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Iran Super Thread- Merged

More on the protests. It is interesting to see the analysis of who is taking to the streets and how this is different from the 2009 Green Revolution:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/2/iran-protests-differ-2009-green-revolution/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWVdZeU9HVmxOek13TTJZMCIsInQiOiJTR0ZpaVlQZEt3UE5ERkdiQW43bGxseW9qNVk4WjRyb1dkQ1R5cnh6NktQNEw5N2k2Rm9RakloaDh5NDVHS0V6Q0JiVzQ0M3dIck5iM1hRN3VnRTZjMFdhdVpSRFowSEZ0SmJBUzJjOWZ4b0JFVExMZ1pEOTFNWkFkUjZFUTljaCJ9

Why the ‘working poor’ uprising in Iran may have the power to topple hardline regime

While the abortive Green Revolution eight years ago was driven mainly by the children of wealthy political elites in Tehran in the wake of a questionable election, the spontaneous protests this time around are unfolding across the country and driven ... more >
By Guy Taylor - The Washington Times - Tuesday, January 2, 2018

The wave of violent protests churning across Iran differs dramatically from the last major uprising that rocked the country in 2009 and could spiral out of control if the regime moves too quickly toward military-style tactics to crush the unrest.

While the abortive Green Revolution eight years ago was driven mainly by the children of wealthy political elites in Tehran in the wake of a questionable election, the spontaneous protests this time around are unfolding across the country and driven by what analysts describe as “the working poor” — a segment of the population that has little to lose in the face of a crackdown by the regime.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has tread lightly since the protests began last week, weighed in for the first time Tuesday by claiming the protests were being spurred on by “enemies of Iran.” His remarks came in the wake of harsh comments from President Trump on Twitter on the government’s handling of the popular protests amid reports of hundreds of arrests and 21 deaths caused by the unrest.

The White House said Tuesday that Mr. Trump was weighing new sanctions on Iran in light of the unrest. Mr. Trump on Twitter said the Iranian nuclear deal President Obama helped negotiate in 2015 was in part to blame for giving Tehran billions of dollars to fund the military and repress dissent at home.

Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called on the Security Council and the U.N. Human Rights Council to hold emergency meetings on the crisis.

“Nowhere is the urgency of peace, security and freedom being tested more than in Iran,” Mrs. Haley told reporters in New York.

All sides are now watching to see whether the protests will grow in the coming days — and how far the government of President Hassan Rouhani will go to suppress popular protest. Sources with contacts inside Iran say the toll could climb significantly.

“The segment of the population that’s out protesting right now is much the same segment that carried out the revolution against the U.S.-backed Shah nearly 40 years ago,” said one of the sources, who spoke Tuesday on the condition of anonymity. “We’re talking about people who weathered the bullets of the Shah. We don’t know how these people are going to react if there’s a violent crackdown.”

Rahim Guravand, a 34-year-old Tehran construction worker, said the government’s misplaced priorities were at the heart of the crisis.
“The government should stop spending money on unnecessary things in Syria, Iraq and other places and allocate it for creating jobs here,” he told The Associated Press.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the protests are smaller than the 2009 demonstrations, which featured massive crowds in the Iranian capital. “But the number of cities they’ve popped up in is astounding — especially because these are cities where the regime would have expected to have had support,” he said.

“This is spreading through the urban poor in cities other than Tehran, people that should be the staunchest supporters of the regime,” Mr. Taleblu said. “The fact that the regime can’t count on that support now is really embarrassing for hard-liners running the government,” he said.

It took Ayatollah Khamenei nearly a week to issue a public statement on the situation because he’s afraid of sending the wrong message, Mr. Taleblu added.

Region watches

President Hassan Rouhani has said demonstrators have a right to protest peacefully, but the 78-year-old supreme leader, who has final say over all state matters, warned Tuesday of an enemy “waiting for an opportunity, for a crack through which it can infiltrate.”

“Look at the recent days’ incidents,” the supreme leader said. “All those who are at odds with the Islamic republic have utilized various means, including money, weapons, politics and [the] intelligence apparatus, to create problems for the Islamic system, the Islamic republic and the Islamic Revolution.”

Gulf Arab nations, including Iran’s archrival Saudi Arabia, are watching the protests carefully, and some analysts warned Tuesday that the situation could take a far more serious turn in short order.

“The fact that these protests shifted so quickly from being an outcry against economic conditions to now a political protest against the regime shows you how desperate things are and how hungry the Iranian people are for change,” said Mr. Taleblu.

