Iran Lobby

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

NIAC Trying to Gain Influence On U.S. Congress

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NIAC affiliates working as staffers to some of the U.S. Congress representatives.

Recently an Anglo-Iranian activist and news editor, Mr. Hanif Jazayeri, through lights on the activities of the Iranian regime’s main lobby, NIAC’s activities in the U.S. Congress attempting to influence the US policy towards Iran, in favor of the Iranian regime.

Lately, a group of representatives sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, calling for sanction’s relief for Iran. They also questioned the designation of the Iranian regime’s Central Bank, which is the main source of financing the IRGC, which is behind the Iranian regime’s terrorist activities and regional aggressions. The move did not seem a usual one, particularly at a time that a recent report by Reuters speaks of a massacre of at least 1,500 protesters during the November nationwide unrest in Iran.

“About 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest that started on Nov. 15. The toll, provided to Reuters by three Iranian interior ministry officials, included at least 17 teenagers and about 400 women as well as some members of the security forces and police.” Reuters reported.

“The toll of 1,500 is significantly higher than figures from international human rights groups and the United States,” Reuters added.

Apparently the letter by a small group of representatives did not sound right to Hanif Jazayeri, and after digging into the issue, he expressed his concerns in a thread on his Twitter account. Jazayeri proposed that “the letter was probably drafted by Iran’s mullahs”. The proposition was due to his finding that several of the NIAC affiliates are now working at the offices of various U.S. representatives.

Tyler O’Neil, a senior Editor on PJ Media, expressing concern over the role of the Iranian lobby on the letter writes:

“An organization long described as a front group for the Iran regime sponsored the letter and has embedded staffers with many of the letter’s supporters in Congress, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).”

Referring to Mr. Jazayeri’s thread on Twitter who had originally exposed the case, O’Neil asks:

“Is Iran’s regime quietly infiltrating Congress?” M. Hanif Jazayeri, news editor at Free Iran, asked on Twitter. He pointed out that many of these congresswomen hired current or former staffers with the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), an organization with many links to Iran’s regime and which Iran state-media has described as “Iran’s lobby” in the U.S.

Jazayeri added that NIAC “has a mole in Congress. [Samira Damavandi] is now a permanent Legislative Assistant in the Office of [Barbara Lee]. That could potentially give her (& the regime) access to US citizens’ data.”

The Gateway Pundit, also wrote a piece that was widely shared on the social media, reminding how  the Iranian lobbies, work to lift the sanctions, while “At the Same Time Mullahs In Iran Are Killing Democracy Protesters in the Streets”.

In return NIAC, reacted furiously and started a series of attacks on the activist (Hanif Jazayeri) who had exposed their plot, and were frustrated about the revelation.

In the meantime, another activist on social media, Heshmat Alavi a writer and human rights activist, wrote a thread, in which he exposed what NIAC and its affiliates have been doing to infiltrate the U.S. Congress and impact the U.S. policy towards Iran.

The discussions on the issue continues on social media. Adjunct professor at Notre Dame University and Lawyer, Professor Margot Cleveland, calls for a journalist with an international outlet to do a report on the concerning news:

Staff writer

While Iran Lobby Plays Blame Game Iran Goes Nuclear

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to students at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, January 10, 2019. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS – RC15D1E44B00

The National Iranian American Council stepped up in defense of the Iranian regime by attacking U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent speech in Cairo but failed to recognize the decision by the Iranian regime to launch “preliminary activities for designing” uranium fuel with a purity of 20 percent in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal the Iran lobby group championed.

The juxtaposition between the NIAC’s criticisms of Pompeo, but failure to chastise the Iranian regime demonstrates the rank hypocrisy the NIAC operates under when it comes to picking and choosing what to criticize.

In Pompeo’s speech and in follow up visits to regional allies, Pompeo hammered hard on the point that Iranian extremism and expansionism needed to be restrained by the U.S. and its allies and required a more global approach to stifle the mullahs’ ambitions.

In a stop at Doha in Qatar as part of his nine-country Middle East tour, Pompeo signed a memorandum of understanding expanding the U.S. military base there and renewed efforts to form a tighter coalition with eight Arab states to generate greater pressure on Iran.

Pompeo, who held strategic talks with Qatari leaders, also said reunifying the Gulf states was essential to the success of the new regional body the U.S. hopes to create called the Middle East Strategic Alliance, which would include all six GCC nations in addition to Jordan and Egypt. The Trump administration hopes the new organization will become a bulwark against The Iranian regime.

Earlier, Pompeo had given a speech at American University in Cairo – the same site as President Obama’s speech launching a new relationship with the Muslim world – where he cast the Iranian regime as the top U.S. concern in the region.

“The nations of the Middle East will never enjoy security, achieve economic stability, or advance the dreams of their people if Iran’s revolutionary regime persists on its current course,” he said.

The location was meant to recognize the failure of the previous administration of trying to achieve peace by coddling the mullahs in Tehran only emboldening them to plunge Syria and Yemen into bloody civil wars and launch a crash ballistic missile program.

The laundry list of failures since that ill-fated speech in Cairo by President Obama serves as a reminder once again throughout history that policies of appeasement aimed at totalitarian regimes yields no moderation and little peace.

Typically, the NIAC responded to Pompeo’s speech with its usual bluster but did little to recognize why its previous calls to accommodate the Iranian regime only yielded failure.

