Iran Lobby

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

NIAC Letter on Iran Nuclear Deal Just More of the Same

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NIAC Letter on Iran Nuclear Deal Just More of the Same

NIAC Letter on Iran Nuclear Deal Just More of the Same

The National Iranian American Council, that reliable cheerleader for the mullahs in Tehran, cobbled together yet another letter signed by the usual cadre of pro-regime supporters, urging Congress to once again bail out the faltering Iranian regime.

Fortunately, this letter was vastly shorter than previous tomes but still espoused the same essential principles the Iran lobby has been harping on since then-presidential candidate Donald Trump blasted the Iran nuclear deal on the campaign trail in 2015.

In short, the letter urged Congress to continue:

  • Supporting the nuclear agreement and return the U.S. to comply with it;
  • Opposing sanctions that:
    • Disrupt any other country’s efforts to stick with the nuclear deal;
    • Prevent the U.S. from coming back into compliance with the deal in the future;
    • Disproportionately impact Iranian civilians rather than regime officials engaged in illicit or destabilizing activities;
    • Block necessary humanitarian and medical supplies from reaching the country;
  • Support more diplomacy toward additional agreements as the preferred basis for addressing further concerns about Iranian activity; and
  • Oppose starting a war of choice with Iran.

The conditions are typical for what the Iran lobby has pushed for since the Obama administration first opened talks with the mullahs and largely ignores the realities on the ground as the Iranian regime has become the most destabilizing force in the Middle East since the nuclear deal’s passage.

The Trump administration has stated from the very beginning it welcomed renewed diplomatic efforts with Tehran in an effort to achieve a more comprehensive solution to the region’s problems, including curtailing the spread of terrorism, improving human rights conditions and eliminating the delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction in the form o intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The fact Tehran has no desire to take up any of these other, but no less vital issues demonstrates the mullahs complete lack of transparency or willingness to engage in diplomacy to solve these problems.

Also, while Iranian regime leaders such as Hassan Rouhani, have made a public show of discounting the impact of U.S. economic sanctions, the reality is that they have hurt the regime in places where it is most vulnerable: financial services, oil and gas exports, and currency exchanges.

The choices made in the NIAC letter are noteworthy since they are aimed at the most effective portions of the U.S. sanctions program. The letter tries to portray the sanctions as having an impact only on ordinary Iranians and not regime officials, but the opposite is true since the regime, through its Revolutionary Guard Corps, controls much of the economy, especially its heavy industries and continually diverts badly needed capital from growing the economy and instead uses it to finance its military adventures in Syria and Yemen, while also funneling money to support terror groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq and Afghan mercenaries in an effort to extend its sphere of influence.

The proof of the debilitating impact the regime’s decisions has had on ordinary Iranians can be seen in the yearlong series of very public protests staged throughout Iran by these same ordinary Iranians the NIAC describes as being “disproportionately impacted” by the sanctions.

Starting last December and continuing through 2018, the near-daily images of women protesting hijabs and moral codes that restrict education, jobs and even the ability to ride a bicycle, are mingled with those of merchants storming through Tehran’s Grand Bazaar or truckers blocking roads and highways or farmers demanding more water for parched lands to local towns and villages decimated by poverty and a wrecked environment.

All the results of the mullahs’ decisions and nothing having to do with Washington.

The dichotomy between the claims of the NIAC’s letter and the reality in Iran is as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

Lastly, the NIAC’s false flag of warning of a war with Iran is just another red herring designed to elicit fear and send false worries into members of Congress. It’s interesting to note the only people ever mentioning the words “war” and “Iran” together are the NIAC and its fellow Iran lobby members; the same ones that comprised the infamous “echo chamber” used to bully and persuade reluctant members of Congress to support the nuclear deal in the first place.

It has always been the Iranian regime that has undertaken the provocative military action first in the region and not the U.S. or its allies.

The U.S. did not plot to assassinate Iranian leaders in a foreign country, but the Iranian regime did in Denmark, France, and Germany in efforts to kills dissidents.

The U.S. did not threaten to sink commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and halt oil shipments, but the Iranian regime did.

The U.S. did not take the U.S. and other dual-national citizens hostage on trumped-up charges and throw them in prison without trial and access to legal representation, but the regime did.

All these actions and more have been undertaken by the same regime the NIAC and the rest of the co-signers of the letter are trying hard now to get off the hook.

There is little appetite in Congress, either during this lame duck session, or when the new Congress is sworn in January to reward the mullahs for their abhorrent behavior. Even the harshest critics of the U.S. move to withdraw from the nuclear deal, such as France and Germany, had a change of heart when Iranian agents were caught trying to smuggle a bomb for the purpose of killing a few thousand Iranian dissidents meeting outside of Paris last June.

Unfortunately for the NIAC, they can’t control the mullahs, it’s the other way around.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Missile Program is Heart of Sanctions Issue

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Iran Missile Program is Heart of Sanctions Issue

Iran Missile Program is Heart of Sanctions Issue

A core reason for the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal was the rapid and alarming growth and development of the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile program, which got a significant bump from the massive infusion of cash received as a result of the deal.

The origins of the Iranian missile program are well documented with missile design supplied by North Korea and then aggressively expanded through a test launch program that became almost a nightly feature on state-controlled media outlets.

That missile program escalated from testing missiles limited in range to essentially being theater weapons, to growing until they achieved intercontinental ranges capable of striking Europe and Asia.

While the Iran lobby and the regime have vigorously contested the inclusion of ballistic missiles in any existing United Nations restrictions, the plain truth from the U.S. perspective is that Iran has moved far beyond “defensive” missiles and instead sought to create “offensive” weapons with the payload capacity to lift nuclear warheads and multiple payloads.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo emphasized this point in a tweet Saturday claiming Iran had test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons. In condemning the act, Pompeo called on Iran to cease its missile testing and proliferation activities that threaten to destabilize an already unstable region.

