Iran: Many families are tonight mourning the brutal and vicious mass execution of their loved ones

Following the mass execution of about two dozen Sunni prisoners in the notorious Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, north-west of Tehran, by the anti-human mullahs' regime, families of these victims are mourning tonight.
The families were informed to go to the prison before 15.00 (local time) Tuesday to visit their loved ones for a last time.
One of the families who were on route to the prison to say farewell for the last time to their young son said they received a call from prison authorities in the middle of the road telling them to go and pick up the body of their loved one from the morgue victim instead of visiting their son.
Another report from the family of a victim said the families were told to visit their loved ones for a final time in the prison before 15.00. But when the family arrived at the prison, they were told to go instead to the coroner's office to collect the body of their loved one who had already been executed.
List of names of 28 Sunni prisoners who had been forcibly moved out of Hall 10 of Ward 4 in Gohardasht Prison on Monday afternoon, August 1, 2016 are as follows:
1. Kaveh Veysi
2. Taleb Molki
3. Behrouz Shah-Nazari
4. Barzan Nosratollah-Zadeh
5. Farzad Shah-Nazari
6. Varya Qaderi-Fard
7. Keyvan Momeni-Fard
8. Alam Bamashti
9. Seyyed Jamal Seyyed-Moussavi
10. Edris Ne'mati
11. Ahmad Nasiri
12. Mokhtar Rahimi
13. Yavar Rahimi
14. Pourya Mohammadi
15. Farzad Honarjou
16. Shahram Ahmadi
17. Farshid Nasseri
18. Amjad Salehi
19. Omid Peyvand
20. Arash Sharifi
21. Kaveh Sharifi
22. Shahu Ebrahimi
23. Abdollah Sharifi
24. Jamal Qaderi
25. Omid Mahmoudi
26. Mohammad Gharibi
27. Fouad Yousefi
28. Keyvan Karimi

Then NCRI had already called on International organizations to do their utmost to prevent this heinous mass executions. In a statement issued on August 1st, the NCRI had said
The Iranian Resistance makes a call to save the lives of a large number of Sunni prisoners on death row, requesting urgent intervention by the United Nations Security Council and Member States, and international human rights organizations, especially the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Special Rapporteur to prevent the implementation of these criminal and inhumane rulings.
A large number of special Revolutionary Guards forces raided hall 10 of ward 4 in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj (west of Tehran) in the afternoon of Monday, August 1. These repressive forces apprehended dozens of Sunni prisoners as their hands and feet were chained, mouths shut with tape and heads covered with plastic bags. These prisoners were transferred outside of the ward to an undisclosed location.
Hours prior to this transfer the regime’s forces and IRGC members had closed all wards and open-air areas, imposing special conditions in the jail. Gohardasht Prison is under the complete IRGC control.
Appeasement vis-à-vis the criminal rulers of Iran, with the execution of 120,000 political prisoners in their report card, and sending more youths to the gallows with each passing day, is nothing but collaborating and encouraging the continuation of these crimes. All political and economic relations with this regime must be conditioned to the complete halt of all executions in Iran, and this regime’s officials must be placed before justice for their crimes against humanity.

 

Iran hardline regime: Women must stay at home and not to appear in public wearing makeups

Promoting repression of women in Iran by the mullahs regime

The misogynist and medieval regime of mullahs in Iran which advocates stone-age thinking and backward ideology of women being half of men, has come up with a new idea of how to push these disgusting rules in the society.
To attract more attentions to this hateful ideology of repressing women, some hard line devoted members of the para-military Basij or the clergy faction have installed a huge ad-box on the top of their cars promoting their misogynist ideas.
This photo taken in the city of Qom, the power base of the mullahs and some 120 km to the south of capital Tehran shows a car carrying this huge ad-box which has two women drawn on it, one with long black veil (chador) apparently standing in the “heavens.” And the other woman with blond hair, without veil, caught in the middle of fire in the “hell.” A sign written on the top reads “Sit in your houses and don’t come out dressed up wearing makeups like the old era of ignorance.”
The other side of the box reads “Honorable and religious men don’t allow their wives and daughters to go out wearing short skirts and makeups in front of strange men. 
The photo has been provided by the para-militry Basij affiliated the 'Association of Enjoining virtue and forbidding wrong' in the city of Qom.

