The post Iran rejects ending 20% enrichment before U.S. lifts sanctions, state TV says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivers a speech before the heads of banks, in Tehran, Iran, January 16, 2020. (Office of the Iranian Presidency via AP)

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s president Thursday applauded a ruling by the International Court of Justice that it can hear Iran’s case against the US seeking to end sanctions, calling it a “big victory” for the Islamic Republic.

A report by state-run IRNA news agency said President Hassan Rouhani congratulated the nation on its legal “victory” over the US.

“I congratulate the Iranian people on a very big victory the government achieved yesterday at the Hague, and this is one of several victories that the government has gained against America at the tribunal,” he said in remarks carried by State TV.

The United Nations’ highest court ruled Wednesday that it can hear a case brought by Iran against the United States. It seeks to end sanctions the administration of former President Donald Trump re-imposed in 2018 after pulling out of an international deal aimed at curtailing Tehran’s nuclear program.

US President Donald Trump signs a document reinstating sanctions against Iran after announcing the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 8, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB)

Lawyers for the US argued at hearings last year that the case should be thrown out by the court for lack of jurisdiction and admissibility.

Iran filed the case in July 2018, a few months after then-President Donald Trump said he was pulling the US out of the 2015 international agreement and would re-impose sanctions on Tehran. Washington also threatened other countries with sanctions if they didn’t cut off Iranian oil imports by early November.

Iran alleges the sanctions breach a 1955 bilateral agreement known as the Treaty of Amity that regulates and promotes economic and consular ties between the two countries.

The ruling Wednesday came as US President Joe Biden is seeking to enhance diplomacy toward Iran.

The court based in The Hague, Netherlands, had ruled in favor of Iran in a preliminary ruling in October 2018, saying that Washington should “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” the re-imposition of sanctions to the export to Iran of medicine and medical devices, food and agricultural commodities and spare parts and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation.

The US sanctions do have specific carve-outs for medicine and humanitarian aid to Iran. However, international banks and financial institutions hesitate in dealing with Iran transactions for fear of being fined or locked out of the American market.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/irans-president-claims-big-victory-in-legal-efforts-to-end-us-sanctions/

The post Iran’s president claims ‘big victory’ in legal efforts to end US sanctions first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

JNS.org – In August 2002, the Iranian opposition, known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), disclosed secret Iranian nuclear facilities at the Natanz enrichment plant, the Arak heavy-water production facility, the Isfahan uranium conversion plant, and other previously unknown Iranian facilities. Rather than negotiate access to these newly revealed sites by international atomic watchdogs, the United States proposed that Iran hold talks with the EU-3 powers (Britain, France, and Germany). The United States was busy with Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs of Saddam Hussein. So it left the Europeans to do the heavy lifting on Iran.

The first deal with the EU-3 was struck on October 21, 2003 in Tehran. Iran agreed “to suspend all uranium enrichment activities.” But after the accord was reached, the two sides disagreed over the question of how to define “suspension.” For Europe, suspension meant freezing all enrichment activities. This was something that the Iranian leadership would not agree to. A second agreement was struck in Paris on November 15, 2004.

The Iranians wanted to leave the definition of “suspension” vague so that what they were committing to suspending would be unclear, which would allow Iran to build more centrifuges, for example. And the Iranians reversed themselves within months, declaring that they would manufacture centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

Uranium comes in two forms, or isotopes: U-235 and U-238. Only the lighter isotope, U-235, can undergo nuclear fission, releasing energy to power a reactor or an atomic bomb.

The post Israel Is Right to Doubt Negotiations Will Work With Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday banned the import of US and British-produced coronavirus vaccines, saying they were “completely untrustworthy.”

“It’s not unlikely they would want to contaminate other nations. Given our experience with France’s HIV-tainted blood supplies, French vaccines aren’t trustworthy either,” he said in a tweet accompanied by the hashtag #CoronaVaccine.

He was referring to a scandal in the 1980s in which blood infected with HIV was distributed in France, and later abroad, even after the government became aware of the problem, Agence France-Presse reported.

