Tag Archives: IRGC

Ahmadinejad Fires Back at Latest Threats, Accusations of ‘Nationalism’

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In a speech in Iran’s Khuzestan province today, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he “received a message that said, ‘If you become too bold, you’ll pay for it.’”

The president continued, “They ask, ‘Why are you traveling at the end of your term?’ Does it make a difference if it’s the end of the term or the beginning?” As president, Ahmadinejad spent a considerable portion of his time traveling to Iran’s various provinces to shore up support for his administration. He is accused of doing so now to campaign in an unofficial capacity for his ally Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who has not yet announced his candidacy. The message of which Ahmadinejad speaks to is most likely in reference to his bold campaigning efforts and statements.

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Rafsanjani Denies Controversial Remarks About Khamenei, Revolutionary Guard

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On April 16, Saham News, a website close to Mehdi Karroubi, published an article which quoted an anonymous source who was present at a meeting between the head of the Expediency Council, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and provincial governors during Rafsanjani’s and Mohammad Khatami’s presidencies. The following day, the public-relations department of the Expediency Council denied the reports attributed to Rafsanjani.

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Iran Police Dress Suspect in Women’s Clothing, Parade Him in Public

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A group of parliament members have signed a letter of protest after police officials had reportedly forced a suspect to wear women’s clothing in public. According to Digarban, this event took place on April 13. According to Nasim online, which originally reported the story, the event took place in the city of Marivan, in Iran’s Kurdish region near the Iran-Iraq border.

The parliament members had “sought to notify the interior and justice ministers” of the event. Security officers had reportedly forced a “famous street thug” to wear women’s clothing and then paraded him in public. The parliament members who signed the letter, including the representative from Marivan, wrote that “this action is against Islamic values and it degrades the clothing and character of Muslim women.”

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Khamenei Rep: US-Iran War Due to ‘Conflict of Beliefs’

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The Supreme Leader’s representative to Sepah [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] said, “A soft war comes from the conflict of beliefs, and our war today with America also comes from this conflict of beliefs, and in this war all of Islam stands against all of the unbelievers.”

Hojat al-Islam Ali Saeedi, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to Sepah, warned that “when the enemy cannot move forward with a soft war, they will start a hard war.” He made these statements in the eastern city of Mashhad yesterday.

The term “soft war” is often referred to as a cultural war that many Iranian officials believe the US and the West are waging against Iran to change the identity and tastes of its public, so that it becomes more friendly to the West and, in their eyes, less Islamic.

Saeedi framed Iran’s standing in the Islamic world this way: “The Islamic Republic of Iran is holding the banner of Islam and it is standing against two imperfect forms of Islam.” The first Islam he described as one “that has taken the shape of al-Qaeda, which has been promoted from the Salafi-Wahabi Arab countries [in the Persian Gulf].” The second “imperfect Islam” that Saeedi believes Iran stands against is from the Western, “secularized Islam, such as one that is present in Turkey.” Continue reading →

Iran General: Israel’s Apology To Turkey Meant to Weaken ‘Regional Resistance’

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Iran’s Deputy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces said that “the apology from the prime minister of the Zionist regime to the government of Turkey for the attacks on the [Turkish] ship in 2010 is a new game by America, Israel and Turkey to influence regional resistance, especially the Islamic Awaking [Arab Spring].”

IRGC General Massoud Jazayeri told Sepah News on Saturday that “under today’s conditions, the prime movement of the world arrogance is to replace Iran’s [place] in the Islamic world.” He added that “the elite of the Islamic world must be alert and conscious and not allow America and its allies to lessen public awareness.”

On President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to apologize for Israel’s raid on a Turkish ship that was attempting to pass through its naval blockade of the Gaza strip in 2010. The raid left nine dead. Netanyahu was quoted as saying that the crisis in Syria was “his main motivation” for the call.

General Jazayeri added that the “the combination of those against Syria proves the government’s and country’s legitimacy.” He explained that “right now, America, England, France, Arab reactionaries, Turkey, and the Zionist regime form the prime anti-Syrian ring and this combination is a good indication of an anti-resistance front.” Iran sees itself, Syria and Hezbollah in an “axis of resistance” against American and Israeli influence in the region. They view the support by the West and Gulf Arab countries as a means to weaken this axis.

