Search Results for: Atieh Bahar

Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

February 9, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

Five Iranian-American groups sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to work for the release of an Iranian-American being held by the Iranian regime and not part of the prisoner swap that occurred last month.

The signatories to the letter were the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, the Pars Equality Center, the National Iranian American Council, Iranian Alliances Across Borders, and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Most of these groups actively supported the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime and have campaigned on behalf of it; most notably the NIAC.

Siamak Namazi has been held in Iranian prison since last October and his continued imprisonment has now become something of a cause amongst groups such as NIAC who have previously not dared to voice any public disagreement with the regime on previous occasions, including the imprisonment of other more notable Iranian-Americans such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, who had been subjected to torture and released as part of the prisoner swap.

The U.S. released seven Iranian nationals held in the U.S., in return and agreed to drop international arrest warrants and charges against 14 Iranians outside of the U.S. who had been involved in the smuggling of arms and nuclear components.

Other Iranian-Americans, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to the New York Times, said they were postponing or scrapping planned trips to Iran until Namazi was released, or at least until the circumstances surrounding his case were clearer since his arrest has stirred anxiety among those who thought the nuclear deal portended a new era.

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd.
At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government.
In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

The ties between Namazi and Trita Parsi of the NIAC previously exposed by Iranlobby.net were also revealed in a Daily Beast expose that detailed how in 1999, Namazi got together with Parsi at a conference in Cyprus. The conference, titled, “Dialogue and Action Between the People of Iran and America,” was convened to help ameliorate U.S.-Iranian relations in advance of reconciliation by forming an aggressive public relations and lobbying response to any anti-Iranian regime policies and legislation.

Two years later Parsi founded the NIAC, which long advocated opening up commercial and financial lines back to Iran with Namazi’s family companies offering to provide foreign companies and investors with connections and access to regime officials in a cozy relationship that no longer appears that cozy.

This is especially ironic since in March 2006 (at the height of the covert Iranian war with the U.S. in Iraq), Parsi told a colleague not to worry about a trip to Tehran, “NIAC has a good name in Iran and your association with it will not harm you.” When the colleague was briefly questioned by the regime, then released, he reported back (PDF) to Parsi that he’d been told the reason he was let go was “that they knew NIAC had never done anything seriously bad against the Islamic Republic.”

The shifting political winds within the Iranian regime have been reflected in the mass dismissals of thousands of proposed candidates for parliamentary election seats, but of more immediate concern is the prospect of mass demonstrations by ordinary Iranians – not over election issues, but because a large number of Iranians who receive public payments have not been paid by the regime. This also shows that as far as the ordinary Iranians are concerned, they have no illusion about the existence of a moderate or any moderation within the mullah’s regime.

An extraordinary directive from the Herasat Office, the regime’s domestic intelligence and security forces, entitled: “Issue: Paying workers’ wages in the final days of the year”:

“With greeting and respect, you are hereby informed that given that the end of the [Persian calendar] year is approaching and taking note of the instructions handed down by the minister and competent authorities regarding timely payment of workers’ wages and back pay, you must instruct that all wages, bonuses, back pay and overtime pay be paid no later than February 24, 2016 in order to prevent any possible gatherings or sit-ins and their related negative consequences.

“You are reminded that given the upcoming elections of the Assembly of Experts and Islamic Assembly (Parliament), this issue must be treated with especial importance and sensitivity in order to prevent any misuse of this matter for publicity in particular in the realm of workers’ protests.”

In other words, a lot of Iranians haven’t been paid their salaries, and the Khamenei regime is ordering that they be paid the money they’re owed by February 24, two days before the election, in the hope of defusing any potential mass protests.

The prospect of election protests is worrisome to regime leaders, especially since these elections will be held at the same time International Women’s Day is observed, which is all the more problematic for the regime when one considers the abysmal state of women’s rights in the regime today.

Nothing exemplifies this more than reports that Press TV, the regime’s state-run, English language news channel, suspended two executives on Monday after a prominent newscaster exposed that she had endured years of sexual harassment from them.

The newscaster, Sheena Shirani, has fled the country according to the New York Times.

Press TV is a part of the Voice and Vision organization of Iran, a powerful state media organization that is widely seen as a tool of the country’s hardline factions. One expatriate journalist who previously worked for Newsweek said that Emadi doubled as an interrogator in the Evin prison and once interrogated him. Emadi was later placed on a European blacklist of human rights violators.

The incident has also led to debate on social media. Several women have said such forms of harassment are commonplace in Iran under the mullahs rule, where unemployment is high and laws overwhelmingly favor men.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Turns on Its Own

October 29, 2015 by admin

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen, has been credited with helping found the Iran lobby including the creation of the National Iranian American Council alongside Trita Parsi as the primary vehicle for advocating for a nuclear agreement lifting economic sanctions on the regime.

The Daily Beast chronicled his family’s involvement as an “intellectual architect” for the NIAC as a pathway for empowering those within the regime whom he had a close relationship with and believed by helping secure an agreement it would boost his fortunes within the regime.

In the immortal words of Kevin Spacey who plays the scheming Frank Underwood on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” “We’re all victims of our own hubris at times.”

Truer words were never spoken about the Iran lobby because on the verge of reaping their perceived successes, they discover all they really are, are puppets for a regime of mullahs whose intent is only focused on preserving their own power.

That is because according to regime media reports, while visiting family in Tehran, Namazi was arrested by Revolutionary Guards Corp soldiers and tossed into the notorious Evin Prison.

