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Category: iran

  • Freed British-Australian Academic Says Iran Subjected Her To ‘Psychological Torture’

    A British-Australian woman jailed in Iran for more than two years on widely criticized espionage charges has said in a television interview broadcast on March 9 that she was subjected to “psychological torture.”

    Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a lecturer in Islamic Studies at Melbourne University, returned to Australia in November after serving 804 days of a 10-year sentence.

    Moore-Gilbert, 33, who was freed in exchange for the release of three Iranians held in Thailand, told Sky News that she was held in solitary confinement.

    “It’s [an] extreme solitary confinement room designed to break you. It’s psychological torture. You go completely insane. It is so damaging. I would say I felt physical pain from the psychological trauma I had in that room. It’s [a] 2-meter by 2-meter box,” she said.

    “There were a few times in that early period that I felt broken. I felt if I had to endure another day of this, you know, if I could I’d just kill myself. But of course, I never tried and I never took that step,” Moore-Gilbert added.

    She also confirmed that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had attempted to recruit her as a spy “many times.”

    Moore-Gilbert had written about the attempts in letters smuggled out of prison and published in British media in January 2020.

    Iran has arrested dozens of foreign and dual nationals in recent years on espionage charges that they and their governments say are groundless.

    Critics say Iran uses such arbitrary detentions as part of hostage diplomacy to extract concessions from Western countries, which Tehran denies.

    With reporting by AP and The Guardian

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Enriching Uranium With ‘More Advanced Centrifuges’ At Natanz

    In a further move away from the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran has started enriching uranium with a third cascade, or cluster, of advanced IR-2m centrifuges at its underground plant at Natanz, Reuters reported on March 8, citing a report by the UN nuclear watchdog.

    Monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on March 7 verified that Iran began feeding uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges, into the third cascade, the Vienna-based agency said in the report to its member states that was obtained by Reuters.

    The report said a fourth cascade of 174 IR-2m centrifuges had been “installed but had yet to be fed with natural UF6,” adding that a fifth cascade of IR-2m centrifuges “was ongoing.”

    Under the 2015 nuclear agreement, which aimed to restrict Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions, Tehran can only use first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, which refine uranium much more slowly, at Natanz.

    Tehran has gradually rolled back its commitment under the accord in response to a 2018 decision by former U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the pact and reimpose sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

    Iran has in past weeks accelerated its nuclear activities in what could be an attempt to pressure the new administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which has signaled its readiness to revive the deal but insists Iran first return to all its nuclear commitments.

    Meanwhile, Tehran says it first wants sanctions to be lifted.

    Based on reporting by Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ordeal in Iran may be reaching ‘endgame’

    There is hope that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ordeal is reaching the “endgame” as the British-Iranian woman was released from house arrest after serving a five-year sentence in Iran.

    A former top civil servant at the Foreign Office welcomed “good” progress in her case. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said he hopes it may be reaching the final stages, but cautioned:

    we might have many more months to go.

    The 42-year-old mother was detained in 2016 as Tehran made widely refuted spying allegations. She finished the latter part of her sentence under house arrest due to Covid-19. She had her ankle tag removed on Sunday, but her future remains uncertain, as she must appear before an Iranian court in a week’s time to face new charges.

    “This case has not yet ended”

    “Nazanin has completed her sentence, something good yesterday happened with the removal of the ankle tag but the final moves have still to take place – this case has not yet ended.”

    Ratcliffe, who was preparing to protest outside Iran’s London embassy with their six-year-old daughter on Monday, expressed cautious optimism over the prospects of his wife’s return to the UK after speaking last week with Dominic Raab. He said:

    I spoke last week to the Foreign Secretary who said, ‘listen, I can’t promise you it’s going to be this weekend but it feels like we’re close’. I’ve spoken to other former hostages and they say yes at the end it gets quite bumpy and this, to them, feels like the endgame. So fingers crossed it is but also we might have many more months to go.

    “Hostage diplomacy”

    Many have linked a long-standing debt running into hundreds of millions of pounds as central to the case, which has been dubbed “hostage diplomacy” by former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt.

    The UK is thought to owe Iran as much as £400 million over the non-delivery of tanks in 1979, with the shipment stopped because of the Islamic revolution.

    Lord McDonald insisted it was a “separate case”, but said work is under way to pay back what he said is accepted is owed to Tehran:

    We acknowledge it is Iranian money and does have to go back to Tehran. Problems in that case cannot complicate Nazanin’s release from Iran... One of the key complications is that Iran is subject to very comprehensive sanctions so how this money is repaid is a part of the story. But we are dealing with that.

    Richard Ratcliffe
    Nazanin’s husband Richard Ratcliffe (Aaron Chown/PA)

    Protest at the Iranian embassy

    Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker who was employed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has strongly denied the widely refuted allegations that she was plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic’s government.

    The mother, of north London, was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport while taking their daughter Gabriella to see her parents in April 2016.

    The fresh charges were unclear, but the Guardian reported that they include alleged involvement in propaganda activity against Iran, including attending a 2009 demonstration outside its embassy in London, and speaking to BBC Persian.

    Ratcliffe, Gabriella and his wife’s brother Mohamed will demonstrate outside the Iranian embassy in Knightsbridge from around midday on Monday.

    They will deliver a 60,000-signature Amnesty International petition to the embassy calling for his wife’s immediate release.

    The UK has been locked in a high-profile diplomatic tussle over her detention, during which she suffered time in solitary confinement and took part in hunger strikes.

    The government has afforded her diplomatic protection, arguing she is innocent and that her treatment by Iran failed to meet obligations under international law.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Ireland’s Foreign Minister Holds Talks In Iran

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • British-Iranian Aid Worker Released, But Summoned To Court Again

    British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her ankle tag removed after her five-year prison sentence expired, but it remains unclear if she can leave Iran.

    Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been summoned to court again on March 13, dashing hopes for her immediate return home.

    British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a statement that Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be released immediately so she can return to her family in Britain.

    Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained at Tehran airport after a family visit in 2016 and subsequently given a five-year sentence for plotting to overthrow Iran’s government.

    Her family and the foundation deny the charge while Amnesty International denounced the proceedings as a “deeply unfair trial.”

    Britain has demanded Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release and that of other dual nationals imprisoned in Iran. Tehran does not recognize dual citizenship.

    In November, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was notified in court of a fresh indictment of “spreading propaganda against the regime.”

    She was temporarily released from the capital’s notorious Evin prison and placed under house arrest in March 2020 owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Ready To ‘Immediately’ Take Measures If U.S. Lifts Sanctions, Rohani Says

    Iran says its prepared to take steps to live up to measures in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as soon as the United States lifts economic sanctions on the country.

    “Iran is ready to immediately take compensatory measures based on the nuclear deal and fulfill its commitments just after the U.S. illegal sanctions are lifted and it abandons its policy of threats and pressure,” Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on March 7.

    Rohani made the remarks as he received Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney amid diplomatic efforts to revive the landmark nuclear deal. Ireland is not party to the deal, but Dublin has the role of facilitator in the implementation of the nuclear agreement.

    Rohani criticized the European signatories of the deal – Britain, France, and Germany — for what he said was their inaction on their commitments to the agreement. He said Iran “is the only party that has paid a price for it.”

    U.S. President Joe Biden has signaled his readiness to revive the deal, but insists Iran first return to all its nuclear commitments.

    Former U.S President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew Washington from the agreement that aimed to restrict Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions.

    The Trump administration argued that the agreement failed to address Iran’s ballistic-missile program or its support for regional groups that Washington considers terrorists.

    After withdrawing in 2018, the United States reimposed sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran gradually and publicly abandoned the deal’s limits on its nuclear development.

    Based on reporting by AFP and AP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In Or Out Of Jail, Veteran Iranian Human Rights Defender Narges Mohammadi Won’t Be Silenced

    Despite being repeatedly threatened by Iran’s security apparatus, harassed, sent to prison multiple times, and prevented from seeing her children, the authorities have failed to silence Narges Mohammadi.

    One of Iran’s leading human rights defenders, Mohammadi has long campaigned against the death penalty and defended victims of state violence.

    While in prison, she has gone on several hunger strikes to protest the conditions there, attended a sit-in to condemn the security forces’ killing of several hundred protesters in November 2019, and spoke out about human rights abuses in open letters and statements smuggled out of her cell.

    Since her release in October 2020, the award-winning Mohammadi has remained in a defiant mood, speaking out publicly against state tyranny and injustice. “Despite the price I’ve paid, I remain hopeful, and I’m confident that our efforts will bear fruit, although not immediately,” she says.

    Mohammadi’s 10-year prison sentence on charges stemming from her human rights work was shortened due to concern for her health during the coronavirus outbreak in Iranian prisons and after calls for her release by the UN and rights groups.

    Punished For Not Backing Down

    A journalist and trained engineer, Mohammadi tells RFE/RL that despite everything she has endured, she remains positive and determined to keep fighting for better rights, freedom, and democracy in Iran.

    Mohammadi, the spokeswoman of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center co-founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, has been meeting with mothers whose sons were victims of the recent deadly state crackdowns while continuing to raise concerns about rights violations.

    In a video posted online last week, she highlighted violence against female detainees, including herself, saying she was subjected to force during her 2019 prison transfer from Tehran to the northwest city of Zanjan, some 300 kilometers from the Iranian capital. Mohammadi, who suffers from a neurological illness, has said the prison transfer was aimed at punishing her for protesting the killing of demonstrators.

    Mohammadi said she was physically assaulted by male guards and a prison director despite Islamic laws enforced in Iran that men should not touch women to whom they are not related. “How come you do not have to obey Islamic laws [in prison]? So what you’ve seen saying [about the need to uphold Islamic rules] was a lie,” she said.

    “I protest against assault by the Islamic establishment’s men against women and I won’t be silenced,” Mohammadi said in the video, where she also mentioned jailed environmentalist Niloofar Bayani, who has accused her interrogators of sexual threats and pressure.

    Narges Mohammadi (right) joins Behnam Mahjoubi's mother (center) and others protesting in front of the hospital in Tehran where he died.

    Narges Mohammadi (right) joins Behnam Mahjoubi’s mother (center) and others protesting in front of the hospital in Tehran where he died.

    In late February, Mohammadi was among the activists demanding accountability for the situation of jailed Sufi Behnam Mahjubi, 33, who fell into a coma after suffering from what authorities said was medicinal poisoning.

    In online videos, Mohammadi was seen asking hospital staff about Mahjubi, who later died amid accusations of medical neglect. She was also seen attempting to comfort Mahjubi’s mother outside the hospital where he was fighting for his life. She later criticized Mahjubi’s treatment in media interviews.

    Earlier this month, Mohammadi joined a group of civil society activists and rights defenders to file an official complaint against the use of solitary confinement while calling for the prosecution of officials who authorize it. Political detainees in Iran are often held in solitary confinement for weeks or months with no access to the outside world.

    Mohammadi, who has endured solitary confinement several times in prison, condemned the “inhuman” practice in a 2016 letter from Tehran’s Evin prison, where she called it “psychological torture” aimed at forcing prisoners to make false confessions.

    Mohammadi’s outspokenness could be difficult for the authorities to ignore, especially as they are in no mood to tolerate dissent amid a deteriorating economy and a deadly coronavirus pandemic that Tehran has struggled to contain.

    The prominent rights defender says she is well-aware of the risk she’s facing. “It’s not like I’m not worried, but the truth is that despite being concerned and despite the risk of arrest, I believe we have to keep working on issues that matter in our society,” Mohammadi tells RFE/RL.

