Iran Lobby

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

Only Language Iran Regime Understands is Bullying

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Only Language Iran Regime Understands is Bullying

Only Language Iran Regime Understands is Bullying

In some ways, the Trump administration may be as vexing to the mullahs in Tehran as the first British explorers glimpsing hieroglyphics in an Egyptian pyramid before discovering the Rosetta Stone.

In that regard, the mullahs are grappling with the same problem mystifying many journalists and members of both parties as they deal with a president who is undoubtedly one of the most unfiltered politicians since Winston Churchill.

For the mullahs, they have become accustomed to a string of U.S. leaders that have tried to engage the regime in the predictable language of diplomacy and through existing international structures such as the United Nations. Sometimes it has not worked to their advantage such as when Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush imposed sanctions on the regime.

Other times it has as President Barack Obama sought to try and appease the mullahs in an effort to secure a nuclear agreement.

What has been clear from the start is that since the days of the Islamic revolution in 1979, the ruling clerics have operated by using a language of threats, coercion, bullying and invective and it has not changed since then.

For the Iranian regime, using bullying to make a splash in international media is akin to North Korea launching a missile or setting off a nuclear bomb test.

The latest example was at the conclusion of a new round of war games put on by the Revolutionary Guard Corps in which an IRGC commander said the U.S. should expect a “strong slap in the face” if it underestimated the regime’s military capabilities.

“The enemy should not be mistaken in its assessments, and it will receive a strong slap in the face if it does make such a mistake,” said General Mohammad Pakpour, head of the Guards’ ground forces, quoted by the Guards’ website Sepahnews.

On Wednesday, the Revolutionary Guards concluded three days of exercises with rockets, artillery, tanks and helicopters, weeks after Trump warned that he had put Tehran “on notice” over the missile launch.

“The message of these exercises … for world arrogance is not to do anything stupid,” said Pakpour, quoted by the semi-official news agency Tasnim.

“Everyone could see today what power we have on the ground.” The Guards said they test-fired “advanced rockets” and used drones in the three-day exercises which were held in central and eastern Iran, according to Reuters.

But the Iranian regime didn’t just take verbal potshots at the U.S., it also has been ratcheting tensions with its neighbor Turkey as it takes on a more important relationship with Russia and secured a seat at the table of Syrian peace talks; clearly a move that the mullahs seem to be threatened by.

“Iran is an important neighbor to us. We have always been in dialogue with Iran. But it does not mean we will ignore Iran’s efforts in penetrating the region,” said Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin in the latest thinly veiled threat between the countries during his weekly news conference.

Kalin was responding to comments by Ali Akbar Velayati, a key adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who told Turkish soldiers to leave Iraq and Syria, or the people would “kick them out.”

“They are very serious, I mean the competition between Iran and Turkey, everyone knows it, it’s like two elephants in a small room,” warns political consultant Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. “Iran is clearly an expansionist country, their goal of building a Shia circle all the way from Tehran to Lebanon is no secret, at least from the Turkish perspective.”

Experts say religious sectarianism underscores the tensions between predominantly Shia Iran and mostly Sunni Turkey, according to Voice of America News.

The escalation in tensions and verbal fisticuffs with Turkey is nothing new for the Iranian regime as it has already threatened its other Sunni-dominant neighbors in Saudi Arabia and Gulf States. Its supply of Houthi rebels in Yemen has sparked a civil war that threatens to plunge the Persian Gulf region deeper into a shooting war.

The Iranian regime’s willingness to use military force to back up its verbal threats has not been lost on its nervous neighbors and explains why there is movement for a regional coalition aligned against Iran’s expansionism.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been turning to other Sunni countries in the region for support. This month, he visited Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States for talks observers say focused on curtailing Iran’s influence. Analysts suggest Ankara’s assertive stance could be influenced by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“With Trump, flexing his muscles against Tehran, Ankara may have sensed an opportunity to bring this antagonism into the open and to finally resolve this longstanding low level conflict in Syria and Iraq space,” suggests consultant Yesilada.

None of which has stopped the Iranian regime from pushing aggressively on all fronts including news reports that the regime has started up a series of cyberattacks against Saudi Arabia after a four year hiatus.

Late last month, the Saudi government warned in a notice to telecommunications companies that an Iranian-origin malicious software called Shamoon had resurfaced in cyberattacks against some 15 Saudi organizations, including government networks, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The Shamoon malware was last detected in the 2012 cyberattack against the major Saudi state oil producer Aramco. That cyberattack damaged or destroyed some 30,000 computers and was considered one of the more destructive state-linked cyberattacks to date.

A State Department security report issued Feb. 10 stated that the 2012 attack destroyed over three-fourths of Aramco’s computers, and that the damage took five months to mitigate at “an extreme cost.”

Shamoon also was used in Iranian cyberattacks against RasGas, a liquified natural gas company located in neighboring Qatar.

A new version of the malware, Shamoon 2, was linked to the recent cyberattack, which took place in November. Security officials linked that attack to a Middle East hacker group known as Greenbug that used fraudulent emails in phishing scams to acquire login credentials for Saudi networks.

The Iranian regime is clearly speaking the same language it has always used and it’s time for the rest of the world respond in kind.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Absurdly Punishes 18 Year Old Chess Prodigy

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Iran Regime Absurdly Punishes 18 Year Old Chess Prodigy

Iran Regime Absurdly Punishes 18 Year Old Chess Prodigy

There are lots of reasons why teenagers get punished. They stay out too late. They get bad grades in school. They drink alcohol or take drugs.

Why then would an 18-year-old chess prodigy who has achieved the exalted status a grand master get punished? Did she fail to sacrifice her queen to win a gambit?

In the case of

, when she competed at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival last month, she committed a grave act in the eyes of the Iranian regime; she chose to wear a simple headband instead of a mandated hijab head covering while she played.

As a result of this grave act, Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh, the head of Iran’s Chess Federation, ruled this week that Derakshani would be kicked off the national team.

