On Monday, Amnesty International published an Urgent Action notice update regarding the case of a female political prisoner in Iran who faces a potential extended prison sentence for demanding justice for her siblings who were executed during the 1988 massacre in Iran.
Maryam Akbari Monfared has been told she may receive three more years in prison and may be removed to a remote one.
She has been serving a 15-year sentence in Evin prison in the country’s capital since 2009.
When Mr. Trump arrived in Israel after his visit in Saudi Arabia, he called for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s unclear what form this deal would take, and Trump said he prefers to leave it to both sides to decide between themselves.
Trump said Iran had negotiated a “fantastic deal” with his predecessor, winning “a lifeline and prosperity”, when he spoke in Jerusalem. He continued, ”…instead of saying thank you”, the Iranians were backing terrorism.” On Monday, he accused Iran of “deadly funding, training and equipping of terrorists and militias”.
Some say that after the liberation of Mosul from ISIL control that the American military must stay, however our presence is defined. They ask why we intervened, if we are to leave Iran free to dominate Iraq?
“Iran is playing for keeps in Iraq,” says Brian J. Dunn in his article for Track Persia, a Platform run by dedicated analysts who spend much of their time researching the Middle East,looking for indications of growing expansionary ambitions on the part of Iran in the MENA region and the wider Islamic world.
On Sunday, United States Senator John McCain said that President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia this weekend has sent a message to the Iranian regime, the Washington Examiner reported, that the U.S. and its allies are ready to block Tehran’s efforts to destabilize the region.
On Fox News Sunday the Republican Senator said, “There’s no doubt that if we’re going to impede the Iranian’s continued efforts to exert, certainly, significant strength in the region that this is an important step forward.”
On Friday, May 19th, Iran’s incumbent President Hassan Rouhani was re-elected to a second term. Still, The Telegraph said, “The re-election of President Hassan Rouhani changes nothing. Iran remains an impoverished dictatorship governed by a theocratic elite.” This demonstrates the belief that Tehran will continue defying domestic demands and international calls for a changed approach.
In contrast to the concessions made by the former US administration, just hours after the announcement of Rouhani obtaining a second term, US President Donald Trump arrived in the region for discussions with Saudi leaders, regarding a mission to launch a Middle East initiative aimed at establishing an unprecedented coalition.
With the resurgent Taliban holding more than 40 percent of the rural territory in Afghanistan, some 130,000 undocumented Afghan refugees are heading toward an uncertain future after having been forced to flee Iran by the government.
Each day, hundreds more are expelled from Iran, who plans to send 600,000 back to Afghanistan by the end of the year.
Spokesman for the Afghanistan Ministry of Refugees and Returnees, Hafiz Ahmad Miakhel, said last week, “7,695 Afghan refugees returned from Iran, 60-65 percent of whom were deported involuntarily. The majority of them were young individuals, but some were families, including women and children.”
For the second time since the Syrian civil war started, a US-led coalition against ISIS has targeted Iranian proxies in Syria. Reports suggest that it was not Syrian army soldiers that were targeted, but international Shia militiamen.
The American warplanes targeted a convoy of regime vehicles that were en route to a military base on the Syria / Jordanian border called al-Tanf.
The military base is occupied by British and US Special Forces that are advising the Commandos of the Revolution – an anti-ISIS rebel group that is known as Maghawir al-Thawra.
The Organization of Iranian American Communities-US (OIAC) and Congressman Tom Garrett (R-VA) sponsored and organised an event in Washington to support the people of Iran during the sham Iranian elections. The briefing, which took place on Capitol Hill, was named “Iran Presidential Election: Status Quo or Change”, and experts, lawmakers and academics spoke about the unfairness of the elections which are in no way democratic. They also called on the international community to support the people of Iran in their fight for freedom, democracy and human rights.
Political Director of the OIAC, Majid Sadeghpour, was in attendance, as was Lee Smith, Alireza Jafarzadeh, Prof. Ivan Sascha Sheehan, Representatives Garrett, member of the HFAC, and Mike Coffman (R-CO), a member of the HASC and Dr. Ilan Berman.
Iran’s presidential election on May 19th gives the people of that country little choice. The two main candidates were hand picked by leadership in Tehran. All candidates in the election must be approved by the the Guardian Council. This year, only six out of 1,636 candidates were allowed to run.
In an article in The Hill, by Soona Samsami, Representative in the United States for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, she writes, “They are fighting over a very narrow sliver of turf. No matter who wins, count on Iran remaining viciously repressive, destabilizing to the region and ever-eager to attain nuclear weapons.”
Iran’s state-controlled media has been dominated over that past several weeks by the presidential candidates making their case for the country’s presidency. However the media has ignored what the people of Iran really believe about the elections, which seems to be that they reject the ruling regime and its presidential nominees.
In a live televised debate on Friday, the candidates themselves gave reasons why there’s no real choice in Iran’s presidential elections. As they highlighted their opponents’ failures, the nominees, in effect, admitted that they’re all deeply involved in the regime’s suppression of the Iranian people and its plundering of the country’s wealth.