The regime’s Foreign Ministry countered the tweet, describing the program as solely defensive, according to a statement carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The statement didn’t confirm or deny whether a test-fire had taken place.

“Iran’s missile program is defensive in nature and is designed based on the country’s needs,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted as saying.

But the regime’s continued development of longer-range missiles with heavier payload capacity can only be seen as offensive in nature and an effort to deploy its coercive influence far from its own borders.

In the history of arms control, no one would ever believe claims by the American or Russian governments that its own ballistic missiles were solely for “defensive” purposes, but the regime and Iran lobby seem intent on trying to make that silly notion fly.

Even after giving away the proverbial farm in approving a flawed nuclear deal in 2015, the Obama administration still imposed economic sanctions for Iran’s continued missile program development in a quixotic case of trying to have its cake and eat it too.

It is a reminder that the core issues with the nuclear deal went far beyond nuclear weapons and instead should have focused intensely on the regime’s actions including human rights violations and sponsorship of terrorism.

The nuclear deal’s fatal flaw was to try and rein in a specific weapon while leaving along a host of other weapons at the disposal of madmen in the mullahs.

The fact that the regime defiantly stated it would continue in its missile development, demonstrates why imposing stiff sanctions is ever more important. To relent and allow Iran unfettered freedom to develop its missile program would be place Europe under a nuclear sword of Damocles since the nuclear deal admittedly was never designed to stop Iran’s nuclear program, only slow it down.

Since the mullahs’ openly professed desire to become an Islamic nuclear power is almost inevitable, the key is to neuter their ability to drop a nuke on Paris, London or Berlin; all noteworthy since Islamic-inspired terrorism has already been visited on each of those cities since the nuclear deal was signed.

U.N. Security Council resolution 2231 enshrined Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States in which Tehran curbed its disputed uranium enrichment program in exchange for an end to international sanctions.

The resolution says Iran is “called upon” to refrain for up to eight years from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt tweeted that he was deeply concerned by “Iran’s test-firing of a medium range ballistic missile. Provocative, threatening and inconsistent with UNSCR 2231”.

“Our support for (the Iran nuclear accord) in no way lessens our concern at Iran’s destabilizing missile program and determination that it should cease,” Hunt added.

The language of the U.N. Security Council Resolution “calls on” rather than “forbids” Iran from testing its missiles, according to Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council.

It is this inconsistently that the Iran lobby and regime have sought to exploit in aggressively pushing for a missile program free from threat of sanctions. It’s interesting that Parsi resorts to verbal semantics when he should be calling on the Iranian regime from refraining from developing these potential weapons of mass destruction in the first place!

But then again, Parsi is less concerned about stopping the proliferation of weapons than he is in protecting his mullah patrons in Tehran from any further sanctions.

Iran Regime Grows Desperate as Sanctions Tighten

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Iran Regime Grows Desperate as Sanctions Tighten

As the full weight of new economic sanctions are imposed on the Iranian regime, an uncomfortable truth is roiling the sleep of the mullahs in Tehran; oil prices are plummeting and putting the squeeze on them.

Leading that global glut of oil is surging U.S. production that is becoming a potential hammer blow to the mullahs’ faint hopes of weathering the economic storm.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “observers expected American energy production to reach a plateau. A lack of pipeline capacity was expected to constrain output in the Permian Basin through 2020. Instead, shippers found ways to use existing pipelines more efficiently, and new pipelines were constructed faster than expected. U.S. crude-oil production is expected to average 12.1 million barrels a day in 2019, 28% higher than in 2017. Surging production has roiled world energy markets.”

The biggest loser of this newfound energy production? Iran. As the Journal outlines, the economic windfall the mullahs hoped to reap from the nuclear deal forged by President Barack Obama were largely offset by the sharp price spiral of oil in 2016. Now rising American output is doing the same thing to Iran in 2018.

The financial profits the mullahs have traditionally carved out for themselves from black market sales of Iranian oil are unlikely to materialize as spotty sales on the bourse created by the Iranian government has already shown.

Hopes by the Iran lobby that countries opposed to the U.S. might pick up the slack by buying Iranian oil such as China are being dashed by falling oil prices. Just a few months ago oil was predicted to hit $100 per barrel, but instead the global benchmark has fallen to $50 per barrel.

Iran hasn’t been helped by record oil production by its regional opponent, Saudi Arabia, which raised production to an all-time high in November, pumping a colossal 11.3 million barrels per day.

The squeeze to the Iranian regime on all sides is fueling the domestic unrest spreading across the country as a result of deepening economic worries.

Predictions by the Iran lobby that the regime could weather this economic storm are becoming harder to make with a straight face. One such idea was the much-hoped for barter agreement system being proposed to allow Iran to sell oil in exchange for goods, thereby avoiding U.S. secondary sanctions on currency exchange.

Of course, the regime will resort to earlier sanction busting tactics including fraud, smuggling and even having Iranian tankers turn off position signals in an effort to go stealth.

The end result of all these shenanigans though is not to benefit or help the Iranian people, but rather to further enrich the ruling elites and Revolutionary Guard Corps which continues to spend prodigious amounts of cash in funding various terrorist actions abroad and proxy wars, as well as keep its loyal terror groups such as Hezbollah in the black.

The chief argument made by the Iran lobby against these sanctions is that they will be unlikely to motivate the Iranian people to rise up and demand change from their government.

“The theory behind it is, you make the population so miserable that they will rise up against the government,” said Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council.

Unfortunately for Parsi and the NIAC, the Iranian people are rising up. Merchants have taken to the markets to protests. Truckers have stopped driving. Teachers have halted classes. Throughout Iran the people are making their voices heard and predictably, the regime is resorting to violence and intimidation in an effort to suppress it.

But that hasn’t topped the NIAC from pedaling more false ideas and schemes to get relief for the mullahs, including putting out a so-called report outlining the potential of restoring the nuclear deal.

