Iran Lobby

Exposing the Activities of the lobbies and appeasers of the Mullah's Dictatorship ruling Iran

Why Does the Iran Lobby Fear the Iran Resistance Movement?

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Supporters of MEK protest against Rouhani's visit to the United Nations.

Why Does the Iran Lobby Fear the Iran Resistance Movement?

Why is the Iran lobby terrified of the Iranian resistance movement around the world? Almost every spokesperson, lobbyist and PR flak with a vested stake in the Iranian regime’s continued well-being has been intent on discrediting any Iranian dissident to diminish the messenger.

Why?

The answer is simple: The existence of a viable, vocal and demonstrative dissident movement comprised of Iranians offers an alternative narrative to the Iran lobby and mullahs in Tehran that directly contradicts virtually every key message they articulate.

Key advocates for the regime such as the National Iranian American Council have made it a career to find new and inventive ways to discredit, discount and disregard even the idea of an Iranian dissident movement.

The existence of any dissident movement threatens everything the Iran lobby has sought to achieve. During the run-up to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, the NIAC’s Trita Parsi was a constant fixture on news programs and shuttling in and out of the White House and Switzerland to plant the seeds of ideas such as that the nuclear deal would empower “moderate” Iranian political forces and help stabilize the government and build trust with the U.S.

Unfortunately for Parsi, the opposite has happened with several presidential and parliamentary elections have come and gone with no viable moderates or true political opposition even allowed onto the ballot.

The reason for this is simple since the mullahs have never harbored any thoughts of actual political liberalization. Top mullah Ali Khamenei has ruled Iran in the same manner as his predecessors ever since the Islamic revolution was hijacked by the religious theocracy and turned into a virtual dictatorship.

In the intervening decades, the mullahs have grown fat and comfortable skimming off the Iranian people and economy and funneling billions to themselves, their families and the military that backs them.

The NIAC and other Iran lobby advocates, therefore, have worked to avoid the question of the dismal human rights condition within Iran and instead focused on tarring anyone who dares raise a voice of dissent against the ruling mullahs.

It’s a paradoxically insane position since it relies on the suspension of disbelief; namely that you have to ignore all of the terrible things being done internally to any political opposition in Iran and because of the lack of internal dissent, everything must be blissfully cooperative and collegial according to the Iran lobby.

This also explains why the Iran lobby spends almost no editorial time ever criticizing the Iranian regime over the treatment of its people as evidenced by the lack of commentary over the massive protests that have swept throughout Iran since last December.

Unlike the political protests that followed the disputed election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which was centered on major urban areas and supported largely by educated, more well-off protestors, these protests have been supported by the Iranian poor and working classes and been centered in the more remote provinces and cities indicating how widespread discontent is with the ruling classes.

All of which has led the NIAC and the rest of the Iran lobby to focus its current anti-dissident barrage squarely at the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), one of the oldest Iranian dissident groups, in an effort to discredit the U.S. administration’s aggressive policies against the regime, including the decision to pull out of the nuclear deal.

That PR offensive has focused on the fact that official such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and current National Security Advisor John Bolton have addressed meetings of Iranian dissidents before. Interestingly, the NIAC and other Iran lobbyists have neglected that notable Democratic officials have also addressed these same groups but have not drawn similar rhetorical fire.

All of which lends more credence to the idea that these attacks are less about fending off Iranian dissidents as much as it’s about partisan politics.

But several academics, columnists, bloggers and journalists who were part of the so-called “echo chamber” created by the Iran lobby to support the nuclear deal, are now attacking the MEK as a stalking horse by calling it a “cult” and depicting it as a terrorist group for its past efforts to fight the Iranian regime early in Islamic revolution’s birth.

Some of those hit pieces have come from William Hartung in the Philadelphia Tribune, Bernd Debusmann in the Arab Weekly, Philip M. Giraldi in Mintpress News and Hamid Dabashi in Aljazeera.

They all use nearly identical language in an effort to single out and attack the MEK, such as Hartung’s editorial which says:

“Next-level steps could include supporting anti-regime groups like the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which was for many years on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. But its ability to win over influential supporters like John Bolton does not mean that the MEK has either the capacity or the support to overthrow the Iranian government. To think that an organization that the New York Times has rightly described as a ‘fringe dissident group’ could overthrow the government of Iran is a fantasy,” he writes.

It’s not surprising he quotes the New York Times since virtually all of the opposition to the Trump administration’s Iran policy seems to be more motivated by partisan political bickering and less about what is best for the Iranian people.

One of the central tenets of the Iranian resistance movement as articulated by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran which is the major umbrella group of Iranian dissident organizations, is that any movement towards regime change and democratization in Iran must begin and be grounded in the Iranian people. Any outside influence would only play into the hands of the mullahs, which is precisely why the NIAC and rest of the Iran lobby have sought to portray all this as a manipulation by the Bolton and his cronies.

The reality is that the protests flaring all across Iran is genuine, organic and rooted deeply in the dissatisfaction Iranians have over the corruption of their government and that’s a topic the Iran lobby doesn’t want to talk about.

Michael Tomlinson

 Iran Regime Chooses its Path Contrary to Iran Lobby Claims

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 Iran Regime Chooses its Path Contrary to Iran Lobby Claims

In this picture released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks at a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 14, 2018. Khamenei said that the U.S.-led attack on Syria is a “crime” and said the countries behind it will gain nothing. The Iranian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the strikes and warned of unspecified consequences. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

One of the central arguments being made by the Iran lobby, especially led by the National Iranian American Council, has been that the Trump administration is hell-bent on starting a war with Iran and doing all it can to engineer one, including pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

In all of its recent editorials and media appearances, NIAC staff have consistently tried to argue that the Trump administration alone was responsible for any negative consequences coming out of Tehran.

