PHOTO: Supreme Leader addresses families of Iranian troops killed in Syria, June 25, 2016


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The Supreme Leader took charge on Saturday in the Iran regime’s escalating campaign against Saudi Arabia and Bahrain

In a speech to families of martyrs, including Iranian troops killed in the Syrian civil war, Ayatollah Khamenei denounced the Bahraini monarchy’s revocation of citizenship of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim:

In Bahrain, a ruthless and arrogant minority is oppressing the majority. It has now carried out an act of aggression against the diligent scholar, Sheikh Isa Qassim. This is insanity and stupidity.

The leaders of Bahrain, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, have cracked down on dissent since mass protests for rights and reforms in February 2011. Earlier this month, the Kingdom extended the prison sentence of Sheikh Ali Salman, the leader of the opposition movement Al Wefaq, from four to nine years. Activists have been given long terms, including a life sentence for Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, the founder of the Bahrain Center of Human Rights.

Bahrain’s Sunni leadership has accused Iran of fomenting violence by the Shia majority, but Khamenei said on Saturday that Qassim, the spiritual leader of Al Wefaq, had prevented the mass protests from being driven to extremism.

The Supreme Leader then effectively called on Bahraini youth to act:

These fools do not understand that eliminating Sheikh Isa Qassim means removing the barrier in front of the spirited Bahrani youths against the government. Nothing can silence these youths anymore.

Fight v. Saudi Arabia in Syria

Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic relations with Iran in January, after Riyadh executed a prominent Shia cleric and a crowd in Tehran responded by attacking the Saudi Embassy in Tehran.

There was an effort at rapprochement through arrangements for Iranians to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, following last September’s disaster in which 464 Iranians were among an estimated 2,500 people who died in a stampede. However, the talks collapsed last month.

Iran stepped up its rhetorical challenge to the Saudis and Bahrain upon Monday’s news of the revocation of citizenship for Qassim. The Tehran Friday Leader invoked the 1979 Islamic Revolution to warn that “the Shah’s fate awaits the rulers of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia”.

See Iran Daily, June 25: “Shah’s Fate Awaits Saudi and Bahraini Rulers”

Khamenei’s choice of audience linked the campaign to the proxy fight in Syria between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Islamic Republic, an essential ally of the Assad regime, has suffered increasing casualties as it puts in more commanders and troops, particularly on fronts near Aleppo city. Saudi Arabia has no ground forces in Syria, but provides essential political support and some military assistance for the Syrian opposition and rebel factions.

The Supreme Leader with the young daughter of one of the slain fighters:

KHAMENEI GIRL 25-06-16


Judiciary: Iranian-British Zaghari “Involved in 2009 Sedition”

A judiciary official has declared that the Iranian-British national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, detained since early April, was involved in “sedition” — the regime’s label for mass protests against the disputed 2009 Presidential election.

Yadollah Movahed, the head of the Justice Department in the city of Kerman, asserted that Zaghari-Ratcliffe “conducted activities against the security of the country by designing websites and carrying out campaigns in the media”.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project co-ordinator for the charitable branch of the Thomson Reuters media group, was seized ast Imam Khomeini Airport as she and her 22-month-old daughter were returning from a visit to Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s parents in Tehran.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was moved to Kerman, about 1,000 miles from the capital, and put in solitary confinement. Her daughter’s passport was seized, meaning she had to remain in Tehran with her grandparents.

The project manager is one of a number of dual nationals who have been detained by the Revolutionary Guards as they visited Iran.

No evidence has been presented against Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Her husband Richard said last month that she had had no access to a lawyer: “She’s isolated. The only human contact is with her interrogators.” He said she signed a confession, admitting to a “small mistake”:

I suspect they will be linking the fact that she works for a charity connected to a media organisation, that she’s married to a British husband and she will have friends on Facebook they don’t like. That’s probably enough — if you see the world as a conspiracy.