Iranian political prisoners described their experiences of torture and interrogation either approved or carried out by Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s judiciary chief and the frontrunner to win this week’s presidential election.
Farideh Goudarzi, who was imprisoned for being a member of a banned political group, said she was tortured by guards in prison while pregnant and forced to give birth in jail. Following the birth, Ms. Goudarzi said Raisi watched as guards dropped her baby on the floor as part of her interrogation.
Former political prisoners said the likely election of Raisi, who is the regime’s favored candidate to win the presidency, was designed to send a message that political dissent in Iran would no longer be tolerated.
The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal would have to wait until after Iran’s presidential election, in a statement on Wednesday.
The current president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, is set to step down on Aug. 3, while the newly elected president is expected to name his cabinet by the middle of August.
The sixth round of talks about the nuclear agreement took place last Saturday in Vienna, between the parties to the deal. Sources close to the diplomats working on the deal said negotiations were now being held on the most difficult issues and that significant disagreements remained.
And the outgoing head of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, made several revelations about its operations in Iran, in a documentary aired on Channel 12.
During the interview, Yossi Cohen hinted that Israel had been involved in the attack on Iran’s nuclear plant at Natanz, and the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
While Cohen did not directly confirm Mossad’s involvement with the assassination, he said Fakhrizadeh had been an agency target for many years.
