1 Report for

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Daily Report for Wednesday, May 04, 2016

1 Report for

Wednesday, May 04, 2015

Ordibehesht 14, 1394

Highlights, Page 2 News Briefs, Page 3 Other Stories, Page 4

Why so many Iranians have come to hate the hijab, Page 7 South Korea’s new opening to Iran, Page 12

Pro-Rouhani candidates scoop up most seats in runoff, Page 14

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2 Highlights

 Over the years the state crackdown on women’s dress has become more of a show to placate the country’s hardline base. Our correspondent shares stories from her personal repertoire illustrating the point. (See Page 7)

 president Park Geun-hye [was] on a three-day official visit to Iran, accompanied by a 236-person trade delegation, and intent on reversing the recent decline in the bilateral trade between the two countries, which has slipped from $10 billion dollar in 2011 to over $6 billion last year. (See Page 12)

 The second round of Iran’s parliamentary elections gave most remaining seats to the Reformist-moderate camp that supports President Hassan Rouhani. (See Page 14)

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News Briefs

* BBC Persian reports that reformist Ali Tajernia has said that ‘influential figures’ have sent a ‘message’ to President Rouhani telling him not become a candidate [in the next presidential election in 2017].

* May 24 will be the current Parliament’s last day, with the new Parliament holding its first session on May 27. Elections for parliament speaker will occur shortly thereafter.

* Fars News Agency reports that Artesh Special Forces and IRGC Qods Force are operating south of Aleppo.

Fars News Agency notes that Artesh Special Forces and the IRGC Qods

Force are operating in the towns of al- Hadher and Zaytan in southern Aleppo province.

* Defa Press news website reports that Parliament approves legislation on benefits for foreign fighters. It allows the Iranian government to grant citizenship to the families of “non- Iranian martyrs” killed in Iranian military missions during the Iran-Iraq War or afterwards. This legislation would theoretically cover families of Afghans and Pakistanis living in Iran that have been dispatched to fight in Syria and Iraq.

‘Reformist victory’

Reporting on the April 29 runoff parliamentary elections, leading reformist newspaper Shargh ran the headline “Reformist Victory” on its front page after the elections.

Its elections coverage stated that reformists “will necessarily form an alliance with the independents” in order to reach a majority and claimed that the majority of independents “lean towards the reformist camp.”

The article criticized the elections coverage by several prominent news agencies, particularly Fars News Agency and Tasnim News Agency, for

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claiming a “principlist victory” in the elections by overstating the number of independents who will vote with principlists.

Shargh quoted Mohammad Kianoush Rad, a reformist activist and former parliamentarian, as attributing the different statistics to “the principlists’

fear of accepting defeat.”

Rouhani praises election results

State-owned newspaper Iran reports that President Hassan Rouhani stated that the newly-elected Parliament “will have better coordination” with his administration, which will now be able to “act on the promises it has made to the people.”

Rouhani also praised the fact that 18 women were elected to the new Parliament.

His tally of 18 means that he included Minoo Khaleghi, a reformist parliamentarian controversially disqualified by the Guardian Council after the elections took place, in his count of elected parliamentarians.

Rouhani criticized the Guardian Council on April 28 for overstepping its authority by disqualifying Khaleghi after the elections. His inclusion of Khaleghi in his count indicates that he is still supporting her candidacy against the Guardian Council.

MPs discuss next Majlis Speaker

Tasnim News Agency reports that elected parliamentarian Mostafa Kavakebian stated that the parliament speaker should be a reformist and called for including more reformists in Parliament’s senior leadership. He also noted that current Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, a principlist who ran as an independent in the elections, should not be considered a reformist.

Parliamentarian Kazem Jalali, who won a seat in Tehran and was backed by the reformist-moderate List of Hope despite his record as a principlist, denied that the 30 parliamentarians elected to represent Tehran have signed a document vowing to support senior reformist politician Mohammad Reza

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Aref’s candidacy for parliament speaker. Jalali stated that he has “not seen”

such a document.

