Iran Lobby

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

Iranian Exile’s Life Cut Short in San Bernardino by Extremism

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Iranian Exile’s Life Cut Short in San Bernardino by Extremism

Iranian Exile’s Life Cut Short in San Bernardino by Extremism

Bennetta Betbadal was born in Iran in 1969 and fled to the U.S. when she was a young 18-year-old to “escape Islamic extremism and the persecution of Christians that followed the Iranian Revolution,” her family said in a statement.

She settled in New York City and eventually moved to California where she married and eventually settled in Rialto to raise her family of three boys and a girl now aged 10, 12 and 15 years old.

Her husband worked as a police officer at local community college and she went to school to earn a degree in chemistry, eventually taking a job as an inspector with the San Bernardino County Health Department in 2006.

She went to work Wednesday morning filled with optimism about a presentation she was due to give to co-workers and had just finished decorating the family Christmas tree.

Shortly after 11 am that day, she, and 13 of other people, was killed at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino in what is quickly becoming a case of terrorism by a couple that may have been radicalized and had links to Islamic extremist groups.

The morning massacre apparently carried out by a Syed Farook, 28, and his 27-year-old Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik had many of the same hallmarks of the recent terror attacks in Paris. Both attacks appeared to be well-planned, involving more than a lone gunman, and included significant technical skills in creating explosive devices.

Both attacks involved native-born young men who appeared to have been radicalized by similar extremist Islamic messages that power most of the world’s terror groups such as ISIS, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda and Shiite militias.

In the statement issued to the news media, the family said: “It is the ultimate irony that her life would be stolen from her that day by what appears to be the same type of extremism that she fled so many years ago.”

The tragedy of Betbadal is a reminder to the world that Islamic extremism is a real, prevalent and growing threat to the civilized world and the first battle in confronting comes by calling it for what it is and naming the sources of it.

It’s a necessity that the Iran lobby has fought hard to prevent from happening because in the world today, there is only one nation state that is a theocratic exporter of terror and extremism and that is the Iranian regime. In fact, the regime is just one of three nations on the planet still on the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror.

In the weeks and months to follow there will be more details revealed from the shooters’ lives and we’ll know more conclusively of the links they may have had to terror groups, but the intial evidence is worrisome and damning.

It has also been well documented that the regime has served as the “spiritual godfather” of Islamic extremism as its leaders, especially its current top mullah Ali Khamenei, have preached a hardened vision of Islam that is both apocalyptic and nihilistic. It’s specific brand of Shia sectarian belief has been used to justify everything from public executions and brutal torture to suppression of women’s rights and the virtual destruction of Iran’s environment and rape of natural resources.

The attacks in Paris and San Bernardino and previously in Sydney, the Charlie Hebdo attacks and others all can be traced back to a view point that violence in the name of religion is justified to achieve goals, which was given birth to by the mullahs after the 1979 revolution.

It’s also no surprise that regime supporters such as the National Iranian American Council have again been reduced to mute silence in the face of another act of Islamic extremism. In fact, the Twitter feed for NIAC head Trita Parsi spit out more tweets about gun control and denouncing Saudi Arabia than in expressing any sympathy for the 14 people killed and 21 people wounded in the attacks.

Ironically enough, Parsi did send out one tweet making fun of the fear people have about the rise of terror attacks, saying “Scary map of all Islamic terror attacks in the U.S. Just kidding, its just all mass shootings since Sandy Hook #gunsense”

Parsi might have instead tweeted out this time-lapse mapping of all terror attacks worldwide over last 15 years. He would find that the number of killings, bombings, shootings and attacks dwarf what Parsi points too.

But that may be asking too much of Parsi and his colleagues at NIAC who have devoted themselves to serving as political cover for the regime whenever Islamic extremism rears its ugly head, even all the way to a quiet suburb in Southern California.

By Michael Tomlinson

Tying Terrorism to the Environment Doesn’t Excuse Iran Regime

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Tying Terrorism to the Environment Doesn’t Excuse Iran Regime

Tying Terrorism to the Environment Doesn’t Excuse Iran Regime

As world leaders gathered this week in a Paris still suffering from the after effects on a series of bloody terrorist attacks for a global summit on climate change, one of the more controversial side topics to erupt from it was the claim of a linkage between the planet’s extreme weather changes and the rise in extremist terror around the world.

The world’s news media have been filled with analysis and debate, which has filtered over into the U.S. presidential campaign as well. Evan Halper in the Los Angeles Times recaps some of that debate as the issue has been promoted by luminaries such as Britain’s Prince Charles and denounced by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper.

The linkage from proponents comes from the idea that global warming has shifted weather patterns to such an extent that crop failures and long-term drought have led to deprivation of impacted regions of the globe that have lent themselves to the spawning of extremist groups initially intent on acquiring limited resources such as food, water and arable land to curry the favor and recruitment of desperate people.

One case in point has been the building debate over root causes of the Syrian civil war, which some climate activists have claimed had its start in a decade-long drought that caused the mass migration of some 1.5 million people out of farming areas and into refugee status and provided a fertile recruiting group for extremist groups.

The complexity of such a debate must also take into account issues of religion, politics, economics and even personal graft and greed; all issues of pressing relevance throughout the Middle East and developing world.

But the Iran lobby and the Iran regime have been quick to latch onto this theory as an alternative rise in Islamic extremism and put some distance between the mullahs in Tehran to terror groups and terrorist activities they have historically supported such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria and the Houthis in Yemen.

The regime was so intent on fostering this idea that it sent Masoumeh Ebtekar, head of its Department of Environment, to Paris to speak on the sidelines of the global climate summit and gave her remarks broad play in state-run media.

But even when the topic is rising temperatures, the mullahs could not miss out on any opportunity to voice their time worn demand for the immediate lifting of all sanctions against it by having Ebtekar make the promise that the regime would cut its greenhouse emissions by 4 percent and increase those cuts to 12 percent if sanctions are fully lifted.

