Brief On Iran, BOI, Newsletter, March 30th, 2015

 

The Iranian authorities must prove that their participation at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva is more than a mere PR exercise , by halting any plans to execute an alleged juvenile offender and ordering a judicial review of his case, said Amnesty International.

The execution of Saman Naseem, a member of Iran’s Kurdish minority, following a grossly unfair trial that relied on ‘confessions’ extracted under torture, was scheduled to take place one month before the UN Human Rights Council session on 19 March. The execution was not carried out then and the authorities have refused to officially disclose his fate and whereabouts since.

We fear the Iranian authorities may have postponed Saman Naseem’s execution merely to avoid criticism and condemnation at the UN Human Rights Council session, leaving him at even graver risk of execution once the review ends.

Earlier this month, Shahindokht Molaverdi, Iran’s Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, led an official delegation to the United Nations in New York to attend the 59th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. In her March 11 speech to the commission, Molaverdi said that “the Islamic Republic of Iran has always had the empowerment of women and improving their status…on its agenda.”

Molaverdi described the significant progress Iranian women have made in education and science, citing unilateral economic sanctions and violence against women as factors that have impeded the full realization of women’s rights. There was little in her speech to suggest that domestic factors — including Iran’s laws and policies — play a significant role in depriving Iranian women of real gender equality and empowerment.

For the fourth year in a row, the ailing prominent human rights defender Mohammad Seifzadeh was not granted furlough for the Iranian New Year (March 20-April 1). Furlough, typically granted to prisoners in Iran for a variety of familial, holiday, and medical reasons, is routinely denied to political prisoners as a form of additional punishment.

Seifzadeh’s wife, Fatemeh Golzar, said in an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “Since his arrest in April 2011, he has never requested furlough, and he asked us [the family] not to request furlough for him. If everything goes according to law, a prisoner must be granted furlough, but during the years he has been in prison, he has not been granted any furlough.”

Golzar told the Campaign that Seifzadeh suffers from kidney disease. “In February, he was transferred to a hospital for kidney treatment for ten days. He suffers from kidney stones and he was in a lot of pain, but after examinations and tests, the doctors said there is no need for surgery,” she said. Medical care is routinely denied to political prisoners in Iran.

March 27, 2015-The United Nations Human Rights Council voted today to renew the mandate of Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, signaling the international community’s continued concern over the state of human rights in Iran. The resolution to renew the mandate received 20 votes in favor, 11 against, and 16 abstentions.

“The vote’s message is loud and clear: four years after the establishment of the mandate, Dr. Shaheed’s work is not done,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “The most basic rights and freedoms continue to be routinely violated in Iran.”

  Pro-Hassan Rouhani Iranian editor defects while covering nuclear talks in Lausanne

The United States is taking part in joint military operations with Iran, admitting it is providing aerial surveillance over the current battle for Tikrit.

The war on ISIS is getting weird in Iraq

The US has started providing “air strikes, airborne intelligence, and Advise & Assist support to Iraqi security forces headquarters” as Baghdad struggles to drive ISIS militants out of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.

The Iraqi assault has heretofore been spearheaded by Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and most of the Iraqi forces are members of Shiite militias beholden to Tehran.

The Week

The British magazine The Week features Suleimani in bed with Uncle Sam, which is quite striking given that Suleimani directed “a network of militant groups that killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq,” as detailed by Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker.

The notion of the US working on the same side Suleimani is confounding to those who consider him a formidable adversary.

CAIRO – The Arab states said on Sunday that they had agreed to form a combined military force to counter both Iranian influence and Islamist extremism, a gesture many analysts attributed in large part to their drive for more independence from Washington.

The agreement came as American and other Western diplomats in Lausanne, Switzerland, were racing to beat a self-imposed deadline of Tuesday to reach a deal with Iran that would restrict its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of economic sanctions. In response, Saudi Arabia and other American allies in the region have made clear that they are seeking to bolster independent regional security measures because they see the proposed accord as a betrayal of Washington’s commitment to their security.

Regardless of Iran’s nuclear program, they complain, the deal would do nothing to stop Iran from seeking to extend its influence around the region by backing favored factions, as it has done in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen.

 LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) – The United States is considering letting Tehran run hundreds of centrifuges at a once-secret, fortified underground bunker in exchange for limits on centrifuge work and research and development at other sites, officials have told The Associated Press.

The trade-off would allow Iran to run several hundred of the devices at its Fordo facility, although the Iranians would not be allowed to do work that could lead to an atomic bomb and the site would be subject to international inspections, according to Western officials familiar with details of negotiations now underway. In return, Iran would be required to scale back the number of centrifuges it runs at its Natanz facility and accept other restrictions on nuclear-related work.

Instead of uranium, which can be enriched to be the fissile core of a nuclear weapon, any centrifuges permitted at Fordo would be fed elements such as zinc, xenon or germanium for separating out isotopes used in medicine, industry or science, the officials said. The number of centrifuges would not be enough to produce the amount of uranium needed to produce a weapon within a year – the minimum time-frame that Washington and its negotiating partners demand.

  Iran nuclear talks set to miss deadline
The France Times

Diplomatic talks to secure a landmark nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers looked set to run past their official deadline as negotiators raced to try and salvage the terms of an accord from a tense day of discussions.

US, Russian and European officials said late on Tuesday evening that with just hours to go to a midnightdeadline there was still no final deal agreed but, that if necessary, they would work into Wednesday to secure one.

Against the backdrop of a Saudi-Iranian proxy war engulfing Yemen, military gains by Sunni jihadis in Syria and a deepening security crisis in North Africa, the prospect of at least a partial rapprochement between world powers and Tehran, had provided a rare glimmer of diplomatic hope for the Middle East. It could even pave the way for a more permanent recasting of the region’s geopolitical dynamics.

Official leaks suggest the U.S. is making ever more concessions.Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress this week that no one should pre-judge a nuclear deal with Iran because only the negotiators know what’s in it. But the truth is that the framework of an accord has been emerging thanks to Administration leaks to friendly journalists. The leaks suggest the U.S. has already given away so much that any deal on current terms will put Iran on the cusp of nuclear-power status.

The latest startling detail is Monday’s leak that the U.S. has conceded to Iran’s demand that an agreement would last as little as a decade, perhaps with an additional five-year phase-out. After that Iran would be allowed to build its uranium enrichment capabilities to whatever size it wants. In theory it would be forbidden from building nuclear weapons, but by then all sanctions would have long ago been lifted and Iran would have the capability to enrich on an industrial scale.