Iran Terrorism – Iran Lobby

Bad News for Iran Swamps Iran Lobby

January 9, 2019 by admin

While 2019 may be a fresh start for most people, the new year brings more of the same from the Iranian regime as the European Union announced it was imposing new sanctions on Iran’s intelligence ministry and two Iranian nationals for their likely involvement in two assassination plots in the Netherlands.

The charges were laid out in a letter from the Dutch government to parliament indicating the regime was suspected in at least four assassination and bomb lots throughout Europe over the past three years.

The Dutch indicated that investigations of two murders led to the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from the Netherlands last June as disclosed in the letter signed by Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry cited “strong indications that Iran was involved in the assassinations of two Dutch nationals of Iranian origin,” one in 2015 in the city of Almere and another in 2017 in The Hague.

European intelligence officials have also linked the Iranian government to unsuccessful plots in Denmark and France.

“In the Dutch government’s opinion, hostile acts of this kind flagrantly violate the sovereignty of the Netherlands and are unacceptable,” the letter said.

The sanctions involve freezing assets connected to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and two Iranian officials: Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, a senior Iranian intelligence official, and Assadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat arrested in connection with a plot to bomb a rally of an Iranian opposition group in Paris last year, according to the New York Times.

The unified front by the 28-member European Union was surprising given the vocal cheerleading the Iran lobby, particularly the National Iranian American Council, had been giving to the idea of an alternative payment system being set up by the EU to sidestep U.S. sanctions.

On Tuesday, ambassadors from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands visited the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran “to convey their serious concerns” about Iran’s behavior, according to the Dutch letter.

In response, the regime’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, did not deny the allegations, but accused European countries in a Twitter post of harboring dissidents from the Mujahedeen Khalq, (MEK), the group targeted in the Paris bomb plot and a long-time thorn in the side of the regime.

The growing gap between the publicly advocated idea of adhering to the Iran nuclear deal and the growing terrorist actions under direct control of the Iranian government may prove to be too large for the Iran lobby to overcome as even the staunchest advocates for staying in the nuclear deal such as Germany are pushing hard against the regime over these latest incidents.

Security analysts have said that Iran, under domestic and international pressure, appears to be stepping up its intelligence operations around the world and perhaps even making contingency plans in case of open conflict.

The actions by the regime fly in the face of the messaging the NIAC and other Iran lobby supporters have long advocated of an Iranian government seeking new, more moderate relationships with the West.

These latest incidents and the resulting EU actions undercut virtually all of the past arguments made by NIAC officials such as Trita Parsi and Jamal Abdi, which may explain why the NIAC has gone virtually dark about the new EU sanctions and the revelations of Iranian machinations to carry out terrorist actions on European soil.

While the NIAC has been quick to leap to the defense of the Iranian regime in the past over other transgressions such as test firing of ballistic missiles or bombastic threats by regime leaders, it has become increasingly harder for the long-time regime support group to remain a vocal advocate for Iran as the regime’s actions grow more desperate under the internal pressures of domestic protests and external pressure from renewed sanctions.

What is probably most troubling for the Iran lobby is the direct sanction of an arm of the Iranian government in the form of the MOIS. In the past, the regime has resorted to more clandestine terrorist acts through proxies such as Hezbollah, the Houthi and even Shiite militias to take action against its enemies; often through its special Quds Forces arm of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

But this sanctioning of the MOIS hits directly at an official Iranian government agency and in a regime tightly controlled from top mullah Ali Khamenei on down through his puppet president Hassan Rouhani, there can be little doubt the bomb plots and assassinations were carried out either under the direct orders of Iranian leadership or with its tacit approval.

That places the Iran lobby in a difficult spot. Does it continue to defend the regime in the wake of such overwhelming evidence and risk losing what little credibility it has left or does it try to change channels and messages?

As evidenced by the NIAC website, it’s clear the latter was a more prudent choice as it sought to tackle earth-shattering issues such as the cancellation of user accounts on Slack.com of Iranian users.

What is even more problematic for the Iran lobby is that with the new incoming Congress, the appearance of an Iranian government running assassination plots of foreign soil is likely to counter any hope of persuading the new Democratic majority in the House to fight for lifting sanctions on Iran.

While the EU gives lip service to the idea that the nuclear deal and the bomb plots are separate issues, the incontrovertible truth is that they are not and that fact, more than anything else, is likely to sink any hopes by the NIAC of having any leverage on Capitol Hill.

Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Diplomats Expelled from Albania in Another Murder Plot

December 21, 2018 by admin

The obsession by the Iranian regime to exterminate any dissenting Iranian opinions reached into the Balkan nation of Albania, resulting in the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats who were tied into an alleged plot to attack an Iranian dissident group that has long plagued the mullahs with calls for democratic reform and political freedom.

Albanian officials decided to kick out Iran’s ambassador to that country and another diplomat for “violating their diplomatic status” in another unfolding chapter in the Iranian regime’s ongoing vendetta against any Iranian dissidents.

According to reporting by The Independent, a source with knowledge of the matter said the expulsions were connected to an aborted March 2018 scheme by two alleged Iranian members of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, its foreign secret operations branch, caught planning “an explosive” attack against the base or personnel of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK.

Tirana’s move follows diplomatic rebukes of Iran by Denmark, France, and Netherlands amid allegations of using diplomatic facilities to carry out alleged terrorist operations targeting dissidents living in Europe, including the MEK and Arab exile groups.

In France, an annual gathering of the MEK and related human rights and dissident groups was being held outside Paris and was apparently targeted for a similar explosive device before being stopped by security forces in the Netherlands.

