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Iran Lobby Attacks on John Bolton Hide Fear of Regime Change

March 30, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Iran Lobby Attacks on John Bolton Hide Fear of Regime Change

The Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, have been busy hurling attacks and invectives at John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the new national security advisor, calling him everything from being crazy to a war monger to an extremist or child of Satan.

The accusations have seemed to take on a life of their own as Iranian regime loyalists such as NIAC’s Trita Parsi empty out the thesaurus in an effort to try and find something that will stick and either derail his nomination or throw cold water on the administration’s plans to revisit the Iran nuclear deal.

In either case, it seems apparent the trains have already left the stations and on Capitol Hill, it appears Democrats are only pondering going after President Trump’s CIA director nominee, Gina Haspel, for past involvement in the interrogation of terror suspects, with Bolton and secretary of state nominee, Mike Pompeo, looking like solid confirmations.

This new troika of national security, intelligence and diplomatic heads represents a significant shift in the president’s thinking as it relates to the challenges of Iran, North Korea and Islamic extremist terrorism.

Far from trying to swat individual terror suspects like so many mosquitos, it appears the administration maybe looking for a more strategic approach in draining the swamp so-to-speak by dealing directly with the sources of terrorism; more specifically nation states.

The terror attacks of 9/11 served as a reminder that safe harbors such as a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, provide training, security, funding and logistical support for terrorists to plan and execute their attacks.

The rise of ISIS out of the wreckage of a Syrian civil war and Iraqi sectarian conflict borne out of Iranian regime’s meddling carved out a caliphate which provided ISIS with everything from oil to sell and ready recruits to satellite broadcasts and a news magazine.

The Iranian regime set the template when it built Hezbollah to a formidable terrorist operation and shock troops for proxy wars. Iran mullahs utilized Hezbollah and a safe harbor in Lebanon.

But now the mullahs in Tehran are confronted with a rapid flurry of problems that have escalated nearly out of their normally iron-fisted control.

The explosion of U.S. fracking for oil turned it into the top oil producer in the world and forced prices to plummet on the open market, crushing revenues the mullahs were expecting from the lifting economic sanctions following the Iran nuclear deal. Coupled with the drain on cash reserves for propping up the Assad regime in Syria and spending heavily on military equipment, including building a ballistic missile program, Iran soon became a pauper nation;
A free-falling economy gave ordinary Iranians a gut-punch with stagnant wages, limited job opportunities and a deeply corrupt government that controlled almost all facets of the economy. Couple that with deep dissatisfaction over the increasing divide of haves vs. have-nots as those with ties to the Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force or the ruling mullahs profited handsomely; and
Massive protests swept the nation as the combination of punishing economic conditions and dissatisfaction with oppressive rule, including morality laws specifically targeting Iranian women, drove ordinary Iranians to extraordinary acts of defiance unheard of in Iran. This included women launch the hijab movement with the mullahs responding by passing laws criminalizing it on the basis it promoted “prostitution” and calling for 10 years imprisonment.

These trends are unmistakable and more importantly, unassailable by the Iran lobby, which for the most part has stayed silent on these domestic protests; choosing only to blame the economic conditions on the U.S. not fully complying with the terms of the nuclear deal.

Apparently Parsi and his friends think we should empty out Ft. Knox on behalf of the mullahs.

What is apparent though is that the accusations being flung by the Iran lobby at Bolton’s nomination miss an inescapable truth which is Bolton is not setting the stage for war when Tehran has already been at war with the West ever since it supplied explosives to kill Marines in Beirut or U.S. troops in Iraq.

Ivan Sascha Sheehan, incoming executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore, makes that point in a strongly worded editorial in The Hill.

“Those who are concerned about the potential for war with Iran should embrace Bolton’s appointment and support the administration’s efforts to confront Tehran’s destabilizing regional influence by taking its theocratic regime to task. The regime’s misbehavior only worsened in the run-up to Trump’s ascension to the Oval Office, and particularly under the prior administration’s cooperative policies that engendered an even greater sense of impunity than the Islamic Republic was used to,” Sheehan writes.

“Trump’s assertiveness during his first year in office is paying small dividends. U.S. Navy officials recently reported that close encounters between their vessels and those of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which were commonplace over the previous two years, halted abruptly in August,” he added.

But what the Iran lobby is most fearful of is not a simple knee-jerk tearing up of the nuclear deal by President Trump, but rather a consensus among U.S. allies to rework the deal, toughening provisions on terror support, ballistic missile development and human rights improvement, in an effort to save it.

Using the deal as a leverage against the Iranian regime is fair turnabout since the regime and Iran lobby have used its continued existence as a blunt instrument against any calls to rein in the regime’s excesses.

The Economist outlined some of the intense deal-making going on now from Great Britain, France and Germany to compel the Iranians to accept new restrictions; restrictions that should have been included in the original deal in the first place.

“Sir Simon Gass, a former British ambassador to Tehran who led the British team negotiating the deal, says that it might be possible to get an agreement from Iran not to develop an intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting America. An ICBM, he points out, only makes sense if it carries a nuclear warhead, so testing one should prompt broad economic sanctions. Patricia Lewis of Chatham House, another London think-tank, believes that the Europeans may already be talking to the Iranians about a future regional missile-deal that would ban long- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles,” the Economist editorial said.

Ultimately the real rub for Parsi and his fellow travelers is that new restrictions, coupled with worsening economic conditions will once again rollback Tehran back to 2009 when massive street protests nearly toppled the regime.

As the president’s new team take their place, it’s clear the era of appeasing the mullahs is dead.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Becomes Unhinged at Selection of John Bolton

March 27, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Iran Lobby Becomes Unhinged at Selection of John Bolton

Monday morning dawned across the U.S. to see the news dominated, not by talk of a Final Four match-up featuring Cinderella Loyola of Chicago and Sister Jean, but instead with an intense debate blowing up over President Donald Trump’s selection of former UN ambassador John Bolton to succeed H.R. McMaster as national security advisor.

