#NuclearDeal – Page 3

Iran Regime Adds Funds for Missile and Terrorism Programs

August 15, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

In this photo taken on Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017, lawmakers attend an open session of the Iranian parliament in Tehran, Iran. Iran’s parliament voted overwhelmingly Sunday, Aug. 13, to increase spending on its ballistic missile program and the foreign operations of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, chanting “Death to America” in a direct challenge to Washington’s newest sanctions on the Islamic Republic. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

The Iranian regime parliament burnished its hardline credentials by approving an enormous boost in spending for its ballistic missile program and its Quds Forces within the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been at the heart at virtually all the proxy wars Iran is currently fighting throughout the Middle East.

The estimated $609 million boost will be divided evenly between the Quds Forces and missile effort, which the regime called the nation’s “deterrent capability,” according to regime-controlled Tasmin news agency.

Some lawmakers chanted, “death to America” as the bill was passed, according to state media.

The increase in funding comes as no surprise as the Iranian regime has steadily been funneling millions of dollars to fund its growing military commitments and support for proxies and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

If we think back to the completion of the Iranian nuclear agreement two years ago, the Obama administration shipped pallets full of cash via Iranian airliners in exchange for the release of American hostages. There were no conditions attached to the money which undoubtedly found its way to support Iran’s efforts to save the Assad regime in Syria.

Also, the Iranian regime does not report funding for its military nor for its paramilitary operations through its Quds Forces so we really don’t know how much money Iran really is spending on its missile and terror programs, but there can be little doubt the mullahs consider both high priorities.

Hassan Rouhani, the regime’s president, essentially tried to blame the Trump administration’s levying of new economic sanctions as the reason for the increase in funding, as well as the president’s public statements promising to rip up the nuclear deal.

“Anyone who harms the accord harms himself and his country,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency. If the U.S. seeks to act against the agreement “everyone will side with us and against the person who wants to weaken it” he said in reference to other signatories to the deal including Germany and France, which have expressed their support for its continuation.

The move by the regime to boost its missile program comes in the wake of fellow rogue state North Korea’s rapid push into launching ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, as well as intelligence reports that North Korea now possesses at least one nuclear device capable of being mounted on a missile.

It also follow’s North Korea’s threats to turn waters around the island of Guam and home to a sprawling U.S. naval base into a sea of fire with multiple missile strikes.

The roadmap North Korea has laid out in its missile and nuclear development is being closely followed by the Iranian regime in spite of the false promises consistently made by the Iran lobby that Iran was not pursuing nuclear capability.

North Korea’s licensing of its missile technology to Iran gave the regime a head start on missile development and provided a much-needed source of cash to the North Korean regime as it become the most isolated and sanctioned nation in the world.

In fact, North Korea’s Kim Yong Nam, the speaker of the parliament, attended Rouhani’s swearing in ceremony last week in a sign of the hermit kingdom’s close ties with the Iranian regime.

This isn’t Yong Nam’s first trip to Iran. He also visited in 2012 to attend the Non-Aligned Movement’s summit in Tehran. Then as now he was in the country for about 10 days, making many official visits and appearances, signing agreements for technical and educational cooperation between Iran and North Korea, according to the Daily Beast.

The connections between North Korea and Iran extend beyond building a missile fleet together as explained by David French in the National Review. The 1994 “Framework Agreement” between North Korea and the U.S. was almost a carbon copy of the Iran nuclear deal.

Like the Iran Deal, it sought to halt the pursuit of nuclear weaponry. Like the Iran Deal, it was supposed to bring a rogue nation back into the “global community.” Like the Iran Deal, it allegedly had enough safeguards to prevent cheating, French writes.

“Unfortunately, North Korea cheated. It maintained a secret uranium-enrichment program, and the deal collapsed soon after the Bush administration confronted the North Koreans with evidence of their noncompliance,” French added.

French goes on to point out that given this history, the Iran Deal may have been the worst possible model. For example, agreement with Iran famously provides the regime up to 24 days of notice before inspectors are allowed access to some suspect cites, and a regime with a record of cheating like North Korea’s is the worst possible regime to grant any leeway or any trust.

