Hossein Hosseinpour, a young protestor who lost an eye after being shot by security forces during a crackdown on 2022 protests, has been sentenced to one year in prison by the Revolutionary Court.
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the sentence was reduced to 11 months after Hosseinpour agreed not to appeal the verdict.
The report said that the sentence was issued on the charge of "propaganda against the regime" and is related to posts he shared on social media.
Hosseinpour was shot in the right eye with a shotgun pellet during the nationwide protests in Mahabad in October 2022. He has undergone four surgeries so far.
In early September 2023, he was arrested by intelligence agents. After the interrogation process in the Soroush detention center in Shiraz, he was transferred to the Adel Abad prison in the same city.
In late January 2024, he was transferred to Shiraz Prison No. 2, also known as the Nezam prison. He has reportedly contracted an eye infection during his detention and continues to be denied medical care.
In recent months, there have been reports of arrests of or summonses to protesters who lost their eyes in the 2022-2023 protests. According to these reports, Amir Shahvelayati and Matin Hasani, two protesters who lost their eyes in the protests, were arrested in Tehran and Bukan, in West Azarbaijan, in January. Also, Mahbano (Kosar) Khoshnoudi, another protester who lost an eye in the nationwide protests, reported that she had been repeatedly summoned by security forces.
Entekhab website on Wednesday quoted Hassan Ameli, a member of the Assembly of Experts that Raisi is one of the members of a committee of three appointed by Khamenei to determine his successor. Ameli said that he himself is also on the committee. Earlier, Rahim Tavakol, another Assembly member had revealed his membership in the committee.
This suggests Khamenei's confidence in Raisi's victory in the upcoming March 1 Assembly of Experts election. Raisi, the sole candidate from South Khorasan Province until last week, now faces a second candidate, for the sake of formality.
The new candidate, Hassan Rouhbakhsh has told the press in Iran that he has no intention of competing with Raisi, and that he has taken part in the election to end the embarrassing situation for Raisi and to thank the Islamic Republic for all that it has given to him during the past years.
All signs indicate that Raisi is leading the succession committee, as the other two clerics have remained relatively unknown to the public and media, except for the few thousand locals who elected them to the Assembly. Ameli, in his interview with Entekhab, disclosed that during committee meetings, Khamenei issues orders and provides advice to Raisi.
What remains unclear is the role of the remaining 85 members of the Assembly of Experts if the committee of three is tasked with "finding" the successor to the Islamic Republic's leadership. Neither Khamenei nor the committee has provided an explanation for this matter. The Assembly has the constitutional task of selecting a Supreme Leader.
Ameli emphasized that the committee's "sensitive task" makes it the most crucial committee within the Assembly of Experts. Several years ago, Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, who initially revealed the existence of the succession committee, stated that due to the sensitive nature of their mission, the committee's members remain unknown to the rest of the Assembly.
Other members of the Assembly of Experts typically refrain from discussing the issue with the media, likely because they have limited knowledge about it. Those who do comment often make humorous or bizarre remarks.
Ahmad Beheshti, a cleric from Fars Province in the Assembly, expressed his desire for Khamenei's long life in a recent interview. He hoped that Khamenei's extended tenure would obviate the need for the Assembly to select another leader.
Another member of the Assembly expressed a different perspective, stating his wish for the Shiite hidden Imam to emerge after some 15 centuries of occultation and assume leadership, thus eliminating the need for a successor to Khamenei. Behesti also expressed hope for an uneventful tenure during both the current and future rounds of the Assembly. Reflecting on his 15-year tenure as an AoE member, he mentioned that he has consistently prayed that circumstances would not require the consideration of a replacement for Khamenei.
While the personality cult gives him the likeness of a divine status among his supporters, and Assembly members often deny that part of their responsibility is to keep checks and balances on Khamenei's performance, Mahmoud Mohammadi Araghi, a member of the Assembly, has claimed that unlike other countries, the Iranian people can take the leader to court if necessary.
This comes while many in Iran, including former regime insider Abolfazl Ghadiani say they will not take part in the March 1 parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections and will encourage others to do likewise.
Maryam Hashemi, a proud member of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in the Kurdish majority city of Kermanshah, had dedicated her world championship gold medal to Ali Khamenei in 2019 and in return received his Keffiyeh, a symbol of allegiance with Iran’s ruler.
"The first time I dedicated my medal to the Supreme Leader, I made a vow to myself that I will present every valuable medal I earn to him," she said in 2019. In total she had given five medals from international events to Khamenei and met with him at least seven times.
The first time she gave her medal to Khamenei was in 2013, when she made headlines for her unconventional behavior during a meeting with the country's most senior figure. Without saying anything, she got up and walked over to the Supreme Leader and handed him her medal, against set protocols.
