by Jubin Katiraie
With news that the former President of Yemen was killed, it is gives us one more name on the long list of people that have died for refusing to bow to Iran’s demands. Since Iran got involved in the civil war in Yemen, there are many people who have been killed for standing in the way of the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Iran Focus
London, 5 Dec – Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist, president of the International American Council, businessman, and leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, discussed Iran’s increasing presence in Latin America in an article for the Arab News.
Iran’s state-run media outlets have been mentioning Iran’s military participation in Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, and several other countries in Latin America. Iran is trying to increase its naval presence there.
Iran Focus
London, 5 Dec – Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the President of Yemen, urged the people in Houthi-controlled areas to rise up against the militias that are backed by Iran. The militias that have just killed their once ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former president of the country.
Hadi spoke to the people in a televised address, reassuring them that the Yemeni army that is surrounding the capital city was working to get rid of the Houthi rebels. He said that he wants to change the course of the war so that a new page can be opened – a future that includes democracy, freedom and pluralism.
Iran Focus
London, 5 Dec – French President Emmanuel Macron called on Iraq to dismantle all militias — including an Iran-backed military force – and open a dialogue with Iraqi Kurdish leaders to ease tensions in a recent press conference.
On December 2, at a joint press conference with Iraqi Kurdish leaders, including Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, Macron said: “France calls for a constructive national dialogue to engage in Iraq.”
He continued: “It is essential that there is a gradual demilitarization, in particular of the [Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces] that established itself in the last few years in Iraq, and that all militias be gradually dismantled.”
Iran Focus
London, 5 Dec – Recent comments from an Afghan Shiite leader that were complimentary to the Iranian and Syrian regimes are likely to attract regional sectarian rivalries to Afghanistan and incite further violence, according to analysts.
Deputy Afghan Chief Executive Mohammad Mohaqeq, a leader of the country’s Shiite minority, told an international summit of scholars from Muslim nations in Iran: “I thank all the warriors who cooperated in these wars from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the world.”
He was talking specifically about the war in Syria where the Iranian Regime helped to prop up the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship by sending in their Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Lebanese proxy group Hezbollah, and thousands of other fighters from across the Middle East.
Iran Focus
London, 4 Dec – The Lebanese people have always been divided over support for Hezbollah, which has both a political and a military arm, but that divide has only become more pronounced following Hezbollah’s interference in regional conflicts, i.e. Iraq and Yemen, at the behest of the Iranian Regime.
This regional destabilisation, which has earned Hezbollah a terrorist designation from the US, Canada, and many Middle Eastern countries, was only exacerbated following the ballistic missile attack on the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in early November.
On November 4, the Iran-backed Houthi terror cell in Yemen launched an Iranian made ballistic missile against Saudi Arabia, which the Saudis blamed on Hezbollah and Iran because the Houthis had no way of producing the missiles themselves.
Iran Focus
London, 4 Dec – CIA director Mike Pompeo said that he sent a letter to a top Iranian military official warning that the US would hold Iran accountable for any attacks it conducted on American interests in Iraq.
Pompeo, who has long been vocally critical of the Iranian Regime, said on Saturday at a defense forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in Simi Valley, California, that he’d sent the letter to General Qassem Soleimani, a leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and elite Quds Force, but that Soleimani didn’t read it.
Iran Focus
London, 3 Dec – According to reports, a base or ammunition warehouse south of Damascus was hit in the early hours of December 2, by missiles from an airstrike.
This attack was conducted against a site that is well known, and foreign media has alleged that Israel is behind that strike. However, while Israel has taken credit for previous airstrikes on Syria, questions have arisen about the timing of the attack and what it was meant to achieve.
There have been warnings over this past year, that Iran hoped to construct permanent bases in Syria, laying the groundwork for the era after the defeat of ISIS.
Iran Focus
London, 2 Dec – In April 2016, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at the Tehran airport while trying to return with her two-year-old daughter to the UK after a vacation to visit family in Iran, writes Lord Maginnis of Drumglass. The child’s passport was confiscated and she has been separated from her British father ever since. Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was deprived of due process, subjected to vague national security charges, and sentenced to five years in prison. Now the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is spearheading an effort to add new charges based on the same so-called evidence and expand her sentence by as much as 16 years, Lord Maginnis wrote on the Politics Home website on Thursday.
Iran Focus
London, 1 Dec – It appears that toward the end of former president Ahmadinejad’s first term in April 2009, his relationship with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei began to sour, after period of good relations that had defined their alliance up to that point.
When the first Minister of Intelligence, Mohammad Reyshahri, objected to Ahmadinejad’s government separating the Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Khamenei told Ahmadinejad to reverse the decision. Ahmadinejad disregarded the Supreme Leader’s objections, and forced Khamenei to make them public.
