Memorial Day – Iran Lobby

This Memorial Day Remember Victims of the Iran Regime

Memorial Day, which recognizes service personnel killed in the line of duty, originated from Decoration Day after the American Civil War in 1868 and formalized as a commemoration of all the men and women who died while serving.

Unlike Veterans Day, Memorial Day recognizes the greatest sacrifice made by those donning the uniform and making the ultimate sacrifice for the protection of their loved ones and the ideals and way of life embodied in America.

But for our purposes, Memorial Day is also an appropriate time to reflect on all those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for freedom, dignity and human rights at the hands of the mullahs of Tehran.

Since the takeover of the revolution in Iran in 1979, the mullahs and religious cohorts have placed a stranglehold on the Iranian people; enforcing their own nihilistic vision of Islamic law that imposes the most dreaded penalties for the slightest deviations from their reactionary thought.

But the mullahs were never simply content to violate every basic right of the people of Iran, they also wanted to extend their extremist vision of Islamic revolution throughout the world and most especially to their closet neighbors in order to create a kind of Islamic Warsaw Pact to shield the revolution from potential challenges.

From the crafting of its constitution to the construction of its judiciary and religious courts, the mullahs have sought to impose their will in virtually every part of Iranian life; from fashion and the economy to foreign policy and women’s rights.

As part of that zealotry, the mullahs have undertaken a militant foreign policy over the last 30 years that has spurred war, terrorism and death throughout most of the Middle East. They have done so through the supplying of proxies such as Hezbollah, their long-time terrorist ally, to Shiite militias and insurgents in Iraq to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Most notably, Iran largest military commitment outside of the Iran-Iraq War has been its full-fledged participation in the Syrian civil war to keep the regime of Bashar al-Assad firmly in control no matter the collateral damage or consequences.

The butcher’s bill for the mullahs over the years has been long and bloody and it is worth remembering this Memorial Day so the world does not forget the suffering, loss and misery inflicted by them:

On October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War, two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing United States and French military forces—members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF)—killing 241 U.S. and 58 French servicemen, six civilians, under the direction and with the support of the Iranian regime;

Almost 4,500 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014 with at least 500 U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan directly linked to Iran and its support for anti-American militants according the U.S. defense officials;

On April 23, 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 400,000 people had died so far in the Syrian war, in which Iran has supplied Quds Force, Revolutionary Guard fighters and commanders, as well as supplied Hezbollah troops and Afghan mercenaries equipped with Iranian arms and ammunition;

According to the United Nations, from March 2015 to March 2016 over 6,500 people have been killed in Yemen, including 3,218 civilians, as part of the civil war being waged by Houthi rebels armed and supplied illicitly by the Iranian regime;

In March 2016, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, said in a report to the organization’s Human Rights Council that at least 966 people were put to death in the country in 2015, roughly double the number executed in 2010 and 10 times as many as were executed in 2005. The report noted that executions in Iran were at the highest level since 1989; and

Iranian dissident groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran have documented and chronicled over 2,500 executions since the installation of “moderate” president Hassan Rouhani, with almost near daily executions of men, women and children.

The reach of the regime is long and respects no boundaries. Agents of the regime have participated in bombings and attempted assassinations in places as far away as Argentina and Washington, DC. Its forces inflict suffering by attacking places such as Camp Liberty in Iraq, home of thousands of Iranian dissidents who oppose the mullahs and are targeted by them for that opposition.

The Iranian regime’s leadership is for all intents a purposes a death cult, devoted to an Islamic extremist ideal that has no place in today’s civilized world and should be met by the international community with condemnation and indignation, not negotiations and treaties.

For the families who have loved ones killed by the regime, for the wives, sons and daughters who lost fathers to Iran-supplied IEDs, to the children of Iran who have lost fathers and mothers to the gallows of the mullahs, this Memorial Day should be marked with moments of silence and remembrance for them and their suffering and the hope for a free Iran where these types of memorials will no longer be necessary.

By Michael Tomlinson

As we enter the Memorial Day holiday weekend, families will gather for barbecues and picnics and others will gather to remember those who have fallen in past conflicts and made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation. But Memorial Day should also be a day to commemorate those who didn’t put on a uniform, but still had to make the same sacrifices and their families had to pay that ultimate price.

It is an unfortunate legacy of the world we live in today that innocent men, women and children often have to bear the same price as those who are trained and volunteer to fight. Throughout the Middle East, that scenario is being played out on countless battlefields, in numerous villages, towns and cities in places such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

But even cities and nations unaccustomed to fighting have been places of terror and carnage such as an office in Paris, a store in Sydney or a government building in Canada. All at the hands of extremist Islamists who have copied their playbook of terror from the Iran regime which has had a 30 year head start on terror spectacles and continues to this day with almost daily public hangings in most city squares.

So this Memorial Day ought to serve as a sobering reminder not just of the sacrifices service personnel make, but for those innocents who have been caught in the escalating violence around the world.

All of which makes the choices offered by the Iran lobby in regards to ongoing nuclear talks with the Iran regime all the more odd since supporters such as the National Iranian American Council have consistently framed the choices in a nuclear agreement as stark ones between war and peace. Their hyperbole clouds the real issue driving the mullahs in Iran and for them the choices are not about war and peace.

It’s really about cash and lots of it. Iran’s economy is reeling under the triple blows of corrupt mismanagement by the ruling elites, spiraling oil prices and the heavy costs associated with funding proxy wars and terror groups in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Not to mention the billions of dollars being spent by the regime in building and maintaining a far flung network of installations and research facilities dedicated to developing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles necessary to carry them.

That need for billions of dollars in unfrozen assets, proceeds from oil sales and renewed capital investment is what drives the mullahs. They hunger for cash in the same way an addict craves his next drug fix. It is also why Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, has consistently demanded a complete lifting of all economic sanctions at once, including those levied by the UN Security Council, European Union and the U.S. Congress and president.

And that is the quandary facing the NIAC and other regime lobbyists; how do we sell a nuclear deal driving by a need for a financial bailout of Tehran? In classic spin control, they opt to frame the debate as a choice between war and peace.

They recognize that America is war weary and that voters have little appetite for more American blood to be shed, but the choice for Americans and by extension for Congress and the Obama administration is that the choice really is not between war and peace. It’s about whether or not to let mullahs in Iran get the cash they want and so desperately need.

Economic sanctions work. They brought the mullahs to the negotiating table and they are still the most compelling non-violent tool available to the International community. To abandon them without a solid deal that not only cuts Iranian regime’s nuclear program off at the knees, but also modifies its behavior towards proxy wars, terror groups and human rights is dumb and a mistake of historic proportions.

For when we gather to commemorate and celebrate Memorial Day weekend, we should remember that the surest path to peace is not through appeasement, but through strength; strength of conviction, strength of commitment and strength of will.

I hope your Memorial Day is a peaceful one.

By Michael Tomlinson