The demonstrations began unexpectedly on Dec. 28 in the conservative city of Mashhad — some 550 miles east of Tehran. Crowds initially were chanting about the weakness of the Iranian economy, plagued by high unemployment, inflation and a widespread feeling that the lifting of economic sanctions following the nuclear deal had not trickled down to ordinary Iranians. A national poll taken in the summer put economic issues far ahead of security and foreign policy as a top priority for voters.

But the most recent unrest spread rapidly over the weekend to other cities, where some are now calling for Ayatollah Khamenei’s ouster and an overthrow of the ruling regime.

Where demonstrators called for more personal freedoms and civil rights in 2009, many now are expressing anger at their government’s economic record. Some protesters have chanted against the government’s military interventions in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, where Tehran is helping underwrite for proxy militias.

With rallies raging Tuesday in at least a dozen cities, including Tehran, there were reports that some 450 had been arrested.

Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian American Council, said the protests are likely to surge if there is a major government crackdown, led by conservative groups that see themselves as guardians of the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic republic.

“If this goes on a couple more days, at some point the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] will get involved,” he told The Washington Times. “That could create a surge with the protests getting bigger at first, but I believe, ultimately this will be put down by the government.”

Syria repeat?

However, one Iranian source who spoke anonymously with The Times said concerns are high inside Iran that an aggressive crackdown could devolve into a Syria-style situation in which outside powers attempt to militarize the protesters.

“People are worried that if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps comes in and starts brutalizing people like it did in 2009, there will be others in the region that say, ‘Well, we’re willing to provide arms to the protesters,’” said the source. “To some extent, that’s how Syria started — it was peaceful protests, then [Syrian President Bashar] Assad went in with tanks and six months later there’s nothing left of Syria.”

President Trump said on Twitter Tuesday that “the people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime.”
“The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights,” the president wrote. “The U.S. is watching!”

Iran’s economy has improved marginally since the nuclear deal in which Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for the end of some international sanctions. The nation now sells its oil on the global market and has signed deals to purchase tens of billions of dollars worth of Western aircraft.

But the economic opportunities have yet to reach the masses. Unemployment remains high, and official inflation has crept up to 10 percent again. It was a recent increase in egg and poultry prices by as much as 40 percent — which the government has blamed on a cull over avian flu fears — that apparently spurred protesters to take to the streets last week.

Some analysts believe the protests starting in Mashhad as an attempt by hard-line conservatives in the regime seeking to undercut Mr. Rouhani, a relatively moderate cleric who strongly backed the nuclear deal and just won a second four-year term in elections in May. But the apparently leaderless demonstrations, spread in both size and scope of message with help from social media, in particularly a messaging app called Telegram.

The government has since shut down access to Telegram and the photo-sharing app Instagram, which now join Facebook and Twitter in being banned, the AP reported.

Mr. Rouhani has claimed the exiled opposition group known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq was inciting the violence. According to his website, Mr. Rouhani spoke by telephone with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and urged France to stop hosting the group, known as the MEK, which fled after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The MEK has close ties to the National Council of Resistance (NCRI) of Iran, which holds an annual rally in France to call for the downfall of Iran’s theocratic government. Tens of thousands attend the rally, which has featured speeches from U.S. political figures, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.

Ali Safavi, an NCRI spokesman in Washington, said Tuesday that the group stands with the protesters taking to the streets in Iran.
“The slogans that are being chanted are slogans we’ve been advocating for the last 39 years,” he said. “Some might want to say this whole thing is spontaneous, but it clearly isn’t.”
 
Strategy Page on the demonstrations:

https://www.strategypage.com/on_point/20180103223613.aspx

The Ayatollahs' Brittle Regime Confronts A New Iranian Revolt
by Austin Bay
January 3, 2018

The anti-regime protests now jolting Iran send the world two core messages -- one dismal and sobering, the other an explosive cocktail of the deadly and the hopeful. Both core messages provide guidance for open-minded American and free world policy makers.

It takes a narrow-minded Obama Administration apologist to miss the dismal and sobering message. Here it is, offered with prayers for the abused Iranian citizens who suffer the consequences: Not quite nine years after Tehran's theocrat fascist dictators and their brutal Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps thugs crushed the 2009 Green Movement, Iran remains a domestic political disaster and economic disaster.

Yes -- domestic political disaster and domestic economic disaster. The political requires emphasis since many initial mainstream media reports addressing the protests downplayed the political oppression component.

True, the Movement coalesced around a disputed election and no electoral dispute sparked December 2017's first protests. However, public outrage at the mullah regime's endemic corruption, its relentless political injustice and perpetual economic stagnation also energized the June 2009 anti-regime protests.

