Iran Lobby

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

Over 1,600 Presidential Candidates in Iran and None Are Moderates

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The Iranian regime has over 1,600 people registered as candidates for next month’s presidential election, but like all previous elections in the mullah’s regime, the outcome is predetermined and not a single moderate or dissident will end up on the final ballot.

The logjam of registered candidates is typical of a system that offers the false veneer of inclusive democracy when it in fact is anything but. It’s emblematic of the root problems within the Iranian regime and why any idea of appeasement or rapprochement is just plain fantasy.

The Associated Press provided a nuts and bolts overview of the election process in Iran.

Under Iranian law, there’s no fee for registering. Hopefuls only must swear allegiance to Iran’s government and be Shiite Muslims. That gives gadflies and publicity seekers the chance to smile and wave to gathered journalists. It’s still a lot of candidates, though. The last similar turnout was Iran’s 2005 election, which saw more than 1,000 register, according to the AP.

All the candidates will be vetted by the Guardian Council, a 12-member panel half selected by the top mullah Ali Khamenei and half nominated by the judiciary and approved by parliament. The council controls elections and must approve all laws passed by parliament. It has never allowed a woman to run for president and routinely rejects candidates calling for dramatic reform. The panel also declared Ahmadinejad won the 2009 election despite widespread fraud allegations.

And who sits at the top of this pyramid? Khamenei of course. The supreme leader also serves as the country’s commander in chief over its military and the powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force involved in the wars in Iraq and Syria that also has vast economic holdings across Iran. An 88-member elected clerical panel called the Assembly of Experts appoints the supreme leader and can remove one as well, although that’s never going to happen.

Iran does not allow international observers to monitor its elections. Security forces answering only to the supreme leader also routinely arrest dual nationals and foreigners, using them as pawns in international negotiations, according to AP.

All of which brings us back to the central point people need to remember as these elections unfold, which is that there is no democracy in Iran. The Iranian people have very little choice and fewer real options and nothing happens without Khamenei’s direct approval.

Iran’s election system puts to a lie the arguments long made by Iran lobby members such as the National Iranian American Council which has consistently argued the fiction that real factions and splits occur between “moderate” and “hardline” elements there; when in fact the differences in Iran’s political and religious elite is basically comprised of fights over who’s snout can dig deepest into the trough of ill-gotten gains. The fact is that Iran’s government consistently ranks as one of the most corrupt on the planet and no matter who’s sit on president’s seat, the regime has continued to be the number of executor of its people per capita and the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

The fact that the Iranian people’s top choices right now are its current president, Hassan Rouhani, who promised many reforms including a liberalization of the economy and more economic benefits to the people—all of which has actually gotten worse—and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was widely reviled during his tenure.

The other choice being Ebrahim Raisi, custodian of Iran’s wealthiest charity, Astan Quds Razavi in Iran’s holiest shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, who was also tied to massacres of 30,000 Iranian dissidents in the 1988.

These are not great choices for the Iranian people, nor do they spell any kind of relaxation in the regime’s often barbaric policies in terms of human rights abuses and more foreign policy misadventures.

That is because the regime mandates fealty to the principle of obedience to Supreme Guardianship (Velayat-e faqih), meaning, the rule of the ayatollahs. It would be akin to eliminating all political parties in the U.S. and forcing every candidate to swear allegiance to one ruler who can never to drummed out of office.

In many ways the election of a president means relatively little since the real power resides within Khamenei and the position of supreme leader, which is why no matter who gets elected on May 19th, how to deal with Iran, especially its military is the real concern for Iran’s neighbors and the U.S.

Mohammad Amin, an analyst in Iranian affairs and fellow at the Paris-based Middle East Research Foundation, examined the wide-ranging reach of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and how confronting it is the biggest challenge facing the West.

“The IRGC, the Leviathan of Terror, which has the financial and military resources that exceed the wildest dreams of ISIS, now lurks in the Middle East. Its tentacles extend well beyond the geographical borders of Iran. While ISIS claimed parts of Syria and northern Iraq, the IRGC’s Shiite militias have an extensive presence in almost every country in the region,” he writes in the Daily Caller.

The main Iranian opposition the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has revealed a list of 31,690 Iraqi mercenaries of the IRGC, all of whom receive their salaries from Iran.

Last year, U.S. military officials said that as many as 100,000 Iranian-backed Shiite militia are now fighting on the ground in Iraq, “raising concerns that should the Islamic State be defeated, it may only be replaced by another anti-American force that fuels further sectarian violence in the region,” he added.

Amin adds that an essential first step in the direction of controlling the IRGC is for the Trump administration designating the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Failure to adopt this critical measure will only serve to embolden the regime while the region and the wider world continue to grapple with the menace of religious extremist and terrorism.

For any chance of democracy in Iran, the West needs to support Iranian opposition groups such as the NCRI and cut off the financial support the regime receives from the IRGC. That is surest pathway to eventual freedom for the Iranian people.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Covers for Chemical Attacks on Innocents in Syria

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Iran Lobby Covers for Chemical Attacks on Innocents in Syria

Iran Lobby Covers for Chemical Attacks on Innocents in Syria

True to form, the Iran lobby—in this case the National Iranian American Council—dutifully stepped up to the plate to defend the Assad regime’s continued existence by bashing the Trump administration decision to attack a Syrian regime airbase that flew the strikes.

Trita Parsi, the NIAC’s founder and president, offered up some gems of disingenuousness in Huffington Post claiming that the decision to finally cross the red line that President Obama balked at would have serious consequences.

