Iran Lobby

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

Trita Parsi’s Myths

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Five Myths About Trita Parsi

Five Myths About Trita Parsi

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, has been hard at work pushing the mythology of how the U.S. and President Donald Trump are really aiming for all-out war with the Iranian regime.

His beating of the war drum is nothing new. He’s been doing it ever since the administration of President George W. Bush and while he found a receptive audience during President Barack Obama’s tenure, he’s finding it tough sledding these days.

A prime example of his fake news narrative is in an editorial he wrote in the Washington Post in which he outlines “five myths about Iran.”

It’s notable that he does admit—finally—that the Iranian regime has been demonizing the U.S. for the past four decades with “Great Satan” characterizations and other false claims, but that is just cheap throwaways to help in aiding his perception of being a “moderate” when in fact all he cares about seems to be preserving a badly flawed nuclear deal.

Of course his top myth is about that same nuclear deal. Parsi posits that it’s a myth that the deal only delays the inevitable building of a nuclear weapon by the mullahs.

While Parsi admits that restrictions on advanced centrifuges and other technology to make weapons-grade uranium expires after only 10-15 years, he argues that inspections are enough to tamp down the threat.

The real myth from Parsi is that inspections alone are enough to stop the mullahs. He neglects to mention how prior inspections regimens failed to halt Iran from beginning a nuclear program in the first place and in the case of North Korea, inspections failed spectacularly.

Parsi’s second myth is that killing the Iran nuclear deal would not help the protestors in Iran. He argues that killing it would actually hurt protestors striving to break free from the rule of the mullahs. The reality is that Parsi’s “do-nothing to rock the boat” advice goes all the way back to the fierce election protests in 2009 in which the Obama administration stood on the sidelines as regime police mercilessly killed scores of protestors.

The reality is that killing the deal would cement for Iranians that the nuclear deal was a complete failure and that Hassan Rouhani basically lied to the Iranian people when he promised reforms and economic improvements with its passage. In fact, the billions Iran received in sanctions relief went to fund war efforts and line the pockets of the ruling mullahs and Iranians know it and they are pissed.

Parsi’s silly myth is that the Green Movement was a failure. He argues that it, in fact, was a success and helped usher in an era of liberalization in Iran. He even says that Rouhani’s election is proof of that liberalization.

If he wasn’t so serious, his claim would be hilariously funny.

Rouhani’s administration has made his predecessor’s reign look like a picnic. More Iranians have been executed under Rouhani than at any time since the Islamic revolution. Iran has been plunged into wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen and it accelerated the spread of radical Islamic terrorism across the globe. Furthermore, the Iranian people have no illusions about any reform and/or moderation within the mullah’s hierarchy. This could well be hear in the slogans of the protesters chanting: “Hardliners, Reformers, game is over”.

Some moderation.

Parsi’s last myth is that “Iranians hate Americans.” Another ridiculous idea to try and stir controversy since Parsi knows full well that Americans don’t hate Iranians and Iranians don’t hate Americans.

The conflict has always been about Iran’s mullahs and the ruling theocracy and the Revolutionary Guards they control.

The frustration of American presidents and Congress has always been embodied by people such as top mullah Ali Khamenei and the vast network he controls that does his bidding.

Parsi tries mightily to frame this debate as American leaders provoking Iran and beating a war drum with heavy-handed views aimed squarely at ordinary Iranians.

The reality is far and away nothing close to what Parsi tries to paint. The myths he cites are in fact not myths Americans have about Iran. In fact, Americans view Iran through a much more discerning and educated view.

They have had two years since the Iran nuclear to judge Iran’s mullahs on their actions; not their promises and have found them wanting.

The trail of destruction left behind by Iranian regime’s policies are proof enough. The smuggling of weapons into Yemen and the incitement of a revolution to topple a lawful government and push Saudi Arabia to the brink of war.

The wholesale slaughter of Syrians while supporting the criminal regime of Bashar al Assad and producing the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

These are just some of the actions taken by the Iranian regime that has put Parsi’s myths to rest and instead provided living proof of why his fake news is no longer finding an audience among the American people.

Laura Carnahan

The Irony of Trita Parsi Attacking an Echo Chamber

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The Irony of Trita Parsi Attacking an Echo Chamber

The Irony of Trita Parsi Attacking an Echo Chamber

Politico recently published a blockbuster expose of the Obama administration’s efforts to derail and stymie investigations by the Drug Enforcement Agency into the narcotics and arms trafficking of the Lebanese-based terrorist group, Hezbollah, in order to preserve the prospects for a nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime.

Predictably, the National Iranian American Council, the flagbearer for the Iran lobby, finally chimed in with an editorial authored by the NIAC’s Trita Parsi in Huffington Post.

The parade of misstatements by Parsi is not surprising if anyone has followed his career. He has been a staunch and vocal supporter of the Iranian regime, even when it engages in brutal acts of human rights violations or supports various proxy wars resulting in the deaths of thousands of men, women and children.

In many aspects, his objectivity has never been an issue of debate since he clearly demonstrates he is incapable of demonstrating any objectivity when it comes to criticizing the mullahs in Tehran.

In his latest diatribe in Politico, there is a certain amount of irony in his naming the opposition to the Iranian regime as a “pro-war echo-chamber” since the NIAC led the “pro-Iran echo-chamber” charge during the run-up in nuclear talks. It is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes was the one who famously described the echo chamber built by the administration in collusion with pro-Iranian lobbying forces to suppress any dissent and spread the false narratives that any opposition to passage of the deal was merely war mongering by Iran “hawks.”

That echo chamber was a formidable coalition of Obama administration officials, Democratic and progressive support groups, K Street lobbying firms and sponsored front groups such as the NIAC and The Ploughshares Fund whose job it was to supply a steady stream of so-called “experts” and academics that could be paraded before news media as reliable sources of information and analysis.

Parsi’s hit piece in Huffington Post is a prime example of those same smear tactics in attempt to suppress any contrary opinion even in the face of overwhelming evidence over the past two years that all of the promises made by Parsi and his cohorts have fallen flat on their faces.

Parsi attempts to discredit the Politico investigation by describing it as lacking any “actual evidence,” but its noteworthy that Parsi never tackles the heart of the Politico story which are the statements made by DEA agents and Department of Justice prosecutors who go on record detailing the suppression of the narcotics trafficking investigations against Hezbollah.

Any reasonable person would doubt that career DEA agents are part of the right-wing, pro-war hawks Parsi tries to pin the story on. In fact, the lengthy series of articles is largely devoid of the bombast normally associated with political diatribes common to Beltway politics.

Instead, it’s a sober, methodical and meticulous examination of the hard work put forth by federal agents and prosecutors and the documented ties between Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.

At no time does Parsi ever actually deny that Hezbollah is a military and terrorist proxy for Iran and never does he deny Hezbollah’s acts in committing heinous crimes in Syria and Lebanon, nor its role in targeting and killing U.S. personnel over the past three decades.

Instead Parsi does the typical two-step dance move in sidestepping these inconvenient truths and instead tries to reach way out into fantasyland by trying to tie the Politico story with Israel in some convoluted way.

“If the pro-war echo-chamber genuinely believes their own spin that Obama betrayed other less pressing issues in order to secure a nuclear deal, then that reveals an even more dangerous problem: Their complete inability to see the bigger picture and differentiate between larger and smaller threats, prioritize between primary and secondary objectives,” Parsi writes.

This is Parsi’s favorite gambit, to try and frame the argument of choices between “big picture” objectives like the nuclear agreement and “little picture” ones such as human rights and terrorism or ballistic missiles.

It’s a terrible Hobson’s choice he tries to set up largely because history teaches us that you cannot act on the initiatives of a crazed regime and leave the regime’s power structure in place to create more mischief in other areas.

This was the exact same conundrum faced by European nations in the 1930s when Hitler’s Nazi Germany rose to power. By never addressing the sickness at the core of Nazi Germany and only dealing with the excesses such as the annexation of Austria, Hitler was only emboldened to reach farther afield when he realized the West was not going to stop him.

Similarly, the Obama administration’s well-documented efforts at trying to appease the Iranian regime at all costs has led to disastrous consequences for the regime with conflicts raging in Syria and Yemen and the threat of a broader war breaking out between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

“For the pro-war echo-chamber, Iran and the Iranian nuclear deal is at the center of the universe. All other challenges America faces are overshadowed by the desire to kill the Iran deal and strike Iran militarily. While that may be a fitting point of departure if you look at the region from the perspective of Iran-obsessed governments in Tel Aviv or Riyadh, it does not make sense from the perspective of any government in Washington that takes America’s global responsibilities and national interest seriously,” Parsi adds.

This is the heart of the insanity of his persistent falsehoods regarding the Iran nuclear deal and the overall approach to the Iranian regime in general.

Opponents to Iran have never wanted war. No one is calling for war and the Iranian dissident movement has not urged it. It is a canard created by Parsi and his colleagues in an effort to frighten the public and policymakers and drive American public opinion away from taking concrete action in containing Iran.

The Iran nuclear deal is not at the center of the Trump administration policy discussions because the mess left by the nuclear deal has spawned a host of headaches including the threat of long-range ballistic missiles, civil wars in neighboring countries, the rise and spread of radical Islamic terrorism and the daily oppression of the Iranian people.

These are all things Parsi neglects to talk about because for him, the truth is too hard to fight.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Pushing More False Narratives Against Protests

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Iran Lobby Pushing More False Narratives Against Protests

Iran Lobby Pushing More False Narratives Against Protests

As the mass protests in Iran surged during its first week, the various groups comprising the Iran lobbying effort stepped up their own efforts in trying to find any message that might prove effective in blunting the awful scenes of ordinary Iranian citizens battling regime security forces.

The National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi was one of the busiest regime boosters in that period, appearing on a glut of news programs in an effort to portray the protests as less a response to the mullahs’ brutal policies, but rather a manipulation by outside forces such the Trump administration, incidentally, almost exactly what Ali Khamenei, Iranian regime’s supreme leader claimed at the end of the 2nd week of uprising in Iran.

In Huffington Post, Parsi blamed a nuclear deal that was overwhelmingly supported by the Iranian public, but failed to deliver on its economic promises because of obstruction by the U.S. and conservative Republicans hawkish against the regime.

On MSNBC, Parsi took aim at Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol’s calls for the U.S. to support the protests, by claiming Kristol actually wanted war against Iran.

 In the Hill, Parsi claimed that President Trump’s calls to support the protestors was meaningless because the president’s opposition to the nuclear deal made him lose credibility with the Iranian people.

“He has no popularity, no credibility on Iranian streets,” Parsi said.

Parsi added that the president would better demonstrate his support for the Iranian people by lifting any travel restrictions against Iran.

Meanwhile in Politico, Parsi claimed that the president was taking advantage of the situation to boost his own flagging political fortunes.

The dizzying number of appearances and competing messages and theories put out by Parsi could leave even experienced foreign policy analysts baffled, but this is Parsi’s only strategy left to him and his allies.

The fact that Parsi is offering different ideas on how to react to the protests in Iran lays bare that Parsi has no rational ideas to accurately describe what is happening there without validating the real reasons for these protests: the Iranian people have had enough of the mullahs.

These protests grew organically and spontaneously. They are not being led or organized by any political figure from within the regime’s power structure like the 2009 protests.

These protests are being staged by ordinary Iranians from middle and working classes who have borne the brunt of the wartime economy top mullah Ali Khamenei has mandated and have offered up their sons, brothers and fathers to fight in distant wars far from Iranian interests.

