Iran International
A group of female political prisoners in Tehran’s Evin Prison staged a sit-in to protest recent executions, saying the regime wants to frighten people into submission.
“The regime is taking revenge for the revolutionary movement by executing and killing people,” human rights activist Narges Mohammadi told inmates who gathered Saturday evening at the courtyard of the women’s ward to protest the execution of three political prisoners in Esfahan Friday.
Mohammadi argued that unlike the 1980s when the regime executed thousands of political prisoners to establish and stabilize its tyranny, the recent executions will only strengthen the people’s determination to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaghoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi were handed down the death sentence in a trial condemned as a travesty of justice by human rights campaigners, who say the prisoners were tortured into confessions, and there is no reliable evidence against them.
The three men were convicted over the death of two IRGC’s Basij militia members and a police officer during protests last November in Esfahan. Leaked audio from police radio chatter from the night the three regime agents were killed indicates that they were shot by friendly fire of plainclothes forces. The accused even had alibis for the time the agents were killed, with the family of one of the victims claiming there was CCTV video footage of their son at work.
Friday's executions brought to at least seven the number of protesters hanged since the beginning of the nationwide protests last September, which turned into one of the boldest challenges to the clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution. The protests were ignited by Mahsa Amini's death in the custody of Iran's morality police.
“Execution and taking people’s lives has turned into a despicable everyday practice in the Islamic Republic,” Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said at the same gathering. “Execution of three protesters in Esfahan [last week], two in Tehran [in December], executions of 209 in five months, 580 in one year, 14 executions in one day, 22 executions in two weeks…,” she went on to say.
Hashemi accused the regime of using executions to “shut the mouths of critics and dissidents and to escape accountability over the appalling situation in the country” and it also signals the regime’s fear of the people.
She denounced executions “under any pretext, including for impertinence against the prophet, insult against sanctities, taking up arms against the regime, blasphemy, corruption on earth and even for drug trafficking” because, she said, “justice has been taken to the slaughterhouse”.
Hashemi, a former lawmaker who launched Zan daily for women during the presidency of reformist President Mohammad Khatami in late 1990s, is an outspoken critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Activists and politicians at home and abroad, as well as family members of protesters killed by the regime have extensively condemned the recent executions. Several neighborhoods in the capital Tehran, Esfahan and in a few other cities were scenes of protests against the regime’s executions last week. Students at universities across Iran also staged demonstrations.
Over 170 activists and politicians in Iran in a joint statement released Sunday dubbed the executions a “systematic murder by the government and demanded the immediate annulment of all death sentences.
A group of political prisoners including reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh, also an outspoken critic of Khamenei, said in a separate statement that the regime is using executions “as a tool of suppression and to cover up political, economic and social challenges and crises.”
Friday’s executions also sparked outrage among Western governments and people around the world.
In an interview with Didban Iran website, Hossein Raghfar, said as the number of those living in the margins of Iran's major cities is on the rise, there is an increased possibility of new protest movements that will take the officials by surprise.
Raghfar said, "this might happen any moment. The people are badly vulnerable and price rises have brought them to the verge of a revolt. In the meantime, officials appear to be oblivious to the looming threat."
The economist warned: "Unpredictable unrest is likely to take place. What you saw in last year's protests was only the tip of the iceberg."
The website quoted the Central Bank of Iran as reporting that rents in the Iranian capital rose by 46 percent during the first half of last year. This comes while the government had allowed landlords to increase the rents by just 25 percent. As a result, wrote the website, many have decided to live outside Tehran, and some have chosen to live in makeshift houses built on some of Tehran's rooftops.
Iran has been gripped by very high inflation since 2018 when the United States withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed tough economic sanctions. A recent report indicated that the inflation rate is close to 70 percent.
The website wrote that more than 24 million Iranians are feeling the crunch this year as rents are going to go up once again with the beginning of the summer. Raghfar said skyrocketing rents is one of the results of rising house prices that have also led to rising prices for other goods and services. For instance, nearly 50 percent of the price of clothing people buy is used to cover the clothing shops' rents. He added that the rising cost of housing has even led some young Iranians to leave the country for good.
He also mentioned the social problems that occur as a result of rising housing cost: "Some sleep in the buses and some families share a house with another family." This, he said, marks the failure of government policies during the past three decades.
The Secretary of Trade Union of Real Estate Agents Saeed Lotfi told reporters that in parts of the Iranian capital, rents are paid in US dollars rather than the extremely devalued national currency rial. He also confirmed that some of the tenants are being pushed out of the capital and that some others share a house with another family although he said the union is against the idea of house sharing.
