Iran Talks – Page 9

Trita Parsi of NIAC Lobbies for Iran

March 29, 2015 by admin

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.

In an article published at the American Thinker titled “Friends of Iran in the United States” Michael Curtis studies Trita Parsi and his lobby firm, NIAC and how they are acting in favor of the mullahs by demanding annihilation of the nuclear related sanctions on Iran. Given the extent of activities by the Iranian lobby, the entire article is published below for our readers.

“On February 19, 2015, a full-page ad was published in the New York Times by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) opposing the invitation given to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress. It asked the question: “Will Congress side with our President or a Foreign Leader?”

The ad did not disclose that the founder and president of the organization, Trita Parsi, was an Iranian-Swedish citizen who holds a Green Card and has had links with Iranian authorities, especially the Iranian defense minister, Javad Zarif. Those links were held to be extremely close by a critic, Hassan Daioleslam, an Iranian-American journalist and human rights activist who left Iran in 1981 and lives in Arizona. He wrote that NIAC, and its leader Parsi, are an organization engaged in lobbying Congress on behalf of a foreign government – namely, that of Iran.

The invitation to Netanyahu and his speech to Congress became the occasion for dramatic political theater by Team Obama and its supporters, who disliked the Israeli’s criticism of the Obama administration’s attitude toward Iran. Nothing was said by that team or in the mainstream media on the question of whether the NIAC had lobbied or tried to lobby Congress or had any impact on the current policy of the Obama administration in negotiating with Iran.

In his articles, Daioleslam (Dia) claimed that the NIAC, and former Congressman Bob Ney, who was associated with it, were helping Iran to manipulate U.S. policy on Iran’s behalf. Among other issues, in 2007, the organization had lobbied to prevent U.S. funds going to democratic elements in Iran. The NIAC brought a lawsuit in May 2008 in the attempt to halt Daioleslam’s further criticism of the Iranian regime. But it delayed producing, and sometimes failed to produce, necessary information on its computers, calendar entries, and e-mails. In addition, the assistant director of the NIAC changed some files from references to “lobbying” to “legislative direct.”

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judge John Bates) in September 2012 dismissed the lawsuit. The Court found that the NIAC had given false information to it, and it ordered the NIAC to pay Daioleslam’s legal expenses – about $184,000. It held that the work of the NIAC and its founder, Trita Parsi, was not inconsistent with the idea that it was “first and foremost an advocate for the regime.” Consequently, Daioleslam’s statement could not be considered defamatory.

The court in July 2010 had ordered NIAC three times to submit its server for inspection to determine if all documents had been given to it, and complained that additional computers in the network of the NIAC had not been produced. The court found that the NIAC had withheld 5,500 e-mails written by its senior officials. It is unclear whether this refusal or inability to produce documents was deliberate or result or incompetence.

The decision of the District Court was upheld by the opinion of two circuit judges and a senior circuit judge in the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in a decision on February 10, 2015. The Court of Appeals approved the opinion of the District Court that the NIAC was involved in systematic abuse of the legal discovery process and made false declarations to the court.

The court held that the NIAC had “flouted multiple court orders” and taken “inexcusable” action in delaying delivery of documents to during the lawsuit that it had itself brought, and therefore had driven up the costs imposed on the Daioleslam. It referred to the NAIC’s conduct as “dilatory, dishonest, and intransigent.”

Ironically, this case is somewhat similar to other events current in Washington where individuals have refused to provide or have misplaced official documents or have given incomplete records after requests by members of Congress for full documentation.

The Court did not finally decide if the NIAC had violated the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The statute, enacted in 1938, requires that persons acting as agents of foreign authorities in a political or quasi-political capacity make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with a foreign entity. Action of this kind is legally different from advocating better ties with a foreign entity, because this would be in the interests of the U.S.

The NIAC was founded in 2002 by Trita Parsi, who said it would enable Iranian-Americans to condemn the 9/11 attacks. It is organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and states that it is non-partisan and does not receive funds from the Iranian government or from the United States government. It says it is dedicated to advancing the interests of the Iranian-American community on civic, cultural, and political issues. It speaks on behalf of that community to which it refers as “one of the most highly educated minority groups in the U.S.”