That report is nothing more than a regurgitation of past NIAC misstatements assembled in a slim few pages and passed off as scholarly research. We might call it Cliff’s Notes version of Iran lobby messaging.

Also included are opinions by Paul Pillar, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, who has become such a fixture alongside Parsi one might wonder if they’re related as they appear on any policy panel they can get on in an effort to find any kind of audience for their messaging.

The culmination of all this doesn’t alter the trajectory of the Iranian regime under these sanctions. What is different now than from past sanctions is a U.S. administration committed to pushing the regime back to the bargaining table to address not only nuclear weapons but also its destabilizing influence throughout the region and support for terrorism, as well as its dismal human rights record.

What is also different is the willingness of the Iranian people to defy their own government and unlike the previous protests after disputed presidential elections in 2009, these protests resonate more deeply because it comes from all parts of Iranian society, including the poor and working class who helped fuel the overthrow of the Shah in the first place.

The parallels to that time may be painfully uncomfortable for the mullahs now.

Iran Lobby Left Sputtering as US Sanctions Take Effect

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Iran Lobby Left Sputtering as US Sanctions Take Effect

The U.S. re-imposed economic sanctions on the Iranian regime on Monday targeting the money machine that fuels the mullahs’ religious dictatorship, including petroleum sales, shipping, banking, and insurance. The sanctions were carefully crafted to go at the heavy industries and financial pipelines funneling cash to the regime and funding its proxy wars and terrorist activities.

President Donald Trump trolled supporters of the Iranian regime with a tweet riffing on HBO’s show “Game of Thrones” with a movie-like poster featuring the iconic font reading “Sanctions Are Coming.”

The near-hysterical response from the Iran lobby over the weekend was predictable, but also revealing in that the regime supporters such as the National Iranian American Council were left with little to talk about except blasting the president’s tweet.

“Trump, his war cabinet and regional cheerleaders in Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman do not have the Iranian or American people’s best interests at heart,” said Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council. “Instead, they are blowing up an agreement that supports U.S. interests and the aspirations of the Iranian people while planting the seeds for a disastrous war.”

The NIAC added its own tweet trolling attempt by labeling the president a “White Walker,” but while it tried to score points on cheekiness the Iran lobby cheerleader was essentially powerless to stop the imposition of sanctions and the economic hammer blow it will rain down on the mullahs.

Not even the Iranian regime’s leader of its infamous Quds Forces, General Qasem Soleimani, could resist sending his own “Game of Thrones”-inspired post saying he would “Stand Against You” in referring to the president’s tweet.

“Things are escalating and the fact that it’s Soleimani tweeting is a sign that this is moving towards a military confrontation,” NIAC founder Trita Parsi said in response. “This was not a crisis. The only reason this is a crisis is because Trump pulled out of a fully functioning deal.”

Parsi trying to claim Soleimani is gearing up for war with the U.S. through a trolling tweet renders any intelligent reader as sophomoric sophistry at best and idiot banality at worse.

The sanctions are aimed at more than 700 Iranian individuals and entities and are hoped to put a stranglehold on the regime’s economy and force the regime into a new round of negotiations.

“Our ultimate aim is to compel Iran to permanently abandon its well-documented outlaw activities and behave as a normal country,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Friday in a conference call previewing the sanctions. The U.S. penalties will hit foreign countries and companies that do business with the targeted Iranian entities, including its national oil company, its banks, and its shipping industry.

Abdi claimed though the sanctions would hurt the Iranian people, a silly argument since it virtually ignores how the mullahs have destroyed not only Iran’s economy, but sacrificed its environment and plunged large portions of the Iranian population into near poverty status all on its own.

“Impoverishing ordinary Iranians will not hurt the regime or achieve any of America’s security interests, but it will set back the Iranian people’s aspirations for years to come,” Abdi said.

The messaging by the Iran lobby that the Iranian people are helpless in the face of the powerful regime also ignores an essential truth that has steadily build since last year which is the Iranian people are finally becoming emboldened and taking to the streets, bazaars and markets to voice their collective frustration, fury and displeasure at their religious overlords.

Abdi also ignores how the U.S. is also granted waivers exempting certain countries from select sanctions in order not to overtly harm the Iranian people, including lobbying more than a dozen countries doing trade with Iran – India, Japan, Greece and Turkey – to wean themselves off from Iranian oil in exchange for waivers.

Pompeo said eight jurisdictions, which he declined to name, were cooperating with the administration on its push to move to “zero” oil imports from Iran. Those entities will earn temporary exemptions when the sanctions go into effect on Sunday night, Pompeo said.

There will also be some exemptions for food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods, Pompeo said, further diminishing the Iran lobby’s feeble arguments.

But these are essentially the only talking points left to the Iran lobby. It tries to claim the U.S. is only interested in war and sanctions will hurt the Iranian people.

Absent from any of these points is any blame directed at the regime and the mullahs in Tehran for fueling the crisis in the first place by pushing forward with a massive military build-up including the launching of advanced ballistic missiles, coupled with devastating wars in Syria and Yemen.

Supporters such as the NIAC have also been silent on more recent attempts by the Iranian regime to carry out terrorist attacks and assassinations of Iranian dissidents in Europe as seen in a foiled bombing attempt outside of Paris over the summer and murder plan disrupted by Denmark.

Both incidents led France and Denmark to demand a harsh response to the Iranian regime; neither of which was answered by the Iran lobby.

The facts are activists such as Abdi and Parsi are left with little to say, except sputtering the same inane banalities as before and their collective effectiveness in stopping the sanctions train has been virtually non-existent.

With few options left, we might advise the NIAC to stop clogging up the airwaves and discussion boards and confine their tweets to speculation on who will come out on top at the end of the “Game of Thrones.”

Our money is on the Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons.

Michael Tomlinson

Will Oil Sanctions Crumble the Iranian Regime?

