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Tehran forces Iranian Jews to join anti-Israel Global March

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Tehran forces Iranian Jews to join anti-Israel Global March

 

The Islamic regime in Tehran was not satisfied with the public support the Iranian Jewish community’s was forced to confer on the Global March to Jerusalem for which Iran is recruiting Islamists worldwide. Now, the event’s organizers, Majlis Speaker Hossein Sheikh-ol-Eslam and Salim Ghafouri, have ordered the community to send a Jewish delegation to march with the Islamist groups in Lebanon,DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources disclose.
The delegations are scheduled to mass on the Lebanese and Jordanian borders with Israel and at West Bank and Gaza checkpoints on March 30, when Israeli Arabs mark Earth Day every year.

Iran’s ancient Jewish community of around 15,000 souls (9,000 in Tehran, 4,000 in Shiraz and 1,300 in Isfahan) has been living in fear of reprisals should Israel or the United States carry out a military operation against the country’s nuclear facilities.  Now, they face a fresh danger of murder and abduction by Hizballah and Palestinian gunmen and terrorists in Lebanon.
Jewish communal leaders were instructed by the Iranian authorities this week to have at least 10 young men aged 18 to 22 ready for the march. They were to be given “the honor” of acting as vanguard for breaking through the Lebanese-Israeli border fence and leading a mass incursion across the border.
They suspect that this ploy is meant to prevent Israeli soldiers from firing on the trespassers for fear of killing the Jewish contingent, while at the same time, exposing them to violence when the event is over at the hands of al-Qaeda linked Palestinian groups under Hizballah protection.

The Salafi doctrine held by the al Qaeda killer Muhammad Merah who murdered four Jews, including three children, in Toulouse Monday, is rife in the south Lebanese Palestinian Ain Hilwa refugee camp. The most active are two Palestinian jihadist groups, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which now and then shoots rockets into northern Israel, and Jund al-Sham, which is closely tied to al Qaeda branches in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, where they call themselves Osbat al-Ansar.

The two terrorist groups are the bosses of the Safouri Quarter of the camp.
Our sources report an Iranian scheme to send the Jewish marchers on a visit to Ain Hilwa to show their solidarity with the most radical Palestinian cause.

Last week, Jewish leaders were obliged to sign a declaration of solidarity with the Global March and condemnation of Israel. The text put before them for signing was as follows: We the Jews of Iran strongly condemn the barbaric crimes of the occupation regime in Palestinian and declare the Zionist state in violation of the principles of Our Teacher Moses and the Will of God. We are totally at one with the aspirations of the heroic Palestinian people.”
Signed: Dr. Syamak Mare Dedeq, Jewish Member of Parliament, and Rabbi Mashallah Golestani-Nejad, described as the Chief Rabbi of Iran.
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources add: Tehran is the main bankroller and live wire of the Global March against Israel’s borders and claims to have rounded up Islamist delegations from five continents to support the Palestinians. Seventy sympathizers are on their way to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan from India, Malaysia, Pakistan and other Asian countries.
To mark the event, Tehran staged a cartoon contest. The winner drew around the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem a wall modeled on the fences of Auschwitz.
Both the organizers are members of the Ministry of Intelligence MOIS with long experience of managing Iranian activities on behalf of Arab and Palestinian terrorist groups. Sheikh-ol-Islam, while holding the post of Deputy Speaker of Parliament, also coordinates Tehran’s relations with the Lebanese Hizballah.
On Feb. 26, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proclaimed the launching of the Global March to Jerusalem an expression of Iran’s policy for strengthening “resistance operations” against Israel and guarding Palestinian interests.

Source: debka

US Wants Iraq to Block Iran Weapons Sales to Syria

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US Wants Iraq to Block Iran Weapons Sales to Syria

 

By Scott Stearns

The United States wants Iraq to stop Iran from using Iraqi airspace to ship weapons to Syria.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of the last major suppliers of military intelligence and weapons to embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

U.S. officials say Iran’s support for the Syrian government, along with help from Russia, is one of the biggest reasons that President Assad has survived a year-long uprising. Most of those Iranian weapons are flown to Syria through Iraq, which also supports Assad.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland says Baghdad should prevent the shipments.

“We are making the point that any export of arms or related materials from Iran, frankly, to any destination would be a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1747, and that any arms sent to the Syrian regime at this time would obviously be used in the brutal repression that the regime is exacting on its own people,” said Nuland.

Foreign policy analyst Malou Innocent says Iran enhances its regional power by supporting President Assad.

“Assad’s government has been seen as a sort of an arm of the Iranian government in terms of assisting proxy forces in Lebanon through Hezbollah and also with Hamas,” said Innocent.

