U.S. SHOULD TURN UP THE HEAT ON IRAN

U.S. SHOULD TURN UP THE HEAT ON IRAN

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the support of "elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of" power. He made the comments in a hearing on State Department budget for next year before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Secretary Tillerson’s testimony on Iran, coupled with that of near unanimous Senate vote on “Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017”

 bill condemning mullahs’ missile proliferation program, human rights record and destabilizing role in the Middle East, was received in Tehran as a recipe for disaster.

It is for the first time in nearly four decades of mullahs’ rule that a U.S. Secretary of State clearly calls for regime change. It might be a coincidence that at the same time the strongest Senate vote to date against Iran’s religious dictatorship is passed with 98 votes out of 100.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson holds a press conference on Iran in the Treaty Room of the State Department in Washington, DC on April 19, 2017. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The bill is also unique because while it targets the most important issues involving the Iranian regime’s provocative actions, it has not violated the nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) struck by the Obama administration. It is an important reminder since the deal is often used as an excuse to give the regime in Tehran a free pass.

Some in the West were falsely led to believe that Hassan Rouhani’s second term would reign in Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ambiguous missile proliferation program. In the weeks after the sham election and before his official inauguration it became abundantly clear that no such change is in Iranian political horizons.

“They are taken by mistake if the new U.S. rulers think they can pressurize Iran with bills … in the Senate and Congress,” Rouhani said in reference to a new Senate move, IRNA news agency reported. Earlier in his second term victory speech Rouhani vowed to continue with mullahs’ missile program.

On June 21, the Iranian opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the whistle-blower of the mullahs’ nuclear and missile programs, held a press conference in its Washington office to give newly obtained information on the regime missile program from sources inside Iran. Its largest affiliate, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (POMI/MEK), first obtained the information that IRGC with the help of North Korean engineers are developing and testing a variety of medium and long range missiles.

It is no secret that since the 2015 nuclear deal the Iranian regime has stepped up production and testing of ballistic missiles. It has been playing permanent host to scientists from North Korea, which has the know-how to build and launch atomic weapons. The mullahs’ regime sees North Korean’s help and knowledge so crucial to its missile program that it has housed their scientists and technicians in Tehran.

NCRI says that IRGC is working in 42 missile sites. The regime is busy in "development, manufacture, and testing of missiles by the IRGC. It also determined that at least one such center, located in Semnan Province, 52 miles southeast of Tehran, was actively collaborating with the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (Persian abbreviation: SPND), which had previously been identified as the institution in charge of nuclear weapons-related work in the Islamic Republic."

“On the basis of specific intelligence, the IRGC’s missile sites have been created based on North Korean models and blueprints,” the NCRI said. “North Korean experts have helped the Iranian regime to build them. Underground facilities and tunnels to produce, store, and maintain missiles have also been modeled after North Korean sites and were created with the collaboration of the North Korean experts.”

NCRI also exposed in April secret facilities IRGC uses to enrich uranium. Some things will never change with this regime. It is constantly looking for back doors when it comes to transparency and coming clean on its nuclear and missile programs. The two are indivisible components of keeping the mullahs’ regime afloat in the turbulent times.

A close examination of the Iranian regime’s ever growing harassment of its neighbors, not to mention its direct involvement in soon to be 7-year-old Syrian war, harassment of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz and especially that of the U.S. Navy vessels, demonstrate that it is not going to back off. General Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview recently that Iran is “harassing U.S. and international maritime activities” in the Persian Gulf. There have been reports of vessels originated from Iran carrying weapons for Houthis in Yemen. Australian navy patrolling the area near Bab-el-Mandeb intercepted a few of them last year.

Not taking into account the mullahs’ brutality at home, which is unprecedented in Iran’s modern history, the destabilizing role it has played in the region since day one is more than enough for the international community to draw the line.

The new sanctions bill is an effective first step to push back. Since its introduction the Iranian regime’s officials are terrified of consequences and some have called it the "mother of all sanctions" or the "black hole." It is obvious that a regime change policy, which does not involve U.S. military intervention, requires putting some teeth into it in another way. The bill and similar measures such as outright black listing of IRGC as the main actor in all the regime’s devious activities in Iran, in the region, and beyond, requires such drastic measures. Recognizing the legitimate resistance of Iranian people against the regime is another undeniable component of a regime change.

