Iran Discussion

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has banned the energy-intensive mining of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin for nearly 4 months, President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday, as the country faces major power blackouts in many cities.

“The ban on the mining of cryptocurrencies is effective immediately until September 22 ... Some 85% of the current mining in Iran is unlicensed,” Rouhani said in a televised speech at a cabinet meeting.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are created through a process known as mining, where powerful computers compete with each other to solve complex mathematical problems. The process is highly energy intensive, often relying on electricity generated by fossil fuels, which Iran is rich in.

As next month’s presidential election approaches, the blackouts have been widely criticised by Iranians. The government has blamed the power cuts on cryptocurrency mining, drought and surging electricity demand in summer.

According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, around 4.5% of all Bitcoin mining takes place in Iran, allowing it to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from cryptocurrencies that can be used to lessen the impact of U.S. sanctions.

Iran’s economy has been hit hard since 2018, when former President Donald Trump exited Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with six powers and reimposed sanctions.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration and other global powers have been in talks with Iran to revive the deal.

Iran has accepted crypto mining in recent years, offering cheap power and requiring miners to sell their bitcoins to the central bank. Tehran allows cryptocurrencies mined in Iran to be used to pay for imports of authorised goods.

The prospect of cheap power has attracted miners, particularly from China, to Iran. Generating the electricity they use requires the equivalent of around 10 million barrels of crude oil a year, or 4% of total Iranian oil exports in 2020, according to Elliptic.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief won the country’s presidential election in a landslide victory Saturday, propelling the supreme leader’s protege into Tehran’s highest civilian position in a vote that appeared to see the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

Initial results showed Ebrahim Raisi won 17.8 million votes in the contest, dwarfing those of the race’s sole moderate candidate. However, Raisi dominated the election only after a panel under the watch of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disqualified his strongest competition.

His candidacy, and the sense the election served more as a coronation for him, sparked widespread apathy among eligible voters in the Islamic Republic, which has held up turnout as a sign of support for the theocracy since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Some, including former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called for a boycott.

In initial results, former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezaei won 3.3 million votes and moderate Abdolnasser Hemmati got 2.4 million, said Jamal Orf, the head of Iran’s Interior Ministry election headquarters. The race’s fourth candidate, Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, had around 1 million votes, Orf said.

Hemmati offered his congratulations on Instagram to Raisi early Saturday.

“I hope your administration provides causes for pride for the Islamic Republic of Iran, improves the economy and life with comfort and welfare for the great nation of Iran,” he wrote.

On Twitter, Rezaei praised Khamenei and the Iranian people for taking part in the vote.

“God willing, the decisive election of my esteemed brother, Ayatollah Dr. Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, promises the establishment of a strong and popular government to solve the country’s problems,” Rezaei wrote.

The quick concessions, while not unusual in Iran’s previous elections, signaled what semiofficial news agencies inside Iran had been hinting at for hours: That the carefully controlled vote had been a blowout win for Raisi amid the boycott calls.

As night fell Friday, turnout appeared far lower than in Iran’s last presidential election in 2017. At one polling place inside a mosque in central Tehran, a Shiite cleric played soccer with a young boy as most of its workers napped in a courtyard. At another, officials watched videos on their mobile phones as state television blared beside them, offering only tight shots of locations around the country — as opposed to the long, snaking lines of past elections.

Balloting came to a close at 2.a.m. Saturday, after the government extended voting to accommodate what it called “crowding” at several polling places nationwide. Paper ballots, stuffed into large plastic boxes, were to be counted by hand through the night, and authorities said they expected to have initial results and turnout figures Saturday morning at the earliest.

“My vote will not change anything in this election, the number of people who are voting for Raisi is huge and Hemmati does not have the necessary skills for this,” said Hediyeh, a 25-year-old woman who gave only her first name while hurrying to a taxi in Haft-e Tir Square after avoiding the polls. “I have no candidate here.”

Iranian state television sought to downplay the turnout, pointing to the Gulf Arab sheikhdoms surrounding it ruled by hereditary leaders, and the lower participation in Western democracies. After a day of amplifying officials’ attempts to get out the vote, state TV broadcast scenes of jam-packed voting booths in several provinces overnight, seeking to portray a last-minute rush to the polls.

But since the 1979 revolution overthrew the shah, Iran’s theocracy has cited voter turnout as a sign of its legitimacy, beginning with its first referendum that won 98.2% support that simply asked whether or not people wanted an Islamic Republic.

The disqualifications affected reformists and those backing Rouhani, whose administration both reached the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and saw it disintegrate three years later with then-President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of America from the accord.

