Iranian Journalists Prosecuted for Reporting on Protester's Death

The figures provided by Tejarat News, a non-independent news outlet, indicate that a doctor has taken their own life approximately every 10 days since the beginning of the Persian New Year in late March.

While there has been a significant increase in suicides among young doctors, students, teachers and others in Iran, the country’s Ministry of Health has been accused of withholding accurate statistics on suicide rates.

"Unfortunately, there are no official statistics available on doctors' suicides. This has been a problem in previous years too, but now, with the prevalence of online platforms, news spreads rapidly,” the head of the Iranian Nursing Organization, Mohammad Sharifi Moghadam told Tejarat News.

Among those lost to suicide recently are physician Zahra Maleki Ghorbani, rheumatology specialist Samira Al-e-Saeedi, and cardiovascular specialist Parastoo Bakhshi.

The Silence of Iran’s Ministry of Health

Despite acknowledging the rising suicide rates, the government has been criticized for its lack of action and ineffective policies to address the underlying issues driving suicide.

Moghadam emphasized the Ministry of Health's neglect of the challenges faced by young doctors and medical graduates in Iran, highlighting it as a persistent issue.

"Despite years of dedication and education, some individuals have reached a point where they prefer death to life," he said.

Former health minister Hassan Hashemi similarly decried the government’s silence surrounding the suicides, stating that "it is the duty of the Minister of Health and his other colleagues to examine these issues with the help of sociologists, psychologists, and other experts and find a solution as soon as possible to prevent this shocking incident."

Homayoun Sameh Najafabadi, a member of the health committee of the Iranian parliament, acknowledged the gravity of the issue but refrained from elaborating on why the parliament doesn't demand accountability from the Ministry of Health.

Factors Behind Iran’s ‘Suicide Crisis’

Though the exact reasons why someone commits suicide are often complex and multifaceted, and may not be fully understood by others, Tejarat News has suggested some contributing factors to the underlying issues that contribute to the suicide trend in Iran.

The outlet claimed that contributing factors included the separation of married couples due to work and financial struggles, restrictions on alternative employment, and the lack of respect for medical staff in certain hospital settings.

These challenges, the report suggests, culminate in feelings of depression and hopelessness, affecting even the country's elite youth.

"The work pressure is so high that these people lose their footing," Moghadam said, pointing out that livelihood struggles and disrespect from hospital administrators compound the already immense challenges faced by doctors in Iran.

Mohammad Mirkhani, a social consultant at the Medical Council of Iran, attributed the significant increase in doctor suicides in Iran to the challenging working conditions they face. He noted, "Medical assistants sometimes work for 72 hours straight, which poses extreme dangers to their mental well-being. Such conditions often lead to depression."

But, the suicide crisis faced by the medical community also extends to students and other parts of the country’s workforce.

In February, the labor union, the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teacher Trade Associations, described the situation of student suicides as a "tsunami."

Last year, over the course of 283 days, 23 workers committed suicide, according to a report by the ‘reformist’ Etemad newspaper.

That outlet listed poverty, arrears, and demands for wages and dismissal from the workplace as reasons for the suicide rate among workers.

Experts have attributed the increased suicides in Iran to the systemic reluctance and neglect of Iranian authorities to address workers' conditions – identifying it as one of the key underlying causes.

With a history of long-standing human rights violations, experts anticipate that Iranian authorities will continue to neglect the well-being of the country’s workforce and other segments of society, perpetuating a cycle of suffering and injustice.

In a Monday statement, it condemned the ongoing crackdown on Iranian women and girls who are at the center of a nationwide defiance of the country’s mandatory hijab laws, policies which the UN has branded 'gender apartheid'.

USCIRF Commissioner Susie Gelman said the US must do more to hold Iran accountable amid mass human rights abuses as Iran continues undeterred in spite of global sanctions. Just last year, record numbers of Iranians were executed as the regime fights for its survival in the biggest uprising since the founding of the Islamic Republic. 

