Lebanon's Top Christian Cleric Slams Hezbollah Tactics In Election

Pascal Smet, the Secretary of State for European and International Relations for the city council of the Belgian capital Brussels, announced his resignation at a press conference earlier in the day, saying that one of his employees made the mistake of inviting the Iranian hardliner, Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran.

Zakani was a hardline member of parliament before becoming a candidate in the 2021 presidential election and withdrawing in favor of Ebrahim Raisi. He also served as the head of IRGC’s Student Basij paramilitary forces and had a prominent role in cracking down on students during popular protests in July 1999. 

So deep was the controversy, Smet announced his regret in a statement: "I regret that I gave the impression that the Iranian regime is welcome. I assure you that it was not my intention to hurt anyone and that my moral compass is very high. For all these reasons, but mainly because of the accommodation costs, the mistake my employee made, I have decided to resign as Secretary of State." 

Darya Safai, a Belgian-Iranian member of the Belgian Parliament, had led the campaign for Smet's resignation. In a tweet on Sunday she said that his stepping down followed days of work by her party to condemn the invitation of an Iranian delegation to the Urban Summit in Brussels. 

Safai added that the responsibility lies with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Hadja Lahbib, who issued the visas after individual evaluation. She said her party is set to grill Lahbib this week for not only the invitation but her cooperation with Iranian officials and the prisoner swap deal with Iran that led to release of Iranian diplomat convicted of terrorism, Asadollah Assadi. 

Reformist daily Shargh Online wrote in a political analysis that conservative political figures such as, former parliamentary Speaker and traditional conservative Gholamreza Ali Haddad-Adel and his successor, neo-conservative Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf are not likely to be able to win the next parliamentary elections in March even if they form a coalition together. 

The report said that they might need the support of moderate conservative Ali Larijani, another former Speaker to make that form a successful alliance. Only then they might be able to defeat the powerful hardline conservative front led by former IRGC General Sadeq Mahsouli one of the leaders of Paydari Party, which other conservatives regard as a “radical” group.

The analysis loosely characterised Ali Larijani as “the new right,” Ghalibaf and Haddad Adel as “moderate right” and Paydari as “radical.” This characterisation is interesting and shows how the far right has radically distanced itself from the main body of the conservative camp, so that all others look relatively moderate when they are compared with Paydari.

Such a tripartite alliance, if ever formed, may be able to put an end to the country’s political impasse and save the Islamic Republic from an even bigger political crisis, the analysis concluded.

However, the report ignored the fact that without opening up some space for the regime’s ‘reformists’ the political impasse will not end. 

The Coalition Council of the Revolutionary Forces (Persian acronym: SHANA) which represents traditional conservatives, held a meeting on Thursday but like many other such meetings by political groups and parties they did not publish any photos of the gathering for the likely reason of a low turnout.

The monopoly of power by hardliners in both the executive and the parliament has dissuaded more moderate conservatives from a serious political agenda as they know that forming coalitions and will not work unless they have the overt support of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his aides.

According to Shargh, politicians such as Ghalibaf and Haddad-Adel fear that without Larijani joining them, the radicals might kick them out of political competitions in the same way they got rid of Larijani in the 2021 presidential elections. However, the article did elaborate on why Larijani can help the other two politicians, who apart from everything else, happen to be Khamenei’s relatives. 

All other conservative alliances during previous elections either fell apart before the voting day or they were faced down by the ultra-conservative Paydari in the last minute. 

On the other hand, Ali Larijani is not known for having a sizeable following. Members of the Iranian Parliament who worked closely with him have not been observed to defend him after his disqualification by the Guardian Council in 2021. Since then, on the contrary, the Paydari has been gaining more political power in the parliament where it holds the majority, and in President Ebrahim Raisi’s cabinet.

The only factor that can help more moderate conservatives, including Larijani and Haddad-Adel, is the poor record of ultra conservatives both in the cabinet and in parliament, where Ghalibaf as speaker shares the blame. 

Both the current economic crisis and repression, with no end in sight, have badly discredited the hardliners, who for the past two years have enjoyed a total monopoly of power.

On the other hand, some political observers in Iran, including the author of Shargh’s analysis, Davoud Heshmati believe the “purification” process that kicked Larijani out of the power circle might also expel Ghalibaf in the next election. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the remarks on Sunday in reaction to reports citing a Western official that the objective of the impending nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran is to stop Israel from attacking Iran.

The statement goes against all other reports in recent days that quoted other Israeli politicians such as Yuli Edelstein, the head of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who said Israel could accept such a deal if it includes rigorous supervision of Tehran's nuclear program. 

