Iran Focus

London, 01 April – Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he was pulling the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA), or 2015 Iran nuclear deal as it is known. Crippling economic sanctions were re-imposed and the U.S. State Department said that all countries must reduce their imports of Iranian oil to zero.

Initially, waivers were not to be granted, but as the deadline got closer, it was not feasible for some of Iran’s biggest oil importers to cut their imports to zero. Waivers were granted to a certain number of countries and strict conditions were applied.

Iran Focus

London, 29 March – Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has been on a campaign to curb the Iran threat. He has quite rightly identified Iran as the number one threat to peace and security in the Middle East and the number one state sponsor of terrorism.

His administration is in the midst of pursuing a maximum pressure campaign that has the aim of cutting the government off from the extensive revenue that it uses to fund terrorist activities and its militias and proxy groups that are scattered across the region. Some of Iran’s main allies in the region include the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Bashar al Assad of Syria, and the Shiite militias in Iraq.

Iran Focus

London, 28 March – Domestic unrest has reached unprecedented levels in Iran, to the point where the totalitarian leader Ali Khamenei is strengthening his position on his policies of persecution, power projection, and terror by appointing hard-liner loyalists to critical positions in state institutions to ensure that they remain faithful to the “principles” of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

In fact, Khamenei recently appointed Ebrahim Raisi to head Iran’s judiciary. Raisi ran against, and lost to, Hassan Rouhani in the presidential elections of 2018. His loss was largely due to the fact that Raisi is known to the Iranian people as a violator of human rights. He played a leading role in “the summer of blood” — the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners.

Iran Focus

London, 28 March – On Nowruz, the first day of the Persian new year as well as the vernal equinox, the Supreme Leader’s annual address focused on foreign policy, and a call for Iran to develop its non-oil economy.

This speech, delivered in Mashhad, is believed to carry more significance than any other. This year, it offered little hope regarding the country’s economic suffering.

Because of its Zoroastrian roots, the clerical orthodoxy is historically hostile to the Nowruz festival. Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founding leader, never so much as used the word “Nowruz” in his annual address.