Iran Lobby

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

The Iran Lobby Fig Leaf

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Human Rights for IranThis weekend in Paris was marked by one of the largest gatherings ever assembled of people dedicated to change in the Iran regime and the return of that nation to freedom and democracy.

With a crowd estimated at over 100,000 people, the gathering sponsored by the Iranian diaspora, supporters of the resistance umbrella group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, featured an eight hour marathon of speeches and remarks by delegations representing over 60 nations, all focused on the brutal nature of the regime and the harsh repression and cruel treatment of Iran’s citizens by their religious mullah overlords.

Even with that much program time, a proper accounting of Iran’s human rights abuses would fill a month’s worth of speeches; so vast and large is the ledger of the abuses by the mullahs. The full extent of Iran’s human rights abuses have been so chronic as to warrant the appointment of a Special Rapporteur by the United Nations focused exclusively on Iran.

The appointment of Ahmed Shaheed as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Iran is one of only ten such appointments currently in effect; ranking Iran alongside persistent human rights abusers as Haiti, Myanmar, North Korea and Sudan.

Shaheed has continually spoken out against abuses by the mullahs, most notably as recently as June 5, 2015 over the rapid escalation of arrests and imprisonment of journalists, including American journalist Jason Rezaian.

“The recurrent use of vague references to threats to national security, propaganda against the system and insult to authorities to prosecute and detain journalists or activists is in contradiction to both international norms relating to freedoms of expression and association and the principle of legality,” Mr. Shaheed stated.

Amnesty International’s annual report goes into extensive detail on the litany of human rights abuses flowing from the mullah’s mandates including restrictions on the freedom of expression, association and assembly, widespread use of torture, codified unfair trials, institutional mistreatment of ethnic and religious minorities, the broad denial of women’s rights, lack of privacy, denial of education, and frequent and indiscriminate use of the death penalty.

The chronicle of abuses does not even include the special ire and venom reserved for Iranian dissidents such as those who assembled in Paris by Iran’s mullahs who have sought for the past 35 years to discredit, defame, attack and murder members of Iran’s resistance groups such as the NCRI and People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).

In the course of resisting Iran’s despotic rule, the groups have seen over 120,000 members murdered by the regime, most recently in hangings from trumped up show trials and at Camp Liberty in Iraq where 2,500 dissident refugees are frequently attacked by Iranian security forces and paramilitaries.

Yet even after the catalogue and almost daily chronicle of abuses against Iranians and Iranian-Americans by the regime, their most vocal supporter, the National Iranian-American Council, has barely uttered a word of protest or criticism even when the abuses are specifically aimed at Iranian-Americans, nominally the reason why the NIAC exists in the first place.

The litany of abuse had become so rampant, so blatant and appearing daily in the front pages of newspapers and global newscasts, that the NIAC finally had to issue some kind of statement recognizing the gross mistreatment going on or risk become a laughingstock every time they opened their mouths; some might argue it already is a laughingstock, but that’s another matter.

So what did the NIAC do to strike fear in the hearts of the mullahs and their prison guards, torturers, hangmen and puppet jurists? It issued a 379-word long press statement in which it “condemns the Iranian government’s recent violations of its international human rights obligations.”

Most notable in the brief statement was that 148 words of it dealt, not with human rights, but with the proposed nuclear deal being negotiated in Switzerland. Even when faced with the overwhelming human misery and suffering being caused by Iran’s leadership, the NIAC can barely force itself to utter a peep about it.

By way of comparison, an editorial written by NIAC policy fellow Ryan Costello in The Hill blog the same week devoted a brawny 891 words to the topic of the issue of inspections of military sites, nearly four times the amount devoted to human rights.

