https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/20/middleeast/iran-analysis-trump-raisi-cmd-intl/index.html Trump dashed dreams of reform in Iran. The country's new hardline president is living proof (CNN)It should have been a spring day most Iranians could look forward to. The trees that lined Tehran's boulevards glistened in the sun as a gentle breeze wafted through the city. But on May 8, 2018, the capital's residents braced themselves for a terrible reversal of fortunes. President Donald Trump was about to announce America's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. It signaled the start of an onslaught of sanctions that would all but crush Iran's economy. It also dashed the dreams of reform-minded Iranians. "What Trump is about to do is extend the life of the regime by another 30 years," an elderly Iranian-American told CNN in the hours before the speech. The Islamic Republic, established in the wake of the overthrow of the autocratic, staunchly pro-Western Shah, was just a few months shy of its 40th birthday. The nuclear deal, on the other hand, seemed to serve as the opening salvo of reform in the country. In June 2017, Iranians had shown up in droves to reelect President Hassan Rouhani in what was seen as a referendum on his landmark deal. The urgency to preserve the most significant opening up of the insular country to the West was palpable. But along came Trump. And Iranians, who have arguably witnessed more dramatic political twists and turns in the last seven decades than any other people, knew that the US President's plans would backfire. The so-called "maximum pressure" campaign would not achieve its stated goal of toppling Iran's clerical establishment. It would prop it up. The skepticism of the West that forms the ideological core of the regime would be underscored, highlighted and scribbled around in frenzied circles. Iran had kept up its end of the bargain, by the State Department's own admission, but the US pulled out anyway. The ensuing sanctions led to rampant food and medicine shortages, and sent the country into a financial tailspin. European parties to the deal proved powerless in salvaging it. "We told you so," the conservatives told Iranians a thousand times over. Much has happened since then. In 2020, Trump ordered the killing of Iran's most revered general, Qasem Soleimani, further enraging conservatives. His funeral was one of the largest in the region's history. Trump was voted out of office that same year. His successor, Joe Biden, immediately moved to restore the deal. Reformist Iranians thought, perhaps, that they could dial back the clock to May 2018. But the clerical establishment's response was a resounding "no." Nowhere was that more loudly articulated than in this week's election, which was engineered to deliver victory for ultra-conservative judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi, the most hardline president Iran has seen in decades. Both the process and the outcome of the election were exceptional in their brazenness, even by the Islamic Republic's standards. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was doubling down. Iran's political future would become even more micromanaged by the ultra-conservative clergy. But this election could have reverberations beyond the four or eight years Raisi will be president. Raisi, a close associate of the ailing 81-year-old Khamenei, is suddenly being referred to as an Ayatollah, an honorific title to indicate high rank among Shia Muslims. Khamenei currently holds that title. So did his predecessor and founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini. The clerical elite, it appeared, were rolling out Raisi's rite of passage to succeed Khamenei and take the highest office of the land. This has grated on many Iranians. Khamenei, it seemed, had chosen cementing his legacy over the public's calls for constitutional reform. The conservative Guardian Council, which vets presidential candidates, barred Raisi's serious rivals from the presidential race. As a result, voter turnout at the presidential election was below 50% for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic. To add insult to injury for the reformist camp, Raisi personifies the darkest aspects of the regime that Iranians have chafed under. For two years, he has headed Iran's draconian judicial branch, which boasts one of the worst capital punishment rates in the world and metes out long jail sentences for some of the most subtle forms of dissent, such as protesting against the mandatory headscarf. In 1988, he allegedly was part of a death commission that executed and forcibly disappeared thousands of political prisoners in secret. For the rest of his career, he was a leading prosecutor who was linked to multiple crackdowns on dissent. Most Iran's voters did not vote for Raisi. But the clerical class opted to contend with public disgruntlement rather than deal with Western fickleness. The cost of US unpredictability was tremendous. Iranians buckling under the strain of a flailing economy have repeatedly protested in large numbers. Too