Iran Lobby

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

Can Anyone Trust Iran’s Mullahs?

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Iran Nuke Facility

If you are like me, you probably Google every day on topics of interest and for me, today was no different. In searching for topics of discussion concerning Iran, its ruling mullahs and topics of interest, Google never fails to turn up some golden nuggets and there were some winners today.

“Dissident group alleges new secret nuke site in Iran.” – USA Today
“Iran pursuing nukes in underground complex despite talks with West.” – Fox News
“Giving Iran everything it wants.” – Washington Post
“Exclusive: Iran smuggles in $1 billion of bank notes to skirt nuclear sanctions.” – Reuters
“Document reveals growth of cyberwarfare between U.S. and Iran.” – New York Times
“U.S. says Iran helped Houthis seize Yemen.” – Al-Arabiya

And all this just in one day. It raises an important question. Even if the P5+1 negotiations yield an agreement, how can the West trust Iran’s mullahs to actually stick to it? Therein lays the proverbial question haunting everyone at the table in Geneva.

When you consider the Iranian regime’s nearly 18 year-long effort to first conceal evidence it was building a nuclear program and only after intelligence agencies and Iranian dissidents on the ground, the National Council of Resistance of Iran finally broke the secret open with smuggled photos, reports and eyewitness accounts did Iran’s mullahs grudgingly even admit a “peaceful program.”

But this “peaceful program” was being developed on military bases and research facilities experimenting with high explosives, nuclear detonators, missile technology and delivery systems. All places Iran’s religious leadership kept hidden for a decade from the prying eyes of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In the interim, the world galvanized with economic sanctions that Iran’s mullahs merely shifted over the impact away from its governmental operations and placed the full brunt of it on its own people in order to hold them up to the world as victims of unremitting sanctions. While Iran’s leadership was busy funneling billions of dollars to fund terror groups such as Hezbollah and the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, it continued to pour billions into its nuclear development in spite of global condemnation.

Why?

Because Iran’s mullahs calculate – correctly I might add – that in the time necessary for the world to get its act together and place enough pressure on Iran to curb its activities, they would have bought enough time to build the infrastructure necessary to ramp up production without any real damage to its program.

Now Iran sits on 19,000 centrifuges for enriching nuclear fuel, a ready-made stockpile of enriched fuel of various levels and testing facilities that have already done the heavy lifting of designing and testing various components used in assembling a nuclear warhead, not considering today’s fresh information on an actively parallel nuclear site operating with advanced centrifuges.

In essence, the P5+1 is now negotiating with an Iranian regime that has already achieved what it set out to do and now can sit back and allow a deal to take shape without losing any real ground.

Revelations by the IAEA of Iran’s continued stonewalling and the NCRI of yet another secret nuclear site, on top of reports of over $1 billion in continued sanctions evading smuggling all point to a single conclusion: Iran’s mullah cannot be trusted to keep any bargain made with the West.

The key issue of verification in any agreement is critical since Iran has successfully managed to evade inspection and disclosure for almost two decades. Only through revelations from Iranian dissidents and democracy sympathizers on the ground in Iran – and at great personal peril to their lives – have we been able to even crack open a little bit of the secrecy that shrouds Tehran’s programs.

To think Iran’s mullahs are going to happily oblige opening up all of their secrets in a nuclear deal is naiveté of the highest order.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran-Nuclear Floodgates Open

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FloodgatesSeparate reports from various media outlets indicate the U.S. has put forward a significant concession towards the Iranian regime in the third round of nuclear talks between the Islamic state and the P5+1 group of nations seeking to halt its development of nuclear weapons.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal this morning, “the U.S. and Iran are exploring a nuclear deal that would keep Tehran from amassing enough material to make a bomb for at least a decade, but could then allow it to gradually build up its capabilities again.

“Such a deal would represent a significant compromise by the U.S., which had sought to restrain Tehran’s nuclear activities for as long as 20 years. Tehran has insisted on no more than a 10-year freeze.”

The concession is monumental for several reasons.

