Senate Panel Doubts Geneva Accord Will Curtail Tehran's Nuclear Drive, Urges Obama Administration To Grant Political Refugee Status to Iranian Dissidents in Iraq, says OIAC

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday warned against pinning too much hope on the Interim Geneva Accord signed last month between the Iranian regime and world powers, emphasizing that "final agreement should provide, what has always been contemplated in a final agreement for the last ten years; Iran should be a nuclear free country."  

Speaking at a reception at the historic Senate Kennedy Caucus Room, the former presidential candidate also urged President Obama to grant refugee status to 3,000 Iranian dissidents living in an overcrowded camp in Iraq where they are threatened daily by the pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad.
He noted that tiny Albania is the only country so far to accept some of the Iranians with no prior connection to that country. Mr. Giuliani said the United States should not think twice about welcoming the dissidents as refugees. The Obama administration turned the dissidents' protection over to Iraq in 2009, and they have been repeatedly attacked by Iraqi gunmen, including on Sept. 1^st when assassins attacked the heavily-guarded Camp Ashraf north of  Baghdad, murdering 52 unarmed dissidents, most of them execution-style.

Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) praised the audience for their efforts in "alert[ing] the average Congressman, the people of America to the atrocities of this regime in so many different ways and so again I appreciate your advocacy." Regarding the nuclear deal with Tehran, Gen. Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "I think if you were sitting in their [Iran's] equivalent of their Oval office right now and you had a score board up on the side and you were starting to keep the score, you would say okay what did we achieve? Roll back on the sanctions? Check it, achieved. Did we get assistance to a faltering regime? Achieved. Did we in fact get access to hard currency? Achieved."

The decorated General also criticized the administration for "ignoring a promise that we made to these dissidents to protect them."

Former CIA Director James Woolsey accused the White House of weakness. "To count on the Iranian regime to comply with the agreement and give up its nuclear weapons program is naive and wishful thinking. The more vulnerable the regime is the more it will try to hide its program in order not to lose leverage with the West. By extension the West has only one way to deal with the nuclear threat of Iran, help those Iranians who seek a non-nuclear, non-belligerent, non-Islamist Iran, to take over in time before the Ayatollahs get the bomb."

Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy challenged the administration to uphold the promise to the Iranian dissidents. "The fight for freedom and the fight for democracy by the people of Camp Liberty and Ashraf is really a universal fight for democracy and freedom," he said. "That is why the United States made a pledge to make the United States stand by these dissidents."

SOURCE OIAC