Leaked audio: Iran's Basij brace for new protests and fear being named online

Reyhaneh Ghasemizadeh accused government opponents of displaying “fake concern for Iran” before making the controversial remark in footage widely circulated on social media Monday.

Iran’s state broadcaster said her comments had been taken out of context and released a longer version. In it, Ghasemizadeh accused critics who had called for Donald Trump’s help of now claiming concern for southern Iran, saying: “They post claims of patriotism... saying, ‘Our hearts ache for the south.’ Southern Iran, sacrificed for southern Lebanon.” She then accused the same critics of celebrating reports that 168 students in Minab had been killed on February 28.

Islamic Republic supporters argued online that the disputed phrase was not Ghasemizadeh’s own view, but a quotation or paraphrase of what she was attributing to government opponents. Most visible comments under widely shared versions of the clip, however, rejected that interpretation, saying her delivery did not make clear she was quoting dissidents.

The remarks touched a longstanding political fault line in Iran over the Islamic Republic’s support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and other members of what Tehran calls the “Axis of Resistance.”

“Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran” has long been among the slogans chanted in antigovernment protests in Iran.

It first gained prominence during the 2009 Green Movement and has repeatedly resurfaced during subsequent waves of anti-government demonstrations.

It was most recently heard during nationwide protests beginning in December 2025, including in Tehran and other cities. The slogan has become shorthand among protesters for opposition to Tehran directing financial and military resources toward regional allies while Iran faces economic hardship at home.

Ghasemizadeh’s comments also come weeks after southern Iran bore the brunt of a sustained US bombing campaign following renewed fighting around the Strait of Hormuz.

US forces carried out 13 consecutive nights of strikes in July, hitting military and other infrastructure across Hormozgan, Khuzestan and Sistan & Baluchestan provinces, including around Bandar Abbas, Jask, Chabahar and Qeshm. Washington said the campaign was intended to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping.

Iranian authorities reported deaths, damaged bridges and transport links, as well as power and water disruptions in parts of the south, fueling public concern over the civilian cost of the renewed conflict.

Iran’s repression follows survivors through three places: into the hospital, where their wounds may identify them; into their bodies, where pellets and pain remain; and into exile, where scars, flashbacks and fear continue years later.

Every injured protester I advised feared the healthcare system; not the physicians trying to help them, but what might happen if their wounds identified them.

Healthcare should be a red line. Patients must be able to seek treatment without being punished for their wounds, and clinicians must be free to treat them without intimidation. Yet UN experts reported that Iranian security forces entered medical facilities, attempted to arrest wounded protesters and detained people in and around them.

From Los Angeles, I joined physicians working through MAHSA Medical to provide free, confidential telehealth guidance to injured civilians. I also worked through a network of doctors in the United States connected to colleagues and relatives practicing inside Iran.

Through WhatsApp and Telegram, I spoke directly with injured civilians and examined them on live video whenever security and connectivity allowed. We reviewed photographs, medical imaging and prerecorded audio and video from homes where protesters were hiding.

Patients told us they feared that even seeking antibiotics or pain medication from a pharmacy could flag them as protest casualties. They suffered silently at home while we tried to provide what limited care we could from thousands of miles away.

During one live video call, I saw a young man with a deep wound across his right hand and significant active bleeding. He said security forces had attacked him with a machete-like blade, cutting to the tendons. The injury required formal evaluation and likely surgical repair, but he feared its pattern would identify him as a protester.

Instead of a hand-surgery suite, we discussed temporary stabilization using household materials. Even while bleeding and in severe pain, he remained remarkably composed. After years of treating catastrophic trauma, I had never witnessed that combination of physical pain, acute fear and resolve. This was not equivalent care. It was harm reduction when seeking ordinary care felt dangerous.

The pellet injuries were even more pervasive. Patients ranged from teenagers to women in their 70s. Some had clusters of 20 or more fragments in one region; others carried more than 100. I reviewed pellets involving the face and eyes, neck, chest, hands, hips, upper thighs and urogenital region—near structures whose injury can cause blindness, catastrophic bleeding, nerve damage, sexual or reproductive harm, disability or death.

In the cases I reviewed, I estimated that more than 95% of the retained pellets could never safely be removed. Fragments were embedded between the small joints of hands and knuckles, within or beside larger joints and near delicate neurovascular structures. Searching surgically for each tiny fragment could damage a nerve, blood vessel, tendon or joint and cause more harm than leaving it in place.

