Iran has covertly accelerated activities to construct nuclear weapons despite publicly declaring that its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian purposes, a coalition of Iranian opposition groups revealed on Thursday.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which seeks to overthrow the country’s Islamist regime, held a press conference in Washington, DC in which it disclosed what it described as new findings about the Iranian nuclear program.

“The Iranian regime is covertly working on the weaponization aspect of its nuclear project to build a warhead, effectively obstructing verification through deceit,” said Soona Samsami, a representative for NCRI in the US.

According to NCRI, the regime has ramped up activity in the Center for Research and Expansion of Technologies on Explosions and Impact (METFAZ), which is part of the country’s bomb-making operation, the Organization for Advanced Defense Research (SPND). The dissident group contends that the regime has intensified research on manufacturing devices to enable nuclear detonation. 

Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI’s US Office, detailed the group’s findings, which it said were based on extensive research and reports from dissident networks inside Iran.

METFAZ carries out its nuclear enrichment efforts through a shell company called Arvin Kimia Abzaar, which is under the control of Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an internationally designated terrorist organization, according to NCRI. Arvin Kimia Abzaar, which was established in 2018, publicly claims that its actions are done for the legitimate purpose of expanding Iran’s “oil industry.”

Despite the company’s public declarations, however, NCRI says that the company’s “key personnel” work for the Iranian regime in the field of nuclear advancement. Two members of the company — Saeed Bori and Akbar Motallebizadeh — held major roles in the SPND Organization and worked on nuclear weapons production for Iran. Borji has maintained a role in the IRGC since 1980 and has held important positions in METFAZ. Moreover, Borji has allegedly been instructed on how to build nuclear detonators.

The company has conducted operations in the Sanjarian area, a zone in east Tehran, since April and named the area of its facilities the “Meshkat Complex,” according to NCRI.

The dissident group said that Iran “demonstrates the lowest level of transparency in building a nuclear bomb (compared to other aspect of its nuclear program) and is rapidly advancing toward bomb production” and that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, should “absolutely” visit Tehran to inspect the site. 

Samsami claimed that “appeasement” efforts toward Iran have been a total failure and that the regime’s leaders have “exploited this window of time to advance its nuclear program and move closer to acquiring nuclear weapons.” The NCRI representative argued that the Iranian regime needs to be held “accountable” for its actions.

Though Samsami did not give specific advice for the incoming Trump administration, he urged the next White House to adopt an unabashedly adversarial posture against Iran. 

Once US President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House next month, his administration is widely expected to re-implement sanctions on Iran and adopt a “maximum pressure campaign” against the regime.

The sanctions levied on Iran under the first Trump administration crippled the regime’s economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.

Many argue that the Biden administration’s decision to reverse some sanctions on Iran allowed the regime to increase funding to terrorist groups. During campaign speeches, Trump has repeatedly argued that the current White House’s approach to Iran allowed the regime to inject resources into the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which perpetrated the invasion of and massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.

Samsami argued that Iranian leaders have been “severely weakened” in the aftermath of the fall of long-time ally Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime earlier this month. With some of its proxies weakened across the Middle East — including Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which had been fighting Israel for over a year — many observers have questioned whether Iran may dash toward a nuclear weapon as a means of self-preservation.

“The only long-term solution to prevent the world’s most dangerous regime from obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapon is its overthrow by the people and the organized resistance — a goal that is more attainable now than ever before,” Samsami said.

Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons. However, the IAEA reported earlier this month Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to close to weapons grade at its Fordow site dug into a mountain. The UK, France, and Germany said in a statement this week that there is no “credible civilian justification” for Iran’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”

In April, a senior IRGC commander suggested that the Iranian regime could reassess its position on nuclear weapons. 

Israel has accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge echoed by lawmakers in many allied nations. Leaders in Middle Eastern countries have also expressed concern about Tehran covertly trying to build nuclear weapons.

The post Iran Covertly Ramping Up Nuclear ‘Weaponization’ Work, Dissident Group Reveals first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The Jewish community in France has lambasted a European Union lawmaker for arguing that French-Palestinians must be able to join the “Palestinian armed resistance” if their French-Israeli counterparts are allowed to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Rima Hassan, a 32-year-old lawyer and activist, earlier this year became the first French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, the EU’s law-making body. On Wednesday, she posted on the social media platform X that the legacy of colonialism would be the only reason to oppose the idea that Palestinians in France should be allowed to join the so-called “resistance” currently fighting Israel in the Middle East.

“If Franco-Israelis are allowed to serve in the Israeli army while enjoying the benefits of dual nationality, any Franco-Palestinian must be able to join the Palestinian armed resistance whose legitimacy is recognized by the United Nations resolutions relating to the right to self-determination of peoples. The only thing that prevents you from considering it is the coloniality of the world,” wrote Hassan, a member of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and coordinator of the Human Rights Subcommittee.

