Iran Lobby

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

Human Rights Groups Protest Iran Regime Destruction of Mass Graves

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In the summer of 1988 following a decree by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s Supreme Leader at the time, thousands, with some estimate as many as 30,000 political prisoners were executed in a matter of few months, the majority in the first few weeks. A crime against humanity that remained largely out of media limelight.

Iranian regime’s current leaders, including presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi and re-elected president Hassan Rouhani were complicit in those atrocities, especially Raisi who served as a prosecutor on one of the “death commissions” that dispensed execution orders.

Bodies were buried in mass graves throughout Iran without markers or notice of who these people were or why they died. Their existence only commemorated by their families and relatives.

Now comes reports that the Iranian regime is erasing even these unmarked graves from existence in a disturbing effort to hide the awful truth of these massacres.

The desecration of a mass grave site in Ahvaz, southern Iran that contains the remains of at least 44 people who were extrajudicially executed would destroy vital forensic evidence and scupper opportunities for justice for the mass prisoner killings that took place across the country in 1988, said human rights groups Amnesty International.

Photo and video evidence obtained by the NGO Justice for Iran and reviewed by Amnesty International shows bulldozers working on a construction project directly alongside the mass grave site at Ahvaz, as well as piles of dirt and construction debris surrounding the grave. Although the Iranian authorities have made no official announcements about Ahvaz, families learned through a construction worker that the plan is to ultimately raze the concrete block marking the grave site and build over the area.

“By attempting to destroy the mass grave in Ahvaz, the Iranian authorities appear to be embarking on a sinister and deliberate effort to destroy crucial evidence of their past crimes and deprive the families of the victims of the 1988 mass prisoner killings of their right to truth, justice and reparation. This is a shocking assault on justice that must be stopped immediately,” said Magdalena Mughrabi Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The action is akin to other mass murdering regimes that have attempted to erase the evidence of their crimes. It is no different than the Nazis burning down a concentration camp or a Serbian army unit digging up bodies from a mass grave to move them.

“For years the authorities have inflicted unbearable suffering on the families of the victims of the 1988 extrajudicial executions. They have denied them the right to give their loved ones a dignified burial and forced them to walk through piles of rubbish to visit their dead. Now they are planning to destroy their final resting place and trying to obliterate their memory from history,” said Shadi Sadr, the Executive Director of Justice for Iran.

According to Amnesty International, mass graves are crime scenes that require professional forensic expertise to undertake exhumations and ensure preservation of evidence and accurate identification of bodies. By desecrating the site, the authorities will be destroying vital evidence that could one day be used to shed light on the number and identity of those killed in state custody.

The Ahvaz mass grave is located on a barren piece of land 3km east of Behesht Abad Cemetery. It is believed to contain the bodies of dozens of people who were among several thousand political prisoners killed in a wave of extrajudicial executions across Iran in the summer of 1988. The prisoners were rounded up and forcibly disappeared before being killed in secret.  Their bodies were then dumped into freshly dug trenches overnight.

The regime plan is to widen a roadway near the grave site and eventually raze the concrete block sitting on top of it in favor of a green space or even a commercial development. The idea the regime would allow construction of an office building built on top of a mass grave site shows the mullahs disregard for these people who were viewed as enemies of the Islamic revolution.

This is not the only mass grave from the mass killings of 1988 at risk of destruction. Justice for Iran has learned of apparent efforts to tamper with another site in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi province, where up to 170 political prisoners are believed to be buried.

Many of the prisoners in 1988 that were rounded up and executed were either members of the dissident group, the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), or suspected of being members. Even if a prisoner had no affiliation with the dissident group, regime officials would tag the prisoner with an association to expedite their execution.

The vast majority of those killed had already spent years in prison, often for peacefully exercising their rights by distributing newspapers and leaflets, taking part in peaceful anti-government demonstrations, or having real or perceived affiliations with various political opposition groups. Some had already completed their sentences but had not been released because they refused to “repent”.

To date, no Iranian officials have been investigated and brought to justice for the extrajudicial executions. Some of the alleged perpetrators continue to hold political office or other influential positions, including in the judiciary, according to Amnesty International.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

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Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

With Hassan Rouhani ensconced for another four years, the mullahs in Tehran can turn their attention back to the work at hand which is continuing the expansion of the Iranian regime’s extremism and secure the gains it made during four years of an Obama administration’s failed policy of appeasement.

That expansion is on a variety of fronts. First and foremost, the regime is focused on expanding its military capabilities and has made aggressive moves to do so. It’s a vital step for the regime since the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its related units, such as the Quds Force, are the tip of the spear that also happen to control the economic purse strings of the country.

Through an elaborate network of shell companies, the IRGC control most of the major industrial sectors such as oil, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. It regularly uses the profits from these enterprises to pay for its military expenditures as well as the proxies it uses in its fighting.

The IRGC also pushed hard for the nuclear deal for one specific purpose which was to lift crippling economic sanctions that were cutting off its supplies of cash and arms. That was vital since the handwriting was on the wall since the Arab Spring democracy protests and the disputed Iranian presidential election of 2009 that the regime was under significant pressure that threatened the rule of the mullahs.

The flawed nuclear offered unjustified concessions for the regime not only because it lifted sanctions and flooded cash back into the mullahs’ coffers, but also it allowed the regime to unlink its abysmal human rights record and support for terrorism from the agreement itself.

This essentially gave the regime a blank check to continue to engage in militant actions without fear of reprisal.

Part of that military support has been a destructive expansion on Iran’s use of proxies such as the terrorist group Hezbollah to fight its battles, especially in the ever-widening Syrian civil war and the insurgency in Yemen with the Houthi.

