Iran Lobby

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

Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

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Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

It is a basic principle of physics that if you heat a liquid in a confined space, it will build up pressure until the container explodes unless the material is strong enough to withstand the pressure.

In the case of the leadership of the Iranian regime, the cracks are beginning to show as they struggle to absorb the implications of a Trump presidency and a newly energized Congress determined to demonstrate to the American voter that it can get tough on a militant regime in Iran.

One clear sign of Donald Trump’s attitude towards foreign policy and national security is his emerging Cabinet selections, in which he has assembled a large number of fierce opponents to the Iranian nuclear agreement.

As Adam Kredo outlines in the Washington Free Beacon, the selections include retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) as CIA director, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser, picks that have won plaudits for their vocal opposition to the nuclear deal.

“It’s no secret that Flynn considers Iran to be the linchpin of a global alliance of hostile rivals” said one source familiar with the backroom talks about future national security picks. “He was in the Middle East during the Iraq war and knows first-hand how Iranian proxies killed hundreds of American troops, and he has seen the intelligence showing that they’ve targeted Americans around the world.”

Other recent national security picks include KT McFarland, a longtime national security analyst and commentator who has vocally criticized Iranian regime and the nuclear deal, and Yleem Poblete, who served for nearly two decades as a senior staffer for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

A senior congressional aide familiar with Poblete’s work on key national security matters told the Washington Free Beacon that Trump’s picks would not back down from a showdown with Iran as it continues to fund terrorism across the Middle East.

Poblete played a key role in crafting sanctions against the Iranian regime and was the senior staffer on the Foreign Affairs Committee when they were initially signed into law.

For the mullahs in Tehran, the assembling team must be a nightmare for their future plans on counting on American appeasement. More importantly, the pressure seems to be getting to them as Iran has issued some pretty bizarre statements and actions over the past few days.

One incident involved the arrest of 12 people in the fashion industry in Iran who were jailed for “spreading prostitution” via images posted online.

The eight women and four men were handed sentences of between five months and six years by a court in Shiraz, a lawyer told the Ilna news agency.

They were also banned from working in fashion and travelling abroad for two years afterwards, Mahmoud Taravat said.

The 12 were convicted of charges including spreading prostitution and promoting corruption via the publication of obscene images online, inciting Muslims to corrupt themselves through putting on fashion shows, and spreading a “Western-style culture of nudity.”

The crackdown follows a similar crackdown earlier this year when in May, the prosecutor of Tehran’s cybercrimes court announced the arrest of eight people involved in posting photographs of women without headscarves on social media. Iranian law requires that all women cover their hair in public.

But that wasn’t the only episode of growing paranoia within the regime leadership. Al-Monitor also reported that even Iranian children born to foreign fathers are even under suspicion by the regime.

Based on Iran’s civil code, the marriage of an Iranian woman to a foreign national is dependent upon special permission from the Foreign Ministry. In practice, this means that Iranian women need to get permission to marry non-Iranian Muslims. Iran’s civil code forbids Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men. An estimated 70,000 marriages between Iranian women and Afghan men are not registered with the National Organization for Civil Registration. Meanwhile, Iran’s Interior Ministry has declared all marriages between Iranian women and Afghan men that took place after 2001 invalid.

In contrast, Iranian men may marry Muslim or non-Muslim women and Iranian or non-Iranian women without obtaining permission from the Foreign Ministry. Under Iranian law, children born to an Iranian father — whether residing in Iran or abroad — are considered Iranian. Meanwhile, children born to Iranian mothers are not granted automatic citizenship rights, creating a complicated situation for Iranian women who marry non-Iranian citizens.

The contradiction is yet another example of the misogynistic attitude of the regime’s leaders and ongoing harsh treatment of women under the regime’s religious rule. Since there is no religious basis for this different treatment of men and women, it is clear the regime’s legal provisions stem from old fashioned sexism and the devaluing of Iranian women and their children by the mullahs.

In many ways, these antiquated laws are reminiscent of racial laws that prohibited mixed race marriages or considered children of mixed races to be less than human; an apt comparison considering the Iranian regime’s eagerness to apply to death penalty broadly.

On a more practical level, the Iranian regime’s continued denial of the legal status of dual national Iranians has brought visits from abroad to a grinding halt as members of the Iranian diaspora rethink visits back to Iran in light of arrests and imprisonment of Iranians with citizenship from countries such as the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

The Los Angeles Times examined the growing fears among the largest Persian community outside of Iran in Los Angeles.

Last summer, San Diego resident Reza “Robin” Shahini became one of several U.S. citizens detained in Iran, joining dual nationals from Britain and France who had been arrested earlier this year.

His prison sentence came a week after Iranian American businessman Siamak Namazi, who was living in Dubai before his arrest, and his ailing father, Baquer Namazi, were sentenced to 10 years in prison each on similarly vague charges of spying for the United States, according to a report by Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s news service.

It is noteworthy that groups ostensibly working on behalf of Iranian-Americans, such as the National Iranian American Council, has remained largely silent as the practice of dual-nationals continues.

In August, the State Department updated its travel warning, advising that “Iranian authorities continue to unjustly detain and imprison U.S. citizens, particularly Iranian Americans, including students, journalists, business travelers, and academics on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security.”

Ultimately, the pressure on the mullahs may cause them to take even more aggressive actions and the world will need to be prepared for it.

