Iran Talks – Page 10

Why Human Rights Matter in Iran Nuke Talks

February 2, 2015 by admin

There has been a dirty little secret about the negotiations going on between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations seeking to limit Iran’s nuclear capability. It has hung like a cloud over two previous rounds of failed talks over the past years and threatens the third round of talks now underway.

What is it? The unwillingness of the P5+1 group to seriously raise the issue of Iran’s dismal human rights record and the need to make steep improvements in order for Iran to secure any kind of agreement.

For years now Iran’s ruling mullahs and their lobbying and PR machine in Washington, DC have argued strenuously that human rights issues are domestic ones and have no place at the bargaining table. In fact, the chief public face for Iran in the U.S., the National Iranian American Council has made the inclusion of human rights in talks a de facto red line in the sand, akin to asking mullahs in Iran to give up its military capabilities.

It is an odd position to be in since the U.S. has historically pushed for improved human rights situations as a condition of moving forward with international treaties and agreements with totalitarian regimes for decades. For example:

• The U.S. threatened to hold up China’s membership in the World Trade Organization if it did not improve its human rights situation in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre;
• The U.S. threatened to hold back on the North American Free Trade Agreement unless Mexico improved the plight of migrant workers and narco-terror gangs; and

So it is not unusual or inappropriate to broach such topics. In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry just recently raised the issue of the arrest of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian during the most recent round of talks, opening the door to a broader discussion of Iran’s human rights violations.

Iran and its lobbying allies have long contended that talks should be strictly centered on the issue of nuclear research and development, but even that position is a canard since Iran routinely seeks to tie other issues to the talks such as the immediate suspension of economic sanctions or the release of frozen assets.

Why are human rights important to these talks?

Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen, the Treasury Department’s outgoing point man on Iran sanctions, said in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal that Iran was “stuck. They can’t fix this economy unless they get sanctions relief.” Adding “I think they are coming to the negotiations with their backs to the wall.”

A hopeful sign, but also one that reinforces the historic opportunity the West has to seek real and meaningful change in Iran for the Iranian people. In the past year under Hassan Rouhani, there has been a significant rise in a broad crackdown on political dissent, cultural expression, gender restrictions and access to uncensored information and sources.

According to Amnesty International, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran and various human rights groups on the ground such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, public executions have taken off over the past year and reached over 1,000 men and women. Iranian regime’s notorious Evin Prison is now filled to capacity and the mullahs continues to aggressively fund terror groups such as Hezbollah and Houthis and engage in open wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

More importantly, a nation’s view on human rights towards its own people is the most accurate gauge of its views on its neighbors and the world. By not involving human rights in these discussions, we leave out the one element that could truly make the West trust any agreement reached with Iran. Without a marked improvement in human rights, there can be no guarantees or assurances that Iran would ever live up to whatever bargain it brokered out of economic necessity and not from a worldview that it was right or a moral decision.

By Michael Tomlinson

Postponing the Inevitable on Iran

January 28, 2015 by admin

In calling a Hail Mary pass from his own party, President Obama managed to secure a two-month reprieve from Senate Democrats who were on the verge of joining their Republican colleagues in offering up a new sanctions bill on Iran should the third and latest round of talks fail to produce an agreement.

The new deadline is now March 24th and in a letter to the President, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee left no doubt that he and other Democrats remained “deeply skeptical that Iran is committed to making the concessions required to demonstrate to the world that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.”

Adding in the letter “we will only vote for this legislation on the Senate floor if Iran fails to reach agreement on a political framework that addresses all parameters of a comprehensive agreement.”

Other Senators signing the letter included Charles E. Schumer of New York, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Iran loyalists such as the National Iranian American Council were quick to hail the agreement as a “breakthrough” for nuclear talks and patted themselves on the back publicly for their perceived win.

What they and other Iran sympathizers failed to realize or admit publicly is that the Democrats letter only cemented the very real possibility of sanctions since the last round of talks having ended last November there has been a virtual stalemate and no movement from the Iranian side towards any meaningful agreement.

The prospects of substantial movement occurring during the next two months are remote and Senate Republicans know this which is why they agreed to the Democratic proposal in the hope of gaining a veto-proof supermajority by March 24th.

Ironically, The New York Times noted that while the Democrats were offering up their extension, the Iranian Parliament was moving forward with proposals to bind their own negotiating team and preventing them from any agreement on production limits on nuclear fuel.

“In fact, their own proposals would require Tehran to deploy centrifuges that can enrich uranium far more efficiently than ever,” according to the Times.

