Iran Lobby

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

One Year after Nuclear Agreement Iran Is Worse

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One Year after Nuclear Agreement Iran Is Worse

One Year after Nuclear Agreement Iran Is Worse

This weekend marked one year since the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – was reached between Iran and the group of nations known as the P5+1 and subsequently adopted by the United Nations Security Council and European Union.

The Iran lobby made it a life or death struggle between forces of good and moderation versus dark and hardliners. The Iran lobby promised a new era of rising moderate political influence and an opening to the West. The Iran lobby warned that failure to approve the agreement would plunge the region into chaos and open the door for decades of unremitting violence and turmoil.

The Iran lobby promised that failure to approve a deal would lead to a cataclysmic war with Iran that could unleash nuclear weapons. It warned of a war-mongering hunger within the U.S. government intent on eradicating the poor, peaceful mullahs.

“War against Iran has been on the agenda in Washington since at least 2005. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate is credited with thwarting the George W. Bush administration’s plans — confirmed to me by administration officials — to attack Iran by revealing that the U.S. intelligence community had concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons program,” wrote Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council last June 2015 in Foreign Policy.

His warnings were part of the “good cop, bad cop” playbook the Iran lobby used in praising Iran’s intentions and denouncing the threat of war from those opposed to the deal.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, they were spectacularly wrong in their promises and warnings. One year later the Middle East is in chaos with three full blown wars raging across Syria, Iraq and Yemen, causing the largest refugee crisis the world has seen since Adolf Hitler went goose-steeping across Europe.

Yousef al-Otaiba, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the U.S., wrote in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal of the uncertainty and angst being felt throughout the region with a newly empowered and aggressive Iranian regime since the nuclear deal.

“Since the nuclear deal, however, Iran has only doubled down on its posturing and provocations. In October, November and again in early March, Iran conducted ballistic-missile tests in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“In December, Iran fired rockets dangerously close to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz, just weeks before it detained a group of American sailors. In February, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan visited Moscow for talks to purchase more than $8 billion in Russian fighter jets, planes and helicopters.

“In Yemen, where peace talks now hold some real promise, Iran’s disruptive interference only grows worse. Last week, the French navy seized a large cache of weapons on its way from Iran to support the Houthis in their rebellion against the U.N.-backed legitimate Yemeni government. In late February, the Australian navy intercepted a ship off the coast of Oman with thousands of AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. And last month, a senior Iranian military official said Tehran was ready to send military ‘advisers’ to assist the Houthis,” Otaiba writes.

The laundry list of militant acts by the Iranian regime grows longer each day to include smuggling warheads and arms to Shiite cells in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, widespread crackdowns at home aimed at political dissidents and religious minorities, large-scale human rights violations including historic levels of executions of women and children, and rigging of parliamentary elections to remove over half of the candidates from even appearing on the ballot, including the most loyal agents and officials of the same regime in the past few decades.

The swiftness of the transformation of the Iranian regime since the nuclear deal was approved last year has been stunning. The mullahs are flush with cash, they’ve invited foreign companies to invest billions, not suffered any repercussions from human rights violations or involvement in proxy wars, kept their nuclear enrichment infrastructure intact and elevated development of their ballistic missiles to reach Europe, Africa and American military bases from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.

And the regime has no intentions of taking its foot off the gas, especially in the area of boosting its missile capability.

Ali Larijani, the regime’s parliamentary speaker and someone lauded by the Iran lobby as a “born-again moderate” said that Iran should continue to develop its missile capabilities despite opposition from western countries.

“Although some excuses recently raised by a number of Western countries about Iran’s missile [tests] are flimsy and legally worthless, they are indicative of their long-term policy which [shows] that they do not want the Islamic Republic to be powerful enough to ensure regional security,” he said according to Tasnim News on Saturday.

“For this reason,” he added, “we should insist on strengthening the country’s defense capability, especially in the field of missiles.”

There is a certain irony that last year the world was worried about nuclear warheads and now it has to worry about missiles to carry those warheads and battlefields across the region, as well as a sharp rise in terror attacks striking at cities around the world killing hundreds.

The ultimate irony came in President Obama’s remarks at the so-called National Security Summit this weekend in Washington in which he criticized the regime for undermining the “spirit” of the agreement even as they stick to the “letter” of the deal.

“Iran so far has followed the letter of the agreement, but the spirit of the agreement involves Iran also sending signals to the world community and businesses that it is not going to be engaging in a range of provocative actions that are going to scare businesses off,” Obama said at a press conference.

“When they launch ballistic missiles with slogans calling for the destruction of Israel, that makes businesses nervous.”

“Iran has to understand what every country in the world understands, which is businesses want to go where they feel safe, where they don’t see massive controversy, where they can be confident that transactions are going to operate normally,” he added. “And that’s an adjustment that Iran’s going to have to make as well.”

I can’t tell if the president is naïve or just-plain dumb when he equates a burgeoning missile program and threat of nuclear annihilation to a need to improve Iran’s business climate. The problem the world is dealing with in Iran is not that businesses are skittish of investing, but rather that the mullahs are intent on remaking the world in their own image.

We can only hope that come November, a new administration will be more intent on reigning in Iranian extremism rather than the opening of a new McDonalds or Starbucks in Tehran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Pressure Mounts to Keep Iranian Regime Out of Financial System

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Pressure Mounts to Keep Iranian Regime Out of Financial System

Arrangement of various world currencies including Chinese Yuan, Japanese Yen, US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, Swiss Franc and Russian Ruble pictured in Warsaw January 26, 2011. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

The American dollar is the world standard for global currencies. Its fluctuations set the pricing in currency markets, allows companies and governments to transact business around the world and provide certainty in holding reserves and assets in turbulent times.

