ANALYSIS: As Ahwaz protests, downward spiral continues in Iran

Rouhani at a press conference in Ankara on April 4, 2018.

Protests have flared up across southwestern province of Khuzestan in past few days. What is taking shape today in Iran is but a reminder that protests that started in the final days of last year have not stopped. But it has gained momentum and has spread across the country.

Ahwaz, provincial capital of Khuzestan, was the scene of recent protests of Arab citizens outraged by the state TV’s insulting program with clear racial and discriminatory connotation.

Soon other cities throughout the region including Abadan, Mahshahr, Hamidiyeh and Sheyban joined and the theocratic regime in Tehran respond was harsh and violent.

According to a statement from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) People in Ahwaz were brutally attacked by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on March 30.

“Police mercenaries and anti-riot guards threw tear gas and attacked demonstrators in the city of Kut Abdullah [southern suburbs of Ahwaz] with batons and opened fire at the crowd. Clashes between people and repressive forces continued for hours,” said the statement.

Scratching the surface, despite living on a pile of gold, citizens in the oil rich region are suffering from high unemployment, lack of clean water, daily sand storms among other problems.

Unpaid salaries

Making even more difficult for the regime, the workers in Khuzestan that are the largest working class community in Iran are fighting for their unpaid salaries and benefits owned to them by their employers.

Some of the workers have not been paid for over a year. Irony is that many of the new employers of the factories are IRGC’s former commanders turned businessmen. This was another trick up IRGC and the Supreme Leader’s Ali Khamenei’s sleeves to escape international sanctions.

The majority of these supposed financial entities owned by so-called Iran’s private sector have gone bankrupt leaving their workers with nothing. Since the owners have powerful backers such as the military arm of the IRGC, the protesting workers are often arrested and jailed and their families go hungry.

In one such company, which used to be one of the largest sugar cane factories in the Middle East, thousands of workers are on strike for months now.

A statement from NCRI  which closely monitors protests in Iran said: “Workers from various sectors of the Haft-Tapeh sugarcane Company located in a region of the same name in the Southwestern city of Shush, including farmers in the agricultural sector, went on strike since the morning of Tuesday, March 28, and stopped working on sugarcane production”.

Last month another very serious protest rocked the Iranian regime in Isfahan central Iran. This time, farmers fed up with water shortage for their livelihood, blocked roads using their tractors and clashed with the IRGC and other security forces near their fields.

This is ironical considering, since the early days of the 1979 revolution, Iranian regime officials have counted on farmers as their strong supporters and garnered their votes.

On March 16, NRCI reported:  “The protests of thousands of desperate farmers from cities of Varzaneh, Sarshiadoran, Ejiyeh ... With the support of the people of Isfahan became more widespread on Friday.”

According to a statement from the National Council of Resistance of Iran, people in Ahwaz were brutally attacked by the IRGC on March 30. 

According to the statement, a massive crowd gathered along the Khaju Bridge to protest against the regime’s refusal to grant farmers the right to water and catastrophic livelihoods of farmers and ranchers.

“They went on to march on the streets of the city shouting ‘Today is the day of mourning, the life of the worker is in peril today’ and ‘Liar Rouhani, where is our Zayandeh Rood? [Referring to Iran’s largest river in central Iran] Authorities! Be ashamed, leave your presidency.’”

They also reportedly chanted: “Farmer dies, does not accept charity, we fight, we die, we get our water share back.” Protesters also displayed a huge banner which read the following: “We, the farmers of the Eastern Isfahan, want our thousands years old water share and we stand with our lives for it.’” 

Environment: Iran’s weak spot

The regime also needs to take responsibility for Iran’s environmental disasters. Analysts believe that water shortage in the country has created the biggest challenge for officials in Tehran. It is not nature’s wrath as the Iranian regime is trying to imply and look innocent.

But it is the direct result of decades of mismanagement of Iran’s water supplies. This country for centuries had survived on its water resources despite being located on a dry plateau.

Dust storms is not a phenomena limited to southwestern Iran anymore. Iranian regime dried natural swamps and lagoons during the eight-year war with Iraq to have dry land for armored vehicles marching toward the border with Iraq.

Swamps served as barriers to sand and dust storms from directly blowing into Iran’s southern and southwestern regions. Something which once was just a problem in Khuzestan and regime tried to hide it, now is on their own door steps in their lavish villas in northern Tehran.

