Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said he was “very relieved” that Kamran Ghaderi and Massud Mossaheb were being brought home after “years of arduous imprisonment in Iran.”

Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said that he was “happy and relieved that a Danish citizen is on his way home to his family in Denmark after imprisonment in Iran.” He didn’t name the person, saying their identity was “a personal matter” and he couldn’t go into details.

Schallenberg thanked the foreign ministers of Belgium and Oman for providing “valuable support,” without elaborating on what form it took. Løkke Rasmussen also thanked Belgium and said that Oman ”played an important role.”

Last week, a prisoner exchange between Belgium and Iran returned to Tehran an Iranian diplomat convicted of attempting to bomb exiles in France, Assadollah Assadi. Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele, looking visibly gaunt, headed back to Brussels as part of the swap.

There was no immediate word on what, if anything, Iran obtained in return for the latest releases.

On Friday, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib tweeted that her country was “unwavering in our dedication to advocating for other Europeans who are being arbitrarily detained” and had “successfully secured the release of two Austrians and one Dane who were unjustly held in detention in Iran.”

Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said he had briefed his Austrian and Danish counterparts at a Thursday meeting in Moldova on the “imminent release” of the three prisoners “heading to Belgium via Oman.”

Iranian state media and officials did not immediately acknowledge a release on Friday, which is part of the weekend in the Islamic Republic.

Oman often serves an interlocutor between Iran and the West and brings released captives out of the Islamic Republic. An Oman Royal Air Force Gulfstream IV, which had been on the ground in Tehran for several days, took off shortly before news of the European trio’s releases came out.

The releases also come after Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq visited Iran on his first trip there since becoming the Arab nation’s ruler in 2020.

Ghaderi is an Iranian-Austrian businessman who was arrested in 2016 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly spying for the U.S., charges strongly rejected by his supporters. His family had criticized Austria for being silent on his case in recent years.

Mossaheb, also an Iranian-Austrian businessman, was arrested in 2019 and received a 10-year prison sentence after what Amnesty International called “a grossly unfair trial for vague national security offenses.” Amnesty had said Mossaheb suffered from heart failure and diabetes, making his imprisonment that much more dangerous for him.

Iran has detained a number of foreigners and dual nationals over the years, accusing them of espionage or other state security offenses and sentencing them following secretive trials in which rights groups say they have been denied due process.

Critics have repeatedly accused Iran of using such prisoners as bargaining chips with the West.

Iran, facing Western sanctions over its rapidly advancing nuclear program, has experienced protests in recent months and economic strain. However, it also reached a detente with Saudi Arabia through Chinese mediation, and the International Atomic Energy Agency dropped two inquiries into the country’s nuclear program.

Khamenei is now facing a situation that puts him in complete isolation in the region…

After three months, President Biden in an effort to curb the expansion of Iranian regime’s nuclear program within the framework of JCPOA, indirectly through his European partners, started negotiation with the Iranian representatives in Vienna, Austria. Although Iran’s representatives have ostensibly stated that they will not negotiate directly or indirectly with the United States until the lifting of sanctions by the United States, it is clear to observers that the meeting in Vienna was a kind of negotiation between the two countries. 

The meeting even provoked some reactions from opponents of negotiations with the United States in Iran, and several representatives of the so-called fundamentalist faction, as well as the head of the judiciary of Iranian regime; Ibrahim Raeisi protested the participation of Iranian Foreign Ministry representatives in this meeting.

This is a manifestation of disagreement within the Iranian regime over negotiations with the United States. On the one hand, Hassan Rouhani, who is going through the last days of his second term and has no possibility of re-election, is desperately looking for an agreement with the United States to return to JCPOA before the end of his term in June, and lift the sanctions imposed by Trump to provide some air to breathe for the regime. 

Because these sanctions, along with the widespread corruption of the ruling regime, have pushed the Iranian economy to the brink of collapse, so that now the Iranian economy shrank about 8.2% with respect to last year and inflation has reached more than 65%, so that more than 60% People live below the poverty line, and nearly 35 million people are living in deplorable conditions in shanty towns due to their inability to pay for housing in cities.

People’s hatred and antipathy for this situation can be seen daily in gatherings and protests of different segments of the population due to poor economic conditions, non-payment of salaries, high prices and lack of many essential commodities such as cooking oil , eggs, chicken … all over Iran. 

