National Iranian-American Council – Page 4

If You Never Talk About Human Rights, Maybe It Doesn’t Exist?

November 10, 2015 by admin

The first thing they teach you in any 12-step recovery program is that you have to admit you have a problem before you can start the road to getting better. The Iran lobby suffers from the basic problem that it cannot admit it has a problem backing a regime that has absolutely no intention of ever abiding by international norms of civility and normality.

Depending on your point of view, Iran regime supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council or Jim Lobe of Lobelog, or Gareth Porter is either partners with the regime or unwitting dupes who are hopelessly locked into a myopic point of view regardless of the facts disputing their worldview.

If we take the more charitable view and give them the benefit of the doubt about their motivations, then it is a head scratching moment to think of why they virtually ignore human rights violations in Iran in almost all of their public pronouncements, media interviews and social media postings. Why would anyone proclaiming deep interest in the well-being of the Iranian people never say a contrary word about record levels of arrests, imprisonments and executions?

Take for example the NIAC, which any casual perusal of its website would reveal little criticism of the Iran regime on the issue of human rights. In fact, if you type in “human rights” in its search box, you’ll find the bulk of any mention about human rights issues occurs during the run up with nuclear talks, but after the deal is done…nothing.

Even more impressive, for the entire year of 2015 so far, NIAC only issued one statement even mildly criticizing Iran on the issue of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian who was arrested and falsely accused by the regime of espionage.

Considering the litany of human rights abuses so far in 2015 in Iran, including over 1,000 public executions, the holding of five Americans illegally, the suppression of mass demonstrations and the support for terrorist acts and proxy wars in three different countries, it’s a wonder the NIAC could even be bothered to issue the single statement it did.

But like the age-old philosophy question posed by professors everyone, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The same question could be applied to the NIAC and other regime supporters within the Iran lobby. If you never talk about human rights, do you think they don’t exist?

The only substantial mention about human rights from NIAC comes within the context of passing the nuclear agreement with Iran as a pathway towards a more moderate and forgiving Iran.

As we have seen, the true nature of the Iranian regime has been revealed since passage of the agreement with a wide range of bewildering, militant and aggressive acts ranging from the alarming such as the test firing of new ballistic missile design capable of carrying nuclear warheads to defending the meaning of keeping its “Death to America” chants.

In all of these cases, the NIAC and other regime supporters have been silent as a tomb in raising any concern or these aggressive acts by the regime and in the one specific case where Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi, a key supporter of the NIAC and the regime, was arrested in Iran and tossed into the infamous Evin Prison, NIAC issued a statement expressing how “deeply troubled” it was by the report, but then spent most of the statement trying mightily to distance itself from Namazi.

You have to pity Namazi. On the one hand he had devoted considerable time and effort working with Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi during their collective time together at the consulting company Atieh on opening up avenues for the regime past sanctions imposed by the rest of the world, but then once he wears out his own welcome with the regime and gets tossed in prison, his old friends claim no knowledge of him.

You’d think Namazi would have chosen more reliable friends.

But the NIAC’s lack of concern over human rights is more likely a function of the fact that any deep discussion of human rights is ultimately embarrassing to the regime and hinders the process of gaining advantages for the mullahs in Tehran. Since the Obama administration was readily agreeable to the idea of un-linking human rights from nuclear talks, the regime has been essentially freed from the pesky restraints of being sanctioned or held accountable for anything it does from now on.

This explains why the Iran regime has closed its deal with Russia to buy advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries, launched a series of cyberattacks on U.S. and European computer systems, broadened its offensive in Syria, and attempted smuggling even more weapons to support Houthi rebels in its proxy war in Yemen aimed at Saudi Arabia next door.

The alarming increase and speed in actions by the Iran regime has spawned a broad and equally alarmed reaction from many and warnings are now being raised on the eve of the presidential election in 2016 that restraining and controlling Iranian regime may now rank as serious a foreign policy issue as combatting ISIS for most Americans.

These reactions come from small community newspapers such as the Staten Island Advance editorializing against the flaws in the nuclear deal to major market editorials such as the New York Post warning how mullahs in Iran have used the nuclear deal as a blank check to go wild.

The negative reactions have also come from both sides of the political aisle as evidenced by an editorial by Reps. Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA) and Richard Hanna (R-NY) in Huffington Post advocating their proposal for a new joint commission to monitor and verify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal as an additional safeguard to what they call a flaw in the nuclear agreement.

We can only hope it is not an example of too little, too late.

By Michael Tomlinson

What the Taking of Another American by Iran Regime Tells Us

November 2, 2015 by admin

What the Taking of Another American by Iran Regime Tells Us

The sudden and surprising arrest by Iran regime officials of Siamak Namazi raised the eyebrows of many veteran Iran watchers; not the least because Namazi has been an integral part of efforts to build a lobbying force in the U.S. used to support the regime’s political goals, namely passage of a just-completed nuclear agreement.

In fact, the ties between Namazi and Trita Parsi, the founder of the National Iranian American Council and leading lobbyist for the regime, have been well documented, all of which raised the question of why would regime leaders order the arrest of one of their own?

The very question indicates how wrong most analysts are about Iranian mullahs in the first place. Many people, including apparently Namazi, long assumed that if you towed the party line of the mullahs, you were always going to be in their good graces and in Namazi’s case, he hoped to reap the financial rewards that came from that association in the form of guiding foreign investment into Iran following the nuclear deal.

