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Budget pressure unlikely to deflect Iran from nuclear goals

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December 27, 2014

Budget pressure unlikely to deflect Iran from nuclear goals – A big oil price slide will hurt Iran’s attempts to rescue battered living standards, but economic pain is unlikely to soften its stance in nuclear talks or end aid to allies such as Syria, matters seen by its ruling clerics as strategic priorities.

A big oil price slide will hurt Iran’s attempts to rescue battered living standards, but economic pain is unlikely to soften its stance in nuclear talks or end aid to allies such as Syria, matters seen by its ruling clerics as strategic priorities.

Economic misery due to sanctions and mismanagement has been a reality for years, and while social strains in the 76 million population are deep, the clerics will seek to contain them, say experts examining Iran’s budget plans for 2015.

The largest drop in oil prices since the 2008 financial crisis means more budget pressure for the OPEC member, already bereft of tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue due to Western sanctions and years of economic mismanagement.

And tougher economic times may spur Tehran’s determination to end a nuclear dispute and lift sanctions that isolate it from the global banking system and deter most foreign investors.

But significant changes in Iran’s regional strategy including its approach to any nuclear deal are unlikely.

That is partly because funds for security affairs come from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not the government. He also decides nuclear policy.

“Our support to our brother Assad will never change,” said a senior Iranian official, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad. “Because of [declining] oil prices we face economic hardship … but we will mange to continue our support to Syria, militarily and financially.”

Ali Vaez, of the International Crisis Group think tank, said the oil price fall would hurt, but was unlikely to make Iran accept a nuclear deal “that it views as lopsided.”

“Iran’s support for its allies in Iraq and Syria is not a questions of means, it’s a strategic necessity. This is why neither the fall of the rial in 2012 or economic malaise in 2013 affected Iran’s support for its Syrian and Iraqi allies.”

Iran and world powers are negotiating to end a standoff over Tehran’s nuclear goals. Tehran denies Western charges it is seeking nuclear weapons.

President Hassan Rouhani presented a “cautious, tight” budget on Dec. 7 in response to falling oil prices, now almost $10 a barrel below the $70 his budget was based on.

Spending was 6 percent above this year, a real terms cut due to inflation of 20 percent.

But with revenues pressured, plans to hike defense spending 33 percent prompted speculation that Rouhani wants to placate security hardliners, hoping they will indulge his bid to win a nuclear deal and end sanctions.

Powerful anti-Western hawks in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who report to Khamenei, have been wary of the negotiations.

They have tolerated the talks, diplomats speculate, largely because Rouhani’s big 2013 election win revealed the depth of anger over economic mismanagement and support for his aim of ending Iran’s international isolation.

Mehrdad Emadi of Betamatrix International Consultancy suggested Rouhani had to consider the IRGC in setting economic policy because it could spoil any nuclear deal.

Greater defense spending was aimed at “giving them a big piece of the public pie so they can stop kicking up a fuss when it comes to negotiations, especially those with the Americans.”

“The IRGC are extremely sensitive to any reduction of ‘military aid’ to what they see as strategic allies.”

The IRGC could ruin any rapprochement with the West it felt might hurt its interests.

Last year, Iran granted Syria a $3.6 billion credit facility to buy oil products, with another $1 billion for non-oil products.

Domestically the government has ways of mitigating the pain.

One is gradual depreciation of the official exchange rate at which it converts oil revenues from dollars into rials. This allows a progressively smaller amount of dollars to supply the same rial revenues.

The central bank’s official exchange has dropped to 27,043 rials to the U.S. dollar, from 25,651 at the end of June and 24,774 at the end of last year. Next year’s budget is based on a rate of 28,500 rials per dollar, showing the government plans to continue this strategy.

Meanwhile, the free-market price of the rial has stabilized at about 35,000, far from lows near 40,000 two years ago. That suggests most Iranians think that while cheaper oil will pressure the rial, they do not yet expect an economic collapse or a run on the currency.

Emadi said Rouhani would try to shield the poorest from spending cuts to avoid any repeat of the unrest that followed 2009’s disputed presidential election.

A 30 percent rise in bread prices on Dec. 1 rattled Iranians, but there was no major unrest. Emadi said the government later took steps to compensate poorer households.

There could be further subsidy cuts but open protest was unlikely since “the regime’s machinery of repression still makes this very risky,” said Scott Lucas of EA WorldView, a specialist website on Iran and Syria.

Source: Israel Hayom – Budget pressure unlikely to deflect Iran from nuclear goals

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

Rouhani addresses his IRGC headache

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December 26, 2014

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Rouhani addresses his IRGC headache – During several elections in Iran I took the political temperature in Mahallati, a housing estate for Revolutionary Guard in northeast Tehran. In the 2005 presidential poll I remember many Guards, wives and grown-up children telling me they would vote for Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who had been a senior Guard officer before becoming Iran’s police chief.

