Iran Lobby – Page 12

Bipartisan Consensus Forming on Dealing with Iran Regime

March 30, 2017 by admin

Bipartisan Consensus Forming on Dealing with Iran Regime

In today’s turbulent political environment there is not much anyone agrees on, except that maybe the New England Patriot comeback in the Super Bowl was astounding or that the Chicago Cubs win of the World Series was historic.

Other than that, most politicians can’t even seem to agree on the weather and what causes a shift in temperature day to day.

On one topic though there seems to be a growing bipartisan consensus, not just in the U.S. but around the world and that is more needs to be done to rein in the intransigence of the Iranian regime and the threat posed by its burgeoning military and ballistic missile program.

Monday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iran was an example of a political environment with a rare and welcomed unanimity. Ranking member Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) remarked that although he voted against the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran, he doesn’t think it would be wise to withdraw, saying:

“Iran’s activities today are as bad as they have ever been and probably worse. They are certainly increasing their terrorist sponsorship in the Middle East as we see in so many different countries in that region. Their record on violating the ballistic missile obligations are well known and well understood. Their human rights violations against their own citizens are horrible, one of the worst countries in the world. They violate the arms embargo and the list goes on and on. So, it is appropriate to get this Committee to look at what we can do to make sure that first, the Iran nuclear agreement is honored so that Iran does not become a nuclear weapons state, but then secondly, look at those activities that were not covered under the JCPOA as to how we can play a stronger role.”

He was joined by his Republican colleague, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the committee who said:

“One of my criticisms of the JCPOA was that it would become our de facto Middle East policy and Iran would expand their destabilizing activities. I think we are seeing a lot of that today. Regionally, we’ve seen an escalation in Iranian intervention. Iran, along with its allies in Russia, has continued to prop up Assad at the cost of countless lives in Syria. Iran’s support to the Shia militias in Iraq threatens the interests of Sunnis and Kurds alike, not to mention the Shia in Iraq that don’t subscribe to the anti-American, zero-sum politics of the militias that are there.”

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post’s Right Turn blog opined that “given this shared assessment of Iran — the JCPOA is not going away but the United States needs to confront Iran in other arenas — it’s not surprising that a bipartisan bill, the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017, with seven co-sponsors from each party, was introduced last week.”

“The act establishes new sanctions targeting Iran’s testing of ballistic missiles and its backing for terrorism, and also seeks to block the property of any entity involved in the sale of arms to or from Iran. It does not reintroduce sanctions lifted from Iran as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.”) In a summary released last week, senators described potentially far-reaching measures including mandatory sanctions on those involved with Iran’s ballistic missile program, new sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a requirement for the president “to block the property of any person or entity involved in specific activities related to the supply, sale, or transfer of prohibited arms and related material to or from Iran,” Rubin added.

But it wasn’t just on Capitol Hill where there was unanimous consent as all 15 resolutions passed by the Arab summit which took place in Jordan Wednesday were devoted to an indictment of Iran, its Revolutionary Guards Corps and Lebanese surrogate, Hezbollah. They were a testament to the depth of Arab-Iranian animosity and exposed the extent of the rift between the Sunni and Shiite Muslim worlds.

Iran was accused of meddling in the internal affairs of Arab nations, inciting Shiites against Sunnis, and arming and training Shiite terrorist groups for operations against legitimate Arab governments. The Arab rulers combined to put Tehran in the dock for its interference in the Syrian civil war and assault on its sovereignty.

It was notable that at an Arab summit that has in the past concerned itself with issues related to Israel and the plight of the Palestinian people, the entire focus of the summit was on the Iranian regime; demonstrating how important the issue of confronting Tehran has become to the wider Arab world.

In the annual AIPAC conference a clearer united vision of the importance to oppose the Iranian regime was surfaced. American authorities and law makers used the opportunity to show their unanimous visions on the threat they feel from the Iranian regime and the need to take action to contain the growing destabilizing activities of the mullahs in the region.

The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, called to designate the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group, describing it as a “terrorist army.” He said “Iran supports the terrorist dictator of Damascus and the militias in Yemen, Baghdad and Beirut.”

Furthermore, Nikki Hailey, the US ambassador to the United Nations asserted at the conference that “Iran’s nuclear deal is worrisome because it empowered Russian and Iran and encouraged the latter to act freely without fear of accountability.”

Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader in the Senate added: “Today we must adopt a different approach. We must combat Iran’s ability to finance, arm and train terrorists, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and its proxies in Syria.”

McConnell criticized Iranian regime’s nuclear deal, saying that it disabled the United States from taking more aggressive steps against Iran.

Meanwhile the Iran lobby was once again beating the war drum in an editorial in Huffington Post by Jamal Abdi of NIAC Action and Adam Weinstein of the National Iranian American Council, in which they claimed that this bipartisan consensus would only provide incentives for the U.S. to be plunged into a war with Iran at the behest of President Trump.

They go on to argue that if the proposed sanctions bill passes, Tehran would respond negatively and all the positive gains made by the nuclear deal would evaporate. What positive gains?

Since the deal was agreed to, the Iranian regime has broken every promise of moderation, stability, peace and partnership made by the NIAC and other Iran lobby supporters.

The harsh proof of Iranian regime’s track record over the past years has been so convincing that a bipartisan consensus is seen among both houses of congress to try to oppose the mullahs in Tehran.

All we can say is that it’s about time.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Steps Up Global Spy and Lobbying Efforts

March 29, 2017 by admin

Iran Regime Steps Up Global Spy and Lobbying Efforts

The Iranian regime is sensing an opportunity to expand its influence through its use of its operatives and proxies in the Ministry of Intelligence and its lobbying and public relations efforts that were used during the run up to the nuclear agreement reached with the U.S. and five other nations.

The regime’s own intelligence minister has been busy boasting about the regime’s ability to run a lobbying group in the very heart of the “Great Satan” in Washington, DC.

Amir Basiri, a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and an Iranian human rights activist, detailed these claims in an editorial.

“Mahmoud Alavi, Iran’s spy chief, bragged about the regime’s capability to run a lobby group in Washington with the aim of promoting Tehran’s hardline agenda,” Basiri wrote.

