Iran Lobby

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

Iran Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

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Iran Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

Iran Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

Most of the public pronouncements made by leaders of the Iranian regime are meant to incite strong reactions be it threats to destroy its enemies or bury large swathes of the world under a barrage of Islamic missiles and rockets.

Targets for the verbal histrionics typically includs the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Canada, the U.K., France, Sunnis, Christians, women, Iranian dissidents, Instagram users and just about anyone else that seems to offend the mullahs; which seems to be about everyone on the planet not aligned with them.

Often the threats are hollow and empty and indicative of the weakness inherent in a regime that has to resort to verbal threats to get its point across, but every so often the regime makes itself known and to more discerning ears, therein lays nuggets of truth.

When top mullah Ali Khamenei called a resistance economy of sacrifice and deprivation from the Iranian people in order to keep the supply pipeline filled to prop up the Assad regime in Syria, he was telling the truth.

When Hassan Rouhani said in an interview that Iran does not recognize dual national citizens and that any Iranian, regardless of their passport was fair game for arrest, he wasn’t kidding.

Now we have the latest example of regime bloviating in the form of comments made by regime defense minister Hossein Dehghan, a well-known regime blowhard, who claimed that Donald Trump’s election could lead to a “world war” if the president-elect fulfilled his promise of altering the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Dehghan promised that Israel and all of Iran’s enemies in the region, including the Gulf states, would be destroyed. He further claimed that Trump’s previous statements had caused “unease” among America’s allies in the region, according to the regime’s Mehr’s news agency.

Dehghan’s singling out of the Gulf states of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Qatar was not by coincidence. They, along with Saudi Arabia, have proven to be the biggest thorn in Iranian regime’s side, especially in the Syrian civil war and uprising in Yemen, both fomented by Iran.

Dehghan’s bluster also includes the truth that the Iranian regime is pretty concerned over what Trump and his new cabinet will do as it relates to future relations with Iran. It is unlikely Trump will seek out confrontations with Iran as the Iran lobby has maintained since the election last month.

Given Trump’s penchant for hammering out deals and extracting concessions, he is likely to view the Iranian regime as an untrustworthy partner in any deal that requires close monitoring and specific punishment for any violation.

The difficulty Trump faces are the result of the failed policies of trying to appease the Iranian regime in order to change it by the Obama administration. Fortunately for Trump, he has a history of blunders to learn from over the past two years, which makes Dehghan’s comments noteworthy—not for the bluster—but for the real anxiety that seems to be gripping a Tehran that doesn’t quite know what to expect from Trump and how to deal with him.

Consequently, the default setting for the regime is to threaten first and then threaten again.

For Tehran, the operating manual for diplomacy now seems to be consist of making threats over and over again.

In order to back up those threats, the Iranian military has launched into a series of massive war drills to showcase it supposed muscle and fend off any potential attacks against it. The fact that Iran has to hold military drills because it fears an actual attack clearly shows how the attitude of the mullahs in Tehran has shifted rapidly from smugness to fear.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s military forces enjoy supremacy over the Persian Gulf region more than any other time,” Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri, the deputy chief of staff of the regime’s armed forces, was quoted as saying over the weekend. “The military and security conditions of the Persian Gulf are in a way that the enemy’s forces and equipment are fully within the range of the Iranian military men.”

As part of these drills, the regime’s military was busy unveiling almost every piece of new hardware it claimed to have developed including a new drone in a ritual of show-and-tell designed to mollify Iranian leaders more than dissuade the U.S.

What probably concerns Tehran more is not the threat of war, as much as the possibility that Trump will use the subtle levers of power to nudge the regime back on a course of real diplomacy and meaningful reforms at home. Bloomberg editorialized that Trump has ample tools at his disposal to crack down on Iran without necessarily tearing up the nuclear agreement on day one of his administration.

“At least Trump’s job will be made easier by Congress, which just extended the Iran Sanctions Act, allowing the U.S. to punish Iranian entities involved with terrorism, illegal weapons and human-rights violations. Trump can and should also end the de facto policy of looking the other way at Iran’s early infringements of the pact, such as the recent revelation that it had exceeded the deal’s cap on how much heavy water it is allowed to stockpile,” the Bloomberg editorial board said.

“In the long term, the six nations should try to negotiate changes in both the nuclear pact itself and the related side agreements (all of which the U.S. should make public). Iran may well be willing to come to the table. It complains that it has seen very little of the estimated $100 billion of its assets that had been frozen in foreign banks, due to other U.S. sanctions and rules making it hard to “dollarize” the funds for transfer. In addition, the hoped-for rush of investment by European energy companies — and the banks that accompany them — has been slow to materialize,” Bloomberg added.

That economic hammer remains the biggest one the U.S. possesses and one Trump understands intimately. For Trump, this new “art of the Iran deal” may very well prove to be right up his alley and that has the mullahs terrified.

Michael Tomlinson

The Race is On for Iran to Close All Deals

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hourglass-running-out-1January is not only the start of the New Year and 2017, it also marks a race against the clock for the Iranian regime as it struggles to close as many business deals as it can before Donald Trump is sworn into office as the new president.

There also seems to be a fever gripping the mullahs in Tehran beyond the normal insanity of religious fervor that grips them. In this case, it is a fever for cash.

