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Why the Iran Lobby Avoids Discussing Human Rights and Terrorism

June 8, 2016 by admin

Why the Iran Lobby Avoids Discussing Human Rights and Terrorism

In a world where it is common place knowledge that the Iranian regime is a state sponsor of terrorism, with a long and bloody history, it always seems that the Iran lobby operates in a different plane of existence.

For regime supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, issues such as human rights violations and terrorism are less than inconvenient truths about Iran; they are things never meant to be spoken of in public or on social media.

The Iran lobby consistently seems to operate on the premise that if you never mention either of these topics, then they must not be real.

This is obvious by simply perusing the blogs and social media feeds for these Iran support groups periodically. Reading them within the context of what is happening in real time in the Middle East and Iran provides a surreal view that is totally disconnected from reality.

It’s also pretty darn funny to read.

Take for example Trita Parsi’s Twitter feed (@tparsi) which can’t help but be viewed as comedy material or pure ignorance. More likely it resonates as part of the famed “echo chamber” that national security staffer Ben Rhodes boasted about in a recent New York Times Magazine article.

Take for example this nugget in which Parsi derides the U.S. State Department’s annual terrorism report in which it identifies Iran as a leading state sponsor of terrorism:

“Still a mystery to me why State doesnt release this on April 1,” he tweets, implying that the report is a joke better left for an April Fools prank.

Unfortunately for Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby, mockery and ridicule can’t hide the facts laid out in the report in which the State Department spells out the Iranian regime’s longstanding support for Hezbollah, a key cog in the regime’s long-running involvement in the Syrian civil war, and its support for Shiite militias in Iraq that have roamed throughout Sunni areas as death squads and Houthi rebels in Yemen that have displaced nearly half of the country’s population as part of a civil war.

Parsi’s Twitter feed is absent any mentions of those Iran-backed wars and the role the mullahs and the regime’s Quds Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps play in them. He does make mention of the plight of Syrian refugees fleeing the war and the high price they pay in trying to cross the Mediterranean, but never urges Iran to seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict or even open its borders to those refugees it is forcing out.

Parsi does however spend considerable social media time attacking Saudi Arabia, the Iranian regime’s biggest rival, accusing it of “terrorism” and acts more readily identified with the mullahs in Tehran.

He even goes to the absurd level of defending top mullah Ali Khamenei’s incendiary speech over the weekend in which he denounced the U.S. and called Great Britain “evil” and blamed his country’s continued economic woes on existing U.S. sanctions on Iran’s access to U.S. currency markets tied to human rights violations and not the nuclear deal from last year.

“Khamenei said today what Iran’s been signaling the US for a while: Anti-ISIS cooperation on hold due to sanctions relief problems,” Parsi tweets.

The implication Parsi tries to make is that continued sanctions against Iran for the mass executions of over 2,500 Iranian men, women and children, as well as its sponsorship of three major wars is somehow halting the war against ISIS.

He conveniently ignores the bulk of Khamenei speech which is filled with vitriol and hate and the usual threats to wipe Iran’s enemies off the face of the Earth.

The more appropriate evaluation to make of Parsi social media postings and those his colleagues at NIAC is that they spend more time posting about Donald Trump than they do about the misery being suffered by Iranians at the hands of their own government.

They spend more time posting about the Cannes Film Festival than they do about the threats being made by the creation of a new morality police force designed to enforce strict Islamic codes against Iranian women.

They spend more time discussing the plight of Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American arrested and imprisoned in Iran who is a long-time supporter of the NIAC, than the thousands of Iranian dissidents, journalists, artists, bloggers and activists that were rounded up, imprisoned and tortured leading up to parliamentary elections.

The priorities of the Iran lobby are always on display to anyone who wishes to scan through the social feeds of supporters such as Parsi. What is telling is what is NOT in those feeds, such as any criticism of the mullahs, any calls for a Syrian cease fire, any demands for a release of all Iranian journalists or dissidents, any urging for the end of the barbaric practice of public hangings of prisoners, or any hopes for a cessation of the practice of beating women who do not wear hijabs.

Parsi and his cohorts do not do any of these things because they are – above all else – committed to supporting the Iranian regime and keeping it safe from any threats.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

May 21, 2016 by admin

Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen who helped establish a pro-Tehran lobbying group in America, has been arrested in Iran and imprisoned indefinitely.

Mr. Namazi was visiting family in Tehran when he was arrested by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) soldiers and sent to Evin Prison, according to Iranian media reports.

The detention center is infamously known for its horrific mistreatment of prisoners. The facility is noted for its routine “beatings, torture, mock executions, and brutal interrogations,” experts have said.

As the 5th American citizen now held hostage by the regime, Namazi joins the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati.

Namazi has been described as one of the “intellectual architects” of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group that has been accused of working in support of the regime in Tehran.

He and NIAC Director Trita Parsi founded the organization as a way to continuously lobby for the removal of sanctions against Iran and to promote Iran’s foreign policy, while combating the pro-Israel sentiment in America, according to documents from a Cyprus convention that featured the two men.

Both Parsi and Namazi have strong connections with the Iranian regime’s President, Hassan Rouhani, and its foreign minister, Javad Zarif. The two have continued to actively communicate with members of the regime. Recently, Parsi was seen traveling with Iran’s delegation during the final stages of the Iranian nuclear deal talks.

