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More Sanctions Levied on Iran for Missile ProgramMore Sanctions Levied on Iran for Missile Program

July 31, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

More Sanctions Levied on Iran for Missile Program

Iran’s recent launch of a rocket carrying a satellite into space served more as a test for the regime’s accelerating ballistic missile program in terms of lofting heavier payloads over greater distances.

In many ways, the Iranian regime’s missile program has mirrored the development of the North Korean program which now threatens the continental U.S. with its own launch of a ballistic missile last Friday.

Intelligence agencies have long believed that Iran’s missile program was kickstarted by a technology licensing agreement between the two rogue regimes, but Iran’s larger industrial capacity and ample financial resources due to illicit sales of its embargoed oil supplies over the years have enabled Iran to leapfrog the pace of development by North Korea.

It also explains why the mullahs were so intent on ensuring that the nuclear deal had no explicit restrictions on their missile program; an omission by the Obama administration in the false hope of fanning the flames of moderation.

All of which means a mess has been left to the Trump administration to sift through and it has done so with an admirable degree of incremental steps designed to slowly isolate the regime and target the most problematic parts of the regime’s terror industry.

For every provocation by the Iranian regime, the Trump administration has responded in direct proportion to send an unmistakable message to the Tehran.

A joint statement on Friday from the United States, France, Germany and Britain said Iran’s launch was inconsistent with a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Iran not to conduct such tests.

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed new sanctions on six Iranian firms owned or controlled by the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group. The move enables the U.S. government to block any company property under its jurisdiction and prevents U.S. citizens from doing business with the firms, according to Reuters.

“These sanctions … underscore the United States’ deep concerns with Iran’s continued development and testing of ballistic missiles and other provocative behavior,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement.

“The U.S. government will continue to aggressively counter Iran’s ballistic missile-related activity, whether it be a provocative space launch … or likely support to Yemeni Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia such as occurred this past weekend,” Mnuchin said.

The six Shahid Hemmat units targeted by the U.S. sanctions manufacture missile components, missile airframes, liquid-propellant ballistic missile engines, liquid propellant, guidance and control systems. They also do missile-related research and maintenance.

The move comes on the heels of the Congress passing by overwhelming majorities legislation to impose new sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia, as well as sanctions imposed last July 18 directed at 18 people and entities for supporting Iran’s missile program or—more importantly—the Revolutionary Guard Corps which directly supports terrorism.

The moves from the Trump administration are slowly rolling back all the moves made by the Obama administration, but smartly are being done in a manner not to give the Iranian regime an excuse to claim the U.S. is violating the nuclear deal.

That of course has not stopped Iran lobby members such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council from claiming that the U.S. was indeed trying to wreck the deal.

Parsi took to Lobelog, another well-worn Iran lobby booster blog, to bray away that President Trump was actively seeking a war with Iran in another pathetic attempt at trying to drum up war fears.

“The American public knows the Iraq playbook quite well. Trump’s own supporters remain enraged by the disastrous war with Iraq. They know how they got played. It’s difficult to imagine why they would allow themselves to get played again by a president who has left little doubt about his intent to deceive,” Parsi said.

Parsi tries to press home the point that President Trump is some crazed warmonger, but even he admits that his presidential campaign was propelled in part by America’s dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq and the pretext for it.

Parsi cannot have both sides of the argument. He either must believe the president is actively seeking a war with Iran and is thumbing his nose at the very voters who put him in office, or Parsi must acknowledge the truth; which is that President Trump isn’t seeking a war, but is repairing the damage done by the Obama administration in enabling the mullahs in Tehran to act with impunity.

The president certainly doesn’t want a war, but he must correct the course set by the previous administration by attempting to restrain the Iranian regime, begin the laborious process of rebuilding the international coalition against the regime, cut off the flow of money funding its missile program and either hold the regime strictly accountable to the nuclear deal or force a better deal to be crafted.

In essence, President Trump is trying to get a do-over from the fumble made by the Obama administration and reset the terms of engaging with Iran to place issues such as ballistic missiles, human rights and terrorism back at the top of the agenda where they belonged in the first place.

It is an argument that has been made for years now by the Iranian opposition movement which warned that Iran would take advantage of the nuclear deal to rebuild its armed forces and fund its proxy war efforts rather than invest it back into the economy for the benefit of the Iranian people.

In hindsight, opposition leaders such as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran look almost prescient now in light of how the regime has acted in the two years since the deal was crafted.

For the regime, it must seem like they are trying to hold off the inevitable with the ever-rising tide of sanctions now being imposed almost daily.

This ultimately gives the Trump administration significant leverage to force back an expansionist Iran; leverage that the Obama administration never sought to use much to the dismay of the peoples of Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Begins Threatening with Ballistic Missiles

July 28, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Iran Regime Begins Threatening with Ballistic Missiles

Just as the world saw North Korea ramp up its production of ballistic missiles and begin launching them with greater regularity, we have seen a similar scenario begin to play out with the Iranian regime’s own missile fleet.

For the mullahs in Tehran, their ballistic missile fleet represents their ace in the hole; a weapon platform that can reach faraway enemies, threaten its neighbors and provide the ultimate leverage by carrying nuclear or chemical warheads.

You don’t build a weapon system unless you are prepared to use it and the mullahs are prepared.

What distinguishes the Iranian regime from North Korea is that Iran has fired its missiles in anger, unleashing a salvo of missiles at targets in Syria that it claimed were ISIS strongholds.

With one action, the mullahs served notice they were more than willing to push the proverbial red button; a disturbing thought when one considers the regime’s extensive list of enemies which seems to grow longer by the day.

Besides its nemesis in the U.S., the regime has added Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Pakistan to its list, not to mention anyone following the Sunni, Christian, Jewish and any other faith you can think of.

