Iran deal – Page 4

NIAC Ignores the Bad News in FATF Decision on Iran Penalties

March 5, 2018 by admin

NIAC Ignores the Bad News in FATF Decision on Iran Penalties

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an inter-governmental body made up of 35 countries and two regional governing groups setting standards to promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.

The FATF monitors the progress of its members in implementing necessary measures, reviews money laundering and terrorist financing techniques and counter-measures and promotes the adoption and implementation of appropriate measures globally.

The FATF serves as a crucial watchdog then against the spread of global terrorism through the transfer of funds through the international banking system. Chief among its current assignments is to monitor North Korea and the Iranian regime.

As part of its monitoring of Iranian regime, the FATF provides periodic updates on the action plan the regime pledged to follow as part of the nuclear deal it signed two years ago. In its most recent update, the FATF noted that Iran’s action plan has expired with most items on its to-do list remaining incomplete.

Chief among the items still needing to be addressed by the regime are:

Adequately criminalizing terrorist financing, including by removing the exemption for designated groups “attempting to end foreign occupation, colonialism and racism”;
Identifying and freezing terrorist assets in line with the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions;
Ensuring an adequate and enforceable customer due diligence regime;
Ensuring the full independence of the Financial Intelligence Unit and requiring the submission of STRs for attempted transactions;
Demonstrating how authorities are identifying and sanctioning unlicensed money/value transfer service providers;
Ratifying and implementing the Palermo and TF Conventions and clarifying the capability to provide mutual legal assistance;
Ensuring that financial institutions verify that wire transfers contain complete originator and beneficiary information;
Establishing a broader range of penalties for violations of the ML offense; and
Ensuring adequate legislation and procedures to provide for confiscation of property of corresponding value.

If Iranian regime does not meet these obligations, the FATF has the power to impose counter-measures punishing the regime, including restricting its access to international currency exchanges and electronic transfers.

It was this kind of pressure that proved pivotal in bringing the mullahs to the bargaining table in the first place.

Although Iran has left most of the required action items unfilled, the FATF has opted to hold off pending the Iranian parliament taking up these measures in draft legislation. Their outcome remains uncertain as the regime has dropped suggestions it may walk away from the nuclear deal anyway, including statements made by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi.

And yet, while the FATF continues to press the regime to comply with its promises, the National Iranian American Council didn’t miss the opportunity to crow that the FATF’s forbearance was in fact some kind of endorsement of the Iranian regime’s actions.

Predictably, the NIAC also called the FATF’s actions as standing up to pressure from the Trump administration.

“By showing itself unwilling to give in to pressure from the Trump administration and outside advocacy groups like United Against Nuclear Iran, which were pushing for the re-imposition of counter-measures against Iran, FATF smartly avoided politicization of its work and protected its integrity as a technical body assessing countries’ anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws,” the NIAC statement read.

The NIAC said the Iranian regime had made “significant progress” in meeting the action plan, but neglected to note the disparity in how far the regime still has to go. For the NIAC, its only concern is to keep pushing the goal line back farther and farther to avoid crossing it and triggering new sanctions.

Its failure to recognize the agonizingly slow pace of approval of legislation by the Iranian parliament as part of a larger scheme to not make any changes in its financing of terror demonstrates the charade of the NIAC’s positions.

While the Trump administration has succeeded in focusing new pressure on Iran, Iran lobby groups such as the NIAC are now struggling to find any excuse to hold back the rising tide against its patrons in Tehran.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Tapping Into Smartphones with Apps

February 23, 2018 by admin

Iran Regime Tapping Into Smartphones with Apps

One of the hallmarks of the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, has been its consistent boasting of looking out of the interests of average, ordinary Iranian-Americans. That’s why it has spent considerable energy burnishing its credentials through attacking the Trump administration’s immigration proposals aimed at curbing terrorism and supporting the Iran nuclear agreement.

Of course, that’s exactly why the Iran lobby, especially the NIAC, cannot be trusted to advocate on behalf of ordinary Iranians; it is in the bag with the mullahs in Tehran.

This explains why the NIAC has been silent on blockbuster revelations by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the largest dissident group to the Iranian regime, that Iran was using false front smartphone apps to secretly collect data on smartphone users in Iran, as well as around the world and may have been using the data to target and arrest protestors sweeping across Iran recently.

NCRI researchers allege in this new investigation that there are not only hundreds of smartphone apps currently being used by the Iranian regime to spy on its own citizens, some of them are available to users around the world via online marketplaces like Apple’s App Store, Google Play and GitHub.com, according to a Fox News report.

“The Iranian regime is currently hard at work to test the success of these apps on the people of Iran first,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the deputy director of the NCRI’s Washington office. “If not confronted, its next victims will be the people of other nations,” Jafarzadeh added, noting that the Iranian intel unit responsible for this alleged surveillance is the same group tasked with cyberwarfare against the West.

The NCRI report lists a handful of supposedly problematic apps that are available outside of Iran, despite these alleged connections to Iranian intelligence. The list includes Mobogram, Telegram Farsi and Telegram Black. Fox was able to confirm that most, if not all, are indeed still available for download.

The regime apps leverage the ability to text and communicate in native Farsi as an attribute driving many Iranians to download and use them, not knowing they are secretly developed by special cyberwarfare units within the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It is estimated that some 40 million people in Iran were using the official Telegram app as a series of deadly protests broke out at the end of 2017, and the beginning of 2018. The apps have become popular because people outside of Iran are able to communicate with their family and friends, and because domestic users are able to evade government crackdowns on the internet.

This raises the very real specter that the regime is spying on family communications between Iranians and their American relatives and using that information to arrest and imprison any who might be viewed as dissenters.

