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Iranian producer Elaheh Nobakht, whose credits include Dreams Gate, the doc depicting an all-female Kurdish militia that launched earlier this year from Berlin, has been banned by Iranian authorities from traveling outside the country.

Nobakht who is a board member of the Iranian Producers Association (IPA) and of the Iranian Documentary Producer Association (AOIDP) was stopped by security guards in early August upon re-entering Iran from a film presentation in Portugal at Tehrans Imam Khomeini airport. The guards confiscated her passport, laptop and mobile phone, according to a knowledgeable source. No reason has been given for this action.

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Due to the travel ban Nobakht has been unable to travel from Iran toArmenias Apricot Tree Film Festival, where she had been selected to serve as a member of the jury, and to Spains San Sebastian fest. Nobakht, who is a fixture on the international film festival circuit, had been invited to San Sebastian to present new projects in the pipeline at her Tehran-based Eli Image production and distribution company. The ban has also prevented her from attending a co-production workshop in Turkey.

Besides Negin AhmadisDreams Gate other recent Eli Image productions include Farnaz Jurabchian and Mohammadreza Jurabchians doc Silent House, on the impact of the 1979 revolution on three generations of an upper-middle-class Iranian family, which launched last year from Amsterdams IDFA fest; and Mahmoud Ghaffaris The Apple Day, about the economic hardships of an Iranian family in a mountain village that bowed in February from Berlin.

News of Nobakhts travel ban surfaced Friday, on the same day of the announcement that this years Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, who is currently imprisoned for advocating for womens rights in the country.

Human rights efforts in Iran have long been an urgent issue in the entertainment industry, with filmmakers hailing from the country raising their voices about the oppression being endured. Last week Iranian directorJafar Panahiwrote an impassioned plea demanding that his set designer, Leila Naghdipari, be released from jail after she was arrested during protests marking the one-year anniversary of Mahsa Aminis death.

Today, Iranian independent cinema is more that ever struggling to breathe under the boots of the security forces, Panahi wrote, adding: Im worried about Leila and Im worried about Iranian cinema.

Naghdipari, who is a board member of the Iranian Film Designer Guild, was reportedly granted bail and released from jail on Oct. 2, following appeals from the Berlin Film Festival and many other international film institutions.

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Iranian Authorities Ban Dreams Gate Producer Elaheh Nobakht From Traveling to Festivals - Yahoo Entertainment

1. US supplies Ukraine with a million rounds of ammunition seized from Iran  The Guardian
2. US sends seized Iranian ammunition to Ukraine  Reuters
3. US Sends Ukraine 1.1 Million Rounds of Ammunition Seized from Iran  The New York Times

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US supplies Ukraine with a million rounds of ammunition seized from Iran - The Guardian

In June 2014, Dina Esfandiary and Ariane Tabatabai wrote an article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, making the case that Iran had genuine and reasonable concerns about its nuclear fuel supplies and that it would need many more centrifuges to become energy independent. There had to be a mechanism to guarantee Iranian supply, they wrote, a position plainly sympathetic to Tehrans interests.

The Bulletin identified Esfandiary as a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and Tabatabai as a political scientist at the RAND Corporation. What it did not say was that both women belonged to the Iran Experts Initiative. According to blockbuster reporting in Semafor and Iran International, it was a high-level informal influence operation, involving a handful of scholars of Iranian descent, that was conceived and manipulated by the Iranian regime.

Another well-known participant in I.E.I. was Ali Vaez, now the Iran Project director at the International Crisis Group. Over several years, the trio wrote guest essays (including in The Times) and gave scores of interviews to major Western media outlets, making them unusually influential in the debates about Iran.

Vaez is also close to Robert Malley, who helped lead the Obama administrations negotiations over the nuclear deal. Malley returned to government as the Biden administrations special envoy to Iran. Tabatabai joined his team at the State Department and later moved to the Pentagon, where she is now chief of staff to Christopher Maier, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations.

Then things got interesting. In April, Malleys security clearance was suspended by the State Department on suspicion of mishandling information. In June, he was put on leave. In July, Semafor reported that he is under F.B.I. investigation. (Maier told a House committee last week that Tabatabais security clearance was being investigated.)

