Thanks to the extremely dubious leadership of the Biden Administration, Iran and China have become more empowered and emboldened than ever. The Chinese Communist Party and the ruling Islamist mullahs of Iran have been conveniently violating US sanctions without facing any consequences from the Biden administration.
The protests in Iran against the regime’s Islamist dictatorship have largely been quelled for the time being, but the conflict remains. It is between a regime that implements medieval and barbaric laws and a young generation that wants to live in a modern and civilized society; and between a regime that rejects the notion of, and constantly defies, an international community, and the Iranian people, who are increasingly longing for Iran to become part of the international community.
A radical regime, whose mission is to “Export the Revolution” and bring Islamist rule to the rest of the world, will not alter its aims through policies of appeasement.
The appeasement policies of the Obama Administration empowered and emboldened Iran’s ruling mullahs, and the Biden Administration seems determined to pursue the same path. Recall when, upon reaching the JCPOA “nuclear deal” with Iran in 2105, then US President Barack Obama pointed out that he was “confident” that the deal, with its lifting of sanctions on Iran, would “meet the national security needs of the United States and our allies”? It was even outlined in the JCPOA preamble that all parties “anticipate that full implementation of this JCPOA will positively contribute to regional and international peace and security.”
Iran and China are on the move again. Last Friday, to the apparent surprise of the Biden Administration, China asserted its influence in the Middle East by entering the vacuum created by US President Joe Biden, and brokering a deal between Iran and its threatened neighbor, Saudi Arabia, which Biden had vowed to make a “pariah,” and “end the sale of material” to it. The Saudis heard.
Iran, meanwhile, has not been shy about its mission to “export the revolution” to the Western hemisphere. Most recently, in February, two Iranian warships docked in Brazil, under its recently elected socialist President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. From there, the ships will reportedly proceed to the Panama Canal, already controlled at both ends by Iran’s newish ally — the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The girls defied a ban on public dancing and strict public dress codes mandating the wearing of headscarves
Iranian police are hunting for a group of girls who launched a viral Selena Gomez dance trend.
A video was posted online last week showing five young Iranian women performing a dance routine to the Afropop hit Calm Down by Rema and Selena Gomez.
The women danced without headscarves in front of tower blocks in Shahrak Ekbatan, a west Tehran housing development that has been a flashpoint of anti-government protests.
I wonder if @heisrema knows that his song #CalmDown is the backdrop of an incredibly courageous act of defiance by young Iranian women?
It started when 5 girls danced to his music in @shahrak_ekbatan– risking persecution by a regime that has murdered women for simply protesting. pic.twitter.com/V9zIbaF8og
— Nahayat Tizhoosh (@NahayatT) March 12, 2023
DUBAI, March 12 (Reuters) – Iran and the United States have reached an agreement to exchange prisoners, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told state TV on Sunday, but Washington denied it as a “false” claim by Tehran.
“Regarding the issue of prisoner swaps between Iran and the U.S. we have reached an agreement in the recent days and if everything goes well on the U.S. side, I think we will witness a prisoner exchange in a short period,” Amirabdollahian said.
Ever since the Biden Administration shifted Washington’s Iran policy from maximum pressure to total appeasement, the ruling mullahs’ nuclear advances have been remarkable.
The Iranian regime is rapidly forging ahead with uranium enrichment. Inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), recently found uranium particles in Iran that were enriched up to 83.7%, just shy of the 90% needed for nuclear weapons. The enrichment has been taking place in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site. Before the Biden Administration, the regime was enriching uranium at 3.5%. This is a remarkable nuclear escalation in just two years.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are to resume diplomatic relations, the two countries announced in a joint statement on Friday, in a diplomatic coup for China, which brokered the agreement.
The agreement to restore ties within two months was reached after four days of meetings in Beijing between the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani and his Saudi counterpart Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban, the two countries said in a joint communique with China.
While some academic institutions, such as the University of Freiburg in Germany, have pulled the plug on their affiliation with Iranian universities that urge the destruction of Israel, McGill University in Montreal continues to mainstream lethal antisemitism through its partnership with Tehran University.
Iran’s supreme leader has called the suspected poisoning of Iranian schoolgirls in recent months an “unforgivable” crime amid signs that hundreds of schoolgirls have been treated in hospital, many more than the regime had previously admitted.
“Authorities should seriously pursue the issue of students’ poisoning. This is an unforgivable and big crime … The perpetrators of this crime should be severely punished,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said. He added there would be no amnesty for those found guilty.
So far, more than 1,000 schoolgirls in 15 cities have reported symptoms consistent with those experienced by victims of toxic gas attacks. Girls interviewed by the state media say that they were suddenly overcome by a smell “of rotten fruit or rotten eggs or a strong perfume” and could barely breathe. Some say they passed out and had to be dragged into the fresh air by their friends. Others say they felt dizzy and sick. Many girls were taken to hospital.
“U.S. support for demonstrations in Tel Aviv isn’t about the future of Israel’s judiciary. It’s about handcuffing Israel while Iran gets the bomb,” writes Lee Smith in Tablet Magazine.
This week, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl announced, in a statement confirmed by the United Nations, that Iran has enriched uranium to nearly weapons-grade level at an underground nuclear site, and could produce “nuclear material for a bomb in about 12 days.”
Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns tried to reassure the House of Representatives: “We don’t see evidence that they’ve made a decision to resume that weaponization program.”
This may very well be a prelude to the Iranian regime’s asking the US, “How much will you pay us not to go nuclear on the Biden Administration’s watch?’
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Over the past three months, hundreds of young girls attending different schools in Iran have become overpowered by what are believed to be noxious fumes wafting into their classrooms, with some ending up weakened on hospital beds.
Officials in Iran’s theocracy initially dismissed these incidents, but now describe them as intentional attacks involving some 30 schools identified in local media reports, with some speculating they could be aimed at trying to close schools for girls in this country of over 80 million people.
The Biden administration is still attempting to revive the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, which paved the way to lift the arms embargo on the country and helped the Iranian regime to currently become a major global arms exporter.
Among the many gifts that the Obama Administration offered to the Iranian regime was one setting October 18, 2020 as the date when the arms embargo on Iran would be removed, allowing the regime to export, import, buy and sell weapons legally, as it might wish. The arms embargo for Iran had been previously placed on it by the five members of the United Nations Security Council in 2007, during the Bush administration. The embargo encompassed a wide range of weapons, including large-caliber artillery, drones, combat aircraft, battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, attack helicopters, some missiles and missile launchers, and warships.
