Iran Lobby

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

Human Rights Report Puts Focus on Iran Regime

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Human Rights Report Puts Focus on Iran Regime

Human Rights Report Puts Focus on Iran Regime

Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran issued a new report saying that the Iran regime was on track to execute more than 1,000 people in 2015 in an unrelenting campaign of brutal human rights suppression that continues unabated after agreeing to a nuclear agreement that proponents said would shift the regime to a more moderate stance.

Calling it an “unprecedented assault on the right to life in Iran,” Shaheed described a surge in executions over the past year. He said Iran hanged nearly 700 people since January.

Shaheed said that within the past two weeks, the Islamic Republic violated international law by hanging two juvenile offenders. He added “there are dozens more waiting a similar fate on death row.”

According the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at the end of last year, at least 30 journalists were held in Iranian prisons, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. Others have been detained since, and in August state media accused a senior Wall Street Journal reporter who once served as a correspondent in Iran of conspiring against the government. The Journal called the claims “completely false, outlandish and irresponsible.”

Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an interview with the Associated Press, reporters often get targeted because they are “much easier to frame” as spies.

Additionally, in more signs of a brutal crackdown, the regime jailed and sentenced two Iranian poets. Fatemeh Ekhtesari, a practicing obstetrician, and Mehdi Mousavi, a trained doctor who teaches literature and poetry, were first arrested in December 2013, months after Hassan Rouhani took office and sentenced to 99 lashes apiece for shaking hands with members of the opposite sex. Ekhtesari received an 11½-year prison sentence, while Mousavi got nine years on charges ranging from propaganda against the state to “insulting sanctities,” as well as the lashings, according to PEN America, an organization promoting literature and freedom of speech.

“I think people thought with the nuclear deal, there would be sort of a bit of a thaw as well or a bit of an opening up,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, the director of Free Expression Programs at PEN America. “I think the judiciary is sort of pushing back and trying to make clear that there isn’t going to be that opening people were hoping for.”

Shaheed’s report detailed a grisly butcher’s bill of death by the regime:

  • Between Jan. 1 to Sept. 15 this year, Tehran hanged at least 694 people, the highest rate of executions under the regime in 25 years;
  • The bulk of the crimes committed by those executed were for non-violent, political or drug offenses;
  • By way of comparison, in the last year of Mohammad Khatami’s term as president in 2005, the regime carried out a total of 91 executions according to the report; nearly doubling in the first year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s term to 177 executions;
  • According to Shaheed, the Iran regime executes more people per capita than any other country on the planet.

In addition to drug crimes, Iranian law applies the death penalty for a range of offenses: from threats to “the security of the state” to “enmity towards God,” also known as moharebeh, to “insults against the memory of Imam Khomeini and against the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic,” according to the State Department’s 2014 human rights report on Iran. “Prosecutors frequently used moharebeh as a criminal charge against political dissidents and journalists, accusing them of struggling against the precepts of Islam and against the state that upholds those precepts.”

Shaheed said a “deeply flawed justice system” that violates international standards and national laws sits at the heart of Iran’s human rights troubles. He said he continues “to receive frequent, alarming reports” about the mistreatment of detainees and the use of torture to obtain confessions. Many of the accused lack access to defense lawyers.

The authorities, he said, have also refused to acknowledge rights for gay, lesbian, or transgender individuals, saying it is incompatible with sharia law. And authorities have imposed harsh sentences, including the death penalty, for posting articles on social media deemed offensive to the government. A semi-official news outlet reported that more than 480 people were flogged during the first two weeks of Ramadan for not fasting.

The regime refused comment on Shaheed’s report and in fact has consistently refused to allow entry into Iran by Shaheed or any member of his office to see first-hand the human rights abuses going on in Iran.

In fact, while Shaheed was issuing his report, Rouhani was holding forth with state-controlled media IRNA in a ceremony welcoming the new Spanish ambassador to Iran, saying he believed sanctions on the regime would be lifted as early as the end of this year, again contradicting assurances by the nuclear deal proponents that the sanctions removal would only come after the regime had met its obligations for dismantling its nuclear infrastructure.

Clearly the regime remains committed to its policy of public executions and cares not a whit about international opinion on the matter.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Ongoing Appeasement of the Iran Regime

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The Ongoing Appeasement of the Iran Regime

The Ongoing Appeasement of the Iran Regime

During the run up towards the completion of negotiations over the nuclear agreement with the Iran regime, the Obama administration and the Iran lobby likened it to the most significant foreign policy issue of our time. The words used by proponents in advocating the deal included “historic,” “transformational,” “ground breaking,” “momentous,” “consequential” and “important.”

You almost thought Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council and chief cheerleader for the regime, had a word-a-day calendar on his desk with new synonyms for “historic.”

The fact that proponents of the deal characterized the choices as being between “war” and “peace” helped to get the agreement passed, but it also gave the Iran regime the opening to hold the West linguistic hostages since by framing the agreement in that manner, supporters found themselves beholden to the mullahs in Tehran to the extent no matter what they did, supporters of the deal were going to have to cover for them in order to keep the agreement alive.

