Iran Claims It Arrested Israeli-Linked Sabotage Team

A video from a CCTV camera was released on media showing a car, which apparently was following Majid Abdolbaghi’s vehicle as it went into the parking lot, stopped in front of a building, as one man started shooting with a handgun from the front seat and another one got out of the car and started shooting from behind the car. According to reports Abdolbaghi succumbed to injuries after he was taken to hospital.

The Metropol twin towers collapsed on May 23 burying more than 80 people under the rubble, with about 42 bodies recovered. Soon after the collapse it became apparent that the owner and builder, Hossein Abdolbaghi, was a powerful and politically well-connected businessman who had disregarded regulations and building codes, backed by officials, who might have had their own financial interests.

Following the incident, Iranian media initially reported that Abdolbaghi, who was reportedly connected to Iran’s top security official Ali Shamkhani, had been arrested, but the government later announced that he had died in the collapse. The public did not believe the claim and many said that he escaped and corrupt officials, who had allowed him to violate building regulations, wanted him to disappear.

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In June, reports came out that a physician who refused to cooperate in the alleged coverup had died mysteriously.

Earlier in the week, Iran’s prosecutor general issued an indictment against 20 people accused in the case of the Metropol incident.

The Saturday ceremony was held in al-Khalis, located about 15 kilometers (9 miles) northwest of the city of Baqubah in Diyala Province, and was attended by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Chairman of the Popular Mobilization Forces Falih al-Fayyadh, Secretary General of the Badr Organization Hadi al-Amiri and a number of high-ranking military officials.

The militia also unveiled new weapons and military equipment, including al-Rasid (Monitor) and al-Hassib (Auditor) systems to control unmanned aerial vehicles and overhauled Russian T-52 tanks.

Al-Hashd al-Shaabi was established back in 2014, following a fatwa (a decree or ruling in Islamic sharia law) by influential Iraqi religious authority, Ali al-Sistani, to fight ISIS, which controlled four governorates and reached the borders of the capital Baghdad at the time. The Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization is composed of approximately 67 different armed factions, with around 128,000 fighters that are mostly Shia Muslim groups, but also include Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Yazidi groups. 

Earlier in July, Moqtada al-Sadr, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, who is against Iran’s presence in Iraq -- renewed his call to reorganize the Hashd al-Shaabi, which was led by former Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis before he was killed alongside Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 by a US drone strike.

He said Hashd al-Shaabi should not be involved in sectarian conflicts, should withdraw from the Sunni-dominant areas, and should be kept away from foreign interventions – an indirect reference to Iran.

People in the cities of Darab, Neyriz, and Estahban and about 10 of their surrounding villages in the Fars province were affected by floods.

Hossein Darvishi, the CEO of Red Crescent Society of Fars Province, said 74 people were rescued from the flooded areas.

Estahban’s governor, Yousef Kargar, criticized the province’s meteorological organization for not issuing any warning about the precipitation.

In response to this criticism, the Meteorological Organization of Fars Province said it announced on Wednesday evening, July 20, the possibility of showers and thunderstorms for Friday.

In March 2018, a flash flood in the province led to the death of 44 people.

The director of Crisis Management of the province’s governorate, Khalil Abdollahi, said that at least 15 cars were also stranded in the flood.

Iran has been suffering from drought for at least a decade and this year officials have been warning of a further decrease in precipitation. However, Iran’s metrology department had warned about possibly heavy seasonal rainfall across the country. The dangers of flash floods have been exacerbated by the widespread construction of buildings and roads near riverbeds.

Darya Safai, an Iranian-born member of the Belgian parliament, released a document by the Brussels Court of Appeal on twitter on Friday evening showing the decision.

Following numerous complaints after the Belgian Parliament ratified a controversial prisoner swap treaty with Iran on July 20, the court ordered that Belgium be “provisionally prohibited from releasing Assadi […] from the Belgian prison where he is serving a sentence of 20 years […] and transferring him to any foreign state whatsoever.”

Assadi is imprisoned for “attempted murder and involvement in terrorism” for his role plotting to bomb a gathering of the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) near Paris in 2018.

After being rejected by the court of first instance in Brussels on Thursday, the opponents of the prisoner-swap deal with Tehran -- including victims who had registered as civil parties to the trial -- won their appeal on Friday. 

Georges-Henri Beauthier, a lawyer acting for the National Council of Resistance of Iran – an umbrella organization with MEK as its main member, said that according to the order, any proposed release of Assadi be subject to “cross-examination before a judge”.

The court noted that the rights of the plaintiffs “could be irreparably violated” if Assadi were handed over to the Iranian authorities, without allowing the decision to be legally challenged and confirmed by a judge through an adversarial procedure – a hearing where both parties are present or represented by a lawyer. The ban will apply until such a hearing is held, the court added.

The new campaign began with an Instagram story by reformist activist and sociologist Mohammad Reza Jalaeipur on July 20 when he urged religious women who wear the hijab by choice to oppose the government's pressure on other women to comply with forced hijab.

Jalaeipur’s story went viral and tens of thousands of hijab-wearing women either shared his story or posted their own pictures with the hashtag “I wear the hijab but am against morality police patrols”.

The campaign which is a separate initiative from the anti-hijab campaign launched earlier this month by women’s rights activists has angered many hardliners.

Meanwhile, in a statement Friday, fifteen prominent Iranian figures who are usually referred to as “religious intellectuals”, some of whom have a background in Shiite seminaries condemned the government policy of compulsory hijab and suppression of women.

They also urged religious scholars to display solidarity with Iranian women and condemn forced hijab and tools of suppression such as morality police’s hijab enforcement patrols.

However, hardliner clerics did not mince words in their Friday sermons, calling those who campaign for freedom of choice traitors.

Jalaeipur, a practicing Muslim, has long been speaking against the government's policy of forcing all women to abide by the prescribed hijab rules and argues that imposing these violates the rights of the majority citizens who are against compulsory hijab.

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“When are you going to accept that the policy of compulsory hijab has failed and when exactly are you going to revise it?” Jalaeipur had challenged the authorities for a response in a Telegram post on June 27.

Iran’s government which is now fully controlled by hardliners has adopted a harsher than usual approach amid economic crisis and hardship for tens of millions. Government and military officials have warned the population a disobeying hijab rules and the morality police hijab enforcement patrols have detained many women, sometimes violently, on the streets.

The government also designated July 12 as the Hijab and Chastity Day this year and celebrated it with gatherings of women with full hijab at stadiums and other public venues.

Hundreds of thousands have supported the anti-hijab campaign on social media in the past few weeks. Many women have shot videos of themselves with uncovered hair in public places and posted the videos on social media with the ‘No2Hijab’ hashtag to display civil disobedience in reaction to the government’s harsh treatment of women for hijab.

Several activists have been arrested for their defiance of the hijab rules in July including Souri Babai-Chegini, a civil activist who published a video of herself removing her hijab, and Nazi Zandieh, a twenty-one-year-old student who also supported the anti-hijab campaign.

Officials usually insist that complying with hijab rules is “the demand of the majority of Iranians”.

Several surveys in the past few years, including a survey by Gamaan polling agency in the Netherlands, show that more than 50 percent of all Iranians and 75 percent of citizens in larger cities including the capital Tehran, oppose the compulsory hijab rules.

Results of surveys conducted by Iranian government agencies are usually not made public but according to Mehdi Nasiri, the former managing director of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, a survey carried out by the ministry of Islamic guidance in 2015 showed that more than 70 percent of Iranians did not agree with compulsory hijab.