NIAC has not commented publicly on Namazi’s arrest, which is believed to have occurred a week or two ago.

When reached by Breitbart News, NIAC Policy Director Jamal Abdi said that the organization has no comment at this time.

An expert on Iran suggests the arrest is the result of a power struggle within the country. Hassan Dai, the editor of the Iranian American Forum, told Breitbart News that Namazi’s imprisonment shows the Ayatollah remains completely in control of his nation’s affairs, and that even Iran’s president is powerless to protect his acquaintances from imprisonment.

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

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

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

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

Namazi’s arrest casts doubt on President Obama’s rationale for the Iran deal. The White House insisted that engaging Iran will help reform the regime, but the detention of a fifth American citizen, and Iran’s continuing aggression, shows that the administration’s reasoning for dealing with the Ayatollah has not held up to scrutiny thus far. The power structure of Iran has not changed since the nuclear deal, neither has Iran’s support for regional terrorist organizations.

Iran claims that the United States is currently holding 19 Iranian nationals under arrest. Regime officials have hinted that they would trade the American citizens for the state-side Iranians. On October 23, a U.S. court sentenced Mozaffar Khazee, an Iranian-American dual citizen, who was convicted of attempting to smuggle state-secrets to Tehran.

by JORDAN SCHACHTEL27 Oct 2015

Edwin Mora contributed to this report.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/27/iran-arrests-american-founder-pro-regime-lobby/

Iran Lobby Excuses Get Stranger and Stranger

March 17, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Excuses Get Stranger and Stranger

The Iran lobby has offered up a variety of excuses for the actions and militant behavior of the Iranian regime ranging from pleas of peace-loving intent and political moderation to feigned ignorance and indignation over escalating human rights abuses and proxy wars throughout the Middle East.

One of the newest lines being trotted out by the Iran lobby is the absurd notion that Iran has never started a war.

A scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, took that claim to task in a column for Commentary Magazine.

He showcased comments made by Iranian regime apologists Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor, and retired Congressman Ron Paul who said “There’s no history to show that Iran are aggressive people. When’s the last time they invaded a country? Over 200 years ago!”

“Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of ‘no first strike.’ This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders,” said Cole.

The Iranian regime knows when it has got a good thing going. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif yesterday tweeted, “Iran hasn’t attacked any country in 250 years. But when Saddam rained missiles on us and gassed our people for 8 yrs, no one helped us.”

These are absurd comments when looked at in the context of what the mullahs have wrought since the Islamic revolution in 1979. The mullahs preferred method of aggression is to use proxies, either in the form of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah or local militias such as in Iraq and Yemen.

Hezbollah alone has served as a conduit of death and destruction for decades by carrying acts of terror either under the direction of or direct cooperation with Revolutionary Guards and Quds Forces personnel. In the most recent Syrian conflict, senior Iranian commanders have been in the field directing combat operations and even getting killed.

It’s noteworthy that Syria never posed a direct conflict with Iran, not even sharing borders, but the mullahs felt it necessary to engage in armed conflict there and even expanded it by calling for Russia to join in the bloodshed and widen the war.

Since the revolution, Iran has been involved in military campaigns in:

1982-present: Lebanon
2003-present: Iraq
2006: Israel (via Hezbollah)
2011-present: Syria
2015-present: Yemen

Not exactly a record of pacifism, but certainly in line with the extremist nature of the regime and the duplicitous nature of the excuses made by the Iran lobby.

Another example of that stranger than fiction messaging came when regime-controlled media blasted the report issued by Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, which blistered the regime for appalling human rights abuses, including a near historic 1,000 executions in 2015 and a distressing willingness of the mullahs to kill children and women.

Iran Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari criticized the recent report as “biased,” “politically motivated” and “prejudicial, Tasnim news agency reported.

He said that the report is “imbalanced” and has been prepared based on “unreliable information.”

Those criticisms fell on deaf ears though as the Committee to Protect Journalists joined 34 other organizations in calling on the U.N. Human Rights Council to vote in favor of renewing the mandate Shaheed’s term as special rapporteur. The vote is scheduled to take place during the 31^st session of the council, which ends March 24.

In the joint letter, the organizations drew attention to the range of “serious and systematic violations” of civil and political rights in Iran, as well as the need for the council to urge Iranian authorities to implement long overdue legal changes that would address the grievances of those who have borne the brunt of human rights abuses.

Journalists and other political and civic actors are “arbitrarily detained and given increasingly harsh prison sentences, often for trumped-up national security-related charges,” the letter said. Iran is one of the leading jailers of journalists, with 19 behind bars as of CPJ’s annual prison census on December 1. Ahead of last month’s legislative elections, journalists were arrested and at least one publication was banned, CPJ research shows.

In the meantime, even the modest “moderate” election wins hailed by the Iran lobby were under assault as several women who won seats were being verbally attacked for making comments deemed threatening to the regime, such as criticizing laws mandating women wear traditional veils and coverings.