much was at stake, and the conservative clergy want to cut their losses. Moderate politicians, who under outgoing President Hassan Rouhani enjoyed a popular mandate, have been greatly undermined. Sanctions set the government up for failure, making Iran's savvy negotiators and diplomats, like Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, look weak. Meanwhile, the hardliners have successfully portrayed themselves as survivors. They prevailed over the US maximum pressure campaign that was repeatedly billed by its own architects, namely former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as the most aggressive sanctions regime Iran has ever faced. The message from Iran's election will resonate around the region: in these most uncertain of times, only autocrats can ensure stability. Some of the biggest cheerleaders for authoritarianism -- Russia's Vladimir Putin and Syria's Bashar al-Assad -- were quick to congratulate Raisi on his win. Proponents of Middle Eastern regimes will argue that the growing gap between the region's leadership and its people is a lesser danger to states than the risk posed by clumsy Western interventionism. Trump's maximum pressure campaign isn't historically unique in this respect. In 1953, the CIA's orchestration of a coup d'état that deposed Iran's democratically elected and secular Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in many ways laid the groundwork for a longer pattern. Today, once again, democracy in the politically tumultuous Middle East proves more elusive than ever, even as discontent grows. The region has repeatedly been rocked by pro-reform or democracy protests. But these are disorganized masses who face a much more organized, politically hardened elite. So, it may be true, as our Iranian friend said, that real change will take another 30 years to transpire.
Let's see what Iran has been doing in the U.S. What is Biden doing about these aggressive actions from Iran on our own soil (beyond arresting the kidnappers in the U.S.)? Remember the Obama administration gave Iran piles of cash to support their aggressive illegal activities around the world. It is time to come down hard on Iran and stop putting up with this nonsense. At this point we should start taking out Iranian military assets which support this aggression. Iranian Agents Are Facing Charges For Their Role In A Plot To Kidnap A U.S. Journalist https://www.npr.org/2021/07/14/1015...or-their-role-in-a-plot-to-kidnap-a-u-s-journ Federal prosecutors in New York charged five foreign agents backed by the Iranian government for their roles in a stranger-than-fiction plot to kidnap a U.S. citizen and journalist critical of the nation's regime. The 43-page indictment unsealed Tuesday details the plan by an Iranian intelligence official and his three assets to track a Brooklyn-based journalist with the goal of bringing her back to Iran. The court records also include information on a fifth person, a woman based in the U.S. who prosecutors say helped fund the operation. The indictment in Manhattan federal court doesn't name the intended victim, who is described as a journalist and human rights advocate. However, The New York Times reports that the journalist and author Masih Alinejad confirmed in an interview that she was the intended target. Alinejad lives in Brooklyn and has family still in Iran. Alinejad, who is a U.S. citizen, is a longtime critic of the Iranian government. She was a journalist in her native Iran for several years until she fled the country in 2009 following presidential elections and a government crackdown. She has continued to work as a journalist with her Voice of America Persian show in the U.S. Alinejad also organizes "White Wednesday" and "My Stealthy Freedom" campaigns where women film themselves without head coverings, or hijabs, in public in Iran — in a challenge to the nation's government. Alinejad shared on Twitter that she was grateful to the FBI "for foiling the Islamic Republic of Iran's Intelligence Ministry's plot to kidnap me. This plot was orchestrated under [Hassan] Rouhani" — Iran's president. Iran tracks dissidents in the U.S. and other countries According to the FBI and federal prosecutors, the movie-like plan to kidnap Alinejad and bring her back to Iran started last year, though as early as 2018 Iranian government officials tried to get Alinejad's family to tell her to join them in another country outside the U.S. and Iran. The goal was to detain her and transport her to Iran for imprisonment. Her family rejected those efforts, prosecutors said. FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement: "This is not some far-fetched movie plot. We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a U.S. based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Not on our watch." The operation was part of a larger plan to lure other potential victims from Canada, the U.K., and the United Arab Emirates back to Iran, according to the indictment. Iran has previously been successful in attracting other critics of the nation to countries outside the U.S. or Iran. Once away from