Sweeping report details justice denied for Iran's protest victims

A total of $77 million has been earmarked for almost a quarter of a million families, Naeem Qassem said in a televised speech on Thursday, adding that most of the funds came from Iran.

Families whose primary homes have been destroyed would eventually be paid $8,000 as compensation and between $4,000 to $6,000 for temporary accommodation for a year, depending on where they live.

"We thank the Islamic Republic of Iran, led by Imam Khamenei, the state, the people, and the blessed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for providing this generous support in the displacement process," Qassem said.

Hezbollah was formed by the IRGC in 1982 and joined a war between Israel and Hamas a day after the Palestinian group launched the deadliest attack on the Jewish state in its history on October 7 2023.

Israel escalated the conflict in September, killing Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah after maiming hundreds of mid- and senior-level commanders by planting explosives in their communications devices.

Hundreds of air strikes pounded Hezbollah's centers of popular support mostly within majority Shi'ite areas of south Beirut and the country's south. Lebanese authorities say more than 3,960 people were killed, many of them civilians.

Meanwhile in Iran, decades of US-led sanctions and economic mismanagement have sent costs soaring while the currency has plumbed multi-decade lows.

Labor and cost of living protests swept Iran earlier this month as nurses, emergency personnel, retirees, and public transportation drivers picketed, expressing dissatisfaction with government economic and social policies.

Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian warned of depleting foreign currency reserves in a televised address on Monday and earlier warned of an "economic abyss" due to shortages of water, electricity, and natural gas.

"Following a review of the evidence provided by the Metropolitan Police Service’s Counter Terrorism Command, we have authorised charges against two Romanian nationals," the CPS said in a statement.

Iran has previously denied involvement in the case and any alleged attempts to attack dissidents abroad.

The men named as Nandito Badea, 19 and George Stana, 23 were arrested on Wednesday and have appeared in a Romanian court on charges of "wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and wounding".

They now face extradition to the UK.

"The charges relate to an attack on a journalist in Wimbledon on the afternoon of Friday, 29 March 2024," the CPS added.

Zeraati was stabbed outside his home in Wimbledon, south London, on that date and sustained leg injuries.

"We won’t be commenting further on the investigation and would urge others not to speculate about the case, given criminal proceedings are now pending,” the London Metropolitan Police's acting counter terrorism commander Helen Flanagan said.

Iran International spokesperson Adam Baillie welcomed the developments.

"We’re happy for Pouria, who suffered the attack, and we’re delighted that the UK police investigation into the attack has progressed to this stage."

"It is reassuring for our journalists, as for others in organisations under similar threat," Baillie added. "We see in this the commitment of the UK to fight transnational repression in Britain.”

US and British law enforcement agencies have previously accused Tehran of recruiting criminals and gang members to attack dissidents abroad.

“We’re not dealing with the usual suspects,” Matt Jukes, head of counterterrorism policing in the UK, was quoted as saying in a Washington Post article in September.

“What we’ve got is a hostile state actor that sees the battlefield as being without borders, and individuals in London are as legitimate as targets as if they were in Iran.”

US federal indictments last year accused three individuals allegedly linked to an Eastern European mafia group of plotting to assassinate Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad at the request of Iranian authorities.

Syrian forces were withdrawn "to preserve the lives of civilians and to prevent urban combat", the army said in a statement, as Al Jazeera broadcast footage of opposition fighters in the city center.

The shock advance of hardline Islamist-led rebels wrested the second largest city Aleppo from the forces of President Bashar al-Assad last week, endangering the Islamic Republic's oldest Arab ally in region.

A rebellion which has festered for over a decade since Arab Spring protests in 2011 had mostly been quelled after heavy backing from Iranian paramilitary forces and fighters from the Lebanon's Tehran-backed Hezbollah militia.

Iran has said it is ready to support Assad and has returned to the country a top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander who had helped Damascus wrest Aleppo back from the rebels in 2016.

"We firmly stand by Syria and will certainly intervene in the fight against terrorists”, Abbas Golroo, an Iranian lawmaker who recently visited Damascus said on Thursday.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran stood by Syria for ten years and now too has responded to the Syrian government’s request to intervene," he added. "Our intervention is aimed at preventing the presence of terrorists and combating them.”

Iraqi militias long armed and funded by Iran have been entering the country since the rebel offensive began, Reuters reported quoting Syrian military sources.

One such call to civil disobedience came from Abdollah Naseri this week, a former managing director of Iran's official news agency (IRNA), who called the hijab law “pure evil”.

“It is a good time for the revolutionary men and women of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ to take over the streets again and without violence shout the right to freedom of how to dress, a gift from God to his creatures,” Naseri said in a note published by the banned Kalemeh website Tuesday.

Like the prominent jailed dissident Mostafa Tajzadeh, Naseri is a member of the banned Mujahedin of the Islamic Revolution, a small but once very influential Reformist political organization withing the Islamic Republic's political elite.

Naseri has been one of several activists and political figures to be vocally against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s leadership and policies including his insistence on the necessity of hijab. The hijab laws have continued to worsen in the wake of the uprising in 2022, sparked by the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini, arrested for not wearing her head covering properly.

He said the current situation as laws continue to become ever more draconian, is “extremely unstable”.

Vasmaghi, a female Islamic scholar and politician, has argued that the Islamic Sharia does not require women to cover their hair and alleges that the Islamic Republic has used it to enhance its discrimination against women.

