Top former U.S. officials present joint Iran policy statement to Maryam ...

Onward with the Iranian Resistance, regime change is within reach paris...

Rudy Giuliani: “The ayatollah must go”

THOSE WHO MASSACRED PMOI MEMBERS SHOULD BE REWARDED, SENIOR IRANIAN OFFICIAL SAYS

Ahmad Khatami, a board member of the Iranian regime’s Assembly of Experts, used the Tehran Friday prayers sermon to express his anger over the ever-increasing scope of the justice movement related to the 1988 massacre. He called for the perpetrators of the atrocity of executing over 30,000 political prisoners to be awarded medals.“Then we see some people who on their websites switch the place of martyrs and murderers.

It was a divine move by [Iranian regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini] to force the [PMOI (People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran)] out of the country. All those who acted based on these orders should be rewarded with medals… however, those who on their websites have switched the place of martyrs and murderers should repent and beg for forgiveness,” he said.

This senior Iranian official, involved in many of the regime’s crimes, continues to be infuriated over the July 1 Iranian opposition rally held in Paris. He made ridiculous remarks against the former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, blaming the 1953 coup d'etat on him for not thanking the mullahs for their support, and for instead feuding with mullah Abolghasem Kashani, a figure hated by the Iranian people for his relations with 1953 coup perpetrators.

Mullah Abbasian, another Friday prayers imam, made similar remarks in this regard:

“During the election season we witnessed how a number of people sought to change the PMOI’s image and criticized those who stood against the PMOI (MEK)… Hat’s off to the judge who executed PMOI members,” he said.

A few days ago, former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, sought by Swiss, German and Argentine prosecutors through international subpoenas, also expressed his concerns over the justice movement.
“Regarding the PMOI (MEK) and all other groups who are mohareb [at war with God]… [Khomeini] ordered it… the ruling for all of them is execution… [Khomeini] constantly emphasized to beware they don’t slip out of your hands… [Khomeini] would always say be careful in this regard… before and after the 1988 issue. If a judge didn't sentence them to death, he would have acted incorrectly,” he said.

“I want to discuss my first analysis, and that is the [PMOI] rally in France… the sheer fact that they are permitted to hold a rally there is practical support for terrorism…,” he said at Tehran’s Friday prayers.

Former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, a leading official involved in the 1990s chain murders in Iran, referred further to the scope of the 1988 massacre of MEK members.

“This was [Khomeini’s] orders… these people should always be executed, before and after the 1988 case. [Khomeini] would constantly say be careful they don’t slip out of your hands. He would say we should act based on our religious duties and don’t wait for history to judge us,” he said. Fallahian also acknowledged that many people were arrested in the early years after the 1979 revolution simply for selling newspapers, or procuring food and other necessities for the PMOI.

These horrific remarks are only a tip of the iceberg of an intense chorus launched by the regime's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to justify the 1988 massacre, especially after his failure in engineering the recent presidential election and attempting to have his favored candidate, mullah Ebrahim Raisi, known for his direct role in the 1988 massacre, replace the incumbent Hassan Rouhani.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

CALL ON U.N. : NOBEL LAUREATES CONDEMN EXECUTIONS BY IRAN REGIME PERPETRATORS MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

A group of Nobel laureates expressed grave concerns over continuing human rights violations in Iran. 21 Nobel laureates from the United States, Canada, Germany and Norway issued a letter asking United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to use his good offices “through the UN Human Rights Council to closely monitor the human rights situation in Iran,

inform the world of the violations taking place in that country and to strongly condemn such violations …” and “an immediate halt to intractable arrests, torture and arbitrary executions. The perpetrators of such executions must be held accountable.” Pejman Amiri an Iranian dissident and freelance writer wrote in an article in ‘News Blaze’ on July 22, 2017 and the article continues as follows:

The 21 Nobel laureates have praised the Secretary-General’s last report on the human rights situation in Iran, in which he referred to the 1988 massacre of more than 30,000 innocent human beings in Iran on the charge of loving freedom, said Dr. Richard J. Roberts, a Nobel laureate in medicine from the US who led the initiative. The 1988 massacre has currently become a very challenging internal matter for the brutal clerics in Iran.

The prominent laureates reiterated their previous communications with the UN about the fate of members of the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in Camps Ashraf and Liberty in Iraq who were under constant missile barrage attacks.

“In previous communications, we had expressed our utter abhorrence over the massacre of refugees in camps Ashraf and Liberty in Iraq, all of whom were opponents of the crackdown and human rights violations in Iran. We also voiced our support regarding their safe and sound transfer outside of Iraq. Fortunately, under international community supervision, these residents have now been transferred to other countries, including Albania.

We are witness to your direct efforts as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in aiding the issue of Ashraf and Liberty residents, and we express our humble gratitude,” they wrote.

Nobel Laureates Condemn Executions in Iran.

Nobel Laureates.

From 2011 to 2016, as the top UN refugee officer, Guterres UNHCR supported a safe and secure transfer of MEK members out of Iraq. He personally intervened with former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to prevent attacks against the residents. Al-Maliki and Iran-backed Shiite militias regularly stormed the MEK members at the behest of Tehran.