A shocking report from government affiliated media reveals that Iran’s weather in past few days is alarming. Weather in most of cities in Iran’s Khuzestan province deemed unsafe. Cities of Ahwaz, Abadan, Ramhormoz and Shushtar are just a few examples. 

A final word 

In his New Year message, Khamenei tried to reduce the country’s problems to some minor difficulties in economy. But he intentionally overlooked other problems.

Khamenei has problems with his neighbors, has proliferated ballistic missiles, and has unleashed IRGC and Quds Force in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen. In the process he has destroyed his own country.

The world should have realized by now that the Iranian regime has neither any intentions nor the ability to coexist with others. The EU bloc countries will be much better off not flocking Tehran’s dead horse.

_____________________________
Reza Shafiee is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

John Bolton – Right Man, Right Job, Right Moment

National Security Advisor to the Trump administration John Bolton

 The appointment of John Bolton as National Security Advisor has given rise to lively debate in American foreign policy circles. The discussion seems all the more imperative in light of the upcoming May 12 deadline for sanction waivers under the Iran nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Ultimately, the conversation about both Bolton and the JCPOA is more than a debate over his particular positions and personal style, or the merits and failings of the nuclear deal. Rather, it differentiates two distinct schools of thought. One views Tehran as a potentially reliable negotiating partner that can be wooed into changing its conduct and acquiescing to international demands. The other recognizes the need for a firm policy in dealing with a regime that will neither submit to international norms nor listen to reason.
That firm policy does not necessarily involve military action, but it does seek to present the Iranian regime with circumstances in which the cost-benefit analysis makes further aggressive action and defiance of international norms untenable. In fact, the threat of war is not even the most effective way of creating such circumstances. A policy that isolates the regime while promoting the democratic ambitions of the Iranian people would be far more effective.
Some might object that this is an unproven premise, that it is not clear that the Iranian people have the organizational capacity to present a serious threat to the regime’s hold on power. But one would also have to acknowledge that the policies of negotiation and appeasement have proven ineffective for more than three decades.
The West has reached out over and over again to “moderates” within the Iranian regime, like Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, and most recently the current president, Hassan Rouhani . In each case, the outcome has been an escalation of Iran’s hardline policies and destabilizing behaviors, rather than their retraction. This has been detrimental not only to Western interests in the region, but also to the fortunes of the Iranian people. And that has in turn stoked their resentment and their readiness to throw off the regime that holds them in bondage.
These facts were underscored in December and January, when mass protests rocked every major town and city in Iran, giving rise to slogans like “death to the dictator” and explicit calls for regime change. Beyond highlighting the fallacy of Western optimism about “moderation,” the protests also pointed to the likelihood of success for policies that recognize the disaffection of Iran’s populace with its rulers. The regime’s struggle to suppress those protests exposed its own weakness. In their wake, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was even compelled to admit that the leading Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), was a driving force and thus a significant threat to the regime’s hold on power.
For years, the mullahs sought to dismiss the MEK as lacking in domestic support and as decimated by Tehran’s brutal efforts to destroy it. In the summer of 1988 alone, some 30,000 political prisoners were put to death as part of that effort. All told, upwards of 100,000 MEK activists have been killed. Yet the recent anti-government protests made it clear that the group’s democratic message and commitment to regime change appeal to ever-larger portions of the population, including poor, rural Iranians long cast as politically inactive or even supportive of the clerical regime.
The MEK has also been gaining traction abroad. Its support among American politicians is bipartisan, including prominent Democrats and Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Howard Dean, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Richardson, and General James Jones, who served as National Security Adviser under the Obama administration. Another of the MEK’s friends is the new appointee to that position, John Bolton. Clearly, the Iranian Resistance is winning more widespread acceptance at a time when mainstream American politics is more receptive to the long-neglected policies that would promote its democratic aims.
This shift could not be more timely. Iran’s recent nationwide uprising was not a one-off event. Many experts have suggested that protests will resume, perhaps with even greater strength, in response to the regime’s repressive response. Indeed, Maryam Rajavi , the president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI ), recently called for the new Iranian calendar year to be “a year full of uprisings.”
Activists continue to be arrested and public gatherings disrupted. Evidently, Tehran is taking this threat seriously. As well it should, because the ongoing efforts of the Trump administration, with its new foreign policy staff, suggest that the era of appeasement is over. Advocates of the alternate school of thought now have a unique opportunity, to accomplish what Sun Tzu called “the supreme art of war”: to subdue the enemy without fighting.
At this exceptional juncture, we must recognize that the mullahs can be subdued, and that the U.S. can put itself on the right side of history by supporting Iran’s domestic push for a free, democratic future. To do so would be a triumph for the Iranian people, for American interests, and for the Middle East as a whole. Such an accomplishment would indeed go down in history, and be acclaimed by all Americans and all defenders of democracy, whatever their politics. 

