Iran Lobby

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

Why Regime Change in Iran is Gaining Momentum

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Why Regime Change in Iran is Gaining Momentum

Why Regime Change in Iran is Gaining Momentum

Regime change is a phrase that sends the Iranian regime’s mullahs into an apoplectic rage. One can imagine spittle flying and foaming mouths as they chew on the idea of their regime ending and being replaced by a secular democratic government.

At most points during the mullah’s regime’s history, the idea of regime change might very well seem like a distant idea or even outright fantasy except to ardent Iranian dissidents who have fought an often-lonely battle for freedom, but slowly and inexorably under the Trump administration the idea of regime change is gaining power and currency.

Unlike the Obama administration which viewed appeasing the mullahs as a viable foreign policy position, the Trump administration is skeptical of the mullahs and tempered by seeing what Iran has accomplished over the past eight years under that appeasement policy.

Some supporters of the president are now openly floating the idea of toppling the Iranian regime’s leadership as a policy initiative.

Supporters of dislodging Iran’s iron-fisted clerical leadership say it’s the only way to halt Tehran’s dangerous behavior, from its pursuit of nuclear weapons to its sponsorship of terrorism, according to Politico.

“The policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who speaks regularly with White House officials about foreign policy. “I don’t see how anyone can say America can be safe as long as you have in power a theocratic despotism,” he added.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to endorse subverting the Iranian regime during recent testimony about the State Department’s budget when Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) asked the diplomat whether the Trump administration supports “a philosophy of regime change” in Iran.

Noting that Trump’s Iran policy is still under review, Tillerson said the U.S. would work with Iranian opposition groups toward the “peaceful transition of that government.”

The case for political subversion in Iran has also been pressed to the White House by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank strenuously opposed to Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

Soon after Trump’s inauguration, FDD’s CEO, Mark Dubowitz, submitted a seven-page Iran policy memo to Trump’s National Security Council. The memo — which was circulated inside the Trump White House and recently obtained by POLITICO — included a discussion of ways to foment popular unrest with the goal of establishing a “free and democratic” Iran.

“Iran is susceptible to a strategy of coerced democratization because it lacks popular support and relies on fear to sustain its power,” the memo argued. “The very structure of the regime invites instability, crisis and possibly collapse.”

Another administration voice forcefully speaking out against Iran is CIA Director Mike Pompeo who said on Saturday that Iran is not only the world’s top terrorism sponsor, but it’s support has also grown over the last several years, according to the Daily Caller.

The Islamic state’s influence across the Middle East “has expanded considerably ” in the last six or seven years, said Pompeo during an interview with MSNBC. This influence and support of terrorism makes Iran a threat to national security, he added.

“Whether it’s the influence they have over the government in Baghdad, whether it’s the increasing strength of Hezbollah and Lebanon, their work alongside the Houthis in Iran, the Iraqi Shias that are fighting along now the border in Syria — certainly the Shia forces that are engaged in Syria. Iran is everywhere throughout the Middle East,” said Pompeo.

Because of this malign influence, Iran is playing an increasingly “destructive role” in the region, according to the director.

Also, recent revelations by leading Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, revealed 12 previously undisclosed missile production sites across Iran.

The NCRI identified 42 independent missile centers involved in the production, testing and launching of missiles, in a report published on June 20. Some of these bear the hallmarks of Iran’s nuclear comrade, North Korea.

The report identifies 15 sites related to missile manufacturing. Many of these sites have several factories churning out weapons components.

Combined, the other 27 sites house 25 storage facilities, 13 launch pads, and eight sites for training and deployment brigades.

The effort to expand its missile capabilities are just part and parcel of the Iranian regime’s efforts to push its influence across the region in an effort to stave off growing discontent at home.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Desperation Shows as It Blames US for ISIS

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Iran Regime Desperation Shows as It Blames US for ISIS

Members of Iranian forces take cover during an attack on the Iranian parliament in central Tehran, Iran, June 7, 2017. Tasnim News Agency/Handout via REUTERS

The Iranian regime pushed out an absurd theory over the weekend blaming the U.S. for the birth and growth of ISIS and continues to push the inane message even though virtually every intelligence and news report refutes the notion.

Of course, the reason the mullahs are pursuing this silly argument is simple: They must blame the recent ISIS attacks in Tehran on someone else otherwise they will face the uncomfortable truth that the terror they have wrought on the rest of the world is finally coming home.

Armstrong Williams, an advisor and spokesman for the presidential campaign of Dr. Ben Carson and a radio host, took that notion to task in a piece in the Hill.

While he correctly sympathizes with the victims killed and wounded in the ISIS attacks, Williams points out that the attacks were less about raining death and destruction on the Iranian regime, as much as making a propaganda point against the mullahs.

“It is also important to recognize the significant role that symbolism plays in both Iranian and Middle Eastern cultures. Which is why the second terrorist attack targeting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s tomb complex, the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, was a veritable attack at Iran’s core,” he writes.

“These twin terror attacks, striking the mullahs’ parliament and shrine to the Khomeini, represent a very painful bitter pill for the Iranian regime to swallow.”

It’s a harsh wake-up call to the mullahs who have consistently used terror and proxies such as Hezbollah and Shiite militias to wage war on their enemies to see the same thing happen right in their backyard.

“ISIS, the Taliban and al Qaeda have also received support from the extremist Iranian mullahs, which is ironic since each of these terrorist groups’ ideologies are determined to eradicate Shi’ism, which just happens to be the religious backbone of the Iranian regime,” Williams said.

“And the reason for this twisted terrorist support is sickening: Tehran sees benefit in forming tactical alliances with these terrorist entities because they too loath America, and are motivated by a virulent anti-West agenda.”

