Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

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Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

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Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The era of appeasing Iran is over.

Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Uniting the World…Against It

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Iranian Regime Uniting the World…Against It

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

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As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

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Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pardon us while we laugh hysterically at Marashi.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is a neat solution for the Iran lobby.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Happens After the Iran Presidential Elections?

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What Happens After the Iran Presidential Elections?

What Happens After the Iran Presidential Elections?

The steady flow of analysis and opinion pieces regarding the upcoming Iranian presidential election keeps on coming and much of it is critical of anything really changing after the election no matter who gets elected.

One such piece comes in TIME magazine from Dennis B. Ross, co-founder of United Against a Nuclear Iran, and Jason M. Brodsky, policy director for UANI.

“Iran’s upcoming presidential election on May 19th has all the hallmarks of a Western-style democracy: a series of television debates, endorsements by elder statesmen and catchy campaign banners adorning cityscapes,” they write. “But it is all window dressing.”

“The Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) control much of the economy, and they continue to block deals that might build the strength of the private sector in Iran. Yes, there has been an infusion of cash, but following the money shows that funds have flowed to the Supreme Leader, to companies he controls and to the security services — not to ordinary Iranians,” they added.

The structural control of much of Iran remains firmly in the hands of the ruling clergy and the military that backs them. There is no opportunity for anyone rising to the top of the political pyramid without their explicit permission. This eliminates any real meaningful change from ever taking root within the regime’s government.

The evidence of that lack of change in direction has been on display for the last four years of Hassan Rouhani’s term when his much-anticipated election came with near-reverent promises of moderation and openness from the Iran lobby.

The only problem is that since his election, Iran has been anything but moderate. It’s track record since 2013 has been littered with a brutal and savage war in Syria that has claimed almost half a million lives and another insurrection in Yemen spurred by Iran that threatens to drag Saudi Arabia into direct conflict with the Islamic state.

Add to that a brutal crackdown on human rights that has all but wiped out any dissenters within Iran, and a rash of arrests and prison sentences for dual-national citizens, including five Americans, and things don’t look so great now.

The smoke signals moving forward after the election are just as bleak.

Ross and Brodsky point out that Rouhani has warned in this campaign cycle of increased “extremism” in Iran, saying “[w]e will not let them bring the security and police atmosphere back to the country.” But actions of the deep state inside the regime — the judiciary and security services — speak louder than words.

In March, to lay the groundwork before the presidential election, officials arrested administrators of twelve Telegram (an instant-messaging service) channels on unspecified charges, they noted.

Sonna Samsami, the U.S. representative for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, one of the largest Iranian dissident groups, wrote about the lack of changes coming in a piece for the Hill.

“In a recent survey of Iranians in 15 provinces, by the International American Council on the Middle East and North Africa, 79 percent of those asked said they don’t believe the outcome of the election will make any difference in their lives. Faces change, but policies remain the same,” Samsami writes.

“Meanwhile, the lot of the Iranian people remains dire as wages stagnate, needed investments in infrastructure are deferred and corruption runs rampant. These grievances have no real outlet and no real hope for redress. The greatest danger in a theocracy is that all state actions are sanctified by an authority for whom there is no higher appeal. Democracy is but a mirage under the theocracy,” Samsami adds.

The sorry state of the Iranian economy and rampant corruption has caused a simmering discontent among the Iranian people which explains why the mullahs exert such ruthless control over the electoral process for fear of an actual reformist candidate getting elected.

Author Seth M. Siegel writes about this deep dissatisfaction in an opinion piece in the Washington Post resulting from the collapse of the regime’s water supplies.

“Due to gross water mismanagement and its ruinous impact on the country, Iran faces the worst water future of any industrialized nation. After the fall of the shah in 1979, water policy became a victim of bad governance and corruption, putting the country on what may be an irreversible path to environmental doom and disruption that owes nothing to sanctions or years of war with its neighbors,” Siegel writes.