In many ways, these protests represent the most serious threat to the Islamic regime because they are coming from the bedrock base of the country who comprise the farmers, laborers, workers and small business owners that make the Iranian economy run.

This explains why Parsi is in a pickle. He cannot discount the source of these people’s discontent without looking like a complete idiot and he cannot affix any real blame to the regime leadership’s inept and corrupt governance since they are his titular bosses.

Which is why Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby are busy trying to blame anyone except the regime itself.

Parsi’s NIAC colleague, Reza Marashi, has been just as busy as this all-hands-on-deck exercise has NIAC staffers churning out commentary at a level not seen since the heady halcyon days of the Iran nuclear deal’s debate two years ago.

“The lessons of 2009 very much apply in 2017,” Marashi said in the Washington Post. “The protests as they stand today remain leaderless. There’s a problem with creating a leaderless revolution.”

Marashi claims that his experience at the State Department during those protests gives him a unique insight into these protests and he believes that these protests will fail since they lack “leaders.”

Of course, in the same breath, Marashi and his allies denounce long-time representatives of the Iranian resistance movement, such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, from having any part in these protests and if they did, it would only serve to de-legitimize them.

Marashi then is trying to have his cake and eat it too in claiming no leadership to these protests and denying that any leadership it might have is in fact illegitimate.

Khamenei meanwhile was busy trying to blame President Trump for all of his regime’s ills even as protestors were busy tearing down posters bearing his likeness; an almost unthinkable act where such actions are punished harshly.

Marashi, in a CNN interview, even tried to split hairs by saying “I don’t think you can separate the economic from the political,” when describe the source of protests stemming from people’s desperation over high food costs and a moribund economy.

It is no surprise that when Marashi was at the State Department during the landmark 2009 protests that were brutally put down with regime security forces ruthlessly shooting and killing protestors in the streets, the U.S. government’s official response was to do nothing and allow the mullahs to kill their opponents.

Now that the Iran lobby finds itself on the outs of a U.S. government led by President Trump firmly opposed to the rule of the mullahs, Parsi and Marashi are casting about wildly for any defense of the regime and hoping U.S. journalists are too dim-witted to see the falsehoods in their comments.

But not everyone is bought into the regime lines of attack. A columnist for Bloomberg, offered up a litany of actions the U.S. and its allies could take to help support protestors and pressure the mullahs including boosting efforts by banned social media platforms such as Telegram, Instagram and WhatsApp to work around the regime’s blackout efforts.

The article also took to task the Iran lobby and its efforts to cover for Hassan Rouhani and Khamenei saying “this network, based primarily in Washington, includes the National Iranian American Council, the Ploughshares Network and the many journalists and experts titillated by U.S.-Iranian diplomacy. For years they told us Rouhani was a reformer. Today they whisper that these demonstrators are really a ploy of Rouhani’s ‘hard-line’ opposition. They celebrate ‘elections’ that have the legitimacy as those for student government. They want Trump to be silent today.”

Let’s hope the U.S. never stays silent in supporting Iranians fighting for their freedom.

Michael Tomlinson

Devastating Report Shows Obama Blocked Hezbollah Sting

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Devastating Report Shows Obama Blocked Hezbollah Sting

Devastating Report Shows Obama Blocked Hezbollah Sting

Politico published a devastating story of how the Obama administration derailed a Drug Enforcement Administration operation aimed at Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based, Iranian-backed terrorist group, which used trafficking in drugs and weapons to fund its operations, in order to prevent jeopardizing the Iran nuclear deal.

The blockbuster revelation came in an exhaustive three-part series by Politico’s Josh Meyer who delved deep into Hezbollah’s criminal and terrorist operations, its support from the Iranian regime and the Obama administration’s desperate moves to keep the DEA’s investigation from jeopardizing a flawed nuclear deal alive.

Known as Project Cassandra, the DEA’s extensive campaign was aimed at toppling the terrorist group’s elaborate network smuggling and selling narcotics and weapons around the world; whose profits were used to fund the terror network worldwide.

“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” David Asher, who helped establish Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst in 2008, told Politico. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

When Project Cassandra leaders, who were working out of a DEA’s Counter facility in Chantilly, Virginia, sought an OK for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, Justice and Treasury Department officials delayed, hindered or rejected their requests, according to Politico.

Project Cassandra members said Obama officials blocked or undermined their efforts to chase down top Hezbollah operatives, including one of the world’s biggest cocaine traffickers who was also a top supplier of conventional and chemical weapons used by Syrian President Bashar Assad against his own citizens.

Former Obama administration officials told Politico their decisions were guided by improving relations with Iran, stalling its nuclear weapons program and freeing four American hostages held by the country.

According to Politico, the DEA followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

It is ironic that the other countries involved in the smuggling operation include countries such as Venezuela who is closely tied to the Iranian regime.

It is even more ironic that the Iran lobby has been deaf, dumb and mute on the disclosures since they fly directly in the face of the claims made by Iran advocates such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council who extolled the virtues of the nuclear deal as a moderating force within Iran and throughout the Middle East, but now we know that the promise of the deal in fact persuaded the Obama administration to give Hezbollah a free pass in shipping narcotics to Western nations and arms to proxies who later used them in conflicts stretching from Syria to Yemen to Nigeria.

The Obama-led Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested, according to Politico.

In hindsight, the Obama administration’s Pollyanna-ish view of the Iranian regime and Hezbollah since at best naive, and at worst deliberately obstructive.

Obama’s then CIA director, John Brennan, even recommended that Obama “has the opportunity to set a new course for relations between the two countries” through not only a direct dialogue, but “greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system.”

The logic that believed the mullahs in Tehran could be trusted to act in a civilized manner also seemed to guide the belief that Hezbollah could be assimilated into a normal political party in war-torn Lebanon.

