Iran – the Final Countdown

By Struan Stevenson

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report highlights the huge significance of the uprising in Iran, which began on 28 December 2017. It shows how millions of ordinary Iranians bravely risked their lives to join mass public protests against the repressive theocratic regime that has held power in Iran for the past 39 years. The widespread nature of these demonstrations is without precedent. People have taken to the streets in some 140 cities across Iran.

Demonstrators chanting: “Death to Khamenei”, “Death to Rouhani”, “Reformists, hardliners, it is game over now,” “Death to the Islamic Republic” and “Shame on you, mullahs,” have shown that this is an uprising against the regime itself. Their chants of: “No Gaza, No Lebanon, My Life for Iran ‘Death to Hezbollah” and “Leave Syria alone, think about us instead” have shown that they are sick of their wealth being looted to fund proxy wars and terrorists throughout the Middle East.

As always, much of the western media has either failed to report the uprising at all, or initially reported that the mass demonstrations were simply based on Iran’s dire economic situation. The western media for, the large part, has adhered to the Obama/EU appeasement policy that has insisted on viewing the theocratic regime in Iran as an ally, making it difficult for them to comprehend why the 80 million beleaguered citizens of that country could possibly rise up and demand regime change.

The Obama/EU axis and its supporters in the media have consistently denied Iran’s role as the world’s principal sponsor of terror and its steady and lethal march towards regional hegemony in the Middle East, a phenomenon now openly recognised by the new US administration. The western media who cheered Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal as a great breakthrough, ignored the fact that the terms of the deal will still enable the Islamic Republic to become a fully armed nuclear power in 12 to 15 years’ time, able to carry out its oftrepeated threat to wipe out Israel.

The Obama/EU axis even ignored the windfall release of $150 billion under the terms of the nuclear deal, that has enabled the theocratic regime to re-double its financing of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal civil war in Syria, the genocidal campaign to wipe out the Sunnis in Iraq, the murderous Houthi rebels in Yemen and terrorist Hezbollah in Lebanon. But worst of all, the Obama/EU axis and its supporters have deserted and betrayed the long-suffering Iranian people, who have been subjected to decades of medieval cruelty.

This report unravels the extent of the mass demonstrations and reveals the deadly crackdown imposed by the regime, the torture and death of prisoners arrested during the protests and the role of social media and cyber-warfare during the uprising. The report shows how admissions by leading members of the regime have exposed its fear and vulnerability to regime change and their acknowledgement of the role and growing support for the main democratic opposition movement - the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

The report concludes with the clear view that the clerical regime is now on its last legs and that its demise is inevitable, charting the next necessary steps to restore peace, democracy, human rights and women’s rights to Iran, while bringing the perpetrators of crimes against humanity and international terror to face justice in the international courts.

New sanctions show US sides with Iranian people, not the regime

Last week, the “Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017" received a rare and near unanimous bipartisan vote in Congress. The legislation placed more sanctions on the Iranian regime. It called for extending terrorism-related sanctions on the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), Iran’s violators of human rights and its missile program, which is increasingly threatening world peace. It was signed into law earlier Wednesday.

This coincided with the second anniversary of the Iran nuclear deal. President Donald Trump has appointed a team in the White House to figure out how to deal with the agreement, but his administration has also correctly pointed out that the broader implications of that deal have by no means been positive.

Critics of the Obama administration’s conciliatory Iran policy understood that when sanctions relief was narrowly focused on the nuclear issue, Iran would be emboldened in other areas. They were right. Today, the regime is escalating its nefarious activities in the region, even carrying out several illicit ballistic missile tests in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

In contrast to the dictatorship, the Iranian people are overwhelmingly educated, pro-democracy and seek to live in coexistence with the outside world. Understandably, they have a keen awareness when it comes to the threats presented by the regime.

The opening to the regime by the West was illusory, as President Hassan Rouhani will not oversee a period of "moderation" in Tehran. Western policymakers should take into account the Iranian people when designing Iran policy and look at the organized opposition, which is ready and capable to change the regime from within.

Had any Western executive body wanted the input of progressively-minded Iranians, they could have visited Paris on July 1 to hear from what a speaker described as approximately 100,000 of them at the international gathering for Free Iran.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) President-elect Maryam Rajavi applauded the international community in her speech for beginning to turn away from the conciliatory policies that had been adopted in the run-up to the nuclear agreement. Rajavi urged the U.S. and the rest of the world to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, ousting it from regional conflicts and pursuing human rights charges against Iranian officials who participated in a massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, mainly the activists of the main opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in 1988.