One, it continues the trend of the West caving in to Iran’s mullahs without gaining any significant concessions from them in return. There are no concessions for Iran’s religious leadership to move towards a democratic, secular society. No assurances on the release of thousands of imprisoned political and religious prisoners. No indication even of any let up in the regime’s support for the global increase in terrorism and extremist groups.

Second, it does not prevent the regime from eventually building a nuclear device anyway. It merely reduces the originally hoped-for period for supervising Iran’s nuclear program from 20 years to now only a decade. It is even more astonishing considering the recent revelations from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has still avoided and stonewalled disclosing details of the military aspects of its nuclear program.

How does anyone expect Iran to undergo a decade of supervision of its nuclear program when it has already successfully evaded international inspection of its military facilities for the past 12 years? Let alone the reports about the continuation of the clandestine activities and its missile program, that can be used to carry nuclear warheads to Europe and Middle East.

The proposal to shrink the window and allow mullahs in Iran the ability to ramp up its enrichment capacity does nothing for improving peace prospects globally as the regime’s lobbying allies such as the National Iranian American Council would have us believe. If anything, the accelerated push towards the ability to construct and deploy nuclear devices is most likely to cause another arms race amongst Iran’s anxious neighbors.

We can only imagine how regime loyalists such as Trita Parsi, Ryan Costello and Tyler Cullis will crow about this development and call it “peace in our time.”

It will also force a confrontation whereby Iran’s mullahs will seek to flex its newfound political muscle by using its leverage in the proxy war against ISIS as it continues to deepen its control over its neighbors in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and be buoyed financially by the lifting of economic sanctions of the flood of billions in petrodollars into its coffers.

The most absurd part of this entire process has been the perception among diplomats and analysts, which is the appearance that the U.S. has been essentially negotiating against itself in giving concession after concession without gaining anything meaningful from the mullahs in return. As Iran’s inscrutable mullahs sit through three years of talks and publicly have denounced America and its policies and the potential of any deal, the U.S. has slowly chipped away at its own position in an effort to entice Iran’s mullahs into agreeing to a deal…any deal.

In sports, it is akin to a team trying to lure a desirable free agent and still bidding higher even as every other team has walked away from the table.

In this specific moment of time, negotiators seemed to have adopted the mantra that “there is no such thing as a bad deal.”

All of which portends significant trouble on Capitol Hill where both Republicans and Democratic Senators have made plain their opposition to any agreement that gives the Iranian regime the ability to develop and possess nuclear weapons period; not just extend the time and inconvenience it takes the regime to develop those weapons.

The right approach will be for the Senate to develop a more skeptical line to any proposed deal.

By Michael Tomlinson

Parallel Nuclear Talks with the Iranian Regime

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Magnifying GlassWhile U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leads diplomats from the P5+1 negotiating team in meetings with his counterparts from the Iranian regime, another set of talks have been going on in parallel concerning inspections and access to the Iranian regime’s nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that have so far drawn much less media attention.

But in a secret report issued by the IAEA to its member states and obtained by some Western news agencies including the New York Times and Reuters, the IAEA declared that Iran’s mullahs have stalled for the past three years on several critical areas of concern over nuclear weapons development and have not been provided answers to questions that had been promised by the Iranian regime as late as last year.

The timing of the release of the report, coming as the third round of talks between the Iranian regime and the West gets underway in Geneva is interesting because it demonstrates the level of frustration international inspectors have reached in attempt to squeeze answers out of the Iranian regime over issues such as the use of next-generation centrifuges for enrichment of nuclear fuel and the testing of conventional high explosives which could be used in detonators for nuclear warheads.

The IAEA and the United Nations have always maintained that any accord reached with the Iranian regime be conditional on Iran’s mullahs fully answering the questions that still linger after years of stonewalling.

“We’ve been stonewalled on all those questions,” one European official involved in the talks said recently in the New York Times story. “And the question is does it make sense to lift sanctions against Iran before it satisfies the inspectors?”

In the Times article, an initial report by the IAEA in 2011 published a list of a dozen technologies, most of them necessary to build a nuclear weapon that inspectors said Iran had tried to master. That list was narrowed down to three which the IAEA wanted Iran to explain first.