The disclosure that Brennan actually believed that “moderate elements” within Hezbollah could be cultivated is a shocking echo of the same arguments made about empowering “moderate elements” within the Iranian regime through a negotiated nuclear agreement.

It is clear now that the pervasive idea of appeasement was hatched almost from the day President Obama was sworn into office and guided U.S. policy moving forward and eventually set the stage for the carnage and bloodshed Iran has unleashed over the past three years.

Politico cited the example of Lebanese arms dealer Ali Fayad, a suspected top Hezbollah operative whom agents believed reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a key supplier of weapons to Syria and Iraq, who was arrested in Prague in the spring of 2014.

But for the nearly two years Fayad was in custody, top Obama administration officials declined to apply serious pressure on the Czech government to extradite him to the United States, even as Putin was lobbying aggressively against it.

Fayad, who had been indicted in U.S. courts on charges of planning the murders of U.S. government employees, attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization and attempting to acquire, transfer and use anti-aircraft missiles, was ultimately sent to Beirut. He is now believed by U.S. officials to be back in business, and helping to arm militants in Syria and elsewhere with Russian heavy weapons.

We know that the Obama administration’s policy of appeasement has been a complete failure in reining in Iranian extremism. It has made the world a much more dangerous place and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

We can only hope that the Politico story revelations will serve as a harsh reminder for the Trump administration not to make the same mistakes.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Budget Proposal Hides True Costs of Extremism

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Iran Budget Proposal Hides True Costs of Extremism

Iran Budget Proposal Hides True Costs of Extremism

Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani presented a $337 billion draft budget to parliament and earmarked roughly $100 billion of it for so-called “public service programs” ostensibly to create jobs, address a banking crisis and introduce a new social security program.

In his televised remarks, Rouhani said banks need to “withdraw from business dealings” and return to traditional lending services amidst a crisis in the sector drowning in bad loans and a shadow economy of money lenders forced to operate on the margins by government-controlled economy that has funneled badly needed capital away from the private sector to fund a variety of military programs and wars.

The proposed budget comes with a raft of significant tax hikes and increases in fees and duties including steeper car registration fees and departure taxes sure to hit ordinary Iranians even harder.

While Rouhani’s budget grew by six percent over last year’s budget, inflation has been running at almost 10 percent, wiping out the effects of any budget growth in terms of real services delivered to the Iranian people.

Rouhani added in his speech the customary and desultory promises to eliminate poverty, create social justice and push for full employment; all promises that have about as much chance of being fulfilled by the mullahs as the Cleveland Browns of making the Super Bowl this year.

Rouhani had promised the Iranian people significant economic relief in the wake of the Iranian nuclear deal two years ago and the lifting of economic sanctions. While the International Monetary Fund did report that Iranian gross domestic product growing a robust 12.5 percent last year, almost all of that growth was attributed to expanding oil exports with the lifting of sanctions.

The Iranian consumer economy remained stagnant and in areas such as agriculture, slid backwards. The IMF predicts growth to be a sluggish 3.5 percent this year now that oil exports have stabilized.

When coupled with Iran’s chrfgonic high unemployment (officially pegged at 12.5 percent, but likely higher), the economic outlook remains bleak for Iranian families.

Much of the blame lies squarely with Rouhani and his fellow mullahs who preside over an economy riddled with deep corruption, nepotism and cronyism. They also divert massive amounts of capital to military programs such as the crash development of ballistic missiles and foreign wars such as the Syrian civil war and Houthi uprising in Yemen.

Rouhani has frequently bragged of a whopping 145 percent increase in Iran’s military budget; largely resulting from the billions of dollars supplied by the Obama administration in payments for Iranian assets previously frozen during sanctions, including the now-infamous visual of pallets of cash being loaded onto a jetliner in exchange for a release of American hostages.

There is a certain irony in all of this since under the previous rule of the Shah, steep increases in military spending led to wide discontent among Iranians over the perceived lack of support for the consumer economy. A similar scenario is now developing under the mullahs in Tehran.

That heavy investment in military campaigns has paid dividends for the mullahs insomuch as it has helped drive conquests in several countries to help fulfill their ambitions of building an Shiite arc of influence stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Indian Ocean in a radical Islamic version of the old Soviet Warsaw Pact.

For top mullah Ali Khamenei it fulfills a vision he has long nurtured to wipe out Iranian regime’s enemies and secure a ring of protection from any potential attacks. For Khamenei, the preservation of his extremist ideology and the power death grip he maintains seems to be his most driving passion.

Key to fulfilling those ambitions has been his conscious choice to make the Iranian people continue enduring a war economy and funnel massive hoards of cash to developing a network of proxies to fight his wars and consolidate his gains.

This includes Hezbollah terror groups in Lebanon who served as cannon fodder in Syria, as well as Shiite militias in Iraq, recruited Afghan mercenaries and the Houthis that toppled the government in Yemen and now mount raids along the Saudi Arabian border.

All of which makes Rouhani’s comments that Iran stood ready to restore ties with Saudi Arabia if it stopped bombing in Yemen all the more fanciful and mostly propaganda fodder.

This also shows the duplicity of comments made by regime’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an editorial in the New York Times in which he urged Europe to continue working with Iran. He emphasized that the regime’s military capabilities were “entirely defensive” in nature.

It’s an absurd comment when seen in the context of Iran’s military actions are all occurring outside of its own borders! Zarif would be hard-pressed to prove that diving in the Syrian civil war and contributing to the deaths of half a million men, women and children is a “defensive” act.

In another disingenuous statement, Zarif defends Iran’s missile program by claiming it has only focused on precision targeting and not range as an example of developing conventional warheads and not nuclear ones.

He of course neglects the steady progress Iranian regime has made in building and test firing larger missiles with heavier payloads and longer ranges. The most recent missile tests earlier this summer showed off ranges that placed much of Europe, Asia and Africa within striking distance of Iran.