During the mass protests that broke out last year and into this year, the regime shut down the popular Telegram app that many protestors were using to communicate with the outside world, including Western news agencies. This prompted many Iranians to switch to the fake regime apps and unwittingly placed them square in the bullseye of regime intelligence agencies.

Fox News reported that based on the NCRI revelations, Google was one of the first internet giants to remove some of the suspect apps from its Google Play and Android stores. We can only hope that Apple follows suit.

All of which makes curious why the NIAC remains silent on an issue of tremendous import to Iranian-Americans, but it silence should be surprising given its complete reticence in attacking any aspect of the Iranian regime’s policies.

In fact, why Iranian-Americans are being spied upon, the NIAC’s Trita Parsi was traveling through Kentucky to speak at a local World Affairs Council gathering and appear on local radio to again shill for the flawed Iran nuclear deal and flog the same tired myth that ditching the deal would surely lead the U.S. to war with Iran.

Ironically, it might be the Iranian regime and not the U.S. that ditches the nuclear deal first based on comments by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi who said if Iran did not continue to gain any benefits from the deal, especially more foreign investment, it would walk away from it first.

“If the same policy of confusion and uncertainties about the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) continues, if companies and banks are not working with Iran, we cannot remain in a deal that has no benefit for us,” Araqchi said. “That’s a fact.”

For Iran, the deal only serves as a means to an end, which is to reopen the flood-gates so cash could flow back into a regime dangerously teetering on the brink of insolvency from the cash it spent in supporting the Assad regime in Syria and the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, as well as development of its ballistic missile program.

It also means that the Iran lobby really doesn’t care much what happens to Iranians unless it benefits its PR efforts on behalf of the regime.

Laura Carnahan

NIAC Tries to Diminish Iran Protests

February 14, 2018 by admin

NIAC Tries to Diminish Iran Protests

The National Iranian American Council has a problem; well it has several problems. It has lost its influential position in the “echo chamber” created by the Obama administration. It has lost its currency with many mainstream news organizations as the Iranian regime it defends has clearly shown itself to be a staunch supporter of sectarian wars and terrorism.

It finds itself having to retool on the fly and recast itself as a loyal and faithful partner to the progressive wing of American politics in the hopes of finding continued relevancy in an era of conservative politics dominating the White House, Congress, and electorate.

Much of that more conservative view among Americans has been driven by unrelenting terrorist attacks inspired by Islamic extremism; much of it flowing from the Iranian regime. It was also helped by extensive coverage of Iran’s own appalling human rights record over the past two years in the face of a so-called moderate administration by Hassan Rouhani.

Now the NIAC is faced with the specter of a widespread series of grassroots protests ranging throughout Iran and based largely within the working classes and poor of Iran’s population. It is the type of revolt that fueled the revolution against the Shah before it was hijacked by the mullahs that turned Iran into a theocracy.

The protests in Iran have been largely fueled by deep distrust of the regime, backbreaking poor economic conditions, the perception of rampant government corruption and a rigged game that rewards the scions of the Revolutionary Guards and mullahs, but punishes everyone else with strict morality codes, ever-vigilant policing and ruthless religious courts.

So, the leaders of the NIAC, including Trita Parsi, are faced with having to defend an Iranian regime in the face of broad and deep protests from the Iranian people – many of whom communicate with American-based relatives that find the NIAC virtually silent and absent in advocating for their Iranian brethren.

What does the NIAC do then? It does what it has always done: try to confuse the public and media about the true nature of resistance to the Iranian regime.

In this case, it involved putting on a panel discussion in Washington, DC in the hopes of communicating that Iran was changing in response to the protests.

Among the panelists were notable advocates for the Iran nuclear deal and noted apologists for the Iranian regime.

“Public dialogue with the (Iranian) state occurs through protest and those protests force changes to come about,” said Sanam Anderlini, Executive Director and co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network. “Each time there are protests, the regime gives some space and the public moves along, and there is an accommodation” that pushes the country in a more progressive direction.

It is one of the more inane comments said in relation to the political reality in Iran since the Iranian regime has never responded to public protest with a push towards a “more progressive direction.”

In fact, past history clearly demonstrates the regime’s willingness to use brutal force and murder to suppress protest. It happened in the wake of the 2009 mass demonstrates over a presidential election widely considered stolen in favor of re-electing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This most recent rounds of protests around the country have been suppressed by police and IRGC plain clothes and resulted in scores of deaths and arrests of nearly 8,000 men and women, 12 of which are known to have been slain under torture, which the government claims have been cases of suicide.

By the regime’s own admission, fewer than a thousand of those arrested have so far been released weeks later.

Another panelist, a research associate at the Watson Institute at Brown University, pushed the other favorite theory of the Iran lobby which was that these protests were in fact not products of discontent by ordinary Iranians, but were instead fomented by “hardliners” opposed to Rouhani’s “moderate” policies.

She again also emphasized the lack of sanctions relief by the U.S. as a major reason why the regime’s economy has sputtered and spurred protests. She, of course, neglected to mention the diversion of billions in new funds resulting from the lifting of sanctions from the nuclear that was instead used on building a ballistic missile program and funding wars in Syria and Yemen rather than boosting the economy.

In another Iran lobby message, she squarely lays blame on President Donald Trump as if the president was personally cooking the books in Tehran.

Predictably, the NIAC’s Reza Marashi weighed in by comparing the Trump administration to the Obama administration as if he was mourning a long-lost lover.

The panelist from Brown University’s biggest lie was describing the political response in Iran to the protests as being markedly different than previous major demonstrations.

“Unlike the 2009 protests, in which the political establishment eventually decided they should be suppressed, in this protest almost all factions have said publicly ‘we should let the people protest and let the people air their grievances’ because no one wanted to be seen as suppressing their base,” she claimed.

