Daily Report for Wednesday, September 14, 2016
1
Report for
Wednesday,
September 14, 2016 Shahrivar 24, 1395
Highlights, Page 2 News Briefs, Page 3
Other Stories, Page 3
“Spies at work”, Principlists warn about foreign embassies, Page 5 Water pressure plummets in Tehran, Page 9
Daily Report for Wednesday, September 14, 2016
2 Highlights
The upgrading of London-Tehran relations to ambassadorial level last week was instantly met with domestic backlashes in Iran. (See Page 5)
After years of warnings about an impending water crisis, Tehranis are
experiencing dramatic drops in water pressure and now face the likely prospect of water rationing. (See Page 8)
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News Briefs
* Etemad newspaper reports that Health Ministry says that 31,950 AIDS patients have been identified so far, and that it is estimated that there are about 80,000 AIDS in Iran.
* Aftab news website reports that a 27-year-old man attacked and killed another young man with knife after a heated argument over „inappropriate parking in a narrow alley‟.
* Aftab news website reports that a 17-year-old boy ran his car into an electric car, resulting in the death of four persons near Damaq (Hamedan).
The boy did not have driving license.
* Mardom Salari newspaper reports that Isfahan emergency services have rescued four Swiss tourists from certain death after their car overturned into a river near Isfahan.
* Mardom Salari newspaper reports that Sistan and Baluchistan cyber police have arrested a gang on charges of selling arms and ammunition through online.
* Mardom Salari newspaper reports that a collision between a Peugeot and a trailer [truck] leaves behind two dead and three injured near Qom city.
* Etemad newspaper reports that a collision between Peugeot 405 with a motorcycle in Kahnuj city (Kerman Province) has left behind seven dead.
* Etemad newspaper reports that Tehran police have arrested a professional car thief who has confessed to 20 counts of car thefts in western parts of Tehran city.
* Ebtekar newspaper reports that Judiciary has said that there have been lottery schemes recently by people were tricked into transferring [small]
money through ATMs, and during such transactions much larger amounts of money were secretly transferred out of the victims‟ accounts.
Other stories
Iran denies reports of
Ayatollah Khamenei‟s fatwa on Hajj, Karbala pilgrimage
Tasnim News Agency reports that Iran‟s interests section in Egypt denied reports on a religious fatwa attributed to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei alleging that Iranians could go on pilgrimage to Iraq‟s holy Shiite shrines, as in Karbala, instead of Hajj in Saudi Arabia.
In a statement on Monday, Iran‟s interests section in Cairo denied the stories about Ayatollah Khamenei‟s fatwa on the performance of Hajj rituals by one million Iranians in Iraq‟s holy Shiite sites, including the shrine of the third Shiite imam, Imam Hussein (AS), in the city of Karbala.
Reacting to a statement by Al-Azhar University and the media reports, the diplomatic mission dismissed the reports as “untrue, fabricated and defamatory”, saying such a decree has never been issued, either this year or in the past.
It came after Saudi-affiliated media outlets spread rumors that Iranian pilgrims, barred from Mecca amid escalating conflicts between Tehran and Riyadh, have come up with a “holy plan B” to substitute Karbala pilgrimage for Hajj.
Iran should not increase tensions with Saudi Arabia
State-owned newspaper Iran reports that IRGC Maj.
Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi called for Iran to improve its relations with the Gulf states.
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Safavi stated, “We must improve our relations with Oman, Kuwait, and even Qatar. We should never move towards tensions with Saudi Arabia.”
Safavi claimed that the Saudis “want to have tense relations with Iran” and stated,
“The Saudis are incensed at Iran‟s increasing geopolitical weight. They blame Iran for their own failures in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and even Yemen.”
President Hassan Rouhani stated that
“regional issues must be solved by regional countries and only via political negotiation, dialogue, and understanding,”
during a phone conversation with Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani.
Syrian ceasefire “should not be used as a vacuum”
Jaam-e Jam newspaper reports that Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Supreme Leader Ali Akbar Velayati commented on the Syrian ceasefire recently brokered by the U.S. and Russia.
