Iran Human rights – Iran Lobby

Iran Starts Off Year by Banning Instagram

January 3, 2019 by admin

New Year’s Eve filled the social media airwaves around the world as millions of revelers shared pictures and videos of fireworks, champagne toasts, concerts and the inevitable cute pet pictures.

The memes, viral videos and emojis have become a global fixture as recognizable as the crystal ball dropping in Times Square.

And just as predictable, the Iranian regime kicked off 2019 by moving to ban Instagram – adding to its already considerable list of banned social media platforms – in the name of national security concerns.

The regime’s National Cyberspace Council approved steps to block the popular photo-sharing app in a move following similar crackdowns against Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Telegram with internet providers ordered to block access to these services.

Resourceful Iranians however have often been able to evade the restrictions through the use of virtual private networks which redirects to overseas internet addresses; bypassing local blocks.

The irony of the regime’s move to block Instagram comes as President Hassan Rouhani posted his own messages on his own Instagram account which has over two million followers.

Regime officials similarly use banned social media apps such as Twitter to communicate to the outside world even though ordinary Iranians may face jail time for using them. Even top mullah Ali Khamenei has an official Twitter account.

The move to block Instagram removes the last major social media account still active in Iran. Even though the regime cited “national security” concerns.

The protests swelled and were soon joined by other protests aimed at government corruption, the stagnant economy and the endless cycle of wars and terrorism plaguing the country since the mullahs opted to go all-in to support the Assad regime in Syria.

Even innocuous acts such as Iranian women riding bicycles in open defiance of the mullahs’ edicts became fodder for Instagram stories and a constant sore spot for the regime.

The regime had previously tried targeting individual Iranians with high-profile Instagram followings.

The regime TV special showed them all tearfully repenting their actions in what can only be deduced as coerced confessions.

Apparently, those strong-arm tactics didn’t work, which points up a growing problem the mullahs are having which is the widening age gap in Iranian society and the technological savvy of Iran’s young people.

Even as Twitter has been banned, it’s use has remained at center stage recently as ongoing protests over a bus crash at Tehran’s Azad University killing 10 students have been fueled and covered on Twitter.

A video on Twitter showed students at a campus in Tehran chanting slogans and demanding the resignation of the chairman of the university’s board of trustees, Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Social media had been utilized by Iranians and dissident groups to convey images and videos of protests and crackdowns within Iran, which explains the most recent efforts to expunge social media, another repressive measure to prevent the flow of information from Iran.

More than half of Iran’s 82 million people are under 35 years old with almost 40 percent under the age of 24; a staggering baby bubble that poses problems for a ruling elite well in their geriatric age.

In many ways the efforts to curb social media are likely to only fuel greater ingenuity by Iranian youth to evade the restrictions. For the Iranian regime, the knee-jerk reaction to ban social media only covers up a growing demographic disparity posing significant political problems for the mullahs.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Resorts to More Hangings in Effort to Preserve Mullahs Rule

November 21, 2018 by admin

There are iconic images that grace many national flags. The maple leaf for Canada. The Union Jack. The Stars and Stripes are just some of the few. Every national flag bear icons telling a story about the country, its history and its people.

In the case of the Iranian regime, it may be time for it to redefine its national flag with a new symbol; one that has come to symbolize one of the most prolific acts committed by its government.

A hangman’s noose.

Iran ranks among world leaders in state-sponsored executions, especially of political, ethnic and religious prisoners. It’s preferred method of execution is hanging, often in public and often using the ubiquitous construction crane.

But as the mullahs in Tehran have experiencing an unprecedented level of domestic protest and international pressure as a result of renewed U.S. sanctions, as well as gross mismanagement of the economy and the redirection of billions in hard currency to fund several wars and insurrections, they have turned to using executions as a means of harsh crowd control.

The latest example came in the execution of a gold dealer known as the “Sultan of Coins” in a blatant warning to Iranian merchants and businesses not to do anything to undermine the regime’s policies in the face of growing economic distress.

Vahid Mazloumin was sentenced to death in October after being accused by Iranian authorities of contributing to price hikes by hoarding gold. His assistant, Mohammad Esmail Qassemi, was also hanged last week, state-run Iranian Students News Agency said.

The killings came in the wake of a national currency which has fallen into a steady death spiral of devaluation; dropping a stunning 70 percent against the dollar, fueling massive surges in prices for good and leading to a widespread underground and illegal market in trading.

Mazloumin didn’t hold a permit to trade gold and foreign currency, yet had formed the largest illegal network in that area, according to state-run Fars news agency. He instructed his team to corner the gold coin market to resell at higher prices, amassing about 2 tons of them, local media said.

Whether or not it’s true or was simply something manufactured by the regime in order to set a stiff example, the truth at the core of the hangings is the mullahs’ desperate efforts to hang onto control of a deteriorating economic situation and widespread public unrest.

In an effort to restore calm and project a sense of order, the mullahs have repeatedly threatened to take harsh measures against anyone “disrupting the economy” while promising to provide assistance to the poor, according to Bloomberg.

Last week, Tehran police instituted large scale raids in which security forces arrested about 130 illegal currency traders in recent days.

In further measures to placate the deeply distressed Iranian people and lessen the pain of rising prices, president Hassan Rouhani’s government started providing benefits for the neediest to help pay for food packages that include meat, cooking oil and dairy. Parviz Fatah, who heads the state-controlled Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, said the program will initially reach 2.7 million Iranians after its launch last Tuesday.

Top mullah Ali Khamenei said in a speech that Iran “can solve its economic problems by correctly using its domestic resources”; a not too subtle threat to any Iranian that circumvents policies to keep the regime afloat.

