Iran Lobby

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

No Surprise the Iran Regime Lies

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Archived documents revealed proves Iran had a nuclear weaponry program

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu presented findings from a secret nuclear archive in Iran-April 30, 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a televised address that was part news conference, part reality show and part TED talk, in which he revealed a trove of over 100,000 files and 180 CDs full of data allegedly from the Iranian regime’s “atomic archive” detailing its program to design and build nuclear weapons in a program code named “Amad,” which ended in 2003.

The revelations in and of themselves were not too surprising since the Iranian resistance movement originally revealed the existence of the nuclear program and has been regularly exposing regime’s nuclear activities including revealing secret military sites where the regime conducted tests for high explosive detonators.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the leading dissident organization, has held its own press conferences to unveil smuggled documents, videos and photos of the regime’s nuclear program so what Netanyahu unveiled demonstrated a flair for showmanship, but didn’t shake the earth with new information.

But what was underscored is the simple truth that seems to have eluded many news organizations who were taken in by the PR push by the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, which is that the regime has consistently lied about its nuclear program.

During the run up towards the Iran nuclear deal, the NIAC always maintained that Iran was not actively building towards a nuclear weaponization program but was instead building a civilian nuclear program. It tried to justify the weak inspections regimen by contending the Iranian regime wasn’t pursuing a bomb anyway, but the agreement would ensure that one could be postponed by a decade or longer.

Since the agreement didn’t include inspections of Iranian military sites, those assurances could never be fully realized and the Iranian resistance movement and Netanyahu’s disclosures only verified what was arguable one of the worst kept secrets that Iran was in fact trying to build a bomb, but somehow that past coverup never was called out as a reason not to trust verification by the regime under the deal.

The most explicit example of that conundrum was in the clean-up of Parchin facility before international inspectors could visit the site in 2015. Classified satellite images obtained by the U.S. government showed bulldozers and heavy machinery working at the site which was used by the regime as part of its nuclear program.

Of course, NIAC issued a statement by Trita Parsi that skirted the issue of Iranian lies and instead focused on the one thin shred of hope it has left before President Trump decides whether or not to decertify Iranian compliance with the deal by the May 12th deadline.

“Anyone familiar with the history of Iran’s nuclear program or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will not be surprised by allegations that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program fifteen years ago. Those well-known concerns were the reason why the international community negotiated an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program and subject it to intrusive international inspections,” Parsi said.

Unfortunately, Parsi was one of the key advocates for ignoring the Islamic state’s penchant for boldly lying about its nuclear program and urging the rest of the world to simply trust and believe in Iranian “moderation.”

Three years later we know now that Iran merely used the nuclear deal as a tool to gain access to billions in badly needed cash to save its military adventures in Syria, as well as launch its ballistic missile program.

While it didn’t come as a surprise that the mullahs lie, it was a useful reminder moving forward that Iran has to be held to a different standard, akin to North Korea which broke every international agreement it entered into until President Trump decided to play hardball.

Again, the NIAC tries to stoke war fears in order to dissuade public opinion from taking harsh action against the Iranian regime.

“Amid an already ruinous regional proxy war in the Middle East, a war against Iran could be even more disastrous for global security than the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Iran is nearly four times the size of Iraq, with influence in military conflicts from Syria to Yemen and with missiles capable of striking U.S. ships and bases in the region. Bombing cannot erase Iran’s nuclear know-how and would only empower those in Iran eager to obtain a nuclear deterrent. Moreover, it would set the region aflame and draw the U.S. into a prolonged quagmire that would cost American blood and treasure and set U.S. security back decades,” said NIAC’s Ryan Costello in a statement.

It’s remarkable how many misconceptions are in that one paragraph. First and foremost, he neglects to mention that the Iranian regime is the only one responsible for the “ruinous” proxy war engulfing the region through its support and control of the terrorist group Hezbollah and its use in Syria.

It is gratifying though for Costello to admit Iran has developed a ballistic missile capability aimed directly at U.S. military bases but falls flat on his face in supposing the U.S. aim is to fight a war with Iran.

If anything, President Trump has been an outspoken opponent to using U.S. troops in the Middle East, being a frequent and harsh critic of President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

President Trump has made it clear that his desire is to use the punitive power of economic sanctions which brought Iran to the bargaining table in the first place before the giveaways began under the Obama administration to appease the mullahs.

The threat of war doesn’t come from the U.S., it comes from Tehran and the mullahs there for are becoming increasingly desperate to hold onto their power.

What NIAC won’t tell you is that it isn’t worried about the threat of war, but the threat of renewed economic sanctions coming at a time when the regime is as weak and vulnerable as it has ever been. The prospect of regime change under those conditions is what terrifies Parsi and Costello and their comrades in arms.

Laura Carnahan

Mike Pompeo Wastes No Time Focusing on Iran Regime

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Mike Pompeo Wastes No Time Focusing on Iran Regime

Pompeo meets with Saudi officials on his first trip as the new Secretary of States, April 2018

Fresh off his Senate confirmation despite a desperate effort by the Iran lobby to torpedo it, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo kicked off a whirlwind trip overseas with stops at a NATO summit in Brussels, Saudi Arabia and Israel in which he put the Iranian regime front and center of U.S. foreign policy moving forward.

The turnaround from the Obama administration’s attitude towards the Iranian regime is startling and badly needed. Under the previous administration, the focus of making the Iran nuclear deal the centerpiece of its foreign policy achievements drove out all other considerations.

Iranian regime’s long and brutal history of human rights violations was largely ignored as an inconvenient truth. Iran’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism was overlooked and its threats to its neighbors were glossed over by measly promises of “moderation” that never came to pass.

If hindsight is 20/20, then in the three years since the deal was struck, the world has seen Iran’s true colors and it’s largely consisted of red for the blood spilled and black for the charred remains of cities and villages blasted into oblivion in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

To say the world became a much more dangerous place with the rise of Islamic extremism coupled with the outflow of Iranian money supporting terrorist groups is a gross understatement.

