Iran's Goal is Middle Eastern Hegemony

[Solomon2]

Dispatches
Michael J. Totten
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/users/michael-j-totten
Iran's Goal is Middle Eastern Hegemony
6 April 2015

The chattering class has spent the last couple of days pontificating on and bickering about the so-called nuclear “deal” with Iran, but largely missing from the conversation is a recognition of the Iranian government's ultimate goal—to become the regional hegemon. Its nuclear weapons program is simply a means to that end.

Last month Ali Youseni, former intelligence minister and current advisor to President Hassan Rouhani, made that perfectly clear at a conference in Tehran. “Since its inception,” he said, “Iran has [always] had a global [dimension.] It was born an empire.”

A nuclear deal isn't beside the point, exactly, but at best it's more of a patch than a solution, and the truth is we don't yet have a deal anyway. What we have is a “framework” for a deal that may or may not be agreed upon in the future, and it's not clear that Washington and Tehran even agree on the framework. The US, for instance, says Iran has agreed to cease and desist using advanced nuclear centrifuges, yet Iran says “work on advanced centrifuges shall continue on the basis of a 10-year plan.”

The Iranian government is more patently dishonest than the American government, of course, and may be selling a face-saving bill of goods to its exhausted population, but Washington has never been and never will be above political spin, and it's entirely possible—and perhaps even likely—that each side genuinely perceives the results of the talks so far differently.

Much of the pontificating and bickering among those in the chattering class is a bit premature, but one thing at least should be clear: the Iranian government is and will continue to be a pernicious force in the region regardless of any agreement. Even with a good deal from our point of view, replacing a rapid expansion of Iran's nuclear weapons program with sanctions relief and economic growth will at best be a wash.

Many in Washington seem unbothered by Iran's ultimate ambitions and are only concerned with Iranian nukes. In an interview on NPR in December, President Barack Obama said a deal could break Iran's isolation and enable the country to become, as he put it, “a successful regional power.”

Iran, though, is already a successful regional power. It has been an on-again off-again regional power since the Persian Empire ruled much of the ancient world, and it has been more culturally and politically sophisticated than most of the Middle East for thousands of years. The current era, which began in 1979 with the installment of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary clerical regime, is a but a rough patch—a mere blip—in all that history.

But we're not past that blip yet. The elderly “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei will pass from the scene soon enough. The Guardian Council and Revolutionary Guard Corps may eventually reform themselves out of all recognition as the Vietnamese and Chinese Communist Parties have done, or they may be overthrown like the Soviet client states of Eastern Europe in 1989, but we're not there yet. Iran could eventually become a force for good if and when a new government reins in or dismantles its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, and beyond, but for now the regime is aggressively projecting power beyond its borders into the Arab world in ways that are entirely detrimental to both the West and the Arabs.

Zoom out and look at the rest of the region. One Middle Eastern state after another has disintegrated into schismatic abstractions controlled by rival armed groups. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, and Yemen are all, as scholar and analyst Jonathan Spyer put it, “living in the time of the militias,” many of which moonlight as international terrorist organizations.

Iran backs armed factions in four out of five of those countries—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, undisciplined Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The only reason it has no footprint in Libya is because Libya has no natural Shia constituency for Iran to throw its weight and power behind.

Tehran's most effective project so far is Hezbollah, which has dominated Lebanon for decades and is expanding into its range of operations deep into Syria. Its Iraqi proxies just burned and lootedSaddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, and its Houthi clients in Yemen are well on their way to conquering the city of Aden, one of the country's largest cities, after seizing control of the capital Sanaa a couple of months ago.

One could argue that Iran's influence isn't entirely negative since its proxies are fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but ISIS wouldn't have gained much traction there in the first place if it weren't for the vicious depredations of Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki, both Iranian clients. Besides, the world's largest state sponsor of international terrorism is the last country on earth we should want as a firewall between us and international terrorist organizations.

Iran's ability to disrupt the Middle East is unmatched by any other state in the region, but it couldn't conquer and rule the whole area even if it did have nuclear weapons. It can, however, foment fragmentation, chaos, terrorism, and war, and will continue to do so whether or not its government signs and adheres to an agreement with the US. A deal that allows Iran to grow stronger through sanctions relief without addressing any of that, alas, will almost certainly make the Middle East a worse place than it already is.

