‘The world is watching’: Lawmakers tout bipartisan resolution condemning Iran
‘The world is watching’: Lawmakers tout bipartisan resolution condemning IranWashington Examiner, June 17, 2020
A bipartisan majority in the House is pushing for a resolution that condemns Iran for foreign terrorism and expresses support for the Iranian people calling for regime change.
Two dozen Republican and Democratic lawmakers spoke in support of the resolution on Wednesday during a virtual event hosted by the Organization of Iranian American Communities. Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of California, the legislation’s sponsor, said members of both parties are encouraged by efforts within Iran to demonstrate despite the threat of imprisonment or death.
“There is a reason why a strong bipartisan majority in the United States House of Representatives has come together to co-sponsor this resolution condemning Iran’s terrorist acts,” McClintock said. “It’s because the world is watching the struggle for freedom in Iran, and it is cheering for your cause.”
McClintock pointed out that Iranian citizens have “taken to the streets and the airwaves” to protest against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime, which he said has “lost any claim to legitimacy.”
The event’s moderator, Ramesh Sepehrrad, noted the significance of the resolution and the event. She said it was meaningful because both Republicans and Democrats have come together to support the legislation.
The resolution highlights foiled Iran-linked terrorist attacks against the National Council of Resistance of Iran, or the NCRI, an umbrella group of dissidents based in Europe and led by Maryam Rajavi that advocates for regime change in Iran. The resolution highlights a 2018 plot to attack a gathering of thousands of NCRI members and foreign officials, including President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
In addition to condemning the alleged Iranian plots, the resolution calls on the U.S. to stand “with the people of Iran who are continuing to hold legitimate and peaceful protests against an oppressive and corrupt regime” and to recognize “the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic of Iran.”
Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the NCRI, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that the core of the resolution “relies on the support for the Iranian people’s movement to overthrow this regime as a prerequisite for a democratic, secular republic in Iran.”
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IAEA: Iran Engaged in Secret Nuclear Work
U.N. reprimands Tehran amid ongoing nuclear ramp-up, development of missiles
Washington Free Beacon, June 19, 2020
Iran engaged in covert nuclear work that breached international accords as recently as 2019, according to nuclear inspectors who have been blocked from accessing these contested military sites.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) board of governors officially reprimanded Iran on Friday for denying inspectors access to at least two sites now known to have been part of Tehran’s secretive atomic weapons program.
The two locations have remained off limits to the IAEA despite evidence they were used for illicit nuclear operations in the last year. At least one of these sites contained a secret high-explosives testing site that could have been used to advance Tehran’s nuclear know-how.
The resolution was forwarded by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, all of which are still party to the nuclear accord with Tehran. While these nations have sought to preserve the accord, their willingness to publicly reprimand Iran is a new sign of mounting frustration with the country’s behavior. In addition to blocking IAEA access, Iran has ramped up its development of advanced missiles and enrichment of uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon, to levels needed for a bomb.
The resolution highlights what these nations described as a “continued lack of clarification regarding Agency questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear related activities in Iran.”
The move was met with anger by Iranian officials, who said they will continue to block access until the international community offers greater concessions, particularly relief from biting economic sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Iran’s behavior is proof that it continues to lie to the world about its development of nuclear arms and has no intention of curtailing its nuclear program.
“Iran’s denial of access to IAEA inspectors and refusal to cooperate with the IAEA’s investigation is deeply troubling and raises serious questions about what Iran is trying to hide,” Pompeo said in a statement.
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Iran’s currency reaches lowest value ever against the dollar
AP, June 22, 2020
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s currency on Monday dropped to its lowest value ever against the dollar and officials warned Iranian exporters to bring their foreign earnings home from abroad.
Money exchange shops briefly traded the Iranian rial 200,000 for a dollar and later in the day, the currency was valued at 198,000 rials against the dollar. The lows were a new record after the rial on Saturday traded at 190,000 for the dollar.
The plunge of the rial comes amid severe U.S. sanctions imposed on Tehran. Iran’s Senior Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri on Monday urged Iranian exporters to bring home their earnings from abroad. Last week, Jahangiri said Iran’s oil revenues have plummeted to $8 billion from $100 billion in 2011.
The country’s commerce ministry warned that it would revoke export licenses for those who fail to comply and bring the hard currency home while Iran’s central bank said on Sunday that it would publish the names of the violators.
Iranian companies reportedly export non-oil products in the value of more than 40 billion dollars a year, and officials say about half of that money stays abroad.
The rial has tumbled from a rate of 32,000 rials to $1 at the time of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The currency unexpectedly rallied for some time after President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the nuclear deal and reimpose crippling trade sanctions on Iran more than two years ago.
The sanctions have caused Iran’s oil exports, the country’s main source of income, to fall sharply.
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Iran Protests & more
Iran Arrests Prominent Charity Founder, Alleging ‘Anti-Iranian’ Activities
Radio Farda, June 22, 2020
Iranian security forces on Sunday arrested Sharmin Meymandinejad, founder and director of the biggest anti-poverty NGO in the country and shut down its head office.