In Lebanon, supporters of Sunni cleric Ahmad al-Assir oppose Iran’s involvement in Syria because they say it undermines Lebanese security.

”When we started our movement, many people told us, ‘We agree there is injustice in Syria, but we are afraid,'” al-Assir noted. “When I asked them why, they say they are afraid of the allies of Syria, like Hezbollah.”

Iran says clerics such as al-Assir and Saudi calls to arm Syria’s opposition show the need for Tehran’s Shia leaders to back President Assad against a Sunni-led power grab.

“There has certainly been a sharpening division between Shia and Sunni blocks within the region. We have seen that now play out not only in Libya and in Syria and Iran, but also in Bahrain and in Yemen,” added Innocent.

Iraqi officials say they have no interest in helping Iran prolong Syria’s uprising as Syrian refugees from the conflict come to Iraqi Kurdistan. U.S. officials say senior members of the government in Baghdad have expressed a commitment to ensure that Iraqi territory and airspace are not used as a transit point for Iranian weapons to Syria.

Source: payvand

UN gives Iran human rights investigator second year

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UN gives Iran human rights investigator second year

 

The United Nations renewed the mandate of its human rights investigator for Iran on Thursday, but Russia and China voted against the resolution that expressed “serious concerns” about a country said to have the highest per capita execution rate in the world.

As Western nations tighten sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, Thursday’s vote at the U.N. Human Rights Council added to the pressure by extending the one-year term of the investigator who has been denied entry by Tehran.

Just as they opposed the economically crushing U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran and twice vetoed Security Council resolutions against Syria, Russia and China were among the five countries that voted against the human rights resolution that was backed by 22 countries with 20 abstentions.

The vote means that former Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed retains for another year the role of looking into human rights in the Islamic Republic.

After his first year in the job he issued a report earlier this month showing a rapidly increasing rate of executions in Iran, with some 670 people put to death last year, most of them for drug crimes that do not merit punishment under international law and more than 20 for offences against Islam.

According to rights group Amnesty International, only China, with a much bigger population, executes more people.

Shaheed also voiced concern about the abuse of minorities and the persecution of homosexuals and labour unions.

The delegate for Sweden, which sponsored the resolution, urged Tehran to work with the investigator, an unlikely prospect as Iran says his appointment was merely part of the West’s manoeuvres against it.

“The deteriorating situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to be of great concern. We regret that the special rapporteur, Dr. Shaheed, has not been given access to the country,” Sweden’s diplomat, Irina Schoulgin Nyoni, told the meeting.

“We strongly encourage the Iranian authorities to engage in dialogue and cooperation with this important mechanism of the Human Rights Council,” she added.

Sayed Mohammad Reza Sajjadi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said human rights were being used as a pretext to advance the political interests of specific states.

EU adds 17 Iranian officials to human rights blacklist

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EU adds 17 Iranian officials to human rights blacklist

 

The European Union has tightened restrictive measures against Iranian authorities over human rights abuses.

Following a meeting on Friday, the Foreign Ministers of the 27-nation bloc added the names of seventeen Iranian officials to an already existing asset freeze and travel ban “for serious human rights violations,” bringing the total to 78.

The European Union Council also banned “exports of equipment and software intended for use in the monitoring or interception of internet and telephone communications” by the Iranian state. The EU’s High Representative Catherine Ashton said that the EU was “deeply concerned” over the worsening human rights situation in Iran.

“We deplore the continuing increase in executions and the widespread repression of Iranian citizens, including human rights defenders, journalists and members of the opposition. We renew our calls on the Iranian authorities to live up to their international human rights obligations and to protect all fundamental freedoms to which the Iranian people are entitled.”

On Thursday, the United Nations renewed the mandate of its human rights investigator Ahmad Shaheed for Iran. Following a vote at the UN Human Rights Council, Shaheed’s term as special rapporteur was extended for another year.

Up until now, the former Maldives Foreign Minister has been denied entry into Iran. “The deteriorating situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to be of great concern. We regret that the special rapporteur, Dr. Shaheed, has not been given access to the country,” Swedish diplomat, Irina Schoulgin Nyoni, said at the meeting.

“We strongly encourage the Iranian authorities to engage in dialogue and cooperation with this important mechanism of the Human Rights Council.”

 Source: irangreenvoice

Jailed activist goes on hunger strike

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Jailed activist goes on hunger strike

 

Peyman Aref, the jailed Iranian journalist and activist, has been on a hunger strike for four days.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reports that he began his hunger strike in protest against his “illegal” imprisonment.