Ghalibaf was not the only former Guard running for president, or least he wasn’t until Mohsen Rezaei, who commanded the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) from 1981 to 1997, withdrew two days before polling. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won the election, had served during the 1980-1988 Iraq war as an engineer in the Basij militia linked to the IRGC.

Set up in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution against Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and answerable to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the IRGC has around 120,000 troops, including naval and air units – nearly a third the size of the 400,000-strong regular armed forces.

“It’s a people’s army,” Hussein Shariatmadari, editor of the conservative newspaper Kayhan, once told me. But with the IRGC also part of Iran’s factional politics and a business heavyweight, its relations with the Rouhani government face intense scrutiny in Tehran.

Internationally, the IRGC is targeted by U.N. Security Council resolutions on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. The Guards have also played a crucial role in conflict in both Syria and Iraq though the elite Al-Quds brigade.

But within Iran, there are more rumblings over the IRGC’s opaque commercial empire. This made up around 30 percent of the Guards’ operations in 2006, according to an interview given by Brig. Gen. Abdol-Reza Abed, then the IRGC deputy commander and head of Khatam-ol-Anbia, one of its many companies.

Figures of IRGC income vary, especially if alleged smuggling is included. But no one doubts the IRGC expanded under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when affiliated companies won contracts including a $1.3 billion a gas pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Pakistan border, exploration for phases 15 and 16 of the South Pars gas field, and a $1.2 billion line for the Tehran metro.

This growth arose in part from tightening Western – especially U.S. – sanctions that drove out international operators, especially in energy. Growing pressure over Iran’s nuclear program led to the leadership favoring self-sufficiency, state planning and import substitution.

But this stifled the private sector, which President Hassan Rouhani now wants to encourage to foster growth. This is just one reason why Rouhani is trying to trim the IRGC’s wings. Tension with the Guards bubbled over early this month when the president aimed a broadside. “If guns, money, newspapers and propaganda all gather in one place, one can be confident of corruption there,” he told a conference in Tehran.

His words made headlines in Tehran. Battered with questions at a public appearance, Mohammad Ali Jafari, the IRGC ground forces commander, said it was only an assumption that the president was speaking about the IRGC, and the media also reported Rouhani rowing back in suggesting he had been talking “in general.”

Whether the usually calm Rouhani had shown signs of frustration or was firing a calculated warning shot, we should not conclude a major clash is looming. Indeed, there are many signs that the president and IRGC are finding ways to compromise.

The Guards seem to have agreed their companies will give up smaller projects. Abdullah Abdullahi, head of Khatam-ol-Anbia, has said his company will not take on contracts under “100 to 150 billion tomans” – around $30-44 million. A proposed 50 percent increase in the IRGC’s budget allocation for 2015-2016 seems designed in part to compensate for a loss of business profits. Back in September, Jafari said that after “doubts at the beginning” there was “good cooperation” with Rouhani’s government.

Fundamentally, the IRGC supports the principle of Velayat-e Faqih (rule of the jurist), so disputes are likely to be resolved mainly behind the scenes as long as Rouhani retains Khamenei’s support. This is not to say that the Guards will stay entirely apart from politics. Commanders have voiced their opposition to relaxing vigilance against “seditionists,” a term applied to the Green movement, whose leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi remain under house arrest for encouraging protests after the disputed 2009 presidential election.

Leading IRGC figures will also continue to seek political positions. Ghalibaf, now mayor of Tehran, may retain presidential ambitions, and has an ally in Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Al-Quds brigade, who reportedly endorsed his candidacy in 2013.

Another rising star is Ali Shamkhani, the former head of IRGC naval forces appointed by Rouhani as the country’s top security official. Attesting to the range of views in the IRGC, Shamkhani, an ethnic Arab from southwest Iran, was defense minister under the reformist President Mohammad Khatami, at a time when Khatami helped secure Rezaei’s removal as IRGC commander.

“Shamkhani is no Rezaei in terms of political ambitions,” Farideh Farhi, of the University of Hawaii, told me, “but he has shown himself to be much more of a political person than Soleimani, who seems happy with his good and adept soldier portrayal.”

Farhi doubts Soleimani seeks the political limelight, despite his media exposure organizing Kurdish and Shiite forces resisting [ISIS] in Iraq. “He’s been head of the [Al-Quds brigade] since 1988 and doing much the same stuff for years,” she said. “He was promoted to major general in 2011 and brokered peace in Basra in 2008 [between the Iraqi army and the militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr]. His more recent public persona is a function of events, and the use that public persona has for all players involved.”

Bottom line: Many Iranians, and certainly the political class, look to the Revolutionary Guard for defense at a time of crisis. Rouhani wants the men in uniform to remember they are first and foremost soldiers.