Add to that the increasing range of its missile fleet and you can see how Iran is able to drop missiles on virtually anyone it thinks is a threat to the regime.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Iran possesses the “largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East” with literally thousands of short- and medium-range missiles stockpiled on mobile launchers and underground bunkers.

Maps overlaid with the range of its missiles, shows that Iran can strike targets as far away as India, China and Russia to the east and most of Europe and North Africa to the west.

It’s Shahab-3 missile has a range of over 2,000 km with a payload capacity heavy enough to accommodate a nuclear or chemical warhead of over 2,000 lb.

The Iranian regime has used this weapon system to hint strongly at the U.S. that its military bases in the Middle East are subject to being destroyed by Iran’s missiles; a not too subtle threat that raises the level of tensions in the region despite the reassurances of the Iran lobby.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari demanded Wednesday the U.S. withdraw all its military bases within 1,000 kilometers of Iran’s borders, a distance that encompasses most of the U.S.’s operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, including massive bases in Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait.

The U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf are especially problematic for the Iranian regime since they present a direct challenge to the regime’s authority in what it considers its territorial waters and has often acted to threaten and imped international shipping through the Gulf; recently culminating in the detention of two American navy patrol boats and their crews.

Jafari made his threats because he is worried, as are all the mullahs, that the Trump administration is incrementally acting on its campaign promises to get tough on the Iranian regime and actively encourage regime change.

While the Obama administration, with the not so subtle direction and guidance of the Iran lobby, sought to keep various issues separate from the nuclear deal it negotiated including Iran’s missile fleet, the Trump administration is acting aggressively on those other fronts much to the consternation of the mullahs.

By levying new sanctions on Iran this week, as well as openly contemplating designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, President Trump is setting up a slow, methodical and thorough constricting of the regime’s finances and ability to export its brand of terrorism.

Trump is resetting the playing board to the conditions prior to the nuclear deal negotiations in which sanctions had crippled Iran and threatened to topple its regime leadership. The president is undoubtedly taking a course of action that can only lead to one goal which is regime change.

It is logical to assume that the U.S. would react violently and unilaterally should the Iranian regime use any of its missiles against U.S. personnel directly, which makes much of the threats by Jafari and other regime leaders empty and hollow.

On the border between Syria and Iraq, the U.S. already flexed its muscle when Navy jets attacked a convoy of Iranian-backed Shiite militia that were approaching a Syrian rebel base occupied with U.S. advisors. We can only imagine what would happen if Jafari were to lob a Shahab missile at a U.S. base in Afghanistan for example.

The mullahs in Tehran are reactionary, bellicose and even blood thirsty, but they are not crazy. They understand that their options are shrinking and Trump is only a few steps away from not certifying Iran in compliance with the nuclear agreement and triggering the 60-day review period for open debate in a Congress that has already shown bipartisan hostility to the regime.

From that point, it’s only a proforma matter before President Trump nullifies the Boeing deal, cuts off Iran’s access to U.S. currency markets and begins to penalize foreign businesses for investing in Iran.

In short order, the mullahs could find themselves back in 2009 where the economy was in shambles and an unpopular president was being met with massive street protests that rocked Tehran for days.

The recipe for regime change is well known and the mullahs are doing everything they can to avoid a repeat which is why they are so eager—or desperate—to threaten everyone with a rain of ballistic missiles.

Michael Tomlinson

Two Years of Appeasing Iran Regime Officially Ends

July 28, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Two Years of Appeasing Iran Regime Officially Ends

Two years have passed since the Iran nuclear deal was agreed to by the U.S. and other nations and during that time virtually every promise made by the Iran lobby and the Obama administration about moderating the Iranian regime and improving the stability of the Middle East have fallen faster than Twitter’s stock price lately.

The practice of trying to appease the Iranian regime by conceding just about anything the mullahs wanted bought neither stability nor moderation. In fact, the opposite has occurred and places the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as it is more formally known, on par with the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler or the Treaty of Versailles in terms of effectiveness.

History has demonstrated over again that rewarding tyranny only invites more tyranny and in the case of the Iranian regime, it has been a textbook case of that lesson.

Thankfully that period of appeasement is finally at an end with passage of a sanctions bill approved by a 97-2 margin targeting Iran, North Korea and Russia and headed to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature.

The U.S. House passed the sanctions package Tuesday in a 419-3 vote, sending the legislation to the Senate. The White House has not definitively said that President Trump will sign the bill, but the measure won a veto-proof majority in both the House and Senate, which makes his approval moot.

At its core is the imposition of economic sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program which violates a United Nations Security Council resolution, as well as the JCPOA which prohibited Iran’s development of a ballistic launch system with intercontinental range.

That fact was put on display with the announcement by the Iranian regime of its launching of a satellite into orbit on a ballistic missile.

Iranian state media confirmed the launch of a Simorgh rocket which the Trump administration considers a violation of the JCPOA.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the launch appeared to be related to Iran’s attempts to develop ballistic missiles, which is not covered under the nuclear deal but is a subject of protest and sanctioning by the U.S.

“We would consider that a violation of UNSCR 2231,” Nauert said at a briefing with reporters when asked about the launch. “We consider that to be continued ballistic missile development. … We believe that what happened overnight, in the early morning hours here in Washington, is inconsistent with the Security Council resolutions.”

The Simorgh is a two-stage rocket first revealed in 2010. It is larger than an earlier model known as the Safir that Iran has used to launch satellites on previous occasions.

The U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center said in a report released last month that the Simorgh could act as a test bed for developing the technologies needed to produce an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM.

“Tehran’s desire to have a strategic counter to the United States could drive it to field an ICBM. Progress in Iran’s space program could shorten a pathway to an ICBM because space launch vehicles (SLV) use inherently similar technologies,” the report said.