It is a mere fig leaf by the NIAC to cover up for the fact it is a group appearing to be solely dedicated not to the plight of Iranian-Americans, especially four of them languishing in Iran now, but rather towards supporting the political aims of a small cadre of religious rulers in Iran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran- The Importance of Resistance as a Force for Good

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18583574530_7b81c1431b_b“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

So said famed American author and poet Henry David Thoreau in his landmark essay “Resistance to Civil Government” in which he argued passionately for the importance of disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau wrote that in 1849 and since then it has influenced the thinking of the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi in the art of civil disobedience.

But resistance to corrupt governments is nothing new. You can look at the 800th anniversary celebrations taking place for Magna Carta, the document that first enshrined protection of church rights, protection for the barons that forced King John of England to sign it from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown.

It is almost a genetic imperative for human beings to resist anything that would aim to shackle the free expression of will, creativity or thought. One would like to think in the 800 years since Runnymede or the 166 years since Walden Pond, the world had advanced more in the area of brutality and corruption, but sadly in some parts of the world, it seems we’ve actually gone backwards.

One such place is the Islamic state of Iran, which under the tight rein of a religious theocracy imposed by mullahs, has committed human atrocities and brutalities at home and abroad with mind-numbing frequency. In the 18 months since Hassan Rouhani was handpicked to become president, over 1,700 political dissidents, religious minorities, cultural subversives and ordinary citizens have been executed, most in barbaric public hangings more appropriate for the Dark Ages than the 21st Century.

But a spark of hope, born 50 years ago in Iran struggling against the despotic rule of one tyrant, only to shift after a revolution was hijacked to fight the mullahs who now rule Iran, has now been fanned into a fierce flame of resistance which was on bold display in a crowded, massive convention hall in Paris on Saturday.

The People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) was started by a group of Muslim Iranian university students, as a Muslim, progressive, nationalist and democratic organization that has since morphed into one of a number of resistance groups joined under the banner of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in working for regime change in Iran and bringing about a new era of freedom and democracy.

The annual meeting sponsored by Iranian diaspora supporting the NCRI brought an impressive crowd of over 100,000, including 600 dignitaries from over 100 nations, together to join in what amounts to a giant pep rally for regime change. It’s a remarkable sight with bleacher stands packed with men, women and children of all ethnicity, religions and languages waving flags enthusiastically, clapping loudly and cheering heartily after speech after speech.

The fact that these people were still just as enthusiastic in the seventh hour listening to speeches by the representatives of Romania and Portugal as they were when Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, head of the NCRI, and Rudy Giuliani, the expressive former mayor of New York, spoke earlier in the day is either a testament to the effectiveness of French coffee or the deep and abiding passion these delegates had for the plight of their brothers, sisters, husbands, wives and children residing in Iran.

Association, let alone membership, with PMOI or its members is punishable by death in Iran. The same holds true for a number of other resistance groups. Yet these people Instagram selfies, tweet defiance and hashtag support to such an extent, the #Iran_Maryam hashtag used for the gathering ended up as a leading global Twitter trend.

But this resistance movement is more than slogans. It carries with it a very real cost and yields tremendous benefits. The NCRI and its extensive network of supporters within Iran has been able to get past government censors, Internet blockades and confiscated satellite dishes to get the word out about protests and demonstrations, arrests, executions and imprisonments and disclosures about secret Iranian nuclear facilities the mullahs were dying to keep secret.

The fact that the resistance gathering took place only two weeks before the June 30 deadline for the current round of nuclear talks was no accident. It was a shout out to the P5+1 group of nations reminding them of the failure to deliver a real deal that not only guarantees Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, but also has to change how it does business in the arena of human rights and it support for proxy wars against its neighbors.

As the gathering closed and satisfied and resolute people boarded their buses and headed for trains, you could hear their determination in their voices and the hope in their faces that the window for regime change was finally at hand, which only makes me wish that “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh was the exit song.

“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.”

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran-Giving Voice to the Voiceless

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VoicelessOn Saturday, June 13, a cavernous convention hall in Paris will be filled with over 100,000 people who will be joined together in what has become an annual rite of summer; energizing and galvanizing for regime change in Iran and a global movement to turn the Islamic state back to a free, democratic country.