And yet, the Obama administration held on to the hope that things would get better, if nothing else because it couldn’t stand to admit that it made a colossal mistake in the approving of the nuclear deal without any conditions on inspection of Iranian regime military sites, its ballistic missile program or meddling in the affairs of its neighbors.

The Trump administration hasn’t been under illusions about Iran’s role in destabilizing activities and has correctly called the mullahs out for their role as the center of troubles in the Middle East. Even more fortunate, this administration frankly doesn’t care much about its perceived public image or the goodwill of academics, television analysts or armchair foreign policy wonks.

Under Pompeo and new national security advisor John Bolton, this administration has been blunt and to the point; a shock to the system of typically mild-mannered diplomacy practiced over the past decade.

Pompeo kicked off his first full day as secretary of state this past Friday at a NATO summit for foreign ministers in Brussels in which he said it was “unlikely” the president would remain in the Iran nuclear deal after the May 12th deadline unless European leaders agreed to a “substantial fix” addressing the president’s concerns.

“Absent a substantial fix, absent overcoming the flaws of the deal, he [Trump] is unlikely to stay in that deal,” Pompeo said.

While President Trump has met with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in two visits in which both pressed him to remain in the deal, the president has made it clear what his conditions are to stay in the agreement. The diplomatic ball is now firmly in the hands of European and Iranian negotiators.

But beyond the nuclear agreement, Pompeo continued on to Iranian rival Saudi Arabia to make clear the U.S. position that now views Iranian regime as the greatest threat to regional stability.

Speaking to reporters in Saudi Arabia, Pompeo said the multi-party agreement reached in 2015 to curb Tehran’s nuclear program did not do enough to contain the Islamic Republic. “In fact, Iran has only behaved worse since the deal was approved,” he said.

Secretary Pompeo, cited Iranian regime’s support for the “murderous” government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and also accused the country of arming Houthi rebels in Yemen who have repeatedly targeted Saudi cities with ballistic missiles — a charge denied by Tehran.

“Iran destabilizes this entire region,” Pompeo said, standing alongside his Saudi counterpart in Riyadh. “It is indeed the greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world, and we are determined to make sure it never possesses a nuclear weapon.”

That thematic was carried to Israel as Pompeo repeated his talking points while meeting with Israeli officials.

The trip highlighted the forming of a new alliance in the Middle East opposed to Iran’s expansion making strange bedfellows of traditional foes in Saudi Arabia and Israel, along with the Gulf states, many of which have been on the receiving end of Iranian machinations to stir up unrest with protestors and terrorist acts.

The bluntness of the Trump administration has turned the tables on the mullahs who now are the ones on the proverbial hot seat and have to make the decision on whether or not to stay in the deal by acquiescing to the U.S. demands.

While the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, has worked mightily in an effort to portrays the president’s tough talk as a pathway to war with Iran, the reality has been a clear definition of the expectations for Iranian compliance moving forward and failure of the deal rests squarely with the mullahs in Tehran and nowhere else.

There is no small irony that the discussions taking place now are not about what concessions the U.S. must give to Iran to preserve the nuclear deal, but rather what will the Iranian regime do to stay in a deal that it needs more than the U.S.

The inescapable fact right now confronting the mullahs and Hassan Rouhani is that Iran is a basket case of a nation with a free-falling currency, stagnant economy, dwindling foreign cash reserves and beset with civil unrest and protests on an almost daily basis.

The regime needs the deal badly in order to hang on to any kind of ability to convince the world that it’s indeed a reformed nation, a fiction that has served it well the past few years but has become an outright lie.

Just as North Korea has promised to decommission its nuclear test site and reactor, the president’s tough approach may soon yield the same dividends with Iran.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Ineffectiveness Reaches New Lows

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Iran Lobby Ineffectiveness Reaches New Lows

Iran Lobby Ineffectiveness Reaches New Lows

For the past several weeks, the Iran lobby has mounted a massive effort to try and dissuade the Senate from confirming former CIA chief Mike Pompeo as the next secretary of state, as well as opposing the installation of former UN ambassador John Bolton as the new national security advisor.

This included the usual suspects such as National Iranian American Council staffers such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi, as well as NIAC Action head Jamal Abdi busy issuing press statements and drafting editorials and giving interviews to anyone who would bother listening to them.

Gone though are the heady days during the Obama administration when the Iran lobby was part of the vaunted “echo chamber” pushing for passage of the Iran nuclear deal and gaining appearances on mainstream programs such as CNN.

This latest effort to alter the trajectory of President Trump’s latest cabinet additions to his foreign policy team died a quiet death amidst a dearth of any appreciable news coverage of the Iran lobby’s messaging.

Long gone are the days when Parsi could command prime editorial space in major newspapers. Instead, the complaints and whining of the NIAC are relegated to progressive blogs and academic journals.

Their complaints were centered on the same old, refrain warning of the Trump administration’s misguided actions in getting tougher with the Iranian regime leading almost certainly to a path towards war.

It’s the same nonsense NIAC tried pedaling in warning about the president’s tough talk against North Korea and now we see the positive steps coming from that tough talk as the presidents of North and South Korea met in a historic meeting this week in South Korea; marking the first time a North Korean leader set foot across the Demilitarized Zone.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered to discuss denuclearization for the first time without preconditions; an admission both startling in its suddenness and shocking in its existence.

Even President Trump’s most ardent critics have reluctantly given him credit for the breakthrough and for setting the stage for the first-ever summit between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

It is ironic too considering that North Korea provided Iran with its initial designs for its ballistic missile program, as well as assistance in jump starting its nuclear weapons program.

If North Korea and the U.S. can find an accommodation to abandon nuclear weapons as well as curtail ballistic missile development, then the claims made by NIAC and the rest of the Iran lobby that the Iran nuclear deal would be the best vehicle to achieve those goals will be proven false.

Pompeo’s confirmation by the Senate by a comfortable 57-42 margin also demonstrated how feeble the Iran lobby is now and how it lacks much influence anymore on domestic American politics.