This leverage cleared the way for the continuing acts of appeasement being afforded to the mullahs in the run up towards implementing the agreement. The perception of needing to keep this deal alive quickly became more important than addressing how much the Iran regime might cheat and what to do in response if the mullahs did cheat.

Two recent developments made that appeasement abundantly clear.

The first was the completion of a secret side agreement between the Iran regime and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the arm of the United Nations Security Council responsible for inspections and compliance of nuclear issues.

The IAEA has worked for the past decade to gain access to regime nuclear facilities, its scientists and technicians, as well as documentation to ascertain the full scope and nature of Iran’s nuclear program. It has been stymied and stonewalled at every turn by the regime.

Beyond the obfuscation by the regime, it is imperative to any future compliance to the nuclear agreement that the IAEA establish a baseline of where Iran’s nuclear program stands. Without it, there is no way to make comparisons to see if the regime is indeed cheating.

The IAEA “is committed under the deal to release a report by year-end about the status of Iran’s alleged weaponization work. U.S. officials over the weekend said the IAEA report would have no bearing on moves by the international community to lift sanctions,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

“That final assessment, which the IAEA is aiming to complete by December 15th, is not a prerequisite for implementation day,” a senior U.S. official said Saturday. “We are not in a position to evaluate the quality…of the data. That is between Iran and the IAEA.”

The irony here is that the U.S. is basing its decision to move ahead with implementing the agreement with the regime on the findings of the IAEA inquiry, but at the same time is not going to evaluate the veracity of those findings. In essence, the U.S. and other nations will simply shrug and say “we believe you” even if Iran provides no information or complete access as per the agreement.

So on December 15th, if the IAEA certifies Iran as being in compliance even though it has no tangible proof the regime is in compliance, the political pressure will be such that the IAEA will rubberstamp the report and allow implementation to move forward.

As Armin Rosen writes in Business Insider: “In the process, the US has essentially decided that the investigation of past nuclear-weapons work, and the state of current Iranian weaponization expertise, is nonbinding on a treaty specifically meant to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

If it wasn’t such a serious issue, it would be Orwellian in nature.

The second issue was the recent test firing of a new ballistic missile by the regime which violated a UN ban on development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. The ban is tied to the nuclear agreement and sets an eight year ban on ballistic missiles after the agreement is implemented.

The U.S., Britain, France and Germany called on UN Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee to take action over the missile test by Tehran. Diplomats have said it was possible for the sanctions committee to blacklist additional Iranian individuals or entities if it determined that the missile launch had breached the U.N. ban. However, they said Russia and China, which have opposed the sanctions on Iran’s missile program, might block any such moves.

All of which sets up the most obvious question facing everyone. What if Iran cheats? What should the response be?

Even though the U.S. asked the Security Council to take action over the missile test, U.S. officials said in the next breath that the missile test itself didn’t violate the nuclear deal.

Let that sink in for a second. We sent a letter calling for action for a violation of the UN ban, but in the same moment said the launch did not violate the nuclear agreement. So we are scolding the mullahs, but also letting them off the hook.

It’s a bipolar approach to foreign policy worthy of analysis by a psychiatrist.

In both cases, the Iran regime is clearly acting to breach terms of not only the nuclear agreement, but existing sanctions that will remain in effect after the nuclear deal goes into effect and the repercussions of those violations appear to be non-existent or minimal. This does nothing to deter the mullahs and only empowers them into believing they can continue to press their advantage.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries Clearing Economic Pathway for Regime

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Iran Lobby Tries Clearing Economic Pathway for Regime

Iran Lobby Tries Clearing Economic Pathway for Regime

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has been busy working to clear the economic runway for the Iran regime now that it has its nuclear deal because now that it has the opportunity to operate more freely in the world, the mullahs have opted to significantly increase the regime’s military operations in Syria, Yemen and Iraq; all of which requires cash and mountains of it.

As part of that NIAC propaganda push, Tyler Cullis and Amir Handjani, posted an editorial in The Hill arguing that the U.S. should open greater economic ties with the Islamic regime; the reason being that European and Asian nations are already quickly seeking to exploit these new markets.

Cullis and Handjani are correct that there are some companies and nations seeking to rush into this economic void. We know that China has a deep interest in securing contracts for cheap Iranian oil, while Russia has already begun selling weapons to the regime despite the fact that embargos on advanced ballistic missiles and weapons remains in effect.

They note however that the Obama administration has put the brakes on the rush to re-open economic ties with the regime. Part of delay comes from the huge groundswell of negative reaction from American voters to the nuclear deal which has forced many representatives who supported the deal to backtracked and offer up new pieces of legislation to address the perception that the Iran regime received a sweetheart deal and the U.S. got nothing in return; most notably Sen. Ben Cardin’s (D-MD) move to introduce to track compliance by the regime.

Most anti-regime critics called the effort too little, too late and still does not address the central and most critical issue surrounding the Iran regime: the delinking of human rights and sponsorship of terror from the deal and thus making no effort to reform or modify the regime’s bloodthirsty policies.