Many news media and even the Iran lobby often try to portray the combatants in Syria as split on sectarian lines; Sunni vs. Shia with Iran firmly and bravely fighting ISIS, but in truth, Iran sees and has used ISIS as an effective foil for the West, diverting attention from its own actions in Yemen, Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

In fact, the Iranian regime could not have it both ways anymore. It could not—on the one hand—sponsor and export terror and not expect to that to rebound on them down the road. It’s the ultimate act of hubris on the scale of a Greek tragedy.

Amir Basiri, a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway column, explained how the Iranian regime and ISIS both benefitted from each other.

“The Islamic State clearly owes its rise to Tehran. The violence caused by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its affiliates in Iraq and Syria created the perfect breeding ground for the emergence of the Islamic State and allowed it to occupy large swathes of land in both countries,” he writes.

“Reciprocally, the Islamic State returned the favor, causing rampage that provided Iran with the perfect excuse to increase its meddling in neighboring countries. Under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State, Tehran founded and legalized the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella for extremist Shiite groups backed by Iran. The Islamic State also became Iran’s excuse to openly intervene in the Syrian conflict and shore up the Assad regime against opposition forces,” he added.

That recognition by both sides is what has allowed both to flourish as Iran expanded its control over Syria, Iraq and Yemen, while ISIS grew from a small collection of jihadi fighters to a vast terror-nation state with access to cash reserves, oil exports and a tax system.

Only when ISIS began to suffer losses on the battlefield and engaged in inspiring terror attacks worldwide over the past two years have nations finally coalesced in trying to exterminate the group.

The problem for the mullahs in Tehran is what happens if ISIS is eventually eradicated? The excuse they have used for so long in justifying their presence in Syria and Iraq will evaporate, which is why they are now trying to tie ISIS to the U.S. and long-time foe Saudi Arabia.

Only by framing the two as ISIS god parents can Iran hope to legitimize its continued occupation of its holdings.

“This is a reminder that Iran is not part of the solution in fighting the Islamic State or other extremist groups. Islamic fundamentalism can only be eradicated if it is fought in its entirety. This will require the eviction of the Iranian regime and the Revolutionary Guards from the region and the total dismantling of its terrorist proxies,” Basiri adds.

The Iranian regime is already working hard to beat the clock and solidify its foothold with the announcement of the appointment of a new Iranian ambassador to Iraq, not from the diplomatic corps, but from its Quds Forces.

Iran’s most prominent economic daily describes the arrival of Iraj Masjedi in Baghdad to take over Iran’s embassy there. Masjedi is a brigadier-general in the Quds Force who served in several leadership roles in forward operating bases during the Iran-Iraq War.

In recent years, the Iranian press has described him as a senior advisor to Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani. His promotion to be Iranian ambassador to Iraq suggests that Tehran’s focus in Iraq in the coming years will be military.

That suspicion was amplified with news reports that a blast that killed three people and injured 15 others on Friday in the Iraqi city of Karbala had an Iranian link.

“After the explosion and during the investigation and inspection on Friday night, the Iraqi intelligence forces arrested five Iranians who had explosives and remote control devices at the area near the blast site, in the eastern Abbasid,” an official said on condition of anonymity.

“The security forces transferred the Iranian detainees to the Karbala intelligence headquarters for interrogation,” the source said. “But minutes later dozens of Brigade Ali Akbar and Badr Organization militias supported by Iran surrounded the headquarters of the intelligence of Karbala.”

The source said the militias demanded the release of the five Iranian detainees but their request was rejected by the head of intelligence, who emphasized that he will hand them back only to authorities in Baghdad.

The refusal led the armed militias to break into the intelligence headquarters, where they took the five detainees and the head of the intelligence department.

The strong-arm tactics are nothing new to Iranian-backed militias and heralds a disturbing new chapter in Iran’s involvement in Iraq.

We can only hope that the Quds Forces do not turn Iraq into another Syria in order to find a new distraction for the world.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Tries to Blame ISIS Attacks on Opposition

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Iran Regime Tries to Blame ISIS Attacks on Opposition

The body of a terrorist, at background left, lies on the ground while police control the scene at the shine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Several attackers stormed into Iran’s parliament and a suicide bomber targeted the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Wednesday, killing a security guard and wounding 12 other people in rare twin attacks, with the shooting at the legislature still underway. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

An attack by six assailants armed with rifles and explosives took Iranian regime security forces by surprise the other day in a series of attacks aimed at the heart of the government, including a takeover of the Parliament building and the tomb of the regime’s founder, leaving a dozen dead and 46 wounded that shook the religious theocracy ruling Iran.

The attacks lasted for hours and was claimed by ISIS, which if true, would represent the first successful attack by the terror group on Iranian soil and a significant and somewhat ironic turn of events in the growing sectarian conflict between and extremist Sunni and extremist Shiite ideologies.

Predictably, the default response from Iranian officials was to point the finger of blame at regional rival Saudi Arabia and even Iranian dissident groups such as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. As Iranian officials struggled in the wake of the attack, one could sense confusion and even a slight note of panic setting in as the prospect of Tehran joining the ranks of cities such as London, Paris and Berlin as prime terror targets began to seep.

For the Iranian regime, much of the blame for the notable rise in Islamic extremist groups lies squarely on its doorstep. The mullahs constant vitriol aimed at Israel, the U.S. and the its Sunni Arab neighbors has only made routine the kind of hate that groups like Hezbollah have acted on for decades.

The use of proxies and terrorist groups has always been a part of the statecraft toolbox for Iran as it has used Hezbollah and the Houthis to conduct open warfare in Syria and Yemen, meanwhile bolstering Shiite militias in Iraq to push Sunnis out of the coalition government there and into the waiting arms of ISIS recruiters.

According to the New York Times, tensions in the Middle East were already high following a visit by President Trump last month, in which he exalted and emboldened Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival. Saudi Arabia and several Sunni allies led a regional effort on Monday to isolate Qatar, the tiny Persian Gulf country that maintains good relations with Iran

In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards Corps said, “The public opinion of the world, especially Iran, recognizes this terrorist attack — which took place a week after a joint meeting of the U.S. president and the head of one of the region’s backward governments, which constantly supports fundamentalist terrorists — as very meaningful,” a reference to Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy.

