My latest in PJ Media:
After Israel struck Iranian Quds Force installations in Syria on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh declared: “The Zionist regime is well aware that the era of hit and run is over….Iran’s presence in Syria is advisory, and naturally, if anyone disrupts this advisory presence, our response will be a crushing one.” Especially now, when the next president is likely to be as solicitous and helpful toward the Iranian mullahs as his old boss Barack Obama was. There are numerous signs that the mullahs assume that good times are ahead.Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency announced Sunday that the Islamic Republic is stepping up its nuclear program: Iran’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations Kazem Gharibabadi “says the country will operate 174 advanced IR-M2 centrifuges at Natanz nuclear facility.” Gharibabadi also took care to emphasize that “all of Iran’s nuclear activities are peaceful, carried out under the supervision of the IAEA, and the United States has no excuse to attack Iran.” No worries. With the foreign policy establishment firmly back in the saddle, doing anything to offend or oppose the mullahs is the last thing on anyone’s mind.
This looming new empowerment of the Iranian regime also has implications for the embattled communities of non-Muslims inside Iran. IranWire reported Sunday that “in simultaneous operations in various cities across Iran, security agents ransacked the homes of tens of Baha’is. Their personal effects, mobile phones, computers, laptops and religious books and pictures were all confiscated, and in a number of cases, the agents also reportedly took away any cash they found, along with national ID cards.”
One Baha’i was puzzled: “At a time when people are supposed to be working together and observe social distancing and avoid unnecessary traffic, unknown individuals – who might be carriers of the disease – came to Baha’i homes and touched everything on the pretext of an inspection. Isn’t such behavior contrary to public health guidelines?”
Sure. But the mullahs know that the severe threat to their regime that Donald Trump posed will soon be over. The Iranian nuclear deal that enables Iran’s nuclear program and opens the door for it to receive billions from a thoughtless, imprudent, and willfully ignorant West will soon be back on. So now is the time to step up its operations against the perceived enemies of the Islamic regime, that is, poor and defenseless non-Muslims.
There is much more. Read the rest here.