National Security and Foreign Policy (NSFP) Parliamentary Commission Chairman Alaeddin Boroujerdi called Larijani “the best option for parliament speaker” due to his experience and “relationship with the administration.” Boroujerdi was reelected to parliament during the runoff elections.

Deputy interior minister denies reports that undercover police will not report moral transgressions

Deputy Interior Minister Hossein Zolfaghari denied previous reports that a new 7,000-member undercover police unit in Tehran will not report “moral transgressions” like improper veiling.

He criticized the false reports for “making up their own headlines” and stated that the plan for undercover agents “will be implemented in various dimensions. It is not only for moral issues.”

President Hassan Rouhani criticized the plan for a new undercover unit during remarks on April 20.

Iranian casualties in Syria

Iranian Labor News Agency reports that Ayatollah Khamenei’s bodyguard is rumored to be killed in Syria. Iranian news outlets reported that IRGC Col. Hassan Akbar was killed due to a “technical error” with his weapon during a training exercise. Although no information was given on his place of death in Iranian news outlets, Israeli media are citing Syrian opposition sources reporting that he was killed in the outskirts of Aleppo.

Iranian killed in Syria. Mostafi Erafi was from Khorasan province. No further information was reported on his rank or unit affiliation.

Two Afghans killed in Syria. Mohammad Hossen Khavari was from Alborz province, and Enayat Ahmadi was from Tehran province.

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Eight members of Afghan and Pakistani Shia militias killed in Syria. Aziz Hosseini, Ayoub Rezaei, and Gholam Yahya Rahmani were members of the Afghan Shia militia Fatimiyoun Brigade. Saber Hossein, Mohsen Ali, Hossein Mozafer, Seyyid Gholam, and Naghib Ali were members of the Pakistani Shia militia Zeinabiyoun Brigade. They were buried in Qom on May 2.

IRGC member killed during search for bodies of Iran-Iraq War veterans.

Ali Reza Shamsipour was killed in Iraqi Kurdistan while searching for the bodies of veterans killed during the Iran-Iraq War. He had previously served in Syria. No further information regarding his rank or unit affiliation was provided.

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7 Why so many Iranians

have come to hate the hijab

The Guardian newspaper: As summer approaches, police in Tehran have once again begun to crack down on Iranians who fail to comply with the country’s Islamic dress code. This year, besides the customary uniformed morality police, 7,000 undercover agents are reportedly also on the case. I was spared the early years of the Islamic Republic, but my mother recalls how diligent she had to be to avoid giving the morality police – or anyone else with the authority to judge appearances – any pretext to find fault with her, as jail sentences for “protesting” were all too common for dress- code transgressors.

It was a hot day in the early 1980s and my parents were going to an international exhibition in Tehran. As my older sister, then a baby, lay in her carriage, my mom wheeled her into the room filled with female agents who were in charge of checking the women’s compliance. They would ask some to fix their hijab, passing tissues to others to wipe off their makeup. As one agent finished scrutinizing my mother, she looked at my sister in the carriage.

“Khanoum!” – “lady” – she exclaimed. “Why are your daughter’s bare legs showing?” she asked, in apparent shock.

“She’s just eight months old,” my mother, in even greater shock, replied.

“So what? She’s a girl, isn’t she?”

My mom covered my sister’s legs with a blanket. Back then, nobody would argue further. People were scared.

As time went by, the younger generation gradually became accustomed to the morality police, then known as komiteh. Just one encounter with them, and the spell of dread was broken. You were not scared of them any more. At least those in my circle were not.

During the early 1990s, the komiteh arrested my sister and her friend on the street.

They were on their way to buy ice cream when a van pulled up beside them. A woman

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in black chador opened the van door and asked them to enter. Frightened, my sister and her friend ran toward an idling taxi a few meters away and jumped in. The van shot forward and veered in front of the taxi. Two soldiers leaped out and pointed their guns at the car while the woman in chador shouted at the top of her lungs for my sister and her friend to get in the van. They did.