The founder and president of the NIAC has been invited to the White House, has arranged meetings between the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and members of Congress, and given talks at the CIA. He has done so without registering as an agent of a foreign power.

The NIAC also expresses its “vision” to work to ensure that human rights are upheld in Iran and that civil rights are protected in the U.S. It received funds, almost $200,000, from the National Endowment for Democracy.

More significantly, the NIAC has pressed for an end to international sanctions on Iran. The NIAC has also played a partisan role in U.S. and international politics. It lobbied against the appointment of Dennis Ross to the National Security Council. The documents revealed to the Court that Parsi had helped prepare reports about Iran and helped send them to Atieh Company in Tehran, which paid Parsi for his work.

One can only hope that the NIAC was not consulted in the current negotiations with Iran on nuclear issues.”

By Michael Curtis, published at American Thinker

The Proxy War of the Regime in Iran

March 27, 2015 by admin

Events in the Mideast are moving fast as Yemen is toppled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, inviting a response by Saudi Arabia which launched air strikes in Yemen alongside Gulf State allies in an effort to check the progress being made by another Iranian regime proxy.

The stunning advances made by the Houthis shined a spotlight on a favorite tactic of Iran’s mullahs which is the use of proxies to fight their wars. It’s a tactic that harkens back to the Cold War-era fights in Southeast Asia and Africa between the West and old Soviet empire as Third World countries supplied the cannon fodder for countless wars, large and small.

The Iranian regime took a page out of the history books in funding, arming, training and then directing terror networks over the past three decades, most notably Hezbollah which has chalked up several ignominious victories, including:

Bombings of the U.S. Embassy and barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983 killing 241 Americans and another bombing of the embassy annex in 1984;
Hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985;
Systematic kidnapping and hostage taking of Americans and Europeans from 1982 to 1992 in Lebanon;
Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 killing 19 American servicemen; and
Training and arming of insurgents during the Iraq War targeting thousands of innocent Iraqis and also American service personnel.

Iran’s mullahs have used Hezbollah fighters to prevent the fall of Syria’s President Assad and target moderate rebels which has resulted in ISIS to rise up and form.

The Iranian regime has also used its virtual puppeteering of Shiite militias in Iraq in fighting ISIS that gave it the excuse necessary to move its military wholesale into Iraq and take over vast parts of that country’s military and political arms.

Though the recent Yemen attack by the gulf countries shows that the mullahs will pay a price for overreaching themselves, yet the regime in Iran, desperate to create crisis outside (to cover up the already exploding discontent of the Iranians against mullah’s dictatorship), has moved its proxies on the chessboard and enabled it to now interfere in a swath of territory stretching from the Mediterranean with Lebanon, through Syria and Iraq and now down through Yemen.

Yet, given the long and bloody history of the Iranian regime’s use of proxies to wage war, terror and murder, the regime’s lobbying and PR machine continually seeks to gloss over that record and instead attempt to rehabilitate its leaders. It’s akin to hiring a PR firm to try and redo the brand image of the Nazis.

The most recent example is an editorial from the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi who wrote in The Atlantic that the regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei was a misunderstood softie who really wanted peace with the West. Parsi offers as logic, Iran’s historical interactions with the world going back to 1813 as reason for the regime’s natural suspicions of the rest of the world’s motives

Now, I am willing to concede that Khamenei is an old man, but I doubt he was around to be personally offended by anything that happened in the early 19^th century. Parsi also never mentions Khamenei’s direction of Iran’s proxies, or his oversight of one of the most brutal human rights periods in Iranian history

Parsi also skips over Khamenei’s annual verbal calisthenics of leading chants of “Death to America” or his angry pronouncements that Iran will give no quarter in its efforts to preserve its multi-billion nuclear development program that was conceived in secret, violating international agreements and to this day, still largely uninspected by international agencies.

One would love to ask Parsi why, if Iran’s history is so important to understanding the motivations of the regime’s leadership, can’t the West use the Iranian regime’s bloody history of using proxies in its wars as evidence of the regime’s desire to wage war until it achieves its goals of establishing an Islamic extremist empire for itself?

Of course, he would probably tell us Iran doesn’t have any proxies.