There has also been discussions and disagreements over the conflict between the nuclear deal and the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRA) which was signed into law in August 2012 by President Obama which closes the foreign subsidiary loophole that the an annex in the nuclear deal makes open.

According to Fox News, “ITRA contains language, in Section 605, requiring that the terms spelled out in Section 218 shall remain in effect until the president of the United States certifies two things to Congress: first, that Iran has been removed from the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, and second, that Iran has ceased the pursuit, acquisition, and development of weapons of mass destruction.

“Additional executive orders and statutes signed by President Obama, such as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, have reaffirmed that all prior federal statutes relating to sanctions on Iran shall remain in full effect.”

All of which drives a stake through the arguments made by Cullis and Handjani who by using the flawed tactic of supporting “moderates” against “hardliner” mullahs, argue that continued economic isolation of Iran only strengthens the “hardliners” and leaves American companies out in the cold versus their European and Asian competitors.

First of all, it is refreshing Cullis and Handjani are so interested in the economic well-being of American firms, but the reality is they recognize failure to fully open Iran to international trade and commerce will not bring in the cash and investment necessary for the regime to generate the revenue necessary to fund its expansionist policies.

The regime has spent upwards of $15 billion in direct financial aid and military support just to prop up the Assad regime in Syria alone. This doesn’t include the billions being spent to arm Houthis in Yemen and outfit Shiite militias in Iraq, not to mention the regime’s old terrorist partners in Hezbollah. With slumping oil prices, the mullahs desperately need that foreign investment to help keep them in power as ordinary Iranians have staged protests against the “war economy” top mullah Ali Khamenei has mandated for the past decade.

Oddly, Cullis and Handjani use the analogy of President Nixon opening up relations with China in the early ‘70s as an example of opening up to a closed society the U.S. was in conflict with, but what they don’t mention is the fact that coming out of the Vietnam War, China recognized the need to end its sponsorship of armed conflict and instead turn to embracing capitalism.

The fact that a deeply Communist nation that inflicted the Cultural Revolution on its people in brutal repression, recognized it needed to do a complete policy turnaround and embrace the very thing it denounced as part of its founding represents why the Nixon overtures were even possible in the first place; China’s leaders made that opening available by being receptive to change.

Iran’s mullahs have exhibited no such inclination. In fact since the nuclear deal was agreed to, Iran has partnered with Russia to step up an air and ground campaign in Syria, was caught smuggling weapons into Yemen and has turned Iraq into a virtual client state.

So while the Iran lobby may be hard at work trying to rewrite history, the Iran regime is busy trying to shape the future to its own perverted vision.

By Laura Carnahan

Syria is Just Tip of Iran Regime Iceberg

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The Restocking of Iran Regime Bank Accounts and Weapons

The Restocking of Iran Regime Bank Accounts and Weapons

In what has to be regarded as one of the strangest lobbying efforts being mounted, Iran regime foreign minister Javad Zarif is being put forward for the Nobel Peace Prize Award for his work in actually duping the West, during the P5+1 talks that resulted in crafting a deeply flawed nuclear deal. Putting him forward as Nobel recipient would be akin to giving the peace prize to António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz in 1949 for inventing the prefrontal lobotomy, and almost as appropriate.

If the idea wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable given what has happened since the agreement was reached.

Zarif himself has echoed public statements by Hassan Rouhani and Ali Khamenei in drawing a firm red line in the sand that Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, has to be part of any Syria plan and that Russia is on board with efforts to keep him in power.

Ironically, Zarif put forward the idea that any decision on Assad has to be made by the Syrian people. He neglected to mention that Assad and Iran’s Quds Forces and Hezbollah allies have driven four million Syrians out of the country and gassed and barrel bombed the remaining 600,000 who oppose Assad in a virtual siege aided by Russian air strikes.

But the coordination between the Tehran and Moscow goes much deeper than the regime has let on. In a compelling Reuters story, Iran’s Qassem Soleimani, the head of the regime’s Quds Forces, went secretly to Moscow last July and laid out the strategy for Russian intervention to save Assad in Syria.

“Soleimani put the map of Syria on the table. The Russians were very alarmed, and felt matters were in steep decline and that there were real dangers to the regime. The Iranians assured them there is still the possibility to reclaim the initiative,” a senior regional official said. “At that time, Soleimani played a role in assuring them that we haven’t lost all the cards.”

The decision for a joint Iranian-Russian military effort in Syria was taken at a meeting between Russia’s foreign minister and Khamenei a few months ago, said a senior official of a country in the region, involved in security matters according to Reuters.

“Soleimani, assigned by Khamenei to run the Iranian side of the operation, traveled to Moscow to discuss details. And he also traveled to Syria several times since then,” the official said.

In the biggest deployment of Iranian forces yet, sources told Reuters last week that hundreds of troops have arrived since late September to take part in a major ground offensive planned in the west and northwest.

Around 3,000 fighters from the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah have also mobilized for the battle, along with Syrian army troops, said one of the senior regional sources.

The military intervention in Syria is set out in an agreement between Moscow and Tehran that says Russian air strikes will support ground operations by Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces, said one of the senior regional sources.

