Israeli Airstrikes Hit Iran-Backed Militia Bases In Syria

“We have to enforce our sanctions, particularly on the energy sector,” said Senator Ben Cardin (D-M), chairman of the influential committee. “And I think there is going to be consensus in this committee to strengthen those tools.”

The Senate hearing Wednesday was the latest in a series of Congressional attempts to deal with Iran’s increasingly aggressive behavior in the Middle East, propping up an array of armed groups to destabilize the region and advance the regime’s interest at the expense of almost everybody else, including ordinary Iranians.

“Iran will find ways to finance its proxies to the detriment of its own people,” Senator Cardin said in his concluding remarks of the hearing. “The first priority of their budget is these terrorist activities.”

The Iranian regime is the main sponsor of Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemen's Houthis, and several armed groups in Syria and Iraq, all of which rely on Iran’s funds, weapons and training. The groups are bound by material interest and fulfilling Tehran's policy of forcing the US military out of the Middle East.

The Biden administration should announce that they make no distinction between Iran and its proxies,” former special representative for Iran Brian Hook told the committee, “anything that a proxy does, we will attribute agency to the Iranian regime and they will be held accountable as if it was a direct attack.”

President Joe Biden’s policy on Iran was a major theme in the hearing. Most participants criticized Biden and his team for “not doing enough” to stop or “deter” Iran. Senator Jim Risch (R-ID), ranking member of the foreign relations Committee, explained how and why, in his view, things have gone wrong.

“At the beginning of the Biden Administration, the president’s Iran policy was abundantly clear and that was an attempt to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal regardless of the cost,” he said. “The administration chose engagement and appeasement over containment and isolation… Three years later, Iran is more emboldened and empowered than before, and the Middle East is in turmoil.”

Suzanne Meloney, Director of Foreign Policy at the Brooking Institution –and the only other witness alongside Hook– stressed the need for a change in approach.

“There was a period in time in which negotiations with Iran proved that they could be fruitful in terms of getting concessions on real security risks that we have with respect to the regime,” Meloney said.. “I think that time is now firmly over. The current leadership within Iran has no interest in making concessions to the United States.”

Iranian officials have never hidden their intention to “rid” the Middle East of American forces. In the past few years, they have pressed on with their missile program and have made advanced drones that Russia uses against Ukraine.

“I cannot overstate how bad policy has allowed Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea to move from being transactional partners to strategic allies with each other,” Senator Risch said, “This is a failure of American policy that will have consequences for years to come.”

Curiously, no official from the Biden administration was present at the public hearing. Unnamed officials had agreed to take part in a confidential meeting only – which was held at the subcommittee level Wednesday, according to Senator Cardin.

It’s unclear why the administration preferred not to have any representation at the Senate hearing. One reason could be the ongoing investigation about former Iran envoy Robert Malley, whose security clearance was taken away last year for alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Malley was a key figure in framing Biden’s policy on Iran (and the Middle East more generally). Out of public sight since June 2023, his name keeps surfacing whenever Iran and Biden’s Iran policy is discussed. So it did in the Senate hearing Wednesday.

Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) claimed Malley was the one who “stopped enforcing [Iran] sanctions wholeheartedly” in the hope that the regime would agree to limit its nuclear activities as part of an unwritten agreement. He forced the administration to “look the other way,” so that Iran could sell oil to China, Hagerty said. “It’s a disgrace.” 

The alternative –most of those present at the hearing seemed to agree– would be ‘tightening the screw’.

“My view on the Iranian regime is that you’re more likely to get the deal you want with crippling sanctions,” Hook said. “If you create a positive environment Iran is going to play cat and mouse with you as long as you let them.”

A source close to the family said the burial of Karim Mohammadi is being delayed in the hope that the human rights activist may still receive permission to attend in time.

Her father died aged 90 on Tuesday having been stopped from visiting Narges for the past 22 months.

In an attempt to increase pressure on the human rights activist, Iran’s judiciary had denied her any phone contact with his ailing father over the past three months.

