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IRAN’S POWER STRUGGLE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES CONTINUE FOLLOWING I.S. ATTACK & ELECTION

What Happens in Iran After the ISIS Attacks?: Reza Shafiee, American Thinker, June 14, 2017 — In many ways, the Iranian regime is different from other classic dictatorships.

Rouhani’s Second Term: On a Collision Course with the Revolutionary Guards: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, JCPA, June 7, 2017— Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected to a second term, winning 57 percent of the votes in the May 19, 2017, election.

Is Trump All Talk on Iran?: Jonathan S. Tobin, National Review, May 31, 2017 — During his trip to the Middle East last week, President Donald Trump had one consistent theme and he never wavered from it: The region needs to unite to stop Iran.

The Tehran Two-Step: Jenna Lifhits, Weekly Standard, May 8, 2017— Details of the United States' 2016 prisoner swap with Iran continue to surface more than a year later, forming a picture much different from the one the Obama administration presented at the time.

 

On Topic Links

 

Terrorism in Tehran: ISIS Intensifies Its Subversive Activity in the Middle East: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, JCPA, June 15, 2017

What the Islamic State Wants in Attacking Iran: Will McCants, Foreign Policy, June 7, 2017

Drawing a “Broader Conclusion” on Iran’s Nuclear Program: Olli Heinonen, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, June 14, 2017 

The Ethnic Instability of Iran: Mike Konrad, American Thinker, June 11, 2017

 

 

 

WHAT HAPPENS IN IRAN AFTER THE ISIS ATTACKS?

Reza Shafiee

American Thinker, June 14, 2017

 

In many ways, the Iranian regime is different from other classic dictatorships.  But who would have thought that in mourning Tehran's terrorist attacks last week, a first for ISIS in Iran, which left 13 dead and some forty others injured, the mullahs' supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, would set a new high in absurdity?

 

It is obvious that any leader's first priority in any civilized country in the world would be to mourn with his people.  It is even customary for leaders and elected officials to show at the scene as soon as possible and pay respects to those who lost their lives and comfort the families of the victims.  But not Khamenei.  He did nothing.  Instead, on June 7, he callously minimized the ISIS twin attacks by shrugging them off, saying: "These firecrackers that happened today will not have the slightest effect on the will of the people."

 

Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, claimed that "the incident was not unexpected," and the regime's Parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, referred to the bloody attack as a "gem" and a "valuable jewel." Such comments, although painful and shocking for many Iranians, had a hidden and dreadful truth.  Khamenei and Rouhani alike were trying to capitalize on the ISIS attack in their political favor. Iran's police chief and later minister of intelligence and security (MOIS) gave, in some cases, conflicting reports and different accounts of the events.  One thing was certain: neither was being transparent.  In comparison to how, for example, British police were clearly and consistently releasing information to the public in recent terrorist attacks in London, the regime authorities were trying to cover them up.

 

The MOIS chief was vague and refused to give bombers' last names and their prior activities.  Case in point was one of the bombers, Serias Sadeghi, an Iranian Kurd from Paveh, a city in western Iran, who has been cited as a prominent recruiter for ISIS in Iranian Kurdistan. It has been reported that Sadeghi, over a year ago, was arrested by MOIS and then recruited by ISIS.  He underwent training for three months.  Then he was released.   

 

Iranian Kurdistan since the 1979 revolution has always been a hotspot for the regime.  People in that region are twice as much under pressure by the IRGC and MOIS as the rest of the country.  How is it possible that an ISIS recruiter has such a free hand in Kurdistan?  It just does not add up. It has been a pattern throughout the mullahs' regime to use a diversion when it is struggling to stay afloat in the face of problems at home.  The Iranian regime's founding father, Khomeini, set an example when, for the first time, he shocked Iranians by calling the devastating eight-year-old Iran-Iraq war a "blessing."  Khomeini's fatwa for British writer Salman Rushdie's head is another famous example of how this regime operates and dodges problems.  The fatwa was used as an excuse to cover the heavy losses in the war with neighboring Iraq in 1988. Then again, there were the planned terrorist attacks designed by MOIS to blow up Imam Reza's holy shrine in the northern eastern city of Mashhad in 1994 and blame it on the regime's opposition.

