As 31 international human rights organizations call for the release of Sharifeh Mohammadi, a labor activist sentenced to death, a Kurdish political prisoner has boycotted her court proceedings in protest.
The catalyst for the urgent visits appears to be the looming threat of an Iranian attack on Israel, predicted to occur 'imminently', according to US intelligence.
A high-ranking Russian delegation led by Sergei Shoigu, the Secretary of Russia's National Security Council, arrived in Tehran. The purpose of the visit, according to the Secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, is to strengthen political and security ties and to discuss regional and international issues. However, the timing of Shoigu's arrival coincided with heightened military preparations and international concern.
Meanwhile, Michael Erik Kurilla, the commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), arrived in Israel on Saturday. Although a US official stated that Kurilla's trip was planned before the recent surge in tensions, it is now expected to serve as a crucial opportunity to bolster the international coalition defending Israel.
Earlier, Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder announced that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin discussed regional tensions with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his Qatari counterpart Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani spoke on the phone to discuss the possible attacks by Iran and Hezbollah against Israel, stressing the need for de-escalation, according to Axios journalist Barak Ravid.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he has spoken with UAE President and Saudi Crown Prince on the situation.
"We call on all stakeholders to show responsibility and restraint to avoid a regional conflagration. No one has any interest in escalation," he said.
During a visit to the underground command center of the Israeli Air Force, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant highlighted the country's readiness to transition swiftly to offensive operations if necessary.
"Our enemies are carefully considering their every move because of the capabilities you have demonstrated over the past year. Nevertheless, we must be prepared for anything – including a swift transition to offense," he said.
Several countries have advised citizens to leave Lebanon and Iran. The situation has led to airlines, including Lufthansa, Delta, and others, suspending flights to the region due to the escalating risks.
In Lebanon, the World Health Organization has delivered 32 tons of medical supplies in anticipation of potential war casualties, reflecting the increasing likelihood of a broader conflict involving Hezbollah and Israel.
"The goal is to get these supplies and medicines to various hospitals and to the health sector in Lebanon, especially in the places most exposed (to hostilities) so that we can be ready to deal with any emergency," Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad told reporters at the airport landing strip where the aid arrived.
Meanwhile, Beirut airport has seen a surge in people attempting to leave the country, indicating widespread fear of an impending full-scale war.
Iranian officials have at the same time continued their inflammatory rhetoric. On Monday, Ali Bagheri Kani, the Acting Foreign Minister of Iran, held a meeting with Khaled Qaddoumi, the representative of the Hamas movement in Tehran. The visit, part of a broader consultation with various ambassadors and foreign mission heads in Tehran, underscores Iran's intention to launch the attack very soon.
Kani emphasized the “moral imperative” to oppose what he described as the "occupation of Palestinian land and the genocide of a nation," framing the situation as one where indifference and appeasement would only “enable further evil.”
Speaking to his Bahraini counterpart, Bagheri Kani said Iran would be "rewarding" Israel if it remains silent following the killing of Ismail Haniyeh. "Therefore, the Islamic Republic considers reciprocal action to be its right, based on international rules and norms," he said.
Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, criticized Israel's recent actions, calling for a harsh response to what he termed as an Israeli mistake.
"If the Israelis receive a firm response, they will understand that killing Haniyeh was a mistake… The Israelis are constantly making calculation errors, and they have repeated this mistake once again," he said.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani also underscored Iran's determination to retaliate, emphasizing that no external messages were needed to justify their actions.
Backed by the US and an international coalition, Israel braces for a potential Iranian assault, similar to that created in the face of the April 13 bombardment towards Israel. At the time, most of the 350 projectiles were intercepted.
The Arbaeen ceremony, marking the end of the 40-day mourning period following Ashura—the religious ritual commemorating the third Shia Imam, Hussain ibn Ali, grandson of Prophet Muhammad, who was killed in 680 AD—is one of the world's largest annual gatherings. Iranian officials say that around four million people travel to Iraq for the event.
Criticism was sparked by the announcement that the newly appointed Vice-President Mohammadreza Aref had ordered 4 trillion rials (around $650,000) to support the event which culminates with ceremonies in the Iraqi cities of Karbala and Najaf on August 25 this year.
The money will be spent to "prevent unforeseen incidents, contagious diseases, and heat strokes at border points and along the pilgrimage path.”
