THIS PAGE WILL BE UPDATED WITH THE LATEST NEWS
UPDATE: 10:00 AM CET
Isfahan Protests Continue
Farmers in Isfahan who are protesting the plundering and monopolization of the countries water resources by the state-affiliated organization, continued their protest for the 17th consecutive day at Zayandeh Rud river bed. They chanted: “Shout Isfahani! “Shout out your right!” and “A flowing Zayandeh Rud is victory at last!”
An old farmer who was protesting today said: “We are starving, Khamenei. Your stomach is full, but what about us? With these calluses on our hands, with our flesh and blood, we just want to make a living. May God rule over you!”
The sit-in of Isfahan’s farmers continues while these protesters are spending the nights in very dire circumstances. They are sitting in tents set up on the river bed, suffering from cold without any means of heating. The farmers said they will continue their protest under any circumstances in order to achieve their demands which means the flowing water in the Zayandeh Rud river that enables the entire region’s agriculture to get back to life.
UPDATE: 9:30 AM CET
Amid Uncertain Times for the Regime, Raisi Warns Against The Enemy
In a meeting with the leaders of the paramilitary Basij Force, Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian regime’s president said today: “The enemy is looking for rupture inside the ranks of our system… Hostile groups are trying to sow deviation and dispute in our thoughts and actions in cultural, social, and political stages. The enemy’s strategy is to create despair and hopelessness in society. In these times, it is necessary for everyone within our system to stand together.”
Tuesday Protests in Iran
The people of Shahrekord took to the streets for the third consecutive day on Tuesday, to protest the monopolization of water resources by the state-affiliated organizations. According to reports, security forces tried to stop the demonstrations but were met with resistance and the protests continued.
Today, truck drivers in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province went on strike in Farrokhshahr. Farrokhshahr is one of the main cities of the province, which is located on the Shahrekord-Isfahan road, 15 km southeast of Shahrekord.
Since Tuesday morning, workers of the Asminun Manojan mine blocked the Manojan-Bandar Abbas highway by gathering on the road to protest and call for their demands.
UPDATE: 5:00 AM CET
Doctors Are Leaving Iran in Four Digits, Officials Admit
Amir‑Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, a member of the regime’s parliament said: “Unfortunately, during the last three years, about 4,000 doctors and more than 300,000 college-educated people, who had master’s degrees and PhDs, emigrated from the country.”
Mohammad Raiszadeh, head of the regime’s Medical Council, told the state-run Fararu website: “The migration of doctors was taking place even before the pandemic and it is still going on.”
“Our doctors are migrating, because unrealistic treatment costs, bureaucratic hassles, lack of support for higher education and expertise makes working in the pharmaceutical industry in Iran inappropriate, and leaving the country has become a good option,” Raiszadeh added.
UPDATE: 2:00 AM CET
IRGC Border Units Shot and Wounded Two Hardworking Freight Carriers
The Revolutionary Guards shot and wounded two Kurdish ‘kulbars’ (Persian for paid freight carriers) at the Nosud border. On Sunday evening, November 20, Salahuddin Aliyevisi from the village of ‘Kiseleh’ in Kermanshah Province was wounded by border guards in the Nosud border heights.
According to the Kurdpa site website, on the morning of Monday, November 22, a Kurdish ‘kulbar’ named “Saadi Rahimi” from the village of “Janoureh” in the Marivan region was wounded by the guards. The guards shot and targeted a group of ‘kulbars’ directly without warning.
Iran’s Neglect of Natural Resources is Turning into Social Crises, State Media Warn
The uprising in Isfahan and extending it to other provinces has become a worrying factor for the regime as state media have started to warn about repercussions since November 22.
Mohsen Pirhadi, a member of the regime’s parliament executive board told the Resalat newspaper: “Today, people’s demand for water is spreading from one city to another and from one province to other provinces. The demands of the labor society have reached the teachers’ community or the medical staff and this will soon encourage other social strata and spectrums to pursue their demands. If this happens, then the neglect of handling issues and problems such as air pollution in metropolitan areas won’t be justified.”
