Iran Lobby

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

The Proxy War of the Regime in Iran

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Houthi RebelsEvents in the Mideast are moving fast as Yemen is toppled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, inviting a response by Saudi Arabia which launched air strikes in Yemen alongside Gulf State allies in an effort to check the progress being made by another Iranian regime proxy.

The stunning advances made by the Houthis shined a spotlight on a favorite tactic of Iran’s mullahs which is the use of proxies to fight their wars. It’s a tactic that harkens back to the Cold War-era fights in Southeast Asia and Africa between the West and old Soviet empire as Third World countries supplied the cannon fodder for countless wars, large and small.

The Iranian regime took a page out of the history books in funding, arming, training and then directing terror networks over the past three decades, most notably Hezbollah which has chalked up several ignominious victories, including:

  • Bombings of the U.S. Embassy and barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983 killing 241 Americans and another bombing of the embassy annex in 1984;
  • Hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985;
  • Systematic kidnapping and hostage taking of Americans and Europeans from 1982 to 1992 in Lebanon;
  • Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 killing 19 American servicemen; and
  • Training and arming of insurgents during the Iraq War targeting thousands of innocent Iraqis and also American service personnel.

Iran’s mullahs have used Hezbollah fighters to prevent the fall of Syria’s President Assad and target moderate rebels which has resulted in ISIS to rise up and form.

The Iranian regime has also used its virtual puppeteering of Shiite militias in Iraq in fighting ISIS that gave it the excuse necessary to move its military wholesale into Iraq and take over vast parts of that country’s military and political arms.

Though the recent Yemen attack by the gulf countries shows that the mullahs will pay a price for overreaching themselves, yet the regime in Iran, desperate to create crisis outside (to cover up the already exploding discontent of the Iranians against mullah’s dictatorship), has moved its proxies on the chessboard and enabled it to now interfere in a swath of territory stretching from the Mediterranean with Lebanon, through Syria and Iraq and now down through Yemen.

Yet, given the long and bloody history of the Iranian regime’s use of proxies to wage war, terror and murder, the regime’s lobbying and PR machine continually seeks to gloss over that record and instead attempt to rehabilitate its leaders. It’s akin to hiring a PR firm to try and redo the brand image of the Nazis.

The most recent example is an editorial from the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi who wrote in The Atlantic that the regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei was a misunderstood softie who really wanted peace with the West. Parsi offers as logic, Iran’s historical interactions with the world going back to 1813 as reason for the regime’s natural suspicions of the rest of the world’s motives

Now, I am willing to concede that Khamenei is an old man, but I doubt he was around to be personally offended by anything that happened in the early 19th century. Parsi also never mentions Khamenei’s direction of Iran’s proxies, or his oversight of one of the most brutal human rights periods in Iranian history

Parsi also skips over Khamenei’s annual verbal calisthenics of leading chants of “Death to America” or his angry pronouncements that Iran will give no quarter in its efforts to preserve its multi-billion nuclear development program that was conceived in secret, violating international agreements and to this day, still largely uninspected by international agencies.

One would love to ask Parsi why, if Iran’s history is so important to understanding the motivations of the regime’s leadership, can’t the West use the Iranian regime’s bloody history of using proxies in its wars as evidence of the regime’s desire to wage war until it achieves its goals of establishing an Islamic extremist empire for itself?

Of course, he would probably tell us Iran doesn’t have any proxies.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby – Trita Parsi Can’t Escape His Past

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Boxed InTrita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and apologist-in-chief for the Iranian regime, was caught in another embarrassing revelation about his past conduct when Breitbart.com ran a story detailing a previous effort by Parsi between 2006-2007 to arrange a meeting between 12 Democratic Senators and Iranian officials to coordinate efforts against then President George W. Bush’s foreign policy.

The revelation came in email correspondence that was only made available after NIAC brought a failed defamation suit against Iranian journalist Hassan Dai, in which the enterprising reporter revealed the NIAC’s connections and lobbying efforts on behalf of the regime.