Seven Democratic senators joined with Republicans in approving Pompeo in a strong sign of bipartisan support. It is no coincidence that his approval came after his secret diplomatic mission to North Korea in meeting Kim to discuss the summit with the president in the kind of diplomatic derring-do NIAC has claimed the administration was incapable of conducting.

Far from serving the interests of Iranian-Americans anymore, NIAC has been reduced to either serving as a cheap adjunct to the extreme “progressives” wing in order to keep money flowing or parrot whatever comes out of the mouths of the foreign ministry in Tehran.

Worse yet, NIAC seems to get more press from regime-controlled publications than any in the U.S. Even Parsi’s tweets have taken on an edge of near-panic.

“WAKE UP AMERICA! Trump’s about to start a war with #Iran and he’s openly telegraphing it. He’ll kill the #IranDeal (the deal that restricted Iran’s program) and then threatens war if Iran restarts the program – which it’ll only do if Trump kills the deal.” — Trita Parsi (@tparsi) April 24, 2018

One has to wonder why Parsi and the rest of NIAC are fixated on fighting battles to oppose the president at every turn, they remain strangely silent on more recent moves by the mullahs in Tehran to oppress its people and further try to destabilize the region.

The regime for example took the first steps to the popular Telegram instant messaging app used by over half of the Iranian population by banning the ability of Iranians to swap videos and pictures on it.

The act was taken by the regime to try and halt the near constant flow of videos and pictures being sent around and outside of Iran of protests and acts of oppression by the regime including arrests and beatings by regime police.

Also, the U.S. has stepped up surveillance to monitor the movement of suspected Iranian anti-air and ballistic missiles inside Syria as concern mounted the Iranian regime was moving its military forces into position for possible strikes against U.S.-backed coalition forces or even Israel.

Amidst these new actions, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif arrived in New York for a weeklong visit and was met by large protests from Iranian dissident and human rights groups.

Several dozen supporters of the Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC) joined a demonstration Monday across the street from New York’s Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as it hosted a discussion with Zarif on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and U.S.-Iran relations.

Shirin Nariman, the organizer of Monday’s protest, told VOA Persian that her group objected to Zarif’s invitation to speak at CFR. “The people of Iran have spoken [through anti-government street protests] in the last few months and showed that they don’t want this regime at all — not even a part of it,” Nariman said.

We can only hope that the ever-shrinking influence of the Iran lobby and NIAC continues to eventually disappear.

 

Iranian Regime Threats Ring Hollow

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Iranian Regime Threats Ring Hollow

Iranian Regime Threats Ring Hollow

What a difference a year makes. Last year the Iranian regime was riding high with its victories in Syria, its military partnership with Russia, the overthrow of the government in Yemen, billions of dollars to spend on upgrades to its military and successful ballistic missile launches showcased on state television almost weekly.

But in less than 12 months, the regime is under the most severe attack and pressure from all quarters than it has ever been since the nascent days of the Islamic revolution that the mullahs highjacked.

First the foremost, the Iranian economy is in freefall and a basket case. The rial has dropped faster than a lead anchor from a ship and furious attempts by the Iranian regime to artificially boost it and control the flow of foreign currency through local money changers has failed miserably.

The threat of a new cyber currency being offered by the ubiquitous messaging app Telegram didn’t help either which led to the mullahs trying to ban it even though over half of the Iranian population uses it.

On the military fronts, the gains made in Syria have been threatened with Bashar al-Assad’s continued indiscriminate use of chemical weapons to kill men, women, and children leading to the first multi-national military response on Syrian targets by French, British and U.S. forces.

It also forced Russia to sit on the sidelines and allow its ally to be hammered by over 300 missile strikes.

Also, Iran’s move into Yemen had the unintended effect of galvanizing long-time foe Saudi Arabia into action and form alliances that were unheard of only a short time ago such as Saudi and Israeli defense officials meeting to go over planning in defending against Iranian aggression and even permitting mutual flights over each other’s airspace for the first time ever.

The mullahs also probably did not count on the waves of mass protests and public discontent that have sprung up beginning late last year and have been propelled not by a single issue such as the disputed presidential election of 2009, but rather a whole raft of complaints ranging from pathetic job growth and record unemployment among youth, to the constant oppression of Iranians, especially women, over everything from riding bicycles and not wearing hijabs to degraded environmental conditions turning much of the Iranian countryside from fertile farmlands to barren deserts.

Not to mention the election of President Donald Trump and the 180-degree about face from trying to appease the regime under President Obama to the aggressive efforts to match Iranian aggression move for move.

You allow Assad to use chemical weapons? Okay, we’ll bomb sites and if Iranian military personnel happen to be there assisting, tough.

You threaten to walk away from the nuclear deal? Feel free to do it.

Every Iranian regime temper tantrum, taunt, and the threat is now met with a shrug of indifference and steely resolve instead of the constant handwringing that marked the previous administration.

Even the Iran lobby is left with little to nothing to say. In response to the president’s most recent comments to the possibility of Iran walking away from the nuclear deal, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council issued a curt two-paragraph statement that shows how much his verbosity has plunged in this new era.

“Macron and Europe seem willing to bend over backward to save the nuclear deal and prevent catastrophe. When our closest allies express alarm in unison, we should listen. Trump should quit while he is ahead and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the JCPOA before it is too late. The alternative would be an isolated America, an unchecked Iranian nuclear program, and an escalation towards war,” Parsi writes.

It’s laudable for Parsi to even admit for the first time that President Trump is actually ahead of the ballgame with Iran. He recognizes, even if he is unwilling to say so publicly, that President Trump’s actions have turned the tables on who controls leverage in the Middle East.

The same approach has brought a startling and breathless turnaround with North Korea in which the Hermit Kingdom has agreed for the first time to put denuclearization on the negotiating table without any preconditions.