The executions drew harsh criticism from human rights groups that have long decried the use of “kangaroo trials” used by the regime to summarily sentence and imprison large numbers of Iranians and dual-nationals, notably British, Canadian and American citizens.

“Iran’s hanging of people who have been convicted in courts without a fair trial is a blatant violation of law,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, describing the trial venues as “kangaroo courts”.

Amnesty International called the trial “grossly unfair”.

“In Iran, unfortunately, instead of punishing the main elements of systematic corruption, they punish and execute persons who are not important,” said Mahdi Khalili, a “reformist politician” and political scientist in Tehran. “The main ones are free from any problems or punishment.”

Iran ranked 130 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2017 corruption index, demonstrating that the regime’s judicial system is anything but just.

Human rights specialists and jurists, including Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, have said the suspects were condemned to death in quick trials that were unfair and failed to measure up to Iranian law much less international standards, which include a thorough appellate review process for death sentences.

Among other irregularities, the courts apply secretive national security rules to cases of white-collar crime, restricting the ability of defendants to get a lawyer, according to the Independent.

“The prosecutions suggest Tehran is attempting to shift blame for the collapse of the country’s currency to low-level traders and grey market businessmen in an effort to deflect from the Iranian system’s own incompetence and corruption, rooted in the economic power of religious charities and ideologically fervent security branches, especially the Revolutionary Guard,” wrote the Independent.

“It also shows what many critics have described over the years as the arbitrary nature of justice under the Islamic republic, where prominent members of ethnic and religious minorities as well as the Shia Muslim majority, and dissidents as well as businessmen, can become entangled in an obscure, Kafkaesque legal system overseen by Islamic jurists under the sway of shadowy security enforcers,” he added.

What is notable with these new executions was the silence coming from the Iran lobby, especially groups such as the National Iranian American Council which ostensibly is supposed to advocate for the better treatment of Iranians.

It’s too bad that doesn’t seem to apply to those who actions undermine the regime’s efforts to stay in power.

Laura Carnahan

Death Spiral of Iran Rial Spells Disaster for Mullahs

July 30, 2018 by admin

Death Spiral of Iran Rial Spells Disaster for Mullahs

The Iranian regime’s currency, the rial, plunged to a new record low this weekend, dropping past 112,000 rials to a single U.S. dollar. The stunning drop comes on the eve of the re-imposition of harsh economic sanctions by the Trump administration following the decertification of Iran nuclear agreement because of the regime’s continued support of terrorism, development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and abysmal human rights record.

The first lot of sanctions go into effect on August 7^th, while more severe sanctions, including the halt of imports of Iranian oil, go into effect on November 4^th. Failure to do so will bring U.S. financial measures that have already caused a flurry of cancellations of contracts by Asian and European companies worried about them; further crippling the Iranian regime.

The weekend alone saw a drop from 97,500 rials on Saturday to the 112,000 level on Sunday, a one-day plunge of 12.5 percent, according to foreign exchange website Bonbast.com. Other websites said the dollar was exchanged between 108,500 and 116,000 rials, according to Reuters.

The last time the rial experienced a similar death spiral in value was September 2012. The spread between the official trading value set by the mullahs and the black market is a stunning 154 percent. While that may appear to be devastating news for Iran’s ruling regime, the dirty secret is that for anyone holding vast sums of U.S. currency, such as the ruling mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, they could handsomely profit enormous sums in the blink of an eye, according to an editorial by Steve H. Hanke of John Hopkins University in Forbes.

So, while ordinary Iranians are caught in a financial squeeze, the regime’s leadership and military could weather the short-term chaos personally. The question is whether long-suffering rank-and-file Iranians will push for democratic reforms and eventual regime change?

The other half of the financial picture of the dying rial is spiraling inflation which has grown increasingly ugly. According to Hanke, Iran’s implied annual inflation rate has surged to 203 percent; almost twenty times higher than the official inflation rate of 10.2 percent.

Hanke goes on to give an example of how Bulgaria’s implementation of a currency board helped arrest hyperinflation and put that country back on the road to fiscal health.

It’s a nice thought, but it would never work for Iran because, unlike Bulgaria, the Iranian regime is:

Deeply corrupt with graft and skimming taking place throughout the economy by the ruling mullahs, their families and state-owned industries such as petroleum, banking, and telecommunications which supports the military;
Heavily involved in funding proxy wars in Syria and Yemen, as well as terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah with massive amounts of cash, especially to prop up the Assad-regime in Syria;
Unable to exercise any fiscal discipline when its monetary commitments to its foreign and military initiatives drain it of badly needed foreign currency such as buying expensive weapon systems from Russia and China.

The dilemma facing the mullahs over its dying currency and the looming American sanctions has forced the mullahs to verbally attack the U.S. but offer little else in the way of real resistance in the face of what is sure to be punishing sanctions.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif weighed in by claiming that Iran would survive any U.S. sanctions.

“We have enough power to show the United States that it should abandon this addiction. We believe that the world has come to the conclusion that the United States should overcome its dependence on sanctions,” Zarif was quoted as saying by Iran’s ISNA news agency.

He all but begged the European Union to intervene and act in the interests of its member-states and stop blindly following the policy of President Trump, but the issue is not whether or not the mullahs will endure sanctions since they have already literally ripped off the people of Iran in stockpiling their wealth.

No, the real question is at what point do the Iranian people say enough is enough and seek real democratic reforms, such as allowing the creation of truly independent political parties that can run for parliamentary and presidential campaigns.

Things are so bad in Iran that the regime is preparing to launch its own cryptocurrency to circumvent the decline in the rial.

Alireza Daliri, of Iran’s Directorate of Deputy of Management and Investment Affairs, said several domestic companies are developing a digital currency and will launch it after fixing several persistent flaws. He added the unnamed companies were working in coordination with the Central Bank of Iran.