By Laura Carnahan

Yemen as Warning for Iran Regime Nuclear Deal

March 26, 2015 by admin

As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” But what do you say when you’ve been fooled over and over again? “I’m an idiot?” Maybe and in this case, it almost certainly applies to anyone thinking they can trust the Iranian regime.

News came out of Yemen that Iranian-backed Houthi rebels had taken over the capital Sana and also moved south forcing the popularly-elected President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi to reportedly flee by boat from the port city of Aden.

Yemeni intelligence officers still loyal to Hadi’s failing government attempted to burn secret files in a scene reminiscent of the effort to destroy files in the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 as militants stormed the building before the Iranian revolution was hijacked by radical extremist mullahs.

The fact that the Iranian regime has been deeply involved in the financing, training, equipping and leadership of Hezbollah fighters in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and now Houthi rebels in Yemen, all the while pushing for a rapid lifting of economic sanctions as part of ongoing nuclear weapons talks with the P5+1 group of nations, leads any rational person to deeply suspect the West is being played for fools by Iran’s mullahs.

It is hard to imagine anyone at the negotiating table in Switzerland being blind and oblivious to what is happening in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, and yet we know little, if anything, about the substance of these talks or if Iran’s conduct around the world has even been mentioned in a cursory way.

What we do know is that the track record of Iran’s mullahs is soaked in blood and is unquestionably focused on fomenting more of the sectarian violence rippling across the Mideast as Iran pushes its extremist ideology everywhere. No doubt the colossal expenditure of money necessary to fund all of these wars is draining Iranian coffers, which is one reason why Iran’s mullahs are almost frantic in their demands for an immediate lifting of all sanctions immediately.

News agencies report upwards of 18 Iranian oil tankers sitting off the coast filled to the brim with 30 million barrels of Iranian oil waiting to depart for market deliveries the minute sanctions are lifted with an agreement; bringing in billions of dollars to fund its war efforts.

The presence of Iranian military and intelligence officers on the ground in Yemen to take possession of classified files related to intelligence activities against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, widely regarded as the terrorist network’s most dangerous branch, can only lead to a single conclusion: Iran’s leadership remains committed to its long-term plan of preserving and even growing terror networks around the world endangering the global peace.

While the White House can easily dismiss Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s recent “Death to America” chants and tweets as something for “domestic political consumption,” it is impossible to ignore the active security threats the Iranian regime presents in nations where the U.S. is literally running out the door such as Syria and Yemen.

Trust. It’s a simple word, but one filled with powerful meaning. It is earned and often only after demonstrations to earn trust over a long period of time. We know how trust works in our work lives, families, personal relationships, even in our choices of which brands to buy. Trust is a singularly important human emotion.

If the U.S. closes a deal with the Iranian regime without any pre-conditions on Iranian terror activities, let along relief for its gross human rights abuses at home, then the real fools will be those who support such an agreement and place their trust in Iran’s mullahs to keep their word when their past betrays them.

By Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Example of Helsinki for Iran Dead Right

March 12, 2015 by admin

The lack of intellectual rigor coming from the Iranian regime’s foremost lobbying team in the National Iranian American Council fails to impress and today is no exception with an inane editorial written by Tyler Cullis and appearing in the New York Times.

In it, Cullis attempts to draw parallels between the diplomatic efforts made by President Gerald in overcoming Senate opposition to craft an accord with the old Soviet Union in an effort to lay the groundwork for détente between the East and West. He aligns this scenario with what is currently happening in talks between the Iranian regime and the P5+1 group of nations seeking to restrict the mullahs march to a nuclear weapon.

Cullis fails to mention several key and crucial distinctions between the two that have an even more profound impact on current talks.

For one thing, President Ford attempted to make human rights a core feature of the accords in recognition of the terrible human rights violations occurring regularly within the Warsaw Pact nations. In a speech he gave while trying to sell the Accords to the American public, he said:

“The Helsinki documents involve political and moral commitments aimed at lessening tension and opening further the lines of communication between peoples of East and West. . . We are not committing ourselves to anything beyond what we are already committed to by our own moral and legal standards and by more formal treaty agreements such as the United Nations Charter and Declaration of Human Rights.”

It was significant for President Ford to stress the human rights aspects of the Accords since the agreement would effectively make permanent the Soviet Union’s annexation of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after World War II and place them under harsh rules for the next 30 years.

