Iran Lobby

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

NIAC Tries to Diminish Iran Protests

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NIAC Tries to Diminish Iran Protests

NIAC Tries to Diminish Iran Protests

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laura Carnahan

NIAC Tries to Rebuild Image Among Iranian-Americans

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NIAC Tries to Rebuild Image Among Iranian-Americans

NIAC Tries to Rebuild Image Among Iranian-Americans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that must concern Parsi very much.

Michael Tomlinson

Hassan Rouhani Mounts PR Offensive to Rebuild Moderate Image

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Hassan Rouhani Mounts PR Offensive to Rebuild Moderate Image

Hassan Rouhani Mounts PR Offensive to Rebuild Moderate Image

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laura Carnahan

Trita Parsi Tries to Diminish Iranian Protesters

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Trita Parsi Tries to Diminish Iranian Protestors

Trita Parsi Tries to Diminish Iranian Protestors

The McGill International Review (MIR), an online publication of the International Relations Students’ Association of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, seems to be one of the few publications reading statements by Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council.

In a story trying to characterize the chances of Iran’s latest protest movement’s long-term success, MIR lifted Parsi’s January 1, 2018 description of the protestors as appearing “much more sporadic, with no clear leadership and with objectives that have shifted over the course of the past four days.”

MIR took Parsi’s bait in trying to compare and contrast these current protests against the more widely publicized 2009 Green Movement protests that were crushed by the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“This contrasts the 2009 protests which were mostly limited to Tehran. The new wave of protests are also nowhere near as large as the 2009 protests which numbered in the millions, whereas the recent protests have been estimated to be in the tens of thousands,” wrote Ethan Fogel in MIR.

The effort to compare and contrast these two sets of protests is another tactic and messaging point from the Iran lobby to diminish the current protests as being less significant and largely irrelevant.

What is especially disappointing in the MIR article is to take what Parsi says at face value without seriously questioning why he is taking these positions in the first place and the veracity of his assumptions.

In his January 1st statement, Parsi claims to have gotten an overview of these new protests by speaking to “witnesses.”

“According to witnesses I’ve spoken to, the protests were initiated in Mashhad by religious hardliners who sought to take advantage of the population’s legitimate economic grievances to score points against the Hassan Rouhani government, which they consider too moderate,” Parsi writes.

Let’s first ask the most basic question: What “witnesses” was Parsi talking to? Considering his loyal and faithful service in carrying the mullahs’ water, we sincerely doubt he’s talking to any genuinely aggrieved Iranians and because of his close government contacts with the regime, it is more likely his witnesses are actually regime officials.

Since he tries to frame the episode as an effort by “hardliners” to embarrass “moderate” Hassan Rouhani, he simply rehashes one of his tried and true message points from the nuclear agreement debate, which is that there exists a political death-struggle in Iran between moderate and hardline political forces fighting for the future of Iran.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the regime since 2009 has ably demonstrated that it acts with one voice and one truth: It remains solidly in lockstep in preserving the extremist state and the mullahs control over the levers of government, the economy and military.

The only disputes that have arisen within the regime has been fighting over the dividing of the spoils resulting from the lifting of economic sanctions as the Revolutionary Guards and Quds Forces fought for and got the lion share of wealth in starting wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and funding terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

Secondly, we have to ask the question, has Parsi ever really talked to a genuine Iranian dissident? Has he even traveled to Iran and gone to the notorious Evin prison to speak to any one of the thousands of Iranian political prisoners languishing and undergoing brutal torture there?

The answer is a glaring and obvious “no” and that places Parsi’s comments squarely in the suspect column since its hard to take anything Parsi says about the dissident movement in Iran with any confidence.

Parsi has tried to build his career from denouncing the Iranian resistance movement, whether it came from established groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran or Iranian youth protesting the regime with selfies on Instagram.

Parsi reminds readers that Rouhani won re-election with 57% of the vote in a massive turnout (his characterization), but neglects to mention how the regime disqualified virtually every competitor from the ballot.

