The Abduction of Iran's Border Guards

There is much to be learned about the nature of the Islamic Republic and its modus operandi from the way the regime handled the kidnapping of five Iranian border guards by the Jeishaladl terror group.

Soon after the soldiers were abducted it was the usual regime sabre rattlings and threats. Brig. Gen Hasan Shah-Safi, head of the IRGC Air Forces, claimed "If  a single strand of hair goes missing from our soldiers, our reconnaissance teams will identify the probable hiding places of the terrorists and then reduce them to dust" 

Then it was said that the regime is sending its elite special forces, the Saberin, not just to the Sistan and Balouchistan province in South East Iran but even beyond the borders into Pakistan territory to rescue the abducted soldiers. 

Despite all the sabre rattlings however, sadly more than a single strand of hair went missing from the kidnapped soldiers and not only nothing was reduced to dust, the Saberin special forces never arrived either. Jamshid Danaei-far, the only ranked soldier who was amongst the five kidnapped, was executed by the Sunni terrorist group in revenge for a relative of one their members who was executed by the Islamic Republic during the time the five soldiers were held captive. 

Ten days prior to the execution of Jamshid Danaei-far by JeishalAdl terrorists, his wife had given birth to their first child. The father and son never got a chance to see each other. Danei-Far's wife was never brought on state TV to appeal to the kidnappers to release her husband as one would expect in other countries. The news that she had given birth to their son ten days earlier, only came about after Danaei-Far was executed.

The kidnapping of the five Iranian conscripts caused a nationwide outrage amongst all Iranians, including those who oppose the regime. The five were just innocent conscripts who were told to guard the borders and not accomplices in the regime's repression. 

The video of how they were captured was posted by Jeishaladl and it showed how ill equipped the soldiers were. All five were stuck in a tent, in the middle of no-where in a God forsaken land with virtually no facilities. Seeing how poorly Iran's borders were being guarded caused further outrage against both the regime and the Jeishaladl terrorists. 

The regime tried to deflect the attention to Pakistan, saying that Pakistan was harbouring the terrorists and it was Pakistan's responsibility to help release the Iranian soldiers. Pakistan's ambassador was summoned and told that Iran expects Pakistan to secure the release of the five abducted soldiers.

Iranians took to protest outside Pakistan embassies and their other representative offices. The spontaneous call for protests outside Pakistani embassies was welcome by all Iranians at home and abroad, amongst the opposition and the supporters of the regime. The calls for the protests were even given coverage in the regime backed news sites.

Yet in Tehran, the regime's security forces decided to attack the peaceful protesters outside the Pakistani embassy and some of the protesters who were identified as opposition activists were arrested. In Mashad however, the protests outside the Pakistan Consulate went ahead peacefully. This showed once again that there is not one coherent centre for making decisions in the Islamic Republic. Some security official in Tehran obviously feared any gathering which was not organised and controlled entirely by the regime and some security official in Mashad had decided it was ok and could be tolerated.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Tasnim Aslam, reacted to Islamic Republic's claims and said "Iranian officials never contacted Pakistan to follow up on the abducted soldiers". Aslam added "a joint committee was set up to co-ordinate the search for the soldiers but after that the Iranians never contacted us".

The regime's indifference to the plight of its abducted conscript soldiers was all too obvious. A simple comparison with how the regime reacted to the plight of its "pilgrims" captured in Syria and that of its conscripts on the border with Pakistan clearly demonstrated this indifference and incompetence.

While the abducted soldiers were missing, I was discussing the situation with a former Iranian Major, Mohamad Baqer Bani-Ameri, who had served in the Sistan-Balouchistan province for years and knew the area and the people in the province well. I asked the former major, if he was serving in the area now and was ordered to find the abducted soldiers, what would he do? The Major replied, "the only way to resolve this is to appeal to the elders in the area, get their support and get them to put pressure on the kidnappers to release our soldiers".

At the end, what the former Major told me, was exactly how the situation was resolved. Molavi Abdol-Hamid, the Sunni Friday Prayer leader of Zahedan and other elders in the province persuaded the JeishalAdl terrorists to release the remaining four soldiers.

Finally the good news came and the four soldiers were released but they did not quite get a hero's official state welcome, like Shapour Bakhtiar's assassin, Ali Vakili-Raad had received. Ismail Kowsari, the Majlis member of the National Security and Foreign Policy commission asked for the released soldiers to be punished. Kowsari, referred to the video of their abduction and said the soldiers were all sleeping in the tent instead of being on guard. Pictures of Iranian MPs sleeping during the Majlis sessions soon went viral on the Iranian cyberspace, in response to Kowsari's ridiculous call for punishing the released soldiers.

