December 21, 2022
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Wednesday slapped sanctions on Iran’s chief prosecutor, four other Iranian officials and a company that supports the country’s security forces for their roles in an ongoing violent crackdown on antigovernment protests.
The Treasury Department announced it is targeting the Prosecutor-General of Iran, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, two senior commanders in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, and two members of the Basij, a paramilitary volunteer group that often enforces strict rules on dress and conduct.
“We denounce the Iranian regime’s intensifying use of violence against its own people who are advocating for their human rights,” Treasury said in a statement, noting that Montazeri has presided over prosecutions of protesters some of whom have been executed or condemned to death.
It identified the IRGC commanders as Hassan Hassanzadeh, the head of its forces in Tehran, and Seyed Sadegh Hosseini, who runs its Beit-al Moghadas Corps of Kurdistan province. The two Basij members are the group’s deputy coordinator, Hossein Maroufi, and Moslem Moein, its cyberspace chief, it said.
Treasury said it is also penalizing the Imen Sanat Zaman Fara Company, which produces armored vehicles and other equipment for the security forces. The sanctions freeze any assets that those targeted may have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from doing business with them.
Iran has been rocked by protests since the Sept. 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being detained by the morality police. The protests have since morphed into one of the most serious challenges to the theocracy installed by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Security forces have violently cracked down on the protests, killing more than 500 protesters and arresting over 18,000, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has been closely monitoring the unrest. More than 60 security forces have been killed, according to the group.
“The United States continues to support the people of Iran in the face of this brutal repression, and we are rallying growing international consensus to hold the regime accountable,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
“Thousands of brave Iranians have risked their lives and their liberty to protest the regime’s long record of oppression and violence,” he said. “We again call on Iran’s leadership to immediately cease its violent crackdown and to listen to its people.”
An Iranian masterwork opens with its director behind bars
December 21, 2022
NEW YORK (AP) — After being arrested for creating antigovernment propaganda in 2010, the Iranian director Jafar Panahi was banned from making films for 20 years. Since then, he’s made five widely acclaimed features.
His latest, “No Bears,” opens soon in U.S. theaters while Panahi is in prison.
In July, Panahi went to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to inquire about the arrest of Mohammad Rasoulof, a filmmaker detained in the government’s crackdown on protests. Panahi himself was arrested and, on a decade-old charge, sentenced to six years in jail.
Panahi’s films, made in Iran without government approval, are sly feats of artistic resistance. He plays himself in meta self-portraitures that clandestinely capture the mechanics of Iranian society with a humanity both playful and devastating. Panahi made “This is Not a Film” in his apartment. “Taxi” was shot almost entirely inside a car, with a smiling Panahi playing the driver and picking up passengers along the way.
In “No Bears,” Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself while making a film in a rural town along the Iran-Turkey border. It’s one of the most acclaimed films of the year. The New York Times and The Associated Press named it one of the top 10 films of the year. Film critic Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times called “No Bears” 2022’s best movie.
“No Bears” is landing at a time when the Iranian film community is increasingly ensnarled in a harsh government crackdown. A week after “No Bears” premiered at the Venice Film Festival, with Panahi already behind bars, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while being held by Iran’s morality police. Her death sparked three months of women-led protests, still ongoing, that have rocked Iran’s theocracy.
More than 500 protesters have been killed in the crackdown since Sept. 17, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran. More than 18,200 people have been detained.
On Saturday, the prominent Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti, star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning “The Salesman,” was arrested after posting an Instagram message expressing solidarity with a man recently executed for crimes allegedly committed during the protests.
In the outcry that followed Alidoosti’s arrest, Farhadi — the director of “A Separation” and “A Hero” — called for Alidoosti’s release “alongside that of my other fellow cineastes Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof and all the other less-known prisoners whose only crime is the attempt for a better life.”
“If showing such support is a crime, then tens of millions of people of this land are criminals,” Farhadi wrote on Instagram.