It is a bald-faced distortion given the ample video and photographic evidence of regime police and IRGC plainclothes wading into crowds throughout Iran in running street battles as chants of death to Rouhani and top mullah Ali Khamenei rang out.

It is amazing that the NIAC can continue to deny the evidence that every Iranian-American knows now which is that Iran is not on a course to moderation, but steering straight towards a reckoning with its own people.

Laura Carnahan

NIAC Tries to Rebuild Image Among Iranian-Americans

February 7, 2018 by admin

NIAC Tries to Rebuild Image Among Iranian-Americans

One of the drawbacks for the Iran lobby’s leading organizer, the National Iranian American Council, has been that with investigative journalism and lawsuits the truth about its ties to the Iranian regime have come out and colored the perception of it as a true non-partisan, human rights group only interested in advocating for the welfare of Iranian-Americans.

In truth, the group’s links to the regime and its almost-cult-like obedience to supporting the regime and not criticizing it has left it open to legitimate charges of being an Iranian regime front group and nothing more.

This has been especially damaging towards the larger Iranian-American community which has shown a broader and deeper willingness to question the NIAC’s motives, especially as the Iranian resistance movement has made tremendous inroads in building ties to the broader Iranian diaspora scattered since the Islamic revolution that stole their homeland.

The damage to the NIAC has come especially in the wake of the nuclear agreement two years ago and the much-promised democratic reforms that the NIAC claimed would come as a result have become illusory.

In fact, Iranian-Americans have become alarmed at the level of brutality and violence shown by the regime and its blatant targeting of dual nationals; resulting in several notable Iranian-Americans being arrested and held without trial or charge and used only as potential chips in political bartering.

These same Iranian-Americans have also been horrified by social media postings from friends and relatives in Iran showing the brutal crackdowns on recent protests flooding throughout Iran from ordinary Iranians struggling to survive in an essentially a war-time economy.

But Trita Parsi and other leaders at the NIAC are not idiots. They recognize the futility of trying to cover for the regime when Iranian women are being rounded up and tossed into prison for simply taking off their headscarves as a sign of solidarity with protestors.

That is why the NIAC has launched an effort to participate in voter education campaigns in Northern California in San Mateo and Sacramento counties; both with sizable Iranian populations.

On the surface, the voter education efforts are pretty innocuous; designed to help educate voters, translating documents to Persian and conduct outreach. The efforts are funded by grants from the Hopewell Fund and the Future of California Elections. It would be interesting to know if either organization is aware of the NIAC’s ties to the Iranian regime’s leadership and its record of shilling for Iran in the face of mind-boggling human rights violations.

For the NIAC though the voter outreach is important in presenting a different face to the Iranian-American public beyond constantly braying for a nuclear agreement that has not worked in curbing the violent excesses of the mullahs.

Parsi and his colleagues also know that constantly defending the regime and the nuclear agreement from near-constant assault from President Donald Trump on down to columnists and bloggers is nothing more than a rear-guard action now and the NIAC is rapidly becoming impotent on the topic.

That leaves them working to rebuild their image and re-legitimize themselves in the eyes of the one community their mission statement claimed to represent all along. Unfortunately, because of the policy of appeasement adopted by the Obama administration, the NIAC found a home with progressive Democratic organizations and as such needs to work for their political advancement as its only means of survival.

That loyalty to Democratic aims is on display on Parsi’s social media feeds in which he regularly retweets political postings that often have nothing to do with the welfare of Iranian-Americans, but reinforces his progressive credentials.

All of which is odd since Parsi and the NIAC have done a rather piss-poor job of supporting for example the rights of women in Iran in regards to employment, misogyny laws, dress codes and imprisonment.

Oh, Parsi might send out the odd tweet about a woman prisoner or specific case, but will not condemn the theocratic system in Iran which dispenses so much misery on a mass scale.

This is also why the NIAC has taken up the cause of illegal immigration and trying to tie to Iranian-Americans claiming that Trump administration is anti-Iranian, not anti-terrorism. It is an ironic position to take since the U.S. is not the one throwing Iranian-Americans into prison, but rather the Iranian regime is doing that.

Inconsistency of thought has never been a problem for Parsi as he literally bends like a pretzel to accommodate the excesses of the Iranian regime. For Parsi, he go-to messages points are always to blame Saudi Arabia, etc.; claim that anyone opposing the regime is a war-monger and that there are lots of moderates fighting the good fight within Iran’s government.

Fortunately, due to the hard work of investigative journalists, blogs such as ours (if we can toot our own horn) and landmark disclosures through lawsuits, the broader truth about the NIAC’s true aims have come to light.

All of which may go a long way towards explaining why the Iranian-American community is not a broad supporter of the NIAC. The benefits and results directly affecting this community through the NIAC’s advocacy are few and far between.

So while the NIAC is busy trying to educate voters in Northern California, the broader Iranian-American community, especially in the greater Los Angeles area (which contains the largest Iranian diaspora community outside of Iran) has been largely silent in supporting the NIAC, but has been a vocal booster of the Iranian resistance movement both financially and politically, including support for the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

And that must concern Parsi very much.

Michael Tomlinson

Hassan Rouhani Mounts PR Offensive to Rebuild Moderate Image

February 7, 2018 by admin

Hassan Rouhani Mounts PR Offensive to Rebuild Moderate Image

One of the inconvenient truths for Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani has been the growing irrelevance of the Iran lobby and its inability to drive the narrative in the U.S., especially among leading media outlets.

Where once loyal allies such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council were common fixtures on CNN, NPR and the New York Times, they are now largely relegated to small, progressive blogs and websites.