With the nuclear agreement reached with Iran and the P5+1 group of nations came a lifting of economic sanctions. The Iran lobby argued that the removal of these sanctions would empower moderate elements in the Iranian government and usher in a new period of cooperation and diplomacy.

Unfortunately none of that has come to pass as Iran’s government became even more rigidly dominated by the mullahs and their cohorts in the military and Revolutionary Guards and Iran’s military activities through its terrorist proxies have plunged it into fighting wars in three countries at once.

The drain on the regime’s coffers have been enormous and led to a stagnation of the economy that has caused the Iranian people to become restless to a point where the regime instituted a large-scale crackdown aimed at journalists, students, artists and other dissidents.

The election of Trump poses a new risk for the regime as he selects cabinet picks that have a long and critical history of U.S.-Iran relations under the Obama administration. The comprehensive nature of his cabinet choices has clearly shown the mullahs that the free ride of appeasement they have enjoyed the past several years is coming to an end.

All of which leads to an astonishing effort by the Iranian regime to close as many investment and business deals as possible before the potential re-imposition of economic sanctions since Iran has done little to conform to the spirit, let alone letter of the nuclear agreement.

Hassan Rouhani and his master, Ali Khamenei, know the necessity of securing as many business deals as possible since the regime is badly in need of cash. It is also why the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, have been fixated with preserving the commercial aspects of the agreement.

The New York Times described the race by Rouhani to close these deals, especially bolstering its oil industry in regaining its international status as a top oil producer.

Iran’s oil industry, the lifeblood of its economy, was devastated by the cumulative impact of the nuclear sanctions, which halved petroleum exports and left the country ostracized economically, the Times wrote.

The international nuclear agreement that lifted those sanctions nearly a year ago, one of the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy initiatives, has enabled Iran to partly recover. But Mr. Trump has warned that he may dismantle the deal, a threat that has injected new urgency into Iran’s push to build up its oil industry before Mr. Trump takes power next month,” the Times added.

Over the last four weeks, Tehran has negotiated agreements with the oil field services giant Schlumberger and companies from China, Norway, Thailand and Poland, including a deal just announced with Royal Dutch Shell.

“They are signing before Trump does something,” said Dragan Vuckovic, president of Mediterranean International, a Texas-based oil services company that works in North Africa and the Middle East. “The Iranians will give the Europeans favorable terms because of Trump. They want to send a message to Trump that if you try to cancel this agreement, we will just go to the Europeans.”

It’s a strategy that carries significant risk since the combative election demonstrated how the incoming president reacts to threats from opponents.

The Iranian regime also announced the completion of its $16.6 billion deal to buy 80 jetliners from Boeing. Planned aircraft sales by Boeing and European plane maker Airbus Group SE have been among the most high-profile transactions pursued by Iranian regime after Western powers in January removed sanctions in return for its agreeing to constrain its nuclear program. U.S. officials cleared the way in September for Airbus and Boeing to start contract talks.

The plane deals have been staunchly opposed by critics of the nuclear accord with Iran, which has come under fire from Trump and his emerging national-security team. Some U.S. lawmakers have also tried to block any financing for the planned sales, the Wall Street Journal reported.

What troubles the mullahs and Iran lobby is that the members of Trump’s team include ex-military officers who have been battle-tested in combat against Islamic extremist groups and terror proxies. For them, their world view has been shaped by actual experience with terror and Islamic extremism and the horrors they bring.

According to the Washington Post, the three generals making up the core of Trump’s foreign policy team have views cutting against the grain of U.S. policies seeking to empower moderates in Iran and of U.S. intelligence assessments that terrorism no longer stands alone atop the rankings of global security threats now crowded by concerns about cyberattacks and renewed aggression by China and Russia.

Their views, though far from uniform, have been heavily influenced over the past 15 years by intensely personal battlefield losses, the country’s waning attention to the wars and an up-close view of a ruthless enemy, said the Post.

“I think it’s likely there will be terrorist attacks in the coming years, and I think Trump will feel tremendous pressure to be seen as acting very decisively,” said Dan Byman, a former Middle East analyst at the CIA and a professor at Georgetown University.

Byman cited the example of the Iranian seizure of American sailors shortly before the Iran nuclear deal was signed as an example of an overseas provocation that had the potential to derail broader U.S. policy goals.

Trump’s advisers “have a lot of personal experience and might be more inclined to see Iranian hostility as deeply planned,” rather than the act of a rogue faction or a function of chaos, Byman said. “They’re more likely to read things negatively than the Obama administration would have.”

While the Iran lobby may believe that is a pathway to armed conflict, the growing consensus is that Trump’s team is more likely to avoid that option by simply finally holding the Iranian accountable diplomatically and through a rigorous sanctions process that does now reward Iranian regime for belligerent behavior.

For Tehran, the clock is running out on them.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Launches Media Blitz to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

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Iran Lobby Launches Media Blitz to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

Iran Lobby Launches Media Blitz to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

We’ve already chronicled recent efforts by the National Iranian American Council to try and save the flawed Iran nuclear agreement with a flurry of press releases, editorials and social media posts in an attempt to attack everything from President-elect Donald Trump’s tweets to his Cabinet selections.

Not to be outdone, the other leader in the Iran lobby stepped up the plate with another media blitz by the Ploughshares Fund, which sent out its own editorials in an effort to dredge up the same old arguments similar to the arguments used by the Iran lobby during the run up to the nuclear agreement last year in which groups such as Ploughshares and NIAC tried to portray anyone opposed to the deal as a militaristic hawk hell bent on carpet bombing Iran.