Hundreds of people in Iran were among those infected.

France’s then-Prime Minister Laurent Fabius was charged with manslaughter, but acquitted in 1999. His health minister was convicted but never punished.

The Islamic Republic has reported more than 1.2 million COVID-19 cases and over 56,000 deaths, according to the news agency.

Vials of Iranian domestic coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine —Reuters

It has accused the US of hampering its access to vaccines through a strict sanctions regime.

Iran, the Middle Eastern country hardest hit by the pandemic, last month launched clinical trials of its own vaccine.

While food and medicine are technically exempt from the sanctions, international banks tend to refuse transactions involving Iran.

Last month, President Hassan Rouhani said that Washington had demanded that Tehran pay for the drugs through US banks, adding that he feared the US would seize the money.

Source: https://nypost.com/2021/01/08/ayatollah-khamenei-bans-imports-of-us-uk-covid-vaccines-to-iran/

The post ‘Completely untrustworthy’ – Iran leader bans import of US and UK-made COVID-19 vaccines first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Joe Biden knows Iran better than any American President since its 1979 revolution. He has personally dealt with its top officials—a few of them for decades. “When I was Iran’s representative to the U.N., I had several meetings with Biden,” the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, acknowledged after the U.S. election, in an interview with Entekhab, a Tehran publication. The two aren’t exactly friends. Their meetings “can be described as professional relations based on mutual respect,” Zarif said. But Biden does have the Iranian’s personal e-mail address, as well as his cell-phone number.

As one of his first acts on foreign policy, Biden wants to renew diplomacy with the Islamic Republic—and reёnter the nuclear accord that President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations,” Biden wrote, in an essay for CNN, in September. Yet the President-elect already faces a minefield over basic issues—such as, what exactly is “compliance”? Who moves first? And how? And what about all those other flashpoints not in the 2015 accord—Iran’s growing array of missiles, its proxy militias and political meddling, which have extended Tehran’s influence across the Middle East, and the regime’s flagrant human-rights abuses?

During the transition, interested parties in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East have been posturing behind the scenes in ways that already complicate the Biden team’s thinking about how to reëngage. I’ve heard from all sides—unsolicited. “This is the silly, screwy period because everyone is trying to communicate through the press or interlocutors,” a former diplomat involved in the nuclear deal told me. Meanwhile, Trump appears determined to sabotage Biden’s plans, adding layers of military and economic obstacles. In December, the Trump Administration issued new sanctions, the latest of more than a thousand. Trump also discussed U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s main nuclear installation, at Natanz. And, since November 21st, U.S. B-52 bombers have flown three show-of-force missions—thirty-six-hour flights from as far away as Louisiana and North Dakota—around the perimeter of Iranian air space. Just before Christmas, Trump again put Tehran on notice, accusing Iranian proxies of firing rockets at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. “Some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible,” he tweeted. “Think it over.”

After Biden is inaugurated, he will have only a sliver of time—six to eight weeks—to jump-start the process before the political calendar in Iran threatens to derail potential diplomacy over the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A. On March 20th, Iran marks Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on the vernal equinox, and the whole country shuts down for two weeks. After the holiday, Iran’s Presidential campaign begins, culminating in a mid-June election. President Hassan Rouhani, who charted a new course by proposing diplomacy with the United States, in 2013, is not eligible to run; Iran has two-term limits. New U.S.-Iran diplomacy could become the top election issue and impact its outcome, the Tehran University political scientist Nasser Hadian told me. “If we have a very quick comeback to the J.C.P.O.A., the chances of reformists or moderates winning the next election in June is going to be very good,” Hadian said.