Ken Blackwell served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in the George H. W. Bush Administration.

John Bolton Is Good for the U.S. and Bad for Iran

Adam Ereli - #John Bolton Is Good for the #U.S. and Bad for #Iran https://townhall.com/columnists/adamereli/2018/04/02/john-bolton-is-good-for-the-us-and-bad-for-iran-n2466847

Adam Ereli

Biography

Ambassador Adam Ereli (@erelija) was the U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain and Deputy State Department spokesperson during the Bush administration.

Articles

John Bolton Is Good for the U.S. and Bad for Iran

April 02, 2018 | 

 

Why Americans Should Welcome the Current Iranian Uprising

January 18, 2018 | 

 

Top-Down Reform Trumps Bottom-Up Change

Saudi Hails US Stance on Need to Confront Iran’s Threat 4/4/2018 3:20:18 AM

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz chairs a cabinet session in Riyadh

 Saudi Arabia hailed on Tuesday the stance of the United States in which it stressed the need to confront the Iranian threat in the region, reported the Saudi Press Agency.

Meeting in Riyadh, the Saudi cabinet, which was chaired by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz, underlined Washington’s position on the need to confront Iran’s destabilizing actions.

A recent White House statement had also condemned the Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen, highlighting Saudi efforts aimed at reaching a political solution to the Yemeni crisis.

King Salman briefed the members of cabinet on the telephone call he held with US President Donald Trump earlier this week. The two leaders had stressed each of their countries’ firm stance on several regional and international affairs.

Trump had hailed in the talks the visit of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, to the US, noting his productive meetings and agreements that will serve the interests of Washington and Riyadh.

King Salman also briefed the cabinet on the telephone call with Egypt’s Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, in which he congratulated him on his re-election as president.

The Saudi cabinet then highlighted the talks Crown Prince Mohammed held with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The two officials stressed the need to implement the values of the UN and international law. They also emphasized Saudi Arabia’s right to defend its interests and preserve its security through cooperating with its allies in the Middle East.

The cabinet also praised Prince Mohammed’s ongoing trip to the US and the discussions he held with senior US officials and executives.

Clouds form over Iran deal as Trump deadline nears

When Trump extended Iran’s sanctions relief in January, he pledged it would be the last time

 Dark clouds are forming over the Iran nuclear deal as the calendar marches toward a May 12 deadline set by President Trump to improve the accord or see the United States effectively withdraw from it.
When Trump extended Iran’s sanctions relief in January, he pledged it would be the last time unless European allies agree to a supplemental deal to fix what the president sees as the fundamental problems with the nuclear pact negotiated by the Obama administration.
And while negotiations with the Europeans are ongoing, hopes for a solution are increasingly fading.

“Every single day I have a new percentage about whether we’re going to get a new deal. Today is 51/49 no deal,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who favors changing the deal instead of scrapping it.
Trump came into office vowing to tear up the “worst deal ever negotiated.”
The pact signed between Iran and the United States, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and Germany provided Tehran with billions in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs to its nuclear program.
Trump sees three main issues: several provisions sunset, inspectors can’t demand to see some military sites, and it does not address Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for terrorists.
During Trump’s first year in office, his national security team argued it was in the U.S. interest to remain in the deal — a stance that influenced Trump’s decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the deal but not to reimpose sanctions. Decertification had little bearing on the deal’s fundamentals, but reimposing sanctions could doom it.
Now, two of the administration officials who supported staying in the deal have been ousted and are being replaced with staunch Iran hawks.

While a member of Congress in 2016, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo argued that the Iran deal “virtually guaranteed that Iran will have the freedom to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons.” Following Trump’s election, Pompeo, currently the director of the CIA, said he looked “forward to rolling back this disastrous deal.”

