One of the most reliably consistent events in all the world is the annual Nowruz New Year message from the Iranian regime’s mullah-in-chief, Ali Khamenei, in which he serves as mullah’s national cheerleader for the annual “Death to America” chants that is usually part of regime’s weekly ceremony in mullah’s Friday prayers.
This weekend was no different in which Khamenei made his remarks in the northern city of Mashhad where he demanded that any nuclear deal end all economic sanctions against Iran at its outset, rather than gradually as the P5+1 working group of nations have long supported.
“Sanctions must be lifted immediately,” Khamenei is quoted as saying in a Los Angeles Times article. A sentiment shared I’m sure by his fellow ruling mullahs and also a key issue at the heart of these negotiations. It is also worth noting Khamenei attacked President Obama’s Nowruz message as well.
The Americans “want to turn the people against the government,” Khamenei said, calling Obama’s message “dishonest.”
It is an ironclad fact that stiff, relentless economic sanctions have crippled the Iranian regime’s economy, even more so with the massive expenditures it is making to support military operations and terrorist groups in Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Nigeria. The costs have been massive and the mullahs’ decision to siphon capital from the consumer economy and force the Iranian people to bear the burden has sparked mass discontent throughout the nation.
This discontent boiled up in fraudulent elections and mass demonstrations harshly put down by the regime in 2009 and 2013 and serve as a warning to the regime since it was a similar economic freefall that helped spark the street protests of the original Iranian revolution in 1979 which was quickly subverted by extremist Islamists.
All of which leads to an interesting juxtaposition. As Iran’s top leader leads annual chants of “Death to America” and demands an all-or-nothing approach to any nuclear deal, the regime’s lobby in the U.S. led by groups such as the National Iranian American Council, are strangely and universally silent. It’s almost like these groups believe Khamenei to be some crazy uncle you ignore at family gatherings, rather than the supreme leader of mullahs in thrall to religious lunatics.
But the lack of criticism or event acknowledgement of these tirades and demands yields more evidence that the NIAC’s goals are not aligned with finding peace in the world, but more in tune with supporting a corrupted regime intent on spreading its gospel of Islamic extremists across the region and imposing it on its neighbors, including its medieval views on women, misogyny, a free press and the use of terror to achieve political goals.
No matter how “moderate” and nice President Hassan Rouhani tries to portray the Iranian regime, the simple truth is that his boss, Khamenei, is still in fine form urging death to America and demanding a complete lifting of sanctions and for what? Allowing his regime to keep 6,000 centrifuges, the ability to conduct R&D on newer ones? Not even putting ballistic missile technology on the table and no changes to its support of Hezbollah, Shiite militia terror groups in Iraq and the Houthis that are now making Yemen into another Libya? And Iranian government is still holding Americans in prison without trial or charge. On what planet do we think we can trust mullahs in Iran? Sanctions were working; they brought Iran’s mullahs to the table and instead of using that leverage to force real democratic change, are we simply going to take their word for it?
If groups like the NIAC cannot pen an open letter to the regime and ask Khamenei, politely of course, to lay off calling for the destruction of America, then what can we really believe from the NIAC in the first place?
Is the NIAC so enslaved to Tehran that it cannot simply send a tweet saying “For the love of God, stop demanding Death to America! #peaceloving?”
No, it seems even such a small act would be too rebellious for NIAC and its religious masters.
By Michael Tomlinson