Addicted Infants

The newspaper Qanoon has reported with the headline "Addicted Infants" that Hossein Asadbigi, the head of Iran's Social Emergency Service, announced the identification of 780 newborns and children poisoned by drugs during the first nine months of 2016, stating that during this period, 384 newborns were born addicted to drugs. Ali Kazemi, a judge, also commented on these infants, stating that some children are born addicted due to their mother's addiction, or some inherit their parents' AIDS. He emphasized that these children are victims of their parents' addiction or social harms, but unfortunately, despite the increase in social harms, there are currently no laws to protect these children from harm, and only some preventive measures can be taken to prevent the birth of addicted infants. Meanwhile, the final report of the Special Committee investigating the Plasco incident was presented during a media session on Saturday, but most newspapers close to the conservative faction, including Resalat, Javan, Vatan-e-Emruz, and Kayhan, refrained from mentioning this report on their front pages. Hamshahri is one of the few newspapers close to this political faction that published this report on its front page with the headline "An End to the Ambiguities of Plasco," but it did not mention the negligence of the municipality, instead focusing on the shortcomings of the Foundation of the Oppressed and the Ministry of Labor, Cooperatives, and Social Welfare. Among the newspapers close to reformists or the government, Farhikhtegan, Shahrvand, Bahar, Ebtekar, and Etemad dedicated their front pages to this report, while newspapers like Shargh, Qanoon, Hamdeli, and even Iran, which is considered the government's press organ, only referenced the final report of the Special Committee investigating the Plasco incident as a secondary headline. The newspaper Shahrvand, on its front page titled "Untold Stories of Plasco," wrote: "Finally, after two months, the details of the national report on the Plasco incident were announced in a five-hour session with the presence of the head and members of the Special Committee investigating the Plasco incident; now, in addition to the municipality's fault, the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Interior, the investigations of this ten-member team show that the crisis management of this incident, which was commanded by the mayor of Tehran, did not meet the necessary standards." According to this newspaper, Baqer Mortazavi, a member of the Special Committee investigating the Plasco incident, stated that this investigation shows that during the fire at the Plasco building, "they should have started operations from the tenth floor and stood up on the eleventh floor and searched from the twelfth floor; however, they did not do this, and the evacuation and operations were not conducted according to standard fire attack principles. The building's electricity was not cut off, and wireless investigations show that disruptive forces were present until the last minutes. Moreover, the fire department lacked a safety team and unfortunately still does not have a structural team. Firefighters should have evacuated the building before 10:50 AM, but the evacuation order was issued late, a few minutes after 11 AM and after the building collapsed, which should not have happened." Mehdi Hadavand, a legal scholar and member of the committee investigating the Plasco incident, also stated: "In emergency decision-making, the safety team should monitor the factors and inform the commander, but apparently such a person does not exist in our fire department structure. There is a regulation in the national building code that states a building collapses after three hours of fire; we do not have a specific rule for evacuation, and this depends on the commander, but if we consider the three hours, evacuation should have occurred around 11 AM." According to Mehdi Hadavand, the municipality also "had the duty to intervene personally in the implementation of the law if the building owner did not take action to secure it, which it did not do," and "the Ministry of Interior should have supervised municipalities for the implementation of Article 22, and on the other hand, since 2014, the disaster management law has expired, and no action has been taken to issue a new law." The newspaper quoted Mohammad Fazeli, a member of the social and media committee of the Special Committee investigating the Plasco incident, stating: "The live broadcast of the incident for ten days from the national media turned it into a national crisis, an incident that according to Mr. Mortazavi was at level two. It is unclear who decided to broadcast the incident 24/7 for ten days. This incident has positively affected the community's sensitivity, but having a tragic incident broadcasted for hours throughout the day is not good for society, and a protocol should be established in this regard." Mohammad Taqi Ahmadi, head of the Special Committee investigating the Plasco incident, emphasized that they did not want to appear as a judicial court regarding Plasco, pointing to the negligence of other centers and institutions, including the Tehran City Council, stating: "The Tehran City Council could have organized and supervised the city's crisis management plan. The council could have designed a safety control process for existing buildings in Tehran or requested responsible officials to plan this." The newspaper Farhikhtegan also reviewed the report of the Plasco incident investigation committee with the headline "Mistakes that Turned the Plasco Incident into a National Catastrophe," quoting Saeed Bakhtiari, head of the safety and fire committee of this committee, who attributed the cause of the fire in Plasco to "electrical connection and possibly gas leakage from a gas cylinder." According to this newspaper, Baqer Mortazavi, head of the crisis management committee of the Special Committee investigating Plasco, presented an infographic showing the timeline from the start of the fire to the various operational stages, stating that crisis management in this incident was neither scientific nor defensible. He said: "In such conditions, the commander should come to the field, of course, a commander who has the necessary expertise, knowledge, and experience," but the commander of operations in Plasco "lacked such qualifications, and it is even unclear where he was trained." Farhikhtegan also noted that "although there have been many criticisms