Derakhshani’s younger brother Borna, 15, who also entered the tournament, was also kicked off the team. His offense was agreeing to play an Israeli opponent, according to the Washington Post.

Let’s forget for a moment that kicking a grand master off your national team is akin to benching LeBron James before the Olympics, but punishing children is even more absurd.

“Unfortunately, what shouldn’t have happened has happened,” Pahlevanzadeh told the semiofficial Fars News Agency on Monday (via Radio Free Europe). “Our national interests have priority over everything.”

“As a first step, these two will be denied entry to all tournaments taking place in Iran,” he continued, “And, in the name of Iran, they will no longer be allowed the opportunity to be present on the national team.”

That the two young chess masters received such a harsh punishment is not a surprise. Sports in Iran and other parts of the Middle East have long been affected by the region’s strict cultural norms and precarious political stance.

Last year, American chess master Nazi Paikidze did not compete in the chess world championships in Iran because of the country’s requirement that she don a hijab, said the Post.

“Some consider a hijab part of culture,” Paikidze said in an Instagram post announcing her decision. “But, I know that a lot of Iranian women are bravely protesting this forced law daily and risking a lot by doing so. That’s why I will NOT wear a hijab and support women’s oppression.”

The controversy over the hijab is incidental to the larger issues it represents which is the near constant oppression of Iranian women in a society that legitimizes misogyny, allows for the public beating of women found in violation of dress codes, and regularly arrests girls and women who post on social media selfies in which they do not wear head coverings.

The fact that the Iranian regime uses sports and competition as platforms to advance its views is nothing new. The recent welcoming entry of an American wrestling team to wide media coverage stands out in sharp contrast to the disqualification of these teenaged prodigies.

It is also interesting to see the silence from the Iran lobby on this subject. While groups such as the National Iranian American Council have been vociferous in its protests of social issues such as the controversy over President Trump’s immigrant visa moratorium, it has been stone-dead silent on issues such as the rights of women in Iran and the abuse they suffer at the hands of the regime’s dreaded morality police.

The contrast and hypocrisy is stunning.

It may also explain why American views of the leadership in Iran has plunged to all-time lows in spite of the full-court public relations offensive put on by the Iran lobby.

An annual survey by Gallup on Americans’ views of foreign countries earlier this month revealed that Iran and North Korea were the least liked countries out of the 21 on the list.

Other countries in the “most unfavorable” category, which contains nations that have favorable ratings lower than 20 percent and unfavorable ratings above 70 percent, were Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The poll was conducted before recent events such as North Korea’s ballistic missile test in violation of U.N. resolutions and the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half-brother.

It does put into perspective though that in spite of the efforts by the Iran lobby to portray Iran as a moderate state, its militant actions such as intervention in Syria and support for a civil war in Yemen, along with its recent launches of ballistic missiles have firmly convinced the American people that the Iranian regime’s leadership is dangerous and untrustworthy.

Also noteworthy was a call by 100 leading Iranian dissidents to Congress to investigate the Iran lobby’s efforts to influence U.S. policy through its network of lobbyists and spin doctors.

The group of dissidents, composed of prominent Iranian voices that oppose the hardline regime in Tehran, says that Congress is not doing enough to expose the Iranian regime’s lobbying efforts in D.C. and propaganda network, which is said to include some at Voice of America Persia.

Iranian-American groups claiming to represent American interests are said to be carrying water for the Islamic regime inside the White House and on Capitol Hill, according to these dissident voices.

The letter cites VOA’s Persian service as a source of pro-Iran corruption. The Free Beacon has reported multiple times on claims that VOA has been infiltrated by Iran regime loyalists who seek to spin coverage in a favorable way for Tehran. In one instance, an Iranian dissident was barred from appearing on VOA Persia for voicing critical opinions about the regime.

Laura Carnahan

 

While Iran Regime Throws Roses It Denies Medical Treatment

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While Iran Regime Throws Roses It Denies Medical Treatment

While Iran Regime Throws Roses It Denies Medical Treatment

Nothing illustrates the cold, calculating nature of the Iranian regime than two incidents happening this week.

On the one hand, an American wrestling team was welcomed with open arms, red roses and a barrage of social media selfies as it arrived in Iran for a tournament that had been threatened in response to President Trump’s visa moratorium.

The two-day tournament began Thursday, when U.S. wrestlers faced off against Georgia, Russia and Azerbaijan. The Iranian regime didn’t miss the opportunity to stage photos of the Americans being surrounded by well-wishers and flooding social media with comments praising the team, but deriding the U.S. government.

“Welcome to Iran champ!!!!” one Iranian user, Saeed Mohammadi, commented on an Instagram photo.

Another, Nima Jan, said he was traveling to the stadium to cheer for the Americans,

“You proved that you are a noble man.… This is a big chance for us,”Nima Jan commented on an Instagram. “We do not pay attention to the behavior of America’s government” toward Iran, according to the Washington Post.

Widely considered a national sport, wrestling has been one venue to maintain a cultural channel between Iran and the U.S. In fact, a U.S. wrestling team became the first American sports team to visit Iran since the revolution.

In contrast to that public photo opportunity, in the dank, dark confines of Evin prison, a British-Iranian mother and an aid worker languishes, falling ill and being denied medical treatment by the regime.

According to the Times of London, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, who has been held in prison since April last year, was denied urgent medical treatment for a neck injury sustained in prison that has left her unable to lift her arms or carry her child.

Prison officials last week refused to refer the charity worker to a neurologist, despite an X-ray and MRI scan revealing that vertebrae in her neck were out of place.

She is unable to move her arms beyond a certain point or lift her two-year-old daughter Gabriella, who is also trapped in Iran after regime authorities confiscated her British passport.

The cruelty of Ratcliffe’s continued incarceration and denial of medical care has earned sharp rebukes from the British government and human rights groups, but it follows a typical pattern of abuse heaped on detained dual national citizens by the regime.

