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Namazi, NIAC Ringleader

August 21, 2014 by admin

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

In June 2001, just months after Parsi relocated to the US to begin work as Director of Development at the American-Iranian Council (AIC), he began formulating a plan to set up his own Washington-based NGO.

Assisting Parsi in the process was Siamak’s father, Baquer, who had established the NGO, Hamyaran, in Iran and had facilitated the participation of Parsi and Siamak at the Cypress conference in 1999.

Also involved in creating the new NGO was Abbas Edalat, an Iranian academic working in the UK who in 1999 had established the Science & Arts Foundation (SAF), an NGO to provide computers and internet services in schools in Iran.[1] In 2005 he founded the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), another NGO, to entice anti-war groups to support the mullahs’ political agenda.

Details of Parsi’s involvement with Baquer and Edalat were made public during the defamation lawsuit filed by Parsi and NIAC against Hassan Daioleslam in 2008.

The first available Parsi email, dated June 17, 2001, was sent to four Iranian Americans, all affiliated to Edalat’s SAF organization, and a US lawyer, about an upcoming conference call to discuss the structure of the new NGO. SAF had attracted many prominent and successful Iranian Americans who, in turn, were asked to assist Parsi set up the political NGO in Washington. The four Iranian Americans are:

Payman Ababshahi – senior research scientist at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
Esmail Ghorbani – electrical engineer and founder of Enginuity Search.
Susan Tahmasebi – women’s rights and civil society activist.
Fereydoun Taslimi – Chief Technology Officer at PerformanceIT and founder of Informatics Sciences.

The lawyer, Brian L. Oliner, founded the charity, Children of Persia. In the June 17^th email, Parsi listed five issues he wanted to discuss:

Lift sanctions or grant exemption for non-profits?

501C3 or Not?
Extent of cooperation with other groups.
When to go public?
Importance of doing the groundwork in Congress.

Parsi said a “key decision” for the group was whether the new NGO should lobby to lift all economic sanctions on Iran or “simply lobby for an exemption for non-profits.” Parsi then lectured the Iranian Americans, misinforming them about the politics behind the sanctions. Parsi said:

It is important to keep the following in mind: The main purpose of the sanctions are not to halt Iran’s alleged attempts to acquire WMDs or halt its alleged support to terrorist groups. The main purpose is to constitute a political obstacle to a US-Iran dialogue and improved US-Iran dialogue and improved US-Iran relations. From the Israeli perspective (the sole force behind the lobby efforts to impose and now extend the sanctions), every step Washington takes toward Tehran is a step away from Tel Aviv.[2]

Parsi told the Iranian Americans the new NGO should have the ability to lobby every member of Congress:

In order to be successful, we must have the resources to meet with all offices on the Hill (app.535). We should be careful about giving the impression of being able to successfully carry through with our mission until we have gathered the necessary sources. [emphasis added][3]

After their conference call, Parsi distributed an email with the minutes of their conversation. During the call, the Iranian Americans said they preferred the NGO initially lobby for an exemption for non profits, rather than the removal of all sanctions.

Parsi and Edalat disagreed. On June 23, 2001, Parsi sent an email to the group, supporting Edalat’s proposal to have the NGO both lobby to remove sanctions, as well as seek an exemption for non-profits. Parsi wrote:

I think Prof. Edalat is right on point. Combining the two goals will also enable us to work with allies both within and outside Congress who perhaps would oppose an effort to just get the NGO exemption, as such a move might make the lifting of the sanctions altogether more difficult.[4]

Parsi discussed the contents of the minutes from their conference call.

There has been silence since the draft minutes of last week’s telephone conference was sent to the group for your review and approval. I assume everyone has been busy, but it would be good if we could finish the minutes by Tuesday so that we can follow Mr. Ba[qu]er Namazi’s instructions and sen[d] it to Amb. Bill Miller.[5] [emphasis added]

The email reveals that Baquer Namazi is the ringleader of the group, giving instructions to Parsi and the others. Parsi is thus working with Namazi, who has close ties to the Iranian regime, and whose family members work for one of the top consulting companies in Tehran with multiple links to government officials and ministries.

The email indicates Parsi also was working with William G. Miller, then an advisor for the Search for Common Ground and a member of the board of the American Iranian Council. He earlier had been a political officer at the US Consulate in Isfahan (1959-62) and Embassy in Tehran (1962-64).

On June 25, 2001, Parsi sent an email to Fereydoun Taslimi, one of the four Iranian Americans,

regarding the minutes of the conference call, which was copied to the other members of the group. Taslimi was not pleased with the draft minutes and wanted changes.

Parsi acknowledged to Taslimi that the group preferred to restrict lobbying for the new NGO to the removal of sanctions on non-profits:

Your point on giving NGO exemption priority is well taken. In the minutes, it currently states that a majority favors that but that we also saw the need for more research. That is my understanding of our meeting, please correct me if I am mistaken.[6]

Parsi said he would “add text regarding the [group’s] wish to keep things loose without an official organization, my apologies for forgetting to emphasize that more.” He also attempted to persuade the group to change their position, stating, “Few Congressmen will support a 1-3 (sic) loosely organized charitable organizations (sic) that are (sic) not even allowed to lobby in the first place.”[7]

Additional emails are unavailable to explain what happened next. When Parsi announced the establishment of NIAC in the spring of 2002, the four Iranian Americans who had participated in the discussions of its agenda were nowhere to be seen.

Two of the Iranian Americans – Abranshahi and Tahmasebi – were later named officers of the SAF branch in Maryland, along with Edalat.

Siamak Namazi’s brother in law, Bijan Khajdhpour, who is the head of Atieh International, became the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at SAF.
[1] Edalat set up a branch in New York City in 1999 and another branch in Rockville, Maryland, in 2003.

