Ballistic Missiles – Iran Lobby

US Pressure on Iran Missile Program Pushing Europe to Act

March 5, 2018 by admin

US Pressure on Iran Missile Program Pushing Europe to Act

The Trump administration has been applying diplomatic pressure on the Iranian regime over its ballistic missile program and support for terrorism and has consistently raised the specter of invalidating the Iran nuclear deal by certifying the regime as being out of compliance with its provisions.

For those efforts, the administration has been roundly and harshly criticized by the Iranian regime’s allies, especially within the Iran lobby by groups such as the National Iranian American Council and individuals such as Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former regime nuclear official who now masquerade’s as an academic at Princeton University.

The vitriol being thrown at the administration over this new pressure on Iran has only been matched by the depth and breadth of misinformation and fake news being pumped out by the Iran lobby.

What is becoming clear though is that the central issue at the heart of the Trump administration’s complaints—that Iran’s ballistic missile program posed a serious international threat and its support of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah was destabilizing the Middle East—have finally gotten the attention of European leaders and serious traction throughout European capitals.

During the Obama administration’s negotiation of the nuclear deal, little emphasis was placed on Iran’s missile program, nor its abysmal human rights record or support for terrorism. That lack of negotiating prowess essentially left the Iranian regime off the hook and gave it carte blanche to rapidly build its missile program and gain strongholds in Syria, Iraq and Yemen through proxy wars.

Many EU leaders that had lauded the nuclear deal as paving the war towards Iranian moderation have been left in more precarious political situations as nearly four million Syrian refugees flooded into Europe in the greatest refugee crisis since World War II and cities such as Paris, Berlin and Brussels were rocked by terrorist acts inspired by the Islamic extremism espoused by the mullahs in Tehran.

That has forced many of them to make a decision to head off a potential move by the Trump administration to kill the nuclear deal and that is to apply more pressure on the Iranian regime on these issues they once considered unimportant.

One example has been French president Emmanuel Macron, who has taken a more public and aggressive stance towards Iranian military actions and human rights.

Macron told the Iranian regime’s Hassan Rouhani in a telephone call this weekend of his support for the nuclear accord and his concerns over Iran’s other activities according to the Financial Times.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, French foreign minister, is due to hold further talks in Tehran on Monday as the clock ticks towards a May deadline set by the US president for European countries to “fix” the nuclear agreement.

The EU and the bloc’s three signatories to the deal — France, Germany and Britain — are urgently trying to craft a solution that will placate the Trump administration’s without destroying an accord they argue is working.

Macron also asked for “clear responses” from Iran over “problems” outside the deal relating to its ballistic missile program and its destabilizing role in the region, particularly in Lebanon.

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, will visit Tehran this week and call upon the regime to address the West’s misgivings about its ballistic missile program and Middle East military activities, according to Reuters.

The growing threats posed by the Iranian regime are now being scrutinized more openly as evidenced by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal authored by Jose Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, and Stephen Harper, former prime minister of Canada, in which they both urged Europe to act more decisively in containing Iranian expansionism.

“Despite Tehran’s quest for regional control, popular protests in December and January showed that most of the nation’s citizens don’t share their leaders’ designs. The regime’s destabilizing actions have also triggered resistance from Saudi Arabia and other regional powers. Iran’s own citizens and neighbors are convinced of Tehran’s malice, and all concerned nations should heed their warning,” Aznar and Harper wrote.

“Thankfully, the U.S. has demonstrated its ability to rally its Middle Eastern partners in stabilizing the region. Iranian theocracy appeals mainly to a few neighboring Shiite Islamic factions, and Iran’s long-term conflicts with other sects have made many states eager to cooperate in restraining its influence. Numerous allies can be mobilized in the struggle against Iran, from the Kurds and tribal elements to many Sunni Arabs and Shiite forces not co-opted by Tehran. These factions must collaborate to contain Iran’s hegemonic ambitions,” they added.

They go on to warn that “if left unchecked, Iran’s aggression will ultimately threaten Europe and North America as well. All should urgently work together to counter this threat to global security.”

Their warnings should be heeded by the EU since the evidence has been so overwhelmingly against the claims of the Iran lobby and the Iranian regime.

The most serious threat facing the U.S. and in its allies is the high probability that Iran is quickly building permanent military bases in Syria and planning to move ballistic missiles there; placing most of Europe within range and providing almost no warning time for regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel any advance warning to detect, let alone shoot down, any Iranian missiles.

President Trump understood the geopolitical ramifications of the Iran nuclear deal better than anyone and now sees its potential certification as battering ram he can use to drive home the point of the threat Iranian regime missiles and its military poses to Europe.

It remains to be seen how many other European nations heed the wake up that French president Macron seems to be trumpeting more urgently now, but we hope they all take action soon.

Michael Tomlinson

The Biggest Lie About Syria and Middle East Stability

March 2, 2018 by admin

The Biggest Lie About Syria and Middle East Stability

On June 30, 2015, Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council and a staunch cheerleader for the Iranian regime, published an editorial on CNN’s website that in retrospect now looks otherworldly stupid.

In it, Parsi was making the case for the Iran nuclear deal and the benefits it would bring, not the least of which was the argument that it would help empower moderates in Iran, rally Iranian youth and bring about stability throughout the Middle East.

His exact words were:

“The deal will help unleash Iran’s vibrant, young (the median age is 28!) and moderate society, which is continuously pushing Iran in a democratic direction. The deal enjoys solid support among the Iranian public as well as among Iranian civil society leaders, partly because they believe the deal ‘would enable political and cultural reforms.’