But what he failed to understand and what many others have failed to grasp even as they tried appeasing these same mullahs is that they are never going to allow anyone into their tight circle of control who does not follow their proscribed fundamentalist and extremist religious beliefs.

For the mullahs in Tehran, the coin of the realm is not just money; the constitution vests absolute authority with Ali Khamenei and his cadre of mullahs who oversee the judiciary, military and foreign affairs and vast tracts of the economy, while have an unrelaxing temptation for expansion of their authorities in to neighboring countries.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps wields disproportionate influence through its monopolistic control of entire industries such as telecommunications, petroleum, finance and agriculture. Iran’s theocracy controls planning of the economy and dispenses its meager rewards to the Iranian people, while reserving the bulk of the financial gains for its elites, their families and the military campaigns it funds overseas in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

For Namazi and Parsi and their fellow Iran lobbyists, the suddenness of the arrest was jarring, but it should have not comes as a complete surprise since the mullahs have long practiced the art of score-settling amongst their factions with sham trials, imprisonments and even executions.

But unlike what Parsi and his ilk would have the rest of the world believe, the fight in Iran’s leadership is not between “moderates” and “hardliners,” but in fact is between factions of corrupt mullahs bickering over the booty they rob from the Iranian people. The fact that every effort to promote a “moderate” faction within Iran has met with utter failure is indicative not of the lack of passion within the Iranian people for regime change, but rather the ruthless willingness of the mullahs to use deadly force against their own people to keep tight their grip on power.

Also since signing of the nuclear agreement, Khamenei has made it his mission to remind the world the he does not view adherence to the terms of the agreement to be beneficial to the regime, nor indispensable. In fact, in his mind, anything that compromises the extremist Islamic fanaticism is the antithesis of what the mullahs want. For Khamenei, getting a $150 billion check from unfrozen assets with no strings attached is the best possible alternative.

Khamenei is eager for the money in order to continue funding his vision of an expanding Islamic sphere of influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, but he does not want to jeopardize it with young Iranians clamoring for access to Snapchat on their iPhones while wearing clothes from Old Navy, which is why the arrest of Namazi, a putative supporter of the regime, tells us clearly that the regime intends to be the one calling the shots and not the other way around.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Turns on Its Own

October 29, 2015 by admin

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd.
At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government.
In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen, has been credited with helping found the Iran lobby including the creation of the National Iranian American Council alongside Trita Parsi as the primary vehicle for advocating for a nuclear agreement lifting economic sanctions on the regime.

The Daily Beast chronicled his family’s involvement as an “intellectual architect” for the NIAC as a pathway for empowering those within the regime whom he had a close relationship with and believed by helping secure an agreement it would boost his fortunes within the regime.

In the immortal words of Kevin Spacey who plays the scheming Frank Underwood on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” “We’re all victims of our own hubris at times.”

Truer words were never spoken about the Iran lobby because on the verge of reaping their perceived successes, they discover all they really are, are puppets for a regime of mullahs whose intent is only focused on preserving their own power.

That is because according to regime media reports, while visiting family in Tehran, Namazi was arrested by Revolutionary Guards Corp soldiers and tossed into the notorious Evin Prison.

There is an irony here on par with Alfred Nobel inventing dynamite and then creating the Nobel Peace Prize after his invention was used in war.

Namazi joins four other Americans who are being held hostage by the regime, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former Marine Amir Hekmati and the former FBI agent Robert Levinson.

According to a piece in American Thinker, Parsi and Namazi founded NIAC as a way to lobby for the removal of sanctions against the regime and promote its foreign policy while combatting anti-regime forces in the U.S.

Both Parsi and Namazi reportedly enjoyed close ties and access to Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, the regime’s president and foreign minister, with Parsi being seen traveling with and in close discussions with the regime delegation during nuclear talks.

Conspicuously, the NIAC have been silent on the issue, declining comment and social media feeds for Parsi and other NIAC staff is devoid of any mention of the arrest.

But Hassan Dai, editor of the Iranian American Forum who won a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Parsi, speculated that the arrest suggests a power struggle of sorts within the regime’s leadership.

Dai explained in an interview with Breitbart News that Namazi had consistently “lobbied in favor of a faction of the regime,” which upset the mullahs because it would only be acceptable to “lobby for the whole regime.”

The fight between the factions in Iran is a fight for “the best solution to preserve the regime,” he explained, adding that groups like NIAC have never sided with true “reformists,” but with people who wish to employ a different strategy to empower the regime, such as Rouhani and former President Akbar Rafsanjani.

Because Namazi and NIAC prefer one faction over the other, “they are undermining the Supreme Leader. They are undermining the Revolutionary Guard,” Dai explained. “When you lobby U.S. policymakers to remove sanctions against Iran with the rationale that it will help reform the regime, you undermine the Supreme Leader, because he wants them to accommodate to the regime now.”

The arrest of Namazi sends a message from Iran’s rulers that “Rouhani has no power,” Dai concluded. “He cannot even protect his own friend.”

Breitbart News further speculates – and rightly so – that the arrest pours cold water on the notion that securing the nuclear deal would empower “moderates” within the regime and help reform it. Evidence since agreeing to the nuclear contradicts that idea completely with the conviction of Rezaian, the test launch of an illegal ballistic missile and the launching of a new offensive in Syria alongside Russian forces.

