Iran Lobby

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

Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

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Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

Is the Iranian regime trying to conquer the world or does it simply want to carve out its own little protected niche in the world?

That seems to be the basic question confronting the rest of the world. For the Obama administration and many of the supporters of the Iranian regime, the focus was solely on the nuclear issue and ignored virtually every other aspect of the regime’s behavior that has troubled the world for the past three decades.

Dealing only with the nuclear issue is like negotiating with a serial killer to get rid of his use of handguns, but allowing him to keep his knives, flamethrowers and lock picks. Ultimately the behavior never changes and he is free and emboldened to do whatever he pleases. Such is the state we face with the Iranian regime today.

Now the world is witnessing a regime that is literally on a binge of dangerous behaviors, like someone with an eating disorder staring at a buffet table, the mullahs in Tehran are licking their lips at the banquet table being laid out before them.

A hallmark of that new militant behavior has been the arrests of dual national citizens and their subsequent sentencing to harsh prison terms without benefit of trial or even legal counsel. Three Americans were sentenced this way over the past week, with Reza “Robin” Shahini of San Diego, California receiving an absurd 18-year prison term.

“They’re bargaining people’s lives as if they’re trading Persian carpets,” said the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Oftentimes, these almost comically harsh sentences are simply meant to increase the value of these prisoners in the event of any quid pro quo with the United States.”

For the mullahs, these hostages do have value. In the case of four Americans released last year with the nuclear agreement, they were worth $1.7 billion in cash.

Not a bad payday for Iran.

But what seems to be at work in the larger context of international affairs is the almost bipolar nature of how Iran is dealing with the world and vice versa.

On the one hand, the Iranian regime is taking hostages, ramping up its participation in three widening wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It is smuggling arms, cash and men, which ironically end up getting used against other countries.

In Yemen, that means Iranian-purchased Chinese cruise missiles fired at US Navy warships.

In Syria, that means Iranian fighters and Afghan mercenaries and Iraqi Shiite militias being ferried in via Iranian airlines to fight against US-backed rebel forces.

In Iraq, it means Iranian-backed Shiite militias leading purges in Sunni villages liberated from ISIS and broad control over Iraq’s foreign policy with its Turkish neighbors.

  1. Todd Wood in the Washington Times also explains Iranian regimes avarice to secure a land corridor from the Iranian border to the Mediterranean to be able to have access to Arab lands, North Africa, and Europe in order to expand its terrorism through Iranian proxy forces and militias in Iraq and Syria.

“The operation seems to be headed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their General Qassem Soleimani who has also visited Moscow multiple times in violation of United Nations sanctions. He is coordinating the actions of Iran proxy forces in Iraq and Syria,” he writes.

Iranian regime is feverishly working on these plans, while at the same time it is busy opening itself up to Western investment and partnerships commercially.

As Thomas Erdbrink writes in the New York Times, the disconnect between the two halves are actually part of a larger, carefully orchestrated plan; a plan that the Obama administration and sympathetic EU nations seem oblivious to.

“What would seem to be a puzzling contradiction is in fact a carefully thought-out, two-track policy being pursued by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the circle of leaders around him,” he writes.

“Iranian generals are directing the ground war in Syria. Iranian advisers are training Shiite militias fighting in Iraq and Syria. Iranian arms and other support help the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“In addition to sanctioning the country’s more aggressive military footprint in the region, Ayatollah Khamenei regularly issues broadsides against the United States, promising there will be no softening of Tehran’s stance against the Great Satan, while quietly opening the door to Western capital and expertise,” he adds.

“In Mr. Khamenei’s view, we should be like China,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, an analyst with close ties to the hard-liners. “Have economic relations with the West, but without their political influence and neo-colonization.”

Thus, visa restrictions have been eased and foreign investment policies relaxed, while Iranian diplomats are spreading a message of Iran as the last major untapped market in the world.

But unlike China, Iran’s interests are not solely commercial and economic. It is more than willing to use military force to achieve its religious goals which stands in stark difference to China; essentially an atheist state.

For Khamenei and Rouhani, improvement in the economic status of the Iranian people is paramount to keeping their hold on power. Unless they can improve their quality of life, the street protests of 2009 are going to look like a picnic compared to March of 2017; Rouhani’s re-election bid.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Escalating Tensions With US Navy

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Iran Regime Escalating Tensions With US Navy

Iran Regime Escalating Tensions With US Navy

This week has seen tensions rise off the coast of Yemen to unheard of levels as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels twice fired cruise missiles at US Navy warships and in response, a US Navy destroyer fired Tomahawk cruise missiles destroying three coastal radar installations that were used to track the American ships.

Tensions rose even more when the Iranian regime announced it was sending two Iranian warships to the Gulf of Aden in close proximity to one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

“Iran’s Alvand and Bushehr warships have been dispatched to the Gulf of Aden to protect trade vessels from piracy,” regime-controlled Tasnim News Agency reported.

The move introduces Iranian warships far from their operating bases and coastline along the Persian Gulf and puts them adjacent to US warships at a time when threatening behavior is being met with salvos rather than radio warnings.

The Iranian regime has used its navy over the past year to engage in an escalating game of chicken in the Persian Gulf, including having ships make aggressive high speed runs at US warships and ignore radioed warnings and even shots fired across their bows.

