Iran Digest Week of September 23 - September 30
/AIC’s Iran digest project covers the latest developments and news stories published in Iranian and international media outlets. This weekly digest is compiled by associate Samuel Howell. Please note that the news and views expressed in the articles below do not necessarily reflect those of AIC.
US-Iran Relations
How the CIA failed Iranian informants in its secret war with Tehran
The spy was minutes from leaving Iran when he was nabbed.
Gholamreza Hosseini was at Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran in late 2010, preparing for a flight to Bangkok. There, the Iranian industrial engineer would meet his Central Intelligence Agency handlers. But before he could pay his exit tax to leave the country, the airport ATM machine rejected his card as invalid. Moments later, a security officer asked to see Hosseini’s passport before escorting him away.
Hosseini said he was brought to an empty VIP lounge and told to sit on a couch that had been turned to face a wall. Left alone for a dizzying few moments and not seeing any security cameras, Hosseini thrust his hand into his trouser pocket, fishing out a memory card full of state secrets that could now get him hanged. He shoved the card into his mouth, chewed it to pieces and swallowed.
Not long after, Ministry of Intelligence agents entered the room and the interrogation began, punctuated by beatings, Hosseini recounted. His denials and the destruction of the data were worthless; they seemed to know everything already. But how?
(Reuters)
Nuclear Accord
Iran and IAEA restart talks amid nuclear deal deadlock
Talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have restarted over a probe into nuclear material found at nuclear sites in Iran, which has been at the centre of the stall in efforts to restore the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
“Dialogue has restarted with Iran on clarification of outstanding safeguards issues,” tweeted Rafael Grossi, the director general of the global atomic watchdog late on Monday.
Grossi had met with Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami in Vienna earlier on Monday following the General Conference of the agency, where both men delivered speeches.
Women of Iran
The Latest on the Protests in Iran 2022—And How to Help the Women Leading Them
By now, the world knows her name: Mahsa “Jina” Amini. On September 13, the 22-year-old ethnic Kurdish woman was arrested in the capital Tehran by the so-called “morality police” for “violating” mandatory hejab. According to her brother, it was two hours between the time she was taken from the police station to the hospital. After spending three days in an ICU—it is widely believed that the morality police had brutally beaten her—Amini died on September 16. That’s when her story, initially a Persian language hashtag (#Mahsa_Amini), spread like a wildfire throughout the country only to turn into widescale protests in 30 out of 31 provinces.
Mandatory hejab has always been seen as a symbol of repression under the Islamic Republic and one of the key tools to control women, who make up 60 percent of the country’s university graduates. While women are at the forefront of these protests—removing, and in some instances, burning their headscarves, and even cutting their hair—this is very much a youth-facing movement, led by Iranian Generation Z (Gen Z). Like their western counterparts, this is a tech-savvy generation that has grown up with the internet and social media—albeit heavily censored, as 35 percent of the most popular sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, are blocked.
'They Have Found The Courage': Iranian Women Go Hijab-Less In Public Amid Protests
Two young Iranian women posted a photo of themselves having breakfast at a restaurant in Tehran without hijabs.
The same day, actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya spoke at the public funeral in the Iranian capital without a headscarf.
On September 27, a video emerged of a woman without a hijab marching on a road in Tehran holding a placard that read, "Women, life, freedom."
Such acts of civil disobedience have increased in Iran, where the country's "hijab and chastity" law requires women and girls over the age of 9 to wear a headscarf in public, since the death of a young woman in the custody of the morality police on September 16.
Economy
With new sanctions, US vows to ‘severely restrict’ Iran oil sales
The Biden administration has announced a new round of sanctions against Iran, vowing to impose financial penalties on a “regular basis” in an effort to “severely restrict” Iranian oil and petrochemical exports.
The measures announced on Thursday target several firms and “front companies” based in China, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and India that the United States accuses of involvement in the sale of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products.
The administration of US President Joe Biden also explicitly linked the sanctions to the failure to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Inside Iran
Iran’s morality police disappear from streets after dozens killed in protests
The white-and-green Guidance Patrol vans, used by Iran’s morality police to monitor and arrest women who defy the Islamic dress code, have in recent days disappeared from the streets of Tehran.
For the past decade a symbol of the Islamic republic’s crackdown on women, the vans are not even visible outside the morality police centre in central Tehran.
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman of Kurdish ethnicity, was this month bundled into one of these vehicles. She later died in custody, triggering the biggest street protests across the country since the 2019 unrest over fuel prices. At least 41 protesters have died, according to state television. Hundreds of people have been arrested, local agencies report, including political activists and journalists.
Hackers seek to help — and profit from — Iran protests
As protests erupted in Iran over the death in custody of a woman arrested for violating gender-based morality laws, hacker groups started offering help — and sometimes hoped to profit. But researchers warn that the offers may not be as benevolent as they appear.
The cybersecurity firm Check Point said it began observing chatter about the Iranian protests among the groups soon after the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, when demonstrations broke out.
For the last week, the Iranian government has been limiting mobile internet access from the late afternoon, around 4 pm, to midnight local time, according to Doug Madory, the director of Internet Analysis at Kentik. Although fixed-line internet services remain online, popular services including Instagram and WhatsApp are blocked, he said.
Regional Politics
Thirteen killed in Iraq as Iran attacks Kurdish groups blamed for protests
Thirteen people have been killed in Iraq's Kurdistan Region, officials say, as Iran launched missiles and armed drones at what it said were bases of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups.
A pregnant woman was reportedly among those who died in the strikes.
Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps said it hit "separatist terrorists" who had supported recent "riots".
Anti-government protests have swept across Iran since the death in custody of a Kurdish woman there 12 days ago.
(BBC)
Global Relations
Russia escalating use of Iranian ‘kamikaze’ drones in Ukraine
Russia is escalating its use of Iranian-supplied “kamikaze” drones in southern Ukraine, including against the southern port of Odesa and the nearby city of Mykolaiv, amid estimates that hundreds of weapons may now have been deployed by the Kremlin in Crimea and other occupied areas of the south.
The drones – also known as loitering munitions – have also been used against Ukrainian artillery positions in the country’s east, including in the Kharkiv region. Britain’s Ministry of Defence first noted the Russian use of the Iranian supplied weapons in mid-September.
Able to remain airborne for several hours and circle over potential targets, the drones are designed to be flown into enemy troops, armour or buildings, exploding on impact – explaining their description as kamikaze drones.
Analysis
Iran’s tired regime is living on borrowed time
By: The Economist
The most poetic scenes are sometimes the most powerful. A young woman dances in front of a bonfire, then tosses her headscarf into the flames. A lone old lady, her white hair uncovered, shuffles down the street waving her headscarf in tune to the words “Death to Khamenei!” Such acts of defiance against Iran’s supreme leader and his regime, prompted nearly a fortnight ago by the murder of a young woman arrested by the “morality police” for not covering all her hair, have spread to dozens of Iranian cities. They mark the most menacing threat to the ayatollahs’ dictatorial rule for many years.
Revolutions are often sparked by individual acts of courage. Witness the self-immolation of a vegetable-seller in Tunis that started the wave of rebellions that raced across the Arab world in 2011. Several times in the past dozen or so years Iranians have erupted against their regime, only for huge demonstrations to fizzle out under the lash of a well-practised system of repression. Might this time be different?