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Will Oil Sanctions Crumble the Iranian Regime?

There is no doubt petroleum is the lifeblood of the Iranian regime’s economy. It’s one of the few natural resources the mullahs have left that has not been over-exploited or driven to ruin. During the time economic sanctions were lifted because of the Iran nuclear deal, the windfall of selling its oil on the open market once again pumped badly needed hard currency into the floundering Iranian economy and fueled its wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

But even during the decade in which sanctions were in place, the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard Corps personally profited from the illicit sale of oil on the black market and pocketed hefty commissions for family members through a shadowy network of middlemen.

Now the re-imposition of economic sanctions by the U.S. after pulling out from the nuclear deal is looming with the ban on sales of Iranian oil to commence next week. The sanctions beginning November 4th are geared to specifically hit the regime where it hurts, including:

  • Sanctions on Iran’s port operators and shipping and shipbuilding sectors, including on the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), South Shipping Line Iran, or their affiliates;
  • Sanctions on petroleum-related transactions with, among others, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO), and National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), including the purchase of petroleum, petroleum products, or petrochemical products from Iran;
  • Sanctions on transactions by foreign financial institutions with the Central Bank of Iran and designated Iranian financial institutions;
  • Sanctions on the provision of underwriting services, insurance, or reinsurance; and
  • Sanctions on Iran’s energy sector.

The sanctions on shipping, petroleum, banking and insurance are aimed squarely at the financial engine that powers the Iranian regime’s corrupt empire. Since virtually all of the major industries in Iran are controlled directly by the government or the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the direct financial impacts of these sanctions hit the theocratic regime and are not aimed at the Iranian people.

It’s an important distinction since the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, has long pounded on the messaging that the Iranian people are the ones being hurt the most by these sanctions.

Using today’s favorite hashtag, that’s just #fakenews.

The truth is that the regime’s own gross mismanagement, incompetence and deep corruption has been more than sufficient to run the Iranian economy into the ground. The fact that the country’s currency has steadily declined in value under the mullahs’ control is just one of many indicators of how they have managed to muck everything up.

The reason the U.S. sanctions are aimed at these particulars sectors is to deny the regime’s ability to finance terrorism and support the proxy wars it has waged on its neighbors. The sanctions are not aimed at stopping the flow of food, medicine or consumer products to the Iranian people.

The regime for example has been the one to block communications to the outside world, ban access to social media, artificially regulate the consumer market with heavy-handed regulations designed to keep the pipeline of luxury goods flowing to the entitled and privileged, but provide none of the support for the staples the Iranian people need to survive.

In a desperate effort to keep the flow of cash coming in, the regime offered up one million barrels of oil through the regime’s domestic bourse so its private sector could buy oil to resell to the international market.

The response from the global marketplace was tepid at best with only 280,000 barrels of crude oil being sold according to oil ministry news service Shana.

Saeed Khoshroo, NIOC’s director for international affairs, had said Sunday that the eased restrictions would cause the crude offered on the bourse to get snapped up immediately.

The fact that so little crude was bought highlights the growing impotence of the regime in trying to navigate a path out of the economic fallout coming next week.

Of special concern to the regime was the price paid on the bourse which was only $74.85/b in 35,000-barrel consignments. The steady decline in price demonstrates the belief in the global marketplace that shortfalls from Iranian supplies cut off by sanctions can be made up from other sources, as well as a projected global drop in demand, which has increased U.S. crude inventories and further drove the price down.

Iran’s last use of the bourse was in early April 2014, when US and EU sanctions on Iran were in force. Just 2,920 barrels were sold on the first day that the crude was offered, and a second offer a day later failed to find any buyers.

Hopes by the regime that things would be different this time around were dashed and raise an ugly prospect for the mullahs: “What happens when the cash stops flowing?”

For the regime, the cut-off of money raises the specter that the Iranian people may now have the best opportunity ever to force regime change in demanding concessions from the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard Corps to loosen their iron-grip on the country and clear a pathway for greater democracy; especially the introduction of legitimate opposition parties.

The loss of oil revenue is likely to keep driving the value of the rial down and fuel more inflation – both have been drivers of popular uprisings and protests throughout Iran – thereby adding to the volatile and combustible mix of anger aimed at the ruling mullahs.

On Saturday, Iran’s parliament approved a government economic reshuffle, according to a Reuters report in an effort to try and convince the population the regime was trying to address its concerns, but will reshuffling of regime leaders be enough to stave off regime change this time?

We don’t think so.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Taking Desperate Measures to Stave off Sanctions Impact

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The bad news just keeps building on the sagging shoulders of the mullahs in Tehran as economic body blows continue to rain down as U.S. economic sanctions are resetting global commerce and finance around the embattled religious tyranny.

While the U.S. has rolled out economic sanctions in waves in response to its pullout from the Iran nuclear deal, the hammer of sanctions on Iran’s oil industry are being felt as petroleum markets are becoming roiled at the expected shortfall and impact of secondary U.S. sanctions on any country or company trading in Iranian oil.

Iran’s crude oil exports plunged to 1.1 million bpd in the first seven days of October, sliding further down from 1.6 million bpd in September as sanctions loom just four weeks away, Reuters reported on Monday, citing tanker tracking data and an industry source tracking shipments.

Tanker shipments may vary week to week in a month, but the very low volumes in early October may suggest that Iran’s crude oil exports are taking a hit and are falling faster than the market had expected just two-three months ago.

According to Refinitiv Eikon tanker tracking data quoted by Reuters, not a single Iranian-flagged tanker headed to Europe in the first seven days of October, but Iran’s tankers were bound for China, India, and the Middle East in the first week this month, according to the data.

Oddly enough, according to S&P Global Platts trade flow data, a dozen Iranian oil tankers may have shut off their position devices last month. Nearly 207,000 bpd of Iran’s oil exports that left Iranian oil terminals last month is reportedly unaccounted for, because of switched-off transponders as the regime seems to be reverting to black market tactics to smuggle its oil out.