Repeated incidents like this, depict an essential truth of the Iranian regime which is that it is without compassion or mercy and utilizes innocent people to its political advantage on the world stage. It will willingly use a sports team to stage a photo opp to protest moves designed to restrict the movement of terrorists supported by the Iranian regime and it will also put the screws to an ailing mother to put pressure on a British government balking at opening up trade with the regime.

The mullahs are cruel and callous and any press releases or news interviews by Iran lobby supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council cannot hide that simple truth.

The mullahs calculate every move and weigh every opportunity. They are less religious leaders and more like accountants and they count up the ill-gotten gains they receive from their various black market channels, especially with the nuclear agreement which opened up additional sources of funding to them.

Heshmat Alavi, an Iranian activist, penned a piece in Forbes looking at how the regime was benefitting from the nuclear agreement.

“Now in early 2017, however, signs indicate the main winners in Iran are none other than state-owned companies. This means Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the terrorist-supporting Revolutionary Guards are enjoying JCPOA benefits,” Alavi writes.  “At least 90 of the nearly 110 agreements, totaling nearly $80 billion, involve such state-controlled companies. This includes the National Iranian Oil Company, parallel to others run by regime pension funds and massive conglomerates of semi-public nature.”

“It is a known fact that Tehran maintains a heavy hand over the economy, providing circumstances allowing state-controlled firms to acquire most business deals made possible after sanctions were lifted. The private sector makes up a mere 20% of Iran’s economy, according to official estimates,” he added. “To this end, private companies have received a dismal 17 deals, including a hotel management contract sealed most probably because of the French partner’s chief executive being the brother of Eshaq Jahangiri, Iran’s vice president.”

For the Iranian regime, decision-making is all about perception, economic benefits and exporting its extremist brand of Islam.

Unfortunately, until the world joins together again to confront the Iranian regime, innocents such as Ratcliffe will continue to pay the price.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Does Away With Moderate Façade

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Iran Regime Does Away With Moderate Façade

Archive-Iran Regime Does Away With Moderate Façade

The old adage goes “judge me by my deeds, not my words.” It’s appropriate to apply it to the Iranian regime when weighing how to react to the Islamic state. In the case of the new Trump administration, it is becoming increasingly easy to figure out what is motivating the mullahs in Tehran.

The Iran lobby, most notably the National Iranian American Council, has always made the argument to ignore the rhetoric and judge Iran by its people and the “moderates” struggling to gain control of the government.

Notable Iran lobby advocates such as NIAC’s Trita Parsi have literally yelled from the rooftops that Iran was not really interested in confrontations with the U.S. and only wanted a new friendly relationship. It was this slippery slope the Obama administration fell down in acquiescing broadly to the demands of the mullahs in crafting a nuclear deal separate and apart from placing conditions on things such as support for terrorism and abusive human rights.

Unfortunately, virtually none of those promises have come to pass and in the face of a Trump administration that has opted for an aggressive posture towards Iran with newly announced sanctions and the appointment of several vocal regime critics in key cabinet positions, the mullahs seem to have finally decided to drop the charade and stop trying to portray themselves as moderates.

The latest evidence of that came in the form of a full-length animated film depicting an armed confrontation between Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the U.S. Navy soon to open in Iranian cinemas.

According to Reuters, the director of the “Battle of Persian Gulf II”, Farhad Azima, said that it was a remarkable coincidence that the release of the film – four years in the making – coincided with a “warmongering” president sitting in the White House.

“I hope that the film shows Trump how American soldiers will face a humiliating defeat if they attack Iran,” Azima told Reuters in a telephone interview from the city of Mashhad in eastern Iran.

The 88-minute animation opens with the U.S. Army attacking an Iranian nuclear reactor, and the U.S. Navy in the Gulf hitting strategic locations across the county.

In the film, the IRGC retaliates by raining its ballistic missiles on U.S. warships.

“They all sink and the film ends as the American ships have turned into an aquarium for fishes at the bottom of the sea,” Azima said.

The main Iranian commander in the film has been intentionally depicted as Qassem Soleimani, the notorious IRGC commander who is overseeing Iran’s military operations in Syria and Iraq against Islamist militants and was designated a supporter of terrorism by the U.S. for his role in coordinating the manufacture and delivery of IEDs to Iranian-controlled Shiite militias in Iraq targeting U.S. personnel.

Soleimani was reportedly seen arriving in Moscow earlier this week in violation of sanctions restricting his travel. He has been to Moscow several times ignoring his travels bans on Iranian airlines to discuss military operations in Syria with Russian officials. His direct pleas have been widely regarded as key to persuading Russia to enter the conflict in order to save the faltering Assad regime.

This is Soleimani’s third trip to Moscow following visits in April and July 2015. Soleimani is thought to be the mastermind behind Iran’s proxy war in Syria in order to prop up the Assad regime. Soleimani met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu days after the Iranian nuclear deal was agreed to in Vienna.

According to Fox News, Soleimani was in Moscow to register the mullahs’ displeasure with Russia’s relationship with Iran’s regional foes, specifically the sale of Russian military equipment to Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

Lest we forget, the Iranian regime has steadily increased the tempo of bell`igerent actions since the nuclear deal, including the detention and parade of American sailors, widening of the wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and a steady stream of propaganda efforts including the routine “Death to America” depictions as well as the launching of increasingly more powerful ballistic missiles.

The latest disclosures of the IRGC’s operation of a vast network of training camps for its own and foreign fighters to be deployed in conflicts abroad by a network of Iranian dissident groups only solidifies the argument that the Iranian regime is done with the pretense of trying to be a more moderate nation.

The dissident groups, led by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, have issued calls for the IRGC to be designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization as a whole.

Iran already is part of the U.S. State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list, along with Syria and Sudan. However, new calls are coming from leading critics of the regime to designate the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization – and the Trump administration is said to be considering that.