“Secretary Pompeo’s speech failed to outline a coherent strategic logic for the Trump administration’s Middle East policy. If Secretary Pompeo wants regional stability, human rights, and an end to U.S. military adventures and endless wars, he would press his boss to return to the Iran deal, pursue and facilitate good-faith diplomacy among all stakeholders, and honor our international agreements,” said Jamal Abdi, NIAC president.

Abdi went on to press his call for saving the nuclear deal, but even the Iranian regime seems to recognize that idea is dead as Iran’s nuclear chief announced the regime would start work on designing nuclear reactor fuel delivering 20 percent purity according to Reuters.

The 2015 nuclear accord capped the level to which Iran is able to enrich uranium to 3.67 percent purity, well below the 20 percent it was reaching before the deal, and the roughly 90 percent that is weapons-grade.

Iran is, however, allowed to produce nuclear fuel under strict conditions that need to be approved by a working group set up by the signatories to the deal. Those conditions include ensuring that the fuel cannot be converted to uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges that enrich uranium.

“We have made such progress in nuclear science and industry that, instead of reverse-engineering and the use of designs by others, we can design new fuel ourselves,” state broadcaster IRIB quoted Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as saying.

The move to design an indigenous nuclear reactor underscores the regime’s long-term goals to develop its own nuclear capability rather than be dependent on foreign suppliers; similar to its push into ballistic missiles by first licensing designs from North Korea and then advancing designs to carry larger warheads over intercontinental distances.

The fact the NIAC made no statement about this latest move by Iran underscores its reluctance to deal with the harsh realities of Iranian intransigence as the mullahs continue their nuclear program and military efforts; now in the open and without pretense.

Even as Iran steps up its nuclear ambitions and threatens to renew a regional arms race for nuclear weapons, the NIAC blasted John Bolton, U.S. National Security Advisor, for requesting contingency plans for taking military action against the Iranian regime should the pressure of renewed economic sanctions fail to change the regime’s behaviour.

The planning is prudent considering the Iranian regime has already thrown Syria, Iraq and Yemen into turmoil and has sent its own Revolutionary Guard Corps to fight in Syria’s bloody civil war and Iraq sectarian conflict.

But Abdi wasted no time in trying to redirect and blame Bolton for war mongering.

“John Bolton and fellow Iran hawks believe they have two years left to collapse the Iran nuclear deal and trigger a disastrous war that the American people want no part of. We know that Bolton and other administration officials preferred an Iran war to negotiations prior to serving Trump. Now there is confirmation that they are still seeking out opportunities to fulfill their war agenda,” Abdi said.

Of course, Abdi neglected to mention that the only nation waging war against a neighboring nation was Iran under the mullahs as its used proxies to destabilize Yemen and launched attacks on Saudi Arabia with Iranian-supplied weapons, but that is something the NIAC doesn’t want to talk about.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Jumps on Detention of Iranian Newscaster

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Iran Lobby Jumps on Detention of Iranian Newscaster
Press TV anchor arrested in the U.S.

There are several truths about the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council: 1) It will never overtly criticize the Iranian regime unless it has no choice; and 2) It will never miss an opportunity to criticize U.S. actions towards Iran, even if the regime has committed far worse.

The most recent example was the detention of Marzieh Hashemi, an anchorwoman for the regime’s state-run English-language Press TV, in St. Louis and then taken to Washington, DC by the FBI as a material witness in a case.

Hashemi was born in New Orleans under the name of Melanie Franklin and eventually found her way to Iran reading new copy written by the regime.

Predictably the regime blasted her detention and tried to compare her case to the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Regime Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called for her immediate release, telling Press TV that “we have a right to continue to look after her interests.”

“She is a famous journalist, she’s done nothing but journalism,” Zarif said. “The arrest of Ms. Hashemi is a very clear affront to freedom of expression, a political abuse of an innocent individual and I believe the United States should release her immediately without further delay.”

What is hugely ironic about his comments and feigned indignation is the fact Iran continues to hold American hostages itself.

In fact, the nuclear deal negotiated back in 2015 included provisions for a hostage swap of four Americans being held illegally in exchange for billions of dollars in cash; a fact often omitted whenever the Iran lobby chastises U.S. policy.

Now the Iranian regime continues to hold several Americans, a fact that makes Zarif’s call for Hashemi’s release laughable.

The most recent disclosure of an American citizen being held by Iran was Michael White, a 46-year-old former Navy cook. White’s family says he was taken into custody in July last year when he traveled to Iran to visit his girlfriend, whom he had met online. In a statement released for a family spokesperson, Joanne White, his mother, said she is “very worried that’s he’s not going to make it.”

White had been undergoing cancer treatment and his mother is urging the Iranian government to release him so he can get the “specialized medical care he needs.” Why White was even detained by Iran in the first place, as of Thursday, remains a mystery, according to Fox News.

Iran also continues to hold Chinese-American Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly “infiltrating” the country while doing doctoral research on Iran’s Qajar dynasty. The university says he was taken into custody a year earlier, but “was not involved in any political activities or social activism; he was simply a scholar trying to gain access to materials he needed for his dissertation.”

Also, being held is Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese-born Internet freedom activist who is a permanent resident of the U.S., who was detained in 2015 while attending a woman’ empowerment conference he was invited to and has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on spying charges.

