Iranians Umrah Pilgrimage To Saudi Arabia Officially Cancelled
Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization announced the official cancellation of the Umrah pilgrimage, with refunds for over 30,000 Iranians already registered being processed.
Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization announced the official cancellation of the Umrah pilgrimage, with refunds for over 30,000 Iranians already registered being processed.
The Umrah, an Islamic pilgrimage to the holiest Muslim city Mecca in Saudi Arabia, can be undertaken at any time of the year, in contrast to the Haj pilgrimage, which has specific dates according to the Islamic lunar calendar. The first group of Iranian pilgrims was scheduled to embark on Umrah in early January after about seven years of diplomatic estrangement between Tehran and Riyadh.
The cancellation of the Umrah pilgrimage was attributed to a "technical disagreement" regarding Iranian flight permits for entry into Saudi Arabia.
Hesam Ghorbanali, the spokesperson for Iran’s flag carrier airline Iran Air (Homa), said at the time that due to the lack of the required permit, the aircraft of the Islamic Republic was unable to travel to Saudi Arabia, claiming that the problem would be resolved within a few days.
Now after about a month and a half, Haj and Pilgrimage Organization announced that all registration fees will be refunded.
Since the suspension of Umrah in 2015 and the emergence of disagreements between Tehran and Riyadh, approximately six million Iranians have been awaiting the resumption of Umrah. The minister of culture had previously promised that before the summer of 2024, around 400,000 people would undertake the Umrah pilgrimage.
The relations between the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia have been strained over the years, with heightened tensions due to Iran's support for Shia paramilitary groups, notably in Yemen.
However, after a seven-year diplomatic hiatus, Tehran and Riyadh reached an agreement in February 2023 of the previous year to resume diplomatic relations. The agreement, mediated by China paved the way for a subsequent trip by Ebrahim Raisi, the President of the Islamic Republic, to Saudi Arabia.
Amin Sabeti told Iran International that digital security cannot rely solely on slogans and rhetoric, predicting further large-scale cyberattacks against Iranian targets.
The latest episode in a long series of cyberattacks in the past few years, was a major of hack of parliament’s servers that brought to light troves of documents, including the real income of lawmakers and US sanctions evasions.
He further stated that many projects aimed at developing what the regime terms “domestic services” have failed due to their reliance on corrupt connections and nepotism rather than meritocracy and expertise.
According to Sabeti, both public and private organizations in Iran do not take information security audits seriously. He emphasized that severing ties with the global internet cannot guarantee cybersecurity, highlighting the inefficacy of the regime’s costly “national internet” project.
Meanwhile, an Iranian lawmaker acknowledged the country's vulnerability to cyberattacks due to structural weaknesses in its cyberspace control. Shahriar Heydari, deputy chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian parliament, stated that the National Organization for Passive Defense and the Intelligence Ministry should be held accountable for recent cyberattacks against Iran.
“Cyberspace is a war of information. Every country needs to secure its systems against hacking and data theft,” Heydari stressed.
His remarks came two days after a cyberattack targeted over 600 Iranian government servers, including the Khaneh Mellat News Agency, the Iranian parliament’s media arm. Hacktivist group Uprising till Overthrow, closely linked with the Albania-based opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) organization, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Heydari accused MEK of attempting to defame the Iranian parliament ahead of the upcoming parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections on March 1. Documents leaked following the hack uncovered a wide range of Tehran’s strategies to circumvent US sanctions. The documents revealed the parliament's coordination with designated Iranian entities and individuals to facilitate their trade activities and conceal their identities and connections from international regulatory bodies.
Some other documents were also released by a group calling itself ‘Uprising till Overthrow’, including those related to the high salaries of Iranian lawmakers. Lawmakers have incomes that are at least 20 times more than what an ordinary government employee earns.
In December, a cyberattack paralyzed gas stations across Iran. The hacking group ‘Gonjeshk-e-Darande’ or Predatory Sparrow announced the attack on X, claiming that they took out “a majority of the gas pumps throughout Iran.” Tehran accuses the group of having links to Israel.