Parsi understands that the same mobilization of pressure and harsh rhetoric backed by tough actions are being applied to Iran now with most European allies, who had been staunch supporters of the Iran nuclear deal, now being contortionist moves to appease the Trump administration in an effort to save the deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Washington was designed to showcase French unity with the U.S. on issues such as Syria, while also acknowledging the need to address issues left untouched by the Obama administration such as ballistic missile development and unfettered access to now-blocked off Iranian military sites.

The fact that all of Europe is now intensely focused on appeasing President Trump instead of the mullahs is a remarkable feat of diplomatic brinkmanship and indicative of how the tide has utterly turned against the Iranian regime.

Meanwhile as Iran threatens to pull out of the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons if the Trump administration approves a non-certification of the deal by the May 12th deadline, President Trump now essentially has Iran dancing on a string since he could simply conditionally approve the extension one more time and squeeze Iran and Europe for even more concessions.

The president has taken a page from the mullahs’ playbook and is throwing it right back at them.

The threat to pull out of the NPT rings hollow since by doing so, Iran would be throwing its lot in with countries such as Israel which has not signed the agreement.

Now that would be ironic.

Michael Tomlinson

As Currency Plummets the Iran Regime Teeters on Collapse

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As Currency Plummets the Iran Regime Teeters on Collapse

As Currency Plummets the Iran Regime Teeters on Collapse

Iran’s currency, the Rial, is on a skydive plummet downward to historic levels and poses the most significant threat to the stranglehold the mullahs have had on the Islamic state.

Pegged to the price of petroleum, the Rial has been rocked by the global glut of oil and a stagnant economy riven through by rampant corruption and the diversion of billions of badly-need dollars to fund wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen as well as a massive military build-up including a ballistic missile program.

Now as Iran has been gripped by rising political tension with massive demonstrations sweeping across the country since last December, there has been a rush to the banks as Iranian citizens desperately try to cash out and swap to scarce U.S. dollars in a scene reminiscent of bank runs during the Great Depression.

The Rial has bled away a third of its value just this year alone with an exchange rate of 60,000 Rial to a single dollar. The track record for the mullahs in fiscal management is pretty rancid ever since the Iranian revolution in 1979 when one dollar bought 70 Rials.

Since Hassan Rouhani assumed power in 2013, 36,000 Rials equaled one dollar. The drop in value is as much a reflection of Iranians lack of confidence in their government as it is of an economy that is nearing Third World status.

The mullahs have reacted in their typical brutal manner setting an official exchange rate of 42,000 Rials to the dollar in an example of wishful thinking. To enforce that rate, the mullahs have promised harsh punishment including arrest for anyone trying to exchange Rials at a different rate than the one established by them.

The crisis is driven by an inability to access physical currency notes, which are estimated at only five percent of all foreign currency in Iran, while the rest is available in the form of credits for business and the government.

Long gone it seems are the images of pallets loaded down with dollars and euros being unloaded from airplanes as part of the ransom payment made by the U.S. in exchange for U.S. hostages as part of the Iran nuclear deal.

That nuclear deal has failed to deliver the benefits promised by Rouhani to ordinary Iranians; instead the regime has siphoned the economic relief it brought to state-owned industries and the powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It has also failed to generate the flood of foreign investment promised by Rouhani with many foreign companies unwilling to risk capital in investments in Iran when the U.S. has contemplated additional sanctions for the regime’s abysmal human rights record and its involvement in the support of terrorism and the war in Syria.

The use of chemical weapons repeatedly by the Assad regime against its own citizens has also ostracized Iran for its support of Assad and the heavy use of Iranian military units in the conflict.

The sponsorship of the revolt in Yemen and support of Houthi rebels has also ignited another potential regional conflict with Saudi Arabia and brought the U.S. and Russia into contentious situations that could possibly start a wider war rattling any potential investors.

Other efforts by the Iranian regime to bring in more foreign currency include trying to increase oil production in order to generate more sales overseas, but that has been stymied by fields utilizing outdated equipment and failure to attract any significant foreign partners to develop oil fields.

“This currency crisis is another step in the collapse of the Iranian economy, which was expected to rebound after the signing of the nuclear agreement. Difficult economic conditions brought protestors to the streets in a number of Iranian cities earlier this year, however those protests were quelled by the government. It is important to continue watching the economic situation in Iran, because historically economic issues have typically led to the most significant political unrests in that country,” wrote Ellen R. Wald, a historian and scholar at the Arabia Foundation.

The regime hasn’t been helped by action this week by the European Union to extend sanctions on Iran over human rights violations in an effort to demonstrate its willingness to the Trump administration to hold Iran accountable, while trying to preserve the nuclear agreement.

France has pushed for new sanctions over Iran’s missile program and involvement in conflicts in the region, including in Syria where Tehran backs President Bashar al-Assad. Paris hopes that would show President Trump the EU takes his concerns seriously.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, offered in an editoRial in The Hill that the collapsing Rial represented an opportunity to apply even more pressure on the regime.

“The White House should re-impose sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran to vindicate currency traders’ fear that it now plans to inflict serious damage on Tehran’s economy,” they write.

“Based on our analysis of the Central Bank data, Iran’s currency has lost roughly half of its value, 46 percent, falling from 40,170 to 58,880 per dollar, since Trump put the future of the nuclear deal in doubt last October.  The Iranian economy looked particularly wobbly amidst protests in December when Iranians took to the streets to protest the regime-controlled banking sector, and lack of economic opportunity and political freedom,” they added.

They believe that additional pressure on Iran’s Central Bank could be the nudge necessary to send it into collapse and bring down the regime.

“Under the sanctions law applied prior to the nuclear deal, foreign financial institutions are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with the Central Bank. In effect, the Bank’s foreign-held accounts are put on lock down, barring the regime from accessing its foreign exchange reserves.  On paper, Iran may get paid for its oil but the money sits in the purchaser’s country and is only available for Iran to buy goods from that country in the local currency. Without access to these reserves, the regime would find it much harder to defend the Rial,” the article said.

The proverbial hammer blow this would deal to the regime is significant since the Central Bank provides the funding for the Revolutionary Guard Corps and supplies the cash for its activities in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The irony is that the regime can be crippled without canceling the nuclear deal as the Iran lobby has feared and instead using the Rial as a leveraged weapon against the mullahs by hitting them where it hurts; wiping out popular support from the Iranian people.