That does not make the pellets harmless. They can chronically irritate nerves and joints, causing pain, stiffness, reduced mobility and recurrent inflammation. Unlike a single projectile with one wound track, a shotgun discharge can scatter dozens of permanent foreign bodies across tissues too delicate to explore safely.

The eyes reveal the scale of this harm. During the January 2026 crackdown, more than 400 gunshot-related eye injuries were documented at a single Tehran hospital, according to physicians cited by the Guardian.

Doctors described permanent blindness and eyes damaged beyond repair. This continued a pattern seen during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, when ophthalmologists reported at least 580 significant eye injuries. The nationwide toll remains unknown.

100%

Years after the streets fall silent, a pellet lodged beside a nerve or within a joint can turn an ordinary movement into both pain and memory. Each bend of a finger can evoke the gunfire, fear and moment the survivor was wounded.

But the wounds can also become evidence against the wounded. Reuters reported that Revolutionary Guards and police sought hospital records to find protesters who had already been discharged. The Associated Press reported that some physicians removed pellets or altered records to help patients avoid detection.

A retained pellet does not prove a person’s beliefs or conduct, but in this environment it can become a physical marker of suspected protest participation. Identification can expose a survivor to arrest, detention and prosecution, including proceedings carrying the death penalty.

Medical records, scans and forensic examinations should be preserved securely, not transformed into instruments of surveillance. When the injured avoid hospitals, they lose not only treatment but contemporaneous documentation of what happened.

I encounter the other end of this process as a volunteer physician evaluator with the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network. In a forensic medical evaluation, I assess whether an asylum seeker’s scars, chronic injuries and psychological symptoms are medically consistent with the history of persecution the person reports.

Medicine cannot decide whether someone legally qualifies for asylum, identify an assailant from a scar alone or prove every detail of an event. It can document findings, consider alternative explanations and explain how closely the clinical evidence corresponds to the account provided.

One man, now in his early 40s, reported that his persecution began in his mid-20s and recurred over nearly two decades. His family operated a wedding hall where music and men and women celebrating together drew repeated Basij or IRGC intervention. He described repeated detention, including solitary confinement without meaningful legal process. In one assault, he suffered penetrating knife wounds to his thigh and posterior chest, requiring emergency vascular surgery and about a month in hospital.

Years later, I documented extensive scarring, diminished pulses, muscle loss and chronic vascular and neurological complications medically consistent with severe penetrating trauma near the femoral artery. Such an injury can cause massive hemorrhage, shock, loss of the limb and death. A wound cannot prove an assailant’s subjective intent, but it can establish that the violence was life-threatening.

Nearly two decades after the persecution began, he still reported pain, nightmares, insomnia, flashbacks and hypervigilance. News from Iran and disrupted communication with his family impaired his concentration and work. He had escaped the immediate danger, but the danger continued to organize his life.

I have seen the same continuum in other survivors: scars medically consistent with accounts of beatings and lashings, alongside panic, dissociation, depression and hypervigilance that can persist long after someone has escaped. Not every enduring injury is visible, and no single symptom can prove what happened. But trauma-informed forensic evaluation can document what violence leaves behind.

Executions and deportation remain part of the stakes, but they are not the center of this medical story. Amnesty International has documented protesters subjected to incommunicado detention, denial of medical care and torture-tainted proceedings, including cases carrying the death penalty. For survivors seeking protection abroad, return can mean renewed exposure to the institutions they identify as their persecutors.

The response must begin with protecting the independence of medicine. Iranian clinicians must be able to treat patients without intimidation or punishment. International investigators should document attacks on patients, health workers and facilities. Governments reviewing asylum claims should protect confidentiality and provide access to qualified forensic evaluation.

No one should have to choose between leaving a disabling injury untreated and revealing themselves to those they fear.

As an Iranian American, this work is personal. But my medical conclusions must rest on examinations, imaging, clinical evidence and candor about what those findings can and cannot establish. A wound is not merely a mark of what happened to one body. Properly treated and independently documented, it can become part of the record of what happened to a society.

Iran’s authorities may try to frighten the wounded away from hospitals, intimidate those who treat them and suppress the evidence left behind. Medicine cannot stop that machinery alone. But it can care for the injured, protect the integrity of their stories and preserve what repression is designed to make disappear.