But on the other hand, we see that Khamenei has emphasized that Iran will not return to the 2015 JCPOA before United States removes all sanctions and we verify them, and not only we will deploy newer centrifuges (JCPOA forbids Iran from installing them) but also will continue to enrich uranium to 20% and make uranium metal. The question is why Khamenei, who two years ago witnessed upon tripling the price of gasoline Iranians took to the streets in nearly 200 cities to protest, setting fire to almost all banks and gas stations so much so that  forced him to crack down on protesters and order his security forces to directly fire and kill 1,500 people and arrest more than 12,000 in order to quell the uprising, is so stubborn in negotiating and is not willing to give any concessions?

The fact is that Khamenei is in a very weak position and he is afraid of negotiations because he knows that now he must make many concessions and 2021 is qualitatively different from 2015 and the new balance of power has left no room for Khamenei. Khamenei is well aware of People’s dissatisfaction, but he is most afraid of the imminent uprising and knows that if another uprising like the one in November 2019 happens again, this time he will not be able to control it easily and may topple his regime. 

From the beginning, Khamenei’s regime survival has been based on internal repression and exporting crises to countries in the region through its proxy forces, and terrorism. Khamenei later sought to secure his survival by acquiring a nuclear weapon, which he was forced to abandon, at least temporarily, since the Iranian resistance exposed his secret nuclear program.  Thus, Khamenei relies on two leverages of internal repression and meddling in countries of the region. 

But Khamenei is now facing a situation that puts him in complete isolation in the region. On one hand, he has lost much of its former financial strength to support its proxy forces in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, and on the other hand with assassination of Qasim Soleimani, his influence in the region has diminished dramatically and people in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon blame the Iranian regime for all their misfortunes and demand that Iran not to interfere in their countries. Khamenei knows that negotiating with the United States will lead to other demands, such as controlling missile programs and the regime’s non-interference in the region. 

Losing any of these leverages will be a mortal blow and the regime will lose its balance and further in conjunction with dissatisfied people inside Iran will make his shaky regime much more unstable and prone to overthrow.

To further bargain, he agreed to give the Chinese a lot of concessions with a 25-year deal with them to strengthen its position vis a vis the West. This, of course, was widely protested inside Iran, and most people consider it a treacherous deal and the sale and transfer of Iran to China.

Now it is up to Biden’s administration to recognize the regime’s weak state and emphasize the need for decisive policy and not to give concessions to Khamenei. Khamenei’s show of force is a bluff, and sooner or later, under internal pressure, Khamenei will be forced to accept western’s conditions for lifting of sanctions. In any case, no matter which path Iranian regime takes, a regime change in Iran could be expected in the near future.

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.

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.

Lebanon is facing the worst consequences of Iranian meddling and Hezbollah’s domination

One year after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the number one man in promoting the Iranian regime’s terrorist policies in the region, the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of Iranian nuclear activities, took place, virtually without retaliation.

Then, in the Belgian court in Antwerp, Assadollah Assadi, the diplomat terrorist of the regime in Austria, went on trial for carrying a bomb to be installed at the annual gathering of the Iranian Resistance, despite regime attempts to have him returned to Iran and open threats if the trial went ahead.

The consequences of these three strategic blows have had a profound effect on Iran and the region, greatly reducing the authority of the savage and bloodthirsty fundamentalists, and eroding the regime’s defense embankments, which it had spent years and huge amounts of assets to build.

Some of the effects of these blows are:

1. The people of the region, especially Iraq, in protest against 16 years of corruption, unemployment, bloodshed and the interventions of the Islamic Republic of Iran through armed proxy groups in Iraq, revolted in October 2019. This uprising is ongoing and expanding daily. This uprising has all but erased the sense of invincibility of the regime’s proxy armed forces in the mind of the masses.

2. Now, on the anniversary of the Iraqi uprising, after 3 days of conferences at the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, where Ayatollah Sistani, the senior Iraqi Shiite cleric, lives, four Iraqi popular militia groups (joined with Hashd Al-Shaabi) have denounced the Islamic Republic of Iran.

These four militia groups are: Lavaye Al Nessar Marjaeyat, Lavaye Ali Al-Akbar, Ferqat Al-Abbas Al-Qataliyya, and Ferqat Imam Al-Qataliyya. They had previously requested to be separated from Hashd Al-Shaabi.

