Iran- Human Rights (Women, Minorities, Ethnics) Three Public Executions in Iran Today
Iran Human Rights
Iran Human Rights, January 4, 2015: Three men were hanged publicly in the town of Torqabeh near Mashhad (Northeastern Iran) today. The state run Iranian news agency Fars reported that three men identified as “Mehdi V”, “Ehsan K” and “Mahmood K” were convicted of raping a young woman in one of the villages near Torqabeh.
The report didn’t mention the age of the men and the exact time of the offence.
Mehdi and Ehsan were sentenced to death by public execution convicted of rape, while Mahmood was sentenced to 100 lashes and public execution for threatening and raping the woman, said the report.
On January 1, one man was hanged in Qazvin, while according to unofficial sources 13 prisoners were hanged in three different prisons on January 1. These include four women in Bam, 7 prisoners in Kerman and two prisoners in Bandar Abbas.
Reports: Iran Hanged Nine on Christmas Day
Breitbart
On Christmas day in Iran, at least nine prisoners were hanged by Iranian regime officials, according to reports. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) reports that seven were hanged in the infamous Adelabad prison on Christmas morning.
The NCRI also reports that on two separate occasions, just days before Christmas, ten other prisoners were hanged in the same Adelabad prison. Additionally, NCRI said the hangings continued on Monday, with two suffering the same fate in Iran’s Orumieh prison.
Adelabad and Orumieh are two of the many jails in Iran where prisoners’ human rights are grossly violated. One former political prisoner of Adelabad described the facility as one where individuals are routinely sodomized, “beaten, tortured, and harassed.”
11 million Iranians living in rural squalor
OIAC
11 million Iranians live without basic facilities such as running water, electricity and sewage pipes, a newspaper in the regime has revealed.
Nariman Mostafaei, director general of empowerment and organization of informal settlements, told Iranian daily Mardomsalary that 11 million Iranians – or one seventh of the population – live outside cities without even the most basic utilities.
Experts have described ‘fringe living’ as the exclusion of part of the population from the political, economic and social life of the nation, which is one of the richest countries in the region with $700 billion income from oil exports during the eight years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency.
The official news agency IRNA quoted Rouhani Deputy Health Minister Ali-Akbar Sayari on December 4 claiming that 78% of Iranians have a poor diet with includes a lack of fruit and vegetables.
U.S. calls for release of Americans in Iran, denies swap deal
Reuters
(Reuters) – The United States called on Tuesday for the release of U.S. citizens held in Iran, but denied a report that Washington had proposed a prisoner exchange for a former U.S. Marine.
A lawyer for Amir Hekmati, an Iranian-American former Marine jailed in Tehran, was quoted in a report on Tuesday on Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency as saying that the United States had sought his release through a prisoner swap.
“Those reports are not accurate,” U.S. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told a news briefing.
“The U.S. government has not proposed a prisoner exchange for Mr Hekmati … We do however call on the Iranian government to release Amir Hekmati immediately, as well as detained U.S. citizens Saeed Abedini and Jason Rezaian, and to assist us in locating Robert Levinson.”
Iran- Terrorism Activities (Middle East)
Iranian soldiers seen in photos ‘on Israel-Lebanon border’
Al Arabiya
Recently-released pictures on social media appear to show Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards on the border between Israel and Lebanon.
Earlier this month, an Iranian blog released similar photos, claiming that they were taken in southern Lebanon in late October.uards on the border between Israel and Lebanon.
The blog was titled “We are arriving… near the Mother of Corruption, the accursed Israel; soon we will pass over their bodies, Allah willing,” according to MEMRI, a U.S.-based site that translates Arabic and Persian media reports, in addition to several other languages.
Shiite Iran says it has sent military advisers to assist Syria and Iraq in battling Sunni-led rebels and extremist groups, but has denied sending any combat forces to either country.
On Sunday, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander was been killed during a battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremist group in Iraq, according to the Guard.
Brig. Gen. Hamid Taqavi was “martyred while performing his advisory mission to confront ISIS terrorists in Samarra,” said a statement posted on the Guard’s website.
Death of a General
The Economist
Wars in Syria and Iraq are sucking Iran into ever more tangled conflicts
MANY chefs have stirred the cauldron of war consuming Syria and Iraq, but perhaps none so vigorously or with so long and capacious a spoon as the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unlike the American-led international coalition formed to combat Islamic State (IS) following the radical Sunni Islamist group’s summer surge towards Baghdad, which has limited its role to air strikes, and unlike Russia or the Arab countries that have armed opposing sides in Syria, Iran has physically inserted itself in the intertwined conflicts. It has dispatched not just fuel and weapons but hundreds of “advisers” from its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as well as thousands of fighters from the Shia militias that Iran has fostered, armed, trained and funded in Lebanon and Iraq.
