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International-UN-NGOs

Behind the scenes of the Nobel Peace Prize

2023-10-08

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Text taken from the Live Journal post of Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin. Commentary by Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] Interesting details about the new “Nobel laureate”.

Intelligence services, drugs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Behind the scenes of the Nobel Peace Prize

In 2003, Nargiz Mohammadi joined the Center for Human Rights, founded in 2000 by Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. He holds the position Vice President of the Human Rights Defense Center (DHRC).

***

DHRC was established in Tehran in 2001.

Ebadi received the Nobel Prize and Mohammadi got a job with her.

The peculiarity is that Ebadi was an activist in the campaign to strengthen the legal status of women and this played a key role in the presidential elections in May 1997, which was won by reformist Mohammad Khatami and appointed Ali Shamkhani as Minister of Defense. Ebadi's human rights activities were aimed at demonstrating the cruelty of Khatami's conservative opponents in eliminating dissident intellectuals.

Ali Khamenei pointed to the enemies of Iran, others specifically to the Israeli intelligence services, and Ebadi to the liquidation team from the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS).

So Said Emami, adviser to the Minister of Intelligence, was arrested and, under strange circumstances, passed away, hiding almost all traces.

However, the story of the murder of Iranian-Kurdish dissidents in a Greek restaurant in Berlin (09/17/1992), the details of which were reported to German investigators by Abolghassem Mesbahi, a former Iranian intelligence officer who fled the country with the assistance of Emami, led to an arrest warrant for Ali Fallahian, an influential minister intelligence from 1989 to 1997 under Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

So Khatami, having become the president of Iran (when Bill Clinton began his second presidential term, replacing Secretary of State Christopher with Madeleine Albright, a protégé of Zbigniew Brzezinski), immediately weakened the position of his predecessors. Emami was Fallahian's deputy at MOIS and became an advisor to his successor Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi.

The investigation into the “chain of murders” with the participation of Shirin Ebadi led not only to the liquidation of Emami, but also to the resignation of Dorri-Najafabadi.

Only then (in February 1999) did Khatami have his own intelligence minister, Ali Younesi, who later served as adviser to President Hassan Rouhani on political and security issues.

So, Shirin Ebadi is a very special human rights activist.

When it created its center in Tehran, Ahmadinejad was the mayor.

But what could he do against Khatami's will?

And so in 2003, Nargiz Mohammadi, born in Zanjan, got a job with Ebadi.
Perhaps then the game of Ahmadinejad or Khamenei began to introduce “their human rights activist” closer to the “alien” Ebadi (who has been living in exile in London since 2009, because she called for the cancellation of the election results in which Ahmadinejad was re-elected).

Or Mohammadi, like Ebadi, represents the Khatami/Shamkhani network.

This interpretation is also possible.

Once again: the flow of opium from Baluchistan goes by land from Iran through Armenia to Georgia, and then by sea to Odessa; the scheme strengthens the elites of southern Iran, but the influence of the Azerbaijani provinces in the West (West and East Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan) decreases.

More recently, Ali Shamkhani was getting closer with the NKR and was in conflict with Azerbaijan.

The Nobel Committee, at the request of unnamed VIPs, confirmed that the influence of the Azerbaijani provinces has weakened and those who criticize the excesses of the regime are winning?

And then the multifaceted regime sent the advanced Ahmadinejad to Guatemala. First delayed due to security issues. And then he left with a beautiful woman without a hijab on the plane (maybe they were waiting for her?). Show that Azerbaijani provinces can respond brightly. Exactly in the same special field.

Almost simultaneously with Ahmadinejad's detention at the airport, some media in Colombia reported that former President Alvaro Uribe would stand trial and could receive 12 years in prison. Uribe, who has ties to Medellin and the local cartel, is on the opposite side of President Gustavo Petro's stance on drug policy splicing.

The author is transparently trying to hint that the Iranian special services continue to play Zubatovism with “special human rights activists” since the late 80s, using them as a tool to control the human rights agenda and internal squabbles. The version, of course, has only indirect confirmation, but it has a right to exist, although the very fact of working for another “Nobel laureate”, who was supervised by Iranian intelligence services, does not yet prove that the new “laureate” also worked for them.