There is an irony here on par with Alfred Nobel inventing dynamite and then creating the Nobel Peace Prize after his invention was used in war.

Namazi joins four other Americans who are being held hostage by the regime, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former Marine Amir Hekmati and the former FBI agent Robert Levinson.

According to a piece in American Thinker, Parsi and Namazi founded NIAC as a way to lobby for the removal of sanctions against the regime and promote its foreign policy while combatting anti-regime forces in the U.S.

Both Parsi and Namazi reportedly enjoyed close ties and access to Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, the regime’s president and foreign minister, with Parsi being seen traveling with and in close discussions with the regime delegation during nuclear talks.

Conspicuously, the NIAC have been silent on the issue, declining comment and social media feeds for Parsi and other NIAC staff is devoid of any mention of the arrest.

But Hassan Dai, editor of the Iranian American Forum who won a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Parsi, speculated that the arrest suggests a power struggle of sorts within the regime’s leadership.

Dai explained in an interview with Breitbart News that Namazi had consistently “lobbied in favor of a faction of the regime,” which upset the mullahs because it would only be acceptable to “lobby for the whole regime.”

The fight between the factions in Iran is a fight for “the best solution to preserve the regime,” he explained, adding that groups like NIAC have never sided with true “reformists,” but with people who wish to employ a different strategy to empower the regime, such as Rouhani and former President Akbar Rafsanjani.

Because Namazi and NIAC prefer one faction over the other, “they are undermining the Supreme Leader. They are undermining the Revolutionary Guard,” Dai explained. “When you lobby U.S. policymakers to remove sanctions against Iran with the rationale that it will help reform the regime, you undermine the Supreme Leader, because he wants them to accommodate to the regime now.”

The arrest of Namazi sends a message from Iran’s rulers that “Rouhani has no power,” Dai concluded. “He cannot even protect his own friend.”

Breitbart News further speculates – and rightly so – that the arrest pours cold water on the notion that securing the nuclear deal would empower “moderates” within the regime and help reform it. Evidence since agreeing to the nuclear contradicts that idea completely with the conviction of Rezaian, the test launch of an illegal ballistic missile and the launching of a new offensive in Syria alongside Russian forces.

The arrest of Namazi demonstrates that the leadership of the Iran regime is of one mind and firmly in the control of Ali Khamenei and his religious cohorts and that any idea of moderation within the regime is a pipe dream; which may go to explain why coming off of the NIAC’s recent leadership conference to celebrate the nuclear deal, Parsi’s Twitter feed was filled with posts condemning Saudi Arabia, a bitter enemy of Iran and locked in fighting in Yemen.

If Parsi doesn’t tow the mullahs’ line, he might find a different kind of reception party the next time he travels to Tehran and end up sitting next to his buddy Namazi.

By Michael Tomlinson

Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

October 27, 2015 by admin

Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

Halloween involves kids (and adults) firing up their imaginations to come up with costumes and then go knocking door to door seeking treats and getting the odd trick played on them maybe in a haunted house. For the Iran lobby, Halloween came a week early as the chief advocate, the National Iranian American Council, held its annual leadership conference this weekend.

It’s worth noting that the NIAC bills its event as a premier conference for the nation’s Iranian-American community, but its agenda and participants hardly represent the views and beliefs of the estimated one million Iranian-Americans living in the U.S.

In fact, the line-up of speakers at this year’s conference reads more like a line-up card of Iran regime boosters and potential business partners than any group seriously examining the daunting challenges remaining between the U.S. and Iran. What is even more amazing are the lack of any speakers who have first-hand experience with the abysmal human rights situation in Iran, nor were there any speakers offering views on the sizable opposition worldwide to the regime amongst the Iranian diaspora.

Among the highlights of this gallery of apologists and appeasers includes:

Bijan Khajehpour, who founded Atieh International and the related Atieh Bahar which employed NIAC staffers to serve as a conduit for directing foreign companies to invest into the regime through the access it provided to top regime officials who controlled most of Iran’s economy through a complex web of shadow companies. Atieh was the subject of an in-depth piece in The Daily Beast on its start and close relationship with leading supporters of the regime and how it profited from those ties and in advocating for a lifting of sanctions against Iran;
Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund which was the largest funder of the lobbying campaign in support of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions against the regime. It alone provided NIAC with at $150,000 for its advocacy work on behalf of the nuclear deal; not including money given by its staff. Commentary Magazine poured through tax records to glean the wide scope of Ploughshares giving to groups working on behalf of the regime’s cause; and
Alan Eyre, the U.S. State Department’s Persian-language spokesman who came under fire recently for promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy sites demonizing American Jewish groups, as well as postings on his personal social media praising the regime’s controversial Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani according to the Washington Free Beacon. Eyre also posted links to Lobelog, a well-known blog dedicated to supporting the regime’s key messages.

The conference also featured several speakers who are actively seeking business deals within the regime including: Ned Lamont, chairman of Lamont Digital Systems; Jay Pelosky, a self-described advisor on emerging markets who recently visited Iran; and Amir Handjani, president of PG International Commodity Trading Services, a leading importer of agricultural commodities in the Iranian market.

We can’t resist one dig at Reza Marashi of NIAC who called the gathering the “world cup of Iranian-Americans.”

One interesting tidbit were comments made by Dr. Farideh Farhi who lamented the fact the nuclear deal had not led to substantial changes in U.S. policy towards the regime, but failed to note the swift shifts in Iranian policy towards the rest of the world in the rapid buildup of its military in Syria and launching of a new ballistic missile in violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions; both provocative acts.

