#Tehran well drain

[ashitakaxsan]

Interesting Developments on Iran's Gaming Industry.

a)The influence of "Prince of Persia" on Iran and, specifically, Iran’s video game industry is irrefutably strong and seriously everlasting.Now the news is The French video game publisher Ubisoft released the first major installment,of the popular video game,where the characters speak Farsi.

Speaking about the collaboration with Ubisoft Montpellier, a subsidiary of Ubisoft, the secretary general of the Tehran Broadcast & Dubbing Association said: “The French company, together with an intermediary company in Iran, negotiated with different groups and asked for voice samples. 

“Finally, they selected Moj-e-Ketab Digital Publishing Group for dubbing the game in Persian,” Honaronline quoted Sobhan Ekrami, who served as the director of the dubbing team, as saying on Sunday.

“When the dubbing process was over, they liked the work. According to their procedure, before the official release of the game, the company had some gamers, especially some famous Persian-speaking gamers, play and assess the game. Fortunately, it was well received by all the gamers. Upon the release of the game, the company suggested to all the customers that for a better experience of the game play it in Farsi,” he added.

The “Prince of Persia” franchise draws heavily on Persian mythology and Iranian culture, but until now has always been in English. 

Below screenshots by the previous instalments of “Prince of Persia”.

The game's designer, Mounir Radi, said that the developers wanted to “depict and respect Persia and Iran” in the gameplay. “It was natural for us to say, 'if we are going into this culture, we have to be true to this culture, we have to do this”.

Among the updates for the new version was an increased effort to add elements like language and history that made the game more authentic to the region it depicts.

The game's producer Abdelhak Elguess said they were “very proud” to have made the changes. “We have so many people from Persian cultures that are very happy,” he said.

Emad Saedi has been a fan of the games since he was a child when he connected with the series' cultural references to Persia but says something always felt off.

“Those games were missing a fundamental element of the culture the prince came from: language,” he said. “My friends and I always had this question that if he's a Persian prince, how come he speaks English or any language except Persian? Isn't that odd?”

Emad said it is a “huge step forward” to include the language, in part because he felt Iran and Persian culture are “under-represented in today's world”.

“In a world that is saturated with Western culture content, seeing something from other parts of the world feels like a breath of fresh air, especially from a hidden gem like Iran,” he said. “It feels like we are finally being seen after being ignored for many years. There are many wonderful stories in our culture with massive commercial potential - I hope the entertainment industry recognizes this opportunity and continues to invest in them”.

Persian is spoken by a significant number of people worldwide, totaling around 130 million. Other than Iran, it serves as an official language in various countries including Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

“Prince of Persia” is centered around a series of action-adventure games focused on various incarnations of the eponymous Prince, set in ancient and medieval Persia.

Its latest installment “The Lost Crown” has been released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S and received positive reviews from critics and gamers.

The game was heavily inspired by Persian mythology, with Radi adding that the team wanted to “bring some light to a mythology that maybe should be better known,” as well as showing how Persian culture has affected other mythologies.

Source:https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/493995/New-Prince-of-Persia-game-voiced-in-Farsi

b)Serious Efforts to Prevent Brain drain The Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has pledged its support,in an effort to prevent the migration of game developers and boost the gaming industry.

Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad-Mehdi Esmaeili stated that game developers are crucial cultural elements in the country and that the ministry is working tirelessly to eliminate obstacles and stop their migration, Mehr reported on Saturday. 

Esmaeili emphasized that the gaming industry is a vital cultural and artistic sector in the country. He stated, "We have requested the National Foundation of Computer Games' board of directors to assess all barriers in this field and actively work towards resolving them."

He continued by highlighting the attractiveness of the gaming industry and the potential consequences of not providing suitable platforms for talented individuals. "If we fail to create favorable conditions for these skilled developers, we may lose some of them," he cautioned.

"We are committed to preventing the migration of game developers by removing obstacles and offering support," Esmaeili affirmed.

Esmaeili further emphasized that game developers are the country's most significant cultural figures, emphasizing that the gaming industry is not merely a technological sector. Rather, he believes that it serves as a valuable cultural and artistic tool that can contribute to the intellectual advancement of society, address various issues, and promote societal values.

Esmaeili reiterated the ministry's supportive stance towards the gaming industry and game developers, stating that they will continue to provide assistance and foster its expansion.

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/493952/Culture-ministry-aims-to-prevent-game-developers-migration-for

[mightyflamethrower]

Lame-duck presidencies, especially in the last six months of their final term, in general can offer opportunities for America’s enemies to take advantage of a perceived vacuum as one government transitions to the next.

But these normal changeover months are especially dangerous when a perceived weak or appeasing lame-duck president is likely to be replaced by a strong deterrent successor that will likely serve as a corrective to his disastrous policies.

James Buchannan (1857-1861), a northern but pro-South president, was a particularly anemic chief executive. He had done little if anything to try to deal with the growing rift between North and South, especially the furor over the Dred Scott decision and Bloody Kansas. Even when warned, Buchannan did little to beef up the U.S. Army or increase its weapon stockpiles to deter any potential secessionist state.

After Buchannan declined to run for a second term, the South understood that the abolitionist and anti-slavery Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln might well be elected in 1860—given the North/South split within the Democratic Party. And they understood that President Lincoln might well use force to stop secession.

Therefore, in the waning days of the Buchannan administration, after Lincoln’s victory, seven southern states seceded during the presidential transition, a confused North reacted little, more would follow, and a terrible Civil War became inevitable.

During the waning days of the crippled second term of Richard Nixon in summer 1974, communist North Vietnam saw a once deterrent president fatally weakened by Watergate. It was encouraged by a renewed antiwar movement, a likely soon anti-war Congress, and the next president, Gerald Ford—a probable caretaker soon to be replaced by an anti-war Democrat. And so in late 1974 and 1975, the communists renounced ignored peace accords, judged correctly that the directionless US would not help South Vietnam stop a massive invasion from the North, and thereby won the 12-year-long war.

As the Jimmy Carter administration began to wind down and as it was increasingly judged as weak abroad, the new theocratic revolutionary government in Iran stormed the U.S. embassy and took hostages in November 1979. Throughout the next year, Tehran systematically humiliated the U.S., mocked an impotent Carter administration, and rebuffed all U.S. efforts to secure the return of the hostages.

The Soviet Union as well saw the dying and still inert Carter term as ripe for exploitation and so invaded Afghanistan a month later, in December 1979. It too concluded that there would be a year of continued timidity in Washington before a likely remedy from a Republican president—in this case, Ronald Reagan, who had declared his candidacy a little over a week after Iran took hostages with clear promises to restore U.S. deterrence abroad.

We are now once again entering one of these dangerous moments, compounded by a weakening of the armed forces. During Biden’s tenure, the U.S. military has suffered historic shortfalls in recruitment, the disastrous humiliation in Afghanistan, a new DEI commissariat that wars on meritocratic promotions and assignments, the politicization of generals and admirals, the hyped but otherwise inane effort to root out mythical white supremacists and “domestic terrorist” bogeymen from the ranks, and the expulsion of some of our best soldiers for their reluctance to be vaccinated, many of them having developed natural immunity from prior infection.

The Pentagon is short on ships and planes. U.S. weapons stocks are dangerously low, drained by the abandonment of billions of dollars of equipment to the Taliban, the resupply efforts to Ukraine and Israel, the failure of the Biden administration to fund the restocking of our munitions and to ramp up resupply production—and a $35 billion national debt fed by $2 trillion annual deficits.

Add eight million illegal aliens who pranced over a nonexistent southern border, nearly uninhabitable big-city downtowns, an epidemic of violent crime, and a president who resuscitates mostly to blast half the country as “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” extremists.

Add it all up, and the world abroad agrees America is in a strange, self-inflicted decline and will not or cannot defend its interests, or for that matter itself.

In particular, both enemies and neutrals have accordingly drawn a number of self-interested conclusions about the waning Biden administration and what may follow:

That Joe Biden, to their apparent delight, has in the last three years reversed the Trump deterrence policies and thus has green-lit their aggressions.