Well, regarding drugs, the United States tried to separate Balochistan from Iranian territory as part of the 2007 “Greater Middle East” plan, which would allow them to control drug production in Balochistan, complementing other important drug countries that are under US control - Colombia , Afghanistan (until recently), Kosovo, etc. Baluchistan, if the Americans managed to destroy Iran, would be an excellent addition to this strategy of controlling the main flows of drug trafficking.Official Iran officially scolded the award of this prize, calling it an example of Western interventionism and its interference in the internal affairs of Iran.

More from RIA Novosti
Biography of Nargiz Mohammadi

Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi was born on April 21, 1972 in Zanjan (Iran).

She graduated from Imam Khomeini International University with a degree in physics. She worked as an engineer.

While at university, she co-founded an organization called the Enlightened Students Group and was arrested twice.

As a journalist, she wrote for various reformist magazines, including Payam-e Hajar. This publication was later banned. Mohammadi is also the author of political essays "Reforms, Strategy and Tactics" in Persian.

In 2003, Nargiz Mohammadi joined the Center for Human Rights, founded in 2000 by Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. He holds the position of Vice President of the Human Rights Center (DHRC).

In 2008, she was elected president of the executive committee of the National Peace Council of Iran, a coalition against war and for human rights.

Nargis Mohammadi was first arrested in 1998 for criticizing the Iranian government. Her most recent arrest occurred in November 2021, just a year after her October 2020 release . She was released on health grounds in February 2022 but was arrested again seven weeks later.

In total, Nargis Mohammadi was arrested 13 times, convicted five times and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

Nargiz Mohammadi has received many awards and honors for her human rights activities. Among them are the International Alexander Langer Prize ( 2009 ); Per Anger Prize - an international award from the Swedish government in the field of human rights ( 2011 ); Prize of the Italian Foundation "Galileo 2000" ( 2015 ); City of Paris Award from the Mayor of Paris and Reporters Without Borders (RSF, 2016 ); Human Rights Award from the German City of Weimar (2016); Andrei Sakharov Award from the American Physical Society ( 2018 ); Reporters Without Borders Award borders" ( 2022 ).

In 2023, she was awarded the UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize together with Nilufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi.

On October 6, 2023, Nargis Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for her struggle against the oppression of women in Iran and for promoting human rights and freedom for all."

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Suspected explosion hits area of Iran missile base; Israeli involvement speculated UPDATE: Iran sez ‘False News’

2023-09-27

[IsraelTimes] Residents of Khorramabad said to hear ’terrible sound,’ feel the ground shake near Imam Ali underground base, which makes Shahab-3 missiles capable of hitting Israel

A suspected explosion rocked the area of the Iranian city of Khorramabad on Monday evening, with some unofficial reports speculating it could have been a sabotage operation in a nearby underground ballistic missile base.

Iranian media outlets affiliated with the country’s Islamic regime reported that a "terrible sound" was heard by local residents, who also said the ground had been shaking.
"It was like Yoko Ono was singing! It was horrible!"
However,
death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate...
official reports said later that no earthquake had been recorded in the area, and authorities also denied that a kaboom had taken place, adding that the source of the disturbance was being investigated.

Situated some 35 kilometers (22 miles) from Khorramabad is the Imam Ali base, one of Iran’s two underground missile silos, where former president Mohammad Khatami ordered the production of Shahab-3 medium-range missiles — new variants of which have a range of 2,000 kilometers and are thought to be capable of hitting Israel and of carrying a nuclear warhead.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that around 10 p.m. on Monday, "strong shocks accompanied by a terrible sound caused tremors in parts of the city of Khorramabad, causing panic and disrupting the peace of the people at night."

The report added that after it became clear that no earthquake had been recorded, "the occurrence of the earth-shattering kaboom became more prominent in the minds of the people."

Some observers, such as US-based Iranian-American Middle East researcher Erfan Fard of the Counter-Terrorism Center, suggested the incident could have been a successful operation by Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Unofficial and unverified reports said the operation may have been conducted using attack drones.

Israel views Iran
Iran

Update from the Jerusalem Post courtesy of Skidmark at 1:30 p.m. EDT:

IRAN DENIES 'FALSE NEWS' OVER MISSILE-RELATED BLAST
Iranian media quoted officials in Lorestan, who allegedly expressed concern about “false news and speculation,” indicating that this may be a security and political issue. “We request the people of Lorestan not to pay attention to rumors and to receive news only from official authorities and media,” the authorities said.

Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against a Nuclear Iran, noted that “there have been mysterious explosions at Imam Ali Base before in Iran,” in a post on social media, referencing similar incidents that have occurred there, including in 2010.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Iranian foundation offers land to Salman Rushdie's attacker - state media

2023-02-22

[Jpost] '1,000 square meters of agricultural land'
1 acre = 4046.86 square meters so, about 1/4 acre.
No bigger than some house lots.
An Iranian foundation has praised the man who attacked novelist Salman Rushdie last year, leaving him severely injured, and said it will reward him with 1,000 square meters of agricultural land, state TV reported on Tuesday through its Telegram channel.

Rushdie, 75, lost an eye and the use of one hand following the assault by Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old Shi'ite Muslim American from New Jersey, on the stage of a literary event held near Lake Erie in western New York in August.

"We sincerely thank the brave action of the young American who made Muslims happy by blinding one of Rushdie's eyes and disabling one of his hands," said Mohammad Esmail Zarei, secretary of the Foundation to Implement Imam Khomeini's Fatwas.

"Rushdie is now no more than living dead and to honor this brave action, about 1,000 square meters of agricultural land will be donated to the person or any of his legal representatives," Zarei added.

FORMER IRANIAN AYATOLLAH ISSUED BOUNTY ON RUSHDIE
The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader called on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after The Satanic Verses was published. Some Muslims saw passages in the novel about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.

The Jerusalem Post first reported on the pro-Iranian regime professor at Oberlin College in Ohio, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who endorsed the edict to kill Rushdie at the time.

Lawdan Bazargan, an Iranian-American activist seeking to secure Mahallati's dismissal, told the Post that "I consider Mahallati and US universities such as Oberlin College, Princeton, and Columbia responsible for the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. These elite universities hire the Islamic Regime of Iran's Ambassadors, call them scholars, and give them access to American students to brainwash them and spread radical Shi'a Islamic values. Mahallati had defended the bounty against Salman Rushdie as a non-disputable fact among Muslims."

She added that "In the past 30 years, Mahallati has shared the same ideas with his students in the classrooms, and they shared them with their circle of friends and colleagues, spreading hate and intolerance all over the US. Besides, Mahallati is closely connected with Islamic Centers and mosques in the US, spreading his hateful message through those platforms, radicalizing young people such as Hadi Matar. US universities such as Oberlin are responsible for this terrorist attack because they created a platform for the ideologues such as Mahallati to do the dirty work of Iran's Islamic regime. How many more people must be injured or killed until Oberlin college fire Mahallati and Princeton fire Mousavian?"

Sheina Vojoudi, an associate fellow for the Gold Institute for International Strategy, told the Post that "It’s not surprising that the top state-sponsor of terrorism, which has hijacked an ancient civilization and turned it to the source of funding for terrorism, rewards a terrorist."

The US State Department has classified the Iranian regime as the worst international state-sponsor of terrorism.

Vojoud added that "The Islamic Republic has been rewarding terror entities like Fatemiyoun, Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi, Hamas and Hezbollah since Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. The members of these terror organizations, especially Fatemiyoun, are rewarded with houses and monthly salaries in dollars, not in the Iranian rial. I’ve tried to draw the world’s attention to Fatemiyoun, Hezbollah and Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi’s role in killing the Iranian protesters for the economic benefits."

"It’s time for the European Union to take this matter in consideration and finally list Iranäs Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization."

Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived with a bounty on his head and spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.

Although Iran's pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the edict in the late 1990s, the multimillion-dollar bounty hanging over Rushdie's head kept growing and was never lifted.

The man accused of attacking the novelist has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami and former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi have both called for political changes amid the protests triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini

2023-02-06

[PUBLISH.TWITTER]

#Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami and former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi have both called for political changes amid the #protests triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.https://t.co/1TkGBij8CC
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) February 5, 2023

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Iran sentences ex-top defense official to death for spying for UK on nuclear talks

2023-01-12

[IsraelTimes] Iran
Iran

...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites....
sentences a former senior defense official to death after convicting him on charges of spying for Britannia, state-linked media reports.

The judiciary says Ali Reza Akbari, who was deputy defense minister until 2001, was a "key spy" for British intelligence, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reports. It said Iranian intelligence unmasked the spying by feeding him false information.

Tasnim also reported that he had spied on past nuclear talks between Iran and Western powers. Akbari had served as deputy defense minister under President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who had pushed for improved relations with the West.