“The people of Iran would welcome the designation of the IRGC, which is responsible for thousands of political executions and tortures in prison. It is also responsible for training terrorists supporting and engaging in terrorist activities outside Iran,” said Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the NCRI, which is the largest Iranian opposition group.

“I believe the time has come for a firm policy on Iran. The failed policy of appeasement has hurt the Iranian people, as well as global peace and security,” she said.

To emphasize the suffering of the Iranian people under the mullahs’ medieval rule, news reports came out of a 14-year old girl suffering a savage beating by the regime’s morality police for wearing ripped jeans.

Zahra*, who The Independent is not identifying for fear she may suffer reprisals, was celebrating her birthday with friends last week when a patrol of “morality police” pulled up.

The teenager said officers tried to force her and her friends into their car in the city of Shiraz, beating them when they resisted.

“There were two women and two men in a huge van and they pushed us into it with the force of their beatings,” she recalled. “Their objection was to the ripped jeans that we were wearing. There were really no other issues concerning my friends and I.”

“I still carry the bruises sustained from their beatings on my face,” she said. “I still feel their pressure on my arm and my ribs still hurt.”

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, her mother described the ordeal as “the worst day of my life, as if the world has ended for me”.

Rules are enforced by thousands of visible and undercover religious or “morality” police, who patrol the streets to check for violations.

Women found to have their hair or bodies inadequately covered can be publicly admonished, warned, fined or even arrested, while vigilantes are also active.

This is why any discussion of a moderate Iran under its current leadership is simply another case of “fake news.”

Laura Carnahan

Case For Designating the IRGC as Terrorists Builds

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Case For Designating the IRGC as Terrorists Builds

Case For Designating the IRGC as Terrorists Builds

Momentum continues to build for the U.S. to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a Foreign Terrorist Organization as a whole. Much of that momentum stems from the IRGC’s own actions over the years in supporting terrorism worldwide as well as initiating, supplying and controlling many of the proxy wars breaking out throughout the Middle East.

Even though there has already been well-documented disclosures about the IRGC’s illicit activities, new information continues to come to light as was the case on Tuesday when the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a leading global organization of Iranian dissident and human rights groups, held a press conference in Washington, DC to disclose details of the IRGC’s terrorist training activities.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington Office of the NCRI, presented information to reporters gathered by the social network of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, a dissident group located inside Iran. He said that information shows that since 2012, the NCRI has seen an increase in the training of foreign nationals in its terrorist training camps, which threatens a wide scope of countries, not just those beset by conventional warfare.

Using intelligence gleaned from sources within Iran, the NCRI claimed that the IRGC had created a training command operating dozens of military bases across Iran specializing in all aspects of warfare with units divided by national origin and specialization such as missile and naval operations to insurgency and urban warfare.

The IRGC that is answerable only to the Iranian regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei. It specializes in insurgency and guerilla tactics and is notorious for having supplied most of the IEDs used by Iranian-controlled Shiite militias in Iraq targeting U.S. and foreign troops; resulting in the deaths and wounding of thousands of Americans.

The IRGC was the initial unit that came to the rescue of the Assad regime in Syria as it teetered on the brink of collapse by smuggling in weapons and cash, as well as recruiting and directing Hezbollah fighters. It eventually expanded its role to include Iranian military, as well as the recruitment of Afghan mercenaries and deployment of Shiite militias from Iraq.

According to the NCRI, every month, hundreds of forces from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Lebanon — countries where the regime is involved in frontline combat — receive military training and are subsequently dispatched to the various frontlines. For operations in countries where there is no open warfare – including Persian Gulf countries, such as Bahrain and Kuwait – terrorists cells are trained instead.

The NCRI highlighted 14 IRGC training camps, as well as described the command structure, detailing how the commander of the Training Directorate, reports directly to Quds Force Commander, Qassem Soleimani.

Terrorist training for operatives from across the globe is commanded by Colonel Tahmasebi. Codenamed ‘320’, the commander of heavy weapons training at Imam Ali military base is Colonel Ali Mohammad. In charge of ‘VIP Security’ is Colonel Ramky, the NCRI said.

The sheer scale of the Training Directorate’s efficiency in producing fighters is underscored by the fact that just one of its training camps is currently sending 2,000 Afghans to Syria every week, according to the NCRI.

“The IRGC is actually the entity that runs the whole show when it comes to terrorism,” even though they are spearheaded by the Quds force, Jafarzadeh said. “You cannot do the separation. You cannot have the Quds force designated as a terrorist entity, but not the IRGC.”

Jafarzadeh said there is bipartisan support in Congress for the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist group, and suggested that with the new Trump administration, there is “a better possibility for those measures to move forward.”

The disclosures by the NCRI are significant since they provide first-hand and eyewitness accounts of the IRGC and Quds Force activities as it relates to the active support of terrorism and terror-related operations. It also points out with disturbing clarity the efforts by the Iranian regime to ramp up its military activities outside of its borders during the time it sought to portray itself as a “moderate” nation intent on resolving disputes peacefully.

Another example of those destabilizing activities has been the IRGC’s initiation of the revolt in Yemen with Houthi rebels supplied by IRGC forces; mostly smuggled aboard non-descript fishing boats in the Gulf of Aden.

Many of these ships have been intercepted and weapons confiscated by Saudi Arabian and Gulf State warships; the arms eventually traced back to Iranian factories.

Sanam Vakil, Ph.D an Associate Fellow at Catham House told IBTimes UK that the PMOI report spoke to the extent of the IRGC’s training scheme, although she could not independently verify the numbers.

“What I take from this is that this is a very sophisticated operation,” Vakil said. “Iran’s strategic strength is in a-symmetrical proxy relationships. Its conventional military is weak particularly in Iraqi and Syria they have had success in the past. Of course we also know they are the God Parents of Hezbollah.”