In addition to these Americans, Iran continues to hold others from countries such as Great Britain such as human rights worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who began a hunger strike over her false imprisonment.

NIAC is kind enough to provide some lip service to the plight of these hostages but has never thrown its political and PR machinery behind a full-court press to get the mullahs in Tehran to release them.

The statement issued by Jamal Abdi, NIAC’s president, is typically mild about the plight of these innocents.

“NIAC is concerned by reports of mistreatment and reiterates that all nations must observe international law with regard to such detentions. Ms. Hashemi’s status as a journalist for an Iranian outlet cannot prevent her from access to the same legal rights afforded to every U.S. person,” Abdi said.

Under U.S. federal law, judges are allowed to order witnesses to be arrested and detained if the government can prove their testimony has extraordinary value for a criminal case. They must also prove the witness would be a flight risk and unlikely to respond to a subpoena.

The statute generally requires those witnesses to be promptly released once they are deposed.

It’s a process largely transparent compared to the Iranian regime’s refusal to even specify the charges against many of the hostages it holds; let alone the convictions handed down by religious courts without proper legal representation or other due process.

Press TV focuses predominantly on international affairs through the lens of how leaders in the Islamic state see the world, often generating fierce criticism of British and American foreign policy.

Its broadcasts have also drawn Western criticism.

In 2012, the Anti-Defamation League described the channel as “one of the world’s leading dispensers of conspiratorial anti-Semitism in English.”

The channel was pulled from the air in Britain in 2011 after a complaint by a Canadian-Iranian journalist for Newsweek who was imprisoned by Iran after the 2009 disputed re-election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the Green Movement protests. Bahari said the channel aired an interview that had been scripted by his captors, who threatened to execute him unless he cooperated.

While we can hope Hashemi’s case is quickly resolved, the same hope for Americans being held in Iranian jails falls on deaf ears at NIAC.

Michael Tomlinson

Bad News for Iran Swamps Iran Lobby

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Bad News for Iran Swamps Iran Lobby
The Dutch Foreign Minister, Stef Blok, reveals for the first time that the Iranian regime was behind two assassinations in the Netherlands in 2015 and 2017

While 2019 may be a fresh start for most people, the new year brings more of the same from the Iranian regime as the European Union announced it was imposing new sanctions on Iran’s intelligence ministry and two Iranian nationals for their likely involvement in two assassination plots in the Netherlands.

The charges were laid out in a letter from the Dutch government to parliament indicating the regime was suspected in at least four assassination and bomb lots throughout Europe over the past three years.

The Dutch indicated that investigations of two murders led to the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from the Netherlands last June as disclosed in the letter signed by Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry cited “strong indications that Iran was involved in the assassinations of two Dutch nationals of Iranian origin,” one in 2015 in the city of Almere and another in 2017 in The Hague.

European intelligence officials have also linked the Iranian government to unsuccessful plots in Denmark and France.

“In the Dutch government’s opinion, hostile acts of this kind flagrantly violate the sovereignty of the Netherlands and are unacceptable,” the letter said.

The sanctions involve freezing assets connected to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and two Iranian officials: Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, a senior Iranian intelligence official, and Assadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat arrested in connection with a plot to bomb a rally of an Iranian opposition group in Paris last year, according to the New York Times.

The unified front by the 28-member European Union was surprising given the vocal cheerleading the Iran lobby, particularly the National Iranian American Council, had been giving to the idea of an alternative payment system being set up by the EU to sidestep U.S. sanctions.

On Tuesday, ambassadors from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands visited the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran “to convey their serious concerns” about Iran’s behavior, according to the Dutch letter.

In response, the regime’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, did not deny the allegations, but accused European countries in a Twitter post of harboring dissidents from the Mujahedeen Khalq, (MEK), the group targeted in the Paris bomb plot and a long-time thorn in the side of the regime.

The growing gap between the publicly advocated idea of adhering to the Iran nuclear deal and the growing terrorist actions under direct control of the Iranian government may prove to be too large for the Iran lobby to overcome as even the staunchest advocates for staying in the nuclear deal such as Germany are pushing hard against the regime over these latest incidents.

Security analysts have said that Iran, under domestic and international pressure, appears to be stepping up its intelligence operations around the world and perhaps even making contingency plans in case of open conflict.

The actions by the regime fly in the face of the messaging the NIAC and other Iran lobby supporters have long advocated of an Iranian government seeking new, more moderate relationships with the West.

These latest incidents and the resulting EU actions undercut virtually all of the past arguments made by NIAC officials such as Trita Parsi and Jamal Abdi, which may explain why the NIAC has gone virtually dark about the new EU sanctions and the revelations of Iranian machinations to carry out terrorist actions on European soil.

While the NIAC has been quick to leap to the defense of the Iranian regime in the past over other transgressions such as test firing of ballistic missiles or bombastic threats by regime leaders, it has become increasingly harder for the long-time regime support group to remain a vocal advocate for Iran as the regime’s actions grow more desperate under the internal pressures of domestic protests and external pressure from renewed sanctions.

What is probably most troubling for the Iran lobby is the direct sanction of an arm of the Iranian government in the form of the MOIS. In the past, the regime has resorted to more clandestine terrorist acts through proxies such as Hezbollah, the Houthi and even Shiite militias to take action against its enemies; often through its special Quds Forces arm of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

But this sanctioning of the MOIS hits directly at an official Iranian government agency and in a regime tightly controlled from top mullah Ali Khamenei on down through his puppet president Hassan Rouhani, there can be little doubt the bomb plots and assassinations were carried out either under the direct orders of Iranian leadership or with its tacit approval.