It’s a significant meeting earning wide praise in global news media, blogs, columnists and opinion pages including the Washington Times, The Hill, American Thinker, the Chicago Sun-Times and Western Free Press.

Organized by the Iranian diaspora supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the group’s president, the Grand Gathering of Iranian expatriates will include a formidable array of 600 political dignitaries, including former Democratic and Republican administration officials and 120 parliamentarians from more than 60 countries.

Just a few of the noteworthy luminaries will include a bipartisan delegation from the U.S. Congress, General Hugh Shelton (former U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff), Gov. Howard Dean (former chair of the Democratic National Committee), Alan Dershowitz (renowned jurist and human rights activist), Michelle Alliot Marie (former defense and foreign minister of France), Sid Ahmed Ghozali (former prime minister of Algeria), Gunter Verhugen (former vice president of the European Commission), and many others.

The fact that Iran, a regime led by mullahs who enforce a brutal suppression of human rights and engage in actively exporting proxy wars and terror for a corrupted ideology, could bring such a wide diversity of political parties, ethnicities, nationalities, religions and economic backgrounds together united in one common goal is irony of the highest order.

The timing of the meeting is also auspicious coming just two weeks before a self-imposed deadline of June 30 for the P5+1 group of nations to come to final agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. The gathering is an opportunity to shine a global spotlight on the dangerous shortcomings in the proposed deal and what still needs to be done to ensure global security.

In an interview with the Washington Times’ Guy Taylor, Mrs. Rajavi warned that “the failure to prevent the Iranian regime’s meddling in Iraq after the 2003 Iraq War, which morphed into the gradual occupation of Iraq by the Iranian regime, gave an unprecedented boost to the growth of fundamentalism.”

“Similarly, the [Khamenei] regime’s crimes in Syria and Iraq and the genocide against Sunnis, which is accompanied by Western silence, have enabled the rise of [the Islamic State],” Mrs. Rajavi added.

It’s a sentiment shared by Linda Chavez, author, syndicated columnist and radio talk show host, wrote in an editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times that “when it comes to supporting our ‘partners on the front lines,’ the one group that gets the cold shoulder from this administration is the organized Iranian opposition. Tehran faces growing internal opposition, which it has answered by engaging in more repression of its own people. Since Hassan Rouhani became president in 2013, Iran has executed more than 1,700 people, a higher total than at a similar point in former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tenure. These executions signal that the Iranian regime is growing weaker, not stronger.”

Raymond Tanter, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and president of the American Committee on Human Rights, echoed the same support for the NCRI in his editorial in The Hill saying “it is only prudent for the West to listen to Iranian dissidents as well in formulating a sound policy on Iran.”

Listening to that voice, the voice of leaders like Mrs. Rajavi, gives the voiceless millions not only in Iran, but also in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and other places where the Iran regime’s long reach of terror funding and proxies have caused uncountable deaths and inflicted untold suffering on men, women and children a powerful ally in the fight for freedom and regime change in Iran.

As Ken Blackwell, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in American Thinker: “the voices of these leaders and world-renowned experts will also be joined by thousands of Iranians whose brothers and sisters in Iran are brutally repressed.  Their voices not only tell of the threat Iran poses, but also testify to the popularly supported democratic alternative to the Iranian regime.  It may not happen tomorrow, or even the next day, but Iran’s actions at home and across the region exposes the leadership’s hardline, irrational beliefs and the importance of the alternative these Iranians represent.”

To join and watch the gathering live, go online at www.iranfreedom.org and use the hashtag of #iranfeedom and help make a difference.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Heartbeat of a Resistance Movement

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Rosa-ParksOn December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was asked by a bus driver to move to the back of a municipal bus for coloreds and leave the section reserved for white passengers. In response she said “No.”

