On Thursday, Chatham House will be hosting an event in London entitled “Overcoming Regional Challenges in the Middle East” and “perversely” the Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, is scheduled to address that conference, writes Lord Maginnis of Drumglass. He says, “Worse still, it is further planned that he will address the UK Parliament earlier that day.”

Lord Maginnis is an independent member of the UK House of Lords and prominent member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom (BPCIF), www.iran-freedom.org.

The visit by the Iranian regime’s president, Hassan Rouhani, to France ended with many industrial contracts but also by a deafening silence on the issue of human rights. In response, there were many protests and speeches that condemned the Iranian regime.

The leader of the clerical regime, President Hassan Rouhani, arrived in Paris to a wave of protests. Rouhani is one of the most senior officials responsible for the extreme and plentiful human rights violations in Iran. The protesters were Iranians, French citizens, human rights organizations, human rights activists and French and European political figures.

At the gathering, starting at noon at Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris, the protesters called for French officials to denounce Rouhani for his grave human rights abuses. They called for Rouhani’s policy of export of terrorism and fundamentalism and for his involvement in the destructive conflicts in the region to be acknowledged.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran on January 28, said that welcoming Hassan Rouhani to France and Italy is a mistake on the part of the western nations.

Regarding the visit by Hassan Rouhani, the President of the clerical regime, to Italy and France, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, stated that, “As a mullah, Hassan Rouhani is a defender of the ruling theocracy and has sworn allegiance to the velayat-e faqih (absolute rule of the supreme leader). Rouhani has been among the most senior officials of the religious fascism ruling Iran throughout the past 37 years and has been involved in all its atrocities. He should face justice for crimes against humanity.”

In an article published in the French daily Le Monde, writer Tahar Boumedra writes that Iran has a human rights problem that the regime refuses to acknowledge and address.

Boumedra is the author of “The human rights situation in Iran: a challenge for international law”, and is also the former director of the human rights office of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has written an article for the Washington Times, and is very critical of the role the U.S. has played vis a vis Iran. Shelton uses the word “irony” to describe the U.S. Iranian relationship. Across the board, the United States has shown leniency in the face of belligerence and used half-measures to confront adversaries who define extremism in both word and deed.