Iran Lobby

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

 The Iranian Regime Inability to Renounce Terrorism

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 The Iranian Regime Inability to Renounce Terrorism

The Iranian Regime Inability to Renounce Terrorism

Adel Al-Jubeir, the foreign minister for Saudi Arabia, posited a simple proposition in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, improved relations between the Iranian regime and the rest of the world can only occur if the Islamic state renounces its support for terrorism.

It is a simple idea, but one fraught with a high likelihood of failure because the mullahs in Tehran are as wedded to terrorism as a tool of statecraft as a compulsive gambler is addicted to a slot machine or craps table.

“The fact is that Iran is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, with government officials directly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks since 1979. These include suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport; the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996; attacks against more than a dozen embassies in Iran, including those of Britain, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; and the assassination of diplomats around the world, to name a few examples,” Al-Jubeir writes.

“Nor can one get around the fact that Iran uses terrorism to advance its aggressive policies. Iran cannot talk about fighting extremism while its leaders, Quds Force and Revolutionary Guard continue to fund, train, arm and facilitate acts of terrorism,” he adds.

Al-Jubeir notes, correctly, that if the Iranian regime truly wanted to change course and join the community of nations, it could have simply demonstrated that sincerity by handing over al Qaeda leaders who have enjoyed the protection of sanctuary in Iran, including Osama bin Laden’s son Saad and the terror group’s chief of operations Saif al-Adel.

The regime could have also stopped supplying arms and funding for terror groups such as its long-running support for Hezbollah, which basically serves as an adjunct military unit to the Iranian military. It has been well documented how Iran supplied the bulk of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used against US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths and maiming of thousands of service personnel.

I could halt its support for the bloody Assad regime in Syria and stop the civil war and provide a respite for the nearly four million refugees from that conflict and stop adding to the toll of over

500,000 killed so far, but none of that is going to happen because the Iranian regime’s leadership, flowing from its top mullah Ali Khamenei, through Hassan Rouhani all the way down to members of paramilitary units on the streets of Iran have an almost religious belief in the use of violence and terror to advance the goals of the regime.

Al-Jubeir describes how the regime has “set up so-called Cultural Centers of the Revolutionary Guard in many countries, including Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Comoros Islands. The aim was to spread their ideology through propaganda and violence. Iran went so far as to propagate that the Shiite Muslims living outside Iran belong to Iran and not the countries of which they are citizens. This is unacceptable interference in other countries and should be rejected by all nations.”

Since the passage of the nuclear agreement with Iran last year, the regime has grown more bold, more militant and more reckless as it seeks to expand its influence, while at the same time suppressing domestic dissent among ordinary Iranians who feel betrayed and denied any benefits from the nuclear deal.

The mullahs have focused on widening military conflicts and engaging in more aggressive and provocative behavior against the US and now Saudi Arabia in a bid to deflect attention at home and beat the drum of nationalism and fear.

The mullahs are hoping no one notices the misery at while you’re focused on gunboat cat-and-mouse games with US warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

That determination by the mullahs to expand the conflicts to include a perceived showdown with Saudi Arabia may be rooted in the kingdom’s decision to finally take the gloves off and confront the Iranian regime more directly since Iran has fomented conflict dangerously close to Saudi Arabia’s own borders with the civil war in neighboring Yemen.

Saudi Arabia is accusing Iran of supplying weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen and is urging the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran for violating an arms embargo.

Saudi Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi said in a letter to the council that smuggling arms to Houthi rebels violates council resolutions and constitutes “a direct and tangible threat” to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the region and international peace and security.

Predictably the Iranian regime rejected the Saudi contention of Iran’s growing interventions, instead blaming Saudi Arabia for escalating the conflict, but of course denying its own involvement.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdulmalak Al-Makhlafi said that Iran is continuing with its interferences in his conflict-torn country, and urged Tehran to stop, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.

Also, the Yemeni Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Nasser Al-Taheri said in an interview published on Saturday by the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat that light and medium weapon shipments were seized on the borders, coming from Iran, more proof of the regime’s desire to drive neighboring countries into civil war.

Meanwhile, the Iran lobby stepped up its efforts to support the regime by trying to hold the line against Congressional action to renew sanctions against the Iranian regime for its support of terrorism as evidenced by a letter addressed to Congressional leaders signed by a who’s who of Iran lobby members, including the National Iranian American Council’s NIAC Action direct lobbying arm, J Street and MoveOn.Org.

Also, Paul R. Pillar, a former intelligence analyst and now a full-time supporter of the Iranian regime it seems, penned a rambling editorial in the National Interest in which he tried to make the absurd argument that Congressional leaders who advocate holding Iran accountable for its support of terror only aid “hardliners” in the Iranian regime’s government. His deeply flawed piece is worthy of a line by line dissection, but suffice it to say his primary goal is to try and excuse Iranian misbehavior by criticizing US concern over terror and vouching for the regime’s peaceful and delicate nature, while never mentioning the litany of death, destruction and woe being left behind by Iranian mullahs.

By Michael Tomlinson

Study Points to Iran Regime Funding of Terror from US Payment

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Study Points to Iran Regime Funding of Terror from US Payment

Study Points to Iran Regime Funding of Terror from US Payment

Last year the US stacked bundles of euros and Swiss francs on pallets and loaded them onto a transport aircraft bound for Tehran. The $400 million was destined to be used as leverage in securing the release of American hostages being held illegally by the Iranian regime as part of the nuclear deal.

That $400 million would later swell to a total of $1.7 billion in cash paid out to the mullahs as part of a settlement agreement over a longstanding dispute regarding payment made by the deposed Shah of Iran’s government for US military hardware prior to the Islamic revolution.

What has caused concern among elected officials and policymakers is the doubt surrounding what the regime would do with the cash windfall. A recent study by the American Action Forum, a non-profit research organization, estimated that as much as $37.4 million of this $1.7 billion were funneled directly to fund operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

These operations have stretched from supporting the Assad regime in Syria to Shiite militias and death squads in Iraq to Houthi rebel forces in Yemen, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Leading US lawmakers now suspect that the IRGC played a key role in assuming control of this cash, which the White House has admitted to putting directly in Iranian hands, the Free Beacon disclosed Monday evening.