The role of U.S. currency is so integral to conducting business, the Iranian regime’s removal from the global banking system and access to U.S. dollars crippled its export economy and was one of the most significant drivers in forcing the mullahs back to the negotiating table after putting enormous pressure on their finances.

The nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime reached last year provided for an easing of sanctions including allowing the regime access to previously frozen assets, but the agreement did not affect certain restrictions that remained in place keeping Iran out of U.S. currency markets for non-nuclear sanctions such as support and sponsorship of terrorism.

This has proven to be somewhat of an Achilles heel for the mullahs since not having complete and unfettered access to U.S. dollars hampers its ability to conduct international exports such as exchanging euros for dollars for taking advantage of currency floats to earn additional money from the estimated $100 billion in assets it now has access to in overseas accounts.

Relaxation of those restrictions would also greatly ease the ability of family members of the ruling mullahs and members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps to move the illicit funds they have squirrelled away over the past decade in engaging in black market petroleum sales and transfers of weapons and other banned technologies to enrich themselves.

This has become such a thorny issue for the regime that virtually all of its leaders, including Ali Khamenei, Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, have denounced the U.S. for not fully lifting access and threatened to walk away from the nuclear agreement as a result. To say their complaints carry a hint of desperation would be understatement.

The Iran lobby has followed similarly in calling for a complete lifting of all sanctions and warning of a collapse of the agreement that could threaten the region with more disorder, which any rational person would find hard to believe when you look at Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq.

The Obama administration has typically floated some trial balloons to give the regime access to U.S. currency through loopholes creating offshore clearing houses not tied to the U.S. banking system that foreign banks could access to exchange dollars.

The reaction from Congress has been unified and uniformly negative to the idea. A senior State Department official reassured concerned lawmakers on Tuesday that the Obama administration is not planning to allow Iran access to the U.S. financial system or use of the U.S. dollar for transactions.

“The rumors and news that have appeared in the press … are not true,” Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

U.S. lawmakers have expressed deep concern about recent reports that the administration might let Iran use the dollar in some business transactions.

That concern was reinforced in an editorial by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in the Washington Post.

“Iran has yet to see the economic growth it wants from President Obama’s nuclear deal, and it’s demanding additional concessions — above and beyond the agreement — in return for nothing. Specifically, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants the United States to end sanctions aimed at curbing Iran’s funding for terrorism and illicit weapons so Iran can gain access to the U.S. financial system, where the majority of international business is conducted,” Royce said.

“This is an alarming departure from the Obama administration’s position just months ago. Indeed, when selling the nuclear deal to the American people last year, the administration repeatedly stressed to Congress that key terrorism, missile and human rights sanctions against Iran would continue to be vigorously enforced,” he added.

“Iran has seen what Obama will do to preserve his nuclear deal, and it’s taking full advantage. The United States cannot cave again. Congress should make clear that until the Iranian regime drops its illicit missile program and funding of terrorism, it won’t receive another dime of sanctions relief,” Royce said.

Royce is correct in pointing out how the world has gotten virtually nothing in return for the nuclear agreement after one year with Iran engaging in a broad range of militant and aggressive moves both home and abroad. The sheer number of provocative acts has dismayed supporters of the regime and put them on the defensive in trying to explain away everything from missile launches to mass executions to interception of illegal weapons shipments.

For Iran lobby supporters such as the National Iranian American Council and media boosters such as Jim Lobe of Lobelog, their task has been to focus on the idea that the U.S. is failing the nuclear agreement and not the other way around.

Lobe attempted to use results from public opinion polls done in Iran to show how the Iranian people were growing more distrustful of the U.S.

“Confidence that the U.S. will abide by the deal has also slipped—from 45% in a September survey by the Gallup organizations to 29%, according to CISSM. Although 41% of respondents said in September that they were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ confident about Washington’s compliance, the new poll found that figure had risen to 66%. The pollsters did not probe the reasons for the increase in skepticism, although it may relate either to the continuing imposition of sanctions as well as coverage of the election campaign here,” Lobe writes.

His reasoning is as silly as the mullahs blaming the U.S. for the threat of new sanctions for launching illegal ballistic missiles.

The Iranian people live in a society under harsh control by the mullahs where online activities are tracked and they are subjected to withering amounts of anti-American propaganda on a daily basis.

Is it any wonder they feel negative upon seeing no improvement in their lives one year after the deal as Rouhani has promised to keep unfrozen assets overseas to help purchase new weapons and Khamenei has vowed to maintain a “resistance economy?”

These are not the acts of a regime interested in improving the lives of the Iranian people and we should not be swayed their continued propaganda.

By Michael Tomlinson

Khamenei Defends Illegal Missile Program as World Worries

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Khamenei Defends Illegal Missile Program as World Worries

Khamenei Defends Illegal Missile Program as World Worries

In a speech that reinforced the fact that he alone was firmly in control of the Iranian regime’s military policies, top mullah Ali Khamenei firmly defended the regime’s ballistic missile program in the face of mounting concerns around the world as missile after missile has been launched.

In a speech on Wednesday, Khamenei said that Tehran would lose its leverage in negotiations with the world’s major powers if it were to abandon its missile program.

“These are times of both missiles and negotiations,” he said. “If the Islamic establishment seeks technology and negotiations but does not have defensive power, it will have to back down in the face of any petty country that threatens it.”

It’s a curious point to make since Iran currently possesses the largest military in the region, and now flushed with over $100 billion in cash from the nuclear agreement, has gone on a furious buying binge of new advanced military hardware including tactical fighters, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missile batteries, tanks and encrypted communications equipment.