“Iranian authorities callously violate women’s religious freedom and target any individual advocating for freedom of religion or belief. The US government has continued to support global efforts to hold Iran accountable for its heinous acts."

"However, USCIRF urges additional sanctions on Iranian government agencies and security officials responsible for particularly severe violations of religious freedom by freezing their assets and barring their entry into the United States,” she stated.

The push for increased sanctions coincides with the Iranian regime’s new Noor initiative, an enforcement campaign of the hijab which has increased the severity and frequency of crackdowns on Iranian women.

The initiative is part of a broader effort to stifle dissent across various sectors, including human rights activists, journalists, and students, with a new wave of arrests reported recently.

In its annual report on Thursday, USCIRF advocated for the US government to support the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran and to document human rights abuses.

Furthermore, the USCIRF highlighted the systematic harassment, arrest, and torture of protesters, including minors, underlining an escalation in the enforcement of hijab laws, surveillance, and covert operations by morality police throughout 2023.

Grossi met Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami on Tuesday, one of many meetings in the past 32 months, which have failed to resolve any of the outstanding issues. However, this did not stop Eslami from claiming that the discussions were "positive and productive."

Grossi has been at his job for less than five years, but his organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been grappling with the ‘Iran issue’ for more than two decades, ‘raising concerns’, ‘demanding explanations’, ‘assessing compliance’, and ultimately ‘expressing disappointment’.

All the while, the regime in Tehran has been slowly but steadily moving towards nuclear weapons capability. It has never been closer, according to Grossi, who estimates that a ‘bomb’ is only weeks – not months – away, if the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei chose to ‘go for it.’

Iranian officials, of course, maintain that their nuclear program is entirely peaceful. There may exist a mountain of circumstantial evidence to the contrary, but they would like Grossi and other concerned parties to ignore it all, resting on the claim that Khamenei has issued a religious ruling (or fatwa) against all weapons of mass destruction. Although Khamenei has never officially issued a fatwa, but even if he had, it could be overturned in one sweep without much fuss. 

So what are the facts?

The fact is that Iran is now enriching uranium up to 60% purity, according to the IAEA, just one step from the 90% required for making bombs. The fact is that Iran is now in possession of a nuclear stock 27 times the limit that it set in the nuclear deal with US, Britain, China, Russian, Germany, France and the EU in July 2015. And the fact is that virtually every time that the IAEA has found something significant about Iran’s nuclear activities, it has been in spite of, not with the help of, Iran's government.

IAEA experts, including Grossi himself, say such levels of enrichment cannot be justified or explained in the absence of a weapons program. Still, there’s very little Grossi could do to make rulers of Iran think twice, since world powers, including the US, are reluctant to antagonize the regime, refusing even to confront it in the IAEA’s quarterly Board of Governors meetings – the latest of which will commence on 3 June.

"Everyone knows this is a game Iran plays ahead of the Board of Governors meetings, where it routinely over-promises in order to avoid a censure and then underdelivers," analyst Eric Brewer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative told Reuters. "Grossi is well aware of that strategy, too. The key question is whether he can get anything concrete from Iran."

He felt he did that last time he visited Iran – in March 2023. The now-devalued Joint Statement he delivered alongside Iranian officials was supposed to be the first step towards expanded surveillance of Iran’s nuclear facilities. As it turned out, it was the only step, according to Grossi’s last report to IAEA member states.

Grossi’s latest trip to Iran is unlikely to yield much more than the previous one. Some believe that it’s not only futile, but counterproductive.

“Iran has violated its nonproliferation obligations, refused to answer the IAEA’s questions, and is on the threshold of nuclear weapons,” wrote Anthony Ruggiero, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on FDD’s website. “The IAEA should not be celebrating Iran’s nuclear program at a conference in Iran.”