Much of that has been due to the revelations over the years of the existence of the Iran lobby and its cooperation with the Obama administration to create an “echo chamber” in support of passing the Iran nuclear deal and its ties to the Iranian regime through the work of investigative journalists and lawsuits.

Iran itself didn’t help with its long support and intervention in the bloody Syrian civil war and sectarian fights in Iraq and Yemen that have claimed tens of thousands of lives. Neither did the election of Donald Trump as president; who took a much dimmer view of the regime’s claims towards moderation and has all but ignored anything the Iran lobby says.

All of which may explain why the regime has decided to put Rouhani out in front aggressively shilling a moderate/hard line on topics ranging from the economy to recent protests in effort to reinforce the illusion of moderation it once projected.

It’s important to remember that this is really what Rouhani was elected to do in the first place. His position lacks any real substantive power within regime since he does not control the Revolutionary Guards Corps, nor its Quds Force. Neither does he wield any power over the paramilitaries that brutally enforce morals codes on the people or the religious courts that are often used to sentence and imprison Iranians by the thousands.

Which is why the original messages put forth by regime supporters such as Parsi and the NIAC that Rouhani’s election was a sign of a seismic shift within the regime government weren’t worth much more than used toilet paper.

As a prophet, Parsi falls somewhere between David Koresh of the Branch Davidians and the Weekly World News.

What is true is that Rouhani put on a PR blitz this week to try and shore up support from the regime in a number of areas at a wide ranging press conference:

Rouhani conducts a televised news conference in which he states that Iranians have political, economic and social demands that must be met. “Our ears must be completely open to listen and know what the people want. The government is trying to solve the problems with all its power,” he said. Unfortunately, that didn’t help the over two dozen people that were killed and more than 8,000 arrested and tossed into prison as the protests were put down by Rouhani’s government;
At the same press conference, Rouhani reiterated that the regime would abide by the nuclear agreement’s terms even if President Trump opted out and withdrew from the agreement. “We will stay in the JCPOA [nuclear agreement] as long as our interests are observed. The US staying in or out of [the accord] will not be the main criteria for our decision,” Rouhani said. “We have principles and will continue [our commitment to the deal] based on our principles.” He neglected to mention that the regime got all of the benefits it already wanted from the agreement such as billions in cash, relief from sanctions and the ability to see oil back on the open market without giving up hardly anything;
Rouhani adds that the Revolutionary Guard Corps would divest itself from a range of companies it controls, including some in the energy sector, in order to “rescue the country’s economy.” Claiming that Iran needed outside investment to modernize its petroleum production facilities, Rouhani neglects to mention that under his corrupt government, billions were siphoned off to fund war and terrorist activities, allowing industry to falter and fall apart; and
In taking a harder stance, Rouhani said that Iran’s ballistic missile program would be off-limits to any restriction or sanctions. “We will negotiate with no one on our weapons,” Rouhani said. “Iranian-made missiles have never been offensive and never will be. They are defensive and are not designed to carry weapons of mass destruction, since we don’t have any.” He neglected to discuss why the regime’s missile program was the linchpin to a new regional military strategy to put its neighbors and most of Europe and Asia within missile striking distance as a means of political leverage or even blackmail;

So, while Rouhani was all sweet and moderate, behind his words were the real iron fist of a regime unwilling to bend or compromise or deny itself the ability to stifle dissent or control its own destiny.

Add to that statements made by two Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq that demanded the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in order to allow Iran a dominant position as the only foreign military power within Iraq.

Kataib Hezbollah, a more militant, secretive and anti-American group, repeated threats to attack US forces.

“We are serious about getting the Americans out, using the force of arms because the Americans don’t understand any other language,” its spokesman, Jaafar Al-Husseini, told Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV on Monday evening.

Kataib Hezbollah has strong links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and has threatened to attack US forces several times in the past, describing their presence as an occupation.

But what has Rouhani most troubled, as well as the Iran lobby, is the persistent protests by ordinary Iranians that are not going away, no matter how many are imprisoned.

That is what concerns Rouhani and the mullahs the most; that this organic and natural protest movement will continue to spread and take deep root within Iran and pose the most significant threat to their rule.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Pushes Seyed Hossein Mousavian to Forefront

January 25, 2018 by admin

Iran Lobby Pushes Seyed Hossein Mousavian to Forefront

The Iran Lobby must be sweating the protests in Iran and their impact on Trump administration’s views on whether to kill the Iran nuclear deal. In many ways one of the key things holding the Trump administration back from killing the deal outright is how to manage the aftermath with mullahs desperate to hold onto power who may choose bloody violence to instead of diplomacy or giving up their hold on power.

Deciding to kill the nuclear deal is not a knee-jerk reaction, nor should it be done without an end game in place to help manage some sort of peaceful regime change and transition from theological dictatorship to peaceful democracy.

The mullahs have already evidenced their willingness to use brute force and mass murder to hold onto power. They demonstrated it after the disputed 2009 elections and they showed it again this year with the populist movement that grew from deep dissatisfaction among ordinary Iranians over their impoverished state of living.

Now the mullahs are faced with threats on multiple fronts, not the least of which is a new U.S. administration largely skeptical of them and their false promises.

What have the mullahs done?

They’ve put the Iran lobby into overdrive to defend the nuclear deal and throw as much mud as possible at President Donald Trump.

Leading the charge has been Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, but he has been joined by Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian regime nuclear official who relocated to a position at Princeton University refashioning himself as a Middle East security expert/

While Parsi has been busy shooting off editorials at a rapid clip, Mousavian joined him in the literary parade with a recent commentary in Reuters.

