۱۳۹۷ فروردین ۶, دوشنبه

Iran Regime Panicked Over New U.S. National Security Advisor



We will celebrate with you in Tehran in 2019 John Bolton said

Abdulrahman al-Rashed a veteran and internationally acclaimed journalist, and former General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel and editor-in-chief of the London-based leading Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, wrote an article titled: Trump administration in war against who? In Al Arabiya on Mar. 24, 2018, the following is an excerpt of this article.
'We will celebrate with you in Tehran in 2019,' John Bolton said at the Iranian opposition ceremony. 'A sentence echoed in the hall but did not get any attention outside, because its lecturer was just a former ambassador. His serious expression was not merely an interaction with the Iranian opposition, but his convictions, as also was clearly expressed three years ago in the New York Times. Written in an article that sparked a storm of responses 'to bomb Tehran!'
This is the national security adviser appointed by US President Donald Trump as McMaster's successor. By joining the White House team, Trump's opponents have been called a 'war government' because they are mostly generals and conservatives. The post is important, developed with the start of the Cold War and chaired for important issues in meetings attended by secretaries, such as the State Department and the Defense Department, and his office located in the President's pavilion of the White House, who provides summaries of cases to the president.
Bolton himself is a well-known figure of hard-line positions, a school that believes in a strong America, at a time when Russia and China are at its expense. Small powers such as Iran and North Korea have threatened its security, interests and allies.
Bolton's opponents do not want to discuss issues like Iran and North Korea because they can not win the argument, and therefore they resort to targeting him with personal charges, he is racist, and he is against Muslims. In fact, these descriptions are used informally in the assassination of characters.
He wants to overthrow a regime that wears Islamism - the mandate of the Islamic jurisprudent in Iran, against Hezbollah and against the North Korean government led by Kim Jong-un.
That is why my Muslim readers, who disagree with Bolton's opinion on these issues, should raise their hands! In my opinion, the majority of three hundred and fifty million Arabs and Iranians are like Bolton They see the same thing. Even if my estimation is wrong, Mr. Bolton's positions are that of a broad segment of the Middle East population, all of us are against extremism and extremists, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Those who accuse Bolton of racism and Islamophobia are the Khomeinists, the Brotherhood and the Western Left.
For Bolton's promise to celebrate in Tehran in 2019, it is likely that Bolton will not be celebrating on time, that is, to overthrow the regime of the Wilayat al-Faqih. But the government of Tehran, since the first day, when Trump announced the appointment of Bolton as the national security adviser is in a state of anxiety and distrust. Now Iran sees that its trick to flex the Europeans with small concessions will not succeed in stopping the 'bulldozer' President Trump in his march on Tehran.
For us in the Middle East region, despite chaos and destruction, the orderly overthrow of the Iranian regime is an ideal solution to ending the era of chaos that Khomeini had cut its ribbon in 1979. He, together with radical Islamist groups, and other regional regimes collaborating with him led the region to a series of crises, lasting almost forty years, and brought the whole world into fear and uncertainty.
However, not even successful in raising expectations, my article is not misunderstood, the possibility that Trump and the government of hawks which he is leading, engage in a direct war on Iran is unlikely according to current crisis measures.
But the administration would be shocked by it if Tehran's regime erred and dared to do what it did against the former US administration when the American sailors were seized and humiliated on television before the world. A foolish step like this could lead to war, and we know that the foxes of Tehran despite their many adventures, fear the mighty.
Germany and France will not succeed in softening Trump's head, nor the rest of his hard-liner heads of ministries; his adviser Bolton, his new foreign minister, the director of his new intelligence agency, or his defense minister.
Trump's enormous pressure will increase on Iran, and its allied forces and organizations in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan and Yemen. The administration is likely to push its efforts to rid the Iraqi government of Iranian infiltration into its institutions, forces and security and financial apparatuses.
The pressure will reach Lebanon, to dwarf Hezbollah, and even more to ideological groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and to end the actions of adolescent Qatar, Its clumsy policy with the four countries and its alliance with Iran and Turkey against it. I am seeing closer, what I thought was far away.

Report: Iran supplies sophisticated IEDs to Houthi militias



Armed Houthi followers rally in Sanaa on June 14, 2015.

