Iran’s President Promises Free Electricity, Gas, Water Amid Crisis

Just last week, members of Iran's national women's muay thai team boldly challenged the regulations by competing unveiled at the Asian Championships held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital.

This courageous act has triggered an outcry among hardliners, with some officials even disputing the team's official representation of the Islamic Republic. Others are calling on the Ministry of Sports to take decisive action to quell such open defiance.

The government has proposed a bill that, if approved, will impose heavy fines and other punishments on celebrities including athletes who appear unveiled in public.

Over the past few years, several female athletes have chosen to compete unveiled at international events, seeking asylum abroad to avoid being compelled to return to Iran and face punishment. Notably, 19-year-old Dorsa Derakhshani, an International Master and Woman Grandmaster since 2016, was barred from the national team after refusing to wear a headscarf at the 2017 Gibraltar Chess Festival. She was then a temporary resident of Spain.

"Minutes before a match the deputy chairman of the federation would constantly whisper in my ear to be careful not to let my head cover to drop," Parisa Jahanfekrian, former weightlifting champion who is now living in Germany, told Iran International. Once in very warm weather he told me at least ten times to tuck my hair under my head cover only two minutes before the match.

"There, I was constantly thinking about the consequences if my head cover slipped back instead of thinking how to hold the halter and how to carryout my technic," she said.

It was agonizing to conform with all the dos and don'ts that were imposed on female athletes, Jahanfekrian told Iran International, adding that there would always be meetings before international competitions about hijab.

"They demanded that we always was wore a long tunic (called maanto in Iran) and a pullover headscarf with stitched front (called Maghna'e in Iran) when we left our rooms during our stay abroad.

Female athletes who defy hijab rules receive substantial support and are often hailed as heroes by the public. However, they also endure significant pressure from the authorities.

During the anti-government protests of the previous year, climber Elnaz Rekabi made a bold statement by discarding her hijab during the finals of a competition in South Korea, as an act of solidarity with the Woman, Life, Freedom protesters. She received a warm welcome upon her return to Iran after the competition.

Soon after, state media released a video interview with her at the airport arrival hall. In the interview, she referred to her decision to appear without a hijab as "inadvertent." Many speculated that her statements were made under the pressure of regime agents. Social media users criticized the regime's attempts to undermine her convictions, noting that their efforts had ultimately failed.

People on social media said the regime had tried “to break this brave woman,” force her to repudiate her own convictions, and discredit her among hundreds of thousands of young girls who admired her “but as always, they failed.”

The regime has since then been faced with the dilemma of whether to allow women's participation at international competitions and ignore their defiance or keep them home.

The rule is that arms must be always covered to the wrist and legs to the ankle. Roya Mahboodi, an Asian Women’s Arm-Wrestling champion told Etemad daily in June that a government official banned the sport for some period of time because the wrist and a part of the elbow could be seen during matches.

She recounted how wearing a shaal (normal rectangular scarf), which lets more hair to cascade around the face and in the back, was banned whereas maghna'e tightly frames the face and comes down to the chest. Shaal has been the head cover of choice for many Iranian women who do not believe in wearing hijab but have to abide by the hijab rules.

At times, they assert that all the funds have been unblocked, while on other occasions, their remarks suggest a different outcome.

The conflict between various statements is at times observed in the remarks of the same official in a matter of a few minutes. During his news conference Tuesday, President Ebrahim Raisi contradicted himself on the status of the funds.

When a Japanese reporter asked Raisi's opinion about $1.5 billion of Iranian assets in Japan, Raisi said in vague terms: "As we have declared earlier, we would welcome any hand extended to us as a sign of friendship but will cut off the hands of hostile countries." He added, "As regards the money you spoke about, one of the things we have done in my government was securing the release of our frozen assets. This is on our agenda in the area of foreign policy."

Raisi reiterated, "We would like to suggest to Japan to be independent and not be influenced by the Americans. We call on Japan not to freeze in any way any money we might have in that country, whether it is the price of goods we sold, or it is left in Japan as a trust."

Some pro-government agencies such as the IRGC-linked news agency Tasnim first reported this part of Raisi's statement, which indicated there are frozen funds in Japan. But later Tasnim retracted it and replaced it with Rais insisting on not having any frozen assets in any foreign country.

A few minutes later, Raisi reversed himself while the news conference was still in progress that "We do not have any problems with Japan. The only country where our money was frozen in an oppressive way was South Korea. Our assets everywhere else are at the disposal of the Central Bank of Iran."

This, and remarks by Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in day earlier, indicate that Iran has possibly been assured by the United States that Washington has already agreed, or will soon agree to approve the release of all of Iran’s frozen funds.