No official announcement has yet been made but it appears that the Revolutionary Guard has targeted the charity, Imam Ali Society, and its founder with serious security-related allegations.
The Society of Students Against Poverty — also known as Imam Ali’s Popular Students Relief Society and usually referred to as Imam Ali Society — was founded in 1999 as the first non-political student NGO at Tehran’s Sharif Industrial University. It now has a large network of thousands of volunteers even in the remotest areas of the country. The Society’s volunteers are also usually among the first responders at times of natural disasters such as earthquakes.
The Revolutionary Guard-affiliated Tasnim News Agency on Monday quoted “an informed source” about Meymandinejad’s arrest who claimed he had been “creating networks for infiltration at various levels of the society under the guise of public work”. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei very frequently refers to “infiltration” when he talks about western influences. It is one of the charges brought against individuals when the regime wants to accuse a person or entity of espionage or collaboration with “enemies”.
Security forces often make unofficial announcements about the arrests they make and the charges they want to bring against the detainees through news agencies controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, namely, Tasnim and Fars.
Using the characteristic style of security forces and prosecutors in high-profile political cases, the “informed source” also claimed that Meymandinejad and “his agents distorted sacred [Islamic] principles” to promote Western ideas. The source also accused Meymandinejad of using the charity to conduct “extensive actions against Iranian society” as well as “insults against sanctities”, “promotion of deviant religious ideas” and “working with hostile foreign-based [Persian-language] media”.
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Women Political Prisoners Start Hunger Strike Over Basic Rights
Iran HRM, June 21, 2020
Three women went on hunger strike in Qarchak Prison to protest the deplorable conditions under which they are being held.
The prisoners, Sakineh Parvaneh, Soheila Hejab and Zeinab Jalalian have gone on hunger strike in the past days to protest the inhumane treatment of prison officials, unfair prison sentences, and failure to comply with the principle of separation of prisoners by the type and duration of their sentence.
Political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian has started a hunger strike since Saturday, June 20, to demand her transfer to the central prison of the city of Khoy, West Azerbaijan Province.
The ethnic Kurdish prisoner, who was transferred from Khoy Prison to Qarchak Prison on May 10, had recently announced that she will go on a hunger strike in the coming days if she is not transferred back to Khoy Prison.
The political prisoner was recently diagnosed with the Coronavirus but is being held in the quarantine ward of Qarchak Prison with no access to medical treatment.
On June 16, 2020, a Tehran-based human rights activist posted the news about Zeinab Jalalian’s transfer to Qarchak Prison on his Facebook page. “Despite being infected with the Coronavirus, the conditions of her imprisonment have not changed. Even when she was taken to the hospital to be tested for the Coronavirus, she was kept in handcuffs, including during the examination. She has sent letters to many authorities, but no one has paid any attention to her difficult circumstances,” he wrote.
Zainab Jalalian, who comes from a Kurdish family in Maku, northwest Iran, has been in prison for 13 years.
Soheila Hejab, another political prisoner has also started a hunger strike since June 16 to protest her detention in Qarchak prison in Varamin and the authorities’ denial to transfer her to Evin prison.
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Commentary:Iranian opposition boosted by US lawmakers’ support
Arab News, June 21, by Majid Rafizadeh
Bipartisan agreement in US politics is extremely rare these days. But support for democracy in Iran is one cause that effortlessly unites the left and the right in unprecedented ways. For example, senior lawmakers from both parties last month joined the leaders of Iranian-American communities in a congressional briefing to introduce House Resolution 374.
This resolution has now been endorsed by a majority in the House of Representatives. It condemns Iranian state-sponsored terrorism and expresses unambiguous support for the Iranian people’s desire for a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic. House Resolution 374 has a growing list of Democratic and Republican co-sponsors, reaching 221 — including representatives from 41 states and 12 committees — before it was presented to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The resolution lines up equally well with the Democratic Party’s principles and with the Trump administration’s strategy of “maximum pressure” on the Iranian regime. It outlines an assertive policy against a brutal regime but stops well short of endorsing US boots on the ground; instead supporting the homegrown organized opposition.
To pressure the Iranian regime and support the Iranian people, members of Congress have been communicating with domestic Iranian-American communities. One group of senior congressmen, including Republican Tom McClintock and Democrat Brad Sherman, last week spoke to Iranian-Americans and lent their support to their cause in an online video conference. Rep. McClintock said: “The regime’s destabilizing behavior has continued, and acts of terrorism will be addressed. The Iranian resistance has been a target of Iranian terrorism. We condemn these terror acts.”
One of the reasons that the regime in Tehran fears the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) is that it is currently considered the largest Iranian opposition group in exile and has connections with people on the ground in Iran. Many believe that this gives the opposition the crucial resources it needs to play a significant role in counterbalancing the power of the ruling ayatollahs, pushing for a democratic system of governance in Iran, and preserving the US’ national and economic interests.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also fears that foreign governments may cooperate with the opposition, magnifying its power to inspire disaffected youths in Iran into protesting against the regime. In other words, when it comes to confronting the regime, the view of Khamenei and the senior cadres of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is that the soft power of Iran’s ordinary people and opposition is much more potent than the military capacities of foreign powers.
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