According to Heydari, the head of Iran’sPassive Defense Organization was invited to a session of the parliament’s National Security Commission following the December cyberattack.
“Instead of being accountable, he just justified and described the incident. Our problem is that if we invite an organization, the first thing they do is to justify and provide performance statistics, instead of discussing the main issue,” the lawmaker added.
However, the Iranian regime has been involved in sustained cyber operations against different targets around the world, to gain information or disrupt government operations and private companies.
Microsoft disclosed on Wednesday that state-backed hackers from Iran, Russia and China have been leveraging tools developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI to enhance their cyber espionage capabilities.
Earlier in November, Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) reported that Iran has intensified its cyberattacks and influence operations since 2020, targeting Israel and other countries. The report also warned that Iran, Russia and China are likely to plan to influence the upcoming elections in the United States and other countries in 2024.
In December 2023, Iran-linked hackers targeted a water facility in the rural area of County Mayo in Ireland, leaving the residents without water for two days. The attack was carried out by pro-Iran Cyber Av3ngers group which claimed that the facility was attacked because it used an Israeli-made piece of equipment.
Iran International revealed last month that Iran’s Intelligence Ministry conductscyberattacks against Israeli civilian targets via a cover tech company. The cyber group ‘Black Shadow’ (“Saye-ye Siah” in Persian), which targeted Ziv Medical Center in the northern Israeli city of Safed in November is in fact a tech company in Iran.
Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of hardline daily Kayhan and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative at the flagship hardline newspaper who made the threat, has no executive position and no responsibility about the elections.
Shariatmadari's threat came two days after Iran's main collective reformist organization, the "Reform Camp of Iran" announced in a statement that reformist parties and groups will not take part in the parliamentary elections in Tehran because the system is biased against Reformists and elections in Iran are not free and fair.
Iran’s ultraconservative election watchdog, the Guardian Council, has banned almost all Reformists from running in the March 1 parliamentary vote. The reformists were effectively banned from taking part in the previous parliamentary election in 2020 and the presidential election in 2021.
The general dissatisfaction among voters about the deteriorating economic and political situation in Iran and a completely uncompetitive election has led to predictions of extremely low turnout on March 1.
However, Shariatmadari also insisted earlier in the week, without presenting any evidence, that turnout in Tehran will be 20 percent higher than what it was in 2020. This comes while all forecasts in Iran put the expected turnout between 8 to 15 percent.
During the past weeks, hardliners in Iran have been doing whatever they could to encourage people to go to the polls. Khamenei's leading religious singer Saeed Haddadian said on state TV that not taking part in elections is a cardinal sin in Islam! Earlier Hossein Shariatmadari had said that voting in elections is tantamount to Jihad! Many clerics who are on the payroll of the state have also made extravagant statements about the urgency to vote and in praise of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei.
Earlier in this week, former lawmaker Hedayatollah Khademi told the press that after his disqualification for the upcoming elections, he was approached by go-betweens from the Guardian Council who demanded $120,000 to have his qualifications endorsed by the clerics at the election watchdog. Khademi said that various go-betweens wanted 100 billion rials to have his credentials approved by the Guardian Council. He added: "The figures they demanded were almost similar. They wanted 100 billion rials, or 300 standard gold coins, or $120,000."
Meanwhile, it was disclosed by hackers who targeted the parliaments servers that the current ultraconservative lawmakers receive a monthly salary of over 2 billion rials per month, or about $4,000.
That is more than 20 times the salary of an ordinary government employee. Following the hacking, the parliament held closed-door sessions on Wednesday and banned the entry of journalists. Subsequently, the parliament claimed that what the lawmakers actually receive is one tenth of what the hackers have claimed. This comes while the hackers have published the parliament's own documents about the lawmakers' salaries.
In the meantime, reports from Tehran say that while less than two weeks remain before the voting day, even the conservatives who have been allowed to run, have not been able yet to form any alliance to determine who will be on their lists of candidates particularly in the significant constituency of Tehran.
The reports said that a fierce battle is going on over the speakership in the new parliament. What is clear is that the ultraconservative Paydari party is adamant to replace the current Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. If they manage to do so, they will literally take over the entire legislature.