Like Parsi, Mousavian trots out the usual defense of the nuclear deal as being set on a foundation of the “highest standards on nuclear transparency and inspections ever negotiated,” but there is a yawning chasm between reality and fantasy.

He also echoes almost verbatim Parsi’s key messages on the deal’s terms being only temporary after which Iran would fall under safeguards from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He of course neglects to mention that the IAEA failed to detect Iran’s clandestine nuclear development program in the first place. Similarly, he fails to mention how the IAEA failed to halt North Korea’s march to nuclearization and that both Iran and North Korea could and did opt to throw inspectors out and disable cameras and monitoring equipment.

What is to stop Iran from doing the same thing now? Harsh language? The reality is nothing.

Mousavian also criticizes the Trump administration’s effort to link Iran’s ballistic missile program to nuclear sanctions as well as question whether or not the mullahs should ever possess the right to develop nuclear technology.

While Mousavian claims Iran has a “sovereign right” to do so, he ignores the broader and more strategic question being raised by President Trump: Why does a violent, religiously-governed dictatorship ever need a nuclear program?

Iran has always claimed its nuclear program is peaceful and designed for energy development, but those claims ring hollow given the economic conditions in Iran and the global energy map in which nuclear power is rapidly becoming obsolete. In the U.S. alone, the nuclear power industry has been decimated by renewable energy sources, the low cost and abundance of natural gas and the conversion of industries to solar and off-peak battery storage have made it irrelevant.

More importantly, the maniacal nature of the mullahs’ governance makes development of nuclear power an idiotic choice for any nation to allow. Mousavian claims peaceful intent but the true intentions of the regime have been clearly demonstrated and that is to develop a militarized nuclear capability so it can dominate its neighbors, especially chief rival Saudi Arabia.

Mousavian grasps at straws when he claims the killing of the nuclear deal will only spread global distrust of the U.S. and make any deal with North Korea impossible.

With all due respect, that is an idiotic statement to make. No one on the planet sincerely believes that North Korea’s meglo-maniacal leader has any intention of real negotiations with the West over his nuclear toy kit.

The Iranian regime has worked diligently to undermine the nuclear deal right from the start by eradicating all traces of its nuclear work at suspected sites before inspection, restricting access by inspectors from any military sites, only allowing collections of soil samples by regime officials and not dismantling centrifuges that refine uranium.

More worrisome, Mousavian never takes up the issue of the Islamic dictatorship itself. It is cruel, barbaric and actively engaged in supporting terrorism and involved in wars and insurgencies in three countries.

If a government acts in a way that is openly hostile to its neighbors and places little value on the lives of its own people—even murdering them on a mass scale for political disobedience—why on earth would we ever allow them to possess a capability to develop a weapon of mass destruction?

The greatest historical lesson parallel to Iran is Nazi Germany. If Hitler’s Germany raced to develop a nuclear capability prior to World War II, we might all be living an episode of the “Man in the High Castle” on Netflix given how the West tried to appease Hitler by giving away Czechoslovakia, Austria and the Sudetenland.

Following the same approach to Iran and its bloodthirsty leaders such as Ali Khamenei is the same kind of lunacy that plunged the world into a global war that lasted six years.

Mousavian clinches the irony trophy when he writes:

“Rather than challenging his predecessor’s legacy Trump should endeavor to use it as a model to bolster multilateral diplomacy and resolve crises in places such as Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan. Today more than ever, the world needs a balanced and rational White House to promote peace and security rather than to flout international norms.”

Mousavian mentions conflicts that Iran is directly responsible for starting and expanding. It is not the White House that needs to be balanced and rational, but rather it is Tehran that needs to be dragged kicking a screaming into normalcy and peace.

Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi’s Myths

January 24, 2018 by admin

Five Myths About Trita Parsi

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, has been hard at work pushing the mythology of how the U.S. and President Donald Trump are really aiming for all-out war with the Iranian regime.

His beating of the war drum is nothing new. He’s been doing it ever since the administration of President George W. Bush and while he found a receptive audience during President Barack Obama’s tenure, he’s finding it tough sledding these days.

A prime example of his fake news narrative is in an editorial he wrote in the Washington Post in which he outlines “five myths about Iran.”

It’s notable that he does admit—finally—that the Iranian regime has been demonizing the U.S. for the past four decades with “Great Satan” characterizations and other false claims, but that is just cheap throwaways to help in aiding his perception of being a “moderate” when in fact all he cares about seems to be preserving a badly flawed nuclear deal.

Of course his top myth is about that same nuclear deal. Parsi posits that it’s a myth that the deal only delays the inevitable building of a nuclear weapon by the mullahs.

While Parsi admits that restrictions on advanced centrifuges and other technology to make weapons-grade uranium expires after only 10-15 years, he argues that inspections are enough to tamp down the threat.

The real myth from Parsi is that inspections alone are enough to stop the mullahs. He neglects to mention how prior inspections regimens failed to halt Iran from beginning a nuclear program in the first place and in the case of North Korea, inspections failed spectacularly.

Parsi’s second myth is that killing the Iran nuclear deal would not help the protestors in Iran. He argues that killing it would actually hurt protestors striving to break free from the rule of the mullahs. The reality is that Parsi’s “do-nothing to rock the boat” advice goes all the way back to the fierce election protests in 2009 in which the Obama administration stood on the sidelines as regime police mercilessly killed scores of protestors.

The reality is that killing the deal would cement for Iranians that the nuclear deal was a complete failure and that Hassan Rouhani basically lied to the Iranian people when he promised reforms and economic improvements with its passage. In fact, the billions Iran received in sanctions relief went to fund war efforts and line the pockets of the ruling mullahs and Iranians know it and they are pissed.