“By now, it is clear that the missile strike has not impeded Assad from using his air force to strike rebel strongholds. In fact, Syrian warplanes reportedly carried out strikes yesterday against rebels near the city of Homs — taking off from the very air base hit by U.S. missiles. Trump even gave Assad advanced notice via Russian President Vladimir Putin, which enabled the Syrian dictator to move his troops and bunker his planes. Moreover, Trump left one of the airstrips at the targeted base untouched, which is why Assad could quickly use the base to launch further attacks,” Parsi said.

To be blunt, that’s a pretty stupid observation, even for someone claiming to be as learned as Parsi.

President Trump’s decision to strike was not a military one, but a strategic political one. In the old parlance of diplomacy, the Syrian chemical attack was a “Casus Belli;” an act so egregious and reprehensible to the sensibilities of international community and American values that the U.S. had no choice but to act.

In the history of U.S. diplomacy, this kind of retaliation is a no-brainer until President Obama decided he wanted to test out his quaint theory of appeasement in modern diplomacy; much to the shame of human rights history as over 500,000 people have lost their lives now and over four million have flooded out as refugees.

Parsi is quick to point out the lack of military effectiveness of the strikes since he skips over the most obvious benefit, which is to put Bashar al-Assad, and his allies on notice that the U.S. is perfectly willing and able to blow the Syrian military back into the Stone Age and outside interference would be grounds to include their forces in the fracas.

In one fell swoop, President Trump has neatly turned the tables on the Syria-Allies axis and forced them to calculate their own response without setting off another violent U.S. response.

Referring to consequent assault on the rebel’s strong hold and the civilians living in those areas, Parsi concludes: “The end result will be a more intensified civil war with more civilian casualties and even greater difficulty for diplomatic efforts to bear fruit,”.

For the people of Syria, no one will claim that the Syria and Iranian bombardments, assaults and revenge killings against Sunni Muslims can “intensify” as Parsi claims. How do you step up from massive aerial bombardments and the pervasive use of sarin and chlorine gas attacks?

About the only thing the Iranians have not tried against Syrian rebels is using biological agents and we don’t put it past Tehran to go that far as the mullahs have already decided to militarize hospitals and health clinics in this fight by targeting them specifically for attack.

The key to solving the Syrian crisis has always been pushing out foreign elements and leaving the Syrian people to resolve their own dilemma and achieve a political solution. If Iran had not intervened in the first few months of the popular revolt against Assad’s rule, we would find ourselves in a very different situation.

But the fact that Iran has poured billions in cash, sent thousands of soldiers and terrorist fighters, along with planeloads of advanced weapons to keep Assad in power has been the principle reason why Syria is such a mess in the first place; a fact that Parsi never admits to.

“Helping ensure that children and civilians aren’t trapped in Syria should be the first and most obvious thing the U.S. can do to help,” Parsi said in what has to be one of his all-time inane comments.

Trying to find a way to export more Syrian refugees while allowing Syria to descend into more chaos is the recipe the mullahs in Tehran have followed and Parsi has preached. It has not been a recipe for success for the Syrian people though.

Of course, no Parsi editorial would be complete without a defense of the idiotic Iran nuclear deal.

With the revelation that the accord on Syrian chemical weapons turned out to be a complete falsehood, the obvious question everyone is asking—and Parsi never answers—is how can you expect the Iran nuclear deal to be working if the same people are guaranteeing it as guaranteed the Syrian chemical weapons deal?

David French in the National Review asks the same important question as he takes up Glenn Kessler’s fact-checking piece in the Washington Post which gave former National Security Advisor a whopping four Pinocchios for her assertion that the chemical weapons deal worked.

“Media accountability is worthwhile, but we don’t need fact-checkers to tell us that the Obama administration’s Syria policy was a miserable failure. We saw the evidence in the bodies of the children slain by sarin gas. However, we do need to remember the sorry recent track record for WMD deals with hostile countries… The Obama administration was supposed to have stripped Syria of chemical weapons. Syria gassed its citizens,” French writes.

“Vicious liars like the North Koreans, Syrians, and Iranians tend to be vicious liars no matter the documents they sign. That’s a truth worth remembering as another WMD deal collapses and further destabilizes and already-dangerous world,” he adds.

French is correct and Parsi is dead wrong—which isn’t a first for him.

Michael Tomlinson

After Syria Strike Next Move Should be Pushing Iran Out

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After Syria Strike Next Move Should be Pushing Iran Out

After Syria Strike Next Move Should be Pushing Iran Out

You can almost pinpoint to the day when things turned really bad in Syria. For much of the fall and spring of 2012-2013, the Assad regime was on the ropes from a series of victories by rebel forces including the loss of a key airbase and provincial capital.

The Syrian army suffered from several publicized defections of key leaders and the rebel coalition had grown significantly around moderate groups backed by the U.S.

Then in April of 2013, the Iranian regime directed its terrorist proxy Hezbollah to join in the fray, along with advisors and commanders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Coupled with a massive influx of cash and weapons, the restocked Syrian army launched a series of counteroffensives that began to turn the tide.

Up until that point, the rebels had pushed to within eyesight of Damascus and Assad was frantically figuring out where his exile should take place.

For the mullahs in Tehran, it was an equally scary time as its major Shia partner was about to fall.

But with the reinforcements and direct intervention by Iran, the tide of the war changed and with it the situation we are now mired in.

Not only did Syria alongside Iranian forces fight rebels, they specifically targeted, moderate Western-backed units in order to decimate their numbers and leave only radical Islamic groups on the battlefield forcing the U.S. and its allies to pick between a certifiable mass murderer in Assad or groups such as ISIS and Al-Nusra.

It was a clever strategy and one that worked too well given the Obama’s support of the corrupt Al-Maliki government in Iraq, preserving ISIS at a critical time when its numbers were small and lacked cash and weapons. It gained both when it exploited the divided government in Iraq; split apart by Iranian regime’s insistence on a Shia only leadership thereby pushing some of the Sunnis straight into the waiting arms of ISIS and leading directly to the blitzkrieg that toppled Mosul and delivered ISIS its first major victories.

Less than two years later, as Iran was again on the ropes with its resources depleted and rebel forces on the verge of breaking out again in Syria, Iranian mullahs took the step of begging Russia to intervene and save its proverbial goat, which Vladimir Putin was all too happy to oblige, sensing an opportunity to preserve its naval base on the Mediterranean while filling the power vacuum left by the Obama administration’s total withdrawal from the region.

But President Trump’s decision to retaliate against Syria for the use of chemical weapons changed the game plan entirely and now raises the question of how to best move forward?

There is no doubt that the most desirable solution in Syria is a diplomatic one, but focusing on removing Assad from power is only treating the symptom. The real sickness that afflicts Syria is the presence of the Iranian regime there; it is so embedded many Syrians have taken to view Iranian soldiers as an occupation force.

By removing Iran from Syria, the situation resolves itself in a myriad of ways: Russia would lose its key partner on the ground; A peace deal with rebels will definitely prevail; and the Syrian people would have the chance to choose their own destiny.

It would also allow for the repatriation and resettlement of the four million refugees that have fled Syria since the war began.

And the key to pushing Iran out of Syria lies within supporting—fully—the dissident movement within Iran itself.

As Reuel Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, explained in an editorial in the New York Post:

“The regime’s survival is now dependent on unsteady security services and the power of patronage, which ebbs and flows with the price of oil. Iran’s continuing stage-managed elections and colorless apparatchiks, including President Hassan Rouhani, a founding father of the feared intelligence ministry who mimics reformist slogans, have failed to convince, much less inspire,” they said.

“Today, the Islamist regime resembles the Soviet Union of the 1970s — an exhausted entity incapable of reforming itself while drowning in corruption and bent on costly imperialism,” they added. “If Washington were serious about doing to Iran what it helped to do to the USSR, it would seek to weaken the theocracy by pressing it on all fronts. A crippling sanctions regime that punishes the regime for its human-rights abuses is a necessity. Such a move would not just impose penalties on Tehran for violating international norms but send a signal to the Iranian people that the United States stands behind their aspirations.”

Re-prioritizing human rights as a dominant issue with Iran moving forward would place the U.S. back on the moral high ground that the Obama administration vacated and serve as an effective counter to the ceaseless arguments made by the Iran lobby opining about potential economic benefits of trade with Iran.

A new report by human rights group Amnesty International showed that Iran remained a dominant executioner of its own people, second in the world only to China, which makes hammering the regime on human rights all the more critical.

That emphasis on human rights was boosted by the European Union’s decision to extend sanctions until April 2018 on Iran for “serious human rights violations.”

The bloc has also extended by a year its travel ban and an asset freeze on 82 Iranian people and one entity, as well as a ban on exports to Iran of equipment for monitoring telecommunications and other gear that “might be used for internal repression.”

Sir David Amess, a member of the British Parliament, pointed out in an editorial in the Washington Examiner that the key to confronting Iran ultimately is to cut off the IRGC’s commerce as outlined by a leading Iranian dissident group.

“The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) specifically identified the sites of some 90 docks operated exclusively by the IRGC within Iranian ports. The information was obtained from the network of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which has assets within the clerical regime and the IRGC itself and made international headlines in 2002 when it revealed key details about the regime’s nuclear program,” Amess said.

“Iran’s destabilizing regional influence and its subversive activities will only be diminished if the domestic and international power of the IRGC is confronted and constrained, first through the rightful designation of the organization as a terrorist organization and then through the sanctioning of all its economic activities followed by financing regional conflicts and threats against the West,” he added.

Ultimately the U.S. should use its influence to specifically diminish the IRGC and its influence in Syria if there is ever to be any hope of a lasting peace there.

Michael Tomlinson

Years of Obama Compromise Finally Come to End

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Years of Obama Compromise Finally Come to End

Years of Obama Compromise Finally Come to End

With the launching of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from two U.S. Navy warships aimed at a Syrian airbase last week, the Trump administration took an enormous step in reversing the policies of appeasement and accommodation that marked the Obama administration’s approach to Middle East conflicts.

The airstrike was done in response to a chemical weapons attack in which at least 87 people were killed – including women and children – in the assault on the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun last Tuesday. Medical personnel on the ground indicated the chemical agent was sarin, a nerve agent so deadly that mere drops inhaled or absorbed on skin kill within minutes.

U.S. military personnel allegedly tracked the aircraft launched from the airbase in question and took a flight path to the town, dropping its ordinance and returning.

The chemical attack was not the only one the Assad regime has been accused of conducting since a much-publicized deal that Russia brokered to remove Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. These recent attacks demonstrate clearly that the Assad regime retains its chemical weapons and is unafraid of using them.

These incidents demonstrate clearly the utter failure of the Obama administration’s past policies that sought to broker agreements with regimes that have no intention of abiding by them; be it Syria with chemical weapons or Iran with its nuclear program.

As the New York Post editorial board pointed out in a scathing piece pointing out that administration’s failures and more importantly what it means for the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime.

Last week’s horrific attack in Syria disproved the Obama administration’s boast of stripping Bashar al-Assad of “100 percent” of his chemical weapons. And that has big implications for the nuclear deal with Iran. After all, the nuke deal relies on the same kind of verification and accountability system entailed in the agreement with Assad, the Post said.

“We will, for the first time, be in a position to verify all of [Iran’s] commitments,” President Barack Obama said at the time, insisting the deal had at least temporarily halted Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Critics insist it did no such thing. Just as many refused to believe Team Obama’s claim that it had fully rid Syria of its weapons of mass destruction. The Syria accord allowed Obama to save face for failing to enforce his “red line” against Assad’s use of chems after the dictator got caught using sarin nerve gas to kill up to 1,500 Syrian civilians, the Post added.