“Applying the official spending levels to the U.S. payment to Iran, the $1.7 billion would mean $37.4 million for the IRGC,” according to research published by Rachel Hoff, AAF’s director of defense analysis. “Paying ransoms in exchange for Americans held abroad is one bad policy—indirectly funding terrorism is another.”

AAF has determined based on public reports by Iran that the country spends 3.4 percent of its total budget on defense needs, though some experts, including Iranian dissident groups, estimate the number is much higher.

At least “65 percent of that funding [goes] to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iranian elite paramilitary force,” according to AAF. “That works out to 2.2 percent of Iran’s total budget for the IRGC, which actively supports terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East. It is unlikely that Iran accurately reports its military or paramilitary spending, but the reported budget figures are useful as a baseline.”

Most disturbing is the very real possibility that the US exchanged the cash payments directly to IRGC agents and members of its military intelligence units which have been at the forefront attacks against US personnel in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq over the past three decades.

The Iranian regime’s long support for terrorism has included more recent revelations about the mullahs links to Al-Qaeda; a fact that regime and Iran lobby have worked frantically to cover up by trying point blame on Saudi Arabia instead.

Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Dmeocracies, recently took regime foreign minister Javad Zarif to task in a series of tweets lambasting an editorial Zarif penned in the New York Times.

“Where is Abu Hamzah al Khalidi, the head of al Qaeda’s military commission, currently? He’s in #Iran:http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/07/treasury-designates-three-senior-al-qaeda-members-in-iran.php …” read one of his tweets, correctly pointing out how the Iran regime provides safe havens for Al-Qaeda leaders.

Joscelyn reminds us that the State Department’s original sanction against Iran in 2011 was because of the revelations of a “secret deal” between Iran and Al-Qaeda to provide the terror group behind the 9/11 attacks support.

That burgeoning conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Iranian regime drew a strong rebuke a warning from Mecca province governor Prince Khaled al-Faisal who urged Iran to end what he called wrong attitudes toward Arabs and warned it against any use of force in its rivalry with the kingdom.

The Saudi Press Agency quoted Prince Khaled as telling journalists his message to the Iranian leadership was “I pray to God Almighty to guide them and to deter them from their transgression and their wrong attitudes toward their fellow Muslim among the Arabs in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and around the world”.

“But if they are preparing an army to invade us, we are not easily taken by someone who would make war on us.”

Alarmingly, it now seems in addition to the $1.7 billion in cash the regime received from the US, the total amount of cash released back to Iran as part of the nuclear deal could have reached as high as $34 billion, with no tracking of how that money is being used by the mullahs.

The Associated Press reports Iran brought home roughly $20 billion dollars from this deal. But nearly $12 billion dollars in previously frozen U.S. sanctions were given to Tehran as nuclear talks progressed. Add to that the $1.7-billion-dollar cash payout the White House gave Tehran before the release of several U.S. hostages this year and the sum total soars to nearly $34 billion dollars.

“So every dollar that goes to Iran you have to assume is going to go to Hezbollah,” said Senator Marco Rubio (R) FL. “Or it’s going to go to their missile program, or their nuclear ambition or their military.”

Unlike digital transfers of money, cash is untraceable. Some experts say we likely will never know how Iran will take advantage of this windfall.

By Laura Carnahan

State Dept. Concedes Nuclear Deal May Have Fed Iran Regime Aggression

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State Dept. Concedes Nuclear Deal May Have Fed Iran Regime Aggression

State Dept. Concedes Nuclear Deal May Have Fed Iran Regime Aggression

Ever since the U.S. and other nations entered into negotiations with the Iranian regime over a nuclear deal and completed it more than a year ago, critics including the Iranian resistance movement have been warning that a deal that did not also address the regime’s poor human rights record, oppressive government and support of terrorism would inevitably prove fruitless and only empower and embolden the mullahs in Tehran.

The Iran lobby also argued strongly that the nuclear deal would help “moderate” the regime and open the door for more liberal elements of the government to make gains. Notable regime supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and Ali Gharib pushed the idea that Iran could help stabilize the volatile Middle East once a deal had been passed.

Even sympathetic editorial pages and commentators were actively encouraged by the administration to support the deal on the basis that it would bring economic benefits to the Iranian people long beleaguered by crippling sanctions and gross corruption and mismanagement by regime officials.

Over the past year, reality has set in and the world has discovered that virtually none of those promises and assurances ever came true and in fact the litany of woe heaped on the world by the rising tide of radicalized extremism flowing from Iran since the nuclear deal has all but reshaped the landscape of the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Africa and even touched Latin America.

The luxury of 20/20 hindsight has allowed the world to see the results of the nuclear deal and it is hard for even the most ardent member of the Iran lobby to put a positive spin that is remotely believable.

Things are so blatantly obvious that even the State Department has finally conceded that the nuclear deal may have in fact emboldened the Iranian regime to commit even more aggressive and militant acts; not diminish it.

Under questioning from Fox News reporter James Rosen, State Department spokesman Mark Toner could not rule out that the deal “has served as a cause for this more aggressive posture” by the regime.

Rosen noted, Iran had recently threatened to shoot down two US Navy surveillance planes in international airspace. This was just the latest in a growing list of provocations, including taking 10 US sailors hostage and abusing them in violation of international law.

The New York Post editorial board was flabbergasted by the admission since if the Obama administration had even an inkling of this aberrant behavior on the part of the mullahs, it made no sense to continue a policy of appeasing them, including bending over backwards to ship the regime $1.7 billion in hard cash in exchange for American hostages.

The Post said that of course, after citing incidents that “needlessly escalate tensions” Toner then said it all makes the deal even “more important, because the last thing anyone would want to see in the region is a nuclear-armed Iran.”

“Especially, we’d add, an Iran grown even more aggressive and hostile precisely because of that very deal.

“The logic here is just mind-boggling.

“Yes, Iran has been emboldened by a deal that gives it billions in cash now and an easy road to going nuclear in a few years — thanks to a president who won’t dare challenge Tehran’s behavior and risk undoing his dubious diplomatic legacy.

“Nice to see someone finally admitting as much,” the Post added.

The Iranian regime isn’t taking the potential for blowback lightly. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reports that the country’s foreign minister and his international counterparts will meet this month to discuss “some differences” over the implementation of the landmark nuclear deal.

