Iran: cellmate of executed decorator saved from death

                                     Women in Iranian prisons

Important News

• Iran: court hearings for rights advocate postponed
• Girl college students clash with security agents in southwest Iran
• Protesting teachers rally in northern Iran

Related News

• Iran: court hearings for rights advocate postponed
• Girl college students clash with security agents in southwest Iran
• Iran: Baha’i prisoner deprived of leave

Mohammad Ali Jaddari Forughi, the lawyer of death row prisoner Sahar Mahabadi Monfared wrote:
“Sahar Mahabadi Monfared was saved from “Qisas” (punishment of retaliation) at 2:30 pm on Monday, October 5 after the family members of the victim agreed to spare her…”

Reyhaneh Jabbari

It must be noted that Reyhane Jabbari, a 26-year old decorator who was in the same ward with Sahar for about a year prior to her execution, had placed intensive effort with the help of her mother – Mrs. Sho’le Pakravan – to save Sahar’s life and have her spared from execution. This was done while she, herself was on the death row and was finally hanged on Oct. 25, 2014.

( NCRI Women’s Committee )

Northern Iran: Teachers protesting for their rights

            protesting teachers in Iran hate mullahs

A group of teachers in the city of Rasht in Gilan Province, northern Iran, protested on Monday outside the local branch of the regime’s Education Ministry.
The Iranian teachers protested against inequality, poor living standards, and overdue wages.
 There was a strong presence of female teachers among the protesters.
On September 22, on the eve of the new Iranian academic year, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi , the Iranian Resistance’s President-elect, hailed Iran’s university and high school students, teachers, and professors as “future makers” and wished them a fruitful year with more extensive protests and advancement on the path of freedom and emancipation of the people of Iran.

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. 

How ‘facts on the ground’ in Syria were created by Russia

                  Russian airstrikes in Syria

Russia’s expanded role in the Middle East has been simply hiding in plain sight for months waiting to be found. And the Obama administration, eager for Moscow’s diplomatic help, all but invited it. (Yet another mistake.) Now that Russian jets and tanks have arrived in Syria, this intervention doesn’t look so benign, The Washington Post reported.
“These are facts on the ground,” warns John McLaughlin, former deputy director of the CIA, in an interview about the Russian military deployments. “Anything we do now will be conditioned by their presence and influence. This is a reality we now have to deal with.”
To American officials, Russian involvement in defusing the Syria mess seemed just a few months ago like a useful spinoff of the Iran nuclear deal. At the last negotiating session in Vienna, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is said to have turned to his “P5-plus-1” colleagues and proposed similar cooperation in resolving other Middle East disputes.
President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry were hopeful about working with the Russians on a “managed transition” away from a weakened President Bashar al-Assad. “I do think the window has opened a crack for us to get a political resolution in Syria, partly because both Russia and Iran, I think, recognize that the trend lines are not good for Assad,” Obama told reporters at the White House on Aug. 5.
Back then, the enthusiasts for greater Russian involvement in the Middle East included many traditional U.S. allies who also seemed eager to play the Russian card. Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman traveled to Moscow; so did U.A.E. leader Mohammed bin Zayed. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir met with Kerry and Lavrov in Qatar. An ominous sign of what was really ahead — a Russian-Iranian alliance to bolster Assad — came with the Moscow visit of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force. But otherwise, this looked until a week ago like a diplomatic love boat.
Obama and his allies failed to anticipate that Russian President Vladimir Putin would come armed to the negotiating table — and prepared to use his weapons to gain military leverage. Putin embodies a kind of muscular diplomacy the U.S. disdained over the last three years of halfhearted attempts to train and equip the Syrian opposition. Obama’s failure to develop a coherent strategy left the field open for Putin.
The speed and decisiveness of Russian action appear to have taken the administration by surprise, prompting Kerry to voice “grave concerns.” A U.S. official said the intelligence community predicted that Russia would provide indirect support to Assad, such as training and advisers, but that “direct military intervention was not considered the most likely” response.
A close source to Assad’s regime blasted what he claimed was chronic American misunderstanding of Syria. “The scandal is how amazingly incompetent American intelligence is,” he wrote in an email. “Not only were U.S. officials predicting until weeks ago that the Russians could abandon Assad, ... U.S. intelligence could not even pick up on what the Russians were doing, the logistical, technical, military and manpower preparations ... [ to] execute such an unprecedented mission.”
Though Putin claimed Monday that Russia was intervening to fight the Islamic State, so far his targets have mostly been the anti-Assad rebels who were advancing in Homs and Hama in western Syria, threatening Assad’s ancestral homeland of Latakia in the northwest. U.S. officials may protest, but they are “de-conflicting” military operations with the Russians, which many Syrians translate as cooperation.read more

