The following numbers are extremely important to us:
Well over 440
Nearly 18,000
31
Approximately 500
Approximately 58
Less than 5
Well over 440. That is how many meetings EMET has conducted educating members of Congress or their staffers on Capitol Hill since the negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran began in April of 2021.
When we first began to talk about the fallacy of negotiating with this brutal, bloodthirsty theocracy, many foreign policy staffers on Capitol Hill were convinced that diplomacy was the only way to go.
We agreed that diplomacy would be ideal, however, but that it would only work if our negotiating partner shared our common intentions. It does not work when dealing with a regime that is perilously close to nuclear breakout, has cells throughout the region and the world, has been the most destabilizing actor in the Middle East, and brutalizes and kills its own young people.
Our educational work on Capitol Hil has been to explain the actual, brute nature of the Islamic regime. How, in 1988, their current President, Ebrahim Raisi, personally presided over the “Death commissions” trials that lasted mere moments. In those trials, he sentenced over 5,000 people to death in only a few minutes. So many people were hung that they had to be lifted by cranes 6 at a time in order to finish the task in a timely manner. Not only was he the presiding judge but he insisted on being present at their executions.
We have explained the personalities running the regime. It is replete with nefarious characters such as Hossein Dehghan, who in 1983 bombed the US Marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 US servicemen. We have also educated Capitol Hill about Akhar Velayiti, who is now an advisor to Supreme Leader Khameini. He was involved in the AMIA bombing, the Jewish center in Argentina, in 1994 that killed 85. Dehghan and Velayiti are people that the regime had wanted off the State Department’s terrorist list. Our task has been to explain that you do not negotiate with such people.
We have explained how outrageous it has been that the Russian Minister, Sergei Lavrov has been our water carrier in the nuclear negotiations in Vienna, even after Russia invaded Ukraine.
We have explained how outrageous it has been that the Iranians have demanded that this deal if negotiated, would never be open to negotiations again. That means, according to our Constitution, this deal would have to be submitted as a treaty, which would mean that two-thirds of the Senate would have to approve.
We have explained how the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA) found traces of uranium in undeclared sites back in June. Because of this, the IAEA voted to express dissatisfaction and the Islamic Republic has not been allowed the IAEA back in to do their inspections since.
Of course, the regime has expressed yet another absurd demand in the negotiations to end all further IAEA inspections.
It has been a heavy lift, but we have been there, all along, saying that the United States needs a Plan B; that in order to have negotiations taken seriously by such an evil regime, there has got to be some credible threat of military force.
Today, the Islamic Republic hung their first of many dissenters. the trial that lasted no more than a few minutes. Mohsen Shekari was convicted of “moharebeh,” a Farsi word meaning “waging war against God.”
But he is only the first of many. There are at least a dozen others on death row, some as young as 16.
Nearly 18,000. That is how many of these courageous dissidents have been arrested by the regime. They know that they might face the death penalty. They know that they might be tortured, and the women raped, in the notorious Evin prison, but they despise the regime so much that they do not care. They do not want the regime to moderate their attitudes about the hijab. They want to overthrow the regime.
31. That is how many provinces there are in Iran. And every single one of them has seen their streets inflamed by the protestors. Every university, even the religious ones in Qum have been partaking in the protests.
Approximately 500. That is the latest number we have been able to find of how many protestors have randomly been shot, beaten to death, or thrown from buildings by the regime.
58. That is the number of children, some as young as 9, that have been killed by the regime.
Less than 5 minutes. That is how much television time the NBC Nightly News, the most watched nightly news broadcast, has devoted to covering this story, since the demonstrations broke out on September 16th when Jina Mahsa Amini was brutally murdered for letting a bit of hair show out from under her hijab.
This is outrageous. The American people have got to know. And we have painfully learned that many on Capitol Hill simply have not been paying attention to the situation that is inflaming the streets of Iran.
A regime that rapes, kills, and tortures its own children could not be trusted with nuclear bombs. Civilized agreements that might work in the West could never be entrusted to them. They have already proven that they have violated every agreement they have ever signed.
Yet, there are some in the administration that have said that they are still open to negotiation with them.
And that is why EMET is here.
During this extremely important time, we are asking all of you to please give as much as you possibly can so that EMET can continue its important work of educating our nation’s policymakers and the public at large about what Israel, our Sunni Gulf allies, and the United States are up against with this savage regime. And that there must be a Plan B.
Donate to support our work here, or you can send a check to:
Endowment for Middle East Truth, P.O. Box 66366, Washington, DC 20035
To donate by phone, please call 202-601-7422. All contributions are tax-deductible.