One such editorial was authored by Jamal Abdi, executive director for NIAC Action and the incoming leader to replace Trita Parsi as head of the NIAC, in Defense One.

“In the lead-up to Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Iran deal, the President operated with near-impunity from Congress and the media. His nomination of Mike Pompeo, an avowed Iran hawk who worked tirelessly in Congress to undercut Obama’s diplomatic efforts and unravel the nuclear deal, met with some controversy but ultimately passed over the toothless opposition of Senate Democrats,” Abdi writes.

“Trump’s appointment of John Bolton to round out his ‘Iran war cabinet’ provoked a handful of headlines but received far less media scrutiny than even Bolton’s 2006 recess appointment to a lower position in the Bush Administration. And in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s decision, it appeared he might also bully his way past Congress, the press, and Europe to begin escalating toward military conflict,” he adds.

Abdi and the rest of the Iran lobby seem to operate under the impression that Iran’s mullahs have no free will of their own and only respond like automatons to whatever provocation President Donald Trump aims at them.

In many ways, Abdi’s argument tries to absolve Iranian regime’s leadership of any responsibility since it can operate under the excuse of being “provoked” by President Trump.

Ultimately, the responsibility for everything Iran does lies not with President Trump, or his cabinet or the European Union or even social media influencers. The mullahs are the only ones who decide what happens in the theocratic dictatorship that is Iran’s government.

This is the inconvenient truth Abdi, Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby studiously ignore because if the world’s media did affix responsibility on the mullahs for all of Iranian regime’s actions, then all of its atrocities committed in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen and other far flung places around the world—not to mention at home against its own people—would force the regime to pay a heavy price.

The Iran lobby fights mightily to ensure the mullahs do not have to pay that price.

For the NIAC, the war narrative is an important cog in its PR machinery to deflect any attention being focused on the actions of the regime and mullahs. If blame can be affixed on the Trump administration than anything bad that happens must be the president’s fault by this perverse piece of logic.

For example, Abdi boasts of a language inserted by a group of Iran-supporting members in the House in an authorization bill to support Pentagon operations prohibiting the use of U.S. armed forces against Iran as a landmark moment in halting the Trump war train.

What Abdi hopes the American people don’t notice is that the Trump administration is not preparing for war against the Iranian regime, but instead is relying on the diplomatic strategy of applying economic pressure on the regime as it has done with North Korea.

That threat is far greater to the mullahs and the real fear of the Iran lobby since cutting off the economic lifeline to Iran can only exacerbate the pressure on the Iranian economy and further drive deeper the wedge growing between the mullahs and the elites with the common, every day, oppressed Iranian citizen.

The language Abdi puts so much stock in will not survive in the Senate and raises the larger problem looming on the horizon for the Iran lobby which is the complete lack of interest in the American people in supporting the Iran nuclear deal in upcoming midterm elections.

There is literally no Senate or House candidate on either side of the political aisle out there campaigning for reinstatement of the Iran nuclear deal.

In this area, the Iran lobby stands conspicuously alone in the U.S. which is why the Iran lobby is focusing so much of its efforts on trying to keep the European Union in the fold as witnessed with a recent open letter sent to the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini.

“In an increasingly unstable global climate and ever-more precarious ‘age of extremes,’ it is essential that one of the great diplomatic successes of the 21st century not find itself carelessly squandered. By your own estimation, it took some 12 years for this agreement to be reached. If Europe in coordination with its Russian and Chinese partners prove unable to salvage the JCPOA, the likelihood of further instability in the region and even war increases exponentially,” the letter said, which was signed by the usual suspects of Iran lobby academics and cheerleaders including Parsi.

It’s apparent how self-important this group sees itself, naming the Iran nuclear deal as being on par with such notable landmark agreements of the 21st century, especially when considering there have been no notable landmark agreements yet in the 21st century.

Typically the signers warn of “war” again but miss the essential point which is the decision of whether or not a pathway to conflict is followed lies firmly in the iron grip of the mullahs in Tehran.

Only leaders such as Ali Khamenei can decide what path the Iranian regime will take. They decided to use the financial windfall from the nuclear deal to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. They decided to build a ballistic missile program. They decided to topple the government in Yemen. They decided to deploy Revolutionary Guard Corps troops to Syria. No one made them do it and the Iran lobby has never criticized the regime for it.

The real threat of war is not in Washington but lies only in Tehran.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Myth of War Finds Little Traction

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Iran Lobby Myth of War Finds Little Traction

Iran Lobby Myth of War Finds Little Traction

“Iran was not about to capitulate,” said Trita Parsi, the now former head of the National Iranian American Council, in an editorial in The Nation blasting the Trump administration’s efforts to rein in Iranian expansionism.

It is a simple statement by Parsi, but one that reflects years of deep connection between the key Iran lobbyist and his masters in Tehran. Parsi knows the minds of the mullahs better than most and is also the one providing the narrative they wish propagated in the wake of President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement by not re-certifying Iranian compliance with its terms.

His editorial lays out the new terms of the debate the Iran lobby wants to have with the Trump administration and the American media landscape moving forward.

In essence, Parsi argues that:

  • The idea that President Obama had Iran on its heels due to strangling economic sanctions and had the opportunity for a more comprehensive deal was a fiction;
  • Iran was already well on its way to becoming a nuclear power in response to those increased sanctions;
  • The breakthrough in negotiations was due to President Obama’s willingness to concede Iran had a right to enrich uranium; and
  • The idea that Iran was brought to the table by economic sanctions was a fabrication by the Obama team to blunt criticism at home.

Unfortunately for Parsi every single one of his arguments have been proven wrong with the passage of time and no thanks to his masters in Tehran who have striven to disprove everything through their own actions.