    “The efforts that are being made will definitely bring results in the mid- or long term and help remove injustices and discrimination against our people in different areas — including in the economy, culture, politics, and women’s rights — and allow society to grow,” she says.

    Increasing The Pressure

    In December, Iran executed Ruhollah Zam, the manager of the popular Amadnews Telegram channel, who was convicted of inciting violence during the anti-establishment protests in late 2017 and early 2018.

    Scores of activists, academics and dual nationals have also been arrested, and a number have been sentenced to harsh prison terms. The authorities have also pressured a prominent NGO that fights against poverty, ordering its dissolution.

    Even after her release from prison, the authorities kept pressure on Mohammadi by banning her from traveling outside the country and by bringing new charges against her over her 2019 prison protest.

    She has said she will refuse to appear in court, saying her prison sit-in was a peaceful protest against “the repressive policies of the Islamic republic” and the “ruthless” crackdown on protesters two years ago who protested a large, sudden rise in the price of gasoline amid rising poverty in the country.

    “Iranian authorities’ persecution of human rights defenders often continues even after they are released from prison,” Human Rights Watch Iran researcher Tara Sepehrifar told RFE/RL. “Yet Narges, like several other Iranian human rights defenders, continues to show resilience and commitment to peaceful resistance against repression by speaking up and also building pressure by utilizing potential legal avenues open for challenging authorities’ abusive behavior.”

    Mohammad’s teenage daughter and son, Kiana and Ali, live in France with their father, political activist Taghi Rahmani, who left the country in 2012 to escape a jail sentence. Mohammadi remained behind, believing she could be more effective inside the country, and has not seen her children since July 2015.

    Mohammadi says the authorities have rejected her demand to be allowed to visit her twins, who took to social media in late January to condemn the travel ban against their mother.

    Even if the ban is lifted, Mohammadi is not planning to live in exile like many other activists who have been forced to flee Iran to escape state repression. “I told Tehran’s prosecutor that I want to be with my family for two months and then return. Unfortunately, they refused [my request] and I don’t plan to leave the country illegally,” she says.

    Standing with the people is the principle that has guided her throughout her life, she adds.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Doubts Expressed Over Scheduled Release Of U.K.-Iranian Aid Worker Jailed In Iran

    British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s five-year jail term in Iran expires on March 7, but her husband has said her release may be in doubt.

    Richard Ratcliffe told the BBC on March 6 that his wife’s detention has “the potential to drag on and on” and said that “it’s perfectly possible that Nazanin gets a new court case thrown at her.”

    Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation who is now 42, was detained at Tehran airport after a family visit in 2016 and subsequently given a five-year sentence for plotting to overthrow Iran’s government.

    Her family and the foundation deny the charge while Amnesty International denounced the proceedings as a “deeply unfair trial.”

    Britain has demanded Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release and that of other dual nationals imprisoned in Iran. Tehran does not recognize dual citizenship.

    In November 2020, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was notified in court of a fresh indictment of “spreading propaganda against the regime.”

    Ratcliffe told the BBC that the family has “never seen a copy of the charges on which she was sentenced” originally, and accused Iran of preserving “the space to make it up as they go along at every stage.”

    Nazanin was temporarily released from the capital’s notorious Evin prison and placed under house arrest in March owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Media have connected Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release to the outcome of negotiations between Iran and the United Kingdom over the release of hundreds of millions of dollars of Iranian funds frozen by London more than 40 years ago.

    Officials in both London and Tehran have denied that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is linked to a repayment deal.

    Based on reporting by the BBC and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Jailed Belarusian, Iranian Exile, Slain Afghans Among U.S. ‘Women Of Courage’ Honorees

    The U.S. State Department will honor 14 “extraordinary” women from Belarus, Iran, and other countries who have demonstrated leadership, courage, resourcefulness, and a willingness to sacrifice for others.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host the annual International Women of Courage (IWOC) awards in a virtual ceremony on March 8 to honor jailed Belarusian opposition figure Maryya Kalesnikava, as well as Shohreh Bayat, an Iranian chess arbiter who went into exile after violating her country’s strict Islamic dress code, the State Department said in a statement on March 4.

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    It said a group of seven other “extraordinary” women leaders and activists from Afghanistan who were assassinated while serving their communities will also receive an honorary award.

    The IWOC award, now in its 15th year, is presented annually to women from around the world who have “demonstrated exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment — often at great personal risk and sacrifice.”

    This year’s recipients include Kalesnikava, a ranking member of the Coordination Council, an opposition group set up after Belarus’s disputed presidential election in August with the stated aim of facilitating a peaceful transfer of power.

    The opposition says the election was rigged and the West has refused to accept the results. Thousands of Belarusians have been jailed during months of crackdowns on the street demonstrations against strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

    Kalesnikava was arrested in September and charged with calling for actions aimed at damaging the country’s national security, conspiracy to seize state power, and organizing extremism.

    Ahead of the presidential election, “Belarusian women emerged as a dominant political force and driver of societal change in Belarus due in no small part to” Kalesnikava, according to the State Department.

    The opposition figure “continues to be the face of the opposition inside Belarus, courageously facing imprisonment, it said, adding that she “serves as a source of inspiration for all those seeking to win freedom for themselves and their countries.”

    The State Department said Bayat will be honored for choosing “to be a champion for women’s rights rather than be cowed by the Iranian government’s threats.”

    Bayat, the first female Category A international chess arbiter in Asia, sought refuge in Britain after she was photographed at the 2020 Women’s Chess World Championship in Shanghai without her head scarf, or hijab, as her country mandates.

    “Within 24 hours, the Iranian Chess Federation — which Shohreh had previously led — refused to guarantee Shohreh’s safety if she returned to Iran without first apologizing,” the State Department said.

    “Fearing for her safety and unwilling to apologize for the incident, Shohreh made the heart-wrenching decision to seek refuge in the U.K., leaving her husband — who lacked a U.K. visa — in Iran.”

    In addition to the individual IWOC awards, Blinken will also present an honorary award to seven Afghan women whose “tragic murders” in 2020 underscored the “alarming trend of increased targeting of women in Afghanistan.”

    The women include Fatema Natasha Khalil, an official with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission; General Sharmila Frough, the head of the Gender Unit in the National Directorate of Security; journalist Malalai Maiwand; women’s rights and democracy activist Freshta Kohistani; and midwife Maryam Noorzad.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Washington Singles Out Growing Rivalry With ‘China, Russia, Other Authoritarian States’

    The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has singled out a “growing rivalry with China, Russia, and other authoritarian states” as a key challenge facing the United States.

    A White House document outlining Biden’s national-security policies, made public on March 3, describes China, the world’s second-largest economic power, as “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.”

    The 24-page document also warns that Russia “remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.”

    Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea are pursuing “game-changing capabilities and technologies, while threatening U.S. allies and partners and challenging regional stability.”

    Both Beijing and Moscow “have invested heavily in efforts meant to check U.S. strengths and prevent us from defending our interests and allies around the world,” according to the document, titled Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.

    It says that in the face of challenges from “an increasingly assertive China and destabilizing Russia,” the U.S. military would shift its emphasis away from “unneeded legacy platforms and weapons systems to free up resources for investments” in cutting-edge technologies.

    After four years of former President Donald Trump’s “America first” approach, Biden has vowed to confront “authoritarianism” in China and Russia while reengaging with allies and centering multilateral diplomacy.

    Washington and Beijing are at odds over influence in the Indo-Pacific region, China’s economic practices, and human rights in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang region.

    Moscow’s relations with Washington are at post-Cold War lows, strained by issues including the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, Russia’s alleged meddling in elections in the United States and other democracies, and the poisoning of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.

    In a foreign-policy speech at the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the U.S. relationship with China as “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century,” while several other countries also represent “serious challenges” for the United States, including Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

    “Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be,” Blinken said.

    The United States needs to “engage China from a position of strength,” which requires working with allies and partners, engaging in diplomacy and in international organizations, “because where we have pulled back, China has filled in,” and “standing up for our values when human rights are abused in Xinjiang or when democracy is trampled in Hong Kong.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pakistan’s Baluchis Protest Iranian Treatment Of Ethnic Brethren After Border Shootings

    Dozens of ethnic Baluch rights activists have staged a protest in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi to condemn the killing of their ethnic brethren by Iranian border guards last month.

    The protest comes amid reports of violent unrest and Internet blackouts in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province triggered after security forces killed cross-border fuel smugglers.

    Human Rights Watch last month said at least 10 people were killed at the Saravan border area near Pakistan on February 22, although the number of dead may be higher.

    In the wake of the killings, there have been reports of armed men attacking Iranian government buildings and security forces near the border, prompting a harsh crackdown.

    In Karachi, the protesters demanded of the Iranian government stop using violence against smugglers and protesters who have few other means of earning a living in the poverty-stricken region.

    They also demanded compensation for those who have been killed and injured.

    Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran’s poorest provinces, is a volatile area where drug smugglers and militant groups operate along a porous border with Pakistan, which also faces an ethnic Baluch separatist insurgency and a brutal state crackdown that has killed thousands of people since 2004.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pakistan’s Baluchis Protest Iranian Treatment Of Ethnic Brethren After Border Shootings

    Dozens of ethnic Baluch rights activists have staged a protest in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi to condemn the killing of their ethnic brethren by Iranian border guards last month.

    The protest comes amid reports of violent unrest and Internet blackouts in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province triggered after security forces killed cross-border fuel smugglers.

    Human Rights Watch last month said at least 10 people were killed at the Saravan border area near Pakistan on February 22, although the number of dead may be higher.

    In the wake of the killings, there have been reports of armed men attacking Iranian government buildings and security forces near the border, prompting a harsh crackdown.

    In Karachi, the protesters demanded of the Iranian government stop using violence against smugglers and protesters who have few other means of earning a living in the poverty-stricken region.

    They also demanded compensation for those who have been killed and injured.

    Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran’s poorest provinces, is a volatile area where drug smugglers and militant groups operate along a porous border with Pakistan, which also faces an ethnic Baluch separatist insurgency and a brutal state crackdown that has killed thousands of people since 2004.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Rockets Hit Iraq Air Base Hosting U.S. Troops Ahead Of Papal Visit

    The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq says at least 10 rockets have been fired at a military base that hosts American and other coalition troops.

    The missiles struck the Ain Al-Asad Air Base in the western province of Anbar at 7:20 a.m. local time on March 3, spokesman Colonel Wayne Marotto said.

    The Iraqi military said the attack did not cause significant losses and that security forces had found the launch pad used in the incident.

    AFP quoted Western security sources as saying the rockets were Iranian-made Arash models.

    “One civilian contractor died of a heart attack during the attack,” a high-level security source told the news agency, adding that he could not confirm the contractor’s nationality.

    The Ain Al-Assad base hosts Iraqi forces, as well as troops from the U.S.-led coalition helping Iraq fight the Islamic State extremist group.

    The attack comes after a February 16 rocket salvo on a military base in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

    It also comes two days before Pope Francis is due to travel to Iraq despite the deteriorating security situation in some parts of the country.

    The leader of the Roman Catholic Church said on March 3 that he would make the three-day trip — the first-ever papal visit to Iraq — because “the Iraqi people are waiting for us.”

    “One cannot disappoint a people for the second time,” Francis said, referring to Pope John Paul II’s aborted plans to visit the country in 2000.

    Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria

    Every power worth its portion of salt in the Levant these days seems to be doing it.  On February 25, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria.  The premise for the attacks was implausible.  “These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq,” claimed Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “and to ongoing threats to those personnel.”

