Iran View

During Vice President Mike Pence's Knesset address, he repeatedly put the spotlight on Iran. He made a “solemn promise” to the world that the U.S. would never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. And after his firm declarations about the “dangerous regime,” he had a “better” message for the Iranian people. Pence said: “From the people of America to the proud and brave people of Iran. We are your friends and the day is coming when you will be free from the evil regime that suffocates your dreams and buries your hopes.” He added that when their “day of liberation” arrives, the friendship between the U.S. and the “good people of Iran ... will blossom once again.” In December, protests broke out throughout Iran over poor living standards and the government's corruption. More than 20 people have been killed in the clash and thousands have been detained. The death of a 22-year-old protester while in police custody prompted humanitarian organizations to question the ...

Agencies, 21 January 2018  - Iran Mullah regime wasted little time squelching their citizens' favorite social media as protests multiplied in December including slapping 'temporary' blocks on encrypted international apps like Telegram and Instagram, in addition to existing obstacles to Internet access, Radio Free Europe reported. Such steps paled in comparison to reports of protester deaths in the streets and in custody, thousands of arrests, and official denunciations of demonstrators as puppets of foreign 'enemies.' But officials are convinced that the digital clampdown helped extinguish the outbreaks of simmering popular anger against the mullahs establishment in more than 90 cities and towns. 'Cyberspace was kindling the fire of the battle,' cleric Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday Prayers in the Iranian capital on January 5, with reports of unrest waning. 'Once cyberspace was restricted and closed down, the sedition was stopped....

US News & World Report, Jan. 18, 2018  - The recent unrest in Iran has confirmed what many attuned to domestic conditions in the Islamic Republic have long known: that an explosion was not a matter of if, but of when. The destructive reach of the Islamic Republic of Iran from Africa to South America and via Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq is hardly disputed. Yet this destructive influence serves the hesitance of many in the West to confront what appears as a strong and threatening regime. The riots and demonstration may have faded – but not the realities that created them. And this might provide an important policy lesson: Islamic regime's power posturing is designed to hide its true weaknesses. Iran's economy is in shambles. The days of high oil prices are long gone, and national resources are almost depleted. Despite the JCPOA – an agreement aimed at opening the Iranian market to international investors – Iran's economy remains in stagflation, with very little pros...

Breitbart, Jan. 18, 2018  - Iranian members of parliament pressured President  Hassan Rouhani  to permanently block critical messaging and communications app Telegram, used by tens of millions living in the Islamic Republic, on Tuesday. “In recent months, the enemies of the Iranian nation made maximum use of foreign messaging apps to create insecurity and chaos in Iranian cities,” the MPs wrote in a letter read during a public session of the parliament January 16. The MPs reportedly also blamed the deadly attacks on Iran’s parliament by Islamic State (IS) militants last June on said apps in order to strengthen their request to shutter access to them for everyday Iranians. Although apps like Telegram and Instagram were temporarily blocked by the regime at the onset of the December 28 protests and uprising, some were still able to access them by using anti-filtering software and proxies, both of which the MPs have asked the government to block. Breitbart News reporte...

By IranHRM Introduction Thousands of Iranians angry over rising food prices, government institutions’ scam and inflation protested in the country’s second-largest city and other areas Thursday, December 28, 2017. The protests swiftly spread to 142 cities and turned into a nationwide uprising. The slogans chanted by people combined economic dissatisfactions and political discontents, poverty, unemployment, corruption and total rejection of the regime. Iranian authorities blocked access to social media tools that had become key sources of information to demonstrators. Telegram and Instagram had been blocked since Dec. 31, while internet access was sporadically cut off to several cities where protests have taken place. The authorities also resorted to violence to disperse the demonstrators using firearms and water cannons. Thousands of innocent young protesters, have been detained while dozens were shot dead or wounded by the State Security Force. Some of those arrested...

The Guardian, January 18 2018 -  An Iranian protester who died in custody was forced to take pills that made him sick, his family have claimed, as secrecy shrouds the similar deaths of other prisoners. Little is known about the circumstances leading to the death of at least five protesters rounded up in mass arrests during Iran’s largest protests in nearly a decade. At least 25 people died in clashes during the unrest, which began on 28 December over economic grievances and spread across the country. Mahmoud Sadeghi, an outspoken MP who has scrutinized the authorities’ conduct of the crackdown, has said about 3,700 people were arrested during the protests. A series of tweets by Sadeghi since the unrest has been a rare source of information from within the country. “According to the relatives of one of the detainees who died in jail, he had told his family during a phone conversation [prior to his death] that the authorities had forced him and other prisoners to take ...

Al Arabiya, 17 January 2018  - European countries have increased pressure over Iran’s ballistic missile program and its role in regional conflicts even as they try to tackle President Trump’s threat to nullify nuclear deal with Tehran, a news report has revealed. A Financial Times report, quoting foreign ministry sources in Berlin, said that German, French and British foreign ministers – and EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini – agreed with Iran to hold an “intensive and very serious dialogue” on Tehran’s missile program and regional influence. According to the report, Germany’s foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, briefed Rex Tillerson, his US counterpart, about the plan after the European officials met Javad Zarif in Brussels last week. The meeting was held a day before Trump’s warning to European signatories that this was their “last chance” to fix it. The report says that European diplomats are seeking more information from White House officials to understand...

New York Times, Jan. 14, 2018  - The village of Zaras lies in a valley circled by the Zagros Mountains in southwestern Bakhtiari Province of Iran. An hour’s ride from Izeh, the nearest town, Zaras is home to about 60 families, who make a living from farming, pastoral nomadism and working as migrant laborers in Iranian cities. On a September afternoon in 2014, I sat by the mud wall of a hazelnut garden with Darab, a 50-year-old farmer in Zaras. Darab, a man with a charming face and rough, calloused hands, cultivated potatoes, beans and onions on a plot of land slightly larger than an acre. Yet the harvest wasn’t enough to feed his family — his wife, his six children and his elderly parents. Iran imported grains and potatoes on an enormous scale, and the prices fell each year. Darab supplemented his meager earnings by digging wells and working for a few months at construction sites in nearby cities. He would make less than the equivalent of about 20 American dollars for 10 hou...

By Raymond Tanter and Ivan Sascha Sheehan 14 Jan 2018  -- On Jan.12, 2018, President Trump renewed the nuclear deal with Iran. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was the lead official in helping Trump rollout the decision. The President extended sanctions relief under the deal, keeping it intact for at least another 120 days, but said he would not issue any further waivers, as he negotiates a modified deal with European allies.  In extending the deal, Treasury also issued new sanctions on Iran; the president set a four-month window for Congress and our European allies suggest ideas for a new “pact,” which was neither a treaty nor a signed document. The head of Iran’s judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, is named on the sanctions lists, as is a Chinese network helping Iran procure weapons. The measures are meant to pressure Tehran over ongoing missile tests and its crackdown on Iranian protesters. At the end of 2017 and beginning of this year, Iran has seen its largest dem...