Iran reported its first confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections on 19 February 2020 in the city of Qom, probably brought to the country by merchants who had travelled to China, and in the following days became a center of the spread of the virus in the region, as well as the second-worst affected country in the world. In the first week of March, Iran reported dozens of dead and hundreds infected each day, next only to China as the pandemic’s epicenter. At the same time, the government closed schools, universities, shopping centers, bazaars, holy shrines, and cancelled public events and festival celebrations. As confirmed cases mounted, health ministry announced that checkpoints would be placed between cities to limit travel. The unprecedented situation has left Iran in need of masks, respirators and other medical equipment, but imports are virtually impossible due to unilateral U.S. trade sanctions.

On its own feet

Faced with such inhumane anti-Iran policy, unseen in the history of economic warfare, Iran turned to its own resources. The government has allocated 1,000 trillion rials (about $24 billion) to help lessen the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the national economy. In early March, a five-day World Health Organization (WHO) technical support mission that included German and Chinese experts, confirmed Iranian rapid improvements in its testing capacity. When the team arrived, Iran had only 22 testing laboratories, and by the time they left on 10 March, there were around 40 laboratories. Five days later, Alireza Beglari who heads the Pasteur Institute of Iran (IPI), the flagship organization fighting infectious diseases in the country, announced that the country is daily doing 6,000 coronavirus test at 50 laboratories, and two weeks later, he also announced that the numbers had risen to 20,000 tests and 100 labs.

At the same time, several Iranian biomedicine companies have obtained certificates from health authorities to produce COVID-19 testing kits on a commercial scale, each producing at least 80,000 kits a week. Besides diagnostic testing, Iran’s health authorities have screened over 10 million people for symptoms until 15 March, 41 million a week later, and 65 million by the end of the month. By early April, Iran conducted about a quarter of a million diagnostic tests, as much as France and the United Kingdom.

Various governmental organizations have also demonstrated tremendous efforts and success in fighting the pandemic. Iran’s Volunteer Basij Force Organization has unveiled portable rapid testing laboratories, delivering the ultimate result in just two hours. Iran also unveiled homegrown smart software that helps physicians diagnose the novel coronavirus pneumonia with the help of artificial intelligence that is used to analyze computed tomography (CT) scans. The software has been developed in a joint project involving researchers from various Iranian universities in only one month. According to the professor of AI technologies at Sharif University, software’s error margin in detection of COVID-19 is much lower than the similar ones developed by China and Stanford University of the U.S.

Researchers at Shahid Beheshti University also developed diagnostic kits that could be used to diagnose the disease in 20 minutes, as well as anti-coronavirus masks and light ventilators. The university has developed six scientific-research departments to help authorities in charge of the health sector in their efforts to curtail the outbreak. Numerous scientific institutions have become involved in the development of drugs and therapies for the coronavirus, including stem cell scientist Dr. Masoud Soleimani, recently illegally detained in a U.S. prison, who is developing a method which uses mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) to treat coronavirus patients.

The Headquarters for Executing Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO) known as Setad, mobilized all the equipment at hand to provide the necessities of the people and the sanctioned medicines in the very beginning of the outbreak. To date, their services include 25 million three-layered and N95 masks, launching a production line of medical masks despite U.S. attempts to prevent Iran from having breathing machines (respirators), production of Iranian test kit for coronavirus infection, research on the medicine of the disease, launching the 4030 phone line with the help of 2,200 doctors and paramedics for answering people’s questions about coronavirus, breaking the monopoly of the U.S. in making oxygen concentrator (with producing 50 machines every day), production of 400,000 liters of disinfectant gel, etc.

Ruptly reported that the organization’s “authorities also inaugurated a mask manufacturing facility that is reportedly the largest in Southwest Asia amid soaring demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in a town of Eshtehard, Alborz province on Tuesday.

The head of the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, Mohammad Mokhber said the factory will produce every day four million masks equipped with a nano filter, which guarantees a high level of protection.

The Barakat Foundation, an EIKO subsidiary, launched a production line with a capacity of manufacturing 1.5 million three-layer face masks containing nanofibers. Hadi Johari, its deputy director, expressed hope that the company could be able to increase its face mask production to three million per day, thus being able to meet a major part of the domestic demand for the product. Commenting on Barakat Foundation’s measures to curb the coronavirus spread in Iran, he said since the beginning of the outbreak, a company in northwestern ‎Iran affiliated to the foundation, which solely produced hospital gowns, began manufacturing isolation gowns once the country was faced with a shortage in this regard. He put the daily number of isolation gowns produced by the company at between 2,000 and 2,500, noting that it has so far manufactured 35,000 isolation gowns and distributed them among the country’s hospitals and medical centers.