The agreement also included the provision of more sophisticated Russian weapons to the Syrian army, and the establishment of joint operations rooms that would bring those allies together, along with the government of Iraq, which is allied both to Iran and the United States.

All of this flies in the face of claims made by the Iran lobby that the nuclear deal would bring forth a more moderate Iran intent on bringing stability to region and fighting ISIS. Nothing could be further from the truth as the mullahs have boldly flexed their military muscle openly now.

The regime isn’t even hiding its military intentions now that it’s been given tacit approval by the rest of the world with the nuclear deal.

Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, said that “all U.S. military bases in the Middle East are within the range of” Iran’s missiles and emphasized that the Islamic Republic will continue to break international bans on the construction of ballistic missiles, in a statement to the regime’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

“We do not see any restriction for our missiles and the IRGC’s preparedness and missile drills are conducted without a halt and according to our annual time-table, but only some of them are publicized through the media,” Hajizadeh said.

The comments echo similar rhetoric of IRGC Navy Commander Ali Fadavi, who warned last month that “the U.S. knows the damages of any war and firing bullets in the Persian Gulf.”

“The U.S. is obedient and passive in the Persian Gulf and we impose our sovereignty right in the Persian Gulf very powerfully,” Fadavi said.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the Iran regime has been planning this coordinated military mission to save Assad long before the nuclear deal was finalized and with full knowledge and consent of Iran’s top mullahs. It is also clear that the messages delivered by the regime’s lobbyist allies such as the National Iranian American Council, Ploughshares Fund and J-Street were fundamentally wrong.

The mullahs have now gained a valuable military partner in Russia and are intent on pushing their gains across the rest of the Middle East.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Fends Off More Attacks on Regime

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Iranian RocketsAs Congress moves ahead with a flurry of new bills to stymie the Iran regime and hold the conduct of the mullahs in Tehran to some level of accountability, the Iran lobby, most notably the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), went into overdrive spitting out policy positions against any encroachment on Iran’s advances.

Specifically, the NIAC and its lobbying arm, NIAC Action, issued nearly identical denunciations of two pieces of legislation introduced last week. In the House, a Republican proposal entitled the “Justice for Victims of Iranian Terrorism Act” was passed out on a floor vote by a bipartisan majority of 251-173 and seeks to block sanctions relief granted under the nuclear deal until the Iran regime pays all legal judgements and fines levied against it by U.S. courts which found the regime liable for acts of terror totaling $43.5 billion.

This move follows a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to agree on hearing an appeal of a lower court decision awarding $1.7 billion in damages from Iran’s central state bank in a similar case involving reparation payments to the victims and families of Iranian regime terror incidents.

“The consideration of the bill undermines U.S. national security interests and the perception that the U.S. can abide by its international commitments. It also risks opening the door to reciprocal action in Iran, which could threaten to link its concessions to the U.S. to outstanding claims in Iranian courts,” said Jamal Abdi, executive director of NIAC Action in response.

But Abdi misses the essential point of the move and subsequent decision by the Supreme Court which is the nuclear deal never addressed the most pressing issues, which is the conduct of the regime, specifically its long history of support for acts of terror aimed directly at Americans.

The fact that the regime still holds U.S. citizens in its prisons despite a negotiation that yielded billions of dollars for the mullahs and not one U.S. hostage returned in exchange is more telling about the inadequacy of the nuclear deal and subsequent drive by Congress to act more forcefully than the Obama administration in addressing the rising dissatisfaction of American voters over the deal and perception the mullahs pulled a fast one on the U.S.; which is why the NIAC and other Iran lobbyist allies are left to sputtering short statements which condemn the bills, but spoke nary a word about the ongoing harm Iranian regime is visiting on Syria, Iraq, Yemen and by holding American citizens.

Nowhere was that misleading of the American public on better display than in an editorial by Bardia Rahmani in The Georgetown Voice, a student-run magazine, which makes the argument that the $100 billion in frozen assets to be released back to the regime under the nuclear deal is erroneous and that most of the funds would not be used in supporting terror groups or in proxy wars.

It is a remarkably naïve opinion if genuine and a blatant obfuscation if deliberate. First of all, the estimate of frozen assets to be released is closer to $150 billion if you count assets held by central banks around the world as part of sanctions levied under the United Nations and European Union and include assets held not only by the Iranian government, but private Iranian entities.

The mistake the editorial makes is drawing a distinction between private and public ownership of assets and industries in Iran. Virtually all the national economic infrastructure is owned in part or in whole by institutions controlled by Iran religious government. For example, its telecommunications industry is owned through holding companies controlled by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The same goes for construction, banking, petroleum, agriculture, trade and even entertainment and media.

Returning these assets to these “private” entities is the same as returning them to the checking account for Ali Khamenei.

The editorial also makes no mention of the significant cash drain the regime has experienced in funding Hezbollah, the Syrian civil war to keep Assad afloat (that alone comes to the tune of $4 billion annually), Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebel forces in Yemen as a shooting war with Saudi Arabia erupts. The threat of a wider conflict with Saudi Arabia was reinforced by remarks made by Iran regime brigadier general Morteza Qurbani who claimed over 2,000 rockets were awaiting orders from Khamenei to be fired at Saudi Arabia.