“Why? Arbaeen was not this government’s promised concern. Leave Arbaeen to the people,” Mohammad-Taghi Fazel-Meybodi, a reformist cleric, posted on X, arguing that the “justice” promised by Pezeshkian and his government would be allocating the budget for the education of children in Sistan and Baluchestan province where many children are deprived of an education.
In a tweet Sunday, Iranian journalist Fateme Karimkhan contended that the negative reactions to the expenditure were unfounded. “More than four million Iranians will participate in the Arbaeen Walk and the government would have been responsible to make plans for their protection even if they were to take a domestic route,” she argued.
Most Iranian pilgrims travel to the border, where free parking facilities are provided, and take the walk to the cities of Najaf and Karbala from there while some others fly directly to these cities.
The Islamic Republic has made extensive plans and allocated huge sums in the past decade to encourage and fund the annual event as a show of Shia political power and influence.
Hossein Tayebifar, Acting Representative of Supreme Ali Khamenei in the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), said on July 28 that the event was “the biggest deterrent operation in the world against the conspiracies of the enemies of Islam.” Some officials and clerics say the Arbaeen gathering is one of the manifestations of the Shia “soft power’.
The cost to the public includes massive budgets for infrastructure works such as building and maintenance of roads and service stations as well as provision food, water and field and mobile hospitals along the main routes and in Iraq, and mobilization of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the regular army and other bodies to provide the security of the event, and state propaganda.
The government also allocates Iraqi currency at cheaper rates and no-interest loans to pilgrims to encourage more people to participate. As in the past few years, the government will sell 200,000 Iraqi dinars (around $120 at open market rates) to pilgrims at the discounted rate of 370 rials to the dinar against 450 rials in the open market.
Many government organizations, municipalities, and city councils separately allocate special budgets for the event. The City Council of Mashhad, for instance, approved a budget of 150 billion rials ($5 million) for services in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf in 2023 and dispatched over 500 city cleaners and 350 bus drivers there.
Other perks include ‘pilgrimage leave’ for civil servants and free internet and roaming mobile services during the event.
If four million or more participate in the event as predicted, the discount in foreign currency rates and the loans could cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars or more depending on the number of participants.
It was also revealed last week that the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs had ordered various government agencies as well as the government retirement fund to contribute to the costs of holding the procession.
“I declare it here that I’m not happy with using the assets of the retirement fund, even as much of as one rial, for anything other than what the funds were established for,” a retired teacher posted on X. Others have pointed out that those who benefit from the perks of Arbaeen should be mindful that any money taken from the fund without their consent will be ‘haram’ - or religiously forbidden.
President Pezeshkian has also ordered all government bodies involved in the matter to abide by their commitments but has also suggested that his government wants to minimize its own role in holding the event.
“We can increase people’s participation [in supporting the event] and the government will withdraw as much as possible ... Where people cannot help, the government should assist and support them. There is no reason for the government to get involved and create more problems where people can help,” he said Saturday at a meeting of the ‘Arbaeen Taskforce’ formed a few years ago of which the vice president and several ministers are members.
While many Iranian officials and politicians call for a strong retaliation against Israel for Haniyeh’s brazen killing by an explosive projectile while he was sleeping, a few insiders insist that the priority should be to understand how such an operation was possible.
One of these voices is an influential commentator and former senior lawmaker Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh who spoke to Etemad newspaper.
"The most important scenario to consider regarding the assassination of Haniyeh is the scenario of infiltration. This issue needs to be carefully analyzed and evaluated. I hope that the scenarios being presented by some experts on state television and in certain radical media outlets are not being used as an excuse to avoid accountability," Falahatpisheh said.
He is one of a dozen or so commentators allowed to often speak out on government-controlled media about sensitive issues. He often voices opinions critical of some government policies, including its foreign policy.
Iranian security and intelligence officials remained largely silent in the first three days after the assassination about the exact circumstances and what kind of weapon was used. This led to plenty of speculation both in the Iranian and foreign media. The New York Times went as far as claiming that a bomb placed in the guesthouse two month earlier killed Haniyeh, not any projectile fired from the air or the ground.
Finally, on Saturday, the Revolutionary Guard issued a statement rejecting this scenario and announcing that Haniyeh was killed by a small and short range projectile fired from the vicinity of the compound.
However, criticism of security and intelligence agencies continue. Javad Emam, a politician from the Reform Front in a tweet asked President Pezeshkian to act. "The assassination and martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil was a warning about the incompetence and inefficiency of certain parts of the country's intelligence and security apparatus."
