Iran Lobby

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

Time for the NIAC to Pack It Up

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Time for the NIAC to Pack It Up

Time for the NIAC to Pack It Up

The National Iranian American Council was born out of an idea hatched by Trita Parsi to develop a US-based group that could serve as an effective lobbying force for the interests of the Iranian regime. It could help provide “cover” for the mullahs by pushing a narrative seeking to reshape the public image of the Iranian regime.

It did so through editorials and press releases and through the use of NIAC staffers as so-called Iranian “experts” to news media. The intelligentsia and academia were regaled with lofty tales of how Iranian regime could be a friend to the US instead of an enemy and how the intractable problems of the Middle East could be solved through a moderate and willing Iranian partner.

The NIAC became part of the “echo chamber” created by the Obama administration to help push that narrative as it sought a nuclear deal with the mullahs in Tehran. NIAC staff such as Reza Marashi and Tyler Cullis obligingly offered up these fantasies even as Iran mullahs essentially set the stage for the Syrian civil war by jumping in to prop up the Assad regime.

The NIAC deepened its efforts by creating NIAC Action, a direct lobbying arm so it could knock on the doors of Congressmen and Senators and pressure them into supporting a badly flawed nuclear deal and promise them political cover by offering to say “Iranian-Americans” supported it.

Even as the death toll mounted by the thousands in Syria at the hands of Iranian forces and the barrels of Iranian guns and refugees flooded into Europe by the millions, the NIAC was resolutely pushing ahead to preserve the deal by blaming Saudi Arabia and other enemies of Iran for these problems.

Against the dubious backdrop of midnight flights of pallets loaded with cash in exchange for American hostages, the NIAC still kept at the narrative, ignoring the risk to Iranian-Americans and other dual nationals being arrested in Iran at an astonishing rate and Hassan Rouhani’s flat out refusal to recognize dual nationalities.

While the NIAC argued for loosening of restrictions to allow the freer flow of cash to Iran, the regime cracked down even harder on dissent at home with over 3,000 executions in four years and arrests of journalists, students, artists, bloggers and dissidents by the scores.

Even the US news media were getting the idea that NIAC did not have much to offer being apologists for the Iranian regime every time anything went wrong as NIAC staffers found less ink and air time on mainstream media and found themselves relegated to self-publishing blogs and fringe websites more prone to fake news than real news.

The election of Donald Trump and the sweep of Republicans into both houses of Congress put an even bigger damper on NIAC’s prospects to help the Iranian regime any more, which raises the most logical question: Is it time for the NIAC to close shop?

The question is not just rhetorical, but should prompt a serious discussion among supporters of the NIAC and its donors. What role will the NIAC play in a Trump presidency?

The same question must be vexing Parsi and his colleagues since we’ve seen a noticeable shift in their public comments on items. Instead of slavishly towing the party line of the mullahs in Tehran, the NIAC now has been busy commenting on issues related to Trump’s immigration proposes.

Some might argue that these topics should be the more traditional and appropriate topics for support and debate by an organization putatively claiming to support Iranian-Americans.

Unfortunately, the shift has less to do with genuine and sincere attention to a legitimate issue, but probably rather a need to justify the continued existence of NIAC.

One benchmark of that imperiled future will be the NIAC’s Bay Area fundraiser scheduled for February 12, 2017. The NIAC website states that the proceeds will be used “to support immediate efforts to combat discrimination, support civil rights, protect the US-Iran Nuclear Deal, and prevent war.”

Given the NIAC’s track record, virtually all the funds will be used to preserve the Iranian regime’s interest? Parsi and the NIAC have no real interest in the concerns and issues facing Iranian-Americans. They are more concerned about all facets of the Iranian regime and how to keep maintaining support for it. The NIAC’s checklist is absurdly limited given the state of the world:

  • Preserve the Iran nuclear deal so Iranian regime does not suffer renewed sanctions;
  • Oppose any new or re-imposition of sanctions on Iran;
  • Denounce and defend any accusation against the Iranian regime for sponsoring terror or human rights abuses;
  • Tie any effort to rein in Iran as a pathway to war and empowering “hardliners” in Iran; and
  • Keep the money flowing to Tehran and the mullah’s coffers at all costs.

These should not be the priorities of any group concerned with Iranian-American issues. They are the concerns only of an organization dedicated to doing the bidding of the mullahs in Tehran.

It’s time for the NIAC to go away and for a legitimate group to rise in its place to be a true advocate for Iranian-Americans and not a mouthpiece for Tehran.

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

Iranian Regime Under Pressure Everywhere

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Iranian Regime Under Pressure Everywhere

Iranian Regime Under Pressure Everywhere

Like some rodent prey being squeezed by a python, the Iranian regime’s mullahs are finding themselves under pressure from all quarters as they find themselves under scrutiny for human rights violations, its militant actions and the deeply flawed nuclear agreement.

