The Intelligence Ministry has increased the pressure on Ayatollah Seyyed Sadeq Shirazi. Dozens of his followers and managers of a television network affiliated with him were arrested. Ayatollah Shirazi’s representative in Mashhad, Sheykh Ja’far Ghafuri, was arrested along with his seven-year-old son.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
The head of Iran’s Security Forces said today that the house arrest of opposition leaders Mir Hosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and their wives has been carried out under the orders of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam told Keyhan that following the controversial 2009 presidential election, which triggered widespread demonstrations and street protests across the country, the police arrested 40 prominent political figures, but Ayatollah Khamenei did not give them leave to arrest MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two reformist candidates that had challenged the result of the vote count.
Ahmadi Moghaddam said that after the protests reached an apex in December of 2009, he presented Ayatollah Khamenei with a list of figures that should be put under arrest, but the Supreme Leader pointed to the names Mousavi and Karroubi and said: “I will take care of these myself.”
He added that the judiciary and the security forces had prepared a case against Mousavi and Karroubi, but the cases were abandoned and they were only put under house arrest.
MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi accused the government of cheating in the vote count and challenged the Ahmadinejad government following the 2009 election. The challenge led to mass street protests unprecedented since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
The government cracked down on protests, killing and arresting protesters.
In February of 2011, after the two opposition leaders rallied their supporters to demonstrate in support of the Arab uprising in the region, the authorities put them under house arrest, where they still remain.
No official charges have been laid against Mousavi and Karroubi, and they are practically cut off from the public and their families.
Source: Radiozamaneh
Tehran is developing its own plans for continuing the Syrian war and maintaining its grip on the country – even as Washington and Russia press on with secret discussions on the fate of Syrian president Bashar Assad, backed by UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s mediation efforts in Damascus. Tuesday, Dec. 25, the envoy said after meeting Assad that he would stay on for another six days in the hope of persuading the parties to end their bloody hostilities.
At the same time, Iran is putting its military and intelligence assets in place ready for the day after Assad’s departure.
DEBKAfile reports: In the opinion of Saudi intelligence chiefs who attended the two-day GCC summit in Manama Monday and Tuesday, Iran has drawn up plans to sabotage any deal Washington and Moscow may pull off between Assad and the rebels for ending their war and incapacitate any transitional regime set up to replace the Assad presidency.
Those sources report that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has already issued directives to Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the Al Qods Brigades (Iran’s external intelligence and terrorist arm), for perpetuating the Syrian conflict by means of a terrorist network spread across the country and operating in conjunction with local militias.
“These militias,” said one Saudi intelligence source, “all depend on Hizballah for their supplies of weapons, explosives, funds and intelligence.”
Their task together with the terrorist cells will be to keep Syria in a constant state of warfare and so prevent any central government in Damascus from exercising its authority after Assad’s exit. There will be one secure island in the havoc: a fortified enclave in the capital. This setup will resemble the fortified palace compound in Kabul where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is barricaded, or Baghdad’s Green Zone in which Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is protected.
Iran’s Hizballah design for Syria borrows heavily from Soleimani’s al Qods program for Iraq in the years 2003-2007.
Then, Tehran used its terrorist squads under Hizballah’s guidance to systematically derail US control of the country. They generated violent mayhem for the purpose of rendering any pro-Western regime rising in Baghdad unsustainable and forced it to make way for a government dependent on Tehran.
Today, Iraq’s prime minister is reduced to a measure of dependence that leaves him powerless to stop the Iranian airlift bound for Syria transiting his country’s airspace and sends him running to Tehran for approval before every change of policy.
The Supreme Leader is believed by Saudi intelligence to have condemned post-Assad, post-war Syria to a version of this scenario and blocked any chance for the US and the West to extricate the country from Iran’s clutches, whether the Syrian ruler stays or goes.
Five years after performing for Tehran in Iraq, Hizballah has been recast for the return show in Syria – the only difference being the change in a key role. In Iraq, Al Qods benefited from the services of Hizballah’s late military chief Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in Damascus in February, 2008. His successor is Wafiq Safa, a kinsman of Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who is already working in Syria with the commander of Iranian forces in Lebanon, Gen. Hossein Mahadavi,.
Saudi intelligence is deeply pessimistic about the next stage of Syria’s future. They envisage Bashar Assad sticking it out in Damascus and pretty soon giving the order to launch chemical and biological warfare against the insurgency and Syria’s close neighbors.
