Free Republic

Source: Official White House Photo by Delano Scott The international community's patience is growing thin as the Iranian regime's nuclear defiance and regional terrorism intensify. At the same time, credible accusations that the regime's President, Ebrahim Raisi, was involved in the massacre of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, are making it harder for other countries to engage and negotiate with a genocidal president. The Iranian regime is dealing with a multitude of crises and challenges. The economy is in shambles, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc, the unemployment rate continues to set new records, and the official inflation rate is now...

Human rights usually feature prominently in America's political rhetoric but fade insignificance when it comes to concrete action. That trend can take a historic turn when it comes to Iran, where a genocidal madman has taken the presidency. That the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi in Iran hasn't galvanized governments in the West and in the U.S. in particular to pursue his prosecution is still a mystery. Human rights groups, UN experts, Nobel laureates, scores of elected officials, lawmakers, and journalists have already expressed outrage over Raisi's rise to power. And justifiably so. In 1988, Raisi was one of the members...

WASHINGTON — The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog says his monitoring program in Iran is no longer “intact” after Tehran refused requests to repair cameras at a key facility, creating the possibility the world will never be “able to reconstruct the picture” of what the Iranians have been doing. In an interview with NBC News, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi says he’s been unable to establish the type of direct communication with Iran’s government that he had before a new hardline government run by President Ebrahim Raisi was elected in June.

The inauguration of an Iranian governor was interrupted by a man walking on stage and slapping him in the face - allegedly because he was furious his wife had to get her Covid jab delivered by a male doctor. Abedin Khorram was appointed as Governor of East Azerbaijan Province in northwestern Iran was slapped by 'a member of the armed forces' during the ceremony, according to the regime-linked Fars news agency. Mr Khorram is a former IRGC provincial commander and has reportedly been kidnapped in the past by Syrian rebel forces. After taking the podium for his inaugural address, the...

Human rights activists have recently joined with persons affected by the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses in order to issue formal requests for the arrest of Ebrahim Raisi, the president of Iran. Raisi assumed office in August following months of protests by Iranian citizens and expatriates alike over his role in severe human rights violations, including the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members and supporters of the main opposition, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) in the summer of 1988. Public demands for his arrest intensified in the wake of the announcement that Raisi is expected to attend the COP26 climate change...

Something strange is going on. Why is the EU so keen to shoe-horn America back into the nuclear deal with Iran? Former US president Donald Trump ditched the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal three years ago and imposed heavy sanctions on the mullahs’ regime under his ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. Since then, the Iranians have boasted about how they have flouted the terms of the deal by accelerating their advanced centrifuge program and enriching uranium to almost weapons grade fissile status. The Biden administration is being ultra-cautious. But the EU’s high Representative for Foreign Affairs & Security, the Spanish...

Kia was arrested on Monday. On Thursday, the court decided to order detention for this person on charges of grossly and unlawfully abusing his position as someone with access to classified information and violating national security to avoid him destroying documents or escaping. The arrested person is accused of espionage for reasonable reasons, the Swedish Security Service said in a statement. His arrest comes a month after the arrest of an Iranian couple, who had obtained refugee status in Sweden by presenting a false Afghan identity. They were the agents of the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). In...

Nearly 3,000 miles from Tehran where mass executions were carried out in 1988, a murder trial in Sweden could produce new revelations that complicate life for Iran’s president-elect. Iran’s president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi, helped decide which prisoners lived or died during mass executions in 1988. A trial in Sweden may shed more light on his role.Credit...West Asia News Agency He was a 28-year-old student and member of a communist group in Iran serving a 10-year prison sentence in 1988 when, according to his family, he was called before a committee and executed without a trial or defense.

As the leading executioner per capita in the world, it is perhaps appropriate that a notorious killer, known as ‘The Butcher of Tehran,’ has ascended to the presidency. Following his rigged election, Ebrahim Raisi was inaugurated as president on August 5th. Listed as an international terrorist in the USA, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called for his indictment for violations of human rights and crimes against humanity. He has boasted of his role as a member of the ‘Death Commission’ appointed by the then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988, which oversaw the massacre of more than 30,000...

DUBAI, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Monday the United States' "military failure" in Afghanistan offered an opportunity to establish lasting peace in the country. Taliban insurgents took control of the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday following a rout of the U.S.-backed Afghan army as foreign forces withdrew from Afghanistan. Washington has accused Iran in the past of providing covert aid to Taliban fighters against U.S. forces. Tehran, which supports an inclusive Afghan government that would include all ethnic groups and sects, has denied this. "America's military defeat and its withdrawal must become an opportunity to...