Critics were quick to note that several groups describing themselves as part of the pro-Palestinian “resistance” against Israel are designated internationally — including by the EU itself — as terrorist organizations.

The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, made this point on Thursday while lambasting Hassan’s argument.

“The organizations that claim to be part of the Palestinian ‘armed resistance’ — Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, etc. — are all recognized as terrorists by the European Union,” CRIF posted on X. “Can you imagine a European MP calling for people to join Al Qaeda or Daesh [ISIS]? If Rima Hassan wanted peace and truly defended the Palestinians, she would fight Hamas instead of defending it without taking responsibility.”

Hassan, who was born in Syria to an Arab family that previously fled Israel during its war of independence in 1948, has falsely accused the Jewish state of “genocide” in Gaza. She has also reportedly accused Israel of being a “nameless monstrosity” and a “fascist colonial entity” which “lies every day,” and has described her keffiyeh as “my superhero cape.”

The EU lawmaker’s political party, the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI — “France Unbowed”), is the largest member of the New Popular Front (NFP), an anti-Israel leftist coalition of political parties that came to power in France’s snap parliamentary elections in July. The coalition gained the most seats of any political bloc but not enough for a majority. Its leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has been lambasted by French Jews as a threat to their community as well as those who support Israel. He previously suggested that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’ Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the NFP in July’s elections. “We fear for the future of our children.”

Shortly after the NFP’s victory, Melenchon — who in a 2017 speech referred to the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest” — called for France to recognize a Palestinian state. Supporters of the hard-left coalition, which includes socialist and communist parties, poured into the streets of Paris waving Palestinian flags. French flags were largely absent from the celebrations.

In the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, Melenchon and his party issued a statement declaring the attacks “an armed offensive of Palestinian forces” as a result of continued Israeli “occupation.” Melenchon also failed to condemn a deputy who called Hamas a “resistance movement.”

Last month, CRIF released a survey of the French public that found that 55 percent of LFI supporters adhere to at least six antisemitic prejudices and that a third of LFI supporters indicated they adhere to at least nine such bigoted beliefs.

By comparison, nearly half (46 percent) of French people overall said they adhere to more than six anti-Jewish prejudices, and 52 percent of those who support the far-right Rassemblement National (RN — “National Rally”) said the same.

The survey also found that 20 percent of LFI supporters consider the departure of Jews from France desirable, compared to 15 percent of those who back RN and 12 percent of France’s general population (up from just 6 percent in 2020). The number increases among people under the age of 35, of whom a striking 17 percent think that the departure of Jews from France would be good for the country.

Similarly troubling, the results showed that 25 percent of LFI supporters have “sympathy” for Hamas, and 40 percent refuse to label the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization.

The survey noted that one in two French people now suspect their Jewish fellow citizens of “double allegiance” to Israel — a reality that CRIF president Yonathan Arfi blamed in part on LFI’s fierce anti-Israel opposition.

“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” he told Le Point. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”

As for people aged 18 to 24, only 53 percent think that the majority of Jews are well integrated into the population, compared to 84 percent of French people more broadly, the survey found.

Meanwhile, almost a quarter of those surveyed think that Jews are not really French like the rest of their countrymen, an uptick of more than six points. The findings also showed that, among the French people surveyed, 64 percent believe that Jews have reason to be afraid of living in France, and 70 percent believe that the country has experienced an increase in antisemitism.

The survey results came as France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s atrocities last Oct. 7, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

This year, anti-Jewish hate crimes and demonstrations in France have continued to skyrocket.

In August, then-French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned that incidents targeting the country’s Jewish community spiked by about 200 percent since Jan. 1.

“Two-thirds of anti-religious acts … are against Jews,” he added, according to French broadcaster BFM TV.

Darmanin appeared to call out the hard left for fostering a hostile environment for Jews during his remarks.

“There is hateful political speech against the Jews of France and it must be denounced,” he said, according to France Info. “We can clearly see that part of the left, unfortunately, is making this speech of encouragement of hatred toward our Jewish compatriots.”

Darmanin’s comments followed him stating weeks earlier that antisemitic acts in France have tripled over the last year. In the first half of 2024, 887 such incidents were recorded, almost triple the 304 recorded in the same period last year, he said.

The now-former interior minister also called out Melenchon during his remarks, asking, “How can politicians think antisemitism is residual?”

Darmanin was referring to a blog post published in June in which Melenchon wrote that antisemitism in France was “residual” and “absent” from anti-Israel rallies. Critics argued that Melenchon was downplaying the significance of antisemitism in France.

