An economist in Tehran says members of President Masoud Pezeshkian's economic team are not on the same page, as the government must deal with a massive economic crisis gripping the country since 2019.
A statement by the IRGC's Saheb al-Zaman Headquarters said a "gas leak" in an IRGC "workshop" in Isfahan killed one and injured 10 others.
The statement did not provide further details but used the word "martyr" for the only victim of the mysterious incident.
The public relations office of the Isfahan IRGC announced on Thursday that the death toll from the incident had risen to two, with Captain Mojtaba Nazari and Lieutenant Colonel Mokhtar Morshedi identified as the victims.
It is not yet clear if the alleged "gas leak" has caused any blast. So far, no explosion has been heard by social media users.
However, what makes the incident more suspicious is the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency's use of the hashtag #Israel in its initial report about the "gas leak". The hashtag was later deleted from the outlet's website, but it might hint to an act of sabotage, possibly by Tehran's arch-foe.
Isfahan is home to several important military bases and the Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center, which manufactures the Shahed-136 drones. It is also home to sites associated with Iran's nuclear program, such as its underground Natanz enrichment site, which Israeli sabotage activities have purportedly repeatedly targeted.
Back in April, a central part of an air defense system at an Iranian air base in Isfahan was hit by an Israeli attack which came shortly after the IRGC's massive attack on Israel. Unnamed US officials said at the time missiles were fired from Israeli fighter jets over Iraqi airspace and “hit” their intended target which was the Eighth Shekari Air Base, about 20 km northeast of Isfahan and 150 km south of the nuclear facility at Natanz.
The imagery of the Iranian S-300 air defense system showed some significant damage to its fire control radar, while the missile launchers were apparently left intact.
Her life was cut short by her own father, Rahim Khan Zeynivand, who shot her dead with a shotgun because of her relationship with a young man.
Mobina attended school in the village of Sheikhmakan, where she became acquainted with a boy from another tribe. However, these two tribes had a history of conflict.
According to sources, her father opposed the relationship due to longstanding "tribal disputes." The situation escalated when the boy visited Mobina, only for the couple to be discovered by her cousin. A confrontation ensued, and Mobina, fearing for her life, fled to a neighbor’s house. But her father tracked her down, dragged her back home, and shot her in front of her mother.
This act was later confirmed by Ilam’s police commander, Jamal Soleimani, who downplayed the incident by labeling it as a "family dispute," a common euphemism used by Iranian authorities to describe honor killings.
The case of Mobina is far from an isolated incident. In Iran, a legal framework rooted in Islamic law offers leniency to men who commit such acts. Under the Islamic Penal Code, fathers who kill their children are shielded from the punishment of "qisas" (retributive justice), effectively granting them impunity. Furthermore, Article 630 of the Penal Code allows a man to kill his wife and her lover if he catches them in the act of adultery, without facing any punishment.
Critics have long pointed to Iran's patriarchal culture and its legal system as factors contributing to the prevalence of honor killings. These murders, often carried out for reasons as trivial as a woman’s refusal to wear the mandatory hijab, are a reminder of the oppressive environment in which many Iranian women are forced to live.
Recent reports highlight an increase in honor killings across Iran. The newspaper Etemad reported that at least 85 women were killed by male family members in April, May and June of the years 2022, 2023, and 2024, with Tehran leading the statistics.
On March 29, a 21-year-old girl in a border village near Abadan was killed by her father. On April 7, a 27-year-old woman in Ahvaz was stabbed to death by her brothers in front of her husband. In May alone, a string of murders occurred: a man in Mashhad killed his wife and injured her 16-year-old sister and brother; another man set his wife on fire in Kosar Hospital, and an Afghan woman six months pregnant was murdered by her husband for being "disobedient."
These are just a few examples of the countless lives lost to a culture that prioritizes male honor over female life. The full extent of this crisis may never be known, as many honor killings go unreported, with families and communities conspiring to keep these atrocities hidden.