The loquacious and quotable Bolton has been a frequent commentator and critic of the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal on Fox News and other media outlets and now finds himself in a key policy position to act on those beliefs.

Predictably the response from the Iran lobby was swift, vicious and stupefying. Leading the anti-Bolton charge was the National Iranian American Council, once a ley architect of Iranian appeasement and now finding itself virtually alone on an ever-shrinking game of foreign policy “Survivor” as it allies leave the scene to a newly muscular and empowered Trump administration.

Trita Parsi, NIAC president, issued a blistering statement condemning Bolton and blaming for everything short of triggering the Apocalypse.

“Bolton is an unhinged advocate for waging World War III. He has explicitly called for bombing Iran for the past ten years and has suggested the U.S. engage in nuclear first strikes in North Korea. Bolton’s first order of business will be to convince Trump to exit the Iran nuclear deal and lay the groundwork for the war he has urged over the past decade. Additionally, he has has called for ending all visas for Iranians, shipping bunker busting weapons to Israel, and supporting the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) terrorist organization and other separatist groups inside of Iran. The Iranian-American community and our pro-peace, pro-human rights allies will organize to stop Bolton’s plans from becoming a reality,” Parsi said.

In one paragraph, Parsi has managed to regurgitate virtually every false and misleading key message point the NIAC has articulated over the past five years.

Parsi calls Bolton “an unhinged advocate for waging World War III,” but neglects to parse any blame on an Iranian regime that has launched three wars on its own in Iraq, Syria and Yemen in the past three years;
Bolton has never called for nuking North Korea or Iran, but he has called for serious discussion about strike first policy options should Iran or North Korea move forward in developing nuclear capable ballistic missiles; a position virtually all Republican and Democratic congressional representatives have supported;
Bolton’s urging of the exiting the Iran nuclear deal is not a prelude to war—unless the mullahs in Tehran decide first—but rather a recognition that the deal did little to stymie Iranian extremism, halt terrorism or even delay Iran’s ability to lob nuclear weapons on missiles thousands of miles;
Parsi again takes a shot at one of the leading Iranian dissident groups in the MEK, using the “terrorist” label that has already been discredited. It’s also no coincidence Parsi refers to Iranian dissident and democracy groups as “separatist” groups refusing to acknowledge the widespread dissent and protests by ordinary Iranians sweeping across the country.

Parsi’s statement goes on to attack Bolton’s support of Iranian dissident groups as emblematic of war mongering, but Parsi doesn’t recognize the vast coalition of humanitarian, political, ethnic, religious and gender groups opposed to the Iranian regime including Amnesty International, members of the Bah’ai faith and virtually all Iranian women.

His focus solely on the MEK indicates the Iran lobby’s fears of recognizing the broad and deep resentment of the mullahs, especially the ever-unpopular rule of Hassan Rouhani.

Parsi’s hope that somehow slinging the MEK name around might somehow diminish Bolton’s chances for confirmation is a slim one since the MEK and the umbrella group of Iranian dissident and human rights groups it is part of, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has become an important source of information smuggled out of Iran about protests and the activities of the regime such as the secret development of its nuclear program in the first place.

Intelligence services in the EU and the U.S. have commended the quality and veracity of information supplied by these dissident groups, often at great risk to sympathizers in Iran who smuggle out photos and videos, including the most recent Iran protests across the nation.

Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby know the end is here for their policy of appeasing the regime. Pompeo and Bolton are only vocal supporters of ending it. The real architect of getting tougher with Iran is the president himself who used the Iran nuclear deal as a potent message point with American voters on the campaign trail; most of whom were disillusioned in the wake of massive terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists inspired by Iran’s war in Syria.

For most Americans, the memories of Orlando, San Bernardino and Paris and Nice mingle with vivid images of handguns, trucks, bombs, knives and virtually any other tool grasped by terrorists to kill innocent people.

Parsi is never one for understatement so his statements aimed at Bolton are only natural, but the only unhinged one making crazy statements is Parsi which diminishes his authority and reasonableness in the eyes of many news organizations.

That of course hasn’t stopped the NIAC as it made Parsi and fellow staffers Reza Marashi and Jamal Abdi available to news media to talk Bolton. Considering the only news outlets that seem to have picked their comments are Russian and Iranian publications and an occasional Iranian regime advocate blog like Lobelog, we are heartened to see that fewer and fewer journalists frankly care what NIAC has to say.

The problem with the histrionics of Parsi and his Iran lobby colleagues is that when you consistently scream at the top of your lungs and sound deranged, no one ends up listening to you.

In fact, the much-vaunted echo chamber of the Iran lobby only seems to echo with their own voices and no one else is listening.

Laura Carnahan

NIAC Tries to Defend Former Associate in State Department

March 23, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

NIAC Tries to Defend Former Associate in State Department

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a State Department official who was instrumental in directing policy for completing the much-criticized Iran nuclear deal under the Obama administration, has been reassigned to other duties in the State Department by the Trump administration which has generated a flurry of lobbying activity by the Iran lobby.

The National Iranian American Council organized an effort to denounce the move in a letter sent to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and acting Secretary of State John Sullivan even though the reassignment was made last April 2017.

The genesis for this new round of false outrage though was a Politico story that discussed email conversations between administration officials calling into question her political loyalty. In essence, the NIAC and its brethren were objecting to that age-old political practice of “cleaning house” when a new party and administration comes to power.

Where was the NIAC’s outrage when the Obama administration led its own purge of Bush-era appointees and installed its own loyalists in key civil service positions at the end of its own term to ensure policies were continued in spite of the new Trump administration’s move in?