But those tactics are less likely to aid the Iranian people and more likely to generate illicit profits to continue lining the pockets of the mullahs and their families.

The move to smuggle oil in advance of sanctions comes as the Tehran Stick Exchange suffered heavy losses recently. The market however, posted its fourth straight decline–and one of its biggest in recent history– on Sunday, with the benchmark TEDPIX index ending the day 4.16% lower, taking the market below the 180,000 level it had boasted just days ago.

Head of the Securities and Exchange Organization, Shapour Mohammad offered his take on the reasons behind the market’s rout, saying that crowd behavior, manifested in the irrational thinking of some investors carries the blame.

The uncertainty in Iran’s financial markets mirrored the wild devaluation of Iran’s currency and the concerns of Iranian business owners and workers as they see the regime continue to spend scarcer cash reserves in fueling its wars in Syria and Yemen, including launching missile barrages in Syria in retaliation for recent attacks at a military parade.

The growing lack of cash reserves has the mullahs casting about wildly for money left under some errant stone.

This included a claim by the Iranian regime to try and recover $1.75 billion in national bank assets seized by U.S. courts. The U.S. on Monday asked judges at the International Court of Justice to throw out the claim by Iran.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the assets must be turned over to American families of victims of the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, among others who were killed in Iranian-planned terrorist attacks.

“The actions at the root of this case center on Iran’s support for international terrorism,” Richard Visek, legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State, said on Monday, calling on the court to reject Iran’s suit.

Meanwhile, the European Union continued its quixotic campaign to try and throw an economic lifeline to Iran. Last month, Brussels provided Tehran with billions of dollars worth of aid to help offset the impact of US sanctions. The bloc agreed to establish an alternative payment system between European and Iranian banks that is designed to skirt the U.S. financial system entirely. 

Patrick Pouyanné, the chairman of the French oil giant Total, told a conference last week in Moscow that even the hint of seeing their assets frozen in a U.S. bank would be too high a price. To be blunt, it would be downright suicidal for companies to take on the U.S. when the benefits of doing so — maintaining trade with Tehran — is a drop in the barrel compared to what the American market provides, according to The Spectator.

Sanctions experts have concluded that Brussels is essentially banging its head against the wall, hoping that their sheer persistence will force the Trump administration into backing down or finding some type of compromise arrangement. But unfortunately for them, businesses will do what’s best for their balance sheets, not what’s convenient for European politicians, wrote Daniel R. DePetris in The Spectator.

In an example of how much pressure the Iran regime is under came in the form of the Iranian parliament’s passage of new measures allegedly designed to halt funding terrorism and move Tehran closer to global norms and standards in the fight against terror.

The measures, which allow Iran to join a convention against the funding of terrorism (CFT), still have to be approved by a clerical body before they become law.

Tehran says it has been trying to implement international standards against money laundering and the funding of terrorism set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), but it has struggled to get the measures passed, according to Reuters.

Its parliament has opposed legislation aimed at moving toward compliance with FATF standards, arguing it could hamper Iranian financial support for allies such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which the U.S. has classified as a terrorist organization.

The fact that the Iranian regime is even willing to contemplate such a façade is proof how desperate it is to regain some kind of legitimate status on the global stage. While it’s highly doubtful the regime would ever truly implement any of these anti-terrorism reforms, the mere debate on them shows far the mullahs have been backed into a corner.

Laura Carnahan

On Eve of UN General Assembly Session News Gets Worse for Iran Regime

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On Eve of UN General Assembly Session News Gets Worse for Iran Regime

It seems the mullahs in Tehran can’t catch a break as events conspire to slowly and inexorably pry their fingers away from the stranglehold of control they’ve exerted over the Iranian people for the past nearly four decades.

With the United Nations General Assembly scheduled to start next week and chaired by President Donald Trump, the Iranian regime is being buffeted by attacks and threats from all sides not the least of which has been the economic hammer blows wielded by the Trump administration in the wake of pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

A flurry of European companies, who raced in once the deal was approved in 2015, are now racing out of Iran with looming secondary sanctions by the U.S. for anyone doing business with Iran in key areas.

The focus is on “bottleneck sectors” — areas where there is little or no way to avoid a U.S. connection, including aviation, insurance, shipping, logistics, and especially banking. This means many German companies are caught in the crosshairs and have pulled up stakes.

Many observers expect many more big firms to leave Iran. “We expect almost all of the European and Japanese companies along with major Korean companies to leave Iran,” Sara Vakhshouri, the president of SVB Energy International in Washington DC, told Deutsche Welle.

Major German companies scaling back or shutting down operations in Iran include automakers Volkswagen and Daimler, financial institutions Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and DZ Bank, manufacturing giants Airbus and Siemens, insurance giants Allianz and Munich Re, airlines Lufthansa and Austrian, Deutsche Telekom and consumer goods company Henkel.

This follows pullouts by Total and Peugeot and many other European firms the Iranian regime has been desperate to keep. The exodus has prompted officials such as Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Javad Zarif to beg the European Union to try and come up with alternative means of keeping Iran afloat.

The list of companies leaving Iran has been staggering and leaves the mullahs in a precarious position with unfinished projects, little capital investment available and unemployment driving growing protests across the country.

But Germany’s pullout only compounds the pressure the Iranian regime is receiving in its most vital economic sector: petroleum.

According to numerous media sources, OPEC is considering boosting oil production by half a million barrels a day to counter a perceived shortfall from Iran as customers cut orders because of U.S. sanctions.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries gathering in Algeria may indicate whether the group has “the barrels available to fully cover the Iranian lost output,” said John Kilduff, a partner at New York-based hedge fund Again Capital LLC, according to Bloomberg.

OPEC and allied producers are set for another contentious meeting: Iran has threatened to veto any decision that harms its interests. Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the group had no authority to impose a new supply arrangement.