For Biden, there’s also a scientific urgency. When he and Barack Obama left the White House, in 2017, the “breakout” time for Iran to build a bomb was well over a year. Several safeguards had been put in place under the nuclear deal, which was brokered, in 2015, by the world’s six major powers, during intense diplomacy that featured pen-tossing, hair-pulling, shouting, a broken leg, and other dramas. The agreement was not foolproof; it involved unpopular compromises. But it provided for unprecedented human and high-tech inspections, as well as limits on the hardware and fuel needed to assemble the world’s deadliest weapon. It also forced Tehran to destroy some of its nuclear infrastructure, limit uranium enrichment, and reduce its stockpile—with the implicit threat that the world would jointly punish the Islamic Republic, through global economic sanctions or war, if it violated the terms.

When Donald Trump leaves office this month, Tehran will need only three months to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb, according to a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Iran’s weapon capabilities and existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium are now greater. Its research-and-development program—simply put, what it knows, and can’t now unknow—is more advanced. And the world has not stood together since Trump abandoned the accord, in 2018, to pursue a bigger deal that also covers the four other flashpoints. Trump failed—just as he failed to limit North Korea’s nuclear program, negotiate arms control with Russia, contain China’s economic and territorial ambitions, support Venezuela’s democratic opposition, and get Mexico to pay for a wall.

Even with a new President, however, U.S.-Iran diplomacy will still be defined by decades of mutual wariness. Long haunted by the 1979 seizure of its embassy and fifty-two hostages, Washington has been reluctant to trust Tehran’s overtures. Iran is, in turn, suspicious of American outreach, given U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, in the nineteen-eighties, including intelligence that Iraq used to deploy chemical weapons and kill tens of thousands of Iranians. Biden may feel that he can make a fresh start, but Rouhani’s team has been stewing for four years over the costs of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign—and his dismissal of the boldest Iranian diplomacy in four decades. U.S. sanctions slashed Tehran’s oil exports at one point last spring by more than ninety percent, and targeted everything from the Supreme Leader’s office to the Revolutionary Guards and the Central Bank. Iran claims that the sanctions have caused two hundred and fifty billion dollars in economic losses since 2018.

For Biden, the initial step is straightforward. After the Inauguration, he or his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, can relay their intentions through Iran’s U.N. mission or directly to its foreign ministry, Richard Nephew, a former member of the U.S. negotiating team who is now at Columbia University, told me. But it will not be a “one-and-done” scenario, Nephew said, and success will require a lot more than diplomatic Band-Aids. Biden and the Iranians “have said fundamentally similar things—compliance for compliance,” Jarrett Blanc, the State Department coördinator on implementation of the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama Administration, said. “But they will first have to figure out what compliance means. It’s not dead obvious.”

Iran claims that the U.S. has to act first—since it withdrew from the deal—and do more than offer promises. “Go back to full compliance, normalize Iran’s economic relations with the rest of the world, stop making new conditions, stop making outrageous demands,” Zarif said, at the Mediterranean Dialogues, in early December. “And as soon as you come back to the letter of the J.C.P.O.A., let alone its spirit, we will immediately do that.” In a statement to the United Nations on December 22nd, Iran formally gave notice that it would roll back its breaches “as soon as all JCPOA participants start implementing their commitments unconditionally, effectively and in full.” Biden can lift sanctions with three executive orders, Zarif told an Iranian newspaper.

In broad terms, Biden wants Iran to roll back its recent breaches, especially on uranium enrichment. Iran, in turn, wants U.S. sanctions lifted so that it can sell more oil, tap into its financial assets frozen abroad, and revive an ailing economy also hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Tehran claims that it demonstrated restraint after Trump withdrew from the deal; it honored all its obligations for more than a year, as verified repeatedly in inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. After Trump began a rapid-fire sequence of tough economic sanctions and demanded new negotiations, Tehran responded with gradual breaches in a tit-for-tat strategy to pressure Washington. “Because the J.C.P.O.A. was negotiated based on mutual mistrust, we put in place a mechanism that if one side does not live up to its obligations, the other side can in fact reduce its commitments or withdraw altogether,” Zarif said in December. Iran has also responded to covert operations against its program. After the nuclear facility at Natanz was hit by a mysterious explosion, in July, which Tehran claimed was sabotage, Iran began building a new facility deep in the mountains—safer from aerial assault—to produce centrifuges.