“We are getting chemical weapons out of Syria without initiating a strike,” said Obama. And Secretary of State John Kerry: “We got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out.”

Just this past January, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice insisted, “We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile” in a way “that the use of force would never have accomplished.”

The Post summed up by saying “Just how wrong they all were has now become dead obvious. So why should anyone still believe the same team’s assurances on Iran’s ability to produce nukes?”

While the strike by the Trump administration didn’t do much tactical damage to the airbase since American officials warned the Russians of the pending attack, who then promptly tipped off their Syrian allies who quickly moved most of their assets out of harm’s way, the attack was a major strategic masterstroke by President Trump.

The attack was the first by the U.S. against Syrian regime assets and crosses the “red line” that President Obama had previously laid down the first time the Assad regime used chemical weapons, only to infamously balk at crossing its own line.

The airfield bombed is significant, because it is also used by members of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Quds Force, according to a report from Asharq Al-Awsat Arabic language website. The field has been used for a long time by IRGC to operate not only in Syria but also in Iraq.

It also neatly puts the Iranian regime on notice that the conditions of the conflict have shifted dramatically. The U.S. was willing to take unilateral military action without U.N. approval or consultation with regional partners in response to a clear and present danger.

For Bashar al-Assad and Hassan Rouhani, the prospect of a surprising and swift U.S. response must have come as a shock.

Of course that did not stop Iran from doubling down on its bets on a murderous Assad regime.

Iranian regime rallied around the Syrian strongman and pledged to respond to US “aggression” after the Trump administration bombed a military airfield in retaliation for a poisonous gas attack.

Assad has drawn heavily on foreign Shi’ite militias sponsored by Iran, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, for his most important gains since the Russian intervention.

In Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the U.S. missile strike was a “a strategic error, and a repeat of the mistakes of the past,” the state news agency IRNA reported.

“The Islamic Republic has shown that … it does not back off and its people and officials … do not retreat in the face of threats,” said Khamenei.

Many Syrians opposed to Assad’s rule consider Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian-backed troops as occupiers seeking to drive out mainly Sunni Syrians from the areas they live in. They hold Iran and its allies responsible for the displacement of millions outside the country, according to Reuters.

Allies including the United Kingdom and Australia Friday, applauded Trump’s decision to launch the strike.

Michael Tomlinson

Upcoming Presidential Elections in Iran Just More of the Same

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Upcoming Presidential Elections in Iran Just More of the Same

Upcoming Presidential Elections in Iran Just More of the Same

Elections in the Iranian regime are not left up to chance or to the Iranian people for that matter. The ruling mullahs have always wanted a neat, tidy election process that harbors no dissent and provides for no surprises.

In practicality, the mullahs admire the no-contest elections where the ruling elite often hold all the cards. This may explain why Iran has worked closely with North Korea in exporting that regime’s ballistic missile technology, while it seeks to be a major oil trading partner to China and a major arms buyer to Russia.

The history of Iranian elections has been less than spectacular. Last year during parliamentary elections, the regime wiped off the ballots thousands of candidates deemed unsuitable for running. The most common attribute of the eliminated candidates was a disturbing tendency to being a dissident voice.

In the infamous presidential election of 2009, the much-reviled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected in what was widely regarded as a rigged election that resulted in massive protests harshly put down by the regime’s military resulting in thousands of deaths, arrests and prison sentences.

The mullahs learned their lesson in 2013 by installing Hassan Rouhani as an affable, cheery candidate in contrast to the typical regime clerical candidate.

Now with presidential elections looming on May 19th, Iran is entering into another familiar cycle of political speculation. Unfortunately, none of it will matter much since the regime’s leadership, led by top mullah Ali Khamenei, controls the councils which will decide who will be allowed to run in the first place.

But the Western media will again make the same mistake as it did before in trying to parse the Iranian regime’s politics into “moderate” and “hardline” camps, of which there are none. Iran has no viable opposition parties and all members and candidates swear the same allegiance to the Shia revolution and Khamenei.

It is akin to essentially trying to find nuances between members of the same Nazi party in World War II-era Germany.

Just because Rouhani likes to use Twitter does not excuse the fact his tenure is marked by the highest rate of public executions ever, putting Ahmadinejad to shame, nor does it make him a “moderate.”

The best example of this mislabeling comes in the form of coverage over the announcement that certain candidates were put forward to challenge Rouhani as being part of the regime’s “hardline, conservative” blocs.

As Reuters described it: “A bloc of conservative Iranian political parties has nominated a powerful cleric as their candidate to run in next month’s presidential election to try to unseat the moderate Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s state news agency IRNA said.

“Seeking to regain the presidency by stopping Rouhani winning a second four-year term, Iran’s powerful hardliners have been gearing up for a showdown in the May 19 vote.”

Five candidates were nominated, including Ebrahim Raisi, a powerful cleric who last year was appointed custodian of the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, Iran’s second city. He also controls what is believed to be the Islamic state’s wealthiest institution: Astan-e Qods Razavi, a religious foundation that owns properties and land across the country.

The 56-year-old cleric has held senior judicial positions, including prosecutor-general. Dissidents accuse him of authorizing a brutal crackdown against the opposition in the 1980s.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the largest Iranian dissident groups, detailed Raisi’s bloody history on behalf of the regime.

“In 1988, when he was Deputy Prosecutor of Tehran, he was one of the four individuals who Khomeini appointed to carry out his order to massacre the activists of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). During that massacre, 30,000 political prisoners, who were primarily from the PMOI, were executed within a few months. An audio tape surfaced last summer, after 28 years, of Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s designated successor at the time, meeting with the ‘death committee’ in Tehran, including with Raisi, about 20 days after the start of the massacre. Montazeri told them that these executions were the biggest crimes committed by the Islamic Republic,” the NCRI said in a statement on its website.