Saudi Arabia swiftly rejected the claim and the Trump White House, while expressing sympathy for the victims, was quick to note that “states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote” in a statement.

The MEK also denied any involvement and accused regime officials of a smear attack saying “their intention is to either use this event” against the group or justify their own previous crimes” in a statement.

But that didn’t stop members of the Iran lobby from stepping up to also blame Iranian dissident groups for the attack either directly or indirectly.

Paul R. Pillar, a stalwart for the Iran lobby, wrote in Consortium News blaming the MEK for alleged terrorist attacks in Iran and claiming that prior attacks had left the regime much better prepared to counter terrorism.

We hate to tell Pillar that his measure of “preparedness” by Iranian security forces leaves much to be desired judging by the daylong standoff at the Parliament building.

Pillar even begins laying the ground work for the Iranian regime to step up its terrorist activities in the wake of the attacks saying “in the months ahead, Iran may take actions outside its borders in response to the attacks.”

“Iran may see a need to be more aggressive in places such as Iraq or Syria in the interest of fighting back against ISIS,” Pillar said.

His comments are instructive since the mullahs are likely to use the attacks as an excuse to step up their fights in Syria in to preserve the Assad regime and in Yemen to continue destabilizing the border to Saudi Arabia.

It is not inconceivable that the Iranian regime will use the attacks as a pretext to launch fresh initiatives in places such as Bahrain and Qatar to further split apart the Gulf states and weaken opposition to its regional ambitions to build a Shiite sphere of influence.

Pillar wasn’t alone in trying to drag the MEK into the mud, as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, gleefully attacked the resistance group in interviews claiming that the MEK was equipped to carry out these attacks because of its channels into the regime and its ties to Saudi Arabia.

“If the goal was to penetrate and destabilize Iran, the MEK clearly was Saudi Arabia’s best bet,” Parsi said. “Still unclear who’s behind the current attack in Iran, but the MEK (and their Saudi backers) are a main suspect. Timing is of course curious. Just last month, A Saudi Crown Prince said Riyadh is working hard to take battle to inside of Iran.”

Parsi and Pillar offered no proof, only suspicions that read like they came from a talking points memo from Ali Khamenei’s office as Iran struggles with the aftermath of the attacks and desperately seeks any scapegoat other than its own support for terrorism.

The roots for these attacks lie squarely in the Iranian regime’s long history of exporting terror as a tool and it has finally come home to bite them.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

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Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

With Hassan Rouhani ensconced for another four years, the mullahs in Tehran can turn their attention back to the work at hand which is continuing the expansion of the Iranian regime’s extremism and secure the gains it made during four years of an Obama administration’s failed policy of appeasement.

That expansion is on a variety of fronts. First and foremost, the regime is focused on expanding its military capabilities and has made aggressive moves to do so. It’s a vital step for the regime since the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its related units, such as the Quds Force, are the tip of the spear that also happen to control the economic purse strings of the country.

Through an elaborate network of shell companies, the IRGC control most of the major industrial sectors such as oil, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. It regularly uses the profits from these enterprises to pay for its military expenditures as well as the proxies it uses in its fighting.

The IRGC also pushed hard for the nuclear deal for one specific purpose which was to lift crippling economic sanctions that were cutting off its supplies of cash and arms. That was vital since the handwriting was on the wall since the Arab Spring democracy protests and the disputed Iranian presidential election of 2009 that the regime was under significant pressure that threatened the rule of the mullahs.

The flawed nuclear offered unjustified concessions for the regime not only because it lifted sanctions and flooded cash back into the mullahs’ coffers, but also it allowed the regime to unlink its abysmal human rights record and support for terrorism from the agreement itself.

This essentially gave the regime a blank check to continue to engage in militant actions without fear of reprisal.

Part of that military support has been a destructive expansion on Iran’s use of proxies such as the terrorist group Hezbollah to fight its battles, especially in the ever-widening Syrian civil war and the insurgency in Yemen with the Houthi.

News reports have pointed towards a fresh influx of support for Hezbollah and what that may mean for U.S.-backed rebel forces in Syria.

A top U.S. military official says rather than using any additional monies to invest more heavily in conventional forces, there are indications Tehran continues to focus on cultivating special operators to help lead and direct proxy forces, according to Voice of America.

“If anything, increased defense dollars in Iran are likely to go toward increasing that network, looking for ways to expand it,” U.S. Special Operation Forces Vice Commander Lieutenant General Thomas Trask told an audience in Washington late Tuesday.

“We’ve already seen evidence of them taking units and officers out of the conventional side that are working with the IRGC in Syria,” Trask added. “We’re going to stay focused on these proxies and the reach that Iran has well past Syria and Yemen but into Africa, into South America, into Europe as well.”

Yet despite Iran’s heavy involvement in Syria to help prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. military officials see no indications much of that money has been set aside for bolstering Tehran’s conventional forces.

Nor do they see that as a likely scenario, even though the latest estimates from the U.S. intelligence community warn Iran is trying to develop “a range of new military capabilities,” including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and armed drones.

Already, Iran is supplementing its own forces inside Syria by providing arms, financing and training for as many as 10,000 Shia militia fighters, including units from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Military and intelligence officials further worry about the sway Iran has over tens of thousands of additional fighters who are part of Shia militias fighting in Iraq.

Fighting involving U.S. aircraft against Iranian-backed forces in the border town of al Tanf where Syria, Jordan and Iraq meet gave a prelude to what may be a wider war as Iran continues to pour resources into Syria to consolidate gains made by the Assad regime with the backing of Russia.

But conventional warfare isn’t the only area the mullahs want to expand as Steve King, COO and CTO of Netswitch Technology Management, pointed out Tehran’s investment in cyberattacks in Lifezette.