Michael Tomlinson

Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

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Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

The experiment to see if the Iranian regime could be moved to join the community of nations and act in a moderate manner is officially over with the unanimous passage of the extension for renewal of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA).

The U.S. Senate passed a 10-year extension of sanctions against the Iranian regime, following a similar vote in the House, sending the bill to President Obama’s desk where he is expected to sign it.

The measure passed by a 99-0 vote after passing the House with only one dissenting vote in a bipartisan display of unity among Democrats and Republicans rarely seen in Washington.

Without the votes, the ISA was due to expire on December 31st. Leaders of both parties and the U.S. State Department have said passage of the extension would not violate the terms of the current nuclear agreement with Iran, even though the Iranian regime has threatened harsh retaliation in response.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) said the renewal ensures Trump can re-impose sanctions Obama lifted under the deal, in which Iran curbed its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

“Extending the Iran Sanctions Act … ensures President-elect Trump and his administration have the tools necessary to push back against the regime’s hostile actions,” Corker said in a statement.

“Given Iran’s continued pattern of aggression and the country’s persistent efforts to expand its sphere of influence across the region, preserving these sanctions is critical,” the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on Thursday. He said he expected the Trump administration and the new Congress to “undertake a total review of our overall Iran policy.”

As the U.S. legislation advanced, Iranian regime officials said that the country may increase its stockpile of enriched uranium, a move that could spark a new international crisis in the weeks before Donald Trump takes office.

“Iran has made necessary preparations for potential U.S. decisions about the extension of sanctions,” the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Monday, according to Iranian state media.

The threats are not surprising since top mullah Ali Khamenei has been making regular threats about tearing up the agreement even during negotiations last year.

What has changed though is that the gravy train of appeasement policies coming from the Obama administration in the hopes of moderating Iranian behavior probably has come to an end. The stunning majorities in passing the renewal demonstrate both political parties desire to taker tougher stand against Iran especially as yet another potential terror-related attack occurred on the campus of Ohio State University.

“The practical effect is the Iran nuclear agreement depends on our resolve, on our commitment to… stop a nuclear-armed Iran by using sanctions and other means if necessary,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who supported the Iran deal.

The passage marks just how far American opinion has swung over the past year in which the Iran lobby trumpeted the nuclear agreement as a landmark effort to bring the U.S. and Iran closer together only to see the Iranian regime launch three wars, arrest American citizens and threaten the U.S. with military confrontations almost everywhere throughout the Middle East.

Iranian regime’s actions have only grown worse under the nuclear agreement and the 99-0 vote is a recognition that more needs to be done to confront Iranian extremism and push back on it even as the mullahs devise new ways to sow chaos and confrontation.

One example of those methods came in the form of a new report issued by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an independent research group, which tied markings on munitions used by Houthi rebels in Yemen to arms shipments from Iran.

The markings found on rifles, rocket launchers, anti-tank guided missiles and munitions provided some of the more concrete evidence to date of Iranian regime’s logistical support to Houthis fighting in Yemen’s nearly two-year-old civil war, according to the Washington Post.

Vice Admiral Kevin M. Donegan, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the region, told reporters that the first of the five weapons shipments were seized in April 2015. CAR’s report focuses on three weapon caches recovered in early 2016.

“CAR’s analysis of the seized materiel … suggests the existence of a weapon pipeline extending from Iran to Somalia and Yemen, which involves the transfer, by dhow, of significant quantities of Iranian-manufactured weapons and weapons that plausibly derive from Iranian stockpiles,” the report says.

A Somalia-bound dhow was stopped with 2,197 weapons onboard. Aside from a smattering of small arms including Kalashnikovs and medium machine guns, the vessel was laden with roughly 100 Iranian-made RPG-7-style rocket launchers.

While the Iran lobby continues to try and discount the votes on ISA, they ignore the unanimous majorities it garnered for its passage. Most disturbing for Iranian regime sympathizers such as the National Iranian American Council is how far the pendulum has swung away from appeasing the regime to finding ways to hold it accountable.

Laura Carnahan

Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

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Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

Since the Iran nuclear deal was agreed to last year have things gotten better or worse in the Middle East?

It isn’t just a speculative question for polite cocktail conversation. It goes to the heart of a key question facing not only the incoming Trump administration, but the entire world really since if the answer is a definitive “No” the world will have to significantly alter its approach to the Iranian regime since the policy of appeasing it over the past two years has been an abject failure.

Part of the challenge in dealing with the mullahs in Tehran is that while the nuclear agreement only dealt with the nuclear portion of Iran’s actions, it has been the Iranian regime’s actions in all other areas that have contributed to what can only be called a mess of global proportions.

One of the central tenets of the Iran lobby’s support for the nuclear agreement was that it would foster more moderate behavior from Iran, empower moderate elements in the government and lead to a pathway for regional peace with Iran as a central broker.

None of those things have come to pass. In fact, since the agreement, things have only gotten significantly worse, which is why a debate is raging in Washington and other capitals about what to do with Iran and the nuclear agreement moving forward after the Trump administration assumes office.

For the Iranian regime and the Iran lobby, the threats have been clear and loud; revocation of the agreement would lead to “dire” consequences with intimations of a new arms race and confrontation.

It’s hard to imagine how much worse things could get as the Iranian regime has helped contribute to the deaths of 800,000 people in Syrian, turned another four million in refugees swamping nations from Germany to Hungary to Greece, to starting a conflict in Yemen that threatens to start a regional war with Saudi Arabia and potentially drawing in the U.S. and Russia into direct military conflict.

