Iran's Ahmadinejad Calls Putin 'A Tyrannical Narcissist'

Videos of Raisi’s “unannounced” visit to Firouzkouh (Firuzkuh), one of the flood-hit areas north of Tehran, surfaced on social media Saturday evening showing people berating the president over empty promises and lack of dams or other needed infrastructure to protect their homes against such disasters. 

People interrupted Raisi’s speech and told him that they have lost their homes and family members, criticizing him and the authorities for inaction and forgetting their hardship within a few days. 

Estimated material damage so far has reacged $700 million according to official sources.

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Rare summer monsoon rains and floods in Iran have wreaked havoc in many provinces, with at least 110 people dead or missing, amid the worst annual drought in recent memory.

According to official figures, as of Sunday, 70 to 80 people are confirmed killed in the floods, and at least 45 others missing. Twenty-four of Iran’s 31 provinces are affected by heavy rains and floods, with at least 20,000 homes destroyed. 

Indian sub-continent summer monsoons usually bring some rain showers to Iran’s arid plateau, but every few decades the impact becomes more intense and causes flooding.

Partly due to the arid nature of the land and partly because of neglect in urban planning, even a modestly strong storm leads to deadly floods in Iran. Many dry riverbeds are choked off with construction or debris dumped by residents, leading to sudden flash floods in places no one expected.

Jomhouri Eslami (Islamic Republic), was launched in 1979 by current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the mouthpiece of the fundamentalist Islamic Republic Party but has increasingly adopted a critical stance against hardliners who have established full control over the state.

The newspaper wrote on Saturday, July 30 in an editorial by its editor Massih Mohajeri, , a cleric who maintains his own independent views regardless of the paper's former political affiliation, that the Raisi administration has visible weaknesses in the area of foreign policy and nuclear negotiations."

During the past year, Jomhouri Eslami has opposed the Iranian government's official views on foreign policy issues including relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the nuclear talks and domestic political issues including the violent crackdown on what Iranian hardliners call "bad hijab" women.

Diplomats negotiating to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, JCPOA, have repeatedly said that an agreement has almost been completed in 11 months of talks in Vienna, but Tehran demands more sanctions be lifted than Washington is willing to waive.

The daily wrote that many Iranians ask in political circles, family gatherings and government and private business office meetings "Where are we standing in the talks about [reviving] the nuclear deal and where are we headed? Will the negotiations result in an agreement or remain futile?"

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According to the daily, the question arises by the fact that contrary to slogans by Iranian officials, a major part of the economy and the people's livelihoods are tied to the sanctions. The newspaper stressed that slogans about nullifying sanctions without doing any harm to the people have led to no tangible results.

"Those who chanted that slogan have been in charge of the country's executive affairs for a year now, and they have reached the conclusion that Iran's economic problems cannot be solved without lifting the sanctions," Mohajeri wrote.However, he acknowledged that part of the country's problems are the outcome of the inefficiency of Raisi's economic ministers and Raisi has so far refused to replace them.

"The paper said there is now an opportunity to reach a fair deal. “While officials on both side agree that an agreement is within reach, and some regional players have talked about a golden opportunity to reach a deal, Iranian officials are expected to realize that no better situation is going to emerge for an agreement," stressed the Jomhouri Eslami, adding that the Iranian nation will be happy with the achievement that was within reach in May 2021 on the final days of Iran's previous government, and suggested that Iranian negotiators should strive to finalize that agreement.

During the past weeks, many Iranian observers including commentators and lawmakers criticized President Ebrahim Raisi for claiming that the people wish to resist rather than reach an agreement that would lift the sanctions and bring about a breakthrough in Iran's economy.

Some former Iranian diplomats suggested that Raisi and other ultraconservatives take advantage of the current foreign policy impasse over the revival of the JCPOA for their own personal or factional political gains to strengthen their foothold in Iran's domestic politics.

This comes while several Iranian politicians including former vice President Mostafa Hashemi Taba have said that the current foreign policy impasse perpetuates the country's paralyzing economic crisis, one of the worst in Iran's modern history.

Hamidreza Naghashian (Naqqashian) said in an interview that Khomeini was admitted to hospital with a heart problem, but later it was found that his stomach had upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

Naghashian claimed that medications to treat Khomeini were bought through several connections from a pharmacy in London, which had not existed before and was only established for providing Khomeini’s drugs and immediately shut down afterwards.

He did not elaborate on who had prescribed the medicines and who had provided them, but said the intelligence ministry has the script of the buyers’ interrogation, adding that former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani did not allow the ministry to follow up the case.

The former bodyguard also called on the authorities to increase measures to protect the current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei because of the suspected infiltration in his office.

Since mid-2020 a series of high-profile mysterious attacks have hit Iran’s nuclear and military installations around the country, widely believed to have been Israeli sabotage operations.

In May, several IRGC officials were killed or died in suspicious circumstances, prompting Tehran to blame Israel -- which has never officially taken credit for these operations – and a major reshuffling of IRGC intelligence and counter-intelligence leadership in the following month.

During their hour-long phone call he two presidents underscored the importance of strategic relations between Tehran and Beijing but nothing truly new was reported in the readouts of the talk. The Chinese president had a call with US President Joe Biden the day before.

According to the Iranian readout of the call, Raisi reiterated that reviving the 2015 agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) depends on a "political decision" by Washington as it was the US that left the agreement and imposed sanctions on Tehran. There was no mention of the nuclear deal in the Chinese readout of the phone conversation. 

Somehow similar to Xi’s call with Biden, in which the “one China” policy was among the main topics, the issue of Taiwan also came up in his call with the Iranian president. 

"Support for the One China policy is a definite and principled policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Raisi said, criticizing the US interference in the internal affairs of countries. 

Raisi told Xi that Tehran is resolved to expand relations with Beijing in all fields regardless of international developments, especially in providing maritime security and transfer of energy.

The two also talked about the implementation of the 25-year strategic partnership agreement between Tehran and Beijing as well as regional and extra-regional arrangements such as the group of the world’s emerging economies, known as BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. 

Morteza Mousavi, the deputy police commander of Alborz province close to the capital, said on Friday that the assault happened Thursday evening. He was taken to the hospital and is now in stable condition. 

The attacker was only identified as an Iranian and a self-proclaimed follower of Muhammad al-Mahdi, believed by the Twelver Shiites to be the last of the Imams and the eschatological Mahdi, who will emerge in the end of time to establish peace and justice and redeem Islam.

Several Iranian clerics have come under attack by angry Iranians recently as rising prices and constant protests have led to a tense environment in the country.

Earlier in July, a congregational prayer imam was injured in an assassination attempt by an assailant on a motorcycle in the city of Esfahan.

In early June, the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader in the central city of Esfahan was attacked by a young man carrying a knife. And in April, a man stabbed three clerics in Iran's largest Shiite shrine in Mashhad, killing two of them.

Earlier in the year, a senior Islamic scholar said that clerics and seminary students are avoiding their usual garb for fear of being insulted in public, as the people in Iran blame the clergy for the current hardships they experience, including high prices and corruption. Another well-known cleric also talked about the growing hatred and grudge towards the clergy in January, warning of a crisis unfolding in society.