OIAC will Present Photo Exhibition At Rayburn Foyer To Address The Rights Violations In Iran
OIAC
OIAC invites you to our photo exhibition on Human Rights Conditions in Iran organized for December 14, 15, 16th in the Rayburn Foyer.
http://oiac.org/oiac-will-present-photo-exhibition-at-rayburn-foyer-to-address-the-rights-violations-in-iran/
Iran- Human Rights (Women, Minorities, Ethnics)
Iran Court Sentences Woman to Death by Stoning
Iran Human Rights
Iran Human Rights (DEC 9 2015): A court in the north of Iran has reportedly sentenced a woman to lashings, 25 years in prison, and also death by stoning for allegedly assisting in the murder of her husband, Arash Babaieepour Tabrizinejad.
Her sentence was reportedly issued by Branch 2 of a criminal court in Gilan. A local Iranian official website, quoting the Prosecutor of Siahkal (a city in the province of Gilan), has identified the woman as only “A.Kh”.
http://iranhr.net/en/articles/2386/
New York Time’s “Tales from Persia” is an affront to the people of Iran
OIAC
Earlier this year the New York Times decided to organize luxury trips to Iran. The planned trips, ostensibly buoyed by the new found relationship between Iran and the outside world was no doubt organized with cooperation by Iranian regime. The fact that a reputable outlet like the New York Times would pursue such an endeavor with an totalitarian regime raises serious concerns about the motivation and objective of this collaboration.
http://oiac.org/new-york-times-tales-from-persia-is-an-affront-to-the-people-of-iran/
International Human Rights Day 2015
US Department of State
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was forged in the aftermath of World War II to protect freedom and prevent future atrocities. As we commemorate it today, we recall President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 Four Freedoms address, which inspired the Universal Declaration, and which the United Nations selected as this year’s theme for International Human Rights Day.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/12/250541.htm
Underground Music Distributors Await Appeal Decision for Six Years in Prison
Iran Human Rights
Two musicians and a filmmaker who were jointly sentenced to six years in prison and fined 200 million rials (about $6,650) each for “insulting the sacred” and “propaganda against the state,” are awaiting a ruling by a Tehran appeals court, a source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
Mehdi Rajabian, a musician and founder of BargMusic, an underground music distributor in Iran, along with his brother, Hossein Rajabian, an independent filmmaker and photographer, and Yousef Emadi, a musician, were put on trial in May 2015 at Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court presided by Judge Moghisseh.
http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2015/12/mehdi-rajabian/
Iran newspaper chief indicted for defying Khatami ban
Yahoo News
Tehran (AFP) – The managing editor of Iran’s oldest newspaper was indicted Tuesday for defying a national reporting ban on comments and pictures of the country’s reformist former president Mohammad Khatami.
Mahmoud Doaei of the moderate Ettelaat daily used an image of Khatami on Saturday, also translating remarks that the politician made in an interview with Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper.
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-newspaper-chief-indicted-defying-khatami-ban-111600665.html
Iran- Terrorism Activities (Middle East)
Bipartisan Agreement: Iran is Leading State Sponsor of International Terrorism
CNS News
(CNSNews.com) – The top Democrat and the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee both agreed that Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism around the globe.
Ranking member Eliot Engel (D-NY) pointed out during a committeehearing last week that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been fueling turmoil throughout the Middle East even with strict economic sanctions in place.
“Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and in the past several years when Iran had no money, it still found money to be the leading state sponsor of terrorism,” Engel said.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/zachary-leshin/bipartisan-agreement-iran-leading-state-sponsor-terrorism
Menendez slams ‘silence’ on Iran missile test
The Hill
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) on Tuesday slammed the Obama administration and the international community, suggesting they hadn’t taken a firm enough response to recent ballistic missile tests by Iran.
“What has happened as a result of Iran violating the U.N. Security Council resolutions as it relates to missile testing? Absolutely nothing,” he said. “Something is wrong because the silence is so deafening.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/262577-dem-senator-slams-silence-on-iran-missile-test#.VmeNkMiphY0.facebook
Western Officials: Iran Retreating From Syria Fight
Bloomberg
Iran is beginning to withdraw its elite fighters from the Russian-led military campaign in Syria, according to U.S. and other Western military officials, suggesting a fissure in what President Barack Obama derided last month as a “coalition of two.”
