Back to Brief on Iran
TEHRAN - Police have rounded up 462 people in Tehran operations against offenders ranging from drug addicts to men flirting with women, newspapers reported on Thursday.
Those arrested in past days included 115 drug addicts, 27 petty narcotic distributors, and 10 peddlers in "decadent" pictures, video and audio tapes, the hardline daily Kayhan said.
The rest were described as "hooligans," picked up "in line with a fight against symbols of corruption, including those violating other people's honors," the paper added.
It said police had confiscated and impounded 32 cars belonging to the offenders.
The English-language Iran Daily, citing a police officer, said 200 men had been arrested for such offenses as whistling at women or offering them rides.
The latest crackdown on "social vice" came after a period of relative relaxation of strict regulations following the election of President Mohammad Khatami in May 1997.
Prisoners Executed in Gas Chambers, Iran Zamin News Agency, July 25
MASHAD - On Tuesday, July 21, the mullahs' regime executed a number of prisoners through suffocation in a gas chamber in Vakil-Abad prison in Mashad, capital of the northeastern province of Khorassan.
One of the victims was identified as Nasser Naddaf, from the village of Kadkan in Torbat Heidarieh, Khorassan Province.
On July 15, in a mysterious fire in the same prison, 20 inmates were killed and 41 injured.
Earlier in July, the clerical regime hanged 15 prisoners in public in the city of Sarakhs in Khorassan. Since the beginning of June, 32 people are known to have been executed in Iran.
These executions bring to at least 250 the number of public executions since Mohammad Khatami took office in Iran.
Iranians Detain Afghans , BBC World
Service, July 30
There are strong indications that the authorities in Iran have detained large numbers of Afghan refugees in order to send them back to Afghanistan.
Aid workers in Iran say police in Khorassan have been rounding up Afghans and moving them to deportation camps.
Local witnesses claim that in some cases, the authorities are conducting house-to-house searches for Afghans.
There's been no official comment from the Iranians, who have periodically said they would deport refugees caught without proper documents.
Anniversary of NLA's Eternal Light Operation, Iran Zamin News Agency, July 27
Tehran - The clerical regime held extensive ceremonies across the country to mark the tenth anniversary of the extensive fighting in July 1988 between the National Liberation Army and the mullah's forces in western Iran.
The Eternal Light operation was the NLA's largest foray into enemy territory, taking its units to the outskirts of Kermanshah, the largest city in western Iran and 180 kilometers from the border.
NLA forces fought off a numerically superior force of 200,000 for four days and inflicted 55,000 casualties on the Revolutionary Guards.
"Throughout the eight-year war with Iraq, we were never taken by such surprise as the Mojahedin's attack in July 1988," said senior Guard Corps commander General Hossein Hamedani on the state television on July 25, 1998. He also said that the then President Khamenei and Majlis Speaker Rafsanjani rushed to Kermanshah to oversee the mullahs' counter-offensive directly.
Tehran's Regime Would Aid Syria Against Israel-Cleric, Reuter, July 30
BEIRUT - Lebanon's most senior pro-Iranian cleric has said that Iran, which is developing missiles, would come to the defense of Syria under a military alliance if it was attacked by Israel.
"Producing the new Iranian missile created a new problem for the American, Zionist and Turkish policies because Iran began to own weapons with which it could face Israel in the event of any war in the future, especially as Iran has started a military alliance with Syria," Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said.
"If Syria entered war with Israel as a result of an Israeli aggression, then Iran would be ready to enter into this war to side Syria according to this alliance," he said during a weekly religious lesson on Wednesday.
Iran said it successfully launched this month a 1,300 km (800 mile) range Shehab-3 missile, enough to reach Israel, Saudi Arabia, much of Turkey and portions of Russia.