NCRI: Iran’s economy on verge of collapse/Iran regime sentences 4 reporters to 27 years in jail/Execution rate rising in Iran under Rouhani/Iran regime has ‘legitimacy deficit’

Former Minister: Iran’s economy on verge of collapse
Tuesday, 26 April 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI

 The Iranian regime’s former Minister of Education announced that the country’s economy is on the verge of collapse and that not all problems related to the dire economic situation were the byproduct of international sanctions. The Fars News Agency, affiliated with the regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), reported on Thursday, April 21, that Hamidreza Haji-Babai noted in his speech in Arak, central Iran, that the “country’s economy is on the verge of a stroke. We are facing stagnation, and we are not in good shape.”Haji-BabaI, who in addition to being a minister was a legislator of the regime for 20 years, made the following assessment of the regime’s economy: “We should note that not all the problems are related to the sanctions. Just 30 percent of our problems are due to sanctions and the remaining 70 percent have to do with management.”In an editorial on April 18, 2016, The New York Times pointed out that the Iranian regime should primarily blame itself for its economic problems due to a corrupt financial system and support for terrorism.The New York Times added: “Most American sanctions remain in place because of Iran’s involvement in terrorism and human rights abuses and its testing of ballistic missiles. Iran knew that lifting all American sanctions was never part of the nuclear deal. This means American companies are still banned from doing business in Iran, except for trade in civil aviation, carpets and agricultural products.”

Iran regime sentences 4 reporters to 27 years in jail
uesday, 26 April 2016 /NCRI – Iran’s fundamentalist regime has sentenced four journalists to a combined total of 27 years of jail, their lawyer announced on Tuesday.
Afarin Chitsaz was sentenced to 10 years behind bars for gathering and colluding to disrupt national security and having ties to foreign governments, her lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaee told the state-run Tasnim news agency. Ehsan Mazandarani was given a seven year sentence for propaganda against the regime and gathering and colluding to disrupt national security, Alizadeh-Tabatabaee said. Davood Assadi and Ehsan (Saman) Safarzaie were each handed down a five year sentence for gathering and colluding to disrupt national security.The four detained journalists previously wrote for state-run media in Iran. They were arrested on November 2, 2015 in raids on their homes by intelligence agents of the Revolutionary Guards who accused them of spying for the governments of the United Kingdom and United States.

Dowlat Nowrouzi: Execution rate rising in Iran under Rouhani
Tuesday, 26 April 2016/NCRI – Dowlat Nowrouzi, the representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in the United Kingdom, says the rate of executions in Iran are rising during Hassan Rouhani’s presidency. In an interview with ncr-iran.org on Tuesday, Ms. Nowrouzi said that recent trips by European officials to Iran have not led to an improvement of the human rights situation by the mullahs’ regime. Earlier this month while the head of European Union diplomacy Ms. Federica Mogherini visited Tehran, 10 people, including two women, were executed, Ms. Nowrouzi pointed out. “The recent trips not only did not help the terrible human rights situation in Iran; they only aggravated it,” she said. She added that according to the United Nations the execution rate in Iran hit a record last year. “In reality and based on the reports by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran only last year 966 people had been executed in Iran, while we know that the real figure is much higher,” Ms. Nowrouzi said. “In the aftermath of the nuclear deal the human rights situation has not improved for the better; rather, it is getting much worse.” The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement on April 13 that the increasing trend of executions “aimed at intensifying the climate of terror to rein in expanding protests by various strata of the society, especially at a time of visits by high-ranking European officials, demonstrates that the claim of moderation is nothing but an illusion for this medieval regime.”Ms. Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was in Tehran on April 16 along with seven EU commissioners for discussions with the regime’s officials on trade and other areas of cooperation. Her trip was strongly criticized by Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI who said: “This trip which takes place in the midst of mass executions, brutal human rights violations and the regime’s unbridled warmongering in the region tramples on the values upon which the EU has been founded and which Ms. Mogherini should be defending and propagating.”Amnesty International in its April 6 annual Death Penalty report covering the 2015 period wrote: “Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to at least 743 the year before.””Iran alone accounted for 82% of all executions recorded” in the Middle East and North Africa, the human rights group said. There have been more than 2,300 executions during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure as President. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran in March announced that the number of executions in Iran in 2015 was greater than any year in the last 25 years. Rouhani has explicitly endorsed the executions as examples of “God’s commandments” and “laws of the parliament that belong to the people.”

Ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield, a former senior United States official.: Iran regime has ‘legitimacy deficit’
Tuesday, 26 April 2016/NCRI – Iran’s regime has a “legitimacy deficit” and fears any challenges to its rule and as such is “jailing and executing people who pose a political challenge,” said Ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield, a former senior United States official. In an interview on Iran News Update’s YouTube page, Amb. Bloomfield criticized the Obama administration for not considering Iran’s human rights violations as a factor in the nuclear agreement made with the mullahs’ regime in 2015. “This raises the question of whether the United States has been ignoring one of the most egregious violators of human rights in the world, and ignoring the plight of the individuals who are being detained and jailed and tortured and executed in Iran,” said Amb. Bloomfield who previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs in the U.S. State Department from 2001 until 2005.
“I do think that there is a refocusing that is needed as to what should be the appropriate approach to the behavior of the ruling regime in Iran.”Amb. Bloomfield said he does not believe that international trade deals would encourage the regime to reduce the number of executions in carries out annually. “Most of the major contracts that European leaders are signing with the regime are certainly with Iranian entities where profits will flow to the clerics, and to the foundations they control,” he said.
“President Rouhani came into office in mid-2013 talking about reform. He brought in the Foreign Minister Zarif; both these men speak good English and they engaged in social media campaigns in English to charm the West. But at the same time his Justice Minister is guilty of crimes against humanity from 1988, and so it was, it seems to me they are putting up two faces to the public.”
“I think there is one acid test that could be posed for those who claim to be advancing ‘reform’ inside Iran. And that is, it has to do with the key point in the Constitution that Ayatollah Khomeini introduced in 1979, when he combined religious devotion and political legitimacy, for the first time in hundreds of years; the same thing that ISIS is going to try to do. Which is to say, the Caliphate which is the element that makes the Supreme Leader essentially the embodiment of the twelfth Imam of the descendent of the prophet; this needs to be changed. And if someone in Iran is willing to say ‘I am a reformer, and I propose to remove this from the constitution, and no longer give the Supreme Leader and the Assembly of experts – the Guardian Council – over-riding power, that could be proof that they’re willing to move Iran back into the modern age.”
“I will tell you that I’ve been a political appointee in the United States, and if you are being granted a position by a political party they investigate very carefully to make sure that you will not bring embarrassment to the President of the White House; but in Iran everyone who wants to run for office is investigated by the Basij, who puts together a folder and brings it the Guardian Council to review, to see if this person is loyal enough to the Supreme Leader, or has shown any kind of deviationist tendencies. So they really are imposing a severe loyalty test to the Supreme Leader before anyone is allowed to run.”
Amb. Bloomfield suggested that the mullahs’ regime is in a weak state. “I interpret most of their behavior as a reaction to the weakness of their legitimacy; and mostly defensive in nature, and which makes them very dangerous.”“They’re trying both through coercion and charm to buy time because, as I just said, most of the leaders have nowhere else to go. If they were not behind the shield of power they could not survive as free citizens in the world given the crimes on their personal dossier. They would not be able to walk as free men.”