The regime has killed at least 120,000 dissidents during its 42-year rule.

Forty-two years ago, Iranians, fed up with the oppression of the 50-year-old dictatorship of the Pahlavi dynasty, joined hands in hopes of gaining freedom in a revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979. The revolution brought a new dictatorship to power. A theocracy that still rules today with an iron hand. But what has the clerical regime achieved after 42 years?   

Political and civil liberties

Iranians wanted freedom more than anything else in the 1979 revolution. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Rohullah Khomeini took advantage of the people’s desire for freedom and promised freedom to all segments of the society, especially the working class. He was able to deceive Iranians and achieve his own goals, which were the curbing of civil and political freedoms and the establishment of a religious dictatorship that is far more violent than the Shah’s. 

Forty-two year later, Iranians have been robbed of most basic individual freedoms, let alone political ones such as freedom of speech and the press.

Iranians are brutally tortured and detained for expressing their opinions or speaking out against the regime. Hundreds of political prisoners are languishing in Iran’s prisons where torture is a common practice. Any opposition to the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, even from those close to Khomeini and Khamenei who played a role in establishing the regime, are met by imprisonment, torture, and death in various forms. The regime has killed at least 120,000 dissidents during its 42-year rule.

One example is the killing of at least 30,000 political prisoners, mostly supporters of the MEK opposition group, during the summer of 1988.  They were executed according to Khomeini’s fatwa (religious decree) only because they refused to deviate from their principles and beliefs.

Censorship has been imposed on all publications, social media and the Internet. Most social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Telegram are banned in Iran. Iran ranks 173rd out of 180 countries in press freedom. If a publication writes anything against Khamenei’s opinion, it is banned, and its owners and writers arrested and imprisoned on various security charges. In short, the freedoms that Iranians demanded 42 years ago have all but disappeared, making conditions much worse than before the revolution, under the Shah.  

Human rights

Deprivation of liberties does not only include civil and political freedoms. The Iranian regime systematically violates the rights of all Iranians including ethnic and religious minorities.  Bahais are banned from practicing their religion, going to school and university and from having businesses, while Sunnis Muslims are not allowed to have their own mosques. Christians are also harassed and Christian converts are prosecuted and jailed.

For this reason, many non-Muslims, including Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Baha’is have left their homeland to settle in other countries.

Iran’s ethnic minorities including Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and the Baluch people are systematically persecuted and executed for demanding their basic rights.

But Iranian women have suffered the most at the hands of Iran’s misogynist state. The laws imposed on women in the name of Islam have deprived them of almost all the achievements they made before the revolution. They now have almost no role in the country’s political affairs. The compulsory hijab, the right of men to divorce unilaterally, not having equal opportunities at work, not being allowed to travel without the consent of a spouse or father, and not even being allowed to go to a stadium to watch soccer matches are just some of the many restrictions they face.

Economic and public welfare

In his early speeches, Khomeini promised social welfare and said the Pahlavi Dynasty stole the people’s money, lived in palaces, and deprived the people of the country’s wealth. Khomeini promised that water and electricity would be free and that he would bring social welfare for farmers, workers and the underprivileged.

Soon after taking power, he broke his promises. He mocked the people who wanted economic welfare and said in a speech that the revolution did not happen so that people “could eat watermelons” and that it was to “bring Islam to power.”

“It is enough for people to eat one meal a day. The people fast and eat one meal a day, and it does not matter if they do not even eat meat once a month, because meat is not a good thing at all,” he said in a speech.

Over the past 42 years, Iran’s currency has lost a lot of its value. Before the revolution, one USD was equal to 7 tomans. However, a couple of months ago, the toman reached an all-time low of 30,000 tomans to the dollar. The daily fluctuations of the national currency have now become a joke for Iranians.  Due to Iran’s crumbling economy, the fluctuations have a direct effect on the price of everyday commodities. Food price inflation has reached more than 45% and impoverished Iranians have even resorted to buying bread in installments.

Most Iranians, especially the working class, farmers, employees, and the ex-middle class live below the 10 million toman poverty line. Many Iranians have not tasted meat or fruit for several months due to the high price of red meat and poultry. There were reports from the impoverished province of Sistan and Baluchestan in southeastern Iran that some villagers had been forced to eat cat and crow meat. According to a member of parliament who represents Sistan and Baluchestan, 75% of the province population suffer from malnutrition.

The Nomads Affairs Organization, a government body affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture said on February 7 that red meat consumption had decreased by 40% in Iran.

In the past 42 years, many large and small factories have gone bankrupt due to government mismanagement, lack of support for domestic products and the import of similar goods at the government foreign exchange rate. The government’s foreign exchange rate is much lower than the open market rate and provides huge profits for importers, who are mostly regime elites.

Despite daily protests and strikes by workers, nothing has changed, and the condition of workers and the working class has deteriorated.

According to official statistics, 70% of minimum wage workers are not covered by unemployment and health insurance or pensions. More than 51% of Tehran residents are living in rented homes and more than 60 million Iranians are eligible for government subsidies for daily subsistence. Phenomenons that were not seen in Iran before the revolution, such as the sale of kidneys and other body organs, are now increasingly seen across the country. Many people sell their furniture or family jewelry to cover their daily needs. Poverty and misery have increased the number of drug addicts to 4.4 million. The number of children forced to drop out of school and work to help support their families due to poverty is estimated at 5 million.

In the summer of 2020, Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar, a member of the Land Management Association of Iran, said 38 million Iranians lived in slums adding that “7.6 million people lived around cemeteries.”

“In 2017, about 40% of the urban population in Iran lived in shanty towns and poor housing. After three years, in 2020, due to inflation, the high price of housing, and increase in rent… this figure has increased to 45%,” he added.

These conditions have caused a sharp increase in suicide rates, especially among women and children. Reports of children committing suicide due to poverty and being deprived of education have turned into an almost everyday event in Iran.

State terrorism and nuclear weapons capability

Since Iran’s religious regime quickly lost popular support, it started using prison, torture and executions to wipe out its internal opposition, while using terrorism and assassinations to eradicate its external opposition. The regime has successfully eliminated many of its opponents inside and outside the country.

The regime has also spent billions of dollars to secretly acquire nuclear weapons to counter international threats. This was done at the expense of the people of Iran, who were getting more impoverished every year.

Iran’s secret nuclear program was exposed in June 1991 by the NCRI, a Paris based opposition group.  

Iran’s brain drain

Due to the current political, social, and economic situation, thousands of Iranians emigrate every year in hopes of a better life. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), between 150,000 and 180,000 educated Iranians leave Iran each year. Iran ranks number one out of 91 undeveloped countries in the world in terms of brain drain. The annual brain drain of Iranians is equivalent to the outflow of 150 billion dollars of capital. According to a 2018 estimate by Majid Hallajzadeh, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Iranian Affairs Abroad, about 7 million Iranians live abroad.