Source: DEBKA
The court, presided over by Judge Moghiseh, sentenced 65-year-old political activist Naser Sodagari and his wife Tahereh Rostampour to five years in prison and 10 years in exile to Zahedan. Their son, 24-year-old student Pouyan Sodagari, was sentenced to six years in prison and six years in exile to Kerman. They were arrested on May 1, 2011 and convicted of attending the mourning ceremony of Ali Haj Aghai. Then they were released on bail. Naser Sodagari and his wife are political prisoners from the 19880s in Iran. They were also imprisoned in Evin for one year in 2007 for attending a memorial ceremony for the executed political prisoners in 1988 in Iran.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Head of the Basij Operating Division, Colonel Nasrallah Sayeef, announced that an exercise by the “Towards Beit al-Moqaddas (Jerusalem)”rapid response battalions would be conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, December 26 and 27 in Golestan Province. He added that over 100 rapid reaction battalions of Basij would participate in the drills. Sayeef announced that the war games would be the 22nd exercises of their kind, adding that “the drills aim to promote Basij forces’ hard, semi-hard and soft power in confrontation against enemies’ hard, semi-hard and soft threats.”
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Five Kurdish prisoners (Ahmad Jahangir Badozadeh, Ali Ahmed Sleman, Yousef Kakememi, Ahmed Temoi and Mostafa Ali Ahmed) from Ourmiyeh Prison were transferred to the Intelligence Ministry in the city. Following their interrogation and despite no poof having been found, they were charged with communication with the foreign media and ties with human rights reporter. These prisoners have not had any contact with their families and were treated violently and subjected to threats during their interrogation.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Abulqassem Mozafari, Commander of Khatam al-Anbia Development Headquarters of the IRGC, announced that his organization is constructing the 315-meter-long dam in southwestern Iran, and it is the world’s tallest double-curvature concrete dam. He said, “The dam will be constructed on the Bakhtiari River, a tributary of the Dez River, and we have begun preliminary operations for equipping its workshop, (digging) deviation tunnels and (constructing) access roads.”
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Acting Commander of the IRGC Naval Forces, Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, declared that IRGC’s submarines will operate in the Persian Gulf in the near future. The IRGCN gear also includes fast boats (used in swarm attacks) armed with various types of rockets (and missile) systems, reconnaissance UAVs (Shahed 129, Hazem) for 24-hour surveillance of the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, navy missiles, cruise missiles, shore-to-sea missile (Persian Gulf, Noor, Qader, Kowsar, Saeqeh). Defense Minister, Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, said that “Production of different types of submarines is on our agenda, and naturally they will be delivered to the IRGCN when they are complete.” He added that the Ministry plans to equip the IRGC Navy with its new domestically produced submarines. “These submarines will be in models other than Qadir (light submarines), and their production and delivery to the IRGC are underway.” He reiterated that Iran is producing military tools based on its doctrine of asymmetric defense (warfare). Army Navy Commander, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, announced that “our most recently manufactured systems were unveiled on November 27, and we will announce the start of operation of these new systems by February 10.”
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Canada says it has added the Qods Force, the international arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, to the list.
Canada has accused the Qods Force of “exporting the Iranian Revolution through activities such as facilitating terrorist operations.”
Canadian Public Safety Minister Vic Toews went on to allege that the Qods force provides “arms, funding and paramilitary training to extremist groups, including the Taliban, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.”
The IRGC has confirmed that its Qods forces are present in Syria and Lebanon but only in the capacity of aides and advisers.
Source: Inside of Iran
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran says the Iranian government must stop harassing family members of Persian BBC staff.
In a report released on December 20, the campaign reports that according to Persian BBC director Sadeq Saba, Iran has increased pressure on families of its employees in recent weeks, directing them to get their relatives to stop working for the BBC.
Hadi Ghaemi, a spokesperson for the campaign, commented on the situation, saying: “Targeting the family members of journalists is a brazen breach of international and domestic laws. The international community should not tolerate such actions and must hold the Iranian government accountable.”
The trigger for the recent pressures, according to Saba, appears to be the BBC’s airing of Forced Confessions, a documentary by Maziar Bahari, in early December.
The campaign reports that the Islamic Republic is also applying similar pressure to the spouses and families of prisoners of conscience.
Abolfazl Ghadiyani, a prominent political prisoner, recently published a letter describing the harassment of the family of another political prisoner, Alireza Rejai, whose wife is even being advised to divorce him.
The Islamic Republic has accused Persian BBC of having an adverse political agenda with regards to Iran and, therefore, it regards any collaboration with the BBC as “support of Iran’s enemies.”
Source: Radiozamaneh