Parsi’s silly myth is that the Green Movement was a failure. He argues that it, in fact, was a success and helped usher in an era of liberalization in Iran. He even says that Rouhani’s election is proof of that liberalization.

If he wasn’t so serious, his claim would be hilariously funny.

Rouhani’s administration has made his predecessor’s reign look like a picnic. More Iranians have been executed under Rouhani than at any time since the Islamic revolution. Iran has been plunged into wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen and it accelerated the spread of radical Islamic terrorism across the globe. Furthermore, the Iranian people have no illusions about any reform and/or moderation within the mullah’s hierarchy. This could well be hear in the slogans of the protesters chanting: “Hardliners, Reformers, game is over”.

Some moderation.

Parsi’s last myth is that “Iranians hate Americans.” Another ridiculous idea to try and stir controversy since Parsi knows full well that Americans don’t hate Iranians and Iranians don’t hate Americans.

The conflict has always been about Iran’s mullahs and the ruling theocracy and the Revolutionary Guards they control.

The frustration of American presidents and Congress has always been embodied by people such as top mullah Ali Khamenei and the vast network he controls that does his bidding.

Parsi tries mightily to frame this debate as American leaders provoking Iran and beating a war drum with heavy-handed views aimed squarely at ordinary Iranians.

The reality is far and away nothing close to what Parsi tries to paint. The myths he cites are in fact not myths Americans have about Iran. In fact, Americans view Iran through a much more discerning and educated view.

They have had two years since the Iran nuclear to judge Iran’s mullahs on their actions; not their promises and have found them wanting.

The trail of destruction left behind by Iranian regime’s policies are proof enough. The smuggling of weapons into Yemen and the incitement of a revolution to topple a lawful government and push Saudi Arabia to the brink of war.

The wholesale slaughter of Syrians while supporting the criminal regime of Bashar al Assad and producing the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

These are just some of the actions taken by the Iranian regime that has put Parsi’s myths to rest and instead provided living proof of why his fake news is no longer finding an audience among the American people.

Laura Carnahan

The Irony of Trita Parsi Attacking an Echo Chamber

January 21, 2018 by admin

The Irony of Trita Parsi Attacking an Echo Chamber

Politico recently published a blockbuster expose of the Obama administration’s efforts to derail and stymie investigations by the Drug Enforcement Agency into the narcotics and arms trafficking of the Lebanese-based terrorist group, Hezbollah, in order to preserve the prospects for a nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime.

Predictably, the National Iranian American Council, the flagbearer for the Iran lobby, finally chimed in with an editorial authored by the NIAC’s Trita Parsi in Huffington Post.

The parade of misstatements by Parsi is not surprising if anyone has followed his career. He has been a staunch and vocal supporter of the Iranian regime, even when it engages in brutal acts of human rights violations or supports various proxy wars resulting in the deaths of thousands of men, women and children.

In many aspects, his objectivity has never been an issue of debate since he clearly demonstrates he is incapable of demonstrating any objectivity when it comes to criticizing the mullahs in Tehran.

In his latest diatribe in Politico, there is a certain amount of irony in his naming the opposition to the Iranian regime as a “pro-war echo-chamber” since the NIAC led the “pro-Iran echo-chamber” charge during the run-up in nuclear talks. It is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes was the one who famously described the echo chamber built by the administration in collusion with pro-Iranian lobbying forces to suppress any dissent and spread the false narratives that any opposition to passage of the deal was merely war mongering by Iran “hawks.”

That echo chamber was a formidable coalition of Obama administration officials, Democratic and progressive support groups, K Street lobbying firms and sponsored front groups such as the NIAC and The Ploughshares Fund whose job it was to supply a steady stream of so-called “experts” and academics that could be paraded before news media as reliable sources of information and analysis.

Parsi’s hit piece in Huffington Post is a prime example of those same smear tactics in attempt to suppress any contrary opinion even in the face of overwhelming evidence over the past two years that all of the promises made by Parsi and his cohorts have fallen flat on their faces.

Parsi attempts to discredit the Politico investigation by describing it as lacking any “actual evidence,” but its noteworthy that Parsi never tackles the heart of the Politico story which are the statements made by DEA agents and Department of Justice prosecutors who go on record detailing the suppression of the narcotics trafficking investigations against Hezbollah.

Any reasonable person would doubt that career DEA agents are part of the right-wing, pro-war hawks Parsi tries to pin the story on. In fact, the lengthy series of articles is largely devoid of the bombast normally associated with political diatribes common to Beltway politics.

Instead, it’s a sober, methodical and meticulous examination of the hard work put forth by federal agents and prosecutors and the documented ties between Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.

At no time does Parsi ever actually deny that Hezbollah is a military and terrorist proxy for Iran and never does he deny Hezbollah’s acts in committing heinous crimes in Syria and Lebanon, nor its role in targeting and killing U.S. personnel over the past three decades.

Instead Parsi does the typical two-step dance move in sidestepping these inconvenient truths and instead tries to reach way out into fantasyland by trying to tie the Politico story with Israel in some convoluted way.

“If the pro-war echo-chamber genuinely believes their own spin that Obama betrayed other less pressing issues in order to secure a nuclear deal, then that reveals an even more dangerous problem: Their complete inability to see the bigger picture and differentiate between larger and smaller threats, prioritize between primary and secondary objectives,” Parsi writes.

This is Parsi’s favorite gambit, to try and frame the argument of choices between “big picture” objectives like the nuclear agreement and “little picture” ones such as human rights and terrorism or ballistic missiles.

It’s a terrible Hobson’s choice he tries to set up largely because history teaches us that you cannot act on the initiatives of a crazed regime and leave the regime’s power structure in place to create more mischief in other areas.