Moreover, the same deal granted Iran enormous economic benefits, access to international arms markets, and the ability to build ballistic missiles. A similar deal with North Korea would have the potential to supercharge the DPRK threat.

Instead, the Iran deal has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Iran which the mullahs are now funneling into the IRGC. North Korea demonstrates clearly that relying on “trust” to verify a nuclear agreement fails miserably when the rogue regime in question can’t be trusted in the first place.

The bolstering of Iran’s missile fleet and Quds Forces comes at the worst possible time for hopes of regional stability as Iran is now deeply involved in full-blown war and covert subversive campaigns in Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen and now recently fired mortars and rockets along the Pakistan border.

All of the promises made by groups such as the National Iranian American Council that Iran would be a moderate force with the nuclear deal passed have been proven false and the world is now going to live under the threat of Iranian missiles because of it.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Human Rights Cruelty Knows No Limits

August 14, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Iran Regime Human Rights Cruelty Knows No Limits

A young Iranian man who was arrested, convicted and sentenced to die as a 15-year-old, was put to death by the Iranian regime this week in a new low in human rights even for this brutal regime.

Alireza Tajiki was 21 years old at the time of his execution. He was arrested in May 2012 when aged 15 and sentenced to death nearly a year later in April 2013. The trial was grossly unfair and relied primarily on “confessions” which Alireza Tajiki had said were extracted through torture, including severe beatings, floggings and suspension by the arms and feet, according to Amnesty International.

The use of torture to coerce confessions is notoriously widespread throughout Iran and is indiscriminately applied against men, women and children and has been documented by news media and international human rights groups.

Iran is one of the last few countries in the world that still executes juvenile offenders. As of August 2017, Amnesty International had identified at least 89 individuals on death row who were under the age of 18 when the crime was committed.

“By going ahead with this execution in defiance of their obligations under international law, and despite huge public and international opposition, the Iranian authorities have again cruelly demonstrated their complete disdain for children’s rights. This shameful act marks a critical turning point for Iran, and exposes the hollowness of the authorities’ claims to have a genuine juvenile justice system,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“This execution is a flagrant violation of Iran’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it ratified two decades ago. By putting Alireza Tajiki to death, the Iranian authorities have demonstrated their appalling commitment for continuing with this abhorrent practice and shown they do not even have the will to implement their half-hearted reforms to save the lives of those convicted as children,” he added.

The liberal use of the death penalty has been a hallmark of the Iranian regime’s control over the Iranian people, but alongside the gruesome punishments, the mullahs enforce morality laws in such odd fashion that seemingly innocuous acts are often characterized as crimes, such as women riding bicycles.

The fact that women receive the brunt of these morals violations is no coincidence as the mullahs work aggressively to oppress Iranian women and deny them educational opportunities, careers and even basic freedoms to move about without restriction.

One example of this the recent crackdown against women participating in Zumba dance classes and exercises in one of the more ludicrous actions by the regime.

A group of four men and two women were charged for trying to “change lifestyles” over their Zumba dancing and for not adhering to the country’s strict hijab dress code this week.

“The members of a network teaching and filming Western dances have been identified and arrested,” said Hamid Damghani, an official with the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“They were arrested by the Guards’ intelligence forces while teaching and creating video clips… as they sought to change lifestyles and promote a lack of hijab,” Damghani said.

The fight by the regime to suppress all kinds of creativity by young Iranians has been long-running. The latest Zumba arrests are a reminder that in 2014, seven young Iranians were arrested for dancing to Pharrell Williams’s hit “Happy” in a home-made video that went viral on the internet. They were given suspended jail and lashing sentences.

Far from being random or non-sensical, the arrests are deadly serious business for the mullahs because they represent a threat to the strict ideology and religious culture imposed by them since the Islamic revolution.