According to Breitbart.com, “Parsi and his group started a campaign called the ‘Iran Negotiation Project,’ where NIAC would help to link up Democratic Congressmen with the state-sponsor of terrorism. Dai reported that NIAC arranged for a group of 12 Democrat ‘Congress members that opposed Bush’s policy toward Iran’ and that they ‘met regularly to coordinate their efforts and planned to meet members of the Iranian parliament.’”

Parsi’s actions are even more ironic considering his statement to the American Thinker at the time in which he said:

“These [Democratic Party] members are very disillusioned with the Bush foreign policy and are tired to sit on the sidelines as Bush undermines the US’s global position. As a result, they are willing to take matters in their own hands and they accept the political risk that comes with it.”

All of which makes his recent condemnation of the efforts by Senate Republicans to hold the Obama administration accountable in current nuclear talks with the Iranian regime the height of hypocrisy. Parsi cannot help but be boxed in by how own past deeds and actions.

More evidence of NIAC’s hypocrisy was on display with a joint letter signed by it and 50 self-claimed groups largely compassionate to the criminal regime of mullahs sent to Senators urging more accommodation with Iran’s mullahs who urged them to not hold a proposed agreement accountable and subject to review.

But these types of mental gymnastics are nothing new for an organization that has so often tossed logic to the wind all in the service of the mullahs in Tehran that maintain an iron grip over their people and serve as the launching point for a large number of the world’s terror groups.

NIAC’s position in favoring the Iranian regime maintaining its nuclear infrastructure in the absurd piece of logic that it would foster regional peace was put to shame with the news reported in the Wall Street Journal out that Saudi Arabia had reached an agreement with South Korea to launch a feasibility study for building two nuclear reactors worth $2 billion over the next 20 years.

“Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a member of the royal family, has publicly warned in recent months that Riyadh will seek to match the nuclear capabilities Iran is allowed to maintain as part of any final agreement reached with world powers. This could include the ability to enrich uranium and to harvest the weapons-grade plutonium discharged in a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel,” wrote the Journal.

Far from making the region a safer place, the Iranian regime’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons is now triggering a full-scale arms race.

The NIAC has long advocated positions that it later contradicts whenever it suits the whims of its regime masters and Senators are right to be skeptical of anything produced by it.

By Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Example of Helsinki for Iran Dead Right

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Helsinki AccordsThe lack of intellectual rigor coming from the Iranian regime’s foremost lobbying team in the National Iranian American Council fails to impress and today is no exception with an inane editorial written by Tyler Cullis and appearing in the New York Times.

In it, Cullis attempts to draw parallels between the diplomatic efforts made by President Gerald in overcoming Senate opposition to craft an accord with the old Soviet Union in an effort to lay the groundwork for détente between the East and West. He aligns this scenario with what is currently happening in talks between the Iranian regime and the P5+1 group of nations seeking to restrict the mullahs march to a nuclear weapon.

Cullis fails to mention several key and crucial distinctions between the two that have an even more profound impact on current talks.

For one thing, President Ford attempted to make human rights a core feature of the accords in recognition of the terrible human rights violations occurring regularly within the Warsaw Pact nations. In a speech he gave while trying to sell the Accords to the American public, he said:

“The Helsinki documents involve political and moral commitments aimed at lessening tension and opening further the lines of communication between peoples of East and West. . . We are not committing ourselves to anything beyond what we are already committed to by our own moral and legal standards and by more formal treaty agreements such as the United Nations Charter and Declaration of Human Rights.”

It was significant for President Ford to stress the human rights aspects of the Accords since the agreement would effectively make permanent the Soviet Union’s annexation of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after World War II and place them under harsh rules for the next 30 years.

The Accords were also significant because they were not a treaty per se, as evidenced by the strong objections by nations such as Canada, Spain and Ireland in allowing the Soviets to swallow the Baltic States. In a bit of historical irony, the Accords laid the groundwork for the later Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the same working group which has floundered in building a cohesive response to Russia’s recent annexation of the Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine.

All of which further demonstrates the feebleness of Cullis argument. At no point during the P5+1 talks has the Iranian regime’s dismal human rights record ever been put on the negotiating table, nor its long support and sponsorship of global and Islamic extremist terror groups.