He goes on to claim credit for ending the bloodshed in Syria, but neglects to mention that Iranian regime’s intervention in the first place is what widened the war.

Overall, his editorial is a particularly adept example of fake news publishing.

Alongside Rouhani’s budget proposal, it’s no wonder the true costs of Iranian regime’s extremism remain hidden.

Michael Tomlinson

Fake News and False Promises of Iran Regime

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Fake News and False Promises of Iran Regime

Fake News and False Promises of Iran Regime

The Iranian regime’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, authored an editorial that ran in the New York Times which has been receiving some play in social media circles and it is worthy of closer examination because of the litany of falsehoods it perpetuates.

Zarif’s editorial recounts the completion of the Iran nuclear accord and the benefits it has brought the region, specifically to Europe as it has opened Iranian markets to European Union companies.

He warns that all that demanding work has been put at risk by President Donald Trump’s assertive stance towards the regime, especially its ballistic missile program which the U.S. views as a strategic threat to its forces and allies in the region.

While Zarif waxes longingly about the crisp Vienna air two years ago, he neglects to mention what Iran has accomplished in that same span of time that might now make his list of accolades.

There is little surprise in his editorial running in the New York Times which has long been a staunch advocate of supporting policies easing the burden on Iran during the Obama administration and Zarif repays its support in literary license by equating President Trump’s opposition to the regime to the threat of climate change.

Ultimately though, Zarif’s editorial is aimed squarely at the capitals of EU nations that may be wavering in their wholehearted support of the opening economic channels with the Iranian regime; some have already made the shift such as France under incoming French President Emmanuel Macron’s strong denunciation of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

What Zarif and his mullah masters have recognized is that support throughout European capitals is thinner than they think. The past two years of Iranian involvement in several conflicts have had a detrimental effect on Europe, especially the Syrian civil war which widened only after Iran stepped in with cash, arms and troops to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

That conflict alone set in motion one of the largest migrations of refugees into Europe since the end of World War II and helped give rise to the radical extremism of ISIS which has plagued Europe of terrorist attacks in London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin and elsewhere.

European leaders, while attracted to the idea of accessing Iranian markets for investment, are realizing that doing a deal with the devil is no deal worth doing in the long run.

History may also be playing a role since the diplomatic history of Europe has been littered with many failed efforts to rein in extremism such as the Munich Accords which failed to bring Adolf Hitler to heel. Those reminders serve to pointedly give EU nations pause when considering what to do next with Iran.

Zarif didn’t help his cause when he attempted to push some silly false narratives in his editorial, especially extolling the defensive virtues of Iran’s ballistic missile program, insisting their pinpoint accuracy should not cause concern.

His claim that Iran’s desire for a vast military buildup is only fueled by history such as the Iran-Iraq War rings hollow when taken in the context of how the regime has invested so heavily in weapons that can strike well beyond its own borders and threatens Europe itself.

This may explain why leaders such as Macron are quick to push back against Iran now since they already have a model of ballistic futility to follow in the standoff with North Korea and the rest of Asia.

Macron can probably envision how France may end up in the same proverbial boat as Japan is now with North Korea lobbing missiles over its airspace and Iran demonstrating it will soon be able to achieve the same thing.

Zarif’s blaming of the revolt in Yemen on Saudi Arabia is even more outlandish since Iran was the one responsible for inciting the Houthis to revolt in the first place and arming them with weapons that include shooting missiles at targets within Saudi Arabia.

He also mentions Iranian regime’s “partners” but while he means to include Russia and Turkey in that description, the regime’s real partners are terrorist proxies that fight its wars, including Hezbollah in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.

These are hardly the partners that “labor to put out fires.” If anything, the Iranian regime’s partners are more like the arsonists he decries, and they have thrown matches that have caused vast tracts of the Middle East to be consumed in bloodshed.

But if Zarif wants to talk about Turkish partners, he might want to mention Resit Tavan, a 40-year old Turkish businessman, being charged by U.S. prosecutors for illegally smuggling U.S.-made engines and boat generators to the Iranian navy in violation of sanctions.

Or possibly Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who is accused of using his position at Turkey’s state-run HalkBank to design a system of money transfers to help Iranian regime access cash.

Of course, Zarif also neglected to mention the fates of several European citizens currently languishing in regime prisons, including a British-Iranian aid worker which the Iranian regime will treat as an Iranian citizen and she will serve her sentence as determined by the judiciary, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday.

The fates of her and other European citizens, who have been treated as hostages to be used as political pawns by the mullahs, only reinforces the perception that is growing in Europe that the Iran nuclear deal was a bill of goods and Iranian regime used to gain much-needed cash to fund its military activities while strangling any hope of democratic reforms domestically.

This sentiment has been on display with the large numbers of European Parliament members now meeting with members of the Iranian resistance movement to decide on how best to confront the Iranian regime.

If Zarif’s editorial is any indication, the mullahs in Tehran are deeply worried that Europe may soon be following the lead of the Trump administration.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Shows its Hypocrisy in Latest Attacks on US

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Iran Lobby Shows its Hypocrisy in Latest Attacks on US

Iran Lobby Shows its Hypocrisy in Latest Attacks on US

The recent media speculation over U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s alleged precarious employment status has given rise to a cottage industry overnight of second-guessing by various talking heads and analysts over what a potential change at Foggy Bottom might look like in terms of future US policy.

The Iran lobby, specifically the National Iranian American Council, was swift to jump on the bandwagon and raise the specter of a push by “neocons” to put one of their own into the seat and go to war against the Iranian regime.

The focus of that smear attack was Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) who has been a vocal critic of the Iranian regime, especially the nuclear agreement.