In the year since the deal was approved, it is ironic to see the Iranian regime being the one to carpet bomb cities in Syria and funnel arms to terrorist proxies and militias in Iraq and Yemen. Of course Ploughshares offers no editorials condemning the cycle of war and violence the Iranian regime feeds and nurtures.

Paul Pillar, a former intelligence officer that has been penning on behalf of the Iranian mullahs in various occasions, joined at the hip to the Ploughshares Fund, offered up one such editorial in the National Interest in which he pedaled the same old idea that anyone critical of the Iran nuclear deal was a neo-con war hawk.

Pillar again raises the specter of the Iraq war as a harbinger of war with Iran in order to try and scare readers as he bangs the drum against President-elect Trump.

“None of this is a prediction that there will be such a war.  But the danger of one is greater now than it was before November 8th and the appointments that followed.  Vigilance is required to avoid further steps that would increase the chance of a war,” Pillar adds. “Also to be watched for are any moves, such as aggressive U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf, that could become steps down a slippery slope to conflagration.”

That last statement by Pillar really demonstrates how bought in he is for Iranian regime, when he makes no mention of the devastation Iranian regime’s military actions in the region have caused.

Unlike what Pillar says, the aggression is coming from Iran.

But Pillar wasn’t the only Iran lobbying ally to get in on the act, Tytti Erästo, a fellow at Ploughshares, also offered up her own editorial at the National Interest as well trying to sell the idea that Trump needs the Iran nuclear deal to engage with Russia and North Korea.

She tries to make the case that North Korea would somehow view an intact nuclear deal as the appropriate pathway since it would demonstrate the benefits of diplomacy.

Let’s think about that idea carefully for a moment:

  • North Korea supplied Iranian regime with information and designs for its nuclear program, as well as licensed its ballistic missile designs to jumpstart the regime’s missile program;
  • North Korea has consistently been the most sanctioned nation on the planet over its nuclear program as it developed the capability, actually built warheads and then exploded them in tests; and
  • North Korea is widely regarded as the world’s most notorious rogue state after it consistently broke every international agreement negotiated with it.

Yes, that sounds like a wonderful template of how Iran can positively influence North Korea!

And how could nuclear deal influence anyone, particularly since we are talking about a flowed agreement with no teeth that provides ample exemptions and waivers for violations and lift all economic sanctions without the need for compliance monitoring?

In fact, her statement reflects a key component of all the Iran lobby’s positions which is that the International community bears the burden for compliance and any failure in the agreement must stem from the U.S. and others not from anything the Iranian regime did.

It is the same frivolous thinking that paved the way for a badly flawed deal which led us to the crises the world currently faces.

While such efforts by the Iran lobby reveals the weak position and the fear the mullahs have, it also proves that the right policy towards Iran is and has always been a firm policy that should hold the Iranian regime finally accountable for its actions and not the other way around.

Michael Tomlinson

Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

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Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

The experiment to see if the Iranian regime could be moved to join the community of nations and act in a moderate manner is officially over with the unanimous passage of the extension for renewal of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA).

The U.S. Senate passed a 10-year extension of sanctions against the Iranian regime, following a similar vote in the House, sending the bill to President Obama’s desk where he is expected to sign it.

The measure passed by a 99-0 vote after passing the House with only one dissenting vote in a bipartisan display of unity among Democrats and Republicans rarely seen in Washington.

Without the votes, the ISA was due to expire on December 31st. Leaders of both parties and the U.S. State Department have said passage of the extension would not violate the terms of the current nuclear agreement with Iran, even though the Iranian regime has threatened harsh retaliation in response.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) said the renewal ensures Trump can re-impose sanctions Obama lifted under the deal, in which Iran curbed its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

“Extending the Iran Sanctions Act … ensures President-elect Trump and his administration have the tools necessary to push back against the regime’s hostile actions,” Corker said in a statement.

“Given Iran’s continued pattern of aggression and the country’s persistent efforts to expand its sphere of influence across the region, preserving these sanctions is critical,” the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on Thursday. He said he expected the Trump administration and the new Congress to “undertake a total review of our overall Iran policy.”

As the U.S. legislation advanced, Iranian regime officials said that the country may increase its stockpile of enriched uranium, a move that could spark a new international crisis in the weeks before Donald Trump takes office.

“Iran has made necessary preparations for potential U.S. decisions about the extension of sanctions,” the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Monday, according to Iranian state media.

The threats are not surprising since top mullah Ali Khamenei has been making regular threats about tearing up the agreement even during negotiations last year.

What has changed though is that the gravy train of appeasement policies coming from the Obama administration in the hopes of moderating Iranian behavior probably has come to an end. The stunning majorities in passing the renewal demonstrate both political parties desire to taker tougher stand against Iran especially as yet another potential terror-related attack occurred on the campus of Ohio State University.

“The practical effect is the Iran nuclear agreement depends on our resolve, on our commitment to… stop a nuclear-armed Iran by using sanctions and other means if necessary,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who supported the Iran deal.

The passage marks just how far American opinion has swung over the past year in which the Iran lobby trumpeted the nuclear agreement as a landmark effort to bring the U.S. and Iran closer together only to see the Iranian regime launch three wars, arrest American citizens and threaten the U.S. with military confrontations almost everywhere throughout the Middle East.