Panahi’s absence has been acutely felt on the world’s top movie stages. At Venice, where “No Bears” was given a special jury prize, a red-carpet walkout was staged at the film’s premiere. Festival director Alberto Barbera and jury president Julianne Moore were among the throngs silently protesting the imprisonment of Panahi and other filmmakers.
“No Bears” will also again test a long-criticized Academy Awards policy. Submissions for the Oscars’ best international film category are made only by a country’s government. Critics have said that allows authoritative regimes to dictate which films compete for the sought-after prize.
Arthouse distributors Sideshow and Janus Films, which helped lead Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Japanese drama “Drive My Car” to four Oscar nominations a year ago, acquired “No Bears” with the hope that its merit and Panahi’s cause would outshine that restriction.
“He puts himself at risk every time he does something like this,” says Jonathan Sehring, Sideshow founder and a veteran independent film executive. “When you have regimes that won’t even let a filmmaker make a movie and in spite of it they do, it’s inspiring.”
“We knew it wasn’t going to be the Iranian submission, obviously,” adds Serling. “But we wanted to position Jafar as a potential best director, best screenplay, a number of different categories. And we also believe the film can work theatrically.”
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences declined to comment on possible reforms to the international film category. Among the 15 shortlisted films for the award announced Wednesday was the Danish entry “Holy Spider,” set in Iran. After Iranian authorities declined to authorize it, director Ali Abbasi shot the film, based on real-life serial killings, in Jordan.
“No Bears” opens in New York on Dec. 23 and Los Angeles on Jan. 10 before rolling out nationally.
In it, Panahi rents an apartment from which he, with a fitful internet signal, directs a film with the help of assistants. Their handing off cameras and memory cards gives, perhaps, an illuminating window into how Panahi has worked under government restrictions. In “No Bears,” he comes under increasing pressure from village authorities who believe he’s accidentally captured a compromising image.
“It’s not easy to make a movie to begin with, but to make it secretly is very difficult, especially in Iran where a totalitarian government with such tight control over the country and spies everywhere,” says Iranian film scholar and documentarian Jamsheed Akrami-Ghorveh. “It’s really a triumph. I can’t compare him with any other filmmaker.”
In one of the film’s most moving scenes, Panahi stands along the border at night. Gazing at the lights in the distance, he contemplates crossing it — a life in exile that Panahi in real life steadfastly refused to ever adopt.
Some aspects of the film are incredibly close to reality. Parts of “No Bears” were shot in Turkey just like the film within the film. In Turkey, an Iranian couple (played by Mina Kavani and Bakhiyar Panjeei) are trying to obtain stolen passports to reach Europe.
Kavani herself has been living in exile for the last seven years. She starred in Sepideh Farsi’s 2014 romance “Red Rose.” When nudity in the film led to media harassment, Kavani chose to live in Paris. Kavani was struck by the profound irony of Panahi directing her by video chat from over the border.
“This is the genius of his art. The idea that we were both in exile but on a different side was magic,” says Kavani. “He was the first person that talked about that, what’s happening to exiled Iranian people outside of Iran. This is very interesting to me, that he is in exile in his own country, but he’s talking about those who left his country.”
Many of Panahi’s colleagues imagine that even in his jail cell, Panahi is probably thinking through his next film — whether he ever gets to make it or not. When “No Bears” played at the New York Film Festival, Kavani read a statement from Panahi.
“The history of Iranian cinema witnesses the constant and active presence of independent directors who have struggled to push back censorship and to ensure the survival of this art,” it said. “While on this path, some were banned from making films, others were forced into exile or reduced to isolation. And yet, the hope of creating again is a reason for existence. No matter where, when, or under what circumstances, an independent filmmaker is either creating or thinking.”
Iran announces the death of two suspected terrorists involved in the November bombing in Izeh
December 21, 2022
Iranian authorities announced Wednesday the death of two suspected terrorists involved in the November bombing in the city of Izeh, which killed seven people and wounded more than a dozen others.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard said that security forces launched a joint operation in the framework of "rigorous intelligence efforts" against several people involved in the attack and added that two other suspects have been arrested.
