Coronavirus: Should the U.S. Lift Sanctions on Iran?

by Majid Rafizadeh • March 24, 2020 at 5:00 am

In a recent video, a masked man holding a Kalashnikov-style assault rifle warns that the attacks on Taji and Basmaya military camps were only the beginning of a much larger offensive. — Usbat al-Thayireen, or League of Revolutionaries, a new Shiite militia group, Newsweek, March 19, 2020.
"The Islamic resistance of Usbat al-Thayireen vows to strike the occupation forces' bases and [US] embassy in the coming days and will continue striking the occupation until it exits the country, and the matter will be taken further if the occupier does not leave. We say to the hypocrites who are collaborators at the evil embassy: Your days are numbered and you will face your fate very soon." — Usbat al-Thayireen, or League of Revolutionaries, a new Shiite militia group, Newsweek, March 19, 2020.
The idea that the ruling mullahs of Iran and the top state sponsor of terrorism will use the extra revenues from the lifting of sanctions for humanitarian purposes is totally irrational. Easing sanctions will enable, embolden and empower the Iranian regime to damage the US and its allies' national security interests still further and kill more Americans. The US President's Iran policy of maximum pressure, which should probably be even more maximum, is headed in the right direction.

Iran-backed militias recently launched approximately eighteen Katyusha rockets into Camp Taji, Iraq, killing two American soldiers and one British soldier. Pictured: US soldiers supervise a training session at the Camp Taji, Iraq on March 6, 2017. (Photo by Sabah Arar/AFP via Getty Images)

While the US administration is expanding its maximum pressure policy on Iran, some people, such as US Senator Bernie Sanders, are calling for immediate relief for the Iranian regime. "As a caring nation," Sanders recently posted on Twitter, "we must lift any sanctions hurting Iran's ability to address this crisis, including financial sanctions."

Lifting sanctions on the aggressive regime of Iran would be an extremely wrong move.

What politicians such Sanders seem not to recognize is that the Islamic Republic prioritizes its military adventurism over its nation's health crisis. In other words, Iran's regime will almost certainly use the extra revenues to arm its militias across the region that attack the US and its allies' forces, as it has a pattern of doing in the past.

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Turkey: Violence against Women Continues to Escalate

by Burak Bekdil • March 24, 2020 at 4:00 am

Violence against women has become Turkey's new normal.
In 2010 Turkey was shaken by the surfacing of alleged serial rapes.... including cases of adults raping minors and minors raping toddlers, killing one.
In 2014 Erdoğan said that "women should know their place," and that "gender equality is against human nature"....
No doubt Turkey's gender equality deficit bitterly shows that Islamist culture is much stickier than any Western-inspired legislation. Patriarchal cultural codes are deeply engraved throughout the society; unfortunately, it will take more than legislation to make them disappear.

Violence against women has become Turkey's new normal. (Image source: iStock)

It has become customary. As in previous years, on March 8, Turkish riot police brutally attacked demonstrators walking in central Istanbul to mark the International Women's Day. A feminist march at midnight was dispersed by rubber bullets and scores of tear gas canisters shot by the police. All that Turkish women were asking for was equal treatment and protesting the growing "tradition" of women being murdered.

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