“Recklessly, these companies began damming major rivers, changing the historical water flows of Iran. This was done to give water preferences to powerful landowners and favored ethnic communities while also transferring billions from the public treasury to IRGC leaders’ accounts. In all, since the 1979 revolution, more than 600 dam projects have been completed, contrasted with 13 dams built in Iran prior to the shah’s fall,” he adds.

These policies after only a few years resulted in dammed rivers and over-drafted groundwater, aquifers began to go dry and lakes shriveled. Iran’s once massive Lake Urmia, until recently 2,000-square-mile expanse, contracted 90 percent between 1985 and 2015, creating cascading regional environmental problems. Other surface water resources experienced similar shrinkage and ecological consequences.

“With farmland ruined, topsoil blown away and insufficient water to grow crops, millions of farmers and herders have left the countryside to live in dismal conditions in Iran’s growing cities. Meanwhile, deserts have also expanded, and the environmental damage to the country continues,” Siegel said.

The end result has been a country on the path to ruin that no amount of militant police can control.

All of which means that the pathway to democracy may not lie in the ballot box, but in the parched soil of destroyed farmlands.

Laura Carnahan

 

Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

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Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

With only scant days before the Iran presidential election, the Iran lobby’s most ardent supporters weighed in on the race with typical obsequiousness. The best example was an editorial by Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, in Foreign Affairs.

Predictably he offered up one of the more ridiculous spin lines in the history of disinformation on behalf of the Iranian regime. Parsi actually tried to push the idea that top mullah Ali Khamenei had no influence on the outcome of the election and that “reformist” former president Mohammad Khatami was the real power in this election.

Parsi bases that silly idea on the concept that Khamenei represents the “establishment” and as such his perceived candidates are constantly defeated at the polls by the Iranian people.

To say Parsi’s reasoning is flawed is like saying President Trump likes to tweet.

First of all is the idiotic idea that Khamenei has no influence on the election.

The Supreme Council has the final say in terms of vetting candidates to appear on the ballot for any election right down to a lowly provincial seat. Khamenei has the right to directly select half of the Council’s members. The others are appointed indirectly by him as well.

So right off the bat, Khamenei exercises a monopoly on who even goes on the ballot before the first vote is cast.

Secondly, the regime’s constitution itself ensures that only candidates meeting specific loyalty tests to the regime and its theocracy are allowed to run for office, thus ensuring adherence to preserving the mullah’s rule in Iran.

Control of who appears on the ballot allows Khamenei to control the narrative as to which candidates are perceived to be “moderate.” By stacking the ballot with four candidates who essentially have no chance at all, Khamenei can create the perception of a clear choice between a “moderate” Hassan Rouhani or a “hardline” Ebrahim Raisi.

Over 1,636 people registered to appear on the ballot for president. Only six were approved by Khamenei’s council.

Both of these men are dyed-in-the-wool insiders who are dedicated to serving the religious theocracy and Khamenei’s wishes, but Iran, with the help of the Iran lobby, creates a false perception of a real “choice” in the election.

“Another unknown candidate by the name of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated the presumed favorite, the late Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered one of the pillars of the revolutionary regime. But precisely because Rafsanjani was perceived as an embodiment of the establishment, the antiestablishment vote went to Ahmadinejad,” Parsi writes.

Of course, Parsi tries to posit that the 2009 race, which was widely considered rigged for Ahmadinejad causing widespread mass protests, was in fact actually a portrayal of the former “outsider” to be an “insider” now which caused the vote discrepancy.

Far from being honest with the reader, Parsi tries yet again to pull the wool over everyone by slicing Iran’s politicians into neat little camps opposed to each other and representing widely divergent viewpoints.

The reality is that there is very little difference between these candidates since are all loyal members of the regime.

Take Rouhani for instance. He was elected on the platform of being a moderate vowing reforms, but during his tenure, Iran has taken a huge step backward in human rights and now is involved in three wars sending thousands of young Iranians to fight and die, while the mullahs and elites skim huge personal fortunes through a massive network of corrupt shell companies.

These are not the facts that Parsi wants people to know about since it would ruin his carefully constructed fantasy.

Benny Avni writes in the New York Post how this election may be one where Khamenei decides the pretense of a moderate face for the regime is no longer necessary since Iran gained concessions from the nuclear deal already.

“Just as Americans and others are reorienting themselves for the age of President Trump, so are the mullahs. In their calculation, they now need to replace the friendly sounding voices, like those of Rouhani and his sidekick, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, with angrier men,” Avni writes.

“Raisi is an insider who has climbed the political ladder. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is said to favor him as successor, when the time comes,” he adds.

“But before Raisi follows Khamenei and his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, at the top of the mullahs’ greasy poll, Raisi first needs a bit of public exposure. He could also use some governing experience, which he currently lacks. The position of president, which doesn’t have nearly as much power as Supreme Leader, is a perfect stepping stone.”

More evidence in the manipulation of the outcome was on display when Raisi’s path to the presidency became easier Monday, when a fellow hardliner, Tehran’s Mayor Mohammad-Baghar Ghalibaf, dropped out of the race.

Analysts believe Ghalibaf won the TV debates and is clearly more qualified, but, under pressure, he’s now calling on supporters to vote for Raisi.

What is clear from all this is that Parsi makes no mention of Raisi in his editorial which only demonstrates how close Raisi is to becoming elected and returning a public hardliner back into power to confront a U.S. administration no longer committed to a policy of appeasing Tehran.

We can be assured that if Raisi is elected, Parsi will no doubt ascribe his election as resulting from being a “outsider.”

Michael Tomlinson

What If Iran Held an Election and No One Voted?

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What If Iran Held an Election and No One Voted?

Iranian clergymen vote in the parliamentary and Experts Assembly elections at a polling station in Qom, 125 kilometers (78 miles) south of the capital Tehran, Iran, Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. Iranians across the Islamic Republic voted Friday in the country’s first election since its landmark nuclear deal with world powers, deciding whether to further empower its moderate president or side with hard-liners long suspicious of the West. The election for Iran’s parliament and a clerical body known as the Assembly of Experts hinges on both the policies of President Hassan Rouhani, as well as Iranians worries about the country’s economy, long battered by international sanctions. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The Iranian regime’s presidential election is fast approaching on May 19th and with it comes expectations around the world of what the election will mean.

For the mullahs in Tehran and their overlord, Ali Khamenei, it has meant staging an election that gives the world the appearance of being fair and free, but in fact is anything but. They have even sought to create the aura of tension and debate by offering up “hardliners” to run against “moderate Hassan Rouhani.

In reality, this election—like so many others before it—has already been pre-ordained. The difference is that the mullahs learned their lesson from the disastrous 2009 re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which convulsed Iran in massive street protests that had to be put down ruthlessly and aired live on then-novel fledgling social media networks around the world.

Since then the mullahs offered up a less contentious election in 2013 with Rouhani being foisted on the world as a paragon of moderation and friendly attitudes through the removal and disqualification of any other threatening candidates to make the ballot.

The parliamentary elections last year saw a massive crackdown against journalists, dissidents, artists, students, and just about anyone else that might have Twitter on their cellphone.

Now the mullahs are staging an election where the outcome has already been pre-determined and the rest of the world just has not been clued in yet.

Slater Bakhtavar, an attorney, foreign policy analyst and political commentator, described the election farce in a piece for Forbes.

Western media are bafflingly enamored of extolling the virtues of Iran’s “free” and “democratic” electoral process, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it is neither. Anyone holding naive notions of any and all Iranians having some unalienable right to submit their name for election, then have a fair and equal chance to earn votes through rigorous campaigning and the debate of ideas, would do well to abandon such lofty fantasies, he writes.

