Iran Focus
Washington, 20 Jun – US Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chided on Friday the Obama administration over comments by Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday that the US would be prepared to accept concessions regarding full disclosure of Iran’s past attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, including permitting sanctions relief before those issues are fully resolved.
Iran Focus
London, 19 June – US President Barack Obama has come under pressure from senior members of his Democratic party to protect some 2,500 Iranian dissidents affiliated with Iran’s main opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK), in Camp Liberty, Iraq, from attacks by militias loyal to Tehran.
“[We] demand that the people in Camp Liberty live in safety and security. No longer the targets of terrorist acts. No longer the victims of violence. No longer left unprotected,” said Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J), a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Menendez was addressing the annual Iran Freedom rally held by the Iranian opposition on June 13 in Paris. His videotaped remarks were carried by the Washington Times on Thursday.
Iranians attending an annual grand gathering in Paris over the weekend in support of democracy in Iran commemorated also the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Iran’s main opposition group, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK/PMOI).
The MEK is the main organisation in the opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), led by opposition leader Maryam Rajavi.
At the major rally in Paris there was a large memorial in memory of the founders of the MEK and the 120,000 MEK members who had been executed by Iran’s regime.
Paris, June 16 – Arab nations must act to curb Iranian influence if there is ever to be peace and stability in the Middle East, a major conference has been told.
Tehran is spreading terror and sowing sectarian discord in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, top Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi warned delegates at a conference on Sunday on religious extremism and Iran’s ‘destructive role’.
The major conference, held north of Paris at the headquarters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), drew participants such as former Algerian Prime Minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali, former Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Elorabi, and former Palestinian Women’s Affairs Minister Rabiha Diab.
The Iranian people desire an end to the regime’s nuclear weapons program, the leader of Iran’s Parliament-in-exile told Fox News in an interview on Friday.
The mullahs’ regime in Iran “cannot and should not be trusted” to respect the terms of any agreement that the world powers reach with it on its nuclear projects, Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said.
“Do not make more concessions to this regime. Adopt a firm policy and make it clear to the Mullahs ruling Iran that they have to abandon their nuclear weapons program,” she told Fox News in the exclusive interview.
The West’s appeasement of Iran during the nuclear talks is ‘giving legitimacy’ to an illegitimate regime, Iranian Resistance leader Maryam Rajavi has declared.
She said circumstances were ‘ripe for regime change’ but the US and other Western governments were standing in the way by pursuing a deal to halt Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb.
She told the Washington Times newspaper: “Through their policy of appeasement and giving concessions to the regime, Western governments have served as an obstacle to the regime’s overthrow.
“In the absence of Western assistance, this regime would have fallen by now.”
Professor Raymond Tanter of the University of Michigan warns today in an article publish by The Hill that, “A bad nuclear deal with Iran would jeopardize world peace.”
While Tanter agrees that people would rather that President Obama can manage to talk sense into Iranian regime’s ears to halt their nuclear program, he expresses no hope as the Iranian regime has shown no intention to “forgo its nuclear weapons program.”
Without explicit support for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the United Kingdom would never be able to truly confront the brand of Islamic fundamentalism that ISIS represents, David Jones, a Conservative Member of Parliament in the UK has argued.
“There should be no doubt in the West that Tehran is using its proxies to compete with ISIS for dominance in Iraq, Syria and the wider Middle East. Iran has absolutely no interest in defeating and degrading the Islamic fundamentalism that is threatening the region,” Mr. Jones wrote on Tuesday in the website The Diplomat.
Organizers of the June 13 grand gathering in Paris in support of democratic change in Iran announced on Monday that a total of 330 Iranian associations have been involved in the event’s ongoing mobilization effort.
The mobilization campaign is being carried out in 345 cities from 24 countries throughout Europe, North America, Australia, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East and North Africa.
In some countries, including France, Germany, UK, Poland, Czech Republic, and Netherlands, associations of local citizens and supporters of the Iranian Resistance are playing an important role in the mobilization campaign, the event organizers said.
Lord Alex Carlile, a member of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords from the Liberal Democrat Party, has called on UK Prime Minister David Cameron to endorse the resistance movement to the mullahs’ regime in Iran.
Lord Carlile’s appeal came as Cameron was meeting with other world leaders in the G7 Summit in Germany.
Whether or not the UK remains part of the EU, and whether or not Prime Minister Cameron succeeds in renegotiating the UK’s terms under a new EU Treaty, the issue of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and Middle Eastern hegemony will remain an important issue for Europe, Lord Carlile wrote in the HUffington Post.