In the past few years, Aref has been arrested three times by the authorities. He was first arrested in March of 2010 in Behsht-e Zahra Cemetery with a number of other political activists while visiting the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who was shot to death during the street demonstrations that followed the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.

He was released the next day, only to be arrested two days later and sentenced to a year in prison, 74 lashes and a lifetime ban from journalism and all forms of political activity for “acting against national security and insulting the president.”

Aref served out his sentence and received 74 lashes before his release last October.

He was arrested again on March 14, 2012, and the charges against him this time have not been announced yet.

Source: radiozamaneh

Party of Fraud: Hizballah’s Criminal Enterprises

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Party of Fraud: Hizballah’s Criminal Enterprises

Given the growing confluence of drugs and terror, Washington needs to be more focused on Hizballah’s illicit activities, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. A long-established relationship with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Qods Force provides Hizballah, Iran’s trusted proxy group, opportunities to build operational capacity in the global illicit drug trade.

Given the growing confluence of drugs and terror, Washington needs to be more focused on Hizballah’s illicit activities, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. A long-established relationship with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Qods Force provides Hizballah, Iran’s trusted proxy group, opportunities to build operational capacity in the global illicit drug trade.

Hizballah entered the global narcotics trade approximately seven years ago by acquiring relatively small amounts of cocaine in 15kg–20kg quantities. Trafficking the drugs from the Tri-Border Area (Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina), across the Atlantic, and into locations like Europe, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, this initial investment produced hefty profits almost overnight. Today, Hizballah is moving tons of cocaine into West Africa, onward to North Africa, and eventually into European markets.

For decades, Hizballah has been a master at identifying and exploiting existing smuggling and organized crime infrastructure. Conservatively, the DEA has linked at least half of the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations to the global drug trade. Hizballah’s illicit activity is directly linked to the group’s ability to build contacts and relationships globally.

In permissive environments, Hizballah operatives are developing close personal relationships with individuals from organized crime groups. Formidable interorganizational relationships evolve from these personal relationships as young operatives dispatched to places like the Tri-Border Area ascend the ranks within their organization. DEA agents routinely report links between Hizballah and other terrorist and organized crime groups throughout South America, West Africa, and Europe.

Going forward, Washington should focus on three key strategies to disrupt the growing nexus between drugs and terror. First, the development of interlocking counternarcotics and counterterrorism strategies with singular funding streams can limit the usual stovepiping that stifles cooperation between agencies. Second, because U.S. law enforcement presence in South America has decreased since 9/11, Washington needs to put greater emphasis on “defense in depth”—i.e., expanding U.S. activity in the region. Finally, a relentless focus on traditional threats such as drugs, arms, and human trafficking, along with their associated money laundering, will expose terrorist operatives to law enforcement.

– Michael Braun

Hizballah has long exploited the Lebanese banking system to bolster the group’s coffers. The startling growth of Lebanon’s banks illustrates the degree of Hizballah’s money-laundering activity in the wake of Hizballah’s 2006 war with Israel. Banking data suggests the Lebanese banking system essentially doubled between 2006 and 2011, the result of a massive surge in dollar-dominated deposits from non-residents and members of the Lebanese diaspora. Foreign exchange reserves and gold reserves of the Central Bank of Lebanon tell a similarly story—during the war the funds skyrocketed. The miraculous growth experienced by the Lebanese banking system during costly reconstruction efforts is suspicious at best.

The fastest growing bank in Lebanon over the last decade has been the Lebanese Canadian Bank—the bank most centrally involved in Hizballah’s finances. It provided services and loans to Hizballah entities and received large deposits without reporting their source to the central bank. Hizballah has encroached on every part of Lebanon’s economy from its banking system to real estate and construction; however, they also seem to embrace illicit finance as a main source of revenue. Indeed, these illicit networks connect back to Hizballah’s coffers through Hussain al-Shami, a senior leader in charge of foreign donations to Hizballah’s fundraising organizations.

In December 2011, a $483 million asset forfeiture claim filed in the Southern District of New York exposed a massive money-laundering scheme through Hizballah fronts in Lebanon, including the Lebanese Canadian Bank and two Beirut-based money exchange houses. The Lebanese financial institutions assisted in a scheme to integrate hundreds of millions of dollars from narcotic sales with the proceeds of used cars bought in the United States and sold in Africa. Over the last five years, large sums of bulk cash, often escorted by Hizballah security guards, have been shipped from Africa to Lebanon; in 2007 alone, some $1.2 billion declared at the Togo-Ghana border made its way into Lebanese banks. The Lebanese Canadian Bank and affiliated exchange houses laundered and eventually piped the funds back into the U.S. and European banking systems.