Organizations like Stop Femicide Iran have been working to shed light on this epidemic of violence. Their efforts have revealed a 60% increase in femicides in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period the previous year. Of the 93 gender-based killings recorded, nearly half were young women aged 15 to 35.
Ali Sharifi-Zarchi, a former member of the bioinformatics and AI Faculty of the Sharif Industrial University, took to X Monday to announce that the decision to allow him to teach again after a year has been finalized.
When asked about Sharifi-Zarchi’s case by Mehr News Agency on Monday, the university’s chancellor, Abbas Mousavi neither confirmed nor denied his reinstatement but promised to comment in the coming days.
Sharifi-Zarchi backed dissident students during the months-long nationwide protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. He also disclosed that authorities were recruiting politically "endorsed" academics to replace critical academics. Thousands of students and alumni of the university signed a petition in his support.
The return of tens of purged academics is one of the major popular demands that the newly established government of the pro-reform Masoud Pezeshkian and its minister of science, research, and technology (higher education), Hossein Simaei Sarraf are facing.
Simaei-Sarraf, 56, is a lawyer, politician, and university professor who served as the Cabinet Secretary in Hassan Rouhani’s administration between 2019 and 2021.
The Islamic Association of Students at Sharif Industrial University published an open letter to the new minister on Monday, reminding him of his promise to “restore the dignity of academia.” They urged him to reinstate the dismissed professors and take steps to reconcile with them.
The new minister on Tuesday sacked a hardliner faculty dean at Allameh Tabatabei University for calling Mahsa Amini “a Kurdish Sunni girl who went six feet under” in a derogatory tone in a recent interview with the state-run television (IRIB).
Amini’s death in custody of morality police for hijab sparked nationwide protests that lasted for several months.
Ardeshir Entezari’s tone angered many Iranians including the Kurdish and Sunni minority groups.
The government of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi purged tens of prominent professors and lecturers in the summer of 2023. Some were sacked, some were forced to retire early, and others were refused a renewal of their contracts. The government also installed hardliners in most universities as chancellors.
The purge in academia began after the protests, but Mohsen Borhani, a professor of criminal law at Tehran University, told the reformist daily Etemad at the time that the Raisi administration had decided to eliminate dissident professors shortly after he took office in August 2021.
Borhani was among the professors purged last year because he had used social media to criticize the execution of four young protesters a few months after Amini’s death.
The purge of academia has a long history in the Islamic Republic that a few months after the Revolution of 1979 launched a “cultural revolution” and shut down universities for nearly three years to purge thousands of professors and students.
In August 2023, the reformist Etemad newspaper published a list of around 157 tenured professors dismissed, forced into retirement, or banned from teaching for their dissenting views since 2006.
The purge was widely attributed to President Ebrahim Raisi’s ultra-hardliner allies who aimed to assert their dominance in the political arena by ousting other politicians, officials, and academics.
Hardliners denied the allegations that purging academics was based on their political beliefs. Instead, they accused those dismissed of “moral issues” and some had been sued by students over “ethical matters”.
A similar purge affected thousands of school principals and even clerics in seminaries during a process that came to be called “purification”.
Following Khamenei's 2021 directive, the Rejuvenation of the Population and Protection of the Family (RPPF) law was enacted, banning the provision and education of contraceptives in health centers across Iran. The law criminalizes the use of contraceptives, prohibits sterilization, and imposes harsh restrictions on pregnancy screening, despite risks to maternal and infant health.
Khamenei's obsession with increasing Iran's population, to avoid an aging demographic crisis, has led to policies that disregard the well-being of women and children, experts say. During a Tuesday meeting with President Masoud Pezeshkian and his cabinet, Khamenei issued a series of directives, with a particular focus on the so-called "danger of early population aging." He singled out the newly appointed Minister of Health, Mohammadreza Zafarghandi—who received the lowest vote of confidence in parliament—to ensure enforcement of these policies.
