Iran International
Iran's leading Sunni cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid has welcomed the government’s appointment of a Sunni ethnic Balochi as governor of the Sunni-majority Sistan and Baluchestan Province.
Speaking to a group of citizens in Chabahar, one of the major cities of the Sunni-majority province, Abdolhamid briefly referred to the appointment of Mansour Bijar and said he was pleased with the appointment.
Before he was appointed governor, Bijar, a 50-year-old civil engineer, served as a development affairs coordination deputy to the governor of the province.
Bijar is the third from a religious and ethnic group to be appointed as governor by Pezeshkian’s government.
His appointment came after the appointment of a Sunni Kurd as the governor of Kordestan Province and an ethnic Arab as governor of the oil-rich Khuzestan Province.
Abdolhamid who wields much influence among the large Sunni, Balochi population of Sistan and Baluchestan and other Sunni-populated regions has repeatedly criticized the government for political, social, and religious discrimination against Sunnis.
Referring to the new governor’s appointment at the cabinet meeting Wednesday, Pezeshkian expressed hope that the appointment would help remedy the impoverished province’s problems while underlining that his government does not discriminate between the Persian-speaking and other ethnicities including Arabs, Kurds, and the Balochi.
During his campaign debates, Pezeshkian repeatedly criticized the unwritten ban on the appointment of Sunnis and women to higher government management positions but presumably under pressure from the Shia religious establishment, he proposed neither Sunnis nor women as candidates for ministerial positions in his cabinet.
Pundits say Shia sources of emulation (Grand Ayatollahs) who have always opposed the appointment of Sunnis to higher government positions are likely to be disappointed with Pezeshkian’s recent appointments.
Pezeshkian visited Qom Thursday to meet with several influential grand ayatollahs some of whom are known for their strong opposition to giving positions of high responsibility to Sunnis that they believe gives them supremacy over Shias. Conservative grand ayatollahs also strongly oppose women’s appointment as ministers.
No mention was made of discussion of the appointments in the official reports of these meetings.
In September the majority hardliners and ultra-hardliners of the Parliament also blocked the resignation of a Sunni Kurdish lawmaker, set to join Pezeshkian’s cabinet as a deputy. The Parliament’s hard stance sparked speculation over whether Pezeshkian would fight to keep the Sunni lawmaker in his cabinet or relent to hardliners’ pressure to omit them.
In a Friday sermon in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan, Abdolhamid criticized the Parliament’s objection to Hosseinzadeh’s resignation and barring him from entering Pezeshkian’s cabinet although resignation of other lawmakers to join the cabinet had always been accepted before.
Sunnis are also impeded from running for the presidency. In June, the unelected 12-member Guardian Council, responsible for vetting candidates, blocked Jalal Jalalizadeh, a Sunni former representative of Sanandaj in the Iranian parliament, from running in the snap presidential elections.
Over the years, Sistan and Baluchestan has witnessed several major terrorist attacks by Jundullah and Jaish al-Adl, two closely related insurgent Balochi groups that advocate for an independent Balochistan that encompasses Baloch populations on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border.
Last week, Jaish al-Adl, a group known for its history of ambushes, bombings, and other violent operations resulting in the deaths of both civilians and security personnel, took responsibility for the killing of ten border guards in Taftan Country of Sistan and Baluchestan.
Israel has historically been one of the toughest places to recruit spies and foreign operatives, but recent weeks have seen a surge in arrests of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Azerbaijan.
The latest citizens to be arrested were a married couple, Rafael and Lela Goliev, who live in the mixed Arab and Jewish city of Lod. The 32-year-olds were arrested after carrying out tasks on behalf of an Iranian infrastructure that recruits Israeli immigrants from the Caucasus countries, Israeli authorities say.
The investigation revealed that Rafael Goliev was recruited into the plot by fellow Azeri Elshan Agayev, 56, acting on behalf of Iranian officials.
“As part of the operation, Golayev carried out surveillance missions on security sites in Israel, including the Mossad's headquarters, and collected intelligence on an academic working at the Institute for Security Studies who the Iranians marked as an assassination target,” a statement from Israel Police said.
Goliev was also asked to locate a person who would serve as the assassin for the Iranian operation. Some of the tasks were carried out by Goliev with the help of his wife Lela who will be served with an indictment today.
The two, both of Azeri origin, had been in contact with the handler since 2021, but in the last month, it is the sixth cell busted for working for Iran. In the last year, the incidences have spiked, reaching a head in October with all the cases coming from either Russia or Azerbaijan.
Israel’s former head of Interpol, Asher Ben Artzi, told Iran International on Thursday as the news broke that the situation reflects a disconnected segment of Israel’s immigrant population. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, several Jews used the right of return to move to Israel and thousands more Russians have fled to the Jewish state in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
“These people come from a very closed society, it’s not like native born Israelis who could never conceive of doing such a thing,” he said. “In all my years in the security services here, I never thought I would see this day. It’s a tragic thing that people who come here seeking refuge, can do this all for the pursuit of greed.”
Immigrants from the former Soviet Union tend to live in more closed communities and integrate less than other immigrants, as well as often being among the less economically well-off segments of the population.
Iranian-born Israeli Beni Sabti, also a researcher at the INSS, told Iran International that Iranians are catching “people or communities in Israel who are not paid enough and are dissatisfied in life”, a vulnerable sector of society which now numbers around one million of Israel’s 10 million population.
Ronen Solomon, an Israeli defense and intelligence analyst, told Iran International that using Azeri for communications may have revealed a gap in Israel’s monitoring capabilities, which are more robust for Persian and Hebrew languages.
Ben Arzti, a veteran of Israel’s security and intelligence sector, noted that Iran enjoys greater operational freedom in Azerbaijan, enabling it to potentially recruit and groom agents there for deployment to Israel.
Solomon further suggested that the recruited Azeris may come from Iran’s Azeri speaking population, making them especially vulnerable to recruitment efforts.
Like previous plots, Solomon said the fact they communicate on Telegram also exposes the weakness of the social media platform which protects the identity of users even when engaged in criminal activity.
Other targets of surveillance in the operation included the Moldovan consulate in Tel Aviv, the national electric company, the port of Haifa, public shelters in Tel Aviv, and graves of victims of the October 7 attacks.
According to the indictment, Goliev received an amount of approximately $600 for each day of surveillance and photography in the mission. His handlers ordered him to purchase an operational phone, high quality cameras, a laptop as well as to use the coding software they installed on the laptop, in order to transfer the information they collected safely. In total, the couple received around $26,000, the police said.
Tamir Hyman, the former head of Israeli defense intelligence and head of the INSS, told Israel’s Ynet: "It is not surprising that the members of the Institute for National Security Studies are a target for Iran and its proxies. Although the institute is an independent research institute, and is not part of the defense establishment, it is the leading defense research institute in Israel and as such, Iran seeks to harm its people.”
Last week, an indictment was filed against seven residents of northern Israel who operated as part of an organized squad recruited by an Iranian agent, and during the war engaged in information gathering and photography of military facilities and bases - among others, those that were the target of the Iranian missile attack on October 1.