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Iran’s sacked oil minister has issued a parting warning to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, predicting a looming “catastrophe” in the Iranian energy sector because of high consumption, media reported Sunday. “If we do not find a solution to the energy problem in the next 15 years, the country will face a catastrophe,” Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh was quoted as saying at his farewell ceremony late on Saturday by the ISNA student news agency.

“I am ready to prove that if the fuel situation continues along current trends we will face an energy crisis in the future,” he said. “The current pattern of consumption is a disaster for the country.” The comments by Vaziri Hamaneh, who also revealed for the first time that he was sacked in a cabinet reshuffle last week, are a stark warning about the energy problems of a country rich in natural resources. Iran is OPEC’s number two crude oil producer and is also pinning major hopes on its gas reserves, estimated to be the second largest proven reserves in the world after Russia. But frenzied consumption of petrol forces it to import millions of litres per day of refined oil to make up for a domestic shortfall. Wasteful heating methods also create gas shortages in winter. The government introduced petrol rationing in June in a bid to ease the immense strain on the budget of importing petrol for Iran’s 70 million people, but it is still forced to import huge quantities of petrol daily. A further problem comes from under-investment in its oil fields, an issue compounded by US action to prevent banks lending to Iran over its controversial nuclear programme. The influential research centre of parliament also sounded a downbeat note on the future of Iran’s gas industry, saying that exports would not be possible in the next 10 years given the scale of domestic consumption.

“It seems that for at least the next 10 years there will not be any extra gas for export. Iran is advised to remove gas export from the country’s policy due to the limited production capacity,” it said. Turkey is currently the only recipient of Iranian gas exports, receiving several billion cubic metres annually. But Iran is seeking to export large quantities of gas to Turkey and other countries in the Middle East, as well as to India and Pakistan through new pipelines. Vaziri Hamaneh confirmed for the first time that he was sacked in the reshuffle, which also saw the departure of Industry Minister Alireza Tahmasebi and was seen as a bid by Ahmadinejad to step up his control over the economy. “I did not resign, because I still have the ability to work. Anyone who has the ability to work will not resign,” Vaziri Hamaneh said, according to the Mehr news agency. “Sacking me from the ministry was the president’s idea, and I obliged,” he added. Vaziri Hamaneh is a veteran oil ministry official who was Ahmadinejad’s fourth choice for the post when he took power in 2005. Two candidates were rejected by parliament and another stepped back of his own accord. He complained that in the “two years of Ahmadinejad’s government, oil managers had been forced to pay for all mistakes made in the past. “And I say here if these group’s pressures are not stopped, the industry and the country will face crisis.” Tahmasebi also launched a stinging attack on Ahmadinejad’s economic policies in his resignation letter, complaining of under-investment and damaging personnel changes.

Source: AFP

Gunmen opened fire at vehicles in southeast Iran and took as many as 30 people hostage on Sunday, Iranian news agencies reported, in an incident one commander blamed on a group Tehran has previously linked to al Qaeda. But some media sources gave sharply lower figures for the number of people seized on a road in Sistan-Baluchestan, a volatile province near Pakistan notorious for frequent

 clashes between security forces and drug smugglers. The ISNA and Fars news agencies said 30 people were taken hostage, while state radio said “some” people were abducted. The official IRNA news agency earlier said armed bandits seized two people but had added that details were still unclear. State television, citing “informed sources,” said the gunmen had transported the hostages across the border into Pakistan. Colonel Mohammad Javad Asna-Ashari said the perpetrators belonged to a group led by Abdolmalek Rigi, who Iran has blamed for several other attacks in the southeast of the Islamic Republic, the Fars News Agency said. Jundollah (God’s Soldiers), a shadowy Sunni Muslim group led by Rigi, most recently claimed responsibility for an attack on a bus owned by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in February that killed 11 people.

