The report – which the Associated Press said is the first time authorities have offered any sort of accounting for the violence used to quell the demonstrations — comes a day after Amnesty International estimated that at least 208 people have been killed since they began in mid-November.

“This alarming death toll is further evidence that Iran’s security forces went on a horrific killing spree, that left at least 208 people dead in less than a week,” Philip Luther, research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, previously said in a statement.

“Since the Iranian authorities have previously shown they are unwilling to carry out independent, impartial and effective investigations into unlawful killings and other arbitrary use of force against protesters, we are calling on the international community to help ensure accountability,” he added.

People walk past buildings that were burned during recent protests, in Shahriar, Iran, on Nov. 20. (AP)

IRANIAN ACTIVIST SAYS UNREST IS ‘TOTALLY DIFFERENT’ FROM PAST PROTESTS AGAINST REGIME

The statement also said Amnesty viewed footage showing security forces shooting unarmed protesters.

An Iranian judiciary official though has disputed the Amnesty toll as “sheer lies,” without offering any evidence to support his position. Iran shut down internet access amid the unrest, blocking those inside the country from sharing their videos and information.

The recent demonstrations — while not drawing as many Iranians into the streets as the 2009 protests over the country’s disputed presidential election — rapidly turned violent, faster than previous rallies.

They started after authorities raised minimum gasoline prices by 50 percent, to 15,000 Iranian rials per liter. That’s 12 cents a liter, or about 50 cents a gallon. After a monthly 60-liter quota, the cost then rises to 30,000 rials a liter, which is nearly 24 cents a liter or 90 cents a gallon. An average gallon of regular gas in the U.S. costs $2.58 by comparison, according to AAA.

IRAN CONSIDERED STRIKING US BASES BEFORE DECIDING ON SAUDI ARABIAN OIL FIELD

Shattered windows line a building that was set ablaze during protests over government-set gasoline prices rises, in Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 20. (AP)

Cheap gasoline is practically considered a birthright in Iran, home to the world’s fourth-largest crude oil reserves despite decades of economic woes since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. That disparity, especially given Iran’s oil wealth, fueled the anger felt by demonstrators.

The state TV report Tuesday alleged that some of those killed were “rioters who have attacked sensitive or military centers with firearms or knives or have taken hostages in some areas.” The report described others killed as passers-by, security forces and peaceful protesters, without assigning blame for their deaths.

In one case, the report said security forces confronted a separatist group armed with “semi-heavy weapons” in the city of Mahshahr in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province. The surrounding oil-rich province’s Arab population long has complained of discrimination by Iran’s central government and insurgent groups have attacked oil pipelines in the past there. Online videos purportedly from the area showed peaceful protests, as well as clashes between demonstrators and security forces.

“The marshes you see behind me and on the right are where hostile groups were hiding and shooting at the police, but praise to Allah, the armed forces deftly and vigilantly came to the field and foiled their plots,” Mahshahr police chief Col. Reza Papi said in the report.

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State TV also acknowledged that security forces confronted “rioters” in Tehran, as well as in the cities of Shiraz and Sirjan. It also mentioned Shahriar, a suburb of Tehran where Amnesty on Monday said there had been “dozens of deaths.” It described the suburb as likely one of the areas with the highest toll of those killed in the unrest. Shahriar has seen heavy protests.

Amnesty International offered no breakdown for the deaths elsewhere in the country, though it said: “the real figure is likely to be higher.”

Fox News’ Danielle Wallace and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-state-run-tv-security-forces-shot-killed-rioters-gas-price-protests

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Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday announced to state media that the Islamic Republic had completed construction of a facility capable of producing advanced centrifuges at its nuclear plant Natanz, fulfilling threats that it would continue nuclear production in the event that the US withdraw from the 2014 nuclear deal and slap heavy sanctions on the country.

“Khamenei ordered us to set up and complete a very advanced hall for the construction of modern centrifuges, and this hall has now been fully equipped and set up,” said the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization to IRNA news agency, according to Reuters.

In recent months, Iran has made known its plans to increase its uranium enrichment capacity. In May, following the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, a letter was submitted to the Atomic Energy Agency “regarding the start of certain activities,” according to Salehi, indicating work had begun on the infrastructure for building advanced centrifuges at the Natanz facility.

However, Salehi vowed in the letter that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear activities would remain within the framework of the crumbling agreement.

“What we are doing does not violate the (2015 nuclear) agreement,” he said, noting that this was just the start of the production process and “does not mean that we will start assembling the centrifuges.”

Under the landmark deal, Iran can build parts for the centrifuges as long as it does not put them into operation within the first decade.