All of which provides additional proof that any hope of moderation offered up by the Iran lobby is never really going to happen. This was put on bold display when Reza Marashi, research director for the National Iranian American Council, published a plaintive editorial in Huffington Post pleading for the release of his fellow regime supporter, Siamak Namazi, who was arrested and imprisoned by the regime and not part of the prisoner swap resulting from the nuclear deal.

“After finishing his graduate studies abroad, he again returned to Iran in 1999, this time as a consultant. Most people in his shoes returned to try and make a quick buck as a big fish in a small pond. Not Siamak. He helped run a world-renowned consulting firm – staffed predominantly with Iranian-born citizens – that facilitated badly-needed foreign investment from blue-chip multinational corporations,” Marashi said.

Unfortunately, Marashi neglects to mention how that firm, Atieh Consulting, become embroiled in regime politics since his family had deep connections to various parts of the regime’s leadership and actively cooked up the idea of creating an Iran lobby in the U.S. through the NIAC to help advocate for the lifting of international sanctions and far from being a selfless act, Namazi and others had hoped to position themselves to serve as middlemen to funnel foreign investment back into the regime and steer it towards their political allies as described in several investigative pieces.

It is also noteworthy how Marashi did not write similar heartfelt pieces on behalf of other Americans held captive in Iranian prisons such as Amir Hekmati or Saeed Abedini or endured years of torture in Iran.

It would certainly be interesting to see Marashi put his feet where his mouth is and go to Iran himself to plead with the mullahs and see if he can avoid a lengthy prison term as well as another political pawn for them.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Pushes Fiction of Moderate Win in Iran

March 15, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Pushes Fiction of Moderate Win in Iran

That bastion of apologists for the Iranian regime’s abuses and extremists activity – the National Iranian American Council – has pushed vigorously the fiction that the recent parliamentary elections in Iran delivered a resounding win for the forces of moderation; all evidence to the contrary.

It’s a recognition by the NIAC and their fellow travelers that the rhetoric in the American presidential campaign has heated up against the recent actions of the mullahs with all the Republican candidates and now Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton all calling for new sanctions to be imposed in the wake of ballistic missile tests violating United Nations Security Council resolutions banning them.

For the NIAC, it’s a particularly thorny problem since the clock is now running on the end of the Obama presidency and what has been a policy of appeasement of the mullahs in Tehran. Coupled with that is growing public opinion that Iran has not shifted towards moderation in the wake of the nuclear deal, but in fact has grown more aggressive and hostile especially in human rights abuses and proxy wars with its neighbors.

The world has been subjected to the largest refugee crisis since World War II resulting from the Syrian civil war and has seen the Iranian regime go all in by begging Russia to intervene and target rebels to the regime of Bashar al-Assad and not ISIS as widely touted.

The Iranian elections were also a charade given the mass elimination of over half of the candidates submitted for approval. Even the most supportive news media have grudgingly admitted that the human rights situation in Iran and throughout the Middle East has grown more desperate.

Ahmad Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, has issued yet another blistering report of human rights conditions within Iran following similar condemnations by Amnesty International and Iranian dissident and watchdog groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), all of whom have painted a bleak picture of the mass arrests, torture, imprisonment and execution of journalists, artists, bloggers, students, ethnic and religious minorities and political opponents and dissidents.

The picture of how bad things are in Iran has become so obvious it’s taken on the near-certainty of gospel. Ask any person on the street if things have improved in Iran, the answer will most likely be “No.”

And yet the NIAC and its allies cannot give up the fight and still try to push the fiction that things are better, even as their own allies such as Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi was arrested and tossed into prison without explanation by the same regime he was promoting in the ultimate irony.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

But Jamal Abdi and Ryan Costello of the NIAC continued to push the party line with the publishing of a “policy memo” on the NIAC website cheerfully citing all the good news coming out of the Iranian elections such as:

Huge moderate wins in the parliament and Assembly of Experts, even go so far as saying Hassan Rouhani now has a plurality to enact his policies;
How Rouhani, newly empowered, will seek out new policies to open up bridges to the rest of the world; and
How so many notable hardliners were defeated as evidence of the mandate of the Iranian people for a new moderate future.

Unfortunately, none of that is true.

The dismissal of over 6,000 candidates left open the way for a field of candidates bulging with loyal supporters of the regime. If the Iranian people are only left with choices between bad and worse candidates, it stands to reason they would select the lesser of two evils.

What Abdi and Costello leave out is the simple fact that real power within the regime didn’t change at all. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei still remains in charge, as does the Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) which has been busy shooting missiles as fast as it can. The courts and police remain firmly in control and have been busy executing 2,300 people under Rouhani, as well as rounding up virtually any dissenter and locking them away.

Of course Abdi and Costello neglect to mention any of the extremist policies undertaken by Rouhani such as the level of executions than have surged higher than at any time in the history of the mullahs’ reign since 1989. Nor do they take up the lack of any progress on halting child executions, misogynist laws passed under Rouhani’s term or the continued use of Basiji paramilitaries to beat and arrest women for honor code violations such as driving alone or not wearing traditional hijabs.