According to analysts, the shift in production to cover an Iranian shortfall could occur chiefly through more pumping from Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two largest producers within the OPEC+ group.

As a chief regional rival to Iran, Saudi Arabia could deal a harsh economic blow to Iran, and while the Iranian regime has worked tirelessly to keep Russia as a sponsor, the prospect of becoming a dominant global player in a reconfigured oil market without Iranian leverage appeals to the Russians according to analysts.

Events are quickly conspiring to further isolate the mullahs and strip them of the economic leverage they once had in controlling virtually all of the country’s industries through a vast network of shell companies.

In typical bluster, the Iranian regime held military exercises near the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf according to the regime’s official IRNA news agency.

The drill involved the military’s and Revolutionary Guard fighter jets, including U.S.-made F-4, French Mirage and Russian Sukhoi-22 planes, the report said, adding that five logistics and combat helicopters are also taking part in the exercise over the Persian Gulf waters and the Sea of Oman.

IRNA said the maneuver is a warning to Iran’s enemies that they face a quick, “stern response” in case of any ill-will toward Iran.

The predictable military threats by Iran come on the heels of decision by the U.S. State Department to once again tag the regime as the world’s leading sponsor of state terrorism.

The annual survey on global terrorism said Iran and its proxies are responsible for intensifying multiple conflicts and undermining U.S. interests in the region.

“Designated as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984, Iran continued its terrorist-related activity in 2017, including support for Lebanese Hezbollah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various groups in Syria, Iraq, and throughout the Middle East,” the report said.

The survey said that Iran used the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force to provide support to terrorist organizations, provide cover for associated covert operations, and create instability in the region.

“Iran uses terrorism as a tool of its state craft, it has no reservations about using that tool on any continent,” Ambassador Nathan Sales, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, told journalists Wednesday. He cited Iran-linked fundraising networks in West Africa, weapons caches in South America and operational activity in Europe.

Michael Tomlinson

US Iran Action Group Puts Regime Front and Center of Foreign Policy

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Brian Hook, the newly appointed head of the Iran Action Group, speaks about the “Iran Action Group” during a press briefing at the State Department in Washington, DC, August 16, 2018. 

A hallmark of the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts with Iran was to try and figure out how much it could giveaway before it could entice the mullahs into doing a nuclear deal. The laundry list was an impressive one:

  • Ignore Iran’s development and test of the ballistic missiles. Check.
  • Allow Iran to continue funding terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. Check.
  • Deliver planes loaded with cash to Iran in a swap for American hostages. Check.
  • Allow Iran to funnel that cash to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. Check.
  • Allow Iran to crack down on dissidents, oppress women and execute a record number of Iranians. Check.

It’s an impressive accomplishment with the benefit of hindsight to see how little the U.S. and the rest of the world got for a flawed nuclear deal. The butcher’s bill was heavy with victims that included nearly half a million men, women and children killed in Syria and flooding Europe and the U.S. with over four million refugees.

The response to this unprecedented escalation in violence and regional instability was deafening in its silence as the U.S. led by example and did nothing to counter the rise of Islamic extremism and terrorism unleashed by Iran’s proxy wars, including the creation of ISIS.

Fortunately, President Donald Trump has re-oriented U.S. foreign policy and placed the Iranian regime front and center in terms of trying to find innovative ways to corral Iran’s extremist tendencies and chart a pathway towards democratic reforms for the long-suffering Iranian people.

His first step was to fulfill a campaign promise and withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Then he moved swiftly to reimpose economic sanctions aimed at hurting industries controlled by and profiting the regime’s military and ruling elites.

The Trump administration also announced the formation of an Iran working group within the State Department to help coordinate the government’s response to Iran and search for ways to help foster democratic reforms in the Islamic state.

Brian Hook, the department’s current director of policy planning, will lead the team as the administration’s “special representative for Iran,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Thursday.

“Our goal is to reduce every country’s import of Iranian oil to zero by Nov. 4,” Hook said in remarks to reporters. “The United States certainly hopes for full compliance by all nations . . . in terms of not risking the threat of U.S. secondary sanctions if they continue with those transactions.”

“That is our strategy,” Hook said. “We have launched a campaign of maximum diplomatic pressure and diplomatic isolation” against Iran. Trump, he noted, “has also said he is prepared to talk” to Iranian leaders without preconditions, an initiative he said was on a “parallel track” to sanctions pressure, according to the Washington Post.

Predictably the Iran lobby attacked the idea, but its effectiveness seems akin to the Little Dutch Boy with his finger in a dike being swamped with storm waters as the Trump administration moves aggressively on several fronts to pressure the mullahs in Tehran.

“Not only is the Trump administration content to sabotage a successful nonproliferation agreement with Iran and collectively punish 80 million Iranians with harsh sanctions, the State Department’s new ‘Iran Action Group’ is nothing more than an attempt to bypass the State Department’s civil servant experts to implement Pompeo’s dangerous vision to destabilize Iran and close diplomatic off-ramps,” said Jamal Abdi, President of the National Iranian American Council.

Abdi recites the same “boy who cried wolf” refrain claiming this is a lead up to war with Iran, but there is no evidence as President Trump has long been a critic of previous U.S. armed intervention, including criticizing the Iraq invasion while on the campaign trail; a fact Abdi neglects to mention.

But while Abdi focuses on the falsehood that the U.S. is supposedly arming for war, the real issue which Abdi and the rest of the Iran lobby is terrified of is that the working group is really focused on finding ways to empower and support the Iranian people who are leading the push for democracy with massive waves of protests that have rattled the mullahs badly.

The internal pressure mounting on the regime has led to in-fighting previously unheard of in the notoriously closed-knit ruling elites, including calls by Iranian lawmakers to launch impeachment proceedings against President Hassan Rouhani’s finance minister on Sunday in a move designed to provide a scapegoat as U.S. economic sanctions hammer the regime.