[2] Email from Trita Parsi, Conference Call material, June 17, 2001.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Email from Trita Parsi, Re: Conference Call minutes, June 23, 2001.

[5] Email from Trita Parsi, Re: Conference Call minutes, June 23, 2001.

[6] http://www.iranian-americans.com/docs/ned1/conferenceCall.pdf

[7] Ibid.

Read more about NIAC:

Bogus Memberships & Supporters
Survey
Lobbying
Iranians for International Cooperation
Defamation Lawsuit
People’s Mojahedin
Trita Parsi Biography
Parsi/Namazi Lobbying Plan
Parsi Links to Namazi & Iranian Regime
Collaborating with Iran’s Ambassador

Parsi Links to Namazi & Iranian Regime

August 21, 2014 by admin

It’s unclear how and when Parsi first met Siamak Namazi. An article in the Washington Times said they initially got together in 1996, when Parsi “was a student in Sweden.”[1]

This may be true but, as previously discussed above, Parsi has deliberately avoided all mention of his undergraduate education in his CVs and other biography materials. Where and when he went to undergraduate school is unclear.

Siamak in 1996 was in Tehran for awhile, completing his military service, and then returned to the US to begin graduate studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Siamak, born in Iran on October 14, 1971, left the country with his family when he was 12. In the years that followed, he would move 11 times in 18 years, experiencing a wide range of cultures, from Nairobi, Kenya, to White Plains, New York.

After completing an undergraduate degree at Tufts University in Boston, Siamak was offered a position with an NGO in Cairo, Egypt, where his father worked. Siamak declined the job and instead traveled to Tehran in 1994 to complete compulsory military duty. Most Iranians who oppose the regime refuse to serve in its military or they make a payment in lieu of the requirement.

Siamak volunteered to return to Iran. He remained there for two and a half years, serving as a duty officer at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning.

No public information could be located on Parsi’s participation, payment, or avoidance of the regime’s compulsory military duty.

Maybe Parsi and Siamak met while they both were in Iran. Parsi did not travel to the US until the summer of 1997, when he went to work as an intern for then Congressman Robert Ney. If Parsi and Siamak didn’t meet in Iran, where did they cross paths?

What is known is that they share a sympathetic view toward the Iranian regime and had a common interest in organizing Iranian expats to influence US governmental policies to remove the sanctions in Iran.

Parsi returned to Sweden after finishing his internship in August 1997. Siamak concluded his graduate degree at Rutgers in 1998. While at the university, he occasionally published an article for Iranian.com, an Iranian community website founded in 1995.

In 1998 article, Siamak said Iranian-Americans should study and better understand the American political system “in order to influence it.”[2] He applauded the creation of Parsi’s NGO, Iranians for International Cooperation (IIC), and said Iranian-Americans needed to add their “cultural values and ideas to the American political landscape.”[3]

Siamak said “Iran stands to gain substantially should its expatriate population hold decision-making power in foreign lands.”[4] [emphasis added] The assimilation and naturalization of the Iranian expatriate population, he said, was “in accordance with the long-term interests of Iran.”[5] [emphasis added]

Siamak asked readers to “picture the mood in the US Congress with Senators of Iranian origin.” He asked rhetorically, “Could France have sold the sophisticated technology it did to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war (sic) if the French foreign ministry housed influential French-Iranian?”[6]

Atieh Bahar

Atieh Bahar (AB) is a influential consultancy firm in Iran with close ties and partnerships with the government.

AB was founded in 1993 by Pari Namazi, Siamak’s sister, and her husband, Bijan Khajehpour. The company’s legal division is headed by Babak Namazi, Siamak’s brother.

AB provides market research, public affairs, recruitment, market intelligence, business strategies, and legal assistance to companies in Iran and others looking to enter the market.

AB also contracts with government ministries and banks, as well as direct and indirect partnerships with energy and telecom companies.

Albrecht Frischenschlager, an AB Director, manages FTZ Services, a joint venture with three government free zones in Iran. His partner at Middle East Strategies is Hatami Yazd, the former head of the Bank of Saderat Iran, the country’s second largest bank. This bank and two others affiliated with Hatami are under US sanctions.

Siamak statement and question are revealing. During the early years of the war, France was aligned with Arab nations and much of the rest of the world, including the United States, in opposing Khomeini’s Iran, which sought to topple Saddam’s regime and replace it with an Islamic republic. Siamak implies France would have been blocked from supplying arms to Iraq had French-Iranians been in the foreign ministry. In other words, France would not have aligned with the West but in support of Iran’s ruling mullahs. Siamak identifies with the Iranian regime and opposes the West.

After finishing graduate school, Siamak set up a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. called Future Alliance International (FAI) to promote business opportunities in Iran. The idea likely originated from Siamak’s sister, Pari, and her husband, Bijan Khajeh Pour, who had returned to Iran in 1993 to set up a consulting firm, called Atieh Bahar, to assist foreign companies enter the Iranian market. Atieh Bahar has been highly successful due to its close ties to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and government ministries.

In 1998, Siamak’s father set up the NGO, Hamyaran, to monitor and control other Iranian NGOs and international organizations operating in Iran.

Siamak and Parsi presented their paper at the conference in Cypress in 1999. At the time, Siamak was likely living in Tehran. What is known is that he moved in 1999 to Iran to begin work at Atieh Bahar.

Parsi founded NIAC in 2002 and began work on a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. During this time, Atieh Bahar hired Parsi to write a newsletter. Parsi acknowledged he produced about 15 newsletters for the Iranian consulting company.[7]

Soon after establishing NIAC, Parsi applied for a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to produce a video and media training workshop in Iran. Non-Iranian groups are required to partner with an Iranian NGO for projects in Iran. It also has to be approved by Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

NIAC Collaborations with Atieh BaharOver the years, NIAC and Atieh Bahar have often collaborated Biajan Khajehpour, the head of AB, has appeared on panel discussions sponsored by NIAC, including:

Khajehpour was a panelist at the NIAC Leadership Conference in 2012.