He stated, “The ceasefire is acceptable when it has been agreed to by all parties, especially the Syrian government and Syria‟s allies, including Iran and Hezbollah.”
Velayati also noted, “The ceasefire and the cessation of fighting is to everyone‟s liking. However, if the price is that the enemies of the Syrian government and nation exploit the ceasefire, it will not only be useless, but also harmful… The
ceasefire should not be used as a vacuum, such that terrorist groups like [Jabhat] al Nusra have time to strengthen their objectives.”
Iran concludes „historic‟
border pact with Oman
State-owned newspaper Iran reports that Iran says it had concluded a “historic”
accord with Oman that demarcates the Islamic Republic‟s maritime border with the fellow Persian Gulf littoral state.
Abbas Araqchi, Iran‟s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, announced the agreement on Tuesday.
The important step, he said, was taken during a trip by Omani Interior Minister Hamoud Bin Faisal al-Busaidi to Tehran last week, when he met with Iran‟s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the two exchanged the required documents.
Besides outlining Iran‟s longest maritime border in the Sea of Oman, the agreement justly apportioned potential hydrocarbon resources between the two countries, Araqchi said.
He said, “Iran and the royal government of Oman successfully completed complex and tough technical and legal negotiations on the determination of their maritime border in the light of their very close relations and based on the principles of good will and good neighborliness.”
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“Spies at work”,
Principlists warn about foreign embassies as Iran gets closer to presidential election
IRDiplomacy news website: A day after Hamid Baeidinejad and Nicholas Hopton submitted their credentials to London and Tehran, Kayhan published an editorial penned by editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari, in which he called the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs‟ move illegal on the grounds that it had to solicit Majlis‟
permission to renew ties with the UK only after the latter changed its hostile policies.
Shriatmadari drew on foreign secretary Boris Johnson‟s remarks in which he called the upgrade “an important moment” in bilateral ties. “I hope this will mark the start of more productive cooperation between our countries, enabling us to discuss more directly issues such as human rights and Iran‟s role in the region, as well as ongoing implementation of the nuclear deal and the expansion of the trading relationship between both our countries,” Western media outlets quoted Johnson as saying. To Shariatmadari and his like-minded peers, this was intelligence-driven brag.
Shariatmadari went on to claim that the newly assigned UK ambassador has been a
„prominent agent‟ of MI6 and cemented his argument for intelligence threats through a quote from ex-MI6 chief Sir John Sawers‟s televised speech in October 2010:
“Stopping nuclear proliferation cannot be addressed purely by conventional diplomacy. We need intelligence-led operations to make it more difficult for countries like Iran to develop nuclear weapons.”
It is a historical fact that in less than a month, Iranian quantum physicist Majid Shahriari was assassinated on the same day that Fereydoun Abbassi, who later became chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), saved himself from a similar car bomb assasination. Iran officially blames Mossad for the assassinations.
Shariatmadari, however, made a quickly passing reference, and then accused the British Council of providing financial and intelligence support for the 2009 US-Israeli
“sedition”, a label Iranian officials use to refer to the unrest that followed the controversial presidential race of that year.
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In his concluding paragraph, Shariatmadari took his argument to a whole new level, making it a case against all the Big Three European states‟ diplomatic missions. The new French ambassador to Iran, François Sénémaud, is also a veteran intelligence agent of DGES, France‟s external intelligence agency, the article said. Shariatmadari went on to note that Michael Klor-Berchtold, rumored to be the next German ambassador to Tehran, has deputized the Federal Intelligence Service under Gerhard Schindler. “He should have remained for at least three years in the deputy post but was discharged after two years for a mission to Iran. What is all the hurry about?”
In the final line of the article, Shariatmadari made clear who his real target was. These developments, nine months before the presidential election in Iran, indicate that the US and its allies have plans for Iran, he said.