US officials on Wednesday praised the decision by the NATO country to expel the diplomats. US National Security Adviser John Bolton wrote in a Tweet that the move signaled to Iranian leaders that “their support for terrorism will not be tolerated.”

President Trump thanked Prime Minister Edi Rama in a letter for his “steadfast efforts to stand up to Iran and counter its destabilizing activities and efforts to silence dissidents around the globe,” according to the U.S. Embassy in Tirana.

Predictably Iranian regime officials denied any plot and tried to portray the expulsions as an effort by the U.S. to pressure Albania as part of its ongoing sanctions movement as a result of pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

Iranian officials even trotted out the old charge that Bolton had previously spoken at MEK events and was therefore unable to be an impartial party on the issue. A silly charge to make considering this is now the third attempt the regime has mounted in the past year to kill MEK members on foreign soil.

But close observers of Iran describe a resurgence of clandestine operations across Europe and elsewhere targeting Iranian dissident groups. Others have noted Iran’s burgeoning efforts to establish clandestine networks in the Balkans. Albania in particular has a Bektashi religious minority with ties to the Shia branch of Islam practiced as the official religion in Iran.

“What’s happening in Albania has only proved how big Tehran’s networks in the Balkans are,” Ruslan Trad, a researcher and journalist focusing on Iranian influence in the Balkans, told The Independent.

The MEK in Albania were re-located from refugee camps in Iraq after being consistently targeted by Iranian intelligence agents in a series of attacks killing scores of unarmed men and women, with the help of Iranian-controlled Iraqi Shiite militias who subsequently fueled a sectarian conflict in Iraq and fought in the Syrian civil war on the side of protecting the Assad regime.

Past media coverage of the MEK compound – fueled by innuendo by the Iran lobby – criticized the heavily fortified nature of the facilities there for MEK members and tried to cast the group as cult-like in its security preparations.

In light of these most recent efforts at bombings, those precautions now seem not only prudent, but life-saving.

The MEK has drawn the particular ire of the mullahs in Tehran for its long history of revealing secrets such as the existence of the previously secret Iranian nuclear program, as well as the recent surge in protests by Iranians over depressed economic conditions and rampant corruption within the government through smuggled pictures and videos.

Most worrisome is the fact that the MEK represents an alternative voice to the regime in Tehran. The existence of any dissident voice among fellow Iranians is a galling sore point for the regime which demands near total obedience and a cult-like adherence to the whims of the supreme mullah, Ali Khamenei.

The growing strength of the protest movement within Iran among ordinary, working-class Iranians has worried the regime as it has worked to try and put down the demonstrations.

Furious Iranian steelworkers in the city of Ahvaz in oil-rich Khuzestan province, southwest Iran, are continuing to strike in defiance of President Hassan Rouhani’s brutal regime, according to The Express.

Earlier this week, dozens of workers were arrested during raids to their homes, as they pleaded for their basic human rights. But the protests continued and workers chanted: “Imprisoned workers should be freed.” The demonstrations took place despite the heavy presence of security forces attempting to thwart freedom of expression and intimidate the demonstrators.

The ultimate fear of the regime is that the MEK could become an active political force within Iran and marshal the disgruntled Iranian people in a serious challenge to the mullahs rule.

As long as the MEK exists, the mullahs will continue their efforts to attack it.

Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Leader Again Threatens to Cut Off Oil Chokepoint

December 7, 2018 by admin

There are several predictable things about the Iranian regime. For one, it will always hold marches where protestors will chant “Death to America.” For another, it will support terrorist activities against its neighbors and its perceived enemies in far-flung countries.

It will also have its leaders make slightly irrational and not-so-veiled threats against any number of countries, militaries, economies, landmarks – or most recently – navigable waterways.

The latest episode was Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s threat this week that the Iranian regime would disrupt other countries’ oil shipments through the Persian Gulf if the U.S. moved forward with efforts to stop Iranian oil exports as part of its renewed economic sanctions.

“America should know that we are selling our oil and will continue to sell our oil and they are not able to stop our oil exports,” Rouhani said in a televised speech during a trip to the northern Iranian city of Shahroud.

“If one day they want to prevent the export of Iran’s oil, then no oil will be exported from the Persian Gulf,” Rouhani, the supposedly moderate President of the Iranian regime said.

The fact that Rouhani made nearly identical threats in last July should come as no surprise as the regime is long on rhetoric, but short on action on this scale.

His comments were backed up by similar bellicose statements from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose commander was quoted as saying Tehran would block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. went ahead and banned its oil sales.

The concept of a blockade of the Gulf, while appealing to the more irrational members of the mullahs running Iran, would only help topple their rule since any effort to force a blockade would almost assuredly have the opposite effect and unite countries around the world in forcing open the shipping lanes no matter the cost.

The threat comes less than 24 hours after U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that an aircraft carrier group led by the USS John C. Stennis is set to arrive in the Persian Gulf “within days” — which will bring a close what’s been described as the longest period in two decades that a carrier group was absent from the region. Specifically, the unnamed officials identified the purpose as to “exhibit a show of force against Iran”.

The carrier deployment, though previously scheduled, was announced after the U.S. condemned Iran’s test firing a medium-range nuclear capable ballistic missile on Sunday.

It would also reinforce the perception that Tehran was never really serious about moderation when it entered into the nuclear deal and instead only wants to continue disrupting the world stage.

The threat of a blockade is about as serious as the claims by the mullahs that no dissension exists within the Islamic state, despite mounting protests throughout the country.