Hizballah’s money-laundering activities and infiltration of the banking system constitute a principal risk to Lebanon’s financial security. For instance, the U.S. Treasury designation of the Lebanese Canadian Bank triggered a run on funds in the banking system, while Iran and Syria continue to use Beirut to skirt sanctions and thus expose the entire Lebanese banking system to severe sanctions. The choice facing the Beirut is clear: maintain Lebanon’s government or maintain Hizballah.

Going forward, the United States needs a decisive pressure option to curtail the influence of Hizballah and Iran in Lebanon without resorting to military force. Washington should consider creating an Iran-Hizballah Illicit Activities initiative—similar to the initiative applied against Kim Jong-il’s regime and the strategy that proved effective against Milosevic in the mid-1990s.

– David Asher

While Hizballah has long engaged in criminal activity, the scope and scale of that activity has expanded significantly over time, providing law enforcement opportunity to undermine the group’s capabilities. Consider last December, when federal prosecutors accused three Hizballah-linked financial institutions with laundering more than $480 million from narcotics trafficking and other criminal activities. Hizballah operative Ayman Joumma, who had operations in Colombia, Lebanon, Panama, and West Africa, laundered as much as $200 million a month in cocaine sales in Europe and the Middle East for the scheme.

Over several years Hizballah has been uniquely positioned to draw from a vast continuum of worldwide supporters and operatives. At one end is a small group of Hizballah-trained operatives and at the other a much larger pool of sympathizers who provide funds for the group.

From weapons procurement of shoulder-fire missiles to stolen laptops, passports, and PlayStation 2s, material support cases in 2009 indicate the scope and scale of Hizballah’s rising criminal activity. In one case a Hizballah operative attempted to sell counterfeit money to a government witness. The counterfeit bills, however, proved to be genuine, revealing a Hizballah scheme to sell money stolen from the Middle East.

In yet another instance, Dani Nemr Tarraf, charged with spearheading a plot to obtain military-grade weapons for Hizballah, told conspirators that weapons could be easily shipped through the port of Latakia into Syria and Iran because Hizballah controlled the port and secrecy was guaranteed.

Criminal activities expose Hizballah to unprecedented scrutiny from U.S. law enforcement, offering new opportunities to target the group. Although many countries are reluctant to cooperate with the U.S. counterterrorism efforts for fear of admitting that terrorists operate on their soil, they are less hesitant to cooperate on criminal law enforcement. It is often easier to pursue and apprehend suspects as criminals than as terrorists.

This has been evident in U.S. efforts to counter Hizballah activity in the Tri-Border Area. It is no surprise that Buenos Aires, Brasilia, and Asuncion issued a joint statement rejecting U.S. claims of terrorist activity in the region.

Yet, “the governments [of the Tri-Border Area] have long been concerned with arms and drugs smuggling, document fraud, money laundering, and the manufacture and movement of contraband goods through this region,” according to a 2007 U.S. State Department assessment. These countries are more willing to cooperate with the United States if it frames its efforts as anticrime and antidrug rather than as counterterrorism. Enforcing domestic laws to hold terrorists accountable for their criminal activity allows countries to avoid the messy politics that counterterrorism activities might imply.

– Matthew Levitt

Source: thecuttingedgenews

Iran accused at UN of shipping weapons to Syria

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Iran accused at UN of shipping weapons to Syria

 

The United States and Britain accused Iran at the United Nations on Wednesday of shipping weapons to Syria that are being used by the Syrian government against their own people.

U.S., British and French diplomats voiced alarm over reports from governments that Iran has been violating U.N. sanctions and is illegally supplying weapons to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government for its bloody year-long crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The accusation was made during a U.N. Security Council briefing on the reported sanctions violations by Tehran.

“We are alarmed that a majority of the violations … involved illicit transfers of arms and related material from Iran to Syria, where the Assad regime is using them to violently repress the Syrian people,” U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations, Rosemary DiCarlo, told the council.

Under U.N. sanctions imposed on Iran for refusing to halt its nuclear enrichment program, Tehran is banned from exporting weapons. A 2011 U.N. report accused Iran of smuggling arms to Syria, but at the time Western diplomats said those weapons were being passed on to Lebanese and Palestinian militants.

Iran and Syria have denied charges of arms trade.

The United Nations says over 8,000 civilians have been killed during the Syrian government’s crackdown. The U.N. Security Council voiced support on Wednesday for U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s bid to end violence that has brought Syria to the brink of civil war.

“We are seriously concerned by evidence of systematic Iranian activity to provide weapons illegally to the Syrian government. Weapons which, as we speak, are being used to violently suppress the people of Syria,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told the council.