The arrest of Namazi demonstrates that the leadership of the Iran regime is of one mind and firmly in the control of Ali Khamenei and his religious cohorts and that any idea of moderation within the regime is a pipe dream; which may go to explain why coming off of the NIAC’s recent leadership conference to celebrate the nuclear deal, Parsi’s Twitter feed was filled with posts condemning Saudi Arabia, a bitter enemy of Iran and locked in fighting in Yemen.

If Parsi doesn’t tow the mullahs’ line, he might find a different kind of reception party the next time he travels to Tehran and end up sitting next to his buddy Namazi.

By Michael Tomlinson

Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

October 27, 2015 by admin

Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

Halloween involves kids (and adults) firing up their imaginations to come up with costumes and then go knocking door to door seeking treats and getting the odd trick played on them maybe in a haunted house. For the Iran lobby, Halloween came a week early as the chief advocate, the National Iranian American Council, held its annual leadership conference this weekend.

It’s worth noting that the NIAC bills its event as a premier conference for the nation’s Iranian-American community, but its agenda and participants hardly represent the views and beliefs of the estimated one million Iranian-Americans living in the U.S.

In fact, the line-up of speakers at this year’s conference reads more like a line-up card of Iran regime boosters and potential business partners than any group seriously examining the daunting challenges remaining between the U.S. and Iran. What is even more amazing are the lack of any speakers who have first-hand experience with the abysmal human rights situation in Iran, nor were there any speakers offering views on the sizable opposition worldwide to the regime amongst the Iranian diaspora.

Among the highlights of this gallery of apologists and appeasers includes:

Bijan Khajehpour, who founded Atieh International and the related Atieh Bahar which employed NIAC staffers to serve as a conduit for directing foreign companies to invest into the regime through the access it provided to top regime officials who controlled most of Iran’s economy through a complex web of shadow companies. Atieh was the subject of an in-depth piece in The Daily Beast on its start and close relationship with leading supporters of the regime and how it profited from those ties and in advocating for a lifting of sanctions against Iran;
Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund which was the largest funder of the lobbying campaign in support of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions against the regime. It alone provided NIAC with at $150,000 for its advocacy work on behalf of the nuclear deal; not including money given by its staff. Commentary Magazine poured through tax records to glean the wide scope of Ploughshares giving to groups working on behalf of the regime’s cause; and
Alan Eyre, the U.S. State Department’s Persian-language spokesman who came under fire recently for promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy sites demonizing American Jewish groups, as well as postings on his personal social media praising the regime’s controversial Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani according to the Washington Free Beacon. Eyre also posted links to Lobelog, a well-known blog dedicated to supporting the regime’s key messages.

The conference also featured several speakers who are actively seeking business deals within the regime including: Ned Lamont, chairman of Lamont Digital Systems; Jay Pelosky, a self-described advisor on emerging markets who recently visited Iran; and Amir Handjani, president of PG International Commodity Trading Services, a leading importer of agricultural commodities in the Iranian market.

We can’t resist one dig at Reza Marashi of NIAC who called the gathering the “world cup of Iranian-Americans.”

One interesting tidbit were comments made by Dr. Farideh Farhi who lamented the fact the nuclear deal had not led to substantial changes in U.S. policy towards the regime, but failed to note the swift shifts in Iranian policy towards the rest of the world in the rapid buildup of its military in Syria and launching of a new ballistic missile in violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions; both provocative acts.

This was followed by a tweet by Trita Parsi, NIAC’s head honcho, who described comments made by Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Mehdi Hasan, a commentator for Al Jazeera’s English broadcast, as saying about the panic from neighboring Arab nations about the nuclear deal: “If someone panics, you slap them in the face, you don’t indulge them.”

An appropriate comment since it neatly encapsulates the Iran lobby’s response to concerns over what the Iran regime will do now in the wake of the nuclear agreement. The recent rise in belligerent military action, coordination with Russia in blasting Syrian rebels back to the Stone Age and the conviction of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian all point to a slide into anarchy which has even alarmed Democratic lawmakers who initially supported the nuclear deal, but now have begun offering up new legislation designed to keep the regime in check.

The NIAC conference was predictable in celebrating its perceived win with the nuclear deal and the effort now to safeguard potential foreign investment after “Implementation Day” on December 15 when the U.S. will pave the way by lifting economic sanctions and allow Iran to rejoin the world of international commerce.

But the conference also revealed the biggest weaknesses of the lobby which was its inability or unwillingness to meet the most troublesome aspects of the Iran regime head-on; namely it horrific human rights record which leaves a deep and wide trail for the world’s media to follow.

With every arrest, every beating, every public hanging and every denunciation of a minority religious or ethnic group, the regime weakens any argument the lobby can make and increases the pressure on groups such as the NIAC to answer basic questions of “why aren’t you speaking out against the killing of X group?”

Which is why the NIAC conference was so focused on economic issues since the regime is desperate to not only get its hands on the estimated $150 billion in frozen assets to help pay off its military obligations in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, but is equally anxious to bring in foreign investment to help prop up an economy devastated by gross mismanagement and corruption by regime officials.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Shifts Focus, Now Demanding More Dialogue With Iran

September 18, 2015 by admin

Khamenei-with-IRGC-The main force behind terror in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, etc.