In that meeting Montazeri talked about how pregnant women and 15-year-old girls were executed during the massacre. Those who attended the meeting (including Raisi) condoned the mass executions. It was subsequently exposed that Raisi was the most active and most ruthless member of the committee. The audio file of the meeting between Khomeini’s then-successor and the “death committee” also corroborated this reality, the NCRI added.

The Guardian Council, a powerful body controlled by Khamenei, will announce later this month which candidates are qualified to contest the election. All contenders must be deemed loyal to the Islamic republic and the final candidates appearing on the ballot will go a long way in showing what Khamenei’s thinking is moving forward for the regime.

Raisi’s elevation and election to president could very well set him up as the successor to Khamenei which from the perspective of the mullahs makes sense since he is a steadfast loyalist to preserving the mullahs power and has demonstrated a willingness to massacre dissidents and rivals.

All of which does not bode well for the future of the Iranian people.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Stands by Assad in Chemical Attack

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Iran Regime Stands by Assad in Chemical Attack

Iran Regime Stands by Assad in Chemical Attack

In the aftermath of the grisly chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians that killed more than 100 men, women and children, the Iranian regime predictably stood by their man in Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, even as it publicly condemned the attack.

“Iran strongly condemns all use of chemical weapons regardless of who is responsible and who are the victims,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi told reporters in Tehran, according to an account carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

But Ghassemi cautioned against “rushed judgments and accusations that benefit … certain actors,” claiming that anti-Assad rebel groups — which Tehran calls “terrorists” — have also been known to have stored and used chemical weapons.

It’s a strange position to take since the only people attacked were in rebel-controlled areas. It is unlikely rebels would be dropping chemical agents on their own positions, but logic was never a strong suit of the Iranian regime.

Citing Assad’s frequent past use of chemical weapons, the Trump administration and governments across Europe have said Damascus was most likely behind the attack on the Syrian province of Idlib.

The reaction of Assad’s patron is not unexpected, but while media attention is focused on their denials, one important fact seems to be escaping most analysts’ attention which is the fact that Iran had previously committed to the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons earlier as part of an agreement to avoid President Obama’s infamous “red line” mandate.

The fact that chemical weapons were used, especially a more sophisticated compound in sarin gas, demonstrates the Iranian regime’s comfort level with its ally using these weapons.

On another account, Dr Joseph Kechichian, an author and writer, penned an editorial in Gulf News detailing how Iran actually continues to focus on interfering in the affairs of its neighbors.

“The intrepid Iranian spokesperson further rejected as groundless all of the claims made by several Arab leaders in their pronouncements that the Islamic Republic of Iran openly interfered in the internal affairs of Arab countries, saying that Tehran ‘never interfered in the internal affairs of any country and feels no need at all for such interference,’ which must also be challenged. He added his deep sorrow as several Arab and Muslim leaders, ‘either intentionally or by mistake… go astray and fail to distinguish friend from foe,’ allegedly because they point the finger at Iran instead of ‘dealing with the most important crises in the region,’” Kechnichian writes.

In fact, and lest the fearless Qassemi may have forgotten, it was Ali Akbar Velayati, a former Iranian minister of foreign affairs and an adviser on international affairs to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — as well as the president of the Expediency Council’s Centre for Strategic Research — who told a group of Yemeni clerics gathered in Tehran in October 2014 that “The Islamic Republic of Iran supports the rightful struggles of Ansar Allah [Al Houthis] and considers this movement as part of the successful materialisation of the Islamic Awakening [the name Iran uses for the Arab Uprisings] movements”.

Velayati boasted of Al Houthi victories in Yemen, which came to naught after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia led a coalition to restore the legitimately elected president in Sana’a, even if the war is now in its third year. Velayati and his colleagues may be sure of an Al Houthi triumph in Yemen, though there is little to back that presumption, except that Tehran successfully managed to empower Al Houthis to play the same role that Hezbollah plays in Lebanon, he added.

Article in the Commentary Magazine added another perspective in the Iranian regime’s willingness to keep using Afghan refugees impressed into service as mercenary fighters for the regime’s campaigns.

“Increasingly, however, the Islamic Republic of Iran is replicating the former Soviet and Cuban strategies in Syria, where its intervention to support Bashar al-Assad has cost the Islamic Republic several thousand Iranian soldiers and cadets. The Iranian use of Hezbollah in Lebanon should have put permanently to rest any notion that Hezbollah has evolved into a Lebanese national organization. Rather, it remains what it always has been: A proxy for the Islamic Republic of Iran. But Hezbollah is not alone. A couple of years ago, I noted the increasing number of funerals of foreign nationals—especially Afghans—occurring in Iran whom Iranian news sources said had died fighting in Syria,” The Commentary Magazine writes.

The chemical attack in Syria is just symptomatic of the broader problem of the Iranian regime’s control of the battles being waged in Syria with the influence of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Unless Iranian control is removed from the equation more Idlib attacks will happen.

Michael Tomlinson

New Chemical Attack in Syria Shows Iran Complicity

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New Chemical Attack in Syria Shows Iran Complicity

New Chemical Attack in Syria Shows Iran Complicity

If your neighbor is about to get arrested for being a pedophile and polluting the neighborhood by burning toxic waste in his backyard, it seems like a no-brainer to remove the offending person.

But what if their distant cousin from across town moves in to save them from being arrested and evicted by persuading authorities they will serve as a careful guardian and custodian? Now imagine the courts and law enforcement allow that creep to stay, but he just goes right on pillaging the neighborhood kids.

That pretty much sums up Bashar al-Assad in Syria and his Iranian benefactors.

