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Iranian Whose Son was Murdered by the Regime: Sanctions Relief Will Aid the Mullahs, Not the People

Apr 28, 2020 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

An Iranian father whose son was murdered by Iran’s security forces last November while protesting against a rise in gas prices has a message for the world. While some American politicians, such as Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders, have “demanded” that President Trump lift sanctions on Iran “because of the coronavirus,” Manouchehr Bakhtiari urges quite the opposite: he asks that there be no lifting of sanctions because he knows what the regime will spend most of its restored revenue on.

The story is from the Jerusalem Post:

Manouchehr Bakhtiari, whose son Pouya was gunned down by the security of forces of the Islamic Republic for his protest against rising gasoline prices, urged on Friday that sanctions relief not be provided to Tehran’s rulers.

“If sanctions are lifted, the regime will sell oil and other natural resources of Iran to buy guns to kill our children with them,” said Manouchehr Bakhtiari.

The Iranian human rights activist and dissident Masih Alinejad tweeted on Friday: “He is the father of Pouya Bakhtiyari, a young Iranian mercilessly killed by the Revolutionary Guards during Iran Protests of November 2019.

“He asked me to relay this video to Persian-speaking and international news outlets.

“He has a few words on sanctions on the Islamic Republic.”

Bakhtiari said in the video that “The regime will spend that money [from a lifting of American sanctions] on relatives of officials. They will spend the money in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine. They will not spend it on Iranians,” adding that “any money the Islamic Republic receives, it spends it on its own needs rather than on the people.”

As Bakhtiari knows, and Omar and Sanders do not, the men who rule Iran have only two interests. One is their own economic well-being. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, has amassed the hallucinatory fortune of $95 billion; lesser leaders, including clerics and IRGC leaders, have managed to acquire tens of millions of dollars apiece. Colossal sums have been diverted from the national treasury into the pockets of these grasping theocrats and generals. The protests that began last November were not only against a surprise rise in the prices of gasoline, but even more widely, a cry of rage against the massive corruption. The regime, Bakhtiari warns the West, “will spend that money on relatives of officials,” that is, after they have first diverted goodly sums to themselves, they like to take care of their extended family.

For the Iranian regime, the second great expenditure is buying weapons for, and otherwise supporting, the fighters who belong to Iran’s proxies and allies abroad. These include the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Shi’a militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite forces in Syria. Despite the plummeting Iranian revenues, the financial support for foreign adventurism has been the last item on the budget (Grand Theft by the rulers is an off-line item) to suffer cuts. The continued creation of a Shi’a crescent is more important to the clerics than relieving the economic anguish of the Iranian people.

He noted that “If the international community and the UN really want to help Iranians, they should help directly. I ask the World Health Organization to designate a representative in Iran and help Iranians directly.”

The WHO could supply testing kits, PPE (masks, gloves, gowns), and ventilators directly to Iranian hospitals and medical personnel, instead of handing hundreds of millions of dollars to the Tehran government, and trusting it to spend that money on what it was intended for – the health care system. Mr. Bakhtiari is sure that Tehran would spend that money, or most of it, not on medical care but, as it has been doing for years, on allies and proxies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and “Palestine.”

Would Iran allow the WHO to distribute its medical supplies directly? The first instinct of the regime in Tehran is to furiously resist any demands from the outside world. But if the World Health Organization stands firm, and does not relent in demanding that it be allowed to distribute Personal Protective Equipment (masks, gloves, gowns), and medical equipment (including ventilators) directly to hospitals and medical staff without the regime’s interference, Iran will have to acquiesce. That will happen sooner if the cases continue to spike upwards. The Iranian regime claims, as of mid-April, that there are 66,220 confirmed cases and 4,110 deaths, but opposition groups claim that the real figures have been covered up, alleging that more than 20,000 have died. For the regime, tens of thousands more deaths from coronavirus, and protests by Iranians against the refusal of their leaders to allow WHO to distribute its medical supplies directly, would be a nightmare scenario, with unforeseeable, and possibly regime-changing, results.

Mr. Bakhtiari, having lost his son, has nothing further to lose and in his despair is determined to tell the truth. He knows that the lifting of sanctions would bring increased revenues to Iran, but only very little of that would be applied by this grasping and cruel regime to health care for the pepole. He has lived under that regime for forty years and observed its priorities. First come the colossal handouts for the leaders, and fat sinecures for their family members, of a size that would make even Tammany Hall blush. The biggest crooks in the Western world could never rival Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, with his $95 billion fortune. Second, vast sums will go to supplying weapons, and giving financial support, to Houthis, Hezbollah, the Syrian army, the Shia militias in Iraq and even – a special exception to the general Shi’a-only rule — money for the Sunnis in Hamas, given that they are involved in the most important Jihad of all, that waged against the “Zionists.” And only then would the regime’s attention be focussed on the coronavirus pandemic, and what’s left in the government coffers would be used to buy those masks, those gloves, those medical gowns and even, perhaps, a few dozen ventilators.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Iran Tagged With: Manouchehr Bakhtiari, Pouya Bakhtiyari


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Comments

  1. Peter Buckley says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 10:54 am

    https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2020/04/28/camel-urine-islams-best-cure-for-coronavirus/

    • Giacomo Latta says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 12:41 pm

      Inject me with Lysol any day.

