Iran Lobby

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

Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

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Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

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Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

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Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

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

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

 

The Cruelty of the Iranian Regime at the Holidays

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The Cruelty of the Iranian Regime at the Holidays

The Cruelty of the Iranian Regime at the Holidays

Amidst the horror of World War I over a century ago, a remarkable event occurred that has almost never been seen again in the history of human conflict.

During Christmas in 1914, the Western Front of World War I in France was a devastated moonscape of trenches filled with mud, dead bodies, snow and men filled with despair and lost hope amidst the first modern war of the Industrial Age.

The First World War introduced machine guns, aerial bombardment and poison gas and chemical attacks. It was brutal, unforgiving and merciless. Yet that Christmas saw what was to become known as “the Christmas Truce” where French, German and British soldiers got out of their trenches to walk across no man’s land and exchange seasonal greetings with their enemy.

They exchanged food and souvenirs, held prisoner swaps and even ended up singing holiday carols together. Some units even played football games together. It was a remarkable sight and one that some hoped might portend a pathway to ending the bloody conflict.

Unfortunately, war, as in all human conflict, resumed its proceedings with brisk abandon and there would be no further repeats of this holiday miracle.

This episode is instructive since it shows us that even the most bitter of enemies can pause and allow the good nature of the holiday period seep in and allow a few moments of grace to settle over a bloody battlefield.

One hundred and two years later, a different kind of uneasy peace has settled over the city of Aleppo in Syria, but unlike the battlefields of Europe, this silence has been brought about by the utter destruction of a city and its residents by the round-the-clock merciless attacks and bombings by the Syrian regime and its allies, especially Iran.

The wreckage of Aleppo mirrors old black and white photos of cities blasted to bits in that long ago war in France, but today there is no hope for truce, no compassion and no hearkening to a holiday message of peace and forgiveness.

For the mullahs in Tehran, a cold blackness rules their collective Islamic extremist hearts and their judgment is swayed by the needs of the moment which almost always revolves around their struggle to keep their shaky grip on power.

While the rest of the world takes a break this weekend to celebrate the holidays with family gatherings and goodwill towards one another, the Iranian regime continues to find new ways to demonstrate its depravity.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, has been told that she must choose between taking her two-year old daughter, Gabriella, into a Tehran’s notorious Evin prison or sign away her rights to be with her daughters, her husband Richard Ratcliffe told the Telegraph.

“The ultimatum is that Gabriella lives with her three days a week in prison or she signs a paper waiving her rights of custody,” he said.

“She is deeply wary of having Gabriella move into prison partly because prison is horrible, and partly because after a hunger strike she does not have the strength to look after her three days a week,” he said.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was sentenced to five years in prison in September following a conviction on unspecified “national security-related” offences following a trial before a Revolutionary Court in the capital Tehran.

The 37-year old charity worker has been in custody – much of it solitary confinement – since being detained by the Revolutionary Guard Corps on April 3.

Ratcliffe, who has dual British-Iranian nationality, was on holiday visiting her parents in Tehran. She was arrested at the check-in desks of Khomeini International Airport.

Gabriella was left in the care of her grandparents after the arrest, but her passport was confiscated meaning the child was trapped in Iran.

Hassan Rouhani earlier articulated the regime policy that it did not recognize dual-national citizens, arresting several Canadians, Americans, French and British subjects following the nuclear agreement reached last year.

The arrests, coupled with a broad crackdown domestically against Iranian dissidents, journalists, students and artists, highlight the chief motivation for the mullahs in Tehran which is fear. The mullahs are afraid of dissent. They are afraid of Iranians living abroad coming home and spreading dangerous ideas such as freedom, democracy and peace with their friends and family.

The mullahs fear an open and free press and they fear young people and artists who have utilized social media to show their objections to the mullahs by simple acts of defiance.

For the Iranian regime, the only thing the mullahs understand is power and violence and how to apply brute force to advance their goals. It’s the recipe the regime has followed since its founding in using violence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

While Aleppo stands empty and Iranian commanders take public tours of the destruction they have wrought, the most telling indictment of the Iranian regime may not be bombed out buildings, but in the message that the mullahs are forcing a mother to decide between losing her child or bringing her into one of the darkest and most brutal hellholes on Earth.