Parsi moderated a NIAC panel discussion on “Assessing the Iran Nuclear Talks” in May 2012 that featured Khajahpour.

Khajehpour was a panelist on the NIAC “Hill Briefing,” titled “Rouhani Election Presents West with Golden Opportunity.”

Parsi and Khajehpour have also appeared jointly at other conferences. They were panelists at the Atlantic Council conference, “Changing Iran’s ‘Great Satan’ Narrative” in December 2013.

In March 2013, Parsi authored a 30-page report with Khajehpour and Reza Marshi on economic sanctions imposed on Iran.

NIAC met with an official at the Ministry and with Hamyaran, the NGO established by Siamak’s father, to discuss acceptable NGO partners. Not surprisingly, the project was approved by the regime and NAIC received the grant from NED, providing much needed financial resources for the newly formed NGO. In subsequent years, NIAC received nearly $200,000 in NED grants.

In 2005, Siamak took a sabbatical from Atieh Bahar to participate in a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.[8] While at the Center, Siamak worked with Parsi to formulate policies at NIAC.

As evidence, in November 2005, Siamak sent an email to Parsi, suggesting an agenda for an upcoming meeting. He proposed they “develop a common list of policy recommendation[s] to enhance our ability to influence decision-makers.”[9] [emphasis added] In another email, Siamak told Parsi:

“[W]e need to carve out time to work on our discussion with [US Secretary] Burns. If you have any policy papers I can look at, I could also start working on one for [Steven] Hadley’s office [He was National Security Advisor to President George Bush]. Once a draft is available, we can get input from our network and make it stronger.”[10] [emphasis added]

These and other emails exchanged between Siamak and Parsi demonstrate Siamak’s close involvement in shaping policies at NIAC, as well as Parsi’s collaboration with the regime-linked consulting firm, Atieh Bahar.

[1] “Iran Advocacy Group Said to Skirt Lobby Rules,” Washington Times, November 13, 2009.

[2] “If Mahdi Doesn’t Come,” by Siamak Namazi, The Iranian, November 9, 1998.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Deposition of Dr. Trita Parsi, Trita Parsi and National Iranian American Council v. Daioleslam Seid Hassan, US District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil No. 08 CV 00705 (JDB), December 1, 2010.

[8] In 2013, the Center published a report by Siamak, titled “Sanctions and Medical Supply Shortages in Iran.”

[9] www.iranlobby.com

[10] www.iranlobby.com

Read more about NIAC:

Bogus Memberships & Supporters
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Trita Parsi Biography
Parsi/Namazi Lobbying Plan
Namazi, NIAC Ringleader
Collaborating with Iran’s Ambassador

Parsi/Namazi Lobbying Plan

August 21, 2014 by admin

Trita Parsi coauthored a paper with Siamak Namazi on the importance of bringing Iranian-Americans into the political process to “mend the differences and misperceptions between Iran and the United States,” which they delivered at a conference in Cypress in November 1999.[1]

The paper discusses the Iranian-America demographics, their participation as cultural ambassadors between both nations, and value of increased communications and travel.

They recommended setting up a lobbying organization in the US, patterned after the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Both Parsi and Siamak oppose economic sanctions and urged an “increased awareness” among Iranian-Americans on the “counterproductive aspects of a confrontational sanctions policy.” They said it was important for Iranian-Americans to engage “in the debate on the future of Iran-US relations,” which they described as “a rational approach to Iran,” and not the same as “support for the regime in Iran.”[2]

What is most interesting about the paper is the near absence of any negative information about the Iranian regime and its long history of repression and violence against its citizenry. There are reasons the mullahs’ regime has been described as “evil” and the “most active state sponsor of terrorism,” issues completely avoided in the paper.

Parsi and Namazi describe Iranian expats who fled the totalitarian regime as “handicapped” because of their first-hand knowledge of the regime. Expat children, they then explain, “do not carry the same emotional burdens that stand in the way of fully adapting to a new country and culture.”[3] Thus, knowing less about Iran and its vile ways is advantageous to improving relations with regime.

The Parsi/Namazi paper attacks the People’s Mojahedin (PMOI/MEK), which has long been the main opposition group advocating the replacement of the regime with a democratic government. Parsi and Namazi said involving more Iranian-Americans in the US political process “could do a lot in the way of ostracizing the MKO.”[4]

Parsi and Namazi highlight the high level of trade between Iran and the US in 1991 ($760 billion) and its subsequent decline after sanctions were applied. They avoid any discussion on the reasons sanctions were imposed. The day President Clinton signed the sanctions bill into law in 1996, he said, “You cannot do business with countries that practice commerce with you by day while funding or protecting the terrorists who kill you and your innocent civilians by night.”[5]

That the paper by Parsi and Namazi presents a false and misleading view of the Iranian regime is no surprise given their links to the mullahs.

The conference where they presented their paper was sponsored by the Centre of World Dialogue and by Hamyaran, an Iranian NGO established by Siamak’s father, Baquer, and an Iranian deputy minister.[6] The NGO oversees all contacts between international organizations and Iran’s NGOs to ensure they do not step out of line.[7]

Baquer reportedly made the arrangements for Parsi and Siamak to attend the conference, which was organized to promote pathways to improve US-Iranian relations and remove the economic sanctions.[8] In reality, it was a propaganda platform for the mullahs and a means to promote their foreign policy goals.

[1] “Iran-Americans: The Bridge between Two Nations,” Siamak Namazi & Trita Parsi, presented at the Dialogue and Action Between the People of Iran and America (DAPIA) Conference, Cyprus, November 1999.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Clinton Signs Bill Against Investing in Iran and Libya,” New York Times, August 6, 1996.