 Sophisticated improvised explosive devices camouflaged as rocks are Iran’s latest contribution to Houthi forces in Yemen, according to a report by a weapons-tracking group.
Based on six missions to Yemen over the last year, and comparisons with similar devices documented elsewhere in the Middle East, Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said the radio-controlled bombs were evidence of a “recent influx of technology.”
“Improvised weapons used by Yemen’s Houthi forces have been manufactured using the same, identically configured components as those recovered from Iranian-backed groups in Bahrain,” said James Bevan, executive director of the group. “CAR’s latest findings confirm consistencies in Iran’s military support, not only to Houthi forces but also to its proxies across the wider region.”
The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 against Iran-aligned Houthis after they seized control of the capital and other provinces, forcing the government to flee. The civil war has killed an estimated 10,000 people and displaced more than 2 million people.
CAR, based in the UK, said most IEDs found in Yemen were rudimentary in design but there was an increase in more sophisticated devices. Its report presented comparative findings on explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) documented by CAR in Yemen and similar devices documented by field investigation teams elsewhere in the Middle East.
The IEDs recovered in Yemen featured EFPs, which were camouflaged to resemble natural rocks. These devices were armed by radio control and initiated using passive infrared switches, so they could be classed as RCIEDs.
CAR also found that the EFPs concealed in synthetic rocks resembled in design and construction other devices recovered in Iraq and Lebanon and which had been forensically linked to Iran.
“Multiple strands of evidence suggest that Iran orchestrated the transfer of technology and materiel to Houthi forces in Yemen to assist in the manufacture of RCIEDs,” the report, published today, said.
CAR said material it seized in Yemen was identical to components previously taken from the Jihan 1, an Iranian ship laden with arms and seized by Yemeni authorities in 2013. US and Yemeni officials said it carried a large cache of weapons, including surface-to-air missiles being smuggled from Iran to insurgents in Yemen.
“This confirms widespread assertions that the vessel was destined for Houthi forces in Yemen and would suggest that Iranian support to Houthi forces began as early as January 2013,” the report said.
CAR also pointed to large-scale production, saying that “identical construction, and the use of hand-annotated, serialized components, suggest that the electronics kits used in the Yemen RCIEDs were constructed in bulk and potentially in the same workshop.”
Tim Michetti, CAR’s head of regional operations for the Gulf, said the presence of these EFPs should not be a surprise given they had been found in other conflict areas. “The underlying thread connecting them is Hezbollah or other Iranian proxy groups,” he said.
The supply of weapons from Iran to Yemen has escalated tensions between Arab countries and Tehran.
Saudi Arabia and the US accuse Iran of exporting ballistic missiles to the Houthis, which are then fired at the Kingdom. In December, the US presented fragments from missiles fired at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport in November, which it says came from Iran in violation of UN resolutions.
Previous research by CAR has provided evidence of shipments of weapons on dhows from Iran to the Houthi militias.

۱۳۹۷ فروردین ۳, جمعه

Mike Pence: President Trump will no longer certify the disastrous Iran nuclear deal



Mike Pence says Trump will no longer certify the disastrous Iran nuclear deal

Vice President Mike Pence speaks in Manchester, N.H., March 22, 2018.
New Hampshire Journal-23 March 20 18- In a speech in Manchester, Pence rolled through the numbers on the U.S. economy in the first year of the Trump administration and, by any measure, they added up to good news for the GOP.
“If you’ve been listening to President Trump, he keeps saying it comes down to the simple words: Jobs, jobs, jobs,” the vice president told a crowd of several hundred at the Manchester Downtown Hotel. He urged the gathered faithful to spread the word of good economic news “neighbor to neighbor.”
“Tell them we’re putting Washington back to work for them, not the other way around,” Pence said.
The event was sponsored by a pro-Trump advocacy group, America First Policies, as part of a national tour promoting the GOP-backed tax cuts in swing states like Iowa, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Among the numbers crunched by the vice president:
• Nearly 3 million new jobs created since Trump’s election.
• Unemployment at a 17-year low.
• 313,000 new jobs in February alone.
“The only sector that lost jobs in February,” Pence asked? “The federal government,” he said, to cheers from the crowd.
Other items of note from Pence’s speech:
IRAN: President Trump “will no longer certify the disastrous Iran nuclear deal.”

Jubeir: We cooperate with the United States in containing Iran



Saudi Foreign Minister said his country and the United States are working on containing Iran’s militia activities in the region

Speaking from the Brookings Institute Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said military cooperation between his country and the United States goes back decades and that both countries are working on containing Iran’s militia activities in the region.
He also discussed the importance of maintaining key bilateral relationships to promote the restoration of security and stability in the Middle East.
His talk at the Brookings Institute comes as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Washington DC on Tuesday and met with US President Donald Turmp.

۱۳۹۷ فروردین ۲, پنجشنبه

Iran’s ambition is to destroy the Saudi state, says Prince Turki Al-Faisal



Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi ambassador and chief of the General Intelligence Directorate.

Iran is a “threat” and aims to destroy the Saudi state, the Kingdom’s former intelligence chief has warned.
Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi ambassador and chief of the General Intelligence Directorate, said that Iran had boasted about its interference in regional states.
“I don't think they threaten our existence. But definitely, their ambition is to destroy the Saudi state. And this is not new. This is from the time of (the former Supreme Leader of Iran) Khomeini,” Prince Turki told NPR.
Prince Turki pointed to Iran’s alleged interference in regional countries including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
“Iran has not hesitated to interfere in all of these countries, and they boast about it. It's not something that they hide or that they shy from mentioning ... Their leadership has boasted about controlling four Arab capitals,” he said.
Prince Turki also said that the Iran-backed Houthi militias had tried to take over Yemen by military force.
“The Kingdom responded to the appeal of the legitimate government in Yemen to provide military support to help them push back on this Houthi-cum-Iranian interference in trying to take over in Yemen,” he said.
“Yemen is bordering Saudi Arabia. Imagine if Mexico or Canada had started interfering in the affairs of the United States. What would the reaction of America be? It would be to defend itself. Yes, it is complicated. And yes, we are paying a price for that. But I think it is a justifiable defense of our interests.”

