Iranian Man Killed Following Fight Over Price Of Chicken

Nahid Khodakarmi, the former head of the Health Committee of the Tehran City Council, warned that the regime's latest plan to separate genders in the emergency room has no other result than "wasting resources, imposing costs and disorder".

She described it as “harmful, time-consuming, and costly", risking women's access to emergency healthcare in the most vulnerable times.

After the head of the country's emergency department, Jafar Miaadfar, announced the new plan for both emergency room and ambulance segregation, Khodakarmi called it a new area of gender segregation.

"Emergency services are not segregated by gender anywhere in the world," she said on Monday. "I don't know the reason behind emphasizing on gender segregation in different areas of the healthcare system .... gender segregation in the general sense is not possible in the emergency room."

Miaadfar announced on Saturday that in the new special ambulances for women, the ambulance driver will be a man, but both technicians will be women.

Defending the decision, Miaadfar said the measure was approved by the Supreme Council of Health in a session with President Ebrahim Raisi in attendance, highlighting that the plan has been implemented in several cities and will become operational throughout the country’s metropolitan areas in the near future. 

This is the first time Tehran joins a regional pact since the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

The SCO also known as the Shanghai Pact is a Eurasian political, economic and security alliance formed in 2001 with Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, with one of its goals being cooperation against extremism. India and Pakistan joined the pact in 2017 and Belarus is also slated to become a member.

Iran, which has become more isolated from the global economy since the United States imposed sanctions in 2018, hails its membership in SCO as an achievement for its Eastern oriented foreign and economic policy.

The SCO also seeks to expand its influence by accepting more members, although two of its biggest members, Russia and Iran face more diplomatic and economic isolation than ever.

The summit Tuesday was hosted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who emphasized the original mission of the organization to jointly fight terrorism. He also said the world is embroiled in disputes, tensions and the impact of the pandemic and global food, fuel and fertiliser crises are big challenges for all countries.

"We need to think together that are we, as a group, capable of meeting the expectations and ambitions of our people? Are we capable of facing modern challenges?" Modi said. "Is SCO becoming a group that is completely ready for the future?"

Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and leaders of four central Asian countries took part in the online proceedings as well as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Although Russia and Iran claim SCO will reduce Western influence and can be a vehicle for replacing the US dollar in international trade, Modi visited the United States in June and received a warm welcome. 

China does offer trade in its currency yuan, but that is mostly helpful in bilateral transactions with Beijing. Neither the Chinese yuan nor the Indian rupee are considered global hard currencies like the US dollar or the euro.

Also, it is debatable whether Iran’s membership will add much to the influence SCO hopes to have, while Russia has also become seriously weakened not only by sanctions, but also by its invasion of Ukraine and the recent mutiny by the mercenary Wagner group.

President Vladimir Putin reassured others in his address to the summit of Russia's stability and unity.

"The Russian people are consolidated as never before," Putin told the virtual meeting.

"Russian political circles and the whole of society clearly demonstrated their unity and elevated sense of responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland when they responded as a united front against an attempted armed mutiny."

Putin's emphasis on Russia's unity at a meeting with key allies appeared to show how keen he is to remove any doubts about his own authority on the world stage after the short-lived mutiny led by Wagner mercenary founder Yevgeny Prigozhin late last month.

Russia and Iran constantly speak of countering US unilateralism, but the fact is that Europe appears united with the United States in countering Russia’s military adventure and putting pressure on Iran.

China has also been threading carefully and so far, a substantial Chinese backing for the Russian war effort has not materialized.

In Iran’s case, China is buying illicit Iranian oil shipments in violation of US sanctions, but remains unclear how much it pays in hard currency, since Tehran is facing a serious financial and economic crisis.

Yehuda Fuchs, who commanded the Gaza Division of Israel Defense Forces, told Iran International’s correspondent on Thursday that the Islamic Jihad and Hamas militia groups operate in the West Bank with the financial support of the Islamic Republic. 

Undeterred, he said Israel will take action against whoever engages in terrorist acts against it no matter where they are and how complicated that would be.

Israel sent drones to strike targets in a militant stronghold in Jenin early Monday and deployed hundreds of troops in the area. The attack set off a gunbattle lasting into the morning. Israeli troops have remained inside the Jenin refugee camp. 