The failure of Congress to halt the implementation of the nuclear deal with the Iran regime opens the floodgates for the regime to reap financial, military, economic and political rewards, but those gains may prove tenuous and illusory since in order to win passage of the agreement, the Obama administration took the unusual route of proposing it not as a full-fledged treaty, but as an administrative action that an incoming administration could conceivably reverse.

Since the Iran regime was adamant on delinking anything not related to the nuclear issue including human rights violations, support of terrorism, development of ballistic missiles and proxy wars, the reality is sinking in for supporters of the regime that they need to pay lip service to these other issues in order to stave off renewed calls to punish Iran for its transgressions.

This was evident by the issuance of a press release by lead regime lobbyist, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, who even acknowledged that the deal’s passage would not cause significant shifts in regime policy:

“While dialogue does not guarantee that Iran’s foreign policy conduct will shift to Washington’s liking, the absence of engagement all but guarantees that there will be either no change or a change in the wrong direction,” Parsi said.

While Parsi is showing its true face by advocating more dialogue with the criminal mullahs, his call for greater dialogue were again undermined by the statements of the regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei.

In his weekly televised speech, Khamenei warned commanders of the regime’s Revolutionary Guards to be on alert for “political and cultural” infiltration by the U.S. according to Agence France-Press.

“The main purpose of the enemies is for Iranians to give up on their revolutionary mentality,” Khamenei told a gathering of Guards commanders and personnel in Tehran.

“Enemy means global arrogance, the ultimate symbol of which is the United States,” he said, calling on the powerful branch of the military to protect the revolution.

“Economic and security breaches are definitely dangerous, and have dire consequences,” he said.

“But political and cultural intrusion by the enemy is a more serious danger that everyone should be vigilant about,” he added.

Parsi of course did not call for Khamenei to moderate his language or stop the continued depiction of the U.S. as Iran’s greatest “enemy.” Parsi saves his rhetorical fire – not to his mullah taskmasters – but for the U.S. leadership that he actively lobbies.

Khamenei threw more cold water on Parsi’s press release and his call for greater dialogue by saying last week that Iran would not hold any negotiations with the U.S. beyond the nuclear issue. Short of calling Parsi a liar, Khamenei certainly refutes most of what Parsi has to say.

It’s no surprise that Khamenei made his appeal directly to the leaders of the Revolutionary Guards which was created by the mullahs to preserve the mullah’s rule and maintain the stranglehold the leadership holds over Iran’s economy and its people.

The passage of the deadline to sink the nuclear deal also marked a celebration of sorts by supporters of the regime as evidenced by Ben Wikler, Washington director of Moveon.org, piece in Huffington Post which gleefully recounted how the regime’s supporters marshalled their forces to prevent the agreement’s demise.

The only thing missing was a photo of Wikler and Parsi holding hands in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner over an Iranian missile battery.

But while Wikler breathlessly recounts the campaign to support the deal, this moment may prove Pyrrhic for supporters as the next year reveals the true nature of the regime as it no doubt continues to support conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and Americans grow increasingly uneasy about the deteriorating situation in the Middle East along with the rise of extremist groups and a full-blown refugee crisis.

Broad public disapproval of the nuclear deal has already been registered in virtually every public opinion poll and the fact the deal was passed with no bipartisan support and only through a minority vote of 42 Democratic senators may condemn any member running for re-election not only in 2016, but also 2018.

In essence, the regime lobby is praying mightily the American people will have a short memory and that the mullahs don’t blow it for them; neither scenario seems likely.

Already we’ve seen the veneer being peeled off of the Iran lobby with a flood of news articles examining the lobby, especially the NIAC and its financial backers. Ben Cohen, senior editor of TheTower.org, joined in this review by posting a story on JNS.org recounting the various investigative news stories recently published about the NIAC including The Daily Beast and others and smartly asks the inevitable question that should be on the lips of every Capitol Hill staffer:

“Now that the truth about NIAC is emerging, one has to ask why anyone who seeks respectability in Washington would have anything to do with Parsi and his cohorts,” Cohen said.

“The Islamist regime in Iran is the root of the problem, not its cure: as long as it remains in place, there should be no talk of normalization. Second, that there shouldn’t even be an Iran lobby in America, if by ‘Iran lobby’ we mean individuals and groups like NIAC, whose mission is to sell this vicious regime as an attractive partner for Western democracies,” Cohen added.

Cohen is correct when he assesses only regime change in Iran will force changes in policy away from sponsorship of terror and human rights abuses. The real hope and future lies not in the nuclear deal Parsi has championed, but in a new presidential administration that can tear it up.

By Michael Tomlinson

Controversy Over Iran Lobby Connections Grows

September 17, 2015 by admin

Controversy Over Iran Lobby Connections Grows

The fallout from recent revelations about the nature and reach of the Iran lobby continues as more news media pick up various threads that are unraveling from Iran regime supporters such as the National Iranian American Council, which made an effort to pay former president Bill Clinton to deliver a speech to one of its fundraising galas.

“As we’ve said before, as a matter of course, all requests were run by the State Department,” said an official in the former president’s office. “And most importantly, ultimately, the president did not give this speech.”

It says a lot about associating with NIAC when you are relieved you didn’t take its money for a speech. For all of NIAC’s organizing, lobbying and fundraising, the disclosure of the paid speech forced a rapid backpedal away from the NIAC as it became clear no one wanted to be associated with a group so blatantly tied to Tehran’s mullahs. It also demonstrated that close association with the NIAC is not a recipe for long-term political health.