To say the NIAC’s outrage is silly is an understatement. Every president reserves the right to pick and choose whomever he likes to serve and carry out his policies. Every president is also entitled to move or reassign any federal employee that does not wish to carry out that administration’s policies.

It is no different for someone like President John F. Kennedy taking over for Dwight D. Eisenhower or Bill Clinton taking over for George H.W. Bush.

But in the twisted logic of the NIAC, it seems even that most basic of presidential prerogatives is off-limits when it comes to keeping a trusted ally in the heart of policy-making when it concerns the Iranian regime.

In the case of Nowrouzzadeh, her involvement in policy towards Iran under the Obama administration has been well-documented.

Born in the U.S. to Iranian parents, Nowrouzzadeh has worked in various government capacities including the Defense Department in 2005 as a foreign affairs analyst and later the State Department in a similar capacity. She later joined the Obama White House in the National Security Council as a director for Iran and part of the team responsible for the Iran nuclear deal.

What raises the suspicions of many though was her prior stint working for NIAC which seems to have been purged from her bios and NIAC’s public records. Why? Obviously, association with the Iran lobby group can be fatal to a career civil servant’s future job prospects and it has been in Nowrouzzadeh’s case.

Also, her key involvement in crafting an agreement that President Trump has openly derided also has proven disadvantageous.

While the reassignment is common in new administrations, the furor is not as the NIAC has chosen to use her as a stalking horse for attacking the Trump administration yet again as ardent Iran-haters and racists.

It is sad to see the NIAC elevate her case and drag her through the public mud in order to score political points over an action that every incoming president undertakes throughout history.

What this does reveal though is NIAC’s willingness to cast any stone in wild attempts to attack the Trump administration in some blind hope of slowing down the freight train of change barreling towards the Iranian regime.

The setbacks for NIAC are numerous and significant:

Its attacks on the Saudi government have failed to prevent a historic realignment in the Middle East of nations united against Iran’s regime and containing its expansion;
Its efforts to keep alive the Iran nuclear deal are on life support as President Trump has decided to install Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and former UN ambassador John Bolton as the new National Security Advisor. Both are ardent opponents of the nuclear deal;
Its struggle to deny democratic protests sweeping through Iran and bolster the fraudulent regime of Hassan Rouhani have only proven to news media how out of touch NIAC is with current events.

Oddly enough, Nowrouzzadeh could have settled this entire unhappy episode herself by simply advising President Trump’s incoming foreign policy team on the best methods for improving the nuclear agreement she had just worked to implement.

If you want to show your non-partisan, unbiased credentials, then all one has to do is provide the other point of view.

In her case, and because of the effort by NIAC to leverage her reassignment, the sad truth is that policy making in the State Department became highly politicized under the Obama administration, especially towards Iran.

Her reassignment is only the tip of the iceberg since if President Trump is going to finally hold the Iranian regime accountable for its support of terrorism and unbridled human rights failures, he will most likely need to reassign many more Nowrouzzadehs and that is the future that NIAC is terrified of.

Iran Lobby Faces United US-Saudi Front

March 22, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Iran Lobby Faces United US-Saudi Front

Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman, heir to the Saudi throne, kicked off a two-week tour of the U.S. with a meeting with President Donald Trump which highlighted the close relationship the administration shares with the Kingdom that began with the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia shortly after his inauguration.

Part of that relationship is centered on restoring stability in a Middle East riven asunder by the Iranian regime which has plunged three countries into war in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The latter of most concern to the Kingdom because of its common border and a hail of Iranian-made rockets and mortar shells falling on it.

The Saudi Crown Prince has moved quickly not only to take the reins of foreign and defense policy for the Kingdom, but also to move it into a more progressive era by instituting changes and reforms especially aimed at empowering Saudi women in culture, politics and the economy.

Changes that are anathema to the mullahs in Tehran and evidence of the growing divide between the two countries.

Of course, that has not stopped the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, from consistently attacking Saudi Arabia and attempting to portray it as a bloodthirsty state sponsor of terrorism.

Ironically, while Iran occupies almost permanent status on the U.S. State Department’s target list of state sponsors of terrorism, Saudi Arabia has moved quickly to identify and eradicate radicalized Islamic elements in its society, especially those adhering to the Iranian regime’s principles.

But that hasn’t stopped the NIAC’s Trita Parsi from issuing a statement attacking the Crown Prince because of his public statements warning of spreading Iranian extremism.

“While the Saudi effort to drag the US into war with Iran was blocked by previous administrations, Riyadh now appears to be pushing an open door,” Parsi said. “The tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are destabilizing the Middle East and necessitate strong diplomatic efforts to defuse the conflict before it escalates into a wider war.”

Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby have consistently banged the war drum in order to stoke fears, but the source of that tension has always been blamed on someone else rather than the mullahs in Tehran; be it the U.S. or Saudi Arabia or Israel, according to Parsi someone else is always to blame.

In Parsi’s worldview, the Iranian regime’s sponsorship of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah is not to blame. Nor has been the arming of Shiite militias in Iraq or Houthi rebels in Yemen. Neither can blame be laid at the launching pads of dozens of ballistic missiles fired off by the Iranians, nor their leaders’ threats to blast its enemies out of existence.

In his statement, Parsi also takes a stab at the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has developed a close relationship with bin Salman.

Parsi claims that the Saudis are eager to start a war against Iran using American service personnel. It’s frankly an absurd claim since no one, not President Trump, nor the Saudi royal family, have ever mentioned a war or the prospect of one. In fact, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have started and participated in nearly a dozen peace initiatives aimed at defusing the conflicts Iran has started included several peace conferences aimed at halting the bloodshed in Syria and in each case, Iranian regime’s reluctance to accept any terms that diminish its military or political advantage have torpedoed all of these talks.