The regime also exerts influence and power through its network of terror groups and proxies such as Hezbollah, Shiite militias and the Houthis in maintaining control. The argument of needing intercontinental ballistic missiles for defense is farcical since such weapons are commonly characterized as first-strike offensive weapons.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 expressly restricts the regime from developing such weapons and Khamenei has openly dismissed such restrictions as being inapplicable to Iran.

Khamenei was speaking to religious eulogists in Tehran a day after it emerged that the US and its European allies in the security council had written a joint letter warning that recent missile tests by Iran were in defiance of a UN security council resolution adopting last year’s nuclear agreement.

The letter, which claimed that Iranian missiles were “inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons”, was carefully drafted and did not say, however, that the tests violated the accord itself, which would have serious implications on its implementation.

Earlier in March, the Revolutionary Guards claimed to have successfully tested two ballistic missiles, Qadr-H and Qadr-F, during large-scale drills. The Fars news agency, which is affiliated to the guards, said the missiles carried a message in Hebrew written on them: “Israel must vanish from the page of time.”

His speech was aimed not only at international audiences, but also to domestic ones in which he sought to tamp down any expectations of hope for moderation or change in the regime’s leadership. Even at age 76, Khamenei remains engaged and committed to the extremist principles it espouses.

The furor over how to rein in the regime’s missile program is an ironic repeat of the same consternation and debate that enveloped the regime over its nuclear program three years ago. While Groundhog Day already came, it still seems like the cycle of Iranian violations and threats of new sanctions is repeating itself.

This also points out the inherent weakness of the Iran lobby’s argument last year in which groups such as the National Iranian American Council argued strenuously to remove subjects such as the ballistic missile program from nuclear negotiations in the false hope it would lead to moderation.

The opposite has occurred now that the regime, led by Khamenei, feels it has the upper hand in pushing forward with its military programs without worry of repercussions or penalties.

But if signs that the United Nations Security Council might not sanction Iran over its ballistic missile program continue, a key member of Congress vowed an angry response, potentially increasing the incentives for lawmakers to come down hard on Tehran with congressional sanctions.

That “directly contradicts assurances made by the administration,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said in a statement Wednesday. “As many of us feared, now it appears Iran can defy those restrictions with impunity, fearing no pushback from the U.N. Security Council.”

The Treasury Department has taken steps to sanction Iran over the reported ballistic missile tests, blacklisting individuals and companies that it determined are working to support Iran’s ballistic missile program. There is strong bipartisan support for coming down hard on Iran for the missile tests as well, with several Democrats who supported the Iran deal arguing it is essential to the integrity of that deal to make sure Iran is held to account for its actions elsewhere.

Sens. Corker and Ben Cardin (D-Md.), are expected to soon release bipartisan legislation stepping up sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile program.

The flurry of action shows the price to be paid for previous inaction in opposing the regime. Sooner or later, the world will have to come to the realization that appeasing the mullahs only emboldens them.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Blaming US for Failure of Nuclear Accord

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Iran Lobby Blaming US for Failure of Nuclear Accord

Iran Lobby Blaming US for Failure of Nuclear Accord

Like the erupting of Old Faithful or the certainty of the tides and moon, the Iran lobby is now attempting to blame the failure of the nuclear agreement reached with the Iranian regime squarely on the Obama administration and the U.S.

It’s an absurd and bitterly ironic move since it was these same supporters of the Iranian regime who lauded President Obama for disregarding the opinions of the American people, his military and national security advisors and a majority of Congressmen to do a deal with a nation firmly in the thrall of religious extremists.

Since the deal was done last summer, the evidence of Iran’s complete lack of compliance has been laid bare to see ranging from the testing of illegal ballistic missiles and narrowing of inspections to carefully stage-managed media events to the imposition of a vicious human rights crackdown and rigging of parliamentary elections that delivered continued control of Iran to the ruling mullahs.

And in a complete demonstration of weak intestinal fortitude, the doors were opened for Iran to access over $100 billion in cash which is promptly used to begin buying advanced new weapons from Russia, as well as host North Korean officials connected to that regime’s nuclear and missile programs.

Meanwhile, the Iranian people have seen no benefits or improvements in their lives, only greater oppression as detailed by Amnesty International and the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Iran who have noted a dizzying climb in executions, including among children and women, and severe crackdowns against religious minorities such as Christians, Sunni Muslims and Bahai, as well as journalists, artists, students and political dissidents.

Now the Iran lobby is blaming the U.S. for the failure of the nuclear accord?

“The nuclear accord between the U.S., other major world powers, and Iran is under threat. But the source of this risk might upset expectations: it is the Obama administration that has failed to resolve persistent ambiguities with the U.S. sanctions relief and, as a result, major foreign banks continue to refuse to handle transactions involving Iran, frustrating the expectations of Iran’s people for economic reprieve and plaguing the ultimate sustainability of the nuclear accord,” said Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council in a piece in Huffington Post.

Last week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly alleged that the United States was failing to “respect its commitments” under the nuclear accord, particularly by “using roundabout paths to prevent the Islamic Republic” from achieving economic re-integration with the rest of the world. Specifically, the Supreme Leader decried the reticence of foreign banks to re-engage with their Iranian counterparts, chalking it up to pernicious efforts by U.S. sanctions authorities to undermine the benefit of the sanctions relief for Iran, wrote Cullis.