The Wednesday report says they will focus on banking sanctions, which Iran complains have not been fully lifted. The meeting will take place Sep. 22, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, where the regime’s Hassan Rouhani is scheduled to speak in what we can only assume will be a verbal tongue lashing blaming the U.S. for a wide range of problems resulting from a now failed nuclear deal.

It has been clear from statements made by regime officials such as Ali Khamenei and members of the Iran lobby that the regime has shifted focus now to condemning the U.S. for the inability of the regime to participate in U.S. currency exchanges because of sanctions put in place for its support of terrorism and not related to the original nuclear deal.

The Iranian regime also recognizes that since the deal was passed, its conflict with Saudi Arabia, especially in Syria and Yemen, is stalling its plans for regional hegemony under a radicalized Shiite banner. The influence of Saudi Arabia in standing up to Iran including its active fighting in Yemen and interception of Iranian boast trying to smuggle illicit weapons through the Persian Gulf to Houthi rebels in Yemen has been effective and annoying to the mullahs in Tehran.

This helps explain why the Iranian regime has turned its attention and that of the Iran lobby into a full-blown smear campaign aimed at Saudi Arabia, and by association the U.S.

This can be seen in an editorial appearing in the New York Times penned by Mohammad Javad Zarif, the regime’s foreign minister, blaming Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia in particular for literally every terrorist act being committed around the world and chastised the Kingdom’s large lobbying efforts.

It is a preposterous piece since it blames Saudi Arabia for exactly what the Iranian regime is doing itself with its own substantial investment in PR firms, lobbyists, paid analysts, bloggers and commentators, as well as spreading cash to a large number of so-called grassroots organizations such as the Ploughshares Fund which strongly advocated for the nuclear deal.

Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, took Zarif to task and ticked off the Iranian regime’s own bloody history of support for terrorism around the world in a piece appearing on AEI’s site.

“It was the Islamic Republic that created Hezbollah and sponsored the groups that kidnapped and murdered Americans through Lebanon’s long civil war,” Pletka writes. “It is Iran that props up the murderous Assad regime — you know, the guys that have repeatedly gassed their own people. It is Iran that has assassinated its enemies the world over, and it is Iran’s own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (and its expeditionary Quds Force) that was responsible, during the Iraq war, for hundreds of US servicemen dying.”

The first step in recovery for any addict is to admit they have a problem. We can only hope this admission by the State Department will be the first step in confronting the Iranian regime forcefully, honestly and openly again.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Oddity of Excusing the Iranian Regime All the Time

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The Oddity of Excusing the Iranian Regime All the Time

Vector illustration of stop excuses concept background

Over the past few years, there has been a concerted effort by many to open up a dialogue to the Iranian regime. The most noteworthy of these efforts has been the nuclear deal struck last year and the creation of the Iran lobby and “echo chamber” of sympathetic journalists, bloggers, think tanks and lobbyists working to change perceptions about the mullahs in Tehran.

These efforts have included blasting out press releases, running letter writing campaigns, pushing messages on social media and even cornering Congressmen in hallways to press them on supporting this outreach.

Media such as the New York Times have even gone so far as to offer package deals for tourists to visit Iran in an effort to spur the idea of cultural and tourism exchanges in the hopes of portraying Iran as a friendly destination like Disney World in Orlando.

Unfortunately, that offer should probably come with the proviso that if you are a dual citizen Iranian-American, you might get arrested and tossed in prison for no reason and exchanged eventually for a few million dollars.

A curious side effect of these efforts has been the global effort to overlook and even make excuses for almost any egregious act committed by the regime by these sympathizers and apologists.

That apology train rolled out throughout the nuclear negotiations and in the year since.

  • The launching of illegal ballistic missiles? Technically not covered by the nuclear agreement and the UN sanctions were THAT explicit in banning them;
  • The escalation of the conflict in Syria that has led to 600,000 Syrian deaths at the hands of Hezbollah, Quds Force and Revolutionary Guard fighters? Peace in Syria was not part of the nuclear agreement;
  • The payment of $400 million in cash directly linked to the release of American hostages? We owed the mullahs the money anyway;
  • The executions of almost 3,000 Iranians under the administration of “moderate” Hassan Rouhani? Regrettable, but not part of the nuclear deal;
  • The start of the civil war in Yemen and Sunni/Shiite conflict in Iraq through IRGC units and backing? The Iranian regime is not explicitly in control of those wars; and
  • The snatching of even more foreign hostages including Americans, Canadians and British citizens? Hardliners are just trying to embarrass moderates in the regime.

At a certain point you just have to ask yourself when does the charade end and reality start to settle in people’s heads? Are we going to continue to ignore the transgressions of the Iranian regime simply because we are living on the “hope” they will eventually somehow magically change and become avid fans of Apple iPhones, McDonald’s burgers and the NFL?

Even the actual implementation of the nuclear agreement itself has been fraught with transgressions, exemptions and excuse-making.

Take for instance the release of an update from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency which assured the world that Iran was not violating the agreement, but buried within it was a disturbing notation that the regime had begun manufacturing new rotor tubes for centrifuges, allowing them to produce enriched uranium fuel that could be turned into nuclear warheads.

Iran is allowed to make the parts, but only under certain conditions.

For the 5,060 low-tech centrifuges now producing limited amounts of fuel-grade enriched uranium in Iran, Tehran must use spare parts stripped from old or idle machines. Parts for more advanced centrifuges would fall under even tighter regulations.

In its confidential report obtained by The Associated Press, the atomic energy agency said “related technical discussions” with Iran on rotor tube manufacturing are ongoing.

The agency needs to keep a close eye on how many rotor tubes are being made and for what models of centrifuges to make sure they are being produced only in quantities and for machines allowed under the 2015 nuclear agreement that sets a schedule for when and how many advanced centrifuges can be tested.

Any overproduction could hint at possible plans by Iran to expand advanced centrifuge testing beyond pact limits. That could be a significant issue, considering enriched uranium is a potential pathway to nuclear arms because more technically sophisticated models can enrich the uranium much more quickly than Iran’s present mainstay centrifuges, according to US News and World Report.