“America benefits if the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people are increasingly met, because a more democratic Iran is a more moderate Iran.

“This is particularly important at a time when the violent winds of religious radicalism are ravaging the Middle East and beyond. America is in desperate need of an injection of political moderation in the region. An Iran that moves towards democracy could provide that,” Parsi wrote.

In the three years since he penned that fairy tale, the reality has been brutally and violently different than the rosy picture he painted:

Iran poured billions of dollars it received in economic sanctions relief into propping up the Assad regime in Syria and committing thousands of troops and material into expanding a civil war that claimed 400,000 lives and pushed out four million refugees;
Iran shifted billions away from its domestic economy to crash produce a ballistic missile program exempt from restrictions in the nuclear deal, threatening the region under a missile umbrella stretching 2,000 km and plunging the Iranian people into poverty;
In two parliamentary elections and a presidential race, the regime cracked down by arresting hundreds of journalists, dissidents, artists, bloggers, students and ethnic and religious minorities, as well as wiping off thousands of candidates in favor of preserving power within the hands of hardline religious candidates;
Iran has expanded wars in Iraq and Yemen using terrorist proxies funded and armed by the regime’s Revolutionary Guards and Quds Force, destabilizing the.

Parsi is either the dumbest political analyst on the planet or one so far committed to covering for the Iranian regime it’s a wonder he’s not drawing a salary from the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Parsi has been so colossally wrong in his predictions we have to ask if any news organization ever runs a check on the accuracy of his quotes.

But picking apart Parsi’s past stumbles is only picking at the corners of a much broader tapestry; one in which the NIAC has been proven wrong over and over again in its predictions.

One of the more recent claims was by Ryan Costello, a NIAC policy fellow, who wrote in analysis running on the NIAC’s website on February 16, 2018, that the Iranian regime’s missile program was not a threat and pointed out it was limiting the range of its weapons to 2,000 km, which only placed most of the Middle East under threat of attack and not the whole world.

Small comfort when news has come out of satellite photos revealing a flurry of activity as Iran’s military begins construction of permanent military bases outside of Syria’s capital of Damascus complete with hangers capable of storing missiles that can now strike Israel, Saudi Arabia and most of the Mediterranean within a matter of minutes.

You hear that sound? It’s crickets in the silence coming from the NIAC.

According to Fox News, satellite images from ImageSat International show what is believed to be the new Iranian base operated by the Quds Force. The photos show two new white hangars, each roughly 30 yards by 20 yards, used to store short- and medium-range missiles.

On Capitol Hill this week, the top U.S. military commander for American forces in the Middle East said Iran was “increasing” the number and “quality” of its ballistic missiles it was deploying to the region — when asked during a House Armed Services Committee hearing by Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., about reports Iran had moved more missiles into Syria.

Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, said Iran has “enhanced” its funding to proxy forces in the Middle East since the landmark nuclear agreement in July 2015, including sending missiles, fighters and other arms to Yemen and Syria.

The presence of permanent bases in Syria by Iran directly contradicts claims made by the NIAC that Iranian regime would only be a stabilizing force, but instead has turned into an occupation force.

All of which begets the question of what the U.S. needs to do to counter the regime, a question the NIAC has yet to answer other than to press the Trump administration not to ditch the nuclear agreement.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last month laid out a U.S. strategy in Syria that includes an indefinite stay for troops.

“U.S. disengagement from Syria would provide Iran the opportunity to further strengthen its position in Syria,” Tillerson said in the January speech. “As we have seen from Iran’s proxy wars and public announcements, Iran seeks dominance in the Middle East and the destruction of our ally.”

The tragedy of all this is that the NIAC has contributed to the biggest lie about Syria over the past three years and so far no one except us and the Iranian dissident movement seems to be holding it accountable for it.

Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Tries to Defend Iran Missile Program Again

February 21, 2018 by admin

NIAC Tries to Defend Iran Missile Program Again

Just when you thought there might be the tiniest of cracks in the unified armor of the National Iranian American Council’s mind-numbingly strict defense of the Iranian regime with its recent statement criticizing the death of Canadian-Iranian environmentalist Kavous Seyed Emami, the NIAC went full-bore again in defending the regime’s ballistic missile program with an “analysis” of it.

Prepared by the NIAC’s Ryan Costello, the paper makes the argument that Iran’s ballistic missile program should not be a concern to the U.S. or anyone else (except maybe Saudi Arabia and Israel) and in fact ought to be viewed as benign.

He makes these arguments because the regime’s missile program has proven problematic for supporters of the Iran nuclear agreement. It is the inconvenient truth that no matter how much Iran lobby supporters say the deal is good for the world, the regime’s display of aggressive missile firepower boldly mirrors that of North Korea and frankly, scares the daylights out of the rest of the world.

It also doesn’t help that the Iranian regime fomented wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and is busy brutalizing its own people, as well as snatching citizens from other countries such as the U.S., U.K. and Canada.

That tends to make people have less faith in your word.

Which is why our good friend Ryan Costello is busy trying to reassure everyone that missiles with the throw weight necessary to carry a large warhead with a present range of over 2,000 kilometers is nothing to worry about.

“Despite this flurry of activity, there have been subtle shifts in Iran’s missile program that could reduce the program’s threat. In particular, Iran’s articulation of a range limit to its missiles and a shift toward short-range solid fueled missiles signals an interest in conventional, regional deterrence, not long-range nuclear missiles,” Costello writes.

Costello bases his argument that solid-rocket motor propelled missiles are somehow shorter range and less of a threat than liquid-fueled ones.

He obviously doesn’t know anything about missile technologies.