Ahmadinejad Ally Warns About Interference in Elections

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In an interview with state-run IRNA yesterday, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei said that “the president has strongly emphasized and has even stated that if he feels that either secretly or openly the elections become tainted, he will deal with it seriously.” Mashei said that in a meeting with the governors of the provinces the president warned against “showing partisanship” towards any of the candidates during the administration of the elections.

Iran’s presidential elections are in June 2013 and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been using the final months of his presidency to campaign and promote his longtime advisor Mashei as a candidate for the presidency. Since the president’s second term Mashaei has been attacked by conservatives and hardliners for an apparent promotion of “Iranianism” over “Islamism” and has been accused of being at the center of a “deviant” strain within the administration.

President Ahmadinejad had previously warned on several occasions about “interference” in these upcoming elections. In January of this year, Hojat al-Islam Ali Saeedi, Khamenei’s representative in the Revolutionary Guard said that “[the body's essence] is to engineer the elections logically and rationally.”

Mashaei also criticized national media for their coverage of the elections. He said that “on the threshold of elections, from the view of partisanship towards candidates in the upcoming presidential elections, the national media has not performed well.” He added that “people remember well the performance the national media in the previous elections and that the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) should act with care and pursue a more moderate path.”

In the June 2009 elections, heated and somewhat sensational televised live debates between presidential candidates drew in millions of viewers. Live televised debates have been banned for these upcoming elections.

“Mr. Obama: We Have Our Options on the Table, Too”

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General Seyyed Massoud Jazayeri, Deputy General of the Armed Forces, told Sepah News yesterday that “Iranian commanders had been given the authority to immediately respond to any hostile action from the enemy.” According to Sepah, this was in response to “threats made from some of the Zionist [Israeli] leaders.”

Jazayeri said that “the era of childish games of threats and intimidation with carrots and sticks is over, such that if greedy countries do not have a correct understanding of the world’s and region’s situation today, they will encounter many and unforeseeable problems.” He added that “the the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran are popular” and that “our enemies are operating under their own illusions, with thousands of lies against Sepah and Basij to distort society’s view of us.”

After the contested 2009 elections, Sepah, also known as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), actively sided with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s support of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Sepah also controls Khatam Al-Anbia, one of Iran’s largest contracting firms. Their dominance in politics and business has angered many in Iran.

Jazayeri concluded with a warning to President Barrack Obama. “Mr. Obama,” he said, “Do not be mistaken; our options are on our table, too. Before you get more entangled in a quagmire in this region, go back home.” In an interview last Thursday with Israeli TV, President Obama said that he told Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu that if negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program are not resolved, the United States continues “to keep all options on the table.”

Iranian Hospitals May Soon Face Shortage of Anesthetics

The head of pharmacy at Tehran University Medical Sciences School of Pharmacy has warned about the lack of anesthetics in Iran.

Kheirollah Gholami told Iranian Labor News Agency that “Tehran University Medical Sciences hospitals presently don’t have a shortage of anesthetics,” but that “anesthetics such as atracurium, sevoflurane, and isoflurane either do not exist in the markets or are very low.” Gholami warned that “if this continues, we really don’t know what we’ll do.”

When asked by reporters what sort of measures have been devised to face this crisis, Gholami responded that “we have to pray, because if we can’t acquire the anesthetics we’ll have to close our operating rooms,” adding that “it’s up to the minister of health to address this situation.”

Gholami blamed sanctions and the lack of funding for the shortage.

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Earlier last week, Fatemeh Nikpour conducted an extensive Q&A with Dr. Akbar Abdullahi, the president of Abidi Pharmaceutical Company, to discuss the medicine crisis in Iran. Abdullahi said that “the primary reason for the medicine shortage in Iran is domestic politics and challenges as opposed to international sanctions.”

Abdollahi listed a number of management issues which have contributed to Iran’s medicine crisis, such as decisions made “without considering all the sides,” “interference from political and oversight organizations” and “a lack of cooperation.” Abdollahi added that “many American companies have a license from the State Department to export medicine to us because medicine is not sanctioned, but we have a problem with securing and transferring money.”

Abdollahi recounted a tale in which he said that “the head of Iran’s Food and Drug Administration was consulting and trying to free up Iranian money that had been blocked by a European source, and he was succeeding, but with the removal of the health minister, these efforts were suspended. In the time it took the new health minister to investigate this, many opportunities were lost.”