Voter apathy also has been fed by the devastated state of the economy and subdued campaigning amid months of surging coronavirus cases. Poll workers wore gloves and masks, and some wiped down ballot boxes with disinfectants.

If elected, Raisi would be the first serving Iranian president sanctioned by the U.S. government even before entering office over his involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, as well as his time as the head of Iran’s internationally criticized judiciary — one of the world’s top executioners.

It also would put hard-liners firmly in control across the government as negotiations in Vienna continue to try to save a tattered deal meant to limit Iran’s nuclear program at a time when Tehran is enriching uranium at its highest levels ever, though it still remains short of weapons-grade levels. Tensions remain high with both the U.S. and Israel, which is believed to have carried out a series of attacks targeting Iranian nuclear sites as well as assassinating the scientist who created its military atomic program decades earlier.

Whoever wins will likely serve two four-year terms and thus could be at the helm at what could be one of the most crucial moments for the country in decades — the death of the 82-year-old Khamenei. Speculation already has begun that Raisi might be a contender for the position, along with Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba.

DUBAI, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Iran started military exercises near its border with Azerbaijan on Friday as tensions between the two neighbours rose over issues including Baku's relations with Tehran's arch-enemy Israel.

Iranian state media said the exercises involved armoured and artillery units, as well as drones and helicopters. They kicked off near the Poldasht and Jolfa border crossings with Azerbaijan.

Iran has long criticised Azerbaijan's military ties with Israel, which include purchases of Israeli arms. Tehran has also been wary over nationalists in Turkey and Azerbaijan fanning secessionist tendencies among its Azeri minority.

After Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev reportedly voiced "surprise" over the planned exercises, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Thursday that holding military exercises by a state within its territory was part of its national sovereignty, Iranian state media said.

Referring to an Israeli presence along Iran's borders, Amirabdollahian told the new Azeri ambassador: "Iran does not tolerate the Zionist regime's activity against its national security and will take whatever action is necessary," state media reported.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think tank, Israel provided Azerbaijan with some $825 million in weapons between 2006 and 2019.

Separately, Iran on Friday denounced a visit by Israel's foreign minister to Bahrain to mark the establishment of relations, saying the trip left a stain on the Gulf Arab state's rulers that "will not be erased".

On a sultry autumn afternoon in 2019, as fishermen hauled in a net of Persian Gulf shrimp, Mohsen Rezaie-Atagholipour stood by waiting to sort through the scraps. A marine biologist at Iran’s Qeshm Environmental Conservation Institute, Rezaie-Atagholipour was scouting for the sharks and rays that the fishermen accidentally snagged in their nets. But as he weighed and measured several familiar creatures—collecting data for Iran’s first shark and ray conservation program—something unexpected caught his eye: a small olive green ray with two tiny tentacles just below its eyes. The biologist looked at the creature in disbelief: “I found the tentacled butterfly ray.”

In 2017, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the tentacled butterfly ray as critically endangered, and possibly extinct. The last time anyone had recorded seeing one was in 1986, off Pakistan. The species was thought to have been wiped out across its range, from the Red Sea to the western Bay of Bengal. Unfortunately, the animal Rezaie-Atagholipour found was dead.

“All of the researchers we’ve spoken to who work in India, Pakistan, and the region, have never seen it, and they’ve been working there for quite a long time,” says Rima Jabado, a marine scientist and founder of the United Arab Emirates–based Elasmo Project, who worked with Rezaie-Atagholipour and others to document the discovery in a new paper. “We’re excited it is still in Iran.”

But from that initial, surprising discovery, the tentacled butterfly rays just kept turning up. Between October 2019 and November 2020, Rezaie-Atagholipour surveyed 96 hauls from shrimp trawlers operating in the Gulf of Oman and the eastern Persian Gulf and found a total of 367 tentacled butterfly rays in 39 catches. The species made up nearly 15 percent of all the rays in the by-catch.

“That was very surprising,” Rezaie-Atagholipour says. The scientists suspect that the area off southern Iran may be the tentacled butterfly ray’s last stronghold.

For Hamid Reza Esmaeili, a fish biologist at Iran’s Shiraz University who wasn’t involved in the research, this “lost and found” discovery provides an opportunity for scientists to study the ecology and behavior of this poorly understood species.

Yet the very fishing activities that helped scientists find the imperiled ray also threaten its existence. In a separate study, Jabado and her colleagues found that overfishing disproportionately affects species of sharks, rays, and chimeras found in tropical and subtropical coastal waters, including in the northern Indian Ocean. “We have extreme fishing pressure from the number of countries operating here,” she says. “There’s kind of nowhere to hide.”