 

Why would Khamenei and his regime welcome such a heinous attack in Tehran by ISIS? The short answer is that a new excuse was needed to prevent the powder keg – the Iranian society – from explosion. Despite arguments that elections were a show of unity and force for the mullahs' regime, they were not.  The election opened old wounds and intensified factional infighting and an unprecedented power struggle.  Since a year before the presidential election of May 29, Iran's supreme leader had been planning for – engineering – it.  He openly banned his previous favorite former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from running in hope of a quiet and clean "section" for the post.  He failed, and Ahmadinejad defiantly threw his hat in but was blocked from entering the race by the powerful Guardian Council.

 

The next step was to prop up Ebrahim Raisi, an infamous hanging judge with a track record of at least 30,000 political executions in 1988.  All factions within the mullahs' regime tried hard to brush off the massacre.  Raisi and Rouhani struggled to distance themselves from killing of those prisoners who were serving their sentences.  The main Iranian opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (POMI/MEK) shone the light on the regime's black history last year with a major campaign.  Among those executed were teenage girls as young as 13, according to Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Khomeini's handpicked successor, who was later sacked for protesting the summary executions…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]    

 

 

Contents            

                                                                        

 

ROUHANI’S SECOND TERM: ON A COLLISION

COURSE WITH THE REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS                                  

Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall                                                                                        

JCPA, June 7, 2017

 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected to a second term, winning 57 percent of the votes in the May 19, 2017, election. During the campaign, Rouhani ended up going head-to-head with the conservative candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, who was supported by the spiritual Leader of Iran, Khamenei, and is on the list of candidates to succeed him.

 

The fact that Rouhani was elected despite Iranians’ growing disappointment with him may reflect, when all is said and done, the choice of the lesser evil. The other option, Raisi, was responsible for mass executions of political prisoners in the late 1980s. Rouhani’s first four years in office – which most notably will be remembered for the nuclear deal with the West – did not bring about the hoped-for economic transformation. The election campaign also put Rouhani on a direct collision course with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). That pertains particularly to sensitive issues such as Iran’s missile program, its nuclear program (Rouhani’s concessions during the negotiations have not been forgiven), and Iran’s regional policy. It pertains to economic issues as well, including the need to subject the IRGC’s shadow economy to transparency and taxation. Most of all, however, the collision course has to do with the issues on which Iranians most fervently long for a change – human rights, women’s rights, individual freedom, and freedom of expression. On all these, Rouhani has no good tidings to offer.

 

In the foreign sphere, it is indeed symbolic that on the very day Rouhani’s election victory was announced, U.S. President Donald Trump opened a new chapter in U.S. regional policy with his visit to Iran’s bitter political-religious adversary, Saudi Arabia. From there, Trump went on to Israel, a country Iran does not recognize and whose destruction it calls for. Perhaps as a sign of what is to come, a short time before Trump landed in Saudi Arabia, the Houthi rebels in Yemen fired a 675-km-range Burkan-2 (Volcano-2) ballistic missile at the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Although not the first of its kind, such a launch at such a sensitive time was carried out with Iran’s approval. It conveyed the message – both to the United States and to the reelected Iranian president – that the IRGC, which has the Leader’s support, has no intention of forgoing its ambitious goals either at home or abroad.

 

The West, of course, lauded the victory of the so-called “moderate,” pragmatic, reformist leader over his conservative, hardline opponent. The desire to return to “business as usual” with Iran is very strong. The galloping of Western companies, accompanied by delegations of politicians, is heard in the streets of Tehran. To the ordinary Iranians’ deep disappointment, human rights and civil society issues go almost unmentioned. As in the past, the West prefers to hide behind the fig leaf of a “reformist” president who – “helped by the will of the Iranian people” – defeated his ultra-conservative rival and proved that Iran is looking westward, wishing only to return to the international community’s good graces.

