IRGC-Linked Website Threatens Europe With Missiles For 'Hosting' MeK

Amnesty International and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran said in a report on Wednesday that the actual number is likely higher, as authorities keep secret figures on death sentences passed and executed.

The rights organizations compiled the figure from a variety of sources, including prisoners, relatives of those executed, human rights defenders, journalists, and reports by state media as well as independent media outlets and human rights organizations.

They warned that if executions continue at this pace, they will soon surpass the total of 314 executions recorded for the whole of 2021, according to Amnesty’s data.

At least 86 people were executed for drug-related offenses that do not carry the death penalty under international law, including many members of the Baluchi ethnicity, a minority people living in Iran’s south-east bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Most of those executed in 2022 – 146 -- had been convicted of murder with well-documented patterns of executions being systematically carried out following “grossly unfair trials.”

“During the first six months of 2022, the Iranian authorities executed at least one person a day on average. The state machinery is carrying out killings on a mass scale across the country in an abhorrent assault on the right to life, said the deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, Diana Eltahawy. She added that "Iran’s staggering execution toll for the first half of this year has chilling echoes of 2015 when there was another shocking spike.”

Executive Director of Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, Roya Boroumand, called on the Iranian authorities to immediately establish an official moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty completely, saying, “The renewed surge in executions, including in public, shows yet again just how out of step Iran is with the rest of the world, with 144 countries having rejected the death penalty in law or practice.”

On 23 July, the Islamic Republic also executed one man in public in southwestern Fars province, after a halt in public executions for about two years during the covid-19 pandemic.

On June 16, UN Secretary General António Guterres released a report on the situation of human rights in Iran, decrying “the high number of death penalty sentences and executions” and “reports of death in prison due to denial of adequate and timely medical care.”

The UN chief said that the number of executions in Iran increased from at least 260 cases in 2020 to 310 individuals in 2021, and the number continued to rise into 2022.

Delivering a keynote speech on rising crime in the United States on the second day of a two-day America First Agenda Summit on Tuesday, July 26, in Washington, Trump said Iran would never have been allowed to develop nuclear weapons if he had been the president.

“They (Iran) were dying to make a deal. They would have made a deal with us right after the election, and it would have been a good deal,” he added.

Trump claimed that “Iran, China, Russia and North Korea weren't going to do a thing against us just two years ago,” but now “we're a nation that is no longer respected or listened to around the world. We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke.”

Lashing out the policies of President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for the country's ills, he decried Biden allowing an "invasion" by millions of migrants crossing the southern border, highest inflation in 49 years and highest gas prices “in the history of our country." "Our country is going to hell and is going to hell very fast... We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation."

He stopped short of declaring his candidacy but hinted that he would run for president in the next election, noting that a Republican will be back in the White House in 2024.

The influential Senators, including Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Chuck Grassley and Ted Cruz have signed the letter led by Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa say that after Argentina detained Iranians with links to the Revolutionary Guard in early June, the Biden Administration “has refused to provide key Argentinian law enforcement officials information confirming links to terrorist activities.”

Argentina’s security minister Anibal Fernández tweeted on June 11 that the government detained a Venezuelan plane sanctioned by the United States and withheld the passport of five Iranian crew members. The admission by the minister came after a local website reported on the incident. Later it was revealed that the pilot of the Iranian plane “leased” to a Venezuelan cargo carrier.

A week later, as Argentina downplayed any links with the Revolutionary Guard, head of the Paraguayan National Intelligence Secretariat Esteban Aquino said Captain Gholamreza Ghasemi of the 747 cargo plane was a member of the IRGC Qods (Quds) Force, sanctioned by the US for terror activities.

100%

According to the senators who have sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Argentinian judiciary has asked for information “key to their investigation into the Iranian suspects” held since June. The senators say that “The Argentine judiciary, through standard process which is called the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) program, requested information from the Justice Department on the potential involvement of the plane and its crew in support of international terrorism.”

The letter accuses the Biden administration of delaying information because it pursues to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA, which former President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018.

The senators say the alleged delay is “all to prioritize the administration’s desperate and misguided pursuit of a new Iran nuclear deal, it would be a disgrace and completely unacceptable. We need assurances right away that vital information will be promptly provided, along with a full explanation for the delay,”

The administration has yet to respond to the accusation, but its record in relation to Iran has been mixed since it launched indirect talks in Vienna in April 2021 to revive the JCPOA.

While the Biden team has issues new sanctions against individuals and companies involved in clandestine Iranian activities violating previous US sanctions, the administration has not vigorously enforced the major economic sanctions against Iran’s oil exports.

Since early 2021, China has more than doubled its illicit imports of discounted oil from the Islamic Republic, throwing a lifeline to its dire finances.

The senators warned that if it tuns out the administration purposely delayed or ignored Argentinian requests needed to carry out their investigation, “it would be a disgrace and completely unacceptable.” Sen, Ernst was quoted as saying, “We need assurances right away that vital information will be promptly provided, along with a full explanation for the delay.”

The country sits on the world’s second-largest gas reserves after Russia, but years of various international sanctions have prevented the technological development of its gas export sector.

"We have collected close to $4 billion of gas exports for the first four months of the year, which is nearly as much as what was collected for the entire previous year," Owji said.

On Tuesday Iran made a claim that its oil export revenues climbed by 580 percent from March 2021 to March 2022, although other government data show little revenue flowed into its treasury. Iran’s high inflation and a falling currency keep the economy in a crisis.

Iran mainly exports gas to Turkey and Iraq, but its delivery has not always been reliable due to debt-payment issues with Baghdad, Iran's own domestic consumption needs, and occasional technical problems which forced a momentary halt in exports to Turkey over the winter.

The Iranian government says it has found ways to repatriate funds from earlier energy exports and reached an agreement to resume gas supplies to Iraq in April as Baghdad paid part of its debts owed to Tehran.

Global gas prices have risen almost fivefold in 2022 and it is possible that Iran earned one billion dollars a month, although last year its gas exports totaled $4 billion.

In his daily briefing on July 26, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that “we are reviewing the draft understanding on mutual return to full implementation with the JCPOA that the high representative shared with us, as well as with Iran and the other JCPOA participants,” referring to a draft agreement by Josep Borrell, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. 

About the proposal being fully acceptable to the Biden administration, he said “this new text” that Borrell referred to [in an op-ed] is based on “an outline of what we believe to be a good deal on the table since March that we have been prepared to accept.”

In an article published by the Financial Times on Tuesday, Borrell said there is “no other comprehensive or effective alternative within reach,” stressing the need for swift political decisions. 

“We are studying the changes that have been proposed by the EU; we’ll respond to them in short order. And we hope that Iran finally and ultimately decides to seize the opportunity that has been before it for some time now,” he added. 

Dodging a direct answer about any definite timeframe or deadline on the talks to restore the deal, Price said that “we are going to continue to pursue a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA for as long as it’s in our interest to do so. That remains the case."