Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Pleading to Save Iran Nuclear Deal Despite Regime Militancy

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Iran Lobby Pleading to Save Iran Nuclear Deal Despite Regime Militancy

Iran Lobby Pleading to Save Iran Nuclear Deal Despite Regime Militancy

With only a few days left until Donald Trump is sworn in as the next president of the United States, the Iran lobby and their Iranian regime leaders are in an absolute tizzy about the nuclear agreement and its future.

For the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council and the Ploughshares Fund, the nuclear deal with Iran represented a high water mark for their perceived effectiveness, but like a evaporating lake in a desert, their success was illusory since it was largely built on the decision by the Obama administration to try a policy of appeasing the Iranian regime.

With the ascension of the Trump administration with such noted critics of the Iranian deal in many of cabinet nominees now undergoing confirmation hearings, the Iran lobby is faced with rollback of all of their gains in one fell swoop.

Iran lobby supporters such as Trita Parsi have tried all sorts of tactics in an effort to save the deal in a shotgun approach of messages. First they openly criticized Trump during the presidential election, joining the tactics of his opponents with personal attacks.

When that failed and he won election, Parsi and his cohorts shifted to the threat of war if the Iran nuclear deal was scrapped by Trump. When that fell on deaf ears and gained almost no traction with the media and Trump announced his cabinet picks, the attacks shifted to the nominees.

Now that line of attack has essentially failed, the Iran lobby is now trying to float the idea that the Trump is actually in support of the nuclear deal and not likely to scrap it because the consequences would be so devastating.

Trying to keep track of all the misses by the Iran lobby is like trying to keep track of clanks off the rim by a worst shooting team in the NBA.

And now their worst fears are finally starting to come to fruition: the U.S. is finally beginning to realize that instead of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran, it is now time to hold them accountable for their actions.

The Iranian lobby fears that deeds and not words are likely to be the new currency of diplomacy in 2017.

But it isn’t just a Trump administration that is causing the Iran lobby to freak-out, it is the changeover in Congress and the potential for a whole raft of actions aimed at the mullahs ranging from the re-imposition of economic sanctions on the federal level to state-by-state sanctions means the Iran lobby is poised to be overwhelmed.

Congress has already begun offering up a series of bills taking aim at various aspects of the Iranian regime’s conduct including the near unanimous passage of the Iran Sanctions Act. Now comes a bill offered up last week to initiate an investigation into Iran Air and other regime airlines by the new Director of National Intelligence into whether or not they provide support to the Revolutionary Guard Corps or other terrorist groups.

The timing of this legislation is important to the Iranian regime as it takes delivery of new commercial airliners from Airbus and soon Boeing to replace aging aircraft in its fleet. Iran Air took delivery last week of the first of 100 jets it ordered from Airbus with Boeing scheduled to deliver in 2018.

Should the investigation of Iranian airlines lead to the discovery of a link between them and support for terrorist activities, the suspect airline could end up back on the U.S. sanctions list and be prevented from receiving any new aircraft or U.S.-made parts according to CNN News.

There has always been deep suspicion that the Iranian regime uses commercial airliners to ferry troops, ammunition and cash to hotspots such as Syria and Iraq. Should that link prove true, the Iran lobby could find itself fighting for the economic survival of the regime again.

Mahan Air, Iran’s second biggest carrier, is still on the sanctions list for aiding Iran’s military and is barred from buying Western planes and parts.

Iran Air was removed from the U.S. sanctions list in January 2016 as part of an agreement to convince Iran to restrain its nuclear program. It opened the path for multi-billion dollar sales by Boeing and Airbus. That prompted an outcry from some lawmakers who said the Obama administration offered no proof that Iran Air had stopped its support of the Iranian military or designated terrorist organizations.

The news for the Iran lobby got worse with the release of a letter from 23 former U.S. officials urging the Trump administration to open up a dialogue with Iranian dissident groups, specifically the National Council of Resistance, which counts as one of its members the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran; a dissident group the mullahs in Iran have made it their mission to pursue and destroy.

Trump transition officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An NCRI spokesman, Ali Safavi, said the group had no “role whatsoever” in the letter, but forwarded a statement from an NCRI official, Soona Samsami, welcoming the letter as an “appropriate and timely initiative.”

In spite of these changing political fortunes, the Iranian regime seems intent on maintaining the same militant attitude to the rest of the world as news came out of Iran of the mass execution of 20 prisoners over the past two days.

Amnesty International reports indicate that Iran executed at least 977 people in 2015, mainly for drug-related crimes.

The human rights activist NGO also blames Iran for continuing to execute juvenile offenders, those aged under 18 at the time of the crime, in violation of the international law.

For the mullahs, some things don’t change.

Michael Tomlinson

Momentum Builds for Trump to Reach Out to Iranian Opposition

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Momentum Builds for Trump to Reach Out to Iranian Opposition

Momentum Builds for Trump to Reach Out to Iranian Opposition

A letter signed by 23 former officeholders calls on president-elect Donald Trump to consult with the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella organization representing several Iranian dissident and opposition groups. The group has called for free elections and freedom of religion in Iran, as well as an end to what it calls Tehran’s “religious dictatorship.”

According to Fox News, while the Iranian regime called the group terrorists, the NCRI’s network of supporters in Iran helped expose Iran’s nascent nuclear weapons program by revealing secret sites that had escaped detection from Western intelligence agencies.

“Iran’s rulers have directly targeted US strategic interests, policies and principles, and those of our allies and friends in the Middle East,” the letter reads, in part. “To restore American influence and credibility in the world, the United States needs a revised policy.”

The letter’s signatories include former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani; former Sen. Joe Lieberman; and retired Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bill Clinton.

