Iran Talks – Page 7

Iran Regime Dangling Dangerous Dollars

June 9, 2015 by admin

With the June 30 deadline looming for the third round of nuclear talks between the P5+1 group of nations and the Iran regime, the news media have picked up steam in discussing the possibility of foreign companies jockeying for position in investing in Iran once a deal is completed.

But in the immortal words of Greek fabulist Aesop “do not count your chickens before they are hatched.” More than a cliché, they are prudent and appropriate words for any companies looking to take advantage of a newly opened market in Iran.

USA Today ran a story looking at visiting business delegations streaming into Tehran, all with an eye towards the completion of these talks and a signing of a deal. The vast majority of these companies are European with only a few American firms kicking the tires of an open Iranian market.

“Even if all sanctions are lifted, there will still be blacklists of Iranian companies that Western companies should avoid,” said Bijan Khajehpour of Atieh International, a consulting firm in Vienna that works to bring companies into the Iranian market. “Assets in the economy controlled by the semi-state organizations are gradually approaching the size of government.”

But Khajehpour is wrong when he says that “developing Iran’s economy will lead to greater peace, political reform and moderation by its revolutionary government” because Khajehpour has a long record of associating with supporters and lobbyists of the Iran regime, including Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, in efforts to direct companies and investment into Iran.

Khajehpour and his firm – co-founded with his wife Pari Namazi who is the sister of Siamak Namazi a close confidante of Parsi – have been boldly supportive of the regime in advocating for the lifting of economic sanctions by working to steer greater interest by foreign companies in Iran. The effort is designed to create a fait accompli and build global momentum towards the “inevitability” of a nuclear deal.

While the potential size of the Iranian market is significant with 81 million people, the obstacles are daunting irrespective of what happens at the negotiating table in Switzerland. For one thing, Iran ranks in the top 40 of most corrupt nations according to Transparency International; listed at 136, tied with Nigeria and Cameroon, with corruption running rampant throughout Iran’s government with much of the nation’s wealth diverted to the mullahs who control the country and their families.

Another facet of this corruption is the shell-company ownership of vast sectors of the Iranian economy by quasi-governmental entities such as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps military which controls nearly a tenth of the entire nation’s economy by some estimates. The IRGC has made no bones about its desire to see a completed nuclear deal because of the vast wealth that would be pumped into its coffers at a crucial time when it has expended billions of dollars in propping up the Syrian regime, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The IRGC also recognizes that unless it can secure a deal and have foreign investment flow back in, disaffected Iranians suffering under the mismanagement and general ineptness of the mullahs might very well choose regime change in order to get their Apple iPhones and McDonald’s Big Macs.

The true scope of the conundrum facing Western companies revolves around the central idea of why would you want to invest billions in a corrupt regime who’s very actions might turn all those billions into lost assets in the likelihood that Iran’s mullahs continue their nuclear development in secret as they did before?

Every public hanging, arrest of a religious minority, acid attack on a woman, or assault by Shiite militia poisons the well so to speak and makes it untenable for any politician to give the mullahs what they want, especially in an election cycle.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Silent as Religious Persecution Rises

June 3, 2015 by admin

There are certain truisms in life. Not paying your taxes will get you into trouble. Eating high fat foods makes you gain weight and the paid lobbying machine for the Iran regime will always remain silent when it comes to the mistreatment of those living in Iran.

That was on display the other as Fox News reported that “Iran’s revolutionary court imposed harsh prison sentences on 18 Christian converts for charges including evangelism, propaganda against the regime, and creating house churches to practice their faith.”

The sentences totaled almost 24 years, but the lack of transparency in the regime’s infamous judicial system did not reveal how the sentences were dished out to each person. In addition to prison time, each defendant was barred from organizing home church meetings and given a two-year ban from leaving Iran.