 

[Solomon2]

NCRI Iran News

Online Q & A with Mohammad Mohaddessin on Iranian regime’s role in Islamic fundamentalism
Friday, 17 April 2015 11:16

April 16, 2015 - First let me address the uprising of the teachers across the country. According to reports we received so far, since this morning teachers in 27 out of 31 provinces of Iran, including in Tehran, started demonstrations and protests. Teachers are an important part of the Iranian society numbering more than one million and covering 13 million students. They have widespread influence in the Iranian society.
Meanwhile labour strikes and protests also have taken new dimensions, covering large parts of the country.

These are clear examples of widespread dissatisfaction of the Iranian society and their demand to overthrow the religious fascism ruling Iran.

Result of the meddling of the Iranian regime in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen and the result of the Iranian nuclear projects has been poverty, unemployment, rocketing inflation, and the people want to stop them.

Today the world and especially our region is faced with a major disaster by the name of fundamentalism and Islamic extremism whose epicenter is in Tehran under the mullahs' rule. The clerical regime has extended its interventions in recent years to Baghdad, Damascus and more recently Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. This interference is not limited to these countries and the apparatus of export of terrorism and fundamentalism to Palestine and other Arab and Islamic countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Turkey and Afghanistan is actively working.

The main question here is how the international community can push back these interventions? Or should this situation be accepted as a bitter reality and recognize the hegemony of the religious fascism ruling Iran in the region?
My short answer is that we can push back the invasion wave of the regime in the region and free Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other countries in the region from the regime's occupation. And it costs far less than what it is thought. Iran's regime is extremely weak and fragile.

The Iranian regime wants the international community to believe that Qods Force is strong and mighty.

The terrorist Qods Force is not a powerful and invincible army, as it is portrayed. This force has spread itself in the region only because of wrong foreign policies in particular of the US. Over the years no barrier existed against it except unarmed and defenseless people, and with the excuse of nuclear talks or fighting ISIS, this regime has been rewarded rather than being punished.

We have no doubt that if this regime is confronted with a firm policy, and if the international community and the countries of the region stand firm against the aggressions of this regime, the regime will necessarily withdraw to within the Iranian borders and then quickly will be overthrown by the Iranian people and resistance.

Over the past years, I draw your attention to four big and critical mistakes on Iran. These are factors for the current situation:

1- After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf war in 1991 we declared that Islamic fundamentalism was the new global threat that would threaten peace, democracy, and security of the region and the world, and that its epicentre was in Iran. At the time, not only due attention was not given to this warning, but in the aftermath of the Soviet Union collapse and the Kuwait war, many of the western governments opened the door for the Iranian regime. On the opposite side, they put pressure on its opposition, i.e. the Iranian resistance, and labeled it as terrorist. At that time, the US State Department authorities officially considered the threat of fundamentalism that we were pointing out as exaggeration.

2- After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the danger of fundamentalism was clear for everyone. However once again, under the excuse that the perpetrators of September 11 were Sunni Muslims who had come from Arab countries, the heart of fundamentalism i.e. the clerical regime was forgotten and the Tehran regime continued spread of fundamentalism under the light of fighting Al-Qaeda and war with Afghanistan and Iraq.

3. The biggest mistake was that with the overthrow of the government in Iraq, the United States, rather than confronting the influence of the Iranian regime in Iraq, opened gates of Iraq to them and the spies, terrorists, and the mullahs flooded the country. The US also disarmed the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which was a strong politico-cultural obstacle against fundamentalism, and besieged it, and subsequently in 2009 handed over their protection to Maliki, who was a mercenary of the Iranian regime. Handing over Iraq to Iran by the US government was the world's greatest political disaster in the past 50 years. The danger of Iranian regime's meddling in Iraq is a hundred times higher than the danger of a nuclear bomb.

4. Silence against the massacre of the Syrian people by Bashar Assad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that we are all familiar with.​

If each of these errors did not occur, there is no doubt that the Iranian regime and the region were not in the current point, ISIS and Al Qaeda either would not have been formed or they would have been marginalized or small groups. Charlie Hebdo would not have happened. The Houthis would not have occupied Yemen. Situation in Libya and Palestine and other Islamic countries would have been different.