The central and most consistent issue confronting the Iranian regime has been its abysmal human rights record which continually has drawn international condemnation for the oppression of dissidents, abuse of women and children, heinous public execution of prisoners and widespread use of torture on political prisoners.

Groups such as Amnesty International have consistently documented these abuses and tried to draw international attention to the suffering at the hands of the mullahs. In its most recent report, Amnesty International described the widespread of medieval punishments including some of the most barbaric practices.

Iran’s persistent use of cruel and inhuman punishments, including floggings, amputations and forced blinding over the past year, exposes the authorities’ utterly brutal sense of justice, said Amnesty International.

Hundreds are routinely flogged in Iran each year, sometimes in public. In the most recent flogging case recorded by Amnesty International, a journalist was lashed 40 times in Najaf Abad, Esfahan Province, on 5 January after a court found him guilty of inaccurately reporting the number of motorcycles confiscated by police in the city.

“The authorities’ prolific use of corporal punishment, including flogging, amputation and blinding, throughout 2016 highlights the inhumanity of a justice system that legalizes brutality. These cruel and inhuman punishments are a shocking assault on human dignity and violate the absolute international prohibition on torture and other ill-treatment,” said Randa Habib, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The latest flogging of a journalist raises alarms that the authorities intend to continue the spree of cruel punishments we have witnessed over the past year into 2017.”

According to Amnesty International, under Iranian regime law, more than 100 “offenses” are punishable by flogging. These cover a wide array of acts, ranging from theft, assault, vandalism, defamation and fraud to acts that should not be criminalized at all such as adultery, intimate relationships between unmarried men and women, “breach of public morals” and consensual same-sex sexual relations.

Many of those flogged in Iran are young people under the age of 35 who have been arrested for peaceful activities such as publicly eating during Ramadan, having relationships outside of marriage and attending mixed-gender parties.

The Amnesty International report goes on to document a long list of heinous punishments inflicted by the regime on its own people.

Besides pressure being brought Amnesty International, potential avenues of dialogue may finally be opening between an incoming U.S. administration and Iranian resistance groups that have helped shine a bright light on transgressions by the Iranian regime, not only human rights abuses, but also its then-secret nuclear weapons program.

With the Trump administration taking office, a ripple effect has been moving out affecting the Iranian regime in all sorts of ways, including concern coming from commercial aircraft leasing companies that may be having second thoughts about doing business with the Iranian regime in these uncertain times.

Even though Iran’s flag carrier, Iran Air, last week received the first new jetliner from Airbus, and last year finalized deals to buy 100 planes from the European plane maker and another 80 from Boeing, big aircraft lessors still are reluctant to do business in Iran. “We will remain cautious,” said John Plueger, chief executive of Air Lease Corp.

Trump has voiced skepticism about the Iran accord and “we have to be mindful of that,” Air Lease Corp.’s Plueger said Tuesday at an Airline Economics forum.

U.S. critics of the Iran deal have tried to block financing of the planes. Members of the House of Representatives this week introduced a bill to force the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence to investigate whether planes operated by Iran Air or other carriers are being used to support terrorism.

“We’re asking the intelligence community to provide a full accounting of Iran’s use of commercial airlines to support its global network of terror proxies” including in Syria, Rep. Peter J. Roskam (R-IL) said in a statement Tuesday.

Businesses are worried the U.S. may reimpose sanctions. “There is a substantial snap-back risk,” said Olaf Sachau, chief executive of Intrepid Aviation. Although he sees Iran as an attractive market for plane-leasing companies to do businesses, the U.S. election outcome means tapping the market isn’t on the agenda for now.

These uncertainties have taken the shine off of the anniversary of the nuclear agreement as Hassan Rouhani has tried to celebrate it. Rohani has been saddled by the high expectations he set, as Iran’s economy continues to struggle and the great boost in foreign investment and other benefits he envisioned has so far failed to materialize mostly as a result of the lack of capabilities within the ruling elite and for spending much of the cash in promoting the war in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc and on empowering the IRGC at home for domestic repression.

The Iranian currency, the rial, hit a record low against the dollar in recent weeks, prompting fears that efforts to boost the exports of industrial goods will suffer and anticipated foreign goods will be prohibitively costly. The unemployment rate is on the rise, reaching 11.3 percent in 2016 compared to 10.8 in 2015.

In a nutshell, the limited economic progress Rohani’s government has made has yet to trickle down to the average Iranian household in terms of jobs, salaries, and the prices of basic goods. This is something that none other than top mullah Ali Khamenei had to admit, saying in August that Iranians had yet to see a “tangible effect” in their daily lives.