When announcing former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s firing and Pompeo’s nomination, Trump focused on the Iran deal.

“We disagreed on things,” Trump said of Tillerson. “You look at the Iran deal. I think it's terrible, I guess he felt it was OK. I wanted to break it; he felt differently.”

But supporters of the Iran deal see Trump’s choice of John Bolton as his incoming national security advisor as the biggest death knell for the deal.

Bolton penned an op-ed while the deal was being negotiated that was bluntly titled, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” He also encouraged Trump to “abrogate the Iran nuclear deal in his first days in office” last year.

Tillerson may have been hoping for a framework agreement with the Europeans that would allow Trump to save face without killing the deal, experts said, but Pompeo and Bolton are unlikely to accept something that’s mostly symbolic.

“The views of Bolton and Pompeo matter quite a bit” to the success or failure of the European negotiations, Taleblu said. “I don’t think both of them will settle for anything that’s just crossing t's and dotting i's.”

Since Trump’s January announcement, State Department officials led by director of policy planning Brian Hook have had several rounds of negotiations with France, the U.K. and Germany, the so-called E3.

Hook has said the department is preparing for either a deal with the Europeans or a withdrawal from the nuclear accord.

“We always have to prepare for any eventuality, and so we are engaged in contingency planning because it would not be responsible not to engage in it,” Hook told reporters last month after returning from Iran deal meetings in Berlin and Vienna. “We’re kind of dual-tracking this.”

Trump’s January ultimatum also included a call to Congress to pass legislation to fix the nuclear deal. But Congress’s efforts have stalled as it waits for the results of negotiations with the Europeans.

“It’s 100 percent with the administration, meaning they have to convince the E3 that there be a follow-on agreement,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters last month. “If they do that, then we’ll consider legislation domestically after that occurs.”

Even if the E3 agree to sanctions for Iran’s long-range missile development, as has been discussed, the European Union Council would have to unanimously sign off on them.

Barbara Slavin, director of the Atlantic Council’s Future Iran Initiative, said there are two April dates that could determine the success of these negotiations.
The first is a mid-April EU Council meeting that could signal the EU’s response to a follow-on deal. The second is French President Emmanuel Macron’s April 24 state visit to Washington.

“That would be the last chance to push a view of the deal in a way that Trump might be willing to listen to because he likes Macron,” Slavin said.

Slavin also said Trump may be persuaded to renew sanctions waivers once more because Pompeo may not be confirmed by May 12 and the national security team is busy preparing for a summit with North Korea’s leader.

“This could be the argument for hanging in there,” she said. “But this is all very rational, and as we know, we have a president who gets his policy views from ‘Fox & Friends.’”

But even if Trump does not renew sanctions waivers, the deal may survive, experts said. Europe could move to protect its companies from U.S. sanctions for doing business with Iran or the Trump administration could choose not to enforce sanctions immediately, meaning Iran would still get benefits from the deal even if the United States is not a party to it.

Slavin also predicted Iran would not want to walk away from the deal immediately after the United States withdraws.

“Iran will at least initially wait to see what everyone else does,” she said.

Others were less hopeful.

Storm brewing in Iran over nuclear deal, terror ties and domestic unrest

Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton (L), a strong critic of Tehran, is now Trump’s National Security Advisor

  Recent developments are indicating a tough road ahead for Iran in what is promising to be a tumultuous summer.

U.S. President Donald Trump sacked his top diplomat, Rex Tillerson, on March 13, citing specifically differences regarding the Iran nuclear deal.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, nominated to lead the State Department, favors a firm approach confronting Tehran’s regional policy and is a major critic of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the Iran accord is formally known.

Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a strong critic of Tehran, is now Trump’s National Security Advisor.

Prior to this, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Iran on March 5, expressing concerns over Tehran’s ballistic missile program and Middle East belligerence. This portrayed the JCPOA’s fragile nature and Tehran’s failure to use Europe as a shield against the Trump administration.

Couple all this with escalating Iranian protests across the country, and the regime’s recent intention of filtering Telegram, a popular messaging app used by over 40 million people, and you have a recipe for disaster from Tehran’s perspective.  

Prelude 

Paving the path for Iran’s miseries, the Financial Action Task Force issued its latest report in February placing a June ultimatum for Tehran to input significant changes in its banking system and end financial relations with terrorist groups through nine specific procedures.