Commenting on face mask production by the foundation, Johari said a number of small clothing workshops across the country are working in this field under the supervision of the foundation. He said these workshops are mostly located in deprived areas and rural districts, adding they produce close to 70,000 face masks per day, which are distributed in the regions where they are located. Johari said manufacturing face masks in the deprived areas has led to a surge in their production and job opportunities. He noted that Barakat Foundation has distributed‎, through medical and health centers, ‎isolation gowns, face masks and disinfectants among people in seven deprived areas in the country, including regions in the provinces of Yazd, Sistan and Baluchestan and Kerman, as well as northeastern parts.

Increased demand for masks has given rise to an amazing phenomenon, namely temporary conversion of mosques and holy shrines into local mask factories. Inside the Imamzadeh-Masum mosque, located south of the capital city of Tehran, women have taken up positions in front of table-top sewing machines to produce face masks, while other women fold and arrange the printed sheets of material as they are produced. In another room, men sitting on prayer mats make plastic gloves with rudimentary heat-sealing devices. “We distribute these products to hospitals and deprived areas in Tehran and several other cities,” explained Fatemeh Saidi, a 27-year-old woman involved in the Basij with her husband. The holy shrine of Shah Cheragh in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz has also been turned into a workshop for local women producing more than 3,000 masks a day. Rated by many travellers as the most beautiful mosque in the world, the Shah Cheragh today is the most beautiful factory in the world.

In the holy shrine of Shah Cheragh, the son of Imam Mousa Kazem’s (AS), 7th Shia Imam, in the city of Shiraz, the capital of Fars province, Southern Iran, people produce more than 3,000 masks a day to combat coronavirus. Source: FarsNews

In a similar way, the Iran Mall, the world’s largest shopping mall which was built during the harshest sanctions, has been transformed into 3,000-bed COVID-19 hospital. The Iranian Armed Forces has prepared hospitals with thousands of beds from Tehran to Bushehr, and the elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has provided the National Headquarters for Coronavirus Management with 24 permanent hospitals and 13 mobile hospitals, along with 380 military clinics in different cities. In a speech at the IRGC’s biological base, Major General Salami said the IRGC’s Baqiatallah Hospital has provided the largest number of beds for coronavirus patients in the country and has one of the biggest virus diagnostic laboratories.

The results of the above efforts are abundantly clear. According to the latest updates released by the Iranian Health Ministry, coronavirus has so far infected 66,000 people and killed 4,100 others. The country’s ranking in the number of confirmed cases has, however, dropped from second place to the eight over the past month. Today, Iran ranks behind the United States, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, China, and the United Kingdom. In comparison to all these countries, except China, Iran has the fewest active cases and fewest deaths per million people, as well as the highest number of total recovered. The number of infections and mortality in Iran are also on a downward trend for more than a week, unlike in most other countries. All this Iran’s success has been achieved with less resources, time and experience, and with the lion’s share of organizations labeled “terrorist” or “fancy corporations” by the United States.

Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton, a cartoon character-type war monger who could have served as a role model for the fictional film “Wag the Dog” about a US war against Albania based on concocted falsehoods and a steady stream of televised propaganda, strongly appears to have had his fingerprints all over the June 13 attack on two ships transiting outbound from the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf of Oman.

No sooner than had the story broken worldwide about the attack did Bolton’s partner-in-crime Secretary of State Mike Pompeo go before cameras a cast blame on Iran for attacking the ships with mines. Pompeo declared that “intelligence” determined that Iran carried out mine attacks on the Japanese-owned and Panamanian-flagged M/V Kokuka Courageous and the Norwegian-owned and Marshall Islands-flagged M/V Front Altair. But whose intelligence? Pompeo did not claim that US intelligence concluded that Iran was responsible. Given Pompeo’s and Bolton’s close ties with the far right and uber-nationalist regime of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the “intelligence” being relied on by Pompeo strongly appears to have been from Mossad and its team of video propagandists in Herzliya; Washington, DC; and Los Angeles.

