The United States has imposed sanctions on 30 foreign companies or individuals for transferring sensitive technology to Iran for its missile program or for violating export controls on Iran. The new sanctions imposed on entities and individuals who have assisted the Iranian regime’s missile program comprise a positive step to prevent the mullahs’ expanding missile program, which pursues no objective but warmongering and the spread of fundamentalism.
Senior U.S. officials are weighing the possibility of labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization. Members of Congress are introducing calling for such a measure, hallmarking a significant overhaul of the U.S.-Iran policy.
Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart have proposed a new bill seeking a long overdue measure after too many people have been killed and injured through IRGC-sponsored terrorist activities. This entity, enjoying the utmost support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, advocates an ideology of destruction against the West.
The Syrian people’s six-year uprising for freedom from decades of dictatorship in their country, now evolving into a regional war and global crisis, is proof of two undeniable facts:
First, proving the international community’s inaction and a failed Western policy in the face of Middle East challenges.
Second, devious intentions pursued by Iran, as the root of all current unrests and crises engulfing the region.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and major policy-maker in Iran, died at the age of 82 on Sunday, leaving behind a legacy of domestic suppression, foreign terrorism, and political deceit. Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI),described Rafsanjani’s death as the fall of “one of the two pillars key to the equilibrium of the religious fascism ruling Iran.”
Iran, and the entire world, for that matter, was shocked and appalled over images of homeless Iranians resorting to sleeping – and even living – in pre-dug graves to escape freezing winter cold conditions. As mainstream media correctly covered this previously unknown aspect of life in Iran that the ruling mullahs desperately attempt to cloak, further news continues to trouble readers across the spectrum while shedding light on a broader dilemma diseasing the regime.
The Obama Middle East policy, fashioned to incentivize Iran and prevent its abandoning of the nuclear deal, allowed Tehran take nearly full control over Baghdad. Senior officials in Tehran are extremely concerned over the selection of various candidates of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet. This marks the end of a “golden era,” during which President Barack Obama provided meaningless incentives to the mullahs.
Iran’s entire power structure and most of its civil society is centralized under the personal control of the Supreme Leader. In this way, Iran’s dictatorship is every bit as entrenched as North Korea’s, making the idea of traditional regime change a pipe dream.
The mullahs created a regime — an entrenched revolution — specifically designed to resist change or reform, adopting a unique theocratic structure that uses both Islamic ideology and brutal force to maintain absolute power.
There is but one regime, and it has no interest in “reform.”
The membership of every single one of the many official-sounding bureaucratic organs is personally approved by the Supreme Leader. Indeed, any individual, or coalition of individuals who might serve as a check on his absolute power is, in fact, completely beholden to Khamenei’s whims, making him the most complete and powerful dictator on the planet.
Elections in this regime are not indicative of any form of “democracy”. Instead, they are merely a process of choosing among individuals vetted by the Supreme Leader. There are no factions based upon ideological differences, there is mere jockeying for position and the personal favor of the Supreme Leader.
Western governments’ policy of providing concessions to the Iranian regime in order to empower “reformist” factions is based on a fantasy — a fantasy which the Iranian regime deliberately encourages in order to fool naïve foreign leaders into easing sanctions and turning a blind eye to the nuclear program. In reality Western concessions are strengthening Khamenei — further reducing the possibility of change, and increasing the likelihood of outright war.