First and foremost, the impact of economic sanctions was deep and far-reaching and pushed the Iranian regime’s leadership to look for a pathway out. Parsi highlights how the mullahs stepped up their nuclear activities in response to sanctions and credits that as proof that sanctions had no impact, but he misses the point—or more accurately covers the truth—that the mullahs crashed dived their nuclear program to force the issue of negotiations over a nuclear deal in order to gain relief from those sanctions as quickly as possible.

This explains the regime’s adamant demands that the deal be front-loaded with economic relief, such as the immediate release of frozen Iranian assets without oversight or pre-conditions, as well as the immediate sale of Iranian oil back on the open market.

For Iran, its economy was stagnating and its military resembled a shell of itself. And for the regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, the pathway forward was simple: get a deal done as quickly as possible so the regime could begin rebuilding its military.

After the deal was signed, that was exactly what the regime did, going on an epic spending spree with over $100 billion in new orders for everything from new advanced anti-aircraft missile batteries to new jet fighters and main battle tanks.

A little side note that Parsi neglected to mention, prior to the nuclear deal, Iran was prohibited from buying offensive weapons systems, but under the agreement, the regime was free to acquire those weapons which it has put to use in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime.

The most disturbing item never discussed by Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby is a simple one, which is the mental state of the Iranian leadership.

Any international agreement is predicated on an assumption that both parties are rational, truthful and obligated to the deal, but in the case of the Iranian regime, a religious theocracy is in charge that has little regard for human life and values survival above all else.

Parsi’s argument all fail when you start from the premise that the Iranian leadership has an agenda very different from what he claims. Case in point:

  • If Iran was committed to improving the state of the economy and the lives of its citizens, why did it divert virtually all of the financial windfall it received towards supporting terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, financing the Assad regime in Syria and upgrading its military with offensive weapons?
  • If Iran was hoping to broaden its government to open the door to political moderates and opponents, why did it virtually eliminate all potential candidates from presidential and parliamentary elections following the nuclear deal?

The Iran lobby is left only with two lies in its verbal arsenal. It can only argue that the Trump administration’s true aim with Iran is to seek war but offers no proof.

All of the evidence points to a very different pathway President Trump has chosen. As with the current push for a diplomatic solution to a nuclear North Korea, the strategy towards Iran is to pursue diplomacy and work within the framework of America’s allies; a far cry from the drum beating Parsi is engaged in portraying.

Secondly, Parsi and the rest of Iran lobby is trying to portray U.S. efforts at regime change to topple Iran and install dissident groups he terms as “terrorists.”

It’s another fanciful claim to make since the groups he has singled out such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) has publicly staked their future on the idea of a secular, free and democratic Iran in which the people are allowed to make their own choices in free elections.

That hardly sounds like a sinister conspiracy, but then again Parsi is left with little else than making Deep State conspiracy claims.

Laura Carnahan

Jamal Abdi Responds to Mike Pompeo with Absurdities

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Jamal Abdi Responds to Mike Pompeo with Absurdities

Jamal Abdi Responds to Mike Pompeo with Absurdities

In a landmark speech to the Heritage Foundation, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out the Trump administration’s new policy towards the Iranian regime including a list of a dozen conditions the mullahs would need to address to move forward with the U.S. in a new relationship.

Chief among those conditions was a new requirement that the Iranian regime would have to stop enriching all uranium and supporting militant groups such as Hezbollah and the Houthi; conditions that the Obama administration had tossed aside in its haste to nail down a nuclear deal with almost no pre-conditions.

In exchange for accepting these new conditions, Pompeo laid out the U.S. would lift punishing economic sanctions, restore diplomatic relations, open up commercial activity and give Iran access to advanced technology it badly needs to revitalize its economy and infrastructure.

The policy as laid out by Pompeo essentially resets the clock to the period before the Iran nuclear negotiations ran off the rails when crushing and comprehensive economic sanctions from countries around the world had dragged the Iranian regime kicking and screaming to the bargaining table where the Obama administration promptly gave away the proverbial house.

If this was a game of high stakes poker, the Obama team folded even before the flop, paying the price of the ante, but never seeing the hole cards.

Of course, the idea of a new, revised agreement that finally corralled the regime’s worst instincts was greeted with skepticism by European leaders.

Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, said the U.S. decision to fold all of its disputes with Tehran into a “jumbo Iran treaty” would be very difficult to achieve “in anything like a reasonable timetable,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, insisted the Iran agreement President Trump had abandoned remained the best way to contain Tehran’s nuclear efforts and said the EU would support it as long as Iran did. “The deal belongs to the international community,” she said.

But the new policy articulated by Pompeo is a clear demonstration of what should have been on the table in the original negotiations back in 2015. If the U.S. had exercised its leverage at that crucial moment, the devastating wars in Syria and Yemen may have never taken place.

Predictably the National Iranian American Council led the braying chorus of naysayers attacking Pompeo’s speech and leading the charge was Jamal Abdi, recently anointed as the new president for NIAC.

“The Trump Administration is setting the stage for a war of choice with Iran, with Mike Pompeo offering a smokescreen of diplomacy to distract from the administration’s pursuit of Iraq-style regime change,” Abdi said in a statement released by NIAC.

“Trump is renting out U.S. Middle East policy to the highest bidder – in this case Saudi Arabia, the GCC states, and Israel – and expecting ordinary Americans and U.S. service members to shoulder the burden of a regional escalation, a potential trade war with our allies, and a new Iraq-style regime change war in the Middle East.”

Abdi may be replacing Trita Parsi, but the rhetoric and misstatements are still the same. NIAC once again trots out the war fears in a false flag effort to convince Americans that the president wants to wage war against Iran; forgetting that then-candidate Trump was the one of the first on the campaign trail to criticize the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and has been reluctant to commit U.S. combat troops to any new escalation, especially during the bloody Syria civil war.

Abdi of course neglects to mention that Iranian regime was responsible for the escalation that killed over 400,000 people in Syria, when it shipped Hezbollah fighters, then its own Revolutionary Guards to fight there.