    More specifically, the strikes were in retaliation for rocket attacks in northern Iraq on the airport of Erbil that left a Filipino contractor working for the US military dead and six others injured, including a Louisiana National Guard soldier.  The targets in Syria were facilities used by Iranian-backed militia groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada.  According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attack left up to 22 people dead.

    The Biden administration has resorted to tactics long embraced by US presidents.  To be noticed, you need to bomb a country.  The measure, more a sign of raging impotence than stark virility, is always larded with jargon and bureaucratic platitudes.  “We said a number of times that we will respond on our timeline,” explained Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reporters keeping him company on a flight from California to Washington.  “We wanted to be sure of the connectivity and we wanted to be sure about the right targets.”  He was convinced “that the target was being used by the same Shia militants that conducted the [February 15] strikes.”

    Seven 500-pound bombs were used in the operation, though Stars and Stripes initially reported that “the type of weaponry used” was not disclosed.  The Pentagon had been keen to push a larger range of targets, but Biden was being presidential in restraint, approving, as the New York Times puts it, “a less aggressive option”.

    Kirby insisted the operation had been the sensible outcome of discussions with coalition partners.  “The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel.”  Defying credulity, the spokesman suggested that the US had “acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”

    Congress, the people’s chamber, was left out in the cold, though not for the first time by this administration.  Press outlets such as the Associated Press had ingested the fable that this was “the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration”.  But on January 27, the New York Times reported that the US Air Force had killed 10 ISIS members near Kirkuk in Iraq, including Abu Yasser al-Issawi.  A spokesman for the US-led coalition against Islamic State, Colonel Wayne Marotto, was satisfied with the bloody result.  “Yasser’s death is another significant blow to Daesh resurgence efforts in Iraq.”

    Such casual non-reporting, even during the incipient stages of a presidential administration, should have received a tongue-lashing.  Instead, there were a good number in the press stable who could only see the figure of the previous White House occupant, and feel relief that Biden was being so sensible.

    The Daily Beast suggested, with little substance, that the airstrike lacked the recklessness of the Trump administration.  Bobby Ghosh for Bloomberg, also falling into error in claiming this as Biden’s “first military attack”, was convinced that the actions were sound in letting those naughty Iranians “know” that the president “wasn’t bluffing.”  Iran and its “proxies were caught completely off guard.  They had been lulled into a sense of impunity by the administration’s early reticence in attributing blame for the attacks in Iraq and the White House’s determination not to ‘lash out and risk and escalation’.”

    Ghosh even goes so far as to laud the February 25 military strike as a necessary antidote against paralysing and unproductive diplomacy, ignoring accounts suggesting that Iran has encouraged Shiite militias in Iraq to refrain from excessive violence.  The US, including its allies, Britain, France, and Germany, had initially embraced a posture of “studied calm”.  Thankfully, that period of studiousness was over: “Biden has now demonstrated that he can walk and chew gum at the same time.”  And so, a vigilante act in violation of a State’s sovereignty comes to be praised.

    Not all have sanitised the act as a necessitous one.  Mary Ellen O’Connell of Notre Dame Law School thought that the strike failed to meet the necessary “elements” of a necessary use of force.  “The United Nations Charter makes absolutely clear that the use of military force on the territory of a foreign sovereign state is lawful only in response to an armed attack on the defending state for which the target is responsible.”

    Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was also troubled by the strike, worried that it put “our country on the path of continuing the Forever War instead of ending it.  This is the same path we’ve been on for almost two decades.”  Maine Democrat Senator Tim Kaine turned to the role of Congressional power. “Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary military circumstances.”

    Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar also pointed out that the current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had herself criticised President Donald Trump in 2017 for authorising a strike in retaliation of a chemical weapons attack.  “Assad is a brutal dictator,” tweeted Psaki at the time.  “But Syria is a sovereign country.”  Another sentiment forgotten in an increasingly amnesiac administration.

    Unfortunately, war apologists tend to find ongoing justifications in the elastic imperial provisions found in the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).  The 2001 AUMF was focused on perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.  The 2002 AUMF was directed to Iraq.

    Their sheer broadness has irked the sole person to vote against them.  “Nearly 20 years after I cast the sole ‘no’ vote on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF),” stated Californian House Representative Barbara Lee, “both the 2002 and 2002 AUMFs have been employed by three successive Presidents to wage war in ways well beyond the scope that Congress initially intended.”

    Biden does not even go so far as to cite such authorities, instead stating that the strikes were “consistent with my responsibility to protect United States citizens both home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.”

    Overly stretching his argument, Biden opined that his action was also consistent with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, acknowledging a state’s right to self-defense.  Not even Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama or Trump had bothered to push the international law line for such thuggish intervention, confining themselves to domestic sources of power.  But such virtue signalling did evoke some praise, notably from former legal adviser to the State Department, John B. Bellinger III.  The President’s inaugural war powers report was “a model of war powers practice and transparency.”

    Congress has made a few efforts in recent years to restrain the Commander-in-Chief for overzealous commitments.  The War Powers Resolution sought to end US participation in the Yemen conflict.  In 2020, members of Congress resolved to modestly shackle Trump from commencing a full blown war with Iran.  But the February 25 attacks show that the misuse and abuse of US military might by the imperial executive remains a dangerous orthodoxy, and one that continues to have its defenders.

    The post Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • If Biden Wants to Protect Troops, He Should Bring Them Home — Not Bomb Syria

    President Joe Biden walks alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Miller and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as he arrives at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 2021.

    The United States has bombed Syria more than 20,000 times over the past eight years, so last week’s attack on a border post in northeastern Syria, which killed 22 militiamen and apparently no civilians, may not seem surprising to some. However, taking place barely five weeks into his presidency, it is nevertheless disappointing that President Biden appears determined to continue the failed policies of his predecessors, regardless of their illegality.

    Some members of Congress challenged Biden’s authority to order such an attack, which contravenes both international law and the U.S. Constitution. Virginia senator and 2016 vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine stated that Americans deserved to know the “rationale” for the strikes and the “legal justification without coming to Congress,” noting that, “Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional, absent extraordinary circumstances.”

    Similarly, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) tweeted: “We ran on ending wars, not escalating conflicts in the Middle East. Our foreign policy needs to be rooted in diplomacy & the rule of law, not retaliatory airstrikes without Congressional authorization.”

    Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) condemned the strike as an attack on “a sovereign nation without authority.”

    However, Biden found strong support from such right-wing Senate stalwarts as Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).

    The targeting of the Iraqi Shia militia on the Syrian side of the border, several hundred miles away from U.S. forces, seemed to be more of a political decision than a strategic one. Since these militias operating inside Iraq are nominally part of the Iraqi armed forces, bombing them inside the country would have created a huge popular backlash. By contrast, Washington cares little for what Syrians think.

    The Biden administration charges that these militiamen were smuggling Iranian arms from Syria. However, this claim doesn’t make much sense, since such weaponry could come directly from Iran, which shares a much longer border with Iraq.

    It’s true that these militias are proxies for Iran (unlike the Yemeni Houthis, where the alleged Iranian role is exaggerated, or the opposition movement in Bahrain, where the actual Iranian role is quite minimal). They place their allegiance to the ayatollahs above Iraqi national interests. In Syria, in addition to fighting Salafist extremists, they have also assisted the brutal repression of other opponents of the Assad regime and have participated in war crimes. Similarly, in Iraq, they have engaged in atrocities against members of the Sunni minority and have murdered peaceful pro-democracy activists protesting the corrupt U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad.

    Legally, however, these militias are present in Iraq and Syria at the request of those countries’ governments. By contrast, the Syrian government has demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and the Iraqi parliament has called for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

    Ironically, despite reports of atrocities, a number of these Shia groups were initially encouraged by the United States to fight Baathists, other nationalists, and various Sunni groups fighting the U.S. forces and the U.S.-installed government in Baghdad during the height of the counterinsurgency war which soon followed the U.S. invasion. More recently, the U.S allied with them in the fight against ISIS (also known as Daesh). Following the defeat of ISIS, now limited to a handful of scattered units without control over any Iraqi territory, it was presumed U.S. troops would leave, However, 3,500 American soldiers remain in northern Iraq, and U.S. planes and missiles are poised to strike at any time.

    The United States began bombing these ancient lands 30 years ago, at the start of the Gulf War. The U.S. has continued bombing Iraq and neighboring countries on and off ever since. Each time, we have been told that doing so would protect American interests and help bring peace and stability to the region. Yet each period of airstrikes has brought more suffering, more violence, less security and greater instability.

    In Syria, Washington keeps changing targets: Initially, the U.S. targeted facilities belonging to the Syrian government; next, the U.S. bombed ISIS forces, by far the most common target; now, the U.S. is going after Shia militia. For Washington, it seems that whatever the problem is, the answer is bombing.

    The Biden administration defends the ongoing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq as necessary to fight the remnants of ISIS as well as the Shia militia. What bears noting is that both ISIS and the Shia militia were a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion, occupation and counterinsurgency war in Iraq. Under the old regime, there were virtually no armed Salafist and pro-Iranian groups.

    Indeed, back in 2002, a number of prominent Middle East scholars (including myself) had wanted to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prior to the Iraq War authorization to warn that a U.S. invasion could result in the rise of just such extremist groups. However, then-chairman Joe Biden — a strong supporter of the invasion — blocked our testimony.

    Even some opponents of the initial decision to invade now argue that the United States should nevertheless keep troops in Iraq to help “clean up” the messes we created. However, we must seriously ask what difference our troops are making in curbing extremist violence, given the risk of provoking a wider war as a result of their continued presence. Indeed, such hostilities brought us extremely close to an all-out war with Iran in January of last year.

    As we have seen from Lebanon to Somalia, other hostile countries filled with competing armed groups, the major purpose of maintaining a U.S. troop presence appears to have evolved into simply protecting themselves from attack. At such a point, it begs the question of: Why the hell are U.S. troops still there?

    Instead of bombing a neighboring country, if Biden is really concerned about protecting our troops, why not just bring them home?

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Christiane Amanpour, Jeff Kaufman and Jason Rezaian talk about the film Nasrin

    Washington Post Live on 2 March 2021 published a fascinating insight into the making of the film Nasrin [see https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/12/16/new-film-nasrin-about-the-iranian-human-rights-defender/]. Nasrin Sotoudeh is one of the most recognised human rights laureates in the Digest with 7 major awards: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/848465FE-22DF-4CAF-928F-7931B2D7A499

    The transcript is verbatim and long, so you would have to follow the link at the bottom of the post to get the full story. Here just some excerpts:

    MR. IGNATIUS: So, we have with us Christiane Amanpour, the international anchor for CNN; Jeff Kaufman, who is the producer and writer of this film; and my colleague, Jason Rezaian, who is our Tehran bureau chief.

    MR. IGNATIUS: If I could ask Jeff to begin by telling us a little bit about Nasrin, her career as a human rights activist, how you came to make this documentary about her.AD

    When we first reached out to Nasrin about doing a documentary about her life and work, there was a trust-building process through friends, and one of the things that she shared with us was a strong interest in having her story really be a story about so many others. We had known Nasrin’s work for years, and one of the things I loved about Nasrin is she is a Muslim woman who often reached out on behalf of other faiths and other backgrounds to support people in need. And I thought that that was such a powerful message for our own country as well. As a matter of fact, I think everything about Nasrin is a powerful message for democracy and mutual respect in this country and around the world.

