Wednesday, December 01, 2021

12/01 Links Pt1: UN to Condemn Israel in 3 Resolutions, Erase Jewish Connection to Judaism’s Holiest Site; As Vienna talks resume, Iran's military vows to destroy Israel

From Ian:

David Singer: If Israel swallows Arab propaganda on Judea and Samaria why shouldn't EU and UN?
United Nations (UN), European Union (EU) and Arab propaganda has perverted the history of the Arab-Jewish conflict. Their heinous conduct enables them to falsely claim that Jews have no legal right to live in Judea and Samaria ('West Bank').

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has seemingly swallowed parts of their disingenuous narrative hook line and sinker.

Achieving this triumvirate’s sinister agenda has been amazingly simple: Start with the year 1967 – instead of 1920 – when talking about resolving a conflict that has in fact been raging for more than 100 years.

Doing so has seen the UN, EU and Arab propagandists:
-Term the conflict: The “Israel-Arab conflict” or the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” - instead of what it has always been – the “Jewish-Arab conflict”.
-Ignore that Arabs living in Palestine in 1922 were only regarded as part of the “existing non-Jewish communities” – that “Israelis” and “Palestinians” did not then exist.
-Paper over that the San Remo Conference and Treaty of Sevres in 1920 decided that:

Arab self-determination was to occur in 99.99% of the territory captured from the Ottoman Empire in World War 1 - including those territories designated under the Mandate for Syria and Lebanon and the Mandate for Mesopotamia (now Iraq)

Jewish self-determination was to occur in the remaining 0.01% - “Palestine” - under the Mandate for Palestine (Mandate) - unanimously adopted by all 51 member states of the League of Nations in 1922.


UN Watch: UN to Condemn Israel in 3 Resolutions, Erase Jewish Connection to Judaism’s Holiest Site
Today the UN General Assembly is slated to adopt three one-sided resolutions targeting Israel, as part of a total of 14 resolutions being adopted over the next month that target the Jewish state, with only five on the rest of the world combined.

“The UN’s assault on Israel with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental watchdog organization.

“It’s absurd that in the year 2021, out of some 20 UN General Assembly resolutions that criticize countries, 70 percent are focused on one single country— Israel. What drives these lopsided condemnations is a powerful political agenda to demonize the Jewish state,” said Neuer.

Today’s resolution on Jerusalem refers to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, solely by its Muslim name, “Haram al-Sharif.”

Neuer said that “the UN shows contempt for both Judaism and Christianity by adopting a resolution that makes no mention of the name Temple Mount, which is Judaism’s holiest site, and which is sacred to all who venerate the Bible, in which the ancient Temple was of central importance.”

Another resolution blames Israel only for the lack of peace, giving a free pass to the Palestinian Authority. References to terror fail to name perpetrators such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whereas Israel is named and blamed throughout.

“Today the General Assembly will adopt resolutions about the Palestinians that fail to say a word about terrorism and other gross human rights abuses committed by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Nor do they even attempt to promote democracy, accountability and the rule of law to actually help Palestinians living in the areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas,” said Neuer.

Adoption of the resolutions will come two days after the UN held its annual international Palestinian solidarity day, featuring one-sided events in Geneva and New York.
US Vote on Palestinian Refugees Raises Discomfort in Israel
The United States’ vote to abstain last month on a draft United Nations resolution involving Palestinian refugees and their descendants set off discomfort in Israel over Washington’s policy regarding one of the most sensitive topics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

During the November 9 meeting, the UN’s Fourth Committee passed the resolution, which, among other things, affirmed support for the continued work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). It called on Israel to “cease obstruction of the Agency’s work” and affirmed that “Palestine refugees are entitled to their property and income derived from it.” It urged “the two sides to deal with property rights in the final stage of negotiations.”

The resolution comes up every three years. The US abstaining was a marked departure in policy — all previous American administrations except the Obama administration have voted against this resolution.

In explaining the abstention, Ambassador Richard Mills, the deputy US representative to the United Nations, stated that Washington was “pleased to see language included in several of the resolutions that reflect our priorities in line with strengthening UNRWA. This language puts a stronger onus on the Agency and on UN leadership to demonstrate a renewed commitment to the humanitarian principles of neutrality, independence, and impartiality, as well as provides a basis for strengthened agency oversight.”

