Multiple Challenges Show Disarray In Iranian Media, Politics

Residents of Khorramshahr and Behbahan, two other cities in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, took to the streets Thursday night, chanting slogans against the Islamic Republic.

The people of Shahinshahr in the central Esfahan province and Bandar Abbas in the southern province of Hormozgan also held protest rallies to show their solidarity with the people of Abadan, whose mourning ceremonies for the victims of the collapsed ten-story Metropol twin towers have turned into anti-government protests since Wednesday.

During the Thursday night protests in Abadan, people chanted slogans against the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself, saying “Khamenei is a murderer; his rule is illegitimate” despite the deployment of anti-riot police.

Iranians see the Metropol incident, with 24 people dead so far, the result of powerful insiders not abiding by laws and regulation and violating building codes, and accuse the authorities of letting Metropol owner flee Iran.

The government says the owner died in the collapse, but protesters say authorities are lying and the well-connected man has fled.

People in Khuzestan, Esfahan and Tehran are reporting serious disruption in their access to the internet amid ongoing protests to prevent uploading images of protests to social media.

Iran witnessed days of protests in May when the government raised food prices, with the overall political situation remaining tense.

Tasnim cited data from the health ministry dating back five years. The agency claimed that only ten of 1,000 abortions had been legal, with 93 percent of the women married and 7 percent single. A daily figure of 1,000 is half the 2,000 – or around 700,000 a year – claimed last year by Amirhossein Bankipour, head of the parliament’s population committee.

While figures on terminations are generally unreliable, the United Nations last year used government figures to estimate between 300,000 and 600,000 illegal abortions a year, even though the terms of a 1991 law allowing abortion to save the woman’s life had been gradually extended.

Despite a global inverse correlation between abortion and access to contraceptives, the Iranian parliament has passed legislation outlawing tubectomy, vasectomy, and the free dispensation of contraceptives other than where pregnancy would threaten a woman's health.

Supreme leader Ali Khamenei earlier this month said that efforts to increase Iran’s population – including legal measures and cultural work – were urgently required given the “dangers of an aging population.” Iran’s median age of 32, although around the same as Saudi Arabia and Israel, is higher than many Middle Eastern countries including Jordan at 24, Iraq at 21, and Afghanistan at 18.

“The unilateral cancelation of the Iran-Canada match by Canada Soccer once again showed that the motto of non-political athletics is a cover towards [realization of] Western countries’ interests,” Ehsan Kalhor, deputy sports minister, tweeted Thursday, adding that the Iranian Football Federation will pursue a $ 10 million compensation through legal channels based on its contract with Canada Soccer.

Kalhor’s response was made shortly after Canada Soccer announced, also in a tweet, that it had canceled the match which was planned to be held in Vancouver on June 5. Canada Soccer said additional details would be provided to all ticket purchasers later.

Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry, on Tuesday accused Canada of politicizing the upcoming match and said Canada Soccer would be held responsible for any violations of its agreement with Iran’s football federation if the match was canceled.

The match, which was part of the Canadian men’s team’s preparation for World Cup in Qatar later this year, was called off in the face of growing criticism of Canada Soccer by activists who allege that soccer in Iran is controlled by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).

Critics also say the IRGC was responsible for the death of their loved ones when it fired two missiles at a Ukrainian airliner over Tehran in January 2020. Of the 176 onboard, all of whom died in the crash, 55 were Canadians of Iranian origins and 30 more were permanent residents. Iran has not allowed an independent and transparent investigation into the crash in more than two years, claiming the missiles were fired “by human error”.

Since the disaster more than two years ago, Iran has refused full cooperation with countries affected by the incident, including Canada and Ulraine, and to conduct a transparent investigation, as well as a clear expalanation of who ordered the attack on the civilian airliner.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week said the invitations by Canada Soccer “wasn’t a very good idea”.

The Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims and its spokesman, Hamed Esmaeilion, who lost his wife and young daughter in the crash, spearheaded the call for the cancelation of the match.

Esmaeilion who called the Canadian invitation a “slap in the face” of everyone who has been affected by the tragic crash of Flight PS752 has welcomed Canada Soccer’s decision.