News reports have pointed towards a fresh influx of support for Hezbollah and what that may mean for U.S.-backed rebel forces in Syria.

A top U.S. military official says rather than using any additional monies to invest more heavily in conventional forces, there are indications Tehran continues to focus on cultivating special operators to help lead and direct proxy forces, according to Voice of America.

“If anything, increased defense dollars in Iran are likely to go toward increasing that network, looking for ways to expand it,” U.S. Special Operation Forces Vice Commander Lieutenant General Thomas Trask told an audience in Washington late Tuesday.

“We’ve already seen evidence of them taking units and officers out of the conventional side that are working with the IRGC in Syria,” Trask added. “We’re going to stay focused on these proxies and the reach that Iran has well past Syria and Yemen but into Africa, into South America, into Europe as well.”

Yet despite Iran’s heavy involvement in Syria to help prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. military officials see no indications much of that money has been set aside for bolstering Tehran’s conventional forces.

Nor do they see that as a likely scenario, even though the latest estimates from the U.S. intelligence community warn Iran is trying to develop “a range of new military capabilities,” including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and armed drones.

Already, Iran is supplementing its own forces inside Syria by providing arms, financing and training for as many as 10,000 Shia militia fighters, including units from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Military and intelligence officials further worry about the sway Iran has over tens of thousands of additional fighters who are part of Shia militias fighting in Iraq.

Fighting involving U.S. aircraft against Iranian-backed forces in the border town of al Tanf where Syria, Jordan and Iraq meet gave a prelude to what may be a wider war as Iran continues to pour resources into Syria to consolidate gains made by the Assad regime with the backing of Russia.

But conventional warfare isn’t the only area the mullahs want to expand as Steve King, COO and CTO of Netswitch Technology Management, pointed out Tehran’s investment in cyberattacks in Lifezette.

Since 2015, Iran has been conducting a sophisticated online cyberattack campaign that uses custom-built malware to deliberately infect and gain access to sensitive industrial control systems and critical infrastructure in companies across the globe, King writes.

All of this activity during the last two years has been like spring training for the Iranians: mostly practice attacks designed to sharpen their skills, he added.

King noted that according to a 2016 Defense Department report, Iran has evolved its cybersecurity operations to become the primary pillar of its national security strategy and has been testing the limits of sanctions and repercussions associated with the nuclear deal as they might be applied to their activities in cyberspace. So far, no reaction from the West.

Cyberwarfare is now as important to Iran’s military strategy as its ballistic missile program used to be, he warns.

The broad array of threats being presented by the Iranian regime is becoming readily apparent even though the Iran lobby and its supporters continue to work to obscure all of the regime’s actions.

One example is a piece by Cornelius Adebahr in Carnegie Europe that extols the virtues of a Rouhani win and what it means for Europe. It’s a puff piece for the regime and ignores the historical record of Iranian extremism.

Sadly, Adebahr only regurgitates the same false messages offered by groups such as the National Iranian American Council. The brutal reality of Iranian policy can’t be seen in the ballot box but in the battlefields across the Middle East.

Michael Tomlinson

Chances of US and Iran Confrontation Grows in Syria

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Chances of US and Iran Confrontation Grows in Syria

Chances of US and Iran Confrontation Grows in Syria

The Iranian regime has been instrumental in the evolution of the Syrian civil war. From its earliest days when the regime of Bashar al-Assad violently put down pro-democracy demonstrations, the mullahs in Tehran have done everything they could to keep Assad in power.

As one of its few allies, the Assad regime represents a vital link for Iran to the Mediterranean and serves as a counterweight to the Iranian regime’s rivals. As one of the few partners the Iranian regime has, Syria serves as more than an ally, but also as a sign of Iranian strength and reach.

The dark days for the Iranian regime and Assad in the early days of a growing rebellion revealed deep fissures in Syrian society and forced Iran’s mullahs to open up its larder to supply Assad as he quickly was running out of cash, ammunition, weapons and soldiers as mass defections within the Syrian army took hold.

As the Iranian regime launched an air bridge between Tehran and Damascus using its own airlines to ship badly needed supplies to Assad, the situation on the ground changed as well as radicalized Islamic extremist fighters began to trickle in from safe havens in Afghanistan and Iran.

For the mullahs in Iran, they saw an opportunity to use these militants to target and attack more moderate Western-backed rebel groups fighting Assad and turn the terms of the rebellion away from democracy and towards a war against terror; an ironic twist considering Iranian regime’s own long history of supporting terror.

The fact that Iran was using Hezbollah fighters as its shock troops on the ground in Syria was no mere coincidence. The regime has long used these terrorists in proxy operations around the world.

In response, the world aligned to fight these new terror groups, including ISIS thereby buying time for Assad and breathing room for Iran’s mullahs to make moves.

After years of ISIS-inspired and led terror attacks around the world in Paris, Brussels, Orlando, Nice, Boston, San Bernardino, Sydney, Ottawa and Berlin, the world finally took the fight to ISIS and worked to drive it back out of Mosul in Iraq and now has made advances in Syria, but those gains have brought a new situation that is only gaining in tension.

Military forces from the U.S., Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan are now all converging on similar territory in Syria as ISIS forces get pushed further back bringing on the very real possibility that these forces may inadvertently start shooting at each other.

In one border crossing between Syria and Iraq, in a town called Tanf, that possibility loomed large as U.S. aircraft dropped leaflets warning pro-Syrian regime militia to avoid one the so-called deconfliction zones around a small U.S. occupied base there, according to the Military Times.

Officials at the Pentagon have acknowledged that pro-regime forces are active in the area and were conducting armed patrols in the vicinity of Tanf.

