Iran International
A hashtag created in the name of a young woman who went into a coma and died following her arrest by Iran's police this week has passed the 1.6 million mark.
Originally from Saqqez in Kurdistan Province, the 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, known as Zhina to family, collapsed at a detention center two hours after her arrest by a hijab enforcement patrol in Tehran. She passed away Friday afternoon at Kasra Hospital in northern Tehran due to severe brain injury.
A hospital source told Iran International Saturday evening that her brain tissue had been seriously damaged because of multiple blows to the head and there was no chance of surgery.
The hashtag’s popularity is only second to ‘Do Not Execute’ against the death penalty in 2020 which reached an staggering 10 million mark. the hashtag was first used to stop the execution of three young protesters in Iran.
Amini’s father speaking to Ham-Mihan newspaper denied various claims by Islamic Republic officials that his daughter’s death was caused by previous health conditions including epilepsy, hydrocephalus, and cardiovascular diseases.
Some women began cutting their hair as protest against forced hijab and posting the videos on social media.
According to Hengaw Human Rights Organization, a Kurdish rights group, the number of protesters wounded by security forces in Saqqez Saturday after the young woman’s burial has increased to thirty-three including a young man blinded by birdshots.
Iran’s exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi announced two days of public mourning in a statement, telling Iranians that they need to use their grief and anger to boost national solidarity against the Islamic Republic regime.
The former Crown Prince had issued a statement earlier calling the Islamic Republic “misogynistic” and asking Iranians to “stand up against this monstrosity.”
In July he had said that as long as Iranian women are not free, Iran will not be free, calling on men to be in the front lines in this struggle to support women in their struggle to reclaim their obvious and basic rights,” especially the freedom to choose what to wear.
Some Iranians consider Mr Pahlavi’s reaction inadequate in the circumstances and expect him to use his position which comes with some good degree of popularity to encourage action stronger than mere mourning.
“What is an announcement of two days of public mourning going to do for people mourning 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? It will be like pouring two cups of water in the sea. What are they supposed to do during the two days of mourning? Cry? Wail?” Arash Joudaki, essayist and philosophy professor in Belgium, tweeted Saturday, arguing that mourning decreases stamina for action against the regime. “Angry mourners must turn their grief and anger into a springboard for effective action!”
Joudaki replied to a comment from one of the supporters of the former Crown Prince who alleged he was “settling political scores” that he had no accounts to settle with the prince. Another Twitterati directly addressed Reza Pahlavi asking him why he has not been using public arenas to further the cause of the Iranian people. “Go lobby and make speeches at the UN. Aren’t allowed in the UN? Go make a speech in a university, or even in a cafe,” he wrote.
In a tweet Saturday, London-based journalist Pouria Zeraatisuggested that, if possible, businesses should go on strike, women should post their photos without hijab on social media, and people should put graffiti including Mahsa’s image and slogans against compulsory hijab on walls, and chant slogans on rooftops.
But as on previous occasions, the regime appears to be ready to crush protests using tens of thousands of anti-riot forces and armed civilian paramilitaries called the Basij. In nationwide protests in November 2019, these forces killed at least 1,500 unarmed protesters.
The spokesman of the ministry Nasser Kanaani told reporters in Tehran that agreements have been worked out between the sides “and now it is the decision of America whether this deal is implemented or not.” He was responding to a question whether the prisoner exchange scheme has been delayed because nuclear talks with the United States are stalled.
Kanaani did not give details of the prisoner exchange agreement he referred to.
Although both Iran and the United States have claimed that a prisoner exchange deal is not directly tied to the revival of the 2015 nuclear accord, the JCPOA, but indications are that the two issues are intricately connected.
In August, Iran International reported that Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri-Kani had given an off-the-record briefing to local reporters in Tehran about the outlines of a nuclear agreement drafted after 17 months of negotiations in Vienna.
He reportedly said that when a nuclear agreement is signed, and its implementation period begins Iran will release all US prisoners (hostages) once $7 billion worth of its assets frozen in South Korea are released. In fact, the issue of the $7 billion held by two South Korean banks due to US sanctions on Tehran, has been tied to the issue of hostages at least since last December.
