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Showing posts from December, 2021

Countering Iran’s Threat, Strategies for Regional Stability

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  Written by Mahmoud Hakamian Two-minute read On Sunday morning, April 14, the Iranian regime launched an unprecedented attack against Israel, escalating tensions in the Middle East. Despite military experts’ assessments that the attack failed, it underscores  Iran’s role as a focal point  of regional conflict. The October 7th attack sent shockwaves globally. Despite ample evidence implicating the Iranian regime, Western governments dismissed Tehran’s involvement, adhering to a flawed appeasement policy toward the primary state sponsor of terrorism. They disregarded explicit statements from Revolutionary Guards  (IRGC) commanders boasting  about their direct role in the attack. For decades, the Iranian Resistance has urged the international community to adopt a resolute stance against the Iranian regime’s aggression and terrorism. Despite persistent calls, the failed appeasement policy of the West allowed Tehran to escalate its belligerent activities, including financing, arming, train
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National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) Holds Biennial Session

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Written by  Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) The National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI ) held its biennial session in Paris on December 27 and 28, 2021. Mrs.  Maryam Rajavi , the NCRI’s President-elect, presided over the session. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, flights cancellations, and other protective restrictions imposed to prevent the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, NCRI’s members in various countries and Ashraf 3 1  in Albania attended the session virtually. On the first day of the meeting, a number of supporters and allies of the NCRI were present as observers, and some of them also spoke. In her opening remarks at the NCRI session, Mrs. Rajavi said the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei installed Ebrahim Raisi, the henchman of the 1988 massacre, 2  as president (in 2021) and subsequently intensified repression, arrests, executions, and pressure on political prisoners. However, despite extreme challenges and the severe impacts of t
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A strategy for dealing with Iran that would work

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  By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh The Biden administration and European leaders appear to be mistakenly investing all their political capital in reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Also known as the Iran nuclear deal, it is an agreement reached in 2015 between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 world powers — the US, the UK, Russia, China and France plus Germany — together with the EU. Whether or not a renewed deal is reached with the Iranian regime, the West should simultaneously pursue another strategy of supporting and assisting regional powers in confronting the theocratic establishment in Tehran. This is due to the fact that the Iranian regime’s underlying threat in the region has never been limited to its nuclear program. This wider threat is the reason why, when the nuclear agreement was reached in 2015, access to the considerable funds the deal freed up had the perverse effect of allowing Tehran to pour ever greater sums into the coffers of groups such as Hezbollah and the H
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Iran’s Ban on Cryptocurrency Mining Unlikely To Stave off Energy Shortages, Protests

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 Written by Shahriar Kia It was widely reported on Tuesday that Iranian authorities had imposed a ban on cryptocurrency mining until through March 6, in an effort to prevent energy shortages throughout the winter. It is the second such ban to be imposed this year, though questions continue to swirl about the extent of the prior ban’s enforcement, given that many of the entities responsible for both licensed and unlicensed cryptocurrency mining operations are linked to the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The prior ban was imposed in the wake of large-scale protests over power cuts during the summer. The protests resulted in serious and sometimes fatal clashes between Iranian citizens and regime authorities, and helped to fuel concerns in Tehran regarding the ongoing influence of nationwide uprisings in January 2018 and November 2019. The latest ban was presumably motivated in large part by concerns over the potential for further unrest should Iranians find themselves
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As Vienna Talks Enter Eighth Session, Iranian Regime Demands Still Show Signs of Escalating

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 Written by Aladdin Touran Negotiations to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) entered their eighth session on Monday, as skepticism about their prospects continued to grow. The seventh session began on November 29 following a gap of more than five months and continued through the first week of December with little, if any, progress. In fact, officials from the United States, Britain, France, and Germany all indicated that Iran’s posture in those talks had actually undermined earlier progress by backtracking on points that had supposedly been agreed to over the course of six sessions between April and June. As well as brazenly demanding that those earlier agreements should be, the Iranian regime’s negotiators also hardened Tehran’s core position. Even under its previous, so-called moderate president, Tehran insisted that US sanctions should be lifted in their entirety before any restrictions were re-imposed on the Iranian nuclear program. Now, under the administratio
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Iran’s State Media: You Don’t Realize the Depth of Crisis!

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 Written by Mansoureh Galestan It goes without saying that Iran’s social and economic have reached an irreversible point, and Iranian society’s restiveness increases daily due to the regime’s corruption, ineptitude, and oppression. Now the situation has reached a point that even Iran’s state media acknowledge the “depth of the crisis.” In its article on December 27, the state-run  Etemad daily  warns regime officials that they “do not realize the depth of the crisis,” reminding them that their hypocrisy and using Islam to justify their inhumane actions no longer work. “Unfortunately, the performance of the Islamic Republic and its officials has increased people’s dissatisfaction, and this dissatisfaction has decreased the clerics’ popularity among people,” Etemad daily wrote. “Even [mullahs] acknowledge the appalling way people treat clerics in public. People’s participation in Friday Prayer and attending mosques has sharply decreased. Polls show that people’s trust in [mullahs] has de
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Iran: The Unwitting Admissions of an MOIS Official

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  On Tuesday, December 28, 2021,   the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) published an article   about a recent report by the state-run Mehr News Agency regarding startling confessions by an anonymous official of the Ministry of Intelligence Ministry and Security (MOIS). In that story, the official speaks at length about the late Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri and the MEK. In 1985, Montazeri was officially designated as the successor to the regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, but Khomeini stripped him of title and publicly ostracized him due to his opposition about the  1988 massacre of MEK members . Montazeri died in 2009, following two decades of house arrest. In his lengthy interview with Mehr, the MOIS official acknowledges how Khomeini and his inner circle “became wary of developments in Montazeri’s office (Beyt), ultimately forcing Khomeini to dismiss Montazeri of all his official titles, particularly after the latter protested the 1988 massacre of 30,000 politic
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Iran: Removing Official Exchange Rate Is Playing With Fire

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  John Maynard Keynes, a renowned economist, once   said , “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose.” Now the mullahs’ regime has decided to destroy Iran’s already declining economy by removing the official exchange rate. The government of Ebrahim Raisi has decided to remove the official exchange rate of 42,000 rials to a dollar. This decision comes at a time when Iran’s national currency has plunged to a near all-time low of 305,000 rials to a dollar, and many economists the move as “playing with fire.” Raisi’s predecessor, Hassan Rouhani. introduced the so-called “official exchange rate” in 2018 to control inflation and skyrocketing prices of essential goods, such as medicine, wheat, and livestock imports. However, Iran’s state media and officials had protested th
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