A group of Mohammadi’s inmates in notorious Evin Prison have launched a sit-in protest against the Islamic Republic’s decision not to give leave to the Nobel peace prize laureate.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the female civil and political activists lambasted the Iranian regime’s continuous pressures on Narges Mohammadi and celebrated her defiant resistance.

The statement called for the government to release Mohammadi unconditionally so that she can mourn her father, adding that the regime’s refusal to do so shows its deliberate attempt to torment prisoners.

Born in 1972 in Zanjan, Narges Mohammadi became politically active at university. She has received several international awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran” and the Sakharov Prize from the American Physical Society in 2018.

She has so far spent 12 years in jail as the Iranian authorities attempt to suppress her human rights activities. She was last arrested in 2021 and has been in Evin Prison since then. Last month she was given a further 15-month sentence accused of spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic while in jail.

The document is a strategic report by the parliament’s monitoring department titled the Outlook on Regional Developments After the Gaza War, providing a rare glimpse into the Iranian regime's own thinking on the repercussions of the conflict that has engulfed the Middle East since Ocotber. The report was prepared in early December, about the time when Iran-backed regional militant groups intensified attacks on Israeli and US targets to pressure Israel into ceasing its offensive against Hamas.

Uprising till Overthrow, closely affiliated with the Albania-based opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) organization, said they breached 600 of the main servers of the parliament, including those of commissions, assistants, the parliament bank, and other servers related to administrative functions, via the legislature's media arm, Khaneh Mellat News Agency.

The 13-page document highlighted that Tehran is aware of the US and Israel's plans to shift their focus to Iran after the Gaza war and is expecting mounting international pressure and further economic sanctions. The document claimed the US and Israel will adopt the “Octopus Doctrine,” which means taking up measures against Tehran instead of confronting its proxy tentacles across the region.

The document, however, predicted a low possibility for any direct confrontation with the US or Israel. But the report was prepared well before the attack by Tehran-funded Iraqi militants on a US base in Jordan in late January, which killed three US servicemen and injured about 40 others. After the attack, the Pentagon said, “We know that Iran is behind it, and we will certainly hold them responsible." The attack, along with Iran’s Houthi rebels’ attacks on Red Sea shipping, intensified the conflict, prompting the US to lead an international military coalition to blow up dozens of targets in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The possibility of a direct confrontation with Iran was briefly elevated, but the attacks by Iran-backed militia suddenly decreased significantly after the early February flare-up.

The parliament’s report assessed that other countries would increase economic pressures on Iran, including through disrupting Tehran’s rising oil sales, and further European sanctions based on UN Security Council Resolution 2231, the foundation of the 2015 nuclear deal, whose military checks and balances expired in October 2023.

Among the consequences, the report predicted that Washington would push its allies to designate the Revolutionary Guards, the main outfit pulling the strings of most regional militia. There have been numerous calls by US lawmakers on other countries to follow suit and blacklist the IRGC as a terror group. The United States listed the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019.

In addition to years-long activism by Iranian dissidents to label the IRGC, the parliaments of the United Kingdom, Canada, and Europe have voted overwhelmingly to designate the group. However, no country has taken the step, each with different justifications, but in general, to keep a diplomatic dialogue open with Tehran. 

The report also predicted that Iranian foreign resources, such as the revenues of its exports in foreign banks, can also be a target for the global community to put pressure on Iran. The report also envisioned a unified international coalition against Tehran, which ironically enough is what Iranian dissidents and opposition figures have been urging for a long time.

The report outlined various potential scenarios, exploring possibilities such as ending the Gaza war with the current status quo -- which the report described as a victory for Hamas – or the perpetuation of conflict without decisive outcomes.

“We should view the elections from the national interests’ perspective, not from factional perspectives. If the election [turnout] is weak, the loss will affect everyone,” Ali Khamenei told the youth voting for the first time and the families of martyrs Wednesday while stressing that he was not “accusing anyone”. Amid expectations of very low turnout, Khamenei appeared to be pleading with people to go to the polls on Friday.