“I wish to urge the UN system to initiate an assessment on the carbon footprints of war, conflicts, security and terrorism,” Ebtekar said. “Those perpetuating conflicts are in fact accomplices of the global warming process.”

It’s an interesting statement to make from the regime’s leadership considering that their gross mismanagement has turned what was once called the cradle of civilization into what is arguably now one of the greatest environmental disasters on the planet.

Tehran has been rated one of the most polluted cities in the world with cars and buses using mostly leaded gasoline, which is heavily subsidized by the regime in order to quell a restive population, but which has the unfortunate side effect at negating any effort to conserve and leads to profligate and highly inefficient traffic patterns.

Its traffic management systems are virtually non-existent with little to no vehicle inspection, mobile emission testing or controls and a government bureaucracy so corrupted by the mullahs nepotism and favoritism that the wealthy children of mullahs and those aligned with the Revolutionary Guards Corps are often seen tooling around in gas guzzling Lamborghinis and Ferraris.

The rural parts of Iran suffer from large-scale overgrazing and growing desertification and deforestation turning large swathes of the country into desert dunes, while industrial and urban wastewater runoff has contaminated most rivers, coastal areas and underground aquifers.

The World Bank estimates that losses inflicted on the regime economy as a result of deaths coming from air pollution alone reach $640 million or 0.57 of total gross domestic product for the entire nation, while the UN Environment Program ranked Iran 117th among 133 countries in terms of environmental indexes.

One example of the environmental mismanagement of the regime is the drying up of Lake Urmia in the northwest of Iran, which has shrunk a stunning 70 percent and is in danger of permanently disappearing after being the sixth largest saltwater lake in the world.

Things are so bad that Iran generates an estimated 50,000 tons of trash every day with only 70 percent of it disposed of safely and an even smaller amount redirected into reuse and recycling. The rest of the garbage finds its way into the country’s waterways and forests. Iran ranked worst in the world for soil erosion as well in 2011.

The degradation of Iran’s environment has led to mass discontent throughout the nation as the country’s environmental activists have taken to protesting the mullahs’ mismanagement much in the same way Iranian dissidents protested human rights violations.

The failure of Hassan Rouhani to live up to campaign promises to clean up the environment have led to top mullah Ali Khamenei to issue his own 15-point list of policy directives to staunch some of these problems. In reading the policy directive, one could almost envision it being a verbatim policy paper written by the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency as it calls for lofty goals such as “bilateral, multilateral, regional and international partnerships and targeted cooperation in the environmental field.”

But no matter how many “laterals” the regime undertakes, what is abundantly apparent is that the regime is more concerned about practical political and military matters than environmental ones as it spends much of its treasury on supporting terror groups and the proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

If President Obama is correct and extremist terrorism is given its birthplace out of the degraded environments of regions plagued by drought and famine, then Iranian regime’s dismal environmental management has certainly produced bumper harvests of terrorists and violence.

By Laura Carnahan

 

Reasons To Be Thankful This Past Weekend

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Reasons To Be Thankful This Past Weekend

Reasons To Be Thankful This Past Weekend

This past weekend, across the U.S., families sat down together to celebrate family and give thanks for all what they have, including secularism in government, freedom of speech and the practice of religion, support for the rights of women and minorities, protection for a free and active press and the guarantee of due process and a presumption of innocence in criminal cases.

All those things and more have formed the bedrock of American civil society for 239 years, but are virtually non-existent in the one country that has steadily called for the destruction of the American way of life since 1979: the Iranian regime.

The past few months of 2015 have certainly caused significant concern and alarm among Americans and throughout most parts of the world. We have seen terror attacks spring up literally around the world, most recently in the horrific attacks in Paris – first with the Charlie Hebdo attacks and then the bombings – and in the wave of atrocities perpetuated by Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah and Shiite militias.

Couple that with the spread of sectarian conflicts – most fueled by the Iranian regime – in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and you begin to get a pretty good idea of how chaotic the year has become in spite of the promises made by the Iran lobby that things would settle down after a deal was struck with the mullahs in Tehran over a new nuclear deal.

How wrong people like Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council were.

But for most Americans, their Thanksgiving wishes and victories were much smaller and personal. For them, most Americans could be thankful that this past weekend:

  • No more Americans were arrested and held hostage in Iran, except for the five currently held captive by the Iranian regime;
  • No new terror attacks were launched against Americans at home or abroad; and
  • The Iranian regime didn’t launch any new ballistic missiles like it did last month violating United Nations arms embargoes.

But for the Iranian regime, this past weekend wasn’t nearly a peaceful or good one for the mullahs as setbacks continue to dog the regime and stymie each of its efforts to expand its vision for a greater Islamic sphere of influence controlled from Tehran.

Among the news coming from media sources this weekend include:

  • Reports that Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was seriously injured in Syria while supervising Iranian regime forces fighting rebels on behalf of the Assad regime. This follows previous news of deaths of other top Iranian military commanders in Syria;
  • The Washington Post reported that findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency can be expected to spark another round of intense scrutiny over the Iran regime’s claims its previously undisclosed nuclear program did not have any military components to it;
  • In anticipation of the IAEA report, the regime denounced the ongoing investigation and warned that Iran would not follow through on the nuclear deal unless the IAEA closed its investigation no later than Dec. 15;
  • Kenyan security forces have arrested two Kenyan men with links to the Iranian regime’s Quds Forces on suspicion of planning attacks in the East African nation, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday. It said their targets included “hotels in Nairobi frequented by Western tourists and diplomats;”
  • A flurry of reports in the Iran regime’s official and semi­official news outlets that have flooded out about more combat deaths suffered by Iranian forces in Syria have surprised analysts who monitor the country’s tightly controlled media. The reports, they say, indicate that at least 67 Iranians have been killed in Syria since the beginning of October, in a move some have described as an attempt by the mullahs to grab headlines back from Russia in an effort to burnish the image of regime forces fighting in Syria.