Coupling this with the periodic statements given by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei bolstering this position and one can easily see why Senator Menendez’s concession to President Obama wasn’t much of a concession. The decision gives Democrats the breathing room to say they want to support the Administration, yet retain the flexibility to quickly join Republicans to move ahead with sanctions.

So while the NIAC may be dancing with joy, it’s a Pyrrhic victory since the essential facts surrounding negotiations have not changed. Iranian regime is hardening its stance and continues on a human rights and terror rampage that alarms the American people every night while they watch the news and emboldens them to urge their Congressional representatives to take a harder stance with respect to Iran.

On March 24th, Iran and its lobbying allies are in for a rude awakening.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Sanctions Are Sanctions Are Sanctions

January 27, 2015 by admin

There is an interesting effort being mounted by the Iranian lobby in the wake of a growing strong consensus within Congress to support stiffer sanctions on the regime in Iran should nuclear talks fail for a third time.

But Iran boosters such as the National Iranian American Council have lately preached a line of reasoning pointing towards the potential of various pieces of legislation being proposed in Congress as evidence of a splintering of support for harsher sanctions. They point to proposals by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), as well as ideas being floated by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) and even stream of thought comments made by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Bob Corker (R-TN) as proof of disagreement on the question of sanctions.

What NIAC and other Iran sympathizers fail to mention is the one constant amongst all these proposals; the support for some sort of enhanced sanctions should talks fail. The only disagreement is one of timing and severity.

Virtually no Senator in Congress has taken an anti-sanctions stand, nor has there been any vocal support for granting mullahs in Iran a blank check in nuclear talks. At a time when Democrats and Republican can’t seem to agree on what’s on the menu in the Senate cafeteria, there is broad, deep and universal agreement that Iran should not get a nuclear weapon and that Iran is a central character in the global rise in Islamic extremism.

Various analysis of the joint proposal from Senators Menendez and Kirk, the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2015, clearly shows this trend. It reinstates sanctions that were suspended as part of the interim agreement if a new and comprehensive agreement is not reached. It also specifically targets Iranian senior officials who are part of the religious leadership and its judicial and military systems which have been responsible for the unprecedented crackdown on human rights the past year and the expansion of militant extremism taking place around the world.

It also explicitly grants the President the ability to waive the application of sanctions should he certify to Congress it is necessary for national security, completion of a nuclear deal or Iran is making no further progress on nuclear development and is in compliance with all interim agreements.

One would have to wonder where the idea is coming from that there is large disagreement within Congress over Iranian regime’s sanctions giving the fact the basic outline of these terms were originally supported by an overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans two years ago when sanctions were originally imposed.

What Iran’s mullahs see is a small window of opportunity coming on President Obama’s unilateral decision to normalize relations with Cuba to gain the same benefit in the lame duck years of the presidency. Consequently, the NIAC and other Iranian lobbyists are pushing hard the concept that sanctions are not universally supported.

It is a line of reasoning doomed to failure given the massive support the idea of sanctions has right now in light of growing public unease and concern over gains being made by ISIS and Boko Haram, the collapse of Yemen and Iraq and the ongoing social media efforts by terror groups to frighten and bully the West for more beheadings.

Iran mullahs and their brand of Islamic extremism is at the heart of these groups flourishing since the regime in Iran essentially wrote the manual with its own broad range of torture and public punishments such as hangings and amputations on its own people that these extremist groups have since adopted.

But you will not find NIAC others denounce these growing atrocities, nor even condemn the most heinous ones. In fact, if one were to peruse the social media feeds for NIAC and its officers such as Trita Parsi, you would find virtually no condemnations. This only reveals their true nature and cheerleaders for mullahs in Iran and nothing more.

By Michael Tomlinson

Stopping the Welcome Wagon for Iran

January 27, 2015 by admin

In the wake of another round of talks underway between Iran and the P5+1 negotiating team of countries, there is emerging a pattern of perceived public support being built by those who support Iran and seek to see its quick re-admission to the international community without making any substantial concessions as part of any agreement.

Many of these Iran apologists are seeking to build what can only be called a “wave of inevitability” towards a normalization of relations between Iran and the West.

There has been a push by Iran’s global network of supporters to create a situation by ginning up a parade of officials, corporate representatives and news media who are speaking and acting on the impending possibility of the lifting of economic sanctions against Iran; even without a nuclear agreement in place.

One glaring example of that effort was the recent delegation of German lawmakers who journeyed to Iran and decided to inappropriately meet with a Holocaust denier and another official implicated in the kidnapping of American diplomatic personnel back in 1979.