Alireza told ISNA news agency they were trying to prepare the grounds to use the virtual currency in the country. He further stated that the digital currency would help the country to transfer money anywhere around the world and would also help the nation during the U.S sanctions.

Another piece of fiction being foisted by the regime since crackdowns on global cryptocurrencies by several nations have been effective in combatting their use by narcotics cartels and criminal syndicates.

Iran itself banned the instant messaging app Telegram because of the success of the initial offering of its own cryptocurrency which Iranians were hungry for since it was not tied to the rial.

In another sign of its desperation, the Iranian regime announced plans to offer price and tax incentives to private investors to take over idled state projects to help boost the economy. Most of these projects were originally managed and financed by foreign companies in the wake of the nuclear deal’s signing in 2015, but now have fled Iran with the looming sanctions.

The plan will offer attractive prices and flexible terms as well as tax holidays for investors who agree to take over some of the 76,000 government projects which are unfinished or idle, Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri said on state television.

“Over the past few months, the country’s liquidity has gone into housing, foreign exchange, and gold coins, raising prices and provoking public concerns,” Jahangiri was quoted as saying by the website of the state broadcaster.

The admission by the regime that its economy was headed for a disaster was more proof that the mullahs were reaching the end of the line in trying to keep the sinking ship of state afloat.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Grows More Desperate

July 18, 2018 by admin

Iran Regime Grows More Desperate

It’s no secret the mullahs controlling the Iranian regime despise any form of dissent, especially anything that could be construed as homegrown. While the mullahs try to brush off criticism from the international community, it’s harder to turn a blind eye when their fellow Iranians are the ones leading the protests.

A proverbial thorn in their side has been the Iranian diaspora made up of exiled and expatriate Iranians living around the world. Many were initially stranded outside of Iran when the Islamic revolution swept through Iran, while others have fled the regime’s extremism over the years.

That diaspora consists of nearly five million Iranians living abroad and large numbers of them actively participate in a variety of human rights and dissident groups dedicated to improving conditions within Iran or peacefully working for regime change or at least better human rights and religious freedoms.

One of the largest and longest active dissident groups has been the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) which has earned him top honors on the mullahs’ hit list of most wanted. It has received special attention from the regime, including its infamous Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) which has waged a decades-long campaign aimed at disinformation, slander and even organizing attacks against MEK members.

Those past attacks have included strikes against refugee camps for Iranians who fled Iran, many of them MEK members. The Iranian regime, working with Shiite militia allies in Iraq, staged frequent attacks at these camps where the residents were unarmed, slaughtering scores of them.

The MEK has continued to be a sore point for the regime by uncovering all sorts of secrets in Iran, including the clandestine nuclear program that soon became the focal point of international sanctions.

The dissident group has also provided one of the few reliable channels to the outside world of what is going on inside the closed of Islamic state, including photos, videos, and testimonials of public executions, abuse of women and mistreatment of ethnic and religious minorities.

The regime has not been able to shake these dissident groups off of itself no matter how hard it tries to kill off its detractors, but most of these efforts have been focused on attacks in distant places, cyberspace and in the arena of public opinion.

Recently the Iranian regime sanctioned what may be its most brazen effort yet in planning to bomb an annual gathering of Iranian dissident groups including the MEK a massive rally outside of Paris with scores of distinguished luminaries in attendance, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

Assadollah Assadi, a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat, was suspected of contracting a couple in Belgium to attack the according to German federal prosecutors.

He allegedly gave the Antwerp-based couple a device containing 500 grams of the explosive TATP during a meeting in Luxembourg in late June, prosecutors said in a written statement.

Assadi was detained earlier this month near the German city of Aschaffenburg on a European warrant after the couple with Iranian roots was stopped in Belgium and authorities reported finding powerful explosives in their car.

In their statement, German prosecutors allege that Assadi, who has been registered as a diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Vienna since 2014, was a member of MOIS, whose tasks “primarily include the intensive observation and combatting of opposition groups inside and outside of Iran.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of using its embassies to plot extremist attacks in Europe and warned Tehran that its actions have “a real high cost” after it threatened to disrupt Mideast oil supplies.

“Just this past week there were Iranians arrested in Europe who were preparing to conduct a terror plot in Paris, France. We have seen this malign behavior in Europe,” Pompeo said in an interview with Sky News Arabia.

The extent of the bomb plot and the potential to kill and maim so many non-Iranian dignitaries and journalists attending the gathering demonstrates how desperate the regime has grown as it faces unrelenting pressures at home and abroad with massive protests and demonstrations over a spiraling economy and renewed economic sanctions by the Trump administration.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an Iranian dissident umbrella group that sponsored the Paris gathering, quoted its intelligence sources inside the country as saying that Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, and President Hassan Rouhani approved the bombing plan.

“In Belgium, it is more probable that Assadi will face justice and has to answer all sorts of questions and does not have any diplomatic immunity,” said Shahin Gobadi, a MEK spokesman.

The MEK intelligence report said the Paris attack was approved months ago by every lever of Iranian power, from the supreme leader to the foreign and intelligence ministries to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The report said Assadi’s cover was as a counselor. In fact, he is the MOIS station chief in Vienna and the ministry’s coordinator for other stations in Europe.

“His main task was espionage and conspiracy against the [MEK], and he has been traveling to various European countries in this regard,” the report said.

