Iran Lobby

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

Trump Effect on Iran Already Seen in Syrian Talks

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Trump Effect on Iran Already Seen in Syrian Talks

Trump Effect on Iran Already Seen in Syrian Talks

Donald Trump hasn’t even been inaugurated yet and his effect on U.S. foreign policy is already being felt throughout the Middle East:

  • Saudi Arabia is cautiously optimistic that the policy of trying to appease the Iranian regime under the Obama administration is at an end and that U.S. policy will once again shift back to traditional alliances in the regime that provided security for U.S. allies for the past 50 years;
  • After inserting itself into the Syrian civil war at the behest of the Iranian regime, Russia is now preparing to open new avenues of cooperation with the Trump administration even if Iran is vehemently opposed to them; and
  • The Iranian regime has reaped quick benefits from the Obama administration and the nuclear deal it negotiated including receiving $10 billion in cash and gold, but now is desperate to rake in as much cash as possible with the looming potential of the spigot being shut off by Trump.

A much ballyhooed summit is planned in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana this weekend to discuss a pathway for peaceful resolution of the Syrian conflict, involving Russia, Iran and Turkey, but now Iran is protesting Russia’s proposal to include the U.S. in these talks once Trump assumes office.

Iranian regime foreign minister Javad Zarif stated the regime’s opposition to the U.S. participating in what the regime hoped would be a photo opp moment in the diplomatic limelight for the mullahs in Tehran with these talks.

“We have not invited the U.S. and oppose their presence” at the talks, Zarif said, according to Iran’s Press TV.

Whether Iran would refuse to attend if the United States were invited was not immediately clear. The talks are part of a three-way process led by Russia and including Turkey and Iran — now the three most powerful international players on the ground in Syria. The process is aimed at forging a settlement in Syria after the failure of the Obama administration’s diplomacy, according to the Washington Post.

The opening round is expected to be a modest affair, with representatives of Syrian rebels meeting with members of the Syrian government to discuss the modalities of a shaky cease-fire that went into effect on Dec. 29, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow. Representatives of the invited countries will attend in the role of observers, rather than participants.

Although Iran is one of the three sponsors of the peace talks, it has not signed the agreement reached between Russia and Turkey that launched the cease-fire, suggesting that Tehran has reservations about an effort that could potentially erode its extensive influence in Syria.

Both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have said they regard Syria as one of the areas in which the United States and Russia could cooperate more closely. Trump has said on a number of occasions that he hopes better relations with Moscow will help counterbalance Iran’s expanding regional role.

That expansion and deepening relationship between Russia and the U.S. could very well leave the Iranian regime out in the cold and without the ability to leverage the two superpowers against each other for its own gain.

Iran has been instrumental in providing the manpower and resources that have helped Assad’s government hold the rebellion at bay. Thousands of Iranian-trained Shiite militia fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan are on the front lines, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah is at the forefront of most of the major battles, and Iranian military advisers and commanders are embedded with them in many locations around the country.

All of those gains could be erased should Trump and Putin see eye-to-eye on the necessity to rein in Islamic extremism and view Iran as the regional godfather of radicalized Islamic terror.

That prospect is frankly freaking out the Iranian regime and Hassan Rouhani took to state-owned airwaves to try and keep its attachment to Russia as close as Siamese twins.

“Iran, Russia and Turkey managed to bring a ceasefire to Syria … It shows these three powers have influence,” Rouhani said. “The (Syrian) armed groups have accepted the invitation of these three countries and are going to Astana.”

Asked why the United States and Saudi Arabia had no direct role in the talks, Rouhani said: “Some countries are not attending the talks, and their role was destructive. They were helping the terrorists.”

The prospect of a Trump presidency and realignment with Russia has caused the mullahs to issue pronouncements on a daily basis to try and spin the potential outcomes for the regime after January 20th; most of them bad for the mullahs.

Rouhani went on television to insist that any effort to “renegotiate” the nuclear agreement by Trump is “meaningless” and attributed it simply to Trump making campaign slogans, while his boss, Ali Khamenei, insisted that if the U.S. were to alter the agreement “we will light it on fire.”

Even European Union leaders are coming to the realization that the outcomes over the nuclear deal no longer rely on them, but rather now rest firmly on Trump’s decisions.

Federica Mogherini, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, who received withering criticism for trips to Iran while political prisoners were being executed, penned an editorial in the Guardian praising the nuclear deal in the hope of staving off its elimination.

It is worthy to note that Mogherini places her support squarely on the economic benefits towards European firms, but makes no mention of the year of terrorism and human rights abuses perpetrated by the Iranian regime and is silent on Syria and the absolute disaster for Europe from millions of refugees that has flooded in.