Bagheri in his briefing also told reporters that Iran and the US had earlier agreed on this, but Washington reneged on its promise, assuming that the money will give Iran financial breathing room to raise new demands in the nuclear talks.
This does not sound too much off the mark, since US officials have been in frequent talks with South Korean diplomats since 2021, when the fate of the nuclear talks were still uncertain.
In early January, Choi Jong-kun, first vice foreign minister of South Korea visited the venue of the nuclear talks in Vienna and held meetings with various delegations in what was an attempt to untie knots in the talks. Seoul has no involvement in the nuclear dispute, except the $7 billion of Iranian money it holds. Other countries also have frozen Iranian funds.
South Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyundong visited Washington on Friday and met with top State Department officials, including US Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley. The US envoy tweeted, “We thank the Republic of Korea for their close partnership, including their efforts to help ensure the return of our wrongfully detained citizens in Iran and to reach a deal on JCPOA.”
It is not clear if the visit of the high-ranking Korean diplomat was mainly related to the Iran issue or the meeting with Malley was just one part of his visit, while other international issues such as tensions with China and the war in Ukraine were the main points of agenda for his visit.
The Biden Administration is under pressure to arrange the release of six American citizens and permanent residents held by Iran as of July. In addition there around 20 Western European citizens and residents also taken hostage since the JCPOA was signed in 2015.
But given widespread criticism of the administration’s policy to lift sanctions in order to restore some limits to Iran’s nuclear program, a hostage deal giving Iran $7 billion before a nuclear agreement would be politically costly for the Biden White House.
The EO evoked the 1976 National Emergencies Act and empowered the Secretary of State to “publicly or privately designate or identify officials of foreign governments who are involved, directly or indirectly, in wrongful detentions,.”
In an interview with ‘Washington Post live,’ Sherman, a deputy secretary of state, highlighted as an example of the ‘emergency’ Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s introduction of the ‘D’ notice as a warning to travelling Americans.
Sherman said the notice was applied to a country that was “using the detention, unjust detention of Americans as leverage, economic leverage, geopolitical leverage.” She insisted the Biden administration was committed to “bring Americans home who are wrongfully detained.”
Families of those detained in US allies like Egypt or Saudi Arabia have saidthe US approach – the ‘D’ notice applies to Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela – is based on politics rather than concern for detained Americans. One relative told the Guardian newspaper in June that Blinken was guilty of “hypocritical cherry-picking.”
Sherman, however, said the ‘D’ indicator was attached to “countries that unjustly detain Americans over a period of time or in numbers.”
“It’s not every American who might be jailed, because sometimes Americans do things that are illegal, that are crimes, and it is not an unjust detention,” she explained.“But we look at things like have they gotten a fair trial, a fair judicial process…”
International human rights organizations and UN experts have repeatedly said that Iran engages in systematic unlawful imprisonment of foreigners and dual-nationals as hostages to gain leverage against Western countries. Usually, Tehran demands the release of people convicted for terrorism or other unlawful acts benefitting the Islamic Republic.
‘Brutal meetings’
Sherman said that her contact with relatives of four Americans detained in Iran had been “brutal meetings,” as it had been with Christine Levinson, the Central Intelligence Agency contractor who disappeared in Kish Island, Iran, in 2007 and who Washington believes is dead.
As Irans' President Ebrahim Raisi is scheduled to arrive in New York soon to attend the United Nations General Assembly, two former hostages in Iran and an ex-political prisoner have announced they will launch a civil lawsuit againt him in the United States.
Sherman, who during the administration of President Barack Obama was actively involved in negotiations leading to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, defended the current administration’s approach to reviving the agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
Repeating the US assessment that Iran had given “a pretty tough response” in its latest input to negotiations mediated by the European Union, Sherman said President Joe Biden would “continue to look for ways to move forward as long as we believe that it makes sense to do so.”
The administration was “planning for any eventuality,” Sherman said. “Whether the deal happens or the deal doesn’t happen, the president still believes it is in our interest to pursue the deal, and we’ll continue to do so as long as that is the case.”
The deputy secretary of state insisted that efforts to bring home American detainees from Iran was “a very high priority, the highest priority in many ways.” It was not dependent on whether the JCPOA was revived or not, she said.