This was the exact same conundrum faced by European nations in the 1930s when Hitler’s Nazi Germany rose to power. By never addressing the sickness at the core of Nazi Germany and only dealing with the excesses such as the annexation of Austria, Hitler was only emboldened to reach farther afield when he realized the West was not going to stop him.

Similarly, the Obama administration’s well-documented efforts at trying to appease the Iranian regime at all costs has led to disastrous consequences for the regime with conflicts raging in Syria and Yemen and the threat of a broader war breaking out between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

“For the pro-war echo-chamber, Iran and the Iranian nuclear deal is at the center of the universe. All other challenges America faces are overshadowed by the desire to kill the Iran deal and strike Iran militarily. While that may be a fitting point of departure if you look at the region from the perspective of Iran-obsessed governments in Tel Aviv or Riyadh, it does not make sense from the perspective of any government in Washington that takes America’s global responsibilities and national interest seriously,” Parsi adds.

This is the heart of the insanity of his persistent falsehoods regarding the Iran nuclear deal and the overall approach to the Iranian regime in general.

Opponents to Iran have never wanted war. No one is calling for war and the Iranian dissident movement has not urged it. It is a canard created by Parsi and his colleagues in an effort to frighten the public and policymakers and drive American public opinion away from taking concrete action in containing Iran.

The Iran nuclear deal is not at the center of the Trump administration policy discussions because the mess left by the nuclear deal has spawned a host of headaches including the threat of long-range ballistic missiles, civil wars in neighboring countries, the rise and spread of radical Islamic terrorism and the daily oppression of the Iranian people.

These are all things Parsi neglects to talk about because for him, the truth is too hard to fight.

Michael Tomlinson

Fake News and False Promises of Iran Regime

December 14, 2017 by admin

Fake News and False Promises of Iran Regime

The Iranian regime’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, authored an editorial that ran in the New York Times which has been receiving some play in social media circles and it is worthy of closer examination because of the litany of falsehoods it perpetuates.

Zarif’s editorial recounts the completion of the Iran nuclear accord and the benefits it has brought the region, specifically to Europe as it has opened Iranian markets to European Union companies.

He warns that all that demanding work has been put at risk by President Donald Trump’s assertive stance towards the regime, especially its ballistic missile program which the U.S. views as a strategic threat to its forces and allies in the region.

While Zarif waxes longingly about the crisp Vienna air two years ago, he neglects to mention what Iran has accomplished in that same span of time that might now make his list of accolades.

There is little surprise in his editorial running in the New York Times which has long been a staunch advocate of supporting policies easing the burden on Iran during the Obama administration and Zarif repays its support in literary license by equating President Trump’s opposition to the regime to the threat of climate change.

Ultimately though, Zarif’s editorial is aimed squarely at the capitals of EU nations that may be wavering in their wholehearted support of the opening economic channels with the Iranian regime; some have already made the shift such as France under incoming French President Emmanuel Macron’s strong denunciation of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

What Zarif and his mullah masters have recognized is that support throughout European capitals is thinner than they think. The past two years of Iranian involvement in several conflicts have had a detrimental effect on Europe, especially the Syrian civil war which widened only after Iran stepped in with cash, arms and troops to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

That conflict alone set in motion one of the largest migrations of refugees into Europe since the end of World War II and helped give rise to the radical extremism of ISIS which has plagued Europe of terrorist attacks in London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin and elsewhere.

European leaders, while attracted to the idea of accessing Iranian markets for investment, are realizing that doing a deal with the devil is no deal worth doing in the long run.

History may also be playing a role since the diplomatic history of Europe has been littered with many failed efforts to rein in extremism such as the Munich Accords which failed to bring Adolf Hitler to heel. Those reminders serve to pointedly give EU nations pause when considering what to do next with Iran.

Zarif didn’t help his cause when he attempted to push some silly false narratives in his editorial, especially extolling the defensive virtues of Iran’s ballistic missile program, insisting their pinpoint accuracy should not cause concern.

His claim that Iran’s desire for a vast military buildup is only fueled by history such as the Iran-Iraq War rings hollow when taken in the context of how the regime has invested so heavily in weapons that can strike well beyond its own borders and threatens Europe itself.

This may explain why leaders such as Macron are quick to push back against Iran now since they already have a model of ballistic futility to follow in the standoff with North Korea and the rest of Asia.

Macron can probably envision how France may end up in the same proverbial boat as Japan is now with North Korea lobbing missiles over its airspace and Iran demonstrating it will soon be able to achieve the same thing.

Zarif’s blaming of the revolt in Yemen on Saudi Arabia is even more outlandish since Iran was the one responsible for inciting the Houthis to revolt in the first place and arming them with weapons that include shooting missiles at targets within Saudi Arabia.

He also mentions Iranian regime’s “partners” but while he means to include Russia and Turkey in that description, the regime’s real partners are terrorist proxies that fight its wars, including Hezbollah in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.

These are hardly the partners that “labor to put out fires.” If anything, the Iranian regime’s partners are more like the arsonists he decries, and they have thrown matches that have caused vast tracts of the Middle East to be consumed in bloodshed.

But if Zarif wants to talk about Turkish partners, he might want to mention Resit Tavan, a 40-year old Turkish businessman, being charged by U.S. prosecutors for illegally smuggling U.S.-made engines and boat generators to the Iranian navy in violation of sanctions.

Or possibly Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who is accused of using his position at Turkey’s state-run HalkBank to design a system of money transfers to help Iranian regime access cash.

Of course, Zarif also neglected to mention the fates of several European citizens currently languishing in regime prisons, including a British-Iranian aid worker which the Iranian regime will treat as an Iranian citizen and she will serve her sentence as determined by the judiciary, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday.