That kind of silence on important issues of terrorism and war are precisely why Europe has been blistered with multiple attacks in Brussels, Paris, Nice and Berlin and why solving the problem of Iran’s Islamic extremism is the surest path to peace.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working Feverishly to Avoid Collapse

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Iran Lobby Working Feverishly to Avoid Collapse

Iran Lobby Working Feverishly to Avoid Collapse

As the sun sets on the Obama administration and its flawed policy of appeasing the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby is working in overdrive to do anything and everything it can to preserve the few wins it managed to snag over the past eight years; most notably the Iran nuclear deal.

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, has been trying to insert himself into any Iranian-related news story he can find; most recently the death of Hashem Rafsanjani. He has also weighed in president-elect Donald Trump’s potential scrapping of the nuclear agreement, banking restrictions on Iranians in the U.S., the Boeing deal and if he could manage it discussing the potential of Iranian films in the Oscar race this year.

For Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby, the biggest potential disaster looming is the possible revocation or alteration of the nuclear agreement once the Trump administration takes office next week. Parsi and the mullahs in Tehran seem resigned to the fact that Trump will almost certainly act on his campaign promise to trash or redo it.

“The deal is in tremendous danger,” Parsi said in the Washington Post. “Iranians are building a case to make sure that once the deal falls apart they can point to a strong record of the U.S. causing it. It’s going to be part of the cost the administration will have to decide if it’s willing to pay.”

Parsi is already trying to frame the debate as the fault of the U.S. knowing that Tehran’s free ride is coming to an end. Similarly, the jockeying for rhetorical position illustrates the key flaw in the nuclear agreement in the first place which was that it did not address the motivations of the Iranian regime in supporting terrorism, oppressive human rights abuses or proxy wars.

Without correcting the underlying behavior of the mullahs, the agreement was doomed from the start, something the Trump team has already publicly acknowledged.

“There’s a recognition in the incoming team that the regime cheats incrementally, not egregiously, even though the sum total of cheating turns out to be egregious,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a prominent critic of the agreement. “Trump should show a zero-tolerance policy to cheating. Which means, at a minimum, using U.S. sanctions to respond. At a maximum, it means building up a case there’s a history of incremental violations, and move to snap back sanctions.”

For the Iranian regime though the deal has served its purposes. It has enabled the regime to:

  • Replenish its coffers with over $100 billion in badly needed cash that was redirected to support the Assad regime in Syria on the brink of collapse and pay for Hezbollah fighters and Afghan mercenaries to fight a holding action there until Russia was dragged into the conflict by Iran;
  • Allowed the regime to burnish the public image of “moderates” winning in Iran when in fact there are virtually no real moderates left in Tehran, only various factions differentiated only by their fight for control of state industries and their piece of the trough of cash, kickbacks and skimmed funds; and
  • Support the renewal of sectarian wars in Iraq and Yemen aimed at building a Shiite sphere of influence there Iraqi Shiite militias and Houthi rebels through the purchase and shipping of massive quantities of guns, ammunition, rockets, mortars and missiles.

The mullahs in Tehran are not stupid. They saw the gravy train coming to an end and have worked to gain as much advantage as they can to jump start a nuclear program that never really stopped as Jennifer Rubin points out in the Washington Post.

We saw just how lopsided the U.S.-Iran relationship has become. “The 2015 nuclear deal obligated Iran to keep no more than 130 metric tons of heavy water, a material used in the production of weapons-grade plutonium,” explains Iran analyst Omri Ceren. “But the Iranians have continued to produce heavy water, and they exceeded the cap in February and November. The violations [are] functionally blackmailing the Obama administration: Either someone would purchase the excess heavy water, allowing Iran to literally profit from violating the deal, or the Iranians would go into formal noncompliance, endangering the deal,” she writes.

Now the Associated Press has reported:

“Iran is to receive a huge shipment of natural uranium from Russia to compensate it for exporting tons of reactor coolant, diplomats say, in a move approved by the outgoing U.S. administration and other governments seeking to keep Tehran committed to a landmark nuclear pact.

“Two senior diplomats said the transfer recently approved by the U.S. and five other world powers that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran foresees delivery of 116 metric tons (nearly 130 tons) of natural uranium.”

Rather than police the deal to ensure compliance, the Obama administration is assisting Iran in violating the JCPOA. Ceren remarks, “That’s enough for more than 10 nuclear bombs.”  We both allow the Iranians to exceed the heavy-water limits in the deal — and then richly compensate them with uranium that can be used for bombs. Our allies would be excused for thinking we are now promoting Iran’s interests, not the West’s,” Rubin adds.