Khamenei has sharpened his criticism. He has continued to emphasize a “resistance economy” aimed at boosting domestic production for export and warned against Western “infiltration” by way of the agreement, highlighting the fact that the mullah’s regime is incapable of making any radical change in country’s economy.

He may be recognizing that as the Iranian regime is getting squeezed again, he and his fellow mullahs will need to crack down harder to keep their tenuous hold on the Iranian people.

Laura Carnahan

Trump Effect on Iran Already Seen in Syrian Talks

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Trump Effect on Iran Already Seen in Syrian Talks

Trump Effect on Iran Already Seen in Syrian Talks

Donald Trump hasn’t even been inaugurated yet and his effect on U.S. foreign policy is already being felt throughout the Middle East:

  • Saudi Arabia is cautiously optimistic that the policy of trying to appease the Iranian regime under the Obama administration is at an end and that U.S. policy will once again shift back to traditional alliances in the regime that provided security for U.S. allies for the past 50 years;
  • After inserting itself into the Syrian civil war at the behest of the Iranian regime, Russia is now preparing to open new avenues of cooperation with the Trump administration even if Iran is vehemently opposed to them; and
  • The Iranian regime has reaped quick benefits from the Obama administration and the nuclear deal it negotiated including receiving $10 billion in cash and gold, but now is desperate to rake in as much cash as possible with the looming potential of the spigot being shut off by Trump.

A much ballyhooed summit is planned in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana this weekend to discuss a pathway for peaceful resolution of the Syrian conflict, involving Russia, Iran and Turkey, but now Iran is protesting Russia’s proposal to include the U.S. in these talks once Trump assumes office.

Iranian regime foreign minister Javad Zarif stated the regime’s opposition to the U.S. participating in what the regime hoped would be a photo opp moment in the diplomatic limelight for the mullahs in Tehran with these talks.

“We have not invited the U.S. and oppose their presence” at the talks, Zarif said, according to Iran’s Press TV.

Whether Iran would refuse to attend if the United States were invited was not immediately clear. The talks are part of a three-way process led by Russia and including Turkey and Iran — now the three most powerful international players on the ground in Syria. The process is aimed at forging a settlement in Syria after the failure of the Obama administration’s diplomacy, according to the Washington Post.

The opening round is expected to be a modest affair, with representatives of Syrian rebels meeting with members of the Syrian government to discuss the modalities of a shaky cease-fire that went into effect on Dec. 29, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow. Representatives of the invited countries will attend in the role of observers, rather than participants.

Although Iran is one of the three sponsors of the peace talks, it has not signed the agreement reached between Russia and Turkey that launched the cease-fire, suggesting that Tehran has reservations about an effort that could potentially erode its extensive influence in Syria.

Both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have said they regard Syria as one of the areas in which the United States and Russia could cooperate more closely. Trump has said on a number of occasions that he hopes better relations with Moscow will help counterbalance Iran’s expanding regional role.

That expansion and deepening relationship between Russia and the U.S. could very well leave the Iranian regime out in the cold and without the ability to leverage the two superpowers against each other for its own gain.

Iran has been instrumental in providing the manpower and resources that have helped Assad’s government hold the rebellion at bay. Thousands of Iranian-trained Shiite militia fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan are on the front lines, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah is at the forefront of most of the major battles, and Iranian military advisers and commanders are embedded with them in many locations around the country.

All of those gains could be erased should Trump and Putin see eye-to-eye on the necessity to rein in Islamic extremism and view Iran as the regional godfather of radicalized Islamic terror.

That prospect is frankly freaking out the Iranian regime and Hassan Rouhani took to state-owned airwaves to try and keep its attachment to Russia as close as Siamese twins.

“Iran, Russia and Turkey managed to bring a ceasefire to Syria … It shows these three powers have influence,” Rouhani said. “The (Syrian) armed groups have accepted the invitation of these three countries and are going to Astana.”

Asked why the United States and Saudi Arabia had no direct role in the talks, Rouhani said: “Some countries are not attending the talks, and their role was destructive. They were helping the terrorists.”

The prospect of a Trump presidency and realignment with Russia has caused the mullahs to issue pronouncements on a daily basis to try and spin the potential outcomes for the regime after January 20th; most of them bad for the mullahs.

Rouhani went on television to insist that any effort to “renegotiate” the nuclear agreement by Trump is “meaningless” and attributed it simply to Trump making campaign slogans, while his boss, Ali Khamenei, insisted that if the U.S. were to alter the agreement “we will light it on fire.”

Even European Union leaders are coming to the realization that the outcomes over the nuclear deal no longer rely on them, but rather now rest firmly on Trump’s decisions.

