Iran has two goals at the moment – keep the civilian population quiet by threat of imprisonment, and to hang on to their economy by their fingernails until November.
They are moving to do the former, and with IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi now formally having “ultimate authority” granted to him by nepo baby “he’s not quite dead” Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the Iranian public is facing prison time for saying anything that would make the regime look bad in the West.
Iran’s parliament is pushing a new bill that could put Iranians in prison for up to two years just for speaking out about the country to US or Israeli media.
The bill would criminalize interviews and communications with the media deemed hostile to the Islamic Republic, according to local reports.
Under the proposed bill, openly sharing information with the world of what’s happening inside Iran that isn’t approved by the regime would result in a sentence of six months to two years in prison, the Shargh newspaper reported.
Interviews with foreign media, like the ones that have come out of Tehran during the war, would require the permission of Iran’s intelligence ministry.
The proposed crackdown on free speech for the country’s 93 million people comes amid a recent wave of reports of Iranians struggling to make ends meet as the war with the US drags on toward its sixth month.
This might be a “proposed law” right now, but the Iranian parliament is there to rubber-stamp the will of the Supreme Leader, and with Mojtaba missing in action, that means Vahidi is the de facto Supreme Leader. And the odds are quite good that anyone arrested under this law would either “disappear” while in prison, or told to recant. However, that doesn’t always work, especially when those already under arrest realize they have little left to lose.
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