The potential problems go deeper. Biden is under pressure to maintain Trump’s sanctions as leverage to win concessions—to expand the original nuclear deal as well as to negotiate new accords on the other flashpoints. For six months, there’s been talk among diplomats and foreign-policy pundits about a “J.C.P.O.A.-Plus,” which would amend the nuclear deal, notably the sunset clauses stipulating when Iran can resume aspects of its various weapons programs. (The sunset clause that limited Tehran’s ability to buy conventional arms for its aging arsenal expired in October. Other limitations on the nuclear program expire gradually over the next twenty years, although the deal stipulates that Iran will never build a bomb and will permanently allow inspections of declared and undeclared suspect sites.)

On December 21st, Britain, France, and Germany—which co-sponsored the original pact—added to the confusion when they warned that “just a commitment” to the deal was not enough. “We are standing at a crossroads today,” the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, said. “To make possible a rapprochement under Biden, there must be no more tactical maneuvers of the kind we have seen plenty of in recent times—they would do nothing but further undermine the agreement,” he added. “The opportunity that is now being offered—this last window of opportunity—must not be squandered.”

Iran was outraged. “Renegotiation is out of the question,” Zarif tweeted, on December 21st. Hadian, the Tehran University political scientist, who is close to top Iranian officials, told me, “The expectation of the Rouhani government is a quick return—not one word less and not one word more, not J.C.P.O.A.-Plus, not J.C.P.O.A. 2.0.”

Iran has also proffered ideas of its own that throw a spanner in the diplomatic works. It proposed that Washington lift sanctions without signing on to the original deal again. Zarif said that Biden could, instead, acknowledge U.S. commitments under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which was passed unanimously, in 2015, as a global endorsement of the accord. If Biden formally reёnters the accord, Tehran is nervous about what rights that gives any future U.S. President, notably the ability to demand that the whole world impose “snapback” sanctions.

The deal allows any one of the six powers that negotiated the deal—Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S.—to call for “snapback” sanctions if it believes Iran is cheating; the other five countries automatically have to comply. The Trump Administration invoked “snapback” sanctions in September, but, because the U.S. had previously withdrawn from the deal, the other parties refused to comply. “We don’t know who is going to be President four years from now,” Hadian told me. “So we don’t want the U.S. to have the right to ‘snapback.’ ” Iran’s new position, a person familiar with Biden’s thinking told me, “adds confusion when the benefit of what Biden proposes is clarity. The Iranians are hurting their own case. It’s a bizarre interpretation and will slow everything down.”

The assassination, in November, of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, further complicates the future. Iran blamed Israel. Tehran vowed to retaliate. Last month, the State Department withdrew some U.S. diplomats from neighboring Iraq, for fear that they could be targets. “No matter what happens between now and January 20th, Biden is determined to reëngage, with one caveat, which is that Iran could take actions which would make that commitment very difficult to adhere to,” the person familiar with Biden’s thinking told me. Endangering American lives would make Biden’s return to diplomacy “difficult if not impossible.” Biden’s first responsibility will be to “defend Americans and do what he can to help America’s allies.”

Iran’s parliament, however, did retaliate. On December 2nd, it hastily passed a law that required the government to immediately begin enriching uranium to a higher grade, closer to the level needed to fuel a weapon. It also requires that Rouhani suspend international inspections if U.S. sanctions are not lifted by mid-February. On January 2nd, Iran invoked a military analogy to describe its readiness to increase enrichment to twenty percent. “We are like soldiers, and our fingers are on the triggers,” Ali Akbar Salehi, the M.I.T.-educated head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said, on national television. “The commander should command and we shoot. We are ready for this and will produce as soon as possible.” The move is still reversible if Biden acts before the sixty-day deadline. And uranium needs to be enriched to ninety percent to build a bomb.

“If, within two weeks of being President—between January 20th and no later than mid-February—Biden at least verbally says that he’s going back to the J.C.P.O.A., then Rouhani will be in a position to unconditionally return to the deal and outmaneuver everybody in Iran,” Hadian told me. “But if Biden doesn’t act, then all of Iran’s major factions will push for Iran to increase all aspects of its nuclear program, including enriching uranium to twenty percent.”