This was followed by a tweet by Trita Parsi, NIAC’s head honcho, who described comments made by Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Mehdi Hasan, a commentator for Al Jazeera’s English broadcast, as saying about the panic from neighboring Arab nations about the nuclear deal: “If someone panics, you slap them in the face, you don’t indulge them.”

An appropriate comment since it neatly encapsulates the Iran lobby’s response to concerns over what the Iran regime will do now in the wake of the nuclear agreement. The recent rise in belligerent military action, coordination with Russia in blasting Syrian rebels back to the Stone Age and the conviction of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian all point to a slide into anarchy which has even alarmed Democratic lawmakers who initially supported the nuclear deal, but now have begun offering up new legislation designed to keep the regime in check.

The NIAC conference was predictable in celebrating its perceived win with the nuclear deal and the effort now to safeguard potential foreign investment after “Implementation Day” on December 15 when the U.S. will pave the way by lifting economic sanctions and allow Iran to rejoin the world of international commerce.

But the conference also revealed the biggest weaknesses of the lobby which was its inability or unwillingness to meet the most troublesome aspects of the Iran regime head-on; namely it horrific human rights record which leaves a deep and wide trail for the world’s media to follow.

With every arrest, every beating, every public hanging and every denunciation of a minority religious or ethnic group, the regime weakens any argument the lobby can make and increases the pressure on groups such as the NIAC to answer basic questions of “why aren’t you speaking out against the killing of X group?”

Which is why the NIAC conference was so focused on economic issues since the regime is desperate to not only get its hands on the estimated $150 billion in frozen assets to help pay off its military obligations in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, but is equally anxious to bring in foreign investment to help prop up an economy devastated by gross mismanagement and corruption by regime officials.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Stands to Reap Rewards of Nuclear Deal

September 16, 2015 by admin

Iran Lobby Stands to Reap Rewards of Nuclear Deal

An in-depth piece of reporting by Alex Shirazi (a pseudonym of an Iranian dissident) in The Daily Beast examined the financial windfall key members of the Iran lobby are due to inherit through passage of the nuclear agreement with the Iran regime; specifically the involvement of an Iranian family called the Namazis which played a key role in the creation of the National Iranian American Council, the lead lobbying force for the regime.

Shirazi examines the family’s history coming out the Iranian revolution and the opportunity it saw to turn a thawing in relations between the U.S. and the Iran regime into serious business opportunities, including Pari Namazi and her husband, Bijan Khajehpour, who returned to Tehran in 1993 to launch a company called Atieh Bahar Counsulting, offering services to foreign companies interested in doing business in Iran.

That company provided a pipeline of communication directly into the leadership of the regime and after more family members joined the enterprise, Atieh’s client list rapidly grew to include global brands such as “German engineering giant Siemens; major oil companies BP, Statoil, and Shell; car companies Toyota, BMW, Daimler, Chrysler, and Honda; telecom giants MTN, Nokia, Alcatel; and international banks such as HSBC,” according to Shirazi.

But that success was marred by their close relationship with leaders of regime who were revealed to be hip deep in corruption schemes including Mehdi Hashemi, the son of then regime president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was later imprisoned on bribery charges.

Coupled with revelations that the regime was in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2002 by disclosures from the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading Iranian dissident group, the Namazis’ saw their fortunes wan until Bijan Khajehpour began a relationship with Hassan Rouhani who would later be the handpicked president and sold to the world as the “moderate” face of the Iran regime.

With this new relationship, Shirazi describes the creation of the strategy that gave birth to the NIAC and the Iran lobby as Siamak Namazi met with Trita Parsi and together issued the document that laid the groundwork for the Iran lobby’s work:

Hold “seminars in lobbying for Iranian-American youth and intern opportunities in Washington DC.”

Increase “awareness amongst Iranian-Americans and Americans about the effects of sanctions, both at home and in Iran.”

End “the taboo of working for a new approach on Iran”—i.e., end the then-two-decade-old U.S. policy of containment.

Soon after the NIAC was created which Parsi heads and gave birth to an official lobbying arm, NIAC Action, both of which led the vanguard action pushing for the Iran nuclear deal.

Most interestingly, Shirazi describes how while serving as president of NIAC, Parsi wrote intelligence briefings as an “affiliate analyst in Washington, D.C.” for Atieh, focusing on such topics as whether or not the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) would revive its anti-Iran campaigning on the eve of the Iraq war, or on the efforts by the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MeK), an Iranian opposition group to oppose the regime.

Parsi became a strong booster of Khajehpour to American media while being paid by for his work and not disclosing that financial arrangement with Atieh.

With almost half a million Iranian Americans living in the U.S., NIAC only boasts 5,000 dues paying members, but claims a vast network of supporters for the regime’s causes. NIAC has also served as a proving ground for staffers who are funneled into U.S. government positions and other non-governmental organizations supportive of the regime.

Shirazi describes the background of Reza Marashi, who works for NIAC after coming to from a stint at Atieh and with the U.S. State Department as an Iran desk officer, a similar position that has other NIAC staffers, most notably Sahar Nowrouzzadeh who is now National Security Council director for Iran in the Obama administration and therefore the top U.S. official for Iran policy, have occupied.

Interestingly enough, Nowrouzzadeh does not list her employment as NIAC and Marashi refuses to acknowledge his time at Atieh.

Shirazi points out, as we did on this blog previously, how Parsi and the NIAC public and social media statements have hardly mentioned any criticism of regime policy, nor condemned the most notorious actions of the regime such as the three proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen it is fighting, nor the continued imprisonment of Iranian Americans such as Amir Hekmati and Saeed Abedini.

