Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Cannot Defend Growing Human Rights Violations

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Iran Lobby Cannot Defend Growing Human Rights Violations

Iran Lobby Cannot Defend Growing Human Rights Violations

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” – Abraham Lincoln

On this President’s Day, it is fitting we look back on past presidents for lessons and observations that hold true in today’s chaotic world and Lincoln’s quote is as powerful and meaningful today as it was in his day, especially as we look at the downward spiral that is the Middle East in general and the Iranian regime specifically.

Lincoln, faced with a great split down the middle of his country, believed deeply in uniting a nation under the principles of freedom and equality for all. He saw slavery as a morally corrupt practice that – if allowed to continue – would darken and sicken the heart of his nation to its core. His quote hearkens to the need to stand firm in the face of great adversity and make the hard decisions today because any delay would force ever harder decisions tomorrow.

The same sentiment applies to the world’s approach to the mullahs in Tehran. The rush to appease the Iranian regime with a dubious nuclear agreement and the move to delink from it a wide range of regime abuses such as support for terror, development of ballistic missiles, holding of hostages and crackdowns on human rights, have proven to be problematic in its aftermath.

Lincoln’s words are also a necessary reminder that we cannot bargain away important moral points today in the hopes for political expediency and we certainly cannot be lured by the siren song of false promises that emanate from the Iran lobby which fought hard to position the regime as a moderate-seeking group of bureaucrats and not a bunch of thuggish theocrats which they really are.

When regime advocates such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council argue for an almost obsequious approach to dealing with the mullahs in the hopes of gaining favor, they in fact are arguing the world give away all of its leverage in the hope of gaining some whiff of cooperation when none will be forthcoming.

Even now, Parsi and Marashi and others in the Iran lobby have consistently ignored the broader implications of aggressive regime behavior since the nuclear deal and instead focused on non-issues such as visa waivers and holding the line against any possible future sanctions.

They have ignored the widespread imprisonment of journalists, Iranian dissidents, artists, students and bloggers throughout Iran.

They have ignored the dramatic escalation in the Syrian war as the mullahs begged Russia to enter on behalf of saving the Assad regime.

They have ignored the blatant acts of aggression committed by the regime in detaining ten U.S. sailors and then using them in a constant stream of propaganda exercises; releasing video of them kneeling underneath guns, even one sailor crying and now revelations they were subjected to constant and intense questioning by regime officials.

The Iran lobby has consistently ignored the repeated reports and demands of international human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in Iran, all of whom have revealed evidence of mounting regime abuses of increasing size and barbarity.

An Iranian who fled the bloodshed of the regime wrote in the American Thinker his own story of the atrocities committed by the regime and sad state of affairs for ordinary Iranians.

“In the last 37 years, the Iranian nation has lived under the reign of the most backward regime.  The truth is that the clergymen who rule Iran do not belong in this age and cannot deal with the realities of the modern world.  At best, the Islamic revolution of 1979 was the revolution of century against century.  They believe that after 37 years of mismanagement and brutality, the only way they can extend their rule is by increasingly terrorizing their critics.  The Islamic regime has taken this noble Iranian nation into the Middle Ages, creating some of the most medieval laws and implementing them against its citizens in the most vicious manner,” he writes.

“The regime’s atrocities include stoning men and women, cutting off their fingers, torturing innocent people for their opinion, incarcerating religious minorities on fabricated charges, imprisoning Iranian youths for upholding their very basic human rights, and organizing vigilantes to murder political opponents.  They have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, where Iranians cannot trust one another.  In brief, in the name of religion, the clergymen have created a society where sadness and despair have replaced hope and optimism,” he added.

This testimony is only one of many that pour out of Iran demanding to be addressed by the world’s governments and news media. Iranian dissident groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran have provided much of the proof of the atrocities being committed through smuggled video of public executions, sworn testimony from victims of the regime and tracking of prisoners who all too often disappear in the labyrinth of infamous black holes such as Evin Prison.

Ultimately, Lincoln’s message may prove prophetic as the price to be paid in confronting Iranian regime aggression will only rise in the next president’s term. We can only hope that price will not be too high to pay in light of recent appeasement of the mullahs.

By Laura Carnahan

Iranian Regime Antagonizes as Iran Lobby Ignores It All

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Iranian Regime Antagonizes as Iran Lobby Ignores It All

New App to get around the oppressive “Ershad” security units.

 

W

hile the Iran lobby is trying to push for the idea, of moderate forces existing inside the Iranian regime, the violation of human rights in Iran is on the rise. Things have gotten so bad, that some smart Iranian app developers have created a remarkable mobile phone app to help young fashion conscious Iranians avoid the regime’s notorious morality police known as “Ershad.”

According to the BBC, Ershad’s mobile checkpoints which usually consist of a van, a few bearded men and one or two women in black chadors, are deployed in towns across Iran and appear with no notice.

Ershad personnel have a very extensive list of powers ranging from issuing warnings and forcing those they accuse of violating the regime’s strict Islamic code of conduct, to make a written statement pledging to never do so again, to fines or even prosecuting offenders.

The new phone app which is called “Gershad” (probably meaning get around Ershad instead of facing them) however, will alert users to checkpoints and help them to avoid them by choosing a different route.

The data for the app is crowdsourced. It relies on users to point out the location of the Ershad vans on maps and when a sufficient number of users point out the same point, an alert will show up on the map for other users. When the number decreases, the alert will fade gradually from the map.

In a statement on their web page the app’s developers explain their motives in this way: “Why do we have to be humiliated for our most obvious right which is the right to wear what we want? Social media networks and websites are full of footage and photos of innocent women who have been beaten up and dragged on the ground by the Ershad patrol agents.”

“Police need to provide security for the citizens not to turn into a factor for fear. A while ago, angry with such unreasonable oppressions, we looked for a solution to find a practical way to resist the volume of injustices peacefully with low risk level, to restore part of our freedom.”