There is irony in Parsi’s January 1st statement where he notes Rouhani’s restraint in calling in troops to suppress the protests. Unfortunately, we now know that indeed regime forces were called in to beat, arrest and even kill scores of protestors in a violent repeat of 2009.

Parsi is proven wrong again in his analysis by unfolding events, which makes MIR’s use of his quotes even odder.

It doesn’t take much effort to research the veracity of Parsi’s history and background and recognize his deep-state ties to the Iranian regime. Those ties instantly make him suspect as an objective news source, which MIR would be wise to avoid using again.

It is disappointing to see the MIR article buy into the perceived hardline vs. reformer fight that Parsi and the Iran lobby has tried to foster since that only helps keep some international support focused on Rouhani as a leader of the “reform” movement and continue to buy the regime time.

While more and more mainstream media outlets are avoiding using Parsi as a quoted source in their stories, that same skepticism has so far not reached Montreal’s halls of higher education.

We hope that changes soon.

Laura Carnahan

Trita Parsi Bashes Trump State of the Union on Iran Threat

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Trita Parsi Bashes Trump State of the Union on Iran Threat

Trita Parsi Bashes Trump State of the Union on Iran Threat

President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union speech in which he went through a laundry list of domestic policy achievements as all presidents are wont to do. As expected, the speech will generate much debate and fierce support and opposition, but for our purposes, we are more interested in the reaction of the Iran lobby to his specific comments on the rogue regime in Iran.

In his speech, the president singled out recognition of the ongoing protests erupting in Iran:

“When the people of Iran rose up against the crimes of their corrupt dictatorship, I did not stay silent. America stands with the people of Iran in their courageous struggle for freedom.”

He also went on to criticize the Iran nuclear deal:

“I am asking the Congress to address the fundamental flaws in the terrible Iran nuclear deal.”

President Trump’s comments were a stark contrast to his predecessor’s efforts to tout diplomatic overtures to the mullahs in Tehran as a means to cajole them into submission; ultimately failing entirely.

Whereas President Obama took nearly a week to toughen his talk after the brutal suppression of protests over the disputed 2009 presidential election in Iran, President Trump opted to embrace protests in Iran even as they broke out on the streets of cities throughout Iran.

President Trump’s actions also stand in opposition to the key messages and slogans endlessly uttered by the Iran lobby and some of its chief leaders such as the National Iranian American Council which always sought to deflect any potential criticisms of Iran or its theocratic leadership.

The NIAC’s Trita Parsi wasted no time in jumping up to attack President Trump over his support for Iranian protestors.

On his Twitter feed, which people should look at just for the Hollywood-like pats on the back he gives himself over his new book, Parsi tried to turn the president’s comments away from the legitimate protests in Iran towards his immigration ban to halt the flow of terrorists from countries that support terrorism.

“No Mr. Trump, you did not stand with the people of Iran when you banned them from visiting their American relatives in the US, nor when you tried to turn legitimate protests against the Iranian government into a tool for your Saudi-sponsored push for war…” Parsi tweeted.

It really is amazing how Parsi is able to cram so much misinformation in less than 140 characters.

He accuses the president of supporting the protestors in Iran as a pretense for some Saudi Arabian plan for war against the Iranian regime. Of course, Parsi neglects to mention that it was Iran’s intervention in the Syrian civil war and the Houthi rebellion in Yemen that brought it into direct conflict with the Saudis.

It has always been the mullahs in Tehran that have destabilized the Middle East through their intervention and use of the Revolutionary Guards and Quds Forces to subvert and attack their neighbors.

And Parsi and his colleagues at the NIAC have always stood by them and defended them against attacks; diplomatic or journalistic.

Ryan Costello of the NIAC, sent out a similar tweet attacking President Trump on the immigration ban. Fortunately, no one seemed to be listening with only two retweets five hours after the speech.

Therein lies the problem confronting the NIAC and its fellow travelers in the Iran lobby: fewer and fewer people seem to be caring what it has to say. With a hyperactive Twitterverse exploding with commentary about the president’s speech, Parsi’s tweets and those of his NIAC’s cohorts garnered little social media traction.