That given the ensuing chaos, they have further agreed that Biden’s growing unpopularity with the American people makes it likely that both he and his appeasement policies will be gone by January 2024.

That Donald Trump may well return to office. That would mean a much worse deal for Russia, China, Iran, and its terrorist satellites, and thus recognition that 2024 is a brief window of opportunity for aggression.

Putin remembers that Trump blasted 200 Russian mercenaries in Syria, got out of a bad missile deal with Moscow, upped sanctions on Russian oligarchs, flooded the world with cheap oil, destroying Russian oil export profits, sold once-canceled offensive weapons to Ukraine, and warned what would happen if Putin invaded Ukraine. Of the last four administrations, Trump’s was the only one that saw no Russian cross-border invasions.

China remembers that Trump slapped tariffs on its mercantilist market economy, accused China of birthing the COVID virus at its Wuhan virology lab, increased military spending, forced NATO to spend another $100 billion on munitions, and jawboned more alliance members into upping their military contributions. Beijing knew that to send a spy balloon across the continental United States between 2017-21 would have meant its destruction the minute it entered U.S. airspace. China did not serially threaten Taiwan during the Trump era—and may believe that this year could be the last chance in a decade to confront Taiwan.

Iran has concluded two things about 2024: 1) they do not wish to see another Trump presidency on the horizon that took out its top-ranking terrorist-general Qasem Soleimani, slapped sanctions on its oil, yanked the U.S. out of the flawed Iran Deal, declared the Iranian Houthi satellites a foreign terrorist organization, cut off all aid to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, moved the U.S. closer to Israel, and warned Hezbollah of consequences should it start a war with Israel; and 2) that the present Biden abdication will likely be short-lived and thus now may be the time to take advantage of a currently directionless global superpower that either will not or cannot deter Iranian aggression.

So what should we expect in 2024? Lacking a strong U.S. patron and sponsor, Israel will be subject to more international calls to leave Gaza, to negotiate with Hamas, and to give up the idea it can “destroy” Hamas.

Hezbollah will likely up its daily barrage of missiles into Israel.

Iran will become more overt in supplying Russia, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis with weapons.

China will increase its threats to Taiwan and weigh carefully the costs-to-benefits of attacking the island.

The common denominator? All our enemies are right now calculating how best to use their gift of the next 12 months from a non-compos-mentis president and his neo-socialist team that either believes the U.S. is at fault for much of the world’s pathologies or is too terrified to do anything about them.

In sum, adversaries believe there is a rare window of opportunity in which the U.S. uncharacteristically does nothing to deter its enemies, back its allies, or win over neutrals. And over the next year, we can only pray they are mistaken.

[shirzan140102]

Another Asiatic Cheetah Killed in Iran (Yes, the regime is to blame here, as well.)

Remember how I talked about sweet baby Pirouz's death in this post? One of the very few remaining members of his species, the Asiatic Cheetah, was recently killed in a car accident in Iran. I am not going to blame the driver, since I doubt that this was an intentional action. However, this was yet another avoidable tragedy as a result of the regime's policies. Their disregard for environmental issues, which has resulted in the arrests of many activists, and their corruption, which has drained any funds that could've been used to improve the country's infrastructure and, in turn, increase the likelihood of preventing this tragedy, were the perfect recipe for this mess. It is infuriating and heartbreaking.

SOURCE

[dragoneyes618]

"One unexpected blowback from the medieval Hamas’s barbaric murdering of hundreds of Israeli civilians is the revelation of current global amorality. More than 20 Harvard University identity politics groups pledged their support to the Hamas murderers — to the utter silence for days of Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment. But the overt support for Hamas killers by the diversity, equity and inclusion crowd on a lot of campuses exposes to Americans the real moral and intellectual rot in higher education.

Democratic Socialist members of the new woke Democratic Party openly expressed ecstatic support for Hamas’s bloodwork. Their biggest fears were not dead fellow Americans or hostages, or some 1,000 butchered Jewish civilians. Instead they were fearful that righteous Israeli retaliation might destroy the Hamas death machine. Palestinians for years fooled naifs in Europe and the Obama and Biden administrations into sending billions of dollars into Gaza. These monies were channeled to tunnel into Israel, to obtain a huge rocket arsenal and to craft plans to wipe out Jews. The Biden administration has blood on its hands. As soon as President Joe Biden took power, he resumed massive subsidies to radical Palestinians, canceled by the prior Trump administration. He ignored warnings from his own State Department that such fungible cash would soon fuel Hamas terrorism. His administration dropped sanctions against Iran, ensuring that Tehran would enjoy a multibillion-dollar windfall to be distributed to Israel’s existential enemies — another fact well known to the Biden administration. If the Biden administration had announced overtly that it was rabidly anti-Israel, it would be hard to imagine anything it could have done differently from its present nihilist behavior.

Biden and company quickly restarted the defunct Iran appeasement deal — a leftover from the anti-Israeli Obama administration. No surprise, they appointed radical pro-Iranian activist Robert Malley to head the negotiations. Malley allegedly has leaked American classified documents to Iranian officials and is under investigation by the FBI. He did his best to place pro-Iranian, anti-American activists into the high echelons of the U.S. government. Biden was intent on forcing South Korea to release to Iran $6 billion in sanctioned frozen money. That expectation of cash ensured Iran would be reimbursed for its present terrorist arming spree. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shamefully tweeted that Israel should settle for an immediate cease-fire. No wonder he soon withdrew his unhinged posting. That idiocy would be the moral equivalent of an American ally in December 1941 urging the United States to seek negotiations with imperial Japan after its surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor — to avoid a “cycle of violence.” The Biden team has drained strategic arms stockpiles in Israel, designed to help the Jewish state in extremis. It recklessly abandoned a multibillion-dollar arms trove in Kabul, some of which reportedly made its way from Taliban killers to the Hamas murderers. Once the mass murdering started, the amoral clarity of our “allies” was stunning. NATO partner Turkey openly sided with the killers. It — along with Blinken — called for a cease-fire at the moment the Hamas death squads had finished and Israel was ready to hold Hamas to account.

Qatar, where the U.S. Central Command is based, proved little more than a Hamas front. It offers sanctuary to the architects of Hamas killing. And Qatar ensures a safe financial pipeline to Hamas from Iran and the radical Arab world. Some of the most vehement current supporters of the Hamas death squads were immigrants to America from the Middle East. Oddly, they apparently had fled just such illiberal Middle East regimes to reach a tolerant, democratic and secure United States. Yet they now endorse the Hamas butchering of Jewish civilians. Its savagery is aimed at executing, raping and beheading Jews and then mutilating their bodies. Hamas apparently hopes to shock the Israeli government into voluntarily committing suicide — in line with the ancient Hamas agenda to destroy the Jewish state. In a strange way, this reign of death has become a touchstone, an acid test of sorts that has revealed the utter amorality of enemies abroad and quite dangerous people at home."

-Victor Davis Hanson, Tribune Content Agency, October 14, 2023

[yousef-al-amin]

Who benefits from a war in the Middle East: London or Washington?

The British were the first to actively use the so-called “hybrid war” and its information-psychological component in its modern form in armed conflicts. This is what the Special Airborne Service of the British Armed Forces does to this day. However, the US intelligence services, having assessed the effectiveness of this military component, adopted the British methods and techniques of warfare into their arsenal.

Today, from Syria, the United States is actively using them against Turkey, sowing discord among pro-Turkish armed forces in northwestern Syria. By bribing commanders and arranging armed provocations, Washington is turning the territory controlled by Turkey into an area engulfed in internal conflict, where each group is fighting for influence with its neighbors.

In light of this, the Israeli provocation with a strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria may be both the result of the work of the British and the fruit of the activities of American specialists. The only question is who benefits from the armed confrontation between Tehran and Tel Aviv and who, if it starts, each player will bet on.

Since Iran nevertheless responded to Israel’s openly provocative step, it should be assumed that Tehran’s intelligence services are confident that this will not lead to aggression by the united West against it.