 

U.S. and British Special Forces use the facility to train Syrian opposition forces for the fight against ISIS, according to U.S. Central Command officials. The deconfliction zone encompasses a 55-kilometer radius around the base.

“These patrols and the continued armed and hostile presence of pro-regime forces inside the deconfliction zone are unacceptable and threatening to coalition forces,” said a CENTCOM official.

With the pending liberation of the Syrian city of Raqqa by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, elements of the Syrian regime and proxies allied to Iran have been jockeying for control.

Without any agreement between parties to the conflict in Syria on what to do with formerly held ISIS territory, confrontation becomes a likely avenue, said Fabrice Balanche, a leading French expert on Syria and a visiting fellow at The Washington institute for Near East Policy.

Ultimately, Syria is worried about the permanent presence of a U.S.-backed Syrian opposition group blocking a strategic route for the regime.

Over the weekend, members of the Katib Imam Ali, an Iraqi Shiite militia associated with the Iranian regime, positioned a large number of forces to include tanks and technicals — modified pickup trucks with mounted heavy machine guns — just outside the 55-kilometer zone.

Officials in Baghdad say they will use force to defend the installation where U.S. forces are operating. Only two weeks ago, pro-regime militias tested U.S. forces requiring strikes from U.S. aircraft to attack a pro-regime tank and bulldozer.

Syrian rebels say the U.S. and its allies are sending them more arms to try to fend off a new push into the southeast by Iran-backed militias aiming to open an overland supply route between Iraq and Syria.

The stakes are high as Iranian regime seeks to secure its influence from Tehran to Beirut in a “Shi’ite crescent” of regime’s influence through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, according to Reuters.

A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of Assad told Reuters the deployment of government forces and pro-Damascus Iraqi fighters in the Badia would “obstruct all the plans of the MOC, Jordan and America”.

The commander, a non-Syrian, said Assad’s enemies were committed to blocking “what they call the (Shi’ite) Crescent”. But, he said, “Now, our axis is insistent on this matter and it will be accomplished.”

The mullah’s backed Iraqi Badr militia said its advance to the Syrian border would help the Syrian army reach the border from the other side. “The Americans will not be allowed to control the border,” its leader, Hadi al-Amiri, told al-Mayadeen TV.

As all these forces converge, it’s clear that Iranian regime’s long support of Assad is finally leading it into direct conflict with the U.S. and its allies and that will be a scenario the mullahs in Tehran should surely avoid.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

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Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

The re-election of Hassan Rouhani to another term as president of the Iranian regime came as no surprise to experienced Iran watchers and the larger dissident community; particularly since the election process in Iran is essentially rigged from the start by the process of eliminating thousands of candidates who register to run for the office, but this has not stopped the Iran lobby from claiming the win was a mandate for so-called “moderate” policies.

One example of this myth-making comes from the National Iranian American Council which noted Rouhani’s win with an analysis on its website.

According to the NIAC, more than 41 million Iranians voted in Iran’s May 19th Presidential election, or nearly 75% of the electorate. The NIAC claims that figure included tens of thousands of Iranians in the diaspora with a remarkable feat given the obstacles imposed by Iran’s unelected institutions.

It’s a silly argument to make since many election analysts who have studied Iranian elections have noted the past practice of ballot stuffing and double counting of ballots cast in presidential and city council races in order to boost overall numbers.

There is also the infamous 2009 election “victory” of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which was widely considered to be illegitimate for the same tactics.

The claim of high Iranian voter turnout would be similar to basing the election turnout for the Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump race on counting ballots cast for state races as separate and unique.

It is even more ironic for the NIAC to claim a high turnout from the Iranian diaspora when it has previously openly condemned large portions of the diaspora involved in the Iranian resistance movement, such as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran.

The NIAC also claims that the election was a 57-38% landslide for incumbent Rouhani, and a defeat for so-called hardliners – including the leadership of Iran’s judiciary and Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – which publicly mobilized for perceived conservative candidate Ebrahim Raisi

What the NIAC doesn’t admit to is that the election was precisely a victory for the hardliners because the regime government is controlled and directed by the same hardliners who claim to be moderates. All Iranian officials from the Rouhani on down to the lowliest village representative all have to swear the same oath of fealty and allegiance to the regime’s religious leadership and theocracy.

There is no distinction within the Iranian regime between moderates or hardliners since all are beholden to the same power structure.

The NIAC also claimed the election was a referendum on the nuclear deal, but what it fails to do is make the distinction of how the election was engineered to deliver a pre-determined outcome. By setting up a race between Rouhani and Raisi, the mullahs created the perception of a moderate vs. hardliner battle and all but ensured Rouhani’s election as a choice of the lesser of two evils.

The election was never about the nuclear deal since most Iranians have not received any benefits from the deal and probably won’t for many more years. For Iranians who voted for Rouhani, the election was simply a choice of choosing a less odious candidate than another, which tends to be the basic choices provided by the mullahs.

To keep that fiction up, Raisi and his supporters are now even accusing Rouhani of rigging the vote with widespread voter fraud.

“Tampering with the numbers of people’s participation is inappropriate. Not sending ballots to centers where the government’s opponent has a chance of getting votes is very inappropriate,” Raisi was quoted as saying.

“I ask the Guardian Council and the judiciary not to let the people’s rights get trampled. If this vote-tampering is not looked into, then the people’s trust will be damaged.”

The claim is humorous given the regime’s predilection for rigging elections, but Raisi’s claims might very well be genuine, but in the end irrelevant since the mullahs got the result they wanted, which was to fool the rest of the world.

The need to fool the world is necessary for the Iranian regime as it continues to implement an aggressive agenda seeking to expand its sphere of influence throughout the region, which is why recent news that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias were on the very of opening a land corridor from Iran to Assad-regime controlled territory in Syria is worrisome.