In spite of the shame, Hashemi, who was given a four-year ban from all athletic competitions after she was found guilty of doping the anabolic steroid nandrolone in the 2019 championship in China, has now resurfaced after her ban expired in October and is looking for sponsors for her city’s team.
Shahrbanou Mansourian, another Iranian wushu champion, was hit with a 28-month ban from participating in any domestic and international competitions only for blowing the whistle on Hashemi’s doping and complaining that she had been fast-tracked through the national team qualifiers and picked up for the squad unfairly. “Hashemi was defeated in three qualifying contests in front of an audience of 2,000. However, they still chose her for the world competitions,” she said.
The martial artist, who consistently maintained her allegiance to the Islamic Republic principles including advertisement for wearing hijab, is just another example that athletes who are on the side of the regime play by a different set of rules amid an ingrained culture of cheating.
A well-known case is Hossein Rezazadeh, an Olympic champion and World Weightlifting champion who has been selected as the Iran Sportsperson of the Year award four times, more than any other athlete in the country's history. He has been found guilty of doping several times but unfettered to his career as he used to climb on the podium with a framed photo of Khamenei numerous times. "Our (Muslim) religion forbids doping," he famously said.
When he was at the helm of Iran’s weightlifting national team, the country’s squad was mired with cases of doping allegations. In December 2009, Iran’s weightlifting federation permanently banned Rezazadeh and the national team's technical staff from any professional activity in the field due to systematic doping for national athletes. A few days later, he was appointed as the head of the federation.
The undue influence the Islamic Republic exerts over athletes has been aggravating the dichotomy of those with and against the regime in Iran, where several athletes face suspensions and legal actions for simply criticizing the authorities. The schism between the popular athletes who have chosen to be on the side of people and the ones who have been vocal supporters of the regime has especially been deepening since the 2022 protests. A large number of athletes at different levels have been persecuted for expressing solidarity with the nationwide protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022. Several of these have since been forced into exile in sports from chess to football.
Amidst growing tensions between the government and the populace, football, the most popular sport in the world, has morphed into a battleground for ideological conflict. A special predicament is the support for the Iranian football (soccer) team, whose members met with President Ebrahim Raisi just before leaving for Qatar for the World Cup in 2022. Later it was revealed that the players were given permits to import foreign cars without paying taxes. In spite of this, they refused to sing the national anthem at the games in Doha, causing mass outrage in Tehran for the rebellion. In their following match, they sang the anthem.
A growing number of Iranian athletes have been defecting from the Iranian squad to represent other countries in international competitions. Around 30 Iranian athletes have defected in recent years, seeking asylum in other countries while the trend is gaining momentum following the 2022 protests. In addition to dress code restrictions, another issue forcing Iranian athletes to defect is Tehran’s policy of not allowing them to compete against Israelis.
Iran has provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, six sources told Reuters this week, deepening the military cooperation between the two US-sanctioned countries.
Iran is "actively enabling Russia's war in Ukraine and its attacks against Ukrainian cities," deputy press secretary and senior communications adviser Andrew Bates said in a memo viewed by Reuters that will be distributed publicly Friday.
"President Biden is standing up to Iran. But where is Speaker Johnson's supposed commitment not to 'appease Iran' in all this? Nowhere. Instead, his inaction is benefiting Putin and the Ayatollah," the memo says.
Top Biden administration officials spent last weekend in Europe trying to soothe jitters over the prospect of US military aid to Ukraine ending, assuring counterparts from Paris, Berlin and Kyiv as the war enters its third year that Washington will somehow come through.
In previous negotiations with Republicans in Congress over the debt ceiling and other spending, the Biden White House has mostly avoided sharp public criticism as it focused on behind-the-scenes negotiation. But it has targeted Johnson frequently, accusing him in a Valentine's Day poem of threatening border security.
The Senate last week approved a $95 billion bill providing assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan by an overwhelming 70-30 vote, with 22 Republicans joining most Democrats in voting "aye."
Johnson sent the House home for a two-week recess without bringing the measure up for a vote, saying "we're not going to be forced into action by the Senate."
He says any package of international military and humanitarian assistance must also include measures to address security at the US border with Mexico after Republicans blocked a version of the bill that included the biggest overhaul of US immigration policy in decades.
Senate Republicans and Democrats have joined those urging passage of the aid bill. Many believe it would pass the House with bipartisan support if Johnson would allow the chamber to vote.
"Putin has signaled he could attack NATO countries the United States is obligated to defend if he succeeds in Ukraine," the memo warns.
"If House Republicans facilitate Ukraine's defeat, America could face costs infinitely more expensive than the bipartisan investments we need to make in Ukraine's capacity to defend themselves," it reads.
Former President Donald Trump, frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination and a long-standing critic of the NATO alliance, has in recent weeks threatened to abandon some European allies if they were to be attacked by Russia.
(Reporting by Reuters)