3. Following a wave of pressure from Iranian-backed political parties in Iraq, such as Al-Fatah (affiliated with Hashd Al-Shaabi) and Dolat Qanoon against Saudi Arabia and Iraq rapprochement, finally the tables have turned against Iran and after 29 years a Saudi high-level delegation, led by the Saudi Minister of Commerce and Investment, Majid al-Qasbi, traveled to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on Monday 7 December to sign several memoranda of understanding and economic agreements.

4. In Yemen, no one can tolerate the Houthis, affiliated with the Iranian regime, and in Syria, every day, IRGC commanders are killed and the mullahs do not dare announce the news.

5. In Palestine, pro-regime forces can no longer freely employ Hamas, Jihad-Islamic and Hezbollah. Fatah and Hamas have formed a coalition in solidarity.

6. Today, Lebanon is facing the worst consequences of Iranian meddling and Hezbollah’s domination. It is devastated economically and politically and is in complete international and Arab isolation. It has suffered a catastrophic fate. Most Lebanese people hate Hezbollah’s domination and the Iranian regime that funds it.

As a result, while we will not rush to judge it as the “ineffectiveness of the Iranian regime” quite yet, certainly the course of developments in the Middle East has changed. The balance of power and rules of engagement for the Iranian regime have shifted and there is no return!

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

All because of the political Islamic parties and organizations that have clearly committed the largest historical crime against the Islamic religion…

For the first time in the history of the European continent, Austria recently announced the intention to create a new criminal offense termed “political Islam”. This step came as part of a series of anti-terrorism actions following the terrorist attacks in the Austrian capital, Vienna, which killed five people and injured about 20.

Austrian Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz stated clearly on his personal Twitter account: “We will create a criminal offense called ‘political Islam’ in order to be able to take action against those who are not terrorists themselves, but who create the breeding ground for them”.

Several media outlets have indicated that a new law will be enacted in Austria with the aim of keeping convicted terrorists behind bars for life, while maintaining those convicted of terrorism-related crimes under electronic surveillance upon their release, in addition to criminalizing religiously motivated political extremism.

In the aftermath of the latest terrorist attacks, anxiety over political Islamist groups among Europeans is mounting significantly. A survey conducted by the British Chatham House Institute found that most Europeans oppose the continuation of Muslim immigration into their countries due to security concerns brought about by terrorist incidents.

The survey’s results, published a while ago, included more than 10,000 citizens from ten European countries, 55 percent of whom responded with a “yes” to the suggestion: “Immigration from Muslim-majority countries must be banned”.

These ten European countries were Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Britain, Hungary and Poland. Whilst some of these countries, such as France, Belgium and Britain, are home to large Muslim communities, their voice against embracing Muslim immigrants has not faded. The strongest opposition came from Poland, where about 71 percent of participants were against harboring Muslim immigrants.

The specifics of the survey were even more interesting than its overall results, as they showed that senior citizens oppose Muslim immigration more than other age groups. While 44 percent of participants, aged between 18 and 29 were pro banning Muslims from entering their countries. On the other hand, the 63 percent of participants who were pro the ban, were aged 60 and up.

The survey also showed that “the educational level played a visible role in the outcome of these results, with 59 percent of participants who have basic education supporting Muslim immigration, compared to 48 percent who hold university degrees. Yet, one in two people with higher education wants to ban Muslims from entering their countries. Meanwhile, sex and place of residence had a minor impact: as 57 percent were men and 52 percent were women. Importantly, residents of big cities were slightly more open than those of small ones and rural areas by 52 percent, compared to 55 percent and 52 percent, respectively”.

Europeans today feel that they are paying for the mistake of having been the most welcoming people in the world to third world immigrants in the last century, all because of the political Islamic parties and organizations that have clearly committed the largest historical crime against the Islamic religion and its followers around the world.

Although some European politicians and decision-makers have not yet grasped the public opinion opposing Muslim immigration, they will do so sooner or later. And when that time comes, not only will Europe officially close its doors to Muslims, it will also abandon the principles of the last century, and no one can blame it for that, as security was, and will always be, above all.

The opinion piece was originally published in Arabic in Okaz Newspaper, and translated by Al Arabiya.

Hani Al-Dhaheri is a Saudi Journalist and Writer.