Even the carefully pushed narrative by the Iran lobby that Europe would come to Iran’s rescue with an alternative financing mechanism designed to help pay for Iranian oil sales in alternative forms of payment got a dose of cold water and had to be refuted by its foreign minister.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denied a Reuters report that said a European mechanism to set up an account to trade with Iran and beat the newly re-imposed U.S. sanctions may not cover oil sales, the Iranian foreign ministry website reported.

“Based on the information we have, it’s not so. Because if Iran’s oil money is not deposited into the account, it’s not clear that there would be any funds for trade, because oil is a major part of Iran’s exports,” Zarif said, according to the website.

“This appears to be propaganda aimed at discouraging people,” Zarif added.

While the Iranian regime had pinned hopes that the effort led by France and Germany would yield dividends, the ill-advised efforts by the regime to assassinate Iranian dissidents in France and Denmark led to renewed calls to punish the regime.

Talk about bad timing. The mullahs seem to excel at it; continually undercutting the messaging by the Iran lobby with idiotic actions.

This contradiction in messages is borne out by a new study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) which revealed a dramatic increase in the regime’s defense spending; far beyond what would be perceived as necessary for its defense.

One key finding was that the 2018–19 defense budget bill is much higher than what even the most ardent critics within the Iranian establishment had sought. These hardliners wanted five percent of the country’s total budgetary outlay for defense, which was already achieved in 2016.

Iran’s military expenditure for 2018–19 is estimated at $19.6 billion out of $260 billion total outlay, which makes defense spending at 7.5 per cent of Iran’s total budget.

Most interesting though was the finding by IISS that the latest Iranian defense budget also had a whopping 84 percent rise in allocations for local forces pointing to rising internal dissent and the need to shift more resources to putting down protests and tracking down dissidents.

So while Rouhani may be blustering about closing the Gulf, the real threat to Iran and its mullahs is not coming from the Straits of Hormuz, but the streets of Tehran.

Michael Tomlinson

Evidence Mounts of Iranian Transgressions Making Action Necessary

December 2, 2018 by admin

The reason why the U.S. pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal two years after its passage was because the track record of compliance by the Iranian regime was littered with failure and the inherent flaw in the agreement of not restraining Iranian regime’s aggression in other areas such as terrorism became problematic.

The inherent flaws in the regime lie at the heart of its style of government: a religious theocracy.

There is no checks or balance system in Iran. The ultimate authority is vested in the supreme religious leader who rules with the near-autonomy of monarchs of old. An interesting irony considering the Islamic revolution in the first place deposed the Shah.

But because of the lack of accountability within the regime to only a select elite few, the future of successful implementation of the nuclear deal was dead on signing.

When the Obama administration and rest of the European Union withdraw demands that Iran comply in areas such as sponsorship of terrorism, destabilization of its neighbors and improvements in human rights at home, all the leverage the world had on Iran evaporated.

The Iran lobby, specifically the National Iranian American Council, have contended that to include such restrictions would have doomed the deal to failure. The reverse has prophetically come true: by not including those provisions, the deal was indeed doomed to fail, and it has.

The bloody trail of Iranian extremism has been well documented, and the Iran lobby has never spoken harshly against that record, only excusing the regime with faint calls for reform and blaming every misstep by the mullahs as being provoked by the U.S. from withdrawing from the nuclear deal.

The harsh truth the Iran lobby has vigorously sought to cover up is the strategic plan the mullahs have to build its own Islamic version of the Warsaw Pact by converting or controlling its neighbors to its brand of extremism and using proxies to institute insurrections and wars.

That plan was worked to some degree with the Iranian regime using Hezbollah and Afghan mercenaries to stem the civil war in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq to control that government and Houthi rebels to overthrow Yemen and threaten regional adversary Saudi Arabia.

But those conflicts haven’t been enough for Iran, even as the mullahs direct the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force to supply more arms, weapons and cash to other militants further afield.

Evidence for these efforts was put on display when Brian Hook, special representative for Iran and senior policy advisor to the U.S. secretary of state, released information that the Iranian regime was violating the United Nations arms export ban by supplying militants across the Middle East and continuing to build out its ballistic missile program unabated.

At a military hangar in Washington, Hook showed reporters a display of seized Iranian weapons that he said is much larger than it was a year ago. He then elaborated on each weapon on display and where it was found, including a collection of guns, rockets, drones and other gear.

“We need to get serious about going after this stuff,” Hook told reporters.

Some of the weapons had been intercepted in the Strait of Hormuz en route to Shia fighters in the region while others had been seized by the Saudis in Yemen, the Pentagon said.

The centerpiece of the display was what Hook said is a Sayyad-2 surface-to-air missile system that the Saudis had intercepted in Yemen this year.

Farsi writing along the white rocket’s side helped prove it was Iranian made, Hook added.

“The conspicuous Farsi markings is Iran’s way of saying they don’t mind being caught violating UN resolutions,” Hook told reporters, adding the missile was destined to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Hook said the seized weapons are “clear and tangible evidence” that Iran is fueling instability in the Middle East.

Iran has the largest ballistic force in the region, Hook said, with 10 ballistic missile systems in its inventory or under development. Missile development and testing has increased in recent years, he added.

Last year, Iran launched a medium-range missile believed to be the Khorramshahr, he said. It can carry a payload of more than a half ton and could be used to carry nuclear warheads. Its suspected range is 1,200 miles, which puts Europe in range.

Fajr rockets intended for the Taliban were recovered by the Afghan National Army in Afghanistan’s Helmand province near Kandahar Airfield, Hook said.