Most galling of all are Abdi and Costello’s lack of any comment on the bloodshed caused by Rouhani’s policies in supporting three active wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and the complete lack of any momentum to halt the killing taking place at the hand of Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters, Iranian-backed Shiite militia and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said in an editorial on Fox News:

“Rouhani has not been the only loyal servant of the theocracy throughout his career. The same can be said of all the well-known candidates from the supposedly moderate and reformist faction in the recent elections. They include men like former Chief Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court Ali Razini and former Prosecutor General and Intelligence Minister Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, both of whom oversaw the executions of political prisoners, the extrajudicial assassinations of dissidents and undesirables, and issued orders for shockingly inhumane punishments like stoning.

“Meanwhile, standing side-by-side with current president Hassan Rouhani is former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has somehow come to be regarded as a leading reformist. This is a man for whom Interpol issued an arrest warrant due to his involvement in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and wounded 300.”

The reality is that things have not changed in Iran and in fact are only getting worse.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Spin Iran Elections

March 3, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Spin Iran Elections

With the recent parliamentary elections in Iran, the regime and its allies are working hard to project the image of a moderate landslide setting the stage for a new era of peace, prosperity and happiness. Somewhere in there are probably also promises that eating ice cream doesn’t make you fat and pots of gold lie at the end of rainbows.

At the center of that spin control exercise stands the National Iranian American Council, the chief lobbyist and public advocate for the mullahs in Tehran, which sent its leaders out to talk to virtually any journalist that would listen to them about how great things turned out in Iran.

“The stunning setback of the hardliners in the elections is precisely why they opposed the Iran nuclear deal,” said Trita Parsi, president of the NIAC. “They knew that if successful, the Rouhani faction would benefit electorally from the significant achievement of resolving the nuclear issue and reducing tensions with United States.”

Parsi’s comments are the key message for regime supporters: that approval of the nuclear deal was the key for the moderate wins. It makes for a nice fiction, but it is also as blatantly wrong.

First, Parsi’s contention of a moderate win is beguilingly false since he ignores the months-long vetting process in which the handpicked members of the Guardian Council bounced over half of the 12,000 candidates that submitted for approval to appear on the ballot. Those that survived were largely approved based on their allegiance to the Supreme leader of the mullahs and adherence to the supporting the policies of the ruling mullahs, backed by the Revolutionary Guard.

Anyone who deviated from those goals was arrested and thrown in jail during a massive crackdown across Iran that saw journalists, dissidents and potential opposition politicians rounded up. Of course, Parsi and his colleagues did not utter a word of protest during these arrests.

In another quote given in an editorial in the Washington Post, Parsi added that hardliners “knew that if successful, the Rouhani faction would benefit electorally from the significant achievement of resolving the nuclear issue and reducing tensions with United States. These benefits would not just be limited to the parliamentary elections, but could establish a new balance of power in Iran’s internal politics with significant long-term repercussions.”

It’s the second falsehood Parsi preaches in claiming there are indeed factions splitting the Iranian regime, including a bloc of moderates aligned with Hassan Rouhani.

Where Parsi is wrong is his claim that the differences separating these so-called “faction” are political, when they are in fact more about power and greed.

The Iranian regime ranks as one of the most corrupt economies in the world with the Revolutionary Guard and the families of the mullahs running the regime deeply involved and controlling of virtually all the major industries in Iran, including petroleum, aviation, telecommunications, mining, shipping and manufacturing.

With the cash infusion of $100 billion in hard currency being made available, the mullahs and military are loathe to give up control of those assets, or the billions in foreign investment that will flow as a result of the nuclear deal. The fight over parliamentary seats is less about opening up Iranian society and broadening human rights and more about securing enough seats to control how that spoils of the nuclear deal get divided up.

The mullahs have long made clear their political strategy in crafting a regime modeled after China in which the economy is liberalized while maintaining tight political control over the people. In that manner, the parliamentary elections and claims of moderation by the Iran lobby make perfect sense. As Parsi and others proclaim moderation, the government is still left firmly in the hands of those intent on enriching themselves and not improving the lot of the Iranian people.

The deception by Parsi does go to some absurd lengths as he claims in an interview on The Real News that Ali Larijani, the current head of the parliament and overseer of the judiciary, is actually in favor of moderate policies.

“Ali Larijani, who is the current head of the parliament, is a conservative. And he’s been a conservative for a very long time, belongs to a very conservative and well-established family. But he has aligned himself with Rouhani most of the time on most issues. And he’s not considered right now to be in the anti-Rouhani camp,” Parsi claims.

It’s a silly claim when you consider that the regime’s judicial and police functions are firmly in control of hardliners that enforced the vetting process in the first place and removed all the opponents to Rouhani’s slate of “moderate” allies. This is also the same judiciary that has consistently imprisoned Americans, Christians and sentences children to death, and most recently snatched up Parsi’s friend and ally, Siamak Namazi, and threw him in prison without legal representation or charge.

The fact that Parsi called these “the most consequential non-presidential elections in Iran at least for the last two decades” in an interview with the Cato Institute, is even more absurd given that many would claim that the disputed 2009 presidential elections that were stolen and protested with mass demonstrations that were brutally put down violently by the mullahs were the most consequential elections in Iran since that was the last time the Iranian people actually took a stab at real regime change.

The last false argument being put forth by the Iran lobby is the contention that real change is possible down the road with the possibility of a new supreme leader being elected following the inevitable death of the 76-year old Ali Khamenei.