According to the designers of Gershad, in 2014 alone, around three million people were issued with official warnings, 18,000 were prosecuted and more than 200,000 were made to write formal pledges of repentance.

While it is laudable that Iranians are developing new and innovative ways to get around the strict control imposed by the mullahs, the price of that covert activity can be high in a regime where over 2,200 executions have already occurred under the tenure of Hassan Rouhani.

That point was emphasized by Mohammad Rez Naqdi, commander of the regime’s infamous Basij paramilitary force, who claimed that the U.S. could no longer act in the Middle East without the consent of top mullah Ali Khamenei.

Those kinds of boasts have caused an ever-increasing number of news outlets and political leaders from both sides of the aisle to demand more accountability from the regime.

According to the Washington Post, this week alone, U.S. lawmakers will gather for at least five separate committee meetings specifically dedicated to reviewing Iran’s actions ranging from its compliance with the nuclear pact to its dedication to locating and freeing still-missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007. Top U.S. intelligence officials were grilled Tuesday in two additional hearings for their take on the threat posed by Iran.

And later this month, senators are expected to roll out a series of bills to bring the greater weight of more non-nuclear sanctions down on Tehran, seeking to punish Iran for everything from recent ballistic missile tests to pervasive human rights abuses.

Among the proposals was one offered by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) who pledged to get more funding for the group responsible for making sure Iran doesn’t cheat on the nuclear deal, suggesting President Obama’s budget request doesn’t go far enough.

“As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I am committed to doing everything I can to increase funding for the [International Atomic Energy Agency] during the Appropriations process,” he said in a statement. “However, this goal is made considerably more difficult by the administration’s low baseline request.”

It is almost a given that Iran’s upcoming parliamentary elections are being engineered by the mullahs to deliver an overwhelming slate of winners favorable to Khamenei and his cadre of mullahs. It remains to be seen what the rest of the world will do in response to another stolen election in Iran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Continues to Ignore Human Rights Violations

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Iran Lobby Continues to Ignore Human Rights Violations

Iran Lobby Continues to Ignore Human Rights Violations

The Iran lobby’s leading cheerleaders seem to have a problem with selective memory recall as evidenced by the latest editorial by Reza Marashi from the National Iranian American Council in the National Interest in which he praised Hassan Rouhani’s European tour and boasted of the Iranian regime’s plans for its newfound wealth as a result of the nuclear deal.

“Iran is pursuing this agenda in an effort to increase government legitimacy and security among Iranian society through improved economic conditions,” Marashi says in of the more inane comments he makes.

“Alliances and enmities shift regularly in Iranian politics, but survival of the system is the shared goal of all stakeholders. Thus far, Rouhani’s political coalition has won Iran’s internal political debate by arguing that survival is better guaranteed through flexibility than intransigence,” he adds in typical think tank-speak.

What Marashi is missing from his less than eloquent dissertation is the reality that is going on within Iran now which is the swift action by the Guardian Council to remove from parliamentary election ballots upwards of 90 percent of all candidates perceived to be moderate or opposed to the current mullah leadership. Even the grandson of the regime’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, was tossed off the ballot for being too moderate!

Marashi’s piece is titled “Can Iran Get Out of Its Own Way?” That much he got right, since it is clear the mullahs in Tehran have absolutely no desire to halt their steady stream of militant and aggressive actions in solidifying their hold on power, continue their crackdown on human rights and internal dissent and utilize its newfound wealth to rebuild its infrastructure and enrich themselves at the same time.

The upcoming parliamentary elections are now set to deliver a hand-picked slate of loyalists beholden to the mullahs and Ali Khamenei and Rouhani – far from being the moderate struggling to preserve the future of democracy in Iran – has ably served in his capacity as the puppet face for Khamenei.

It’s also worth noting that Marashi’s claim of the regime realigning to provide an economic boon to ordinary Iranians is also a farce since the deals being signed are lined up to funnel billions back into the coffers of the Revolutionary Guard which controls the heavy industries such as petroleum, aviation and manufacturing.

Marashi also doesn’t address the unseen corruption so deeply rooted in the regime economy that any foreign investor is likely to face barriers. He also does not dare mention the sophisticated cyberwall cutting Iran off from the rest of the world and the high degree of surveillance conducted by the regime’s intelligence agencies that monitor virtually all traffic in and out of the country and often leads them to dissidents and other activists.

Despite the deals and the desire of European governments to begin trading with Iran, financing remains a big issue as major European banks remain reluctant to handle Iranian payments, deterred by previous huge fines from the US treasury. Nuclear-related sanctions have been lifted but other US measures relating to terrorism and human rights are still in place, according to The Guardian.

In typical regime fashion indicative of the corruption within it, far from being a political fight between “hard line” and “moderate” factions, the fight within the regime can be viewed as a fight over the spoils of getting the nuclear deal since the vast majorities of Iranian industries are controlled in whole or part through shell companies belonging to the Revolutionary Guard, which in turn has provided a steady source of illicit income to regime officials for the past two decades.

Even as Khamenei has still called for a “resistance economy,” his intent and those of the mullahs is not to resist any American threat, but instead keep the Iranian people under the boot of oppression and not allow the full benefits of a reopened economy to flow to them.

Evidence of this schism was shown as the regime cancelled plans for a conference set for London where new contracts for foreign oil companies to drill in Iran. Regime officials ostensibly claimed the cancellation was due to British visa requirements, but in fact political turmoil domestically was to blame as various regime groups jockeyed for their share of the corrupt spoils.

Some oil officials are worried the contracts won’t be attractive enough to offset the majors’ reluctance to invest globally due to low oil prices. Others fear mounting criticism by hard-liners who say the deals would give too much away of the country’s natural wealth, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The new deals have been criticized by the Basij, the paramilitary oppressive forces, formed to uphold the principles of the mullah’s rule. On Saturday, members of Basij’s student wing were arrested after protesting against the contracts, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported.

Political crackdowns in Iran are so commonplace and for so many trivial acts, that some Iranians who have been repeatedly arrested have developed handbook to help those who might face arrest in the regime.