Institutionalized and systematic government corruption

It is not odd to see reports of embezzlement and corruption by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and regime officials in state-run media, Iranian press outside of Iran or on social media. These reports show only the tip of the iceberg. These days, regime official embezzle billions of dollars and unlike the rest of the population, live lives of luxury. Systematic corruption starts from the very top of the regime. Supreme Leader Khamenei owns a personal off the books hedge fund worth billions of dollars.

While most Iranians struggle to put food on the table, the government-affiliated class live in billion-dollar palaces and villas and drive luxury cars inside and outside Iran.

Although Khamenei has so far been able to continue his grip on power through the IRGC and security force by resorting to extreme violence against angry Iranians who are fed up with the regime, many analysts believe that the regime will not be able to hold on to power for long.

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator investigating the social issues and economy of the middle east countries in general and Iran in particular.

The main goal of the NIN is to cutoff Iranians from the world.

Tehran (IranNewsWire) – A few weeks after the National Information Network (intranet) plan was confirmed by Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, parts of it were published by the state-run Mehr News Agency.

The National Information Network’s “master engineering design” was approved on September 15 by Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace (ISCC) after it was confirmed by the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

What is the National Information Network?

The Iranian regime has spent years pursuing a plan to build a domestic intranet separate from the global internet for security and censorship purposes called the “National Network.”

Proposed in 2005, the National Information Network (NIN) is an ongoing project to develop an infrastructure intranet network. The “master engineering design” was signed by Hassan Rouhani in September.

According to Mehr, the purpose of the “national” network is to “reduce dependency and prevent foreign access to Iran’s cyberspace”.

The news agency also said the NIN would create an environment that would be “in accordance with Iran’s Islamic culture”. The plan includes software services, as well as infrastructure objectives.

The services will include a “national” intranet search engine, messenger, social media platforms, internal email system, user registration and a domestic operating system. An operating system for smartphones with the goal of obtaining at least 20% of the smartphone market has been included in the “master engineering design” according to the report.

It will also include system “enhancements” in Iran’s security, law enforcement and judicial institutions to “identify” and deal with crimes and violations in cyberspace, with an annual goal of 25% crime reduction.

NIN budget

Only in one instance, Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, previously announced that over 100,000 billion tomans were spent on the NIN infrastructure. This is 26 times the Ministry of Information and Communication’s budget and 66 times more than the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism budget in one year.

In April 2019, the Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly estimated that about 190 trillion rials (approximately $4.5 billion) had been spent on creating the intranet last year.

This is while the state-run ILNA News Agency reported today that over 90% of villages in Iran don’t have any access to the internet.

Official figures published in October showed that half of Iran’s population are living in absolute poverty.

Iran’s cyber freedom

Human rights organizations have expressed concern over the National Information Network plan, saying that Iranians will be denied freedom of information.

They say the main goal of the NIN is to cutoff Iranians from the world.

Last year, during November 2019 nationwide protests, the Iranian regime implemented a 3-day internet blackout to suppress protesters and hide the scope of the crackdown.

On October 8, the regime created internet disruptions in Tehran when Iranians who had gathered to pay their respects to legendary singer and musician Mohammad-Reza Shajarian chanted “death to the dictator” echoing the iconic singer’s chant during 2009 protests.

On October 15, two Telegram administrators were arrested in Ardabil, northwestern Iran, for “insulting” officials.

According to a new report by Freedom House, the application of national sovereignty to cyberspace is a tactic used by autocratic governments. It has given them “free rein to crack down on human rights while ignoring objections from local civil society and the international community.”

The report said that Iran’s government cut off connections to hide the police’s violent response to mass protests in late 2019 adding that this was “an ultimate expression of contempt for freedoms of association and assembly, as well as for the right to access information.”

Image credits IranFocus.

The former media officer and spokesman for the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), Yaqoub Hor Al-Tostari, has announced that he has renewed his hunger strike, the second such protest in the ‘Battle of the Empty Bowl’ as the hunger strikes have been named, to protest against the extension of his unjust detention in Denmark.

Tostari was arrested on February 3 in Denmark where he now lives in exile with his family. His arrest coincided with the arrests of Habib Jabor, the movement’s former leader, and his brother Nasser Jabor, also in Denmark, while in Holland Dutch security forces arrested the journalist Isa Sawari (Mehdi Fakher), a member of the ASMLA’s media office and presenter of a TV program on the Ahwazna channel.

Nasser Jabor’s wife has reported that her husband is suffering from severe spinal problems and needs immediate medical care, noting that due to physiological pressure and long hours of interrogation his pain has worsened and he needs to be admitted to hospital for treatment.

Nasser Jabor has been held in solitary confinement since February 3, treatment usually reserved for convicted and dangerous terrorists and murderers, or inflicted as a temporary measure in response to bad behavior. Many experts consider prolonged solitary confinement a cruel and unusual punishment.

Human rights bodies and legal sources revealed that Tostari’s hunger strike is part of an escalating protest at the Danish authorities continuing unjustified detention of the activist who has committed no crime, with the accusers providing no evidence to substantiate the allegations levelled against him by Iran’s regime which continues to target dissidents in Europe and worldwide.

The sources confirmed that the accusations directed against the members of the ASMLA are scurrilous, fabricated slanders on the Iranian regime’s behalf which are intended to smear and delegitimize a movement engaged in peaceful campaigning for freedom, justice, dignity and democracy for Iran’s brutally oppressed Ahwazi Arab population, long denied by Iran’s regime.

The sources further confirmed that, despite holding Tostari and the other activists for over six months, the Danish authorities have been unable to provide any evidence to their continued detention. Specifically, according to these sources the judge had question the police and the prosecutor’s inability to substantiate the initial charges alleging that the three detainees in Denmark had been engaging in acts of industrial, and other espionage, on behalf of Saudi Arabia after months of investigation and lack of transparency in the process, continuing behind close doors. Rather than present any evidence to these claims, however, the police and the prosecutor demanded more time for investigation and came back with unrelated charges accusing the detainees of a terrorism-related conspiracy, with political links to Saudi Arabia.

Throughout this experience, the detainees had been unable to engage with independent counsel, nor share their experiences with the media. Furthermore, the media coverage of these developments had been limited to the talking points provided by the authorities, and therefore, largely reflected, the government perspective.

Such media coverage has the effect of perpetuating biases and false perceptions in the public view of the situation, making it difficult for the average citizen to understand the scale of injustice being inflicted upon the Ahwazi asylees from Iran’s systematic oppression, one of whom is a Danish citizen.