Provoking a US military attack against Iran in a Gulf of Tonkin-style false flag operation is certainly a key part of the playbook of Bolton, Pompeo, and the team of neo-conservatives and pro-Israeli shills they have hired at the National Security Council and State Department. In addition, waging war through deception is an integral part of the strategy of the Israeli Mossad. Operation Susannah in 1954 was one such deceptive tactic used by the Mossad. American, British, and Egyptian targets in Egypt were bombed by Mossad agents with blame being cast on Egyptian Communists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, an intelligence-gathering ship on patrol in the eastern Mediterranean was originally intended to be blamed on Egypt. The 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane and its diversion to Entebbe, Uganda was, according to British intelligence, a false flag attack planned by Israeli intelligence using Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) cut-outs to damage the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the eyes of the French and Americans. And serious questions remain about Mossad’s role in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

Provoking a US military attack against Iran in a Gulf of Tonkin-style false flag operation is also not beyond the Bolton, Pompeo, and other top neo-cons like Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook and State Department Counter-terrorism Coordinator Nathan Sales.

Several facts point away from Iran being responsible for the attacks. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was preparing to depart for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, when the attack on the ships occurred. There is zero chance that Iran would have engaged in such action while the president was traveling abroad. Although the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was blamed by neo-con circles for the attack, it is IRGC policy not to interfere with commerce in the waterways of the region. That is because the IRGC, recently designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the Trump administration, is invested in various commercial enterprises, including transportation, in Iran and Iraq. The IRGC also regularly deals with mitigating actual threats in the area, such as those coming from the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), both groups being financed by Saudi Arabia. Launching unprovoked attacks on shipping would also affect the IRGC’s bottom line, hence the policy.

In addition, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Tehran when the ships were attacked. Abe was on a peace dialogue mission and was carrying a letter from Donald Trump to the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is noteworthy that the Kokuka Courageous is Japanese-owned and the Front Altair was transporting its cargo of highly-flammable naptha from Abu Dhabi to Japan at the time it was attacked. The Kokuka Courageous was transporting flammable methanol from Saudi Arabia to Singapore. A spokesman for the Japanese Trade Ministry in Tokyo stated the two ships were carrying “Japan-related cargo.” From Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said “suspicious doesn’t begin to describe” the attack on a Japanese-owned vessel during the visit of Abe to Iran.

Iranian television airborne television news cameras were able to capture video of the two ships burning from their flammable cargos. These videos, taken against a cloudless sky, were highlighted by the war-promoting Western news networks, including Fox News, CNN, MS-NBC, the BBC, and others to promote the meme that Iran carried out the attacks. But why would Iranian TV purposely provide the Western corporate media with such footage if they had clandestinely carried out the attacks? In addition, the crew of the Front Altair, consisting of 11 Russians, 11 Filipinos, and a Georgian, were rescued by the Iranian Coast Guard, treated for injuries, and transported to Bandar Abbas for flights home.

There are other more likely sources for the attacks on the vessels during the first visit to Iran in some 40 years for a Japanese prime minister. For example, the Saudis, Emiratis, and Israelis are all opposed to any talks between Washington and Tehran, whether they are mediated by Japan or another country. For example, the Saudis have previously pressed hard against Oman for entertaining a role as a mediator between the Trump administration and Iran.

Ironically, on the very same day the House Intelligence Committee was hearing evidence about the threat of “deep fake videos” during the upcoming presidential election campaign, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) released a grainy forward-looking infrared (FLIR) video, along with photographs, purporting to show a boat belonging to the IRGC removing an unexploded limpet mine from the side of the Kokuka Courageous. The Pentagon provided the video as “proof” of Iran’s culpability. However, the Pentagon was caught in a major Trump-grade lie when Yutaka Katada, the president of Kokuka Sangyo Marine, the company that owns the Kokuka Courageous, said the attack on his firm’s vessel did not come from a mine, but from a “flying shell.” The explosion was too far above the water line to have been from a mine, Katada told the press in Tokyo.

Pompeo told the press that “no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.” That was another falsehood. Israel maintains at least one Dolphin-class diesel electric submarine on patrol in Persian Gulf waters at all times. These submarines are not only equipped with nuclear-armed missiles but conventional missiles, including the Popeye Turbo cruise missile, capable of causing the damage to the Kokuka Courageous and Front Altair. The Saudi naval fleet in the Persian Gulf consists of Al-Badr-class corvettes and Al Sadiq-class patrol boats armed with Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles capable of damaging the two merchant tankers. The UAE Navy’s corvettes are armed with Exocet anti-ship missiles capable of damaging the tankers.