Those three factors -- corruption, injustice and economic stagnation-- drive the current protests.

Sanctions relief provided by the Obama Administration and its so-called nuclear weapons deal didn't jump start the Iranian economy as Iranian president Hassan Rouhani promised they would. Where did the dollars and euros and "trade credits" go? Critics -- and this category includes a substantial swath of the Iranian public -- contend the money went into nuclear and ballistic missile weapons programs and the bank accounts of insider ayatollahs, IRGC officers, secret police officials and assorted Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist proxies waging war in Syria and Yemen.

Considering the context, 2018's Iranian public outrage rates as double dismal. In the last nine years the Iranian regime has not moderated, as the Obama Administration contended it would. Rather, the mullah regime has fossilized, dishing out the same violent, repressive, rip-off poison it dished nine years ago.

But here's a difference that's dangerous for the ayatollahs. In 2018 the robed dictators know they are a brittle fossil, ripe for collapse. Why? Well, Donald Trump is the U.S. president, not a Barack Obama-type supplicant who fervently believes a nuclear weapons deal with Iranian militants is the ultimate in peacenik presidential legacies.

The result of the dismal domestic political and economic morass and the presence of the Trump Administration: Iran's dictators enter 2018 thoroughly shaken.

Now here's the dangerous and hopeful message: a substantial percentage of the population (likely the majority) despises the mullahs and their thugs and once again has the courage to take to the streets and show it.

This action is very dangerous because the regime may respond with the Tehran equivalent of a Tiananmen Square (China 1989) bloodbath -- with tens of thousands of Iranian civilians killed by the thugs, and military.

However, hatred for the regime is hopeful for several reasons. The street protests and citizen demands demonstrate the desire for freedom continues to empower Iranians across the socio-economic spectrum. Confronting the secret police and regime thugs show that Iranians know the corrupt dictatorship is responsible for the political mess and economic disaster.

Though many media outlets are reluctant to admit it, freedom protestors throughout the world rely on a positive, supporting reaction by the U.S. president, his administration and other free world leaders.

I've seen several Obama Administration apologists claim President Obama supported the Green Revolution. In truth Obama dithered and his dither is to his eternal discredit. Belatedly, he gave verbal support to Green Revolution demands, after regime thugs and police beat and arrested Iran's vulnerable protestors.

In contrast, the Trump Administration has quickly backed the protests, and backed them with diplomatic and rhetorical spine.

Trump's January 1, 2018 tweet captures the revolutionary moment: "Iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the Obama Administration. The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food & for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!"
 
More on the slow disintegration of Iran. While we may hope that change will come faster, the regime is entrenched and has ample resources. Unless the Saudis and Israeli's have something up their sleeves, the Iranian revolutionaries are lacking the external support and safe areas needed to successfully prosecute a revolution:

https://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/islamic-republic-iran-doomed/

Why the Islamic Republic of Iran is Doomed
BY MICHAEL LEDEEN FEBRUARY 13, 2018

I think the Islamic Republic of Iran is doomed, and I think this is pretty much demonstrated by the events of the past few weeks, culminating in the fiasco on Sunday. Successful revolutions require several things, including manifest failure of the regime, widespread contempt from the overwhelming majority of the people, and a palpable inability of the leaders to impose themselves on the country.

Sunday provided a clear test of the strength of the regime and its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The occasion was the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution that overthrew the shah and imposed a theological dictatorship. Khamenei, President Rouhani and their henchmen were eager to demonstrate that the Iranian people actually supported the regime, and that the widespread anti-regime demonstrations of the past month were the marginal consequences of foreign meddling, not genuine passion. Hence the mullahs called for monster rallies to celebrate the 39 years of Islamic Revolution.

It didn’t work.

Turnout was shockingly low, and in fact there were scores of anti-regime demonstrations. Speeches by regime supporters were interrupted, and women brandished hijabs in acts of defiance. A fiasco for the regime.

rest of article is at the link
 
Lumber said:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/25/middleeast/saudi-arabia-intercepts-missile/index.html

So many questions!

1. What are the Saudis intercepting these incoming missiles with?

2. Where are Yemeni rebels getting these?

3. If these are rebels attacks, why is the Yemeni defence ministry claiming that the "operation was successful"? Sounds like complicitness.

Some answers:

1. Patriots (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot)
2. Likely Iran (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkan-2)
3. According to your link the ministry of defence is controlled by the rebels:
according to Yemen's Houthi-controlled Defense Ministry.
 
The Saudis use the Patriot missile.In recent news the Russians helped the regime out with nuclear program.
 
