Victory Star: April 2017

To confront Iran, halt the IRGC's commerce: Last week the leading Iranian opposition group held a press conference in Westminster to highlight some aspects of the ever-growing commercial empire being maintained by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as the ways in which the paramilitary's wealth contributes to the ongoing operations of terrorist groups throughout the region. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) specifically identified the sites of some 90 docks operated exclusively by the IRGC within Iranian ports. The information was obtained from the network of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which has assets within the clerical regime and the IRGC itself and made international headlines in 2002 when it revealed key details about the regime's nuclear program. The NCRI pointed out that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei specifically ordered docks whose operations have been granted to the IRGC should be subject to no oversight. The notably hard line paramilitary organization has free rein to smuggle black market goods into the Islamic Republic and most disturbingly, to smuggle weapons, financial resources and personnel to spread the regime's influence into the wider regions of the Middle East, including Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain.

How will Trump's Syrian missile strikes affect tensions with Iran?: President Trump's decision to target the Syrian airfields used to carry out Tuesday's horrific chemical attacks may mark a major change in the direction of the six-year-old Syrian civil war. At the very least, it was a welcome break from the previous administration's penchant to let Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad off the hook for his war crimes. Still, it will be interesting to see how Trump's Syrian missile strikes affect tensions with Iran. In 2013, Assad staged a similar chemical bomb raid against a Damascus suburb. But Obama refrained from taking firm action and instead decided to stay on the sidelines and back off from his red lines. The main beneficiaries of this hands-off approach were the Assad regime and Assad's patrons in Tehran. Assad got away with murder and the Iranian regime got the green light to relentlessly increase its violent meddling in Syria.