Iranian authorities have jailed musician Khosrow Azarbeyg for criticizing Tehran’s financial support for Hezbollah and former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he said in an audio recording from prison.
"I was imprisoned for peacefully criticizing the deposit of Iran’s revenues into the satanic palaces of Hassan Nasrallah and Bashar al-Assad," he said.
Azarbeyg added that he had been denied contact with his family since his arrest nearly two weeks ago.
Last Tuesday, his lawyer Amir Raisian announced that Azarbeyg was arrested in Tehran in a post on X, adding that his family was told he is accused of insulting former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The musician had played the Persian daf frame drum in Tehran’s metro while singing Ey Iran, a widely-recognized patriotic anthem, in protest against the Islamic Republic’s support for Assad’s government after his ouster.
Months after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike, he posted a video on Instagram from Tehran’s metro, saying, "Let’s forget all the sadness of Lebanon," as he began singing the same anthem and playing the daf.
Pro bono legal group Dadban on Thursday condemned Azarbeyg’s arrest, arguing that Iran’s Islamic Penal Code criminalizes insults against foreign heads of state only if they are in office at the time and if their country takes reciprocal action—conditions it said did not apply in this case.
Last September, Azarbeyg was arrested while performing music in Tehran’s Mellat Park. Security forces confiscated his belongings.
Although he was released after a few hours, authorities opened a judicial case against him, according to US-based rights group Human Rights Activist Network Agency (HRANA).
“The Palestinians become pawns,” said Schwartz, “particularly by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
According to Schwartz, the plight of the Palestinians serves the interests of the clerical rulers of Iran as a geopolitical tool in its broader quest for regional dominance.
"It's a regional problem," said Schwartz.
Since the inception of the Islamic Republic, the leader of the revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, coined the term "little Satan" to refer to Israel and "big Satan" to reference the United States.
Iran’s clerical rulers have pledged to destroy Israel for more than four decades. The country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei often appears in public wearing a black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh to symbolize Palestinians.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Iran-backed Hamas militants, Iran’s fingerprints are seemingly everywhere as the Middle East has descended into turmoil.
Hezbollah in Lebanon, the armed Houthi movement in Yemen and Iraqi militias - all equipped and trained by Tehran - have taken shots at Israel with missiles and drones.
The Wall Street Journal, citing a Hamas source, reported on Oct 8, 2023, that Iran helped plot the attack, with the greenlight being given in Beirut during a meeting.
US intelligence, however, suggests that the attack came as a surprise to Iran.
While it’s not clear if Tehran coordinated the exact timing of the attack, what is certain is Iran has funded, trained and armed Hamas for decades. Iran has provided $100 million annually to Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas, according to the US State Department in 2020.
"That money didn't go to improving the lives of the people of Gaza - the opposite, and went to building their vast tunnel network to building up their rockets and their weapons," said Schwartz.
The Hamas-Iran relationship: a paradox
The Shia-led theocracy in Iran and Sunni-led Hamas in Gaza adhere to diverging creed but have a common enemy in Israel.
Their ardor is fueled by extremism driving both sides of the conflict, Schwartz said.
"There is extremism on both sides. There are extremists on the Jewish side as well. There are Jewish extremists in the West Bank who are attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, and there's no excuse for that," said Schwartz.
"People often forget that the name of Hamas means the Islamic Resistance Movement," she added "this weaponization of Islam is only hurting the Palestinian people and making the prospects for peace ever more distant."
As the conflict drags on, Schwartz observes a shift within Israeli society, particularly in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks.
"Many of the Jews who were killed and kidnapped on Oct. 7 were left wing Israelis. Many of them were peace activists. And as we've seen over the course of the last 16 months, many in Israel have shifted rightward," Schwartz said.
That shift has a historical parallel in the 1929 Hebron Massacre, about which Schwartz has written a book.
She contends the obscure atrocity set in motion a cycle of violence that continues to shape the region today.
In 1929, Arabs set upon the Jewish community of the holy city of Hebron now in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and killed nearly 70 people.
Many those killed or injured were pious Jews opposed to a political Zionist movement, viewing it as a secular movement.
The attack, however, hardened many survivors into advocates of a Jewish state.
While the origins of that cycle of violence are not rooted in Iran, the violence between two peoples with suing conflict has only been exacerbated by Tehran, Schwartz said, creating more obstacles to lasting peace.
Peace in the holy land, which Schwartz believes is destined for both peoples to share, can't happen without both sides having self-determination. But peaceful coexistence is not feasible, argues Shwartz with the long arm of the Iranian establishment reaching the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
"I do think that the only way we will see peace and an end to this never-ending war is when both people have self-determination."
You can watch the full episode of Eye for Iran with award winning author Yarden Schwartz on YouTube, or listen on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, Amazon or any major podcast platform.
Shoeib Rezapour, 28, was hanged on Behesht Esfarayen bridge after being convicted of murder, according to the Oslo-based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR).
Rezapour had been convicted of fatally stabbing a man three and a half years ago, IHR said citing an informed source. His sentence was qisas, or retribution-in-kind under Iran’s Islamic legal system.
Iran remains one of the few countries to conduct public executions, a practice widely condemned by human rights groups.
Public hangings were halted in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions but resumed in 2022. That year, two people were hanged in public, increasing to seven in 2023 and four in 2024, IHR says.
IHR on Thursday also reported that eight prisoners were executed in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj the previous morning. Six of them were convicted of murder, one was sentenced to death on drug charges and another was hanged for moharebeh or enmity against God in connection with an armed robbery charge.
Earlier this week IHR also warned of the imminent execution of two political prisoners Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani at the same prison after Iran's Supreme Court rejected their request for a retrial.
Last year, at least 975 people were executed in Iran, marking a 17% increase from the 834 executions recorded the previous year.