 

The Iranian regime will blind 5 prisoners with acid

These eyes will be blinded  by the Iranian regime

The horrible law of retribution, or as it is called by the mullahs’ regime in Iran as Qisas, which is based on the old saying of “an eye for an eye”, the Iranian regime is to blind at least five prisoners in Iran’s notorious Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, northwest of the capital Tehran. This barbaric punishment also includes to deafen the prisoners as well.
According to reports from inside the prison, some 40 kilometers from the Iranian capital Tehran, the Iranian regime’s judiciary is pushing for the sentences to be implemented quickly; however prison doctors have thus far refused to carry out the draconian procedures.
Mojtaba Saheli (Yasaveli), 31, who was previously blinded in his left eye by the regime, was recently informed by prison officials that he is to be blinded in the right eye with acid.
On March 3, 2015 he was blinded in one eye with acid in Gohardasht Prison in the presence of the regime’s deputy prosecutor in Tehran Mohammad Shahriari and prison officials after the draconian sentence was upheld by the regime’s Supreme Court.
On August 3, 2009 he allegedly blinded a driver in Qom, south of Tehran, with acid. The regime’s court in Qom sentenced Mr. Saheli to be blinded in both eyes with acid, pay blood money and serve a 10-year prison term as part of the regime’s inhumane law of retribution.
Mr. Saheli is currently imprisoned in Ward 2 of Hall 4 of Gohardasht Prison. He had been told to pay blood money to avoid the new blinding sentence from being implemented on his right eye.
According to one report, Mr. Saheli recently inquired from the prison’s office of implementations about his sentence and was informed that the implementation order for his sentence had been received, but until now no physician had been willing to break their doctor’s oath to carry out the sentence.
He was furthermore informed that the regime’s judiciary is pressing for the sentence to be carried out and that at any moment one of the doctors may decide to set aside their oath and carry out the blinding sentence.
Five prisoners are currently awaiting to be administered acid on to their eyes and ears. They are:
• Mojtaba Saheli (Yasaveli), 31, whose left eye has already been blinded, and who is awaiting implementation of a sentence to be blinded in the right eye.
• Fatollah Khojasteh, sentenced to be blinded in one eye and made deaf in one ear with acid.
• An unnamed prisoner, sentenced to be blinded in both eyes with acid.
• An unnamed prisoner, sentenced to be blinded in one eye and made deaf in one ear with acid.
• An unnamed prisoner, sentenced to be blinded in one eye with acid.
Dr. Sanabargh Zahedi, chairman of the Judicial Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI ), earlier this month said: “The inhumane law of retribution (qisas) has been implemented against the Iranian people for the past 37 years. These punishments date back to the medieval ages and show the clerical regime’s reactionary nature. These inhuman punishments are clear violations of all principles and norms of a modern judiciary, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and all civil and political covenants. Such punishments undoubtedly constitute a savage form of torture and should be condemned by any freedom-seeking person. The Iranian Resistance and NCRI members have since 1980 condemned the regime’s qisas law as anti-human.”“According to the logic of the Quran and modern democratic Islam the first principle which applies to the penal code is dynamism. Thus the Islamic penal provision should be interpreted within the context of social and economic conditions and scientific progress. The clerical regime is centuries away from this logic, and as such it is clear that there is no possibility of reform within this regime,” he added.
Amnesty International in a statement on March 5, 2015 condemned the Iranian regime for blinding Mr. Saheli in his left eye two days earlier.
“Punishing someone by deliberately blinding them is an unspeakably cruel and shocking act,' said Raha Bahreini, Amnesty International's Iran Researcher.
'This punishment exposes the utter brutality of Iran’s justice system and underlines the Iranian authorities' shocking disregard for basic humanity. Meting out cruel and inhuman retribution punishments is not justice. Blinding, like stoning, amputation and flogging, is a form of corporal punishment prohibited by international law. Such punishments should not be carried out under any circumstances.”

Saudi diplomat: We witnessed a complete destruction in Tehran

Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir

Saudi Arabian diplomats who had been based in Tehran have returned home to Riyadh with stories of mistreatment at the hands of Iranian officials, Euro News reported on January 6th, 2016.
Their arrival follows their government’s decision to cut ties with Saudi’s main political and religious rival in the region following an attack on its embassy.
Leading embassy diplomat Mohammed al Otaibi told journalists at King Khalid International airport:
“We witnessed a complete destruction, they messed up the contents of the embassy (in Tehran), then there were three days of horror which we were forced to live through until we arrived here at the airport thank God.” He went on to claim his staff had been forcibly searched.
An Iranian mob stormed the Saudi embassy, setting it alight on Saturday
Despite the breach in relations Saudi Arabia says it will not affect talks on Syria, another round of which is scheduled in Geneva this month.

Tehran: Clashes at Sharif University during Rouhani’s speech

Clashes at Sharif University in Tehran

Eyewitness report from Sharif University in Tehran indicate that clashes erupted between the two factions of the government, the hardline clergies and the so called moderates, attending President Rouhani’s speech. 