The opening of such a corridor would accelerate Iran’s ability to ship weapons and fighters to Syria without having to resort to more clandestine methods such as using commercial Iranian airliners to ferry troops and supplies.

Syrian rebel sources have warned of advances by the Syrian army and Iranian-backed militia to reach the border.

The news of Iranian involvement in other regions included reports from Afghanistan of Pakistani and Iranian nationals fighting for ISIS elements.

Afghanistan Nangarhar provincial Police Chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said that the Pakistani and Iranian detainees confessed that militants were being funded by Iran and Pakistan.

The attack against the U.S. didn’t stop either after the election as top mullah Ali Khamenei continued his customary verbal broadsides against the U.S. by marking the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by ripping Saudi Arabia, saying its Sunni rival is being pumped for money by the U.S., according to Agence France-Presse. 

Khamenei’s comments comes after President Trump brokered a $110 billion defense deal with the Saudis during his first foreign trip in office.

The defense deal between the U.S. and the Saudis will bolster Riyadh’s defense capabilities by providing more equipment and services to combat extremist terror groups and Iran.

Even as the Iran lobby claims the Iran election has resolved much, the opposite has been the truth.

Michael Tomlinson

On Memorial Day We Should Honor Everyone Who Died for Freedom

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On Memorial Day We Should Honor Everyone Who Died for Freedom

On Memorial Day We Should Honor Everyone Who Died for Freedom

Memorial Day will see families and friends gather for backyard BBQs and hit stores for shopping sprees. In other, more quiet gatherings, people will gather to honor the memory of those who gave their lives for defending freedom in wars and battles at home and abroad.

But Memorial Day should be a day for a broader and more inclusive remembrance of people who fought for freedom. It should also be a time for honoring those who did not wear a uniform, but still paid the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of a better world.

Many of those people are activists and dissidents who have fought for democracy and human rights against authoritarian regimes around the world such as Iran and North Korea. For them, active protests against their government can cause arrest, torture, imprisonment and often execution.

Their sacrifice is an ultimate demonstration of the courage it takes to stand up to tyranny and oppression. For many who make that sacrifice, the bravery shown as they are led to the gallows is no different than soldiers going over a hill to attack an enemy position or brave fire to save fellow soldiers or civilians.

In a way, Memorial Day is a celebration; a celebration of the courage it takes for one person to act, to suppress their fears and do something most normal people wouldn’t even consider doing. Memorial Day is a recognition that to be brave is a choice and a moral one at that.

Across America, we observe Memorial Day legacies from the recent past in recognizing soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines who have fought and died in the global war on terror in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and other remote locations.

We should also recognize the sacrifices made by those who have acted on similar instincts in their own way.

In places such as Iran, the Iranian regime has been ruthless and relentless in seeking out and punishing dissidents severely. The regime has a long history of murder and massacres as a tool of statecraft, going back to the mass slaughter of 30,000 Iranian dissidents back in the ‘80s and the continued arrest and execution of dissidents to this day.

In the prior decades of the Islamic state, dissidents were primarily political and often came from opposition and resistance parties and groups such as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) and the Mujaedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK).

Now the range of dissident in Iran is as broad as the entire population itself. It has grown to include students who oppose restrictions on their education, small business owners upset with a struggling economy, women resisting moral codes that require hijabs or handcuff their ability to choose careers or even a husband, or even artists and bloggers who are imprisoned for expressing themselves or critiquing the mullahs.

The list of people executed by Iran and regimes such as Syria and North Korea is long and bloody. It is the hallmark of these regimes that wanton murder is a preferred method of eliminating opponents.

In the case of the Assad regime in Syria, using the full power of the military to drop chemical weapons and barrel bombs to wipe out entire villages or eliminate families or ethnic groups on a wholesale basis. There could be no better Memorial Day remembrance than to observe the sacrifices made by the Syrian to protest and oppose the Assad regime in the first place that sparked the civil war there.

In most of their cases though, as in the case of dissidents in Iran, there will be no parades, no festivals, no special sales at the malls and no documentaries or TV specials. For most of them, the memory of their sacrifice lives on in their families and in the dissident organizations that keep up the fight such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Now we see many of these activists and dissidents fight back in their own ways, many staging hunger strikes to bring international attention to their plight while international groups stage demonstrations and protests around the world and keep their visibility up through social media campaigns.

On this Memorial Day, it would be fitting if we took a moment to recognize their sacrifices as being no less meaningful than the soldier on the battlefield and for their sacrifice, we should all be grateful.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

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Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

The effort by President Trump to build a new international coalition to confront and contain the Iranian regime got off to a solid start with summits and meetings in Saudi Arabia and Israel. The warm welcome he received from Arab leaders must have unnerved the mullahs in Tehran since the Iran lobby has turned its attention a full-throated defense of the regime.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council took to authoring an editorial on the NIAC website that attempts to downplay Trump’s efforts.

“A key factor explaining the violence in the Middle East in the past few decades is that the region has lacked a sustainable, indigenous order. The process of establishing an order is by definition disruptive and the Middle East has almost continuously been in this state since the end of the Cold War,” Parsi writes.

“To make matters worse, the temporary equilibriums that briefly provided a resemblance of order were established and sustained by an external power – the United States – rather than by the states of the region themselves. As a result, these temporary periods of stability could only last as long as the external power was willing to sustain the order with its own blood and treasure,” he adds.

Parsi’s logic is perverse since he effectively argues for a process in which Iranian regime institutes order by eradicating everyone else that stands in its path. Of course, Parsi claims that Iran only has the best of intentions for its neighbors, but the track record does not show that as Iran is now embroiled in three wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Parsi goes on to blame Saudi Arabia for Middle East turmoil all in an effort to isolate Iran, but Parsi never admits to Iranian regime’s own culpability in setting the region ablaze in bloodshed and sectarian violence.

