Report Documents An Alarming Rise In Iran’s Rights Violations

Ukraine’s military chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said Friday that the Ukrainian air force intercepted 87 of the ballistic and cruise missiles and 27 of the Shahed-type drones overnight. The aerial attack that began Thursday and continued through the night, hitting six cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and other areas from east to west and north to south Ukraine.

Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk wrote on his official Telegram channel that it was “the most massive aerial attack” since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

At least 88 people were injured and an unknown number were buried under rubble during the roughly 18-hour onslaught, Ukrainian officials said. Among the buildings reported to be damaged across Ukraine were a maternity hospital, apartment blocks and schools.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X, “Today, Russia used nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal.”

Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said on air that an attack of this scale "has not been seen for a long time." According to the Ukrainian air force, the previous biggest assault was in November 2022 when Russia launched 96 missiles against Ukraine.

Western officials and analysts have recently warned that Russia had limited its cruise missile strikes in recent months in an apparent effort to build up stockpiles for massive strikes during the winter.

Iran has supplied hundreds of the kamikaze Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to Russia since mid-2022, which Moscow has used extensively to target civilian infrastructure and cities.

The drones are also used during massive missile attacks to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. The drones are relatively cheap, costing around $20,000 each and Ukraine sometimes has to fire much more expensive anti-air missiles to bring them down.

According to Al Arabiya sources, the targeted IRGC members, responsible for overseeing Iran-backed forces in eastern Syria, were at the airport to welcome a senior delegation. IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif denied the report on Friday without providing any details.

One of the IRGC commanders in Syria, Major General Gholam-Ali Rashid Ali-Nour, was also injured in the airstrike, Saudi media channel Al-Hadath reported.

The attack near the airport came "one whole day after the airport resumed flights," said the British-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Israel rarely comments on strikes targeting Syria, but it keeps reiterating that it will not allow its nemesis Iran to entrench itself in the country. Israel has been regularly attacking targets in Syria since 2017 to weaken Iran's attempts to strengthen its military presence in the war-torn country and build up a threat on Israel's northern borders. In the past year, Syrian airports have become frequent targets, as Iran is reportedly shipping weapons for its proxy forces by planes.

Earlier this week, the IRGC confirmed that one of its top commanders in Syria, Brig. Gen. Razi Mousavi, was killed in an Israeli “missile attack.”

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and several other military commanders have issued messages, warning that Israel “will certainly pay for this crime.”

For years, Iranian administrations have not transparently disclosed their oil revenues, citing the illicit nature of shipments under the US sanctions regime. However, in the past two months, the Raisi government has released some statistics on oil revenues, labeling it the 'transparency of the Raisi administration.

Mohammad Rezvani-Far, the Head of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA), stated on December 27, that during the first 9 months of current Iranian fiscal year, the country's oil exports totaled $26.46 billion, electricity exports were $300 million, and technical and engineering services exports were approximately $780 million.

He referred to the total foreign trade of the country during this period as $112 billion, stating that $63 billions of this amount is related to the total exports of the country, including oil, electricity, and services.

At the same time, Ehsan Khandouzi, the Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, also confirmed these figures.

Confirmation comes while the figures presented by Minster Khandouzi and the Head of the Central Bank of Iran last month indicated that the total exports of oil, electricity, and services of the country in the first 8 months of the current fiscal year (March 2023 to November 2023) were about $20 billion.

From the official statements of the Raisi administration, it is understood that the average monthly exports of oil, electricity, and services in the first 8 months were $2.5 billion, but suddenly in the 9th month of the Iranian calendar, it surged to over $7.5 billion.

Statistics from industry monitoring firm Kpler show that the volume of Iran's oil exports in the past month not only did not grow compared to previous months but it showed a notable decrease.

Also, tanker tracking companies' statistics show that Iran exports 1.25 million barrels per day of crude oil and gas condensate as well as more than 200 thousand barrels of petroleum products (mazut and kerosene) during the current fiscal year.

The nominal price of Iranian oil is between $80-$85 according to OPEC statistics. Thus, Iran's oil export revenues should have been about $34 billion in the nine-month perios, but the statements of the Head of Customs and the Minister of Economy indicate that this figure is $26.46 billion.

The reason for this lies in Iran's extensive discounts to Chinese oil refineries and the cost of circumventing sanctions, especially middlemen, who arrange the illicit Iranian shipments to China by various methods, including mixing Iranian crude with shipments from other countries, thus hiding their origin.

Iran also barters some of its oil with Chinese goods. However, this amount is included in the country's oil export figures.

The Customs statistics in China show that from April to November (approximately the first 9 months of the Iranian calendar year), China imported about $2.6 billion of non-oil goods and $5.5 billion of exports to Iran. Thus, about $3 billion of Iran's oil exports to China during this period were spent on bartering with Chinese goods.