It serves the Iran lobby’s purposes to push the narrative that Trump administration’s primary focus is to somehow foment a war with Iran; even though no administration official—from the president on down—has never even hinted at such an outcome, let alone advocated it.

The narrative though helps the Iran lobby by feeding into the fear factor it has long used in warning against taking any aggressive actions to restrain the mullahs in Tehran. Remember how during the run up in negotiations over the nuclear agreement how the NIAC and its allies pushed the image of a war between Iran and the US as the reason for completing the deal?

The Iran lobby has always used fear mongering as a PR tactic and in the case of Secretary Tillerson, it is going all out to push it again.

The best example was an editorial authored by Trita Parsi and Ryan Costello of the NIAC on its website with the provocative headline of: “Cotton, Pompeo and Trump are a Recipe for War with Iran.”

Hyperbole aside, Parsi and Costello argue a scenario where Tillerson is replaced by current CIA director Mike Pompeo and he is replaced at the intelligence agency by Cotton. Of course Parsi and Costello offer no proof for such a scenario other than a vague “reported plan.”

There is no better example of trolling fake news than what Parsi and Costello are doing.

They go on to recite a history of Pompeo and Cotton’s record—which is already well known—of their doubts about the Iran nuclear deal and of the ability to rein in Iranian extremism, but couch it in a way to convey the idea that both are some crazed blood thirsty war mongers.

“What of the man that Pompeo would replace, Rex Tillerson? It is indisputable that Tillerson has been a disaster on many fronts, in particular, his campaign to gut the State Department which will do untold damage to American diplomacy for years to come. Yet, on the Iran nuclear deal, Tillerson has actually allied with Secretary of Defense James Mattis to urge Trump against ripping up the deal. The loss of Tillerson, combined with Cotton’s elevation, would mean that Pompeo and Cotton could face little resistance in their campaign to unravel a nuclear accord that is working and downplay the likely alternative ― war,” Parsi and Costello write.

In the twisted little world that Parsi and Costello are trying to fabricate, they stick to the logic that unraveling the nuclear accord can only lead to war; a preposterous idea when considered alongside the reality of since the deal was passed.

In the wake of the Iran nuclear deal, the Middle East has devolved into a region-wide war zone due largely to actions by Tehran, including the bloody civil war in Syria that sent four million refugees flooding across Europe and another sectarian uprising in Yemen that now threatens to bring Saudi Arabia into direct conflict with Iran.

Far from producing a peaceful world, Iranian regime has been at the epicenter of some of the worst conflicts taking place now; a far cry from the absurdist claims made by Parsi and Costello.

Of course, neither ever takes Tehran to task for supporting those wars, nor for its North Korean-like fanatical support for developing ballistic missiles; a point reinforced by a regime spokesman in denouncing comments made by French president Emmanuel Macron criticizing the missile expansion program.

“French official, other officials, who want to speak about Iran’s affairs need to pay attention to the deep developments that have come to pass in the region in past decades and the big changes between the current situation and the past,” said Bahram Qassemi, regime foreign ministry spokesman, according to state media.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not negotiate on defense and missile issues,” he added.

Tension between Iran and France increased last month when Macron said that Iran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify its ballistic missile program. His foreign minister also denounced, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran’s “hegemonic temptations.”

France’s criticisms only echo those made by then-candidate Donald Trump and his current administration’s positions, and yet Parsi and Costello avoid criticizing the French on the same issue.

The hypocrisy of their positions is readily apparent as they fabricate Tillerson’s potential demise in order to create a false narrative, but not apply the same standard in criticizing the much-more revealing truth behind Iranian actions over the past four years.

Pompeo and national security adviser HR McMaster spoke at length about Iranian expansion in “weak states” in the Middle East at the 2017 Reagan National Defense Forum in California this weekend.

Pompeo confirmed he sent a letter recently to Maj. Gen Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s foreign operations arm or Quds Force.

“I sent a note. I sent it because he had indicated that forces under his control might in fact threaten US interests in Iraq,” Pompeo said.

“He refused to open the letter. It didn’t break my heart to be honest with you. What we were communicating to him in that letter was that we will hold he and Iran accountable for any attacks on American interests in Iraq by forces that are under their control. We wanted to make sure he and the leadership in Iran understood that in a way that was crystal clear.”

Far from being a call to war, Pompeo’s effort to reach out to Soleimani only illustrated the focus of the Trump administration to rein in Iranian expansionism, not start a shooting war.

If there are any real war mongers here, they live in Tehran, not Washington.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Ups Ante with Warships Near the US

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Iran Ups Ante with Warships Near the US

Iran Ups Ante with Warships Near the US

Back in the height of the Cold War, the saying “the Russians are coming!” often filled the political dialogue of the day with the kind of anxiety that came naturally at a time when everyone worried about building fallout shelters and conducting duck and cover drills at school as the old Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles 90 miles offshore in Cuba.

The Cuban missile crisis precipitated the closest episode to an all-out nuclear war the world had ever seen and hoped would never see again, but now the specter of confrontation along the U.S. coastline is again raising its ugly head as the Iranian regime announced plans this week to send a naval flotilla to the Gulf of Mexico in a show of power designed to thumb the mullahs’ collective noses at America and its allies.

Following orders from Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, the newly installed commander of its navy, Rear Adm. Hossein Khanzadi, announced a fleet of Iranian warships would soon be making their way into the Atlantic Ocean, despite what Iran claims is opposition by U.S. officials.

As Iran continues to deploy military assets to Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern hotspots, its navy is placing a renewed focus on displaying force in international waters, according to the military leaders.

The latest military displays follow a series of provocative moves by Tehran aimed at rattling U.S. officials in the Trump administration, which has increasingly sought to confront Iran’s regional intransigence. Any Iranian presence in the Atlantic Ocean is certain to put U.S. military leaders in edge, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The naval maneuver is designed to bolster Iranian influence with Latin American nations hostile to the U.S.; namely Venezuela and Bolivia.