In fact, rather than turning to the U.S. for help, the Saudis have taken it upon themselves to fight against Iranian-backed Houthi incursions along their border, as well as use their own navy to intercept Iranian fishing vessels trying to smuggle fresh arms into Yemen.

The portrayal of the Saudi position towards Iran by the Iran lobby is just more evidence of the effort to throw smokescreens up at any effort to affix blame on the Iranian regime for the chaos enveloping the Middle East.

It is also a recognition that the new world order in a post-Obama world has changed radically.

No longer is the U.S. content to try and appease the mullahs in Tehran. No longer will the U.S. bind itself to a flawed nuclear deal that did not attempt to rein in the regime’s ballistic missile program or fundamentally abusive human rights record.

Most importantly, the Iranian people themselves are expressing their own frustrations and desire for change in their oppressive government as protests have swept the country before being ruthlessly put down; crackdowns that drew almost not a whisper of protest by NIAC ironically.

The Saudis know the Iranian playbook because they have seen it put into effect in Lebanon and Syria where Hezbollah was built into a powerful military proxy that eventually served to take over both countries.

All of which rightly worries the Saudis in Yemen as Iran looks to create another Hezbollah with the Houthis it backs. A viewpoint shared by Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

He told CNN that Iran wants to destabilize Saudi Arabia, and that it poses a threat to the entire region and international security.

“Here’s what happening in Yemen: (Iran is trying to create) another Hezbollah in Yemen, which will not just threaten our security and Yemeni security, but also regional security.”

“We’ve been focusing on the weapon of mass destruction, the WMD. What we should really be focusing on is the MD, the mass destruction that Iran is committing in the region.”

He stressed to CNN that Tehran was stirring unrest and said the so-called “nuclear deal” between Iran and Western powers needs “to be fixed.”

It is ironic that while Saudi Arabia is moving to open up the Kingdom to benefit women and seek diplomatic overtures to contain the Iranian regime, the regime keeps oppressing its citizens and uses terror and military force to achieve its aims.

Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Misses Mark on Apple Shutdown of Iran App Store Access

March 20, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

NIAC Misses Mark on Apple Shutdown of Iran App Store Access

Apple reportedly shutdown access to its App Store to users and developers in Iran last week raising intense speculation as to why the tech giant restricted access, although Iranian users reported being able to access the store by the weekend.

Speculation ranged from potential U.S. sanctions looming on the horizon to the announcement of CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as U.S. Secretary of State.

The Iran lobby weighed in predictably as well, with the National Iranian American Council leading the blame game with a statement it issued in which it again displayed the irony of decrying Apple’s move, while at the same time never criticizing the Iranian regime’s weaponization of those some smartphone apps to identify and arrest potential dissidents and protestors.

Earlier this month, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the largest Iranian dissident group in the world, issued a report detailing how the Iranian regime has launched a sophisticated cybercampaign to deploy apps on Apple and Google’s app stores that mimic more well-known apps and allows the regime’s security services to monitor the activities of Iranian citizens, as well as export malware cyberattacks against U.S. citizens.

Starting with the massive election protests of 2009, smartphones have played a vital role in organizing opposition to the Iranian regime and helped share video, photos and audio of the brutality of the regime as it has arrested, beaten and even killed protestors over the years; culminating to the most recent protests that have rocked Iran over the past two months.

These include protests over poor economic conditions, rampant corruption within the regime and even over morality codes by women who have abandoned head scarves and posted photos on social media in a form of soft power protest that has landed many of them in prison.

Nearly 48 million Iranians have smartphones with about 70 percent of them having access to the internet, making Iran one of the more connected nations in the Middle East, but the regime has struggled to restrict Internet access and have tried to disrupt the usage of popular messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp by protestors.

The move by Apple, while not publicly commented on by the company yet, highlights the precarious nature of technology in Iran. The regime uses it as a prolific tool for cyberwarfare while the rest of the free world views it as an engine of change, commerce and communication.

The NIAC highlights this in its statement saying:

“Access to communication technology is important for both humanitarian as well as U.S. strategic interests, which is why exemptions for Internet communication tools were put in place under the previous Administration. Allowing these exemptions to fall by the wayside helps no one except those who seek to keep the Iranian people silent.”

It’s a laudable position to take, but hollow and empty when we consider how the NIAC has never criticized the Iranian regime for its manipulation of technology to restrict protests.

“We have already been in communication with the U.S. government about decisions late last year by Apple and Google to block Iranian developers from hosting applications on their platforms. We have emphasized the need to broaden exemptions to reverse such decisions and will redouble our efforts to address these new challenges,” the NIAC statement said.

It’s a twisted piece of logic by the NIAC since the NCRI report, as well as similar reports by national intelligence agencies, have long documented the Iranian regime’s use of Iranian programmers to create apps that have malware embedded in them and efforts to crack the encryption of apps such as WhatsApp.

But this exclusion of Iran from the Apple App Store is not the first time. Back in August of 2017, Apple removed all apps created by Iranian developers from its App Store as a result of U.S. economic sanctions.

Iran’s own Telecommunication Minister said the ban of Iranian-made apps would probably have a limited effect on the country’s economy and tech industry, as the US company had only an 11 percent market share in the country, according to a report from the New York Times, but the move was bound to hurt the regime’s intelligence gathering efforts.

Far from hurting Iranians, as the NIAC suggests, restricting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps access to these app stores benefits those Iranians who rely on clandestine technology to spread, share and collaborate in their dissent.

This is why the NIAC continually misses the mark in its position papers and statements because of its slavish devotion to the Iranian regime and an uncompromising reluctance to ever criticize Tehran on anything.