French Deputy U.N. Ambassador Martin Briens said many detailed reports of weapons deliveries to Syria from Iran had been made to the Security Council committee that monitors violations of the sanctions on Tehran.

“The scope of this confirms the existence of a deliberate and continued policy of the illicit transfer of arms and related material between Iran and Syria,” he told the council, adding that France was “extremely concerned.”

The Security Council first imposed sanctions on Iran in 2006. Western powers suspect Iran is developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program. Iran insists its only aim is the peaceful generation of electricity and refuses to halt its enrichment program.

The council has adopted several rounds of sanctions against Iran. The recent sanctions resolution was approved in June 2010.

Source: insideofiran

Jafar Panahi: arrested, banned and defying Iran with his new film

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Jafar Panahi: arrested, banned and defying Iran with his new film

 

Despite his house arrest, and 20-year ban on making films, the Iranian director has released a movie – the unclassifiable This Is Not a Film, smuggled out of the country in a cake.

If one accepts Iran’s ruling that Jafar Panahi is no longer a film-maker, then it follows that his latest release is an orphan, unnamed and unclassifiable; a 75-minute yawp in the darkness.

“This Is Not a Film,” the opening title assures us, after which we are free to sit back and watch as the Iranian dissident pads distractedly about his Tehran apartment, testing the limits of his cage and implicitly highlighting the absurdity of his situation. The result may well be the most intriguing, quietly compelling non-movie we’ll see all year.

In December 2010, Panahi was convicted by Iran’s Islamic republic of “making propaganda against the system” and placed under house arrest. He faces a 20-year ban on writing scripts, directing films, giving interviews or leaving the country.

As an added bonus, he is currently staring down the barrel of a six-year jail term – he is in a judicial phase known as “execution of the verdict”, which means that his prison sentence can start at any moment.

Made in tandem with the documentary director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (who was later arrested for his trouble), This Is Not a Film, which goes on general release on 30 March, catches the exile at play – obeying the letter of the law, if not quite the spirit.

If Panahi cannot make a film, he will simply tell us about the film he would make if he could. So he sits in his book-lined apartment, reciting dialogue from his script and mapping fictional landscapes on a Persian rug. “You can’t call ‘cut!'” Mirtahmasb scolds him at one point. “It is an offence.”

The director once remarked that he had spent his entire career making movies “constructed around the notion of restriction, limitation, confinement and boundaries”.

In the case of This Is Not a Film, however, he finds himself tied in knots that would thwart Houdini.

Panahi, alongside Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, was a leading light of the Iranian new wave, the creator of haunting social-realist fables that were suppressed in his homeland but played well with art house audiences in the west.

He studied film at the Iran broadcasting college in Tehran, where he became obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock and dreamed of imitating the master’s icy, high-concept style. But his first short film was a disaster. “So cold and artificial that it had no soul,” he admitted. “I knew I had to go another way.”

Panahi’s alternative route involved him first working as an assistant on Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees and then making an acclaimed feature debut with 1995’s The White Balloon, a deceptively simple folk tale about a girl’s trip to buy a goldfish. If there was any political commentary in those early works (The White Balloon, 1997’s charming drama The Mirror), the director kept it low in the mix; shrewdly folded amid the hurly-burly of the city streets.

“There is a sense in many films of the Iranian new wave that the real meaning lies in what’s going on in the background,” explains Geoff Andrew, the head of film programming at BFI Southbank, which is planning a retrospective of Panahi’s work.

“That gives a lovely elusiveness to the narrative and pushes the audience to think. But it’s also born out of necessity, in that it’s what Iranian film-makers have to do. They’re not allowed to put a message up front. So they have to scatter seeds to either side and hope that we’re clever enough to pick them up.”

Yet Panahi may have crossed the line with his subsequent work. The Circle (2000) turned out to be an impassioned criticism of the treatment of women in Iran. Crimson Gold (2003) spotlighted a crisis of masculinity in the nation’s underclass, and Offside (2006) was prompted by the experience of the director’s daughter, who was refused entrance to a football stadium because of her gender. All three films won awards on the international festival circuit. All three were promptly banned in Iran.

“I don’t think Panahi’s a party political director, but he certainly points out that life is not a bed of roses, particularly for women,” says Andrew. “Undeniably he makes films that the regime don’t like. But given that they ban so many films, that seems almost inevitable.”

In 2009, for good measure, Panahi became a vocal supporter of the green movement, protesting against the result of the disputed election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

In March 2010, the director was arrested at his home and taken by plainclothes officers to Evin prison, a notorious holding-pen for political dissidents. Iran’s culture minister later explained that this was because “he was making a film against the regime and it was about the events that followed the election”, although Panahi’s wife says that this is untrue.