[6] The conference was called “Dialogue and Action Amongst the People of Iran and America.”

[7] Ibid.

[8] The conference was title “Developing Links between Iran and the United States.” See “Iran’s Web of Influence in US,” by Hassan Daioleslam, FrontPageMag.com, August 4, 2008.

Read more about NIAC:

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Parsi Links to Namazi & Iranian Regime
Namazi, NIAC Ringleader
Collaborating with Iran’s Ambassador

Fight Over American Hostages in Iran Escalates

July 25, 2017 by admin

Xiyue Wang, a naturalized American citizen from China, arrested in Iran last August while researching Persian history for his doctoral thesis at Princeton University, is shown with his wife and son in this family photo released in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. on July 18, 2017. Courtesy Wang Family photo via Princeton University/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY.

Ever since Otto Warmbier was brought back from his imprisonment and torture in North Korea only to suffer from severe brain damage and eventually succumbing to his injuries, President Donald Trump has become more personally involved in the plight of Americans being held hostage in Iranian prisons.

Though there is a large partisan divide that separates the president from Democrats and Republicans, on the issue of American prisoners he has become quietly, but forcefully involved in sending unmistakable messages to the mullahs in Tehran that he wants them freed.

While there is plenty of speculation as to why the president takes a personal interest in this issue, there is none regarding the correctness of his position. Even the Iran lobby’s most ardent supporters, the National Iranian American Council, could not hide from the cruelty in the regime’s latest hostage taking, Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-American graduate student from Princeton University, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Trita Parsi, the head of the NIAC, put out a statement condemning Wang’s “unjust detention and sentencing.” Of course, Parsi couldn’t help but tie the case back to old message of the sentencing as an effort by hardline elements in Iran seeking to “undermine Iran’s economic reintegration into the world.”

His statement underscores the ever-shrinking island for the Iran lobby when it comes to supporting the Iranian regime. The past two years since the nuclear deal was agreed to have fully demonstrated how incapable Iran has become to living up to the false promises of moderation made by people such as Parsi.

The Iranian regime has never made it a secret that it views hostage-taking as an essential tool of statecraft and not just American citizens either. It has detained and imprisoned Canadians and European citizens and used them as pawns in negotiations with their nations in trying to wring out concessions.

The fact that the Obama administration essentially rewarded the regime by paying pallets stacked with cash for the return of Americans including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, only incentivized the mullahs to take more hostages.

But for now, the Trump administration has openly called for the release of three Americans currently still in Iran, including former FBI agent Robert Levinson and Siamak and Baquer Namazi, son and father who are Iranian-American businessmen.

In Levinson’s case, he has been held in Iran for over 10 years and Iranian officials refused to make him part of the deal that released Rezaian and other hostages.

“The United States condemns hostage takers and nations that continue to take hostages and detain our citizens without just cause or due process. For nearly forty years, Iran has used detentions and hostage taking as a tool of state policy, a practice that continues to this day with the recent sentencing of Xiyue Wang to ten years in prison,” the White House statement read.

The statement urged that Iran is responsible for the care and well being of all US citizens it has in its custody. It added that Trump is willing to impose new consequence unless all “unjustly imprisoned’ American citizens are released by Iran.

The White House announcement comes at the heels of a new administration policy — banning Americans from visiting another country known for imprisoning Americans — North Korea.

In addition, Congress has moved forward with legislation imposing new sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia, adding to the pressure now coming from a U.S. government freed from the previous policies of trying to appease Iran.

Of course, none of this stopped the Iranian regime from making its own demands and accusing the U.S. of holding Iranian citizens in “gruesome prisons.”

“You are keeping our innocent citizens in gruesome prisons. This is against the law and international norms and regulations,” said Sadegh Larijani, head of the regime’s judiciary, quoted by Iran’s state broadcaster.

“We tell them that you must immediately release Iranian citizens locked up in US prisons.”

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Washington of holding Iranians on “charges of sanction violations that are not applicable today… for bogus and purely political reasons”, at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank in New York last week.

Larijani also criticized the seizure of Iranian assets in the United States, such as a recent ruling to seize a Manhattan skyscraper to compensate victims of terrorism.

“They confiscate the assets of the Islamic republic. This is a blatant robbery. Americans behave as a bully and they want to oppress people of other countries,” he said.

Larijani’s comments deserve a good chuckle or at least a shocked gasp considering how abysmal Iranian regime’s prisons are, including the notorious Evin prison, as well as the regime’s reliance on medieval punishments such as public hanging and amputations.

Of course, given the regime’s past history of using hostages as pawns, the Larijani’s rhetoric may just be an opening prelude to another offer by the regime to swap Iranians convicted of smuggling material out of the U.S. for Wang and other Americans.

Remember, Iranian regime already has a taste of a quiescent U.S. in the prisoner swap from 2016, and may be lining up to orchestrate a similar move.

Even Reza Marashi of NIAC, acknowledged a similar move was afoot.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the Iranians are looking for another prisoner swap,” Marashi told Newsweek Monday.

The larger policy question for President Trump will be, if the regime offers a repeat of 2016, will he take the deal?

We would caution that doing so only encourages the Iranian regime to take even more hostages in 2018.

Michael Tomlinson

Arrest of American and Brother of Rouhani Signals Chaos Inside Iran

July 17, 2017 by admin

Arrest of American and Brother of Rouhani Signals Chaos Inside Iran

Just when you think things can’t get crazier inside the Iranian regime, the mullahs fooled us again by announcing a pair of actions this weekend including the arrest of the brother of regime president Hassan Rouhani on corruption charges and the sentencing of a Chinese-American college student to a shocking 10-year prison term for espionage.