But now the United States blamed the Syrian government and its patrons, Russia and Iran, on Tuesday for one of the deadliest chemical weapons attacks in years in Syria, one that killed dozens of people in Idlib Province, including children, and sickened scores more, according to the New York Times.

A senior State Department official said the attack appeared to be a war crime and called on Russia and Iran to restrain the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria from carrying out further chemical strikes.

Britain, France and Turkey joined Washington in condemning the attack, which they also attributed to Assad’s government. The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to be briefed on the attack on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the White House called the attack a “reprehensible” act against innocent people “that cannot be ignored by the civilized world.”

The State Department official who briefed reporters on Tuesday, also said that it appeared Russia was unable or unwilling to hold the Syrian government to the agreed cease-fire.

He reiterated that the attack on civilians appeared to be a war crime. The official, who could not be identified under the State Department’s protocol for briefing reporters, also asserted that even before the alleged chemical strike, the Trump administration had shelved the idea of cooperating militarily with the Assad government against the Islamic State.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group, said 58 people were killed in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Idlib province, including 11 children. The  death toll is likely to rise, the group said.

Turkey said it dispatched 30 ambulances to Idlib following chlorine gas attacks in the northwestern province, the Turkish Anadolu news agency reported. Syrian opposition health minister Firas Jundi put the death toll at more than 100 civilians and said 500 others, mostly children, were sickened or burned by the gas.

“I believe this horrible memory will stay with me for the rest of my life,” Jundi told CNN.

The Syrian anti-government activist group Idlib Media Center published photos of young children receiving medical treatment, and a video showed what appeared to be bodies of children lined up on a blanket.

On Tuesday, Tillerson released a statement condemning the attack, one that took aim at Russia and Iran.

“There are reports of dozens dead, including many children.  While we continue to monitor the terrible situation, it is clear that this is how Bashar al-Assad operates: with brutal, unabashed barbarism,” the statement said. It also called on the countries to act. “As the self-proclaimed guarantors to the cease-fire negotiated in Astana, Russia and Iran also bear great moral responsibility for these deaths.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called the attack “further evidence of the barbarity suffered by the Syrian people.” British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said he was “horrified” by the attack that “bears all the hallmarks” of chemical weapons previously used by the Syrian regime. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the attack “inhuman” and “unacceptable.”

Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the largest Iranian resistance group, pointed blame at Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps for protecting and enabling the Assad regime with fighters, arms, cash and equipment.

“Persistence of the war crimes in Syria with the growing involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and its affiliated militia clearly shows that as long as the Iranian regime is not evicted and its IRGC not expelled from Syria, and so long as their puppet government is in power in Damascus, peace, tranquility and even a ceasefire could not be upheld in that country and the region,” she said.

The attack appeared to be the largest and deadliest chemical attack in Syria since August 2013, when more than 1,000 people were killed in the Damascus suburbs by the banned toxin sarin. Under threat of United States retaliation, Assad agreed to a Russian-American deal to eliminate his country’s chemical weapons program, which until that time it had denied having, and to join an international treaty banning chemical weapons.

With this week’s attack, it clearly shows that guarantees on chemical weapons being banned in Syria are pretty much worthless.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Plays With Lives of Innocent Pawns

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Iran Regime Plays With Lives of Innocent Pawns

Iran Regime Plays With Lives of Innocent Pawns

One of the hallmarks of the Iranian regime has been its callous disregard for the value of human life. It is a characteristic that pervades much of the regime’s activities from its foreign policy to judicial process to economy.

If one examines history, totalitarian and fascist governments have often worked diligently to reduce the value of an individual life in favor of the collective good as a means of exerting greater control over the people.

Iran is no different as the mullahs figured out that the pathway to ironclad control in the wake of the revolution was to ensure that dissenters could be arrested, beaten, imprisoned, exiled and even killed with virtual impunity.

That philosophy has been at the center ever since and to this day has manifested itself in policies that have caused pain and suffering across the entire Middle East.

In foreign policy, the Iranian regime has pursued conflicts that have resulted in some of the worst humanitarian disasters since the end of World War II, namely the Syrian civil war which has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over four million people.

The mullahs’ decision to enter that war—after the Assad regime was found to be using chemical weapons on its own people—and save Assad sparked a sectarian conflict that now rages across Iraq, Yemen and has sparked now into the Gulf States.

The fact that Iranian regime is so willing to start conflicts, especially through the use of proxies such as terror groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Now come increasingly more worrisome reports over evidence that the Iranian regime may be behind terror activities in Bahrain including the operation of a secret bomb factory.

According to the Washington Post, the men who built the secret bomb factory had been clever — suspiciously so, Bahraini investigators thought, for a gang known mostly for lobbing Molotov cocktails at police. The underground complex had been hewed, foot by foot, beneath the floor of a suburban villa, with no visible traces at street level and only a single entrance, hidden behind a kitchen cabinet.

But the real surprises lay inside. In one room, police found $20,000 lathes and hydraulic presses for making armor-piercing projectiles capable of slicing through a tank. Another held box upon box of the military explosive C-4, all of foreign origin, in quantities that could sink a battleship the Post said.

“Most of these items have never been seen in Bahrain,” the country’s investigators said in a confidential technical assessment provided to U.S. and European officials this past fall that offered new detail on the arsenals seized in the villa and in similar raids that have occurred sporadically over nearly three years. In sheer firepower, the report said, the caches were both a “game-changer” and — matched against lightly armed police — “overkill.”

The report, a copy of which was shown to The Washington Post, partly explains the growing unease among some Western intelligence officials over tiny Bahrain, a stalwart U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf and home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Six years after the start of a peaceful Shiite protest movement against the country’s Sunni-led government, U.S. and European analysts now see an increasingly grave threat emerging on the margins of the uprising: heavily armed militant cells supplied and funded, officials say, by Iran.