It is becoming increasingly clear that in order to effect the growth of Islamic-inspired terrorism abroad, the restraint of the IRGC will be a key factor. Designating it a FTO would be an important step in the right direction.

Michael Tomlinson

Rebuilding the Global Coalition Against Iran

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Rebuilding the Global Coalition Against Iran

Rebuilding the Global Coalition Against Iran

The early days of the Trump administration have offered opponents of the Iranian regime hope that a significant change in U.S. policy towards the Islamic state will presage a similar shift in global opinion towards the mullahs in Tehran.

If we reset back to when the first talks took place over Iran’s nuclear program, the unity amongst the international community was one of the hallmarks of forcing the regime to the bargaining table in the first place.

Three consecutive American presidential administrations imposed ever growing harsh sanctions on the regime. Coupled with the sinking Iranian economy due to gross mismanagement and corruption, the regime was brought to the bargaining table in a position of weakness. The mullahs recognized this in rigging a presidential election to install Hassan Rouhani as a benevolent “moderate” face following the much-reviled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Unfortunately, instead of seizing the opportunity to effect significant changes to the regime’s conduct—especially its brutal human rights record and support for terrorism—the P5+1 group of nations, led by the Obama administration, picked the appeasement policy as its policy forward and folded like a cheap suit in caving to regime demands.

Gone were any restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program. Say goodbye to improving human rights within Iran. Forget about stemming the flow of terrorism around the world.

The opportunity to solve so many troubling problems through the single chance to make change within the Iranian regime was missed and for the past six years the world has paid a heavy price for that oversight.

While Iran lobby supporters such as the National Iranian American Council have been busy trumpeting the “wins” from the agreement, cities around the world have witnessed a much more dismal result.

Paris, Ottawa, Brussels, Sydney, Nice, Berlin, San Bernardino, Boston and Orlando are only some of the cities subjected to Islamic extremist terror, but far worse has been the whole sale slaughter committed in places such as Aleppo at the hands of Iranian regime forces.

Now with the Trump administration in place with the first encouraging signs of reversing the flow of moves aimed at appeasing the regime to one that is more confrontational and accountable, the diplomatic board has been reset with a fresh opportunity to rebuild that global coalition that was so effective before.

Reassembling a global consensus against the Iranian regime will be difficult, but it is achievable. The first promising signs have come from a Trump administration that has found prominent policy making positions for noted and vocal critics of the regime, including Mike Pompeo at the Central Intelligence Agency, Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and James Mattis as Secretary of Defense.

There has also been a unifying response from Iran’s neighbors, especially Arab nations who have been subjected to the prospect of terror attacks and outright war, including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Their inclusion in any global consensus building against Iran will be vital.

Also, unlike the prior administration, the Iran lobby has been frozen out of the equation and does not have the same access it enjoyed previously into the White House and State Department. White House visitor logs are unlikely to show the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi traipsing through the West Wing anymore.

Already, we have seen some possible signs of the Trump administration’s efforts to rebuild a relationship with Russia and drive a wedge between Russia and Iran. Of course, separating the two may prove unachievable, but it does set the scenario for Trump to engage in some old fashioned horse trading in which the Vladimir Putin might be induced to give up his support for Iran in exchange for something else.

An editorial by a scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, offered some thoughts on how Russia might be persuaded to change its support for Iran in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

“What, then, is the best American strategy? Iran continues its campaign against the U.S., and it won’t end so long as the regime endures. Therefore American policy must rely on dismantling the Khamenei regime as peacefully as possible, perhaps from the inside out,” the editorial writes.

“Antiregime demonstrations erupt in Iran all the time, and most experts believe the vast majority of Iranians detest Mr. Khamenei and his henchmen. With U.S. support, these millions of Iranians could topple the Islamic Republic and establish a secular government resembling those in the West,” he adds. “With the Islamic Republic gone, the Trump administration would be in a much stronger position to strike a deal with Mr. Putin. The road to Moscow runs through Tehran.”

The more troublesome part of any international coalition might be getting a unified Europe which has responded to the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran with an unbridled rush to tap Iranian markets. Who can forget the parade of EU officials leading trade delegations to Tehran in the aftermath of the deal while Iranian men, women and children were being publicly executed.

Even after the swelling in terrorist attacks and flood of refugees fleeing the Iranian-caused Syrian civil war, some European leaders still seem to be adopting a position of bowing to Iranian regime demands.

One such example was the much-criticized visit of the Swedish trade minister in which she and the female members of her delegation wore hijab coverings and met with Hassan Rouhani and an all-male team.

The irony of the photo opportunity was not lost on many human and women’s rights groups.

Considering that previous state visits to Saudi Arabia by female leaders such as Michelle Obama and German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen publicized their decisions to forgo wearing traditional head coverings, the willingness to acquiesce to Iranian demands is deeply troubling.

We can only hope that the rest of Europe realizes that winning a few dollars isn’t worth empowering more terrorism.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Echo Chamber Going Full Bore to Support Iran Regime

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Iran Lobby Echo Chamber Going Full Bore to Support Iran Regime

Iran Lobby Echo Chamber Going Full Bore to Support Iran Regime

With the Trump White House announcing a series of new sanctions aimed at officials of the Revolutionary Guard Corps for the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile program, as well as contemplating broad new sanctions stemming from a possible designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, the Iran lobby and supporters of the regime have launched an all-out PR effort to prop up the faltering regime.

In a campaign similar to the infamous “echo chamber” of academics and advocates furiously penning editorials and giving interviews to sympathetic media outlets, the Iran lobby is trying anything to deflect attention on the regime’s militancy and instead claim anything aimed at punishing the regime is somehow racist or a prelude to armed conflict.

But the effort to come to the aid of the mullahs in Tehran isn’t just limited to the usual assorted Iran sympathizers as European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini met with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and spoke “at length” about the Iran nuclear deal according to Reuters.