Source: The Daily Star – Rouhani addresses his IRGC headache

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

Prison Sentence for Young Iranian Facebook User Increased from 15 to 20 Years

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December 26, 2014

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Prison Sentence for Young Iranian Facebook User Increased from 15 to 20 Years – A Tehran Revolutionary Court has increased the sentence of a 21-year-old Facebook user from 15 to 20 years in prison for his postings on Facebook.

The case was originally appealed in the hope that the severe 15-year sentence would be reduced. However, the appeals court remanded the case to the lower court because one of the charges, “insulting the sacred,” was not addressed in the original ruling.

As a result, the judge in the lower court, Judge Moghisseh, added the charge of “insulting the sacred” to the ruling in the case of Masoud Seyed Talebi, which added five more years to his sentence, according to a source close to Talebi’s case.

The ensuing 20-year sentence is indicative of the intensifying crackdown on social media networks in Iran, as hardline authorities attempt to reign in exponential growth in the use of such networks.

“Judge Moghisseh has issued this young man’s ruling in clear violation of the law. At the December 20 court session that was convened to address the shortcomings in the case, the charge of ‘insulting the sacred’ that was not included in the [original] ruling was added to the list of charges, and thus added five more years to this young man’s sentence,” said the source.

IRGC agents arrested Masoud Seyed Talebi, an engineering student at Tehran Azad University, on October 13, 2013. He is one of eight suspects who were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 8 to 21 years in July 2014 on charges related to their activities on Facebook. Talebi was indicted for “propaganda against the state,” “insulting the Supreme Leader,” “assembly and collusion against national security,” “insulting government officials,” “insulting the sacred,” and “publishing inappropriate images.” The lower court originally sentenced him to 15 years in prison. Branch 54 of the Tehran Appeals Court remanded the case and sent it to the lower court to rule on the charge of “insulting the sacred” as well, resulting in the increased sentence.

“Masoud was arrested at his home on October 13, 2013, as he was preparing to go to university. Agents told a crowd of neighbors who had gathered during their search of the premises and Masoud’s arrest that he had committed fraud,” said the source. Talebi was kept inside IRGC’s Ward 2-A at Evin Prison for interrogations for a month and was later transferred to Evin’s Ward 350.

IRNA first reported of the trial of eight Iranian citizens for their Facebook activities on July 13, 2014. IRGC’s Sarallah Base had pursued and identified the eight individuals, leading to the July 2013 arrests,according to IRNA.

The Campaign reported in July that all six male convicts in the case are currently inside Ward 350 of Evin Prison. One female convict is held under deplorable conditions at the Gharchak Prison outside Tehran, and one of the female convicts with two young children was released on bail.

Source: Payvand – Prison Sentence for Young Iranian Facebook User Increased from 15 to 20 Years

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

Iran Is Using The Same Dangerously Effective Strategy In Iraq As It Used In Syria

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December 24, 2014

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Iran Is Using The Same Dangerously Effective Strategy In Iraq As It Used In Syria – As the Iraqi insurgency grew at the beginning of 2014, many of the country’s militias began mobilizing to face the threat including Kataib Hezbollah (KH), the Hezbollah Brigades.

In 2007, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force (IRGC – QF) formed the group as a small elite unit to attack US forces in Iraq. Its leader was Abu Mahdi Al Mohandes, a former member of Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, who now acts as a representative of Iranian Quds Force commander General Qasem Soleimani in the country. In 2012 Tehran deployed KH to Syria to support the government of Bashar al-Assad. And in 2014 it refocused upon Iraq to fight insurgents there.

From the day it was formed until today Kataib Hezbollah has acted as a means for Iran to project its influence into Syria and Iraq.

Kataib Hezbollah has its origins with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force (IRGC – QF). In 2007 IRGC-QF created Kataib Hezbollah as a small elite force of around 400 fighters to carry out operations against the United States and Coalition Forces in Iraq.

It received arms and equipment from Tehran as well as training from Lebanese Hezbollah. Starting in March 2007 it began attacking American forces. In July 2009 the US Treasury Department put the organization on its terrorist list and sanctioned it. From 2010-11 it stepped up its attacks as the Americans were preparing to withdraw.

In July 2010, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq General Ray Odierno claimed that KH elements were in Iran for training to conduct new operations against the US and Iranian advisers were also said to be in Iraq as well to assist them. On June 6, 2011, KH claimed responsibility for an attack upon a base in Baghdad that killed five US soldiers and also carried out a rocket attack upon the Green Zone three days later. At the end of the month the group killed three more Americans in a rocket barrage on their base in Wasit province near the Iranian border.