Bahrain provided captured Iranian small-arms weaponry found on their territory, which were given to Shiite militant groups to carry out attacks against the government. They include sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 assault rifle variants and hand grenades, Hook said.

Since 2006, the Iranian regime has supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with thousands of precision rockets, missiles and small arms, Hook said. It now has more than 100,000 rockets or missiles in its stockpile.

The scope and size of the munitions being produced by the Iranian regime and smuggled throughout the Middle East puts to rest any concept floated by the Iran lobby of Iranian “moderation” following the nuclear deal.

In fact, it has been a year since U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was at a similar event to highlight the dangers posed by Iran’s proliferation of missiles and other weapons across the Middle East, only to see this year’s display of captured Iranian weaponry dwarf last year’s display.

Laura Carnahan

Denmark Latest to Accuse Iran Regime of Assassination Plot

October 31, 2018 by admin

Denmark joined a growing list of countries to accuse the Iranian regime of attempting to mount assassinations of dissidents on its soil when it announced on Tuesday it suspected an Iranian government intelligence service of trying to kill an Iranian Arab opposition figure,

The alleged plot, which Denmark’s foreign minister said he believed the Iranian government was behind, prompted the Nordic country to call for fresh European Union-wide sanctions against the Islamic Republic, according to Reuters.

A Norwegian citizen of Iranian background was arrested in Sweden on Oct. 21 in connection with the plot and extradited to neighboring Denmark, Swedish security police said.

The attack was meant to target an Iranian dissident, intelligence chief Finn Borch Andersen said.

Predictably the Iranian regime was quick to deny the charges and tried to place the blame on its various enemies. Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said that the publication of such “spiteful” media reports and its attribution to Iran is a plot by enemies to affect Tehran’s growing relations with European countries.

He emphasized that these claims are the continuation of plots and conspiracies hatched by known enemies who are against good and expanding Iran-Europe relations at the current sensitive conditions.

The Norwegian suspect had been observed photographing the residence of the Iranian dissident, Danish security services said in a statement.

The plot follows a similar one over the summer in which Iranian intelligence services were implicated in attempting to smuggle a bomb into a gathering of Iranian dissident groups outside of Paris at which a number of American dignitaries were attending, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Last Friday, France expelled an Iranian diplomat over the bomb plot in retaliation.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen described the alleged planned assassination by Iran in Denmark as “totally unacceptable”

Rasmussen said, after a meeting with his British counterpart Theresa May in Oslo, that he appreciated her support.

“In close collaboration with UK and other countries we will stand up to Iran,” he tweeted.

Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said Denmark would discuss further actions with European partners in the coming days.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated Denmark on arresting “an Iranian regime assassin.”

In May, Pompeo claimed that Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guard was carrying out “assassination operations in the heart of Europe”, an allegation that at the time bewildered security experts, given that there had been no recent killings in Europe officially attributed to the Iranian state. Since then, France and now Denmark have directly blamed Tehran.

The most recent killing of an Iranian dissident took place in The Hague in November last year, when a gunman shot Ahmad Mola Nissi, another Iranian dissident, which had claimed responsibility for several attacks in Iran.

In further action, Denmark recalled its ambassador from Tehran and called for fresh European Union sanctions in retaliation. The announcement came as Tehran scrambled to muster European support before the US re-imposes stringent sanctions on the country early next month.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about the seriousness in the increasing number of assassination efforts by the Iranian regime and the bewildering lack of response by EU officials who have been busy trying to concoct ways to throw an economic lifeline to Iran in the wake of U.S. sanctions.

“Denmark wants the EU to impose new sanctions on Iran. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s pro-Iran foreign-policy chief, replied blandly that “we are following events.”

“Even as Iranian hit squads are setting up shop across the Continent, the European Union is displaying a fundamental lack of seriousness about a country uninterested in distinctions between bombs, missiles and assassinations,” the Journal’s editorial board opined.

It is a remarkable turn of events to see the Iranian regime resort to these brazen attacks being carried out under the direct supervision of Iranian intelligence and diplomatic personnel without any effort to hide or disguise the plots.

It can be seen as an indicator of how desperate the mullahs must be in Tehran as they see their grip on power eroding steadily under the drumbeat of persistent protests throughout Iran and the threat of new economic sanctions that will cut off the supply of hard currency to fund the regime’s operations.

That desperation is another sign that the Iranian regime’s days may be numbered.

France Points Finger at Iran for Bomb Plot Targeting Resistance Group

October 3, 2018 by admin

In what might be one of the more anti-climactic findings revealed yet about the Iranian regime, France publicly linked Iran’s notorious intelligence services to the failed plot to bomb a meeting of Iranian dissident groups near Paris last June.

A plot of “such extreme seriousness on French territory could not be let go without a response,” France’s ministers of foreign affairs, interior and finance said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

“France has taken preventive, proportionate and targeted measures,” the ministers said. “In taking this decision France reiterates its determination to fight terrorism, especially on its own territory.”

France also acted by announcing it would freeze the assets of the Iranian regime spy ministry, otherwise known as the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), which has been the puppet master in a string of terror attacks and assassinations spanning decades, and most recently spearheaded efforts to utilize social media in coordinated cyberattacks against Iranian dissident groups.

According to the New York Times, the decision to freeze the assets of the spy ministry seemed to be a clear sign France was angry that Iran appeared to be ignoring international norms and acting with impunity. It also indicated that, at least indirectly, France endorsed the Trump administration’s judgment that Iran was a rogue regime.

The French findings certainly didn’t help the Iran lobby’s ceaseless campaigning to have European nations bail the Iranian regime out of its financial woes that have only increased since the U.S. withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and began levying economic sanctions.