The US also voted against several additional resolutions that singled out Israel: “We are disappointed that Member States continue to disproportionately single out Israel,” Mills said. “For this reason, the United States strongly opposes the annual submission of a package of resolutions biased against Israel.”

In contrast, the Clinton administration’s representative voted against the refugee resolution in 1999, saying the US “could not support unbalanced resolutions which attempted to prejudge the outcome of negotiations; lasting peace would come from agreements reached among the parties themselves, not from any action taken by the Committee.”


Ignored by the UN, Mizrahi Jews survived pogroms and expulsions, too
Surrounding Cairo’s Tahrir Square, houses confiscated from Jewish families host Egypt’s top foreign embassies. To this day, ambassadors from Germany, Switzerland, and the United States work or live in homes expropriated from Jews after 1948, while other formerly Jewish-owned homes became the Great Library of Cairo and government offices.

The expulsion of 850,000 mostly Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) and Sephardic Jews from Arab and Muslim countries took place before, during, and after the Holocaust. As nationalist Arab leaders aligned with Nazi Germany in the name of oil and expelling the British, Jewish communities were targeted for pauperization, expulsion, and murder.

Despite the region’s centrality to Jewish history, the narratives of Middle Eastern Jews have long been considered “supplemental” in collective Jewish memory, as well as that of the rest of the world. One of several reasons for the marginalization of their accounts is that Mizrahi Jews developed different ways of telling their stories, according to historian and journalist Edwin Black.

“The Sephardic and Mizrahi communities have always been insular,” Black told The Times of Israel. “At the same time, in most major Jewish organizations our collective memory is an Ashkenazic collective memory.”

In 2014, Black worked with Israeli and Diaspora Jewish officials to implement an annual observance on November 30 commemorating the expulsion of Jews from the region. The remembrance is called Yom HaGirush, or Day of the Expulsion, and awareness of the commemoration is slowly spreading.

“I take a more inclusive approach when it comes to looking at what happened to the Jewish people during World War II and after,” said Black, who wrote the book “The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust.” Added Black, “Hitler’s war against the Jews was global.” ‘Farhud’ pogrom in Baghdad, Iraq, 1941 (public domain)

Jews were an enduring presence in Arab and Muslim lands for nearly three millennia, yet today fewer than 4,000 Jews live in the region. This contrasts with post-Holocaust Europe, where 1.4 million Jews currently reside. So much for the Moroccan proverb, “A market without Jews is like bread without salt.”
More UN Security Council meetings needed on Lebanon, Iran: US envoy
She added: “The impact of Iran’s regional malfeasance, nuclear aspirations, and hatred for Israel cannot be ignored.”

As for what could be done to advance a two-state solution, Greenfield said Palestinians and Israelis needed to work things out between themselves.

The UN Security Council could facilitate constructive steps. “We can enforce Security Council resolutions intended to constrain Iran’s regional malign activities, nuclear threats, support for terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Greenfield also noted that Israeli officials voiced their concern that the UN was “intrinsically biased against Israel.”

“They interpret the overwhelming focus on Israel in this body as a denial of Israel’s right to exist and an unfair focus on this one country – and they are correct,” she said, adding that Security Council monthly meetings on the Middle East focus “almost exclusively on Israel.”

“This Council’s attention should reflect all areas that threaten international peace and security, and we should have open meetings on Lebanon and meet on Iran more regularly. Israel does not define the Middle East,” the US diplomat said.


Israel security expert: Latest Hamas terror infrastructure ‘most dangerous in recent years’
The large-scale Hamas terror plot uncovered by the Shin Bet intelligence agency and broken up in recent weeks is “the most dangerous tactical-operational infrastructure I recall in recent years,” a senior former Israel Defense Forces officer has told JNS.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Eitan Dangot, Israel’s former Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and a senior research associate at the Miryam Institute, emphasized the dozens of Hamas operatives arrested, in addition to the number of suicide-bomb vests and weapons recovered in counter-terror raids.

The Shin Bet announced on Monday that it had, together with the IDF, broken up the cell, which was being orchestrated by senior Hamas operatives overseas, including the head of Hamas’s West Bank terror operations, Salah Al-Arouri (who is also Hamas’s deputy chief).