On Wednesday, August 11, Ebrahim Raisi, the new president of Iran, introduced the names of his cabinet ministers to Iran's parliament. A brief look at the proposed ministers clearly shows that, as expected, with these ministers and their boss, Raisi, no serious changes will occur in the management or, better say, in the country's mismanagement. Most of Raisi's proposed ministers held ministerial positions in Ahmadinejad's cabinet, and there is almost no new face among them. Looking at the titles of each of these proposed ministers, it can be seen that a significant number of them carry the title "doctor…", Doctor...

Last week, Ebrahim Raisi officially took over the government of Iran. With blood still dripping from his hands from the 1988 massacre of political prisoners, he is recognized ‎as the most hated president in Iran. Unfortunately, Western countries have turned a ‎blind eye to the crimes committed by Raisi, and the European Union has sent Enrique ‎Mora, its deputy secretary-general of the External Action Service to Tehran as the EU ‎representative for the inauguration ceremony. ‎ Amnesty International issued a statement protesting the dispatching of an EU envoy to ‎attend the inauguration of Ebrahim Raisi. On June 19, 2021, the...

Team Obama-Biden's decision to brand its 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the so-called "Iran nuclear deal," as comprehensive was White House disinformation of the vilest sort: a blatant lie told to deceive the American people. President Barack Obama's JCPOA was anything but comprehensive. It had weak nuclear inspection requirements and enforcement mechanisms, which Iran easily skirted. Documents that Israeli intelligence acquired in 2018 confirmed Tehran routinely violated the JCPOA. The plan of action? Inaction in the face of Tehran's calculated violence is more apt. Team Obama-Biden failed to penalize the Iranian regime's covert and overt violent troublemaking, a grievous...

Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline judge who is under U.S. sanctions for human rights abuses, secured victory as expected on Saturday in Iran’s presidential election after a contest marked by voter apathy over economic hardships and political restrictions... Turnout in Friday's four-man race was a record low of around 48.8% and there were 3.7 million invalid ballots that were likely to have been mostly blank or protest votes. Appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the high-profile job of judiciary chief in 2019, Raisi was placed under U.S. sanctions a few months later over human rights violations. Those included the...

And one candidate in particular is leading: Ebrahim Raisi, the current judiciary chief, appointed by Mr. Khamenei, who has a long history of involvement in human rights abuses, and who lost in 2017 in a surprise victory by the outgoing president, Hassan Rouhani. With no credible challenger, Mr. Raisi is expected to win this time. Any serious competition has been winnowed from the race. Even some members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, known for their strong hostility to any political dissent, described the election as anti-democratic.

While there is not much time left until June 18, the day of the presidential elections in Iran, the war between the two factions within the regime for winning this seat has escalated. On April 25, a letter signed by 220 members of the Iranian parliament was published in the media. The MPs asked Ebrahim Ra'isi, the head of the regime's judiciary, to run for the presidency. The letter was published contrary to the usual custom of non-interference of the legislature in the affairs of the executive branch. Ra'isi's endorsement is also interpreted as an attack against the current president,...

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani traveled to the city of Yazd on Sunday to deliver a speech about Iran’s economy, the oil sector and to express sympathy with earthquake victims. He also revealed massive allegations of corruption. In a rare rebuke, the president attacked the oil minister and demanded to know where $700 million in funds have gone, and slammed the judiciary and the Central Bank over a separate $2 billion corruption case. Rouhani began his speech with good news, arguing that since April, the economy of Iran has stabilized, despite difficult pressures from abroad – a reference to the US...

Sotoudeh has represented opposition activists and women who removed mandatory headscarf. Nasrin Sotoudeh, an internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in Iran, was handed a new sentence on Monday which her husband said was 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Sotoudeh, who has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory headscarf, was arrested in June and charged with spying, spreading propaganda and insulting Iran's supreme leader, her lawyer said. She also was jailed in 2010 for spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security — charges she denied ... The news comes days after Iran appointed...

The appointment of Cleric Ebrahim Raisi as head of the Iranian judiciary on Thursday was met with wide-ranging international condemnation. Statements from groups such as Amnesty International have highlighted Raisi’s record as one of the most brutal figures in the modern history of Iranian jurisprudence, owing especially to his leading role in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988.The National Council of Resistance of Iran echoed this criticism. It has sought over the years to bring broader international attention to the massacre. This is to be expected, since the NCRI’s main constituent group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran...