Iran Lobby

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

The Clenched Fist of the Iran Regime

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The Clenched Fist of the Iran Regime

The Clenched Fist of the Iran Regime

The Wall Street Journal editorialized yesterday about the downfall of the hopes of backers of the Iran nuclear deal in a new, more moderate Iran opening up to the West in the wake of the landmark agreement. It even included a non-too slightly snarky aside about the anticipation the New York Times had about the potential of leading guided tours of the wonders of Iran.

Instead, the Journal rightly outlines the abrupt downward spiral the mullahs in Tehran have charted instead; most especially the spat of arrests the regime has undertaken targeting journalists, dissidents and most disturbing of all: American citizens.

“In recent days Tehran has arrested two U.S. citizens, bringing to five the number of Americans known to be under Iranian lock and key. They include Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who has spent nearly 500 days in prison. Former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati has been imprisoned since 2011 on espionage charges, and Saaed Abedini, a Muslim-born convert to Christianity, was arrested in 2012 on charges of leading an underground house-church movement,” the Journal said.

Interestingly though was the Journal’s insight into the arrest of Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-born American businessman who has been an outspoken advocate of closer U.S.-Iranian ties, even collaborating with Trita Parsi in help support the National Iranian American Council, one of the regime’s chief lobbying vehicles.

Namazi had even worked in the Iranian Housing Ministry under the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, now perceived to be a moderate, but widely considered a theological hardliner back in the day; all of which goes to prove that the Iran regime is undergoing the same ideological purges that marked the worst of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s.

“Some speculate that the arrests are part of Mr. Khamenei’s effort to underscore his regime’s ideological purity and beat back domestic calls for reform. But the Islamic Republic has been in the business of taking hostages since its beginning, no matter whether the president is a reputed moderate like current leader Hasan Rouhani, or a firebrand like predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” said the Journal.

“When it comes to the Islamic Republic, international goodwill is invariably met with contempt and cruelty. In the wake of the nuclear deal, this is a lesson the West will have to learn all over again,” it added.

The Journal’s lesson is plain to see now as the evidence is now overwhelming that for the mullahs, the nuclear deal isn’t worth the paper it was printed on, but the mullahs recognize correctly that the Obama administration is willing to overlook virtually any violations or aggressions by Iran in order to protect the appearance of preserving a historic foreign policy win.

The mullahs have also correctly calculated that the time remaining before U.S. presidential elections in 2016 literally amounts to a fire sale and they are racing to sweep anything and everything they can before the sale ends.

This includes a number of moves that have come to light further illustrating just how far Ali Khamenei and his fellow mullahs are willing to go to secure their goals.

The Guardian printed a story in which it tracked the recruitment, training and flow of Afghan refugees living in Iran and Syria by the regime and sent to die on Syrian battlefields.

“Iran is recruiting Afghan refugees to fight in Syria, promising a monthly salary and residence permits in exchange for what it claims to be a sacred endeavor to save Shia shrines in Damascus,” Dehghan writes. “The Fatemioun military division of Afghan refugees living in Iran and Syria is now the second largest foreign military contingent fighting in support of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, after the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.”

Horrifically enough, the Guardian revealed that the Iran regime was accepting Afghans below the age of 18. At least one 16-year-old Iran-based Afghan refugee was killed in Syria earlier this year. The allowance for child fighters is a tactic that both the Iran regime, ISIS and Al-Qaeda all share.

Most Iran-based Afghans, who are also Shia, are not going to Syria to risk their lives on religious grounds but because of the financial and stability benefits that their involvement will bring to them and their families. Nearly 1 million Afghans are registered as refugees in Iran but the country is believed to host at least 2 million more that are living there illegally.

In another sign of the growing provocations by the regime, Bahrain convicted five Bahrainis of conspiring with Iran to carry out attacks within the country. Bahrain charged that Tehran was trying to foment unrest in their country by providing training to two of the Bahrainis involved and communicating with the others through the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

This follows an incident last month in which Bahrain security forces uncovered a large bomb-making factory and arrested a number of suspects linked to the Revolutionary Guards.

All of which shows that not only there are no signs of moderation in Iran, but its moving more and more in the opposite direction.

By Michael Tomlinson

What the Taking of Another American by Iran Regime Tells Us

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What the Taking of Another American by Iran Regime Tells Us

What the Taking of Another American by Iran Regime Tells Us

The sudden and surprising arrest by Iran regime officials of Siamak Namazi raised the eyebrows of many veteran Iran watchers; not the least because Namazi has been an integral part of efforts to build a lobbying force in the U.S. used to support the regime’s political goals, namely passage of a just-completed nuclear agreement.

In fact, the ties between Namazi and Trita Parsi, the founder of the National Iranian American Council and leading lobbyist for the regime, have been well documented, all of which raised the question of why would regime leaders order the arrest of one of their own?

The very question indicates how wrong most analysts are about Iranian mullahs in the first place. Many people, including apparently Namazi, long assumed that if you towed the party line of the mullahs, you were always going to be in their good graces and in Namazi’s case, he hoped to reap the financial rewards that came from that association in the form of guiding foreign investment into Iran following the nuclear deal.