More than a year later, the Iranian regime has still failed to provide information on even one single topic of concern to inspectors; that being the development of conventional explosives to create focused shock waves sufficient to compress the core of a nuclear device and start the chain reaction necessary for a nuclear blast.

The IAEA has been consistently blocked by the Iranian regime in getting even the most basic answers, which raises more concerns over the apparent shroud of secrecy that has fallen on the most current round of P5+1 talks. Many international observers critical of any agreement with Iran’s religious leaders, including opposition groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, have contended the talks need to be transparent and open in order to allay international concerns and hold Iran’s rulers accountable because of a past history of obstruction and evasion.

In the Reuters story, Western diplomats have viewed such stalling as an indicator of the Iranian regimes unwillingness to cooperate fully until punitive sanctions are lifted in talks with the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain. This intent to have Iran’s mullahs be rewarded for simply sitting at the table is at the heart of the regime’s negotiating position and the reason why two earlier rounds of talks had failed.

Pressure to craft a framework of a deal by a March 24th deadline has placed both sides on a path towards a complex game of chicken to see who will blink first. Given the Iranian regime’s past willingness to tank previous talks, Western negotiators should be wary of giving in to regime demands simply to satisfy the appearance of progress.

No doubt the regime’s lobbying machine in the U.S. including the National Iranian American Council, that recently published a $200K ad in New York Times in favor of the mullahs, will press for a deal that hides most of the key components from public or Congressional scrutiny, but as the IAEA report has demonstrated, the Iranian regime has and continues to flaunt international concerns even after concessions and shows no interest in changing its ways.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby-The Goal of Misdirection

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NIAC NYT AdYesterday one of the Iranian regime’s most loyal lobbying groups, the National Iranian American Council, took out a full page ad in the New York Times. In it, the NIAC decrying House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on Iran’s nuclear program.

There is no argument that the Israeli leader’s presence is a controversial and divisive one, but the real issue at hand here is not his remarks, but the omnipresent effort by NIAC and other Iran sympathizers to do virtually anything to change the channel away from the key issues surrounding the Iranian regime’s conduct and instead shine the spotlight on other perceived villains.

If Trita Parsi of the NIAC thought it would work, he would probably also take out full page ads in American newspapers blaming global warming, high cholesterol and the upcoming fifth season of Game of Thrones for derailing nuclear talks between Iran’s mullahs and the P5+1 group of nations.

But the advertisement is instructive on several levels.

One, it shows just how desperate Iran’s mullahs have become. At a time when ISIS and other terror groups pledging loyalty to them are busy beheading and burning Christians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Japanese, Britons, Egyptians and Americans on television around the clock, the American people’s concern over foreign affairs and fanatic Islam has now shot through the roof.

A new poll conducted and released by CBS News showed a whopping 65 percent of Americans view ISIS as a major threat, up from 58 percent in October, with a majority of Republicans, Democrats and independent viewing ISIS as their top concern above jobs and the economy.

The poll further showed a growing groundswell of support among Americans for the use of American ground troops to stop ISIS with 57 percent now favoring sending combat troops into Syria and Iraq. What bodes ill for Iranian regime sympathizers is the sharp rise among Democrats for action with a majority now supporting combat action.

Which leads us to the second issue Iran’s mullahs are terrified about which is the U.S., pushed by concern over ISIS and continued failures at the bargaining table to win nuclear concessions from them, will finally throw its hands in the air and take matter into its own hands and force both issues.

Iran’s religious cadres have worked tirelessly to gain control over Iraq’s political and military leadership. It has used the growth of ISIS as an excuse to move its Quds Force and the Revolutionary Guard Corps into Iraq and take over control of Shiite militias, as well as gain understanding of American combat tactics from Iraqi units trained by departing American forces.

Without making any concessions in nuclear talks, Iran’s mullahs have managed to solidify their grip on Iraq and Syria and make deep in roads with Islamic extremist movements making gains in Yemen, Nigeria, Libya, Chad and Sudan.

Iran’s mullahs have also managed to quash any dissent at home and have felt comfortable enough to arrest and imprison American journalists and missionaries without charge or trial and without fear of any retribution.