An odd situation considering how their profiles boast of thousands of followers. One might wonder if Parsi and his colleagues bought their followers from social media firms such as Devumi as recently reported widely of similar scams by several noted celebrities.

While Parsi claims to have over 71,600 followers, the guy can only get 12 retweets on his anti-Trump tirade?

While Parsi has always had a problem with generating fake news, he seems to be having trouble generating any interest out his Twitter followers except by click-baiting profiles that only retweet such as @sabengel4 which seems to have generated an amazing amount of retweets for Parsi, but not authored one original tweet.

This should lead to a broader and deeper discussion of just how much influence does Parsi and the NIAC really wield these days in the post-Obama world they now find themselves in. With events in Iran moving away from them with a mass rebellion by the Iranian people and a regime not living up to the nuclear deal and Trump administration outmaneuvering them on almost every front, the NIAC and Parsi seem to be contestants on the latest episode of “Survivor.”

This growing isolation can be seen in the decidedly less than ample access the NIAC seems to enjoy from mainstream media outlets which carry fewer and fewer editorials and opinion pieces authored by Parsi and his colleagues.

It seems the only places Parsi can get an audience is only when he bashes President Trump on issues such as immigration on progressive media outlets or blogs or his annual appearance on Russia Today.

In many ways, Parsi is becoming the very thing he seems to despise the most as evidenced by his ham-handed self-promotion over his latest non-bestseller: irrelevant.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Pushing More False Narratives Against Protests

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Iran Lobby Pushing More False Narratives Against Protests

Iran Lobby Pushing More False Narratives Against Protests

As the mass protests in Iran surged during its first week, the various groups comprising the Iran lobbying effort stepped up their own efforts in trying to find any message that might prove effective in blunting the awful scenes of ordinary Iranian citizens battling regime security forces.

The National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi was one of the busiest regime boosters in that period, appearing on a glut of news programs in an effort to portray the protests as less a response to the mullahs’ brutal policies, but rather a manipulation by outside forces such the Trump administration, incidentally, almost exactly what Ali Khamenei, Iranian regime’s supreme leader claimed at the end of the 2nd week of uprising in Iran.

In Huffington Post, Parsi blamed a nuclear deal that was overwhelmingly supported by the Iranian public, but failed to deliver on its economic promises because of obstruction by the U.S. and conservative Republicans hawkish against the regime.

On MSNBC, Parsi took aim at Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol’s calls for the U.S. to support the protests, by claiming Kristol actually wanted war against Iran.

 In the Hill, Parsi claimed that President Trump’s calls to support the protestors was meaningless because the president’s opposition to the nuclear deal made him lose credibility with the Iranian people.

“He has no popularity, no credibility on Iranian streets,” Parsi said.

Parsi added that the president would better demonstrate his support for the Iranian people by lifting any travel restrictions against Iran.

Meanwhile in Politico, Parsi claimed that the president was taking advantage of the situation to boost his own flagging political fortunes.

The dizzying number of appearances and competing messages and theories put out by Parsi could leave even experienced foreign policy analysts baffled, but this is Parsi’s only strategy left to him and his allies.

The fact that Parsi is offering different ideas on how to react to the protests in Iran lays bare that Parsi has no rational ideas to accurately describe what is happening there without validating the real reasons for these protests: the Iranian people have had enough of the mullahs.

These protests grew organically and spontaneously. They are not being led or organized by any political figure from within the regime’s power structure like the 2009 protests.

These protests are being staged by ordinary Iranians from middle and working classes who have borne the brunt of the wartime economy top mullah Ali Khamenei has mandated and have offered up their sons, brothers and fathers to fight in distant wars far from Iranian interests.

In many ways, these protests represent the most serious threat to the Islamic regime because they are coming from the bedrock base of the country who comprise the farmers, laborers, workers and small business owners that make the Iranian economy run.