Organized opposition to the mullahs in Tehran has always been thorn in the side of the religious theocracy holding power in Iran and the regime has spent considerable resources in targeting, attacking and defaming these dissidents.

Until recently, the Iranian regime used Iraqi intelligence forces to mount attacks on unarmed members of various dissident groups at refugee camps located in Iraq leading to scores killed over the years until the refugees were finally moved to countries granting them asylum and refugee status.

Even membership or affiliation with any of these groups is punishable with imprisonment and even execution, a policy stretching back to an infamous massacre in 1988 in which the Iranian regime’s leadership ordered the mass executions of thousands of dissidents.

Ironically, many of the current leaders of the Iranian regime, including Hassan Rouhani and the recently deceased Hashem Rafsanjani, participated in the conducting the arrests, imprisonments and trials of these dissidents.

The prospect of the Iranian dissident movement having a seat at the table in Washington, DC with a Trump administration is driving the mullahs into an apoplectic state; one evidenced by the mobilization of the Iran lobby to attack members of Trump’s cabinet who may be perceived to be receptive to these opposition groups.

In Democracy Now, which aggressively supported the Iran nuclear deal, the blog characterized retired Gen. James Mattis’ confirmation hearings as being less about policy and more about a discussion of his personal wealth and the promise to preserve the military-industrial complex.

“It is interesting that this is among the many other issues that wasn’t really discussed during the hearing, that could have been discussed instead of the pork-barrel projects that you were talking about. And, you know, he could have been asked about these apparent conflicts of interest that might have developed as a result of his consulting work, and how he might deal with them,” said Aaron Glantz, a senior reporter at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

Meanwhile, Iran lobby leader, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, took to doing more interviews, this time claiming that Mattis had promised to enforce the Iran nuclear deal in spite of Trump’s long criticism of it on the campaign trail, even though Mattis’ testimony was clearly not an endorsement of the deal.

The status of the nuclear deal is proving to be an important topic for the mullahs as they seek to position any break in it as the fault of the U.S. Iran’s deputy foreign minister says the nuclear deal between the Iranian regime and world powers “will not be renegotiated” ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump taking office this week.

In a press conference Sunday marking the one-year anniversary of the agreement’s implementation, Abbas Araghchi told reporters that “the new U.S. administration cannot abandon the deal.”

Araghchi repeated an earlier warning by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who publicly stated, “If they tear it up, we will burn it,” without elaborating.

“There will be no renegotiation and the (agreement) will not be reopened,” said Araqchi, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator at the talks that led to the agreement in 2015, quoted by the state news agency IRNA.

“We and many analysts believe that the (agreement) is consolidated. The new U.S. administration will not be able to abandon it,” Araqchi told a news conference in Tehran, held a year after the deal took effect.

The potential for the Trump administration to scrap or renegotiate the nuclear deal, tied with the possibility of the incoming administration to build a rapport with Iranian dissident groups may prove to be a volatile mix of problems for the mullahs.

We can only hope that Trump extends to these Iranian dissidents the opportunity to talk and listen to their stories of the horror suffered by them and their loved ones at the hands of the mullahs and why ultimately any agreement with Iran must be based not on faith, but cold hard, verifiable facts.

Michael Tomlinson

Get it Right: Iran’s Rafsanjani Was Not a Moderate

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Get it Right: Iran’s Rafsanjani Was Not a Moderate

Get it Right: Iran’s Rafsanjani Was Not a Moderate

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died and many Western media outlets breathlessly reported that his death would be a devastating blow to Iran’s “reformers” and how that moderate movement had lost one of its lions.

Let’s get something straight right off the bat: Rafsanjani was not a reformer or moderate. He was a staunch leader of the Iranian regime from the very beginning as a disciple of Ruhollah Khomeini and led Iran’s armed forces during its bloody war with Iraq and as president.

His long record is often overlooked by most journalists who are too enamored with the image of a pop-culture icon of change and reform and buy into the narrative that Rafsanjani was a man valiantly leading the fight against the obstructionist Islamists and hardcore neo-cons.

The headline from the New York Times was typical of this idiotic adoration for a man who oversaw the growth of the Iranian regime and committed various murders, assassinations and attacks against political opponents and dissidents to keep it firmly in his hands and his fellow mullahs.

“Death of Iran’s Rafsanjani Removes Influential Voice Against Hardliners” read the Times headline.

The distinction of calling Rafsanjani a moderate is like making a distinction between Hermann Goering and Henrich Himler in Nazi Germany. There is little difference and both collaborated to make the Nazi’s control of Europe a long and bloody one.

Over the past 38 years, both under Khomeini and in later years, Rafsanjani played a critical role in suppression at home and export of terrorism abroad as well as in the quest to acquire nuclear weapons. Though portrayed by some Western media outlets as a “pragmatist” or “moderate,” during his long career he was associated with some of the regime’s most egregious actions, including mass-casualty terror attacks and the assassinations of exiled dissidents.

Heshmat Alavi, an Iranian human rights activist, took the characterizations of Rafsanjani to task in an editorial in Forbes.

Recently Rafsanjani gained a reputation for his aggressive challenge against Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, while playing the role model for Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s so-called “moderate” president,” Alavi said.

Of course, Rafsanjani was definitely considered part and parcel to the religious establishment in Iran, bearing in mind his special ties to regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini, who died back in 1989. However, appeasement advocates in the West dubbed him as a “pragmatic conservative” willing to work with the outside world, especially the “Great Satan,” he added.

While Rafsanjani’s power diminished noticeably in recent years, he continued to enjoy a final post as chief of the Expediency Council, assigned to seemingly resolve disputes between the Guardian Council and parliament. The former is an ultra-conservative body closely knitted to Khamenei and known to screen all electoral candidates according to their loyalty to the regime establishment.

Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh detail Rafsanjani’s long and often bloody history in an editorial in the Washington Post pointing out that during his presidency (1989–1997), Rafsanjani revamped the Atomic Energy Organization, sought to lure Iranian scientists from abroad and went on a shopping spree for dual-use nuclear technologies.

Rafsanjani’s published daily journals, which cover his presidency, reveal tantalizing evidence of cooperation with North Korea on ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. They also reveal Rafsanjani’s glee in outfoxing U.S. naval surveillance, Gerecht and Takeyh said.

Make no mistake, Rafsanjani was no egalitarian for the people. He accumulated a vast mountain of wealth for himself and his family amounting to billions.

“One brother headed the country’s largest copper mine; another took control of the state-owned TV network; a brother-in-law became governor of Kerman province, while a cousin runs an outfit that dominates Iran’s $400 million pistachio export business; a nephew and one of Rafsanjani’s sons took key positions in the Ministry of Oil; another son heads the Tehran Metro construction project (an estimated $700 million spent so far),” states a 2003 Forbes analysis.

The report also mentions billions stashed by the Rafsanjanis in overseas bank accounts.

“Some of the family’s wealth is out there for all to see. Rafsanjani’s youngest son, Yaser, owns a 30-acre horse farm in the super-fashionable Lavasan neighborhood of north Tehran, where land goes for over $4 million an acre. Just where did Yaser get his money? A Belgian-educated businessman, he runs a large export-import firm that includes baby food, bottled water and industrial machinery.”

More importantly, Rafsanjani represents one of the last leaders of the revolution and as such the power stemming from that iconic moment now falls to the oldest living leaders in the Islamic state such as Ali Khamenei and his handpicked leaders such as Hassan Rouhani.

Power in the Iranian regime does not flow down as much as it flows laterally among a small cadre of committed religious leaders who jealously guard their financial fortunes as much as the rigid Shiite ideology of the state.

So while media outlets are analyzing the impact this will have on Iran’s “moderates” the more important and appropriate question is how to reintroduce and empower true moderates back into Iranian politics and not simply settle for calling regime leaders “moderates” because they happen to be less brutal than others.

Is it a sign of moderation when one mullah advocates imprisonment for a dissident while another calls for a public hanging?

That is the mistake media outlets are making with Rafsanjani.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Voice Becoming Lonelier With New Congress

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Iran Lobby Voice Becoming Lonelier With New Congress

Iran Lobby Voice Becoming Lonelier With New Congress

A new Republican-controlled Congress took office on Tuesday and with it comes the promise of sweeping changes in American foreign policy versus the last eight years. Most notable will be an almost certain end to the policy of appeasing the Iranian regime followed by the Obama administration in the hopes of moderating Iran’s behavior.

What is also sure to happen as well is a greatly diminished role for the Iran lobby in this new administration, especially for supporters such as the National Iranian American Council. Evidence of that reduced stature and influence has come in the downward spiral in media opportunities members of the NIAC are receiving.

Trita Parsi for example has been relegated to providing analysis on Russia Today segments and the self-blogging forum TopTopic has become the go-to publisher of NIAC commentary. Gone are the heady days of placements in the New York Times and CBS News and now they face the uncomfortable truth that they are in danger of becoming irrelevant.

One of those TopTopic pieces was written by Ryan Costello from NIAC in which he lamented the tidal wave of bills being introduced aimed at punishing various aspects of the Iranian regime such as a bill by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) authorizing the Trump administration to use military force against Iran should it be necessary.

Costello characterizes Hasting’s move as representative of a “small minority” of Democrats opposed to the nuclear deal with Iran, but what he fails to acknowledge is the fact that there is actually a growing nucleus of Democrats that the American people want to stop giving Iran endless concessions.

Costello goes on to mention additional bills being offered up including one proposal by Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) that would impose sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program. While Costello laments the flood of bills coming to the fore with the change in Congress, he—and the rest of the Iran lobby—ignore the reasons why these bills are being offered up now.

The mood in America and frankly through most of Europe has swung dramatically since the nuclear agreement was reached with Iran from one of hopeful optimism to uncertainty and fear. The rise of Islamic extremism rippling across the globe, striking in cities such as Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando, Paris, Brussels, Nice and Berlin, have all been harsh reminders to elected officials that wishing for moderation does not yield moderation from extremist groups and hostile nations such as Iran.

The question of how to confront Iranian extremism has never been answered by the Iran lobby other than to repeatedly call for more accommodation and more restraint. That position has now lost its status and consigned to the political junk heap of obscure blogs and media controlled by Iran and its few allies.

Now the major media have turned their attention to the specific pathways open to Trump to restrain the Iranian regime and that is a fundamentally different approach from what the Iran lobby has tried to champion over the past five years.

The Wall Street Journal looked at the possibility of re-imposing economic sanctions, which may be opposed by European allies, is certainly available to Trump as a leverage tool at the very least.

President Trump could, among other things, re-impose the “secondary” sanctions that bar foreign companies from doing business with those individuals or entities on sanctions lists, the Journal said.

“The Iran sanctions program will be the one with the quickest attempt by the administration to put their mark on,” said Adam Smith, an attorney at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP who previously served as a senior adviser at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the main enforcement body for sanctions.

Heshmat Alavi, a political and rights activist, authored a piece in The Hill tackling this notion of Iranian “moderation” and declaring it a myth solely designed to gain Western support for a deal that would allow the mullahs access to billions of dollars in desperately needed cash.

“If Tehran truly bore the intent to not only embrace the nuclear agreement but the spirit of the accord with the West, they would not have test-fired missiles in March or October of this year,” he said.

“If the mullahs are actually sensitive about the human rights of ordinary Iranian citizens, then this regime would not have executed over 3,000 people in the past four years alone and nearly 1,000 in 2015.

