Iran Sends Undercover Intelligence Agents Abroad As Boxing Referees
An exclusive report by the IranWire website reveals that undercover judicial officials posed as referees for international boxing events to report back to the regime.
An exclusive report by the IranWire website reveals that undercover judicial officials posed as referees for international boxing events to report back to the regime.
Citing information from an intelligence source within the Ministry of Sports and Youth, IranWire disclosed that Abolfazl Ameri Shahrabi, the Deputy Prosecutor of Arak, and Majid Abbaszadeh, a member of the intelligence organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were sent abroad to boxing event under the guise of international referees.
According to the report, Ameri Shahrabi's involvement in the world of boxing dates back to his participation in the national boxing team's camps between 1995 and 1998. He transitioned into refereeing the sport during the early 2010s. The report further revealed ongoing discussions about the potential transfer of Ameri Shahrabi to Tehran to assume a new position in one of Tehran's sensitive judicial centers.
Ameri Shahrabi is the same judicial official who filed charges against Sadrollah Fazeli Zarei and Yousef Mehrdad, who were executed in May 2023on accusations of blasphemy and insulting religious and Islamic sanctities on social media.
On a related note, Majid Abbaszadeh, a boxing referee and a member of the intelligence protection organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, assumed the position of the head of the Tehran Boxing Association in July of this year.
This disclosure of the overseas travels of these two individuals with judicial and intelligence affiliations to European and American countries comes at a time when Western nations have imposed sanctions on numerous officials of the Islamic Republic.
In reports to diplomats of countries forming the board of directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the watchdog’s experts also said there has been no progress in talks with Tehran on sensitive issues such as explaining uranium traces at undeclared sites. The head of Iran’s nuclear agency has claimed repeatedly in recent months that the IAEA’s questions have been “satisfactorily” addressed regarding to the undeclared sites use more than two decades ago.
According to one of the confidential quarterly reports to member states seen by Reuters and other media, the IAEA said Iran's stockpile of uranium enriched to up to 60-percent purity, close to the roughly 90% of weapons grade, continued to increase albeit at a slower pace, despite some of it having been diluted.
"The (IAEA) Director General (Rafael Grossi) regrets that there has been no progress in resolving the outstanding safeguards issues in this reporting period," one report said, referring to Iran's failure to credibly explain the origin of uranium particles found at two undeclared sites.
The reports, sent to IAEA member states ahead of a quarterly meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors next week, also said that after limited progress on re-installing IAEA surveillance cameras in the previous quarter, there had since been none, further raising tensions with Western powers.
Iran and the IAEA announced an agreement in March on re-installing surveillance cameras introduced under a deal with major powers in 2015 but removed at Iran's behest last year. Only a fraction of the cameras and other monitoring devices the IAEA wanted to set up have been installed. But US officials have already acknowledged, according to Bloomberg that they have reduced enforcement of sanctions that has led to a doubling of Iran's oil exports since mid 2022.
Adding to the issues likely to cause tension with the West, Iran's stock of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent grew by an estimated 7.5 kg to 121.6 kg, the report said, even though 6.4 kg of it was diluted with uranium enriched to a lower level.
Iran's production of uranium enriched to up 60 percent has slowed to around 3 kg a month from about 9 kg a month previously, a senior diplomat said.
Other diplomats have said the slowdown could be part of so-called "de-escalation" efforts between Iran and the United States also involving Iranian funds frozen abroad and US prisoners held in Iran, though US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has denied the issues are linked.
"Of course, Iran claims (the slowdown in enrichment to up to 60%) as a positive, but more HEU (highly enriched uranium) is still more HEU," one Western diplomat said.
CAMERAS WITHOUT FOOTAGE
Iran's stock of uranium enriched to 60 percent is now almost three times the roughly 42 kg that by the IAEA's definition is theoretically enough, if enriched further, to produce a nuclear bomb. Experts add, however, that some uranium would be lost in the process. Iran denies wanting to produce nuclear weapons.
The IAEA continues to have regular access to Iran's declared nuclear facilities and its core nuclear activities under long-standing agreements that predate the 2015 nuclear deal, but the 2015 deal added monitoring to areas such as the production of parts for centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium.
Even where IAEA monitoring equipment has been re-installed, such as at a site in Isfahan, it does not have access to the footage that its cameras record since that was not included in the March agreement it negotiated with Iran.
One of Monday's reports spelled out that problem.
"The Director General reiterates that for Agency cameras to be effective, including those installed at Esfahan, the Agency needs access to the data they record."
With reporting by Reuters, Bloomberg
The huge jump occurred during the first full year of Ebrahim Raisi’s presidency, dominated by hardliners, who insisted on continuing their anti-Western foreign policy and claiming that economic sanctions imposed on Iran can be defeated. The period spans from March 22, 2022, to March 21, 2023, or the Iranian calendar year 1401.
The annual borrowing total reached nearly $50 billion, representing 30 percent of the yearly GDP. This level of borrowing is unprecedented and indicates an increase in money printing by the government, which is likely to result in further inflation, since the borrowing was entirely from domestic state or quasi-governmental banks. In turn, these banks face huge debts and an unstable financial situation. Therefore, when the government borrows from these institutions, they have to turn to the Central Bank of Iran for liquidity and the central bank has to print more money.
To provide context, Turkey's total government debt is equivalent to 31 percent of its annual GDP, whereas in Iran's case, one year's borrowing alone has reached the same level.
This development poses the question about Iran’s increased oil exports in 2022 and 2023, which should have provided financial resources to the government and forestalled more borrowing. During the period in question Iran sold around 1.2 million barrels of oil daily, mostly to China, and with high prices in 2022 it should have brought in at least $26 billion even if sold the oil at the discounted price of $60 per barrel.
Around $11 billion is provided at deeply discounted exchange rates to importers of food, medicine and animal feed. This means that around $5 billion is “wasted” on indirect subsidies. That still leaves around $20 billion for other government expenses, including 15 percent as share of the National Oil Company.
This is basically half of what the government needs from oil exports in order to balance its budget, and it explains why it was forced to borrow more, or to be precise, to print more money. But $20 billion in 2022 was probably more than the government had earned from oil exports in previous years since 2018, when the United States imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports.
One explanation about why the government fell into more borrowing in 2022-2023 could be that national reserves dwindled after repeated withdrawals since 2018. A report in August indicated that in the past decade Iran withdrew $140 billion from its National Development Fund, mostly since 2018, leaving an estimated small amount of $10 billion.
Oil exports are said to have increased in recent months reaching 1.5 million and in August surging to around 1.9 million barrels a day, as the United States relaxed its enforcement of sanctions to try to reach a nuclear deal with Tehran.
However, it is not clear how much discount Iran is offering Chinese importers to compete with discounted oil from Russia. In recent days, media in Tehran estimated that the government could be selling its oil for as little as $30 per barrel, given a statement by a top official that it was able to earn just half of what it expected from March to August of this year.
Annual inflation is already hovering at around 50 percent and the national currency has fallen by 50 percent in one year to 500,000 rials per one US dollar. The coming months will show if the higher borrowing will lead to even higher inflation.
