Iran Focus

London, 20 Feb - In an effort to tackle issues such as poverty, exclusion and unemployment, The United Nations General Assembly has decided to annually observe February 20th as the World Day of Social Justice. However, in Iran, unemployment continues to increase.

With oil and gas and other natural resources, 33% of Iran’s population (26.4 million) still lives below the poverty line. In order to support their households, many are forced to engage in menial jobs with low wages, or dangerous jobs where they risk their lives.

State-run Young Journalist Club quoted regime economist Gholamreza Kiamehr as saying, “in light of the high price of goods and services, a family who earns less than 3.5 million toumans is considered to be below the poverty line.”

Iran Focus

London, 19 Feb - The international community's negligence has allowed the Syrian Civil War to go on for far too long and cost far too many lives. Now the war, which many predicted to be winding down, has spread to four different fronts and had become a proxy war for many actors in the Middle East, not least Iran.

The Iranian Regime’s proxy forces have used the Syrian conflict to deploy Hezbollah troops to the border of Israel, to expand Iran’s Shiite Crescent, and to prop up the Bashar Assad dictatorship, fearing that if he fell, then the Iranian mullahs would be next.

Iran Focus

London, 19 Feb - Dozens of prominent women including political personalities, lawmakers, jurists, judges, and women’s rights advocates from five continents participated in a conference entitled, “Women Force for Change, Iran Uprising and the Role of Women,” held in Paris on Saturday, February 17, 2018, in the presence of the President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. A delegation of mothers of martyrs, a delegation of Iranian women’s associations and rights activists, as well as a delegation of youth supporting the Iranian Resistance were among the speakers to the conference.

The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) is a political group dedicated to bringing freedom and democracy to Iran.

They derive their political beliefs from a modern and tolerant version of Islam that is fully compatible with modern society – the exact opposite of the ruling mullahs’ Sharia Law, which is intolerant, extremist, genocidal, non-democratic, and misogynist – and the MEK believe that their interpretation is the true meaning of Islam.

Iran Focus

London, 18 Feb - Iran is currently facing a turbulent time. There are widespread protests in Iran calling for the removal of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani – some by any means necessary – and the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has led to power vacuums that the Regime is desperate to fill and everyone else is desperate that they don’t.

Thus Iran has turned to its favourite method of dealing with foreign and domestic crises: misdirection.

Iran has been attempting to strengthen ties with its neighbour Azerbaijan over the past few months and there are signs that it is working.

Iran Focus

London, 16 Feb - Former White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, who was instrumental in helping secure media support of the 2015 Iranian Nuclear Deal through manipulation that he admitted, has now joined the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation that also helped to sell the deal by paying for favourable media coverage of it.

Back in 2015, before the Iran Deal was agreed, Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund told NPR’s All Things Considered that he believed the American security establishment was solidly behind the deal and said that opponents to the deal were merely trying to block everything that President Obama wanted to do.

Iran Focus

London, 16 Feb - The Houthis’ continued ballistic missiles attacks against Saudi Arabia are not simply retaliation for the Saudi-led Arab coalition seeking to restore the internationally recognised Yemeni government to power.

Instead, a Western diplomat based in the region said that this appears to be an attempt by Iran, who supplied the Houthi terrorist cell with the ballistic missiles, to start a bigger regional conflict or test their missiles against the US missile defence systems used by Saudi Arabia.

Iran Focus

London, 16 Feb - In spite of ongoing nationwide protests against dramatically rising costs and falling living conditions, the Iranian Regime has still seen fit to raise the prices of water, electricity and gas in their budget for the New Year, which begins on March 21 according to the Persian calendar.

The decision to increase prices in line with Iran's Sixth Development Plan, which states that water and electricity costs could rise by between 20% and 30 % a year, comes after a long debate in the Regime’s Parliament about how best to fill the budget deficit.

The Iranian House of Representatives voted in favour of this proposal from the Ministry of Energy on Wednesday, following its approval from the Council of Ministers.

Iran Focus

London, 15 Feb - Back in 2017, many advocated for the Syrian conflict to be solved through Russian intervention because that scenario was more appealing than a Syria controlled by Iran.

The Russian Syria plan, accepted by the US and their allies, meant that Russia would devise a plan for peace in Syria while also reducing Iranian influence there.

Iran Focus

London, 15 Feb - When Syrian anti-aircraft missiles downed an American-made Israeli F-16 fighter jet last weekend, Iranian-proxy Hezbollah called it a turning point in the conflict.

One of the Hezbollah pundits declared on television that from now on the Syrian army, Hezbollah, Yemeni army, Iraqi army, and Iranian army must all be thought of as the “resistance axis”.

Iran Focus

London, 15 Feb - Professor Kavous Seyed-Emami is the latest Candian to be imprisoned and killed in an Iranian jail.

The environmentalist was working in Iran to protect the Asiatic cheetah, of which there are only 50 left in the world, when the Iranian Regime accused him of spying for the West and arrested him.

This is the fourth and final piece in a series about the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

When we left off last time, the mullahs had stolen the 1979 Revolution from the MEK and the people of Iran and were instead using it to serve their own interests. Ruhollah Khomeini had returned from exile only to appoint Supreme Leader (essentially, naming himself king) and appoint the clergy to the government against the wishes of the Iranian People.

Iran Focus

London, 15 Feb - On 12th February 2008, Hezbollah lost Imad Mughniyeh – one of the terrorist group’s most ruthless military commanders. He was behind the 1983 US Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and the 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in which 29 civilians died and 242 were injured. He was also the mastermind behind the 1994 attack on the AMIA’s (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) building in Buenos Aires.

He was killed in Damascus, Syria, just after attending an event held by Iranian patrons to mark the 29th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. When he got to his car, an explosive detonated – killing just Mughniyeh. It turns out that the spare tyre in his vehicle was replaced with an explosive that detonated as he approached it.

Iran Focus

London, 14 Feb - The Iran has unveiled a range of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles at this weekend’s military parades, despite a UN resolution against developing those missiles.

The nuclear-capable missile appears to be similar to North Korean technology, according to experts, and according to Iran it has radar-evading capability and can even strike Israel from Iranian territory.

As such, it looks like these missiles will further inflame tensions between Israel and Iran, given that the Iran fuels terrorist proxies on Israel’s borders and could easily supply the groups with these missiles as they do for the Houthis against Saudi Arabia.

Iran Focus

London, 14 Feb - A British charity worker imprisoned in Iran on bogus spying charges is being psychologically tortured by the authorities of Iran, according to campaigners.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Iran for almost two years, is the victim of a “state-orchestrated campaign [of] psychological abuse" that meets United Nations criteria for torture, according to anti-torture charity Redress.

The charity have written to Professor Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, on behalf of the Free Nazanin campaign with evidence that Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being tortured to coerce the British Government to negotiate a deal for her release (i.e. paying a ransom to Iran) or force her to confess to spying on behalf of the UK and provide information about others.

Iran Focus

London, 14 Feb - Iran is reportedly seeking to rewrite the “rules of the game” over Israel’s involvement in Syria, now that the Syrian Regime is largely taking over the country again and Syrian rebels are largely defeated.

You can see this from the Israeli fighter jet that was shot down in Syria last weekend, in relation to the downing of an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace and Israeli bombs dropped on terrorist targets in Syria.

Before the attack on the fighter jet, Israel had the expectation that its attacks on Iranian-Hezbollah weapons convoys and production facilities would not be met with a military response as either Syria or Hezbollah could afford a war with Israel.