Brief on Iran,(BOI), Newsletter May 4th, 2015

It was reported that Iran’s only women’s magazine, Zanan-e Emrouz, or Today’s Women, had been shut down on Monday, by the regime’s Press Advisory Board after publishing only 15 issues since being permitted to return to print last year. The forced closure stemmed from the magazine’s publication of a series of stories about unmarried cohabitation, which the regime calls “white marriage.”

Although a number of other newspapers and magazines had also published stories about this social phenomenon, Zanan-e Emrouz was singled out as supposedly justifying and encouraging the practice, and thus contributing to what the regime considers to be immorality. The only obvious different between the offending stories and those of other news sources is that they appeared in what was Iran’s only women’s interest magazine.

On Tuesday, IranWire sought reactions to the closure from female Iranian politicians, namely members of parliament who are part of the “women’s faction.” The news site quoted three such MPs as saying that they had either never heard of Zanan-e Emrouz or had heard the name but had never read it. None of the three female politicians had heard the news of the magazine’s closure. Even so, one of them, Laleh Eftekhari was quick to defend the government’s actions, saying “Look, if this magazine has committed an offense, then it must be shut down. They would not shut it down without a reason.”

The anti-human clerical regime of Iran sent another 30 prisoners to the gallows from April 22 to April 26.

Nine prisoners were collectively hanged on April 22 in Vakil Abad prison in Shiraz. On April 23, sixteen other prisoners in Bandar Abbas, Kerman and Jiroft were executed. On April 25 and 26, three prisoners in Rasht prison and two other prisoners were executed in the cities of Zanjan and Abhar. These statistics show sharp increase in executions under Rouhani in past 2 weeks.

As such, the number of executions over two weeks, April 13 to April 26, reaches 115. The real number of those executed is much more than this. According to some reports in recent weeks, a large number of prisoners have been executed secretly in Arak.

April 29, 2015-On the eve of International Workers’ Day on May 1, Iranian authorities have arrested at least five labor leaders. The arrests have taken place in the context of intensifying labor protests, strikes, and arrests of individuals organizing or participating in labor protests.

“The Government views any labor mobilization as a national security threat,” said Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the Campaign. “Workers should be allowed to peacefully defend their common interests, without risking years behind bars.”

“Rouhani needs to turn his attention to the people of Iran. Workers are suffering and their demands need to be heard,” added Ghaemi.

Tehran Security Police arrested two members of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, Ebrahim Maddadi and Davood Razavi, in their homes on April 29, and two other labor activists, Mahmoud Salehi and Osman Ismaili, were arrested in the city of Saqez in the Kurdistan Province on April 28. On April 25, plainclothes security agents in Sanandaj, Kurdistan, arrested the labor activist Reza Amjadi.

                                                  Armin Rosen

Iraq and Syria is no longer exist as coherent, unitary states.

By now, followers of events in the Middle East have grown used to maps that show how ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Free Syrian Army, the Assad regime, the Baghdad government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Sunni tribes, Iranian-backed militia groups, and various other actors have filled the vacuum in the countries still officially known as Iraq and Syria.

Michael Pregent, an analyst and former US Army intelligence officer, created a map that greatly clarifies this mess by showing the “priority” and “secondary” defensive front lines for Iran, the Kurds, and the Assad regime, showing the areas that are most vital to the sides’ war objectives.

The map shows that the strategic fault lines in Iraq and Syria have nothing to do with the country’s internationally recognized borders, or even with the “borders” of ISIS’s “Caliphate.” And it reveals something important about the future of the fight against ISIS.

This past Wednesday could well mark a turning point in the U.S.’s fight against ISIS and other forces of instability and violence in the greater Middle East. The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Trade held a hearing entitled “ISIS: Defining the Enemy,” where Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the Iranian opposition group the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), was the first to testify.  This is a watershed development, especially at a moment when the U.S. government is flying headlong into a nuclear deal with Tehran that can only help legitimize the brutal Iranian theocracy that is fomenting much of the sectarian chaos that is feeding the rise of ISIS.

In her remarks, provided via videoconference from Paris,. Rajavi offered an alternate reality scenario of an Iran that is secular, non-nuclear, and democratic. Such a nation not only would reduce the existential dread of our allies in the region, but would drain the swamp of Iran’s terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah which have sparked the vicious Sunni extremist backlash led by Al Qaeda and ISIS.  This makes groups like NCRI promising allies in the fight against Islamic extremism. We need to encourage and empower progressive and anti-fundamentalist Muslim groups like NCRI and I urge my former colleagues in Congress to heed what Rajavi said.