Many hold the view that the 2015 deal was the world’s best hope to stop Iran’s slow march towards nuclear weapons capability. Former president Donald Trump abandoned that deal, giving Tehran what it perhaps wanted most: an excuse to roll back cooperation with the IAEA and accelerate its uranium enrichment.

Others argue that the 2015 JCPOA agreement was a poor attempt at stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions. The deal had clear sunset clauses that would expire and Tehran just needed to be patient and wait.

President Joe Biden spent the first half of his term trying to revive the 2015 nuclear deal – and failed. He then turned to chasing an informal agreement, looking the other way as China purchased tens of billions of Iran’s sanctioned oil, and releasing billions in frozen funds, all to encourage the regime in Tehran to limit enrichment, even temporarily.

Iran did indeed slow its production of highly-enriched uranium last summer, only to resume it in Autumn, according to an IAEA report last December.

Last month, following an Israeli air strike against an Iranian air defense system near a major nuclear site in central Iran, a senior IRGC commander warned that the regime could “change” its nuclear doctrine. The statement was read by many as a thinly veiled threat that the Islamic Republic could break ties with IAEA and ‘go for’ nuclear weapons.

No course of action is guaranteed to stop that, according to most diplomats and nuclear experts. That’s the reason, perhaps, that Grossi found himself accepting yet another invitation from Tehran, shaking hands and smiling with officials whose sincerity he may trust even less than the efficacy of his trip.

Over the course of two days, approximately 25 activists will engage in around 40 separate meetings with the agenda including pressing for assistance for asylum seekers as Iranians continue to flee the oppressive conditions in Iran. Currently, around a quarter of a million Iranians reside in Canada.

The forums will also address the needs of the Association of Families of the Ukrainian Flight PS752 who have still seen no justice for the loss of the 176 lives, including 82 Iranians and 63 Canadians, when the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) shot down the plane shortly after it took off near the Imam Khomeini International Airport in January 2020.

The two-day meeting with parliamentarians will also demand the proscription of the IRGC and continue the push of the ongoing investigation into Iran's interference in Canada. In September, Canada launched a public inquiry into the interference of foreign governments, including Iran, in the country’s federal electoral processes and democratic institutions.

While Canada has sanctioned many Iranians and state-affiliated entities, the lobbying group wants to see more sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Courts and other judiciary officials for the continued rights abuses being committed against dissidents in Iran, a move sparked by the recent death sentence of rapper Toomaj Salehi.

The meetings with members of the Canadian Senate and House of Commons have been organized by the Iranian Justice Collective in collaboration with other civil bodies and independent activists.

During the international sanctions of the first half of the 2010s and the US sanctions imposed since 2018, Iran faced restricted access to the international banking system. To circumvent these limitations, it relied on an extensive network of so-called ‘trust companies’ and foreign exchange outlets.

Through these channels, Iran covertly transferred proceeds from its sales of crude oil, petroleum, and petrochemical products worldwide for a range of purposes, including funding its proxies.

The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and its global oil laundering network are heavily involved in establishing and operating such clandestine networks.

These complex networks usually operate in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Singapore, Hong Kong, Iraq, Malaysia, Cyprus and Malta, as well as some Western countries as indicated by the US Treasury’s sanctions lists.

Last week a controversy over Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani’s secretly concluded agreement with a Chinese construction firm to import transport and traffic surveillance equipment, worth nearly two billion euros, opened a pandora box that included, among other things, inadvertent references to the use of trust companies.

Under fire from critics who said the Chinese company, Poly Changda Overseas Engineering (PLCD), was ill-equipped for procurement of the equipment needed by the city, the mayor and his supporters argued that the agreement would help funnel back the funds accrued in China.

The funds, they said, could otherwise not be repatriated due to global sanctions that have blocked Iran's access to the international banking system so this was a “golden opportunity” that had to be urgently utilized.

As professional enablers of financial secrecy, trust companies also orchestrate the crude oil sales to overseas buyers while concealing its origins and the involvement of the Iranian government by rebranding products and falsifying documents.