Federica Mogherini, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, who received withering criticism for trips to Iran while political prisoners were being executed, penned an editorial in the Guardian praising the nuclear deal in the hope of staving off its elimination.

It is worthy to note that Mogherini places her support squarely on the economic benefits towards European firms, but makes no mention of the year of terrorism and human rights abuses perpetrated by the Iranian regime and is silent on Syria and the absolute disaster for Europe from millions of refugees that has flooded in.

That kind of silence on important issues of terrorism and war are precisely why Europe has been blistered with multiple attacks in Brussels, Paris, Nice and Berlin and why solving the problem of Iran’s Islamic extremism is the surest path to peace.

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

Iran Regime Operates Through Fear and Intimidation to Work

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Iran Regime Operates Through Fear and Intimidation to Work

Iran Regime Operates Through Fear and Intimidation to Work

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear,” said Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa and prisoner of conscience who led his nation out of apartheid rule.

He recognized during his long imprisonment for his political beliefs that to conquer a regime and policy of institutionalized oppression, one had to first conquer the fear that institution uses to control its people. It is through the tools of violence, fear and intimidation that a people can remain oppressed for generations.

For the Iranian regime, the mullahs learned early on the lessons of similar oppressive regimes throughout history. Whether you were a Roman tribune enslaving barbarians or a Nazi Stormtrooper kicking down doors in the Warsaw ghetto or a Boko Haram fighter kidnapping scores of girls to auction them as sex slaves, the tools of intimidation and fear were universal in your efforts to maintain control.

Throughout Iran, the mullahs impose the same practices through the use of religious courts that hand down brutal sentences almost on a whim with no accountability, to roving bands of Basji paramilitaries who are free to accost and beat women on the street for violating dress codes.

The mullahs use the same principles in exporting their extremist brand of Islam by supporting terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah or growing their own Shiite militia in Iraq which can be used to subjugate Sunni villages or be shipped off to fight in Syria.

The use of military power and violence is a tried and tested prescription for the Iranian regime to impose its will.

Unfortunately for the mullahs, history has proven those policies eventually fail. Although Rome stood for thousands of years, it eventually collapsed under its own corruption and inability to assimilate the regions it conquered into peaceful co-existence. Eventually all totalitarian regimes have fallen throughout human history; the only question has been how long has it taken?

For the Iranian regime, the clock is running and the mullahs recognize their time may very well run out on them as their economy remains stagnant, unemployment especially among young people remains sky-high and technology improvements in social media and mobility have made it almost impossible to keep a lid on dissenting voices.

Even a string of hunger strikes by political prisoners has resonance as their plight is carried throughout the world on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat and has led to noted people such as Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi to openly call for the head of Iran’s judiciary to quit.

Sadeq Larijani was appointed by Ali Khamenei and cannot be summoned by MPs for questioning and is not directly accountable to the public. Under his watch the judiciary has made a number of high-profile arrests of dual nationals, according to the Guardian.

Ebadi, a human rights lawyer and women’s rights activist living in exile in the UK, said she considered Larijani to be “directly responsible for the injustices and corruption” in the system.

She said that “in the name of religion and with the excuse of national security”, the judiciary was “overseeing a miscarriage of justice”.

“Civil and social activists and thinkers who voice criticism or protest are put in jail and condemned to lengthy prison sentences and torture and persecution, while criminals, serial killers and those involved in embezzlement continue to abuse people under the shadows of a corrupted judicial system,” she said in a statement posted on the website of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, of which she is president.

“A considerable number of prisoners are those held on political or religious grounds. In what part of the world and according to what history, you would call this judicial system fair?” she added.

An example of the harsh treatment by Iranian courts was put on display when a British-Iranian woman being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison has appeared in an appeals court, using the last legal opportunity to challenge her five-year jail sentence.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency’s charitable arm, was found guilty in September on unspecific charges relating to national security.

On Wednesday, she attended a court session in the Iranian capital that lasted up to three hours, her husband told the Guardian. Few details have emerged about the hearing but a verdict is expected to be announced next week.

The exact reason why the 38-year-old has been convicted in Iran is still unclear, but the Revolutionary Guards, which arrested her at the airport in April while she was about to return to the UK after a family visit, have accused her of fomenting a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic republic.

“What I know is that the appeals happened and went on for three hours, the family weren’t able to go but Nazanin was there and her lawyer was there,” said Richard Ratcliffe. “There were lots of revolutionary guards there from both Kerman’s branch and the Tehran branch.”

According to Amnesty International, Iranian authorities have hinted that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest is connected to the 2014 imprisonment of several employees of an Iranian technology news website. They were given lengthy prison terms for participating in a BBC journalism training course. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was a project assistant at the BBC’s Media Action, the broadcaster’s international development charity, in 2008-09.