KH was created to carry out Iranian policy in Iraq. Tehran felt threatened by the US occupation of the country. There were hostile forces right on its border and the Americans were trying to create a pro-Western government in Baghdad. Iran was intent on undermining these efforts and funded various militias to drive the US out. When the US announced that it would withdraw by the end of 2011 Tehran had its proxies like KH pick up its operation so that Iran could claim credit for the departure of the US.

Kataib Hezbollah next expanded its operations to Syria when Iran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad was threatened.

In 2012 Qasem Soleimani called on Kataib Hezbollah and other Iraqi militias aligned with Tehran to send fighters to Syria to help the Assad government. KH helped form the Abu Fadhl al-Abbas Brigade along with Syrian and Lebanese members under the supervision of the Soleimani and the IRGC’s Quds Force.

In early 2013 it formed another militia called Kataib Sayid al-Shuhada along with the Badr Organization to fight in Syria. By April 2013 it made its first public announcements of its involvement in Syria when it posted pictures of some its fighters who had been killed there.

To support and maintain this effort KH began recruiting in Iraq with some of its new fighters being sent to Iran or Lebanon for training. KH justified its involvement in Syria by saying that it was defending the Sayid Zainab shrine in the Damascus suburbs from Sunni Islamists and the Free Syrian Army. That way it could say that it was performing a religious duty and distract from its support of the Assad government at Tehran’s behest. The shrine was also located in a strategic neighborhood that blocked rebels from surrounding the Syrian capital and allowed regime forces access to the Damascus International Airport.

When the protests against the Assad government began, Tehran offered support to break them up. It didn’t believe that the Syrian army was loyal enough or up to the task. So Iran brought in its Iraqi allies such as Kataib Hezbollah, groups that have now become the main forces defending the Assad regime against the rebels. That made Assad dependent upon Iran and its Iraqi proxies. And this strategy would be replayed in Iraq in 2014.

When the Iraqi insurgency was revived this year KH began bringing back its men from Syria to fight at home.

According to Reuters, in April Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had a meeting where he told fellow politicians that militias were being deployed to the Baghdad area because he was disappointed with the performance of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). These irregular forces were put under Maliki’s office of commander and chief.

KH was already withdrawing its men from Syria to fight in Iraq by then, and began a new recruiting drive in April as well. These were put into Popular Defense Companies. The next month KH posted video of it helping the ISF. In return, the army was providing uniforms, weapons and support to the group.

Its role was expanded after the fall of Mosul in June. In August it helped break the siege of Amerli in Salahaddin and was said to have Quds Force advisers with it. Like in Syria, its operations were coordinated with General Soleimani.

In December for instance, an Iraqi parliamentarian told the Observer that Soleimani “has the Shia militias, Asai’b ahl al-Haq, Katai’b Hezbollah and the Badr Brigades following his instructions to the letter.” Like in Syria, the Iranian government was not sure of the capabilities of the ISF when open fighting began in Anbar in January. It therefore called on its militia allies once more to protect the government.

Today those groups are half or more of the government’s forces and they have been informally integrated within units of the ISF. Like Damascus, Baghdad is now largely dependent upon Iranian and militia support to fight the insurgents.

KH’s leader Abu Mahdi Muhandis, also known as “The Engineer,” is also a facilitator for Iran’s policies in Iraq. Muhandis, whose real name Jamal Jaafar Mohammed Ibrahimi, joined the Dawa Party in Iraq in the early 1970s. He left for Kuwait later in that decade where he found a job as an engineer in Kuwait City.

In 1983 he aided in the bombings of the US and French embassies there and then made an attempt to assassinate the emir of Kuwait in 1985. These were both planned by the Quds Force to deter Kuwait, France and the Americans from supporting Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.

Muhandis ended up moving to Iran afterward where he joined the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). He went on to fight on the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq War and eventually became the deputy commander of ISCI’s militia the Badr Brigade.

Badr was then an official arm of the IRGC, making Muhandis an Iranian officer. In 2002, Muhandis quit ISCI when it decided to work with the Americans in the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2005, Muhandis won a seat in the Iraqi parliament as part of the Iraqi United Alliance. But when the US found out who he was it put out an arrest warrant for him and he fled back to Iran.

That didn’t stop him from unsuccessfully running again in 2010 with the Iraqi National Alliance. Between then he funneled weapons to Iranian-backed militias, while providing training for their fighters. When the Americans finally withdrew at the end of 2011, Muhandis returned to Iraq where he worked as Genera Soleimani’s unofficial representative to Baghdad.

In Iraq he lived in a house in the Green Zone under the protection of Premier Maliki. Maliki gave him political cover by saying that the charges against him for the bombings and assassination attempt in Kuwait in the 1980s were never proven. And he even included him in an official delegation to Kurdistan in February 2013. Since 2014 he has facilitated the flow of Iranian funds, logistics and planning to its militia allies in Iraq.

