Tag: iran

Iranian Regime Sentences Artist to Death for Advocating Freedom and Insulting Muhammad

The Iranian regime has issued a death sentence against pop singer Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, known professionally as Tataloo, for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

This has sparked a wave of reactions both within and outside the country, highlighting the severity of Iran’s blasphemy laws.

Tataloo, whose fame has spread beyond Iran’s borders, has been a controversial figure in the underground music scene.

According to sources, the singer has been detained in Iran since his extradition from Turkey in December 2023.

He now faces a sentence that not only threatens his life but also underscores the tensions between artistic freedom and the strict interpretation of Islamic law in Iran.

Tataloo’s case is not an isolated incident.

The Islamic Republic is known for its harsh policies against expressions deemed offensive to religion. “The singer was sentenced to death for insulting the Prophet,” stated a report from Europa Press, emphasizing the gravity of the accusation and the penalty imposed.

Keep reading

Iran and Russia’s Friendship Just Got a Lot Deeper

By abstaining from diplomacy and relying so heavily on isolating countries and the broad stroke of sanctions, the U.S. runs the risk of creating a community of isolated and sanctioned countries. A community of sanctioned countries negates the effect of sanctions. And a community of isolated countries creates the very multipolar world the U.S. is trying to push back.

In the past couple of years, Iran has fought back against isolation and sanctions by joining the Russian and Chinese led Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, two significant international organizations intended to balance American hegemony in a multipolar world.

On January 17, though, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between their two countries, bringing Iran and Russia into a closer partnership than ever before.

Article 2 of the treaty commits the two countries to rejecting unipolarity and pursuing multilateralism, while Article 14 specifically commits them to “deepen[ing] cooperation within the framework of regional organizations,” including the promise to “interact and coordinate positions in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.” In a press conference following the talks, Pezeshkian said that BRICS and the SCO are transforming the region and “represent new opportunities and potential for both countries to collaborate in the future.”

But the new strategic partnership is much more than a vague public announcement of Iran and Russia’s friendship. The detailed forty-seven article document is the product of months of intense diplomacy. The document brings the comprehensive partnership a historic new intensity. In his opening remarks at the press conference, Putin called the document “truly ground-breaking.” Dmitri Trenin, research professor at the Higher School of Economics, told me that Putin’s use of words like “breakthrough,” refer, above all, “to the very fact that the Moscow-Tehran relationship now has a treaty as a base.”

Keep reading

Russia & Iran Sign 20-Year Defense, Energy Pact 3 Days Before Trump Inauguration

President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran on Friday signed a 20-year pact between their countries at the Kremlin, just three days before Trump’s inauguration.

Dubbed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, the Kremlin is hailing it as bringing relations with the Islamic Republic to a new level, enshrining the two countries’ status as strategic partners. Putin hailed the “real breakthrough, creating conditions for the stable and sustainable development of Russia, Iran and the entire region.”

Russian media has described it covers all spheres, including defense, counter-terrorism, energy, finance, transport, industry, agriculture, culture, science and engineering.

The allies are also working on linking their national payment systems: “According to the Russian leader, in 2024, the share of transactions in Russian rubles and Iranian rials exceeded 95% of all bilateral trade operations,” TASS noted.

Putin further said in a press conference with Pezeshkian, “Our countries firmly uphold the principles of the supremacy of international law, the sovereignty of states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.” As for Pezeshkian, he said the following:

“We witness a new chapter of strategic relations,” the Iranian president said, adding that the countries were set to expand trade ties and also boost the “level of security cooperation.”

The pact is heavily focused on defense and security cooperation. “It will confirm the parties’ desire for closer cooperation in the field of defense and interaction in the interests of peace and security at the regional and global levels,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had earlier stated.

Already, the two sides cooperate closely on drones. Russia has since the Ukraine war’s start been using Iran-produced ‘Shahed’ kamikaze drones against Ukrainian cities, and Iran has reportedly set up a major UAV production facility on Russian soil at Moscow’s invitation. 

