Iran Lobby

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

Why is the Iran Lobby Silent About Ransom Demands?

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Why is the Iran Lobby Silent About Ransom Demands?

Why is the Iran Lobby Silent About Ransom Demands?

One of the curious side notes during the increasing concerns over news streaming out of Iran about harsh prison sentences being imposed on Iranian-Americans is that the Iran lobby has been relatively silent on the issue as a whole.

Leading Iranian regime supporter, the National Iranian American Council, felt compelled to issue a statement when Siamak Namazi and his father received 10-year prison sentences. Earlier news reports detailed a personal friendship between Namazi and NIAC founder Trita Parsi which may explain the latter’s willingness to criticize the Iranian regime on this one issue.

But for the rest of the Iran lobby, leading sympathetic journalists and bloggers such as Jim Lobe of Lobelog.com have been virtually silent on the issue of hostage taking of dual nationals by Iran.

Considering the goals and aims of the Iran lobby to preserve a badly flawed nuclear agreement and combat negative stories about the regime, it’s understandable why this practice hasn’t received much defense from them because it really is an indefensible action.

What compounds the problem for the Iran lobby has been the open statements being made by Iranian regime officials speculating on the amount of ransom they can extort from the US and other nations it has arrested, calling it many “billions of dollars.”

The issue of ransom and hostage-taking is deeply troubling and likely to only increase since the Obama administration has made it clear it will do nothing to jeopardize the nuclear agreement which it considers its signature foreign policy agreement.

But while the administration does not consider the shipment of $1.7 billion in pallets of cash to be a “ransom” for the release of five Americans last year, the mullahs in Tehran certainly and eagerly perceive it that way; all of which presents a problem for the arguments made by the Iran lobby of a newly moderate Iran.

If the US does not call this hostage taking and ransom payments, but Iran does, then in whose scenario should we be more worried about? The US government for acting as if these are part of the normal diplomatic process or a regime that views this as a new form of commerce?

For many lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the distinction is not difficult to discern. For many Republicans and Democrats, the practice of hostage taking, sham secret trials, lengthy prison sentences and demands for cash are to be taken seriously and dealt with strongly.
“President Obama’s cash ransom payment to Iran makes Americans more vulnerable and encourages unjustified prison sentences and blatant kidnapping like this,” Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio told FoxNews.com on Wednesday.
“Senior Justice Department officials warned the White House that Iran would view the pallets of cash as ransom, but the president didn’t listen, and now Iran is taking more hostages and demanding more money,” he added.
“Once again Iran has made a mockery of its own legal system in convicting wrongfully detained Iranian-Americans,” California GOP Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee, said after reports of the Namazis’ sentencing.
The State Department last week said the Namazis were “unjustly detained” and called for their immediate release.
The department also said U.S. officials are especially concerned by reports of the elder Namazi’s “declining health and well-being.”
Lawmakers also have suggested that Iran has been further empowered by the U.S.-led international pact signed in July 2015 in which Tehran agreed to curb its development of a nuclear weapon in exchange for countries lifting billions in sanctions.
Most distressing were reports from Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen and permanent resident of the United States, who said through his attorney Tuesday that Iranian officials in April told him it would take as much as $2 billion to ensure his release from captivity.

In September, Iranian officials lowered that amount to $4 million, and told him that he was spared the death penalty but would remain in prison for 10 years until the payments are made.
“This is a grave breach of, among [other international laws and treaties], the Geneva Conventions against hostage-taking,” his lawyer, Jason Poblete, said in a statement Tuesday. “Iran is using Nizar, other Americans and dual nationals, as political chattel to exact concessions from the U.S. and other powers.”
“On behalf of Nizar, we request that all be done by the U.S. and other governments to secure his unconditional release from captivity on humanitarian grounds,” he added.
Zakka, an advocate for Internet freedom whose nonprofit group did work for the U.S. government, denies the spying charges. He believes the Iranian government, lured him to Tehran in order to seize and imprison him. He was arrested in Iran after traveling there to attend an International Conference and Exhibition on Women in Sustainable Development at the invitation of an Iranian office who asked him to serve as one of the events speakers.

If this is true, it is even more disturbing since it implies the regime is now actively targeting dual nationals and working to bring them back to Iran for arrest and imprisonment.

In the case, of Reza “Robin” Shahini, the San Diego, California resident just sentenced to 18 years in prison, regime officials indicated he was being sentenced based on posts he made on his Facebook page during the protests against the 2009 elections, which were widely considered fraudulent and condemned by international observers.

If so, that would indicate the regime’s active scouring of social media to pick up tidbits that could be used as justification to arresting any dual national, even though those just coming to Iran to visit relatives.

It is a disservice for the Iran lobby to remain mute on this subject. Every day the NIAC and other supporters stay silent, it only heightens the legitimate criticisms of them being tools and puppets of the mullahs.
Michael Tomlinson

Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

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Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

Is the Iranian regime trying to conquer the world or does it simply want to carve out its own little protected niche in the world?

That seems to be the basic question confronting the rest of the world. For the Obama administration and many of the supporters of the Iranian regime, the focus was solely on the nuclear issue and ignored virtually every other aspect of the regime’s behavior that has troubled the world for the past three decades.

Dealing only with the nuclear issue is like negotiating with a serial killer to get rid of his use of handguns, but allowing him to keep his knives, flamethrowers and lock picks. Ultimately the behavior never changes and he is free and emboldened to do whatever he pleases. Such is the state we face with the Iranian regime today.

Now the world is witnessing a regime that is literally on a binge of dangerous behaviors, like someone with an eating disorder staring at a buffet table, the mullahs in Tehran are licking their lips at the banquet table being laid out before them.

A hallmark of that new militant behavior has been the arrests of dual national citizens and their subsequent sentencing to harsh prison terms without benefit of trial or even legal counsel. Three Americans were sentenced this way over the past week, with Reza “Robin” Shahini of San Diego, California receiving an absurd 18-year prison term.

“They’re bargaining people’s lives as if they’re trading Persian carpets,” said the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Oftentimes, these almost comically harsh sentences are simply meant to increase the value of these prisoners in the event of any quid pro quo with the United States.”

For the mullahs, these hostages do have value. In the case of four Americans released last year with the nuclear agreement, they were worth $1.7 billion in cash.

Not a bad payday for Iran.

But what seems to be at work in the larger context of international affairs is the almost bipolar nature of how Iran is dealing with the world and vice versa.

On the one hand, the Iranian regime is taking hostages, ramping up its participation in three widening wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It is smuggling arms, cash and men, which ironically end up getting used against other countries.

In Yemen, that means Iranian-purchased Chinese cruise missiles fired at US Navy warships.

In Syria, that means Iranian fighters and Afghan mercenaries and Iraqi Shiite militias being ferried in via Iranian airlines to fight against US-backed rebel forces.

In Iraq, it means Iranian-backed Shiite militias leading purges in Sunni villages liberated from ISIS and broad control over Iraq’s foreign policy with its Turkish neighbors.

  1. Todd Wood in the Washington Times also explains Iranian regimes avarice to secure a land corridor from the Iranian border to the Mediterranean to be able to have access to Arab lands, North Africa, and Europe in order to expand its terrorism through Iranian proxy forces and militias in Iraq and Syria.

“The operation seems to be headed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their General Qassem Soleimani who has also visited Moscow multiple times in violation of United Nations sanctions. He is coordinating the actions of Iran proxy forces in Iraq and Syria,” he writes.

Iranian regime is feverishly working on these plans, while at the same time it is busy opening itself up to Western investment and partnerships commercially.

As Thomas Erdbrink writes in the New York Times, the disconnect between the two halves are actually part of a larger, carefully orchestrated plan; a plan that the Obama administration and sympathetic EU nations seem oblivious to.

“What would seem to be a puzzling contradiction is in fact a carefully thought-out, two-track policy being pursued by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the circle of leaders around him,” he writes.

“Iranian generals are directing the ground war in Syria. Iranian advisers are training Shiite militias fighting in Iraq and Syria. Iranian arms and other support help the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“In addition to sanctioning the country’s more aggressive military footprint in the region, Ayatollah Khamenei regularly issues broadsides against the United States, promising there will be no softening of Tehran’s stance against the Great Satan, while quietly opening the door to Western capital and expertise,” he adds.

“In Mr. Khamenei’s view, we should be like China,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, an analyst with close ties to the hard-liners. “Have economic relations with the West, but without their political influence and neo-colonization.”

Thus, visa restrictions have been eased and foreign investment policies relaxed, while Iranian diplomats are spreading a message of Iran as the last major untapped market in the world.

But unlike China, Iran’s interests are not solely commercial and economic. It is more than willing to use military force to achieve its religious goals which stands in stark difference to China; essentially an atheist state.

For Khamenei and Rouhani, improvement in the economic status of the Iranian people is paramount to keeping their hold on power. Unless they can improve their quality of life, the street protests of 2009 are going to look like a picnic compared to March of 2017; Rouhani’s re-election bid.

Michael Tomlinson

Human Rights in Iran Spiraling Down the Drain

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Human Rights in Iran Spiraling Down the Drain

Human Rights in Iran Spiraling Down the Drain

Reza “Robin” Shahini, 46, from San Diego, California, was visiting his ailing mother in Iran when he was snatched up by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officials and thrown into prison. He joined a growing list of dual national citizens arrested, imprisoned and sentenced by the Iranian regime without so much as a reasonable facsimile of a legitimate trial.

“It was a terrifying moment, and they blindfolded me and they took me to the custody and I did not know where I was,” Shahini said, speaking to VICE News via phone from prison. “They were interrogating me every morning, every afternoon, and I was always by myself in my cell.”

During his interrogation, he said he asked to see the evidence against him. “They don’t answer such questions,” he said. “The thing is they are all brainwashed [to think] that the U.S. is a hostile government. Even the judge.”

Shahini joins several other dual nationals from the UK, Canada and fellow Americans in Iranian prisons with each being sentenced ever more harsher prison sentences. In Shahini’s case, he received a penalty of 18 years for “collaborating with a hostile government.”

Since September 2015, Iranian authorities appear to have been targeting citizens who they believe could upset the status quo, such as human rights activists, charity workers, or foreign journalists.

But it is the arresting of Americans, Canadians, Brits and other nationalities that has sent ripples around the world as governments who naively thought the Iranian nuclear agreement would bring about a more moderate regime are now being confronted by a newly aggressive one.

In the case of two British subjects being held by the Iranian regime, their families have allied with international human rights groups to try and put more pressure on the British government to force their loved ones release.

Richard Ratcliffe and Kamran Foroughi handed over a 72,000 signature petition from Amnesty International to Downing Street and the Foreign Office on behalf of Ratcliffe’s wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and Foroughi’s father, Kamal Foroughi.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker, was sentenced to five years in prison last month after a conviction on unspecified “national security-related” offences following another sham trial before a revolutionary court in the capital Tehran.

