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The U.S. must protect its citizens from disease while starting the urgent work of planning for a new epoch.

The surreal atmosphere of the Covid-19 pandemic calls to mind how I felt as a young man in the 84th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge. Now, as in late 1944, there is a sense of inchoate danger, aimed not at any particular person, but striking randomly and with devastation. But there is an important difference between that faraway time and ours. American endurance then was fortified by an ultimate national purpose. Now, in a divided country, efficient and farsighted government is necessary to overcome obstacles unprecedented in magnitude and global scope. Sustaining the public trust is crucial to social solidarity, to the relation of societies with each other, and to international peace and stability.

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Western and Arab media sources have published several stories recently about the growing opposition to the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman inside the Al Saud Royal Family. The Crown Prince’s future is to be decided in the next couple of months, so very little time remains for opposition players. After the Yemen War quagmire and the damage done in Abqaiq, some royals will undoubtedly try to weaken MBS position. The main issue currently is that here is no real contender available, as most Saudis are still supportive of MBS. The old guard, such as the brother of King Salman, prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz , are not favored by the young. Still, MBS has to speed up his passion projects as success is everything when it comes to winning power in Riyadh. 

It is not surprising that the recent positive media reports emerging from Saudi Arabia come just before the Davos in the Desert or FII2019 meeting is held. A possible Aramco IPO presentation at FII2019, followed by a 1% listing at the Saudi Tadawul, would put MBS firmly back in the spotlight and weaken any opposition. With the current stalemate in the region, more than 4000 investment funds, sovereign wealth funds and corporations will be sitting in the conference halls of the Ritz, willing to hand over the much needed cash and multibillion projects to solidify MBS’ position.

Open support for MBS will be in place very soon, with Russian president Vladimir Putin expected to head to Riyadh very soon. Putin is openly a big supporter of the crown prince’s strategy and dreams. Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF and others are flocking to Riyadh’s hotels as further evidence of Russian support. Moscow appears set to capitalize on Washington’s hands off response to the recent attacks in Saudi Arabia, and MBS will be eager to take advantage. Along with USA Maximum Pressure Campaign against Islamic Republic, a closer Saudi-Russian relationship will surely end up choke mullahs more, as the Islamic Republic is heavily dependent on Moscow’s support.

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(1) respect for human rights,

(2) faith in the dignity and value of the human as persons,

(3) equality between men and women,

(4) the pursuit of regional and global peace and security,  

the Islamic Republic presence in the United Nations is in full conflict with the purposes and spirit of the United Nations Charter. Many articles of the Islamic Republic’s own Constitution have fundamental hostility against global peace and stability. This list includes but not limited to:

(1) blatant violation of the rights of men and women and the execution of children  

(2) Replacing the Ummah instead of the Nation to forge political unity in the Islamic world

(3) Establishing a military camps training to export revolution to other countries

(4) Interfering in the affairs of other countries to help fight for the rights of the oppressed of the world and wipe out the infidels from

(5) The rule of the absolute guardianship of the Islamic jurisprudence and the Imam & global ummah

(6) God’s sovereignty over the world and man rather than the sovereignty of the nation

(7) Revelation of Allah as ruler of nations

(8) Implanting morality troops to the region and establishing medieval “Inquisition” 

Therefore, the Council for Iran’s Constitution 1906 and its progressive referendum of 1963 task force hereby declare the Islamic Republic and its representatives to the United Nations illegitimate. The General Assembly and the Human Rights Committee, have made repeated resolutions against Islamic Republic Regime in Iran. This Task Force would like to high light in particular the UN Security Council Resolutions Nos. 1373; 1377; 1452; 1535 that specifically and strongly declare Islamic Republic as threat to regional and international peace and security arising from terrorist acts and its continuing violations of the human rights.

in accordance with:

1. Article 6 of the Charter, which provides “any member of the United Nations in violation of The principles laid down in this Charter insist It may be dismissed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council.
2. Lack of compliance with the legal requirements as grounds for the expulsion of the Islamic Republic from the United Nations.

The expulsion of the Islamic Republic from the organization is the most important step to Free Iran and maintain global peace and security.

We calling for immediate enforcement of Iran’s Constitution 1906 and its progressive referendum of 1963 to empower Iranians to reclaim Iran by their own devices and to restore secular democratic government based on the Charter of Human Rights.

In the end this task force Reminds all UN members and all that Iran’s constitution 1906 is the pillar of Iranian national unity and solidarity.

Payandeh Iran

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▪ Both President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair told me at different times that they had identified “men with whom we can work” in Tehran and that the key to success was getting rid of Khamenei and his “hardliners.”

▪ [W]hether we like it or not, it is Khamenei, and not Rafsanjani, Khatami or Rouhani, who set the tune in the Islamic Republic.

▪ Thus if Trump, or anyone else, wish to make a deal with the present regime in Tehran, the man they should talk to is Khamenei, not Rouhani, an actor playing the president.

▪ [T]he two are, in fact, just one creature in two disguises, a witch bent on doing mischief.

▪ Trump has been warned!

If President Donald Trump, or anyone else, wish to make a deal with the present regime in Tehran, the man they should talk to is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left), not Hassan Rouhani (right), an actor playing the president.