The Accords were also significant because they were not a treaty per se, as evidenced by the strong objections by nations such as Canada, Spain and Ireland in allowing the Soviets to swallow the Baltic States. In a bit of historical irony, the Accords laid the groundwork for the later Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the same working group which has floundered in building a cohesive response to Russia’s recent annexation of the Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine.

All of which further demonstrates the feebleness of Cullis argument. At no point during the P5+1 talks has the Iranian regime’s dismal human rights record ever been put on the negotiating table, nor its long support and sponsorship of global and Islamic extremist terror groups.

One of the key recognitions of the Helsinki Accords was its commitment and focus to the preservation of human rights as a key element in the dialogue between the West and Soviet Union. It presented the framework by which later talks under détente efforts by preceding Presidents were always framed by the need to dissuade the Soviets from abusing its own people and those of nations under their sway.

It is a model of success that has borne early fruit with the Iranian regime by forcing it to come to the negotiating table after economic sanctions began having their desired effect, but Cullis and other regime sympathizers would have us give Iran’s mullahs the breathing room necessary to rebuild their economy while arming themselves with nuclear weapons under the guise of peaceful talks.

While Cullis holds the Helsinki Accords as a model for Iranian talks, he unwittingly reinforces the true reason why those Accords succeeded and it had nothing to do with President Ford ignoring Congress, but had everything to do with his focus on human rights.

According to the Cold War scholar John Lewis Gaddis in his book “The Cold War: A New History” (2005), “Leonid Brezhnev had looked forward, Anatoly Dobrynin recalls, to the ‘publicity he would gain…when the Soviet public learned of the final settlement of the postwar boundaries for which they had sacrificed so much’… ‘[Instead, the Helsinki Accords] gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement’… What this meant was that the people who lived under these systems — at least the more courageous — could claim official permission to say what they thought.”

We can only hope that this proposed agreement with the regime gets scrapped and instead a true human rights-driven manifesto takes its place rightly restoring the importance of Iran’s mullahs getting an agreement conditioned only by their acceptance and implementation of human rights improvements and the renunciation of terror.

Thank you Mr. Culis for so eloquently making my point.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Marginalization of NIAC

March 6, 2015 by admin

With the debris beginning to clear from the build up to the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech to a joint session of Congress and the March 24^th deadline fast approaching for the P5+1 negotiators in Geneva, Switzerland for a framework of a deal for halting the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, it is an opportune time to survey the landscape and ask just how effective Iran’s chief lobbyists, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), have been lately.

The NIAC had performed almost every acrobatic maneuver in drowning out the message about the true nature of the Iranian regime and its role as the center of extremist Islam in the world and terrorism, but how effective has it truly been?

NIAC also held a “National Day of Action” in an attempt to deliver petitions to local Congressional offices calling for an end to economic sanctions against the mullah’s regime in Iran. After much hype, the actual results were not even worthy of a Model UN session of high school students. Roughly 65 teams in only half of the states fanned out to deliver a few petitions and mostly posed for selfies in Congressional offices.

The political muscle of the NIAC falls far short of what we have come to expect from powerhouse political operations such as the National Rifle Association, labor unions, environmental groups or even grassroots efforts like Occupy Wall Street. From an impact standpoint, the NIAC seems to rank somewhere between “irrelevancy” and “obscurity.”

But the NIAC does not lack a certain notoriety, especially in the wake of a disastrous defamation suit it filed in which evidence was produced linking it to the Iranian regime and steps taken by it to obscure and cover up those connections. The NIAC has struggled mightily to recast the decision by the US federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in a favorable light, but the court ruling reads like a blow-by-blow indictment of NIAC.

An excellent review of the decision and its implications for NIAC was published by Business Insider by Armin Rosen the other day and worth reading. Rosen recounts the most damning revelations from the court decision, including finding that:

NIAC really didn’t produce calendar records it was ordered to;
NIAC initially hid the existence of four of its computers from the court and was not honest about what they were used for;
NIAC misrepresented how its computer system was configured;
NIAC didn’t explain why it withheld 5,500 emails from its co-founder and former outreach director;
NIAC was not truthful about the nature of its record-keeping system;
NIAC took two and a half years to produce its membership lists under court order; and
NIAC did not turn over mountains of relevant documents and even altered an important document after the lawsuit was brought.