But what he failed to understand and what many others have failed to grasp even as they tried appeasing these same mullahs is that they are never going to allow anyone into their tight circle of control who does not follow their proscribed fundamentalist and extremist religious beliefs.

For the mullahs in Tehran, the coin of the realm is not just money; the constitution vests absolute authority with Ali Khamenei and his cadre of mullahs who oversee the judiciary, military and foreign affairs and vast tracts of the economy, while have an unrelaxing temptation for expansion of their authorities in to neighboring countries.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps wields disproportionate influence through its monopolistic control of entire industries such as telecommunications, petroleum, finance and agriculture. Iran’s theocracy controls planning of the economy and dispenses its meager rewards to the Iranian people, while reserving the bulk of the financial gains for its elites, their families and the military campaigns it funds overseas in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

For Namazi and Parsi and their fellow Iran lobbyists, the suddenness of the arrest was jarring, but it should have not comes as a complete surprise since the mullahs have long practiced the art of score-settling amongst their factions with sham trials, imprisonments and even executions.

But unlike what Parsi and his ilk would have the rest of the world believe, the fight in Iran’s leadership is not between “moderates” and “hardliners,” but in fact is between factions of corrupt mullahs bickering over the booty they rob from the Iranian people. The fact that every effort to promote a “moderate” faction within Iran has met with utter failure is indicative not of the lack of passion within the Iranian people for regime change, but rather the ruthless willingness of the mullahs to use deadly force against their own people to keep tight their grip on power.

Also since signing of the nuclear agreement, Khamenei has made it his mission to remind the world the he does not view adherence to the terms of the agreement to be beneficial to the regime, nor indispensable. In fact, in his mind, anything that compromises the extremist Islamic fanaticism is the antithesis of what the mullahs want. For Khamenei, getting a $150 billion check from unfrozen assets with no strings attached is the best possible alternative.

Khamenei is eager for the money in order to continue funding his vision of an expanding Islamic sphere of influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, but he does not want to jeopardize it with young Iranians clamoring for access to Snapchat on their iPhones while wearing clothes from Old Navy, which is why the arrest of Namazi, a putative supporter of the regime, tells us clearly that the regime intends to be the one calling the shots and not the other way around.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Turns on Its Own

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Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd. At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government. In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd.
At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government.
In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen, has been credited with helping found the Iran lobby including the creation of the National Iranian American Council alongside Trita Parsi as the primary vehicle for advocating for a nuclear agreement lifting economic sanctions on the regime.

The Daily Beast chronicled his family’s involvement as an “intellectual architect” for the NIAC as a pathway for empowering those within the regime whom he had a close relationship with and believed by helping secure an agreement it would boost his fortunes within the regime.

In the immortal words of Kevin Spacey who plays the scheming Frank Underwood on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” “We’re all victims of our own hubris at times.”

Truer words were never spoken about the Iran lobby because on the verge of reaping their perceived successes, they discover all they really are, are puppets for a regime of mullahs whose intent is only focused on preserving their own power.

That is because according to regime media reports, while visiting family in Tehran, Namazi was arrested by Revolutionary Guards Corp soldiers and tossed into the notorious Evin Prison.

There is an irony here on par with Alfred Nobel inventing dynamite and then creating the Nobel Peace Prize after his invention was used in war.

Namazi joins four other Americans who are being held hostage by the regime, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former Marine Amir Hekmati and the former FBI agent Robert Levinson.

According to a piece in American Thinker, Parsi and Namazi founded NIAC as a way to lobby for the removal of sanctions against the regime and promote its foreign policy while combatting anti-regime forces in the U.S.

Both Parsi and Namazi reportedly enjoyed close ties and access to Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, the regime’s president and foreign minister, with Parsi being seen traveling with and in close discussions with the regime delegation during nuclear talks.

Conspicuously, the NIAC have been silent on the issue, declining comment and social media feeds for Parsi and other NIAC staff is devoid of any mention of the arrest.

But Hassan Dai, editor of the Iranian American Forum who won a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Parsi, speculated that the arrest suggests a power struggle of sorts within the regime’s leadership.

Dai explained in an interview with Breitbart News that Namazi had consistently “lobbied in favor of a faction of the regime,” which upset the mullahs because it would only be acceptable to “lobby for the whole regime.”

The fight between the factions in Iran is a fight for “the best solution to preserve the regime,” he explained, adding that groups like NIAC have never sided with true “reformists,” but with people who wish to employ a different strategy to empower the regime, such as Rouhani and former President Akbar Rafsanjani.

Because Namazi and NIAC prefer one faction over the other, “they are undermining the Supreme Leader. They are undermining the Revolutionary Guard,” Dai explained. “When you lobby U.S. policymakers to remove sanctions against Iran with the rationale that it will help reform the regime, you undermine the Supreme Leader, because he wants them to accommodate to the regime now.”

The arrest of Namazi sends a message from Iran’s rulers that “Rouhani has no power,” Dai concluded. “He cannot even protect his own friend.”

Breitbart News further speculates – and rightly so – that the arrest pours cold water on the notion that securing the nuclear deal would empower “moderates” within the regime and help reform it. Evidence since agreeing to the nuclear contradicts that idea completely with the conviction of Rezaian, the test launch of an illegal ballistic missile and the launching of a new offensive in Syria alongside Russian forces.