Creativity, artistry, even a simple exercise dance class can lay the seeds for rebellion in a society governed by the whims of religious zealots. For the mullahs in Tehran, even free thought can pose a counter-revolutionary risk.

This explains why the regime also spends considerable time, energy and resources in trying to stifle, suppress and even kill any members of Iranian opposition or dissident groups.

The long history of the regime’s efforts to annihilate the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, a long-time opposition group have been well-documented by international monitoring and human rights groups, especially the covert attacks on a refugee camp in Iraq housing members of the PMOI resulting in the murder of scores on refugees.

What is most disturbing though is as the Iranian regime steps up its brutal suppression of human rights with more executions and campaign to arrest women for taking part in innocent activities, the Iran lobby has been stone-deaf silent; none more so than the National Iranian American Council.

The NIAC in particular has thrown itself into the fight to save the Iran nuclear deal and virtually ignored the mounting human rights abuses in Iran. It points out the lie in the NIAC which claims to fight for Iranian-American issues and dignity, but does neither.

Its sole agenda is to fight to preserve the lifting of economic sanctions that keep the flow of cash running to the mullahs’ pockets.

Unfortunately, young Iranians like Alireza Tajiki are the ones left to pay the ultimate price.

Laura Carnahan

Regime Change in Iran will Come from the People

August 8, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Regime Change in Iran will Come from the People

The passage of new economic sanctions against the Iranian regime and the signing of the legislation by President Donald Trump officially buried the Obama administration’s policies of trying to appease the mullahs in Tehran into trying to turn towards moderation.

The response from the Iran lobby was predictable with dire warnings of war and destruction being pedaled, but the reality is that the regime change being sought by the U.S. is not the regime change the Iran lobby is trying to portray.

One of the great misconceptions about the idea of regime change is that it must come about violently and it would be externally driven by outside forces such as the U.S. scheming to plot the overthrow of the mullahs by some armed insurrection or brutal invasion.

It serves the purposes of regime supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council to push the narrative that President Trump is itching for a war with Iran.

The reality though is much different. The president campaigned strongly on the platform that the Iraq invasion by the Bush administration was a mistake and worse yet, not planning for its aftermath was blunder.

Most historians would not find fault with that appraisal and apparently not many American voters did either. It would be ironic then for a president—who campaigned against more wars in the Middle East—to start of his administration with seeking to instigate a war with the region’s largest army in Iran.

Then again, logic was never a strong suit for regime advocates such as Parsi, which is why we see his messages for what they are: diversions.

There are efforts to divert attention from the real concerns the mullahs have and are constantly battling against which is the potential for their rule to end because of the desire of the Iranian people to want change.

History has proven that all dictatorial regimes fail eventually. No government can stand against the entropy that occurs by suppressing basic human rights, using fear as a means of intimidation and control, and world events that reshape the region around a regime.

More recently, the Arab Spring protests toppled firmly established autocratic governments throughout the Mediterranean and reshaped the Middle East radically and it did so without the violence of bloody revolution that accompanied the Iranian revolution for example in 1979.

Even the more recent election demonstrations of 2009 showed the Iranian regime clearly that the Iranian people were more than capable of toppling their reign and it probably scared them to death and like any reactionary totalitarian regime, the mullahs did what came naturally for them: they cracked down even harder.

They rigged the election for Hassan Rouhani in 2013 by clearing the field of any other candidates. The did the same thing during parliamentary elections, keeping control with an overwhelming majority of loyalists.

They arrested journalists, stepped up attacks on dissidents, seized satellite dishes, banned social media, imprisoned students and artists and expanded the size and reach of “morality” police forces to enforce order.

Under Rouhani’s first time, the use of the death penalty skyrocketed to all-time highs as gallows and cranes were busy throughout public squares in Iran hanging Iranian men, women and even youngsters.

Even under this onslaught, protests still flourished in Iran with Rouhani’s re-election earlier this year in which he was greeted by masses of protesters at some campaign stops that turned ugly. Regime change in Iran won’t come at the point of an American invasion. It will come from the shouts and marches of millions of Iranians in city streets throughout the country.