The Christians, many of whom were arrested in 2013, were sentenced in accordance with Article 500 of the Islamic Penal Code, a vague law used as a catch-all criminal statute to penalize threats to Iran’s clerical rulers. According to the law, “Anyone who engages in any type of propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran or in support of opposition groups and associations, shall be sentenced to three months to one year of imprisonment.”

It’s a code that has been used widely against religious minority as well as political dissidents as a quick means of throwing them in prison before deciding on more serious charges such as espionage, treason or heresy.

The persecution doesn’t stop with Christians as Iran’s mullahs have also targeted Sunni Muslim sects and other religious minorities such as Baha’is for harassment. The number of Christians in Iran is estimated at between 200,000 and 500,000, out of an overall population of nearly 78 million.

Although the Islamic Republic’s constitution guarantees on paper that Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism are protected religions, the application of mullah’s constitution relegates the members of the minority religions to second class citizens.

Against that backdrop was testimony given on Capitol Hill yesterday by the families of Americans being held hostage in Iran, including Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor imprisoned by the regime’s revolutionary court.

The family of Amir Hekmati, an Iranian-American Marine, taken prisoner in 2011, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he has been subjected to brutal torture both physical and psychological. “Amir’s feet were beaten with cables. His kidneys were shocked with a Taser. He was drugged by his interrogators, who then forced him to suffer through withdrawal. Amir was also kept in solitary confinement for months on end and held in a cell so small for the first year of his imprisonment that he could not fully extend his legs. He was allowed to walk outside his cell once a week,” said Sarah Hekmati, Amir’s sister.

Amir was also kept incommunicado for years. His jailers took advantage of this and falsely told him his mother had been killed in a car accident in a cruel example of the regime’s treatment of its prisoners.

Yet throughout all this mistreatment, Trita Parsi and other advocates for the regime have barely uttered a word of protest, even while Parsi hob nobs with Iranian delegates in Swiss hotel hallways and lounges. Their silence, while deafening, is not unexpected since the brutal treatment of Iranian-Americans could prove troublesome to the end goals of bailing out the Iran regime with a nuclear agreement that lifts all economic sanctions immediately.

It is unfortunate that this Iranian hostage crisis appears to have no end in sight.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Fails Imprisoned Iranian Americans

May 28, 2015 by admin

The National Iranian American Council touts itself as a champion for Iranian Americans. Its own mission statement trumpets the organization as “a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting Iranian-American participation in American civic life.”

One can only assume that its daily verbal assaults against anyone opposing a nuclear deal with the Iran regime is part of that educational process for promoting civic life in America. A casual tallying of public statements, press releases, news quotes and surveys released by NIAC would leave most observers wondering why American civic life happens to be tied so intimately to the foreign policy of the Islamic state.

But the NIAC claims an extended mission to help promote universal human rights in Iran saying on its website:

“NIAC works to ensure that human rights are upheld in Iran and that civil rights are protected in the US. NIAC believes that the principles of universal rights – dignity, due process and freedom from violence – are the cornerstones of a civil society.”

A rational person could then deduce that NIAC would be a vocal and outspoken proponent for the human rights of Iranian Americans who are being abused or mistreated in some fashion. In fact, if you scroll through NIAC’s Issues blog, you cannot find any denunciations, condemnations or calls for better treatment of people within Iran.

Indeed, if NIAC’s mission is to advocate on behalf of Iranian Americans, I can easily come up with three who desperately need its help. Languishing in Iranian prisons are:

Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter and Iranian American born in California, who has been held by Iran and only this week has been charged with espionage for reporting Iran news and is not facing trial in the Revolutionary Court in a closed session without even his family allowed in attendance;
Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine and the longest-held American prisoner in Iran, who has been sentenced in another sham trial and whose appellate hearing was denied yet again; and
Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor from Idaho, who was convicted for holding religious services in private homes.

In response to the Rezaian closed session trial moving forward, NIAC’s president, Trita Parsi, was quoted in the New York Times saying “If there is a conviction in the Rezaian case and no leniency, it can create a crisis in the nuclear talks, yet another complication.”

