Iran Lobby

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

Iran Regime Grows Desperate as Sanctions Tighten

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Iran Regime Grows Desperate as Sanctions Tighten

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iranian Regime Commitment to Terrorism as Strong as Ever

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Iranian Regime Commitment to Terrorism as Strong as Ever

The failed plot by the Iranian regime to bomb an annual gathering of the Iranian opposition movement outside of Paris began the journey to trial when Germany transferred an Iranian diplomat involved in the plot to Belgium where he was charged with planning the terror attack according to a state prosecutor.

The diplomat, identified only by his given name as Assadollah Assadi, worked at the Iranian embassy in Vienna. The other three alleged participants have also been charged in Belgium.

Two of them were arrested by Belgian police in June with 500 grams (one lb) of TATP, an explosive that can be home-made from easily available chemicals, as well as a detonation device.

Iran predictably denied French accusations that one of its diplomats was involved in a plot targeting an annual gathering of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on June 30.

Tehran summoned the German ambassador to complain but to little effect. On October 2, the French interior, economy and foreign ministries said in a joint statement that France had frozen the assets of two Iranian citizens as well as those belonging to Iran’s Intelligence Ministry over the foiled terrorist attack

The audacity of the Iranian plot and the mullahs’ willingness to suffer the repercussions of international condemnation highlight their long embrace of terrorism as a tool of statecraft. It also reaffirms the correctness of the decision by the U.S. to pullout of the Iran nuclear deal and re-impose economic sanctions because of the regime’s support of terrorism.

The long civil wars in Syria and Yemen have also reinforced the perception that the mullahs in Tehran care little about international diplomacy and peace initiatives and instead are intently focused on strengthening their control over neighboring countries and suppressing the rights of their own people in order to curb dissent.

That internal struggle has manifested itself in a long series of ever-growing protests that have threatened the mullahs hold on power and rocked Iranian society to its core.

In the last iteration of that unrest, shop owners in Iran have joined truck drivers in a strike across dozens of cities in protest against deteriorating living conditions amid widespread economic woes.

Sources told the National that a number of shopkeepers refused to open their shops in the second day of strikes.

Truck drivers began the strike more than two weeks ago in cities across Iran, including major cities such as Tabriz. According to Arabic newspaper Al Hayat, at least 320 cities have been affected.

Iran News Wire, an opposition news agency based in San Diego, posted a video of stationary trucks supposedly parked in protest in the city of Dorud in Lorestan Province.

“At its heart, it’s the socio-economic situation that is largely driving the recent discontent, with strikes serving as a means to voice these grievances – poverty, unemployment, low wages, lack of economic growth, and depreciating currency, rising prices,” said Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi, a regional security analyst at Le Beck International.

The International Monetary Fund predicted last May that the US administration’s announcement of their withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, would shrink the Iranian economy by 1.5 per cent this year and 3.6 per cent in 2019.

Iran’s economic woes have been exacerbated by pitiful management of the country’s environment resulting in massive drought conditions wiping out once fertile farmlands. That environmental impact has spread to neighboring Iraq where Iran has cut off water supplies into the Tigris river in order to divert supplies to Iranian agriculture projects.

The ripple effect of the regime’s decisions is having devastating impacts as social media has been flooded with images of people across the Tigris, a never previously recorded phenomenon.

It may not be coincidental that move to cut off Iraqi water is having a deleterious effect on Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, as well as added to deep public dissatisfaction in Iraq over economic issues.

Both may be efforts by the mullahs to further destabilize potential threats and allow them to sow chaos thereby allowing them to continue exerting influence on their neighbors.

The weaponization of food and water are a logical next step in the terrorist tool kit for the Iranian regime and only proves the depths the regime is willing to go to achieve its aims no matter what innocents are harmed in the process.