Which is why the imposition of sanctions by the Trump administration is an opening step to making regime change possible; not through the threat of war as the Iran lobby would you believe, but rather in the reapplication of pressures that nearly forced the mullahs to lose control prior to the nuclear deal.

If we recall, the stage set prior to the nuclear negotiations showed the Iranian economy was groaning under the onslaught of an economy that had been drained of cash through rampant corruption and the funding of proxy wars and terrorist operations.

Ordinary Iranians were struggling to make ends meet and dealing with diminished expectations as career paths were blocked and opportunities shrank. Iranian small businesses struggled to stay afloat, while dual-national Iranians coming back to visit relatives or conduct business were increasingly being arrested and thrown in jail for no reason other than to be used as hostage pawns by the mullahs.

The level of discontent only needed a channel to express itself and that venue is increasingly becoming the Iranian resistance movement through groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) which has long been a thorn in the side of the mullahs.

Comprised of Iranians abroad and inside Iran, these dissidents and others, form the basis of the most viable option for Iranians looking for a change. Within Iran lies a strong core of supporters, even those Iranians who may not support the MEK specifically, but are more than willing to work towards regime change anyway.

A central platform to the Iranian dissident movement’s policies is a call for pluralistic and democratic change in a multi-party system. While the concept might seem perfectly ordinary to anyone living in a democratic society, it is anathema to the Iranian regime. The biggest threat to the mullahs is the very simple idea that the Iranian people might want a political choice other than the Islamic state created by the mullahs.

All of which leads us back to the original imposition of new sanctions by President Trump and the start of the process to designate the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. These actions place the mullahs back in the crosshairs of international scrutiny, but most importantly attempt to recreate the environment back from 2009-13 when four years of tumultuous change was being demanded by the Iranian people.

It is time for the U.S. government to support and recognize the various Iranian dissident and opposition groups and empower them to begin the process of regime change; peacefully.

Michael Tomlinson

Hassan Rouhani Starts Second Term with False Threats

August 8, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Hassan Rouhani Starts Second Term with False Threats

Hassan Rouhani must be feeling like he’s stuck in the movie “Groundhog Day” as he was sworn in for a second term as the Iranian regime’s handpicked puppet president of Ali Khamenei and his fellow mullahs.

Four years ago, he was handpicked by his fellow clerics to be the “moderate” face of the regime and push for a lifting of economic sanctions that were crippling Iran through a nuclear agreement with the West.

With the help from the Iran lobby and a misguided Obama administration, he shepherded a deal through that saved him and his fellow mullahs from being tossed out on a wave of broad discontent among the Iranian people.

Now he begins a second term finding himself once again trying to promote a nuclear deal that is in danger of going the way of the dodo bird; only this time he finds a much different world stage he stands on in which the Iranian regime’s true colors have been on vivid display.

He finds President Donald Trump clearly skeptical of the regime’s intentions and efficacy of the nuclear deal.

He finds a U.S. Congress voting overwhelmingly to impose new economic sanctions because of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

He finds a Trump administration moving quickly to impose economic sanctions targeting Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders and companies involved in ballistic missile development.

Most worrisome, he finds a weakened Iran lobby machine that has lost much of its punch and influence with the transition of the Obama administration leaving many regime advocates cut off from the West Wing and cabinet agencies.

Rouhani attempted to offer up some tough-sounding rhetoric, but only ended up reminding watchers of his precarious position within the regime as his own brother was arrested on corruption charges.

“Today is the time for the mother of all negotiations, not the mother of all bombs,” Rouhani said, referring to the US dropping its largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat in Afghanistan in April. The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, was among those present at Rouhani’s inauguration.

“The US has showed a lack of commitment in its implementation of the nuclear deal because its policymakers are addicted to the illegal and futile policy of sanctions and humiliation,” Rouhani said. “This has proved the US to be an unreliable partner to the world and even to its longtime allies.”