What the NIAC does focus on specifically is the lifting of sanctions against the regime and opposing any efforts within and outside the U.S. government to support regime change within Iran, both of which would have serious consequences on the prospects of the Namazi family.

Shirazi also recounts the failure of Parsi’s defamation lawsuit in 2008 against Hassan Dai, an Iranian exile working as an investigative journalist with the Voice of America. That lawsuit revealed a trove of documents substantiating much of the relationship Parsi and NIAC had with the regime leadership.

The reach and ambition of the NIAC was revealed this week by Fox News’ Ed Henry who disclosed that emails released from Hillary Clinton’s personal server included a request from former president Bill Clinton to State Department staff about the possibility of delivering a paid speech to a gathering hosted by NIAC. President Clinton eventually declined the speech, but the incident demonstrated Parsi’s desire to push into the highest levels of American policy making.

By Michael Tomlinson

Well-Funded Iran Lobby Makes Trusting Regime Appealing

August 27, 2015 by admin

Well-Funded Iran Lobby Makes Trusting Regime Appealing

The central conceit of the proposed nuclear weapons deal with the Iran regime is a simple one: Iran’s mullahs can be trusted to act moderately and peacefully. It’s an idea that is hopeful, optimistic and enticing. It’s an idea propagated by the extensive lobbying and PR machine built up to support the mullahs in Tehran. It is an idea designed to reassure nervous Americans and provide political cover for wavering congressional lawmakers.

It is an idea fatally flawed.

The concept of trust is defined as a “firm belief in the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; confidence or reliance.” In order for trust to work, it assumes that the party in question – in this case the religious theocracy ruling Iran – has either demonstrated an ability to be trusted or expressed a desire to be trusted and then lives up to it.

In the case of the mullahs, nothing could be further from the truth. In their every action, the Iran regime has demonstrated again and again that it cannot be a reliable partner in any international agreement.

On the nuclear issue alone, Iran regime signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty yet violated the terms of the treaty by engaging in nuclear weapons development prior to 2003 and through 2012, leading to the stockpiling of 20 percent enriched uranium and the development of related weapons programs such as warhead detonation and missile delivery design. The International Atomic Energy Agency has found Iran in non-compliance repeatedly over the past decade.

Putting the nuclear issue aside for a moment, Iran also signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, but moved forward in supporting the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad after he used chemical weapons on his own people. Interestingly enough, while the regime’s top mullah Ali Khamenei has issued a much-ballyhooed “fatwa” or religious edict proscribing the use of nuclear weapons, he did not rule out the development of those weapons, nor did he mention chemical or biological weapons.

For the Iran regime language and its nuances is vital to its aims which is why the proposed nuclear agreement is a paltry 159 pages and does even include two secret side deals with the IAEA. The SALT and START treaties between the U.S. and Soviet Union dwarf it with detailed provisions and requirements.

This explains why the regime has strenuously held out for a finite time limit in any further sanctions or limits on its nuclear development; the mullahs have the patience of Job and are content to outwait the rest of the world. The fact that the proposed deal has no further limitations after 10 years means Iranian regime is free to scale up to industrial capacity in enriching uranium. The fact that its centrifuges will not be destroyed – only unplugged and stored – allowing Iranian regime to keep its refining infrastructure intact.

All we have done is kick the can down the road for a decade and allow another administration and Congress to deal with the mess.

Oddly enough, those elected officials supporting the deal have basically placed their faith and re-election hopes in the hands of the mullahs. There can be no other interpretation of their support. They are betting on the mullahs which seems an inane act unless you consider the lobbying force the mullahs have deployed.

Michael Rubin in a piece for Commentary delves deeply into the financial support for the Iran lobby; looking specifically at the Ploughshares Fund which spreads its millions of dollars around to a number of regime supporters, including the National Iranian American Council. He also connects the dots of how many staffers and activists supporting the regime are funneled through groups and entities with close ties to the regime.

“Those staffing NIAC, for example, have always sought an end to sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many had worked for Atieh Bahar, a Tehran-based consultancy close to former Iranian regime President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. They are not chameleons, changing their stripes to match their funders,” Rubin said.

“When NIAC policy director Reza Marashi, an Atieh Bahar alum, worked for the State Department during the George W. Bush years, he was not pro-democracy agenda, but was understood to be sympathetic to an embrace rather than isolation of Iran. Indeed, his persistent questions about the recipients of U.S. aid inside Iran raised security concerns,” he said. “Likewise, when NIAC received a couple hundred thousand dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy, Trita channeled it to organizations close to the Iranian government.”

Rubin lists the extensive donations made by Ploughshares to benefit regime supporters, including:

$210,000 to the Arms Control Association for “influencing…US policy toward Iran.”
$80,000 to the Atlantic Council to support the Iran Task Force and another $130,000 for the South Asian Program;
Funded the Center for New American Security to give “boot camps” to Congressional staffers “on the nature of Iran’s nuclear program,” in other words, to lobby them;
Underwrote the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s efforts “to support an integrated lobbying strategy to build support for pragmatic approaches to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue;”
$100,000 to J Street to “educate” on behalf of an Iran deal;
$150,000 to the National Iranian American Council for its advocacy on behalf of the Iran deal, not including money given individually to its staff;
$75,000 to National Security Network to “educate media and policymakers about policy options to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon;”
Blogger Jeffrey Lewis criticized and downplayed the Associated Press’ revelation about a side deal between Iran and the IAEA gutting verification by allowing Iran to test itself, but did not acknowledge a $75,000 gift to his home institution from Ploughshares;
The Aspen Institute also received Ploughshares money to educate Congressmen and senior staffers about Iran policy options, again, effectively to lobby them; and
$75,000 to Gulf-2000, a listserv run by former Carter Iran hand and “October Surprise” conspiracy theorist Gary Sick, who has used Gulf-2000 to become a “Journolist”-style clearing house to feed pro-Iran talking points to journalists.