 

At the start of his second term, Rouhani faces a huge challenge both in the domestic and foreign spheres. At home, despite a change for the better in the macro- economic sense, he has not succeeded to bring about a tangible desired micro-economic improvement in Iranians’ lives. The distress of young Iranians, who constitute many of those who elected him, remains unchanged. The promises of the first term have not been borne out. Unemployment rates are still high, particularly among the educated young. Rouhani is again promising jobs, social justice, reforms, as well as personal and political freedom. Yet, he has not been able to secure the release from house arrest the leaders of the reformist camp, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and former Majlis (parliament) Chairman Mehdi Karroubi, to reopen reformist newspapers and websites, or to improve the human rights situation.

 

That failure continues to be felt, and Rouhani could not cite even a symbolic achievement to his supporters who cried, during the campaign rallies, “Ya Hossein, Ya Hossein.” On the other hand, the ongoing, now eight-year house arrest of the reformist “Green” leaders – whom young Iranians continue to regard as representing the hope for a change – reflects the regime’s fear of a resurgence of the protest movement that was violently suppressed in 2009. Hence, there may still be hope for a change in Iran under the right domestic and international circumstances…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]    

 

 

Contents   

                       

IS TRUMP ALL TALK ON IRAN?

Jonathan S. Tobin

National Review, May 31, 2017

 

During his trip to the Middle East last week, President Donald Trump had one consistent theme and he never wavered from it: The region needs to unite to stop Iran. Mutual antipathy for Tehran has driven Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia to make common cause with Israel. It was also the motivation for the massive $110 billion arms deal Trump struck with the Saudis, who believe that President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran has endangered their security.

 

But while Trump talks tough about the Iranians, the normally bellicose Islamist regime has been restrained, at least by its standards, in response. Why? The Iranians may be unhappy with Trump’s effort to orchestrate the creation of a Middle East NATO that would oppose their dream of regional hegemony, but they are actually quite pleased with other elements of his administration’s Iran policy. For all of Trump’s bluster, his decision not only to leave the nuclear agreement in place but to erect no obstacles to a major U.S. commercial deal with Iran may have convinced the ayatollahs that the president isn’t quite as hostile as he wants to seem.

 

One of the least noticed aspects of the nuclear deal was a provision that granted Tehran an exception to U.S. sanctions that remained in place after it was signed. That provision allowed U.S. companies to sell “commercial passenger aircraft and related parts and services” to Iran, and Boeing took advantage of it, joining European businesses in a race to secure Iranian business. It was a clever strategy that enabled Obama to undermine the remaining resistance to the deal. If, as Obama hoped, a major U.S. firm such as Boeing were to conclude a massive deal of its own with Iran, the jobs created by the sale would build a strong new constituency opposed to retightening the screws on Tehran no matter the regime’s subsequent actions.

 

Boeing’s deal with Iran was concluded in June 2016, and the Obama administration subsequently issued the requisite licenses for it to move forward. But the Trump administration still has a chance to raise objections and to block the delivery of the planes to Tehran. The grounds for objection were already clear last year, when Boeing was celebrating the deal: Many of the companies with which it would be doing business have strong connections to or are owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which coordinates Iran’s international terrorist network. Yet so far, the Trump administration has remained suspiciously silent about the deal, leading Iran to the not unreasonable conclusion that while the president may be willing to talk about its role as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, he is as reluctant to do something about it as his predecessor was.

 

Trump has no good options when it comes to tearing up the nuclear deal that he spent so much of the 2016 campaign denouncing as a betrayal of U.S. interests. Walking away from the pact at a moment when neither America’s European allies nor Russia and China are willing to re-impose sanctions would simply give the Iranians permission to move quickly toward a bomb without providing a means short of war to stop them. But Trump does have options that can start the process of rebuilding an international quarantine against Iranian terror and punishing the regime for its illegal missile tests.