The level of hubris it takes for the Iranian regime to stage an attack on French soil at an event with a global television audience makes it a worthy parent to terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

It may be high time for the mullahs to pay a heavy price for sanctioning such an act of terror.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Teeters on the Brink of Change

July 11, 2018 by admin

A scene of Iranian protesters near Grand Bazar Tehran

Iranian protesters gather at Mobile market in Tehran on June 25, 2018.
Protesters in Tehran shouted slogans and threw rocks in the streets on June 25, before being dispersed by anti-riot policemen. / AFP PHOTO / ATTA KENAREATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

In it, Shakespeare’s tragic villain, the ugly hunchback Richard schemes to depose his brother from the throne of England and steal it for himself after slaying the child heirs—his nephews. He eventually meets his fate, dying at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

In many ways, Shakespeare’s classic mirrors the ascension of the mullahs in Tehran who stole the revolution in 1979 that deposed the Shah of Iran only to turn it into a tyrannical Islamic theocracy that has regularly imprisoned, abused, tortured and hanged its own people including men, women and children.

It is only fitting today we may be witnessing the third and final act for the Iranian regime as it is rocked with an ever-increasing tempo of mass protests that have swamped the country and put the mullahs and military allies in the Revolutionary Guard Corps on the defensive.

The popular protests started spontaneously last winter and were rooted in economic woes being experienced by ordinary Iranians, including much of the poor in the more remote provinces outside of Tehran including farmers, coal miners, and other workers.

Unlike the protests in the wake of the disputed presidential elections of 2009 which were largely centered in Tehran and were powered by middle class and educated Iranians, these protests have swollen to include broad cross-sections of Iranian society.

The most recent protests have engulfed the Grand Bazaar in Tehran and reflect the despair and frustration of Iranian business owners and merchants over the virtual free fall in the Rial against the dollar, which hit an all-time low of 90,000 Rial for a single U.S. dollar.

The financial fallout is so bad, the mullahs have sought to halt trading in dollars and banned the import of 1,300 foreign goods such as household appliances and consumer technology products.

Additionally, the decision by the Trump administration to not re-certify the Iran nuclear deal and effectively end it brought on the reinstatement of economic sanctions that has crippled the Iranian economy that feeds its military adventures in Syria and Yemen.

The Trump administration’s focus on stiffening those sanctions have resulted in a cascade of business deals being canceled culminating in a warning from the U.S. State Department that companies currently buying Iranian crude oil must completely cut those exports by November this year or face sanctions.

The administration does not expect to grant any waivers to companies that purchase Iranian oil or invest in its energy industry, a State Department official said, putting these companies in a precarious position should they choose to continue doing business with the Iranian regime.

Things have gotten so bad that a senior Revolutionary Guard Corps commander went on television to tell all Iranians they were duty-bound to help the regime overcome its economic problems.

“It is our duty to work in coordination and synergy to help the government and other branches overcome economic woes and foil enemy plots for an economic war and psychological warfare,” said Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a military adviser to top mullah Ali Khamenei.

The regime sought to blame the economic woes on outside forces such as the U.S., even though protestors such as those taking over the Grand Bazaar, have increasingly and loudly denounced the regime’s foreign military ventures such as the Syrian civil war which has drained the Islamic state’s coffers dry.

For Hassan Rouhani, the prospects look even bleaker as Khamenei weighs whether or not to sacrifice his puppet in order to satisfy calls for reform.

For Rouhani’s part, he dutifully sent France, Germany and Britain letters with a list of demands calling it the price that needs to be paid in order for Iran to stay in the nuclear deal in a Hail Mary effort to keep an economic lifeline open.

While the contents were not made public, we can easily assume Rouhani was demanding these countries keep their commitments for EU companies to continue fulfilling business deals, as well as continue buying Iranian oil. Without these lifelines, the collapse of the regime could be counted in months.

One example of those collapsing deals was the decision by French-Italian regional aircraft manufacturer ATR to halt delivery of its turboprop passenger aircraft Iran ordered in the wake of the nuclear deal.

IranAir, the regime’s national flag carrier, contracted to buy 20 planes from ATR and eight have been delivered with the remaining dozen now in limbo.

Large commercial manufacturers Boeing and Airbus also announced halts in delivering airliners ordered by the regime which has used its commercial air fleet, such as Mahan Air, to ferry troops, ammunition and weapons to Syria to help support the Assad regime during its bloody civil war.

Things have gotten so desperate for the regime that government spokesman, Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, called on diaspora Iranians to “bring their money to Iran” and urged all Iranians to invest their cash and gold into the economy.

Of course, he neglected to mention the practice of arrested and imprisoning dual-national Iranians coming back to visit relatives which increased dramatically following the nuclear deal.

The International Monetary Fund reported that a record amount of capital, $27 billion, was taken out of the country last year. Khamenei, in a sermon recently celebrating the end of Ramadan, called upon Iranians to stop taking leisure trips abroad, to make sure no more foreign exchange leaves Iran, according to the New York Times.

In comments following on his boss’, Rouhani promised his government would cut spending, reduce international travel and fly economy class to ease the burden on the public. He also said his government would import raw materials at affordable prices to help domestic manufacturers and ensure supply for Iranians.

Additionally, he urged ministries to issue government bonds to give people alternatives to the dollar and the euro for investing their assets.

“If anyone thinks the government will resign or step aside, or go, they are mistaken,” Rouhani said.

The clock is ticking on the Iranian regime and the mullahs.

Michael Tomlinson

How Much Suffering Will the Iranian People Endure?

July 11, 2018 by admin

Maedeh Hojabri, the 19-year-old girl arrested for posting her dancing videos on Instagram

News agencies around the world profiled the plight of Maedeh Hojabri, a 19-year-old girl who does what comes naturally for most teenagers around the world.

She likes to dance and often posts clips of her moves to Instagram, drawing a following of 600,000 followers. In the U.S., she would probably be hit up by companies wanting her to endorse her products online and maybe even start up a YouTube channel.