Earlier, the Iranian regime detained two US patrol boats that had strayed into waters claimed by the regime and paraded captive US sailors on television and even built a monument to the episode.

The move was seen as the latest escalation in U.S.-Iran tension related to a proxy war in Yemen, where the two are backing opposing sides. The U.S. in March 2015 joined a Saudi-led military coalition to support the embattled Yemeni government against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, according to The Hill.

Although the Tasnim News Agency reported that the Iran ship deployments were to “protect the country’s trade vessels against piracy in the unsafe zone,” it also noted that it “coincides with the US decision to directly get involved in a Saudi-led war against Yemen.”

For the Iranian regime and its mullahs, Yemen is rapidly rising in importance as it becomes a proxy war for the larger conflict it is pursuing in the region. The use of Houthi rebels as proxies is similar to the game plan used by the mullahs with Hezbollah in Syria and Shiite militias in Iraq, all of which are supplied by Iran’s Quds Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps with weapons, ammunition and training.

The Houthi’s use of Chinese-made cruise missiles against the US Navy warships is a disturbing escalation since the weapons are not cheap and require a fairly high level of technical know-how to operate in coordination with radar tracking; technical expertise almost surely provided by the Iranian military.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a leading advocate of a tough foreign policy toward Iran, said it was unacceptable that the Obama administration continues to relax financial sanctions on Iran while it supports the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“I am relieved the crew of the USS Mason remain safe and unharmed in the Red Sea after Iran-backed Houthi rebels repeatedly launched missile attacks at them,” Kirk said in a statement.

“It’s counterproductive, absurd and unacceptable that the White House keeps unilaterally relaxing financial sanctions against the Iranian terror-sponsoring regime while Iran continues to actively support Houthi militants in Yemen that are trying to kill American servicemen and servicewomen in the Middle East,” he said.

The inconvenient truth for the White House is that after over a year of appeasing the Iranian regime, the US now finds itself on a brink of an actual shooting war with Iran; a fact that the Wall Street Journal editorial board warned about.

“The White House doesn’t want Americans to notice, but the tide of war is not receding in the Middle East. The Navy this week became part of the hot war in Yemen, with a U.S. warship launching missiles against radar targets after American vessels were fired on this week. Just when President Obama promised that American retreat would bring peace to the region, the region pulls him back in,” the Journal wrote.

“Don’t expect the White House to acknowledge this because the ironies here are something to behold. Mr. Obama is backing the Saudis in Yemen in part to reassure them of U.S. support after the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal that the Saudis opposed. Mr. Obama’s Iran deal was supposed to moderate Iran’s regional ambitions, so Mr. Obama could play a mediating role between Tehran and Riyadh. But the nuclear deal has emboldened Iran, and fortified it with more money, so now the U.S. is being drawn into what amounts to a proxy war against Iran. Genius,” the Journal added.

The increase in attacks against the US by Iran may be designed to weaken its support for Saudi Arabia and further fragment the coalition fighting Iranian adventures in Syria, Iraq and Yemen right now.

By Michael Tomlinson

Key to Syrian Solution Lies in Pushing Iran Out

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Key to Syrian Solution Lies in Pushing Iran Out

Key to Syrian Solution Lies in Pushing Iran Out

Sunday night’s presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is sure to be analyzed, dissected and poured over for days, but while both candidates traded accusations on Syria and its effect to refugees, terrorism and geopolitics, neither candidate hit the mark when it came to highlighting the real solution to the Syrian civil war.

The real solution to stopping the bloodshed in Syria lies in getting the Iranian regime out of Syria.

The Syrian civil war has been raging since 2011 and it is easy to forget its beginnings and how it grew into the global conflagration it has become, but what has been indisputable has been the influence of the Iranian regime from the very beginning.

It is useful to recall that the source of the original unrest were protests by ordinary Syrians demanding democratic reforms in March of 2011 and the release of political prisoners. In many respects, the protests taking place on the streets of Damascus were eerily similar to protests on the streets of Tehran by Iranians protesting similar issues in the wake of a presidential election widely recognized as being fraudulent.

Within a month protests had spread throughout Syria and the Assad regime responded just as the mullahs in Tehran did two years earlier; with massive crackdowns by the military that included the indiscriminate shooting of civilians in the streets.

The images of dead and dying civilians in Tehran and Damascus are not the only things that connected the two regimes.

The Iranian regime acted quickly to funnel funds to the cash-strapped Assad regime after a series of punishing international sanctions were imposed for the regime’s use of chemical weapons and mass killing weapons such as barrel bombs on civilians, including hospitals; that support was estimated by the UN to be as high as $6 billion annually, with other human rights groups doubling that amount.

Additionally, the Iranian regime sent senior commanders from its Quds Forces to plan and lead operations involving Hezbollah terrorists to help repel the gains of Syrian rebels. This level of involvement increased with the forced recruitment of thousands of Afghan refugees as mercenaries, along with the shifting of Shiite militias from Iraq to fight in Syria.

The involvement of so much Iranian military capacity led to declarations from Syrian military officials that Syria might as well become a province of Iran.

Even with all of that Iranian regime interferences, the rebels were still making gains leading up to the actual shelling of Assad regime buildings in Damascus, which led to the now not-so-secret trip to Moscow by Quds Force commanders to beg for Russian intervention in Syria.