According to Alavi, Iranian dual citizens in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have maintained their loyalty to the “Islamic revolution,” the mullahs’ hallmark motto ever since 1979, through which they have wreaked havoc across the region and beyond, he said.

A “lobby group for the Islamic Republic of Iran” is actively bolstering Tehran’s status in the international stage and helping to sell and legitimize its nuclear ambitions as just causes to the globe, Alavi claimed.

“The head of Iran’s intelligence apparatus did not bother to name the specific lobby entity. One certain group, however, the National Iranian American Council, has been the target of major criticism in the past several months, with accusations of the group lobbying on Tehran’s behalf. Various dissident organizations are demanding the Trump administration to launch an official probe digging into NIAC’s history and nature of its current events,” Basiri added.

What was interesting was that the NIAC, did not deny Alavi’s claims.

Basiri pointed out that Congress has also been petitioned to investigate ties between Iran and the NIAC, and the latter’s active drive to promote a pro-Tehran agenda in Washington. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., who chair the foreign affairs committees in each chamber of Congress, have received specific letters signaling the importance of urgent action in this regard.

NIAC was once again under the spotlight this January for its actions of presenting a positive image of the Iran nuclear deal and advocating a pro-diplomatic approach with Tehran. The media reported extensively on how two senior Iranian regime supporters, former Iranian nuclear diplomat Hossein Mousavian and NIAC founder and president Trita Parsi, enjoyed access to the Obama White House on more than 30 occasions, conducting meetings with senior administration officials, while a former NIAC staffer now directs Iran policy at the State Department.

Alavi’s recent remarks are source for serious concern as entities advocating Iran’s agenda in the American capital are obliged by the Foreign Agents Registration Act to disclose the nature of their work. This even includes conditions where the relationship does not involve money exchanges, at least not through legal and opaque channels.

For years Iran has been known to forward an official plot of boosting relations with groups promoting anti-war and pro-regime policies in the West. Improving contacts with Iranian dual nationals living in the West has been high on Tehran’s agenda on this matter.

One major task of this network has been discrediting those opposing the regime in Tehran and taking measures against any efforts voicing support for Iran regime change. The main Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and its most important member, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), have been the constant target of smear campaigns launched and orchestrated by the Iranian regime and NIAC, according to Basiri.

Not only has the Iranian regime worked hard to develop its lobbying resources, but it has continued to expand on its efforts to spy and conduct terror operations on its neighbors as the government of Bahrain announced Sunday that it had arrested over a dozen individuals believed to have planted a bomb on a police bus and received training from Hezbollah and the government of Iran.

Bahrain’s interior ministry issued a statement Sunday confirming the arrests of 14 individuals who “are suspected of receiving overseas military training under the supervision of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah in Iraq,” according to the Associated Press. The men were arrested as part of a larger raid on a property that authorities claimed was stocked with weapons; police say the terror cell was planning assassinations, though they did not specify if they believed the men were targeting any officials in particular.

Al-Arabiya adds that authorities believe the alleged terrorists arrested were working under the supervision of Mortadha Majeed al-Sindi and Qassim Abdullah Ali, the latter of which has received a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” label from the U.S. State Department. Reuters identifies both men as “exiled Bahrainis living in Iran.” In addition to being led by individuals living in Iran, the terror cell boasted a number of individuals with ties to Iranian terror groups. Voice of America cites local outlets who reported that official identified five alleged terrorists as having received training from Hezbollah, and another six who had been trained by IRGC leaders.

In another case, a Pakistani man was convicted in Germany on Monday of spying for Iran to search out potential attack targets for the Revolutionary Guards.

The defendant, 31-year-old Mustufa Haidar Syed-Naqfi, was sentenced to four years and three months in prison “for working for a foreign intelligence service”, a spokeswoman for Berlin’s superior court said.

The court found he spied “against Germany and another NATO member”, France, for the Quds Force, the foreign operations wing of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

Syed-Naqfi compiled dossiers on possible attack targets – a German lawmaker who is the former head of a German-Israeli organisation, and a French-Israeli economics professor.

Investigators found detailed dossiers on the men and their daily routines, with hundreds of photos and video clips.

A representative of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, which handles counterespionage, said it was alerted to the defendant by a “reliable” source.

The service suspected the Quds Force was preparing for a possible future conflict with the United States and Israel, when it could hit targets in Europe in a form of “asymmetrical warfare”.

Laura Caranahan

Khamenei Promises More Crackdowns on Election Protests

March 22, 2017 by admin

Khamenei Promises More Crackdowns on Election Protests

Back in 2009, the Middle East was being rocked by the Arab Spring, a pro-democracy movement that toppled governments throughout the region and put despotic regimes on the defensive.

At the time, the Iranian regime’s much despised president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was running for “re-election” in a contest widely viewed as unlikely for him given the historic disapproval of the Iranian people and their deep desire for democratic change.

But as with all things under the careful watch of the mullahs, his election was essentially guaranteed in what the international community dubbed a rigged election.

In response, Iran was rocked with mass protests and demonstrations the likes of which the Iranian regime had not seen before in the most serious threat to the iron rule of the religious establishment. Alarmed and in response to keep their hold on power, the top mullah Ali Khamenei ordered a widespread crackdown that set human rights back in Iran decades in resulted in scores killed and thousands beaten, arrested and imprisoned.

The mass protests were aided in large part by the emergence of social media which helped rally young and old Iranians alike to dispute the election and served as a splash of cold water in the regime’s face that it would have to change as well, but not in terms of granting more freedoms.

By the time 2013 rolled around, the mullahs had gotten wise to international opinion and instead staged an election by removing anyone from the ballot that could even be considered a dissident and instead offered up an old loyalist in Hassan Rouhani repackaged as a smiling, tweeting, kindly “moderate.”

The end result was another sham election and in comparison to 2009 with favorable media attention abroad. It was also aided by the creation of an Iran lobby apparatus designed to push forward more positive narratives about the regime in news media and among elected officials, especially the National Iranian American Council.

Since then, while Rouhani has paraded himself as ca champion of the oppressed, Iran has plunged even further into disrepair.

It is involved now in two full-blown wars in Syria and Yemen, while spending billions of dollars in cash to support the Assad regime, Shiite militias in Iraq, its long-time Hezbollah proxy, and a rebuilding of its vast military.

