“The successful holding of elections and the massive turnout of Syrian people is an important step towards the establishment of peace, stability, calm, reconstruction, and prosperity of Syria,” the Friday statement said.
The statement added, “The Islamic Republic of Iran respects the Syrian people’s decision, and supports their right to decide their fate and the future of their country without any foreign interference.”
“Iran congratulates President Assad and the resilient people of Syria on his decisive victory in these elections,” it further said.
Assad was re-elected in a landslide, officials said Thursday, ushering in a fourth seven-year term in the war-torn country.
Officials said 18 million were eligible to vote. But in the country ravaged by the 10-year-old conflict, areas controlled by militants or Kurdish-led troops did not hold the vote.
At least 8 million, mostly displaced, live in those areas in northwest and northeast Syria.
Over 5 million refugees — mostly living in neighbouring countries — have largely refrained from casting their ballots.
Syria’s parliament speaker, Hammoud Sabbagh, announced the final results from Wednesday’s vote. He said Assad garnered 95.1% of the votes. He said turnout stood at 78.6% of the voters, in an election that lasted for 17 hours on Wednesday with no independent monitors.
While many Iranian clients were interested in buying the car at the auction, a Romanian collector finally managed to purchase it.
The Paykan (meaning Arrow) is the first Iranian-made car produced by Iran Khodro between 1967 and 2005. The car was very popular in Iran from its introduction until its discontinuation. It is often colloquially referred as the Iranian chariot.
The Paykan was a Hillman Hunter built under licence, but had some unique body work and locally-developed variants (most notably, the pickup, which used a different body shell from the one sold elsewhere).
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said the vote is held in one day, but its effects remain for years. The Leader called on people to vote for whoever candidate they believe is the right choice. Ayatollah Khamenei urged voters to turn a deaf ear to those who try to promote voter apathy by creating the impression that going to the polls would be futile.
He said those individuals do not care about the nation.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Leader touched upon the process of establishing the eligibility of presidential hopefuls.
He said the Constitutional Council did its job and named the candidates who are eligible to run in the race.
Ayatollah Khamenei also expressed his gratitude to all hopefuls who had registered for the election, saying many of them definitely did so due to a sense of responsibility.
In the Wednesday meeting, Zarif expressed hope for deeper economic relations between the two countries in the post-pandemic era. He said development of Meghri Border Free Trade Zone and launch of Iran-Nakhchivan-Armenia rail link lay the ground for expansion of mutual economic ties. The top diplomat also expressed hope Iran will be able to play an effective role in Armenia’s Syunik Province and this will help further strengthen ties with Yerevan.
The foreign minister noted that Iran is willing to see stability maintained in the region and Armenia’s territorial integrity guaranteed, and expressed regret over tensions in Armenia’s borders with the Azerbaijan Republic over the past days.
Armenia’s caretaker prime minister, in turn, said Yerevan considers ties with Iran of strategic significance, saying he is pleased about the fact that his country’s border with Iran has always marked friendship and security for both sides.
Pashinyan also touched on the steps Armenia has taken to develop its Syunik Province, including a push to speed up the establishment of Meghri Free Trade Zone, expressing hope these measures will lead to expansion of ties with Iran.
He also talked about the recent tensions on Armenia’s border with the Azerbaijan Republic. He offered details on Yerevan’s stance on the border issue, its referral to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, killing of an Armenian soldier along the border with the Azerbaijan Republic on Tuesday (May 25) and the current border situation.
During the meeting, Zarif and Pashinyan also discussed the natural gas and electricity swap plan between the two countries, extension of a contract for exports of Iranian natural gas to Armenia and an increase in the amount of exported natural gas as well as cooperation on infrastructure, science and education.
Dr. Hossein Asgari, who has talked to villagers first-hand, says the lifestyle of the locals is based on an intellectual and jurisprudential school of thought formed some 200 years ago.
“Residents of the village take their deceased to Qom and Tabriz as there is no cemetery in the village,” he says.
“They (the villagers) speak Turkish; of course, they know Persian, too,” he adds.
“They sometimes welcome guests, and sometimes don’t,” Asgari explains.
“They do not allow women into their community at all,” he says.
Moreover, he adds, no one has ever seen their women, either.
Here is IFP’s translation of a report by Shahrvand newspaper about a strange village that has shut its doors on technology:
At the village’s entrance, there is a white gate on which a no-trespassing sign grabs your attention. Beyond this gate, a group of people originated from Iran’s north-eastern city of Tabriz live behind an enclosed windowless clay straw wall.
Some 30 years ago, these Tabrizis made up their minds, packed their belongings and left all the means and instruments of modernity behind to lead a simple life in Iran’s Taleqan County, Alborz Province, at the foothills of a soaring mountain and inside low-ceiling houses on the bank of Shahroud River.
The silent bells with their hanging ropes at the door of every house attest to the fact that silence is the most striking characteristic in this village.
