But Old Joe’s handlers appear determined to pursue the Obama course of appeasement. In any case, this shows the falsity of the common claim that the sanctions hurt the Iranian people, not the regime. These dissidents wouldn’t want them maintained if that were the case.
“Iran-based dissidents urge Biden to keep sanctions on Islamic Republic,” by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, February 6, 2021:
Iran-based dissidents, many of whom have been persecuted by the clerical regime, sent a letter to US President Joe Biden urging his administration to continue the robust sanctions campaign against the Islamic Republic.
The letter was dated February 1, and stated as part of its requests: “Recognition of the majority of the Iranian people’s aspiration and interest for a Secular Democratic Constitution over the survival of the Islamic Republic Theocracy; Maintaining maximum political, diplomatic, and financial pressure on the regime; Advocacy for human rights in Iran and release of all political prisoners and those imprisoned for their personal views; Supporting the Iranian’s determination in seeking a secular democratic government through a non-violent, free, and fair referendum.”
The dissidents wrote that the regime used the benefits of sanctions relief from the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, to spend “billions of dollars gained from the Iran nuclear deal on exporting its totalitarian ideology by providing funds to terrorist networks, developing missile technology as offensive leverage to dominate the Persian Gulf and beyond, and causing chaos in the Middle East.”
The JCPOA was designed to curb Iran’s drive to build a nuclear weapons program in exchange for sanctions relief.
The letter continued that the “Iranian people for a long time have been expressing their discontentment with Islamic Republic Government and their determination for a fundamental change. The nationwide protests in the Winter of 2017-2018 and in November 2019 are the latest affirmation of the Iranians resolve in establishing a democratic rule of law.”
According to a Reuters investigation, the regime’s security forces suppressed the 2019 protests against the regime, leading to more the murders of more than 1500 Iranians. The letter stated that the Iranian regime authorities ”arrested more than ten thousand innocent people” during the peaceful demonstrations.
The US government-run news outlet Voice of America reported that “The Iranian dissidents who wrote to Biden include 11 of the 28 activists who signed 2019 letters urging the resignation of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the replacement of Iran’s Islamist constitution with a democratic one. Most of the signatories of the 2019 letters were arrested for doing so.”
VOA added that at least 21 of the 38 signatories of the new letter to Biden have been arrested or imprisoned in Iran for peaceful political and social activism.”…
Mojdeh says
پاسخ بایدن به خامنهای: اول توقف غنیسازی، بعد لغو تحریمها
جو بایدن، رییسجمهور آمریکا، میگوید کشورش تحریمهای ایران را تا زمانی که تهران غنیسازی اورانیوم را متوقف کند لغو نخواهد کرد؛ این هشدار همزمان با آن صورت میگیرد که علی خامنهای، رهبر جمهوری اسلامی، هم پیششرط بازگشت تهران به برجام را لغو کامل تحریمها عنوان کرده است.
mortimer says
Translation of remarks by Mojdeh:
Biden’s answer to Khamenei: first stop enrichment, then lift sanctions. US President Joe Biden says his country will not lift sanctions on Iran until Tehran stops uranium enrichment; This warning comes at a time when the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, has also made the lifting of sanctions a precondition for Tehran’s return to the UN Security Council.
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To Mojdeh: the issue is whether Iranians want political and religious freedom or not. Most of Iranians apparently want freedom from the mullahocracy. So does the author of the article above.
Peter Buckley says
For any JW readers who aren’t up to speed with the situation in Iran, we now know that Iran is no longer a “muslim country”:
https://iranintl.com/en/iran/iranians-have-lost-their-faith-according-survey
In other words, the current regime is unsustainable, even in the short term:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXDPOzQOdgw&t=114s
Westman says
Iranian Islam had its “Hitler” moment in the 8-years war with Iraq when the Ayatollah Khomeini enjoyed the majority support. The populace watched their young men spent like so much cheap fodder by a man who told them this life(their life) was worthless. Then came the internet and instant communications that educated young Iranians about what life could be and was in the West.
Now they have the next dictator, Khamenei who shows them, daily, how worthless their lives actually are to him by jailing and hanging them. He is simply a tyrant bathed in religious garb and rhetoric. Like Hitler, Napoleon, and a host of others, his aim is conquest. He speaks of Islamic glory today and sends you to die tomortow. He would be content to spend half the population to destroy Israel if it will bring worldly glory and an Islamic historical place for himself. The young Iranians see what a dangerous person he is and how they are walled in by a primitive religion that is not fit for the future. Eventually, they will remove him and Islam from ruling power. Islam’s time is finished in Persia – it just hasn’t realized it.
gravenimage says
All too many Iranians still seem to support Islam, though. If they have really rejected its tenets, I will be glad to see it.
Westman says
There was a time when Romans believed in many Gods and then moved on to beliefs more in line with the developing future and reality. Islam is too primitive for the future unless reformed equivalently to the development of Christianity. Christianity didn’t end mosaic law, it just left much of it behind. Islam must do the same or both it and the humans it controls will ultimately perish or move on.
The Persians, who are not Arab, may be the most intelligent ME population of Muslims (Turkey’s Erdogan may not agree) and have the great potential if they can escape Islam.
Mojdeh says
Translation is PR Joe Biden said to Khamanie first stop Uranium making then we try to phase out the embargo and same time Khamanie said we put conditions to first stop embargo then we talk. Ayatoolahs are bully #1 Iran has 10 atom bombs. If Iran get 20 or 30 atom bombs God help us all. Khamanie go back where you came from.
srikrishnachaitan says
Iran must be in sanctions until mullahs are kicked off from iran
mortimer says
The mullahs are using all additional money to export their terrorism.
Biden is frail, nonsensical nitwit who should be playing shuffleboard.
gravenimage says
Iran-based dissidents, many who have been imprisoned by the regime, urge Biden to keep sanctions on Islamic Republic
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Will Biden pay any attention? Don’t count on it…
mortimer says
Sleepy Joe is stupid … defined as repeating the same failed formula and expecting a successful result.
Mojdeh says
Yes as ex Prisioner in EVIN i say same way we brought Africa freedom and change. We must choke Ayatoolahs until they attack us and we bome the hell of them or this regime will collapse with COVID as well.
Mojdeh says
آمریکا به شورای حقوق بشر سازمان ملل بازمیگردد
مقامهای دولت آمریکا گفتند كه دولت بایدن روز دوشنبه بازگشت ایالات متحده به شورای حقوق بشر سازمان ملل متحد را اعلام خواهد کرد.
جو بایدن پیشتر در جریان رقابتهای انتخاباتی گفته بود که در صورت پیروزی، آمریکا را به نهادهای بینالمللی که در دوره ریاست جمهوری دونالد ترامپ از آن خارج شده، باز میگرداند.
رییس جمهور پیشین آمریکا نزدیک به سه سال قبل خروج آمریکا از شورای حقوق بشر سازمان ملل را اعلام کرده بود.
USA will get the seat of human rights back from UN.
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden will just mindlessly just continue in the same old terribly flawed fool and terrible policies of his former boss and chief, Obama, favoring that tyrannical cruel and hostile Islamic regime of Iran.
Biden and administration future disaster just waiting to occur.
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden owes much to that “mullah regime” of Iran. For Biden is controlled by the tyrannical Islamic regime of Iran. At least to some degree, this is because Biden is much indebted to Iran for aiding, as in helping him obtain the Office of the President of the United States.
So naturally; the ayatollahs, mullahs as well as the other regime officials would be very overjoyed with the Biden administration.
For that Biden administration will ,no doubt, will be most un-American, treacherous, subversive and even treasonous to the Constitutional Government of the United States of America,
To make matters worse, this coming awful administration will come into being because a stolen national election by massive voter fraud and rigged voting machines.
This treachery and blatant travesty of a national rigged election is an is a terrible affront and violation to and affront to the Law of the US Constitution the American spirit of a true and honest and real Presidential election system.
Let’s not be hopefully unrealistic and naïve 2021 was the last genuine national American election this nation will ever have this coming Biden/Harris administration has the total essence of the Red/ Green alliance in it and backing it.
It’s no wonder than that the Muslim tyrants of are in power in that Islamic aggressive, hostile Islamic tyrannical regime are euphoric about Biden administration.
It’s also very likely that this despicable “mullah regime” of Iran had it sinister insidious Islamic hand playing apart in that November rigged national election. For in the video documentary entitled TRUMP CARD by Dinesh D’ Souza . His film exposed that their number one, top, goal for the year of 2020 was to scrap the Trump administration and replace it with a Biden administration. So the ayatollahs ,mullahs and other officials of that Islam Iranian regime schemed ,funded ,support and promoted the Biden President campaign in every was that it was able to, by hook or by crook, that “mullah tyranny” aided the Biden campaign.