Tehran arrests population expert accused of spy links

Iran says it will continue missile tests after US allegation

TEHRAN: An Iranian fertility expert accused of working with foreign “espionage networks” to downplay the country’s population crisis has been arrested, state news agency IRNA confirmed yesterday. It did not give details of the charges, but quoted a lawyer who named the expert as Meimanat Hosseini Chavoshi. She is listed by the University of Melbourne as working at its School of Population and Global Health, published widely on Iran’s once-lauded fertility and family-planning policies.

On Saturday, hardline newspaper Kayhan reported the arrest of several population “activists... who, under the cover of scientific activities, had infiltrated state bodies”. It said they manipulated statistics and handed sensitive information to Iran’s enemies as part of efforts at “cultural and social invasion”. Iran was once considered an international success story in population control, bringing birth rates down from seven per woman in the 1980s to 1.66 in 2016, according to World Bank figures.

Then-health minister Alireza Marandi received the United Nations Population Award in 2000 for his family planning initiatives, which had to overcome entrenched taboos in an Islamic society. Chavoshi has written extensively about these efforts, which she described as the “fastest fall in fertility ever recorded” in a 2009 book. But lately there has been concern that Iran overshot its target, with the number of births falling well below the level needed to keep the population growing.

In 2012, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said it was a mistake to have continued the family planning policies of the 1990s, and called for new measures to double the population to 150 million. The Kayhan report said Iran’s enemies were using population experts to counter these efforts by downplaying the gravity of the situation. “There is evidence these individuals are connected to Western espionage networks,” Nasrollah Pejmanfar, a member of parliament’s cultural commission, told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, Iran said yesterday it would continue missile tests to build up its defenses and denied this was in breach of UN resolutions following US allegations that Tehran had tested a new missile capable of carrying multiple warheads. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday condemned what he called Iran’s testing of a medium-range ballistic missile in violation of the 2015 international agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, from which Washington has withdrawn.

“Missile tests...are carried out for defense and the country’s deterrence, and we will continue this,” Brigadier- General Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. “We will continue to both develop and test missiles. This is outside the framework of (nuclear) negotiations and part of our national security, for which we will not ask any country’s permission,” Shekarchi said. He did not confirm or deny Iran had tested a new missile.

Earlier, US National Security Adviser John Bolton tweeted: “Iran just test-fired a... ballistic missile capable of reaching Israel and Europe. This provocative behavior cannot be tolerated.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi also said Iranian missiles were purely defensive and added, “There is no Security Council resolution prohibiting missile program and missile tests by Iran”.

UN Resolution 2231 enshrined Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States in which Tehran curbed its disputed uranium enrichment programme in exchange for an end to international sanctions. The resolution says Iran is “called upon” to refrain for up to eight years from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly said its missile program is purely defensive and denied that its missiles are capable of being tipped with nuclear warheads, or that it has any intent of developing nuclear weapons through uranium enrichment. — Agencies