The looming U.S. economic sanctions, especially those due to kick in next month on Iran’s oil industry, may in the long run prove too much for the mullahs to overcome as the U.S. Treasury Department warned the rest of the world to beware of money fleeing the Islamic state, especially funds being smuggled out by friends and families of the mullahs and those controlling the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Any country that allows its central bank to be involved in deception in support of [Iranian] terrorism requires the highest levels of scrutiny, particularly when the country itself is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker said Thursday.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued the advisory “to help financial institutions better detect and report potentially illicit transactions related to the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Ultimately the true test of the Iranian regime’s commitment to terrorism will come when the full force of sanctions hit and the mullahs will have to decide whether or not to reform their government or face a popular uprising from the Iranian people.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Taking Desperate Measures to Stave off Sanctions Impact

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laura Carnahan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Struggles with Chaos Engulfing Iranian Regime

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The mullahs in Tehran continued to struggle with the fallout from re-imposed economic sanctions by the Trump administration with its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, as well as mounting pressure from demonstrations and protests enveloping the country as Iranians demand relief from a death spiral of an economy and national currency.

Internal dissent has festered into open chaos as the Iranian parliament acted to remove Hassan Rouhani’s beleaguered finance minister from office in a largely symbolic act to show frustrated Iranians the regime was doing something to fix their problems, although it’s doubtful any Iranian honestly believed that fiction.

The parliament backed the removal from office of Masoud Karbasian, minister of finance and economic affairs, by 137 votes to 121 against, state media said.

The sacking was the latest in a continuing shakeup of top economic personnel. In early August Iranian lawmakers voted out the minister of labor and last month Rouhani replaced the head of the central bank.

“(America’s) focus is on a psychological war against Iran and its business partners,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday, according to the Tasnim news agency.

Zarif’s statement smacks of the desperation the regime is feeling as it tries for any rhetorical volley in an effort to find anything that might stick on the Trump administration in terms of effective messaging.

The fact there has been a wholesale pullout of foreign firms from contracts in Iran such as Total, Peugeot and other leading names demonstrates just how ineffective the regime has been in the face of potential secondary economic sanctions from the U.S. that could punish anyone doing business with Iran.

One of the key requirements by the Trump administration was for the Iranian regime to rein in its support of the Assad regime and stop involving itself militarily in Syria, but the Iranian regime’s top defense official was in Damascus this weekend meeting with Bashar al-Assad and pledged to continue supporting the regime.

Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami said that Iran would help expand Syria’s military arsenal.

“The Islamic Republic has high capabilities in the area of defense and can help Syria in expanding their military equipment,” he said, according to ISNA.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said last week that Iran should remove its forces from Syria.

Senior Iranian officials have said their military presence in Syria is at the invitation of the Assad government and they have no immediate plans to withdraw.

More than 1,000 Iranians, including senior members of the Revolutionary Guards, have been killed in Syria since 2012.

The Guards initially kept quiet about their role in the Syria conflict. But in recent years, as casualties have mounted, they have been more outspoken about their engagement, framing it as an existential struggle against the Sunni Muslim fighters of Islamic State.

In reality, Iranian intervention in Syria was vital in order to preserve one of the very few allies the Iranian regime has from being deposed as part of the democracy movement protests sweeping across the Middle East in 2010.

The end result of that military intervention was over half a million men, women and children killed and nearly five million refugees flooding into Europe as well as the rise of ISIS and years of terrorist attacks on Europe, Asia, the U.S. and Canada.

While there is much speculation about Rouhani’s future, the truth is that he is largely irrelevant since top mullah Ali Khamenei remains the firm head of the regime both spiritually and practically. Rouhani’s ultimate utility will be as a scapegoat to protect Khamenei and the other mullahs from the wrath of the Iranian people.

Parliament members have also called for the impeachment of the education and interior ministers, and others have said the industry and housing ministers should be impeached if Rouhani doesn’t shake up his economic team himself, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Iran’s economic outlook has darkened in recent months. Analysts at BMI Research in London project economic growth to slow to 1.8% this year, followed by a contraction of more than 4% next year.

Of course, the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, are trying to make the argument that Rouhani’s downfall would only leave the regime in the hands of hardliners, but that message misses the entire fact that since Rouhani’s election which was manipulated by Khamenei, the hardliners have never loosened their grip on power.