Iranian regime’s actions have only grown worse under the nuclear agreement and the 99-0 vote is a recognition that more needs to be done to confront Iranian extremism and push back on it even as the mullahs devise new ways to sow chaos and confrontation.

One example of those methods came in the form of a new report issued by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an independent research group, which tied markings on munitions used by Houthi rebels in Yemen to arms shipments from Iran.

The markings found on rifles, rocket launchers, anti-tank guided missiles and munitions provided some of the more concrete evidence to date of Iranian regime’s logistical support to Houthis fighting in Yemen’s nearly two-year-old civil war, according to the Washington Post.

Vice Admiral Kevin M. Donegan, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the region, told reporters that the first of the five weapons shipments were seized in April 2015. CAR’s report focuses on three weapon caches recovered in early 2016.

“CAR’s analysis of the seized materiel … suggests the existence of a weapon pipeline extending from Iran to Somalia and Yemen, which involves the transfer, by dhow, of significant quantities of Iranian-manufactured weapons and weapons that plausibly derive from Iranian stockpiles,” the report says.

A Somalia-bound dhow was stopped with 2,197 weapons onboard. Aside from a smattering of small arms including Kalashnikovs and medium machine guns, the vessel was laden with roughly 100 Iranian-made RPG-7-style rocket launchers.

While the Iran lobby continues to try and discount the votes on ISA, they ignore the unanimous majorities it garnered for its passage. Most disturbing for Iranian regime sympathizers such as the National Iranian American Council is how far the pendulum has swung away from appeasing the regime to finding ways to hold it accountable.

Laura Carnahan

As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

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As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

So much for Iranian moderation.

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has long maintained that following the nuclear agreement, Iran would become a more moderate force in the Middle East and a new period of U.S.-Iranian relations would spring forth.

The unfortunate truth has been the complete opposite—much to the Iran lobby’s chagrin—but Iran’s militant actions are continually defended by their staunch advocates with nary a word of criticism ever coming out.

It did not matter if top mullah Ali Khamenei threatened destruction on the U.S. or restated continually that Iran would be on a war footing to oppose the U.S. as the “Great Satan.”

It did not matter if Iran took American citizens against their will and locked them up only to demand billions of dollars in ransom and even after negotiating a prisoner swap, the mullahs again took more Americans hostage and again stated plainly and openly its hope to garner more billions of dollars.

It did not matter what the Iranian regime did because the Iran lobby was always going to ignore the bad news and keep pushing a positive narrative.

But now with the new Trump administration assembling its national security team, which appears to be comprised of many critics of the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby finds itself trying out new tactics to protect the regime.

Part of this new effort includes trying to throw mud at potential Trump appointees in an effort to discredit them such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani who is being touted as a potential Secretary of State, or former UN ambassador John Bolton who is also being considered for a top foreign policy post.

An example of the smear campaign by the Iran lobby was a scandalous editorial that ran in Politico authored by Daniel Benjamin who attacked Giuliani ruthlessly by using information provided by Iran’s intelligence agencies in their efforts to smear Iranian opposition groups.

It is interesting to note that the information Benjamin used was taken almost word for word from similar postings made by Iranian-linked sources attacking opposition and democracy groups, but the fact that he went so aggressively after Giuliani demonstrates the level of pressure the Iran lobby must feel as Trump’s cabinet is beginning to shape up with well-known Iran skeptics.

Robert Torricelli, the former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, penned a scathing rebuke to Benjamin in Politico that correctly pointed out the attack against Giuliani had little to do with the former mayor, but rather was aimed at the broader Iranian resistance movement that has gained substantial support from both Democrats and Republicans in recent years.

It is this democracy movement that causes the most panic amongst the mullahs in Tehran since it represents a homegrown opposition of fellow Iranians and makes a lie of the idea the Iranian government indeed has moderate elements within it.

Instead, the mullahs have cracked down harshly against opponents both political and otherwise with mass arrests of journalists, students and other activists and ensuring the election of a parliament securely filled with their loyal supporters.

These are all things the Iran lobby chose to ignore and with every Iranian provocation, groups such as the NIAC maintain their deafening silence.

Take for example statements made the other day by the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces where he openly called for an expansion of Iranian military bases in other countries.

“We need distant bases, and it may become possible one day to have bases on the shores of Yemen or Syria, or bases on islands or floating (bases),” said General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, quoted by the Shargh daily newspaper.

“Is having distant bases less than nuclear technology? I say it is worth dozens of times more,” added Baqeri, who was speaking at a gathering of naval commanders.

It is no accident he names Syria and Yemen, both countries that Iran has spent considerable resources in financing, weapons and fighters to hold as vassal states.

This part of the larger narrative and vision the mullahs in Tehran have openly talked about in creating a Shiite sphere of influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. It is also why Iran is engaged in sectarian wars against Sunni tribes in Iraq and Sunni-majority nations such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Even Iran’s fight against ISIS is not about combatting terrorism but trying to eliminate a Sunni rival for regional hegemony.

So long as the Iran lobby continues its efforts to provide cover for the mullahs, it is reasonable to believe that whatever groups such as the NIAC has to say about Iranian intentions will always be suspect.