Moscow and Tehran early last month lost a key Middle East ally upon the fall of Bashar al Assad, after Islamic insurgents rampaged across the country and the demoralized and underpaid Syrian Army quickly collapsed. Turkey was widely seen as supporting the insurgents with intelligence and equipment, and likely other NATO states played a background role as well.

Keep reading

Former Israeli Military Officials Float Audacious Plan To Strike Iran in Final Days of Biden Presidency

Two prominent Israeli national security analysts have proposed that the Jewish state go it alone with major attack on Iran in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Kobi Michael and Gabi Siboni, both former senior Israeli military officials, argued in a policy paper published last month that only a series of airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear, military, economic, and government infrastructure can prevent the regime from rebuilding its regional terrorist network, which Israel has degraded over 15 months of war. Israel should start the attack just ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, according to the analysts—thereby minimizing the risk of diplomatic retaliation by Biden and forcing the hand of the president-elect.

“With this attack, Israel will demonstrate to the United States … its absolute refusal to accept the continuation of the Iranian nuclear program and its unwillingness to risk Iran’s breakout to a bomb,” Michael and Siboni wrote for the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, a think tank in Jerusalem where they are researchers. “As several rounds of attacks on Iran will be required, [the subsequent rounds] will take place after Trump takes office and under a U.S. administration that is more sympathetic than Biden’s.”

Few Israeli politicians would contemplate such a move in public, and even in the think tank world, Michael and Siboni’s proposal stands out as audacious. But their paper, which has been discussed in Hebrew media, comes as Israeli leaders signal new willingness to go it alone against Iran if necessary.

When prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program more than a decade ago, he was repeatedly blocked by his powerful security chiefs and criticized by his political rivals. Today, Israel’s security establishment has reportedly advocated such a strike, as have leading politicians across the Zionist political spectrum.

Keep reading

Preemptive Strikes On Iran Will Be A ‘Real Possibility’ Under Trump: Officials

Starting in December the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, IAEA, warned that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment close to the roughly 90% level which is weapons-grade.

On Tuesday President Emmanuel Macron called Iran the main “strategic and security challenge” for France and Europe. “The acceleration of the nuclear program leads us nearly to the point of no return,” he told an annual conference of French ambassadors.

However, it remains anything but clear whether the Islamic Republic has actually decided to build a nuclear weapon, something recently (and surprisingly) acknowledged by the CIA.

Still, the constant daily headlines over Iran’s enrichment advances set things up for a collision course with the Trump administration after the Jan.20 inauguration.

According to a fresh report in Axios, the chances of Trump ordering a preemptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities are now higher than ever:

Iran’s recent nuclear advances give President-elect Trump a crucial decision to make in his first months in office: Try to neutralize the threat through negotiations and pressure, or order a military strike.

Trump’s decision in 2018 to withdraw from an Obama-era nuclear deal prompted Tehran to accelerate its nuclear program, such that it’s now a de facto “nuclear threshold state.” Officials and diplomats from the U.S., EU and Israel all told Axios they expect Trump to face an Iran crisis in 2025.

Trump and his advisers are planning to quickly return to the “maximum pressure” campaign they conducted against Iran between 2018 and 2020.

Axios further underscores that “Several Trump advisers privately concede Iran’s program is now so far along that the strategy might not be effective. That makes a military option a real possibility.”

But it remains that US attacks on the Islamic Republic would only surely accelerate possible efforts to achieve a bomb. Much of the country’s nuclear infrastructure and technology is now likely underground, which would make it hard for any external power to destroy everything.

Though in prior years the Ayatollahs have condemned nuclear weapons as ‘unIslamic’ – if the Iranians perceive themselves under direct threat of annihilation, they would urgently feel the need to rapidly have a bomb.

Keep reading

Attacking Iran Would Be Wrong and Illegal

Richard Nephew thinks that the case against attacking Iran isn’t as strong as it used to be:

But today, the case against military action is not so neat.