The struggle by the NIAC to overcome the Iran lobby label was taken up by liberal group Media Matters in a piece slamming original Daily Beast article by an Iranian dissident that examined the close ties NIAC and its staffers had with an influential Iranian family, the Namazis, who profit from consulting businesses helping to steer Western companies into partnerships with Iranian ventures, most owned or controlled by Iranian government entities such as the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Conspicuously, the Media Matters piece, which included statements by Trita Parsi of NIAC, failed to address the most basic facts in the Daily Beast article which was the past employment of NIAC staffers by the Namazis-controlled Atieh consulting firm, several of whom later went on to work in positions at the U.S. State Department and National Security Council.

The Media Matters piece also did not address Parsi’s own damning emails and documents that came out of failed defamation lawsuit against Hassan Dai who at the time was a journalist for the Voice of America reporting critically on the NIAC. Parsi and the NIAC not only lost that suit and the subsequent appeal, but were excoriated by the three-judge appeals panel and ordered to pay for Dai’s legal fees for destroying and altering calendars and emails to hide their relationship with regime officials.

Media Matters contention that the Namazis would not materially benefit from the lifting of economic sanctions and that benefits would flow to the Iranian people instead was one of the boldest distortions played out. Iran has consistently been ranked as one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet with vast swaths of the economy such as telecommunications, energy and commodities controlled through shell companies owned by the Revolutionary Guards Corps or regime leaders such as Hassan Rouhani and Ali Khamenei.

Reuters reported on one such arrangement controlled by Khamenei, one of the most powerful and secretive organizations in Iran – “Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam,” or Setad.

“The deal, which is likely to go into effect after clearing a major Congressional hurdle last week, lifts U.S. secondary sanctions on Setad and about 40 firms it owns or has a stake in, according to a Reuters tally based on annexes to the deal.

“The delisting of Setad — which has little connection to Iran’s nuclear program but is close to Iran’s ruling elite — feeds into U.S. Republicans’ criticism that the deal will empower Iran’s hardliners and help fund its regional ambitions.”

Reuters went on to report that with stakes in nearly every sector of Iran’s economy, Setad built its empire on the systematic seizure of thousands of properties belonging to religious minorities, business people, and Iranians living abroad, according to a 2013 Reuters investigation, which estimated the network’s holdings at about $95 billion.

Iranians who said their family properties were seized by Setad described in interviews in 2013 how men showed up and threatened to use violence if the owners didn’t leave the premises at once, said Reuters.

Already, one Setad firm appears to be moving to take advantage of the deal. Ghadir Investment Company, which the U.S. Treasury identified as a Setad-linked firm, signed a 500 million euro ($565 million) contract with the engineering unit of Finmeccanica, a spokesman for the Italian defense group said in August, according to Reuters.

Not only will the regime directly benefit economically from the nuclear deal, Parsi and his allies are now trying to spin the argument that things will improve in places such as Syria where nearly four million Syrian refugees have fled in the face of Afghan mercenaries hired by Iran, Hezbollah fighters armed by Iran and Syrian army troops loyal to the Assad regime funded by Iran.

Parsi went so far as to tell BuzzFeed that the deal would at the least help the conflict from escalating, but he neglected to mention the rapid escalation and destabilizing presence of Russian military troops and hardware now landing with regularity in Syria in support of Assad and working in cooperation with the Iran regime.

He also neglected to mention the regime’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani’s secret visit to Moscow in violation of United Nations sanctions to discuss the acquisition of new military hardware and coordinate operations in Syria where his Quds Forces has been in the vanguard of fighting there.

Now as the news media see the deep ties the NIAC has to the regime and with all of the Republican presidential candidates vowing to ditch the nuclear deal on the day they take office, the fire sale is on for the regime to swipe, take and steal as much as it can before the door is finally closed on them.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Stands to Reap Rewards of Nuclear Deal

September 16, 2015 by admin

Iran Lobby Stands to Reap Rewards of Nuclear Deal

An in-depth piece of reporting by Alex Shirazi (a pseudonym of an Iranian dissident) in The Daily Beast examined the financial windfall key members of the Iran lobby are due to inherit through passage of the nuclear agreement with the Iran regime; specifically the involvement of an Iranian family called the Namazis which played a key role in the creation of the National Iranian American Council, the lead lobbying force for the regime.

Shirazi examines the family’s history coming out the Iranian revolution and the opportunity it saw to turn a thawing in relations between the U.S. and the Iran regime into serious business opportunities, including Pari Namazi and her husband, Bijan Khajehpour, who returned to Tehran in 1993 to launch a company called Atieh Bahar Counsulting, offering services to foreign companies interested in doing business in Iran.

That company provided a pipeline of communication directly into the leadership of the regime and after more family members joined the enterprise, Atieh’s client list rapidly grew to include global brands such as “German engineering giant Siemens; major oil companies BP, Statoil, and Shell; car companies Toyota, BMW, Daimler, Chrysler, and Honda; telecom giants MTN, Nokia, Alcatel; and international banks such as HSBC,” according to Shirazi.

But that success was marred by their close relationship with leaders of regime who were revealed to be hip deep in corruption schemes including Mehdi Hashemi, the son of then regime president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was later imprisoned on bribery charges.

Coupled with revelations that the regime was in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2002 by disclosures from the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading Iranian dissident group, the Namazis’ saw their fortunes wan until Bijan Khajehpour began a relationship with Hassan Rouhani who would later be the handpicked president and sold to the world as the “moderate” face of the Iran regime.