For several years, Iran has been locked in a shadow war with the United States and Israel, marked by covert attacks on its disputed nuclear program. The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist in 2020, which Iran blamed on Israel, indicated foreign intelligence services had made major inroads.

Akbari, who ran a private think tank, has not been seen in public since 2019, when he was apparently arrested.

Authorities have not released any details about his trial. Those accused of espionage and other crimes related to national security are usually tried behind closed doors, where rights groups say they do not choose their own lawyers and are not allowed to see evidence against them.

The Afghan Digest mentions that Mr. Akbari also holds UK citizenship. Not that Iran cares about any citizenship other than its own.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Protest-hit Iran says reviewing mandatory headscarf law

2022-12-04

[Rudaw] Iran
Iran

...The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both...
said Saturday it is reviewing a decades-old law that requires women to cover their heads, as it struggles to quell more than two months of protests linked to the dress code.

Protests have swept Iran since the September 16 death in jug of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin arrested by the morality police for allegedly flouting the sharia-based law.

Demonstrators have burned their head coverings and shouted anti-government slogans. Since Amini's death, a growing number of women have not been observing hijab, particularly in Tehran's fashionable north.

"Both parliament and the judiciary are working (on the issue)" of whether the law needs any changes, Iran's attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said.

Quoted by the ISNA news agency, he did not specify what could be modified in the law by the two bodies, which are largely in the hands of conservatives.

The review team met on Wednesday with parliament's cultural commission "and will see the results in a week or two", the attorney general said.

President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday said Iran's republican and Islamic foundations were constitutionally entrenched.

"But there are methods of implementing the constitution that can be flexible," he said in televised comments.

The hijab headscarf became obligatory for all women in Iran in April 1983, four years after the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy.

It remains a highly sensitive issue in a country where conservatives insist it should be compulsory, while reformists want to leave it up to individual choice.

- HUNDREDS KILLED -
After the hijab law became mandatory, with changing clothing norms it became commonplace to see women in tight jeans and loose, colourful headscarves.

But in July this year Raisi, an ultra-conservative, called for mobilisation of "all state institutions to enforce the headscarf law".

Many women continued to bend the rules, however.

In September, Iran's main reformist party called for the mandatory hijab law to be rescinded.

The Union of Islamic Iran People Party, formed by relatives of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, on Saturday demanded the authorities "prepare the legal elements paving the way for the cancellation of the mandatory hijab law".

The opposition group is also calling for the Islamic republic to "officially announce the end of the activities of the morality police" and "allow peaceful demonstrations", it said in a statement.

Iran accuses its sworn enemy the United States and its allies, including Britannia, Israel, and Kurdish groups based outside the country, of fomenting the street protests which the government calls "riots".

A general in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps this week, for the first time, said more than 300 people have bit the dust in the unrest since Amini's death.

Iran's top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, on Saturday said the number of people killed during the protests "exceeds 200".

Cited by state news agency IRNA, it said the figure included security officers, civilians and "separatists" as well as "rioters".

Oslo-based non-governmental organization Iran Human Rights on Tuesday said at least 448 people had been "killed by security forces in the ongoing nationwide protests".

UN rights chief Volker Turk said last week that 14,000 people, including children, had been arrested in the protest crackdown.

The campaign of arrests has snared sportspeople, celebrities and journalists.

Among the latest figures to be arrested was film star Mitra Hajjar, who was detained at her home on Saturday, according to the reformist newspaper Shargh.

The Supreme National Security Council said that in addition to the human toll, the violence had caused damage valued at trillions of rials (millions of dollars).

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Ahvaz Protests Threaten to Spread Across Iran

2021-07-22

[ENGLISH.AAWSAT] The expansion of protests over the diversion of Ahvaz rivers and the drying up of wetlands in southwestern Iran
Iran

...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
threatens to spread across the country, two weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Ibrahim Raisi.

Calls spread for protests to be held in Iranian cities in solidarity with the movement in Ahvaz. Videos showed Iranians chanting "Death to Wilayat al-Faqih" and "Death to the Islamic Theocratic Republic" at Sadiqiyah, the second largest station in the west of Tehran.

In the northwestern provinces of the country, which are predominantly Azeri, posters in the ~~Ottoman~~ Turkish language were spread expressing solidarity with the Arab cities in the south.

This came following the fifth night of protests in the city of Ahvaz, during which demonstrators tried to reach the central areas of the province, chanting slogans condemning the policies of the Iranian regime.