Around the same time, Iran International, a London-based, Persian-language opposition news channel, obtained a trove of Iranian government emails. Many center on Mostafa Zahrani, a top Iranian diplomat.

The messages are not the smoking-gun evidence of some sort of treasonous Iranian spy ring, as they have been described in some quarters. But they do paint a picture of the subtle ways the Iranian regime was able to use a group of influential intellectuals, hungry to maintain access to high-level Iranian officials, that quickly turned into opportunities for Iranian manipulation.

As an Iranian, based on my national and patriotic duty, I have not hesitated to help you in any way, Vaez unctuously wrote Javad Zarif, who was then the foreign minister, from proposing to your excellency a public campaign against the notion of breakout a fast transition from nuclear energy to nuclear weapons to assisting your team in preparing reports on practical needs of Iran.

Tabatabai also checked with Zahrani about attending a conference in Israel.

I am not interested in going, but then I thought maybe it would be better that I go and talk, rather than an Israeli like Emily Landau who goes and disseminates disinformation, she wrote, referring to an Israeli nuclear policy analyst who died in 2020. I would like to ask your opinion too and see if you think I should accept the invitation and go. Tabatabai may have worried how a visit to Israel might affect her extended family in Iran, but that only underscores Zahranis implicit power over her.

The International Crisis Group flatly denies the thrust of the reporting, telling me that they were replete with inaccuracy and mischaracterization and noting that I.C.G. is also the subject of criticism from Tehran. The Iranian government never directed the substantive research and conclusions of our staff, Richard Atwood, the Crisis Groups executive vice president, wrote me.

Its true that emails and texts can always be quoted selectively and misleadingly. Its true that these scholars almost surely saw themselves as pursuing an honorable aim that required them to cultivate relationships with all sides. And its true that Iranian officials, in their internal communications, may have been exaggerating the extent to which I.E.I. was a tool in their hands.

But whats damning here wasnt the scholars purpose, which was in line, overall, with U.S. foreign policy. It wasnt even the appearance of taking direction from a despotic regime.

Its the lack of transparency. Readers of their opinion essays deserved to know from them about their links to I.E.I. and its masters in Tehran. Full transparency was also owed to their think-tank funders, academic deans, newspaper and magazine editors and the government. Without it, honest advocacy becomes malign influence peddling.

The Justice Department defines a foreign agent as one who engages within the United States in political activities, such as intending to influence any U.S. government official or the American public regarding U.S. domestic or foreign policy or the political or public interests of a foreign government or foreign political party.

No matter how the investigation into Malley ends, its worth asking how the authors of these emails can retain any position, public or private, of trust and responsibility.

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Opinion | Iran's Captive Minds - The New York Times

OAKLAND The U.S. Attorneys Office today announced charges against and guilty pleas by Farhad Nafeiy for violating sanctions by exporting software upgrades for commercial-grade telecommunications servers to the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran), and for tax evasion. The plea was accepted by the Honorable Araceli Martnez-Olgun, United States District Judge. The announcement was made by United States Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail J. Ramsey, Assistant Attorney General Mathew G. Olsen, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent in Charge Tatum King, and Special Agent in Charge of the IRS Criminal Investigations Oakland Field Office Darren Lian.

Nafeiy, 70, of Alamo, Calif., was charged with and pleaded guilty to a violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Under IEEPA, the President of the United States is granted authority to address unusual and extraordinary threats to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States. Under that law, the President has issued orders prohibiting certain activities and transactions with Iran and the Government of Iran. The Department of Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has issued regulations, referred to as the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), implementing those orders. These sanctions on Iran generally prohibit, among other things, exporting or facilitating the export of U.S.-origin products to Iran and providing services to Iran.

Nafeiy obtained licensesor approvalsfrom OFAC for advising non-Iranian telecommunications companies on doing business with Iran. However, those licenses did not authorize Nafeiy to provide any hardware, software, or technology directly to Iran. Nafeiy exceeded his OFAC licenses, thereby violating the ITSR and IEEPA, by directly providing software upgrades to telecommunications equipment in Iran. Nafeiy admitted in his plea agreement that he knew he exceeded these licenses when he did so. In his plea agreement, Nafeiy further admitted that the total amount of sales of such software upgrades to Iran was approximately $400,000. Nafeiy separately was charged with, and admitted to, evading his federal income taxes, and specifically not paying income tax on some of the proceeds of these sales.