Remember, the original revolution against the Shah was largely fueled by economic concerns before it was stolen by the mullahs. Wouldn’t it be delicious to see the same thing happen to them?

Laura Carnahan

Iranian Nobel Prize Winner Finally Endorses Regime Change

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Iranian Nobel Prize Winner Finally Endorses Regime Change

Iranian Nobel Prize Winner Finally Endorses Regime Change

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, former judge in the Iranian regime and noted human rights activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, making her the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the award.

During her extensive and laudable career, Ebadi took care to never explicitly call for the kind of regime change many Iranian dissidents have long advocated. Instead, she retained hope that the Iranian government could be fixed from within by so-called reformers such as Hassan Rouhani, whom regime advocate groups like the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) have long sought to portray as a “moderate.”

However, her true positions came to light recently in an interview with Bloomberg in which she finally announced her belief that “reform is useless in Iran.”

Echoing the argument that Iranian dissidents have been making for more than two decades, Ebadi said that the means of ending Iranian tyranny should be a U.N.-monitored referendum on the constitution that proposes one basic change: eliminating the unelected office of supreme leader. The Iranian people, she said, “want to change our regime, by changing our constitution to a secular constitution based on the universal declaration of human rights,” according to Lake.

It’s a position similar to the one advocated by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in a ten-point plan for the future of  Iran.

Rajavi’s plan now seems remarkably prescient in light of the recent wave of massive grassroots demonstrations that began last December. Those protests and Ebadi’s belated condemnation are a strong rebuke not only to Rouhani but also to the Western progressives who foolishly believed he was an agent of change.

While Ebadi first made her views on the referendum known in February, she used the interview with Bloomberg to get more specific about what Western governments, and particularly the Trump administration, can do to assist the Iranian people in their struggle.

That included warning against any U.S. military intervention and urging only Iranian support for regime change. It’s a position that again echoed what the NCRI called for over a decade ago and represents a vindication of the vision laid out by the Iranian resistance movement in urging Western support for the Iranian dissident movement.

Ebadi went on to clarify what this type of Western support might look like, by advocating regime-targeting sanctions that would weaken the government without hurting the people themselves. For example, Ebadi says the U.S. and European governments should sanction the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting or IRIB. This conglomerate controls the media in Iran and also manages Iran’s foreign propaganda such as the English-language PressTV and the Arabic al-Alam. Ebadi stopped short, however, of endorsing the style of crippling sanctions that were disbanded by the Obama administration in mid-2015.

Ebadi also criticized NIAC, which played a key role in advocating for President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Ebadi told Bloomberg, she regrets participating in an event with NIAC in 2011, saying “when I analyzed what they say and do, I realize what they say is closer to what the government says that what the people want.”

Predictably, NIAC rallied its defenders among the American left including Noam Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said in The “Iranian” (a site where lobbies and agents of Iranian regime write): “I don’t know on what basis Shirin Ebadi is confident that she knows better what Iranians want than NIAC, to take one of her examples,”

So what makes Chomsky, an American professor who speaks no Farsi and has never been to Iran, feel that he has more authority on the subject than an Iranian woman who has risked her life fighting for basic human rights in her country of birth?

It’s not clear, but coming from someone who has made a career echoing regime propaganda of America being a “terrorist state,” and has cast doubt on Assad’s well-documented use of chemical weapons, it is sadly unsurprising.

Trying to kill the messenger in order to kill the message seems to be a favored tactic of the Iranian regime and its lobbying arm.

Laura Carnahan

 

Iran Lobby Attacks on John Bolton Hide Fear of Regime Change

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Iran Lobby Attacks on John Bolton Hide Fear of Regime Change

Iran Lobby Attacks on John Bolton Hide Fear of Regime Change

The Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, have been busy hurling attacks and invectives at John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the new national security advisor, calling him everything from being crazy to a war monger to an extremist or child of Satan.

The accusations have seemed to take on a life of their own as Iranian regime loyalists such as NIAC’s Trita Parsi empty out the thesaurus in an effort to try and find something that will stick and either derail his nomination or throw cold water on the administration’s plans to revisit the Iran nuclear deal.

In either case, it seems apparent the trains have already left the stations and on Capitol Hill, it appears Democrats are only pondering going after President Trump’s CIA director nominee, Gina Haspel, for past involvement in the interrogation of terror suspects, with Bolton and secretary of state nominee, Mike Pompeo, looking like solid confirmations.

This new troika of national security, intelligence and diplomatic heads represents a significant shift in the president’s thinking as it relates to the challenges of Iran, North Korea and Islamic extremist terrorism.

Far from trying to swat individual terror suspects like so many mosquitos, it appears the administration maybe looking for a more strategic approach in draining the swamp so-to-speak by dealing directly with the sources of terrorism; more specifically nation states.

The terror attacks of 9/11 served as a reminder that safe harbors such as a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, provide training, security, funding and logistical support for terrorists to plan and execute their attacks.

The rise of ISIS out of the wreckage of a Syrian civil war and Iraqi sectarian conflict borne out of Iranian regime’s meddling carved out a caliphate which provided ISIS with everything from oil to sell and ready recruits to satellite broadcasts and a news magazine.

The Iranian regime set the template when it built Hezbollah to a formidable terrorist operation and shock troops for proxy wars. Iran mullahs utilized Hezbollah and a safe harbor in Lebanon.

But now the mullahs in Tehran are confronted with a rapid flurry of problems that have escalated nearly out of their normally iron-fisted control.