MATTIS: US ARMS FOR SYRIAN KURDS WILL CONTINUE AFTER RAQQA

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson talks with Secretary of Defense Jim Mathis before the start of a dinner with President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House

MUNICH (AP) June 27, 2017 -- U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday that America will continue to provide weapons to Syrian Kurdish fighters after the battle to oust Islamic State militants from Raqqa, Syria, is over.

Describing American reassurances to Turkey that the U.S. will take back weapons given to the Syrian Kurds after the IS fight, Mattis said it depends on when or where the next mission is. And he also sounded a cautionary tone when asked if all the weapons would be returned. 'We'll do what we can,' he told reporters traveling with him to Germany.
Mattis' comments marked the first time he has spoken at length publicly about the U.S. pledge to recover the weapons provided to the Kurds.

Turkish officials late last week said Mattis had reassured them by letter that arms given to the Syrian Kurds would be taken back and that the U.S. would provide Turkey with a regular list of arms give to the fighters.

The Trump administration's decision last month to arm the Kurds roiled Turkey, which views the fighters as an extension of a terror group operating in Turkey.
Mattis said the U.S. has made it clear all along that, 'we're going to equip them for the fight. If they have another fight and they need, you know, the light trucks that they've been using ... we'll get them that.'

It depends, he said, on the battle and what weapons the Kurdish fighters need.
Mattis said the U.S. gave the fighters weapons they needed for the urban fighting they are facing in Raqqa. And as the fight goes on, he said the U.S. will collect weapons and repair them, or take certain weapons back and provide others .

'When they don't need certain things any more, we'll replace those with something they do need,' said Mattis, who is expected to meet with his Turkish defense counterpart during a NATO meeting later this week in Brussels.

The U.S. is convinced that the Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG, are the most effective local force in trying to oust IS militants from their stronghold in Raqqa.
Ankara, however, fears that weapons given to the Kurdish fighters will end up in the hands of insurgents in Turkey, known as the PKK.

U.S. officials have been careful not to publicly detail the amount or specific types of weapons going to the Syrian Kurds. But officials have indicated that 120 mm mortars, machine guns, ammunition and light armored vehicles were likely. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the matter, said artillery or surface-to-air missiles would not be provided.

The initial weapons deliveries began at the end of May, and the Pentagon said they included small arms and ammunition.
Mattis also said that as the fight against IS grows more complex and moves into the Euphrates River Valley, it will require more deconfliction with the Russians.
In recent weeks, when the U.S. shot down a Syrian government war plane and an Iranian drone that were threatening U.S.-allied Syrian fighters, the angry response from the Russians was to declare they would not use the deconfliction phone line.

But Mattis said the de-confliction talks continue and are happening at several military levels, to insure that aircraft and ground forces are safe.
Syrian, Russia, U.S. and coalition aircraft all fly in the increasingly crowded skies over Syria. And as the fight moves beyond Raqqa to other IS-held territory along the river, Mattis said the crowded field of forces -- from Russia, Syria, Hezbollah and the coalition -- will have to work to avoid conflicts on the ground.

Asked if the various groups would carve up the river valley into controlled segments, Mattis said it may not look that neat.
'It'll be based on where does the river bend here and which side of the river is the town on there, this sort of thing. So it may look a little more squiggly,' Mattis said.
He said commanders can work it all out, 'however, as you mix more forces more closely together, what worked before for deconfliction is going to take more precision.'

Trump allies push White House to consider regime change in Tehran

“US officials should worry more about saving their own regime than changing Iran’s,”

 

June 26, 2017-- As the new administration conducts a routine review of its Iran policy, senior officials are hinting that they're open to toppling the country's clerical regime.

As the White House formulates its official policy on Iran, senior officials and key Trump allies are calling for the new administration to take steps to topple Tehran’s militant clerical government.
Supporters of dislodging Iran’s iron-fisted clerical leadership say it’s the only way to halt Tehran’s dangerous behavior, from its pursuit of nuclear weapons to its sponsorship of terrorism.

Influential Iran hawks want to change that under Trump.
“The policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who speaks regularly with White House officials about foreign policy. “I don’t see how anyone can say America can be safe as long as you have in power a theocratic despotism,” he added.