Salehi also emphasized that these moves “do not mean the negotiations [with Europe] have failed.”

The Iran nuclear deal is among the multilateral agreements that Trump bashes as part of his “America First” stance. Here, Iranians gather next to a replica of a Ghadr medium-range ballistic missile during a demonstration in Tehran on November 4, 2017   ATTA KENARE (AFP/File)

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Brigadier General Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, criticized Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 12-point plan for potentially reaching a new nuclear agreement with Iran after President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 deal earlier this month. In his first major policy speech as top U.S. diplomat, Pompeo said last week that any new agreement would have to include an Iranian commitment to end support for militant groups abroad and ballistic missile development, something Iranian officials have roundly rejected.

“They think Iran should end the development of its missile (program),” Salami said at a ceremony in Tehran, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency. “Since they cannot force us, they ask us to do it, ourselves.”

“No one can destroy our missile power and if they are afraid they can go to shelters,” he added.

An Iranian military truck carries missiles past a portrait of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a parade on the occasion of the country’s annual army day on April 18, 2018 in Tehran. Iran’s production of non-nuclear missiles and support for foreign groups were not covered by the 2015 nuclear accords reached under the administration of former President Barack Obama.ATTA KENARE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The Revolutionary Guards are widely considered to be Iran’s top fighting force, and they have been involved in regional conflicts as well. Like the U.S., Iran is involved in the government-led battle against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in Iraq, but Iran also supports the Syrian government against ISIS and insurgents, whereas the U.S. backs a mostly Kurdish coalition that also includes Arabs and other ethnic minorities operating mostly outside of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s control in Syria.

In both countries, Iran has backed Shiite Muslim groups considered terrorist organizations by the U.S., including the Lebanese Hezbollah movement in Syria and Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq. Iran’s successful anti-ISIS campaigns in both Iraq and Syria have expanded its regional foothold, but have also produced a violent flare in hostilities between international-backed campaigns. In past months, U.S. and Israeli forces have conducted deadly airstrikes against Iranian and pro-Iran groups in Syria.

Related: Iran Tells U.S.: We Were Invited to Iraq and Syria, What About You?

While not listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department, Yemen’s Zaidi Shiite Muslim Ansar Allah, or Houthi movement, has also been accused of receiving Iranian backing by the U.S. and its Saudi Arabian ally. The insurgents have fired missiles at Saudi Arabia as the kingdom leads a war to expel them from the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.

The U.S. has also alleged Iranian support for Sunni Muslim-designated terrorist groups such as the Palestinian Hamas, Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Iran has charged the U.S. with clandestine support of ISIS, which grew out of an Al-Qaeda-led insurgency following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and a 2011 Syrian uprising backed by the West, Turkey and Gulf Arab states.

A graphic shows the extent of Iran’s ballistic missile program. The U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of destabilizing the region, but Iran has warned it will continue developing its weapons to defend its borders.CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES MISSILE DEFENSE PROJECT

Trump’s May 8 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement came despite pleas for the U.S. to remain by European allies and other leading powers. With U.S. nuclear-related sanctions going back into effect, Iran has expressed skepticism about staying a party to the deal, but Tehran’s diplomats have met with fellow signatories China, France, Germany, Russia and the U.K. in an attempt to salvage it.

The U.S. and Iran have been deeply mistrustful of one another since the 1979 Islamic Revolution brought the current theocratic leadership to power in Iran, ousting a pro-West absolute monarch who was reinstalled by a CIA coup in 1953. The countries have not maintained formal relations for decades and U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia have pushed Trump to adopt a tougher policy against Iran.

Source: http://www.newsweek.com/iran-says-no-can-destroy-our-missile-power-not-even-us-948120

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The protesters rallied for days in Iran, chanting against government corruption and demanding justice.

That was last year, when depositors who lost their savings in the collapse of major government-run credit union took to the streets, shouting “Death to (Valiullah) Seif,” Iran’s Central Bank governor.

In the past 10 days, there were new protests, the largest in Iran since its 2009 disputed presidential election, fueled by young people angry over their bleak prospects. This time, they shouted slogans against President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a figure seen as subordinate only to God by hard-liners.

The new unrest appears to be waning, but anger over the economy persists. The protests in dozens of towns and cities also showed that a sector of the public was willing to openly call for the removal of Iran’s system of rule by clerics — frustrated not just by the economy but also by concern over Iran’s foreign wars and general direction.

That sentiment likely extends beyond those who took to the streets. But the protests also showed the constraints on discontent. Fear of reprisals probably kept some people away from the protests, but so did worry over chaos that might result from unrest and hope that gains could still be made within the system.