More importantly, the exercise is designed to provide a propaganda boost at a time when the mullahs are clearly beleaguered back home; wracked with the devastation caused by massive earthquakes along the Iran-Iraq border and a moribund economy that continues to drag along in stark contrast to the promises made by Hassan Rouhani in the wake of the nuclear agreement which lifted economic sanctions.

Iranian efforts to sail its warships into the Atlantic Ocean coincide with a call by Khamenei to boost the regime’s military presence in international waters.

“The navy is in the frontline of defending the country with important regions, such as Makran, the Sea of Oman, and the international waters, in front of it,” Khamenei said in Tuesday remarks celebrating Iran’s Navy Day.

“Presence in free waters should continue similar to the past,” Khamenei added ahead of a meeting with Iranian military leaders.

Khamenei further disclosed that Iran is working to produce more advanced military equipment.

“The navy is more advanced and capable compared with 20 years ago, but this level of advance is not convincing; and a high-speed move should be pursued with determination, high morale, lots of efforts, innovation, and action,” he was quoted as saying.

The Iranian regime has often resorted to military displays as a means of diverting attention from disasters or setbacks at home; relying on jingoism to cover up inadequacies in the regime’s handling of the economy and widespread dissent at home.

The massive influx of cash the regime received as a result of the nuclear deal has helped solidify and steady its military at a time when intervention in the Syrian civil war nearly bankrupted the Iranian economy.

The diversion of fresh capital from the needs of the Iranian people and boosting the economy towards the regime’s ballistic missile program and its military adventures abroad—including this jaunt to the other side of the globe—no doubt bolsters the mullahs, but does little to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians.

But then again, the regime has announced the voyage which is a far cry from actually pulling it off with its limited resources. The Iranian navy has famously never been a blue-water navy, content to ply the shallow Persian Gulf and hug the coastlines around the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean and play games of cat and mouse with U.S. Navy warships.

Back in 2014, the last Iranian navy commander, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, said that Iran planned to send ships near the U.S. to counter the American presence in the Persian Gulf.

Sayyari later said the sailings had been canceled “due to a change in schedule.” No other effort to send Iranian warships on such a voyage have ever been mounted until now.

Of course, that is not to say the regime cannot accomplish the task, but it does point out doubts as to the credibility of anything the mullahs announce.

What is clear though is that the regime is desperately casting about for anything to take attention away from its growing domestic problems at home.

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has been busy focused on domestic U.S. policy such as the fight over immigration policies and even focusing on the shooting death of a local Iranian-American in a traffic stop; anything to avoid talking about what is happening in Iran today.

It is ironic, that during the negotiations for the nuclear deal, NIAC leaders such as Trita Parsi talked almost non-stop about conditions in Iran as a result of international sanctions, but since then have been largely silent—even as conditions worsen.

The disparity between reality and fiction under the Iranian regime and its allies is as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

Michael Tomlinson

Reasons for Comparing Iran Top Mullah to Hitler

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Reasons for Comparing Iran Top Mullah to Hitler

Reasons for Comparing Iran Top Mullah to Hitler

In an escalating verbal war of words, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman called the Iranian regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, “the new Hitler of the Middle East” and warned that like the history of Europe, “appeasement doesn’t work.”

“We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East,” bin Salman, told The New York Times in an interview published last week.

What is remarkable is not that the crown prince made those comments, but that news media treated it as earth-shattering. Human rights groups, Iranian dissidents, families of prisoners languishing in regime prisons have long called out Khamenei and his procession of handpicked presidents such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani as tyrants long modelled on the bloody blueprint of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

It is also remarkable that for once the Iran lobby was virtually silent on the crown prince’s remarks. Maybe Trita Parsi at the National Iranian American Council is finally getting the hint that shamelessly defending Khamenei is a useless exercise.

The comparison to Hitler is really neither extreme, nor shocking given the Iranian regime’s bloody history and the comparisons don’t start and stop with two megalomaniacal dictators who were power hungry for an apocalyptic vision for their countries.

No, the comparisons between the Iranian regime and Nazi Germany extend far into policies, military intervention and political propaganda.

The Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland and Austria is eerily like Iranian regime’s moves into Yemen and Syria, even using the pretext of fighting ISIS the same as the Nazi’s used the excuse of Bolsheviks to invade its neighbors.

But where the two regimes share the most is in their respective preferences for oppressing minorities and making liberal use of state courts to weed out less desirables from their societies.

For the Nazis, their policies of “racial purity” not only targeted Jews for extermination, but sent millions of Russians, Poles, gypsies, the mentally ill, gays and countless others to their deaths.

For the Iranian regime, its litmus test is religious where the mullahs view anyone not adhering to their branch of extremist belief an apostate and worthy of elimination. This explains why the regime has historically targeted minorities such as the Baha’i, Kurds, Christians and Sunnis for imprisonment and oppression.

Also, while the Nazis relied on the dreaded Gestapo and SS to enforce security at home and wage war abroad, the Iranian regime relies on its morality paramilitaries and zealous Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force to achieve the same goals.

The resemblance between the two regimes is eerie and the crown prince does not make the comparison lightly.

Just as Nazi Germany gained appeasement with the West through the much-maligned Munich Agreement, Iranian regime did the same with the Iran nuclear deal; both documents weren’t worth the paper they were printed on and both launched a period of global unrest as the Nazis and mullahs took the opportunity to pursue their ambitions.

The Saudi crown prince has recognized that failure to act in defiance of the Iranian regime will only beg for another potential for war. The need for confronting the mullahs has long been a key talking point for Iranian dissidents who have warned repeatedly that failure to act to restrain the Iranian regime only emboldens the mullahs into acting more aggressively.

