Iran

In a significant move that, since the establishment of Iran’s Islamist regime, Iranian leaders have actively extended their influence to support a political party and candidate in a U.S. presidential race. This notable intervention is directed towards aiding the Democratic ticket headed by Vice President Kamala Harris. It is a move that signals that Iran’s regime hopes to secure an even deeper geopolitical alignment after the upcoming U.S. elections.

The FBI recently confirmed that information stolen by the Iranian regime agents, through their hacking of Donald Trump’s campaign, was disseminated to individuals connected to the Democratic campaign.

The good news from Iran is that there isn’t going to be any change in the way the Islamic Republic has always behaved. This is to say, the “Supreme Guide” has decided to swallow his latest humiliation caused by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran and refrain from seeking “hard revenge” as his more radical followers hoped. On Tuesday, a group of Revolutionary Guards raided the German Goethe Institute in Tehran and shut and sealed it in retaliation to the German government’s closing of an Iranian propaganda center in Hamburg last month.

The bad news is also the same: there isn’t going to be any change in the way the Islamic Republic has always behaved. Newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian isn’t going to be the Iranian Gorbachev, as the pro-US faction in the ruling clique had hoped.

“Today he is the bravest, the wisest and the most popular leader of the Resistance Front.” This is how the Iranian daily Kayhan spoke of guess who.

Wrong guess.

The daily’s editorialists are notorious for their exaggerated praise of the “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But this time it was not Khamenei they had in mind. Believe it or not, it was Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, who was thus being accoladed beyond his wildest dreams. You may wonder why…. Until recently, the Tehran media treated Nasrallah as something of an Iranian satrap in Beirut. Each time he came to Tehran, he was reported to have asked for an audience with the Great Leader to offer a report on his satrapy.

Since the Biden-Harris administration came into power in 2021, the Iranian regime’s belligerent behavior has reached unprecedented levels. The only way to stop this regime’s aggression is a response that makes it clear that the cost of any further malign activity on the part of them — or their proxies — will be a price too high to pay.

Could Pezeshkian be Iran’s Gorbachev?

Referring to President Masoud Pezeshkian, the question was headlined in a Tehran daily Tuesday and triggered a torrent of comments.

The paper’s commentator described Pezeshkian as a man trusted by the system and thus capable of introducing unspecified reforms to save Iran from unspecified dangers.

This is not the first time that regime insiders call for adjustments in its trajectory.