The next time the Iran lobby advocates for accommodating Iran, you may want to ask why there is not accommodation for a mother and her child at Christmas?

Laura Carnahan

 

Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

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Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

What is the purpose of a sanction? According to the dictionary, a sanction is “a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule.” Sanctions come in all forms ranging from your mother grounding you for painting the family dog to imposing economic sanctions on your nation because you’re trying to build nuclear weapons.

In either case, the basic premise is still the same: you do something wrong, you suffer the consequences. It’s not a complex idea and one as basic as human nature, except in the case of the Iranian regime, sanctions don’t seem to apply.

Take for instance the case of Qasem Soleimani who is the commander of the regime’s Quds Force, the arm of the Iranian military often engaged in irregular operations and is the primary contact for terrorist groups and militias around the world.

If Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer, the Quds Force is the bazaar for militants, terrorists, mercenaries and rebels.

The Quds Force is unique because it directly and solely reports to the regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei. That would be like if the Navy SEALS only reported to the president and were accountable to no one else. As the Quds Force commander, Soleimani wields enormous influence which he has used in carving out a personal theater of operations ranging from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen.

Since 2007, the Quds Force has been a supporter of terrorism by the U.S. and Soleimani was singled out and sanctioned by the United Nations as well. He was also cited by the European Union in 2011 for his role in supporting the violent suppression of protests in Syria which sparked that civil war.

Since then, Soleimani has been at the heart of the Syrian conflict and the faceless man standing behind Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in a war that has claimed over 800,000 lives and turned large swathes of Syria into desolate wreckage.

Soleimani was also the principle player in flying to Moscow to plead with Russia to intervene militarily in Syria just as rebels had gained the upper hand and Assad was pushed to the brink.

The fact that Soleimani has been able to fly to Russia and travel throughout the Mideast has been amazing considering he is under an international travel ban as part of the sanctions imposed on him and yet he travels as freely and frequently as any reputable businessman.

Now we have recent photos and social media posts of him touring the ruins of Aleppo in the wake of that city’s surrender this weekend. Soleimani tour of Aleppo was a demonstration of Iran’s waxing influence in Syria and disregard for international resolutions barring such behavior. Soleimani’s presence in Syria is a direct violation of the United Nations resolution governing the nuclear deal, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Soleimani’s visit coincided with moves by the terror group Hezbollah, which is controlled by Iran, to establish its own claim in Syria, according to regional reports and footage.

Iran’s public presence in Syria has not been met with action by the Obama administration, which has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks to explain why it is not enforcing current sanctions against Iran. Soleimani continues to direct Iranian forces in both Iraq and Syria and has long been sanctioned for the murder of U.S. citizens.

Mutliple sources who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon about the matter disclosed that the Obama administration is taking a soft approach with Iran, including not enforcing sanctions, in order to preserve the nuclear deal and diplomacy with Tehran, which has threatened repercussions for any new sanctions.

Sanctions imposed by the international community to prevent the flow of arms and foreign fighters to Syria have proven just as impotent as Soleimani has used the Quds Force to recruit Afghan mercenaries from the ranks of refugees living in Iran, as well as shipped in Shiite militias from Iraq to fight for Assad.

He has also orchestrated the dramatic escalation in the use of air power first through Syria and later through Russia resulting in the use of barrel bombs and similar weapons of mass destruction on civilian targets.

Most disturbing, the Quds Force supported Shiite militias in Iraq with IEDs that were responsible for killing hundreds of American service personnel there and Soleimani has never been called to account for those American deaths.

In 2011, Soleimani and other members of the Qods Force were implicated in the failed Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. at a popular restaurant in Washington, D.C. As part of the nuclear deal reached with Iran, the UN travel ban on Soleimani will be lifted either in October 2020 or when the International Atomic Energy Agency determines that all nuclear material in Iran is for peaceful purposes.

