It is an irony that not even the most devoted supporters of the ayatollahs can ignore that a country such as Iran, that prides itself on being one of the world's largest oil producers, is unable to produce enough fuel to satisfy the needs of its own population.

These are, moreover, hard times for the ayatollahs in many other respects. Not only are the leaders coming under pressure at home for their disastrous handling of the economy. They are also seeing their efforts to export Iran's Islamic revolution to other corners of the Middle East being roundly rejected, with anti-Iran protests taking place in Iraq and Lebanon.

With the Iranian economy under such intense pressure as a result of the sanctions, however, the regime has little room for manoeuvre, so it faces a stark choice: either radically reform its conduct or continue to face the wrath of the Iranian people.

One of the reasons behind IMF's gloomy picture of Iran's economy is linked to the Trump administration's decision not to extend its waiver for Iran's eight biggest oil buyers; China, India, Greece, Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey and South Korea.

Iran's national currency, the rial, also continues to lose value: it dropped to historic lows. One US dollar, which equaled approximately 35,000 rials in November 2017, now buys you nearly 110,000 rials.

Spain's media establishment has prohibited representatives of Vox from appearing on national television — apparently in an effort to prevent Spanish voters from knowing more about the Vox platform.

Vox received a major boost after Spanish television was required to allow Abascal to participate, for the first time, in a nationally televised presidential debate, on November 4. More than eight million voters tuned in to the debate, in which Abascal was confident, relaxed, looked his opponents directly in the eye and exuded common sense. Millions of Spaniards who had never before seen the Vox leader speak learned first-hand that the party is patriotic, not the fascist threat portrayed by its detractors in the media.

Vox says that it is "a movement created to put the institutions of government at the service of Spaniards, in contrast to the current model that puts Spaniards at the service of the politicians."

"Vox is the common-sense party, which gives voice to what millions of Spaniards think in their homes; the only party that fights against suffocating political correctness. Vox does not tell Spaniards how they should think, speak or feel. We tell the media and the parties to stop imposing their beliefs on society." — From the Vox mission statement.

"As Iranian, Saudi and other Muslim women around the globe struggled for freedom from the hijab, which they consider a political symbol that has nothing to do with piety, the reaction among the liberal circles in the West was confounding. Here an increasing number of feminists, leftists and the liberal media glorified the hijab as some exotic symbol of women's liberation that had to be embraced." — Tarek Fatah, The Toronto Sun, August 29, 2019

"The Guards are gathering to remove reformists from power." — Najmeh Bozorgmehr, Iranian journalist, Financial Times, October 13, 2019.

The anti-corruption campaign is led by none other than the hard-line cleric Ebrahim Raisi.... Raisi is widely considered the most likely cleric to succeed to the role of Supreme Leader when Khamenei retires or dies. But Raisi also carries with him a disturbing reputation for judicial violence.

Hamas is hardly on its way to transforming itself into a non-violent movement that would uphold Israel's right to exist. Its decision to refrain, this time, from pounding Israel with rockets is in no way a sign of moderation or pragmatism. Instead, the terror group needs a break from the fighting in order to prepare better for its main goal: to take down Israel down, once and for all.

Hamas leaders – like their PIJ counterparts – are motivated for their own well-being; the well-being of the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip is a joke to them. Why else would PIJ endanger their people by forcing Israel to respond to the launching of hundreds of rockets toward Israeli civilian communities?

This is not a good guy/bad guy scenario. Instead, it is a temporary rift between two extremely bad guys, both of whom are wholly committed to destroying Israel, even if that means destroying their own people along the way as well.

"These numbers underline, first of all, that we are talking about a problem that has to do with ethnicity. The argument that this has nothing to do with foreigners has to be taken off the table." — Trine Bramsen, legal affairs spokesperson for the Social Democrats, in Berlingske Tidende, August 24, 2017.

