Pompeo Joins Pressure Campaign To Block Iranian President’s Visit To UN

According to Shargh daily in Tehran, a data analysis by Mohamad Rahbari indicates that numerous reports about the success or failure of negotiations have pushed social media users back and forth between hope and despair in the past 18 months. The report suggests that in recent weeks, despite more optimism surrounding the revival of the JCPOA, Iranian social media users have become less sensitive to news about the talks.

But the report does not cite figures from the past about the degree of interest in JCPOA to substantiate its claim of declining interest.

Iranian Twitter users posted some 22,000 tweets about the JCPOA from August 6-13. The data collected by Rahbari suggests that there was a rise in attention to the issue until Tuesday, August 9, followed by a decline. But as more optimistic reports started to come in, the number of tweets reached a peak of nearly 4,000 on August 13.

The report added that nonetheless, the JCPOA was not the top issue for Twitter users. A review of other political and economic reports during the week showed that a statement issued by former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, which challenged Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's authority, caught the most attention and the JCPOA was the second most important news. 

While there were 22,000 tweets about the JCPOA, the Mousavi story generated 31,000 posts, and the Rushdie attack 15,000.

Meanwhile, although there were more tweets about the JCPOA than those about the assassination attempt on British author Salman Rushdie, the posts about Rushdie received more "likes" than those about the JCPOA.

Things, however, were different on Telegram channels where the news about the JCPOA attracted far more attention than the stories about Mousavi or Rushdie. Nonetheless, there were many more posts about the exchange rate of Iran’s currency, as the rial began to rise against the US dollar.

Here, the JCPOA was the subject of 53,000 posts, forex 95,000, with the rest below 20,000 each.

On the other hand, trends in Google searches which reflect people's preoccupations and questions more accurately, indicate that users showed the least degree of interest to the JCPOA and its revival. In other words, there were more searches about Salman Rushdie (yellow graph), subsidies (purple), Mousavi (red), and Forex and gold (green) than about the JCPOA and its revival (blue) [Figure 4]. This shows that a large number of Iranians who use Google search, were far less sensitive about the JCPOA than about other matters.

The research observed that most of the tweets about the JCPOA were not indicative of users' sensitivity to the matter. Instead, they mainly contained jokes about the negotiations. This was more evident in tweets that had received the largest number of "likes."

In the most popular tweet of this kind which received 3,476 "likes," user Massoud Saeedi, who pretended to be an Iranian government official wrote: "The text of the JCPOA had some problems we will not tell you about. We prepared a better text that you should not know about. However, we insisted on some conditions that we are not going to tell you about. Now an unidentified group of experts are reviewing the text, but we are not going to share with you the results of this review. You just need to know that we are better than the previous government."

The second most popular tweet observed that "The winner of the negotiations was the hotel that was the venue of the talks."

The report concluded that the reasons for the decline in sensitivity about the JCPOA include the extraordinarily prolonged duration of the talks and the attacks made on the deal during recent years by its Iranian and foreign opponents. Some Iranians may have concluded that the JCPOA may not be able to solve their problems.

Referring to ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, Haley said the US should, “not shake hands and do a deal with him” as he is “openly trying to execute Americans on our soil.”

She echoed similar remarks by advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which called for designating Khamenei as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under US Executive Order 13224 and other international terrorism authorities.

Underlining that Khamenei is the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Armed Forces, and the country’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) as well as directly in charge of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, the UANI said since Khamenei became supreme leader, the Islamic Republic has “taken multiple foreign citizens hostage,” "ordered terrorist attacks.

UANI mentioned the bombings of Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) and Khobar Towers,” and "attempted mass casualty attacks in Europe where Americans were present,” referring to the failed bombing plot at a gathering of the Albania-based opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MEK). 

The group also referred to plotted assassinations and attacks against current and former US and foreign officials, including former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and former US Special Envoy for Iran Brian Hook, as well as inciting assassinations and abductions against US citizens and permanent residents, including author Salman Rushdie, and Iranian American dissident Masih Alinejad.

Nearly 20 workers at Iran’s AzarAb Industries Construction company – which employs more than 2,500 people – were suspended from work for one year, and a local court sentenced them to 30 lashes, and three months imprisonment over their participation in a protest in late May. 

The workers of the company say their salaries have been paid regularly in the past two months but there is no stability in the managerial team and they keep changing. 

