Spring of freedom

he latest news to rattle the Washington establishment is that John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, has asked the Pentagon for military options against Iran. The commentariat and the Democrats in exile are aghast and insist that such bellicosity will only invite belligerence from Iran. Many former Obama administration officials fear that Bolton’s truculence may lead Iran to resume its nuclear program. But the truth is that when dealing with Iran, threats usually work while blandishments only whet the appetite of the mullahs who run the country. No president was more concerned with the Islamic revolutionaries’ sensibilities than Jimmy Carter. Even after Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took American diplomats hostages, Carter hoped to resolve the crisis in a manner that did not jeopardize the possibility of resuming ties with the theocracy. Such deference helped prolong the crisis for 444 days and essentially doomed Carter’s presi...

  INU- StaffThe Trump administration has focused heavily on the Iran threat and is currently implementing the maximum pressure campaign that it announced earlier this year. Trump has made it very clear that he will not tolerate Iran’s belligerence and any threat that it is responsible for. Other officials in the U.S. administration are being equally forceful when it comes to Iran, most notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton. Pompeo said a few months ago that the administration is working on finding a way to put a permanent end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Previous to this, the Secretary of State listed twelve demands that Iran must adhere to before the United States will consider treating it like a “normal nation”. The demands were focused on the regime’s nuclear program, its domestic behaviour and its interference in the Middle East. John Bolton has spoken about the administration’s intention to “squeeze” Iran as hard as possible. ...

By Reza Shafiee After months of speculations, finally President Donald  Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal  formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The deal was struck by his predecessor President Obama who went out his way to sweeten the deal for the regime in Iran hoping that its rulers may eventually come around and stop their destabilizing behavior in the region, not to proliferate long-range ballistic missiles and end human rights violations at home. None of that happened. Lack of transparency in the deal from day one raised many eyebrows. No one really knows how much money was offered to the regime in exchange. The figures are anywhere from $50 to $150 billion. Sadly not a dime of the money gained from the deal was spent to make life easier for average citizens. Instead it was generously wasted on wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Iran’s clerical regime did everything possible to prop up its puppet Bashar al-Assad in...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel   President Donald Trump will host German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of two European leaders heading to Washington as he mulls the fate of the nuclear deal with Iran. Their April 27 meeting follows French President Emmanuel Macron’s stop in the U.S. capital. The agreement’s future may depend on the success of last-minute European interventions with Trump. Macron and Merkel will likely be the last foreign leaders invested in the deal to see Trump before his deadline for the 2015 deal to be strengthened. Trump’s pledged to withdraw by May 12 unless U.S., British, French and German negotiators can agree to fix what he sees as the deal’s serious flaws. Iran has said a U.S. withdrawal and reimposed sanctions would destroy the pact, and has threatened to restart banned nuclear activities.

White House spokeswoman said Trump held Russia and Syria responsible for the chemical attack The White House said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump has not laid out timetable for action in response to a suspected chemical attack in Syria, despite his note on Twitter that missiles “will be coming” and Russia should “get ready.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump had a number of options, not just military, that all options were still on the table and he was assessing how to respond. She said Trump held Russia and Syria responsible for the chemical attack and denied that his Twitter comments had created any problem.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks to reporters at Trump Tower, January 12, 2017, in New York City. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Read Newsmax Article:  Giuliani Welcomes Trump Iran Policy, Calls for Support of Uprising | Newsmax.com Urgent:  Do you approve of Pres. Trump’s job performance?  Vote Here!   Oppressive regimes have never been inevitable. In fact, their apparent inevitability is because they possess the trappings of power. But underneath the trimmings, they lack popular support. There have been and may still be many misconceptions about what is going on inside Iran, but since the end of December, many of those fallacies have been dispelled. A major uprising is going on, a level of unrest that lays bare the lack of backing of Iran’s people for their unwanted rulers. On Feb. 28, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani addressed a luncheon at the National Press Club (NPC) to discuss Iran and the uprising. “Some 142 cities had pro...