Other Principlists soon took the cue from Shariatmadari‟s lead. On Sunday, Mohammad-Nabi Habibi, Secretary General to the Islamic Coalition Party, echoed the same concerns in a meeting with the party‟s secretaries, saying London‟s behavior with Iran has not changed. “The new UK ambassador is one of the country‟s security official, specializing in soft war. His appointment before the 2017 election is not expedient and he should be considered an adverse element. This shows the London‟s hostilities will intensify in the new round of relations,” Tasnim News Agency quoted him as saying.
Fars Plus, a Fars News subsidiary which is now limited to a Telegram channel, vaguely quotes an article in Seda Weekly, titled “Proxy Diplomacy”, written by Ahmad Naghibzadeh, political scholar affiliated with the pro-Rafsanjani Executives of Construction Party, which apparently says Iran-UK relations are a function of diplomacy between Tehran and Washington. Fars Plus does not provide any further details but finds that the Rouhani administration‟s “insistence to reopen the British Council and upgrade ties” was aimed to facilitate UK‟s proxy measures for the US.
European diplomatic missions are not the only ones under the Principlists‟ radar. Pars News, a hardliner online outlet, has also published a short article on the suspicious links among embassies of three African countries in Tehran. As Iranian intelligence services have become more sensitive about European embassies‟ covert recruitment of informers under the cover of educational classes, the Europeans have relegated the operation to African embassies, the article claims.
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“The embassies of three African countries, including one in Western Africa, have held English, French and music classes for students in Tehran, directed and financed by the French Embassy,” Pars reported. The classes are used to elicit the information and pave the ground for future cooperation. Pars calls it an obvious example of infiltration in the country‟s Education Ministry, “definitely intended to estrange [Iranian] students from the values of the Islamic Revolution and familiarize them with Western culture.”
“An intelligence orchestra is being formed in Tehran,” warns Mahdi Mohammadi, an ardent critic of Hassan Rouhani‟s nuclear policy and former politics editor at Kayhan Daily. In a hand-rubbing tone, Mohammadi writes the situation is quickly becoming more “delicious”, in a short article that appeared on his Telegram channel. Parroting claims made by Shariatmadari, Mohammadi writes:
“First, proxy operations are peaking. A certain African or Asian embassy puts all its capacities at the service of the US and France. Do not be surprised if you hear news that an American diplomat is also deployed to Tehran. More interesting is the division of labor being established. The embassy of the UK is responsible for political affairs, while that of Sweden focuses on entrepreneurship, with Netherland on human rights, Italy on the youth, Germany on academics and artists and France on culture. I shall repeat what is already ordained: who are they mobilizing for?”
Back during the street protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election, Iran arrested several diplomats and foreign embassy staff members for playing alleged roles in the sedition. Spain‟s chief consular official Ignacio Perez-Cambra who was held under arrest for four hours is one example. Western embassies in Tehran, including those of France and Italy, openly announced that they would welcome 2009 presidential protesters being chased or injured and the then French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner admitted that it was a “European order”.
This year, too, Iran has had its own face-offs with foreign diplomatic missions, including partygoers and those who have approached military sites. Iranian judiciary officials are putting more emphasis on dual-nationals who are, they believe, easier targets for adverse intelligence services. Even a rare episode is still under way after Iranian nuclear negotiator, Abdolrassoul Dorri Esfahani, was indicted.
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Since President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013, Principlists have warned the arrival of “The Greater Sedition”, echoed in what Principlists mouthpiece and activist now turned grossing filmmaker Massoud Dehnamaki had to say on his apparently abandoned project about foreign infiltration. Two weeks ago, on the sidelines of a film premiere, he told reporters he had prepared a script titled “Infiltrators,” but abandoned trying to make it into a film out of fear of his life, probably referring to possible foreign threats, as he cannot be more secure at home. He went on to elaborate on cases of foreign espionage and infiltration and foreboded that Iran “should expect incidents in 2017 and 2019”.