It’s an absurd series of statements that would take an encyclopedia to deconstruct, but let’s take a shot at the highlights or rather, the lowlights:

  • Ali Khamenei, the religious dictator in control of Iran, has long hammered the U.S. and the rest of the world for that matter not only for sanctions and policies aimed against the regime, but also for the failure to free Iran to interact with the rest of the world, even though he has consistently called upon Iranians to embrace a “resistance economy” built on the idea that the regime could be self-sustaining and not subject to future sanctions; thereby freeing it to pursue any policies it wanted free from reprisals;
  • Khamenei and Cullis’ claim that Iran is being kept from re-entering the international financial system is partly true in that the Obama administration is still debating whether or not to lift those restrictions. The problem is that since the regime insisted that the nuclear deal not be tied to other contentious issues such as support for terrorism and human rights violations, the similar lifting of sanctions in place for those “unrelated” activities might violate U.S. laws on the books;
  • Cullis’ contention that failure to lift access to the financial system is burdensome on the Iranian people is a farce since the government of Hassan Rouhani has already announced it is going to keep the bulk of its new-found wealth abroad to be used to buy planes, missiles, telecommunications equipment and other items the regime was prohibited from buying beforehand. Virtually none of that money will find its way back to Iran to provide healthcare for Iranians, boost the consumer economy or even help protect Iran’s environment devastated by gross mismanagement by the mullahs.

Khamenei and Cullis can’t have it both ways. You cannot demand to have items delinked from the deal and then demand the lifting of sanctions not related to the nuclear deal as well. In this case, both are whining like bully children being denied the ability to smack around another child that already waved the white flag.

While Cullis urges to provide foreign banks with clear guidelines on how to tap Iran back into the financial system, he neglects to focus on the real issue which is by treating the nuclear deal by itself and not addressing the vast number of other collateral issues, the sanctions program against Iran regime is frankly a mess and vast loopholes and uncertainty everywhere.

In fact, the Obama administration and U.S. Treasury Dept. have already had to levy additional sanctions and criminal charges against individuals and companies for violating existing sanctions, as well as for brand new cyberattacks on U.S. financial institution and a New York dam.

“Without taking steps such as these, the Obama administration will continue to frustrate Iran’s expectations and risk the nuclear accord in the process. When it comes to U.S.-Iran relations, perceptions matter; and the perception in Iran right now is that the U.S. — whether acting out of malice or negligence — is hindering the practical benefit to Iran of the sanctions relief. Should this perception grow in Tehran that the United States is not a good-faith actor with which Iran can deal, both the historic nuclear accord and the progress in relations between the two bitter adversaries will be placed in bitter peril,” Cullis adds.

It’s a silly statement to make because it pre-supposes that the burden of compliance falls on the U.S. and its allies, not on Iran mullahs which violated international law in the first place by pursuing nuclear weapons!

This is like a serial killer being paroled from prison and then suing the state for not providing him with a beachfront home in Malibu and brand new Tesla in the garage.

Cullis’ gumption is admirable, it’s takes a special kind of chutzpah to push for a terror regime to gain access to the world’s ATM machine.

By Laura Carnahan

“Eye for an Eye” is Literal to Iran’s Mullahs

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“Eye for an Eye” is Literal to Iran’s Mullahs

“Eye for an Eye” is Literal to Iran’s Mullahs

Proving that “an eye for an eye” is more than just an Old Testament verse, the Iranian Supreme Court has sentenced a man to have his eye gouged out after blinding another man in a street fight, according to the Independent.

The 28-year-old, identified only as Saman, was convicted under the regime’s strict retribution laws after fighting in the street with his then 25-year-old victim when he was 23.

According to Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based NGO, Saman claimed he had unintentionally blinded the man with a metal rod.

The regime – controlled by a group of religious clerics – uses a strict interpretation of sharia law of “an eye for eye.” Last year, a man convicted of attacking another man with acid – blinding and disfiguring him for life in the city of Qoms – was sedated and had his left eye gouged out.

The regime’s reliance on barbaric and grotesque punishments more akin to the Dark Ages is a product of the mullahs’ utter devotion to their strict extremist ideology which continues unabated during the so-called moderate administration of Hassan Rouhani.

Since coming to power as a supposed moderate in 2013, Rouhani has presided over the execution of more than 2,300 people as well as public beatings, floggings and amputations.

In 2014, a Christian man was sentenced to having his lips burnt off with a cigarette for eating during daylight hours in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In June last year, authorities at the Central Prison in Mashhad, Khorasan Province, amputated four fingers from the right hands of two men sentenced for theft without anesthetic, Amnesty International reports.

These ongoing acts have failed to garner the scrutiny they deserve, but some are beginning to question why Western governments are eager to normalize relations with a regime that regularly engages in such despicable acts.

Case in point was in Australia which has extended diplomatic overtures to the Iranian regime in the wake of the nuclear agreement. On Wednesday, government senators Cory Bernardi and James Paterson expressed their concerns about Saman’s case. Senator Bernardi questioned whether Australia should be cozying up to Iran.

“How can we justify opening diplomatic relations with a country that wants Israel destroyed, imprisons Christians and hangs people for being homosexual?” Senator Bernardi said.

“The world needs to wake up to the reality of what is happening in the Middle East.”

“We should never turn a blind eye to such injustices,” he added.

Senator Paterson said it showed Iran had a long way to go before it would be “recognized and respected” in the international community.

“As Australia and other Western nations seek to normalize our relations with Iran, we cannot ignore its appalling record of human rights abuses and medieval justice,” Senator Paterson said.

The increase in such inhuman punishments, coupled with more violations of sanctions against ballistic missile development and the downward spiral of nearby wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen are convincing some nations that the Iranian regime needs to be reined in despite the nuclear agreement which the Iran lobby claimed would moderate the regime.

The U.S. and its European allies issued a joint letter saying Iran’s recent ballistic tests involved missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and were “inconsistent with” and “in defiance of” council resolution 2231, adopted last July.

The joint U.S., British, French, German letter was sent to Spain’s U.N. Ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon.