Michael Tomlinson

Reasons to be Thankful on Campaign Against Iran Regime

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Reasons to be Thankful on Campaign Against Iran Regime

Reasons to be Thankful on Campaign Against Iran Regime

This Thanksgiving will be a momentous one for a lot of people, not only for an end to a bruising, contentious presidential election campaign season, but also for the hope it brings in fostering a new approach and outlook on how to address the Iranian regime’s growing militancy and expansion efforts.

Closer to home, this Thanksgiving is also one for us to be grateful to see how the true nature of the Iran lobby movement has been revealed and uncovered for the rest of the nation to see.

We should be thankful that the past year after the Iran nuclear deal was approved we have seen just how flat out false the promises were made by Iran supporters such as the National Iranian American Council and Ploughshares Fund.

They promised a more moderate Iranian government. We got a midterm parliamentary election that was rigged by the mullahs who wiped off thousands of names from the ballot and ensured they remained firmly in control of the government and it remained a religious theocracy.

They promised an Iran that could serve as a stabilizing force in the Mideast and solve the Syrian civil war diplomatically. What we got was an alarming escalation of sectarian war in Syria, Iraq and Yemen that caused the greatest refugee crisis since World War II and broadened the conflict to pull in Saudi Arabia, Russia and the U.S. into dangerous confrontations.

They promised a liberalization of moderate forces in Iran and an improvement in the lives of ordinary Iranians. Instead, the Iranian people experienced one of the harshest crackdowns since the Islamic revolution with thousands of people arrested, imprisoned and sentenced without fair trials and many hanged publicly. The crackdown has been so widespread and deep that even posting a selfie on Instagram can get you arrested.

We can also be thankful that the tactics of the Iran lobby have finally been revealed as nothing more than carrying the water for the mullahs in Tehran.

Advocates such as Trita Parsi of the NIAC talk a good game about supporting Iranian-Americans, but we now see how they have remained largely silent on the snatching up of dual national Americans by Iran and how the NIAC and its allies have mounted no grassroots campaigns, no lobbying efforts, no hashtag campaigns, nothing to help those Iranian-Americans languishing in Iranian prisons.

We should also be thankful that with a new administration, we will hopefully see an end to the experiment of appeasing the Iranian regime in the hopes of an end to the tyranny in Iran.

The past year has aptly demonstrated how foolish that belief was and now with the new administration, we hope for a change in the policy of appeasement of the mullahs in Iran, and in that way, we may finally have an administration that will hold Iranian regime accountable and not treat the symptoms but go after the core problem which is the regime’s religious leadership.

Ultimately, we should be thankful that as a nation and global community the luster has finally worn off on the idea of appeasing Iran’s dictatorship and now we need to cobble back together the international consensus to hold Tehran accountable for its actions and finally focus on improving the human rights situation there.

No solution to Iranian intractability can occur without addressing a liberalization of its policies against its own people, ending the executions, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

We can be grateful and thankful on this Thanksgiving weekend that those are all things we celebrate here.

Laura Carnahan

Why the NIAC Has Lost All Credibility

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Why the NIAC Has Lost All Credibility

Why the NIAC Has Lost All Credibility

The National Iranian American Council has gotten virtually nothing correct over the last three years when it comes to predicting the behavior and actions of the Iranian regime.

That in and of itself should not be too surprising since in its role as a chief advocate and lobbying force for the Iranian regime, its responsibility is not to journalistic fact, but to lobbyist advocacy. That fact alone should make any journalist talking to them or reading their publications slightly skeptical from the outset.

Also, it is erroneous to consider the NIAC a “human rights” organization when its stated mission goal of helping Iranian-Americans is plainly shown to be ignored at best and duplicitous at worst since the NIAC does not mount media or grassroots efforts on behalf of imprisoned Iranian-Americans in Iran. Nor does the NIAC ever join with mainstream human rights groups such as Amnesty International in pressing the Iranian government to release these American hostages.

While the NIAC takes out full page ads in the New York Times touting the moderation of the Iranian regime, it does not similarly take out full page ads critical of Hassan Rouhani’s public statements in which he reaffirms the regime’s policy of not recognizing dual citizenship; the only nation on the planet to do so.

The NIAC promised Iranian moderation in light of a new nuclear agreement, but in the 18 months since, Iran has embarked on what is arguably the widest range of war, insurrection and human rights abuses spanning four countries including Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

At home it has defeated, removed and imprisoned virtually all political opponents. It has resorted to mass arrests of students, journalists, artists, bloggers and anyone else showing any inkling of rebellion to the mullahs.

It has conscripted Afghan refugees to fight and die as mercenaries in Syria, while it brought Russia into the conflict resulting in the mass bombing of civilians, hospitals and reduced Aleppo to a pile of dust.

All of these things NIAC promised would not happen, yet it has all come to pass.

Now the NIAC has issued a 45 page “report” of recommendations to the incoming Trump administration on how to secure American interests in the Middle East.

While mildly entertaining as a work of fiction, the Trump transition team would be wise to consider using this report to wrap up food leftovers since that is all it is good for.

This document is nothing more than a retread of the same tired and now proven false assumptions the NIAC has been peddling now for the past decade. It loses all credibility for one basic omission: It never acknowledges nor criticizes Iran’s role in the escalation of tensions and bloodshed in the Middle East.

That’s like blaming the weather for a mass murderer on the loose.

If one understands that the NIAC is an Iranian regime advocate and not a human rights organization, it is easy to understand the priorities it places on its discussion topics in the document.

It places the nuclear agreement and the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia as its two more important topics, which coincidentally are the two most pressing concerns for the Iranian regime.