That lack of accountability and enforcement of sanctions points the greatest weakness in the argument made by the Iran lobby and other supporters of the nuclear which was that Iran wouldn’t be able to evade it.

Soleimani and the Quds Force are proof that Iran can not only evade international sanctions, but do so freely and without consequences.

Ultimately, the challenge for the incoming Trump administration and the rest of the world will be not in forging new agreements with Iran, but just enforcing the myriad of sanctions already in place.

Michael Tomlinson

Complications and Conflicts Are Coming with Iran in 2017

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Complications and Conflicts Are Coming with Iran in 2017

Complications and Conflicts Are Coming with Iran in 2017

Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Physics states that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The same could be said for geopolitics as it relates to the Middle East where every act of terror seems to be met with a corresponding act of retribution and every scheme is met with another scheme by a competing entity or enemy.

For the Iranian regime, its actions throughout the Mideast has wrought suffering and destruction on a level not seen since World War II as the fall of Aleppo demonstrated with pictures and images reminiscent of bombed out cities such as Dresden or Tokyo.

Iran’s intervention at the start of the Syrian civil war to prop up the Assad regime set into motion a conflict that has claimed over 800,000 men, women and children and turned into refugees a whopping eight million people who have overwhelmed nations from Greece to Sweden.

Iranian regime sits at the center of most of the foreign policy challenges facing it in 2017, including:

Hezbollah

Long a loyal military proxy for the Iranian regime, the terrorist group Hezbollah has risen in prominence with its long campaign in Syria culminating in the fall of the rebel stronghold Aleppo. Iran has supplied Hezbollah with arms, cash and advanced weaponry for its campaigns, but the terror group’s bank account got a huge influx in cash coincidentally when the Obama administration secretly transferred $1.7 billion to Iran as part of the nuclear deal and hostage swap.

“While we cannot establish whether the money transferred from the U.S. went directly into the expanded defense budget, it, at a minimum, enabled the government to release an equal amount of money for defense purposes,” said Nimrod Raphaeli, a senior analyst at the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“It is noteworthy that the increase in the proposed defense budget for 2017 is approximately equal to the amount transferred by the U.S.,” he continued.

Raphaeli explained the government of Rohani “has submitted to the Majlis (parliament) a draft budget for the fiscal year March 2017-March 2018 for a total of $99.7 billion equivalent.”

That, he said, is up 13.9 percent, with a “sharp increase of 39 percent … in funds earmarked for defense, including a big increase in the budget of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards.”

The report described the IRGC as “a potent military force accountable to the supreme leader, in regional politics, and particularly in Syria and Iraq.”

“A branch of the IRGC, the Qods Force Brigade, commanded by Gen. Qasem Soleimani, is responsible for spreading Iran’s subversive and, often, terrorist activities across the Middle East and beyond.”

Soleimani was seen in eastern Aleppo this weekend surveying the remains of the city as residents, long trapped by the fighting, struggled to evacuate.

Syria

Syrian rebel leaders blamed Iran for halting the evacuation of civilians from Aleppo, leaving an uncertain fate for residents as Iranian forces backed Syrian government troops entering the beleaguered city.

The operation to evacuate fighters and civilians from the last opposition-held area of Aleppo was suspended on Friday, its second day, after pro-government militias demanded that wounded people also be brought out of al-Foua and Kefraya, and protesters blocked the road out of Aleppo.

Munir al Sayal, the head of the political wing of the Ahrar al Sham rebel group involved in negotiations over the deal said Iranian-backed Shi’ite fighters led by Hezbollah militia and other Iraqi Shi’ite groups were behind the detention of hundreds of people trying to leave on Friday, leading to some deaths before they were turned back, in an effort to disrupt the evacuation.

Iran Nuclear Deal

The success or failure of the Iran nuclear deal (depending on your affiliation with the Iran lobby) hinges not so much on whether or not Iranian regime adheres to the deal (since it already has broken several sections of it) but rather whether or not the U.S. finally holds Iran accountable for specific violations instead of trying to paper them over with waivers and exemptions.