The increasing tempo of military actions collapsed a proposed cease-fire and led to claims and counter charges between the US and Russia reminiscent of the Cold War. Nothing illustrated that confusion more than the situation in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

The New York Times examined the zany alliances at work in Aleppo where there are Iraqi Shiite militiamen cheering for clerics who liken the enemy to foes from seventh-century battles. There are Iranian Revolutionary Guards fighting on behalf of a Shiite theocracy. There are Afghan refugees hoping to gain citizenship in Iran, and Hezbollah militants whose leaders have long vowed to fight “wherever needed.”

The messy mosaic of ground fighters on both sides has challenged Washington’s tangled allegiances. The United States is effectively allied with Iraqi Shiite militias to thwart the Islamic State in Iraq, but in Syria, some of those same militias are fighting on the side of the Assad government, which the United States opposes, and against a mix of rebel groups, some of them backed by the Obama administration.

The Daily Caller discussed the vast increases in Shiite militias in Syria.

“Most estimates of the total number of Shi’a militia fighters in all of Syria now exceed 60,000,” U.S. strategic advisory firm The Soufan Group notes. The Soufan Group highlights that this number may even exceed that of the actual Syrian Arab Army under command of Assad. These Shiite militias take orders only from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Alarmingly, even though the evidence is overwhelming that the only viable solution to Syria’s war lies in containing and ultimately removing Iran’s control of the Assad regime, the Washington Post reported efforts were underway by the Obama administration to actually weaken sanctions imposed on Syria.

According to lawmakers and staffers in both parties, the White House is secretly trying to water down the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that would sanction the Assad regime for mass torture, mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The bill, guided by House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (N.Y.), would also sanction entities that aid the Syrian government in these atrocities; that includes Russia and Iran.

The bill, named after a Syrian defector who presented the world with 55,000 pictures documenting Assad’s mass torture and murder of more than 11,000 civilians in custody, has 70 co-sponsors, a majority of whom are Democrats.

Now the White House has told members and staffers that the bill’s sanctions on Iran could violate the nuclear agreement the Obama administration struck with Tehran last year and the Russia sanctions could hurt any future efforts to work with Moscow diplomatically on Syria.

It is a stunning position to take and one disturbingly similar to arguments made by Iran lobby members such as the National Iranian American Council.

It seems that the similarities between Syria and Iran be beyond just murdered civilians in the street.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Inks Oil Deal Benefiting Khamenei

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Iran Regime Inks Oil Deal Benefiting Khamenei

Iran Regime Inks Oil Deal Benefiting Khamenei

The Iranian regime signed its first oil production deal under a new less restrictive model that it hopes will boost its production output in spite of a new agreement with other oil producing nations to curb production in an effort to boost sagging oil prices worldwide.

The clincher is that the Iranian oil ministry’s news agency Shana said the government had signed a $2.2 billion contract with a unit of Iranian company Tadbir Energy, which is controlled by a religious foundation overseen by top mullah Ali Khamenei, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The regime hopes its new Iran Petroleum Contracts (IPC), part of an effort to sweeten the terms it offers on oil development deals, will attract foreign investors and boost production after years of sanctions.

The National Iranian Oil Company also signed a contract with Persia Oil & Gas Industry Development Co., an Iranian firm, according to Reuters. The U.S. Treasury Department named Persia Oil & Gas in 2013 as part of Setad Ejraiye Farman-e Emam, or Setad, a secretive and powerful organization overseen by Khamenei.

With stakes in nearly every sector of Iran’s economy, Setad built its empire on the seizure of thousands of properties belonging to religious minorities, business people and Iranians living abroad, according to a 2013 Reuters investigation, which estimated the network’s holdings at about $95 billion. (reut.rs/1g1qkCg)

The U.S. Treasury in 2013 sanctioned Setad and 37 companies it said it oversees, calling it “a major network of front companies controlled by Iran’s leadership.” Those sanctions were lifted in January, as part of the historic nuclear deal reached between Iran and world powers in 2015.

The deal, the first to be clinched under new improved terms for oil companies, is aimed at increasing output from four fields located near the Iraqi border to 260,000 barrels a day, compared with 185,000 barrels a day previously.

The deals target an increase in overall output to 5.7 million barrels a day by the end of 2020, compared to only 3.6 million barrels a day reached just last August. The increase in production is being allowed under an exemption granted to the Iranian regime by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which may threaten the long-term prospects of the reduction deal.

Ali Kardor, the head of the National Iranian Oil Co., said Monday that Iran intended to return to the market share it held before international sanctions, implying a production level of over 4 million barrels a day.

The near-desperate desire by the regime to hit the increased production levels reflects the mullahs need to gain market share and sell aggressively in order to bring badly needed revenue back into the regime’s bank accounts, which have been largely drained dry through its support of the prolonged wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The United Nations special envoy for Syria previously estimated the Iranian regime’s support for the Assad regime in Syria topped a whopping $6 billion annually alone, with other analysts estimating the total Iranian support for Syria more than double that amount to $15 billion in military and economic aid in 2012 and 2013.

By signing the first deal under this new IPC structure, the regime hopes to entice foreign oil companies to return to Iran and invest in the development of these fields. Previously, foreign firms were reluctant because of buy-back contracts that only benefitted the regime and often left foreign operators with little to no profit.