In addition, the terrorist cult group, Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), whose interests in Washington are represented by Bolton and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, has shown itself more than capable of carrying out terrorist attacks on Iranian targets along the Persian Gulf coast, with the support from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Bahrain is also home to a US and British naval bases. The MEK is opposed to any country maintaining relations or dialogue with the Iranian government and, like Bolton and Giuliani, seeks “regime change” in Tehran. While the Trump administration has labeled the IRGC a terrorist organization, it has dropped the terrorist brand for the MEK and allows it to operate freely in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles.

Pompeo, who is as adept a liar as Trump, said “no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.” That, of course, means the opposite in Trumpland’s Orwellian “doublespeak,” which is to say, the MEK, with the support of the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, does have the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.

Yet no one in war-cheerleading US corporate media talks about the quadrillion derivative crisis that will gut the global economy if there’s an attack on Iran (I addressed it here.) Shutting down the Strait of Hormuz will bring down the 2.5 quadrillion world derivative market, largely wiping out the economies of all Western nations.

No one talks about the massive arsenal of Iranian anti-ship missiles, as well as ballistic and cruise missiles, some in positions visible to US satellites and drones, deployed all along the northern shore of the Persian Gulf. Those include the Russian SS-NX-26 Yakhont, which travels at Mach 2.9 speed. Iranian – as well as Russian and Chinese – anti-ship missiles can knock out the entire US Aircraft Carrier Task Force before their planes are even in range.

No one talks that it would take the US at least six months to place a proper combat army in Southwest Asia; the Pentagon scenario of a possible 120,000-strong troop deployment does not even begin to cut it.

And no one talks that Tehran won’t crack even under “maximum pressure.”

Saudi tankers are “sabotaged” – and Iran is instantly blamed, evidence-free. Some Brit bureaucrat says war can break out “by accident”. Consul Pompeus Minimus scares European poodles into isolating Iran.

And no one talks about Pompeo’s real target in his flash visit to Baghdad; to apply gangster tactics. Don’t deal with Tehran – or else. Buy “our” Make America Great Again (MAGA) electricity, not Iran’s. Get rid of the People Mobilization Units (PMUs). Or else.

Take me to false flag heaven

The deal between the holy triad – US neocons, Zio-cons and Bibi Netanyahu – is that a false flag, any false flag, must be blamed on Tehran, thus forcing the Trump administration to protect and defend the “rules-based order”. Better yet, an even more elaborate false flag should induce an Iranian response – thus providing the rationale for an attack.

Trump at least is correct that it would take “a hell of a lot more” troops than 120,000 to attack Iran; more like a million troops. There’s nowhere to land them. No one – Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Pakistan – would welcome the “liberators”.

In an extremely hot scenario Tehran could even have instant access to nuclear missiles in the black market.

The bottom line: the neocon threat of war against Iran is a bluff.

Iranian Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi described it as a “theatrical” and “useless” attempt to “magnify the shadow of war.”

IRGC commander of aerospace force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizade famously said, “a US battleship with 6,000 personnel in the vicinity (Persian Gulf) with 40-50 jets onboard used to be a threat to us. Today it is a target.”

Tehran sent an unmistakable message to all its neighbors, especially the House of Saud and the Emirates; your whole infrastructure will be totally destroyed if the US uses you as a platform for a military campaign.

Then there’s the evolving drone-on-pipeline saga. The Houthis in Yemen targeted two pumping stations along the Saudi East-West pipeline – which carries oil from the Eastern province to the Red Sea. One of the stations caught fire. The hugely strategic pipeline – which allows Riyadh to bypass the Strait of Hormuz – has an enormous capacity, transporting 5 million barrels of crude a day. Operations had to be suspended.

Whether this drone attack was IRGC-directed, independent, or even a false flag is irrelevant; it provides just a taste of what might happen to the whole regional oil and gas infrastructure in case of a hot war.

Conversations with old-time Persian Gulf traders are quite enlightening. They attest, “if a pumping station is destroyed it takes two years to fill an order for a new pump. The Saudis maintain they have pumps in reserve. If all the pumps are destroyed in Saudi Arabia, no oil would flow for two years. The prime target would be Abqaiq. If this processing plant is destroyed, oil prices would soar.”