Authorities cut the internet from mobile phone service in several areas, according to local reports.

In the west of Ahwaz, the city of Khafajia witnessed a tumultuous night on Monday, when thousands of people marched towards the city center, before organizing a sit-in in front of the governor’s headquarters, demanding that he submit his resignation.

The anti-riots forces, which had deployed in the city on Sunday night and fired at the protesters, withdrew on Monday after sharp criticism over the authorities’ resorting to the use of excessive violence

Activists in Ahvaz said that the authorities continued to arrest protesters in various areas, but no figures were published on the exact number of detainees.

Meanwhile,
...back at the shootout, bullets whapped! around Butch as he tried to tie his scarf around his shoulder as a tourniquet......
outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
...Iran's moderate president, which he is, relative to his predecessor, which doesn't mean he's anything but a puppet of the nearest holy man...
maintained silence over the suppression of the protests, while conservative figures pointed to the "mismanagement" that led to deteriorating conditions in the oil-rich province.

The former reformist President Mohammad Khatami expressed his regret over the killing and wounding of the demonstrators. He said: "People are truly upset, protesting against what is happening. Peaceful protest is a right for the people and citizens."

For his part, former Iranian President Mahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad criticized the suppression of the demonstrations, declaring his solidarity with the protesters’ demands.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Amid Iran’s crisis, parliament impeaches Rouhani-allied labor minister

2018-08-09

[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The Iranian parliament on Wednesday, impeached labor minister Ali Rabiei, a close ally of president Hassan Rouhani, after months of mounting anger over the government’s handling of an economic crisis which has deepened with the reimposition of US sanctions.

According to Iranian Fars news agency, Rabiei lost a confidence motion in parliament by 129 votes to 111 against with 3 abstened, out of 243 votes which automatically means he is dismissed from office.

Rubaie, 62, was one of President Rouhani’s most prominent allies and was an adviser to former reformist president Mohammad Khatami between 1997 and 2005.

Rouhani has three months’ time to replace Rabiei.

During his speech in parliament, Rabiei accused Iran’s hardliners in the House of targeting the Rouhani government, as a hearing is expected to be held for minsters of interior, economy and education, a move considered by observers intented to corner president Rouhani’s government and discourage it from any negotiations with the Americans.

In recent weeks, Rouhani has come under immense pressures in order to undertake a major reshuffle of his economic team.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Iran approves release of protest leaders Mousavi, Karroubi: family

2018-07-30

[AlAhram] Iran's top security body has approved the release of opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi

, under house arrest for seven years for leading mass protests in 2009, a family member told local media.

"I have heard that the decision to lift the house arrest was approved by the Supreme National Security Council," said Hossein Karroubi, son of the locked away
Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!
reformist, according to the Kalameh news website which is close to the family.

"This decision will be presented to the (supreme) leader so that this case can be concluded," he said, adding that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would have 10 days to veto the decision.

There was no official confirmation of the decision, but the reports come at a time when Iran's leaders are keen to unite conservative and reformist factions to face down increasing pressure from the United States and a worsening economic crisis.

Mousavi, 76, and Karroubi, 80, were reformist candidates in the controversial election of 2009, which was won by hardliner Mahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad.

They claimed the vote was rigged, triggering months of mass protests, particularly in Tehran. Hundreds of thousands erupted into the streets in the biggest challenge to the system since the Islamic revolution of 1979.

The pair were sent to his room without trial in February 2011, along with Mousavi's high-profile wife, 66-year-old Zahra Rahnavard.

Hossein Karroubi said the security council had also agreed to lift restrictions on reformist figurehead Mohammad Khatami, who was Iran's president from 1997 to 2005.

The media had been banned from showing Khatami's face and strict limits were placed on his movements.

President Hassan Rouhani repeatedly vowed to seek the release of Mousavi and Karroubi -- a major plank of his election in 2013 and re-election last year, with their names frequently chanted at his rallies.

But despite Rouhani chairing the Supreme National Security Council, which is made up of government and military figures appointed by the president and supreme leader, there had been no sign of progress on their release.

Link

Arabia

Iranian politician: There’s no ISIS in Yemen, so why should we intervene?

2017-12-06

[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Mostafa Tajzadeh, a veteran Iranian politician, has attacked the Revolutionary Guard for its intervention in Yemen, saying that there was "nothing to make of Yemeni territory that have any strategic importance for Iran".