"In addition to a common fondness for crime, the culture of immigrant gangs is a cocktail of religion, clan affiliation, honor, shame and brotherhood... The harder and the more brutal [you are], the stronger you are, and then you create awareness of yourself and attract more [people]". — Naser Khader, member of the Danish Parliament for the Conservative Party and co-founder of the Muslim reform movement, in a blog, "Immigrant gangs are also culture and religion" in Jyllands-Posten, November 2018.

"[T]he price for the failed integration [of immigrants] is [paid] by those with the least resources. It is the schools and neighborhoods of the working classes that are destroyed...." — Niels Jespersen, op-ed in Berlingske Tidende, October 1, 2019.

People with the means to move, such as Lunøe, will take their children and run to safer areas. What will happen to the many that are unable to do so and have no choice but to stay in the crosshairs of the shootings, the knives and the car-torchings?

The Court of Justice ruling, which effectively encourages the strict French labelling requirements to be applied across the European Union, has been roundly condemned as reflecting the EU's anti-Israel bias. Many commentators noted that of all the world's many territorial conflicts — from Crimea to Northern Cyprus to Tibet to Western Sahara — the EU has singled out Israel as the only country subject to special labelling requirements.

"There are over 200 ongoing territorial disputes across the world, yet the ECJ has not rendered a single ruling related to the labeling of products originating from these territories. Today's ruling is both political and discriminating against Israel." — Israeli Foreign Ministry.

"It also goes against the international standard of trade set by the World Trade Organization... This is the worst kind of fiddling while Rome burns. The European court quoting Israel for its 'breach of the rules of international humanitarian law' whilst Hamas and its acolytes are bombing innocent civilian populations in Israel is one of the most perverse ironies I have witnessed in quite some time." — Menachem Margolin, Chairman, European Jewish Association, Brussels.

The captives, some as young as five years old, were reportedly "tortured, starved and sexually abused."

"The government of Pakistan failed to adequately protect these groups, and it perpetrated systematic, ongoing, egregious religious freedom violations; this occurred despite some optimism about the potential for reform under the new government of Prime Minister Imran Khan." — United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's, 2019 Report.

A first step towards eradicating this threat might be establishing an international interfaith coalition of Muslims, Christians and other religions, with chapters in every country, to stand up against religious persecution and on behalf of the right of every individual to harbor beliefs and engage in practices of his or her choosing.

"These regulations [from 2006] stipulate that all places of non-Muslim worship must be licenced. However, the government has yet to issue any licence for a church buildings [sic] under this ordinance, ignoring applications from churches to regularise their status in accordance with the ordinance." — International Christian Response, September 25, 2019, Algeria.

Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board sought to deport a refugee family — a mother and three children — that had fled their native country of Nigeria after they were attacked and threatened with death for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity.... "They face a 'fatwa' (a pronouncement of death) against them for converting to Christianity from Islam. They believe they face certain death if they are returned to Nigeria. They are quite fearful." ... Supporters of the family said the government was not taking the time to establish the family's humanitarian status or perform a proper risk assessment. "They're trying to boot [them] out of the country before then." The family's current status is unclear.

They claim since force cannot impose democracy, it was wrong for the US to invade Iraq and dislodge Saddam Hussein. They ignore the fact that though force cannot impose democracy, impediments to democracy can, and have been, removed by force.

Iraqi officials wonder how so many Iraqis, including many statistically-classed illiterates, manage to send and receive text messages on their smartphones. Those officials do not realize that even the poorest peasant is now able to pick up the rudiments of the alphabet and a vocabulary of a few hundred words to express his anger and passions and to coordinate action with those who share his concerns.

Tehran is wrong in toying with the idea of ending the uprising with a bloodbath as in Syria. Washington is wrong to think that yet another election with the same rules and same cast of characters would do the trick. The Najaf mullahs are wrong to believe that Iraqis will obey their fatwas as they did a generation ago. Tribal chiefs are mistaken in thinking the big "Sheikh" could secure a big cheque in exchange for calming down his kith-and-kin.

But, the fact remains that old tricks will not push that genie back into the bottle.