Yaqoub Hor Tostari’s family has called for support for his struggle for justice and freedom, emphasizing that he has committed no crime and is being imprisoned as a result of unfounded allegations in an effort by Iran’s regime to silence dissidents who expose its well-documented crimes against humanity and speak out in defense of the long-withheld rights of the Ahwazi people.

To that effect, Iran is engaging in a form of lawfare which coopts, manipulates, and weaponizes European systems of justice against opposition and critics. It is a form of gaslighting and deception, that runs counter to Danish and Dutch commitment to human rights. For from upholding judicial and national independence and preserving the integrity of the legal processes, Iran’s campaign runs counter to European or Danish and Dutch own national security interests. This interference with the legal system is the highest form of disrespect for the sovereignty of these countries.

Al Tostari’s wife, who wished to withhold her name for fear of retribution against her family in Iran by the regime, said on Friday that Yaqoub will not break his hunger strike until his case and those of his fellow activists are heard and they receive a free trial, and that he is willing to starve to death in order attain justice. After saying this, she broke down in tears, pleading for media and human rights organizations to intervene and raise awareness of her husband’s case, to ensure a fair trial and to call for his release.

Until now, these cases have largely been ignored by the major human rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International’s chapter in Denmark, which perhaps, are concerned about the image of challenging Western governments over the plight of the victims of Iranian oppression.

Tostari’s wife added that Ahwazis had fled the regime’s murderous oppression to seek refuge in European countries, hoping that they would finally be able to enjoy long-denied democracy, freedom and human rights in safety and to speak out about the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses only to find themselves caught between the economic and political convergence of Iran and Western countries Tostari’s family has demanded that the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, along with the Special Rapporteur on refugees’ rights, and the Danish government headed by the country’s Prime Minister, urgently and immediately intervene in the case to secure Yaqoub Hor Tostari’s release, especially since he has already been imprisoned for far longer than the legal period of detention for which he can be held without charge without any of the Iranian regime’s scurrilous allegations against him being substantiated in any way.

Until now, UN’s Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard has not addressed the issue in public in any way. Callamard had expressed outrage after US liquidation of Iran’s head of the IRGC Al Quds force, the designated terrorist Qassem Soleimani.

Tostari has repeatedly refuted these allegations and called for an investigation into how the regime is putting pressure on officials to extend his detention in such a terrible unjust manner. The family stressed the need to galvanize effective solidarity with the cause of Tostari and his colleagues and fellow activists, particularly from institutions concerned with human rights, chiefly: Amnesty International, the Council of Europe (Le Conseil de l’Europe), Foundation for Human Rights Defenders (ProtectDefenders), the Front Line Foundation for the Protection of Defenders Of Human rights (frontlinedefenders), and the Danish Refugee Council (DRC).

In a related matter, the Ahwazi Organization for the Defence of Human Rights confirms that the measures taken by the Danish authorities, whether in the manner of arrest or detention, violate the terms stipulated in international conventions, as follows: First: the principle of the presumption of innocence, which is the most important principle in dealing with prisoners awaiting trial. None of the Ahwazi activists being held were imprisoned to penalize them or charged or tried before detention, and prison authorities must take this into account, in compliance with Article (11) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: Every person accused of a crime is considered innocent until proven guilty by law in a public trial in which he has the necessary guarantees for his defence.

Second: The judicial process against Yaqoub Hor Tostari has gradually extended his detention without justification or evidence in violation of Article (9) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that any individual arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly to a judge or official legally authorized to take direct responsibility for judicial functions and shall have right to be tried within a reasonable time or released.

The detention of persons awaiting trial may not be the general rule. However, their release may be suspended on guarantees to ensure that they will attend the trial at any other stage of the judicial process and to ensure that the sentence is organized when necessary.

A couple of weeks ago, starting on July 21, 2020, Ahwazi activists in Germany held a sit-in protest and hunger strike outside the Danish Embassy in Berlin which lasted for four days in solidarity with the four detained ASMLA members. During the peaceful demonstration, the participants delivered messages to the Danish and Dutch embassies protesting against the detention of the activists and of prominent Ahwazna TV media anchor Eissa Mahdi al-Fakher The Ahwazi activists, who have named their series of hunger strikes the ‘Battle of the Empty Stomach’, also called on Denmark and the Netherlands not to be cowed or misled by Iranian regime pressures or the regime’s very typical use of empty threats and blackmail over economic deals.

In addition, on Monday July 27, members of Belgium’s exiled Ahwazi community staged a protest in front of the EU Parliament calling for the immediate release of the detained Ahwazi members of ASMLA.

Protesters in the Netherlands also staged a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with the imprisoned activists on Friday August 7, calling on the Dutch government to release the journalist Isa Sawari (known as Mehdi Fakher). So far, however, the protests met with limited media coverage nor generated responses from the relevant government officials.

However, far from being seen as an attempt to interfere with the independence of the judicial process, such efforts should be viewed as an attempt to draw attentions to the violation of the due process rights of the detainees and to restore the process, for which the detainees and the families have the highest level of respect.

The backstory to these unfounded allegations is political, rather than legal. All four detainees were arrested the day following the conclusion of a lucrative pharmaceutical deal between Denmark and the Iranian government. Both Denmark and the Netherlands have had a series of pharmaceutical deals and investments inside the country.

The Ahwazis have been a long source of irritation for the Iranian, since over the years they have gotten increasingly vocal and successful at bringing attention to Tehran’s abuses, including hosting a successful conference for the EU parliamentarians in Brussels shortly prior to the arrests. In the past, the regime has targeted the detainees through assassination attempts and spying operations.

Relevant accessories to attempt murder and espionage have been convicted in Scandinavian courts. Despite these instances of Iran’s obvious intervention in European affairs, real accountability has avoided Tehran, allowing it instead, to continue business dealings with the countries in question, but using the Ahwazi critics as leverage.

The legal process in Denmark and the Netherlands treats these past assassination and intimidation attempts as separate cases, unrelated to the current plight of the detainees. A fair process would include looking at the totality of circumstances and examining all the relevant facts, not just the convenient optics delivered by the police and the prosecutor on the basis of evidence that the detainees have not had the opportunity to examine properly, at least in part due to the ongoing pandemic.

At least part of the apparent reason for this unreasonably prolonged process is to shut down dissent by ASMLA and its members, affiliates, and associates, to intimidate other opposition, and to keep these specific Ahwazi activists from speaking out. The longer term goal, past keeping them silences for as long as possible, is to discredit the detainees and their efforts through an effective and wide ranging character assassination, disinformation about ASMLA and it activities, and the use of information warfare – which may include tampering with evidence – to corrupt the legal process and to taint the image and reputation of the detainees.