The push to boost production is also seen as an attempt by Hassan Rouhani to boast of better economic news as he prepares to run for re-election in next year’s presidential election. Iran’s economy has remained stagnant even after the completion of the nuclear deal last year in which Rouhani promised significant economic benefits that have failed to materialize.

The lack of economic improvement for ordinary Iranians have led to renewed discontent in the form of protests by large sectors of the Iranian economy; from teachers protesting low wages to small business owners chafing under poor sales and workers angry over inflated salaries for high-ranking regime officials.

The inclusion of the first oil deal with a firm under the control of Khamenei also signals that the regime’s leadership is still in primary control over Iran’s future and alongside the Revolutionary Guard Corps, virtually every sector of the Iranian economy is controlled by the regime’s leadership.

That belief in the re-opening of the oil markets to Iranian oil may also be behind the recent snub of the German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel who was in Tehran on a high profile visit, but took the opportunity to urge the Iranian regime to pursue reforms at home and act more responsibly in Syria.

He also said Iran, which provides economic and military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, should help push for a ceasefire in Syria’s civil war, adding: “I think Iran knows its responsibility there.”

His comments did not go over well with Iran’s parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, who opted to skip a meeting with the German cabinet member in a display of annoyance over the criticism.

Sadeq Larijani, brother of the parliament speaker and head of Iran’s judiciary, criticized Gabriel on Monday for his comments. “If I were in the government’s position or in the foreign minister’s shoes I would never let such a person come to Iran,” he said.

As Iran tries to re-enter the global markets, it should be ready for even more criticism as the world takes greater notice of the regime’s policies and practices.

Ultimately, Iranian mullah’s desire to regain a spot on the global stage may eventually make it once again even more vulnerable to new sanctions for its bad behavior.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Escalates War on Human Rights

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Iran Regime Escalates War on Human Rights

Iran Regime Escalates War on Human Rights

There has been no doubt that the Iranian regime is one of the worst abusers of human rights in the world today. Its record of abuse has been well documented by human rights groups and Iranian dissident organizations.

Anyone sitting in front of a computer or using a smartphone can simply Google “Iran” and “executions” to get a taste of how badly the regime treats its own people. The regime tries mightily to hide its abuses from the world through its control of the Internet, prohibiting the use of social media and employing an army of cyberhackers to monitor communications, as well as attempt to crack the encryption on messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

The Iranian regime is unique in one other regard which is that it pretty much doesn’t seem to care what the rest of the world thinks about its human rights record.

One example of that callous disregard for international condemnation was the regime’s decision to uphold a 16-year prison sentence against a prominent human rights advocate in Narges Mohammadi, which was widely protested by groups such as Amnesty International.

Mohammadi, who is critically ill, had been sentenced in May on charges of violating national security and acting against the Islamic regime through her support of an anti-death penalty campaign.

As vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran, Mohammadi gained attention in 2014 for defending women who had acid thrown on them in the city of Esfahan, purportedly for dressing immodestly.

While jailed this summer at Tehran’s Evin Prison, she staged a 20-day hunger strike in protest of authorities who barred her from speaking by phone with her family.

Mohammadi is mother to 9-year-old twins, who live in France with their father. Friends say she suffers from a chronic illness that causes partial paralysis, which has worsened due to her imprisonment, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“This verdict is yet another cruel and devastating blow to human rights in Iran, which demonstrates the authorities’ utter contempt for justice. Narges Mohammadi is a prominent advocate of human rights and a prisoner of conscience. She should be lauded for her courage not locked in a prison cell for 16 years,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“By insisting that this harsh and appalling sentence is imposed for her peaceful human rights work, the authorities have laid bare their intent to silence human rights defenders at all costs,” he added.

Human rights activists and dual nationals continue to be imprisoned during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, whose 2013 election had raised hopes of an easing of Iran’s harsh security laws, but has since come to be regarded as an instrument of the regime’s security apparatus.

Mohammadi is a supporter of the Campaign for Step by Step Abolition of the Death Penalty, known by its Persian acronym, Legam. Iran is one of the world’s leading practitioners of capital punishment, putting to death an estimated 1,000 people last year alone.

Last month, Iran put to death a teenager who was convicted of a crime when he was 17. Approximately 160 minors are on death row in Iran, according to Amnesty International.

“It is particularly shocking that this sentence comes as Iran’s authorities are preparing for renewed bilateral dialogue with the EU, given that Narges Mohammadi was convicted for her work campaigning against the death penalty and meeting with the former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs. This casts serious doubts over Iran’s commitment to engage meaningfully with the EU on human rights issues,” Luther added.

And therein lay the quandary the world faces: Even as it seeks to open up trade relationships with Iran following the nuclear deal, the world turns a blind eye to the continuing, blatant abuses being committed by the regime.

The harsh sentence of Mohammadi for essentially representing women who had been brutalized by regime paramilitaries and police is an especially visible demonstration of how much the mullahs in Tehran simply don’t care what the world thinks.

Part of their disregard stems from their efforts to perpetuate the myth that the nuclear deal is so valuable to the world in keeping Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons that the world is willing to look the other way on virtually any other issue in order to preserve the deal.

Forget the fact that the deal itself is a wreck and unenforceable and the regime already has taken advantage of it, but this attitude by the world’s leaders has enabled the regime to commit more atrocities, expand its military presence and rapidly rebuild its military without fear of punishment or reprisal.

Nothing epitomizes that more than the rapid development, testing and deployment of the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile program which has progressed from short-range conventional weapons, to now deploying intercontinental missiles capable of carrying nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wrote in US News and World Report, explaining the regime’s use of nuclear agreement to advance its own agenda.

“Tehran insists that foreign (implicitly, U.S.) machinations have undermined the sanctions relief that the deal should have brought. Iranian officials have claimed they have ‘no fear’ of the deal falling apart, and openly discuss how to snap back their remaining nuclear infrastructure if they believe the deal has been transgressed. These critiques form the core of Iran’s snapback-centric strategy, one aimed at upping the ante to pocket additional concessions,” they write.

The “snapback” mechanism included in the deal allows the countries involved to restore sanctions in the event of Iranian “significant non-performance.” But Iran retains a separate snapback capability that can nullify both nuclear and non-nuclear sanctions: the threat of ramping up its nuclear infrastructure. The fact that the Islamic Republic is able to credibly threaten such snapback means Western audiences will have to reckon with Tehran’s complaints,” they added.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Threatens to Shoot Down American Planes as Tensions RiseIran Regime Threatens to Shoot Down American Planes as Tensions Rise

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Iran Regime Threatens to Shoot Down American Planes as Tensions Rise

US Claims Iran Threatened to Shoot down US Military Planes near Iranian Airspace

In a sign of the growing escalation in confrontations being manufactured by the Iranian regime, two U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft flying in international airspace near Iran were challenged and threatened by regime air defense stations over the weekend and told to change course or be shot down.

U.S. officials disclosed the aircraft were flying over the Strait of Hormuz on routine patrols, which the Iranian regime has used as a platform to intimidate commercial and naval ships with frequent run-ins with regime patrol and attack boats, often running courses directly at ships, ignoring warnings as severe as gunfire across their bows.

Using ground-to-air communications, officials at the Iranian air defense station told the crews they were flying near Iranian airspace and that if they didn’t change their course quickly they risked being fired upon, according to a spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain, Cmdr. Bill Urban.

“We will fire Iranian missile,” was one of the transmissions from the ground, he said. Both the American planes were threatened in three separate radio calls, Cmdr. Urban said in a statement.

U.S. State Department officials decried the incident, saying it showed Iran had yet to show signs of shifting from its aggressive stance in the region even after the international nuclear agreement reached last year.

“Frankly, there’ve been previous incidents much like this, and they’re concerning, obviously. They escalate tensions,” said Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman. ”We have conveyed our concerns to Iran.”

The Navy P-8 Poseidon with a crew of nine and an EP-3 Eries with a crew of roughly 24, were flying a reconnaissance mission 13 miles off the coast of Iran, through the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman, according to officials who call the boundary Iran’s “black line.”

Iran’s territorial waters—like all nations–extend 12 miles into the sea, according to international maritime law, neither aircraft breached the boundary line.

The US military planes ignored the warning and continued flying in international airspace, although close to Iranian territory, the officials told Fox News.

“We wanted to test the Iranian reaction,” one US official told Fox News when asked why the US jets were flying close to Iran.

“It’s one thing to tell someone to get off your lawn, but we weren’t on their lawn,” the official continued.  “Anytime you threaten to shoot someone down, it’s not considered professional.”

“This been a continuing issue with respect to Iranian intercepts,” said Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, who is the top U.S. commander of the coalition air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The increasing frequency of incidents raises the question of why the regime is acting in such a provocative manner. Many within the Iran lobby have argued these acts are being committed by a small segment of hardliners within the Revolutionary Guard Corps who object to the opening up of Iran to the West as signaled by the nuclear agreement reached 14 months ago.

The line of reasoning attempts to mask the growing militant nature of the regime and the almost earnest efforts by regime officials to spark a conflict. One could almost surmise the mullahs actually are trying to provoke a response from the U.S. military in order to claim the moral high ground against the Great Satan, but why? For what purpose?

Most analysts agree that the supposed benefits of the nuclear agreement with the lifting of economic sanctions have not benefitted ordinary Iranians at all. Their economic condition remains bleak and as a result, there has been significant restlessness amongst the population, with large demonstrations over stagnant wages and rampant corruption taking place.

The regime, especially top mullah Ali Khamenei, have been vocal and outspoken in blaming the U.S. for the struggling economy and the perceived lack of benefits flowing from the nuclear deal, but what the mullahs don’t want to talk about is how they have decided to use most of the financial windfall the regime received, including the “ransom” payments of $1.7 billion for American hostages, to continue funding proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and not spend it to improve the lives of Iranians.

Also, while the U.S. did lift its nuclear related sanctions last January, other sanctions, including financial ones, related to Iran’s ballistic missile program, allegations of state sponsoring of terror groups and human rights abuse claims remain.

Major international banks are unwilling to risk losing access to the dollar market or huge fines out of fear of inadvertently falling afoul of what they say are ambiguous U.S. regulations.

It is an ironic turn of events since the regime was adamant during negotiations that issues not related to nuclear programs be de-linked. Now the mullahs are paying the price for that decision.