The recent congressional consensus on Iran addresses many of such demands, i.e., subjecting the IRGC to terrorism-related sanctions, imposing additional missile sanctions and subjecting human rights violators to sanctions. The congressional language needs to be followed up by the administrations to do the following:

First, all the key entities and commanders of the IRGC and its affiliated groups need to be identified and subject to the sanctions under executive order 13224. Second, the IRGC and its affiliates must be expelled from the region, particularly Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Third, the list of rights violators must include all the key elements who ordered, facilitated and carried out the massacre of 1988. Finally, the organized opposition, which has been the main victims of repression, as well as the best hope for change, should be heard and their rights recognized to make a free Iran a reality.

If similar measures had been undertaken when the 2009 uprisings occurred, the show of international support very likely would have bolstered efforts to oust the clerical regime and establish a democracy in line with the secular and democratic principles long advocated by the NCRI.

The Free Iran rally exuded the promise that change in Iran is within reach. Several thousand protest actions have been recorded throughout Iran over the past year, even as the regime’s domestic crackdowns have escalated. The simmering resentment toward the regime is growing ever closer to spilling over into another mass uprising.

When the Trump administration is finished evaluating its post-nuclear deal policy on Iran, it would be a sharp departure from the past if these new realities on the ground are taken into consideration. It is time to recognize the right of the people for a free, non-nuclear and secular republic in Iran. 

Soona Samsami is the representative in the United States for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which seeks the establishment of a democratic, secular and non-nuclear republic in Iran.

Iran ripe for regime change two years after nuclear deal

BY:IVAN SASCHA SHEEHAN

The Iran nuclear agreement — officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — has been in effect for a year and a half, during which time the world has been able to assess the impact of its formal implementation. But it has now had two full years to consider the effects of its negotiation, which concluded on July 14, 2015.

The negotiations themselves were promoted by then-U.S. President Barack Obama and his surrogates as a means of creating a new diplomatic status quo between Iran and the West. It was hoped that following the 2013 election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Tehran would moderate its behavior by demonstrating cooperation with former adversaries.

But internal moderation of the Iranian regime has proven elusive, and Tehran has shown no aptitude to reform from within.

The result? Western powers have learned the same lesson from the Rouhani administration that they learned from Mohammad Khatami, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, and other Iranian officials similarly labeled as reformers worthy of outreach. Moderation is a mirage Tehran uses to seduce their prey.

Executions have skyrocketed under Rouhani's watch, with his administration overseeing an alarming 3,000 hangings during its first four-year term. Analysts expect the human rights violations to continue as the president commences a second term next month.

Rouhani's tenure is also distinguished by a dangerous continuation of ballistic missile research, development and testing (including evidence of cooperation with North Korea) and a repressive crackdown by the country’s security forces on activists, artists, academics, journalists and anyone accused of having ties to the West. These unfortunate trends have shown no signs of abatement on the second anniversary of the landmark agreement that granted far-reaching concessions in return for constructive engagement.

Neither has Tehran’s regional behavior demonstrated signs of improvement with the regime serving as a driving force behind sectarian conflict and an active participant in the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars.

As Western powers commemorate the two-year anniversary of the nuclear negotiations, a comprehensive Iran policy that addresses the joint plan’s shortcomings is needed. The U.S. must take the lead — as it did when nuclear negotiations began — but this time it must lead the world in confronting Iran over the nature of its repressive, fundamentalist regime by building a global coalition that supports regime change from within.

To its credit, the Trump administration has taken steps in this direction by increasing sanctions on the country’s ballistic missile program and pursuing the blacklisting of Iran’s hardline paramilitary organization, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But the Trump administration's willingness to confront Tehran would benefit from clear, overarching policy that more fully embraces the regime’s collapse and replacement.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s strong statement before the House Foreign Affairs Committee was a first step in this direction: “Our policy towards Iran is to push back on (its regional) hegemony, contain their ability to develop, obviously, nuclear weapons and to work towards support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government.”

Now Tillerson's rhetoric needs to be backed with clear statements by U.S. officials — including the President himself — that the false narrative of internal moderation has expired and the aspirations of the Iranian people for regime change are within reach.

It is widely believed that the sanctions and diplomatic pressure employed by the White House and Congress are intended to serve the goal of regime change. If so, this needs to be made clear so that interested parties can coordinate their strategies and address questions about the availability of the “elements inside of Iran” that Tillerson referred to.

The regime’s lobby in Washington would have U.S. officials believe no such elements exist, at least none with adequate organization and resources to oust the clerical regime and replace it with a democratic system of government. Such mischaracterizations are as inaccurate as they are well funded.

The accusations were addressed earlier this month when Tehran’s parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, along with the main Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, held its annual international gathering for democratic change in Paris. The gathering included tens of thousands of Iranian expatriates and hundreds of politicians and foreign policy experts from around the world who embraced regime change by the Iranian resistance.