“Behind all this was a long, meticulous and detailed investigation by our (intelligence) services that enabled us to reach the conclusion, without any doubt, that responsibility fell on the Iranian intelligence ministry,” a French diplomatic source said.

The source, speaking after the government announced asset freezes, added that deputy minister and director general of intelligence Saeid Hashemi Moghadam had ordered the attack and Assadollah Asadi, a Vienna-based diplomat held by German authorities, had put it into action.

The ministry is under control of top mullah Ali Khamenei, which makes the decision to bomb the Iranian resistance groups on French soil even more brazen and a deliberate act of state policy by the regime.

According to Reuters, the plot targeted a meeting of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) outside the French capital. President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and several former European and Arab ministers attended the rally.

It unraveled after Asadi, an accredited diplomat in Austria, was arrested in Germany, two other individuals were detained in Belgium in possession of explosives, and one other individual in France.

On Monday, a court in southern Germany ruled the diplomat could be extradited to Belgium.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke to their Iranian counterparts about the issue at the U.N. General Assembly after demanding explanations over Iran’s role.

An internal French foreign ministry memo in August told diplomats not to travel to Iran, Reuters revealed, citing the Villepinte bomb plot and a toughening of Iran’s position toward the West.

Paris has also suspended nominating a new ambassador to Iran and not responded to Tehran nominations for diplomatic positions in France.

The plot marked one of the first times that an Iranian official has been caught allegedly taking part in a covert operation in Europe. Police in a number of different European countries are investigating alleged attacks against Iranian opposition figures, including two murders in the Netherlands since 2015.

In July, Dutch authorities said they had expelled two Iranian diplomats whom foreign officials say were linked to the assassinations of at least one Iranian dissident, Ahmad Mola Nissi. He was shot and killed in November by a masked assassin in The Hague. U.S. officials believe Iran’s MOIS was involved. Dutch authorities are investigating, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Predictably the Iranian regime fired back by falling back on its usual tirade claiming the meeting being targeted was comprised of terrorists and called the accusations against its diplomat as a “false flag ploy.”

Considering the precarious state of the Iranian economy and near-constant state of demonstrations against the regime, it is mind boggling the mullahs would order such a reckless act given Iran’s desperate need for an economic lifeline from Europe.

But past history shows that the mullahs care less about rationality and more about silencing the perceived threat and free and open opposition poses to their continued existence.

The pressure being mounted by outside opposition and dissident groups has helped drive internal protests, as well as ensured a steady conduit of videos, pictures and eyewitness reports continue to stream out even as the regime tries to stymie the flow of information with stepped up arrests and imprisonment.

Also on Tuesday, around 200 French police launched a dawn anti-terror raid on one of the biggest Shiite Muslim centers in France, the Zahra Centre France, as well as the homes of its directors.

Eleven people were questioned — three of them arrested, security sources told AFP, including for the illegal possession of firearms.

The Zahra Center France was founded in 2009 by Yahia Gouasmi, a pro-regime activist and religious figure who has spoken in support of Hezbollah.

Gouasmi is also the founder of the Anti-Zionist Party in France and an associate of controversial comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, a convicted anti-Semite.

While not specifically linked to the bombing plot, the raid sent a clear signal by French authorities to Iranian regime officials that the era of cozy accommodation was at an end.

Death Spiral of Iran Rial Spells Disaster for Mullahs

July 30, 2018 by admin

Death Spiral of Iran Rial Spells Disaster for Mullahs

The Iranian regime’s currency, the rial, plunged to a new record low this weekend, dropping past 112,000 rials to a single U.S. dollar. The stunning drop comes on the eve of the re-imposition of harsh economic sanctions by the Trump administration following the decertification of Iran nuclear agreement because of the regime’s continued support of terrorism, development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and abysmal human rights record.

The first lot of sanctions go into effect on August 7^th, while more severe sanctions, including the halt of imports of Iranian oil, go into effect on November 4^th. Failure to do so will bring U.S. financial measures that have already caused a flurry of cancellations of contracts by Asian and European companies worried about them; further crippling the Iranian regime.

The weekend alone saw a drop from 97,500 rials on Saturday to the 112,000 level on Sunday, a one-day plunge of 12.5 percent, according to foreign exchange website Bonbast.com. Other websites said the dollar was exchanged between 108,500 and 116,000 rials, according to Reuters.

The last time the rial experienced a similar death spiral in value was September 2012. The spread between the official trading value set by the mullahs and the black market is a stunning 154 percent. While that may appear to be devastating news for Iran’s ruling regime, the dirty secret is that for anyone holding vast sums of U.S. currency, such as the ruling mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, they could handsomely profit enormous sums in the blink of an eye, according to an editorial by Steve H. Hanke of John Hopkins University in Forbes.

So, while ordinary Iranians are caught in a financial squeeze, the regime’s leadership and military could weather the short-term chaos personally. The question is whether long-suffering rank-and-file Iranians will push for democratic reforms and eventual regime change?

The other half of the financial picture of the dying rial is spiraling inflation which has grown increasingly ugly. According to Hanke, Iran’s implied annual inflation rate has surged to 203 percent; almost twenty times higher than the official inflation rate of 10.2 percent.

Hanke goes on to give an example of how Bulgaria’s implementation of a currency board helped arrest hyperinflation and put that country back on the road to fiscal health.