He explained that the lines of defense for the Iranian revolution are today in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. “We are ready to carry out the orders of Khamenei and move anywhere he wants,” Qurbani added.

The regime has diverted significant funds from its economy to fund these wars – an act Khamenei praises as a “war time economy” – and the regime shows no signs of slackening any of its funding priorities. This was evident in Hassan Rouhani’s decision to suspend social welfare payments to Iranian citizens, sparking large civil unrest as fiscal belt tightening took place throughout the regime.

All of which was supported by multiple news accounts of Iranian military forces being moved en masse to the Syrian border in preparation for large-scale direct military involvement coming on the heels of Russian air strikes against foes of the Assad regime.

Assad himself gave an interview to the regime’s Iran News Network in which he described a coalition between Syria, Russia, Iraq and Iran was the best hope for regional peace, which was an odd statement considering Assad’s brutal crackdown on democracy protestors originally started the civil war which led to his use of chemical weapons against his own people and caused a refugee crisis of four million Syrians fleeing the war zone and flooding into Europe.

All of this spin control was not just confined to Syria and Iran lobbyists, but reached all the way to Tehran as the regime’s parliament took up the issue of swift passage of the nuclear agreement, but the debate and parliamentary moves were revealing since the regime was already gaming the deal by making a distinction that the regime was only “suspending” its nuclear activities and not removing them, thereby allowing for the future swift restart of the program.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

“Deadline Schmedline” Trita Parsi Not Worried for Regime

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“Deadline Schmedline” Trita Parsi Not Worried for Regime

Trita Parsi has had close working relationship with Javad Zarif, when he was Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations. In a deposition, Parsi stated he only communicated in 2006 with Zarif in order to “interview him.” But this is not true.
Emails made public demonstrate that Parsi and Zarif collaborated on numerous political issues. Parsi publicly distributed an Iranian regime document to influence US policy. He made arrangements for the ambassador to participate in a conference on Capitol Hill and to meet members of Congress, and sought the ambassador’s council regarding the feasibility of a new Persian Gulf security arrangement.
About the collusion between Parsi and Zarif, a former Associate Deputy Director of the FBI said Parsi should have been registered as a foreign agent of Iran. Arizona Senator Jon Kyl contacted the US Justice Department, urging an investigation of Parsi.

Noun: dead·line

 

  • a date or time when something must be finished : the last day, hour, or minute that something will be accepted

“Deadline schmedline, I’m still not worried.”

Apparently Parsi, chief cheerleader and lobbyist for the Iran regime, has a slightly different view of deadlines than the foreign ministers of six countries negotiating with regime, but not so different from his mullah masters in Tehran since Iran has now blown past five self-imposed deadlines to reach a nuclear deal over the past two years.

The new, new deadline is today to meet a deadline set in legislation granting Congress 30 days to review any deal instead of a 60 day period; the logic being having a longer review period would allow opposition to a Iranian nuclear more time to lobby Congress.

In fact, Iran’s mullahs care little about deadlines since what they seem most interested in is taking verbal potshots at their opposite numbers, especially the U.S. as evidenced by heated exchanges from regime foreign minister Javad Zarif who chastised P5+1 negotiators for taking exception to regime’s latest demand to lift embargoes against the conventional arms trade.

Parsi was almost crowing about Zarif’s verbal explosion by tweeting out how well received it would be back in Iran by the mullahs.  All of which makes it plain Parsi could really care less about a deal as long as the regime gets to play the rest of the world as fools.

In each case as a new deadline approached, the regime has sabotaged the hope of any agreement by issuing new, aggressive demands; typically through a public rant by top mullah Ali Khamenei or more recently by issuing his very own infographic of “red lines” the regime would not cross in concessions.

And Parsi has faithfully sought to provide cover for the mullahs in his media interviews and social media tweets even though he probably knows what he is saying is either false or contradicted by the very mullahs he’s trying to make excuses for.

Take for example his tweet the other day chastising the amount of money spent by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states as part of their overall military budgets. He lists Iran’s military spending at only $10.6 billion which is patently false since the regime halted public reporting of its military expenditures since 2009 when the mullahs stole the presidential election and spurred massive protests by the Iranian people which were brutally put down.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute tracks global military spending but has no data for Iran past 2009 and the data it did have before then did not include regime spending for paramilitary forces such as the Revolutionary Guards Corps and Quds Force, nor did it take into account aid given to terror groups such as Hezbollah or proxies such as Shiite militias in Iraq or Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But Parsi is by no means the only apologist for the regime. His colleague Reza Marashi has been just as busy in trying to explain why the mullahs keep heaping on demand after demand even after a so-called interim agreement was reached and only “technical” details had to be worked out.

His contention in the Los Angeles Times was that the mullahs worry the “White House will use administrative authority to temporarily lift U.S. sanctions on Iran but that Congress won’t follow through to permanently remove sanctions that were enacted into law.”