This is not hyperbole. It is a very real possibility and much of it can be blamed squarely at the policies of Ali Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani and their clerical brethren.

The response from U.S. lawmakers has become increasingly tough as Democrats and Republicans have joined in criticizing the Iranian regime as they recognized the political mood of the American voter after a historic election.

Senate Democrats are ripping Iran over threats issued by top Iranian officials to retaliate if Congress extends sanctions that the Obama administration has said are permitted under last summer’s nuclear deal, according to conversations with lawmakers conducted by The Weekly Standard.

Iranian regime officials have threatened reprisal in recent weeks if Congress extends the longstanding Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) and have called the potential 10-year extension a violation of the nuclear deal.

“Iran is making this up. These problems don’t exist,” Maryland senator Ben Cardin, ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Weekly Standard. “Congress, by extending ISA, is not taking any new steps against Iran at all.”

Fellow New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez, who also voted against the deal, said that the ISA is critical for reigning in illicit Iranian activity and should be reapplied regardless of Iranian threats.

The ISA had already been passed by the House by a near-unanimous vote and the Senate vote is expected to deliver a similar result even though Secretary of State John Kerry made a last-ditch appeal to Senate Democrats.

The Obama administration has joined the Iran lobby is trying to stoke fears of Iranian retaliation should the ISA be renewed. A remarkable position to take since the administration has not offered any retaliation for similar missteps by the regime including two clear violations of the agreement found by the UN’s watchdog agency.

Last month, seven Democrats who voted for the deal last year wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to urge him to schedule a vote on the bill, arguing that it strengthens the deal by giving the White House an “unambiguous ability to immediately snap back sanctions in the coming years.”

But none this has stopped supporters of the Iranian regime from continuing to make silly claims such as Massoumeh Torfeh in Al-Jazeera, in which she claimed that if Trump were to confront Iran, it would embolden and help “hardliners” in Iran.

This is again the same misleading argument made endlessly by the Iran lobby which tries to mask the inescapable fact of life now in Iran: the hardliners have always been in charge anyway.

“The year 2017, in which Iran would be holding presidential and provincial elections, would be dominated by a heated debate between the hardliners and the centrists on how to handle the new US presidency and the nuclear deal signed with the so-called P5+1 endorsed by the United Nations Security Council,” Torfeh writes.

It is nearly word for word the same argument made earlier this year in advance of Iran’s parliamentary elections which were supposed to deliver a larger “moderate” body, but instead became ever more hardline as Khamenei’s handpicked councils wiped away thousands of potential candidates from even appearing on the ballot.

A similar outcome is expected in 2017 regardless of what Iran sympathizers like Torfeh promise.

The reality of Iran’s bad behavior is undisputable. The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East reinforced that view this week.

Army Gen. Joseph Votel said the agreement, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits to its nuclear program, was being “implemented appropriately,” but that it has not changed Iranian behavior.

“I am concerned about continued malign activities of Iran across the region,” Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, said at a forum hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Those included Iran’s cyber activities, the use of surrogate forces, facilitation of lethal aid, buildup of missile and anti-access capabilities, and unprofessional and aggressive activities in the Persian Gulf, he said.

Michael Tomlinson

 

 

Iran Lobby Broadens Attacks Against Trump Nominees

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Iran Lobby Broadens Attacks Against Trump Nominees

Iran Lobby Broadens Attacks Against Trump Nominees

The full-scale assault against President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for key positions by the Iran lobby is underway as Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), his pick for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, became the latest target of a hit piece; this time in Huffington Post by Ryan Costello, a policy fellow at the National Iranian American Council.

Costello attacks Pompeo for his fierce opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement and attempts to portray the nominee as some wild-eye lunatic seeking to carpet bomb Tehran.

“Pompeo has been a fierce ideological opponent of the Iran nuclear accord and gone out of his way to work to roll back the multilateral agreement. Perhaps most disconcertingly, Pompeo has downplayed the costs of bombing Iran, hyped bogus ‘secret side deals’ in order to discredit the accord and engaged in public political stunts harmful to U.S. diplomatic efforts,” Costello writes.

Costello then goes on to laughably attempt to portray the Iran nuclear agreement as having delivered benefits to the U.S. intelligence community by allowing closer monitoring of Iran nuclear activities.

Of course, this is one of more idiotic assertions that could be made since U.S. intelligence largely missed Iran’s burgeoning nuclear program in the first place and even some secret nuclear facilities only came to light when revealed by Iranian dissident groups and not U.S. intelligence assets.

Costello also neglects to mention how since the deal was passed, the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has already reported several violations of the agreement by Iran and sought waivers and exemptions rather than enforcement.

His laundry list of rewriting history includes trying to portray the secret side deal given to Iranian regime and not disclosed to Congress at the time of debate over the agreement as nothing more than a business as usual action.

Even more interesting was Costello’s attempt to brush off Pompeo’s efforts to visit Iran to observe parliamentary elections last February that were widely viewed as rigged given the regime’s decision to wipe off thousands of candidates from the ballot. Costello also criticizes efforts to visit Americans being held captive in Iranian prisons as a political stunt.

It should be noted that not even Costello nor his NIAC colleagues ever expressed a desire to check on the status of their fellow Iranian-Americans being held in Iran, nor did they ever mount a grassroots or media campaign on their behalf for their release.