“The actual voting process is riddled with fraud, too. The government meticulously plans initiatives to transport poor people (whose political leanings are known beforehand) to the polling stations, and official government employees are essentially ordered to vote. Tactics such as these allow officials to report enormous voter turnout numbers, pleasing journalists and maintaining the facade of Iran’s democratic international image,” Bakhtavar adds.

Bakhtavar notes how the Obama administration fell for the façade or the mullahs in supporting a flawed nuclear deal that did not reform the regime’s government and shockingly enabled the mullahs by paying cash ransoms for American hostages, thereby convincing the mullahs their path of squashing human rights was the correct one and carried no repercussions.

He does note however that the election of President Trump provides an opportunity to reset the scales with Iran and empower an Iranian dissident movement that has been under constant assault by the mullahs for three decades.

“President Trump is correct in his backing of the Iranian people, both morally and pragmatically. It has always been the right thing to do to support these oppressed people as they increasingly seek reform and the formation of a freer society, but now, in the early 21st century, the timing is perfect,” Bakhtavar said.

“New technologies exist now that allow communications on a wider scale than ever before, enabling the proliferation and exchange of new ideas and ways of thinking. Free thought is a danger to Iran’s theocratic regime, as it is to all dictatorships. These technologies are to be encouraged among the people of Iran, and those people should be afforded the dignity and respect of being addressed directly – not through their tyrannical rulers,” he added.

This explains why the mullahs spend such an inordinate amount of the regime’s time and resources to confiscating satellite dishes, blocking access to social media apps, tracking illegal online activity and trying to break the encryption of communications platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp.

The mullahs live with the very real fear that if the Iranian people were ever able to organize and communicate effectively, especially with the outside world and dissident and human rights groups, their tenuous hold on power would slip away.

Mohammad Mohaddessin, chair of Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), one of the largest Iranian dissident groups, answered this very real concern of the mullahs.

“Over the past 38 years the clerical regime has entirely relied on execution and prison to stay in power and all regime’s officials, including Rouhani who has been one of the decision makers in the regime during this period, are directly responsible for the crimes committed,” Mohaddessin said.

To that end, the Iranian resistance movement has offered an alternative to the Iranian people dissatisfied with their choices in the election: Simply boycott the vote.

An online campaign has been picking up steam with photos of demonstrations in Iran beginning to leak out on social media of Iranians calling for a boycott of the elections.

While it’s doubtful the mullahs would even reveal the effects of any boycott since returns are usually suspected of being falsified in the first place, any boycott is a sign of growing resistance, especially in a regime where any overt act of defiance often lands one in prison or worse yet at the end of the hangman’s noose.

But some intrepid Iranians are talking to Western media about participating in such a boycott over their disgust with their choices.

“I will not vote,” said Hossein Ghasemi, a 35-year-old taxi driver who voted for Rouhani in 2013 told Bloomberg. “None of them care about our demands and difficulties linked to daily increasing prices.”

There are already warning signs on the horizon for Rouhani. A report Monday by the state-run IRNA news agency said a survey of over 6,000 eligible voters found over a third saying they would not be voting, while another 46 percent said they would pick their candidate later. It offered no margin of error on the nationwide random survey, according to Bloomberg.

We can only hope that on May 20th the full extent of the dissatisfaction of the Iranian people is heard.

Michael Tomlinson

Will Pakistan Become the Next Yemen?

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Will Pakistan Become the Next Yemen?

Will Pakistan Become the Next Yemen?

The Iranian regime has turned inciting civil wars into an art form. It got its start early with the bloody sectarian conflict in Lebanon that saw Iran fund and nurture Hezbollah as it grew from a ragtag militia into a globe-spanning proxy for Iran to fight its wars.

Within the last decade, the Iranian regime has refined its mischief-making to new highs in starting the Houthi insurrection in Yemen and drawing Saudi Arabia perilously close to an all-out war with Iran, while in Syria the regime went all-in for the Assad regime.