Mojahedin celebrate the Iranian New Year in Tirana, Rudy Giuliani invited in it



Giuliani described MEK’s members as heroes, as they have fought against a regime of clerics for decades in a row.

 Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and advisor to the US president on cyber security, has participated in a party hosted by mujahedeen in Tirana on the occasion of the Iranian New Year .
Giuliani described MEK’s members as heroes, as they have fought against a regime of clerics for decades in a row.
“This year will bring great changes as far as Iran is concerned. The corrupt regime of the Ayatollah is on the verge of collapse. In contrast to the previous US administration, which tried to please the Mullahs, this administration holds them accountable for crimes in the country and abroad and it supports the legitimate right of the Iranian people for a change of regime and the introduction of democracy and human rights”, Giuliani said.
Meanwhile, according to Maryam Rajavi , the critical situation in which the Mullah regime finds itself in is a product of the historical resistance of the Iranian people.

On Iran, European diplomats should listen to their parliament



“The people of Iran, especially the younger generation, have made it clear that they are fed up with Islamic fundamentalist rule and want democratic change.”

 Last month, when the French foreign minister visited Tehran, the most important event unfolding in Iran was strikingly missing from his agenda. While the country was still in the aftershocks of a nationwide  uprising that started in the final days of 2017, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s top diplomat, preferred to focus on the nuclear accord struck between Iran and five world powers in 2015. He ignored the grievances of hundreds of thousands of protesters across Iran who poured into the streets weeks earlier.
Le Drian’s lack of interest in the latest round of protests in Iran pretty much epitomizes European governments’ tendency to put their economic interests before their moral obligation to support freedom and democracy in Iran. But the same can’t be said about the European Parliament, whose members recently issued a statement that raised concern about the deterioration of the human rights situation in Iran and called for international support for the Iranian people’s uprising.
“We are deeply concerned about the suppression of anti-government protests in Iran that began on 28 December 2017. The backlash by the ‘Islamic Republic’ has been violent,” reads the statement, which was co-signed by 197 of the 751 MEPs.
According to a statement by the opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran, in the first two weeks of the nationwide uprisings, the regime’s notorious Revolutionary Guards and other suppressive forces arrested at least 8,000 protesters, most of whom are under the age of 25. A large number of them have disappeared, and a number have been killed under torture, which the regime dubiously claims the prisoners have committed suicide.
The families of the detained protesters gathered in front of various prisons to demand the release of their loved ones. Their response has so far been more violence by regime forces and denial of access to information about the fate of the detainees.
The Iranian regime has a track record of violently clamping down on dissent when it feels an existential threat. In 1988, as Iranian authorities prepared themselves for the repercussions of a ceasefire that would suspend eight years of fighting with their western neighbor, Iraq, Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, ordered the execution of all political dissidents in Iran’s prisons. The measure was meant to prevent opposition forces from flourishing at a time that the regime was at its weakest. More than 30,000 prisoners were executed in the span of a few months.
With the emergence of online services and social media networks, the Iranian regime learned that directly unleashing its violence in the streets will backfire by providing the people with a chance to document its crimes and spread it across the world, as it happened in 2009, when footage and images of repressive forces cracking down on protestors were distributed on social media. That’s why the regime’s security forces quickly changed tactics, arresting protesters and taking them to clandestine prisons, where they subjected them to horrific tortures.
The same thing is bound to happen again after the 2018 uprisings. “The shroud of secrecy and lack of transparency over what happened to these detainees is alarming,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Mughrabi also called on the Iranian regime to investigate the events that have happened in its prisons and to punish any authorities involved in human rights abuses. But that’s not going to happen. It is up to the international community to step up for the rights of the protesters who linger in the Iranian regime’s prisons, a responsibility it has not yet fulfilled.
At a recent European Council meeting, NCRI President Maryam Rajavi said, “I urge the Council of Europe, the European Union and its member states, and the United Nations to stand beside the people of Iran and not the mullahs’ theocratic regime. The regime must understand that it has to pay a high price for opening fire on demonstrators and killing them under torture.”
This can be fulfilled by preventing the Iranian regime from concealing its crimes, as it has in the past. Rajavi called for the formation of an international inquiry delegation to investigate the deaths, detention, and disappearances of Iranian protesters and those murdered in prison.
And the international community can compel the Iranian regime to accept this delegation. “All diplomatic and economic relations with the Iranian regime must be put to halt. Iran’s rulers must face comprehensive sanctions for decades of crimes against humanity,” Rajavi said. “Iran’s economy is concentrated at Khamenei’s headquarters and in the hands of the IRGC. Doing business with this regime will only fuel its killing machine and its export of war and terrorism.”
Amir Basiri (@amir_bas) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is an Iranian human rights activist.