Author: AIAINY

WASHINGTON (AFP)— The US Senate is urging Iran to free jailed leaders of the Bahai faith and recommending sanctions against officials in the Islamic Republic over treatment of the religion’s followers. In a resolution approved by voice vote late Thursday, the Senate said it “condemns the government of Iran for its state-sponsored persecution of its Bahai minority and its continued violation of the International Covenants on Human Rights.” The Bahais, whose faith was founded in Iran two centuries ago, have faced persecution both before and after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The clerical regime bars Bahais from higher education and government…

By Lisa Daftari Twelve Christians stood trial Easter Sunday in Iran, where they were called “apostates” in a courtroom and tried on multiple charges, according to sources close to Iran’s Christian community. The Christians had been acquitted on the same charges, including “crimes against the order,” a year ago in Bandar Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea. The group was first arrested when authorities found them drinking wine while taking communion, according to sources. “It ultimately illustrates that being a Christian is illegal in Iran. No matter how clear or how open a pastor and a church may be,…

Although Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to a disputed island in the Persian Gulf, claimed by both Iran and the United Arab Emirates, created an international incident last week, video posted online later appears to show that Iran’s president was also forced to engage in what Americans call retail politics during his visit to the region. Watch the Video

By Tom Ridge To believe that the resumption of negotiations in Istanbul could — or ever will –avert Iranian nuclear breakout and a possible Middle East conflagration, is to believe in the triumph of hope over experience. When it comes to the Mullahs’ intentions, however, we believe that the past is best viewed as prologue. Consider that on the eve of these new negotiations, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brazenly mocked President Obama’s “last chance” proffer to the Mullahs, declaring that sanctions were a failure because Iran has stockpiled enough hard currency to survive for years without selling any oil. True or not,…

NEW YORK, A bipartisan group of former U.S. political and military leaders is calling for the U.S. State Department to remove a prominent Iranian dissident group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran/Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (PMOI/MeK), from its list of terrorist organizations, saying the classification is unjustified and 3,400 Iranian dissidents housed at Camp Ashraf in Iraq cannot be safely resettled until the change is made. “What troubles me is the politicization of the national terrorist list,” former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-RI, said at a conference attended by more than 1,000 Iranian-Americans and community leaders Saturday in New York.”I call on the State…

The infamous Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’s has a well-known saying: “If you tell a lie big enough and repeat it often enough, and the whole world will believe it.” Trita Parsi’s preposterous and naive attempt to besmirch the reputation of the main Iranian opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) as a “terrorist” group smacks of pure desperation to lay lie upon lie in order to build a metaphorical dam against a growing tide ofsupport for the MEK in Washington and around the world. That is, of course, not unexpected. Parsi is the head of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a group…

By Ali Safavi, Member of Iran’s Parliament in Exile; President of the Near East Policy Research On a chilly October day in 1981, after returning home from the University of Michigan campus, I answered a phone call. On the other side of the line was my step mother from Iran. She rarely called those days because of the reign of terror imposed by the regime some five months earlier. In tears, she gave me the distressing news. My older brother, Hossein, had been executed a week earlier… Read More

“There is a chance that this wholly indigenous movement, by virtue of its own success, and entirely for its own reasons, could bring about an incredibly positive shift in the global security environment…What I hold to be essential is that we must act…The Iranian regime is facing pressure from within unlike anything it’s ever felt.” (From Remarks Rep. Gary Ackerman; Chair, House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia – Feb 03, 2010)

Members of Congress Hold Press Conference to Express Support for the Iranian Dissidents Living in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. Read More

Prominent New Yorkers Call for International Intervention for Protection of Camp Ashraf; Immediate Release of 36 Abductees NEW YORK, Aug. 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In a newsbriefing today the “International Committee for Implementation of the Fourth Geneva Convention for Ashraf Residents” condemned the July 28 barbaric and unprovoked attack on Camp Ashraf by Iraqi troops of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. Stressing that “the human rights of the residents of Ashraf are violated,” Rev Dr. David B. Lowry, Director of the Center for Peace and Reconciliation at the Desmond Tutu Center, called the assault a horrific mistake. He said that the…