If anything, the case against attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities is stronger than it has ever been. It is because Iran’s nuclear program has advanced so far that we have no reason to believe that military action would be successful. Because Iran is more vulnerable than it has been in the recent past, that makes it more likely that an attack would spur the Iranian government to pursue nuclear weapons as a deterrent. When a government feels more threatened than before but has more advanced capabilities for developing these weapons, that is a terrible time to make their fears of attack a reality. Thanks in large part to the stupidity and malice of hawks in the U.S. and Israel, Tehran’s incentives to acquire nuclear weapons have increased. That is why we should reject a military option that gives Iran an even bigger incentive to cross that line.

Military action against Iran is unnecessary, and the threat of military action has made the nuclear issue harder to resolve. The Iranian government likely could have built a small nuclear arsenal over the last six and a half years since Trump reneged on the nuclear deal, but their leadership has not wanted to do that. Western policymakers talk about attacking Iran as if this were a last ditch option to halt proliferation, but Iran weren’t constantly being threatened with attack (and then occasionally attacked) their government would have fewer incentives to consider acquiring nuclear weapons.

Nephew writes, “But unless it is prepared to live in the world that Iranian nuclear weapons would create, it may have little choice but to attack Iran—and soon.” This is dangerous nonsense. The U.S. has no right to attack Iran in the name of “preventing” a possible threat sometime in the future. Even if Iran were building a nuclear arsenal right now (it isn’t), the U.S. would have no right to attack them. The prohibition against the use of force has only one exception, and waging a preventive war against Iran has nothing to do with self-defense. If the U.S. chose to attack Iran, it would be doing so because it wanted to and because it had no respect for international law. It would be the act of a rogue aggressor.

One of the biggest lies that interventionists like to tell is that the U.S. has been forced into taking military action. They will always insist that they don’t want war, but that the other state has “forced” the most powerful country in the world to attack anyway. What they usually mean is that the U.S. has issued maximalist demands that the other government cannot accept without humiliation, and then when the other government refuses to capitulate the U.S. “has to” attack the much weaker state. This is the brutish logic of a thug. It is also the logic of an imperialist.

Keep reading

2025, Iran Is Back in the U.S. Crosshairs for Regime Change

A new American president and a new Middle East configuration have brought Iran back into the crosshairs for regime change with an intoxicating vengeance.

The signs are that Iran is going to face intensified hostility from the U.S. over the next year for regime change.

The sudden fall of Syria and the isolation of Hezbollah in Lebanon – Iran’s regional allies – have made Tehran look vulnerable.

Anti-Iran hawks in the U.S. are cock-a-hoop about the prospect of regime change in Tehran.

The recent death of Jimmy Carter at the age of 100 puts in perspective how great a prize the Islamic Republic represents for Washington’s imperial desires. Carter was disparaged as the American president who lost Iran in 1979 as a crucial client state for U.S. power in the Middle East.

For over four decades, American imperialist power has sought to topple the Islamic Republic and return the Persian nation to the U.S. global fold.

Though, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken lamented last month, American “regime change experiments” in Iran have been a failure.

Now, however, there is renewed enthusiasm in Washington for the Persian prize.

The lust for regime change in Tehran has peaked with the dramatic fall of President al-Assad in Syria.

American lawmakers and Iranian exiles are publicly calling for the new Trump administration to get back to its maximum pressure campaign on Tehran because they believe there is “a perfect moment” for regime change.

During Donald Trump’s first White House (2017-2021), he revoked the Iranian nuclear deal of the Obama administration and ramped up economic sanctions in what was referred to as a policy of “maximum pressure.”

A growing chorus of Republicans and Democrats are urging the United States to seize the opportunity of a perceived weakened Iran to overthrow the clerical rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Keep reading

Is Biden Teeing Up an Iran War for Trump?

President Joe Biden has less than a month in office, but that might be enough time to leave a very big mess on President-elect Donald Trump’s desk. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan presented Biden with plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites before the end of his term “in a meeting several weeks ago,” Axios reported on Thursday. A source told Axios that Biden’s inner circle believes that he has both “an imperative and an opportunity to strike” now.