Development of a nuclear bomb is part of the regime's policy for the export of terrorism and fundamentalism and a tool to exert hegemony over the region. Some people mistakenly think that a firm policy against the regime in the region will cause the regime to refuse to sign an acceptable agreement in the nuclear negotiations. But on the contrary, just when the regime advances in the region, it demands more concessions on nuclear, while the reverse is true as well.

The operation "Decisive Storm" was the first barrier against the regime. Our detailed information from inside the regime shows that in this case the regime was quite surprised and did not expect such a reaction.

If this coalition in Yemen continues, here is no positive scenario for the regime. That is why it seeks ceasefire with all its power to maintain part of its position in Yemen in order to be able to exert its domination in the next step. The situation would have been different if the regime was confronted in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Today I declare that the entire region, particularly Yemen, Iraq and Syria, is an interconnected whole. We should not be confined to Yemen, but the regime must be evicted from Syria and Iraq. In this situation the regime will be evicted from the whole region.

With the continuation of the coalition, the crisis within the regime will escalate. The mullahs have lost their potential. We should not compare this regime to that of Khomeini in 1980's. Its capacity for loss is very low and its vulnerability is very high.

Let's mention a few points about developments in Yemen within the regime:

• The regime has heavily invested in it over the past 25 years. The Qods Force has long been training the Houthis with equipped weapons, and both politically and strategically has followed their issues. The advances of Houthis from Saada toward Sanaa were completely planned and organized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods force.

• In the last year, Qods Force commanders were constantly traveling to Yemen and Houthis were present in Iran. In February 2015 a delegation of Houthis went to Iran and met with various organizations including the office of Khamenei, the Qods Force and other related organs. The issue of Yemen is under the auspices of Khamenei, and the Qods force follows this issue in direct communication with Khamenei. Many government agencies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are active in this regard but work under the auspices of the Qods Force.

• Based on the specific information of the Iranian resistance, Brigadier General Amiriyan is directly responsible for Yemen in the Qods Force.

• Following the start of the "Decisive Storm" operation and closure of previous means of aid to the Houthis, Tehran specifically has continued to help the Houthis in the following three areas:

1. Presence of the Qods Force commanders in the scene who are actually responsible for the planning and directing the Houthis.

2. Establishing the necessary communication systems such that the Houthis can communicate directly with the Qods Force in Tehran and get the direction and guidance from there.

3. Dispatching more commanders and force from the Lebanese Hezbollah to help Ansarullah (Houthis): Given the intensification of war and confrontation, the presence of Iranians (specifically non-Arab forces) in Yemen has become more difficult, therefore, the focus has been on the deployment of members of Hezbollah who can maneuver and operate better than the Iranians given the current situation.
​

• Inside the regime, while all of the regime leaders such as Rafsanjani and Rouhani condemn the coalition and the Decisive Storm following Khamenei, and use the strongest terms against the Saudi government, but every day that passes, the differences and divisions within the regime about the performance of Khamenei and the Qods Force in Yemen increase and even within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, there are protests about this issue.​

 

[IR-TR]

Bunch of fear mongering nonsense. Get over it. Iran can't be ignored nor will it remain in shackles for much longer.Look at how it ended up in Europe when the great powers tried to 'reign in' Germany twice. You can't just ban a nation of 80 million in the Middle East.

 

[raptor22]

It's good to see "Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran aka as MKO terrorist organization which killed at least 17000 of Iranian people and sided with Saddam in Iran and Iraq war and helped Iraqi dictator to crackdown Iraqi people back 90s has negative views about us.

 

[Bornubus]

But how Iran can esbt its hegemony as KSA defense budget alone is $80 ~ billion

 

[raptor22]

But how Iran can esbt its hegemony as KSA defense budget alone is $80 ~ billion

Don't cave in to this crap what they want simply is this "Iran must obey us" , otherwise it's axis of evil ..and don't forget they are some bunch of innocent people trying to fight Iranian evil.

 

[Serpentine]

NCRI Iran News

You know what kind of guy you are dealing with when he quotes NCRI, a terrorist organization and the most hated group among all Iranians regardless of their political view.

Another hate mongering by main stream media. Too many rubbish materials gathered in one place and is published as an 'article'.