In spite of the clear violations by the regime and the clear lack of regard for human rights, the four powers’ carefully worded letter stopped short of calling the Iranian launches a “violation” of the resolution, which “calls upon” Iran to refrain for up to eight years from activity, including launches, related to ballistic missiles designed with the capability of delivering nuclear weapons in an another sign of continued weakness in the face of Iranian aggression.

That aggression has directly led to the destabilization of much of the Middle East and contributed to the mass exodus of refugees that have flooded into Europe which has helped conceal a reported 400 foreign fighters the terror group ISIS has claimed to slip back into several countries to stage attacks similar to the Paris and Brussels strikes.

This helped set the stage for the ultimate irony of Rouhani canceling his planned state visit to Austria because of “security concerns” since his policies and those of his fellow mullahs have been a largely responsible for causing the terror surge the world is experiencing now.

The postponement appeared to catch Iranian media by surprise as most had prepared special sections detailing trade links between the two nations.

Another area where the promise of a moderate Iran by the Iran lobby has failed to live up to the reality has been the inability of foreign companies to lure Iranian expatriates into going back to Iran to work on new ventures.

According to Reuters, some expatriates whose families left Iran before or soon after the 1979 revolution are skeptical about career prospects and worry that Tehran’s refusal to recognize their dual citizenship status makes them vulnerable to arbitrary arrest.

Security forces have arrested some dual nationals who hold U.S. and European passports in recent years on unspecified national security charges.

Others hesitate because of concerns over the bureaucratic regime, the lower standard of living in traffic-clogged Tehran and restrictions enforced by the “morality police” on Islamic dress and behavior codes.

For many Iranians living inside Iran and abroad, the harsh truth is that as long as the mullahs remain in charge, conditions will not be improving.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Doubles Down on Missile Violations

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Ali HajizadehThe Iranian regime announced its intent to continue pursuing development of its illegal ballistic missiles despite the U.S. blacklisting of more Iranian companies linked to the program, according to multiple news sources.

The regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) test-fired several ballistic missiles this month, drawing condemnation from Western leaders who believe the tests violate a United Nations resolution.

The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted on Thursday two Iranian companies, cutting them off from international finance over their connection to the missile program. Washington had imposed similar sanctions on 11 businesses and individuals in January over a missile test carried out by the IRGC in October 2015.

“Even if they build a wall around Iran, our missile program will not stop,” Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC’s aerospace arm, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency. “They are trying to frighten our officials with sanctions and invasion. This fear is our biggest threat.”

Hassan Rouhani, the regime president touted by the Iran lobby as a pragmatic conservative, said on Sunday that boosting Iran’s defense capabilities is a “strategic policy.”

“We will pursue any measure to boost our defense might and this is a strategic policy,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by Press TV in the first cabinet meeting in the new Persian year.

The fact that the regime fought hard to separate its ballistic missile program from the nuclear agreement reached last year created the kind of yawning loophole which now allows it to develop longer range missiles without fear of jeopardizing the flood of billions in cash now streaming into the regime as a result of the deal.

Hajizadeh downplayed the recent sanctions describing them as futile efforts to curb the regime’s missile program and he is correct in large measure because the deal struck by the Obama administration essentially only allows for pinprick sanctions in response to missile violations.

It also ignores the fact that the nuclear deal does not prevent the Iranian regime from using its new generation of missiles to use chemical or biological weapons payloads, increasing the lethality of what the mullahs can order up.

Another demonstration of the futility of patchwork sanctions was a visit to Iran by North Korean executives of the Korea Mining Development Trading Corp., which is under both UN Security Council and U.S. sanctions for exporting equipment related to ballistic missiles and other weapon systems.

The North Koreans met with the regime’s Shahid Hemat Industrial Group to sell valves, electronic components and measurement devices that are used in liquid-fueled ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles.

The continued commerce between North Korea and the Iranian regime shows how much things have not changed since the deal was signed and demonstrates the fundamental untruth pushed by regime allies such as the National Iranian American Council that the nuclear accord would dramatically alter Iran’s relationship with the world.

Nothing has changed and if anything the past few months have shown how much worse things have gotten with appalling terrorist attacks mounted by Islamic extremists in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino and a refugee crisis that shows no sign of slowing down as Iran continues to send fighters to battlefields throughout the Middle East.

Ali Safavi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading Iranian dissident group, wrote in the New York Daily News about the disconnect between the perception of reformers within the regime and the reality of their hardline practices.

“The leaders of this round’s so-called reformist faction include former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and current President Hassan Rouhani. The former was famously embraced in the early 1990s by the West as a pragmatist willing to do business, before he we went on to preside over the worst period of the Iranian regime’s terrorist attacks and assassinations of dissidents and foreign nationals abroad,” he said.

Indeed, during his “moderate” presidency, Rafsanjani’s Iran was regarded by the U.S. State Department as the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism, a dubious distinction maintained by the current president,” Safavi added. “When will Washington wake up and learn that perhaps the Iranian regime is fundamentally incapable of reform? When will it learn that it should invest in the Iranian people and the real opposition instead of the phony moderates?”

He poses the central problem with policymakers and elected officials dealing with the Iranian regime: failure to learn from past mistakes dooms us to keep repeating them.

Until the world stands firm against Iranian subterfuge, these types of sneaky acts will only continue.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Presses Harder Human Rights Crackdowns

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Iranian Regime Presses Harder Human Rights Crackdowns

Iranian Regime Presses Harder Human Rights Crackdowns

While Christians celebrated Easter this weekend with prayers and hopes for peace, love and redemption, the Iranian regime stood alone in its wide ranging efforts to crackdown on human rights, stir up confrontation and foment strife around the world.