Abqaiq, with an enormous capacity of 7 million barrels a day, is the primary oil processing plant for Arabian extra light and Arabian light crude oils.

Assuming the drone attack was not a false flag, Persian Gulf traders were impressed with the accuracy of the drone at these distances for a precision hit. This would mean that Abqaiq itself is vulnerable. And there is absolutely nothing the Trump administration can do to stop the oil price from going to $200 a barrel just from Abqaiq being knocked out.

Moreover, no one is talking about insurance rates. As Persian Gulf traders insist, Vito, Trafigura, Glencore and other operators will not buy two million barrels in a tanker at $70 a barrel if there’s no insurance – or the rates go skywards.

It takes basically one single tanker going to the bottom of the Persian Gulf with two million barrels to permanently close the Strait of Hormuz – and interrupt all tanker traffic for 22 million barrels a day of crude, unless governments come in to insure the tankers even though they have no ability to protect them.

It’s all about maximum resistance.

So what does Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei want? Here it is, in his own words; “There won’t be any war. The Iranian nation has chosen the path of resistance… “We don’t seek a war, and they don’t either.”

On top of it, Tehran won’t talk to Washington – following Trump’s “call me” caper – or sign any sort of modified or post-JCPOA nuclear deal. Khamenei; “[Such] negotiations are a poison.”

If President Trump had ever read Mackinder – and there’s no evidence he did – one might assume that he’s aiming at a new anti-Eurasia integration pivot centered on the Persian Gulf. And energy would be at the heart of the pivot.

If Washington were able to control everything, including “Big Prize” Iran, it would be able to dominate all Asian economies, especially China. Trump even said were that to happen, “decisions on the GNP of China will be made in Washington.”

Needless to add, this would be the icing in the geopolitical cake of destabilizing for good the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the road map for Eurasia integration, of which Iran is a crucial node.

Now cue to President Putin musing on Iran-Russia relations; “I have repeatedly said in conversations with [our] Iranian partners that, in my opinion, it would be more rational for Iran to remain in this treaty, no matter what. Because as soon as Iran takes the first steps in response [to the US’ exit from the JCPOA], declares that it is withdrawing, tomorrow everyone will forget that the United States was the initiator of the destruction, and everything will be blamed on Iran”.

Arguably the key (invisible) takeaway of the meetings this week between Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi, and then between Lavrov and Pompeo, is that Moscow made it quite clear that Iran will be protected by Russia in the event of an American showdown. Pompeo’s body language showed how rattled he was.

There will be much to talk about if Putin and Trump do meet at the G20 in Osaka next month. In the meantime, the dead may even die without going to war.

Ben NORTON

A curious decision by Instagram, which is owned by social media giant Facebook, has called into question its independence from the US government. The company has banned several top Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, from its photo-sharing platform.

This disappearance of foreign government officials by American tech corporations is the latest episode in a global information war.

On April 15, the administration of President Donald Trump designated Iran’s military wing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “terrorist” organization. Less than a day later, Instagram suspended the accounts of several Iranian officials, from military commanders to politicians with no ties to the IRGC.

Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani was among those banned. (Soleimani drew public attention in November for using his Instagram account to comically respond to Trump’s threat of sanctions with a Game of Thrones-style meme.) IRGC commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari also saw his Instagram account suspended, as did Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour.

Instagram additionally banned Iranian officials with no connection to the IRGC, including Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the former mayor of capital Tehran, who has not worked for the IRGC for nearly two decades. It even removed the page of Ezzatollah Zarghami, a former government minister and ex-director of Iran’s state media broadcaster; and the chief of Iran’s police, Kamal Hadianfar.

The news site Al-Monitor reported, “Accusations that Instagram is practicing double standards and advancing a political agenda gained further momentum when the ban targeted non-IRGC figures, among them Chief Justice Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric who lost the 2017 presidential race to Hassan Rouhani.”

IRGC Instagram accounts were popular among Iranians, particularly during the recent floods that saw several cities plunged into crisis. Al-Monitor noted, “Many Instagram users have praised the IRGC’s ongoing involvement in flood relief across Iran.”

A pro-government newspaper, Javan, responded to the suspensions by sarcastically dubbing the social media company “Insta-Trump,” Al-Monitor reported.