Mogherini helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, along with diplomats from Iran, the United States and other major world powers. The deal curbed Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief said Reuters.

Trump has said the deal is terrible, and Flynn put Iran “on notice” last week for test-firing a ballistic missile, raising the prospect of spiking tensions between Iran and the United States.

Since the deal, Mogherini has visited Tehran while the regime commenced a series of ghastly executions of men and women; none of which were protested by the EU.

Even Russia Today weighed in as well by publishing an opinion piece by John Wright, an outspoken supporter of the Iran nuclear deal, who took the Trump administration to task for focusing on Iran instead of the world’s “number one terrorist state” in his mind—Saudi Arabia.

“The Trump administration’s consistent and ongoing demonization of Iran flies in the face of reality in which Iran has stood, alongside Syria, Russia, the Kurds, and the Iranian-backed Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, as a pillar against the very same Salafi-jihadist terrorism that poses a threat to the American people,” Wright said in a splendid example of mimicking the very same messages consistently uttered by the National Iranian American Council and other Iran lobby members.

Wright went on to hammer Saudi Arabia, while essentially excusing the vile acts of ISIS and downplaying anything the Iranian regime has done by comparison. His logic or lack thereof defies commonsense and represent the intellectual vacuum that characterizes much of the Iran lobby’s arguments.

In a more flimsy example of casting doubt on efforts to designate the IRGC a terrorist organization, the Chicago Tribune offered up a story with the dubious headline of “Warnings for White House on terror designation for Iran Revolutionary Guard” and goes on to hint at warnings from defense officials, but neglects to mention anyone specifically, nor offer a single quote against the planned designation.

It does however rehash the discredited story of the terror designation of Iranian dissident groups in a message point repeatedly endlessly by the Iran lobby as part of the smear campaign against opposition groups.

Another Iran lobby message point was trolled out by William O. Beeman, an anthropology professor and not a national security expert, who nevertheless offered up the same silly arguments that folks like Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of NIAC put forth, in an editorial.

“The tiny issue on which the US objection rests is whether the Iranian missiles are capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Iran says: no! The United States (and Israel) say ‘maybe,’ because they can’t know for sure whether this is the case. In the latest missile test, the missile blew up, so no one can say one way or the other,” he writes.

Beeman should stick to teaching about dead civilizations.

The issue of ballistic missiles is not a “tiny” one. Iran’s development of longer-range missiles based on illicitly acquired North Korean designs has produced missiles with over a 2,000-km range, giving it intercontinental reach. Tie this with the development of solid fuel boosters and you now approach the threshold weight necessary for a nuclear weapon. But put that aside, it is more than enough thrust and range for a chemical or biological weapon to be aimed at Eastern Europe, North Africa and India and China.

The Economist went even further claiming that Trump’s punitive actions against the Iranian regime were actually helping it.

Most incredulous of all was the opening line from the piece which claimed “the ritual chants of ‘Death to America’ had grown fainter in recent years. The feverish crowds had thinned. Some demonstrators seemed to wave Uncle Sam banners less to jeer America than to cheer it. Yet thanks to Donald Trump this year’s annual rally to commemorate Islamic Revolution Day on February 10th in Tehran looks set to be one of Iran’s biggest.”

The Economist fails to mention that the regime can ramp up attendance any time it needs to with help from the Basij paramilitaries to round up supporters under threat of beatings and the chants aimed at America have not stopped and will never stop under the mullahs.

It also makes the same mistake all media make who do not understand the dynamics of the mullahs’ hold over Iran by continuing to make a distinction between “hardliners” and “moderates” in Iran’s government.

Let’s set the record straight: There are no moderates in Iran’s government. Moderation within the regime is akin to making distinctions between the SS and Brown shirts in Hitler’s Reich. It’s only variations on the theme of extremism. One could say that compared to ISIS, Al-Qaeda looks like a Boy Scout troop.

The argument that Trump only emboldens the “hardliners” is a self-fulfilling prophecy since the hardliners have been and always will be in control of Iran.

Michael Tomlinson

The News Keeps Getting Worse for Iran Regime and Lobby

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The News Keeps Getting Worse for Iran Regime and Lobby

The News Keeps Getting Worse for Iran Regime and Lobby

To say things aren’t looking so great for the Iranian regime would be stating the obvious at the moment. Even before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the regime suffered setbacks in Syria requiring the intervention of Russia and at home where gross mismanagement of the economy and rampant corruption coupled with plunging prices for oil sank the Iranian economy further in the red.

Protests mounted at home requiring even more brutal crackdowns, sending another spiral of discontent against the mullahs spreading out like ripples in a pond with a stone tossed in it, but now the mullahs are facing the full brunt of the end of Obama’s appeasement era.

The discussion of designating the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization can be the most effective act if undertaken by the new administration so far and if true, would be a welcome boon to the Iranian dissident movement that have been fighting the IRGC for decades.

According to Reuters officials said several U.S. government agencies have been consulted about such a proposal, which if implemented would add to measures the United States has already imposed on individuals and entities linked to the IRGC.

The IRGC is by far Iran’s most powerful security entity, which also has control over large stakes in Iran’s economy and huge influence in its political system.

Reuters has not seen a copy of the proposal, which could come in the form of an executive order directing the State Department to consider designating the IRGC as a terrorist group. It is unclear whether Trump would sign such an order.

Some of Trump’s more hawkish advisors in the White House have been urging him to increase sanctions on Iran since his administration began to take shape. After tightening sanctions against Iran last week in response to a ballistic missile test, White House officials said the measures were an “initial” step.

The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the IRGC. In 2007, the U.S. Treasury designated the IRGC’s Quds Force, its elite unit in charge of its operations abroad, “for its support of terrorism,” and has said it is Iranian regime’s “primary arm for executing its policy of supporting terrorist and insurgent groups.”

A designation of the entire IRGC as a terrorist group would potentially have much broader implications, including for the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and the United States and other major world powers.