It’s a wonder Parsi always seems to find a way to tie everything back to nuclear talks. You think he has a genetic sequence which compels him to burp the word “nuclear” whenever he is asked a question about Iran.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Parsi actually lived up to his own organization’s mission statement and said something like: “We think it is horrible that Iranian regime is holding these Iranian Americans in prison without proper due process or transparency. We urge Iran’s authorities to respect international law and all these Americans to come home to their families without any further delay.”

Now was that so hard?

But then again, the Iran regime does seems to share a playbook with other dictatorial regimes which use hostages as political bargaining chips. We can only assume Iran’s mullahs have seen the prisoner swaps and are holding on to these American hostages hoping to leverage them as part of the nuclear talks; talks that Parsi and NIAC seem pathologically tied to as well.

But the plight of these Iranian Americans should be blatant evidence of the true nature of the mission of the NIAC, which is not to help them, but help Iran gain a nuclear deal with the immediate lifting of all economic sanctions as a reward.

By Michael Tomlinson

The False Choices of the Iran Lobby

May 22, 2015 by admin

As we enter the Memorial Day holiday weekend, families will gather for barbecues and picnics and others will gather to remember those who have fallen in past conflicts and made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation. But Memorial Day should also be a day to commemorate those who didn’t put on a uniform, but still had to make the same sacrifices and their families had to pay that ultimate price.

It is an unfortunate legacy of the world we live in today that innocent men, women and children often have to bear the same price as those who are trained and volunteer to fight. Throughout the Middle East, that scenario is being played out on countless battlefields, in numerous villages, towns and cities in places such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

But even cities and nations unaccustomed to fighting have been places of terror and carnage such as an office in Paris, a store in Sydney or a government building in Canada. All at the hands of extremist Islamists who have copied their playbook of terror from the Iran regime which has had a 30 year head start on terror spectacles and continues to this day with almost daily public hangings in most city squares.

So this Memorial Day ought to serve as a sobering reminder not just of the sacrifices service personnel make, but for those innocents who have been caught in the escalating violence around the world.

All of which makes the choices offered by the Iran lobby in regards to ongoing nuclear talks with the Iran regime all the more odd since supporters such as the National Iranian American Council have consistently framed the choices in a nuclear agreement as stark ones between war and peace. Their hyperbole clouds the real issue driving the mullahs in Iran and for them the choices are not about war and peace.

It’s really about cash and lots of it. Iran’s economy is reeling under the triple blows of corrupt mismanagement by the ruling elites, spiraling oil prices and the heavy costs associated with funding proxy wars and terror groups in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Not to mention the billions of dollars being spent by the regime in building and maintaining a far flung network of installations and research facilities dedicated to developing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles necessary to carry them.

That need for billions of dollars in unfrozen assets, proceeds from oil sales and renewed capital investment is what drives the mullahs. They hunger for cash in the same way an addict craves his next drug fix. It is also why Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, has consistently demanded a complete lifting of all economic sanctions at once, including those levied by the UN Security Council, European Union and the U.S. Congress and president.

And that is the quandary facing the NIAC and other regime lobbyists; how do we sell a nuclear deal driving by a need for a financial bailout of Tehran? In classic spin control, they opt to frame the debate as a choice between war and peace.

They recognize that America is war weary and that voters have little appetite for more American blood to be shed, but the choice for Americans and by extension for Congress and the Obama administration is that the choice really is not between war and peace. It’s about whether or not to let mullahs in Iran get the cash they want and so desperately need.

Economic sanctions work. They brought the mullahs to the negotiating table and they are still the most compelling non-violent tool available to the International community. To abandon them without a solid deal that not only cuts Iranian regime’s nuclear program off at the knees, but also modifies its behavior towards proxy wars, terror groups and human rights is dumb and a mistake of historic proportions.