Accompanied by other women, mostly young, who had similarly been arrested, they were driven to Vozara Detention Center where a group trial date was scheduled. A few hours later, my parents took my sister home. My mother was stunned, my father confused. My sister, who was then in middle school, had a very different take. She entered our house with a wide smile on her face, telling me it was the “coolest experience”. She excitedly described how all the women were singing and clapping as they waited together in a communal cell. A few of their fellow scofflaws, apparently regulars at that particular detention center, were handcuffed. As my sister and her van companions entered the cell, one of them held her hands up in the air and shouted,

“Hey kids! Check this out! They have given me bracelets!”

A few days later, the girls in the van showed up for their group trial and were fined 5,000 tomans each – the equivalent then of less than 20 dollars.

In the early 2000s, my dad was driving my sister back from a class when, a few blocks from home, they were stopped by the morality police.

“What’s the relation between you two?” a male agent asked my father.

“She’s my daughter,” he calmly replied.

“Why are you in the car with this man? Who is he?” a female agent asked my sister.

“He’s my dad,” she calmly replied.

The agents asked for documents that could prove these incredible claims. My father and sister didn’t have any. The agents talked between themselves for few minutes and let them go. By this point, no one took such encounters to heart. Hearing the story, my mom responded with an incredulous “What?” I just laughed.

This was during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, when many of us young people felt emboldened to publicly bend the morality rules and even, yes,

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protest. One night around that time, four of us were tooling down the Modarres Highway when a police car signaled for us to pull over. My sister’s boyfriend was behind the wheel, while she rode shotgun. I was in the rear alongside my boyfriend, who’d been smoking out the window.

One policeman exited the car and walked toward us.

“What’s the problem, officer?” my sister’s boyfriend asked.

“This lady was sitting improperly,” he said, pointing at me. I was resting my knees on the back of the front seat.

I’m certain that none of us were scared. My sister even chuckled quietly. I got angry and started shouting and crying. I felt insulted. It was the policeman, if anyone, who seemed less than sure of himself. He apologized, asked us to sit “properly”, and invited us to go.

No, it was not always that easy. There were times we sensed that arguing would make things worse.

One evening during the mid-2000s, we were on our way back from a day trip to the Alborz Mountains near Firouzkuh, northeast of Tehran. There were nine of us, girls and boys, filling up two cars. As we drove down the dusty road of a small village, a man on a motorbike pulled up alongside the lead car and requested we stop. We did.

The biker parked directly in front of us so as to thwart any potential escape. He displayed his militia card and said he wouldn’t let us go.

“But why?” one friend asked.

“Because you think you can do all the filthy things you want in the mountains and run away,” he replied.

In fact, it had been a fairly innocent hike. Sure, some of us had been smoking. Yes, maybe we held hands and hugged as we posed for the camera. That’s all.

As we argued with the militia member, men and boys from the village surrounded the car. Some were holding shovels. This time, we were a bit scared.

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Then the militia guy, who was in his twenties, delivered the strangest soliloquy I have ever heard in my life, more surreal than anything else I’ve experienced, even on stage, from Beckett on down.

“You Tehranis think you are so cool? No, you are not. You think we villagers don’t understand anything, but we do. Do you think only you know things? Do you think only you read books? I also know who Sigmund Freud is. I read his books. I know what the Oedipus complex is. Do you know what the Oedipus complex is?”

That was just the beginning. After what seemed like an hour of breathless lecturing on matters Freudian and Sophoclean, he did at long last let us go. During the rest of the trip we tried ever so hard to interpret what he was trying to communicate. We didn’t get very far.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, the shift toward conservatism was palpable. It was August, height of morality police season. Their numbers seemed to multiply virtually overnight, and they would pick on anybody.

Another trip to the Alborz, a couple years into the Ahmadinejad era. Not so far this time, and we were walking back. It was already dark. I was exhausted, having hiked to the peak of Mount Tochal. On the trek home, I had been joined by my aunt and her friends, a small group of women in their fifties. Sweating all day in my baggy khaki pants and loose white shirt with thin khaki stripes, I looked miserable.

