SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
national iranian-american council
Protests to Demand Netanyahu's Arrest as Fugitive Israeli PM Welcomed by Trump
"Benjamin Netanyahu should not be welcomed to the United States! He should be arrested for war crimes," said CodePink.
Feb 04, 2025
The women-led peace group CodePink is set to hold bicoastal demonstrations this week as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his backers in the U.S. government ignore an International Criminal Court
arrest warrant for the right-wing leader, who stands accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Netanyahu arrived Monday in the United States, which has not ratified the Rome Statute governing the ICC, after crossing the airspace of European nations that are signatories to the treaty. The Israeli leader and Republican U.S. President Donald Trump are scheduled to hold a joint news conference Tuesday afternoon after meeting in the White House.
Later in the week, Netanyahu is set meet with Trump administration officials and congressional leaders, who recently spearheaded bipartisan passage of House legislation to sanction ICC officials for seeking to hold Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, accountable for waging a war whose conduct is also the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
"No matter who is in power, the imperialist leaders continue to fully support and fund the Zionist entity's escalating genocide of the Palestinian people," CodePink said in an online announcement of a Tuesday afternoon protest in Washington, D.C., and referring to Israel.
"While both Trump and Netanyahu continue to publicly advocate for total ethnic cleansing, we must ensure that they do not convene in our city without the people taking a stand," the group added. "We reject war criminals being welcomed into our city. Join us on Tuesday to reject this meeting, which will inevitably advance their genocidal plans."
Groups including CodePink, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, and American Muslims for Palestine are also planning a Tuesday afternoon press conference to demand Netanyahu's arrest.
CodePink is also set to hold a demonstration outside Berkeley, California City Hall on Wednesday afternoon.
"War criminal Benjamin Netanyahu should not be welcomed to the United States! He should be arrested for war crimes," the Bay Area chapter of CodePink asserted. "We are speaking out against the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu and taking a stand against the U.S. funding of the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people."
In addition to calling on the U.S. to "end all military aid to Israel," CodePink Bay Area condemned the Trump administration's plan to imprison tens of thousands of migrants in the notorious military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The White House confirmed Tuesday that U.S. officials have begun sending migrants from the United States to Guantánamo
Amnesty International said Tuesday on social media that "by welcoming Israeli PM Netanyahu, wanted by the ICC to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the United States is showing contempt for international justice."
"The Biden administration flouted any efforts at international justice for Palestine. Now, by not arresting Netanyahu or subjecting him to U.S. investigations, President Trump is doubling down, welcoming him as the first foreign leader to visit the White House since the inauguration," the group continued.
"The U.S. has a clear obligation under the Geneva Conventions to search for and try [to] extradite persons accused of having committed or ordered the commission of war crimes," Amnesty added. "There must be no 'safe haven' for individuals alleged to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity."
Human Rights Watch chief advocacy officer Bruno Stagno said in a statement Tuesday that "if President Trump wants to break with the Biden administration's complicity in the Israeli government's atrocities in Gaza, he should immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel."
"Trump said the hostilities in Gaza were 'not our war' but 'their war,' but unless the U.S. ends its military support, Gaza will also be Trump's war," Stagno added.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), meanwhile, expressed alarm at reporting that the Trump administration is preparing to ramp up his "maximum pressure" policy against Iran in an effort to stop the country from developing nuclear weapons and cripple its oil exports.
"Benjamin Netanyahu has played every single modern U.S. president to act against American interests and likes to boast, 'I know America, America is a thing that can be moved easily,'" NIAC president Jamal Abdi said Tuesday. "Only time will tell whether Trump will succeed in his efforts to end and prevent wars and be a dealmaker in the Middle East, or if [Netanyahu] will move Trump into a war with Iran that will torpedo his presidency and ensure another generation of American military adventures."