Muhandis’ long alliance with the Iranians explains why he was put in charge of Kataib Hezbollah when it was formed in 2007. He’d been working on conjunction with the IRGC since the 1980s and had a commission in the organization. His long time in the Iraqi opposition also gave him standing and ties with many Shiite politicians that came to power after 2003 making him an ideal middle-man.

Kataib Hezbollah has worked as one of Iran’s main proxies in Iraq and Syria since its creation in 2007. It carried out attacks for Tehran against the Americans, and then moved to defend Iran’s ally President Assad in Syria. Today it is one of the main forces defending Baghdad and its leader Muhandis is helping to supply other pro-Iranian militias as well.

All along it has served Iran’s interests in the region opposing its enemies and helping its friends. Tehran has regularly deployed these types of allies to carry out its policies in the Middle East and beyond.

Source: Business Insider – Iran Is Using The Same Dangerously Effective Strategy In Iraq As It Used In Syria

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

How Iran Uses Dual Citizenship in the Caribbean to Skirt Sanctions

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December 24, 2014

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How Iran Uses Dual Citizenship in the Caribbean to Skirt Sanctions – St. Kitts and Nevis (SKN) is a miniscule Caribbean nation whose biggest employer is the state sugar corporation and whose currency features wading sea turtles and the visage of Queen Elizabeth II. It is also one of the most attractive destinations for Iranian businessmen seeking to exploit citizenship-for-investment programs to skirt international sanctions over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Thirty years ago, in a bid to spur foreign investment, SKN became the world’s first country to allow foreign investors to obtain citizenship. Many other countries have since followed suit, and in recent years, many more countries have joined this club by offering citizenship or residency fast-track programs through investment. They include economic heavyweights such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and several other European countries, alongside the older programs in Caribbean islands like Antigua and Dominica. But SKN terms for citizenship remain among the most lax in the world: no residency is required and a passport is provided within three months in exchange for $250,000 or a qualifying investment in real estate.

Since sanctions against Iran began to bite, Iranian requests for citizenship have poured in, and in 2011 SKN barred Iranians living in the Islamic Republic from applying. Iranian expatriates, however, may still obtain SKN citizenship, and all evidence suggests that Iranians who live abroad continue doing so in droves.

After all, for Iranians hoping to establish companies and bank accounts in foreign jurisdictions, the biggest obstacle of all is an Islamic Republic passport. A change of residence and nationality is often all that is required for them to prevent banks’ scrutiny.

Facilitating Iranian business abroad through citizenship-by-investment programs is now a profitable endeavor. Capital Immigration, a Dubai-based company run by Iranian expatriates, is typical: its homepage, both in English and Farsi, offers a variety of citizenship, permanent residency and overseas company-formation options, and prominently advertises the prospect of a SKN passport.

Perhaps the most visible case in point involves Houshang Farsoudeh, Houshang Hosseinpour, and Pourya Nayebi, three Iranian nationals whom the U.S. Department of Treasury sanctioned in February 2014 for facilitating banking, money laundering activities and illicit procurement through a network of companies and a banking institution they briefly controlled in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, in the South Caucasus. Georgia’s commercial registry documents show that all three – and at least one family member – traveled and conducted their business in the region as SKN nationals.

Within the last year, at least five SKN citizens – all of them Iranians – have established companies in Turkey, trading in petroleum products, medical equipment, and wholesale import-export. Moreover, internal documents of Georgia’s Poti Industrial Free Zone show that SKN nationals have the second-highest incorporation rate, after Iranians themselves. According to Georgia’s commercial registry, all of the SKN nationals who registered companies there were born in Iran (Treasury eventually sanctioned two of them).

Though once hidden from view, Iranian exploitation of citizenship-for-investment schemes is becoming something of an open secret. In May 2014 the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (or FINCEN) issued an advisory “to alert financial institutions that certain foreign individuals are abusing the Citizenship-by-Investment program sponsored by the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis (SKN) to obtain SKN passports for the purpose of engaging in illicit financial activity.”

The growing network of companies for second citizenship and incorporating companies overseas suggests that citizenship-for-investment programs remains a lucrative business, and not just in SKN. Time will tell whether St. Kitts and Nevis, alongside other countries offering fast track programs to citizenship, recognize how these programs are being subverted for nefarious purposes. Meanwhile, Iran has found a loophole to visa and banking restrictions that enables its own middlemen to continue their nefarious activities under a new and more respectable identity.

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on illicit financial and procurement networks at its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.

Source: National Interest – How Iran Uses Dual Citizenship in the Caribbean to Skirt Sanctions

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

Iran’s military budget growth connected with staff salaries

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December 23, 2014

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Iran’s military budget growth connected with staff salaries – Iran’s military budget growth for next year (to start March 21, 2015) is related to the salaries of the military staff, Esmail Kowsari, MP of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Islamic Republic said.