This explains why Parsi is in a pickle. He cannot discount the source of these people’s discontent without looking like a complete idiot and he cannot affix any real blame to the regime leadership’s inept and corrupt governance since they are his titular bosses.

Which is why Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby are busy trying to blame anyone except the regime itself.

Parsi’s NIAC colleague, Reza Marashi, has been just as busy as this all-hands-on-deck exercise has NIAC staffers churning out commentary at a level not seen since the heady halcyon days of the Iran nuclear deal’s debate two years ago.

“The lessons of 2009 very much apply in 2017,” Marashi said in the Washington Post. “The protests as they stand today remain leaderless. There’s a problem with creating a leaderless revolution.”

Marashi claims that his experience at the State Department during those protests gives him a unique insight into these protests and he believes that these protests will fail since they lack “leaders.”

Of course, in the same breath, Marashi and his allies denounce long-time representatives of the Iranian resistance movement, such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, from having any part in these protests and if they did, it would only serve to de-legitimize them.

Marashi then is trying to have his cake and eat it too in claiming no leadership to these protests and denying that any leadership it might have is in fact illegitimate.

Khamenei meanwhile was busy trying to blame President Trump for all of his regime’s ills even as protestors were busy tearing down posters bearing his likeness; an almost unthinkable act where such actions are punished harshly.

Marashi, in a CNN interview, even tried to split hairs by saying “I don’t think you can separate the economic from the political,” when describe the source of protests stemming from people’s desperation over high food costs and a moribund economy.

It is no surprise that when Marashi was at the State Department during the landmark 2009 protests that were brutally put down with regime security forces ruthlessly shooting and killing protestors in the streets, the U.S. government’s official response was to do nothing and allow the mullahs to kill their opponents.

Now that the Iran lobby finds itself on the outs of a U.S. government led by President Trump firmly opposed to the rule of the mullahs, Parsi and Marashi are casting about wildly for any defense of the regime and hoping U.S. journalists are too dim-witted to see the falsehoods in their comments.

But not everyone is bought into the regime lines of attack. A columnist for Bloomberg, offered up a litany of actions the U.S. and its allies could take to help support protestors and pressure the mullahs including boosting efforts by banned social media platforms such as Telegram, Instagram and WhatsApp to work around the regime’s blackout efforts.

The article also took to task the Iran lobby and its efforts to cover for Hassan Rouhani and Khamenei saying “this network, based primarily in Washington, includes the National Iranian American Council, the Ploughshares Network and the many journalists and experts titillated by U.S.-Iranian diplomacy. For years they told us Rouhani was a reformer. Today they whisper that these demonstrators are really a ploy of Rouhani’s ‘hard-line’ opposition. They celebrate ‘elections’ that have the legitimacy as those for student government. They want Trump to be silent today.”

Let’s hope the U.S. never stays silent in supporting Iranians fighting for their freedom.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Shows its Hypocrisy in Latest Attacks on US

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Iran Lobby Shows its Hypocrisy in Latest Attacks on US

Iran Lobby Shows its Hypocrisy in Latest Attacks on US

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Ups Ante with Warships Near the US

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Iran Ups Ante with Warships Near the US

Iran Ups Ante with Warships Near the US

Back in the height of the Cold War, the saying “the Russians are coming!” often filled the political dialogue of the day with the kind of anxiety that came naturally at a time when everyone worried about building fallout shelters and conducting duck and cover drills at school as the old Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles 90 miles offshore in Cuba.

The Cuban missile crisis precipitated the closest episode to an all-out nuclear war the world had ever seen and hoped would never see again, but now the specter of confrontation along the U.S. coastline is again raising its ugly head as the Iranian regime announced plans this week to send a naval flotilla to the Gulf of Mexico in a show of power designed to thumb the mullahs’ collective noses at America and its allies.

Following orders from Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, the newly installed commander of its navy, Rear Adm. Hossein Khanzadi, announced a fleet of Iranian warships would soon be making their way into the Atlantic Ocean, despite what Iran claims is opposition by U.S. officials.

As Iran continues to deploy military assets to Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern hotspots, its navy is placing a renewed focus on displaying force in international waters, according to the military leaders.