Cotton advocated a combination of economic, diplomatic and covert actions to pressure Tehran’s government and “support internal domestic dissent” in the country. He noted that Iran has numerous minority ethnic groups, including Arabs, Turkmen and Balochs who “aren’t enthusiastic about living in a Persian Shiite despotism.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to endorse subverting the Iranian regime during recent testimony about the State Department’s budget when Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) asked the diplomat whether the Trump administration supports “a philosophy of regime change” in Iran.

Noting that Trump’s Iran policy is still under review, Tillerson said the U.S. would work with Iranian opposition groups toward the “peaceful transition of that government.”
In response, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif lashed out on Twitter, saying that the U.S. was “reverting to unlawful and delusional regime-change policy” towards his country.
“US officials should worry more about saving their own regime than changing Iran’s,” he added.

As a candidate, Trump was sharply critical of U.S. efforts to topple dictators in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, though each of those instances involved the use of military power, which virtually no Iran hawks currently advocate as an instrument within Iran.
But, along with Tillerson, key Trump officials are on the record as saying that Iran will remain a U.S. enemy until the clerical leaders and military officials who control the country’s political system are deposed – even under the administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani , a reformer with whom President Barack Obama cultivated ties and who was re-elected in May.

As a member of Congress, Trump’s CIA director, Mike Pompeo, last year publicly called for congressional action to “change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.” And the Trump national security council’s director for Middle East affairs, Derek Harvey, told an audience at the conservative Hudson Institute in August 2015 that the Obama administration’s hope of working with moderates to steer Iran in a friendlier direction was a “misread” of “the nature and character of the regime,” whose structure he said he has carefully studied.

The case for political subversion in Iran has also been pressed to the White House by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank that strenuously opposed President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran and which has close ties to many key Trump officials.

Soon after Trump’s inauguration, FDD’s CEO, Mark Dubowitz, submitted a seven-page Iran policy memo to Trump’s National Security Council. The memo—which was circulated inside the Trump White House and recently obtained by POLITICO—included a discussion of ways to foment popular unrest with the goal of establishing a “free and democratic” Iran.
“Iran is susceptible to a strategy of coerced democratization because it lacks popular support and relies on fear to sustain its power,” the memo argued. “The very structure of the regime invites instability, crisis and possibly collapse.”

It maintained that Trump has an instrumental role to play in discrediting the regime. “No one has greater power to mobilize dissent abroad than the American president,” the memo states, setting a goal of “a tolerant government that adheres to global norms.”
In 1979 Iran underwent an Islamic revolution that overthrew a pro-U.S. shah who counted Richard Nixon and Andy Warhol among his friends, replacing him with a Shiite fundamentalist government fiercely hostile to the U.S. and Israel.

In June 2009, allegations of election rigging sparked mass street protests, that briefly seemed to threaten Khamenei’s regime. The protests were brutally suppressed.

Many Trump officials consider Rouhani’s moderation a deceptive mask for Khamenei’s militant fundamentalism and believe Obama was naïve to consider him a true political reformer. Most also consider Obama’s nuclear deal a giveaway that only pauses Tehran’s path to a nuclear bomb—while entrenching Khamenei’s regime by relieving sanctions that were generating popular discontent.

The FDD memo argues that Rouhani’s presidency “has managed to mislead world leaders that it is a force for moderation and pragmatism,” and suggested that the Trump administration work to prevent Rouhani’s re-election, although there is no evidence that it did.
The memo also proposed borrowing from Cold War anti-communist tactics, citing the Reagan administration’s support of the Polish “Solidarity” labor movement, which helped to fracture the Eastern European communism.

Emulating the way Reagan worked with Poland’s Catholic Church and labor unions, the memo argues, Trump “can use trade unions, student organizations and dissident clerics to highlight the economic, political [and] moral shortcomings of the Iranian regime.”
It also called for spotlighting Iran’s atrocious human rights record as a means of pressuring Rouhani at home by reminding Iranians about the true nature of their regime. Despite the generally low priority his State Department has placed on human rights in U.S. foreign policy, Tillerson has repeatedly denounced Iran as a rights abuser—most recently during his May visit to Iran’s arch-enemy, Saudi Arabia.

Anton said the FDD memo was just one of many sources of input the White House has solicited, including from experts with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, and that “our policy is based far more on what is generated inside the government than by what comes from the outside.” He did not specify how widely the memo had been circulated. Dubowitz called the memo one of several he has submitted to the Trump administration.