Iran’s satellite-launch program falls under the responsibility of the defense ministry, which has denied that the space program is a cover for weapons development, but such denials are silly on its surface since Iran has no civilian space agency.

Clearly the regime is using the guise of “scientific development” to advance its ballistic missile capability, especially now that the mullahs see their advantages disappear under an energized Congress and president intent on rolling back gains made by Iran.

For the mullahs, it is clearly a race now for the regime to develop additional technologies necessary to complete a nuclear delivery system such as heat shields and targeting systems designed to allow a payload to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere to strike at targets thousands of miles away.

The table is now set for President Trump to walk away from the nuclear deal and news media have reported that he has instructed aides to closely re-examine the deal and evaluate against the regime’s actions over the past two years.

While the Iran lobby was nearly apoplectic over the news, it could not ignore the real possibility that all its hard work in securing the deal is about to be erased like tracks across sand dunes swept away by wind.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council issued a typically hysterical statement claiming that the president’s call for expanded inspections of Iran’s military installations for nuclear violations was a pretext to war.

“Clearly, facts don’t matter to the Trump administration – their desire to start a war trumps everything. Now, his team appears to be putting his desires into action,” Parsi said.

We advise Parsi to take a Xanax and calm down since his protestations have always been proven false in the past and this latest one is no different.

The fact that the JCPOA excluded large segments of Iran’s military-industrial complex allowed the regime ample room to hide its nuclear activities and the fact that international inspectors are restricted from accessing sites and many sites they were allowed to visit were scrubbed clean of any evidence months in advance shows how wrong Parsi is and how correct the president is in seeking additional inspections.

The Iranian regime predictably reacted with false anger and vitriol at the developments, but could not ignore the fact that the JCPOA is not a treaty and President Trump has wide latitude to simply walk away from the agreement.

Laura Carnahan

Threat of Iran Sanctions Drives Iran Lobby and Regime Crazy

July 28, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) speaks with reporters about the withdrawn Republican health care bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

It’s all but a done deal. House and Senate negotiators reached agreement according to news reports on Wednesday to get sanctions legislation against Iran, Russia and North Korea through the Senate without further amendments; avoiding needing another House vote.

“Following very productive discussions with [House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy], I am glad to announce that we have reached an agreement that will allow us to send sanctions legislation to the president’s desk,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “The Senate will move to approve the Iran and Russia sanctions it originally passed six weeks ago, as well as the North Korea sanctions developed by the House.”

Votes in both houses of Congress up to this point have been lopsided, bipartisan affairs as Democrats joined with Republicans in a rare show of unity on confronting the three nations in question.

Both sides agreed on the need to take further action against North Korea even as the rogue nation has ramped up launches of ballistic missiles with ranges reaching the continental U.S.

The speed with which the sanctions legislation is moving through Congress demonstrates sharply how the landscape has changed over the last two years since the Iran nuclear deal went into effect.

The Iranian regime’s provocative actions in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Bahrain and Kuwait have aptly shown the world how an unrestrained regime will act. It has also proven false the narrative used by the Iran lobby that by approving the nuclear deal, moderate elements in Iran would be empowered to take a leading role there.

Clearly, the truth has been shown that there are no moderate elements in Iran’s government.

But that hasn’t stopped the Iran lobby from trying to stop this speeding train from running over the mullahs in Tehran as evidenced by the latest editorial by Jamal Abdi of NIAC Action in The Hill.

Abdi tries to make the argument that in their rush to punish Russia, Democrats are allowing President Trump to dismantle the Iran nuclear deal.

“While Democrats may score a victory on Russia, they may be setting the stage for turning Trump into a wartime president. And if that happens, few will remember the Democrats as the party that sanctioned Russia. Instead they will remember when Democrats acquiesced to, and even encouraged, Trump’s push towards war with Iran,” Abdi said.

There is little doubt that Abdi’s words are not only ineffectual, but largely being ignored on Capitol Hill; demonstrating how far the Iran lobby has fallen in its effectiveness and ability to set the national debate.

Long gone are the days of the vaunted “echo chamber” banging the PR drum loudly in support of the mullahs; only replaced by vivid images of multiple missile launches, Iranian navy ships speeding at American warships, and wide swathes of destruction in Syria and Yemen at the hands of Iranian troops.

The inability of the Iran lobby to offer any policy whatsoever calling for any reform or restrictions to the Iranian regime’s behavior is fueling the belief that the Iran lobby can offer no more solutions.

The most recent hostage-taking by Iran of a Chinese-American researcher from Princeton University and the 10-year anniversary of the arrest of former FBI agent Robert Levinson who is still being held in Iran only reinforced the perception that the regime was lawless and recalcitrant.

The recent death of North Korean-hostage Otto Warmbier only reinforced the urgent necessity of getting American captives out of Iran and has become a focal point for President Trump as he demanded the release of several other Americans being held in Iran.

Typically, Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council, proposed another hostage swap, taking a page from the Obama administrations appeasement policies, and echoing demands from Iran’s leadership for the U.S. to release Iranians convicted of smuggling nuclear technology to Iran.

For President Trump, his ultimate leverage may be the very nuclear deal the Iran lobby is trying desperately to save. Even though the flawed deal served up all of the freebies and goodies for the Iranian regime in the beginning, it does represent the last fig leaf covering up the ugliness of the Iranian regime’s actions under the guise of “compliance.”

Without it, the regime would have no political cover and would become a pariah nation again so the president’s warnings in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal that he may ultimately find the Iranian regime “noncompliant” with the deal could prove a key turning point for his administration.

The regime’s leadership responded with characteristic bravado as Hassan Rouhani vowed a “reciprocal” response should U.S. sanctions pass.

Rouhani said his country would “take any action that is necessary for the country’s expedience and interests” should the sanctions go into effect, according to The Associated Press.

