National Media Agency in MI, USA | IRAN — Ruhollah Zam, a former opposition figure who had lived in exile in France and was implicated in anti-government protests, speaks in a courtroom during a trial, November 30, 2020

National Media Agency in MI, USA | Apadana Media

In its report on the state of journalism in the world in 2020, Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) has appropriately ranked Iran as the global record-holder of killing media staff.

Referring to Ruhollah Zam’s kidnapping process that led to his trial behind closed doors, sentencing, and hanging, the internationally renowned organization has called his death not execution but a murder.

However, 42-year-old Zam was not the only journalist killed by Iran merely for his views and activities as a social media activist and reporter.

The so-called Islamist forces that came to power in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, brazenly or secretly, started issuing death sentences for journalists and authors long before dominating the ancient country. The Islamic extremists have never hesitated to condemn to death anybody they considered to have views against the “Islamic” train of thought, or as they maintain the “Holy Shari’a.”

Before the downfall of Iran’s pro-West king, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, these fundamentalist forces believed that journalists, writers, and artists, or anybody opposing their views were apostates, and it would be “fair” to punish them by death for insulting Islam and Muslims.

After consolidating power in Iran, they practically added the killing of their critics to the extensive list of the nascent Islamic Republic’s crimes. Eliminating whoever dared to raise voices against the “glorious Islamic Republic” became a part of the new rulers’ daily life in Iran.

By grabbing all national resources across the country, Iran has successfully implemented various methods to force journalists and writers to remain silent. The plans include brutal censorship, banning newspapers and magazines, detaining and forcing writers and journalists into exile or blatantly killing them in the streets, or executing them in prisons after show-off trials.

Leading Iranian linguist, nationalist, historian, and former Shi’ite cleric, Ahmad Kasravi, is the most famous writer assassinated before the establishment of Iran.

On March 11, 1946, members of a shadowy group, Fadā’iyān-e Islam (Devotees of Islam or Self-Sacrificers of Islam), led by a controversial mid-ranking black-turbaned clergy, Navvab Safavi, stabbed to death Ahmad Kasravi and one of his assistants, while being tried on charges of “insulting Islam.”

The founder of the Islamic Republic and a supporter of Navvab Safavi, Ruhollah Khomeini, had earlier called on an offshoot of Fadaiyan-e Islam, “Young Martyrs for Islam,” to confront Kasravi, referring to him as “this illiterate (man from Tabriz).”

Furthermore, years before Kasravi’s assassination, Ayatollah Khomeini had attacked the prominent linguist and historian in his first book, Kashf al-Asrar (Decoding Secrets). He blatantly stated that Kasravi and other writers like him deserve death. In the same book, he boldly theorized the necessity of closing newspapers, magazines, and books, setting them on fire, and hanging their authors as divine rulings in Shi’ite jurisprudence.

Therefore, it is no surprise that a government based on his teachings is now leading the way in killing writers and journalists around the world.

In the last forty years, nearly thirty people, whose main occupation was journalism or writing, have lost their lives in several ways, from being shot, hanged, murdered in prison, and assassinated at home or on the street.

Two pre-Islamic Revolution directors of National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT), Mahmoud Ja’farian and Parviz Nikkhah, and the French daily Journal de Tehran’s editor, Simon Farzami, were executed. The Managing-Director of an influential weekly magazine, Khandaniha (Reader’s Digest), Ali Asghar Amirani, and a playwright and poet, Saeed Soltanpour, were killed by a firing squad. Jalal Hashemi Tangestani was assassinated and died of unknown causes. The Assistant Editor of the daily Kayhan, Rahman Hatefi, died behind bars under torture. Popular TV showman, poet, and crooner, Fereydoun Farrokhzad, was stabbed to death in Bonn, Germany. Prominent researcher, author, historian and poet, Ali Akbar Sa’eedi Sirjani, was killed in intelligence services’ custody.

Furthermore, the Islamic Republic agents assassinated lawyer and former MP, Reza Mazlouman (aka Kourosh Aryamanesh) in Paris; author and translator Ghaffar Hosseini; prominent Iranologist and professor of ancient Iranian languages, Ahmad Tafazzoli; journalist Ebrahim Zalzadeh, poet and political activist, Ms. Parvaneh Parastou; author and translator, Pirouz Davani; writer and ideologist, Majid Sharif; and members of Iranian Writers Association, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Ja’far Pouyandeh, in Tehran. Meanwhile, a prominent author and translator, Ahmad Mir Ala’ee, and the poet and researcher Hamid Hajizadeh and his ten-year-old son were assassinated in Isfahan and Kerman, respectively.

Several writers and journalists, including Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Ms. Zahra Kazemi, bloggers Sattar Beheshti, Omid Reza Mir Sayafi, and Ya’qoub Mir Nehad, and journalists Alireza Eftekhari and Hoda Saber were killed in the Islamic Republic’s prisons.

Haleh Sahabi, a journalist and political activist, died after being physically attacked at her father’s funeral.

The administrator of a social media news channel with millions of followers, Paris-based Ruhollah Zam, was lured into Iraq, abducted, and taken back to Tehran, and executed.

A failed attempt to kill 21 Iranian journalists, writers, and poets on a bus destined for Armenia also must be added to the list of Iranian crimes against writers and people involved in media.