Ratcliffe said he last spoke to his wife on Christmas Day. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was previously described as being at breaking point, has recently been removed from solitary confinement and taken to Evin’s women’s wards alongside other political prisoners including journalist Reyhaneh Tabatabaei and leading activist Narges Mohammadi, and a number of Baha’i women held because of their faith.

Ultimately, the full force and weight of the Iranian judicial system is being used to focus on a British mother and charity worker and is emblematic of how fragile the mullahs control is if they are forced to have to imprison someone like her.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

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Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

With the nuclear agreement reached almost two years ago, the Iranian regime has used the $1.7 billion cash it received from the Obama administration as part of the swap for American hostages to help solidify its precarious position in Syria, while it has used new oil revenues to pump badly needed cash back into its military operations depleted from years of war abroad.

With three conflicts going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the mullahs placed a priority in supplying the terrorist proxies doing the heavy lifting for the regime such as Hezbollah, but they have also expanded the scope of their funding to include Afghan mercenaries recruited among the multitude of refugees living in Iran, as well as transporting Shiite militias from Iraq to fight in Syria.

The expenditure of ammunition, weapons and arms has been prodigious as the Iranian regime has been the sole supplier to the Houthis in Yemen waging a protracted civil war against the elected government.

The drain in foreign currency has exacerbated the regime’s economy to the point where the rial has plunged against the U.S. dollar and ordinary Iranians still struggle with anemic wages and an economy that is not capable of meeting basic needs leading to widespread discontent.

For the mullahs though the priority is on their military, especially since the Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership controls much of the Islamic state’s economy and reaps tremendous personal wealth from the skimming and corruption running through it.

With that emphasis on the military come the needs to constantly bolster the image of the regime’s armed forces, even if most of the boasting is illusory and aimed more for propaganda effect than practical military applications.

The Iranian regime constantly boasts of new military inventions such as patrol boats, drones, and new missiles, but lately the boasts are getting more grandiose to the point where many military analysts are shaking their heads.

For example, Hassan Rouhani claimed that the regime would now focus on building nuclear-powered ships even though the technology to do so is massively expensive and would require highly enriched uranium well in excess of what the country is allowed under the nuclear agreement.

Now come the latest boasts that the regime is going to build an aircraft carrier, a ship-type that even Russia and China struggle to grasp in building successfully.

“At present, the Defense Ministry and the Navy are both after building military equipment for naval warfare but the Defense Ministry is producing different types of missiles indigenously and the Navy’s needs to missiles are met using this capacity,” Deputy Navy Commander for Coordination Admiral Peiman Jafari Tehrani said on Monday, as cited by semi-official Fars news agency.

“Building an aircraft carrier is also among the goals pursued by the Navy and we hope to attain this objective,” he added.

It’s not the first time Iran has floated the idea of building aircraft carriers, since 2011 and 2014, Iranian defense officials have claimed to be moving forward with the idea even though there has been no evidence of such a building program.

Far from being able to develop advanced weapons systems, the Iranian regime is usually relegated to holding war games exercises and parades in order to beat its chest for public consumption.

For example, Iran kicked off a five-day large scale military exercise in the country’s southern region warning that civilian and military aircraft risk being shot down if they stray into Iranian airspace occupied by the drill.

The exercises, codenamed Modafe’an-e Aseman-e Velayat 7 or Defenders of Velayat Skies 7, include air defense drills and various missile, artillery and radar equipment as well as cyber and electronic warfare exercises, according to regime media.

Speaking Sunday, the commander of the regime’s air force Gen. Farzad Esmaili warned foreign aircraft trespassing the airspace covering the drill area would be shot down immediately, even though there were no foreign aircraft anywhere near the area, demonstrating the regime’s need to appear the bully.

The regime planned on using U.S.-made F-4 Phantom fighter jets older than the pilots flying them, as well as test firings of newly acquired Russian-built S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries.

All too often the regime’s military displays only succeed in reminding the world how grossly inadequate its military is in today’s modern battlefield. The Iranian regime excels in the kind of low-intensity, urban conflicts where proxies and terror groups can be used, but little else.

This inherent weakness in the regime’s military capability probably leads to a certain level of paranoia amongst the mullahs which is why they spend so much time, effort and energy arresting, torturing, imprisoning and executing any dissenters.

This has included mass arrests of journalists, students, artists, bloggers, social media users, fashion models and just about anyone else you can think of. It also includes a respectable number of dual-national citizens that Iran does not recognize, including Canadians, French, Brits and Americans.