Because the IRGC controls huge swathes of the Iranian economy through a complex web of shell companies, the designation as a terrorist organization could expose almost all of the Iranian economy to potential sanctions, separate and apart from the nuclear deal. This includes industries such as petroleum, telecommunications, healthcare, aviation and agriculture.

Officials said that rather than tearing up the nuclear agreement, the White House might turn instead toward punishing Iranian regime for its support for Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and some Shiite forces in Iraq, as well as covert support for Shiites who oppose the Sunni regime in Bahrain, and cyberattacks on Saudi and other Gulf Arab targets.

Top mullahs Ali Khamenei took his turn to try and blast President Trump in remarks on Tuesday saying the U.S. leader had exposed his country’s “political, economic, ethical and social corruption.”

“We are grateful to this gentleman who has come, grateful because he made it easy for us and showed the U.S.’s real face,” Khamenei said referring to Trump.

On Tuesday White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Mr. Trump would take action “as he sees fit” and “will not take anything off the table.”

“Iran is kidding itself if they don’t realize that there’s a new president in town,” Spicer said.

Middle East security analyst Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council told VOA Persian’s NewsHour program on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s approach toward Iran was very different from that of its predecessor.

“Under the Obama administration, Iran had enormous latitude politically and economically in terms of reaping benefits from the nuclear deal,” said Berman, who serves as senior vice president of the Washington-based conservative research institute.”Under the Trump White House, it is not known whether the nuclear deal is off the table completely, but it is very clear that the new administration is going to pursue a more confrontational approach [toward implementing it].”

Berman based his assessment of the new U.S. policy on what he called the Trump national security team’s “remarkable … commonality of views” about Iran.

“From Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to national security adviser Michael Flynn, there is very deep skepticism about Iranian intentions and whether or not it’s a good idea to continue the nuclear deal, and there’s very deep apprehension about the destabilizing role that Iran can play in the Persian Gulf region,” Berman said. “So I think you see a much more realistic view of Iran beginning to take shape.”

The unpredictability of the new U.S. administration’s future plans may be the motivating factor in the decision by the Iranian regime to hastily scrap a planned missile launch of a longer-range ballistic missile.

The New York Post editorial board attributed the last-minute change to the regime blinking in the face of the tough talk coming from the White House.

“Fox News reports that new satellite imagery, verified by US officials, shows Iran has abruptly removed a new missile that was being prepared for launch as recently as Friday.

“It was a long-range Safir missile — a class that Tehran last launched into space two years ago, and that uses the same components as those needed for an intercontinental ballistic missile.

“The images showed a flurry of activity, including a host of visitors, on the launchpad Feb. 3, the day the missile was first spotted.

“Then, on Tuesday, the missile was gone,” the Post said.

The tough response from Trump was “unlike anything Tehran saw in eight years under President Barack Obama — whose State Department routinely issued reports critical of Iran, but turned a blind eye to the Islamic Republic’s nefarious behavior, not to mention its repeated violations of the sweetheart nuclear deal.”

“It’s a sign that for Iran, the days of wine and roses — and blind-eye treatment — are over. And perhaps an even more welcome sign that tough talk, combined with tough action, really does work,” the Post added.

We couldn’t agree more.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Reduced to Picking at Crumbs with Trump Inauguration

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Iran Lobby Reduced to Picking at Crumbs with Trump Inauguration

Iran Lobby Reduced to Picking at Crumbs with Trump Inauguration

Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Physics is that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” For the Iran lobby, after enjoying rare support for a policy of appeasing the Iranian regime under the Obama administration culminating in the nuclear deal reached last year, the pendulum has swung full circle with the swearing in of Donald Trump as the president of the United States.

Just as the Iran lobby worked to support the “echo chamber” of fabrications, fake news and misleading analysis used to help push the nuclear agreement, it now is left picking up the few crumbs thrown about in the hopes of salvaging anything it had gained.

A perusal of the website for the National Iranian American Council, one of the mainstays of the Iran lobby, revealed just how feeble life has become in the wake of Trump’s ascension with the posting of news articles designed to give to the impression that the Trump administration was backing away from tearing up the nuclear deal or confronting the Iranian regime:

The headlines are a far cry from last year in which the NIAC was busy trumpeting the good news of the mullahs set to receive billions of dollars as economic sanctions were being lifted.

Now Trita Parsi and his colleagues are left hoping for the best and trying to read the tea leaves of confirmation hearings knowing that Trump and his cabinet have already established the biggest single departure from the Obama administration which is Iran must be held accountable for its behavior and no longer given a free hall pass for its many abuses.

This is the essential difference between Trump and Obama in that Trump sees everything through the lens of a business deal and negotiation, whereas Obama saw it through the political lens of historical achievement and publicity.

For Trump, the Iran nuclear deal is not really a question of tearing it up or not, but rather asking the most basic question that Obama did not ask which is “what do we want Iran to do or not do in exchange for this agreement?”

Obama too easily caved in to Iranian demands to separate key issues such as human rights and support for terrorism and the mullahs knew the pressure of time and politics were pushing Obama. Trump does not seem to have any of those concerns as he starts his presidency. Therefore one possible scenario is that if Trump and Putin can agree on settling Syria by pushing Iran out of the equation, overnight the prospects for the mullahs’ political future becomes as dim as a burned out light bulb.

This realignment in the Middle East would eliminate the Iranian regime’s leverage of playing one superpower off against the other and leave it increasingly isolated.

Sir David Amess, a member of the British House of Commons, wrote in Forbes that to resolve the situation in Syria, Iranian influence has to be removed.

“The siege of Aleppo should prove to the international community how destructive the role of Assad’s Tehran backers are. For all the crimes of the Syrian army, it seemed poised to let rebels and civilians evacuate the city in the immediate aftermath of the conquest. The Russian defense ministry offered guarantees that a humanitarian pathway would remain open, and hundreds of evacuees went on to pass through a Russian checkpoint on their way out,” Amess said.