The arrest of Namazi demonstrates that the leadership of the Iran regime is of one mind and firmly in the control of Ali Khamenei and his religious cohorts and that any idea of moderation within the regime is a pipe dream; which may go to explain why coming off of the NIAC’s recent leadership conference to celebrate the nuclear deal, Parsi’s Twitter feed was filled with posts condemning Saudi Arabia, a bitter enemy of Iran and locked in fighting in Yemen.

If Parsi doesn’t tow the mullahs’ line, he might find a different kind of reception party the next time he travels to Tehran and end up sitting next to his buddy Namazi.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Human Rights Report Puts Focus on Iran Regime

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Human Rights Report Puts Focus on Iran Regime

Human Rights Report Puts Focus on Iran Regime

Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran issued a new report saying that the Iran regime was on track to execute more than 1,000 people in 2015 in an unrelenting campaign of brutal human rights suppression that continues unabated after agreeing to a nuclear agreement that proponents said would shift the regime to a more moderate stance.

Calling it an “unprecedented assault on the right to life in Iran,” Shaheed described a surge in executions over the past year. He said Iran hanged nearly 700 people since January.

Shaheed said that within the past two weeks, the Islamic Republic violated international law by hanging two juvenile offenders. He added “there are dozens more waiting a similar fate on death row.”

According the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at the end of last year, at least 30 journalists were held in Iranian prisons, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. Others have been detained since, and in August state media accused a senior Wall Street Journal reporter who once served as a correspondent in Iran of conspiring against the government. The Journal called the claims “completely false, outlandish and irresponsible.”

Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an interview with the Associated Press, reporters often get targeted because they are “much easier to frame” as spies.

Additionally, in more signs of a brutal crackdown, the regime jailed and sentenced two Iranian poets. Fatemeh Ekhtesari, a practicing obstetrician, and Mehdi Mousavi, a trained doctor who teaches literature and poetry, were first arrested in December 2013, months after Hassan Rouhani took office and sentenced to 99 lashes apiece for shaking hands with members of the opposite sex. Ekhtesari received an 11½-year prison sentence, while Mousavi got nine years on charges ranging from propaganda against the state to “insulting sanctities,” as well as the lashings, according to PEN America, an organization promoting literature and freedom of speech.

“I think people thought with the nuclear deal, there would be sort of a bit of a thaw as well or a bit of an opening up,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, the director of Free Expression Programs at PEN America. “I think the judiciary is sort of pushing back and trying to make clear that there isn’t going to be that opening people were hoping for.”

Shaheed’s report detailed a grisly butcher’s bill of death by the regime:

  • Between Jan. 1 to Sept. 15 this year, Tehran hanged at least 694 people, the highest rate of executions under the regime in 25 years;
  • The bulk of the crimes committed by those executed were for non-violent, political or drug offenses;
  • By way of comparison, in the last year of Mohammad Khatami’s term as president in 2005, the regime carried out a total of 91 executions according to the report; nearly doubling in the first year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s term to 177 executions;
  • According to Shaheed, the Iran regime executes more people per capita than any other country on the planet.

In addition to drug crimes, Iranian law applies the death penalty for a range of offenses: from threats to “the security of the state” to “enmity towards God,” also known as moharebeh, to “insults against the memory of Imam Khomeini and against the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic,” according to the State Department’s 2014 human rights report on Iran. “Prosecutors frequently used moharebeh as a criminal charge against political dissidents and journalists, accusing them of struggling against the precepts of Islam and against the state that upholds those precepts.”

Shaheed said a “deeply flawed justice system” that violates international standards and national laws sits at the heart of Iran’s human rights troubles. He said he continues “to receive frequent, alarming reports” about the mistreatment of detainees and the use of torture to obtain confessions. Many of the accused lack access to defense lawyers.

The authorities, he said, have also refused to acknowledge rights for gay, lesbian, or transgender individuals, saying it is incompatible with sharia law. And authorities have imposed harsh sentences, including the death penalty, for posting articles on social media deemed offensive to the government. A semi-official news outlet reported that more than 480 people were flogged during the first two weeks of Ramadan for not fasting.

The regime refused comment on Shaheed’s report and in fact has consistently refused to allow entry into Iran by Shaheed or any member of his office to see first-hand the human rights abuses going on in Iran.

In fact, while Shaheed was issuing his report, Rouhani was holding forth with state-controlled media IRNA in a ceremony welcoming the new Spanish ambassador to Iran, saying he believed sanctions on the regime would be lifted as early as the end of this year, again contradicting assurances by the nuclear deal proponents that the sanctions removal would only come after the regime had met its obligations for dismantling its nuclear infrastructure.

Clearly the regime remains committed to its policy of public executions and cares not a whit about international opinion on the matter.

By Michael Tomlinson

Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

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Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

Halloween involves kids (and adults) firing up their imaginations to come up with costumes and then go knocking door to door seeking treats and getting the odd trick played on them maybe in a haunted house. For the Iran lobby, Halloween came a week early as the chief advocate, the National Iranian American Council, held its annual leadership conference this weekend.

It’s worth noting that the NIAC bills its event as a premier conference for the nation’s Iranian-American community, but its agenda and participants hardly represent the views and beliefs of the estimated one million Iranian-Americans living in the U.S.

