Congress bill on Iran

Iran Lobby Struggles with Tide of Bad Regime News

October 6, 2015 by admin

Passage of the nuclear agreement between the Iran regime and the P5+1 group of nations was aided by a coalition of liberal Zionist groups, progressive organizations and the regime lobbying network, but in the aftermath the fault lines have cracked that coalition and broken it apart as the world struggles with the still unanswered fundamental problem with the Iran regime: How do you restrain its support for terror, proxy wars and sectarian conflict?

Philip Weiss, writing in Mondoweiss, takes note of efforts by Senate Democrats, most of whom supported the nuclear deal, to offer up legislation that the regime lobby has said contains potential “poison pills” liable to derail the agreement.

It’s understandable as many voters are appalled at the downward spiral of events in the Middle East, especially Iran’s newly formed alliance with Syria, Iraq and Russia.

Republicans have pounced on recently announced deals by the Iran regime to acquire $20 billion in new jet aircraft and satellite technology from the Russians as evidence the mullahs are more interested in upgrading their aerospace and defense capabilities than in jump starting a moribund economy driven to near bankruptcy by a corrupt government and siphoning of billions to fund three proxy wars.

This new “Axis of Terror” has greatly unsettled a world that naïvely thought the nuclear deal would usher in a period of greater stability and moderation. Instead, the world has seen Russia – almost overnight – launch an air campaign in Syria, coupled with a large build-up of Iranian and Hezbollah forces along the Syrian border, bolstered by a fresh influx of Afghan mercenaries paid for by the Iran regime’s Quds Force.

The list of acts by the Iran regime according to the Wall Street Journal since the nuclear deal was approved has forced the Iran lobby to work overtime to cover for it:

Despite a string of high-level talks with Western leaders, including two bilaterals between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran has displayed little interest in cooperation with the West;

Iranian officials publicly backed a Russian military campaign in Syria that is aimed at propping up President Bashar al-Assad, a leader Washington wants out;

Saudi Arabia said it seized a large shipment of Iranian arms headed toward Houthi rebels in Yemen who overthrew an allied government this year. Yemen President Abed Rabbo Mansour used his speech to the U.N.’s General Assembly last Tuesday to accuse Iran of seeking his country’s destruction;

Meanwhile, Iranian officials publicly demanded that the White House release Iranian prisoners held in U.S. jails in exchange for Americans detained by Tehran—a considerable hardening of the Iranian position; and

Western diplomats said regime officials consistently claim Tehran is open to ideas and discussion on Syria. But they add that Iran’s bottom line, like Russia’s, is that Assad is a guarantor of stability in Syria and they will accept no threats to his rule.

In a sign of how bad things have gotten for the region, “dozens of conservative Saudi Arabian clerics have called for Arab and Muslim countries to ‘give all moral, material, political and military’ support to what they term a jihad, or holy war, against Syria’s government and its Iranian and Russian backers,” according to Vice.com

But in spite of the sharp escalation in tensions with the Iran regime, the mullahs still seem intent on keeping their economy on a war footing. Agence France-Press disclosed warnings from Iran regime ministers overseeing the economy, industry, labor and defense who warned of an economic collapse.

Mohammad Gholi Yousefi, an economics professor at Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran, said the letter had exposed tensions over the allocation of cash from Iran’s own banks.

“Almost half the banks’ resources is practically blocked by the government, special customers and banks themselves,” he told AFP, meaning it is not reaching businesses crucial to the economy and that much of the regime’s anticipated cash hoard is not accessible by middle class and poor Iranians who have seen their purchasing power plummet since 2012 and the local rial currency losing two-thirds of its value.

The recent aggressive moves by the Iran regime to acquire new military hardware and boost military forces involved in Syria has been fueled in part by the softening of sanctions even during nuclear talks as claimed by many critics of the nuclear deal.

According to Reuters, “the U.S. government has pursued far fewer violations of a long-standing arms embargo against Iran in the past year compared to recent years, according to a review of court records and interviews with two senior officials involved in sanctions enforcement.”

“The sharp fall in new prosecutions did not reflect fewer attempts by Iran to break the embargo, the officials said. Rather, uncertainty among prosecutors and agents on how the terms of the deal would affect cases made them reluctant to commit already scarce resources with the same vigor as in previous years, the officials said.”

All of these accommodations and acts of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran in the hopes of creating a more moderate Iran regime have come home to roost and borne no fruit other than more war and chaos.