Dangot linked the development to cracks that have appeared in the rule of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and its 86-year-old leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

He pointed out Hebron and its environment as a known ideological Hamas stronghold, and a Hamas activity hotspot, but added that Jenin and its environment have seen a spike of armed activity as well. The area is traditionally a Palestinian Islamic Jihad hotspot but also known for its opposition to Abbas’s rule from Fatah-affiliated militias like the Tanzim, stated Dangot.

“Hamas hasn’t budged one millimeter from its ideological commitment to Israel’s destruction, and it is implementing this gradually,” said Dangot. “Its military wing is building up force, and engages in rounds of fighting, like May’s conflict. Due to organizational problems, and secondary considerations created by Hamas’s sovereign rule over a population, the organization also opts for periods of calm, in line with its analysis of its interests at any given time.”
Israeli Border Police Thwart Stabbing Attack Near Givat Ze’ev
Israeli Border Police thwarted a stabbing on Wednesday morning at the Al-Jib crossing outside of Givat Ze’ev, northwest of Jerusalem, a statement by a spokesman for the unit revealed.

According to the statement, a 43-year-old Palestinian drove up to the checkpoint and was spotted by troops on duty to be holding a knife.

When they aimed their weapons at the would-be assailant, he threw down the knife, police said.

He was then arrested and taken in for questioning by security officials.


Murderer’s children: “We grew up on [dad’s] good name” - “We are sons of a hero”
Alaa Sharbati, son of terrorist Ayman Sharbati: “We grew up holding [our dad Ayman Sharbati] in our hearts and holding our heads high [thanks to] this man. We hold the paternal value high because we are the sons of a hero and fighter… We grew up living on dad’s good name and people treated us accordingly, as the sons of the heroic prisoner who sacrificed his life for the sake of his people’s life.”

Muhammad Sharbati, son of terrorist Ayman Sharbati: “This is [my son] Ayman, [my] father’s name…

Alaa Sharbati: They called him Ayman after the Ayman in prison, and Allah willing he will be a hero like him.”

Muhammad Sharbati: “Allah willing.”

Ayman Sharbati - Palestinian terrorist who shot and murdered Israeli Gavriel Hirschberg and wounded another Israeli in the Old City of Jerusalem on Nov. 20, 1997, and who was also involved in other terror attacks. Sharbati is serving a life sentence.


Abbas meets Qatari emir amid Hamas tensions, PA financial crisis
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Doha on Tuesday with the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, against the backdrop of increasing tensions between the PA and Hamas in the wake of a security crackdown on Hamas’s members in the West Bank. It also came amid an acute financial crisis in the PA, which has repeatedly appealed to Arab countries to fulfill their promises to support the Palestinians.

Qatar hosts several Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, and has been supportive of the Gaza-based Islamist movement for several years.

Attempts by Qatar and other Arab countries over the past 14 years to resolve the dispute between Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction and Hamas have been unsuccessful.

PA officials have frequently criticized Qatar’s financial and political support for Hamas, especially the delivery of cash grants to the Gaza Strip in coordination with Israel. The officials claimed that Qatar was emboldening Hamas, thus solidifying the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
PA: Jerusalem airport symbol of Palestinian sovereignty
Palestinians are strongly opposed to Israeli plans to build a new neighborhood in Atarot because the area includes an airport that is “one of the symbols of the sovereignty of the State of Palestine,” Palestinian Authority presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudaineh said on Wednesday.

Opened in 1924, the Jerusalem International Airport, also known as Atarot Airport or Kalandiya Airport, was the first airport in the British Mandate for Palestine.

Royal Jordanian and Middle East Airlines, the national flag-carrier airline of Lebanon, used the airport in northern Jerusalem for commercial flights.

After 1967, Israel’s Arkia and El Al airlines used the airport until it was closed two decades ago, after the beginning of the Second Intifada, due to security concerns.

The Jerusalem Municipality recently advanced plans for a 9,000-home project in Atarot, which is located within the boundaries of the Jerusalem Municipality. The project would transform the 124-hectare (301-acre) site of the former airport into a new neighborhood.

Last week, Regional Cooperation Minister Esawi Frej announced that he was promoting a plan to establish a joint Israeli-Palestinian airport in Atarot.

Frej said that Ben-Gurion Airport is already functioning at close to maximum capacity.
UNRWA chief warns Palestinian refugee agency facing a funding crisis
The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Tuesday it was unable to pay its 28,000 employees on time this month because of a major funding crisis, warning of potential cuts in vital services to millions of people amid a global pandemic.

UNRWA runs schools, clinics and food distribution programs for millions of registered Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, mainly the descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding the Jewish state’s creation.

The 5.7 million refugees mostly live in camps that have been transformed into built-up but often impoverished residential areas in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Jordan that the resumption of United States support for the agency this year — which had been halted by the Trump administration — was offset by a reduction in funding by other donors.

The agency also went through a management crisis in 2019, when its previous head resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct, nepotism and other abuses of authority at the agency.

Staff went on strike Monday after being informed last week that salaries would be delayed, but halted the action following mediation, Lazzarini said.


PreOccupiedTerritory: Youth Hopes To Reach 500 Firebombs Hurled At Jews Before Int’l Media Report Any (satire)
A Palestinian teen who spends his afternoons and evenings flinging Molotov cocktails toward cars with Israeli license plates on the road connecting this town of 20,000 people with Jerusalem and surrounding communities keeps a running tally of his achievements, and harbors an ambition to perpetrate a certain number of such attacks without reporters from mainstream Western outlets informing their audiences of the daily phenomenon.

Muhammad Attiyah, 17, established a routine during the summer of 2020 that included the preparation and use of Molotov cocktails against Israeli motorists, a practice that began during summer vacation but that he found time to maintain even when the 2020-2021 academic year began. Then then-sixteen-year-old has, by his own count, assembled close to three hundred homemade firebombs, of which he boasts more than 250 have flown from his hand toward Israeli cars and buses. Attiyah, however, aims not only to cause as much harm, and preferably death or injury, to his targets; he hopes that international news agencies continue to ignore those activities of him and his like-minded buddies as long as possible in an effort to preserve the Palestinians-as-helpless-victims narrative that tends to frame stories about the Arab-Israeli conflict in Western media, and that by the time those journalists can no longer justify turning a blind eye to his terrorism, he will already reach the 500 mark. Attiyah estimates he will hit that plateau sometime in early 2022.

“I’m no so naïve as to think I can escape Western news coverage forever,” he acknowledged, toting a backpack with eight Molotov cocktails one weekday afternoon. “At some point either the Israeli army will come in and do something, forcing the reporters to mention what it’s all about, or one of my bombs will finally result in a serious death toll, like if I hit the front of a bus and the driver goes over the side of the mountain or something. I’d love for that to happen now, but I also kind of want to hit that magic number, just as a personal goal.”
United Nations Weighs Taliban Admission
While the Biden administration has not formally recognized the Taliban government in Kabul, it has been working with the terrorist organization to ensure Americans still trapped in the country can come home. Russia and China have been more willing to back the Taliban, but neither has formally recognized the terrorist group. The United States, China, and Russia play an outsized role in the credentials committee, and their votes will likely be critical to deciding the Taliban's fate at the United Nations, at least in the short term.

Nikki Haley, the Trump administration's former ambassador to the United Nations, told the Washington Free Beacon that the Taliban has no place at an organization committed to global freedom and peace.

"Under no circumstance should the United States, or any other country, vote to recognize the Taliban at the United Nations," Haley said. "It should not be a difficult decision to keep a group of terrorists out of an organization founded to maintain peace and security."

Shaheen, the Taliban's chosen representative to the United Nations, reportedly said last week the group is counting on Russia to support its bid.

"We had and currently have good relations with the Russian Federation, and we are expecting them to support the new government that has been formed in the result of our struggle for liberation of Afghanistan," Shaheen said. "We expect Russia and other countries will support us at the Credentials Committee of the United Nations, because this is good for the peace in Afghanistan and in the region, which is also of interest to the Russian Federation."

The vote, however, is likely to be a more complicated process.

The committee has "no coherent rules or guiding principle," according to the Diplomat, meaning the process could become turbulent and end without a final decision. Previous decisions by the committee "have been unpredictable and riven by great power politics," the outlet reported in September.


Ruthie Blum: As Vienna talks resume, Iran's military vows to destroy Israel
Given the shared supplicatory stance of the above three Western countries, he was pretty accurate, though he was actually trying to lump them together as colonialist/imperialist invaders, rather than peace-and-quiet-seekers at all costs.

Ditto for his final remark about America, the intent of which was to illustrate the inevitable victory of Islamist forces against the West, but is not far from an apt depiction of its decline in the eyes of its enemies.

"Every day since the Islamic Revolution 43 years ago, the United States has fallen several hundred meters from the mountain peak, and is now near the valley," he said. "Is it wise to go after an America that is falling into the valley!? Naturally, you have to abandon America, which is on a downward slope. Not only has it achieved nothing, but it's also lost its dignity."

Coming from a despotic, ayatollah-led regime whose people are abused and impoverished, the assertion that the United States hasn't accomplished anything over the past four decades is ridiculous. But there is more than a grain of truth to the second allegation, and not merely because former President Jimmy Carter sat by helplessly while Islamists took over Iran and held dozens of US Embassy staff hostage for 444 days.

Former President Barack Obama's administration, too, humiliated itself by pleading with Iran to sign the disastrous JCPOA in the first place – rewarding it with tranches of cash, and proceeding to ignore its multiple and egregious violations of the pact. Today, it's President Joe Biden's team that's bowing down and bending a knee.

Sadly, it doesn't matter that The Jerusalem Post's Benjamin Weinthal exposed Shekarchi's pre-Vienna interview, which ISNA posted solely in Farsi, with no traces on its English-language website. Biden and his European, Russian and Chinese bidders in the Austrian capital are perfectly capable of and happy to put Iran's intentions aside in order to push their agenda forward.
Richard Goldberg: Why The Iran Nuclear Talks Were Over Before They Began
President Joe Biden replaced his predecessor’s campaign of maximum pressure with one of maximum deference. Biden hoped that goodwill gestures would induce Tehran not just to return to the JCPOA, but to reach a follow-on agreement that included even tougher restrictions. In theory, the follow-on agreement would address the JCPOA’s many deficiencies – most importantly, its lack of restraints on either Iran’s missile program or its support for terrorism, and the deal’s sunset provisions, which would allow Iran to become a nuclear weapons threshold state after several years.

Biden’s strategy has turned out to be carrot-filled and stickless. The administration stopped enforcing its most important sanctions, allowing Iran to significantly increase its exports of crude oil to China. Washington would even unfreeze billions of dollars of regime assets to allow Iran to pay off its foreign debts.

Biden has also avoided taking any actions that he thinks might provoke Tehran and jeopardize a return to the JCPOA. When Iran ordered its proxies in Iraq and Syria to attack U.S. troops and related targets, the president responded with pinpricks or not at all. He took no action in March when a U.S. contractor died after an Iranian-backed attack on a U.S. base in western Iraq – nor did he respond militarily to a UAV strike on U.S. troops in Syria in October.

Rather than reciprocate Biden’s restraint, Iran seized on American weakness – increasing the frequency of attacks on the U.S and its allies while pushing its nuclear program far beyond levels once perceived as possible redlines for U.S. military action. Tehran has enriched uranium to 60 percent purity – nearing weapons grade – produced uranium metal – a component of nuclear weapons – and blocked IAEA access and verification efforts at key sites. Despite all this, the Biden administration instructed its allies not to put forward any resolutions of censure at the IAEA’s quarterly Board of Governors meetings.

The results? To use a football metaphor, Iran was arguably backed up to its own 1-yard line at the end of 2020 and is now driving deep into America’s red zone after just 10 short months.


Iran starts enriching with advanced machines at Fordow during deal talks
Iran has started producing enriched uranium with more efficient advanced centrifuges at its Fordow plant dug into a mountain, the UN atomic watchdog said on Wednesday, further eroding the 2015 Iran nuclear deal during talks with the West on saving it.

Indirect talks between Iran and the United States on bringing both fully back into the battered deal resumed this week after a five-month break prompted by the election of hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi.

Western negotiators fear Iran is creating facts on the ground to gain leverage in the talks.

On the third day of this round of talks, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had started the process of enriching uranium to up to 20% purity with one cascade, or cluster, of 166 advanced IR-6 machines at Fordow. Those machines are far more efficient than the first-generation IR-1.

Underlining how badly eroded the deal is, that agreement does not allow Iran to enrich uranium at Fordow at all. Until now it had been producing enriched uranium there with IR-1 machines and had enriched with some IR-6s without keeping the product.
'Iran is the country that doesn't want to engage diplomatically,' says expert
Iran demanding all sanctions be lifted to revive deal

Interview with Eric Brewer, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic & International Studies

'The key challenge to the US is that it's going to need find a way to keep Iran's nuclear advances in check,' says Brewer


Stop Iranian Drones Act introduced by House Foreign Affairs C'mtee reps
A bipartisan group of leading members from the House Foreign Affairs Committee introduced the Stop Iranian Drones Act (SIDA) on Tuesday. According to a joint statement by the members, the bill would “clarify that US sanctions on Iran’s conventional weapons program under CAATSA [Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act] include the supply, sale or transfer to or from Iran of unmanned combat aerial vehicles.”

The legislation also states that it is US policy to prevent Iran and Iranian-aligned groups from acquiring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can be used in attacks against the United States or its partners. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-New York) and Ranking Member Michael McCaul (R-Texas) spearheaded the bill, together with Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and Global Counterterrorism Ted Deutch (D-Florida), and Ranking Member Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina).

“Deadly drones in the hands of the world’s greatest exporter of terrorism, Iran, jeopardizes the security of the United States and regional peace,” Rep. Meeks said in a statement. He added that recent Iranian drone attacks on US troops, commercial shipping vessels, and against regional partners, along with the export of drone technology to conflict zones, pose a dire threat.

“The Stop Iranian Drones Act not only aligns current US sanctions law with the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, but also sends a strong signal to the international community that support for the Iranian drone program will not be tolerated by the government of the United States,” said Meeks.

According to Rep. McCaul, Iran’s UAV proliferation continues to threaten the US and its allies throughout the Middle East.
Seth Frantzman: Iran’s new elite are a major challenge to the West
A reading of the report provides several other takeaways. A shift away from the West is now likely. If in the past Iran would put on a kind face, trotting out Javad Zarif like a Cheshire cat to smile with his Western counterparts, today Iran sees less use for the West. In some ways this may mean that at the Vienna talks, Iran will present the West with a fait accompli: Give us a deal or we walk.

Iran feels empowered. Despite US maximum pressure during the Trump era, the Iranian regime reached new heights of power. It got the Shia militias in Iraq to be given official paramilitary status, raising them up and making them permanent. It empowered Hezbollah by destroying Lebanon’s economy. It has given the Houthi rebels in Yemen new missile and drones technology. It has expanded the Hamas arsenal. It helped keep the Syrian regime in power and took over a swath of Syria. It also brokered deals with Turkey and Russia regarding the beleaguered country. For policymakers, the reality of Iran’s regime is now clear. Instead of the dog and pony show that used to be trotted out in talks with the West, with the “moderates” on hand to talk the Western language while the “hardliners” controlled things back home, now the Iranian regime is what it appears to be.

There are fewer contradictions now that these men have come to power. This means that the regime may telegraph more openly exactly what it is going to do, rather than hide behind its old duplicity.
As Protests Shake Iranian Regime, Iranian Americans Demand Meeting With Biden Admin
Amid a wave of protests in Iran over mass water shortages that has shaken the Iranian regime, an Iranian-American group is petitioning the Biden State Department for an immediate sit-down about ways to hold the regime accountable for its violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.

The National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), a nonpartisan organization of Iranian Americans that promotes human rights in Iran, says the latest mass protests—and the Iranian regime's violent crackdown—represent a watershed moment in the Iranian people's efforts to depose the hardline clerical regime. The government has already shot at protesters on the street and shut down the country's internet to stop the spread of information and prevent the rise of more protests.

NUFDI says it has tried on multiple occasions to meet with U.S.-Iran envoy Robert Malley but that those overtures have been rebuffed. The group warned the Biden administration in recent weeks that ongoing protests were likely to boil over and prompt a violent response from Iran's hardline government. The Biden administration "ignored those warnings," according to a letter sent on Monday by NUFDI to the State Department and White House and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Pressure is now mounting on the Biden administration to address Iran's mass human rights abuses just a day after it restarted diplomatic talks with the regime aimed at securing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord. Those talks have led activists and Republicans in Congress to accuse the administration of prioritizing the nuclear deal ahead of human rights and democracy for the Iranian people. Groups like NUFDI are pressing for additional sanctions on the Iranian government, but such sanctions are unlikely to happen as the Biden administration negotiates with Iran. The United States has already waived some sanctions on Tehran to cajole the Islamist regime back to the bargaining table, and the State Department has said it is prepared to unwind every sanction that was applied by the Trump administration. Iran should be forced to address human rights during its talks with the United States, and if it does not, American should walk away from negotiations, NUFDI says.









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