Solid-fuel boosters are the Holy Grail of ballistic missiles because they require no fueling, which can often be a laborious and time-intensive process. Solid-fuel capable missiles can be launched instantly and since they require no fueling facilities, can be siloed, transported or placed in virtually any location making them harder to detect and destroy.

The reason why Iran and North Korea for that matter are aggressively pursuing solid-fuel boosters is because of the cut down in response time. If you are looking to blast your neighbors to smithereens, it helps to be able to do so without warning.

Costello also bases his claims on statements made by top mullah Ali Khamenei that Iran would halt its development of longer range missiles and stick to the 2,000 km limit. It’s a dubious claim to stake global peace and security on given that Khamenei’s past track record of reliability has been just short of Adolf Hitler’s in 1938.

Costello credits all this to the Iran nuclear deal in shifting away from longer-range missiles, an absurd contention since he offers no proof other than to say the regime hasn’t fired as many test missiles as North Korea.

That is not a reassuring statistic.

The mere presence of a growing ballistic missile fleet, especially one being converted to solid-fuel boosters, represents an enormous destabilizing influence in the Middle East. Let’s remember that Costello and his brethren at the NIAC all claimed that passage of the nuclear deal would promote moderation within Iran and help stabilize the region.

The past three years have flatly proven them wrong as Iran has been at the very center of chaos in the region.

Costello also fails to address the elephant in the room, which is how can you trust a regime to not develop longer-range missiles when there is no agreement in place to prevent that from happening in the first place!

The argument the Iran lobby made for the Iran nuclear deal in the first place was that it was necessary to have an agreement and structure in place to hold Iran accountable and provide leverage through an inspections regime, but no such structure exists to blunt Iranian development of these weapons.

In essence, Costello is making the argument that we simply shouldn’t worry about them because hey, the mullahs will only fire them in self-defense!

This also explains why Costello’s boss, NIAC head Trita Parsi, has been busy trying to drum up the fear of war again by blaming Israel for exacerbating tensions with Iran, including the recent shootdown of an Iranian drone in Syria.

“Instead of a showdown in Syria, the showdown will move to New York and feed into an ongoing effort by Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration to use any pretext – missiles, drones or violating the ‘spirit’ of the Iran deal – to pass a Chapter VII UN [Security Council] resolution,” said Parsi, who supports the 2015 nuclear deal.

Parsi goes on to expand that idea in an editorial he authored in Defense One claiming that Saudi Arabia is manipulating the United Nations to punish its long-time regional foe.

“Such a resolution would once again put Iran in the penalty box, with its economy sanctioned and its political pathways for influence in the region blocked — i.e., an all-out containment of Iran. In Riyadh’s calculation, this will thwart Tehran’s rise and shift the regional balance in favor of Saudi Arabia and Israel,” Parsi writes.

It is mind-boggling how the NIAC will try any argument, no matter how far-fetched, to shift blame away from the mullahs and cast it on anyone else.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Pushes Seyed Hossein Mousavian to Forefront

January 25, 2018 by admin

Iran Lobby Pushes Seyed Hossein Mousavian to Forefront

The Iran Lobby must be sweating the protests in Iran and their impact on Trump administration’s views on whether to kill the Iran nuclear deal. In many ways one of the key things holding the Trump administration back from killing the deal outright is how to manage the aftermath with mullahs desperate to hold onto power who may choose bloody violence to instead of diplomacy or giving up their hold on power.

Deciding to kill the nuclear deal is not a knee-jerk reaction, nor should it be done without an end game in place to help manage some sort of peaceful regime change and transition from theological dictatorship to peaceful democracy.

The mullahs have already evidenced their willingness to use brute force and mass murder to hold onto power. They demonstrated it after the disputed 2009 elections and they showed it again this year with the populist movement that grew from deep dissatisfaction among ordinary Iranians over their impoverished state of living.

Now the mullahs are faced with threats on multiple fronts, not the least of which is a new U.S. administration largely skeptical of them and their false promises.

What have the mullahs done?

They’ve put the Iran lobby into overdrive to defend the nuclear deal and throw as much mud as possible at President Donald Trump.

Leading the charge has been Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, but he has been joined by Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian regime nuclear official who relocated to a position at Princeton University refashioning himself as a Middle East security expert/

While Parsi has been busy shooting off editorials at a rapid clip, Mousavian joined him in the literary parade with a recent commentary in Reuters.

Like Parsi, Mousavian trots out the usual defense of the nuclear deal as being set on a foundation of the “highest standards on nuclear transparency and inspections ever negotiated,” but there is a yawning chasm between reality and fantasy.

He also echoes almost verbatim Parsi’s key messages on the deal’s terms being only temporary after which Iran would fall under safeguards from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He of course neglects to mention that the IAEA failed to detect Iran’s clandestine nuclear development program in the first place. Similarly, he fails to mention how the IAEA failed to halt North Korea’s march to nuclearization and that both Iran and North Korea could and did opt to throw inspectors out and disable cameras and monitoring equipment.

What is to stop Iran from doing the same thing now? Harsh language? The reality is nothing.

Mousavian also criticizes the Trump administration’s effort to link Iran’s ballistic missile program to nuclear sanctions as well as question whether or not the mullahs should ever possess the right to develop nuclear technology.

While Mousavian claims Iran has a “sovereign right” to do so, he ignores the broader and more strategic question being raised by President Trump: Why does a violent, religiously-governed dictatorship ever need a nuclear program?

