THIS PAGE WILL BE UPDATED WITH THE LATEST NEWS
UPDATE: 7:00 PM CEST
Tehran Sets New Conditions for Nuclear Talks
In a letter to the Iranian regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi, 250 members of the regime’s parliament set new conditions that will raise the stakes in the already stalled nuclear talks in Vienna.
The state-run Fars news agency reported today: “The letter emphasizes that experience shows the United States’ unwillingness to provide sufficient guarantees to the Iranian side cannot guarantee the rights of the Iranian people. The new sanctions imposed on some individuals and companies by the United States during the negotiations further shows the malign intentions of the United States and need to be addressed in the final agreement.”
Among the new conditions set for the negotiation team, the US Congress must ratify and guarantee that the US will not abandon the deal in the future, the snapback mechanism be waved from the agreement, the regime be allowed to export oil like during the pre-sanctions era and receive the money through the banking system and that all frozen assets of the regime be released.
The Price of Bread Has Started to Increase
The commercial deputy of the Grain Department in Zanjan Province, Sattar Rahmani, disclosed a plan in which bread will be subsidized and sold on a daily basis in Zanjan and several other provinces. He did not elaborate on the subsidized amount or the price.
While the governor of Zanjan said that the “pilot plan” would be implemented soon and in a limited way, Mehdi Bayat, president of the Zanjan Bakers’ Union, said he was unaware of such a plan.
Upon implementation, if people need to buy bread more than the subsidized number, they have to buy it at a much higher rate at the so-called ‘free market price’.
In order to avoid social shocks and triggering unrest, the Iranian regime has been increasing the prices of essential items by circulating rumors in one or two provinces and then denying the news to test and measure the reaction of the people.
Unprecedented Dust Storms Hit Twenty Two Iranian Provinces
According to the state media, dust and sandstorms continue to sweep through 22 provinces of the country and the air quality in 27 cities of 14 provinces is classified as dangerous.
In Tehran, the air quality in 19 stations has been reported very dangerous. According to state media, Tehran topped the world’s most polluted cities in the last two days.
Noting that dust storms in Tehran have been an unprecedented phenomenon in the past 12 years, the head of the air quality control department of Tehran municipality said: “We will probably face similar situations in the coming days.”
According to the regime’s environmental protection department in Khuzestan, dust storms have affected 16 cities in this province and the amount of dust in Ahvaz has reached 10 times the allowable limit, leading to the closure of offices and educational centers in the province.
In Lorestan province, air pollution reached 10 times the allowable limit. The weather conditions in the cities of Poldakhtar, Doroud, Kuhdasht, and Romeshkan were in dangerous conditions.
In Kermanshah province, unhealthy weather conditions were reported in six cities, including Qasr Shirin, Sarpolzahab, Kangavar, Paveh, Kermanshah, and Islamabad. All schools were closed on Sunday.
The deputy director of the regime’s environmental protection department in West Azerbaijan province said: “With an index of 500, the weather in Sardasht and Bukan is still dangerous and in North Khorasan, the concentration of dust has increased on Sunday.”
UPDATE: 3:30 PM CEST
Tehran-backed Militia Leader Accuses Iraqi Politicians of Being Bound to Foreign Will
Qais Khazali, the leader of the Asaeb Ahl al-Haq, a Tehran-backed militant group in Iraq accused the triple coalition, the Sadrist Movement, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, and the al-Sayyada coalition, of “being tied to foreign powers” and threatened that the Shiite Coordination Framework will not accept any government initiated by Muqtada al-Sadr.
“We do not disagree with the Sadrist faction, but we do disagree about representation and political achievements,” Khazali told Al-Sharqiya TV. He added that Muqtada al-Sadr is calling for the dismantling of Hashad al-Shaabi, a paramilitary group that is taking orders from the Iranian regime’s IRGC Quds Force.
Six months after Iraq’s parliamentary elections, there is still no new government in Baghdad. Following the October 2021 elections, Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc won the most seats with 73 out of 329 in parliament, and the Fatah coalition, led by Hadi Ameri, close to the IRGC-QF, lost about two-thirds of its seats.
In a message to Iranian-backed groups, Muqtada al-Sadr warned that he would refuse to unite with the Tehran-backed ‘Shiite Coordination Framework’ and they in turn, under the Iranian regime’s instructions, are blocking the political process.