The bill would also give the Intelligence Ministry and the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organization a central role in establishing prohibited foreign links, potentially handing prosecutors a broad new set of offenses in a judicial system repeatedly criticized by rights groups over due process.

Parliament approved the general framework of the bill on Sunday, though its current text has not been made public.

The latest publicly available draft contains 19 articles imposing prison terms, professional bans and other penalties across journalism, academia, civil society, culture and communications with foreign individuals and organizations.

Approval of the general framework does not mean lawmakers have approved each provision, and the final legislation could differ substantially.

But if its central provisions survive, the legislation would create an extensive new framework for prosecuting alleged foreign influence as authorities intensify prosecutions over perceived links to foreign governments and media.

What could land someone in prison?

Among the most far-reaching provisions is Article 7, which would prohibit sending messages, photographs, videos, audio or other data to non-Iranian media or people engaged in media activity abroad.

The offense would carry a prison sentence, with potentially harsher punishment if the communication occurred under a work arrangement, was deemed intended to undermine national security or took place during “crisis,” “unrest” or “rioting.”

Article 6 would prohibit interviews or other communication with media deemed hostile, including American or Israeli-funded outlets. Speaking to other foreign media would require notification through an Intelligence Ministry system, with failure to notify also punishable by imprisonment.

Under Article 5, the Intelligence Ministry would annually publish a list of foreign governments, universities and institutions approved for scholarships, academic agreements, conferences and scientific cooperation.

Collaboration with institutions outside that list could bring imprisonment, as could sending medical, research or archaeological samples to them.

Private individuals and organizations communicating with foreign embassies or institutions would meanwhile need to notify authorities and obtain written authorization, with limited exceptions for personal and civil-status matters.

NGOs, associations and political parties would be barred from accepting financial benefits from foreign governments, institutions or embassies without approval from a committee including the Intelligence Ministry and IRGC Intelligence.

Violations could bring imprisonment, lengthy bans on social and cultural activity and dissolution of the organization.

Film, documentary, theater, music and book projects involving “prohibited foreign direction or support” could result in permanent professional bans if authorities determine that they question religious rules, portray Iran negatively or promote what the bill calls anti-Islamic culture.

Organizing certain foreign-linked courses or workshops, including online programs, could also bring prison terms, as could knowingly participating in them.

Broad crimes, powerful investigators

The breadth of the prohibited conduct is compounded by the powers given to Iran’s security agencies.

The draft names the Intelligence Ministry and IRGC Intelligence as the principal investigative authorities responsible for presenting evidence of prohibited foreign direction or involvement to judicial authorities.

The criteria they would be tasked with establishing are broad.

Article 1 covers people acting under the supervision, direction, training or guidance of a wide range of foreign governments, international organizations and other non-Iranian entities.

Potential harms include damaging national security or territorial integrity, but also undermining public trust in the political system or reducing electoral participation. Severe prison sentences are envisaged in some circumstances.

Another provision indicates that ignorance of a prohibited foreign connection would not necessarily eliminate criminal liability if authorities conclude negligence or carelessness resulted in harm.

Cases would be heard by Revolutionary Courts, which could also order confiscation of assets and professional bans.

New charges in a system under scrutiny

By criminalizing a much wider range of foreign contacts and communications, the bill could give investigators and prosecutors additional charges in cases involving alleged foreign links.

That prospect is particularly consequential given the record of Iran’s Revolutionary Courts and security agencies.

Human Rights Watch has documented restrictions on access to independent lawyers in national security cases and said Revolutionary Courts regularly fall short of fair-trial standards.

The group reported in February that state-affiliated media had broadcast hundreds of purported confessions, including statements describing collaboration with foreign intelligence agencies and sharing protest footage with Persian-language media abroad.

Amnesty International has similarly documented what it describes as systemic denial of access to lawyers and forced confessions during the January crackdown, including detainees being made to confess to sending protest images to media outside Iran.

The overlap with conduct contemplated by the proposed legislation is striking.

The bill would therefore arrive in a system already accustomed to prosecuting alleged foreign connections, but with a substantially expanded range of conduct explicitly available for prosecution.

It would also criminalize certain foreign-directed economic activity and allow enhanced punishment for other crimes committed under alleged foreign supervision or guidance.

If passed into law in its available or a similar form, the legislation would move the concept of foreign “infiltration” far beyond conventional espionage.