  • The explosion of U.S. fracking for oil turned it into the top oil producer in the world and forced prices to plummet on the open market, crushing revenues the mullahs were expecting from the lifting economic sanctions following the Iran nuclear deal. Coupled with the drain on cash reserves for propping up the Assad regime in Syria and spending heavily on military equipment, including building a ballistic missile program, Iran soon became a pauper nation;
  • A free-falling economy gave ordinary Iranians a gut-punch with stagnant wages, limited job opportunities and a deeply corrupt government that controlled almost all facets of the economy. Couple that with deep dissatisfaction over the increasing divide of haves vs. have-nots as those with ties to the Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force or the ruling mullahs profited handsomely; and
  • Massive protests swept the nation as the combination of punishing economic conditions and dissatisfaction with oppressive rule, including morality laws specifically targeting Iranian women, drove ordinary Iranians to extraordinary acts of defiance unheard of in Iran. This included women launch the hijab movement with the mullahs responding by passing laws criminalizing it on the basis it promoted “prostitution” and calling for 10 years imprisonment.

These trends are unmistakable and more importantly, unassailable by the Iran lobby, which for the most part has stayed silent on these domestic protests; choosing only to blame the economic conditions on the U.S. not fully complying with the terms of the nuclear deal.

Apparently Parsi and his friends think we should empty out Ft. Knox on behalf of the mullahs.

What is apparent though is that the accusations being flung by the Iran lobby at Bolton’s nomination miss an inescapable truth which is Bolton is not setting the stage for war when Tehran has already been at war with the West ever since it supplied explosives to kill Marines in Beirut or U.S. troops in Iraq.

Ivan Sascha Sheehan, incoming executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore, makes that point in a strongly worded editorial in The Hill.

“Those who are concerned about the potential for war with Iran should embrace Bolton’s appointment and support the administration’s efforts to confront Tehran’s destabilizing regional influence by taking its theocratic regime to task. The regime’s misbehavior only worsened in the run-up to Trump’s ascension to the Oval Office, and particularly under the prior administration’s cooperative policies that engendered an even greater sense of impunity than the Islamic Republic was used to,” Sheehan writes.

“Trump’s assertiveness during his first year in office is paying small dividends. U.S. Navy officials recently reported that close encounters between their vessels and those of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which were commonplace over the previous two years, halted abruptly in August,” he added.

But what the Iran lobby is most fearful of is not a simple knee-jerk tearing up of the nuclear deal by President Trump, but rather a consensus among U.S. allies to rework the deal, toughening provisions on terror support, ballistic missile development and human rights improvement, in an effort to save it.

Using the deal as a leverage against the Iranian regime is fair turnabout since the regime and Iran lobby have used its continued existence as a blunt instrument against any calls to rein in the regime’s excesses.

The Economist outlined some of the intense deal-making going on now from Great Britain, France and Germany to compel the Iranians to accept new restrictions; restrictions that should have been included in the original deal in the first place.

“Sir Simon Gass, a former British ambassador to Tehran who led the British team negotiating the deal, says that it might be possible to get an agreement from Iran not to develop an intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting America. An ICBM, he points out, only makes sense if it carries a nuclear warhead, so testing one should prompt broad economic sanctions. Patricia Lewis of Chatham House, another London think-tank, believes that the Europeans may already be talking to the Iranians about a future regional missile-deal that would ban long- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles,” the Economist editorial said.

Ultimately the real rub for Parsi and his fellow travelers is that new restrictions, coupled with worsening economic conditions will once again rollback Tehran back to 2009 when massive street protests nearly toppled the regime.

As the president’s new team take their place, it’s clear the era of appeasing the mullahs is dead.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Faces United US-Saudi Front

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Iran Lobby Faces United US-Saudi Front

Iran Lobby Faces United US-Saudi Front

Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman, heir to the Saudi throne, kicked off a two-week tour of the U.S. with a meeting with President Donald Trump which highlighted the close relationship the administration shares with the Kingdom that began with the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia shortly after his inauguration.

Part of that relationship is centered on restoring stability in a Middle East riven asunder by the Iranian regime which has plunged three countries into war in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The latter of most concern to the Kingdom because of its common border and a hail of Iranian-made rockets and mortar shells falling on it.

The Saudi Crown Prince has moved quickly not only to take the reins of foreign and defense policy for the Kingdom, but also to move it into a more progressive era by instituting changes and reforms especially aimed at empowering Saudi women in culture, politics and the economy.

Changes that are anathema to the mullahs in Tehran and evidence of the growing divide between the two countries.

Of course, that has not stopped the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, from consistently attacking Saudi Arabia and attempting to portray it as a bloodthirsty state sponsor of terrorism.

Ironically, while Iran occupies almost permanent status on the U.S. State Department’s target list of state sponsors of terrorism, Saudi Arabia has moved quickly to identify and eradicate radicalized Islamic elements in its society, especially those adhering to the Iranian regime’s principles.

But that hasn’t stopped the NIAC’s Trita Parsi from issuing a statement attacking the Crown Prince because of his public statements warning of spreading Iranian extremism.

“While the Saudi effort to drag the US into war with Iran was blocked by previous administrations, Riyadh now appears to be pushing an open door,” Parsi said. “The tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are destabilizing the Middle East and necessitate strong diplomatic efforts to defuse the conflict before it escalates into a wider war.”

Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby have consistently banged the war drum in order to stoke fears, but the source of that tension has always been blamed on someone else rather than the mullahs in Tehran; be it the U.S. or Saudi Arabia or Israel, according to Parsi someone else is always to blame.

In Parsi’s worldview, the Iranian regime’s sponsorship of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah is not to blame. Nor has been the arming of Shiite militias in Iraq or Houthi rebels in Yemen. Neither can blame be laid at the launching pads of dozens of ballistic missiles fired off by the Iranians, nor their leaders’ threats to blast its enemies out of existence.

In his statement, Parsi also takes a stab at the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has developed a close relationship with bin Salman.

Parsi claims that the Saudis are eager to start a war against Iran using American service personnel. It’s frankly an absurd claim since no one, not President Trump, nor the Saudi royal family, have ever mentioned a war or the prospect of one. In fact, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have started and participated in nearly a dozen peace initiatives aimed at defusing the conflicts Iran has started included several peace conferences aimed at halting the bloodshed in Syria and in each case, Iranian regime’s reluctance to accept any terms that diminish its military or political advantage have torpedoed all of these talks.