And to top off the weekend, top mullah Ali Khamenei went on his usual Sunday rant denouncing the U.S. and promising to keep the regime’s policies aimed squarely at preserving the Islamic revolution and spreading it throughout the region.

As reported in the Washington Times, Khamenei’s message was the subject of an analysis in a report by the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

“To encourage perpetual revolution might mean to foment continuous crisis,” the report said. “This, in turn, suggests greater regional instability and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps provocations toward U.S. forces and others.”

In other words, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal on which the Obama administration gambled for a more moderate Iran, has not tempered Khamenei’s fiery outcry.

“Khamenei’s endorsement of an expansive and perhaps even growing IRGC role confirms the group’s position as the chief obstacle to any political and economic reform in the Islamic Republic, and also suggests that the IRGC may win disproportionate advantage from any unfrozen assets or foreign direct investment entering the Iranian economy,” the report added.

All of which points out that while Americans celebrated values of family, peace, forgiveness and charity on Thanksgiving, the Iranian regime was busy deepening a conflict that has displaced half of Syria’s population, creating the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the end of World War II and spreading a radicalized form of extremist Islam manifesting itself in various terrorist groups around the world.

We can only hope the mullahs don’t get their holiday wishes granted next month.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Weighs in On Hillary Clinton as Nuclear Agreement Draws Scrutiny

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Iran Lobby Weighs in On Hillary Clinton as Nuclear Agreement Draws Scrutiny

Iran Lobby Weighs in On Hillary Clinton as Nuclear Agreement Draws Scrutiny

If there is any silver lining in the wave of terrorist attacks, sectarian wars being waged and ominous threats and provocative actions coming out of the Iranian regime, it is that virtually all of the candidates running for president in 2016 are united in their collective wariness of the mullahs in Tehran.

That lack of desire among the presidential candidates ranges from outright hostility to the regime to a recognition that the mullahs are committed to an agenda that does not support moderation or regional peace hopes, but that certainly has not stopped the Iran lobby from attempting to influence those campaigns or the American voting public.

The lobby’s chief advocate has long been the National Iranian American Council and its newly created lobbying arm, NIAC Action, which has been urging its supporters to sign and send in petitions and letters to the various campaigns urging them to support the nuclear deal and a broadened dialogue with the regime should they win the White House.

Judging by the lack of enthusiasm from the various campaigns, we can assume that the petition drive by NIAC is being received with less than stellar applause, which might explain by Reza Marashi of NIAC took to Huffington Post with an editorial criticizing Hillary Clinton for taking a harder line against the Iran regime and Islamic extremism in some of her stump speeches.

Marashi took exception to a speech Clinton delivered the Council of Foreign Relations where she said:

“We cannot view Iran and ISIS as separate challenges. Regional politics are too interwoven,” she said. “Raising the confidence of our Arab partners and raising the cost to Iran for bad behavior will contribute more effectively to the fight against ISIS.”

Her views that Iran’s Arab neighbors could become more effective partners in the fight against rising Islamic extremism only if the Iranian regime was held accountable for its actions, such as the recent attempt to overthrow the government in Yemen and the effort to take over the Iraqi government, is both a prudent and smart foreign policy declaration for someone who could very well be sitting in the Oval Office in 2017.

The fact that Marashi takes the well-worn Iranian regime talking point blaming its Arab neighbors for the supporting these terror groups is evidence of how paltry and bereft of substance the arguments are from the Iran lobby. The NIAC and other regime supporters have opted to try and shift blame for the rise in terror, including the bloody attacks in Paris on anyone else but the Iranian regime.

But Secretary Clinton recognizes a key point that Marashi and his ilk are desperate to cover up, which is Iran, as a theocratic state, uses its status as a country to support and prop up many terror groups around the world and engage actively in proxy wars that have threaten to draw the rest of the world into bloody conflict. While the flow of funds to some terror groups may be traced back to donations from individual donors, Iranian regime is the only nation-state that has devoted its treasury, military, economy and political influence in supporting groups such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, as well as provided safe harbor and shelter for members of Al-Qaeda and ISIS in the past.

The one true statement Marashi makes is when he says “the more options America has, the greater its leverage becomes.”

In this he is correct, but not in the way he intended because in agreeing to the nuclear deal with Iranian mullahs, the U.S. has unwittingly hampered itself by taking a whole host of tools off the table ranging from continued sanctions to restrictions on the flow of cash coming from the Iranian regime and into the coffers of various terror groups.

But what is even more surprising are the revelations in a recent National Review story that pointed out that the nuclear agreement had not even been signed by the regime and in effect has no legal standing.

“The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document,” wrote Julia Frifield, the State Department assistant secretary for legislative affairs, in a November 19 letter written in response to an inquiry sent to Secretary of State John Kerry by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.).

Regime leader Hassan Rouhani discouraged his nation’s parliament from voting on the nuclear deal in order to avoid placing legal burdens on the regime, saying “If the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is sent to [and passed by] parliament, it will create an obligation for the government. It will mean the president, who has not signed it so far, will have to sign it,” Rouhani said in August. “Why should we place an unnecessary legal restriction on the Iranian people?”

That statement has led to rampant speculation on Capitol Hill that the nuclear deal is already null and void, which explains why most of the presidential candidates have already staked out policy positions visibly diverging from what the Obama administration negotiated with regime.

As more journalists point out this inconvenient truth, such as Michael Ledeen writing of the lack of any signatures in Forbes, we can expect an even more desperate attempt by the Iran lobby and Marashi to try and shift more attention away and onto another false canard. Maybe they can blame El Nino on too much methane coming from cows next.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Iran Lobby Prefers the World Ignores Terror Threats

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Iran Lobby Prefers the World Ignores Terror Threats

Iran Lobby Prefers the World Ignores Terror Threats

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council and one of the chief supporters and defenders of the Iranian regime, retweeted a cartoon on his Twitter feed which may have been a Freudian slip on his part since, we can deduce it reflects his desperate desire to see the world’s news media and American voters focus on anything else besides the recent spate of terror attacks and the regime’s rampage of human rights violations.

