REGIME KEEPS UP PRESSURE ON REFORMISTS
As part of the Iranian regime’s ongoing crackdown on domestic opposition, the government of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dissolved a pair of pro-reform political parties. According to Mohseni Ejehi, the spokesman for Iran’s Judiciary, a state court – acting on orders from the country’s Interior Ministry – has disbanded the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mujahedin Organization. Both political parties are known to have supported reformist presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi in the past.
The Iranian regime’s anti-reformist campaign has manifested itself in other ways as well. Iran’s Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance is reported to have recently issued an edict banning the publication of photos of opposition leaders Mehdi Kharroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi. Under the ban, those publications that do feature images of the reformist politicians run the risk of having their publishing license suspended or revoked. (Rooz Tehran, October 18, 2010; Associated Press, September 27, 2010)
AMID SANCTIONS, IRAN’S GASOLINE TRADE CONTINUES...
Is Iran still buying gasoline from abroad, despite UN and U.S. sanctions? The answer, according to a new study from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, is unequivocally “yes.” The report, requested by Senators Lieberman, Kyl and Collins, lists a number of major firms that sold refined petroleum to Iran earlier this year, and are believed to be continuing to do so despite the new restrictions. Specifically, the UAE’s Emirates National Oil Company, Singapore’s Hin Leong Trading, and China’s ChinaOil, Unipec and Zhuhai Zhenrong companies are all still believed to be involved in supplying gasoline to Iran. However, a number of others – among them Switzerland’s Glencore and Trafigura, India’s Reliance Industries and The Netherlands’ Royal Dutch Shell – appear to have pulled out of the Islamic Republic, according to the study. A third category lists three firms that have given at least some indication that they are backing out of the Iran gasoline trade, but may still be involved in it: Malaysia’s Petronas, Kuwait’s IPG and Russia’s LUKoil. (GAO, September 3, 2010)
...BUT AT REDUCED VOLUME
In recent weeks, Iran has begun to experience major disruptions to its refined petroleum trade as a result of U.S. and international sanctions. According to calculations by the news agency Reuters, Iran imported just 12,000 tons of refined petroleum from abroad – less than one half of an average tanker shipment – between August and September. That decline followed a similarly steep constriction of Iran’s gasoline acquisitions between May (the month before passage of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions And Divestment Act by the U.S. Congress) and July, the month after. (Reuters, September 24, 2010)
SECRET EXECUTIONS ON THE RISE
The Iranian regime is stepping up the pace of unannounced executions at a key detention facility in the country’s east, an Iranian rights group has charged. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, or ICHRI, the Iranian government has increased secret killings – carried out outside of constitutional and judicial norms – at the country’s notorious Vakilabad prison in the city of Mashhad. Those who have warned of the practice, meanwhile, have been hounded by authorities; according to ICHRI, religious scholar Ahmed Ghabel, himself a former prisoner at Vakilabad, was recently rearrested after blowing the whistle on the extrajudicial executions being carried out there. (Radio Free Europe, October 28, 2010)