In fact, rather than turning to the U.S. for help, the Saudis have taken it upon themselves to fight against Iranian-backed Houthi incursions along their border, as well as use their own navy to intercept Iranian fishing vessels trying to smuggle fresh arms into Yemen.

The portrayal of the Saudi position towards Iran by the Iran lobby is just more evidence of the effort to throw smokescreens up at any effort to affix blame on the Iranian regime for the chaos enveloping the Middle East.

It is also a recognition that the new world order in a post-Obama world has changed radically.

No longer is the U.S. content to try and appease the mullahs in Tehran. No longer will the U.S. bind itself to a flawed nuclear deal that did not attempt to rein in the regime’s ballistic missile program or fundamentally abusive human rights record.

Most importantly, the Iranian people themselves are expressing their own frustrations and desire for change in their oppressive government as protests have swept the country before being ruthlessly put down; crackdowns that drew almost not a whisper of protest by NIAC ironically.

The Saudis know the Iranian playbook because they have seen it put into effect in Lebanon and Syria where Hezbollah was built into a powerful military proxy that eventually served to take over both countries.

All of which rightly worries the Saudis in Yemen as Iran looks to create another Hezbollah with the Houthis it backs. A viewpoint shared by Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

He told CNN that Iran wants to destabilize Saudi Arabia, and that it poses a threat to the entire region and international security.

“Here’s what happening in Yemen: (Iran is trying to create) another Hezbollah in Yemen, which will not just threaten our security and Yemeni security, but also regional security.”

“We’ve been focusing on the weapon of mass destruction, the WMD. What we should really be focusing on is the MD, the mass destruction that Iran is committing in the region.”

He stressed to CNN that Tehran was stirring unrest and said the so-called “nuclear deal” between Iran and Western powers needs “to be fixed.”

It is ironic that while Saudi Arabia is moving to open up the Kingdom to benefit women and seek diplomatic overtures to contain the Iranian regime, the regime keeps oppressing its citizens and uses terror and military force to achieve its aims.

Michael Tomlinson

IranLobby Screams About War With Iran

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IranLobby Screams About War With Iran

IranLobby Screams About War With Iran

“War!” The talking point pours out of the mouths of Iran lobby supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council about as often as he tweets it seems. Parsi and his colleagues have always waved the banner of war as a means of distracting from the key issues continually dogging the Iranian regime such as its miserable human rights record.

During the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal, the specter of war was a near-constant theme sounded by the NIAC, even though there was never any real prospect of a conflict with the Iranian regime under the Obama administration.

It was however a convenient tool to use in the so-called “echo chamber” of public opinion created by the NIAC in collaboration with a White House intent on landing a PR win at almost any cost, including appeasing the mullahs in Tehran.

Even after the deal was struck and the Iranian regime launched a series of wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the chorus of the Iran lobby continued to warn that any effort to take action against Iran would inevitably result in war.

It was a silly argument; akin to saying that trying to stop the burglar robbing your house would only lead to more violence so one should leave him to his thievery.

After President Donald Trump took office and installed an administration openly skeptical of the Iran nuclear deal, the Iran lobby continued to warn that any effort to rein in Tehran’s militant actions would only lead to war. This included doing everything in the PR/lobbying handbook to preserve the nuclear deal that delivered billions in cash to the mullahs to help fund their wars and ballistic missile program.

Now the president has decided to shuffle his cabinet by moving Mike Pompeo from the directorship of the Central Intelligence Agency to become Secretary of State, replacing the outgoing Rex Tillerson.

The change represents a potential realignment of U.S. foreign policy hewing more closely to the promises made by candidate Trump on the campaign trail when he called the Iran nuclear deal the worst deal ever made and vowed to tear it up for a new one.

Predictably, Parsi and the NIAC went on the offensive in near hysterical warnings of war. The NIAC issued a statement that blasted the appointment of Pompeo, a noted and vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal.

“Mike Pompeo’s nomination for Secretary of State could have profound implications for the fate of the Iran nuclear deal and the prospect of a new war in the Middle East. While serving in Congress, Pompeo’s positions on foreign policy were often ideological and tended towards militarism rather than diplomacy. His opposition to the Iran deal – including the political hijinks he engaged in to undermine U.S. negotiators – and his comments suggesting that military strikes would be more effective than diplomacy, raise serious questions about his fitness to serve as America’s top diplomat,” the NIAC statement read.

“It may result in a dramatic escalation of tensions in the Middle East and a war with Iran.”

Of course, Pompeo’s position as CIA director provided him with the ultimate access to the most conclusive information on whether or not Iran was truly adhering to the terms of the nuclear deal, as well as the full scope of the regime’s activities, especially its support for proxy terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

His elevation by President Trump sets the stage for what Iranian dissidents have been calling for all along which is an honest, unabashed focus on the Iranian regime’s conduct and not the false promises being made by the mullahs and their cheerleaders in the Iran lobby.

In this case, actions speak louder than words and the regime’s actions over the past two years since the deal was approved lay bare the lies that have been consistently spouted.

It’s no secret that Pompeo has been a harsh critic of the Iranian regime, calling out its brutality towards dissidents and use of its police forces to crack down on protests.

“Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are the cudgels of a despotic theocracy,” Pompeo said in a speech last October. “They’re the vanguard of a pernicious empire that is expanding its power and influence across the Middle East.”

A week later, he told the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) that Trump is of the same mind.

“The president has come to view the threat from Iran as at the center of so much of the turmoil that bogs us down in lots of places in the Middle East, right? Whether it’s Lebanese Hezbollah, the threat that it presents to both Lebanon and to Israel; whether it’s the Shia militias—you can see the impact that they’re having today,” Pompeo said.

That kind of tough talk and brutal honesty is what has driven a recalcitrant North Korea back to the bargaining table after three years of brazen missile launches and should prove to be equally effective against the mullahs in Tehran.

Appeasement has never historically worked. It didn’t work against Hitler in Munich and it certainly didn’t work against Ali Khamenei in Geneva.