With this new relationship, Shirazi describes the creation of the strategy that gave birth to the NIAC and the Iran lobby as Siamak Namazi met with Trita Parsi and together issued the document that laid the groundwork for the Iran lobby’s work:

Hold “seminars in lobbying for Iranian-American youth and intern opportunities in Washington DC.”

Increase “awareness amongst Iranian-Americans and Americans about the effects of sanctions, both at home and in Iran.”

End “the taboo of working for a new approach on Iran”—i.e., end the then-two-decade-old U.S. policy of containment.

Soon after the NIAC was created which Parsi heads and gave birth to an official lobbying arm, NIAC Action, both of which led the vanguard action pushing for the Iran nuclear deal.

Most interestingly, Shirazi describes how while serving as president of NIAC, Parsi wrote intelligence briefings as an “affiliate analyst in Washington, D.C.” for Atieh, focusing on such topics as whether or not the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) would revive its anti-Iran campaigning on the eve of the Iraq war, or on the efforts by the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MeK), an Iranian opposition group to oppose the regime.

Parsi became a strong booster of Khajehpour to American media while being paid by for his work and not disclosing that financial arrangement with Atieh.

With almost half a million Iranian Americans living in the U.S., NIAC only boasts 5,000 dues paying members, but claims a vast network of supporters for the regime’s causes. NIAC has also served as a proving ground for staffers who are funneled into U.S. government positions and other non-governmental organizations supportive of the regime.

Shirazi describes the background of Reza Marashi, who works for NIAC after coming to from a stint at Atieh and with the U.S. State Department as an Iran desk officer, a similar position that has other NIAC staffers, most notably Sahar Nowrouzzadeh who is now National Security Council director for Iran in the Obama administration and therefore the top U.S. official for Iran policy, have occupied.

Interestingly enough, Nowrouzzadeh does not list her employment as NIAC and Marashi refuses to acknowledge his time at Atieh.

Shirazi points out, as we did on this blog previously, how Parsi and the NIAC public and social media statements have hardly mentioned any criticism of regime policy, nor condemned the most notorious actions of the regime such as the three proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen it is fighting, nor the continued imprisonment of Iranian Americans such as Amir Hekmati and Saeed Abedini.

What the NIAC does focus on specifically is the lifting of sanctions against the regime and opposing any efforts within and outside the U.S. government to support regime change within Iran, both of which would have serious consequences on the prospects of the Namazi family.

Shirazi also recounts the failure of Parsi’s defamation lawsuit in 2008 against Hassan Dai, an Iranian exile working as an investigative journalist with the Voice of America. That lawsuit revealed a trove of documents substantiating much of the relationship Parsi and NIAC had with the regime leadership.

The reach and ambition of the NIAC was revealed this week by Fox News’ Ed Henry who disclosed that emails released from Hillary Clinton’s personal server included a request from former president Bill Clinton to State Department staff about the possibility of delivering a paid speech to a gathering hosted by NIAC. President Clinton eventually declined the speech, but the incident demonstrated Parsi’s desire to push into the highest levels of American policy making.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Promises of a “Changed” Iran Regime are Untrue

September 14, 2015 by admin

One of the central propaganda tenets of the Iran lobby, especially viewpoints espoused by the National Iranian American Council, Ploughshares Fund and media such as Lobelog is that the proposed nuclear deal with the Iran regime would help improve internal conditions in Iran, strengthen so-called “moderate” factions and lessen the tensions with the West.

But time and time again, the words and actions of the regime’s own leadership have continually undercut, undermined and proved those views to be false and misleading. In fact, the regime’s leader, Ali Khamenei, once again gave another of his patented speeches denouncing the U.S. yet again as the “Great Satan” and vowed that Iran would not negotiate on any topic beyond the just-concluded nuclear agreement.

“We agreed to talks with the U.S. only for the nuclear issue,” Khamenei said, according to his official website. “In other areas, we did not allow talks with the U.S. and we will not negotiate with them.”

As the titular head of the government and sole decision-maker on its foreign policy, Khamenei has repudiated virtually all of the key talking points used by regime supporters such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of the NIAC. It is clear that Khamenei was only interested in securing a deal that will allow billions in frozen assets back into the regime, lifts embargoes on trade, finances and arms sales and attaches no conditions on Iran’s human rights violations or support of terror and proxy wars.

But the Iran lobby continues to ignore these statements and plows ahead with its obfuscations. Take for example Parsi’s recent appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal segment where he sidestepped questions about the regime’s ability to continue to spread terror and acquire upgraded military hardware.

The crowning hypocrisy comes when Parsi denounces comparisons of the Iran nuclear deal to the infamous Munich deal with Nazi Germany and labels it “fear propaganda” when he himself has been one of the chief merchants of fear mongering by pushing the “war vs. peace” scenario for passage of the deal.

All of the efforts put forth by the Iran lobby have largely failed on the American people though as shown by the latest Pew Research Center poll released this week which showed a steep decline in support for the deal, falling from 33% approval in mid-July to now only 21% approving the deal just two months later.

Nearly half of Americans (49%) disapprove of the agreement with just three-in-ten (30%) having no opinion.

While the differences between Republican and Democrat approval and disapproval showed a wide gap, crucial independent voters remained opposed to the deal by a significant 47% to 20% margin auguring a contentious election season next year for any candidate supporting the deal.