Iran has always claimed its nuclear program is peaceful and designed for energy development, but those claims ring hollow given the economic conditions in Iran and the global energy map in which nuclear power is rapidly becoming obsolete. In the U.S. alone, the nuclear power industry has been decimated by renewable energy sources, the low cost and abundance of natural gas and the conversion of industries to solar and off-peak battery storage have made it irrelevant.

More importantly, the maniacal nature of the mullahs’ governance makes development of nuclear power an idiotic choice for any nation to allow. Mousavian claims peaceful intent but the true intentions of the regime have been clearly demonstrated and that is to develop a militarized nuclear capability so it can dominate its neighbors, especially chief rival Saudi Arabia.

Mousavian grasps at straws when he claims the killing of the nuclear deal will only spread global distrust of the U.S. and make any deal with North Korea impossible.

With all due respect, that is an idiotic statement to make. No one on the planet sincerely believes that North Korea’s meglo-maniacal leader has any intention of real negotiations with the West over his nuclear toy kit.

The Iranian regime has worked diligently to undermine the nuclear deal right from the start by eradicating all traces of its nuclear work at suspected sites before inspection, restricting access by inspectors from any military sites, only allowing collections of soil samples by regime officials and not dismantling centrifuges that refine uranium.

More worrisome, Mousavian never takes up the issue of the Islamic dictatorship itself. It is cruel, barbaric and actively engaged in supporting terrorism and involved in wars and insurgencies in three countries.

If a government acts in a way that is openly hostile to its neighbors and places little value on the lives of its own people—even murdering them on a mass scale for political disobedience—why on earth would we ever allow them to possess a capability to develop a weapon of mass destruction?

The greatest historical lesson parallel to Iran is Nazi Germany. If Hitler’s Germany raced to develop a nuclear capability prior to World War II, we might all be living an episode of the “Man in the High Castle” on Netflix given how the West tried to appease Hitler by giving away Czechoslovakia, Austria and the Sudetenland.

Following the same approach to Iran and its bloodthirsty leaders such as Ali Khamenei is the same kind of lunacy that plunged the world into a global war that lasted six years.

Mousavian clinches the irony trophy when he writes:

“Rather than challenging his predecessor’s legacy Trump should endeavor to use it as a model to bolster multilateral diplomacy and resolve crises in places such as Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan. Today more than ever, the world needs a balanced and rational White House to promote peace and security rather than to flout international norms.”

Mousavian mentions conflicts that Iran is directly responsible for starting and expanding. It is not the White House that needs to be balanced and rational, but rather it is Tehran that needs to be dragged kicking a screaming into normalcy and peace.

Michael Tomlinson

Fake News and False Promises of Iran Regime

December 14, 2017 by admin

Fake News and False Promises of Iran Regime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Pushing Saudi Arabia to Brink of War

November 14, 2017 by admin

Iran Regime Pushing Saudi Arabia to Brink of War

Over the weekend, Iranian regime-backed Houthi rebels lobbed a missile at the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh from Yemen in what is being described as an “act of war” by Saudi officials by the Iranian regime.

While tensions have long simmered between Saudi Arabia and Iran—rising to a boiling point with confrontations between the two in the Syrian civil war and Yemen—this is the marks the first-time theater-wide weapons have been introduced aimed at either countries’ capitals.

“We see this as an act of war,” said Adel Jubair, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, in a CNN interview. “Iran cannot lob missiles at Saudi cities and towns and expect us not to take steps.”

This latest provocation seems to be part of the larger chess game being played out between the two countries that includes clashes in Lebanon and Iraq as Saudi Arabia seems determined to step up to the plate and blunt the Iranian regime’s expansionist moves over the past several years as part of an effort to build a Shiite sphere of influence controlled by Tehran.

The two countries had only recently appeared to be working towards a rapprochement offered by the Iranians only to see the regime launch proxy military efforts in backing Houthi rebels in Yemen and using Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon in Syria; both moves seemingly aimed at isolating and diminishing Saudi influence.

The missile launched by the Houthis was intercepted before reaching the capital and while causing no damage, pushed the region dangerously closer to all-out war between the two countries.

The move by Iranian regime to allow such an act underlines how vastly stupefying promises were made earlier by Iran supporters and advocates such as the National Iranian American Council two years ago during negotiations over the Iran nuclear agreement that passage of the deal would embolden moderate forces within Iran and usher in a more moderate and stabilizing Iran.

It’s worth noting again how utterly wrong people such as Trita Parsi of the NIAC have been since then.

While it may be eminently satisfying to call out Parsi and his cohorts on how blatantly obvious it was to simply be shilling for the mullahs, the ramifications of the PR push to essentially grant Tehran a hall pass to sow terror and conflict throughout the Middle East are coming home to bear poisonous fruit.

Far from accepting the blame and pushing for moderation from the mullahs in Tehran, Parsi and the NIAC have only doubled down by aggressively going after the Saudi regime with a spate of editorials, social media posts and statements blasting Riyadh for everything from manipulating the Trump administration’s policies towards Iran to conspiring with conservative Republicans to start to eradicate Iran.

On the surface, the NIAC’s claims are ludicrous, but given the dark history of complicity by it and its allies within the Iran lobbying machine, it’s no wonder that Tehran feels emboldened enough to start lobbing missiles at Saudi Arabia.

Jubair detailed how the missile was smuggled into Yemen in parts and assembled by Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps operatives and fired by Hezbollah from Yemen.

The fact that U.S., Saudi and other coalition naval warships have periodically caught Iranian fishing and commercial vessels smuggling weapons, ammunition and parts to Yemen from Iran have only strengthened these claims over the years of direct Iranian activity in the escalating war in Yemen.