A simple word, but one filled with profound meaning because while her act of defiance landed her in jail and caused her to lose her job as a seamstress in a local department store, it launched the now famous Montgomery Bus Boycott which was immortalized in the movie “Selma” and helped push Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to national prominence.

If we consider the context of place and time, Rosa Parks’ decision could not have been an easy one knowing it could land her in an Alabama jail during segregation when scores of blacks had been mistreated or even killed.

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear,” Parks said in response to questions over her fears.

That same mindset is one that countless activists around the world have as they battle oppressive regimes with acts of defiance great and small; whether it was Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Laureate who was shot in the face by Taliban opposed to her activism for women’s rights and education, or Maryam Rajavi, a woman who leads one of the largest resistance groups to the Iran regime in the National Council of Resistance and whose members have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed by the Iran’s religious courts.

Parks quote is important because it clearly illustrates what often separates activists from the rest of us; the willingness to put oneself at risk knowing their actions might bring arrest or even worse upon them.

Nowhere is that more true than in the Islamic state of Iran where the ruling mullahs enforce a brutal religious code that rules everything from civil life to economic matters to making war on its neighbors. Anyone offering up dissent is usually ticketed for a one-way trip to Evin Prison and often a nearby public square for a hanging.

It is a barbaric system that many of risen up to oppose. Mrs. Rajavi’s group, including the PMOI/MEK groups, have led a long-suffering campaign to help get the word out on protests inside Iran past the Internet blockades, social media bans and confiscation of satellite dishes imposed by the mullahs.

This includes recent mass protests by Kurds in the north, large protests over the teetering economy, and waves of protests by teachers sweeping across Iran over wages and working conditions all point to a deep level of disaffection and disenfranchisement by the Iranian people and their religious overlords.

It’s worth remembering that the original Iranian revolution to overthrow the Shah was precipitated with a remarkably similar set of circumstances such as severe economic displacement among the people and a harsh crackdown by the government on dissenters which only grew as the protests grew.

The same scenario is now happening in Iran. Given the steep declines in Iranian GDP over the past year because of the massive drains on the treasury in funding Assad in Syria to the tune of $35 billion and to keep Shiite militias in Iraq equipment and Houthi rebels in Yemen supplied has placed the Iranian economy on a precarious ledge.

This Saturday in Paris, the global resistance to the Iran regime will be holding its annual gathering with a livestream available. We can only hope from that meeting of the thousands come a similar number of Rosa Parks whose simple acts of defiance can be the building blocks, brick by brick, of a new, democratic and free Iran.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Wrong on Nuclear Deal Stabilizing Region

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Parsi-and-FitzpatrickOne of the more extraordinary leaps of logic being propagated by the Iran lobby is that a completed nuclear agreement between the Iran regime and the P5+1 group of nations would help stabilize the Middle East and allow the U.S. to refocus and rebalance on more urgent matters. This flight of fancy was espoused by Mark Fitzpatrick, the director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and Trita Parsi, president of the regime’s chief cheerleading squad at the National Iranian American Council.

The claim being made by the two was that the U.S. could work with Iran’s mullahs on issues such as anti-narcotics trafficking, poverty alleviation, female empowerment and halting the spread of the Islamic State.

Now let’s think about that for a moment. They are contending that a regime with some of the highest narcotics addiction rates in the world and one of the largest traffickers in illicit drugs is somehow going to be a force for change in drugs?

They are contending that a regime with an economy in the tank due to the funding of three proxy wars Syria, Iraq and Yemen and terror groups such as Hezbollah and Shiite militias is somehow going to fight poverty? Especially when it ranks as one of the most corrupt places to do business with regime elites and mullahs’ families skimming off the top everywhere?