Although Iranian trawlers aren’t targeting rays, they often pick them up as by-catch. Due to lengthy haul hours, the rays typically die before the nets are even pulled out of the water. Most shrimpers sell their by-catch at a low price to fish-meal manufacturers.

Rezaie-Atagholipour plans to work with fishing communities to reduce by-catch rates. One approach could be to use turtle excluder devices. Made of metal and mesh, and placed at the neck of a trawl net, these tools have been shown to reduce ray by-catch by 18 to 59 percent.

Abdulnoor Malahi, a fisherman working on a shrimp trawler in Iran, welcomes the use of such devices, provided they don’t restrict his shrimp catch. But he believes the real solution is to ban trawling. Without that, many marine animals stand to be wiped out, he says. And the tentacled butterfly ray may go extinct for real.

Tehran, Iran – Thousands of protesters have gathered in Isfahan in central Iran to demand the revival of a major river that has dried up.

Footage broadcast by state television and dozens of videos circulating on social media on Friday showed a sea of farmers and other people standing on a huge barren strip of dirt where the major Zayandeh Rud River used to flow, near the iconic Khaju Bridge in Isfahan province.

“Give Isfahan its breath, give our Zayandeh Rud back,” the protesters chanted. Some called for “equality and justice”.

The river’s dryness is thought to directly affect the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farmers in the province, state TV said, in addition to adversely affecting the environment.

The key river has faced water shortages and droughts for years, and farmers have intermittently protested the lack of attention given to the issue. But officials have yet to find a sustainable solution to the problem.

Former administrations had promised to come up with solutions, and the country’s Supreme Council of Water approved a nine-point plan involving reviving a major wetland that it said was a sustainable solution eight years ago, but it was never fully implemented.

Farmers have been protesting at the site for more than a week, but Friday’s demonstration attracted the largest number of people and drew the attention of the government.

President Ebrahim Raisi held a meeting with environmental experts, while his first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, directly addressed the protesters in a short phone call with the state broadcaster.

Mokhber promised that the administration is “seriously” following up on the issue and said he has ordered the agriculture and energy ministers to resolve it. He added that a number of solutions have been proposed but did not name any of them.

Droughts have dogged Iran for decades, but have intensified over the past decade. Most Iranian provinces currently face some level of drought.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been reunited with her family, hugging and kissing her seven-year-old daughter in emotional scenes at RAF Brize Norton after returning to Britain for the first time since she was detained in Iran six years ago.

Wearing a blue dress and a yellow scarf, the colours of Ukraine, Zaghari-Ratcliffe stepped off a government-chartered flight from Oman at the Oxfordshire airbase in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Alongside 44-year-old Zaghari-Ratcliffe as she disembarked was fellow British-Iranian Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, who was also released from jail in Iran on Wednesday.

They walked across the tarmac together, gesturing to photographers, before entering the airport building for a private reunion with their families.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was seen hugging her daughter, Gabriella, inside the reception building. She carried the girl in her arms as they were surrounded by other family members, including her husband, Richard, who campaigned for years for her release.

Gabriella was heard asking “Is that mummy?’’ as her mother disembarked the flight at Brize Norton, according to a video shared on Instagram by Anoosheh Ashoori’s daugher, Elika. Later in the video, Richard Ratcliffe shakes Anoosheh Ashoori’s hand, before Ashoori is reunited with his tearful family.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe appears in the video and hugs and kisses her daughter and asked her “do I smell nice?”, before holding her hands. She also hugged members of the Ashoori family.

Elika Ashoori also posted a tweet of the families at the airport, captioned “Happiness in one pic”.

Sharing photographs from the flight on Twitter, Stephanie Al-Qaq, director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Foreign Office, said there was “relief and joy” as the British-Iranians and officials left Tehran.

Liz Truss, the British foreign secretary, was watching on from the airport building as the pair arrived and tweeted that she was “delighted” that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori had returned to the UK.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori, who was detained in Evin prison for almost five years, were accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government and of spying respectively.

A third British detainee, Morad Tahbaz, has been released from prison on furlough but remains in Iran. All three deny the charges.

Truss said on Thursday morning that the government would “continue to work intensively’’ for the freedom of Tahbaz.

As part of negotiations for their release, the UK is understood to have agreed to pay £393.8m owed to Iran after it cancelled an order of Chieftain tanks following the overthrow of the Shah in the revolution of 1979. The details of the deal were hammered out in secret talks in February largely in Oman between a British Foreign Office team and the Iranians. With trust between the two countries at a low point, every aspect of the deal, including its choreography, had to be agreed.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori were initially taken to the Gulf state of Oman, which has been closely involved in the behind-the-scenes negotiations.