Instagram: “We work with the appropriate government authorities”

This wave of censorship bolsters journalist Yasha Levine‘s argument that US tech corporations act as “privatized instruments of American geopolitical power.”

Iran’s minister of information and communications technology, Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, condemned the Instagram censorship, tweeting, “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you aren’t proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you FEAR what he might say.”

When you tear out a man’s tongue, you aren’t proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you FEAR what he might say
وقتی دهان یک مرد را می‌بندی،دروغگو بودنش رو ثابت نمیکنی،بلکه فقط به دنیا میگی از چیزی که او ممکنه بگه میترسی#GameOfThrones⁩⁠ ⁠#TheRegionRemembers⁩ https://t.co/B6XeynRdnp

— MJ Azari Jahromi (@azarijahromi) 16 April 2019

An Instagram spokesperson told the US government-funded Voice of America (VOA) that the bans were done to abide by “the constraints of U.S. sanctions laws.” The spokesperson added, “We work with the appropriate government authorities to ensure we meet our legal obligations, including those relating to the recent designation of the IRGC.”

Instagram did not however explain why it also suspended the accounts of Iranian officials who do not work with the IRGC.

This is not the first time American social media corporations have banned Iranians. In August, The Grayzone reported on Twitter’s suspension of an Iranian student journalist, Sayed Mousavi, who did not work for the government, and was censored as part of a larger coordinated crackdown by Twitter, Google (which owns YouTube), and Facebook (which owns Instagram).

“What worries me is that, I was just a student doing my bit of what I can do to journalism to counter just a little bit of the huge amount of disinformation being put about my country,” Mousavi told The Grayzone at the time.

He added, “It’s really a burden upon us, different anti-Zionist, different anti-imperialist groups, to make our voices heard. We need to diversify our platforms.”

Israel, Saudi media, MEK, US neocons gloat after Instagram suspensions

The Israeli government gloated after Instagram’s ban of the top Iranian officials. On its official Persian-language account, Israel cited a proverb that roughly translates to, “You reap what you sow,” adding #TerroristGuardCorps.

اینستاگرم صفحه رسمی قاسم سلیمانی را بست.
چیزی که عوض داره گله نداره… #سپاه_تروریستی_پاسداران pic.twitter.com/5NMQl0TFku

— اسرائیل به فارسی (@IsraelPersian) 16 April 2019

Numerous anti-Iran media outlets, including Saudi state propaganda and pro-Israel websites, also happily reported on the temporary suspension of the English-language Instagram account of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei on April 16. (Khamenei’s profile was restored after the short ban. The accounts of the IRGC commanders and other politicians remain suspended.)

Israel’s right-wing Jerusalem Post newspaper drew an explicit connection between the censorship and Trump’s “terrorist” designation.

Is it intentional or a coincidence that #Instagram decided to suspend Ayatollah Khamenei and Qasem Soleimani’s accounts one day after the U.S. designated the IRGC a #terrorist organization?https://t.co/XcRjTreC7G

— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) 17 April 2019

VOA, the US government outlet, boasted in a report, “With 800,000 followers, the Instagram page of the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force was among the most popular pages of Iranian officials on the photo-sharing website.”

The American front group for the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a US-backed violent cult that has spent decades trying to overthrow the Iranian government, also praised Instagram’s censorship.

#Instagram Takes Down #Iran Regime’s Leader and #IRGC Accounts After US Terror Designation
Social media site Instagram blocked the IRGC commanders and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Tuesday in order to comply with US sanctions on Iran.https://t.co/5gQbZBUqlM
#BlackListIRGC pic.twitter.com/0A5fRBsR7x

— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) 17 April 2019

Today, the MEK operates freely on social media, running numerous accounts for several front groups. Al Jazeera revealed that the cult even oversees a massive troll farm in Albania.

.@instagram on Tuesday blocked the account of #Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, and several Iran’s #IRGCTerrorists commanders.#BlackListMOIS#BlackListIRGC https://t.co/wO6P6qXkp1 pic.twitter.com/VyBWRkm8JW

— Iran Freedom (@4FreedominIran) 17 April 2019

Opposition outlet Iran International TV, which is funded by sources closely linked to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was among the sites that celebrated the banning of Khamenei’s senior adviser Ali Akbar Velayati.

