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In this mailing:
* Majid Rafizadeh: How Iran's Mullahs View the US Election
* Amir Taheri: Iran: Desperately Seeking Gorbachev


** How Iran's Mullahs View the US Election ([link removed])
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by Majid Rafizadeh • August 4, 2024 at 5:00 am
* Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration, in the tradition of former President Barack Obama, released billions of dollars to Iran. In addition, there was lax enforcement of existing sanctions, waiving of other sanctions and no secondary sanctions whatsoever -- meaning that any country that does business with Iran is banned from doing business with the US -- placed on Iran to discourage other countries from financing it.
* China therefore has become Iran's largest customer, and Europe conducting business as usual. This financial relief has come alongside a lenient attitude towards the advancements in Iran's nuclear program. These include more than 160 Iranian military attacks against US troops just since October; virtually shutting down the Suez Canal, thereby forcing ships, unable to buy insurance, to detour around Africa; Iran's and its terror groups' military actions in the region, including the war against Israel, and Iran's military support to Russia to attack Ukraine.
* Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, openly acknowledged that without Iran's financial and military support, many militia and terror groups might have been unable to survive.
* The Trump administration's sanctions forced Iran's leaders to cut funding to militias, allies, and terror groups. The regime's militants reportedly were not receiving their salaries or benefits, preventing them from fighting. As one Iran-backed militia fighter in Syria told The New York Times, "The golden days are gone and will never return. Iran does not have enough money to give us."
* It is no wonder why Iran is apprehensive about the prospect of a Trump victory. Under Biden-Harris or Democratic leadership, the Iranian regime enjoys financial benefits and total impunity. Under Trump, the "golden days" might again come to an end.

Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration, in the tradition of former President Barack Obama, released billions of dollars to Iran. In addition, there was lax enforcement of existing sanctions, waiving of other sanctions and no secondary sanctions whatsoever, (Image source: iStock)

In Iran's latest presidential elections, the candidates revealed that they are concerned about the possibility of former President Donald J. Trump winning the upcoming US election. From their perspective, a victory for Trump would be detrimental to their interests.

Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration, in the tradition of former President Barack Obama, released billions of dollars to Iran. In addition, there was lax enforcement of existing sanctions, waiving of other sanctions and no secondary sanctions whatsoever -- meaning that any country that does business with Iran is banned from doing business with the US -- placed on Iran to discourage other countries from financing it.

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** Iran: Desperately Seeking Gorbachev ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • August 4, 2024 at 4:00 am
* Gorbachev had a thin resume as an apparatchik who had risen in the party by doing nothing, in fact, by being nobody.
* When he came to London to be promoted by Margaret Thatcher, his 10-line resume introduced him as the Central Committee's agricultural tsar who had risen to be party boss and later president of the USSR.
* He was a blank face on which one could draw one's ideal face for a Soviet leader.
* Iran's President Pezeshkian offers that kind of blank face. His thin resume inspires a variety of fanciful images.

Pictured: Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian addresses the parliament in Tehran, on July 30, 2024, after he was sworn as the Islamic republic's ninth president. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

Could Pezeshkian be Iran's Gorbachev?

Referring to President Masoud Pezeshkian, the question was headlined in a Tehran daily Tuesday and triggered a torrent of comments.

The paper's commentator described Pezeshkian as a man trusted by the system and thus capable of introducing unspecified reforms to save Iran from unspecified dangers.

This is not the first time that regime insiders call for adjustments in its trajectory.

The first to do so was Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, who issued an 8-point reform manifesto which, had it been implemented, would have made Iran a Scandinavian-style democracy minus the monarchy.

Needless to say, that didn't happen.

Instead, the nation witnessed mass executions, the pursuit of an unwinnable war against Iraq and flood-like spread of corruption.

A decade later, it was the turn of President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to masquerade as champion of reform.

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