In the process of bartering oil with goods, a significant part of the value of Iran's oil is wasted due to the costs of dealers and intermediaries.

Service Exports And The Country's Trade Balance

UN statistics show that in 2017, before the US imposed sanctions, Iran had nearly $10 billion in annual service exports, the majority of which was transportation, personal travel, construction services as well as business travel. Iran's service imports were $17 billion as well.

The latest statistics from the Iran Trade Development Organization show that the country's service exports reached just $2.3 billion in 2021, and some scattered statements by Iranian officials indicate that this figure was about $4 billion last year. Now, the statements of the head of Iran Customs show that in the first 9 months of this year, this figure has dropped to $780 million. He did not explain why the country's export of services suddenly plummeted.

The Central Bank of Iran does not separately publish statistics on the export and import of services, but it publishes the statistics of the trade balance of services (the difference between service exports and imports), which has always been around negative five to six billion dollars in recent years.

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The head of customs and the minister of economy, without mentioning the existence of the annual negative balance of five to six billion dollars for services, only referred to the statistics of service exports, oil, and non-oil goods and claimed that during the 9 months, the total foreign trade balance of the country was a positive $15 billion.

In other words, in the calculations of these senior officials, Iran had a total of $63 billion in oil, non-oil, and service exports during this period, but only imported $49 billion in goods. The figures presented by the two senior officials of Ebrahim Raisi administration only include the import of goods and do not include petroleum products imports (gasoline), as well as service imports, and it cannot be claimed that the foreign trade balance was a positive $15 billion during this period.

Capital Flight

Central Bank statistics show that, considering oil, non-oil and service trade, Iran's net capital account was a negative $15 billion last Iranian year (March 2022-March 2023). In other words, the outflow of foreign currencies from the country was $15 billion more than the inflow of foreign currencies.

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Central Bank statistics show that the country had about $100 billion negative capital account during 2011-2021.

Part of this situation is due to the large gap in the balance of trade in services, but a significant part of it is also due to the efforts of the people to take their capital out of Iran and buy property in foreign countries, especially Turkey, the Emirates, and Western countries.

Reports from the Turkish Statistical Institute show that in recent years, Iranian have been the top buyers of homes in this country. Since the US imposed sanctions against Iran in 2018, Iranians have purchased about 39,000 homes in Turkey.

The purchase of houses and properties is just one facet of capital flight from Iran. Owing to the unfavorable economic prospects within the country, Iranian citizens have embarked on substantial capital investments, diversifying into various forms of real estate and assets abroad.

In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal Thursday, Bennett, who was prime minister from June 2021 to June 2022, admitted that Israel was behind attacking an Iranian base and the assassination of a senior IRGC commander in 2022.

Calling on Israel and the US to topple the Iranian regime, he described the Islamic Republic as “the source of endless war, terror and suffering throughout the world.” He called it inexplicable that almost nobody is taking on Tehran, which has been “at the center of most of the Middle East’s problems and much of global terror.”

Israel rarely admits publicly to attacking Iran directly, but Bennett wrote, "After Iran launched two failed UAV attacks on Israel in February 2022, Israel destroyed a UAV base on Iranian soil. In March 2022, Iran’s terror unit attempted to kill Israeli tourists in Turkey and failed. Shortly thereafter, the commander of that very unit was assassinated in the center of Tehran."

Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei, a member of IRGC’ Quds Force, was the deputy commander of Unit 840 and in charge of its operations in the Middle East and countries neighboring Iran.

On December 25, a senior IRGC commander, Razi (Reza) Mousavi, was killed by an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria, for which Iranian officials have threatened that Israel would pay a high price.

"The US and Israel must set the clear goal of bringing down Iran’s evil regime. Not only is this possible. It is vital for the safety and security of the Middle East—and the entire civilized world," Bennett concluded in his piece.

State media in Iran announced the tariff increase after weeks of speculation about a price hike of as high as 100 percent.

Iran has a vibrant ecommerce sector, that might face losses because of higher Internet rates, which could also push overall inflation higher.

Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Issa Zarepour, had hinted at the possibility of an impending internet tariff hike during a government meeting earlier in the month.

This price surge comes as Iran has some of the strictest internet access regulations globally, with users experiencing low-quality connections and being forced to pay for expensive Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and anti-filtering software to avoid the censorship imposed by the government.

The authorities in the Islamic Republic have extensively blocked many messaging apps, social media networks, and websites. They are also in the process of establishing a "National Internet," similar to China. Internet restrictions tend to intensify during widespread protests in the country.

Mohammad-Javad Azari-Jahromi, the former Communications Minister, expressed concerns, saying, "The result of the price hike is apparently clear; the end of this spiral will lead to securing the economic interests of satellite internet providers and widening the [political] gap between the people and the government."

Last week, Faraz Daily reported that Internet companies in Iran had petitioned the government to increase their broadband and mobile tariffs by 100 percent.