Hezbollah’s participation is worrisome since the IRGC has often used the Lebanese-based terror group as its shock troops in conflicts such as Syria and in targeting U.S. service personnel over the past three decades around the world.

Earlier news disclosures of U.S. State Department cables published on WikiLeaks show that Yemen had acquired stockpiles of missiles from North Korea and that Iran may have shipped components of North Korean missiles to its Houthi allies who in 2015, with the support of Tehran, toppled the internationally-recognized government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi and now control much of the countryside since then.

This new-found “Axis of Evil” between Iran, North Korea and terror groups such as Hezbollah, point out the highly volatile nature of Iranian regime’s expansion plans and how it has built a formula for conquest around using terror groups and insurgents to destabilize a country and then move in to consolidate its power and use it as a base of operations to stage even more actions.

It is a model used effectively in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and has gained traction in Iraq, but was stymied in the Gulf states by swift action by Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has called for an urgent meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo next week to discuss Iran’s intervention in the region, an official league source told Egypt’s MENA state news agency.

The call came after the resignation of Lebanon’s prime minister pushed Beirut back into the center of a rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran and threatens to re-open that country to bloody conflict.

Even French President Emmanuel Macron is blaming Iran for the missile attack targeting Riyadh and said it illustrates the need for negotiations with Tehran over its missile development.

“The missile which was intercepted by Saudi Arabia launched from Yemen, which obviously is an Iranian missile, shows precisely the strength of their” program, Macron said late as he visited the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

“There are extremely strong concerns about Iran” among its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf region over the missile launch, and “there are negotiations we need to start on Iran’s ballistic missiles,” he said.

All this flies in the face of the false promises made by Parsi and the NIAC and demonstrates clearly why any reputable news organization should think twice before providing air time or space for them to make such disreputable claims.

Clearly the Iran lobby has become one of the largest machines churning out “fake news” today.

Michael Tomlinson

The Importance of the Hate Machine to Iran

November 6, 2017 by admin

The Importance of the Hate Machine to Iran

Ever since the Iranian revolution that deposed the Shah and installed an Islamic theocracy in Tehran, the ruling mullahs have invested heavily in a state-supported hate machine designed to gin up fierce hatred of the U.S., which typically reaches a crescendo on the anniversary of the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover.

Last Saturday marked the latest iteration of a heavily choreographed spectacle designed to communicate Iranian hatred of the U.S., but also to divert the attention of the Iranian people away from the ever-growing mountain of problems they are struggling with under the mullahs’ rule and towards a perceived common enemy.

For the last nearly four decades, the mullahs have used the anniversary as the culmination of weekly and monthly demonstrations that include the now ritual “Death to America” chants and the parades across painted American flags and posters plastered on city walls mocking American political leaders.

The protests and observances have taken a different tone and edge over the years though; ceasing to be filled with vitriol by the Iranian people and carry more of a resigned air matched only by skies increasingly polluted by lack of regard by the mullahs for the environment or the health of the Iranian people.

For the mullahs these events commemorate a rare victory when hundreds of extremist regime related militant students (The very same militants that later formed the “Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps”, IRGC) took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days in an event that helped cement the mullahs in power as they used the event for its propaganda value to legitimize the theocratic state they wanted to build; thereby stealing the promise of democracy ordinary Iranians had hoped for after the downfall of the Shah.

The mullahs learned from that singular event which is why they have carefully crafted a government built on a state-driven hate machine that attacks not only the U.S., but also other enemies such as the Sunni Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia, as well as perceived enemies from within like the Iranian resistance movement.

That machine is comprised of state-controlled media encompassing newspapers, television networks, bloggers, social media and pretty much every other avenue of communication within the regime.

It is backed by the thuggery of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the paramilitaries that enforce the dreaded “morals codes” that oppress the Iranian people. Together with the Islamic religious courts and police, they work in concert to tightly orchestrate these observances and ensure obedience from the Iranian people.

In this aspect, the Iranian regime acts like a mirror image of the cultish North Korean dictatorship that forces citizens there to treat their leader as a deified entity.

While top mullah Ali Khamenei may not aspire to godhood, he certainly relishes having his wishes obeyed as if he was one.

To reinforce the militant aspects of this year’s anniversary celebrations, the Iranian regime’s military rolled out a surface-to-surface Sejjil ballistic missile with a range of 1,200 miles in a show of force. It marks the first time the regime has displayed this particular missile and comes shortly after President Donald Trump moved to decertify the Iranian regime under the current nuclear deal, partly because of the regime’s accelerated missile program.

The Fars news agency posted pictures of demonstrators burning an effigy of Trump and holding up signs saying “Death to America,” Reuters reported.

A statement read out at Saturday’s protest said Iranians “see the criminal America as their main enemy and condemn the denigrating remarks of the hated US president against the great Iranian people and the Revolutionary Guards.”

Khamenei speaking to the regime supporters urged them to never forget that “America is the enemy”. “To give in to the Americans makes them more aggressive and insolent. The only solution is to resist,” he said.

Ali Shamkhani, former chief commander of IRGC and current secretary of the regime’s Supreme National Security Council, addressed the crowd, saying Iran will make any sanctions imposed by the U.S. “ineffective” even as the U.S. targets Iran’s economic, nuclear and defensive power.

Shamkhani, alluding to Trump’s threats against North Korea, said even U.S. allies know that Trump “has no power to realize his bluffs, against Iran, too.” He called the U.S. the “eternal enemy” of Iran.

The regime needs to continually turn up the volume on the hate meter to continue using force and intimidation to keep the Iranian people in line and Iran in a perpetual state of conflict. The mullahs need to generate fear as a means of control as a way for justifying their increasingly punitive decisions.