Unfortunately for Maedeh, she lives in Iran where the mullahs seem to be obsessed with tossing anyone in prison who exhibits any form of creative or artistic freedom, especially if they are female.

She had been quietly arrested by regime officials last May, but her whereabouts only recently became known to her followers when fans recognized a blurry image of her on a regime-supported television show that showed her crying and admitting that dancing was a crime.

We’re sure the mullahs thought public shaming of a teenager was a recipe for success in their small, twisted, warped minds, but instead the incident had the opposite effect as it galvanized the Iranian people into more of a frenzy of protest over the regime’s ongoing corruption, unemployment, and faltering economy.

Predictably, none of that seems to make a difference to the mullahs who seem to be hellbent on alienating almost the entire population of Iran with even more strong-arm, militant tactics, including the announcement that Shaparak Shajarizadeh, the woman who removed her headscarf in protest last February was sentenced to two-years in prison and 18 years of probation.

With all of the new inflamed reaction being spread across Instagram, the regime now is contemplating banning Instagram the same as it banned Telegram, the instant-messaging app that the overwhelming majority of Iranians use to communicate.

The mullahs blamed Telegram for being used as a tool of dissidents to organize protests, as well as the launch of its own cyber currency which threatened to derail an already floundering rial.

The reaction from Iranians to Maedeh’s forced confession on Twitter ranged from indignant to outraged as reported by the New York Times.

“Really what is the result of broadcasting such confessions?” one Twitter a user, using special software to gain access to Twitter, which is also banned in Iran. “What kind of audience would be satisfied? For whom would it serve as a lesson, seriously?”

The criticism was sharp and bold. “In this land corruption, rape or being a big thief, animal or child abuser, not having any dignity, is not a crime,” Roya Mirelmi, an actress, wrote under a picture she posted of Maedeh that got 14,133 likes. “But in my motherland, having a beautiful smile, being happy and feeling good is not only a crime but a cardinal sin.”

All of which raises the question of just how much suffering is the Iranian people to take before they force regime change on their own?

The question is not so far-fetched now in the wake of widespread, deep-rooted and pervasive dissent that has manifested itself in protests all over Iran, including the virtual shutdown of the famed Grand Bazaar marketplace in Tehran. Those series of protests were so concerning that the Iran lobby pitched in to discount the symbolic importance of the bazaar with an editorial by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a University of London professor, in the Conversation and later in The Independent.

“Once again, Iranians are articulating very specific demands related to the economy. But this is a part of the reform process in the country and not a revolutionary movement. The strike of the bazaari is the latest manifestation of the political prowess of an immensely potent civil society in Iran. And it is exactly because of this ability to organize and articulate their specific demands that Iranians have repeatedly managed to garner concessions from successive governments in their country – in many ways against all odds,” he writes in one of the more idiotic statements we’ve seen.

To claim that the Iranian people are able to wring concessions from successive regime governments is ludicrous in light of the crackdown on civil liberties such as the arrest of dancing teenagers and banning of social media. If anything, the opposite is happening in Iran as the mullahs seem to grow more and more desperate to stamp out any sign of dissent, even possibly sanctioning a terrorist plot to bomb a gathering of Iranian dissidents in Paris that was foiled by authorities.

The scope of the regime’s punishment of its own people reached new heights when Amnesty International revealed in a report that said: “more than half (51%) of all recorded executions in 2017 were carried out in Iran.”

According to Amnesty International, “Iran executed at least 507 people, accounting for 60% of all confirmed executions in the region.”

Out of the 507 individuals executed in Iran last year, “501 were men and six were women. At least five juvenile offenders were executed and 31 executions were carried out publicly.

It’s stunning to think the Iranian regime is literally a world leader in executing its own citizens and yet those same citizens are taking to the streets, sharing on banned social media and voicing their dissent in a myriad of ways knowing that such expressions of discontent could punch their ticket to Evin prison and the gallows.

It is against all of this that the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, remains stonily silent even though it purportedly speaks on behalf of civil liberties.

Michael Tomlinson

Arrest of Nasrin Sotoudeh Shows Falsehoods of Iran Lobby

June 15, 2018 by admin

Arrest of Nasrin Sotoudeh Shows Falsehoods of Iran Lobby

Nasrin Sotoudeh is one of Iran’s most prominent human rights attorneys and has been a thorn in the side of the Iranian regime’s controlling mullahs by objecting to some of their most extreme laws and representing some high-profile protestors.

In a blatant act that can only be seen as a complete disregard for international opinion, the regime went ahead and arrested her at her home in Tehran where she was transferred to the notorious Evin prison according to her husband, Reza Khandan.

In an interview earlier today with Manoto News, a Persian language news channel broadcast from outside Iran, Reza Khandan also revealed that Nasrin Sotoudeh was told she was being arrested to serve a five-year prison sentence. However, neither he nor Nasrin Sotoudeh knew anything about this sentence.

“Nasrin Sotoudeh has dedicated her life to fighting for human rights in Iran. She has won international awards but has also paid a high price for her courage, spending three years in jail. Her arrest today is the latest example of the Iranian authorities’ vindictive attempts to stop her from carrying out her important work as a lawyer,” said Philip Luther, research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at ‎Amnesty International in a statement.

Amnesty International went on to note her groundbreaking work in challenging the regime’s recent change to the criminal code which denied the right of the accused to access to an independent lawyer of their own choice during the investigation of any charges the regime claimed were related to “national security.”

The net effect of which is to allow the regime to round up anyone and toss them in prison without representation in what amounts to arrest, sentencing and imprisonment all at once.

Sotoudeh is no stranger to the regime’s cruelty, having represented Narges Hosseini, who was prosecuted for peacefully protesting against compulsory veiling in Iran earlier this year. Since December 2017, dozens of women have been violently attacked and arrested for peacefully protesting against compulsory veiling according to Amnesty International.

