Iranian Media Report Fresh Missile Attack On US Base In Syria
IRGC media report a fresh attack on a US base in Deir Ezzor in Syria on Friday, after US warplanes hit two targets in the region belonging to the Revolutionary Guard.
IRGC media report a fresh attack on a US base in Deir Ezzor in Syria on Friday, after US warplanes hit two targets in the region belonging to the Revolutionary Guard.
Tasnim news agency affiliated with the IRGC reported at midday local time that “six missiles launched from the vicinity of Bu Kamal and al-Mayadeen” at the US base near the al-Omar oil fields.
If true, this would constitute a quick response by Iranian forces to a limited US retaliatory attack launched hours earlier at tow reportedly unmanned weapons depots of the Revolutionary Guard near Bu Kamal.
Iran’s armed proxy forces in Syria and Iraq have launched nearly 20 drone and rocket attacks against US bases in the two countries since the October 7 Hamas terror raid into Israel.
President Joe Biden and other US officials had warned of retaliation if Iranian-affiliated forces continued targeting American forces.
Iran had not attacked US bases in the region for nearly a year before the October 7th Hamas invasion. Tehran was holding secret talks with Washington to free billions of dollars of its frozen funds. The Biden administration agreed to release at least $8.7 billion blocked in South Korea and Iraq since June in exchange for five American hostages held by Iran and reportedly an agreement to deescalate tensions. However, the Hamas attack on Israel have led to the possibility of a serious conflict in the region.
Iran fully backs Hamas and has threatened the United States that if the attack on Gaza does not stop, it can engulf US interests.
The online poll, completed over a period of one month, was conducted after lawmakers, mostly affiliated to the ultra-hardliner Paydari Party, ratified a bill in September that they have named "Protection of Family Through Promotion of Hijab and Chastity Culture".
The legislation, originally prepared by the government and later modified by the parliament’s hardliners, proposed various penalties including heavy cash fines for women who do not abide by the prescribed dress code of the Islamic Republic. This dress code consists of a headscarf covering all hair and the shoulders, a loose long tunic with long sleeves, and trousers that cover the legs to below the ankles.
The constitutionally mandated 12-member Guardian Council which, among other things, has the final say in legislation, rejected the bill on Tuesday in a surprising move and asked the parliament to amend it.
The Council has found several formal shortcomings in the text including vagueness of some of the terms used in it, such as a term translatable as “unchastity” or “corruptness”.
The Council’s rejection of the proposed hijab law has nothing to do with people’s objection to it, Asieh Amini, a Norway-based women’s rights activist, told Iran International. According to Amini, the reason for the Council’s rejection is based on the hardliners’ wish to make the legislation as watertight as possible.
Others believe the Guardian Council may have been apprehensive about increasing the people’s discontent with the regime before the upcoming parliamentary elections in March. The elections four years ago had the lowest participation rate in the four-decade history of the Islamic Republic.
“The outcome of this bill will be nothing other than increasing people’s discontent, decline [of belief] in hijab, and deepening of the rift between the government and the people,” conservative journalist Behrouz Mirzaei-Shirmard tweeted before the Council’s rejection of the bill. He said he hoped “those in the system who are wise and care” would stop the bill, which “is in contradiction with citizen’s rights” from being approved.
In the past few months, hardliners have tried to impose strict hijab rules in government offices, schools and universities, hospitals and other public places. Nevertheless, many women are defying the hijab rules.
For instance, Habib Ilbeigi, the director of the supervision department of the Islamic Guidance Ministry’s Cinema Organization, said that actresses who have defied hijab standards will be banned from acting.
The department has released a list of banned actresses that includes many popular actresses including Baran Kowsari, Vishka Asayesh, Taraneh Alidoosti, Katayoun Riahi, Pantea Bahram, Hengameh Ghaziani and Pegah Ahangarani.
The organization is mandated with the approval of public screening and streaming of all films produced in Iran, and very often implements censorship by rejecting scripts or modifying them.
Sources in Iran say in many places, wearing the hijab now is stranger than not wearing it, as the number of women wearing ordinary clothes and no headscarf has hugely increased.