By far the most likely casualty of a Corbyn government would be the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, where there is a strong likelihood that other member states of the alliance will be deeply reluctant to share highly sensitive material with a British prime minister who has spent his entire political career openly associating with regimes and groups that are utterly hostile to the West and its allies.

At the heart of his hard Left approach to foreign policy lies a deep hatred for the US and its role in safeguarding the interests of the Western democracies.

Thus Mr Corbyn's instinct is to be more sympathetic to the views of Russia, Iran, North Korea and the Assad regime in Syria than Britain's long-standing allies in Washington and Europe.

Soon after, Muslim organizations that had asked for students to have the right to wear the veil in schools also asked for a change in the school curriculum -- in history, so that Muslim civilization would be presented in a more "correct" and "positive" way.

"If the way I dress disturbs you, leave my country". — Signs at a demonstration, October 27, 2019.

"Any criticism of Islam is now blasphemy." — Ivan Rioufol, columnist, Le Figaro, November 4, 2019.

Details lead one to see that the anti-Christian acts were mostly acts of church vandalism, the anti-Semitic acts were very often violent attacks against Jews or cemetery desecrations, and that the anti-Muslim acts were almost only anti-Muslim graffiti or the laying of slices of bacon the entrance to a mosque or in the mailbox of a Muslim organization. No Muslims were physically attacked.

"We are not in a project of assimilation." — Yassine Belattar, former advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron, October 27, 2019.

Éric Zemmour has suggested that France is threatened not by a risk of "partition", but by an inverted "colonization".

The representative of the 92nd Street Y acknowledged that the accusation [a disproved and defamatory accusation of sexual relations with an underaged girl] was unfounded, but said it didn't matter: "We don't want protests or trouble." So suddenly I found myself blacklisted — or as it's now called, "de-platformed"....

It reminded me of my days at Brooklyn College, when professors were blacklisted based on accusations that they had been Communists or fellow travelers. Institutions that had blacklisted them often claimed that they didn't believe or support the accusations, but they too didn't want protests or trouble. So the easy way is to censor, de-platform, or disinvite instead of standing up for principle, due process, and truth.

The public, particularly those who support the Y and participate in its programs, have the right to know the truth. They have the right to express their views as to whether a long-time speaker should be denied a platform at the Y based on false and disproved accusations. I would be happy to debate this issue at the Y. I have just written a new book — Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo — in which I discuss how false accusations can destroy a career. I challenge the Y to have a public discussion on this important issue.

I will not allow my life's work — on behalf of Israel, the Jewish community, Soviet Jewry, human rights, civil liberties, teaching students, writing books, and defending the accused — to be "cancelled" by a totally false accusation by a woman I never met and by the cowardly McCarthyism of the 92nd Street Y.... I will continue to fight for truth and justice as I have during my entire life. I will not remain silent even if the 92nd Street Y tries to silence me.

The objective of using the word "Islamophobia" appears to have been to make Islam untouchable by placing any criticism of it as equivalent to racism or anti-Semitism.

The word "Islamophobia" deliberately intends to transform the critique of a religion -- a fundamental right in Western societies -- into a crime.

"The term 'Islamophobia' serves several functions....Above all, however, the term is intended to silence Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce their religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and dogmatic." – Pascal Bruckner, in his book, Un racisme ordinaire : Islamophobie et culpabilité, Grasset, 2017 [English version: An Imaginary Racism: Islamophbia and Guilt, Polity 2018]

It is not Muslims people "hate," any more than they hate Hindus or Buddhists or Shintos. It is the violence and coercion that some adopt -- what is known as jihad or holy war -- that people reject.

In the attacks at the Bataclan Theater and other sites in 2015, terrorists murdered 131 persons and wounded 413. Is it irrational to remember who was calling those shots?

Tehran shelters members of the terrorist group Al Qaeda, and it is reportedly continuing to facilitate the group's operations.

Now imagine if this rogue state obtains nuclear weapons, what kind of destruction could it inflict on the world?

The international community, particularly European nations, must take urgent steps to counter Iran-backed international terrorism and prevent it from becoming a nuclear state.