Israel's Response To Iran Attack Should Be 'Limited', Blinken Says

Fatemeh Sepehari's brother says that Iran's judicial authorities organized a virtual meeting in Mashhad's Vakilabad prison with the presence of a "psychological interrogator", who asked her questions about her childhood.

Emphasizing that "this person refused to tell my sister his name", Asghar Sepehri wrote on X: “She is in an abysmal mental state after the session”.

The political prisoner has been imprisoned since September 21, 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests. Despite her illness and several operations, including open heart surgery, she remains in confinement.

Sepehri faces severe charges, including "collaboration with hostile countries" resulting in a ten-year sentence, "conspiracy and collusion" resulting in five years of imprisonment, "insulting the leadership" resulting in two years of imprisonment, and "propaganda against the system" resulting in one year of imprisonment.

Earlier in April the judiciary opened a new case for her with the charge of "supporting Israel" after she condemned the atrocities committed by Iran-backed Hamas on October 7 which triggered a proxy war in the region.

In line with Biden, many of Israel’s western allies are pressuring Israel not to respond. Everyone is concerned about the breakout of an all-out regional war in the Middle East, and since the attack catastrophically failed, many argue that there is no reason to escalate.

While Israel has declared its intent to “hit back” at Iran, Biden, has declared the US would not participate in any Israeli attack against Iran, while stressing the US’s “Iron Clad” commitment to defend Israel. The last time a US president warned Israel not to attack an adversary, was during the presence of an existential threat in 1967.

Many in the West argue that the Iranian regime only wished to deliver “a message” to Israel, and save face in the eyes of its regional proxies and domestic audience, and thus argue for Biden’s stance from a different angle. To blame Israel for its “escalatory” tendencies on account of its insecurities whilst declaiming the merits of Iran’s vehement, albeit failed, “retaliation” as grand scale messaging distracts from a global culprit.

Biden’s appeasement policy, billed as “de-escalation” and “containment”, has failed to act as an effective deterrence and critics say the US administration can no longer shrink from its own responsibility with regards to Israel-Iran Proxies entering a phase of “Open Conflict.”

Biden’s continued efforts at “containing” the Iranian regime is informed by domestic economic concerns, namely, skyrocketing oil prices, if the Middle East is plunged into a region wide conflict. Correspondingly, Biden is concerned with his own ongoing unpopularity amongst the independent voters as well as amongst the critical Arab-Muslim voting bloc in bellwether states like Michigan. However, long before any such consideration becomes an important part of any “re-election” calculus, the Biden administration’s propensity to “de-escalation”, read “appeasement”, was its Achilles heel that was exploited by Iran and its proxies.

Since assuming the presidency, Joe Biden’s foreign policy has been marred with adopting policy options that have at once emboldened the adversaries of the US and its allies and provoked uncertainty and insecurity amongst many US partners globally. Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the first significant misstep that only emboldened various actors, from Russia to Iran, to test the limits of Biden’s “de-escalation” policy. Biden’s vision of US national security, as outlined in Biden’s National Security Strategy, prioritizes the threat Russia and China pose and seeks to proactively confront them in strategic fissure points of conflict like Ukraine and the South China Sea.

Yet, in dealing with state and non-state actors that can equally wreak havoc in the rules-based global order, namely Iran and its proxies, the Biden administration prefers to reactively apply “strategic patience” and de-escalatory measures. As I have detailed in another piece, such an approach has in fact backfired. It has only made “rogue” states like Iran and their proxies become progressively more aggressive against the United States and its allies. According to the US Congressional Research Service Brief(February 28, 2024), not only has the Biden administration systemically refrained from enforcing the secondary sanctions against Iran’s petroleum importers, but it also has sought to cajole the ever-emboldened Iranian regime through a combination of “cash incentives” and “waivers.” The administration’s justification for such behavior only seeks to reinforce its national security orthodoxy of “maximum de-escalation.” Biden’s team argue that such an approach has helped the administration to bring back home US dual citizens in the Iranian custody whilst ensuring that US would not enter direct conflict with the Iranian regime.