“In the short term the parliamentary elections will impact Iran’s economic policies. But for the long term, this assembly could elect the next supreme leader, which has greater long-term implications for Iran and its people,” said Reza Marashi, also of the NIAC.

It is laughable to think there will be any real possibility of installing a new top mullah that would deviate from the path the Islamic revolution has taken, or loosen the control the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard have over the country. For Marashi to think there would be any change over a long, incremental pathway ignores the abject suffering and brutality being meted out against the Iranian people every day.

When the Rouhani regime has overseen a record number of executions, far exceeding the high water mark set by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the idea of a loosening of the regime is merely a smokescreen.

Already Rouhani has seen fit to keep the vast majority of the billions in released funds in overseas accounts to help pay for the new military hardware Iran is busy buying from Russia and soon China. The Iranian people are unlikely to see any of it and ultimately their hopes for an improving economy will remain only an unfilled dream so long as the mullahs are in Power.

By Michael Tomlinson

Who Are These So-Called “Moderates” in Iran Elections?

March 1, 2016 by admin

Who Are These So-Called “Moderates” in Iran Elections?

The New York Times, among other news outlets, trumpeted the election results from Iran with great fanfare announcing “strong” gains by moderates and reformists in this weekend’s parliamentary elections. Predictably, the spin revolved around the notion that this was a step in the right direction towards a more moderate future in Iran.

“Though hard-liners still control the most powerful positions and institutions of the state, two national elections last week appeared to build on the slow but unmistakable evolution toward a more moderate political landscape — now and into the future,” wrote Thomas Erdbrink in the Times. “While the hard-liners still remain firmly in control of the judiciary, the security forces and much of the economy, the success of the moderate, pragmatic and pro-government forces seemed to give Mr. Rouhani political currency to push a course of greater liberalization of the economy at home and accommodation abroad.”

What Erdbrink and most other Western journalists miss is the simple fact that the mullahs in control of the regime – virtually all of the important sectors of power as Erdbrink notes – have allowed a smattering of candidates to run that can appear “moderate” when compared to the more vocal conservatives in power, but in fact all share the same loyalty to the aims of the Islamic state.

Revolution and regime change are not coming anytime soon to Iran under these mullahs no matter what rosy picture some media wish to paint.

What is even more amusing is that all the celebration is focused on the election of a small minority dubbed “moderates” in the lower house parliament, but in the 88-member Assembly of Experts, over three-quarters of the original candidates seeking to run were swept off the ballot before voting even began, leaving only hardcore supporters of top mullah Ali Khamenei to win seats.

As to whom actually won, the Wall Street Journal editorial board took a closer look at the winners and found them less than “moderate” and downright unsavory.

Mostafa Kavakebian. The General Secretary of Iran’s Democratic Party, Mr. Kavakebian is projected to enter the Majlis as a member for Tehran. In a 2008 speech he said: “The people who currently reside in Israel aren’t humans, and this region is comprised of a group of soldiers and occupiers who openly wage war on the people.”

Another moderate is Kazem Jalali, who previously served as the spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Majlis and is projected to have won a seat. In 2011 Mr. Jalali said his committee “demands the harshest punishment”—meaning the death penalty—for Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two leaders of the Green Movement that was bloodily suppressed after stolen elections in 2009. Those two leaders are still under house arrest.

According to the Journal, as for new Assembly of Experts, many of the “moderates” projected to have won seats were also listed on the hard-liners’ lists, since the ratio of candidates to seats was well below two, including:

Mohammad Reyshahry, a former Intelligence Minister believed to have helped spearhead the 1988 summary execution of thousands of leftists;
Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, another former Intelligence Minister believed to have directed the “chain murders” of the late 1990s; and
Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabainejad, a fierce opponent of women’s rights who has called Israel “a cancerous tumor.”

That seems like quite a slate of “moderate” new faces that got elected. Maybe Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi from the National Iranian American Council, can fly over and have lunch with these moderates, unless they are worried they might be arrested like their fellow Iran lobby supporter Siamak Namazi who now languishes in an regime prison.

“The political reality in Iran is that the Ayatollahs, backed by the Revolutionary Guards, remain firmly in control,” the Journal correctly points out.

The funny thing about the parade of optimistic and sunny news headlines is how they eerily echo the same notes of hope that came in the wake of the nuclear agreement only to be followed by grimmer headlines of illegal ballistic missile tests, detaining of American sailors, rocket launches at U.S. and French navy warships, recruiting Russia to fight in Syria and the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Even as regime supporters laud these “moderate” wins, shocking news came of a village in southern Iran of a heinous incident announced by Shahindokht Molaverdi, the ironically named vice president for women and family affairs.

“We have a village in Sistan and Baluchestan province where every single man has been executed,” she said, without naming the place or clarifying whether the executions took place at the same time or over a longer period. “Their children are potential drug traffickers as they would want to seek revenge and provide money for their families. There is no support for these people.”

Maya Foa, from the anti-death penalty campaigning group Reprieve, said: “The apparent hanging of every man in one Iranian village demonstrates the astonishing scale of Iran’s execution spree. These executions — often based on juvenile arrests, torture, and unfair or nonexistent trials — show total contempt for the rule of law, and it is shameful that the UN and its funders are supporting the police forces responsible.”