It’s a nice thought, but it would never work for Iran because, unlike Bulgaria, the Iranian regime is:

Deeply corrupt with graft and skimming taking place throughout the economy by the ruling mullahs, their families and state-owned industries such as petroleum, banking, and telecommunications which supports the military;
Heavily involved in funding proxy wars in Syria and Yemen, as well as terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah with massive amounts of cash, especially to prop up the Assad-regime in Syria;
Unable to exercise any fiscal discipline when its monetary commitments to its foreign and military initiatives drain it of badly needed foreign currency such as buying expensive weapon systems from Russia and China.

The dilemma facing the mullahs over its dying currency and the looming American sanctions has forced the mullahs to verbally attack the U.S. but offer little else in the way of real resistance in the face of what is sure to be punishing sanctions.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif weighed in by claiming that Iran would survive any U.S. sanctions.

“We have enough power to show the United States that it should abandon this addiction. We believe that the world has come to the conclusion that the United States should overcome its dependence on sanctions,” Zarif was quoted as saying by Iran’s ISNA news agency.

He all but begged the European Union to intervene and act in the interests of its member-states and stop blindly following the policy of President Trump, but the issue is not whether or not the mullahs will endure sanctions since they have already literally ripped off the people of Iran in stockpiling their wealth.

No, the real question is at what point do the Iranian people say enough is enough and seek real democratic reforms, such as allowing the creation of truly independent political parties that can run for parliamentary and presidential campaigns.

Things are so bad in Iran that the regime is preparing to launch its own cryptocurrency to circumvent the decline in the rial.

Alireza Daliri, of Iran’s Directorate of Deputy of Management and Investment Affairs, said several domestic companies are developing a digital currency and will launch it after fixing several persistent flaws. He added the unnamed companies were working in coordination with the Central Bank of Iran.

Alireza told ISNA news agency they were trying to prepare the grounds to use the virtual currency in the country. He further stated that the digital currency would help the country to transfer money anywhere around the world and would also help the nation during the U.S sanctions.

Another piece of fiction being foisted by the regime since crackdowns on global cryptocurrencies by several nations have been effective in combatting their use by narcotics cartels and criminal syndicates.

Iran itself banned the instant messaging app Telegram because of the success of the initial offering of its own cryptocurrency which Iranians were hungry for since it was not tied to the rial.

In another sign of its desperation, the Iranian regime announced plans to offer price and tax incentives to private investors to take over idled state projects to help boost the economy. Most of these projects were originally managed and financed by foreign companies in the wake of the nuclear deal’s signing in 2015, but now have fled Iran with the looming sanctions.

The plan will offer attractive prices and flexible terms as well as tax holidays for investors who agree to take over some of the 76,000 government projects which are unfinished or idle, Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri said on state television.

“Over the past few months, the country’s liquidity has gone into housing, foreign exchange, and gold coins, raising prices and provoking public concerns,” Jahangiri was quoted as saying by the website of the state broadcaster.

The admission by the regime that its economy was headed for a disaster was more proof that the mullahs were reaching the end of the line in trying to keep the sinking ship of state afloat.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Grows More Desperate

July 18, 2018 by admin

Iran Regime Grows More Desperate

It’s no secret the mullahs controlling the Iranian regime despise any form of dissent, especially anything that could be construed as homegrown. While the mullahs try to brush off criticism from the international community, it’s harder to turn a blind eye when their fellow Iranians are the ones leading the protests.

A proverbial thorn in their side has been the Iranian diaspora made up of exiled and expatriate Iranians living around the world. Many were initially stranded outside of Iran when the Islamic revolution swept through Iran, while others have fled the regime’s extremism over the years.

That diaspora consists of nearly five million Iranians living abroad and large numbers of them actively participate in a variety of human rights and dissident groups dedicated to improving conditions within Iran or peacefully working for regime change or at least better human rights and religious freedoms.

One of the largest and longest active dissident groups has been the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) which has earned him top honors on the mullahs’ hit list of most wanted. It has received special attention from the regime, including its infamous Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) which has waged a decades-long campaign aimed at disinformation, slander and even organizing attacks against MEK members.

Those past attacks have included strikes against refugee camps for Iranians who fled Iran, many of them MEK members. The Iranian regime, working with Shiite militia allies in Iraq, staged frequent attacks at these camps where the residents were unarmed, slaughtering scores of them.

The MEK has continued to be a sore point for the regime by uncovering all sorts of secrets in Iran, including the clandestine nuclear program that soon became the focal point of international sanctions.

The dissident group has also provided one of the few reliable channels to the outside world of what is going on inside the closed of Islamic state, including photos, videos, and testimonials of public executions, abuse of women and mistreatment of ethnic and religious minorities.

The regime has not been able to shake these dissident groups off of itself no matter how hard it tries to kill off its detractors, but most of these efforts have been focused on attacks in distant places, cyberspace and in the arena of public opinion.

Recently the Iranian regime sanctioned what may be its most brazen effort yet in planning to bomb an annual gathering of Iranian dissident groups including the MEK a massive rally outside of Paris with scores of distinguished luminaries in attendance, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

Assadollah Assadi, a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat, was suspected of contracting a couple in Belgium to attack the according to German federal prosecutors.

He allegedly gave the Antwerp-based couple a device containing 500 grams of the explosive TATP during a meeting in Luxembourg in late June, prosecutors said in a written statement.

Assadi was detained earlier this month near the German city of Aschaffenburg on a European warrant after the couple with Iranian roots was stopped in Belgium and authorities reported finding powerful explosives in their car.

In their statement, German prosecutors allege that Assadi, who has been registered as a diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Vienna since 2014, was a member of MOIS, whose tasks “primarily include the intensive observation and combatting of opposition groups inside and outside of Iran.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of using its embassies to plot extremist attacks in Europe and warned Tehran that its actions have “a real high cost” after it threatened to disrupt Mideast oil supplies.