The regime has expanded its efforts during this holiday season to target Christians, arresting any who preach the Gospel or attempt to convert a Muslim to Christianity. This follows the regime’s prior efforts to arrest and abuse others faiths such as Ba’hai and Kurds.

Ultimately much of the Iranian regime’s military boasting is so much hot air, but not the sincerity of the threats it makes against its neighbors. Even an old and weak animal can still cause havoc and mayhem.

Michael Tomlinson

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

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Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Iran’s currency, the rial, took a nosedive in hitting a record low against the U.S. dollar as financial markets returned from the Christmas holiday and doubts crept up about the impact the incoming Trump administration would have on the struggling Iranian economy under the mullahs.

More importantly, the plunge in the rial was more proof of that the mullahs in Tehran were incompetent when it came to managing their economy and that supporting three large-scale wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and had drained the regime’s foreign currency reserves dry.

The much ballyhooed promises of the Iran lobby that the nuclear deal reached last year would yield economic benefits for the Iranian people fell as fast and as flat as the Iranian currency.

The rial was quoted in the free market at 41,500 to the dollar, weakening from around 41,250 on Sunday and 35,570 in mid-September. Before this month, the record low was about 40,000, hit in late 2012, traders said.

Economists said there were several reasons for the slide, including the dollar’s strength against many currencies in the last few weeks, and uncertainty before next year’s presidential elections in Iran, according to Reuters.

But they said Trump’s election in November was a major factor. He has said he will scrap the deal between Iran and world powers that imposed curbs on Tehran’s nuclear projects and lifted sanctions on the Iranian economy in January this year.

This would hinder Tehran’s efforts to attract tens of billions of dollars of foreign funds to help modernize its economy. Inflows since January have been smaller than the government expected, partly because big international banks fear running into U.S. legal trouble if they deal with Iran; this in spite of efforts by the outgoing Obama administration to grant waivers and exemptions to the regime in an effort to spur the flow of cash to Tehran.

Iranian officials have denied any link between the U.S. election result and the rial’s slide. Samad Karimi, head of the exports department at the central bank, blamed the slide on a temporary surge in demand for dollars for travel and trade at the end of the year, state news agency IRNA reported.

Regime spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said on Monday that the rial’s drop was due to “psychological issues” and that the government hoped it would rebound within days.

Nevertheless, traders at some exchange houses in Tehran told Reuters they had not seen a sudden rise of dollar demand in recent weeks – suggesting the reasons for the rial’s tumble might be deep-seated.

That assumption of deep-seated problems within the Iranian economy are true since Iran is notoriously corrupt with virtually of the nation’s industries controlled through a myriad of shell companies by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and personal family fiefdoms of regime leaders.

This arrangement restricts Iran’s ability to operate a true free market economy, but rather is run like a gangland-style criminal enterprise where nepotism, personal favorites and enrichment and slavish devotion to exporting its extremist Islamic ideology dominate economic and fiscal decisions.

How a President Trump will deal with the Iranian regime is fast becoming the dominant policy discussion in European and Middle Eastern capitals. The initial reaction to his announced cabinet choices shows the potential for a more hardline response to Iranian militancy and extremism with such avowed critics of the regime as Rep. Mike Pompeo and Sen. Jeff Sessions set to assume office.

The potential for a sea change from the policy of appeasement followed by the Obama administration has emboldened critics of the Iranian regime to speak out including Iranian dissident groups long shut out by Obama.

A group of leading Iranian human rights activists and former political prisoners published an open letter on Friday to President-elect Donald Trump asking for a wholesale change from President Obama’s rapprochement with Iran’s clerical regime.

“Unfortunately, Iranians have been among the main victims of the detrimental policies adopted by President Obama in the Middle East. A prime example of these detrimental policies was the secret delivery of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to the Revolutionary Guards in exchange for the release of the hostages,” the dissidents’ letter said.

Fox News first published the document, the full text of which can be read on the Farsi-language website Taghato, which is run by the Iranian Liberal Students and Graduates group.

The signatories come from France, Germany, East Asia, Canada, the US and other countries.

“The ISIS and the Islamic Republic of Iran are two sides of the coin that is Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. To end this reign of terror, the Islamic caliphate (ISIS) and the Islamic regime in Iran must be replaced with elected pro-peace and prosperity governments.”

The letter called for fresh sanctions targeting “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the supreme leader’s financial empire and direct the US Treasury to strongly enforce them” and stop Iran’s pursuit of long-range missiles.

Publication of the document electrified Iran’s social media and regime-controlled news outlets. The IRGC-controlled Fars News Agency called supporters of the letter traitors, while the subject was among the top hashtags on Twitter.

BBC Persian said the letter was re-tweeted more than 10,000 times.