The arrest sparked a petition signed by many high-profile actors and directors (Steven Spielberg, Robert De Niro, the Coen brothers). Later, at the Cannes film festival, Juliette Binoche broke down in tears at the podium upon hearing reports that Panahi had begun a hunger strike. He was eventually released on bail at the end of May that year.

“I think it’s the duty of all film workers to oppose censorship wherever it takes place,” says the British film-maker Ken Loach, who was one of the first to call for Panahi’s release. “I slightly resist the idea that we can feel smug about living in the west, because there is censorship here too. But at least artists are not being put in prison as a result of their creative decisions. Men like Panahi are suffering in a way that we are not.”

In the meantime, what’s the answer? Hobbled by restrictions, their every move scrutinised, Panahi’s new-wave compatriots have largely decided to abandon Iran. Makhmalbaf now lives in Paris and has no plans to return, while Kiarostami shot his last film in Tuscany and remains sceptical about his chances of ever making another picture on home soil. Yet Panahi has always identified himself as an Iranian film-maker, based in Iran. It is a stance that may turn out to have cost him dear.

“I don’t know what I’d do in his situation,” Loach admits. “Of course the best solution is for a film-maker to make films in his own country, where he understands the nuances of the language and can see details below the surface.

“If you choose to make films outside of your natural habitat, you’re really just approaching the material like a tourist. So I have a great respect for the man’s decision to stay put, despite the obvious danger that brings.”

On camera, in This Is Not a Film, Jafar Panahi does not look like your obvious firebrand. The man’s manner is professorial and low key; his mood a ruminative brew of gloom and amusement.

He finds himself cast as the unwilling hero of his own reality show, surrounded by oddball supporting characters (his pet iguana, a moonlighting art student, a neighbour’s yapping dog) and railing against the sheer dumb injustice of his house arrest.

In keeping with Panahi’s bizarre circumstance, the film was finally smuggled out of Iran in the form of a USB stick concealed within a birthday cake.

“I love the fact that he sent it to us in a cake,” says the British-Iranian comic Omid Djalili. “It’s a gift, it’s a laugh; it says a lot about the spirit of the man.” Djalili points out that, for all their barbed social commentary, Panahi’s pictures are also very funny; gently catching the sheer absurdity of life in modern-day Iran. “I see this one as a kind of comic enterprise. Sometimes the limitations of the enterprise overwhelm him and those scenes are very moving. But he’s always fighting against that sense of futility. He never loses his sense of the ridiculous.”

Panahi’s attitude reminds Djalili of the tales of his own ancestors back in Iran. “They were Baha’i Iranians, which was an outlawed faith. They were poets and intellectuals and they were captured and humiliated on the streets, because they were Baha’i. The authorities put dunces’ hats on their heads and forced them to walk barefoot in the snow. And their response was to look at one another and just burst out laughing. The situation was so stupid that you could only look on it as a big, silly joke.

“Panahi has the same rebellious spirit. He’s turning the situation to his advantage. He’s irrepressible, so he finds a way to overcome what obstacles they give him. Even if they put him in a cell, he’ll probably make a film about getting up to have a piss in a bucket.”

For the time being, Panahi remains in limbo. The prognosis is bleak. As matters stand, it seems possible that This Is Not a Film will be Panahi’s swansong. It is his film in disguise, the one that got away; a rueful critique of an oppressive regime and a heartfelt salute to the creative impulse that will not be quashed. “It is a film about imprisonment,” says Andrew. “But in the very fact of it being made, it is a film about liberation.”

Source: guardian

Chinese firm helps Iran spy on citizens

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Chinese firm helps Iran spy on citizens

 

A Chinese telecommunications equipment company has sold Iran’s largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications, interviews and contract documents show.

The system was part of a 98.6 million euro ($130.6 million) contract for networking equipment supplied by Shenzhen, China-based ZTE Corp to the Telecommunication Co of Iran (TCI), according to the documents. Government-controlled TCI has a near monopoly on Iran’s landline telephone services and much of Iran’s internet traffic is required to flow through its network.

The ZTE-TCI deal, signed in December 2010, illustrates how despite tightening global sanctions, Iran still manages to obtain sophisticated technology, including systems that can be used to crack down on dissidents.

Human rights groups say they have documented numerous cases in which the Iranian government tracked down and arrested critics by monitoring their telephone calls or internet activities. Iran this month set up a Supreme Council of Cyberspace, headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said it would protect “against internet evils,” according to Iranian state television.