Amnesty International UK’s Individuals At Risk campaign manager, Kathy Voss, said: “There’s been a lot of talk recently about ‘thawing relations’ between the UK and Iran, but these two cases lend the lie to that. It looks very much like Nazanin and Kamal are being treated like pawns by the Iranian authorities and we’d like to see the UK seriously raising its game over securing proper justice for these British nationals. Boris Johnson needs to make sure these two cases are right near the top of his in-tray. We can’t let this drop.”

Voss is correct that all pretense of a new moderate Iran pushed by the Iran lobby have been proven false over and over again. The sheer volume of inhumane acts and criminal steps taken by the regime over the past year leave no doubts.

Even the most persistent supporters of the regime, including the National Iranian American Council, had to concede the obvious and issued a press statement critical of the 10 year prison sentences levied on Iranian-Americans Siamak Namazi and his father.

Meanwhile the regime continues on its brisk pace of executions with three more men hanged in Iran’s southern city of Shiraz. Although the regime ostensibly executes prisoners for crimes such as murder and drug trafficking, it broadly applies the death penalty to include political dissidents and crimes against the regime which serves as a catch-all definition suitable for any offense the mullahs see fit.

But death sentences are not the only way the regime muzzles its critics. Amnesty International reported on the arrest of writer and human rights activist Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee who had recently written about the regime’s use of stoning as punishment.

Despite the fact that no official summons has been issued, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee’s home was raided this morning by officials, who violently broke through her front door before taking her to Evin Prison in Tehran. It appears that she has been taken to the women’s ward to begin serving her six-year sentence.

She has been convicted of charges including “insulting Islamic sanctities,” for writing an unpublished story about the horrific practice of stoning in Iran. Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee’s husband, Arash Sadeghi, a human rights activist and prisoner of conscience, has since started a hunger strike in protest at her imprisonment.

“Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee is the latest young writer and activist to be caught up in Iran’s relentless crackdown on artistic expression. Her imprisonment for peacefully voicing her opposition to stoning is a terrible injustice and an outrageous assault on freedom of expression. It is also a shocking and deeply disturbing display of support for the cruel and inhuman punishment of stoning,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“The Iranian authorities must break this cycle of injustice and immediately and unconditionally release Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee. We also urge them to ensure that her conviction is quashed.”

The unpublished fictional story, for which Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee has been convicted of “insulting Islamic sanctities,” describes the emotional reaction of a young woman who watches the film The Stoning of Soraya M – which tells the true story of a young woman stoned to death for adultery – and becomes so enraged that she burns a copy of the Qur’an according to Amnesty.

In essence the regime arrested and sentenced her for writing something that wasn’t even published. If the mullahs could figure out a way to detect dissident brainwaves, they would probably start arresting anyone for thinking improperly, but such is the sad state of human rights in Iran today.

Michael Tomlinson

Hassan Rouhani Comments on US Election Despite Troubles Ahead

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Hassan Rouhani Comments on US Election Despite Troubles Ahead

Hassan Rouhani Comments on US Election Despite Troubles Ahead

Hassan Rouhani addressed a crowd in the Iranian city of Arak and deplored what he called a “lack of morality” in the US presidential campaign and mocked the recent presidential debates in the his first public comments on a race to elect the next president who will have to decide to confront growing Iranian extremism.

“We have seen the way the (US presidential) candidates speak, accuse and mock (one another); and this is the American democracy and election,” Rouhani said.

Rouhani’s comments followed similar critical remarks made by top mullah Ali Khamenei who also lashed out at both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

“The (ongoing) election campaigns in America and issues raised by the two candidates constitute a clear and evident example of the consequences of lack of spirituality and faith among those in power,” Khamenei said this weekend.

“During the coming weeks, one of these two candidates of America’s (presidential) election, whose remarks and condition you observe, will become the president of a country which has power and wealth and the biggest amount of nuclear weapons as well as the biggest media in the world,” he added in regime-controlled media.

The ramp up in comments by Khamenei and Rouhani indicate a new level of interest and worry by the Iranian regime as the sun sets on the Obama administration which has pursued a policy of appeasing the regime through the nuclear deal, lifting of economic sanctions and payment of ransom to gain the release of American hostages.

For the mullahs in Tehran the upcoming election is worrisome since both candidates have been especially harsh in condemning actions of the Iranian regime such as its long-running support for the Assad regime in Syria and the continued arrests of Iranian-American dual nationals.

The fact that Rouhani and Khamenei are wrestling with a stagnant economy, restless population, skyrocketing youth unemployment and the drain of maintaining three separate proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, has threatened their hold over power, which has forced them to pursue an even harsher crackdown on human rights at home to prevent dissent.

The uncertainty of what a new US president will do in regards to Iranian policy has also trickled down to foreign banks and potential investor putting a hold on future investments until next year.

One can almost feel the sweat bead up on Rouhani’s forehead again.

It is ironic though to see Rouhani and Khamenei weigh in on the US election given the handling of their elections.  The Iranian regime historically has rigged its own elections as to make any outcome other than the one desired by the mullahs as moot.

The “stolen” election of 2009 that saw unpopular Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected in a contest widely viewed as fraudulent is just one example. Another was the election of Rouhani himself in which all potential opponents were cleared off the ballot by a committee hand-picked by Khamenei.

The creation of the Iran lobby through organizations such as the National Iranian American Council helped facilitate the false perception that Rouhani was a “moderate.” Fortunately the world has had the benefit of seeing Rouhani in action—especially the year following the nuclear agreement—and has come to the realization that the Iranian regime is not interested in truly becoming a moderate nation.