The process of appeasing of the Iranian regime in order to support an illusory “moderate” movement within the Iranian government has yielded nothing of tangible worth and has only emboldened and empowered the regime and strengthened the hold the Revolutionary Guards Corp has on virtually every aspect of Iran.

In many ways, the UN’s international nuclear watchdog agency has already been compromised by politics by looking the other way with violations by Iran in heavy water limits, enrichment levels and amounts of enriched uranium. Hassan Rouhani’s recent pledges to launch a crash program to develop nuclear-power naval vessels would require fuel far in excess of the agreement’s levels; thereby putting the UN’s watchdog again on the spot.

Economic Sanctions

Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s insistence on paying $1.7 billion in cash to Iran and opening up the doors to foreign investment weakened the usefulness of future of economic sanctions by providing the Iranian regime with an economic cushion.

The mullahs recognize their vulnerability on this score and are in a mad dash to complete as many business deals as possible even threatening Trump with harsh repercussions should he interfere in the recently announced deal by Boeing to sell $16.6 billion worth of jet airliners to Iran.

For the mullahs, the airliners are vital since a nation cannot operate in a global economy without a strong and viable air network, but in Iran’s case airliners also serve as the vital air bridge to move arms, cash, supplies and fighters to their proxies in far flung battlefields. Emanuele Ottolenghi wrote in the Hill of Iran’s use of its airlines to support its wars.

“It is well known that Iranian passenger planes ferry Iranian-backed militias to Damascus from Iran’s airports such as Abadan, Yazd and Tehran. The aircraft also carry weaponry in their cargo compartment. Weapons flown to Damascus supply Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the regime forces of the Syrian army, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and their Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani Shiite militias,” Ottolenghi wrote.

“Conclusive evidence that Iran’s aircraft is the principal conduit for Tehran’s weapons and military personnel airlift in support of Assad’s war of extermination against his own people emerged recently, as Boeing representatives were in Tehran to finalize a $16.6 billion aircraft deal with Iran Air. Airbus will soon follow suit with an even larger deal,” he said.

While the outlook for the Mideast remains murky to say the least, there is no doubt that Iranian regime’s role and how it can be confronted will dominant much of 2017.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

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Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

In what can be considered a symbolic show of disapproval, the Iran Sanctions Act reauthorization became law without President Obama’s signature. The near unanimous margins in Congress made Obama’s signature superfluous; providing a veto-proof margin.

The act was a last measure of defiance from Obama as he leaves office and the new president-elect has built a cabinet and national security team made up of critics of the nuclear agreement with the Iranian. It’s a childish and petulant act that reinforces how out of step the administration was from an American electorate unnerved by numerous terrorists attacks in the U.S., Asia, Africa and Europe motivated by Islamic extremism.

Clearly the Obama administration intends to provide as much running room for the mullahs in Tehran before it leaves office as Secretary of State John Kerry said that even though he considers it unnecessary to renew the existing waivers, he had done so anyway “to ensure maximum clarity” that the United States will meet its obligations under the deal, according to the Washington Post.

All of these efforts might be intended to reassure the Iranian regime, but they are largely meaningless actions since Trump can overturn all of the waivers granted for Iranian violations of the agreement, as well as impose economic sanctions, obliterating the nearly eight year effort to appease the mullahs in Tehran.

“President Obama doesn’t want to provide an excuse in the waning days of his administration for the Iranians to walk away from the deal,” said Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a prominent critic of the Iran deal.

“But at this point, he’s a lame-duck president, and what he does or does not do is completely irrelevant to the incoming administration and completely irrelevant to the Iranians.”

The irony of all these machinations is that the Iran lobby is left with so little leverage anymore within the U.S. government to influence any positive changes for the benefit of the regime that all it can do is whine and complain.

One example of that was a short statement put out by the National Iranian American Council, the regime’s chief lobbying force, lauding a modification to a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) issued by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC).