One of the student activists jailed three times and tortured, believes there are steps activists in Iran can take to better protect themselves, both inside and outside prison walls. He belongs to a group of over a dozen activists who used their hard-earned personal experiences to create a 19-chapter booklet in Farsi and English titled “Safe Activism: Reducing the Risks and Impact of Arrest,” according to the Guardian.

Designed to teach activists and journalists how to avoid careless behaviors that could endanger them and those around them, the booklet, now online, also offers guidelines on what to do in case of arrest and how to mitigate the consequences of incarceration,” the Guardian added.

Basic safety measures are highlighted in the first chapters of the ‘Safe Activism’ booklet. Readers are reminded to take precautions before meeting with other activists and not communicate important information over the phone. They are advised to keep sensitive documents as well as identification papers and travel documents at a safe place outside their residence, and to clear their homes of illegal items like drugs, alcohol and banned media.

The fact that ordinary Iranians would need a handbook like these speaks volumes about conditions in Iran and is damning proof that Marashi’s optimistic views are really flights of fantasy.

It would be more of a service if the NIAC published the handbook on its website so future Iranian-Americans visiting Iran are not imprisoned like so many others have been.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran-Rouhani Paris Visit Met by Thousands of Protestors

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Rouhani Paris Visit Met by Thousands of Protestors

Rouhani Paris Visit Met by Thousands of Protestors

As Iranian regime leader Hassan Rouhani arrived in Paris for the second half of his European tour, thousands of protestors gathered at Place Denfert-Rochereau to demonstrate against his presence and give voice to the brutality that has been meted out during his term against dissidents, religious minorities, women, children and ordinary Iranians in gross violations of human rights.

The protests included French political figures, Iranians, human rights groups and other activists who called on French leaders to reprimand Rouhani for the terrible human rights conditions in Iran, as well as the long-term policies of support for terror groups and the spread of Islamic extremism including the long-running Syrian civil war.

The list of noteworthy participants at the protests included:

  • Sid Ahmad Ghozali, former Algerian Prime Minister;
  • Gilbert Mitterrand, President of France Libertés Foundation and son of the late French President Francois Mitterrand;
  • Senator Jean-Pierre Michel;
  • Giulio Maria Terzi, former Italian Foreign Minister;
  • Alejo Vidal-Quadras, President of the International Committee In Search of Justice (ISJ) and former Vice-President of the European Parliament;
  • José Bové, Member of the European Parliament from France;
  • Rama Yade, former French Secretary of State for Human Rights;
  • Henri Leclerc, prominent French lawyer and jurist;
  • Dominique Lefevbre, member of French National Assembly;
  • Jean- François Legaret and Jacques Boutault, Mayors of 1st and 2nd districts of Paris;
  • Struan Stevenson, President of European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA);
  • Michel Kilo, member of Syrian opposition; and
  • Marzieh Babakhani, member of PMOI/MEK Central Council

The large demonstration represented a tangible reminder to world media that Rouhani was not being welcomed with open arms in Europe, as a sizable contingent of French citizens joined in protests amid the still resonating pain of the Paris attacks that left 130 dead. Rouhani’s presence – far from being a PR coup for the regime – provided the opportunity for news media to see a visceral opposition to Rouhani and the theocratic regime as a whole.

 

It was also a reminder that far from being the “moderate” portrayed by the regime, Rouhani faithfully tows the party line in pushing unpopular positions such as the Iranian regime’s insistence that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad stay in power; dashing hopes for a quick political resolution to the bloody conflict that has forced the largest mass migration of refugees since World War II.

Asked at a news conference in the Élysée Palace whether Tehran would drop its support for Assad, Rouhani called the question “strange.”

“Syria’s problem is not a question of people. The problem is terrorism and Islamic State,” Rouhani said, standing beside French President François Hollande, who has repeatedly called for Assad to step down.

The stalemate over Assad bodes ill for a meeting set for Friday in Vienna, where Western governments hope to meet with Russia, Iran and other countries in the region as well as the Syrian regime and opposition to push for an end to the nearly five-year war.

Another further illustration of the harsh nature of the regime came in a three-minute video released by top mullah Ali Khamenei in which he questioned the Nazi Holocaust. The video – entitled “Holocaust: Are the Dark Ages Over?” – plays on of Khamenei’s speeches in which he said “No one in European countries dares to speak about the Holocaust, while it is not clear whether the core of this matter is reality or not. Even if it is reality, it is not clear how it happened.”

The questioning of the Holocaust is a matter of rote exercise for the regime as famously uttered by Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and has almost become an article of faith among the mullahs in Tehran and a perennial sore point in relations with the West.

That lack of concern over such deplorable events in human history carries over in the regime’s day-to-day disregard for human rights in virtually all phases of Iranian society and jurisprudence. The Daily Mail ran a powerful photographic series from Sadegh Souri who shot pictures documenting the harsh treatment and plight of young girls and women awaiting death sentences in Iranian prisons.

In Iran, the second-biggest user of capital punishment in the world, young women can be hanged for crimes, following unfair trials, including those based on forced confessions extracted through torture and other ill-treatment.

The frightened girls are imprisoned in a Juvenile Delinquents Correction Centre after their sentence verdict and a large number of the inmates are then killed when they reach 18.

In Time magazine, Matthew Trevithick, one of the American hostages released in the prisoner swap with Iran, recounted his arrest and 41 day imprisonment, in which he was studying Farsi in Tehran only to be placed under surveillance, then arrested and told he was never going to be leaving Iran again.

During his imprisonment, Trevithick was told to lie to his mother about his whereabouts and then regime interrogators demanded he videotape a confession that he worked for the CIA and had access to arms and cash. He said no and then was sent back to Evin prison where interrogators questioned him about any ties to journalists he might have had.

Trevithick noticed that the other prisoners he was with were all artists, dissidents and intellectuals; everyone who could be viewed as a problem for the regime was being locked up. Even as he is finally released, the regime officials at the airport make him pay a fee for overstaying his student visa.