Rouhani’s comments are even more ridiculous when you consider statements made by Ali Akbar Velayati, a key foreign policy advisor to Khamenei with Iran’s al-Alam television network, in which he claimed the regime opposed interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

“Iran opposes interference by any country, including Turkey or others, in the internal affairs of another country,” he said, adding that the domestic affairs of any country are its own concern.

The regime official rejected claims that Iran is interfering in the affairs of Iraq and said Tehran only provides Baghdad with military consultation at the request of the Arab country’s legitimate government, according to the regime’s PressTV.

The audacity for the regime to peddle such an obvious lie is amazing since the Iranian regime has almost gleefully inserted itself into the internal affairs of its neighbors in Syria and Iraq to a point where Syrians and Iraqis have openly complained of an Iranian takeover of their governments.

The regime’s use of terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah to carry out attacks and bombings in places such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Afghanistan and even Argentina point out how far the mullahs are willing to go to meddle in other countries’ affairs.

Even the use of cyberhackers within the Revolutionary Guard Corps to attack US and European computer systems demonstrates the level of willingness to interfere in virtually all aspects of other nations’ affairs.

It’s now clear that the policy of appeasement of the mullahs to help “moderates” in Iran has failed, and the next president must define a firm policy towards the mullahs in Iran, if it wants to prevent the spread of terror and extremism in the region.

Michael Taylor

Iran Regime Taunts US for More Ransom Payments to Free Americans

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Iran Regime Taunts US for More Ransom Payments to Free Americans

Iran Regime Taunts US for More Ransom Payments to Free Americans

Who actually runs Iran?

It’s not a silly question. It’s an important one because it goes to the heart of the central assertions made repeatedly by the Iran lobby that there is an internal struggle between “moderates” and “hardliners” for the future of Iran.

If you listened to people such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council or bloggers such as Jim Lobe or Ali Gharib, the struggle was a titanic war being waged between good and evil with Hassan Rouhani carrying the banner for all the true moderates in Iran seeking a better life for every Iranian.

What a load of fragrant cattle by-products to put it nicely.

The reality has been quite starkly different as the Iranian regime now controls conflicts in three countries, woos foreign nations and countries to invest and snatches up even more dual national citizens from around the world.

The latest provocation was the sentencing of several Americans to extended prison sentences in secret trials, which earned condemnation from almost every quarter of the political and diplomatic spectrum, but instead of offering any olive branches, the Iranian regime went deeper into its extremism.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Iranian regime is seeking “many billions of dollars” in payments from the US in exchange for the release of several American hostages still being detained in Iran, according to reports by Iran’s state-controlled press that are reigniting debate over the Obama administration’s decision earlier this year to pay Iran $1.7 billion in cash.

Senior Iranian officials, including the Rouhani, have been floating the possibility of further payments from the US for months. Since the White House agreed to pay Tehran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year as part of a deal bound up in the release of American hostages, Iran has captured several more U.S. citizens.

Future payments to Iran could reach as much as $2 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter, who said that Iran is detaining U.S. citizens in Iran’s notorious Evin prison where inmates are routinely tortured and abused.

Iranian news sources close to the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which has been handling prisoner swaps with the United States, reported on Tuesday that Iran expects “many billions of dollars to release” those U.S. citizens still being detained.”

Which leads us to the question we started with: Who’s calling the shots in Iran? Rouhani, who previously has served as a regime cheerleader for moderation now openly admits in interviews with Western journalists that Iran does not recognize dual nationalities, even though he previously issued a call for ex-pat Iranians to return and help rebuild its shattered economy.

“We should wait and see, the U.S. will offer … many billions of dollars to release” American businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer, who was abducted by Iran after the United States paid Iran the $1.7 billion, according to the country’s Mashregh News outlet, which has close ties to the IRGC’s intelligence apparatus.

The Persian language news report was independently translated for the Washington Free Beacon.

Six hostages have been sentenced to 10 years in prison by Iran in the past months, including the Namazis.

One senior congressional adviser familiar with the issue told the Free Beacon that Iranian officials have been pressing for another $2 billion from the United States for months.

“Iranian officials including Foreign Minister [Mohammad Javad] Zarif have been bragging for months that they’re going to force the U.S. to pay them several billion dollars more,” the source said. “Now officials across the spectrum in Iran—from IRGC hardliners to the ostensibly moderate President Rouhani—are talking about those billions, and maybe several more, alongside chatter about the U.S. hostages.”

The Washington Post editorial board acknowledged the true nature of the regime with the harsh sentences handed down.

“The government of Hassan Rouhani, which negotiated the nuclear deal with the Obama administration, is often portrayed as opposed to this de facto hostage-taking. If so, the government appears powerless to prevent it. Instead, officials complain about the relatively slow return of Western investment and trade following the lifting of United Nations sanctions, even as some of those who promote the opening are unjustly imprisoned,” the Post said.

“Though it was officially part of a separate claims settlement, the Obama administration’s delivery of $400 million in cash to the Iranian regime at the time of the release of (Washington Post reporter Jason) Rezaian and other prisoners may have whetted the appetites of Tehran’s jailers.”

Clearly now, everyone can see Rouhani is not a moderate. When it comes to main policies of the regime, he was and still is merely no different than the top mullah Ali Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guard Corps which controls Iran and its people as tightly as a hangman’s noose wraps around a condemned prisoner’s neck.

Michael Tomlinson

Why Hassan Rouhani’s Calls for Co-Existence Are Meaningless

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Why Hassan Rouhani’s Calls for Co-Existence Are Meaningless

Why Hassan Rouhani’s Calls for Co-Existence Are Meaningless

Iranian regime controlled media loudly broadcast remarks made by Hassan Rouhani at a ceremony marking National Exports Day in Tehran in which he called for peaceful co-existence with the rest of the world and Iran’s neighbors.