Under the RPPF, all forms of contraceptive distribution, including free and subsidized options, have been halted, and any recommendation for their use has been criminalized. The law also bans pregnancy screenings unless parents explicitly request them or a gynecologist deems them necessary, but even then, stringent conditions apply. As a result, government support and insurance for pregnancy screenings have been withdrawn, leaving women, particularly in rural areas, vulnerable to forced pregnancies and birth complications.
Despite the ministry of health's statement that no increase in fetal abnormalities has been reported following the reduction of 200,000 pregnancy screenings in three years, independent reports paint a more alarming picture. Etemad newspaper in Tehran and Iran International have highlighted the rise in chromosomal disorders and the birth of an estimated 180,000 disabled and genetically impaired infants due to such policies.
Iran's population growth rate has plummeted to 0.6 percent from 1.23 percent just two years ago, a stark contrast to the 4.21 percent rate seen in 1984. Yet, Khamenei remains fixated on increasing the population to 150 million by 2050, ignoring the profound human cost of his policies. This relentless push for population growth, at the expense of individual rights and health, reveals the Islamic Republic's disregard for the welfare of its citizens, particularly women and children, in its pursuit of ideological goals.
Hamid Haji-Esmaili told the press this week, that although nearly all the economists chosen by the President have joined his team, they lack coordination.
However, the lack of coordination among the ministers of the 'national accord' government is just one of its challenges. Last week, parliamentarians criticized Pezeshkian and his cabinet for not presenting practical plans to manage the state's affairs. In response, Pezeshkian, with a noticeable tone of boredom and impatience, retorted, "Just give us the vote of confidence and let us get on with our work!"
Haji-Esmaili did not elaborate on why he believes the government suffers from a lack of coordination, but it seems he was alluding to potential differences in opinion and approach among Pezeshkian’s key economic officials. For some, controlling inflation is the top priority, while others may believe that increasing subsidies is essential to support the country's large, impoverished segment of the population.
The most prominent economist in Pezeshkian's team is Vice President Ali Tayyebnia, who is known as an inflation fighter. He is joined by Economy Minister Abdolnaser Hemmati, Labor Minister Ahmad Maydari, and Central Bank Governor Alireza Farzin. Additionally, former Central Bank Governor Abdoh Tabrizi is expected to join the team.
According to Haji-Esmaili, the government's ongoing appointments of deputy ministers and other senior officials are further complicating coordination, as the addition of new members is making it even harder to achieve cohesion.
He went on to say that the government's economic team could positively impact society and the economy if they can demonstrate a genuine effort to fulfill Pezeshkian's promise of addressing the current crisis, with one key step being the stabilization of market prices.
Since the United States pulled of the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed sanctions, Iran’s economy has faced many serious challenges, with its currency falling 15-fold, public services sharply declining and inflation topping 40% for the past five years.
Haji-Esmaili emphasized that the government must show it is listening to the people, who should, in turn, feel that their demands are being met. He added that while the government may struggle to implement a specific plan, its primary focus should be on stabilizing the market over the next six months.
Haji Esmaili emphasized the critical need to address issues in Iran’s foreign relations. He stated that it is crucial for Pezeshkian and his foreign minister to demonstrate to the world that they are adopting a different approach to international relations than previous governments and that they are open to dialogue.
National Development Fund Chief Mehdi Ghazanfari, who recently suggested that Iran should establish consular relations with the United States, shared that he met with Pezeshkian and is convinced that the new president is determined to prioritize the country's development and improve governance in Iran.
However, he stopped short of saying that Pezeshkian agreed with his idea about the US Consulate and whether he would seek Khamenei's approval for that.
Labor Minister Maydari in an interview before taking office, warned that any missteps in the effort to improve economic conditions could have serious consequences for Iran. He emphasized that the transition to a new economic state must be carefully calculated. To illustrate his point, he referenced the privatization in Mexico, which ultimately led to the transfer of state assets into the hands of local mafias.
Maydari suggested that the new government should be transparent and remove obstacles to creating a competitive economy. He warned that attempting to improve the economy without transparency could lead to financial corruption. He added that the government must clarify its regulations and resolve conflicts between various regulations.