This was the same IAEA that was prohibited by Iran from having inspectors on the ground to collect soil samples from a nuclear site that was reportedly scrubbed clean by the regime, only to have radioactive particles show up in subsequent testing.

Earlier this month, a U.S. think-tank said Iran had been secretly allowed to overstep certain thresholds in order to get the deal through on time, but a diplomat said no limits had been exceeded apart from one incident which the agency reported in February.

The Institute for Science and International Security think-tank, headed by a former IAEA inspector, said one of the secret concessions exempted unknown quantities of low-enriched uranium contained in liquid, solid and sludge wastes.

It also said Iran had been allowed to keep operating 19 radiation containment chambers more than set out in the deal. These so-called “hot cells” are used for handling radioactive material but can be “misused for secret, mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts,” it said.

All of these actions demonstrate that as long as the world seems willing to continue looking the other way, the Iranian regime is certainly willing to continue engaging in unlawful behavior. This presents the central problem with the West’s approach to the Iranian regime.

Unless and until you hold the mullahs accountable and stop giving them a blank check or get out of jail card, you are never going to get them to change their behavior or change their leadership.

The great lesson of the tough sanctions imposed earlier that actually brought Iran to the bargaining table in the first place has been lost on world leaders: When they had the opportunity to change Iranian behavior and hold it accountable for terrorism and human rights violations, the world blinked and let the mullahs slide based on the false hope that change was possible without leverage or consequences.

By Michael Tomlinson

Shocking Report Reveals Secret Side Deals to Iran Nuke Agreement

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Shocking Report Reveals Secret Side Deals to Iran Nuke Agreement

Shocking Report Reveals Secret Side Deals to Iran Nuke Agreement

In what is bound to be one of the most startling revelations made about the Iran nuclear agreement, the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based non-profit, non-partisan institution dedicated to informing the public about science and policy issues affecting international security, issued a damning report outlining “secret” concessions granted to the Iranian regime.

In the report, the United States and its negotiating partners agreed “in secret” to allow the Iranian regime to evade some restrictions in last year’s landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to the think tank’s report published on Thursday.

“The exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it appears that they favor Iran,” said David Albright, the group’s president, in an interview with Reuters.

Among the exemptions outlined in the think tank’s report were two that allowed Iran to exceed the deal’s limits on how much low-enriched uranium (LEU) it can keep in its nuclear facilities, the report said. LEU can be purified into highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium.

Other provisions would allow Iran to continue operating 19 “hot cell” radiation containment chambers; and permission for Iran to store 50 tons of heavy water in Oman under its control, instead of selling it, as required by the nuclear deal.

The exemptions, the report said, were approved by the joint commission the deal created to oversee implementation of the accord. The commission is comprised of the United States and its negotiating partners — called the P5+1 — and Iran.

The Institute noted that the low-enriched uranium could be processed into weapons-grade material, so the secret side deal makes it effectively impossible to know how much bomb material Iran could produce, on fairly short notice. The hot cells can also be “misused for secret, mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts,” according to the report.

The White House claims these changes to the JCPOA were not kept secret from Congress, but at least one prominent critic of the nuclear deal, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who is a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters he was “not aware” of the exemptions, and was never briefed on them.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, (R-N.H.), who sits on the Armed Services Committee, also issued a statement. Ayotte argued that the new evidence of “secret exemptions” underscores “the willingness of the Obama administration to bend over backwards to accommodate Tehran, conceal information from the American people, and protect a fundamentally flawed and deeply dangerous agreement that is only getting worse.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who formerly chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was far harsher: “Secret exemptions, ballistic missile tests, ransom payments, heavy water purchases but no sanctions. #Iran’s bent + broken horrid nuke deal,” she tweeted.

“Since the JCPOA is public, any rationale for keeping these exemptions secret appears unjustified. Moreover, the Joint Commission’s secretive decision making process risks advantaging Iran by allowing it to try to systematically weaken the JCPOA. It appears to be succeeding in several key areas,” wrote Albright and his co-author, Andrea Stricker, who has written extensively on the illegal nuclear trade and Iran’s nuclear program.

State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on the work of the joint commission, saying it was confidential, but the lack of transparency flies in the face of the original promises made by the Iran lobby, such as the Ploughshares Fund and National Iranian American Council, which reassured skeptical members of Congress that there were no other provisions in the deal other than what was presented to Congress for review.

That assertion was proven false within days when secret appendices were revealed by the media to exist and now follow up decisions by the join commission can now carve out wide exemptions for the mullahs in Tehran without public review or knowledge.

“The current arrangement has been overly secret and amounts to the generation of additional secret or confidential arrangements directly linked to the JCPOA that do not have adequate oversight and scrutiny,” the report states. “Moreover, the process in general raises the question of whether Iran is exploiting the exemption mechanism, outside of any public oversight, to systematically weaken as many JCPOA limitations as possible.”

A “senior knowledgeable official” quoted by the report said that without the secret exemptions, Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance with the nuclear deal by Jan. 16, which was set as the implementation day.

That statement alone should give people pause since it clearly indicates that the Iranian regime was not prepared to abide by the agreement from Day One and since then it has used the commission to receive more and more exemptions allowing it to violate the agreement without penalty.

At every step of the negotiations and through the implementation of the Iranian nuclear agreement, both U.S. and European officials have been consistently misled by the regime and yet bizarrely accommodating of the mullahs, granting exemptions, leading trade delegations to Tehran even while political prisoners are being executed, keeping mum about a rash of hostage-takings of dual-national citizens and refusing to demand the halt of Iran’s participation in proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The world has given the Iranian regime so many second-chances, the mullahs must be wondering how they can keep this gravy train of appeasement going into 2017.

By Michael Tomlinson

Week of Living Dangerously in Persian Gulf By Iran Regime

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Week of Living Dangerously in Persian Gulf By Iran Regime

Week of Living Dangerously in Persian Gulf By Iran Regime

A lot can happen in one week. According to the Bible, God created the heavens and earth and all the creatures in just a week’s time. You can have half of an Olympic Games run in one week.

For the Iranian regime, one week is enough time to create an international crisis in the Persian Gulf and threaten to spark a shooting war with the U.S. Navy.

