A bipartisan group of House members on Thursday put forward a resolution calling for the Iranian government to cease the oppression of its people and political dissidents.
The representatives held a news conference to highlight the resolution, which is being sponsored by Rep. Bob Filner, California Democrat, and which they put forward on the first anniversary of the start of Iran's violent postelection uprising.

The representatives, many of whom are on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said they hope their resolution will help bring democracy to the Islamic republic.

"This will signal to the regime that the resistance has support on the Hill," said Raymond Tanter, president of the Iran Policy Committee, a nonprofit advocacy group.
 ...
Read More

WASHINGTON-The U.S. has accelerated its effort to provide dissidents in Iran with computer hardware and software to evade government censors. But it's a shift that many activists say is insufficient to bring political change in Tehran.
 ...
Read More

Six months ago Muhammed Hussein Torkaman was a young Revolutionary Guard in Iran, working in the security team attached to the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
As part of this inner security force, the Sar-Allah, or Avengers of God, he was also responsible, he says, for the leaders' personal safety during the protests after the presidential elections, which were widely viewed as having been stolen by Ahmadinejad.
He witnessed increasing dissent within the guards. "We have Revolutionary Guards who defied orders, though they were severely punished, expelled from the force and taken to prison," he says.
 ...
Read More

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military will relinquish control of a base near a compound housing an Iranian opposition group next month, a move that will close a chapter on one of the most intractable issues in U.S.-Iraqi relations.
The presence of the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran at Camp Ashraf has long been an irritant to Iraq's Shiite-led government, and the exiles expressed fear that they would face violence without the Americans there to protect them.
The announcement Thursday of the base closure on July 1 came nearly a year after Iraqi security forces raided the camp, prompting a melee that officials said left 11 residents dead and dozens injured...

A member of the European Parliament sent a letter this week to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton raising concern about a U.S. departure from the area.
Struan Stevenson, the European Parliament's point man on relations with Iraq, warned it would "be an extremely dangerous development that could lead to a new humanitarian catastrophe with far greater dimensions compared to the events of last July."
 ...
Read More

Senator John McCain called on the United States on Thursday to support regime change in Iran, saying that the latest United Nations sanctions are "inadequate" and that it is unrealistic to expect the current government in Tehran to stop pursuing nuclear weapons, supporting terrorism and cracking down on its own people.
In a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy honoring Iran's dissident Green Movement, Mr. McCain said President Obama's attempt to talk with Tehran has been "defiantly met with a clenched fist" and that the hope that Iran's rulers will finally negotiate in good faith "seems totally at odds with the character of this Iranian regime."
 ...
Read More

...Encouragingly, Mr. Obama spoke of the anniversary this Saturday of last year's fraudulent presidential election and of how the regime "brutally suppressed dissent and murdered the innocent" in its aftermath. Though it has been forced off the streets, the Green movement probably has a better chance of forcing meaningful change in Iran than the sanctions approved Wednesday. The Obama administration would do well to devote as much attention to a strategy for supporting the opposition as it has to collecting votes at the United Nations.
 ...
Read More