“Just this past week there were Iranians arrested in Europe who were preparing to conduct a terror plot in Paris, France. We have seen this malign behavior in Europe,” Pompeo said in an interview with Sky News Arabia.

The extent of the bomb plot and the potential to kill and maim so many non-Iranian dignitaries and journalists attending the gathering demonstrates how desperate the regime has grown as it faces unrelenting pressures at home and abroad with massive protests and demonstrations over a spiraling economy and renewed economic sanctions by the Trump administration.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an Iranian dissident umbrella group that sponsored the Paris gathering, quoted its intelligence sources inside the country as saying that Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, and President Hassan Rouhani approved the bombing plan.

“In Belgium, it is more probable that Assadi will face justice and has to answer all sorts of questions and does not have any diplomatic immunity,” said Shahin Gobadi, a MEK spokesman.

The MEK intelligence report said the Paris attack was approved months ago by every lever of Iranian power, from the supreme leader to the foreign and intelligence ministries to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The report said Assadi’s cover was as a counselor. In fact, he is the MOIS station chief in Vienna and the ministry’s coordinator for other stations in Europe.

“His main task was espionage and conspiracy against the [MEK], and he has been traveling to various European countries in this regard,” the report said.

The level of hubris it takes for the Iranian regime to stage an attack on French soil at an event with a global television audience makes it a worthy parent to terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

It may be high time for the mullahs to pay a heavy price for sanctioning such an act of terror.

Laura Carnahan

Trump Pull Out from Iran Nuke Deal is End of Line for Iran Lobby

May 10, 2018 by admin

Trump signs the Presidential Order to pull out of JCPOA

Trump Pull Out from Iran Nuke Deal is End of Line for Iran Lobby

With a quick flourish of his pen, President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and signaled the end of the waning influence of the Iran lobby on U.S. foreign policy.

Administration officials said the Iran sanctions suspended under the agreement snapped immediately back into effect, meaning any new contracts and financial deals are banned. They said businesses and banks have either 90 or 180 days to wind down existing ties, depending on the particular type of transaction, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Because of the dominance of the U.S. economy on the global stage and the reach of its financial markets, as well as the status of the U.S. dollar as the world’s currency standard, the effect on the Iranian regime will be devastating no matter what European leaders attempt to keep Iran afloat.

Already the Iran lobby has howled like a pack of mad dogs at the president’s move.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council sounded the familiar war refrain as he claimed the move sets the U.S. on a path to war.

“Donald Trump has committed what will go down as one of the greatest acts of self-sabotage in America’s modern history. He has put the United States on a path towards war with Iran and may trigger a wider regional war and nuclear arms race,” Parsi said.

It’s a moronic statement since the U.S. is obviously not gearing up for war. There is no military build-up. No aircraft carrier battle groups are steaming for the Persian Gulf. The lack of any U.S. military activity is conspicuous.

The president has been forceful in speaking out against the Iraq invasion and against long-term U.S. foreign commitments, preferring to focus on domestic matters. In his mind, after granting several extensions to the deal giving European allies several months to work on a compromise addressing his concerns, he finally concluded that the only party not interested in changing anything were the mullahs in Tehran.

But that hasn’t stopped the Iran lobby from spreading its falsehoods like fertilizer in the hopes of resurrecting its fortunes, but not even recruiting for Obama officials in a last-ditch effort to save the nuclear deal made a difference because the Iran lobby could never address the real concerns the president had about Iranian regime’s support for terrorism, development of ballistic missiles and crushing human rights abuses.

It didn’t help that the mullahs cracked down by banning the instant messaging app Telegram and snatching yet another British-Iranian dual national citizen with no reason given adding to the large number of hostages the regime seems intent on stockpiling.

In his remarks in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, President Trump spoke directly to the Iranian people, recognizing their oppression and the lack of a government responsive to their needs. His words made plain that his actions were aimed at the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard Corps that backs them rather than the Iranian people who have been engaged in massive protests to this day against their government; most recently taking to the streets to protest the Telegram ban.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of Iranian dissident and human rights groups, addressed a rally in Washington this past weekend opposing the regime in which she correctly pointed out that since the Iran nuclear deal never addressed core issues making the regime dangerous to the stability of the Middle East, the action taken by the president was inevitable.

“Regarding the billions provided to the regime in the framework of this deal, I said that the money poured into the regime’s coffers must be placed under strict United Nations monitoring to ensure that it addresses the Iranian people’s urgent needs, especially the unpaid, meager salaries of workers, teachers, and nurses, and is used to provide food and medicine to citizens. Otherwise, Khamenei will use these funds to further the regime’s policy of export of terrorism and fundamentalism in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon,” she said.

The fact that the Iran nuclear was never submitted to the U.S. Senate for a vote as a treaty, but instead as an executive order and one of dubious legality, its erasure by President Trump was swift and simple.

The Iran lobby argued for this course because it knew it would never survive a Senate confirmation.

Bret Stephens, opinion columnist for the New York Times, argued this same point in an editorial and pointed out how supporters of the deal continued to get everything wrong about it.

“Apologists for the deal answer that the price is worth paying because Iran has put on hold much of its production of nuclear fuel for the next several years. Yet even now Iran is under looser nuclear strictures than South Korea, and would have been allowed to enrich as much material as it liked once the deal expired. That’s nuts,” he writes.