They are contending that a regime that empowers the Basij paramilitary to enforce strict adherence to Sharia laws such as prohibitions on women driving alone or holding hands in public by beating them and throwing acid on their faces is best equipped to empower women? Let’s not forget recent passage of laws allowing for child marriages as young as 14 years old and misogynist policies such as allowing fathers to marry their stepdaughters.

And they are contending that Iran can halt the spread of ISIS when it was its own policies that gave birth to ISIS by intervening in Syria and pouring billions of dollars in arms and fighters to prop up Assad and allow Syrian forces to drive out moderate rebel forces and encourage the rapid rise of extremist terror groups to form ISIS.

One would have to be a dolt to think these two have come up with a magic elixir to solve all the problems of the Middle East by granting Iran a deal enriching it with billions of dollars while allowing it to continue development of nuclear weapons without inspection of its military sites.

Iran’s chief rival, Saudi Arabia, has already taken dramatic steps to counter Iranian moves by securing a nuclear development deal of its own with South Korea and an air campaign aimed at defeating Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

How does any of this provide a sense of stability and security in the Middle East when Iran’s actions lie at the heart of some of the greatest human misery and suffering now being felt on the planet today?

Let’s not even mention Iran’s abhorrent human rights record which has been widely and loudly condemned by Amnesty International and the UN Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed, who is mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on the situation in Iran.

It’s a farcical proposition by Parsi and Fitzpatrick, but nothing new with only two weeks left before the self-imposed June 30th deadline for a nuclear agreement as they step up the Iran lobby’s efforts to sell even the most threadbare of Persian carpet ideas.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working for $120 Billion Paycheck

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PaycheckOnly someone with a doctorate in voodoo economics would equate the Iran regime’s “resistance economy” as a “blueprint for economic reform,” but that is exactly what Bijan Khajehpour of the Atieh International Consultancy is advocating in remarks he made at the Wilson Center.

The call for a “resistance economy” designed to withstand the impacts of economic sanctions imposed on Iran for its clandestine nuclear program was issued by the regime’s leader Ali Khamenei in February 2014, in which he called on the government of Hassan Rouhani to expand production and export of knowledge-based products, increase domestic production of strategic goods and develop markets in neighboring countries. He also urged greater privatization and increased exports of electricity, gas, petrochemical and oil by-products instead of crude oil and other raw materials.

How has that gone for Iran’s mullahs so far? Iran’s gross domestic product (GDP) has steadily declined the last three quarters from 4.4 percent, to 3.7 percent and now at an anemic 2.8 percent.

Khajehpour attempted to explain away the decline by blaming economic sanctions, government mismanagement, corruption, and former president Ahmadinejad’s brand of populist economic policies. The one variable he left out was Iran’s diversion of billions of scarce dollars to support proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as terror groups such as Hezbollah.

U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, estimated Iran spends $6 billion annually on propping up Assad’s government. Other experts put the number even higher. Nadim Shehadi, the director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University, said his research shows that Iran spent between $14 and $15 billion in military and economic aid to the Damascus regime in 2012 and 2013, even though Iran’s banks and businesses were cut off from the international financial system.

All of which comes on the heel of fresh calls by Assad for even more fighters and equipment he needs to combat rebels which Iran has met with the delivery of 15,000 new soldiers to fight for Syria. Far from being a resistance economy, Iran has been on a war footing for the past two years, all of which is fighting unrelated to its nuclear program.

It is hard to see how Khajehpour can overlook these staggering costs and contend Iran’s economy rebound as it throws more men, cash and expensive military hardware at its neighbors.

And you can’t even blame the declining price of oil on the world market for Iran’s economic problems either. Iran has a fairly diversified economy, in which oil accounts for only 23 percent of GDP. The largest contributor to the GDP is services (around 50 percent of total output), which means Iran’s primary drivers of its economy are its people.

These are the same people who are regularly subjected to street justice by the Basij paramilitary, who are thrown into prison for posted offending or critical comments on social media, who see scions of the mullahs’ race around the streets of Tehran in expensive foreign cars while they languish in economic purgatory.