We have seen the profound loss of life after the Obama administration abdicated any role in fixing Syria in favor of the Iranian regime settling issues through barrel bombs and chemical gas attacks.

Parsi’s colleague, Reza Marashi, takes up the cause of whitewashing Iran in his own editorial reiterating the tired old refrain of Hassan Rouhani of being a tried and true moderate, whose real goal is only alleviating the economic malaise gripping Iran.

Unfortunately, no one told Marashi it seems that Iran’s economy will not improve so long as the mullahs continue to siphon billions for their own personal enrichment, as well as ship off more billions to prop up the Assad regime in Syria and pay to support Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in their wars.

Marashi even dubs the newly formed partnership against Iran as an “Axis of Rejection” a nifty piece of word play that reminds us of President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech.

“Rouhani’s track record demonstrates that sustained engagement can lower tensions and produce peaceful solutions to conflict,” Marashi writes.

It is a claim that is both surreal and fantasy since Rouhani has presided over a massive escalation in wars that Iranian regime is fighting with no discernible pathway to peace other than to kill off Iran’s enemies.

But the NIAC isn’t through trying to support Iran as Ryan Costello weighed in with a press release lauding tweets made by former Secretary of State John Kerry who negotiated the horrific Iran nuclear agreement in the first place opposing proposed Senate legislation to levy new sanctions on the regime.

“Sec. Kerry’s public intervention cautioning against new Iran sanctions legislation should be another wake-up call that this is the wrong bill at the wrong time. Sec. Kerry would not be turning to the microphones unless the bill was an Iran deal-killer and private efforts to remove poison pills had failed,” Cosello writes.

“Lawmakers must ask themselves why they would give President Trump a mandate to undermine the Iran nuclear deal, ratchet up tensions in the region and undermine Iran’s moderates on the heels of their election victory. Tens of millions of Iranians voted in favor of openness and engagement with the outside world while Trump danced with unelected Saudi monarchs and called for Iran’s isolation,” he adds.

The more appropriate question back to Costello would be “why would lawmakers ever think they could trust the Iranian regime anymore after its commitment to waging proxy wars on its neighbors.”

The NIAC wasn’t the only Iran lobby supporter busy propping up the mullahs. Hooman Majd, a former advisor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, offered up the fairy tale that Iran had opted for peaceful co-existence with Rouhani’s re-election in a piece for Foreign Policy.

“Iran’s presidential election also proved the adage that the only thing predictable about Iranian politics is its unpredictability. Which, to the consternation of the Washington foreign-policy class, puts Iran experts on the same professional level as astrologers or palm readers,” Majd writes.

Again, Iranian regime supporters like Majd show their silliness when the election outcome in Iran was far from unpredictable. In fact, no incumbent Iranian president has ever lost re-election, not even Ahmadinejad when his re-election had to be rigged with widespread ballot tampering.

Iranian elections are so predictable, they remind us of the old Soviet Union-style elections with 99 percent voter participation and zero percent uncertainty.

The more the Iran lobby tries to prop up the Iranian regime the more it reveals how weak and vulnerable the mullahs have become.

 

Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

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Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

For the Iranian people, the choices in this year’s presidential election were appalling. They could choose to return Hassan Rouhani to a second term after his first term was marked by a nuclear deal that provided no discernible economic benefits to them, presiding over a government rife with corruption and massive protests over inflated salaries for officials, and a brutal crackdown on human rights that saw everyone from students and bloggers to journalists and artists imprisoned.

Or they could select Ebrahim Raisi, a cleric with no discernible public backing who is widely reviled for his role in executing 30,000 imprisoned Iranian dissidents in 1988.

To say the Iranian people’s choices ranged from bad to awful is an understatement, but that is exactly the kind of predicament the mullahs wanted to arrange for their people; to be forced into selecting the lesser of two evils.

It is also why Rouhani’s election was met with media messages of a “moderate” win; all of which suits the mullah’s purposes to frame the narrative for the next four years as a moderate Iran confronts an “extremist” Trump administration with its “extremist” Arab allies.

The mullahs are not stupid, they realize the geopolitical landscape is rapidly changing on them as their Arab rivals are linking arms with a newly energized U.S. in articulating a policy of confronting Iran rather than appeasing it.

What is driving that change has been the Iranian regime’s own policies over the past four years which has seen the regime ignite the Syrian civil war and turn it into an abattoir of death. It has also started the Houthi rebellion in Yemen which has drawn Saudi Arabia into a direct proxy war with Iran.

Couple that with an economy mired in mud and a newly aggressive ballistic missile program that has freaked out the world and you get a recipe for unlikely alliances being forged now.

You know things are different in the world when direct, non-stop service between Tel Aviv and Riyadh has been inaugurated.

But the change in the political environment worldwide pales in comparison to the stark changes happening internally in Iran.

The regime has already struggled mightily to suppress social media and encrypted communications apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. It’s first taste of the power of social media campaign in disputed 2009 elections in which protests and the coverage of the crackdowns were largely promoted and carried on social media.

In response under Rouhani, the regime has sought to suppress all dissent online which is a virtually impossible exercise. The regime has used its Basij paramilitaries to seek out and arrest anyone viewed as disruptive whether it’s a Snapchat post of a woman riding a bicycle or an Instagram post of a woman not wearing a hijab.

Evin Prison has been filled with such threatening individuals as a bunch of students posting a viral video of them dancing to Western music.

Nowhere has the internal threats to the regime been more apparent than in the increased visibility and activity of organized Iranian resistance groups; long a thorn in the mullah’s side.