“Our first mission is to stop Iran from going nuclear,” Netanyahu said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting. “We made clear to our American friends time after time, and I am doing it again today, that we oppose agreements, first of all to the original agreement called the JCPOA, which will just pave Iran’s way to the bomb and will pad it with hundreds of millions of dollars.” 

“We also tell [the Americans] that more limited understandings, what’s called a ‘mini-deal,’ does not serve our purpose, in our opinion, and we oppose that, as well,” he said, claiming that his “principled opposition” to the JCPOA played a part in ensuring the US does not return to that deal. 

Bibi added that “Israel will do whatever it needs on its own to defend itself from Iranian aggression, whether on the nuclear file or its terrorist proxies.” 

Prince Faisal bin Farhan arrived in Tehran on Saturday and immediately held a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, followed by a joint press conference where the top Saudi diplomat realized he was standing in front of a picture of IRGC general Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s architect of proxy wars in the Middle East, including arming Yemen’s Houthis against Saudi Arabia.

Prince Faisal immediately requested the venue of the press conference to be changed and the Iranian side complied in a bid not to tarnish the newly revived relations between the two countries after years of tension which isolated the Iranian régime in the region.

Soleimani was killed in an air strike in January 2020 ordered by former US President Donald Trump - a victory for many in the region who saw themselves as victim to his reign of terror.

Farhan later met with President Ebrahim Raisi, though there was almost nothing about the meeting on government news websites on Sunday morning other than a few relatively independent websites which carried the news of the incident at the press conference, including critical comments.

Even in Saudi, the embarrassing incident was avoided, the Saudi Press Agency only carrying a short and formal dispatch from both meetings, essentially saying nothing beyond formal diplomatic statements.

Fararu, a moderate website, simply reported on a tweet by reformist commentator Abbas Abdi, who quipped that if former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had acquiesced to the Saudi request to move the press conference, hardliners would have raised hell, but because now they are in charge it happened quietly.

“Don’t you feel shame? You stooped yourselves to the level of worthless pawns,” Abdi addressed the hardliners, pointing out that until recently they were chanting Soleimani’s name.

In his meeting with Prince Faisal, Raisi repeated the Islamic Republic’s anti-Israel rhetoric saying, “The Zionist regime is not only the enemy of Palestinians, but also a threat for all Muslims. Normalizing of ties by some countries with this regime not only does not contribute to security, but also contradicts Muslim opinion.”

Saudi Arabia has so far refrained from joining the Abraham Accords and establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, unlike some of its close allies such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

When in March Riyadh and Tehran announced their agreement to re-establish relations, some believed that Saudi Arabia wanted to create a regional balance in its foreign policy before joining the Abraham Accords. The United States has also been trying to encourage Riyadh, but so far there are no signs of a decision as Iran has encouraged Palestinians to engage in military confrontations with Israel since March.

The semi-official ILNA news website in Tehran, one of the few to report on the topic, quoted al Farhan as telling Raisi that “some countries in the world do not want peace and progress in the region. With emerging goodwill between Iran and Saudi Arabia and in the Muslim world, unlimited achievements become possible, and it also guarantees that no foreign countries interfere in the region.”

However, in the joint press conference the Saudi top diplomat sent a clear message to Iran regarding his country's expectations from the détente.

"I would like to refer to the importance of cooperation between the two countries on regional security, especially the security of maritime navigation... and the importance of cooperation among all regional countries to ensure that it is free of weapons of mass destruction," Prince Faisal said

Films, music, books and art in general is strictly regulated, monitored and controlled by the Islamic government in Iran. Films or TV shows must first get a production permit to make sure they are in sync with the official ideology and religious restrictions. After a film is produced it is reviewed again for a screening permit.

Some websites in Iran on Sunday published the copy of a letter sent to film producers by Habib Eilbaygi a deputy in the government film watchdog, dubbed Cinema Organization. In the letter he says that producers “should refrain from employing” individuals who have been outspoken on the issue of hijab and “have ignored the country’s laws.”

Anti-hijab and anti-regime protests erupted in Iran in September 2022 after Mahsa Amini, a young woman was arrested in the street by the notorious ‘morality police’ and received fatal head injuries during here detention and later died in hospital.

Many celebrities, including actors and sports figures came out in support of the protests angering the regime. Dozens of women among them also removed their headscarves in public, a direct show of defiance against the ruling clerics.

Following the protests tens of thousands of ordinary women now walk in streets without hijab for the first time since the early 1980s.

Hardliners dominating all branches of government are now trying to restore their control and force women to observe hijab rules.