Nonetheless, for the Biden administration’s every conciliatory step, Khamenei’s regime strode light years in both bolstering its armed regional proxies and expanding its ambitious enrichment program. The administration’s inability to implement the many sanctions that it has imposed on Iranian proxies caused some analysts to question their purpose and efficacy in reports published only a month before Hamas 7 October attack on Israel. Just two years into Biden’s presidency, advisors of the Tehran regime argued that Iran and its proxies must pursue maximum pressure on the US and its allies in the Middle East as a matter of national, Shia, security strategy. Such a maximum pressure seeks to win the good graces of the regime’s senior security partners, namely, Russia and China. According to this vision, Russia and China may treat the Iranian Shia Imperium’s chronic escalation as a critical leverage that could distract the Euro-American alliances from conflict points in Ukraine and East Asia.

Amid all the above, it is astonishing how the Biden administration continues to claim to appreciate the Iranian regime’s forty-five-year long practice of sowing the seeds of instability in the region and at once discounts it as a threat that can be and should be contained through “de-escalation. Having squandered all its resources to build up an imperium of proxies with the express goal of “the destruction of the state of Israel”, the regime has funded them all with cash and fattened them up with the most advanced weaponry to impose upon Israel, an asymmetrical war of attrition since the 1990s.

From the Israeli point of view, there are several constants that remain unchanged with respect to the Iranian threat: as long as Israel exists, whether it does so in peace and harmony with the Palestinians or in constant war, the Islamic Republic of Iran is committed to Israel’s destruction. Israel’s fundamental rationale to retaliate is informed by the fact that Tehran’s most recent “retaliatory” attempts establishes that it is both “willing” and “able” to bring to bear this “conventional capacity” directly from its own soil upon Israel. Israel, and the world, are fully aware of the “unconventional” “nuclear” capacity that the Iranian regime has. To Israel, Biden’s pressure on Netanyahu for “restraint” is an illusory hope for “de-escalation”. Israel’s determination to respond to Iran is meant to disabuse Biden’s administration of this illusion.

Iran, one of the leading executioners globally, has already executed nearly 1000 prisoners since 2023 – with this latest news sparking renewed concerns about the regime’s human rights record.

According to human rights organizations, between April 11 and April 15, prisoners from jails in Hamedan, Esfahan, Zanjan, and Mashhad were executed.

On Monday, 5 prisoners in Vakilabad prison in the city of Mashhad were executed on drug-related charges, according to human rights organization Haalvsh.

Prisoners Javad Beigi, Behrouz Namdar, Mostafa Abdi, and two other unnamed prisoners had been transferred to solitary confinement on Saturday ahead of their execution yesterday.

Two days ago, Arsalan Hashemi was executed in a Hamedan prison in western Iran.

According to reports by human rights organization HRNA, Hameshi was arrested and sentenced to death for drug-related offenses three years ago. His death sentence was carried out on Sunday.

Earlier this month, 82 Iranian and international human rights organizations called for joint action to stop drug-related executions, urging the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to halt its cooperation with the Iranian authorities.

HRNA also reported that a couple was executed on Sunday in the northwest of Iran, in Zanjan. Their sentences had been issued three years ago. Esmaeil Hosniani, 29, and his wife, Marjan Hajizadeh, aged 19, were executed in Zanjan Central Prison, as further confirmed by another human rights organization, Hengaw.

HRNA further reported that Hajizadeh was a victim of child marriage and was only 16 years and four months old at the time of her arrest.

On Saturday, Abu Dhar Salem, of Afghan origin, was executed in Dastgerd prison in Isfahan, Iran. Salem was 30 years old and from Pol-e-Khomri, a city in northern Afghanistan. He was arrested and sentenced to death about three years ago on murder charges.

In addition, 5 prisoners in Ghezel Hesar prison in the city of Karaj, and another prisoner in Rasht prison were transferred to solitary confinement cells over the last two days.

The transfer of prisoners with death sentences to solitary confinement aligns with the standard procedures that Iranian authorities follow before executing sentences.

According to HRNA, yesterday Nasir Jabari, a 40-year-old prisoner from Sari at Rasht Central Prison in northern Iran, was transferred to a solitary cell. Jabari was arrested three years ago on murder charges.

Yesterday, 5 unidentified prisoners arrested on murder charges were also transferred to solitary cells in preparation for executions at Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, Iran, according to HRNA.

