Category: Iran

Under Iran’s theocratic dictatorship atheist Soheil Arabi faced death for blasphemy

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Amnesty, Atheist, Council of Ex-Muslims, death for blasphemy, Iran, Soheil Arabi, Supreme Leader

Thousands were released in Iran, but not atheist prisoner Soheil Arabi
The activist and blogger sentenced to blasphemy is on hunger strike

By Rahila Gupta  

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Soheil_Arabi_2014
Soheil Arabi. Photo: Nano GoleSorkh

If lockdown has deepened our empathy with the predicament of inmates in our jails, it has also released innovative means of protest on behalf of political prisoners locked up in brutal conditions. On 14th April, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain organised a self-declared first: a three-hour online protest, live-streamed on Facebook, mixing music, poetry and an array of international speakers, in support of Soheil Arabi.

Arabi is an atheist, activist and blogger. He’s in an Iranian prison, in bad shape both emotionally and physically. His crime? Blasphemy: writing insulting Facebook posts about the prophet Muhammad, the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei and other Iranian officials. Arabi was arrested in December 2013 and sentenced to death for blasphemy. In July 2015, upon appeal, his death sentence was reduced to seven and a half years in prison and two years of religious studies to cure him of his atheism. In addition to physical problems caused by various hunger strikes, Arabi has been tortured, resulting in blunt trauma to his testicles and a broken nose, amongst other injuries.

Refusing to be silenced, he was later sentenced to an additional three years in prison, exile and a fine on charges of “propaganda against the state” and “insulting the sacred and the supreme leader” because of his open letters highlighting inhumane prison conditions of political prisoners in Iran. As if to rub the mullahs’ noses in it, he signs letters as Soheil Arabi, Atheist.

Iran, Pakistan and Yemen are the three worst countries in regard to the implementation of blasphemy law, often used to harass religious and ethnic minorities. (See my interview with Saif ul-Malook, the lawyer who represented Asia Bibi. A Christian woman, Bibi spent nine years in prison on confected charges of blasphemy, many of those on death row, before the sentence was commuted to life.) According to The Freedom of Thought report 2019, blasphemy laws exist in 69 countries and is punishable by death in six.

We don’t know the number of prisoners sentenced to death for blasphemy in Iran. Figures are hard to come by. A 2018 Amnesty report put the number of individuals executed at over 253, while 18 were convicted of moharebeh (enmity against God) and 14 of “spreading corruption on earth”, vague terms for blasphemy much in vogue in Iran. Any criticism of the state can be deemed a religious offence and has proven a handy mechanism for controlling dissent.

Arabi resumed his hunger strike on April 4 in protest at the Iranian regime’s denial of medical care, inhuman prison conditions and the denial of leave for prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic. In a bid to stop the spread of the virus, more than 85,000 prisoners were released on temporary leave, including the more well-known political prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian citizen imprisoned for allegedly “plotting to topple the Iranian government”. In his letter to the Greater Tehran Penitentiary announcing his hunger strike, Arabi asks, “And I have been imprisoned for telling the truth. Those who had embezzled money were granted prison leave and are now at large. Armed robbers are now at large. What is the danger of a journalist?”

Atheism is a red rag to religion in a way that religion rarely is to atheism – unless we are talking about authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union. It’s a point that is often eclipsed in liberal democracies where freedom of belief often trumps the freedom not to believe. Of course, in countries like Iran, neither freedom exists.

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Obama Crushes the Neocons

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Iran, Neocons

Obama Crushes the Neocons
The agreement signed with Iran on Sunday is a momentous step forward. Yet Republicans will try to subvert the success by playing to their Obama-hating base.

Well, the ayatollah appears to have lent his provisional support to the historic U.S.-Iran accord announced Saturday night. In a letter to President Hassan Rouhani, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said the deal “can be the basis for further intelligent actions.” Now we just need sign-off from our American ayatollahs. But the early indications are that the Republicans, eager to perform Bibi Netanyahu’s bidding—not that they needed a second reason to oppose something Barack Obama did—will do everything within their power to stop the thing going forward.