Earlier, Boris Johnson thanked the Omani government for its help in bringing the pair home. Speaking on a visit to Saudi Arabia, the prime minister said: “It is fantastic news that Nazanin is out. I am thrilled also for Anoosheh Ashoori and Morad Tahbaz who are also out.

“It has been a lot of work by a lot of people. I want to pay particular tribute to her husband Richard. It is fantastic that she will be able to come back, see her family, see her daughter Gabriella.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained on security charges by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at Imam Khomeini airport after a holiday visit to Iran where she introduced Gabriella to her grandparents. Ashoori was arrested in August 2017 while visiting his elderly mother in Tehran.

In the Commons, with Ratcliffe and Gabriella, seven, watching, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, set out details of their release.

“It was only when we heard that the wheels were up in Tehran that we really knew it was happening,” she said.

Tulip Siddiq, who is Ratcliffe’s MP, told ITV’s Peston programme about how Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been able to come home. The Labour MP said: “She was contacted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Iran over the weekend and asked to come in for questioning, and quite apprehensive – she messaged me before she went. To her utter surprise, at the end of the questioning, and there were some scare tactics in there, she was given her British passport back.

“Bearing in mind she hasn’t seen her British passport since 23 April 2016. But just as she was about to leave the door, they said to her, ‘Don’t book your own flight, we will sort out the flights for you’.

“So after that, I had an idea that she would be coming back, but it’s always touch and go with these things – we’ve had so many false dawns, I didn’t know for sure.

“But the minute she was at the airport, I had a message from Richard Ratcliffe saying Nazanin is at the airport and to her surprise Anoosheh was there as well, who was the other detainee, [a] British citizen. We didn’t think he was coming home, because he wasn’t under house arrest, he was actually in Evin prison.”

The former prime minister David Cameron, who was in No 10 when Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in Iran, told Channel 4 News her release was “a piece of good news that we’ve all been waiting to hear for so long”.

Iran is treating Tahbaz, 66, as an American citizen, even though he was born in Hammersmith, west London, and holds US, UK and Iranian citizenship. Disagreements over his fate proved an obstacle to a deal in the past.

The Tahbaz family told the Guardian: “We have been let down and betrayed by the British government. He was the only one of the three with a British birth certificate, and he has been left behind. We were not told about this arrangement except in a short phone call with the foreign secretary, when it was too late to do anything about it. The British now just say he is an American problem.”

A 22-year-old woman has died in an Iranian hospital days after being detained by the regime’s morality police for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab regulations.

Mahsa Amini was travelling with her family from Iran’s western province of Kurdistan to the capital, Tehran, to visit relatives when she was reportedly arrested for failing to meet the country’s strict rules on women’s dress.

Witnesses reported that Amini was beaten in the police van, an allegation the police deny.

The news comes weeks after Iran’s hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, ordered a crackdown on women’s rights and called for stricter enforcement of the country’s mandatory dress code, which has required all women to wear the hijab head-covering since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Amini’s family were notified that she had been taken to hospital hours after her arrest. She was transferred to an intensive-care unit at Kasra hospital.

According to Hrana, an Iranian human rights organisation, Amini’s family were told during her arrest that she would be released after a “re-education session”.

The police later said that Amini had suffered a heart attack. Amini’s family disputed this, however, and said she was healthy and had not been experiencing any health problems.

Amini was in a coma after arriving at the hospital, her family said, adding that they were told by hospital staff that she was brain dead.

Photographs of Amini lying in the hospital bed in a coma with bandages around her head and breathing tubes have circulated on social media.

Her hospitalisation and death drew condemnation from Iranian celebrities and politicians. Mahmoud Sadeghi, a reformist politician and former MP, called on the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to speak out over Amini’s case.

“What does the supreme leader, who rightfully denounced US police over the death of George Floyd, say about the Iranian police’s treatment of Mahsa Amini?” Sadeghi tweeted on Friday.

The interior ministry and Tehran’s prosecutor launched inquiries into the case after an order from Raisi, state media reported.

Raisi signed a decree on 15 August clamping down on women’s dress and stipulating harsher punishments for violating the strict code, both in public and online.

Women have been arrested across the country after the national “hijab and chastity day” declared on 12 July. One of the women was Sepideh Rashno, a writer and artist who was reportedly beaten and tortured in custody before making a forced apology on television.

Human rights groups have reported that extra security forces have been deployed outside Kasra hospital.