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-10/western-officials-iran-retreating-from-syria-fight
How Iran’s mafia-like Revolutionary Guard rules the country’s black market
Business Insider
The revolutionary children of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Pasdaran, were the poor, marginalized thugs of the Shah’s era, people with a huge appetite for violence. They founded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, and became the main tool of oppression in the hands of Iran’s theocratic regime.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-irans-mafia-like-revolutionary-guard-rules-the-countrys-black-market-2015-12
A realignment of Iran’s political factions underway as elections loom
The Guardian
The importance of regional and local factors increases as distance grows from the political hot house of Tehran.
Every so often Iran’s political factions change shape, and there are signs that a realignment is currently underway. July’s agreement with world powers, including the United States, has driven a wedge in the political class that is dominating the run-in to February’s elections for parliament and Majles-e Khobregan (‘Assembly of Experts’), the body that elects the supreme leader.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2015/dec/11/realignment-irans-political-factions-before-2017-elections
Corker Condemns Lack Of U.S. Response To Illicit Iranian Ballistic Missile Tests
Senator Corker
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today condemned the lack of a U.S. response to repeated Iranian ballistic missile tests that violate existing U.N. Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR). U.S. officials yesterday confirmed in media reports that Iran conducted an illicit ballistic missile test on November 21, which represents the second such launch since the Iran nuclear agreement was reached in July.
http://www.corker.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-list?ID=52e9605f-6ea0-43a9-aeaf-b858d11d00d7
Saudi foreign minister criticizes Iran at Gulf Arab summit
Yahoo News
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) – Gulf Arab leaders meeting in Saudi Arabia reiterated Thursday their calls for a political solution to the wars in Yemen and Syria, but the kingdom’s foreign minister went a step further, criticizing Iran’s role in those conflicts.
Adel al-Jubeir told reporters after the two-day summit in Riyadh concluded that “Iran is playing a negative role in most regional issues.” He said he had only met for “a few minutes” with his Iranian counterpart in Vienna last month on the sidelines of a meeting on Syria’s nearly five-year war, in which Saudi Arabia and Iran are backing opposite sides of the conflict.
http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-fm-criticizes-iran-during-gulf-arab-summit-121136749.html
Iran- Nuclear Activities
Iran Intends To Buy Russian T-90 Tanks 
TASS- Russian News Agency
TEHRAN, December 8. /TASS/. Iran intends to buy the T-90 tanks from Russia, Commander of the Iranian Ground Force Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said in an interview to local reporters on Tuesday.
“Our ties with Russia in the field of equipment supply are established, and we have on our agenda the purchase of T-90 tanks,” Pourdastan told reporters on Tuesday, quoted by the Tasnim news agency. He expressed the hope that the corresponding contracts will be concluded and Iranian experts will go to Russia to acquire the experience of operation of this modern equipment.
http://tass.ru/en/defense/842417
Plea to President Obama regarding the Iran deal
The Hill
Dear President Obama, I am writing to you as one of the millions of victims of the Iranian regime’s violations of human rights and on behalf of those oppositionists who advocate democracy in a nuclear free Iran.
Just as much as the regime knows no limits whatsoever in its terror against the Iranian people, its anti-Americanism, and in its striving to annihilate Israel, just as little will it abide by its obligations resulting from the Vienna nuclear deal.
The Iranian regime’s decades-long relentless insistence on its nuclear projects and the international conflicts it has accordingly been willing to sustain are the result of its apocalyptic ideology and its global claim to power which will prohibit any reform of the system in perpetuity.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/252485-plea-to-president-obama-regarding-the-iran-deal
Editorial: Iran’s already cheating
Chicago Tribune
As part of the international agreement to prohibit Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the Iranian government was supposed to resolve a dozen questions about its past nuclear research. Come clean, the rest of the world essentially said, and we’ll have enough confidence to lift economic sanctions.
Iran hasn’t come clean. Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a key report on what it has learned.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-iran-nuclear-iaea-obama-edit-1211-20151210-story.html
Iran Test-Fires Another Missile, U.S. Says
The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON-The Obama administration is backing a resolution that would formally close an investigation by the United Nations nuclear watchdog into evidence Iran had secretly developed technologies for atomic weapons, according to a draft copy of the document.
The resolution, being discussed by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors, is expected to be passed in the coming week, according to U.S. officials.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-backs-closing-u-n-probe-into-irans-nuclear-program-1449595905