In September 2010, Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “spreading propaganda against the system” and “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security” for her work as a lawyer, including defending countless cases of prisoners of conscience and juvenile offenders sentenced to death.

In 2012, she received the European Union’s highest human rights award, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and continued to work as a human rights lawyer even as the regime denied her repeated requests to represent political prisoners.

Predictably, the Iran lobby sought to frame her arrest as an outgrowth of President Trump’s decision to back out of the Iran nuclear deal which helped empower “hardliners” according to Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council.

“Lost in much of the discourse over the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and announcement of new sanctions and escalatory measures has been the impact these external actions may have on the political dynamics inside of Iran,” Parsi said.

But even Parsi couldn’t find much wiggle room in such a blatant attack by the regime on a prominent human rights activist, grudgingly admitting that “the blame, of course, lies with those actors inside Iran who are seizing on this opportunity to advance an agenda that is anathema to Iran’s human rights obligations and to the wishes of the Iranian people.”

That still hasn’t stopped others from essentially excusing the regime’s act by attempting to blame President Trump as Simon Tisdall did in the Guardian:

“Trump argued his action would force Iran to change its behavior for the better. Instead, conservative hardliners appear to be extending their grip on Iranian society as part of a renewed bid to undermine the moderate forces around Rouhani. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian citizen held since 2016, is another innocent victim of this struggle,” Tisdall writes.

It’s an absurd assertion since the practice of arresting, imprisoning and even hanging political prisoners and human rights activists have been going on long before President Trump even thought about running for the White House.

Tisdall and Parsi omit how after Hassan Rouhani was elected president in Iran and was lauded as a new “moderate,” the regime went on a binge of historic proportions in rounding up and arresting everyone from journalists and bloggers to ethnic and religious minorities to Youtubers and social media users in an effort to quell internal dissent during the negotiations with the Obama administration on a nuclear idea.

How ironic there was barely a whisper about Iran’s brutal human rights suppression then, but now Iran lobby supporters blast President Trump’s recent summit with North Korea in which human rights were also not brought up.

In February, Tehran police said that 29 women had been detained for posing in public without their headscarves in the previous weeks.

In a statement sent following the arrest, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Sotoudeh “is a human rights champion who should be applauded, not jailed”.

“Iran’s judiciary again has revealed to its citizens and the international community its disdain for and fear of people who seek to protect human rights,” Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW Middle East director said.

Indeed the move to arrest Sotoudeh is recognition by the mullahs in Tehran that the jig is up and trying to pretend to be a moderate Iran was not going to work anymore. If anything, Trump’s actions have finally ripped away the lie the Iran lobby has worked hard to maintain and revealed the awful truth about the Iranian regime.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Desperation Shoots Skyward

May 3, 2018 by admin

Hossein Mousavian- Former Iranian regime nuclear official and present lobby for the regime.

You can almost smell the desperation coming from the Iran lobby as it scrambles for an all-hands-on-deck effort to save the Iran nuclear deal before President Trump decides whether to withdraw from it by May 12.

One of the dedicated warriors for the Iran lobby is Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian regime nuclear official who wrapped himself in the cloak of academia at Princeton University as a faculty member.

In an editorial published by Reuters, Mousavian takes up the gauntlet thrown down by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who earlier this week blistered Iran over its failure to disclose its nuclear program; calling the regime a liar.

Mousavian diligently checks off the talking points the Iran lobby has been flogging lately; namely that it was no secret what Netanyahu revealed, Iran has been in compliance under the nuclear agreement, and that President Trump and his foreign policy team were leading the U.S. to war with Iran.

He goes further by implying that the Trump administration’s “get tough” approach to Iran will not work.

“Implicit in Trump’s approach is that he can bully and pressure Iran into meeting his demands. However, the track record of U.S.-Iran relations since the 1979 Iranian revolution leaves little room to believe that Iran concedes to pressure,” Mousavian writes.

“I know from firsthand experience that Tehran responds to pressure by doing everything it can to produce leverage for itself. The modus operandi of Iranian leaders when it comes to addressing pressure is to become inflexible, steadfast and retaliatory,” he adds.

Mousavian finally reveals the first bit of truth. The mullahs are inflexible, steadfast and retaliatory, but that is not how they respond to pressure, it is their normal course of doing business.

For all of the cries of moderation by the Iran lobby during the negotiations for the deal in 2014-15, the reality has been a regime that have never wavered from its overriding goal of spreading its form of Islamic extremism at all costs around the world and build a Shiite sphere of influence protecting it from its many enemies.

To that end, the regime has admirably stubbornly held true to that goal by leveling Syria, overthrowing the government in Yemen, begging Russia to join the Syrian conflict and controlling Iraq through Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

Which is why Netanyahu’s central claim was never challenged by Mousavian and the rest of the Iran lobby: Iran has never deviated from its long-term plan to have nuclear weapons to use as leverage and a threat to its enemies and rivals.

But where Mousavian and the rest of the Iran lobby get it wrong is in saying that these moves by the Trump administration will push Iran into full-blown nuclear build mode.

The regime is already committed to such a path! Adhering to the deal doesn’t push them off their course. In fact, the appeasement policies practiced by the Obama administration have only made things worse. We have a track record of the past three years to show us exactly what the mullahs will do.

What brought Iran to the bargaining table in the first place back in 2015? Mousavian and his allies would have us believe it was diplomacy.

It wasn’t.

It was backbreaking economic sanctions imposed first by President George W. Bush and increased by President Obama, coupled with blocking Iran from accessing international currency exchanges which put Iran in the deep freeze money-wise.