In spite of promises made by regime officials such as Hassan Rouhani and loyal supporters such as the National Iranian American Council that Iran was a model of moderation and accommodation for religious and ethnic minorities, the opposite has been the case as the regime showed little tolerance for anyone outside of its own narrow ideology that fuels an extremist fervor.

Take for example the plight of Christian converts in Iran who risk prison or death by secretly worshipping as Christians in Iran’s house church movement. According to watchdog groups, the number of Christians in Iran worshipping in secret has surpassed one million people.

The London-based Pars Theological Center is training at least 200 Iranian Christians to become the next generation of Iran’s church leaders, the Christian Post reported.

The persecution of Christians has persisted in Iran since the 1979 rise of the country’s theocratic government — with Christians facing the threat of death, lashing and torture. About 100 Christians currently remain imprisoned under Rouhani’s rule.

In 2010, top mullah Ali Khamenei said the country’s underground house churches “threaten the Islamic faith and deceive young Muslims.”

Sources describe Iranian house churches as consisting only of about four to five members — due to the threat of detection — and that they are forced to their place of gathering every time they meet.

“If they want to sing, they have to sing very quietly or not sing at all,” the source told the Post.

While Iran has released high-profile Christian pastors from captivity — most notably Iranian American Saeed Abedini — other Christian ministers still languish in the country’s prisons.

Regime punishment and torture of religious minorities has included brutal treatment of Sunni Muslims and those who follow the Baha’i faith, in which details of torture inflicted upon twelve Baha’is by interrogators three years ago at Amir Abad prison and detention centers in Iran’s Golestan Province—and the Iranian Judiciary’s complete lack of any response to the formal letter of complaint that was sent in 2012 by the victims of that torture to the head of the Judiciary of Golestan Province, were recently revealed in the media.

Twelve Baha’i citizens described harrowing instances of torture by their interrogators at the Amir Abad Prison, in the city of Gorgan, and other unnamed detention centers in Golestan province, northeast of Tehran.

“On the first day of his interrogation, Mr. Behnam Hassani’s wrist was tied very tightly with a rope and attached to a metal ring. The ring was raised to a nail above his head such that only his toes could touch the ground. He was in so much pain that he started to scream and shout,” said the letter.

“Then they brought him down and dragged him into a room and beat him. They pressed a pen between his fingers and hit him behind the head and on his mouth… Then they kept him under the rain for several hours on a cold night,” continued the letter.

These twelve Baha’is were among the 24 Baha’is (the other 12 were arrested in February and March 2013, also in Golestan Province), who recently received long prison sentences in January 2016.

Meanwhile, Ellie Silverman reporting for McClatchy News Service, detailed some of the brutal treatment regime prisoners received and how many were threatened before being released not to reveal any details of their mistreatment.

“A detailed picture of life inside Evin can be put together from interviews with former prisoners” Silverman writes. “Solitary confinement was one aspect they all had in common. All were blindfolded whenever they were taken from their cells, according to the Canadian, American and Iranian prisoners who spoke about their experiences,” Silverman continues.

“Another key aspect: Each prisoner was assigned to one principal interrogator who exercised authority over virtually every aspect of a prisoner’s life and served as that prisoner’s only contact with the outside world,” she added.

The former prisoners all recounted a difficult time adjusting to normal life after their release, including nightmares, flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress. The prisoners released in January likely are enduring a similar adjustment period, said J. Wesley Boyd, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

The scars and pain inflicted by the regime’s mistreatment of prisoners lingers long after their confinement ends and serves as a warning to others of what could happen to any other dissidents who dare oppose the mullahs.

The regime’s attacks and systemic marginalization of Sunni Muslims is also another example of how widespread the regime’s human rights crackdown is and how it is not limited to those outside of the Islamic faith.

According to Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, president of the International American Council writing in Huffington Post, Iran’s Sunni are the largest minority in the country. Some of the discrimination that the Sunnis have suffered, according the UN report, are that the Sunni communities in Iran “have long complained that Iranian authorities do not appoint or employ them in high ranking government positions such as cabinet-level ministers or governors. They have also raised concerns regarding reported restrictions on the construction of Sunni mosques in Shia-majority areas, including the capital Tehran, and the execution or imminent execution of Sunni activists the government alleges were involved in terrorist-related activities.”

The regime’s abuses are aimed at virtually anyone not subscribing to its own extremist view of Islam and serves to remind us that the claims made by the Iran lobby about the regime’s moderate intentions are simply a smokescreen to hide the brutality it metes out on a daily basis.

By Michael Tomlinson

Human Rights in Iran Get Worse and Ignored

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Human Rights in Iran Get Worse and Ignored

Human Rights in Iran Get Worse and Ignored

An attempt by allies of the Iranian regime at the U.N. Human Rights Council to block the renewal of the appointment of a special investigator into Tehran’s human rights record failed and reinforced the bid to keep a spotlight on the regime’s dismal human rights record.

Support for renewing the five-year-old mandate of Ahmed Shaheed, the independent “special rapporteur” for human rights in Iran, was far from overwhelming, however. The 47-member HRC approved the resolution by a 20-15 vote, with 11 countries abstaining.

The regime got more support now than it did at the time the special rapporteur mandate was first established in 2011, when the measure passed by a 22-7 vote, with 14 abstentions after a furious lobbying effort by the regime.

Shaheed has angered the regime with annual reports highlighting severe violations, while receiving the backing of mainly European and Latin American democracies, in addition to that of the regime’s regional Arab rivals, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Iranian and international human rights advocacy organizations say Tehran’s human rights record has worsened in recent years, notwithstanding the election in 2013 of the ostensibly “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani, and despite the diplomacy that led to the nuclear agreement last year.