One of the key recognitions of the Helsinki Accords was its commitment and focus to the preservation of human rights as a key element in the dialogue between the West and Soviet Union. It presented the framework by which later talks under détente efforts by preceding Presidents were always framed by the need to dissuade the Soviets from abusing its own people and those of nations under their sway.

It is a model of success that has borne early fruit with the Iranian regime by forcing it to come to the negotiating table after economic sanctions began having their desired effect, but Cullis and other regime sympathizers would have us give Iran’s mullahs the breathing room necessary to rebuild their economy while arming themselves with nuclear weapons under the guise of peaceful talks.

While Cullis holds the Helsinki Accords as a model for Iranian talks, he unwittingly reinforces the true reason why those Accords succeeded and it had nothing to do with President Ford ignoring Congress, but had everything to do with his focus on human rights.

According to the Cold War scholar John Lewis Gaddis in his book “The Cold War: A New History” (2005), “Leonid Brezhnev had looked forward, Anatoly Dobrynin recalls, to the ‘publicity he would gain…when the Soviet public learned of the final settlement of the postwar boundaries for which they had sacrificed so much’… ‘[Instead, the Helsinki Accords] gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement’… What this meant was that the people who lived under these systems — at least the more courageous — could claim official permission to say what they thought.”

We can only hope that this proposed agreement with the regime gets scrapped and instead a true human rights-driven manifesto takes its place rightly restoring the importance of Iran’s mullahs getting an agreement conditioned only by their acceptance and implementation of human rights improvements and the renunciation of terror.

Thank you Mr. Culis for so eloquently making my point.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran – Another Step for Regime Hardliners

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Mohammad YazdiThe Wall Street Journal ran a story the other day saying the Iranian regime had announced the installation of conservative mullah Mohammad Yazdi as the new chairman to the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses and supervises the regime’s Supreme Leader, a post currently held by Ali Khamenei, who – if news reports are to be believed – is in poor declining health.

While the news, in and of itself, might not be too surprising, it does illustrate a key point about the nature of the Iranian regime that has a direct bearing on current nuclear talks between the Islamic state and the P5+1 group of nations and that is no matter what the public perception might be about a more “moderate” face to Iran, the nation is still firmly and unquestionably in the control of the religious conservatives.

The timing of the move is also interesting considering other moves the regime has taken in the past few weeks to reinforce the perception that it will remain a bastion of Islamic extremists and is not interested in moderating its policies just to gain a deal.

These include regular public denunciations of America as the “Great Satan” and the blowing up of a mock U.S. aircraft carrier in military exercises. The regime has also stepped up its tactical command and control of Iraqi military forces and Shiite militias in the fight with ISIS as it bulks up its ability to extend military power by the commissioning of a new home-made naval warship.

The decision to appoint Yazdi is a crucial one since Khamenei’s death would require a selection of a successor and he is the natural choice given his elevation within the mullahs hierarchy. Yazdi also is a member of the mullah’s Guardian Council and former regime Chief Justice, with lots of blood on his hand.

He has regularly espoused conservative views over the years according to the Journal story, including a quote in 2013 “when he told the Mehr news agency that it wasn’t appropriate for women to run as presidential candidates.”

Why his election is significant, because it illustrates a key conundrum Obama administration officials have been reluctant to talk about which is there are no divisions between “moderates” and “conservatives” in a religious theocracy where the wishes of a small cadre of ruling mullahs carry the power of law.

This narrative of moderates vs. hardliners in Iran is largely a fabrication of the news media controlled by the Iranian regime in order to present to the world the perception there is a battle of wills and ideas and that by acting in a certain way, the forces of moderation will be supported.

In contract talks for free agent professional athletes, we call that “negotiating against oneself.”

Which are exactly what the West and the U.S. in particular has been doing the past three years. There is a perception in the Western media that Hassan Rouhani is some kind of soft, lovable teddy bear of a moderate who is only interested in holding back the dread forces of darkness and medieval thinking in his own country. It’s a perception bolstered by the non-stop lobbying and branding efforts of the regime’s U.S.-based supporters including the National Iranian American Council.

