Brief on Iran

Brief On Iran – Jan 12th, 2015

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Brief On Iran – Newsletter
Jan 12th, 2015

Rally in Washington, DC

OIAC

Members of the Iranian American Community of Virginia (OIAC-US Network) shares the community’s sympathy with the people of France in the rally to condemn the brutal attack in Paris in Washington, DC. January 9, 2015.

OIAC expresses solidarity with the people of France and deep regret for the criminal attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine.Washington D.C. – Members of the Iranian American Communities of Virginia and Maryland, members of OIAC US Network, join the rally against Extremism.
  Iran- Human Rights (Women, Minorities, Ethnics)
 Four Prisoners Hanged in Iran On Jan 06thSaber Mokhalad Mowaneh

Iran Human Rights

Four prisoners were hanged in two different prisons today. 21 prisoners have been executed in the first 6 days of 2015 in Iran.

Iran Human Rights, January 6, 2015: Three prisoners were hanged in the prison of Urmia (Northwestern Iran) according to unofficial sources.  According to the sources Iran Human Rights (IHR) has been in contact with one of the prisoners was identified as Saber Mokhalad Mowaneh (Picture), who was sentenced to 5 years in prison formembership in Kurdish political party and to death for a murder committed in 2009.

Iran Human Rights

Tens of prisoners have been executed in the past few months in the prison of Kerman (Southeastern Iran) and their executions have not been announced by the official media. Most of the prisoners have been convicted of drug-related charges. It is not known how long these executions have been going on but it is certain that the executions are not limited only to the past few months. Iran Human Rights (IHR) is investigating further details of the executions.

At least 33 prisoners have been executed in the prison of Kerman since August 2014, according to sources Iran Human Rights(IHR) has been in contact with. The prisoners have often been executed in groups of 6-8 at a time, according to these sources. Except for one prisoners who was charged with murder, all the other prisoners had been sentenced to death for drug-related charges.  No executions in the prison of Kerman has been reported by the official Iranian sources in this period.
Iran 7th worst for abuse of Christians
Iran Freedom

The Iranian regime has been ranked the 7th worst regime in the world for the persecution of Christians, according to a new study.

Iran under the rule of mullahs is among countries where Christians are subject to harassment, discrimination and prosecution, the Open Doors Organization reported.

North Korea ranks first on the list, followed by Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, Eritrea and Nigeria.

The Open Doors Organization reported that expansion of extremists’ activities has brought oppression of religious minorities and Christians. In 40 out of 50 countries that were studied, Islamist fanatics were active, the organization said.

The Iranian regime’s treatment of 700,000 Christians in Iran has worsened since last year and persecution and harassment continued over Christmas.
  Iran- Terrorism Activities (Middle East)
LA Times

Aiding and abetting Iran’s destructive role in Iraq or Syria would be a strategic mistake for the U.S. that only exacerbates a profound crisis.

At  the dawn of 2015, the U.S. has yet to articulate a comprehensive foreign-policy strategy to counter the influence and territorial gains of Islamic State, the terrorist group that emerged last year – and poses a dangerous and vexing threat to stability across the Middle East and North Africa. By the Pentagon’s admission, we neither understand the underlying ideology of the merciless group nor have a grasp of all the players in the region who have aggravated the crisis.

Indeed, the fog of war seems to have muddied Iran’s role in this dark chapter of regional affairs. Is Tehran an ally or a nemesis in the fight against Islamic State? At least initially, the U.S. believed that Iran could play a constructive role in combating a mutual adversary. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, touting the age-old axiom “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” suggested that Iran could be part of the solution.The only trouble is that Iran is a major part of the challenges we face.
The Telegraph – Sep 2012

Iran has seized on widespread Muslim outrage over a film insulting the Prophet Mohammad to revive the death threat against Salman Rushdie, raising the reward for killing him by US$500,000 (£320,000).

Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, head of a powerful state foundation providing relief to the poor, said the film would never have been made if the order to execute Rushdie, issued by the late Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had been carried out.

Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a fatwa sentencing the author to death in 1989 after declaring his novel, The Satanic Verses, “blasphemous”, but Iranian officials later indicated it would not be implemented.

“It [the film] won’t be the last insulting act as long as Imam Khomeini’s historic order on executing the blasphemous Salman Rushdie is not carried out,” he said in a statement.
Israel Nation News

In an explosive TV interview aired last week, Iraq’s Grand Mufti Rafi Al-Rifa’i, the highest Sunni authority in the country, accused the IranianRevolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iraqi government, and Iraqi Shiite militias of mass genocidal killings and rape of Sunni men and women from Iraqi towns and villages “liberated” from ISIS (Islamic State).

Mufti Al-Rifa’i posed the unanswerable question, “Why should we fight ISIS? So the Iranian IRGC can take over? The same Iranian IRGC that is running operations in Iraq?”

Mufti Al-Rifa’i is the religious leader of roughly eight million Sunni Muslims who live in the western parts of Iraq. Overall, about 22 million Sunni Muslims live in eastern Syria and Western Iraq. They are the current target of ISIS – and also, it turns out, of the Iranian IRGC.
 Iran- Nuclear Activities
Iran, Venezuela vow to ‘neutralise’ oil price problem

President Hassan Rouhani & Nicolas Maduro

AFP- Yahoo News

Tehran (AFP) – Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, flanked by Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro, vowed Saturday to “neutralise” the threat posed to both countries by plummeting oil prices, in a barely veiled broadside at Saudi Arabia.

OPEC members Iran and Venezuela are reeling from a slide in the cost of crude to around $50 per barrel from $100 just six months ago, a precipitous fall that is straining their budgets.

Losses accelerated after the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel, of which Iran and Venezuela are founders, chose late last year not to cut output despite lower prices and oversupply.
 Times of London: Obama Outreach to Iran Could Be ‘Single Most Reckless Act of 2015’
Times of London

President Barack Obama’s hope to turn Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani “into a friendly ally in the fight against Islamic State” could lead him to undertake “the single most reckless act of 2015” and cut a bad nuclear weapons deal with Teheran, The Times of London editorialized on January 1. 
The newspaper agreed that “a deal that places Iran significantly farther away from developing a nuclear bomb is clearly attractive.”
It cautioned that the “weakened American leader” could turn to foreign policy to justify his 2009 Nobel peace prize.
“If he does so, it has to have at its heart a sense of what the West considers to be worth fighting for and worth preserving.”
The Times warned that “Europe has a tendency to turn inwards, the UN is too often rendered impotent by Moscow and Beijing and NATO summits have degenerated into fundraising events.”
It was time to rethink these institutions which were constructed for a different age, said the editorial.
“If the idea of the ‘West’ is to retain meaning, then its leaders have to find ways of acting together to limit the power and influence of expansionist dictators. It must find coherent responses rather than purely reflexive strategies towards marauding terrorist armies.”
OIAC 
Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Hamad al-Sabah, Foreign Minister of Kuwait, opposed the meddling of the Iranian regime in countries in the region and considered the Iranian regime’s nuclear program to be a matter of grave concern to them.

 Fars News Agency, affiliated with IRGC, reported on Monday, January 6, that during a visit from the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi from Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Hamad al-Sabah, the foreign minister of this country, declared in an interview with Egyptian reporters that “Iran should describe the nature of its program to the International Atomic Energy Agency, especially since Kuwait is threatened by any nuclear radiation from Iran and is worried about pollution of Gulf waters.” He called on the international community to take note of the Iranian regime’s nuclear program and stated that Kuwait and other Gulf countries, as well as the United States, are concerned about the outcome of this program on Arab countries in the Gulf.

Twenty months ago, prior to the earthquake in Bushehr, there was an urgent meeting in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, where the Gulf states voiced their grave concern for the perils of nuclear radiation from the Bushehr nuclear plant and requested a quick dispatch of a group of IAEA experts to inspect the plant for possible damage and to ensure the plant’s safety.

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