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Showing posts from October, 2021

Intensifying U.S. Economic Pressure: Washington’s New Move Against the Mullahs’ Regime and Its Consequences

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  By Reza Hoseani Is Washington’s economic fury more effective than military warfare? An examination of the United States’ new sanctions targeting the IRGC’s financial lifelines and their impact on Iran’s explosive social environment. Amid the regime’s paralyzing deadlock between war and restraint, Washington has made its choice unmistakably clear: an all-out economic war instead of a large-scale military war. This choice is not the product of moderation. Rather, it reflects an understanding that economic pressure may be more lethal to the regime, less costly for the West, and more socially acceptable to the Iranian people than military intervention. 1. From “Maximum Pressure” to “Economic Fury”: The IRGC’s Lifelines in the Crosshairs In recent months, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has escalated economic pressure through two new initiatives. First came what has been described as Operation Economic Fury, announced by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He stated explicitly ...
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Iran’s Raisi and His Administration Have No Claim to Legitimacy

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 Written by Mansoureh Galestan Ebrahim Raisi  was confirmed as the Iranian regime’s next president in June, in a process whereby Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been consolidating power as he prepares himself as his regime copes with a surge of social unrest.   In January 2018, more than 100 Iranian cities and towns were hosts to demonstrations that called for regime change. In  November 2019 , the prior uprising’s slogans were re-popularized in a series of protests that spontaneously erupted across nearly 200 localities. About 1,500 participants in the latter uprising were fatally shot in a matter of days, and at least 12,000 were arrested, many of whom became targets of a months-long campaign of torture at the behest of a judiciary then led by Ebrahim Raisi.   Under the Iranian regime’s system of “velayat-e faqih,” or absolute clerical rule, no one may directly challenge policies or edicts expressed by the supreme leader...
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Hard-liners’ rift highlights Iranian regime’s fragility

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  By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh For decades, Iranian politics has been predominantly characterized as a competition between the hard-liners’ political camp and the moderates or the reformists. But, since the hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi became president in August, a new phenomenon is emerging in Iran’s political system: The hard-liners are turning against one another. Although Raisi has been in office for fewer than 100 days, the Kayhan newspaper — a mouthpiece for the Office of the Supreme Leader and whose editor in chief is a close adviser to Ali Khamenei — has already begun criticizing the president due to the state of the economy and rising prices. Kayhan would not be likely to criticize Raisi without the approval of the supreme leader. While Khamenei and his circle appear to be repeating the supreme leader’s underlying modus operandi, which is dodging responsibility by throwing blame on the “government,” a.k.a. the president and his team, such an act is unprecedented when the president h...
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Tehran’s Nuclear Extortion Grow Worse as EU Refuses To Act

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 Written by Mohammad Sadat Khansari This month, the Iranian regime adopted a new delaying tactic as various Iranian officials began pushing for an entirely separate set of nuclear negotiations in  Brussels , ostensibly aimed at establishing conditions for the continuation of the Vienna talks that already went through six rounds before being stalled in June. What would be the ultimate result of these preliminary negotiations? Tehran aims to make a separation between the US and its European allies, and the Iranian regime’s mere request for such talks underscores its expectation that it can squeeze more concessions from the European Union than from a unified Western bloc. Unfortunately, the EU leadership has given the Iranian regime ample reason to maintain that expectation, with foreign policy chief Josep Borrell even going so far as to undermine efforts that member states took to hold Tehran accountable for its nuclear extortion. Early in 2020, Tehran declared it would no longe...
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Iran: Rise of IRGC Commanders in Raisi’s Cabinet Reveals a Frightened Regime

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  By: Ali Safavi The Iranian regime President Ebrahim Raisi’s  cabinet  is packed with veterans of the regime’s brutal security apparatus, more so than any other cabinet in the past 40 years. The regime’s unambiguous pivot toward greater suppression and terrorism is a function of the conspicuous panic harbored by the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his regime over looming social unrest. As the theocracy’s historical decay hastens, such upheavals can spell the end for an otherwise milquetoast dictatorship. The most glaring feature of Raisi’s team is the flagrant rise of the most senior former commanders of the Islamic  Revolutionary Guard  Corps (IRGC), the regime’s Praetorian Guard. In psychological terms, this trend can be presented as Exhibit A when it comes to the mullahs’ frightful reflexive retaliation against five rounds of major nationwide uprisings over the past four years alone. Indeed, nothing says the regime is panicking more than the fact th...
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Criticism From UN Nuclear Agency Should Spark Action To Confront Iran’s Impunity

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By: Alejo Vidal-Quadras Over the weekend, the head of the UN’s nuclear monitoring agency reminded the international community of the fact that the inspections regime at an Iranian nuclear facility in Karaj was still not “intact.” This was surely an understatement given that the inspections regime was effectively dismantled all across Iran in February. Rafael Grossi’s comments singling out the  Karaj facility  reflected the fact that there is a persistent gap in data collection there, even in the wake of an agreement that the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency struck with Iranian authorities to allow routine maintenance on monitoring equipment at various nuclear facilities. However, it bears mentioning that that agreement was not announced until two weeks after the deadline for such maintenance, meaning that the hard drives connected to surveillance cameras and other devices had likely been full for that period of time, leaving a broad gap in knowledge w...
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Anniversary of Reyhaneh Jabbari’s Execution and Plight of Iranian Women

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 Written by Mansoureh Galestan October 25 marks the anniversary of the execution of  Reyhaneh Jabbari . Iran’s misogynist regime hanged Reyhaneh because she had killed Morteza Sarbandi, an official of the Ministry of Intelligence, in self-defense, as he attempted to rape her. Seven years later, more innocent women have been the victims of the regime. Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26 years old, was an interior designer who went to Sarbandi’s office on business, but Sarbandi tried to rape her. Reyhaneh was sentenced to death following years of imprisonment and going under various forms of torture to make false confessions. The regime’s misogynous judiciary officials verbally assaulted Reyhaneh each time at court. The criminal judge Tardast blatantly told Reyhaneh that she “should have let him rape her and then filed a complaint.” This claim is completely absurd as in Iran under the mullahs’ regime, the laws are not to protect people, rather they are to strengthen the regime’s grip on power....
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