“This regime, if actually sensitive about its ‘moderate’ image, would not be executing women and minors, and would not be sending opposition supporters to the gallows. This certainly doesn’t sound anything similar to ‘moderate’ behavior, at least not in the democratic world,” Alavi added.

Alavi calls for greater outreach by the Trump administration to avowed opposition and dissident groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a broad coalition of Iranian dissident and human rights groups opposed to the mullahs rule.

By switching from listening to the propaganda of the Iran lobby to the sound policy recommendations of the Iranian opposition, Trump can advance the cause of peace and democracy in the Middle East faster than anyone could imagine.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Operates Through Fear and Intimidation to Work

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Iran Regime Operates Through Fear and Intimidation to Work

Iran Regime Operates Through Fear and Intimidation to Work

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear,” said Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa and prisoner of conscience who led his nation out of apartheid rule.

He recognized during his long imprisonment for his political beliefs that to conquer a regime and policy of institutionalized oppression, one had to first conquer the fear that institution uses to control its people. It is through the tools of violence, fear and intimidation that a people can remain oppressed for generations.

For the Iranian regime, the mullahs learned early on the lessons of similar oppressive regimes throughout history. Whether you were a Roman tribune enslaving barbarians or a Nazi Stormtrooper kicking down doors in the Warsaw ghetto or a Boko Haram fighter kidnapping scores of girls to auction them as sex slaves, the tools of intimidation and fear were universal in your efforts to maintain control.

Throughout Iran, the mullahs impose the same practices through the use of religious courts that hand down brutal sentences almost on a whim with no accountability, to roving bands of Basji paramilitaries who are free to accost and beat women on the street for violating dress codes.

The mullahs use the same principles in exporting their extremist brand of Islam by supporting terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah or growing their own Shiite militia in Iraq which can be used to subjugate Sunni villages or be shipped off to fight in Syria.

The use of military power and violence is a tried and tested prescription for the Iranian regime to impose its will.

Unfortunately for the mullahs, history has proven those policies eventually fail. Although Rome stood for thousands of years, it eventually collapsed under its own corruption and inability to assimilate the regions it conquered into peaceful co-existence. Eventually all totalitarian regimes have fallen throughout human history; the only question has been how long has it taken?

For the Iranian regime, the clock is running and the mullahs recognize their time may very well run out on them as their economy remains stagnant, unemployment especially among young people remains sky-high and technology improvements in social media and mobility have made it almost impossible to keep a lid on dissenting voices.

Even a string of hunger strikes by political prisoners has resonance as their plight is carried throughout the world on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat and has led to noted people such as Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi to openly call for the head of Iran’s judiciary to quit.

Sadeq Larijani was appointed by Ali Khamenei and cannot be summoned by MPs for questioning and is not directly accountable to the public. Under his watch the judiciary has made a number of high-profile arrests of dual nationals, according to the Guardian.

Ebadi, a human rights lawyer and women’s rights activist living in exile in the UK, said she considered Larijani to be “directly responsible for the injustices and corruption” in the system.

She said that “in the name of religion and with the excuse of national security”, the judiciary was “overseeing a miscarriage of justice”.

“Civil and social activists and thinkers who voice criticism or protest are put in jail and condemned to lengthy prison sentences and torture and persecution, while criminals, serial killers and those involved in embezzlement continue to abuse people under the shadows of a corrupted judicial system,” she said in a statement posted on the website of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, of which she is president.

“A considerable number of prisoners are those held on political or religious grounds. In what part of the world and according to what history, you would call this judicial system fair?” she added.

An example of the harsh treatment by Iranian courts was put on display when a British-Iranian woman being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison has appeared in an appeals court, using the last legal opportunity to challenge her five-year jail sentence.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency’s charitable arm, was found guilty in September on unspecific charges relating to national security.

On Wednesday, she attended a court session in the Iranian capital that lasted up to three hours, her husband told the Guardian. Few details have emerged about the hearing but a verdict is expected to be announced next week.

The exact reason why the 38-year-old has been convicted in Iran is still unclear, but the Revolutionary Guards, which arrested her at the airport in April while she was about to return to the UK after a family visit, have accused her of fomenting a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic republic.

“What I know is that the appeals happened and went on for three hours, the family weren’t able to go but Nazanin was there and her lawyer was there,” said Richard Ratcliffe. “There were lots of revolutionary guards there from both Kerman’s branch and the Tehran branch.”

According to Amnesty International, Iranian authorities have hinted that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest is connected to the 2014 imprisonment of several employees of an Iranian technology news website. They were given lengthy prison terms for participating in a BBC journalism training course. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was a project assistant at the BBC’s Media Action, the broadcaster’s international development charity, in 2008-09.

Ratcliffe said he last spoke to his wife on Christmas Day. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was previously described as being at breaking point, has recently been removed from solitary confinement and taken to Evin’s women’s wards alongside other political prisoners including journalist Reyhaneh Tabatabaei and leading activist Narges Mohammadi, and a number of Baha’i women held because of their faith.

Ultimately, the full force and weight of the Iranian judicial system is being used to focus on a British mother and charity worker and is emblematic of how fragile the mullahs control is if they are forced to have to imprison someone like her.

Michael Tomlinson

Trump Can Fix Biggest Flaw in Iran Nuclear Deal

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Trump Can Fix Biggest Flaw in Iran Nuclear Deal

Iran: Nuclear Force

A letter was delivered to incoming president Donald Trump signed by 37 people, most of them scientists who previously supported the Iran nuclear deal, urging him to maintain the agreement and refrain from dismantling it after he takes office. The signers included the cadre of academics who have previously joined with the Iran lobby in the debate over the flawed nuclear agreement.