Both incidents point to what has clearly become a struggle for power amongst the various factions inside the regime, but unlike what the Iran lobby has characterized a battle between “hardline” and “moderate” factions, the fight is between groups seeking to preserve their slice of the ill-gotten gains being milked from the economy.

It is important to remember that the Iranian regime is one of the most corrupt and least transparent on the planet. It has virtually no independent news media—having jailed almost all dissenting journalists in the run-up to last year’s parliamentary elections—and the bulk of its economy is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the families of the ruling mullahs through a series of shell companies.

Together, these elements stifle dissent and criticism, especially focusing on brutally putting down any economic protests such as over low wages, lack of jobs or corporate corruption. None of that has stopped the near constant occurrence of demonstrations that take place on an almost daily basis throughout Iran from disgruntled small business owners, coal miners, unemployed women and unhappy students with few job prospects.

Rouhani’s brother, Hossein Fereydoun, was taken into custody and is eligible for bail, Tasnim news agency cited regime judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei as telling reporters on Sunday. Mohseni-Ejedi did not elaborate on why Fereydoun, who served as an aide to the president during nuclear talks that led to the 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers, was arrested.

In the recent presidential election where Rouhani was re-elected, the results were seen as a sharp rebuke of top mullah Ali Khamenei’s choice in Ebrahim Raisi, who’s candidacy was hurt by revelations of his participation as a member of a “death commission” that ordered the execution of over 30,000 Iranian men and women perceived as dissidents and political opponents in 1988.

The irony of Fereydoun’s arrest coming on the second anniversary of the Iran nuclear deal was apparent since many within the IRGC feel Rouhani has not been able to deliver on all of the promised ill-gotten financial windfall promised with the deal; even though the billions that were delivered were squandered by the regime in fueling proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and lining the pockets of prominent IRGC commanders and their families.

All of which points to the dog-eat-dog nature of the current fight as regime leaders fight for cash the way starving dogs fight over a bone or scraps from the dinner table.

The fact that Iran’s economy remains stagnant is not a reflection on the nuclear deal since it did indeed deliver billions in cash to the regime, but rather to the incompetence and corruption rooted deeply within the regime leadership.

Fereydoun’s arrest on corruption charges is then the ultimate irony since if the claims being made of using his influence to place colleagues in high-paying positions such as being the heads of banks are true, the accusers within the regime have committed the exact same crimes over and over again.

Meanwhile, Mizan news agency, the mouthpiece of Iran’s judiciary, identified the American as Xiyue Wang, a 37-year-old researcher at Princeton University. Wang, who was born in China, was arrested in August 2016 while trying to leave Iran, the report said.

Mizan reported that Wang had “digitally archived” 4,500 pages of Iranian documents for foreign research institutions, including Princeton and the British Institute of Persian Studies.

The news agency published screenshots of Wang’s Princeton web page and an excerpt of a March 2016 report from the British institute that quoted Wang as saying he had been in contact with “senior scholars” at Iranian government archives in Tehran and Mashhad.

Mizan cited the statement as evidence that Wang was on a covert mission, even though the institute’s report was publicly available.

His case is reminiscent of the case of at least three Americans who are still imprisoned in Iran. Baquer Namazi, 80, and his son Siamak are serving 10-year sentences in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison and are believed to be in ill health. Karan Vafadari, who owns an art gallery in Tehran, was arrested last July with his wife, a U.S. green card holder.

A fourth American, Gholamrez Reza Shahini of San Diego, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on national security crimes but has appealed the judgment and is free on bond.

The U.S. government has repeatedly called for the Americans’ release. An unknown number of Iranians holding European passports are also believed to be jailed, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We call for the immediate release of all US citizens unjustly detained in Iran so they can return to their families,” the State Department said on Sunday.

The arrest of the Princeton student is similar to North Korea’s arrest of university faculty and academics, making them targets of convenience.

The recent turmoil within the Iran regime and the continued arrest of American citizens will undoubtedly provide even more fuel for a Congressional push for new economic sanctions on the Iranian regime.

We only hope it comes before more Americans are tossed into Evin prison.

Laura Carnanhan

Iran Lobby Attacks Trump Administration for Favoring Regime Change

June 16, 2017 by admin

Iran Lobby Attacks Trump Administration for Favoring Regime Change

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave testimony to the House and Senate Foreign Affairs Committees this week in detailing the State Department budget priorities for the upcoming year. While the bulk of his testimony concerned the issues such as North Korea and Russian relations, Tillerson made a few comments on Iran that engendered a full-fledged response from the Iran lobby.

While the majority of news media gave ample coverage to Tillerson’s testimony concerning Russia, he was asked a question regarding Iran by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), a noted critic of the Iranian regime and the mullahs who control it, that drew scant attention, but clearly worried the Iran lobby.

Tillerson was asked about future plans to enter into negotiations with the Iranian regime and he replied the administration had no immediate plans to do so and expressed support for elements within Iran working towards regime change and a transition to democracy in Iran.

Predictably, the National Iranian American Council, staunch supporters of the Iranian regime, led the charge against Tillerson’s comments; literally breathing fire.

It appears that the concept of promoting democracy in Iran strikes mortal terror in the hearts of Trita Parsi and his fellow travelers at the NIAC.

Darius Namazi at NIAC whipped out a statement condemning Tillerson’s remarks and taking a swipe at Iranian dissident movements, namely the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which had supporters in attendance at the hearings to express support for democratic change in Iran.

Poe asked Tillerson whether the U.S. supports “a peaceful regime change” and whether it is U.S. policy “to lead things as they are or set up a peaceful long-term regime change.”

Namazi claimed that Tillerson implied that it was U.S. policy to move toward supporting regime change, stating the U.S. would “work toward support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of those governments.”

Only the NIAC would have a problem with the concept of a “peaceful regime change,” but that is par for the course for the Iran lobby.