In response, the NIAC issued a “clarification” on its website in a feeble attempt to restate Judge Robert Wilkens’ opinion and heavily edited from his full opinion.

Lastly, there is a growing realization among U.S. news organizations that NIAC is merely a functionary for the Iranian regime and as such less of its “news” is finding its way into mainstream media. A review of just the past few days during the NIAC’s most intense lobbying and media efforts revealed the overwhelming bulk of news organizations carrying NIAC’s statements were Arabic news media with ties to the Iranian regime or semi-official Iranian news organs.

The dearth of in-depth coverage is growing evidence the group has worn out its welcome when it comes to serious policy discussions about Iran’s nuclear program and has even less credibility when taken into context of its apparent lack of criticism of the regime over human rights violations, support for terrorist groups and the propagation of Islamic extremism.

It is a curiosity for American news media to receive media pitches from NIAC that border on hysterical when it blithely ignores injustices committed by the Iranian regime so egregious as to shock even seasoned foreign correspondents.

Thankfully, the NIAC is becoming less of an influence as evidenced by this week’s events. We can only hope it eventually fades into political obscurity the same way the dodo bird became extinct.

By Michael Tomlinson

Can Iran Mullahs Be Trusted?

March 3, 2015 by admin

In the Wall Street Journal, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), a former Air Force B-1 pilot and member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, authored an editorial that raises the most essential question facing the Congress, American people and frankly the world right now: “In what way is Iran a reliable negotiating partner?”

The short answer to that question is: “None.”

Congressman Stewart forthrightly examines the conundrum facing anyone dealing with Iran’s mullahs. What evidence has there been to give reassurance to anyone sitting across from a negotiating table from them that they would adhere to the letter and spirit of any agreement?

His experiences during the Cold War in dealing with the old Soviet Union are instructive because they teach us that for any agreement to work, both sides have to be considered reliable and trustworthy partners. It is also an axiom of politics and nation states that if breaking an agreement serves the national interest, it is likely going to be broken.

He goes on to recount the litany of acts by Iran’s leaders which would give any normally sane person pause, including listing Iran as an official sponsor of state terrorism for the last 30 years and creation of an indigenous military-industrial complex allowing it to create and ship out its own weapons and ammunition to terror groups.

Stewart cites mullahs in Iran as the primary weapons supplier for two other state sponsors of terrorism in Syria and Sudan, while it supplies arms to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, as well as Shiite militias in Iraq.

“Tehran’s regime suppresses internal dissent and has executed tens of thousands of its own citizens for opposing the regime. It is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. military personnel in Iraq through improvised explosive devices supplied to Shiite militias in the past decade. Iran counts as close allies Russia, China and North Korea, which team with the regime in developing ballistic missiles and nuclear capabilities,” Stewart writes.

But Stewart correctly goes on to cite the Iranian regime’s involvement in money laundering, drug and arms trafficking, counterfeiting, promoting extremism and plotting terrorist attacks in South and Central America, demonstrating the mullahs reach and global aspirations.

Besides a long record of regular violations of international and human rights law, Stewart asks how can the regime in Iran be trusted if the primary mechanism for compliance – international inspections – isn’t even allowed by the regime? He cites the International Atomic Energy Agency report from Feb. 20 that was harshly critical of Iran’s stonewalling of inspections and continued non-compliance.

If Iran’s mullahs won’t even comply with inspections at this critical juncture when it claims a heartfelt desire to negotiate a deal, when will it ever allow inspections?

The deep and abiding obstacle starts and ends with the intentions of the ruling mullahs. Unfortunately the U.S. and the rest of the P5+1 group have never conditioned a nuclear deal on a fundamental request; that is Iran’s transition from a religious theocracy to a democratic society.

Unless you can change Iran’s society and government to one that is at its core more law-abiding, more peaceful and more interested in being an international partner, then any agreement negotiated with the current regime isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

Trust is something that is earned and built upon. It is not something that one “hopes” is inherent when the track record is so devoid of any trust. Therefore in the case of Iran mullahs, it should be “Verify before you trust.”