Iran Lobby Fends Off More Attacks on Regime

October 5, 2015 by admin

As Congress moves ahead with a flurry of new bills to stymie the Iran regime and hold the conduct of the mullahs in Tehran to some level of accountability, the Iran lobby, most notably the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), went into overdrive spitting out policy positions against any encroachment on Iran’s advances.

Specifically, the NIAC and its lobbying arm, NIAC Action, issued nearly identical denunciations of two pieces of legislation introduced last week. In the House, a Republican proposal entitled the “Justice for Victims of Iranian Terrorism Act” was passed out on a floor vote by a bipartisan majority of 251-173 and seeks to block sanctions relief granted under the nuclear deal until the Iran regime pays all legal judgements and fines levied against it by U.S. courts which found the regime liable for acts of terror totaling $43.5 billion.

This move follows a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to agree on hearing an appeal of a lower court decision awarding $1.7 billion in damages from Iran’s central state bank in a similar case involving reparation payments to the victims and families of Iranian regime terror incidents.

“The consideration of the bill undermines U.S. national security interests and the perception that the U.S. can abide by its international commitments. It also risks opening the door to reciprocal action in Iran, which could threaten to link its concessions to the U.S. to outstanding claims in Iranian courts,” said Jamal Abdi, executive director of NIAC Action in response.

But Abdi misses the essential point of the move and subsequent decision by the Supreme Court which is the nuclear deal never addressed the most pressing issues, which is the conduct of the regime, specifically its long history of support for acts of terror aimed directly at Americans.

The fact that the regime still holds U.S. citizens in its prisons despite a negotiation that yielded billions of dollars for the mullahs and not one U.S. hostage returned in exchange is more telling about the inadequacy of the nuclear deal and subsequent drive by Congress to act more forcefully than the Obama administration in addressing the rising dissatisfaction of American voters over the deal and perception the mullahs pulled a fast one on the U.S.; which is why the NIAC and other Iran lobbyist allies are left to sputtering short statements which condemn the bills, but spoke nary a word about the ongoing harm Iranian regime is visiting on Syria, Iraq, Yemen and by holding American citizens.

Nowhere was that misleading of the American public on better display than in an editorial by Bardia Rahmani in The Georgetown Voice, a student-run magazine, which makes the argument that the $100 billion in frozen assets to be released back to the regime under the nuclear deal is erroneous and that most of the funds would not be used in supporting terror groups or in proxy wars.

It is a remarkably naïve opinion if genuine and a blatant obfuscation if deliberate. First of all, the estimate of frozen assets to be released is closer to $150 billion if you count assets held by central banks around the world as part of sanctions levied under the United Nations and European Union and include assets held not only by the Iranian government, but private Iranian entities.

The mistake the editorial makes is drawing a distinction between private and public ownership of assets and industries in Iran. Virtually all the national economic infrastructure is owned in part or in whole by institutions controlled by Iran religious government. For example, its telecommunications industry is owned through holding companies controlled by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The same goes for construction, banking, petroleum, agriculture, trade and even entertainment and media.

Returning these assets to these “private” entities is the same as returning them to the checking account for Ali Khamenei.

The editorial also makes no mention of the significant cash drain the regime has experienced in funding Hezbollah, the Syrian civil war to keep Assad afloat (that alone comes to the tune of $4 billion annually), Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebel forces in Yemen as a shooting war with Saudi Arabia erupts. The threat of a wider conflict with Saudi Arabia was reinforced by remarks made by Iran regime brigadier general Morteza Qurbani who claimed over 2,000 rockets were awaiting orders from Khamenei to be fired at Saudi Arabia.

He explained that the lines of defense for the Iranian revolution are today in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. “We are ready to carry out the orders of Khamenei and move anywhere he wants,” Qurbani added.

The regime has diverted significant funds from its economy to fund these wars – an act Khamenei praises as a “war time economy” – and the regime shows no signs of slackening any of its funding priorities. This was evident in Hassan Rouhani’s decision to suspend social welfare payments to Iranian citizens, sparking large civil unrest as fiscal belt tightening took place throughout the regime.

All of which was supported by multiple news accounts of Iranian military forces being moved en masse to the Syrian border in preparation for large-scale direct military involvement coming on the heels of Russian air strikes against foes of the Assad regime.