The hardliners being backed by the Supreme leader, Khamenei chanted slogans against the other side, the supporters of Rafsanjani and Rouhani. While the Rouhani supporters shout back at the rival faction by chanting slogans in support of the powerless president. 

These clashes happened while the people in the audience where vetted carefully. The Rouhani faction had brought as many number of people to the event as possible to avoid embarrassment.   

Iran: Tehran University Students protest against suppression and plundering

Tehran University students demonstrated today, on the occasion of National Student Day protesting against suppression and plundering of the country’s wealth by the Iranian clerical regime. Students chanted 'University is no a military base.'
Eyewitness reports indicate that the demonstration by Tehran University was against a bogus plan by the authorities to rip off the university’s budget under the pretext of privatization. 
They also expressed anger and dissent against repressive measures applied in the school and the government filtering the internet sites. 
In another case, students from Sharif University in Tehran taped their mouths during president Rouhani’s speech in a sign of clampdown and repression in the country which he and other clerics rule.

Suppressive iranian agents again target gathering of families of political prisoners arrest more people

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
 On Monday, November 23, agents of regime’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) brutally attacked families of martyrs and political prisoners in Tehran’s Vanak Square arresting some and taking them to undisclosed location. This measure taken to prevent their protest gathering was the second such attack by suppressive forces this week against these families. Just two days ago, the suppressive forces had attacked an assembly of families of martyrs and political prisoner in front ofEvin Prison arresting dozens and transferring them to Evin or Qerchak Prison in Varamin.

Ms. Seamin Ayvaz-zadeh, 56, mother of political prisoner Omid Ali Shenas, who was arrested on November 21 and transferred with a number of other women to Qerchak Prison in Varamin is currently on hunger strike. She suffers of high blood pressure and arrhythmia.
Her son Mr. Omid Ali Shenas, a political prisoner in Ward 8 of Evin that has staged a hunger strike in protest to the MOIS agents attack on the families of prisoners and the arrest of his mother, was battered by head henchman Khazaii, a guard officer in Evin. This prisoner that has been detained for 14 months has been kept in limbo and his trial date has still not been announced.
The Iranian regime has found brutal suppression as the only tool to confront the wave of popular protests and public abhorrence.
The Iranian Resistance calls on the Iranian people, especially the valiant youth, to support and show solidarity with the families of political prisoners, especially those arrested in the recent days, and urges all international human rights agencies to take immediate and effective action to secure the release of all arrestees of the recent days.

Iran: shocking figures- Human catastrophy

20% reduction in food basket

State-run in Iran acknowledge economic mismanagement by the mullahs’ regime has led to Iranians being able to consume 20 percent less food and liquids.
In 2010, each Iranian household on average consumed an annual amount of 2,318 kilograms of food and liquids. In the current year, the average annual consumption stands at 1874 kg, a decrease of 19.15%, according to the state-run Etemad daily.
The difference in consumption rates in the two periods is considerably higher when considering only basic food and beverage.
Iranian households on average consumed 1076 kg of basic food and beverage in 2010 in comparison to 846 kg in the current year, a net decrease of 21.37%, the report said.
The report was published on Wednesday by other state-run media including the Khorasan daily and the Alef and Tabnak websites.
On September 20, Eghtesadnews.com, a state-run website published an advertisement for selling body organs that had been posted in Pasteur Square in Tehran. This square is in the vicinity of the headquarters of Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the office of the regime’s President Hassan Rouhani .
This advertisement reads: “Eye cornea, bone marrow, liver blood type B+ for immediate sale.”
This website wrote that many government officials probably pass this advertisement for selling body organs every day on their way to work.
Such advertisements are posted on the walls by the very poor who have no money to buy food or receive medical treatment.
There is rampant poverty in oil-rich Iran which ranks eighth in the world for natural resources and mines. The ruling mullahs’ regime spends most of country’s resources on its nuclear bomb project, domestic suppression, and meddling and terrorism in the Middle East.
Reports from Tehran indicate that these advertisements may readily be seen in other streets of the capital.

70,000 high school students  use crack

Drug addiction on the rise in Iran under the mullahs

Drug distribution in various cities, especially in Tehran, has grown and become much easier than ever before, said a regime official in Iran.
2.65% of the country’s population between the ages of 15 to 65 are addicted to drugs, and currently in major cities such as Tehran there are around 200 to 250 so-called contaminated areas, he added.
Back in 2001 five percent of all addicts in Iran were women. However, in 2010 and 2011 their numbers rose to 9%, he continued, meaning the ratio of women addicts in the country has nearly doubled and this is an alarm bell. 
Currently 70,000 of country’s high school students have experienced using crack, he finalized.

man who set himself ablaze outside regime judiciary died of his wounds

According to reports from Iranians in the city of Molkan the individual who set himself ablaze last Monday, September 28th outside the mullahs’ judiciary in this city, lost his life to his wounds.

