Iran Digest Week of August 11- August 18
/AIC’s Iran digest project covers the latest developments and news stories published in Iranian and international media outlets. This weekly digest is compiled by associate Samuel Howell. Please note that the news and views expressed in the articles below do not necessarily reflect those of AIC.
US- Iran Relations
The US and Iran look for de-escalation
After more than two years of tortuous, halting talks, the Biden administration may finally be making some progress in its efforts to de-escalate tensions with Iran, secure the freedom of US nationals imprisoned in the Islamic republic and potentially put a lid on a long-running nuclear crisis.
Last week, Iran transferred four Iranian-US citizens, including businessmen Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz, from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison to house arrest as the first phase of a prisoner swap. Under the agreement, the detainees, plus another dual national also under house arrest, will eventually be free to leave the Islamic republic. Washington, meanwhile, will allow Tehran to access $6bn of its frozen oil funds held in South Korea and release five Iranian prisoners.
The deal smacks of hostage diplomacy and will justifiably cause concerns that it will encourage the regime to keep cynically using human pawns as a tactic in its decades-long hostility with the west. But the release of the dual nationals is a welcome step — Namazi had languished in Evin for eight years; Shargi and Tahbaz for five years, all on spying charges.
Women of Iran
Iran arrests women's rights activists ahead of 'Woman, Life, Freedom' anniversary
At least 11 women's rights activists were arrested by security forces in Iran in the northern province of Gilan Wednesday, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
However, Iranian officials say the number of people arrested in Gilan is 12, according to the Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard. It quotes the "Intelligence Office of Gilan Province" as saying those arrested are an "organizational team of 12 members, which has a history of numerous anti-security activities over the last year's riots."
HRANA says in most cases, the arrests occurred by raiding activists' homes.
(ABC News)
Iran's politicians to debate hijab laws in secret
Iranian MPs have voted to review a controversial hijab law behind closed doors - meaning it is likely there will be no public debate on the matter.
The so-called Hijab and Chastity Bill would impose a raft of new punishments on women who fail to wear the headscarf.
It was drafted in response to months of mass protests triggered by the death in custody of a woman who was accused of not wearing her hijab correctly.
(BBC)
Economy
Iran grapples with unintended consequences of ultra-cheap petrol
As western governments struggle to keep a lid on fuel prices, the leadership of Iran faces a very different problem: its petrol is just too cheap.
Heavy state subsidies ensure that Iranian prices start at just $0.03 a litre, a fraction of the $1.10 paid at US pumps or the $1.88 that motorists in the UK are charged to fill their cars.
Oil-rich Iran vies with Libya and Venezuela, which has proven oil reserves greater than Saudi Arabia, as the countries with the cheapest petrol in the world.
(Financial Times)
Environment
Iranians Protest Government Negligence As Lake Urmia Dries Up
Iranians held a demonstration in the northwestern city of Tabriz on Saturday to protest mismanagement that has led to the disappearance of Lake Urmia.
The protesters gathered outside the provincial office of Iran’s Natural Resources and Watershed Management Organization, demanding the reopening of dams on rivers that feed the lake to resuscitate the dying hypersaline body of water.
Located between the provinces of East Azarbaijan and West Azarbaijan in northwestern Iran, Lake Urmia (Orumiyeh) was the largest lake in the Middle East and the sixth-largest saltwater lake on Earth with an original surface area of 5,200 square kilometers in the 1970s, or 2,000 square miles. It had shrunk to 700 sq km by 2013. The lake began shrinking in the 1980s due to water mismanagement and climate change.
(Iran International)
Inside Iran
Iran sentences filmmaker to prison for screening film at Cannes
Director Saeed Roustayi and producer Javad Norouzbeigi traveled to Cannes last year to show “Leila’s Brothers,” competing for the festival’s grand Palme d’Or prize. The film focuses on a family struggling to make ends meet as Iran faces international sanctions and includes sequences showing protests in the Islamic Republic as a series of nationwide demonstrations shook the nation.
The film also depicts security forces beating demonstrators protesting Iran’s ailing economy, which has already sparked mass protests and bloody security force crackdowns killing hundreds. The family in it loses all its savings over the rapid depreciation of Iran’s rial currency, something Iranians across the country have lived with for years.
Additionally, the aging patriarch, hoarding his family’s wealth and forcing them into squalor for a chance at personal glory, can be seen as an allegory to Iran’s theocracy.
Regional Politics
Iran FM in Saudi Arabia, says relations ‘on the right track’
Saudi Arabia and Iran are making progress on mending ties, Iran’s foreign minister has said after meeting with his counterpart in Riyadh, as the two regional heavyweights seek to overcome past hostility and boost cooperation.
“Relations between Tehran and Saudi are on the right track and we are witnessing progress,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a joint news conference with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud on Thursday, adding that “the talks were successful”.
His visit to the kingdom comes months after Prince Faisal met with officials from Iran in Tehran in June on his first trip to the country after a China-brokered deal between the regional rivals in March to restore ties.
Iran's Quds Force commander urge Iraqi militias to not attack US-led coalition forces: sources
Iraqi sources said that General Esmail Qaani, the commander of Iran's Quds Force, secretly visited Iraq on Tuesday, 15 August, and discussed security and political developments with several Iraqi politicians and militia leaders.
This is Qaani's fourth visit to Baghdad following the formation of Mohamed Shia al-Sudani's cabinet by pro-Iran parties and militias in October 2022.
Iran's Quds Force is an arm within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that operates abroad, and both are under US sanctions.
Global Relations
Inside the Russian effort to build 6,000 attack drones with Iran’s help
The engineers at a once-bustling industrial hub deep inside Russia were busy planning. The team had been secretly tasked with building a production line that would operate around-the-clock churning out self-detonating drones, weapons that President Vladimir Putin’s forces could use to bombard Ukrainian cities.
A retired official of Russia’s Federal Security Service was put in charge of security for the program. The passports of highly skilled employees were seized so they could not leave the country. In correspondence and other documents, engineers used coded language: Drones were “boats,” their explosives were “bumpers,” and Iran — the country covertly providing technical assistance — was “Ireland” or “Belarus.”
This was Russia’s billion-dollar weapons deal with Iran coming to life in November, 500 miles east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region. Its aim is to domestically build 6,000 drones by summer 2025 — enough to reverse the Russian army’s chronic shortages of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, on the front line. If it succeeds, the sprawling new drone factory could help Russia preserve its dwindling supply of precision munitions, thwart Ukraine’s effort to retake occupied territory and dramatically advance Moscow’s position in the drone arms race that is remaking modern warfare.
Analysis
A Religious Ritual in Iran Becomes a New Form of Protest
By: Farnaz Fassihi
The large crowd of men congregated at the center of a mosque in the central city of Yazd, clad in black and beating their chests rhythmically in unison. They were commemorating Ashura, Shiite Islam’s most sacred ritual, showcased annually with great fanfare in Iran as a testament to the Shiite theocracy’s power and strength.
But this year Ashura looked different. The mourners who gathered in Yazd last month and in many other cities across Iran diverged unexpectedly from the script to target the clerical rulers of Iran, turning religious ballads into protest songs about the suffering of Iranians.
“For a city in ruins, for all of us held hostage, for the grieving mothers, for the tears of the marginalized,” the men sang, according to videos. “We are mourning thousands of innocent lives, we are ashamed of this raging fire. Oh rain, oh storm, come. They have set fire to our tent.”