Abdi doles out the same tropes the Iran lobby has used before, but now they ring hollow with the benefit of hindsight. The three years since the deal have shown how an unrestrained Iran has radically reshaped the Middle East and resulted in deaths from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and the essential failure of the promises made by NIAC and the Iran lobby: the nuclear deal did not moderate the Iranian regime but unleashed it.

Now that Iran’s economy is reeling from corruption, mismanagement and diversion of billions of dollars to its military and terrorism, the mullahs in Tehran are under enormous pressure from mass protests across the country since last December, which is why the Trump administration views this as an opportunity to reset the situation and bring about a more comprehensive deal.

In his own unconventional style, President Trump sees an opportunity here to correct what the previous administration fumbled and the Iran lobby has been rendered largely impotent in trying to stop him.

Laura Carnahan

Trita Parsi Stepping Down But Is He Going Away?

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Trita Parsi Stepping Down But Is He Going Away?

Trita Parsi Stepping Down But Is He Going Away?

Our old friend, Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council and chief cheerleader for the Iranian regime, announced he was leaving the post of president and turning the reins over to Jamal Abdi, NIAC’s current vice president for policy and head of its NIAC Action lobbying front.

Should we shed a tear or let out a cheer that the nemesis of Mideast peace is transitioning out?

Probably neither since his departure from NIAC is probably less about stepping away from publicly lobbying for the Iranian regime and more about removing the bulls-eye target that has been affixed to him for the past decade.

Parsi personifies the strengths and weaknesses of the Iran lobby in the U.S. He is educated and has the ability to speak in academic circles by convoluting historical events with twisted assumptions about what they mean.

He understands the soft spots of American democracy and the rise of political correctness and progressivism and parlays them to his advantage by catering to populist messages that support Iran without asking any tough questions.

In the Obama administration, he found kindred spirits and was able to translate that into unprecedented access to the White House—with visitor logs showing a stupefying nearly three dozen visits leading to the run-up of the Iran nuclear deal, which amounted to the high-water mark of his tenure.

But like his would-be masters in Tehran, Parsi was trapped by his own dogged refusal to ever find fault with the regime’s actions never let even the most horrific atrocities committed by Iran or its proxies divert him from his cause of supporting Tehran.

The use of chemical weapons to gas scores of Syrian men, women and children—twice—failed to move him to condemn the Iranian regime.

The snatching of dual citizens from the U.S., Great Britain, Canada and other countries wasn’t enough to get Parsi off his regime wagon train; even when one of them was a putative friend of his.

Over 17 years, Parsi has worked hard off a blueprint he envisioned of creating a strong PR machine designed to give the Iranian regime a moderate face and lobby U.S. decision makers on giving the mullahs in Tehran a break.

“Give peace a chance” became more than a slogan for Parsi and the NIAC, it became a mantra to steer U.S. foreign policy into one of the most disastrous decisions ever: a nuclear deal that came with no strings attached for human rights violations, sponsorship of terrorism, funding of proxy wars in neighboring countries and development of a crash ballistic missile program that would make North Korea look like an Erector-Set toy.

What was Parsi able to gain in return for his partners in Tehran? A cash windfall of billions of dollars in repatriated money, opening the global market for Iranian oil and invite scores of European and Asian companies to lock up investment deals.

What did the world get in return? A postponement, but not an eradication of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. A full-blown civil war in Syria creating four million refugees and killing over 400,000 men, women, and children. Destabilization in Yemen and Iraq and the threat of a full-blown war between Israel and Saudi Arabia with Iran.

That’s quite a butcher’s bill for Parsi and his promise of moderation.

Now Parsi is handing off the NIAC to Jamal Abdi, a man who has spent years working his way into the political warrens of Capitol Hill and influencing policy towards moderating views about Tehran. Alongside his fellow cohorts including Reza Marashi, Tyler Cullis, and Ryan Costello, Abdi helped Parsi flog his untruths and even spearheaded the creation of NIAC Action, the formal lobbying arm of the NIAC.

The creation of NIAC Action and the installation of Abdi as its first leader is no accident. The open secret that NIAC was lobbying on behalf of Iranian interests finally became too hard to sweep under a carpet and the NIAC had to come out into the sunlight as an official lobbying force (paradoxically neither NIAC Action or Abdi are registered with the House of Senate lobbying disclosure databases).

Of course, Parsi is not leaving the baby he gave birth to. His announcement on the NIAC website states he will turn over power on August 1, 2018, but he intends to “continue to be involved and fully committed to the organization but through a different role.”

And what role would that be? It’s too much to hope for that Parsi would simply exit the stage he left in tatters as the Trump administration has killed the Iran nuclear deal he worked so hard to secure and a deluge of global companies have announced decisions to back out of contracts with the Iranian regime as renewed U.S. economic sanctions loom large.

Not even the wailing of European interests about trying to salvage the deal through a European Union-only coalition will be enough to safeguard the Iranian regime.

Even the Iran Parsi promised is just a mirage. The mullahs are under tremendous pressure back home from unrelenting and broad protests that they have met with brutal suppression and efforts to ban messaging apps such as the popular Telegram.

Iran’s economy is reeling, its currency sinking to an all-time low and a united front is now on the horizon in forming policies to block Iranian expansionism.

About the only thing left Parsi has to show for all of his efforts now is a photo of him shaking hands with a smiling Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, in the wake of the nuclear deal.

How fast things have changed for the Iran lobby in just a year.

Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi Delusions and Victimhood Reach New Highs

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Trita Parsi Delusions and Victimhood Reach New Highs

Trita Parsi Delusions and Victimhood Reach New Highs

In picking through the debris field of losses suffered by the Iran lobby under the Trump administration—namely the death knell of an Iran nuclear deal that gave the mullahs billions and gave the rest of the world Syria, chemical weapons attacks, terrorism and ballistic missiles—Trita Parsi, the leader of the Iran lobby’s most faithful foot soldiers at the National Iranian American Council sought to place blame on a shadowy effort to smear his good name.