This individual was 45-year old Sirous Neekkhu. This Iranian committed such a horrific suicide protesting how the judiciary treated a case related to his family.
The funeral for this individual was held on Saturday under tight security conditions. 

A Strategy Necessary to Push Iran Out of Syria

                                        Iranian Mullahs  are  taking over Syria  

The Iran nuclear deal is a good one as far as it goes, and if Obama administration officials actually implement it. But Washington has to show it will stand up against Tehran’s regional designs. The place to do that is Syria, The Daily Beast reported.
News from the Middle East has been dominated by two separate sets of issues in recent months.  First, there is Iran and the contentious debate over the nuclear agreement with Tehran, known more formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The other has been Syria, with its refugees overflowing into Europe, a new Russian military build-up, and Washington’s admission that its initial, half-hearted effort to build up a moderate opposition had failed. 
In actuality, these narratives are much more closely intertwined than the coverage would have you believe, because how the United States handles Syria could have a profound effect on the long-term implications of the Iranian nuclear agreement.
As with the product of any difficult negotiation, the deal is far from perfect. The limited duration of some of the most important constraints on Iranian nuclear development leaves people uneasy
Whether one supported or opposed the JCPOA, at this point all Americans have an interest in ensuring that it is rigorously and successfully implemented to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons.
Our greatest concern with the Iranian nuclear deal is an issue that is only just starting to get the attention in the public debate that it deserves: its potential impact on the Middle East itself.  In truth no one—including the Israelis and the Saudis—feared that the Iranians would start lobbing nukes at them as soon as they got them.  Instead, everyone’s (legitimate) fear was that an Iranian nuclear arsenal would enable and encourage greater Iranian efforts to destabilize the region by subversion or even outright aggression.  The deal itself will take that particular worry off the table for 10-15 years if not longer, but does not mitigate the pre-existing problem of Iranian efforts to overturn the regional status quo by force, terrorism, insurgency, and other unsavory methods. 
In fact, that’s what all of America’s allies are most afraid of. That, coupled with the fear that the United States will use the nuclear deal to further disengage from the region. Understandably, they fret over a post-nuclear-deal future in which the United States is making even less of an effort to play its traditional role as regional stabilizer, and its very absence further incites Iran to greater aggressiveness.
The Obama Administration insists that it does not plan to disengage from the Middle East after the Iranian nuclear deal, but America’s Middle Eastern allies remain unconvinced. Across the board in private, Gulf officials damn the Administration for its disdain for the Middle East and particularly its weak response to Iran. But the reality is that in the absence of American engagement, leadership, and military involvement in the region, the GCC states (led by the Saudis) get frightened, and their tendency when frightened is to lash out. 
The GCC military campaign in Yemen is a perfect example of this.  It represents a dramatic departure from past practice: the Gulf States had never intervened directly with their own armed forces against another country, except a part of a massive American-led force, as in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.  It drives home the point that in the absence of a strong American role in pushing back on Iran, the GCC’s default mode is to attack on their own
Here there are three possibilities, but ultimately only one conclusion.  Yemen is the wrong place for the United States to confront Iran.  Yemen is simply not consequential enough to justify making any American investment there; in fact, Washington should be doing everything it can to help the Saudis and the GCC end their own intervention in Yemen, not reinforce it.  Iraq is also the wrong choice too.  
That leaves Syria.  If the United States is going to push back on Iran in the aftermath of the nuclear deal to demonstrate to both Tehran and our regional allies that we are not abandoning the field and allowing (or enabling) the Iranians to make greater gains, Syria is the place to do it.  Syria is a genuinely contested battlefield with high stakes for both Iran and the GCC states and one where increased American action could tip the scales in the midst of a prolonged stalemate.  This is not the place to describe in detail how the United States might mount such an effort, but we can sketch out some of the broad contours, to highlight what should and could change.
First and foremost the Obama Administration needs to abandon its self-defeating focus on Daesh (the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL) as the only target of its strategy and adopt a comprehensive approach that deals with the Syrian civil war as a whole.  The Administration’s single-minded approach fails to recognize that Daesh is nothing but a symptom of the wider malady of the Syrian civil war. Even if the U.S. could somehow vaporize Daesh, if the civil war continues to rage, new extremist organizations will simply emerge to replace it.  This is exactly what happened with al-Qaeda in Iraq.  Daesh’s predecessor was virtually extirpated in Iraq by 2011 until the civil war in neighboring Syria provided it with a new refuge and lifeline.  Resolve the civil war, however, and the source of Daesh’s strength and appeal disappears.
There are 4 million Syrian refugees already, and millions more to follow if the war keeps raging. The only way to truly end that crisis is to end the Syrian civil war.
Ending the Syrian civil war will mean creating a Syrian opposition army capable of effectively threatening all of the other warring factions, including those backed by Iran as well as Sunni extremists, and forcing them to come to the bargaining table to work out their differences politically, rather than simply pursuing a military strategy.  This was ultimately how NATO engineered the Dayton Accords, helping to build a Croat Army (backed by NATO air power) able to defeat the Serbs on the battlefield, thereby forcing Milosevic and Karadzic to sit down with Richard Holbrooke or else have the Croats overrun the rest of Serbian Bosnia. 
Until the same happens in Syria, no negotiated agreement will be worth the paper it is written on.  Since the Sunni states of the Middle East (with limited American and European covert aid) have clearly failed to create such a force, only a much greater effort by the United States—assisted by its regional and European allies—could do so. 
Of necessity, that will mean devoting far more effort toward building a new opposition military capable of dominating the battlefields of Syria.  It will also mean using American leverage and its investment in this new force to get our regional partners on board and asking them to shift away from supporting extremist groups inside Syria.  Meanwhile, the United States should continue to provide support to other existing groups inside Syria who have already proven effective, including the Southern Front and the Kurds, with the intention of eventually integrating them into a wider coalition force built around the new opposition army. 
