Leader’s Representative Calls On IRGC To Train More Fierce Forces

The announcement by the ministry came as Masoud Younesian, the secretary of the epidemiology and research committee of the national taskforce to combat coronavirus, said on Sunday that two new subvariant of Omicron, namely BA4 and BA5 -- which started in the African continent -- may soon prevail over the country. 

He added vaccines are less effective against the new subtypes, which have also been increasing in other countries around the world. 

Younesian expressed worries about a new wave of the pandemic in the country, saying that now it is not far from the expectation that Iran’s daily infection numbers will reach four digits, and double-digit deaths are also a possibility. 

According to the official data, about 20 to 25 percent of people in the country did not receive covid vaccines at all, and between 30 to 35 percent only got one dose. 

The number of deaths in Iran since Covid-19 began has been 300,000 higher than in previous years, suggesting pandemic deaths may be more than officially reported.

Iran has reported around 141,000 deaths from Covid since the beginning of the pandemic, the Middle East’s highest official level, leaving 160,000 more deaths unexplained.

Responding to allegations that test questions were leaked and sold for huge amounts of money, Abdolrasoul Purabbas, head of the higher education ministry’s evaluation organization (Sazeman-e Sanjesh), swore in a program broadcasted by the state-run television (IRIB) on Saturday that corruption in holding the exams was not true.

Social media users posted images of test booklets half an hour after the exams started to prove that they had leaked out, but Purabbas insisted that nobody could have accessed the test questions. According to him 480 participants who had attempted to use digital equipment to receive the answers to the multiple-choice test questions from outside were arrested.

Around a million young men and women sat for the annual university entrance exams known as Concours from Wednesday to Friday to compete for available places in universities and colleges across the country but some of them, apparently, already had the questions and knew the correct answers.

A Telegram social media channel on Friday published the test questions half an hour after the exam started as proof that they had leaked. Many claim that the questions, and answers, had been sold to those who could afford paying between $10,000-20,000 to get placement in top universities. Those who fail, or are not accepted in their preferred universities, have to wait for another year to take the Concours again.

The figures mentioned in local media are huge sums in Iran where the middle class has become impoversihed due to years of 40-50 percent inflation. The scandal has further tarnished the image of the clerical government, which has already lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of the public.

The Concours (from French, meaning competition) which is held only once a year across the country is designed to test a candidate's ability to study in college, with questions based on Iran’s high-school curriculum. It is recognized by all Iranian state universities as well as the Islamic Azad University which has branches all over the country.

Allegations of corruption in holding the Concours are not new. This year authorities said they had taken extra measures, including shutting down the Wifi and mobile internet around the exam locations during the several-hour-long exams. Candidates were also searched before the exam and signal detectors were used to ensure they were not using digital equipment such as mobile phones or Bluetooth to cheat.

Several lawmakers have demanded a probe into the recurring issue of leakage and selling of Concours questions and graduate school entrance tests which are also held at a national level.

A member of the parliament’s education committee, Mehrdad Veys-Karami, told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) on Saturday that there are organized criminal groups that help candidates to cheat in return for huge sums. It is not clear who leaks the questions and how payment is exchanged.

Veys-Karami urged the authorities to take precautions such as frequent moving of those involved in the process of preparation and distribution of the test questions to prevent any chances of fraud.

The Concours is held in five major groups (mathematics and physics, experimental sciences, humanities, arts, and foreign languages). All participants are also required to sit for tests in Persian literature, Islamic studies and culture, as well as Arabic and English languages.

The supreme cultural revolution council decided last year that from this year the score in the Concours would make up 40 percent of the final score to be admitted to university, with the remaining 60 percent coming from the high school average grade point.

In response to a query by Iran International, the spokesman of the Belgian Federal public service of Justice, Edward Landtsheere, said on Sunday that the draft law, slated to be reviewed by the foreign affairs committee of parliament on Tuesday consists of three bills that stipulate a prisoner exchange agreement with India, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as well as Iran. 

Critics say the bill’s approval would pave the way for the repatriation of Asadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat serving a 20-year sentence in Belgium for “attempted murder and involvement in terrorism” for his role plotting to bomb a gathering of the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) near Paris in 2018.

The ministry’s response seemed an evasive answer to a question if Assadi will be freed as a result of the proposed bill. Obviously, the bill is not intended for a specific person but it could end in repatriating the convicted former diplomat to Iran where he will most probably go free.

Although some activists, such as Oxford-based human rights lawyer Kaveh Moussavi, are of the opinion that the bill will not lead to Asadi’s release because such a move will be against a dozen international treaties to combat terrorism, there are Belgian politicians, such as representatives Theo Francken, Michael Freilich and Darya Safai who have warned of the dangers of the deal. 

On Saturday, A US lawmaker also warned of “immanent dangers” of such a deal.

Mario Abdo Benítez said in a press conference on Friday that a “large number” of Venezuelan-Iranian crew of the plane immobilized at Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires over suspected connections with Iran's Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force have “links to international terrorism.”

"Since Paraguay informed and alerted the authorities, they were able to make enquiries and we saw that a large part of the crew [made up of Iranians and Venezuelans] had links to international terrorism," he said. 

He added that one of the Boeing 747’s crew members had "even had an operation to change his face in Cuba,” admitting that the allegation is like something out of “a film.”

In June, Gerardo Milman, an Argentine lawmaker, told Iran International that Iranians aboard the Venezuelan plane planned “attacks on human targets.”

Contrary to Iran’s claim June 13 that the plane was not owned by an Iranian company and that any Iranians aboard were instructors, Milman said the pilot was “a senior official of Qods (Quds) force,” Tehran’s extraterritorial intelligence and secret ops outfit listed as a terrorist organization by the United States. 

Earlier in June, Paraguay's intelligence agency said Captain Gholamreza Ghasemi did not merely share a name with a member of the group but is in fact the same man.

The hacking group, reportedly affiliated with the Albania-based opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) group, said on Sunday that they put photos of the leaders of the group Massoud and Maryam Rajavi on the organization’s website.

The website of the organization, run under the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, is down at the moment, therefore it is not clear for how long it was displaying photos of the MEK leaders and slogans in support for the group. 

The hacktivist group said that it has also disabled six websites and systems, 44 servers and two internal administrative systems of the state organization. 

In a video released by the hackers, they claimed they have obtained 200,000 documents, including letters and directives from secret correspondence with the president’s office, identities of the organization’s employees abroad, and list of the incomes of its personnel. 

In early June, the group hacked into and deactivated over 5,000 surveillance cameras and 150 websites and online services of Tehran Municipality.

Last week, a hacking group called Predatory Sparrow targeted three of Iran’s major steel plants by a cyberattack, purportedly forcing one of them to halt production.

The Sunday cyberattack came a few days after Israel -- which is widely believed to have waged cyber war against Iran's nuclear facilities and other infrastructure -- confirmed that an Iranian hacker group has recently targeted several travel booking sites of an Israeli company and stolen personal information of more than 300,000 Israelis.