This may explain why the regime is acting so aggressively in order to divert attention from the economic turmoil and political unrest and create a false crisis internationally. It is an old tactic and one the mullahs are dusting off in the hopes of overcoming the domestic discontent they are facing in spite of a massive crackdown at home on journalists, students and dissidents.

Ultimately it should not come as any surprise to see the regime increase these confrontations and try to provoke a response. Otherwise, their own necks might be on the line.

By Michael Tomlinson

Shocking Report Reveals Secret Side Deals to Iran Nuke Agreement

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Shocking Report Reveals Secret Side Deals to Iran Nuke Agreement

Shocking Report Reveals Secret Side Deals to Iran Nuke Agreement

In what is bound to be one of the most startling revelations made about the Iran nuclear agreement, the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based non-profit, non-partisan institution dedicated to informing the public about science and policy issues affecting international security, issued a damning report outlining “secret” concessions granted to the Iranian regime.

In the report, the United States and its negotiating partners agreed “in secret” to allow the Iranian regime to evade some restrictions in last year’s landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to the think tank’s report published on Thursday.

“The exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it appears that they favor Iran,” said David Albright, the group’s president, in an interview with Reuters.

Among the exemptions outlined in the think tank’s report were two that allowed Iran to exceed the deal’s limits on how much low-enriched uranium (LEU) it can keep in its nuclear facilities, the report said. LEU can be purified into highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium.

Other provisions would allow Iran to continue operating 19 “hot cell” radiation containment chambers; and permission for Iran to store 50 tons of heavy water in Oman under its control, instead of selling it, as required by the nuclear deal.

The exemptions, the report said, were approved by the joint commission the deal created to oversee implementation of the accord. The commission is comprised of the United States and its negotiating partners — called the P5+1 — and Iran.

The Institute noted that the low-enriched uranium could be processed into weapons-grade material, so the secret side deal makes it effectively impossible to know how much bomb material Iran could produce, on fairly short notice. The hot cells can also be “misused for secret, mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts,” according to the report.

The White House claims these changes to the JCPOA were not kept secret from Congress, but at least one prominent critic of the nuclear deal, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who is a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters he was “not aware” of the exemptions, and was never briefed on them.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, (R-N.H.), who sits on the Armed Services Committee, also issued a statement. Ayotte argued that the new evidence of “secret exemptions” underscores “the willingness of the Obama administration to bend over backwards to accommodate Tehran, conceal information from the American people, and protect a fundamentally flawed and deeply dangerous agreement that is only getting worse.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who formerly chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was far harsher: “Secret exemptions, ballistic missile tests, ransom payments, heavy water purchases but no sanctions. #Iran’s bent + broken horrid nuke deal,” she tweeted.

“Since the JCPOA is public, any rationale for keeping these exemptions secret appears unjustified. Moreover, the Joint Commission’s secretive decision making process risks advantaging Iran by allowing it to try to systematically weaken the JCPOA. It appears to be succeeding in several key areas,” wrote Albright and his co-author, Andrea Stricker, who has written extensively on the illegal nuclear trade and Iran’s nuclear program.

State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on the work of the joint commission, saying it was confidential, but the lack of transparency flies in the face of the original promises made by the Iran lobby, such as the Ploughshares Fund and National Iranian American Council, which reassured skeptical members of Congress that there were no other provisions in the deal other than what was presented to Congress for review.

That assertion was proven false within days when secret appendices were revealed by the media to exist and now follow up decisions by the join commission can now carve out wide exemptions for the mullahs in Tehran without public review or knowledge.

“The current arrangement has been overly secret and amounts to the generation of additional secret or confidential arrangements directly linked to the JCPOA that do not have adequate oversight and scrutiny,” the report states. “Moreover, the process in general raises the question of whether Iran is exploiting the exemption mechanism, outside of any public oversight, to systematically weaken as many JCPOA limitations as possible.”

A “senior knowledgeable official” quoted by the report said that without the secret exemptions, Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance with the nuclear deal by Jan. 16, which was set as the implementation day.

That statement alone should give people pause since it clearly indicates that the Iranian regime was not prepared to abide by the agreement from Day One and since then it has used the commission to receive more and more exemptions allowing it to violate the agreement without penalty.

At every step of the negotiations and through the implementation of the Iranian nuclear agreement, both U.S. and European officials have been consistently misled by the regime and yet bizarrely accommodating of the mullahs, granting exemptions, leading trade delegations to Tehran even while political prisoners are being executed, keeping mum about a rash of hostage-takings of dual-national citizens and refusing to demand the halt of Iran’s participation in proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The world has given the Iranian regime so many second-chances, the mullahs must be wondering how they can keep this gravy train of appeasement going into 2017.

By Michael Tomlinson

How Much Are Four Americans Worth to Iran? $400 Million

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How Much Are Four Americans Worth to Iran? $400 Million

How Much Are Four Americans Worth to Iran? $400 Million

How much are four Americans worth to the Iranian regime? Apparently $400 million since news reports indicate the Obama administration secretly shipped $400 million worth of cash to Iran coinciding with the release of four Americans detained in Tehran and released as part of the nuclear agreement.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

While Obama officials denied any quid pro quo of cash for the prisoners, U.S. officials also acknowledged that Iranian regime negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.

Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused the Obama administration of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.”

“This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures” of Americans, he said.

Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.