So far, the United States has confirmed that it has approved the release of around $2.7 billion from Iraq and $6 billion from South Korea, but there has been no clarity about another $8 billion in Iraqi banks and up to $3 billion in Japan. In exchange, Iran has agreed to eventually release five US hostages kept in Tehran.

The official Iranian news agency IRNA on Monday quoted Amir-Abdollahian as saying, "Iran has no frozen assets in any country." He added that "Iran can now use the assets it has at its disposal." However, the Iranian Foreign Minister denied humiliating reports that said Iran was allowed to use its released assets in South Korea within the frameworks of an oil-for-food scheme under the supervision of the United States.

Amir-Abdollahian said, "The reports about oil for food are not true." Meanwhile, speaking about Iran's assets in Iraq, he said our assets at the TBI Bank of Iraq are constantly on the rise, which was a vague statement. The released funds from Iraq are supposed to be transferred to Oman from where they could be spent on Iran’s humanitarian purchases around the world.

The Foreign Minister also added that "oil for food" also does not apply to the £390 million Iran has received from the United Kingdom as London's debts to Iran dating back to the years before the 1979 Islamic revolution. Earlier reports had said that the money would be held in Oman and spent to buy food and medicine for Iran by Omani authorities.

Former Central Bank Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati said in a series of tweets about Amir-Abdollahian's statements that "If what the foreign minister says is true, it means that Iran now has several billion dollars of hard currency at its disposal." This then raises the question of why the Iranian currency does not rebound from the almost historic low of 490,000 per US dollar.

During this period, which marks the first five months of the Iranian calendar year, the total value of Iran's foreign trade reached $43.5 billion with 55.9 million tons of goods worth $19.3 billion being exported. Although Iran's exports have increased by about 27% compared to the same period last year, non-oil exports have decreased by 8.6% in terms of value.

The report shows that the amount of goods imported into Iran was 14.4 million tons worth $24.2 billion, which had a growth of 2.17% in terms of weight and 7.49% in terms of value. However, Iran's overall trade balance was in deficit of $4.9 billion at the end of these five months.

The main reason for the decrease, according to customs experts, is the decline in the global prices of petrochemical exports, which account for a big share of the Iranian exported output.

According to the customs administration, the main destinations for Iran's exports were China with $5.6 billion, Iraq with $3.5 billion, the United Arab Emirates with $2.3 billion, Turkey with $2.2 billion, and India with $845 million – with these nations accounting for over 75% of weight and approximately 75% of the total export value from March to July.

The geography for imported goods bore a similar profile with the United Arab Emirates at $7.3 billion, China at $7.1 billion, Turkey at $2.5 billion, Germany at $879 million, and India at $813 million.

Mohammad-Mehdi Esmaeili, speaking in support of the president, also highlighted that during his youth, Raisi was entrusted with numerous judicial missions by the late Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding leader of the Islamic Republic.

President Raisi is facing domestic and international scrutiny due to his alleged involvement in orchestrating mass prison executions in 1988. Many of these executions targeted individuals associated with opposition groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), as well as leftist, secular, and Kurdish organizations.

Raisi was a member of an ad hoc judicial committee colloquially known as the "Death Commission." This committee was responsible for deciding the fates of prisoners during summary trials that were held in secret. While Raisi has denied direct involvement in issuing sentences, he has defended the actions against the MEK, citing their history of “violence” as justification.

Notably, some prisoners had been previously released from incarceration, only to be rearrested and retried during the execution spree, which was also referred to as a prison purge. The intention behind these retrials was to ensure prisoners fully denounced the MEK and demonstrated repentance.

The precise number of prisoners executed during the 1988 purges remains uncertain. However, according to Amnesty International, the Iranian authorities "forcibly disappeared" and "extrajudicially executed" an estimated 5,000 individuals between July and September 1988.

On Monday, a group of parliament members met with Mohammad Abdul Kabir, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Taliban and released a statement, "With the emergence of the Islamic Emirate government, the fight against the production and distribution of drugs in Afghanistan has been pursued, which also has an impact on Iran."

However, evidence suggests that poppy production and the cultivation of narcotics is on the rise. Eskandar Momeni, the Secretary-General of the Anti-Narcotics Headquarters of Iran said earlier this spring that despite the promises made by the Taliban and based on the official statistics of the United Nations, drug cultivation and production in Afghanistan had increased in the past year.

He said that Afghanistan currently holds the "first rank in opium production" and the "second rank in industrial drug production, including methamphetamine" in the world. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime states that Afghanistan produced 80% of the world's opium in 2022.

Therefore, despite Iran’s praise and the claims by Taliban officials to be working towards limiting and eventually eliminating drug cultivation and distribution, the statistics do not support their rhetoric.