Why is the Biden administration continuing to negotiate with the mullahs of Iran to revive the nuclear deal and lift sanctions placed against them — an act that would hugely strengthen their regime — after the country, during nuclear talks, was caught plotting to kidnap a US citizen in Brooklyn, New York?
IMHO the Biden admin is proceeding with Obama’s and the State Department’s plan to disengage from the Middle East.
The leaders of the European Union, who preach about human rights and democracy, are not only turning a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s handpicking of a mass murderer, Ebrahim Raisi, to be the next president; they are also now joining North Korea in congratulating the ruling mullahs and their new President Raisi.
Iranian government report says U.S. will lift sanctions on banks, oil trade, other sectors
The Biden administration is prepared to lift American sanctions on Iran, including on its oil trade and banks, providing the hardline regime with a lifeline as its economy teeters on the brink of collapse, according to an Iranian government report outlining the status of negotiations with the United States.
Sanctions are the key sticking point in talks between Iran and the United States in Vienna, as diplomats from both countries work to finalize an agreement that would see the Biden administration rejoin the 2015 nuclear accord.
An Iranian intelligence officer and three alleged members of an Iranian intelligence network have been charged in Manhattan with plotting to lure a U.S.-based journalist and human rights activist from New York to Iran, authorities said Tuesday.
An indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that the plot was part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom to Iran. Victims were also targeted in the United Arab Emirates, authorities said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State media in Tehran did not immediately acknowledge the alleged plot, though Iran has become more aggressive in recent years about seizing opposition journalists and dissidents abroad amid tensions over its tattered nuclear deal.
Winston Churchill famously warned against appeasing the aggressor: “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear — I fear greatly — the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, ever more loudly, ever more widely. It will spread to the South; it will spread to the North.”
This is all prelude to the eventual pull-out by the US from the ME begun under Obama.
US President Joe Biden must give serious consideration to abandoning his ill-conceived plan to revive the nuclear deal with Tehran following the election victory of Iran’s new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi.
The appointment of the 60-year-old Mr Raisi as Iran’s eighth president since the 1979 revolution means that, far from being prepared to make any further concessions in the nuclear talks, the regime under his leadership is certain to adopt a far more aggressive and uncompromising stance in its dealings with the US and its allies.
“The Biden administration should understand that Ebrahim Raisi is an extremely dangerous man partially because, from his perspective, anyone who criticizes the Islamic Republic or protests against it is rising against God and his representatives on earth. Whatever his regime does is presumed to be fully justified and rewarded by God because the Islamic Republic is a divine political establishment and all its actions are enforcing God’s will on earth.”
The US learned that lesson in WW II fighting the emperor worshipping Japanese. Death in the “God’s” service was considered an honour by his soldiers. They have forgotten that.
The latest alteration before the Americans trying to revive the “nuclear weapons deal” — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — with Iran is the carefully staged election this month of Ebrahim Raisi to its presidency. A clerical hardliner known as “the Butcher,” he is responsible for thousands of executions of oppositions leaders, torture and other “ongoing crimes against humanity.”
Raisi’s election, “engineered to guarantee his victory,” looks suspiciously like a ploy by Iran’s Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei to terrify the American negotiators into capitulating to Iran’s demands even faster and more recklessly, to avoid negotiating with an opponent more uncompromising than whomever they are negotiating with at present.
GENEVA, June 29 (Reuters) – The U.N. investigator on human rights in Iran has called for an independent inquiry into allegations of state-ordered executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 and the role played by President-elect Ebrahim Raisi as Tehran deputy prosecutor.
Javaid Rehman, in an interview with Reuters on Monday, said that over the years his office has gathered testimonies and evidence. It was ready to share them if the United Nations Human Rights Council or other body sets up an impartial investigation.
I bet this will be transparent and fair.
Now what? This is the question Iranians ask these days as they try to absorb the shock of the latest elections which has propelled another turban into the presidency of the Islamic Republic.
Leaving aside the first two whose ephemeral career was too short to merit attention, the Islamic Republic has had five presidents.
The Iranian regime ran a sham election to make its favorite mullah candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, linked with mass executions, become the next President of the Islamic Republic. Will the European Union and the Biden administration at least condemn the Iranian regime and stop the West’s appeasement policies with the ruling mullahs?
In Iran, the regime urged people to vote, most likely to show that it enjoys legitimacy; however, what it faced was widespread voter apathy and a record low voter turnout. Many people boycotted the elections and protesters called on US President Joe Biden to stop trying to return to the nuclear deal. Anahita, an Iranian teacher from Tehran, told Gatestone, “I did not go to vote. Like many people, I did not have a candidate. So, why should I vote? The mullahs had a candidate: Raisi”.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — American authorities took down a range of Iran’s state-linked news websites they accused of spreading “disinformation” on Tuesday, a U.S. official said, a move that appeared to be a far-reaching crackdown on Iranian media amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case had not yet been officially announced by the American government, said the U.S. had seized roughly three dozen websites, the majority of which are linked to Iranian disinformation efforts.
In the last two days, three interesting stories have emerged from the Middle East. The first story is about Ebrahim “the Butcher” Raisi’s election as president in Iran; the second is Israel’s announcement that this election forces it to protect itself against this butcher; and the third is news that Iran’s sole nuclear power plant abruptly shut down. The first and second stories are quite obviously connected. The real question is whether the third story is a promise of things to come or is just a coincidence.
Iran’s president-elect has welcomed the negotiations with world powers aimed at reviving a 2015 nuclear deal, but said they must guarantee national interests.
At his first news conference since his victory in Friday’s election, Ebrahim Raisi promised he would not allow the talks in Vienna to be dragged out.
He also insisted that Iran’s ballistic missile programme was “not negotiable”.
Biden will give them anything they want.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s sole nuclear power plant has undergone an unexplained temporary emergency shutdown, state TV reported on Sunday.
An official from the state electric energy company, Gholamali Rakhshanimehr, said on a talk show that the Bushehr plant shutdown began on Saturday and would last “for three to four days.”
He said that power outages could result. He did not elaborate but this is the first time Iran has reported an emergency shutdown of the plant, located in the southern port city of Bushehr. It went online in 2011 with help from Russia. Iran is required to send spent fuel rods from the reactor back to Russia as a nuclear nonproliferation measure.