Such an approach would also significantly ease recruiting challenges, as few Syrians have been interested in joining a force unwilling to take on Assad.  That is the primary reason that the initial U.S. train and equip program produced only a few dozen fighters despite thousands of would-be volunteers.  However, it also means taking on slightly greater risk, because it would mean scrapping the cumbersome vetting standards the Administration has so far employed.  These have successfully kept out anyone who might prove to be a terrorist agent, but they have also excluded the vast bulk of Syrian opposition fighters, virtually all of whom want to fight the Assad regime as well as Daesh, leaving a miniscule force that numbers in the dozens rather than the needed thousands.  
The approach thus far has focused on actively proving that each and every individual to be trained and armed by the United States is not an extremist, instead of using the training itself to identify the extremists and cull them out as the U.S. did successfully in Iraq in 2007-2009.  
This bass-ackwards burden of proof has dramatically slowed the process. The reality is that unless we were to abandon the train-and-equip program altogether, some American arms are going to end up with bad guys no matter how cautious we are.  But this is a commonplace in all civil wars, and it has never proven decisive or even terribly meaningful, even if the stories are always embarrassing to the provider.
The plan outlined by the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, in September 2014 remains a reasonable approach to building a new, professional, conventional Syrian opposition army, one that—with American advisers, weapons, intelligence support, and massive air power—would have a good probability of defeating the regime’s Iranian-supported forces as well as those of Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra, to make clear to all of them that victory was not possible and convince all of Syria’s warring communities to opt for a power-sharing agreement instead. 
In another critical departure from the current, failed train-and-equip mission, the right way to muster a new Syrian opposition army would be to build it in Turkey or, better still, Jordan, and to keep it there until it is ready for the Syrian melee.  The 5,400 fighters per year originally envisioned by the Administration seems entirely appropriate, as it would enable such a force to take on Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra, the Assad regime and any other challengers.  But it is critical to hold it back until it is properly armed, trained and sized to ensure that it has every chance of success to create psychological momentum in its favor.  (In addition, a force of this size will be able to occupy territory sufficient to enable the UN and NGOs to set up humanitarian relief and governance mechanisms to succor the populace in the liberated space and encourage other Syrians to join the cause.)
If the United States and its regional and Western allies are willing to properly build and support such a force, there is good reason to believe that it will be able to do in Syria what the rebuilt Croat army did in Bosnia, threaten all of its rivals with catastrophic defeat, thereby making them amenable to the compromises of the Dayton Accord.  In Syria, we should seek a similar end state, with a power-sharing arrangement that decentralizes authority and resources to the constituent communities; provides for the creation of a small, professional military representing the entire polity; and establishes equal treatment and protections for all Syrians. 
It is important to note that while Bashar al-Assad should, could and likely would go in this scenario, the Alawi community that he currently leads must get a seat at the table as well as political and economic influence equal to its demographic weight.  That is also the best way to assure that Iran (and Russia) would ultimately acquiesce, just as Russia ultimately acquiesced to the Dayton Accords (as well as Serbia’s defeat in the 1999 Kosovo war).  Indeed, at various points, whenever it has seemed that the United States would adopt this approach, the Iranians have been quick to signal that they were glad to jettison Assad in return for the Alawis getting their fair share in any future political settlement.
The new Russian military build-up obviously adds yet another complicating factor, but there is no reason it needs to be a deal-breaker.  The United States has conducted military campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo, Korea and Vietnam while Russian “advisors” and “volunteers” were present on the other side and it never led to a superpower war.  In Syria, it is hard to imagine Putin wanting to tangle with the United States if Washington makes clear that it is serious about victory, again, as was the case in both Bosnia and Kosovo. 
Moreover, as with the Iranians, there is good reason to believe that the Russians won’t fight if the United States makes clear that its goal is not to sacrifice the Alawis to Sunni extremists, but to protect them by engineering a new power-sharing agreement among all of Syria’s warring factions with appropriate guarantees for the safety of Syria’s minorities.  Ultimately, if the United States is determined to prevail in Syria, there is little that Russia can do to stop it, and such a negotiated settlement would be the best Moscow could hope for.
In the end, a serious American effort to tip the scales in Syria and bring the civil war to an end would send a powerful signal both to our Arab allies and to Iran.  It may also set the table for a new regional order where, in the aftermath of a negotiated agreement on Syria as well as the nuclear issue, there is a precedent set for greater engagement and diplomacy between the United States, Iran and the Arab States to solve the region’s problems.  But it is yet another of the paradoxes of the Middle East that before those more positive scenarios can come to pass in the aftermath of the Iranian nuclear deal, finally executing the Obama Administration’s proclaimed strategy for Syria and increasing American involvement may be the best and only way to regain control over the dangerous confrontation escalating between Iran and America’s Arab allies.  
All of which brings us back to the news from Syria.  Debating whether to take 10,000 or 100,000 refugees does not address the reality that there are 4 million Syrian refugees already, and millions more to follow if the war keeps raging.  The only way to truly end that crisis is to end the Syrian civil war. The history of the past 20 years has repeatedly demonstrated that that is possible, but only if the U.S. is willing to lead a coalition to do so, and that will require a much more serious effort than what we have tried so far.  Our strategic interests and our humanitarian impulses are finally beginning to mesh, and they all point toward taking such a greater role in Syria.
What was it that Churchill once said?  “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, but only after they have exhausted all of the alternatives.”  We’ve exhausted all of the alternatives.  It’s time now to do the right thing in Syria.

