European lawmakers are warning President Obamathat his failure to remove an exiled Iranian opposition group from the U.S. terrorist blacklist gives the brutal Iranian regime an excuse to execute domestic dissidents and pursue nuclear weapons.
Last week, 210 members of the European Parliament and the national parliaments of Britain, France and Italy sent a letter to Mr. Obama appealing to him to lift the terrorist classification of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).
"The designation of the PMOI serves as an impediment to our efforts in dealing with the Iranian regime's growing threat to global peace and security. We urge you to end the designation," they said in their letter.
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An anti-government protest erupted Saturday in Tehran's Hor Square, with protestors chanting "Allah-o Akbar (God is the Greatest)" and "death to [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei".
Passers-by joined the protest which continued for several minutes around Hor Square and Pasteur, War College and Kargar streets.
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Iranian exiles and supporters of the main opposition staged a gathering on Friday in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York as the UN Security Council was busy reviewing matters pertaining to Iraq.
Some of the participants in the gathering were families of residents of Camp Ashraf, Iraq, which is home to 3,400 members of the main Iranian opposition, People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The demonstrators demanded respect for the rights of Ashraf residents as well as guaranteeing their protection by UN forces in Iraq.
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A month after President Obama signed into law a fresh round of Iran sanctions, the new restrictions appear to be getting Tehran's attention. Gasoline imports into the Islamic Republic fell nearly 50% in July from May, according to Energy Market Consultants. Despite being a major oil producer, Iran needs to import at least 30% of its refined gasoline for domestic consumption, and the sanctions are putting further strains on the regime. To which we say, more please.
This has been a hard summer for Iran's leaders...
It would also help if President Obama gave dissident Iranian exiles some face time in the Oval Office, both as a statement of principle and a message of defiance against the rulers in Iran. Considering how well a year's worth of his polite overtures have gone over with the regime, he could do worse than to repay its contempt in kind.
The risk now is that the modest success of the sanctions will lure the Administration into dropping some of them in exchange for another round of temporizing and inevitably useless negotiations with Tehran. Last Tuesday, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the Administration sensed "that there may well be a willingness on the part of Iran to enter into the kind of dialogue that we have long sought." Mr. Obama followed up with his own entreaty to the mullahs to accept his proposal to talk.
He can be sure the mullahs will make the U.S. pay dearly for the pleasure of their company. Better to keep the pressure on by squeezing sanctions even harder 
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...What was striking was the president's sobriety about the issue, his evident pride in the global diplomatic efforts that produced the latest resolution and his determination to pressure the Tehran regime as much as possible. It was clear that he had no illusions about Iran. When he talked about his "engagement" strategy of the first year, it was not with wistful laments of what might have been or hope about future Iranian willingness to take up the offer to talk seriously about its nuclear program. Rather, Obama described it as a successful tactic in the effort to isolate and put pressure on the regime. By revealing to the world just how unserious the rulers in Tehran were about talks, by proving beyond a doubt that if there was an impasse in the U.S.-Iran relationship, the problem was not in Washington, he had set the stage for Iran's international isolation.
The president also expressed his belief that the sanctions are already starting to pinch the regime. What was interesting, however, was that he did not take this as a sign that there might now be a new opportunity for diplomacy. He and his advisers disparaged recent Iranian mumblings about resuming talks with the "P5-plus-1" (the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany) as nothing new. And they displayed no eagerness to press for renewed talks or to make new dramatic gestures. The president went out of his way to note that the Iranians are masters of delay and deception...
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