Since 2015, Iran has been conducting a sophisticated online cyberattack campaign that uses custom-built malware to deliberately infect and gain access to sensitive industrial control systems and critical infrastructure in companies across the globe, King writes.

All of this activity during the last two years has been like spring training for the Iranians: mostly practice attacks designed to sharpen their skills, he added.

King noted that according to a 2016 Defense Department report, Iran has evolved its cybersecurity operations to become the primary pillar of its national security strategy and has been testing the limits of sanctions and repercussions associated with the nuclear deal as they might be applied to their activities in cyberspace. So far, no reaction from the West.

Cyberwarfare is now as important to Iran’s military strategy as its ballistic missile program used to be, he warns.

The broad array of threats being presented by the Iranian regime is becoming readily apparent even though the Iran lobby and its supporters continue to work to obscure all of the regime’s actions.

One example is a piece by Cornelius Adebahr in Carnegie Europe that extols the virtues of a Rouhani win and what it means for Europe. It’s a puff piece for the regime and ignores the historical record of Iranian extremism.

Sadly, Adebahr only regurgitates the same false messages offered by groups such as the National Iranian American Council. The brutal reality of Iranian policy can’t be seen in the ballot box but in the battlefields across the Middle East.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

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Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

The re-election of Hassan Rouhani to another term as president of the Iranian regime came as no surprise to experienced Iran watchers and the larger dissident community; particularly since the election process in Iran is essentially rigged from the start by the process of eliminating thousands of candidates who register to run for the office, but this has not stopped the Iran lobby from claiming the win was a mandate for so-called “moderate” policies.

One example of this myth-making comes from the National Iranian American Council which noted Rouhani’s win with an analysis on its website.

According to the NIAC, more than 41 million Iranians voted in Iran’s May 19th Presidential election, or nearly 75% of the electorate. The NIAC claims that figure included tens of thousands of Iranians in the diaspora with a remarkable feat given the obstacles imposed by Iran’s unelected institutions.

It’s a silly argument to make since many election analysts who have studied Iranian elections have noted the past practice of ballot stuffing and double counting of ballots cast in presidential and city council races in order to boost overall numbers.

There is also the infamous 2009 election “victory” of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which was widely considered to be illegitimate for the same tactics.

The claim of high Iranian voter turnout would be similar to basing the election turnout for the Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump race on counting ballots cast for state races as separate and unique.

It is even more ironic for the NIAC to claim a high turnout from the Iranian diaspora when it has previously openly condemned large portions of the diaspora involved in the Iranian resistance movement, such as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran.

The NIAC also claims that the election was a 57-38% landslide for incumbent Rouhani, and a defeat for so-called hardliners – including the leadership of Iran’s judiciary and Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – which publicly mobilized for perceived conservative candidate Ebrahim Raisi

What the NIAC doesn’t admit to is that the election was precisely a victory for the hardliners because the regime government is controlled and directed by the same hardliners who claim to be moderates. All Iranian officials from the Rouhani on down to the lowliest village representative all have to swear the same oath of fealty and allegiance to the regime’s religious leadership and theocracy.

There is no distinction within the Iranian regime between moderates or hardliners since all are beholden to the same power structure.

The NIAC also claimed the election was a referendum on the nuclear deal, but what it fails to do is make the distinction of how the election was engineered to deliver a pre-determined outcome. By setting up a race between Rouhani and Raisi, the mullahs created the perception of a moderate vs. hardliner battle and all but ensured Rouhani’s election as a choice of the lesser of two evils.

The election was never about the nuclear deal since most Iranians have not received any benefits from the deal and probably won’t for many more years. For Iranians who voted for Rouhani, the election was simply a choice of choosing a less odious candidate than another, which tends to be the basic choices provided by the mullahs.

To keep that fiction up, Raisi and his supporters are now even accusing Rouhani of rigging the vote with widespread voter fraud.

“Tampering with the numbers of people’s participation is inappropriate. Not sending ballots to centers where the government’s opponent has a chance of getting votes is very inappropriate,” Raisi was quoted as saying.

“I ask the Guardian Council and the judiciary not to let the people’s rights get trampled. If this vote-tampering is not looked into, then the people’s trust will be damaged.”

The claim is humorous given the regime’s predilection for rigging elections, but Raisi’s claims might very well be genuine, but in the end irrelevant since the mullahs got the result they wanted, which was to fool the rest of the world.

The need to fool the world is necessary for the Iranian regime as it continues to implement an aggressive agenda seeking to expand its sphere of influence throughout the region, which is why recent news that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias were on the very of opening a land corridor from Iran to Assad-regime controlled territory in Syria is worrisome.

The opening of such a corridor would accelerate Iran’s ability to ship weapons and fighters to Syria without having to resort to more clandestine methods such as using commercial Iranian airliners to ferry troops and supplies.

Syrian rebel sources have warned of advances by the Syrian army and Iranian-backed militia to reach the border.

The news of Iranian involvement in other regions included reports from Afghanistan of Pakistani and Iranian nationals fighting for ISIS elements.

Afghanistan Nangarhar provincial Police Chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said that the Pakistani and Iranian detainees confessed that militants were being funded by Iran and Pakistan.

The attack against the U.S. didn’t stop either after the election as top mullah Ali Khamenei continued his customary verbal broadsides against the U.S. by marking the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by ripping Saudi Arabia, saying its Sunni rival is being pumped for money by the U.S., according to Agence France-Presse. 

Khamenei’s comments comes after President Trump brokered a $110 billion defense deal with the Saudis during his first foreign trip in office.

The defense deal between the U.S. and the Saudis will bolster Riyadh’s defense capabilities by providing more equipment and services to combat extremist terror groups and Iran.

Even as the Iran lobby claims the Iran election has resolved much, the opposite has been the truth.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

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Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

The effort by President Trump to build a new international coalition to confront and contain the Iranian regime got off to a solid start with summits and meetings in Saudi Arabia and Israel. The warm welcome he received from Arab leaders must have unnerved the mullahs in Tehran since the Iran lobby has turned its attention a full-throated defense of the regime.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council took to authoring an editorial on the NIAC website that attempts to downplay Trump’s efforts.