Hypocrisy seems to be a common thread through NIAC’s public statements versus public actions.

But the NIAC and the rest of the Iran lobby are never ones to miss an opportunity as well as it has issued a fundraising call based on the election results; putting itself squarely in the camp opposed to the Trump administration from the outset.

Elham Khatami, NIAC’s outreach director, posted a fundraising appeal on the group’s website asking for donations to combat the perceived injustices of a future Trump administration.

“Trump has selected a man with ties to the White Nationalist movement, Steve Bannon, as chief strategist, pro-war lawmaker Mike Pompeo as CIA Director, and noted Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor,” Khatami writes.

Clearly the NIAC has chosen the best course of action to oppose any initiative set for by the new administration and has raised the stakes in describing Trump’s nominees in such graphic and alarming ways.

None of this should be too surprising since the Iran lobby has already calculated the policy of appeasing Iran by the U.S. is rapidly coming to an end and as such is now reduced to essentially fighting a rear-guard action to minimize the damage to Tehran.

The mullahs in Tehran recognize this may be the end of their gravy train as well as more provocative actions by Iran’s military aimed at U.S. forces have stepped up including another incident in the Persian Gulf in which Iranian regime warships aimed their weapons at U.S. helicopters; an action that U.S. defense officials called “provocative.”

Two U.S. defense officials told Reuters on Monday that a small vessel operated by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) trained its weapon on a Navy MH-60 helicopter on Saturday as it flew within half a mile of two Iranian vessels in international waters.

Several similar incidents have occurred this year. In September, a U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship changed course after an Iranian fast-attack craft came within 295 feet of it.

This incident only reinforces the Iranian regime’s intent to advance their extremism as a mean to their survival and hence appearing in confrontation with the West  at every turn since the nuclear deal was agreed to last year, including using its forces to attack U.S.-backed forces in the Syrian civil war, in Iraq in the sectarian war begun by Iran and in Yemen where Iranian-backed Houthis now battle U.S. and Saudi-supported forces.

Ultimately, the sooner Trump’s foreign policy team can be put in place, then the sooner the business of holding the Iranian fully accountable for its actions can begin…and none too soon.

Michael Tomlinson

As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

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As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

So much for Iranian moderation.

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has long maintained that following the nuclear agreement, Iran would become a more moderate force in the Middle East and a new period of U.S.-Iranian relations would spring forth.

The unfortunate truth has been the complete opposite—much to the Iran lobby’s chagrin—but Iran’s militant actions are continually defended by their staunch advocates with nary a word of criticism ever coming out.

It did not matter if top mullah Ali Khamenei threatened destruction on the U.S. or restated continually that Iran would be on a war footing to oppose the U.S. as the “Great Satan.”

It did not matter if Iran took American citizens against their will and locked them up only to demand billions of dollars in ransom and even after negotiating a prisoner swap, the mullahs again took more Americans hostage and again stated plainly and openly its hope to garner more billions of dollars.

It did not matter what the Iranian regime did because the Iran lobby was always going to ignore the bad news and keep pushing a positive narrative.

But now with the new Trump administration assembling its national security team, which appears to be comprised of many critics of the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby finds itself trying out new tactics to protect the regime.

Part of this new effort includes trying to throw mud at potential Trump appointees in an effort to discredit them such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani who is being touted as a potential Secretary of State, or former UN ambassador John Bolton who is also being considered for a top foreign policy post.

An example of the smear campaign by the Iran lobby was a scandalous editorial that ran in Politico authored by Daniel Benjamin who attacked Giuliani ruthlessly by using information provided by Iran’s intelligence agencies in their efforts to smear Iranian opposition groups.

It is interesting to note that the information Benjamin used was taken almost word for word from similar postings made by Iranian-linked sources attacking opposition and democracy groups, but the fact that he went so aggressively after Giuliani demonstrates the level of pressure the Iran lobby must feel as Trump’s cabinet is beginning to shape up with well-known Iran skeptics.

Robert Torricelli, the former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, penned a scathing rebuke to Benjamin in Politico that correctly pointed out the attack against Giuliani had little to do with the former mayor, but rather was aimed at the broader Iranian resistance movement that has gained substantial support from both Democrats and Republicans in recent years.

It is this democracy movement that causes the most panic amongst the mullahs in Tehran since it represents a homegrown opposition of fellow Iranians and makes a lie of the idea the Iranian government indeed has moderate elements within it.

Instead, the mullahs have cracked down harshly against opponents both political and otherwise with mass arrests of journalists, students and other activists and ensuring the election of a parliament securely filled with their loyal supporters.

These are all things the Iran lobby chose to ignore and with every Iranian provocation, groups such as the NIAC maintain their deafening silence.

Take for example statements made the other day by the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces where he openly called for an expansion of Iranian military bases in other countries.

“We need distant bases, and it may become possible one day to have bases on the shores of Yemen or Syria, or bases on islands or floating (bases),” said General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, quoted by the Shargh daily newspaper.

“Is having distant bases less than nuclear technology? I say it is worth dozens of times more,” added Baqeri, who was speaking at a gathering of naval commanders.

It is no accident he names Syria and Yemen, both countries that Iran has spent considerable resources in financing, weapons and fighters to hold as vassal states.