“If the enemy breaches parts of the deal, we will breach parts of it,” the Iranian president added. “If they breach the entire deal, we will breach it in its entirety.”

The threats seem pointless at this time since whatever restrictive effects the deal purportedly had have been largely bypassed with Iran’s ability to keep its entire nuclear refining capacity and aggressive expansion of its ballistic missile program.

For the mullahs, they have already milked that deal dry and walking away from it would probably cause them little to no discomfort.

Fight Over American Hostages in Iran Escalates

July 25, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Xiyue Wang, a naturalized American citizen from China, arrested in Iran last August while researching Persian history for his doctoral thesis at Princeton University, is shown with his wife and son in this family photo released in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. on July 18, 2017. Courtesy Wang Family photo via Princeton University/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY.

Ever since Otto Warmbier was brought back from his imprisonment and torture in North Korea only to suffer from severe brain damage and eventually succumbing to his injuries, President Donald Trump has become more personally involved in the plight of Americans being held hostage in Iranian prisons.

Though there is a large partisan divide that separates the president from Democrats and Republicans, on the issue of American prisoners he has become quietly, but forcefully involved in sending unmistakable messages to the mullahs in Tehran that he wants them freed.

While there is plenty of speculation as to why the president takes a personal interest in this issue, there is none regarding the correctness of his position. Even the Iran lobby’s most ardent supporters, the National Iranian American Council, could not hide from the cruelty in the regime’s latest hostage taking, Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-American graduate student from Princeton University, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Trita Parsi, the head of the NIAC, put out a statement condemning Wang’s “unjust detention and sentencing.” Of course, Parsi couldn’t help but tie the case back to old message of the sentencing as an effort by hardline elements in Iran seeking to “undermine Iran’s economic reintegration into the world.”

His statement underscores the ever-shrinking island for the Iran lobby when it comes to supporting the Iranian regime. The past two years since the nuclear deal was agreed to have fully demonstrated how incapable Iran has become to living up to the false promises of moderation made by people such as Parsi.

The Iranian regime has never made it a secret that it views hostage-taking as an essential tool of statecraft and not just American citizens either. It has detained and imprisoned Canadians and European citizens and used them as pawns in negotiations with their nations in trying to wring out concessions.

The fact that the Obama administration essentially rewarded the regime by paying pallets stacked with cash for the return of Americans including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, only incentivized the mullahs to take more hostages.

But for now, the Trump administration has openly called for the release of three Americans currently still in Iran, including former FBI agent Robert Levinson and Siamak and Baquer Namazi, son and father who are Iranian-American businessmen.

In Levinson’s case, he has been held in Iran for over 10 years and Iranian officials refused to make him part of the deal that released Rezaian and other hostages.

“The United States condemns hostage takers and nations that continue to take hostages and detain our citizens without just cause or due process. For nearly forty years, Iran has used detentions and hostage taking as a tool of state policy, a practice that continues to this day with the recent sentencing of Xiyue Wang to ten years in prison,” the White House statement read.

The statement urged that Iran is responsible for the care and well being of all US citizens it has in its custody. It added that Trump is willing to impose new consequence unless all “unjustly imprisoned’ American citizens are released by Iran.

The White House announcement comes at the heels of a new administration policy — banning Americans from visiting another country known for imprisoning Americans — North Korea.

In addition, Congress has moved forward with legislation imposing new sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia, adding to the pressure now coming from a U.S. government freed from the previous policies of trying to appease Iran.

Of course, none of this stopped the Iranian regime from making its own demands and accusing the U.S. of holding Iranian citizens in “gruesome prisons.”

“You are keeping our innocent citizens in gruesome prisons. This is against the law and international norms and regulations,” said Sadegh Larijani, head of the regime’s judiciary, quoted by Iran’s state broadcaster.

“We tell them that you must immediately release Iranian citizens locked up in US prisons.”

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Washington of holding Iranians on “charges of sanction violations that are not applicable today… for bogus and purely political reasons”, at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank in New York last week.

Larijani also criticized the seizure of Iranian assets in the United States, such as a recent ruling to seize a Manhattan skyscraper to compensate victims of terrorism.

“They confiscate the assets of the Islamic republic. This is a blatant robbery. Americans behave as a bully and they want to oppress people of other countries,” he said.

Larijani’s comments deserve a good chuckle or at least a shocked gasp considering how abysmal Iranian regime’s prisons are, including the notorious Evin prison, as well as the regime’s reliance on medieval punishments such as public hanging and amputations.

Of course, given the regime’s past history of using hostages as pawns, the Larijani’s rhetoric may just be an opening prelude to another offer by the regime to swap Iranians convicted of smuggling material out of the U.S. for Wang and other Americans.

Remember, Iranian regime already has a taste of a quiescent U.S. in the prisoner swap from 2016, and may be lining up to orchestrate a similar move.

Even Reza Marashi of NIAC, acknowledged a similar move was afoot.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the Iranians are looking for another prisoner swap,” Marashi told Newsweek Monday.

The larger policy question for President Trump will be, if the regime offers a repeat of 2016, will he take the deal?

We would caution that doing so only encourages the Iranian regime to take even more hostages in 2018.

Michael Tomlinson

US Sanctions Set to Begin as Iran Threatens Hostages

July 24, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

US Sanctions Set to Begin as Iran Threatens Hostages

In a sign of not-so surprising bipartisan agreement in the highly charged partisan atmosphere of Washington, DC, Republican and Democratic lawmakers announced an agreement on legislation that will impose new sanctions on the Iranian regime, North Korea and Russia.

To say that there is very little Republicans and Democrats agree on today would be a colossal understatement, but it is clear dealing with Iran and North Korea has moved to the forefront because of their respective ballistic missile programs and Russia for alleged interference in U.S. elections.