The previous health minister, Dr. Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, was fired in December 2012 after publicly complaining that the administration had not allocated the proper funds for the purchase of medicine.

Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei on Argo

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Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the chief of the Secretariat of the Non-Aligned Movement and a controversial ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has defended his recent spate of meetings with foreign leaders, claiming that they were “always in the office of the President”.

Mashaei also commented on the Oscar winner for Best Picture, Argo, claiming that “there is no doubt that in these kinds of things politics has a role, but [to reckon] every action is entirely political is also not the case and it is not possible to judge…I have not seen this film and only heard that it is against Iran, but I have not seen it [to know] what its anti-Iranian dimensions are…If it has questioned Iranian smarts it has made a big mistake. If Iranians did not have a great intelligence, the name ‘Iran’ would now no longer exist”.

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IRGC Commander: Downing drones was “serious demand” of Supreme Leader

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Brigadier Amir Ali Hajji Zadeh, Commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s aerial forces has said that the downing of American drones was the “serious demand” of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hajji Zadeh added that Ayatollah Khamenei, “emphasised that the drones are not seen, but they collect information and thus striking and downing them was part of the serious demands of the Supreme Leader from the commanders”.

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Ahmadinejad government-affiliated news site shoots back at IRGC criticism

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Shabake-ye Iran which is tied to the government affiliated Iran Newspaper has criticized a number of high ranking members of the Revolutionary Guard and their criticisms of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, going as far as to say, “perhaps Iran is the only country where some of its military servicemen up to this level, at any moment they desire, can attack the highest office [i.e. the presidency]”.

The article also complains of the lack of oversight vis-à-vis the political manoeuvring of the Revolutionary Guards, even frontally attacking Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative in the Revolutionary Guards, Hojjat al-Islam Ali Saeidi:

“Apparently the investigator in the Revolutionary Guards is the person of Hojjat al-Islam Saeidi, but his position is clear. Perhaps Mr. Saeidi needs at times an investigator himself”.

Over the last year Ahmadinejad’s relations with a section of the Revolutionary Guards has noticeably deteriorated, to some extent paralleling the president’s uneasy relationship with Iran’s Supreme Leader. As a result some frank criticism and jibes being exchanged between the two.

Shabake-ye Iran also claimed that the previous Political Deputy of the Revolutionary Guards, Ali Ashraf Nuri, was cast aside because of his “moderate” positions regarding the government. His successor by contrast, Commander Rasul Sanai Rad, is a known critic of President Ahmadinejad and the incumbent government. It has been implied on numerous occasions by government affiliated outlets that his appointment was political in nature.

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Revolutionary Guards’ political deputy accuses Ahmadinejad of narcissism and delusion

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The political deputy of the Revolutionary Guards, Rasul Sanai Rad, without mentioning the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by name, has criticized the latter’s failure to write a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, clearly apologizing for his recent conduct.

In a meeting of Revolutionary Guard commanders in Semnan province, Sanai Rad stated that someone who claims to have “esteem” for the Supreme Leader, but in a “narcissistic” atmosphere, is not prepared to write a letter apologizing, cannot account for such inconsistency in his behavior.

The reference to sentiments of “esteem” or “regard” for the Supreme Leader is a clear reference to the president’s most recent letter to the Supreme Leader in the aftermath of the controversial exchange of insults and threats that took place between Majles speaker, Ali Larijani, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the course of the impeachment hearing of the government’s labor minister. Since the incident, both Majles speaker, Ali Larijani, and judiciary chief, Sadeq Larijani, have sent letters of contrition to Khamenei.

Sanai Rad added that a number of individuals who entered the political fray with “the slogan for unfurling the flag of justice and fighting corruption” are “after the preservation of power at any price” and are “involved in manifest deviance.”

The Revolutionary Guard commander stressed that “in political psychology, an individual who finds himself engrossed in political narcissism and who thinks himself superior to others, is not able to accept criticism, doesn’t accept the word of others and becomes susceptible to delusion.”

Sanai Rad’s appointment late last year as political deputy to the IRGC was regarded as a political decision by Ahmadinejad government supporters, as he has proven to be a regular and stinging critic of the administration.

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