It then dives into Iraq and Syria, the two principle battlefields Iran is involved with in creating its Shiite sphere of influence. Oddly, the report does not mention Yemen or the rise of Islamic militants in sub-Saharan Africa which are now responsible for instability stretching from Egypt to Nigeria to Yemen.

Lastly, the report devotes a scant three pages to human rights and only from the perspective that Washington can only improve human rights by essentially trusting the Iranian regime to do the right thing if Washington caves in and appeases the mullahs fully.

The one thing the report does say is that the Trump administration “should heed the advice of Iranians themselves.” On this point, NIAC is correct, but not in whom it believes are the right Iranians to listen to.

The Trump administration needs to part ways from failed policies of the Obama administration and muzzle the “echo chamber” of Iranian lobbying it created. It needs to chart its own pathway and listen to the concerns, thoughts and advice of Iranian dissidents and opponents both within Iran and outside.

Let the Iranian people counsel on what are the best approaches to bringing back a secular, democratic government in Iran. That kind of advice is not likely to come from the NIAC, Ploughshares Fund or similar Iranian lobbyists.

It will come from opponents such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Amnesty International and outspoken leaders on the human rights situation in Iran such as Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

The most amusing part of the NIAC report is the claim that was signed by 76 “national security experts” but a closer review of those names and titles reveals that:

  • 3 are staff members of NIAC
  • 47 are professors, mostly from history, linguistics and anthropology disciplines
  • 1 has a military background
  • Zero are human rights activists

The overwhelming number of these so-called “experts” is in reality advocates and lobbyists for the Iranian regime or commercial interests tied to the Iranian regime such as Bijan Khajehpour, managing partner of Atieh International which works to line up foreign businesses with Iranian-state industries.

Mainstream media outlets would do well to finally stop quoting these sources that are as accurate as pollsters on election night.

Michael Tomlinson

Near Unanimous Vote to Extend Iran Sanctions Act Shows Weakness of Iran Lobby

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Near Unanimous Vote to Extend Iran Sanctions Act Shows Weakness of Iran Lobby

Near Unanimous Vote to Extend Iran Sanctions Act Shows Weakness of Iran Lobby

The decision by the House to renew the Iran Sanctions Act is noteworthy for two things: One is the margin, an overwhelming 419-1 vote that clearly demonstrates on this one issue, both Democrats and Republicans universally agreed on the outcome.

The second is that the age of appeasing the Iranian regime and giving credence to the Iran lobby’s echo chamber on “moderation” has finally died in the wake of an unrelenting year of war, carnage and bloodshed by Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies following approval of the nuclear deal.

It is universally agreed to even among the most ardent supporters of the mullahs in Tehran that Iran could have done more to demonstrate its commitment to being a reliable international partner.

The fact that a lame duck session of the House voted these sanctions through says lots about how members truly feel. While there is no disagreement about wanting to compel Iran mullahs to not build nuclear weapons, the methodology of how to get there is clearly and appropriately back up for debate.

The ISA itself, extended for another decade by this vote, is not even connected to the nuclear deal since it deals with sanctions imposed for Iran’s support for terrorism and development of ballistic missiles; items that Iran lobby supporters such as the National Iranian American Council famously argued should be disconnected from the nuclear deal. They are now paying for that disconnect.

The other sanction, which was passed on a unanimous voice vote no less, imposes sanctions on anyone assisting the Syrian regime in the wholesale slaughter of civilians and contributing to the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Given that Iran is Syria’s biggest sponsor and supporter, the message to Tehran is clear: Get out of Syria and stop supporting the mass murder of men, women and children.

Ultimately the best thing to come out of these moves will be to refocus the debate on human rights and the barbaric practices of the Iranian regime and Syria.

The renewal and extension of the ISA and the sanctions connected to Syria provides the incoming Trump enormous flexibility and tools as it takes up the thorny question of how to roll back Iranian aggressions.

The Iran lobby has been busy trying to make the case that the status quo needs to continue and in fact grant Iranian regime even more concessions with the further lifting of restrictions preventing the regime from tapping into U.S. currency exchanges to finance its activities, but even a blind man can recognize the American voter was in no mood to accommodate Iranian regime during a time when fears over terrorism was ranked as the second-highest concern they had in exit polling right after the state of the economy.

Both Democrats and Republicans realize their political careers might be cut short if they followed through with President Obama’s desire to maintain the status quo. It is clear from the dramatic results from the election that Americans want change and they are willing to decimate the political class to get it.

For the Iran lobby, especially long-time advocates such the NIAC and Ploughshares Fund, their options have narrowed dramatically to have any leverage with the new Congress and the Trump administration, which is why they have shifted their focus to a shotgun approach of trying out any number of message points and see if any of them stick.

One of the stranger rationalizations offered by Trita Parsi of NIAC, is that trying to isolate the Iranian regime may prove difficult for Trump since the Obama administration first made the case that Iran had failed to cooperate and thus was able to assemble an international coalition.

But Parsi must be nuts to think the international community doesn’t recognize that Iran has been at the very center of three of the worst raging wars on the planet today in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Parsi even pins his hopes on Iran’s fight with ISIS as a saving grace for Trump that may spare Iran from retaliatory sanctions for sponsoring other terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. By his logic, giving Iran a hall pass for fighting one murderous group of thugs while supporting another murderous group of thugs is somehow a good thing.