He also stressed that the terrorist cell "has received a blow" with this operation and stressed that it has resulted in the seizure of weapons and ammunition, as reported by the Iranian news agency Mehr.
On the other hand, he emphasized that the terrorists had received training and support from "foreign-based monarchists" who sought to use them to "provoke unrest and insecurity, as well as to carry out terrorist attacks".
Iranian Foreign Minister Hosein Amirabdolahian accused Israel and other "Western" countries of planning "a civil war", a day after the attack, executed in a market in Izeh. He also stressed that these people "should know that Iran is not Libya or Sudan" and reiterated that "the enemies have attacked Iran's integrity and Iranian identity".
US targets Iran top prosecutor in new protest sanctions
December 21, 2022
The United States on Wednesday targeted Iran's prosecutor general in its latest sanctions over a crackdown on major protests, deploring his role in executions.
"We again call on Iran's leadership to immediately cease its violent crackdown and to listen to its people. We will continue to promote accountability for those involved as we support the Iranian people," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
The Treasury Department said that the prosecutor general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, was responsible for human rights abuses including torture and death-penalty trials of protesters.
The hanging earlier this month of Mohsen Shekari, the first person known to be executed over the protests, bore "little resemblance to a meaningful trial," a Treasury Department statement said.
Montazeri drew widespread attention earlier this month when he was quoted as saying that the state was abolishing the morality police, which enforces strict codes on women's dress.
The protests, Iran's most widespread in years, broke out after the death in the morality police's custody in September of a 22-year-old woman.
But Montazeri's apparently off-the-cuff remarks drew skepticism and there were no signs of follow-up in ending the notorious unit.
Also hit by the sanctions was company Imen Sanat Zaman Fara, the manufacturer of vehicles used in crowd suppression, and four officials from the elite Revolutionary Guards including one involved in monitoring the internet.
The move blocks any US assets and criminalizes transactions with targeted officials and companies, who are not known to have significant holdings in the United States -- which already maintains sweeping sanctions against the clerical state.
Ukraine warns Iranian trainers traveling to Ukraine to help Russia: ‘You will not return home’
December 21, 2022
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov has warned Iranian instructors who have arrived on Ukrainian territory to collaborate with Russian troops that "they will not return home in the form in which they arrived."
"What we can say for sure is that some of them will no longer return home in the form in which they arrived," Danilov has said in an interview for the Voice of America news portal, in which he has extended this warning to the rest of foreigners who set foot in Ukraine to participate on the side of Russia.
"I would not recommend any representative of another country to come to our territory to fight on the side of Russia. The danger of being annihilated will be extremely high for that," Danilov has emphasized.
Danilov has assured that they are aware of the presence of Iranian instructors in several areas of the territories now managed by Russia, such as Crimea and especially in Kherson.
"The training is carried out by the people and companies that supply these weapons," he said, referring to the drones that arrive from Iran and whose use has become another controversial point in this war.
In this sense, Danilov said that Russia has intensified the use of this type of weaponry because, in his opinion, they do not have the necessary capacity to take the war to an "open battle".
However, he warned of the "dangers" of having made Russia "a rat in a cul-de-sac", for which reason Ukraine, he said, is preparing for what may happen in these first three months, since "they can be decisive".
"Taking into account that Russia does not want to accept the position of the entire world community that it should withdraw now so that its country suffers the least possible consequences, it will continue to attack and risk everything," he has theorized.
As other leaders and representatives of the Kiev government have stressed, Danilov has also insisted on the rhetoric that the fight against Vladimir Putin's Russia concerns the whole of Europe and that Ukrainians are fighting not only for their freedom, but for the freedom of the whole continent.
"We are protecting the whole of Europe from this influence," said Danilov, who believes that his European partners have realized this situation as they have now stepped up and improved the military aid they provide to the Ukrainian forces.
"In Europe (...) they have changed their mind and if before (...) they supplied helmets, or bulletproof vests, now they supply the heavy weapons we need to defeat this enemy. We are aware that we are not only protecting ourselves," he stressed.
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