Sepideh Rashno, an Iranian woman who refused to wear a headscarf and whose video of a quarrel with a hijab enforcer went viral last month, has been charged with propaganda against the Islamic Republic.
In the past ten days, subscribers to Instagram and WhatsApp who use two-step authentication for signing into their accounts have reported that they are not receiving the required authentication codes via text message. Text message codes are also required for creating new accounts.
Many suspect that Iran’s mobile operators are blocking text messages containing keywords including “code”, “Telegram”, “WhatsApp”, and “Instagram”.
A majority of Iranian lawmakers issued a statement in January asking the government and the Judiciary for measures to restrict peoples’ activities on the internet. In February, an ad hoc parliamentary committee approved the outline of a controversial bill, ironically titled Legislation to Protect Cyberspace Users’ Rights, to limit access to various apps and platforms.
Many Iranians including some lawmakers say the implementation of the plan has practically been in progress in the past few months. Authorities have restricted bandwidth allocated to Instagram in the past few months and reduced Internet speed both of which make connecting to social media platforms difficult.
According to information technology expert Arian Eghbal, the recent disruption in access to Instagram and other platforms is deliberate. “There is evidence that our [filtering] system is working like China’s,” he told Entekhab news website on August 17.
The slow internet has affected many areas of life, from navigation of taxis and cars to tens of thousands of large and small online businesses that rely on Instagram, as well as government and public online services.
“They are restricting access to the Internet to make communication between people harder … Those who wrote the Siyanat bill don't want people to conjoin in the cyberspace, talk to each other, and discuss social and political issues,” Gholamreza Nouri-Ghezeljeh, chairman of the Independents’ Faction in the parliament told Salam-e No website earlier this month.
Canada-based science and technology reporter Mehdi Sarami told Iran International that the government is quietly implementing the yet unapproved legislation to force people to use domestically developed platforms such as Soroush and Rubika which can easily be controlled.
A survey conducted by the state-run Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) in 2021 found that 73.6% of Iranians over the age of 18 use social media, including WhatsApp (64.1), Instagram (45.3), and Telegram (36.3). Only 4.8% reported that they use domestically developed platforms. Many of Instagram’s subscribers in Iran use it for business.
Instagram with around 45 million users is the only major social media platform not blocked in the country where other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Telegram cannot be accessed without the use of anti-filtering software and VPNs (virtual private networks).
Nearly every Iranian with a smartphone has installed anti-filtering software that allows access to filtered applications and websites. Anti-filtering software, however, will time out if the internet speed is low. Nonetheless, with over 50 million users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging application in Iran.
In June 2020 Pavel Durov, the CEO of the encrypted instant messenger
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has multiple accounts on Instagram and Twitter, but his loyal followers are behind the efforts to restrict access for citizens.
Iran has one of the world’s worst internet censorships, with tens of thousands of websites blocked since the early 2000s and most social media platforms banned. In the absence of free media and heavy censorship, many Iranians turn to social media for political news and information.
General Javad Ghaffari, the IRGC Qods Force commander who had reportedly been expelled from Syria last November for ‘major breach of Syrian sovereignty’, led the IRGC Intelligence Organization's plots to kill Israelis in Turkey in the past nine months, a former senior IRGC official told Iran International.
After returning from Syria, Ghaffari was appointed as the deputy head of IRGC Intelligence Organization for Special Operations, where he orchestrated a series of failed attacks against Israeli citizens, the Iranian source said.
In the latest case in June, Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) thwarted a planned attack against Israeli diplomats and tourists in Istanbul. MIT said that it detained eight suspects allegedly working for an Iranian intelligence cell.
Ghaffari was the third commander of the Iranian forces in Syria since 2011 when Iran began its large-scale intervention in Syria's civil war. He started his career in Syria as one of the commanders at the Iranian forces' headquarters in Damascus and was later appointed as the commander of the forces in Aleppo - where he became known as the 'Butcher of Aleppo'.
There, he led Iranian forces as well as their Lebanese Hezbollah proxies and Afghan mercenaries, the Fatemiyoun, until he was allegedly ousted by Assad.
Ghaffari was expelled from Syria as he was "accused of ‘major breach of Syrian sovereignty’ after attacking US forces, and deploying Iranian weapons to unapproved places," the Times of Israel quoted Saudi sources as saying.
According to the Times, it was reportedly Syria that shunned Ghaffari for "nearly starting a war with Israel," and "almost causing an unwanted regional war."
Back-to-back failures
Ghaffari's expulsion from Syria not only did not result in his retirement, but also won him a senior position at the IRGC Intelligence Organization (SAS).
His failures at SAS outraged many IRGC officials, and finally prompted Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to sack the organization's controversial, but powerful chief Hossein Ta'eb, who had run SAS for 13 years.
However, Ghaffari was not the first or only official responsible for SAS operations overseas. His predecessor Reza Seraj had also been sacked for a failed plot to kill Israelis in Cyprus.
Another key figure in the unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Israelis in Turkey was Rouhollah Bazghandi, the deputy head of the SAS counterintelligence (Unit 1500), the former senior IRGC official told Iran International.
Bazghandi was in charge of the June operation to assassinate former Israeli Consul General in Istanbul, Yosef Levi Sfari, as well as three Israeli women tourists.
By using amateur agents to carry out the attacks against Israeli targets in Istanbul, Bazghandi dealt a heavy blow to IRGC Intelligence Organization, the source told Iran International.
He was also in charge of thwarting plots to assassinate Iran's security officials inside Iran; however, Hossein Ta'eb used him for his extraterritorial operations, and apparently his absence, among other reasons, turned Iran into a safe haven for Israeli Mossad agents who launched several sabotage operations and assassinations, killing Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, other key figures and scientists in Iran's drone, missile and nuclear program.
On May 22, two assailants on a motorbike fired several bullets at Col. Sayyad-Khodaei outside his home in broad daylight, prompting Iranian officials to accuse Israel of organizing the attack, and vowed revenge.
This incident was followed by more mysterious deaths of IRGC officers and weapons experts, which were again blamed on Israel that has not denied responsibility as it is engaged in a secret war with the Islamic Republic.
Iran's Judiciary Media Center quoted Revolutionary Court Judge Iman Afshari as saying on Saturday that Rashno was summoned from the prison and was served her indictment issued by the prosecutor's office. He added that she will be officially tried in the near future.
She is accused of “association and collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the country's security through communication with foreigners and propaganda activity against the Islamic Republic and encouraging people to commit corruption and prostitution."
On Monday, August 15, some women's rights activists staged flash mobs in Tehran to demand information on her whereabouts. She has reportedly been in detention at the IRGC ward of Tehran’s Evin Prison since her arrest on July 16 after the video of her row with a woman enforcing hijab rules went viral on social media.
In a move that was condemned by many activists and people on social media, the state-run television (IRIB) aired on July 31 the so-called ‘confessions’ of the 28-year-old artist, writer and editor.
She was tortured and forced to denounce herself and other activists, and express regret for her confrontation with the hijab enforcer and posting her video on social media. She had been so that she was suffering from internal bleeding.
