Iran warns Germany over crackdown criticism
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned Germany of a “proportionate and firm” response, as Berlin pushed to rally European states against Tehran’s crackdown on anti-government protesters.
Amir-Abdollahian dismissed Germany’s approach as “provocative, interventionist and undiplomatic,” and spoke of “long-term consequences” in bilateral ties.
The Iranian minister was responding to his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, who renewed her country’s pledge to be the voice of Iranians “as long as necessary,” as she mentioned names of several protesters believed to have been killed by Iranian government forces.
In a tweet thread on Wednesday, Baerbock also announced that Berlin was working on a fresh package of sanctions against the Islamic Republic while seeking an investigation by the UN Human Rights Council to hold Iranian officials accountable.
The German foreign minister and her EU colleagues will discuss Iran as they convene in Brussels early next week. In October, the European body blacklisted nearly a dozen Iranian officials. Four entities were also included, among them the morality police, which was responsible for the hijab-related arrest of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, whose death sparked the ongoing unrest.
Separately on Wednesday, the German parliament passed a bill aimed at ramping up diplomatic and economic pressure on the Islamic Republic. The bill also demands that German officials deny entry visas to Iranian authorities involved in the repression.
The heavy-handed response has left 328 protesters killed, including at least 50 children, according to a tally documented by the foreign-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
In the latest, the Kurdish city of Mahabad saw an overnight crowded funeral of 37-year-old protester and father of one Fayegh Mam-Ghaderi, who succumbed to injuries he reportedly sustained from police firing in the restive city last month.
Continuing to round up activists, intelligence agents arrested Elham Afkari, the sister of Navid Afkari, a wrestling champion and dissident whose controversial execution in 2020 drew massive international backlash, including from Amnesty International.
Pro-government media published photos of the woman blindfolded inside a security vehicle and quoted intelligence organizations as saying that she was arrested over her “cooperation” with Iran International, a London-based Persian-language television network that has given extensive coverage to the Iranian protests. The network was recently designated by Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib as a “terrorist” entity. Khatib has also warned “collaborators” with prosecution, signaling that interviews or sharing protest videos with the news station will be treated as cooperation with a “terrorist organization.”
Judiciary officials were also reported to have handed Afkari’s 3-year-old daughter to an “investigation branch.” The move invited a barrage of anger and sarcasm on social media against the Islamic Republic as “the regional power, which has pulled together all its forces to interrogate a 3-year-old.”
Dance and defiance
On the same day, President Ebrahim Raisi was delivering a speech in the city of Pakdasht. Referring to the unrest in the past tense, he described it “as an enemy conspiracy to destabilize the country,” but one that faced “defeat.”
Apart from rallies across universities and schools, on the streets, defiance of the theocratic establishment’s once unshakable pillars was increasingly becoming evident. Videos on Thursday showed hijabless women dancing to an Iranian song in the city of Rasht before being reportedly swarmed, attacked and dispersed by bike-riding security forces.
In the capital’s central and busy Vali Asr Avenue, young women walked without headscarves, cheered by supportive honks from passing traffic.
And others inside a packed Tehran subway train were chanting a popular anthem that has pieced together the many demands of the protest movement.