It has also cracked down viciously at home, oppressing women, religious and ethnic minorities and even going on a binge of hostage taking amongst dual-national citizens including Americans, Canadians and Brits.

Now the stage is set for another election this May and once Khamenei has set the table by declaring that the regime would not tolerate any interference; meaning only the regime’s candidate will be elected and everyone should stay off the streets.

“I will confront anyone who wants to tamper with the results of the people’s vote. In previous years and previous elections …, it was the same. Some of it was in front of people’s eyes and they became aware of it. And some of it they were not aware of but I was informed about it,” he said in Iranian New Year remarks carried live on state television, according to Reuters.

“It was revealed in 2009 – they came out and drew battle lines. And in other years in other ways, but in all these years I stood against them and said whatever the results of the election are, they must be carried out.”

Two of the candidates from the 2009 presidential election, which put hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into office for a second term despite large protests over alleged vote fraud that shook the Islamic Republic, have been under house arrest since 2011. Although part of the regime apparatus, they were detained for calling for street protests at the same time that pro-democracy uprisings were convulsing Tunisia and Egypt.

This year’s election will never be in doubt. Whoever Khamenei wants is going to win, this is a matter of course since he controls the policy making body that will have final say on whoever gets on the ballot in the first place.

Imagine if the Democratic or Republican parties had final say on who got on a presidential ballot without having to suffer through the rigors of a primary contest? In essence, that is what the Iranian regime does on a regular basis; it’s a rigged game.

But the Iranian regime is becoming more sophisticated in the ways of politics. Just as it adjusted to the brutal crackdowns following the 2009 elections, it is following up on the initial creation of the Iran lobby with a broader call for more Iranians in the West to become active lobbyists for the regime’s causes as outlined in an editorial by Michael Rubin in Commentary.

“An Iran watcher and Iranian citizen recently alerted me to this clip showing Mahmoud Alavi, Iran’s intelligence minister, on Iranian national television suggesting there are Iranians in the West who have a lobby for the regime,” Rubin said.

“Alavi does not mention NIAC, but the number of politically active groups that focus on issues of sanctions, defending Iran’s ballistic missile program, and Iran’s nuclear program can like be counted not only on one hand but rather on one finger. If Iran’s intelligence minister believes that Tehran can leverage a specific lobby in the West on behalf not of Iranians but rather of the Islamic Republic, perhaps it is time for American counterintelligence authorities to take a far harder look at whatever lobby to which Alavi might be referring,” he added.

Rouhani’s election will be critical as the regime enters a new phase of expansion and aggression as it puts its newfound billions in cash it received as part of the nuclear deal to good use in furthering the war in Yemen and securing Syria as part of its Shiite sphere of influence.

According to Reuters, Iran is sending advanced weapons and military advisers to Yemen’s rebel Houthi movement, stepping up support for its Shiite ally in a civil war whose outcome could sway the balance of power in the Middle East, regional and Western sources say.

Sources with knowledge of the military movements, who declined to be identified, say that in recent months Iran has taken a greater role in the two-year-old conflict by stepping up arms supplies and other support. This mirrors the strategy it has used to support its Lebanese ally Hezbollah in Syria.

A senior Iranian official said Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force – the external arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – met top IRGC officials in Tehran last month to look at ways to “empower” the Houthis.

We may very soon see the Arabian Peninsula erupt in a war not unlike what has convulsed Syria if the mullahs have their way.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working Overtime Pushing Fake News

March 21, 2017 by admin

Iran Lobby Working Overtime Pushing Fake News

Merriam-Webster defines “hypocrisy” as “a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not: behavior that contradicts what one claims to be believe or feel.”

In the case of the Iran lobby, hypocrisy runs deep within its press releases, background papers, editorials and blog entries, especially the National Iranian American Council. In the aftermath of the end of the Obama administration’s policies of trying to appease the Iranian regime, the NIAC has been working overtime to push narratives that have come to define this era of “fake news.”

The NIAC website was busy this weekend pumping out several storylines, including attempting to shift blame for global terrorism from the Iranian regime to Saudi Arabia; attempting to character assassinate a vocal critic of the regime in the Trump administration; and tried to claim that Yemen was an example of a failed U.S. policy.

The most hypocritical position taken by the NIAC was an opinion piece by Adam Weinstein in which he called Saudi Arabia the world’s “biggest state sponsor of terrorism.” He makes this claim largely on the basis that many terrorist groups such as ISIS are comprised of Sunni members, while largely ignoring the magnitude of death and destruction meted out by Iranian-backed Shiite terror groups such as Hezbollah.

Weinstein goes on to try and specifically link Wahhabism to the Saudi government, while ignoring the direct support Shiite terror groups receive directly from the Iranian regime through the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force operations.

While the Saudi government has a myriad of its own problems, such as the status and role of women in Saudi society and the need to rein in rogue Saudis that have engaged in terror, such as Osama bin Laden, the Saudi government does not purse and enact a policy of global terror, nor a systematic effort to attack and kill its enemies and dissidents at home and abroad; all things the Iranian regime does.

Weinstein delves into the complexities of the Islamic religion and its various offshoots and varieties in an attempt to confuse readers when in fact the issue is not about religion, but national policy instead.

What makes the Iranian regime the center point of terrorist activities is that the regime relies heavily on terrorist proxies to conduct military operations, terrorist attacks and assassinations. Notable examples include the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the flood of Iranian-built IEDs into Iraq targeting U.S. service personnel.

Iran also provided shelter and support for Al-Qaeda leaders fleeing the U.S. invasion in Afghanistan and then later provided passage for these same fighters to enter Syria and from there spawned ISIS and other radical militant groups who were originally turned loose to attack U.S.-backed rebel groups.

But the NIAC’s fake news didn’t end there as Ryan Costello issued a press release attacking Trump national security aide Sebastian Gorka, a vocal and harsh critic of past policies towards the Iranian regime, especially the deeply flawed nuclear agreement.

The irony of Costello’s statement was his attempt to blame Gorka for anti-Semitism, a crazy concept considering the Iranian regime’s naked hostility to Jews and Israel; advocating for its destruction about as often as it holds public “Death to America” chants.

The effort to attack Gorka is not about racism, but about dislodging a strong opponent of the Iranian regime from any position of influence within the administration. This is an especially important consideration when viewed in light of recent disclosures that former Obama administration staffers have managed to burrow their way into the State Department to maintain influence over Iran policy; including one who was a former NIAC staffer.