“We applaud OFAC for taking a significant step towards fully realizing the U.S.’s JCPOA commitments and providing guidance intended to reduce the risk for non-U.S. banks and companies interested in lawfully engaging the Iranian market. OFAC clarified that it would permit foreign companies to receive payment for goods or services rendered in the case of a U.S. sanctions snapback,” the statement said.

The FAQs do not carry the force of law and are simply administrative answers to common questions, but the fact that the NIAC is left to applaud a modest change demonstrates how low it has sunk in trying to find good news about Iran.

There is a significant irony in the NIAC’s statement since it criticized attacks on those same OFAC FAQs back in October when Iran critics attacked them for “easing” sanctions. The NIAC issued a statement saying the revised FAQs are a simple restatement and clarification of existing U.S. sanctions laws – not an “easing” of U.S. sanctions as some reports have erroneously claimed.

“There is a simple reason for this: Regulatory guidelines – like these FAQs – cannot change the operative law, but can merely explain and interpret that law,” the NIAC said.

So in one case, the FAQs should be judged as merely clarification, but in another case the FAQs are necessary as clear mandates to adhere to the nuclear agreement.

The NIAC cannot have it both ways, but the confusion from the OFAC is understandable since its officers have made steady pilgrimages to NIAC functions, including Adam Szubin, currently the acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence and former director of OFAC from 2006-2015, who recently spoke at a NIAC-sponsored conference and has often been quoted in NIAC publications and press announcements.

We can only assume how the cozy relationship between members of the OFAC and the NIAC might have produced these changes to the FAQ.

Even as the NIAC is busy flogging these tiny wins for the regime, the mullahs are moving as quickly as possible to consolidate their military advantages with final bloody battle to retake Aleppo in Syria that has resulted in the slaughter of countless men, women and children.

Freelance writer Heshmat Alavi wrote in the Daily Caller a sad recounting of the regime’s use of extremism to gain political leverage and how it must be confronted by the rest of the world.

“Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a strategic one for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate either Syria or Khuzestan [in southern Iran], our priority is to keep Syria.”

These are the words of Mehdi Taeb, former chief of Revolutionary Guards intelligence. This provides a very vivid incite of the importance of Syria, specifically, for Iran, and the necessity to continue meddling outside its borders, in general.

Being a flashpoint region of sectarian quarrels, continuously fueled by Iran’s mullahs, the Middle East has been witnessing a slow dragging into a new wave of sectarianism. Iran has been applying sectarian policies against others in the region, centralizing its efforts in provoking extremist and fundamentalist viewpoints, Alavi writes.

The mounting criticism of the Iranian regime continued to pour in as Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA, blasted the Obama administration’s handling of Iran.

“We have held our response to a whole bunch of egregious Iranian activity … hostage to the preservation of the near-term nuclear deal,” Hayden said Wednesday during the Jamestown Foundation’s tenth annual terrorism conference.

“What they’re doing in Syria, what they’re doing in Iraq, what they’re doing with Hezbollah, what they’re doing in Lebanon, what they’re doing in Yemen, what they’re doing in the Gulf,” Hayden said. “I would push back and push back hard.”

“The fear is if you did that, if you pushed back, they’d walk from the deal,” he continued. “My response is, that’s their decision.”

On a day when the regime was taking punches left and right, the NIAC was left applauding a FAQ.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Defends Iranian Regime Threats

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Iran Lobby Defends Iranian Regime Threats

Iran Lobby Defends Iranian Regime Threats

In the wake of overwhelming votes by both houses of Congress to reauthorize the Iran Sanctions Act, the Iranian regime has been vocal in its threats and bravado, but Iran upped its aggression game when Hassan Rouhani announced that Iran would start developing systems for nuclear-powered marine vessels.

According to Reuters, nuclear experts said that Rouhani’s move, if carried out, would probably require Iran to enrich uranium to a fissile purity above the maximum level set in the nuclear deal. The announcement was the first declarative statement by the regime’s leadership of an action taken in direct response to the ISA vote.

Predictably, the Obama administration downplayed the comments in the hopes of maintaining the badly flawed deal in the face of mounting criticism from the foreign policy team being assembled by incoming president Donald Trump.