That disturbing revelation shows that the mullahs’ decision to widen conflict in the region and continue pursuing their vision of a greater sphere of Shia influence; contrary to all the protestations and messaging of the Iran lobby, is a core cause of most of the turmoil in the Middle East.

Even the practice of snatching hostages has become a standard practice for the mullahs from the very beginning of the revolution with the American embassy takeover to the recent practice of arresting and imprisoning dual-national citizens based on the despicable principle that Iran does not recognize dual citizenship.

For the mullahs, the value of hostages has been unfortunately proven true by the rash and unwise decision by the Obama administration to effectively ransom American hostages as part of the nuclear agreement negotiations. That only emboldened the mullahs to continue the practice.

Several of their current prisoners include a British mother and charity aid worker, a missing American former FBI agent, two businessmen and an American college student who was recently released on bail.

The American of Iranian descent was arrested in Iran in July and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment on dubious charges has been released on bail after he went on a hunger strike, rights activists reported on Monday, according to the New York Times.

The American, Robin Shahini was released about two weeks ago, just before the start of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, according to news by rights groups.

It was unclear whether Shahini’s release was temporary or if he could leave the country, Shahini had been required to post bail of 2 billion rials — about $60,000 — and that he could be sent back to prison if his conviction were affirmed on appeal.

Shahini, a graduate student at San Diego State University, is one of at least four Americans of Iranian descent who have been imprisoned in Iran since the country negotiated a nuclear agreement with major powers including the United States in 2015.

Many rights activists regard the imprisonments as a warning to Americans of Iranian descent not to view the nuclear agreement as a sign of better relations between the United States and Iran.

 

Other Americans held in Iran include Siamak and Baquer Namazi, a father and son who were sentenced in October to 10 years’ imprisonment, as well as Karan Vafadari, an art gallery owner, and his wife, Afarin Niasari, an Iranian with permanent United States residency status. The precise nature of the charges against them are unclear.

Iranian regime considers imprisoned Iranian-Americans to be citizens of Iran and does not afford them consular privileges ordinarily granted to foreign citizens.

For the mullahs, granting any individual basic human rights seems to be out of their plans.

Michael Tomlinson

The Double Standard of the Iran Lobby

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The Double Standard of the Iran Lobby

US Defence Minister James Mattis addresses the press during a NATO defence ministers’ meetings at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on February 15, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNAND

Consistency of thought has never been the strong suit for members of the Iran lobby such as the National Iranian American Council. Often staffers from the NIAC write editorials that passionately argue to right some perceived wrong being perpetrated by the U.S. government, while at the same time ignoring the exact same violation being committed by the Iranian regime.

Take for example the issue of detention of Iranians within the U.S. under the Trump administration’s new immigration rules versus the long-running policy of the mullahs in Tehran of snatching up and imprisoning dual-national citizens.

The NIAC issued a statement by Ryan Costello arguing against the arrest of an Iranian citizen holding a U.S. visa in Michigan. According to the statement, the “news comes amidst an uptick in government harassment of visa holders and citizens entering the U.S. We are concerned this is further evidence of a discriminatory culture being promoted by Donald Trump and his administration, particularly towards people of Middle Eastern descent.”

While the attention to this case seems to be the primary focus of the NIAC, the notorious supporters of the Iranian regime are virtually silent on the same practice by the mullahs in arresting dual-nationals such as Iranian-Americans on bogus or secret charges and held in deplorable conditions.

Consider the long-running saga of British charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was arrested at Tehran Airport on April 3 last year while visiting family with daughter Gabriella.

She was imprisoned for five years in September for allegedly plotting to topple the Iranian government and lost an appeal against her sentence in January but maintains her innocence.

On Sunday – the 365th day since the arrest – family and friends gathered at Fortune Green close to Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s home in north-west London according to the Standard.

Supporters tied yellow ribbons to a tree in the park along with quotes from inmates at Evin prison in Iran, where Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held, describing what they would do with one day of freedom.

Her painful and heartfelt wish reads: “My fondest dream has always been to arrive at our home, you ask me if I want to have a cup of tea, then make me one.”

“I just sit back and watch you two play. This is the image I had most when in solitary confinement.

“How I wish I could watch you both dance in the middle of our sitting room to the Michael Jackson music – like when Gabriella was only tiny.”

The NIAC makes no mention of her incarceration, not even a plea for humanitarian release because of her sharply declining health and denial of adequate medical care. Why the double standard?

One of the more stunning double standards was an editorial in the Atlantic Council by NIAC’s Adam Weinstein which argued why Iran views its ballistic missile program as a “red line” that warrants full protection by the mullahs.

He predictably recounts the same old arguments from Iran’s experiences in the Iran-Iraq War in which Saddam Hussein showered Iranian troops with missile barrages and how the mullahs in Tehran vowed to develop their own missile capability to defend themselves in the future, especially as a deterrent from perceived enemies such as the U.S. and Saudis.

Weinstein argues—incredibly—that alleviating Iran’s sense of vulnerability might be a better way to approach Iran.

Using his logic, if your neighbor has decided to arm himself and occasionally takes shots at you, Weinstein argues that you should be the one of reassure your violent neighbor, not the other way around?!

Weinstein even stretches his bizarre logic by trying to tie into a historically revisionist view of Shi’ism portraying it as choosing pragmatism over ideology.

Not many Syrians or Yemen civilians being subjected to Iranian bombs, mortars, rockets, drones and militia would find any proof of that sentiment.

What Weinstein never discusses though is the rapid development of Iran’s missile program in creating and testing ever more powerful boosters designed to reach intercontinental distances and lift capability approaching via nuclear payload capabilities.

