Opinion: Couple US sanctions with Middle East expulsion of Iran

By: Shahriar Kia *

2017-08-01 14:38:34

    The Iranian regime is attempting to secure a corridor through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, providing a supply route for its numerous terrorist proxies in the region.
Iran’s clandestine nuclear and ballistic missile drive, support for terrorism and domestic crackdown are all aimed at maintaining the Tehran’s fascist mullahs in power and pursue their regional policies.
This notorious objective, in direct conflict with those of the regional and global coalitions to fight terrorism and extremism, can be stopped. Eviction of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and all its proxy forces from the Middle East must complete the new US Congress sanctions. With President Donald Trump signaling his approval, this first and foremost step should be taken with hesitation following the sanctions.
The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to rally major new sanctions on Iran, parallel to measures on North Korea and Russia. To impose additional sanctions on Iran’s defense sector, the House voted 419-3. Coming after three weeks of negotiations, this bill “tightens the screws on our most dangerous adversaries,” explained House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), welcomed the adoption of a bill by both chambers of the US Congress which imposes new sanctions on the Iranian regime for violating human rights and pursuing ballistic missiles.
“Since several years ago, the Iranian Resistance had urged the terrorist designation of the IRGC, as it preserves the entirety of the clerical regime and acts as its main apparatus for domestic suppression and export of terrorism and fundamentalism,” she stressed. “However, the policy of appeasing the mullahs’ religious dictatorship paved the way for the IRGC and its proxies’ rampage in the entire region.”
A look back at the pivotal role Iran played in the rise and flourishing of ISIS, parallel to sectarian conflicts in the region, will help find the right tracks for security in the region.
In 2008, a joint campaign led by the U.S. military and Iraqi Sunnis rooted al-Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to ISIS. However, the Obama administration’s decision to pull back and deliver the country to former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, a close ally of the Iranian regime, eventually led to the unraveling of all previous achievements.
Maliki dismantled the Iraqi “Awakening Council” and gave Iran free pass to exert its full influence on Iraq’s political and military apparatus.
In tandem, the destruction and crimes committed by the IRGC and Bashar al-Assad regime against the Syrian people provided the prefect breeding ground for sectarian strife and allowed ISIS to occupy a wide swath of land straddling both countries.
The Iranian regime became the main beneficiary of the rampage caused by ISIS and subsequently used it as an excuse to expand its clout by forming and later legalizing the IRGC-equivalent Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). This entity has become notoriously renowned for its crimes against humanity, no less horrendous than those committed by ISIS.
Iran’s highest officials have time and again acknowledged funding and supporting the criminal militia forces in Iraq and Syria, expressing their vested interest in occupying neighboring countries through whatever means.
The Obama administration’s hands-off approach vis-à-vis Iran’s regional ambitions provided Tehran a far better opportunity to pursue its nefarious agendas under the pretext of fighting ISIS. Speculations raised U.S. officials on possible cooperation with Iran in the fight against terrorism only made matters worse.
Now, as ISIS is losing influence and ground, Iran is attempting to fill the gap. Letting it have its way would be a recipe for disaster, as proven in the past eight years.
Despite the threats and taunts broadcasted regularly Iran’s state media, the regime is far from capable or inclined to enter open warfare with any other state in the region or across the globe.
Tehran’s proxies are only as good as the funding and supplies the regime provides. Without IRGC support Iran’s proxies will be hard-pressed to spread their mayhem in the region.
Sanctions alone, however, will not be enough. Tehran has found ways to continue causing mischief under the toughest sanctions regime.
The threats rendered by Tehran will only end with regime change in Iran. This will initially benefit the people of Iran, being the first victims of this regime’s criminal ideology, and categorically reject its destructive foreign policy, both inside the country and abroad.
One of the greatest manifestations of the Iranian people’s desire for change was expressed at the July 1st Free Iran gathering in paris. Tens of thousands of Iranian expats as well as politicians, activists and religious figures from across the world attended the rally to express their solidarity and support for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran.
The event had a clear message: regime change in Iran is the only viable solution for both the people of Iran and the region’s nations. There’s no need for another foreign conflict. The people of Iran and their organized resistance have the will, power and means necessary to realize this change.
Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal also addressed the massive gathering.
“So, you have coming together now a mighty coalition of forces, joining with the Resistance, and that should give us hope that we can make that [regime] change,” he stressed.


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*Shahriar Kia is an Iranian dissident and a political analyst on Iran and the Middle East. He is a member of the Iranian opposition and a graduate of North Texas University.