The dissidents’ open letter is only one of many entreaties now being aimed at the Trump team in the hopes of reasserting America’s role as watchdog of the Iranian regime and curb on the mullahs.

For the Iranian people, renewing the push for democracy and accountability can only help improve their economic condition.

Michael Tomlinson

Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

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Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

What is the purpose of a sanction? According to the dictionary, a sanction is “a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule.” Sanctions come in all forms ranging from your mother grounding you for painting the family dog to imposing economic sanctions on your nation because you’re trying to build nuclear weapons.

In either case, the basic premise is still the same: you do something wrong, you suffer the consequences. It’s not a complex idea and one as basic as human nature, except in the case of the Iranian regime, sanctions don’t seem to apply.

Take for instance the case of Qasem Soleimani who is the commander of the regime’s Quds Force, the arm of the Iranian military often engaged in irregular operations and is the primary contact for terrorist groups and militias around the world.

If Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer, the Quds Force is the bazaar for militants, terrorists, mercenaries and rebels.

The Quds Force is unique because it directly and solely reports to the regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei. That would be like if the Navy SEALS only reported to the president and were accountable to no one else. As the Quds Force commander, Soleimani wields enormous influence which he has used in carving out a personal theater of operations ranging from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen.

Since 2007, the Quds Force has been a supporter of terrorism by the U.S. and Soleimani was singled out and sanctioned by the United Nations as well. He was also cited by the European Union in 2011 for his role in supporting the violent suppression of protests in Syria which sparked that civil war.

Since then, Soleimani has been at the heart of the Syrian conflict and the faceless man standing behind Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in a war that has claimed over 800,000 lives and turned large swathes of Syria into desolate wreckage.

Soleimani was also the principle player in flying to Moscow to plead with Russia to intervene militarily in Syria just as rebels had gained the upper hand and Assad was pushed to the brink.

The fact that Soleimani has been able to fly to Russia and travel throughout the Mideast has been amazing considering he is under an international travel ban as part of the sanctions imposed on him and yet he travels as freely and frequently as any reputable businessman.

Now we have recent photos and social media posts of him touring the ruins of Aleppo in the wake of that city’s surrender this weekend. Soleimani tour of Aleppo was a demonstration of Iran’s waxing influence in Syria and disregard for international resolutions barring such behavior. Soleimani’s presence in Syria is a direct violation of the United Nations resolution governing the nuclear deal, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Soleimani’s visit coincided with moves by the terror group Hezbollah, which is controlled by Iran, to establish its own claim in Syria, according to regional reports and footage.

Iran’s public presence in Syria has not been met with action by the Obama administration, which has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks to explain why it is not enforcing current sanctions against Iran. Soleimani continues to direct Iranian forces in both Iraq and Syria and has long been sanctioned for the murder of U.S. citizens.

Mutliple sources who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon about the matter disclosed that the Obama administration is taking a soft approach with Iran, including not enforcing sanctions, in order to preserve the nuclear deal and diplomacy with Tehran, which has threatened repercussions for any new sanctions.

Sanctions imposed by the international community to prevent the flow of arms and foreign fighters to Syria have proven just as impotent as Soleimani has used the Quds Force to recruit Afghan mercenaries from the ranks of refugees living in Iran, as well as shipped in Shiite militias from Iraq to fight for Assad.

He has also orchestrated the dramatic escalation in the use of air power first through Syria and later through Russia resulting in the use of barrel bombs and similar weapons of mass destruction on civilian targets.

Most disturbing, the Quds Force supported Shiite militias in Iraq with IEDs that were responsible for killing hundreds of American service personnel there and Soleimani has never been called to account for those American deaths.

In 2011, Soleimani and other members of the Qods Force were implicated in the failed Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. at a popular restaurant in Washington, D.C. As part of the nuclear deal reached with Iran, the UN travel ban on Soleimani will be lifted either in October 2020 or when the International Atomic Energy Agency determines that all nuclear material in Iran is for peaceful purposes.

That lack of accountability and enforcement of sanctions points the greatest weakness in the argument made by the Iran lobby and other supporters of the nuclear which was that Iran wouldn’t be able to evade it.

Soleimani and the Quds Force are proof that Iran can not only evade international sanctions, but do so freely and without consequences.

Ultimately, the challenge for the incoming Trump administration and the rest of the world will be not in forging new agreements with Iran, but just enforcing the myriad of sanctions already in place.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

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Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

In what can be considered a symbolic show of disapproval, the Iran Sanctions Act reauthorization became law without President Obama’s signature. The near unanimous margins in Congress made Obama’s signature superfluous; providing a veto-proof margin.