Emam urged Pezeshkian to make personnel and other changes.
"First, take action to reorganize the intelligence and security forces, and if necessary, reselect them.
Second, where possible, and not in a rushed manner, work towards merging parallel intelligence agencies to prevent further costs to the country due to lack of coordination and the actions of inexperienced personnel.
Third, by establishing truth-finding committees and punishing those at fault, and following the example of several important national cases, work to restore a sense of security in society,” he argued.
Falahatpisheh, in turn, mocked statements by officials who periodically claim they have demolished enemy networks within the country. One such statement by the intelligence minister was made just days before the Haniyeh incident.
"A while ago, one of the officials openly stated that they had uncovered and neutralized all areas of Zionist infiltration in the country. However, incidents like the assassination of Martyr Haniyeh show that there are still specific security vulnerabilities that need to be addressed urgently. Addressing these gaps and deficiencies should be one of the key priorities for the new administration," the former lawmaker stated.
Despite these calls for a serious investigation and holding security officials responsible for the failure to protect a high-level foreign guest, so far there is no sign of action. What occupies most headlines in Iran is the issue of a retaliatory attack against Israel.
They have condemned the accusations against Mohammadi as unfounded, asserting that Iran’s security institutions fabricated the case.
In a joint statement published by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the rights groups urged Iran’s judiciary to drop all charges against Mohammadi and to cease the systematic harassment of women. “We ask the Iranian judiciary to immediately and unconditionally revoke all charges against Sharifeh Mohammadi," the statement read.
On July 4, Mohammadi was sentenced to death by Branch 1 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court in Rasht, under Judge Ahmad Darvish Goftar. She was convicted on charges of "armed rebellion" due to her alleged membership in the national Labor Unions Assistance Coordination Committee (LUACC), which operates legally in Iran, and the banned Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan.
Both Mohammadi and her family have consistently denied her involvement with these organizations.
"The charges were brought against her because of her activities in defense of workers' rights, which were not only peaceful but also legal and within the framework of the country's laws,” the statement added.
It comes amid major crackdowns on labor protests which intensified after the Women, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022. Iran's economic crisis has seen calls for better working conditions and pay for workers across a range of industries.
The Campaign to Defend Sharifeh Mohammadi, supported by her family, has launched an online petition calling for the annulment of her death sentence and her immediate release. The petition has garnered over 5,000 signatures. “Sharifeh has no membership in any armed organization or political entity,” the petition asserts.
Other rights groups, including the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), have also called for the immediate overturning of Mohammadi’s death sentence, expressing concern for other prisoners at risk of execution based on similarly dubious charges. Among them are Pakhshan Azizi and Varisheh Moradi, who also face "armed rebellion" charges.
In protest against the death sentences of Mohammadi and Azizi, Kurdish political prisoner Varisheh Moradi, currently imprisoned in Evin, refused to attend her second court session on Sunday.
“I will not go to court in protest against the death sentences handed down to my comrades Sharifeh Mohammadi and Pakhshan Azizi, and I do not recognize a court that does not issue fair judgments,” Moradi wrote in her defense letter, published by Iranian women’s rights group Bidarzani.
Moradi was scheduled for a second court session on August 4 before Judge Salavati, notoriously known as the “judge of death,” at Branch 15 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court.
Following her refusal to attend, her lawyers, who have been denied access to her case details, were informed that the session has been postponed to a later date, according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
Moradi was arrested on August 1 last year and spent 13 days in Iran’s intelligence ministry detention in Sanandaj before being transferred to Ward 209 of Evin Prison in Tehran.
In her defense letter, Moradi described the severe mistreatment she endured from the moment of her arrest, stating she was subjected to “torture and physical assault.”
She described being subject to giving forced false confessions at Tehran's Evin prison, a tactic commonly used by Iranian authorities to justify the issuance of death sentences or long prison verdicts.
“I was transferred to Ward 209 of Evin House of Detention, where I spent four and a half months under intense pressure during interrogations that included torture, contradictory and deceptive fabricated scenarios, threats of character assassination, and forced confessions. I suffered severe headaches, constant nosebleeds, and worsening neck and back pain.”
“These were the gifts of my days in solitary confinement,” she added.
So far this year, 300 people have been executed in Iran. It follows record numbers last year when over 850 were killed.