"Today, Trump has a rare and historic opportunity for peace—if he stands up to Bibi," Abdi asserted, using Netanyahu's nickname. "He has a chance to stabilize the Middle East and do what his predecessors tried and failed to accomplish: ending the forever wars that have bogged down the U.S. and American troops in the region for a generation."
"Or, he could bow to Bibi and allow the U.S. to be dragged into a catastrophic regional war that would torpedo his presidency and America's interests," Abdi added. "Netanyahu and fellow hawks will surely welcome the 'return' of the so-called 'maximum pressure' approach on Iran—even though it never went away—and work to ensure that it is implemented as harshly as possible to drive Iran away from the negotiating table and push the U.S. and Iran toward a disastrous war."
Keep ReadingShow Less
As DOJ Unseals Murder Plot Charges, Fears of Trump Iran Policy Mount
"Trump is inheriting a mess that he helped create," said the National Iranian American Council. "All parties need to focus not on threats but on dialogue to end these crises."
Nov 08, 2024
Amid growing concerns about what U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House will mean for Washington's rocky relationship with Tehran, the Department of Justice on Friday announced charges against an Afghan national accused of plotting to assassinate the Republican at the direction of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Though Trump survived two shooting attempts during the campaign, neither appears to be tied to Iran's alleged plot to kill him.
"There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a Friday statement announcing the charges against Farhad Shakeri, "an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran's assassination plots against its targets," including Trump.
"We have also charged and arrested two individuals who we allege were recruited as part of that network to silence and kill, on U.S. soil, an American journalist who has been a prominent critic of the regime," Garland added, referring to New Yorkers Jonathon Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera, who are both in custody—unlike Shakeri, who is believed to be in Iran. "We will not stand for the Iranian regime's attempts to endanger the American people and America's national security."
The department did not publicly identify the reporter but its statement "matched the description of Masih Alinejad, a journalist and activist who has criticized Iran's head-covering laws for women," Reutersnoted Friday. "Four Iranians were charged in 2021 in connection with a plot to kidnap her, and in 2022 a man was arrested with a rifle outside her home."
The Friday announcement about these three men follows another case related to Trump and Iran. As Politicodetailed: "In August, Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged a Pakistani man suspected of plotting on behalf of Iran to kill high-ranking U.S. politicians or officials—including perhaps Trump. The man is accused of trying to hire hitmen to carry out the plot."
The next month, after Trump was reportedly briefed about alleged Iranian assassination threats against him, he declared during a campaign rally that "if I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case, Iran—that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens."
"We're gonna blow it to smithereens, you can't do that. And there would be no more threats," added Trump, whose comments were swiftly decried by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) as "an outrageous threat" and "genocidal."
Responding to Reuters coverage of the Justice Department's Friday statement on social media, NIAC said that "threats of violence against political officials are unacceptable and only risk further opening Pandora's box of war and destruction. Trump is inheriting a mess that he helped create and reports like this demonstrate just how grave the stakes are. All parties need to focus not on threats but on dialogue to end these crises."
During Trump's first presidential term, he ditched the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal; ramped up deadly sanctions against the Middle East country; and ordered the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq—actions that heightened fears of a U.S. war with Iran.
Such fears have surged since Trump's Tuesday win. He is set to return as commander-in-chief after more than a year of the Biden-Harris administration backing Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and strikes on other countries including Lebanon and Iran.
NIAC Action executive director Jamal Abdi said in a statement after the U.S. election that "many in our community feared this day—worried about the return of the travel ban, attacks on our civil liberties, demonization of immigrant communities, and deepening militarism in the Middle East. But we have been here before and our resilience is unwavering in standing up for our community and our rights."
"In the coming weeks, Trump, along with his new vice president, JD Vance will select the advisers who will shape his policies," Abdi noted. "We will not stand down, disengage, or give up but will redouble our efforts for peace and justice by any means necessary. The resilience and unity of our community are more vital now than ever."