The Iran deal will be another issue thats coming up in May, Sen. Bob Corker said describing the timeline Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said Sunday that he believes President Donald Trump is likely to pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal in May, a step that would undo one of the major foreign policy achievements claimed by former President Barack Obama. Corker (R-Tenn.) told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that such a move by Trump could be avoided if the president’s concerns, which deal largely with Iran’s actions outside the specifics of the nuclear deal, are addressed as part of a multilateral framework. Such an agreement seems unlikely, Corker said. “The Iran deal will be another issue that's coming up in May, and right now it doesn't feel like it's going to be extended. I think the president likely will move away from it, unless my — our European counterparts really come together on a framework. And it doesn't feel to me that the...

A wounded Syrian child is treated at a makeshift hospital in the rebel-held town of Douma, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta With the reported death toll in Eastern Ghouta exceeding 670 since the air bombardment started on February 13, the US administration upped the ante on Friday, threatening the Assad regime that it “will not tolerate the atrocities” and calling on Russia to immediately uphold a ceasefire all over Syria. The White House, following Donald Trump calls to Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, issued a statement on Friday that stresses the urgency of the situation in Syria. The leaders agreed that “the Syrian regime, and its Russian and Iranian supporters, should immediately and fully implement  United Nations  Security Council Resolution 2401” calling for an immediate ceasefire across Syria, it said.  It addressed Moscow directly, calling for a halt of its bombing in Eastern Ghouta, and to pressure “the Assad r...

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday urged all members of the U.N. Security Council to back the renewal of the international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria, saying it was needed to prevent President Bashar al-Assad from using the arms.  “Need all on the UN Security Council to vote to renew the Joint Investigative Mechanism for Syria to ensure that Assad Regime does not commit mass murder with chemical weapons ever again,” Trump said in a note on Twitter.

Iraqs Popular Mobilization Force commits criminal activities in Kurdish regions  Trump’s exclusion of Iraq from his enumeration of Iranian violations in the Arab world and the IRGC roles there, in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, has interesting implications. Iraq seems to occupy a special position for President Trump. The prime minister in Baghdad, Haider al-Abadi, may have earned the trust of the US president, and even a preferential position with regard to US support, possibly at the expense of the Kurds, Washington’s erstwhile long-standing ally. Indeed, Trump has overlooked the participation of the Popular Mobilization forces in battles alongside the federal Iraqi forces to retake Kirkuk from the Kurds and other Kurdish-claimed regions in northern Iraq, bearing in mind that the US Treasury Department has now targeted the IRGC as a supporter of designated groups and stepped its sanctions against Tehran’s elite force. Clearly, the state of division within the Kurdish ran...

Iranian regime poses a multitude of threats to international peace and security, all of which have to be addressed. By Amir Basiri   Washington Examiner- Oct. 6, 2017-  Varying sources have confirmed that President Trump will decertify the Iran nuclear deal come an Oct. 15 deadline. This will mean that the president does not see the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is formally known, as vital to the national security interests of the U.S. It will then be up to Congress to decide whether to scrap the deal and reimpose sanctions on the Iranian regime or to preserve it and take other necessary measures to address its flaws. The question now is what this move means for Iranian regime, and how its leaders will react? Iranian officials have threatened to walk away from the deal and the enrichment of uranium on several reprises in the past months as Trump intensified the tough talk against the accord's failures and Tehran's unlawful ventures. But in the...

US President Donald Trump is weighing the issue of uncertifying Irans nuclear compliance  President Donald Trump has railed against a deal to curb Iran's nuclear program, but officials say that far from scrapping it, he is considering kicking the decision to Congress. Ahead of an October 15 deadline, several officials familiar with White House deliberations told AFP Trump has made it clear he does not want to certify Iran's compliance with the accord. The 2015-era Obama agreement offered Tehran relief from punitive economic sanctions, in return for limits to uranium enrichment and intrusive inspections. Every 90 days Trump must decide whether the Iran is living up to its end of the bargain, something that has already caused him political pain on two occasions. The Trump administration has publicly accused Iran of violating the 'spirit' of the accord -- known as the JCPOA -- although some officials privately admit there is a thin line between testing the li...