Kovsari said that the administration plans to increase the salaries of the all ministries’ employees by 14 to 15 percent next year and the military staff is not excluded, Iran’s Fars news agency reported Dec. 21.

Kovsari, who is a former director of the Security Department in the Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces said that the Islamic Republic’s military budget is the lowest among the regional countries.

The government’s proposed national budget for next year amounts about 8.379 quadrillion rials (about $293 billion).

The Iranian government has offered a 32.7 percent rise in defense expenditure in next year’s budget bill compared to the current year’s budget, most of which will be assigned to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

IRGC budget has increased to 174 trillion rials (about $6.11 billion based on the official rate of each USD at 28,500 rials in the budget bill). About 100 trillion rials (about $3.51 billion) of this amount is allocated to Khatam Al-Anbia Construction Headquarters, some 60 percent of IRGC total budget for next year.

Khatam Al-Anbia is a giant company with 25,000 employees. It controls over 812 registered companies inside and outside Iran. Some 10 percent of the company’s employees are IRGC members and the rest are contractors. The company is also connected to Iran’s oil and gas industry.

Earlier, Mohammad Reza Sabzalipour, head of Iran’s World Trade Center told Trend that while considering the fact that the headquarter implements construction and development projects, the increase in the next year’s military budget is mainly connected with the development projects rather than military purposes.

Source: Trend – Iran’s military budget growth connected with staff salaries

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

Iran as an Occupying Force in Syria

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December 22, 2014

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Iran as an Occupying Force in Syria – It is no longer accurate to describe the war in Syria as a conflict between Syrian rebels on the one hand and Bashar al-Assad’s regime forces “supported” by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Hezbollah, and Iraqi militias on the other.

Most major battles in Syria—along the frontlines of regime-held areas—are now being directed and fought by the IRGC and Hezbollah, along with other non-Syrian Shi’i militias, with Assad forces in a supportive or secondary role.

The Iranian regime has spent billions of dollars on weapons and fighters shipped to Syria since the start of the Syrian revolution in March 2011. It has also financed a large part of the economy in the regime-controlled parts of Syria through loans and credit lines worth billions of dollars. The Assad regime would have collapsed were it not for this Iranian support.

One result of this heavy Iranian involvement in the war in Syria has been a change in the nature of the relationship between the Syrian and the Iranian regimes. From historically being mutually beneficial allies, the Iranian regime is now effectively the dominant force in regime-held areas of Syria, and can thus be legally considered an “occupying force,” with the responsibilities that accompany such a role.

The revolution in Syria can therefore also be considered an international conflict that involves a foreign military occupation by Iranian forces and a struggle by the Syrian people against this occupation, as defined by the 1907 Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

Recognizing the war in Syria as an international conflict also means that, as an occupying force, Iran has certain duties toward the Syrian population under its occupation. There is sufficient evidence that the Iranian regime and its various forces and militias fighting in Syria have repeatedly violated many of these duties since March 2011.

In November 2014, the campaign group Naame Shaam, of which the authors are founders, released a report on the role of the Iranian regime in the ongoing war in Syria. The report, “Iran in Syria: From an Ally of the Regime to an Occupying Force,” provides many examples of human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed in Syria that would likely not have taken place without the Iranian regime’s direct military involvement.

The Iranian regime’s adventure in Syria is not just about saving Assad and his regime. Rather, it has been primarily driven by the Iranian regime’s own strategic interests. At the forefront of these interests is keeping arms shipments flowing to Hezbollah in Lebanon via Syria, so as to keep Hezbollah a deterrent against possible attacks on Iran’s military nuclear program. The other Iranian lines of defense include the government and various Shi’i militias in Iraq, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and recently the Houthi militias in Yemen.

If the Assad regime falls, Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah are likely to cease, and Hezbollah would no longer be the deterrence against Israel that it is now. The Iranian regime would therefore feel more vulnerable and would not be able to negotiate from a strong position during nuclear talks with international powers. It may even have to at least temporarily give up its dreams of building a nuclear bomb. Resources in Iran—human, economic, and military—have as a result been mobilized to keep Assad in power.

The U.S. administration has so far been unwilling to intervene in a decisive manner against the Assad regime, the IRGC, and Hezbollah. It was providing moderate Syrian rebels with just enough support not to lose the war, but not enough to win it either. Even this support has declined in recent months, and rebel groups have suffered more losses in northern Syria. The Naame Shaam report describes this as a “slow bleeding” policy adopted by the Obama administration toward Iran and Hezbollah in Syria.

Source: The Epoch Times – Iran as an Occupying Force in Syria

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

Why Iran’s Influence In Syria Is Likely To Outlive President Bashar Assad’s Rule

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December 20, 2014

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Why Iran’s Influence In Syria Is Likely To Outlive President Bashar Assad’s Rule – There’s one external player that looms large in Syria’s civil war, supporting a regime that might otherwise have fallen by now. And its clout in the nation is so big that it would likely survive even that regime’s downfall.