In fact, the line-up of speakers at this year’s conference reads more like a line-up card of Iran regime boosters and potential business partners than any group seriously examining the daunting challenges remaining between the U.S. and Iran. What is even more amazing are the lack of any speakers who have first-hand experience with the abysmal human rights situation in Iran, nor were there any speakers offering views on the sizable opposition worldwide to the regime amongst the Iranian diaspora.

Among the highlights of this gallery of apologists and appeasers includes:

  • Bijan Khajehpour, who founded Atieh International and the related Atieh Bahar which employed NIAC staffers to serve as a conduit for directing foreign companies to invest into the regime through the access it provided to top regime officials who controlled most of Iran’s economy through a complex web of shadow companies. Atieh was the subject of an in-depth piece in The Daily Beast on its start and close relationship with leading supporters of the regime and how it profited from those ties and in advocating for a lifting of sanctions against Iran;
  • Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund which was the largest funder of the lobbying campaign in support of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions against the regime. It alone provided NIAC with at $150,000 for its advocacy work on behalf of the nuclear deal; not including money given by its staff. Commentary Magazine poured through tax records to glean the wide scope of Ploughshares giving to groups working on behalf of the regime’s cause; and
  • Alan Eyre, the U.S. State Department’s Persian-language spokesman who came under fire recently for promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy sites demonizing American Jewish groups, as well as postings on his personal social media praising the regime’s controversial Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani according to the Washington Free Beacon. Eyre also posted links to Lobelog, a well-known blog dedicated to supporting the regime’s key messages.

The conference also featured several speakers who are actively seeking business deals within the regime including: Ned Lamont, chairman of Lamont Digital Systems; Jay Pelosky, a self-described advisor on emerging markets who recently visited Iran; and Amir Handjani, president of PG International Commodity Trading Services, a leading importer of agricultural commodities in the Iranian market.

We can’t resist one dig at Reza Marashi of NIAC who called the gathering the “world cup of Iranian-Americans.”

One interesting tidbit were comments made by Dr. Farideh Farhi who lamented the fact the nuclear deal had not led to substantial changes in U.S. policy towards the regime, but failed to note the swift shifts in Iranian policy towards the rest of the world in the rapid buildup of its military in Syria and launching of a new ballistic missile in violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions; both provocative acts.

This was followed by a tweet by Trita Parsi, NIAC’s head honcho, who described comments made by Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Mehdi Hasan, a commentator for Al Jazeera’s English broadcast, as saying about the panic from neighboring Arab nations about the nuclear deal: “If someone panics, you slap them in the face, you don’t indulge them.”

An appropriate comment since it neatly encapsulates the Iran lobby’s response to concerns over what the Iran regime will do now in the wake of the nuclear agreement. The recent rise in belligerent military action, coordination with Russia in blasting Syrian rebels back to the Stone Age and the conviction of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian all point to a slide into anarchy which has even alarmed Democratic lawmakers who initially supported the nuclear deal, but now have begun offering up new legislation designed to keep the regime in check.

The NIAC conference was predictable in celebrating its perceived win with the nuclear deal and the effort now to safeguard potential foreign investment after “Implementation Day” on December 15 when the U.S. will pave the way by lifting economic sanctions and allow Iran to rejoin the world of international commerce.

But the conference also revealed the biggest weaknesses of the lobby which was its inability or unwillingness to meet the most troublesome aspects of the Iran regime head-on; namely it horrific human rights record which leaves a deep and wide trail for the world’s media to follow.

With every arrest, every beating, every public hanging and every denunciation of a minority religious or ethnic group, the regime weakens any argument the lobby can make and increases the pressure on groups such as the NIAC to answer basic questions of “why aren’t you speaking out against the killing of X group?”

Which is why the NIAC conference was so focused on economic issues since the regime is desperate to not only get its hands on the estimated $150 billion in frozen assets to help pay off its military obligations in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, but is equally anxious to bring in foreign investment to help prop up an economy devastated by gross mismanagement and corruption by regime officials.

By Laura Carnahan

 

The Ongoing Appeasement of the Iran Regime

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The Ongoing Appeasement of the Iran Regime

The Ongoing Appeasement of the Iran Regime

During the run up towards the completion of negotiations over the nuclear agreement with the Iran regime, the Obama administration and the Iran lobby likened it to the most significant foreign policy issue of our time. The words used by proponents in advocating the deal included “historic,” “transformational,” “ground breaking,” “momentous,” “consequential” and “important.”

You almost thought Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council and chief cheerleader for the regime, had a word-a-day calendar on his desk with new synonyms for “historic.”

The fact that proponents of the deal characterized the choices as being between “war” and “peace” helped to get the agreement passed, but it also gave the Iran regime the opening to hold the West linguistic hostages since by framing the agreement in that manner, supporters found themselves beholden to the mullahs in Tehran to the extent no matter what they did, supporters of the deal were going to have to cover for them in order to keep the agreement alive.

This leverage cleared the way for the continuing acts of appeasement being afforded to the mullahs in the run up towards implementing the agreement. The perception of needing to keep this deal alive quickly became more important than addressing how much the Iran regime might cheat and what to do in response if the mullahs did cheat.