In the cartoon, a man watches television as a reporter yells out “What can we do to lessen the grip of fear from terrorism?” The man hits the remote to turn the TV off with a knowing smirk on his face.

You can almost see Parsi’s face substituted in there as he wishes the world could just turn off their TVs or switch to playing Angry Birds on their smartphones instead of watching photos and videos showing the gruesome aftermath of Paris and Mali as scores of innocent people are killed and injured.

Unfortunately for Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby, the flow of images won’t stop as terror groups such as ISIS, Boko Harem, Al-Qaeda and others step up their attacks in a sick game of upping the ante on each other. All of these attacks are a constant reminder that the world is not going to be moderate wonderland after the Iran nuclear deal and that the Iranian regime is not a force for stabilizing the Middle East.

Since last July when the agreement was signed, the mullahs in Tehran have engaged in an avalanche of misdeeds that have culminated with the announcement this weekend that the regime formally sentenced imprisoned Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian to an indeterminate sentence for spying.

“We’re aware of the reports in the Iranian media but have no further information at this time,” Washington Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl said. “Every day that Jason is in prison is an injustice. He has done nothing wrong.

“Even after keeping Jason in prison 488 days so far, Iran has produced no evidence of wrongdoing,” Jehl added. “His trial and sentence are a sham, and he should be released immediately.”

Parsi was able to break away from his normal tweeting defending the regime to comment how sad it was that Rezaian had been sentenced. Of course, Parsi could not be bothered to openly criticize Hassan Rouhani or Ali Khamenei or the mullahs running the revolutionary courts or demand for Rezaian’s release or even mention the scores of other journalists recently rounded up by the Revolutionary Guards in a widespread crackdown on dissent. No, that might have taxed his tweeting duties to criticize opposition for calling for a pause in the influx of Syrian refugees.

It is worth noting the debate over the fate of Syrian refugees is misplaced and efforts by Parsi and others in the Iran lobby to politicize the issue are disingenuous because the more fundamental question is not what to do with Syria’s four million refugees, but why are they leaving and not going back in the first place?

The answer to that is even simpler: the Iranian regime’s unquestioned support of the Assad regime has created the very crisis Parsi and his colleagues are now attacking. It’s an absurd scenario since Parsi and the NIAC have never opposed Iran’s military intervention, nor use of Hezbollah as a terrorist proxy in the bloody civil war.

The plight of Syria’s refugees will not be resolved by policy debates over verification, but rather by cutting the Assad regime from Tehran’s coffers and getting rid of the thousands of Hezbollah, Quds Force, Revolutionary Guards, afghan mercenary and Shiite militia fighters the Iranian regime has put into Syria.

There can be no solution to the dilemma of ISIS, without first resolving how we can get Iran out of Syria and create a long-term peaceful solution that allows the Syrian people to go back home, which could only be possible when Assad is put aside.

Part of that solution will come when Russia determines to what extent it wants to keep its interests aligned with the Iranian regime, especially as President Putin travels to Tehran this week for his first visit in eight years and first since Rouhani was elevated. Already there are signs that Russia’s long-term views of how to fix Syria are diverging from the Iranian regime’s plans.

Christopher Phillips, a Syria expert at Chatham House international affairs think-tank in London, describes Iran and Russia as “frenemies” in Syria, fighting in lock-step for a common short-term interest but maintaining divergent long-term goals.

“Iran was happy to say [to Moscow]: send some planes or [President Bashar al-] Assad is in trouble,” said Mr Phillips. “But longer term, Iran will naturally be uncomfortable. Syria was becoming their fiefdom. They invested a lot and now a bigger fish has come along.”

Views differ on the balance of interests between Moscow and Tehran — including over their respective fidelity to the Assad regime. But one European diplomat said the “complex, sometimes unfathomable” relationship was crucial to untying the knotty international politics over Syria’s conflict.

The very fact that the Iranian regime is a religious theocracy, guided by its devotion to an extremist and warped view of Islam makes any kind of stable relationship with the mullahs virtually impossible as the actions taken by the regime since July can attest to.

How does convicting an American journalist serve the regime’s goals? How does supplying thousands of new fighters to prolong a civil war that has spilled over onto the streets of Paris help reduce tensions? How does ignoring a nuclear agreement by test launching banned ballistic missiles help reassure jittery Arab neighbors to Iran?

In all these cases, the answer remains that Iran’s mullahs are the source of these tensions and Parsi’s vocal support for them and lack of criticism only reinforces the growing perception is nothing more than a paid mouthpiece.

By Michael Tomlinson

Human Rights and Nuclear Issues Move to Forefront of Iran

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Human Rights and Nuclear Issues Move to Forefront of Iran

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano reacts as he attends a news conference during a board of governors meeting at the UN headquarters in Vienna November 29, 2012. The U.N. nuclear agency made no progress in a year-long push to find out if Iran worked on developing an atomic bomb, its chief said on Thursday, calling for urgent efforts to end Tehran’s standoff with the West. Amano said he would not give up seeking to end what Western diplomats describe as Iranian stonewalling of the agency’s investigation into possible military dimensions to the Islamic state’s nuclear programme. REUTERS/Herwig Prammer (AUSTRIA – Tags: POLITICS ENERGY HEADSHOT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) – RTR3B0LF

Like twin hammer blows, breaking news concerning the Iranian regime came out revealing that the two issues the Iran lobby have tried mightily to keep separate and growing more entwined; namely human rights and the nuclear agreement given to the regime last July.

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, rabidly argued that human rights issues – which the regime has an abysmal record on – needed to be decoupled from any nuclear agreement because it could jeopardize momentum for an accord and was outweighed by the perceived benefit of gaining an agreement with the regime.

The logic being, as advanced by regime stalwarts such as Trita Parsi, was that an agreement would empower “moderate” elements led by Hassan Rouhani and usher in a new period of cooperation with the West.

Unfortunately for Parsi, the opposite has come to happen. Reuters reported on a confidential International Atomic Energy Agency report it gained access to which describes that the regime’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium has actually increased instead of decreased under the terms of the agreement.

Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium had increased by 460.2 kg in the past three months to 8,305.6 kg, the report said. Under the deal with major powers, that stockpile must be slashed to no more than 300 kg.

Additionally, the centrifuges being dismantled are only ones previously unused by the regime and those that have been dismantled are only being stored, not destroyed, allowing the regime the flexibility to quickly put them back into service whenever it wants.

That quick restart ability is being preserved also at the Arak nuclear reactor where a regime member of Parliament said it could be reactivated within as little as six months unless all sanctions against the regime were lifted quickly.

“If the Americans break the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding lifting the sanctions, Iran will activate the Arak reactor within six months,” ISNA news agency quoted head of National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, as saying.

The threats have only increased as top mullah Ali Khamenei has voiced displeasure over the slow pace of lifting sanctions repeatedly warned the regime would restart its nuclear program unless all sanctions were lifted at once. This is of course at odds with what was actually agreed to last July under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but it fits with the regime’s pattern of rewriting international accords even before the ink dries to suit its needs.

This pattern of purposeful evasion by the regime also applies to its callous treatment of human rights of its own people, including religious minorities such as those who follow the Baha’i faith who recently have been subjected to mass arrests, Iranian women who have been threatened with arrest for driving cars without proper coverings, and even social media administrators getting rounded up.

But the world is beginning to take notice and coming on the heels of the Friday the 13th massacres in Paris, showing a greater willingness to confront extremist views prevalent in the Iran regime and terror networks such as ISIS, as evidenced by a vote by the United Nations General Assembly’s human rights committee which approved a resolution expressing deep concern about rights violations in Iran by a 76 to 35 vote.

The resolution is the 62nd resolution the UN has adopted censuring the regime for its ongoing human rights violations. This resolution stemmed from the recent report issued by Ahmad Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Iran.

It calls on the Iranian regime “to abolish, in law and in practice, public executions… and executions carried out in violation of its international obligations” and “to ensure, in law and in practice, that no one is subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

The victims of such treatment include political opponents, human rights defenders, women’s and minority rights activists, labor leaders, students’ rights activists and others, the resolution said.

The regime’s notorious Revolutionary Guards Corps has rounded up artists, journalists and U.S. citizens as part of a crackdown on what it has called Western infiltration.

The crackdown includes announcements this week of 170 people arrested in Qazvin Province in Iran, a number of others in Gilan Province, and five journalists in Tehran, all by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, amounts to the largest crackdown since the violent state suppression of the protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election in Iran.

The 170 arrested were called “managers of groups active in mobile social networks,” which the regime claimed for acting “against moral security” and distributing “indecent and immoral” content in the form of text and images that “encouraged people to commit obscene acts” and “insult ethnic minorities, officials and distinguished national figures,” according to the Fars news service.

Even with the increased criticism over human rights, the mullahs in Tehran may believe they have an ace up their sleeve with the Paris attacks which they believe may aid the regime in keeping Assad in power and shifting attention away from its involvement in the civil war.

The Guardian in an interview with a MacArthur fellow at King’s College London, said:“I think Iran might think that the Paris attacks give it an upper hand over Syria because naturally it gives a little bit more credibility to the rhetoric that combating Isis is more important than combating Assad.

“Iran will think that its position will be strengthened as the result of the attack but I am not sure it necessarily will. The only thing that the Paris attacks will really change is rhetoric in the west but I’m not sure if it changes much on the ground. France is going to say that the focus is going to be on attacking Isis. To be fair, that’s always been the focus but that hasn’t detracted away [from] trying to get rid of Assad,” she said.

Ultimately, the West must focus on tying the Iranian regime’s human rights record back into judging its progress towards dismantling its nuclear infrastructure as well as its support for terrorism abroad. Without that linkage, the regime is as well shielded against any meaningful reforms as ISIS is from attack if it was using human shields.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Ramps Up Efforts to Influence US Presidential Campaign

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Iran Lobby Ramps Up Efforts to Influence US Presidential Campaign

Iran Lobby Ramps Up Efforts to Influence US Presidential Campaign

The silly season is upon us and we don’t mean the College Football Playoff selection process. We mean the quadrennial presidential election season and with it, what promises to be a year filled with debates, poll results, gaffes, blizzard of television advertising and a healthy barrage of social media postings.

But the stakes for this election cycle are enormous and carry with it a sense of gravity we have not seen since during the height of the Cold War when Lyndon B. Johnson famously aired the “Daisy” ad against Barry Goldwater hinting that electing the Arizona conservative would start World War III.

Even though the ad only aired once, it has become one of the most controversial political ads ever aired used in American politics, but it did show what some political candidates are willing to entertain in terms of tackling controversial topics and issues.

Every campaign season has its own rhythms and rollercoaster swings in emotions and momentum. This season has been no different starting with a Republican field of candidates that has been dominated by two total outsiders in Donald Trump and Ben Carson, while the Democratic side was stuck in relative limbo while Vice President Joe Biden was deciding if he was in or out of the race and Hillary Clinton waded through her email controversy as Sen. Bernie Sanders rallied huge numbers of supporters.

But with the recent nuclear deal with the Iranian regime and the bloody Friday the 13th massacre in Paris, terrorism and what to do with Syria has moved front and center in the consciousness of American voters.

According to a new Reuters/lpsos poll done after the Paris attacks, showed that terrorism had moved to the front of all topics of concern to voters (20.5%), ahead of the economy (15.9%) and healthcare (8.8%) and unemployment (8.6%).

The five-day tracking showed concern over terror effectively doubled over the weekend of the Paris attacks and shows only signs of increasing as France battles additional terror cells in its suburbs while French warplanes bomb targets in Syria.

“What is almost certain is that the demands on the candidates will grow more exacting. As previous presidential campaigns jarred by outside events have demonstrated, how a candidate responds can be as important to a campaign as the event itself,” speculated Jonathan Martin in the New York Times.