    So, when Nasrin said yes, we could do a film with her, she worked out sort of a complicated process. I couldn’t go to Iran because of past work I had done, and it wouldn’t have made sense to have a big American crew show up in Tehran anyway. So, we worked with these really remarkable, talented, and courageous individuals who followed Nasrin around from both working with at-risk clients, to protests, to art galleries, theaters, bookstores. It was a thrill for us to sort of be there with them, and we are so happy to be able to bring her story to you.

    MR. IGNATIUS: Jeff, if I could ask, one of the most powerful things about this film is the footage from inside Iran. Did the people who were shooting this footage for you run personal risks? And I worry that some of them may have, themselves, been subject to arrest or difficulties with the authorities.

    MR. KAUFMAN: No one has been subject to arrest or difficulties with authorities because of the film itself, but because they are also activists and believed that their work can push society forward, they have put themselves, on occasion, at risk for that.

    We–Marcia and I, so often throughout the production of this film, would say to Nasrin and her husband, Reza, you know, we will stop at any moment if you feel this puts you or anyone else at risk. That was always our largest concern. And we did the whole film in secret, didn’t even fundraise in public, because we wanted to keep as much privacy for them as possible during the process. And even when we were editing, we said to Nasrin and Reza, “Hey, we will stop now if you think this is a concern.” But they felt–you know, Nasrin has this wonderful quote. She says, “Our children must not inherit silence.” And she will say over and over again, as do other human rights advocates, that repressive governments, they use pressure and force and intimidation to make people quiet, and Nasrin refuses to have her voice muffled. So, we are proud that the film can help amplify that voice.

    I just want to add that I got a message from Nasrin’s husband this morning. I had asked if there was a message from Nasrin. And he said two things. He said that the cell she is in now, just so you know, is an 8-foot by 13-foot cell that has 12 beds in it, bunkbeds. And it is a low ceiling, there’s no windows, and very little access to clean water. So that is the conditions that she is living in right now.

    MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask Christiane. Christiane, I think you have interviewed Nasrin in the past and you have interviewed many other courageous men and women who have taken these risks to stand up for human rights. What it is that motivates a special person like Nasrin, in your experience?

    MS. AMANPOUR: Well, you know, I’m shaking my head because I am just so horrified at what her husband, Reza, has described as her latest terrible conditions inside a political prison, where she is not a political person. And I think this is what also really, for me, has been emblematic of all the human rights defenders who I have interviewed around the world. I haven’t had the pleasure of interviewing Nasrin, but I have had the pleasure of interviewing Shirin Ebadi, who as you remember also was a human rights lawyer in Iran. She also cannot go back to Iran. She was the first Iranian to win the Nobel Prize, and I covered the stories that she, and the cases that got her that Nobel Prize. And I know the risk that comes with it, and I know that they are not strictly speaking party political.AD

    And I think this is one thing that came across in Jeff and Marcia’s film, and we talked about it when we did the interview. She is not being political. She is not talking about tearing down the regime or wanting any kind of regime change. She is just talking about basic, fundamental rights for the people of Iran, mostly in her case women and children, but some young men as well, under their own constitution. It is not like she is going out saying and taking cases to court that she is trying to try under Western law or whatever. It is under their own constitution. And this is what makes everybody, and certainly me, so angry that this is what has happened to her, this incredible woman.

    I think what makes them take those risks, David, is that they truly believe in human rights. They truly believe in the dignity of each and every individual, and–this is important–they truly believe and want to hold their own governments accountable to the promises that those governments made. As I said, Nasrin defends cases based on the Islamic law in Iran, of the Islamic Republic, based on the promises that that regime made to the people 40 years ago, when the revolution started. And you can see that they have completely reneged on those promises, and that is why people like her are so utterly important.

    MR. IGNATIUS: Jason, you were imprisoned in the same prison where Nasrin is being held today. As Christiane said, the reports from her husband, Reza, her conditions are horrifying. You have been there. Maybe you could just describe for our audience a little bit of what that prison is like, what it feels like to be there, the feelings that go through the many, many dozens, hundreds of people who are being held there unjustly.

    MR. REZAIAN: Well, thank you for the question, David, and for the opportunity, and thank you to all three of you for taking part in this, and for David and Christiane for supporting me and my family while I was locked up in Evin Prison, which is a big reason why this film has been so important for me to get involved with.

    I think that the reality of the political prisoner system in Iran, Christiane makes a very important point. I wasn’t a political prisoner, either. I was just a reporter doing my job. But our arrests and our detentions are very much politicized events.AD

    The intention of our jailers is to really break us, to make us hopeless, to disassociate ourselves from society, and in Nasrin’s case, they have failed miserably. I did have the opportunity to interview Nasrin once, in 2013. It was a couple of months after Hassan Rouhani was elected president, and there was the hope that there would be more moderate attitude from the leadership in Tehran.

    And ahead of his first trip to the UNGA, they released Nasrin, and my wife and I, who was working for Bloomberg at the time, visited Reza and Nasrin and their children in their home, on that very first day that she was released. And although she was relieved and happy to be back with her family, she made it clear that she was not at all satisfied that she had been released, because so many of her colleagues and friends and other innocent people were being held in prison.

    And I think for someone like her, I imagine one of the most frustrating things about her experience would be that she understands the laws that she is trying to uphold much better than the people who are implementing them and using them against her, and I think that for that reason she is an incredible example and hero to so many.AD

    And I just think that, you know, I want everybody to understand that Iranian woman are the backbone of that country. There is no doubt about it. They really, really are. Unlike women in many parts of the Islamic world, the Iranian women have been very strong, very mobilized, very much part of society, as you can see. Nasrin and Shirin and the others don’t just emerge out of nowhere. It is a long, long tradition. And I think it is great that Jeff is showing this, and I think it’s great that the world needs to understand it. And if I might just say also, you know, the first female to win a field mathematics medal was an Iranian-American.

    So, there is a huge amount of success by Iranian women around the world, and that is why I think it is really important to show what Iranian woman are trying to do for their own girls and women and for their rights in their own country, and what an incredible hard, hard job it is, and how much personal risk they take.

    And I also want to pay tribute to the journalists, as Jeff said. At the beginning of the film, he said, “I pay tribute to all the camera people and the crews, who I cannot name.” He explained why. But it is really important to understand that this story is being told despite the massive crackdown, and I think that is fantastic….

    MR. IGNATIUS: So, Jeff, I want to ask you about one of the really moving parts of this film, and that is the footage of Nasrin’s husband, Reza, who has stood by her unflinchingly, supporting her, believing in her. He seems like a remarkable person. The fact that you were in touch with him today is especially moving to me. Tell our audience a little bit about Reza, Nasrin’s husband, and why he has been such a supporter of his wife’s cause and commitment.

    MR. KAUFMAN: I will. I am so glad you asked. One of the reasons we wanted to do this film, besides profiling Nasrin, was because we wanted to fight back on the demonization of Iran and the demonization of Islam, that is being used too often for political purposes in this country, and no one has a better way to do that than Nasrin and Reza.

    I think this film is an example that we can overcome obstacles from great distances, and even technological imitations, but sometimes it’s difficult.

    I asked Reza, Nasrin’s husband, if Nasrin had any message to share for this conversation, and I got a note from him this morning. These are Nasrin’s words through Reza. Nasrin said, “What occupies my thoughts the most is those who are on Death Row here in Gharchak Prison. Right now, there are 17 women on Death Row facing imminent execution.” And she closed by saying, “I am hoping for an end to the death penalty across the world.”

    So, you know, there’s Nasrin facing enormous pressure and difficulties, but as usual she is not thinking about herself. She is thinking about others and she is trying to push her country forward.

    Jason, let me ask you, as someone who was imprisoned unjustly, whose cause was taken up by your newspaper and by many, many thousands of Americans, what difference you think that public pressure from the United States, from world public opinion, made in your ultimately being released?

    MR. REZAIAN: So, I think it made a huge amount of difference in my case. And oftentimes when we are talking about foreign nationals being held hostage in Iran, usually they are dual nationals, and, you know, Iran tries to suppress this information of our second nationality as much as possible. For me, it became clear, as my case was being brought up more and more, my treatment by my captors got better and better. And I realized, at some point during the process of going on trial in Iran’s Revolutionary Court, I don’t think I need to tell anybody that’s in the conversation with me but maybe some folks at home listening should know that if you ever find yourself on trial in a court with “revolutionary” in its name, you don’t have a good chance of winning.

    But I realized that my real case was in the case of international public opinion, and the more people who kind of pushed for my release, the more involved the U.S. government got, and so much of that started, first and foremost, with my family, very early on with my imprisonment. My mom went on Christiane’s show and talked about my situation. And our colleagues at The Washington Post, who didn’t let a day go by without raising my case.

    So now, you know, when I’m contacted by the families of people who are being held in prison in Iran, unfortunately there are five Americans being held at this very moment, and I’m in touch with every one of those families, I tell each one of them, make as much noise as you possibly can, and when your loved one gets out, they will thank you for it. And time and again, when people have been released, that I have written about, they contact me and say, “Thank you for making sure that I wasn’t forgotten about.” And my attitude is, what kind of hypocrite would I be if, after getting all the support that I got, that I didn’t pay it forward by helping people who have had their voices silenced?

    MR. IGNATIUS: I hope we made a little noise today on Nasrin’s behalf. We are unfortunately out of time, but I want to close by thanking our guests, Christiane Amanpour from CNN, Jeff Kaufman, in particular, who made this extraordinary film, and my colleague, Jason Rezaian. You can watch “NASRIN,” this powerful, upsetting film, in the USA and Canada now on demand. International audiences can stream the film starting in a week, on March 8….

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2021/03/01/transcript-nasrin-conversation-with-christiane-amanpour-jeff-kaufman-jason-rezaian/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Biden Jeopardizes Nuclear Talks With Iran by Bombing Militias in Syria

    Biden Jeopardizes Nuclear Talks With Iran by Bombing Militias in Syria

    The Biden administration is facing intense criticism from U.S. progressives after carrying out airstrikes on eastern Syria said to be targeting Iranian-backed militia groups. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports at least 22 people died. The Pentagon called the assault a response to recent rocket attacks on U.S. forces in northern Iraq. Those attacks came more than a year after Iraq’s parliament voted to expel U.S. troops — an order ignored by both the Trump and Biden administrations. “Very quickly the Biden administration is falling into the same old patterns of before, of responding to this and that without having a clear strategy that actually would extract us from these various conflicts and actually pave the way for much more productive diplomacy,” says Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. We also speak with California Congressmember Ro Khanna, who says President Biden’s recent airstrikes in Syria lacked legal authority. “This is not an ambiguous case. The administration’s actions are clearly illegal under the United States’ law and under international law,” says Khanna.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to Syria. The Biden administration is facing intense criticism after U.S. Air Force fighter jets bombed eastern Syria Thursday. The Pentagon claimed the strikes targeted Iranian-backed militant groups. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports at least 22 people died.

    Biden ordered the airstrike on the same day he spoke with the king of Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch rival in the region. According to the White House, Biden committed on the call to helping Saudi Arabia defend its territory from Iranian-aligned groups.

    The Pentagon called the assault a response to recent rocket attacks on U.S. forces in northern Iraq. Those attacks came more than a year after Iraq’s parliament voted to expel U.S. troops — an order that’s been ignored by both Trump and Biden.

    On Friday, Biden was asked about the airstrikes.

    REPORTER: Mr. President, what message were you sending to Iran with your first military action?

    PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You can’t get — you can’t act with impunity. Be careful.

    AMY GOODMAN: Still with us is Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California. We’re also joined by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the new think tank, the Quincy Institute. His most recent book is titled Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy.