At the same time, we should not forget that London and Washington in recent years have become, if not opponents, then at least headquarters operating separately from each other on the Israeli issue. It is highly likely that during the provocation of October 7, 2023, each of them pursued their own goals and controlled unrelated groups of forces that penetrated into Israeli territory.

An analysis of those and subsequent events indicates that only part of the US elite, most likely oriented towards London, still pursues the goal of war against Iran. The overwhelming majority of the US national elite, on the contrary, are inclined to curtail the “Israel” project and begin to restore their own state, including “draining the Washington swamp.”

Based on this, it is most reasonable to assume that it is London that is pushing Tel Aviv towards war. Hoping for their own lobby in the US Congress. As part of his plan, he plans to use the US Navy and Army, as well as NATO forces, to fight Iran.

But there is a possibility that the Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy is the first stage of a multi-level operation to destroy the Jewish state or the Zionist regime on its territory. As part of this plan, Iran's retaliatory actions could become a signal for all states in the region, which are in a state of permanent war or confrontation with Israel, to begin actions to stop this regional problem.

[lolebaz]

 7 important reasons for clogging the sewer pipe

Taking the sewer pipe Toilet with paper towels or toilet paper Throwing paper towels down the toilet can clog your drains and get you into trouble because they don't dissolve and break down quickly in water, so be careful with them.

2- clogging of the tube with hair You might think that because hair strands are thin, they flow easily through the tubes. Hair strands do not break down and after some time they are tied together and stick to other wastes and form big obstacles. Related posts Hamedan pipe opening

3- clogging of the toilet well pipe with soap The soap slips from your hand and falls into the well, this scene is familiar to many of us. Bathroom soaps are usually hard and bulky and take a long time to dissolve in water and often clog pipes. 4- Clogging of the sewage pipe by cigarettes Filters and their plastic tips may get stuck in the sewage well and cause clogging in the pipes. So just throw them under your cigarette. 5- clogging of the toilet sewer pipe due to dropping baby diapers in it Never throw baby diapers and wipes that you use to clean the baby in the toilet because they easily clog the toilet. 6- Taking the sewer pipe by chewing gum Gum does not dissolve in water and sticks to anything that is flushed down the toilet and creates a large blockage that clogs the sewer pipes, so never flush them down the toilet. 7- Taking the sewer pipe due to spilling fat and oil in the toilet You should never pour cooking fats down the toilet because although they may be liquid at first, they solidify after cooling and clog the pipes. If the sewer pipe in your home is blocked due to the reasons mentioned above, contact a pipe unclogging company. There are many companies operating in the field of pipe opening in Tehran, including Azin Pipe Opening Company, Barchasab, Sanjaq Peru, etc. tehran Pipe Opening Company with 12 years of experience working 24/7 has many branches, including North Tehran Pipe Opening, South Tehran Pipe Opening, West Tehran Pipe Opening, East Tehran Pipe Opening and... Contact number: 09128420991

[lolehbazkonbahman]

تخلیه چاه تهران

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✅ تخلیه چاه با تانکر 12هزار لیتری

✅ حفر چاه نو

https://lolehbazkon.com/cheap-drain-wells-tehran/

[alexsmitposts]

Why are Tel Aviv and Washington Inflaming the Situation in the Persian Gulf? During the run-up to the anniversary of the insidious assassination of Iranian General Soleimani – and after one month had passed since the equally controversial massacre of leading nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh – Israel and the United States, which are ones responsible for this atrocity, are demonstratively increasing their military presence in the Middle East, and doing so in demagogic fashion under the guise of fearing “retaliation from Iran”. The United States, located both at a considerable distance from Iran and outside the range of its missiles, having provoked this crisis clearly fears only a missile attack on its diplomatic mission in Iraq, as well as other American facilities in the region. Washington is trying to validate these fears with reports from American intelligence services, according to which pro-Iranian armed formations that can deliver a “retaliatory strike” have allegedly stepped up their activity in Iraq. However, on December 21 Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh denied these suspicions, which especially resounded in recent statements made by US Secretary of State M. Pompeo about the alleged complicity of pro-Iranian militia in the latest rocket strikes executed on Baghdad’s “Green Zone”. Along with that, Khatibzadeh wrote on Twitter that for Tehran “attacks on diplomatic facilities are unacceptable”. Washington still dispatched additional warships and a squadron of fighters to the Middle East, and demonstratively conducted a nonstop flight of a B-52 strategic bomber that has the ability to carry nuclear weapons, by doing so intending to “intimidate Tehran”. In addition, on December 21 a US naval unit entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz that included a USS Georgia (SSGN 729) Ohio-class submarine, which carries up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and is capable of taking on board up to 66 special operations service personnel, as well as two Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers: a USS Port Royal (CG 73) and a USS Philippine Sea (CG 58). Previously, at the end of November, a USS Nimitz (CVN-68) aircraft carrier was sent off the Persian Gulf “to help contain the enemy”; this was rationalized by the need “to have additional defensive capabilities in the region in case of any unforeseen circumstances”. As far as Israel goes, it clearly fears a “retaliation strike” from Iran since, given the Jewish state’s modest size, a successful attack on it could actually terminate its existence. This is especially true if the strike were to hit the Dimona Nuclear Research Center, which is considered to be the site where Israeli nuclear weapons originated; Tel Aviv neither confirms nor denies that the center exists. Incidentally, Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Movahedi Kermani already delivered a warning to Israel that “if Iran decides to put up resistance, then one missile strike on the Dimona reactor would be enough”. It is clear that Iranian missiles will not really be launched at Dimona, since this is fraught with consequences that entail nuclear contamination and destruction not only for Israel, but for Iran and quite a few neighboring countries across the region. And that is why the Iranian media occasionally names another target: the Israeli city of Haifa. Israel, fearing the hysteria itself that potential military action could unleash, in a speech made by IDF Chief of General Staff Aviv Kochavi on December 21 cautioned Iran not to attack Israel, stating that “the Jewish state will retaliate against any aggression”. Along with that, A. Kohavi evidently pointedly forgot to mention that it is not Iran, but Israel itself, that has already demonstrated its aggressive stance toward the Islamic Republic to the whole world by organizing and initiating acts of terrorism and assassinations – and not only against nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. After all, this is far from the first time that Iranian scientists and leading representatives from Iranian society have been killed by an Israeli act of terrorism. For example, in Tehran, five nuclear physicists have been assassinated recently – and this specifically includes Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the architect of Iran’s ballistic missile program. All this points to the systematic destruction of the best Iranian scientists employed in the defense industry, which is being accomplished by the international community with impunity. This series of assassinations of prominent Iranian scientists, politicians, and military personnel – who ended up being unacceptable for the United States and Israel – substantiates the suspicions first voiced long ago that Western intelligence services and Israel have adopted the terrorist practice of eliminating key personnel and various prominent figures in those countries with which they are at war; this is done to weaken their defense systems and technological potential. In addition to the words it speaks to help deter Tehran, Tel Aviv has taken a series of measures to test the combat readiness of its army against any potential foreign attacks, and is active about consulting with Washington – especially with representatives from the Pentagon – about how to work out joint coordination for the two countries to take military action against Iran. In particular, large-scale, unprecedented exercises came to an end in December, during which the capabilities of the three levels of Israel’s anti-missile defense (ABM) systems to neutralize various air threats were put to the test. Senior Israel Defense Forces officers, according to the Internet publication Breaking Defense, held “negotiations on coordination work” with their counterparts in the US Central Command (CENTCOM, which includes the Middle East) to bolster cooperation between the armed forces in the two countries “against Iran possibly taking revenge in the region”. According to this publication, the IDF has reached its highest degree of readiness, in particular with regard to repelling “some of the 140,000 missiles that Iran-backed Hezbollah has in Lebanon, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen”. At the same time, it has been reported that although the Israeli command does not disclose the details about how it prepares for war, its tactical and operational anti-missile defense systems, and long-range missile systems, are still on high alert. In addition, as reported by The Times of Israel, on December 17, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley arrived in Israel as part of his Middle East tour to discuss the threat that Iran poses to Washington’s allies, including the Jewish state. As part of preventive measures taken against the armed situation in the region potentially escalating, Israel began to actively spread out its naval fleet around Iran. An Israeli Navy Dolphin-class (Type 800) submarine carrying cruise missiles on board passed through the Suez Canal, and on December 21 demonstratively surfaced in the Persian Gulf, in the waters that stretch between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Dolphin is a series of German modified diesel-electric submarines that are specially designed for Israel, and which have from 6-10 torpedo tubes. Besides torpedoes, they are armed with mines and Popeye Turbo SLCM cruise missiles that have a range of up to 1,500 km, and are capable of carrying nuclear charges with a capacity of up to 200 kilotons launched from torpedo tubes. The Israelis regularly keep at least two of their submarines.in the Indian Ocean, in the immediate vicinity of the Persian Gulf. Today, in the assessments made by numerous experts, there is reason to presume that in January 2021, before Donald Trump leaves the White House, a joint American-Israeli missile strike could be launched against Iran, primarily to neutralize Iran’s air defense systems, as well as its nuclear industry facilities. However, while ramping up the degree of military tension in the region Tel Aviv and Washington cannot help but clearly see that Iran does not intend to attack either the United States or Israel. Iran is not in an ideal condition to wage war now, since its economy is seriously undermined by the restrictive measures imposed on its oil sales abroad, as well as by the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, the deficit inflicting its national budget, and the weakening of its national currency. Yes, military operations “against American and Israeli aggressors” can raise patriotic sentiments in the Islamic Republic for a certain period, but they would quickly drain the Iranian economy and militaristic zeal. In addition, hoping for a change in the attitude taken toward it after the White House administration changes, for political and economic reasons it would now be clearly disadvantageous for Tehran to carry out any large-scale “retaliatory strike”. Therefore, the maximum that Tehran is capable of doing today, without causing itself significant damage, is to carry out a special operation against the Israelis involved in the murder of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh – or to inflict a targeted strike on American facilities in the region through its “proxies”. As for the United States, Israel, and their allies taking military action against Iran right now, it should be kept in mind that the Islamic Republic, despite all its existing economic problems, is a pretty tough nut to crack in terms of its military, and aggression against it would have serious costs. And this cost is obviously unacceptable for either Trump or Netanyahu, who intend to keep pursuing their political careers.