Truth behind the Iran lobby in US

Trita Parsi and its Iran lobby NIAC funded by the clerical regime in Iran

In the weeks since the Obama administration announced the perilous international Iran nuclear deal, growing attention has been paid to the network of organizations and foundations that have been actively lobbying in an effort to normalize relations between Washington and Tehran.
Rightly, that network is being referred to as the “Iran lobby.” The welcome and much-needed scrutiny of its workings and contacts provides a salutary lesson in how to identify enemies who present themselves as friends.
At the head of the pack is the Washington, DC-based National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Led by Trita Parsi, a Swedish-Iranian immigrant, NIAC has artfully worked itself into the center of the Iran policy debate. The organization has close relations with many liberal Democrat legislators and progressive outfits like J Street, the small Jewish-but-anti-Israel advocacy group, as well as minted foundations including the Ploughshares Fund and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, both of which have donated generously to NIAC’s coffers. Some of its alumnae, like Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, have even made it into the White House—in her case, as desk officer for Iran.
NIAC presents itself as a moderate, thoughtful organization. It also claims to advocate on behalf of human rights in Iran, but check the page on its website ostensibly devoted to the subject, and you will see the odd press release urging the release of Iranian-Americans currently incarcerated by the mullahs interspersed with plenty of propaganda defending the nuclear deal. Executions, torture, repression of religious minorities, systemic anti-Semitism and homophobia are all staples of the Iranian regime’s outlook and behavior—but in NIAC’s airbrushed world, such matters don’t even exist.
Indeed, NIAC’s repeated denials that it is formally connected to the Iranian regime sound increasingly hollow. As the investigative journalist Lee Smith reported a few months ago, when writing about NIAC’s legal campaign against Hassan Daioleslam, an emigre Iranian who has doggedly exposed the truth about the organization, “The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found in 2012 the work of NIAC, which wasn’t registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, ‘not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the regime.’”
Last week, The Daily Beast published a further expose on NIAC authored by “Alex Shirazi,” an Iranian dissident who wrote pseudonymously out of the fear that his family back in Iran might be targeted for reprisals. Shirazi chronicled NIAC’s evolution within the broader ambitions of the Namazis, a little-known but influential Iranian family that first rose to prominence under the Shah and returned to Iranian public life following the death of Khomeini in 1989. Among the consultants affiliated with Atieh Behar (AB) Consulting, a company with strong institutional ties to influential elements within the regime, was Trita Parsi.
According to Shirazi, “While serving as president of NIAC, Parsi also wrote intelligence briefings as an ‘affiliate analyst in Washington, DC’ for AB, focusing on such topics as whether or not the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) would revive its anti-Iran campaigning on the eve of the Iraq war, or on efforts by the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MeK), the Iranian opposition group that exposed Natanz in 2002 would get itself de-listed as a terrorist entity by the U.S. State Department.”
A good insight into NIAC’s slipperiness was gleaned from an interview with Carl Gershman, the president of the Congressionally-financed National Endowment for Democracy. Expressing regret at his decision to fund NIAC and its Iranian partner Hamyaran, a regime-sanctioned NGO, to the tune of $200,000 between 2002 and 2006, Gershman said that NIAC had misrepresented itself: “We weren’t aware when these grants were made that NIAC were presenting themselves as a lobby...We were trying something that might be a way to help people on the inside [of Iran]. But that quickly became unworkable; the grant didn’t work. Then NIAC showed itself as a lobby organization, so we have nothing to do with them anymore.”
Better late than never. Now that the truth about NIAC is emerging, one has to ask why anyone who seeks respectability in Washington would have anything to do with Parsi and his cohorts.