As behooves a group of academics, their central argument was that the nuclear agreement was working effectively in preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, saying that “as agreed, Iran has deactivated and put into storage under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seal about 2/3 of its centrifuges, and it has exported more than 95% of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium—a springboard to weapon-usable highly enriched uranium.”

The letter checks off the usual boxes mentioned by Iran supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, who have consistently argued that the agreement would not only reduce the chance of Iran developing nuclear weapons, but would also help move it to become a moderating force in the Middle East and empower moderate elements in the Iranian government.

Therein lies the greatest failing in the scientists’ letter and the greatest opportunity Trump has been presented, which is that the Iran nuclear deal really had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, but rather about lifting sanctions in order for a reeling Iranian government to replenish its funds just as it was starting proxy wars in three different countries.

There was one absolute condition the Iranian regime had when it entered into negotiations with the P5+1 group of nations and that was for a clear separation of issues not-related directly to nuclear weapons. This included Iranian regime’s long history of support for terrorism, its harsh treatment of human rights, its crackdown on dissent at home and its eagerness to supply proxy military forces.

For the mullahs, there was nothing more important than in gaining relief from crippling economic sanctions that had pushed their iron grip to the edge with a population grown restless because of lowered wages, stagnant growth and diminished expectations for the future, including an unemployment rate among young Iranians that threatened to feed a revolt in a similar way it did in 1979 with the revolution.

And what was Tehran’s reward? According to the Wall Street Journal, over $10 billion in cash and gold was funneled to the mullahs since the deal passed in a variety of ways, some worthy of a spy novel including late night flights of jets stuffed with pallets of cash and transfers to small Iranian banks of currency converted into gold bullion.

This tallying of the sanctions relief to date includes payments previously announced and others that haven’t been. In one previously unreported payment, the U.S. authorized Iran to receive $1.4 billion in sanctions relief between when the final deal was struck in July 2015 and when it took effect, according to the U.S. officials,” the Journal said.

“Some U.S. lawmakers and Middle East allies contend that the shipments of cash and gold, a highly liquid form of money, can be used to fund Iran’s allies in the region, including the Assad regime in Syria, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and the Houthi political movement in Yemen,” the Journal added.

This is precisely why the mullahs and their leaders Hassan Rouhani and Ali Khamenei were so desperate to complete a deal. The Iranian regime needed funds badly in order to provide Hezbollah with weapons to support the faltering Assad regime in Syria, as well as launch a civil war in Yemen with the Houthis to take on Saudi Arabia and support Shiite militias in Iraq as they launched a sectarian war against Sunni Muslims.

It also represents the greatest opportunity for Trump since the issue is not the dismantling of the nuclear agreement, but rather the threat of sanctions to link Iranian conduct back to the bargaining table.

This includes finally holding Iran accountable for items kept out of the nuclear agreement such as the development of long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads, as well as Iran’s support of three wars that have turned the Middle East into a bloodbath and large parts of Europe into refugee camps.

As part of the deal, Iran is entitled to a whopping $115 billion in sanctions relief over the past three years, but accessing those funds have been difficult since sanctions on currency transfers over the international financial network remain in place. This provides Trump with the greatest leverage possible over the mullahs.

Failure on the part of Tehran to halt its support of terrorism or lift the hammer of oppression at home is why the West should keep the firehose of funds from flowing to Tehran. This would make things problematic for the mullahs as they are facing a presidential election this spring.

Another round of broad discontent and protests again, as in 2009, could force the mullahs to once again engage in a bloody crackdown that turns international opinion firmly against them and away from the perception of moderation the Iran lobby has worked hard to try and preserve.

For the Iranian regime, the flow of cash is paramount to fulfilling its ambitions of extending its sphere of influence from the Mediterranean to Indian Ocean. A piece in Foreign Affairs examined the regime’s efforts to secure naval bases in Syria and Yemen to help its navy breakout of the Persian Gulf bubble it’s been locked in for decades.

This explains why supporting Assad in Syria and fomenting the civil war in Yemen were so crucial to the Iranian strategy for creating its own version of a Shiite Warsaw Pact.

“Bases in Syria and Yemen would be particularly important to Iran. Yemen sits on the strategic shipping route of the Bab el Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s most heavily trafficked waterways, and a naval outpost there would give Tehran unfettered access to the Red Sea and put it in a more advantageous position to threaten its main regional rival, Saudi Arabia,” Foreign Affairs said.

These are all facts the scientists who signed the letter to Trump failed to recognize or chose to ignore. It also underscores how incredibly wrong these people were in their original estimation of the success of the Iran nuclear deal.

Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

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Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council and chief apologist for the Iranian regime, penned an editorial in Middle East Eye that curiously finally recognizes the complete and utter lack of stability in the Middle East. Unfortunately, he never assigns any blame to the Iranian regime.

He does however recognize that the split between Iran and its chief rival, Saudi Arabia, is likely to fuel and deepen even wider divisions and instability in the region.

“Indeed, while some point to Tehran celebrating its victory in Aleppo, success on the battlefield is coupled with even deeper divisions between Iran and some of its Arab or Sunni neighbors, paving a path towards greater conflict rather than reconciliation,” Parsi writes. “Ultimately, as all parties involved should know, true security only stems from the ability to live in peace with one’s neighbors, not one’s ability to outgun them.”

“Thus, the celebrations of today ring very hollow, as the region as a whole is likely heading towards greater instability in the year to come,” he adds.”

Parsi is correct in that the future is bleak in 2017, but his inability to focus on the constant push by Iran of its own extremist Shiite ideology is the fuel that has burned through Syria, Iraq and Yemen fueling new rounds of bloody sectarian violence that haven’t been seen since the decade-long civil war in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Parsi blames previous U.S. administrations for following a policy that was too reliant on supporting traditional U.S. regional allies such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt and isolated regional pariahs such as Iran and Iraq.