[architectnews]

Hooba Design Group clads Tehran office building in brick panels that adjust to the sunlight

Local architecture studio Hooba Design Group has completed an office building for the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, which features a smart brick facade that adapts to different times of the day.

The Sharif Office Building was designed as a communal workspace for the Sharif Innovation Zone next to the university. It was built on top of an existing concrete structure that forms the ground floor of the building.

Top image and above: the Sharif Office Building is located next to the university in Tehran

This was expanded and completed with modifications based on Hooba Design Group's new design, which features specially-made smart-brick panels that adjust according to the sunlight.

To create the facade Hooba Design Group designed a brick that took its cue from the 1940s-style bricks that clad the nearby university buildings. The studio's version is larger, with a cut-out in the middle that is the same dimension as the traditional bricks.

Its facade is made from specially-designed bricks

"The intention was to reinterpret the traditional brick used in the university buildings, using industrial bricks," Hooba Design Group founder Hooman Balazadeh told Dezeen.

"The hole in this brick gives a semi-transparent character to the solid block."

These bricks, which were manufactured by Azarakhsh Bricks exclusively for the project, are set on panels equipped with light sensors that adjust according to the sunlight throughout the day.

These are set on panels that adjust to the sunlight

"They adjust based on lighting patterns and the required light exposure in the interior spaces," Balazadeh explained.

"Sensors are programmable based on two different scenarios and are set up based on user preferences in each floor."

Sharif Office Building has communal workspaces and offices

Designing the facade from brick but using new technology was a nod to the nearby 1960s brick-clad university buildings, as well as the fact that the Sharif Office Building will house students working on technological innovations.

The 7,200 square-metres building (77,500 square feet) will house the Bon Tech Institute, which was initiated by the Sharif University of Technology as a research-based communal working space for students.

It was built on an existing concrete structure. Photo is by Mohammad Hassan Ettefagh

"The aim of this group was to provide the students with adequate facilities for research and investigation and to reduce the huge amount of brain drain from the country," Balazadeh explained.

Sharif Office Building will have offices as well as common spaces, including a meeting space and a cafeteria which will be connected to the outdoors and the university commons. Inside, the offices are open and semi-open, separated by interior green spaces.

Its double skin helps to reduce energy consumption

Its design also took the surrounding environment into consideration,

"The double skin used in this project helps to control the sun heat exposure in the climate of Tehran and eventually reduces energy consumption during the hot season," Balazadeh said.

Hooba Design Group also designed a new type of brick for an earlier project, the headquarters of brick manufacturer Kohan Ceram, while its design for the Aptus concrete factory had an all-concrete envelope.

Photography is by Parham Taghioff unless otherwise stated.

Project credits: 

Principal architect: Hooman Balazadeh Project architect: Elham Seyfiazad Design team: Elham Seyfiazad, Saman Soleimaniha, Mona Razavi, Saeed Farshbaf, Davood Raeesi Detail design: Dariush Ghorbani Site supervision: Dariush Ghorbani Construction director: Mohsen Agahimand Mechanical engineer: Bahram Eksiri Electrical engineer: Amin Khaniki Structural engineer: Majid Naghipour Lighting design: fad Lighting Co. Physical modelling: Mehran Alinezhad Graphic: Ehsan Lessani

The post Hooba Design Group clads Tehran office building in brick panels that adjust to the sunlight appeared first on Dezeen.

[corinthbayrpg]

NAME. Sela Amin AGE & BIRTH DATE. 2577 & September 3rd, 557 BCE GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female & She / Her SPECIES. Fury of Tisiphone OCCUPATION. Translator at Corinth Bay Library FACE CLAIM. Sarah Shahi

BIOGRAPHY

( tw: kidnapping, murder, violence, death ) A couple thousand years is a lot of time to dull one’s memories, particularly when their keeper does not wish to revisit them. It’s the reason there’s a name that she knows is hers but sounds foreign and uncomfortable despite being an intrinsic part of her, like a childhood bedroom left untouched and revisited in adulthood. Hers, but not. Something left behind intentionally. There’s a lot of things she recalls but doesn’t, just like her name. Maybe a small family headed by a struggling mother and a city called Anshan, and a war of conquest led by a man whose name didn’t matter to a child at the time. In fact, very little mattered at the time except doing as her mother asked while she helped support a number of siblings whose faces blur when she tries to focus on them. Part of her believes that’s a side effect of age or compulsion, but part of her thinks maybe she doesn’t wish to see it. Either way, the memories vanish like smoke when she presses, and so she doesn’t, not anymore.

No one really noticed when she disappeared. One less mouth to feed, particularly as a teenager who ate more than a small child might. That evening is something burned into her memory, unfortunately. He had green eyes, olive skin, and a mess of dark curls atop his head. Beautiful if she’d been interested, she thought, but then he met her gaze and suddenly she couldn’t look away. He told her not to speak, to follow obediently, and much to her horror, she couldn’t resist the command no matter how gently he spoke it. From there a new world opened up before her, one where creatures called vampires could do as they pleased without fear of time nor violence. She gathered quickly that they required a steady supply of blood to keep themselves alive, and that they could create more of their kind by feeding someone their own blood and killing them. The latter part of this discovery was what she witnessed most often within the confines of the home these creatures used as a base. Here her memory becomes spotty as well–later she learned vampires could command others to do their bidding with eye contact and a simple command, and if they told her to forget, she did. For what felt like several lifetimes over, she watched them take people like her, people who wouldn’t be missed, as well as people who craved power. They called themselves followers of the goddess Persephone, and wished to fulfill the directive given to the original member of their species to create vampires and stall the passage of souls to the underworld. They kept humans as an easy food source and turned others into monsters. She hated every endless minute of it.