The more time they remain isolated and unable to participate effectively in their own defense and in the exposure of the political issues hijacking and driving this incomprehensible and corrupt legal farce the more like that is to happen.

Irina Tsukerman is a New-York based Human Rights Lawyer, National Security Analyst. She can be followed under @irinatsukerman.

Rahim Hamid is an Ahwazi author, freelance journalist and human rights advocate. He tweets under @Samireza42.

The current political situation shows that the regime in Iran is tangled in a political and economic dead-end…

July 15, 2020, marks the fifth anniversary of the Iranian regime’s nuclear deal with 5+1 countries, a deal woven through with appeasement policy, leading to nothing but instability in the region and the spread of terrorism.

During the first three years, from 2015 to 2018, the Iranian regime’s proxy groups continued to be developed unchecked, in the regime’s hands turning into an apparatus for the killing of Iraqis, Yemenis and the people of Lebanon.

The deal also enabled the regime to support Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria, giving it an open hand in chemically bombing its own people.  The Assad regime’s war against the Syrian people with the help of Qasim Soleimani, the late chief of the Qods force, led to five million Syrian refugees.

No wonder Mohammad Javad Zarif,  the Iranian regime’s foreign minister, called this deal his greatest diplomatic achievement. Speaking in Majlis (parliament) he said: “I met each week with Qasim Soleimani and we set our schedules together”.

Also, Hassan Rouhani called the deal the key to solving Iran’s economic problems. But after five years, the JCPOA has borne no fruit, but rather catastrophe for the regime.

The outraged people of Iran shook the foundations of the clerical rule with three great uprisings in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

After each uprising the regime claimed to have everything under control, yet again the brave youth of Iran, accompanied by all strata of the society, rose in another uprising; even more widespread, to show their abhorrence of this regime.

Eventually, on Tuesday, May 8, 2018 the US left the JCPOA and President Donald Trump ordered the revival of the sanctions against the Iranian regime.

Irrevocable developments have taken place during 2018 to 2020, in the region and regarding Iran’s internal affairs. Qasem Soleimani, the number one terrorist and the chief of the IRGC’s (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps) Quds Force was killed; in Soleimani, the Iranian regime lost one of its most important commanders who coordinated its regional terrorism and his death has resulted in debilitating the regime’s proxies in the region.

Also during the last two years, Tehran has faced serious economic, social and political crises; its ruling elite witnessing serious internal fractures.

As far as its economy is concerned, according to a report published by ‘Trading Economist’ on July 2, 2020, Iran’s annual inflation rate reached 22.5% in June of 2020; food and beverages had seen a 14.9% rise, housing, and services 21.7%, transportation 48.6%, medical and hygienic services 24%, clothing and shoes 28% and restaurants and hotels a 17.9% rise in prices.

In a Bushehr’s City Council meeting on Tuesday, July 14, Majid Khorshidi security and social deputy of Bushehr’s (southeast Iran) governor, said: “Sanctions have crippled our economy”. (Avaye-Bushehr- July 15, 2020)

He continued, “Impacted by escalating sanctions, and with the coronavirus increasing the impact, the country’s economy is in turmoil”. He spoke of “a halt in all” the regime’s “revenues”.

Recently, the minister of Health and Medical Education, Saeed Namaki, stated, “Having in mind the conditions of our citizen’s livelihood, we must think of all the poor, rioting”. (Deutsche Welle- July 9, 2020).

The regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is well aware of the army of hungry people and knows that the slightest mishap could ignite a great uprising. To control this situation, Khamenei has seized control over political, economic and cultural affairs, unilaterally controlling the society.

He has engineered a homogeneous governing force, putting Ibrahim Raisi and Mohammad Baqer Qalibah over two of the country’s powers, the judicial and the executive, and trying to seize the third one too, the legislative, by an effort to oust Rouhani and replace him with one of his own ‘royal pawns’, to help save himself from the current infighting.

Khamenei and his faction are turning Rouhani into a scapegoat, blaming all the regime’s failed policies on him to relieve Khamenei of the blame.

Regime MPs (appointed by Khamenei in a sham election) signed for Rouhani’s impeachment. But Khamenei, not having the power to exclude Rouhani from their infighting, is holding back the reins. This is the dead-end that Khamenei is facing in trying to homogenize his ruling force.

Meanwhile, in the early hours of Thursday, July 16, a huge crowd, led by youths, took to the streets in Behbahan (located in Khuzistan Province, southwestern Iran). They gathered in front of the Meli Bank which was torched in November 2019 uprising and chanted: “Don’t be afraid, we are all together”, “canon, tanks and fire crackers, the mullahs must get lost” and “neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I give my life for Iran.”

In a short time, in fear of a rise in other cities, the regime disrupted and cut the internet in Khuzistan Province.

SSF units (Social Security Forces) were deployed to the scene and tried to disperse the crowd by firing tear gas canisters and shooting in the air, but the youths confronted them in the streets and alleys by throwing stones at them.

The chief of Behbahan’s SSF, Colonel Mohammad Azizi, announced the day after that the protesters “not only didn’t disperse” when police entered the scene, “but also started chanting slogans against the Nezam (system)”.

Simultaneously, Iranians abroad, along with advocates of democracy in Iran, held a global webinar gathering with live communication from 30,000 locations in more than a 100 countries of the world in solidarity with the Iranian people.

A thousand political personalities from many countries participated in this global gathering, several making speeches pledging their support.

This comprehensive portrait of the current political situation shows that the regime in Iran is tangled in a political and economic dead-end, with no light for it at the end of the tunnel.

Hassan Mahmoudi is a Sweden-based social analyst, researcher, independent observer and commentator of Middle Eastern and Iranian Politics. He tweets under @hassan_mahmou1. 

Abul Ala Maududi is to “Political Islam” what Karl Marx was to Communism

Abul Ala Maududi (1903-1979) was an Islamic theologian, a prolific author, and the founder of the political Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).

Maududi’s theories helped form the tenets of Qutbism, an ideology that is believed to have influenced numerous violent extremist offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood including Takfir and Hijrah, al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and Alshabab.

Maududi insisted that sharia (Hakimya) would eradicate what he referred to as modern jahiliyya, the state of ignorance afflicting the world’s Muslims. Such modern jahiliyya in the form of socialism, secularism, or liberal democracy.

According to Maududi, the only way to defend against jahiliyya was to Islamize society, first by introducing Islamic regulation to politics and economy, and eventually the entire state.

Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb went on to popularize these notions in the 1960s.

In 1960, Maududi wrote in his book The Islamic Law and Constitution about his vision of an Islamic state where “no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private”.

Al Hakimya (الحاكمية) The totalitarianism of God’s sovereignty, Maududi wrote, would “bear a resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states”.