Lastly, NIAC’s ad also reveals the almost pathological effort to find any villain it can blame for another failure in nuclear talks, especially when Mullah’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei once again went on another public rant this week denouncing the U.S. and West, threatening economic repercussions on Europe and recommitting to a nuclear future.

The timing of the ad in light of Khamenei’s venting is auspicious and a clear sign NIAC is hard at work covering for the Iranian regime.

Parsi’s latest tactic only reveals the ever-growing weakness in the Iranian regime’s position as the March 24th deadline fast approaches.

By Michael Tomlinson

Khamenei Shows True Colors

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Angry KhameneiBenjamin Franklin famously said “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” If Franklin were alive today, he might add mullah’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the list of certainties.

Yesterday in a public speech in Tehran carried by the official IRNA news agency, Khamenei once again vowed Iran would resist global sanctions in its pursuit of nuclear capability and threatened to cut off natural gas exports in retaliation to any continued sanctions.

“Serious work must take place. We can withstand the sanctions and neutralize and foil the enemy’s goals. If we don’t, the enemy would proceed and place conditions on our nuclear program and impose sanctions,” Khamenei said.

“If sanctions are to be the way, the Iranian nation can also do it. A big collection of the world’s oil and gas is in Iran so Iran if necessary can hold back on the gas that Europe and the world is so dependent on,” he added.

It is noteworthy Khamenei still refers to the West and especially the U.S. as the “enemy.” His worldview is clouded by the long-simmering extremist view he has nurtured for the past several decades and seems unable to move forward into a new era of peace and prosperity. He clings to the notion Iran must resist all attempts at compromise and maintain a virtual war footing.

But Khamenei’s threats ring hollow when you consider Iran’s total oil production is estimated at 2.7 million barrels per day, mostly for domestic use. It also produces 600 million cubic meters of natural gas, of which 500 million cubic meters is used at home, meaning Iranian regime’s ability to “punish” Europe with a natural gas embargo is about as real as finding a unicorn.

But Khamenei didn’t stop there. He went on to accuse the U.S. of secretly supporting ISIS and criticized the European Union for placing sanctions on the National Iranian Tanker Company, the regime’s largest tanker company for carrying its petroleum overseas.

All of which flies in the face of recent frantic efforts by the Iranian regime’s lobbying and PR machine to convince the American public Iran does indeed want a compromise in current nuclear talks, even after two previous rounds of talks failed largely because of Khamenei’s hardline position and refusal to accept any deal compromising Iranian regime’s ability to generate large quantities of enriched uranium for use in nuclear warheads.

One might even feel slightly sorry for Iranian regime loyalists such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council who wax poetic about Iran’s desire for compromise only to be torpedoed on a regular basis by a new rant by Khamenei that reinforces and reminds Americans how mad the guy really is.

But any sympathy evaporates when we realize the stakes involved in this tense game of chicken Khamenei is playing. For all his bluster, he acts like he has virtually no interest in a deal. He regularly dumps on the U.S. He pushes for harder crackdowns at home in gross human rights violations. He has directed a foreign policy and controls a military and intelligence service involved in conflicts in almost a dozen countries now.

Just as ISIS has designs on a new fanatic Islamic caliphate, Khamenei shares the same vision for an Iranian-controlled sphere of influence. It is a dream born out of his virulent hatred of all things from the West including gender equality, free speech, an uncensored media and an unfettered internet.

As negotiators continue talks, they should not ignore the latest outburst by Khamenei because in most people’s minds, three strikes is usually enough to call someone out.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran’s Way or the Highway?

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Gareth PorterOne of the more intriguing aspects of the arguments put forward by the Iranian regime lobbyists and PR flaks is the near constant drumbeat of the message that hopes for any possible deal with Iran on nuclear weapons lies with the U.S. and not Iran.

It is an argument advocated by Iranian regime loyalists such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and Gareth Porter, a self-proclaimed historian and journalist, who most recently advanced the theory the U.S. negotiating position is unworkable and only foments the deep suspicions already inherent in Iran’s religious ruling class.

