According to a new, and secret, document compiled by the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which an Iranian opposition group managed to get hold of and deliver to the U.S. government-supported Radio Farda, popular discontent with the regime has reached new heights; Iranian society “is described as ready to explode.” Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and a full report on this can be found here: “Iran ‘society set to explode’ while Biden unfreezes $29 billion for regime,” by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, February 5, 2022:
An activist hack organization has revealed a highly sensitive Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps document that asserts Iranian “society is in a state of explosion” because of the crippling sanctions imposed on the nation due to its illicit nuclear program.
The US government news organization Radio Farda obtained the document from Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice), the whistleblower entity, that has also secured confidential documents and video footage about the torture of Iranian prisoners, wrote Radio Farda.
According to Radio Farda’s Golnaz Esfandiari, who authored the exclusive article, “the document covers a meeting with IRGC’s intelligence wing and quotes an official named “Mohammadi” saying that Iran’s “society is in a state of explosion.”
Mohammadi added that “social discontent has risen by 300% in the past year.”
In other words, the sanctions that the Trump Administration put back on Iran in 2018 are now having the full, desired effect. Iran’s economy has been devastated, which in turn has created such deep anger against the regime, that it may not be able to withstand these shocks to the system, should the Iranians come out by the millions to express that rage. We already are hearing reports of protests which are set off by rising prices, but the chants are no longer only about those prices; they are, rather, “Death to the Dictator! Death to Khamenei!”
Mohammadi noted that “several shocks” in recent months have “shaken public trust” in the regime of President Ebrahim Raisi, who is listed as a US-sanctioned person for his role in several mass murders, including the massacre of at least 5,000 Iranian political prisoners in 1988.
Radio Farda reported that Mohammadi referred to soaring inflation, including hikes in the price of food items, energy, and cars. He also noted the sharp declines in stock prices.”
According to Radio Farda, “the leaked document includes notes from a November 2021 task-force meeting chaired by Brig.-Gen. Hossein Nejat, a senior IRGC commander and deputy head of Sarallah, a key IRGC base that oversees security in Tehran.”
Omri Ceren, the national security adviser for US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, tweeted on Saturday: “The Biden administration is giving Iran a nuclear weapons arsenal,” with a link to a Daily Mail article that declares: “Biden REMOVES some Iran sanctions imposed by Trump, including unfreezing $29 billion in bank accounts overseas, in bid to return to Obama-era deal that three negotiators have resigned over.”…
Biden has agreed to lift sanctions on those foreign states and individuals helping with the non-military parts of Iran’s nuclear program. He has agreed to unfreeze $29 billion in Iranian assets in bank accounts abroad, just as a sweetener, a way to entice Iran to keep negotiating, without asking anything from Iran in return. That is how desperate the Bidenites are for the Vienna talks to “succeed, ”which means Iran would have all sanctions removed in return for an unverifiable promise to return to the 2015 nuclear deal. Except apparently for the Bidenites, we all remember how Iran cheated continuously, fooling the inspectors, when the JCPOA was in force from 2015 to 2018.
While there have been protests in the past against rising prices, Taghi Rostamvandi, the deputy interior minister, now fears the rage at the mass immiseration of the Iranian people, 60% of whom now live below the poverty line, has become so deep and so widespread among the Iranian people, that nothing short of a change in regime (“fundamental changes in the country”), including the replacement of the theocratic state by a secular government, will satisfy them.
Given this information that has come from the IRGC’s intelligence operative, a certain “Mohammadi,” and from Iran’s deputy minister Rostamvandi – that “Iranian society is ready to explode” – the Bidenites should not do anything to help the Iranian government to weather this storm. They should be driving a hard bargain in Vienna, aware that the Iranian regime knows it is sitting on a volcano, and is desperate to obtain billions of dollars in unfrozen assets to placate its infuriated masses.
Instead, the Bidenites are making things as easy for the Tehran regime as possible. They have dropped any pretense of trying to “lengthen and strengthen” the 2015 deal, as both Biden and Blinken had once promised would happen. They have agreed to unfreeze $29 billion in Iranian assets that are now in bank accounts abroad. That money can at once be used by the Iranian government to provide relief to the impoverished, both through subsidies on essential goods — food, medicine, fuel, whose costs have risen so dramatically since 2020 – and through direct grants to the poor. That might lessen popular fury.
But that’s not all the Bidenites are prepared to do. On January 26, Secretary of State Blinken signed several sanctions waivers related to Iran’s civilian nuclear activities. The sanctions threat against foreign countries and companies from China, Russia, and Europe that had been cooperating with non-military parts of Iran’s nuclear program has now been removed. And what did Iran do in return? Nothing. Or rather, the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters the move “is not enough.” He then reiterated that one of the “main issues” of the talks in Vienna is Iran’s demand that it be given guarantees that the U.S. will not withdraw from the 2015 deal again. This is an impossible demand: how can the Americans promise that no matter what Iran does they will not withdraw from the 2015 deal again? Are Washington’s hands tied even If Iran turns out to be massively violating the agreement?
In late January, three members of the American negotiating team left the talks in Vienna, apparently appalled at the concessions the Bidenites were prepared to offer Iran. One of them was Richard Nephew, deputy special envoy and the second highest-ranking official on the American team, outranked only by the head of the delegation, Robert Malley.
The spirit of appeasement is in the air in Vienna, where the negotiations with Iran are being held and the ghost of Chamberlain hovers, whispering advice to Robert Malley. Vienna, as it happens, is on the very same latitude, 48 degrees N., as Munich. How fitting that Vienna was the site chosen for the Bidenites who, 84 years after the Umbrella Man in Munich, are pleased to offer their very own capitulation.
mortimer says
Meanwhile the senile, near-sighted President Magoo is focused on the problem of besmirching patriotic Republicans, rather than see the opportunity to deliver a death blow to the tottering mullahocracy.
The Dems cannot see the forest for the trees. They are bumblers bumbling every historic opportunity like this one.
peter says
Well said mortimer!
PMK says
Even if Iranian society does ‘explode’ against Khamenei, we should not expect a quick change in US-Iran relations. At least two generations of Iranians have been taught that America is their enemy. This may be a crisis in Iran, but we should not view it as an opportunity for peace. Too many hearts have been hardened over the last four decades. Too many people on both sides have a stake in things remaining as they are.
gravenimage says
Besides, as much as I’d love to see Khamenei go, we should not assume that he’d be replaced by a liberal democracy…
Kesselman says
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if sheer stupidity is at reign in the current WH or it’s somehow more calculated? Narrowsightedness is not difficult to see, though, but one never knows when cash in the billions are at play. I’ll tend to take Joey Bidet and his incompetent handlers at face value and deem the whole bunch out of pedagogical reach.
mjazz says
It is definitely calculated.
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
“[S]everal shocks” in recent months have “shaken public trust” in the regime of President Ebrahim Raisi.
People of Iran! Remember the admonition of Muhammad (pbuh) to obey your Islamic headman, even if he is a Raisin (Bukhari 1:662).
gravenimage says
Iran ‘Set to Explode,’ But Bidenites Come to the Rescue
…………….
Who but Biden would *want* to prop up the Mullahs? (Save for his boss Obama, of course…).
OLD GUY says
Makes me wonder if Hunter is in charge of the bail out funds for Iran. Makes no sense to financially help your enemy stay in power. For some reason we think you can buy friends in these countries that are run by nothing less than criminals or dictatorships that care only about their personnel power and wealth and are for sale to the highest bidder.
If Russia or China want to financially support these countries let them. Russia tried it once before and took a beating, lets not do the same mistake.