“A key factor explaining the violence in the Middle East in the past few decades is that the region has lacked a sustainable, indigenous order. The process of establishing an order is by definition disruptive and the Middle East has almost continuously been in this state since the end of the Cold War,” Parsi writes.

“To make matters worse, the temporary equilibriums that briefly provided a resemblance of order were established and sustained by an external power – the United States – rather than by the states of the region themselves. As a result, these temporary periods of stability could only last as long as the external power was willing to sustain the order with its own blood and treasure,” he adds.

Parsi’s logic is perverse since he effectively argues for a process in which Iranian regime institutes order by eradicating everyone else that stands in its path. Of course, Parsi claims that Iran only has the best of intentions for its neighbors, but the track record does not show that as Iran is now embroiled in three wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Parsi goes on to blame Saudi Arabia for Middle East turmoil all in an effort to isolate Iran, but Parsi never admits to Iranian regime’s own culpability in setting the region ablaze in bloodshed and sectarian violence.

We have seen the profound loss of life after the Obama administration abdicated any role in fixing Syria in favor of the Iranian regime settling issues through barrel bombs and chemical gas attacks.

Parsi’s colleague, Reza Marashi, takes up the cause of whitewashing Iran in his own editorial reiterating the tired old refrain of Hassan Rouhani of being a tried and true moderate, whose real goal is only alleviating the economic malaise gripping Iran.

Unfortunately, no one told Marashi it seems that Iran’s economy will not improve so long as the mullahs continue to siphon billions for their own personal enrichment, as well as ship off more billions to prop up the Assad regime in Syria and pay to support Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in their wars.

Marashi even dubs the newly formed partnership against Iran as an “Axis of Rejection” a nifty piece of word play that reminds us of President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech.

“Rouhani’s track record demonstrates that sustained engagement can lower tensions and produce peaceful solutions to conflict,” Marashi writes.

It is a claim that is both surreal and fantasy since Rouhani has presided over a massive escalation in wars that Iranian regime is fighting with no discernible pathway to peace other than to kill off Iran’s enemies.

But the NIAC isn’t through trying to support Iran as Ryan Costello weighed in with a press release lauding tweets made by former Secretary of State John Kerry who negotiated the horrific Iran nuclear agreement in the first place opposing proposed Senate legislation to levy new sanctions on the regime.

“Sec. Kerry’s public intervention cautioning against new Iran sanctions legislation should be another wake-up call that this is the wrong bill at the wrong time. Sec. Kerry would not be turning to the microphones unless the bill was an Iran deal-killer and private efforts to remove poison pills had failed,” Cosello writes.

“Lawmakers must ask themselves why they would give President Trump a mandate to undermine the Iran nuclear deal, ratchet up tensions in the region and undermine Iran’s moderates on the heels of their election victory. Tens of millions of Iranians voted in favor of openness and engagement with the outside world while Trump danced with unelected Saudi monarchs and called for Iran’s isolation,” he adds.

The more appropriate question back to Costello would be “why would lawmakers ever think they could trust the Iranian regime anymore after its commitment to waging proxy wars on its neighbors.”

The NIAC wasn’t the only Iran lobby supporter busy propping up the mullahs. Hooman Majd, a former advisor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, offered up the fairy tale that Iran had opted for peaceful co-existence with Rouhani’s re-election in a piece for Foreign Policy.

“Iran’s presidential election also proved the adage that the only thing predictable about Iranian politics is its unpredictability. Which, to the consternation of the Washington foreign-policy class, puts Iran experts on the same professional level as astrologers or palm readers,” Majd writes.

Again, Iranian regime supporters like Majd show their silliness when the election outcome in Iran was far from unpredictable. In fact, no incumbent Iranian president has ever lost re-election, not even Ahmadinejad when his re-election had to be rigged with widespread ballot tampering.

Iranian elections are so predictable, they remind us of the old Soviet Union-style elections with 99 percent voter participation and zero percent uncertainty.

The more the Iran lobby tries to prop up the Iranian regime the more it reveals how weak and vulnerable the mullahs have become.

 

Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

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Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

Iranian Opposition Movement Grows During Election

For the Iranian people, the choices in this year’s presidential election were appalling. They could choose to return Hassan Rouhani to a second term after his first term was marked by a nuclear deal that provided no discernible economic benefits to them, presiding over a government rife with corruption and massive protests over inflated salaries for officials, and a brutal crackdown on human rights that saw everyone from students and bloggers to journalists and artists imprisoned.

Or they could select Ebrahim Raisi, a cleric with no discernible public backing who is widely reviled for his role in executing 30,000 imprisoned Iranian dissidents in 1988.

To say the Iranian people’s choices ranged from bad to awful is an understatement, but that is exactly the kind of predicament the mullahs wanted to arrange for their people; to be forced into selecting the lesser of two evils.

It is also why Rouhani’s election was met with media messages of a “moderate” win; all of which suits the mullah’s purposes to frame the narrative for the next four years as a moderate Iran confronts an “extremist” Trump administration with its “extremist” Arab allies.

The mullahs are not stupid, they realize the geopolitical landscape is rapidly changing on them as their Arab rivals are linking arms with a newly energized U.S. in articulating a policy of confronting Iran rather than appeasing it.

What is driving that change has been the Iranian regime’s own policies over the past four years which has seen the regime ignite the Syrian civil war and turn it into an abattoir of death. It has also started the Houthi rebellion in Yemen which has drawn Saudi Arabia into a direct proxy war with Iran.

Couple that with an economy mired in mud and a newly aggressive ballistic missile program that has freaked out the world and you get a recipe for unlikely alliances being forged now.

You know things are different in the world when direct, non-stop service between Tel Aviv and Riyadh has been inaugurated.

But the change in the political environment worldwide pales in comparison to the stark changes happening internally in Iran.