In another example of how the Iranian regime axis of Shiite influence is trying to recalibrate to the new reality of a Trump administration, even Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad said in an interview on Tuesday that Trump was a “natural ally” if he was committed to fighting “terrorists.”

Of course Assad’s definition of “terrorist” might be very different from the American definition given his military’s targeting of civilian neighborhoods and hospitals with airstrikes, barrel bombs and chemical weapons.

What Parsi, Assad and even the mullahs in Tehran do not understand is that Trump is far from the knee-jerk, knuckle dragger they tried to portray him as during the presidential campaign. Far from it, Trump has focused his policies on the idea of restraining Iranian regime influence and resetting the power balance in the Middle East away from Iran and back towards global powers.

His openness towards working with Russia and Vladimir Putin presents a more subtle and unique threat to Iran since Putin might even make the calculation that forging a partnership with the U.S. negates the need for supporting Iran’s interests so long as preservation of a warm water port in the Mediterranean from Russian ships is guaranteed.

For Iranian mullahs, the field is narrowing in terms of their ability to affect outcomes, which is why the Iran lobby has been campaigning hard to influence who will be sitting on key positions of the upcoming administration.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Takes Aim at Iranian Regime Critics

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Iran Lobby Takes Aim at Iranian Regime Critics

Iran Lobby Takes Aim at Iranian Regime Critics

The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States presents a thorny dilemma for the Iranian regime and its core of lobbyists and supporters in the U.S. and Europe; not the least of which the gravy train of concessions and naïve thoughts of Iranian “moderation” are finally coming to an end with the change in administrations.

This explains why the regime’s leadership and members of the Iran lobby are busy issuing press statements and making stern speeches warning the incoming president and the next Congress not to abandon the Iran nuclear deal or re-impose sanctions.

There is an unmistakable air of bluster as well as fear that permeates much of what top leaders such as Hassan Rouhani and key advocates such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council have had to say about the U.S. election results.

But there is a nuance here that is being largely ignored by much of the media in which while the Iranian leadership is claiming dire consequences should the U.S. back out of the nuclear deal, Trump’s own statements and those of opponents of the nuclear deal provide a better insight as to what the real goals are for the U.S.

Namely, no one has ever said they opposed a nuclear deal that restricted the regime’s ability to build weapons of mass destruction. The intentions of such a deal are laudable and important and deserving of support from the global community.

What is in dispute is whether or not this deal actually accomplishes that goal and the answer is a resounding “NO.”

The world has had the luxury of a year’s worth of hindsight to see how badly constructed the agreement was, which was undermined every step of the way by concessions, exemptions and waivers that were granted for everything from the ability to inspect suspected nuclear sites in Iran to the amount of heavy water produced and kept illegally by the regime.

It is this consistent practice of exempting Iran from the provisions of the deal, as well as agreeing to not tie other aspects of the Iranian regime’s conduct such as support for terrorism and human rights abuses, that have rendered the deal ineffective at best and enabling at worst.

Of course, Trump and long-time critics of the regime including current and former US officials don’t want to start a shooting war, but the Iran lobby is certainly not letting up in its rhetorical histrionics, even going so far as starting to assail Trump campaign supporters for their prior support for Iranian resistance groups such as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), which opposed the mullahs’ rule in Tehran in support of the restoration of a democratic, secular government.

A who’s who of fringe blogs have started regurgitating the same propaganda and lies told by Iranian intelligence services almost word for word in a two-pronged effort to try and discredit any association with Iranian dissident groups from having any kind of input with the organization of a new Trump administration and also start up a new “echo chamber” promoting the continuation of the same policies of accommodation and appeasement to the regime.

Examples of such renewed efforts include posts attempting to portray Trump loyalists such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as being in the “control” of groups such as PMOI and this past association should preclude their ability to work in a future Trump administration on Iranian issues.

It is no secret that they and other prominent European and U.S. officials have appeared at forums, rallies and demonstrations held by a wide range of human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Iranian dissident groups such as PMOI and the National Council of Resistance of Iran to voice support for democratic reforms in Iran and denounce human rights violations and the regime’s long support of terrorism.

It is also important to note that support for the Iranian resistance movement globally isn’t limited just to those who supported Trump’s candidacy, but includes prominent Democrats such as Sen. Richard Menendez (D-NJ) and Robert Torricelli.

A senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Iran is likely to test the future Trump administration as part of this new effort to shape U.S. foreign policy next year.

“Despite much of the attention being paid to what President-Elect Trump’s Iran policy has to do with the [Iran] nuclear deal, another domain the next administration will have to contend with Iranian belligerence in is in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz,” the analyst said. “Trump’s statements about having Iran’s IRGC speedboats—which have been overtly harassing the U.S. Navy in international waters—’shot out of the water,’ appears to indicate a desire to respond more aggressively to Iranian provocations.”

An aggressive U.S. response may send a message to Iran, the senior analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies said.

The potential for a Trump administration to scrap the nuclear deal as one of its first foreign policy items has the full attention of the Iranian regime.

Department of State Spokesman Mark Toner confirmed to reporters “the agreement is valid only as long as all parties uphold it.”

Since the nuclear deal was signed by Russia, Britain, France, China, the U.S. and Germany, the withdrawal from the agreement by the U.S. would make it null and void. With the American and several other European companies beginning to re-engage economically with Iran, such as Boeing signing a multi-million dollar deal with Iran Air, to provide a brand new fleet of planes, the very real threat of the deal’s collapse looms large.