Most incredibly of all, Khajehpour tried to make the argument that the estimated $120 billion in frozen Iranian assets that would be repatriated in the event of a nuclear deal would actually diminish the revenues of such corrupt actors within Iran because they no longer would have a monopoly on what commodities went in and out of Iran.

While it is not the dumbest statement ever made, it certainly ranks as one of the least believable; given the enormous pressure the regime’s mullahs are under to keep Assad afloat, a tight rein on the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and Houthi-rebel controlled Yemen.

If Khajehpour thinks the mullahs will not use that $120 billion to prop up their puppets, then he only reveals his true colors as a regime apologist and unabashed cheerleader.

By Michael Tomlinson

Head of IAEA Calls for “Years” of Iran Regime Inspections

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Yukiya Amano

In a blunt rebuttal to demands from the Iran regime’s top mullah Ali Khamenei that Iran’s military facilities remain off limits to nuclear inspectors, Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that inspectors must be permitted access to suspect sites for “years and years” in order to become confident that Iran’s nuclear program was indeed peaceful.

“We will continue these activities for quite a prolonged period of time and then, after making our efforts, we come to the point when we can provide credible assurance that there is no indication of activities other than peaceful activities,” Mr. Amano said at a news conference. “This is a long process and full cooperation from the country is needed.”

 

He added there was no way to tell how long it would take the IAEA to be satisfied about the regime’s nuclear program, but acknowledged it was a question of years and not months contrary to the pronouncements being made by many allies of the Iran regime, including its aggressive lobby in the U.S. and Europe such as the National Iranian American Council.

 

Amano’s position has been repeatedly bolstered by Western leaders such as French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who has contended that if anytime, anywhere access was not granted by Iran to its military facilities, a nuclear deal was off the table.

 

Iran has spent considerable effort to hide its nuclear activities at military sites, including questions about high explosives testing at its Parchin site which could be useful for detonating nuclear weapons. Tehran has refused to allow IAEA inspectors renewed access to Parchin for years after the secret work being conducted there was revealed by members of Iranian dissident groups including the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

 

The IAEA is not new to this delaying effort by the regime. It has previously sent to the mullahs in Tehran a list of 12 areas of concern over the military aspects of Iran’s nuclear program and to this day, the regime has chosen to ignore those inquiries in contradiction to its earlier claims of cooperation at the start of nuclear talks almost three years ago.

 

But the stonewalling of the IAEA by Iran is just one stone of an entire wall of obstruction by the regime’s mullahs who have already sought to delink its ballistic missile program from nuclear talks, as well as recent revelations showing that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium actually grew instead of shrank during the past few of months of an interim framework agreement to reduce nuclear material.

 

With the June 30 deadline fast approaching, it is becoming rapidly clear that Iran’s continued reluctance to cooperate on a slew of outstanding issues is threatening to derail the entire negotiating process.

 

The worrisome nature of Iran’s obstruction has prodded Senators to offer up amendments to the defense budget requiring continuation of sanctions in force since 1996 for another 10 years in light of the regime’s failure to comply.

 

The stage is set and the regime is clearly failing to uphold its end of the bargain…again.

 

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Iran Lobby Comes Late to the American Hostage Party

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CGrDrmxW0AI6gKWAfter a day of gut wrenching testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this week in which families for four Americans imprisoned unjustly in Iran spoke out about the brutal torture their loved ones have been subjected to, the Iran regime’s trusty lobbyists, the National Iranian American Council, did not even have the wherewithal to join in the condemnation of Iran’s mullahs for this appalling human rights violation.

Instead, the NIAC issued a matter-of-fact recitation of the testimony and noted the passage of a bipartisan resolution sponsored by Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) calling for the release of Americans detained in Iran, including Amir Hekmati, Jason Rezaian, Saeed Abedini and Robert Levinson.