As Iran remains blacklisted in the financial market, investors are very hesitant over launching any meaningful project with the clerical regime.

Iran’s economic bankruptcy, parallel to widespread protests by people from all walks of life that continue as we speak, provide a very clear understanding about Tehran’s chief crises.

 Double impact

The groundworks of such circumstances are vivid in two very specific JCPOA weak points, from Iran’s perspective. While Europe lifted many sanctions, similar steps imposed by the U.S. remained considering how Congress disagreed with the Obama administration’s engagement with Tehran.

Obama used his executive authority to suspend nuclear sanctions, while non-nuclear sanctions imposed by the U.S., blocking America’s financial system to Iran. As a result, European banks are unable to get involved in dollar transactions with Iran.

This, again, leaves the JCPOA very fragile and allows Trump to annul the entire accord while financial & non-nuclear sanctions remain intact.

Underestimation 

Failing to comprehend the impact, Iran was boasting about Western companies lining up for business. This honeymoon ended quickly as Tehran came to understand its grave underestimation.

Former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry began receiving calls from his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, seeking measures to set aside banking sanctions.

In March 20 16, Mohammad Nahavandian, then chief of staff of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani , travelled to London warning of unaccountable results if the JCPOA fails to resolve Tehran’s economic dilemmas. Maybe he was referring to the Iranian uprising where the poor flooded the streets and raised demands for regime change.  

Sweeping changes  

Iran’s economic predicaments continue as we speak, especially with the Obama years ending and the Trump administration executing sweeping changes in U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran. Banks and companies across the globe, especially Europe, are showing cold feet in engaging with this regime.

Speaking at London’s Chatham House back in February, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi vividly voiced his regime’s concerns, complaining how Tehran is not fully benefiting from the JCPOA and describing the atmosphere as “destructive” resulting from Washington’s “confusion” regarding the nuclear pact’s future.

Iran also miscalculated the JCPOA as a green light by the international community to deploy the Lebanese Hezbollah and dozens of other Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Quds Force-linked militia to not only massacre the Syrian people, but enjoy military presence in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

From 2015 onward Tehran is significantly developing its ballistic missile arsenal, providing such an inventory to the Houthis in Yemen to target Saudi Arabia. All the while, Iranian officials continue boasting about Hezbollah’s missile capabilities.

In response, the U.S. Congress is continuously adopting sanctions targeting the Iranian regime’s belligerence, especially blacklisting the IRGC.

Another expressively sweeping change that proved Iran’s calculations completely came as Europe began distancing from Tehran. Iran’s JCPOA dream story is culminating, realizing Europe will never choose business with this regime over its strategic economic relations with the U.S.

European officials went to great lengths to have Iran curb its ballistic missile program and regional meddling in the face of Trump’s threat to exit the JCPOA.

This resulted in Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials adopting strong positions against France, expressing their discontent of Europe siding with the U.S.

“If we have maintained our missile range to 2,000 kilometers, it is not due to technological limitations… we will increase our missile reach to the extent which we feel threatened,” said IRGC deputy Hossein Salami in a state TV interview on November 26. 

Ultimate concern

While international isolation creates mounting quandaries for Iran, domestic unrest has forever been Tehran’s ultimate concern. To add insult to injury, Iran’s ongoing protests and uprising is under the navigation of the opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). This coalition has for four decades been the main target of the Iranian regime’s onslaught.

Professor Ivan Sascha Sheehan in his recent article in The Hill says:

“Tehran’s violent reaction to peaceful protests demonstrates that the language of strength is the only language the regime understands. Even under current president Hassan Rouhani’s so-called ‘moderate’ leadership, the Islamic Republic continues its illicit activities to every extent it is permitted to do so.”

This is not a call to war. Quite the contrary. The world should acknowledge Iran’s current wars in Syria and Yemen, conveniently gone neglected by mainstream media and appeasement supporters.

The international community can best support the Iranian people’s uprising by crippling the regime’s entities, such as the Central Bank and IRGC. This goes analogous to recognizing the Iranian people’s organized resistance for regime change, symbolized in the PMOI/MEK.

An Iranian expression translate into “April showers bring May flowers.”

This spring is already promising a stormy summer for the Iranian regime and a year of historical developments for the Iranian people.