The Iran nuclear deal was solely designed to get Iran desperately needed cash to save its military intervention in Syria and allow it to rearm and rebuild its depleted military. The fact that Iran’s economy has tanked is a result of that diversion of much-needed capital from the Iranian people to the military.

It’s no wonder why protesting Iranians have chanted since last December to get out of Syria and stop supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The NIAC posted a roundup of news items in an effort to try and portray how Iran is slipping into the grip of hardliners because of the new economic sanctions, but the past three years prove how silly that idea is since the regime has flexed its military muscle throughout the Middle East while cracking down harshly on dissenters at home.

These are not the actions of a “moderate” government as the NIAC would have you believe. What we may be seeing those are the desperate thrashings of a regime being crushed from all sides.

Finger Pointing Mounts Inside Chaotic Iran Regime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is the Open for Business Sign for Iran Now Closed?

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Is the Open for Business Sign for Iran Now Closed?

Is the Open for Business Sign for Iran Now Closed?

One of the primary reasons why the Iran lobby was conceived and brought to life was a recognition by the mullahs in Tehran that they lacked all credibility when it came to the Western news media and needed surrogates to help shape the world’s perception of them as more open, accommodating and moderate than they really were.

This was especially important in light of the crippling economic sanctions that were bringing the Iranian regime’s economy to its knees, which was part of the discontent that was on display in the aftermath of the scandalous 2009 presidential election.

The massive street protests came at the height of the Arab Spring protests toppling governments throughout the Middle East and threatened to take down the mullahs in Tehran.

After brutally putting down the protests, the mullahs figured out they needed help to keep their grip on power which led to the election of “moderate” Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and a massive PR push aimed at the Obama administration to craft a nuclear deal that would lift the economic sanctions on Iran.

Much has already been written about the launching of Iran lobby advocates such as the National Iranian American Council and its prominent role in pushing for the nuclear deal by working in coordination with the Obama administration in creating the much-discussed “echo chamber” of supporters.

The aftermath of the nuclear deal and hasty implementation by the outgoing Obama administration created a narrow window of opportunity for the Iranian regime to get what it needed most at that time: cash and lots of it.

The regime was bleeding cash in its support of wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen so accessing frozen assets, as well as the planeloads of cash paid as part of ransom payments for American hostages, helped stave off imminent collapse.

The next aim for the regime and Iran lobby was the lifting of economic sanctions so that business and investment deals could be struck to provide steady future sources of revenue.

After an initial rush by some European companies, later followed by Russian and Chinese military sales, the proverbial land rush slowed to a crawl amid uncertainty that the Trump administration and U.S. Congress might reinstitute sanctions because of Iranian regime’s support for terrorism and an alarming increase in ballistic missile launches.

It didn’t help the mullahs that their technological partner, North Korea, was busy flinging ballistic missiles into orbit faster than reruns of Real Housewives of Orange County, and alarming most of the nations in the Pacific.

The prospect that the U.S. might levy new sanctions slowed investment to a crawl, aside from a few high-profile sales of commercial jetliners, there has been few business deals announced.

That drought of new investment once again stirred ordinary Iranians to anger in the most recent presidential election a few months ago which saw mass protests throughout Iran; even including harsh demonstrations aimed at Rouhani himself.

The poor condition of the Iranian economy was also a contributing factor to the implosion of the candidacy of Ebrahim Raisi, the handpicked would-be successor by top mullah Ali Khamenei, leading to broad speculation that the mullahs’ grip on power was slipping.

The most recent high-profile deal announced by Iran was with French petroleum giant Total, which agreed to a deal to jointly develop Iran’s massive South Pars gas field. Total was the first, and so far, only major oil player to commit to returning to Iran, while other firms, especially U.S. and British ones remain on the sidelines uncertain of the potential of the re-imposition of economic sanctions.

The risks for Total, and for that matter any other foreign company, doing business with Iran are substantial, as outlined in an insightful editorial by Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, president of the International American Council, in Arab News.

“U.S. pressure and sanctions on Tehran will likely continue to escalate, affecting American and non-American companies. The US may re-impose its sanctions bill that targets non-American companies doing business with Iran. If a company does business with both countries, its investments could be in peril. Quitting Iran’s market would not be easy for those with long-term investments,” Rafizadeh said.

