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U.S. Seeks Global Consensus to Counter the Threat of a Revolutionary Iran

(Foundation for Defense of Democracies) Brian Hook - Brian Hook, who leads the State Department's Iran Action Group, told the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington on Tuesday: The Iranian regime is the last revolutionary regime on earth. The ideologues who forcibly came to power in 1979, and remain in power today, are driven by a desire to conform all of Iranian society to the tenets of the Islamic Revolution. And the full achievement of the revolution at home and abroad is the regime's ultimate goal. We can see the effects of the revolutionary mindset across the Middle East, and even the world. The revolutionary worldview means that the regime cannot tolerate any ideas coursing through the veins of Iranian society that would threaten them. This is why the regime throws a teenage gymnast in jail for dancing on Instagram. Instead of using the wealth generated from the Iran deal (JCPOA) to boost the material wellbeing of the people, the regime grabbed it for themselves. And they use the money to line the pockets of dictators, terrorists and rogue militias. Iran provides Lebanese Hizbullah about $700 million per year. Iran has spent at least $16 billion on supporting its proxies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Iran has historically provided over $100 million per year to Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran has extended at least $4.6 billion in lines of credit to Syria. As a result of the failure of the Iran nuclear deal to effectively restrain proliferation, or to curb Iran's destabilizing behavior, on May 8 the president ended America's participation in the nuclear deal. Secretary Pompeo announced a new Iran strategy shortly thereafter with 12 objectives. And we have launched a multipronged pressure campaign that reflects his goal of protecting the American people and our allies and our partners from this outlaw regime. The goal of aggressive sanctions is to force Iran into simple but hard choices of whether to cease or persist in the policies that trigger the sanctions. Regime leaders should feel painful consequences for their violence and bad decision-making. We are asking every nation that can no longer tolerate the Islamic Republic's destructive behavior to protect its people by joining this pressure campaign.
2018-08-30 00:00:00
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