Molavi AbdolHamid, the Sunni releigious leader whose appeal to the JeishalAdl kidnappers helped secure the release of the soldiers did not receive a thank you or special recognition either. The official Islamic Republic newspaper [Jomhouri Eslami] scolded him instead by asking "Why did Molavi AbdolHamid not appeal to the terrorists from the beginning and how is it exactly that he has so much influence on JeishalAdl that they listen to him and release the soldiers? " 

Officials then started congratulating the Supreme Leader instead for securing the release of the soldiers.

So in summary, the following observations are noteworthy: 

The sabre rattling and use of special elite forces by the regime came to no use at all.

Iran's mainstream opposition once again showed it is a responsible opposition which will put the national interests and national unity above it's opposition with the regime.

The life of a conscript is worthless for the regime.

The regime will suppress any peaceful gathering or protest which is not in its control or it has not organised itself, even if the gathering or protest is not against the regime.

Lastly, the Islamic Republic establishment will not credit anyone but the Supreme Leader himself for success while failures are always blamed on others.

Former US Embassy Hostage Takers

The recent appointment of Hamid AbuTalebi, as Islamic Republic's new envoy to the UN, quickly made the headlines in the West, as it was suggested by Bloomberg that the new appointee was a former US embassy hostage taker in the 1980s. Bloomberg also mentions the website Taskhir which has a picture of Hamid AbuTalebi as a young hostage taker. Taskhir, meaning capture or takeover in Persian, is in fact a website run by former Muslim Students Following the Line of Imam, or those who climbed the US embassy walls in November 1979 and took 52 US embassy staff as hostages for 444 days.

AbuTalebi on the other hand has denied he was one of the hostage takers and claimed he only acted as a translator and helped with the negotiations.

Reading about all this, I started rummaging through the Taskhir website. It has an interview with one of the former hostage takers, Mohammad Hashemi who mentions Hamid Abutalebi, as one of their representatives who was sent to Algeria to take part in a conference of "Liberation Movements" from around the world.

Another former hostage taker, Faezeh Moslehi, one of the female Students Following the Line of Imam,  also mentions AbuTalebi being sent to Algeria to represent the student hostage takers. She refers to him as "Brother AbuTAlebi".

But there are even more interesting facts that I picked up. For example another one of the former hostage takers is identified as AbdolHossein Rouhalamini, whose son, Mohsen Rouhalamini, was arrested during the 2009 protests, taken to Kahrizak and died as a result of severe beatings. i.e. Father was a US embassy hostage taker and son was killed by the regime's security forces, three decades later.

Another interesting name that came up was Ali Tayebnia, the widely reputed competent and able current Minister of Economy. Tayebnia also studied in the London School of Economics under Professor Laurence Harris. So presumably he managed to get a UK student visa after having taken part in the US embassy hostage takeover.

Majlis Commission Confirms : "Luxury Cars were imported instead of medicine"

Maserati Celebrations in Iran

It was a story that started in the Guardian by Saeed Kamali, the pro-Rowhani Iranian journalist who nominated Hasan Rowhani for the Nobel Peace Prize. Manouchehr Esmaili-Liousi, a haemophiliac patient had died as a result of a hiking accident and never even got to the hospital, but the story of the tragic accident was changed into a haemophiliac boy in Iran "dying in hospital after his family failed to find the vital medicine he desperately needed for his disease."

"Sanctions are Causing Medicine Shortage in Iran and Killing Patients" soon became the sexy preferred headline in the Western media. Western newspapers and news sites raced each other with similar news headlines and the Islamic Republic lobby groups in the West had a feast with yet another too common phenomenon of lazy journalism in the Western mass media. See also NIAC Profiteering from Deceit. Only the Times of London reported what was actually taking place on the ground in Iran.

Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, Ahmadinejad's health minister at the time, was not saying what the Western media were regurgitating, she kept publicly complaining that the $2 Billion in the annual budget, allocated to import medicine with,  was not received by the health ministry.

It was a bizarre situation in which, Iran's health minister kept repeating the medicine shortage was nothing to do with sanction and yet the Western media kept repeating, sanctions were causing the medicine shortage in Iran!

Islamic Republic's first female health minister, Marzieh Dastjerdi,  finally paid the price for her outspoken remarks and was unceremoniously sacked by Ahmadinejad. Now 18 months after, the Islamic Republic's Article 90 Majlis Commission, has endorsed her claims. The allocated $2 Billion with subsidised currency rate which should have gone to the Health Ministry to import medicine with, was  instead being used to import luxury cars.

Nader Ghazipour, the MP for Oroumieh and a member of the Majlis team investigating the luxury import of cars corruption said the list of companies who used subsidised currency rate to import luxury cars, amounted not to just one or two pages but to several pages and names of some government officials can be seen amongst them.