No, this was not an April’s Fool joke come early, nor was it an attempt at early Halloween gallows humor.

Rouhani was making his appeal because the world has not reacted well to the regime’s militant and aggressive moves since a nuclear agreement was reach over 18 months ago. There has arisen significant uncertainty among foreign companies, institutional investors and many governments over entering into business agreements at a time when new sanctions may be coming.

Rouhani was making his appeal on a strictly commercial basis in which he hoped to see Iran enter the global marketplace as a significant consumer market, as well as an eventual exporter of goods.

According to Trend News Agency, “Iran has no choice other than forming a constructive interaction with the world in order to boost its export,” he said.

He further said that constructive interaction with the world means establishing suitable ties with global community for exports, and import of capital goods and raw materials as well as employment of youth.

There is good reason for Rouhani and his fellow mullahs to be worried. Iran’s economy remains stagnant, with little benefits trickling down to ordinary Iranians as promised by Rouhani. Youth unemployment remains staggeringly high and wages have not risen significantly in over a decade leading to widespread discontent and protests throughout Iran.

Scandals involving excessive compensation for high-placed executives at regime-controlled industries have rocked Rouhani’s term, as does a high-profile crackdown against journalists, students, artists, bloggers, dissidents, and religious and ethnic minorities.

The mullahs’ “morals” police squads are working overtime arresting and abusing everyone from Iranian women riding bicycles to Iranian youth congregating in coffee shops.

But what has most foreign companies and investors worried is the regime’s rapid escalation in its involvement in three widening proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, in which US armed forces are increasingly being drawn into direct conflict with Iranian and Iranian-backed forces.

In Yemen, Iranian regime-backed Houthi rebels reportedly fired cruise missiles at US warships three times in one week; resulting a response from the US of three cruise missiles hitting radar installations in Yemen.

US Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of US forces in the Middle East, said on Wednesday that he believes Iran was behind the missile strikes on US Navy ships in Yemen.

“I do think that Iran is playing a role in some of this. They have a relationship with the Houthis, so I do suspect there is a role in that,” said Votel at the Center for American Progress, The Hill’s Kristina Wong reports.

Now news reports have surfaced detailing how the Iranian regime has stepped up weapons transfers to the Houthis threatening to widen and prolong the now 19-month-old war.

Much of the recent smuggling activity has been through Oman, which neighbors Yemen, including via overland routes that take advantage of porous borders between the two countries, the officials said.

U.S. and Western officials who spoke to Reuters about the recent trend in arms transfers said it was based on intelligence they had seen but did not elaborate on its nature. They said the frequency of transfers on known overland smuggling routes had increased notably, though the scale of the shipments was unclear.

A senior Iranian diplomat confirmed a “sharp surge in Iran’s help to the Houthis in Yemen” since May, referring to weapons, training and money.

“The nuclear deal gave Iran an upper hand in its rivalry with Saudi Arabia, but it needs to be preserved,” the diplomat said.

Ironically, the timing of the increased flow of cash and arms to the Houthis coincides with the ransom payments of $1.7 billion made to the Iranian regime by the US to free four American hostages.

Meanwhile in Syria, the growing failure of repeated cease-fires have placed US personnel dangerously close to being targeted by Russian and Syrian airstrikes, as well as facing Shiite militias imported from Iraq by Iranian airliners to fight alongside Syrian forces against US-backed rebels.

It is against this backdrop of global uncertainty that Rouhani is making one of the most absurd sales pitches anyone can recall since it is exactly because of the Iranian regime’s acts that have made many companies and investors skittish at risking billions of dollars.

That idea of co-existence draws little weight as Rouhani himself has admitted that the regime does not recognize dual national citizens and is in the midst of an unprecedented binge of hostage-taking of US, British, Canadian and other citizens.

Even more disturbing has been taunting statements made on regime-controlled websites demanding “billions in cash” as ransom payments for these new hostages.

Even Rouhani has taken a personal hand in tightening the figurative noose among his fellow Iranians by firing Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Jannati, Education Minister Ali Asghar Fani and Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Mahmoud Goudarzi all on the same day.

It’s interesting to note that all three ministers oversaw parts of Iranian society which enjoyed a bit more creative freedom during the run-up of the nuclear negotiations in an effort to present a more “open” society to the world. With the nuclear deal accomplished, their dismissals and subsequent crackdown on freedoms should not be a surprise.

Laura Caranahan

Even Iran Lobby Is Not Immune From Regime Extremism

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Even Iran Lobby Is Not Immune From Regime Extremism

Even Iran Lobby Is Not Immune From Regime Extremism

Siamak Namazi, a 45-year-old Iranian-American businessman who enjoyed close ties and access to one of the Iran lobby’s leading advocates in the National Iranian American Council, found himself on the wrong end of a 10-year prison sentence handed down by an Iranian court.

Sentenced alongside his 80-year-old father, Baquer Namazi, a former Iranian provincial governor and former UNICEF official who also has dual Iranian-American citizenship, Siamak has become another hostage pawn in the Iranian regime’s schemes to angle for more cash, more accommodation and more appeasement from the US.

Both men were sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying and cooperating with the U.S. government, said Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, according to the Fars news website, without specifying when exactly the sentences had been handed down.

The U.S. State Department’s deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, said the father and son had been “unjustly detained” in Iran, and called for their immediate release.

Babak Namazi, Siamak’s brother and Baquer’s son, called the sentences unjust.

“My father has been handed practically a death sentence,” Babak Namazi said in a statement.