The truth of the matter is that Rouhani is in lock step with his hardline brethren since his days running the regime’s National Security Council and a past negotiator on previous nuclear talks that also collapsed and failed. The fact that during his tenure of president, Iran has stepped up executions to over 1,200 according to Amnesty International and instituted broad crackdowns on internet access, news media, social media and minority religious freedoms leaves little doubt Iran has veered even more conservative since his election.

In fact, in 1999 after student protests, Rouhani was said in a speech at a pro-government rally during his tenure at the National Security Council:

“At dusk yesterday we received a decisive revolutionary order to crush mercilessly and monumentally any move of these opportunist elements wherever it may occur. From today our people shall witness how in the arena our law enforcement force . . . shall deal with these opportunists and riotous elements, if they simply dare to show their faces.”

This is not a man of moderation, but a man that can work well with either Khamenei or Yazdi.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Marginalization of NIAC

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Outside Looking InWith the debris beginning to clear from the build up to the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech to a joint session of Congress and the March 24th deadline fast approaching for the P5+1 negotiators in Geneva, Switzerland for a framework of a deal for halting the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, it is an opportune time to survey the landscape and ask just how effective Iran’s chief lobbyists, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), have been lately.

 

The NIAC had performed almost every acrobatic maneuver in drowning out the message about the true nature of the Iranian regime and its role as the center of extremist Islam in the world and terrorism, but how effective has it truly been?

 

NIAC also held a “National Day of Action” in an attempt to deliver petitions to local Congressional offices calling for an end to economic sanctions against the mullah’s regime in Iran. After much hype, the actual results were not even worthy of a Model UN session of high school students. Roughly 65 teams in only half of the states fanned out to deliver a few petitions and mostly posed for selfies in Congressional offices.

 

The political muscle of the NIAC falls far short of what we have come to expect from powerhouse political operations such as the National Rifle Association, labor unions, environmental groups or even grassroots efforts like Occupy Wall Street. From an impact standpoint, the NIAC seems to rank somewhere between “irrelevancy” and “obscurity.”

 

But the NIAC does not lack a certain notoriety, especially in the wake of a disastrous defamation suit it filed in which evidence was produced linking it to the Iranian regime and steps taken by it to obscure and cover up those connections. The NIAC has struggled mightily to recast the decision by the US federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in a favorable light, but the court ruling reads like a blow-by-blow indictment of NIAC.

 

An excellent review of the decision and its implications for NIAC was published by Business Insider by Armin Rosen the other day and worth reading. Rosen recounts the most damning revelations from the court decision, including finding that:

 

  • 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.

 

In response, the NIAC issued a “clarification” on its website in a feeble attempt to restate Judge Robert Wilkens’ opinion and heavily edited from his full opinion.

 

Lastly, there is a growing realization among U.S. news organizations that NIAC is merely a functionary for the Iranian regime and as such less of its “news” is finding its way into mainstream media. A review of just the past few days during the NIAC’s most intense lobbying and media efforts revealed the overwhelming bulk of news organizations carrying NIAC’s statements were Arabic news media with ties to the Iranian regime or semi-official Iranian news organs.

 

The dearth of in-depth coverage is growing evidence the group has worn out its welcome when it comes to serious policy discussions about Iran’s nuclear program and has even less credibility when taken into context of its apparent lack of criticism of the regime over human rights violations, support for terrorist groups and the propagation of Islamic extremism.

 

It is a curiosity for American news media to receive media pitches from NIAC that border on hysterical when it blithely ignores injustices committed by the Iranian regime so egregious as to shock even seasoned foreign correspondents.

 

Thankfully, the NIAC is becoming less of an influence as evidenced by this week’s events. We can only hope it eventually fades into political obscurity the same way the dodo bird became extinct.

By Michael Tomlinson

Can Iran Mullahs Be Trusted?

