Iranian MP Voices Concern Over Government Pay Hikes

Johan Floderus, detained in April 2022 during a vacation in Iran on charges of espionage, is now navigating a legal process marked by little transparency and what appears to be a hostage situation. He has been in detention for more than 600 days. 

Iranian officials vehemently slammed a Swedish appeals court for upholding a life sentence for Hamid Nouri, a former prison official who was convicted earlier this year for his role in the massacre of up to 5,000 political prisoners in 1988. The Swedish verdict upholding the sentence was announced on Wednesday, as Tehran used pressures and threats to influence the appeal decision.

Now, Floderus is accused of “corruption on earth”, a serious Sharia charge that can lead even to a death sentence. This particular charge is often used by the Iranian regime against pollical opponents. He is accused of espionage, but the case, as many other similar detentions of foreigners in Iran, is wrapped in a lack of transparency.

He was told in the court on Wednesday that "These accusations are based on intelligence surveillance by Iranian security forces, scrutiny of messages, emails, monitoring of your mobile phone, your travels to various countries, your presence in Iran's border cities, your communications, trips to occupied territories [Israel], and other pieces of evidence."

According to Iranian media, Floderus did not accept the allegations attributed to himself and emphasized: “The issued warrant has a general and abstract nature and has no direct connection with me."

Judge Iman Afshari also accused Floderus of having connections with Swedish military institutions, but this EU diplomat emphasized that after completing his 13-month military service, he had no ties to Swedish military, intelligence, or security institutions."

Iran’s foreign ministry and Judicial authorities have categorically rejected the Swedish appeal court’s decision regarding Hamid Nouri. Naser Kanaani, the foreign ministry spokesperson responded to the confirmation of the life imprisonment sentence for Nouri, saying, "Iran fundamentally finds the verdicts of the lower and appellate courts regarding Hamid Nouri unacceptable and strongly condemns them." 

Kazem Gharibabadi, the Secretary of the Human Rights Headquarters of Iran’s Judiciary, threatened that “Sweden's actions in this regard will not be without cost.” He made a bizarre statement that “In this case, the English were also involved, and it was not a case solely decided by Sweden."

The Floderus case is similar to the conviction of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat convicted for terrorism in Belgium but released in May after Iran detained a Belgian traveller and accused him of espionage. Aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele spent 455 days in Iranian detention facing an uncertain future until Belgium gave in and released the convicted Iranian official.

At the time, many warned that such a prisoner exchange would set a dangerous precedent for other Westerners. The Islamic Republic of Iran has a history of detaining foreigners and dual national to use the as bargaining leverage against Western countries.

Ali Salajegheh stated Wednesday "It is not unlikely that Iran's drought on a small scale is the result of hostile actions, but research in this area has not yet been conducted," a typical charge made by the government on matters for which it has no justifications.

Recent years have seen a number of Iranian environmentalists convicted of espionage for the US and UK governments and sentenced to prison.

The latest claim comes four months after Iranians protested in Tabriz against the mismanagement that led to the disappearance of Lake Urmia. The lake, once the largest in the Middle East, has significantly shrunk over the years due to water mismanagement and climate change.

Reports indicate that a quarter of Iran's farmers have lost their jobs in the past seven years, mainly due to water scarcity. Droughts and water shortages have also led to soil erosion, desertification, and hazardous dust storms affecting approximately half of Iran's population, according to the country's health ministry.

In recent years, scientists and activists have criticized the Iranian regime for its mismanagement of the country's environment, particularly concerning water resources.

Sabzian-Fard, married at the age of 15, faced the implementation of her death sentence for killing her husband four years after their marriage in 2013, according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR).

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the Director of IHR, branded her execution as a “stark reflection of an inefficient and corrupt government resorting to violence and intimidation to sustain itself.” The IHR has called on the international community to hold Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other officials of the Islamic Republic accountable for such actions.

Sabzian-Fard's story is emblematic of women in Iran who, at a young age, are forced into marriage and subsequently become victims of marital issues. The latest report from the Iranian Statistical Center reveals a distressing statistic: at least 27,448 girls under the age of 15 in Iran married in 2022 alone.

Simultaneously, there has been an intensification of policies encouraging marriage in the country, as emphasized by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In recent years, targeted efforts have been made to reduce the age of marriage for girls and encourage families to facilitate the marriage of their daughters. One in five marriages involves minors, girls allowed to marry as young as 13. 