Referring to Trump, he added: “We do not wish to engage with political novices … Those who want to tear up the nuclear deal should know that they will be ripping up their own political life by doing so and the world won’t forget their noncompliance.”

Tehran has complained the US is reneging on its obligations. Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, said last week that Tehran had formally complained to the joint commission supervising implementation of the accord over the US senate’s new sanctions against Iranian entities, imposed over Tehran’s testing of missiles.

It is a curiously ironic stand for the regime to make since Iran was adamant during negotiations over the nuclear deal two years ago that “side issues” such as the regime’s ballistic missile program, sponsorship of terrorism and human rights abuses should not be part of the agreement.

When the Obama administration caved into those requests and took them out, the stage was unwittingly set for the Trump administration and Congress to act on those same “side issues” separately and apart from the nuclear deal and now the mullahs are crying foul like squealing babies whose milk bottle has been yanked from their mouths by a stern father.

The Iranian regime clearly wants a double standard on its conduct and now that it isn’t getting it, the mullahs cry foul and threaten to pack up and leave like petulant children.

It’s an appropriate metaphor given how Iranian parliament members acted when European Union policy chief Federica Mogherini showed up for the swearing in ceremony and was promptly surrounded by them in a rush of sophomoric selfies.

The scene was roundly criticized in Iranian state media and on social media for the “strange” behavior being exhibited.

The Fars news agency posted a photo which many social media users felt showed Mogherini unimpressed – and labelled the MPs’ behavior “strange”. One MP, Alireza Salimi, called the behavior “self-surrender to the West”, and said that a committee on the conduct of members may probe the incident – if other MPs complain that the selfies caused “contempt” for parliament.

One popular tweet compared the image to a scene from the film “Malena,” where crowds of men rush to light actress Monica Belluci’s cigarette.

Another made the same point using of an iconic image from Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

But the irony was not in the rush for selfies, but rather the fact that most Iranians are barred from using social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter because of their widespread use by political opponents and dissidents.

It is also ironic to see Iranian MPs swarm a female politician when so many Iranian women are brutalized by misogyny laws passed by the same parliament permitting underage child marriages and restricting job opportunities and educational choices for women.

In fact, women are still prohibited from riding bicycles on public streets throughout Iran.

Now that is more compelling irony.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby in Full Attack Mode Against Trump

August 4, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Iran Lobby in Full Attack Mode Against Trump

The Iran lobby is in full attack mode against President Donald Trump and it’s not a surprise. We predicted as early as last December that the Iran lobby would mobilize to block any moves made by the new Trump administration to curb Iranian regime excesses.

It did not matter what the administration did so long as it might be construed to make things more difficult for the mullahs in Tehran then it deserved fierce opposition from the Iran lobby.

To that end the Iran lobby’s chief architect, the National Iranian American Council, first turned its attention to the debate over immigration, since for the NIAC, it was a perfect opportunity to burnish its credentials as a progressive fighter for human rights. An ironic notion since it all but encourages Iran to abuse its own people by not voicing any opposition to the continued imprisonment, torture and execution of thousands of Iranians.

It then tried to attack the Trump administration over its escalation in Syria in the fight against ISIS and the Assad regime, but as they say in the Deep South, “that dog just wouldn’t hunt.”

The NIAC and its allies got little traction on that issue, especially in light of horrific scenes of chemical attacks by Assad forces on Syrian civilians and the increase of direct attacks on U.S.-backed forces by Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias.

The handwriting was on the wall that trying to defend Iran in Syria was a no-winner for the NIAC.

It then shifted back to familiar ground by pushing the idea that the president was actively seeking a war with Iran and looking for excuses to start one.