Seeing little hope of finding anymore receptive audiences in the U.S., Parsi and the NIAC have increasingly turned their message to European audiences and the regime has followed suit as regime-controlled media have already begun trying to shape the narrative about Pompeo by urging Europe to act as a balance against the Trump administration.

“Pompeo is very interested in waging a war similar to the Iraq war by citing international regulations,” said Alo Khorram, a former Iranian envoy to the United Nations, in the daily newspaper Arman. “European powers will play a role in balancing his desire.”

While the NIAC continues to panic, the clock may finally be running out on the reign of the Iranian regime.

Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Desperately Trying to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

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NIAC Desperately Trying to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

NIAC Desperately Trying to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

The much-criticized and ridiculed Iran nuclear deal is on life support and the Iran lobby’s top cheerleader, the National Iranian American Council, is doing cartwheels and midair splits in a desperate bid to save it.

The NIAC has steadily been churning out editorials ever since the Trump administration moved into the White House and the president began threatening to tear up the agreement.

But since his swearing in, President Trump has continued to renew certification of the agreement and kept it as leverage against European allies who were eager to embrace newly opened markets in Iran but gave scant attention to the Iranian regime’s destabilizing efforts throughout the Middle East over the past two years.

The president figured out quickly that summarily ditching the agreement wouldn’t buy the U.S. and its allies anything since the mullahs in Tehran got what they most desperately needed from the Obama administration anyway: cold hard cash, billions of it in sanctions relief.

Now we are seeing some of the fruit coming from his decision to bash the nuclear deal, while at the same time keeping it in play. France has led increasing calls to modify the agreement to address the Trump administration’s chief concerns including Iran’s ballistic missile program, its sponsorship of terrorism and brutal human rights record.

The French have realized that appeasing Iran yielded little of anything in the way of tangible benefits. Syria become a hellhole. Moderating forces in Iran was quickly crushed and Islamic extremist terrorism flourished, even striking France in Paris and Normandy.

Predictably, the NIAC and rest of the Iran lobby has reacted to the potential of modifying the agreement as tantamount to killing it. It’s an odd position to take since it basically assumes Iran will walk away from the deal and immediately restart its nuclear program.

Ryan Costello, the NIAC’s assistant policy director, delivered that very message in an editorial appearing in Defense One, in which he makes the inane argument that ditching the nuclear agreement will allow Iran to turn into another North Korea.

He goes further by comparing the North Korean Agreed Framework and its failure to the potential failure of the Iran deal as a result of U.S. policy decisions not to live up to its end!

“Under the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. shifted from incomplete follow-through to looking for an exit from the agreement. Far from normalization, Bush lumped North Korea into an ‘axis of evil,” Costello writes.

“And former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton infamously crowed about evidence of secret North Korean uranium enrichment: ‘This was the hammer I had been looking for to shatter the Agreed Framework.’ Had the Bush administration sought to address the challenge through diplomacy instead of exiting the accord, today North Korea might not be close to fielding nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the United States,” he adds.

Costello blames U.S. for policy in saying “just as North Korea felt that they were not getting what they bargained for under the Agreed Framework, faith that the U.S. will uphold its end of the JCPOA has precipitously declined in Iran. The Trump administration is inflicting deliberate harm by violating the accord, and daring Iran to be the one to leave first.”

In this, he is partially correct. The Trump administration surmised that the threat Iran was posing was its expansion of military and terrorist activities through the region. It saw what its Quds Force was capable of inflicting in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It also understood that the crash program to develop ballistic missiles and place them in Syria and other countries Iran controlled posed an imminent danger to the U.S. and its allies.

Ditching the nuclear deal outright would do little to coerce the Iranian regime back into the fold of negotiations and split the U.S. from the EU, which is why the mere threat of ditching the agreement and laying out the provisions for a follow-on agreement with the Iranian regime has shaped up as the policy prescription on finding support among EU leaders.

President Trump is slowly cobbling together consensus and using the recent mass protests in Iran as a catalyst to convince the rest of the world that Iranian regime remains a theocratic dictatorship no different than North Korea.

In rebuilding that consensus, the administration seeks to reassemble a new sanctions regime that can again bring the Iranian regime back to the bargaining table and force a new agreement.

Of course, the NIAC is screaming bloody murder about the potential scenario, but the proof of its viability is ironically playing out in North Korea where the Trump administration’s harsh and bellicose rhetoric aimed at the Hidden Kingdom, alongside crushing new sanctions have brought North Korea back to the bargaining table.

In a historic announcement by South Korea, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un indicated a willingness to reopen diplomatic talks with the U.S. and South Korea about denuclearization and normalizing relations, and “made it clear” that it would not resume provocations while engaged in dialogue, the officials said upon returning to Seoul, according to the Washington Post.

Already, many media outlets are grudgingly giving President Trump’s “madman” approach to diplomacy towards North Korea credit for achieving the diplomatic breakthrough.

“He does deserve credit,” said Ian Bremmer, the head of the Eurasia Group and a Trump critic who nonetheless sees some hope in his North Korea strategy. “I think North Korea’s openness in the Olympics and summitry with South Korea, as well as potentially direct talks with the U.S., are the result of Trump’s approach.”

Krishnadev Calamur, a senior editor at The Atlantic, writes that “beyond the potential that Kim is feeling confident, there are several other reasons the North could be making such an offer. It could be that Kim is genuinely keen on dialogue with the United States. U.S. and UN sanctions on the North may have hurt the country economically to the point that Kim feels compelled to negotiate—a similar dynamic that helped bring Iran to nuclear negotiations under Obama. The sanctions might also have hurt the regime’s ability to conduct more missile and nuclear tests, something they did regularly in 2017.”

The dynamic is true but hopefully the outcome will be different since its doubtful President Trump will emulate President Obama’s policies of appeasement when it comes to dealing with North Korea and Iran.

In this way, the NIAC is yet again horribly, completely and satisfyingly wrong.

Laura Carnahan