regarding the lack of firefighting equipment for extinguishing the fire, Baqer Mortazavi believed that the fire department had the necessary equipment to manage and extinguish this incident, and the problem was the lack of specialized command and effective management." The newspaper Sharq, on its front page, reported: "Raisi's Prayer, Rouhani's Speech," stating that last Wednesday, "IRIB broadcasted the prayer of Hojjatoleslam Raisi, who is in charge of the Astan Quds Razavi, after the Maghrib and Isha prayers," but on Saturday, Hassan Rouhani, as the President, delivered his speech at a conference on resistant economy and rural development, while IRIB, in an unusual move, did not broadcast this event live. The newspaper pointed out that "perhaps the non-broadcast of Hassan Rouhani's speech was due to the President's allusion to the national media on Friday, where he mentioned in a gathering of youth and elites in Semnan province that 'at the beginning of this government, the inflation of food and food items compared to the previous year was 51 percent; however, this year our food inflation is less than eight percent compared to the previous year. But at that time, when food inflation was 51 percent, IRIB was asleep and dozing.'" Sharq emphasized that "the confrontation of IRIB with Hassan Rouhani" began before the presidential elections of 2013 and has now peaked in the run-up to the presidential elections, despite the change of three presidents in this organization. The newspaper Iran, close to the government, dedicated its front page to Ali Jannati, head of the information committee of Hassan Rouhani's electoral headquarters, who stated: "IRIB unfortunately has an inappropriate performance that has made such mistakes in the past; in 1997 we also witnessed such a situation, despite all the attacks against the reformist president, he received the highest votes," because "whenever people feel that IRIB intends to undermine a candidate, they act completely contrary, so we are not worried about the media's attacks." The newspaper also reported that "Islamic Republic TV" on Saturday "after avoiding broadcasting Hassan Rouhani's speech at the conference on resistant economy and rural development, also refrained from covering the press conference related to the Plasco report, while during the incident, which according to Baqer Mortazavi, a member of the special committee investigating the Plasco incident, was a maximum level two emergency, the media turned it into a national crisis by broadcasting it 24/7 for ten days." Meanwhile, the newspaper Javan, close to the IRGC, mentioned Mehran Modiri on its front page for criticizing the government's economic programs and statistics, referring to him as a "prominent television host," stating that "Mehran Modiri, in his stand-up performances on the program 'Dorehami,' has repeatedly criticized the weaknesses of government management and once again ridiculed the promises and alleged economic boom of the government." Kayhan rejected the economic statistics announced by the government, stating on its front page with the title "Salt of False Statistics on the Wounds of People's Livelihoods": "While the President speaks of improvements in the economic situation and people's livelihoods, according to statistics, the economic situation remains disordered, and people's livelihoods are under pressure." Ali Tajernia, a reformist political activist and former member of the sixth parliament, wrote in the editorial of the newspaper Sharq: "Those who are responsible for today's deplorable situation suddenly became advocates for people's livelihoods, and in this situation, Hassan Rouhani can assure the people that the government will continue its movement with enthusiasm and serious determination in the future, and when people come to the scene themselves, the extensive propaganda apparatus against the government, which will not remain idle until election day, will have less chance of deceiving public opinion." Amir Mohabian, an analyst close to the conservative faction, told the newspaper Etemad that "four major obstacles are ahead of Ebrahim Raisi in the elections," stating: "Public opinion does not know Mr. Raisi well; this is the biggest obstacle he faces with public opinion," and another significant obstacle is that his conservative and reformist rivals are heavily maneuvering on two issues to undermine him: first, that he has no executive experience and, beyond that, is not a political figure at all; second, that they are maneuvering on some of his judicial backgrounds to portray him as a ruthless and harsh figure." According to Amir Mohabian, "Ebrahim Raisi must first ensure that voters know him and secondly that they recognize him in a way that they will vote for him, not as the image his rivals portray. This task is very difficult in the very short time remaining; however, it may not be impossible." The newspaper Jahan San'at reported on its front page that "the misery index has halved," stating: "The misery index is derived from the sum of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate, which was 46 percent in 2013 and has decreased to about 21 percent in 2016, meaning it has been cut to less than half during this period." The newspaper Khorasan published new details on the "reversibility capacity of Iran's nuclear program" quoting Pejman Rahimian, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and CEO of the parent company for the production of nuclear raw materials and fuel, stating: "Enrichment for reversibility will be both rapid and of a higher quality and more unbelievable dimensions." The deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said: "Because we have considered reversibility at all stages of negotiation and implementation, we have collected and stored all machines and infrastructures in such a way that they have not only not been damaged but can return to their previous positions according to the markings made whenever we want." Pejman Rahimian also responded to some criticisms of the JCPOA, stating that some had said, "The JCPOA has turned Fordow into a football field," and told the newspaper Khorasan: "Transforming one hall of Fordow, I emphasize only one of the halls of Fordow into an empty hall without facilities, removed a time-consuming stage of reversibility from the country's hands, and if the other side had thought more carefully and did not need this issue for media propaganda, they should not have made our hands freer for reversibility."