The decision of how best to deal with Iran and North Korea seems to be about the only issues that draws popular and wide-ranging support from both sides of the political aisle; much to the consternation of the Iran lobby.

One of the most consistent arguments made by Iran supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council has been the idea that the issues such as Iran’s nuclear program should be addressed separate and apart from ballistic missiles, human rights or sponsorship of terrorism.

The Obama administration followed through on that idea by not conditioning the nuclear agreement on those “side issues,” but all that did was enable the Iranian regime to act on all of those issues with impunity and a sense of invulnerability seeing how the U.S. would be unwilling to jeopardize the agreement no matter how egregious the actions by the regime.

It was a similar scenario that followed North Korea and sanctions were ramped up with each North Korean aggressive action only to be traded for concessions which enabled yet another round of militancy.

Tyrannical regimes soon figured out that if you wanted to get something from the Obama administration, you just had to act a little crazy and you would get it or have the U.S. back down; i.e. never crossing that “red line in the sand.”

Not coincidentally, that separation of issues doesn’t work both ways according to the Iran lobby. If the U.S. could not criticize or act against the regime for its conduct on ballistic missiles or human rights, then the U.S. could also be criticized for acting on its own against Iran for any of those issues.

Parsi and his colleagues have also chimed in that imposing sanctions on Iran for human rights violations is a separate issue and would only jeopardize the nuclear agreement. Its collapse would only force an arms race and speed up Iran’s path to the bomb.

Unfortunately for them and other supporters of the Iran regime, that is exactly what the U.S. Congress has done with this bill. It has finally acted on imposing sanctions separate and apart from the conditions of the nuclear deal—just as the Iran lobby demanded before.

Even the Los Angeles Times editorial board, long an advocate of the nuclear deal, agreed that issues such as ballistic missiles and support for terror groups such as Hezbollah ought to be addresses separately and so they have at last.

The House is set to vote on Tuesday on a package of bills on sanctions covering Russia, Iran and North Korea, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s office. The measure will “hold them accountable for their [alleged] dangerous actions,” McCarthy claimed in a statement on Saturday, Reuters reported.

The legislation would also impose sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile development program and its activities in the region, especially the support provided by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps for Tehran’s allies in their campaigns to fight in Syria.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said a strong sanctions bill is “essential”, and said in a statement that he expects “the house and senate will act on this legislation promptly, on a broad bipartisan basis.”

The bills are now shaping up as only the opening chess move between President Trump and the mullahs in Tehran as he has demanded the release of imprisoned Americans in Iranian jails, which received a similar demand from Tehran for the release of Iranians convicted on charges related to the attempted export of nuclear materials.

In the arena of prisoners and hostage taking, Iran and North Korea are again joined at the hip in terms of tactics since North Korea imprisoned and then released American Otto Warmbier who was released and died as a result of severe injuries suffered in what was described by medical officials as torture or savage beatings.

Iran has similarly detained Americans, Canadian and European citizens and subjected then to torture that has been widely documented and condemned by human rights and Iranian opposition groups such as Amnesty International.

In the face of the American action, the Iranian regime predictably announced the launch of a new production line to mass manufacture a new version of its Sayyad-3 air defense missile in a photo opportunity moment to shake the spear so-to-speak and warn against any efforts to attack Iran.

The Sayyad 3 missile can reach an altitude of 16 mile and travel up to 74 miles, Iranian defense minister Hossein Dehghan said at a ceremony, as reported by Reuters. The missile is copied after similar Russian designs.

The missile can target fighter planes, unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise missiles and helicopters, Dehghan said.

The implied threat by Iran was again the tired old line that the only inevitable outcome of the dispute between itself and the U.S. had to lead to war. For the Iran lobby and Iranian regime, rattling the saber and banging war drums seems to be about their only response to the issue of increasing sanctions aimed at the threat posed by Iran’s missile fleet.

But as Harry J. Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, pointed out in a Fox News editorial, the close working relationship between North Korea and Iran only means Iran will be able to deploy nuclear weapons on its missiles even more quickly in spite of the nuclear deal.

“Many experts have been warning for years now that Tehran and Pyongyang have been trading missile technology. If the Trump administration doesn’t act fast it won’t be just the hermit kingdom that has nukes that can strike at targets thousands of miles away” Kazianis writes.

It is clear that the best possible solution is to continue moving forward with sanctions against Iran and North Korea and reverse the damage done by President Obama’s eight years of appeasing the Iranian regime.

Michael Tomlinson

Trump Administration on Verge of Junking Iran Nuclear Deal

July 20, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

The announcement came just hours before the midnight deadline for US President Donald Trump to inform congress whether Iran had met the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. | Nicholas Kaam/AFP

The Trump administration once again announced the Iranian regime was following the two-year old nuclear deal, but barely.

In several revealing and extraordinary news stories, including one from Bloomberg which disclosed how President Trump was ready at the last minute to pull the trigger and find the Iranian regime was no longer in compliance with the agreement.

“So just as (Secretary of State Rex) Tillerson was preparing to inform Congress on Monday that Iran remained in compliance with what is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Trump called it off, according to administration officials. He wanted to know his options and what would happen if Tillerson didn’t make the announcement,” Bloomberg wrote.

“And for a few hours on Monday afternoon, it looked like the White House was going to tell Congress it could not certify Iran was complying, without saying Iran was in breach of the pact. This would have triggered a 60-day period in which Congress could vote to re-impose the secondary sanctions lifted as a condition of the deal, or to strike it down altogether,” Bloomberg added.

The fact that Trump was serious about getting tough on the Iranian regime was a welcome departure from the last eight years under the Obama administration, but also points to the tight spaces he must navigate to restrain the mullahs in Tehran.

The central driving force behind decertifying Iran lies with the regime’s behavior since the deal was signed. The president recognizes, as do most Americans, that in the past years Tehran has operated as if there wasn’t any agreement in the first place.

