Iran Digest Week of November 18th - November 24th
/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
United States Enters a New Era of Direct Confrontation With Iran
Over the past few days, Iran has told international inspectors that it plans to begin making near bomb-grade nuclear fuel deep inside a mountain that is hard to bomb, and dramatically expand its nuclear fuel production at a plant that Israel and the United States have repeatedly sabotaged.
Iranian forces have shot or locked up antigovernment protesters, provided Russia with drones for its war in Ukraine and, some Western intelligence agencies suspect, may be negotiating to produce missiles as well for Russia’s depleted arsenal. The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of once again violating Iraqi territory to conduct attacks in the Kurdistan region.
A new era of direct confrontation with Iran has burst into the open. Its emergence was hidden for a while by more dramatic events — including the Ukraine invasion and rising U.S. competition with China — and negotiations with Tehran dragged on, inconclusively, for 18 months
Nuclear Accord
Iran starts enriching uranium to 60% purity at Fordow plant
Iran has begun enriching uranium to 60% purity at its Fordow nuclear plant and plans a vast expansion of its enrichment capacity, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday, detailing the latest acceleration of Iran's atomic program over Western objections.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was confirming Iranian reports of Tehran's step, taken in retaliation for the agency's criticism of Iran in a board of governors resolution last week.
While Iran is already enriching uranium up to 60% purity elsewhere, its decision to do so at Fordow is likely to be viewed by Western nations as particularly provocative because the site is buried under a mountain, making it harder to attack.
(Reuters)
Women of Iran
Iran’s women prisoners face down their inquisitors
The solitary cell in which the shah’s torturers incarcerated Iran’s future supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, for eight months in 1974 was 2.4 metres long by 1.6 metres wide. A thin strip of sunlight pierced his confines for a few minutes a day. The interrogation room lined with hooks for whips was along the corridor. “There were loud shouts, without exception,” he once recalled. Sometimes they were his. The experience might have induced a revulsion of torture. Sadly, too often, the abused become abusers
Inside Iran
How Iran’s Security Forces Use Ambulances to Suppress Protests
In early October, about a month into Iran’s anti-government protests, a Tehran resident reported seeing at least three protesters being shoved into an ambulance during a student-led demonstration. But the resident said the protesters did not appear to be injured.
Around the same time, Niki, a university student in Tehran, said she saw security forces using ambulances to detain protesters at an intersection.
“They grabbed people,” she said. “They put them in the ambulance, turned off the lights. There were lots of people in the back.” The ambulance then drove down the street, she said. “I didn’t see where they dropped off the people, but I saw that there were normal people inside, like young girls.”
Tehran Infighting Continues Amid Iran's Biggest Political Crisis
The ongoing nationwide uprising in Iran appears to have led to an escalation in confrontations among various ruling conservative and hardliner groups.
How to deal with the protests and solve the biggest crisis in the clerical regime’s 43-year history is one of the main subjects that divides Iran's conservatives who have already lost the nation's trust. They have been controlling all three branches of government for more than a year, with disastrous economic consequences.
Although Iran's situation is currently more serious to allow any room for factional infighting, the hardline conservatives who have refused any reforms during the past four decades, and the neo-cons who want to appear open to some changes, are currently at loggerheads.
Regional Politics
In Iraq’s Mountains, Iranian Opposition Fighters Feel the Squeeze
Sitting under an oak tree on a mountainside in the Kurdish region of Iraq, Mohammad Kurd said he recently fled neighboring Iran after two friends were killed by security forces and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps started going door to door to arrest antigovernment protesters.
His baggy khaki uniform, typical of Kurdish fighters, still looked new. In his thin coat, he shivered from the cold mountain air.
Mr. Kurd and a small number of others like him are the latest recruits of Komala, one of the armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups that have been based in the mountains of the Iraqi Kurdistan region for decades.
Global Relations
Iran soccer team silent during national anthem at its first World Cup game
Iran’s national men’s soccer team refused to sing the country’s national anthem at the World Cup in Qatar on Monday, in an apparent act of defiance against their government, which has become the target of growing and incendiary protests.
The team stood in a line with arms around one another's shoulders, before their opening match against England, but instead of singing the words, as is traditional, the players looked stony-faced and stared straight ahead.
England’s players, by contrast, sang a verse of their national anthem.
The moment was not shown on state TV in Iran.
(NBC News)
U.N. rights council votes to probe Iran's ongoing crackdown
The U.N. Rights Council voted on Thursday to appoint an independent investigation into Iran's deadly repression of protests, passing the motion to cheers of activists amid an intensifying crackdown in Kurdish areas over recent days.
Volker Turk, the U.N. rights commissioner, had earlier demanded that Iran end its "disproportionate" use of force in quashing protests that have erupted after the death in custody of 22-year old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16.
The protests have particularly focused on women's rights - Amini was detained by morality police for attire deemed inappropriate under Iran's Islamic dress code - but have also called for the fall of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
(Reuters)
‘Say her name, Mahsa Amini’: Iran protests arrive at World Cup
Chants of “Say her name, Mahsa Amini,” reverberated among protesters outside Khalifa International Stadium ahead of Iran’s first match of the World Cup 2022 against England.
A few dozen men, women and children were seen on Monday wearing t-shirts saying “Zan, Zindagi, Azadi” (women, life, freedom), a famous chant from the protests in Iran.
Protests have been taking place across Iran since mid-September after the death in custody of Amini, a 22-year-old woman from Iran’s Kurdistan province. Amini was arrested by the country’s morality police in the capital Tehran for allegedly not adhering to Iran’s dress code for women.
Analysis
Drone sales to Russia spark a debate in Iran
By: Javad Heiran-Nia
The revelation that Iran has sold drones to Russia that the latter is now using to attack Ukraine has touched off a debate about whether this growing closeness to Russia is in Iran’s national interest.
According to Realism, at a time of increasing polarization in the international system, small or medium-sized powers generally try to make coalitions with big powers in order to balance against rivals (external balancing), keep a safe distance from great powers, and avoid entering their conflicts. Based on this, Iranian reformists and even some conservatives have criticized the issue of delivering drones to Russia as undermining Iranian interests.
The drone sales have led to additional sanctions against Iran by the United States, Switzerland, and the European Union. They have also led some to accuse Iran of violating United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution 2231, which maintains restrictions on the export of Iranian missiles until 2023.
