Brief On Iran (BOI)- Newsletter, June 22nd, 2015

Tens of thousands of Iranian opposition exiles gathered in France last weekend for an annual rally demanding regime change in Iran and condemning President Obama’s push to sign a nuclear accord with the Islamic republic.

The gathering was led by the Iranian exile organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and drew dozens of current and former officials from the U.S., Europe and the Middle East who joined in the call for Iran‘s Shiite Islamist government to be overthrown.

Among the more high-profile figures was Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, Arizona Republican, who told the massive crowd in a prerecorded video message that “the Iranian regime [is] the true epicenter of Islamic extremism in the world.”

Despite participating in nuclear negotiations with Western powers, Iran‘s leadership “continues to fund terror and incite chaos and in its campaign for domination in the vacuum of American withdrawal,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee told the gathering.

The Obama administration is considering appointing a “czar”-like official to oversee the enforcement of a nuclear deal with Iran, one of several options it is weighing to ensure the still-unfinished accord doesn’t unravel, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

It’s an idea that some argue is smart – even crucial – because of the multiple agencies, countries and international bodies that will be involved in the deal. People familiar with an earlier nuclear agreement with North Korea say having had such a position then would have helped, at least for a while, keep that doomed deal on track.

Story Continued Below

“It’s a sensible idea,” said Robert Einhorn, who served as assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation during the Clinton administration. “Call it a czar, call it a special representative, whatever it is. Call it coordinator for implementation or something like that.

The end of June deadline for a comprehensive deal between world powers and Iran over its contested nuclear program is fast closing, and the prospects of achieving a deal that will prevent an Islamic fundamentalist state from obtaining nuclear bombs are grim.

Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi recently warned, “Western governments, the United States in particular, violated U.N. Security Council resolutions and offered major concessions, propelling the [Iranian] regime closer to the bomb.”

Rajavi was speaking at a convention held in Paris, in which tens of thousands of Iranian expatriates from across the globe and some 600 dignitaries from 69 countries attended to support regime change in Iran.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who spearheads an attempt at détente with Iran, argues his approach has effectively frozen Iran’s nuclear program and prevented the derailment of negotiations that will supposedly end the decade-long standoff with Iran over its illicit nuclear program.

Sanctions against Iran’s economy are likely to erode if talks to curb Iran’s nuclear program fail or U.S. lawmakers try to block an international agreement, according to the U.K. and German envoys to Washington.

“You’re already seeing a number of countries which of course don’t respect the embargo on oil,” U.K. Ambassador Peter Westmacott said Tuesday, referring to half a dozen economies with an exemption from U.S. sanctions that lets them import Iranian crude, as well as companies that have sought to evade bans on trade.

Westmacott spoke alongside his French and German counterparts at the Atlantic Council, a Washington policy institute, about the prospects for reaching a deal on Iran’s nuclear program before a self-imposed deadline of June 30.

An exiled Iranian opposition group accused Tehran Thursday of a “vast collaboration” withNorth Korea in developing nuclear arms, alleging that experts from both countries made regular intelligence-sharing visits.

North Korean experts spent a week in the Iranian capital in April this year, the report said, staying at a site close to the country’s defence ministry.

It was the third such visit by a North Korean nuclear delegation in 2015 alone, according to the report.

Senior Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was meanwhile in North Korea when it held a third nuclear test in February 2013, the NCRI said, and Iranian experts went to the country on a regular basis.