CNN and Politico have reported that Brian Hook is expected to lead Trump's transition team at the U.S. Department of State. As Drop Site News' Murtaza Hussain wrote, Hook is "known as a major Iran hawk who helped lead the 'maximum pressure' campaign of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations that characterized Trump's approach to Tehran."
Speaking with Hussain, Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, pointed out that Trump's previous Iran policy was largely guided by John Bolton, who spent over a year as his national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
"The Trump administration's approach towards Iran depends very much on who he chooses to staff his administration. In his first term, he was sold on an idea by people like Pompeo and John Bolton that Iran could be sanctioned and pressured into oblivion, but that was an approach more likely to deliver war than an agreement," Parsi said. "The Iranian view is that Trump himself wants to make a deal, but it depends on whether he appoints the same neoconservatives as last time to his administration."
Keep ReadingShow Less
80+ Groups Have Message for Biden: 'No War With Iran!'
"It is not in the national interest for the U.S. to be led into a war with Iran," the groups stressed.
Oct 03, 2024
On the same day that President Joe Biden said his administration and Israeli leaders are "discussing" an attack on Iranian oil infrastructure, a coalition of over 80 advocacy groups on Thursday implored the U.S. leader to "halt Israel's march toward regional war."
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) led the groups in a letter to Biden asserting that "it is not in the national interest for the U.S. to be led into a war with Iran" by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu's far-right government.
The letter's signers include Just Foreign Policy, Friends Committee on National Legislation, IfNotNow, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, CodePink, Peace Action, and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
"The primary ask behind this letter is that the Biden administration utilize the significant leverage it has to rein in Netanyahu as he continues to proceed with a consistently failed 'deescalation through escalation' approach throughout the region that has cost countless civilian lives," NIAC explained.
As stated in the letter, "It is in the strong national interest to utilize diplomacy, backed by full American leverage—including withholding further offensive weapons transfers to Israel's military—to move all the parties back from the brink and toward a cease-fire that ends the devastation of Gaza and Lebanon and reverses the slide to regional war."
"Moreover, we urge you to recognize and respect that Congress has not authorized military force against Iran or militias backed by Iran, and that any potential military action against Iran could only proceed following a debate and passage of a war authorization before entering our troops into any imminent hostilities in the region," the groups continued.
"President Biden has recently spoken of steps he has taken to wind down America's military footprint abroad," the letter adds. "However, unless he acts quickly and decisively through diplomacy, it appears that a new endless war will be his legacy."
The U.S. provides Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover for its yearlong war on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 148,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
Fears of a full-blown regional war have mounted recently as Israel escalates hostilities by assassinating Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Tehran and Beirut and as Israeli forces invade southern Lebanon accompanied by a bombing campaign that has left thousands of Lebanese dead and wounded.
Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based political and paramilitary group, has been engaged in limited cross-border projectile attacks on Israel in solidarity with Gaza, resulting in scores of deaths and injuries.
"The wars in the Middle East are just getting more and more dangerous, not only with Lebanon, but now with Iran," CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin said Wednesday in a video urging Americans to call their members of Congress to demand peace. "Netanyahu has been trying to drag the U.S. into a war with Iran for years, and unfortunately, there are many members in this Congress... who are all too eager to go along with him."
Benjamin highlighted remarks by U.S. lawmakers including Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) who said Tuesday that attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities are "fair game."
"Let's remember it's Israel that has nuclear weapons, not Iran," said Benjamin, who added that attacking Iran would encourage Tehran's allies "to strike U.S. soldiers in the region."
Benjamin also noted Sen. Robert Wicker's (R-Miss.) call for regime change in Tehran—one of the latest in a long line of such calls over the past 45 years—and admonished U.S. officials for "forgetting the disastrous attempts of regime change that the U.S. did recently in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan," and that "the present government in Iran is there precisely because of the U.S. overthrowing their democratically elected government in 1953."
"We want to live in peace," Benjamin added. "We want to stop supporting the genocide that Israel is carrying out... We don't want any more weapons sent to the region... We the American people don't want war with Iran. We want to live in peace."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular