The Bitter Trade of Surrogate Mothers' Wombs

The newspaper Shargh, while publishing a photo of Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf on its front page, reported under the headline "Time for the Mayor to Respond" that "the Tehran City Council has summoned the mayor to provide explanations regarding the transfer of properties." According to this newspaper, "Following the report by Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the Attorney General of the country, about the property transfer case in Tehran Municipality, the members of the Tehran City Council have now asked their mayor to come to the council meeting on Tuesday to provide details about this report and the property transfers." Shargh also noted that "on Sunday, 25 council members signed a letter calling for Qalibaf to respond. Among the names of the 25 signatories, both conservative and reformist members of the council are present." Mojtaba Shakari, a conservative member of the Tehran City Council, responded to Shargh's question about why the council members have now asked the mayor to report on this issue by saying: "The mayor of Tehran previously announced that he would defer his explanation until after the report from the Inspection Organization and the judicial authority. However, the mayor may not accept the council's request for further explanations beyond what the judicial authority has announced." This council member emphasized that "the Attorney General's report mentioned formal issues rather than substantive ones, and it seems we need to know more details about this matter," stating: "We believe that the mayor of Tehran is aware of more details, and that is why we asked him to explain this matter to the council and the public as well." Meanwhile, the newspaper Etemad has highlighted the letter from 14 reformist members of the Tehran City Council to the head of the judiciary, stating: "The reformist representatives in this letter have called for serious attention to the case and no leniency regarding the case of Yashar Soltani, the editor of Archi News website." Ali Saberi, a legal member and reformist of the Tehran City Council, told Etemad: "The reformist members of the council have written a letter to the head of the judiciary, in which we have officially stated that none of the reformist members of the council have filed a complaint against Yashar Soltani, and we have called for serious and expedited action from the judiciary regarding the investigation and resolution of the astronomical properties case and announcing the results for public awareness and to resolve current issues and ambiguities." Etemad also reported on the support of conservative members of the Tehran City Council for Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and their condemnation of the disclosure of documents related to the astronomical properties of the capital's municipality, stating: "While Ahmad Hakimipour had previously announced that the Inspection Organization's report was not marked confidential, on Sunday, Parviz Sarouri again claimed that these documents were confidential," and said that "the spokesperson for the judiciary and the prosecutor's office emphasized the confidentiality of the documents and initially stated that the publication of confidential documents constitutes a crime." According to this newspaper, Parviz Sarouri also accused Ahmad Hakimipour of "aiding in the crime" for providing the Inspection Organization's documents to Yashar Soltani and stated: "We cannot expect to enter a gunpowder warehouse with a torch and not spark a fire; unfortunately, they create the grounds for tension in the council and then expect the council to remain tension-free." The newspaper Khorasan highlighted the statements of Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the Tehran prosecutor, regarding the astronomical properties case and the arrest of the whistleblower of this financial and administrative corruption in the municipality, quoting him as saying: "With the arrest of Yashar Soltani, some said that the arrest of this individual was to prevent the exposure of corruption. This interpretation is incorrect, and these two matters are unrelated. Municipality managers are being pursued for potential violations, but this does not mean that the actions of websites in publishing letters containing preliminary investigations of judicial authorities are permissible." According to this newspaper, the Tehran prosecutor emphasized that "the chief inspector of the Inspection Organization in the municipality case stated that he had informed Yashar Soltani and some members of the city council that the organization was in the investigation stage regarding the matter and that the publication of investigations was prohibited." Khorasan reported Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying: "Yashar Soltani's claim that he did not know that publishing this letter was a crime is unacceptable, as ignorance of the law does not exempt one from criminal responsibility, and Mr. Hakimipour's claim that the Inspection Organization's letter was not marked confidential is also unacceptable because, according to clause 6 of article 6 of the Press Law, judicial investigations are confidential." The newspaper Javan, close to the Revolutionary Guards, in its Tuesday issue reported under the headline "The Arrow of the Reformists Bounced Back on Muharram Hosseini," quoting "an informed source" accusing Alireza Solhi, a physician from Tabriz, of "being involved in the murder of his family." The newspaper emphasized what it called "the confession of the reformist physician to being involved in the murder of his family," stating: "Alireza Solhi, a physician from Tabriz who gained fame by writing neat prescriptions, recommending listening to songs for patients, and showing kindness to patients by covering the cost of prescriptions, is now said to have been involved in the murder of two family members." This newspaper noted that on October 17, following the news of the poisoning of six family members with sacrificial food, he was placed under police surveillance as a suspect, and the media and opposing networks began to exploit the incident moments after the news was published, linking it to intellectual movements and insults to sacred values. Javan recalled that Alireza Solhi's fame began when, nearly a year ago, he wrote on a prescription for a patient addressed to the pharmacy that the cost of the medicine should not be charged to the patient, providing his phone number and stating that he would cover the cost himself, which gained him