Scholars have adopted the term Islamic-Fascism (Islamist Fascism) or Islamofascism, to describe Maududi’s and others’ Islamist vision.

Saudi Scholar Salih AlFawzan warned of the Hakimya and indicated it is a ploy used by the partisans to serve the agendas of their parties (Muslim Brotherhood).

To most Pakistanis and to those who have been associated with various Islamist political outfits in countries like Egypt, Indonesia, Syria and Malaysia, Abul Ala Maududi is to “Political Islam” what Karl Marx was to Communism.

Maududi’s ideas were eventually adopted by General Ziaul Haq, who had pulled off a successful military coup in July 1977 and then invited Maududi to help him shape policies to help make Pakistan a “true Islamic country” run on “Nizam-e-Mustafa”.

In a way Ziaul Haq was the Pakistani Gamal Abdel Nasser, in the sense he adapted a more contained policy against the Jamaat-e-Islami as Abdul Nasser did with the MB in the beginning of his reign.

To understand more about the Pakistani Geopolitics and President Ziaul Haq refer to the news articles and books between the 70s to late 80s as it will give variable points of views on the Geopolitics of Pakistan and the region at the time.

Khaled Homoud Alshareef holds PhD in Business and he earned Masters in Philosophy. He writes for MilliChronicle about Islamism, Islamist factions and modern Terrorism. He tweets under @0khalodi0.

There is fear because he was so central to almost every regional event in the last two decades that even people who hate him can’t believe he could die.

Middle East woke up to incredible news of Qassem Suleimani’s killing in US strike in Iraq, at Baghdad airport on Friday. He had reportedly just flown back from Beirut. He was like a Middle East viceroy, trotting around region, giving orders, masterminding small and large operations.

A combination of elation, relief and fear here in the region among people who suffered tremendously from Suleimani’s policies, from Lebanon to Syria and Iraq.

Elation and relief because he was seen as the evil mastermind of policies of death and destruction propping up bloodthirsty oppressive militias, overseeing a devastating war in Syria, feeding/playing on sectarian hatred, helping crack down on protestors in Iran (2009/2017/2019), Iraq now, and likely more recently helping Hezbollah to navigate protests in Lebanon.

Note that he had just flown back from Beirut and it’s definitely not his first visit. There were reports of him being in Lebanon in 2006 to help Hezbollah strategise in the war against Israel, and so there’s celebration and relief from Iran, to Iraq to Lebanon and Syria, among those, Sunnis and Shias who suffered from his evil mind.

I write about him in my forthcoming book Black Wave and the deadly dynamics of revenge that he pursued after Iran-Iraq war.

There is fear because he was so central to almost every regional event in the last two decades that even people who hate him can’t believe he could die, a bit like people couldn’t believe Saddam was really gone. He seemed invincible, omnipotent. What happens in his absence?

Some of his aura or reputation was probably overblown, but he really was indispensable to Iran, he was not on a mission, he was the mission, the architect of Iran’s expansionist regional policy, the indispensable upholder of the Islamic Revolution, keeping it alive for Khamenei

So what comes next: war? chaos? limited retaliation? nothing? no one really knows, not in the region, and not in DC, because this is unprecedented.

There is anger too of course, among his supporters, allies, proxy militias, who were devoted to him and lionized him and will be lost without him.

There is no replacement that I know of or can see. They will be mulling their next step for a bit. First, huge displays of mourning.

Lots more to say about region, US policy, Saudi Arabia reaction, Iran domestic reaction, local dynamics and more later, but for now then read Dexter Filkins’ piece from 2013 on Suleimaini, the best profile out there.

Kim Ghattas is a non-resident scholar and author of upcoming book Black Wave. Article complied from series of her Tweets.

Soleimani was also responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrians through boosting Bashar al-Assad’s brutal genocidal regime in Syria. 

This morning, US forces killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force. Soleimani was a towering figure, in command of Iran’s often brutal tactics to retain the country’s political and ideological dominance in the region and in charge of how it presented this strength to the wider world. He was revered and championed by supporters of the Islamic regime in both Iran and in the Middle East. 

Quds is the Arabic word for Jerusalem. The Quds Force is tasked with all the Guards’ military operations in the Middle East and beyond. But the Quds Force is not only a military force, it also determines Iran’s diplomacy in the Middle East. General David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces, says he once received a text message saying: “Dear General Petraeus, you should know that I, Ghasem Soleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.” 

As commander of the Quds Force, Soleimani was responsible for organizing Iran’s proxies in the region. He masterminded the killing and wounding of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq by Iran’s proxies. He organized and led the Iraqi militias fighting and defeating Daesh (ISIS) Sunni extremists in Iraq. Soleimani was also responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrians through boosting Bashar al-Assad’s brutal genocidal regime in Syria. 

In 2019, IranWire published an extensive series on the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards organization and its generals and commanders. We republish the profile here. 

On the eve of the 1982 Operation Fath-al-Mobin, Commander Mohsen Rezaei tasked a young subordinate with raising a unit of Sar-Allah soldiers in Kerman for an upcoming major offensive aimed at ejecting the Iraqi army from Khuzestan. The subordinate chosen for the assignment was a 19-year-old former construction worker named Ghasem Soleimani. 

Commander Hassan Bagheri, who was the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) first ground force commander and who spearheaded the Guards’ intelligence department, was skeptical of the decision, believing that new forces led by an inexperienced new commander would not have the capacity to meet the demands of such a key operation. Rezaei remained firm, however, arguing that Soleimani was more than up to the task. The unit would later grow into a battalion before eventually becoming the the Guards’ 41st Corps of Sar-Allah. Lead exclusively by Ghasem Soleimani after its initial inception, its soldiers hailed from the provinces of Kerman, Sistan, Baluchistan, and Hormuzgan. 

In Soleimani’s own telling, his first mission was ordered by Hossein Kharazi, then commander of the 14th Corps of Imam Hossein, to guard the 14th corps’ flanks. Biographers favorable to Soleimani have stated that this first engagement was a resounding success, but some of his contemporaries have not been as flattering toward his leadership during the campaign. In fact the former Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, Mohammad-Ali Jafari, wrote about the matter in his memoir: “In February 1982 during the Fath-al-Mobin operation, Hossein Kharazi’s corps was under pressure from two different sides because the Sar-Allah unit could not secure either flank, which Soleimani’s forces were tasked with protecting.”  

This uncomfortable divergence between myth and reality did not prevent Soleimani from hailing Operation Fath-al-Mobin as his most important success during the Iran-Iraq War. Although Soleimani had participated in previous operations, including Karbala 1 and 5, Valfajr 8, Tariq-al-Quds, and Kheibar, it was Operation Fath al-Mobin that saw him in the role of a commander for the first time. 

