Iran and Russia have been strengthening their alliance recently, growing it gradually to such an extent that the Wall Street Journal wrote on August 27 that the two countries were “forging tighter ties than ever,” as both countries face continued international isolation.
In recent months, Russia and Iran have signed a multitude of agreements, especially in trade, oil and gas, and military cooperation.
On September 9, 2022, Channel 1 (Iran) aired a special following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Show host Pejman Karimi said that the Queen’s death was “good news” for the oppressed people of the world, and Iranian academic Foad Izadi of Tehran University’s Global Studies Department compared the Queen to Adolf Hitler, saying that she was “one of the greatest criminals in the history of mankind.”
The Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation was once a small, obscure list of autocrats that posed no real threat. Not any more, writes Matthew Campbell
Authoritarian world leaders including President Putin of Russia and President Xi of China will gather this week in Central Asia for the annual summit of an obscure organisation which has attracted little global attention since its founding in 1996.
That is about to change, for the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation (SCO) is poised to take a bold step. In a development certain to irritate Washington, it is granting membership to Iran, a country regarded in America as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The new “Iran nuclear deal,” it appears, is “off the table for the time being.” Let us hope that the report is accurate.
In spite of the opposition from US allies in the Middle East as well as many US Congressman, both Democrats and Republicans, the Biden administration appeared determined to reward the ruling mullahs of Iran, whose policies and ideology are anchored in “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
The Biden administration seemed to hope that if they could just “contain” Iran with a “deal” — put Iran “in a box” even for a few years — it would “free up” the US to deal other problems, such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran’s growing influence in Venezuela and the Indo-Pacific, with one less distraction. If only.
If and when the Biden administration signs a new nuclear deal with Iran, the mullahs’ Lebanese terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, will undoubtedly benefit from the billions of dollars that the Iranian regime is expected to receive once the sanctions on their country are lifted. Hezbollah will use the money to obtain more weapons, tighten its grip on Lebanon and prepare for more war with Israel. It will also use the money to undermine the security and stability of America’s allies in the Arab world.
The talk about an imminent revival of the nuclear deal between Iran and the Biden administration and other Western countries has raised serious concerns among many Arabs. They state that they are especially worried about the billions of dollars that Iran’s mullahs will receive once the deal is done. The Arabs say they have no doubt that the money would be used by the mullahs to promote more terrorism and violence and expand Tehran’s terrorist proxies in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and various militias in Iraq.
“The Arabs will be shocked when the details of the new nuclear deal are published,” wrote Sayed Zahra, deputy editor of Bahrain’s Akhbar Al-Khaleej.
The Iranian government is planning to use facial recognition technology on public transport to identify women who are not complying with a strict new law on wearing the hijab, as the regime continues its increasingly punitive crackdown on women’s dress.
The secretary of Iran’s Headquarters for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani, announced in a recent interview that the government was planning to use surveillance technology against women in public places following a new decree signed by the country’s hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, on restricting women’s clothing.
A recently surfaced photograph of three of Al Qaeda’s top leaders, including Saif al Adel – the man many believe to be the successor to emir Ayman al Zawahiri – shows that they were present in the Iranian capital of Tehran. Numerous U.S. government designations have previously outlined the presence of senior Al Qaeda leaders in Iran, but this photo offered rare visual proof.
The photo was originally published by @Sw0rdOfAnon (Anonymous) on Twitter. Two U.S. intelligence officials independently confirmed to FDD’s Long War Journal the authenticity of the photograph, as well as the identities of the three men. The intelligence officials said the photograph was taken in Tehran before 2015.
The Biden administration’s new nuclear deal with the ruling clerics will lift economic sanctions against the Iranian regime the moment the deal enters into effect.
At that moment, the Iranian regime will receive approximately $90 billion. The Biden administration will also instantly be lifting sanctions on the Iranian regime’s energy sector, which will also significantly boost the regime’s oil and gas revenues.
As Western governments quake in the face of Russian nuclear threats, they are on the verge of striking a deal that will give Iran that same power over them.
Even after six months of war in Europe, they cannot seem to grasp the parallels between the two. Putin risked invading Ukraine because of Western weakness and appeasement, naively welcoming Russia back into the family of nations after it devoured large parts of Ukraine in 2014, while at the same time filling its war chests with ever more billions of euros from energy exports to Europe.
After more than three decades, a debate that started during the Iran-Iraq war seems to be making a comeback in Tehran: Should the Islamic Republic take the final steps towards building a nuclear arsenal?
The original debate that took place behind the scenes was prompted by the revelation that, with French help, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had been trying to build a nuclear capacity around Osirak, a nuclear power station and research center which was wiped out in a surprise attack by the Israeli Air Force.
Since assuming office, the Biden administration’s policy towards the Iranian regime has been one of capitulation and giving concessions to the ruling Islamist mullahs of Iran. So far, they include suspending some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on Iran-backed Houthis, then revoking the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group; disregarding Iran’s oil sales to China; shipping oil to Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Venezuela in direct violation of US sanctions; ignoring the Iranian regime’s crackdown on protesters, smuggling weapons to the Houthis and Venezuela; attempting to murder US former officials and citizens on American soil, and taking more foreign hostages.
On top of that, newly leaked information from inside Iran, obtained by Iran International, reveals that the Biden administration has made even more concessions to revive the nuclear deal, which have not been revealed to the public. According to the report, “the US guarantees that its sanctions against IRGC would not affect other sectors and firms: e.g. a petrochemical company shouldn’t be sanctioned by US because of doing business with IRGC.”
As the Biden administration seems to be moving closer to reaching a new nuclear deal with Iran, the mullahs in Tehran are encouraging their Lebanese and Palestinian terrorist proxies to prepare for waging war on Israel.
The mullahs appear convinced that once the Biden administration capitulates completely to their demands for reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, they will be able to step up their already significant efforts to eliminate Israel and export their Islamic Revolution to Arab and Islamic countries. Iran already occupies four Arab countries: Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
There were protests and condemnation last week after an Iranian woman who was arrested for defying newly hardened hijab laws appeared on state television to give what observers claimed was a forced confession as a result of torture.
Sepideh Rashno, 28, was arrested in July soon after footage of her being harassed on a bus over “improper clothing”, was circulated online.
Rashno, a writer and artist, is among a number of women arrested after the introduction of a national “Hijab and Chastity Day” on 12 July.
The stabbing of author Salman Rushdie by a Lebanese Shiite Muslim from New Jersey may be the culmination of efforts by Iran to imitate Al Qaeda and ISIS by building its own online terror network to carry out attacks inside the United States of America. The latest reports indicate that Hadi Matar, Rushdie’s attacker, had been in touch with members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The recent indictment of a member of the Iranian regime’s IRGC terror network for soliciting the assassination of former US National Security Advisor John Bolton provided a window into how Iran has targeted former Trump administration members.