The Bashar Assad regime, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants and Iran are known as the region’s Shiite “axis of resistance” against Sunni powers, such as Saudi Arabia. Iran has been the Syrian president’s strongest backer since the war broke out in 2011, and its involvement is increasing. Iran’s military support has become so essential to the regime’s survival, and Iran’s Influence In Syria so pervasive, that Iranian involvement there would continue even if Assad were to be deposed.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Council (IRGC) advises the Syrian army, trains pro-regime militia and has organized roughly 70,000 fighters in Syria since the war began in 2011, Iranian officials said earlier this year. Iran’s military support is keeping Assad as a viable force in the war, but Syria’s Iran-trained militias could remain loyal to the Islamic Republic even if Assad falls, further complicating the United States’ choices in a war that’s threatening to engulf the whole region.

“The Iranians had essentially replaced the Syrian army with a militia called the National Defense Force, which draws many of its volunteers from the Alawite religious group — the regime’s main supporters — and also requires minimal training and support to function,” military correspondent David Axe wrote in a Reuters opinion article Wednesday.

The shrinking of Assad’s army is forcing him to rely on irregulars like the National Defense Force, local militias and foreign fighters. Very few of these units are strictly Syrian; even those that are composed of solely pro-regime Syrians are kept alive by Iran’s support. High casualty rates, the threat of gruesome retaliation from the Islamic State group and discontent among pro-regime Syrians have limited the army’s conscription capabilities; the irregular forces are now Assad’s most powerful and most effective ground force.

On paper, Assad commands the NDF and local militias, but if he did fall, “the remnants of the regime are likely to join forces with Assad’s militias, enjoy enduring Iranian support and continue to resist the Sunni oppositionists,” according to an 2013 report by the Institute for the Study of War.

When Assad’s armed forces were losing ground against the opposition in 2012, the IRGC sent in funding and advisers; Hezbollah troops from Lebanon were deployed; and nearly 5,000 Iraqi Shiite volunteer fighters joined the regime. This likely came at the request of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, whom a former CIA official called “the most powerful operative in the Middle East.” Soleimani’s strategy was to turn Syria’s shabiha gangs, once thought of as pro-regime thugs from the Alawite community, into a version of the Iranian Basij battalions, legitimate local militias armed by the government.

“Iran came and said, why don’t you form popular support for yourself and ask your people for help,” Sayyed Hassan Entezari, an Iranian soldier who fought in Syria, told IRGC-backed Mashregh News in October. “This was how the National Defense Force was formed.”

The IRGC is training Syrian and Hezbollah youth for these militias both inside and outside Syria, according to a report from the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of opposition groups that describes itself as a “parliament-in-exile.”

After initial training in pro-regime areas of Syria, 50 people a month are sent to an IRGC Special Forces training unit in Tehran, where they undergo “intensive and guerrilla training,” the report stated. Some are trained to infiltrate opposition brigades in order to “sow discord” among opposition groups. The regime positioned itself as the only truly Syrian armed force, accusing the rebels of being beholden to foreign interests like the Saudis and Gulf states. For a time this succeeded in creating heavy fissures in rebel ranks.

Iran’s Influence In Syria so pervasive, that Iranian involvement there would continue even if Assad were to be deposed.

But that strategy isn’t working anymore, with Assad’s credibility weakening in the face of advances by the Islamic State fighters and as his forces engage in more and more brutality against civilians. Earlier this month, the Sunni opposition formed the largest anti-regime coalition since the war began, a grouping with a far more radical Islamist stance than the U.S.-favored Free Syrian Army, which had so far been the main rebel grouping.

The regime’s “current dependence on indiscriminate tactics and Iran-backed militias is fuel for jihadi flames,” according to a report from the International Crisis Group.

And in a signal of Tehran’s growing importance in Syria, some local groups have already shed their ties to Assad, but are obeying Iran.

Entezari told a story of his Iranian comrades in Syria who had succeeded in persuading an Alawite tribe to turn itself into a pro-regime militia. “They said that if the Syrian government had asked them, they wouldn’t have complied. But because we are representatives of the Islamic Republic, they would do this willingly,” Entezari said. “So, see how their view toward the Islamic Republic has changed.”

Source: International Business Times – Why Iran’s Influence In Syria Is Likely …

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

IRGC gets more funding, Iran Issues more threat

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December 18, 2014

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IRGC gets more funding, Iran Issues more threat – Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, in an apparent act of self-contradiction, increased the budget for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps by 50 percent at roughly the same time that he criticized the effect of monopolies on the poor economy and endemic corruption throughout the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The IRGC has either a controlling interest or outright ownership of businesses in a wide variety of Iranian industries and benefits greatly from a black market economy that has grown up in response to Western economic sanctions. The IRGC has also steadily been given a greater share of power in society. It owns prominent media outlets in the country, and recent legislation provides civilians under the control of the IRGC with extensive license to publicly accost people for violating Islamic laws and cultural norms.