He also alludes to the increasing political instability within Iran, as well as the tightening grip on the Iranian economy by Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. That grip exists because of the rising need by the IRGC to funnel even more funds for its foreign adventures which have expanded in various fronts.

Also, as Iranian regime ramps up its ballistic missile program, the United Nations may feel compelled to act and sanction Iran lest it has to deal with both an Iran and North Korea crisscrossing the sky with ballistic missiles.

Recognizing the threat of possibly having its economy shutdown once again, the mullahs are moving rapidly to take advantage of the Total deal to ready an additional 14 oil and gas exploration for tender offers to foreign companies.

Sitting on some of the world’s biggest energy reserves, Iran has already been working on deals to develop fields such as South Pars, South Azadegan, Yadavaran, West Karoun, Mansouri and Abteymour, Reuters reported.

France’s Total last week became the first major to sign a post-sanctions development deal with Iran. Russia’s Lukoil and Denmark’s Maersk are also potential investors.

“Next on the horizon is the search for new oil, with the National Iranian Oil Company planning to tender 14 oil and gas blocks for exploration in the next two to three months,” NIOC’s deputy director for exploration blocks, Rahim Nematollahi, said in Istanbul.

But these deals may become moot should either the U.S. or UN act to impose new sanctions, especially any sanctions once again removing Iran from accessing the international wire transfer network or currency exchanges.

All of which places any foreign entity in a precarious position should it decide to invest in Iran. A company also runs the risk being labelled a supporter of terrorism since the vast majority of revenue Iran generates from one of these deals would inevitably be used to fund its proxy wars and support its terrorist allies.

This may mean that for the short-term at least, the “open for business” sign for Iran may be just another example of fake news.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Economy Delivering Only for Military and Regime Elites

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Iran Economy Delivering Only for Military and Regime Elites

Iran Economy Delivering Only for Military and Regime Elites

The Iranian economy should be an economic powerhouse backed by one of the largest petroleum reserves in the Middle East and a population that historically has been one of the best educated and entrepreneurial.

The Iranian people have spread throughout the world as part of the diaspora stemming from the Islamic revolution and have helped make scientific advances, create masterpieces of art and build globe-spanning industries.

Yet, given all of these accomplishments, the Iranian economy remains mired in stagnant growth with huge unemployment numbers, especially for Iranian youth who face a bleak future. All too often their choices are to struggle in finding jobs or join the regime as part of its military to be sent off to fight and die in far-flung battlefields far from home.

The truth of the Iranian economy is that it has been shaped and molded to serve not the Iranian people, but to fund the whims and lavish lifestyles of the ruling elites, including the families of mullahs in a dynastic fashion, as well as prime the engine of war for the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In Al-Arabiya, Tony Duheaume examined the contradictions in the economic windfalls benefitting the elites and the hopelessness and poverty being experienced by Iran’s poor.

“While many of Iran’s citizens have suffered all of the hardships of a failing economy, in a land of increasing unemployment and low pay, the ruling mullahs lead the lives of past emperors, living in absolute luxury, with billions they have made off the backs of the Iranian people, now insulating them from the crumbling nation they reside over,” he writes.

“Beggars wander the streets of Iran in droves, drug addicts with nothing to live for litter the thoroughfares, while the homeless find shelter where they can, some known to have taken up residence living under bridges, or in the sewerage canals that run alongside the country’s highways,” Duheaume added.

Duheaume pointed out a shocking photo essay published in the Shahrvand Daily last year that depicted many of these hapless vagrants sleeping in empty graves in Shahriar, a town about 12 miles from Tehran, the nation’s capital, in images that shocked the nation.

Reports suggested that at least 50 men, women and children were living in this cemetery, with many of their number addicted to drugs. Dressed in grimy rags, their emaciated, dirt-streaked features stare vacantly out of open graves, with only tattered tarpaulins or sheets of well-worn polythene covering the holes to protect them from the elements, in an area where the temperature in winter can drop to well below freezing, he said.