Iranian workers and pensioners have been holding regular nationwide protests during the past months to demand better work conditions and higher salaries on par with the increasing prices of essential foods and other commodities. 

On August 9, Iranian pensioners held another round of demonstrations in protest to the government’s decision to a 10-percent increase in payments while the inflation rate stands at 55 percent, denouncing the government's move to ignore decrees by the Supreme Labor Council, which had stipulated a 38-percent increase in the minimum wage.

Amid a dire economic situation in Iran that has been worsening in recent months, at least 10 workers have committed suicide in the last three months due to dismissal from their jobs and "livelihood problems".

With food prices rising faster after four years of United States’ ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Iranian workers and retirees have been holding regular protests or strikes to demand higher salaries. In June, Iran’s currency fell to a historic low of 333,000 rials to the US dollar.

In a letter addressed to the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, former officials pointed out that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has twice before “directly or indirectly” stopped the proposed legislation and asked Ghalibaf to remove it from the parliament’s agenda.

The signatories of the letter protested that a provision in the law would set up a clerical council within the central bank that would supersede all other decision-making mechanisms and in fact would set monetary policy. This they argued, would strip the bank of its ability to professionally execute its duties as the guardian of the national currency and protector of the country’s monetary stability.

The letter which was released to the media this week argued that the proposed legislation focuses on transformation of the central bank's structure and monetary policies and fails to offer any new solutions or initiatives that could satisfy high-ranking religious authorities’ and the people’s demand for the elimination of interest and resolving the problem of riba.

Riba, a concept meaning usury or charging unreasonably high-interest rates, is prohibited under Sharia law. Lending money, according to Sharia, should be a charitable act with no interest involved, rather than making profit for the bank that could lead to exploitation and loansharking.

However, this religious concept is incompatible with modern economic realities and bank interests are not only common in Iran but sometimes quite high.

“The purpose of [establishing] clerical councils in [banks in] all Islamic countries is supervising the execution of Islamic-type contracts and elimination of interest from financial and credit facilities, not setting monetary, financial, and economic policies and [dealing with the issues] of inflation and liquidity,” the letter to the parliament speaker said.

The letter was signed by over 130 former officials including former central bank governors Akbar Komijani, Mahmoud Bahmani, Valiollah Seif, Tahmasb Mazaheri, and Mohammad Hossein Adeli, spanning three decades, as well as former bank board members and executives of other state and private banks.

The former banking officials also suggested that the central bank be given 18 months to come up with its own solutions and propose any required legislation through the government.

In recent years the CBI has lost its professional independence, being forced by government to print money and create a huge money supply that has led to 54-percent inflation rate.

After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Iranian banking system was altered to accommodate Islamic laws, particularly the ban on interest. Since then, authorities have resorted to various solutions to justify paying and charging interest without being accused of riba.

One of the solutions that banking authorities and high-ranking clerics agreed on was to redefine the contract between the bank and the individual or company taking a loan to conform with the Islamic notion of Murabahah which means cost-plus financing as well as other similar contracts.

In Murabahah contracts, the two sides agree to the cost and markup of the loan, which in essence is interest coated with religious jargon.

Besides banks and finance and credit institutions, there are also Islamic non-profit granting funds in Iran called Gharzolhasaneh (no-interest charity) funds.

All Iranian banks charge interest that is approved by the Central Bank at least once a year in proportion to the inflation rate and demand high value collateral items such as real estate.

According to a New York Post interview published on Wednesday, Hadi Matar said he had only "read a couple pages" of Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" and that a tweet in the winter announcing the author's visit to the Chautauqua Institution gave him the idea of going there.

Rushdie has lived with a bounty on his head since "The Satanic Verses" published in 1988 prompted Khomeini to issue a fatwa urging Muslims to kill him.

"I respect the Ayatollah. I think he's a great person. That's as far as I will say about that," the Post cited Matar as saying in a video interview from the Chautauqua County Jail.

"I don't like him very much," Matar said of Rushdie, adding that "He's someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems."

Some Western politicians and media have said that Iran's death fatwa against Rushdie makes it responsible for the incident and the United States should not continue nuclear talks with Tehran.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman on Monday, August 15, denied any links with the 24-year-old who stabbed the 75-year-old Indian-born author on August 12.

Vice News reported on Sunday, August 14, that according to European and Middle Eastern intelligence sources, Matar had been in contact with elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), a charge Matar denied. Matar was charged with attempted murder on Saturday.