Wrapped to look like Seasons Greetings

A quiet Christmas Eve at home, a pre-made turkey meal with a shandy (a mix of beer and lemon-lime soda) followed by some Pepperidge Farm chocolate cake. Then off to Twitter for a few minutes before bedding in for the night to wait for Santa. Then I saw it...

Hassan Rouhani@HassanRouhani 6h May Jesus Christ, Prophet of love & peace, bless us all on this day. Wishing Merry #Christmas to those celebrating, esp Iranian Christians. Retweeted by Iain Dale Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran and the nation's liar-in-chief sending out Christmas greetings. A radical Islamist doing what he does best, trying to convince the less than suspecting that he actually cares about Christmas and Christians. That he offered platitudes to Iranian Christians was the worst part.

---

The government supposedly guarantees Christian minorities some rights such as to produce and sell non-halal food, to be represented in parliament, and special family law. But that is restricted to people born as Christians. Converts from Islam are subject to a penalty of death as was the case with Youcef Nadarkhani a Jammiat-e Rabbani pastor "sentenced to death for refusing to recant his faith". Fortunately for Youcef, he was later acquitted of "practicing Christianity in Iran". According to US-based Barnabas Fund, government intrusion, expropriation of property, forced closure and persecution, particularly in the initial years after the Iranian Revolution, have all been documented. Saeed Abedini is an American pastor sentenced to eight years in prison for working with Christian house churches. I responded to the tweet: @HassanRouhani @IainDale As a goodwill gesture maybe The Iranian President could free American Pastor Saeed Abedini - didn't think so! I can't say what Iain Dale was thinking because the tweet came out without any commentary. Dale is a centre-right member of the Conservative Party, a former parliamentary candidate and now a national radio presenter sometimes referred to as 'the blogfather' for his pioneering activity in the UK in this field. There will be some though for whom Rouhani has found his target. The Iranian President doesn't expect to sway columnists at Canada Free Press for example, but I suspect many of the 46,000 followers of Dale on Twitter, and his many more radio listeners may be swayed to think the Iranian President is actually quite reasonable. The people at persecution.org, though are not swayed and, ironically at exactly the same time as Dale, they tweeted out the following: persecution.org @persecutionnews 6h Remember Pastor Saeed as He Marks His Second Christmas Imprisoned in Iran: #SaveSaeedhttp://ow.ly/s36Xf Last Christmas, Saeed was in Evin Prison, also known as Evin University because of the number of political prisoners held there. According to various accounts he was beaten and abused, suffering internal injuries. This Christmas, he found himself in Rajai Shahr prison in the town of Karaj which is populated with serious criminal offenders, and has harsher, sometimes life-threatening, conditions. Saeed has already been threatened at knifepoint, and his life is in danger every day. He remains there even after the Obama administration's deal over nuclear enrichment, which saw Iran gets billions in sanctions relief and "humanitarian transactions" from the United States. As a precursor Iran also received back one of its own, a nuclear scientist imprisoned for nuclear proliferation. Even though Saeed is now a US citizen (since 2010) having lived in the USA with his American wife since 2005, he is an Islamic convert (since 2000) and has made trips back to Iran to promote Christianity. In the summer of 2012 he was arrested for his activities and received his eight year jail sentence six months later. Furthermore Saeed is one of three Americans of interest believed to be held in Iran. Amir Hekmati is an Arab-American who served in the US Marines and then worked as an Arabic translator. He has been accused of spying against Iran for the CIA. Bob Levinson is an ex-FBI agent who the Iranians deny any knowledge of though he disappeared there in 2007 on a business trip. Hassan Rouhani is not this friendly guy that the West can all of a sudden throw more trust to. He presents himself as a man with arms open ready to put old things aside in order to bridge gaps, but it's all deception. Rouhani's Christmas Eve tweet is designed to be disarming with his open hand policy being constantly repeated. But it's just an attempt to bring our guards down so that another beneficial deal for Iran can be garnered. And another, and another, and another.....