The mullahs in Tehran used Afghan mercenaries, Shiite militias from Iraq, Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and its own Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force troops to cut a swath of blood and death across most of Syria.

At the same time, Iran manipulated the government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq to collapse the government, launch a sectarian conflict against Sunni tribes and indirectly fuel the rise of ISIS through the swift fall of Mosul.

Now comes worrisome signs that Iran may be turning its sights on neighboring Pakistan in a formula that has worked so well before.

A senior Iranian military commander said the country reserves the right to destroy suspected havens for terrorists in Pakistan following a recent alleged terrorist attack against Iranian border guards serving on the country’s southeastern frontier, according to regime-controlled news services.

“The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran condemn such measures and if the Pakistani government does not take serious measures, they (Iranian forces) reserve the absolute and legal right to resolutely counter and destroy the lairs of terrorists however deep inside the neighboring country’s soil,” Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said on Tuesday.

He added that Iranian Armed Forces would spare no efforts to safeguard the country’s security.

For Pakistan, the comments are no mere idle threat as the mullahs have acted on past warnings to its neighbors. The turmoil in Iraq and Yemen are prime examples.

A shocked Pakistan foreign office summoned the Iranian ambassador to record a formal protest over the provocative comments.

Relations between Islamabad and Tehran have been complex and full of mistrust for a while now. The two countries, however, have avoided aggressive posturing through public statements in the past, which makes these Iranian comments even more disturbing to Pakistani officials.

At least 10 Iranian border guards were killed in an ambush near the town of Mirjaveh in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan Balochistan last month. Following the assault, an anti-Iran Sunni Muslim militant group called Jaish al Adl, or the Army of Justice, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan’s recent decision to join a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition of 41 predominantly Sunni Muslim nations also has upset Iran. Tehran sees the military alliance as an anti-Iran group and an attempt to expand Saudi influence in the region. Saudi and Pakistani officials reject the assertions as unfounded.

The tensions the Iranian regime are creating amongst its neighbors stands as the primary driver of instability throughout the Middle East, contrary to the promises made repeatedly by the Iran lobby which only promised Iranian cooperation and moderation in the wake of the nuclear agreement reached in April 2015.

But the instability outside its borders are only a mirror of the tensions within Iran, especially in the run up to presidential elections on May 19th, but another significant event is going to take place beforehand on May 14th.

May 14 will mark the ninth anniversary of the arrests of the Iranian Baha’i leadership, known as the Yaran. These seven men and women managed the religious and worldly needs of Iran’s Baha’i, who make up the country’s largest non-Muslim minority. Iranian authorities condemned them to 20-year prison terms for their alleged misdeeds—charges that included “corruption on earth,” “insulting religious sanctities,” “espionage for Israel,” and “propaganda against the system.” The group’s secretary was arrested on March 5, 2008, and was also sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Elliott Abrams detailed the plight of the Baha’i in a piece for Foreign Affairs.

From the Iranian revolution in 1979 to this day, the regime has shown the Baha’i no mercy. The Iranian Baha’i community has faced continued oppression on the economic front and in the denial of educational opportunities.

Last November, Iranian authorities shut down more than 100 Baha’i-owned businesses throughout Iran after those businesses were briefly shuttered by their owners to observe the Baha’i holidays.

In December and January alone, more than a dozen Baha’i students were kicked out of Iranian universities because of their faith. As one student put it, “This has been going on for 37 years [since the Iranian revolution].

Every year, university security officials identify new Baha’i students and find excuses to throw them out.” Meanwhile, hundreds of students took the national entrance exam for universities, passed, and were denied entry into any university.

The unjust imprisonment of Baha’i continues, with new arrests by the Intelligence Ministry as recently as April. It is estimated that 80 to 90 Baha’is remain imprisoned in Iran solely due to their religious beliefs. The effort to smear the Baha’i and their religion continues as well, with thousands of anti-Baha’i articles running in Iranian media in the last 12 months.