    Trita Parsi, can you respond to the attack, the U.S. bombing of Syria?

    TRITA PARSI: Yes. The Biden administration, I think President Biden himself specifically, felt strongly that because of the attacks in Iraq earlier, that a response was warranted. But what I think many people are fearing is that very quickly the Biden administration is falling into the same old patterns of before, of responding to this and that without having a clear strategy that actually would extract us from these various conflicts and actually pave the way for much more productive diplomacy.

    The idea that this actually would help us with the diplomacy with Iran, for instance, seems really difficult to understand, mindful of the fact that we are now in a situation in which the Iranians have rejected the offer from the Europeans to come to the talks precisely because of these attacks, because of other measures that have been done, which means that these first two months of the Biden administration, that could have been used for really productively laying the groundwork for new talks, seem to instead have been used to just fall into the old patterns. And this is quite concerning, because, at the end of the day, reviving the JCPOA is another promise that the Biden administration gave during the campaign and said that it would pursue diligently.

    AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised by these attacks? And explain exactly where they took place in Syria.

    TRITA PARSI: Took place in eastern part of Syria. These are various groups that the Biden administration describes as pro-Iranian, certainly seem to have a degree of support from Iran. Whether they’re under the command of Iran is not as clear.

    And at the end of the day, you know, the fact that this was said the same day as the Biden administration decided not to pursue sanctions on MBS, again, seems to suggest that the Biden administration is more concerned at this point of making sure that it doesn’t upset certain allies in the region, doesn’t pay a political cost at home, for pursuing compromise with Iran over the nuclear issue, which I think sends a very, very concerning message, because, at the end of the day, in order for the JCPOA to be revived, both the Iranians and the U.S. side have to give compromises, and they’re going to have to pay a political price at home. The Obama administration did so. The Rouhani government did so. There is no escaping from that. But if at already this stage we’re signaling that we’re not ready to do so and we’re too concerned about those political costs, that really sets a question mark as to whether the political will exists for seeing these negotiations on the nuclear program come to completion.

    AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Ro Khanna, your response to the bombing of Syria?

    REP. RO KHANNA: Well, this is not an ambiguous case. The administration’s actions are clearly illegal under the United States’ law and under international law. We do not have any authorization of military force to go into Syria. In fact, President Obama tried and then backed off in getting that authorization. We do not have any authorization of military force to attack Iran. The idea that this was an imminent attack on U.S. self-defense is simply not borne out by the facts. And under international law, for self-defense, we have to go to the United Nations. The administration did not do that. So, my concern is that this president ran on ending endless wars, ran on respecting the United States’ and international law, and these actions clearly violate both.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, Trita Parsi, if you could talk about the European Union, Iran rejecting an offer by the EU to hold direct talks with the U.S. on the nuclear deal after the U.S. attack on eastern Syria? The significance of this?

    TRITA PARSI: It’s a very unfortunate decision by the Iranians. I mean, I think it would have much better if they accepted this invitation.

    But at the same time, it is not a surprising decision. In fact, one of President Biden’s own senior officials, Wendy Sherman, who is now going to be confirmed next week or having hearings to become the deputy secretary, said — she was a lead negotiator under Obama for the nuclear deal — said, in 2019, that the idea that the Iranians would come to the table and talk to the United States without some sanctions relief, meaning that the United States would continue to violate the JCPOA and yet the Iranians would come, was extremely unlikely. It’s not clear to me why the Biden administration has chosen a strategy that some of its own senior officials earlier on had deemed to be extremely unlikely to succeed.

    So it’s not surprising. It’s very negative. And now we’re in a worse situation. There’s going to be a fight potentially today at the IAEA Board of Governors about whether to censure Iran for some of its reductions of obligations under the JCPOA, while the United States continues to completely disregard all of its obligations.

    So, these are all the type of wrong measures and steps that should be taken at this stage of diplomacy. At this stage, there should be goodwill measures, there should be positive signals of intent, in order to create the best possible circumstances for diplomacy to start. Now we’re having the opposite.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain, Trita, Iran’s demand that the U.S. end sanctions before returning to negotiations? Explain what the U.S. sanctions against Iran are and how they’re affecting the people there.

    TRITA PARSI: Well, the Iranians have now suffered tremendously under sanctions that President Trump put in place in 2018 and 2019 and onwards. These have been devastating to the Iranian economy. In fact, President Trump intensified those once COVID broke out, seeing the pandemic as a way to further enhance the impact of sanctions. And this means including blocking Iran’s ability to get IMF loans for the purpose of fighting the virus. So, the Iranians have suffered tremendously under these sanctions for the last couple of years.

    I think part of the reason why they’re fearful of going to the table without getting some indication — not all sanctions need to be lifted, from their perspective, but some indication that the U.S. is going to lift sanctions, is that, otherwise, they fear that the talks may not succeed, they will get blamed for the breakdown of talks, they will be seen as being at fault, even though the United States, under Biden, has not changed Trump’s position of maximum pressure. So the U.S. doesn’t even come back into the deal but manages to shift the blame onto the Iranians. I think this is part of their fear.

    I think, at the same time, demanding that all sanctions be lifted, which they did earlier on, is completely unrealistic. What is happening right now is that the Iranian demand is that the U.S. side promises that once the U.S. is inside of the deal, it will lift sanctions. But it’s also very difficult to see how the U.S. could reject that, mindful of the fact that once it is inside the deal, it has to lift the sanctions; otherwise, it will be in complete violation of the deal.

    AMY GOODMAN: Ro Khanna, if you can talk about the timing of this attack? All week, the buildup to the release of the report on the murder of Khashoggi and the clear connection to MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, so all of that was building. Then President Biden says he’s speaking with the king, and they talk about defending Saudi’s borders. And just before the release of the report, they bomb Syria, and they talk about attacking Iranian-backed militias, the major enemy of Saudi Arabia. Can you respond to this, this idea that they are releasing a report that proves the murder of Khashoggi is the crown — behind it is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, but then they do Saudi Arabia’s bidding?

    REP. RO KHANNA: Well, Amy, this is why the Constitution says that before a president takes these actions, they have to come to Congress, because those issues would have been debated in Congress. Questions would have been asked: Is this in any way in response to conversations with the Saudis? Why do we need to take this action now? Why is it that suddenly we feel that there’s an imminent threat? Is this action going to be escalatory? They’re saying that the action is deescalatory. I haven’t understood how. How is a military strike deescalatory?

    And the main point here is that the maximum pressure campaign has not worked. Iran’s enriched uranium was about 102 kilograms when President Trump took office. It is 2.5 tons now. It is 25 times more. So, repeating this continued strategy not only has implications for our staying entangled in the Middle East, it actually has not worked in the objectives. And the challenge is a naive view in the United States that somehow our actions are going to force regime change in Iran. If anything, they’re entrenching the regime. We need a totally different approach. And I actually think the American people want a totally different approach.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Trita Parsi, thank you for joining us, with the Quincy Institute. I also want to thank Ro Khanna and ask you to stay with us, because a lot has happened in the House, where you’re a member from California. We want to ask you about the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. The House has included the $15-an-hour minimum wage, but it will be stripped out. Get your response to that and other issues. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Venezuela And Iran Deepen Alliance With ‘Perfect Trips’

    The Venezuelan government is shipping jet fuel to Iran as part of cooperation to tackle its gasoline and diesel shortages in the South American country.

    According to Reuters, state oil company PDVSA and its Iranian counterpart NIOC have agreed to a swap deal that sees Tehran ship gasoline to Caracas, with the vessels carrying jet fuel in the opposite direction. Venezuela currently has a glut of the latter, with air traffic all but ground to a halt during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The agreement is described as a “perfect trip” in the maritime industry as the tankers travel fully loaded in both directions.

    Oil export monitor Tanker Trackers reported that Iran’s handysize Forest tanker docked in El Palito refinery on February 20 and unloaded 44 million liters of gasoline, approximately 277,000 barrels.

    The post Venezuela And Iran Deepen Alliance With ‘Perfect Trips’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not The Diplomacy He Promised

    The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly-formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing “Iranian-backed militias” who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-a-vis Iran, why hasn’t the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts?

    According to the Pentagon, the U.S. strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member. Accounts of the number killed in the U.S. attack vary from one to 22. 

    The post Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not The Diplomacy He Promised appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel’s Netanyahu Blames Iran For Explosion On Cargo Ship

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of carrying out an attack on an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman last week.

    “This was indeed an operation by Iran. That is clear,” Netanyahu told state radio Kan in an interview aired on March 1.

    “Iran is the greatest enemy of Israel. I am determined to halt it. We are hitting it in the entire region,” Netanyahu said in response to a question about whether Israel would retaliate.

    The MV Helios Ray, a vehicle carrier, was traveling from the Saudi port of Dammam to Singapore when it was struck by an explosion on February 25.

    Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on February 27 that Iran was likely behind the explosion that hit the vessel above the water line.

    “The location of the ship in relative close proximity to Iran raises the belief that Iran was responsible, but it must still be verified,” Gantz told Kan television. “Right now, at an initial assessment level, given the proximity and the context, that is my assessment.”

    Iran blamed Israel for the assassination of its top nuclear scientist in November and vowed to retaliate.

    Gantz said it was known Iran was looking to target Israeli infrastructure and citizens.

    The explosion did not cause any casualties but left two 1.5-meter-diameter holes in the side of the vessel, the ship’s Israeli owner, Rami Ungar, told Kan on February 26.

    The Bahamian-flagged vessel, registered in the Isle of Man, is currently docked in Dubai, where an Israeli team has been sent to investigate.

    With reporting by AP and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Rules Out Informal Meeting With U.S., EU On Reviving Nuclear Deal

    Iran has rejected holding an informal meeting with the United States and European powers to discuss ways to revive its 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, insisting that Washington must lift all its unilateral sanctions.

    “Considering the recent actions and statements by the United States and three European powers, Iran does not consider this the time to hold an informal meeting with these countries, which was proposed by the EU foreign-policy chief,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said, according to Iranian media.

    Iranian officials have said Tehran was studying a proposal by European Union foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell to hold an informal meeting with other parties to the nuclear pact and the United States, which reimposed sanctions on Iran after former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018.

    Iran and the new U.S. administration of President Joe Biden have been at odds over who should take the first step to revive the accord. Iran insists the United States must first lift sanctions while Washington says Tehran must first return to compliance with the deal, which it has been progressively breaching.

    Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Turkey Summons Iranian Envoy To Protest Iraq Dispute

    Turkey has summoned Iran’s envoy to Ankara to demand support in the fight against “terrorism,” escalating a dispute over Turkey’s presence in Iraq.

    The state news agency Anadolu reported that Turkey’s Foreign Ministry summoned Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Farazmand on February 28.

    Anadolu quoted Turkish officials as telling Farazmand that Ankara expected Iran to be on its side in the “fight against terrorism.”

    Iran and Turkey are rivals in some parts of the Middle East and Central Asia.

    But both have carried out operations against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq.

    Earlier in February, Turkey accused Kurdish militants of killing 12 Turks and an Iraqi who were being held hostage in northern Iraq,

    The incident prompted Iranian envoy to Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, to warn that Turkish forces should not “pose a threat or violate Iraqi soil.”

    “We do not accept at all, be it Turkey or any other country, to intervene in Iraq militarily or advance or have a military presence in Iraq,” Masjedi said on February 28.

    But Turkey’s Baghdad envoy, Fatih Yildiz, quickly responded, writing on Twitter that Iran’s ambassador was “the last person to lecture Turkey” about respecting Iraq’s borders.

    Based on reporting by Anadolu and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israel Says Iran Likely Behind Explosion On Israeli-Owned Cargo Ship

    Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on February 27 that Iran is likely behind an explosion earlier this week on an Israeli-owned cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman.

    The MV Helios Ray, a vehicle carrier, was traveling from the Saudi port of Dammam to Singapore when it was struck by an explosion on February 25.

    “The location of the ship in relative close proximity to Iran raises the belief that Iran was responsible, but it must still be verified,” Gantz told Israeli state television Kan.

    “Right now, at an initial assessment level, given the proximity and the context that is my assessment,” Gantz said.

    Iran blamed Israel for the assassination of its top nuclear scientist in November and vowed to retaliate.

    Gantz said it was known Iran was looking to target Israeli infrastructure and citizens.

    Kan television reported later that top Israeli defense and political leaders on February 28 would discuss a response to the apparent attack, citing officials as saying it “crossed a red line.”

    The explosion did not cause any casualties but left two 1.5-meter diameter holes in the side of the vessel, the ship’s Israeli owner, Rami Ungar, told Kan on February 26.

    Tracking data on Marinetraffic.com showed the Bahamas-flagged vessel currently docked in Dubai. The ship is registered in the British Isle of Man.

    Dryad Global, a British maritime security company, suggested a “realistic probability” Iran was behind the explosion.

    “Such activity would be commensurate with current tensions and Iranian intent to exercise forceful diplomacy through military means within its immediate area of interest,” Dryad said.

    The explosion occurred around the same time as U.S. air strikes on February 25 targeted Iran-backed militia groups in eastern Syria believed to be behind a spate of recent rocket attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq.

    It also comes amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran over the fate of the 2015 nuclear deal.

    President Joe Biden says his new administration is open to diplomacy with Tehran after his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord and reimposed sanctions, prompting Iran to gradually breach its commitments.

    But the two sides remain locked in disagreement over which country must move first, with Iran wanting immediate sanctions relief and the United States demanding Iran first return to compliance with its nuclear commitments.

    Israel has been one of the most vocal opponents of the nuclear accord.

    Iran or its regional proxies are believed to be behind a number of attacks on shipping in the strategic Persian Gulf in recent years, including incidents involving two Saudi oil tankers in May 2019. Iran has denied carrying out those attacks.

    With reporting by AFP, dpa, Kan Television, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not the Diplomacy He Promised

    Photo: CODEPINK

    The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly-formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing “Iranian-backed militias” who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-a-vis Iran, why hasn’t the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts?

    According to the Pentagon, the U.S. strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member. Accounts of the number killed in the U.S. attack vary from one to 22.

    The Pentagon made the incredible claim that this action “aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq.” This was countered by the Syrian government, which condemned the illegal attack on its territory and said the strikes “will lead to consequences that will escalate the situation in the region.” The strike was also condemned by the governments of China and Russia. A member of Russia’s Federation Council warned that such escalations in the area could lead to “a massive conflict.”

    Ironically, Jen Psaki, now Biden’s White House spokesperson, questioned the lawfulness of attacking Syria in 2017, when it was the Trump administration doing the bombing. Back then she asked: “What is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.”

    The airstrikes were supposedly authorized by the 20-year-old, post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), legislation that Rep. Barbara Lee has been trying for years to repeal since it has been misused, according to the congresswoman, “to justify waging war in at least seven different countries, against a continuously expanding list of targetable adversaries.”

    The United States claims that its targeting of the militia in Syria was based on intelligence provided by the Iraqi government. Defense Secretary Austin told reporters: “We’re confident that target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strike [against U.S. and coalition forces].”

    But a report by Middle East Eye (MEE) suggests that Iran has strongly urged the militias it supports in Iraq to refrain from such attacks, or any warlike actions that could derail its sensitive diplomacy to bring the U.S. and Iran back into compliance with the 2015 international nuclear agreement or JCPOA.

    “None of our known factions carried out this attack,” a senior Iraqi militia commander told MEE. “The Iranian orders have not changed regarding attacking the American forces, and the Iranians are still keen to maintain calm with the Americans until they see how the new administration will act.”

    The inflammatory nature of this U.S. attack on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, who are an integral part of Iraq’s armed forces and have played a critical role in the war with ISIS, was implicitly acknowledged in the U.S. decision to attack them in Syria instead of in Iraq. Did Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, a pro-Western British-Iraqi, who is trying to rein in the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, deny permission for a U.S. attack on Iraqi soil?

    At Kadhimi’s request, NATO is increasing its presence from 500 troops to 4,000 (from Denmark, the U.K. and Turkey, not the U.S.) to train the Iraqi military and reduce its dependence on the Iranian-backed militias. But Kadhimi risks losing his job in an election this October if he alienates Iraq’s Shiite majority. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein is heading to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials over the weekend, and the world will be watching to see how Iraq and Iran will respond to the U.S. attack.

    Some analysts say the bombing may have been intended to strengthen the U.S. hand in its negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal (JCPOA). “The strike, the way I see it, was meant to set the tone with Tehran and dent its inflated confidence ahead of negotiations,” said Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official who is currently a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.

    But this attack will make it more difficult to resume negotiations with Iran. It comes at a delicate moment when the Europeans are trying to orchestrate a “compliance for compliance” maneuver to revive the JCPOA. This strike will make the diplomatic process more difficult, as it gives more power to the Iranian factions who oppose the deal and any negotiations with the United States.

    Showing bipartisan support for attacking sovereign nations, key Republicans on the foreign affairs committees such as Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Michael McCaul immediately welcomed the attacks. So did some Biden supporters, who crassly displayed their partiality to bombing by a Democratic president.

    Party organizer Amy Siskind tweeted: “So different having military action under Biden. No middle school level threats on Twitter. Trust Biden and his team’s competence.” Biden supporter Suzanne Lamminen tweeted: “Such a quiet attack. No drama, no TV coverage of bombs hitting targets, no comments on how presidential Biden is. What a difference.”

    Thankfully, though, some Members of Congress are speaking out against the strikes. “We cannot stand up for Congressional authorization before military strikes only when there is a Republican President,” Congressman Ro Khanna tweeted, “The Administration should have sought Congressional authorization here. We need to work to extricate from the Middle East, not escalate.” Peace groups around the country are echoing that call. Rep. Barbara Lee and Senators Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy also released statements either questioning or condemning the strikes.

    Americans should remind President Biden that he promised to prioritize diplomacy over military action as the primary instrument of his foreign policy. Biden should recognize that the best way to protect U.S. personnel is to take them out of the Middle East. He should recall that the Iraqi Parliament voted a year ago for U.S. troops to leave their country. He should also recognize that U.S. troops have no right to be in Syria, still “protecting the oil,” on the orders of Donald Trump.

    After failing to prioritize diplomacy and rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement, Biden has now, barely a month into his presidency, reverted to the use of military force in a region already shattered by two decades of U.S. war-making. This is not what he promised in his campaign and it is not what the American people voted for.

    The post Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not the Diplomacy He Promised first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not the Diplomacy He Promised

    by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / February 27th, 2021

    Photo: CODEPINK

    The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly-formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing “Iranian-backed militias” who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-a-vis Iran, why hasn’t the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts?

    According to the Pentagon, the U.S. strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member. Accounts of the number killed in the U.S. attack vary from one to 22.

    The Pentagon made the incredible claim that this action “aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq.” This was countered by the Syrian government, which condemned the illegal attack on its territory and said the strikes “will lead to consequences that will escalate the situation in the region.” The strike was also condemned by the governments of China and Russia. A member of Russia’s Federation Council warned that such escalations in the area could lead to “a massive conflict.”

    Ironically, Jen Psaki, now Biden’s White House spokesperson, questioned the lawfulness of attacking Syria in 2017, when it was the Trump administration doing the bombing. Back then she asked: “What is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.”

    The airstrikes were supposedly authorized by the 20-year-old, post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), legislation that Rep. Barbara Lee has been trying for years to repeal since it has been misused, according to the congresswoman, “to justify waging war in at least seven different countries, against a continuously expanding list of targetable adversaries.”

    The United States claims that its targeting of the militia in Syria was based on intelligence provided by the Iraqi government. Defense Secretary Austin told reporters: “We’re confident that target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strike [against U.S. and coalition forces].”

    But a report by Middle East Eye (MEE) suggests that Iran has strongly urged the militias it supports in Iraq to refrain from such attacks, or any warlike actions that could derail its sensitive diplomacy to bring the U.S. and Iran back into compliance with the 2015 international nuclear agreement or JCPOA.

    “None of our known factions carried out this attack,” a senior Iraqi militia commander told MEE. “The Iranian orders have not changed regarding attacking the American forces, and the Iranians are still keen to maintain calm with the Americans until they see how the new administration will act.”

    The inflammatory nature of this U.S. attack on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, who are an integral part of Iraq’s armed forces and have played a critical role in the war with ISIS, was implicitly acknowledged in the U.S. decision to attack them in Syria instead of in Iraq. Did Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, a pro-Western British-Iraqi, who is trying to rein in the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, deny permission for a U.S. attack on Iraqi soil?

    At Kadhimi’s request, NATO is increasing its presence from 500 troops to 4,000 (from Denmark, the U.K. and Turkey, not the U.S.) to train the Iraqi military and reduce its dependence on the Iranian-backed militias. But Kadhimi risks losing his job in an election this October if he alienates Iraq’s Shiite majority. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein is heading to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials over the weekend, and the world will be watching to see how Iraq and Iran will respond to the U.S. attack.

    Some analysts say the bombing may have been intended to strengthen the U.S. hand in its negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal (JCPOA). “The strike, the way I see it, was meant to set the tone with Tehran and dent its inflated confidence ahead of negotiations,” said Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official who is currently a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.

    But this attack will make it more difficult to resume negotiations with Iran. It comes at a delicate moment when the Europeans are trying to orchestrate a “compliance for compliance” maneuver to revive the JCPOA. This strike will make the diplomatic process more difficult, as it gives more power to the Iranian factions who oppose the deal and any negotiations with the United States.

    Showing bipartisan support for attacking sovereign nations, key Republicans on the foreign affairs committees such as Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Michael McCaul immediately welcomed the attacks. So did some Biden supporters, who crassly displayed their partiality to bombing by a Democratic president.

    Party organizer Amy Siskind tweeted: “So different having military action under Biden. No middle school level threats on Twitter. Trust Biden and his team’s competence.” Biden supporter Suzanne Lamminen tweeted: “Such a quiet attack. No drama, no TV coverage of bombs hitting targets, no comments on how presidential Biden is. What a difference.”

    Thankfully, though, some Members of Congress are speaking out against the strikes. “We cannot stand up for Congressional authorization before military strikes only when there is a Republican President,” Congressman Ro Khanna tweeted, “The Administration should have sought Congressional authorization here. We need to work to extricate from the Middle East, not escalate.” Peace groups around the country are echoing that call. Rep. Barbara Lee and Senators Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy also released statements either questioning or condemning the strikes.

    Americans should remind President Biden that he promised to prioritize diplomacy over military action as the primary instrument of his foreign policy. Biden should recognize that the best way to protect U.S. personnel is to take them out of the Middle East. He should recall that the Iraqi Parliament voted a year ago for U.S. troops to leave their country. He should also recognize that U.S. troops have no right to be in Syria, still “protecting the oil,” on the orders of Donald Trump.

    After failing to prioritize diplomacy and rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement, Biden has now, barely a month into his presidency, reverted to the use of military force in a region already shattered by two decades of U.S. war-making. This is not what he promised in his campaign and it is not what the American people voted for.