“According to experts, there’s only one province that doesn’t suffer from water shortages, and we are facing this natural challenge throughout the entire country,” the state-run Vatan-e-Amrooz newspaper reported.
The state-run newspaper Ebtekar wrote: “Some MPs were trying to tie the protests in Isfahan with ethnic disputes in order to exploit them. These reactions just demonstrate how far they are off, failing to understand the wisdom of the people of Isfahan who didn’t blame their compatriots but rather they aimed at the administrative recklessness.”
The state-run newspaper Jomhori-e Eslami also warned: “The problem that farmers are facing cannot be solved with orders nor with recommendations. It is time for the government to relocate industries with high water consumption from water-scarce areas to the seashores instead of resorting to excuses.”
Concerning the necessity to shut down Mobarakeh Steel Company and Esfahan Steel Company that are the main factories responsible for drying up of the Zayandeh Rud river, a state-affiliated expert told the state-run newspaper Setareh Sobh: “The production of each kilogram of steel consumes about 30,000 liters of water. It is certain that these industries swallow the water on the Zayandeh Rud… Additionally, aquifers are also in serious danger of drying out. The plains in Isfahan, as well as those in Khorasan province, sink 12 cm annually.”
Meanwhile, according to state sources, the outlook for the Chamshir Dam in Khuzestan, which is run by the regime’s Water and Power Resources Management Company and is currently being drained, is worse than the catastrophic fate of the Gotvand Dam. According to the Jomhori-e Eslami newspaper, 500,000 tons of salt are being dissolved in the dam reservoir annually and the conditions of Chamshir dam will be worse than Gotvand dam.
UPDATE: 9:30 AM CET
Regime’s Vice Admits to Unprecedented Budget Deficit
On November 21, during an interview with IRNA, the official news agency, Vice President, Mohammad Mokhber acknowledged that the regime is trying to cope with an unprecedented and extremely worrying budget deficit, saying that the amount of 647,000 billion tomans (equal to $22,685,834,500) this year was the regime’s most important economic challenge.
The Chinese Continue to Trawl in Iranian Waters, MP Disclosed
Moinuddin Saeedi, a member of the regime’s parliament from Chahbahar, told the IRGC-run news agency Fars on November 22n: “I have strong evidence that some of the companies that continue to trawl in Iran, the majority of their shares are owned by the Chinese. According to statistics, there are at least 10 vessels of Kish Shipping Group, among others, in which the Chinese own 49% of the shares. Certainly the Chinese have not come to the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman to catch ordinary fish, their intention is to trawl.”
Trawling is done by large fishing nets. This type of fishing has severely damaged sea life as well as the marine environment in Iran and Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian regime’s president had previously claimed that he has banned trawling while trying to ease nationwide outrage.
UK Home Secretary Discusses Iranian Regime Security Threats
During her speech to the Heritage Foundation about shared security threats, British Home Secretary, Priti Patel said: “Several governments are willing and capable of overt and covert action that undermines the United Kingdom’s national security. This includes such activity from state or state-based organisations in Russia, China, and Iran.
In February, a Belgian court sentenced an accredited Iranian diplomat based in Vienna to 20 years imprisonment for his role in a plot to bomb a conference in Paris hosted by Iranian dissidents. The Belgian state security service stated that “the plan for the attack was conceived in the name of Iran and under its leadership.”
In July, the US DoJ announced that a New York court had unsealed an indictment against four people resident in Iran for their involvement in a plot to kidnap an unnamed Iranian-American journalist.
The indictment also detailed four other individuals under surveillance by the network, including one based in the United Kingdom. Prosecutors said one of the conspirators was an Iranian intelligence official, while the other three were ‘assets’ of Iranian intelligence. All of this shows that complacency for us all is simply not an option.”
UPDATE: 9:00 AM CET
#Iran Coronavirus Update
More than 479,700 people have died of the novel #coronavirus in 547 cities checkered across all of Iran's 31 provinces, according to the Iranian opposition PMOI/MEK.