Even if Biden’s team gets an early agreement on “compliance for compliance,” the new Administration may not be able to negotiate much more until after a new Iranian President is inaugurated, in August. And then the issues only get more complex. The Pentagon is increasingly worried about Iran’s missile program, which has been pivotal to both offensive and defensive capabilities since the country’s air force was decimated during the long war with Iraq. “Over the last four years, Iran has continued to build ballistic missiles even while they’ve been under significant economic pressure,” General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., the head of U.S. Central Command, told me.

Iran has half a million men and women in uniform; it is the largest military force in the Middle East, and the fourteenth largest in the world. Yet its capabilities are limited. Missiles are “the one thing that allows them to threaten their neighbors,” McKenzie said. “They have no army they can deploy. They have no air force worthy of its name, and they have a very weak and impoverished, fractured navy. But what they do have, what they view as the crown jewel, is their ballistic-missile force.” Iran’s arsenal of missiles is “very good, and they’re getting better,” McKenzie told me. Tehran has shared many of its rockets and missiles—via the Quds Force—with proxy forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. “It’s a problem Biden’s going to have to face,” he said.

On the eve of Biden’s Inauguration, the standoff between Washington and Tehran has grown “very tense,” McKenzie added. The dangers were palpable over New Year’s weekend, with the anniversary, on January 3rd, of the U.S. airstrike that killed General Qassem Suleimani, the Quds Force commander responsible for Iran’s military operations and proxies across the Middle East. Suleimani was a hero in Iran; billboards are plastered with his picture, honoring his “martyrdom.” A year ago, Tehran retaliated by firing missiles on an Iraqi military base that housed U.S. troops; more than a hundred Americans suffered brain injuries. The Islamic Republic has long vowed additional revenge. At a commemoration for Suleimani on New Year’s Day, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, warned that his killers would “not be safe on earth.” In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon was concerned that McKenzie (who is viewed as Suleimani’s counterpart in the same theatre of operations) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Mark Milley, could be potential targets.

Any new accord—to limit Iran’s missiles and, potentially in return, the weaponry in rival Arab arsenals—will almost certainly have to include a wider array of countries. Israel and the United Arab Emirates are already lobbying to be included or have a say. Even stickier are the missiles that Iran has provided to proxies. In an end-of-year interview, the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said that the Lebanese militia had doubled its stock of precision-guided missiles over the past year. “To develop a conventional missile program is an inherent right of any country under international law, and Iran is no exception,” the Iranian U.N. Ambassador, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, said, on December 22nd. “Iran will not negotiate its legitimate ballistic-missile program.” That divide, General McKenzie said, “appears to be, at least to me, intractable.”

The even harder challenge will be finding ways to address horrific human-rights abuses, which go to the heart of the unique judicial and political systems in the Islamic Republic. After his appointment as Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan tweeted scathing criticism of Tehran’s treatment of Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian living in exile who publicized information about the 2017 anti-government protests, on the messaging service Telegram. In 2019, Zam was lured to Iraq, where Iranian Revolutionary Guards kidnapped him and returned him to Iran for trial on charges of “corruption on earth.” He was hanged in December. “Iran’s execution of Ruhollah Zam, a journalist who was denied due process and sentenced for exercising his universal rights, is another horrifying human rights violation by the Iranian regime,” Sullivan tweeted. “We will join our partners in calling out and standing up to Iran’s abuses.” The furor over Zam’s execution reflected the fundamental gap between the United States and Iran under any President. Even with Biden’s commitment to diplomacy, four years may not be enough time to achieve breakthroughs on all the flashpoints between Washington and Tehran.

The post Biden faces a minefield in new diplomacy with Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Israel Defense Forces have been preparing for the possibility that the U.S. military will strike Iran during the last two months of President Trump‘s term, according to a report.