    This article was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2021 at 9:05am and is filed under Bombs, Democrats, Iran, Iraq, Joe Biden, Militarism, Syria, US War Crimes.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Says U.S. Air Strike In Syria A Warning To Tehran

    U.S. President Joe Biden says the air strike against an Iran-backed militia in eastern Syria should be seen by Tehran as a warning against any further aggressive actions.

    “You can’t act with impunity,” he told reporters on February 26 when asked what the message was from the air strikes announced a day earlier.

    “Be careful,” he added during a stop in Houston as part of a tour to inspect relief efforts in the storm-ravaged state of Texas.

    The U.S. Defense Department on February 25 announced the air strikes in response to rocket attacks earlier this month on an Iraqi base housing U.S. and coalition troops, saying they sent “an unambiguous message [that] President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel.”

    The Pentagon said two F-15E warplanes dropped seven precision-guided munitions on sites in eastern Syria used by the militias believed to be behind the rocket attacks on U.S. and other troops.

    The Pentagon said the strikes, the first military action undertaken by Biden’s administration since he was sworn into office last month, hit “multiple facilities” at a control point on the Syria-Iraq border used by several Iran-backed militias, including the Iraqi Shi’ite groups Kaitib Hizballah and Kaitib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

    “This location is known to facilitate Iranian-aligned militia group activity,” spokesman John Kirby said, describing the site as a “compound” that previously had been used by the Islamic State (IS) terror group when it controlled the area.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said 17 members of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) were killed after the strike hit three trucks loaded with munitions coming from Iraq.

    The PMU is an umbrella paramilitary force composed of a number of mostly Shi’ite Iraqi militia groups.

    Tehran condemned the attack, saying it would further destabilize the region. The Foreign Ministry called the action “illegal attacks” in “clear violation of human rights and international law.”

    Damascus labeled it “cowardly American aggression.”

    “It is a bad sign regarding the policies of the new US administration which should adhere to international [norms],” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.

    Russia, a key Syrian ally, also condemned the attack, saying its troops stationed in Syria were given little advanced warning.

    Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the action called into question the U.S. administration’s plans in Syria.

    “It is very important for us to understand the United States’ strategic line on the ground,” Lavrov said.

    Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responded to Lavrov’s criticism that Moscow had been notified just a few minutes before the U.S. attack.

    “We did what we believe was the proper amount of notification for this,” he said. “It shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody that we’re going to do what we have to do to notify, but we’re also going to do what we have to do to protect our forces.”

    Along with Russia, Iran has provided crucial military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s civil war, which began with a crackdown on anti-government protesters in March 2011. More than 400,000 people have since been killed and millions displaced.

    The U.S. military has also been active in Syria in support of a coalition of Syrian Arab and Kurdish opponents of Assad.

    The strikes came after three recent rocket attacks. A February 15 rocket salvo on a military base at Irbil International Airport in the capital in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

    Another rocket attack on a base hosting U.S. forces north of Baghdad days later hurt at least one contractor. Yet another rocket barrage targeted the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week.

    A little-known Shiite militant group calling itself the Guardians of Blood Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack in Irbil. Some experts say Kaitib Hizballah has used separate militant cells as a cover to absolve itself of responsibility for attacks on U.S. forces.

    With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Says U.S. Air Strike In Syria A Warning To Tehran

    U.S. President Joe Biden says the air strike against an Iran-backed militia in eastern Syria should be seen by Tehran as a warning against any further aggressive actions.

    “You can’t act with impunity,” he told reporters on February 26 when asked what the message was from the air strikes announced a day earlier.

    “Be careful,” he added during a stop in Houston as part of a tour to inspect relief efforts in the storm-ravaged state of Texas.

    The U.S. Defense Department on February 25 announced the air strikes in response to rocket attacks earlier this month on an Iraqi base housing U.S. and coalition troops, saying they sent “an unambiguous message [that] President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel.”

    The Pentagon said two F-15E warplanes dropped seven precision-guided munitions on sites in eastern Syria used by the militias believed to be behind the rocket attacks on U.S. and other troops.

    The Pentagon said the strikes, the first military action undertaken by Biden’s administration since he was sworn into office last month, hit “multiple facilities” at a control point on the Syria-Iraq border used by several Iran-backed militias, including the Iraqi Shi’ite groups Kaitib Hizballah and Kaitib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

    “This location is known to facilitate Iranian-aligned militia group activity,” spokesman John Kirby said, describing the site as a “compound” that previously had been used by the Islamic State (IS) terror group when it controlled the area.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said 17 members of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) were killed after the strike hit three trucks loaded with munitions coming from Iraq.

    The PMU is an umbrella paramilitary force composed of a number of mostly Shi’ite Iraqi militia groups.

    Tehran condemned the attack, saying it would further destabilize the region. The Foreign Ministry called the action “illegal attacks” in “clear violation of human rights and international law.”

    Damascus labeled it “cowardly American aggression.”

    “It is a bad sign regarding the policies of the new U.S. administration which should adhere to international [norms],” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.

    Russia, a key Syrian ally, also condemned the attack, saying its troops stationed in Syria were given little advanced warning.

    Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the action called into question the U.S. administration’s plans in Syria.

    “It is very important for us to understand the United States’ strategic line on the ground,” Lavrov said.

    Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responded to Lavrov’s criticism that Moscow had been notified just a few minutes before the U.S. attack.

    “We did what we believe was the proper amount of notification for this,” he said. “It shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody that we’re going to do what we have to do to notify, but we’re also going to do what we have to do to protect our forces.”

    Along with Russia, Iran has provided crucial military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s civil war, which began with a crackdown on anti-government protesters in March 2011. More than 400,000 people have since been killed and millions displaced.

    The U.S. military has also been active in Syria in support of a coalition of Syrian Arab and Kurdish opponents of Assad.

    The strikes came after three recent rocket attacks. A February 15 rocket salvo on a military base at Irbil International Airport in the capital in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

    Another rocket attack on a base hosting U.S. forces north of Baghdad days later hurt at least one contractor. Yet another rocket barrage targeted the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week.

    A little-known Shi’ite militant group calling itself the Guardians of Blood Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack in Irbil. Some experts say Kaitib Hizballah has used separate militant cells as a cover to absolve itself of responsibility for attacks on U.S. forces.

    With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden’s Syria Airstrike Prompts Demands for Answers From Social Media, Lawmakers

    President Biden answers a reporter's question as he departs with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Vice President Kamala Harris at the Pentagon on February 10, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Democratic lawmakers and anti-war activists have slammed the Biden administration for carrying out illegal airstrikes in Syria while abandoning progressive policy priorities.

    The United States carried out an airstrike in Syria on Thursday, claiming it was targeting militias allegedly backed by Iran in what is the first known military action by President Joe Biden since he was sworn into office.

    “We didn’t flip Georgia Blue for Biden to air strike Syria. We flipped Georgia Blue for our $2,000 Stimulus Checks,” said Ja’Mal Green, a civil rights advocate and former surrogate for Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president.

    Anti-war organization CODEPINK similarly criticized the Biden administration for failing to de-escalate U.S. foreign policy while rejecting policies such as student debt relief.

    The Pentagon has stated that “multiple facilities” were destroyed in the attack, which was ostensibly ordered in response to a rocket attack against U.S. and other coalition personnel in Iraq earlier this month, which killed a civilian contractor.

    While the militia attacked by the U.S. said that just one individual had died, a separate war monitor suggested there were at least 22 fatalities, the BBC reported.

    Syria has condemned the attack, calling it a “bad sign” for the new administration. The Pentagon justified the airstrike as a “proportionate military response” that was taken in consultation with allies in the region.

    Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) criticized the Biden administration for authorizing a unilateral strike that keeps the U.S. entangled in conflicts overseas.

    “There is absolutely no justification for a president to authorize a military strike that is not in self-defense against an imminent threat without congressional authorization,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) said in a statement. “We need to extricate from the Middle East, not escalate.”

    Mainstream analysts said that the new administration launched the airstrike to demonstrate its willingness to use military force in its rivalry with Iran.

    “It is sending a message: The bottom line is that we won’t tolerate this and will use military force when we feel you’ve crossed the line,” Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said to The New York Times regarding Biden’s possible motivations for the airstrike.

    Stephen Kinzer, former foreign affairs correspondent for The New York Times, noted that Biden is now the third successive president to have bombed Syria.

    “Syria is a sovereign country with which we are not at war,” Kinzer added. “Therefore we have no legal or moral right to bomb its territory. Yet the bipartisan attitude in DC seems to be ‘We’re the USA, we bomb wherever we want.’”

    Iraq War veteran and former lawyer for the Brennan Center for Justice Chris Deluzio lambasted the Biden administration for failing to get congressional authorization, and noting that the justification for the attack would likely lean on an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that dates back to nearly 20 years ago.

    “Reminder: the Congress never authorized military action in Syria,” Deluzio said. “Relying for nearly two decades on the 2001 AUMF passed after 9/11 is part of how we find ourselves mired in Forever War, with no end in sight.”

    Adil Ahmad Haque, a Rutgers law school professor who writes on the ethics of armed conflict and international criminal law, said the airstrikes were “almost certainly” in violation of international law.

    “The airstrikes did not repel an ongoing armed attack, halt an imminent one, or immediately respond to an armed attack that was in fact over but may have appeared ongoing at the time,” Haque wrote in a blog post for Just Security. “And the airstrikes were carried out on the territory of another State, without its consent, against a non-State actor,” which Haque argued is unlawful when there isn’t an ongoing attack.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US Bombs Syria And Ridiculously Claims Self Defense

    On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.

    Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases.

    Here’s this from The Washington Post:

    The Biden administration conducted an airstrike against alleged Iranian-linked fighters in Syria on Thursday, signaling its intent to push back against violence believed to be sponsored by Tehran.

     

    Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the attack, the first action ordered by the Biden administration to push back against alleged Iranian-linked violence in Iraq and Syria, on a border control point in eastern Syria was “authorized in response to recent attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats.”

     

    He said the facilities were used by Iranian-linked militias including Kaitib Hezbollah and Kaitib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

     

    The operation follows the latest serious attack on U.S. locations in Iraq that American officials have attributed to Iranian-linked groups operating in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this month, a rocket attack in northern Iraq killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member there.

    So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on “US locations” in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were “Iranian-linked”, a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force. And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation.

    This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.

    The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against. This is completely backwards and illegitimate. Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.

    It’s illegitimate for the US to be in the Middle East at all. It’s illegitimate for the US to claim to be acting defensively in nations it invaded. It’s illegitimate for the US to act like Iranian-backed fighters aren’t allowed to be in Syria, where they are fighting alongside the Syrian government against ISIS and other extremist militias with the permission of Damascus. It is illegitimate for the US to claim the fighters attacking US personnel in Iraq are controlled by Iran when Iraqis have every reason to want the US out of their country themselves.

    Even the official narrative reveals itself as illegitimate from within its own worldview. CNN reports that the site of the airstrike “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks” in Iraq, and a Reuters/AP report says “Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.”

    This is all so very typical of the American supremacist worldview that is being aggressively shoved down our throats by all western mainstream news media. The US can bomb who it likes, whenever it likes, and when it does it is only ever doing so in self defense, because the entire planet is the property of Washington, DC. It can seize control of entire clusters of nations, and if any of those nations resist in any way they are invading America’s sovereignty.

    It’s like if you broke into your neighbor’s house to rob him, killed him when he tried to stop you, and then claimed self defense because you consider his home your property. Only in the American exceptionalist alternate universe is this considered normal and acceptable.