“We are seeking that you in your new position call on the Iraqi government to pay the compensation to these Ashraf and Liberty residents for their property in Iraq, valued at $600 million. During their confinement in Iraq the government did not permit them to sell their property and refused to provide compensation. This money would have allowed the residents to pay for their current accommodation in Albania, which from a humanitarian perspective is both necessary and vital,” the Nobel laureates’ letter to Guterres continues.

“In addition to our scientific obligations to advance science and improve human life, we also consider defending human rights across the globe as our duty. We believe the two endeavors of science and human rights must advance in lock-step to establish a better world. The wanton trampling of basic human rights in the 21st century is completely unacceptable,” they added, shedding light on their motivation behind this humanitarian initiative to condemn executions in Iran as it has highest number of executions per capita in the world.

Executions have continued since the May farce presidential election in Iran that the incumbent Hassan Rouhani remained in the presidency. For the past few months many people have been hanged in public. The hangings are despite the Iranian regimes’ lobbyists around the world, particularly in the U.S., portraying the Iranian government and Hassan Rouhani as moderate.

In the early days of this regime after the 1979 revolution, Rouhani had called for the public execution of dissidents during Friday prayers. His justice minister is a member of a four-man commission that supervised the execution of more than 30,000 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience back during the 1988 massacre.

Currently, the relatives of the executed victims are active in social media calling for justice to be done and bring the henchmen and those who ordered the executions to justice. The Nobel laureates letter to the United Nations Secretary General emphasizing that “The perpetrators of such executions must be held accountable” is certainly giving a new international dimension to this issue and a stronger voice to the demand for justice to be done.

Not necessary to put war back on the table; Iran is at war

Hamid Bahrami

Two years have passed since the signing of the ineffective nuclear agreement between world powers and Tehran, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

For those who are familiar with the theocracy in Iran, it is a known fact that all foreign policy in Iran are decided by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. This is even true in the case of the highly promoted nuclear deal. It is worth noting that before and during the negotiations, Khamenei, said that Oman had a key role in breaking the ice between Iran and the US.

Thus, it is naive to think that the new president, Hassan Rouhani, was the one who changed the 10-year-long stalemate. Iran has an abundance of oil, gas and others natural resources, hence, using nuclear energy is both expensive and controversial.

Independent experts acknowledge that Iran’s goal of maintaining a nuclear program is to produce nuclear weapon. However, Iran has consistently refused these views and claims that its program is of a peaceful nature.

Regional hegemony

It is worth pointing out that having a nuclear warhead will guarantee Iran’s regional hegemony. Therefore, Iran has consistently tried to achieve it. Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president and one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic who died last year, said that Iran was trying to make nuclear bomb.

“When we first began, we were at war and we sought to have that possibility for the day that the enemy might use a nuclear weapon”, he said in an interview. Consequently, the regime in Tehran sought nuclear weapons in order to tilt the balance of power in the region in its favor.

The West imposed comprehensive sanctions against Iran targeting its finance sector and its selling of oil. These intelligent punitive measures exacerbated the Iranian economy that already suffered greatly from decades of economic mismanagement and widespread corruption, to the point of destruction, according to statistics from Iran’s own Central bank. The inflation was over 30 percent in 2013.

Iranian authorities confess that the greatest threat to theocracy is not a foreign enemy, like the US, but popular protests, especially by the disenfranchised poor people and youth

irHamid Bahrami

Economic poverty put immense pressure on the Iranian middle class, the Iranian government even tried to redefine the base basket of food (government subsidies to the Iranian middle class) to control the inflation. Rouhani's government even started to distribute especial food baskets. The regime’s National Security Council warned about hungry rebellion. Salaries of labors was unpaid and economic deadlock brought the government to its knees.

Although, Iran’s goal of making nuclear weapon was in reach and Tehran increased its intervention in the region, the economic crisis threatened the theocracy's very existence. Consequently, the Supreme Leader ordered his officials to start the negotiation with the West. This was president Obama giving artificial respiration to Tehran.

After the agreement

The sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear program. According to the JCPOA, Iran must redesign and rebuild its heavy-water reactor in Arak. It means that Iran’s abilities to develop and produce nuclear weapon is intensively limited for years. Some experts, diplomats and government officials argue that the sanctions achieved their goal.

But at that time, the JCPOA did not include the rest of Iran’s threatening and destabilizing activities such as its ballistic missile program, dispatch of tens of thousands of militias and paramilitary forces to Syria. The JCPOA did neither addressed the appalling human rights situation in Iran.

Iran and violation of agreement

A conditional approval was published by the Supreme Leader Khamenei with regard to Tehran agreeing to the JCPOA. The document contained several conditions.

One of the conditions was about new sanctions after signing of the agreement, it said that “Any sanctions against Iran at every level and on any pretext, including terrorism and human rights violations, by any one of the countries participating in the negotiations will constitute a violation of the JCPOA, and a reason for Iran to stop executing the agreement.”