For when we gather to commemorate and celebrate Memorial Day weekend, we should remember that the surest path to peace is not through appeasement, but through strength; strength of conviction, strength of commitment and strength of will.

I hope your Memorial Day is a peaceful one.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran-Nuclear Talks Going Nowhere Fast

May 21, 2015 by admin

Pity the supporters and cheerleaders of the Iran regime such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council. They have all but shouted themselves blue to the highest mountains that Iran’s mullahs were indeed ready for a sea change in their relationship with the world. They argued that Hassan Rouhani was a new kind of moderate Iranian politician. They urged President Obama to embrace dialogue as the surest path to peace.

Those claims have been undone in large part through Iran’s own actions including the overthrow of the Yemen government, provocative acts in international waters, the decision to move forward with spy trials of American journalists and the continued crackdown at home including stepped up public executions and packing its prisons like sardine cans.

But out of the mouth of the regime’s top leader, Ali Khamenei, comes the most damaging statements to the credibility of the Iran lobbying allies.

In a speech at the Imam Hussein Military University in Tehran yesterday, Khamenei again denounced what he said were escalating demands by the P5+1 negotiating group and flatly declared any interviews of Iranian nuclear scientists by international inspectors to be completely off the table, as well as not allowing inspections of any of Iran’s military sites.

This follows similar statements he made last summer when Khamenei vowed to greatly expand Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity, scaling up to industrial size with 190,000 centrifuges, 10 times the number currently installed.

Not surprisingly, the regime still has not responded to a dozen questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency on the scope and scale of the possible military dimensions of its current nuclear program, leading to the agency’s head declaring serious doubt about Iran’s ability to live up to any agreement.

As the New York Times described, the inability to interview Iranian nuclear scientists makes compliance a moot point.

“Central to that is the ability to interview nuclear scientists, starting with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the man considered by Western intelligence officials to be the closest thing Iran has to J. Robert Oppenheimer, who guided the Manhattan Project to develop the world’s first nuclear weapon,” the Times said.

“The scientists and engineers Fakhrizadeh has assembled over the past 15 years are best suited to explain, or rebut, documents suggesting that Iran has extensively researched warheads, nuclear ignition systems and related technologies. Fakhrizadeh has never been made available to inspectors for interviews, and his network of laboratories, some on university campuses, have not been part of inspections,” added the Times.

Even more surprising were statements made by France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, who unveiled details about the current state of nuclear talks in advance of the June 30 deadline currently taking place in Switzerland, where the Iran regime demanded a 24-day period before international inspectors could visit any of its nuclear sites in the event of a suspected violation.

It is absurd that Iran regime could get over three weeks to cover up or clean out any suspected violation before allowing any inspectors in. It makes a mockery of the P5+1 promise of “anytime, anywhere” inspections as part of the framework agreement previously announced.

Unsurprisingly, Trita Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby have been as silent as fence posts during all this, probably realizing any comments they make in the face of such explicit statements from the one man in the regime in Iran who has the final say over an agreement would be worthless.

By Michael Tomlinson

Things To Know About the Iran Regime This Week

May 18, 2015 by admin

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) questions Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, President Obama’s pick to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, during the second day of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 29, 2010. UPI/Kevin Dietsch

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wrote in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal an editorial outlining eight conditions the Iran regime must meet before any nuclear agreement is reached. The points included common sense ideas such as closure of all hardened or formerly secret nuclear sites and allowing anytime, anywhere inspections of all Iranian military and nonmilitary facilities.

His points are valid and important in order to ensure any deal removes the threat of nuclear weapons from coming into the possession of the Islamic state., but the most important point he outlined as the conditioning of relief from economic sanctions on certification by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran was in full compliance and demonstrate that compliance over a sustained period of time.