The regime's efforts have been championed by some members of the parliament, government officials, and various cultural and educational institutions.

Iran is the world's leading executor of women, with a minimum of 16 reported executions in 2022 and a total of at least 17 women executed in the country so far this year. This grim reality is exacerbated by Iranian laws that prevent women from seeking divorce, even in cases of domestic violence.

Centrist Aftab News website in Tehran wrote in a commentary on Monday that the money in question, which could be more than $3 billion, is 15 times more than the funds needed to implement the long-awaited pension adjustment to make life easier for retirees. An annual inflation rate of around 50 percent has impoverished retirees and wage earners.

The website also argued that the amount was enough for establishing up to nine major petrochemical plants.

However, calculations like that will be meaningful only if one could assume that the embezzled money was going to be spent in the interest of the public and was not going to be spent on the wars in the region.

A retired government employee told Aftab News that if the money was allocated to pensioners, not only they would climb out of poverty, but the government’s bankrupt Pension Fund could also reach a surplus to spend on the retiree healthcare.

One of the recurrent slogans chanted by unpaid pensioners during their recurrent protests is: "Our problems will be solved if there was only one less embezzlement case."

Massoud Pezeshkian, a lawmaker from Tabriz told reporters, "The underlying reason for all these corruption, land grabbing and bribery cases is that Iran does not have a transparent data system. Unless we have such a system, everyone will point fingers at others and the problem will remain unsolved.

Meanwhile, other reports about the case have unearthed a letter that the managing director of the implicated Debsh Tea Company, Akbar Rahimi, wrote to President Ebrahim Raisi more than a month before the scandal became news.

The publication of the letter by the press on Monday revealed that the Raisi Administration showed no tangible reaction to the revelation. In the letter, the company's head had warned that it might have to stop all of its activities within a few days and that all of more than 6,000 of its employees might lose their jobs.

In the letter, Rahimi spoke about limitations imposed on the activities of the company. He possibly meant that the Judiciary had started investigations about the company. Rahimi named the Intelligence office of Karaj, the capital of Alborz Province near Tehran as one of the offices that created problems for the tea company. He further complained that the limitations were imposed on the company's activity without any prior notice.

In another development, Expediency Council member Ahmad Tavakoli wrote in a letter to President Raisi that there is possibly another corruption case under way as the government has given a concession to a hitherto unknown company to import 13 million tons of essential commodities under strict secrecy and without meeting legal formalities. 

Tavakoli said that giving such a big concession to a new company is unprecedented. He added that the profit of the importing operation is supposed to be divided on a fifty-fifty basis between the company and those who granted the concession to it.

The politician added that the company is supposed to import 13 million tons of essential commodities, including as rice, meat, and poultry feed while it has never imported even one ton of such goods. These are goods that the slightest irregularity or delay in their import could cause havoc in the country.

Tavakoli further warned that the confidential nature of the concession makes this deal dangerously non-transparent. He revealed that in May 2022, the Minister of Agriculture ordered the Central bank to pay 735 million euros (around $800m) to a foreign company before any goods arrived in Iran.

The consecutive revelations of corruption cases not only badly damages the image of hardliners running the government, but it also reflects badly on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has been ruling Iran for 34 years.

The meeting serves as a precursor to Haniyeh's forthcoming trip to Egypt for negotiations aimed at bringing an end to the ongoing conflict with Israel.

Amir-Abdollahian traveled to Doha on Tuesday for bilateral talks with Qatari officials, focusing on regional developments, particularly the situation in Gaza. A French news agency, citing a source close to Hamas, revealed that Haniyeh is leading a "high-level delegation" to Egypt in a bid to negotiate with Egypt's intelligence chief and other officials with the goal of "ending the war and reaching an agreement on the release of prisoners", referring to the Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence and special operations organization, has embarked on trips to two countries for negotiations concerning a potential agreement with Hamas for the release of the more than 130 hostages still held by the terror group.

In tandem with the developments, Israeli sources shared with Axios on Tuesday that Israel proposed a one-week ceasefire in the Gaza conflict as part of a new agreement to secure the release of hostages. The proposal represents Israel's first initiative since the resumption of hostilities following a one-week ceasefire.

The Iranian Foreign Minister’s trip to Doha is the fourth since the Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7—a move that swiftly implicated Iran in the regional conflict. The Islamic Republic terms Hamas and its proxy groups as "resistance forces," while the UK, Europe and the United States officially designate Hamas as a terrorist organization.