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Sunday, February 19, 2023

Dissident Iranian TV Channel Forced To Quit UK, After Police Warn They Cannot Protect Staff From Assassins

CarolineFrost

February 19, 2023
A UK-based Iranian TV channel has had to stop broadcasting from its headquarters in London, after British police warned staff that it could not protect them on UK soil.
Iran International has been advised to relocate from London to Washington DC by UK counterterrorism specialists, following a string of foiled plots to target the channel’s journalists.
These include an incident last weekend reported by the Times in which an Austrian national flew into the UK and was allegedly caught filming outside the channel’s premises in west London, where around 100 staff work.
Mahmood Enayat, the channel’s general manager, said in a statement: “I cannot believe it has come to this. A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the British public on British soil that we have to move.
“Let’s be clear, this is not just a threat to our TV station, but [to] the British public at large. This is an assault on the values of sovereignty and free speech that the UK has always held dear.”

'Rifts' to surface within Iranian regime, says son of last shah

AFP
February 18, 2023
Rifts already exist within the Iranian regime and they will become more apparent, eventually contributing to cutting down Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's power, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran, said Saturday.
"The full control of Khamenei makes it almost impossible for those who are closely associated with him to take position against him," said Pahlavi, who is one of several forces opposing the Iranian regime.
Nevertheless, according to "testimonies that we receive and leakage of information... there will be some rifts that will become more apparent", he told journalists at the Munich Security Conference.
Pahlavi was among key players of the Iranian opposition invited to the gathering of world leaders in the southern German city.
Pahlavi said Khamenei was "trying to push for his son (Mojtaba Khamenei) to basically replace him" -- a move that could eventually backfire.
"At that point, the clout that Khamenei has had over his own internal mechanism will weaken tremendously," Pahlavi said.
Iran has been rocked since September by nationwide protests after the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest for an alleged breach of Iran's dress code for women.
Since then, the regime has come under unprecedented pressure.
Even Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami and former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi have come out to call for political changes.
Nevertheless, according to "testimonies that we receive and leakage of information... there will be some rifts that will become more apparent", he told journalists at the Munich Security Conference.
Mousavi, 80, said the protest movement began in the context of "inter-dependent crises" and proposed holding a "free and healthy referendum on the need to change or draft a new constitution".
He also called the current system's structure "unsustainable".
"What Mousavi said two weeks ago was different than what he said earlier," Pahlavi said.
"Back then he was still considered a loyal opposition, still within the context of the existing constitution."
Several factions of the divided Iranian diaspora have embarked on assembling common ideas for a transitional council to prepare elections and to draw up a new constitution.
The son of the shah, who was overthrown in 1979, pointed to a "grey spectrum" of government officials tempted by the opposition wave but who are reticent about publicly expressing their backing.
"The question is how many of them will start defecting," Pahlavi said.
While it was not possible to predict a timeline, "right now the momentum is to more and more separations or defections", he said.
"What we are trying to do is to have an open-door policy, of maximum inclusion," he said.
"If that grey spectrum adopts these values and principles as a basis of cooperation, we can broaden the spectrum to include more of these people," he said.
On the question on how to deal with the vestiges of the regime, Pahlavi said that "everybody deserves a second chance".
"There are formulas that already been established in terms of traditional justice, what do we do with people who have been acting criminally in a position of governors... We can't refuse people that solicit justice."
Referring to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Pahlavi said: "We have to be able to say you can be back in the military, or some kind reserve force or other form of roles in the civilian sector".
Such issues are currently being discussed, he said, emphasising that there is a "strategy, a plan" to prepare for a post-Islamic republic.
- Democratic dream -
Yet Pahlavi himself has not commanded universal admiration within the opposition, with some wary about a failure to distance himself from the authoritarian rule of his father, to show transparency about his family's wealth, or to halt the often aggressive posturing of pro-monarchy supporters on social media.
But Pahlavi's stance in the protests has won plaudits among even left-leaning opposition figures, while sparking attacks in hard-line Iranian media.
Pahlavi has repeatedly said he is not seeking the return of the monarchy but wants to play a part in creating the first secular democratic system in Iran's history.
"To say that my father was the king, and whatever happened then I have to assume responsibility for that, is a kind of irrational proposition," he said in Munich.
"If I had the option between a secular republic and the monarchy, I would choose the republic," he said, while acknowledging that "you cannot eliminate an option if part of the nation may want to discuss it".
"What will happen at the end, I leave it to the constitutional assembly to debate over this," he said.
His preference, nevertheless, is "to be out there in the full debate, with absolute freedom of expressing my views."

