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In an unprecedented move, a 23 member bi-partisan group of senior former US officials signed a critical letter and delivered it to President Donald Trump. The letter suggested new policy options regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran and the need for the US to open up a meaningful channel of communication with the Iranian opposition, namely the coalition, National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

This is something that has never been done under any other administration. The letter is signed by senior former US officials including Rudy Giuliani, Joseph Lieberman, Patrick Kennedy, General Hugh Shelton (a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bill Clinton) to name a few. It explains that revised policies toward Iran are needed because Iran has used every opportunity since its establishment to scuttle US foreign policy objectives and damage US national, geopolitical, economic and strategic interests with the assistance of its proxies.

More importantly, the officials urge Trump to cooperate with Iran's opposition, as other countries are doing the same "Bush publicly credited the resistance [NCRI]. It is time to end the fundamentalist regime's undue influence over US policy and establish a channel of dialogue with the NCRI, as many other governments have done, consistent with the longstanding US diplomatic practice of dialogue with political opposition groups worldwide." For Iranian leaders, the NCRI is a serious threat to their hold on power. They fear foreign governments' cooperation with the NCRI because it would put significant pressure on the ruling clerics and tip the balance of power against them. Iranian leaders fear that Iranian opposition might inspire the disaffected youth in Iran to protest against the government. Khamenei has repeatedly shown that his main concern is such infiltrations.

Iranian leaders fear the soft power of oppositional groups more than the military and hard power of foreign governments.

More fundamentally, an Iran without the current ruling clerics in power would be a powerful US ally, rather than being an enemy sworn to consistently strive to damage US security and national interests. An Iran without the ruling clerics in power would fundamentally shift the regional and global balance of power in favor of the US.

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Harvard-educated, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. . He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard.

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Former US Officials Urge Trump to Work with Iran Opposition - Huffington Post

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Gunfire broke out in Tehran, Irans capital, on Monday. A drone flew over the city and provoked anti-aircraft fire. Deputy of Air Defense Alireza Elhami said that the drone left the restricted area after the firing.

It is likely that this episode is harmless, but nothing can be taken lightly in the age of Donald Trump. Trump has assembled a team that is obsessed with Iran. His Secretary of Defense James Mattis and his National Security Adviser Mike Flynn take their fulminations into bizarre territory. Last April, Mattis said that ISIS is nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief. Iran is not an enemy of ISIS; they have a lot to gain from the turmoil that ISIS creates. That Iran is providing material support to the Iraqi armed groups that have just entered Mosul (Iraq) after ejecting ISIS from parts of the city and that Iran is providing aid to the Syrian government in its battles against ISIS does not change Mattis reality.

Nor is Flynns perspective threatened by the facts. As director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama, Flynn wanted to find evidence that Iran was responsible for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. Like the neo-cons who took the United States to war illegally against Iraq, these men itch to bomb Iran.

Encage Iran

What obsesses these men is that Iran is now more powerful in West Asia than it was before 2001-03. The United States, as I show in The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution, removed two of Irans historic enemies the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Baath in Iraq. To push Iran back into its borders the American strategic planners first tried to go after its allies in Syria (with the 2003 Syria Accountability Act) and then in Lebanon (with Israels 2006 war). Neither worked.

In 2006, the United States fabricated a crisis over Irans nuclear energy program to push for United Nations, European Union and U.S. sanctions. This too did not work. The sanctions regime had to end in 2015. Iran, with a population two and a half times greater than Iraq, cannot easily be bombed to submission. Iranian patriotism is deep, and even those who dislike the regime in Iran would not welcome a Western attack on it.

Saudi Arabia, for political purposes, fears any regional threats whether from Iran or from the neo-Ottoman objectives of the Turkish government. But the Saudis have been far more forgiving of the Turks, since Turkey until recently has been subservient to Western interests. When Saudi Arabian and Turkish interests have collided as they did over the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt then the Saudis have used every diplomatic muscle to push out the Turks. But in Syria, for instance, Saudi Arabia and Turkey worked closely in their attempt to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad. Now that Turkey has shifted its goals, the tension between Saudi Arabia and Turkey will return.

With Iran, there has not been since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 any collaboration with the West nor with Saudi Arabia. The Kings of Arabia have feared that Irans Islamic Republic provides a direct challenge to its Islamic Monarchy. Sectarianism plays a role here, but the obsession is primarily over the theory of rule that a Muslim country need not have a King is anathema to the Saudi monarchy. This Saudi fixation combined with the fantasies of the Israelis releases a toxic worldview into the American security industry. Iran, for them, is no longer a real place, but a fantastic place of evil North Korea in West Asia, Putin as a Mullah. Fantasy of this kind has no place in the making of foreign policy, but here it is fantasy combined with remarkable illiteracy that rules the day.

