The US continued its “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran last month by announcing new sanctions that disrupted a scheme to ship Iranian oil to Syria in spite of US sanctions on Iranian oil exports and providing material support to the Bashar Assad dictatorship.
The Treasury Department then designated nine targets linked to what it called a plot by Iranian officials to ship millions of barrels of oil to the Assad dictatorship in exchange for cash that Iran used to fund groups designated as terrorist entities.
But that was hardly the only rebuke to Iran’s malign involvement in Syria this year. In April, a coalition of US, UK, and French forces launched air strikes at sites known to be affiliated with Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities in response to a chemical attack, believed to be by the Syrian government, which killed at least 43 civilians and injured hundreds more.
Iran lashed out in response, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry warning about “regional consequences”, Regime’s Leader Ali Khamenei claiming there was no benefit to these “criminal” air strikes, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani saying this would lead to the destruction of the Middle Eastern countries. Why would they do this? Because an attack on chemical weapons sites in Syria is effectively a strike on the Iranian Regime.
The Iranian people are also outraged about the Regime’s involvement in Syria, as they have said time and time against at the anti-regime protests that have plagued the country since last December. A popular cry from protesters is “No Gaza, No Lebanon, I Sacrifice My Life for Iran”. The people are angry over Regime corruption, a dire economic situation, and unfilled promises by the mullahs, all of which can be linked to Iran’s involvement in Syria. The Regime has responded with threats, arrests, and even executions.
However, perhaps the most obvious way that the Regime is hitting back at the Iranian people and Western governments is their terror plots targeting Iranian dissidents in Europe and the US. The Regime thinks that these plots – all of which have thankfully been foiled by the relevant authorities – send a message to the world to stop putting pressure on the Regime, but honestly, they send the message that getting tough on the mullahs is the only thing that works. So with Western intelligence services concerned about further attacks, Europe should end its appeasement of Iran and increase sanctions on them as well.
Source » ncr-iran