A group of 33 MPs signed a motion accusing the minister, Masoud Karbasian, of being unable to manage the economy or form and implement policies, according to Reuters.

That was enough votes to force Karbasian to come to parliament to answer questions on his record in the next 10 days.

But that move may only be a band-aid as the real hammer – oil sanctions – loom in November forcing the Iranian regime to take the unusual step of publicly calling on OPEC to ensure that no other member state be allowed to take over its share of exports once sanctions are implemented.

The move was in response to reports that Iran’s chief regional rival in Saudi Arabia was prepared to take over Iran’s share of oil exports once sanctions are implemented, but even that move may be unnecessary since the European Union is still struggling to figure out ways to guarantee Iranian oil exports and sidestep U.S. sanctions in transferring payments to Iran for its oil.

The prospects look bleak as European companies fell like dominos in pulling out of deals with Iran in fear of U.S. sanctions that could cripple their operations elsewhere.

The new U.S. action group has finally placed the Iranian regime in its cross hairs and the Iranian people finally have the powerful ally they have long needed and desired.

Finger Pointing Mounts Inside Chaotic Iran Regime

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One of the key signs of a government in distress is when the backstabbing, finger-pointing and accusations become public even as leaders struggle to maintain a façade of normalcy.

For the Iranian regime, things are not looking so hot.

The regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, is the latest to weigh in against the decision to negotiate the nuclear agreement with the U.S. and other world countries. An odd position to take since he gave his own blessing to the effort at the start of Hassan Rouhani’s new administration on the carefully honed public image that he would usher in a new era of moderation from Iran.

But the regime’s leader, who rarely admits any mistakes from his divine perch, made comments this week that were posted on the Twitter account of Khat-e Hezbollah newspaper, a publication affiliated with his official website, Reuters reported.

With the issue of the nuclear negotiations, I made a mistake in permitting our foreign minister to speak with them. It was a loss for us,” Khamenei said referring to the U.S.

Khamenei confirmed this week that he has banned any future discussions with the U.S.

“I ban holding any talks with America,” Khamenei said. “America never remains loyal to its promises in talks…just gives empty words.”

The tacit criticism of negotiating the deal, which President Donald Trump pulled out of and levied new economic sanctions that potentially will cripple the Iranian economy, drives a stake into the idea that Rouhani’s administration has been a success for the regime.

Instead of the promised moderate era the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council touted, Rouhani has overseen Iran’s involvement in wars in Syria and Yemen, a major crackdown on political dissenters, a massive escalation in the use of the death penalty and a slumping economy due to rampant corruption and graft within his government.

The new sanctions targeted Iranian purchases of U.S. dollars, metals trading, coal, industrial software and its auto sector, though the toughest measures targeting oil exports do not take effect for four more months; all areas more focused on the industrial sectors controlled by the regime through shell companies and state ownership of heavy industries.

Rouhani himself was doing the best he could to backpedal from what is now becoming his greatest foreign policy failure in the nuclear deal.

“America itself took actions which destroyed the conditions for negotiation,” Rouhani also said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). “There were conditions for negotiation and we were negotiating. They destroyed the bridge themselves,” he said. “If you’re telling the truth then come now and build the bridge again.”

Khamenei’s criticism of the nuclear deal essentially throws Rouhani under the bus in an effort to distance himself from the crippled economy and the massive protests sweeping the country giving rise to ironic chants of “Death to Khamenei.”

But the finger pointing is not likely to save Khamenei and the mullahs as the economy continues on a steep death spiral as evidenced by shocking economic news as Iran’s Minister of Industry, Mines and Business says, fluctuations in the local forex market in the past four months have tripled the number of applications for import licenses worth $250 billion dollar.

Describing the figure as “unbelievable”, Mohammad Shariatmadari has insisted that a “number of” profiteering individuals are trying to “fish in troubled waters”, referring to the current currency and economic crisis.

The figure of $250 billion is almost triple of Iran’s annual oil income according to Radio Farda.

Import applications mean requests by importers to receive cheaper, subsidized dollars or other hard currencies from the government.

Rouhani’s new forex policy, fixing the dollar’s official rate at 42,000 rials, encouraged scores of individuals and companies to apply for import licenses, receiving millions of subsidized dollars, bringing in goods into the country and sell them on the basis of dollar’s value in the non-governmental forex market, i.e. one dollar against more than 100,000 rials, thereby reaping a tidy profit.

An example of this profiteering comes in the telecommunications market, an industry controlled by the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, in which certain companies received foreign currency at the official subsidized rate of 42,000 rials to a single U.S. dollar to import cellphones and then turn around and sold them at the black-market rate of 100,000 rials to the dollar.

It’s another example of the rampant corruption fostered by the mullahs and is enraging ordinary Iranians.

Khamenei recognizes that anger among the Iranian people is reaching a critical point and poses one of the most significant threats to the mullahs’ rule in the history of the Islamic state, which is why he is casting about for scapegoats to divert attention from himself, be it blaming President Trump or Rouhani, the end game is to keep himself alive and in power.

“More than the sanctions, economic mismanagement (by the government) is putting pressure on ordinary Iranians… I do not call it betrayal but a huge mistake in management,” state TV quoted Khamenei as saying as he tacitly accused Rouhani of doing little to curb mismanagement of the economy.

The corruption and mismanagement by the ruling mullahs is so pervasive and unavoidable that even reliable Iran lobby cheerleaders such as Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a Princeton University “researcher” and former Iranian regime official even jumped on the bandwagon of criticisms.

In an interview in Tehran Times, Mousavian took aim at the regime’s dysfunctional management of the economy:

“The Iranian economy is under many, many difficulties like corruption, like dysfunctionality, like smuggling, like inflation and they have a lot of problems. This has been problem since 1979 when Saddam invaded Iran, Iran had eight years of war, and after war, the U.S. pushed for many, many sanctions against Iran. However, I believe at least 50 percent of the Iranian domestic economic problem is not because of the sanctions. They are because of the domestic dysfunctionality of different system, but this is the government or other system,” he said.