While the article itself is somewhat overblown, the events being described are happening. I don't think an open and formal alliance like they predict will ever happen, but certainly there has already been many signs of quiet cooperation between the Sunni Kingdoms and Israel, all centred on the idea of isolating Iran and preventing the rise of a Shiite regional hegemony.

https://tsionizm.com/analysis/2019/02/15/as-the-jewish-state-and-the-guardians-of-islams-holy-places-draw-closer-the-fate-of-the-world-hangs-in-the-balance/

The fly in the ointment is described near the end of the article, where the larger circles of influence are being drawn. How far the various players are willing to be drawn into the game is open to question (at some point, it may just be preferable to cut the losses and walk away), but an overly aggressive move to support one side or the other could trigger a cascade of unfortunate effects.

An informal Israeli-Sunni alliance will certainly be a game changer, regardless of how it happened, and will make for interesting events in the next few years.
 
A very interesting piece, Thuc, thanks.  The Arab-Persian relationship (aka Sunni v Shiite) has always been an interesting one — most directly embodied via the Iran-Iraq war in the late-80s, and more recently by proxy in both Yemen and Syria.

It will indeed be interesting to see how these talks develop.

Regards
G2G
 
Looks like I was wrong. I was sure Iran would never give up the evidence and admit fault.

Maybe they realized how much of an asshole it made them look on the world stage. Or maybe they're setting up for another nuclear deal - give them money not to develop world ending bombs kind of thing.

Personally I think the time for negotiations with Iran is coming to a close and the west needs to have a one way conversation with their government or their military.
 
Jarnhamar said:
- give them money not to develop world ending bombs kind of thing.

For the sake of clarity, Iran was never given any money.  Rather they were permitted to access their money that had been denied them as part of the sanctions regime

Personally I think the time for negotiations with Iran is coming to a close and the west needs to have a one way conversation with their government or their military.

While I certainly agree with the sentiment, I just wonder how that conversation would manifest itself without significant collateral damage to civilians, infrastructure, institutions, and foreign policy norms and values.  :dunno:
 
PPCLI Guy said:
For the sake of clarity, Iran was never given any money.  Rather they were permitted to access their money that had been denied them as part of the sanctions regime.
There you go, being all facty and stuff - how's the meme narrative going to get amplified that way?
 
milnews.ca said:
There you go, being all facty and stuff - how's the meme narrative going to get amplified that way?
Ya, he does that.  :eek:rly:  Probably reads.... and... and thinks!

Maybe even refrains from posting when he doesn't know what he's talking about.  Madness.  ::)


/preachy sarcasm
 
Here are images of cash given to Iran by Obama. Accept the fact or be a deniar your choice.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=picture+of+us+cash+to+iran&id=E8290E83016C96B71CBA8AEBDAB2FB1BC7D18CA9&FORM=IQFRBA

https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-iran-payment-cash-20160907-snap-story.html
 
tomahawk6 said:
Here are images of cash given to Iran by Obama. Accept the fact or be a deniar your choice.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=picture+of+us+cash+to+iran&id=E8290E83016C96B71CBA8AEBDAB2FB1BC7D18CA9&FORM=IQFRBA

https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-iran-payment-cash-20160907-snap-story.html

...Yes, as PPCLI Guy said, Iran was given back a portion of money that was legally theirs in the first place and that America has held for nearly 40 years in an interest bearing account. Iran had essentially put a down payment on various foreign military saless (e.g., F-14s) which purchases were scuttled by the Revolution in ‘79. That cash belonged to Iran, they never got what they paid for. America and Iran voluntarily agreed to a process to mediate, arbitrate, and settle all outstanding claims.The cash transfers were part of a settlement in lieu of what likely would have been a much larger tribunal awarded payment following an arbitrated decision.

So yes, America returned some money to Iran. Yes it leaves a bad taste in a lot of mouths (including mine). But America is a signatory to a lot of international treaties, conventions, and laws, and some of these bind it to certain tribunal or court processes to resolve disputes. In this case, American specifically, deliberately, and willingly entered into a bilateral agreement with post-Revolution Iran with the exact intent of dealing with exactly this question and others.

If you want to get acquainted with the facts on this one, this is a good read: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2016/10/03/the-united-states-iran-and-1-7-billion-sorting-out-the-details/
 
Mods- just a thought, maybe time to revive the Iran Megathread for Iran discussions of a more general nature or tangential to specific news items?
 