This part of the larger narrative and vision the mullahs in Tehran have openly talked about in creating a Shiite sphere of influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. It is also why Iran is engaged in sectarian wars against Sunni tribes in Iraq and Sunni-majority nations such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Even Iran’s fight against ISIS is not about combatting terrorism but trying to eliminate a Sunni rival for regional hegemony.

So long as the Iran lobby continues its efforts to provide cover for the mullahs, it is reasonable to believe that whatever groups such as the NIAC has to say about Iranian intentions will always be suspect.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

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Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

Prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, the Iran lobby launched a large PR effort aimed at trying to influence the debate starting to form as to how the incoming Trump administration should approach the problem of Iranian extremism in the Middle East, especially its support for terrorism and the escalating conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

President-elect Trump has already begun forming his national security team with the announced appointments of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as United Nations ambassador, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn as national security advisor, Fox News commentator K.T. McFarland as deputy national security advisor, and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as CIA director.

His selections signal a likely end to the previous administration’s policies of trying to appease the Iranian regime in order to secure a more accommodating stance from Tehran. Those policies—as evidenced by the aftermath of the nuclear agreement—clearly demonstrated that the mullahs in Tehran were no mood for moderation and clearly believed they could take advantage of the U.S. and other nations that brokered the agreement.

Since the election, the Iran lobby has been faced with the uncomfortable truth that its influence in Washington is going to be greatly diminished in light of the new election results and the continued skepticism of the Iran nuclear deal by leaders like Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

But the Iran lobby is doing the bidding of the mullahs by ramping up its efforts in a last-ditch effort to try and spin a new web of obfuscations to replace the failed “echo chamber” of voices urging accommodation with Iranian leaders.

The most offensive product to be produced as part of that effort was a so-called “report” issued by the National Iranian American Council and signed by 76 so-called “national security” specialists, the vast majority of whom lack any national security or military credentials or experience at all. Most were either paid staffers or consultants allied with the NIAC or academics from fields as national security related as linguistics and anthropology.

While the issuance of the report itself and accompanying NIAC statement did not garner much media attention outside of blogs such as Lobelog.com supportive of the Iranian regime, some of the individuals named in the report have taken up the cause with their own media efforts to flog the idea of support for Iran.

One of those was Stephen Kinzer, who penned an editorial in the Boston Globe urging Donald Trump to pursue a pathway of what he calls “dual conciliation” which reads more like a warmed over version of the failed policy of appeasement he previously urged.

Kinzer’s piece is interesting for several reasons, especially one thing he wrote which was that the U.S. should judge Iran not by sentiment, “but strictly according to whether their actions promote our interests. Our central interest in the Middle East is containing violent radicalism.”

It is an odd thing to say since the actions of the Iranian regime have not matched the sentiments it has publicly urged. While leaders such as Hassan Rouhani have purred lines of peace and moderation, the leadership of Ali Khamenei has directed Iranian forces to deepen the war in Syria, widen sectarian violence in Iraq and start an insurgency in Yemen that threatens a direct conflict with Saudi Arabia.

Kinzer is right, we should judge Iran on its actions and not the sentiments the Iran lobby would have us believe. It’s a path that Trump’s national security team has already publicly advocated during the course of the campaign in urging significant reforms to the nuclear deal, as well as holding Iran accountable for its actions.

Kinzer also tries to portray Iranian mullahs as a valiant enemy of Islamic extremism in the form of ISIS, but does not even attempt to distinguish the type of Islamic extremism Iranian regime itself is responsible for. It’s another attempt by Kinzer to try and portray Iran as a “good” Islamic extremist and ISIS as a “bad” Islamic extremist.

The distinction he tries to make is like trying to distinguish between Hitler’s SS and Brownshirts. To their victims, there is no difference.

Similarly, he fails to note that the Iranian regime is the central source of the instability raging through the Middle East. By trying to link the unrest to a supposed Saudi Arabia vs. Iran conflict, he ignores Iranian regime’s use of terrorist proxies in Hezbollah or insurgents such as the Houthis in Yemen or Shiite militias in Iraq to wage unrelenting war. Therefore unlike his proposal, Iranian regime is not going to be any kind of security partner for the rest of the world.

Iranian regime has attempted to build a Shiite extremist dominant empire with wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen to wrest those controls under its control alongside Lebanon and possible Egypt.

None of this should be unexpected since Kinzer is widely known to be a left leaning and a strong critic of the correct policies, especially as it relates to in confronting Latin American and Middle Eastern dictatorships, authoring books on the subject, which we assume makes him a “national security” expert.

Kinzer has long advocated policies of non-intervention which makes him an adequate tool for the NIAC in trying to protect Iranian regime from any repercussions for its actions.

Like his fellow Iran lobby advocates such as Trita Parsi of the NIAC, they are finding a shrinking audience for their message of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran in light of the evidence of a year of Iranian human rights crackdowns and several violations of the nuclear agreement.

We can only hope the Trump administration maintains its skeptical eye to future promises of Iranian moderation.

Michael Tomlinson

Reasons to be Thankful on Campaign Against Iran Regime

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Reasons to be Thankful on Campaign Against Iran Regime

Reasons to be Thankful on Campaign Against Iran Regime

This Thanksgiving will be a momentous one for a lot of people, not only for an end to a bruising, contentious presidential election campaign season, but also for the hope it brings in fostering a new approach and outlook on how to address the Iranian regime’s growing militancy and expansion efforts.