ECONOMIC WOES

The collapse last year of the Caspian Credit Institute, which promised depositors returns often seen in Ponzi schemes, showed the economic desperation faced by many in Iran. Retirees unable to make ends meet on their pensions can be found driving many of the taxis crowding Tehran’s roads. Universities turn out students with no hope of employment in their fields, while those lucky enough to have work often have a second or even a third job.

Banks remain saddled with bad loans, a warning repeatedly sounded by the International Monetary Fund. Some of this stretches back to the days of nuclear sanctions, while others find themselves mired in the murky finances of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which is estimated to control a third of the total economy.

Inflation, initially brought under control by Rouhani, has slipped back into double digits, according to recent figures. He cut some subsidies offered by his hard-line predecessor, the Holocaust-questioning populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Those subsidies benefited rural and poor voters in the provinces, the same people who appear to have taken to the streets in the recent protests, initially sparked by food prices.

The government likely will offer either subsidized food prices or new cash handouts to soothe anger in the provinces, although how that comes about remains to be seen. But the unrest has had one benefit: It has helped boost global oil prices to over $60 a barrel, providing desperately needed hard currency to the OPEC-member nation.

BATTLEFIELD SUCCESS

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran has expanded its presence across the Middle East as a counter to the American bases that dot the Arab Gulf countries surrounding it. The U.S. military accused Iran of training insurgents in Iraq who targeted its troops with roadside bombs, and Tehran has powerful influence over Iraq’s Shiite-led government.

The rise of the Islamic State group, as well as the Syrian civil war, threatened Iran’s allies, and it responded by sending the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds expeditionary force into both Iraq and Syria.

In Iraq, Iranian advisers turned Shiite militias into a powerful ground force against IS extremists.

In Syria, President Bashar Assad appeared to be on the ropes until Iran fully entered the conflict. He held onto his presidency with Quds force generals leading foreign fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well Iranian-supported Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon.

In Yemen, the U.S. and other Western powers accused Tehran of supplying Shiite rebels with ballistic missile technology.

Protesters denounced the money going to support these groups rather than helping people in Iran.

But the success abroad also is used by the state to drum up support. Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani has been elevated to a folk hero among some Iranians. An assault in June by the Islamic State group targeting Tehran — a rare terrorist attack in the Iranian capital — also galvanized support by the public, which fears a return of the bombings and unrest that immediately followed the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranians also see the aftermath of wars in the region as serving to protect the Islamic Republic’s Shiite-dominated government.

NEW ERA LOOMS

Approaching the 40th anniversary of the revolution, Iran increasingly will consider who follows the 78-year-old Khamenei, who underwent prostate surgery in 2014. Among those under consideration is Rouhani, himself a cleric. Both the U.S. and analysts studying Iran say hard-liners initially fomented the economic protests to put pressure on Rouhani but quickly lost control of them.

Iranian law bars Rouhani from seeking a third term, so Iran’s 2021 presidential election will see a wide-open field. Hard-liners at one point called for an earlier presidential election, saying Rouhani’s policies had failed, although that bid went nowhere.

The economic resentment seen in recent days could prompt the rise of another Ahmadinejad-style hard-line populist — if Iran’s clerical leadership allows such a candidacy.

It’s hard to tell right now who emerged stronger after the protests — Rouhani or his hard-line opponents.

Each tried to wield anger over the economy against the other. Weeks before the protests, Rouhani publicly complained that large parts of the government budget went to religious institutions, largely seen as power bases of the hard-liners, seeking to deflect blame over the economy. From the other side, it is widely believed that the hard-liners were the ones who initially stoked the protests to embarrass Rouhani, only to see the demonstrations turn against the entire ruling establishment.

PROTESTS WANE, ANGER REMAINS

Authorities managed to stifle the protests in part by blocking access to the messaging app Telegram, through which demonstrators organized the rallies and shared images from the streets. The Revolutionary Guard’s volunteer Basiji force also was deployed and police have arrested hundreds; more than 20 protesters were killed, although security forces did not engage in the level of bloodshed that followed the 2009 protests.

Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they supported the protesters, without apparently providing any aid. The protests quickly raised the hopes of those abroad who want to see an end to the Islamic Republic.

But for now, that won’t be happening. Instead, Iran’s ruling system faces a future of grappling with the effects of economic woes that have proven to be unpredictable and potentially volatile.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell, an Associated Press reporter since 2006, has covered the Middle East from Cairo and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, since 2013. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap . His work can be found at http://apne.ws/2galNpz .