Tom Cotton wants 'regime change' in Iran to be official US policy

US Sen. Tom Cotton

by Sean Higgins
WashingtonExaminer, Jun 25, 2017 - Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton wants official U.S. foreign policy in Iran to back the downfall of the Islamic Republic in Iran, a change being mulled by the White House.

'The policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran. I don't see how anyone can say America can be safe as long as you have in power a theocratic despotism,' Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, told Politico in a story published Sunday.

Previously, the U.S. has backed reform of the existing Iranian regime, but some officials in President Trump's administration have indicated that may not longer be sufficient while administration allies are urging a more confrontational stance.

The comments come during a time of increasingly fraught relations between Iran and the United States.

On Wednesday, Iran filed a formal protest to comments Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made earlier this month in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. Tillerson said the administration would support 'a philosophy of regime change' for Iran.

Iran's United Nations ambassador called the comments 'a brazen interventionist plan that runs counter to every norm and principle of international law.'

Officially, the new administration is still re-evaluating national foreign policy objectives and has not settled on an approach to Iran.

National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton told Politico, 'An explicit affirmation of regime change in Iran as a policy is not really on the table.'

However, prominent officials inside the administration have backed that approach previously.

Last year, then-Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., said in an op-ed for Fox News, 'Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.'

Such change needn't involve military intervention, Pompeo and others have argued. Economic sanctions and support of internal Iranian dissidents can weaken the regime.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that favors regime change, gave the White House a memo outlining the argument earlier this year.

'Iran is susceptible to a strategy of coerced democratization because it lacks popular support and relies on fear to sustain its power. The very structure of the regime invites instability, crisis and possibly collapse,' said the memo, which was circulated among White House officials and obtained recently by Politico.

What makes the new Iran sanctions significant?

Irans comprehensive sanctions program

By Amir Basiri

American Thinker, June 21, 2017 - Last week, the Senate passed a bill that outlines a new round of sanctions against the Iranian regime for its ballistic missile development, arms transfers, support for terrorism, and human rights violations.  With approval from the House of Representatives and President Trump's signature, the measure, titled the Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017, will become law.
In the backdrop of the Trump administration's tougher stance toward Tehran and the foundation of a regional coalition against Tehran's mischief-making, the new sanctions will mark a major shift from Obama's hands-off approach to Iran's nefarious activities.
Under the nuclear deal signed between Iran and the world powers in 2015, also known as the JCPOA, Tehran had agreed to freeze parts of its illicit nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling international sanctions.  However, the deal had many gaping holes and failed to address the other threats the Iranian regime posed to the region and the world.
Fearing that Iran would walk away from the deal, the Obama administration had implicitly given Tehran a free pass on domains that were considered off the limits of JCPOA.
In this respect, the Revolutionary Guards, the military body that runs a host of illicit operations for the Iranian regime, had benefited immensely.  While taking Obama's weak stance as a cue to continue testing missiles and ramp up its meddling in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, the Guards and regime officials have constantly claimed that their actions are not in violation of the nuclear accord.
Ironically, regime officials are now protesting that the new sanctions passed by Senate are a breach of the nuclear agreement.
Overwhelming support in Congress for tougher measures against the Iranian regime comes at a time where there's general consensus that Tehran is at the heart of the crises engulfing the Middle East.
'In 2017, ISIS is not a threat to regional stability,' James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, told Bloomberg last month.  'The threat now is Iran.'
'A comprehensive Iran policy requires we address all of the threats posed by Iran and it is clear there are many,' Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters at the State Department in late April.
In this context, new sanctions will send a strong message to the mullahs ruling Iran, who had been carrying out their nefarious deeds in the region without fear of reprisal in past years.  It will also be welcomed by Middle East nations, whose leaders clearly reiterated in the recent Riyadh Summit their disdain for Iran's destabilizing role in the region and underlined the need to firmly confront the subversive and destructive Iranian activities inside their countries.
Above all, the bill can send a welcome message to the Iranian people, who are the number-one victims of their rulers' crimes at home and abroad and most deeply wounded by Obama's failed appeasement policy toward Tehran.
'For a people that are capable of so much, their foreign policy is shockingly counter to their own interest,' Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and author of the Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act, said last week on the Senate floor.
This can become prelude to supporting regime change in Iran, which is the true desire of the Iranian people and the only solution to restoring peace and stability in the region.