Stephens adds that “even with the sanctions relief, the Iranian economy hangs by a thread: The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported ‘hundreds of recent outbreaks of labor unrest in Iran, an indication of deepening discord over the nation’s economic troubles.’ This week, the rial hit a record low of 67,800 to the dollar; one member of the Iranian Parliament estimated $30 billion of capital outflows in recent months. That’s real money for a country whose gross domestic product barely matches that of Boston.”

All of which adds up to a simple truth: the Iran lobby has reached the end of its effectiveness in influencing American public opinion and that President Trump has recognized that the Iranian regime can’t be trusted and must be dealt with forcefully and with open eyes.

Michael Tomlinson

The Rank Hypocrisy of Iran Lobby on Syria

April 16, 2018 by admin

The Rank Hypocrisy of Iran Lobby on Syria

Bashar al-Assad rules Syria with the same kind of tyrannical tactics common in Iran under the rule of his mullah partners. That includes the use of chemical weapons to target and kill pockets of resistance to his rule; the most recent strike coming recently and claiming the lives of men, women, and children in grisly scenes broadcast around the world.

The repeated use of such weapons resulted in a coordinated strike by the military forces of the U.S., Great Britain and France against three sites identified as having been storage or development sites for Assad’s chemical weapons this past weekend.

The strikes themselves were hardly a surprise given the level of revulsion around the world to Assad’s continued use of chemical weapons and the tweeting by President Donald Trump of his open intention to punish the rogue regime.

What was interesting was his televised address once the attacks began of his putting the Iranian regime and Russia on notice for their continued support of the Assad regime.

“What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children?” the president said.

President Trump asks an important question and really the only one that matters for the future of Syria and the Middle East.

Under his predecessor’s administration, the U.S. engaged in a foreign policy based largely on appeasing regional bad actors like the Iranian regime in an effort to coax them to adhere to dubious international agreements. That policy led to agreements that essentially exempted Iran from militant actions that only exacerbated and inflamed regional conflict.

Those policies gave us the quagmire President Trump now faces where there are hardly any good choices. The decision to strike militarily was not taken lightly and it says much for the sake of future diplomacy when the U.S. was joined by British and French military forces in a united show of force.

Take into consideration the positive alignments by the Arab world led by Saudi Arabia in confronting Iranian regime’s aggression and we see a world moving towards to the kind of unified front that helped bring the Iranian regime to the bargaining table in the first place with crushing economic sanctions before the Obama administration let the regime off the hook.

“We renew our strong condemnation of terrorist acts carried out by Iran in the Arab region, and we reject its blatant interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries,” Saudi King Salman said at a summit of Arab leaders, without referencing Friday’s missile strikes on Syria, according to Reuters.

Riyadh expressed its support for the strikes on Damascus in a statement on Saturday.

“We fully support military operations against military targets in Syria,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said. “The military operation was necessary to protect civilians and stop chemical use.”

But for the Trump administration, the strike was more than just eradicating chemical stockpiles—stockpiles that the Russians had promised were removed under their supervision in a deal with the Obama administration—but rather about a broader agenda that includes containing the Iranian regime.

In an interview with ABC News, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the U.S. had three objectives in Syria: Defeating ISIS, containing Iran and ending the use of chemical weapons.

Which makes the reaction by the Iran lobby, specifically the National Iranian American Council, all the more appalling.

In a statement released by the NIAC, research director Reza Marashi said:

“The situation in Syria is tremendously dangerous, and President Trump risks throwing fuel on the regional fire. Given that Iranian and Russian forces are closely embedded with the Syrian government, there is a significant risk that any strikes will trigger retaliation and a bloodier, wider war with few discernible ways to de-escalate the conflict.”

We cannot believe Marashi was educated in a home for mentally deficit children growing up, but he must assume the world’s journalists are idiots when he calls for deflecting attacks on Syria because Russian and Iranian forces are deeply embedded there since it was the Iranian regime and Russia that have been supporting Assad and enabling his use of chemical weapons in the first place!

Wouldn’t it have been more responsible for Marashi and NIAC to denounce Assad’s use of chemical weapons and urge Iran and Russia to use their influence on Assad to de-escalate the conflict and garner a promise from him not to gas his own people anymore?

Instead Marashi ends the paltry statement by calling U.S. action “reckless” but only citing a “duty” by Iran and Russia to rein in Assad. Hardly a denunciation of the use of vile weapons.

“A large part of the reason that Syria is in ruins today is because nearly all actors have pursued military solutions instead of diplomacy aimed at halting the bloodshed. An eye for an eye approach will not bring justice or peace to Syria, and there is no moral high ground for those who respond to abhorrent violence with more violence,” Marashi also writes.

The irony of Marashi calling out the lack of diplomatic actions when the Iranian regime ignored diplomatic efforts to stop the Syrian civil war when it started and instead poured billions of dollars to prop up Assad, mobilized tens of thousands of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, shipped in Iranian-backed Shiite militias from Iraq, recruited Afghan mercenaries and started an airlift of ammunition and supplies using its own regional airlines is appalling to any rational observer.

The Iranian regime has been the guilty in ignoring diplomacy and using sheer military might to hold Syria together for Assad. Remember, it was the Iranian regime that sent its notorious Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, on a secret trip to Moscow to beg for Russian intervention in July 2015 to save Assad and Iranian forces from defeat.

Marashi’s statement only proves once again how the NIAC and rest of Iran lobby are still working to spread the kind of fake news that helped the Iranian regime avoid crippling sanctions in the first place, freeing the regime to support Assad and allow these chemical attacks to take place in the first place.

All of which begs the question: Why does the NIAC support the slaughter of men, women, and children with poison gas?

Michael Tomlinson