Fascism, Iranian-style

A few days ago, my Iranian friend Dr. Roya Araghi, a former political prisoner and follower of Ayatollah Boroujerdi, sent me disturbing news about him. He is a leading opponent of the Islamist regime in Iran and supports the complete separation of religion and state from the viewpoint of a Shi’ite cleric. He is currently serving an 11 year prison sentence since October 2006 and will not be released until the regime falls.

He was recently transferred to solitary confinement in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. He suffers from advanced heart disease and is in need of an immediate transfer to a properly equipped hospital outside the prison system, according to the prison’s own doctors. Yet he will not be transferred for medical care because the regime knows it has nothing to lose by endangering his life. His case has not gotten the coverage and support it deserves in the Western and Israeli media.

Meanwhile, two of the eight candidates in Iran’s farcical “selection” process for President in 2013, Mohsen Rezai and Ali Akbar Velayati, are leading suspects in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994 which killed 85 people and injured 300 more. This information was reported on page eight of the May 29, 2013 edition of The South Palm Beach County Jewish Journal.  Rezai is facing an international arrest warrant from Interpol. The attack targeted one of Latin America’s largest Jewish communities, which has a population of 160,000.

The regime is acting with impunity and demonstrating its contempt for Israel and the Jews by approving these candidates to run for President.  The regime is thumbing its nose at the West and at Obama’s weak policies of appeasement toward Iran. This regime knows it has nothing to lose by sponsoring such candidates because Obama not to intervene in support of the Iranian people’s rebellion against this genocidal anti-Semitic regime in 2009. A leading Middle East scholar said that Iranian leaders got the message that “We are with him, and he is with us.” Obama’s policy contributed to the failure of the uprising against this regime and indirectly strengthened its repressive control over the Iranian people and its capacity for sponsoring global anti-Semitism.