Assad himself gave an interview to the regime’s Iran News Network in which he described a coalition between Syria, Russia, Iraq and Iran was the best hope for regional peace, which was an odd statement considering Assad’s brutal crackdown on democracy protestors originally started the civil war which led to his use of chemical weapons against his own people and caused a refugee crisis of four million Syrians fleeing the war zone and flooding into Europe.

All of this spin control was not just confined to Syria and Iran lobbyists, but reached all the way to Tehran as the regime’s parliament took up the issue of swift passage of the nuclear agreement, but the debate and parliamentary moves were revealing since the regime was already gaming the deal by making a distinction that the regime was only “suspending” its nuclear activities and not removing them, thereby allowing for the future swift restart of the program.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Importance of Linking Iran Sanctions and Human Rights

June 9, 2015 by admin

Bijan Khajehpour

Sens. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) have put forward an amendment to the defense budget that would extend congressional sanctions against the Iran regime for 10 additional years. The amendment is aimed at extending the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, currently set to expire at the end of 2016, to the end of 2026.

The amendment is an important step in resetting the expectations associated with the Iran regime’s nuclear weapons program because it links it to the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and human rights abuses; a significant step towards properly addressing the central issues with the regime’s conduct towards the world.

The regime’s chief cheerleaders, the National Iranian American Council, predictably were quick to denounce the legislation, warning that passage of the bill would derail ongoing negotiations. The NIAC’s statement was noteworthy for a few things, namely that it placed the burden of completion of a deal on the U.S. and not the regime.

“There are legitimate questions about whether the U.S. will be able to deliver on the terms for sanctions relief under a nuclear deal, and the passage of this amendment would give credence to those concerns,” the NIAC statement said.

It is a remarkable sentence because it firmly ignores the chief obstacle to any agreement between the West and Iran, which is Iran’s historic inability to live up to any of its international agreements. As recently as last month, Iran has steadfastly refused to answer outstanding questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency about the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program.

On top of that omission are repeated comments by Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, who has reiterated publicly his opposition to allowing access to any Iranian military facility or Iranian nuclear scientists by international inspectors.

This follows continued denials by Iran that it is involved in proxy wars being waged in Syria and Yemen, not to mention its control of Shiite militias in Iraq that are now being accused of reprisal sectarian killings against Sunni Muslim villagers, all of which points to a disturbing and repeated pattern of deception, denial and distrust.

The action by Senators Kirk and Menendez comes after passage of legislation signed by President Obama and over the vigorous objections of NIAC authorizing congressional review of any nuclear agreement reached with Iran.

This latest bill from Kirk and Menendez addresses a glaring hole in current negotiations, which is the failure of negotiators to hold Iran’s human rights conduct accountable, as well as including the regime’s capacity to deliver a nuclear weapon well outside their neighborhood and threaten Europe and Asia.

The NIAC and the rest of the Iran lobby have fought hard to keep these things out of negotiations because they know full well their inclusion would almost certainly doom Iran’s hopes of securing a deal and lift economic sanctions and flood the regime with billions in new cash and investment.

The proposed amendment is not a deal breaker for the West as much as it is a safety clause assuring the West does not deliver a bad deal that could come back to haunt them.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Trying to Make Lemonade From Lemons

May 15, 2015 by admin

The House of Representatives voted yesterday overwhelmingly passed by a whopping 400-25 margin legislation giving Congress the power to review and potentially reject a nuclear agreement with the Iran regime. The large margins in the Senate and House votes represent an undeniable proof of the Iran lobby’s failure at halting the drive for Congressional review.

When the Corker-Menendez legislation was first proposed, regime supporters such as the National Iranian American Council went apoplectic claiming the passage of the bill was tantamount to starting a war with Iran. They and other supporters of the Iran regime including bloggers such as Lobelog and columnists such as Eli Clifton went all in with the effort to kill the bill, ultimately failing to convince Democrats to support the Iranian mullahs in the face of dismal poll results showing Americans overwhelmingly believed mullahs could not be trusted to abide by any agreement.

Faced with their impotence to halt the legislation, the NIAC and its cohorts executed a pretty pirouette and now sounded the warning that “with the final passage of this bill, the onus is now on every member of Congress to evaluate a final nuclear deal its merits, compare it against the alternatives, and decide between war and peace with Iran.”