The regime has already struggled mightily to suppress social media and encrypted communications apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. It’s first taste of the power of social media campaign in disputed 2009 elections in which protests and the coverage of the crackdowns were largely promoted and carried on social media.

In response under Rouhani, the regime has sought to suppress all dissent online which is a virtually impossible exercise. The regime has used its Basij paramilitaries to seek out and arrest anyone viewed as disruptive whether it’s a Snapchat post of a woman riding a bicycle or an Instagram post of a woman not wearing a hijab.

Evin Prison has been filled with such threatening individuals as a bunch of students posting a viral video of them dancing to Western music.

Nowhere has the internal threats to the regime been more apparent than in the increased visibility and activity of organized Iranian resistance groups; long a thorn in the mullah’s side.

According to dissident media outlets, a vast network of dissidents supporting the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) came alive in unprecedented scale to voice the true feelings of the Iranian people about the candidates and the regime in its entirety.

Cities and towns across the country, including major metropolitan centers such as Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Tabriz and Shiraz, have witnessed scenes of brave activists daring long odds and challenges to put up large posters and images of Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi from bridges and overpasses, car windshields and even the walls of buildings belonging to the regime’s security forces, such as the Revolutionary Guards and Basij.

Open support for the MEK inside Iran is forbidden considered a capital crime to any activists that are caught, with torture and possibly even execution awaiting them. Long-time MEK supporter Gholamreza Khosravi was jailed and eventually executed for merely providing financial support for an MEK-affiliated satellite TV network in 2014.

Also, the Iranian regime’s claims of a “historic” election in terms of turnout has also been calle3d into question by the National Council of Resistance of Iran which outlined how the regime in the past has simply cooked the election books.

“One of the simplest and easiest way is multiplying the real votes of the candidates by a factor so that the number of participants in the elections can be shown as several times higher than the real figures,” the NCRI said in a statement. “One of the other ways to cheat, is printing additional ballots and producing fraudulent ballots in secret sites and inserting those ballot boxes into counting centers so that the number of participants is shown higher at the polls.”

Outside of the media-centric environs of Tehran, voter turnout was largely apathetic and low with reports of boycotts in many provincial towns and cities from locals dissatisfied with the economic problems besieging them.

What hasn’t changed in Iran is the basic make-up of the power elite still holding control firmly in their hands which is the religious body comprising most of the parliament and councils governing the judiciary, civil service and financial sector, along with the Revolutionary Guard Corps which still controls virtually all the state industries and companies.

As Rouhani moves forward, he will find a very different world than the one that embraced a flawed nuclear deal two years ago.

The era of appeasing Iran is over.

Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Uniting the World…Against It

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Iranian Regime Uniting the World…Against It

U.S. President Donald Trump takes his seat before his speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The Iranian regime election has given the world another dose of Hassan Rouhani, but in and of itself, his election to another term is meaningless since the world has seen that Ali Khamenei and his close circle of mullahs set policy, backed by the muscle of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The arguments against the Iranian government have never been directed at its people. For the most part, the Iranian people have been manipulated, coerced, bullied and even brutalized into submission. It has been the conduct of the leadership of the mullahs that have brought so much misery to that part of the world.

The leadership of Iran has pursued a policy that emphasizes harsh suppression of internal dissent, while using brute force to enact a foreign policy of war and terrorism to advance its aims, which is to expand the sphere of influence for its form of radicalized Shia theology.

But in an interesting twist of irony, Iran’s very actions to unite underneath its own banner have yielded the opposite effect: countries that have previously been adversaries are now aligning to form an international coalition to halt Iranian regime’s expansion.

President Trump’s first overseas trip started off with Saudi Arabia and extended into Israel, two countries that have not only been at odds and even war, but are also under their own scrutiny. Now both they and other countries, including the Gulf states, have begun the tenuous process of working together at keeping the Iranian regime contained.

The ancient proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is finding utility now among countries that are being confronted by Iranian extremism and for President Trump, the opportunity exists to redefine a new order in the Middle East predicated at halting Iranian expansion and bring about a political realignment within the Iranian regime.

Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia was the first to a Muslim majority nation for an incoming U.S. president and set the tone for reaching out to the Muslim world in a manner his predecessor never managed to achieve.

Trump said on Monday that shared concern about Iran was driving Israel and many Arab states closer and demanded that Tehran immediately cease military and financial backing of “terrorists and militias”.

In stressing threats from Iran, Trump echoed a theme laid out during weekend meetings in Saudi Arabia with Muslim leaders from around the world, many wary of the Islamic state’s growing regional influence and financial muscle.

Trump said there were opportunities for cooperation across the Middle East: “That includes advancing prosperity, defeating the evils of terrorism and facing the threat of an Iranian regime that is threatening the region and causing so much violence and suffering.”

Worried about the movement being made in realigning against the Iranian regime, newly minted Rouhani claimed that regional stability could not happen without Iran.

He said the summit in Saudi Arabia “had no political value, and will bear no results”.

“Who can say the region will experience total stability without Iran? Who fought against the terrorists? It was Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Syria. But who funded the terrorists?”

In this one area, Rouhani is correct, but not for the reasons he claimed. Regional stability is dependent on Iran, but only if Iran stopped fueling the instability it has caused across the Middle East in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Rouhani also trotted out the time-worn claim that Saudi Arabia was in fact more dangerous because of the rise of Sunni-dominant terrorist groups such as ISIS, but ignored his own country’s role in helping spawn ISIS with the downfall of the Sunni-Shia coalition government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq.

While Rouhani tries to diminish the importance of Arab states aligning against Iran, the broader and more important strategic implications are more troubling for Rouhani and his fellow clerics. A clear alliance among fellow Muslim nations with non-Arab states such as Israel, the U.S. and Turkey would represent a sea change in relations among countries with long histories of opposing each other.