Closer to home, this Thanksgiving is also one for us to be grateful to see how the true nature of the Iran lobby movement has been revealed and uncovered for the rest of the nation to see.

We should be thankful that the past year after the Iran nuclear deal was approved we have seen just how flat out false the promises were made by Iran supporters such as the National Iranian American Council and Ploughshares Fund.

They promised a more moderate Iranian government. We got a midterm parliamentary election that was rigged by the mullahs who wiped off thousands of names from the ballot and ensured they remained firmly in control of the government and it remained a religious theocracy.

They promised an Iran that could serve as a stabilizing force in the Mideast and solve the Syrian civil war diplomatically. What we got was an alarming escalation of sectarian war in Syria, Iraq and Yemen that caused the greatest refugee crisis since World War II and broadened the conflict to pull in Saudi Arabia, Russia and the U.S. into dangerous confrontations.

They promised a liberalization of moderate forces in Iran and an improvement in the lives of ordinary Iranians. Instead, the Iranian people experienced one of the harshest crackdowns since the Islamic revolution with thousands of people arrested, imprisoned and sentenced without fair trials and many hanged publicly. The crackdown has been so widespread and deep that even posting a selfie on Instagram can get you arrested.

We can also be thankful that the tactics of the Iran lobby have finally been revealed as nothing more than carrying the water for the mullahs in Tehran.

Advocates such as Trita Parsi of the NIAC talk a good game about supporting Iranian-Americans, but we now see how they have remained largely silent on the snatching up of dual national Americans by Iran and how the NIAC and its allies have mounted no grassroots campaigns, no lobbying efforts, no hashtag campaigns, nothing to help those Iranian-Americans languishing in Iranian prisons.

We should also be thankful that with a new administration, we will hopefully see an end to the experiment of appeasing the Iranian regime in the hopes of an end to the tyranny in Iran.

The past year has aptly demonstrated how foolish that belief was and now with the new administration, we hope for a change in the policy of appeasement of the mullahs in Iran, and in that way, we may finally have an administration that will hold Iranian regime accountable and not treat the symptoms but go after the core problem which is the regime’s religious leadership.

Ultimately, we should be thankful that as a nation and global community the luster has finally worn off on the idea of appeasing Iran’s dictatorship and now we need to cobble back together the international consensus to hold Tehran accountable for its actions and finally focus on improving the human rights situation there.

No solution to Iranian intractability can occur without addressing a liberalization of its policies against its own people, ending the executions, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

We can be grateful and thankful on this Thanksgiving weekend that those are all things we celebrate here.

Laura Carnahan

NIAC Tries to Fool the Public on Iran Again

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NIAC Tries to Fool the Public on Iran Again

NIAC Tries to Fool the Public on Iran Again

The National Iranian American Council is in overdrive using the proverbial firehouse to blanket websites, blogs and comment forums in the hope that the incoming Trump administration doesn’t undo the past three years of achievements on behalf of the Iranian regime.

It’s latest contribution was a piece appearing on CNN authored by Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi who again attempt to portray the choices facing the new administration in regards to the nuclear agreement reached with Iran as an either or proposition of leaving it alone or ripping it up and risking grave consequences.

It’s a Hobson’s choice that the NIAC has become adept at: Follow our suggestion and everything will be fine, but dare threaten Iran and risk cataclysm.

The 800,000 people killed in the Syrian conflict so far at the hands of the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Iranian fighters would be hard pressed to agree with those choices.

The Iranian regime has established itself clearly as uninterested in peaceful conflict resolution and instead has doubled down and gone all in using military force and violence in an effort to impose its religious will on its neighbors in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Parsi and Marashi argue that Trump should take the “political risk necessary to broaden the opening to Iran precisely to avoid replicating recent US policy failures in the Middle East.”

This may be the stupidest statement made yet by Parsi and Marashi.

Why on Earth would Donald Trump want to take a political risk on behalf of Iran, especially as he is already being assailed by the mainstream press and the political elites that turned their noses up at his candidacy (Parsi and Marashi included)?

Parsi and Marashi attempt to force the focus on the survival of the nuclear agreement with Iran when the issue has never been the agreement itself, but rather the behavior of the mullahs in Tehran.

No agreement is worth the paper it’s printed on if one of the participants in the agreement willfully ignores it right from the beginning. The fact that the Obama administration and European Union granted several waivers and exemptions right at the start made the agreement ineffectual and impotent.

During the campaign, Trump correctly focused not on the agreement itself, but the conduct of the mullahs after the agreement was reached. His criticism of the billions of dollars in cash released to Iran and its use in funding conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen demonstrates he looked at the optics correctly, optics that Parsi and Marashi are trying hard to change now with their desperate lobbying campaign.

Parsi and Marashi attempt to frame the discussion around one of Trump’s biggest pledges which was to destroy ISIS and argue that “he cannot walk away or renegotiate the nuclear deal without undermining the coalition against the terror group.”

Unfortunately, Parsi and Marashi never acknowledge that Iranian regime itself is part of the axis of terrorist sponsors with its long-running support for Hezbollah and its sheltering of Al-Qaeda leaders in Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan drove them out.

They also incorrectly state that the Iran nuclear deal cannot be re-negotiated when in fact any agreement can be re-negotiated; a simple fact that the businessman in Trump knows full well. When you have a rotten deal on the table, it’s the idiot that accepts it as gospel. Trump is no idiot, much as Parsi and Marashi have claimed in the past.