Amnesty is particularly concerned about Iran’s execution of juveniles. In a report published in January, the group said Iran had carried out 73 executions of juvenile offenders between 2005 and 2015.

Sistan and Baluchestan, where the unnamed village is situated, “is arguably the most underdeveloped region in Iran, with the highest poverty, infant and child mortality rates, and lowest life expectancy and literacy rates in the country,” according to Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran. “The province … experiences a high rate of executions for drug-related offences or crimes deemed to constitute ‘enmity against God’ in the absence of fair trials.”

Even as the Iran lobby celebrates these wins, an Iranian village has seen all the men in it killed indiscriminately by these same “moderates.”

By Laura Carnahan

Human Rights Remain Under Assault by Iranian Regime

February 22, 2016 by admin

Human Rights Remain Under Assault by Iranian Regime

Next week the Iranian regime will conduct parliamentary elections that most news media and analysts have already called rigged because of the customary elimination of over two-thirds of the candidates seeking seats in the lower parliament and the more powerful Assembly of Experts.

The regime’s Guardian Council, with its handpicked members by top mullah Ali Khamenei, exercised their usual due diligence in removing any candidate that even had a hint of moderation or deviation from the Islamic revolutionary principles that guide the regime.

What is left are only those candidates that pledge religious, ideological and political fealty to the mullahs that run the regime and hold sway over virtually all facets of life in Iran.

This winnowing process empowers the mullahs and allows them the freedom and discretion to continue the unabated crackdown on human rights in advance of the elections with no cause for worry or recrimination from the international community, but there are news accounts that leak out depicting the brutality being visited on ordinary Iranians – often smuggled out by members of the dissident community at great personal risk.

One of those moving accounts was published in Quartz online in a photo essay by a photographer who spent four years researching women and girls being held in Iranian prisons, many awaiting death sentences.

“My main goal in this project was to understand how young girls could end up in jail in the first place,” the prizewinning photographer tells Quartz. “I spent time talking to them, they were nice and kind.”

In Iran, the death penalty can be applied to minors, and in 2014, a United Nations report estimated that at least 160 juvenile offenders were on death row in the country.

While according to a Jan. 25 report by Amnesty International, 73 juvenile offenders were executed in Iran between 2005 and 2015.

The compelling photos paint a grim portrait of a regime willing to kill young girls, often for crimes committed by male acquaintances who escape punishment, leaving it to the girls to pay the ultimate price in their stead.

It’s a situation that the Iran lobby has been virtually silent on. A careful perusal of the websites, blogs and social media feeds for regime supporters such as Trita Parsi, Reza Marashi and Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council or Ali Gharib or Lobelog.com reveal hardly a word of criticism or protest over the heinous violations. What they have protested though has been the incarceration of Siamak Namazi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen who was detained by regime authorities and not part of the prisoner swap that occurred as part of the nuclear agreement.

It is ironic that Namazi’s case is the one that earns the attention of the Iran lobby because of the close relationship he has with Parsi and his role in helping launch the NIAC and as an outspoken advocate of the nuclear deal with the regime.

Now Namazi is experiencing the same denial of legal representation that was forced on other American hostages such as Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. We can only hope now that the shoe is on the other foot, these supporters of the regime would be more vocal in their criticisms, but we doubt it.

These elections though will provide a glimpse though of the lie that is Iranian regime democracy, which was discussed in an editorial in the New York Post who took to task the policy of appeasement exercised by the Obama administration:

“When it runs out of plausible excuses for its appeasement-plus policy on Iran, the Obama administration advances one argument as final line of defense: showing goodwill toward the Islamic Republic would help ‘moderates’ secure a greater share of power in Tehran with the hope of an eventual change of behavior by the ruling mullahs.”

“But who are the ‘moderates’ that Obama hopes to promote Tehran? A trio of mullahs consisting of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Security Minister Dorri Najafabadi and current President Hassan Rouhani forms the core of the faction that Obama hopes would sail to victory next week,” the article writes. “The triumvirate has a history of masquerading as moderates.”

He recounts how these supposed moderates have often espoused political reforms, but never offered or implemented any political reforms while holding office.

“Rafsanjani and his hand-picked successor Khatami governed for 16 years, but never offered a single political reform let alone implementing any. Their successor Rouhani has had more than two years to show that he follows the same path. During his presidency Iran has become world leader in the number of executions and political prisoners,” he adds.

Rouhani is exercising the playbook that Rafsanjani and Khatami exercised in portraying himself as a moderate when he has no intention of supporting reforms and has openly talked about his admiration for the so-called “Chinese Model” which emphasizes economic development with control of the government firmly in the Communist Party’s hands. Rouhani envisions a similar situation with the lifting of economic sanctions bolstering the flow of money to regime coffers, but no loosening of political restrictions.

