Iran
January 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Adam Kredo reports for the Washington Free Beacon: A former Iranian official who is a faculty member at Princeton University recently bragged in an interview about how his hardline government’s death threats against a former top Trump administration official had him and his family “trembling” with fear. Hussein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton
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December 28, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Graeme Wood profiled Xiyue Wang for the Atlantic earlier this year in “The Princeton Historian Mugged by Reality.” Last week the Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross updated the story in “Historian Says Princeton Left Him To ‘Rot’ in Iranian Prison.” Adapting the heading of Wood’s Atlantic profile, the update might be titled “The Princeton Historian Mugged by Princeton.” That is more or less the story told by Wang in the lawsuit
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November 8, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Last month, I wrote about Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, the “professor of peace” at Oberlin College. Mahallati was the mullahs’ man at the United Nations in the 1980s during which time he called for a global jihad against Israel. Mahalliti was the scourge of Iran’s religious minorities, the Baha’i population in particular. An Amnesty International report accused him of crimes against humanity by covering up the massacre of at least 5,000
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October 28, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In case you missed it — and it’s easy to have done so given media lack of coverage — pro-Iranian forces launched a drone attack last week on a U.S. outpost in Syria. No U.S. casualties have been reported, but that’s no thanks to the attackers. Iranian media celebrated the attack, which it credited to something called Allies of Syria. This is a militia controlled by Iran through its Islamic
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October 18, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this month, Iraq held elections. Fifteen years ago, Iraqi elections were considered a big deal in the U.S. Nowadays, hardly anyone here pays attention to them. That’s understandable. Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda in Iraq, and ISIS are all long gone. But Iran isn’t. Neither are those strong Iranian-backed militias. And the U.S. still has a small contingent of troops there. Thus, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the
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October 1, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
When I attended college in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I viewed Oberlin College as a model for what a radicalized campus should be. After John and I braved a snow storm to visit Oberlin for a debate tournament, my impression was confirmed. Oberlin was in the vanguard. These days, that position must be difficult to maintain, but Oberlin is trying hard not to lose it. There was the
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September 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
This pathetic: She can’t even speak to a small group of college students without revealing her anti-Israel views and giving aid and comfort to our enemies. From now on, Harris’ public appearances should be limited to ribbon cuttings (if they still have them). Iran quickly seized on Harris’ statement that the view of Israel as genocidal is one version of the truth. According to Fox News: An Iran state media
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September 15, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Iran seems to be accelerating the pace of its nuclear program in the age of Biden. According to the report flagged by the Times of Israel, Iran could have enough enriched uranium for a nuke in a month. Posted online as “The IAEA’s Iran NPT Safeguards Report” and published under the auspices of the Institute for Science and International Security, the September 9 report is written by David Albright, Sarah
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July 23, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Iran is experiencing a new wave of protests, some violent. The protests are centered in the oil-rich Khuzestan province in the southwest, along the border with Iraq. In this tweet by Entifadh Qanbar, you can watch Iranian demonstrators attack a seminary said to be in the city of Khorramabad, located in Lorestan province, also near Iraq. According to the Washington Post, the protests “have rattled the government.” It “has been
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July 19, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden came to office determined to negotiate America’s way back into the Iran nuclear deal. His team made clear that it was willing to make major concessions to accomplish this dubious objective. What concessions? According to Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif, Biden has expressed willingness to lift sanctions on the “Supreme Leader,” remove restrictions on all but one Iranian bank, and rescind the foreign terrorist designation for the Islamic
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July 14, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The State Department informed Congress late yesterday that it would waive sanctions on Iran’s illicit oil trade so that the regime can access frozen funds from South Korea and Japan. The Washington Free Beacon story on the waiver is here and it is worth reading. The appeasement goes on, we learned yesterday (as the also Beacon notes), even though four Iranian intelligence officials were indicted on charges of conspiring to
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July 2, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
There’s very little Joe Biden has done as president with which I agree. However, I agree with his policy of striking Iranian-backed militias whenever they attack American troops. According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump’s policy was to retaliate only if the Iranian-backed attacks resulted in American deaths. If so, I think Biden’s policy is better. One sign that Biden is on point with this policy comes from the protests
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June 28, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I’ve written briefly about Iran’s newly elected president — the mass murderer Ebrahim Raisi — in “Meet Iran’s new prez,”, “Biden sleepers will not awake,” and “Hope springs supreme” (more here). Raisi brings a bracing clarity to Iran’s public face. Even John Kerry might have a problem prettifying it. He probably won’t be bragging that the guy is his friend, anyway. Spectator deputy editor Dominic Green takes up Raisi’s election
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June 23, 2021 — Scott Johnson
According to Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and psickening pspokesman Jen Psaki, the election of mass murderer Ebrahaim Raisi to Iran’s presidency poses no obstacle to the administration’s desire to consummate another nuclear deal cum sanctions relief with the regime. The administration continues to abase itself in Vienna with the let’s get it on spirit. “The president’s view and our view is that the
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June 22, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Iran’s president-elect Ebrahim Raisi seems a somewhat clarifying figure. He is the head of regime’s judiciary. He is under sanction by the United States for his role in the mass execution of thousands of Iranian political prisoners in 1988. He earned his nickname the hangman honestly. See Mariam Memarsadeghi’s Tablet backgrounder “Meet ‘The Butcher,’ Iran’s New President Ebrahim Raisi” and Bret Stephens’s New York Times column “Iran Bets on Religion,
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June 21, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett obviously had the deep thinkers of the Biden administration in mind when he asserted that Iran’s presidential election was a sign for world powers to “wake up” before returning to a nuclear agreement with Tehran. The winner of Iran’s presidential election this past Friday was one Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi won with 62 percent of the vote. Iran’s president-elect is sanctioned by the United States in
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June 19, 2021 — Scott Johnson
There is a bracing clarity about Iran’s newly elected president, Ebrahim Raisi. The Times of Israel has useful background on the election in this story attributed to various news agencies: Raisi will be the first serving Iranian president sanctioned by the US government even before entering office, over his involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, as well as his time as the head of Iran’s internationally
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