The attempt to vote down the Iran human rights mandate alarmed these groups. Previous such efforts succeeded in getting special rapporteur mandates for human rights in Cuba and Belarus halted in 2007.

Shaheed submitted his annual report prior to the vote, recording abuses in Iran including mistreatment of religious minorities, a “widening crackdown on freedom of expression and opinion,” and a 20-year high in executions.

The regime dismissed the charges contained in the report as “imaginary.”

“The report on the Islamic Republic of Iran is politically-motivated, discriminatory and biased,” foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansar said last week. “It has been written on unwarranted information and not existing realities.”

Iran for the past five years has refused permission for Shaheed, a former Maldivian foreign minister, to visit the country in the exercise of his mandate.

“Change won’t happen overnight, as the Iranian state is based on principles that discriminate against women, ethnic and religious minorities, gays and numerous others,” UN Watch said. “Yet this important step keeps the item prominently on the international agenda and gives hope to oppressed citizens in Iran.”

Meanwhile Human Rights Watch took exception to a new criminal procedure for those charged with national security and political crimes that denied people charged access to independent legal counsel.

Human Rights Watch interviewed lawyers, political prisoners, family members, and sources familiar with cases of detainees facing national security and political charges. Human Rights Watch documented several instances over the past year in which the detainees were denied access to lawyers during investigations or were forced to change their legal advocate under pressure by judiciary officials.

“While Iran claims the new criminal code has improved defendants’ rights, these efforts are meaningless if parliamentary amendments completely undermine the spirit of fair judicial proceedings,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW Middle East director. “The incoming parliament should ensure that the criminal procedure law is actually a step forward rather than two steps back for the rights of its own citizens.”

According to HRW, Iran has consistently failed to prevent torture in detention and to investigate allegations of such abuse. Revolutionary courts use confessions obtained under torture as evidence in court. As a result, the right to access a lawyer from the time of an arrest is an important safeguard against abuses in detention.

A glaring example of this injustice came when brothers Mehdi and Hossein Rajabian, 26 and 31, and their friend Yousef Emadi, 35, were found guilty of “insulting Islamic sanctities”, “spreading propaganda against the system” and “illegal audio-visual activities” in a 2015 trial that activists said lasted no longer than three minutes. They were condemned to lengthy prison sentences without having access to lawyers whilst being interrogated, nor during the course of their trial.

According to Amnesty International, the three men were subjected to beatings and electric shocks to make forced confessions against themselves on camera while being in custody. Those confessions were then used as basis for their conviction in court, a familiar pattern used against prisoners of conscience in Iran.

“These sentences lay bare the absurdity of Iran’s criminal justice system, which brands individuals as criminals merely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression through making music and films. These young men should never have been arrested, let alone brought to trial,” said Said Boumedouha, deputy director at Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa program.

While the renewal of Shaheed’s mandate gives continuing hope of reversing these atrocities by the Iranian regime, the real answer for a change in Iran will only come when the world unites and works with the various Iranian dissident groups both within Iran and around the world to empower the Iranian people to achieve democracy and freedom for themselves in the future.

By Michael Tomlinson

Confrontations with Iran Regime Rise Sharply

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Confrontations with Iran Regime Rise Sharply

Confrontations with Iran Regime Rise Sharply

The Obama administration is expected to blame Iranian hackers as soon as Thursday for a coordinated campaign of cyber attacks in 2012 and 2013 on several U.S. banks and a New York dam, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

The Justice Department has prepared an indictment against about a half-dozen Iranians, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. It is one of the highest-profile U.S. indictments against a foreign nation on hacking charges.

The indictment follows a string of provocative acts the Iranian regime has undertaken ranging from illegal launches of new ballistic missiles to appalling human rights crackdowns to continued support of three proxy wars that have generated a massive refugee crisis.

The indictment was expected to directly link the hacking campaign to the Iranian government, one source said. The banks will not be identified in the indictment due to fear of retaliation, the source said.

Though a planned indictment for the breach of back-office computer systems at the Bowman Avenue Dam in Rye Brook, New York, has been reported, it was only part of a hacking campaign that was broader than previously known, as the indictment will show, the sources said.

This follows the indictment of Ahmad Sheikhzadeh, 60, a consultant to the Iranian mission to the United Nations who is accused of charges related to sanctions violations, money laundering and tax matters, by the U.S. government in a Brooklyn, New York federal courthouse.

The string of legal actions signal an effort to respond to the new Iranian regime violations and incursions against the backdrop of rising terrorist attacks – namely in Brussels – and growing uncertainty over the nuclear deal reached with Iran and the much ballyhooed promise of moderation that is now evaporating quickly.

Calls to get tougher with the regime have become more common and include calls for the re-imposition of sanctions.

“The U.S. and our partners need to impose sanctions with real economic teeth. Some policymakers may be tempted to resolve the current situation by sending a symbolic message to Iran while avoiding antagonizing international partners, for example by imposing a narrow set of sanctions against individual Iranian military officials or small Iranian defense companies involved in the missile program,” said Peter Harrell, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and the former deputy assistant secretary of State for Counter Threat Finance and Sanctions, in a piece in The Hill.

“But these kinds of sanctions rarely have meaningful economic bite, since most Iranian officials and defense companies have few economic ties to the U.S. or our allies. The Iranians would rightly perceive such sanctions as a largely symbolic message that refrained from imposing real costs on Tehran. Such sanctions would be unlikely to deter further Iranian aggression or prevent them from further testing the limits of the nuclear deal,” he added.

Some activists suggested that enthusiasm over the nuclear deal and prospects of future trade with Iran are causing the international community to turn a blind eye to Iran’s human rights violations. Since sanctions were lifted in January, foreign business delegations have flooded Iran and multibillion-dollar deals have been brokered.

