The US on Wednesday announced new sanctions on Iranian officials for their alleged role in cracking down on protesters inside Iran as demonstrations and violence continue across the country.
Announcing the sanctions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US will “continue to find ways to support” protesters inside Iran. He said the measures target 14 individuals and three entities.
The new sanctions come as negotiations between the US and Iran to revive the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, have been stalled. US officials have said the JCPOA is not their “focus” now as they look for ways to support Iranian protesters. An Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday that the US has soured on the possibility of resuming talks with Tehran.
The new sanctions hit members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iranians that work in the country’s prison system. The entities targeted by the sanctions are accused of participating in censorship and the surveillance of Iranians.
The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, and Wednesday marked the 40th day since she died. Iran has accused the US and Israel of fomenting the protests, which Iranian officials have denounced as riots.
Iranian officials have said at least 30 security officials have been killed by demonstrators, including members of the IRGC. On Wednesday, Iranian media reported that an IRGC member was shot dead by “rioters” in the Iranian city of Malayer.
It’s not clear if the US and Israel are involved in the violence, but Israel does have a long history of carrying out covert attacks inside Iran, including assassinations. Back in May, Israel was said to be behind the killing of an IRGC colonel in Tehran and was suspected of involvement in a string of other mysterious deaths around the same time.
The US has signaled that it’s trying to give material support to the Iranian protesters by giving them better access to the internet, which has been restricted. When asked if the US was getting involved in the protests, CIA Director William Burns said, “All I can say is we are going to continue to be strongly supportive as a government in the free flow of information.”
You can bet we stirred the pot, then come the sanctions.
In other words,the people of Iran are incapable of wanting human rights and basic freedoms. Perhaps it was Mossad that murdered that young woman.
How to win hearts and minds – apply yet more sanctions which hurt the poorest people in Iran.
Once a bully, always a bully.
“Blinken says the US will ‘continue to find ways to support’ Iranian protesters.”
And that’s without interfering in another country using taxpayer money.
No, that’s a media lie. She was called to the police station, and in a room with a dozen other women she was talking to a female police officer when she collapsed on the floor, obviously by brain hemorrhage. Security cameras captured all of this. The police quickly brought her to the hospital.
This is then turned into “she was in police custody” to perpetuate the initial lie, “protesters believe she was beaten to death”. Completely baseless but the media simply stopped saying “beaten” without telling people that it was false.
The protesters are Baluchis and Maoist Kurd separatist groups, who always look for ways to promote their agenda. When they come to the West to live off Westerners they angrily say “We aren’t Iranians, we are Baluchis!”, or Kurds. Mahsa Amini was a Kurd. The fact that this is just the usual leftist and ethnic violence is something the media leave out, a lie by omission. The Baluchs and Kurds have separatist groups, which no doubt get money from Washington. There are also other communist remnants beside the Kurds, and these joined the street violence.
If it was in the U.S. the leftist media would call them “mostly peaceful protesters”. And of course, it’s hard to not be more peaceful than the BurnLootMurder criminals. These Baluchis and Kurds don’t loot and burn stores, and murder store owners. But they attack women and police in the streets. They followed an old woman, tore off her head scarf and tried to tear off the rest of her clothes. They attack police and have tried to set them on fire.
30 police and security guards murdered. No wonder the socialists in the West support the criminals. An Iranian commentator on YouTube – often critical of the Iranian government, but also of Washington – pointed out how one of the Western feminists screaming in support of the protests had a big David Star tattooed on her neck. She forgot to cover that up. That picture has made the rounds in Iran, where the vast majority of people oppose the criminals. Try harder to look like “just ordinary people protesting” next time.
Why can’t Wash. mind it’s own business for a change?. The pathetic part is that 99% of the US population see endless war interventions as OK and being part of American policy, since that’s all we’ve ever known since the Spanish American War when the capitalists got into war business, which is good business; peace isn’t.