The incursion took place two days after the Islamic Jihad's Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhala said that anti-Israeli actions in the West Bank reflect Iranian Supreme Leader’s directives.

However, several Israeli officials and military commanders have said that the attack is only to target the proxy militias of the Islamic Republic and that they are not there to engage with Palestinian civilians.

The operation will reportedly end in a few days following the Israeli forces discovering underground storage areas containing weapons stockpiles and the IDF arresting 120 Palestinian suspects while the Palestinian militants, who had barricaded themselves inside the mosque, apparently fled or are hiding on the outskirts of the Jenin refugee camp compound.

At least 10 Palestinian terrorists have been killed in the operation and another 30 injured.

His tragic death is the latest in a rising tide which has claimed dozens of lives.

Hassanzadeh fell into a coma over ten days ago after having a drink apparently contaminated with poisonous methanol.

Many on social media blame the regime for Hassanzadeh and other victims’ deaths, criminalizing alcohol only driving the production into the hands of unregulated crime gangs and untrained home brews.

Since 1979, it has since caused death, blindness, and other serious injuries to hundreds from alcohol poisoning in various areas of the country every year.

According to a survey by Iran Open Data, half of all adults regularly consume alcohol despite the Islamic regime’s ban, homemade alcohol a common way to skirt the bans. In 2018, a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked Iran ninth among 189 countries for alcohol consumption per capita.

The recent wave, however, appears to be much more widespread and has drawn sinister suspicions of state involvement. In Rebat Karim, a working-class town in the south of Tehran, over 40 people have been poisoned in the past month alone, six of whom died.

This has led to allegations that like mass schoolgirl poisonings that started in late November and spread throughout the country until the end of April, the regime itself or religious extremists protected by the regime may be involved in the poisonings.

Police Chief Ahmadreza Radan on Sunday strongly denied suspicions that the recent alcohol poisonings could have been deliberate.

Hassanzadeh was born in 1963 to a working-class Azerbaijani family who ran a fruit-selling shop in the south of the capital Tehran.

He served as a conscript in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) the experiences of which were later inspired many of his early works as did his observation of the Iranian society and its many complexities.

For years, he worked at his family’s shop while also studying art and Persian literature.

Hassanzadeh’s later works in which he used creative combinations of silk screen printing and ceramics are often characterized as ‘pop art’ and often deal with the everyday life of Iranians and sociological issues such as war, women, celebrities, traditional culture, heroes, family as well as the relation between the Iranian society and the West.

“My pictures are often to do with how east and west see one another,” Hassanzadeh told the Guardian on the phone from Tehran in May 2021.

His series of mixed-media works entitled ‘Prostitutes’ served as a commentary on the Iranian society and paid tribute to the 16 prostitutes killed by a serial killer in the religious city of Mashhad between 2000-2001.

The artists’ works were featured in solo and group exhibitions in Iran and many countries including Britain, Lebanon, the Netherlands, and the United Arab Emirates. Some of these are currently held by British Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Fine Arts, Huston Museum of Fine Arts, Agha Khan Museum in Toronto and Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Arts.

The men were investigated after photos and videos of the alleged rapes began circulating on the Internet. The judiciary said that the men who were medical workers set up a fake beauty institute and drugged women with medications they stole from emergency health services.

Rape could carry the death penalty in Islamic law, but many instances of rape between acquaintances go unpunished. The Islamic penal code in Iran says that if rape takes place through deception, it is categorized as “sexual offence” but if it is carried out by force or threat of force, it is considered rape that carries the death penalty.

The law also specifically mentions intoxication of victims as the most serious category of rape with mandatory death penalty.

Court documents speak of one of the executed men setting up an “illegal beauty institute” and incapacitating some victims by injecting mild drugs before raping them and apparently taking images.

He was convicted of seven counts of rape, while one of the other suspects was convicted of four rapes and the third man for one rape.

The Judiciary in Hormozgan Province said that the men appealed their case multiple times and each time the relevant branch of the Supreme Court confirmed their conviction and the death penalty.

The hangings on Tuesday added to an estimated 354 executions so far in 2023 in Iran, the majority for narcotics convictions.