The NIAC contends that any effort to force regime change would naturally be tantamount to an open declaration of war on the mullahs in Tehran, which is understandable considering the last time there was a mass effort for regime change following the disputed 2009 presidential elections, protests were brutally put down and innocent Iranians killed in the streets.

Of course, Namazi accuses the MEK of seeking to “violently overthrow the Iranian government,” as part of the Iran lobby’s continuing efforts to denigrate any organized opposition movement to the mullahs’ rule.

Namazi goes on to criticize Tillerson’s statements that the administration had no plans to negotiate with Iran on a range of issues such as the situations in Syria and Yemen, but Tillerson only correctly pointed out that granting Iran a seat at the bargaining table when it is the key agent causing the chaos in the first place was a pointless exercise.

According to Tillerson, “The Iranians are part of the problem…They are not directly at the table because we do not believe they have earned a seat at that table. We would like for the Iranians to end their flow of weapons to the Houthis, in particular their flow of sophisticated missiles to the Houthis. We need for them to stop supplying that, and we are working with others as to how to get their agreement to do that.”

These are not unreasonable sentiments, but apparently for the NIAC they are totally unreasonable.

Not that their efforts mattered since the Senate passed new sanctions on the Iranian regime by near unanimous margins in a further sign that the U.S. is moving past the failed policies of appeasing the Iranian regime under the Obama administration.

The Senate passed the sanctions bill by a 98-2 margin. The bill places new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and other activities not related to the international nuclear agreement reached with the United States and other world powers.

To become law, the legislation must pass the House of Representatives and be signed by Trump. House aides said they expected the chamber would begin to debate the measure in coming weeks, according to Reuters.

The Iranian regime itself didn’t waste time in attacking Tillerson’s assertions that Iran has “aspirations of hegemony in the region.”

The top U.S. diplomat’s remarks are “interventionist, in gross violation of the compelling rules of international law, unacceptable and strongly condemned,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said in Tehran Thursday.

Qassemi went on to blame a history of U.S. “meddling in Iran in different forms” since the 1950s, saying the policy has only brought about “defeat and global shame” for Washington.

For all the bombastic the Iranian regime and its allies are hurling, the plain truth is that the U.S. is moving quickly and broadly on a number of fronts to rein in Iranian expansionism and militancy.

Congress is seeking new authorities that would enable it to expose and crack down on an Iranian state-controlled commercial airline known for transporting weapons and terrorist fighters to hotspots such as Syria, where Iranian-backed forces have begun launching direct attacks on U.S. forces in the country, according to new legislation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Congressional efforts to expose Iran’s illicit terror networks more forcefully come as U.S. and European air carriers such as Boeing and Airbus move forward with multi-billion dollar deals to provide the Islamic Republic with a fleet of new airplanes, which lawmakers suspect Iran will use to amplify its terror operations.

The new sanction legislation targets Iran’s Mahan Airlines, which operates commercial flights across the globe while transporting militants and weapons to fighters in Syria, Yemen, and other regional hotspots.

A crackdown on Mahan could indicate that Congress is more seriously eyeing ways to thwart Iran’s mainly unchecked terror pipeline in the region.

We breathlessly await the NIAC’s next bout of hyperbole.

Iran Regime Plays With Lives of Innocent Pawns

April 4, 2017 by admin

Iran Regime Plays With Lives of Innocent Pawns

One of the hallmarks of the Iranian regime has been its callous disregard for the value of human life. It is a characteristic that pervades much of the regime’s activities from its foreign policy to judicial process to economy.

If one examines history, totalitarian and fascist governments have often worked diligently to reduce the value of an individual life in favor of the collective good as a means of exerting greater control over the people.

Iran is no different as the mullahs figured out that the pathway to ironclad control in the wake of the revolution was to ensure that dissenters could be arrested, beaten, imprisoned, exiled and even killed with virtual impunity.

That philosophy has been at the center ever since and to this day has manifested itself in policies that have caused pain and suffering across the entire Middle East.

In foreign policy, the Iranian regime has pursued conflicts that have resulted in some of the worst humanitarian disasters since the end of World War II, namely the Syrian civil war which has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over four million people.

The mullahs’ decision to enter that war—after the Assad regime was found to be using chemical weapons on its own people—and save Assad sparked a sectarian conflict that now rages across Iraq, Yemen and has sparked now into the Gulf States.

The fact that Iranian regime is so willing to start conflicts, especially through the use of proxies such as terror groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Now come increasingly more worrisome reports over evidence that the Iranian regime may be behind terror activities in Bahrain including the operation of a secret bomb factory.

According to the Washington Post, the men who built the secret bomb factory had been clever — suspiciously so, Bahraini investigators thought, for a gang known mostly for lobbing Molotov cocktails at police. The underground complex had been hewed, foot by foot, beneath the floor of a suburban villa, with no visible traces at street level and only a single entrance, hidden behind a kitchen cabinet.

But the real surprises lay inside. In one room, police found $20,000 lathes and hydraulic presses for making armor-piercing projectiles capable of slicing through a tank. Another held box upon box of the military explosive C-4, all of foreign origin, in quantities that could sink a battleship the Post said.

“Most of these items have never been seen in Bahrain,” the country’s investigators said in a confidential technical assessment provided to U.S. and European officials this past fall that offered new detail on the arsenals seized in the villa and in similar raids that have occurred sporadically over nearly three years. In sheer firepower, the report said, the caches were both a “game-changer” and — matched against lightly armed police — “overkill.”

The report, a copy of which was shown to The Washington Post, partly explains the growing unease among some Western intelligence officials over tiny Bahrain, a stalwart U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf and home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Six years after the start of a peaceful Shiite protest movement against the country’s Sunni-led government, U.S. and European analysts now see an increasingly grave threat emerging on the margins of the uprising: heavily armed militant cells supplied and funded, officials say, by Iran.