The NIAC should be focused on the cyberwall the regime operates allowing it to monitor virtually all Internet activities of the Iranian people. The NIAC should be calling on the regime to end its use of bogus social media apps to monitor its own people. The NIAC should call for the release from Iranian jails any Iranian being detained for posting a video or photo that violated the regime’s draconian morality codes.

The NIAC should speak on behalf of freedom and democracy and not try to support a regime that is slowly dying from the corruption that is rotting the core of the Iranian government.

That rot has become so apparent to the Iranian people that they have been motivated to post online their own protests and Apple and other Western companies should be encouraged to do more to obstruct the Iranian regime and aid these people in their quest for freedom and democracy.

Michael Tomlinson

IranLobby Screams About War With Iran

March 16, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

IranLobby Screams About War With Iran

“War!” The talking point pours out of the mouths of Iran lobby supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council about as often as he tweets it seems. Parsi and his colleagues have always waved the banner of war as a means of distracting from the key issues continually dogging the Iranian regime such as its miserable human rights record.

During the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal, the specter of war was a near-constant theme sounded by the NIAC, even though there was never any real prospect of a conflict with the Iranian regime under the Obama administration.

It was however a convenient tool to use in the so-called “echo chamber” of public opinion created by the NIAC in collaboration with a White House intent on landing a PR win at almost any cost, including appeasing the mullahs in Tehran.

Even after the deal was struck and the Iranian regime launched a series of wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the chorus of the Iran lobby continued to warn that any effort to take action against Iran would inevitably result in war.

It was a silly argument; akin to saying that trying to stop the burglar robbing your house would only lead to more violence so one should leave him to his thievery.

After President Donald Trump took office and installed an administration openly skeptical of the Iran nuclear deal, the Iran lobby continued to warn that any effort to rein in Tehran’s militant actions would only lead to war. This included doing everything in the PR/lobbying handbook to preserve the nuclear deal that delivered billions in cash to the mullahs to help fund their wars and ballistic missile program.

Now the president has decided to shuffle his cabinet by moving Mike Pompeo from the directorship of the Central Intelligence Agency to become Secretary of State, replacing the outgoing Rex Tillerson.

The change represents a potential realignment of U.S. foreign policy hewing more closely to the promises made by candidate Trump on the campaign trail when he called the Iran nuclear deal the worst deal ever made and vowed to tear it up for a new one.

Predictably, Parsi and the NIAC went on the offensive in near hysterical warnings of war. The NIAC issued a statement that blasted the appointment of Pompeo, a noted and vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal.

“Mike Pompeo’s nomination for Secretary of State could have profound implications for the fate of the Iran nuclear deal and the prospect of a new war in the Middle East. While serving in Congress, Pompeo’s positions on foreign policy were often ideological and tended towards militarism rather than diplomacy. His opposition to the Iran deal – including the political hijinks he engaged in to undermine U.S. negotiators – and his comments suggesting that military strikes would be more effective than diplomacy, raise serious questions about his fitness to serve as America’s top diplomat,” the NIAC statement read.

“It may result in a dramatic escalation of tensions in the Middle East and a war with Iran.”

Of course, Pompeo’s position as CIA director provided him with the ultimate access to the most conclusive information on whether or not Iran was truly adhering to the terms of the nuclear deal, as well as the full scope of the regime’s activities, especially its support for proxy terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

His elevation by President Trump sets the stage for what Iranian dissidents have been calling for all along which is an honest, unabashed focus on the Iranian regime’s conduct and not the false promises being made by the mullahs and their cheerleaders in the Iran lobby.

In this case, actions speak louder than words and the regime’s actions over the past two years since the deal was approved lay bare the lies that have been consistently spouted.

It’s no secret that Pompeo has been a harsh critic of the Iranian regime, calling out its brutality towards dissidents and use of its police forces to crack down on protests.

“Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are the cudgels of a despotic theocracy,” Pompeo said in a speech last October. “They’re the vanguard of a pernicious empire that is expanding its power and influence across the Middle East.”

A week later, he told the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) that Trump is of the same mind.

“The president has come to view the threat from Iran as at the center of so much of the turmoil that bogs us down in lots of places in the Middle East, right? Whether it’s Lebanese Hezbollah, the threat that it presents to both Lebanon and to Israel; whether it’s the Shia militias—you can see the impact that they’re having today,” Pompeo said.

That kind of tough talk and brutal honesty is what has driven a recalcitrant North Korea back to the bargaining table after three years of brazen missile launches and should prove to be equally effective against the mullahs in Tehran.

Appeasement has never historically worked. It didn’t work against Hitler in Munich and it certainly didn’t work against Ali Khamenei in Geneva.

Seeing little hope of finding anymore receptive audiences in the U.S., Parsi and the NIAC have increasingly turned their message to European audiences and the regime has followed suit as regime-controlled media have already begun trying to shape the narrative about Pompeo by urging Europe to act as a balance against the Trump administration.

“Pompeo is very interested in waging a war similar to the Iraq war by citing international regulations,” said Alo Khorram, a former Iranian envoy to the United Nations, in the daily newspaper Arman. “European powers will play a role in balancing his desire.”

While the NIAC continues to panic, the clock may finally be running out on the reign of the Iranian regime.

Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Desperately Trying to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

March 7, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

NIAC Desperately Trying to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

The much-criticized and ridiculed Iran nuclear deal is on life support and the Iran lobby’s top cheerleader, the National Iranian American Council, is doing cartwheels and midair splits in a desperate bid to save it.

The NIAC has steadily been churning out editorials ever since the Trump administration moved into the White House and the president began threatening to tear up the agreement.

But since his swearing in, President Trump has continued to renew certification of the agreement and kept it as leverage against European allies who were eager to embrace newly opened markets in Iran but gave scant attention to the Iranian regime’s destabilizing efforts throughout the Middle East over the past two years.