Consequently, he takes the position the U.S. must recognize the Iranian regime’s insistence on maintaining its enrichment capacity is not irrational and the sooner Washington recognizes it, the sooner a breakthrough will occur.

It’s a position that might elicit laughter if the stakes weren’t so high. Porter further posits that decades of aggressive U.S. policy towards Iran has forced Iran’s leadership to harden its approach to the U.S. in negotiations with the ultimate goal of the immediate lifting of economic sanctions.

Porter never mentions Iran’s broad and deep sponsorship and support of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Quds force, etc. and their past attacks killing U.S. personnel.

He never mentions the almost decade-long brutal crackdown on Iran’s own people which includes censorship and access to media and the internet, as well as mass arrests and halts to demonstrations, rigged national elections – twice – and a sharp increase in the number and frequency of public executions of men, women and religious and ethnic minorities.

Porter’s inability to exercise his historical insights to recount past acts by the Iranian regime as clouding American policy making is inexcusable and betrays his almost dogmatic approach to supporting whatever the Iranian regime position happens to be. One might daresay if the mullahs said the sky was green, Porter would concur.

Even more telling is his comment that criticism coming from rivals within mullah’s hierarchy that their Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s failure to support negotiations with the U.S. was wrong because it would mean Iran was negotiating with the U.S. from a woefully weak position. The fact Porter believes Iran’s negotiating position needs to be one of strength vis á vis the West says more about his allegiances than the need to eliminate nuclear weapons and prevent a new arms race in the Middle East.

If Porter was the historian he pretends to be, he would recognize the mistakes made in the run up of the first Cold War in which unbridled nuclear development placed the world at the brink of a nuclear apocalypse. At no point does Porter decry Iran’s march towards a nuclear weapon. In fact, he acknowledges Iran’s mullahs already possess the ability to build a nuclear weapon with the enriched fuel on hand. Instead he maintains the party line that sanctions must be lifted in order for any agreement to be reached.

While Porter argues “in the context of the history of the sanctions in US-Iran relations, Iran’s determination to hold out for a better deal is hardly irrational. If the Obama administration fails to understand that fact the diplomatic stalemate is likely to continue.”

He misses the exact opposite point of view that given the brutal nature of the Iranian regime and its involvement in literally all of the world’s hot spots involving extremist Islamist groups, one could hardly call the responses to Iran irrational.

By Laura Carnahan

The Inevitability of Iran Sanctions

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Dr. StrangeloveThe ever faithful Iranian regime lobbying machine spit out another gem with an editorial authored by Trita Parsi and Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council entitled – amusingly enough – “How Congress Can Learn to Stop Scuttling and Love the Iran Nuke Talks” that ran in Foreign Policy.

It is a startlingly similar title to the 1964 classic anti-nuclear satire film “Dr. Strangelove or; How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It follows the President of the United States, his advisers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

If the similarities in title and message are intentional by Parsi and Cullis, they most certainly are probably taking their cues from the film’s Gen. Jack D. Ripper character who orders the insane act in the first place based on the psychotic belief the Soviets are polluting the “bodily fluids of Americans.”

It’s a sentiment shared in spirit by Iran’s ruling mullahs, in particular Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has consistently called the West and American culture in particular a plague. This belief is usually punctuated by annual demonstrations denouncing America and the pursuit of a foreign policy aimed at destabilizing and even attacking American interests and citizens through a vast global network of terror and extremist groups funded, armed and supported by Iran’s mullahs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Quds Force.

In the piece authored by Parsi and Cullis, they attempt to portray a battle of Titans between President Obama and Congress over the threat of re-imposing economic sanctions on Iranian regime, should a deal fail to materialize. Most noteworthy is their attempt to frame the central key issues in being able to reach a deal around Congress’s fickleness in following through on any negotiated deal with Iran. Hence, Iran’s mullahs cannot trust any deal with the U.S. since the Congress is hell-bent on punishing the regime in Iran anyway.

They further propose the only real way to reassure the mullahs is for Congress to pass legislation removing the bulk of sanctions up front in any deal by empowering the President to do so on his own. In essence, Congress should abdicate responsibility of oversight on any deal and allow President Obama to close a deal with the mullahs in Iran as he sees fit.