Parsi and Marashi are correct when they characterize Iran as having “substantial latent power – population size and potential for wealth generation,” but miss the most crucial aspect of that power, which is “how will Iran’s leaders choose to apply it?”

Will clerical leaders such as Ali Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani seek to use that potential to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians? Of course not.

Iran’s economy has spiraled downward generating massive protests from small businessmen to school teachers, only to engender a broad and punishing crackdown on dissenters that have filled Iran’s prisons to capacity.

Will the Iranian regime seek to stabilize the Middle East and seek to reduce tensions and conflict? Absolutely not.

Iranian regime deepened the Syrian conflict and broadened it, while bringing Russia into the fight and setting the stage for a return to Cold War confrontations between the U.S. and Russian armed forces. Iran mullahs ignited the Yemen civil war with its clandestine military support for Houthi rebels and plunged Iraq back into sectarian conflict by raising Shiite militias in fighting Sunni insurgents tossed out of the power-sharing government of former president Nouri al-Maliki.

What is even more astonishing is Parsi and Marashi’s suggestion that the solution to the Middle East’s problems is to solve the “Saudi-Iran cold war”; an observation that is ludicrous given the fact that any solution to the current crop of problems in the Middle East starts and stops in Tehran.

Until Parsi and Marashi actually admit that Iran needs to curb its military adventures and support for insurgency and terrorism in order to advance the prospects for peace, nothing they say or write should be considered legitimate policy discussions and instead simply be viewed as propaganda for the mullahs in Tehran.

The quest for peace begins only when Tehran stops trying to rule its neighbors.

Laura Carnahan

Why the NIAC Has Lost All Credibility

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Why the NIAC Has Lost All Credibility

Why the NIAC Has Lost All Credibility

The National Iranian American Council has gotten virtually nothing correct over the last three years when it comes to predicting the behavior and actions of the Iranian regime.

That in and of itself should not be too surprising since in its role as a chief advocate and lobbying force for the Iranian regime, its responsibility is not to journalistic fact, but to lobbyist advocacy. That fact alone should make any journalist talking to them or reading their publications slightly skeptical from the outset.

Also, it is erroneous to consider the NIAC a “human rights” organization when its stated mission goal of helping Iranian-Americans is plainly shown to be ignored at best and duplicitous at worst since the NIAC does not mount media or grassroots efforts on behalf of imprisoned Iranian-Americans in Iran. Nor does the NIAC ever join with mainstream human rights groups such as Amnesty International in pressing the Iranian government to release these American hostages.

While the NIAC takes out full page ads in the New York Times touting the moderation of the Iranian regime, it does not similarly take out full page ads critical of Hassan Rouhani’s public statements in which he reaffirms the regime’s policy of not recognizing dual citizenship; the only nation on the planet to do so.

The NIAC promised Iranian moderation in light of a new nuclear agreement, but in the 18 months since, Iran has embarked on what is arguably the widest range of war, insurrection and human rights abuses spanning four countries including Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

At home it has defeated, removed and imprisoned virtually all political opponents. It has resorted to mass arrests of students, journalists, artists, bloggers and anyone else showing any inkling of rebellion to the mullahs.

It has conscripted Afghan refugees to fight and die as mercenaries in Syria, while it brought Russia into the conflict resulting in the mass bombing of civilians, hospitals and reduced Aleppo to a pile of dust.

All of these things NIAC promised would not happen, yet it has all come to pass.

Now the NIAC has issued a 45 page “report” of recommendations to the incoming Trump administration on how to secure American interests in the Middle East.

While mildly entertaining as a work of fiction, the Trump transition team would be wise to consider using this report to wrap up food leftovers since that is all it is good for.

This document is nothing more than a retread of the same tired and now proven false assumptions the NIAC has been peddling now for the past decade. It loses all credibility for one basic omission: It never acknowledges nor criticizes Iran’s role in the escalation of tensions and bloodshed in the Middle East.

That’s like blaming the weather for a mass murderer on the loose.

If one understands that the NIAC is an Iranian regime advocate and not a human rights organization, it is easy to understand the priorities it places on its discussion topics in the document.

It places the nuclear agreement and the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia as its two more important topics, which coincidentally are the two most pressing concerns for the Iranian regime.

It then dives into Iraq and Syria, the two principle battlefields Iran is involved with in creating its Shiite sphere of influence. Oddly, the report does not mention Yemen or the rise of Islamic militants in sub-Saharan Africa which are now responsible for instability stretching from Egypt to Nigeria to Yemen.

Lastly, the report devotes a scant three pages to human rights and only from the perspective that Washington can only improve human rights by essentially trusting the Iranian regime to do the right thing if Washington caves in and appeases the mullahs fully.

The one thing the report does say is that the Trump administration “should heed the advice of Iranians themselves.” On this point, NIAC is correct, but not in whom it believes are the right Iranians to listen to.

The Trump administration needs to part ways from failed policies of the Obama administration and muzzle the “echo chamber” of Iranian lobbying it created. It needs to chart its own pathway and listen to the concerns, thoughts and advice of Iranian dissidents and opponents both within Iran and outside.

Let the Iranian people counsel on what are the best approaches to bringing back a secular, democratic government in Iran. That kind of advice is not likely to come from the NIAC, Ploughshares Fund or similar Iranian lobbyists.