By Laura Carnahan

Iran emphasis on lifting sanctions not likely to happen

February 10, 2015 by admin

This past weekend, the P5+1 group of nations negotiating a potential nuclear arms deal with Iran held impromptu meetings against the backdrop of worsening conditions in Ukraine with separatists battling for control of large swathes of that country.

In a closing press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Barack Obama signaled his clearest belief yet additional extensions to negotiations would not prove useful, nor be granted should this latest third round of talks fail to yield a framework of an agreement by March 24th, a deadline imposed by Senate Democrats.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif offered a slightly differing take when he also agreed any extension would not be useful, but reiterated mullah’s position that economic sanctions be quickly lifted completely should a deal be worked out. In short, Zarif wants a blank check in restoring and normalizing relations with the U.S.

In many ways Zarif could be forgiven his rose colored glasses. He has witnessed the West cave in twice before on negotiating sessions in which mullahs in Iran gave up barely anything and in return, is in the process of receiving $11 billion in frozen assets in several payments at a critical time for Iran’s economy as oil prices tanked globally and Iran’s military commitments in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan were taking a toll.

Zarif has also seen Obama’s foreign policy deteriorate in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East with radicalized Islamist movements gaining nearly everywhere; all of which has led him and his bosses, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and President Hassan Rouhani, to calculate just how long they can get away with dangling the carrot.

The unfortunate hiccup for them came with the midterm elections in the U.S. when an American public, sickened by the violence taking place around the world and seeing grisly videos of killings, acted swiftly to send an unmistakable message that terrorism was a top concern.

Iranian regime’s imposing PR and lobbying machine in the U.S. towed the party line as groups such as the National Iranian American Council gamely tried to persuade doubting lawmakers that Iran was indeed ready to deal. Their latest so-called “win” was the move by Senate Democrats to delay re-imposing sanctions until March 24th, but all that did in effect was move the June 30th deadline up by three months instead.

Now faced with the dark reality of receiving no more extensions, mullahs in Iran are holding onto the position that any agreement be accompanied by a full and complete cessation of sanctions. In essence, mullahs in Iran wants a do-over and behave as if the past decade of terror, violence, brutality and human rights violations had never happened.

“Sanctions are a liability; you need to get rid of them if you want a solution,” Zarif told attendees at the Munich security conference.

It’s an odd statement since he implies sanctions have to be lifted first before a deal is completed. Secretary Kerry added to the oddity by outlining an acceptable deal would slow Iran’s ability to enrich enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon by one year.

That’s say that again: An acceptable deal with Iran would “slow down” the ability to build a bomb by a year. Not “prevent” Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon, just delay it by a year.

It is hard to fathom a worse situation than to allow Iranian regime the mildly inconvenient cost of 365 days before it gains a nuclear weapon. It is not a scenario that bodes well for the rest of the world.

By Laura Carnahan

When is a Deadline Not a Deadline?

February 6, 2015 by admin

A curious thing happened to the powerful lobbying machine working tirelessly around the clock to halt the re-imposition of economic sanctions by a bi-partisan coalition of Senate Democrats and Republicans last week who felt after two earlier rounds of talks failed the current third round was going nowhere fast as well.

Iranian regime’s sympathizers rejoiced at the agreement by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to postpone action until March 24th and give the Obama administration two additional months to demonstrate there had been meaningful progress towards a verifiable deal agreeable to Congress. Led by the National Iranian American Council, they boasted of the “win” and what it portended for the future of a nuclear agreement.

But in the span of two weeks, these same Iranian loyalists are now suddenly crying foul over the two month delay, now contending all it did was move the original deadline up for a deal from the June 30th deadline agreed to by the P5+1 group negotiating with Iran to March 24th. In essence, the “win” shaved three months instead of gaining two months.

There is nothing quite like patting yourself on the back as a winner only to realize you were an idiot.

Trita Parsi, the NIAC’s head cheerleader, said in comments to Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen, herself a dedicated Iranian regime fan, that “Treating the March ‘interim deadline as the final deadline is highly problematic.’”

Parsi’s comments are almost comic after the NIAC statement two weeks ago in the wake of the Senate’s action which said in part:

“This is a significant victory for those of us who have worked to support a diplomatic agreement, not a war, with Iran. We commend everyone who has worked to stop the diplomacy-killing sanctions bill.”