Another clear moment was a turning point, a vision in a dream of a woman she didn’t recognize but understood to be powerful in her bones. Without hesitation, she asked this woman for help. The cult was barbaric in their treatment of humans, and the creatures they created were an abomination, but compulsion and a human constitution made her no match for an entire group of vampires. If this woman helped her, she’d do anything in return. The being in her dream agreed, and told her to awaken and save herself. She startled awake then and found herself fundamentally changed. Where the night before exhaustion weighted heavily on her shoulders and a compulsion-driven fog kept her quiet and complacent, she now felt light and charged with a sense of clarity so keen it almost disoriented her. That momentary confusion did not stop her from the bloodbath that followed. By the time she finished, blood covered the floors and walls of the house once used by the cult, and she ushered all those held captive to a safe, new life far away from the horrors they faced at the hands of a group of ancient monsters.

Later, when the dust settled and Sela left Anshan, the woman from her dreams finally explained. She was called Tisiphone, one of the three furies dedicated to enacting vengeance against perpetrators of particularly terrible crimes. When Sela begged for the ability to stop the cruelty and murder of the defenseless, Tisiphone gifted her the ability to do so and charged her with continuing that work following their punishment. Those she killed would face justice in the underworld, thus righting the wrong performed in the mortal realm. Tisiphone further explained how her powers worked, and that she could return to the underworld as she pleased to regroup and heal. From then on, Sela lived as a protector of those too weak to help themselves, particularly where women and children were involved. Anyone guilty of an unjust murder found themselves as one of her targets.

For the most part, Sela liked to remain outside of the underworld. There was a time during the Italian Renaissance when she made Florence her home in order to keep watch on the most corrupt and cruel of the city’s leaders that she met and grew fond of a prodigious witch. Until then, Sela didn’t get attached–her nature as a fury required her to be mobile and focused, and something so transient as love couldn’t be a distraction from her charge. It happened anyway, and the attachment went so deep that when the witch fell ill, Sela offered to find the blood of a vampire to turn her, thereby avoiding death in order to remain at her side. The witch agreed, and the pair of them spent the next nearly 200 years together until hunters in search of vampires separated the pair of them. Believing her lover to be dead, Sela returned to the underworld, heartbroken and ashamed for straying from her original purpose.

Only calls from Tisiphone herself, as well as the pleas of those who required her assistance, pulled her from the underworld. Sela kept to herself even when she did surface for a few years at a time. In the early 2000s, the call of a matriarchal trouble who required the assistance of a fury finally spurred her to remain more permanently in the mortal realm. They continually discovered coven members drained of blood and could not keep the creature stalking them at bay. At the behest of her patron, Sela re-entered the mortal realm, found the vampire harassing the coven, and delivered his headless corpse to the leader with barely a word. As she did in the past, she remained there secretly for some time in order to ensure the problem was indeed finished, but instead of returning to the underworld once more, she traveled and began to make a life for herself.

People needed help in ways aside from swift, violent revenge. Her ability to speak and understand any language made her a valuable diplomatic tool, and she could pass through collective memory unnoticed by manipulating the minds of anyone who knew her face. At the time of Tisiphone’s call to Corinth Bay, Sela worked as a translator at the National History Museum in Tehran. She moved immediately and reopened the home she’d all but abandoned there a hundred years ago, and she acquired a position at the local library in order to keep an eye on the supernatural happenings there. The furies wanted herself and those like her in the city for something important, but for now she simply waits.

A couple thousand years is a lot of time to dull one’s memories, particularly when their keeper does not wish to revisit them. It’s the reason there’s a name that she knows is hers but sounds foreign and uncomfortable despite being an intrinsic part of her, like a childhood bedroom left untouched and revisited in adulthood. Hers, but not. Something left behind intentionally. There’s a lot of things she recalls but doesn’t, just like her name. Maybe a small family headed by a struggling mother and a city called Anshan, and a war of conquest led by a man whose name didn’t matter to a child at the time. In fact, very little mattered at the time except doing as her mother asked while she helped support a number of siblings whose faces blur when she tries to focus on them. Part of her believes that’s a side effect of age or compulsion, but part of her thinks maybe she doesn’t wish to see it. Either way, the memories vanish like smoke when she presses, and so she doesn’t, not anymore.

No one really noticed when she disappeared. One less mouth to feed, particularly as a teenager who ate more than a small child might. That evening is something burned into her memory, unfortunately. He had green eyes, olive skin, and a mess of dark curls atop his head. Beautiful if she’d been interested, she thought, but then he met her gaze and suddenly she couldn’t look away. He told her not to speak, to follow obediently, and much to her horror, she couldn’t resist the command no matter how gently he spoke it. From there a new world opened up before her, one where creatures called vampires could do as they pleased without fear of time nor violence. She gathered quickly that they required a steady supply of blood to keep themselves alive, and that they could create more of their kind by feeding someone their own blood and killing them. The latter part of this discovery was what she witnessed most often within the confines of the home these creatures used as a base. Here her memory becomes spotty as well–later she learned vampires could command others to do their bidding with eye contact and a simple command, and if they told her to forget, she did. For what felt like several lifetimes over, she watched them take people like her, people who wouldn’t be missed, as well as people who craved power. They called themselves followers of the goddess Persephone, and wished to fulfill the directive given to the original member of their species to create vampires and stall the passage of souls to the underworld. They kept humans as an easy food source and turned others into monsters. She hated every endless minute of it.

Another clear moment was a turning point, a vision in a dream of a woman she didn’t recognize but understood to be powerful in her bones. Without hesitation, she asked this woman for help. The cult was barbaric in their treatment of humans, and the creatures they created were an abomination, but compulsion and a human constitution made her no match for an entire group of vampires. If this woman helped her, she’d do anything in return. The being in her dream agreed, and told her to awaken and save herself. She startled awake then and found herself fundamentally changed. Where the night before exhaustion weighted heavily on her shoulders and a compulsion-driven fog kept her quiet and complacent, she now felt light and charged with a sense of clarity so keen it almost disoriented her. That momentary confusion did not stop her from the bloodbath that followed. By the time she finished, blood covered the floors and walls of the house once used by the cult, and she ushered all those held captive to a safe, new life far away from the horrors they faced at the hands of a group of ancient monsters. Later, when the dust settled and Sela left Anshan, the woman from her dreams finally explained. She was called Tisiphone, one of the three furies dedicated to enacting vengeance against perpetrators of particularly terrible crimes. When Sela begged for the ability to stop the cruelty and murder of the defenseless, Tisiphone gifted her the ability to do so and charged her with continuing that work following their punishment. Those she killed would face justice in the underworld, thus righting the wrong performed in the mortal realm. Tisiphone further explained how her powers worked, and that she could return to the underworld as she pleased to regroup and heal. From then on, Sela lived as a protector of those too weak to help themselves, particularly where women and children were involved. Anyone guilty of an unjust murder found themselves as one of her targets.

For the most part, Sela liked to remain outside of the underworld. There was a time during the Italian Renaissance when she made Florence her home in order to keep watch on the most corrupt and cruel of the city’s leaders that she met and grew fond of a prodigious witch. Until then, Sela didn’t get attached–her nature as a fury required her to be mobile and focused, and something so transient as love couldn’t be a distraction from her charge. It happened anyway, and the attachment went so deep that when the witch fell ill, Sela offered to find the blood of a vampire to turn her, thereby avoiding death in order to remain at her side. The witch agreed, and the pair of them spent the next nearly 200 years together until hunters in search of vampires separated the pair of them. Believing her lover to be dead, Sela returned to the underworld, heartbroken and ashamed for straying from her original purpose.

