Iran Focus
London, 31 Jan – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has recently ordered that the Regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and its regular army must divest any commercial holdings not directly related to their mission.
At least, he did according to regime’s Defence Minister Amir Hatami. Many IRGC members have claimed that they’ve had no such orders, while also defending their control of at least one-third of the Iranian economy, and Khamenei’s office has not commented on the matter.
Iran Focus
London, 31 Jan – Experts at Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research agreed that the suppression of the people’s protest by the Iranian Regime has only postponed the Regime’s problems.
The panel participants in Abu Dhabi said that if the Regime doesn’t tackle the source of the problems that caused the protests, then the demonstrations will happen again and again and again, until the Regime falls.
Iran Focus
London, 31 Jan – At the end of last month, the people of Iran took to the streets in protest against the corrupt regime that has been putting its regional ambitions before the domestic needs of the country. The people initially protested against the economic problems that have worsened in recent weeks and months, but they soon turned into anti-government demonstrations and the people were calling for the Supreme Leader to leave Iran.
Iran Focus
London, 30 Jan – The Iranian Regime often uses a carrot and stick approach to foreign policy, promising minor reforms that mean very little, whilst threatening that major reforms would lead to instability in the Middle East.
This can be seen most recently in the disgusting visit of Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Chairman of the Iranian Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security, to the European Parliament on 23-24 January.
The European Parliament didn’t hold Boroujerdi to account over the Iranian Regime’s policies- most notably their human rights policies in the wake of an ongoing violent crackdown to anti-regime protests- and allowed him instead to spread Iranian propaganda and use the favoured ‘carrot & stick’ policy.
Iran Focus
London, 30 Jan – The European Union has been roundly criticised for allowing a member of the despicable mullahs’ regime to visit their Parliament during a violent crackdown on protesters in Iran. The MEPs failed to hold Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Chairman of the Iranian Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security, to account for the crackdown, the war in Syria, or any number of other problems during his two-day visit.
Instead, they allowed him to take control of the meeting, before bending over backwards to appease him, praise the Regime, and keep quiet about the issues that matter. But why would the EU do this?
Perhaps it’s time to revisit an op-ed written by Iranian-American political scientist Dr. Majid Rafizadeh in December 2016, called ‘Why is the EU defending Iran?’
Iran Focus
London, 30 Jan – What with the recent widespread anti-regime protests in Iran and the Trump administration’s ongoing debate about withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Iran Lobby must be very worried indeed.
The mullahs, faced with a sceptical US government, have sent their American lobbyists into overdrive to criticise Donald Trump and defend the nuclear deal. The two public faces for this campaign of disinformation: Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian regime nuclear official who bizarrely took up a post at Princeton University as a Middle East security expert.
Iran Focus
London, 30 Jan – It is no secret that since it stole power in 1979, the Iranian Regime continually attempts to discredit the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) both domestically and globally.
There are numerous accounts, by both the MEK and various Western institutions, of Iran’s so-called Intelligence Ministry (MOIS) targeting the MEK’s reputation in a “long-running and sophisticated information campaign”, “coordinated and financed by the Iranian intelligence services” to discredit the MEK.
Iran Focus
London, 29 Jan – The US is seeking to bolster its case for United Nations action against Iran when envoys from the UN Security Council visit the US today to view pieces of weapons that Ambassador Nikki Haley says were given to the Houthis in Yemen by the Iranian Regime.
The Donald Trump administration spent most of 2017, lobbying for the Iranian Regime to be held to account at the UN and threatening to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal if “disastrous flaws” are not fixed.
The UN ambassadors will visit a military hangar at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling near Washington where last month Hayley presented remnants of the ballistic missile fired on Saudi Arabia by Yemen on November 4, which the Pentagon said is Iranian-made, among other weapons.
Iran Focus
London, 29 Jan – The Iranian Regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) finally appear to have ended years of harassment of US Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf and this has been interpreted by some as recognition of a significant policy change in America.
The NY Post describes this as a “dangerous game of chicken” quashed by the “new cop on the beat” i.e. Donald Trump. Simply, it’s a case of ‘no more, Mr. Nice President’.
In years past, the armed Iranian “fast boats” would charge at US ships in a manner that the US Navy deemed “unsafe or unprofessional” at least two times a month. It was not only a clear sign of disrespect and a test of the US’s patience, but it also ran the very real risk of the US firing upon the Iranian boats and starting a war.
Iran Focus
London, 29 Jan – The widespread protests across Iran have now been suppressed by the Iranian Regime’s so-called security forces but it is far from over. As such, the international community should be wary of writing this off as an anomaly and preparing to condone the Regime again.
These anti-regime protests that so disturbed the Regime didn’t spring up out of nowhere. In fact, they are the continuation century-long struggle for democracy and freedom in Iran and it should be expected that the protests will occur again and again until democracy is realised in Iran.