It seems the NIAC is having a case of buyer’s remorse.

While it seems the vaunted Iranian lobbying machine may have shot itself in the foot, the truth of the matter is that they have not really lost time. In fact, one could argue Iran has already gained two years since the first round of talks collapsed in failure and were kept on a respirator through another failed round of talks last November.

In fact, American public opinion had swung solidly in favor of action against the unprecedented growth in radical Islamic terror around the world as epitomized by the ISIS video depicting the horrific death of Jordan’s pilot by fire, which was simply the straw breaking the camel’s back, forcing Senators to act.

This is the essential point Iran’s cadre of supporters are frankly scared witless about; the sanctions ship has already sailed in large part because mullahs in Iran have already had three years to make good on any substantial deal.

But in that time, Iran has poured vast resources of arms, fighters and cash into terrorist activities. It has helped Hezbollah as it fought in Syria, Iraq as it took over that country’s military, orchestrated the total collapse of Yemen and allowed ISIS to spring forth just on the foreign policy front.

At home, Iran has publicly executed over a 1,200 men and women, cracked down on Internet access, blocked social media, arrested and imprisoned political dissidents, journalists, ethnic and religious minorities and even American citizens.

The fact that a delay to March 24th was granted is quite probably the last shred of hope the Iranian lobby is likely to receive. The fact they are now crying over it is more a testament to their own inadequacies than anything else.

To paraphrase from singer Bryan Adam’s 1981 landmark second album, I would say to the Iranian lobby: “You wanted it, you got it. Now live with it.”

By Michael Tomlinson

It’s About the Humanity Stupid

February 5, 2015 by admin

During President Bill Clinton’s campaign, his manager James Carville coined the now famous phrase “It’s the economy stupid” when deciding on the campaign’s key themes. It proved to be simple, powerful and ultimately successful.

Today we are faced with a variation of that theme with the fast-moving developments occurring on two fronts: the rapid growth of ISIS and the ongoing talks with Iran on nuclear weapons.

In both cases, the nature of the public debate and discussion about each has moved to almost polar opposites for these two issues. On the one hand, ISIS is generating a visceral, deep emotional horror as the world watches video after video revealing beheadings and now burnings. ISIS is attempting and succeeding in forcing an almost gag-like reflex at the barbarity and cruelty it is displaying. ISIS has few if any supporters outside of the few radicalized state sponsors of terror and rival terror groups.

In contrast, the ongoing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program have begun to take on a more technical, dry and almost boring aura. Discussions over centrifuges, enrichment capability, stockpiles of fuel and their purity are topics sometimes more avidly discussed in college physics courses than on late night talk shows. Iran also employs a vast and well-funded lobbying and PR machine that encompasses public interest groups, public relations firms, high-priced lobbyists, columnists and journalists and the occasional ex-public official.

But in weighing the importance of the two issues, there is no greater threat to the stability and peace on a global stage than mullah’s regime in Iran and its quest for a nuclear weapon; which brings me back to Carville’s turn of phrase.

The debate and discussion about Iran’s nuclear weapons program needs a literary jump start and the lexicon of humanity needs to be re-injected back into the issue. Iran has worked mightily to keep any link to its dismal human rights record or sponsorship of terrorist groups from being attached to ongoing nuclear talks. Iran’s mullahs have sought and succeeded to some degree in keeping the discussion as dry as the desert sands.

But these talks do need the context of the impacts Iran is having on the rest of the world in order for the P5+1 group of nations to gain a greater understanding of exactly who sits across the table from them. The difficulty is that after two previous failed rounds of talks and almost three years of unrelenting compromise from the Iranian side, any sane and normal person might be feeling a bit exhausted by this exercise.

The political pressure the Obama administration is under to deliver a foreign policy win of any kind has pushed the talks forward into giving Iran access to over $11 billion in frozen assets for few if any meaningful concessions. The West, in large part, has lost the language battle by no longer including terms such as “human rights,” “political dissidents,” “public executions” or “terror sponsorship” as part of the discussions.

Secretary of State John Kerry briefly introduced a fig leaf when he brought up the plight of imprisoned Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, but that brought little result and still leaves unmentioned the plight of literally thousands that are imprisoned by Iran, including other American citizens.