PPCLI Guy said:
For the sake of clarity, Iran was never given any money.  Rather they were permitted to access their money that had been denied them as part of the sanctions regime

Absolutely. It's their money so they should be entitled to it and it probably should have never been held from them in the first place.
I wonder if the US has an ethical leg to stand on withholding that money considering Iran's involvement funding terrorism and threatening the world with their nuclear program. Was it a form of self-preservation? If I owed someone money and they publicly chanted they wanted to kill me I probably wouldn't be in a hurry to give it to them either.

While I certainly agree with the sentiment, I just wonder how that conversation would manifest itself without significant collateral damage to civilians, infrastructure, institutions, and foreign policy norms and values.  :dunno:
Unfortunately I think the things you mention would be exactly what needs to be targeted and destroyed to really bring Iran to heel. Not specifically targeting civilians but not really caring if they get in the way. Take out infrastructure and the amenities they need to live to the point where the civilian population realizes the US/West has had enough and doesn't care about the veneer of civility and are going to crush the country. Incite the civilian population to remove and change their government before the US/West does.
There is of course the threat of making 81 million terrorists in Iran but that never happened in Japan or Germany.

 
Jarnhamar said:
Unfortunately I think the things you mention would be exactly what needs to be targeted and destroyed to really bring Iran to heel. Not specifically targeting civilians but not really caring if they get in the way. Take out infrastructure and the amenities they need to live to the point where the civilian population realizes the US/West has had enough and doesn't care about the veneer of civility and are going to crush the country. Incite the civilian population to remove and change their government before the US/West does.
There is of course the threat of making 81 million terrorists in Iran but that never happened in Japan or Germany.

It did the first time. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles crushed Germany economically, led to great resentment in their population, and basically set the stage for the rise of the Third Reich 15 years later.

Sure we could make living in Iran suck so much that they overthrow their government again, but the next one would probably be little improved from our standpoint, and popular sentiment against the US would simply have been hardened.
 
I think there's some pretty big differences with the Versailles Treaty. By all accounts it was handled poorly. Crazy reparations payments, allied occupation (Iraq anyone?), cede overseas colonies. The big crux being Germany had to accept all the blame for the war and make themselves poor paying off other nations.  Everyone wanted some of the pie.

When you look at Japan we dropped the sun on them, twice, killing 130,000 - 230,000 people in second seconds with countless more from radiation and the after math. They're one of our biggest allies and I believe a pretty solid society now. 
 
PPCLI Guy said:
For the sake of clarity, Iran was never given any money.  Rather they were permitted to access their money that had been denied them as part of the sanctions regime.

More detail from FactCheck.org (01 Mar 2019):

First of all, former President Barack Obama didn’t give “150 billion in cash” to Iran.

The nuclear agreement included China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, so Obama didn’t carry out any part of it on his own. The deal did lift some sanctions, which lifted a freeze on Iran’s assets that were held largely in foreign, not U.S., banks. And, to be clear, the money that was unfrozen belonged to Iran. It had only been made inaccessible by sanctions aimed at crippling the country’s nuclear program.

Secondly, $150 billion is a high-end estimate of the total that was freed up after some sanctions were lifted. U.S. Treasury Department estimates put the number at about $50 billion in “usable liquid assets,” according to 2015 testimony from Adam Szubin, acting under secretary of treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Link.

More info from link contained in above article:

As part of the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Obama agreed in 2015 to suspend or waive some international sanctions, including lifting a freeze on Iranian assets. Sanctions experts told us Trump’s comments show a fundamental misunderstanding of those frozen assets.

“These assets belonged to Iran but they were frozen in international financial institutions,” explained Nader Habibi, a professor of economics at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. “The United States did not give any money to Iran. It simply allowed Iran to transfer its money from other countries to its own banks and domestic institutions. The money became available for Iran to spend.”

“The U.S. is not holding these assets,” Michael Malloy, professor of law at the University of the Pacific and an expert on economic sanctions, told us over the phone. “They are held by the people who were involved in transactions with Iran. The economic sanctions the U.S. and other countries imposed froze the assets in place. But they are still held by banks and commercial companies and other commercial actors who had them in the first place.”

Link
 
tomahawk6 said:
Here are images of cash given to Iran by Obama. Accept the fact or be a deniar your choice.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=picture+of+us+cash+to+iran&id=E8290E83016C96B71CBA8AEBDAB2FB1BC7D18CA9&FORM=IQFRBA

https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-iran-payment-cash-20160907-snap-story.html

The LA Times article quotes the money included liabilities for settlements from the US to Iran over several decades.  Could a part of that finally be the $61.8M settlement the US agreed with Iran in 1996  for the death of the 290 passengers and crew of Iran Air 655?

Regards
G2G
 
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