It will come from opponents such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Amnesty International and outspoken leaders on the human rights situation in Iran such as Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

The most amusing part of the NIAC report is the claim that was signed by 76 “national security experts” but a closer review of those names and titles reveals that:

  • 3 are staff members of NIAC
  • 47 are professors, mostly from history, linguistics and anthropology disciplines
  • 1 has a military background
  • Zero are human rights activists

The overwhelming number of these so-called “experts” is in reality advocates and lobbyists for the Iranian regime or commercial interests tied to the Iranian regime such as Bijan Khajehpour, managing partner of Atieh International which works to line up foreign businesses with Iranian-state industries.

Mainstream media outlets would do well to finally stop quoting these sources that are as accurate as pollsters on election night.

Michael Tomlinson

Near Unanimous Vote to Extend Iran Sanctions Act Shows Weakness of Iran Lobby

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Near Unanimous Vote to Extend Iran Sanctions Act Shows Weakness of Iran Lobby

Near Unanimous Vote to Extend Iran Sanctions Act Shows Weakness of Iran Lobby

The decision by the House to renew the Iran Sanctions Act is noteworthy for two things: One is the margin, an overwhelming 419-1 vote that clearly demonstrates on this one issue, both Democrats and Republicans universally agreed on the outcome.

The second is that the age of appeasing the Iranian regime and giving credence to the Iran lobby’s echo chamber on “moderation” has finally died in the wake of an unrelenting year of war, carnage and bloodshed by Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies following approval of the nuclear deal.

It is universally agreed to even among the most ardent supporters of the mullahs in Tehran that Iran could have done more to demonstrate its commitment to being a reliable international partner.

The fact that a lame duck session of the House voted these sanctions through says lots about how members truly feel. While there is no disagreement about wanting to compel Iran mullahs to not build nuclear weapons, the methodology of how to get there is clearly and appropriately back up for debate.

The ISA itself, extended for another decade by this vote, is not even connected to the nuclear deal since it deals with sanctions imposed for Iran’s support for terrorism and development of ballistic missiles; items that Iran lobby supporters such as the National Iranian American Council famously argued should be disconnected from the nuclear deal. They are now paying for that disconnect.

The other sanction, which was passed on a unanimous voice vote no less, imposes sanctions on anyone assisting the Syrian regime in the wholesale slaughter of civilians and contributing to the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Given that Iran is Syria’s biggest sponsor and supporter, the message to Tehran is clear: Get out of Syria and stop supporting the mass murder of men, women and children.

Ultimately the best thing to come out of these moves will be to refocus the debate on human rights and the barbaric practices of the Iranian regime and Syria.

The renewal and extension of the ISA and the sanctions connected to Syria provides the incoming Trump enormous flexibility and tools as it takes up the thorny question of how to roll back Iranian aggressions.

The Iran lobby has been busy trying to make the case that the status quo needs to continue and in fact grant Iranian regime even more concessions with the further lifting of restrictions preventing the regime from tapping into U.S. currency exchanges to finance its activities, but even a blind man can recognize the American voter was in no mood to accommodate Iranian regime during a time when fears over terrorism was ranked as the second-highest concern they had in exit polling right after the state of the economy.

Both Democrats and Republicans realize their political careers might be cut short if they followed through with President Obama’s desire to maintain the status quo. It is clear from the dramatic results from the election that Americans want change and they are willing to decimate the political class to get it.

For the Iran lobby, especially long-time advocates such the NIAC and Ploughshares Fund, their options have narrowed dramatically to have any leverage with the new Congress and the Trump administration, which is why they have shifted their focus to a shotgun approach of trying out any number of message points and see if any of them stick.

One of the stranger rationalizations offered by Trita Parsi of NIAC, is that trying to isolate the Iranian regime may prove difficult for Trump since the Obama administration first made the case that Iran had failed to cooperate and thus was able to assemble an international coalition.

But Parsi must be nuts to think the international community doesn’t recognize that Iran has been at the very center of three of the worst raging wars on the planet today in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Parsi even pins his hopes on Iran’s fight with ISIS as a saving grace for Trump that may spare Iran from retaliatory sanctions for sponsoring other terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. By his logic, giving Iran a hall pass for fighting one murderous group of thugs while supporting another murderous group of thugs is somehow a good thing.

In another example of how the Iranian regime axis of Shiite influence is trying to recalibrate to the new reality of a Trump administration, even Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad said in an interview on Tuesday that Trump was a “natural ally” if he was committed to fighting “terrorists.”

Of course Assad’s definition of “terrorist” might be very different from the American definition given his military’s targeting of civilian neighborhoods and hospitals with airstrikes, barrel bombs and chemical weapons.

What Parsi, Assad and even the mullahs in Tehran do not understand is that Trump is far from the knee-jerk, knuckle dragger they tried to portray him as during the presidential campaign. Far from it, Trump has focused his policies on the idea of restraining Iranian regime influence and resetting the power balance in the Middle East away from Iran and back towards global powers.

His openness towards working with Russia and Vladimir Putin presents a more subtle and unique threat to Iran since Putin might even make the calculation that forging a partnership with the U.S. negates the need for supporting Iran’s interests so long as preservation of a warm water port in the Mediterranean from Russian ships is guaranteed.

For Iranian mullahs, the field is narrowing in terms of their ability to affect outcomes, which is why the Iran lobby has been campaigning hard to influence who will be sitting on key positions of the upcoming administration.

Laura Carnahan