The president figured out quickly that summarily ditching the agreement wouldn’t buy the U.S. and its allies anything since the mullahs in Tehran got what they most desperately needed from the Obama administration anyway: cold hard cash, billions of it in sanctions relief.

Now we are seeing some of the fruit coming from his decision to bash the nuclear deal, while at the same time keeping it in play. France has led increasing calls to modify the agreement to address the Trump administration’s chief concerns including Iran’s ballistic missile program, its sponsorship of terrorism and brutal human rights record.

The French have realized that appeasing Iran yielded little of anything in the way of tangible benefits. Syria become a hellhole. Moderating forces in Iran was quickly crushed and Islamic extremist terrorism flourished, even striking France in Paris and Normandy.

Predictably, the NIAC and rest of the Iran lobby has reacted to the potential of modifying the agreement as tantamount to killing it. It’s an odd position to take since it basically assumes Iran will walk away from the deal and immediately restart its nuclear program.

Ryan Costello, the NIAC’s assistant policy director, delivered that very message in an editorial appearing in Defense One, in which he makes the inane argument that ditching the nuclear agreement will allow Iran to turn into another North Korea.

He goes further by comparing the North Korean Agreed Framework and its failure to the potential failure of the Iran deal as a result of U.S. policy decisions not to live up to its end!

“Under the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. shifted from incomplete follow-through to looking for an exit from the agreement. Far from normalization, Bush lumped North Korea into an ‘axis of evil,” Costello writes.

“And former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton infamously crowed about evidence of secret North Korean uranium enrichment: ‘This was the hammer I had been looking for to shatter the Agreed Framework.’ Had the Bush administration sought to address the challenge through diplomacy instead of exiting the accord, today North Korea might not be close to fielding nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the United States,” he adds.

Costello blames U.S. for policy in saying “just as North Korea felt that they were not getting what they bargained for under the Agreed Framework, faith that the U.S. will uphold its end of the JCPOA has precipitously declined in Iran. The Trump administration is inflicting deliberate harm by violating the accord, and daring Iran to be the one to leave first.”

In this, he is partially correct. The Trump administration surmised that the threat Iran was posing was its expansion of military and terrorist activities through the region. It saw what its Quds Force was capable of inflicting in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It also understood that the crash program to develop ballistic missiles and place them in Syria and other countries Iran controlled posed an imminent danger to the U.S. and its allies.

Ditching the nuclear deal outright would do little to coerce the Iranian regime back into the fold of negotiations and split the U.S. from the EU, which is why the mere threat of ditching the agreement and laying out the provisions for a follow-on agreement with the Iranian regime has shaped up as the policy prescription on finding support among EU leaders.

President Trump is slowly cobbling together consensus and using the recent mass protests in Iran as a catalyst to convince the rest of the world that Iranian regime remains a theocratic dictatorship no different than North Korea.

In rebuilding that consensus, the administration seeks to reassemble a new sanctions regime that can again bring the Iranian regime back to the bargaining table and force a new agreement.

Of course, the NIAC is screaming bloody murder about the potential scenario, but the proof of its viability is ironically playing out in North Korea where the Trump administration’s harsh and bellicose rhetoric aimed at the Hidden Kingdom, alongside crushing new sanctions have brought North Korea back to the bargaining table.

In a historic announcement by South Korea, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un indicated a willingness to reopen diplomatic talks with the U.S. and South Korea about denuclearization and normalizing relations, and “made it clear” that it would not resume provocations while engaged in dialogue, the officials said upon returning to Seoul, according to the Washington Post.

Already, many media outlets are grudgingly giving President Trump’s “madman” approach to diplomacy towards North Korea credit for achieving the diplomatic breakthrough.

“He does deserve credit,” said Ian Bremmer, the head of the Eurasia Group and a Trump critic who nonetheless sees some hope in his North Korea strategy. “I think North Korea’s openness in the Olympics and summitry with South Korea, as well as potentially direct talks with the U.S., are the result of Trump’s approach.”

Krishnadev Calamur, a senior editor at The Atlantic, writes that “beyond the potential that Kim is feeling confident, there are several other reasons the North could be making such an offer. It could be that Kim is genuinely keen on dialogue with the United States. U.S. and UN sanctions on the North may have hurt the country economically to the point that Kim feels compelled to negotiate—a similar dynamic that helped bring Iran to nuclear negotiations under Obama. The sanctions might also have hurt the regime’s ability to conduct more missile and nuclear tests, something they did regularly in 2017.”

The dynamic is true but hopefully the outcome will be different since its doubtful President Trump will emulate President Obama’s policies of appeasement when it comes to dealing with North Korea and Iran.

In this way, the NIAC is yet again horribly, completely and satisfyingly wrong.

Laura Carnahan

US Pressure on Iran Missile Program Pushing Europe to Act

March 5, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

US Pressure on Iran Missile Program Pushing Europe to Act

The Trump administration has been applying diplomatic pressure on the Iranian regime over its ballistic missile program and support for terrorism and has consistently raised the specter of invalidating the Iran nuclear deal by certifying the regime as being out of compliance with its provisions.

For those efforts, the administration has been roundly and harshly criticized by the Iranian regime’s allies, especially within the Iran lobby by groups such as the National Iranian American Council and individuals such as Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former regime nuclear official who now masquerade’s as an academic at Princeton University.

The vitriol being thrown at the administration over this new pressure on Iran has only been matched by the depth and breadth of misinformation and fake news being pumped out by the Iran lobby.

What is becoming clear though is that the central issue at the heart of the Trump administration’s complaints—that Iran’s ballistic missile program posed a serious international threat and its support of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah was destabilizing the Middle East—have finally gotten the attention of European leaders and serious traction throughout European capitals.