It is an odd position to take since the lifting of sanctions was agreed upon in the interim agreement only after verifying the regime had lived up to the conditions of a deal, including verification and reductions in enriched uranium stockpiles; both conditions repudiated by the regime since last April’s agreement.

But the truth doesn’t seem to faze Parsi and his cohorts and neither it seem do deadlines.

By Michael Tomlinson

As Nuke Talks Fail, Trita Parsi Contributes to Global Warming With Hot Air

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As Nuke Talks Fail, Trita Parsi Contributes to Global Warming With Hot Air

As Nuke Talks Fail, Trita Parsi Contributes to Global Warming With Hot Air

As yet another deadline slipped away in nuclear talks between the Iran regime and the P5+1 group of nations, the new trial balloon being floated was the idea of open-ended negotiations and keeping alive the November 2013 interim agreement which has already paid out to the Tehran’s mullahs a whopping $17 billion in cash.

But why did negotiators let a June 30 self-imposed deadline slip away, only to see another July 7 deadline fall by the wayside? It is because the Iran regime really has no interest in a deal that continues to deprive the mullahs of the $140 billion in frozen assets they need and restricts how they might spend all that cash.

Indeed, while regime supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, Jim Lobe of Lobelog and Atieh Khajehpour of Atieh International have all proclaimed loudly the mullahs commitment to a deal, Iran’s leaders have consistently sabotaged any progress in talks.

The latest example was that as Tuesday’s deadline came and went, Western news sources cited statements from a senior member of the Iranian negotiating team who disclosed the regime fully expects any agreement to also include a lifting of United Nation sanctions imposed on the sale of conventional weapons and ballistic missiles.

“This is one of the important issues we are discussing,” said the official, a negotiator who spoke to Western reporters on the condition of anonymity.

The demand was significant because the P5+1 had already conceded to the regime the idea of removing ballistic missile technology from discussions, but the regime’s insistence on lifting sanctions on all conventional weapons is telling because of the regime’s enormous level of support of three proxy wars with Hezbollah in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The drain on Iranian regime’s military is significant as the mullahs ship guns, rockets, anti-tank weapons, missiles, ammunition and other equipment to their proxies in each of these wars. The fact the mullahs are demanding a lifting to sanctions to allow for the flow of cash and arms back into Iran is ample proof to anyone with a brain what Iranian regime’s future foreign policy direction is once a deal is completed; which makes what regime supporters such as Parsi say look foolish and ridiculous.

Parsi has repeatedly contended that a nuclear deal with Iran would aid moderates within the regime, boost America’s role in the region, improve security for American interests and help destroy ISIS.

But the evidence to the contrary has been as clear as crystal. Any political moderates remaining in Iran have been thrown in the regime’s notorious Evin prison or executed amongst the 1,800 sent to the gallows by Hassan Rouhani’s administration.

Americans have been taken hostage and remain as bargaining chips by the mullahs, while America’s traditional allies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been faced with terror strikes in their borders, open warfare with Iranian proxies and have acted unilaterally to defend themselves.

The fact that the regime itself built the template by which ISIS has modeled itself is another rebuttal to what Parsi contends. Ironically while Parsi has been huffing and puffing claiming “moderate” aims of the mullahs, Jordanian security forces revealed the arrest of an Iranian agent working for the regime’s Quds Force who was caught with a sizable amount of explosives to be used in a strike against the U.S. ally.

But Parsi’s attempt at fooling the world is proving inept as the actions of the regime – almost all of which have contradicted everything Parsi has claimed – are finally being denounced on editorial pages everywhere.

“Now Iran’s negotiators are piling on more last-minute demands. They want the United Nations to lift restrictions on Iranian regime’s trade in missiles and other conventional arms. They act, at least publicly, as though they have all the leverage, that they know their adversary craves a deal more than they do,” said the Chicago Tribune in an editorial.

“Where would they get that idea? Probably from the U.S. and its allies, who reportedly have been backpedaling on key points to eke out a deal,” The Tribune added.

While Parsi and his colleague Reza Marashi enjoy the weather in Vienna and hob nob with journalists and fellow regime sympathizers who have gathered there like rock band groupies following the Iranian delegation, the world outside that bubble have already come to the conclusion that Iran’s mullahs have no interest in a deal, only in re-opening their bank accounts and restocking their military hardware for waging even more war.

By Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi Tries to Dignify Terror

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Trita Parsi- Iran Lobby

Trita Parsi- Iran Lobby

With the 4th of July upon us, it’s appropriate for us to reflect back on some words from one of the Founding Fathers; in this case Thomas Jefferson who wrote in 1774:

“A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”

It’s an appropriate thought as we look at negotiations between the Iran regime and the P5+1 group of nations wrestling with how to keep Iran from possessing nuclear weapons, but if that issue is really just a tangent of an ever greater problem facing the world today which is the recalcitrant and predatory nature of the regime’s mullah leadership.

Jefferson was right thought in 1774 and his words apply today because the claim of authority assumed by Iran’s mullahs was forcibly wrested away from the Iranian people in the 1979 revolution and subverted into the perverse extremist theocracy it has become now.