 

[Sunan]

well both iran and ksa r killing Muslims to establish their hegemony in middle east.Both r destroying the true Teachings of Islam.Both dont beleive on Ummah.As i said so many times that they have nothing to do with Islam iran is a Shia state and Ksa is a Sunni state,Both r sectarian states.Both use their sect to grow their infulence in middle east and feel proud on that idioticity.

 

[munchkin]

Both r destroying the true Teachings of Islam

The true teachings of Islam are found in the very first copy of the Qu'ran written by Mohammed. Today there are only interpretations of the Qu'ran, no original version of it.

 

[IR-TR]

The true teachings of Islam are found in the very first copy of the Qu'ran written by Mohammed. Today there are only interpretations of the Qu'ran, no original version of it.

Yeah, too bad that's the case with every religion EVER. It's all interpretations of interpretations of interpretations.

 

[munchkin]

Yeah, too bad that's the case with every religion EVER. It's all interpretations of interpretations of interpretations.

True. And every preacher like has his own version of the Qu'ran, Bible, whatever. In western countries, it's all secular and preachers no longer participate in politics. In Muslim countries, preachers still participate in politics, war, incite fatwas.

 

[IR-TR]

True. And every preacher like has his own version of the Qu'ran, Bible, whatever. In western countries, it's all secular and preachers no longer participate in politics. In Muslim countries, preachers still participate in politics, war, incite fatwas.

Well we all know the reason why. It's not like muslims are retared or whatever. Muslims just haven't been through the period of Enlightenment. And guess what, Western powers right now aren't allowing them to. It all starts with having a voice. Learning, participating, voting. After that secularism is unstoppable (which doesn't have to mean to be anti religion, you can be secular and religious). The West isn't allowing the muslim world to emancipate, with exceptions here and there.

 

[Solomon2]

Tuesday, 21 Apr, 2015

Opinion: Arab Shi’ites are Iran’s First Victims
In the early days of my postgraduate university studies in London, I had a decent and frank Bahraini friend and colleague; he was a cultured and diligent researcher. This was during the time of the Iran–Iraq War, which naturally formed one of our main concerns.

One day, while discussing the war with my Bahraini friend in the college coffee bar, I expressed my surprise that Syria’s president Hafez Al-Assad was siding with Iran against Iraq. My friend smiled and replied: “Actually, I find your ‘surprise’ surprising,” adding that “Hafez Al-Assad is an Alawite, i.e. Shi’ite, and so is the Iranian regime, while Iraq’s political and security leadership is Sunni; thus it is obvious that Assad should back Iran!”

Naïvely I interjected, “but what about the ties of blood, language, history, and geographical proximity, let alone the common Ba’ath party affiliation?!”

To this, his reply was more decisive and came with a wider smile: “No, brother, the true political identity [in our part of the world] is decided by one’s religious sect, and anything else is just talk. Assad knows this is true and behaves accordingly”. He then said that “Iran’s revolution is a ‘decisive junction’ in our region, it is to our benefit and thus we must back it!”

That discussion opened my eyes and mind to the fact that there were several political trends and currents that blabber and lecture about Arabism, nationalist struggle, and common destiny day and night, without really meaning what they utter. Furthermore, despite my knowing full well that my Bahraini friend and colleague did not necessarily represent the majority Shi’ite public opinion, whether in Bahrain or the Middle East in general, I had to accept that many fanatically sectarian Shi’ites, as well as non-Shi’ite radicals, regarded Khomeini’s Islamic revolution a “decisive junction” in the sectarian, religious and ethnic history of the Middle East.

With regard to Lebanon—where I claim a better understanding of its fabric compared with that of other Arab political entities—the reality of the country’s Shi’ites was essentially quite far from the image drawn for them by Khomeini’s Iran, and later imposed on them by it through Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s Shi’ites lived in different socioeconomic environments at least until the 1950s and early 1960s. South Lebanon was basically a land of village-based agricultural feudalism, while Northern Beqaa was dominated by a clan/tribal structure. As for the Shi’ites of Mount Lebanon, most of those primarily living in the Byblos district and Southern Metn coastal areas are very much part of the local socioeconomic scene.