As we approached Darband Square at Tehran’s northern edge, where my aunt had left her car, a female agent stopped me. “Khanoumi!” little lady. “Could you please come with me for a second?” To this day, I feel like breaking out in a rash whenever I hear khanoumi or khanoumam, so closely associated are they with the special vocabulary of Iran’s morality myrmidons.

The officer lead me over to a van by which a pair of fellow female agents were standing. I looked at all three of them. They each wore full makeup. One had manicured polished nails. Another was strikingly beautiful, like an innocent angel.

“Where’s your manteau?” one asked.

“What do you mean? This is all I have,” I replied.

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“This is not a manteau, Khanoumi. This is a shirt.”

“But what’s the difference? Can you see any part of my body? You can’t even see my body shape in these loose clothes.”

“I know, but this is not a manteau.”

We argued politely for a while as she showered me with her khanoumis andkhanoumams. In the end my aunt ran to her car and brought me a cloak. I put it on and was allowed to rejoin my companions. We were all calm. No one was scared or even angry. We were simply fed up.

This is just a sample of some particularly memorable encounters. I won’t tire you with the many times my friends and I were called “prostitutes” by vigilant citizen-agents for laughing loudly on the street, the countless occasions on which we were asked to roll down our sleeves to obscure our forearms, cover our hair, and sit “appropriately”

in public.

My personal repertoire of such stories stopped growing once I left Iran in late 2008, but friends who stayed are still adding to their collections. One recently told me how she was arrested right next to her home, driven to the police station and had her mugshot taken. She was laughing non-stop, saying it was just “so funny” to have an

“improper dressing” charge on one’s permanent record.

Meanwhile, many with less self-confident senses of humor conscientiously attempt to avoid the morality patrols, skirting certain locations around the capital where they are known to concentrate. There is even an app, Gershad, that purports to pin down the latest danger spots.

The adventures of Iranian citizens with the morality police remind me of Shahrazad and her unending stories. They just go on and on. And it seems like no one who might want to do anything about it has the power to. Last week, President Rouhani gently criticized the deployment of undercover morality agents, saying that the first duty of those who enforce the law is “to respect people’s dignity and humanity.”

Yes. Very well. And? Until that blessed day of respect for Iranians’ dignity and humanity dawns, I’ll still be attempting to decipher what that militia man in the mountain village so many years ago was trying to make us understand.

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1 2 South Korea’s new opening to Iran

Iran Review news website. Dated May 2, 2016. Kaveh L. Afrasiabi. *Kaveh Afrasiabi, Ph.D, is a former political science professor at Tehran University and the author of several books on Iran’s foreign policy. His writings have appeared on several online and print publications, including UN Chronicle, New York Times, Der Tagesspiegel, Middle East Journal, Harvard International Review, and Brown’s Journal of World Affairs, Guardian, Russia Today, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Mediterranean Affairs, Nation, Telos, Der Tageszeit, Hamdard Islamicus, Iranian Journal of International Affairs, Global Dialogue.

South Korea’s president Park Geun-hye is on a three-day official visit to Iran, accompanied by a 236-person trade delegation, and intent on reversing the recent decline in the bilateral trade between the two countries, which has slipped from $10 billion dollar in 2011 to over $6 billion last year.

According to the Tehran media, the Koran Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation, Kang Ho-in, has publicly stated his country’s determination to boost the Iran trade to $30 billion dollars a year. High on the agenda is a new energy agreement, in light of the announcement by Iran’s Oil Minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, that the two countries are expected to sign a $20 billion dollar agreement during President Park’s high-profile visit. Clearly, this is a pivotal trip for President Park, whose country’s economy is adversely affected by a slowing world economy, and who reportedly seeks to solicit Iran’s assistance in dealing with its unruly North Korean neighbor.

Concerning the latter, a Wall Street report has claimed that President Park’s political purpose of the Tehran visit is to use the carrot of economic ties with Tehran to motivate the Tehran leaders to nuance their long-standing relations with North Korea in a way that would be in line with South Korea’s policy of containing and neutralizing the perpetual North Korean threat.