What is certain has been the tepid response from the Iran lobby which has gone virtually mute and deaf over the Paris attacks. Iranian regime loyalists such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council, Jim Lobe of Lobelog, The Ploughshares Fund, just to name a few, have offered little in the way of sympathy over the victims, nor condemnation of the terrorists themselves.

If anything, their social media feeds and public statements have been largely focused on centering blame for the attacks and creation of ISIS on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia as the primary regional rival to the mullahs in Tehran.

It’s a curious stand to make since clearly sectarian violence is at the heart of most of what ails the Middle East both historically and moving forward. In fact, Iran’s all-in support for Assad in Syria help spawn ISIS in the first place as Al-Qaeda fighters pushed out of Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. surge flocked to Syria and splintered off to form their own groups, eventually coalescing into the ISIS we know today.

The fact that the Iranian regime has also served as a terror blueprint of sorts through its longtime sponsorship of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq has given ISIS a roadmap for exploiting the shock value of its attacks and dominate the news cycle; gives it the dubious honor of being a “godfather” to ISIS.

This in turn has placed a burden on the Iranian lobby to step up to the proverbial plate to try and influence the presidential elections since a new president – especially if it’s a Republican – will feel no obligation to stay the course President Obama has set with the nuclear deal with Iranian regime and the hands-off policy he has largely taken in Syria and Iraq.

To that end, NIAC Action, the official lobbying arm of NIAC, launched a petition drive directed at all presidential candidates to refrain from using rhetoric that would be deemed “hostile” at the Iranian regime.

The letter it is circulating reads in part:

“That is why we urge you and everyone running for the White House to retire the hostile rhetoric of the past. This hostile rhetoric often makes no distinction between the Iranian government and the Iranian people. It empowers hardliners, undermines those working to resolve challenges, and promotes conflict.

“Instead, we urge you to articulate how you will seize the opportunity created by the diplomatic breakthrough with Iran to build a more peaceful future.”

To say it is a shameful misdirection of the truth would be generous, because the mullahs in Iran have been very open and specific since the nuclear agreement was secured last July in venting their vitriol about the U.S., let alone keeping up the ritual “Death to America” chants at Friday prayers.

As we move deeper into the election cycle, we can be assured of increased action by the Iran lobby as it seeks to keep a lid on American voters’ concerns over terrorism and it combats any damaging news coming out of the Middle East such as more terror attacks or the Iranian regime’s complicity in some new human rights atrocity.

But from the early signs, it seems that Republican candidates have firmly chosen to not swallow the Kool-Aid on a “moderate” Iran and the Democrats will hedge their bets and set terms for Iran that only aid in ensuring a more stable and cooperative Middle East – both goals that the mullahs are opposed to.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Leader Khamenei Blames America for Creating ISIS

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Iran Regime Leader Khamenei Blames America for Creating ISIS

Iran Regime Leader Khamenei Blames America for Creating ISIS

Over the years the world has seen many fantastical and absurd claims coming from leaders of the Iranian regime such as the denial of the Nazi Holocaust by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the regime hit a new level of outrageousness when the regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, implied that the U.S. created ISIS as a means of distracting world attention away from crimes perpetrated by Israel.

But Khamenei didn’t stop there; he included the creation of Al-Qaeda as another part of a decade long program by the U.S. to shield Israel from scrutiny. I’m sure if we wait long enough, Khamenei will issue a video saying the U.S. was behind the 9/11 attacks as well.

The video, posted on a Facebook page affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards and first reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute, explains that the U.S. created the Islamic State to advance its own agenda.

“France is going through sad bloody nights. Bloodiest blood has been shed on the streets of Paris, reportedly by the ISIS [Islamic State] terrorists,” the narrator states as the video shows footage of the aftermath of the Paris attacks. “Many express condolences. Even the Saudi king and the U.S. president. The same ones whose involvement in creating the ISIS project is being exposed more than ever.”

Additionally, the video features Wesley Clark, former NATO supreme commander, explaining that ISIS was developed in part through funding that was directed at recruiting individuals to fight Hezbollah, the Lebanese group that is staunchly allied with Iran and Syrian President Bashar Assad, who Syrian rebels have unsuccessfully been trying to unseat for several years in a civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

It is worth noting that the video makes pains to insinuate that the US facilitated the formation of a terrorist menace to fight the Iranian regime’s Mideast allies: Assad and Hezbollah.

The video concludes with the narrator appearing to question al Qaeda’s involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Khamenei’s office was responsible for producing the video. The clip concludes with a picture of the address for the supreme leader’s website.

The video is part of the larger effort being mounted by the Iran lobby to try and distance the regime from any responsibility for the surge in terrorism from groups like ISIS that were inspired by the template of terror laid down by the Iran regime originally through its support of Hezbollah and its own Shiite militias.

Meanwhile, many regime leaders and institutions in Iran have celebrated the Paris attacks according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella organization of Iranian dissident groups.

Hamid Abu Talebi, political advisor to regime president Hassan Rouhani and former ambassador to France, has described the terrorist crimes in Paris as “inevitable”, “the outcome of the West’s arbitrary measures in supporting terrorism … and neglecting Iran’s warnings during the past few years”.

“The French have paid the price of their government’s support for ISIS and terrorism,” said Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, deputy commander of Iran’s armed forces general staff. Describing the Syrian people’s resistance as terrorism he added, “From the first months of the terrorist measures in Syria and other neighboring countries, we gave numerous warnings to Europe that terrorism will engulf their lands.”

Tasnim, the news agency affiliated to the Quds Force, described the Paris tragedy as “homemade terrorism” in France and Europe and wrote, “Khamenei had during the past few years warned Western leaders that supporting terrorism in the region will eventually turn back on you… and in the not so distant future, these groups will cause turmoil in the same countries that supported them.”

Far from condemning the attacks, the Iran regime has sought to leverage the attacks for its own political purposes in shifting attention to rival Saudi Arabia and away from the ongoing offensive in Syria which spawned ISIS in the first place.