“Therefore, if Iran is going to resist the sanctions, they would need to address the dysfunctionalities of their own system. Therefore, this is one reality about dysfunctionality of Iranian domestic economic system,” he added.

With friends like these, it’s no wonder the mullahs are in full blame game mode.

Iran Lobby Misinforms on Who is Hurt Most by Iran Sanctions

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A student raises her arm in protest to the Iranian regime's repressive measures against peaceful protesters in Tehran-January 2018

The Iran lobby has scrambled to find the right kind of response to the re-imposition of economic sanctions by the Trump administration. It has tried to shield the mullahs from any culpability for leading Iran down this path with their support for terrorism and proxy wars that have devastated the region.

It has even tried to argue that sanctions will only spur a new regional arms race as the regime is sure to race towards developing a nuclear weapon now that it is freed from the nuclear agreement’s restrictions by the U.S. withdrawal.

In each case the response from news organizations and international governments has been muted because there is no argument with the facts that the regime is brutal and at fault for virtually all of the sins President Donald Trump cited in his decision to pull out of the nuclear deal.

The only feeble response from supporters of the regime has been the whining wail that the regime was in compliance with the agreement and all of the other despicable acts the regime commits, especially against its own people, are outside of the agreement’s scope.

That technicality is at the heart of what made the nuclear so problematic in the first place and why the Iran lobby is yet again shifting its message to a new tack.

Jamal Abdi, the new president of the National Iranian American Council and chief Iran lobby cheerleader, offered in an editorial in the progressive blog Lobelog.com, that the real victims of economic sanctions were the Iranian people.

“The reality is that Trump’s pressure campaign weakens those within Iran who seek more conciliatory foreign relations and a more open political and social domestic landscape. It also empowers Tehran’s most reactionary forces,” Abdi writes.

If it is impolite to call someone an outright liar, then we would have to watch our language and simply say Abdi is being disingenuous with his comments.

The stark reality is that there was never any hope of moderation within the Iranian regime with the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal since the ruling mullahs never had any intention of loosening their grip on power.

The elimination of any potential rival candidates from presidential and parliamentary election slates following the deal ensured that, as well as historically massive crackdowns on the Iranian people, including a round up and imprisonment of any dissenting viewpoint – real or imaginary – as thousands of women, students, journalists, activists, bloggers, artists and even YouTubers ended up in Iranian prisons.

“The repressive powers in the Islamic Republic are far more threatened by Iran’s integration into the global economy than by a tit-for-tat dispute with the United States. They worry that the lifting of sanctions will undermine the monopolies established by the well connected few who are aligned with the Revolutionary Guards and other government entities. Indeed, after the nuclear deal, the Supreme Leader issued edicts against a broader opening to the United States and hardliners repeatedly warned of ‘foreign infiltration’ in order to obstruct President Hassan Rouhani’s outreach to the West,” Abdi added.

Another fabrication from him as the reality is that virtually all of the Iranian economy is controlled by the state through the family dynasties of ruling mullahs or the Revolutionary Guard Corps which controls the largest companies in the petroleum, telecommunications, banking, manufacturing, transportation and energy industries.

Integration back into the global economy was a boon for the Iranian military, allowing it to refill its coffers, depleted by the wars in Syria and Yemen, and mobilize proxy militias in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When foreign companies such as Peugeot, Total and Airbus quickly moved in to sign deals with the regime, who was getting the benefits? Certainly not the Iranian people who’s standard of living has plummeted under the mullahs’ rule.

The much-promised economic windfall promised to the Iranian people after the nuclear deal was signed never came and in response the Iranian people have chosen to risk their lives in ongoing, massive demonstrations sweeping throughout the country since last December and into a sweltering summer of discontent.

“The real threats to repressive rule in Iran are a growing middle class, an organized civil society movement, and leaders who have the political capital to push for change against entrenched elements in the system. These trends make a democratic Iran inevitable. But outsiders, often led by the United States, have taken actions to arrest these developments. They have propped up Iran’s repressive rulers with threats of war and invasion, and bailed them out by slapping sanctions and travel bans to isolate Iranians and keep them weak,” Abdi said.

This last point is the most damning by the Iran lobby since the regime has done its level best to eradicate the Iranian middle class with manipulation of its currency and restrictions that have skyrocketed inflation and pushed the rial down to near Weimar Republic levels.

The defiance of Abdi’s claims comes in the form of the protests taking place throughout Iran by the Iranian people, including his much-vaunted middle class who have been hit hard by the regime’s deep corruption in the economy.

Couple that with the oppressive human rights situation in which women have been tossed in jail for protesting hijab requirements and the feisty mood of the Iranian people can be seen almost every day on Iranian streets and in town squares and marketplaces.

What many in the Iran lobby are terrified of is that the Iranian people will indeed be able to exert enough pressure internally to force the kinds of liberalization and democratization it promised with the nuclear deal but failed to deliver.

The Financial Times editorialized the same sentiment in but only gets it half-right:

“It would, however, be far preferable if Iran moved towards a more liberal and open regime through a process of domestic reform, rather than as a result of crushing external pressure. The history of Iran and the wider Middle East gives ample warning that sudden violent changes in government have rarely led to happy outcomes — particularly when they have had external sponsors,” the FT’s editorial board said.

Iran’s mullahs are never going to give up power as a result of gentle persuasion. Only a massive build up of outrage by the Iranian people coupled by economic sanctions aimed directly at gutting the financial pipeline to the military is the only pathway to gain the internal regime change the FT describes.

The history of the Middle East tells us that change does not come easily, nor politely. It comes only through the convergence of external pressure coupled with internal reforms.

We believe that opportunity is finally coming to Iran.