Irandaily | No. 4452 | National

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Iran, Egypt Can Resolve Syria Crisis

A top parliamentary official said the Islamic Republic and Egypt can help resolve the crisis in Syria through close cooperation.
Hossein Sheikholeslam, director general for international affairs at Majlis, said that Tehran and Cairo were currently working to find a solution to the turmoil in Syria.
Sheikholeslam added that many countries have come to the conclusion that only a political solution can resolve the crisis and that continuing the war and violence in Syria would be detrimental, Press TV reported on Wednesday.
The official said Tehran welcomed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s plan for Syria since the proposal was against war and in favor of political solution.
Morsi initiated the formation of a contact group on Syria, comprising Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, during a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in August 2012.
“Today, many western countries want to be involved in Syria’s issue. However, Iran, Turkey and Egypt have benevolently taken steps to resolve the problem of this country,” Sheikholeslam added.
On February 7, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a meeting with his Egyptian and Turkish counterparts Morsi and Abdullah Gul to discuss the ongoing crisis in Syria and the solutions to end the unrest in the Arab country.
During the trilateral meeting in Cairo, which was held on the sidelines of the 12th Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit, the trio called for an immediate settlement of the crisis and an end to the bloodshed in Syria.
Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 and tens of thousands of people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the turmoil.
The Syrian government says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

Destabilization of Iraq
Elsewhere in his remarks, Sheikholeslam condemned the fresh wave of terrorist attacks in Iraq, saying that the string of deadly bombings is aimed at destabilizing the Iraqi government.
Today, Iraq is beset by a belligerent triangle Sheikholeslam said in reference to the killing of nearly 40 people in a series of bomb attacks that struck predominantly Shiite neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
“Democracy in Iraq has caused regional kingdoms to feel threatened and, therefore, by hiring part of the Syrian terrorists and sending them to Iraq, they have been trying to foster turmoil and chaos in this country (Iraq),” the official stated.
He also blamed the violence on colonial powers, which seek to continue military presence in Iraq, and corrupt remnants of the Ba’athist regime of the executed dictator, Saddam Hussein.
Sheikholeslam referred to recent protests in Iraq and differentiated pro-reform demands from protests aimed at toppling the government of democratically-elected Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.
“Part of the protests [in Iraq] are subversive in a way and are not legally and morally acceptable, and are void in the eyes of the Iraqi people,” he said.
The official hailed Maliki for his efforts to reconstruct Iraq after it suffered serious damages under the former dictator Saddam Hussein and as a result of the occupation following the US-led invasion in 2003.

Zio-US Pharmaceutical Terrorism on Iran

By Yuram Abdullah Weiler

“The policies Iran is pursuing are unacceptable, and until Iran’s leadership agrees to abandon this dangerous course, we will continue to use tough and innovative means to impose severe economic and financial consequences on Iran’s leadership,” said US Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.
The United States has declared war on Iran--economic war by means of sanctions which threaten the lives of Iranians who are forced to depend on western-manufactured pharmaceuticals to fight cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The goal of the ever-escalating US sanctions against Iran may very well be armed conflict, with sanctions merely a method, to quote former US secretary of war Henry Stimson, of ‘how we [the US] should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot’.
Initiated by the Zionist lobby AIPAC in 1995, the US sanctions, which arguably constitute an act of war, fall under the auspices of the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). Sanctions are now managed by David S. Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence; Daniel L. Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing; and, Adam J. Szubin, director of the office of foreign-asset control, all bureaucrats with careers spanning the administrations of several US presidents. This troika of tyranny, referred to as ‘America’s sanction cops’, has been working for almost ten years with the US Congress, under constant pressure from the Zionist regime, to design ever tougher sanctions against Iran.
Unfortunately, the sanctions have also succeeded in deterring western pharmaceutical companies from undertaking business transactions for medicines greatly needed in Iran, despite the Washington regime’s official, but not legally binding, verbiage to the contrary.
In reality, the complexity of the US sanction regime and the severity of the penalties have discouraged the profit-hungry US pharmaceutical manufacturers from risking their bottom right corners to do what is morally right. In one instance, a representative from an Iranian pharmaceutical firm flew to Paris with documentation confirming the legality of a business transaction only to be told by the French banker, “Even if you bring a letter from the French president himself saying it is OK to do so, we will not risk this.”
Iran, whose pharmaceutical sector amounts to some $3 billion per year, imports roughly 30 percent of its medication, and is relying increasingly on China and India as US sanctions close the door to business with American and European drug firms, whose exports to Iran fell 30 percent in 2012. In some cases, finding substitute drugs to fight certain diseases, such as hemophilia, cancer or multiple sclerosis, is impossible because heavily guarded patents make them unavailable except from western sources. The net result for patients in Iran is that it may be virtually impossible for them to obtain critical live-saving medications, which means effectively that the US sanctions have pronounced a death sentence upon them.
Manouchehr Esmaili-Liousi, a young 15-year-old boy from the city of Dezful, in the southwestern province of Khuzestan who suffered from hemophilia, was the first victim to die due to a lack of medicine caused by the sadistic US sanctions against Iran.
Condemning the sanctions, Ahmad Ghavidel, the director of Iran’s Hemophilia Society, said that ‘sanctions hitting medicine in Iran are causing a silent death and are a ploy to hurt the health of Iranian people’. Naser Naqdi, the director general of Darou Pakhsh, Iran’s largest pharmaceutical firm, said bluntly, “There are patients for whom a medicine is the difference between life and death. ... If you have cancer and you can’t find your chemotherapy drug, your death will come soon. It’s as simple as that.”
US Representative Brad Sherman (D, Ca) admits that the misery and death inflicted on Iranians by the sanctions is intended. “Critics argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people,” he said, adding malevolently, “Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”
Cynics arguing in favor of continuing the inhumane sanctions are quick to point to the previously mentioned ‘humanitarian’ loopholes and some even go so far as to blame Iran, the victim, for mismanaging its pharmaceutical supply chains. However, former Woodrow Wilson Scholar, Siamak Namazi, puts the blame where it belongs squarely on the US, explaining, “But, there is no mistaking that the scarcity of medicine and medical equipment in Iran started with the tightening up of sanctions. ... Shortages began when the continuous tightening of sanctions eventually placed overwhelming obstacles in the way of humanitarian trade.”
Let us examine the behavior of the United States under its own definition of international terrorism. According to the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, section 14, found under Title 50 of the United States Code, Chapter 35, Section 1701:
“The term ‘act of international terrorism’ means an act: (A) which is violent or dangerous to human life and that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any State; and (B) which appears to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.”
Concerning (A) above, certainly, the US sanctions are dangerous to human life and withholding needed medication from a patient would be a violation of the laws if committed within the United States, so (A) applies. As for (B), based on Representative Sherman’s remarks, the sanctions are intended to do harm thereby intimidating the civilian population, so (B) (i) applies.
The legal conclusion appears inescapable. Based upon the above definition taken from its own laws, by imposing its Zionist-devised sanctions against Iran, the United States is committing an act of international pharmaceutical terrorism. But Manoucher’s parents already know this, as do the 8,000 Iranians with similar blood diseases, as well as the millions of Iranians suffering from kidney diseases, cancers, multiple sclerosis and other life-threatening diseases.
Source: Press TV

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