JOHN BOLTON: EVERY TIME YOU HEAR NORTH KOREA THINK OF IRAN

JOHN BOLTON: EVERY TIME YOU HEAR NORTH KOREA THINK OF IRAN

by JOHN HAYWARD

 Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton talked about North Korea’s Fourth of July missile test launch on Thursday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.

Bolton said intercontinental ballistic missiles are a goal North Korea has been working towards since the early 1990s, as part of the outlaw regime’s quest for “deliverable nuclear weapons,”

but it was still surprising to many observers that a missile with true intercontinental capability was successfully launched this week.

“It’s capable of hitting Alaska. It can’t hit the Lower 48 yet, but that’s only a matter of time,” he said. “The only other thing we need to find out, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of it, is whether North Korea has miniaturized its nuclear devices – of which it’s already detonated five – to the point they can put it under an ICBM nose cone.”

“I’ve been talking about this for 20 years, and so have many other people. And yet, for the last three U.S. administrations – eight years of Clinton, eight years of Bush, eight years of Obama – people have tried to negotiate with North Korea to talk them out of their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. It’s failed consistently for 25 years,” he said.

“That’s why Trump has inherited this mess. The issue is whether he can find a way out of it, or whether he succumbs to what I know the State Department, and much of the Defense Department, and much of the intelligence community are telling him: just keep doing what we’ve been doing before. Because that will result in a nuclear North Korea,” Bolton warned.

“And by the way, you can already see the mainstream media and academia preparing us to live in a world where North Korea has nuclear weapons,” he added, citing a New York Times op-ed to that effect from Wednesday.

Bolton judged that Japan would continue to be a reliable ally against North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, since the Japanese are well aware their cities lie within range of North Korea’s missiles. On the other hand, he said “all of the evidence points to China and Russia as, at best, turning a blind eye to what the North has been up to, and more likely facilitating the North’s nuclear and missile programs.”

He said his support from China and Russia was kept low-profile to avoid sanctions, but there was no way to conceal that China supplies North Korea with much of its oil and food, giving Beijing more than enough leverage to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear missile program if it truly wanted to.

“China is playing a double game. They say they don’t want the North Koreans to have nuclear weapons but they haven’t shut it down,” Bolton charged. “It’s a very dangerous situation. Nobody should underestimate it.”

“One other point I would make: Every time you hear the words ‘North Korea,’ think of the word ‘Iran,’” he added. “Because whatever North Korea can do, Iran can do the next day by sending them a check in the appropriate amount. We have stovepiped these two nuclear proliferation threats for a very long time. We need to stop doing that because every day that goes by brings us closer to the day when one or both of them can hit the United States.”

Bolton cited North Korea’s five known nuclear test detonations, and its successful test of ballistic missile technology, to say it is a “more imminent threat” than Iran, but stressed that North Korea and Iran have been working “extremely closely on ballistic missiles” since the Nineties, “and there’s every reason to think they have worked extremely closely on the nuclear program as well.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if a big chunk of Iran’s uranium enrichment program is not in Iran, where we know where it is, but under a mountain in North Korea,” he said. “We have very poor intelligence on North Korea, so it’s a big advantage for Iran to work with them.”

“When the Israelis destroyed that reactor in Syria in September 2007, it was being built by North Koreans,” he recalled. “Well, who paid for that? North Korea doesn’t do anything for free. I doubt that Syria had the resources to do it. Quite likely it was Iran. When that reactor was found by the Israelis and destroyed, the lesson I think to Iran was, ‘Build it someplace where the Israelis can’t find it.’ That’s why they may well have turned to North Korea.”

Bolton noted that U.S. and South Korean military officials have been warning for the past year that North Korea was on the verge of developing missiles that could hit the West Coast of the United States, perhaps as early as 2018.

“In public testimony three or four months ago now, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command told Congress that the only thing he had any doubt about was whether North Korea had fully conquered the miniaturization tasks to take a nuclear device and make it small enough to put under an ICBM nose cone. So even just three or four months ago, he didn’t have any doubt about the range,” he noted.

“There are a lot of other technical steps to overcome here. You can put the nose cone and the warhead up, you can bring it back down, but it’s a pretty rocky ride. You have to make sure that the warhead will detonate at the appropriate time,” he explained.

“We don’t know whether the North has mastered that technology, but I would be very cautious about intelligence that says they can’t do this, and they can’t do that, and they can’t do the other thing, because the first American reaction to this launch was ‘it was an intermediate range ballistic missile, not an ICBM,” and we were wrong. And we didn’t detect this one before the launch. I think we’ve had enough lessons in intelligence being imperfect,” he said.

“Don’t count on our lack of knowledge meaning that the North doesn’t have the capability,” he advised. “They may well have the capability. We may simply not have detected it.