 

Earlier this month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a sweeping set of measures designed to impose new restrictions on trade with Iran because of its human-rights violations and support for terror. The point of such efforts is to expand the list of Iranian individuals and companies affected by the sanctions that still remain in place, so as to hamper the ability of the IRGC and other agents of the regime to profit from foreign trade. Moreover, even if other nations won’t re-impose their own sanctions on Iran, U.S. measures that bar foreign banks from the American financial system if they do business with terror-connected Iranian entities can still have a devastating impact on the regime.

 

President Trump mocked John Kerry as the worst negotiator in history for his disastrous role in making the nuclear pact possible. But if he doesn’t move to support the Senate bill and to do something about the Boeing deal, then he will effectively be throwing in his lot with Obama’s secretary of state, who remains a public opponent of increased sanctions on Iran. The reason for Trump’s reluctance to move against Boeing is obvious: Promises to create American jobs were as important to the success of his campaign as were his criticisms of Obama. Putting any further obstacles in the way of the transaction would have a devastating impact on the company and the thousands of workers it employs. Moreover, Boeing is looking to expand its ties with Iran and has applied for another license to sell 30 more planes to entities within the country. But Iran uses commercial planes such as the ones Boeing sells to ferry supplies, munitions, and “volunteers” to Syria, where they have helped preserve the rule of the barbarous Assad regime. No one in the White House can pretend that Boeing’s budding business relationship with the Islamic Republic is unrelated to the security concerns that Trump discussed with the Saudis and Israelis last week.

 

All of which is to say that there’s a glaring contradiction between Trump’s indulgence of Boeing’s desire to profit from its dealings with Iran and his efforts to rein in a dangerous foe of U.S. interests. If he stays silent and/or allows the planes to be delivered, it may preserve jobs for some of the working-class voters who backed him. But it will also validate Tehran’s belief that he is as much a paper tiger as Obama was. And an Iran unfettered by fear of U.S. power, hard and soft, would be an even bigger threat to global security.  

                                                                       

 

Contents                                                                                                                                                                         

                                       THE TEHRAN TWO-STEP

Jenna Lifhits

Weekly Standard, May 8, 2017

 

Details of the United States' 2016 prisoner swap with Iran continue to surface more than a year later, forming a picture much different from the one the Obama administration presented at the time. The latest revelations are the most shocking yet. Under the deal, the United States granted clemency to 7 Iranians and dismissed charges against another 14 in exchange for the release of 4 Americans held in Iran. President Barack Obama called it "a reciprocal humanitarian gesture"—but it turns out the Justice Department had labeled many of those Iranians "a clear threat to U.S. national security."

 

Obama made the announcement on January 17, one day after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal with Iran took effect, along with the news that Tehran and Washington had settled a decades-old claim over an arms deal gone awry. Obama administration officials claimed the settlement—$400 million plus $1.3 billion in interest—saved American taxpayers a significant sum by avoiding a Hague Tribunal proceeding.

 

The string of briefings left dozens of questions unanswered, but most of Washington focused on the timing of the agreements. Officials repeatedly stressed that the money and the prisoners were separate from one another, and from the nuclear deal that had been a top priority for the administration. Skeptical lawmakers and members of the media swamped the administration with requests for information about the mechanics of the $1.7 billion outlay amid allegations that it was a ransom payment for the jailed Americans. Those questions were slowly answered over months—though not by the White House.