Certainly, Iran has the potential to mediate between North Korea and South Korea, as one of few countries in the world that has good ties with both sides. This possibility may have been explored in a prior visit of South Korea’s foreign minister, Yun Byung-se, last November and his extensive conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. A future trip to North Korea by Zarif may therefore be in the offing, assuming that all the preparatory works can be undertaken with utmost sensitivity to both sides, particularly the North Korean leadership that prizes its unique

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strategic relations with Iran and would, naturally, be averse to the idea of any new

“balance” or “equidistance” by Tehran between Seul and Pyongyang.

As a result, Tehran would have to thread these diplomatic waters with extra caution in order to avoid any unwanted damage to its traditional closeness to North Korea, which has been an important source of military technological assistance to Iran in the past.

China too, which is widely regarded in Iran as a North Korean patron state, despite Beijing’s occasional unhappiness with the North Korean leadership’s dangerous brinksmasnship, is closely watching the development of Iran-South Korean relations and, therefore, Tehran is unlikely to make any premature commitment to any dispute resolution role between North and South Korea.

What matters most for Iran at the moment is the new post-sanctions opening of South Korea to Iran, which has been unable so far to gain much advantage from the West, as a direct result of the lingering American opposition. The softening of this opposition, partly due to a recent meeting of Zarif and the US Secretary of State John Kerry in New York, might be behind Park’s visit, i.e., a good omen that Washington is giving the green light to some of its allies to restore their past healthy relationships with Iran.

Unfortunately, too many anti-Iran hawks in US Congress continue to throw legislative roadblocks for any normalization of US-Iran economic relations. But, per the terms of the recent nuclear agreement, US-owned foreign subsidies can engage with Iran — that may include some firms in South Korea.

An important aspect of South Korea’s new opening to Iran is in the realm of banking, given the continuing reluctance of western banks to engage with Iran, in light of a recent statement by South Korea’s ambassador to Tehran, Song-Woong Yeob, that

“the two countries have good banking interactions that have resulted in boosting economic exchanges between Seoul and Tehran.” Following the footsteps of Italian and Austrian banks, the willingness of South Korean banks to do normal business with Iran will undoubtedly have salutary effect in impressing some other countries’ banks to similarly drop their hesitations and open up to Iran.

From the point of view of the Rouhani administration, which is under fire at home for being unable to show much tangible economic results from the nuclear deal, blamed almost entirely on US’s lack of cooperation, the ability to restore ties with South Korea in a new post-sanctions environment represents a timely achievement, for both economic and political purposes. It is, in other words, a win-win meeting for both the South Korean and Iranian presidents.

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1 4 Pro-Rouhani candidates scoop up

most seats in runoff

Al-Monitor news website: After having controlled Iran’s legislature for more than a decade, hard-liners have resolutely been hit with a big defeat in the country’s parliamentary elections. In the first round of voting on February 26, Reformists and moderates got massive support and secured complete victory in the Iranian capital. All of Tehran’s 30 seats were won by the joint Reformist-moderate ticket.

Overall, the Feb. 26 vote gave Reformists and moderates 83 out of parliament’s 290 seats, while the Principlists got 64 and independents won 55. In many cities other than Tehran, elections went to a second round as a number of candidates failed to gain the necessary 25% quorum of votes. The runoff, which was held April 29, was over the 68 remaining seats — lesser in number than the first round, but nevertheless momentous since it determines whether one side will have a majority.

The results of the runoff have baffled the hard-liners as much as the outcome of the first round. Based on the results published by Iranian media, 38 of the contested 68 seats were won by supporters of President Hassan Rouhani.

Overall, the Reformists and the moderates are now considered the biggest faction, with 121 seats in parliament. The Principlists and independents have meanwhile won 83 and 81 seats, respectively.