The week started out on Tuesday with the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps sending several ships to harass the U.S. Navy destroyer Nitze by closing at high rates of speed, then veering off and returning again.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer issued several warnings including radioed messages, fired flares and whistles at the regime ships which did not respond as it transited international waters; well away from Iranian waters. A Navy spokesman described the Iranian maneuvers as “unsafe and unprofessional.”

That incident was followed on Wednesday by another one in which three IRGC ships approached the U.S. coastal patrol ships Squall and Tempest at high speed in the northern Persian Gulf.

According to the Washington Post, “later in the day, an Iranian vessel came within 200 yards of the Tempest. After the Tempest shot flares and tried to communicate using the ship’s loudspeaker, Squall personnel fired three shots into the water from that ship’s .50-caliber gun. The Iranian ship then departed.”

That same Iranian ship later approached the USS Stout, a guided-missile destroyer, later Wednesday. “The [IRGC] vessel proceeded to cross the bow of the Stout at close range on three separate occasions,” said William Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. 5th Fleet.

Responding to a U.S. complaint, the Iranian regime rejected the American version of events. The defense minister, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, said in remarks quoted by the state news media that the Iranian boats patrolled only Iran’s territorial waters and had a mission to “counter any unintentional or aggressive intrusion.”

“If an American ship enters Iran’s maritime region, it will definitely get a warning. We will monitor them and, if they violate our waters, we will confront them,” Dehghan said in a statement reported by the Iranian Students’ News Agency.

It clearly shows the regime’s intentions of antagonizing the U.S. at a time when the Iran lobby had promised a new era of cooperation following the Iran nuclear deal.

Obama administration officials say Iran has abided by its commitments on the nuclear program, but there have been few signs of change in Iranian regime’s behavior in other arenas, including tensions in the Persian Gulf, clashes with U.S. allies in the region and the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.

Congressional Republicans and critical private analysts have been angry about this behavior since late last year, when the Islamic republic conducted two tests of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. sanctions and then staged a live-fire exercise dangerously close to a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf.

The situation worsened in January, when the Iranian regime detained 10 U.S. Navy sailors whose boats had drifted mistakenly into Iranian waters in the Gulf.

Although administration officials hoped the deal might lead to a less-confrontational posture from Iran, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward R. Royce, California Republican, said Iran continues to pursue policies that are “destabilizing the region.”

“Iran is on a roll, and the perception is that the administration is getting rolled at this moment,” Mr. Royce said in January. “We need to see more backbone, not backing down.”

Revelations this month of how the Obama administration worked out a $1.7 billion settlement of a failed Iranian missile sale in January at virtually the same time as the release of five American prisoners held in Iran has only fueled criticism that the Obama administration is overlooking continued misbehavior by Tehran to preserve the nuclear deal.

Stephen Bryen, a senior fellow in defense studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, authored an editorial in U.S. News and World Report, in which he criticizes the administration’s oddly held belief that somehow the Iranian regime can still be a friend to the U.S.

“This view, strongly held by the White House, State Department, Pentagon and CIA, is a true fantasy. … Washington persists in fostering the illusion. There is no immediate cure for a political disease: We have yet to invent an anti-regime-biotic that, when injected into the insane, returns them to normalcy,” Bryen writes.

“As there is no solution, the Obama administration will explain the Persian Gulf incident as some sort of aberration or unauthorized action by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or a mistake, but not an act of overt hostility,” he adds.

More darkly, he raises the specter that the Iranian regime is merely testing a “swarming boat attack” tactic to learn how they might fling multiple small, fast attack boats at much larger U.S. warships.

“Recently the Iranians added another dimension to the swarming boats: a vessel known as the Ya Mahdi, a remotely piloted fast patrol boat that can fire rockets or be stuffed with explosives. It is a new version of the boat that attacked the USS Cole in Aden in 2000 at a cost of 17 lives, 39 injuries and severe damage to the ship,” Bryen warns.

Criticism from the White House is sorely lacking as these provocations increase. One explanation may be the announcement that Ben Rhodes, the national security advisor who created the so-called “echo chamber” of support for the Iranian regime and nuclear deal, is now scheduled to keynote a conference sponsored by Iran lobby loyalist, the National Iranian American Council.

Outside organizations such as NIAC and the Ploughshares Fund, which is co-sponsoring the upcoming conference, were cited as key parts of the White House’s effort to mislead the public about the deal.

The NIAC event is being viewed as another sign that the White House is seeking to boost these organizations in return for their efforts to push the nuclear deal and support the pro-Iran “echo chamber.”

“Pro-Iran lobbies like NIAC were helpful to Ben Rhodes when he created his echo chamber to sell the Iran nuclear deal and the Iran money-for-hostages deal,” said one senior foreign policy consultant who has worked with Congress on the Iran deal. “It’s only fair that Rhodes would return the favor by keynoting NIAC’s conference. It’s not clear what he’ll talk about more: Iran developing its nuclear program, Iran expanding across the region, or Iran seizing more American hostages including those with close links to NIAC itself.”

The cozy relationship between Iran lobbyists and Obama administration may well explain why this past week it has been silent on the provocations, but it does not explain how to stop the regime.

BY Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Assurances Proven False Again

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Iran Lobby Assurances Proven False Again

Iran Lobby Assurances Proven False Again

The “echo chamber” created by the Obama administration to help push through passage of the badly flawed Iran nuclear deal has beat the drum repeatedly in efforts to defend the deal in the face of growing and incontrovertible proof that all of the assumptions of the Iran lobby have been proven false.

The revelations of the falsehoods surrounding the Iran lobby’s participation in that now infamous echo chamber have almost become legendary:

  • Allen S. Weiner, a Stanford law professor and contributor to the Washington Post’s opinions section who co-authored a piece arguing in favor of the $400 million “ransom payment” failed to disclose he had long been on the payroll of the Ploughshares Fund, an organization recently exposed as a key cog in a White House-orchestrated campaign to build what it called a pro-Iran “echo chamber;”
  • Shortly after approval of the nuclear deal, in which the Iran lobby argued it would empower “moderate” forces within the regime, parliamentary elections were rigged to eliminate virtually all perceived moderates and usher in solid majorities loyal to the ruling mullahs; and
  • Promises by the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, that the deal would help steer Iran as a player in the Middle East to stabilize regional conflicts was proven wrong when wars in Syria and Iraq widened, ISIS rose up and Iran launched a rebellion in Yemen by the Houthis.