The absurdity of the situation is balanced by the fact that virtually no news organization knew of his incarceration, nor of the efforts to coerce a confession from the American student who had traveled to Tehran lured by the false sense of security promulgated by the Iran lobby such as the National Iranian American Council and ended up spending 41 days in prison.

Unfortunately for the thousands of other dissidents, women and children languishing in Iranian prison, their hopes for release are much dimmer.

By Michael Tomlinson

Rouhani Meeting with Pope Francis Underscores Mistreatment of Religious Minorities

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Rouhani Meeting with Pope Francis Underscores Mistreatment of Religious Minorities

An Iranian Christian woman lights candles during the Christmas Eve mass at the St. Gregor Armenian Catholic church in Tehran on December 24, 201, as Christians around the world are celebrating Christmas. AFP PHOTO/ATTA KENARE (Photo credit should read ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images)

Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani concluded the second day of his European tour with a 40 minute meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican in which the Pope raised the question of the “promotion of human dignity and freedom of religion”—sensitive topics for the regime, which has been under fire for its human-rights record.

Only yesterday international human rights group Amnesty International issued a blistering report denouncing the Iranian regime’s record-setting pace of executing juveniles, while Iranian dissident groups stage protests of Rouhani’s tour and freed Christian pastor Saeed Abedini going public with revelations about his brutal torture over the past several years before his release as part of a prisoner swap.

No one can fault Pope Francis for praying and hoping for a more peaceful world with Iran’s participation, unfortunately the stark political realities of the regime’s government and rock-solid devotion to its particular virulent strain of extremist Islam makes the Pope’s wishes problematic.

For his part, Rouhani came out of the meeting with the Pontiff proclaiming that the pathway to solving instability in the Middle East and suppressing Islamic extremism and terrorism would come from supporting Iran economically; as if a job and car would be sufficient inhibitors to Extremism.

“If we want to combat extremism and violence in the world, if we want to fight against terrorism, one of the paths that we have is economic development and creating jobs,” Rouhani said.

It’s a curious position for Rouhani to advocate since the economic policies of his administration have so crippled the Iranian economy, widespread dissatisfaction over low wages, deep-rooted government corruption and a yawning gap between the privileged families of the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard Corps have led to large-scale protests and demonstrations throughout Iran involving everyone from striking teachers to small business owners.

There is no broad movement towards economic reforms even with the influx of an estimated $100 billion in cash being released under the terms of the nuclear agreement according to most economists and Rouhani’s shopping list on his European tour reflects that with deals being signed mostly in heavy industries completely under the control of the Revolutionary Guard Corps including aviation, petroleum, manufacturing and shipping.

Industrial sectors benefitting ordinary Iranians such as agriculture, consumer technology, pharmaceuticals and entertainment are not part of the announced economic revitalization Rouhani has outlined.

Meanwhile the plight of religious minorities continues to be a sore spot as dozens of Christians remain in regime prisons, many for simply holding religious services in their own homes. Rouhani’s government currently requires Christians to register with the regime authorities, while their religious practices are carefully monitored by regime intelligence and security forces.

Other religious minorities such as those who practice the Baha’i faith are also dealt with harshly in Iran, as well as those Muslims diverging from the regime’s Shia faith as Abedini noted in which he and other prisoners were forced to watch hangings of Sunni prisoners on Wednesdays in the prison he was being held in.

Abedini noted how during his captivity, he had come to believe his jailers were ready to execute him as well, but recalled how Rep. Robert Pittinger (R-NC) had spoken at a mass protest rally sponsored by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in which he invoked Abedini’s name causing – he believed – the regime to reconsider killing him now that he had become a higher profile prisoner.

“That speech, you mentioned my name,” Pittinger recalls Abedini as saying. “At that time, I really believe they were thinking about killing me. All of a sudden they let up. They got afraid.”

In the last months of Abedini’s detention, while diplomats were negotiating the terms of his release, his captors began treating him very well, taking good care of him and feeding him regularly, Pittenger relays.

“He thought maybe he was headed out, perhaps they were going to release him,” Pittenger says. “’When I left here, they wanted me to look good.’ Those were his words.”

Pittenger doubts Abedini will ever return to Iran.

“He saw the bigger picture. He was arrested because of his Christian faith. He’s Iranian. He understands the government, he understands what these mullahs do. They’re tyrants and they’re very rigid sectarian Shiite Muslims, and they have no respect or tolerance for other sects, much less Christianity,” Pittenger says.

The lack of tolerance within the Iranian regime will be further exposed as the United Nation’s cultural agency, UNESCO, will challenge Rouhani on Wednesday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, over the regime’s plans to host a cartoon contest for caricatures of the Holocaust.

The contest, scheduled for June and announced last December by the regime’s Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), will be held at the Tehran International Cartoon Biennial and offers a prize of up to $50,000.

The atmosphere of intolerance is emblematic of the simple fact that the Iranian regime is not opening up in the wake of the nuclear deal as promised by Iran lobby supporters such as the National Iranian American Council.

Anne Applebaum, writing her column in the Washington Post, pointed out the extremes in Iranian actions towards more intolerance and abuse.

“President Hassan Rouhani is not Mikhail Gorbachev, and this is not a perestroika moment. Iran is not “opening up” or becoming “more Western” or somehow more liberal,” Applebaum writes. “On the contrary, the level of repression inside the country has grown since the “moderate” Rouhani was elected in 2013. The number of death sentences has risen. In 2014, Iran carried out the largest number of executions anywhere in the world except for China.”

“Political pressure and religious discrimination have increased, too. Women who don’t wear veils are still vulnerable to arrest and sentencing. The penalties for apostasy, adultery and homosexuality are still high, up to and including capital punishment,” Applebaum added. “Cultural dissidents are under pressure, too, even more so since the sanctions-lifting deal was announced. On Jan. 7, the poet a poet was arrested after landing at Tehran airport and detained for 48 hours, presumably as a warning. In October, a Kurdish filmmaker received six years and 223 lashes for “insulting the sacred.”

And now with the disappearance of three more Americans in Iraq at the hands possibly of Iranian-controlled Shiite militia groups, the lack of cooperation from Tehran has been noticeable.

As Rouhani continues his tour of Europe, the evidence of regime malfeasance continues to pile up.

By Michael Tomlinson

As Rouhani Tour Starts Amnesty International Exposes Juvenile Executions

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Amnesty International Report: Growing up under death row

Amnesty International Report: Growing up under death row

The Magical Mystery Tour of Hassan Rouhani got off to a start in Italy against the stark backdrop of a new report issued by human rights group Amnesty International calling the Iranian regime one of the leading executioners of juveniles in the world.

In a new report, Amnesty International said that it had documented the execution of at least 73 juveniles in Iran from 2005 to 2015, and that 160 juvenile offenders are languishing on the country’s death row.

According to the New York Times, Amnesty International released its report as a United Nations committee is reviewing compliance with the Convention of the Rights of the Child. In 1994, Iran ratified that treaty, which prohibits capital punishment and life imprisonment without the possibility of release for offenses committed by people younger than 18.

“This report sheds light on Iran’s shameful disregard for the rights of children,” Said Boumedouha, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program, said in a statement released with the report. “Despite some juvenile justice reforms, Iran continues to lag behind the rest of the world, maintaining laws that permit girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 to be sentenced to death.”

Elise Auerbach, an Iran specialist in Amnesty International’s United States branch, said Iran had in the past sought to sidestep criticism of its juvenile death-penalty practices by saying that offenders were not executed until after they had reached adulthood.

“They have executed juvenile offenders,” she said. “If the person commits a crime at age 15 and is not executed until age 21, they’re still executed as juvenile offenders.”

This brutal record of killing young people is only a small part of a much larger record of human rights abuses that has only worsened under Rouhani; the alleged “moderate” face of the regime. According to Iranian dissident groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the total number of executions under Rouhani’s watch has skyrocketed to over 2,000 people, dwarfing what his universally-reviled predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accomplished.

The release of the report comes at an inconvenient time for Rouhani as he made his first stop in Italy in the hopes of securing business deals now that sanctions had begun to be lifted as a result of the nuclear deal.

Italian and Iranian regime-controlled companies signed deals valued at about $18.36 billion late Monday ahead of a formal dinner between Rouhani and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Earlier in the day, Italian steel firm Danieli said it would sign deals worth about $6.18 billion during the visit. Other firms signing agreements on Monday included oil-field services company Saipem SpA, energy group Ansaldo Energia and ship maker Fincantieri SpA, but further details weren’t available according to the Wall Street Journal.

The rush to lock in deals for many of these European companies who previously had ties to Iran prior to the Islamic revolution in 1979, ignores the fluid state of sanctions still in place from the U.S. and the prospect of additional sanctions that could still be imposed for issues left outstanding from the nuclear agreement such as the regime’s ballistic missile program, support of terror and brutal human rights record.

One of the nasty surprises waiting for companies rushing into doing business with the regime was the insistence of the regime to delink these issues from the nuclear deal. While the deal allowed the removal of a significant number of sanctions, it did not address other thorny issues of the regime’s behavior that could become problematic for anyone looking to do business in Iran.

Thousands of Iranian dissidents are planning to counter Rouhani’s charm offensive by attending a rally in Paris Thursday, said Shahin Gobadi of the NCRI, to protest Tehran’s human rights violations as well as its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom France has accused of massacring his own people.

“We need to show to the world Rouhani is anything but a moderate,” Gobadi said.

So the question for many of these companies is whether or not the rush to be first in market is worth the risk of facing new rounds of sanctions should the regime undertake additional aggressive and militant actions such as launching more ballistic missiles in violation of UN sanctions as it has said it would do or take more American sailors prisoner as it did two weeks ago?

The difficulty for any company is that it is now dependent on the choices the Iranian regime leadership makes in the future for the success or failure of its business opportunity and given the track record of the mullahs so far, that is a gamble that many shareholders and investors will find hard to take.

The most compelling peek into the regime’s policies and brutality was given by Christian pastor Saeed Abedini who endured repeated beatings, torture and mistreatment since his arrest in 2012 on charges he was attempting to overthrow the regime by spreading Christianity, and was released along with other American hostages as part of a prisoner swap.

As Rouhani Tour Starts Amnesty International Exposes Juvenile Executions

As Rouhani Tour Starts Amnesty International Exposes Juvenile Executions

Abedini broke his silence with an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren by recounting his initial encounter with regime justice when he was brought before a judge.

“He said you are here because you want to use Christianity to remove government and it was like no, I don’t want to do that, I just came here to start orphanage, loving people and share the gospel with people and just that,” he said.

Abedini said the judge then told him he was using Christianity to “remove the government,” and yelled at him after saying he would pray for the judge.

According to Abedini, his Iranian captors gave him no clothing or reading material the entire time he was in the solitary confinement.

“Once they beat me very badly because they wanted me to write something I didn’t want,” he told Van Susteren.

He was also subject to the threat of death by his interrogators, and was taken to watch several executions.

“The worst thing I saw was when they took some Sunnis for execution, it was in front of our eyes, and they took like tens of them to hang, every Wednesday,” he said.

When he was imprisoned for 60 days with retired U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, Abedini said he felt “very heartbroken” to see what happened when he first saw him, but said it was the best time in captivity to be with someone else.

“I made a plan that I could talk to him, encourage him,” he said. “The best thing I could do over there was praying.”

Abedini’s disclosures, coupled with the Amnesty International report and the demonstrations by Iranian dissidents paint a very different picture than Rouhani wishes portrayed and leaves an uncertain future for companies looking to do business with the regime with an American presidential election looming and the prospect of more sanctions still on the horizon.

By Michael Tomlinson

Hassan Rouhani Begins European Tour Under Cloud of Executions

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Hassan Rouhani Begins European Tour Under Cloud of Executions

Hassan Rouhani Begins European Tour Under Cloud of Executions

Iran regime leader Hassan Rouhani begins a European tour previously postponed because of the terrorist attacks in Paris with stops in France and Italy which has been highlighted by the regime as a goodwill tour as well as a shopping spree to use some of the $100 billion in frozen assets being returned to Iran as part of the nuclear agreement.

Both in France and Italy there are companies with long established business relationships in Iran but they remain hesitant given the regime’s actions in the months immediately following signing of the deal including the test launching of ballistic missiles violating United Nations sanctions against development of nuclear-capable missiles and the continued escalation of the Syrian conflict and support for proxy militias in Iraq and Yemen leading to broad sectarian violence.

More recently the regime engaged in a prisoner swap, releasing several Americans being held by the regime including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, in exchange for a large number of Iranians who had been charged and convicted of arms smuggling and trading in illegal nuclear and military components.

Additionally, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail have expressed doubts over the regime’s ability and willingness to give up its militant ways, as well as what the mullahs plan do with all of the billions of dollars they are about to receive. Several pieces of legislation have been put forward addressing the levying of additional sanctions on Iran should the regime prove recalcitrant moving forward.

This has caused the Iran lobby to push back and attempt to make the issue of new sanctions a partisan issue by placing blame on Republicans, even though support for a tough approach to Iran has come from both sides of the aisle.

“From the European side, there is a concern that if they enter Iranian market they will be subjected to American sanctions. Because there are conflicts in the U.S.,” said Trita Parsi, head of National Iranian American Council, the regime’s chief lobbyist. “Congress is very skeptical about the deal and republicans are still pushing for new sanctions and this is sending a conflicting message making Europeans concerned.”

Parsi made his comments to regime-controlled media in an attempt to convince European companies on the eve of Rouhani’s visit to open wide the doors of trade and investment to the regime even with growing doubts over the corrupt nature of the economy and high level of censorship, human rights abuses and control of most industries by the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Those doubts were only reinforced this weekend by comments made by top mullah Ali Khamenei who commended the actions taken by Revolutionary Guard Corps members in detaining American sailors, calling their actions “courageous.”

“You did a brilliant, interesting and timely job. In fact, this event should be considered God’s work. He drew them towards our waters so that with your timely measure, they would be arrested in that manner – with their hands on their heads,” Khamenei said on his official website.

The statements being made by Khameneni, Rouhani and other regime officials over all the incidents are often conflicting; adding to the confusion over what the regime’s true goals and aims are. Doyle McManus examined this almost bipolar quality within the Iran regime in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times.

“The underlying problem is that Iran still hasn’t made the choice Henry Kissinger described several years ago: whether it is a country or a cause — a normal state, or a revolutionary one,” McManus writes. “On the other hand, the Iranians have repeatedly rejected proposals for normal diplomatic relations with the U.S. (an offer floated by George W. Bush before Barack Obama). They even rejected a U.S. proposal for a hotline between the two countries’ armed forces, even though that could avert unnecessary clashes.”

“This resistance to formal normalization is partly about preserving Iran’s revolutionary self-image,” he added. “So even as he has authorized a de facto rapprochement with the United States, Khamenei has released an uninterrupted flow of statements denouncing the Great Satan and warning against Western subversion.”

This explains much of what is confounding to outside observers about the regime and why the arguments made by the Iran lobby about regime “moderation” is so much hot air. As Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, pointed out in a recent editorial:

“So what to make of President Hassan Rouhani’s election? Rouhani might have embraced a softer rhetorical style than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his predecessor, but he is no more reformist. True, he purged a lot of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers from the cabinet, but he replaced them with Ministry of Intelligence veterans. Public executions have skyrocketed under Rouhani.”

“Khamenei is not only supreme leader, but he’s also master marionette, playing factions off each other in order to maintain his own power. The seeming rotation between hardline and less hardline factions has less to do with liberalization and more to do with simply cleaning house before any alternative power can consolidate.” Rubin added. “Obama may believe change in Iran to be inevitable. Unfortunately, it is not the change he imagines. That the Iran deal as constructed provides the cash to Iran’s most hardline elements will only catalyze the slow decline of Iranian reformism.”

It is against this backdrop that Rouhani’s European tour comes soaked in the blood of over 2,000 men, women, children, political opponents, dissidents, activists and others who have been executed since Rouhani took power; a large number of them in grisly public hangings.

According to human rights groups, Iranian dissidents and even United Nations officials, the pace of executions have been stunning even for Iran’s bloody history and are likely to continue unabated. According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the first two weeks in January have already seen over 52 executions.

The prospects for the future remain bleak as the regime’s Guardian Council, comprised of 12 Islamic jurists appointed by Khamenei, disqualified more than 6,500 candidates from upcoming parliamentary elections, with opposition groups claiming upwards of 90 percent of “reformist” candidates had been eliminated.

For Europeans meeting with Rouhani this week, it is best to think twice before making a big risk in trading with the regime in Iran, particularly since in the eyes of the Iranians inside and outside the country trading with the mullahs is the equivalent to neglecting the gross violations of human rights in Iran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Calls Increase for New Sanctions Against Iran Regime

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Calls Increase for New Sanctions Against Iran Regime

Calls Increase for New Sanctions Against Iran Regime

Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has stepped up his calls – alongside a growing number of Democrats – for the Obama administration to move forward on implementing new sanctions against the Iranian regime for the apparent violation of bans against development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.

“I don’t know why the administration has hesitated, but I am urging them publicly and privately to move ahead with those designations,” he told reporters. “I am concerned with the hesitation to move forward with the ballistic missile related designations.”

Coons is among a growing number of Democrats, including some who supported the Iran nuclear deal, who have called on the president to take a firm response to two missile tests late last year. They argue that the administration’s response should show Iran that it will not be able to cheat on the nuclear agreement.

Coons, who supported the Iran nuclear deal, said it was “very clearly communicated and it played a role in my decision” to support the nuclear agreement that the United States was still able to sanction Iran on non-nuclear issues including its missile program or support for terrorist groups.

Unfortunately, Coons and other supporters of the nuclear deal were largely led astray by the Iran lobby which argued long and hard for a separation of nuclear issues from other issues such as missile development, human rights abuses and sponsorship of terrorism.

We are seeing the butcher’s bill come due now as the Iranian regime begins to push the envelope in all those areas now that it has its nuclear agreement.

Unsurprisingly, the mullahs in Tehran have called any proposed new sanctions a violation of the agreement and “illegal.” Such new sanctions as Coons has called for would be viewed as a breach of the agreement by the mullahs and allow them to resume their nuclear program.

Some, such as the New York Times editorial board, still cling to the hope that these issues could still remain separate in what can only be described as delusional thinking. In an editorial yesterday, the Times continued to make the argument that the nuclear deal was the more important goal:

“Critics of Iran and the nuclear deal say the missile tests are proof that the agreement failed. But ending Iran’s production of ballistic missiles was not the focus of the agreement. The greater threat by far has always been Iran’s nuclear program, which was coming closer to producing a bomb until the agreement halted the process.”

The Times does acknowledge the worrisome threat posed by the missile launches in light of the close collaboration between the Iranian regime and North Korea which supplied Iran’s first missiles and still supplies key components, but it still adheres to the laughable idea that there is a real difference and separation between regime president Hassan Rouhani and top mullah Ali Khamenei in terms of “moderates” versus “hardliners” when it comes to the strategic interests of the mullahs in Iran.

Furthermore, Ahmed Shaheed, the UN human rights advocate to Iran, said in a discussion with “Rooz”, Iranian website, that human rights in Iran have not witnessed a significant change since Rouhani’s reign, given that Iran has been refusing, for six years now, the UN rapporteur on human rights.

Amnesty International also issued a statement, last July, warning of the subject of the accumulating executions during the first half of 2015, after recording figures as high as 700 executions, at a time when Iranian statistics showed only 246 Iranians executed. Since Rouhani’s start of his term, over 2,000 people have been executed in Iran, placing Iran at the top of the world list for executions on a per capita basis.

Clearly change needs to come to Iran, but it won’t be coming from the mullahs.

By Laura Carnahan

NIAC List of Accomplishments Misses on Human Rights

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NIAC List of Accomplishments Misses on Human Rights

NIAC List of Accomplishments Misses on Human Rights

The National Iranian American Council, the leading advocate and lobbyist for the Iranian regime, published its list of accomplishments for 2015. It was a revealing list giving insight into the top priorities for the NIAC.

For an organization that claims as its mission the “strengthening the voice of Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between the American and Iranian people” one would think some of its top priorities would include:

  • Lifting of restrictions within Iran in the use of social media and access to the internet;
  • Halting censorship of news media and a stop to the arrest and imprisonment of journalists;
  • Freeing of Iranian-Americans currently being held in Iranian prisons, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati;
  • Withdrawing support for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and a halt to proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen;
  • Releasing over 90 Christians currently imprisoned in regime prisons for practicing their faith;
  • Stopping all executions and imposition of punishments such as public amputations, stoning and beatings; and
  • Restoring basic rights to Iranian women to be free from abuse, spousal murder and misogyny laws.

On the surface, that would seem like an eminently reasonable list of goals for any organization interested in advancing humanitarians causes, but in the case of the NIAC, none of those goals are in its list of accomplishments, nor are they in its 2016 resolutions for future action.

That’s right, zero, zilch, nada.

So what exactly were the NIAC’s best accomplishments for the year? According to its website, the NIAC lays proud claim to nine achievements in its list, of which seven were related to the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime.

The single most important achievement for the NIAC in 2015 according to its own boasts was securing a nuclear deal already dead on arrival with the test firing of ballistic missiles in violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions and threats by the mullahs to walk away from the deal if there are any threats to impose new sanctions for its missile violations.

Not exactly a recipe for “promoting greater understanding.”

Unsurprisingly, among its four stated “resolutions” for 2016, half relate to the nuclear deal.

Nowhere does NIAC mention the Iranian-Americans being held in Iran.

Nowhere does NIAC mention the brutal human rights situation in Iran.

Nowhere does NIAC mention the growing sectarian rift being fueled by extremist statements being made by top mullah Ali Khamenei who has been calling for the destruction of Sunni Arab states.

Nowhere does NIAC give any mention to the need to ratchet down tensions by calling on the Iranian regime to withdrawal support for proxy wars that have turned the Middle East into a battlefield stretching from the Mediterranean to Indian Oceans.

Instead, the NIAC’s sole focus is to keep the nuclear agreement alive long enough for $100 billion in cash to be wire transferred into regime bank accounts.

Trita Parsi must be looking to buy a new house.

It is a sad situation when the NIAC spells out in its own words its top priorities and none of them address the concerns of Iranian-Americans who yearn for a return to a homeland free from religious control, free from harsh brutality and open to all forms of religious worship and freedoms.

Far from serving Iranian-Americans, the NIAC serves only the mullahs in Tehran and has no other agenda than to take its orders from them.

One would think just for the sake of appearances the NIAC would throw a bone to human rights advocates and mention or cite as a goal the release of these Iranian-American hostages as a priority. It doesn’t even have to be the top priority, maybe number five or six on its list, but the NIAC can’t even bring itself to do that.

It should be apparent to any member of Congress, to any Congressional candidate, to any presidential campaign, who looks at this list, the NIAC is nothing more than a lobbying arm of the Iranian regime and does not accurately reflect the concerns of Iranian-Americans.

In this new year of 2016, we can only hope everyone wakes up to the charade the NIAC has been playing in 2015.