Ghasem Soleimani was born in 1958 in the Qanat-e-Melk village suburb of Kerman. Before the revolution, he had worked in Kerman’s water treatment plant and subsequently as a construction worker. He was an athletic youth and a frequent patron of the city’s famous traditional gyms. 

After the start of the Iran-Iraq War, Soleimani enlisted in the IRGC in 1980, and his first assignment was to guard Kerman’s airport and fleet from Iraqi air bombardments. Months later, he was deployed to combat further west, where he took charge of his unit consisting of many fellow Kerman natives. “I had a huge passion for military tactics and planning,” wrote Soleimani years later in his memoir. “I really wanted to go to combat and contribute to the war. That’s why after I was deployed on my first 15-day mission, I never went back home until the end of the war.”

A Building Mythology

Soleimani was not a yet a public figure during the Iran-Iraq War, but afterwards, Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC Yahya Rahim-Safavi appointed him as Commander of the Quds Corps. At the same time, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Ahmed Kazemi were appointed as Commanders of the Air Force and Ground Forces respectively. The three commanders were close friends, and Soleimani would later show his support to Ghalibaf by backing him during the 2013 presidential election. 

Soleimani’s fame grew exponentially during the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, where he quickly became something of a mythical figure. The roots of this myth, both fact and fiction, trace back to those early days in the Sar-Allah Corps. Anecdotes and legends of his travels run the gamut, particularly in Iraq, with stories of him pretending to be an Iraqi soldier so as to partake in a unit’s meal time or even start fights. Yet other more fantastic stories revolve around him stealing vehicles and earning the moniker “Toyota thief” from Radio Baghdad. But whatever the veracity of the claims, Soleimani has always been well known for his charismatic personality among IRGC officers, who take great interest in his speeches.   

One of his favorite commanders was his own deputy in the Sar-Allah 41st Corps, Mir-Hosseini, whom Soleimani described: “When he appeared at the frontline, his presence was calming and everyone felt assured. Mir-Hosseini was not only a man, but he was truly the Corps himself.”  

Although Soleimani was very loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei, as an IRGC commander he did not often delve into domestic politics. Unlike many other IRGC commanders, Soleimani was careful not to criticize Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and one of the architects of the Islamic Republic — but who also clashed with Khamenei toward the end of his life. Among Sar-Allah soldiers, there was a rumor that Soleimani voted for Mohammad Khatami in the 1997 presidential election. Nevertheless, Soleimani has in the past argued for the Basij to play a prominent role in Iranian politics and criticized any ideas to the contrary.

Hezbollah Ties

Soleimani and his subordinates have in the past colluded closely with the financial and construction projects of Hossein Marashi, the spokesperson for the Executives of Construction Party and former governor of Kerman. Financial involvement also extended to entities like Mahan Airline, which was later blacklisted by the US because of its cooperation with the Quds Corps.

Soleimani’s commentary on politics has been more often found at the local level, where he has previously come out in support of Kerman’s governor, Ali Reza Razm Hosseini. But after the governor’s scandalous resignation over the revelation of his Canadian dual-citizenship, IRGC media outlets did their best to eliminate any trace of Soleimani’s prior support. 

As the Quds Corps Commander, Soleimani had strong involvement with Hezbollah in Lebanon and other militant groups. Iranian state media has shown multiple photographs of him alongside Jihad Mughniyah, the son of the infamous Emad Mughniyah of Hezbollah. His daughter, Zeinab Soleimani, has also been spotted alongside Fatima Mughniyah, Emad Mughniyah’s daughter. 

In recent years, Iran’s foreign policy in the region has fallen deeper and deeper under the influence and control of the Quds Corps. Even many of Iran’s foreign policy elite such as the ambassador to Iraq, Iraj Masjedi, are former IRGC commanders.  

The IRGC has tried to reshape the organization’s negative image by focusing on a propaganda campaign around Soleimani’s character and myth, even going so far as to float his name as a potential presidential candidate. But considering his personality and history, the presidency was not something that he aspired to — unless it had been ordered by the Supreme Leader or other prominent clerical figures. 

Article first published on Iran Wire.

We hate to be controlled.

Blaming others and shirking responsibility for the chaos in the Middle East is the easiest thing ever and I don’t respect that kind of thinking.

The countries of the Middle East had the last 40 years to take hold of their region, and only five of them would have been enough to force Iran to become a normal state instead of going along with their logic of war and conspiracy.

The cooperation among countries of the region and their agreement on a comprehensive political and economic boycott would have been sufficient to make the Iranian regime accept reality and move away from foreign interference.

Because of centuries of occupation, ignorance and cognitive backwardness, most countries in the region have been ruled by a political class that does not know the ABCs of politics, state administration, or even planning ahead.

Most people in the region suffer from a kind of schizophrenia that starts from losing their identity and then confuses their moral compass as well. Most of them no longer identify themselves only as Arab-Islamic and that’s an essential side of the problem.

Long term occupation was one of the reasons for loss of identity. Even when the peoples of the region threw off direct occupation they were still captured by ideological mindsets of both West and East.

Rather than capitalizing on the immense civilizational legacy of the ancient Arab empire, each country tried to create its own and but only achieved distorted versions of Arab civilization.

Well, of all the peoples of the region only the Arabs escaped occupation for thousands of years. Why is this? Let’s take a look at the concept of susceptibility to occupation or colonization.

With the exception of the Arabs, peoples of the region don’t have enough of a bulwark of cultural entrenchment to be able to resist occupation. Long occupation breaks and distorts the cultural foundations of societies and makes them susceptible to any new ideology or identity.

These peoples need elites and leaders who are broadly aware of this cultural dimension; otherwise, they will continue to sink in the same vortex in every historical cycle.

You’ve surely noticed that I always insist on Islam to solve all of mankind’s issues. It’s because Islam does not steal your identity. It empowers and improves the positive sides that you already have so people become stronger and more stable.

Instead peoples of the region began to invent ideologies – distorted versions of Islam – that are mixed up with local moods. Then they attempt to normalize them by mixing in elements of liberalism and communism.

This has produced several contradictory versions if Islam – Shiism, then Sufism, and then Ikhwanism (AKA MBrotherhood) – as well as leftist and local religious trends. All of these ideologies must be radical in nature and always produce the worst outcomes.

Normally Islam is supposed to produce a positive competition among peoples, but because of these distorted versions of Islam the competition is only about imposing and expanding local versions on others.

The West and East have nothing to do with the foundations of conflict in the Middle East. They are purely local cultural causes, and these contradictory local ideologies of course must leave a vacuum that can attract foreign powers.

Foreign intervention can not be positive because human nature will always resist being imposed upon from the outside. We hate to be controlled.