All of these groups work in aligning the interests of the mullahs and in pressing for a deal that releases them of any obligations to change their behavior while setting the stage for turmoil down the road.

By Michael Tomlinson

Call for Investigation into VOA for Pro-Iran Corruption

October 18, 2014 by admin

Archive Photo -Taken from Google for Iran lobbies and appeasers

The Washington Free Beacon, has recently reported that a group of bipartisan congressmen have written to Senator Kerry asking for a probe in to the VOA- Persian program’s pro-Iranian regime policies. The program is viewed by the Iranian diaspora as biased and cozy to the Iranian dictatorship for widely censoring the views and activities of the pro regime-change opposition in Iran, or for always offering a negative and absurd picture perpetuated by Iranian intelligence or Iranian lobbies abroad.

The report written by Adam Kredo, a senior commentator of the website, was published on October 17, 2014 on the website.

Excerpts of the article that show how the media is used in favor of the Iranian regime and its lobbies to advocate favorable reports to the Mullahs in Iran is published here:

“Congress is calling for an investigation into Voice of America’s (VOA) Persian language news service as a result of what they say is the station’s systemic pro-Iran bias and cozy ties to the anti-American ruling regime, according to a letter sent recently to Secretary of State John Kerry”, writes Adam Kredo.

Explaining the background, Washington Free Beacon (WFB) writes: “Lawmakers and Iranian dissidents have long accused VOA’s Persian News Network (PNN) of producing sympathetic coverage of the Iranian regime and blacklisting prominent Iranian opposition voices from appearing on the air.”

“The call from Congress for an investigation into these alleged practices comes just a month after the Washington Free Beacon revealed that PNN had banned from the network a prominent Iranian opposition member and placed him on a so-called “black list” after he attacked Iran’s ruling regime for sponsoring terrorism.”

The article continues, “Nine House lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are now demanding that the State Department launch a formal investigation into potential mismanagement at PNN, according to a letter sent to Kerry on Wednesday and obtained by the Free Beacon.”

“We request that you [Kerry] look into this matter and investigate any possible mismanagement and slanted coverage of news by VOA-PNN, including the oversight of management, staffing, and content,” the lawmakers wrote.

“Those members concerned about PNN’s coverage include Reps. Steve Cohen (D., Tenn.), Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.), Steve Stockman (R., Texas), Trent Franks (R., Ariz.), Howard Coble (R., N.C.), and several others.”

The core of the corruption

In the article, Adam Kredo explains that “The lawmakers say that their Iranian-American constituents have been complaining about PNN’s failure to cover Iran’s human rights abuses and other matters that are potentially embarrassing to the ruling regime.

“We have received complaints from our Iranian-American constituents that VOA-PNN programs have neglected to adequately cover the abysmal situation of human rights violations in Iran, particularly the alarming and dramatic rise in executions,” they write in the letter.

Examples of the misbehavior of VOA-PNN

Giving examples of the misbehavior of the program, WFB reiterates: “During [Iranian] President Hassan Rouhani’s first term in office, nearly 900 hangings have been ordered with very few of these executions receiving VOA-PNN coverage,” they say. “In our efforts to protect and give voice to vulnerable populations, we must ensure that VOA-PNN upholds its mission to provide truthful news and does not suppress the voices of those Iranians seeking human rights protections and Democratic change in their country.”

“In addition to a significant rise in executions, including one scheduled for a female rape victim who spoke out against her attacker, Iran has continued its pursuit of nuclear weapons and support for terrorism in the Middle East.”

“PNN critics, including former staffers and guests, have discussed systematic corruption at the network that includes a policy of censoring those who criticize the regime and those who may reveal information damaging to the network’s senior officials, some of whom have had ties to the Iranian regime,” WFB’s article continues.

“We are concerned that this network, which is meant to promote freedom and democracy through objective news and information, may have harmed instead of helped the plight of Iranians seeking to claim their human rights,” the lawmakers state in their letter.

Iranian-American community leaders welcomed Congress’ call to investigate PNN.

Majid Sadeghpour, political director of the Organization of Iranian-American Communities-US (OIAC), said that U.S. taxpayers expect better of VOA.

“Regrettably, while VOA-PNN has given voice to the pro-Tehran crowd inside the Beltway, it has censored the views of those who seek a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic in Iran,” said Sadeghpour in a statement provided to the Free Beacon.

Regime opponents who have been invited onto PNN say that their comments have been censored, and in some cases have been thrown off the air.

Nikahang Kowsar, an Iranian cartoonist, journalist, and regime critic, told the Free Beacon that he was booted off PNN’s airwaves in March, in the midst of an interview, for discussing corruption in Iran’s oil industry that could be traced back to high-level officials.

Kowsar was being interviewed on VOA Persian’s Last Page program when the host was apparently ordered to stop the interview.

“I was waiting for the second round of questions” when a PNN host claimed that “he was told and ordered not to ask any more questions to me,” recalled Kowsar. “Then a gentleman from the studio came and disconnected my microphone.”

