TEHRAN: Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami and former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi have both called for political changes amid the protests triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.
As the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution approaches, one of the country’s main opposition figures, Mousavi, called on Saturday for the “fundamental transformation” of a political system he said was facing a crisis of legitimacy.
And on Sunday Khatami, the leader of the reformist movement, in a statement said: “What is evident today is widespread discontent.”
Khatami said he hoped that the use of “non-violent civil methods” can “force the governing system to change its approach and accept reforms.”
In a statement carried by local media, Mousavi said: “Iran and Iranians need and are ready for a fundamental transformation whose outline is drawn by the pure ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement.”
He was referring to the main slogan chanted in demonstrations sparked by the death on September 16 of Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd.
She had been arrested three days earlier by the morality police in Tehran for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s dress code for women.
Mousavi, 80, said the protest movement began in the context of “interdependent crises” and proposed holding a “free and healthy referendum on the need to change or draft a new constitution.”
He called the current system’s structure “unsustainable.”
An unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2009, Mousavi alleged large-scale fraud in favor of populist incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, leading to mass protests.
He has been under house arrest without charge in Tehran for 12 years, along with his wife Zahra Rahnavard.
A close confidant of the Islamic republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mousavi was prime minister from 1981 to 1989.
“People have the right to make fundamental revisions in order to overcome crises and pave the way for freedom, justice, democracy and development,” Mousavi said in his statement.
“The refusal to take the smallest step toward realizing the rights of citizens as defined in the constitution... has discouraged the community from carrying out reforms.”
Khatami, 79, made similar remarks, warning that “there is no sign of the ruling system’s desire for reform and avoiding the mistakes of the past and present.”
President from 1997 to 2005 before being forced into silence, Khatami said he regretted that Iran’s population was “disappointed with Reformism as well as with the ruling system.”
Iran ex-president, former PM call for political change
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Iran ex-president, former PM call for political change
- Khatami hopes the use of ‘non-violent civil methods’ can ‘force the governing system to change its approach and accept reforms’
Iraq’s Kurdistan region to hold elections on Nov. 18 — spokesman
- The vote should elect both a parliament and a president for Kurdish regions
SULAIMANIYA: Elections will be held in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq on Nov. 18, the regional government spokesman said on Sunday.
Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani issued a decree on Sunday and approved the date, KRG spokesman Dilshad Shahab told a news conference.
The vote should elect both a parliament and a president for Kurdish regions which have gained self-rule in 1991.
Tunisia recovers 29 bodies after migrant vessels capsize
- Rome has pressured Tunisian authorities to rein in the flow of people
TUNIS: Tunisia’s coast guard said Sunday the bodies of 29 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries had been recovered after three vessels capsized, the latest in a string of such tragedies.
A series of shipwrecks has left dozens of migrants dead and others missing in the country that serves as a key conduit for migrants seeking to reach nearby European shores.
It comes after President Kais Saied made an incendiary speech last month, accusing sub-Saharan Africans of representing a demographic threat and causing a crime wave in Tunisia.
The coast guard said in a statement Sunday that it had “rescued 11 illegal migrants of various African nationalities after their boats sank” off the central eastern coast, citing three separate sinkings.
In one, a Tunisian fishing trawler recovered 19 bodies 58 kilometers (36 miles) off the coast after their boat capsized.
A coast guard patrol off the coastal city of Mahdiya also recovered eight bodies and “rescued” 11 other migrants after their boat sank as it headed toward Italy.
Fishing trawlers in Sfax meanwhile recovered two other bodies.
Black migrants in the country have faced a spike in violence since Saied’s speech and hundreds have been living in the streets for weeks in increasingly desperate conditions.
People fleeing poverty and violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, West Africa and other parts of the continent have for years used Tunisia as a springboard for often perilous attempts to reach safety and better lives in Europe.
The Italian island of Lampedusa is just 150 kilometers (90 miles) off the Tunisian coast, part of the Central Mediterranean route described by the United Nations as the most deadly in the world.
Rome has pressured Tunisian authorities to rein in the flow of people, and has helped beef up the coast guard, which rights groups accuse of violence.
Italy’s hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned Friday that Tunisia’s “serious financial problems” risked sparking a “migratory wave” toward Europe.
She also confirmed plans for a mission to the North African country involving the Italian and French foreign ministers.
Meloni echoed comments earlier in the week by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, who warned Tunisia risks economic collapse that could trigger a new flow of migrants to Europe — fears Tunis has since dismissed.
Since Saied’s speech, hundreds of migrants have been repatriated in flights organized by their embassies, but many say they fear going home and have called on the UN to organize evacuation flights to safe third countries.
Tunisia is in the throes of a long-running socio-economic crisis, with spiralling inflation and persistently high joblessness, and Tunisians themselves make up a large proportion of the migrants traveling to Italian shores.
The heavily indebted North African country is in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a $2-billion bailout package, but the talks have been stalled for months and there is no sign a deal is any closer.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Wednesday that unless they reach an agreement, “the economy risks falling off the deep end.”
Israeli group asks court to punish Netanyahu over legal plan
TEL AVIV: An Israeli good governance group on Sunday asked the country’s Supreme Court to punish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption.
