Iran news in brief, February 13, 2018

Iran news in brief, February 13, 2018

1- NCRI Representative in the U.S. Calls for Recognition of the Right of the Iranian People for Regime Change

The U.S. Representative Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US), sponsored a panel on Monday, February 11, 2019 to discuss the regime’s long and brutal domestic and foreign policy record at home and abroad.

Soona Samsami, the NCRI's representative in the U.S., offered an in-depth examination of the current situation, including major crises that the regime is facing, and struck a note of optimism about prospects for democratic change in Iran.

"The Iranian people are calling for the establishment of a republic, based on democracy and separation of religion and state," she said.

Samsami said: "The NCRI's President-elect, Maryam Rajavi, represents the demands and aspirations of the Iranian people and protestors in recent years. Units of Resistance posted her pictures in major highways and street corners."

Former State Department official and ambassador to Bahrain, Adam Ereli, spoke at the well-attended event at Washington's National Press Club.

Ambassador Ereli added that the fact that the regime's senior leaders, including Khamenei, IRGC commanders and Rouhani, continue to slam the MEK "validates and substantiates the impact that this organization has had and continues to have."

Ereli said: "From the American side, I would simply argue that you've got a very capable opposition." And, "the best thing the U.S. can do is to just stop appeasing the current regime,".

Ali Safavi of the NCRI's Foreign Affairs Committee chronicled what he described as the ineffectual Western policy vis-a-vis the mullahs over the past four decades, starting with the early 1980s, saying: " Everything [in the West's policy] begins with the regime and ends with it. Lost in this approach have been the Iranian people."

2- Iranian mother hangs her children and herself out of poverty, 3 suicides in 4 days in Western Iran

According to a human rights group, a mother of two killed herself and her two children while two other women committed suicide due to extreme poverty in western Iran.

According to the Hengaw Human Rights group, on Sunday, February 10, a young mother from the town of Sahneh in the western province of Kermanshah hanged her two sons identified as 6-year-old Ali-Reza and 3-year-old Amir-Abbas and then hanged herself.

The mother was identified as Zahra Rahmati. Informed sources said that she killed herself and her children as a result of extreme poverty.

Another woman identified by her last name as Badpima killed herself in the western province of Ilam on Friday February 8. Hengaw said that she was suffering from depression as a result of poverty and unemployment.

A 25-year-old woman identified as Suma Salavati committed suicide yesterday in Sanandaj in the western province of Kurdistan.

3- Iran Regime Holds 3rd Court Hearing for 8 Conservationists Accused of Spying

Iran Regime says it has held a third session of a closed-door trial of eight Iranian conservationists who have spent a year in detention on spying-related charges that their supporters say are trumped-up.

Details of the trial have been difficult to obtain because Iran did not allow the conservationists to bring their own lawyers into the courtroom, and the defendants’ relatives declined to speak to the media.