In the effort to be fair, we should mention that Parsi doesn’t have much of a good name left after shamelessly shilling for the mullahs in Tehran for the past 15 years. During that time, he has relentlessly defended even the most horrific human rights abuses by the regime on its own people, let along the hostage-taking of Iranian-American citizens.

He’s also barely batted an eyelash when Iran sent billions in cash released by the Obama administration to fund Hezbollah and pay for a rapid arms upgrade while on a buying spree in Moscow.

In the course of a defamation lawsuit he lost against journalist Hassan Dai, his deep connections to key figures in the Iranian regime and his role as an instrument of Iranian propaganda efforts came to light.

Believe us when we say Parsi doesn’t need much in the way of tar and feathers from detractors to smear his name; he’s provided plenty of it on his own.

All of which leads us to the predicament Parsi and the rest of his Iran lobby fellow travelers now find themselves: What to do now that the Iran deal has been knocked off by President Trump’s decision to pull out?

Initially, Pari and his colleagues got on the tallest soapboxes they could find to bray about the end of the world and inevitability of war with Iran.

It was a curiously discordant note to strike against the dramatic backdrop of North Korea releasing three imprisoned American hostages being brought back to the U.S. by newly-installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It’s worth noting that their release was secured without a swap of North Korean operatives, nor were any pallets of cash rushed onto waiting for North Korean jets to take as payment, unlike what happened under the previous administration with the nuclear deal it struck with Iran under Parsi’s careful cheerleading.

It’s also silly for Parsi to be warning of war with Iran when North Korea has unilaterally called for denuclearization and invited world journalists to come see the destruction of its nuclear testing facility in advance of an epic summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, confirming that the president’s approach works.

To have this much egg on his face, Parsi must be trying out for clown school.

All of which has not stopped Parsi from now spooling out a fanciful tale of espionage and secret smear campaigns being aimed at him. In an editorial, Parsi recounts a daring tale of his being interviewed by a sinister shadowy organization in an effort to smear him. He even manages to work in Harvey Weinstein into his tale.

“Several weeks after the 2016 election, I had received a chilling message from a person in the US intelligence community (via an intermediary). The team around Donald Trump, my contact warned, was going to try to discredit me and my organization, the National Iranian American Council, and some of our allies,” he writes.

“We had been staunch supporters of the nuclear deal, and we were now considered obstructions that needed to be removed in order to kill it. As a first step, the intermediary advised me, I need to get a much more secure p

/hone, which I did.”

He goes on to claim that it was only through the efforts of NIAC that heroically stalled President Trump’s earlier efforts to kill the deal and only when he replaced his then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson and then-national security advisor H.R. McMaster was the way cleared for him.

Parsi does seem to have an eternally high opinion of himself.

It’s interesting to note that Parsi claimed that he was warned by U.S. intelligence as early as the presidential transition in the fall of 2016 that the Trump camp was trying to discredit which raises a whole host of questions that he neglects to delve into, such as:

  • Why didn’t Parsi disclose this tidbit of information back in 2016? It would have been a blockbuster revelation, but strangely he never mentioned it;
  • Exactly why would a U.S. intelligence operative warn off Parsi, the leader of an organization tied to the Iranian regime? It raises the disturbing prospect of collusion between Obama intelligence officials taking care of an Iranian lobbyist; and
  • How did a U.S. intelligence agency actually know the Trump team was looking into members of the Iran lobby and why was it a priority to warn them?

We hate to break it to Parsi, but a whole lot of people have been working on hard on discrediting him and his colleagues for a long time. It isn’t much of a revelation that he was being targeted.

Parsi has been the subject of scrutiny from journalists and bloggers to human rights officials and Iranian dissident groups; all of whom have questioned his connections to the regime and obvious reluctance to criticize it even when it commits horrific offenses.

So for Parsi to claim he is the target of scrutiny is profoundly ironic given that he has been under a public microscope for a long time, but now he finds himself under scrutiny by a much more skeptical audience that has had the benefit of looking at his track record of public support for the Iranian regime.

The lack of balance from Parsi and the NIAC in offering even mild criticism in response to come of the more egregious actions by the Iranian regime is the most damning proof of the lack of any effort to be non-partisan.

The fact that Parsi has calculated President Trump is the enemy and has tried to join in the partisan bashing of the president’s policies only signals that the Iran lobby has run out of ideas to advance the regime’s cause.

It is reduced to throwing verbal assaults and concocting spy tales in lieu of real policy.

Michael Tomlinson

Trump Pull Out from Iran Nuke Deal is End of Line for Iran Lobby

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Trump signs the Presidential Order to pull out of JCPOA

Trump Pull Out from Iran Nuke Deal is End of Line for Iran Lobby

With a quick flourish of his pen, President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and signaled the end of the waning influence of the Iran lobby on U.S. foreign policy.

Administration officials said the Iran sanctions suspended under the agreement snapped immediately back into effect, meaning any new contracts and financial deals are banned. They said businesses and banks have either 90 or 180 days to wind down existing ties, depending on the particular type of transaction, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Because of the dominance of the U.S. economy on the global stage and the reach of its financial markets, as well as the status of the U.S. dollar as the world’s currency standard, the effect on the Iranian regime will be devastating no matter what European leaders attempt to keep Iran afloat.

Already the Iran lobby has howled like a pack of mad dogs at the president’s move.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council sounded the familiar war refrain as he claimed the move sets the U.S. on a path to war.

“Donald Trump has committed what will go down as one of the greatest acts of self-sabotage in America’s modern history. He has put the United States on a path towards war with Iran and may trigger a wider regional war and nuclear arms race,” Parsi said.