Daily Report for Wednesday, September 14, 2016
9 Water pressure plummets in Tehran
Iran has been threatened by a water crisis for years, a situation that is being worsened by the mismanagement of scarce water resources. In just a few more years, the Water and Sanitation Organization may become unable to supply drinking water to densely populated urban areas in the country, including Tehran.
Tehran‟s population has ballooned so immensely in the past decade that Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian has warned of an impending failure to supply clean and safe drinking water to residents should the capital‟s population — currently hovering at 12 million — continue to rise, Hamshahri newspaper reported on Aug. 22. “The water-security problem is very serious in Tehran and needs to be addressed immediately,” Chitchian said.
Some signs are emerging. A rising number of Tehran residents have been experiencing a drop in water pressure, according to leading economic newspaper Donya-e Eqtesad. People living on the third floor or higher have had to install powerful water pumps to suck up more water from the urban pipelines, the paper noted. The wave of pump installations has further lowered water pressure, worsening the situation for citizens without pumps.
The use of pumps is now so widespread that water experts advise residents to also set up small water tanks on their roofs to draw from, to help minimize the pumps‟ impact on water pressure. Water pressure has dropped in recent weeks by 30% in some districts, Donya-e Eqtesad reported.
Many experts believe it was the city managers‟ failure to provide the infrastructure needed for the massive construction of residential buildings in Tehran that caused the looming water crisis. In just the past five years, contractors have gotten licenses from the Tehran Municipality to build 880,000 housing units in the Iranian capital. That number is equal to one-third of the total residential units already available in the city, Donya-e Eqtesad reported, citing official data. If this huge growth in residential developments continues, Tehran will be in a deep trouble as far as water supply is concerned.
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As a short-term solution to the crisis, experts suggest that the capacity of the pipeline system be increased. However, in the long run, the government is advised to shift from reactive to proactive management.
Kaveh Madani, a senior lecturer on environmental management at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, said in a May article for Tehran Times that the current management structure must be drastically revised. He also urged the government to educate Iranians to help change water consumptionpatterns as well. At present, per capita water usage in Iran is twice the world average.
Mohammad Hossein Bazgir, head of the Environmental Office of the City of Tehran, has warned that water rationing is most likely what the city needs. “Iran is approaching the top 10 countries with the lowest annual rainfall. The water crisis is serious, and water rationing will begin very soon in Tehran,” Shafaf quoted him as saying on September 7. He also warned that 350 million cubic meters of surface water in Tehran is being polluted by unmanaged waste in public areas, and therefore not fit for consumption.
Babak Negahdari, president of Tehran‟s Research and Planning Center, however, claims that the water authorities already employ modern technologies to efficiently collect groundwater and improve its quality.
Tehran‟s water is mainly supplied by five dams — Taleghan, Karaj, Mamlo, Latian and Lar — and 480 deep wells located across the city. As no further dams can be built around Tehran, the energy minister has warned that more water will have to be extracted from the wells if the situation gets worse — a move that could cause health problems for Tehran residents, as more intense extraction activities increase exposure to pollutants.
Mohammad Akhoundi, a businessman who represents Todaysure, a British company specializing in the design and manufacture of the Surefire range of incinerators, cremators and combustion systems, told Al-Monitor he agrees with Bazgir‟s comments, saying the groundwater in densely populated regions is highly vulnerable to industrial pollutants.
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“Iranian hospitals and industrial units produce 8 million tons of special waste per year, and since the garbage is not treated under stringent environmental conditions, the liquid generated by it could pollute at least 1 million liters of the surface and groundwater after a time,” he noted.
Water management has been neglected for too long by the Tehran Municipality, the Energy Ministry and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development. The former are to blame for failing to create the infrastructure needed for the city‟s growth, and the latter for failing to stop the indiscriminate construction of multi-unit residential complexes.
Only proper planning and the adoption of a truly sophisticated approach to water management can save Tehran and other big cities from a deathly crisis. Water rationing is the smallest price that residents of big cities can pay to give the authorities time to come up with a comprehensive action plan, ideally in cooperation with internationally respected water-management companies.