Darya Safai, an Iranian women’s rights advocate who was invited to Geneva by the independent monitor U.N. Watch to address the Human Rights Council, said women’s rights are deteriorating by the year. Safai said the decline has been particularly dramatic since Rouhani, the architect of the nuclear deal, took office in 2013 on a platform of “moderation and prudence.”

Speaking from Geneva, Safai said that since Rouhani took office, a 50 percent quota had been imposed on the number of women studying at higher education institutions. Before Rouhani, 67 percent of students at universities were women, Safai said.

More worrisome were comments coming from the Revolutionary Guards who were supportive of calls by top mullah Ali Khamenei for a continuation of the regime’s “resistance economy” and called for a larger role for the Guards in Iran’s economy.

“The armed forces are ready to play a significant role in the resistance economy and implementing the supreme leader’s suggestions,” Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, deputy joint chief of staff of the armed forces was quoted as saying by Fars news agency.

Jazayeri added that Rouhani should see the Guards’ achievements in creating advanced ballistic missiles as an economic blueprint and evidence that Iran did not need foreign investment to succeed.

As the evidence mounts of growing confrontations with the Iranian regime on multiple fronts, the Iran lobby continues to remain silent on the rise in tensions since its claims of moderation in the wake of the nuclear have proven to be false.

By Michael Tomlinson

Brussels Attacks Shows Need to Confront Islamic Extremism at its Source

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Brussels Attacks Shows Need to Confront Islamic Extremism at its Source

Brussels Attacks Shows Need to Confront Islamic Extremism at its Source

An airport ticket counter and Starbucks location crowded with people were the scenes of devastating suicide bombings in Brussels, as was a crowded commuter train where ISIS quickly claimed responsibility for the devastating attacks that so far has killed at least 30 and injured over 200 in a stark reminder of the vulnerability of Europe to sophisticated attacks.

The Islamic State-affiliated news agency has issued a bulletin claiming responsibility for the deadly attacks Tuesday in Brussels.

The claim was disseminated on the group’s official channel on Telegram, a social media platform, and picked up by other official ISIS channels on Telegram and on Twitter.

“Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the coalition against the Islamic State,” the statement says. “Islamic State fighters opened fire inside the Zaventem airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station.”

A security camera image was released depicting three men, two of who wore black gloves that many security experts indicated could have hid the triggering devices or prevented a premature detonation; steps detailed in training manuals developed and distributed by ISIS indicating a high level of planning, coordination and sophistication.

Brussels has now entered the lexicon of Islamic terror attacks that include New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Sydney and Ottawa and adds to the mounting evidence that Islamic extremists and ISIS will not simply be defeated by smart bombs and drones.

To defeat any extremist ideology, one has to look for its sources and how it is nurtured and exported. The blueprint for ISIS was laid out long ago by the Iranian regime which pioneered state-sponsored terrorism by formalizing its deployment in its Quds Forces, backed by the resources of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and excused by the theological nonsense espoused by the regime’s mullahs.

To say the Iranian regime is the godfather of Islamic terror would be accurate. To say the Iranian regime gave birth to ISIS is even more accurate.

ISIS rise out of the quagmire of the Syrian civil war could not have been made possible without the Iranian regime’s support of the Assad regime that prolonged that conflict and reduced the effectiveness of moderate, Western-backed rebel groups in favor of Al-Qaeda affiliated militias.

The splintering and creation of ISIS from Al-Qaeda alone might not have been sufficient to launch the global army of terror we know face unless the meddling of the Iranian regime in Iraq forced the departure of Sunni tribes from the government of Nouri al-Maliki and created a power vacuum allowing for ISIS rapid advances in Iraq, culminating in the conquest of Mosul, which gave ISIS a quadrupling of territory, a ready-made labor force and fertile recruiting ground among disenfranchised Sunni communities.

The fact that Iran went all in by arming and deploying Shiite militias to fight ISIS initially in Iraq quickly turned this conflict into the bloody sectarian war it has now become.

The lack of an appropriate response from the Obama administration only intensified the conflict as Iran sought regional hegemony in a Shia crescent, thereby creating ISIS with a powerful recruiting tool among Sunnis.

Even as the evidence is clear and strong of the links between ISIS and the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby has ramped up to protect Iran from any criticism and have begun to mobilize to lobby the presidential candidates to protect the nuclear deal reached with Iran.

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), strong advocates for Tehran, urged Hillary Clinton to follow President Obama’s lead in encouraging openings with Iran. It warned that “any deviation from Obama’s prudent and wise rhetoric and diplomacy will risk the significant progress achieved in the past few years.”

“At a time when President Obama is seeking to make his historic Iran policy change as irreversible as possible, we are concerned by Secretary Clinton downplaying the possibility of a larger diplomatic opening,” said Jamal Abdi, NIAC Action executive director.

The move to lobby Clinton is the clearest sign yet the NIAC and other Iran supporters are alarmed at the universal declarations coming from all the presidential candidates warning against accommodating the Iranian regime. Public opinion polls show Americans are leery of the regime and find little confidence in the mullahs promises of moderation that the Iran lobby have been flogging for the better part of three years.

The Brussels attacks are only another chapter in a long and bloody novel that is being authored in Tehran and the failure to connect the two will only result in more attacks and more deaths. Only by dealing effectively with Iran and pushing back its forces abroad back within Iran can we hope to curb the influence of the Revolutionary Guards and more importantly the nihilistic ideology the people like Ali Khamenei peddle in weekly chants of “Death to America” which still holds passionate meaning for him and his fellow clerics.

No matter how the Iran lobby tries to paper over the spread and growth of Islamic extremism, the root and source of that poisoned tree lies in Tehran with deep roots.

By Michael Tomlinson