It’s a moronic statement since the U.S. is obviously not gearing up for war. There is no military build-up. No aircraft carrier battle groups are steaming for the Persian Gulf. The lack of any U.S. military activity is conspicuous.

The president has been forceful in speaking out against the Iraq invasion and against long-term U.S. foreign commitments, preferring to focus on domestic matters. In his mind, after granting several extensions to the deal giving European allies several months to work on a compromise addressing his concerns, he finally concluded that the only party not interested in changing anything were the mullahs in Tehran.

But that hasn’t stopped the Iran lobby from spreading its falsehoods like fertilizer in the hopes of resurrecting its fortunes, but not even recruiting for Obama officials in a last-ditch effort to save the nuclear deal made a difference because the Iran lobby could never address the real concerns the president had about Iranian regime’s support for terrorism, development of ballistic missiles and crushing human rights abuses.

It didn’t help that the mullahs cracked down by banning the instant messaging app Telegram and snatching yet another British-Iranian dual national citizen with no reason given adding to the large number of hostages the regime seems intent on stockpiling.

In his remarks in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, President Trump spoke directly to the Iranian people, recognizing their oppression and the lack of a government responsive to their needs. His words made plain that his actions were aimed at the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard Corps that backs them rather than the Iranian people who have been engaged in massive protests to this day against their government; most recently taking to the streets to protest the Telegram ban.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of Iranian dissident and human rights groups, addressed a rally in Washington this past weekend opposing the regime in which she correctly pointed out that since the Iran nuclear deal never addressed core issues making the regime dangerous to the stability of the Middle East, the action taken by the president was inevitable.

“Regarding the billions provided to the regime in the framework of this deal, I said that the money poured into the regime’s coffers must be placed under strict United Nations monitoring to ensure that it addresses the Iranian people’s urgent needs, especially the unpaid, meager salaries of workers, teachers, and nurses, and is used to provide food and medicine to citizens. Otherwise, Khamenei will use these funds to further the regime’s policy of export of terrorism and fundamentalism in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon,” she said.

The fact that the Iran nuclear was never submitted to the U.S. Senate for a vote as a treaty, but instead as an executive order and one of dubious legality, its erasure by President Trump was swift and simple.

The Iran lobby argued for this course because it knew it would never survive a Senate confirmation.

Bret Stephens, opinion columnist for the New York Times, argued this same point in an editorial and pointed out how supporters of the deal continued to get everything wrong about it.

“Apologists for the deal answer that the price is worth paying because Iran has put on hold much of its production of nuclear fuel for the next several years. Yet even now Iran is under looser nuclear strictures than South Korea, and would have been allowed to enrich as much material as it liked once the deal expired. That’s nuts,” he writes.

Stephens adds that “even with the sanctions relief, the Iranian economy hangs by a thread: The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported ‘hundreds of recent outbreaks of labor unrest in Iran, an indication of deepening discord over the nation’s economic troubles.’ This week, the rial hit a record low of 67,800 to the dollar; one member of the Iranian Parliament estimated $30 billion of capital outflows in recent months. That’s real money for a country whose gross domestic product barely matches that of Boston.”

All of which adds up to a simple truth: the Iran lobby has reached the end of its effectiveness in influencing American public opinion and that President Trump has recognized that the Iranian regime can’t be trusted and must be dealt with forcefully and with open eyes.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Desperation Shoots Skyward

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Hossein Mousavian-Iran's lobby

Hossein Mousavian- Former Iranian regime nuclear official and present lobby for the regime.

You can almost smell the desperation coming from the Iran lobby as it scrambles for an all-hands-on-deck effort to save the Iran nuclear deal before President Trump decides whether to withdraw from it by May 12.

One of the dedicated warriors for the Iran lobby is Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian regime nuclear official who wrapped himself in the cloak of academia at Princeton University as a faculty member.

In an editorial published by Reuters, Mousavian takes up the gauntlet thrown down by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who earlier this week blistered Iran over its failure to disclose its nuclear program; calling the regime a liar.

Mousavian diligently checks off the talking points the Iran lobby has been flogging lately; namely that it was no secret what Netanyahu revealed, Iran has been in compliance under the nuclear agreement, and that President Trump and his foreign policy team were leading the U.S. to war with Iran.

He goes further by implying that the Trump administration’s “get tough” approach to Iran will not work.

“Implicit in Trump’s approach is that he can bully and pressure Iran into meeting his demands. However, the track record of U.S.-Iran relations since the 1979 Iranian revolution leaves little room to believe that Iran concedes to pressure,” Mousavian writes.

“I know from firsthand experience that Tehran responds to pressure by doing everything it can to produce leverage for itself. The modus operandi of Iranian leaders when it comes to addressing pressure is to become inflexible, steadfast and retaliatory,” he adds.

Mousavian finally reveals the first bit of truth. The mullahs are inflexible, steadfast and retaliatory, but that is not how they respond to pressure, it is their normal course of doing business.

For all of the cries of moderation by the Iran lobby during the negotiations for the deal in 2014-15, the reality has been a regime that have never wavered from its overriding goal of spreading its form of Islamic extremism at all costs around the world and build a Shiite sphere of influence protecting it from its many enemies.

To that end, the regime has admirably stubbornly held true to that goal by leveling Syria, overthrowing the government in Yemen, begging Russia to join the Syrian conflict and controlling Iraq through Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

Which is why Netanyahu’s central claim was never challenged by Mousavian and the rest of the Iran lobby: Iran has never deviated from its long-term plan to have nuclear weapons to use as leverage and a threat to its enemies and rivals.

But where Mousavian and the rest of the Iran lobby get it wrong is in saying that these moves by the Trump administration will push Iran into full-blown nuclear build mode.

The regime is already committed to such a path! Adhering to the deal doesn’t push them off their course. In fact, the appeasement policies practiced by the Obama administration have only made things worse. We have a track record of the past three years to show us exactly what the mullahs will do.

