A Series Of Unfortunate Events Haunt Swiss Embassy In Tehran

The page has been blocked over its “production of criminal content,” Iran’s judiciary said on Thursday. According to reports, all the posts in his Instagram page, with 128,000 followers, were removed.

Iran’s cyber-police has published a new post on his page, warning that it monitors “the criminal activities of the users.” Iran’s clerical regime has become more strict in enforcing their religious laws that do not allow public dancing and singing.

A human rights group identified the old man as Sadegh Bana Motajadded, adding that he formerly served as a fan leader for Sepidrood, a famous football club in the northern city of Rasht, Gilan province.

He found fame a few days ago after some of his videos in Rasht’s fish market went viral. The videos showed him singing and dancing while male and female onlookers joined him by clapping and dancing.

The videos were well received by Instagram users in Iran who thanked the old man for his attempt to make people happy.

On Tuesday, Hossein Hassanpour, deputy chief of Gilan province police, had announced that 12 people were arrested and charged in relation to the release of these videos.

They are accused of “breaking the norms and publicizing it on social and satellite networks,” he said, adding that their recording and publishing the videos of people singing and dancing is an “outrage against public decency.”

Instagram and Twitter users in Iran have strongly condemned the arrests, saying the Islamic Republic is essentially against happiness and hope.

During the meeting, Raisi once again accused Israel of carrying out “war crimes and genocide” in Gaza, adding that the United States and other Western countries support Israel’s military campaign.

He criticized what he called “the unilateralism and unfairness of the global system,” saying they are now best reflected in the Gaza crisis.

The repeated allegations of Tehran officials against Israel come against the backdrop of Iran’s openly admitted assistance to Palestinian militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and its other proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah and Yemeni Houthis.

Their meeting came a day after the Russian president visited the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to hold talks over the global oil market and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Raisi praised Tehran-Moscow cooperation in the fields of energy and agriculture, further urging the expansion of ties between the two countries.

Putin told his Iranian counterpart that the volume of Tehran-Moscow trade has reached 5 billion dollars, adding that Russia is ready to expand its ties with Iran in different fields, especially in the field of energy.

In 2022, Iran proudly announced the signing of the “largest oil and gas agreements in the country's history worth $40 billion.” However, Russia has not converted any of these memoranda of understanding (MoUs) into contracts.

About a decade ago, Iran also signed dozens of oil and gas MoUs with various Russian companies, none of which were executed.

Speaking about Raisi-Putin meeting, US National Security spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that “it’s certainly not implausible” that Moscow and Tehran would improve their military relations.

Since mid-2022, Iran has reportedly supplied hundreds of kamikaze Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to Russia, which have been extensively used to target civilian infrastructure and cities.

The statement, issued on the Day Against Censorship on December 4 by the long-banned Iranian Writers’ Association (IWA) on Facebook, asserts that censorship has been a decisive instrument over the past four decades to suppress writers, intellectuals, artists, filmmakers, and hinder disapproved social movements and cultural developments.

The IWA's condemnation of censorship extends beyond books and written media to encompass other forms like satellite TV and the internet, enabling the regime to manipulate and mislead society, dismantle independent media, and obscure real information about its oppression, failures, and corruption.

The Iranian regime strictly controls internet access, frequently imposing blackouts during sensitive times, such as widespread protests, and has long restricted access to satellite TV through extensive jamming. The Internet censorship, which began in 2002 by blocking hundreds of websites, later extended to blocking social media platforms. Ten of million of Iranian resort to using VPNs to connect to messaging apps and blocked websites.

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Toronto-based journalist and political analyst Jamshid Barzegar told Iran International that the statement, like the statement known as 134 Writers’ Declaration they issued in 1994, can be considered as one of IWA’s “historical statements”.

The 1994 statement marked the revival of IWA's activities after a decade of suppression, condemning the extensive censorship imposed by the regime, demanding freedom of speech for all. Barzgar noted that the recent statement correctly identifies the violation of the right to freedom of speech as a major tool of suppression.

“They have rightly pinpointed the main flaw, the violation of the right to freedom of speech, as one of the major reasons for continuation of the cycle of tyranny [in the Islamic Republic],” Barzgar said.

Members of the association (Kanoon-e Nevisandegan-e Iran in Persian), which was banned two years after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, have been subjected to systematic harassment and persecution for decades.

The IWA named December 4 as Day Against Censorship thirteen years ago in honor of two of its members, Mohammad and Mokhtari Jafar, who were murdered by intelligence ministry agents in 1998 as part of a systematic plan to eliminate intellectuals, political figures, and dissidents.

Tens of dissident politicians, writers, activists, and even academics fell victim from 1988 to 1998 to these systematic murders that were meant to intimidate others into submission by the rulers of the Islamic Republic. The killings came to be known as Iran’s Chain Murders.

Iranian media, politicians and activists have extensively pointed out the similarity between the double murders of filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui and his wife in October this year and the Chain Murders of the 1990s, warning that similar elimination campaigns may have begun again.

In 2021, the American PEN Association awarded Baktash Abtin, Reza Khandan Mahabadi, and Keyvan Bajan with the Pen Freedom Award. According to PEN America’s 2021 Freedom to Write Index, Iran jailed the fourth-highest number of writers and public intellectuals in the world that year. Since then, arrests of writers and other artists have dramatically spiked.

The Islamic Republic will steadily continue its attempts to destroy Israel in line with “The Second Step of the Revolution,” Gholamreza Soleimani added.

The Second Step of the Revolution was a term coined by Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei, in 2019 on the 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. At the time Khamenei pledged resistance against “the American and Zionist domination” in the region.

Khamenei also stated in 2015 that Israel must be destroyed within 25 years, a remark that has been repeatedly cited by Tehran officials ever since. 

It is worth noting that despite these threats, many citizens in Iran have largely refused to follow the regime’s anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric. Amid a wave of pro-Palestinian rallies across the world, hardliners in Iran have admitted that the general public there have little appetite for the Palestinian cause.

The Islamic Republic, the primary supporter of Hamas, has provided military and financial assistance to the militant organization which launched a deadly onslaught on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 and taking over 240 people hostages. However, so far, Tehran has refrained from direct involvement in the war to defend its ally.

The bill is presented to the parliament in order to implement an agreement signed three years ago by Iran’s former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

The nine-article bill reportedly aims to combat cyber threats, strengthen information security and promote cooperation.

The bill also has a clause that refers to the exchange of information and cooperation in the prosecution of criminal offences between Iran and Russia.

In recent years, Tehran and Moscow have boosted their political, military, communication and cyber relations, raising concerns among Western countries and their allies.

Earlier in November, Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) reported that Russia, Iran, and China are likely to plan to influence the upcoming elections in the United States and other countries in 2024. 

“Election infrastructure, campaigns, and voters” are expected to be targeted by “authoritarian regimes,” Microsoft warned.

The report also confirmed that Iran has intensified its cyberattacks and influence operations since 2020, targeting Israel and Bahrain, for instance.

Back in July, Claudia Plattner, the head of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), warned of a growing threat from Russian, Iranian and Chinese cyber-attacks.

“The goals are espionage, destabilization and influence,” said Plattner, adding that Germany as a European power and supporter of Ukraine is an “attractive target” for hacker groups.