In her speech at the event, NCRI President Maryam Rajavi praised the international community for rejecting the failed strategy of “appeasement” that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action represents and affirmed her movement’s commitment to the replacement of Iran's religious dictatorship, characterizing it as an absolute imperative and “the ultimate solution to the crises in the region.”

Rajavi noted what Iran scholars have long known: 1) Tehran’s vulnerability, domestic unpopularity and international isolation puts its overthrow within reach; 2) this can be achieved by the organized, democratic resistance that exists in the country and is led on the world stage by the NCRI.

The White House can mark the second anniversary of the negotiations that resulted in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action by turning the page on the failed Obama policy of capitulation in the interest of concessions and supporting the aspirations of the Iranian people for democratic change. By working with the Iranian opposition to realize regime change in Tehran, U.S. officials send a signal that they are preparing for the regime’s collapse and democratic transition and put Iran on notice that a new Iran policy has been embraced.

Sheehan is director of the graduate programs in Global Affairs & Human Security and Negotiations & Conflict Management in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. Follow him on Twitter @ProfSheehan.

Trump and Macron Can Transform Mideast Starting With Iran

• 
  
• 
• Trump and Macron Can Transform Mideast Starting With Iran
• 
  
• 
• U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with French President Emmanuel Macron after posing for the family photo during the G20 summit on July 7, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
• 
• By Raymond Tanter
• Wednesday, 12 Jul 2017 11:24 AM
• Current | Bio | Archive
• 
  
• 
  
• Donald Trump accepted Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to meet in Paris for the Bastille Day Parade on July 15. The American and French presidents had meaningful encounters in recent days, shaking hands in Brussels, and standing side-by-side for a group photograph at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg. Macron even left his assigned spot in the center and barged his way in front of others to have a private chat with Trump on the left side of the group shot!
• This year’s Bastille Day weekend allows the two leaders a chance to iron out details of bilateral cooperation and develop an approach regarding future Western policies toward the Middle East.
• Macron and Trump have common ground from which to build. The two have been favorably compared to each other for their pro-business records; although they focus on economic development and other improvements in their home countries, neither has proven willing to turn a blind eye to truly pressing problems around the world.
• On June 28, Agence France-Presse reports a telephone call between the two presidents; they agreed on a joint military response in the event of another chemical attack in Syria. On June 26, the White House said Assad appeared to be preparing another chemical weapons attack, and warned that he would “pay a heavy price,” if one took place.
• Macron and Trump are on the right side of the Syrian issue. In vowing to respond to what might be “crimes against humanity,” Macron is also staying true to France’s identity as a Great Power and global defender of rights and dignity. But the situation in Syria and surrounding area calls for more than a military response to blatant human rights violations. It requires a comprehensive strategy to root out causes of those abuses. Here is where Macron and Trump can expand on their common ground in Paris on Friday.
• The myriad of crimes of the Assad regime would have come to an end years ago, if not for the fact his regime is propped up from outside by direct intervention of Iran, and later Russia. What’s more, Tehran contributed substantially to the escalation of those crimes, as well as adding more to the list through its promotion of Shiite terrorist groups as part of pro-Assad fighting forces. Many of these groups have committed human rights abuses against Sunni populations in quantities rivaling those carried out by ISIS, aka Islamic State, against Shiites in Mosul, Iraq. And unlike ISIS, Iran-backed militants now are poised to stay in Iraq and Syria over the long term.
• If Macron wishes France to have the impact it deserves as a Great Power, he must be willing to align with Trump and confront the Islamic Republic of Iran directly. And they ought to position their countries to lead NATO in doing the same in Europe and the Middle East. If Trump is reluctant to lead NATO, Macron should be prepared to do so without Washington.
• This is not to say any Western power should be jostling for a new war in the Middle East, and this is certainly not what Washington has been advocating. On June 15, the U.S. Senate voted increased sanctions on the Iranian regime over its ballistic missile program, support for terrorism, and human rights violations. Friday’s meeting is a significant chance for both presidents to encourage renewed commitments to sanctions and diplomatic pressure, e.g., coercive diplomacy.
• Iran must be countered by exposing its vulnerability and pushing it from areas of foreign influence. Economic penalties against the Islamic Republic can serve a further purpose, namely encouragement of domestic forces that might facilitate a transfer of power out of the hands of the clerical regime into arms of democratic representatives of the Iranian people.
• The Macron-Trump meeting takes place two weeks after an annual international rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which also took place in Paris, attended by some 100,000 Iranian expats. I was at the rally conducting interviews for this article and heard NCRI President Maryam Rajavi emphasize the Iranian regime is much more vulnerable than is generally acknowledged, because of its overextension in the broader Middle East and hundreds of barely-reported protests taking place daily across the country.
• Sanctions on the Islamic Republic could be the thing finalizing conditions for regime change from within Iran and subsequent improvement in prospects for Syria and the region as a whole. Iran’s democratic opposition would refrain from subverting Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
• If Friday’s talks go well, the two presidents would be the ones most credited with setting this transformative chain of events in motion and accelerating the arc of history toward security and justice.
• Prof. Raymond Tanter (@AmericanCHR) served as a senior member on the Middle East Desk of the National Security Council staff in the Reagan-Bush administration, Personal Representative of the Secretary of Defense to international security and arms control talks in Europe, and is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. Tanter is on the comprehensive list of conservative writers and columnists who appear in The Wall Street Journal, Townhall.com, National Review, The Weekly Standard, Human Events, The American Spectator, and now in Newsmax. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.