The idea is problematic since Parsi and Cullis blissfully ignore the past two years of two other failed negotiating rounds. They ignore a record of dismal human rights abuses by Iran’s mullahs since “moderate” Rouhani took office. They ignore the rapid growth of not only ISIS and the marked brutality of executions videotaped for global consumption, but they also ignore the chaos now circling the globe with violent Islamist extremists on the march in Sydney, Ottawa, Paris, Copenhagen, Belgium, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan and now Libya.

They ignore Iranian regime’s long involvement in supporting these groups through the steady flow of arms, training, fighters and cash. As Dana Perino, former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, said recently on the Fox News Channel’s “The Five” that Iran is at the center of virtually all of the unrest now going on with Islamic extremism in these global hot spots.

The pair also ignored the most basic political reality for the U.S. right now and that is after landslide losses in the midterm elections, President Obama has lost his mandate from the American people who now rank terrorism above jobs and the economy as their chief concern in 2015; hardly surprising given the almost daily news coverage of executions and beheadings, including the brutal slayings of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya and the killings in Copenhagen.

Lastly, it is also worth noting the final gaffe in the logic of Parsi and Cullis and that is opposition to Iran mullahs developing a nuclear weapon is bipartisan. The fact that Democratic Senator Richard Menendez (D-NJ) is leading the sanctions push is no accident, as are voices of concern from prominent Democrats such as Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Bob Casey (D-PA), Joe Manchin (D-WV) and several others who have warned President Obama not to enter into any deal without review and approval by the Senate.

All of which adds up to one question, will the third round of negotiations buy the charm? Judging by the Iranian regime’s decisions to go all in on supporting terror groups and Islamist extremist groups around the world and double down on an even more brutal crackdown on political dissent at home, it seems Iran’s mullahs have calculated the West and President Obama needs a deal more than they do. In fact, Khamenei has already openly opined by the Iranian people’s ability to withstand even harsher sanctions in the hopes of pushing their expansionist agenda.

By March 24th, the world is liable to see that Iranian regime is indeed committed and its mullahs are true believers in their mission to spread their extremism around the world no matter the cost.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran’s Takeover of Iraq’s Military Underway

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Iraqi TroopsA statement made by Iranian Brigadier Gen. Hossein Valivand and made public through various official Iranian regime news agencies has largely escaped notice in the Western news media, but portends a significant and dramatic shift of events taking place in Iraq.

As reported by Jacob Siegel in The Daily Beast, Valivand, who runs the Mullah’s Army’s Command and General Staff College, said “Iranian military experts are prepared enough to offer training to Iraqi forces,” according to Presstv, Tehran’s English-language news outlet.

“Valivand added that the issue of training Iraqi soldiers had been discussed during a recent visit by Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi to Tehran,” Presstv reports.

Siegel describes a meeting last December between Iraq’s defense minister and his Iranian counterpart in which a mutual security agreement was signed. Details were not widely released, but one provision is the training of Iraqi military forces by Iranian officers, continuing the process already begun by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

“Iran has obviously been training the Shia militias and using the proxies very effectively in Iraq and elsewhere. I’d imagine that Iran is hedging their bets: Train the security forces and the militias so you can increase your influence and facilitate the coordination between the formal service and the militias and ensure that, whoever comes out the winner, you retain effective control. It’s the same playbook in Lebanon; Hezbollah has been the proxy but Iran has also exerted increasing influence over the uniformed military services,” said Mark Dubowitz with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan policy institute.

Dubowitz added that the move by Iran to train Iraqi officers would give Iran significant insights into U.S. training tactics.

“If I were Iranian intelligence, I’d be looking at this very carefully,” Dubowitz said. “It’s an interesting way for the MOIS [Iran’s ministry of intelligence] and Revolutionary Guards to get under the tents and learn all they can about U.S. training, force posture, and power projection.”

All of which leads to a significant question: Why is the U.S. allowing the regime in Iran a free hand in retraining Iraqi military units the U.S. has spent the last six years training in order to hand over security during the pullback of U.S. forces?

The situation the U.S. finds itself in grows more complicated each day as ISIS continues expanding and consolidating its hold in Iraq, while the Iranian regime seeks to drive a deeper wedge between Sunni and Shia populations in Iraq and bolster Shiite militia friendly to the regime.

Iran’s mullahs ultimately have bet that the U.S. will no longer want to stay in Iraq and Iran will gain a free hand to turn Iraq into Iran’s newest provincial holding. Part of that calculation comes from the apparent willingness of the Obama administration to adopt the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” policy approach when looking at Iran’s outsize influence in Iraq in the fight against ISIS.

The fact that Iran’s policies in Iraq in supporting the government of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and force out Sunni leadership in any power sharing coalition eventually led to the explosive growth of ISIS in Iraq in the first place seems to be irrelevant to Obama administration officials.

The fact Iran’s training of local militias in the fight against ISIS is the first line of defense in Iraq is no accident. Iran hopes to prevent the re-emergence of a Sunni coalition in the government in order to preserve its premier positon of power in Iraq and Shia militiamen are quickly becoming the local muscle in enforcing its will.

Shia militiamen have been implicated in the massacre of more than 70 Sunni villagers just within the last month. Another two Sunnis were beheaded recently in a Sunnis town, by regime backed Shiite militias, which raised a lot of protests among Sunnis. The prospects for further Iraqi sectarian bloodshed on par with what is going on in Syria is quickly becoming reality as more concessions is given to the mullahs in Iran, while U.S. control wanes.

By Michael Tomlinson

How Can The World Trust Iran mullahs?

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Top SecretWhile Iran negotiates with the P5+1 group of nations in what is now the third round of talks following two previous failed rounds, one of the most persistent and nagging questions facing Western diplomats is “How can the West trust Iran to stick to any agreement when it has sought to evade sanctions, inspections and agreements for decades?”

This question comes into even more stark relief on reporting from Jennifer Griffin of Fox News who uncovered a shadowy covert cell operating within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force known as Unit 190 which has fueled many of the conflicts and civil wars raging across the Middle East and North Africa.

After a lengthy and in-depth investigation, Fox News traced the complex land, sea and air routes used by the Quds Force to move weapons to terror groups like Hezbollah, as well as the Houthis who have recently toppled the government in Yemen which only last year was being held up as an example by the Obama administration in the effective fight against terror.

The irony is overwhelming.

At the heart of Unit 190 is Behnam Shahriyari, born in northwest Iran, who according to western intelligence sources runs a network of straw companies which skirt sanctions by packing rockets, night-vision equipment and grenades in powdered milk, cement and spare kits.

Fox News went on to show photos revealing a hanger at Tehran’s international airport which serves as warehouse and logistics center for the unit’s shipments of illegal weapons fueling conflicts that have killed thousands of innocent civilians globally.

The U.S. has engaged in a veritable cat and mouse game trying to shut down illegal front companies for the Quds Force involved in the trafficking of weapons only to have new ones spring up overnight in an aggressive effort to defeat sanctions. Iran’s weapons have found their way to fighting in Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Somalia and Nigeria.

For intelligence officials, the more operative question to ask is where has Iran not shipped weapons?

All of which raises the central question facing nuclear talk negotiators. How can mullahs in Iran be trusted with any agreement if it already continually and actively seeks to evade sanctions on conventional weapons, let alone nuclear ones?

The answer can be found in only one place; Iran itself. Iran’s actions and the support given by its mullahs for the Quds Force’s activities are more damning than anything else Iran could do. It is a matter of national policy that Iran seeks to stoke these bloody conflicts.

But why?

Put simply, Iran’s mullahs believe sincerely in sowing chaos throughout the world to keep the West off balance and lay the ground work for the expansion and rapid growth of extremist movements beholden and sympathetic to Iran’s brand of religious extremism.

Before anyone forgets, Iran is a religious theocracy governed not by the rule of law and the ballot box, but by the whims and personal interpretations of the mullahs who ruthlessly hold onto their power by crushing political dissent at home and making liberal use of the hangman’s noose; to the tune of 1,200 men and women during the past year and a half.