Armed forces opened fire on protesters on January 8 and 9 from the rooftops of the Quran Mosque, a nearby Basij facility and surrounding buildings on Ashouri Street in the city of Bushehr, witnesses said.

Several people who said they were present identified Pourkabgani as one of the armed men in the area. Some said he carried a handgun, while others described him as holding a Kalashnikov-style rifle.

One witness said Pourkabgani shouted “Labbaik ya Khamenei,” an expression of allegiance to then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as he fired.

Other accounts described the lawmaker as a leading figure among the armed personnel deployed in the area.

Gunfire against at least 19 people attributed to Pourkabgani

Accounts collected by Iran International attributed the shooting of at least 19 people to Pourkabgani. Witnesses said at least two of those struck by his gunfire have died.

It was not immediately possible to independently establish the identities of all those shot, the weapons used or the precise circumstances of the deaths.

Some residents of Bushehr refer to Pourkabgani by the nickname “Jafar the Axe,” according to local accounts.

Pourkabgani has longstanding ties to the Quran Mosque, one of the locations from which witnesses said gunfire was directed at protesters. Public accounts identified him as head of the mosque’s board of trustees for at least part of the period between 2014 and 2022.

Pressure on bereaved families

One local source with knowledge of the matter said that Pourkabgani visited the homes of some bereaved families after protesters were killed and sought to persuade them to say their children had been killed by “terrorists,” which the families rejected.

Pourkabgani has not publicly addressed the allegations that he personally fired at protesters or pressured bereaved families.

Decades in security and local government roles

Pourkabgani joined the IRGC in the early 1980s and subsequently held security, executive and political positions in Bushehr.

In 2004-05, while holding the rank of IRGC colonel, he headed the local Basij unit responsible for enforcing the Islamic Republic’s doctrine of “enjoining good and forbidding wrong.” Accounts of the unit’s activities included searches of homes, confiscation of equipment and arrests.

He served as governor of Bushehr from about 2005 to 2013 and headed the county’s election headquarters during the disputed 2009 presidential election.

Pourkabgani later served on the Bushehr City Council, including as its chairman, before entering parliament as the representative for Bushehr, Ganaveh and Deylam.

Residents have also said that he was involved in the authorities’ response to the November 2019 protests and the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

During the 2022 protests, Pourkabgani was injured in a knife attack in Bushehr’s Kouti neighborhood while serving on the City Council.

Calls for harsh punishment

After the January 2026 protests, Pourkabgani publicly described demonstrators as “rioters” and the demonstrations as a “terrorist operation.”

He called on the judiciary to identify protesters and create official files on them, further demanding that they face the “harshest punishment.”

Viewers who contacted Iran International pointed to what they described as a stark contradiction between Pourkabgani’s position as a representative of the public and the allegations that he fired at the people he was elected to represent.

More than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history, according to documents reviewed by Iran International's Editorial Board.

Iran International's Editorial Board confirmed the death toll on January 25 after reviewing classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families.

The major corruption network involved in the sale of Iranian oil has been operating within the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence Ministry, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The network was built around trusted intermediaries, known in Iran as “trustees,” who were given oil to sell as part of efforts to circumvent sanctions and were expected to return the proceeds to the state.

Iran International’s investigation found that the nine included the relatives of senior current and former officials, including a son of Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei and the sons-in-law of two former intelligence ministers.

On August 9, the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA), quoting Hossein Samsami, a member of parliament’s Economic Committee, named one of the trustees who he said had failed to return Iran’s oil revenue: Hossein Aghayari.

A day later, ILNA provided further details, saying Aghayari was born in 1982 and operated in Tehran using Iranian and Afghan passports. It said he had purchased 40 Iranian oil tankers, taken delivery of 90 million barrels of oil, sold it on the market and failed to return the proceeds.

100%

Aghayari has been based in the United Arab Emirates since before the start of the 40-day war. Two oil-industry sources told Iran International that five months ago, he stayed for several days at the Ritz hotel in London using a Dominican passport.

According to the sources, Aghayari’s name and details of his activities were deliberately provided to Iran’s domestic media as part of a security operation intended to conceal the identities of the principal figures in a much larger network of Intelligence Ministry trustees.

The sources identify the leader of the network as a senior Intelligence Ministry official known as Shayan, the ministry’s director-general for fuel and energy. He was dismissed 10 days ago and, according to three sources, is expected to be arrested.