Pressed further, the survey shows that of those polled who knew a little or a lot about the deal, opposition to the deal grew even larger by more than a two-to-one margin (57% to 27%) which demonstrates that the more people hear about the deal, the more they dislike it, which has to prove troubling for regime lobbyists such as Parsi.

The public continues to express little confidence that Iran’s leaders will live up to their side of the nuclear agreement. Just 2% have a great deal of confidence that Iran’s leaders will abide by the agreement, while another 18% say they have a fair amount of confidence. About seven-in-ten (70%) say they are not too confident (28%) or not confident at all (42%) in Iran’s leaders, said Pew Research Center in a statement.

We can only assume that the 2% having a great deal of confidence in the regime’s leaders must be staffers of the NIAC and Ploughshares Fund since that’s about all there is in America.

The fact that Khamenei flatly rejected any further talks with the U.S. on any other topics spells trouble for the Middle East and rest of the world over the next several years. The consequences of a resurgent Iran are already being felt with a Syrian regime now being bolstered by Russian troops and Iran-paid Afghan mercenary troops fighting in an ever-expanding conflict that is causing a refugee crisis throughout Europe and now touching on America.

The Syrian refugee crisis is emblematic of what is truly wrong with the proposed nuclear deal. As Lina Sergie Attar writes in The Daily Beast:

“One of the biggest complaints of supporters of the Iran deal about its critics is that they oppose the deal for no real reason but the sake of opposing. Perhaps for some politicians, that’s true. Syrians, though, can’t afford the luxury of contrariness. There is one very important reason to oppose any sort of concessions with Iran: Syria. Any deal that supports the regime that fuels the Assad regime’s military is simply a deal that rewards genocide, destruction, and mass displacement of innocent people,” she said.

“Today, almost half of the Syrian population has been displaced as a result of the relentless brutality of the Assad regime and the shocking violence of ISIS and Al Qaida. Eleven million people no longer live in their homes. Four million of them are refugees in neighboring countries. Over the past year, thousands of refugees have decided to risk their lives for a better future in Europe, embarking on harrowing ‘death routes’ across sea and land,” she added.

All of which can be laid at the doorstep of the Iran regime and their supporters.

By Michael Tomlinson

Ramifications of Iran Deal Now Being Felt

September 8, 2015 by admin

Ramifications of Iran Deal Now Being Felt

The web of Iran regime supporters working towards passage of the proposed nuclear agreement have consistently pushed the narrative that approval of the deal would usher in a new period of stability throughout the Middle East and open the door to further engagement with the regime, strengthen so-called “moderates” within Iran and bring about peace in our time.

Leading the pack have been cheerleaders such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, Jim Lobe of Lobelog, Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, Jamal Abdi of the NIAC Action and commentator Ali Gharib just to name a few, but all of their rosy talk has not obscured the ramifications of the deal which are now peeking through the carefully constructed façade of lies built by the Iran lobby.

One crack came in the form of concerns raised by a newly released report compiled by a group of high-ranking U.S. military officers about what the Iran regime will do with the billions of dollars it will receive in unfrozen assets compared to a U.S. military that has ramped down considerably and may not be able to handle a resurgent and aggressive Iran.

“As Iran bristles with more and newer arms, the United States will have fewer and older ones to counter them,” says the report from Retired Marine Gen. James Conway, Retired Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, Retired Navy Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, Retired Army Gen. Lou Wagner, Retired Vice Adm. John Bird, Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, and Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem.

Already, the former officials pointed out, the U.S. Navy won’t be able to maintain a carrier presence in the Persian Gulf for approximately two months this year due to reduced availability of carriers under budget sequestration.

If Iran decides to race for a nuclear weapon after the main provisions of the deal expires, the U.S. will be weaker militarily if sequestration remains the law of the land, Conway said.

“We believe the [deal] will in a sense unleash Iran in a conventional sense in ways that we have not previously seen,” Conway said.

The most obvious consequence of the regime’s influence and actions in the region has been the onslaught of millions of refugees fleeing the three main proxy wars Iran is involved in, including Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The plight of Syrian refugees fleeing the Assad regime and his mercenary army made up of Afghan fighters paid for by Iran mullahs, along with Iranian regime’s Quds Forces has been documented as they flood into Europe by foot, boat and train, often under perilous conditions.

Benjamin Weinthal, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote an editorial in the New York Daily News where he examined how past decisions by European nations and the U.S. not to move militarily against the Assad regime after he used chemical weapons led directly to the current refugee crisis.

“European politicians have remained silent on Iranian regime’s role in forcing Syrians to flee for their lives. Iran’s rulers have provided Assad with an economic lifeline to wage war. Hezbollah — Iran’s wholly owned terrorist subsidiary — has thousands of combatants fighting to retain Assad’s regime,” Weinthal said.

“Making matters worse, Europe and the U.S. are slated to release $150 billion in sanctions relief money to Iran as part of the deal to curb Tehran’s illicit nuclear weapons program. Assad will soon get a fresh economic shot in the arm,” he added.

Assad hailed the nuclear deal as a “great victory.” The nuclear deal was agreed to about a week after Iran extended him a $1 billion line of credit.

The Iran regime demonstrated its single-minded support of Assad when mullah’s foreign minister Javad Zarif criticized demands for Assad’s ouster saying such calls have prolonged Syria’s civil war in an absurd claim since Iranian regime’s support of Assad has been literally the only thing keeping him in power.