The latest research by Amnesty International this month, shows a spike in executions in Iran, with at least 853 people executed in 2023 alone.

"The death penalty is abhorrent in all circumstances, but deploying it on a mass scale for drug-related offenses after grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts is a grotesque abuse of power," the report said.

In a joint statement released earlier today, the student coalition denounced the Islamic Republic regime’s “warmongering” and stated: "...we, the people of Iran, are currently at war with the Islamic Republic, and we must overthrow the Islamic government and win the revolution of Woman, Life, Freedom."

The coalition is comprised of students from several universities in Esfahan, Tehran, Shiraz, Urumieh, Sanandaj, and Malayer.

Criticism is leveled at the government for its domestic repression and its support of its proxy Islamist groups in the region. Despite the regime's claim of military prowess, particularly in missile technology, the statement contends that such displays have become a subject of ridicule both domestically and internationally.

The students also call on the Iranian diaspora to urge “world governments to recognize the demands of the people of Iran” and “list the IRGC as a terrorist entity globally."

They further ask for a “boycott of the Islamic Republic from International forums" and “expulsion of ambassadors of the Islamic Republic worldwide".

Finally, the coalition asks for the international community to recognize the Islamic Republic as “a gender apartheid government where women are considered second class and queers (LGBTQIA+) have no right to live at all.”

In response to the escalating threat of conflict, the coalition calls for a unified push to advance the struggle against the regime in Iran. This includes a call to action for widespread protests, strikes, and demonstrations across all sectors of Iranian society.

The bills have to pass a full Senate vote and be signed by the President to become law. But their sponsors were relieved to see their measures finally get over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) hurdle.

“I'm glad my End IT Act, the SHIP Act, and the MASHA Act passed out of committee today,” Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, posted shortly after the closed door committee meeting. “The Middle East is in unprecedented turmoil and weak U.S. policy has failed to re-establish deterrence with Iran. It’s past time to act, and Congress has a role to play.”

Of the bills that were marked up in the SFRC Tuesday, MAHSA Act was perhaps the most watched and the most controversial, having been held back from the committee for a long time after it passed the House –and now said to be heavily ‘diluted’ before being sent to the floor for vote.

The bill, titled the Mahsa Amini Human Rights and Security Accountability Act, was first introduced to the US Congress in January 2023, four months after the start of nationwide protests in Iran. The bill was a response to the regime’s brutal crackdown of the uprising, and was named after the young woman whose killing by the police started it all.

In its original version, the Mahsa Act required the US government to impose applicable sanctions on Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, his Office and his appointees, Iran’s president and a number of entities affiliated with Khamenei. It also required the US President to report to Congress every year whether those officials should remain under existing sanctions, making it much harder for the current and future administrations to unilaterally lift the sanctions.

“The marked up Senate version of the MAHSA Act that passed today is not the real MAHSA Act that passed the House almost unanimously with 410 votes,” wrote Nick Nikbakht, an Iranian-American businessman and activist, on X . “I have been informed that Senator Cardin has fundamentally changed the bill to dilute and give Biden admin loopholes to not apply any sanctions against the terrorist regime in Iran!”

Senator Cardin (D-MD), chairman of the SFRC has been criticized by Iranian-American activists and critics of Joe Biden for his delay in handling of the MAHSA Act. The other bills marked up by Cardin Tuesday seem to have passed without much change.

Less discussed but perhaps no less consequential is the Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum Act (SHIP Act), which Imposes sanctions on ports and refineries that process Iranian oil in violation of US sanctions.

The other bills that passed the SFRC Tuesday were the MISSILES Act and the End Iranian Terrorism Act (END IT Act) –the former sanctioning those involved in Iran's missile or drone programs, and the latter makes it harder for US administrations to issue sanction waivers to Iran, as long as it “funds terrorism.”

Collectively, these acts are seen not just as attempts to pressure the Iranian regime, but as reactions to Biden’s Iran policy, which his critics in the Congress say is too forgiving.

“Iran, unchecked by the Biden Administration’s policies of appeasement, has expanded its global operations,” Senator Risch said last week. “It is past time the Biden Administration changed course and aggressively targeted Iranian assets. It would not be that tough to do… but they have a different view of Iran than our side does.”