All of which makes what Trita Parsi, leader of the regime’s chief lobbying group, the National Iranian American Council, wrote in National Interest patently absurd and indicative of how craven Parsi has become in shilling for the mullahs.

“But the necessity to uphold dignity is at the very center of both the problems and the solutions in the ongoing nuclear negotiations,” Parsi said.

Parsi’s contention that affording Iran’s mullahs “dignity” is the clear path an agreement. He equates this by using the example of the demands by the P5+1 to allow inspections of regime military sites in order to ascertain if Iran has militarized its nuclear development and whether or not the U.S. would allow similar inspections of its military bases under similar circumstances.

It’s an absurd proposition on Parsi’s part for two significant reasons: 1) Mullahs in Iran and not the U.S. was violating international agreements it had signed to not develop nuclear weapons; and 2) Under nuclear treaties with the Soviet Union and later Russia, the U.S. allowed access to its nuclear bases and facilities for international monitors and Soviet and Russian personnel to witness the dismantling of warheads and missiles.

Parsi also takes exception to the idea of “anytime, anywhere” inspections, blaming that condition for offending Iranian dignity and precipitating a crisis in talks. He further suggests that Iran has always given inspectors access and has no problem with it if it was delivered in a manner preserving of Iranian dignity.

I give Parsi credit for his imagination. He might make a good fantasy writer some day with these fairy tales he concocts, but the truth of the situation is that the regime has repeatedly halted inspections, cutting locks off of monitoring lockers and removing inspection cameras. In fact, the regime still to this day has refused answering questions in a dozen areas raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency over the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.

Far from preserving Iranian dignity, Ali Khamenei and his fellow mullahs have refused these questions and concessions not out some sense of national pride, but rather from the very real fear their military secrets would be discovered and the entire false façade they had constructed of a peaceful nuclear program would come crashing down.

Remember, the regime had hidden even the existence of secret nuclear facilities at Parchin, Natanz and Arak.

The fact that Khamenei himself has posted his own definitive red lines where he will brook no compromise renders Parsi’s arguments moot since the regime’s top mullah has taken upon himself to repudiate Parsi’s claims over and over again.

Why does Parsi discuss Iranian dignity when he never deals with the primary factor which is the regime is the violator of international law and agreements in the first place? Does the dignity of a murderer become important as part of his trial? Do a war criminal’s actions deserve dignity when being examined by prosecutors?

The fact that Iran has been caught in criminal activities effectively negates its right to be treated as an equal amongst nations who abide by international law. China does not fund Hezbollah. France does not supply Houthi rebels with arms. The United Kingdom does not recruit Afghan mercenaries and send 15,000 of them to support the Assad regime in Syria, but the Iran regime does all these things and more.

Instead of writing about the dignity of the regime’s mullahs, Parsi would do better about writing of the indignities being suffered by American hostages such as Jason Rezaian of the Washington Post, or the Iranian families whose loved ones have been hanged by the thousands by the mullahs. Parsi might consider the plight of the millions of Syrians, Iraqis, Yemens and Lebanonese who have been displaced as refugees fleeing the proxy wars Iran has started.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran’s Mullahs Get Ready for a Spending Spree

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Iran’s Mullahs Get Ready for a Spending Spree

Iran’s Mullahs Get Ready for a Spending Spree

Who doesn’t like shopping; especially when you’re about to get a $140 billion credit line? The Iran regime’s mullahs are eagerly anticipating the windfall due to them with a completed nuclear agreement. The cornerstone of nuclear talks for the regime has been the condition for the immediate and total lifting of all economic sanctions from the UN Security Council, European Union and U.S.

In fact, there has been no ambiguity about what Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei is seeking in a nuclear deal having posted his very own infographic listing his specific “red lines” where he would not allow regime negotiators to cross in order to gain a deal with the P5+1 group of nations.

The value of those frozen assets has already been demonstrated when the U.S. released over $17 billion in cash to the regime since the interim framework agreement was announced in April of 2015 and follows a prior interim agreement reached in 2013. In fact the regime just received over 13 tons of gold released by South Africa at the direction of the U.S. as part of those agreements. The massive influx of cash came at an opportune time for the regime.

The benchmark price of crude oil had plummeted from a high of $107.89 per barrel in June of 2014 to only $57.30 per barrel in April of 2015, crushing the Iranian economy and its black market sales of illegal crude.

The 47 percent drop in oil came at the same time that the Iran regime had significantly stepped up its support for Houthi rebels as they overthrew the government in Yemen, spent over $6 billion annually to prop up the Assad regime in Syria, and billions more to fund Shiite militias throughout Iraq.

The cash delivered by the U.S. was a godsend for the mullahs and kept their precarious hold over an increasingly embittered Iranian population firm. The mullahs recognize that replenishing their coffers remains the most vital aspect of these negotiations and would normally provide enormous leverage for the P5+1 – particularly the U.S. – but the Obama administration seems to be intent on securing a deal, any deal, without using this economic leverage to gain substantial changes in Iran’s foreign policy direction or abysmal human rights record.