Kowsar said he was shocked by the experience. He later petitioned the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees VOA and PNN, about the incident.

“When I was in Iran I went to prison for drawing a cartoon, I was cut off from national TV … I was censored in Iran, so somebody who has been censored inside the Islamic republic is not news. But being in the VOA studios in the U.S., the land of the free, and then learning that I have to be censored is … news.”

“If VOA is the channel that wants to talk about American values and freedom of speech and is run by people who have the Islamic republic mindset, that’s not nice,” Kowsar said. “In a way you see that the Islamic republic has exported its values to the heart of Washington and I can’t tolerate that.”

In September – a few months after Kowsar was booted off air – Majid Mohammadi, an Iranian-American academic and critic of Tehran’s hardline regime, was purportedly placed on the station’s “black list” for comparing the Islamic Republic to the terror group Islamic State (IS, ISIS, or ISIL).

“After the program, I was called and one of the staff members of PNN (Mr. Homan Bakhtiar) told me that Mr. Mohammad Manzarpour, the editor, has put me in the black list and PNN will no longer contact me for providing my expertise on Middle East issues in VOA Persian programs,” Mohammadi later wrote in a letter to the BBG.

PNN editor Manzarpour has been singled out for particular criticism by several of the station’s critics and even former employees who have worked with him.

Manzarpour, they allege, has had ties to the Iranian regime and uses his platform at PNN to censor information he finds objectionable.

Manzarpour, his critics note, has previously worked for Iran’s Atieh Bahar Consulting company, which helps foreign companies invest in Iran’s oil sector and “acts as intermediary between them and the government,” according to the Iranian American Forum.

Manzarpour’s previous ties to Atieh Bahar could influence his editorial decisions at PNN, Kowsar said.

“There is something wrong over there, a virus,” Kowsar explained. “You feel there is a sort of conflict of interest over there. Why should somebody coming from Atieh Bahar be in charge of the editorial staff over there?”

“When he cuts me off from a program relating somehow to the oil [industry] … you feel something sketchy over there,” he said.

Read the Source article here

Namazi, NIAC Ringleader

August 21, 2014 by admin

In June 2001, just months after Parsi relocated to the US to begin work as Director of Development at the American-Iranian Council (AIC), he began formulating a plan to set up his own Washington-based NGO.

Assisting Parsi in the process was Siamak’s father, Baquer, who had established the NGO, Hamyaran, in Iran and had facilitated the participation of Parsi and Siamak at the Cypress conference in 1999.

Also involved in creating the new NGO was Abbas Edalat, an Iranian academic working in the UK who in 1999 had established the Science & Arts Foundation (SAF), an NGO to provide computers and internet services in schools in Iran.[1] In 2005 he founded the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), another NGO, to entice anti-war groups to support the mullahs’ political agenda.

Details of Parsi’s involvement with Baquer and Edalat were made public during the defamation lawsuit filed by Parsi and NIAC against Hassan Daioleslam in 2008.

The first available Parsi email, dated June 17, 2001, was sent to four Iranian Americans, all affiliated to Edalat’s SAF organization, and a US lawyer, about an upcoming conference call to discuss the structure of the new NGO. SAF had attracted many prominent and successful Iranian Americans who, in turn, were asked to assist Parsi set up the political NGO in Washington. The four Iranian Americans are:

Payman Ababshahi – senior research scientist at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
Esmail Ghorbani – electrical engineer and founder of Enginuity Search.
Susan Tahmasebi – women’s rights and civil society activist.
Fereydoun Taslimi – Chief Technology Officer at PerformanceIT and founder of Informatics Sciences.

The lawyer, Brian L. Oliner, founded the charity, Children of Persia. In the June 17^th email, Parsi listed five issues he wanted to discuss:

Lift sanctions or grant exemption for non-profits?

501C3 or Not?
Extent of cooperation with other groups.
When to go public?
Importance of doing the groundwork in Congress.

Parsi said a “key decision” for the group was whether the new NGO should lobby to lift all economic sanctions on Iran or “simply lobby for an exemption for non-profits.” Parsi then lectured the Iranian Americans, misinforming them about the politics behind the sanctions. Parsi said:

It is important to keep the following in mind: The main purpose of the sanctions are not to halt Iran’s alleged attempts to acquire WMDs or halt its alleged support to terrorist groups. The main purpose is to constitute a political obstacle to a US-Iran dialogue and improved US-Iran dialogue and improved US-Iran relations. From the Israeli perspective (the sole force behind the lobby efforts to impose and now extend the sanctions), every step Washington takes toward Tehran is a step away from Tel Aviv.[2]

Parsi told the Iranian Americans the new NGO should have the ability to lobby every member of Congress:

In order to be successful, we must have the resources to meet with all offices on the Hill (app.535). We should be careful about giving the impression of being able to successfully carry through with our mission until we have gathered the necessary sources. [emphasis added][3]

After their conference call, Parsi distributed an email with the minutes of their conversation. During the call, the Iranian Americans said they preferred the NGO initially lobby for an exemption for non profits, rather than the removal of all sanctions.

Parsi and Edalat disagreed. On June 23, 2001, Parsi sent an email to the group, supporting Edalat’s proposal to have the NGO both lobby to remove sanctions, as well as seek an exemption for non-profits. Parsi wrote:

I think Prof. Edalat is right on point. Combining the two goals will also enable us to work with allies both within and outside Congress who perhaps would oppose an effort to just get the NGO exemption, as such a move might make the lifting of the sanctions altogether more difficult.[4]

Parsi discussed the contents of the minutes from their conference call.