The fates of her and other European citizens, who have been treated as hostages to be used as political pawns by the mullahs, only reinforces the perception that is growing in Europe that the Iran nuclear deal was a bill of goods and Iranian regime used to gain much-needed cash to fund its military activities while strangling any hope of democratic reforms domestically.

This sentiment has been on display with the large numbers of European Parliament members now meeting with members of the Iranian resistance movement to decide on how best to confront the Iranian regime.

If Zarif’s editorial is any indication, the mullahs in Tehran are deeply worried that Europe may soon be following the lead of the Trump administration.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Shows its Hypocrisy in Latest Attacks on US

December 4, 2017 by admin

Iran Lobby Shows its Hypocrisy in Latest Attacks on US

The recent media speculation over U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s alleged precarious employment status has given rise to a cottage industry overnight of second-guessing by various talking heads and analysts over what a potential change at Foggy Bottom might look like in terms of future US policy.

The Iran lobby, specifically the National Iranian American Council, was swift to jump on the bandwagon and raise the specter of a push by “neocons” to put one of their own into the seat and go to war against the Iranian regime.

The focus of that smear attack was Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) who has been a vocal critic of the Iranian regime, especially the nuclear agreement.

It serves the Iran lobby’s purposes to push the narrative that Trump administration’s primary focus is to somehow foment a war with Iran; even though no administration official—from the president on down—has never even hinted at such an outcome, let alone advocated it.

The narrative though helps the Iran lobby by feeding into the fear factor it has long used in warning against taking any aggressive actions to restrain the mullahs in Tehran. Remember how during the run up in negotiations over the nuclear agreement how the NIAC and its allies pushed the image of a war between Iran and the US as the reason for completing the deal?

The Iran lobby has always used fear mongering as a PR tactic and in the case of Secretary Tillerson, it is going all out to push it again.

The best example was an editorial authored by Trita Parsi and Ryan Costello of the NIAC on its website with the provocative headline of: “Cotton, Pompeo and Trump are a Recipe for War with Iran.”

Hyperbole aside, Parsi and Costello argue a scenario where Tillerson is replaced by current CIA director Mike Pompeo and he is replaced at the intelligence agency by Cotton. Of course Parsi and Costello offer no proof for such a scenario other than a vague “reported plan.”

There is no better example of trolling fake news than what Parsi and Costello are doing.

They go on to recite a history of Pompeo and Cotton’s record—which is already well known—of their doubts about the Iran nuclear deal and of the ability to rein in Iranian extremism, but couch it in a way to convey the idea that both are some crazed blood thirsty war mongers.

“What of the man that Pompeo would replace, Rex Tillerson? It is indisputable that Tillerson has been a disaster on many fronts, in particular, his campaign to gut the State Department which will do untold damage to American diplomacy for years to come. Yet, on the Iran nuclear deal, Tillerson has actually allied with Secretary of Defense James Mattis to urge Trump against ripping up the deal. The loss of Tillerson, combined with Cotton’s elevation, would mean that Pompeo and Cotton could face little resistance in their campaign to unravel a nuclear accord that is working and downplay the likely alternative ― war,” Parsi and Costello write.

In the twisted little world that Parsi and Costello are trying to fabricate, they stick to the logic that unraveling the nuclear accord can only lead to war; a preposterous idea when considered alongside the reality of since the deal was passed.

In the wake of the Iran nuclear deal, the Middle East has devolved into a region-wide war zone due largely to actions by Tehran, including the bloody civil war in Syria that sent four million refugees flooding across Europe and another sectarian uprising in Yemen that now threatens to bring Saudi Arabia into direct conflict with Iran.

Far from producing a peaceful world, Iranian regime has been at the epicenter of some of the worst conflicts taking place now; a far cry from the absurdist claims made by Parsi and Costello.

Of course, neither ever takes Tehran to task for supporting those wars, nor for its North Korean-like fanatical support for developing ballistic missiles; a point reinforced by a regime spokesman in denouncing comments made by French president Emmanuel Macron criticizing the missile expansion program.

“French official, other officials, who want to speak about Iran’s affairs need to pay attention to the deep developments that have come to pass in the region in past decades and the big changes between the current situation and the past,” said Bahram Qassemi, regime foreign ministry spokesman, according to state media.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not negotiate on defense and missile issues,” he added.

Tension between Iran and France increased last month when Macron said that Iran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify its ballistic missile program. His foreign minister also denounced, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran’s “hegemonic temptations.”

France’s criticisms only echo those made by then-candidate Donald Trump and his current administration’s positions, and yet Parsi and Costello avoid criticizing the French on the same issue.

The hypocrisy of their positions is readily apparent as they fabricate Tillerson’s potential demise in order to create a false narrative, but not apply the same standard in criticizing the much-more revealing truth behind Iranian actions over the past four years.

Pompeo and national security adviser HR McMaster spoke at length about Iranian expansion in “weak states” in the Middle East at the 2017 Reagan National Defense Forum in California this weekend.

Pompeo confirmed he sent a letter recently to Maj. Gen Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s foreign operations arm or Quds Force.

“I sent a note. I sent it because he had indicated that forces under his control might in fact threaten US interests in Iraq,” Pompeo said.

“He refused to open the letter. It didn’t break my heart to be honest with you. What we were communicating to him in that letter was that we will hold he and Iran accountable for any attacks on American interests in Iraq by forces that are under their control. We wanted to make sure he and the leadership in Iran understood that in a way that was crystal clear.”

Far from being a call to war, Pompeo’s effort to reach out to Soleimani only illustrated the focus of the Trump administration to rein in Iranian expansionism, not start a shooting war.

If there are any real war mongers here, they live in Tehran, not Washington.

Michael Tomlinson