California vs. the Mullahs

Filed under: Iran — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on March 29, 2007 @ 8:30 pm CEST

Will California take on the Mullahs?

Ardeshir Arian reports for Pajamas Media:

Today California will become the first state to decide whether or not it will continue to do business with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The State Assembly will hear proposed legislation (AB-221) by Republican Joel Anderson of El Cajon, and Democrat Jose Solorio of Anaheim that will require state pension funds to divest from companies that do business with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Iranian-American community and many exiled Iranians are supporting this legislation. Several prominent Iranian-American activists have announced they will testify in support of AB-221, and Iranian groups as far away as Sweden and Turkey are backing the measure. Support for the bill has also come from the Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi but it is opposed by William Reinsch, Undersecretary of Commerce during the Clinton administration. IRI promoters and apologists like the NIAC are also opposing the legislation. (National Iranian American Council).

The California initiative is the nation’s first, and has inspired similar action in Massachusetts, Maryland, Georgia, Ohio and Missouri.

The West has to hurt Iran / the Mullahs as much as possible. All (economic) measures that serve before mentioned purpose are, generally, welcome. I hope that the California state legislature will pass this bill.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree. Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors. Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.

(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly or willfully misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should not be posted.

(2) Comments should avoid use of vulgar language as well as racial, ethnic, or religious slurs.

(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.

(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.

Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors by email.

1 HawkishDove

March 30, 2007 @ 12:57 am CEST

Pension funds are funding Irans oil industry. Cutting off the source of terror by cutting off Iran from the international market will win the war on terror.

I am finally relieved that people are starting to understand that terror funding is the key to this war on terror.