Entry into the Syrian civil war? Necessary to save the Assad regime and preserve a Shiite ally.

Fostering of another civil war in Yemen? Necessary to counter Saudi expansion.

Fast tracking a ballistic missile program? Necessary to maintain a threat to the U.S. and Israel.

Ultimately though the deepest fears of the mullahs are that the Iranian people will see past these charades and choose a different path for their futures.

The Los Angeles Times quoted one such Iranian at the anniversary observances.

“I wish the hostility between the two countries would end as soon as possible because we are suffering from it,” said Hasan Mahmoudi, a shopkeeper near the embassy. “We want to have normal relations with America and foreign investment here to create jobs for our educated youth.”

For the mullahs, nothing would be more of a threat to their rule than the desire of the Iranian people for a normal life, devoid of fear, hate and conflict, where they could live in a democracy and focus on building a better life for their children.

It’s the one future that can defeat the Iranian regime’s hate machine.

Laura Carnahan

Why Ballistic Missiles Matter to the World

November 1, 2017 by admin

Why Ballistic Missiles Matter to the World

Ever since German rocket scientists developed the world’s first ballistic missile in the V-2 rocket that rained down destruction on London during World War II, the world has grappled with the implications of the threat ballistic missiles pose to global security now since they can deliver nuclear warheads or biological and chemical agents.

Today roughly 30 countries have operationally deployed ballistic missiles with the Iranian regime and North Korea leading the pack in missile test flights. Images of missiles racing skyward in massive flaming plumes have become standard programming on television channels beamed from Tehran and Pyongyang.

Beyond their propaganda value, ballistic missiles are a serious security threat to all nations because of their ability to leave the atmosphere, travel vast distances in a short amount of time and deliver their payload without a serious chance of being intercepted.

The threat North Korea poses to its Asian neighbors and the West Coast of the U.S. has pushed global instability to the brink over the past decade. A similar crash program by the Iranian regime to develop its own ballistic missile fleet based on North Korean designs has brought the Gulf region to a similar head.

The deeply flawed nuclear deal negotiated with the Iranian regime two years ago neglected to make ballistic missiles part of the restrictions sought by the U.S. and its allies. Many reasons have been given by negotiators and the Obama administration as to why such an allowance was given to the mullahs in Tehran.

The results have been disastrous since it essentially gave them a free pass to develop a missile capability that prior to the nuclear deal was nascent at best. The fact that the nuclear agreement also funneled billions of dollars in fresh capital to the regime to provide it with the funds necessary to scale up its missile construction on a national scale.

It is not coincidental that after the nuclear deal the world soon saw larger and more powerful missiles launch from sites throughout Iran in displays that the mullahs were not shy about using as threats against their Sunni neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, as well as to the U.S.

Ballistic missiles are also critical to any nuclear program since they are the only delivery system that can make good on any nation’s threats to strike at its enemies with near impunity. Now as the Trump administration has moved to decertify Iran’s participation in the nuclear agreement, the question of how to deal with the Iranian missile threat is moving front and center with policymakers.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously recently for new sanctions on Iranian regime’s ballistic missile program, part of an effort to clamp down on Tehran.

The vote was 423 to two for the “Iran Ballistic Missiles and International Sanctions Enforcement Act.” Among other things, it calls on the U.S. president to report to Congress on the Iranian and international supply chain for Iran’s ballistic missile program and to impose sanctions on Iranian government or foreign entities that support it, according to Reuters.

The House passed three other Iran-related measures last week, including new sanctions on Lebanon’s Iranian regime-backed Hezbollah militia and a resolution urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

The moves underscore the U.S. resolve to confront the Iranian regime on a broader set of issues than the Obama administration addressed during nuclear talks.

It has become abundantly clear that by not addressing Iranian actions on a range of issues such as support of terrorism, ballistic missiles and human rights, the mullahs essentially acted with the assurance they would be free of any international repercussions.

They decision to wade into the Syrian civil war in support of the Assad regime is the centerpiece example of that calculus; even after Assad brutally used chemical weapons on his own people, there was no consequence for that heinous act, only emboldening the mullahs in Tehran.

But now the stage is set for confrontation with Iran as the regime’s leadership has planted a proverbial flag in the ground over its ballistic missile program.

Regime leader Hassan Rouhani said Sunday, after the House of Representatives approved its missile sanctions legislation in a speech carried on nationwide television, that no international agreements prohibit the development of non-nuclear weapons such as ballistic missiles, and that Iran has a right to produce them for its own defense.

“We will build, produce and store any weapon of any kind we need to defend ourselves, our territorial integrity and our nation, and we will not hesitate about it,” he said, according to a translation provided by the Iranian Students News Agency.

What is quickly shaping up is a test of wills between the Trump administration and the mullahs not only over the fate of ballistic missiles, but over the larger question of whether or not the U.S. will be able to rein in Iranian excesses moving forward.

For President Trump, the more strategic issue facing him is how to curb Iranian regime’s influence in places such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan and hold the line against the spread of its radicalized Islamic religion.

In this regard, the battle over the nuclear deal and ballistic missiles are inextricably linked together and any future scenario of resolving them will most likely have to be done together.

This problem is precisely what experts had warned about two years ago when the ill-fated nuclear agreement was being negotiated in the first place. Iranian dissidents and groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran warned of the regime’s duplicity and actively countered the false promises made by Iran lobby supporters such as the National Iranian American Council.

Ultimately, the real tests facing the Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers are only now being confronted. We hope they choose a different path from the one charted earlier.