Remember that the peoples of the Middle East never resisted the first Arab-Islamic influence, but welcomed it, regardless of what happened later. They converted to Islam peacefully because it was naturally constructive.

Everyone observes that there’s a positive competition among the Arabs (Saudi Arabia and UAE). In general they’re more stable and consistent with the international order and are making accelerated impressive efforts in projects of education, technology and development.

The peoples of the region today should respect and benefit from Arabian success and cooperate with the Saudi-UAE model instead of wasting their capabilities and wealth in endless warring conflicts.

Unfortunately the small emirate of Qatar has been tricked by Iran, Turkey and Ikhwanism (MBrotherhood). It believed it could take over Saudi Arabia, and is still wasting wealth on fueling conflicts with help from the West and Israel.

This happened because of rejection of the natural and stable Saudi leadership in the region.

Turki al-Owerde is an independent Political Analyst and Commentator from Saudi Arabia. He tweets under@Turki_AlOwerde.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

She hadn’t always been afraid of the revolutionaries and the horror stories of the executions they committed.

I still remember the moment, 38 years ago, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, when I overheard my mom tell my dad in a hushed voice that Dr. Parsa had just been executed. My mom’s shoulders were shaking and her voice was low. She said that the revolutionary forces had put Dr. Parsa in a burlap sack and shot her in cold blood. At the time, I did not know who Dr. Parsa was, but I knew that anything that could make my tough mother shiver like that — even after all we had endured in 1980 Iran — had to be horrific.

My mother, Ms. M. Dareshi, was the principal of Ettefagh, one of the most prestigious Jewish schools in Tehran during the 1970s and the early ’80s. This in and of itself was quite an accomplishment, as it was not easy for women to earn positions of power in Iran during the Pahlavi era. Despite the shah’s efforts to modernize Iran and promote women in government, the patriarchal culture was still a huge obstacle to the advancement of women in all areas of public life, including education.

Growing up in Iran, I remember how my mother would always rise before everyone in the house, slip on her dress and style her hair in the Thatcher fashion of those days. She used just enough lipstick and blush to look professional, but not enough to draw any extra attention. Teaching the Iranian Jewish children with their non-Jewish peers at Ettefagh was my mother’s calling. She was, and remains today, a dedicated teacher devoted to her students.

Back then, Farrokhroo Parsa was a trailblazer; she had advanced to become the first female minister of education in Iran. When the Iranian revolutionaries arrested her on charges of “spreading vice on earth and fighting God,” it was as if they were battling an ancient Persian mythic power. Her only crime had been to thrive as a successful woman, paving the way for the education of thousands, if not millions, of girls in a country that was (and remains today) both culturally and politically against the empowerment of women.

Parsa was highly educated, a physician by training, with a strong personality that inspired women like my mother.

I remember that my mom was particularly proud of a letter of appreciation she had received from Parsa in the years before the shah was overthrown. The letter was smartly framed and hung on our living room wall. But on that particular day in 1980 — in the midst of a revolution and at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War — my mother destroyed it, afraid that it might tip off the revolutionaries to her true beliefs. It was not worth the risk.

As a young Jewish girl growing up in those scary times, I would try to understand what was really going on in my family. On the one hand, I was so proud of my mom — I used to brag about her to my friends. She was a rare woman in power, yet now she also showed signs of fear.

She hadn’t always been afraid of the revolutionaries and the horror stories of the executions they committed. Only a few weeks earlier she had secretly sent a message to Professor V., the father of one of the beloved Muslim students in her school who had become a supporter of a revolutionary Islamic-Marxist group called the Mujahedin-e Khalq-e Iran. The group had been under attack by the Islamists, who were solidifying their power after the revolution. My mother overheard a group of newly hired Islamist administrators say that 16-year-old Shahrzad (also written ‘Scheherazade’) V., a student at her school, had to be “eradicated” because she had fallen into the trap of Mujahedin-e Khalq — but she was not an active member of the political group, she was not even armed; she had merely been passing out political pamphlets.

My mom called all the students in her school “her children,” and my siblings and I were used to hearing her talk about yet another “child” for whom she had high hopes. Shahrzad V. was one of those children — smart, hardworking, beautiful and unwavering. As a young girl myself, I understood my mom’s mission: to educate and to give hope. So, of course she had to take a risk and warn Shahrzad’s father.

Shahrzad’s father received the message and tried to persuade his daughter to go hiding in Mashhad, a holy city in Iran where they had relatives. He also asked my mom not to contact their family anymore — he said he was worried about the consequences for anyone who had tried to save the “enemy of the revolution.” A few weeks passed before we learned that Shahrzad had rejected her father’s attempt to send her into hiding. She was arrested on charges of treason, just like many Mujahedin-e Khalq active members and their novice supporters, and sent to the notorious Evin Prison, where many inmates were known to have been tortured and killed.

The last we heard about Shahrzad was that she was raped in the prison and then executed. Apparently, Shahrzad’s executioners believed that killing a virgin was not approved in their narrow interpretation of Islam (Shiism). They therefore had to rape her before they “eradicated” her from the earth so that they — along with the virgin girls they killed — could go to paradise in the next world. Rumors spread like wildfire, but no one knew the exact circumstances.

Many years later, my mom told me Shahrzad’s dad could sometimes be seen near Ettefagh in torn clothes, kissing the steps of the school and wailing: “Where is my Shahrzad? She was innocent.” By then, he was no longer a respected professor at Tehran University; people said he had gone “mad.” Even though Shahrzad’s dad was Muslim, I imagined him dressed as the mythical figure of Wandering Jew, going around Ettefagh — cursed to walk aimlessly, searching for his daughter.

In the case of Dr. Farrokhroo Parsa, here was an outspoken woman who was not silenced until the very last minute of her life. In her so-called revolutionary trial, she was forced to wear the hijab but she remained truthful to her mission as an advocate of women’s rights. In her will, which was later published on the internet, she wrote:

I am myself a physician and know that death is nothing more than a moment. I embrace death with open hands and I am not willing to wear hijab for the sake of living a few more years or so; and I will not say “I regret” to stay alive and invalidate 50 years of struggle for the equality between men and women in this land with two simple words. I will never submit to wearing the hijab nor will I go one step backwards.

The day after her execution, there were rumors that she was not raped since she was a married woman with two daughters of her own; instead she was put in a potato sack and shot to death. Rumor had it that her executioners thought she was too filthy (najes in Persian) for them to touch, so they had put her in the sack in order to stay pure and to ensure their passage to paradise.

I was still in Ettefagh’s elementary school when all these events unfolded. My mom had not yet been replaced by a fully veiled Muslim woman who had been approved by the new revolutionary head of the ministry of education.

You might wonder how these ghastly events impacted the life of a young girl like me. I still cannot quite make sense of it all.