What brought Iran to the bargaining table in the first place back in 2015? Mousavian and his allies would have us believe it was diplomacy.

It wasn’t.

It was backbreaking economic sanctions imposed first by President George W. Bush and increased by President Obama, coupled with blocking Iran from accessing international currency exchanges which put Iran in the deep freeze money-wise.

Add to that the fracking boom in the U.S. driving the global price of oil down fast robbing the Iranian treasury of billions in cash from illicit oil sales and you begin to see how the decision to come to the bargaining table wasn’t driven by some desire for political moderation, but knee-capping sanctions that threatened the very existence of the theocratic state.

“If Trump withdraws from the JCPOA, he should not do so thinking Iran is vulnerable and in dire straits,” Mousavian said.

It is plainly apparent to even a closet regime cheerleader like Mousavian the Trump administration doesn’t view Iran on the brink of disaster. Far from it. It views the Iranian regime as robust, growing and a menacing threat to the entire Middle East.

The reason it is that way is because the nuclear deal held no restrictions on all other facts of the regime’s actions; allowing it to grow into the single biggest threat to global stability today.

The last-ditch nature of Mousavian’s missive is plain in his characterization of the protests rocking the mullahs’ control last year as “far smaller than made out to be” and pro-government demonstrations as “massive.”

The only thing true about that statement is that those government demonstrations were a massive failure and a sign of the desperate nature of the mullahs’ predicament.

It’s laughable that Mousavian ends his tirade by saying the end state for the Trump administration’s is war. The only war that is going to result from a withdrawal from the nuclear deal is an economic war as crippling sanctions are put back into place.

Mousavian says if the president wants “bigger deals” with Iran, he should build trust by implementing the nuclear agreement. The reverse is even more true.

If the mullahs want to avoid an economic meltdown that tosses them out of Tehran, they should build trust by burning their nuclear plans, dismantling their ballistic missiles and getting out of Syrian, Iraq and Yemen.

Michael Tomlinson

No Surprise the Iran Regime Lies

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Archived documents revealed proves Iran had a nuclear weaponry program

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu presented findings from a secret nuclear archive in Iran-April 30, 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a televised address that was part news conference, part reality show and part TED talk, in which he revealed a trove of over 100,000 files and 180 CDs full of data allegedly from the Iranian regime’s “atomic archive” detailing its program to design and build nuclear weapons in a program code named “Amad,” which ended in 2003.

The revelations in and of themselves were not too surprising since the Iranian resistance movement originally revealed the existence of the nuclear program and has been regularly exposing regime’s nuclear activities including revealing secret military sites where the regime conducted tests for high explosive detonators.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the leading dissident organization, has held its own press conferences to unveil smuggled documents, videos and photos of the regime’s nuclear program so what Netanyahu unveiled demonstrated a flair for showmanship, but didn’t shake the earth with new information.

But what was underscored is the simple truth that seems to have eluded many news organizations who were taken in by the PR push by the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, which is that the regime has consistently lied about its nuclear program.

During the run up towards the Iran nuclear deal, the NIAC always maintained that Iran was not actively building towards a nuclear weaponization program but was instead building a civilian nuclear program. It tried to justify the weak inspections regimen by contending the Iranian regime wasn’t pursuing a bomb anyway, but the agreement would ensure that one could be postponed by a decade or longer.

Since the agreement didn’t include inspections of Iranian military sites, those assurances could never be fully realized and the Iranian resistance movement and Netanyahu’s disclosures only verified what was arguable one of the worst kept secrets that Iran was in fact trying to build a bomb, but somehow that past coverup never was called out as a reason not to trust verification by the regime under the deal.

The most explicit example of that conundrum was in the clean-up of Parchin facility before international inspectors could visit the site in 2015. Classified satellite images obtained by the U.S. government showed bulldozers and heavy machinery working at the site which was used by the regime as part of its nuclear program.

Of course, NIAC issued a statement by Trita Parsi that skirted the issue of Iranian lies and instead focused on the one thin shred of hope it has left before President Trump decides whether or not to decertify Iranian compliance with the deal by the May 12th deadline.

“Anyone familiar with the history of Iran’s nuclear program or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will not be surprised by allegations that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program fifteen years ago. Those well-known concerns were the reason why the international community negotiated an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program and subject it to intrusive international inspections,” Parsi said.

Unfortunately, Parsi was one of the key advocates for ignoring the Islamic state’s penchant for boldly lying about its nuclear program and urging the rest of the world to simply trust and believe in Iranian “moderation.”

Three years later we know now that Iran merely used the nuclear deal as a tool to gain access to billions in badly needed cash to save its military adventures in Syria, as well as launch its ballistic missile program.

While it didn’t come as a surprise that the mullahs lie, it was a useful reminder moving forward that Iran has to be held to a different standard, akin to North Korea which broke every international agreement it entered into until President Trump decided to play hardball.

Again, the NIAC tries to stoke war fears in order to dissuade public opinion from taking harsh action against the Iranian regime.

“Amid an already ruinous regional proxy war in the Middle East, a war against Iran could be even more disastrous for global security than the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Iran is nearly four times the size of Iraq, with influence in military conflicts from Syria to Yemen and with missiles capable of striking U.S. ships and bases in the region. Bombing cannot erase Iran’s nuclear know-how and would only empower those in Iran eager to obtain a nuclear deterrent. Moreover, it would set the region aflame and draw the U.S. into a prolonged quagmire that would cost American blood and treasure and set U.S. security back decades,” said NIAC’s Ryan Costello in a statement.

It’s remarkable how many misconceptions are in that one paragraph. First and foremost, he neglects to mention that the Iranian regime is the only one responsible for the “ruinous” proxy war engulfing the region through its support and control of the terrorist group Hezbollah and its use in Syria.