The act was a last measure of defiance from Obama as he leaves office and the new president-elect has built a cabinet and national security team made up of critics of the nuclear agreement with the Iranian. It’s a childish and petulant act that reinforces how out of step the administration was from an American electorate unnerved by numerous terrorists attacks in the U.S., Asia, Africa and Europe motivated by Islamic extremism.

Clearly the Obama administration intends to provide as much running room for the mullahs in Tehran before it leaves office as Secretary of State John Kerry said that even though he considers it unnecessary to renew the existing waivers, he had done so anyway “to ensure maximum clarity” that the United States will meet its obligations under the deal, according to the Washington Post.

All of these efforts might be intended to reassure the Iranian regime, but they are largely meaningless actions since Trump can overturn all of the waivers granted for Iranian violations of the agreement, as well as impose economic sanctions, obliterating the nearly eight year effort to appease the mullahs in Tehran.

“President Obama doesn’t want to provide an excuse in the waning days of his administration for the Iranians to walk away from the deal,” said Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a prominent critic of the Iran deal.

“But at this point, he’s a lame-duck president, and what he does or does not do is completely irrelevant to the incoming administration and completely irrelevant to the Iranians.”

The irony of all these machinations is that the Iran lobby is left with so little leverage anymore within the U.S. government to influence any positive changes for the benefit of the regime that all it can do is whine and complain.

One example of that was a short statement put out by the National Iranian American Council, the regime’s chief lobbying force, lauding a modification to a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) issued by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC).

“We applaud OFAC for taking a significant step towards fully realizing the U.S.’s JCPOA commitments and providing guidance intended to reduce the risk for non-U.S. banks and companies interested in lawfully engaging the Iranian market. OFAC clarified that it would permit foreign companies to receive payment for goods or services rendered in the case of a U.S. sanctions snapback,” the statement said.

The FAQs do not carry the force of law and are simply administrative answers to common questions, but the fact that the NIAC is left to applaud a modest change demonstrates how low it has sunk in trying to find good news about Iran.

There is a significant irony in the NIAC’s statement since it criticized attacks on those same OFAC FAQs back in October when Iran critics attacked them for “easing” sanctions. The NIAC issued a statement saying the revised FAQs are a simple restatement and clarification of existing U.S. sanctions laws – not an “easing” of U.S. sanctions as some reports have erroneously claimed.

“There is a simple reason for this: Regulatory guidelines – like these FAQs – cannot change the operative law, but can merely explain and interpret that law,” the NIAC said.

So in one case, the FAQs should be judged as merely clarification, but in another case the FAQs are necessary as clear mandates to adhere to the nuclear agreement.

The NIAC cannot have it both ways, but the confusion from the OFAC is understandable since its officers have made steady pilgrimages to NIAC functions, including Adam Szubin, currently the acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence and former director of OFAC from 2006-2015, who recently spoke at a NIAC-sponsored conference and has often been quoted in NIAC publications and press announcements.

We can only assume how the cozy relationship between members of the OFAC and the NIAC might have produced these changes to the FAQ.

Even as the NIAC is busy flogging these tiny wins for the regime, the mullahs are moving as quickly as possible to consolidate their military advantages with final bloody battle to retake Aleppo in Syria that has resulted in the slaughter of countless men, women and children.

Freelance writer Heshmat Alavi wrote in the Daily Caller a sad recounting of the regime’s use of extremism to gain political leverage and how it must be confronted by the rest of the world.

“Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a strategic one for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate either Syria or Khuzestan [in southern Iran], our priority is to keep Syria.”

These are the words of Mehdi Taeb, former chief of Revolutionary Guards intelligence. This provides a very vivid incite of the importance of Syria, specifically, for Iran, and the necessity to continue meddling outside its borders, in general.

Being a flashpoint region of sectarian quarrels, continuously fueled by Iran’s mullahs, the Middle East has been witnessing a slow dragging into a new wave of sectarianism. Iran has been applying sectarian policies against others in the region, centralizing its efforts in provoking extremist and fundamentalist viewpoints, Alavi writes.

The mounting criticism of the Iranian regime continued to pour in as Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA, blasted the Obama administration’s handling of Iran.

“We have held our response to a whole bunch of egregious Iranian activity … hostage to the preservation of the near-term nuclear deal,” Hayden said Wednesday during the Jamestown Foundation’s tenth annual terrorism conference.

“What they’re doing in Syria, what they’re doing in Iraq, what they’re doing with Hezbollah, what they’re doing in Lebanon, what they’re doing in Yemen, what they’re doing in the Gulf,” Hayden said. “I would push back and push back hard.”

“The fear is if you did that, if you pushed back, they’d walk from the deal,” he continued. “My response is, that’s their decision.”

On a day when the regime was taking punches left and right, the NIAC was left applauding a FAQ.

Laura Carnahan