According to dissident media outlets, a vast network of dissidents supporting the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) came alive in unprecedented scale to voice the true feelings of the Iranian people about the candidates and the regime in its entirety.

Cities and towns across the country, including major metropolitan centers such as Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Tabriz and Shiraz, have witnessed scenes of brave activists daring long odds and challenges to put up large posters and images of Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi from bridges and overpasses, car windshields and even the walls of buildings belonging to the regime’s security forces, such as the Revolutionary Guards and Basij.

Open support for the MEK inside Iran is forbidden considered a capital crime to any activists that are caught, with torture and possibly even execution awaiting them. Long-time MEK supporter Gholamreza Khosravi was jailed and eventually executed for merely providing financial support for an MEK-affiliated satellite TV network in 2014.

Also, the Iranian regime’s claims of a “historic” election in terms of turnout has also been calle3d into question by the National Council of Resistance of Iran which outlined how the regime in the past has simply cooked the election books.

“One of the simplest and easiest way is multiplying the real votes of the candidates by a factor so that the number of participants in the elections can be shown as several times higher than the real figures,” the NCRI said in a statement. “One of the other ways to cheat, is printing additional ballots and producing fraudulent ballots in secret sites and inserting those ballot boxes into counting centers so that the number of participants is shown higher at the polls.”

Outside of the media-centric environs of Tehran, voter turnout was largely apathetic and low with reports of boycotts in many provincial towns and cities from locals dissatisfied with the economic problems besieging them.

What hasn’t changed in Iran is the basic make-up of the power elite still holding control firmly in their hands which is the religious body comprising most of the parliament and councils governing the judiciary, civil service and financial sector, along with the Revolutionary Guard Corps which still controls virtually all the state industries and companies.

As Rouhani moves forward, he will find a very different world than the one that embraced a flawed nuclear deal two years ago.

The era of appeasing Iran is over.

Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Uniting the World…Against It

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Iranian Regime Uniting the World…Against It

U.S. President Donald Trump takes his seat before his speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The Iranian regime election has given the world another dose of Hassan Rouhani, but in and of itself, his election to another term is meaningless since the world has seen that Ali Khamenei and his close circle of mullahs set policy, backed by the muscle of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The arguments against the Iranian government have never been directed at its people. For the most part, the Iranian people have been manipulated, coerced, bullied and even brutalized into submission. It has been the conduct of the leadership of the mullahs that have brought so much misery to that part of the world.

The leadership of Iran has pursued a policy that emphasizes harsh suppression of internal dissent, while using brute force to enact a foreign policy of war and terrorism to advance its aims, which is to expand the sphere of influence for its form of radicalized Shia theology.

But in an interesting twist of irony, Iran’s very actions to unite underneath its own banner have yielded the opposite effect: countries that have previously been adversaries are now aligning to form an international coalition to halt Iranian regime’s expansion.

President Trump’s first overseas trip started off with Saudi Arabia and extended into Israel, two countries that have not only been at odds and even war, but are also under their own scrutiny. Now both they and other countries, including the Gulf states, have begun the tenuous process of working together at keeping the Iranian regime contained.

The ancient proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is finding utility now among countries that are being confronted by Iranian extremism and for President Trump, the opportunity exists to redefine a new order in the Middle East predicated at halting Iranian expansion and bring about a political realignment within the Iranian regime.

Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia was the first to a Muslim majority nation for an incoming U.S. president and set the tone for reaching out to the Muslim world in a manner his predecessor never managed to achieve.

Trump said on Monday that shared concern about Iran was driving Israel and many Arab states closer and demanded that Tehran immediately cease military and financial backing of “terrorists and militias”.

In stressing threats from Iran, Trump echoed a theme laid out during weekend meetings in Saudi Arabia with Muslim leaders from around the world, many wary of the Islamic state’s growing regional influence and financial muscle.

Trump said there were opportunities for cooperation across the Middle East: “That includes advancing prosperity, defeating the evils of terrorism and facing the threat of an Iranian regime that is threatening the region and causing so much violence and suffering.”

Worried about the movement being made in realigning against the Iranian regime, newly minted Rouhani claimed that regional stability could not happen without Iran.

He said the summit in Saudi Arabia “had no political value, and will bear no results”.

“Who can say the region will experience total stability without Iran? Who fought against the terrorists? It was Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Syria. But who funded the terrorists?”

In this one area, Rouhani is correct, but not for the reasons he claimed. Regional stability is dependent on Iran, but only if Iran stopped fueling the instability it has caused across the Middle East in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Rouhani also trotted out the time-worn claim that Saudi Arabia was in fact more dangerous because of the rise of Sunni-dominant terrorist groups such as ISIS, but ignored his own country’s role in helping spawn ISIS with the downfall of the Sunni-Shia coalition government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq.

While Rouhani tries to diminish the importance of Arab states aligning against Iran, the broader and more important strategic implications are more troubling for Rouhani and his fellow clerics. A clear alliance among fellow Muslim nations with non-Arab states such as Israel, the U.S. and Turkey would represent a sea change in relations among countries with long histories of opposing each other.

It also puts to a lie the message Rouhani and his Iran lobby supporters have long pushed which is that opposition to Iran has always been built around sectarian issues and as such lack legitimacy. The opposite is now true; a coalition of diverse nations with varying beliefs all share the same concerns over an Iran that stands at the center of virtually all the instability now wreaking havoc there.

The real proof of Iran’s intentions will not come from words but deeds. If the Iranian regime continues to fling ballistic missiles and supply its various proxies in their ongoing wars, then the regime has no intention of altering its course.