“However on a Wednesday in mid-December, at least 1,000 of those same people were stopped along the evacuation route, at a checkpoint controlled by Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and their militant proxies. This move came after the Iranians single-handedly altered the ceasefire that had been agreed upon the day before. Within a day of that move, the ceasefire appeared to have been violated, with ambulance drivers and rescue workers coming under sniper fire. The Iranian opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) even identified the command base of the IRGC for Aleppo operations,” he added.

Amess is correct when he says the international community must compel Iran through political and financial pressure to step away from the conflict in order to negotiate a lasting ceasefire agreement. If Trump and Putin can achieve common group, a clear pathway would then exist to structure a lasting solution in Syria that does not involve Iran.

That scenario terrifies the mullahs in Tehran and rightly so.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working Feverishly to Avoid Collapse

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Iran Lobby Working Feverishly to Avoid Collapse

Iran Lobby Working Feverishly to Avoid Collapse

As the sun sets on the Obama administration and its flawed policy of appeasing the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby is working in overdrive to do anything and everything it can to preserve the few wins it managed to snag over the past eight years; most notably the Iran nuclear deal.

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, has been trying to insert himself into any Iranian-related news story he can find; most recently the death of Hashem Rafsanjani. He has also weighed in president-elect Donald Trump’s potential scrapping of the nuclear agreement, banking restrictions on Iranians in the U.S., the Boeing deal and if he could manage it discussing the potential of Iranian films in the Oscar race this year.

For Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby, the biggest potential disaster looming is the possible revocation or alteration of the nuclear agreement once the Trump administration takes office next week. Parsi and the mullahs in Tehran seem resigned to the fact that Trump will almost certainly act on his campaign promise to trash or redo it.

“The deal is in tremendous danger,” Parsi said in the Washington Post. “Iranians are building a case to make sure that once the deal falls apart they can point to a strong record of the U.S. causing it. It’s going to be part of the cost the administration will have to decide if it’s willing to pay.”

Parsi is already trying to frame the debate as the fault of the U.S. knowing that Tehran’s free ride is coming to an end. Similarly, the jockeying for rhetorical position illustrates the key flaw in the nuclear agreement in the first place which was that it did not address the motivations of the Iranian regime in supporting terrorism, oppressive human rights abuses or proxy wars.

Without correcting the underlying behavior of the mullahs, the agreement was doomed from the start, something the Trump team has already publicly acknowledged.

“There’s a recognition in the incoming team that the regime cheats incrementally, not egregiously, even though the sum total of cheating turns out to be egregious,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a prominent critic of the agreement. “Trump should show a zero-tolerance policy to cheating. Which means, at a minimum, using U.S. sanctions to respond. At a maximum, it means building up a case there’s a history of incremental violations, and move to snap back sanctions.”

For the Iranian regime though the deal has served its purposes. It has enabled the regime to:

  • Replenish its coffers with over $100 billion in badly needed cash that was redirected to support the Assad regime in Syria on the brink of collapse and pay for Hezbollah fighters and Afghan mercenaries to fight a holding action there until Russia was dragged into the conflict by Iran;
  • Allowed the regime to burnish the public image of “moderates” winning in Iran when in fact there are virtually no real moderates left in Tehran, only various factions differentiated only by their fight for control of state industries and their piece of the trough of cash, kickbacks and skimmed funds; and
  • Support the renewal of sectarian wars in Iraq and Yemen aimed at building a Shiite sphere of influence there Iraqi Shiite militias and Houthi rebels through the purchase and shipping of massive quantities of guns, ammunition, rockets, mortars and missiles.

The mullahs in Tehran are not stupid. They saw the gravy train coming to an end and have worked to gain as much advantage as they can to jump start a nuclear program that never really stopped as Jennifer Rubin points out in the Washington Post.

We saw just how lopsided the U.S.-Iran relationship has become. “The 2015 nuclear deal obligated Iran to keep no more than 130 metric tons of heavy water, a material used in the production of weapons-grade plutonium,” explains Iran analyst Omri Ceren. “But the Iranians have continued to produce heavy water, and they exceeded the cap in February and November. The violations [are] functionally blackmailing the Obama administration: Either someone would purchase the excess heavy water, allowing Iran to literally profit from violating the deal, or the Iranians would go into formal noncompliance, endangering the deal,” she writes.

Now the Associated Press has reported:

“Iran is to receive a huge shipment of natural uranium from Russia to compensate it for exporting tons of reactor coolant, diplomats say, in a move approved by the outgoing U.S. administration and other governments seeking to keep Tehran committed to a landmark nuclear pact.

“Two senior diplomats said the transfer recently approved by the U.S. and five other world powers that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran foresees delivery of 116 metric tons (nearly 130 tons) of natural uranium.”

Rather than police the deal to ensure compliance, the Obama administration is assisting Iran in violating the JCPOA. Ceren remarks, “That’s enough for more than 10 nuclear bombs.”  We both allow the Iranians to exceed the heavy-water limits in the deal — and then richly compensate them with uranium that can be used for bombs. Our allies would be excused for thinking we are now promoting Iran’s interests, not the West’s,” Rubin adds.

She also noted that Reuters reported, “Iranian lawmakers approved plans on Monday to expand military spending to five percent of the budget, including developing the country’s long-range missile program which U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to halt. The vote is a boost to Iran’s military establishment –– the regular army, the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and defense ministry — which was allocated almost 2 percent of the 2015-16 budget.” This, of course, refutes the notion peddled by Iran and echoed by the administration that the deal would empower “moderates” and without the deal “hard-liners” would get the upper hand. It seems that the deal has empowered the hard-liners (the IRGC), just as critics of the deal anticipated.

So while Parsi spins away like an Olympic cyclist, the reality of how to confront a double-talking Iranian regime will soon face the Trump team.

Laura Carnahan