That places the Iran lobby in a difficult spot. Does it continue to defend the regime in the wake of such overwhelming evidence and risk losing what little credibility it has left or does it try to change channels and messages?

As evidenced by the NIAC website, it’s clear the latter was a more prudent choice as it sought to tackle earth-shattering issues such as the cancellation of user accounts on Slack.com of Iranian users.

What is even more problematic for the Iran lobby is that with the new incoming Congress, the appearance of an Iranian government running assassination plots of foreign soil is likely to counter any hope of persuading the new Democratic majority in the House to fight for lifting sanctions on Iran.

While the EU gives lip service to the idea that the nuclear deal and the bomb plots are separate issues, the incontrovertible truth is that they are not and that fact, more than anything else, is likely to sink any hopes by the NIAC of having any leverage on Capitol Hill.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Starts Off Year by Banning Instagram

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Iran Starts Off Year by Banning Instagram

New Year’s Eve filled the social media airwaves around the world as millions of revelers shared pictures and videos of fireworks, champagne toasts, concerts and the inevitable cute pet pictures.

The memes, viral videos and emojis have become a global fixture as recognizable as the crystal ball dropping in Times Square.

And just as predictable, the Iranian regime kicked off 2019 by moving to ban Instagram – adding to its already considerable list of banned social media platforms – in the name of national security concerns.

The regime’s National Cyberspace Council approved steps to block the popular photo-sharing app in a move following similar crackdowns against Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Telegram with internet providers ordered to block access to these services.

Resourceful Iranians however have often been able to evade the restrictions through the use of virtual private networks which redirects to overseas internet addresses; bypassing local blocks.

The irony of the regime’s move to block Instagram comes as President Hassan Rouhani posted his own messages on his own Instagram account which has over two million followers.

Regime officials similarly use banned social media apps such as Twitter to communicate to the outside world even though ordinary Iranians may face jail time for using them. Even top mullah Ali Khamenei has an official Twitter account.

The move to block Instagram removes the last major social media account still active in Iran. Even though the regime cited “national security” concerns.

The protests swelled and were soon joined by other protests aimed at government corruption, the stagnant economy and the endless cycle of wars and terrorism plaguing the country since the mullahs opted to go all-in to support the Assad regime in Syria.

Even innocuous acts such as Iranian women riding bicycles in open defiance of the mullahs’ edicts became fodder for Instagram stories and a constant sore spot for the regime.

The regime had previously tried targeting individual Iranians with high-profile Instagram followings.

The regime TV special showed them all tearfully repenting their actions in what can only be deduced as coerced confessions.

Apparently, those strong-arm tactics didn’t work, which points up a growing problem the mullahs are having which is the widening age gap in Iranian society and the technological savvy of Iran’s young people.

Even as Twitter has been banned, it’s use has remained at center stage recently as ongoing protests over a bus crash at Tehran’s Azad University killing 10 students have been fueled and covered on Twitter.

A video on Twitter showed students at a campus in Tehran chanting slogans and demanding the resignation of the chairman of the university’s board of trustees, Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Social media had been utilized by Iranians and dissident groups to convey images and videos of protests and crackdowns within Iran, which explains the most recent efforts to expunge social media, another repressive measure to prevent the flow of information from Iran.

More than half of Iran’s 82 million people are under 35 years old with almost 40 percent under the age of 24; a staggering baby bubble that poses problems for a ruling elite well in their geriatric age.

In many ways the efforts to curb social media are likely to only fuel greater ingenuity by Iranian youth to evade the restrictions. For the Iranian regime, the knee-jerk reaction to ban social media only covers up a growing demographic disparity posing significant political problems for the mullahs.

Laura Carnahan

Iranian Diplomats Expelled from Albania in Another Murder Plot

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Iranian Diplomats Expelled from Albania in Another Murder Plot

The obsession by the Iranian regime to exterminate any dissenting Iranian opinions reached into the Balkan nation of Albania, resulting in the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats who were tied into an alleged plot to attack an Iranian dissident group that has long plagued the mullahs with calls for democratic reform and political freedom.

Albanian officials decided to kick out Iran’s ambassador to that country and another diplomat for “violating their diplomatic status” in another unfolding chapter in the Iranian regime’s ongoing vendetta against any Iranian dissidents.

According to reporting by The Independent, a source with knowledge of the matter said the expulsions were connected to an aborted March 2018 scheme by two alleged Iranian members of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, its foreign secret operations branch, caught planning “an explosive” attack against the base or personnel of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK.

Tirana’s move follows diplomatic rebukes of Iran by Denmark, France, and Netherlands amid allegations of using diplomatic facilities to carry out alleged terrorist operations targeting dissidents living in Europe, including the MEK and Arab exile groups.

In France, an annual gathering of the MEK and related human rights and dissident groups was being held outside Paris and was apparently targeted for a similar explosive device before being stopped by security forces in the Netherlands.

US officials on Wednesday praised the decision by the NATO country to expel the diplomats. US National Security Adviser John Bolton wrote in a Tweet that the move signaled to Iranian leaders that “their support for terrorism will not be tolerated.”