Considering that US has imposed several sanctions on Iran after the deal, one must ask the following question, why has Iran not stopped executing the agreement?

The Iranian regime is besieged by extensive social discontent. Over 10 millions are unemployed and many ordinary Iranians are forced to live a life below poverty-line.

Not a foreign enemy

Indeed, Iranian authorities confess that the greatest threat to theocracy is not a foreign enemy, like the US, but popular protests and anti-regime demonstrations, especially by the disenfranchised poor people and youth, breaking the current status quo.

The reality is that the regime has always been at war with the young generation over individual liberties and social freedoms, which challenged the foundation of the regime’s theocracy. That is why Iran’s answer to new US sanctions has been merely rhetoric.

Due to the theocracy’s weak position in the society and its faltering economy, if Tehran abandons the nuclear agreement, all sanctions will be re-imposed. That will led to an economic and political collapse of the ruling theocracy.

Consequently, if president Trump orders to renegotiate the JCPOA, or impose new effective sanctions such as designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, Iran is not able to play its enrichment card.

These were the reasons sanctions forced the Iranian regime to come back to the negotiation table, and it will do it again.
______________________
Freelance journalist Hamid Bahrami has served as political prisoner in Iran. He is a human rights and political activist living in Glasgow, Scotland. His works covers Iran’s destructive actions in the Middle East and social crackdown in Iran. He tweets at @HaBahrami & blogs at analyzecom.

IRAN'S MISSILE PROGRAM STEPPED UP AFTER NUCLEAR DEAL

By Shahriar Kia

 American Thinker, June 22, 2017 - Less than a week after the U.S. Senate adopted sweeping new sanctions targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and two days after Tehran launched a series of missiles at territories inside Syria while claiming to target ISIS, the Iranian opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran ) held a press conference in Washington on Tuesday, June 20, unveiling new information about dozens of IRGC missile sites.

On the orders of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the IRGC has accelerated its ballistic missile activities and tests following the Iran nuclear deal, representatives of the NCRI U.S. Office said.

Sources associated with the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), the main NCRI coalition member, and inside Iran's Defense Ministry and IRGC confirmed that Khamenei has specifically tasked the IRGC Aerospace Force with carrying out this initiative.

The locations of 42 sites were verified by the Iranian opposition, all being affiliated with the IRGC's production, testing, and launching of missiles.

'A dozen of these sites were revealed for the very first time. Among the 42 sites, 15 are part of the regime's missile manufacturing network,' said NCRI U.S. Office deputy director Alireza Jafarzadeh in the press conference.  'These 15 centers include several factories related to a missile industry group and together form a web of dozens of missile production facilities,' he added.

    The PMOI/MEK sources were able to provide intelligence on four very important missile sites located in the cities of Semnan in the east of Tehran, Lar in south-central Iran, and Khorramabad in western Iran, as well as near the city of Karaj, west of Tehran.  Iran has recognized only two of these sites as ballistic missile facilities.

 These IRGC missile sites have been constructed based on blueprints provided by North Korea, and experts from Pyongyang have been on the scene throughout the process, according to PMOI/MEK sources.

During the past two decades, the Iranian opposition has provided the international community with accurate reports of Iran's clandestine nuclear and ballistic missile activities.  The recent revelations made in Washington make the sanctions proposed by the Senate all the more necessary to adopt a firm policy against Tehran.

   Iranian officials are in consensus on the need for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload, all in order to maintain their grip on power.  Iranian president Hassan Rouhaniunderscored in late May how the regime's missile activities will go forward unabated.

Tehran is known as the central banker of international terrorism.  Iran's meddling in neighboring countries and support for terrorist proxy groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen have already plunged the region into an inferno.

 On that note, Iran's state-run Mashreq daily wrote on Iran launching missiles into Syria on Sunday:

Although Iran had many different options to respond to ISIS' terrorist attack, it chose to launch missiles from its soil [.]... [T]his may have messages for Washington.

'The primary reason for launching these missiles was in no way ISIS,' Jafarzadeh said.

U.S. officials, alongside their Arab counterparts in the recent Riyadh conference, underscored strong positions against Tehran and its meddling across the region.  Targeting ISIS and claiming that these attacks were in response to the June 7 terrorist attacks in Tehran are only pretexts for the mullahs' hollow threats.

Prior to Iran's measures having any military weight, these actions are aimed at elevating morale among the rank and file, especially the IRGC.  These elements are currently terrified, as the U.S. has become active in Syria and intensified its sanctions against Tehran, and America's top diplomat is emphasizing a policy of supporting regime change during the evaluation of a comprehensive Iran policy.

It has become a known fact that Tehran lacks the capacity and will to halt is ballistic missile policy.

'There is no difference between a change in behavior and regime change,' Khamenei stressed on May 10.

In contrast to the ruling mullahs in Tehran, the Iranian people welcome change and deplore the regime's nuclear and missile programs and abhor the mullahs' meddling across the region.

It is high time that the international community adopted a united and firm policy on Iran based on the following pillars: imposing sweeping sanctions targeting Iran's missile program and blacklisting the IRGC for its role in directing Iran's support of terrorism