The same day, former Biden administration official Richard Nephew published an essay in Foreign Affairs arguing that “the case against military action is not so neat” anymore and that the United States “may have little choice but to attack Iran—and soon.” Nephew had once been a harsh critic of Trump’s attempts to pressure and threaten Iran. Now, like many other Democrats, he seems to be shifting from a dove to a hawk.

The Biden camp is following a path trod by the first Trump administration. Throughout Trump’s last year in office, his own inner circle talked about “military action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons if Trump were to lose the election,” The New Yorker reported. A week after he lost the election, Trump asked for military options, The New York Times confirmed. The final discussion happened exactly four years ago—on January 3, 2021—when Trump’s advisers agreed that it was “too late to hit them,” according to The New Yorker.

In other words, the president starting a war that close to the end of his term would be severely overstepping his mandate.

Keep reading

Why Has The Threat Of Iranian Nukes Suddenly Become Such A Huge Narrative?

Western officials suddenly have a tremendous amount to say about the threat that Iranian nukes could potentially pose to us.  Is it that the threat has increased, or are they trying to justify something that they have planned in early 2025?  I don’t know, but all of this talk about Iranian nukes is certainly not good.  Without a doubt, the Iranian nuclear program has been moving forward for a long time, but now we may be reaching a point of confrontation which could have enormous implications for the entire Middle East.

Earlier today, I came across a Telegraph article that was ominously entitled “Weakened Iran could hit back with a nuclear bomb, Trump told by White House”…

Iran could move to build a nuclear bomb after being weakened by wars in the Middle East, the White House has warned Donald Trump.

Joe Biden’s national security advisor said he had briefed the incoming president on the “risk” of Tehran obtaining the weapons.

It comes as Mr Trump is reportedly considering airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities when he becomes commander in chief again.

Apparently Jake Sullivan and other national security minions in the Biden administration are trying really hard to convince Donald Trump that Iran’s nuclear program is an imminent threat that must be dealt with very soon.

But if Iran’s nuclear program is such a threat, why didn’t the Biden administration do something about it during the past four years?

Why wait until now?

Someone should ask Jake Sullivan that question.

Keep reading

Bloomberg Is Manufacturing Consent For More Western Meddling In Sudan

The pretext is to jointly contain Russian and Iranian influence in the broader region amidst their recent setbacks in the Levant.

Bloomberg published a detailed piece on Wednesday about how “Russian Guns, Iranian Drones Are Fueling Sudan’s Brutal Civil War”. The content is self-explanatory and presents the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) change of fortune in the nearly two-year-long civil war as the result of those two’s backing. Russia provides fuel, arms, and jet components while Iran supplies arms and drones in exchange for privileged access to Sudan’s mineral wealth (particularly gold) and the promise of Red Sea naval bases.

The Russian modus operandi builds upon the model explained here in early 2023 whereby Moscow provides military support to its Global South partners to defend them from externally connected threats to their national models of democracy in exchange for resource and other rights. Iran’s approach is similar but more ideologically driven given the SAF’s closeness with political Islam since former leader Omar al-Bashir’s rise to power in 1989. Both want to make up for recent setbacks in the Levant.

Russia risks losing its bases in Syria following the joint American-Turkish regime change there while Iran’s regional Resistance Axis partners have taken a beating at the hands of Israel. Egypt and Turkiye are also allegedly backing the SAF while the UAE and its Libyan ally Haftar are accused of supporting their Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rivals. Even so, Emirati mineral companies are still active in the SAF-controlled Port Sudan that serves as the country’s temporary capital, thus highlighting the complexity of this conflict.

Readers should also be reminded that “Russia’s Veto Of The UNSC Resolution On Sudan Saved It From A Neocolonialist Plot” last month after the UK tried to turn it into a Western vassal by unsuccessfully attempting to create the legal pretext for a foreign military intervention there to that end. Such a threat still remains though as suggested by Bloomberg’s latest piece, which is clearly aimed at manufacturing consent for more Western meddling there on the basis of jointly containing Russia and Iran.

Keep reading