But the NIAC could not help itself. It seems to be permanently conditioned to always find a way of supporting the regime no matter how debased the actions it undertakes. In this case, Maria Hardman went to great lengths in attempting to explain the hostage-taking was an act committed by “hardliners” in Iran opposed to any rapprochement with the West and seeking to undermine nuclear negotiations.

She went on to take issue with calls by some Congressmen to hold Iran accountable for the illegal detentions, including linking them to ongoing nuclear talks. Hardman seems to posit that linking the two would somehow prove disastrous for nuclear talks.

It is an old argument she espouses, one that regime supporters such as Trita Parsi, Jim Lobe, Eli Clifton and others have consistently offered up – not as a pathway to securing the release of these hostages – but rather in trying to remove any obstacles blocking the regime’s access to a favorable deal that would reward mullahs in Iran with billions of dollars in cash, foreign investment and oil sales.

Rather than take the opportunity to condemn the mullahs for these illegal acts and the very high price being paid by these men and their families, Parsi have hardly uttered a word in support of these innocents. Aside from initial statements calling for their release at the time each of them was arrested, there has been scant mention by any Iran lobby supporter.

All you have to do is Google search “Trita Parsi” and “Saeed Abedini” for example and you will find the lack of quotes from him urging the imprisoned pastor’s release as rare as rain in California these days.

It is also worth remembering that while the Iran lobby attempts to portray Iran as riven by battling hardline and moderate factions, the simple truth is that the various factions within the Iranian regime are no different, when it comes to their treatment of their people. The regime is firmly and completely in the thrall of the mullahs who control – under the constitution – all aspects of Iranian life, including cultural, military, judicial, legal and economic. All power vests solely within top mullah Ali Khamenei and his recent comments have made clear what his expectations are about a nuclear deal.

The regime is firmly committed to twin goals: 1) To remove as quickly and as completely as possible all economic sanctions in order to rescue an economy run aground by rampant corruption and mismanagement by the ruling mullahs; and 2) To maintaining of Iranian regime’s nuclear development in order to extend its control over new territories it has gained through proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. A task that the Iran lobby seems to be very dedicated to.

By Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi and Paul Pillar Outdo Themselves

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Untitled-1Trita Parsi, head of the Iran regime’s top cheerleader, the National Iranian American Council, and Paul Pillar, a former assistant at the Central Intelligence Agency, authored an editorial in Huffington Post in which they attempted to make the argument that Israel was preparing to attack its adversary Hezbollah in an effort to derail nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations.

It’s an odd editorial since it reinforces the Iran lobby’s belief that in order to save a faltering nuclear deal it needs to raise the boogeyman of Israel. For the Iran lobby, Israel serves the same purpose as neo-cons, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) or Fox News, it gives people like Parsi and Pillar the opportunity to run hysterical promising war, apocalypse and mayhem should a nuclear deal not be achieved with Iran’s mullahs.

It’s a typical effort to cajole a reaction from American voters by promising war. A curious tactic considering NIAC has consistently promised a pathway to peace, but logic has never been a NIAC strong suit.

In fact, Parsi and Pillar are scraping the bottom of the barrel when they cite a NPR poll as evidence of shifting momentum for a nuclear deal among Americans. A closer reading of the article they cite reveals points quite unfavorable to them. Among those include:

  • An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month found more than 7-in-10 said they thought a deal would “not make a real difference in preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons.”
  • A Pew survey found that 73 percent said they either knew “a little” or “nothing at all” about nuclear talks. That same poll also found that a strong majority (62 percent) wants Congress to “have the final authority for approving any deal” not President Obama.

The funny thing is that the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t mind talks with Iran on a nuclear deal. Where they disagree with Parsi and Pillar is that the majority of Americans don’t believe Iranian regime will adhere to any deal and that mullahs in Iran simply can’t be trusted.