Its’ nuclear program was never halted, only briefly delayed, and it received vast economic benefits from the lifting of sanctions that essentially saved the regime from collapse and allowed it ramp up its proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

Most importantly, the deal allowed Iranian regime the funding and breathing room to develop its ballistic missile program. Nuclear warheads aren’t much use unless you can deliver them to their targets and missiles make for an excellent Sword of Damocles to hang over Iran’s enemies.

The fact that the regime, along with the Iran lobby, fought hard to keep issues such as its ballistic missile program, separate and apart from the nuclear deal demonstrated its desire to have its cake and eat it too.

This is the quandary that President Trump finds himself in since confronting the Iranian regime isn’t just about the nuclear deal, but includes a whole host of issues including the wars it is fomenting in Syria and Yemen and the crises it created in Qatar, Pakistan and Qatar; not to mention the escalating tensions in international waters in the Persian Gulf and Suez Canal.

The president also needs to find ways to empower the Iranian resistance movement in order to foster the kind of internal regime change most likely to produce a peaceful transition in government without the specter of starting another war in the Middle East.

The potential key to making all this happen may be the potential of closing Iran off to further foreign investment and business as Lake makes clear in his article.

“All of this is also a lesson to Western businesses hoping Iran will be a safe place to invest in the aftermath of the nuclear bargain. Administration officials on Monday said the Treasury Department was still reviewing a proposed sale of civilian airliners from Boeing to Iran’s largest airline. That deal is under scrutiny because Iran uses its civilian air fleet to send supplies, personnel and weapons to the war in Syria,” Lake said.

The administration also moved forward in slapping additional sanctions on Iran not related to nuclear issues the other day in a demonstration of its willingness to hold the regime accountable, while at the same time certifying the nuclear deal in compliance. For President Trump, it is his way of having his own cake and eating it too.

The Treasury Department blacklisted 18 people and entities for supporting Iran’s military and Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which it said harassed U.S. naval vessels and tried to build ballistic missiles and steal U.S. computer software.

The sanctions mean it is illegal for U.S. citizens or companies to do business with those on the list, and any assets they have in the U.S. can be seized. It’s unclear whether the 18 have such assets or businesses.

Predictably the Iranian regime responded to the sanctions with what it called its own “reciprocal actions,” but it pointed out an uncomfortable truth for the mullahs which is that President Trump was moving closer to potentially designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, which could potentially cripple the regime’s flow of illicit funds.

The Iran lobby also weighed in with the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi issuing a press release criticizing the moves by the administration.

“Under Trump, diplomacy has been traded for threats, placing the US and Iran at risk of war once more. Rather than pursuing dialogue with Tehran to resolve remaining disputes, as every one of our European allies have done, the Trump administration has chosen to escalate tensions and eschew opportunities to come to a mutual understanding,” Parsi said.

Parsi continues to try and split the difference in separating the nuclear deal from other issues such as Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for terror or poor human rights record. While that strategy worked with the previous administration, President Trump seems to have determined that all of these issues are interconnected.

This will no doubt cause Parsi to be dismayed and the mullahs to be frightened, but it’s the correct pathway to follow and one that President Obama should have done four years ago when negotiations opened on a deal.

If he had connected the dots of Iran’s bad behavior with the leverage he possessed in negotiating the deal, things might have been very different these past two years.

Unfortunately, it is now up to President Trump to clean up the mess.

Laura Carnahan

Protesting in Iran Comes in All Shapes and Sizes

July 14, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Protesting in Iran Comes in All Shapes and Sizes

Protesting in Iran is a dangerous activity on the best of days. It can earn a quick arrest, imprisonment, brutal treatment and even a walk to the gallows. On the worst of days, protest is met with the iron fist of the religious theocracy the mullahs have created to maintain a tight grip on their power.

The history of protesting in Iran is a mixed bag at best with “legal” protests and demonstrations orchestrated by the Iranian regime typically reinforcing themes the mullahs want to see perpetuated such as the regular “Death to America” chants and rallies dedicated to key milestones in the Islamic state’s history.

The regime works tirelessly to keep a tight lid not only on protests but also any means of distributing news about them to the outside world. This means cutting Iranians off from popular social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, while also working to crack the encryption of secure messaging platforms such as the popular Telegram and WhatsApp programs.

In 2009, following the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran was rocked with massive demonstrations as Iranians protested the election results and relied on social media to organize and stream pictures, videos and first-hand accounts of what was happening on the streets of Tehran to the outside world.

It wasn’t pretty for the mullahs as their violent crackdowns earned worldwide condemnation and pushed them to the brink of collapse. The demonstrations were violently suppressed by the mullahs and their Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The 2009 protests were only the most visible the world had seen because of social media.

Other notable protests in Iran included the less widely known July 1999 student protests where students at Tehran University had occupied buildings protesting the banning of a popular newspaper associated with reform movements.

Large riots spread with police and vigilante mobs swooping in to beat and detain protesting students. At least five of them were killed in the melees and no one was ever convicted of the killings.

This month has seen the hashtag #18Tir make appearances on Twitter in a show of solidarity of the protests. Reports indicate that the hashtag has appeared over 9,000 over a two-day period; paltry in terms of popular trending Twitter topics such as #fakenews, but for Iran, a monumental step forward since anyone identified with prohibited protest activities risked getting tossed into prison.

Beside mass protests, Iranian women have relied on more subtle methods of displaying their disobedience to the rule of the mullahs. Obligatory wearing of the hijab has been an integral policy of the Iranian regime, since the 1979 revolution but it is one the establishment has had a great deal of difficulty enforcing.

Clashes between Iranian women and regime morality police increase steeply during Iran’s notoriously hot summer months, but according to the Guardian, even though the police regularly stop these drivers, fining them or even temporarily seizing their vehicle, such acts of resistance have continued, infuriating hardliners over a long-standing policy they have had a great deal of difficulty enforcing.