In June, state television said security forces had wounded Rigi and killed his brother. Officials have previously said Rigi was a cell leader of Osama bin Laden’s Sunni Muslim al Qaeda network in Iran, an overwhelmingly Shi’ite Muslim country. Giving details about Sunday’s hostage-taking, Asna-Ashari said several armed men closed a road between the Iranshahr and the port city of Chabahar early on Sunday morning and set fire to several cars and two trucks carrying oil. The gunmen blocked the way of a passenger bus, ISNA said, but it was not clear whether all the hostages were from the bus. They also shot at other vehicles and wounded some passengers. Some reports said a local education official was among those taken.

Last week in southeast Iran, officials said bandits took two Belgian tourists hostage. At least one has since been freed. Alongside the February bus attack, Iran has said Jundollah was behind the murder of 12 people in a roadside attack last year and several other incidents in the southeast of the country. More than 3,300 Iranian security personnel have died in the region fighting drug traffickers since Iran’s 1979 revolution. Source: Reuters

Iran has hanged up to 30 people in the past month amid a clampdown prompted by alleged US-backed plots to topple the regime, The Observer can reveal. Many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising signals to the West.

Opposition sources say at least three of the dead were political activists, contradicting government insistence that it is targeting ‘thugs’ and dangerous criminals. The executions have coincided with a crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a ’soft revolution’ with US support.

The most high-profile recent executions involved Majid Kavousifar, 28, and his nephew, Hossein Kavousifar, 24, hanged for the murder of a hardline judge, Hassan Moghaddas, a man notorious for jailing political dissidents. They were hanged from cranes and hoisted high above one of Tehran’s busiest thoroughfares.

The spectacle, the first public executions in Tehran for five years, took place outside the judiciary department headquarters where Moghaddas was murdered. But the location, near many office blocks and the Australian and Japanese embassies, meant they were seen by many middle-class Iranians who would not normally witness such events.

The previous day seven men were publicly executed in the north-eastern city of Masshad, including five said to be guilty of ‘rape, kidnapping, theft and committing indecent acts’. Another two were hanged separately for raping and robbing a young woman. The executions were also shown live on state television.

Public hangings are normally carried out sparingly in Iran and reserved for cases that have provoked public outrage, such as serial murders or child killings. Human rights organisations say the rising death toll has brought the number of prisoners executed this year to about 150, compared to 177 in 2006, a dramatic increase in capital punishment since the country’s radical President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took office two years ago.

The executions come after the government launched a campaign targeting murderers, sex offenders, drug traffickers and others cast as a threat to ’social security’. It resulted in a wave of arrests after police raided working-class neighbourhoods in Tehran and other cities. Those arrested were paraded in public, often in humiliating poses.

The government has also sought to publicise executions conducted behind closed doors. Last month state television broadcast footage of 12 condemned men as they were about to be hanged in Tehran’s Evin prison. The authorities said they had been guilty of ‘rape, sodomy and assault and battery’. Opposition sources say at least three were political activists, though they have not disclosed their identities. Asiran, a government website, dismissed the claims as ‘lies’.

International gay rights campaigners have also said that homosexual men were among the executed. Homosexuality is a capital offence in Iran, along with adultery, espionage, armed robbery, drug trafficking and apostasy.

Iran has long been one of the world’s most prolific exponents of the death penalty and ranks second only to China in the number of executions. Human rights groups say it has the world’s worst record for executions for crimes committed when the defendant was under 18.

However, there have been signs of official disquiet over the recent trend. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the relatively moderate judiciary chief, has made an apparent protest by openly criticising Ahmadinejad’s government on a range of issues. He also signalled displeasure with the repressive climate by ordering officials to investigate claims that student activists were tortured during a recent detention in Evin prison.

Shahroudi is believed to have been unhappy over the stoning to death last month of a man convicted of adultery after he had ordered a stay of execution.

However, the spate of executions seems likely to continue. Tehran’s hardline chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, has announced that he is seeking the death penalty against 17 ‘hooligans’.

Source: Guardian