During the Obama administration’s negotiation of the nuclear deal, little emphasis was placed on Iran’s missile program, nor its abysmal human rights record or support for terrorism. That lack of negotiating prowess essentially left the Iranian regime off the hook and gave it carte blanche to rapidly build its missile program and gain strongholds in Syria, Iraq and Yemen through proxy wars.

Many EU leaders that had lauded the nuclear deal as paving the war towards Iranian moderation have been left in more precarious political situations as nearly four million Syrian refugees flooded into Europe in the greatest refugee crisis since World War II and cities such as Paris, Berlin and Brussels were rocked by terrorist acts inspired by the Islamic extremism espoused by the mullahs in Tehran.

That has forced many of them to make a decision to head off a potential move by the Trump administration to kill the nuclear deal and that is to apply more pressure on the Iranian regime on these issues they once considered unimportant.

One example has been French president Emmanuel Macron, who has taken a more public and aggressive stance towards Iranian military actions and human rights.

Macron told the Iranian regime’s Hassan Rouhani in a telephone call this weekend of his support for the nuclear accord and his concerns over Iran’s other activities according to the Financial Times.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, French foreign minister, is due to hold further talks in Tehran on Monday as the clock ticks towards a May deadline set by the US president for European countries to “fix” the nuclear agreement.

The EU and the bloc’s three signatories to the deal — France, Germany and Britain — are urgently trying to craft a solution that will placate the Trump administration’s without destroying an accord they argue is working.

Macron also asked for “clear responses” from Iran over “problems” outside the deal relating to its ballistic missile program and its destabilizing role in the region, particularly in Lebanon.

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, will visit Tehran this week and call upon the regime to address the West’s misgivings about its ballistic missile program and Middle East military activities, according to Reuters.

The growing threats posed by the Iranian regime are now being scrutinized more openly as evidenced by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal authored by Jose Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, and Stephen Harper, former prime minister of Canada, in which they both urged Europe to act more decisively in containing Iranian expansionism.

“Despite Tehran’s quest for regional control, popular protests in December and January showed that most of the nation’s citizens don’t share their leaders’ designs. The regime’s destabilizing actions have also triggered resistance from Saudi Arabia and other regional powers. Iran’s own citizens and neighbors are convinced of Tehran’s malice, and all concerned nations should heed their warning,” Aznar and Harper wrote.

“Thankfully, the U.S. has demonstrated its ability to rally its Middle Eastern partners in stabilizing the region. Iranian theocracy appeals mainly to a few neighboring Shiite Islamic factions, and Iran’s long-term conflicts with other sects have made many states eager to cooperate in restraining its influence. Numerous allies can be mobilized in the struggle against Iran, from the Kurds and tribal elements to many Sunni Arabs and Shiite forces not co-opted by Tehran. These factions must collaborate to contain Iran’s hegemonic ambitions,” they added.

They go on to warn that “if left unchecked, Iran’s aggression will ultimately threaten Europe and North America as well. All should urgently work together to counter this threat to global security.”

Their warnings should be heeded by the EU since the evidence has been so overwhelmingly against the claims of the Iran lobby and the Iranian regime.

The most serious threat facing the U.S. and in its allies is the high probability that Iran is quickly building permanent military bases in Syria and planning to move ballistic missiles there; placing most of Europe within range and providing almost no warning time for regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel any advance warning to detect, let alone shoot down, any Iranian missiles.

President Trump understood the geopolitical ramifications of the Iran nuclear deal better than anyone and now sees its potential certification as battering ram he can use to drive home the point of the threat Iranian regime missiles and its military poses to Europe.

It remains to be seen how many other European nations heed the wake up that French president Macron seems to be trumpeting more urgently now, but we hope they all take action soon.

Michael Tomlinson

Amnesty International Blasts Treatment of Protesting Women in Iran

March 5, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Amnesty International Blasts Treatment of Protesting Women in Iran

The wave of people’s protests that swept across Iran beginning the end of 2017 and through the start of 2018 have been marked by demands for essentials such as job creation, food and water, as well as increased freedoms for a long-suffering and oppressed people.

Within the fabric of all those protests was the noteworthy and remarkable scene played out in cities and villages throughout Iran as women uncovered their heads by removing the proscribed hijab headscarves in silent protests.

Those iconic protesters were met with typical violence and brutality by the Iranian regime and human rights organization Amnesty International blasted the regime for its cruel treatment of women protestors to stifle dissent.

Amnesty International took note of a warning coming from Iranian regime police in a statement put out by the Mehr news agency warning that women could be jailed for up to a decade for joining any and all protests against veiling.

Amnesty International called it “an alarming escalation of the authorities’ violent crackdown on women’s rights.”

The group noted that more than 35 women have so far been violently attacked and arrested in Tehran alone since December 2017 for participating in peaceful protests. On the day that the regime issued its warning, one of the protestors, Narges Hosseini, was put on trial before an Ershad (Moral Guidance) court in Tehran on charges that included this new charge.

“This is a deeply retrograde move by the Iranian authorities in their ongoing persecution of women who dare to speak out against compulsory veiling. It places many women at serious and immediate risk of unjust imprisonment while sending a chilling message to others to keep quiet while their rights are being violated,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

The history of violence against women runs deep and long in the Islamic state where the mullahs issue hardline edicts designed to suppress women in areas such as domestic affairs, the job market, education and popular culture.

Restrictions placed on Iranian women have included bans on riding bicycles, the inability to gain divorces from abuses husbands, being forced into child marriages with much older male relatives and having scores of careers barred for women.

But the women thrown into Iranian prisons have endured some of the worst treatment.