For a few hours last weekend, political circles in Tehran were seized with speculative fever regarding a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump and the Islamic Republic’s President Hassan Rouhani. Trump had announced in Biarritz, where the G7’s farcical summit was held, that he would be prepared to meet the Iranian mullah and believed that could happen soon. For his part, Rouhani went on TV to declare readiness to meet “anyone”, with no ifs and buts.

One “reformist” analyst phoned me in the middle of night Paris time to “inform” me that, with help from Trump, his faction was about to win a decisive victory over the “hardline” faction led by Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei.

In his narrative, Rouhani would meet Trump in September when both are to attend the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York. They would establish a “roadmap” leading to an agreement incorporating the Obama “nuke deal” plus additional demands by Trump. That, in turn, would lead to a lifting of US sanctions, saving the Iranian economy from a meltdown.

The “miracle” would coincide with the next general election in Iran and a secure landslide victory for “reformists”. That, in turn, would enable them to press for Khamenei’s retirement and replacement by Rouhani, while Muhammad-Javad Zarif, the “heroic” foreign minister, throws his hat, since he has no turban, into the ring for the presidency. With Khamenei and his “Russophile” faction eliminated, the “New York Boys” would put Iran on a new trajectory as the United States’ key partner in the Middle East.

What was remarkable in that narrative was how stale it was.

Weeks after the mullahs seized power, the Carter administration in Washington identified Mehdi Bazargan, Khomeini’s first prime minister, as “the man with whom we can work.”

After he was kicked out, attention was turned to more ephemeral figures such as Ayatollah Muhammad Beheshti, Abol-Hasaan Banisadr and Sadeq Ghotbzadeh who were supposed to lead Iran out of its revolutionary phase into normality, whatever that meant.

With Ayatollah Khomeini, supposedly too old to last long, these were the men who would shape Iran’s Thermidor, emerging from the reign of terror. Fariba Adelkhah, then a young researcher in Paris and later an ardent apologist for the Islamic Republic, even wrote a book bearing the title “Iranian Thermidor”. (She is now a hostage in Tehran held by the very men she had so passionately defended in the French media.)

Over the years, we heard similar analyses from the Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani faction in the 1980s, the Muhammad Khatami circle in the1990, and the Larijani brothers in 2004. Both President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair told me at different times that they had identified “men with whom we can work” in Tehran and that the key to success was getting rid of Khamenei and his “hardliners.”

At one point, the Reagan administration saw Rafsanjani, a wily mullah-cum-businessman, as the Iranian version of Deng Xiaoping. Tony Blair, no doubt under Jack Straw’s influence, saw Khatami, a middling mullah and a wannabe intellectual, as the “Iranian Gorbachev”.

As early as 2004, both the British and the French saw Rouhani as the man capable of delivering what Rafsanjani and Khatami had promised but failed to deliver. The horse on which John Kerry put his bet was Muhammad-Javad Zarif, whose team of “New York Boys” provided Rouhani with a “liberal” varnish.

Western analysts and their imitators inside Iran missed two crucial points.

The first was that, like most revolutionary regimes, the Khomeinist outfit had no mechanism for reform in the direction desired by the Iranian middle classes and the Western powers. Thus, even if its leaders tried to introduce reforms they would be doomed to failure. Lenin tried that in the 1920s with his New Economic Policy (NEP) that, instead of liberalizing the Soviet system, produced Josef Stalin. Mao Zedong’s reform project, known as “The 100 Flowers,” morphed into the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, millions of deaths and further hardening of the Communist regime. Khomeini himself attempted a similar move with his 8-Points reform project in 1981, leading to mass executions in 1988. In the Islamic Republic, the number of executions and political prisoners has always risen under “reformist” presidents such as Khatami and Rouhani.

The second point Western powers ignore is that Iranians today are divided into two broad camps, obviously with subdivisions within each camp. One camp consists of those, perhaps even a majority today, who are disillusioned with the Islamic Revolution and seek ways of closing its chapter as soon as possible. The idea of “change within the regime” appeals to some among them but has never offered a credible political platform from which to attempt a seizure of power within the regime.

In the second camp, we find all those who, for different reasons, are still committed to the Khomeinist Revolution. In that camp the “hardliners” have been and, I believe remain, in a majority. Thus, whether we like it or not, it is Khamenei, and not Rafsanjani, Khatami or Rouhani, who set the tune in the Islamic Republic. In fact, each time Western powers made a deal with the Islamic Republic it was ultimately with Khomeini and, after him, Khamenei. It was Khomeini who drunk the “poison chalice” by ending the war with Iraq, not Rafsanjani who played “strongman” at the time.

The Obama “nuke deal” started with negotiations that Khamenei ordered before Rouhani became president. The result, the JCPOA (Barjam in Persian), was adopted after Khamenei gave his tacit consent.

Thus if Trump, or anyone else, wish to make a deal with the present regime in Tehran, the man they should talk to is Khamenei, not Rouhani, an actor playing the president. On Tuesday, that fact was demonstrated by Khamenei ordering Rouhani to eat humble pie and publicly recant on his boast about a summit with Trump.

The “hardline vs. moderate” comedy played in Tehran reminds me of the French Opera Buffa in which two seductive girls adopt opposite profiles. “No-no-Nanette” always says no to admirers but she ends up in bed with all of them. In contrast, “Yes-yes Yolanda” offers tantalizing “yes” but never goes the whole way. In the end, we find out that the two are, in fact, just one creature in two disguises, a witch bent on doing mischief.

Trump has been warned!

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.

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