The sources say the group, known as the Shayan Network, was responsible for about $11 billion in oil-sale proceeds not being returned to the state.

How the network operated

Since the administration of former President Ebrahim Raisi took office, Iran’s budget laws have allowed executive agencies and state, military and Social Security pension funds, in coordination with the Oil Ministry, to receive Iranian crude oil and gas condensate for sale as part of efforts to circumvent sanctions and return the proceeds to Iran.

The individuals and companies entrusted with selling the oil and transferring the revenue are commonly known in Iran’s political and economic terminology as “trustees.”

The administration of President Masoud Pezeshkian has continued to use similar mechanisms for oil sales.

According to Iran International’s sources, several large patronage networks emerged around the system, including one operating within the Intelligence Ministry through the cooperation of three figures.

One was Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad, who previously headed the Oil Ministry’s Fuel Supply Oversight Headquarters.

The other two, according to the sources, were the principal organizers of the alleged network. One was Shayan, the Intelligence Ministry’s director-general for fuel, who had previously served as a senior ministry interrogator in major oil cases.

Sources say that Shayan used his influence over cases ranging from the missing oil rigs scandal to the Crescent case to accumulate considerable wealth.

The third figure was Meysam Darzinejad Rami, director-general of the Intelligence Ministry Pension Fund, through whom the sources say legal cover was provided for the oil sales. He previously headed security at the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO), the vast economic conglomerate controlled by the office of Iran’s supreme leader.

According to Iran International’s sources, Shayan and Darzinejad built an extensive oil-sales operation around nine influential trustees, one of whom was Aghayari.

Mohsen Fallahian, son of an ex-intelligence minister

One of the best-known members of the alleged network is Mohsen Fallahian, the son of Ali Fallahian, who served as intelligence minister under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

100%

Ali Fallahian has been widely accused of being one of the architects of the Islamic Republic’s campaign of assassinations against opponents abroad, including during the period when Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was killed in Paris.

Mohsen Fallahian runs a company in Iran called Sepehr Sanat Negin, whose stated business activities were changed to include oil and gas operations in October last year.

Iran International’s sources say Fallahian obtained authorization to establish an oil-storage facility at Shahid Rajaei Port in Bandar Abbas through his father’s influence and subsequently joined the Shayan Network’s oil-selling operation.

According to the sources, Mohsen Fallahian lives in the UAE and trades oil under another identity, “Mohsen A.,” using a Turkish passport. In one instance alone, the sources say, he converted 200 million dirhams in Iranian oil revenue into cryptocurrency and transferred it to a European country.

Ali Rezaei, son of Mohsen Rezaei

Ali Rezaei, son of Iran’s newly appointed security chief Mohsen Rezaei, is also identified by the sources as one of the Shayan Network’s trustees.

Rezaei is married to the daughter of Leili Boroujerdi, a granddaughter of Ruhollah Khomeini. For years, he served as deputy for communications at the Secretariat of the Expediency Discernment Council, effectively serving as his father’s deputy.

100%

Iran International’s sources say Rezaei has for some time been living at the Address Mall hotel in Dubai, where he works as an oil trader. They allege that he is among the Shayan Network trustees who have failed to return hundreds of millions of dollars in oil-sale proceeds.

Ali Bayandorian, a trustee for several networks

Another member of the alleged network identified by Iran International’s sources is Ali Bayandorian, 52, who was born in Tehran and lives on Morvarid Street in Tehran’s Saadat Abad neighborhood, although he spends much of the year in the UAE.

The United States sanctioned Bayandorian in January 2020 over his links to Triliance Petrochemical, a Hong Kong-based broker that the US Treasury said facilitated sales of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products on behalf of the National Iranian Oil Company.

100%

Iran International’s sources say Bayandorian sells oil and petrochemical products through a network of companies registered in Iran and Southeast Asia. They also allege that he handles financial transactions related to sanctioned oil sales and pays kickbacks to Shayan through an account in the UAE belonging to one of his wife’s relatives, a woman named Neda.

Before joining the Shayan Network, according to the sources, Bayandorian was a trusted intermediary for a network associated with the Supreme National Security Council.

Because he worked with several parallel networks, the sources say, he sometimes failed to pay Shayan’s share on time or in full. Shayan therefore created a rival for him: Ahmad Maroufkhani, chairman of the board of the Oil Products Exporters’ Union, whom the sources describe as one of the Intelligence Ministry network’s second-tier trustees.