Add to that the fracking boom in the U.S. driving the global price of oil down fast robbing the Iranian treasury of billions in cash from illicit oil sales and you begin to see how the decision to come to the bargaining table wasn’t driven by some desire for political moderation, but knee-capping sanctions that threatened the very existence of the theocratic state.

“If Trump withdraws from the JCPOA, he should not do so thinking Iran is vulnerable and in dire straits,” Mousavian said.

It is plainly apparent to even a closet regime cheerleader like Mousavian the Trump administration doesn’t view Iran on the brink of disaster. Far from it. It views the Iranian regime as robust, growing and a menacing threat to the entire Middle East.

The reason it is that way is because the nuclear deal held no restrictions on all other facts of the regime’s actions; allowing it to grow into the single biggest threat to global stability today.

The last-ditch nature of Mousavian’s missive is plain in his characterization of the protests rocking the mullahs’ control last year as “far smaller than made out to be” and pro-government demonstrations as “massive.”

The only thing true about that statement is that those government demonstrations were a massive failure and a sign of the desperate nature of the mullahs’ predicament.

It’s laughable that Mousavian ends his tirade by saying the end state for the Trump administration’s is war. The only war that is going to result from a withdrawal from the nuclear deal is an economic war as crippling sanctions are put back into place.

Mousavian says if the president wants “bigger deals” with Iran, he should build trust by implementing the nuclear agreement. The reverse is even more true.

If the mullahs want to avoid an economic meltdown that tosses them out of Tehran, they should build trust by burning their nuclear plans, dismantling their ballistic missiles and getting out of Syrian, Iraq and Yemen.

Michael Tomlinson

As Iran Regime Teeters Does the Nuclear Deal Even Matter?

April 19, 2018 by admin

As Iran Regime Teeters Does the Nuclear Deal Even Matter?

To say the mullahs controlling Iran are nervous is akin to saying a hyena is nervous as an enraged elephant is about to step on it.

The imagery is appropriate since the pack of hyenas that are the mullahs in Tehran have worked relentlessly together to rip apart the Iranian economy and gnaw on the bones of the dissected carcass that used to be a shining light in the Middle East.

Iran bears a ghost-like resemblance to its former glory days; even stretching back to the historical Persian Empire that once straddled the known world. Today, Iran’s environment is dying literally and proverbially. Its economy drained of capital through deep corruption and years of supporting and sponsoring proxy wars and terrorist organizations.

Its people harassed, watched, intimidated, imprisoned and executed, Iran is a country reeling from assaults almost all internally created.

In response, the regime has done what all totalitarian governments do: They crack down harder.

It’s proven to be a recipe for more disaster as massive and widespread protests have gripped the country. Unlike previous mass protests such as during the disputed presidential elections in 2009, these protests have covered a wide range of grievances.

Women are protesting the repressive hijab laws. Workers have protested at factories, mines, farms and town squares to protest low wages, stagnant growth and government corruption. Small businessmen have protested graft and favoritism that hurts their ability to keep their businesses afloat while students, especially women, protests efforts to shut down social media, close down the popular Telegram app and restrict access to the outside world.

In response, even members of the regime’s government are calling it quits as deputy head of Iranian regime’s Department of Environment, Kaveh Madani, has decided to resign and leave the country following increasing pressure from the mullahs, according to Al-Monitor.

His appointment was originally hailed as a showcase for returning Iranian elites to help their country. Instead his resignation, tendered while abroad since he was most likely going to get arrested like so many other dual-national Iranians, is another signal that the future under the mullahs is only getting bleaker.

His departure also follows the arrest of a group of Iranian environmentalists, including Kavous Seyed Emami — whom authorities claim committed suicide two weeks after his arrest in February – and indicates the regime is increasingly sensitive to protests about the dismal state of the Iranian environment which has seen lakes disappear, farmland turn to dustbowls and air quality near poisonous levels of unhealthiness.

Predictably, the regime-controlled Mashregh News claims that Madani was also accused of spying and that his resignation, while he was abroad, is rooted in his alleged ties with “spies.” “Following the discovery of the spy and the infiltration network of Kavous Seyed Emami and the arrest of some elements of the Israeli, British and American network, rumors [spread] about Kaveh Madani, a professor at the Imperial College London, and it turned out that he is one of the defendants — and it must be made clear whether there was a relationship between him and the other elements of the spy network,” reported Mashregh News on April 17.

The irony of Madani’s situation is how it makes a mockery of claims made by the National Iranian American Council that the Iran nuclear deal was going to strengthen moderation in Iran. Trita Parsi and his NIAC colleagues have worked tirelessly to blame every problem facing Iran on the alleged incomplete fulfillment of the agreement’s terms, but it’s hard to imagine how Madani’s expulsion can be blamed on the Trump administration.

Simultaneously, the regime’s battle with a falling currency in the rial has essentially failed one week after imposing draconian steps to restrict dollar trading.

The tough new measures by the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) have largely failed to revive the value of the Iranian rial over the past week, based on open market exchange rates. There has been a similar pattern evident in the exchange rate of the rial against other major currencies, including the euro, British pound and Swiss franc.

According to Reuters, the majority of private money changers in Tehran have not bought or sold dollars or other foreign currencies for several days as they wait for the government’s next move in a clear sign of hoarding which is crippling the Iranian economy.

In response, clever Iranians are busy working to develop new smartphone apps that can help protect and mobilize protestors while thwarting the regime’s effort to monitor and identify dissidents.

One of the latest apps is Hafez, which translates as “to protect”. Named after the famous Persian poet whose words frequently targeted religious hypocrisy, the app offers users a collection of human rights-related information.

Foremost, it is a virtual rolodex of human rights lawyers in Iran, which allows users to access legal information regarding human rights, according to Aljazeera.

However, Hafez is more than just a list of telephone numbers, an Iranian human rights activist, told Al Jazeera.