John Bolton Is Good for the U.S. and Bad for Iran

Iran’s protests validate the wisdom of making John Bolton America’s National Security Advisor. If Iran thinks he’s bad, he must be good.

Judging by the rhetoric coming out of Tehran, John Bolton’s appointment as America’s National Security Advisor is the worst thing that ever happened.

The Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council labeled Bolton’s appointment “a matter of shame.” 

The Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy declared,  'The use of hardline elements against the Islamic Republic of Iran shows that the Americans seek to exert more pressure on Iran.”

First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri opined, “They (US officials) are wrong to assume that the Iranian nation will give in to their threats against the Islamic Republic.” 

The Fars News Agency, the mouthpiece of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) editorialized, “Bolton advocates a foreign policy that exaggerates threats, belittles diplomacy, shows contempt for international institutions, and is quick to use violence… Bolton wants to shred the Iran nuclear deal and bomb Iran, whose policy has consistently favored stability…. Experts and policy-makers in Tehran see the Trump theater as no more than a bluff as the U.S. lacks the needed economic, political and military potentials and legitimacy to go for yet another adventurism in the world.” 

Iran’s protests validate the wisdom of making John Bolton America’s National Security Advisor.  If Iran thinks he’s bad, he must be good.  One thing is certain:  the United States will no longer pursue a policy of appeasement toward the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Since 2008, U.S. policymakers have been bending over backwards to accommodate the mullahs in Tehran.  President Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq left that country at the mercy of Iran.  Obama’s capitulation in Syria allowed Iran (and Russia) to keep Assad in power and to wantonly massacre hundreds of thousands of Syrians with impunity.  The lifting of sanctions as part of the nuclear deal put $150 billion into the pockets of Iran’s leaders, which they have used to finance the terrorist depredations of the IRGC and to bankroll their proxies in Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain.

Iran’s regional neighbors are not the only ones who have suffered from the revolutionary fervor of the Islamic Republic’s leaders. Iran is the most repressive country in the Middle East. It executes more of its citizens, per capita, than any other country in the world. Ninety percent of all executions throughout the Middle East take place in Iran. The recent uprisings in over 140 cities throughout Iran show that the people are sick to death of this theocratic dictatorship. They long for freedom, justice, democracy and the rule of law.

Whatever flaws one might ascribe to John Bolton, inconsistency is not among them.  He has been advocating a tough policy toward Tehran for the past two decades.  Struan Stevenson, a former member of the European Parliament from Scotland, put it best when he wrote of Bolton’s appointment: “Chamberlain’s policy encouraged Hitler to go to war.  Obama’s Iran policy encouraged the regime to export its terrorism and meddling in the region.  There is only one way to stop the current conflicts and wars in the region:  adopting a firm line with the Iranian regime and supporting the popular uprising for a democratic change in Iran.”

With John Bolton, America finally has a senior official who will translate these wise words into action.

Critics in Iran and the United States have condemned Bolton’s affiliation with the exiled Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK).  Here, John Bolton is in good company. A bipartisan group of American luminaries and international leaders have lent their support to the group. They include, among others, Senators Joe Lieberman and Bob Torricelli; Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Speaker Newt Gingrich; retired Generals James Jones, Hugh Shelton, and James Conway; former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge; former Attorney General Mike Mukasey; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; former Democratic National Committee Chairs Ed Rendell and Howard Dean; former Ambassadors Bill Richardson, Lincoln Bloomfield Jr., Marc Ginsberg, and Kenneth Blackwell; former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner; former Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi; former Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, and former Algerian Prime Minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali.

Support for opposition political movements is not a crime, and the United States has a long history of helping the victims of political persecution.  Over the course of four months, during the summer of 1988, the Iranian regime executed an estimated 30,000 men, women and juveniles who had been imprisoned for their affiliation with MEK.  During Operation Enduring Freedom in Iraq, the U.S. Government pursued a policy of protecting MEK members there from attack by Iranian-affiliated forces.

On at least two issues, there should be no doubt:  accommodating the Iranian regime will not bring peace to the region and the people of Iran want change.  With John Bolton at the helm of the National Security Council, there is at last a glimmer of hope that the period of appeasement is over and that the mullahs’ days are numbered.

Mr. Ereli was the U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain and Deputy State Department Spokesperson during the George W. Bush administration.