In the One Thousand and One Night tale of the princes of Serendip, all three have one desire: To achieve all their wishes with a single throw of the dice.
However, not confined to the world of oriental tales, that dream has dictated quite a few tragic, comical and tragi-comical events in history.
The latest appearance of the “one throw” theme could be witnessed in Tehran these days, where Islamic Republic leaders offer both tragic and comical versions of it.
While the presumptive President-Elect Joe Biden is advocating for pursuing appeasement policies with Iran’s ruling mullahs as did his former boss, President Barack Obama, it should be noted he will be assisting a regime that has close ties not only to Shia militia groups but also to the terrorist group Al Qaeda.
Some people might attempt to convince you that Iran and Al Qaeda are enemies because the Iranian government is Shia and Al Qaeda is Sunni, but evidence shows strong collaboration between the two.
Iranian authorities on Saturday morning executed once-exiled dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam over his online work that helped inspire nationwide anti-government protests in the Middle East nation in 2017.
The execution took place just months after he returned to Tehran under mysterious circumstances.
Never. Return. To. Iran.
An Iranian woman who posted heavily distorted images of herself online has been sentenced to 10 years in jail, her lawyer has said, a year after she was arrested over her social media activities.
Sahar Tabar, 19, whose real name is Fatemeh Khishvand, came to prominence after posting images of herself with a gaunt, zombie-like face. At one point she had 486,000 followers on Instagram.
She was charged with corruption of young people and disrespect for the Islamic Republic. In spring she pleaded for release from detention, saying she had contracted Covid-19.
Last month the trial began in Belgium of Assadolah Assadi and three other Iranians accused of planning a bomb attack in Paris in 2018. Since 2015 Assadi had been the most senior officer of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security in Europe, at the time operating under diplomatic cover at the Iranian embassy in Vienna. He is the first Iranian government official to be tried by an EU country for terrorist offences, despite numerous attack attempts on EU soil ordered by Tehran.
State supported terrorism is not just an act in itself but also an instrument of national power and coercion. Together, these plots were a malevolent message and clear threat to Europe that unfortunately have been received and acted upon as intended in London, Berlin, Paris and Brussels.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has transferred his powers to his son Mojtaba Khamenei due to health concerns, Newsweek reported Saturday.
To hit back, or not to hit back?
This is the question that has heated up debate within Tehran’s ruling Khomeinist circles for almost a week. The debate was triggered by the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a shadowy figure in the top echelons of Tehran’s murky establishment.
Despite an avalanche of obituaries and reports on the event, it is not yet quite clear who Fakhrizadeh was and what he was doing.
Israel intelligence managed to recruit an Iranian official close to the recently assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and recorded the nuclear scientist speaking about his efforts to produce “five warheads” on behalf of the Islamic Republic, according to a Friday report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
While the European Union has condemned the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, widely regarded as the father of Iran’s modern nuclear program, many Arabs and Muslims expressed relief over the assassination.
By condemning the killing of Fakhrizadeh, the EU has found itself on the side of Palestinian terror groups such as the Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These factions, together with Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group, another Iran proxy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, have also voiced outrage over the killing of the scientist.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service named the trio of countries in a declassified report titled COVID-19: Global Effects and Canadian National Security Interests.
Iran’s ruling mullahs, who are celebrating presumptive President-Elect Joe Biden’s possible presidency in 2021, are already calling on him to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal, which, incidentally, Iran never signed.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani — already urging the next US administration, which he hopes is the Biden administration — also pointed out, according to the state-run IRNA agency:
“Now, an opportunity has come up for the next U.S. administration to compensate for past mistakes and return to the path of complying with international agreements through respect of international norms.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif also advised Biden on Twitter to abandon President Trump’s Iran policy of maximum pressure and rejoin the nuclear deal.
The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist has exposed security gaps which suggest its security forces may have been infiltrated and that the Islamic Republic is vulnerable to further attacks.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s killing on Friday followed two other big security lapses — the theft of Iran’s nuclear archive and a fire at a nuclear facility this year that some Iranian officials blamed on cyber sabotage.
With Fakhrizadeh the fifth Iranian nuclear scientist killed in targeted attacks since 2010, security experts are suggesting Iran’s enemies have found its Achilles’ heel.
No worry, Xi is a Mullah backer he’ll see to it that China Joe fixes that for them.
The ‘moderates’ staffing the Biden administration will move quickly to cement Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy, starting with its most obvious failures
Barack Obama will never forgive Benjamin Netanyahu for being right about the Iran nuclear deal. In his new memoir, Promised Land, Obama writes that the Israeli prime minister’s “vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power.”
With unfailing predictability, EU external affairs spokesman Peter Sano as well as other European Iran-appeasers rushed to condemn the targeted killing on November 27 of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. In doing so they exhibited shocking disregard for the death, destruction and suffering likely to be inflicted by the totalitarian Iranian regime utilising the pernicious expertise of Mr Fakhrizadeh.
From across the Atlantic they were joined by, among others, former CIA Director John O. Brennan, who described the killing as “state-sponsored terrorism” and “a flagrant violation of international law”. Yet Mr Brennan was in the White House Situation Room in 2011 when the US launched an operation to kill Usama bin Laden on Pakistani sovereign territory. Presumably he was not whispering into President Barack Obama’s ear that SEAL Team Six were violating international law.
Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed using a remote controlled machine gun left inside a car which then blew up, sources within the country have claimed.
Fakhrizadeh was shot at least three times by the gun, positioned in a Nissan pickup that was parked alongside the road he was travelling on, before it blew up, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.
The details emerged as Iran held a funeral for the slain scientist, known as the father of the country’s nuclear programme, in Tehran on Monday – where leaders continued to vow revenge for his killing.