It is ironic that Rouhani pointed a finger at Saudi Arabia claiming it held no free elections when Iran’s own history of elections is more checkered, including the debacle of the 2009 disputed elections.

“Mr. Trump has come to the region at a time when 45 million Iranian people went to polling stations, and he went to a country where they don’t know what elections are about,” Rouhani said. “It’s not in their dictionary.

“Hopefully the day will come when Saudi Arabia will adopt this path.”

His triumphant comments neglected to mention that Iran’s elections are hardly free or fair, with candidates chosen by an unelected 12-man council, according to the Los Angeles Times, not to mention that the figure made up by the regime could not be verified, given no independent monitoring has been present, and Iran’s state media are full of facts on how both rivals have made unprecedented deceits in the ballots. The opposition to the Iranian regime has estimated the total number of participants in the fake election, to have been increased by four in order to cover, the regime’s isolation at home.

Rouhani for his part deflected questions about Trump’s calls to isolate Iran over its support for militant groups and its ballistic missile program, suggesting that the new U.S. administration had yet to “settle down” and formulate a coherent policy in the Middle East.

“We are waiting for this new U.S. government to be settled in terms of their stances, posture and future plans,” Rouhani said.

“Hopefully things will be settled down and well established in the U.S. so that we can actually pass judgments on the new administration.”

We can only assume Rouhani hopes to squeeze a few more months out of the appeasement policy pursued by the Obama administration before things go south on him and his fellow mullahs.

Michael Tomlinson

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

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As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

Without much drama, Hassan Rouhani was re-elected to a second term as president of the Iranian regime. The result didn’t come as a surprise to any experienced Iran watcher since no incumbent has ever lost a bid for a second term, even if the results had to be faked to get the job done as was the case with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But what has been lost on a large part of the global media is now the mullahs manage to always stage a convenient drama to be played out for them in terms of a fateful showdown between “reformist and moderate” forces against “hardline and conservative” ones bent on rolling back the freedoms of the Iranian people.

If Nazi Germany had staged an election between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the latter probably would have looked like a moderate too.

The same was true here in which a careful choreography ensued. First thousands of candidates filing to be on the ballot had to be summarily tossed aside to clear the field.

That left only six men to move forward—no women and no active or known dissidents—and then several dropped out to throw their support to one of the two remaining choices: Rouhani and Ebrahim Raisi.

Conveniently, Raisi was portrayed as the “hardline” choice of Ali Khamenei and was portrayed by media as the man who would roll back all the “positive” achievements wrought by Rouhani over the past four years.

Given Raisi’s bloody history as a special prosecutor that oversaw the executions of tens of thousands of Iranian dissidents, it’s easy to see why he might be viewed as slightly more bloodthirsty than Rouhani who oversaw only the execution of mere thousands of dissidents.

It was a Hobson’s choice and a well-played one.

While the Iran lobby focused on Rouhani’s achievements in securing the nuclear deal and opening Iran back up to Western investment, never were there any mentions of the broad human rights crackdowns during his tenure including the largest number of public executions since the 1979 revolution.

In fact, global media were eager to eat up the narrative of a “moderate” win which is exactly what Khamenei and his fellow mullahs wanted to see portrayed.

How easily the world has forgotten the parliamentary elections only last year in which tens of thousands of candidates were knocked off ballots and faithful followers of the mullahs were re-elected.

The Iranian regime smartly chooses to fight its public battles only after the game has been rigged.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council brayed like a wild animal over the results as the NIAC quickly issued statements lauding the outcome.

“President Rouhani’s convincing win is a sharp rebuke to Iran’s unelected institutions that were a significant brake on progress during Rouhani’s first term. It is also a rebuke of Washington hawks who openly called for either a boycott of the vote or for the hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi to win in order to hasten a confrontation,” Parsi said.

“In addition to Trump’s America, there are two other countries that will continue to form an Axis of Rejection in response to Rouhani’s foreign policy. One is Saudi Arabia. Despite Tehran’s repeated outreach, Riyadh has refused to respond in kind,” said Parsi’s NIAC colleague Reza Marashi in a piece for Huffington Post.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, many countries are not hearkening to Parsi and Marashi’s messages.

During President Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia, he found common ground with the Saudis on the need to confront Iranian regime’s aggression since Rouhani has clearly followed a foreign policy of engaging in wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; coupled with a North Korea-like ramp up in ballistic missile testing.

The king said on Sunday Saudi Arabia had not witnessed terrorism until the 1979 Revolution in Iran. Instead of accepting good-faith initiatives, Iran has “pursued expansionary ambitions, and criminal practices and the meddling of other countries’ internal affairs,” he said. The kingdom, however, respects the Iranian people and won’t judge them “by the crimes of their regime,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

Trump later singled out Iran as a terror sponsor. Iran’s leaders speak “openly” of mass murder, Trump said in his keynote speech before dozens of Muslim leaders gathered in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He said the Iranian government gives terrorists “safe harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for recruitment.”

Sen. John McCain lauded President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia this weekend saying it sent a strong message to Iran that the U.S. and its allies are ready to block Iran’s efforts to destabilize the region.

“There’s no doubt that if we’re going to impede the Iranian’s continued efforts to exert, certainly, significant strength in the region that this is an important step forward,” the Arizona Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Orde Kittrie, a professor of law at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lauded the Trump administration’s approach to the Iranian regime and how—in this one area—bipartisan cooperation with Congress seems to be taking root.

“The Trump administration’s different approach is very consistent with that advocated by leading members of Congress including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in their S. 722, and House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chair Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in their H.R. 1698,” he writes in the Hill.

“The Trump administration has been accused by some of acting impulsively at times. Its apparently careful, measured and thoughtful approach to Iran policy is encouraging. Tearing up the JCPOA, without a better strategy for preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb and a broader strategy for combating non-nuclear malign Iranian behavior, would make no sense,” he added.