In an insightful piece for Foreign Affairs by Ray Takeyh and Reuel Marc Gerecht, the Iran regime is seen as taking advantage of ISIS to consolidate its power in the region as it props up Shiites in control of Iraq and Assad’s Alawite sect in Syria just enough to keep Sunni jihadists from complete victory.

This balancing act by the Iran regime according to Takeyh and Gerecht could result in a permanent destabilization of the Arab heartland benefiting Iran as the mullahs use broad sectarian conflict to keep Saudi Arabia bogged down in a civil war in Yemen and Egypt and Turkey off balance with ISIS attacks.

They point to how the Iran regime built the original model for terrorist integration in Lebanon when it melded a variety of Shia parties into Hezbollah which it used as a proxy to attack the U.S. and its allies abroad. The mullahs repeated the model in Iraq after 2003.

“Tehran had two complementary objectives: drive the United States out and prevent the formation of a new anti-Iranian Iraq. Once again, Iran turned to the development of radical Shia militias. The paramilitary outfits lacerated U.S. forces and intimidated, and sometimes killed, secular Shiites and recalcitrant Iraqi clerics,” Takeyh and Gerecht write.

Ultimately, the mullahs aim will be to use the Paris attacks to their advantage and leverage the threat of ISIS – a threat they created – to allow the regime to force alliances with Russia, U.S., France and other nations and make it an indispensable partner in a war on terrorism that it supports already.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Crackdowns Continues as Paris Weeps

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Iran Regime Crackdowns Continues as Paris Weeps

Iran Regime Crackdowns Continues as Paris Weeps

The contrasts in image and tone could not be more striking. On the streets of Paris, thousands gather to mourn those killed in ISIS terror attacks that shook Europe, while on the streets of Tehran, agents for the Revolutionary Guard are busy rounding up more journalists and dissidents in one of the fiercest crackdowns since the days of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reign.

The latest victim of the Iran regime’s security crackdown was the arrest of a press cartoonist who was taken into custody while at work at The Shahrvand, a state daily newspaper in Tehran that is owned by Iran’s Red Crescent Society, or Red Cross according to New York Times.

The arrest had not been reported in the official news media as of Monday night. It came after the publication of a cartoon depicting tearful solidarity with the people of France over the attacks Friday that left at least 129 people dead. The cartoon was also posted on the Instagram.

The fact that a cartoonist is arrested by the regime for publishing a cartoon expressing sympathy for those slain by ISIS – the putative enemy of the Iranian regime – tells us all we need to know about what the mullahs in Tehran are thinking about the slaughter of French, German, American, British, Spanish and Swedish citizens.

The cartoonist’s arrest follows a nationwide crackdown in which several journalists and even two poets have been arrested as being subversive to the regime and serving as tools for Western influence as the regime seeks to stifle any voice of dissent in the wake of the nuclear deal it agreed to last July.

The “to-do” list for the mullahs have been busy lately as they have sought to win the civil war in Syria and secure the Assad regime, gone on a shopping spree for new weapon systems from the Russians, and send proxies to attack an Iranian dissident camp in Iraq in a brutal rocket barrage.

The mullahs have even instituted a new policy to impound the cars of any Iranian women caught driving a car without wearing a “proper” hijab or head covering. This follows past policies that forbade Iranian women from driving alone and allowed basij paramilitaries to beat women drivers and failed to prosecute others who threw acid at women while driving.

Senior mullahs have in recent weeks intensified their verbal attacks on “bad-hijab” women in Iran, with one likening them to “soliciting for sex.”

“The courageous decision by the commander of our police force to confront those women who defy and remove their hijab behind the wheel must be appreciated as it amounts to fighting prostitution on our streets,” said a mullah named Ahmed Alam Ulhoda in one of the more absurd comments ever published.

Another series of arrests targeted social media apps as the Revolutionary Guard also went after administrators on the popular Telegram messaging app for spreading “immoral content” according to the regime’s Fars news agency.

Telegram’s Chief Executive Pavel Durov said last month that Iranian regime authorities had demanded he hand over “spying and censorship tools”, and temporarily blocked the app when he refused.

The IRGC announced the Telegram users’ arrests last week, saying they had shared images and text “insulting to Iranian officials” as well as “satire and sexual advice”. At the time, the judiciary denied any such arrests had even occurred.

This comes after efforts by the regime to block access to popular social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, Tango and Viber.

The crackdowns, especially the widespread nature and swiftness in their enforcement, underscore just how farcical the myth was that Hassan Rouhani’s elevation to president would represent some new “moderate” breakthrough for the regime. Indeed the violations of human rights in Iran has got worse during his tenure.

The alarming rise in human rights abuses moved Human Rights Watch to issue a joint letter signed by 36 human rights groups and other organizations urging support for United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/C.3/70/L.45 which seeks to promote human rights in Iran by calling on the regime to meet its domestic and international obligations to protect human rights.

The vote is scheduled on November 19, 2015 during the 70th session of the General Assembly.

“The Iranian authorities shouldn’t think they are getting a pass on human rights just because the nuclear accord has been signed,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch Middle East director. “Passing this resolution will send the message that the world has not forgotten about the country’s ongoing human rights abuses.”

More importantly, supporters of the regime have uttered not a word of criticism over the recent crackdowns. Groups such as the National Iranian American Council and The Ploughshares Fund and bloggers and commentators such as Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib have shifted their focus not on the tragedy suffered by the people of France, but rather in attempting to link the attacks and ISIS to Saudi Arabia in an effort to attack the Iran regime’s long-time rival.

Trita Parsi, head of the NIAC, has been busy on his social media feeds denouncing Saudi Arabia during the Paris attacks as much as he was busy denouncing Israel during the nuclear talks. In both cases, the real goal of his comments is to shift attention away from the bad acts of the Iranian regime.

Ultimately, the world is beginning to see past the facades put up by Iran lobby supporters and are recognizing that the true center of sectarian hate sits squarely in Tehran.