Ideologically, the Shi’ites of present-day Lebanon produced formidable nationalist figures on both the Lebanese and Arab levels. The Beqaa-born Rustum Haydar (1889–1940)—a royal adviser and cabinet minister in Iraq—was among the Arabist elite in the 1920s and 1930s. Another Shi’ite, Adham Khanjar, who hailed from South Lebanon, was a leading figure in the struggle against the French mandate; his arrest followed by his execution sparked the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925.

In the Lebanese sphere, Sabri Hamadeh, Ahmad Al-***’ad, Adel Osseiran and Yusuf Al-Zain were highly respected leaders in Lebanon’s struggle for independence in 1943. Later on, as Leftist, nationalist and other radical parties emerged, Lebanon’s Shi’ites were at the forefront of the country’s political life, more so during the Lebanese War (1975–1990). The Lebanese well remember dozens of prominent Shi’ite leaders and martyrs like Dr. Hussein Mroueh, Dr. Hassan Hamdan (nom de guerre: “Mahdi Aamel”), Moussa Shu’aib and Sanaa’ Muhaydli, who have nothing in common with the current state of “Shi’ite Subjugation” imposed on the community in Lebanon. All of them fought for “another Lebanon” that has nothing to do with the current “Shi’ite-dominated” Lebanon, and never believed in their community acting as a “fascist authoritarian” behemoth.

What we need to underline is that Iran launched its plan for regional hegemony through founding subservient sectarian militias, whose only allegiance was for the velayat-e faqih and which is openly at odds with other constituent communities in each respective country. The first task entrusted to each of these militias was to impose full control over its own local Shi’ite community; the second, to mobilize the community, incite sectarian friction, and sow the seeds of confrontation; and third, to invite either foreign invention or start an open-ended civil war.

In Lebanon and Bahrain, Tehran founded Hezbollah. In Syria it supported the security-based Alawite establishment and later used some Alawites like Jamil Al-Assad (Hafez’s brother and Bashar’s uncle) to help enhance the Ja’afari Shi’ite presence in the country under the Assad regime’s blessing. In Iraq it founded the Da’wah party and other similar organizations. Last but not least, in Yemen, Tehran, sponsored and exploited the Houthi movement and continues to do so until today.

However, the irony in the above is that while the the Da’wah party and other pro-Tehran Iraqi Shi’ite organizations have never hesitated in building close relations with Washington and its Likudnik “neo cons,” Hezbollah—Tehran’s Lebanese “branch”—virtually monopolized the “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” slogans, claiming to be obsessed with the “Liberation of Palestine.” Today, the Hezbollah-backed Houthis are pleading with Washington to subcontract them in the fight against Al-Qaeda in in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), while what remains of the former “rejectionist” Assad regime in Syria has been busy alerting the West that it is its trusted agent in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Yes, Iran through its subservient armed henchmen subjugated and “occupied” the Shi’ite communities in their respective Arab countries. Then, only after making sure its “occupation” grip was firm enough, it moved forward to subjugate other communities and occupy whole countries by force, as part of its strategy of regional hegemony. The aim of Tehran’s leaders is to use this “on the ground” reality as a bargaining chip in the “grand bargain” with Israel and the International community led by the US.

This is what I remember vividly in Lebanon when Hezbollah imposed itself on the Lebanese Shi’ites, sequestrating their patriotism, silencing their voices, eliminating their leaders, and breaking the backs and wills of their free dissenters. After finishing with the Shi’ites it occupied and controlled the whole of Lebanon in 2008. In spite of this, the Hezbollah militia’s organizational and financial might—all bankrolled by Iran—continues to fail in its attempts to liquidate the patriotic, independent and very courageous Shi’ite presence that insists on openly refusing hegemony and closed-mindedness, trading in the “Liberation of Palestine” slogan, and its subservient clientship to Tehran.

Last week, when Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, yet again spoke to his partisans under the motto of “loyalty to Yemen’s brave and honorable people,” he did just one thing: He uncovered the last mask being worn to bluff the Lebanese, the Arabs and Muslims all over the world. He revealed that he was nothing but a tiny detail in a fully fledged regional master plan. His role there is simply to follow orders, just like any other soldier in the army of the velayat-e faqih.

Eyad Abu Shakra
Eyad Abu Shakra is the managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat. He has been with the newspaper since 1978.

