It is abundantly clear to all, including the Iranian regime, that the West has intent to cause regime change in Iran. The new sanctions announced this week are a clear step towards that goal. It is the beginning of moves that the Iranian freedom movements have been asking the West for for some years. The West has been deaf to the advice of people with knowledge of Iran (predominantly Iranians!), and have thus been following policies of their own which have proved disastrous.

The Foreign Desk Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Who remembers the siege of Sarajevo? Today’s world leaders might have forgotten the early 1990s and the four-year encirclement of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Serbian forces.

Known as one of the longest sieges in modern warfare, it was also a bloodbath – thousands of lives were lost, many of them women and children. For Europe, Sarajevo was a humiliation because the massacre occurred at the heart of what some claimed was the most civilised continent on earth. The European Community was incapable of coming together to prevent the extermination of innocent Europeans. 

U.S. leaves cooperative dissidents hanging

The just-released International Atomic Energy Agency report on the Iranian nuclear weapons program should be the final warning to the West: Iran must be dealt with now, before its advanced nuclear weapons program is operational, and while the United States still has viable options for changing the regime in Tehran. However, the news that Iran is developing nuclear weapons isn’t news at all: Western policymakers have been warned of such plans and intentions for years with exacting intelligence from the main Iranian opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK).

In 2002, MEK activists risked their lives and revealed the existence of secret nuclear sites in Iran, notably the uranium enrichment site in Natanz. Since then, these activists have played a key role in the international community’s efforts to catch Tehran in its hide-and-seek escapades.

 European Union foreign ministers threatened to increase pressure on Iran Monday over its controversial nuclear programme but stood divided on wielding the threat of military action.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle ruled out military intervention once and for all, saying as he arrived for talks in Brussels: "We are not taking part in the discussion on military intervention."

 "We believe such discussions are counter-productive and reject them."