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TrustIn the Wall Street Journal, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), a former Air Force B-1 pilot and member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, authored an editorial that raises the most essential question facing the Congress, American people and frankly the world right now: “In what way is Iran a reliable negotiating partner?”

The short answer to that question is: “None.”

Congressman Stewart forthrightly examines the conundrum facing anyone dealing with Iran’s mullahs. What evidence has there been to give reassurance to anyone sitting across from a negotiating table from them that they would adhere to the letter and spirit of any agreement?

His experiences during the Cold War in dealing with the old Soviet Union are instructive because they teach us that for any agreement to work, both sides have to be considered reliable and trustworthy partners. It is also an axiom of politics and nation states that if breaking an agreement serves the national interest, it is likely going to be broken.

He goes on to recount the litany of acts by Iran’s leaders which would give any normally sane person pause, including listing Iran as an official sponsor of state terrorism for the last 30 years and creation of an indigenous military-industrial complex allowing it to create and ship out its own weapons and ammunition to terror groups.

Stewart cites mullahs in Iran as the primary weapons supplier for two other state sponsors of terrorism in Syria and Sudan, while it supplies arms to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, as well as Shiite militias in Iraq.

“Tehran’s regime suppresses internal dissent and has executed tens of thousands of its own citizens for opposing the regime. It is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. military personnel in Iraq through improvised explosive devices supplied to Shiite militias in the past decade. Iran counts as close allies Russia, China and North Korea, which team with the regime in developing ballistic missiles and nuclear capabilities,” Stewart writes.

But Stewart correctly goes on to cite the Iranian regime’s involvement in money laundering, drug and arms trafficking, counterfeiting, promoting extremism and plotting terrorist attacks in South and Central America, demonstrating the mullahs reach and global aspirations.

Besides a long record of regular violations of international and human rights law, Stewart asks how can the regime in Iran be trusted if the primary mechanism for compliance – international inspections – isn’t even allowed by the regime? He cites the International Atomic Energy Agency report from Feb. 20 that was harshly critical of Iran’s stonewalling of inspections and continued non-compliance.

If Iran’s mullahs won’t even comply with inspections at this critical juncture when it claims a heartfelt desire to negotiate a deal, when will it ever allow inspections?

The deep and abiding obstacle starts and ends with the intentions of the ruling mullahs. Unfortunately the U.S. and the rest of the P5+1 group have never conditioned a nuclear deal on a fundamental request; that is Iran’s transition from a religious theocracy to a democratic society.

Unless you can change Iran’s society and government to one that is at its core more law-abiding, more peaceful and more interested in being an international partner, then any agreement negotiated with the current regime isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

Trust is something that is earned and built upon. It is not something that one “hopes” is inherent when the track record is so devoid of any trust. Therefore in the case of Iran mullahs, it should be “Verify before you trust.”

By Laura Carnahan

Trita Parsi and The Big Lie

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Court GavelYesterday the District of Columbia Court of Appeals issued an order in regards to damages and compensation awarded by the District Court to Seid Hassan Daioleslam, an Iranian American who investigated the National Iranian American Council’s ties to the Iranian regime, as a result of a defamation suit brought by NIAC and its president, Trita Parsi.

The order by the Court only dealt with the issue of reimbursements owed by NIAC to Mr. Daioeslam as a result of the costs he incurred in responding to and researching of NIAC’s claims against him.

It is worth noting the Court upheld the factual elements of the case, which included a litany of bad-faith actions by Parsi and NIAC to avoid, evade, hide and in some cases destroy evidence linking both to key members of the Iranian regime. The core elements of the case against Mr. Daioleslam were thrown out and instead valuable information was unearthed during the course of discovery that proved highly problematic for Parsi and NIAC.

A good roundup of the case merits appeared on Breitbart.com (http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2013/05/26/distorting-niac-s-court-defeat/) so I will save readers from the blow-by-blow descriptions of the case facts.

The Court of Appeal’s order also does a fine job in reiterating the central facts of the case and the lengths to which the NIAC and Parsi attempted to hide their ties to the mullahs in Iran. It is a case of missing computer hard drives, servers and software worthy of Lois Lerner and the IRS fiasco.