    This sort of nonsense is why it’s so important to prioritize opposition to western imperialism. World warmongering and domination is the front upon which all the most egregious evils inflicted by the powerful take place, and it plays such a crucial role in upholding the power structures we are up against. Without endless war, the oligarchic empire which is the cause of so much of our suffering cannot function, and must give way to something else. If you’re looking to throw sand in the gears of the machine, anti-imperialism is your most efficacious path toward that end, and should therefore be your priority.

    In America especially it is important to oppose war and imperialism, because an entire empire depends on keeping the locals too poor and propagandized to force their nation’s resources to go to their own wellbeing. As long as the United States functions as the hub of a globe-spanning power structure, all the progressive agendas that are being sought by what passes for the US left these days will be denied them. Opposing warmongering must come first.

    Standing against imperialism and American supremacism cuts directly to the heart of our difficulties in this world, which is why so much energy goes into keeping us focused on identity politics and vapid energy sucks which inconvenience the powerful in no way whatsoever. If you want to out-wrestle a crocodile, you must bind shut its mouth. If you want to take down a globe-spanning empire, you must take out its weapons. Opposing warmongering and killing public trust in the propaganda used to justify it is the best way to do this.

    _____________________________

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • ‘Prisoners Of Conscience’: A Look At Some Of The Biggest Names On The List

    Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s time as an Amnesty International “prisoner of conscience” was short-lived — but not because he was released from detention.

    Navalny received the designation on January 17 following his arrest at a Moscow airport by Russian authorities who said he had violated the terms of a suspended sentence stemming from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Navalny and his supporters say that both the conviction and the alleged violation are unfounded, politically motivated, and absurd.

    The subsequent conversion of the suspended sentence into more than 30 months of real prison time promised to keep the ardent Kremlin critic away from street protests for the near-term, even as he stayed in the focus of anti-government demonstrators and human rights groups such as Amnesty.

    But on February 23, Amnesty withdrew the designation, citing what it said were past comments by the 44-year old anti-corruption activist that “reach the threshold of advocacy of hatred.”

    The term “prisoner of conscience” is widely attributed to the founder of Amnesty International, Peter Benenson, who used it in 1961 to describe two Portuguese students who had each been sentenced to seven years in prison simply for making a toast to freedom under a dictatorial government.

    The label initially came to apply mainly to dissidents in the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc satellites, but over the years expanded to include hundreds of religious, political opposition, and media figures around the world, including countries of the former Soviet Union and others in RFE/RL’s immediate coverage region.

    According to Amnesty’s current criteria for the designation, prisoners of conscience are people who have “not used or advocated violence but are imprisoned because of who they are (sexual orientation, ethnic, national, or social origin, language, birth, color, sex or economic status) or what they believe (religious, political or other conscientiously held beliefs).”

    Navalny’s delisting has been tied by Amnesty to comments he made in the mid-2000s, as his star as a challenger to President Vladimir Putin and as an anti-corruption crusader in Russia was on the rise, but also as he came under criticism for his association with ethnic Russian nationalists and for statements seen as racist and dangerously inflammatory.

    And while the rights watchdog acknowledged that the flood of requests it received to review Navalny’s past statements appeared to originate from pro-Kremlin critics of Navalny, Amnesty ultimately determined that he no longer fit the bill for the designation, even as the organization continued to call for his immediate release from prison as he was being “persecuted for purely political reasons.”

    The “prisoner of conscience” designation is a powerful tool in advocating for the humane treatment of people who hold different religious, political, and sexual views than the powers that be — in some cases helping to lead to the release of prisoners.

    Here’s a look at some of the biggest names who have been or remain on the list.

    In Russia

    Russia is a virtual cornucopia of prisoners of conscience, with formidable political opposition figures, journalists, LGBT rights activists, and advocates for ethno-national rights gracing the list.

    Political Opposition

    Boris Nemtsov

    Boris Nemtsov

    Boris Nemtsov, the opposition politician who was shot dead in 2015, received the designation in 2011, along with activists Ilya Yashin and Eduard Limonov, after they attended a rally in Moscow in support of free assembly.

    Big Business

    Former Yukos owners Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s and Platon Lebedev’s listing the same year relating to what Amnesty called “deeply flawed and politically motivated” charges that led to their imprisonment years earlier drew sharp condemnation from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

    ‘Terror Network’

    In February 2020, Amnesty applied the designation to seven men standing trial in central Russia on what it called “absurd” charges relating to membership in a “nonexistent ‘terrorist’ organization.”

    Days later, all seven members were convicted and sentenced to prison for belonging to a “terrorist cell” labeled by authorities as “Network” that the authorities claimed planned to carry out a series of explosions in Russia during the 2018 presidential election and World Cup soccer tournament.

    Religious Persecution

    Aleksandr Gabyshev — a shaman in the Siberian region of Yakutia who has made several attempts to march on foot to Moscow “to drive President Vladimir Putin out of the Kremlin” — was briefly placed in a psychiatric hospital in September 2019 after he called Putin “evil” and marched for 2,000 kilometers in an attempt to reach the capital.

    “The Russian authorities’ response to the shaman’s actions is grotesque,” Amnesty said. “Gabyshev should be free to express his political views and exercise his religion and beliefs just like anyone else.”

    In May 2020, riot police raided Gabyshev’s home and took him to a psychiatric hospital because he allegedly refused to be tested for COVID-19. Amnesty called for his immediate release.

    But in January, Gabyshev was again forcibly taken to a psychiatric clinic after announcing he planned to resume his trek to Moscow to oust Putin.

    In Ukraine

    Prominent Ukrainian filmmaker and activist Oleh Sentsov made the list after he was arrested in Crimea in May 2014 after the peninsula was illegally annexed by Russia.

    Oleh Sentsov

    Oleh Sentsov

    Amnesty repeatedly called for the release of Sentsov after he was sentenced to 20 years in prison on a “terrorism” conviction in what the rights watchdog declared was an “unfair trial on politically motivated charges.”

    After five years in prison in Russia, Sentsov was released in a prisoner swap between Kyiv and pro-Russia separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine.

    Sentsov was far from the only Ukrainian to be taken down for criticizing Russia’s seizure of Crimea, prompting Amnesty to call for the release of all “all Ukrainian political prisoners” being held in Russia.

    Among them is the first Jehovah’s Witness to be sentenced by Russian authorities in the annexed territory, Sergei Filatov. The father of four was handed a sentence of six years in prison last year for being a member of an extremist group in what Amesty called “the latest example of the wholesale export of Russia’s brutally repressive policies.”

    In Belarus

    In Belarus, some of the biggest names to be declared “prisoners of conscience” are in the opposition to Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the authoritarian leader whose claim to have won a sixth-straight presidential term in August has led to months of anti-government protests.

    Viktar Babaryka

    Viktar Babaryka

    Viktar Babaryka, a former banker whose bid to challenge Lukashenka was halted by his arrest as part of what Amnesty called a “full-scale attack on human rights” ahead of the vote, went on trial on February 17 on charges of money laundering, bribery, and tax evasion.

    Fellow opposition member Paval Sevyarynets, who has been in custody since June, was charged with taking part in mass disorder related to his participation in rallies during which demonstrators attempted to collect signatures necessary to register presidential candidates other than Lukashenka.

    Syarhey Tsikhanouski

    Syarhey Tsikhanouski

    The popular blogger Syarhey Tsikhanouski was jailed after expressing interest in running against Lukashenka and remains in prison. Three of his associates went on trial in January on charges of organizing mass disorder in relation to the mass protests that broke out after the election.

    Tsikhanouski’s wife, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, took his place as a candidate and considers herself the rightful winner of the election.

    In Kazakhstan

    Aigul Otepova

    Aigul Otepova

    Aigul Otepova, a Kazakh blogger and journalist accused of involvement in a banned organization, was forcibly placed by a court in a psychiatric clinic in November, prompting Amnesty to declare her a “a prisoner of conscience who is being prosecuted solely for the peaceful expression of her views.”

    Otepova has denied any affiliation with the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) opposition movement, which has been labeled an extremist group by the Kazkakh authorities, and Otepova’s daughter told RFE/RL that the authorities were trying to silence her ahead of Kazakhstan’s parliamentary elections in January.

    Otepova was released from the facility in December.

    In Iran

    Nasrin Sotoudeh

    Nasrin Sotoudeh

    Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory head scarves, was arrested in 2018 and charged with spying, spreading propaganda, and insulting Iran’s supreme leader.

    She found herself back in prison in December, less than a month after she was granted a temporary release from her sentence to a total of 38 1/2 years in prison and 148 lashes.

    Amnesty has called Sotoudeh’s case “shocking” and considers her a “prisoner of conscience.” In its most recent action regarding Sotoudeh, the rights watchdog called for her to be released “immediately and unconditionally.”

    In Kyrgyzstan

    Amnesty International in August 2019 called the life sentence handed down to Kyrgyz rights defender Azimjan Askarov a “triumph of injustice.”

    Azimjan Askarov

    Azimjan Askarov

    The ethnic Uzbek Askarov was convicted of creating a mass disturbance and of involvement in the murder of a police officer during deadly interethnic clashes between local Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in June 2010 when more than 450 people, mainly Uzbeks, were killed and tens of thousands more were displaced.

    Askarov has said the charges against him are politically motivated, and the UN Human Rights Committed has determined that he was not given a fair trial and was tortured in detention.

    In May, after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to not review Askarov’s sentence, Amnesty said the ruling “compounds 10 years of deep injustice inflicted on a brave human rights defender who should never have been jailed.”

    In Pakistan

    Junaid Hafeez

    Junaid Hafeez

    Amnesty has called the case of Junaid Hafeez “a travesty” and in 2019 called on Pakistan’s authorities to “immediately and unconditionally” release the university lecturer charged with blasphemy over Facebook uploads.

    Hafeez was charged under the country’s controversial blasphemy laws, which Amnesty has called on the country to repeal, describing them as “overly broad, vague, and coercive” and saying they were “used to target religious minorities, pursue personal vendettas, and carry out vigilante violence.”

    Hafeez has been in solitary confinement since June 2014.

    In Azerbaijan

    Leyla and Arif Yunus

    Leyla and Arif Yunus

    Human rights activists Leyla Yunus and Arif Yunus were arrested separately in 2014 and convicted of economic crimes in August 2015 after a trial Amnesty denounced as “shockingly unjust.”

    After Leyla Yunus was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison, and her husband to seven years, Amnesty said that the rulings showed the “continuous criminalization of human rights defenders in Azerbaijan.”

    After the two were released on health grounds in late 2015 and their prison sentences reduced to suspended sentences, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Azerbaijan to pay them approximately $45,660 for violating their basic rights.

    In April 2016, they were allowed to leave the country and settled in the Netherlands.

    In Uzbekistan

    Azam Farmonov

    Azam Farmonov

    In 2009, Amnesty called for the immediate release of rights activists Azam Farmonov and Alisher Karamatov, who were detained in 2006 while defending the rights of farmers in Uzbekistan who had accused local officials of extortion and corruption.

    Amnesty said the two men had allegedly been tortured and declared them “prisoners of conscience.”

    In 2012, Karamatov was released after serving nearly two-thirds of a nine-year prison sentence.

    Farmonov served 10 years before his release in 2017, but reemerged in March when his U.S.-based NGO representing prisoners’ rights in Uzbekistan, Huquiqiy Tayanch, was successfully registered by the country’s Justice Ministry.

    Written by Michael Scollon, with additional reporting by Golnaz Esfandiari

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.