Bahrain seizes weapons, arrests suspects for ’Iran links’

Iran sending arms to meddle in Bahrain

Bahrain authorities said they had uncovered a large stash of weapons and arrested a number of people suspected of having links with Iran, AFP reported Thursday.
A statement late Wednesday published on the interior ministry’s website said arms and explosives were discovered in a house in the mainly Shia town of Nuwaidrat, south of the capital Manama.
The cache included a tonne and a half of C4 explosives and other explosive material, as well as automatic rifles, pistols, and hand grenades, according to the ministry.
It said several suspects were detained for allegedly having “links with Iran Bahrainin August arrested five people suspected of links with Iran in connection with a bombing that killed two policemen in the island Gulf state.
The tiny but strategic US ally has seen frequent unrest since a Shia-led uprising erupted four years ago demanding a constitutional monarchy.
Bahrain frequently accuses Shia Iran of backing the unrest.

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.

Children: Caught in Syrian vortex

Syrian refugee children on the streets

About one-half of the refugees streaming out of Syria are children, making this an enormously difficult matter. Many of the refugees racing towards the European Union are unaccompanied minors, including many very young children. There are reports of 3-month old infants being put on inflatable boats in this desperate exodus from the vortex of destruction that was once Syria, The Hill reported.
Indeed, Syria is no more. It is a Humpty Dumpty that fell off the wall and then was crushed by Hama rules. Hama rules were developed by Bashar Al Assad’s father. When the city of Hama in Syria started an Islamist rebellion Hafez sent troops in, killed thousands, and cemented them over. Bashar has proven to be much worse than even his murderous father. Bashar drops barrel bombs, essentially oil barrels filled with explosives on anyone that is walking, sleeping, praying, having a rare family dinner, dreaming and about to be dead.
Much of the world is joint and severally liable and culpable for this ethical and moral nightmare. We have failed the Syrian children in the worst sort of ways: from neglect, from lack of backbone to stand up for what is right, and from the moral turpitude that often passes as strategic thinking.

The U.S. did little when it could have done much early in this nightmare.  It has been generous with aid money, but has been parsimonious with real strategic and moral thinking.
The Russians blocked any real attempts to solve this issue early on in an attempt to keep a Navy Base, their people on the ground and their weapons still flowing, and Syria was one of Russia’s biggest arms markets. They are now sending aircraft, advisors and more to Syria to support the mass-murdering, nation-destroyer, Assad.

The Iranians are supporting Shia militias, sending some of their own people, and are sending Afghan fighters from Iranian camps to fight on the side of Assad. Iran also supports Hezbollah of Lebanon, which is also in the fight beside Assad.
ISIS is the spawn of the Iraq wars of the last decades, the collapse of Syria and Iraq, the vernal selfishness of many of the outside and inside parties involved, money coming from various parts of the world to support them, and also a lot of sociopathy and psychopathy. The 10 percent rule applies to this group.

Turkey has done much for the refugees that it has taken in. It has been one of the most generous countries to them.
Lebanon is being overrun with refugees. The last time that happened, then with Sunni Palestinians and this time with Sunni Syrians, the demographics of the country went topsy-turvy and a civil war broke out that cost almost 200,000 lives. Jordan is facing a flood of refugees to add to the Palestinians and others it has taken in. Its future is at risk. The entire region is at risk from the spread of an ideology or murder and revenge that could take down many more places if it is not stemmed now.

The EU is looking at one of the worst refugee crises in its modern history. The entire EU experiment is at risk as border, economic and other tensions mount. Ultra-right wing extremist groups are also growing in the EU as their economies continue to stagnate and people are looking for scapegoats.
The refugee children, some of them very young, are caught in this dangerous, swirling vortex. What would you feel like as a young child of 5, 10 or even 15 running from such violence and fear and then into the unknown?

The average time a refugee is a refugee in 19 years. Can the Middle East and the EU deal with that one? What will these children of war and exodus be like when they grow up?
Where are the world’s strategic and moral leaders on this? Where are the creative leaders who can turn this around?
Sullivan is a professor of Economics at the National Defense University and an adjunct professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University. The opinions expressed are his own.