There has been silence since the draft minutes of last week’s telephone conference was sent to the group for your review and approval. I assume everyone has been busy, but it would be good if we could finish the minutes by Tuesday so that we can follow Mr. Ba[qu]er Namazi’s instructions and sen[d] it to Amb. Bill Miller.[5] [emphasis added]

The email reveals that Baquer Namazi is the ringleader of the group, giving instructions to Parsi and the others. Parsi is thus working with Namazi, who has close ties to the Iranian regime, and whose family members work for one of the top consulting companies in Tehran with multiple links to government officials and ministries.

The email indicates Parsi also was working with William G. Miller, then an advisor for the Search for Common Ground and a member of the board of the American Iranian Council. He earlier had been a political officer at the US Consulate in Isfahan (1959-62) and Embassy in Tehran (1962-64).

On June 25, 2001, Parsi sent an email to Fereydoun Taslimi, one of the four Iranian Americans,

regarding the minutes of the conference call, which was copied to the other members of the group. Taslimi was not pleased with the draft minutes and wanted changes.

Parsi acknowledged to Taslimi that the group preferred to restrict lobbying for the new NGO to the removal of sanctions on non-profits:

Your point on giving NGO exemption priority is well taken. In the minutes, it currently states that a majority favors that but that we also saw the need for more research. That is my understanding of our meeting, please correct me if I am mistaken.[6]

Parsi said he would “add text regarding the [group’s] wish to keep things loose without an official organization, my apologies for forgetting to emphasize that more.” He also attempted to persuade the group to change their position, stating, “Few Congressmen will support a 1-3 (sic) loosely organized charitable organizations (sic) that are (sic) not even allowed to lobby in the first place.”[7]

Additional emails are unavailable to explain what happened next. When Parsi announced the establishment of NIAC in the spring of 2002, the four Iranian Americans who had participated in the discussions of its agenda were nowhere to be seen.

Two of the Iranian Americans – Abranshahi and Tahmasebi – were later named officers of the SAF branch in Maryland, along with Edalat.

Siamak Namazi’s brother in law, Bijan Khajdhpour, who is the head of Atieh International, became the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at SAF.
[1] Edalat set up a branch in New York City in 1999 and another branch in Rockville, Maryland, in 2003.

[2] Email from Trita Parsi, Conference Call material, June 17, 2001.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Email from Trita Parsi, Re: Conference Call minutes, June 23, 2001.

[5] Email from Trita Parsi, Re: Conference Call minutes, June 23, 2001.

[6] http://www.iranian-americans.com/docs/ned1/conferenceCall.pdf

[7] Ibid.

Read more about NIAC:

Bogus Memberships & Supporters
Survey
Lobbying
Iranians for International Cooperation
Defamation Lawsuit
People’s Mojahedin
Trita Parsi Biography
Parsi/Namazi Lobbying Plan
Parsi Links to Namazi & Iranian Regime
Collaborating with Iran’s Ambassador

Parsi Links to Namazi & Iranian Regime

August 21, 2014 by admin

It’s unclear how and when Parsi first met Siamak Namazi. An article in the Washington Times said they initially got together in 1996, when Parsi “was a student in Sweden.”[1]

This may be true but, as previously discussed above, Parsi has deliberately avoided all mention of his undergraduate education in his CVs and other biography materials. Where and when he went to undergraduate school is unclear.

Siamak in 1996 was in Tehran for awhile, completing his military service, and then returned to the US to begin graduate studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Siamak, born in Iran on October 14, 1971, left the country with his family when he was 12. In the years that followed, he would move 11 times in 18 years, experiencing a wide range of cultures, from Nairobi, Kenya, to White Plains, New York.

After completing an undergraduate degree at Tufts University in Boston, Siamak was offered a position with an NGO in Cairo, Egypt, where his father worked. Siamak declined the job and instead traveled to Tehran in 1994 to complete compulsory military duty. Most Iranians who oppose the regime refuse to serve in its military or they make a payment in lieu of the requirement.

Siamak volunteered to return to Iran. He remained there for two and a half years, serving as a duty officer at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning.

No public information could be located on Parsi’s participation, payment, or avoidance of the regime’s compulsory military duty.

Maybe Parsi and Siamak met while they both were in Iran. Parsi did not travel to the US until the summer of 1997, when he went to work as an intern for then Congressman Robert Ney. If Parsi and Siamak didn’t meet in Iran, where did they cross paths?

What is known is that they share a sympathetic view toward the Iranian regime and had a common interest in organizing Iranian expats to influence US governmental policies to remove the sanctions in Iran.

Parsi returned to Sweden after finishing his internship in August 1997. Siamak concluded his graduate degree at Rutgers in 1998. While at the university, he occasionally published an article for Iranian.com, an Iranian community website founded in 1995.

In 1998 article, Siamak said Iranian-Americans should study and better understand the American political system “in order to influence it.”[2] He applauded the creation of Parsi’s NGO, Iranians for International Cooperation (IIC), and said Iranian-Americans needed to add their “cultural values and ideas to the American political landscape.”[3]

Siamak said “Iran stands to gain substantially should its expatriate population hold decision-making power in foreign lands.”[4] [emphasis added] The assimilation and naturalization of the Iranian expatriate population, he said, was “in accordance with the long-term interests of Iran.”[5] [emphasis added]

Siamak asked readers to “picture the mood in the US Congress with Senators of Iranian origin.” He asked rhetorically, “Could France have sold the sophisticated technology it did to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war (sic) if the French foreign ministry housed influential French-Iranian?”[6]

Atieh Bahar

Atieh Bahar (AB) is a influential consultancy firm in Iran with close ties and partnerships with the government.

