Iran

[indy]

Fairly violent protests are going on in Iran currently. I thought it might peter out as did previous ones a few years back but things seem to be escalating instead.

Iranian authorities say they will restrict internet access in the country until calm is restored to the streets, as protests over the death of a young woman in the custody of the morality police rock the Islamic Republic.

Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets in protest since the death last week of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was apprehended in Tehran and taken to a "re-education center," apparently for not wearing her hijab properly.

www.cnn.com/2022/09/24/middleeast/mahsa-amini-death-iran-internet-un-investigation-intl-hnk/index.html

[LFC]

Protests have been continuing. Iranian security forces display just how f***ed up they really are. These are warped, twisted, little men who can't conceive of women being equal human beings. (Huh, sounds like a chunk of the American Christian right.)

Iranian security forces are targeting women at anti-regime protests with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts and genitals, according to interviews with medics across the country.

Doctors and nurses – treating demonstrators in secret to avoid arrest – said they first observed the practice after noticing that women often arrived with different wounds to men, who more commonly had shotgun pellets in their legs, buttocks and backs.

While an internet blackout has hidden much of the bloody crackdown on protesters, photos provided by medics to the Guardian showed devastating wounds all over their bodies from so-called birdshot pellets, which security forces have fired on people at close range. Some of the photos showed people with dozens of tiny “shot” balls lodged deep in their flesh.

The Guardian has spoken to 10 medical professionals who warned about the seriousness of the injuries that could leave hundreds of young Iranians with permanent damage. Shots to the eyes of women, men and children were particularly common, they said.

One physician from the central Isfahan province said he believed the authorities were targeting men and women in different ways “because they wanted to destroy the beauty of these women”.

[LFC]

The executions are starting.

Iran said Thursday it had executed a person arrested over the monthslong protests gripping the country, the first known death penalty carried out related to the unrest.

The news prompted an outcry from some Western governments and activists, who feared it could be the first of many as the regime engages in a violent crackdown on the demonstrations.

Mohsen Shekari was one of 11 people known to have been sentenced to death in relation to the protests, which have posed the biggest challenge to the Islamic Republic's ruling clerical establishment since it came to power in a 1979 revolution.

He was hanged after being convicted of "waging war against God" — specifically blocking a Tehran street and injuring a pro-regime Basij militia member with a machete — the Mizan news agency, which is run by the judiciary, reported early Thursday.

It said he was tried by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, which has been criticized internationally by human rights groups for holding opaque show trials in which defendants are not allowed to see the evidence against them.

This is the regime that Trump empowered when he pulled us out of the nuclear treaty we had with Iran. Obama provided our best chance in a long time to defrost relations and help move Iran out of the 15th Century. Instead we have this.

[LFC]

Thanks, Trump, for killing the deal that was our best bet for bringing Iran into the fold of non-rogue nations. Now look at where we are.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard seized a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker in the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, the second such capture by Tehran in under a week amid heightened tensions over its nuclear program.

The taking of the oil tanker Niovi renewed concerns about Iran threatening maritime traffic in the strait, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all crude passes. It also comes amid the disappearance of a crude oil tanker in southeast Asia believed to be carrying Iranian crude oil amid reports it may have been seized by the United States.