President Trump thanked Prime Minister Edi Rama in a letter for his “steadfast efforts to stand up to Iran and counter its destabilizing activities and efforts to silence dissidents around the globe,” according to the U.S. Embassy in Tirana.

Predictably Iranian regime officials denied any plot and tried to portray the expulsions as an effort by the U.S. to pressure Albania as part of its ongoing sanctions movement as a result of pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

Iranian officials even trotted out the old charge that Bolton had previously spoken at MEK events and was therefore unable to be an impartial party on the issue. A silly charge to make considering this is now the third attempt the regime has mounted in the past year to kill MEK members on foreign soil.

But close observers of Iran describe a resurgence of clandestine operations across Europe and elsewhere targeting Iranian dissident groups. Others have noted Iran’s burgeoning efforts to establish clandestine networks in the Balkans. Albania in particular has a Bektashi religious minority with ties to the Shia branch of Islam practiced as the official religion in Iran.

“What’s happening in Albania has only proved how big Tehran’s networks in the Balkans are,” Ruslan Trad, a researcher and journalist focusing on Iranian influence in the Balkans, told The Independent.

The MEK in Albania were re-located from refugee camps in Iraq after being consistently targeted by Iranian intelligence agents in a series of attacks killing scores of unarmed men and women, with the help of Iranian-controlled Iraqi Shiite militias who subsequently fueled a sectarian conflict in Iraq and fought in the Syrian civil war on the side of protecting the Assad regime.

Past media coverage of the MEK compound – fueled by innuendo by the Iran lobby – criticized the heavily fortified nature of the facilities there for MEK members and tried to cast the group as cult-like in its security preparations.

In light of these most recent efforts at bombings, those precautions now seem not only prudent, but life-saving.

The MEK has drawn the particular ire of the mullahs in Tehran for its long history of revealing secrets such as the existence of the previously secret Iranian nuclear program, as well as the recent surge in protests by Iranians over depressed economic conditions and rampant corruption within the government through smuggled pictures and videos.

Most worrisome is the fact that the MEK represents an alternative voice to the regime in Tehran. The existence of any dissident voice among fellow Iranians is a galling sore point for the regime which demands near total obedience and a cult-like adherence to the whims of the supreme mullah, Ali Khamenei.

The growing strength of the protest movement within Iran among ordinary, working-class Iranians has worried the regime as it has worked to try and put down the demonstrations.

Furious Iranian steelworkers in the city of Ahvaz in oil-rich Khuzestan province, southwest Iran, are continuing to strike in defiance of President Hassan Rouhani’s brutal regime, according to The Express.

Earlier this week, dozens of workers were arrested during raids to their homes, as they pleaded for their basic human rights. But the protests continued and workers chanted: “Imprisoned workers should be freed.” The demonstrations took place despite the heavy presence of security forces attempting to thwart freedom of expression and intimidate the demonstrators.

The ultimate fear of the regime is that the MEK could become an active political force within Iran and marshal the disgruntled Iranian people in a serious challenge to the mullahs rule.

As long as the MEK exists, the mullahs will continue their efforts to attack it.

Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Letter on Iran Nuclear Deal Just More of the Same

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NIAC Letter on Iran Nuclear Deal Just More of the Same

NIAC Letter on Iran Nuclear Deal Just More of the Same

The National Iranian American Council, that reliable cheerleader for the mullahs in Tehran, cobbled together yet another letter signed by the usual cadre of pro-regime supporters, urging Congress to once again bail out the faltering Iranian regime.

Fortunately, this letter was vastly shorter than previous tomes but still espoused the same essential principles the Iran lobby has been harping on since then-presidential candidate Donald Trump blasted the Iran nuclear deal on the campaign trail in 2015.

In short, the letter urged Congress to continue:

  • Supporting the nuclear agreement and return the U.S. to comply with it;
  • Opposing sanctions that:
    • Disrupt any other country’s efforts to stick with the nuclear deal;
    • Prevent the U.S. from coming back into compliance with the deal in the future;
    • Disproportionately impact Iranian civilians rather than regime officials engaged in illicit or destabilizing activities;
    • Block necessary humanitarian and medical supplies from reaching the country;
  • Support more diplomacy toward additional agreements as the preferred basis for addressing further concerns about Iranian activity; and
  • Oppose starting a war of choice with Iran.

The conditions are typical for what the Iran lobby has pushed for since the Obama administration first opened talks with the mullahs and largely ignores the realities on the ground as the Iranian regime has become the most destabilizing force in the Middle East since the nuclear deal’s passage.

The Trump administration has stated from the very beginning it welcomed renewed diplomatic efforts with Tehran in an effort to achieve a more comprehensive solution to the region’s problems, including curtailing the spread of terrorism, improving human rights conditions and eliminating the delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction in the form o intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The fact Tehran has no desire to take up any of these other, but no less vital issues demonstrates the mullahs complete lack of transparency or willingness to engage in diplomacy to solve these problems.

Also, while Iranian regime leaders such as Hassan Rouhani, have made a public show of discounting the impact of U.S. economic sanctions, the reality is that they have hurt the regime in places where it is most vulnerable: financial services, oil and gas exports, and currency exchanges.