The latest military displays follow a series of provocative moves by Tehran aimed at rattling U.S. officials in the Trump administration, which has increasingly sought to confront Iran’s regional intransigence. Any Iranian presence in the Atlantic Ocean is certain to put U.S. military leaders in edge, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The naval maneuver is designed to bolster Iranian influence with Latin American nations hostile to the U.S.; namely Venezuela and Bolivia.

More importantly, the exercise is designed to provide a propaganda boost at a time when the mullahs are clearly beleaguered back home; wracked with the devastation caused by massive earthquakes along the Iran-Iraq border and a moribund economy that continues to drag along in stark contrast to the promises made by Hassan Rouhani in the wake of the nuclear agreement which lifted economic sanctions.

Iranian efforts to sail its warships into the Atlantic Ocean coincide with a call by Khamenei to boost the regime’s military presence in international waters.

“The navy is in the frontline of defending the country with important regions, such as Makran, the Sea of Oman, and the international waters, in front of it,” Khamenei said in Tuesday remarks celebrating Iran’s Navy Day.

“Presence in free waters should continue similar to the past,” Khamenei added ahead of a meeting with Iranian military leaders.

Khamenei further disclosed that Iran is working to produce more advanced military equipment.

“The navy is more advanced and capable compared with 20 years ago, but this level of advance is not convincing; and a high-speed move should be pursued with determination, high morale, lots of efforts, innovation, and action,” he was quoted as saying.

The Iranian regime has often resorted to military displays as a means of diverting attention from disasters or setbacks at home; relying on jingoism to cover up inadequacies in the regime’s handling of the economy and widespread dissent at home.

The massive influx of cash the regime received as a result of the nuclear deal has helped solidify and steady its military at a time when intervention in the Syrian civil war nearly bankrupted the Iranian economy.

The diversion of fresh capital from the needs of the Iranian people and boosting the economy towards the regime’s ballistic missile program and its military adventures abroad—including this jaunt to the other side of the globe—no doubt bolsters the mullahs, but does little to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians.

But then again, the regime has announced the voyage which is a far cry from actually pulling it off with its limited resources. The Iranian navy has famously never been a blue-water navy, content to ply the shallow Persian Gulf and hug the coastlines around the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean and play games of cat and mouse with U.S. Navy warships.

Back in 2014, the last Iranian navy commander, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, said that Iran planned to send ships near the U.S. to counter the American presence in the Persian Gulf.

Sayyari later said the sailings had been canceled “due to a change in schedule.” No other effort to send Iranian warships on such a voyage have ever been mounted until now.

Of course, that is not to say the regime cannot accomplish the task, but it does point out doubts as to the credibility of anything the mullahs announce.

What is clear though is that the regime is desperately casting about for anything to take attention away from its growing domestic problems at home.

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has been busy focused on domestic U.S. policy such as the fight over immigration policies and even focusing on the shooting death of a local Iranian-American in a traffic stop; anything to avoid talking about what is happening in Iran today.

It is ironic, that during the negotiations for the nuclear deal, NIAC leaders such as Trita Parsi talked almost non-stop about conditions in Iran as a result of international sanctions, but since then have been largely silent—even as conditions worsen.

The disparity between reality and fiction under the Iranian regime and its allies is as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

Michael Tomlinson

Reasons for Comparing Iran Top Mullah to Hitler

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Reasons for Comparing Iran Top Mullah to Hitler

Reasons for Comparing Iran Top Mullah to Hitler

In an escalating verbal war of words, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman called the Iranian regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, “the new Hitler of the Middle East” and warned that like the history of Europe, “appeasement doesn’t work.”

“We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East,” bin Salman, told The New York Times in an interview published last week.

What is remarkable is not that the crown prince made those comments, but that news media treated it as earth-shattering. Human rights groups, Iranian dissidents, families of prisoners languishing in regime prisons have long called out Khamenei and his procession of handpicked presidents such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani as tyrants long modelled on the bloody blueprint of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

It is also remarkable that for once the Iran lobby was virtually silent on the crown prince’s remarks. Maybe Trita Parsi at the National Iranian American Council is finally getting the hint that shamelessly defending Khamenei is a useless exercise.

