Is President Trump right to focus on the aggressive policy of Tehran in the middle east?

Trump is right to focus on Iran's support of terrorism

IRGC must designate as a foreign terrorist entity 

BY Ivan Sascha Sheehan

Despite the criticism directed at the Trump White House, the administration is to be commended for important changes in U.S. policy toward Iran since taking office.

The Trump administration has made great strides in shifting from the conciliatory gestures of the Obama years to a much firmer stance that acknowledges American intolerance for violent extremism, human rights violations and the support of terrorism. Leading administration figures have repeatedly taken to the airwaves to broadcast this message and carried it with them on official trips abroad. Today the messaging is resonating with officials from both parties and in elite policy circles.

The time has never been better for the White House to focus on Iran’s support of terrorism.

The Syrian crisis has been complicated by the Iranian regime’s determined efforts to arm and defend murderous Syrian President Bashar Assad. Tehran’s rulers have dispatched members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to fight directly in the conflict and recruited Afghan and Pakistani refugees to form entire brigades that fight as mercenaries in exchange for the promise of permanent residence in Iran and work permits that they otherwise would never be able to obtain.

Then there are the true believers — recruited from among Iranian hardliners and Shiite communities throughout the Middle East — who fight as part of a decentralized network of militant groups, many of which have explicitly sworn allegiance to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Further complicating matters are similar groups in Iraq, as well as the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Taken together the Iranian project to promote terrorism and expand its regional hegemony becomes apparent.

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