While the Iranian regime is arresting, wounding, torturing and killing protesters, all the Biden administration appears to be concerned with is trying to revive a nuclear deal that will soon give Iran unlimited nuclear weapons capability; lift sanctions against the expansionist regime of Iran thereby pumping billions of dollars into its treasury for further adventurism; build nuclear weapons; provide Russia with still more deadly military equipment; and empower the mullahs even further to oppress and murder their innocent, fed-up civilian population for the “crime” of women showing too much hair. Their mothers must be very proud of them.
In a further blow to the Iranian people heroically confronting the brutal regime of Iran, the Biden administration is reportedly releasing $7 billion to the ruling mullahs. Iranian Americans for Liberty wrote in a tweet:
“While the majority of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Parliament chants “Death to America” & supports the Khamenei loyal police for their barbaric actions – the leader of the free world (Joe Biden) is silent. Why? “
The Iranian regime has cut off access to the Internet, and security forces continue to fire rifles and tear gas at the protesters, resulting in at least 185 people killed and hundreds of wounded.
Twenty-one human rights groups, including the Center for Human Rights in Iran, signed and sent a letter on October 6, 2022, to the offices of U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the U.S. Representative to the UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, stating:
“The death of 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini in state custody in Iran on September 13 has set in motion massive nationwide protests and strikes in at least 103 cities and towns across all 31 of Iran’s provinces, with scores of protesters killed and many more injured.
“Thousands of people have been arrested, including journalists, activists and artists. A number of recent detainees are facing grave custodial abuse and torture. On September 30, Islamic Republic security forces cracked down violently on protesters in Zahedan in Sistan and Baluchestan Province in southeastern Iran, killing dozens of Baluch-Iranians. On October 2, students at the prestigious Sharif University were under siege for hours, with security forces shooting at them and detaining them en masse. On October 4, it was reported that 16-year-old protester Nika Shakarami was killed by Iranian state security forces and forcibly disappeared. Many more deaths, injuries and arrests may be obscured by the government’s internet black out.”
Nika Shakarami, a 17-year-old girl, was one of the many women who was arrested for burning her hijab. According to the forensic doctor, she was repeatedly raped, beaten and her dead body was delivered to her family with smashed nose and broken skull.
Just the same, amidst Iran’s bloody protests, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed out that the “JCPOA [Obama’s nuclear deal] is the best way for us”. This obsession with reaching a deal with the mullahs and lifting sanctions against them, all while turning a blind eye on all their crimes and human rights violations, existed during the Obama administration as well.
Middle East scholar Walid Phares wrote in a tweet:
“The collaboration between the #IranLobby in the #Biden Adm & the #IranRegme has culminated through an underground deal, where billions will be transferred to the regime and the latter would release hostages kept in detention for that purpose, while the people of Iran is uprising.”
During the 2009 nationwide uprisings in Iran, the Obama Administration policy was silence in the face of the Iranian regime’s bloodshed, human rights violations, and crackdowns that killed and wounded peaceful protesters. In July 2015, Obama justified his deal by incorrectly claiming:
“The bottom line is this. This nuclear deal meets the national security interest of the United States and our allies. It prevents the most serious threat, Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
In August 2015, Obama delivered another speech justifying his deal, also immediately exposed as a lie:
“After two years of negotiations, we have achieved a detailed arrangement that permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. It cuts off all of Iran’s pathways to a bomb. It contains the most comprehensive inspection and verification regime ever negotiated to monitor a nuclear program.”
However, as the “sunset clauses” quickly revealed, there was nothing “permanent” about it. Iran was to have all the nuclear weapons it wanted in a few short years, along with ballistic missiles to deliver them.
Obama’s billions which were reported as part of a plan to turn Iran in to a “friend,” did the opposite. Iran took the billions, enriched even more uranium, hid what it was doing even further from inspectors, took over Lebanon, and began a war in Yemen.
As Mitt Romney said in 2012:
“[W]hen millions of Iranians took to the streets in June of 2009, when they demanded freedom from a cruel regime that threatens the world, when they cried out, ‘Are you with us, or are you with them?’ – the American president was silent”.
The 21 human rights groups told the Biden administration in the October 6, 2022 letter that the Iranian people need the support of the United States and called on President Biden to:
- Forcefully and publicly to condemn, at the highest levels, the Iranian government for violence against women and civil society activists; call on the authorities to end the internet blackout, call off the violent crackdown, allow for peaceful protests, and release all wrongfully detained individuals;
- Lead, in concert with democratic allies at the United Nations in Geneva, diplomatic efforts to establish an urgent special session immediately after the conclusion of UNHRC’s 51st regular session to bring governments into a debate addressing Iran’s current violent crackdown and its ongoing human rights crisis;
- Lead, in concert with democratic allies, the establishment of an independent, impartial investigative mechanism at the UNHRC that investigates crimes committed against the Iranian people by their government and documented over decades by UN human rights mechanisms.
So far, sadly, instead of standing with the people of Iran heroically confronting a regime that chants “Death to America”, Biden tsk-tsks, says he is “gravely concerned,” but effectively says nothing. He still wants a deal with the mullahs that will quickly bring Iran to nuclear weapons capability, reward Iran’s aggression with a trillion dollars, enable it to oppress women and kill more of its innocent citizens, and empower it to help Russia with even more military equipment to crush Ukraine.
Is Biden — whose family received $3.5 million from the widow of the mayor of Moscow; who, on day one, effectively crippled US oil and gas exploration and exports, thereby, as the price of oil and natural gas suddenly shot up, funding Putin’s war on Ukraine, and who gave Putin the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to blackmail Europe in winter — once again just being a “Russian stooge“?
(Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East)
{Reposted from the Gatestone Institute site}