EDITOR’S NOTE _ Jon Gambrell, an Associated Press reporter since 2006, has covered the Middle East from Cairo and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, since 2013.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/analysis-iran-protests-show-danger-of-economic-woes/2018/01/08/dc795e96-f49a-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html

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The Arab Middle East is currently being carved into spheres of influence by imperial powers. They seek international prestige and covet the region’s energy resources and geo-strategic location.

That may sound a familiar narrative, but this time, those powers are not Britain, France or the United States, but rather Iran and Turkey, two non-Arab states with imperial pasts who wish to reassert their domination.

One hundred years marks the Balfour Declaration, Great Britain’s 1917 letter in support of a Jewish home in Palestine. The declaration was London’s attempt to subvert the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement that aimed to establish British-French spheres of influence in the Middle East, with France presiding over what is now Syria and Lebanon and Britain over Iraq and Jordan. Palestine was left to be internationalized.

But having invested time, people and treasure in the Middle Eastern theater of World War I, Britain was resentful of France’s share.

London demanded both Mosul, the oil region to the north of Iraq, and Palestine with the holy city of Jerusalem to serve as a buffer to both the Suez Canal and the route to the crown jewel of the British Empire, India.

The Balfour Declaration paved the way for the British Mandate over Palestine, which London maintained until the Jewish state of Israel was declared in May 1948, six months after the United Nations resolution in favor of partition. The Arab-Israeli war that followed claimed the lives of 1 per cent of the nascent Jewish state’s population and led to the dispersal of the Palestinian people.

But that was then. Today, with the approval of Russia, Iran and Turkey seek to dominate the Arab world for the same reasons as Britain and France before them: Energy, geostrategic interests, trade, and good old-fashioned prestige.

The successor of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey considers itself a global power. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently remarked that the UN needs structural reform because the world is bigger than the five permanent members of the Security Council, adding that Istanbul should be made a UN center.

Turkey attempts to assert regional influence at every turn. Ankara set up a military base in Qatar, intervened in Syria and wishes to involve itself in nearly every regional development including the Gulf crisis, the Iraqi Kurdish referendum and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

There’s also significant economic interests at stake. Since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came into power in 2002, Turkey sought to increase business and trade links with the Middle East. Currently, Ankara is seeking to raise the volume of trade between Turkey and the Arab world to $70 billion, a sharp increase from the $9 billion it was worth in 2003.

Dormant in Turkey’s imperial psyche is the post-World War I question of Mosul, which Ankara claimed was its territory. Although international arbitration ruled the province part of Iraq, many a Turkish nationalist considers Mosul rightfully theirs.

Over the past few years Ankara propped up Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRG) as a local proxy, using him to win lucrative energy and construction projects. Ankara then played the imperial game of divide and rule by switching allegiance to Baghdad following the Kurdish independence referendum and was rewarded big-time by Baghdad which promised to reopen its pipeline to Turkey. Meanwhile, twice Turkey has intervened in Syria, maintaining a presence in the north of the country.

Iran also has a long imperial history stretching from the ancient Achaemenid Empire to the Qajars, who were replaced by modern Pahlavi dynasty of Shah.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has made enormous domestic sacrifices including sanctions, poverty, isolation and massive loss of life in order to achieve imperial grandeur. This includes Ayatollah Khomeini’s fateful decision to reject Saddam Hussein’s offer for a truce in 1980, prolonging the Iran-Iraq War for another 8 years in the hope of gaining territory to the cost of over one million lives.

Iran has exploited sectarian divisions in neighboring states, sowing the seeds of discord by sponsoring Shia militants in countries as far afield as Lebanon and Yemen in an attempt to carve a crescent of influence in the region.

Despite crippling sanctions, Tehran invested billions of dollars in constructing intercontinental ballistic weapons, developing nuclear energy, and sponsoring regional militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas which have managed to build Iranian sponsored states within states.

Iran was able to further carve its sphere of influence by sponsoring Shia paramilitary militias in Iraq as well as having the ear of the government of Baghdad. In Syria, Tehran managed to maintain influence by supporting Hezbollah and the chemical weapon wielding regime of Bashar al-Assad, all under the guise of the Astana process, an attempt for an international seal of approval not unlike the post-World War I peace conferences that legitimized Britain and France’s hold over the region.

It was once the imperial powers of Britain and France which shaped the Middle East, but today, one hundred years after Sykes-Picot and the Balfour declaration, it is Iran and Turkey which seek to replace them.

Dr Simon A. Waldman is a Mercator-IPC fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center and a visiting research fellow at King’s College London. He is the co-author of the recently published The New Turkey and Its Discontents (Oxford University Press: 2017). Twitter: @simonwaldman1

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.820356

The post Opinion Balfour Is History. The Middle East’s New Imperialists Are Turkey and Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.