In each case, the Iran lobby has sought to assure the world of the good intentions of the Iranian regime, only to have those assurances fall flat in the face of new regime transgressions, but for the Iran lobby the battle being waged by its members is the battle of public perception.

It serves the purposes of the mullahs to have the perception there is a chance for moderation, rather than actually delivering any.

Nothing illustrates that point more than the controversy over the $400 million cash payment made by the Obama administration in what appeared to be linkage for the release of several American hostages.

Even though the Iran lobby remained relatively silent on the issue, “echo chamber” participants such as Weiner made a strong case for denouncing any link of cash for hostages. Of course, the Iranian regime did nothing to steer speculation away from that scenario; with various regime officials all but boasting of how the Islamic state cowed the U.S. and forced it to pay it millions of dollars.

Even though the Obama administration at first vigorously denied any connection, the issue was never what the administration thought, but what the regime thought since if the mullahs indeed believed this was a straight cash for hostage swap, it would only serve to validate their belief that this was a sound policy to pursue in advancing the goals of the regime.

That much was true when the Obama administration finally admitted the other day that the $400 million ransom payment was held up until confirmation of the hostages’ release and flight back home, thereby validating the use of the money as leverage tied directly to the hostages’ plight.

For months the Obama administration had maintained that the payment was part of a settlement over an old dispute and did not amount to a “ransom” for the release of the Americans. Instead, administration officials said, it was the first installment of the $1.7 billion that the United States intends to pay Iran to reimburse it for military equipment it bought before the Iranian revolution that the United States never delivered.

But at a briefing on Thursday, John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said the United States “took advantage of the leverage” it felt it had that weekend in mid-January to obtain the release of the hostages and “to make sure they got out safely and efficiently.”

According to the New York Times, the acknowledgment by Kirby on Thursday touched off a torrent of criticism from Republicans.

“It was ransom,” said Representative Ed Royce of California, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We now know it was ransom. And on top of that it put more American lives at risk. And we’ve emboldened Iran. We’ve encouraged them, frankly, to take more hostages and put more American lives at risk of being taken hostage.”

Iranian regime press has described the payment as a ransom — which fits Tehran’s narrative that it has outmaneuvered the Obama administration.

Kirby conceded that while the deals were negotiated separately, the timing of the final transactions was linked. “As we said at the time, we deliberately leveraged that moment to finalize these outstanding issues nearly simultaneously,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board took a harsh tack with the ransom payment, saying the Obama Administration’s handling of the Iran ransom-for-hostages story brings to mind the classic Chico Marx line in the movie “Duck Soup”: “Who are you going to believe—me or your own eyes?”

“Mr. Obama, meanwhile, spent August denying that a ransom was a ransom. Since the January “leverage” moment, Iran has taken three more Americans as hostage and is now demanding the return of $2 billion in funds that U.S. courts have ordered held for the victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism. The eyes of the world can simply stare,” the Journal added.

The campaign to pass this ill-fated nuclear deal has also been undergoing even more scrutiny with disclosures that Ploughshares Fund sought $750,000 from billionaire financier’s George Soro’s Open Society Foundation to pay off “experts and validators” to vouch for the nuclear agreement.

The disclosure of the Ploughshares request shines further light on backroom efforts by the White House and its top allies to create what they called an “echo chamber” to galvanize public support for the nuclear deal with Iran.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, one foreign policy consultant who has worked intimately with Congress on the Iran deal said that the Ploughshares funding request is further proof that the White House’s efforts were well funded and highly influential.

“You couldn’t turn around last summer without bumping into some Iran deal booster complaining about all the money that skeptics were spending,” the source said. “Now we find out that the architects of the Iran echo chamber were soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars from dark money groups to pour into manipulating the media and pushing fabricated experts into the mainstream.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Disconnect Between Iran Lobby Priorities and Reality

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The Disconnect Between Iran Lobby Priorities and Reality

The Disconnect Between Iran Lobby Priorities and Reality

Money makes the world go around

The world go around

The world go around

Money makes the world go around

It makes the world go ’round.

 

A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound

A buck or a pound

A buck or a pound

Is all that makes the world go around,

That clinking clanking sound

Can make the world go ’round.

 

These are lyrics from the 1972 Academy Award-winning movie “Cabaret” which depicted the last final days of freedom in the Weimar Republic of Germany in 1931 during the rise of the Nazi Party.

The tune entitled “Money, Money” is sung by the cabaret’s emcee as a narrative about the pervasive influence of money and the desperate pursuit of it.

The movie was also noteworthy because of its depiction of issues such as homosexuality and hedonistic club life, as well as the virulence of anti-Semitism and even abortion. It was a movie widely considered to be one of the best 100 movies of all time.

The show tune is appropriate though for our world today and is still powerfully relevant as we consider the current priorities of the Iran lobby and its most conspicuous leaders such as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

It also helps illustrate the wide disparity between the priorities of the Iran lobby and the most pressing issues surrounding the Iranian regime today. If we examine the public statements and recent policy memos issued by the NIAC especially this week, we would assume that the most pressing issues confronting the U.S. and Iranian regime is how to get the mullahs more money.

At the top of NIAC’s legislative priorities is to prevent renewal of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 (ISA) which is up for consideration by Congress before the end of this year and along with it, the tacit lifting of all remaining restrictions and sanctions against the Iranian regime.

The impetus for the legislative push by NIAC and other Iran lobby allies is recognition that the upcoming presidential election is likely to bring significant changes in the U.S. foreign policy approach to the Iranian regime no matter who wins, be it Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, because an incoming administration is likely to gain political capital by taking an aggressive stand against Iran, especially in light of the global deterioration of stability with terrorism and proxy wars on the rise.

To that end, the NIAC has been busy churning out policy papers arguing not only against renewing the ISA, but also the lifting of all remaining sanctions, especially prohibitions against the regime’s access to U.S. currency exchanges and the reluctance of foreign banks to handle Iranian regime transactions for fear of running afoul sanctions still in place pertaining to Iran’s human rights abuses and support for terrorism.