Baquer Namazi has a serious heart condition and other medical issues requiring special medication, his wife wrote on Facebook in February. On Tuesday, UNICEF called for his release on “humanitarian grounds.”

The pleas for the Namazis echoed similar pleas made by desperate family members of previous regime hostages such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former US Marine Amir Hekmati and former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who still remains unaccounted for in Iran.

One significant difference though is that Siamak Namazi has been reported to have worked alongside long-time friend Trita Parsi in launching the NIAC with the idea of forming an advocate within the US to help push the Iranian agenda in the hopes of gaining a lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

For Parsi, the creation of NIAC and its companion lobbying arm, NIAC Action, has provided him and his colleagues with a comfortable living, access to influential power brokers and a platform to extol their support for the mullahs in Tehran.

Yet, Namazi was still snatched up by regime officials along with his father and sentenced to a long prison term without much disclosure as to why.

Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s official news site, published on Sunday video images of Siamak, set to dramatic music and spliced together with images of President Barack Obama and Rezaian, who was released from an Iranian jail in January after more than 18 months in detention.

The video showed Siamak’s U.S. passport and identification card from the United Arab Emirates, where he previously lived. It then showed him standing and holding his arms outstretched, as if being searched, while being filmed by at least one other cameraman. The website said the video depicted “the first images of the moment of Siamak Namazi’s arrest.”

It is a stark and disturbing reminder to other supporters of the regime that their utility only goes so far and should be a sharp slap in the face for folks like Parsi who urged support for a more “moderate” Iran, but now find their associates as easily punished as anyone else; without any special status or immunity for their previous support for mullahs.

The arrests also expose the folly of regime president Hassan Rouhani’s much-touted visit to the United Nations in 2013 in which he famously urged Iranian ex-pats to come back to Iran and help their country; only to find virtually all dual national citizens are fair game for arrest.

In his most recent trip back to the UN last month, Rouhani remarked on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program that the Iranian regime did not even recognize dual national status.

It’s an amazing turnaround in only two years and mirrors the sharp reversal of by the regime after getting its promised nuclear deal; leaving it free to deal harshly with its enemies both foreign and domestic in a broad and harsh crackdown.

The arrest and sentencing of such a close associate of Parsi and the NIAC, finally motivated Parsi to issue a press release with unusually tough language more in line with what his staunchest critics have said about the regime in the past.

“Both Siamak and Baquer Namazi have been denied basic due process and all indications are that the Iranian government has been using them as political pawns in violation of its own laws and basic human decency,” Parsi said.

“For the United States, the sentencing is a clear signal that more political capital and attention needs to be dedicated to securing the release of the Namazis and other Americans imprisoned in Iran. The United States should leave no stone unturned in utilizing diplomatic channels to press the Iranians to secure their release.”

If you didn’t know the statement came from Parsi, you might have mistaken it from a long-time Iranian regime critic from Congress or the pages of the Washington Examiner.

The irony should not be lost on anyone.

For all of its efforts to promote the regime and boost the lifting of economic sanctions and flood the regime with billions in cash that the mullahs are now using in three proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the NIAC and other Iran lobby members are faced with the inconvenient truth that supporting Iran is no guarantee of future safety or security from the same extremists actions against others.

Michael Tomlinson

 

Iran Regime Pushes Oil Contracts to Raise Cash for Wars

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Iran Regime Pushes Oil Contracts to Raise Cash for Wars

Iran Regime Pushes Oil Contracts to Raise Cash for Wars

The Iranian regime’s Hassan Rouhani put out the invitation to a select group of high-powered investors to come visit the regime in the hopes of garnering new investments to help jump-start a stagnant economy that has only gotten worse after promises for improvements by Rouhani proved false after the nuclear agreement. Rouhani did not mention anything about the dual citizens who will end up in prison for a cash ransom.

Rouhani’s invite went to the 20-20 Investment Association, a group of influential investors overseeing $7 trillion of assets, much of it though is held within government-run pension funds which are prohibited by many state laws from investing in Iran because of its support of terrorism. This includes some of the biggest pension funds run by California, New York and Texas.

James Donald, head of emerging markets at Lazard Asset Management, the US fund company that oversees $174 billion of assets, and a board member of the 20-20 association, said the invitation reflected the Iranian regime’s desire to attract more foreign investors.

Donald said: “The group at this stage has not accepted the invitation. An awful lot of large government pension plans have restrictions on Iranian investments and [on] any company that does business in Iran. There is talk of [the remaining sanctions being removed]. I think there would have to be a federal law change [for banks and asset managers to move en masse into the Iranian market].”

In addition Rouhani’s pleas, the regime-controlled National Iranian Oil Co. issued a request for bidders to invest in Iran’s slumping oil industry which powers much of the regime’s overseas and military activities.

The Iranian regime wants to attract more than $100 billion in investment to increase its oil production by 1 million barrels a day by the start of the next decade and raise its current oil output of 3.63 million barrels a day under a compromise agreement reached with other oil producing countries.

The mullahs in Tehran are anxious to try and diversify its investors because in the prior decade of sanctions imposed stemming from its illicit nuclear weapons program, the only dominant investor willing to ignore Western sanctions was China. In many cases, Iran’s oil, telecommunications, manufacturing and other heavy industries are run almost entirely by Chinese workers and managers.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Western investors have been slow to arrive. That’s especially true in the energy sector, where pressure to increase production is intense. Elsewhere, Western clearing banks still refuse to do business with Iran for fear of falling foul of non-nuclear U.S. sanctions that remain in effect, meaning Western companies can’t raise project finance.