Iran in Syria

The Guardian ran a stunning report recently with a headline that read Iran repopulates Syria with Shia Muslims to help tighten regimes control(published on Jan. 13). The main sources for the article were an unnamed senior Lebanese official, Abu Mazen Darkoush, a former Free Syrian Army commander, and Labib al-Nahas, the chief of foreign relations of Ahrar al-Sham one of the more nasty extremist groups that had operated in Aleppo. These people all tell the Guardians Martin Chulov that Iran is driving an agenda of ethnic cleansing from Damascus to the Lebanese border. None of these are credible figures, each with an axe to grind.

The oppositions rumor mill has long suggested that the Syrian government is essentially a proxy for Iran and for Shia domination of Syria. The Baath Party, which rules the government, is afflicted with myriad problems of suffocation of political dissent, of violence against its opponents. It does not, however, have a history of ethnic cleansing. Certainly there are reports of demographic transfers (as the United Nations says) of people from the Damascus suburbs of Daraya and Moadamiyah but these have not been on sectarian lines, more on political lines (rebels have been moved to Idlib, as from Aleppo).

It has been rather the extremist opposition that has purposefully cleansed village upon village of minorities, and it is the extremist opposition especially Ahrar al-Sham that has been unyielding in its hateful rhetoric against the Alawis and other minorities. I remember meeting some of these fighters two years ago and being horrified by their acidic rhetoric against minorities. They meant what they said. Over the course of 2016, extremist groups hit villages and cleansed them of minorities, villages such as al-Zara (in the region written about by Chulov) and then a series of villages in Latakia (Abu Makkeh, Aramo, Barouda, Beyt Shakouhi, Blouta, Bremseh, Esterbeh, al-Hamboushieh, Kafraya, Kharata, Nbeiteh, Obeen, Qalah and Talla). But this context does not appear in Chulovs report nor in many of the reports that build up the anti-Iran case.

What these reports do not provide is an assessment of how Irans power is actually tempered by the contradictions inside Syria. After the Russian intervention into Syria in 2015, I asked an Iranian official why it was Russia and not Iran that entered the country. He did not have a conclusive answer, but he suggested two related points that I found of interest. First, that Iran as a regional power does not have the military heft to pull off an intervention of this scale. Russias intervention could not be balanced by the United States, because this would have put the United States in direct conflict with Russia (Secretary of State John Kerry recognized this when he told two aid workers that their demand for a U.S. intervention might start a nuclear war). Second, that Irans entry would unsettle Israel and provide the necessary provocation for a full-scale Western bombardment of Syria. It is for these reasons that Irans most respected military officer Qasem Soleimani went personally to Moscow in secret to plead the case for a Russian intervention to protect a very shaky Assad government.

Russias entry also inoculated the Syrian government from the charge that it is merely a proxy of Iran, a Shia government of a majority non-Shia country. It is impossible for the Syrian government to push for a sectarian policy given the demographic reality of the country. It has had to reinvent Syrian nationalism as the antidote to the sectarianism of the extremists and the perils of being seen as mere pawn in geopolitical games. Suriyya kilha ma3ak (Syria is with you) is a slogan of the pre-uprising period now revived as part of this Syrian, not Arab nationalism. Neither Iran nor Hezbollah call the shots in Damascus. Russia has seen to that. Hezbollahs attempt to create a security zone along the Lebanese border is merely the extension of its policy from the Bekaa Valley into the Qalamoun Mountains. It has moved from one side of the weak Lebanon-Syria border to the other.

Fear-mongering about Irans ambitions on sectarian grounds feeds Saudi paranoia and gives fodder to the Saudi-backed clerics who fulminate from the minbar. It also provides the raw intelligence for the half-baked theories of the U.S. intelligence community and the State Department. These are precisely that kinds of reports that men like Mattis and Flynn would like to read, and would like to forward to their allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Irans deal

Hastily the Trump team began to disavow their pledge to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. Europe damaged by the destruction of Libya (since 2011) and the Western sanctions on Russia (since 2014) can no longer afford to be cut off from the vital energy supplies from Iran. China and Russia will now ensure that there are never again U.N. sanctions on Iran. The United States made the Iran deal because of pressure from Europe and the acknowledgment that without Iran there was no way to bring stability of any kind of Iraq and Syria. If the Trump team tears up the deal it will further isolate the United States.