Iranian opposition upbeat as Trump Administration talks of regime change

As thousands of supporters of the largest Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, gathered outside Paris today, there is new confidence that pressure on the Iranian regime could finally lead to change.

Recent reports say the Trump administration is potentially considering seeking a strategy to try to topple the regime, and last week the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, put Iran on notice during a speech at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Iran.

What Is the Right Policy Towards Iran and the MEK?

It is sometimes now that many US officials have been talking about Iran and the actions that US must take towards Iran. In a hearing in the congress, the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, in response to a question about the US policy towards Iran said: “Well our Iranian policy is under development. It’s not yet been delivered to the president, but I would tell you that we certainly recognize Iran’s continued destabilizing presence in the region, their payment of foreign fighters, their export of militia forces in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, their support for Hezbollah. And we are taking action to respond to Iran’s hegemony. Additional sanctions actions have been put in place against individuals and others.”

“We continually review the merits both from the standpoint of diplomatic but also international consequences of designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in its entirety as a terrorist organization,” he added. “As you know, we have designated the Quds [Force]. Our policy towards Iran is to push back on this hegemony, contain their ability to develop obviously nuclear weapons, and to work toward support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government. Those elements are there, certainly as we know.”

The fact is that for years Iranian people have been seeking for a regime change, but the brutal internal suppression, and international and especially US policy of appeasement towards Iran have been the main obstacles to reach this goal.

Contrary to many other countries, in Iran a democratic and organized opposition exists. The Mujahedin-e-Khalq or the MEK has been struggling with this regime for over thirty eight years. Since June 20, 1981 Iranian regime has executed over 120000, mostly members and supporters of the MEK. Only in summer of 1988 over 30000 political prisoners, majority of them from the MEK, were massacred. During this massacre the death committee was going to the prisons and asking the prisoners if they are still supporting the MEK, and if the answer was yes, they would immediately be hanged.

In addition to the massacre of MEK supports, Iranian regime created an atmosphere of fear and terror in the society. The terror atmosphere was such that whoever had any connection of any kind with the MEK they would be arrested and tortured. Even using the name of MEK was prohibited. Any call or communication with MEK members in camps Ashraf and Liberty in Iraq by their family members was considered a crime and many MEK family members were arrested and tortured just because they called to talk to their loved ones.

Despite all the carnage, pressures and suppression, the MEK continued its struggle against the regime. After transfer of MEK members from Iraq to Albania, they focused their activities inside Iran. During the sham Presidential elections, supporters of the MEK posted pictures and posters of Maryam Rajavi, the President elect of NCRI, in the public places in many Iranian cities. The extent of these activities was such that the regime was terrified and compelled to react and cover the activities in their media.

In the past eight months, the MEK supports in Iran have staged a campaign regarding the 1988 massacre. In this campaign many atrocities of the regime was revealed. The campaign has been so wide spread and extensive that last week Khamenei, the supreme leader of the regime was forced to react against the MEK, defending the massacre of MEK members and supporters in the prisons.

The widespread activities of the MEK supporters inside Iran and formation of American-Arab coalition in the region, has become the main concern of the regime. Due to this concern, Iran lobbies have started a widespread campaign against the MEK to demonize the MEK. In this campaign they deceitfully do not directly support the regime, but instead by demonizing the MEK, they are trying to say that this regime does not have any alternative so for any possible change, the solution is within the regime and the West must try to find “moderates” inside the regime. The deceptive tactic is to save the same regime with the same values, and the right policy is to ignore all these propaganda of demonizing the MEK by the Iranian regime and its lobbies. The basis for any right policy towards Iran is to officially recognize the MEK as the main opposition to this regime.

Mr. Jubin Katiraie is an editorial staff member of Iran Focus. The views expressed in the article are his own.https://www.mojahedin.org/home/en

The ship was attacked by a guided missile fired by the Houthi militias after it left the Yemeni port of al-Mokha

 

this is the result of the Houthi

Al Arabiya,Retuers 
- 15 June 2017-- The Arab Coalition in support of restoring the legitimate government in Yemen said on Wednesday that a boast launched a missile targeting a UAE ship off the coast of Yemen.