The statement, made by NIAC policy director Jamal Abdi, is an absurd position to take since the choices for Congress have never been between war and peace with Iran, but rather whether or not Iran’s mullahs could be trusted to abide by an agreement. That is the crucial keystone underpinning the calculations being made by Democrats and Republicans in both houses.

What NIAC and other regime supporters have failed to realize is that Congress is increasingly becoming disenfranchised with what is fast-becoming a lame duck Obama administration and are turning their collective gaze to the presidential campaign next year.

With Iran doing its part by continually acting irrationally when supporting conflicts in Syria, where more evidence of chemical weapons use by the Assad regime have come to light again, and Yemen, where Iran is engaged in a high-stakes game of chicken with the U.S. Navy in the Gulf of Aden, the regime is not reassuring American voters or their representatives with this conduct.

It has left the Iran lobby desperately trying to turn lemons into the proverbial lemonade. The hints of their desperation can be seen in the NIAC’s odd insistence of 151 House Democrats signing a letter of support for a deal when the actual number of voting Representatives in the letter is only 145 since members from U.S. territories cannot vote.

Most political analysts have already done the headcounts and the margins needed to override a presidential veto of a thumbs down vote by Congress appears to be in the bag, but it is doubtful any deal will ever come to a vote since Iran’s mullahs appear intent on doing everything they can to kill a deal anyway.

The mullahs continue to use several American hostages as political pawns in Iranian prisons, refusing to discuss their release or even charging them or placing them on trial.

They ignore continued warnings by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran still has been non-responsive to repeated demands for access to nuclear facilities at military bases.

They continue to harass commercial shipping in the Straits of Hormuz with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps patrol boats firing shots at or aggressively tailing commercial vessels for the third time in as many weeks. In the latest incident, Iran on Thursday fired warning shots across the bow of a Singapore-flagged ship, the Alpine Eternity, after it refused to heed demands to move into Iranian waters, according to Bloomberg News.

All of these actions give Americans a strong impression of a growing irrationality emanating from Tehran which is paradoxical given the start of another round of nuclear talks ostensibly to finalize a deal. All of which makes the task of grinding out lemonade by the Iran lobby out of this mess all the more daunting.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Fails Again to Halt Congress

April 15, 2015 by admin

Iran’s lobbying machine, led by the National Iranian American Council, failed yet again to sway members of Congress from supporting the Corker-Menendez bill which passed unanimously out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and grants Congress a voice in negotiations on the Iran nuclear accord.

The bill now goes to the full Senate where a veto-proof majority is anticipated to approve it. Recognizing the inevitable, the White House signaled the President would sign the bill after gaining some adjustments to the timeline to Congressional review and approvals of any deal negotiated.

The NIAC was left sputtering with a statement denouncing the bill, but powerless to affect its’ almost certain passage. What does this portend for the future of the NIAC and other regime apologists?

It proves once again that no amount of spin can cover up the harrowing stories coming out of the Mideast of terror groups supported by Iran’s mullahs wreaking havoc across the region, including beheadings, kidnappings, mass murders and government overthrows.

The bill passed out of committee would mandate the administration send the text of a final accord, along with all classified material, to Congress as soon as completed. It halts the lifting of any economic sanctions during congressional review and culminates in a possible vote to forbid lifting congressionally imposed sanctions in exchange for dismantling much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

The provisions are direct repudiation of demands made by Iranian regime’s leaders including Ali Khamenei, Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif who all denounced American versions of the framework agreement and demanded lifting of all economic sanctions immediately upon completion of a deal; not just American sanctions, but also European Union and United Nations sanctions.

Quite simply, the American people will have their say over whether or not Iran’s mullahs can be trusted to abide by any agreement.

It is a triumph of democracy over an autocratic theocracy, but it only sets the stage for what will likely prove to be another long summer filled with false hopes, clashing views and endless updates leading to nowhere.

Iran’s mullahs have followed a specific negotiating plan aimed at stalling any final agreement for as long as possible, giving the regime time to destabilize the region through direct military action in Iraq and through proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, in an effort to force the hand of Western nations into giving in to Iran’s demands in the false hope of enlisting Iran in quelling the very conflicts it has started.

Ultimately though the regime’s plans will fail just as its lobbying machine has failed because it cannot hide its barbarism, nor resist the pathological desire to inflict pain, suffering and death on all those it finds objectionable, such as other Muslims, Christians, Jews, women, gays, kids surfing the Internet, bloggers, artists, journalists, etc.

By Michael Tomlinson