Iran reveals missile factory
TEHRAN, Feb 9, (Agencies): Iran on Thursday revealed for the first time an underground factory named “Dezful” for manufacturing ballistic missiles.
The unveiling of this plant is a response to the “Western arrogance” believing that sanctions and threats can restrict Iran and prevent it from achieving its long-term goals,” Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps chief Maj Gen Mohammad Jafari said in a statement carried by semi-official Fars news agency.
The Europeans are talking about restricting and sanctioning Iran’s defense capabilities, but it broadly enhance these capabilities with no fear from anything, he added.
The European Union issued last Monday a joint statement from Brussels during which it approved a financial mechanism on cooperation with Iran.
However, the union condemned Tehran’s long-range ballistic missile program, calling on it to abandon activities, which undermine the region’s stability.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has pardoned a “large number” of prisoners in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, state TV reported Thursday.
The report did not say how many prisoners were released, but previous reports suggested it would apply to some 50,000 people, the largest number ever covered in a single pardon. Some prisoners would be released while others would have their sentences reduced.
According to judiciary website Mizanonline.com, the pardon covers a wide range of people, from those serving a year in jail to life in prison.
It said convicts in jail on armed opposition charges, kidnapping, rape, armed robbery, fraud, embezzlement, bribery, forging bank notes and coins, money laundering, smuggling and organized crimes will not be pardoned.
However, men above age 70 and women above age 60 as well as prisoners suffering from certain diseases could be pardoned, according to the website.
If so, the pardon could include 81-year-old Iranian-American businessman Baquer Namazi, who has been held for more than two years and has been diagnosed with epilepsy. Namazi and his son Siamak Namazi, who has been held for over three years, are each serving a 10-year sentence on a charge of collaborating with a hostile power.
Iran has some 240,000 prisoners. It is holding several other people of dual-citizenship with Western nationalities on allegations of threatening national security. It’s unclear whether any, including Baquer Namazi, would be included in the pardon.
Iran is celebrating the 1979 revolution, which toppled a Western-backed monarchy and ushered in four decades of clerical rule. Khamenei, who issued the decree, has the final say on all major policies.
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi said she first had doubts about the 1979 Islamic Revolution when members of the Shah’s regime were executed on the rooftop of a school housing its leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
She has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of Iran’s clerical leadership, 40 years after Khomeini returned from exile in Paris on a special Air France flight to ecstatic crowds on Feb 1, 1979.
But as Iran commemorates the rise of Khomeini, who won the support of millions opposed to the US-backed Shah’s lavish lifestyle and ruthless secret police, her criticisms of its current rulers are compounded by frustrations about US policy.
US sanctions designed to undermine Iran’s ruling theocracy have only hurt ordinary Iranians who face widespread hardships, said Ebadi, a human rights lawyer and former judge who has been living in exile in Britain since 2009.
“The economic sanctions are not to the benefit of the people. They make the people poor,” she told Reuters.
“However, those who are close to the regime benefit from economic sanctions because it gives them the opportunity to gain dirty money. So it’s good for them.”