The Iranian regime’s news media quoted senior regime defense officials who described the cash as a ransom payment themselves putting into proper focus how they perceive the cash payment.

Ironically, the $400 million was paid in foreign currency because any transaction with Iran in U.S. dollars is still illegal under existing sanctions not related to the nuclear agreement for violations of human rights and sponsorship of terrorism.

A report by an Iranian news site close to the Revolutionary Guard, the Tasnim agency, said the cash arrived in Tehran’s Mehrabad airport on the same day the Americans departed.

Revolutionary Guard commanders boasted at the time that the Americans had succumbed to Iranian pressure. “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies,” said Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the Guard’s Basij militia, on state media.

Among the Americans currently being held are an energy executive named Siamak Namazi and his 80-year old father, Baqer, according to U.S. and Iranian officials. Iran’s judiciary spokesman last month confirmed Tehran had arrested the third American, believed to be a San Diego resident named Reza “Robin” Shahini.

Friends and family of the Namazis believe the Iranians are seeking to increase their leverage to force another prisoner exchange or cash payment in the final six months of the Obama administration. Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials have been raising their case with Iranian diplomats, U.S. officials say.

Iranian officials have demanded in recent weeks the U.S. return $2 billion in Iranian funds that were frozen in New York in 2009. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the money should be given to victims of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks.

Clearly the Iranian regime expects to use the same tried and true tactics to squeeze more cash out of the Obama administration in its waning days as the three proxy wars it funds in Syria, Iraq and Yemen drain it of cash as fast as it can replenish it.

The $100 million value per American hostage is a stunning amount. As a point of comparison, the four highest paid professional athletes in the world make less money: Soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi make $88 and $81.4 million respectively, basketball star LeBron James banks $77.2 million and tennis great Roger Federer brings in a paltry $67.8 million compared to what the Iranian regime received.

The fact that the last days of the Obama administration are coming and with both presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—promising to hold the Iranian regime more accountable, the regime’s leaders may be seeing the end of the road to the usefulness of the nuclear deal.

Top mullah Ali Khamenei harshly denounced the Iran nuclear deal Monday, referring to the negotiations as a “lethal poison” that will prevent his country from negotiating with the U.S. in the future.

“They [the U.S.] want us to negotiate with them on the regional issues but the nuclear deal experience tells us that this is a lethal poison and we cannot trust the Americans’ words in any issue,” Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian citizens Monday.

Various officials within the Islamic Republic have criticized the U.S. for implementing new sanctions against Iran since the JCPOA went into effect in January. They claim the deal prevents the U.S. from implementing any new sanctions against their country, however, the deal only pertains to nuclear related sanctions that existed before the accord was signed. Khamenei threatened to “set fire” to the deal in June should the West violate it, he did not elaborate on what exactly entailed a violation.

It’s a silly claim since the Iranians specifically demanded the deal be de-linked from non-nuclear issues such as human rights and terrorism. In essence, the mullahs have trapped themselves.

Khamenei cautioned against talks with the United States on other regional crises, presumably including the wars in Syria and Yemen and the Islamic State extremist group. The experience of the nuclear deal, he said, “tells us that taking this step would be a deadly poison and that the Americans’ remarks cannot be trusted on any issue.”

His remarks are a verbal backflip from the original promises made by the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, that passage of the agreement would help in moderating the various conflicts going on in the region with Iran’s help.

Those claims, like most made in support of the Iranian regime, have proven false.

By  Michael Tomlinson

Iran Accuses British Mother of Trying to Overthrow Regime

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Iran Accuses British Mother of Trying to Overthrow Regime

Iran Accuses British Mother of Trying to Overthrow Regime

There are many perceived threats that the mullahs in Tehran see around them. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an aid worker for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was accused of trying to “overthrow” the government in a statement published Wednesday after having been arrested since April 3, 2016 on the day she was to leave to go back home in Britain.

“This person had membership in foreign companies and organizations and planned and carried out media and cyber projects with the intent of a soft overthrow of the holy Islamic Republic government,” the statement said. It was published by a Revolutionary Guard office in Kerman province, where Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe “carried out criminal activities with the guidance and protection of media and spy services of foreign governments,” according to the statement. She was arrested after “massive intelligence operations” by the Guard.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe dismissed the accusation that Nazanin was trying to bring down the government as “preposterous.”

“To my understanding there are still no formal charges. It seems like this is a political case,” he said.

The Revolutionary Guards statement seemed directed at the Thomson Reuters company, a global media powerhouse regarded with suspicion and hostility in Iran because of its British foundations. Reuters merged with Canada’s Thomson company in 2008.

“The media corporations of hegemonic governments, especially the evil-minded British media, have made their best efforts in the recent months to support her in order to weaken the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ determination but this false hope will never come true,” the statement added.

The fact that Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for the Thompson Reuters Foundation and not the news company may indicate that the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit is not so intelligent, but didn’t read the fine print and arrested her thinking she worked for the news organization in an effort to replicate the Rezaian snatch and grab with the Washington Post.

Ratcliffe said the family had contact with Zaghari-Ratcliffe earlier this week and she’d been moved to the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

Monique Villa, the Chief Executive of the Foundation, said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been employed for four years as a project coordinator in charge of grant applications and training, and had no dealing with Iran in her professional capacity.

“The Thomson Reuters Foundation has no dealings with Iran whatsoever,” she said, and has no plans to.