 

The Wall Street Journal ignited the firestorm in August 2016 with its report that the Obama administration had delivered to Iran $400 million in cash, the first installment of the settlement, via an unmarked cargo plane. Members of Congress toughened their demands for information and raised concerns that Tehran would use the hard currency to boost the Lebanese militia Hezbollah or Bashar al-Assad's murderous Syrian regime. "For the administration to continue to refuse to answer simple questions regarding its suspicious delivery of $400 million in pallets of cash to Iran only raises more questions," then-congressman Mike Pompeo told The Weekly Standard in August. Iran ended up authorizing the money for transfer to its military, according to a September policy brief by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

 

Administration officials claimed they used cash because the United States did not have a banking relationship with Iran. "What we have is the manufacturing of outrage in a story that we disclosed in January," Obama said. "The only bit of news that is relevant on this is the fact that we paid cash. .  .  . We couldn't send them a check and we could not wire the money." But as TWS reported in September, the administration made such wire payments to Iran before and after the president's claim, in July 2015 and April 2016. As controversy over the cash payment raged, administration officials maintained that the financial settlement and prisoner swap were not coordinated; it was a "coincidence" that the money arrived in Iran at almost the same time the regime freed the American prisoners. But in fact, as another Journal report revealed a few weeks later, the cash payment was part of a "tightly scripted exchange" tied to the release of the Americans. Iran could take possession of the cash only once the Americans were in the air (three left that day). Another two cash shipments totaling $1.3 billion were delivered in the weeks that followed.

 

Following the Journal's disclosure, Obama officials said that the administration had used the cash as "leverage." "We took advantage of leverage that we felt we could have to make sure that they got out safely and efficiently," then-State Department spokesman John Kirby said. "I don't think anybody in the administration is going to make any apology for having taken advantage of those opportunities to get these Americans home." He admitted, "I certainly would agree that this particular fact is not something that we've talked about in the past."

 

Then, in late September, the Journal shed light on another deal: The United States had agreed to support lifting United Nations sanctions on two Iranian banks critical to financing Tehran's missile program. Senior State Department official Brett McGurk signed three documents the morning of January 17, 2016, the report revealed: one for the prisoner swap, one for the $1.7 billion payment, and one committing to support lifting the U.N. sanctions. The decision received minimal press coverage at the time, and Obama did not mention it that day. "We still have sanctions on Iran for its violations of human rights, for its support of terrorism, and for its ballistic missile program," Obama said in announcing the swap and settlement. "And we will continue to enforce these sanctions, vigorously."

 

The three agreements were certainly linked, said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, all rooted in the Obama administration's desire to secure the JCPOA. "The nuclear deal was, for the Iranian regime, not the end of negotiations. It was nearly the beginning," Dubowitz told TWS. "They saw an opportunity in the waning year of the Obama administration to try and extract as many concessions as they could from an administration that was clearly .  .  . desperate for a deal." He added, "The notion that somehow the $1.7 billion was about an outstanding military account, and that had nothing to do with the hostages, which had nothing to do with Bank Sepah is completely absurd."…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

 

Contents

On Topic Links

 

Terrorism in Tehran: ISIS Intensifies Its Subversive Activity in the Middle East: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, JCPA, June 15, 2017—The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the coordinated simultaneous terror attacks on Iran’s parliament (Majlis) building and on the tomb of Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. The group issued a statement in its media arm, as well as a short video from a camera carried by one of the assailants at the parliament.

What the Islamic State Wants in Attacking Iran: Will McCants, Foreign Policy, June 7, 2017 —After years of waiting and wanting to strike Iran, the Islamic State claims to have finally done so. According to recent news reports, four militants went on a shooting spree in Iran’s parliament, while other operatives detonated a bomb inside the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, killing 12 people.

Drawing a “Broader Conclusion” on Iran’s Nuclear Program: Olli Heinonen, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, June 14, 2017 —Under the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), key restrictions would expire if  the IAEA formally reaches a “broader conclusion” that Tehran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

The Ethnic Instability of Iran: Mike Konrad, American Thinker, June 11, 2017—Avoiding all political correctness, there are some ancestral reasons that Iran should have been easy to deal with.  However, the last administration coddled the mullahs in Iran and let opportunity fly away.  It may be too late to do anything about it right now; however, later on, after Iran is in pieces, there could be a basis for change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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