Only calls from Tisiphone herself, as well as the pleas of those who required her assistance, pulled her from the underworld. Sela kept to herself even when she did surface for a few years at a time. In the early 2000s, the call of a matriarchal trouble who required the assistance of a fury finally spurred her to remain more permanently in the mortal realm. They continually discovered coven members drained of blood and could not keep the creature stalking them at bay. At the behest of her patron, Sela re-entered the mortal realm, found the vampire harassing the coven, and delivered his headless corpse to the leader with barely a word. As she did in the past, she remained there secretly for some time in order to ensure the problem was indeed finished, but instead of returning to the underworld once more, she traveled and began to make a life for herself.

People needed help in ways aside from swift, violent revenge. Her ability to speak and understand any language made her a valuable diplomatic tool, and she could pass through collective memory unnoticed by manipulating the minds of anyone who knew her face. At the time of Tisiphone’s call to Corinth Bay, Sela worked as a translator at the National History Museum in Tehran. She moved immediately and reopened the home she’d all but abandoned there a hundred years ago, and she acquired a position at the local library in order to keep an eye on the supernatural happenings there. The furies wanted herself and those like her in the city for something important, but for now she simply waits.

PERSONALITY

+ focused, patient, determined - aloof, dogmatic, cynical

PLAYED BY JAY. EST. She/Her.

[samueldays]

“Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.”

Amidst the ratio, one of FP’s defenders suggested we should read the article, not just the tweet.

The article was not better. Excerpts:

By withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and imposing “maximum pressure” on Tehran economically, Trump provoked the Iranians to begin attacking the Gulf states and their oil exports. May, June, and July 2019 saw attacks on six oil tankers, the seizure of two more, rocket and missile attacks from Iraq and Yemen, and drone attacks on Saudi airports.

I feel like the word ‘provoked’ is being asked to carry a lot of weight here.

Worse, Trump and his senior subordinates publicly insisted that they did not consider Iranian attacks on our Gulf allies to be threats to the United States’ vital interests.

I gotta give this one to Trump.

By calling into question the United States’ long-standing commitment to the security and stability of the region, Trump’s approach to Iran and the Gulf will have grave consequences.

I think that commitment, if it ever existed, was called into question by the number of countries the US bombed, invaded and regimechanged in the region well before Trump.

Throughout, the United States established and upheld the basic rules of conduct in the region: the United States would meet efforts to interfere with the free flow of oil by force; uphold freedom of navigation; demand that regional powers give up their irredentist claims on other states or face grave consequences; and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Even presidents who were initially reluctant to get involved in the region ended up affirming this basic approach.

Remember the time Qaddafi was convinced to assist in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by giving up Libya’s WMD, and his reward from the US was getting economically sanctioned and militarily crippled until rebels overthrew his government and sodomized him to death with a bayonet?

Hell of an affirmation.

A related critique holds that the United States’ commitment to the Gulf leads inevitably to long, draining conflicts such as the Iraq War. Yet this conflates two very different things. One can support what is essentially a denial (or, if deterrence fails, a punishment) mission overwhelmingly reliant on modest air and sea power to prevent Iran from disrupting Gulf oil supplies without supporting manpower-intensive counterinsurgency, regime-change, or nation-building missions.

TLDR: 'Just assume we’ll do it right next time.’

I shall let Foreign Policy Magazine get the last word:

In his own ignorant and idiosyncratic way, Trump manifests many of the issues that have been causing Americans to rethink the United States’ role in that region. He has promised to achieve an ill-defined “energy dominance” that will insulate the United States from a volatile world. He has repeatedly argued that nothing good can come of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. 

[whatisycupto]

Day 34, 3 Feb 2019, Tehran

On 17 January 1979, the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled the country after he gradually lost support from the Shi'a clergy and was also wanted to stand trial for crimes committed as Shah (corruption, suppression of political dissent). He then left the country under the pretext that he was ill (though he was indeed previously diagnosed with terminal blood cancer) and went shopping around for countries that would grant him asylum status, before eventually landing in the United States with the backing of President Jimmy Carter. This did not sit well with the Iranians and on 4 November 1979, revolutionary students responded to the new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini's call to attack US interests by storming the United States embassy in Tehran (US Den of Espionage). This sparked a diplomatic crisis where 52 Americans were taken hostage for 444 days. Fearing that the United States' labyrinth of spy network would be exposed, the hostages frantically tried to shred any incriminating evidence, only to have the students painstakingly piecing together the shredded documents, which revealed a particularly meddlesome America trying to intervene in Iranian politics. Today, the antiquated telex machines, computers, and shredders used by the embassy staff in vault-like rooms remain preserved.

A few metro stations later, we reached the Azadi Tower, which was commissioned by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1971 to mark the 2,500th year since the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great. Without decimating King Cyrus' special status among other Gentile kings to the Jews, it is interesting to note that both called themselves Shahanshah (King of Kings) and both were met with untimely deaths.

Lunch was had at Dizi, where there is only one item on its menu... Dizi. Also known as abgoosht, it is a type of Iranian stew where you first drain out the soupy part of the stew to be eaten together with shredded bits of lavash, a soft and thin unleavened bread. The remaining part of the stew which is made with lamb, chickpeas, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and white beans, is then mashed up, serving as an excellent dip together with the lavash. Several cups of doogh (a cold beverage of yogurt, water, and salt) serve as an accompaniment to the hearty meal.

Feeling extremely full, we then head towards the Holy Defence Museum, which an Iranian acquaintance described it as "a crazy place". As our visit coincided with the ten-day celebration of Ayatollah Khomeini's triumphant return to Iran, after a period of exile imposed by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, entry was free of charge, much to the delight of two gleeful visitors. The museum was dedicated to the extremely damaging Iraq-Iran war that spanned 8 years. The war, which was started and conceded by Saddam Hussein, witnessed countless atrocities committed by his Ba'ath party, including the rampant use of chemical warfare, and also the Machiavellistic orchestrations of Western powers who want a share of the rich oil reserves in the Gulf states. Considering the progress of current investigations into the death of the Saudi dissident Jamal Kashoggi, one cannot help but to draw connections to the insidious nature of oil.

We then tried to catch the sunset at Tobiat Bridge but forgot that it was winter and the skies turn dark at 5.30pm, so the sun was already set and gone by then. Fortunately, two friendly gentlemen came up to chat with us and we spent an hour conversing with the translation applications on our phones. After seeing us to the metro station (and our station too!), we had dinner and I ended the day with a banana milkshake, much to the annoyance of my father who cannot understand my proclivity for fruit juice, but not the fruit.

[opedguy]

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Crackdown

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), July 2, 2021.--Showing that 81-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei learned well from the history of totalitarian regimes, he completed the trifecta, consolidating his own Mullah power, and pushing 59-year-old ultra-conservative Chief Justice Ebrahim Raisi into President, then promoting his 64-year-old chief lieutenant 64-year-old Mohseni Ejehi into his new Chief Justice.  Moderates, like 72-year-old former President Hassan Rouhani or 64-year-old former House Speaker Ali Larijani, are a thing of the past, giving way to a brutal reality that Iran, like Communist China and Russia, has zero time for of any Democratic reforms.  Aging Khamenei, who’s already beat back prostate cancer, has consolidated conservative light-skinned Mullah rule for the foreseeable future, all from the same Azeri tribe of Azerbaijani and Turkish ancestry.  Khamenei, who sees his days numbered, wants Iran in conservative hands.

Iran’s population has been beaten down for years at the hands of the Basij  militia, a voluntary paramilitary force given free reign to terrorize the population when the public strays from the Ayatollah’s strict version of Shiite’s strict Sharia law, essentially anything the Ayatollah, considered the Supreme leader, dictates.  Shiites originated after the death of Mohammed when half the faithful followed his cousin Ali as the divine representative of Allah.  Ayatollah Khamenei takes the Shiite domination of Iranian life seriously, something de-emphasized during the reign of the Shah Reza Mohammed Pahlavi and his father who ruled Iran for nearly 100 years.  During the Shah’s reign, Iran became a more tolerant, modern country, built off science, education, technology and medicine, all of which modernized the ancient Persian Republic.  Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei ended the Shah’s rule in 1979.