The independent members of parliament will play a major role in the decisions of the next parliament. It is still not fully known which side they favor. However, a number of moderates ran as independents. Iranian political analyst Hossein Kanani Moghaddam told Al-Monitor, “[The independent parliamentarians] are mostly close to [incumbent Speaker] Ali Larijani.” He added, “I think the independent members of parliament will form an alliance with the Reformists and will support Rouhani’s policies.”

Of further note, the number of women in the coming parliament has increased to 17 — all of whom are Reformist or moderate. It is possible that one more woman may be added to the list. After having won a seat in the Feb. 26 round of polling, Reformist candidate Minou Khaleghi was disqualified by the Guardian Council. The Rouhani

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administration has not accepted the electoral watchdog’s disqualification, arguing that it is not legal to disqualify a candidate who had been cleared and then won a seat.

Indeed, in a speech on the occasion of the May 1 International Labor Day, Rouhani implicitly declared his opposition to the ruling by saying, “For the first time, 18 women have entered the parliament, and this is a record and we are happy that our dear women are taking part in all arenas, and especially in politics.”

Hard-liner reactions

The victory of pro-Rouhani candidates in both rounds of parliamentary polling has yet to be acknowledged by some hard-liners. The hard-line dailies Vatan-e Emrooz and Kayhan both tried to portray Principlists as the winners, claiming that they have won a majority. If this was true, it can be assumed that it would have been the top story rather than a little box on the front page. In contrast, Raja News, which is close to the hard-line parliamentary “Endurance Front” faction, ran the headline, “The victory of the [Reformist-moderate] List of Hope.”

Given how hard-liners — both before and during the polling — went all out in persuading people not to vote for moderates and Reformists, their loss has left them humiliated.

To defeat the pro-Rouhani camp, the hard-liners had first expressed opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Indeed, during the negotiations that led to the nuclear deal, the hard-liners at one point proposed a bill to stop the talks. That effort was only foiled after the intervention of Larijani. After the JCPOA was agreed to on July 14, 2015, the hard-liners were determined to prevent it from being ratified by parliament. However, they failed in that, too. Thus, the next phase of attacks on Rouhani and his allies involved belittling and devaluing the nuclear deal in the eyes of people — an approach that has been embraced by the hard-line-controlled state broadcaster.

Indeed, ahead of the Feb. 26 vote, state TV did not cover election-related stories in the usual manner. This was met with criticism by moderates, who implied that the state broadcaster was striving to lower the turnout as high voter participation tends to favor Reformists and moderates.

In perhaps the most telling reaction, when results of the first round of voting were announced, some hard-liners — shocked at their complete defeat in Tehran —

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resorted to comparing the people of the Iranian capital with that of Kufa, a city about 170 kilometers (105 miles) south of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad. In Shiite teachings, the people of Kufa are notorious for having abandoned Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, as he was faced with battle against forces of the caliph at the time, Yazid.

If anything, the results of the polls may signal that the hard-liners’ anti-Rouhani propaganda backfired. The outcome of the Feb. 26 and April 29 votes shows that only 12 out of 80 members of parliament who proposed the bill to stop the nuclear negotiations succeeded in defeating Reformist and moderate contenders.

Three years into a hard and grueling term, Rouhani, who has been challenged repeatedly by hard-liners in the parliament, may now feel more assured and relaxed about pursuing his stated domestic political agenda. Indeed, in his International Labor Day speech, he said, “People chose the best people in the elections, and we are happy that the next parliament will be more coordinated with the government.”

Moghaddam, the Iranian political analyst, told Al-Monitor, “President Rouhani will have a stronger hand in solving the country’s problems when the parliament is in line with him. The president should seize this opportunity and take advantage of it to remove the obstacles from his way.”

1 Report for

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Report for

2 Highlights

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News Briefs

Other stories

‘Reformist victory’

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Rouhani praises election results

MPs discuss next Majlis Speaker

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Deputy interior minister denies reports that undercover police will not report moral transgressions

Iranian casualties in Syria

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7 Why so many Iranians

have come to hate the hijab

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1 2 South Korea’s new opening to Iran

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1 4 Pro-Rouhani candidates scoop up

most seats in runoff

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Hard-liner reactions

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