The full order is available for reading at http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/95D577149121951685257DE80053C062/$file/12-7111-1536782.pdf

The relevant portion of the order comes last in which the appellate panel writes:

“For the foregoing reasons, we affirm in part the District Court’s award of sanctions, and reverse the award of Mr. Daioleslam’s expenses in preparing the portions of his sanctions motion related to NIAC’s alteration of a document and Parsi’s interrogatory responses, as well as the award of post-judgment interest to run from September 13, 2012. We remand to the District Court for reconsideration of those aspects of its judgment under the proper standard. So ordered.”

What is remarkable is the NIAC’s response in which it issued a statement implying a colossal win over Mr. Daisoleslam. At no point did the Court order dispute the facts of the case.

  • The NIAC willfully over 4,000 entries in electronic calendars detailing who Parsi and other NIAC officers had met with over the years, including representatives of the Iranian regime;
  • The NIAC willfully withheld 5,500 emails of conversations and correspondence between Parsi and other NIAC officers with Iranian officials and supporters;
  • The NIAC never proved any of Mr. Daisoleslam’s conclusions or results from his investigations were in fact defamatory. The first defense from defamation is truth;
  • The NIAC’s failure to produce computers and servers whose existence was only discovered through a forensic sweep of hard drives.

A full listing of all of the charges made against NIAC can be found here at The Legal Project: http://www.legal-project.org/4024/predatory-lawsuit-rebounds-back-on-iranian-front

In short, the Court of Appeals asked the District Court to recalculate the compensation owed to Mr. Daisoleslam by NIAC, taking into account a change in which interest had to be calculated and the costs for preparing a motion related to Parsi’s interrogatory and NIAC’s changing of documents.

The Court never said that any of the facts of the case regarding NIAC and Parsi’s conduct and evasions were in error. It simply required a slight accounting change from the $183,000 award originally given. Once the lower court recalculates the award, NIAC will have no choice but to finally pay up.

Interestingly, NIAC’s statement attempts to reposition the accounting change as a vindication over the facts of the case, which is absurd since they lost of a summary judgment which found all claims made by NIAC to be false.

But trying to make gold out of manure is nothing new for Parsi and NIAC as evidenced by the most recent debacle where they pushed for a delay for a framework nuclear deal and instead of securing the June 30th deadline, they ineptly pushed a new deadline up by two months to March 24th.

Any rational person reading the first two pages of the appellate ruling will quickly come to the conclusion that NIAC and Parsi in particular are accomplished practitioners of the Big Lie for Iran mullahs.

 

Iran emphasis on lifting sanctions not likely to happen

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One YearThis past weekend, the P5+1 group of nations negotiating a potential nuclear arms deal with Iran held impromptu meetings against the backdrop of worsening conditions in Ukraine with separatists battling for control of large swathes of that country.

In a closing press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Barack Obama signaled his clearest belief yet additional extensions to negotiations would not prove useful, nor be granted should this latest third round of talks fail to yield a framework of an agreement by March 24th, a deadline imposed by Senate Democrats.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif offered a slightly differing take when he also agreed any extension would not be useful, but reiterated mullah’s position that economic sanctions be quickly lifted completely should a deal be worked out. In short, Zarif wants a blank check in restoring and normalizing relations with the U.S.

In many ways Zarif could be forgiven his rose colored glasses. He has witnessed the West cave in twice before on negotiating sessions in which mullahs in Iran gave up barely anything and in return, is in the process of receiving $11 billion in frozen assets in several payments at a critical time for Iran’s economy as oil prices tanked globally and Iran’s military commitments in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan were taking a toll.

Zarif has also seen Obama’s foreign policy deteriorate in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East with radicalized Islamist movements gaining nearly everywhere; all of which has led him and his bosses, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and President Hassan Rouhani, to calculate just how long they can get away with dangling the carrot.

The unfortunate hiccup for them came with the midterm elections in the U.S. when an American public, sickened by the violence taking place around the world and seeing grisly videos of killings, acted swiftly to send an unmistakable message that terrorism was a top concern.

