Author: Daniel Larison

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge resumes his discrediting advocacy for the Mujahideen-e Khalq:

Which is why I include myself among an incredible cadre of men and women from across every spectrum of life and political affiliation, in Europe and here in America, who have decided to embrace publicly the viable alternative to the clerical regime, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and the 10-point Plan advocated by the NCRI’s leader, Maryam Rajavi.

It is rather incredible that so many former government officials and retired officers have embraced a totalitarian cult as the “alternative” to another country’s government, but it has been going on for the better part of a decade now. All of the MEK’s American boosters have proven that they have such extraordinary bad judgment that they should have no business talking about Iran policy (or any other foreign policy issue), and their continued advocacy on behalf of this awful organization is proof of how easily corrupted our foreign policy debates are. The MEK probably does still engage in terrorism, since its members were reportedly the ones responsible for murdering Iranian scientists a few years back, but there is absolutely no question that they are not and never could be a “viable alternative” to the current government. It is an indictment of Ridge and others like him, including the National Security Advisor, that they are so gullible or so obsessed with regime change that they are willing to make such ridiculous claims in public.

Continue reading “The Iran Hawks’ Creepy Embrace of the MEK”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Saudi coalition planes bombed the area next to a girls’ school in Sanaa earlier today, killing at least 11 and injuring dozens more:

At least eleven schoolgirls have been killed by an explosion at a warehouse in Yemen, medical officials say.

A total of 54 people in Sanaa have been wounded with eleven children in nearby schools pronounced dead after a metal workshop exploded.

Continue reading “Saudi Coalition Airstrikes Kill 11 Yemeni Girls”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The Secretary of State issued a terse, woefully inadequate message about the floods in Iran, and used most of the message to pin blame for the disaster on Iran:

On behalf of the American people, we offer our condolences to the victims of the recent floods in Iran. These floods once again show the level of Iranian regime mismanagement in urban planning and in emergency preparedness. The regime blames outside entities when, in fact, it is their mismanagement that has led to this disaster. They even jail environmentalists for attempting to help Iran prepare for these very issues. The United States stands ready to assist and contribute to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which would then direct the money through the Iranian Red Crescent for relief.

The Iranian government’s response to the floods has been poor, and the government bears some responsibility for what is happening, but there is no denying that U.S. sanctions have hamstrung relief efforts and continue to impede humanitarian assistance. Pompeo’s statement is little more than lip service, and it is clear that he was much more concerned to use the floods as an occasion to score points against the Iranian government than he was to offer meaningful help.

Continue reading “Pompeo’s Crocodile Tears for Iranian Flood Victims”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

During his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mike Pompeo said the following about Yemen and Saudi Arabia (around 4:10:15 here):

The challenges that you’ve cited, the death that you just cited in Yemen, is not because of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. You have the wrong end of the stick on that.

Continue reading “Pompeo’s Pathetic Pro-Saudi Spin”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

This week marks the fourth year since the beginning of the Saudi coalition’s war on Yemen. In the last four years, the coalition has destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, devastated its economy, driven millions to the edge of starvation, and killed tens of thousands of Yemenis in its bombing campaign. That entire time, the U.S. has provided and continues to provide military assistance and diplomatic cover to the Saudis and Emiratis as they lay waste to their poorer neighbor. For more than two years, the Trump administration has obnoxiously resisted every effort to curtail or end U.S. support for the war. On its own terms, the war has been failure. The Saudi coalition has neither reinstalled Hadi in power nor driven the Houthis from Sanaa, and in attacking Yemen it has strengthened Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and has cooperated with and armed groups aligned with AQAP.

Today 15 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation, more than 85,000 children have perished from hunger, and the coalition’s economic war that has created famine in Yemen continues to starve the population. Reuters reported last week on the dire conditions in some of Yemen’s remote villages:

As Yeman’s war grinds into its fifth year with peace efforts stalling, ten-year-old Afaf’s father sees little hope he will be able to give his starving daughter the food or healthcare she needs.

Continue reading “Four Years of the War on Yemen”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The Trump administration’s destructive Iran policy may be about to get even worse:

Under plans recommended by Mr. Pompeo and some White House officials, the State Department would designate Iran’s military Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. It would be a first instance of the United States designating a unit of another government’s military as a terrorist group; American officials said it could put United States troops and intelligence officers at risk of similar actions by foreign governments.

The plans also would designate some Iraqi Shiite militias as foreign terrorist organizations. As a result, the Iranian-trained militias – and Iraqi officials who support them – would be subject to new economic sanctions and travel restrictions.

The administration’s plans would be guaranteed to increase tensions with Iran and sour relations with the Iraqi government. The designation of the IRGC and Iraqi militias could very well provoke attacks on U.S. forces by those same groups. Previous proposals to designate the IRGC have prompted some of their officers to threaten to do just that. The designation could also provide a pretext for the administration to initiate hostilities against Iran and the armed groups that it supports in Iraq and Syria. When this bad idea first start cropping up over ten years ago, then-Sen. Obama opposed it because he argued that it could be used as an excuse for an attack on Iran. It is potentially very dangerous, and it isn’t going to achieve anything, so it is very much like the rest of the administration’s bankrupt Iran policy.

Continue reading “The Iran Obsession Keeps Getting Worse”