He goes on to blame the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 the cause of the latest round of instability in the region; a curiously silly assumption since he blithely ignores Iran’s role in serving as the primary supporter, funder and guardian of the region’s most notorious terrorist groups in Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and Shiite militias.

Parsi’s ignorance of the role terrorism plays in regional instability and the rise of trans-national groups such as ISIS in instigating the kind of horrific bloodshed that plunged virtually all of the Middle East into war and subjected cities as far flung as Sydney to San Bernardino to Boston to Ottawa to Paris to Brussels and Berlin to mass terror attacks.

Sectarian terrorism is the fuel that has convulsed the world, not the Cold War-era politics of superpowers such as the U.S. and its military might. As far back as the beginning of Christianity and the rise of Islam, religious fervor has sparked millennia of conflict and still does to this day.

This simple fact is why the Iranian regime stands squarely in the middle of virtually all of the conflicts going on today because it is the only religiously-controlled nation there and as such views its foreign and military policies through the colored lens of extremist religious ideology.

Since Iran’s leadership is personified in the religious supreme leader Ali Khamenei, whose wishes are akin to the absolute reign of medieval monarchs, the odds are the bloodshed and violence we are likely to see in 2017 is going to be firmly rooted in the same religious edicts that motivated violence in 2016.

Any child can trace the lines of Shiite fanaticism connecting Tehran to Damascus, Baghdad, Sana, Kabul, Beirut and countless other cities; any child it seems except Parsi. The one truth that Parsi does speak is the prospect of a grim 2017.

“Going forward, there are few signs that stability will return to the region in 2017. Even if the battle of Aleppo signals a turning point in the war in Syria, it is unlikely to signal the end of the war,” he writes. “Russia and Iran may be celebrating their victory, but true stability will only come to the region when all of the regional powers commit themselves to a diplomatic process of brokering a new order.”

“Currently, however, there is far more commitment to military rather than diplomatic strategies. Absent a reversal of this, 2017 will be even grimmer than 2016,” he adds.

Parsi is correct that stability is only going to come when regional powers finally recognize that diplomacy is a preferable path than a military one, but that is a conclusion that the mullahs in Tehran are not even close to reaching.

Tehran’s all-in support for a massive war in Syria, even to the point of dragging in Russia to save the Assad regime—one of Iran’s few reliable allies—demonstrate that diplomacy is not a priority for them. Indeed any solution that involves the mullahs in Iran will have the same faith, since they are the roots of the problem.

Tehran’s support of Houthi rebels in Yemen only broadened the conflict to drag in Saudi Arabia into a shooting war and the use of Shiite militias in Iraq to punish Sunni opponents only pushed the endless cycle of sectarian violence farther down the road.

Parsi’s inability to name Iran’s extremist Islamic policies and priorities as a motivating factor for a dreadful 2016 demonstrates clearly that even now, he cannot bring himself to criticize his Iranian masters in the slightest.

All of this shouldn’t be surprising since Parsi has been a loyal soldier for the Iranian regime and as Donald Trump assumes office in January, Parsi is devoting his time to trying to shape the narrative into painting Saudi Arabia as evil and Iran as good in an effort to drive a deeper wedge into the U.S. relationship with its traditional allies.

As 2016 has demonstrated, 2017 is likely to be just as disappointing for Parsi and his colleagues, but not for the reasons he thinks.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

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Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

With the nuclear agreement reached almost two years ago, the Iranian regime has used the $1.7 billion cash it received from the Obama administration as part of the swap for American hostages to help solidify its precarious position in Syria, while it has used new oil revenues to pump badly needed cash back into its military operations depleted from years of war abroad.

With three conflicts going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the mullahs placed a priority in supplying the terrorist proxies doing the heavy lifting for the regime such as Hezbollah, but they have also expanded the scope of their funding to include Afghan mercenaries recruited among the multitude of refugees living in Iran, as well as transporting Shiite militias from Iraq to fight in Syria.

The expenditure of ammunition, weapons and arms has been prodigious as the Iranian regime has been the sole supplier to the Houthis in Yemen waging a protracted civil war against the elected government.

The drain in foreign currency has exacerbated the regime’s economy to the point where the rial has plunged against the U.S. dollar and ordinary Iranians still struggle with anemic wages and an economy that is not capable of meeting basic needs leading to widespread discontent.

For the mullahs though the priority is on their military, especially since the Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership controls much of the Islamic state’s economy and reaps tremendous personal wealth from the skimming and corruption running through it.

With that emphasis on the military come the needs to constantly bolster the image of the regime’s armed forces, even if most of the boasting is illusory and aimed more for propaganda effect than practical military applications.

The Iranian regime constantly boasts of new military inventions such as patrol boats, drones, and new missiles, but lately the boasts are getting more grandiose to the point where many military analysts are shaking their heads.

For example, Hassan Rouhani claimed that the regime would now focus on building nuclear-powered ships even though the technology to do so is massively expensive and would require highly enriched uranium well in excess of what the country is allowed under the nuclear agreement.

Now come the latest boasts that the regime is going to build an aircraft carrier, a ship-type that even Russia and China struggle to grasp in building successfully.

“At present, the Defense Ministry and the Navy are both after building military equipment for naval warfare but the Defense Ministry is producing different types of missiles indigenously and the Navy’s needs to missiles are met using this capacity,” Deputy Navy Commander for Coordination Admiral Peiman Jafari Tehrani said on Monday, as cited by semi-official Fars news agency.

“Building an aircraft carrier is also among the goals pursued by the Navy and we hope to attain this objective,” he added.