This has created intense pressure on the mullahs to find some way to bring in foreign dollars to modernize its antiquated oil industry in order to get more oil out of the ground and sold to bring in hard dollars to fund three widespread wars Iran is now fighting in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The regrettable end game for the mullahs is to rip off Iran’s natural resources not for the benefit of the Iranian people, but rather fund the Islamic revolutionary expansion they are pushing abroad.

Recognizing the limitations of sanctions still in place, in spite of recent moves by the Obama administration to further accommodate a regime threatening to walk away from the nuclear deal in order to extort more concessions, the Central Bank of Iran announced it had informed banks throughout Iran that any failure by non-American banks to provide dollar-related services to Iranians would be “unacceptable” according to regime-controlled media.

“Providing dollar-related services [to Iranians] will no longer expose non-American banks to the risks of sanctions provided that they stay clear of US financial system,” the CBI said in its statement.

“Therefore, non-American banks cannot use US sanctions against Iran as an excuse for refusing to provide dollar-related services to Iranian individuals and entities.”

It is a desperate statement to make since Iran is not the final arbiter of what is and is not allowed under existing sanctions still in place, but the regime is so desperate for cash it is bullying financial institutions into handling US currency in order to get the flow of cash moving through Iran again.

It’s an explicit warning aimed especially at European and Asian banks who have been reluctant to engage in US currency exchanges with Iran for fear of running afoul of US officials, especially since there is significant uncertainty with the upcoming presidential election virtually guaranteeing a change in policy towards Iran come next January.

All of which highlights the futility of the promises and claims made by the Iran lobby following the nuclear deal in which leading supporters of the regime such as the National Iranian American Council promised a more moderate Iran willing to work to end the series of conflicts in the Middle East.

Instead, the world has amply seen the exact opposite with the breaking out of a shooting war between the US Navy and Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, the ferrying of thousands of Iranian-backed Shiite militias from Iraq into Syria via Iranian airlines to fight for the Assad regime.

The rapid escalation in fighting in these countries is draining the regime’s treasury in spite of the billions of dollars it received as part of the hostage exchange of Americans and the release of frozen assets back to the Iranian regime.

The mullahs squandered those funds and it seems that they are now rapidly trying to squander billions more in foreign investment.

By Michael Tomlinson

WikiLeaks Reveals a Much Tougher Hillary Clinton on Iran Regime

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WikiLeaks Reveals a Much Tougher Hillary Clinton on Iran Regime

WikiLeaks Reveals a Much Tougher Hillary Clinton on Iran Regime

The Iran Lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, have often publicly argued for a more moderate approach to the Iranian regime and encouraged efforts by the Obama administration to appease the mullahs in Tehran in the hopes of changing their historically extremist behavior and policies.

The past two years have shown how foolish it was to believe those promises as the Iranian regime is now the central player in three wars raging across Syria, Iraq and Yemen; all conflicts in which the world is increasingly being dragged into the crosshairs of a shooting war.

The Obama administration has called for another increase in US forces in Iraq to combat ISIS insurgents, yet now find that Iraqi militias it trained are now fighting in Syria against rebel forces the US supports.

Now in Yemen the US Navy is exchanging missile fire with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. Not exactly a recipe for “moderation.”

The NIAC and other Iran lobbyist members have gone all in with the Democratic Party in backing their candidates for House and Senate races in the hopes of overturning a Republican majority that is skeptical of Iran’s professed moderate intentions, but that hope might prove just as illusory as the idea of Iranian moderation.

WikiLeaks has been dumping thousands of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, party officials and members of the Clinton campaign, including from Hillary Clinton itself.

What they reveal is a much different picture of the candidate’s opinions on Iran that what the NIAC would have everyone believe.

According to a speech transcript made public this weekend by WikiLeaks, Clinton on October 28, 2013, told the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago: “I believe that Rouhani was allowed to be elected by the two major power sources in Iran, the supreme leader and the clerics and the Revolutionary Guard … in part because the sanctions were having a quite damaging effect on the economy.”

She continued: “I don’t think anyone should have any illusions as to the motives of the Iranian leadership. What they really want to do is get sanction relief and give as little as possible for that sanction relief.”

According to Eli Lake in Bloomberg, Clinton, in private at least, has taken a more realistic view since leaving the administration. In her Chicago speech, she called Rouhani’s outreach to the West a “charm offensive,” and argued that U.S. negotiations were important as a sign of good faith to the international community, but not as a way to influence Iranian internal politics.

In another speech sure to dismay NIAC and other Iranian supporters, Clinton even advocated privately for U.S.-led strikes against Iranian regime nuclear facilities and acknowledged regime’s ability to terrorize the United States through Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives and other proxies in Latin and North America.

Clinton expressed a willingness to bomb the Iranian regime facilities as an “option” to prevent the Shiite powerhouse from developing a nuclear weapon in a June 4, 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs and elaborated further about the threat Iranian regime, the IRGC, and its proxies pose to the United States in a separate speech on October 24, 2013.

She warned that there would be “consequences” carried out through the IRGC and Iranian regime’s other proxies if the United States took military action against it. Although she did not specifically mention Hezbollah by name, it is the most active Iranian mullah’s terror proxy across the world, including the Western Hemisphere.

In a bit of prescience, Clinton reiterated:  “So it’s a wicked problem, as we like to say, because Iran is not only troubling because of its nuclear program, although that’s the foremost threat, it’s the primary conductor and exporter of terrorism.”

