Iran Democracy Monitor: No. 135

IRAN TIGHTENS SECURITY AHEAD OF ELECTION
With Iran's presidential poll just days away, regime officials are bracing for potential social unrest - and deploying forces to quell it. According to Mohsen Kazemeini, the commander of the Mohammad Rasool-Allah unit of the IRGC, a force "comprised of 27 divisions and Basij districts with 23 districts including ethnic centers and 50,000 cells” will be mobilized in anticipation of political dissent and unrest surrounding the June 14th voting. This will include the deployment of “an aerial surveillance unit," as well as ground forces to "monitor every act of counter-revolutionaries.” (Tehran Rooz, May 27, 2013)

TALIBAN, IRAN MEND FENCES
With the date for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan nearing, Afghanistan's Taliban are seeking to patch up badly-frayed ties with their western neighbor. Taliban leaders recently “traveled to Tehran on the invitation of Iranian officials,” Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi has confirmed. The goal of the delegation was both practical and strategic - to forge a post-Coalition future along the common border between the two countries, as well as to “resolve immigration problems” stemming from the flight of many Afghans away from conflict zones in war-torn Afghanistan. (Bangkok Post, June 3, 2013; London Guardian, June 3, 2013)

IRAN, HAMAS FALL OUT OVER SYRIA...
The Syrian conflict continues to exact a heavy toll on Iran's regional standing and alliances. The Islamic Republic has reportedly slashed its funding to the radical Palestinian Hamas movement over to the latter's support for opposition forces arrayed against the Syrian regime. Although funding to the group from Tehran has not stopped altogether, Iran is said to have reduced its contribution to the movement by more than $23 million monthly as "punishment" for its support of Syria's rebels. Military cooperation between the two parties has also become moribund, a top official for the group has confirmed. "For supporting the Syrian revolution, we lost very much," says Ghazi Hamad, Hamas' foreign minister.

For their part, Hamas officials are increasingly distancing themselves from the Islamic Republic. "We never expected that a country like Iran, which talked about oppressed people and dictatorial regimes, would stand behind a dictator like Assad who is killing his own people," according to Ahmed Yousef, a top aide to Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. "To us, it shakes the basis of the Islamic principles that Iran has recited all these years after the Islamic Revolution." (London Telegraph, May 31, 2013)

...AS TEHRAN DOUBLES DOWN IN DAMASCUS
The civil war in Syria shows few signs of letting up, prompting the Iranian regime to step up its economic assistance to the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Tehran reportedly has granted a sum of $4 billion to Syria to date in various lines of credit. The aid has been essential to maintaining Syria’s purchasing power amid ; according to the country's banking chief, since the start of the conflict in March 2011, the Syrian pound has fallen from 50 pounds to 150 pounds to the U.S. dollar. (Moscow RIA Novosti, May 28, 2013)

IRAN'S NEW CYBER TARGET: ISRAEL
According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jewish state is experiencing a significant increase in cyber attacks—a surge that the Israeli government attributes to “Iran... and its [local] proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.” Recent cyber attacks, Netanyahu says, have targeted Israel's water, power, and banking sectors in a near constant stream of hacks. The relatively low profile of these attempted intrusions, the Israeli premier has said, stems from the fact that Israel itself is stepping up cyber security measures, and has been largely successful in repelling the assaults. (Reuters, June 9, 2013)