It’s a stupid notion since the provocations for starting a conflict with Iran are already abundant and excessive:

Iranian regime has detained American sailors and repeatedly made attack runs at several U.S. warships in international waters warranting the firing of warning shots;
They have falsely arrested and detained several American citizens;
Iranian regime has supported the smuggling of weapons and insurgents to U.S. allies in Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait—home to important U.S. military bases—in an effort to de-stabilize and topple those governments;
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders have consistently made threats of attacks on U.S. personnel in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq and have used their Quds Force units to supply insurgents and militias with IEDs and weapons to target them;
Iranian regime has launched multiple missiles in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions with heavier payload capacity and extended ranges now long enough to strike throughout Europe, Africa and Asia;
Iran mullahs have used cash gained from the lifting of economic sanctions from the nuclear deal not for restarting a moribund economy, but rather to fund its wars in Syria and Yemen with the express purpose of destabilizing Saudi Arabia, the most important Arab ally the U.S. has in the region; and
Iranian regime has continued to escalate cyberattacks against U.S. financial institutions, commercial enterprises and infrastructure elements in a wide-ranging effort to de-stabilize the U.S.

Any of these actions, by themselves, would warrant a strong U.S. response and yet the NIAC and its cohorts in the “echo chamber” of Iranian regime support have always sought to portray the mullahs as some poor, defenseless lambs.

Take for example Mitchell Plitnick, a so-called policy analyst that has bounced around several progressive Jewish outfits and now finds a home as a frequent supporter of the Iranian regime.

He authored a recent editorial that appeared on the same day in noted Iran lobby mouthpiece, Lobelog, and +972 Magazine, that President Trump’s demand for more access for international inspectors to Iranian military bases for evidence of nuclear development work was a “red line” for the mullahs and would effectively kill the deal.

“Access to those sites was an Iranian red line during negotiations, and the agreement to omit that access from the deal was an important component in getting the deal done,” Plitnick writes.

It’s a stupid argument to make since he neglects to mention that Iran’s deep desire to keep its military bases off limits from inspection already created the high probability that Iran is cheating and conducting nuclear work in those safe zones.

Remember, in the ramp up of its nuclear program, which Iran always claimed never existed, the regime spread its development and research work across the vast deserts of Iran and buried them deep in fortified bunkers. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, has never had a complete and thorough accounting of every potential nuclear site in Iran.

Also, Iran was allowed to scrub several sites clean with bulldozers in clearing tons of dirt and debris away before soil samples were taken by Iranians and handed over to the IAEA. Even then, particles of nuclear materials were still detected.

The position that Trita Parsi of the NIAC takes that the president is actively seeking to invalidate the nuclear agreement is false since the truth is that the nuclear agreement is largely being ignored by Iran already.

Also, he fails to note in his extensive press interviews this week that the president’s own State Department has certified Iran every 90 days even though it could have pulled the plug from the president’s swearing in.

All of which means, President Trump is not in a hurry to dump the nuclear deal as much as he is eager to find a plausible pathway for addressing all of the concerns he has with Iran including terrorism, human rights and ballistic missiles.

Parsi’s intense focus on the nuclear deal is yet another distraction to turn attention away from the most menacing aspects of Iran today which is its North Korean-like march to missile dominance.

That is the issue grabbing headlines and global attention and Parsi and his friends are desperate to turn the spotlight away.

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

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

Two Year Anniversary of Iran Nuclear Deal Shows Its Failures

July 14, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif before a meeting in Geneva January 14, 2015. Zarif said on Wednesday that his meeting with Kerry was important to see if progress could be made in narrowing differences on his country’s disputed nuclear program. REUTERS/Rick Wilking (SWITZERLAND – Tags: POLITICS) – RTR4LDZW

Two years ago, President Barack Obama was lauding a landmark nuclear deal, while the image of Iran’s foreign minister, Javid Zarif, shaking hands with U.S. officials was beamed around the world by a global news media largely snookered by the Iran lobby into believing that the Iranian regime had turned the corner and could be trusted as a responsible member of the international community.

What a difference two year’s make.

The world has witnessed the Middle East plunge into chaos with a body count in Syria alone reaching 400,000 dead and four million displaced as refugees. Conflicts rage from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean with the threat of wider wars now appearing on the horizon in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and around the Persian Gulf.

More importantly, conflict is not only confined to the battlefields with armies and proxies, but has been stretched by Iran’s introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles that can now reach well into Europe, Asia and Africa.