Iran is solely responsible for all these crimes. This process’s precedence and continuity clearly show that, regardless of which political camp has been in power in Iran, the Islamic Republic regime has always brutally dealt with journalists and writers who it considered unfavorable.

Some of these writers and journalists have been assassinated by the Iranian government when the judiciary and the country’s security services were simultaneously in the hands of the so-called reformist faction or the fundamentalists.

The saga of all those who have spent their best years of journalism or literary and artistic creation in forced silence, exile, prison, and grappling with censorship is another painful story needing a different feature.

The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Radio Farda.

National Media Agency in MI, USA | Apadana Media

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Media Agency in Battle Creek MI | FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, 1,200 km (746 miles) south of Tehran, August 21, 2010. Iran began fuelling its first nuclear power plant on Saturday, a potent symbol of its growing regional sway and rejection of international sanctions designed to prevent it building a nuclear bomb. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi

Media Agency in Battle Creek MI, US | Apadana Media

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States plans to announce additional Iran sanctions on Friday related to conventional arms and to the metals industry, sources familiar with the matter said.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not provide details on the sanctions, the latest in a series that U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed on the Iranian economy to try to force Tehran into a new negotiation on curbing its nuclear program. The State and Treasury Departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the announcement.

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October 14, 2020

By Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday the United States was pleased that the Iraqi government was doing more to protect the U.S. embassy in Baghdad from Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militias but declined to provide an update on whether Washington was still considering to shut down its embassy.

“We are happy that the Iraqis are doing more to provide increased security for our team on the ground there,” Pompeo told a State Department news conference.

Washington, which is slowly reducing its 5,000 troops in Iraq, threatened last month to shut its embassy unless the Iraqi government reins in Iran-aligned militias that have attacked U.S. interests with rockets and roadside bombs.

A spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerful Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq, on Sunday said it has suspended rocket attacks on U.S. forces on condition that Iraq’s government present a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

Asked if the United States saw the announcement as progress and whether it would still follow through on its threat to shut down the embassy, Pompeo did not specifically answer but sounded doubtful about the militia’s ceasefire declaration.

“We have a rogue set of militias who have now promised not to violate the Iraqi people’s sovereignty and to take aim at the U.S. diplomats serving there that are designed to help the Iraqi people,” he said.

The U.S. warning caused alarm in Iraq, where it was seen as a step toward air strikes, potentially turning Iraq into a battleground in a proxy war between the United States and Iran. A broad array of politicians called on the militia to stop provoking the Americans.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)

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October 14, 2020

By Issam Abdallah

NAQOURA, Lebanon (Reuters) – Long-time foes Lebanon and Israel launched talks on Wednesday over their disputed sea border (maritime border) in a brief meeting which the lead Lebanese negotiator described as “the first step on a thousand-mile journey.”

The talks were mediated by the United States, which has pushed for years for negotiations to resolve the dispute and brokered deals last month for two Gulf Arab states to establish full ties with Israel, in a major Middle East realignment.

Both Lebanon and Israel had played down expectations for Wednesday’s meeting which was held outdoors under blue canvas covers near the two countries’ land border.

The talks, the first to be held over the disputed sea boundary(maritime border), broke up after barely an hour and both sides agreed to meet again in two weeks.

The United States and United Nations, which hosted the meeting, described it as productive, while Israel’s Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said the Israeli delegation would push ahead with the talks “to give the process a chance”.

Agreement to hold the talks was announced weeks after the United States stepped up pressure on allies of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah, imposing sanctions on a senior politician from its main Shi’ite ally, the Amal party.

Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006, says the talks are not a sign of peace-making with its long-time enemy.

(Graphic: Overlapping claims in disputed east Med exploration area Overlapping claims in disputed east Med exploration area, https://graphics.reuters.com/LEBANON-ISRAEL/TALKS/ygdvznygmvw/LEBANON-ISRAEL.jpg)

“Our meeting today will launch the train of technical, indirect negotiations, and represents the first step on a thousand-mile journey for demarcating the southern borders,” the Lebanese army quoted delegation head Brigadier General Bassam Yassin as saying.

“We look forward…to achieving this file within a reasonable time frame.”

GAS-RICH WATERS?

Disagreement over the sea border had discouraged oil and gas exploration near the disputed line.

Israel already pumps gas from huge offshore fields but Lebanon, which has yet to find commercial gas reserves in its own waters, is desperate for cash from foreign donors as it faces the worst economic crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war.

The financial meltdown has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and by an explosion that wrecked a swathe of Beirut in August, killing nearly 200 people.

Wednesday’s meeting was hosted by the United Nations, which has monitored the land boundary since Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000 at the end of a 22-year occupation.

Lebanese sources originally said the next talks will be held on Oct 28, but a statement from President Michel Aoun’s office said they would take place two days earlier on Oct. 26.

Hours before the meeting, Hezbollah and Amal called for changes to the Lebanese negotiating team to ensure it included only military officials. The Lebanese presidency has said the talks would be purely technical.

The talks come after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to establish full relations with Israel, under U.S.-brokered deals which realign some of Washington’s closest Middle East allies against Iran.

(Reporting by Dominic Evans, Ellen Francis and Issam Abdallah in Lebanon and Ari Rabinovitchin Jerusalem; Editing by Samia Nakhoul, William Maclean)

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