I have learned a lot. Life in that part of the world has a way of making one seem older than one’s age. In the West, we know and expect children to be protected and nourished. Sometimes they can even be reckless. I am a teacher myself now, too, and I come across college students who, in fact, do stupid things that they apologize for afterward. But these students are eventually forgiven. This is not so where I was born.

In Persian mythology, Scheherazade is the daughter of a wise vizier who makes a huge sacrifice in order to save the lives of her peers. When King Shahryar and his vizier discover that the queen has had a secret affair, the king gets angry and, in order to take revenge, orders his vizier to find one virgin girl every night so that his majesty can enjoy them in bed and then kill them in the morning. The vizier follows these orders for three years, until his own daughter steps up to the challenge, and after luring the king with her stories, which she weaves one after another as if constructing a maze, she marries the king.

You might have heard of this story as “One Thousand and One Nights” translated from Arabic or Sanskrit. The stories reflect the interconnected worlds of Muslims, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and many other religions that co-existed peacefully then and continue to exist — though not so peacefully at present — in what is now known as “the Middle East.”

To me, an elementary schooler then and a mother now, the stories of the innocent 16-year-old Shahrzad V. who was raped and killed at Evin Prison, and Dr. Parsa, whose name in Persian literally means both “pure”/zahed (one who does no wrong) and “wise”/daneshmand (one who has wisdom), represented the bleak future of a revolution gone astray. Like the strong-willed young girl and the wise woman, my hopes were gone as Islamist zealots washed away everything they thought was impure and filthy.

I recall Shahrzad’s death as the time that I lost my childhood and was forced to become an adult. Fear was instilled in me that day — and, I believe, also in my generation. That fear grew stronger in me every day.

Now in my 40s, I am a worried woman and mother who has struggled with mood swings from time to time during my adult life. At least as I recall these stories, I understand some of the reasons behind my pain.

Yet, my story is not one of despair. I am alive and healthy. I have my own family now, a spirited 10-year-old daughter and a thoughtful 8-year-old son. I am happily married to the most patient and calm man I have ever known. Writing has become a great form of therapy for me. I can now give meaning to my life events, my deep sense of anxiety and my Jewish, Iranian-American identity. Without this search for meaning, life becomes an unbearably dull story. As Victor Frankel memorably wrote in his memoirs about Auschwitz, a life without a search for meaning becomes a dull one.

After all, let’s remember: Scheherazade never told a boring or simple story — because her life depended on it.

Article first published on Forward.com

E. Gheytanchi is an Iranian-American teacher and writer living in the United States. Born and raised in Tehran, she now teaches Sociology at Santa Monica College.

What is the magnitude of poverty in Iran? It’s an important question, but since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there has been no reliable and comprehensive statistics to allow for objective answers, and for the most part, knowledge about the situation has been shaped by conjecture and anecdotes. But in early December 2018, the Iranian parliament’s Research Center published a pioneering and comprehensive report on absolute poverty in the 31 provinces of Iran [Persian link] for the Iranian calendar year of 1395 (March 20, 2016-March 20, 2017).

The figures give considerable cause for concern.

Absolute Poverty

A report published by the United Nations in 1995 defines absolute poverty as “a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to social services.”

The World Bank has established a more quantitative standard. It sets the poverty line at a daily income of US$1.9 at 2010 prices. This translates to more than US$2 in 2016 prices, or more than US$600 per month. 

In 2016, US$1 was worth 3,500 Iranian tomans, so the poverty line in Iran stood at around 2.1 million tomans per month. This number varied in different localities after being adjusted for purchasing power.

For information about the concepts, methods, and statistical data IranWire used to arrive at a general picture of poverty in Iran at a national level, read the introduction to the series. 

This article explores poverty in the province of Kerman.

Source: Statistical Center of Iran

One in Three Families Facing Severe Poverty

Kerman is the largest province in Iran and covers more than a tenth of the country. Besides its world-famous pistachios, it is a center for transportation, car production, and mining.

Nevertheless, it is the second poorest province in Iran. Around 40 percent of its population lives under the poverty line, according to the most recent statistics.

This data was collected in 2016, when the economy was yet to be crippled by rampant inflation and recession, partially as a result of sanctions re-imposed by the United States after it abandoned the nuclear agreement. 

At that time, one in 10 Kerman residents could not afford to consume 2,100 calories per day, the minimum subsistence level. Now the situation is likely to be much worse.

Kerman is the ninth most populous state in Iran but, after Tehran, it has the highest number of poor inhabitants. Of a population of more than three million, 1.3 million live below the poverty line.

This is despite the fact that the province belongs to a group with the lowest urban poverty threshold in Iran: 364,000 tomans (US$87) for one person and 987,000 tomans (US$235) for an average family. 

These figures show that the income level in Kerman is undoubtedly one of the lowest in Iran.

Urban Poverty

In 2016, around 39 percent of urban dwellers in Kerman lived under the poverty line. This equates to around 718,000 people, or 166,000 households with an average size of 4.3. 

The urban poverty line was set at 364,000 tomans (US$87) for one person and 983,478 tomans (US$234) for a family of four.

To update these numbers for 2018, we can use the available statistics for inflation per province.

According to data from the Statistical Center of Iran, prices in the urban areas of Kerman in November 2018 show an increase of 40.3 percent compared to prices in 2016.

By taking this rate into account, the updated poverty threshold for the urban areas of the province, adjusted for inflation, would be around 511,000 tomans (US$122) per person or 1.4 million tomans (US$333) for a family of four. 

The latter is higher than the minimum monthly salary in 2018, meaning that many urban workers who earn the minimum wage are either below the poverty line or very close to it.

This is despite the fact that the unemployment rate in Kerman is close to the national average. According to the latest available employment figures, in 2017 the unemployment rate in Kerman was around 11.5 percent, just 0.6 percent less than average. 

The employment rate of 38.9 percent in the province was also 0.1 percent higher than the national average. This shows that, while many Kerman residents have jobs, they are still unable to earn enough to live comfortably. 

Kerman (Source: Google Maps)

Rural Poverty

In 2016, nearly half (45 percent) of the province’s rural population lived below the poverty line, according to the Iranian Parliament Research Center. This equates to 600,000 residents or 148,338 households.

At this time, the rural poverty line in Kerman was 233,864 tomans (US$56) for one person and 631,433 tomans (US$151) for a family of four. 

Adjusted for inflation, these figures would jump by around 40 percent in November 2018: to 327,176 tomans (US$78) for one person and 883,374 tomans (US$210) for a household of four.

Residents of Kerman whose only sources of income are state welfare subsidies and charitable contributions must therefore be living under the poverty line. The consequences of this are likely to include malnutrition and poor physical and mental health.

Article first published in Iran Wire.