NIAC’s overarching aim is to strengthen the Iranian regime by boosting its ability to trade with America and its allies. That’s accompanied by lots of airy, disingenuous talk about how economic openness leads to more accountable government, but there is precious little sign of the regime reforming itself. If anything, the nuclear deal has persuaded the mullahs that they achieve better results by doing the exact opposite!
What is really irksome is NIAC’s presentation of its agenda as somehow in accord with the national interests of the U.S. Moreover, NIAC flaks, like its Research Director Reza Marashi, have even indulged in a bit of good ol’ Jew-baiting—after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) came out against the deal, Marashi accused him of putting “Israel’s interests before America’s interests.” Students of anti-Semitism will immediately recognize this deployment of the familiar “dual loyalty” smear; what makes this example especially rich is that it comes from the stooges of a regime whose slogan is “Death to America!” and whose military interventions across the region have claimed the lives of hundreds of American personnel. NIAC even insults America by claiming that it works for “human rights” in Iran and “civil rights” in the U.S., insinuating that this country is on the same moral level as one of the darkest, most repressive regimes in recent history.
When the time comes to reckon with Obama’s legacy on Iran, the role of NIAC will be understood as more than a mere footnote. Yet we shouldn’t make the same mistake as the enemies of the Jews by assigning any lobby group a mystical power. read more

NO “moderates” in Iran stop the nuke deal with them

 

they all think about just one single thing

 The following is an article written by Majid Sadeghpour, a political director of the Organization of Iranian-American Communities (OIAC-US), and published in The Hill on Monday, August 24th: i have changed its title! He sais“I think we all share a simple, basic premise, which is that the United States must not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. A nuclear-armed Iran would threaten our national security,” so said Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.), adding that he would support the nuclear deal struck between the P5+1 and Iran, “only if I’m convinced it sufficiently freezes every Iranian pathway to a nuclear weapon.” He could not have said it any better.
Although the administration insists that this agreement is not based on trust but on verification, the supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his underlings have already rejected inspections of military sites, a critical part of the inspections regime envisioned in the comprehensive long-term deal with Iran.  Tehran’s interlocutors, it appears, have made a series of unnecessary concessions in the agreement. Meanwhile, the regime has sensed that it can win even more compromises if it digs in deep enough.
As part of their sale’s pitch to unconvinced and concerned lawmakers and the public at large, President Obama and others in the administration have highlighted comments by “hardliners” in Tehran in opposition to the deal. It seems that they have bought into the myth of moderation, believing that the “moderates” will create a better future.
Indeed, the theatrics by “hardliners” in Iran’s parliament, or the anti-negotiation demonstrations by “ultra-hardliners” in Tehran’s street, coupled with the supreme leader’s rejection of military site inspections made it sound like the mullahs really did not need a deal as bad as the West. At the very least, it seemed like a “faction” of the mullahs is against the deal, while the “moderates”, including the regime’s foreign minister Javad Zarif and president Hassan Rouhani , are trying to convince the “ultra-hardliners” and Khamenei to accept some sort of agreement....more

Iran Nuclear Deal Feeds the Roots of Regional Terrorism

By Maryam Rajavi

Against the backdrop of daily reports of atrocities at the hands of terror groups in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, the world now has word of a nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and the Iranian regime, which–even in the most optimistic reading–not only fails to block Tehran’s pathways to a nuclear bomb, but will provide it with tens of billions of dollars to add to its war chest.