The reason why this condition stands out above all others lies in the most pressing need Iran has right now which is cash. Iran’s mullahs have followed a policy of destabilizing the Middle East over the last three years including the funding of Shiite militias in Iraq and virtually taking over its government, supplying arms and support to the Syrian regime in its bloody civil war, and supporting a Houthi rebel army that has overthrown the government of Yemen and plunged the Arabian peninsula into a dangerous proxy war with Saudi Arabia and Sunni gulf states.

Iran’s mullahs have pressed hard for the lifting of all economic sanctions at once should a deal be completed because it needs the estimated $100 billion in frozen assets to help resupply its coffers depleted by proxy wars and plunging oil prices.

But even with this thirst for cash, Iran remains obstinate on even the most basic parts of an agreement. The regime’s top negotiator and Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi opened talks with the IAEA recently which has been demanding access to Iranian military sites such as Parchin. “Iran, which is extremely reluctant to allow atomic inspectors access to military sites, has been stalling the investigation since last August,” reported Reuters.

This shows that mullahs’ desire for cash does have limits, namely they do not want to limit their ability to produce nuclear weapons. Iran’s mullahs believe that possession of nukes places Iran in a prime position to be the power in the region and weapons of mass destruction allow it to offset a nuclear-capable Israel, while also holding a hammer over the heads of Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia.

But this pursuit of weapons and funding of proxy wars have come at a steep price for ordinary Iranians. As Al Arabiya News Channel recently reported in a new series of stories focused on poverty in Iran:

“In 1979, shortly after the shah had been toppled, the new theocratic ruler Ruhollah Khomeini promised free electricity, water supplies and transportation services to all Iranians, to be paid for by oil revenues under a ‘just’ Islamic economic system. Yet this promise – repeated by several regime presidents after him to make the poor feel the benefits of Iran’s oil wealth – was never delivered.”

Oddly enough though, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seems to think North Korea can somehow learn a positive lesson from any completed deal with Iran, which leaves objective observers dumbstruck since it was North Korea that provided the mullahs with the template for achieving nuclear capability by negotiating an agreement and then violating every aspect of it. In fact, North Korea has supplied Iran with much of its nuclear research and virtually all of its ballistic missile capability under manufacturing license.

Unfortunately while the rhetoric is starting to heat up on the near presidential campaign trail, the news media have all but ignored violent protests that have broken out in Iranian cities. The recent protests against the regime’s oppression began after a May 4 incident in which 27-year-old Farinaz Khosravani jumped to her death from a window when an Iranian intelligence officer allegedly tried to rape her at the hotel where she worked in the city of Mahabad according to the International Business Times.

The mass protests have been met harshly by Iranian regime’s security forces with the potential for even more deaths as a result.

All of which leads us to the most combustible issue coming to a head this week as an Iranian ship heads towards Yemen with what the regime calls a cargo of “humanitarian supplies,” but with no ability to independently verify it.

Iranian Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, the deputy chief of staff, warned that any attempt to interfere with the vessel would “spark a fire” in a clear warning to the U.S. Navy. The stakes rise higher as the Iran regime starts the weekend talking about a nuclear peace and ends it with warnings of war.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Countdown to a Gathering of Resistance

May 13, 2015 by admin

In exactly one month from today, there will be one of the largest gatherings of people dedicated to changing Iran from a religious, despotic regime to a multicultural, democratic, secular nation.

The annual meeting, sponsored by the organizations supporting the National Council of Resistance of Iran, one of the largest resistance groups worldwide to the Iran regime, is held outside of Paris, France and offers a platform for elected leaders, women’s activists, religious leaders, death penalty opponents, anti-nuclear groups and Iranian dissidents to join in an united voice against the mullahs in Tehran and their brutality.

Led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, a moderate woman leader of a global Muslim group, the NCRI offers a compelling and unmistakable contrast to what Iran and its lobbying supporters attempt to portray the resistance as a group of out-of-touch Iranian exiles who do not represent the true hopes of the Iranian people.