Full reporthttps://t.co/XEeGIdS8Rd pic.twitter.com/8rP3uGusn9
— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) November 22, 2021
Iran: Second Day of Protests in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province Over Water Shortages
The people of Shahr-e Kord, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, held the second consecutive day of their large demonstrations on Monday, protesting government policies that have resulted in water shortages across the province. The protesters were chanting anti-regime slogans and encouraging other provinces to join what is slowly becoming a nationwide movement against regime policies.
Isfahan Farmers Demand Water Rights
Farmers of Iran’s central city, Isfahan rallied for the drying up of its river and the impact of this incident on their agricultural activities in recent years. Due to the non-responsiveness of the water authorities, their protests have intensified in recent weeks. Isfahan farmers and residents have been protesting for years over the diversion of their water to Kashan, neighboring Yazd and Kerman provinces.
Water Shortage: Fault of Nature or the Crime of Iran’s Government?
Since June 2021 concurrent with the people’s protests in Iran’s Khuzestan province, the country is witnessing constantly new protests over water shortage. After the recent protests in Isfahan and then in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, the regime, out of fear that the people would declare the regime to be the main culprit of this situation, is introducing drought and rainfall decrease as the main reasons for this situation.
Heart-Breaking Lives of Vulnerable Iranian Children Under the Rule of Iran’s Regime
As countries across the globe celebrate World Children’s Day, the plight of the children in Iran is heart-breaking. Under the rule of the Iranian regime, children are extremely vulnerable due to the regime’s failure to protect or promote their rights. Iranian children suffer greatly due to extreme poverty across the country, with many families struggling to feed their children, leaving many going hungry. Children are also subjected to abuse, trafficking, and even being sold by their parents to earn whatever money they can. Even worse, the laws of the regime heavily promote violations of children’s rights, allowing child labor, early marriages, and honor killings, to name but a few.
Iran: Unjustly Detained Students Harshly Beaten: Ali Younesi & Amirhossein Moradi
Iranian university students Ali Younesi and Amirhossein Moradi, arbitrarily detained without trial in section 209 of Tehran’s Evin prison since 10 April 2020, are at risk of being convicted in a grossly unfair trial of a spurious charge that carries the death penalty. Ministry of intelligence agents beat them and held them in prolonged solitary confinement in harsh conditions to extract forced “confessions”. They are prisoners of conscience targeted for exercising their right to family life.
Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike in Sanandaj and Urmia Prisons
Two political prisoners are on hunger strike in the Central Prison of Urmia and the Prison of Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province. The political prisoners on hunger strike are Shaker Behrouz and Houshmand Alipour. Shaker Behrouz is on death row. He went on hunger strike on November 21, 2021, in protest of the intelligence services’ pressure on the plaintiffs in his case to withdraw their consent, thereby allowing the judiciary to go ahead with his execution. Shaker Behrouzi, 32, is single and comes from Dizej of Urmia.
Kurd Minor Commits Suicide After Security Forces Gun Down His Mules, W Iran
A 15-year-old Kurd minor committed suicide on November 18 after security forces shot the mules he used to carry loads across the border in Nowsud, western Iran. According to the Hengaw Organization, the boy border porter was identified as Soroush Rahmani. Soroush had borrowed the mules to carry loads to pay for his sick father’s cancer treatment.
Families of Flight PS752 Victims Hold Protest in Tehran To Call for Justice for Their Loved Ones
In January 2020, civilian airplane Flight PS752 was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Families of the victims have recently held a protest rally in Tehran, as the Iranian regime holds a formality court regarding the incident. For almost two years, the families of the victims killed during the air disaster have been consistently calling for justice for their loved ones, despite the heavy presence of the Iranian regime’s security forces.
Khavaran, the Symbol of Seeking Justice in Iran
According to Khomeini’s fatwa in the summer of 1988, more than 30,000 political prisoners were executed in Iranian prisons from late July to mid-autumn 1988 in Tehran and other cities and secretly buried in mass graves in often unknown locations. More than 90 percent of those executed were members and sympathizers of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran(PMOI/MEK), but the massacre included a range of other forces, including Marxist parties and organizations.
Read more: Iran News in Brief – November 22, 2021