Zarif went so far as to say that those who have in the past years demanded Assad’s ouster “are responsible for the bloodshed in Syria” in a veiled reference to international calls for Assad to step down.

The Iran regime has been growing bolder in flexing its new-found moment on the international stage as Zarif made his outlandish statements while hosting a delegation from Spain which follows similar European delegations making the trek to Tehran to kiss the proverbial ring of the mullahs.

In fact, several western diplomats estimate that sanctions against the regime could be lifted as soon as the first three months of 2016 in a stunning repudiation of the original promises of three to five years made by the Iran lobby in selling the deal.

But there remain hopeful signs of defiance yet in the face of the overwhelming appeasement in placating the Iran regime, such as recent moves in Iraq by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who leads the Shiite majorities in southern Iraq to distance themselves from Iranian control exercised through ousted Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Maliki was largely viewed as an Iranian puppet and has been held responsible by Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni populations for allowing ISIS to take control over large parts of the nation and fostering deep levels of government corruption.

Sistani’s recent moves does offer a visible break from the Iran regime’s long stranglehold over Iraqi affairs.

Back in the U.S., Sen. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) and David B. Rivkin, Jr., a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, authored an editorial in the Washington Post in which they raised the potential for the filing of a lawsuit under the terms of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 which requires the Obama administration to submit to Congress “any additional materials related thereto, including . . . side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings, and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.”

They cite the decision by the administration not to submit for Congressional review a secret side deal between the regime and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which Iran has vocally opposed releasing.

“Both houses should vote to register their view that the president has not complied with his obligations under the act by not providing Congress with a copy of an agreement between the IAEA and Iran, and that, as a result, the president remains unable to lift statutory sanctions against Iran,” Pompeo and Rivkin said. “Then, if the president ignores this legal limit on his authority, Congress can and should take its case to court.”

By Michael Tomlinson

The Insidious Infiltration of American Government by Iran Lobby

September 7, 2015 by admin

Tritta Parsi paying respect to the Iranian regime delegation in Geneva

Trita Parsi paying respect to Iran delegation in Geneva Talks

Matthew RJ Brodsky, senior Middle East analyst at Wikistrat and former editor of inFOCUS Quarterly, took a deep dive in Huffington Post into the lobbying forces of the Iran regime and the progress it has made in infiltrating deep into American policy making positions under the Obama administration.

What piqued his interest and those who track the activities of the Iran lobby was the latest batch of emails released from Hillary Clinton’s email server in which the pro-regime group The Iran Project provided the administration with a 10-page plan that eventually served as the roadmap for engaging with the regime once again and led to the run up in negotiating the nuclear weapons agreement.

Brodsky includes the ground breaking investigative analysis done by Lee Smith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and senior editor of the Weekly Standard, who examined the ties Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, has with Iran regime insiders such as Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Parsi founded the NIAC in 2002 and was described by Smith as being the “tip of the spear of the Iran Lobby,” in terms of funneling a large number of former staffers into key administration positions and gaining the ear of key members of the Obama administration.

Breitbart News discovered the hiring of Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a former NIAC staffer, as the National Security Director for Iran who sat in on several high level meetings with President Obama while discussing negotiations with the Iran regime on the nuclear deal.

The NIAC attempted to dismiss Nowrouzzadeh’s position as a mere intern, but a 2004 document uncovered by Breitbart News described her as a former “staff member” at NIAC.

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic referred to Parsi as someone who “does a lot of the leg-work for the Iranian regime.”

Parsi’s close ties to the regime came under greater scrutiny during the tense negotiations between the regime and P5+1 negotiators in which Parsi and his NIAC colleague Reza Marashi were often seen conferring with members of the Iranian delegation and often were quoted by news media covering the talks using the same talking points and keys messages as the official regime news agencies.

Bloomberg reporter Eli Lake wrote about Parsi’s close connection with regime foreign minister Javad Zarif uncovered in documents made public as part of a failed defamation lawsuit brought by Parsi against an Iranian American journalist who accused Parsi of working on behalf of the regime.

NIAC and Parsi have moved out of the legally shadowy world of indirect lobbying by forming an official lobbying arm called NIAC Action which made no bones about its open lobbying for positions favorable to the regime and began the solicitation of funds as it expected to make donations to political campaigns it deems supportive of the Iranian regime.

Brodsky in his Huffington Post column also examined the flow of funds to regime lobbying groups and traced how the Rockfeller Brothers Fund spent millions of dollars since 2003 towards promoting a nuclear agreement with the regime, primarily through donations given to The Iran Project. That funding has been supplemented by additional contributions made through the Ploughshares Fund which has given substantial amounts of funding to the NIAC directly.

Ironically, the policy memos written by The Iran Project proved to be key elements of the Obama administration’s outreach to the Iran regime including a call to open a direct dialogue to top regime mullah Ali Khamenei by promising to not seek regime change as a means of reassuring the mullahs which came in the form of a personal letter from Obama early in his first term.

Paramount for the Iran lobby was not only securing a favorable nuclear deal for the regime, but more importantly unlinking any agreement from conditions related to the regime’s conduct in areas such as terrorism, human rights or military interventions through proxies and terror groups.

The de-linking of all these areas may very well turn out to be the biggest win for the Iran lobby.

By Michael Tomlinson