  2. mortimer says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 1:22 pm

    Grieving father Manouchehr Bakhtiari is right. He knows more about the situation than Biden. But Biden and his Globalist puppet-masters are know-it-alls. Nothing should get in the way of their plans for a new global FEUDALISM. The little people have to be CRUSHED and their right to speak removed or their will be no GLOBALIST FEUDAL OVERLORDS.

  3. mortimer says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 1:27 pm

    Imagine living in a country where they SHOOT YOU DOWN IN COLD BLOOD for protesting high gas prices.

    High gas prices raise the price of EVERYTHING, because today, almost everything comes to us today by truck.

    Who wouldn’t protest? The mullahs are the enemies of the Iranian people. They will swing from the lamp posts.

  4. keith says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 4:06 pm

    Same behavior as hamas and every other dictatorship across the planet.
    To be fair about it. Islam isn’t the only corrupt system in the world.
    Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but these vermin are taking things to a whole new level.
    I find it hard to get my head around the ability of these people to shaft their own people for their personal profit.
    Perhaps these corrupt pigs need to be taught a lesson by their own people? We can live in hope.

  5. GreekEmpress says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 6:54 pm

    Mr. Bakhtiari is a brave man to speak out. I hope he can stay safe, wherever he is.

  6. gravenimage says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 7:33 pm

    Iranian Whose Son was Murdered by the Regime: Sanctions Relief Will Aid the Mullahs, Not the People
    ……………………….

    Manouchehr Bakhtiari is right–and he is a brave man to say so. If Iran gets sanctions lifted, it will just benefit the vicious Mullahs’ regime.

  7. abu taleb says

    Apr 29, 2020 at 7:23 am

    Islam is an ideology created for political purpose so that the muslim leaders could have power and enrich themselves by corruption and oppression. And it has been used effectively from 7th century until now.

    • OLD GUY says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 10:50 am

      RIGHT ON!

    • Giacomo Latta says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 12:50 pm

      The koran is clear about what to do with booty from the UN and elsewhere. One-fifth to Mohammed, well he’s not around anymore so it goes to the Ayatollah. One-fifth goes to the mosque, via the Ayatollah, of course. One-fifth goes to the poor and handicapped. The Ayatollah takes care of these people so that money must go to him. Finally, two-fifths goes to the people who need it, but, of course, must pay zakat taxes for management of the distribution. Maybe this is why Democrats are so warm to Islam.

  8. Barbara says

    Apr 29, 2020 at 6:20 pm

    I know the answer, but, why is this not on the front page of every newspaper around the world.
    I worked with a man who had to leave Iran because the Ayatollah wanted to kill him. He can never go back or he will be murdered. His entire family no longer lives in Iran. His mother was an art teacher at an all girls school. After the revolt she no longer had a job.

    Pre revolt the woman dressed like woman every where else. Now they have to wear prison grab.

  9. Walter Sieruk says

    Apr 29, 2020 at 10:02 pm

    Strong sanctions need to be kept on that Islamic hate “mullah tyranny” of Iran that engages in brutal, cruel and murderous violence against its own Iranian citizens, so how much do those in power in Iran care ,if possible, about the human rights of people of other nations.
    Back on the date of 4/22/19 the US Secretary of State ,Michael Pompeo spoke of that brutal and oppressive tyranny which oppresses the people of Iran and said “We will not appease their oppressors as that last administration did .” Pompeo then stated “We will support the Iranian people.”

    As far back as on Tuesday, 2/5/ 19 in his second State on the Union a speech President Trump spoke of that Islamic tyranny of Iran as well as those in total power and complete of that tyrannical rogue state. For the President declared “It is a radical regime, they do bad, bad things.”

    Moreover, an author of an article on a Freedom Site, Dariush Afshar, had explained the reality of the situation well when he wrote that the “People of Iran who fight for freedom in Iran and abroad put a huge gap and draw a prominent line between Iran and the Islamic regime in Tehran.”

    This is sadly and tragically the terrible reality of this Islamic tyrannical regime of Iran. This Islamic tyranny has been well nicknamed “the mullahs regime” in which them mullahs and ayatollahs as well as other fiendish and fanatical Muslims in power have a strong and awful control of the Islamic regime of Iran and through their band of Islamic state “police” , who are called the “Revolutionary Guards “come down hard human rights of the Iranian people .

    Therefore, the Iranian people who are trapped and forced to exist in this Islamic tyranny live in terrible fear of the mullahs and others in power in Iran. This is a tragic and sad reminder of the wisdom that was printed in the periodical of Benjamin Franklin which is entitled POOR RICHARDS’ ALMANAC that reads “Those who are feared are also hated.”

    It also should be added, to this that the actual word “Republic” has on origin the Latin meaning “Of the people” With the mullahs ayatollahs in so much power and even influencing the parliament of this Islamic regime is tyranny is hardly a real republic .Furthermore the ruthless gang of thugs who are the stooges of those Muslim clerics, called the “Revolutionary Guards,” those Islamic State “police” come down hard on the human rights and freedoms of the Iranian people. Therefore the people do have the right to overthrow a tyranny. This reality had even been expressed and described by men of great intelligence .For example the philosopher .John Locke. This is wisdom that mullahs and other villains in power in that Islamic tyranny don’t want the Iranian people to know about or understand

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