Ehsan Sakhaei, son-in-law of Rouhani’s intelligence minister

Ehsan Sakhaei is another person identified by the sources as a trustee in the Shayan Network. He is 51, a Swiss citizen and the son-in-law of Mahmoud Alavi, who served as intelligence minister under President Hassan Rouhani.

According to Iran International’s sources, Sakhaei lives in Dubai’s Vision Tower.

100%

Six years ago, during a Bank Mellat corruption trial, Sakhaei was accused of acting as a fixer who used his father-in-law’s influence to secure multibillion-toman debt write-offs for major bank debtors.

Iran International’s sources say Sakhaei has failed to return several hundred million dollars in proceeds from Iranian oil sales.

Ehsan Tahayori, son of an IRGC brigadier general

Ehsan Tahayori is a well-known Iranian currency dealer who, according to Iran International’s sources, failed to hand over $700 million in Iranian oil revenue in one case alone.

Tahayori, owner of the Arz Iran currency exchange, is the son of IRGC Brigadier General Shams-Ali Tahayor, also known as General Tahayori.

100%

Iran International’s sources identify Tahayori as the principal suspect in a one-billion-dirham fraud involving Iran’s NIMA foreign-exchange system. They also allege that he was released and helped to flee with the assistance of the Intelligence Ministry.

Two sources told Iran International that authorities in the UAE arrested Tahayori during the war and that he is now in prison.

Photographs published earlier and reported to show his luxury cars at his villa in Lavasan had caused controversy in Iran.

Rouhollah Razavi, son-in-law of a Paydari Front spokesman

Another figure identified by the sources is Rouhollah Razavi, the son-in-law of Majid Mottaghifar, spokesman for the hardline Paydari Front.

Iran International’s sources say it was through this political connection that Razavi became one of Shayan’s trusted intermediaries and describe his office in Tehran’s Kamranieh neighborhood as a hub for backroom oil deals.

100%

The sources allege that Razavi has retained more than $1 billion in oil-sale proceeds and provided information about rival trustees in an effort to push them out of the market.

Mohammad-Hadi Momenin, major bank debtor and oil broker

Another trustee identified by the sources is Mohammad-Hadi Momenin, born in 1989.

Iran International’s sources allege that Momenin controls approximately $2 billion in Iranian oil revenue that has not been returned. His name has appeared on the boards of more than 40 companies in Iran.

100%

Last year, when the names of major bank debtors were released, it emerged that Momenin owed Karafarin Bank 743 billion tomans.

The sources say he fled the UAE for Oman during the war and later traveled from there to China, where they say he is refusing to respond to his creditors.

Ehsan Dastgheyb, son of Iran’s ‘Bribery King’

The ninth individual identified by the sources is Ehsan Dastgheyb, son of Abdollah Dastgheyb, a nephew of a former Shiraz Friday prayer leader who is known as Iran’s “Bribery King.”

100%

Ehsan Dastgheyb lives in Dubai and sells fuel oil for the Shayan Network, according to Iran International’s sources. They allege that he, too, has failed to return a large sum of money to Iran.

Network comes under pressure

Following Shayan’s dismissal, Iran International’s sources say both he and Meysam Darzinejad Rami are expected to be arrested and that the network has come under increasing pressure.

The sources say the Shayan Network is only one of several networks of trustees involved in Iranian oil sales and estimate that intermediaries across these networks have collectively failed to return as much as $110 billion in oil revenue.

They also say Oil Minister Paknejad could soon be dismissed, although he has mobilized his political connections in an effort to remain in office.

100%

On July 24, Tehran prosecutor Ali Salehi said 59 cases had been opened against managers of trustee companies, with 43 reaching the indictment stage. He said 22 defendants had been sent to prison and that Interpol Red Notices were being pursued for 15 fugitives.

The prosecutor did not publicly identify the 15 fugitives, making it impossible from the announcement to determine whether any members of the Shayan Network were among them.

Iran International’s sources expressed doubt that the alleged network would be fully pursued, pointing to the powerful connections of those involved: they include sons and sons-in-law of former intelligence ministers, the son of the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and people connected to the Paydari Front and influential clerical families.

According to the sources, the Shayan Network alone was responsible for about $11 billion in Iranian oil-sale proceeds that were not returned to the state.

• 

  Scandal rocks Iran's secret oil money network as billions go 'missing'