Under pressure from Melenchon and Hassan’s LFI party, the French Foreign Ministry quietly announced in March its intention to pursue legal action against any French-Israeli soldiers implicated in alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The post EU Lawmaker: Dual Nationals Must Be Able to Join ‘Palestinian Armed Resistance’ if Allowed to Serve in IDF first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Antisemitism is surging in higher education, but universities have chosen to protect their brands rather than fight the targeting of Jewish and pro-Israel members of their campus communities, according to a new report by US House Republicans.

Six House committees and Republican leadership helped to compile the joint staff report, which was released on Thursday amid crisis levels of antisemitic activity in American higher education, a trend which has seen pro-Hamas students harass their Jewish peers, extremists pen manifestos calling for revolutionary violence, and an unprecedented politicization of the university by faculty for the purpose of spreading anti-Zionist and anti-Western beliefs. To make matters worse, according to the House report, university officials could seldom be counted on to preserve order and protect Jewish students.

“The committee found that so-called university leaders deliberately chose to withhold support from Jewish communities on campus, demonstrating a refusal to address the hostile environments at their institutions,” the report said. “Jewish students, faculty, and staff often felt abandoned by administrators’ passive and muted responses to the explosion of antisemitic hate on campus. The committee’s investigation found that these failures to act were not mere oversights but intentional decisions.”

Part of their failure was messaging, the report explained. Harvard University, for example, declined to condemn the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s atrocities during its invasion of Israel last Oct. 7 — a massacre that, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, has unleashed an ongoing surge of global antisemitism that has seen antisemitic incidents spike to record levels in the US and other countries over the past year.

Meanwhile, the report also noted other cases, including when Columbia University allowed the proliferation of stories about a “chemical attack” involving Jewish students discharging “fart spray,” a fictitious incident which resulted in those students being suspended for as long 18 months while no one accused of antisemitic conduct received a comparable punishment.

Some schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania, pantomimed corrective action to disruptive behavior, assuring the public that it took rules violations, including the commandeering of campus property with “Gaza Solidarity Encampments,” seriously — but it punished very few students for misconduct and those it did were given slaps on the wrist, according to critics.

Egregious conduct which prompted civil litigation evaded disciplinary action, the report continued, explaining that nearly 100 students who participated in an encampment which barred Jewish students from accessing sections of campus at the University of California, Los Angeles “signed resolution agreements allowing them to escape disciplinary consequences” and “none were disciplined.”

Harvard University, despite talking tough during the peak of the spring encampments, ultimately amnestied everyone involved in the unrest, overturning suspensions and reducing probationary periods to the extent that they meant nothing.

Moreover, the report added, university leaders were contemptuous of public officials who investigated campus antisemitism and discussed their wish that the Democratic Party would win a majority in the US Congress, an outcome they hoped would quell any further inquiries into the matter.

“Rather than treat the antisemitic hate plaguing their campuses as a serious problem, they handled it as a public relations issue,” the report said. “Penn [University of Pennsylvania] administrators [tried] to orchestrate media coverage depicting members of Congress as ‘bullying and grandstanding’ and Columbia Board of Trustees leaders dismissing congressional oversight on campus antisemitism as ‘capital hill [sic] nonsense.’”

Nothing short of a revolution of the current habits and ideas which constitute the current higher education regime can prevent similar episodes of unrest from occurring in the future, the report concluded. Colleges need equal enforcement of civil rights laws to protect Jewish students from discrimination, and they should “forcefully reject antisemitism.” They should also, it added, reform aspects of the campus culture which do not appear immediately connected to the issue of antisemitism.

Fostering “viewpoint diversity,” for example, could prevent echo chambers of ideological zeal which justify hatred and violence as a means of overcoming one’s political opponents, the report found. It also said that “academic rigor,” undermined by years of dissolving educational standards for political purposes, would guard against the reduction of complex social issues into the sloganeering of “scholar activism,” in which faculty turn the classroom into a soapbox.

In lieu of so momentous a change, the report encouraged the executive branch of the US government, which is awaiting the arrival of a new administration headed by President-elect Donald Trump, to enforce colleges’ applying of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to incidents of antisemitism and punish those that do not by, for example, freezing their access to federal funds.

Congress has its role as well, the report continued, recommending that the legislative body combat foreign influence in higher education and withhold public funds from colleges which adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

“On Oct. 8, the world saw that antisemitic hatred was alive and well at American institutions of so-called’‘higher’ education. As a result, the reputation of many of these schools has been in free fall,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said in a statement accompanying the report. “Stopping that free fall comes down to one word: accountability. We need accountability because without it, we cannot guarantee that Jewish students have the safe learning environment they deserve.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘We Need Accountability’: US House Report Condemns Universities’ Response to Rising Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.