The Financial Times took note of the Iranian public’s distinct lack of enthusiasm for upcoming elections against the backdrop of a sputtering economy still stifled by mass corruption and a focus on diverting funds to supporting the proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

“The subdued seasonal shopping just one month before Norouz, the Iranian new year holiday, is adding to widespread gloom about a prolonged economic stagnation that has also dimmed public enthusiasm for the crucial upcoming elections,” the Financial Times writes. “Hassan Rouhani, the country’s centrist president, is now blamed by many for failing to deliver on his election campaign promises to help improve the economy with the nuclear agreement. Although inflation has shrunk — from a peak of about 40 per cent in 2013, when Mr. Rouhani took the reins, to about 13 per cent today, according to central bank figures — economic growth is next to zero and people are unwilling to purchase goods.”

While the election results may be a forgone conclusion, the hope remains that an oppressed Iranian people will someday soon see true regime change.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

February 9, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

Five Iranian-American groups sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to work for the release of an Iranian-American being held by the Iranian regime and not part of the prisoner swap that occurred last month.

The signatories to the letter were the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, the Pars Equality Center, the National Iranian American Council, Iranian Alliances Across Borders, and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Most of these groups actively supported the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime and have campaigned on behalf of it; most notably the NIAC.

Siamak Namazi has been held in Iranian prison since last October and his continued imprisonment has now become something of a cause amongst groups such as NIAC who have previously not dared to voice any public disagreement with the regime on previous occasions, including the imprisonment of other more notable Iranian-Americans such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, who had been subjected to torture and released as part of the prisoner swap.

The U.S. released seven Iranian nationals held in the U.S., in return and agreed to drop international arrest warrants and charges against 14 Iranians outside of the U.S. who had been involved in the smuggling of arms and nuclear components.

Other Iranian-Americans, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to the New York Times, said they were postponing or scrapping planned trips to Iran until Namazi was released, or at least until the circumstances surrounding his case were clearer since his arrest has stirred anxiety among those who thought the nuclear deal portended a new era.

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

The ties between Namazi and Trita Parsi of the NIAC previously exposed by Iranlobby.net were also revealed in a Daily Beast expose that detailed how in 1999, Namazi got together with Parsi at a conference in Cyprus. The conference, titled, “Dialogue and Action Between the People of Iran and America,” was convened to help ameliorate U.S.-Iranian relations in advance of reconciliation by forming an aggressive public relations and lobbying response to any anti-Iranian regime policies and legislation.

Two years later Parsi founded the NIAC, which long advocated opening up commercial and financial lines back to Iran with Namazi’s family companies offering to provide foreign companies and investors with connections and access to regime officials in a cozy relationship that no longer appears that cozy.

This is especially ironic since in March 2006 (at the height of the covert Iranian war with the U.S. in Iraq), Parsi told a colleague not to worry about a trip to Tehran, “NIAC has a good name in Iran and your association with it will not harm you.” When the colleague was briefly questioned by the regime, then released, he reported back (PDF) to Parsi that he’d been told the reason he was let go was “that they knew NIAC had never done anything seriously bad against the Islamic Republic.”

The shifting political winds within the Iranian regime have been reflected in the mass dismissals of thousands of proposed candidates for parliamentary election seats, but of more immediate concern is the prospect of mass demonstrations by ordinary Iranians – not over election issues, but because a large number of Iranians who receive public payments have not been paid by the regime. This also shows that as far as the ordinary Iranians are concerned, they have no illusion about the existence of a moderate or any moderation within the mullah’s regime.

An extraordinary directive from the Herasat Office, the regime’s domestic intelligence and security forces, entitled: “Issue: Paying workers’ wages in the final days of the year”:

“With greeting and respect, you are hereby informed that given that the end of the [Persian calendar] year is approaching and taking note of the instructions handed down by the minister and competent authorities regarding timely payment of workers’ wages and back pay, you must instruct that all wages, bonuses, back pay and overtime pay be paid no later than February 24, 2016 in order to prevent any possible gatherings or sit-ins and their related negative consequences.

“You are reminded that given the upcoming elections of the Assembly of Experts and Islamic Assembly (Parliament), this issue must be treated with especial importance and sensitivity in order to prevent any misuse of this matter for publicity in particular in the realm of workers’ protests.”

In other words, a lot of Iranians haven’t been paid their salaries, and the Khamenei regime is ordering that they be paid the money they’re owed by February 24, two days before the election, in the hope of defusing any potential mass protests.

The prospect of election protests is worrisome to regime leaders, especially since these elections will be held at the same time International Women’s Day is observed, which is all the more problematic for the regime when one considers the abysmal state of women’s rights in the regime today.

Nothing exemplifies this more than reports that Press TV, the regime’s state-run, English language news channel, suspended two executives on Monday after a prominent newscaster exposed that she had endured years of sexual harassment from them.

The newscaster, Sheena Shirani, has fled the country according to the New York Times.

Press TV is a part of the Voice and Vision organization of Iran, a powerful state media organization that is widely seen as a tool of the country’s hardline factions. One expatriate journalist who previously worked for Newsweek said that Emadi doubled as an interrogator in the Evin prison and once interrogated him. Emadi was later placed on a European blacklist of human rights violators.

The incident has also led to debate on social media. Several women have said such forms of harassment are commonplace in Iran under the mullahs rule, where unemployment is high and laws overwhelmingly favor men.