Trust companies registered abroad, which represent the interests of the Iranian government and sanctioned entities, report their ownership by unrelated, nominal parties. They are often given vast legal powers to be able to administer and manage the financial assets of the beneficiary, that is the Iranian government, including accepting payments from buyers of Iranian oil and using it to make purchases on its behalf.

To prove the association with these entities and individuals with the Iranian government is very hard or even impossible. In many cases the trustees are not even Iranian nationals.

The role and influence of these intermediaries declined somewhat after the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with the West, which allowed oil revenues to be repatriated through the official banking system.

The situation changed when in 2018 the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA and re-imposed oil export sanctions on third parties and Iran’s banking system. Subsequent attempts by the Biden administration to restore the agreement have failed.

Those in favor of a nuclear deal with the United States in Iran have always accused their opponents of profiteering from sanctions-busting operations and dubbed them as “sanctions profiteers”. This is mainly because IRGC circles organize the secret financial networks, which can manipulate oil exports and money laundering to enrich themselves.

Officials of the government of President Ebrahim Raisi often boast of their success in circumventing sanctions that has provided enough foreign currency to the Islamic Republic to survive.

The country is now exporting nearly 1.5m barrels of oil per day most of which goes to China whereas it could barely export 200,000 bpd after the full re-imposition of US sanctions in 2019.

The government’s recent budget bill shows that it is currently outsourcing some of its oil sales to military and religious entities, and real persons representing them, rather than selling it through the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) which according to the Iranian Constitution should have a monopoly in oil exports.

Whistle-blowers have revealed some cases in which the trustees of the government amassed the funds being paid into their accounts for some time but later delayed payments to the government, using the funds for their own investments, or embezzling billions of dollars.

During his high-profile corruption trial in 2019, for instance, the former CEO of Mellat and Parsian banks, Ali Divandari, said one such company used to bypass sanctions operating out of the United Arab Emirates had moved around $70b for the bank. He accused several other individuals of embezzlement, one of whom he said had fled Iran with 220m UAE dirhams.

“It was not possible to register our names in trust companies because these companies were foreign and would be exposed if this was done,” he told the court.

The Iranian government is unable to take legal action against the trustees in these circumstances due to the secrecy involved in such operations.

In relation to the latest controversy and rising to Mayor Zakani’s defense, hardliner lawmaker Malek Shariati revealed in a tweet on May 3 that the anti-sanctions committee of the secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) had secretly blessed the deal.

Referring to the Chinese company as a “trust company”, Shariati said in response to one of the critics, former Communications Minister Mohammad-Javad Azari-Jahromi, that the Chinese side of the agreement was to provide access to hard currency for imports of basic goods, medicine and other things including subway cars and buses.

The lawmaker also argued that disclosing the contents of the SNSC’s directive would be “treason”. Zakani himself had earlier protested to the disclosure of the company’s name by a whistle-blower and claimed that the Chinese side may decide to withdraw from the agreement due to the failure of the Iranian side to preserve its anonymity.

Azari-Jahromi’s counterargument was a brusque reference to the case of the oil tycoon Babak Zanjani as a reminder of the massive corruption often involved in such clandestine financial dealings.

Zanjani sold Iran's oil in the oil black markets through a host of “trust companies” and banks in various countries such as the Malaysia-based International Safe Oil (ISO), Dubai-based Sorinet Commercial Trust Bankers (SCT Bankers), and Malaysia-based First Islamic Investment Bank (FIIB) he had established.

He was sentenced to death in 2016 for withholding $2.7bn of the proceeds of oil sales. His request for clemency was approved by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last week and his sentence was commuted to twenty years in prison.

Zanjani is likely to be freed soon as he has served almost half of the twenty-year sentence. Authorities claim he “cooperated” in locating his assets abroad, which he had refused to do until now, and the assets were recovered to pay all his debts to the government.