While the world discusses the “moderate” victory in Iran, it would do well to remember how bloody the past four years have been around the Middle East under Rouhani’s term.

 

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

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Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

The Iran lobby has been posturing to depict the Iranian presidential election as a battle between “moderates” and “hardliners” as personified by Hassan Rouhani versus Ebrahim Raisi. It has also sought to downplay any role top mullah Ali Khamenei plays in determining the outcome of the election.

The National Iranian American Council has been the most vocal of these groups in pushing this narrative. Examples of this includes pieces appearing in Huffington Post.

The first one by Reza Marashi of the NIAC argues this central conceit of reformists and pragmatists fending off hardline conservatives. The way Marashi describes it, it is almost a heroic struggle. The only thing missing is a dramatic musical score.

Marashi argues that the Iranian people want moderation and reform in their president. Not an unreasonable idea and one that he argues is supported by the election history of Mohammad Khatami and Rouhani, as well as the dismal election effort of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He even portrays Rouhani as a trailblazer in opening political discourse with his election in 2013.

“While it’s true that election season in Iran traditionally allows for an expansion of otherwise taboo political discourse, Rouhani taken it to uncharted waters. First, he publicly committed to engaging in the process of lifting all non-nuclear sanctions if he wins a second term. Then he told a rally that he had not forgotten his 2013 campaign promises, openly stating: ‘Either they have been achieved, or I have been prevented from keeping them.’ And remarkably, he directly told voters: ‘I’ll need votes higher than 51% in order to do certain things,’” Marashi writes.

He goes on to portray Rouhani’s statement as threatening to the regime and a minor miracle he wasn’t hauled off to Evin Prison for daring to utter such statements.

Pardon us while we laugh hysterically at Marashi.

Rouhani has never been, nor ever will be considered a true moderate. He is a loyal member of the regime, pledging allegiance to the same radical theology that all office holders swear to. His past record in military, religious and judicial matters have provided him with bona fides as a harsh punisher of dissent.

His term over the past four years clearly demonstrates his willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to protect the Islamic revolution. During his tenure, the pace of executions rose to the highest level since the revolution, earning annual condemnations from the United Nations, Amnesty International and just about every other human rights organization on the planet.

He has also enforced a broad crackdown on free speech that Iranians access to unmonitored internet access is non-existent. Add to that mass arrests of journalists, the shutdown of blogs and newspapers, and efforts to crack the encryption of social apps such as Telegraph and WhatsApp and you start getting the picture of how bleak things are in Iran right now.

Marashi is correct on one point, which is that this election really is not about the presidency, but rather the positioning going on to succeed Khamenei at the top of the mullah pyramid.

In that regard Marashi and the Iran lobby are getting their cake and eating it too. If Rouhani is elected, they will get to trumpet the victory of moderation even though Rouhani is no moderate.

If Raisi is elected, they can blame it on a newly muscular approach by the Trump administration towards Iran and Middle East policy and never address the horrific crimes of the Iranian regime.

It is a neat solution for the Iran lobby.

Tyler Cullis of the NIAC takes up this issue in his piece in Huffington Post when he questions why Democratic members of Congress seem willing to give the Trump administration leeway in leveling additional sanctions on Iran.

“Democrats have signed up as co-sponsors for Senate and House legislation, believing their political fortunes best lie in supporting aggressive action against Iran rather than acting as a buffer against the Trump administration’s efforts to derail a nuclear accord that, by all accounts, is working as intended,” Cullis writes.

“Democrats are risking a historic mistake – an error in judgment that could end up both alienating their progressive base and costing them hoped-for electoral gains, not to mention setting the stage for a new conflict in the Middle East,” he adds.

Cullis raises the apocalyptic specter of war with Iran as the inevitable path from tightening sanctions against Iran.

It’s the same argument the NIAC has made repeatedly ever since Congress moved to get tougher with Iran as the regime fired off ballistic missiles, sent ships to aggressively confront the U.S. Navy and supported bloody conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen with men, arms and cash.

Cullis proclaims that war with Iran is the sure outcome from any effort to get tougher with Iran. Of course, that assumes that the mullahs only reaction is to go to war with the U.S by this logic.

In fact, the real story is that the mullahs purposely used the nuclear deal to buy time and get out from crushing economic sanctions that were threatening the very existence of the regime.

Now that Iran has received the benefits of billions in cash, foreign investment and the sale of its oil back on the open market, the usefulness and utility of keeping up the pretense of wanting to reach out to the global community is at an end.

Consequently, whether Rouhani or Raisi gets elected is a moot point, since the policies of the regime are not going to change no matter who gets elected. The NIAC has long acknowledged that the office of president in Iran lacks real power, which makes its impassioned arguments for “moderates” to win there even more incomprehensible.

Then again, logic was never a strong suit of the NIAC.

Cullis even makes the outrageous assumption that getting together on Iran will inevitably compel North Korea to take bolder action and not trust the word of the U.S. in any agreement.

“North Korea will view the U.S.’s abrogation of the Iran nuclear accord as clear evidence that the U.S. cannot be trusted to keep to its commitments and will refuse to deal with the Trump administration. In this case, peace will be impossible and war inevitable. Congress’s failings on Iran will spill over and deter peaceful settlement in other areas of conflict such as the Korean peninsula. Democrats will be on the hook once again,”

Really? Are we to assume that a North Korean regime that has broken every agreement it entered into, detonated nuclear devices and openly launches missiles with increasing range is going to be dissuaded by the U.S. commitment to Iran?

The lack of logic from the NIAC never ceases to amaze.