The comparison to Hitler is really neither extreme, nor shocking given the Iranian regime’s bloody history and the comparisons don’t start and stop with two megalomaniacal dictators who were power hungry for an apocalyptic vision for their countries.

No, the comparisons between the Iranian regime and Nazi Germany extend far into policies, military intervention and political propaganda.

The Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland and Austria is eerily like Iranian regime’s moves into Yemen and Syria, even using the pretext of fighting ISIS the same as the Nazi’s used the excuse of Bolsheviks to invade its neighbors.

But where the two regimes share the most is in their respective preferences for oppressing minorities and making liberal use of state courts to weed out less desirables from their societies.

For the Nazis, their policies of “racial purity” not only targeted Jews for extermination, but sent millions of Russians, Poles, gypsies, the mentally ill, gays and countless others to their deaths.

For the Iranian regime, its litmus test is religious where the mullahs view anyone not adhering to their branch of extremist belief an apostate and worthy of elimination. This explains why the regime has historically targeted minorities such as the Baha’i, Kurds, Christians and Sunnis for imprisonment and oppression.

Also, while the Nazis relied on the dreaded Gestapo and SS to enforce security at home and wage war abroad, the Iranian regime relies on its morality paramilitaries and zealous Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force to achieve the same goals.

The resemblance between the two regimes is eerie and the crown prince does not make the comparison lightly.

Just as Nazi Germany gained appeasement with the West through the much-maligned Munich Agreement, Iranian regime did the same with the Iran nuclear deal; both documents weren’t worth the paper they were printed on and both launched a period of global unrest as the Nazis and mullahs took the opportunity to pursue their ambitions.

The Saudi crown prince has recognized that failure to act in defiance of the Iranian regime will only beg for another potential for war. The need for confronting the mullahs has long been a key talking point for Iranian dissidents who have warned repeatedly that failure to act to restrain the Iranian regime only emboldens the mullahs into acting more aggressively.

It is no coincidence that after Rouhani was elected to his first term and widely lauded as a “moderate” by news media that the regime undertook one of its most brutal crackdowns on dissent rounding up and imprisoning thousands of journalists, students, artists and activists.

Now the world is left to pick up the wrecked pieces of the Middle East that sees the Iranian regime now in control of Syria and Lebanon outright and having a pervasive influence over Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

It’s almost like comparing Iran to Nazi Germany after the blitzkrieg of 1940 that saw it claim most of Western Europe.

But like Great Britain, Saudi Arabia has offered itself as a regional bulwark, opposing Iran in Syria, Yemen and the Gulf region and loudly calling on the rest of the world to recognize the danger the regime poses.

If the crown prince’s words are not enough, the Iranian regime added fuel to the fire when the regime’s deputy head of the IRGC warned Europe that the regime was increasing the range of its missiles to over 2,000 km, allowing it to strike at the heart of Europe.

The comments come as the French president has warned of the threat Iranian regime’s missile program poses and the Trump administration expands its sanctions list to include elements of the IRGC and those connected to its missile program.

The warning from Iran should not be considered superfluous, but rather a clear threat to the continent and an unmistakable shot across Europe’s bow.

The irony of Iran’s actions to Hitler’s speeches to blaming its enemies for driving Germany into the ground in the aftermath of World War I is striking and serves as a reminder that repeating the mistakes of the 1930s today will only lead down a path of regional conflict and even more suffering for the Iranian people.

Laura Carnahan

Why Iranians Have Little to be Thankful For

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Why Iranians Have Little to be Thankful For

Why Iranians Have Little to be Thankful For

With Thanksgiving looming in the U.S., millions of Americans will gather around family dining rooms to enjoy holiday traditions such as consuming enormous quantities of food, watching football games on television and parents chiding their children for spending all their time posting on social media or surfing the internet.