Laura Carnahan

There is No Difference Between North Korea and Iran Regime

April 19, 2017 by admin

An Iranian precision-guided ballistic missile is launched as it is tested at an undisclosed location October 11, 2015. REUTERS/farsnews.com/Handout via Reuters

When you compare North Korea and Iran there seems to be little that connects the two rogue nations except a strict adherence to human rights abuses, but the links and similarities between the two are disturbingly close and provide a foreshadowing of the path Iranian regime is headed on.

In many important ways, North Korea and the Iranian regime are kindred spirits. They are both governments built to consolidate power in the hands of a few elites and ruthlessly dedicated to eradicating all dissent.

Whereas North Korea’s Kim Jong-un had his future laid out for him by his grandfather and father in a kind of dynastic megalomaniacal family hand-me-down, Iran’s leadership has flowed from one scheming mullah to another in a religiously based enterprise with Ali Khamenei at the top of the pyramid.

Both regimes are totalitarian in the strictest sense, utilizing a system of government that includes firm backing from the military and a judicial system designed less for crime prevention than dissident detection.

Both regimes also heavily invest in their respective militaries, especially in developing weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems for them. In fact, the ties between the two are especially close in this area as intelligence agencies around the world have tracked the sale of North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile technology to Iran.

And just as North Korea threatens its neighbors such as Japan and the U.S. with multiple missile launches and test detonations of nuclear warheads, Iran also flexes its muscle with displays of missile launches, as well as direct intervention with its own troops in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

But North Korea is limited in many ways that Iran is not. The most significant being that North Korea’s economy is anemic compared to Iran’s with its oil wealth. This is why North Korea resorts to illicit activities such as cybercrime, counterfeiting and narcotics trafficking to raise money.

Iran by comparison has used its oil wealth to fund a massive military and prop up the Assad regime in Syria as well as fund the terrorist group Hezbollah and the Houthi rebellion in Yemen. Recent reports also show Iran’s military supplying terror cells in neighboring Gulf states such as Bahrain with explosives and funding.

Which is why Iran remains the most pressing and problematic rogue regime in the world today facing the U.S. Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post’s Right Turn column explored the strange relationship between North Korea, Iran and Syria and why the Iranian regime remains the most serious threat to regional security and global stability.

The esteemed historian Michael Oren recently wrote:

“The framework agreements with North Korea and Syria, concluded respectively in 1994 and 2013, were similar in many ways. Both recognized that the regimes already possessed weapons of mass destruction or at least the means to produce them. Both assumed that the regimes would surrender their arsenals under an international treaty and open their facilities to inspectors. And both believed that these repressive states, if properly engaged, could be brought into the community of nations.”

All those assumptions were wrong, according to Rubin.

Oren’s recommendations echo the suggestions of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and outside experts. (“The remaining American sanctions on Iran must stay staunchly in place and Congress must pass further punitive legislation. Above all, a strong link must be established between the JCPOA and Iran’s support for terror…”)

Congress and the Trump administration need to move expeditiously on sanctions, Rubin said.

“On one hand, we are properly worried over Syria and North Korea. On the other hand, our current policy toward Iran, a much greater threat, is such that we are helping to rebuild and enrich a country that is supporting Assad, is exporting terrorism, is fomenting regional chaos and — even without cheating — can eventually obtain nuclear weapons. We are concerned about North Korea’s puny and inept ballistic missile program but have done nothing since pinprick sanctions to respond to Iran’s illegal missile tests. We have lots of challenges to address, to be sure, but we shouldn’t take our eyes off of the worst and most dangerous rogue state,” she added.

Rubin correctly points out that the nuclear agreement forged by the Obama administration has helped strengthen the Iranian regime at a time when it was in very serious danger of collapsing from the weight of supporting Assad in Syria, while also faced with plunging global oil prices that could have bankrupted the ruling theocracy.

This theme of North Korean lessons for Iran was carried by famed human rights attorney Alan Dershowitz in a piece for the Gatestone Institute.

“The hard lesson from our failure to stop North Korea before they became a nuclear power is that we MUST stop Iran from ever developing or acquiring a nuclear arsenal. A nuclear Iran would be far more dangerous to American interests than a nuclear North Korea. Iran already has missiles capable of reaching numerous American allies. They are in the process of upgrading them and making them capable of delivering a nuclear payload to our shores,” Dershowitz writes.

The deal signed by Iran in 2015 postpones Iran’s quest for a nuclear arsenal, but it doesn’t prevent it, despite Iran’s unequivocal statement in the preamble to the agreement that “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire nuclear weapons.” (Emphasis added). Recall that North Korea provided similar assurances to the Clinton Administration back in 1994, only to break them several years later — with no real consequences. The Iranian mullahs apparently regard their reaffirmation as merely hortatory and not legally binding. The body of the agreement itself — the portion Iran believes is legally binding — does not preclude Iran from developing nuclear weapons after a certain time, variously estimated as between 10 to 15 years from the signing of the agreement. Nor does it prevent Iran from perfecting its delivery systems, including nuclear tipped inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States,” he adds.

It is not a coincidence that both North Korea and Iran held massive military parades in a show of force in an effort to rattle the saber to a Trump administration that has made it clear it is NOT the Obama administration.

Both regimes are controlled by power-crazed men with homicidal tendencies. It will be a hazardous path to navigate for President Trump, but confronting Iran forcefully now will assuredly head off worse problems down the road; a bitter lesson we have learned from the Obama administration’s policies of appeasement.