"Yemen

...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
is not occupied by ISIS and it has no holy places, it is not a neighbor of Israel to be considered, by the Iranian regime leaders, with a strategic importance for the Islamic Theocratic Republic," Tajzadeh tweeted on Monday.

Tajzadeh refers to the efforts of the Iranian regime to intervene in the internal affairs of Arab countries, where Iran intervenes militarily in Syria and Iraq. Their presence in one is focused on fighting ISIS while in the second to defend Shiite shrines in both countries, where it calls its militias in Syria and Iraq "Defenders of al-Haram."

Iran is also intervening in Leb’s affairs by supporting the terror group Hezbollah militias, arguing that this country is the first front against Israel.

On Nov. 23, Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari announced what he called an "advisory support" council of his "forces to Yemen", which meant the Houthi
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ...
militias were being supported politically, financially and militarily by Tehran.

Tajzadeh is an Iranian reformist politician who was deputy for the interior minister in political and security affairs under the former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Rouhani pays the price for Khamenei’s Machiavellian game

2017-11-21

[ARABNEWS] The Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is ratcheting up his criticism of President Hassan Rouhani, echoed by Iran’s state-owned media.

Some scholars and policy analysts are interpreting Khamenei’s opposition to Rouhani as a manifestation of Iran’s dynamic, democratic and inclusive political system. However,
a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all...
looking closely at the history of the Iranian regime and Khamenei’s nearly three-decade rule, it becomes evident that this argument is simplistic and fails to demonstrate the complexity of the regime’s apparatuses.

Since Khamenei became supreme leader in June 1989, he has distanced himself from his presidents, especially in their second presidential term; he has done this with Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjnai, Mohammad Khatami, Mahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad and now Rouhani. For example, Khamenei’s criticism of Ahmadinejad in his second term was evident, although the regime’s leader strongly endorsed Ahmadinejad at the beginning of his term and promoted him later.

So why would Khamenei criticize his presidents in public? First of all, he knows that they cannot fulfill people’s economic demands because the nation’s revenues are directed to the treasury of the Office of the Supreme Leader and spent on Khamenei’s gilded circle of cronies, proxies and military advisers. Khamenei has made it clear in his speeches that Rouhani has failed to improve the Iranian people’s economic life or fulfill any of his economic promises.

Khamenei is distancing himself from the president’s failures. He is evading responsibility and accountability. He is attempting to manipulate the disaffected population, who are suffering from unemployment and poverty, by telling them simply that Rouhani is the one to blame, and your supreme leader sympathizes with you. Khamenei is deluding the people into believing that, like the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people, he too is opposed to the government in the shape of the presidential office.

Link

Arabia

Flirting with Doha, Tehran Calls to ‘Reject Tension’

2017-06-07

[Asharq al-Aswat] Following Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt announced severing ties with Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates...
, Iran’s foreign ministry front man, Bahram Ghasemi, called on Gulf states to "renounce tension through dialogue."

Other Tehran officials tried to build bridges with Doha by attacking countries that joined the boycott. Former diplomats have warned their government of the consequences of "investing the Qatar’s card in Gulf tensions."

"The era of cutting diplomatic ties and closing borders ... is not a way to resolve crisis," Hamid Aboutalebi, deputy chief of staff of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, tweeted on Monday.

Aboutalebi reiterated his country’s disdain and criticism of the Arab-Islamic-US summit held in Riyadh in May, unleashing a wave of harsh criticism towards each of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and Bahrain.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday urged Qatar and neighboring Gulf Arab countries that have severed diplomatic ties with it to engage in dialogue to resolve their dispute.

"Neighbors are permanent- geography can’t be changed. Coercion is never the solution. Dialogue is imperative," Zarif tweeted.

According to AFP, foreign ministry front man Ghasemi said in a statement that a solution to the differences between Qatar and its three Gulf neighbors "is only possible through political and peaceful methods and dialogue between the parties".

"Using sanctions in today’s integrated world is inefficient, to be condemned and unacceptable," Ghasemi added of Qatar’s neighbors closing all land, sea and air links with it.

Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, head of the office of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, attacked Saudi policy, saying severing relations with Qatar was an "Arab earthquake." He called on Iran to abstain from interfering and that rationale prevails with what concerns Iranian involvement in intra-Gulf affairs.

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