Why Iran needs a ballistic missile with the range to reach into New Delhi or Rome is never mentioned by Weinstein because there is no reason other than to hold a dagger over Europe, Asia and the rest of the Middle East like the sword of Damocles.

But that double standard is nothing new to the Iranian regime as Iran’s Foreign Ministry called on the United States to pressure its regional allies into abandoning their support for terrorism and not level “malicious” allegations against the Islamic state.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi made the statement on Saturday, reacting to earlier comments by US Defense Secretary James Mattis claiming that Iran continued to sponsor terror, Press TV reported.

Asked about comments Mattis made in 2012 that the three primary threats the United States faced were “Iran, Iran, Iran,” Mattis told reporters in London on Friday that Iranian regime’s behavior had not changed in the years since.

“At the time when I spoke about Iran I was a commander of US central command and that (Iran) was the primary exporter of terrorism, frankly, it was the primary state sponsor of terrorism and it continues that kind of behavior today,” Mattis said.

Laura Carnahan

 

Iran Economy Delivering Only for Military and Regime Elites

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Iran Economy Delivering Only for Military and Regime Elites

Iran Economy Delivering Only for Military and Regime Elites

The Iranian economy should be an economic powerhouse backed by one of the largest petroleum reserves in the Middle East and a population that historically has been one of the best educated and entrepreneurial.

The Iranian people have spread throughout the world as part of the diaspora stemming from the Islamic revolution and have helped make scientific advances, create masterpieces of art and build globe-spanning industries.

Yet, given all of these accomplishments, the Iranian economy remains mired in stagnant growth with huge unemployment numbers, especially for Iranian youth who face a bleak future. All too often their choices are to struggle in finding jobs or join the regime as part of its military to be sent off to fight and die in far-flung battlefields far from home.

The truth of the Iranian economy is that it has been shaped and molded to serve not the Iranian people, but to fund the whims and lavish lifestyles of the ruling elites, including the families of mullahs in a dynastic fashion, as well as prime the engine of war for the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In Al-Arabiya, Tony Duheaume examined the contradictions in the economic windfalls benefitting the elites and the hopelessness and poverty being experienced by Iran’s poor.

“While many of Iran’s citizens have suffered all of the hardships of a failing economy, in a land of increasing unemployment and low pay, the ruling mullahs lead the lives of past emperors, living in absolute luxury, with billions they have made off the backs of the Iranian people, now insulating them from the crumbling nation they reside over,” he writes.

“Beggars wander the streets of Iran in droves, drug addicts with nothing to live for litter the thoroughfares, while the homeless find shelter where they can, some known to have taken up residence living under bridges, or in the sewerage canals that run alongside the country’s highways,” Duheaume added.

Duheaume pointed out a shocking photo essay published in the Shahrvand Daily last year that depicted many of these hapless vagrants sleeping in empty graves in Shahriar, a town about 12 miles from Tehran, the nation’s capital, in images that shocked the nation.

Reports suggested that at least 50 men, women and children were living in this cemetery, with many of their number addicted to drugs. Dressed in grimy rags, their emaciated, dirt-streaked features stare vacantly out of open graves, with only tattered tarpaulins or sheets of well-worn polythene covering the holes to protect them from the elements, in an area where the temperature in winter can drop to well below freezing, he said.

With hundreds of millions of dollars already pouring into the Iranian administrations coffers from released frozen assets, which could eventually total $150 billion, none of this has yet been designated to relieve the suffering of its people. Already billions have been earmarked to spend purchasing Russian T-90 tanks, artillery, advanced Su-30 fighter jets, and helicopters, and during 2016, Iran’s defence sector grew by 45 percent, with the regime spending billions on its long-range missile program, and the development of indigenous weapons systems, Duheaume pointed out.

There is also the delivery of long-promised S-300 air defence systems, said to have cost the Iranian government $900 million. On top of this there are the multi-billion dollars the regime is using to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the $60-$100 million a year it is paying in financial assistance to Hezbollah, plus its expenditure in financial support or weapons to aid terror groups such as Hamas and the Houthis, he explained.

But at the other end of the social scale, Duheaume correctly pointed out the group that is siphoning off large amounts of the nation’s assets, are the ultra-rich mullahs that rule Iran, all of them claiming to live frugal lives, but who are in fact living in the lap of luxury, and are said to be squirreling away vast fortunes in foreign bank accounts.

The pictorial evidence of this lavish lifestyle appeared on social media as these children of the mullahs shamelessly posted selfies as they tore down Tehran streets in exotic sports cars swathed in haute couture fashion more appropriate to the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

Top mullah Ali Khamenei himself sits at the top of the ladder as far as the millionaire mullahs are concerned, known to be in control of a financial empire worth $95 billion, which far exceeds the accumulated wealth of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was Khamenei’s predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Islamic Republic, who used the Shah’s plundering of the Iranian economy, and his unequal distribution of wealth, as one of the main excuses to depose him, and now this plundering has been repeated by his ousters, Duheaume said.

But as far as Iran’s leadership is concerned, all are worthy of the Rich List. To name but a few of Iran’s richest mullahs, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was said to have netted $1.2 billion, Mohammad Ali Taskhiri $90 million, Mohammad Khatami $84 million, Ali Larijani $70 million, Mir Hossein Mousavi $58 million, Mohammad Hossein Adeli $43 million, Mohammad Javad Zarif $32 million, Ahmed Bourghani $19 million, and a little further down the scale, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with $5 million.

The mullahs have concentrated this wealth into their own pockets and have created a system designed to preserve their wealth and power. The Islamic regime does not tolerate dissent, nor does it provide for its people.

It deals with desperate pleas for jobs and aid from the Iranian people with crackdowns, mass arrests and imprisonment.

Any government that has to maintain control through fear and intimidation is not long for success.

Laura Carnahan