Mahmoud Tadjallimehr, a former telecommunications project manager in Iran who has worked for major European and Chinese equipment makers, said the ZTE system supplied to TCI was “country-wide” and was “far more capable of monitoring citizens than I have ever seen in other equipment” sold by other companies to Iran. He said its capabilities included being able “to locate users, intercept their voice, text messaging … emails, chat conversations or web access.”

The ZTE-TCI documents also disclose a backdoor way Iran apparently obtains U.S. technology despite a longtime American ban on non-humanitarian sales to Iran – by purchasing them through a Chinese company.

ZTE’s 907-page “Packing List,” dated July 24, 2011, includes hardware and software products from some of America’s best-known tech companies, including Microsoft Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Oracle Corp, Cisco Systems Inc, Dell Inc, Juniper Networks Inc and Symantec Corp.

ZTE has partnerships with some of the U.S. firms. In interviews, all of the companies said they had no knowledge of the TCI deal. Several – including HP, Dell, Cisco and Juniper – said in statements they were launching internal investigations after learning about the contract from Reuters.

Li Erjian, a ZTE spokesman in China, said his company only sells “standard” equipment to Iran. “Our main focus for business in Iran is to provide standard communications and network solutions for commercial use to help operators upgrade their network.

“We are a small scale telecommunication equipment supplier in the Iran market. We sell standard equipment in Iran as we do globally,” he wrote in an email.

TCI officials in Tehran either didn’t respond to requests for comment or could not be reached.

The United States, Europe and many Arab countries accuse Iran of attempting to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies. But Beijing, along with Moscow, has repeatedly vetoed attempts to strengthen sanctions against Tehran. China is Iran’s largest trading partner with business between the countries surpassing $45 billion last year, up $16 billion from 2010, according to Iran’s FARS news agency.

ZTE, China’s second largest telecom equipment maker, is publicly traded but its largest shareholder is a Chinese state-owned enterprise. The fast-growing firm, which says it sells equipment to more than 500 carriers in more than 160 countries, reported annual revenue of $10.6 billion in 2010.

TCI is owned by the Iranian government and a private consortium with reported ties to Iran’s elite special-forces unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

In a recent interview Mahmoud Khosravi, managing director of Iran’s government-controlled Telecommunications Infrastructure Co., boasted that sanctions have had no effect on Iran’s telecom industry. “We have the latest technology in our networks,” he said.

RIVALS PULL OUT

Sanctions on Iran have focused on banking, terrorism, Iran’s oil industry, and individuals and companies that Western capitals believe are involved in the country’s nuclear development program, which Iran maintains is peaceful. Although sanctions have not specifically targeted Iran’s telecommunications industry, its future growth is expected to suffer from “severe fluctuations in the currency, the rial, as international sanctions begin to impact the economy,” according to a report this month by Pyramid Research in Cambridge, Mass.

Last month, European Union diplomats said the bloc’s 27 governments had reached an agreement in principle to target telecommunications equipment that can be used by Iranian authorities for monitoring anti-government dissent. But no final decision has been made and there is no target date for implementing such a ban.

Like most countries, including the United States, Iran requires telephone operators to provide law enforcement authorities with access to communications. Some telecoms equipment makers that previously provided Iran with gear capable of intercepting communications have cut back sales.

After Iran’s controversial election in June 2009 sparked the country’s biggest demonstrations in decades, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens, said they would reduce their business there. NSN had provided TCI with a monitoring center capable of intercepting and recording voice calls on its landline and mobile network. Ericsson had sold equipment to Iranian telecoms that included built-in interception capabilities.

Even the giant Chinese telecommunications equipment firm Huawei Technologies said it has curtailed new business in Iran. In August 2009, Huawei and British company Creativity Software beat out ZTE to win a contract to supply Iran’s second largest mobile phone carrier, MTN Irancell, with a “location-based services” system, according to a press release from Creativity.

Such systems can be used to track phone users’ whereabouts. Last December Huawei said that “due to the increasingly complex situation in Iran, Huawei will voluntarily restrict its business development there by no longer seeking new customers and limiting its business activities with existing customers.”

“INTERCEPTION SOLUTION”

ZTE’s pursuit of the surveillance market is no secret. Its subsidiary, ZTE Special Equipment Co., or ZTEsec, specializes in security and surveillance systems and often co-sponsors an international trade show called ISS World where companies peddle their wares to governments and law-enforcement agencies. According to the trade show’s website, a ZTEsec official gave a training seminar in Brazil last July on “ZTEsec Deep Insight Solution – Comprehensive and Intelligent Interception Solution.”

The packing list for ZTE’s TCI contract refers to “Equipment Model: ZXMT,” a system the Chinese firm’s marketing documents refer to as an “integrated monitoring system” and a “turnkey solution for lawful interception” that simultaneously monitors telephone networks and the internet.