Villa said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe “had traveled to Iran in a personal capacity. She was on a family holiday with her two-year-old-daughter Gabriella.”

Since Zaghari-Ratcliffe was a dual British-Iranian citizen, it should come as no surprise that regime officials scooped her up since it does not recognize dual status and has regularly arrested and imprisoned large numbers of dual citizens to be used as political pawns for prisoner swaps for example such as what the U.S. did for Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati as a result of the nuclear agreement.

The Iranian regime has already plucked other dual citizens to replenish its prison cells including Siamak Namazi, a longtime supporter of the Iran lobby and Homa Hoodfor, a Canadian university professor, and now Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

No charges have been filed in the case, but Zaghari-Ratcliffe has told family members in Iran that she was forced to sign a confession under duress, her husband said last month.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s file has been sent to Tehran to begin judicial proceedings but officials from the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guard are still interrogating her, according to the statement.

The all-too-familiar pattern by the Iranian regime is being repeated here:

  • Step 1) Arrest a dual citizen;
  • Step 2) Apply pressure and even torture to get them to confess to a false crime;
  • Step 3) Try them as an Iranian citizen in a show court;
  • Step 4) Begin negotiations to get something in return for them.

For the regime, it has been a recipe for success and until the rest of the world puts a halt to this despicable practice, it will continue.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Paying Price for Echo Chamber of Lies

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Iran Lobby Paying Price for Echo Chamber of Lies

Iran Lobby Paying Price for Echo Chamber of Lies

The much-discussed article in the New York Times Magazine describing the Iran Lobby orchestrating of the push for the Iran nuclear deal has set off a chain of events throughout American politics and news media have begun digging deeper into the Iran lobby’s role in the effort to portray the Iranian regime as a moderate government.

Revelations have rippled out like so many stones dropped into a still pond, intersecting and converging as more news reports have come out detailing the flow of cash throughout the Iran lobby and into news organizations to help promote the nuclear deal.

Other stories have gone on to examine in great detail the organization and structure of the Iran lobby’s plans years before actual negotiations began with the Iranian regime, all of which goes to demonstrate the long view the mullahs have in achieving their goals.

Now Congress has stepped up its scrutiny, including demands for greater accountability from the Obama administration, as well as the Iranian regime’s compliance of a nuclear deal that is now suspected of being badly and deeply flawed.

This all came to the forefront as Treasury and State Department officials appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in an effort to reassure skeptical Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

“We need to make sure it’s implemented to the letter,” said New York Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel, “and hold Iran’s feet to the fire with respect to” what he called its troublemaking in the region.

Engel and other lawmakers cited Iran’s support for the militant groups like Hezbollah, as well as Shiia militants in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen and the regime of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. They also raised Iran’s ballistic missile tests in March, in particular two test-fired rockets inscribed with the Hebrew phrase “Israel must be wiped off the Earth,” according to the regime’s semi-official Fars News Agency.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.) heaped criticism on the Iranian nuclear deal at the hearing, calling for more sanctions on Iran to punish its military involvement in Syria.

“People in this country want us to get along with everyone around the world. We long for peace. And there are those who say that sanctions contradict that,” Sherman said. “But when you look at what Iran has done in Syria, hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million people killed by Assad, with funds provided, weapons provided, thugs provided by the Iranian government, when you see people killed by barrel bombs and sarin gas, we realize that the right response to the Iranian regime cannot be ‘kumbaya.’”

Sherman and Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the committee chairman, raised the potential for the reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act to keep the bulk of financial restrictions in place, especially in light of the regime’s actions following the completion of the nuclear deal.

Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, gave blistering testimony explaining how the Iranian regime is taking advantage of a weak nuclear deal and the Obama administration’s persistent efforts to assist the regime.

“Iran is engaged in a robust effort to legitimize its financial sector despite a decades-long rap sheet of financial crimes and illicit financial activities that it shows no sign of curbing. Since the conclusion of the JPCOA, the Obama administration has missed numerous opportunities to push back against Iran’s legitimization campaign,” Dubowitz said.

“Instead of insisting on an end to Iran’s continuing malign activities (terrorism, human rights violations, and other destabilizing activities in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and other countries across the Middle East), and using non-nuclear sanctions to deter and punish these activities, the administration is now effectively acting as Iran’s trade promotion and business development authority. Indeed, the administration may be departing from its original JCPOA negotiating position that it would only suspend or lift so-called U.S. “nuclear sanctions” under its executive authority. Rather, the administration is allowing Iran to hold the U.S. responsible for delivering financial and economic outcomes,” Dubowitz added.

Dubowitz’s testimony also highlighted the awkwardness of Secretary of State John Kerry’s trips around the world recently as he found himself in the odd position of negotiating on behalf of promoting investment in the Iranian regime.

It is a situation that Rep. Royce highlighted at the hearing that Kerry was taking “the odd step” of reassuring foreign firms that Iran is open for business, Royce said, while “other administration officials go so far as to say that Iran economic growth is in our national security interest.”

It’s now a fact that the reassurances by the Iran lobby have less impact now that the full scope of their efforts have come to light. Coupled with the regime’s own actions over the past year, the entire basis of the Iran nuclear agreement – that the mullahs could be trusted to adhere to any international agreement – was built on an “echo chamber” of lies.

By Michael Tomlinson