The choices made in the NIAC letter are noteworthy since they are aimed at the most effective portions of the U.S. sanctions program. The letter tries to portray the sanctions as having an impact only on ordinary Iranians and not regime officials, but the opposite is true since the regime, through its Revolutionary Guard Corps, controls much of the economy, especially its heavy industries and continually diverts badly needed capital from growing the economy and instead uses it to finance its military adventures in Syria and Yemen, while also funneling money to support terror groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq and Afghan mercenaries in an effort to extend its sphere of influence.

The proof of the debilitating impact the regime’s decisions has had on ordinary Iranians can be seen in the yearlong series of very public protests staged throughout Iran by these same ordinary Iranians the NIAC describes as being “disproportionately impacted” by the sanctions.

Starting last December and continuing through 2018, the near-daily images of women protesting hijabs and moral codes that restrict education, jobs and even the ability to ride a bicycle, are mingled with those of merchants storming through Tehran’s Grand Bazaar or truckers blocking roads and highways or farmers demanding more water for parched lands to local towns and villages decimated by poverty and a wrecked environment.

All the results of the mullahs’ decisions and nothing having to do with Washington.

The dichotomy between the claims of the NIAC’s letter and the reality in Iran is as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

Lastly, the NIAC’s false flag of warning of a war with Iran is just another red herring designed to elicit fear and send false worries into members of Congress. It’s interesting to note the only people ever mentioning the words “war” and “Iran” together are the NIAC and its fellow Iran lobby members; the same ones that comprised the infamous “echo chamber” used to bully and persuade reluctant members of Congress to support the nuclear deal in the first place.

It has always been the Iranian regime that has undertaken the provocative military action first in the region and not the U.S. or its allies.

The U.S. did not plot to assassinate Iranian leaders in a foreign country, but the Iranian regime did in Denmark, France, and Germany in efforts to kills dissidents.

The U.S. did not threaten to sink commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and halt oil shipments, but the Iranian regime did.

The U.S. did not take the U.S. and other dual-national citizens hostage on trumped-up charges and throw them in prison without trial and access to legal representation, but the regime did.

All these actions and more have been undertaken by the same regime the NIAC and the rest of the co-signers of the letter are trying hard now to get off the hook.

There is little appetite in Congress, either during this lame duck session, or when the new Congress is sworn in January to reward the mullahs for their abhorrent behavior. Even the harshest critics of the U.S. move to withdraw from the nuclear deal, such as France and Germany, had a change of heart when Iranian agents were caught trying to smuggle a bomb for the purpose of killing a few thousand Iranian dissidents meeting outside of Paris last June.

Unfortunately for the NIAC, they can’t control the mullahs, it’s the other way around.

Laura Carnahan

Iranian Hackers Targeting American Officials and Dissidents

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Iranian Hackers Targeting American Officials and Dissidents

Iranian Hackers Targeting American Officials and Dissidents

In another sign of the growing extremism and aggressiveness of the Iranian regime, the Associated Press revealed an unprecedented effort by Iranian regime hackers to break into the personal emails of American officials responsible for enforcing new economic sanctions imposed on Iran.

In addition to the cyber attacks on U.S. officials, the Iranian regime hackers also targeted high profile dissidents and detractors of the Iran nuclear deal, as well as a hodgepodge of D.C., think tank employees, Iranian civil society figures and atomic scientists.

The AP drew on data gathered by the London-based cybersecurity group Certfa to track how a hacking group often nicknamed Charming Kitten spent the past month trying to break into the private emails of more than a dozen U.S. Treasury officials.

The reported campaign underscores the degree to which government-sponsored hackers still rely on tricking email users into handing over their email usernames and passwords. The alleged phishing campaign aimed to bait targets into handing over their credentials and then went further, asking victims to provide one-time codes, such as texted and app-generated codes, used as a second form of authentication.

The hit list surfaced after Charming Kitten mistakenly left one of its servers open to the internet last month. Researchers at Certfa found the server and extracted a list of 77 Gmail and Yahoo addresses targeted by the hackers that they handed to the AP for further analysis.

It’s hard to know how many of the accounts were successfully compromised or how exactly they were targeted in each case. But even though the addresses likely represent only a fraction of the hackers’ overall efforts, they still provide considerable insight into Tehran’s espionage priorities.

“Presumably, some of this is about figuring out what is going on with sanctions,” said Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written about Iranian cyberespionage and was among those targeted.

Kagan said he was alarmed by the targeting of foreign nuclear experts. “This is a little more worrisome than I would have expected,” he said.

The targeting of the email accounts of nuclear scientists raises the dark specter that the regime is going after data and critical research information that could prove useful in its ongoing nuclear weapons development.

The actions also fly in the face of one of the key arguments made by the Iran lobby during the run-up of the nuclear deal which was that the Iranian regime was only interested in civilian and peaceful nuclear development and had no interest in developing weapons of mass destruction.

In a report published Thursday, Certfa tied the hackers to the Iranian government, a judgment drawn in part on operational blunders, including a couple of cases where the hackers appeared to have accidentally revealed that they were operating from computers inside Iran.

Certfa said its investigation found the hackers used Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, to make it look like they were operating from France and the Netherlands. But the group said it uncovered strong evidence to prove that the hackers were operating from inside Iran.

The assessment was backed by others who have tracked Charming Kitten. Allison Wikoff, a researcher with Atlanta-based SecureWorks, recognized some of the digital infrastructures in Certfa’s report and said the hackers’ past operations left little doubt they were government-backed.