The mere act of defiance by these women is astonishing considering they often run afoul of being arrested or having their vehicles confiscated and underscores the power the Iranian people possess to affect change if they choose to flex their collective muscle.

Another subtle form of protest is being mounted as well as Iranian women don white headscarves on Wednesdays and post selfies with the hashtag of #WhiteWednesdays in a symbolic protest of the regime’s strict dress codes.

While these protests are a far cry from the massive protests of 2009, they reflect a deepening and ongoing divide within Iran between the mullah-controlled government and ordinary Iranians. This past presidential election was preceded by a series of protests that escaped media scrutiny because of the clampdown by the regime.

These included an embarrassing scene in which president Hassan Rouhani was loudly booed by miners following a disaster, while other protests flared up throughout Iran over stagnant wages and a faltering economy that was mismanaged and not delivering improvements to the quality of life for Iranians.

Most distressing to the mullahs must be the strong comeback Iranian dissident groups have made recently with posters, banners and signs bearing messages and images exhorting the Iranian resistance movement and leaders such as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran appearing throughout Tehran during the election.

The mullahs have made it a crime to even be associated with these dissidents groups, so the act of putting up a banner in support of them is not only a huge risk, it is an emphatic statement that protest is alive and well inside Iran.

Even Iran’s neighbors have taken to protest the Iranian regime, including Afghanistan which stage huge rallies aimed at blasting Rouhani over statements he made criticizing planned water projects in Afghanistan.

We can only hope that these signs of discontent and protest will only be fueled in the future and finally lead to a peaceful transition to a secular, democratic government.

Laura Carnahan

Is the Open for Business Sign for Iran Now Closed?

July 11, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Is the Open for Business Sign for Iran Now Closed?

One of the primary reasons why the Iran lobby was conceived and brought to life was a recognition by the mullahs in Tehran that they lacked all credibility when it came to the Western news media and needed surrogates to help shape the world’s perception of them as more open, accommodating and moderate than they really were.

This was especially important in light of the crippling economic sanctions that were bringing the Iranian regime’s economy to its knees, which was part of the discontent that was on display in the aftermath of the scandalous 2009 presidential election.

The massive street protests came at the height of the Arab Spring protests toppling governments throughout the Middle East and threatened to take down the mullahs in Tehran.

After brutally putting down the protests, the mullahs figured out they needed help to keep their grip on power which led to the election of “moderate” Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and a massive PR push aimed at the Obama administration to craft a nuclear deal that would lift the economic sanctions on Iran.

Much has already been written about the launching of Iran lobby advocates such as the National Iranian American Council and its prominent role in pushing for the nuclear deal by working in coordination with the Obama administration in creating the much-discussed “echo chamber” of supporters.

The aftermath of the nuclear deal and hasty implementation by the outgoing Obama administration created a narrow window of opportunity for the Iranian regime to get what it needed most at that time: cash and lots of it.

The regime was bleeding cash in its support of wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen so accessing frozen assets, as well as the planeloads of cash paid as part of ransom payments for American hostages, helped stave off imminent collapse.

The next aim for the regime and Iran lobby was the lifting of economic sanctions so that business and investment deals could be struck to provide steady future sources of revenue.

After an initial rush by some European companies, later followed by Russian and Chinese military sales, the proverbial land rush slowed to a crawl amid uncertainty that the Trump administration and U.S. Congress might reinstitute sanctions because of Iranian regime’s support for terrorism and an alarming increase in ballistic missile launches.

It didn’t help the mullahs that their technological partner, North Korea, was busy flinging ballistic missiles into orbit faster than reruns of Real Housewives of Orange County, and alarming most of the nations in the Pacific.

The prospect that the U.S. might levy new sanctions slowed investment to a crawl, aside from a few high-profile sales of commercial jetliners, there has been few business deals announced.

That drought of new investment once again stirred ordinary Iranians to anger in the most recent presidential election a few months ago which saw mass protests throughout Iran; even including harsh demonstrations aimed at Rouhani himself.

The poor condition of the Iranian economy was also a contributing factor to the implosion of the candidacy of Ebrahim Raisi, the handpicked would-be successor by top mullah Ali Khamenei, leading to broad speculation that the mullahs’ grip on power was slipping.

The most recent high-profile deal announced by Iran was with French petroleum giant Total, which agreed to a deal to jointly develop Iran’s massive South Pars gas field. Total was the first, and so far, only major oil player to commit to returning to Iran, while other firms, especially U.S. and British ones remain on the sidelines uncertain of the potential of the re-imposition of economic sanctions.

The risks for Total, and for that matter any other foreign company, doing business with Iran are substantial, as outlined in an insightful editorial by Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, president of the International American Council, in Arab News.

“U.S. pressure and sanctions on Tehran will likely continue to escalate, affecting American and non-American companies. The US may re-impose its sanctions bill that targets non-American companies doing business with Iran. If a company does business with both countries, its investments could be in peril. Quitting Iran’s market would not be easy for those with long-term investments,” Rafizadeh said.

He also alludes to the increasing political instability within Iran, as well as the tightening grip on the Iranian economy by Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. That grip exists because of the rising need by the IRGC to funnel even more funds for its foreign adventures which have expanded in various fronts.

Also, as Iranian regime ramps up its ballistic missile program, the United Nations may feel compelled to act and sanction Iran lest it has to deal with both an Iran and North Korea crisscrossing the sky with ballistic missiles.

Recognizing the threat of possibly having its economy shutdown once again, the mullahs are moving rapidly to take advantage of the Total deal to ready an additional 14 oil and gas exploration for tender offers to foreign companies.