At least one other woman, Shaparak Shajarizadeh, has been informed that she faces the charge of “inciting corruption and prostitution.” She is currently held in solitary confinement in Shahr-e Rey prison in Varamin, near Tehran. Her lawyer has said that she was subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, including beatings, in Vozara detention centre in Tehran following her arrest and was also injected with an unidentified substance several times by force and against her will.

The statement issued by regime police coincides with a recent upturn in police brutality against women’s solo protests – which see women take off their headscarves in busy public places and silently wave them on the end of a stick while standing on top of raised structures, according to Amnesty International.

Last Thursday, February 22, a video went viral on Persian social media showing a police officer recklessly pushing Maryam Shariatmadari off a concrete structure on which she was standing without a headscarf. Her friends have reported that the fall resulted in injuries requiring surgery. She is also held in Shahr-e Rey prison, without access to adequate medical care.

In recent weeks, the Iranian authorities, including the Chief Prosecutor of Iran and the Head of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, have insulted women protestors by calling them “morons,” “infantile,” “deceived,” “perverted” and “wicked” and accused them of association with “foreign enemies.”

Iran’s judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i has said that the women protesting against compulsory veiling are “acting under the influence of “synthetic drugs” or receiving instruction from “organized criminal groups.”

“The Iranian authorities must hold law enforcement officials to account for human rights violations, including torture and other ill-treatment and refrain from making any statements that incite further violence and abuse,” Mughrabi said.

While Amnesty International has focused on this latest round of abuses directed towards Iranian women, the latest episodes come as no surprise to seasoned Iranian dissident groups who have long championed the suffering of Iranian women by the regime, such as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the largest Iranian dissident group.

By comparison, key Iran lobby members such as the National Iranian American Council, which is supposed to be an advocate for the human rights of Iranian-Americans, has stayed deafeningly silent on these latest abuses, as well as on the abuses suffered by dual-national women taken prisoner and held such as British social worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

The pattern of abuse and intimidation, especially within regime-controlled media, encourages violence against women on the streets and makes liberal use of the morality police and paramilitaries to assault and beat these women.

Amnesty International noted that the regime’s policies stretch far back and have been a hallmark of the theocratic rule of the mullahs in Tehran in meeting any dissent with violence.

While these brave women continue their often lonely quests for equality and rights, it should be noted that the Iran lobby and NIAC are not supporters of theirs, nor defenders of those basic human rights.

Laura Carnahan

NIAC Ignores the Bad News in FATF Decision on Iran Penalties

March 5, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

NIAC Ignores the Bad News in FATF Decision on Iran Penalties

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an inter-governmental body made up of 35 countries and two regional governing groups setting standards to promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.

The FATF monitors the progress of its members in implementing necessary measures, reviews money laundering and terrorist financing techniques and counter-measures and promotes the adoption and implementation of appropriate measures globally.

The FATF serves as a crucial watchdog then against the spread of global terrorism through the transfer of funds through the international banking system. Chief among its current assignments is to monitor North Korea and the Iranian regime.

As part of its monitoring of Iranian regime, the FATF provides periodic updates on the action plan the regime pledged to follow as part of the nuclear deal it signed two years ago. In its most recent update, the FATF noted that Iran’s action plan has expired with most items on its to-do list remaining incomplete.

Chief among the items still needing to be addressed by the regime are:

Adequately criminalizing terrorist financing, including by removing the exemption for designated groups “attempting to end foreign occupation, colonialism and racism”;
Identifying and freezing terrorist assets in line with the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions;
Ensuring an adequate and enforceable customer due diligence regime;
Ensuring the full independence of the Financial Intelligence Unit and requiring the submission of STRs for attempted transactions;
Demonstrating how authorities are identifying and sanctioning unlicensed money/value transfer service providers;
Ratifying and implementing the Palermo and TF Conventions and clarifying the capability to provide mutual legal assistance;
Ensuring that financial institutions verify that wire transfers contain complete originator and beneficiary information;
Establishing a broader range of penalties for violations of the ML offense; and
Ensuring adequate legislation and procedures to provide for confiscation of property of corresponding value.

If Iranian regime does not meet these obligations, the FATF has the power to impose counter-measures punishing the regime, including restricting its access to international currency exchanges and electronic transfers.

It was this kind of pressure that proved pivotal in bringing the mullahs to the bargaining table in the first place.

Although Iran has left most of the required action items unfilled, the FATF has opted to hold off pending the Iranian parliament taking up these measures in draft legislation. Their outcome remains uncertain as the regime has dropped suggestions it may walk away from the nuclear deal anyway, including statements made by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi.

And yet, while the FATF continues to press the regime to comply with its promises, the National Iranian American Council didn’t miss the opportunity to crow that the FATF’s forbearance was in fact some kind of endorsement of the Iranian regime’s actions.

Predictably, the NIAC also called the FATF’s actions as standing up to pressure from the Trump administration.

“By showing itself unwilling to give in to pressure from the Trump administration and outside advocacy groups like United Against Nuclear Iran, which were pushing for the re-imposition of counter-measures against Iran, FATF smartly avoided politicization of its work and protected its integrity as a technical body assessing countries’ anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws,” the NIAC statement read.

The NIAC said the Iranian regime had made “significant progress” in meeting the action plan, but neglected to note the disparity in how far the regime still has to go. For the NIAC, its only concern is to keep pushing the goal line back farther and farther to avoid crossing it and triggering new sanctions.

Its failure to recognize the agonizingly slow pace of approval of legislation by the Iranian parliament as part of a larger scheme to not make any changes in its financing of terror demonstrates the charade of the NIAC’s positions.

While the Trump administration has succeeded in focusing new pressure on Iran, Iran lobby groups such as the NIAC are now struggling to find any excuse to hold back the rising tide against its patrons in Tehran.

Laura Carnahan