It also puts to a lie the message Rouhani and his Iran lobby supporters have long pushed which is that opposition to Iran has always been built around sectarian issues and as such lack legitimacy. The opposite is now true; a coalition of diverse nations with varying beliefs all share the same concerns over an Iran that stands at the center of virtually all the instability now wreaking havoc there.

The real proof of Iran’s intentions will not come from words but deeds. If the Iranian regime continues to fling ballistic missiles and supply its various proxies in their ongoing wars, then the regime has no intention of altering its course.

It is ironic that Rouhani pointed a finger at Saudi Arabia claiming it held no free elections when Iran’s own history of elections is more checkered, including the debacle of the 2009 disputed elections.

“Mr. Trump has come to the region at a time when 45 million Iranian people went to polling stations, and he went to a country where they don’t know what elections are about,” Rouhani said. “It’s not in their dictionary.

“Hopefully the day will come when Saudi Arabia will adopt this path.”

His triumphant comments neglected to mention that Iran’s elections are hardly free or fair, with candidates chosen by an unelected 12-man council, according to the Los Angeles Times, not to mention that the figure made up by the regime could not be verified, given no independent monitoring has been present, and Iran’s state media are full of facts on how both rivals have made unprecedented deceits in the ballots. The opposition to the Iranian regime has estimated the total number of participants in the fake election, to have been increased by four in order to cover, the regime’s isolation at home.

Rouhani for his part deflected questions about Trump’s calls to isolate Iran over its support for militant groups and its ballistic missile program, suggesting that the new U.S. administration had yet to “settle down” and formulate a coherent policy in the Middle East.

“We are waiting for this new U.S. government to be settled in terms of their stances, posture and future plans,” Rouhani said.

“Hopefully things will be settled down and well established in the U.S. so that we can actually pass judgments on the new administration.”

We can only assume Rouhani hopes to squeeze a few more months out of the appeasement policy pursued by the Obama administration before things go south on him and his fellow mullahs.

Michael Tomlinson

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

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As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

Without much drama, Hassan Rouhani was re-elected to a second term as president of the Iranian regime. The result didn’t come as a surprise to any experienced Iran watcher since no incumbent has ever lost a bid for a second term, even if the results had to be faked to get the job done as was the case with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But what has been lost on a large part of the global media is now the mullahs manage to always stage a convenient drama to be played out for them in terms of a fateful showdown between “reformist and moderate” forces against “hardline and conservative” ones bent on rolling back the freedoms of the Iranian people.

If Nazi Germany had staged an election between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the latter probably would have looked like a moderate too.

The same was true here in which a careful choreography ensued. First thousands of candidates filing to be on the ballot had to be summarily tossed aside to clear the field.

That left only six men to move forward—no women and no active or known dissidents—and then several dropped out to throw their support to one of the two remaining choices: Rouhani and Ebrahim Raisi.

Conveniently, Raisi was portrayed as the “hardline” choice of Ali Khamenei and was portrayed by media as the man who would roll back all the “positive” achievements wrought by Rouhani over the past four years.

Given Raisi’s bloody history as a special prosecutor that oversaw the executions of tens of thousands of Iranian dissidents, it’s easy to see why he might be viewed as slightly more bloodthirsty than Rouhani who oversaw only the execution of mere thousands of dissidents.

It was a Hobson’s choice and a well-played one.

While the Iran lobby focused on Rouhani’s achievements in securing the nuclear deal and opening Iran back up to Western investment, never were there any mentions of the broad human rights crackdowns during his tenure including the largest number of public executions since the 1979 revolution.

In fact, global media were eager to eat up the narrative of a “moderate” win which is exactly what Khamenei and his fellow mullahs wanted to see portrayed.

How easily the world has forgotten the parliamentary elections only last year in which tens of thousands of candidates were knocked off ballots and faithful followers of the mullahs were re-elected.

The Iranian regime smartly chooses to fight its public battles only after the game has been rigged.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council brayed like a wild animal over the results as the NIAC quickly issued statements lauding the outcome.

“President Rouhani’s convincing win is a sharp rebuke to Iran’s unelected institutions that were a significant brake on progress during Rouhani’s first term. It is also a rebuke of Washington hawks who openly called for either a boycott of the vote or for the hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi to win in order to hasten a confrontation,” Parsi said.

“In addition to Trump’s America, there are two other countries that will continue to form an Axis of Rejection in response to Rouhani’s foreign policy. One is Saudi Arabia. Despite Tehran’s repeated outreach, Riyadh has refused to respond in kind,” said Parsi’s NIAC colleague Reza Marashi in a piece for Huffington Post.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, many countries are not hearkening to Parsi and Marashi’s messages.

During President Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia, he found common ground with the Saudis on the need to confront Iranian regime’s aggression since Rouhani has clearly followed a foreign policy of engaging in wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; coupled with a North Korea-like ramp up in ballistic missile testing.

The king said on Sunday Saudi Arabia had not witnessed terrorism until the 1979 Revolution in Iran. Instead of accepting good-faith initiatives, Iran has “pursued expansionary ambitions, and criminal practices and the meddling of other countries’ internal affairs,” he said. The kingdom, however, respects the Iranian people and won’t judge them “by the crimes of their regime,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

Trump later singled out Iran as a terror sponsor. Iran’s leaders speak “openly” of mass murder, Trump said in his keynote speech before dozens of Muslim leaders gathered in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He said the Iranian government gives terrorists “safe harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for recruitment.”

Sen. John McCain lauded President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia this weekend saying it sent a strong message to Iran that the U.S. and its allies are ready to block Iran’s efforts to destabilize the region.

“There’s no doubt that if we’re going to impede the Iranian’s continued efforts to exert, certainly, significant strength in the region that this is an important step forward,” the Arizona Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Orde Kittrie, a professor of law at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lauded the Trump administration’s approach to the Iranian regime and how—in this one area—bipartisan cooperation with Congress seems to be taking root.