Two recent developments made that appeasement abundantly clear.

The first was the completion of a secret side agreement between the Iran regime and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the arm of the United Nations Security Council responsible for inspections and compliance of nuclear issues.

The IAEA has worked for the past decade to gain access to regime nuclear facilities, its scientists and technicians, as well as documentation to ascertain the full scope and nature of Iran’s nuclear program. It has been stymied and stonewalled at every turn by the regime.

Beyond the obfuscation by the regime, it is imperative to any future compliance to the nuclear agreement that the IAEA establish a baseline of where Iran’s nuclear program stands. Without it, there is no way to make comparisons to see if the regime is indeed cheating.

The IAEA “is committed under the deal to release a report by year-end about the status of Iran’s alleged weaponization work. U.S. officials over the weekend said the IAEA report would have no bearing on moves by the international community to lift sanctions,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

“That final assessment, which the IAEA is aiming to complete by December 15th, is not a prerequisite for implementation day,” a senior U.S. official said Saturday. “We are not in a position to evaluate the quality…of the data. That is between Iran and the IAEA.”

The irony here is that the U.S. is basing its decision to move ahead with implementing the agreement with the regime on the findings of the IAEA inquiry, but at the same time is not going to evaluate the veracity of those findings. In essence, the U.S. and other nations will simply shrug and say “we believe you” even if Iran provides no information or complete access as per the agreement.

So on December 15th, if the IAEA certifies Iran as being in compliance even though it has no tangible proof the regime is in compliance, the political pressure will be such that the IAEA will rubberstamp the report and allow implementation to move forward.

As Armin Rosen writes in Business Insider: “In the process, the US has essentially decided that the investigation of past nuclear-weapons work, and the state of current Iranian weaponization expertise, is nonbinding on a treaty specifically meant to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

If it wasn’t such a serious issue, it would be Orwellian in nature.

The second issue was the recent test firing of a new ballistic missile by the regime which violated a UN ban on development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. The ban is tied to the nuclear agreement and sets an eight year ban on ballistic missiles after the agreement is implemented.

The U.S., Britain, France and Germany called on UN Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee to take action over the missile test by Tehran. Diplomats have said it was possible for the sanctions committee to blacklist additional Iranian individuals or entities if it determined that the missile launch had breached the U.N. ban. However, they said Russia and China, which have opposed the sanctions on Iran’s missile program, might block any such moves.

All of which sets up the most obvious question facing everyone. What if Iran cheats? What should the response be?

Even though the U.S. asked the Security Council to take action over the missile test, U.S. officials said in the next breath that the missile test itself didn’t violate the nuclear deal.

Let that sink in for a second. We sent a letter calling for action for a violation of the UN ban, but in the same moment said the launch did not violate the nuclear agreement. So we are scolding the mullahs, but also letting them off the hook.

It’s a bipolar approach to foreign policy worthy of analysis by a psychiatrist.

In both cases, the Iran regime is clearly acting to breach terms of not only the nuclear agreement, but existing sanctions that will remain in effect after the nuclear deal goes into effect and the repercussions of those violations appear to be non-existent or minimal. This does nothing to deter the mullahs and only empowers them into believing they can continue to press their advantage.

By Michael Tomlinson

As Iran Regime Approves Nuke Deal, It Bulks Up Militarily

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As Iran Regime Approves Nuke Deal, It Bulks Up Militarily

A new Iranian precision-guided ballistic missile is launched as it is tested at an undisclosed location October 11, 2015. REUTERS/farsnews.com/Handout via ReutersThe Iran regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, added his tepid support to the nuclear deal that the regime’s Parliament also approved, clearing the pathway for the regime to get its payday of $150 billion plus billions more in foreign investment and economic activity.

But nothing is ever simple with the inscrutable mullahs of Tehran as Khamenei added the caveat that all sanctions had to be lifted or Iran would walk away from the deal. This reinforces the key stumbling block he placed in front of negotiators when he maintained that the regime had to first receive the benefits of lifted sanctions before it would begin any dismantling of its nuclear infrastructure.

The chicken and egg argument he poses is deliberately cloaked in the obscurity it needs to allow both sides proof of his adherence to the terms of the deal from both sides perspective, while allowing the wiggle room Khamenei wants to set the implementation of the agreement any way he sees fit.

This is readily apparent in the deluge of provocative acts the regime has undertaken since the agreement was signed, including:

  • The conviction of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian on trumped up spying charges and then offering to swap him for convicted Iranian arms smugglers;
  • The test firing of a new ballistic missile violating United Nations Security Council resolutions prohibiting development of new nuclear-capable missiles;
  • Coordination of a military alliance with Russia through a mission to Moscow by Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in violation of UN travel restrictions; and
  • Launching of a new offensive in Syria against forces opposing the Assad regime including the use of thousands of Iranian fighters and proxies from Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias from Iraq and Afghan mercenaries.

These acts put to a lie the claims long made by the Iran lobby during the nuclear negotiations that the regime was only interested in becoming a moderating force within the region. Led by the National Iranian American Council, those same supportive voices for the regime have been struck deaf and dumb in the face of these new violations by the regime.