While Trump has ample reasons to tear up the deal as he has promised to do, he should also recognize the golden opportunity afforded to him to put the mullahs to the test and gauge how badly they want economic improvements given the deep dissatisfaction among the Iranian people.

The sanctions relief provided to Iran as part of the deal needs to be renewed every 120 to 180 days, which means Trump will need to actively enforce the agreement within his first few months in office, wrote Richard Nephew in a paper published by the Columbia Center for Global Energy Policy. It’s possible, said Nephew, who coordinated Iran sanctions policy when he was at the State Department, that Trump would withhold sanctions relief and use the leverage as part of his push to renegotiate the deal.

All of which means Trump is holding all the cards and the mullahs are left essentially powerless as evidenced by their desperate attempts to smear the long-standing Iranian resistance movement and attack its supporters.

Michael Tomlinson

 

Why is the Iran Lobby Obsessed with Sanctions?

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Why is the Iran Lobby Obsessed with Sanctions?

Why is the Iran Lobby Obsessed with Sanctions?

For an organization that considers itself an activist group fighting for the rights of Iranian-Americans, you would think the National Iranian American Council would be hard at work trying to build grassroots support for the release of Iranian-American hostages.

Maybe Trita Parsi, head of the NIAC, might offer a blistering editorial attacking the regime’s policies of not recognizing dual nationalities?

Maybe Reza Marashi or Tyler Cullis could take a break from giving interviews demanding a lifting of economic sanctions and instead question what else could be done to help get these Iranian-Americans released?

The stark reality is that the NIAC and its members cannot even be bothered to send out tweets, let alone press releases in support of these captive Iranian-Americans, nor try to persuade the Iranian regime to let go of such a damaging and harmful policy that puts countless Iranian-Americans at risk who travel back to Iran to visit relatives.

Instead, the most pressing priority for the Iran lobby—judging by the volume of press releases, statements, editorials, tweets, interviews and speeches—is the lifting of all economic sanctions against the Iranian regime, including all of those not included in the nuclear agreement and were originally imposed because of Iranian regime’s support of terrorism and abysmal human rights record.

The arguments being made by the Iran lobby, especially the NIAC, for lifting of economic sanctions still in place, such as restrictions on Iran’s use of US currency exchanges, resemble the kind of twisted pretzel logic you might find from an extremist that claims to be helping people as he beats them with a club.

One recent example is an editorial by Marashi on the self-publishing blog TopTopic (probably because no self-respecting mainstream publication could print it with a straight face), in which he makes the silly argument that the US is not in compliance with the noxious nuclear deal and is purposely dragging its feet because:

  • It is intentionally squeezing Iran because it has nothing better to do;
  • President Obama wants to protect Hillary Clinton from having to bear an unpleasant political cost of appearing friendly to a bloodthirsty regime widely untrusted by American voters; and
  • The US government is still fighting an internal battle between those committed to punishing Iran and those wanting to set it free.

It is an utterly inane position to advocate since it ignores the most basic and unavoidable truth about the Iranian regime which is compelling most Americans and their leaders to be remain wary of the mullahs in Tehran: the Iranian regime is simultaneously engaged in three wars, while grabbing dual citizens and trying them in secret courts, all during a human rights crackdown that abuses women, religious minorities, children and even gays.

About the only thing most Americans can agree on in this divided political season is that Iran should be restrained, not encouraged.

The sight of pallets full of cash delivered on midnight flights to buy the release of Americans left a sour taste that is hard to forget. The sight of American sailors made to kneel under the guns of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps soldiers was unforgettable.

The sight of Iranians hanged publicly almost on a daily basis, including women and children as young as 15 when convicted horrifies most Americans.

And yet, the Iran lobby does not tackle any of these issues. Instead, it focuses on trying to get the mullahs more cash. One might think NIAC’s fundraising budget is dependent on earning commissions for every billion raised for Iran’s coffers.

The fact that the Iran lobby ignores the almost daily pronouncements proving the regime’s true intentions demonstrates clearly it has no regard for the enormous human suffering being caused by the Iranian regime.

Take for example statements made by Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran’s Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison, an IRGC command front, who was quoted as saying in an Iranian state-controlled publication closely tied to the IRGC that is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran’s top mullah Ali Khamenei.

The IRGC “will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” according to Abnoush, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic.

“The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” he said.

According to Fox News, the military leader’s comments come as Iran is spending great amounts of money to upgrade its military hardware and bolster its presence throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran intends to spend billions to purchase U.S.-made planes that are likely to be converted for use in its air force.

Given these developments, it’s easier to understand the rationale for NIAC’s emphasis on lifting sanctions and it’s not about the poor Americans being held in Iranian prisons.

It’s about cash for Iran, plain and simple.

Not even the sham punishment of 135 lashes given to Saeed Mortazavi, former head of the regime’s Social Security, because of accusations of widespread financial violations and irregularities could cover from his past record as a former prosecutor who was responsible for the mass killings of detainees and political dissidents following the infamous 2009 protests over the stolen presidential election.

It seems in Tehran, you get punished for ripping off your fellow regime leaders, but not for killing innocent protestors.

Too bad the NIAC didn’t have anything to say about it.

Michael Tomlinson