directors branches of the organization according to the announcement. Upon accepting membership he must select one of the branches.
Keshavarz, known for her works such as “Circumstance” and “The Persian Version” has been selected to join the directors' branch.
Beyzai known for his films including “When We Are All Asleep” and “Killing Mad Dogs” left Iran in 2010 after consistently facing censorship and bans on his works on Iran and interrogations by security forces.
Following the 1979 revolution in Iran, Beyzayi’s works "Ballad of Tara" and "Death of Yazdgerd" were denied screening permits by the Iranian authorities amid censorship and crackdown on filmmakers, artists, and media which has continued since.
The UK’s Labour Party intends to proscribe Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist entity, if it wins the general election next month, according to a report by the British newspaper The Telegraph.
The report comes in the wake of the IRGC designation in Canada, which was welcomed by the Iranian-Canadian community who have been pushing for this measure for a few years.
The current UK government, led by the Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak, has considered a similar move but decided against it on a number of occasions.
Based on the Telegraph report, the leading figures in the Labor Party do not share the hesitation and would be willing to back a change in the law that would allow for the IRGC’s proscription.
Yvette Cooper and David Lammy, picked to be the next Home and Foreign secretaries if Labor wins, are said to support the measure.
The Labor Party’s 2024 manifesto includes an explicit reference to Iran’s IRGC, while criticizing the UK’s approach.
“From the Skripal poisonings to assassination plots by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, threats from hostile states or state-sponsored groups are on the rise, but Britain lacks a comprehensive framework to protect us,” the manifesto reads. “Labor will take the approach used for dealing with non-state terrorism and adapt it to deal with state-based domestic security threats.”
It is unclear when and how the Labor would attempt such change –if it gets to form the next UK government after the July 4 election. The proscription will be a lengthy process, since it is a legal process and would require a legal case by the government.
Supporters of the move in the Labor Party may point to the October 7 attack by Iran-backed Hamas and the concerted efforts of non-state armed forces across the Middle East, almost all of which are backed by Iran’s IRGC.
Several student organizations, women's and youth groups are adding their voices to the growing collective effort to boycott the upcoming presidential election in Iran.
Under the banner of "The National Network Woman, Life, Freedom Revolution," the groups issued a collective statement, endorsing organized protests targeting the electoral process.
Their initiative included “meeting with families of political prisoners, conducting nighttime chants with slogans in Iran" and advocating for the staging of demonstrations outside of Iranian embassies abroad.
Their objective, they say, is to sustain the movement that was triggered in September 2022 following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini while in the custody of the so-called morality police. The state's subsequent killing of at least 550 protesters during its crackdown has been labeled a crime against humanity by a UN fact-finding mission.
Simultaneously, Iranian Kurdish families, who have lost loved ones as a result of Tehran's suppression of dissent, have also voiced support for the election boycott, denouncing it as a "circus."
“As justice-seeking mothers from Kurdistan, we will persist in our quest for justice until we secure the right to prosecute and punish those who unjustly executed and shot our children. We unequivocally denounce the Iranian regime and reject any participation in what are deemed as mere staged elections,” the families who have lost loved ones during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests said in a statement published on social media.
The upcoming presidential ballot features five hand-picked insider politicians. Experts have often noted that the office of the president holds limited influence over many institutions and critical decisions, which are predominantly shaped by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Over the weekend, over 500 teachers, union activists, and prominent cultural figures in Iran similarly issued a joint statement publicly declaring their decision to abstain from participating in the upcoming presidential elections.
In their statement, the signatories emphasized, "Engaging in the electoral process, even under the assumption of a victory by a reformist candidate, is futile and does not offer solutions to ongoing issues. Moreover, it risks legitimizing the government and escalating suppression of dissent and protest. Therefore, we announce our refusal to participate in the presidential elections."
Influential figures have also voiced dissent against Iran's upcoming June 28 snap presidential election. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has criticized the election, calling it a facade orchestrated by an oppressive regime.
Several civil and political activists and unions had already united in support of the boycott.
Sepideh Rashno, a writer and civil activist advocating against mandatory hijab, expressed on her Instagram: "There is no future for Iran and its people under the Islamic Republic. The will and resilience of the people has always driven change."
Goljahan Ashrafpour, mother of Akbar Mohammadi, a student activist who died in prison in 2006, conveyed a message from the hospital urging citizens not to participate in the upcoming elections.
She emphasized that the president “lacked authority” and encouraged people to "stay at home on election day" to avoid endorsing what she referred to as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's manipulation of the elections.
Atash Shakrami, the aunt of Nika Shakrami, a 16-year-old killed by Iranian security forces during the 2022 nationwide protests, used her Instagram platform to condemn the government and the electoral process. She asserted, "Every government agent's hands are deeply stained with the blood of our nation's youth."
Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmadreza Djalali, who is on death row in Iran’s Evin prison, has started a hunger strike to protest being left out of a recent Tehran-Stockholm prisoner exchange, his wife said.
Djalali's wife Vida Mehrannia told AFP on Tuesday that her husband believes "the only way anyone can hear his voice in the world is to just start a hunger strike."