With hundreds of millions of dollars already pouring into the Iranian administrations coffers from released frozen assets, which could eventually total $150 billion, none of this has yet been designated to relieve the suffering of its people. Already billions have been earmarked to spend purchasing Russian T-90 tanks, artillery, advanced Su-30 fighter jets, and helicopters, and during 2016, Iran’s defence sector grew by 45 percent, with the regime spending billions on its long-range missile program, and the development of indigenous weapons systems, Duheaume pointed out.

There is also the delivery of long-promised S-300 air defence systems, said to have cost the Iranian government $900 million. On top of this there are the multi-billion dollars the regime is using to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the $60-$100 million a year it is paying in financial assistance to Hezbollah, plus its expenditure in financial support or weapons to aid terror groups such as Hamas and the Houthis, he explained.

But at the other end of the social scale, Duheaume correctly pointed out the group that is siphoning off large amounts of the nation’s assets, are the ultra-rich mullahs that rule Iran, all of them claiming to live frugal lives, but who are in fact living in the lap of luxury, and are said to be squirreling away vast fortunes in foreign bank accounts.

The pictorial evidence of this lavish lifestyle appeared on social media as these children of the mullahs shamelessly posted selfies as they tore down Tehran streets in exotic sports cars swathed in haute couture fashion more appropriate to the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

Top mullah Ali Khamenei himself sits at the top of the ladder as far as the millionaire mullahs are concerned, known to be in control of a financial empire worth $95 billion, which far exceeds the accumulated wealth of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was Khamenei’s predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Islamic Republic, who used the Shah’s plundering of the Iranian economy, and his unequal distribution of wealth, as one of the main excuses to depose him, and now this plundering has been repeated by his ousters, Duheaume said.

But as far as Iran’s leadership is concerned, all are worthy of the Rich List. To name but a few of Iran’s richest mullahs, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was said to have netted $1.2 billion, Mohammad Ali Taskhiri $90 million, Mohammad Khatami $84 million, Ali Larijani $70 million, Mir Hossein Mousavi $58 million, Mohammad Hossein Adeli $43 million, Mohammad Javad Zarif $32 million, Ahmed Bourghani $19 million, and a little further down the scale, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with $5 million.

The mullahs have concentrated this wealth into their own pockets and have created a system designed to preserve their wealth and power. The Islamic regime does not tolerate dissent, nor does it provide for its people.

It deals with desperate pleas for jobs and aid from the Iranian people with crackdowns, mass arrests and imprisonment.

Any government that has to maintain control through fear and intimidation is not long for success.

Laura Carnahan

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

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Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Iran’s currency, the rial, took a nosedive in hitting a record low against the U.S. dollar as financial markets returned from the Christmas holiday and doubts crept up about the impact the incoming Trump administration would have on the struggling Iranian economy under the mullahs.

More importantly, the plunge in the rial was more proof of that the mullahs in Tehran were incompetent when it came to managing their economy and that supporting three large-scale wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and had drained the regime’s foreign currency reserves dry.

The much ballyhooed promises of the Iran lobby that the nuclear deal reached last year would yield economic benefits for the Iranian people fell as fast and as flat as the Iranian currency.

The rial was quoted in the free market at 41,500 to the dollar, weakening from around 41,250 on Sunday and 35,570 in mid-September. Before this month, the record low was about 40,000, hit in late 2012, traders said.

Economists said there were several reasons for the slide, including the dollar’s strength against many currencies in the last few weeks, and uncertainty before next year’s presidential elections in Iran, according to Reuters.

But they said Trump’s election in November was a major factor. He has said he will scrap the deal between Iran and world powers that imposed curbs on Tehran’s nuclear projects and lifted sanctions on the Iranian economy in January this year.

This would hinder Tehran’s efforts to attract tens of billions of dollars of foreign funds to help modernize its economy. Inflows since January have been smaller than the government expected, partly because big international banks fear running into U.S. legal trouble if they deal with Iran; this in spite of efforts by the outgoing Obama administration to grant waivers and exemptions to the regime in an effort to spur the flow of cash to Tehran.