The strangest piece was another one written by Adam Weinstein in which he attempted to show a clash of policy views over the conflict in Yemen amongst American legislators at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

“As is too often the case on Capitol Hill, the hearing – which was framed as an examination of U.S. interests and risks to U.S. policy in the war in Yemen – devolved into a conversation dominated by Iran hawks who inflated Iran’s influence and sought to play down Saudi Arabia’s role in the conflict,” Weinstein writes.

During the hearing, former Ambassador to Yemen (2010-2013) Gerald Feierstein testified that Iran is benefiting from the conflict in Yemen and even claimed Saudi Arabia’s image was suffering as a result.

Weinstein then goes on to make the extraordinary claim that the Iranian regime attempted to persuade Houthi rebels from moving on Sanaa, the capital and blamed a Saudi naval blockade in 2015 for escalating the conflict.

It’s another silly argument to make since Iran’s Quds Forces have been the primary supplier of arms to the Houthis, with several Iranian fishing vessels being intercepted on their way to Yemen carrying guns, ammunition, mortars, rockets and missiles, many bearing Iranian serial numbers.

What Weinstein characterizes as an “obsession” by Saudi Arabia over Iran in Yemen, belies a basic aspect of Iran’s strategy which is to foment a civil war in a country sharing a border with Saudi Arabia in an effort to place the kingdom under duress even as it opposes Iranian forces in the Syrian conflict.

It is a strategy Iranian regime has used for decades in neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Iraq.

Weinstein goes on to claim the Houthis are not proxies for the Iranian regime because they are “indigenous” to Yemen as if accident of birth defines one as a proxy or not for the Islamic state. The true definition of an Iranian proxy is not where they are from, but rather if you are supplied, controlled and commanded by the mullahs in Tehran.

On that score, the Houthis are identical twins to Hezbollah, Shiite militias in Iraq and recruited Afghan mercenaries, all fighting on behalf of the Iranian regime.

Michael Tomlinson

Nowruz Should Bring Hope to Iranian People

March 16, 2017 by admin

Nowrouz Should Bring Hope to Iranian People

The Iranian New Year is marked with the feast of Nowrouz and falls on March 21. Translated, Nowrouz means “new day” and fittingly it should be a new day for the oppressed Iranian people as the effort begins to reverse the damage caused by years of efforts by the Obama administration to appease the mullahs in Tehran.

F.H. Buckley, a professor at the Scalia Law School, wrote an editorial in the New York Post about this need to provide the Iranian people with hope during this year’s Nowrouz observances.

“It would be a good opportunity for President Trump to mark a new day in US-Iran relations — one that corrects his predecessor’s poor treatment of the Iranian people,” Buckley writes.

“Last year at this time, the regime announced that an additional 7,000 undercover officers would patrol the streets to arrest women who had too much hair showing from under a headscarf or were out walking with a boyfriend,” he added.

“That’s why change will come to Iran, if at all, from the streets, from an Iranian Spring. And the Iranians who want to rid their country of its oppressive regime must be told that America shares their goals.” Buckley offered.

Buckley took to task the Obama administration for failing to support mass protests against the Iranian regime during the disputed presidential elections in 2009; a missed opportunity for the U.S. and urged the Trump administration to demonstrate its support for the Iranian people.

“I have a suggestion for Trump. After we ignored the street protests against the Iranian dictatorship, after we cut our disastrous Iran deal, after we abandoned Israel to the threat of medium-range missiles from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, after American hostages were allowed to rot in Iranian jails, let the president welcome NowRuz with a message to the Iranian people,” Buckley said.

“Let him wish them a happy and prosperous new year, and the freedom that all men deserve from their cruel oppressors.”

It’s a noble sentiment and an important one since the Obama administration was quick to offer Iranians a traditional Nowrouz greeting, but never one directed specifically at the Iranian people’s desires for more freedom and democracy in their country. Such a message from the Trump administration would be an important symbol and one that would go a long way to putting the mullahs on notice that this administration will act in a much more conservative manner towards the regime.

Trump has already offered the political rhetoric chastising the regime and the much-maligned nuclear deal, but he needs to keep that momentum going in order to restore stability and balance in the Middle East; a process that Nathan Field, founder and former CEO of Industry Arabic, a translation company that provided services to over 300 high-profile customers throughout the Middle East, praised in a piece for The Hill.

“President Trump’s hardline but pragmatic approach to Iran is paving the way for the restoration of a semblance of order and regional stability. That’s a significant accomplishment for an administration still in its first 100 days,” Field writes.

“Effective foreign policy is not necessarily a matter of complicated treaties that take years to negotiate or opaque theories on international relations that only PhDs can understand. A simple message and tone set at the top is often all that’s needed.”

Field notes how President Trump has made Iranian adventurism throughout the Middle East an issue requiring a coordinated, but firm response, thereby correcting the errors made by the Obama administration.

The deal not only does not “guarantee that Iran will never obtain nuclear weapons, in the process of negotiating it, Iranian leaders, sensing that the U.S. wanted the deal more than they did, felt emboldened throughout the region in countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Yemen,” he said.

One telling example was the American non-response to a series of Iranian cyber-attacks on U.S. banks because, as one official noted, “If we had unleashed the fury in response to that DDoS attack, I don’t know if we would have gotten an Iran deal.”

“The Obama administration, by contrast, alienated nearly every traditional U.S. Middle East ally. Having thrown all of its prestige into a nuclear deal with Iran, opposed by most of the countries of the region, Washington had no leverage.”

The payoffs for the Trump administration’s tougher line against Iran has already yielded some benefits with Saudi Arabia’s willingness to send more troops to Syria and set up safe zones for refugees to stem the flood of a Syrian exodus from the war.

In many ways, Iran is slowly finding itself nudged back onto an island of isolation, even as the mullahs desperately reach out to Russia, China and Turkey in efforts to remain politically and diplomatically relevant.

We can only hope this Nowrouz brings a much better new year to the Iranian people; one that will eventually see them freed from the oppression of the mullahs.