We shouldn’t get too carried away in praising this accord just yet. It’s only a six-month arrangement while the longer-term one is worked out. Those talks are going to be harder than these were, and it’s not at all a stretch to envision them collapsing at some point. Iran is going to have to agree to a regular, more-or-less constant inspection regime that would make it awfully hard for Tehran to be undertaking weapons-grade enrichment. It’s easy to see why they agreed to this deal, to buy time and get that $4.2 billion in frozen oil revenues. But whether Iran is going to agree to inspections like that is another question.

Still, it is indeed a historic step. Thirty-four years of not speaking is a long time. So it’s impressive that this got done at all, and even more impressive are some of the inner details, like the fact that Americans and Iranians have been in direct and very secret negotiations for a year. Rouhani’s election does seem to have made a huge positive difference—four of five secret meetings centered in Oman have been held since Rouhani took office, which seems to be a pretty clear indication that he wants a long-term deal to happen.

So this is potentially, I emphasize potentially, a breakthrough that could have numerous positive reverberations in the region—not least among them the virtual elimination of the chance that the United States and Iran would end up at war. And what a refutation of those harrumphing warmongers! I’d love to have had a tap on John Bolton’s phone over the weekend, or Doug Feith’s, or Cheney’s, and heard the combination of perfervid sputtering and haughty head shaking as they lament Obama’s choice.

Well, then, let’s compare choices. They chose war, against a country that never attacked us, had no capability whatsoever to attack us, and had nothing to do with the allegedly precipitating event, 9/11. We fought that war because 9/11 handed the neocons the excuse they needed to dope the public into supporting a unilateral war of hegemony. It has cost us more than $2 trillion now. It’s taken the lives of more than 100,000 people. It has been the author of the trauma of thousands of our soldiers, their limbs left over there, their families sundered. And on the subject of Iran, the war of course did more to strengthen Iran in the region than Obama could dream of doing at his most Machiavellian-Manchurian. Fine, the world is well rid of Saddam Hussein. But these prices were far too steep.

Then along came Obama in 2008, saying he’d negotiate with Iran. I’d love to have a nickel for every time he was called “naive” by John McCain or Sarah Palin (after the differences between Iran and Iraq were explained to her) or any of dozens of others (and yeah, even Hillary Clinton). I’d settle for a penny. I’d still be rich. You might think that watching this past decade unfold, taking an honest measure of where the Bush administration’s hideous decisions have left us, that some of them might allow that maybe negotiation was worth a shot.

Of course that will never happen. Marco Rubio was fast out of the gates Sunday, but he will be joined today by many others. Some will be Democrats, yes, from states with large Jewish votes. Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez have already spoken circumspectly of the deal (although interestingly, Dianne Feinstein, as AIPAC-friendly as they come, spoke strongly in favor of it). There will be a push for new sanctions, and that push will be to some extent bipartisan.

But the difference will be that if the Democrats get the sense that the deal is real and can be had, they won’t do anything to subvert it, whereas for the Republicans, this will all be about what it’s always about with them—the politics of playing to their Obama-hating base. But there’ll be two added motivations besides. There’s the unceasingly short-sighted and tragic view of what constitutes security for Israel, which maintains the conditions of near-catastrophe that keep just enough of the Israeli public fearful of change so that they perpetuate in putting people like Netanyahu in power, thus ensuring that nothing will ever change. And perhaps most important of all in psychic terms to the neocons, there is contemplation of the hideous reality that Obama and the path of negotiation just might work. This is the thing the neocons can’t come to terms with at all. If Obama succeeds here, their entire worldview is discredited. Check that; even more discredited.

Rouhani appears to be moving his right wing a bit. Ours, alas, isn’t nearly so flexible as Iran’s.