According to their own words, they are the followers of Mirza Sadeq Tabrizi, the religious leader of Iran’s Constitutional period who issued the sternest fatwas against modernism and its achievements. In an attempt to tread on his path, the residents of this village have abandoned technology as well.
It is enclosed by a long rectangle-shaped clay straw wall on which 9 wooden doors have been mounted at regular intervals. The doors, without names and numbers, are all similar in terms of height, shape and colour with hanging ropes of bells, except for two bigger doors which are the public entrance and exit of the village.
A door opens up and an old man appears in a white knee-length shirt and a buff-coloured pair of linen pants. He is holding a red basket in hand, and prefers to slant down his straw hat while turning a deaf ear to our first hello; however, we received a cold welcome when he answered our second hello in undertone.
Though averse to speaking, he divulges that 9 households live behind the wall and that’s all.
“False rumours are widespread about us. They said we are aggressive and combative; far from the truth!” he regretted.
They own 15 hectares of contiguous lands and live in houses as big as 1,000 meters.
He pointed to the simple life that people lead there and said, “We avoid using ready-made stuff as much as we can, and only on rare occasions we have to buy things from outside the village, for example a piece of cloth.”
He noted that the children of the village gain literacy as high as they can read and write and of course become familiar with Muslims’ holy book, Quran, the theology of Twelver Shiites, and actions that according to Islamic law are Halal (permissible) or Haram (forbidden) to engage in.
Girls in this village get married under the Shiite Islamic Shariah law, namely in the age of 15-16.
Because of the lanterns hanging on the doors of every house, shimmering throughout the nights of the village of hermits, neighbouring counties used to call it Fanoos Abad (land of lanterns).
Many years later, for the first time an author and researcher named Hossein Asgari wrote a book about this village and suggested Ista (Static) as a name for the village because its people have remained static in the time before the breakthrough of technology.
To men, communicating with girls and women that are non-Mahram to them (girls and women other than mother, sister, aunt and mother-in-law) is taken as a red line.
“Girls and women of the village won’t come out of their homes or leave the village unless it is necessary; for example, for some medical needs that are beyond our capabilities to deal with,” he stressed.
They never buy food products. For other basic requirements, the shopping responsibility lies with men; however, he says that “once in every few months, one of the men in the village does the shopping for the rest of the households.”
After all, they are no exception to the assumption of “necessity is the mother of invention” as a Nissan pickup has crossed the clay straw wall and won a place in the lives of the hermits.
The old man explains that they did not have any cars in the village until five years ago when they had to buy one out of necessity.
“The pickup belongs to all the people of the village which comes handy in emergencies,” he emphasized.
He argued that their way of life is as simple as it was in old times and said, “We are not strange; life was like this before, you have changed too much and now you can’t accept our way of life.”
In repose to the question on how the people of the village take shower without electricity and piped water, he became surprised and said, “What would your ancestors do? We chop up woods, make fire and heat water for bathing.”
The residents of the village, on the contrary to what many people may think, are among the big prosperous landowners of Tabriz who still enjoy high esteem there. The revenues from those lands pour back into their simple lives in Ista.
Residents of the village look up into the sky and measure the passage of time by the movement of the sun. When it reached the middle of the sky, the old man knew it was prayer time; he thus turned towards the mosque and walked away in short steps.
The virtual meeting was co-chaired by Director General of the Women and Human Rights Department at the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Director General of the United Nations, Human Rights, and Commonwealth Division at the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Iran and New Zealand held the talks with the purpose of getting familiar with the human rights situations of the two countries, building a better understanding of the existing realities, and exchanging experiences in the field of human rights.
During the meeting, the Iranian side elaborated on the Islamic Republic’s approach to the issue of human rights and human dignity based on Islamic principles and the Constitution as well as the developing trend of supporting and promoting human rights principles in different fields.
The New Zealand side, in turn, expounded on Wellington’s efforts to promote human rights, especially in the fields of women rights and the rights of indigenous people.
Talks on the situation of women and the rights of people with disability were among other issues discussed in the meeting.
The two sides also conferred on a list of issues of mutual interest including the impact of climate change on human rights, combating xenophobia and Islamophobia, the right to development, the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, combating human trafficking, combating contemporary forms of slavery, combating child sexual abuse, combating absolute poverty, and enjoying the appropriate standards of living as possible areas for mutual cooperation at different levels, especially at the United Nations.
At the end of the meeting, the two sides expressed their interest in continuing the talks in the future.
Over the past few days, repeated and sudden power cuts in Tehran and several other major cities have closed a number of commercial and manufacturing units, disrupted urban traffic especially in crowded centres as the traffic lights were turned off at the intersections, stopped online classes, and even resulted in the loss of Iranian national chess players who were playing their Asian games online.
Hundreds of thousands of students were also barred from taking their final exams, and most importantly, millions of Iranians felt frustrated and outraged under temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius.
The issue of frequent blackouts in summer days, if not resolved, could turn into another important factor in reducing the turnout in the June presidential election.
A few days ago, Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian apologised to the nation for the blackouts which have complicated the last weeks of President Hassan Rouhani’s term in office.