The Iran lobby has worked relentlessly to attack any appearance of an organized resistance to the regime. Groups such as the National Iranian American Council, blogs such as Lobelog and columnists such as Eli Clifton have sought to misinform and distort the truth in the hopes of throwing enough mud at a wall so that something, anything will stick. The same goes for the distortions being played out over social media.

Why does the Iran lobby seem so offended by any dissent? Largely because its truth is as fragile as a house of cards, ready to be blown over with the slightest breeze. The daily conduct and revelations about the Iran regime undercuts anything the lobby does.

As it tries to portray Hassan Rouhani as a moderate interested in a nuclear compromise, his master, top mullah Ali Khamenei, denounces any nuclear deal that does not reward the regime with an unconditional lifting of economic sanctions.

As foreign minister Javad Zarif smiles for the cameras with Western leaders, Iran is busy leading proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. And many are being executed at home for various excuses, in order to raise fear amongst people and particularly the women and the youth.

As a sympathetic news media try to portray a nuclear compromise as advantageous for regional security and stability, Iran’s neighbors such as Saudi Arabia openly question the possibility of jumping into a nuclear program of their own to match Iran.

Most galling of all is the central truth facing the Iran lobby; the Iranian resistance is not just a collection of academics or elites living in exile. It is comprised of millions of people of all religions, ethnicities and nationalities, all working towards a common dream of freedom.

It has deep connections to millions of Iranians living within the regime who provide information on human rights abuses, demonstrations, police and paramilitary activities and economic performance; all of which puts to a lie the claims made by Iran’s leaders.

The resistance movement has helped uncover secret Iranian nuclear facilities. It has helped bring to light the arrest, imprisonment and abuse of countless thousands of prisoners of conscience. It has shifted the perception of global leaders who no longer believe the flowery speeches and moderate claims made by the mullahs.

Most of all, the resistance movement is a living, breathing embodiment of the hope for real change in Iran. It cannot be explained away by the Iran lobby and is a constant thorn in their side.

Over the next month, as we build up towards the gathering on June 13th in Paris, we will also be on a parallel track with new nuclear talks aimed at delivering a final agreement by the June 30^th deadline. You can bet the lobby will ramp up the rhetoric and vitriol in order to try and salvage an agreement in the wake of near unanimous action by the U.S. Senate to review and decide on any deal.

If there is one thing we know, the pressure of a countdown to June 30^th will place the Iran regime and its lobby under ever-increasing scrutiny.

By Laura Carnahan

Shrinking Hopes of the Iran Regime

May 12, 2015 by admin

The Iran regime continues to suffer reversals on several fronts as it becomes increasingly clear it has overreached in supporting proxy wars and acting as an international rogue state, alarming its neighbors, as well as members of Congress even as it seeks to close a favorable nuclear deal.

Even while the third round of nuclear talks to move the April framework forward begins shortly, Iran’s mullahs have exhibited a callous disregard for international opinion as it engages in an ever brutal human rights crackdown which was highlighted by the arrest of noted human rights lawyer and death penalty opponent Narges Mohammadi without warning or explanation.

According to report released by Iran Human Rights group, in the 18 months since the election of President Rouhani in June 2013, Iranian authorities executed more than 1,193 people. This is an average of more than two executions every day.

The number of executions in that period was 31 percent higher than the number in the 18 months before President Rouhani assumed power. The number of juvenile offenders executed in 2014 was the highest since 1990.

Other human rights and Iranian resistance groups have pegged the number of executed by the regime even higher at 1,500 men, women and children.

But the prospect of a nuclear agreement is being met with growing skepticism with unexpected signs of trouble emerging including the potential for Iran to vastly increase its cyber warfare capabilities.

In a piece in The Hill, Fred Kagan, a national security scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and co-author of a recent report on the Iranian cyber threat, said “We’re in a lose-lose situation from that standpoint. Would you rather have them do that with more resources or fewer?”