Iran freedom struggle stars at Berlin film fest

AFP
February 18, 2023
The Berlin film festival, long a champion of Iran's embattled independent directors, is spotlighting its citizens' fight for basic rights with a series of screenings, events and a red-carpet protest.
French-Iranian actor Golshifteh Farahani, who is serving on the jury for the top prizes with president Kristen Stewart, said as the festival kicked off Thursday that cinema was a crucial fuel for the freedom movement.
"In a country like Iran that is a dictatorship, art is not only an intellectual or philosophical thing, it's essential, it's like oxygen," she said.
Farahani made her name in Iranian movies and became an international star in productions such as Jim Jarmusch's "Paterson" opposite Adam Driver.
She and Stewart joined the red-carpet demonstration for women's rights in Iran on Saturday with festival chief Mariette Rissenbeek, who told AFP the Berlinale stood with Iranian directors who "weren't allowed to travel to the festival".
The Berlinale, Europe's first major cinema showcase of the year, has awarded its Golden Bear top prize to many of the leading lights of Iranian cinema including Asghar Farhadi ("A Separation"), Jafar Panahi ("Taxi") and Mohammad Rasoulof ("There Is No Evil").
Iran, rocked by months of anti-government rallies, this month released Panahi and Rasoulof from prison along with several dozen other well-known detainees in an apparent attempt to appease critics.
This year, the festival is showing several documentaries, including Steffi Niederzoll's "Seven Winters in Tehran" and "My Worst Enemy" by Mehran Tamadon, which expose the brutal conditions in Iran's jails as well as rampant executions.
Niederzoll's harrowing film, which includes material smuggled out of Iran, tells the story of Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was hanged in 2014 at the age of 26 for killing a former intelligence officer she maintained had tried to rape her.
Featuring wrenching interviews with her family, who agitated for her freedom and appealed for mercy to the murdered man's son, the film recounts how an international campaign for Jabbari's life arose.
Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who won the best actress award at Cannes last year, narrates the film with letters, journals and text messages Jabbari wrote from jail, where she became a role model for many fellow prisoners.
"We hope that, hand in hand, we can change something with cinema," Amir Ebrahimi told AFP.
"My Worst Enemy" also examines state interrogations, as director Tamadon invites members of Paris's large Iranian exile community to question him using pressure techniques they themselves experienced in custody.
Half expose, half group therapy session, the film asks whether anyone can become an instrument of state oppression, given the chance.
Amir Ebrahimi appears as one of the interrogators and reveals that she was sexually assaulted while in custody by a female doctor during a purported medical exam.
"I couldn't walk for three days," she says.
- 'Shine a light' -
Tamadon told AFP it was "time to forget that the Islamic republic will reform itself".
He hailed the role of Western platforms such as the Berlinale to "shine a light on the violence perpetrated against the Iranian people".
"Iranians in Iran are exhausted -- this gives the energy and motivation to continue to hit the streets."
Milad Alami's drama "Opponent" stars Payman Maadi from "A Separation", as a closeted gay man seeking asylum with his wife and two daughters in northern Sweden.
Alami, who himself moved from Iran to Sweden as a child, said he aimed with his second feature to explore how official repression penetrates even the most intimate relationships, including a marriage.
"There are walls between them (the couple) that created this feeling of not being able to talk to each other," he said in notes for the film.
The wife Maryam senses her husband's inner conflict even as he keeps it under wraps for fear of reprisal. "That's a big thing in Iran," Alami said.
For those who have left Iran, the struggle to find out who they really are begins anew, he said.
"When you come to another country, when freedom is there, how difficult is it to take it?"

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