Speaking to Iran International Thursday, Javad Soleimani, who also lost his newly-wed wife Elnaz Nabi in the crash, said he was happy that the match was canceled because the match was designed by the Iranian side for “sportswashing” – using sports to improve a country’s tarnished reputation -- and “whitewashing [its] crime [of downing the plane].”

But not everyone condones the moves that led to the cancelation of the game. “This is an own goal for diaspora opposition groups. Politicizing sports and targeting people to people diplomacy will not result in peace, democracy or human rights. Banning Iranians because they are Iranian will only come back to haunt all of us,” President of the Washington-based National Iranian American Council (NIAC), Jamal Abdi, tweeted.

Ukraine’s ambassador-designate to Canada, Yulia Kovaliv has called on Canada Soccer to have a friendly match with Ukraine's soccer team instead. In a tweet Thursday, she said the $400,000 dollars which Canada Soccer had reportedly agreed to pay Iran’s football federation could then be used for humanitarian needs of Ukrainians affected by Russia's war. “I guess it’s win-win.”

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a Thursday interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria at World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in the Swiss city of Davos that the Islamic Republic still considers the removal of Western economic sanctions as a key stumbling block in the Vienna talks to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

He said from Tehran’s point of view, the administration of President Joe Biden is continuing Donald Trump's maximum pressure policy, stressing the need to lift the Trump administration’s sanctions in order to see progress at the talks.

He said Iran is “keeping the window of diplomacy open,” noting that delisting the IRGC is not the main snag hindering a deal as long as Iran is guaranteed economic benefits.

“In fact, the IRGC being on the US blacklist of terrorist groups is a secondary issue that has been magnified by the pro-Israeli lobby and our main priority is the interests of the Iranian nation,” Iran’s top diplomat said.

“Now, we have reached a point that if the American side makes a realistic decision, an agreement would be within reach,” he said, adding that “Zionists do not want an agreement in the Vienna talks... Zionists tell many lies about Iran’s nuclear issue, but Americans know exactly what they must do if they want to return to the JCPOA.”

Amir-Abdollahian’s statement about IRGC’s terror listing as a minor issue contradicts remarks by Iranian officials who have said Tehran’s demand to delist the entity is “red line”.

Fars news agency, close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, cited the Defense Ministry on Thursday that investigations into the cause of the Wednesday evening “industrial accident” were underway.

“On Wednesday evening, in an accident that took place in one of the research units of the Defense Ministry in the Parchin area, engineer Ehsan Ghadbeigi was martyred and one of his colleagues injured,” the ministry said.

The ministry did not elaborate on the accident or provide further details, but identified the engineer who died as Ehsan Ghadbeigi. IntelliTimes blog said that he specialized in mechanical engineering at Sheriff University and worked in materials-related fields, that could integrate with Iran's missile or nuclear programs.

Located 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Tehran, Parchin is a sensitive military site housing several industrial and research units, where Western security services believe Iran carried out tests related to nuclear bomb detonations more than a decade ago. It is also closely linked with the Khojir missile production complex.

The International Atomic Energy Agency previously said it suspected Iran conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons at the site.

In 2015, Tehran allowed the UN nuclear watchdog to take environmental samples at the military site to make an assessment of "possible military dimensions" of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Iran’s missile and space programs have suffered a series of mysterious explosions in recent years. In 2020, a giant explosion occurred in the area of Parchin at a gas storage facility, rattling the capital and sending a massive fireball into the sky near Tehran.

Iran has accused Israel of carrying out several attacks on facilities linked to its nuclear program and of killing its nuclear scientists over the past years.

Last April, Natanz nuclear facility in the central province of Esfahan was hit by what Iran described as "sabotage" a day after it unveiled feeding gas to several centrifuges. A blackout that seemed to have been caused by a deliberately planned blast hit the nuclear facility, causing damage to the electrical distribution grid.

Iranian officials, including the then-head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, as well as several Israeli media said this operation was a cyber-attack carried out by the Mossad intelligence service.

"Condemning this despicable move, the Islamic Republic of Iran emphasizes the need for the international community and the International Atomic Energy Agency to deal with this nuclear terrorism," Salehi said, adding that "Iran reserves the right to take action against the perpetrators."

Israel publicly rejected to confirm or deny any responsibility for the incident. The attack included a cyber-warfare known as the Olympic Games that involved the use of the Stuxnet computer virus, destroying hundreds of centrifuges.