It’s not the first time Iran has floated the idea of building aircraft carriers, since 2011 and 2014, Iranian defense officials have claimed to be moving forward with the idea even though there has been no evidence of such a building program.

Far from being able to develop advanced weapons systems, the Iranian regime is usually relegated to holding war games exercises and parades in order to beat its chest for public consumption.

For example, Iran kicked off a five-day large scale military exercise in the country’s southern region warning that civilian and military aircraft risk being shot down if they stray into Iranian airspace occupied by the drill.

The exercises, codenamed Modafe’an-e Aseman-e Velayat 7 or Defenders of Velayat Skies 7, include air defense drills and various missile, artillery and radar equipment as well as cyber and electronic warfare exercises, according to regime media.

Speaking Sunday, the commander of the regime’s air force Gen. Farzad Esmaili warned foreign aircraft trespassing the airspace covering the drill area would be shot down immediately, even though there were no foreign aircraft anywhere near the area, demonstrating the regime’s need to appear the bully.

The regime planned on using U.S.-made F-4 Phantom fighter jets older than the pilots flying them, as well as test firings of newly acquired Russian-built S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries.

All too often the regime’s military displays only succeed in reminding the world how grossly inadequate its military is in today’s modern battlefield. The Iranian regime excels in the kind of low-intensity, urban conflicts where proxies and terror groups can be used, but little else.

This inherent weakness in the regime’s military capability probably leads to a certain level of paranoia amongst the mullahs which is why they spend so much time, effort and energy arresting, torturing, imprisoning and executing any dissenters.

This has included mass arrests of journalists, students, artists, bloggers, social media users, fashion models and just about anyone else you can think of. It also includes a respectable number of dual-national citizens that Iran does not recognize, including Canadians, French, Brits and Americans.

The regime has expanded its efforts during this holiday season to target Christians, arresting any who preach the Gospel or attempt to convert a Muslim to Christianity. This follows the regime’s prior efforts to arrest and abuse others faiths such as Ba’hai and Kurds.

Ultimately much of the Iranian regime’s military boasting is so much hot air, but not the sincerity of the threats it makes against its neighbors. Even an old and weak animal can still cause havoc and mayhem.

Michael Tomlinson

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

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Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Iran’s currency, the rial, took a nosedive in hitting a record low against the U.S. dollar as financial markets returned from the Christmas holiday and doubts crept up about the impact the incoming Trump administration would have on the struggling Iranian economy under the mullahs.

More importantly, the plunge in the rial was more proof of that the mullahs in Tehran were incompetent when it came to managing their economy and that supporting three large-scale wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and had drained the regime’s foreign currency reserves dry.

The much ballyhooed promises of the Iran lobby that the nuclear deal reached last year would yield economic benefits for the Iranian people fell as fast and as flat as the Iranian currency.

The rial was quoted in the free market at 41,500 to the dollar, weakening from around 41,250 on Sunday and 35,570 in mid-September. Before this month, the record low was about 40,000, hit in late 2012, traders said.

Economists said there were several reasons for the slide, including the dollar’s strength against many currencies in the last few weeks, and uncertainty before next year’s presidential elections in Iran, according to Reuters.

But they said Trump’s election in November was a major factor. He has said he will scrap the deal between Iran and world powers that imposed curbs on Tehran’s nuclear projects and lifted sanctions on the Iranian economy in January this year.

This would hinder Tehran’s efforts to attract tens of billions of dollars of foreign funds to help modernize its economy. Inflows since January have been smaller than the government expected, partly because big international banks fear running into U.S. legal trouble if they deal with Iran; this in spite of efforts by the outgoing Obama administration to grant waivers and exemptions to the regime in an effort to spur the flow of cash to Tehran.

Iranian officials have denied any link between the U.S. election result and the rial’s slide. Samad Karimi, head of the exports department at the central bank, blamed the slide on a temporary surge in demand for dollars for travel and trade at the end of the year, state news agency IRNA reported.

Regime spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said on Monday that the rial’s drop was due to “psychological issues” and that the government hoped it would rebound within days.

Nevertheless, traders at some exchange houses in Tehran told Reuters they had not seen a sudden rise of dollar demand in recent weeks – suggesting the reasons for the rial’s tumble might be deep-seated.

That assumption of deep-seated problems within the Iranian economy are true since Iran is notoriously corrupt with virtually of the nation’s industries controlled through a myriad of shell companies by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and personal family fiefdoms of regime leaders.

This arrangement restricts Iran’s ability to operate a true free market economy, but rather is run like a gangland-style criminal enterprise where nepotism, personal favorites and enrichment and slavish devotion to exporting its extremist Islamic ideology dominate economic and fiscal decisions.

How a President Trump will deal with the Iranian regime is fast becoming the dominant policy discussion in European and Middle Eastern capitals. The initial reaction to his announced cabinet choices shows the potential for a more hardline response to Iranian militancy and extremism with such avowed critics of the regime as Rep. Mike Pompeo and Sen. Jeff Sessions set to assume office.

The potential for a sea change from the policy of appeasement followed by the Obama administration has emboldened critics of the Iranian regime to speak out including Iranian dissident groups long shut out by Obama.

A group of leading Iranian human rights activists and former political prisoners published an open letter on Friday to President-elect Donald Trump asking for a wholesale change from President Obama’s rapprochement with Iran’s clerical regime.

“Unfortunately, Iranians have been among the main victims of the detrimental policies adopted by President Obama in the Middle East. A prime example of these detrimental policies was the secret delivery of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to the Revolutionary Guards in exchange for the release of the hostages,” the dissidents’ letter said.

Fox News first published the document, the full text of which can be read on the Farsi-language website Taghato, which is run by the Iranian Liberal Students and Graduates group.