The test firing of the new ballistic missile was especially provocative and so concerning that the U.S., Great Britain, France and Germany called on the UN Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee to take action over the violation.

In a letter obtained by Reuters containing details on the launch, the nations said the ballistic missile was “inherently capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.”

Is it too late to say “We told you so?”

Even now, news media that once editorialized in support of the nuclear deal have reversed course in noting the worrisome developments by the Iran regime.

“But the Syrian offensive is certainly more than message-sending. If successful, it could eliminate the chance to construct a moderate, secular alternative to the Assad regime, and send hundreds of thousands more refugees across Syria’s borders. It was just such aggression that Mr. Obama acknowledged might be a byproduct of the nuclear deal — and that he vowed to resist. If he remains passive as Maj. Gen. Soleimani’s forces press forward, both Iranian and U.S. allies across the Middle East will conclude that there will be no U.S. check on an Iranian push for regional hegemony,” said the Washington Post in an editorial.

There was also a move by 11 Senate Democrats to push the Obama administration to respond forcefully to the regime’s missile test, pressing the case that a response would set a precedent for how the U.S. would react to any future violations of the nuclear deal.

“We are concerned about the military significance of this test, which is part of a long-term Iranian program that seeks to improve the range and capabilities of its ballistic missiles,” the senators wrote. “We are also convinced that the launch is an attempt to test the world’s will to respond to Iranian violations of its international commitments.”

It is worth noting that several of these same Senators had voted in favor of the deal.

Joshua Keating at Slate raised a similar concern about the fallout from the nuclear deal saying “it certainly doesn’t bode well for the optimistic notion that the deal could lead to U.S.-Iranian security cooperation beyond the narrow areas laid out in the agreement and it certainly doesn’t look good for the administration. Iranian leaders were presumably well aware of this.”

This understanding of the regime’s intentions puts into perspective the potential use of the billions of dollars about to be released into the control of the mullahs and as the International Business Times puts it:

“Pushed by a combination of its own outdated military equipment and the formidable military buying power of its oil-rich Middle East rivals, analysts said Tehran is urgently plotting to upgrade and replace its own antiquated defense technology in favor of Russian- and Chinese-made military equipment by spending oil revenue that’s been trapped in an assortment of banks worldwide for the last three years.”

“Those options range from providing Hezbollah fighters, who are supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war, to boosting aerospace efforts, including space-based platforms such as satellites, to advance its military into the 21st century,” according to Ariel Cohen, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, an international affairs think tank based in Washington, D.C.

It is clear that the foxes let loose by the nuclear deal are now coming home to hunt.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

The Price of Failure in Syria for Iran Regime

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The Price of Failure in Syria for Iran Regime

The Price of Failure in Syria for Iran Regime

With the Iran regime’s all-in move in Syria through the commitment of thousands of additional troops, the loss of top commanders killed in fighting by Syrian rebels and the new alliance with Russia, the mullahs in Tehran have painted themselves into something of a corner.

The most obvious price to be paid by the regime will be whether or not a military campaign against the broad coalition of rebels, Islamic groups and secular opponents actually succeeds or fails. If it fails, the price will be extraordinarily high for Tehran. It will deal a crushing blow to the carefully crafted image of military supremacy the regime cultivates and it will send its leadership into an inevitable round of finger pointing and blame.

Failure in Syria will also carry a financial price tag since the regime’s previous support in propping up the Assad regime has tallied over $15 billion so far and with the stepped up reinforcements and new offensive, the costs are likely to spiral into the upper atmosphere. Depending on how long the fight takes, that $150 billion the mullahs are eager to get their hands on as the result of the nuclear deal could shrink very quickly.

The stakes for the regime are unquestionably high as it has put Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of its Quds Forces, at the frontlines to direct Shiite forces from three countries including Iraq, Lebanon and Afghan proxies in what is shaping up as a major assault on the rebel stronghold of Aleppo.

The fact that Russia has been bombing rebel forces and not areas controlled by ISIS, and that Iran is targeting Aleppo, a strategic economic hub controlled by rebel forces early in the civil war, tells us all we need to know about the priorities of the regime.

The fact that Soleimani, who only recently was a frequent visitor to the battlefields in Iraq where victories for the regime grew scarce as the war stagnated, was shifted over to Syria shows the changing priorities of the Iran regime as it struggles to find a military victory anywhere in the conflicts it has started.

Just as its fight in Iraq and ground to a halt, the Houthi rebels Iran supports in Yemen have been thrown back under the combined assault of an air and ground campaign backed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

As the fighting in Syria went badly for Iranian-backed forces, the mullahs sent Soleimani to Moscow to beg for Russian intervention and have set up this new offensive as a last-ditch effort to salvage any kind of good military news.

Kitaeb Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite militia designated a terrorist organization by the United States, sent 1,000 troops to Aleppo last weekend, said a senior official with the militia. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing orders that the deployment not be made public yet according to the Washington Post.

He said the men were part of the group’s elite forces, which have experience from fighting the United States in Iraq. They have done previous rotations in Syria, he said.

“They were sent based on a demand from Soleimani,” he said. “He specifically requested them for the launch of the operation of Aleppo, which is going to be led by Kitaeb directly under the supervision of Soleimani.”