By Michael Tomlinson

What the Iran Lobby Will Not Talk About

February 8, 2016 by admin

What the Iran Lobby Will Not Talk About

While most of the U.S. and a good chunk of the global sports audience watched the Denver Broncos defeat the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, the rest of the world continued to struggle with the daily hardships that have come with the rise of Islamic extremism flowing out of the Iranian regime.

That extremism has come to take many forms including the world’s largest refugee crisis since World War II as Syrians flee the civil war that Iranian forces have exacerbated. It has also resulted in rising tensions with the Iranian regime since the completion of a nuclear deal that was sold as being an instrument for moderation by the Iran lobby – most notably the National Iranian American Council.

Those tensions have included the blatant violation of existing United Nations Security Council sanctions banning the development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and the continued crackdown on Iranians in advance of upcoming parliamentary elections, including the imprisonment of Iranian-Americans, Christians, dissidents, journalists, artists, bloggers and scores of others deemed a danger to the ruling mullahs.

Even after a prisoner swap that allowed for the release of long-time American prisoners Jason Rezaian, Saeed Abedini and Amir Hekmati, the specter of other Americans becoming prisoners in Iran has loomed to such an extent that the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning for Iran recently “to reiterate and highlight the risk of arrest and detention of U.S. citizens, particularly dual national Iranian Americans, in Iran.”

“Various elements in Iran remain hostile to the United States. Since the United States and Iran reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to address the international community’s concerns over Iran’s nuclear program on July 14, 2015, Iran has continued to harass, arrest, and detain U.S. citizens, in particular dual national,” read the State Department warning.

“The Iranian government continues to repress some minority religious and ethnic groups, including Christians, Baha’i, Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, and others. Consequently, some areas within the country where these minorities reside, including the Baluchistan border area near Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Kurdish northwest of the country, and areas near the Iraqi border, remain unsafe. Iranian authorities have detained and harassed U.S. citizens, particularly those of Iranian origin. Former Muslims who have converted to other religions, religious activists, and persons who encourage Muslims to convert are subject to arrest and prosecution,” added the statement.

Naturally the Iran lobby is completely silent on this issue since there is really nothing it can say to defend the Iranian regime, unless of course it did a public service by reprinting the State Department warning on their own websites to provide a heads up to Iranian-Americans.

The only public pronouncements the Iran lobby has made on travel is to condemn the notion of requiring background checks on those wishing to secure a visa to travel to the U.S. from nations such as Iran.

The plight of those with dual citizenship being detained and imprisoned in Iran was made more public when Reuters confirmed that a number of these dual citizens were being charged with espionage similar to what Washington Post reporter Rezaian was charged.

“We have several dual citizens in jail. Their charges are mostly the same (as Rezaian’s),” the judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. “It is still important to know what he and those related to him were doing in Iran. So their case is still open.”

The fact that the mullahs still view the holding of dual citizens as a form of political gamesmanship and bartering leaves little room for the Iran lobby to make any case for a new wave of “moderation” sweeping over the Iranian regime.

In an odd twist, Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American with strong ties to the Iran lobby and others supportive of the regime and the nuclear deal, was arrested and is still being held in Iran. Namazi’s friends and supporters, including the NIAC, have attempted to portray his plight as being a pawn in the political power struggle between so-called “moderate” and “hardline” factions within the Iranian regime, but the simple truth may be he is just another bargaining chip the regime may want to use in the future.

But his arrest does send a clear signal to the Iran lobby that their utility to the regime is only as worthwhile as the mullahs deem fit and they – like any other Iranian – could just as quickly and easily find themselves in Evin Prison even after being a loyal supporter of the regime.

That nefarious nature of the regime was reinforced by disclosures that even as the Iranian regime was working to negotiate a nuclear deal, it was working to hide its atomic work at its Parchin military complex which has been used to test high explosives necessary for ignitors for nuclear warheads according to various intelligence agencies and Iranian dissident groups.

Forecasting site Stratfor.com says the images published Monday show Iran building a tunnel into a heavily guarded mountain complex inside the Parchin facility, some 20 miles southeast of Tehran, while also working to erase signs of alleged high-explosive testing at another area on the site.

“We’re not saying they’re cheating on the nuclear deal,” Stratfor analyst Sim Tack told The Daily Beast. “The images show Iran was going through the motions to hide what it’s done before, and it is still…developing facilities that the IAEA may or may not have access to,” Tack said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The progression of satellite images tracking construction at Parchin from 2012 to 2015 show how Iran’s leaders apparently worked to keep regime hardliners happy by moving forward with weapons programs, even as the leadership worked to erase signs of an illegal nuclear weapons program, Tack said.

The imagery reveals new paving around a building alleged to be used for high-explosive testing, while another shows plants and trees removed and soil scraped and hauled away as possible evidence of radioactive contamination was removed in advance of inspections.

The simultaneous construction of a tunnel entrance into the mountain complex is also worrisome since the regime has since released new photos showing its inventory of ballistic missiles stored in new underground bunkers.

Yet even with all of these acts and revelations, the Iran lobby remains silent. We can only assume it has been waiting for the Super Bowl so they can relax while their fellow Iranian citizens undergo more torture.

By Michael Tomlinson

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

November 10, 2015 by admin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Michael Tomlinson