After years of wearing the hijab by choice, Vasmaghi posted a video of herself in October 2023 that showed her unveiling in protest.

In a note published on Telegram about the new hijab law, Isa Saharkhiz, another dissident and former politician, has warned that the new hijab law has the potential to trigger a national civil disobedience movement and an “unpredictable domino [of events]”.

One must emphasize that an opportunity has presented itself now to test the ruling establishment’s reaction to a peaceful but effective “national movement” against the new law, he wrote.

Saharkhiz also raised the question of whether given his declaration of total obedience to Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian will eventually yield and carry out Khamenei’s wishes or resign if he could not honor his promise to stop hijab enforcement.

Some dissident politicians appear very optimistic about what civil disobedience against the hijab can achieve.

“Iranian women’s resistance will defeat the Hijab and Chastity Law,” Ardeshir Amir-Arjomand, the spokesman of the Coordinating Council of the Iranian Green Movement and a former senior adviser to Mousavi, tweeted Sunday.

Amir-Arjomand, who lives in exile, argued in his post that the solution to the problem caused by the new hijab law is “resistance and civil disobedience” rather than appealing to the Supreme Leader to abolish it by using his extraordinary powers as some politicians and the media in Iran have suggested in the past few days.

The UN has called Iran's hijab enforcement a form of "gender apartheid" and rights groups have called it a "draconian campaign" to force women to veil and a "war on women".

Since September, Israel has targeted large portions of the group’s infrastructure, including weapons storage and production facilities, rocket launch sites, and key leadership figures. Among those killed in a series of precision airstrikes was long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah.

However, according to Reuters, US intelligence has shown that the group, designated a terrorist organization by countries such as the US and UK and others, has begun to rebuild, recruiting new fighters, rearming through domestic production and smuggling through Syria.

As Syria now faces domestic turmoil with the civil war rearing its head once more, that smuggling route is being ever more guarded by Iran, Hezbollah’s sponsor, which is sending fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan to push back opposition forces trying to dislodge Iran's ally Bashar al-Assad.

Syria has long been a pivotal route for Iran to fund and arm Hezbollah. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Forces (IRGC) also have outposts there. According to Arabic journal Al Majalla, Iran has 55 military bases in Syria and 515 other military points.

The Israeli military has said it is just 13 bases but says Iran has "appropriated Syrian defense assets". The Atlantic Council also cites camps which are essential to the IRGC such as Damascus International Airport, al-Tayfour Airport, Azraa Base, Sayeda Zeinab Base, al-Kaswa Camp, Zabadani Camp, and al-Qusayr Camp.

Amid a 60-day ceasefire brokered by the US and France, Hezbollah is prohibited from procuring weapons or parts, but ongoing activity has seen Israel carry out multiple air strikes on what it has called “terrorist infrastructure” amid the ceasefire, in which both sides have claimed multiple violations. On Monday, Hezbollah fired two rockets into Israel in what it called a "warning" amid tit-for-tat violations.

With a capacity estimated between 130,000 and 150,000 rockets, Hezbollah has been long ready for a prolonged conflict with its adversary, Israel.

Hezbollah will not struggle to find new recruits. At a memorial for slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, thousands came out to mourn the fallen leader, with much of the Shia population still dedicated to the group’s ‘cause’.

Nevertheless, Hanin Ghaddar from the Washington Institute has said that unlike in 2006, after the second Lebanon war, Hezbollah is at its weakest point and cannot afford to go back to war.

“Its strategy at the moment is to lay low and try to recover, which it seems to view as a multistage process,” she said, speaking on The Policy Forum on Monday.

“Hezbollah will presumably decry the Lebanese Army for allowing Israel to continue conducting airstrikes after the ceasefire with no response. Arguing that the weapons of the 'resistance' are Lebanon’s only means of fighting back against Israel, the group will push the next government to re-legitimize its possession of military arms by adopting the same loaded phrase that has appeared in past ministerial statements—namely, that Lebanon’s security is based on ‘the army, the people, and the resistance’.”

She says that Hezbollah has lost credibility, deterrence, most of its strategic weapons and commanders, and any semblance of its past victory narrative.

Unlike in 2006, money to fund Hezbollah is also not as readily available, Iran squashed by heavy global sanctions and a financial crisis. “This time, money is not as abundant in Iran, and the [Persian] Gulf states will no longer help [Lebanon] if Hezbollah is still in the picture. The group’s senior commander losses might also affect its role as Iran’s main proxy arm in the region,” she added, saying that Hezbollah has become a liability for Lebanon.

Matthew Levitt, also from the Washington Institute, said the ceasefire now presents new challenges for Tehran. “Hezbollah’s loss of so many strategic assets is a loss for Iran,” he said, speaking in The Policy Forum on Monday.

“Beyond near-term ceasefire diplomacy, the next [US] administration will need to lead an international effort to frustrate Iran’s efforts to rearm and re-fund its proxies. The international community can no longer sit back and consider the region calm when ceasefires take hold and Iran keeps arming terrorist groups to the teeth. The events of the past year—and again in Syria this past week—are proof of this logical fallacy,” he added.

Aware of the capacity to regroup, he said that getting to the route of the problem with Hezbollah requires addressing Iran.

“America’s core allies, including Israel, understand that degrading the capabilities of armed groups is no longer enough. Ultimately, they must address the threats posed by Iran, the malign actor who sponsors so many of these groups,” he said.