That disturbing revelation shows that the mullahs’ decision to widen conflict in the region and continue pursuing their vision of a greater sphere of Shia influence; contrary to all the protestations and messaging of the Iran lobby, is a core cause of most of the turmoil in the Middle East.

Even the practice of snatching hostages has become a standard practice for the mullahs from the very beginning of the revolution with the American embassy takeover to the recent practice of arresting and imprisoning dual-national citizens based on the despicable principle that Iran does not recognize dual citizenship.

For the mullahs, the value of hostages has been unfortunately proven true by the rash and unwise decision by the Obama administration to effectively ransom American hostages as part of the nuclear agreement negotiations. That only emboldened the mullahs to continue the practice.

Several of their current prisoners include a British mother and charity aid worker, a missing American former FBI agent, two businessmen and an American college student who was recently released on bail.

The American of Iranian descent was arrested in Iran in July and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment on dubious charges has been released on bail after he went on a hunger strike, rights activists reported on Monday, according to the New York Times.

The American, Robin Shahini was released about two weeks ago, just before the start of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, according to news by rights groups.

It was unclear whether Shahini’s release was temporary or if he could leave the country, Shahini had been required to post bail of 2 billion rials — about $60,000 — and that he could be sent back to prison if his conviction were affirmed on appeal.

Shahini, a graduate student at San Diego State University, is one of at least four Americans of Iranian descent who have been imprisoned in Iran since the country negotiated a nuclear agreement with major powers including the United States in 2015.

Many rights activists regard the imprisonments as a warning to Americans of Iranian descent not to view the nuclear agreement as a sign of better relations between the United States and Iran.

Other Americans held in Iran include Siamak and Baquer Namazi, a father and son who were sentenced in October to 10 years’ imprisonment, as well as Karan Vafadari, an art gallery owner, and his wife, Afarin Niasari, an Iranian with permanent United States residency status. The precise nature of the charges against them are unclear.

Iranian regime considers imprisoned Iranian-Americans to be citizens of Iran and does not afford them consular privileges ordinarily granted to foreign citizens.

For the mullahs, granting any individual basic human rights seems to be out of their plans.

Michael Tomlinson

Fierce Debate on Iran Obscures Pain of Hostage Families

March 10, 2017 by admin

File photo shows an Iranian soldier walking in a corridor of Evin prison during a journalist’s visit to the prison in Tehran, Iran on June 13, 2006. Esha Momeni, 28, an Iranian-American student from Los Angeles is imprisoned in Tehran and is not being allowed to talk to her family, her attorney says. Momeni, described as a researcher looking into the status of women in Iran, was pulled over for a traffic infraction in Tehran on October 15 and is now being held at the notorious Evin prison. Momeni has been allowed one phone conversation since her arrest, which her attorney says may have been related to the One Million Signatures campaign, in which women in Iran are pressing for more rights. Several Iranian-Americans were held for months in Iran last year because the government suspected them of working for a “velvet revolution,” and were eventually released without being charged, the BBC reported. (UPI Photo/Mohammad Kheirkhah) (Newscom TagID: upiphotos893509.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]

The debate that rages over U.S. policy towards the Iranian regime under the Trump administration has been marked by a near-constant war of words on social media, editorial pages and blogs with the Iran lobby rising up to challenge every assertion made by Iran critics, as well as deflect from any horrific act committed by the mullahs in Tehran.

The rancor has obscured one important and painful reminder of personal suffering which is the plight of dual-nationals being held as hostages in Iranian prisons by the regime.

These citizens of other countries were arbitrarily snatched up by the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, tossed into prison, and in some cases given secret trials without access to counsel, while others have simply been held without charge or trial.

Most have been subjected to physical, emotional and mental abuses that we would find appalling and even denied much needed medical care as their health has deteriorated as in the case of a British mother who works for a charity organization.

There are five Americans reportedly being held in Iran who were arrested almost immediately after another batch of American hostages were released shortly after the nuclear deal was agreed to and pallets of cold hard cash were flown to Tehran on Iranian jets in a blatant swap.

Iranian officials even boasted of not selling these new hostages for less than $1 billion.

The Iran lobby has been quick to gloss over their plight, only issuing the briefest of rebukes at the beginning and never raising the issue again. The National Iranian American Council has been the most ridiculous in playing this game even through its founder, Trita Parsi, claims one of these hostages, Siamak Namazi, as a close personal friend.

If this is how hard Parsi fights for a friend, I’d hate to see what he does for a relative.

But for the families of these hostages, their pain is real and the struggle to maintain hope is often elusive. They petition the world’s media and beg for the release of their family members from regime officials who ignore them.

This week though, attention has shifted back as family members press their cases again in the media and we observe the passing of the grim decade milestone of one missing American, Robert Levinson.

“I ask myself and my fellow American neighbors: Where is the justice I have come to associate with America?” Robin Shahini, 46, wrote to his family from an Iranian jail.

Shahini was convicted of collaborating with “a hostile government,” the U.S – an accusation his family denies. He was reportedly sentenced to 18 years in prison.

“This charge is unjust and the Iranian government intended to commit this wrong against me, an innocent American citizen, for political purposes. I ask of you, please to not let Iranian government use me,” Shahini wrote in his letter.

“I ask you beloved citizens and all human-loving individuals to not leave me alone and defend my rights, which is also the right of each and every one of you. Defending me is defending yourselves. Do not let me be alone.”

The number of arrests and detentions of visitors…especially dual-citizens… has spiked, warns Lisa Daftari, the editor of the website “The Foreign Desk,” who has followed Shahini’s case.

“In the aftermath of the nuclear deal with Iran, we would expect things to get better,” she said. “But we’ve seen an increase in executions, we’ve seen an increase in crackdowns against journalists, against dual-citizens, against academics, political dissidents, women’s human rights leaders. And this is not what we expected.”