The militia official said the Syrian army would have a “minor role.”

The rapid ramp up in Iranian aggressiveness with the offensive in Syria, launching of new ballistic missiles and conviction of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian have all taken on a certain manic quality as the regime attempts to literally spit out as much vitriol as it can in the shortest amount of time.

It’s a stunning period of chest beating at a time when the regime would be normally seen celebrating what it touts as a victory in its recently completed nuclear negotiations, but this almost bipolar behavior demonstrates the deep schism in regime politics as the religious forces headed by Ali Khamenei exert their control over the political puppets of leaders such as Hassan Rouhani. In many ways, the militant nature of the regime’s recent actions is a reaffirmation that there are no such a thing as moderates within the Iranian regime.

This idea was reinforced when an influential Iranian lawmaker delivered inflammatory new accusations on Monday against Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post’s Tehran reporter convicted of espionage this month, asserting that he had plotted with seditionists.

The New York Times reported that in an interview with Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency, the lawmaker, Javad Karimi-Qoddusi, also sought to depict Rezaian as a nefarious spy who had used his credentials as a journalist as a ruse to gain insights that would be valuable to the Iranian government’s enemies.”

It’s indicative of the deep-seated paranoia that runs throughout the regime’s government and why any agreement negotiated with Iran is doomed to failure as there is very little rational thought within the top ranks of the regime’s leadership.

By Michael Tomlinson

Adoption Day for Nuclear Deal Brings Uncertainty

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Adoption Day for Nuclear Deal Brings Uncertainty

Adoption Day for Nuclear Deal Brings Uncertainty

Sunday marked what has been dubbed “Adoption Day” and we’re not talking about lost puppies. This weekend marked the start of the of what the Obama administration and other members of the P5+1 called the start of showing readiness to the Iran regime in lifting economic sanctions that have held the mullahs in Tehran in check for the past decade.

In a memo, President Obama directed the secretaries of state, treasury, commerce and energy “to take all necessary steps to give effect to the U.S. commitments with respect to sanctions described in (the Iran deal).”

This will be followed by “Implementation Day” on December 15 in which the U.S. and its partners will begin the actual process of lifting sanctions against the regime after certification by the International Atomic Energy Agency that the regime has lived up to its commitments to curb its nuclear program.

For the Iran regime, Sunday also marks the “put up or shut up” moment for the mullahs in which the regime will have to begin the process of dismantling parts of its nuclear program, including decommissioning nearly 15,000 centrifuges, converting its Arak heavy-water reactor so that it will produce less plutonium and reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium 98%. U.S. officials expect it will take about six months.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told Iranian state television Sunday that the country would begin taking its next steps under the deal—including reducing the number of uranium centrifuges in operation, and removing the reactor core at the Arak facility—in short order, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But the real question is will the regime move aggressively forward in order to recoup frozen assets and foreign investments needed to stave off economic disaster from corrupt mismanagement at the hands of the mullahs, or will the regime simply slow walk changes while providing its usual propaganda lip-service, supported by loyal Iran lobbyists such as the National Iranian American Council, and stonewall any real changes?

Already we’ve seen efforts by the Obama administration and United Nations to provide some cover for the regime even as the mullahs have undertaken provocative steps in the wake of adopting the nuclear deal.

The most notable action has been the military buildup in Syria, including the mobilization and commitment of Iranian troops directly into the fight and coordination in drawing in Russia to fight the fights the Iran regime has been unable to win so far in support of the Assad regime.

This has been followed by the reported conviction of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian for espionage (ironically announced on the exact same number of days Iran held the 52 American embassy hostages), and the launching of a new ballistic missile design that has been denounced as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions banning the Iran regime from pursuing ballistic missile designs that could be used to deliver nuclear payloads.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power stopped short of any confrontational rhetoric, affirming Wednesday that the test violated a U.N. Security Council resolution “if the facts are as we believe them to be.” Iran has always considered such resolutions to be invalid and has violated their provisions numerous times since they were adopted in 2010. The Iranian government also denies the ballistic activity violates the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the nuclear agreement.

The fact that the U.S. recognizes that the regime has already violated the UN agreement, yet opts not to confront the regime is indicative of what lies in store for us as the regime continues to make its aggressive and increasingly desperate moves throughout the Middle East.

The regime’s actions are remarkably similar to moves made by North Korea as it first agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program, only to continue advancing it in secret until it tested fully functional nuclear weapons in spite of successive efforts to sanction North Korea after the fact with no effect.

The mullahs in Tehran have watched and learned what Pyongyang did in steering tis nuclear program past international sanctions, which may be why Iran unveiled to the world video of once-secret underground missile bunkers where it stored its arsenal of mobile missile launchers.

The most significant aspects of the revelation by the regime are that: a) no one knew about these secret bunkers; and b) that the bunkers hint at the size and scale of secret military facilities that have hardened against attack by being buried as much as 500 meters under a mountain range.

Why this is important is that it basically invalidates significant sections of the nuclear agreement dealing with limited inspections only of “known” facilities and not allowing inspections of military sites. It also puts into proper perspective the nefarious nature of the regime as it hides most aspects of its military capabilities.