Laura Carnahan

Former Iran Lobby Staffer Burrowing Deeper into State Department

March 15, 2017 by admin

Former Iran Lobby Staffer Burrowing Deeper into State Department

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), has burrowed into the government under President Trump. She’s now in charge of Iran and the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department, according to Conservative Review.

The reason why this is of concern is because of her previous employment at the National Iranian American Council, an organization with well-documented ties to the Iranian regime and a long-time supporter and advocate as part of the larger Iran lobby apparatus created to help support the loosening of sanctions on the regime.

In February, a group of over 100 prominent Iranian dissidents called for Congress to investigate NIAC’s ties to the Iranian regime.

“One of Nowrouzzadeh’s primary duties under President Obama was to promote initiatives that pushed the Iran deal. As President Obama’s NSC director for Iran, Nowrouzzadeh sat in on high-level briefings along with President Obama, former VP Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State John Kerry, as top White House staff crafted false narratives on the Iran deal to sell to the American public,” reported Jordan Schachtel.

According to the head of a state-run Iranian newspaper, Nowrouzzadeh was an essential element to pushing through the Iran deal. Editor-in-Chief Emad Abshenass said that she opened up a direct line of communication with the Iranian president’s brother. “She helped clear a number of contradictions and allowed the entire endeavor to succeed,” Abshenass said of her efforts.

Towards the end of President Obama’s tenure, Nowrouzzadeh was embedded into the State Department and for a brief time served as its Persian language spokesperson.

Breitbart News had earlier investigated Nowrouzzadeh’s prior employment with NIAC, finding that a person with the same name has previously written several publications on behalf of NIAC. According to what appears to be her LinkedIn account, Nowrouzzadeh became an analyst for the Department of Defense in 2005 before moving her way up to the National Security Council in 2014.

A NIAC profile from 2007 reveals that Sahar Nowrouzzadeh appears to be the same person as the one who is currently the NSC Director for Iran. The profiles indicate that she had the same double major and attended the same university (George Washington).

Critics have alleged that NIAC is a lobby for the current Iranian dictatorship under Ayatollah Khamenei. A dissident journalist revealed recently that NIAC’s president and founder, Trita Parsi, has maintained a years-long relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif.

The rise of this NIAC mole within the State Department is troubling since it allows a member of the Iran lobby to still maintain a position of significant influence in developing U.S. policy towards Iran.

The timing of her continued work within the State Department coincides with the upcoming Iranian election for president which is already shaping up to be another rigged cakewalk for Hassan Rouhani to continue as parliament speaker Ali Larijani publicly threw his support behind Rouhani.

Of further note, Rouhani has been selected as the only candidate of the so-called “Reformists” for the election by the Electoral Supreme Council of Reformists for Policymaking, headed by Mohammad-Reza Aref, who was the sole candidate of the Reformists in the 2013 presidential elections but in the final days ahead of that vote withdrew in favor of Rouhani.

The coronation of Rouhani comes as estimates of the Iranian regime’s military expenditures in Syria have risen a whopping $6 billion a year to $20 billion a year, including $4 billion in direct costs as well as subsidies for Hezbollah and other Iranian-controlled irregulars, according to an editorial by David P. Goldman in Asia Times.

“The Iranian regime is ready to sacrifice the most urgent needs of its internal economy in favor of its ambitions in Syria. Iran cut development spending to just one-third of the intended level as state income lagged forecasts during the three quarters ending last December, according to the country’s central bank. Iran sold $29 billion of crude during the period, up from $25 billion the comparable period last year,” Goldman added.

Goldman went on to describe Iran’s financial system as a “black hole,” and how the regime cannot refinance its arrears, recapitalize its bankrupt banks, and finance a substantial budget deficit at the same time. Its infrastructure requirements are not only urgent, but existential. The country’s much-discussed water crisis threatens to empty whole cities and displace millions of Iranians, particularly the farmers who consume more than nine-tenths of its disappearing water supply. Despite what the Tehran Times called “a desperate call for action” by Iranian environmental scientists, the government slashed infrastructure spending by two-thirds during the last fiscal year.

This leaves American policy in a quandary. The Obama administration— as Lieutenant General Michael Flynn warned in this and numerous other statements — inadvertently stood godfather to the birth of ISIS by blundering into the milieu of Syrian Sunni rebels.

All of which places a greater emphasis on just who is developing U.S. policy moving forward and why a housecleaning of former Iran lobby associates is necessary.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Goes to Bat for IRGC and Ballistic Missiles

March 13, 2017 by admin

Iran Lobby Goes to Bat for IRGC and Ballistic Missiles

The twin pillars of the Iranian regime’s military future lies within the Revolutionary Guard Corps which puts boots on the ground to fight its battles and the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying out its biggest threats of global destruction.

They represent the center of power within the Iranian regime since without the IRGC to enforce its’ will, the mullahs in Tehran would be turned out like beggars in the streets by an oppressed Iranian people, while the threat of ballistic missiles hangs like a dagger over Europe and neighboring Arab countries.

It is no surprise then to see the Iran lobby going all out in pushing silly arguments in support of the IRGC and the regime’s missiles as evidenced by two pieces of fiction from the National Iranian American Council.

In one piece authored by Tyler Cullis and appearing in Foreign Affairs, the Iran lobby argues vehemently against designating the IRGC a “foreign terrorist organization, although many of its leaders and subsidiary commercial entities it controls have already been targeted for sanctions by the U.S. and other government for supporting terrorism.

Cullis argues that designating the IRGC would put “U.S. forces in Iraq” in danger and undermine the nuclear agreement reached with Iran, but Cullis argues against his own position when he readily admits that the IRGC is already heavily sanctioned because of its “Iran’s ballistic missile program, its human rights abuses around Iran’s June 2009 presidential election and its disruption and monitoring of Iranian citizens’ communications.”

He also calls any further sanctions a duplicate of current U.S. sanctions so why does he argue against this effort?

Because he knows, as does the rest of the Iran lobby, that designation of the IRGC as an organizational whole is vastly different that current sanctions which only target individuals within the IRGC and some entities. A designation of the whole effectively targets all of the criminal enterprises the IRGC is involved with that siphon monies away from the Iranian people and economy and directly into the coffers of the regime and the pocketbooks of the elites.

Cullis makes the same claim the Iran lobby has made over and over again which is that anything and everything needs to be done to preserve a badly flawed nuclear deal; including treating the chief sponsor of terrorism in Iran with kid gloves.