Interestingly, one policy paper authored by Ryan Costello of NIAC, argued that expiration of the ISA would still allow the president the ability to re-impose the same sanctions, but he neglects to mention the real reason the mullahs wish to shift authority away from Congressional legislation and onto the president: President Obama has demonstrated with his policies of appeasement the value to the mullahs of a president willing to accommodate their wishes and avoid the messy spectacle of a Congressional hearing and floor debate which would almost certainly go against them on almost any issue given the current climate.

More importantly, by trying to sell the idea that a new president could re-impose sanctions at will, ignores the most obvious flip side of that proposition, which is that the same president could choose to ignore Iran’s conduct and not impose sanctions that might otherwise be forced by a renewed ISA.

The NIAC and its allies in the Iran lobby are counting on their ability to duplicate last year’s “echo chamber” to apply political pressure on a new administration to keep the Iranian regime off the sanctions hit list.

Another policy memo authored by Tyler Cullis of NIAC, goes even further to make the explicit link between the need to lift all sanctions and the potential for the nuclear agreement with Iran—the  Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—to fail.

What Cullis and the NIAC fail to admit is that the limits of the JCPOA stop at the issue of human rights violations and support for terrorism; issues that the regime stridently wanted to be de-linked from the nuclear negotiations for fear that they would bring down any hope of a deal and the lifting of economic sanctions that had succeeded in crippling the Iranian economy and weakened the mullahs grip on power.

Cullis’ conclusion reveals the true goals of the Iran lobby when he writes:

“Despite the formal lifting of U.S. nuclear-related sanctions, implementation of U.S. obligations under the JCPOA has not proceeded altogether smoothly. In order to safeguard the decades-long restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. must faithfully observe its JCPOA sanctions-related obligations in full. To do so, though, there must be a common understanding as to the full scope of those U.S. sanctions-related commitments.”

It is a bizarre statement to make since it places the burden solely on U.S. actions and speaks of nothing in regards to growing Iranian regime’s recalcitrance and militant stances; nor takes into account the abysmal state of human rights in Iran.

That situation has grown appallingly worse as the regime has moved aggressively to execute citizens at a fast and monstrous clip, including the mass execution of 25 Sunni Muslims it accuses of “enmity against God,” which earned the regime a blistering condemnation from Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups.

“Iran’s mass execution of prisoners on August 2 at Rajai Shahr prison is a shameful low point in its human rights record,” said Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “With at least 230 executions since January 1, Iran is yet again the regional leader in executions but a laggard in implementing the so far illusory penal code reforms meant to bridge the gap with international standards.”

Two lawyers who represented some of the men told Human Rights Watch that their clients did not get a fair trial and that their due process rights had been violated.

Ultimately, while the Iran lobby fights to fill the Iranian regime’s coffers, we have to ask why it doesn’t also fight to save Iranian lives.

Indeed, money does make the world go round.

By Michael Tomlinson

How Much Are Four Americans Worth to Iran? $400 Million

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How Much Are Four Americans Worth to Iran? $400 Million

How Much Are Four Americans Worth to Iran? $400 Million

How much are four Americans worth to the Iranian regime? Apparently $400 million since news reports indicate the Obama administration secretly shipped $400 million worth of cash to Iran coinciding with the release of four Americans detained in Tehran and released as part of the nuclear agreement.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

While Obama officials denied any quid pro quo of cash for the prisoners, U.S. officials also acknowledged that Iranian regime negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.

Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused the Obama administration of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.”

“This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures” of Americans, he said.

Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.

The Iranian regime’s news media quoted senior regime defense officials who described the cash as a ransom payment themselves putting into proper focus how they perceive the cash payment.

Ironically, the $400 million was paid in foreign currency because any transaction with Iran in U.S. dollars is still illegal under existing sanctions not related to the nuclear agreement for violations of human rights and sponsorship of terrorism.

A report by an Iranian news site close to the Revolutionary Guard, the Tasnim agency, said the cash arrived in Tehran’s Mehrabad airport on the same day the Americans departed.

Revolutionary Guard commanders boasted at the time that the Americans had succumbed to Iranian pressure. “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies,” said Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the Guard’s Basij militia, on state media.

Among the Americans currently being held are an energy executive named Siamak Namazi and his 80-year old father, Baqer, according to U.S. and Iranian officials. Iran’s judiciary spokesman last month confirmed Tehran had arrested the third American, believed to be a San Diego resident named Reza “Robin” Shahini.

Friends and family of the Namazis believe the Iranians are seeking to increase their leverage to force another prisoner exchange or cash payment in the final six months of the Obama administration. Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials have been raising their case with Iranian diplomats, U.S. officials say.

Iranian officials have demanded in recent weeks the U.S. return $2 billion in Iranian funds that were frozen in New York in 2009. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the money should be given to victims of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks.

Clearly the Iranian regime expects to use the same tried and true tactics to squeeze more cash out of the Obama administration in its waning days as the three proxy wars it funds in Syria, Iraq and Yemen drain it of cash as fast as it can replenish it.

The $100 million value per American hostage is a stunning amount. As a point of comparison, the four highest paid professional athletes in the world make less money: Soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi make $88 and $81.4 million respectively, basketball star LeBron James banks $77.2 million and tennis great Roger Federer brings in a paltry $67.8 million compared to what the Iranian regime received.

The fact that the last days of the Obama administration are coming and with both presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—promising to hold the Iranian regime more accountable, the regime’s leaders may be seeing the end of the road to the usefulness of the nuclear deal.

Top mullah Ali Khamenei harshly denounced the Iran nuclear deal Monday, referring to the negotiations as a “lethal poison” that will prevent his country from negotiating with the U.S. in the future.

“They [the U.S.] want us to negotiate with them on the regional issues but the nuclear deal experience tells us that this is a lethal poison and we cannot trust the Americans’ words in any issue,” Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian citizens Monday.

Various officials within the Islamic Republic have criticized the U.S. for implementing new sanctions against Iran since the JCPOA went into effect in January. They claim the deal prevents the U.S. from implementing any new sanctions against their country, however, the deal only pertains to nuclear related sanctions that existed before the accord was signed. Khamenei threatened to “set fire” to the deal in June should the West violate it, he did not elaborate on what exactly entailed a violation.

