Tehran Students Protest Against Tightened Dress Code Restrictions

According to a report by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) on Saturday, the Iran-backed Lebanese group is manufacturing various kinds of mines, artillery shells, and missile in the workshops in the strategic Mahin area in the southeastern countryside of Homs.

The observatory added that many people from the town of Mahin are now working in the ranks of the local militias loyal to Iran, which helped the Syrian government forces take control of the area in early 2017, with Russian air support.

The SOHR cited its sources as saying that after Russian forces completely withdrew from Palmyra Air Base on the eastern outskirts of Homs and relocated to Tiyas Military Airbase, also known as the T-4 Air base, Palmyra Air Base came under the control of Hezbollah and the Afghan Fatemiyoun militia recruited and maintained by the Islamic Republic.

Early in 2022, the observatory reported that IRGC and Hezbollah had started construction work to expand two old military bases near the capital Damascus, saying they are turning the compounds into training and operations centers with underground facilities to store drones and weapons.

Iran International has learned that Israel is considering the possibility of a direct conflict with the IRGC in Syria and its proxies in Lebanon while Iran is settling Shiites in large tracts of land close to the Syrian Israeli border it bought in recent years.

"The ship was seized in the northern part of the Persian Gulf. Its eight crew have been handed over to legal authorities in the southern port city of Bushehr," Gholamhossein Hosseini told Fars news agency affiliated with the IRGC, without elaborating on the nationalities of the crew members.

The IRGC has announced several similar fuel seizures this month, but they have not provided information about the port of origin or the destination of the cargoes. The powerful Guards control most of Iran’s ports through their military and intelligence presence.

It is not clear why seizures or claims of seizures have increased in recent weeks.

Iran, which has some of the world's cheapest fuel prices due to heavy subsidies and the plunge in value of its national currency, has been fighting small-scale fuel smuggling by land to neighboring countries and by sea to Persian Gulf Arab states.

The volumes seized from ships are relatively small in comparison to average oil tanker capacity. The vessels are usually small vessels conducting local trade in the Persian Gulf.

The media office of the parliament's first deputy speaker, Hakem al-Zameli, said in a statement on Saturday that the deliberative meeting will also include Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and the senior undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry, Nizar al-Khairallah.

The session was planned upon an official correspondence submitted by the head of the Sadrist bloc, and more than 50 lawmakers also signed it.

Last Monday, Turkey carried out air and land operations -- dubbed Operation Claw Lock – against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq that targeted camps and ammunition stores.

The military action was part of a long-running Turkish campaign in Iraq and Syria against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, both regarded as terrorist groups by Ankara.

The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which in the past was mainly focused on southeast Turkey.

Iran also has armed Kurdish opposition in Iraq, although they are distinct from the PKK, which mainly operates in Turkey and Iraq.

On March 13, Iran itself attacked sites in the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan Erbil with a dozen ballistic missiles, with reports saying the unprecedented assault was meant to derail a plan to pump Kurdish gas to Turkey and Europe.

Iran says the attack targeted Israeli intelligence sites operating in the autonomous Kurdish region.

An Iranian journalist living in Turkey, Amirhossein Miresmaili, tweeted on April 21 that speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s wife, daughter and sone-in-law who had gone shopping in Istanbul bought two luxury apartments in a famous complex for a total price of 400 billion Iranian rials or $1.6 million.

Miresmaili told Iran International that three days after he revealed the real estate purchase, the Ghalibaf’s have not denied the report, although another journalist residing in Iran has repeated the allegation. He insisted that Iranians in Turkey had seen the family at the Sky Land high rises in Istanbul and the apartments were bought in someone else’s name.

The Ghalibaf family scandal broke when videos emerged that they were having arguments in Istanbul airport for overweight luggage, and it became clear that they had bought luxury items for a baby on the way for Ghalibaf’s daughter. Later a journalist in Iran who had first exposed the shopping trip said that Ghalibafs had returned with more than 20 pieces of luggage.

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The parliament speaker’s son and assistant went into damage control mode, expressing regret and Fars news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard tried to deny the shopping trip, but no one believed the denial and the attempt soon died down. Calls for Ghaliaf’s resignation rang out loud in Tehran, but the final arbiter of such issues, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has remained silent.

Ghalibaf has been involved in numerous financial corruption cases, especially during his tenure as Tehran mayor from 2005-2017. As a former Revolutionary Guard general, in many of his corruption cases there is a thread to other high ranking IRGC figures, including Qasem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

Iran is in a four-day religious holiday and newspapers are not published while politicians and most journalist enjoy the free time probably on the Caspian seashore, far away from the capital. To what extent the apartment shopping allegation will gain traction once the holiday is over, is hard to say, but serious damage has been done to both Ghalibaf and the domestic image of the Islamic Republic, already mired by numerous previous cases of corruption and embezzlement by top officials and regime insiders.

One of the interesting public debates that ensued after the news about Ghalibaf’s scandal was a view expressed by political commentator Sadeq Zibakalam, a former revolutionary turned regime critic, who said luxury shopping abroad is not a crime in itself and many Iranians aspire to live a better life. The issue he said is with whose money such adventures are financed. Nevertheless, many on social media criticized Zibakalam for apparently defending Ghalibaf, which he subsequently denied, saying he simply did not want to kick him while he was down.

But apparently there are others who would not hesitate to stab Ghalibaf while he is wounded. Soon there will be a vote to elect a new parliament speaker and ‘revolutionary’ hardliners would be happy to steal the seat from Ghalibaf.

The former lawmaker said in a tweet on Saturday that Porto’s striker Mehdi Taremi breaking his fast in the middle of a sensitive match is a good advertisement for Islam.

He added that other Iranian players in Europe should be like this.

Motahari, whose father was a famous cleric, has been critical of political suppression in Iran in recent years, but he remains a religious conservative.

Motahari also referred to similar symbolic gestures such as a sajdah -- the act of kneeling and bowing to touches the ground with the forehead – by Egyptian footballer Mohamed Salah after scoring goals, and Real Madrid’s French player Karim Benzema breaking his fast only minutes before an important match against Chelsea.

His comment came as the Islamic Republic is trying to encourage people to observe Islamic traditions. Fewer people have been observing the Muslim fasting period in recent years but police arrest and fine anyone who breaks the rules in public.

As the fasting month of Ramadan started, Iran’s prosecutor-general called on the police to confront those eating and drinking in their cars during daylight.

Every year police enforce a national plan to deal with those who break Ramadan rules in public, and transgressors are sometimes sentenced to months of detention and lashes.