It is gratifying though for Costello to admit Iran has developed a ballistic missile capability aimed directly at U.S. military bases but falls flat on his face in supposing the U.S. aim is to fight a war with Iran.

If anything, President Trump has been an outspoken opponent to using U.S. troops in the Middle East, being a frequent and harsh critic of President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

President Trump has made it clear that his desire is to use the punitive power of economic sanctions which brought Iran to the bargaining table in the first place before the giveaways began under the Obama administration to appease the mullahs.

The threat of war doesn’t come from the U.S., it comes from Tehran and the mullahs there for are becoming increasingly desperate to hold onto their power.

What NIAC won’t tell you is that it isn’t worried about the threat of war, but the threat of renewed economic sanctions coming at a time when the regime is as weak and vulnerable as it has ever been. The prospect of regime change under those conditions is what terrifies Parsi and Costello and their comrades in arms.

Laura Carnahan

Mike Pompeo Wastes No Time Focusing on Iran Regime

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Mike Pompeo Wastes No Time Focusing on Iran Regime

Pompeo meets with Saudi officials on his first trip as the new Secretary of States, April 2018

Fresh off his Senate confirmation despite a desperate effort by the Iran lobby to torpedo it, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo kicked off a whirlwind trip overseas with stops at a NATO summit in Brussels, Saudi Arabia and Israel in which he put the Iranian regime front and center of U.S. foreign policy moving forward.

The turnaround from the Obama administration’s attitude towards the Iranian regime is startling and badly needed. Under the previous administration, the focus of making the Iran nuclear deal the centerpiece of its foreign policy achievements drove out all other considerations.

Iranian regime’s long and brutal history of human rights violations was largely ignored as an inconvenient truth. Iran’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism was overlooked and its threats to its neighbors were glossed over by measly promises of “moderation” that never came to pass.

If hindsight is 20/20, then in the three years since the deal was struck, the world has seen Iran’s true colors and it’s largely consisted of red for the blood spilled and black for the charred remains of cities and villages blasted into oblivion in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

To say the world became a much more dangerous place with the rise of Islamic extremism coupled with the outflow of Iranian money supporting terrorist groups is a gross understatement.

And yet, the Obama administration held on to the hope that things would get better, if nothing else because it couldn’t stand to admit that it made a colossal mistake in the approving of the nuclear deal without any conditions on inspection of Iranian regime military sites, its ballistic missile program or meddling in the affairs of its neighbors.

The Trump administration hasn’t been under illusions about Iran’s role in destabilizing activities and has correctly called the mullahs out for their role as the center of troubles in the Middle East. Even more fortunate, this administration frankly doesn’t care much about its perceived public image or the goodwill of academics, television analysts or armchair foreign policy wonks.

Under Pompeo and new national security advisor John Bolton, this administration has been blunt and to the point; a shock to the system of typically mild-mannered diplomacy practiced over the past decade.

Pompeo kicked off his first full day as secretary of state this past Friday at a NATO summit for foreign ministers in Brussels in which he said it was “unlikely” the president would remain in the Iran nuclear deal after the May 12th deadline unless European leaders agreed to a “substantial fix” addressing the president’s concerns.

“Absent a substantial fix, absent overcoming the flaws of the deal, he [Trump] is unlikely to stay in that deal,” Pompeo said.

While President Trump has met with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in two visits in which both pressed him to remain in the deal, the president has made it clear what his conditions are to stay in the agreement. The diplomatic ball is now firmly in the hands of European and Iranian negotiators.

But beyond the nuclear agreement, Pompeo continued on to Iranian rival Saudi Arabia to make clear the U.S. position that now views Iranian regime as the greatest threat to regional stability.

Speaking to reporters in Saudi Arabia, Pompeo said the multi-party agreement reached in 2015 to curb Tehran’s nuclear program did not do enough to contain the Islamic Republic. “In fact, Iran has only behaved worse since the deal was approved,” he said.

Secretary Pompeo, cited Iranian regime’s support for the “murderous” government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and also accused the country of arming Houthi rebels in Yemen who have repeatedly targeted Saudi cities with ballistic missiles — a charge denied by Tehran.

“Iran destabilizes this entire region,” Pompeo said, standing alongside his Saudi counterpart in Riyadh. “It is indeed the greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world, and we are determined to make sure it never possesses a nuclear weapon.”

That thematic was carried to Israel as Pompeo repeated his talking points while meeting with Israeli officials.

The trip highlighted the forming of a new alliance in the Middle East opposed to Iran’s expansion making strange bedfellows of traditional foes in Saudi Arabia and Israel, along with the Gulf states, many of which have been on the receiving end of Iranian machinations to stir up unrest with protestors and terrorist acts.

The bluntness of the Trump administration has turned the tables on the mullahs who now are the ones on the proverbial hot seat and have to make the decision on whether or not to stay in the deal by acquiescing to the U.S. demands.

While the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, has worked mightily in an effort to portrays the president’s tough talk as a pathway to war with Iran, the reality has been a clear definition of the expectations for Iranian compliance moving forward and failure of the deal rests squarely with the mullahs in Tehran and nowhere else.

There is no small irony that the discussions taking place now are not about what concessions the U.S. must give to Iran to preserve the nuclear deal, but rather what will the Iranian regime do to stay in a deal that it needs more than the U.S.

The inescapable fact right now confronting the mullahs and Hassan Rouhani is that Iran is a basket case of a nation with a free-falling currency, stagnant economy, dwindling foreign cash reserves and beset with civil unrest and protests on an almost daily basis.

The regime needs the deal badly in order to hang on to any kind of ability to convince the world that it’s indeed a reformed nation, a fiction that has served it well the past few years but has become an outright lie.

Just as North Korea has promised to decommission its nuclear test site and reactor, the president’s tough approach may soon yield the same dividends with Iran.

Laura Carnahan