For the past 40 years, Iran’s mullahs have carried out one of the most brutal crackdowns on any civilization in world history, watching citizens jailed and slaughtered much like Soviet Russia and Communist China.  While hiding behind religion, Aytatollah Khomenei understood the principle behind totalitarian rule, understood the unrelenting crackdown of human freedom and dignity, something left in short supply in today’s Iran.  Backing Ebrahim’s Raisi’s election as president and now Mohseni Ejehi as Chief Justice of Iran’s Supreme Court shows that Khamenei means business when it comes to consolidating mullah control over the Islamic Republic.  Like other totalitarian regimes, Iran targets the U.S. and Israel as its mortal enemies, much like the Soviet Union and now Russian Federation Targets the United States.  Communist China too uses the U.S. as its scapegoat enemy.

Both Raisi and Ejehi have been associated with the great purges since the 1979 Islamic Revolution where any dissent has been vaporized, with tens-of-thousands of Iranians gone missing, presumed dead at the hands of the Ayatollah’s henchmen.  Ejehi paid his dues, once dismissed by former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose reign from 2005-2013 was marked by provocations toward Israel, especially Holocaust denial celebrated in Iranian Street . Ejehi ran afoul with Ahmadinejad while serving as Intelligence Minister when he objected to Ahmandinejad broadcasting confessions of jailed dissidents.  Ejehi lost his post, eventually currying favor with Khemenei before Ahmadinejad left office in 2013, never permitted by the Aytollah from returning to Iranian politics.  Ejehi was best know for sending former Tehran Mayor Gholoamhossein Karbaschi to prison after a public lashing.

Raisi and Ejehi came up the ranks as henchmen for the Ayatollah, prosecuting dissidents and Shah-like intellectuals in the 1990s, often sending them to prison where they were liquidated after convictions in Kangaroo courts.  Raisi and Ejehi are the perfect loyalists from Khamenei who’s years left as Iran’s Supreme Leader could be numbered because of health.  Working closely with the Basij militia, Raisi and Ejehi know how to stifle dissent, especially when it comes for reformist policies that in any way resemble anything the Shah’s past.  Under Raisi and Ejehi’s leadership, many of the regime’s dissidents and opposition activist were either imprisoned or liquidated.  Both Raisi and Ejehi proved their blind loyalty to the Ayatollah, now repaid with two of the most powerful positions in the Islamic Republic.  Both think nothing of rigging their own elections to consolidate the Ayatollah’s power.

Iran’s future looks bleak for any progressive-minded citizen that longs for the days when the Shah offered education, culture and real opportunity to businesses, academics and sciences.  Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has experienced an unprecedented brain-drain of its best academics, engineers, doctors and scientists, all because the Ayatollah’s Azeri clan has to monopolize the nation’s wealth.  But with Iran’s brain drain the Ayatollah forgot that the country’s most precious resource is not uranium for nuclear fuel but its people no longer seeing any future in Iran accept for those connected to the Ayatollah’s tribe.  Installing Raisi and Ejehi turns back the clock on any hope for an Iranian future. U.S. President Joe Biden knows that today’s Iran is not the same one in which he entered the 2015 Nuke Deal.  Ayatollah’s power grab makes a workable deal next to impossible.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Buller and Operation Charisma. 

[newstfionline]

As Nuclear Sanctions Loom, ‘Normal Life’ Is Elusive for Iranians

By Thomas Erdbrink, NY Times, May 10, 2018

TEHRAN--It was a day like any other. The evening rush hour heralded the weekend, which in Iran starts on Thursday. People crowded the sidewalks of a West Tehran square, making their way home or to restaurants.

A young street musician wearing a baseball cap and sitting in a wheelchair sang “Someone Like You” by Adele. His sister played keyboard.

“I don’t understand the words, but it’s beautiful,” one passer-by told a friend. A man walked past with fresh bread. Two teenagers sitting beneath an underpass smoked and giggled.

It was easy to forget that the lives of those making their way home here had been changed with the stroke of a pen, thousands of miles away, this week when President Trump formally withdrew from the nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers.

Life can be like a roller coaster in Iran. Ordinary people can do little more than hang on through the twists and turns as their own leaders, and sometimes foreign ones, chart a course. Rarely are they in control.

“No one ever listens to us,” said Ali Akbari, a 33-year-old tech student with a hipster beard. “That’s just the way it is. We have to go with the flow.”

Iranians were thrown into another corkscrew when Mr. Trump pulled out of the agreement, which many here had hoped would give them peace of mind and prosperity. Now they face new rounds of sanctions, along with an economy already riddled with corruption and mismanagement.

Normal people tried to go on with their lives. Those who had taken hope from the more open atmosphere the nuclear agreement brought--at least for a time--were licking their wounds. Iranians who took part in the recent protests that swept the country and businessmen alike struggled to adjust to the new reality.

In the desert town of Kashan, a lawyer and human rights activist, Nasrin Sotoudeh, was in court defending a woman who had protested against the compulsory Islamic head scarf. Ms. Sotoudeh, who herself has been in jail numerous times, said the nuclear agreement had provided breathing space for those critical of the government.

“This move by Trump has empowered hard-liners, and they will start cracking down internally,” she said over the phone. “We can anticipate bad days for civil and human rights activists.”

In Tehran, Hamidreza Faraji, a businessman, also pointed a finger at hard-liners.

Mr. Faraji, 35, opened a perfume shop after the nuclear agreement was reached in 2015. Business growth seemed to be on the horizon. Iran’s leaders promised a bonanza with the arrival of foreign investors.

“I thought there would be more money around, and people would buy more perfume,” Mr. Faraji said.

He sat in his store for many fruitless afternoons, giving high discounts to the few customers who came. Then last week he closed up shop, to prevent further losses.

“This deal was crippled by hard-liners in the U.S. and in Iran,” Mr. Faraji said. “Now we are witnessing its last breaths.”

Still, life went on this week in Tehran, as it did during the 1979 Islamic revolution, the eight years of war with Iraq, the recent anti-government protests and the years of sanctions.

Mr. Akbari, the student, had not even bothered to watch the news when Mr. Trump made his announcement. He woke up on Wednesday, made his way to university and sat down in class. Another student told him that the American president had given a big speech and that sanctions would return.

“My first reaction,” he said, was “prices will go up again--more misery.”

His white earbuds dangled on his shoulders, blasting hip-hop. “I love hip-hop,” Mr. Akbari said. “It’s the voice of the frustrated.”

In Tehran, the metro station filled up and drained empty of passengers. The pink bus driving up from Shahid Beheshti Street stopped at Sadeghiyeh Square. A doctor carrying two shopping bags asked me if I had a job for her daughter.

“She studied industrial management and is really smart,” said the doctor, Marzieh Mirzaei. “But the only offer she got was to work in a pharmacy for one million tomans a month. Do you know how much that is in dollars?”

“Around $150,” I answered.

“Well, would you work for that?” she asked.

No, I said.

Another man, who gave his name only as Amir, did not want to talk about Mr. Trump’s decision at first. A 36-year-old father of two boys, he was sitting in a tiny booth in the Golriz shopping center, selling water pipes and Zippo lighters.

“How miserable have we become that this Trump should play a role in our lives,” Amir said. “How miserable are we that our leaders constantly want to pick fights with everybody.”

He insisted that I write down the following: “I want to live a normal life. Amir from Iran wants a normal life.”

On the streets, many blamed both Mr. Trump and their own leaders for their misery, although it was clear who ultimately had pulled the plug on the deal.

“Trump made us miserable,” said Fatemeh, 22, who works at a store that sells veils. She did not want to give her family name, and only smiled when asked for a reason.

A woman with two teenage daughters walked in and overheard the conversation. Soon, she got into a debate with a man.

“Everybody is destroying us,” she said.

“We have seen the war--this is nothing,” he replied.

“Maybe for you, but I want progress,” the woman said. “Should war be the standard?”

Several streets away, Mohammad Amiri, 27, stood on the pavement, selling cactuses. He had listened to the car radio while coming to Tehran from Karaj and had heard the news.