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How Obama’s Iran deal screwed up Homeland’s third season

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Iran, Obama Iran

How Obama’s Iran deal screwed up Homeland’s third season

 

Thanks a lot, Obama.Thanks a lot, Obama. (Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images, Kent Smith/SHOWTIME)

I am an avid Homeland fan, as is the POTUS.  I doubt that Homeland will be screwed behind the tentative Iran developments…

The Week

Saul Berenson’s grand scheme to assassinate an Iranian official as part of a CIA-orchestrated coup has been bettered by a simpler real-life option: Diplomacy

In a press conference less than 24 hours before Homeland aired the ninth episode of its uneven, Iran-focused third season, President Obama took the podium to offer a brief statement about a breakthrough deal on Iran’s nuclear program. The president described a diplomacy that had “opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure — a future in which we can verify that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and that it cannot build a nuclear weapon. For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back.”

That announcement comes at a strange time for Homeland, which has built a big following by depicting a harrowing post-9/11 political landscape that feels eerily plausible. And the show’s third season has been all about Iran. Homeland‘s vision of the U.S.-Iran relationship shares at least one compelling similarity to real life: The Western world is obsessed with whatever nuclear enrichment might be afoot. But otherwise, the events of this past weekend showcased a sharp contrast between Homeland‘s fiction and the facts of real-life U.S. diplomacy.

The Iran of Homeland‘s third season has fueled nuclear paranoia, and acting CIA director Saul Berenson’s agency has done everything possible to infiltrate this foreign power. As Sunday night’s “One Last Time” revealed, Saul wants to send Nick Brody, a Marine turned terrorist turned fugitive, to kill a high-ranking Iranian intelligence official. This assassination will allow another Iranian official (who the CIA has implausibly blackmailed into working with them) to assume a top position. Saul calls Brody’s target — the head of Iran’s revolutionary guard — “the single greatest impediment to peace” without explaining why. His plan to end a vicious cycle of violence is deploying an assassin. That plotline, brewing all of Homeland’s third season, paints a Manichean picture of U.S.-Iran relations: An unending cycle of terrorist violence, hatred, and confusion.

How strange to have all that murky plotting offset, in the real world, by the first inklings of real dialogue, and an agreement cobbled together in Geneva to buy time and cooperation for something more permanent. In exchange for a reduction in sanctions, Iran will place limits on its much-feared nuclear program. Such news would be unthinkable in Homeland‘s world, and these real-life details mark a sharp contrast to the unsettled post-9/11 world that Homeland revels in.

The drama of Homeland is the drama of the bomber. The show can’t exist without that paranoia, not to mention that often ambiguous line between calm and violence, sanity and bipolar madness. Diplomacy is a distant dream in the world of Homeland. Enemy officials never call each other. Everything is built on backroom deals, blackmail, spying, trickery, and assassination. A deep moral guilt accompanies this battered landscape, as CIA agents like Peter Quinn question the stray causalities they leave behind. The lump-in-the-throat heartstopper of the early seasons revolved around Nick Brody’s rebellion against U.S. drone use and the innocent deaths drones cause.Homeland says the world is already damned, and everyone’s to blame for it.

But there’s a startling disconnect between news of Obama’s outreach, the tentative agreement, and the utter violence of the Iran of Homeland. Because what is Homeland’s Iran if not violent? The series has reached deep into this well of history (often true and troubling, of course), and its convenient thriller narrative in the show’s last several episodes. It assigned blame to Iran for a brutal bombing at Langley, killing more than 200 U.S. citizens. The show marketed this 12/12 attack as a second 9/11, the ghost of which always defines the dynamics at play in Homeland. The villainous Javadi isn’t just the mastermind of killings from afar, but the murderer of his own kin on American soil. Iran, as depicted on Homeland, is incapable of negotiation.