Reuters asked project manager Tadjallimehr and a former ZTE network engineer who helped to install the ZXMT system in another country to review the ZTE packing list. Both men said that among the items were parts for a surveillance system that can monitor voice, text messaging and internet communications. The former ZTE employee said the system does not use any U.S.-made parts or software. Both men said the ZXMT system utilizes “deep packet inspection,” a powerful and potentially intrusive technology that can read and analyze “packets” of data that travel across the internet. The technology can be used to track internet users, search for and reconstruct email messages that have been broken up into data packets, block certain types of traffic and even deliver altered web pages to users.

Andrew Lewman, executive director of The Tor Project, which distributes software so that dissidents in places like Iran and China can surf the internet undetected, says the group has collected evidence showing that Iran has been using deep packet inspection since 2010 to monitor and block internet traffic.

“They seem to be rolling it out countrywide and they seem to be willing to experiment with blocking more and more traffic,” said Lewman, the project’s executive director.

Tor, which has nearly 50,000 daily users in Iran, repeatedly has had to tweak its circumvention technology to outfox Iranian censors. Lewman said after using deep packet inspection to isolate and block specific traffic like Google’s Gmail, the Iranian government can then record every online request for the service and trace individual users. “They can figure out the households,” he said.

ZTE markets its monitoring system as low-cost and user-friendly. In May 2008, the firm made a presentation to the government-controlled Iran Telecommunication Research Center about its latest networking products, including the “ZTE Lawful Intercept Solution,” according to Privacy International, a London-based non-profit that advocates the right to privacy and obtained a copy of the presentation.

In a 91-page document called “Talking to the future,” ZTE noted that its ZXMT system was applicable to military and national security agencies. Citing “10 Reasons to Select ZXMT,” it said the system offered “High security and good secrecy” and was “Invisible to the targets.”

“A VERY SERIOUS MATTER”

The ZTE parts list includes items apparently not connected with its surveillance system. Among them are the U.S. products, including HP computer parts and printers, Microsoft Windows software, Cisco switches, Dell flat-screen monitors, Oracle database products and Symantec anti-virus software.

According to a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Dept., a U.S. company would violate sanctions “if it exports products requiring a license to a third party with the knowledge that its products will end up in Iran.”

In the case of the U.S. products on the ZTE packing list, many – and possibly all – do not require an export license and the companies say they did not know they were being shipped to Iran. Several said their agreements with foreign companies like ZTE stipulate that their products cannot be distributed to embargoed countries.

For example, an HP spokesperson said, “HP’s distribution contract terms prohibit the sale of HP products into Iran … As a matter of company policy, HP investigates any credible allegations of breaches of these contractual obligations by our partners or resellers and we are actively examining this situation.”

Cisco said, “Products such as these, which are not subject to individual export licenses, can be purchased from distributors and resold without Cisco’s knowledge or control. We continue to investigate this matter, as any violation of U.S. export controls is a very serious matter.”

ZTE’S contract with TCI is also signed by ZTE’s Iranian subsidiary, ZTE Parsian, and another Chinese company – Beijing 8-Star International Co., which the documents state is responsible for providing certain “relevant third-party equipments.” Reuters did not have access to an annex to the contract that identified the third-party products to be supplied by Beijing 8-Star.

A Reuters reporter recently visited the company’s office in eastern Beijing. Two male workers there described Beijing 8-Star as a trading company with business all over the world. The otherwise sparse office contained several crates of French wine marked Bordeaux, which the workers said had been imported from France.

A man who answered the phone at Beijing 8-Star declined to answer any questions about the Iranian contract or confirm his identity. “This part of my company’s business is a commercial secret,” he said, adding, “I think on this matter, you’d better not ask me. Because it’s my commercial secret, I don’t wish to tell you.”

70 Kurds arrested in Degulan and Kirmashan in Newroz fests

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70 Kurds arrested in Degulan and Kirmashan in Newroz fests

 

Pressure on the Iranian people especially on the national groups such as Kurds, Arab, Baluch and Azeri is increasingly in Iran. Each day people are arrested on different pretexts.

According to our correspondents, 70 Kurds were detained by the Iranian Intelligent Service in Degulan and Kirmashan cities on Wednesday 14th March.

It is being reported that about 40 people were arrested in Kirmashan city and 30 in Degulan for attending a Kurdish fire festival, known as Chwarshemme Suri (The Red Wednesday).

The festival usually takes place on the last Wednesday of the winter. It is one of the most important festivals for Kurdish people, however it is practices is forbidden by the Iranian regime.

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