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), recalled a speech last year in which Iran’s top mullah Ali Khamenei reminded university students they were “cyberwar agents.”

“I do not expect Iran’s quest for power to decrease if an agreement is reached, and cyber warfare is clearly part of its strategy,” he said.

In another clear signal about the threat the Iran regime poses to the region, a summit organized by the Obama administration in Washington invited the leaders of the six Arab Gulf states involved in the military campaign in Yemen against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, but only two monarchs confirmed their attendance with Saudi Arabia’s King Hamad bin Isaa Al Khalifa conspicuously declining the invitation.

The decision amounts to a public vote of no confidence in the U.S.-led response to Iranian aggression and proxy wars in Yemen, Syria and Iraq fueled by Iranian cash, weapons and fighters.

All of which served as a backdrop to a vote in the U.S. Senate yesterday by an unanimous zhi90-0 margin calling for the Iran regime to release three Americans – Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati and Jason Rezaian – that it holds in its prisons and assist in locating still-missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), who introduced the measure, argued the four should have been released before the U.S. started negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran.

“Iran thinks it elevates its position in the world because it does these kinds of things. It does not,” Risch said. “Certainly it shows toughness, but a barbarian type of toughness that the world is not impressed with at all.”

The contradictions in these nuclear talks were described by Jennifer Rubin writing in the Washington Post’s Right Turn blog:

“In short, not only can we not trust the Iranians to comply with whatever is in a final deal but we also cannot trust the administration to call them on it when Iran again cheats, as we know it will. In big ways and small, the administration has already signaled it will have a high tolerance for violations so as not to upset its diplomatic goals. Imagine how much more tolerant the Obama administration will be when cheating would spell the demolition of the president’s ‘legacy.’”

As the scrutiny deepens and expands on the Iran regime, more of the world’s news media are beginning to ask the kinds of hard questions the mullahs do not want to answer as they see their hopes for pulling a fast one on the world quickly shrinking.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Dark Years of Iran Regime Can End

May 11, 2015 by admin

The reliable foot soldier for the Iran regime, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, offered an editorial over the weekend in the Huffington Post in which he blamed the decision to invade Iraq by former President George W. Bush as being the pivotal turning point for the deterioration of the Middle East.

Parsi goes on to say the regime in Tehran can be a key actor “by virtue of its strong state, Iran can play a critical stabilizing role in the region.”

Unfortunately, Parsi is once again drinking the Kool-Aid of the mullahs and ignoring history and its obvious lessons.

While the Bush administration’s decisions in Iraq are certainly debatable, pointing to the Middle East’s problems from only a decade back in time is silly. The hijacking of the Iranian revolution by the religious fanatics of Khomeini’s mullahs and turning Iran into a giant sectarian factory for terrorism and extremism over the past three decades can be viewed as a much more significant act.

The Iran regime’s involvement as the chief sponsor of Hezbollah turned Lebanon, a once-thriving economic and multi-cultural jewel into a bloody sectarian battlefield since the 1980s.

The regime’s infiltration of Iraq during the U.S.-led invasion resulted in the deaths and injuries of thousands of military personnel and civilians, while also laying the ground work for the rise of Shiite militias and death squads plunging that country back into civil war.

Iran’s unconditional support of Syria’s embattled president allowed the formation of ISIS to spring up as Iran’s Quds Force fighters alongside Syrian army units targeted moderate, Western-backed Syrian rebels.

And only last month have we seen the wreckage caused by Iran’s backing of Houthi rebels in Yemen with the collapse of that government and a full-blown proxy war now being waged by Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states against Iran’s proxies.

Top that off with Iran’s secret drive to build a nuclear weapon and you now have introduced an unrestrained arms race into the Middle East as Saudi Arabia and other neighbors to Iran seriously consider the need to arm themselves against the threat from Tehran.

What the U.S. or for that matter any other country has done in the Middle East has paled compared to the damage and destruction wrought by Iran’s relentless mullahs over the past 30 years.