home, intelligence officers detained the dissidents and took them forcibly back to Tehran, where they met jail sentences or death. These dissidents are native Iranians who have already fled their home country out of fear for their safety. The indictment unsealed this week mentions Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian activist and journalist, who was lured out of France in October 2019. While traveling, he was captured by Iranian intelligence officers and taken back to Tehran. He was officially charged with "corruption on Earth" for running a popular antigovernment website that Iranian officials said incited nationwide protests from 2017 to 2018. He was executed in December 2020. Jamshid Sharmahd, another Iranian journalist who lived in the U.S., traveled to Dubai, where he was also kidnapped. Amnesty International says he was taken back to Tehran in July 2020. He remains in jail for his connection to the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, an Iranian opposition group that advocates for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic system. Iranian agents collected hours of surveillance Prosecutors said the head of the operation, Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani, is an Iranian intelligence official who lives in Iran. He guided Iranian intelligence assets, Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori, in the plot. The three men also live in Iran. Farahani, Khazein, Sadeghi and Noori remain at large. Starting last year, the men searched online for Alinejad's home address in Brooklyn and took screenshots of her home, according to the FBI. In July of that year, the group reached out to a private investigator asking about prices of surveillance services, claiming that they were searching for a missing person from Dubai who fled to New York to avoid repaying debts. They requested high quality pictures and video of the person's home and the cars they drove. Starting that month, the private investigator provided pictures and videos as requested to the men. He sent images of Alinejad's home, her comings and goings almost every hour, as well as pictures of her friends and associates, according to the indictment. Sadeghi repeatedly reached out to investigators demanding "high quality pictures and videos" over the course of several hours each day. At the same time ongoing surveillance continued of Alinejad, prosecutors say Sadeghi and other members of the team researched services offering "military-style speedboats" for evacuations out of New York City. He also researched maritime travel from New York to Venezuela, a country whose government has friendly relations with Iran, the indictment states. Khazein, meanwhile, researched travel routes from Alinejad's home to a waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn. He also searched the distance from her home relative to Venezuela and her home relative to Tehran. Khazein, a resident of Iran, also runs companies that import marine, construction and agricultural equipment to Iran, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say the plan was bankrolled by a fifth person, Niloufar Bahadorifar. While working at a department store, she facilitated payments to the private investigators used by the group to track Alinejad. Bahadorifar isn't facing charges for participating in the kidnapping conspiracy, according to the indictment, but was charged with conspiring to violate sanctions against Iran, to commit bank and wire fraud, and to commit money laundering. She is a California resident, originally from Iran, and was arrested on July 1 and arraigned a week later.
Tell us why is the Biden administration trying to open up relations with Iran, end the embargo, and give them more seized cash. This is the exact wrong strategy. At this point we need to come down hard on Iran -- start arresting all of their terror agents sent to other countries, start taking out with force their military assets threatening ships & people. Time to send a clear message to Iran that we will no longer put up with their proxy terrorism.
Sorry spanky, the GQP was voted out for their bellicose warhawk aggro bullshit. Biden was elected to steer us back on track towards tried and true Obama diplomacy.
Here come the war drums y’all. Our goal with Iran is to stop their nuclear program. That is the national security threat. Coming down hard on Iran has only sped up their nuclear program. It’s either negotiate or war.
There is one way to permanently eliminate Iran's nuclear program. It involves destroying all of their nuclear facilities.
That's why we provided the Patriot missile systems to Israel. We need to stop Iran from funding their proxy wars across the region. The Biden administration giving Iran piles of cash only enhanced their waging of aggression -- not a dime was spent by their government to help the people of Iran. It's time to put our foot down on this nonsense --- and make it clear to Iran their waging of proxy war, kidnapping of people world-wide and nuclear weapon program are unacceptable --- and we will no longer tolerate it.