 

[Hiptullha]

I advise that if Arabs and Israelis do not like an aggressive Iran, they should stop facilitating fighters and militants in states friendly to Iran, stop their desperate vendetta to ensure Iran is completely isolated from the rest of the world and pursue friendly relations.
You can't expect a defensive posture from a country which had to fight a war with Iraq (which was being supported by half of the world) from the moment of it's birth.
If anything, these articles are a collective Arab-Israeli brainfart in response to the global realization that the terror in the Middle East might not be a result of Iran's meddling.

 

[Solomon2]

MARINA NEMAT

Iran’s regime and IS are two sides of the same medieval coin
MARINA NEMAT

Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Apr. 15 2015, 8:44 AM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Apr. 15 2015, 8:46 AM EDT

Marina Nemat is the author of Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran.

Dear President Barack Obama and all the leaders of the P5+1:

In August, 2014, Islamic State abducted thousands of Yazidis, monotheists whose beliefs are linked to Zoroastrianism and other ancient Mesopotamian religions. Many of the abductees were women and children. A few hundred of them have been released or escaped, but it’s believed that about 4,000 remain captive. Many women and girls have been gang raped and sold into sex slavery, and some have become pregnant, including a 9-year-old girl who is now in Germany. IS believes Yazidis are heretics, and it published an article in its propaganda magazine, Dabiq, to justify their mistreatment in accordance to theological rulings of early Islam. Some Yazidi men have volunteered to marry the women who have returned violated and traumatized, but the ones who are pregnant have little hope. They are too close to the trauma, constant reminders of unspeakable horrors that most want to forget. Many of the women have resorted to suicide.

Sexual violence in conflict zones is nothing new, and I am no stranger to it. In 1982, I was arrested at the age of 16 in Tehran. I was a student activist born in a Christian family, and I didn’t like the fact that Iran’s revolutionary regime not only did not deliver any political freedoms, but also it took away the personal freedoms of Iranians. We protested, and many of my teenage friends and I were arrested. I was tortured and was forced to convert to Islam and “marry” one of my interrogators under the threat that if I didn’t, my family would be harmed. My so-called husband, Ali, raped me over and over again. I became pregnant at 17, but I miscarried. After 2 years, 2 months, and 12 days in Evin prison, I was released and returned home. My father had already disowned me. My boyfriend, Andre, told me that even if I had come home with a baby in my arms, he would still have wanted to marry me. I was grateful to him. With Andre’s support, I survived, and we made it to Canada. Many of my friends were not so lucky; they are buried in mass graves in Iran.

Do you see the similarities between the experiences of the Yazidi girls and mine? Do any of you have daughters? Do you realize that when you negotiate with Iran about its nuclear capabilities, it is your moral duty as fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters to pressure Iran to improve its human rights record? The conditions of Evin and other Iranian prisons have not improved since I was there. The bystander allows atrocities to take place, and no amount of justifying would take the blood off your hands. I’m not asking you to bomb Iran. No. I believe that violence never leads to lasting good; it perpetuates the cycle that turns victims into torturers and torturers into victims. Unlike my captors, I believe in justice according to the rule of secular, democratic laws that refrain disallow shooting first and asking questions later or never, laws that do not allow crimes against humanity, including torture and rape, to be justified for anyreason. If you lift the sanctions against Iran, whether quickly or slowly, you would be releasing billions of dollars of frozen assets to a brutal killing machine that is not fundamentally different from Islamic State. IS hides behind the name of God to gain power, and so does the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both “caliphates” are built on mass graves, rape of women and children, and various other atrocities.

A few days ago, Iranians danced on the streets of Tehran and other cities to celebrate the possibility of a deal between Iran and the United States. Iran’s economy has been suffering because of the sanctions, and money has been tight, so people are desperate for some economic relief. The last time I saw such celebrations in Iran was when the Islamic revolution of 1979 succeeded. It didn’t take long after that for Iran’s revolutionary regime to throw thousands of Iran’s best children into prison and torture, rape, and kill them. Without knowing it, in 1979, Iranians were dancing on the graves of their own children.

Please do not give in to the IRI and do not pour money into its bloodthirsty machine. This will lead to nothing but more devastation. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. The IRI and IS are two sides of the same medieval coin.