Daftari also said the arrest and trial of Shahini, and other dual-U.S. citizens like him, serves as a broader propaganda purpose for Tehran, according to Fox News.

“The Iranian regime is delivering a stern message to Iranians living abroad, not to get involved in political activity, not to speak out against the regime, and they want Iranians to know that they are in fact being watched.”

Dan Levinson, the son of missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson, penned an editorial in the Washington Post, lamenting his father’s disappearance in Iran for the past 10 years.

“The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which investigates cases of arrest that may be in violation of international human rights law, did something in January that the previous two U.S. presidents failed to do: It announced a finding that my father, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, was arrested by Iranian authorities without any legal grounds in March 2007 on Kish Island, and it called on the Iranian government to release him immediately,” he writes.

“In finding that Iran has violated international law — and fundamental human decency — by detaining a U.S. citizen and providing him no rights whatsoever, the U.N. working group is being far more aggressive than our own U.S. government has been in 10 years. This is shameful,” Levinson added.

Levinson went on to encourage the new president to pressure Iran for his father’s release.

“If Iran continues to deny holding him and fails to act, Trump can pressure it with tools such as sanctions — which he demonstrated his willingness to use already – or labeling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was very likely involved in my father’s detention, a terrorist organization. Trump can put my father at the center of every single discussion he has with or about Iran and finally make him a top priority — not just in words like the previous administration, but in action,” he said.

We hope these families can be reunited with their loved ones soon and believe that is only going to happen by applying heavy pressure on the Iranian regime and its leaders.

Laura Carnahan

Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

December 6, 2016 by admin

Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi Mounts Defense of Iran Nuclear on Eve of Election

November 7, 2016 by admin

Trita Parsi Mounts Defense of Iran Nuclear on Eve of Election

Tirta Parsi, the founder of the National Iranian American Council and one of the Iranian regime’s most ardent supporters, took to the airwaves in a final effort to shape impressions about an Iranian nuclear deal that is getting widely panned in the wake of a year of Iranian aggression and human rights violations.

Oddly though he appeared on CCTV, the Chinese-produced news channel, which doesn’t have a high Iranian-American viewership, but then again, Parsi isn’t trying to reach the constituency his organization is ostensibly supposed to be helping; rather he is trying to make the case to overseas governments to stay on board with the Iranian regime in spite of its involvement in three raging wars now in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

His appearance amounts to another PR push to try and allay fears that the nuclear deal is going to be trashed by either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. He voiced his greatest optimism for saving the deal with Clinton’s election, but even tempered his language slightly from the normal dumping on Trump in light of the candidate’s closing in these last days in most polls.

For Parsi, the effort must be akin to gritting your teeth while getting a root canal since it seems every time he goes out there to be a loyal supporter of the mullahs’ agenda, they go ahead and do something to prove his statements wrong.

His famous claims that the nuclear deal would moderate Iran and empower more liberal elements in the regime to make gains in parliamentary elections fell flat as the ruling leadership wiped thousands of candidates off the ballots to ensure solid majorities for their supporters.

Parsi’s belief in Iran’s future role as a “stabilizing” influence in the Middle East’s conflicts evaporated like water on a hot plate when Iranian regime brought Russia into the Syrian conflict and escalated wars in Iraq and Yemen. Mass killings of civilians, bombed out villages, fleeing refugees, all have become staples of the post-nuclear deal era.

Most appalling of all has been Parsi’s complete silence on the Iranian practice of grabbing dual-national citizens, especially Iranian-Americans? Even the sentencing of his supposed friend Siamak Namazi to an extended prison term earned only minimal statements and none of the grassroots campaigns that have marked previous NIAC efforts to win support for the nuclear deal.

The irony is overwhelming when an organization supporting Iranian-Americans, abandons them to Iranian prisons.

For Parsi, the Iranian regime continually makes him out to be a false prophet and for the mullahs in Tehran, this year’s US presidential election is just another example—in their minds of the Great Satan’s decline—but in fact, they shined a bright light on of the great achievements of the US political system in comparison to theirs.

As the New York Times wrote, “In the past, Iranians looking to mock the United States would burn cardboard effigies of Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty. But in recent months, as the American presidential election took a series of bizarre turns, Iranians seeking to make fun of the ‘Great Satan’ have ditched the arts and crafts and simply switched on their TV sets.”

“Iran’s state television, a bastion of conservative ideologues, for once interrupted its regular programing about the ‘murders and crimes committed’ by the United States and broadcast all three debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump — live,” the Times added.

In a country that tightly controls information about the United States and depictions of Western democracy generally, the decision to show the debates was unprecedented but by no means inexplicable: The presidential campaign shows the United States political system in such a poor light, hard-liners evidently want it to speak for itself.

And therein lays their weakness. While the mullahs look to make fun of the American political process they gave Iranians a glimpse of something they cannot have and only dream about; the ability to openly denounce, debate, disagree and even vote out their leaders.

In a regime where the top post of “Supreme Leader” is invested by the Iranian constitution with undisputed powers literally for life, the thought of openly disagreeing, even making fun of the regime’s leaders would be met with knocked down doors, secret trials and public hangings.

While the mullahs may think they are mocking the US, in reality they may have uncorked subtle questioning by their own people who may be asking “Why can’t we do this to our leaders?”

The Iranian people are deeply dissatisfied with the course of their nation, fed up with rampant corruption by regime officials, long wars claiming the lives of the young future of the country and tired of lacking even the most basic freedoms to post selfies, dress as they want or even ride a bicycle.

As Parsi even admits in his CCTV interview, the Iranian people are chafing under the lack of progress and improvements, but while he blames the lack of full implementation of the nuclear agreement, what he doesn’t admit is that the source of that discontent is within the regime’s policies itself.

Michael Tomlinson