It’s a silly claim since the Iranians specifically demanded the deal be de-linked from non-nuclear issues such as human rights and terrorism. In essence, the mullahs have trapped themselves.

Khamenei cautioned against talks with the United States on other regional crises, presumably including the wars in Syria and Yemen and the Islamic State extremist group. The experience of the nuclear deal, he said, “tells us that taking this step would be a deadly poison and that the Americans’ remarks cannot be trusted on any issue.”

His remarks are a verbal backflip from the original promises made by the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, that passage of the agreement would help in moderating the various conflicts going on in the region with Iran’s help.

Those claims, like most made in support of the Iranian regime, have proven false.

By  Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries to Hold Off Iran Sanctions

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Iran Lobby Tries to Hold Off Iran Sanctions

Iran Lobby Tries to Hold Off Iran Sanctions

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has consistently raised the idea that Iran has not been rewarded with the full lifting of economic sanctions per the nuclear agreement reached last year.

It makes this case based on the continued shaky nature of the Iranian economy, and by the threatening statements of various regime officials such as top mullah Ali Khamenei and foreign minister Javad Zarif who maintain the U.S. is deliberately trying to sabotage the deal.

It is a profoundly ludicrous ideal given the fact that the Obama administration has broken with past U.S. policy over the past three decades in maneuvering to get this deal done in the first place. The Obama administration has set new standards for political gymnastics in trying to secure this policy win, including treating the agreement as a political framework and not a formal treaty in order to avoid an uncertain Senate vote.

It even de-linked Iranian regime’s notoriously bad human rights record and sponsorship of terrorism as conditions for doing the deal; an unheard of step in modern diplomacy.

It also ignored blatant tampering by the Iranian regime in sanitizing military sites where prior uranium enrichment had been ongoing and ignored copious mountains of evidence that Iran was still pursuing dual-use nuclear technology from Germany and ballistic missile designs from North Korea.

Even after all that, the Iran lobby and regime still blame the U.S. for not following through on its commitments.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

A key goal for the regime remains the lifting of the remaining sanctions put in place by the U.S. in response to Iran’s abysmal human rights record and terror support. These items were ostensibly left out from the nuclear deal since—by the Iranians argument—they had nothing to do with nuclear production, but now the mullahs want these sanctions lifted even though Iranian regime has done nothing to improve its conduct in either area.

The fact that the Iran lobby and regime are now trying to link these sanctions—previously off the table—now back on the table and have threatened to walk away from a deal they have already walked away from, demonstrates how completely useless the nuclear exercise has become.

In a posting on its website, the NIAC, argued that the pending renewal of the Iran Sanctions Act could bring disastrous consequences if it was amended with so-called “poison pills” to impose new restrictions, sanctions or even lengthen its term.

“There is a danger that passage of new sanctions legislation, even if it is to renew sanctions already on the books, could exacerbate tensions over JCPOA sanctions relief. The prospect of Congress renewing ISA, especially extending them beyond the 2023 deadline for lifting sanctions, could send troubling signals regarding the U.S. commitment to the JCPOA at a time of ongoing political uncertainty. Iranian officials and many in the broader Iranian public say the sanctions relief promised under the deal has not been delivered,” the NIAC statement said.

It’s a perverse position to take since the gross mismanagement of the regime’s economy and the decision to support three ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have badly hobbled an economy already rife with public corruption and battered by plummeting oil prices that have nothing to do with the sanctions; especially since Iranian regime is now free to sell the country’s oil back on the open market.

The Iranian people are rightly angry and upset at the stagnant economy, but Tehran’s streets and the channels of social media are not being filled with vocal denunciations of the U.S., instead it is filled with harsh protests of inflated paychecks for regime officials and the pouring of thousands of young Iranian lives to die on the battlefields far from Iran’s borders.

The effort to misdirect attention away from the real failings of the regime and try to blame it on the U.S.—even after the U.S. has tried to do everything it can to appease the Iranian regime short of baking cookies—is a time-worn tactic of the mullahs and we should not fall for it.

Robert Spencer, noted author and director of Jihad Watch, wrote an editorial in the New York Post warning that the Iranian regime is the greatest threat the U.S. and West face right now and dwarfs ISIS in its threat.

“Iran is not as flashy as ISIS but is actively working now on numerous anti-American initiatives that could turn out to be even more lethal than anything ISIS has yet perpetrated,” he said. “The nation is a breeding ground for terrorist activity: funding and controlling a global network of jihad terror organizations with a truly global reach, ready to do Iran’s bidding up to and including the killing of its perceived enemies.”

“Iran’s Hezbollah doesn’t just operate in Lebanon. It continues to target the United States through Mexico, where it has teamed with drug cartels along the US border. This partnership is mutually beneficial: Hezbollah gets massive amounts of cash to finance its jihad operations, and the drug cartels receive extensive training in ways to strike terror into the hearts of their enemies. That is one principal reason why the Mexican drug cartels have adopted what up until recently had been two trademarks of jihad groups: kidnapping and beheading,” he added.

Bob Blackman, a member of the British Parliament, similarly warned of trusting the Iranian regime in a piece in The Hill after the United Nations released a report assessing the regime’s compliance with the nuclear agreement, which found it had failed to meet the higher standards for compliance.

“The critical report by the UN is only the latest in a long series of marks against the Rouhani administration’s supposedly moderate credentials. In order to believe in that moderation in the first place, Western policy-makers had to ignore Rouhani’s long history in the security apparatus of Iran’s clerical regime, including his former role as lead nuclear negotiator, about which he boasted of raising Tehran’s nuclear profile while keeping international scrutiny at bay. And in order to keep the moderation narrative alive to the current date, those same policy-makers have had to ignore various statistical indicators and warnings from the Iranian opposition,” he said.

“The U.S. gave up important leverage in hope of improved relations, but it remained the main object of Tehran’s wrath. The UN closed the file on Tehran’s nuclear weapons program and Iran has continued to accuse it of political bias. And the six major powers involved in the JCPOA, having given in to even last-minute demands by the Islamic Republic, received nothing in return but the most cursory and minimal compliance with the deal. As the Associated Press reported last week, secret side-agreements already outline the expanded nuclear activities that Iran plans to pursue at its earliest possible opportunity,” Blackman added in a warning we should all heed.

By Michael Tomlinson