The plight of these people, coupled with the opening up of a new front against Pakistan shows the willingness of the Iranian regime to disregard world opinion and act according to its own twisted agenda.

Laura Carnahan

Ali Khamenei Reinforces Why Things Will Not Change After Elections

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Ali Khamenei Reinforces Why Things Will Not Change After Elections

Ali Khamenei Reinforces Why Things Will Not Change After Elections

Ali Khamenei, the mullah at the top of the power pyramid in Iran, gave another of his vitriolic speeches in which he reinforced exactly why things won’t change much in the Iranian regime after presidential elections May 19th no matter who gets elected.

He warned that any disrupters of the election would receive a “slap in the face” which is a not so-veiled warning to anyone planning protests over the election results.

The warning came in remarks he made to graduating cadets of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, in which he stressed the importance of security as the dominant issue in the election. An emphasis that is at odds with protests around Iran by ordinary Iranians demanding better jobs wages and economic growth.

The tensions are so bad that Hassan Rouhani’s recent appearance at the scene of a mine collapse trapping and killing scores of miners was met with derision and protesting miners kicking and banging on his car.

Those underlying tensions are a clear signal to Khamenei and the other mullahs of the precarious nature of their hold on power, which is why Khamenei chose to deliver his comments before the regime’s military.

It is also why controls on this year’s elections are much stricter with street rallies banned and restrictions on televised debates.

The elections have also done nothing to alter the trajectory of the regime’s military build-up, which if anything has stepped up in tempo as evidenced by Iran’s communications minister recently announced plans to put two satellites into space, but the impending launch may be cover for ballistic missile research.

Mahmoud Vaezi announced on Monday that the two supposedly home-made satellites will be launched into orbit in the coming months. The launches may seem innocuous, but such space technology could be used to help advance Iran’s missile technology.

“Iran is certainly using its satellite program to shield the ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile) program. The technology and challenges in the two programs are similar in many aspects and one can move from one to another,” Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iran research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Iran needs to disguise its ICBM program, he added, and satellite launches are an ideal method. The Islamic Republic has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its missile tests in the past, even since the signing of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement in 2015. Iran’s military has engaged in at least eight missile launches since the deal was inked.

Iran’s missile arsenal forms the backbone of its national defense. The Islamic Republic was cut off from Western military support after its revolution in 1979, diminishing the capabilities of its air force. The country instead focused on advancing its missile program, which was easier to maintain thanks to the help of North Korea. An Iranian missile tested in January had North Korean origins, according to the Pentagon.

That commitment to Iran’s missile capability was reinforced by Khamenei in the same remarks to the Revolutionary Guard Corps cadets.

“The hype over Iran’s missile capability is because of their (enemies) spite and anger about this element of power in Iran,” Khamenei said.

“We possess missiles which are very precise and can hit the targets with high precision from thousands of kilometres away,” he said, adding that “We will preserve this capability with all in power and will increase it powerfully.”

He said that Iran’s military power serves as a tool for “deterring purposes” and relies on domestic potentials.

Also, the regime test-fired a high speed torpedo, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News, marking the latest provocative action from the Islamic Republic.

The Hoot torpedo, which has a range of six miles, was fired in the Strait of Hormuz, where much of the world’s oil passes each day.

It’s unclear if the torpedo test was successful.

It is not the first time Iran has tried to test this torpedo. The last time it did so was in February 2015. It also follows a cruise missile test from a midget submarine also based on North Korean designs.

Iranian officials announced in April that the regime’s defense budget increased 145 percent under Rouhani, hardly the sign of a government intent on becoming a “moderating” influence in the region as promised by the Iran lobby.

In the end, very little has changed in Iran and will remain so no matter who gets elected. The only real hope for democratic reforms and change remains empowering the global Iranian resistance movement and give it the international backing it needs to become a force within Iranian politics again.

Laura Carnahan