This comes a week after the New York Times reported that Trump asked senior advisers about his options to strike Iran’s main nuclear site after international inspectors reported details about a significant increase in the Iran’s stockpile of nuclear material.

There is no intelligence that indicates an imminent U.S. strike but Israeli officials anticipate that the coming weeks will be “a very sensitive period,” according to Axios.

BIDEN SECRETARY OF STATE PICK BLINKEN OPPOSED TERRORIST LABEL FOR IRAN’S REVOLUTIONARY GUARD

Israeli media reported earlier this week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew into Saudi Arabia for a secret meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday night. The two longtime foes share a common enemy in Iran, and the reported meeting coincided with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to the Persian Gulf.

The Trump administration ramped up its “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran during the president’s lame-duck period.

Last week, the U.S. slapped sanctions on Iran’s Mostazafan Foundation, which the Treasury Department describes as an “immense conglomerate” whose “holdings are expropriated from the Iranian people and are used by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to enrich his office, reward his political allies, and persecute the regime’s enemies.”

BIDEN WILL MOVE US CLOSER TO 2015 NUCLEAR DEAL WITH IRAN, EXPERTS SAY

In announcing the new sanctions, Pompeo warned the future Biden administration about undoing Trump’s sanctions on Iran.

“The Western media reports with alarm that the Iranian regime is increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium,” Pompeo wrote in a document titled, “The Importance of Sanctions on Iran.”

“This is indeed troubling, but even more disturbing is the notion that the United States should fall victim to this nuclear extortion and abandon our sanctions.”

President-elect Biden wants the United States to re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP 

“I will offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy. If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations,” Biden wrote in an op-ed for CNN in September.

The Iranian regime would welcome the de-escalation of tensions, as sanctions have crushed its economy. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on state TV on Wednesday he hopes Iran and the U.S. could find their way back to “the situation on Jan 20. 2017,” before President Trump was inaugurated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/israel-preparing-for-potential-us-military-strike-on-iran-report

The post Israel preparing for potential US military strike on Iran: report first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Recently Ali Khamenei, the Iranian regime’s supreme leader, warned his faction about recent infighting and their threats against Hassan Rouhani, the regime’s president. What do Khamenei’s warnings, as the regime’s highest authority, mean?

After eight months of absence and quarantining himself, Khamenei met with the National Covid-19 Task Force on Saturday. Khamenei, who had not spent a single dollar of this financial empire for helping people amid the pandemic, certainly didn’t intend to help people.

Khamenei appeared to remind his thugs in the parliament, once again, to stop calling for Rouhani’s impeachment or insulting him. So “in the sensitive last year of the government,” they could manage the situation “without damaging the country’s important issue.” In other words, he warned the officials not to enlarge the rift at the top of the regime, which could lead to an uprising and endanger the regime’s most important issue: its grip on power.

The rising COVID-19 death toll has added to the society’s restiveness. After a month of inaction and reopening the economy, schools, and holding gatherings, now people are aware of the regime’s criminal policy of using this deadly virus and its mass casualties as a barrier to widespread protests.

Khamenei refused even to promise help to the people. While having a financial empire with at least $90 billion of assets, Khamenei laid the responsibility of helping people on “philanthropists.” “In this case, people become unemployed and do not have unemployment insurance … philanthropists can help.”

Although Saturday’s meeting was held under the pretext of the “Covid-19 Task Force,” but a glance at its participants shows this was a meeting of the regime’s anti-uprising task force.

Some of the participants of this meeting were: Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Brigadier General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of Staff for the regime’s Armed Forces; Amir Hatami, Minister of Defense; Hossein Ashtari, head of the State Security Forces; Mahmoud Alavi, Minister of Intelligence and Security; and Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the regime’s Attorney-General.

In just a few days, the regime’s security forces killed two young men on the streets. Thirty-year-old Mehrdad Sepeheri was pepper-sprayed and suffocated in Mashhad, northeast Iran, on October 18. In a similar development, police forces shot and killed Mohsen MinBashi, a 37-year-old man, on October 25, again in northeast Iran. Also, under the pretext of fighting “thugs,” the mullahs have stepped up arrests of youth.

