Iran’s Top Military Brass Issue Threats To World

The Saudi-owned Elaph news site quoted an unnamed Israeli military official as saying any move by Tehran to send weapons to Syria will be met with military response by the IDF "without hesitation.” 

“There is information indicating that Iran will take advantage of the tragic situation in Syria” and ship weapons to the Hezbollah terror organization and other Iran-backed groups in Syria, the source said, adding that Israel would not accept this and it would result in a “firm military response from us without hesitation.”

Several Iranian cargo planes reportedly carrying aid have landed in Syria since Monday’s major earthquake in southeast Turkey, that has killed more than 20,000 people in both countries as of Thursday evening.

Esmail Ghaani, who heads Iran’s Revolutionary Guard extraterritorial Quds Force, was seen in Aleppo on Wednesday to supervise Iranian rescue operations.

Several airstrikes against alleged Iranian weapons shipments disguised as seemingly harmless products have been attributed to Israel in recent years, including last month.

Israeli air strikes targeting Iran-linked assets in Syria focused on airports as the Islamic Republic is trying to step up its presence while Russia is entangled in Ukraine.

Israeli and American officials have reportedly made a deal to cooperate over covert and semi-covert operations inside Iran. 

Late in January, a drone attack hit a military factory in the central city of Esfahan. Blaming Israel, Tehran vowed revenge for the latest episode in a long-running covert war.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna conveyed her country’s position to her US counterpart Anthony Blinken, France's Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

The French Foreign Ministry said Colonna and Blinken had spoken by phone on Thursday, during which they discussed an array of topics, including Ukraine and Iran.

"The minister mentioned Iran's destabilizing activities and the increasing threat posed by the increase of its ballistic missiles arsenal, the proliferation of missiles including towards non-state actors (...) and the need to strengthen the international response to this threat," said the ministry, regarding Colonna's talks with Blinken.

They also discussed the need for Iran to fully co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which said last week Tehran was inconsistent in meeting its nuclear obligations.

Nuclear negotiation between the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany, and Iran reached a stalemate in September and since then tensions have increased as the West has imposed new sanctions on Tehran. There have been reports that the US and France are keen to demand a new agreement with Iran surpassing nuclear issues.

Iran's supply of kamikaze drones to Russia is another key issue for Europe, as there are reports that Moscow has requested ballistic missiles from Tehran to augment its dwindling arsenal.

United States sanctions on oil exports, Iran’s main source of income, continue with Tehran shipping half as much oil as in the pre-sanction era and selling the oil at a steep discount.

Mojtaba Amiri a top official of tax administration was quoted by the official government news website IRNA as saying that in the first 10 months of current Iranian year, 3,880 trillion rials of all types of taxes have been collected. This would be in the range of $12-13 billion depending on how the exchange rate is calculated.

The government decided last year to boost tax revenues to offset its large chronic budget deficit in the absence of oil sufficient oil income. Iran needs around $50-60 billion in oil exports to balance its budget. Official figures indicate $37 billion of exports, while the reported steep discounts Iran offers to entice buyers cast doubt on the figure.

Amiri said that about two-thirds of tax revenues came from direct taxes, meaning income and business taxes and one third form “indirect taxes”, which could mean import, export and sales taxes.

He also claimed that tax collection targets were met by 113 percent, but earlier reports indicted a 60-percent tax collection success.

Amid a serious economic crisis, more taxes mean an additional burden on citizens and businesses, while major economic enterprises controlled by regime insiders are legally exempt from taxes.

Next years budget starting March 21 relies even more heavily on tax income.

The decision came at a time when Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was planning his trip to Washington to meet President Joe Biden, sources told Reuters.

On January 13, Brazil granted permission for the IRIS Makran & IRIS Dena ships to dock in Rio's port during January 23-30, according to a post in the official government gazette.

That window has been scrapped, with the ships now authorized to dock between February 26 and March 3, the Brazil's foreign ministry said.

In the meantime, Iranian state media was presenting the scheduled docking of the two ships as a sign of Islamic Republic’s power and influence in America’s backyard.

A US official with direct knowledge of the situation said the prospect of Iranian warships in Rio ahead of Lula's meeting with Biden on Friday "was something unpleasant we wanted to avoid."

"There were a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations about this at many different levels," the official said, adding it was good news that the dates would no longer coincide.

A Brazilian military source confirmed that the federal government, via the foreign ministry, had shifted the dates and blocked the Iranian ships from docking.

"It's true that there was a veto (from the government)," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The Iranian ships could not come during this period."

Diplomacy with Iran was one of the policies of Lula's previous presidential mandate, and he has declared neutrality in the Ukraine conflict.

In comments on Thursday, outspoken Sunni religious leader Mowlavi Abdolhamid praised Mousavi’s proposal and described it as the result of his understanding about the realities of society, demanding that other politicians see these realities.

“With his recent statement, Mousavi showed that he understood the realities of society. It's time for other politicians and ulema (religious scholars) to think about saving the country and see the facts,” he said. In November, the top Sunni cleric himself had called for an internationally monitored plebiscite, saying that by killing and repression the government cannot push back a nation.

Abdolhamid also criticized over a decade of house arrest imposed on Mousavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard, and Former Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, calling it an example of the Islamic Republic’s injustice. 

Mousavi and Karroubi both were presidential candidates in 2009, when a highly disputed vote count gave the presidency to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad triggering large popular protests that became known as the Green Movement. Eventually, both Mousavi and Karroubi were put under house arrest in 2011.

Referring to the regime’s violent crackdown on protesters, Mousavi said in his statement that such events have “demonstrated major truths for the nation.” The rulers of the Islamic Republic are not willing “to take the smallest step to meet the demands of the people.” Iran needs a“fundamental change” based on “Woman, Life, Freedom” and constitutional change, he said earlier in the month.

The leader of the Green Movement is known as a staunch reformist, or someone who believes the Islamic Republic can be reformed to become a more democratic and tolerant polity. But Mousavi’s statement rejected reform as a viable alternative, urging fundamental change, a new constitution and a constitutional assembly. Although he did not openly call for regime change, but his demands, if implemented, could lead to a new and democratic political system.

Mousavi in his statement implicitly repeated what exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi has been saying for years, and other opposition activists have echoed in the past five months – transition from the Islamic Republic.

Abdolhamid who has become an outspoken critic of the regime, has stopped short of calling for a new system of government, but endorsing Mousavi’s statement clearly aligns him with political forces that believe the people should be given a chance to decide what kind of government they want.

The 2009 Green Movement leader’s rejection of the reform option in the Islamic Republic has been met with admiration and antipathy alike. Some reformists, including seven prominent political prisoners and over a dozen figures of the ‘religious intellectual movement’, and its mentor Abdolkarim Soroush, have welcomed his proposal, others have strongly rejected it. The political prisoners, including leading reformist politician, Mostafa Tajzadeh and the daughter of Iran former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Faezeh Hashemi, who are behind bars, announced that "they will do their best to advance this proposal and a peaceful and non-violent transition to a completely democratic and developed Iranian structure." 

Mousavi’s volte-face can be seen as a milestone in the reformist camp as another bigwig of the movement former president Mohammad Khatami also believes reformism in Iran has reached a deadlock. Mohammad Javad Haqshenas, a prominent reformist figure, said earlier this week that Khatami's statement, which was issued on the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, should be construed as a premonition for the regime that the Islamic Republic cannot be reformed. 

February 11, 2023, marks the forty-fourth anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and many people on social media believe that it is the last time the regime is celebrating the event.