Paris: Saturday’s Iranian Resistance annual event took place in a
massive conference hall in Villepinte, France; just northeast of Paris, in an
effort to reachout to the100,000 Iranian diaspora in attendance about the fact
that ‘Regime change is in reach’.
In attendance from the United States were also delegates
across the political party spectrum. And 24 hours before the conference, key
speakers held a #FreeIran rally with particular emphasis to look at Policy
Review in Iran and alongside Iran’s Role in the Middle East region.
American speakers included Middle East analyst Michael
Pregent, visiting fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the
National Defense University; Joseph Lieberman, former Vice Chief of Staff of
the United States Army; and as panel moderator, Ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield
Jr, former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs.
US Policy on the Nuclear Deal
Sharing points of view they each gave short shrift on where
the US should intervene in Iran, drawing quick attention to the precarious 2015
Obama administration Nuclear Deal. Then looking at its flip-side positive
outcomes to show where President Trump can benefit to use the Nuclear Deal as a
tool to bear down further on the already fragile mullahs’ regime.
Quickly arriving in consensus that the Nuclear Deal, for all
its shortcomings, is a certain and pliable tool for holding the Iranian regime
accountable to answer for its ongoing nuclear activity, but also to punish it
economically for its known support of terrorism in the region, through
exporting militia to fight in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq and elsewhere.
Doing this by calling for more renewed sanctions on various
high ranking individuals within the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps)
for its ongoing meddling outside of its Iranian border.
Iran fueled sectarian division
Michael Pregent from the National Defense University gave a
startling account of the rise of the sectarian fighting which he says is fueled
by the Iranian autocratic regime. Outlining the footprint, he tracks it back to
the Iranian's twisting of movement the Son’s of Iraq (SOI), which initially
sponsored by the US Military, was a predominantly Sunni popular movement of
around 90,000 strong.
Then Iran enters Iraq in 2014, spreading the Iranian
narrative, and particularly peddled by high ranking Iranian generals of the
IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), their mandate to guard Iran’s
borders, equating the discontented band (SOI) as being the face of Al-Qaeda.
Ultimately a false narrative, but which did work to the Iran
regime's favour in eventually pushed back a threat of a Sunni insurgency. And
today the mullahs continue to fuel the narrative of a complex sectarian
division, one which they originally promulgated; and support through
maintaining militia and proxy armies through the Middle East region.
Pregent points to this as being the moment that ‘big time
empowered [the Iran regime] in Iraq’, paving the way for its equally barbaric
interventions soon after in Syria.
It’s worth noting that it's generally accepted that the whole
narrative of Sunni and Shia sectarian conflict is a false device and narrative
used by the Iran regime for it’s own gain in the region.The most important
engagement is to disentangle Islamic fundamentalism/extremist activity from the
peaceful practice of Islam by all Sunni or Shia Middle East populations.
Sanctions and calling the mullahs’ regime’s bluff
One of the questions Ambassador Bloomfield posed to the panel
was to ask for practical advice in dealing with Iran’s terrorist entity the
IRGC which he offered over to Joseph Lieberman. The former Vice Chief of Staff
of the United States Army took up first by putting to bed the doubters. Of
Iran’s capability to spread terrorism he was adamant that ‘even though it
[Iran] is half a world away from the United States, what really matters is our
[national] security.’
Without hesitation he added ‘it matters [also] to our
values.’ In the United State, the former Chief of Staff lamented that 'we
behold to a founding document called The Declaration of Independence’ and
relating this to the plight of the Iranian diaspora in attendance at the
#FreeIran annual conference happening in Paris, France, he added ‘the Iranian
diaspora have a personal connection to their homeland too’.
The US then, it seems, has a bedfellow in finding a
mouthpiece to bringing the already feeble Iranian regime to heel, and it’s
called the Iranian Resistance, which formally comes together as the coalition
group #NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran) whose annual rally Free
Iran happened on Saturday I July 2017 in Villepinte in France, just northeast
of Paris with massive delegations from the US, Europe and Middle East.
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