Through it all, Iran’s lobbying machine in the form of the National Iranian American Council and cadre of sympathetic or clueless commentators, journalists and public interest groups have blithely ignored Iran’s track record.

If negotiators want to see the truth of Iranian regime’s intentions, watching Fox News reporting on Unit 190 would be an instructive place to start.

By Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi and The Big Lie

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Court GavelYesterday the District of Columbia Court of Appeals issued an order in regards to damages and compensation awarded by the District Court to Seid Hassan Daioleslam, an Iranian American who investigated the National Iranian American Council’s ties to the Iranian regime, as a result of a defamation suit brought by NIAC and its president, Trita Parsi.

The order by the Court only dealt with the issue of reimbursements owed by NIAC to Mr. Daioeslam as a result of the costs he incurred in responding to and researching of NIAC’s claims against him.

It is worth noting the Court upheld the factual elements of the case, which included a litany of bad-faith actions by Parsi and NIAC to avoid, evade, hide and in some cases destroy evidence linking both to key members of the Iranian regime. The core elements of the case against Mr. Daioleslam were thrown out and instead valuable information was unearthed during the course of discovery that proved highly problematic for Parsi and NIAC.

A good roundup of the case merits appeared on Breitbart.com (http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2013/05/26/distorting-niac-s-court-defeat/) so I will save readers from the blow-by-blow descriptions of the case facts.

The Court of Appeal’s order also does a fine job in reiterating the central facts of the case and the lengths to which the NIAC and Parsi attempted to hide their ties to the mullahs in Iran. It is a case of missing computer hard drives, servers and software worthy of Lois Lerner and the IRS fiasco.

The full order is available for reading at http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/95D577149121951685257DE80053C062/$file/12-7111-1536782.pdf

The relevant portion of the order comes last in which the appellate panel writes:

“For the foregoing reasons, we affirm in part the District Court’s award of sanctions, and reverse the award of Mr. Daioleslam’s expenses in preparing the portions of his sanctions motion related to NIAC’s alteration of a document and Parsi’s interrogatory responses, as well as the award of post-judgment interest to run from September 13, 2012. We remand to the District Court for reconsideration of those aspects of its judgment under the proper standard. So ordered.”

What is remarkable is the NIAC’s response in which it issued a statement implying a colossal win over Mr. Daisoleslam. At no point did the Court order dispute the facts of the case.

  • The NIAC willfully over 4,000 entries in electronic calendars detailing who Parsi and other NIAC officers had met with over the years, including representatives of the Iranian regime;
  • The NIAC willfully withheld 5,500 emails of conversations and correspondence between Parsi and other NIAC officers with Iranian officials and supporters;
  • The NIAC never proved any of Mr. Daisoleslam’s conclusions or results from his investigations were in fact defamatory. The first defense from defamation is truth;
  • The NIAC’s failure to produce computers and servers whose existence was only discovered through a forensic sweep of hard drives.

A full listing of all of the charges made against NIAC can be found here at The Legal Project: http://www.legal-project.org/4024/predatory-lawsuit-rebounds-back-on-iranian-front

In short, the Court of Appeals asked the District Court to recalculate the compensation owed to Mr. Daisoleslam by NIAC, taking into account a change in which interest had to be calculated and the costs for preparing a motion related to Parsi’s interrogatory and NIAC’s changing of documents.

The Court never said that any of the facts of the case regarding NIAC and Parsi’s conduct and evasions were in error. It simply required a slight accounting change from the $183,000 award originally given. Once the lower court recalculates the award, NIAC will have no choice but to finally pay up.

Interestingly, NIAC’s statement attempts to reposition the accounting change as a vindication over the facts of the case, which is absurd since they lost of a summary judgment which found all claims made by NIAC to be false.

But trying to make gold out of manure is nothing new for Parsi and NIAC as evidenced by the most recent debacle where they pushed for a delay for a framework nuclear deal and instead of securing the June 30th deadline, they ineptly pushed a new deadline up by two months to March 24th.

Any rational person reading the first two pages of the appellate ruling will quickly come to the conclusion that NIAC and Parsi in particular are accomplished practitioners of the Big Lie for Iran mullahs.