Israel Hits Damascus, Aleppo Airports In Iran-Related Attacks

One of them said that he saw two people beating up a cleric he knew with metal pipes and when the attackers saw him looking from his car they started beating him too and broke his cars windows. The clerics are prayer imams at two mosques

The second cleric who has lighter injuries criticized the city’s police for showing up very late -- after about 40 minutes – and for not arresting the perpetrators despite the fact that they knew where they were hiding. 

It is not clear if the attackers knew the first victim and if they attacked him for a personal reason.

Several Iranian clerics have come under attack by angry Iranians recently as rising prices and constant protests have led to a tense environment in the country.

Late in July, a cleric named Mojtaba Hosseini was stabbed several times in his back during his sermon in the city of Karaj in Western Tehran. And earlier in July, a congregational prayer imam was injured in an assassination attempt by an assailant on a motorcycle in the city of Esfahan.

In early June, the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader in the central city of Esfahan was also attacked by a young man carrying a knife. And in April, a man stabbed three clerics in Iran's largest Shiite shrine in Mashhad, killing two.

Nouri said that the revision of textbooks and educational content will be carried out for the next academic year in 2023 because the books were being printed when the order was issued.

About 200 titles of books from all grades of elementary to high school have been sent for revision, he said, adding that some of them will be revised by the professors at the Farhangian teacher training university and some by the country's educational research and planning organization. 

Earlier in the year, Ali Khamenei said that the content of some schoolbooks that is not practical and does not benefit the students should be removed. 

In the last few years, some changes and edits in students’ textbooks, including removal of an illustration of some girls from the cover of the third-grade math book and adding anti-American and pro-Russia materials, led to controversy among Iranians. 

A conscious ‘Islamization’ of primary, middle and high school books started soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The process has applied to literature, art and all illustrations in the teaching of history. Last year textbooks were revised to play down historical rivalry between Iran and Russia, particularly in the 18th and early 19th century, reflecting Tehran’s current desire for closer relations with Moscow.

President Ebrahim Raisi has also permanently cancelled the implementation of UNESCO 2030, a United Nations document calling for gender equality in education that Khamenei had suspended in 2017. Former President Hassan Rouhani’s administration had adopted the document as a UN member state and was planning its implementation when hardliners lobbied Khamenei to suspend it.

In a new report, titled 'They don’t treat us like humans,' Amnesty released documents of numerous instances -- mostly at Iran border -- where security forces have shot directly at the refugees as they climbed over walls or crawled under fences to prevent their entry or forcibly return them to face life-threatening risks under the Taliban regime, in violation of international law.

Highlighting their plight, the report said the migrants are poor and lack passports or other valid travel documents, therefore they are especially vulnerable to border police who use threats or outright violence to keep them out. 

It added that Afghans who do manage to enter Iran or Turkey are routinely arbitrarily detained and subjected to torture, with a total of 11 killings by Iranian security forces. Although the true death toll is likely to be significantly higher, the Amnesty said.

“One year after the end of airlift evacuations from Afghanistan, many of those left behind are risking their lives to leave the country – Afghans who have travelled to the Iranian and Turkish borders over the past year, in search of safety, have instead been forcibly returned under fire. We documented how Iranian security forces have unlawfully killed and injured dozens of Afghans since last August, including by firing repeatedly into packed cars,” said Marie Forestier, researcher on refugee and migrants rights.

Hundreds of thousands fled Afghanistan in August 2021 after the US left the country in a chaotic military pullout, allowing the hardline Taliban Islamists to retake control.

Yuliya Leonidivna Klymenko, a member of the liberal party, told Iran International that she was “deeply shocked and saddened" by the fact that Iran sent drones to Russia to be used in its invasion of Ukraine. 

US Defense Department spokesperson Todd Breasseale said on Tuesday that Russia has faced "numerous failures" with Iranian-made drones acquired from Tehran this month, adding that the United States assesses Russia has received the delivery of Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over several days this month. "We assess that Russia intends to use these Iranian UAVs, which can conduct air-to-surface attacks, electronic warfare, and targeting, on the battlefield in Ukraine," the official said.

Iran is a close ally of Russia and its ruler Ali Khamenei openly praised Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.

In July, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters the US has information that shows Iran is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred drones.

The Biden administration last month released satellite imagery indicating that Russian officials visited Kashan Airfield on June 8 and July 5 to view the Iranian drones.

Iran's foreign minister, Hossein-Amir Abdollahian, never denying these reports, said last month that Tehran had "various types of collaboration with Russia, including in the defense sector."

In response to a question about earlier remarks by the country’s foreign ministry spokesman, who had expressed Iran’s readiness for prisoner swaps as part of the agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, he did not rule out such a possibility. 

“We have a duty to follow up on the problems of our citizens anywhere in the world and support them, but relations between countries can be very effective in this field. The level of relationships and the quality of relationships are effective in this field,” he said.

He noted that such exchanges work much more easily with Islamic countries and neighboring countries, especially with countries with whom Tehran has agreements in this regard, but “these relations and contracts do not exist with a country like the United States, and things must be done diplomatically.”

Earlier in the month, foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Iran is ready for swift agreements for prisoner swaps with the US, regardless of the result of talks to restore the JCPOA.

A few days earlier, the spokesman for the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Relations Committee Mahmoud Abbaszadeh Meshkini said, "I don't know specifically whether there is going to be an exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States, but in international relations this is customary and it is not unusual for some prisoners to be exchanged between the two countries.”