iran panorama

By: Edward Carney On Wednesday, Reuters reported that an Iraqi military delegation had traveled to Iran to discuss future strategic cooperation between the two countries. It was the latest in a long line of indicators of entrenched and deepening Iranian influence on the broader Middle East. The meetings between Iraqi and Iranian officials were apparently motivated by Monday’s independence referendum in the northern, Kurdish region of Iraq. That vote appears to be helping to tighten the connections not only between Iraq and Iran but also between those two countries and Turkey, which has traditionally had strained relations with the Islamic Republic. The Reuters report made note of the trilateral developments taking place alongside the Iraqi delegations visit. Following the referendum vote, Turkey has reportedly carried out joint military drills with both Iraq and Iran, on the borders of the Kurdistan region, which spans parts of all three countries. Al Jazeera adds that Tehra...

By: Bob Blackman MP   Earlier in September, the UN Secretary General sent the latest report of the Special Rapporteur on Iran’s human rights to the General Assembly for discussion. The August 14 report provides a detailed account of a series of serious abuses that were carried out by the Iranian authorities in the past year year. But this year's report is unique compared with previous reports because the Special Rapporteur highlights the massacre of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. The report documents the direct involvement of senior Iranian officials and current ministers in carrying out and defending these mass executions as well as the authorities’ efforts to destroy evidence of mass graves and to harass, intimidate and prosecute those who seek truth and justice. On September 21, the UN Security Council adopted a historic resolution proposed by the UK to bring Daesh to justice. According to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office statement, “the resolution ...

By INU Staff INU -Reports of trouble inside Iran’s secretive security forces are rare. Still, stories about young, tormented conscripts resorting to violence have begun to surface. At an army barracks in Tehran last year, a private woke his sergeant one night, and marched him outside at gunpoint. The sergeant was made to writhe in the dirt for an hour, mimicking the exercises the private had been forced to do after he was drafted. The soldiers was believed to have been imprisoned for three years. A 23-year-old draftee holed up with a loaded weapon in his room at a barracks in southern Iran, last July. His superiors had turned down his request for leave. He shot and wounded a police officer before killing himself. In northern Iran, a soldier who was denied a transfer to another base opened fire on other soldiers, killing three and injuring six. Another conscript gunned down three troops at a garrison in Tehran, in August, and wounded at least eight others before he was shot...

Iran Focus London, 28 Sep - A prominent critic of the Iranian nuclear deal recently discussed why he hopes Donald Trump will see the light and finally decertify Iran’s compliance at the October deadline. David Ibsen, president of the United against a Nuclear Iran think tank, gave an interview to the Adriana Cohen Show on Boston Herald Radio on Wednesday September 27, in which he assessed that although it is hard to say for certain what will happen on October 15, he hopes Trump will back up his tough talk on Iran with action. Ibsen said: “I think one hope that people have is that if the president doesn’t recertify this deal that we can put pressure on our allies and the Iranians to shore up some of the shortcomings of the agreement.”

NCRI - We need to stop ignoring Iran’s obstruction of nuclear weapons inspections, according to the former vice-president of the European Parliament. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a Spanish professor of atomic and nuclear physics, wrote an op-ed for the  Washington Examiner  in which he explained that Iran has a long history in obstructing investigations into its nuclear programme and this has not changed in the two years since the nuclear deal was signed. Vidal-Quadras, who is also president of the Brussels-based International Committee in Search of Justice (ISJ) which seeks to gain justice for the victims of the 1988 Iranian massacre, wrote: “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action effectively skirted this issue by making it theoretically possible for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ask for and receive access to military sites, but only following a month-long process during which the Islamic Republic could work to erase evidence of past activities.” Th...

  By Reza Shafiee Every three months, there's a deadline for a U.S. “recertification” of the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As that deadline approaches, discussions in the Beltway heat up as to what is the right approach toward a government which complies with the letter of the deal but not the “sprit," despite signing off on the contract with six world powers in 2015, which limits its bomb-making capabilities for at least 10 years. If nothing has been learned from the behavior of mullahs in Tehran over the past 40 years, one thing is obvious; they succumb only when their back is against the wall. Case in point is the eight-year-old Iran-Iraq war, which left hundreds of thousands dead, and billions of dollars in losses just on Iran’s side. It ended when Supreme Leader Khomeini was convinced that the regime was only steps away from a crashing defeat and subsequent collapse. Many Iran watchers in the West regrettably f...

  By: Dr. Majid Rafizadeh Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani is making a tactical shift once again. This time he is appeasing the hard-liners publicly and revealing the actual agenda of his administration after achieving the Supreme Leader’s economic objectives. Rouhani used the UN pedestal last week to shower praise on Tehran’s theocracy. His stale slogans smack of desperation and deception. Isolated and generally regarded as a pariah, the regime and its familiar figures try to stick to the same plot and project an image of a powerful and rational player. Brush aside the forced rhetoric and the ugly truth reveals itself: A regime that has hanged over 3,100 people under Rouhani alone, securing the world record for the highest number of executions. Dozens of young people are among the victims, securing another record; the world’s last remaining executioner of children. While the Islamic Republic attempts to portray having a democratic electoral system, Rouhani does not r...