According to the Daily Beast, “while details about the alleged 500-meters-down subterranean base are few and difficult to confirm, the bunker and others like it could upset the delicate military balance between the United States and Iran as the two countries move forward on an agreement to limit Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for a gradual easing of economic and military sanctions targeting the Islamic regime.

“That’s because any facility a quarter mile below ground is way too deep for America’s existing bunker-busting bombs to directly destroy in the event Iran reneges on the nuke deal and tries to put atomic warheads on its long-range rockets,” the Daily Beast reported.

Then again, given the regime’s penchant for hyperbole, bluster and outright fabrication in order to make itself seem more militarily formidable than it really is, all of this could simply be fakery.

That begs the question of whether or not the U.S. and its allies should be making the $150 billion bet that the regime is a sheep in wolves’ clothing.

The people that know the regime best, the dissidents and members of the resistance movement worldwide, should be the ones we should be taking our cues from and in their view, the nuclear deal has only emboldened the Iran regime in its march towards oppression.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Iran Regime About to Go All Out in Syria

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Iran Regime About to Go All Out in Syria

Iran Regime About to Go All Out in Syria

“This agreement could be the key that unlocks solutions to some of the most intractable conflicts in the Middle East. The region suffers from a diplomacy deficit and the nuclear deal paves the way for an increase in dialogue and diplomacy on a whole set of issues – which is critical for stability in the Middle East,” said Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, August 27, 2015.

“Iran has sent hundreds of troops into northern and central Syria in the first such open deployment in the country’s civil war, joining fighters from its Lebanese ally Hezbollah in an offensive against rebels and taking advantage of cover from Russia’s air campaign, a regional official and Syrian activists said Wednesday.

“Their arrival is almost certain to fuel a civil war in Syria which has already claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and displaced half of the country’s population. It also highlights the far-reaching goals of Russia’s military involvement in Syria,” from the Associated Press, October 14, 2015.

You have to admire the chutzpah of Trita Parsi to shovel the kind of fragrant stuff he does only to be proven wrong time and time again, which begs the question of why anyone ever listens to him.

As the AP reports that upwards of 1,500 Iranian regime fighters begin arriving in Damascus, the picture in Syria is becoming increasingly bleak as combatants from Iran, Syria, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, U.S. and pretty much from every country in the European Union now rush in for what promises to be the start of a new phase of bloody sectarian conflict.

What is even more impressive about Parsi’s comment only two months ago was that he held out the promise of diplomacy when the Iran regime in fact had absolutely no interest in diplomacy. Instead, the mullahs are committed to a path of military conquest in an all-or-nothing scenario.

Whether intentionally or not, Syria has quickly shaped up to becomes the ultimate bellwether of the ability of the Iran regime to stay alive because of Assad falls, Russia is likely to take a dim view of Iranian promises since Syria contains the only naval base Russia has in the Mediterranean. The loss of Syria would also prove conclusively the mullahs have no ability to expand their dominion beyond using the kinds of terror tactics it has relied on for the past three decades.

The buildup comes as Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian said on Tuesday that Tehran was working with Russia on drafting a peace plan for Syria. But Western powers, and many countries in the Middle East, say Assad must go as a precondition for peace.

Some peace plan, it just requires thousands of Iranian troops to make it work.

But the pending offensive in Syria also serves the Iran regime’s purposes by diverting attention from its other activities throughout the region as Tom Watson points out in The Independent:

“Events in Syria have, however, distracted attention away from Iran’s activities elsewhere in the region. Recently the Iranians were caught supplying weapons to Houthis rebels in Yemen, something Iran has long denied doing. Meanwhile, as a new report for The Henry Jackson Society: ‘Tehran’s Servants’ by Jonathan Spyer demonstrates, Iran has taken control of a vast force of Shia militias in Iraq that are now dominating much of the country. Western leaders may welcome these activities for helping to drive back IS, but no one should be under any illusions about just how extreme these Iranian-backed militias really are,” Watson writes.

“A glance across what is already a very troubled region endlessly turns up signs of Iranian involvement. Tehran has exploited the turmoil to advance its own hegemonic ambitions. It is doing exactly the same with the void left by Obama’s retreat from the world stage. Even as the Iranians look set to adopt the nuclear agreement, the Islamic Republic’s actual conduct rather suggests that the regime in Iran remains far from being a friendly or benign force in the world,” he added.

But why the rush by the regime in so many places around the world at once? The answer is simple: time is the enemy of the mullahs.

A presidential race in the U.S. will usher in what will most likely be a new president un-beholden to the nuclear agreement, and a new Congress eager to pass more sanction legislation against the regime on the wave of American public opinion polls showing vast dissatisfaction with Iran.

Military moves made by the regime have backfired in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and seen their allies in Hezbollah, Houthis and Shiite militias stall and even retreat from gains made earlier this year.

Ali Khamenei’s advanced age and recent health problems add to the uncertainty as does the surge in anti-regime protests that have now stretched into their third year and reveal a vast amount of discontent within the Iranian people.

The mullahs are on the clock and the big push in Syria is their wild last attempt to push all their chips on the table in a desperate bid to hang on.

Now if only Trita Parsi would tell us the offensive is just a new form of diplomacy then the cha  rade would be complete.

Michael Tomlinson