Combine that threat with the insidious rise of North Korea’s own mushrooming missile launches and the world is now faced with missile threats from both sides of the planet controlled by autocratic regimes that have shown a complete disregard for the value of human life.

The picture is bleak and the reason for it rests largely on what the Iran nuclear deal failed to accomplish which is to alter the behavior of a regime controlled by mullahs in Tehran who viewed the deal as a windfall energizing their faltering government.

The Obama administration slowly and inexorably whittled away concession after concession at the request of the mullahs and recast the nuclear deal in evolving terms that changed its nature from a potential instrument of regime change to little more than a slight postponement in the regime’s plans for regional domination.

In the annals of international diplomacy, it has vaulted to rank near the Munich agreement that Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler brokered that gave away Austria in terms of futility.

The central conceit of the Iran lobby was that the nuclear agreement would bring Iranian regime back into the fold of civilized nations and empower the “moderate” elements within the government; none of which has come to pass. If anything, the reactionary, cold-blooded mullahs have demonstrated they remain firmly and clearly in control of the levers of powers and were only emboldened by the agreement.

For top mullahs Ali Khamenei, the nuclear agreement only confirmed in his mind that the Obama administration was less concerned about restraining Iran than in securing a historical legacy for the president. Obama showed his inclination to avoid confrontation with Iran and his willingness to compromise on any issue:

Remove human rights and support for terrorism from the terms of the nuclear deal? Check;
Remove any restrictions from Iran’s ballistic missile program from the nuclear deal? Check;
Include provisions to ransom American hostages as a condition of finalizing the nuclear deal? Check;
Eliminate any inspection of suspected nuclear sites in Iran by international inspectors on the ground? Check;
Allow Iranian regime to retain all of its centrifuges and allow it to acquire better and more efficient centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel? Check.

In each case, the Iranian regime was allowed to lift restrictions from some of its more problematic activities such as its missile program, but most importantly, it eliminated “consequences” for the regime’s actions.

The nuclear deal was a badly flawed document because there were no mechanisms to adequately punish the regime for breaking the agreement since it reaps virtually all of its benefits—namely cash—from the outset.

Now the Trump administration is faced with having to live with the consequences of this deal, specifically whether or not to renew another 90-day compliance finding for the JCPOA, as the agreement is called, to Congress.

President Trump is likely to renew the compliance finding since his administration is in the midst of a policy review for Iran, as well as engaging Iranian-backed militia units on the battlefield in Syria.

If Trump does state Iran is in compliance, it would be his second time since taking office in January to do so despite his promise during the 2016 campaign to “rip up” what he called “the worst deal ever,” according to Reuters.

What is troubling are recent reports from German intelligence agencies that the Iranian regime is still actively seeking components used in nuclear weapons manufacturing and research. This and other disturbing actions by the regime over the past two years point to a pattern that the mullahs are still actively and aggressively seeking to build their nuclear program.

The advanced ramp up of its ballistic missile program mirrors the same crash program North Korea pursued in developing its nuclear and missile programs.

None of this stopped the Iran lobby from praising the anniversary of the nuclear deal as the National Iranian American Council issued a self-congratulatory press statement and criticized efforts to dismantle the agreement:

“Unfortunately, however, the JCPOA remains under attack from elements within both countries that prefer conflict over dialogue and mutual suspicion over greater understanding. Continued sanctions, calls from the White House for nations to refrain from investing in Iran, and an increase in military encounters between the US and Iran all threaten the deal. The JCPOA represented an opportunity for the US and Iran to change course, broaden engagement and end the policy of sanctions and antagonism. Unfortunately that opportunity has largely been squandered,” said Trita Parsi, head of the NIAC.

On the second anniversary of the Iran Deal, the remarks to dub the flawed deal, as a good deal continues, by the Iran Lobby. It is indeed time to rid Washington from the Iranian regimes lobbies such as NIAC and from people like Trita Parsi.

Michael Tomlinson