considerable fame in an environment where many physicians turn a blind eye to everything for money. The physician, whose older prescription circulated in cyberspace, was shown to prescribe the voice of Shahram Nazari for his patients. The newspaper noted that on October 17 of this year, "the poisoning of six family members" of this physician resulted in the death of his wife and grandmother, stating: "According to an informed source in the investigations conducted, it became clear that although the death of these victims occurred due to poisoning, contrary to the claims made, there was no sacrificial food involved," and while "some reformist movements in cyberspace attributed the motives of the killer to political reasons and, in some cases, linked this murder to the prescription of Shahram Nazari's voice by Dr. Solhi," it was now "determined in the investigations that this physician personally prepared food from one of the catering services in Tabriz, and the poisoned food that caused the deaths of these two women was not sacrificial at all." The newspaper Farhikhtegan also reported on "the arrest of the Tabriz physician three days after the death of his family," but stated: "All the news regarding the confession of the Tabriz physician about being involved in the death of his wife and grandmother, published in the last 24 hours in the media and cyberspace, comes from an unnamed informed source. Although this source's news was so important that within a few hours all news sites and cyberspace published it, it seems that it was not important enough for the officials of East Azerbaijan Province to deny or confirm it, and the first person to declare indifference about this important news was Moussa Khalilollahi, the prosecutor of the General and Revolutionary Court of East Azerbaijan Province, who stated in an interview with a local site called Nasr News: "If the case reaches a definitive conclusion, it will be announced to the public, so no attention should be paid to rumors." The prosecutor of Tabriz also stated: "Undoubtedly, as long as the various dimensions of the issue have not been thoroughly examined, a decisive opinion cannot be provided on this matter; however, it is also necessary to mention that until the crime is proven, rumors should not be spread in cyberspace, and one should not preemptively judge the crime." According to Farhikhtegan, a family member of this Tabriz physician also stated in an interview with ILNA that "the physician's involvement in the murder of his family members is false" and said: "The news of his confession is completely false. Unfortunately, some people, instead of pursuing accurate and precise news, are following the rumors circulating among the public and sacrificing their media credibility and ethics for increasing audience and revenue." This newspaper also referred to the differing statements of two representatives from Tabriz in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, stating that while Alireza Beigi, the former governor of East Azerbaijan in the previous government and one of the current representatives of Tabriz in the 10th Assembly, said, "The report from the judicial authorities indicates that this physician was the architect of this matter. In the investigations, it was revealed that this physician did not bring sacrificial food home at all, and he had prepared all the food from catering services and poisoned them," another representative, Alireza Monadi, told Farhikhtegan that "the arrest of this physician is not new news; he was arrested three days after the incident, and I do not know why the news of this physician's arrest suddenly spread in the media, but what is certain is that no confession has been made, and if he has confessed, the prosecutor will announce it." The newspaper Noavaran has a report in its November 1 issue about the spread of the phenomenon of "surrogacy" in Iran, stating: "In the economic and social chaos of the country, amid strange and distressing advertisements for the sale of kidneys and others seen on the streets, hospitals, and clinics, in recent years, a new and strange advertisement has emerged, which is the sale of embryos in the womb." Soraya Azizpanah, a social activist, told this newspaper: "The buying and selling of embryos is closely related to the issue of infertility and its prevalence in society. A significant percentage of women and men in our society face infertility issues, and this method is a solution that society has resorted to in order to address the problem." The newspaper Noavaran emphasized that "the issue of individual embryo sales for subsistence and feeding one's family is, on the one hand, regrettable, and the transformation of it into a business for trafficking rings that are willing to turn anything into profit," stating: "These individuals exploit the poverty of people on one side and the needs of infertile couples on the other to establish a profit-seeking enterprise and fish in troubled waters," and "they engage in the buying and selling of eggs" and demand millions in costs, so much so that "according to documented reports, in these transactions, between 3 to 12 million tomans are exchanged." This newspaper recommended that "if the provision of embryos is to be a solution for infertile couples to have children, all areas should study and examine the dimensions of this issue beforehand so that if it has adverse consequences, it is prohibited, and if it can be used as an alternative solution, it should be under strict supervision so that it does not go astray." The newspaper Etemad featured a photo of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who emphasized in an interview with this newspaper that "the Rouhani government has more problems than my government," but "Rouhani's vote in 96 is guaranteed," and currently "Mr. Rouhani's situation is better than any candidate who could come to the field." Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani spoke about the Assembly of Experts elections held in March 2016, stating: "The disqualification of candidates changed the people's voting path," and "what we wanted in the Experts Assembly did not happen," and "the Experts Assembly needed a change that did not occur." The newspaper Arman, in its front page, featured statements from Elaheh Koulaei, a former member of parliament and a figure close to the reformists, regarding whether "some entered the Hope list through rent and money," stating: "Money and power have always been influential in politics. Some candidates entered the Hope list through rent, and I do not deny this."