"The crime of Mrs. Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, who was sacked by Ahamdinejad, was that she exposed the secrets. She said luxury cars were being imported with the medicine money and she was right" - Ghazipour told the Majlis.

A Snapshot of IR's Assembly of 'Experts'

My last post was about the head of the Islamic Republic's Assembly of "Experts", Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, showing off his expertise on Einstein and the theory of relativity.

This picture on the left is a snapshot from the 15th official gathering of the Assembly of "Experts", the powerful body which at least on paper, is supposed to choose the Supreme Leader and make sure the leader acts appropriately Islamic.

In the picture, you see Rafsanjani, the former head of the Assembly of 'Experts' sleeping. The overweight "expert" sleeping behind him is Ali Razini, the former head of the Special Court for the Clergy. Next to Razini, is Ayatollah Haeri Shirazi who is holding his head and is about to join his comrades and fall asleep any minute.

Finally the picture in the front row, placed on the chair, is that of Ayatollah Khorram Abadi who has passed away but nevertheless a bottle of water is left for him, in case his spirit joins the session and gets thirsty.

Iran's Head of Assembly of "Experts" Speaks about Einstein!

The man shown in this video below, is Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani. He is the head of the Assembly of Experts in the Islamic Republic of Iran. A powerful body which will even decide the next 'head honcho' i.e. the next Supreme Leader of Iran.

Mahdavi Kani is also the head of Imam Sadeq university.

To understand what kind of people run the Islamic Republic and who these "experts" are, watch this video of Mahdavi Kani [English translation below]

"Einstein wrote something in which he said he had converted to Islam and had become a Shiite Muslim and that he was a disciple of Imam Ja'far Sadeq, says so in foreign books. Einstein says 'when I heard about the ascension of the prophet Mohamad' where he had ascended to heavens and come back and the house door was still shaking, a process which was faster than the speed of light. The prophet went quicker than the light that walks, I don't know how much is it? 300,000 km per second! The door knocker was still shaking and the prophet had come back and he had seen all the heavens too. This is the very same relativity movement that Einstein had understood. Similar to what Mullah Sadra had understood before him, a quintessential movement, not a positional movement like crossing the road taking ten minutes, a movement of light or rather a spiritual movement faster than the light moves, Einstein said 'when I heard about the narratives of the prophet Mohamad and that of the Ahle-Beit [prophet's household] I realised they had understood these things way before us"  

Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, who is 83 years old, has been kept alive in the past 25 years by British heart surgeons who have been treating him in St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London.

Seven Years Prison for Iranian Student, Maryam Shafiipour

Maryam Shafiipour

Iranian female student activist, Maryam Shafipour has become the first Iranian student to be sentenced to long term prison for political activism since Rouhani became the president of the Islamic Republic.

Maryam Shafipour was an active member of Karroubi's Women's Committee election campaign team. She received a suspended sentence in 2010 on usual charges of "spreading propaganda against the 'holy establishment' of the Islamic Republic" and was banned from continuing her higher education. 

In July, 2013, Maryam was detained again and spent 60 days in solitary confinement with no access to a lawyer. 

Yesterday she received a seven year sentence by the notorious judge Salavati after seven months of being interrogated in prison and refusing to repent for her peaceful activism. 

Amnesty international issued this statement on Maryam's plight in January this year:

DOCUMENT - IRAN: IRANIAN STUDENT HELD FOR PEACEFUL ACTIVISM: MARYAM SHAFI’ POUR

Jack Straw and Lord LeMont may have the impression that things have changed in Iran and "Tehran resembles any European city like Madrid", but the truth is despite the nice shop front window for the outside world, its business as usual inside the shop.

A Public Execution in Iran with a Slight Twist

Public executions in Iran have sadly become a normal event since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Astonishingly some of those who go to watch these medieval displays, take their young children with them too. Adults along with their children watch masked executioners put the rope around the condemned's neck while the condemned accepts his fate and submits passively to the executioner.

Last week there was a public execution in Iran that didn't quite go according to the plan. The stocky man that was about to be executed asked to see his mother for one last time, but his request was refused. The stocky man who looked strong, struggled with his executioners and broke his handcuffs. Another law enforcement officer tried to walk up to him and was toppled over as the condemned kicked the officer in the chest. The crowd cheered the condemned as the officer fell off the scaffolding, but finally he was subdued by seven officers and the rope was tied around his neck. The condemned man struggled as his neck dangled from the noose until his neck broke. The same crowd who had cheered him kick the law officer in the chest, cheered again when his neck broke and he became restless.

Its all good entertainment on a typical early morning in the lovely Islamic Republic that Jack Straw described as buzzing like Madrid:
http://youtu.be/P2k665GkAZM