“I mean, if you had a big map here behind us, literally from North America to Southeast Asia, there are so many thoughts, so many bombs, so many arrests that are all traced back to the Iranian regime’s revolutionary guard, and their constant efforts to sell (inaudible)….So even if a miracle were to happen and we came up with a verifiable nuclear deal, there would still be problems that Iran is projecting and causing around the world that had real consequences for our friends and ourselves.”

Her recognition of the Iranian regime’s true nature is a welcome boost to those that have opposed the entreaties of NIAC and other Iranian regime supporters. It is also understandable that her comments were private since they were at odds with her party’s leader in President Obama, but with her possible election as president, her core beliefs that the Iranian regime is not a huggable, fluffy teddy bear, but rather a central conduit for the exporting of death, destruction and terrorism is heartening to regime opponents and Iranian dissidents.

On another accout, the Iranian regime blasted comments made by Secretary of State John Kerry who blamed Iran’s provocative actions in Syria and Yemen as being the creator of uncertainty to the extent foreign banks and businesses are reluctant to invest in Iran and not US sanctions on currency exchanges.

In an interview published Friday, Kerry told Foreign Affairs magazine that Iranian regime’s support for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Yemen’s Houthi rebels made it “very difficult” to help Iran improve its banking system and business practices.

“Mr. Kerry’s comments are totally unacceptable,” Iranian regime’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told state television on Sunday night.

“We are surprised. During the nuclear negotiations, we clearly said that questions of security, defense, ballistic missiles and our regional policies were not negotiable and are not linked to the nuclear talks,” he said.

“It is unacceptable that Mr. Kerry is today talking of new conditions.”

No matter how the regime wants to spin it, these problems are problems of its own creation.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Escalating Tensions With US Navy

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Iran Regime Escalating Tensions With US Navy

Iran Regime Escalating Tensions With US Navy

This week has seen tensions rise off the coast of Yemen to unheard of levels as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels twice fired cruise missiles at US Navy warships and in response, a US Navy destroyer fired Tomahawk cruise missiles destroying three coastal radar installations that were used to track the American ships.

Tensions rose even more when the Iranian regime announced it was sending two Iranian warships to the Gulf of Aden in close proximity to one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

“Iran’s Alvand and Bushehr warships have been dispatched to the Gulf of Aden to protect trade vessels from piracy,” regime-controlled Tasnim News Agency reported.

The move introduces Iranian warships far from their operating bases and coastline along the Persian Gulf and puts them adjacent to US warships at a time when threatening behavior is being met with salvos rather than radio warnings.

The Iranian regime has used its navy over the past year to engage in an escalating game of chicken in the Persian Gulf, including having ships make aggressive high speed runs at US warships and ignore radioed warnings and even shots fired across their bows.

Earlier, the Iranian regime detained two US patrol boats that had strayed into waters claimed by the regime and paraded captive US sailors on television and even built a monument to the episode.

The move was seen as the latest escalation in U.S.-Iran tension related to a proxy war in Yemen, where the two are backing opposing sides. The U.S. in March 2015 joined a Saudi-led military coalition to support the embattled Yemeni government against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, according to The Hill.

Although the Tasnim News Agency reported that the Iran ship deployments were to “protect the country’s trade vessels against piracy in the unsafe zone,” it also noted that it “coincides with the US decision to directly get involved in a Saudi-led war against Yemen.”

For the Iranian regime and its mullahs, Yemen is rapidly rising in importance as it becomes a proxy war for the larger conflict it is pursuing in the region. The use of Houthi rebels as proxies is similar to the game plan used by the mullahs with Hezbollah in Syria and Shiite militias in Iraq, all of which are supplied by Iran’s Quds Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps with weapons, ammunition and training.

The Houthi’s use of Chinese-made cruise missiles against the US Navy warships is a disturbing escalation since the weapons are not cheap and require a fairly high level of technical know-how to operate in coordination with radar tracking; technical expertise almost surely provided by the Iranian military.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a leading advocate of a tough foreign policy toward Iran, said it was unacceptable that the Obama administration continues to relax financial sanctions on Iran while it supports the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“I am relieved the crew of the USS Mason remain safe and unharmed in the Red Sea after Iran-backed Houthi rebels repeatedly launched missile attacks at them,” Kirk said in a statement.

“It’s counterproductive, absurd and unacceptable that the White House keeps unilaterally relaxing financial sanctions against the Iranian terror-sponsoring regime while Iran continues to actively support Houthi militants in Yemen that are trying to kill American servicemen and servicewomen in the Middle East,” he said.

The inconvenient truth for the White House is that after over a year of appeasing the Iranian regime, the US now finds itself on a brink of an actual shooting war with Iran; a fact that the Wall Street Journal editorial board warned about.

“The White House doesn’t want Americans to notice, but the tide of war is not receding in the Middle East. The Navy this week became part of the hot war in Yemen, with a U.S. warship launching missiles against radar targets after American vessels were fired on this week. Just when President Obama promised that American retreat would bring peace to the region, the region pulls him back in,” the Journal wrote.

“Don’t expect the White House to acknowledge this because the ironies here are something to behold. Mr. Obama is backing the Saudis in Yemen in part to reassure them of U.S. support after the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal that the Saudis opposed. Mr. Obama’s Iran deal was supposed to moderate Iran’s regional ambitions, so Mr. Obama could play a mediating role between Tehran and Riyadh. But the nuclear deal has emboldened Iran, and fortified it with more money, so now the U.S. is being drawn into what amounts to a proxy war against Iran. Genius,” the Journal added.

The increase in attacks against the US by Iran may be designed to weaken its support for Saudi Arabia and further fragment the coalition fighting Iranian adventures in Syria, Iraq and Yemen right now.

By Michael Tomlinson