Sitting on some of the world’s biggest energy reserves, Iran has already been working on deals to develop fields such as South Pars, South Azadegan, Yadavaran, West Karoun, Mansouri and Abteymour, Reuters reported.

France’s Total last week became the first major to sign a post-sanctions development deal with Iran. Russia’s Lukoil and Denmark’s Maersk are also potential investors.

“Next on the horizon is the search for new oil, with the National Iranian Oil Company planning to tender 14 oil and gas blocks for exploration in the next two to three months,” NIOC’s deputy director for exploration blocks, Rahim Nematollahi, said in Istanbul.

But these deals may become moot should either the U.S. or UN act to impose new sanctions, especially any sanctions once again removing Iran from accessing the international wire transfer network or currency exchanges.

All of which places any foreign entity in a precarious position should it decide to invest in Iran. A company also runs the risk being labelled a supporter of terrorism since the vast majority of revenue Iran generates from one of these deals would inevitably be used to fund its proxy wars and support its terrorist allies.

This may mean that for the short-term at least, the “open for business” sign for Iran may be just another example of fake news.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Efforts to Control Middle East Gets Pushback

July 10, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Iran Regime Efforts to Control Middle East Gets Pushback

The mullahs in Tehran have never made a secret of their lust for controlling the Middle East, especially the countries surrounding Iran. Part of the reasoning has been to create a buffer protecting the Islamic state from its perceived enemies, including regional rival Saudi Arabia, but it also was designed to provide the mullahs with a steady supply of proxies that could be used as cannon fodder for conflicts.

The Iranian regime, through its Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Forces, have historically relied on third parties to do its dirty work be it Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen or Afghan mercenaries in Syria.

The willingness of the Iranian regime to use these proxies demonstrates its callous disregard for human life and take no prisoners attitude in achieving its goals. It also ably demonstrates why any agreement reached with the mullahs is essentially worthless since they will always seek to circumvent any accord should it suit their purposes.

Which is why any effort to resolve the civil war in Syria must first and foremost force the expulsion of Iranian forces from that war-torn country. Similarly, as ISIS is defeated in Iraq with the liberation of Mosul, a similar kicking out of Iranian forces would be a positive first step to returning that beleaguered country to normality.

None of this will be easy though since the mullahs are loath to give up their hard-fought gains in securing a so-called “land bridge” linking Tehran to Damascus through Baghdad, which fulfills the long sought-after vision of Shia control from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

The strategic vision of the Iranian regime includes the establishment of permanent naval bases along the Syrian and Yemen coastlines, giving its navy unfettered access to the crowded international shipping lanes in the Mediterranean and through the Persian Gulf and Suze Canal.

The mullahs see themselves being able to keep a loaded pistol pointed at the economic lifeblood of Europe through its use of its military and navy. It also explains why Iran has invested so heavily and fought hard to protect its ballistic missile program from the threat of economic sanctions.

Just as the control of territory and sea lanes are crucial to the mullahs’ vision of maintaining control, its ballistic missile fleet is the hammer necessary to enforce that control by placing Eastern Europe, North Africa and Southeast Asia under threat of attack.

The firing of ballistic missiles for the first time at purported ISIS targets in Syria was less about actually striking at ISIS forces, as much as it was a practical demonstration and testing of its missiles by Iran.

In many ways, the opening salvos are eerily similar to Nazi Germany’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, not to support the rule of General Francisco Franco in as much the ability to test new German tactics and weapons that would later be employed in the blitzkrieg of World War II.

The civil war was also notable for the bombing of Guernica in 1937 in which Germany tested out new warplanes in killing hundreds of civilians; a prelude to the mass slaughters to follow. Famed artist Pablo Picasso immortalized the attack with his eponymous painting, but if he were alive today, he could have painted similar works memorializing places such as Mosul, Raqqa or Ramadi where Iranian-backed forces have left swathes of destruction that made Guernica look paltry by comparison.

But all of these efforts by the Iranian regime to exert its control over its neighbors may have finally forced pushback among many of these former perceived allies of Iran.

In Pakistan, tensions have sharply escalated with a serious of border conflicts that got another dose of violence in the form of rocket attacks by Iranian border guards aimed at Pakistan.

“The incident took place in the wee hours of Saturday,” Panjgur’s Deputy Commissioner Jabbar Baloch told The Nation. He confirmed no loss of life or property was caused by the Iranian shelling. The rockets exploded with powerful bang after landing in the area, prompting fear and panic among the residents.

The adjacent areas of Panjgur and Chagai close to Pak-Iran border have repeatedly witnessed rocket shells fired by the Iranian security forces followed by strong protest from the Pakistani side. The regular violation of Pakistani territory by Iranian guards and allegations of cross-border infiltration by Pakistani side has strained ties between the two neighboring countries which share a 900-km long porous border.

This was followed by news from Iraq of threats being made by one of the largest tribes in Karbala against Iranian forces after one of its prominent leaders, Sheikh Nema Hadi al-Issawi, was killed in the Iranian city of Mashhad.

In order to calm the tribe, Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of Al- Badr militia and who is close to the Iranian regime and the commander of Al- Quds Force, asked to attend the funeral of the killed Sheikh but the al-Issa tribe refused the request and prevented Amiri from entering its houses in Karbala, according to Al-Arabiya.

This comes after massed protests in southern Afghanistan by locals denouncing Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani over disparaging comments he made in criticizing Afghan water management and dam projects, according to the Voice of America.

Hundreds of demonstrators peacefully marched through the streets of Lashkargah, capital of Helmand province near the Iranian border. They chanted, “Death to Hassan Rouhani” and “Death to enemies of Afghanistan.”

These actions don’t even include the active losses being suffered by Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Yemen at the hands of U.S. and Saudi-backed forces.

All of which points to a turning of fortune for the mullahs that may see their hopes for a Shiite sphere of influence go up like puffs of smoke.

Michael Tomlinson