Israel Military Chief Denounces Iran’s President For Doubting Holocaust

Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of hijab enforcement patrols, has shaken the country, with reports saying police forces fired at protesters in Divandarreh, where at least 10 people were injured, and Saqqez in the Kurdistan province on Monday. People in the capital Tehran and the central city of Esfahan (Isfahan) are also holding on-and-off protests with bouts of clashes with security forces. 

Business owners in the cities with large Kurdish populations such as Baneh, Marivan, her hometown Saqqez, and Kurdistan provincial capital have staged a general strike to protest the murder of Mahsa Amini, also known as Zhina, announcing that they will continue the strikes for several days despite warnings by the authorities. 

Videos sent to Iran International show police using tear gas against people while many citizens have opened the doors of their houses to shelter the protesters. 

In one video, a group of students stand outside the office of their university’s cleric, most probably the representative of the Supreme Leader at the university, chanting “Mullahs Must Get Lost” as the cleric is watching them through his window.

While authorities are lying about the circumstances of Mahsa Amini’s death and defending the Islamic religious patrols, Tehran’s “morality” police chief Colonel Mirzaei has been “suspended” until further investigation into Mahsa’s death. 

The medical documents and dozens of exclusive images sent to Iran International by a hacktivist group vividly show a skull fracture on the right side of her head caused by a severe trauma to the skull, which corroborate earlier accounts by her family and doctors about her being hit several times on the head, proving that the Iranian police's claim that she suffered a heart attack was untrue.

Images of her chest show bilateral diffuse alveolar hemorrhage and damage due to aspiration pneumonia, secretion retention and superimposed infection. Doctors say the results are compatible with acute respiratory distress syndrome due to brain trauma.

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The 22-year-old woman’s death in custody by the hijab police has led to indignation among Iranians and several anti-regime protests in different cities.

A source from the hospital where she died told Iran International on Saturday that her brain tissue was crushed after "multiple blows" to the head, adding that Amini was taken to Kasra Hospital in capital Tehran while she was not responsive and brain dead.

The source added that her lungs were filled with blood when she was transferred to the hospital and it was clear that she “could not be revived." 

This source emphasized that Mahsa's condition "was such that she could not be saved nor was surgery possible because her brain tissue was seriously damaged and it was clear that the patient was not injured by a single punch and must have received many blows to her head."

Asked by Leslie Stahl if he regrets his role in a death commission that executed up to 5,000 political prisoners, Raisi simply answered that they were “terrorists.”

“They were assassinating people and what happened to them was exactly proportionate to what they did,” the Iranian president said.

Most of the prisoners were young members of the Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) group that participated in the 1979 revolution and supported the establishment of the Islamic Republic but soon began opposing the clerics who took full control of the new government.

The organization did engage in acts of terror against officials, but the prisoners who were summarily executed had already received prison sentences and were serving their jail terms.

The United States has sanctioned Raisi and other members of the governing elite for human rights violations, but the Biden Administration decided to issue a visa to the Raisi to go the New York for the United Nations General Assembly starting this week.

American Iranians are preparing for a protest outside the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday when Raisi is scheduled to speak. This is his first visit to a Western country as president and first UN appearance. He said in the interview that he will not meet or speak with President Joe Biden. “I don’t think to meet with him or have a discussion would be beneficial.”

According to Iran International’s correspondent, Lapid reiterated during the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that the US and Israel do not “necessarily agree on the need for a credible military threat against Iran at the present time.”

“We came and asked to introduce a credible military threat during President Biden’s [July] visit,” Lapid said, adding that “We want the basis [for world power’s negotiations with Iran] to be a credible military threat. We didn’t necessarily agree on this with the Americans.”

He noted that he “made it clear to the president and his team that Israel opposes the nuclear deal and maintains complete freedom to act, diplomatically and operationally, in the face of the Iranian nuclear program.”

Israel has recently announced that it will try until the very last moment to make the United States reject the nuclear deal. 

Lapid had earlier said that Israel is leading “an intensive campaign” meant to prevent the signing of “a dangerous” nuclear deal between Iran and world powers but not to the point of rupture.

Earlier in the month, Mossad chief David Barnea said he shared "sensitive intelligence materials" with heads of CIA, FBI, Pentagon and other top officials to warn US against being cheated by the Islamic Republic’s lies. 

"Your daughter and all Iranian girls are my own children, and my feeling about this incident is like losing one of my own dear ones," Raisi’s office quoted him as telling the Aminis, promising them to carefully deal with the "incident".

“I was informed of this incident when I was on a trip to Uzbekistan [to attend the latest Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit]. I immediately ordered my [administration] to investigate this as a special case,” he said, adding that “Rest assured will demand the relevant state bodies to follow up on this case until all its aspects come into light.”

The 22-year-old Mahsa Amini who was arrested on Tuesday by the morality police and was taken to hospital two hours later after losing consciousness. She passed away Friday afternoon at Kasra Hospital in Tehran from severe damage to her brain.

Hospital staff told Iran International that Amini received repeated blows to her head and was near death when she was brought in.

Numerous condemnations and protests are still following Amini’s death, with many state officials calling for the elimination of the hijab enforcement patrols. 

Masoumeh Ebtekar, former President Hassan Rouhani's vice president for women and family affairs, said on Sunday that the previous administration tried to cancel the patrols, but hardliners in the country did not allow it.