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Showing posts from February, 2024

Iran Faces a Growing Internal Crisis

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  By Chuck Wald We have passed the six-month mark of the war between the United States and the Iranian regime. Whatever Tehran’s rhetoric may suggest, its theocratic dictatorship is weaker today than at any point since its establishment in the aftermath of the 1979 Revolution. As this situation continues to unfold, it is increasingly important for Western governments and the broader international community to consider the policies needed to help bring about change driven not by foreign intervention, but by the Iranian people and their organized resistance.  The country’s economy, already suffering from years of decline before the war, is now exhibiting some of its worst indicators in decades, including inflation exceeding 100 percent on key consumer goods. Predictably, these pressures have intensified factional infighting within the regime. The turmoil has been compounded by the loss of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war, February 28.  Khamenei has be...

EU Policy on Iran — a Legacy of Failure

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  By Struan Stevenson When Assadollah Assadi, the Iranian ‘diplomat’ jailed for 20 years in Belgium for a terrorist bomb plot, was released in a farcical deal with the Iranian regime and returned to a hero’s welcome in Tehran, many thought the EU’s appeasement policy had reached rock bottom. Warnings were sounded that the release of Assadi would embolden the mullahs to attempt a further bomb attack or assassination attempt on European soil. The warnings were ignored and sure enough, in November 2023, a hitman financed by the Iranian regime attempted to assassinate Alejo Vidal Qudras, a former senior vice president of the European Parliament. Mr Vidal Qudras was shot in the face, in broad daylight, outside his home in Madrid. He miraculously survived. Following Assadi’s arrest for attempting to bomb an Iranian opposition rally in Paris in 2018, Spanish socialist Josep Borrell, the EU’s high Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security said nothing. When Assadi was sentenced to a ...