Americans are an optimistic people. They want to believe negotiations can yield peaceful fruit, but Americans are not stupid – much to the dismay of Parsi and Pillar – they recognize that trust for a regime run by mullahs that has launched and supported three major proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq can’t be trusted.

Americans also know all too well the brutal human rights situation in Iran and are acutely aware of the inhumane treatment being perpetrated in Iran on these same people.

Anyone typing in the words “Iran” and “hanging” in Google under an image search can see the ample proof on display of how Iranian regime’s judicial system dispenses justice. Americans also see Iran’s mullahs playing games with the lives of four Americans being held in Iranian prisons as pawns in the hopes of bartering concessions in nuclear talks.

It’s also even more galling to see that while Parsi and Pillar produce so much editorial copy aimed at warning of a war, they have never condemned the wars that Iran is already waging:

  • Wars against women, children and anyone who cannot exercise their basic human rights without fear of arrest or public beating;
  • Wars against Christians, Jews, Hindus, Yazadis, Sunni Muslims, or anyone else that doesn’t share their brand of extremist Islam; and
  • Wars against bloggers, journalists, pastors, businessmen, tourists, YouTubers and anyone else that dares shine a light on what is happening within Iran.

These are the wars Parsi and Pillar are not prepared to talk about and the real wars happening now that matter.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Nuclear Stockpile Grows During Talks

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IAEA InspectorsIn a damning revelation, the New York Times revealed that with only one month left before a self-imposed June 30 deadline to complete a nuclear deal with the Iran regime, “international inspectors have reported that Tehran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel increased about 20 percent over the last 18 months of negotiations, partially undercutting the Obama administration’s contention that the Iranian program had been ‘frozen’ during that period.”

The findings were released by the International Atomic Energy Agency which poses a significant stumbling block to the hopes of the Obama administration. As the Times put it:

“In essence, the administration will have to convince Congress and America’s allies that Iran will shrink its stockpile by 96 percent in a matter of months after a deal is signed, even while it continues to produce new material and has demonstrated little success in reducing its current stockpile.”

The fact that Iran has continued building its stockpile of nuclear fuel even while it has consistently said it was not pursuing a nuclear expansion during three years of negotiations leads to the inescapable conclusion that Iranian regime cannot be trusted to comply with any deal reached.

Even while the regime’s chief negotiator Javad Zarif has played the role of charming, accommodating diplomat, his boss, Ali Khamenei, has just as consistently maintained an air of defiance in complying with the most basic of terms such as inspection of military sites.

Iran’s opposition to inspections presents a red line for France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, who reiterated in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that a deal without inspections of military and secret facilities risked sparking a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

“The best agreement, if you cannot verify it, it’s useless,” said Mr. Fabius. “Several countries in the region would say, OK, a paper [has been signed] but we think it is not strong enough and therefore we ourselves have to become nuclear.”

But those were not the only disturbing news reports coming out of Iran. The state-run Fars News Agency reported on Monday that Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation announced it would start construction this year of a second nuclear plant in Iran. The deal comes on the heels of an agreement between Russia and Iran to send the Islamic state an advanced anti-aircraft missile system.

The picture for meeting the June 30 deadline appeared even more muddled with reports from Reuters that Western negotiators appeared to be caving in on key Iranian demands such as shifting complaints about any alleged violations to a “dispute-resolution panel” that would come up with non-binding opinions in an absurd idea.

The proposal would direct complaints to the United Nations Security Council where the same Russia that is busy selling missile batteries and nuclear reactors to Iran would have a veto over any potential sanctions.

All of this would be happening at the same time the regime would be flooded with billions of dollars in oil sales proceeds, new foreign investment and the release of frozen assets at precisely the time Iran needs its coffers replenished after three years of proxy wars.

It does make any rational person wonder how Iran’s mullahs could be trusted when they’ve already added to their nuclear stockpile over the last 18 months while preaching its reduction at the negotiating table.

By Michael Tomlinson