By Michael Tomlinson

Looking Back at 2015: Iran Lobby Pushes Falsehoods

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Looking Back at 2015: Iran Lobby Pushes Falsehoods

Looking Back at 2015: Iran Lobby Pushes Falsehoods

Our last Look Back at 2015 concerns the Iran lobby itself and the complete lack of moral fiber within them. As 2015 saw a world engulfed in violence and bloodshed borne out of Islamic extremism which sprang forth from the teachings and policies of the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby remained deafeningly silent.

Chief among the leaders of the Iran lobby has been the National Iranian American Council, which has come to symbolize all of the oddities and corruption within supporters of the mullahs.

The NIAC claims an extended mission to help promote universal human rights in Iran saying on its website:

“NIAC works to ensure that human rights are upheld in Iran and that civil rights are protected in the US. NIAC believes that the principles of universal rights – dignity, due process and freedom from violence – are the cornerstones of a civil society.”

Lofty goals, but the record of NIAC’s living up to that mission is pitiful, especially given the plight of Iranian-Americans who have languished in Iranian prisons. These Iranian-Americans seem to be outside the good graces of the NIAC and are rarely mentioned in official public statements, or even social media posts by leading NIAC staffers including Trita Parsi, Reza Marashi and Tyler Cullis.

It is on social media we often see the true nature of the Iran lobby and the allegiances these supporters of the mullahs bear; the most prolific Twitterer is Parsi himself and his political goals are often thinly veiled in his tweets.

Throughout the year, Parsi would again and again go to this basic impulse he has to ridicule American institutions and mock all things even remotely offensive to the mullahs in Tehran.

This includes his tweets through the spring and summer in support of nuclear talks between the P5+1 and the Iranian regime. Parsi often framed the debate about what the U.S. is willing to give up and not the other way around, especially as it applied to delinking contentious issues such as human rights abuses and support of terrorism.

Even after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January, the NIAC was silent. For the NIAC, there was no #jesuischarlie hashtag.

Even when Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kassasbeth was burned alive in a cage on video by ISIS, NIAC made no statement condemning the hideous. Nor did the NIAC ever bother to delve into the roots of Islamic extremism, other than to attempt to make the connection in some manner to Saudi Arabia; Iran’s longtime regional rival. Again, it’s all about politics.

But considering Parsi’s past track record in losing a libel lawsuit largely on the grounds of shoddy record-keeping, making false statements and discovery abuses, it seems to be par for the course of how Parsi conducts his public business in the same slipshod manner. It is worth noting that Parsi was ordered to pay the journalist he accused of libel $184,000 to pay for the defendant’s legal expenses.

A closer look at the judge’s ruling in that case exposes many of the falsehoods the NIAC engages in when handling reality and facts, such as:

  • NIAC really didn’t produce calendar records it was ordered to;
  • NIAC initially hid the existence of four of its computers from the court and was not honest about what they were used for;
  • NIAC misrepresented how its computer system was configured;
  • NIAC didn’t explain why it withheld 5,500 emails from its co-founder and former outreach director;
  • NIAC was not truthful about the nature of its record-keeping system;
  • NIAC took two and a half years to produce its membership lists under court order; and
  • NIAC did not turn over mountains of relevant documents and even altered an important document after the lawsuit was brought.

With that much effort devoted to hiding the truth of what the NIAC engages, is it any wonder the plight of imprisoned Iranian-Americans such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is often just the tools for the regime?

Parsi, in an interview with Loyola Marymount University’s Asia Pacific Media Center, claimed the charges against Rezaian were all part of a plot to undermine nuclear negotiations with Iran and the P5+1, which is an odd statement to make. One would think Iran’s provocative attempt to ship arms to Houthi rebels in Yemen via armed convoy was enough to undermine talks, or Iran’s seizure of an unarmed cargo vessel might be enough to trouble negotiators, both acts that Parsi failed to criticize.

By August, protests held in favor of the deal resulted in crowds just as small as the staged regime protests in Tehran with Los Angeles – home to over 800,000 Iranian Americans – protests yielding a paltry 200 participants, most not even of Iranian descent; while rallies in Washington, DC and San Diego were even smaller, barely cracking 100 people.

In contrast, over 10,000 rallied in New York’s Times Square against the deal and another 1,000 gathered in Los Angeles, most of them Iranian Americans demonstrating not only their opposition to the regime, but also for the various resistance movements around the world.

While NIAC staffers such as Parsi, Marashi, Cullis and Jamal Abdi shout until veins bulge out of their collective necks that the mullahs deserve a break, they continued to blatantly ignore the incalculable human suffering being inflicted by those same mullahs on women, children, Christians, Iranian-Americans, Sunnis in Iraq, moderates in Syria or refugees in Yemen. The swatch of human suffering and misery caused by the mullahs has earned neither reproach nor condemnation by the NIAC and its allies.

And those allies pop up in some unusual places as Breitbart News discovered when it looked into the hiring of Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a former NIAC staffer, as the National Security Director for Iran who sat in on several high level meetings with President Obama while discussing negotiations with the Iran regime on the nuclear deal.

The NIAC attempted to dismiss Nowrouzzadeh’s position as a mere intern, but a 2004 document uncovered by Breitbart News described her as a former “staff member” at NIAC.

But the truth about Parsi came out in a serious of journalistic pieces this year as he came under greater scrutiny, including Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic who referred to Parsi as someone who “does a lot of the leg-work for the Iranian regime.”

The crowning hypocrisy came when Parsi denounced comparisons of the Iran nuclear deal to the infamous Munich deal with Nazi Germany and labeled it “fear propaganda” when he himself has been one of the chief merchants of fear mongering by pushing the “war vs. peace” scenario for passage of the deal.

While the passage of the nuclear agreement might be making Parsi and his colleagues feeling good about themselves, the handwriting is on the wall as the presidential election cycle heats up and the rhetoric amongst virtually all of the candidates on both sides of the aisle has turned towards fighting the rise in Islamic extremism and holding the mullahs fully accountable.

In 2016, Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby might be feeling left out in the cold come November.

By Michael Tomlinson