A European-wide public interest known as Stop the Bomb, which is dedicated to halting Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, raised the alarm in Berlin over the German delegation’s meeting with Ali Larijani, the president of the Majlis parliament and a notorious Holocaust denier who defended then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his own incomprehensible positions on the Holocaust.

This comes on the heels of other recent overtures extended by Russian and European companies looking to cash in on the possibility of economic sanctions being lifted, as well as the infusion of upwards of $11.9 billion in frozen Iranian assets now being made available and transferred to Tehran’s accounts by the U.S. as part of the interim nuclear agreement struck by negotiators last year.

The Iranian lobby hopes to build momentum on these various trends and create a perception that a deal is all but inevitable, thereby building more pressure on the West in the face of growing violent Islamic extremism which is ironically being spread by Iranian regime itself as part of its religious campaign to remake the Middle East in its own twisted image. Tried and true Iran apologists such as the National Iranian American Council have led the charge.

The leader of the German delegation, Bundestag Vice President Claudia Roth, has already been widely criticized in Germany and internationally for her all too cozy relationship with Iran’s mullahs, culminating in an infamous high-five greeting of Iran’s then-ambassador to Germany Reza Sheikh Attar, whom Iranian Kurdish dissidents accuse of massacring Kurds during his tenure as governor of the Kurdistan and western Azerbaijan provinces in the 1980s.

But what all of these disparate efforts on behalf of the mullahs in Iran fail to realize is the growing anxiety the rest of the world is feeling towards violent extremism and the negotiation fatigue setting in amongst international capitals and news media as yet another round of talks take place with no hope of agreement coming into focus as long as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his handpicked puppet, President Hassan Rouhani, publicly denounce making any concessions to the West, which sank the two previous sessions.

The regime in Iran has never expressed any desire whatsoever to not only meet the International terms on nuclear reduction, but has never even uttered any inkling of improvements to its dismal human rights record at home and its sponsorship of terror abroad.

Iranian regime’s coercive tactics to normalize economic relations even before any kind of agreement is reached in talks that have only begun last week, explains its over eager lobbying

By Michael Tomlinson.

Whitewashing Iran’s human right’s records to lobby softer position on nuclear talks

December 6, 2014 by admin

Photo credit: The gulf and Middle East Association for civil society-August 2014

The Ministry of Intelligence and Security of Iran had instructed its agents to try to advocate themselves as opposition by writing 80% against the regime and the violation of human rights in Iran, but they have to dedicate 20% to denying the opposition, namely the MEK (Mujahedin-e-Khalq), by spreading rumors discredit them. This seems to be the copy framework agreement with the Iranian regime’s lobby and appeasers with respect to the failed Iran talks in Vienna.

Recently, some advocates of Iranian origin who claim to be human rights activists are expressing concerns over the recent resolution of the House of Representatives against the human rights violation in Iran.

One of these “human rights activists” has written an article in The Hill today, expressing concerns that “seeking ways to achieve tangible human rights improvements inside Iran is also closely related to the outcome of the nuclear negotiations” and that including “separate issues – such as Iran’s rights record, or its support for terrorism – will make it more difficult to reach a nuclear deal”.

The author who by the way is a well-known advocate and affiliate of “NIAC” claims that “the Iranian human rights community strongly supports a successful diplomatic resolution of the nuclear crisis, particularly because many believe that without a deal, the human rights crisis in Iran will worsen”. He goes further in whitewashing the regime’s president Rouhani who is just another mullah within the hierarchy of the theocracy ruling Iran, saying: “the perpetuation of tensions over the nuclear file is likely to result in continued and even increased gross human rights violations. For example, throughout the past decade, Iranian hardliners, opposed to a deal, have thrived by capitalizing on the nuclear confrontation and using it to justify their repressive measures. Failure of the negotiations would embolden them. They would seek to weaken the government of relative moderate President Hassan Rouhani.”

This is while in Iran under the so called “moderate” Rouhani, over 1,100 people have been executed and thousands are on death row. Based on the number of executions that mainly appear on state newspapers in Iran, on average every 8 hours one person is being executed. Women are disgracefully attacked by regime-related thugs, either by acid or being stabbed under the pretext of disobeying the dress code. There is no free access to information, Iran is the biggest prison for journalists and the situation of religious minorities is outrageous, to name a few.