Options before the Trump team to squash Iran are few. It cannot on the one hand befriend Russia and take on China and Iran. This is the incoherence of Trumps foreign policy. Trumps main financial backers, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, and their intellectual, John Bolton, cannot change reality so easily. They will escalate against Iran as much as possible, but reality will be against them.

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Foreign policy disaster: Trump team threatens world security by escalating against Iran - Salon

DUBAI Iranian rescuers have removed three bodies from the rubble of a high-rise building in Tehran that collapsed after a fire, a fire department spokesman said on Saturday, as hopes of finding survivors trapped beneath the shopping mall were fading.

"Because of rekindling fires and the extreme heat..., we feel that it is unfortunately unrealistic that anyone would survive, although our hope is that some may come out alive," fire department spokesman Jalal Maleki told state television.

The television quoted Maleki as saying equipment used to locate survivors had not given any indications on the third day of rescue efforts.

"The total number of those under the rubble, including the firemen, is a maximum of 25," Maleki said. "So far, three bodies have been brought out."

Iran's top emergency response official put the number of people buried in the building collapse at up to 30, many of them firefighters.

"Based on the available indications, the number of people under the rubble are between 25 and 30," Esmail Najjar, head of the National Disaster Management Organization, told the state news agency IRNA.

Officials had said on Friday that 25 people were still unaccounted for after the collapse of the 17-storey building on Thursday, in addition to 20 firefighters who were feared dead in the blaze.

At least two of the recovered bodies belonged to firemen and a third injured fireman had died in hospital, state TV reported.

"This is a lesson and a warning for all officials over the security of the lives of citizens, which is a civil right," President Hassan Rouhani told state TV during a visit to the site of the building on Saturday, declared a day of national mourning.

Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi visited the site of the building and said there were "no indications pointing to sabotage", the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

Managers of the building, built 54 years ago, had ignored repeated warnings about poor safety standards and the building's weak structure, Tehran's mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has said.

Authorities have estimated the damage at about $500 million, and said that most of the shops and businesses were not insured because safety standards had not been met.

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Toby Chopra and Alistair Bell)

JERUSALEM Israel approved building permits on Sunday for hundreds of homes in three East Jerusalem settlements, two days after U.S. President Donald Trump took office, expecting him to row back on the last administration's criticism of such projects.

BAGHDAD Islamic State detonated explosives in the largest hotel in western Mosul on Friday, in an attempt to destroy it and prevent Iraqi forces from using it as a landing spot or base in their offensive to capture the city, witnesses said on Sunday.

LONDON British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Sunday she would not be afraid to tell Donald Trump when she finds something he has said unacceptable, as she prepares to meet the new U.S. President in Washington this week.

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Iran rescuers find three bodies at collapsed building, hopes for survivors fade - Reuters

EXCLUSIVE: Nearly two dozen former top U.S. government officials have urged President-elect Donald Trump to work with Iran's opposition once in office, according to a letter obtained by Fox News.

A letter signed by 23 former officeholders calls on Trump to consult with the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The group has called for free elections and freedom of religion in Iran, as well as an end to what it calls Tehran's "religious dictatorship."

READ THE LETTER

While the Iranian government calls the group terrorists, the NCRIs network of supporters in Iran helped the U.S. with intelligence during the Iraq invasion. The group also helped expose Iran's nascent nuclear weapons program.

"Iran's rulers have directly targeted US strategic interests, policies and principles, and those of our allies and friends in the Middle East," the letter reads, in part. "To restore American influence and credibility in the world, the United States needs a revised policy."

The letter's signatories include former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani; former Sen. Joe Lieberman; and retired Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bill Clinton.

IRAN DISSIDENTS SEEKING MEETING WITH TRUMP

Last month, Fox obtained a letter to Trump from a group of Iranian dissidents that urged the president-elect to follow through on his campaign promise to revisit the nuclear deal between Iran and six global powers, including the U.S.

"I think what's being offered here is to say, 'Look, there is an opposition in Iran,'" former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton told Fox News. "It's a lot of different pieces, like all opposition movements [and] a lot of the groups don't get on well together, but let's be clear: There is an alternative to the ayatollahs."

The Trump transition team has not given any official response to the letter, and it's unclear whether Trump has any plans to take a meeting with Iran dissidents and groups.

Earlier Sunday, Iran's deputy foreign minister told reporters that "the new U.S. administration cannot abandon the deal."Abbas Araghchi added that the agreement "will not be renegotiated" and repeated an earlier warning by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who publicly stated, "If they tear it up, we will burn it," without elaborating.