Iranian regime’s imposing PR and lobbying machine in the U.S. towed the party line as groups such as the National Iranian American Council gamely tried to persuade doubting lawmakers that Iran was indeed ready to deal. Their latest so-called “win” was the move by Senate Democrats to delay re-imposing sanctions until March 24th, but all that did in effect was move the June 30th deadline up by three months instead.

Now faced with the dark reality of receiving no more extensions, mullahs in Iran are holding onto the position that any agreement be accompanied by a full and complete cessation of sanctions. In essence, mullahs in Iran wants a do-over and behave as if the past decade of terror, violence, brutality and human rights violations had never happened.

“Sanctions are a liability; you need to get rid of them if you want a solution,” Zarif told attendees at the Munich security conference.

It’s an odd statement since he implies sanctions have to be lifted first before a deal is completed. Secretary Kerry added to the oddity by outlining an acceptable deal would slow Iran’s ability to enrich enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon by one year.

That’s say that again: An acceptable deal with Iran would “slow down” the ability to build a bomb by a year. Not “prevent” Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon, just delay it by a year.

It is hard to fathom a worse situation than to allow Iranian regime the mildly inconvenient cost of 365 days before it gains a nuclear weapon. It is not a scenario that bodes well for the rest of the world.

By Laura Carnahan

When is a Deadline Not a Deadline?

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Buyer RemorseA curious thing happened to the powerful lobbying machine working tirelessly around the clock to halt the re-imposition of economic sanctions by a bi-partisan coalition of Senate Democrats and Republicans last week who felt after two earlier rounds of talks failed the current third round was going nowhere fast as well.

Iranian regime’s sympathizers rejoiced at the agreement by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to postpone action until March 24th and give the Obama administration two additional months to demonstrate there had been meaningful progress towards a verifiable deal agreeable to Congress. Led by the National Iranian American Council, they boasted of the “win” and what it portended for the future of a nuclear agreement.

But in the span of two weeks, these same Iranian loyalists are now suddenly crying foul over the two month delay, now contending all it did was move the original deadline up for a deal from the June 30th deadline agreed to by the P5+1 group negotiating with Iran to March 24th. In essence, the “win” shaved three months instead of gaining two months.

There is nothing quite like patting yourself on the back as a winner only to realize you were an idiot.

Trita Parsi, the NIAC’s head cheerleader, said in comments to Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen, herself a dedicated Iranian regime fan, that “Treating the March ‘interim deadline as the final deadline is highly problematic.’”

Parsi’s comments are almost comic after the NIAC statement two weeks ago in the wake of the Senate’s action which said in part:

“This is a significant victory for those of us who have worked to support a diplomatic agreement, not a war, with Iran. We commend everyone who has worked to stop the diplomacy-killing sanctions bill.”

It seems the NIAC is having a case of buyer’s remorse.

While it seems the vaunted Iranian lobbying machine may have shot itself in the foot, the truth of the matter is that they have not really lost time. In fact, one could argue Iran has already gained two years since the first round of talks collapsed in failure and were kept on a respirator through another failed round of talks last November.

In fact, American public opinion had swung solidly in favor of action against the unprecedented growth in radical Islamic terror around the world as epitomized by the ISIS video depicting the horrific death of Jordan’s pilot by fire, which was simply the straw breaking the camel’s back, forcing Senators to act.

This is the essential point Iran’s cadre of supporters are frankly scared witless about; the sanctions ship has already sailed in large part because mullahs in Iran have already had three years to make good on any substantial deal.

But in that time, Iran has poured vast resources of arms, fighters and cash into terrorist activities. It has helped Hezbollah as it fought in Syria, Iraq as it took over that country’s military, orchestrated the total collapse of Yemen and allowed ISIS to spring forth just on the foreign policy front.

At home, Iran has publicly executed over a 1,200 men and women, cracked down on Internet access, blocked social media, arrested and imprisoned political dissidents, journalists, ethnic and religious minorities and even American citizens.