What has also been notable is the lack of vocabulary amongst Iran’s supporters over the increasing levels of barbarity and violence coming from ISIS. Aside from a statement from the Iranian government, there has been no similar reaction from Iran loyalists such as the National Iranian American Council or their affiliates.

The very absence of any humane commentary illuminates what is missing from any dialogue concerning Iran. It is also the key issue that leaves many Senators on both sides of the political aisle uneasy about any deal negotiated with Iran. Can the U.S. trust a regime whose concepts of human rights and fair and equal treatment of its own people are as foreign to us and ISIS seems to be from the rest of humanity?

Ultimately Congress has marked a red line in the sand in which any deal reached by the P5+1 must be reviewed by Congress and meet with its approval. Senators recognize giving mullahs in Iran a deal providing even the smallest wiggle room to push a nuclear warhead through would forever change the outlook not only for the region, but the rest of the world. Iran is no North Korea. It has proven oil reserves giving it access to all the military technology capability it needs to build and deliver a nuclear weapon.

When negotiators next sit down with their Iranian counterparts, they should be telling themselves “It’s about the humanity stupid.”

By Laura Carnahan

The Irony that is Iran

February 3, 2015 by admin

That ever loyal servant of the Iranian regime, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, penned an editorial appearing in Reuters where he used a curious turn of phrase saying there were schools of “doubt” in Iran as to who was calling the policy shots in the U.S. He was pointing out a view that held Iran’s mullahs either believed President Obama was genuinely interested in a new rapprochement or was simply being captive to the politics of Congress.

Parsi attempts to lay out the idea that Iran is stuck between a rock and a hard place because it wants to do the best deal it can, but has to contend with confusing American politics.

For Parsi’s benefit, we should point out it is because this is a democracy. Get it?

Democracies are messy affairs. They involve open and sometimes hostile public debate. They require free and fair elections. They generate substantial discussion on news media and social media. They need checks and balances to ensure the rights of minorities are respected. In short, they do all the things Iran’s mullahs are terrified of in their own country.

Parsi also attempts to posit the idea that sanctions against Iran are fast coming undone because of a recent delay proposed by Senate Democrats to give President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry an additional two months to nudge Iran forward. Considering Iran has already had two years to stall, demand and berate negotiators, two months doesn’t seem like much.

Democrats, led by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) were also clear in demanding any deal be reviewed by Congress and that they would hold any proposal under close scrutiny in meeting their approval. Not exactly a Rose Garden walk-through for Iran, but then again Parsi will take anything. So desperate is Iran to gain any advantage, it would take even this twig and portray it as an olive tree.

Parsi goes on to portray the complete erosion of Democratic support for new sanctions, but the irony is that the Democratic and Republican proposal is not for the imposition of new sanctions, but simply the re-imposition of existing sanctions that were temporarily suspended after the interim agreement was reached and contingent on Iranian regime making substantial progress forward.

Since then, however Iran’s progress has been as quick as a snail and as noticeable as glaciers growing larger. The regime in Iran has consistently refused access to additional nuclear research sites to the International Atomic Energy Agency. It has stepped up a brutal crackdown on human rights against its own citizens. It has engaged in four separate wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan now, while still supporting terror groups such as Hezbollah.

At no point has the regime in Iran made any substantial concessions on the core issues of reduction in centrifuge capacity and elimination of missile delivery technology obtained from North Korea, another rogue nuclear state.

With the spread of ISIS and Boko Haram and utter collapse of Yemen, the American people have raised concerns over terror above those of jobs and economy in recent polls. This leads one to wonder why Parsi takes the position that sanctions proponents are now on the margins in this debate.

We might excuse his hyperbole for the simple fact NIAC is a well-greased lackey for the mullahs in Iran, but considering the topic of his editorial, we might be more inclined to think Parsi shares the confusion of the mullahs in simply not understanding how a democratic society truly works.

While Parsi raises his histrionics, the fact remains Congress and a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republications numbering at least 62 Senators with an additional 14 patiently waiting two more months before pulling the proverbial trigger on sanctions are more than sufficient to re-impose sanctions and override any presidential veto. We assume Parsi is an intelligent operative for mullahs in Iran and can count votes, which may be why he is throwing everything he can in hopes something sticks before March 24th.

By Michael Tomlinson