Some analysts have observed this growth of IRGC power and determined that the trend will only continue, as the paramilitary group may now wield enough political power to influence the selection of a new Supreme Leader in the event of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.

On Monday, Rouhani was quoted as saying, “If guns, money, newspapers and propaganda all gather in one place, one can be confident of corruption there. He went on to say that even morally upright figures from the history of Islam would become corrupt under such conditions. But this has not stopped Rouhani f rom proposing a budget that gives more money to the group that he described in these stark terms.

Based on this budget, in the Iranian year beginning March 20, the IRGC will have 6.5 billion dollars to spend on its various paramilitary and propaganda activities. Already, the IRGC is appropriated more money than the regular Iranian army, accounting for 62 percent of total military spending. That total is also set to increase by more than a third under the new budget.

Operating as a branch of the IRGC, the Quds Force conducts paramilitary activities in foreign countries and supports local terrorist organizations. In this capacity it has been involved in fighting in Iraq, where Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani is widely believed to be effectively in charge of Shiite militias and the regular army.

Being named after the Persian word for Jerusalem, the Quds Force evokes Iran’s declared foreign policy of bringing about the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. Concordantly, IRGC rhetoric is often directed at this target. Such was the case on Wednesday when Lieutenant Commander Brigadier General Hossein Salami once again claimed advancements in Iran’s missile programs and said the new weapons “make the Zionists tremble with fear,” according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.

Ironically, the same article points out that other Iranian officials have insisted that the nation’s missile programs are purely for defensive purposes and are no threat to the region. But the notion that any nation would “tremble in fear” of Iran’s military strength seems to belie this commentary.

Source: Iran News Update – IRGC gets more funding, Iran Issues more threat

Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights

Iran’s President, Revolutionary Guards ‘Enjoy Very Good Relations’

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December 18, 2014

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Iran’s President, Revolutionary Guards ‘Enjoy Very Good Relations’ – Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), says President Hassan Rouhani and the IRGC enjoy ” very good relations,” based on mutual trust.

Jafari was reacting to a question regarding recent comments by Rouhani, who warned against the monopolization of power and the spread of corruption in Iran, saying that corruption is brought about when guns, money, and media are concentrated in one institution.

The comments were widely interpreted as a veiled reference to the IRGC, which, apart from its military activities, is also engaged in economic, political, and media activities.

But Jafari told the official IRNA news agency that Rouhani had been asked about his December 8 remarks and that the Iranian president had said that he wasn’t talking about the IRGC, but rather he was making come general comments.

Jafari said Rouhani has full trust in the IRGC. “The enemies of the establishment and revolution, especially the foreign-based counterrevolutionaries, cannot harm this relationship, which was established since the imposed war [with Iraq],” he said.

Rouhani and the IRGC appear to disagree on some issues, including the extent of the IRGC’s role in the economy and cultural policies.

Yet IRGC officials have been generally supportive of Rouhani’s government’s nuclear talks with the West. They have, however, warned that Washington cannot be trusted and that Iran does not need ties with the United States.

Speaking at a December 16 event, Jafari warned against those who are trying to decrease opposition against the United States.

Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran expert with the Washington Institute, says the pragmatic Rouhani knows that he shouldn’t pull the IRGC’s tail, because that would mean challenging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to whom the IRGC answers directly.

Khalaji wrote in January about how Rouhani, unlike previous presidents, seems unwilling to directly challenge the influence of the IRGC over “various aspects of Iran’s political and economic life.”

“Instead, his approach has been to refashion the IRGC’s functions through the supreme leader — who is commander in chief of the entire armed forces — rather than taking independent initiative. This means convincing Khamenei to improve the economy by adjusting the IRGC’s role in politics and business, limiting its influence over the public sector, and weakening its ability to compete with the private sector,” Khalaji wrote.

Rouhani “has already curbed the IRGC’s role in some economic projects, and so far the military leadership has not viewed his actions as a threat,” he adds.

In his analysis, Khalaji quotes from an article on the Alef website affiliated with prominent conservative lawmaker Ahmad Tavakoli. The article describes Rouhani as someone who understands the power relations in the Islamic republic and who is aware that in order to advance his policies, he needs to be constructively engaged with influential institutions.

Source: Radio Free Europe – Iran’s President, Revolutionary Guards ‘Enjoy Very Good Relations’

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Iran’s President, Revolutionary Guards ‘Enjoy Very Good Relations’ – Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), says President Hassan Rouhani and the IRGC enjoy ” very good relations,” based on mutual trust.