On August 10, 2023, Nafeiy was charged by information with one count of violating IEEPA, in violation of 50 U.S.C. 1705, and one count of tax evasion, in violation of 26 U.S.C. 7201. Pursuant to the plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to both charges.

Judge Martnez-Olgun scheduled Nafeiys sentencing hearing for January 29, 2024. For the 50 U.S.C. 1705 violation, Nafeiy faces a maximum statutory prison term of 20 years, a maximum fine of $1,000,000, and restitution, if appropriate. For the tax evasion charge, Nafeiy faces a maximum prison term of five years, a maximum fine of $250,000, and restitution of at least $79,124 to the IRS. As part of any sentence, the court may also order Nafaiy to serve a period of supervised release and to pay additional assessments, however, the court will impose a sentence only after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. 3553.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Kingsley and Trial Attorney David Ryan of the National Security Divisions Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, with the assistance of Kathleen Turner of the U.S. Attorneys Office. Former Trial Attorney Elizabeth Abraham provided valuable assistance in prior phases of the prosecution. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation.

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Bay Area Telecommunications Consultant Pleads Guilty To Violating ... - Department of Justice

A bipartisan House bill introduced on Monday seeks to counter Irans practice of taking U.S. hostages, including pushing to bar ransom payments to U.S. adversaries and block U.S. passport holders from visiting Iran.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committees Middle East subcommittee, and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), a Democratic Iran hawk, comes following the Biden administrations deal to free U.S. hostages in exchange for Iranians imprisoned in the U.S. and $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds.

It requires the administration to formulate and submit to Congress a strategy for preventing hostage-taking by U.S. adversaries, including identifying penalties for wrongful detention and hostage-taking, identifying clear United States Government policies barring the payment of ransom or transactions that could be viewed as ransom, and detailing plans to coordinate with United States allies and partners on such strategy.

The bill would also require the State Department to determine annually whether to declare U.S. passports invalid for travel to Iran, due to concerns that such visits present an imminent danger to the public health and physical safety of United States travelers stemming from the threat of wrongful detention.

It further requires the administration to deny visas to visit the United Nations to any individual sanctioned under terrorism or weapons of mass destruction sanctions.

The administration would also have to annually review Irans hostage-taking practices and identify to Congress any individuals involved in supporting that activity. The bill additionally requires that the administration to identify whether it is waiving applicable hostage-related sanctions on any such individual and explain why.

Regarding the recent prisoner exchange, the legislation requires reports every 160 days to Congress on the funds released, including itemized transaction lists, and certifications that the funds have not been used for non-humanitarian purposes or enabled the Iranian government to increase its spending on malign activities.

It also requires reports to Congress annually on all Iranian assets frozen under U.S. sanctions; on the reasons for any changes to such asset freezes; and on coordinated international efforts to identify, seize and/or freeze assets of sanctioned Iranian individuals and entities. It urges the U.S. to share intelligence and provide technical assistance to foreign governments to seize assets of sanctioned Iranian individuals and entities.

The Iranian Regime continues to be the worlds largest state sponsor of terrorism. This bill takes action, ensuring terrorists who take American citizens hostage are punished for their crimes, and not rewarded with financial incentives, Wilson said in a statement. It ensures that the oppressors of freedom in Iran do not get to visit the United States to enjoy the liberties here that they deprive their citizens of at home in Iran.

Wilsons statement indicates that the legislation specifically seeks to block Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi from visiting the U.N. Raisis visit last month to attend the U.N. General Assembly, raised the ire of numerous congressional Republicans, who urged the administration to deny the Iranian leader a visa.

When Iran wrongfully detains one of our own, they must know that the U.S. will not sit back, we will take action and respond, Moskowitz said in a statement.

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Bipartisan House bill seeks to counter Iranian hostage-taking - Jewish Insider