“The announcement from the Iranians today does not run counter to the international agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a news briefing.

Rouhani also ordered planning for production of fuel for nuclear-powered marine vessels “in line with the development of a peaceful nuclear program of Iran.”

But under the nuclear settlement Iran reached with the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China, it is not allowed to enrich uranium above a 3.67 percent purity for 15 years, a level unlikely to be enough to run such vessels, according to Reuters.

“On the basis of international experience, were Iran to go ahead with such a (nuclear propulsion) project, it would have to increase its enrichment level,” said Mark Hibbs, nuclear expert and senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The threat to seek nuclear propulsion would give the Iranian regime a convenient way of circumventing the nuclear agreement and get back into the enrichment game quickly and still claim it was adhering to the deal.

It is ironic that Rouhani is citing the reauthorization of the ISA as the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back in pushing this announcement since the ISA applied largely to Iran’s ballistic missile program and its sponsorship of terror groups, as well as its nuclear program. The ISA is crucial to fulfilling the Obama administration’s promise of “snapback” sanctions should Iran be found in violation.

Also, the president maintains the authority to waive sanctions under the ISA, which Obama has done. This can only mean Rouhani and his fellow mullahs are terrified of what Trump will do when he takes office.

But one possible motivation for Rouhani may be to goad President Obama into not signing the ISA bill before the deadline expires December 31, 2016, which would ultimately prove futile since the bill easily cleared with unanimous approval—enough to override any veto—but Tehran may be hoping for a symbolic act of defiance in support of them from Obama.

Predictably, the Iran lobby led by the National Iranian American Council voiced its support for the deal and warned of dire consequences with Rouhani’s announcement as proof of impending disaster.

“For months, we warned that ISA’s renewal would have real consequences. Today, those consequences have been realized. While Iran’s move to undertake studies related to nuclear-propelled ships is not in violation of the nuclear accord, it does undermine U.S. foreign policy objectives,” the NIAC statement said. “Iran is signaling that for every negative U.S. action, there will be an Iranian reaction anathema to U.S. interests.”

The NIAC statement is the height of absurdity because the logic to it is akin to having a police officer catch a burglar, only to have the thief produce a weapon and threaten the officer and the officer is held to blame for the escalation.

Iran has already received several waivers and exemptions for violating terms of the nuclear agreement and yet when Congress reauthorizes a bill that the Obama administration has already said does not violate the nuclear agreement, the Iranian regime’s first thought is to threat the U.S.

It is a reaction that is a perfect reflection of why the nuclear deal was doomed from the start and why the Iran lobby cannot be trusted in advancing it.

Instead of urging Iran to reach out diplomatically to the incoming Trump administration, the NIAC has from the beginning sought to characterize Trump as a war monger, Muslim hater, insane person and intellectual idiot. These are not the kinds of comments that would engender a positive reaction from the new president.

While the NIAC has gone all in on supporting Iran, even in the face of outrageous statements, it delegitimizes its stated role as an advocate for Iranian-American interests. How can Iranian-Americans be helped by an organization that does not urge Iran to refrain from making outlandish and dangerous threats?

Michael Tomlinson

 

Iran Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

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Iran Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

Iran Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

Most of the public pronouncements made by leaders of the Iranian regime are meant to incite strong reactions be it threats to destroy its enemies or bury large swathes of the world under a barrage of Islamic missiles and rockets.

Targets for the verbal histrionics typically includs the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Canada, the U.K., France, Sunnis, Christians, women, Iranian dissidents, Instagram users and just about anyone else that seems to offend the mullahs; which seems to be about everyone on the planet not aligned with them.

Often the threats are hollow and empty and indicative of the weakness inherent in a regime that has to resort to verbal threats to get its point across, but every so often the regime makes itself known and to more discerning ears, therein lays nuggets of truth.

When top mullah Ali Khamenei called a resistance economy of sacrifice and deprivation from the Iranian people in order to keep the supply pipeline filled to prop up the Assad regime in Syria, he was telling the truth.

