Iran

Iran has reportedly sentenced two teenagers to death for “corruption on Earth” and “waging war against God” among other charges often used by the judiciary to help the government quell nationwide unrest sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody.

The U.S.-based activist group HRANA quoted an informed source on January 4 as saying that the Revolutionary Court in the northern city of Sari handed down a death penalty to 18-year-old Arshia Takdastan, basing its verdict on an accusation that he threw a drinking bottle and a stone at a police car during a protest in the city of Nowshahr in September.

From Charlie Hebdo

Masih Alinejad: hiding from Iran’s assassins in FBI safe houses

The apartment is almost empty now. Just half a box of Cheerios, a bin bag of rubbish and a few pot plants remain. Masih Alinejad sits in this impersonal room with her laptop balanced on an upturned saucepan, puts on her jacket and goes live on CNN. After finishing her segment, rebutting reports the Iranian government has dismantled its infamous religious police – “Disinformation to break the resolve of demonstrators” – she turns to her husband, Kambiz Foroohar. They must leave in an hour, he says.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is set to be officially declared a terrorist group after 10 plots to kidnap or murder people in the UK last year, The Telegraph can reveal.

Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, and Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, both support the move, which is expected to be announced within weeks.

Officials have been building the case against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with the security services understood to have shared intelligence.

Iranian protesters have opened a new front as their demonstrations over the death of Mahsa Amini enter a fourth month, taking to windows and rooftops to show their anger at the government as they push for more freedoms.

Instead of taking to the streets, people have been chanting anti-government slogans from their apartment buildings in several neighborhoods of Tehran, according to posts on social media. At the same time, street protests and slogans continued in some neighborhoods of the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad and the western city of Kermanshah.

Iran was ousted from the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women on Wednesday after the world body’s 54-member Economic and Social Council adopted a U.S.-initiated resolution to take that step.

The move comes in response to Tehran’s crackdown on nationwide protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the regime’s morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab “correctly.” Since her death on Sept. 16, the Islamic Republic has been rocked by widespread unrest.

Well I’ll be damned.

Global solidarity against Iran’s bloody crackdown on a women-led protest movement will be tested on Wednesday, as world powers vote on whether to oust the country from a UN body tasked with empowering women.

Activists and rights groups say Tehran’s role in the 45-member commission on the status of women is a farce, considering the regime’s forces have beaten and killed women peacefully calling for gender equality.

The UN economic and social council (Ecosoc), which oversees the commission, will gather in New York to consider a US-drafted resolution to remove Iran “with immediate effect”.

I’ll believe this when I see it. 

Protesters demand greater freedoms while the leadership’s conservative vision of Islam falters

For decades, Iran’s clerical leaders have striven to make sure their country stays on a conservative, Islamic path. They have expanded religious education. The faithful have been urged to have more children. Those deemed to be exhibiting what the government regards as anti-Islamic behavior risk the full force of the law.

Months long protests in Iran against the core values underpinning the Islamic system suggest the country might be heading the other way.

Teenage girls now share videos of each other stomping on pictures of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, and his successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Young Iranians have been filmed knocking turbans off clerics’ heads, with the footage posted online. Thousands of women now walk around the streets of Tehran without the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, in what would have been a rare act of defiance just a few months ago.

#MajidrezaRahnavard was charged with "war against god", hanged in front of a basiji crowd from a crane, and buried without his family even knowing. This happens daily in Iran under the barbaric mullahs and their minions.

Don't be offended by the footage – be outraged at the IR. pic.twitter.com/b1izUAl80I

— Nioh Berg ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) December 12, 2022

The protests in Iran now in their third month are a historic battle pitting two powerful and irreconcilable forces: a predominantly young and modern population, proud of their 2,500-year-old civilization and desperate for change, versus an aging and isolated theocratic regime, committed to preserving its power and steeped in 43 years of brutality.