Behind the Headlines/August 8

Jamshid Chalangi:

In tonight’s program of Behind the Headlines:

The latest news of Iran, including:

As the economic crisis in Iran deepens further, the regime becomes even more intransigent towards political change,

Why nobody really cares about the plight of Iranian working classes?

Where has Iran’s national wealth gone under the current regime?

And why the judiciary is incapable of ending the rampant corruption among the top officials?

Our guests to discuss these topics tonight are Reza Taghizadeh and Mehdi Khazali.

Let’s begin with asking Mr. Khazali who has just been to visit the political prisoner Mr Abdulfattah Soltani after the tragic death of his daughter.

Mehdi Khazali:

This is a real tragedy for a family whose father has been in jail for 8 years and then suddenly his 27 years old young daughter dies of a heart attack and the father is allowed for a few days to attend her funeral.

Mr. Soltani has been a source of inspiration to all political prisoners while in jail. He is an innocent man and his only “crime” is for his membership of the Society of Defenders of Human Rights in Iran.

The silence of the so-called reformists on his case has been the main reason for his stay in prison, but he remains a towering character by his resistance.

Reza Taghizadeh:

Mr Soltani’s speech in defence of Iranian people’s human rights at the funeral of his daughter is a very moving and serious issue as he truly speaks from thebottom of his heart.

Mr Soltani should have attended the wedding of his daughter instead of her burial service. The Europeans and other countries must watch the video clip of hisspeech at the grave of his daughter and break their silence on the trampling of human rights in Iran and stop putting their business and trade deals with the Iranian regime before the human rights of the Iranians.

Mehdi Khazali:

You would never find any likeness between the actions of the mullahs of Iran with those advocated by the Prophet Mohammad. The mullahs of Iran are only abusing Islam for their gains.

One example of this hypocrisy is when ayatollah Janati says “it should be fine if the Iranian people can only afford to have one meal a day”. But while millions of young Iranians cannot marry because of the hard economic conditions, he himself at the age of 92 has married again.

And Mr. Rouhani has told the Iranian people to be patient for another year or so before things start to get better. How can you ask millions of hungry and unemployed people to wait for one year before you could start feeding them?

Reza Taghizadeh:

Deception is intertwined with this regime and its leaders and officials. They are asking the nation to live in poverty while they are stealing millions of dollars of their wealth.

One of Khamenei’s many so-called foundations has 100 million dollars of cash of Iran’s oil revenue in its account alone. Why does he not use this capital to improve the well being of some of the poor people? The answer is that he is spending it in the region’s conflicts to promote his vile idea of creating a Shia crescent. And the so-called reformists support his paranoia and keep their mouth shut.