By Michael Tomlinson

What the Paris Attacks Tell Us About Terror Template

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What the Paris Attacks Tell Us About Terror Template

What the Paris Attacks Tell Us About Terror Template

The tragedy of the Paris terrorist attacks this weekend are so startling in their scope, so appalling in the loss of life and so despicable in the choice of victims, that the world has once again been moved to commemorate with demands for stern action and condemnation of the breed of Islamic extremism flowing out of the war torn streets of Syria and now making its way to the wide boulevards of Paris.

With 132 dead as of the latest reporting with scores more in critical condition, the full scope of the killed may not be known for a little while longer, but what is known is that the attack was sophisticated in planning, meticulous in its execution and devastating in its results. It was also spawned and given life from early reports by the ISIS terror network that now dominates vast swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory, while its influence and recruitment stretches from the Americas to Africa and Asia.

What is unmistakable is the “template of terror” that has come to be the calling card of terror groups such as Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and ISIS, amongst scores of others. The names might be different, ethnicities varied, even religions at odds with each other, but all share the same fundamental belief in using violence, terror and fear to state their case, sow terror and achieve their aims.

Attacking and striking at these terror groups has de-evolved into a game of “Whack-a-Mole” as militaries strike at individual terrorist leaders like “Jihadi John,” the Briton who was identified as being one of the ringleaders of ISIS who came to the world’s attention decapitating Western hostages.

More astute analysts have pointed out that to curb the threat of global terror, you have to strike at the safe havens offered by sympathetic governments such as the invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks to dislodge the Taliban’s support of Al-Qaeda. Others have pointed out the need to support unstable democracies as they struggle with the aftermath and chaos wrought by the changes from the Arab spring protests that toppled governments in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere so that they do not become safe havens for terrorists.

But the single largest supporter of terror in the world today, both financially and spiritually, has been and remains the Iranian regime.

The mullahs in Tehran have been the chief sponsors of Hezbollah and have used Hezbollah fighters in proxy wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere. They have also supported Shiite militias in Iraq with arms, including explosive devices manufactured in Iran, used to kill hundreds of U.S. service personnel in Iraq.

The Iran regime has also provided a spiritual template for ISIS and others through the brutal warped application of sharia law to mete out punishment in often ghastly ways. Before ISIS ever decapitated a captive on video, Iranian regime was hanging prisoners in public squares in front of young relatives. Before ISIS ever machine gunned children, Iranian regime was arresting and executing them. Before ISIS ever imposed harsh religious law in the villages and towns it conquered, Iranian regime was flogging women, cutting off the hands of thieves with power saws and beating demonstrators in the street. The medieval measures that are still being practiced under Rouhani.

The visceral brutality of Iranian regime’s justice has long been used as the standard for invoking a twisted form of Islam to justify violence in the name of territorial gain. The mistake most countries make in dealing with Islamic extremism is in thinking it is a religious war.

It is not.

The violence that stems from the Iran regime and flows out to groups like ISIS and Hezbollah is used as a political tool to achieve practical goals such as toppling governments in Yemen, creating safe havens for forces to operate such as in Iraq and Lebanon and building integrated networks to carry out missions around the world such as Iranian-linked terror attacks in Latin America and the U.S.

What is most telling is the response to the Paris attacks by Iran and its lobbyist allies. In the first few hours of the attacks, while the world expressed, shock, outrage and revulsion, social media linked to Iran’s lobbyists did not offer condolences or sympathy, but rather opened up a full bore attack on Iran’s chief regional rival – Saudi Arabia – in an ongoing effort to destabilize that country.

Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, offered up this insightful post on his Twitter feed as the streets of Paris ran thick with blood:

“If it turns out this horrible terror was done by ISIS or AlQaeda, will France rethink its cosy ties with Saudi and those funding Salafists?”

This is the first thing that comes to the mind of Parsi? His next seven posts sought to blame the attacks on Saudi Arabia before he got to his first tweet about Iranians expressing sympathy outside of the French embassy in Tehran.

He even managed to work in a dig at the U.S., tweeting:

“2014, U.S. intel found out that certain equipment sold to Saudi had ended up in ISIS hands. Not sure if they followed up… #ParisAttacks”

Since then, Parsi has continued the drumbeat of linking ISIS to Saudi Arabia, along with other Iran supporters who are marching to the same tune of deflecting blame away from Iranian mullahs.

The only certain thing is that the mullahs in Tehran set the tune and example for the terror industry and by their actions have long validated violence against civilians as a means to an end. It is a pathway that folks like Parsi have never apparently found objectionable judging by their social media accounts and public statements.

Parsi and his colleagues have never made human rights a centerpiece of their lobbying efforts as they have always sought to de-link the issue from any relevancy such as the nuclear talks. The hypocrisy of groups such as NIAC is easily apparent when you peruse their press releases and commentary. The lack of sympathy for the victims of Paris and the all-too-quick efforts to link them to traditional enemies of Iranian regime reveal the true purposes they have.

That true nature of the Iran regime was on front page display in regime newspapers where on its front page, Javan featured an illustration of a masked jihadist with a gun and a machete standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower, waving a mixed flag of the United States and ISIS.

“Return to home,” its headline said, quoting reports that some 200 French extremists had returned to the country after fighting with ISIS abroad.

In Kayhan – Iranian regime’s oldest and most-vocal paper — editor Hossein Shariatmadari, known as the mouth piece for regime’s supreme leader, repeated a conspiracy theory often cited in Iranian media that ISIS is a creation of the West and Israel under an operation dubbed “Hornet’s Nest”.

“Now the designers of the Hornet’s Nest must await the return of the wasps to the real nest — wasps that carry automatic rifles and grenades,” Shariatmadari wrote.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to long-time observers of the regime or to Iranian dissidents who have long warned that ignoring Iranian mullah’s conduct in supporting terrorist groups has only allowed them to flourish.

Unfortunately, unless the world acts to focus on the source of the terrorism occurring in Iran, we will inevitably be faced with more Paris attacks elsewhere.

By Michael Tomlinson