Iran

The Iranian regime has lately been collecting hostages: Topher Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray from New Zealand, detained in July 2022, Johan Floderus, a European diplomat from Sweden detained in April 2022, and Bernard Phelan from France detained in October 2022.

This escalation in hostage-taking of Europeans by Iran’s regime should not come as a surprise: the Belgian government last year proposed and ratified legislation that paved the way to transfer terrorists who have been convicted abroad back to Iran. The so-called treaty between the Belgian government and the Iranian regime was designed to secure the release of Iranian diplomat-terrorist Assadollah Assadi.

Iran’s parliament has passed controversial bill that would increase prison terms and fines for women and girls who break its strict dress code.

Those dressed “inappropriately” face up to 10 years in jail under the bill, for which a three-year “trial” was agreed.

It still needs to be approved by the Guardian Council to become law.

The move comes a year after protests erupted over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was held by morality police for an allegedly improper hijab.

Last year, Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old woman from the town of Saqqez in northwestern Iran, came to visit family in Tehran—a stranger in a strange land.

On September 13, she was exiting a subway station with her brother when she was stopped by the morality police for wearing an “inappropriate hijab.” It’s unclear what she was actually wearing that day—her mother says it was a “long, loose robe”—but she was locked up and beaten for this so-called crime.

Three days later, on September 16, Mahsa Amini was dead.

There seems to be nothing that the Biden administration will not do to appease the ruling mullahs of Iran and their regime, called only a few years ago by the US Department of State the “top state sponsor of terrorism.” Since the Biden administration assumed office, the more it has been appeasing the Iranian regime financially and politically, the more the mullahs, instead of taking reciprocal steps, have become empowered and emboldened. Iran is now holding uranium enrichment at 60% purity, around 10 days away from raising it to the nuclear threshold level of 90%.

In short, the US, instead of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is bribing the mullahs not to go to 90% enrichment, at least on the Biden administration’s watch, especially ahead of the November 2024 US presidential election.

A young woman walks down a street in Tehran, her hair uncovered, her jeans ripped, a bit of midriff exposed to the hot Iranian sun. An unmarried couple walk hand in hand. A woman holds her head high when asked by Iran’s once-feared morality police to put a hijab on, and tells them: “Screw you!”

These acts of bold rebellion – described to me by several people in Tehran over the past month – would have been almost unthinkable to Iranians this time last year. But that was before the death in the morality police’s custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been accused of not wearing her hijab [veil] properly.

The Biden administration has been accused of secretly bypassing US laws to reach a deal with Iran’s Islamist regime.

On August 10, the Biden administration apparently cut a “deal” excluding Congress and keeping the American people and U.S. regional allies in the dark — even though they are the ones who would be the most directly affected by a “deal.”

The Biden administration, determined, it seems, to continue appeasing the Iranian regime — called by the US State Department the leading state sponsor of terrorism — keeps indefatigably trying to revive then President Barack Obama’s 2015 “nuclear deal,” enabling Iran’s mullahs legitimately to have as many nuclear weapons as they like.