“Users receive daily human rights news; [it] allows them to send news of human rights violations securely; [it] disseminates important legal information to users if they are arrested, and provides the contact information for attorneys who can assist,” said the article.

Here’s to hoping the ingenuity of the Iranian people can finally topple the theocratic regime.

Laura Carnahan

As Currency Plummets the Iran Regime Teeters on Collapse

April 15, 2018 by admin

As Currency Plummets the Iran Regime Teeters on Collapse

Iran’s currency, the Rial, is on a skydive plummet downward to historic levels and poses the most significant threat to the stranglehold the mullahs have had on the Islamic state.

Pegged to the price of petroleum, the Rial has been rocked by the global glut of oil and a stagnant economy riven through by rampant corruption and the diversion of billions of badly-need dollars to fund wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen as well as a massive military build-up including a ballistic missile program.

Now as Iran has been gripped by rising political tension with massive demonstrations sweeping across the country since last December, there has been a rush to the banks as Iranian citizens desperately try to cash out and swap to scarce U.S. dollars in a scene reminiscent of bank runs during the Great Depression.

The Rial has bled away a third of its value just this year alone with an exchange rate of 60,000 Rial to a single dollar. The track record for the mullahs in fiscal management is pretty rancid ever since the Iranian revolution in 1979 when one dollar bought 70 Rials.

Since Hassan Rouhani assumed power in 2013, 36,000 Rials equaled one dollar. The drop in value is as much a reflection of Iranians lack of confidence in their government as it is of an economy that is nearing Third World status.

The mullahs have reacted in their typical brutal manner setting an official exchange rate of 42,000 Rials to the dollar in an example of wishful thinking. To enforce that rate, the mullahs have promised harsh punishment including arrest for anyone trying to exchange Rials at a different rate than the one established by them.

The crisis is driven by an inability to access physical currency notes, which are estimated at only five percent of all foreign currency in Iran, while the rest is available in the form of credits for business and the government.

Long gone it seems are the images of pallets loaded down with dollars and euros being unloaded from airplanes as part of the ransom payment made by the U.S. in exchange for U.S. hostages as part of the Iran nuclear deal.

That nuclear deal has failed to deliver the benefits promised by Rouhani to ordinary Iranians; instead the regime has siphoned the economic relief it brought to state-owned industries and the powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It has also failed to generate the flood of foreign investment promised by Rouhani with many foreign companies unwilling to risk capital in investments in Iran when the U.S. has contemplated additional sanctions for the regime’s abysmal human rights record and its involvement in the support of terrorism and the war in Syria.

The use of chemical weapons repeatedly by the Assad regime against its own citizens has also ostracized Iran for its support of Assad and the heavy use of Iranian military units in the conflict.

The sponsorship of the revolt in Yemen and support of Houthi rebels has also ignited another potential regional conflict with Saudi Arabia and brought the U.S. and Russia into contentious situations that could possibly start a wider war rattling any potential investors.

Other efforts by the Iranian regime to bring in more foreign currency include trying to increase oil production in order to generate more sales overseas, but that has been stymied by fields utilizing outdated equipment and failure to attract any significant foreign partners to develop oil fields.

“This currency crisis is another step in the collapse of the Iranian economy, which was expected to rebound after the signing of the nuclear agreement. Difficult economic conditions brought protestors to the streets in a number of Iranian cities earlier this year, however those protests were quelled by the government. It is important to continue watching the economic situation in Iran, because historically economic issues have typically led to the most significant political unrests in that country,” wrote Ellen R. Wald, a historian and scholar at the Arabia Foundation.

The regime hasn’t been helped by action this week by the European Union to extend sanctions on Iran over human rights violations in an effort to demonstrate its willingness to the Trump administration to hold Iran accountable, while trying to preserve the nuclear agreement.

France has pushed for new sanctions over Iran’s missile program and involvement in conflicts in the region, including in Syria where Tehran backs President Bashar al-Assad. Paris hopes that would show President Trump the EU takes his concerns seriously.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, offered in an editoRial in The Hill that the collapsing Rial represented an opportunity to apply even more pressure on the regime.

“The White House should re-impose sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran to vindicate currency traders’ fear that it now plans to inflict serious damage on Tehran’s economy,” they write.

“Based on our analysis of the Central Bank data, Iran’s currency has lost roughly half of its value, 46 percent, falling from 40,170 to 58,880 per dollar, since Trump put the future of the nuclear deal in doubt last October. The Iranian economy looked particularly wobbly amidst protests in December when Iranians took to the streets to protest the regime-controlled banking sector, and lack of economic opportunity and political freedom,” they added.

They believe that additional pressure on Iran’s Central Bank could be the nudge necessary to send it into collapse and bring down the regime.

“Under the sanctions law applied prior to the nuclear deal, foreign financial institutions are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with the Central Bank. In effect, the Bank’s foreign-held accounts are put on lock down, barring the regime from accessing its foreign exchange reserves. On paper, Iran may get paid for its oil but the money sits in the purchaser’s country and is only available for Iran to buy goods from that country in the local currency. Without access to these reserves, the regime would find it much harder to defend the Rial,” the article said.

The proverbial hammer blow this would deal to the regime is significant since the Central Bank provides the funding for the Revolutionary Guard Corps and supplies the cash for its activities in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The irony is that the regime can be crippled without canceling the nuclear deal as the Iran lobby has feared and instead using the Rial as a leveraged weapon against the mullahs by hitting them where it hurts; wiping out popular support from the Iranian people.

Remember, the original revolution against the Shah was largely fueled by economic concerns before it was stolen by the mullahs. Wouldn’t it be delicious to see the same thing happen to them?

Laura Carnahan