It’s a time that reinforces the American traditions of family and freedoms that many others around the world do not get an opportunity to enjoy; namely ordinary Iranians living under the brutal repression of the Iranian regime.

Since the ruling mullahs stole the prospect for democracy away from the Iranian people after the Shah was deposed and the revolution turned into a religious theocracy, Iranians have simultaneously lived two lives: One in the public spotlight where the mullahs demand obedience to their strict religious views unable to express themselves; while they live another life in secret where Iranian women ride bicycles and teenagers post selfies on Instagram disobeying strict dress codes.

The normal everyday pleasures and freedoms Americans take for granted are almost universally restricted in Iran under the rule of the mullahs, which is why it has been important for American policy to make a distinction between the plight of the Iranian people and the policies of the oppressive regime.

The Iran lobby, led by such staunch advocates of the regime such as the National Iranian American Council, have always sought to portray American policies towards Iran as being harmful and punitive towards the Iranian people.

This was never more exemplified than in the long debate over U.S. sanctions aimed at Iran because of the regime’s support for terrorism and its secret nuclear development program.

NIAC leaders such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi went out of their way to try and link the suffering of the Iranian people of the alleged hardships imposed by these economic sanctions.

Fortunately, history has a way of clearing up the facts from the fiction and in the case of the Iranian regime’s conduct, the last several years have shown the truth about the regime’s oppressive policies and the dramatic impacts it has had on the lives of its citizens.

Nothing demonstrates that more clearly than the complete ineptitude with which the mullahs run their government.

Iran has regularly placed near the bottom of rankings for lack of transparency in government and public corruption. The mullahs and their allies in the Revolutionary Guard Corps control virtually all of the major industries and siphon enormous amounts of profits into family bank accounts to live lavish lifestyles or divert it away from the economy for proxy war efforts in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

The draining of capital has slowed the Iranian economy to a snail’s pace over the years and widened the gap between the privileged and the impoverished. A startling and shocking photographic essay recently revealed the depths of Iranian misery in showing how many of Tehran’s poorest and most destitute have resorted to making homes in the empty plots at nearby cemeteries.

The mismanagement of water policy has led to record droughts and the evaporation of historic lakes and turned verdant farmland into desert wastelands, while the lack of available jobs to women has wiped out nearly half of the available workforce for a country struggling with deep unemployment; especially among young people who are often drafted to serve as cannon fodder in the mullahs’ wars.

Even recent natural disasters such as the massive earthquake striking the Iran-Iraq northern border killing over 530 people and wiping out 30,000 homes are a testament to how badly run the regime’s emergency response is to this day.

Seven days after the earthquake took place, regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, visited the devastated areas and expressed that he was “not satisfied” with the response and said officials needed to “redouble their efforts.” This was considered widely an attempt to respond to the wide spread anger against the mullahs’ carelessness in the aftermath of the earthquake.

His remarks are ironic given how he personally controls much of the Iranian economy, as well as personally selects many of the top provincial officials who have so far badly bungled the disaster response.

In many ways, the Iranian people ought to be viewed with admiration since they have suffered incredibly, but still find ways to voice their discontent in a myriad of ways that displays the optimism and hope they all have for a free Iran in the future.

In a nation where public dissent of any kind is often a sure sentence to prison and even a public hanging, ordinary Iranians resourcefully find ways to express their dissatisfaction.

During the recent presidential elections which unsurprisingly saw Hassan Rouhani re-elected, most Iranians simply stayed away from polling places to express their unhappiness; forcing the regime to manufacture fake ballots to justify election returns.

Some of the more daring among the population even took to unfurling banners and signs on overpasses and the sides of building expressing support for banned leaders of the outlawed Iranian resistance movement such as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group comprising several dissident groups.

Ultimately, the message that Americans will celebrate this week with Thanksgiving, may soon be a message that will resonate throughout Iran when a future comes that allows for peaceful regime change and the downfall of the mullahs at the hands of the Iranian people who have grown tired of their restricted freedoms, unpleasant economic future and constant war-footing.

Laura Carnahan