Cullis makes the absurd claim that Shiite militias controlled by the IRGC—which have been responsible for the deaths and attacks on American service personnel in Iraq through IEDs—would end up trying to frustrate American efforts against ISIS. It’s a claim so ridiculous that it doesn’t even deserve a response since we already know very well that Shiite militias already actively engage and fight American-backed forces and advisors in Iraq and Syria.

But the IRGC defense is only half the battle, as the NIAC’s Ryan Costello takes up the cause of defending Iran’s ballistic missile program in a briefing memo on NIAC’s website.

Costello bases his arguments on a lawyerly-like parsing of fine print to excuse Iran’s missile program, but ignores the intent of United Nations resolutions which seek to actively discourage Iran from becoming another North Korea. The fact that Costello is arguing against that development is deeply disturbing and indicative of how little the Iran lobby fears Iran’s crash course race to catch up to North Korea.

Where Costello falls in lock-step with his partner Cullis’ editorial, is in making the same silly argument that sanctions against ballistic missiles threatens the nuclear agreement. Using the same twisted pretzel logic virtually anything the mullahs dislikes threatens the nuclear agreement:

Protest the hanging of Iranian dissidents? That threatens the nuclear agreement;
Demand the freeing of American prisoners? That threatens the nuclear agreement;
Call for a halt to Iran’s support for Houthi rebels in Yemen? That threatens the nuclear agreement;
Force Iranian-backed Shiite militias to stop killing Sunnis in Iraq and Syria? That threatens the nuclear agreement;
Ask that Iran stop allowing its morality police to beat women on the streets? That threatens the nuclear agreement.

At a certain point, the NIAC’s logic becomes insanely stupid and that’s the point it has reached with Costello and Cullis’ propaganda pieces.

Costello even makes the excuse FOR the mullahs that Iran’s ballistic missiles program is “intrinsically” tied to its experience in the Iran-Iraq war and thus Iran has a right to these missiles to prevent any future attacks.

While Costello claims Iran has no interest in developing missiles with a range beyond 2,300 kilometers, he neglects to mention that allowing Iran to have a missile fleet with those ranges puts most of Europe, North Africa, the entire Middle East and virtually every important American military and naval base in the region in the crosshairs of Iranian missiles.

Neither Costello nor Cullis ever address the basic problem with their positions which is the lack of fundamental trust the world has in the religious leadership of Iran. The mullahs are fanatical in their pursuit of expanding the Islamic revolution and zealous in the crackdown of any dissenting opinions.

These heinous positions are illustrated in the decision over the weekend to sentence to death an Iranian and American-Iranian dual national on charges of promoting moral corruption.

The defendants, who have not been named, are believed to be a couple involved in the art industry who were arrested in July last year. They ran a leading art gallery in Tehran, the Iranian capital, and were known to associate with foreign diplomats, according to the Financial Times.

Iran has arrested several Iranians holding dual nationality in recent months in a move analysts suggest is intended to intimidate those associated with foreign businesses or who have social connections with foreigners, the Times said.

Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, Tehran prosecutor-general, said on Sunday that the man and woman had been sentenced because they established “a new cult” and made “alcoholic beverages, encouraged vice . . . through throwing mixed parties [and] . . . exhibiting and selling obscene images at gallery”.

Laura Carnahan

Fierce Debate on Iran Obscures Pain of Hostage Families

March 10, 2017 by admin

File photo shows an Iranian soldier walking in a corridor of Evin prison during a journalist’s visit to the prison in Tehran, Iran on June 13, 2006. Esha Momeni, 28, an Iranian-American student from Los Angeles is imprisoned in Tehran and is not being allowed to talk to her family, her attorney says. Momeni, described as a researcher looking into the status of women in Iran, was pulled over for a traffic infraction in Tehran on October 15 and is now being held at the notorious Evin prison. Momeni has been allowed one phone conversation since her arrest, which her attorney says may have been related to the One Million Signatures campaign, in which women in Iran are pressing for more rights. Several Iranian-Americans were held for months in Iran last year because the government suspected them of working for a “velvet revolution,” and were eventually released without being charged, the BBC reported. (UPI Photo/Mohammad Kheirkhah) (Newscom TagID: upiphotos893509.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]

The debate that rages over U.S. policy towards the Iranian regime under the Trump administration has been marked by a near-constant war of words on social media, editorial pages and blogs with the Iran lobby rising up to challenge every assertion made by Iran critics, as well as deflect from any horrific act committed by the mullahs in Tehran.

The rancor has obscured one important and painful reminder of personal suffering which is the plight of dual-nationals being held as hostages in Iranian prisons by the regime.

These citizens of other countries were arbitrarily snatched up by the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, tossed into prison, and in some cases given secret trials without access to counsel, while others have simply been held without charge or trial.

Most have been subjected to physical, emotional and mental abuses that we would find appalling and even denied much needed medical care as their health has deteriorated as in the case of a British mother who works for a charity organization.

There are five Americans reportedly being held in Iran who were arrested almost immediately after another batch of American hostages were released shortly after the nuclear deal was agreed to and pallets of cold hard cash were flown to Tehran on Iranian jets in a blatant swap.

Iranian officials even boasted of not selling these new hostages for less than $1 billion.

The Iran lobby has been quick to gloss over their plight, only issuing the briefest of rebukes at the beginning and never raising the issue again. The National Iranian American Council has been the most ridiculous in playing this game even through its founder, Trita Parsi, claims one of these hostages, Siamak Namazi, as a close personal friend.

If this is how hard Parsi fights for a friend, I’d hate to see what he does for a relative.

But for the families of these hostages, their pain is real and the struggle to maintain hope is often elusive. They petition the world’s media and beg for the release of their family members from regime officials who ignore them.

This week though, attention has shifted back as family members press their cases again in the media and we observe the passing of the grim decade milestone of one missing American, Robert Levinson.

“I ask myself and my fellow American neighbors: Where is the justice I have come to associate with America?” Robin Shahini, 46, wrote to his family from an Iranian jail.

Shahini was convicted of collaborating with “a hostile government,” the U.S – an accusation his family denies. He was reportedly sentenced to 18 years in prison.