“It’s fairly clear-cut,” she said.

One target was Frederick Kagan, who works for the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank based in Washington. Kagan has repeatedly written about Iranian cyberespionage efforts.

“Presumably, some of this is about figuring out what is going on with sanctions,” Kagan told the AP. He was speaking about economic sanctions the U.S. has placed on Iran. The latest sanctions, on Iran’s oil and financial industry, were announced last month.

Iranian regime cyber attacks are nothing new and have become relentless and a fact of life among white hat programmers tasked with defending government and corporate networks against intrusion, but this latest effort to gain access to personal email accounts with much lower levels of security presents a different tack in the regime’s cyber tactics.

To add a look of legitimacy to their campaign, the hackers in some cases directed victims to open websites hosted on Google Sites pages before entering their usernames and passwords, Certfa said. The researchers said they notified Google of the pattern, and Google deactivated the hackers’ pages hosted on the company’s service. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The effort to target avowed dissidents and naysayers of the Iran nuclear deal indicates another disturbing trend by the mullahs in Tehran which is to go after those who dare denounce or criticize them.

This past year, Iranian intelligence agents have been identified in attempts to smuggle a bomb into an annual gathering of Iranian dissidents outside of Paris and plot an assassination attempt in Denmark against noted critics of the regime.

What is also noteworthy is the virtual silence emanating from the Iran lobby and its chief members, including the National Iranian American Council who have never voiced a criticism of the Iranian regime’s cyber terror activities, nor ever called upon the regime to lift the virtual blockade it has imposed on outside social media services within Iran.

The tight-fisted ban on transmitting information reveals the key weakness of the mullahs’ rule which is it cannot stand up to the scrutiny of daylight and transparency.

This is why the regime relies so heavily on cyber attacks to stifle dissent, gain intelligence and secrets and wage an online war against its harshest critics, such as the efforts by the regime to manipulate fake social media accounts to attack dissident groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Ultimately the regime’s efforts are likely to prove ineffective as its stealth efforts are uncovered and revealed to the world; reinforcing the growing perception that Tehran was never really serious about pursuing a new moderation with the rest of the world.

Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi Still Pushing Same Old Falsehoods

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Trita Parsi Still Pushing Same Old Falsehoods

Trita Parsi, that undeniable cheerleader for the Iranian regime, may have traded in his president’s title for the National Iranian American Council, but he is still a busy beaver in peddling the same, tired old tropes in defending the regime, while ignoring the worst offenses and actions by the mullahs.

It’s a neat trick worthy of a Las Vegas magic act if the cost to ordinary Iranians and their neighbors wasn’t so grievously high.

His latest missive in defense of the regime is a doozy where he tries to make the case that the coalition assembled by the Trump administration to re-impose economic sanctions is somehow falling apart.

How does Parsi come to this conclusion? He simply makes the assumption that the “anti-Iran” coalition is simply comprised of a triumvirate of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel. He then goes on to dutifully explain the various internal political pressures each are facing and how that will magically let Iran off the hook.

First, Parsi points to the controversy over the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and how it will undermine the Saudi monarchy and weaken it’s resolve in opposing Iran because of political pressure that will surely be brought to bear by an outraged Congress that will cut off arms sales to the Saudi kingdom.

“Even if the Republicans end up siding with Trump on continuing relations with Saudi Arabia on the current terms, the Democrats are unlikely to simply allow the relationship to return to business-as-usual,” Parsi writes.

“This is partly because the Saudi-U.S. relationship embodies everything progressives oppose: A cozy relationship with a brutal authoritarian ruler driven by the greed of arms manufacturers, all while the U.S. is complicit in a Saudi-engineered famine in Yemen and the House of Saud’s human rights and women’s rights abuses,” he adds.

Of course, Parsi conveniently leaves out a few important details, such as the Iranian regime was responsible for instigating the conflict in Yemen by inciting Houthi rebels and supplying them with arms and then escalating the conflict by shipping missiles there used to directly attack Saudi Arabia.

It’s also laughable for Parsi to attack “human rights and women’s rights abuses” in Saudi Arabia while ignoring the horrific acts committed to this day by the Iranian regime, including the taking of foreign citizens as hostages, including British and American subjects.

Let’s also not mention the ongoing domestic protests roiling Iran ranging from Iranian women rejecting medieval morals codes and proscriptions that limit their job prospects and stifle daily freedoms like riding a bicycle.

It’s noteworthy that throughout the perceived turmoil in Saudi-U.S. relations, there has never been any mention or serious policy discussion by anyone in Congress altering the kingdom’s role in countering Iranian aggression.

But let’s not let facts stand in the way of hyperbole from Parsi. The most dubious of Parsi’s claims is that the U.S. sanctions effort is failing and he bases that silly notion on the flimsy proof of a “stabilized” rial and ongoing sales of Iranian oil.

If Parsi considers a plunge in the value of the rial to an all-time low in the history of the Iranian regime “stabilized” then he may consider another stint in college to study economics a worthwhile investment for his career.

The Iranian rial has lost a whopping 70 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar since the current Iranian fiscal year began in March.

The use of artificial price freezes by the mullahs to prevent runaway inflation has failed as the costs of consumer goods has skyrocketed and the purchasing power of Iranian savings is beginning to approach beggar status.