Mr. Amiri said there was blame enough to go around. “No one is oppressed in this story,” he said.

One woman inquired about the price of a very tiny cactus, which Mr. Amiri had grown himself. “It took me a year,” he said.

Mr. Amiri told her the plant was just over a dollar. “7,000 toman--or take it for free,” he said.

The woman walked on.

Mr. Amiri wore a yellow Pink Floyd shirt. He has been listening to the band since was 5, and said his favorite song was “High Hopes.”

“This is such a beautiful song,” he said.

I asked if he had high hopes himself.

“No,” he said. “Not a lot.”

[go-redgirl]

Any Person, Politician, Congress Elected Official That Assist illegal Immigrants How To Obstruct  ICE, Is One; (A Traitor) To This Country; Two (Should Removed From Any Political Position In This Country) Three; (Labeled As A Traitor) To This Country And Removed From Any Federal Government Position and Never Allowed To Work In The Federal Government That Represents ‘We The People’ Every Again. OPINION:  PROBLEM SOLVED!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

INDIVIDUALS COMMENTS/POSTS:

To: SeekAndFind

And still, Nancy Pelosi is too afraid to make a minority big mouth upset by removing Maxine from the Finance Committee. Nancy, that sort of fear is going to be your downfall!

You will be known as one who enabled EVIL. You already did this by supporting lies that allowed Obama to become elected. You have broken laws that are unfortunately no longer enforced against Democrats.

4 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:23:59 PM by lee martell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind

Kinda makes ya wonder what ($$$) she’s taken from Iran, doesn’t it?

5 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:25:38 PM by ryderann ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind

She is choosing to believe Iran’s intelligence over her own Country’s military who said it wasn’t in their air space?

6 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:26:51 PM by marajade (Skywalker) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; 

I am unsurprised by my lack of surprise.

7 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:30:27 PM by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind

If some muzzy country dropped a bomb on the USA, maxine would support it because Trump is president.

8 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:31:16 PM by I want the USA back (The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. Orwell.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind

I hope a drone strike takes out the old house negro.

9 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:33:54 PM by july4thfreedomfoundation (President Trump IS The Resistance!) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind Hateful person.

A dark soul.

Mad Maxine can find redemption if she gives her wig back to the Brown family trust.

5.56mm

10 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:35:00 PM by M Kehoe (DRAIN THE SWAMP! BUILD THE WALL!) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind

Moron.

11 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:39:05 PM by myerson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Innovative

And wear a hat with a bullseye on it.

12 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:41:34 PM by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Gone but not forgiven.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind

Well, one has to remember, Democrats are coaching Iran how to beat our foreign policy.

Coaching is what Hillary and Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein and several others are and have been doing.

They don’t want the world to realize how they ALL let Hezbollah traffick/deal/smuggle drugs and perform terrorism and launder money, so Iran would go along with the anti-American Iran deal.

These people are dangerous enemies to this nation and the world.

13 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:43:42 PM by jacknhoo (Luke 12:51; Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To: Innovative

Maxine Waters’ hate for Trump runs so deep that she is willing to take Iran’s side over the word of our military. https://t.co/BnJn7Qn9rN I don't think Iran would take her unless she had wads of cash falling out her pockets like Kerry and other traitors in 'the deep state'...

14 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:45:53 PM by GOPJ (United States being invaded and the ONLY thing democrats care about is the comfort of the invaders?) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind

Maxine Waters Takes Iran’s Side In Drone Shootdown I have a hard time throwing out the accusation that someone is “unamerican”. For me, it means they do things counter to american interests and in favor of an enemy country. A classic example would be “Hanoi” Jane Fonda. And with this stand, add auntie Maxine to the list.

15 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:46:50 PM by cuban leaf ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Innovative

Iranians would be appalled by her insanity and stupidity.

16 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:52:29 PM by granada ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: SeekAndFind Max Mouth : Min Brain

17 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:53:53 PM by antidemoncrat (yawn) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: jacknhoo

She has shown where her heart is—and its not for America. She hates so much that she hates all America.

18 posted on 6/24/2019, 12:55:18 PM by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll Onward! Ride to the sound ovil.f the guns!) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: cuban leaf Call her Tehran Madxine.

19 posted on 6/24/2019, 1:09:23 PM by granada ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[omgstupendousbouquetbasement]

Analysts: US Initiative First of Many Actions to Drain Hezbollah's Financing

A United States initiative toward three key figures within Hezbollah's financial networks would be the first in a series of actions against the Lebanese militant group to drain it of resources, analysts predict. The U.S. on Monday offered $10 million for information on three financiers of the Lebanese terror group. “This looks like it will be one move of many targeting the funding streams Hezbollah uses,” Phillip Smyth, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told VOA on Tuesday. “While some offers for rewards have been better with some groups over others, this may show further cracks within the group regarding overseas financiers and those linked to them,” he added.  Cash rewards program The U.S. announcement is part of the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program, which has largely focused on offering cash rewards for information that leads to the capture of wanted terrorists around the world.  U.S. officials said this announcement marks the first time that the U.S. State Department has offered a reward for information on Hezbollah financial networks. “In previous years, Hezbollah has generated about $1 billion annually through direct financial support from Iran, international businesses and investments, donor networks, and money-laundering activities,” Assistant Secretary for State for Diplomatic Security Michael T. Evanoff said during a press briefing on Monday.  Evanoff said the Shiite group uses these funds to support its destructive activities throughout the world, including Syria and Yemen, and surveillance and intelligence gathering operations in the U.S.  Hezbollah has been increasingly targeted by U.S. sanctions over the past few months. In 1997, Hezbollah was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. In October 2018, the Department of Justice named Hezbollah as one of the top five transnational criminal organizations in Latin America. Targeted figures  The three Hezbollah figures targeted in the cash rewards program -- Mohammed Bazzi, Ali Charara and Adham Tabaja -- are key figures in the group’s financial network that operates on four continents, U.S. officials said Monday. “Together, these individuals comprise key parts of Hezbollah’s financial modus operandi, and they have networks that span four continents, with links to the formal financial sector as well as the drug trade and corrupt foreign governments,” said Marshall Billingslea, assistant secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing.  In 2015, the U.S. Treasury designated Tabaja, who has direct ties with Hezbollah’s senior leadership, and three branches of his business in Lebanon and other countries including Iraq, Ghana and Sierra Leone.  In 2016, the Treasury designated Charara, Hezbollah’s personal wealth manager, and his Lebanese-based company, Spectrum Investment Group Holdings SAL. And Bazzi, who funded Hezbollah from his transcontinental business holdings, was designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the Treasury in May 2018. Bazzi has closely worked with the Central Bank of Iran to expand banking access between Lebanon and Iran, U.S. officials said.  Ties with Iran  Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, also has been targeted by U.S. sanctions in recent months. Since May 2018, when the U.S withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. has imposed a series of sanctions against Tehran. “We're talking about Hezbollah today, but any conversation about Hezbollah must begin in Tehran,” said Nathan Sales, ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism, who was also at the Monday’s briefing. This week, the U.S. ended its sanctions waivers for five countries importing Iranian oil, with the hope to put new pressure on Tehran to curb its military aggression in the Middle East.  “Iran remains the world's leading state-sponsored terrorism… The regime spends nearly a billion dollars a year on its terrorist proxies around the world, and that includes up to $700 million for Hezbollah alone,” Sales said. Sales added that Iran also actively engages in terrorism itself.  Earlier this April, the U.S. labeled Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization for what U.S. officials call its destabilizing role in the Middle East.  With concurrent sanctions on Iran and Hezbollah, U.S. officials hope both sides will be forced to reduce their military activities in the Middle East and beyond. “If Hezbollah can’t count on the same levels of support from Tehran, the group increasingly will need to raise money to support terrorism itself. In this administration, we use every tool at our disposal to dismantle Hezbollah’s global financing network,” Sales said. from Blogger http://bit.ly/2GDfNRK via IFTTT