Fox News' Eric Shawn and Ben Evansky contributed to this report.

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Former U.S. officials urge Trump administration to work with ...

A historic high-rise building in the heart of Iran's capital caught fire and later collapsed Thursday, killing at least 30 firefighters and leaving their stunned colleagues and bystanders weeping in the streets.

The disaster at the 17-story Plasco building, inadvertently shown live on state television, came after authorities said they repeatedly warned tenants about blocking stairwells with fabric from cramped garment workshops on its upper floors.

Firefighters, soldiers and other emergency responders dug through the debris into the night, looking for survivors. While it was not clear how many people were in the steel-and-concrete building, witnesses said many had slipped through a police cordon while the fire burned to go back inside for their belongings.

"They asked us ... using loudspeakers to evacuate the building, but some people went inside again, saying their precious documents, their bank checks, their entire life was in their shops," said witness Masoud Hosseini. "They went inside to fetch those documents. I felt like they cared about their belongings, checks and money more than their lives.

"Firefighters went inside to bring them out, and then suddenly the building collapsed," Hosseini said.

Iranian authorities did not immediately release definitive casualty figures, which is common in unfolding disasters.

Iran's state-run Press TV announced the firefighters' deaths, without giving a source for the information. Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said more than 20 bodies of firefighters had been recovered by Thursday night.

Local state television said 30 civilians were injured, while the state-run IRNA news agency said 45 firefighters had been injured.

Firefighters began battling the blaze around 8 a.m., some 3 1/2 hours before the collapse. The fire appeared to be the most intense on the upper floors, the site of workshops where tailors cooked for themselves and used old kerosene heaters for warmth.

The building came down in seconds, shown live on state television , which had begun an interview with a journalist at the scene. One side collapsed first, tumbling perilously close to a firefighter perched on a ladder and spraying water on the blaze.

A thick plume of brown smoke rose over the site afterward, and onlookers wailed in grief.

"God willing, nothing happened to firefighters who were there," the journalist said, then began crying.

Watching the disaster unfold was Masoumeh Kazemi, who said she rushed to the building because her two sons and a brother worked in the garment workshops on the upper floors.

"I do not know where they are now," Kazemi said, crying.

In a nearby intersection, Abbas Nikkhoo stood with tears in his eyes.

"My nephew was working in a workshop there," he said. "He has been living with me since moving to Tehran last year from the north of the country in hopes of finding a job."

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed sorrow over the fire in a statement and praised the courage and sacrifice of the firefighters.

President Hassan Rouhani ordered Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli to investigate the disaster, IRNA reported. Rouhani also ordered the ministry to ensure the injured were cared for and immediately compensate those affected by the disaster. Rouhani, whose administration struck the nuclear deal with world powers, will probably be standing for re-election in May.

The cause of the blaze wasn't immediately known. However, fire department spokesman Jalal Maleki said authorities had visited the building often to warn tenants about conditions there.

"Everyone stacked up goods outside their shops and in the staircases and corridors," Maleki said. "We warned them many times, but they wouldn't listen."

In the hours after the collapse, authorities also described the building as having a "weak structure," without elaborating.

Another fire broke out later Thursday at a building next to the collapsed tower, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. Firefighters worked into the night to extinguish it.

The Plasco building was an iconic presence on Tehran's skyline, one of the first to rise against the backdrop of the snowcapped Mount Damavand. Opened in 1962, it was the first privately owned tower to be built during the era of the U.S.-backed shah, when oil money fueled the capital's rapid development.

The tower, the tallest in Tehran at the time and just north of the sprawling Grand Bazaar, got its name from the plastics manufacturing company owned by its builder, Iranian Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian.

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the shah, Iran's new clerical rulers had Elghanian tried on charges that included spying for Israel. He was executed by firing squad an outcome that prompted many of the remaining members of the country's longstanding Jewish community to flee.

The state-controlled Islamic Revolution Mostazafan Foundation took ownership of the building. The foundation, which has ties to the powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, made no immediate statement about the collapse.

The fire was the worst in Tehran since a 2005 blaze at a historic mosque killed 59 worshippers and injured nearly 200 others.

Thursday's disaster stunned the city. Firefighters openly wept on the streets, holding each other for support. Dozens of people lined up to donate blood.

"It is a humanitarian duty," said Gholamreza Heidari, a university student. "It is nothing compared to the dedication that our firefighters showed in rescuing people."

Associated Press

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Iran shocked by raging fire that collapsed iconic high-rise ...