The blackouts have been blamed for poor infrastructure and insufficient investment and also the cryptocurrency mining which has imposed a huge burden on the country’s electricity grid.
However, the Energy Ministry says the crisis mainly stems from illegal miners rather than those who have obtained license for mining.
Abouzar Salehi, the head of public relations department at Iran’s Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir), says only one foreign company – namely the Iran-China Consortium – is actively mining cryptocurrency in Iran.
According to Salehi, the Consortium’s farm is located in the city of Rafsanjan in Kerman province, southern Iran.
He said only 354 megawatts of electricity is used by licensed miners, and that is sold to them with the price Iran exports its power to other countries.
“Our main problem is the illegal miners. Our estimates show 8,000 unlicensed mining machines are active in the country,” he said.
The official says these illegal mining activities have cost the country’s electricity grid a deficiency of 2,000 megawatts, leading to massive blackouts across Iran.
On Wednesday, President Rouhani announced all cryptocurrency mining activities – either licensed or unlicensed – will be banned until the end of summer.
Now we should wait and see whether the Energy Ministry will be able to compensate for the power shortage by cracking down on cryptocurrency mining activities.
“The authorised mining of cryptocurrencies does not consume much electricity and needs just around 300 megawatts,” said Hassan Rouhani.
“However, it is unauthorised crypto miners that consume a lot of electricity; they consume about 2,000 megawatts,” the president explained.
“As of today, it will be forbidden even for authorised miners to mine cryptocurrencies until late September,” President Rouhani added.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the president touched upon the negotiations underway between Iran and other parties over the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna.
He said it is the United States that should take the first step when it comes to fulfilling commitments under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Rouhani praised Iranian negotiators in Vienna, saying they have made good headway with the talks with other parties.
He said the negotiators have reached agreement on key issues, adding the talks are aimed at reviving the nuclear deal.
President Rouhani underlined the nuclear agreement itself is not being negotiated; rather, he added, issues such mechanisms for Washington to return to its obligations are being discussed.
The president underlined now Iran has the upper hand in the negotiations unlike a few years ago when the reverse was true.
On Tuesday, the Interior Ministry named the final candidates approved by the Guardian Council to run in the June 18 presidential elections. The list excluded several key candidates: Ali Larijani, Es’haq Jahangiri, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Saeed Mohammad, Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Ezzatollah Zarghami, among others.
The decision to bar Ali Larijani, an advisor to Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and a parliament speaker for 12 years, from running for president has come as a shock to many, even to Sadegh Amoli Larijani, a member of the Guardian Council.
Amoli, who is Ali Larijani’s brother, strongly criticised the GC’s disqualification of candidates, and said in a series of tweets, “In the past 20 years, I have always defended the Guardian Council, even during the years when I was at the Judiciary; but I have never found the GC’s decisions more indefensible, either regarding the candidates approved or those disqualified.”
“This mess has been largely caused by the growing interferences of security bodies in the GC’s decision-making through false reports,” he added.
Amoli Larijani said his arguments at the Guardian Council’s meetings have been futile.
The decision even surprised Ebrahim Raisi, the key contender approved by the Guardian Council. He said in a video that he had already started his consultations with relevant authorities to make changes to the list of final candidates, and make the elections “more competitive”.
President Hassan Rouhani also wrote a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei, asking him to reconsider the GC’s decision if he deems appropriate.
“We have forgotten that the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy is guaranteed by people’s votes,” Rouhani said in a Wednesday meeting.
It is not unprecedented for Ayatollah Khamenei to change Guardian Council’s decisions. He overturned the Council’s decision in 2005 and allowed two disqualified reformist candidates to run for president.
Despite the calls for the revision of the list, almost all the key hopefuls disqualified by the Guardian Council have announced they accept the GC’s decision, and don’t want it overturned.
Ali Larijani said in a handwritten letter that he is pleased with the decision “now that the trend of election is unfolding this way.”
Ali Motahari, who was disqualified by the GC himself, also objected the disqualification of Larijani, and said, “Larijani has always been obedient to the Islamic Republic and had vast experiences for society.”
Motahari suggested that the reason for Larijani’s disqualification is that his daughter is living in the US.
Other reformist candidates like Masoud Pezeshkian and Es’haq Jahangiri and the conservative hopeful Ezzatollah Zarghami also said in separate statements that they accept the GC’s decision.
Meanwhile, Zahra Shojaei, the only woman who was expected to be qualified to run, expressed regret at the GC’s decision to bar all Iranian women from running.
However, she said the good thing that happened in this election was the GC’s interpretation of law on those who can run for president, which also included women.
“It was a positive step. I expected to be disqualified from running, but the important point is the progress we had regarding women’s participation in the elections,” she added.
A door opens up and an old man appears in a white knee-length shirt and a buff-coloured pair of linen pants. He is holding a red basket in hand, and prefers to slant down his straw hat while turning a deaf ear to our first hello; however, we received a cold welcome when he answered our second hello in undertone.