The ballyhooed sales of oil Parsi touts are a drop in the bucket of Iran’s exports and more worrisome for the mullahs is the plunge in the price of oil hovering barely above $50 per barrel of benchmark crude. Iran pegs its budget forecasts on anticipating oil prices at nearly $70 per barrel; the difference is crushing the regime’s ability to invest in new capital expenses.

“Today, if you’re sitting in Tehran, you’re probably more confident in the future than if you’re in Riyadh or Washington. Trump has thrown everything he has at Iran, and it hasn’t worked. And once the European “Special Purpose Vehicle” — an alternative payment system that will enable companies to defy Trump’s sanctions — is up and running next year, the Trump’s Iran strategy may face yet another crippling blow,” Parsi said.

Unfortunately for Parsi, that special purpose vehicle is sputtering on life support after France, Germany and Denmark have all denounced Iran for staging attempted bombings and assassinations on their soil against Iranian dissidents and are now calling on stiff action against Tehran.

It may be hard for Parsi to understand, but you’re not likely to get help from someone when you use their house to plan a murder.

But then again, facts were never a strong suit for Trita Parsi.

Laura Carnahan

Iranian Leader Again Threatens to Cut Off Oil Chokepoint

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Iranian Leader Again Threatens to Cut Off Oil Chokepoint

There are several predictable things about the Iranian regime. For one, it will always hold marches where protestors will chant “Death to America.” For another, it will support terrorist activities against its neighbors and its perceived enemies in far-flung countries.

It will also have its leaders make slightly irrational and not-so-veiled threats against any number of countries, militaries, economies, landmarks – or most recently – navigable waterways.

The latest episode was Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s threat this week that the Iranian regime would disrupt other countries’ oil shipments through the Persian Gulf if the U.S. moved forward with efforts to stop Iranian oil exports as part of its renewed economic sanctions.

“America should know that we are selling our oil and will continue to sell our oil and they are not able to stop our oil exports,” Rouhani said in a televised speech during a trip to the northern Iranian city of Shahroud.

“If one day they want to prevent the export of Iran’s oil, then no oil will be exported from the Persian Gulf,” Rouhani, the supposedly moderate President of the Iranian regime said.

The fact that Rouhani made nearly identical threats in last July should come as no surprise as the regime is long on rhetoric, but short on action on this scale.

His comments were backed up by similar bellicose statements from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose commander was quoted as saying Tehran would block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. went ahead and banned its oil sales.

The concept of a blockade of the Gulf, while appealing to the more irrational members of the mullahs running Iran, would only help topple their rule since any effort to force a blockade would almost assuredly have the opposite effect and unite countries around the world in forcing open the shipping lanes no matter the cost.

The threat comes less than 24 hours after U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that an aircraft carrier group led by the USS John C. Stennis is set to arrive in the Persian Gulf “within days” — which will bring a close what’s been described as the longest period in two decades that a carrier group was absent from the region. Specifically, the unnamed officials identified the purpose as to “exhibit a show of force against Iran”.

The carrier deployment, though previously scheduled, was announced after the U.S. condemned Iran’s test firing a medium-range nuclear capable ballistic missile on Sunday.

It would also reinforce the perception that Tehran was never really serious about moderation when it entered into the nuclear deal and instead only wants to continue disrupting the world stage.

The threat of a blockade is about as serious as the claims by the mullahs that no dissension exists within the Islamic state, despite mounting protests throughout the country.

Even the carefully pushed narrative by the Iran lobby that Europe would come to Iran’s rescue with an alternative financing mechanism designed to help pay for Iranian oil sales in alternative forms of payment got a dose of cold water and had to be refuted by its foreign minister.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denied a Reuters report that said a European mechanism to set up an account to trade with Iran and beat the newly re-imposed U.S. sanctions may not cover oil sales, the Iranian foreign ministry website reported.

“Based on the information we have, it’s not so. Because if Iran’s oil money is not deposited into the account, it’s not clear that there would be any funds for trade, because oil is a major part of Iran’s exports,” Zarif said, according to the website.

“This appears to be propaganda aimed at discouraging people,” Zarif added.

While the Iranian regime had pinned hopes that the effort led by France and Germany would yield dividends, the ill-advised efforts by the regime to assassinate Iranian dissidents in France and Denmark led to renewed calls to punish the regime.

Talk about bad timing. The mullahs seem to excel at it; continually undercutting the messaging by the Iran lobby with idiotic actions.

This contradiction in messages is borne out by a new study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) which revealed a dramatic increase in the regime’s defense spending; far beyond what would be perceived as necessary for its defense.

One key finding was that the 2018–19 defense budget bill is much higher than what even the most ardent critics within the Iranian establishment had sought. These hardliners wanted five percent of the country’s total budgetary outlay for defense, which was already achieved in 2016.

Iran’s military expenditure for 2018–19 is estimated at $19.6 billion out of $260 billion total outlay, which makes defense spending at 7.5 per cent of Iran’s total budget.

Most interesting though was the finding by IISS that the latest Iranian defense budget also had a whopping 84 percent rise in allocations for local forces pointing to rising internal dissent and the need to shift more resources to putting down protests and tracking down dissidents.

So while Rouhani may be blustering about closing the Gulf, the real threat to Iran and its mullahs is not coming from the Straits of Hormuz, but the streets of Tehran.

Michael Tomlinson