The signatories come from France, Germany, East Asia, Canada, the US and other countries.

“The ISIS and the Islamic Republic of Iran are two sides of the coin that is Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. To end this reign of terror, the Islamic caliphate (ISIS) and the Islamic regime in Iran must be replaced with elected pro-peace and prosperity governments.”

The letter called for fresh sanctions targeting “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the supreme leader’s financial empire and direct the US Treasury to strongly enforce them” and stop Iran’s pursuit of long-range missiles.

Publication of the document electrified Iran’s social media and regime-controlled news outlets. The IRGC-controlled Fars News Agency called supporters of the letter traitors, while the subject was among the top hashtags on Twitter.

BBC Persian said the letter was re-tweeted more than 10,000 times.

The dissidents’ open letter is only one of many entreaties now being aimed at the Trump team in the hopes of reasserting America’s role as watchdog of the Iranian regime and curb on the mullahs.

For the Iranian people, renewing the push for democracy and accountability can only help improve their economic condition.

Michael Tomlinson

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

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Outrage over the carnage in Aleppo has so far been directed mainly at Damascus, but activists on the ground say Tehran has a top general on the scene and has established secret camps where Iraqi mercenaries are trained to root out rebels in the Syrian city.

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

According to information provided to FoxNews.com, the forces currently controlling the city of Aleppo are under the command of the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The military outfit under its command includes foreign mercenaries such as Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and also the Shiite fighters of the Liwa Fatemiyoun from Afghanistan and the Liwa Zainebiyoun from Pakistan.

At the same time, Iran participated in a summit in Moscow with Turkey and Russia to begin discussions on dividing up the spoils of the conflict now that Aleppo had fallen under merciless bombardment.

The meeting was further evidence of Iran’s emerging role in Syria, both during the ongoing civil war and the expected aftermath.

According to reports received by the opposition to the Iranian regime, the number of IRGC forces and its hired hands in Aleppo and the surrounding area has reached 25,000, while the number of military personnel from Assad’s army is very limited.

“This report leaves no doubt that the Iranian regime is the primary obstacle to any solution in Syria,” Shahin Gobadi, spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) told FoxNews.com. “The current situation in Aleppo and the role of the Iranian regime in the atrocities committed on the ground require the immediate expulsion of the IRGC and its mercenaries from Syria. By meddling in other countries the mullahs try to cover up their vulnerability at home. The survival of the [Iranian] regime has been intertwined with maintaining the Assad dictatorship in power in Syria.”

The reports, which were obtained by the NCRI and its sister organization People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), state that the commander of the Quds Force – as IGRC units operating outside Iran are known – in Aleppo is Brigadier General Javad Ghafari, who is described as the right-hand man of the Revolutionary Guard’s commander-in-chief, Qassem Soleimani, who has been referred to as the architect of Iran’s role in Russian operations in Syria, according to FoxNews.com

The MEK has established a track record of accurately reporting misdeeds by Tehran over the past decade, including its attempts to hide nuclear weapons-related facilities from UN inspectors, according to Middle East Eye.

The NCRI has also alleged that the Revolutionary Guard has established its main headquarters around 20 miles southeast of Aleppo in a garrison called Behuth, or Fort Behuth, which used to be one of the most important centers of missile and chemical weapon production for the Assad regime.

It is now under the supervision of Ghafari, but it also contains a center operated by Lebanese Hezbollah commanders, as well as a number of Syrian army officers who are also present, according to the intel reports.

“The fact is that Aleppo has been occupied by the IRGC and its mercenaries,” Gobadi said to FoxNews.com. “Mass executions, preventing the transfer of civilians including women and children, attacking the civilians – has all been done by the forces of the mullahs’ regime.

“[They] are the main source of crisis in Syria and the region,” he went on. “By abusing the inaction of the international community and being convinced of not being held accountable for its crimes, [Iran] has continuously become more emboldened.”

The U.N. puts the overall death toll in Syria’s civil war at 400,000. More than 30,000 have died in the Battle of Aleppo, a last urban rebel holdout against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit research group in Washington, has reported that Iran organized thousands of Shiite militias in Iraq not only to fight the Sunni Muslim Islamic State there, but also to deploy them to fight rebels in Aleppo.

The Washington Times recently interviewed Iranian dissidents who had escaped to Western Europe. They said Iran’s brutality at home and aboard has increased, not decreased, since the landmark nuclear deal with the U.S. that provided Tehran billions of dollars.

The MEK report provided to The Times says that Syrian government forces are scarce around Aleppo, meaning it is Iran doing the lion’s share of offensive maneuvers and killings.

“On two occasions the transfer of Aleppo residents were hindered and their buses were fired upon under the instructions of the IRGC to gain concessions on the residents [of] al-Foua and Kefraya,” said the MEK, referring to two towns north of Aleppo.

State Department spokesman John Kirby was asked Monday whether the U.S. will protest to the U.N. Security Council the fact that Gen. Soleimani has been spotted in Aleppo. The U.N. has banned him from international travel for his role in terrorism.

“We do intend to consult with our partners on the Security Council about how to address our concerns with this,” Kirby said. “We’ve long said that Iran needs to choose whether it’s going to play a positive role in helping peacefully resolve conflicts such as in Syria or whether it will choose to prolong them. And you’re absolutely right: His travel is a violation.”

Jim Phillips, a Middle East expert at The Heritage Foundation, said that Assad’s army is depleted and stretched thin protecting government-held territory.

“Without Iran’s expanding military intervention, the Assad regime would have fallen months ago,” Phillips said. “While Russia’s military intervention has dominated media coverage on Syria, Iran has been responsible for almost all of the ground offensives in recent months that clawed back territory from the rebels and encircled Aleppo. It has deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards.”

Michael Tomlinson