This hasn’t been lost on the mullahs or their circle of supporters who have sought to push forward foreign investment in order to create the feeling of inevitability of a lifting of sanctions. Economists have estimated the regime could receive an additional windfall of over $100 billion in direct foreign investment with the lifting of sanctions in addition to the $140 billion it would get from unfrozen assets.

Already regime supporters such as Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council and Bijan Khajehpour of Atieh International are already posturing and trying to facilitate this influx of foreign investment. In Khajehpour’s case, he would personally gain by helping direct investors to regime industries through his consulting firm.

But any thought of this enormous windfall benefitting the Iranian people is foolish and misplaced given past history. Khamenei himself delivered a speech February of 2014 in which he called for an “economy of resistance” and set the stage for preparing the Iranian people for continued hardships. Those hardships have resulted in widespread, but lightly reported, mass protests and demonstrations throughout Iran from everyone ranging from school teachers to factory workers to ethnic minorities.

The fact that regime mullahs directed the massive shifting of funds to fund proxy wars, terror groups and its nuclear program at the expense of its own citizens clearly demonstrates what will happen with this $140 billion payday and is bearing more intense media scrutiny as journalists and columnists delve deeper into where all those billions will most likely go.

As Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, writes in the Wall Street Journal: “The agreement terms reportedly under discussion provide Iran with substantial economic relief while demanding precisely nothing from it regarding its sponsorship of terrorism and destabilizing regional behavior.”

Sounding a similar warning is Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who wrote in the Washington Post: “The massive financial gains from the deal would enable the Islamic Republic’s imperial surge while allowing a repressive regime that was on the brink of collapse in 2009 to consolidate power. This would be no small achievement for Iran’s emboldened rulers.”

As the regime continues to manipulate the U.S. with false promises, the mullahs are busy getting their shopping list ready for the day their bank accounts are flush with cash again.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Admits Skirting Lobbying Laws

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Iran Lobby Admits Skirting Lobbying Laws

Iran Lobby Admits Skirting Lobbying Laws

There was an admission made yesterday during ongoing nuclear talks between the Iran regime and the P5+1 and it wasn’t that the negotiators were going to miss yet another deadline. No, the real news that leaked out and escaped the notice of most news organizations came from the National Iranian American Council, the regime’s longtime loyal lobbying group.

The NIAC announced the formation of a 501(c)4 lobbying arm dubbed “NIAC Action” dedicated to openly carrying the mullahs water through the halls of Congress and collect funds on behalf of the mullahs to advance a nuclear agreement giving Tehran’s cash-starved mullahs access to $140 billion in frozen funds and allow it to retain its nuclear infrastructure without intrusive international scrutiny or inspection.

While the NIAC claims it launched its lobbying group to counter what it feels is the strong anti-regime lobby already operating in the U.S., the more practical reality is that the NIAC had been skirting federal lobbying laws and had to make this move in order to avoid further investigation and possible charges for violating federal laws.

News media have previously chronicled the suspicious and often blatant lobbying efforts by members of the NIAC, especially its founder Trita Parsi who recently lost a defamation suit aimed at a journalist who reported on Parsi and the NIAC’s lobbying actions on behalf of the regime.

An appeal by Parsi resulted not only in another loss but also resulted in NIAC being forced to pay $184,000 and condemnation for blatant and systematic abuse of the discovery process and repeated false and misleading declarations to the court.

NIAC’s Jamal Abdi attempted to spin the lack of coordination between the NIAC and Iran regime officials by saying “We are not lobbying on behalf of the Iranian government. We don’t coordinate. We don’t take money from the Iranian government or the U.S. government.”

But Abdi neglected to mention any prohibition on accepting funding from individuals who receive funding directly or indirectly from the Iranian regime or its vast network of shell companies and false fronts built over the past decade to evade economic sanctions and fund worldwide terror groups such as Hezbollah.

The NIAC has been a constant fixture at the sites of nuclear talks, in news media and online through its aggressive social media efforts. It skirted the letter of federal law by claiming status as a 501(c)3 “social welfare” group even though it organized “legislative action days” where it sent teams to Congressional offices and “lobbied” key representatives and Senators on important Iran-related legislation.

Unsurprisingly, key NIAC staff who have long sought to pressure and influence members of Congress have moved over to key slots at the lobbying arm, including Abdi who is now the executive director, Ryan Costello and Tyler Cullis who move over as policy and legal fellows respectively. It will bear watching to see the amount of cross-over and coordination that occurs between these two groups and whether or not federal lobbying laws will be violated.

It is unsurprising that this new lobbying arm for the NIAC is not devoted the stated mission of the NIAC which is to promote “greater understanding between the American and Iranian people,” but instead was specifically created “to protecting a nuclear deal.”

This will also allow the NIAC to even endorse U.S. political candidates, although an endorsement by a group so closely identified as a mouthpiece for a state sponsor of terrorism, currently holding American hostages and engaging in three proxy wars responsible for the murder and displacement of millions of people would hardly be a welcome endorsement by any Republican or Democratic candidate.

At least the truth is unveiled and we now know the full extent of what the Iran lobby is willing to do to secure a deal for the mullahs.

By Michael Tomlinson