Instagram deleted the account of Ali Akbar Velayati, adviser to the leader of the Islamic Republic. The Persian account of the leader Ali Khamenei, and the accounts of many #IRGC commanders and the chief of the judiciary.#Instagram https://t.co/J9o4mCn1Kk pic.twitter.com/pSV5hfOf5S

— Iran International English (@iranintl_eng) 17 April 2019

Instagram’s censorship inspired a campaign by anti-Iran groups to pressure Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to ban more Iranian officials. Opposition figures have pushed the #TwitterBan4IRGC hashtag, and have particularly targeted Iran’s prominent foreign minister, Javad Zarif.

.@JZarif is a close collaborator of Qassem Soleimani, designated as a terrorist by the US. Shouldn’t @JZarif’s @Twitter account be suspended @jack? @instagram banned Soleimani & other Guards. @JZarif should be treated the same. pic.twitter.com/UnH0bR3Bcx

— Alireza Nader (@AlirezaNader) 18 April 2019

The ineffectiveness of the Trump administration’s latest move in its anti-Iran campaign—its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)—are readily apparent and have been ably analyzed by other commentators. The designation does not put any additional economic pressure on an already heavily sanctioned Iran and, among other drawbacks, only makes it harder for Iranian critics of the IRGC to speak up lest they be seen as stooges of the United States.

The Trump administration is running out of ways to demonstrate its unremitting hostility toward Iran. As it strives to contrive new ways, it compromises and undermines other U.S. interests and objectives. The latest move undermines the objective of counterterrorism by placing, for the first time ever, a governmental entity on a list that never was designed for that purpose.

Omnibus counterterrorist legislation known as the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which Congress enacted in 1996, created the FTO list. That act criminalized material support to terrorist groups, with material support defined broadly to include financial contributions, propagandizing, and almost any other form of cooperation or business dealings with a terrorist group. If support to a foreign terrorist organization was to be made a crime, then it was necessary for the law to specify what counted as a foreign terrorist organization. Hence the 1996 act created a formal list of such organizations, along with criteria for the executive branch to use in determining which groups should be placed on the list.

Sweeping Implications

The broad range of activities that the IRGC performs on behalf of the Iranian state also means the material support provision would apply as well as to other foreign governments that do ordinary, decidedly non-terrorist, business with Iran. This is especially true of Iraq, which for this reason strongly opposed the U.S. designation of the IRGC. Iraqi officials deal with the IRGC not only on matters of Iraqi security but also on such mundane business as regulation of cross-border commerce. The IRGC also has been involved in peace negotiations in Afghanistan, making other participants to that process subject to the material support provision as well.

Putting foreign governments’ militaries or security services on the FTO list starts down a slope on which there is no stopping point other than the arbitrary and inconsistent one that the administration prefers. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s assertion that “the Iranian regime’s use of terrorism as a tool of statecraft makes it fundamentally different from any other government” is fundamentally incorrect. The public record alone shows that other governments use clandestine violence overseas, including in ways that fully qualify as international terrorism under the terms of the same U.S. law that created the FTO list. Pakistan does it. Russia does it. Israel has a long record of doing it, including nasty operations such as car bombs in urban streets that kill innocent passersby as well as the intended target. One of the very Iran-supported operations that Pompeo mentioned in his bill of particulars against the IRGC was clearly an attempt to retaliate for serial Israeli assassinations of Iranian scientists. The original assassinations were international terrorism every bit as much as the attempted retaliation.

Actual Objectives

The IRGC designation is one more indicator of how the administration’s campaign of unrelenting hostility against Iran has less to do with countering nefarious behavior than it does with pursuing other objectives. One of those objectives, as the timing of the designation announcement made obvious, was to bestow another gift on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and help him win re-election. Netanyahu publicly thanked President Trump for responding to the prime minister’s “request” to make the designation.

Another objective is to goad Iran into making some move that would provide a spark or an excuse for the war with Iran that National Security Advisor John Bolton has long wanted and that Pompeo evidently wants as well, as reflected in his refusal to acknowledge, in a recent exchange with Sen. Rand Paul, that the administration lacks congressional authority for such a war.

To all the other deleterious side-effects of the administration’s obsession with Iran—including diplomatic isolation of the United States and poisoning of U.S. alliances—add the damage to U.S. counterterrorist policy and to U.S. credibility in the fight against terrorism.