The regime has tried to intimidate the public. Yet, people’s reactions and the current situation of Iran’s society have forced the regime’s officials to step back from their actions. For example, Mojtaba Zareh, military prosecutor of North Khorasan Province, said the forensics department and the judiciary were investigating the murder of Mohsen MinBashi.

Two factors have terrified Khamenei and his regime. The first factor is people’s increasing knowledge and anger at the regime’s role in spreading the virus across Iran and sending people to the COVID-19 minefield, which has added to the society’s restiveness.
The second factor is the COVID-19 crisis itself, coupled with people’s poverty and the economic pressure they are enduring. Most importantly, the regime has refused to help people during the pandemic.

Khamenei showed up personally to address the regime’s crises. But his remarks portrayed the regime’s absolute deadlock. He could neither quell his regime’s infightings entirely nor offer any a specific solution for the COVID-19 and economic crises.

The increasing infighting at the top of the regime is due to the crises in which the regime is engulfed. In other words, although tragically, the mullahs used coronavirus and its casualties to prevent major Iran protests from reoccurring, the situation is out of the regime’s control.

In a nutshell, the current situation shows that the mullahs are no longer able to use the coronavirus outbreak, and the wave is returning to them.

Source: https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/iran-protests/iran-what-khameneis-special-reappearance-means/

The post Iran: What Khamenei’s Special Reappearance Means? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The presidents of Russia, Iran, and Turkey will hold a video conference on Wednesday to discuss the conflict in Syria, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

In Syria’s nine-year war, Russia and Iran are the main foreign supporters of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, while Turkey backs opposition fighters. Under a diplomatic process dating back to 2017, they agreed to work to de-escalate fighting.

Wednesday’s talks between Vladimir Putin, Hassan Rouhani, and Tayyip Erdogan were scheduled for around 1100 GMT, the Kremlin said.

After an escalation of violence displaced nearly a million people, Turkey and Russia agreed in March to halt hostilities in northwest Syria’s Idlib region. This month military jets bombed villages in the rebel-held area.

Two weeks ago, Russia and Turkey postponed bilateral ministerial-level talks which were expected to focus on Syria and Libya, another country where they support opposing sides.

(Reporting by Alexander Marrow; Writing by Daren Butler in Turkey; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Peter Graff)

Source: https://www.metro.us/russia-turkey-iran-leaders/

The post Russia, Turkey, Iran leaders to discuss Syria on Wednesday, Kremlin says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The confrontation between arch-foes Tehran and Washington has worsened since 2018 when U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

Iran has refused to hold any talks with the United States, which is trying to force Tehran to negotiate a new deal unless Washington lifts sanctions on Tehran and returns to the original agreement.

In a tweet in early June, Trump repeated Washington’s call for a new deal with Tehran aimed at putting stricter limits on Tehran’s nuclear work, curbs its ballistic missile program, and ends its decades of regional proxy wars.

“We have no problem with talks with the U.S., but only if Washington fulfills its obligations under the nuclear deal, apologies and compensates Tehran for its withdrawal from the 2015 deal,” Rouhani said in a televised speech.

“But we know these calls for talks with Tehran are just words and lies,” he added.

In retaliation for Washington’s ‘maximum pressure’ policy, Iran has gradually scaled back its nuclear commitments, a process Tehran says is reversible if the European parties to the pact carry out their promises to shield Iran’s economy from U.S. penalties.

“The Europeans have failed to fulfill their promises. They should carry out their obligations,” Rouhani said.

Rouhani also blasted a resolution by the U.N. nuclear watchdog passed on Friday that called on Iran to stop denying the agency access to two suspected former sites and to cooperate fully with it.

“Iran is ready to cooperate with the (International Atomic Energy Agency) IAEA under law,” he said.

The post Iran says it’s ready for talks if U.S. apologizes over nuclear pact first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Iran Ends Nuclear Limits as Killing of Iranian General Upends Mideast first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.