It is no coincidence that after Rouhani was elected to his first term and widely lauded as a “moderate” by news media that the regime undertook one of its most brutal crackdowns on dissent rounding up and imprisoning thousands of journalists, students, artists and activists.

Now the world is left to pick up the wrecked pieces of the Middle East that sees the Iranian regime now in control of Syria and Lebanon outright and having a pervasive influence over Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

It’s almost like comparing Iran to Nazi Germany after the blitzkrieg of 1940 that saw it claim most of Western Europe.

But like Great Britain, Saudi Arabia has offered itself as a regional bulwark, opposing Iran in Syria, Yemen and the Gulf region and loudly calling on the rest of the world to recognize the danger the regime poses.

If the crown prince’s words are not enough, the Iranian regime added fuel to the fire when the regime’s deputy head of the IRGC warned Europe that the regime was increasing the range of its missiles to over 2,000 km, allowing it to strike at the heart of Europe.

The comments come as the French president has warned of the threat Iranian regime’s missile program poses and the Trump administration expands its sanctions list to include elements of the IRGC and those connected to its missile program.

The warning from Iran should not be considered superfluous, but rather a clear threat to the continent and an unmistakable shot across Europe’s bow.

The irony of Iran’s actions to Hitler’s speeches to blaming its enemies for driving Germany into the ground in the aftermath of World War I is striking and serves as a reminder that repeating the mistakes of the 1930s today will only lead down a path of regional conflict and even more suffering for the Iranian people.

Laura Carnahan

Why Iranians Have Little to be Thankful For

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Why Iranians Have Little to be Thankful For

Why Iranians Have Little to be Thankful For

With Thanksgiving looming in the U.S., millions of Americans will gather around family dining rooms to enjoy holiday traditions such as consuming enormous quantities of food, watching football games on television and parents chiding their children for spending all their time posting on social media or surfing the internet.

It’s a time that reinforces the American traditions of family and freedoms that many others around the world do not get an opportunity to enjoy; namely ordinary Iranians living under the brutal repression of the Iranian regime.

Since the ruling mullahs stole the prospect for democracy away from the Iranian people after the Shah was deposed and the revolution turned into a religious theocracy, Iranians have simultaneously lived two lives: One in the public spotlight where the mullahs demand obedience to their strict religious views unable to express themselves; while they live another life in secret where Iranian women ride bicycles and teenagers post selfies on Instagram disobeying strict dress codes.

The normal everyday pleasures and freedoms Americans take for granted are almost universally restricted in Iran under the rule of the mullahs, which is why it has been important for American policy to make a distinction between the plight of the Iranian people and the policies of the oppressive regime.

The Iran lobby, led by such staunch advocates of the regime such as the National Iranian American Council, have always sought to portray American policies towards Iran as being harmful and punitive towards the Iranian people.

This was never more exemplified than in the long debate over U.S. sanctions aimed at Iran because of the regime’s support for terrorism and its secret nuclear development program.

NIAC leaders such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi went out of their way to try and link the suffering of the Iranian people of the alleged hardships imposed by these economic sanctions.

Fortunately, history has a way of clearing up the facts from the fiction and in the case of the Iranian regime’s conduct, the last several years have shown the truth about the regime’s oppressive policies and the dramatic impacts it has had on the lives of its citizens.

Nothing demonstrates that more clearly than the complete ineptitude with which the mullahs run their government.

Iran has regularly placed near the bottom of rankings for lack of transparency in government and public corruption. The mullahs and their allies in the Revolutionary Guard Corps control virtually all of the major industries and siphon enormous amounts of profits into family bank accounts to live lavish lifestyles or divert it away from the economy for proxy war efforts in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

The draining of capital has slowed the Iranian economy to a snail’s pace over the years and widened the gap between the privileged and the impoverished. A startling and shocking photographic essay recently revealed the depths of Iranian misery in showing how many of Tehran’s poorest and most destitute have resorted to making homes in the empty plots at nearby cemeteries.

The mismanagement of water policy has led to record droughts and the evaporation of historic lakes and turned verdant farmland into desert wastelands, while the lack of available jobs to women has wiped out nearly half of the available workforce for a country struggling with deep unemployment; especially among young people who are often drafted to serve as cannon fodder in the mullahs’ wars.

Even recent natural disasters such as the massive earthquake striking the Iran-Iraq northern border killing over 530 people and wiping out 30,000 homes are a testament to how badly run the regime’s emergency response is to this day.

Seven days after the earthquake took place, regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, visited the devastated areas and expressed that he was “not satisfied” with the response and said officials needed to “redouble their efforts.” This was considered widely an attempt to respond to the wide spread anger against the mullahs’ carelessness in the aftermath of the earthquake.

His remarks are ironic given how he personally controls much of the Iranian economy, as well as personally selects many of the top provincial officials who have so far badly bungled the disaster response.

In many ways, the Iranian people ought to be viewed with admiration since they have suffered incredibly, but still find ways to voice their discontent in a myriad of ways that displays the optimism and hope they all have for a free Iran in the future.

In a nation where public dissent of any kind is often a sure sentence to prison and even a public hanging, ordinary Iranians resourcefully find ways to express their dissatisfaction.

During the recent presidential elections which unsurprisingly saw Hassan Rouhani re-elected, most Iranians simply stayed away from polling places to express their unhappiness; forcing the regime to manufacture fake ballots to justify election returns.

Some of the more daring among the population even took to unfurling banners and signs on overpasses and the sides of building expressing support for banned leaders of the outlawed Iranian resistance movement such as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group comprising several dissident groups.

Ultimately, the message that Americans will celebrate this week with Thanksgiving, may soon be a message that will resonate throughout Iran when a future comes that allows for peaceful regime change and the downfall of the mullahs at the hands of the Iranian people who have grown tired of their restricted freedoms, unpleasant economic future and constant war-footing.

Laura Carnahan