The request by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel intensifies a brewing showdown between Netanyahu’s government and the judiciary, which it is trying to overhaul in a contentious plan that has sparked widespread opposition.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a fierce opponent of the overhaul, asked the court to force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so, saying he was not above the law.
“A prime minister who doesn’t obey the court and the provisions of the law is privileged and an anarchist,” said Eliad Shraga, the head of the group, echoing language used by Netanyahu and his allies against protesting opponents of the overhaul. “The prime minister will be forced to bow his head before the law and comply with the provisions of the law.”
Netanyahu is barred by the country’s attorney general from dealing with his government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, based on a conflict of interest agreement he is bound to, and which the Supreme Court acknowledged in a ruling over Netanyahu’s fitness to serve while on trial for corruption.
But on Thursday, after parliament passed a law making it harder to remove a sitting prime minister, Netanyahu said he was unshackled by the attorney general’s decision and vowed to wade into the crisis and “mend the rift” in the nation. That declaration prompted the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to warn that Netanyahu was breaking his conflict of interest agreement by entering the fray.
The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory and to a burgeoning constitutional crisis, said Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.
“We are at the start of a constitutional crisis in the sense that there is a disagreement over the source of authority and legitimacy of different governing bodies,” he said.
If Netanyahu continues to intervene in the overhaul as he promised, Baharav-Miara could launch an investigation into whether he violated the conflict of interest agreement, which could lead to additional charges against him, Lurie said. He added that the uncertainty of the events made him unsure of how they were likely to unfold.
It is also unclear how the court, which is at the center of the divide surrounding the overhaul, will treat the request to sanction Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate affairs involving wealthy associates and powerful media moguls. He denies wrongdoing and dismisses critics who say he will try to seek an escape route from the charges through the legal overhaul.
The overhaul will give the government control over who becomes a judge and limit judicial review over government decisions and legislation. Netanyahu and his allies say the plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and rein in what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.
Critics say the plan upends Israel’s fragile system of checks and balances and pushes Israel down a path toward autocracy.
The government has pledged to pass a key part of the overhaul this week before parliament takes a month recess, but pressure has been building on Netanyahu to suspend the plan.
Tehran condemns US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria
- Washington said it launched retaliatory raids after US contractor was killed
- Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said at least 19 people were killed
TEHRAN: Tehran has condemned US airstrikes on Iran-linked forces in Syria that reportedly killed 19 people, which Washington said it carried out following a deadly drone attack on US forces.
The Iranian foreign ministry late Saturday condemned “the belligerent and terrorist attack of the American army on civilian targets” in the eastern Syrian region of Deir Ezzor.
Washington said it launched the retaliatory raids after a US contractor was killed — and another contractor and five military personnel wounded — by a drone “of Iranian origin” that struck a US-led coalition base in Syria on Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor has said at least 19 people, most of them Syrian, were killed in the following US strikes launched early Friday morning.
The US strikes triggered further rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias, the Observatory said.
The Syrian government, which is closely allied with Iran, has accused the United States of lying about the targets of its air strikes to justify its “act of aggression.”
The United States has about 900 troops in posts across northeastern Syria to keep pressure on the remnants of the Daesh group and support the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control most of the northeast.
US personnel in Syria have frequently been targeted in attacks by militia groups that Washington says are backed by Tehran.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the US troops’ presence was “illegal” and a “violation of international law and the national sovereignty” of Syria.
In contrast, Kanani said Iranian forces were in Syria at the behest of Damascus.
“The military advisers of the Islamic Republic of Iran are present in Syria at the request of the Syrian government,” he said, adding that they will continue to support Damascus to “help establish peace, stability and lasting security.”
Israel: 2 soldiers wounded in West Bank drive-by shooting
- The attack was the third to take place in the Palestinian town of Huwara in less than a month
- One soldier was seriously wounded and the second was in moderate condition
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said two soldiers were wounded, one severely, Saturday evening in a drive-by shooting in the occupied West Bank, the latest in months-long violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
The attack was the third to take place in the Palestinian town of Hawara in less than a month. One soldier was seriously wounded and the second was in moderate condition, the military said. A manhunt was launched as forces sealed roads leading to Hawara.
No Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the shooting attack, but Hamas, the militant group ruling the Gaza Strip, praised it.
“The resistance in the West Bank can surprise the occupation every time and the occupation cannot enjoy safety,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said.
Violence has surged in recent months in the West Bank and east Jerusalem amid near-daily Israeli arrest raids in Palestinian-controlled areas and a string of Palestinian attacks.
US-backed regional efforts to defuse tensions have led to the meeting of Israeli and Palestinian officials in Jordan and Egypt respectively, where parties hoped to prevent a further escalation during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
On Feb. 27, when Israeli and Palestinian officials met in Jordan’s Aqaba, a Palestinian gunman shot and killed two Israelis in Hawara. Another shooting attack in Hawara took place as the parties met again in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, wounding two Israelis.
Eighty-six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli or settler fire this year, according to an Associated Press tally. Palestinian attacks have killed 15 Israelis in the same period.
Israel says most of those killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their future independent state.