In a recent episode, Sen. Andrew Lockhart scoffs at the idea of blackmailing an Iranian official with knowledge of the official’s corruption. “Which in Iran just means it’s Tuesday,” the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman remarks, writing off the entire country as one of the U.S.’s “sworn enemies.”

“We fry Javadi’s ass publicly,” Lockhart demands, as he seeks to take down the Langley bombing mastermind who serves as an Iranian intelligence chief. This sort of trial strikes Saul as “short-sighted.” Saul would prefer having an asset within Iran, someone the U.S. can “control” to force regime change — the only acceptable option in his mind. (Note to Homeland: The U.S. did something kind of similar 60 years ago. Didn’t work out so well!) To Saul, if the U.S. seizes Javadi and tries him, Iran will inevitably replace Javadi with someone just like him. “And the attack that happened here happens again and again and again,” Saul tells the senator. All of this is fine for drama – but it also showcases the power of Iran in Western imagination, and the divergence between real Iran and TV Iran.

Really, that’s why it’s so bizarre to see this chilling, sinister vision of Iran contrasted with news of a deal crafted between Iran’s government and the U.S., Great Britain, China, Russia, France, and Germany. What would Saul say? Who did the CIA control within Iran to make this possible, Saul? Consider Saul’s explanation for killing an Iranian official and installing his blackmailed bomber in power:

Javadi won’t be just an intelligence source. He’ll be in control of the entire security apparatus. He can do something, something to break the logjam, something besides another war, something that’ll change the facts on the ground just enough, so two countries that haven’t been able to communicate for over 30 years except through terrorist actions and threats can sit down and talk. That’s the play, Carrie. Tell me it’s not worth your time.

Two countries that haven’t been able to communicate. What timing.

This is, of course, the popular conception of Iran, and a testament to how startling the weekend’s agreement really was. The deal blows past the action-movie fantasyland that CIA agents are about to plow into on Homeland. Don’t blame Showtime or Homeland‘s show runners for entrenching that vision of Iran, of course — the frames are certainly common enough. And for a show about U.S. intelligence officials, what better drama than conspiracies and assassinations? But for all the dense plotting of Homeland‘s third season, the real-life events of this weekend punctured Saul’s theories in a big way. It was a welcome dissonance.

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Is The Meme “Nuclear Iran” a Cover For Iran’s Killing and Torture of Dissenters?

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Iran, Iran's Human Rights Violations, Nuclear Iran

The meme of “nuclear Iran” is plastered in every media. This makes convenient cover for Iran’s internal killings and human rights violations. Little attention is given to the slaughter, torture and persecution of minorities, women, atheists, perceived heretics and dissenters!

US Blasts Iran Over Torture And Death Of Blogger

Posted by:– chainsoff

English: Mr. Sayyed Mohammad Beheshti
English: Mr. Sayyed Mohammad Beheshti (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The U.S. has strongly condemned Iran for thetorture and death of Iranian blogger and labor activistSattar Beheshti (35), who as reported, died earlier this week while undergoing interrogation in Evin Prison. “We are appalled by reports that Iranian authorities tortured and killed blogger and activist Sattar Beheshti during a prison interrogation. Besheshti had been arrested for a crime no greater than expressing his political opinion online,” saidVictoria Nuland, U.S. Department spokesperson.

Nuland said that the Iranian government must “investigate this murder, hold accountable those responsible for Beheshti’s arrest, torture, and killing, and immediately cease all reported harassment of Beheshti’s family.” GVF reported that Beheshti’s death occured just one week after his arrest by Iran’s cyber police.

Beheshti was arrested by Iran’s cyber police on national security charges on October 30, who also confiscated the activist’s personal belongings, including his computer and handwritten notes.

Beheshti, the family’s only breadwinner, was reportedly active on Facebook. Iran’s cyber police was launched in January 2011 as part of the nation’s crackdown on online activism. “Sattar Beheshti is just one of thousands of victims of the Iranian government’s campaign of violent repression and efforts to curtail basic freedoms at all costs,” Nuland said

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