"Until a few years ago, there were lots of houses available for rent in southwest Tehran, but nowadays it is really difficult to find a vacant house for families who need it as many of those who were not able to afford high rents in the affluent parts of Tehran have moved to the southwest suburbs," Lotfi said.
He added that many others have chosen to move to much smaller homes as prices and rents rise. Lotfi pointed out that current prices will certainly rise further as “we have not yet reached the peak of housing market which is around September when schools re-open” for the new academic year.
Earlier reports in mid-2022 indicated that there was a more than 300 percent rise in rents in Tehran in a matter of three years. And figures released in December 2021, some six months after Ebrahim Raisi took office as President indicated that food and housing expenses in Iran had risen between 300 to 740 percent during the preceding six years while wages went up by around only 270 percent during the same period.
Shamkhani, who served as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) for almost a decade, was replaced by Ali Akbar Ahmadian, an IRGC chief of the Joint Staff in the 2000s who later headed the Guards’ strategic center.
In recent months there were rumors about Shamkhani stepping aside as hardliners blamed him for failure to suppress protests. In video-taped remarks released on the internet in November, former lawmaker Hamid Rasaei, a hardliner cleric, accused him of failing to quash protests.
He will be replaced by Ahmadian, a natural born IRGC commander, designated by the UN Security Council in March 2007 and listed by the European Union in April 2007. By October same year, he was added to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list of the US Department of the Treasury. He is also sanctioned by the governments of Australia and Japan.
It is unclear if Shamkhani resigned or was pushed. A long-time ally of the Supreme Leader appointed as the secretary of the SNSC in September 2013, he has been instrumental in shaping the regime’s security policies during his tenure. The rear admiral upper half (two-star general) was the only ethnic Arab Iranian in such a senior position and was active across the whole political sphere in the Islamic Republic since its establishment.
Shamkhani was engaged in an armed struggle against the Pahlavi dynasty as a member of a clandestine Islamist guerrilla group, Mansouroun, and joined the IRGC shortly after the Islamic Republic’s formation in 1979. He served as deputy commander of the Guards from 1981 to 1988 and as defense minister under two-term reformist president Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005.
Like most regime insiders, he has been dogged by scandal, including reports about Shamkhani’s sons -- Hassan and Hossein -- owning dozens of businesses, such as large shipping companies. There have also been reports about the extravagant lifestyle of his family members in Iran and abroad. Following “rumors” that even his toddler grandson has hundreds of thousands of dollars in just one bank account as well as several properties, authorities announced that the bank account was blocked. Iran International’s investigative journalist Mojtaba Pourmohsen has published several exposés about the family corruption, including his nephews Mo’ud and Naji Shamkhani.
His final legacy was the China-brokered détente with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia had severed relations with the Islamic Republic in January 2016 after pro-government Iranian mobs attacked and ransacked its embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad following the execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric.
After Shamkhani signed the agreement to end a years-long political rift with Saudi Arabia in Beijing on March 10, he embarked on regional trips to improve strained relations with Arab neighbors. Visits to the UAE and then Iraq were part of the effort to keep up the momentum.
Journalist Ehsan Mehrabi told Iran International that the sidelining of Shamkhani is that Khamenei wanted someone with a less scandalous career for the job. He added that although Ahmadian -- the new security chief – played a key role in the Islamic Republic’s naval mining of the southern waters of Iran, he mostly kept a low political profile, hardly appearing in the media or delivering speeches.
The pundit also believes that Khamenei and Raisi may also seek to prevent Shamkhani winning any further credit for Tehran’s upcoming diplomatic gains after the restoration of ties with Riyadh, perhaps with Egypt on the agenda.
Speaking to Iran International, political commentator Morteza Kazemian suggested the new security chief will likely expand focus on the regime’s security policy to Iran’s regional proxy forces, holding views similar to those of Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the IRGC’s extraterritorial Quds Forces killed by the US in Baghdad in 2020. The long-time IRGC loyalist even served as the head of the Imam Hossein University, where Iran recruits and trains Revolutionary Guards.
He is also of the opinion that Raisi assigned Ahmadian for the job under the orders of Khamenei, who recently also appointed the IRGC commander as a member of the country’s Expediency Discernment Council, an administrative assembly whose members are appointed by the Supreme Leader.
Speculation continues over whether or not the personnel change will lead to real policy shifts, some even suggesting Shamkhani might be considered for a "more important position" in Iran, especially considering a parliamentary election on the horizon. Whatever the reasons, Shamkhani’s departure may indicate the regime is heading toward an ever-more conservative direction, reshuffling anyone even deemed moderately centrist.