Saudi Arabia says it executed six Iranians for drug trafficking

The move follows a live broadcast on Iran's state news channel featuring inflammatory and insulting rhetoric during a religious ceremony.

The remarks targeted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

A religious singer at a ceremony compared current Iran-Turkey-Azerbaijan tensions to a 16th-century Ottoman-Safavid war. He insulted Presidents Erdoğan and Aliyev and said that Iran would reclaim territories in Azerbaijan, invoking religious symbolism.

The territory of what is now called the Republic of Azerbaijan was separated from Iran in the first half of the 19th century, through the so-called Russo-Persian Wars.

The event took place in the presence of a representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the northwestern city of Ardabil earlier this week.

The figure for years 2023 and 2022 were 811 and 579 respectively, which shows an alarming upward trend.

“The international community must adopt a unified, consistent, transparent and effective response to protect those targeted and hold Iran, and other countries following its example, accountable,” read the report by Boroumand center on Tuesday.

Many death sentences are drug-related and are handed and carried out with relative ease, sparking criticism from human rights organizations that suggest the rise in executions may aim to intimidate the populace amid ongoing unrest.

Prominent voices have called for urgent international action. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, in an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, urged the global body to demand that Iran halt its mass executions as a condition for any negotiations.

The cases of individuals executed on charges of political dissent have drawn particular scrutiny.

In August, Iran executed Reza Rasaei, arrested during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests, for allegedly murdering an intelligence officer. In October, Iranian-German dual national Jamshid Sharmahd was executed following a trial Amnesty International denounced as grossly unfair.

Iran’s increasing reliance on capital punishment has been met with widespread condemnation, with human rights organizations reiterating calls for the abolition of the death penalty.

As 2024 concludes, Iran’s judicial practices remain under close scrutiny from the international community, which continues to advocate for accountability and the protection of fundamental rights.

President Joe Biden announced that January 9 will be a national day of mourning throughout the US. "I call on the American people to assemble on that day in their respective places of worship, there to pay homage to the memory of President James Earl Carter," Biden said.

Carter, a Democrat, assumed office in January 1977 but his one-term presidency was marked by the highs of the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt and conversely, the 444 day hostage crisis which saw more than 50 Americans held captive in the US embassy in Tehran.

It is not only in Iran that the former statesman has become a divisive figure. Even in the US, the Washington Historical Association says that “The Iran Hostage Crisis was one of the most important issues of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and likely one of the reasons for his election loss in 1980,” losing in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The US State Department is today more open about the failings of Carter's administration. While at the beginning of Carter’s presidency, the United States and Iran were allies, today, they say, “The Iran hostage crisis undermined Carter’s conduct of foreign policy”.

Like last year’s hostage crisis under Joe Biden in which five dual-nationals were released by Tehran for $6 billion of Iranian frozen funds, the crisis dominated the headlines and made the administration look weak, in echoes of history repeating itself.

When Secretary of State Cyrus Vance opposed a mission to rescue the hostages in Iran in favor of diplomatic channels, the administration was left wide open for the incoming Reagan presidency.

In a 2014 interview with CNBC, Carter tried to justify the disaster that led to his election defeat, failing to admit that it was on the very day his rival was sworn in that the release of hostages took place. American television networks broadcasting Reagan's inauguration, showed hostages on a split screen boarding a flight to the United States.

Carter said: “I could have been re-elected if I had taken military action against Iran. It would have shown that I was strong and resolute and manly. ... I could have wiped Iran off the map with the weapons that we had. But in the process a lot of innocent people would have been killed, probably including the hostages. And so I stood up against all that advice, and then eventually all my prayers were answered and all the hostages came home safe and free.”

Relations before the 1979 Islamic revolution had been strong between Iran and the US. Carter even called Iran during the monarchy “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world” during a visit to Tehran and maintained a strategic relationship with the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

However, this relationship was contentious for both nations. In November 1977, President Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter hosted the Shah and his wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi, at the White House for a State Visit.

Protests broke out between the pro and anti-Shah factions which ended up with over 100 protesters injured as well as police officers. It further pushed Iranians into the hands of the incoming Islamic Republic and its narrative of anti-US policy, which continues to today.

After his January 1979 exile of the Shah, suffering from terminal cancer was allowed to receive medical care in New York, but he later decided to spend his remaining days in Egypt. He was buried with full honors in a Cairo mosque.

Just 16 days after the Shah left, the incoming Supreme Leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, returned to Iran to a thunderous welcome, paving the way for the Islamic Republic’s birth, with the US embassy first attacked in those initial days after.

In Iran, sentiment against the US grew when Carter allowed the exiled Shah into the US for what Carter believed to be life-saving medical treatment in October 1979, one of the final triggers leading to the hostage crisis.

Carter failed to grasp the magnitude of sentiment against the Shah by Iranians in Iran and abroad in the heydays of the revolution, many thinking it was part of a plan to return him to power. Again, it led to demonstrations around the US embassy.

The legacy of Carter’s Middle East policy will now always be torn between the historic peace deal he secured between Israel and Egypt, while for others, it will be the failings of his policy on Iran.

In 1984, during a national debate with Walter Mondale, Reagan blamed Carter for the fall of the Shah, who he said had been a major ally in the Middle East.

He said: “The shah, whatever he might have done, was building low-cost housing and taking land away from the mullahs and distributing it to the peasants so they could be landowners. ... But we turned it over to a maniacal fanatic who has slaughtered thousands and thousands.”

Many Iranians have already spoken out against Carter. Political researcher Arvin Khoshnood wrote on X: “He bears responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians. By actively supporting Khomeini and enabling the Islamic Revolution, Carter is complicit in every life lost to the regime’s brutality and inhumane policies over the past 45 years.”