Gender Segregation in Tehran Parks Officially Confirmed
Mohammad Aghamiri, a member of the Tehran City Council, confirmed that the state has decided on a new regulation to prevent men from entering 200 different parks in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
“More than 200 parks will be reserved for women, mothers, and children,” he told the state-run Iran Dideban on Saturday, April 9 adding that he believed the presence of men in the parks “is not in the best interest of women”.
Without providing any evidence or citing any polls, he also claimed that “the reason for implementing such a plan was the high demand of the people of Tehran”, and the city council “is only implementing the demands of the people.”
Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran, had previously vowed on Twitter that soon there will be an “adjustment effort for 352 parks in Tehran for mothers, children, women, and girls”.
۳۵۲ #بوستان_تهران برای مادران و کودکان، زنان و دختران مناسبسازی و به زودی ۵ بوستان اختصاصی بانوان نیز به پایتخت اضافه خواهد شد.
امکانات تفریحی تهران باید آرامش بخش همه اعضای #خانواده باشد.— AliReza Zakani 4 | علیرضا زاکانی (@arzakani4) January 16, 2022
UPDATE: 9:30 AM CEST
Slogans of Regime Change in Langarud, North Iran
On Saturday, April 9, at 6:30 PM local time, people in Langarud County, Gilan Province, who had gathered in an open-air market for shopping, came to hear chants of regime change.
Loudspeakers played slogans like “Down with Khamenei, viva Rajavi”, and “We don’t want a king nor a mullah, damn with both of them”.
Also, excerpts of speeches from leaders of the Iranian Resistance were broadcasted accordingly.
April 9 – Langarud, northern #Iran
Anti-regime slogans aired in public
"Death to Khamenei!"
"Hail to Rajavi!"
"We don't want a shah or the mullahs!"
Excerpts of speeches by Iranian Resistance leader Massoud Rajavi.#IranProtests #FreeIran2022 pic.twitter.com/U84Mx9uw7J— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) April 10, 2022
Pakistan Probe Links Iranian Supreme Leader’s Representative to Money Laundering
ISLAMABAD: A money-laundering network in Pakistan transferred a “colossal amount” of allegedly illicit funds to Iran, with a representative of the Iranian supreme leader among the recipients, court documents recently submitted by Pakistani investigators show.
Investigation reports and WhatsApp chat logs — all viewed by Arab News and corroborated by security officials — show that members of the network operated between Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq over the past seven years.
US Condemns IRGC Attack
The US Consulate in Erbil, Iraq, strongly condemned the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile attack on Iraqi soil.
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iraq and Iran Affairs Jennifer Gavito virtually met with a group of IKR journalist and made the following statement. pic.twitter.com/H0nFnsw2sV
— U.S. Consulate General Erbil (@USConGenErbil) April 9, 2022
Why Is the Price of Medicine Skyrocketing in Iran?
The price of imported medicine has increased by a factor of six, Bahram Darai, the president of Iran’s Food and Drug Administration, acknowledged in an interview with the state-run Hamshahri newspaper on April 3. Darai also admitted that the price of domestically produced medicine has increased 30 to 100 percent.
In his interview with Hamshahri, Darai claimed that the price hike was caused by “irrational consumption of medicine,” “increased use of medicine during the covid-19 pandemic,” and “reverse smuggling” of medicine from Iran to other countries.
Former Political Prisoner To Be Deported to Iran and Re-imprisoned
Turkish police arrested Fatemeh Davand, a former political prisoner, on April 7, 2022, and transferred her to the Central Deportation Camp outside the city of Kayseri. She is one of the detainees of the November 2019 Iran protests.
Ms. Davand is currently held at Camp Deport. In a telephone interview, she said, “I was arrested by police for no reason yesterday in a shopping mall in the city of Kayseri. After being transferred to a police station and fingerprinted, I was taken to the Central Deportation Camp outside Kayseri.”
Iranian Christian Converts Sentenced to Prison and Fines
A revolutionary court in the northern city of Rasht has sentenced three Christian converts to five years of prison, in addition to fines. The Christian converts were identified as Ahmad Sarparast (25), Ayoub Pourrezazadeh (28), and Morteza Hajeb Mashoud Kari (38).
According to the verdict recently handed down by the Revolutionary Court of Rasht, presided over by Judge Mohammad Hossein Hosseinpour, to their lawyer, Iman Soleimani, each of these Christian converts was sentenced to prison and fine for the charges of ‘forming a house church,’ ‘spreading propaganda against the state,’ and ‘communication with Zionist agents and the Branhamist sect abroad.’
Read more: Iran News in Brief – April 9, 2022