“The Trump administration’s different approach is very consistent with that advocated by leading members of Congress including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in their S. 722, and House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chair Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in their H.R. 1698,” he writes in the Hill.

“The Trump administration has been accused by some of acting impulsively at times. Its apparently careful, measured and thoughtful approach to Iran policy is encouraging. Tearing up the JCPOA, without a better strategy for preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb and a broader strategy for combating non-nuclear malign Iranian behavior, would make no sense,” he added.

While the world discusses the “moderate” victory in Iran, it would do well to remember how bloody the past four years have been around the Middle East under Rouhani’s term.

 

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

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Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

The Iran lobby has been posturing to depict the Iranian presidential election as a battle between “moderates” and “hardliners” as personified by Hassan Rouhani versus Ebrahim Raisi. It has also sought to downplay any role top mullah Ali Khamenei plays in determining the outcome of the election.

The National Iranian American Council has been the most vocal of these groups in pushing this narrative. Examples of this includes pieces appearing in Huffington Post.

The first one by Reza Marashi of the NIAC argues this central conceit of reformists and pragmatists fending off hardline conservatives. The way Marashi describes it, it is almost a heroic struggle. The only thing missing is a dramatic musical score.

Marashi argues that the Iranian people want moderation and reform in their president. Not an unreasonable idea and one that he argues is supported by the election history of Mohammad Khatami and Rouhani, as well as the dismal election effort of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He even portrays Rouhani as a trailblazer in opening political discourse with his election in 2013.

“While it’s true that election season in Iran traditionally allows for an expansion of otherwise taboo political discourse, Rouhani taken it to uncharted waters. First, he publicly committed to engaging in the process of lifting all non-nuclear sanctions if he wins a second term. Then he told a rally that he had not forgotten his 2013 campaign promises, openly stating: ‘Either they have been achieved, or I have been prevented from keeping them.’ And remarkably, he directly told voters: ‘I’ll need votes higher than 51% in order to do certain things,’” Marashi writes.

He goes on to portray Rouhani’s statement as threatening to the regime and a minor miracle he wasn’t hauled off to Evin Prison for daring to utter such statements.

Pardon us while we laugh hysterically at Marashi.

Rouhani has never been, nor ever will be considered a true moderate. He is a loyal member of the regime, pledging allegiance to the same radical theology that all office holders swear to. His past record in military, religious and judicial matters have provided him with bona fides as a harsh punisher of dissent.

His term over the past four years clearly demonstrates his willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to protect the Islamic revolution. During his tenure, the pace of executions rose to the highest level since the revolution, earning annual condemnations from the United Nations, Amnesty International and just about every other human rights organization on the planet.

He has also enforced a broad crackdown on free speech that Iranians access to unmonitored internet access is non-existent. Add to that mass arrests of journalists, the shutdown of blogs and newspapers, and efforts to crack the encryption of social apps such as Telegraph and WhatsApp and you start getting the picture of how bleak things are in Iran right now.

Marashi is correct on one point, which is that this election really is not about the presidency, but rather the positioning going on to succeed Khamenei at the top of the mullah pyramid.

In that regard Marashi and the Iran lobby are getting their cake and eating it too. If Rouhani is elected, they will get to trumpet the victory of moderation even though Rouhani is no moderate.

If Raisi is elected, they can blame it on a newly muscular approach by the Trump administration towards Iran and Middle East policy and never address the horrific crimes of the Iranian regime.

It is a neat solution for the Iran lobby.

Tyler Cullis of the NIAC takes up this issue in his piece in Huffington Post when he questions why Democratic members of Congress seem willing to give the Trump administration leeway in leveling additional sanctions on Iran.

“Democrats have signed up as co-sponsors for Senate and House legislation, believing their political fortunes best lie in supporting aggressive action against Iran rather than acting as a buffer against the Trump administration’s efforts to derail a nuclear accord that, by all accounts, is working as intended,” Cullis writes.

“Democrats are risking a historic mistake – an error in judgment that could end up both alienating their progressive base and costing them hoped-for electoral gains, not to mention setting the stage for a new conflict in the Middle East,” he adds.

Cullis raises the apocalyptic specter of war with Iran as the inevitable path from tightening sanctions against Iran.

It’s the same argument the NIAC has made repeatedly ever since Congress moved to get tougher with Iran as the regime fired off ballistic missiles, sent ships to aggressively confront the U.S. Navy and supported bloody conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen with men, arms and cash.

Cullis proclaims that war with Iran is the sure outcome from any effort to get tougher with Iran. Of course, that assumes that the mullahs only reaction is to go to war with the U.S by this logic.

In fact, the real story is that the mullahs purposely used the nuclear deal to buy time and get out from crushing economic sanctions that were threatening the very existence of the regime.

Now that Iran has received the benefits of billions in cash, foreign investment and the sale of its oil back on the open market, the usefulness and utility of keeping up the pretense of wanting to reach out to the global community is at an end.

Consequently, whether Rouhani or Raisi gets elected is a moot point, since the policies of the regime are not going to change no matter who gets elected. The NIAC has long acknowledged that the office of president in Iran lacks real power, which makes its impassioned arguments for “moderates” to win there even more incomprehensible.

Then again, logic was never a strong suit of the NIAC.

Cullis even makes the outrageous assumption that getting together on Iran will inevitably compel North Korea to take bolder action and not trust the word of the U.S. in any agreement.

“North Korea will view the U.S.’s abrogation of the Iran nuclear accord as clear evidence that the U.S. cannot be trusted to keep to its commitments and will refuse to deal with the Trump administration. In this case, peace will be impossible and war inevitable. Congress’s failings on Iran will spill over and deter peaceful settlement in other areas of conflict such as the Korean peninsula. Democrats will be on the hook once again,”

Really? Are we to assume that a North Korean regime that has broken every agreement it entered into, detonated nuclear devices and openly launches missiles with increasing range is going to be dissuaded by the U.S. commitment to Iran?

The lack of logic from the NIAC never ceases to amaze.