Khamenei underscored the link between national power and security, cautioning that perceived weakness could embolden adversaries to threaten Iran's security. “If the enemy feels that you are not capable, [and] the Iranian nation has no power, they will threaten your security in every way,” he said. He urged individuals expressing reluctance to vote, and those dissuading others from doing so, to contemplate the implications, and “think some more.”.

“National security is all that matters. If there is no security, nothing else will remain. The enemy is opposed to our national power. Therefore, they oppose everything that is a manifestation of national power, including elections."

The extensive disqualification of candidates by the Khamenei-appointed Guardian Council, coupled with dire economic conditions and regime crackdowns on protesters, have led many ordinary Iranians to question the legitimacy of elections they perceive as orchestrated and unlikely to bring meaningful change.

Falling short of outrightly boycotting the elections like Iran's imprisoned Nobel Peace Laureate Narges Mohammadi and others, some political parties and groups such as the reformist Etehad-e Mellat (Nation’s Unity) party have refused to endorse any candidates in the simultaneously held elections of the parliament and the Assembly of Experts whose main purpose is choosing Khamenei’s successor.

Former President Hassan Rouhani, despite being disqualified from running in the Assembly of Experts elections, is urging voters to participate, framing it as a form of protest against the current circumstances and a call for reform to improve livelihoods, increase freedom, and enhance national prosperity.

Rouhani stressed the importance of voting for candidates who openly oppose the status quo and advocate for substantive change, acknowledging that the path to desired reforms may be long and challenging.

However, it is not clear which candidates the former president was referring to as almost all critical voices have been barred from competing as candidates.

While Rouhani criticized authorities for failing to foster conditions conducive to broad participation and fair competition, he also cautioned against neglecting the security and integrity of the electoral process.

In the past few days, state-affiliated media affiliated and the spokesman of the Guardian Council, Hadi Tahan-Nazif, have claimed that new polls conducted indicate interest in the elections and prospects for a higher turnout have increased. However, some former officials claim that turnout can be as low as 10 percent, while hardliners, who have already secured their victory claim that up to 70 percent may turn out to vote.

Regime-controlled media refer to polls taken by state agencies including a poll conducted by the state-run Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) published Wednesday that predicted turnout at national level at 41 and in Tehran and its suburbs at 23.5 percent.

ISPA says 38.5 percent of the 5121 respondents to its recent poll conducted on February 26 and 27 said they would “definitely” take part in the elections against 32.6 percent who were determined not to vote, claiming that the percentage of those who have decided to vote has gone up by 11.1 percent from 27.9 percent in its earlier poll in late October.

The river, known as Helmand in Afghanistan, plays a pivotal role as a critical source for agriculture and drinking water.

Negotiations peppered with disputes between Iranian authorities and the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan have gone on for months.

Now a further delay has pushed back the schedule for any agreement to share the waters from the river which originates in the Afghan mountains.

Reports from Iranian media in November highlighted the Kabul government's failure to allocate any portion of the Hirmand River's water to Iran, sparking concerns about water scarcity in the region.

Ali-Mohammad Tahmasbi, advisor to the head of Iran's Department of Environment, revealed a verbal commitment from Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Acting Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs of Afghanistan during discussions in Tehran, suggesting that Iran would receive water from the Hirmand once conditions permit.

Hassan Kazemi Qomi, President Ebrahim Raisi's special envoy for Afghan affairs, expressed cautious optimism, aiming for water entry from the Hirmand into Iran by October 2024.

However, he acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding the new timeline, citing unsuccessful negotiations between Iran and Afghanistan over the Hirmand water dispute.

Despite Iranian claims of an agreement with the Taliban to allocate 820 million cubic meters of water annually, no formal confirmation has been provided, and no water has been directed towards Iran over the past two years.