“This charge is unjust and the Iranian government intended to commit this wrong against me, an innocent American citizen, for political purposes. I ask of you, please to not let Iranian government use me,” Shahini wrote in his letter.

“I ask you beloved citizens and all human-loving individuals to not leave me alone and defend my rights, which is also the right of each and every one of you. Defending me is defending yourselves. Do not let me be alone.”

The number of arrests and detentions of visitors…especially dual-citizens… has spiked, warns Lisa Daftari, the editor of the website “The Foreign Desk,” who has followed Shahini’s case.

“In the aftermath of the nuclear deal with Iran, we would expect things to get better,” she said. “But we’ve seen an increase in executions, we’ve seen an increase in crackdowns against journalists, against dual-citizens, against academics, political dissidents, women’s human rights leaders. And this is not what we expected.”

Daftari also said the arrest and trial of Shahini, and other dual-U.S. citizens like him, serves as a broader propaganda purpose for Tehran, according to Fox News.

“The Iranian regime is delivering a stern message to Iranians living abroad, not to get involved in political activity, not to speak out against the regime, and they want Iranians to know that they are in fact being watched.”

Dan Levinson, the son of missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson, penned an editorial in the Washington Post, lamenting his father’s disappearance in Iran for the past 10 years.

“The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which investigates cases of arrest that may be in violation of international human rights law, did something in January that the previous two U.S. presidents failed to do: It announced a finding that my father, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, was arrested by Iranian authorities without any legal grounds in March 2007 on Kish Island, and it called on the Iranian government to release him immediately,” he writes.

“In finding that Iran has violated international law — and fundamental human decency — by detaining a U.S. citizen and providing him no rights whatsoever, the U.N. working group is being far more aggressive than our own U.S. government has been in 10 years. This is shameful,” Levinson added.

Levinson went on to encourage the new president to pressure Iran for his father’s release.

“If Iran continues to deny holding him and fails to act, Trump can pressure it with tools such as sanctions — which he demonstrated his willingness to use already – or labeling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was very likely involved in my father’s detention, a terrorist organization. Trump can put my father at the center of every single discussion he has with or about Iran and finally make him a top priority — not just in words like the previous administration, but in action,” he said.

We hope these families can be reunited with their loved ones soon and believe that is only going to happen by applying heavy pressure on the Iranian regime and its leaders.

Laura Carnahan

In Iran the Plight of Women Contradicts International Women’s Day

March 8, 2017 by admin

Iranian demonstrators march after weekly Friday prayers in Tehran on July 8, 2011 during a protest asking the government to intensify its crackdown on women and men to enforce the Islamic dress code. AFP PHOTO/ATTA KENARE (Photo credit should read ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images)

The world is taking part in International Women’s Day in a myriad of ways; some of it commercial offering to donate $100 to the cause of your choice, and other’s political with marches planned in the U.S. protesting a wide range of issues from reproductive rights to opposition to administration’s policies.

Women the world over are gathering to reinforce their solidarity with their gender and to support issues of concern to them. It’s an annual spectacle that for many celebrates the freedom and opportunities women are now enjoying everywhere…except in the Iranian regime.

Although International Women’s Day has been around since 1908, its origins as a fight for equal pay and voting rights has morphed into the hashtag #IWD and lost some of its fervor. It’s also at times celebrated not as a call to political arms, but now used to tout corporate branding campaigns emphasizing a product or company’s openness to women.

Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that in many places in the world, women continue to be treated as second-class citizens or even property of their husbands and fathers. Nowhere is that more brutally explicit than in Iran where the ruling mullahs have consistently passed laws that would make any Western feminist breath fire in reaction.

The Iran lobby has tried to cover up this fact by praising window-dressing efforts to empower women in Iran, but those efforts have rung hollow in the face of escalating brutality aimed specifically at women.

Shahriar Kia, a political analyst and member of the Iranian opposition, the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, outlined some of these practices in a piece for American Thinker.

“Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani has recently been making remarks about women’s rights (!) in an attempt to cloak his portion of the Iranian regime’s misogynist report card,” Kia writes. “In his own memoirs, from page 571 to 573, Rouhani explains in detail how in 1980 he began enforcing mandatory hijab regulations as the mullahs began their historical campaign against Iranian women.”

Rouhani’s tenure has also been the hallmark home of systematic oppression against women, workers, college students, writers, journalists, dissident bloggers; imposing poverty and unemployment on a majority of Iranians; continuous threats made against the media; punishment of political prisoners have increased significantly even in comparison to the years of Iran’s firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During Rouhani’s human rights violations-stained tenure, an average of two to three people have been executed on a daily basis, Kia adds.

The mistreatment of women in Iran extends also to non-Iranian women citizens as in the appalling treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British charity worker who was sentenced to prison for five years by a secret Iranian regime court and has been abused and denied much-needed medical care and given the option of only be able to see her child in prison.

Last year a UN body of human rights experts described her detention as “arbitrary” and said she had been denied a fair trial, according to the Telegraph.

This week, the UN released a new report on human rights in Iran, written by Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran.

From the outset, it is clear that there has been no marked improvement in human rights in the Gulf nation, despite President Hassan Rouhani signing a Citizens’ Rights Charter in December 2016.

The 14,000-word report discusses both ongoing cases of abuse (like the execution of juveniles) and urgent situations (like the fate of political prisoners denied medical care).

Jahangir, who spoke to non-governmental organizations, intellectuals, lawyers and victims to ensure the accuracy of this report, also covers torture, the bias judicial system, free speech and women’s rights and clearly details just how far human rights, especially for women, have sunk in Iran.

For its part, the Iranian regime as usual blasted the UN report and defended the indefensible in its human rights situation.

In an address to a high-level meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi denounced a recent resolution raised in the council as “totally baseless and unacceptable,” claiming that political use of human rights by certain countries would pose a real challenge to the council’s goals and undermine and discredit the UN body, according to regime-controlled Tasnim News.

The UN report stated that “the Islamic Republic of Iran has reportedly executed the highest number of juvenile offenders in the world during the past decade. Despite an absolute ban on the practice under international law, the penal code continues to explicitly retain the death penalty for boys of at least fifteen lunar years of age and girls of at least 9 lunar years for qisas (retribution in kind) or hudud crimes, like homicide, adultery or sodomy.”