When Hassan Rouhani said in an interview that Iran does not recognize dual national citizens and that any Iranian, regardless of their passport was fair game for arrest, he wasn’t kidding.

Now we have the latest example of regime bloviating in the form of comments made by regime defense minister Hossein Dehghan, a well-known regime blowhard, who claimed that Donald Trump’s election could lead to a “world war” if the president-elect fulfilled his promise of altering the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Dehghan promised that Israel and all of Iran’s enemies in the region, including the Gulf states, would be destroyed. He further claimed that Trump’s previous statements had caused “unease” among America’s allies in the region, according to the regime’s Mehr’s news agency.

Dehghan’s singling out of the Gulf states of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Qatar was not by coincidence. They, along with Saudi Arabia, have proven to be the biggest thorn in Iranian regime’s side, especially in the Syrian civil war and uprising in Yemen, both fomented by Iran.

Dehghan’s bluster also includes the truth that the Iranian regime is pretty concerned over what Trump and his new cabinet will do as it relates to future relations with Iran. It is unlikely Trump will seek out confrontations with Iran as the Iran lobby has maintained since the election last month.

Given Trump’s penchant for hammering out deals and extracting concessions, he is likely to view the Iranian regime as an untrustworthy partner in any deal that requires close monitoring and specific punishment for any violation.

The difficulty Trump faces are the result of the failed policies of trying to appease the Iranian regime in order to change it by the Obama administration. Fortunately for Trump, he has a history of blunders to learn from over the past two years, which makes Dehghan’s comments noteworthy—not for the bluster—but for the real anxiety that seems to be gripping a Tehran that doesn’t quite know what to expect from Trump and how to deal with him.

Consequently, the default setting for the regime is to threaten first and then threaten again.

For Tehran, the operating manual for diplomacy now seems to be consist of making threats over and over again.

In order to back up those threats, the Iranian military has launched into a series of massive war drills to showcase it supposed muscle and fend off any potential attacks against it. The fact that Iran has to hold military drills because it fears an actual attack clearly shows how the attitude of the mullahs in Tehran has shifted rapidly from smugness to fear.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s military forces enjoy supremacy over the Persian Gulf region more than any other time,” Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri, the deputy chief of staff of the regime’s armed forces, was quoted as saying over the weekend. “The military and security conditions of the Persian Gulf are in a way that the enemy’s forces and equipment are fully within the range of the Iranian military men.”

As part of these drills, the regime’s military was busy unveiling almost every piece of new hardware it claimed to have developed including a new drone in a ritual of show-and-tell designed to mollify Iranian leaders more than dissuade the U.S.

What probably concerns Tehran more is not the threat of war, as much as the possibility that Trump will use the subtle levers of power to nudge the regime back on a course of real diplomacy and meaningful reforms at home. Bloomberg editorialized that Trump has ample tools at his disposal to crack down on Iran without necessarily tearing up the nuclear agreement on day one of his administration.

“At least Trump’s job will be made easier by Congress, which just extended the Iran Sanctions Act, allowing the U.S. to punish Iranian entities involved with terrorism, illegal weapons and human-rights violations. Trump can and should also end the de facto policy of looking the other way at Iran’s early infringements of the pact, such as the recent revelation that it had exceeded the deal’s cap on how much heavy water it is allowed to stockpile,” the Bloomberg editorial board said.

“In the long term, the six nations should try to negotiate changes in both the nuclear pact itself and the related side agreements (all of which the U.S. should make public). Iran may well be willing to come to the table. It complains that it has seen very little of the estimated $100 billion of its assets that had been frozen in foreign banks, due to other U.S. sanctions and rules making it hard to “dollarize” the funds for transfer. In addition, the hoped-for rush of investment by European energy companies — and the banks that accompany them — has been slow to materialize,” Bloomberg added.

That economic hammer remains the biggest one the U.S. possesses and one Trump understands intimately. For Trump, this new “art of the Iran deal” may very well prove to be right up his alley and that has the mullahs terrified.

Michael Tomlinson