Iran Lobby

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

Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

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Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by JORDAN SCHACHTEL27 Oct 2015

Edwin Mora contributed to this report.

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

Iran Lobby Working for $120 Billion Paycheck

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PaycheckOnly someone with a doctorate in voodoo economics would equate the Iran regime’s “resistance economy” as a “blueprint for economic reform,” but that is exactly what Bijan Khajehpour of the Atieh International Consultancy is advocating in remarks he made at the Wilson Center.

The call for a “resistance economy” designed to withstand the impacts of economic sanctions imposed on Iran for its clandestine nuclear program was issued by the regime’s leader Ali Khamenei in February 2014, in which he called on the government of Hassan Rouhani to expand production and export of knowledge-based products, increase domestic production of strategic goods and develop markets in neighboring countries. He also urged greater privatization and increased exports of electricity, gas, petrochemical and oil by-products instead of crude oil and other raw materials.

How has that gone for Iran’s mullahs so far? Iran’s gross domestic product (GDP) has steadily declined the last three quarters from 4.4 percent, to 3.7 percent and now at an anemic 2.8 percent.

Khajehpour attempted to explain away the decline by blaming economic sanctions, government mismanagement, corruption, and former president Ahmadinejad’s brand of populist economic policies. The one variable he left out was Iran’s diversion of billions of scarce dollars to support proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as terror groups such as Hezbollah.

U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, estimated Iran spends $6 billion annually on propping up Assad’s government. Other experts put the number even higher. Nadim Shehadi, the director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University, said his research shows that Iran spent between $14 and $15 billion in military and economic aid to the Damascus regime in 2012 and 2013, even though Iran’s banks and businesses were cut off from the international financial system.

All of which comes on the heel of fresh calls by Assad for even more fighters and equipment he needs to combat rebels which Iran has met with the delivery of 15,000 new soldiers to fight for Syria. Far from being a resistance economy, Iran has been on a war footing for the past two years, all of which is fighting unrelated to its nuclear program.

It is hard to see how Khajehpour can overlook these staggering costs and contend Iran’s economy rebound as it throws more men, cash and expensive military hardware at its neighbors.

And you can’t even blame the declining price of oil on the world market for Iran’s economic problems either. Iran has a fairly diversified economy, in which oil accounts for only 23 percent of GDP. The largest contributor to the GDP is services (around 50 percent of total output), which means Iran’s primary drivers of its economy are its people.

These are the same people who are regularly subjected to street justice by the Basij paramilitary, who are thrown into prison for posted offending or critical comments on social media, who see scions of the mullahs’ race around the streets of Tehran in expensive foreign cars while they languish in economic purgatory.

Most incredibly of all, Khajehpour tried to make the argument that the estimated $120 billion in frozen Iranian assets that would be repatriated in the event of a nuclear deal would actually diminish the revenues of such corrupt actors within Iran because they no longer would have a monopoly on what commodities went in and out of Iran.

While it is not the dumbest statement ever made, it certainly ranks as one of the least believable; given the enormous pressure the regime’s mullahs are under to keep Assad afloat, a tight rein on the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and Houthi-rebel controlled Yemen.

If Khajehpour thinks the mullahs will not use that $120 billion to prop up their puppets, then he only reveals his true colors as a regime apologist and unabashed cheerleader.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Countdown to a Gathering of Resistance

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CountdownIn exactly one month from today, there will be one of the largest gatherings of people dedicated to changing Iran from a religious, despotic regime to a multicultural, democratic, secular nation.

The annual meeting, sponsored by the organizations supporting the National Council of Resistance of Iran, one of the largest resistance groups worldwide to the Iran regime, is held outside of Paris, France and offers a platform for elected leaders, women’s activists, religious leaders, death penalty opponents, anti-nuclear groups and Iranian dissidents to join in an united voice against the mullahs in Tehran and their brutality.

Led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, a moderate woman leader of a global Muslim group, the NCRI offers a compelling and unmistakable contrast to what Iran and its lobbying supporters attempt to portray the resistance as a group of out-of-touch Iranian exiles who do not represent the true hopes of the Iranian people.

The Iran lobby has worked relentlessly to attack any appearance of an organized resistance to the regime. Groups such as the National Iranian American Council, blogs such as Lobelog and columnists such as Eli Clifton have sought to misinform and distort the truth in the hopes of throwing enough mud at a wall so that something, anything will stick. The same goes for the distortions being played out over social media.

Why does the Iran lobby seem so offended by any dissent? Largely because its truth is as fragile as a house of cards, ready to be blown over with the slightest breeze. The daily conduct and revelations about the Iran regime undercuts anything the lobby does.

As it tries to portray Hassan Rouhani as a moderate interested in a nuclear compromise, his master, top mullah Ali Khamenei, denounces any nuclear deal that does not reward the regime with an unconditional lifting of economic sanctions.

As foreign minister Javad Zarif smiles for the cameras with Western leaders, Iran is busy leading proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. And many are being executed at home for various excuses, in order to raise fear amongst people and particularly the women and the youth.

As a sympathetic news media try to portray a nuclear compromise as advantageous for regional security and stability, Iran’s neighbors such as Saudi Arabia openly question the possibility of jumping into a nuclear program of their own to match Iran.

Most galling of all is the central truth facing the Iran lobby; the Iranian resistance is not just a collection of academics or elites living in exile. It is comprised of millions of people of all religions, ethnicities and nationalities, all working towards a common dream of freedom.

It has deep connections to millions of Iranians living within the regime who provide information on human rights abuses, demonstrations, police and paramilitary activities and economic performance; all of which puts to a lie the claims made by Iran’s leaders.

The resistance movement has helped uncover secret Iranian nuclear facilities. It has helped bring to light the arrest, imprisonment and abuse of countless thousands of prisoners of conscience. It has shifted the perception of global leaders who no longer believe the flowery speeches and moderate claims made by the mullahs.

Most of all, the resistance movement is a living, breathing embodiment of the hope for real change in Iran. It cannot be explained away by the Iran lobby and is a constant thorn in their side.

Over the next month, as we build up towards the gathering on June 13th in Paris, we will also be on a parallel track with new nuclear talks aimed at delivering a final agreement by the June 30th deadline. You can bet the lobby will ramp up the rhetoric and vitriol in order to try and salvage an agreement in the wake of near unanimous action by the U.S. Senate to review and decide on any deal.

If there is one thing we know, the pressure of a countdown to June 30th will place the Iran regime and its lobby under ever-increasing scrutiny.

By Laura Carnahan