Last November, the United Nations General Assembly’s third committee adopted the UN’s 61st resolution condemning human rights abuses in Iran and urged the regime to stop the executions, in such conditions, overlooking the human rights in Iran and ignoring the fact that people and particularly women in Iran are living under despicable conditions is nothing but cruel, shameful and immoral. Asking the US politicians to be softer on the regime with such inhumane records of human rights, is even worse.

The author is also quoting some activists to strengthen his proposition and represent it as a request by the Iranian human rights community. He writes: “As Nasrin Sotoudeh , the prominent human rights lawyer and former political prisoner put it: ‘It is obvious that we welcome peaceful relations with all countries and as such support the negotiations’.” This is while reading Nasrin Sotoudeh’s entire quote, you can see that she is actually demanding the human rights issues to be discussed during negotiations and not to be ignored, exactly the opposite of what the Iranian lobby is criticizing the congress for in the Hill article. Here is her quote from the same source:

“if the Iranian state wants to rehabilitate its relations with the international community, it must certainly address fundamental human rights concerns on issues such as juvenile executions and freedom of expression. The Iranian government should clearly state its position on these issues during the nuclear negotiations. In my opinion, keeping silent on such issues until the end of negotiations will make it more difficult. My understanding is the European countries say we cannot easily bring up human rights issues because it will potentially threaten the negotiations. We say at a minimum ask the Iranian negotiators to express their position on fundamental human rights concerns such as juvenile executions which are banned by all international conventions.”

The truth of the matter is that the Iranian regime has strategically invested in its nuclear program. It is doing everything to get more time to complete the program and will not shift from this unless faced with more pressure and more sanctions. After all it was the sanctions that finally forced the mullahs to go to the negotiation table and accept the Geneva accord, not the appeasement policy that has unfortunately been the dominant policy of the West towards Iran in the past two decades.

The Pretzel Logic of the Iranian Lobby on the Nuclear Deal

November 20, 2014 by admin

"Dedicated to Improving the Relationship Between the U.S. and Iranian Governments"

“The Pretzel Logic of the Iranian Lobby on the Nuclear Deal”

With the deadline of November 24^th fast approaching for the P5+1 negotiators to reach a deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, the chorus of the PR machine working on behalf of the regime is reaching a crescendo.

The opening shot came from disclosures in the Washington Free Beacon that the Truman National Security Project issued a call to arms for writers and bloggers to join in the effort to comment, post and tweet U.S. media in favor of a nuclear deal.

This was followed by a virtual avalanche of editorials and commentary that sometimes borders on the ludicrous such Gary Sick’s piece in Politico where he argued that giving Iran a deal that preserves its ability to enrich uranium was preferable to letting Iran walk away. Sick’s piece attempts to make the leap of logic that failure to reach a deal would potentially place Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani at some crucial disadvantage with perceived hardliners in Iran and lead to his ouster.

It’s an argument that reminds me of MIT professor and Obamacare advisor Jonathan Gruber’s recently unearthed comments about the lack of intelligence amongst American voters. Sick must carry a similar opinion of Western negotiators.

This theme that letting Iran walk away from the negotiating table would be disastrous is being echoed on pro-Iranian blogs such as LobeLog.com and lobbyists such as the National Iranian-American Council. All have let loose shrill cries that almost any deal is preferable than letting Iran walk…even if the deal is viewed as an awful one by the West.

What all of these sympathizers ignore though is the biggest obstacle to closing a deal and it is not the West, it is Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei who previously sank negotiations with public comments against reaching a deal that would impede Iran’s ability to develop a weapon. His most recent comments reinforced that view. In fact, the mullah-in-chief has doubled down with another series of speeches denouncing efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear capacity.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other negotiators were also stunned to hear even more denunciations by Iran’s religious leaders who decried any efforts to cave in to what they considered were excessive demands by the West. Iran has also raised the specter that any deal must first be predicated on the unconditional lifting of economic sanctions without a reciprocal rapid deconstruction of Iran’s nuclear program; a non-starter for almost every nation at the bargaining table.

The pathway now shaping up is a potential for yet another deadline extension without any agreement being reached. The impact of the Iranian lobby and PR machine is being severely undercut by Iran’s own leaders out of their own mouths and it seems the best they can hope for now is not a complete meltdown in talks.

There almost seems a calculation by Iran’s mullahs that President Obama needs a foreign policy triumph more than Iran’s economy needs help. It is a calculation seemingly destined to failure with the midterm election results and American voters expressing great alarm over the disintegrating nature of affairs in the Middle East with ISIS, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Gaza and Afghanistan.

This is one of those times where pretzel logic doesn’t trump the common sense of American voters.

By Michael Tomlinson