Iran

Iran has charged 16 people, including several teenagers, in the northwestern Iranian city of Urmia for planning demonstrations and accusing them of espionage amid reports those detained gave confessions after being beaten.

In November, 25 people were arrested for allegedly having connections with “spy organizations” and “attempted to deceive and incite youth and teenagers through social networks to join protests” against the government after the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody in September.

The Arab countries are still extremely anxious about the possibility that the Biden administration will return to the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The JCPOA — signed in 2015 between Tehran and several world powers, including the US — promises Iran’s regime, after a short time, the ability to possess as many nuclear weapons as it likes, the missiles to deliver them, and no constraints on its terrorism or “revolutionary” expansionism.

In 2018, then US President Donald J. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA after realizing that it failed to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program, missile program or regional aggression and terrorism.

Some Iranian Canadians say they are taking efforts into their own hands to investigate and track down Iranian regime members and affiliates who are now in Canada — saying the Canadian government is not doing enough.

One group even made the extraordinary move of publicly shaming a recent arrival at Toronto’s Pearson airport, who they claimed was a regime affiliate, asking how she got a visa.

The issue has ramped up since protests erupted across Iran last fall after the in-custody death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police in Tehran for allegedly violating Iran’s strict rules requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf.

As ordinary Iranians struggle to pay for fruit and vegetables, their leaders lavish cash on the guards brutally suppressing protests in the streets

Iran’s feared state security forces, which have played a violent role in suppressing nationwide protests, have been allocated $3 billion in the latest budget, despite the country’s collapsing economy.

Announced several weeks late by the government, the budget for the state militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), has been raised by 28 per cent. However, some experts estimate the actual income of the militia could be as high as $17 billion.

On January 16 the European Parliament will debate adding the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to the European Union’s terrorist list. Proscribing the IRGC as a terror organization by the European countries represents a robust political stance, serving multiple purposes: protecting human rights in Iran, preventing further terror attacks in Europe, and punishing the Revolutionary Guards for arming Russia and participation in war in Ukraine.

The IRGC is the premier and the largest terrorist organization in the world, created on May 5, 1979, by order of Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini, the founding father of the Islamic Revolution. It was formed primarily for two specific goals: defending the regime and exporting the Islamic revolution to neighboring countries through terrorism. Over time, the IRGC, aided by its proxies, carried out dozens of terror attacks around the world against American and Israeli targets and took effective control of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

While the Iranian regime has become more belligerent, the European Union and the Biden administration are still attempting to restore the nuclear deal that will lift economic sanctions on Iran, empower and embolden the regime, enhance its global legitimacy and pave the way for what the US State Department has called the “world’s worst sponsor of state terrorism” to legally become a nuclear-armed state.

Iran hanged two men tied to anti-government protests on Saturday, continuing a trend of using capital punishment to suppress dissent. The government has also killed hundreds of people, held thousands of sham trials and sentenced more people to death row, according to rights groups.