Iran Is Getting Away With Murder
The Atlantic
Achieving a nuclear deal with Tehran is hugely important. But stopping Iran from slaughtering innocent Syrians is a worthy goal.
In an interview in late 2006, I asked then-Senator Barack Obama to talk about the challenges to rational deterrence theory posed by the behavior of rogue states. “Whatever you want to say about the Soviets,” Obama answered, “they were essentially conservative. The North Korean regime and the Iranians are driven more by ideology and fantasy.”
Earlier this year, I asked Obama the following question: “What is more dangerous: Sunni extremism or Shia extremism?”
Iran’s IRGC ‘Massacring’ Iraqi Sunnis It ‘Saves’ from ISIS
Israel Nation News
In an explosive TV interview aired last week, Iraq’s Grand Mufti Rafi Al-Rifa’i, the highest Sunni authority in the country, accused the IranianRevolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iraqi government, and Iraqi Shiite militias of mass genocidal killings and rape of Sunni men and women from Iraqi towns and villages “liberated” from ISIS (Islamic State).
Mufti Al-Rifa’i posed the unanswerable question, “Why should we fight ISIS? So the Iranian IRGC can take over? The same Iranian IRGC that is running operations in Iraq?”
Mufti Al-Rifa’i is the religious leader of roughly eight million Sunni Muslims who live in the western parts of Iraq. Overall, about 22 million Sunni Muslims live in eastern Syria and Western Iraq. They are the current target of ISIS – and also, it turns out, of the Iranian IRGC.
Exclusive: Iran’s support for Syria tested by oil price drop
Reuters
(Reuters) – Syrian businessmen and trade officials say they are worried the economic lifeline provided by Iran is under strain from plunging oil prices, despite public messages of support from Syria’s strongest regional ally.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has relied on oil-producingIran to help him fight a nearly four-year-old civil war and also prop under a currency under pressure.
“If it had not been for Iranian support we could not have survived the crisis,” a senior Syrian trade official said from Damascus, requesting anonymity.
“It was Iranian support that has been the most important. In return, we are promising them more and more, and opening more and more doors for them to invest in Syria,” he said.
Iran- Nuclear Activities
Iran says no deal with U.S. to ship enriched uranium to Russia
Al Arabiya
Iran denied on Saturday that it had reached an agreement with the United States to ship its surplus enriched uranium to Russia under new concessions aimed at clinching a comprehensive nuclear deal with six world powers.
The Associated Press, citing diplomats, said on Friday Tehran and Washington had tentatively agreed on a formula to ship to Russia much of the material that could potentially lead to manufacture of atomic arms by the Islamic republic.
It said negotiators had drawn up a catalogue for the first time at their December meeting in Geneva outlining areas of potential accord and differences in their 12-year nuclear dispute.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said “no agreement on any nuclear topic” had been reached.
US senator: enough Iran sanctions support to override veto
Yahoo News- AFP
Washington (AFP) – There is sufficient support for expanded sanctions on Iran in the new Republican-controlled US Congress to override veto threats by President Barack Obama, a senator told radio broadcaster NPR Wednesday.
The Obama administration and other global powers are in the midst of prolonged negotiations with Tehran to end a decade-long standoff over its nuclear activities, which the West sees as efforts to develop an atomic bomb.
The White House has sought to dissuade US lawmakers from passing new sanctions against Tehran, warning such a move could scupper talks.
The powers have set a July 1 deadline for themselves to reach a full technical accord.
The White House wants any deal reached with Iran to be binding on its own, but several US lawmakers have insisted any pact with Iran must go through Congress, not only Obama.
“I think we’ll have a super-majority, a veto-proof majority, to impose additional sanctions on Iran and to require the administration to come before Congress for approval of any deal that he has with Iran,” Senator Marco Rubio told National Public Radio in an interview to air Thursday.
Iran and Modern Cyber Warfare
Global Research
Today US intelligence services seem to finally have become aware of the potential damage a cyber-attack can inflict, therefore Washington is placing particular stress on enhancing its “combat capabilities” in virtual space. Therefore, not only the CIA, but the NSA and the Pentagon have started getting substantial resources on an annual basis in order to be able to create the most advanced cyber-weapons conceivable.
In 2013 alone Washington has allocated one billion dollars to the NSA and 685 million dollars for the CIA for them to carry out offensive cyber-operations and develop spyware like Flame and Duqu and malware like Stuxnet, which had previously been used against countries “that are unfriendly to the United States”, specifically against Iran, Syria, North Korea, and China.
Additionally, Washington has been busy with the creation of a 5000 men strong specialized unit that goes under the name of United States Cyber Command, which is headquartered, according to Bloomberg, at Fort Meade military base in Maryland. This unit alone has been provided with a hefty 3.94 billion dollars in 2013, while in 2014 this sum increased to 4.65 billion dollars, forcing countries that are being targeted by the United States’ offensive cyber-operations to increase their own defensive capabilities as well as creating similar units.