Michael Tomlinson

Starting With US Navy Versus Iran Missiles

October 13, 2016 by admin

Starting With US Navy Versus Iran Missiles

You may not have noticed the news, but there is a shooting war going on off the coast of Yemen between the US Navy and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels trying to overthrow the government in Yemen.

According to US military sources, the US Navy destroyer, USS Mason, was targeted in a failed missile attack as it operated north of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. It was the second attack in the last week against US warships.

The Mason fired defensive salvos in response, bringing down one of the missiles fired at it according to the Pentagon.

In response, the US Navy reportedly fired Tomahawk cruise missiles Thursday morning from the Red Sea at coastal radar sites in Yemen, destroying targets believed to have targeted the US warships.

The missiles were launched from the destroyer USS Nitze at three locations north of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, said Pentagon press spokesman Peter Cook.

“These limited self-defense strikes were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships, and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” Cook said. “The United States will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic, as appropriate, and will continue to maintain our freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and elsewhere around the world.”

Michael Knights, an expert on Yemen’s conflict at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the targeting of U.S. warship suggested the Houthis, fighters from a Shi’ite sect that ruled a 1,000-year kingdom in northern Yemen until 1962, could be becoming more militarily aligned with groups like Lebanon’s Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, according to Reuters.

“Targeting U.S. warships is a sign that the Houthis have decided to join the axis of resistance that currently includes Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran,” Knight said.

The Mason was also the target of a failed missile attack off Yemen on Sunday, and the Navy praised the resolve of sailors aboard the ship.

U.S. officials have told Reuters there are growing indications that Houthi rebels, despite those denials, were responsible for Sunday’s incident. The rebels appeared to use small skiffs as spotters to help direct the missile attack on the warship on Sunday.

The United States is also investigating the possibility that a radar station under Houthi control in Yemen might have also “painted” the USS Mason, something that would have helped the Houthi fighters pass along coordinates for a strike, the officials have said.

Reuters has learned that the coastal defense cruise missiles used against the USS Mason on Sunday had considerable range, adding to concerns about the kind of heavy weaponry that the Houthis appear willing to employ and some of which U.S. officials believe is supplied by Iran.

Another missile launched Oct. 1 caused near-catastrophic damage to the HSV-2 Swift, a catamaran-style high-speed vessel that was operated by the Emiratis and once was a part of the U.S. Navy. Video of the strike published online shows the ship engulfed in a fireball.

It’s no secret that the Iranian regime has been supplying the Houthis in their insurgency campaign and warships from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have intercepted ships coming from Iran to Yemen loaded with illegal weapons, including rockets, mortars and launchers.

Even the U.S. Navy intercepted an Iranian shipping vessel sending vast shipments of arms to the Houthis in April 2016.

Attacking American ships in Yemen is becoming a disturbingly all too common affair since this Wednesday also marked the 16^th anniversary of the terrorist attack against the USS Cole in Aden harbor, which killed 17 American sailors.

The fact that Iranian regime supplies virtually all of the arms to the Houthis, especially sophisticated weapons such as the cruise missiles fired at the US Navy ships, many members of Congress suspect that some of the $1.7 billion cash ransom payment made to the Iranian regime in exchange for the release of American hostages may have paid for the Houthi weapons.

The weekend attack on the U.S. Navy by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels has sparked another official inquiry surrounding the cash payment to Iran, with a group of 17 senators now seeking to obtain an official assessment by the Pentagon of how Iranian regime has allocated this cash to its military operations, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Lawmakers, led by Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas), are petitioning the Pentagon to provide a full analysis of Iran’s military activity since last summer’s nuclear agreement went into effect.

Senior Pentagon leaders have said in recent weeks that the Obama administration kept them in the dark about the cash payment to Iran. The U.S. defense establishment widely believes this money will help Iran foster instability across the Middle East.

The 17 senators sent a letter late Tuesday to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford. The inquiry centers around evidence that Iran has significantly increased its military activity since the nuclear accord went into effect.

“The plain purpose of transferring the payment in cash to Tehran was to circumvent the effects of U.S. and international financial sanctions,” the lawmakers wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Free Beacon. “Iran is almost certainly using this windfall to skirt the arms embargo and illicitly purchase weapons for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the terrorist organization Hezbollah, and/or the murderous Assad regime in Syria.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board took a hard line at the possibility of Iran supplying and directing the use of these weapons against US forces, which “were attacked by two Chinese-built C-802 cruise missiles fired from territory controlled by Iranian-backed Houthi militia. Iran is a major operator of the C-802; its proxy Hezbollah used it in 2006 to punch a hole in an Israeli corvette off the coast of Lebanon.”

“More significantly, the attack on the Navy ships—with hundreds of American sailors aboard—is another reminder that the nuclear deal has done more to embolden than moderate Tehran’s ambitions, despite a cascade of U.S. concessions.”

“The Journal’s Jay Solomon and Carole Lee reported last month that the Administration secretly agreed in January to lift sanctions on two of Iran’s state banks involved in financing its ballistic-missile program seven years ahead of schedule. More recently, the Administration has granted Boeing and Airbus export licenses to sell passenger jets to Iran, and last week it issued new guidelines to facilitate dollar transactions with Iranian firms.”

“So let’s get this straight: The Administration grants the mullahs unprecedented concessions not called for by the nuclear deal, and they respond by attacking the U.S. Maybe President Obama sees a foreign-policy paradox at work. A better way of describing the dynamic might be cause-and-effect.”

So while the Iran lobby, especially the Ploughshares Fund and National Iranian American Council promised better relations with Iran, the US Navy already finds itself in a shooting war against Iranian proxies and missiles.

Michael Tomlinson