Some may view the concessions to Tehran as an attempt by the Obama administration to secure Iran’s cooperation to counter and defeat the insidious danger of Islamic fundamentalism. This would misread the regime’s history and stated intentions.  Tehran’s nuclear program is explicitly tied to its revolutionary, imperialist impulse. As former President and current head of the Expediency Council Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani once boasted, if the regime acquires nuclear weapons, who could prevent the export of the “revolution”?

The agreement comes as the increasingly fragile regime is reeling from a multitude of crises. Under such circumstances, the P5+1 could have easily compelled the regime to abandon its nuclear projects had it adopted a decisive policy. In reality, the international community has lost an exceptional opportunity to stop the regime from acquiring the bomb.

Regime in Tehran has acted as the driving force of the modern Islamic caliphate read more

Is the U.S. Air Force Ready to Attack Iran’s Nuclear Sites?

U.S. and Mullah's negotiators have been scrambling in Vienna to concoct an accord that will stay Tehran nuclear ambitions for at least a decade. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has spent the same amount of time plotting how to derail such an effort if it can’t be done at the negotiating table.

The U.S. has made it clear that it will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon to threaten its other neighbors in and around the Persian Gulf. If the atomic talks break down—and U.S. intelligence decides Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear-armed state—look for the Air Force’s Massive Ordnance Penetration to get the assignment to try to destroy that capability.

 The Obama Administration and its five negotiating allies—Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia—are engaged as much in psychological gamesmanship as potential pyrotechnics. The U.S. has leaked just enough information about the MOP to let the Iranian Mullahs know that the Americans believe its use could set back Iranian efforts to develop a nuclear weapon for years.

But the nation’s military leaders have made clear that a single strike with one or (more likely) more Massive Ordnance Perpetrators may not halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “Obviously anything like that can be reconstituted,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said July 1. “And so a military strike of that kind is a setback, but it doesn’t prevent the reconstitution over time.” It’s a hammer that might have to be used repeatedly if Iran refuses to back down and continues to work on its nuclear program. “The military option isn’t use once and set aside,” Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added. “It remains in place.”

While no one will say so, Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow–buried up to 80 meters beneath a mountain near the Shiite city of Qom, at a former missile base controlled by Iran’s unpredictable Revolutionary Guards–is at the top of that target list. Iran has been conducting much of its suspected nuclear-weapons work for years in underground labs and research facilities thought to be able to survive attacks by earlier generations of U.S. military bunker-busters.

“In October 2014, the Air Force successfully completed one weapon drop from the B-2 aircraft on a representative target,” the Pentagon’s top weapons-tester reported earlier this year. “The test, conducted at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, demonstrated weapon behavior after planned enhancements were incorporated.” Several additional tests have been carried out in recent months, Pentagonofficials say.

Nearly a decade ago, the Pentagon concluded that dropping its one-ton bombs on buried targets was like using a peashooter against an elephant. “Our past test experience has shown that 2,000-pound perpetrators carrying 500 pounds of high explosive are relatively ineffective against tunnels, even when skipped directly into the tunnel entrance,” a 2004 report said. “Instead, several thousand pounds of high explosives coupled to the tunnel are needed to blow down blast doors and propagate a lethal air blast throughout a typical tunnel complex.”

In late 2009, the Air Force quietly circulated a solicitation seeking a “Quick Reaction Capability” to “defeat a specific set of Hard and/or Deeply Buried Targets.” The weapon, the service said, would “maximize effects against Hard and/or Deeply Buried Targets (HDBTs), while minimizing time over target.” The Air Force said it needed the weapon to meet “Urgent Operational Needs requirements”—generally a plea from a battlefield commander who doesn’t think he has the weapons he needs to accomplish a mission assigned to him.

After several upgrades, the US Air Force has let it been known that there’s an operational stockpile of the world’s most powerful non-nuclear bombs at Whitman Air Force Base, Missouri. They’re not far from the B-2 bombers, ready to carry them 7,000 miles to Iran. That much is certain. If the Iranian Mullahs did not comply with what they have accepted in the Nuclear deal and make it collapse, Obama will be obliged to order   the deployment of the Big bomb to take out their illicit nuclear activity.