Earlier in June, two Swedish nationals imprisoned in Tehran were exchanged with Hamid Noury, a former Iranian prison official sentenced to life in Sweden for his role in the 1988 mass killings in Iranian jails.
Last week, Djalali criticized Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson for excluding him from the prisoner exchange, expressing his despair from Evin prison: "You left me here, helpless. Why not me?"
The US does not expect Iran's June 28 presidential election to result in any "fundamental change" in the Islamic Republic's direction, the Biden administration's acting special envoy for Iran said.
"As the Iranian regime prepares for its presidential elections, the US unfortunately has no expectation of free and fair elections or fundamental change in Iran’s direction," Abram Paley said in a series of posts on his X account on Wednesday.
Paley stressed that the six candidates are hand-picked by the Guardian Council and that Iranian voters "lack access to even the most basic freedoms; necessary features of any democracy."
"In the face of the authoritarian regime’s long history of harassing and intimidating journalists, suppressing election coverage, and denying freedom of peaceful of assembly, we support the Iranian people," he said.
Paley also vowed that the US "will continue to defend human rights in Iran, shine a light on the regime’s repression, and support a free and democratic future."
As the Islamic Republic faces its greatest battle for legitimacy since its founding, a new survey shows at least 65 percent of the country will boycott the Friday's presidential election.
According to the survey conducted by the Netherlands-based Gamaan Institute, only 22% of respondents confirmed they would definitely vote, while 12% remain undecided.
The results of the survey highlight deep-seated dissatisfaction with the current political system, with roughly 68% of respondents citing "opposition to the overall system of the Islamic Republic" as their primary reason for not voting. Other notable reasons included "the limited power of the president" (18%) and the "disqualification of my preferred candidate" (8%).
Former US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus took aim at the Biden administration's strategy on Iran, urging for more robust and assertive US policy to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.
In an exclusive interview with Iran International, Ortagus warned that if stronger action isn't taken, Iran will get a nuclear weapon.
"Under the current trajectory, the Iranian regime will get a nuclear weapon in the next administration unless we have a president with the fortitude to stop it," said Ortagus.
She told Iran International's Arash Alaei that no matter who gets elected president in November, will have to make "some very serious and very hard decisions about the regime and their nuclear weapons proliferation."
That means Iran's estimated stockpile of enriched uranium had reached more than 30 times the limit set out in the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers. Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Ortagus also took the opportunity to criticize some Western perspectives that she feels underestimate the resolve and capacity of the Iranian government to advance its nuclear program.
Responding to a question about the enrichment rates of uranium under different US administrations, she provided figures to illustrate her point:
“What was the enrichment rate in the Trump administration? You know the answer to this, 5%. What's the most recent enrichment rate in the Biden administration? 84%," highlighting a significant escalation that has occurred under the current US policy framework.
Ortagus served as a spokesperson for the United States Department of State from 2019 to 2021 during the Trump administration.
She said under Biden's administration, the Islamic Republic has been emboldened
Ortagus said attacks on US forces, the atrocities of October 7, and Iran's support and funding of its proxies known as the 'Axis of Resistance', is further destabilizing the region and the world.
"We just saw the British merchant Marine ship that was sunk. I mean, it's insane to me that we have the Houthis fully funded and armed and backed by Iran, sinking British merchant ships... It is wild to me that we have a terrorist group shooting ballistic missiles at US Navy ships after 911," she said.
“It was Iranian-made drones that killed 3 American service members in Jordan in January... It’s Iranian-made hardware, military hardware... the Houthis [use] ballistic missiles to attack American ships on a weekly basis,” she stated, pointing out the direct consequences of a less assertive US policy on regional security.
Ortagus advocated for Trump's 'maximum pressure' policy to contain Iran.
She argued that Trump's policies had effectively brought Iran "to its knees" by significantly curtailing its oil exports and crippling its economy. She credited these measures with hindering Iran's ability to fund terrorism and pursue its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.
“We took Iran’s ability to export oil off the market, right? I mean, they pursued some black-market endeavours, but because we simultaneously sanctioned Iranian oil and also unleashed American energy exports, we had a situation where we kept the price of oil down,” Ortagus explained.
Ortagus lamented what she views as a relaxation of the strict measures under President Joe Biden, suggesting that the current administration has failed to enforce sanctions with the same vigor, thereby allowing Iran to mitigate some economic pressures.
“The Biden administration will say, well, the sanctions are still in place, sure, but they’re not being enforced as effectively as they were in the Trump administration,” she noted, adding that this lax enforcement has enabled Iran to continue funding and equipping its proxies throughout the Middle East.
Looking to the future, Ortagus discussed the potential for policy changes in a possible second Trump administration, emphasizing that a return to a stance of maximum economic pressure could be expected.
She argued that such measures would be necessary to prevent Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions: “President Trump has said unequivocally that Iran will not get a nuclear weapon on his watch, and that means every option is on the table.”
Ortagus told Iran International that the Iranian government remains a significant threat not only to its own people but also to regional peace and global stability.
She said Donald Trump would not say "no to a negotiation" with Iran under a second Trump administration but would enter it "from a position of strength," but maintained that "every option is on the table."
