March 17, 2023
The Islamic Republic has retaliated against the EU and UK for the multitude of sanctions against Iranians they accuse of human rights violations by counter-sanctioning a multitude of Europeans.
without first surveying how much land was occupied by rare species, so it is now setting about deciding what areas to rope off. Lands used by the Asiatic cheetah are already protected, but the government now wants to protect such species as
Pallas’s cat (above) and the eublepharis gecko (below)
The Iranian sanctions freeze any wealth the sanctioned people and entities have in Iran and deny visas to those named, not exactly meaningful, but mirroring the sanctions the EU and UK have placed on Iranian citizens and entities.
The list of the sanctioned institutions and individuals, as posted on the government website, are:
A- European Union
Institutions
1. Radio J, a radio station in Paris
2. European Friends of Israel (EFI)
3. Bau Heberger Construction Company, for its participation in the construction of chemical weapons factories in Iraq during the imposed war against the Islamic Republic of Iran
Individuals
1. Olivier Klein, Minister Delegate for Cities and Housing in France
2. Dietmar Koster, German Member of European Parliament
3. Timo Heimbach, German forces commander in Jordan
4. Dennis Thering, a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the Hamburg Parliament
5. Gregor Lange, Dortmund, Germany, police chief
6. Tim Zahn, head of the Cyber Security Center of the German Army
7. Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris
8. Francois Bechieu, deputy mayor of the 19th district of Paris
9. Gilbert Mitterrand, a former member of the French Parliament
10. Gerard Biard, editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo magazine
11. Laurent Sourisseau, publishing director of Charlie Hebdo
12. Silvie Coma, deputy director of publishing Charlie Hebdo
13. Bernard-Henri Levy [This is the sole sanctioned figure for which Iran did not include any identifying phrase. Levy is a French public intellectual with little involvement with the Middle East beyond support for the Kurds. See paragraphs at end of story on Levy’s comprehension of Iran.]
14. Emmanuel Slaars, the French commander of the operation of the European maritime coalition mission in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz
15. Lukas Mandl, a representative of Austria in the European Parliament
16. Anna Bonfrisco, a representative of Italy in the European Parliament
17. Abir Al-Sahlani, a representative of Sweden in the European Parliament
18. Bart Groothuis, a representative of the Netherlands in the European Parliament
19. Thijs Reuten, a representative of the Netherlands in the European Parliament
20. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a former representative of Spain in the European Parliament
21. Rasmus Paludan, for insulting the Holy Quran
22. Edwin Wagensveld, for insulting the Holy Quran
B – Britain
Institutions
The Henry Jackson Society (HJS) is a trans-Atlantic foreign policy and national security think tank, based in the United Kingdom.
Individuals
1. Victoria Prentis, Attorney General for England and Wales
2. Michael James Tomlinson-Mynors KC, Solicitor General for England and Wales since September 2022
3. Sir Richard Billing Dearlove, former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service
4. General Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff of the British Army
5. Alex Younger, former career British intelligence officer for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) who served as the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service
6. Phil Capel, Director General of British Prisons
7. Liam Fox, former UK Secretary of State for Defense
8. Bethan David, Head of Britain’s Counter Terrorism Division
In a 2018 interview in France, the above-named Bernard-Henri Levy showed himself quite ignorant of Iran. He told his interviewer: “It’s an incredible story, and indeed that very few people know about, and, in any case, I haven’t read it anywhere, and I tell it in detail. I discovered it somewhere in Kurdistan.
“On 21 March 1935, Persia decided to change its name to Iran under orders from Germany.
“Why? Why? Because Iran, in Persian, in Farsi, means ‘the land of the Aryans.’ And, as it was on the rise at the time, Nazi Germany offered the Persians the deal of the century. Nazi Germany told the Persians: We’ll make you the Aryans from the East, we’ll be the Aryans from the West, we’ll have a great adventure together. We’ll dominate the world….
“In 1958, there was a national debate taking place in Iran with a lot of people saying, wait, we’ve been calling ourselves Persia for 2000 years, it’s been only 20 years since we opted for this terrible name [of Iran], we’re going back to the old name! It didn’t work, the leaders chose to keep it.”