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said of Carter: “In recent years I had the pleasure of calling him and thanking him for his historic efforts to bring together two great leaders, [Menachem] Begin and [Anwar] Sadat, and forging a peace between Israel and Egypt that remains an anchor of stability throughout the Middle East and North Africa many decades later. His legacy will be defined by his deep commitment to forging peace between nations.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in a post on X: ”His significant role in achieving the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel will remain etched in the annals of history.”

Videos and photos of Movahed’s unprecedented act of defiance went viral on social media very quickly, becoming known only as “The Enghelab Avenue Girl” after, having climbed a utility box on Enghelab (Revolution) Ave in Tehran on December 27, 2017, removed her white headscarf, tied it on a stick, and waved it in protest.

The young mother of 32 was arrested within minutes.

Movahed was freed from prison a month later after her first arrest, but her bravery inspired several other young women who came to be known as the 'Enghelab Avenue Girls', protesting on the same spot.

Authorities were eventually forced to build a gable on top of the utility box to stop more girls from climbing it to protest.

Nearly a year later, the young mother climbed a turquoise dome in the center of the very busy Enghelab Square in downtown Tehran with a bunch of red, white, and turquoise balloons and a red and black headscarf in her hand to protest again. She was arrested and was this time sentenced to one year in prison for “inciting people to corruption and immorality” by unveiling.

Movahed served eight months at the notorious Qarchak Prison in the south of Tehran. She has not been seen in public since being freed in 2019 but her name and memory are honored by many every year on social media.

And today, her legacy lives large, thousands of women now appearing unveiled in public arenas, forcing authorities to retreat from implementing a harsh new hijab law drawn up by ultra-hardliners.

The movement was given a rebirth in the wake of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police. It sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom protests across the country in September 2022, protests which lasted for months and saw a tide turn against the compulsory Islamic dress.

During and after the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, scores of celebrities including artists and athletes posted unveiled photos on social media or attended public events with no headscarves. Most of the artists who expressed solidarity with the anti-compulsory hijab movement have been banned from acting, suffering other penalties such as bank account freezes and travel bans.

The public pressure has grown so much in the past year that even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appears to have agreed to the shelving of a new and more radical law to enforce hijab, for the fear of inciting unrest if brought into effect.

In a speech in April 2023, Khamenei said that flouting hijab was “religiously and politically haram (forbidden)”, accused foreign intelligence services of encouraging Iranian women to disobey the mandatory head-dress, and urged the authorities to do whatever it took to enforce it.

In his latest speech to a group of women on 17 December, very uncharacteristically, he did not refer whatsoever to the hijab issue and the controversies surrounding it.

Public acts in defiance of the hijab have grown to new heights in recent months despite authorities' threats of severe legal crackdowns, occasional violence against women on the streets, and measures such as impounding vehicles if unveiled women are spotted in them.

There have been a string of now iconic protesters since. In early November, another young woman, Ahu Daryaei, shed her clothes at a university campus in Tehran, reportedly after being harassed by hijab enforcers. She was arrested and sent to a mental health facility but was freed later without charges being brought against her after the story went worldwide.

A few weeks later, Parastoo Ahmadi, a songstress, performed in a historic caravansary in a black evening dress that showed her bare shoulders and streamed her concert live on YouTube. Ahmadi and her band were arrested too but were later released on heavy bail.

Before Movahed’s public act, women’s defiance of hijab had only been done in safe spaces. A campaign was launched by women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad in 2014 on Facebook, My Stealthy Freedom.

Women contributed photos of themselves taken in the car on quiet roads with their hair flowing on their shoulders or in other places where they could “stealthily” remove their headscarves.

But nothing could have predicted the country's biggest rebellion against the mandatory hair covering which has swept the nation, posing the biggest challenge to the government since the Islamic Republic was founded as women from all over Iran continue to rise up.

The US State Department called for the immediate and unconditional release of Cecilia Sala, 29, and others detained without just cause.

"Unfortunately, the Iranian regime continues to unjustly detain citizens of many countries, often to use them as political leverage," a State Department spokesperson told La Repubblica.

Sala, a newspaper journalist and podcaster, was arrested on December 19 despite working there with government-issued press credentials.

"There is no justification, and they should be released immediately," the spokesperson said, adding that journalists perform critical work to inform the public and must be protected.

Sala’s detention in Tehran may be linked to the arrest of a Swiss-Iranian businessman at Malpensa Airport three days earlier on a US warrant for allegedly violating sanctions on electronic exports, La Repubblica further added citing his lawyer.

Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, 38, faces terror-related charges for a deadly drone strike on a US military base in Jordan linked to Iran which killed three US soldiers.

He is currently held at Milan’s Opera Prison and faces potential extradition to the US.

On Sunday, a sit-in in Turin urged the Italian government to "do the impossible" to secure Sala's release and return her to Italy. Around fifty people, including city councilors and representatives from political and activist organizations, participated in the rally.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Saturday that Sala is in good health and is being held alone in a cell in Evin Prison. Tajani called for media discretion over the case and confirmed that Sala has spoken to her parents twice by phone. Italian Ambassador to Tehran Paola Amadei has also visited her in prison.

"We know that the Italian government has asked us not to demonstrate, but we disobey, we demonstrate," said Italian politician Igor Boni, a member of the organization Europa Radicale, during the Turin rally on Sunday.

"For a week, a journalist from a democratic country has been arrested without charge in a dictatorial country like Iran. The last thing to do is remain silent."

The Italian government has pledged to work discreetly to secure Sala's release as international pressure grows on Iran over what some rights groups describe as a practice of detaining foreign nationals as political bargaining chips.