But what is most incredulous about Parsi’s claims is the idea that a nuclear deal with Iran will forge a new framework by which cooperation between the U.S. and Iran would be the norm moving forward. To say that Iran’s mullahs do not have an adversarial view of the West and the U.S. in particular is absurd, given the annual rituals in Tehran to lead national “Death to America” chants and hold American citizens as hostages in prison without charge or trial to be used as political pawns like some nightmarish replay of North Korea’s negotiating tactics.

The regime in Iran has never followed an international agreement it later viewed as being inconvenient towards their objectives. Iran has never offered any example where it has reigned in extremist behavior in favor of acting in accordance with international law.

There is little reason to think things would be different regardless of Parsi’s assurances to the contrary.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Loses 98-1 in Senate Vote

May 8, 2015 by admin

The Senate voted by a whopping 98-1 margin to approve the Corker-Menendez bill giving it 30 days to review and approve or vote down any nuclear agreement negotiated with the Iran regime and the P5+1 group of nations; affirming the utter failure by Iran’s lobbyists to halt the drive for Congressional review.

While the passage of this landmark legislation – where it is headed towards a similar passage in the House – represents the hard work of a bipartisan coalition of legislators to wedge Congress into the Iran nuclear talks, it boldly shows the ineffectual nature of the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council led by Trita Parsi.

The NIAC has loudly opposed any effort to allow Congress approval of any deal. When the Corker-Menendez bill was first introduced, NIAC issued a quick denouncement warning that “under this legislation, Congress would delay the implementation of any nuclear deal reached with Iran while deciding whether to permanently remove the President’s powers to execute a deal.”

The NIAC rightly recognizes that allowing Congress to approve any deal would bring the regime’s conduct into the equation and allow a public debate on whether or not a regime involved in proxy wars, terrorist activities, brutal human rights abuses and provoking sectarian civil wars is trustworthy enough for an agreement.

A recent NBC News poll found 68 percent of Americans believed Iran was either not too likely or not likely at all to abide by a nuclear agreement. Senators are not dumb, they can read a poll better than anyone else and these types of numbers compelled them to ignore the complaints of the Iran lobby and opt for further oversight.

But the legislative win wasn’t complete. There still remained within the bill some troubling provisions outlined by the Washington Post and decried by co-sponsor Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) including “provisions that may wind up in a final deal — affording Iran immediate sanctions relief (‘a signing bonus’), allowing Iran to keep working on advanced research, reliance on the faulty concept of snapback sanctions, the failure to secure anytime/any place inspections, Iran’s refusal to come clean on past military dimensions of the program and excluding terrorism from sanctions consideration.”

But Sen. Menendez signaled that this bill would not be the final word on the Iran regime’s conduct, promising additional legislation.

“I stand ready to work with colleagues immediately on pursuing other concerns such as missile technology, such as terrorism, such as their human rights violations, such as their anti-Semitism, such as the Americans who are being held hostage. And to look at either sanctions or enhanced sanctions if they already exist on some of these elements that we should be considering. That is separate and apart from a nuclear program,” he said.

The NIAC, stinging from the Senate defeat, has turned its attention to the upcoming House vote, where it is also headed to another defeat, placing its hopes in a letter circulated among Democratic House members urging President Obama to stay the course in seeking a deal with the Iran regime. The letter, signed by 150 House members, including six non-voting members from U.S. territories, does not represent enough members to halt an override of a presidential veto.

It is clear that even after a “all hands on deck” mobilization by the NIAC to get enough signatures for the House letter, knowing the overwhelming defeat it faced in the Senate, it still could not muster the 145 House members necessary to sustain a presidential veto and instead attempted to hide the failure by counting the six non-voting members.

The fact that NIAC attempted this pathetic fig leaf did little to hide its waning ability to influence the ongoing nuclear debate.

By Michael Tomlinson