AB was founded in 1993 by Pari Namazi, Siamak’s sister, and her husband, Bijan Khajehpour. The company’s legal division is headed by Babak Namazi, Siamak’s brother.

AB provides market research, public affairs, recruitment, market intelligence, business strategies, and legal assistance to companies in Iran and others looking to enter the market.

AB also contracts with government ministries and banks, as well as direct and indirect partnerships with energy and telecom companies.

Albrecht Frischenschlager, an AB Director, manages FTZ Services, a joint venture with three government free zones in Iran. His partner at Middle East Strategies is Hatami Yazd, the former head of the Bank of Saderat Iran, the country’s second largest bank. This bank and two others affiliated with Hatami are under US sanctions.

Siamak statement and question are revealing. During the early years of the war, France was aligned with Arab nations and much of the rest of the world, including the United States, in opposing Khomeini’s Iran, which sought to topple Saddam’s regime and replace it with an Islamic republic. Siamak implies France would have been blocked from supplying arms to Iraq had French-Iranians been in the foreign ministry. In other words, France would not have aligned with the West but in support of Iran’s ruling mullahs. Siamak identifies with the Iranian regime and opposes the West.

After finishing graduate school, Siamak set up a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. called Future Alliance International (FAI) to promote business opportunities in Iran. The idea likely originated from Siamak’s sister, Pari, and her husband, Bijan Khajeh Pour, who had returned to Iran in 1993 to set up a consulting firm, called Atieh Bahar, to assist foreign companies enter the Iranian market. Atieh Bahar has been highly successful due to its close ties to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and government ministries.

In 1998, Siamak’s father set up the NGO, Hamyaran, to monitor and control other Iranian NGOs and international organizations operating in Iran.

Siamak and Parsi presented their paper at the conference in Cypress in 1999. At the time, Siamak was likely living in Tehran. What is known is that he moved in 1999 to Iran to begin work at Atieh Bahar.

Parsi founded NIAC in 2002 and began work on a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. During this time, Atieh Bahar hired Parsi to write a newsletter. Parsi acknowledged he produced about 15 newsletters for the Iranian consulting company.[7]

Soon after establishing NIAC, Parsi applied for a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to produce a video and media training workshop in Iran. Non-Iranian groups are required to partner with an Iranian NGO for projects in Iran. It also has to be approved by Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

NIAC Collaborations with Atieh BaharOver the years, NIAC and Atieh Bahar have often collaborated Biajan Khajehpour, the head of AB, has appeared on panel discussions sponsored by NIAC, including:

Khajehpour was a panelist at the NIAC Leadership Conference in 2012.

Parsi moderated a NIAC panel discussion on “Assessing the Iran Nuclear Talks” in May 2012 that featured Khajahpour.

Khajehpour was a panelist on the NIAC “Hill Briefing,” titled “Rouhani Election Presents West with Golden Opportunity.”

Parsi and Khajehpour have also appeared jointly at other conferences. They were panelists at the Atlantic Council conference, “Changing Iran’s ‘Great Satan’ Narrative” in December 2013.

In March 2013, Parsi authored a 30-page report with Khajehpour and Reza Marshi on economic sanctions imposed on Iran.

NIAC met with an official at the Ministry and with Hamyaran, the NGO established by Siamak’s father, to discuss acceptable NGO partners. Not surprisingly, the project was approved by the regime and NAIC received the grant from NED, providing much needed financial resources for the newly formed NGO. In subsequent years, NIAC received nearly $200,000 in NED grants.

In 2005, Siamak took a sabbatical from Atieh Bahar to participate in a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.[8] While at the Center, Siamak worked with Parsi to formulate policies at NIAC.

As evidence, in November 2005, Siamak sent an email to Parsi, suggesting an agenda for an upcoming meeting. He proposed they “develop a common list of policy recommendation[s] to enhance our ability to influence decision-makers.”[9] [emphasis added] In another email, Siamak told Parsi:

“[W]e need to carve out time to work on our discussion with [US Secretary] Burns. If you have any policy papers I can look at, I could also start working on one for [Steven] Hadley’s office [He was National Security Advisor to President George Bush]. Once a draft is available, we can get input from our network and make it stronger.”[10] [emphasis added]

These and other emails exchanged between Siamak and Parsi demonstrate Siamak’s close involvement in shaping policies at NIAC, as well as Parsi’s collaboration with the regime-linked consulting firm, Atieh Bahar.

[1] “Iran Advocacy Group Said to Skirt Lobby Rules,” Washington Times, November 13, 2009.

[2] “If Mahdi Doesn’t Come,” by Siamak Namazi, The Iranian, November 9, 1998.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Deposition of Dr. Trita Parsi, Trita Parsi and National Iranian American Council v. Daioleslam Seid Hassan, US District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil No. 08 CV 00705 (JDB), December 1, 2010.

[8] In 2013, the Center published a report by Siamak, titled “Sanctions and Medical Supply Shortages in Iran.”

[9] www.iranlobby.com

[10] www.iranlobby.com

Read more about NIAC:

Bogus Memberships & Supporters
Survey
Lobbying
Iranians for International Cooperation
Defamation Lawsuit
People’s Mojahedin
Trita Parsi Biography
Parsi/Namazi Lobbying Plan
Namazi, NIAC Ringleader
Collaborating with Iran’s Ambassador