The fact that a delay to March 24th was granted is quite probably the last shred of hope the Iranian lobby is likely to receive. The fact they are now crying over it is more a testament to their own inadequacies than anything else.

To paraphrase from singer Bryan Adam’s 1981 landmark second album, I would say to the Iranian lobby: “You wanted it, you got it. Now live with it.”

By Michael Tomlinson

It’s About the Humanity Stupid

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HumanityDuring President Bill Clinton’s campaign, his manager James Carville coined the now famous phrase “It’s the economy stupid” when deciding on the campaign’s key themes. It proved to be simple, powerful and ultimately successful.

Today we are faced with a variation of that theme with the fast-moving developments occurring on two fronts: the rapid growth of ISIS and the ongoing talks with Iran on nuclear weapons.

In both cases, the nature of the public debate and discussion about each has moved to almost polar opposites for these two issues. On the one hand, ISIS is generating a visceral, deep emotional horror as the world watches video after video revealing beheadings and now burnings. ISIS is attempting and succeeding in forcing an almost gag-like reflex at the barbarity and cruelty it is displaying. ISIS has few if any supporters outside of the few radicalized state sponsors of terror and rival terror groups.

In contrast, the ongoing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program have begun to take on a more technical, dry and almost boring aura. Discussions over centrifuges, enrichment capability, stockpiles of fuel and their purity are topics sometimes more avidly discussed in college physics courses than on late night talk shows. Iran also employs a vast and well-funded lobbying and PR machine that encompasses public interest groups, public relations firms, high-priced lobbyists, columnists and journalists and the occasional ex-public official.

But in weighing the importance of the two issues, there is no greater threat to the stability and peace on a global stage than mullah’s regime in Iran and its quest for a nuclear weapon; which brings me back to Carville’s turn of phrase.

The debate and discussion about Iran’s nuclear weapons program needs a literary jump start and the lexicon of humanity needs to be re-injected back into the issue. Iran has worked mightily to keep any link to its dismal human rights record or sponsorship of terrorist groups from being attached to ongoing nuclear talks. Iran’s mullahs have sought and succeeded to some degree in keeping the discussion as dry as the desert sands.

But these talks do need the context of the impacts Iran is having on the rest of the world in order for the P5+1 group of nations to gain a greater understanding of exactly who sits across the table from them. The difficulty is that after two previous failed rounds of talks and almost three years of unrelenting compromise from the Iranian side, any sane and normal person might be feeling a bit exhausted by this exercise.

The political pressure the Obama administration is under to deliver a foreign policy win of any kind has pushed the talks forward into giving Iran access to over $11 billion in frozen assets for few if any meaningful concessions. The West, in large part, has lost the language battle by no longer including terms such as “human rights,” “political dissidents,” “public executions” or “terror sponsorship” as part of the discussions.

Secretary of State John Kerry briefly introduced a fig leaf when he brought up the plight of imprisoned Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, but that brought little result and still leaves unmentioned the plight of literally thousands that are imprisoned by Iran, including other American citizens.

What has also been notable is the lack of vocabulary amongst Iran’s supporters over the increasing levels of barbarity and violence coming from ISIS. Aside from a statement from the Iranian government, there has been no similar reaction from Iran loyalists such as the National Iranian American Council or their affiliates.

The very absence of any humane commentary illuminates what is missing from any dialogue concerning Iran. It is also the key issue that leaves many Senators on both sides of the political aisle uneasy about any deal negotiated with Iran. Can the U.S. trust a regime whose concepts of human rights and fair and equal treatment of its own people are as foreign to us and ISIS seems to be from the rest of humanity?

Ultimately Congress has marked a red line in the sand in which any deal reached by the P5+1 must be reviewed by Congress and meet with its approval. Senators recognize giving mullahs in Iran a deal providing even the smallest wiggle room to push a nuclear warhead through would forever change the outlook not only for the region, but the rest of the world. Iran is no North Korea. It has proven oil reserves giving it access to all the military technology capability it needs to build and deliver a nuclear weapon.

When negotiators next sit down with their Iranian counterparts, they should be telling themselves “It’s about the humanity stupid.”

By Laura Carnahan