Iranian officials have denied any link between the U.S. election result and the rial’s slide. Samad Karimi, head of the exports department at the central bank, blamed the slide on a temporary surge in demand for dollars for travel and trade at the end of the year, state news agency IRNA reported.

Regime spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said on Monday that the rial’s drop was due to “psychological issues” and that the government hoped it would rebound within days.

Nevertheless, traders at some exchange houses in Tehran told Reuters they had not seen a sudden rise of dollar demand in recent weeks – suggesting the reasons for the rial’s tumble might be deep-seated.

That assumption of deep-seated problems within the Iranian economy are true since Iran is notoriously corrupt with virtually of the nation’s industries controlled through a myriad of shell companies by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and personal family fiefdoms of regime leaders.

This arrangement restricts Iran’s ability to operate a true free market economy, but rather is run like a gangland-style criminal enterprise where nepotism, personal favorites and enrichment and slavish devotion to exporting its extremist Islamic ideology dominate economic and fiscal decisions.

How a President Trump will deal with the Iranian regime is fast becoming the dominant policy discussion in European and Middle Eastern capitals. The initial reaction to his announced cabinet choices shows the potential for a more hardline response to Iranian militancy and extremism with such avowed critics of the regime as Rep. Mike Pompeo and Sen. Jeff Sessions set to assume office.

The potential for a sea change from the policy of appeasement followed by the Obama administration has emboldened critics of the Iranian regime to speak out including Iranian dissident groups long shut out by Obama.

A group of leading Iranian human rights activists and former political prisoners published an open letter on Friday to President-elect Donald Trump asking for a wholesale change from President Obama’s rapprochement with Iran’s clerical regime.

“Unfortunately, Iranians have been among the main victims of the detrimental policies adopted by President Obama in the Middle East. A prime example of these detrimental policies was the secret delivery of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to the Revolutionary Guards in exchange for the release of the hostages,” the dissidents’ letter said.

Fox News first published the document, the full text of which can be read on the Farsi-language website Taghato, which is run by the Iranian Liberal Students and Graduates group.

The signatories come from France, Germany, East Asia, Canada, the US and other countries.

“The ISIS and the Islamic Republic of Iran are two sides of the coin that is Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. To end this reign of terror, the Islamic caliphate (ISIS) and the Islamic regime in Iran must be replaced with elected pro-peace and prosperity governments.”

The letter called for fresh sanctions targeting “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the supreme leader’s financial empire and direct the US Treasury to strongly enforce them” and stop Iran’s pursuit of long-range missiles.

Publication of the document electrified Iran’s social media and regime-controlled news outlets. The IRGC-controlled Fars News Agency called supporters of the letter traitors, while the subject was among the top hashtags on Twitter.

BBC Persian said the letter was re-tweeted more than 10,000 times.

The dissidents’ open letter is only one of many entreaties now being aimed at the Trump team in the hopes of reasserting America’s role as watchdog of the Iranian regime and curb on the mullahs.

For the Iranian people, renewing the push for democracy and accountability can only help improve their economic condition.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Tries Claiming Victory Where There is None

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Iran Regime Tries Claiming Victory Where There is None

Iran Regime Tries Claiming Victory Where There is None

It has been interesting watching the reaction of Iranian regime leaders to Michael Aoun’s election to the largely ceremonial post of president of Lebanon. From the statements and self-congratulations coming out of Tehran, you would have thought the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah was the one elected.

For the people of Lebanon, the results are more akin to a yawner. For Lebanese, who are used to the historical game of musical chairs, the election of Aoun is not so much ground breaking as much as it simply puts a warm body in the chair of the presidency after a two year vacancy.

Antoun Issa, senior editor at the Middle East Institute and a former Beirut-based journalist, appropriately captured the sentiments of most Lebanese when he coined the phrase “Kullun haramiyyeh” which means “they’re all thieves” in describing the most common sentiment on Lebanon’s streets from its vendors and waiters to students and doctors.

“So when Michel Aoun, the maverick general-turned-politician, achieved his long-held ambition of becoming president on Monday, most ordinary Lebanese reacted with indifference. The new president is just another name, another title, and another episode in the country’s endless — and ultimately meaningless — political drama,” Issa writes in Foreign Policy.

“To become president, Aoun, the country’s main Christian leader, struck a deal with his longtime opponent, Saad Hariri, head of the rival Sunni Future Movement. As part of the deal, Hariri will now become prime minister. But for the deal to work, it also needed (and duly received) the approval of arguably the most powerful man in Lebanon — Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah,” he added.

“For ordinary people, this is all a game of musical chairs. Such is the disconnect between the country’s political class and the people that the average Lebanese can’t tell the difference between having a president and not having one. Prior to Monday, Lebanon had, in fact, been without a president for two years — but this fact could not be discerned on the streets of Beirut. President or no, Lebanon has had no effective governance for decades,” Issa said.

More importantly, the long-term strategy of Hezbollah is to so weaken the Lebanese government that it cannot provide basic government services such as education, food, healthcare and security and thus remain the dominant political and military power by dispensing these services to the country’s large Shiite population.

It’s a recipe that the mullahs in Tehran have practiced well by keeping the Iranian people dependent on the largesse of the Iranian regime and not allowing the full economic benefits of what should be a powerhouse economy trickle down to the people.

This Iranian regime game plan of claiming victory where there is none is a tried and true tactic. Even as the Iranian people march, protest and demonstrate against rigged elections, government corruption or shortages of food and job opportunities, the mullahs continue to flog the idea of victories to keep the perception alive they know what they are doing.

The problem with maintaining control with essentially a lie is that it is a fragile form of control subject to toppling even by small acts of defiance. For the Iranian regime this means it cannot tolerate even the smallest inklings of dissent, which is why the mullahs so ruthlessly pursue members of the Iranian resistance movement and arrest Iranians on the slightest provocations.

It is why even dress code violations such as women failing to wear a hijab or students posting selfies on Instagram are met with beatings and arrests.

This past Friday saw another of these instances when regime authorities arrested organizers of a rally held at the tomb of the ancient Persian King Cyrus the Great in Pasargadae, Iran.

Breitbart News previously reported that protesters chanted slogans like, “Iran is our country, Cyrus is our father,” “clerical rule is synonymous with only tyranny, only war,” and “freedom of thought cannot take place with beards,” a reference to the theocratic leaders currently in power.

According to Reuters, there was no indication as to how many of the event’s organizers had been arrested. However, a judiciary official reportedly said on Monday Iran’s intelligence and security forces have placed the organizers of the event under close surveillance and that they will face prosecution.

Prior to the October 28 protest, members of the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other Iranian authorities attempted to thwart the impending rallies by spreading rumors that officials had completely shut down the city, canceling tours to the site, sealing roads to Pasargadae, and shutting down the Internet.

Those actions did not deter the protesters, which consisted mostly of youth and individuals under the age of 35, from carrying out their rally.

The mere existence of such protests are dangerous for the regime, but also provide ample evidence for the rest of the world of the fragility of the mullahs’ rule which is why the international community needs to confront their extremism more forcefully.

Alex Carlile, a Liberal Democrat member of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords and co-chairman of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, challenged the United Nations to hold the regime accountable in an editorial in the Washington Times.

“The Iranian regime has imprisoned a British charity worker and sentenced her to five years’ imprisonment on bogus national security charges,” he writes. “The case of Nazanin Ratcliffe has shocked the British public as it has unfolded over the past six months, since she was arrested by regime officials when she attempted to fly back to England after taking her daughter, Gabriella, to visit her parents.”

“However, this is only the latest in a long line of human rights abuses by Tehran. Earlier this year, a leaked audio file provided further proof of the complicity of top-level regime members in a 1988 massacre, which killed 30,000 political prisoners, including juveniles and pregnant women,” Lord Carlile added.

Lord Carlile writes the main targets of these murders were members of the opposition movement People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, or MEK), although the regime also executed relatives of members or casual supporters as well as other dissidents.

Nothing so incenses the regime than the continued efforts of the Iranian resistance to educate the world about these massacres and other human rights violations because they ultimately point out the hollow and empty “victories” the regime trumpets.

Michael Tomlinson