“The Special Rapporteur urges the Islamic Republic of Iran to take proactive steps to promote the full realization of the rights of human rights defenders and to refrain from any acts that violate the rights of human rights defenders because of their human rights work. The government should take strict measures to ensure that the security and intelligence apparatus does not use reprisals against families of those who monitor or campaign against human rights violations or express views that are contrary to government policies,” the report added.

Aside from the cruelty of human rights in Iran, which includes severe punishments for even minor infractions such as not wearing traditional hijab head coverings, Iranian women are denied economic growth and access to good paying jobs.

According to a Pew Research Center analysis of labor force statistics from 114 nations from 2010 to 2016, the median female share of a nation’s workforce was 45.4%, but in the case of Iran, women made up only a paltry 17.4% of the workforce, ranking near the bottom among all countries.

For all of the talk of empowerment and moderation in Iran by the regime and its Iran lobby supporters, the truth is dismal and the outlook for women even bleaker.

The next time women march for Women’s Day, it might be worth remembering the millions of Iranian women who are denied their futures and can’t even march in protest for fear of arrest and imprisonment.

Iran Lobby Echo Chamber Banging Loudly for Iran Regime

March 5, 2017 by admin

Iran Lobby Echo Chamber Banging Loudly for Iran Regime

It seems that the “echo chamber” created by members of the Obama administration and the Iran lobby is still alive and kicking and trying desperately to keep support flowing to the Iranian regime in light of increasing calls to get tough on Iranian regime because of its continued support for terrorism, brutal human rights abuses and flagrant violations of international sanctions with ballistic missile launches.

The Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, has been especially busy making excuses every time Iran hangs a dissident, puts down a protest or sentences a dual national to prison.

Many of those “experts” sympathetic to the regime and preserving the nuclear deal at all costs continue to push false narratives like a used car salesman pushing a clunker with a rolled back odometer.

One example is a piece authored by Jeffrey A. Sinclair in Foreign Affairs in which he argues that President Trump needs to strengthen Iran’s “moderates.”

“The goal should be to guard against any further escalation of hostilities. After all, unless the administration is willing to wage war with Iran, this confrontation won’t achieve anything useful for the United States. What it will do is further strengthen the hardliners in Tehran, a process that is already underway, and undermine moderates such as President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif less than three months before Iran’s presidential election,” Sinclair writes.

Rarely has a paragraph been loaded with more inaccuracies than that one.

First of all, Trump has made it clear with his criticisms of the war in Iraq during the campaign that he is not in favor of nation-building by military force, but he has also made clear he was not going to offer a blank check to regimes such as Iran and Syria to do whatever they wanted since the end result of those kinds of actions has brought chaos to the Middle East.

Trump has laid out a belief that ignoring Iranian regimes’s militant actions does little to ensure regional stability and peace. Confronting the regime on issues such as human rights, proxy wars or provocative military acts are the right policy if Trump’s administration takes up that road, but saying that such a path only leads to war is one of the boldest falsehoods of the echo chamber.

Trump has at his disposal of plethora of tools, many used successfully by previous administrations, to force Iran to the bargaining table which is exactly what happened recently. The only problem was that the Obama administration fumbled the ball by caving in to every demand the Iranian mullahs had and getting little in return.

Contrary to Sinclair’s missives, confronting Iranian regime is exactly the right course of action since to do nothing except issue paper condemnations does nothing to rectify the situation. Using harsh language as Iran’s Quds Forces supply Houthi rebels in Yemen with arms so they can destabilize the country and risk a regional war between Saudi Arabia and Iran breaking out is not only bad foreign policy, it’s stupid.

Also, when Sinclair calls Rouhani and Zarif “moderates” the only polite thing to do is to keep from laughing hysterically out loud.

The only real moderates in Iran sit in Iranian prisons or have been driving out of the country as political refugees. As a religious theocracy, Iran’s mullahs maintain an iron grip on power. Rouhani did not become president to push a liberalizing agenda for reform. He was hand selected by Ali Khamenei to present the West with a more benign face in order to trigger negotiations to ease crippling sanctions.

The world is not going to see any competition during these upcoming presidential elections in Iran. Nothing is left to chance by the mullahs, which is why the vast majority of political dissidents, journalists, artists, filmmakers, students and anyone else stepping out of line has already been rounded up in advance of the elections.

“Because other U.S. and Western sanctions relating to Iran’s alleged terrorist activities remained in place, and because international banks remained highly skittish when it came to dealing with Iran, economic relief did not come quickly enough,” Sinclair said. “Overall, the administration made too few efforts to help Iran economically, as other terrorism-related sanctions were kept in place. The Obama team, it seemed, had taken its eye off the ball. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and others knew that Iranian moderates needed a post-deal economic boost to secure their position.”

This is another fallacious argument being made that the U.S. somehow was responsible for jumpstarting an Iranian economy that ranks almost dead last in the world in transparency and corruption. Also, since sanctions related to terrorism were not part of the nuclear deal, the U.S. and Trump are under no obligation to lift them, especially since Iranian regime regularly supports terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Shiite militias responsible for wholesale slaughter of Sunni villages in Iraq.

Sinclair also criticizes discussions to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization and contends such a move would “escalate tensions.”

It’s hard to imagine how much worse tensions can get when Iranian regime’s navy detains American sailors, American citizens are being held in Iranian prisons and Iran’s proxies are causing the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

Sinclair—and the rest of the Iran lobby—seems to place its collective hopes on the few wispy strands of less intensive anti-American actions than in the past as positive signs for change.

“For now, signs from Iran are somewhat positive. The yearly celebration of the founding of the Islamic Republic (expected to be a bonanza for the hardliners) turned out to be muted—excessively so, which was a clear sign of at least momentary moderation from the top leadership,” he writes. “In addition, a series of prominent hardliner clerics—including some of the leading clerics in Qom—have in recent days publicly expressed their support for keeping the nuclear deal in place.”

The claimed positive step is at a time that the Iranian regime test fired another Ballistic missile during this period and of course the mullahs are going to express support for the nuclear deal since its amounts to a giant ATM card the regime has been using to buy billions of dollars in new weapons from Russia.

These are not encouraging signs no matter what the echo chamber says and it’s about time we ignore it.

Michael Tomlinson