She also noted that Reuters reported, “Iranian lawmakers approved plans on Monday to expand military spending to five percent of the budget, including developing the country’s long-range missile program which U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to halt. The vote is a boost to Iran’s military establishment –– the regular army, the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and defense ministry — which was allocated almost 2 percent of the 2015-16 budget.” This, of course, refutes the notion peddled by Iran and echoed by the administration that the deal would empower “moderates” and without the deal “hard-liners” would get the upper hand. It seems that the deal has empowered the hard-liners (the IRGC), just as critics of the deal anticipated.

So while Parsi spins away like an Olympic cyclist, the reality of how to confront a double-talking Iranian regime will soon face the Trump team.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Pleading to Save Iran Nuclear Deal Despite Regime Militancy

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Iran Lobby Pleading to Save Iran Nuclear Deal Despite Regime Militancy

Iran Lobby Pleading to Save Iran Nuclear Deal Despite Regime Militancy

With only a few days left until Donald Trump is sworn in as the next president of the United States, the Iran lobby and their Iranian regime leaders are in an absolute tizzy about the nuclear agreement and its future.

For the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council and the Ploughshares Fund, the nuclear deal with Iran represented a high water mark for their perceived effectiveness, but like a evaporating lake in a desert, their success was illusory since it was largely built on the decision by the Obama administration to try a policy of appeasing the Iranian regime.

With the ascension of the Trump administration with such noted critics of the Iranian deal in many of cabinet nominees now undergoing confirmation hearings, the Iran lobby is faced with rollback of all of their gains in one fell swoop.

Iran lobby supporters such as Trita Parsi have tried all sorts of tactics in an effort to save the deal in a shotgun approach of messages. First they openly criticized Trump during the presidential election, joining the tactics of his opponents with personal attacks.

When that failed and he won election, Parsi and his cohorts shifted to the threat of war if the Iran nuclear deal was scrapped by Trump. When that fell on deaf ears and gained almost no traction with the media and Trump announced his cabinet picks, the attacks shifted to the nominees.

Now that line of attack has essentially failed, the Iran lobby is now trying to float the idea that the Trump is actually in support of the nuclear deal and not likely to scrap it because the consequences would be so devastating.

Trying to keep track of all the misses by the Iran lobby is like trying to keep track of clanks off the rim by a worst shooting team in the NBA.

And now their worst fears are finally starting to come to fruition: the U.S. is finally beginning to realize that instead of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran, it is now time to hold them accountable for their actions.

The Iranian lobby fears that deeds and not words are likely to be the new currency of diplomacy in 2017.

But it isn’t just a Trump administration that is causing the Iran lobby to freak-out, it is the changeover in Congress and the potential for a whole raft of actions aimed at the mullahs ranging from the re-imposition of economic sanctions on the federal level to state-by-state sanctions means the Iran lobby is poised to be overwhelmed.

Congress has already begun offering up a series of bills taking aim at various aspects of the Iranian regime’s conduct including the near unanimous passage of the Iran Sanctions Act. Now comes a bill offered up last week to initiate an investigation into Iran Air and other regime airlines by the new Director of National Intelligence into whether or not they provide support to the Revolutionary Guard Corps or other terrorist groups.

The timing of this legislation is important to the Iranian regime as it takes delivery of new commercial airliners from Airbus and soon Boeing to replace aging aircraft in its fleet. Iran Air took delivery last week of the first of 100 jets it ordered from Airbus with Boeing scheduled to deliver in 2018.

Should the investigation of Iranian airlines lead to the discovery of a link between them and support for terrorist activities, the suspect airline could end up back on the U.S. sanctions list and be prevented from receiving any new aircraft or U.S.-made parts according to CNN News.

There has always been deep suspicion that the Iranian regime uses commercial airliners to ferry troops, ammunition and cash to hotspots such as Syria and Iraq. Should that link prove true, the Iran lobby could find itself fighting for the economic survival of the regime again.

Mahan Air, Iran’s second biggest carrier, is still on the sanctions list for aiding Iran’s military and is barred from buying Western planes and parts.

Iran Air was removed from the U.S. sanctions list in January 2016 as part of an agreement to convince Iran to restrain its nuclear program. It opened the path for multi-billion dollar sales by Boeing and Airbus. That prompted an outcry from some lawmakers who said the Obama administration offered no proof that Iran Air had stopped its support of the Iranian military or designated terrorist organizations.

The news for the Iran lobby got worse with the release of a letter from 23 former U.S. officials urging the Trump administration to open up a dialogue with Iranian dissident groups, specifically the National Council of Resistance, which counts as one of its members the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran; a dissident group the mullahs in Iran have made it their mission to pursue and destroy.

Trump transition officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An NCRI spokesman, Ali Safavi, said the group had no “role whatsoever” in the letter, but forwarded a statement from an NCRI official, Soona Samsami, welcoming the letter as an “appropriate and timely initiative.”

In spite of these changing political fortunes, the Iranian regime seems intent on maintaining the same militant attitude to the rest of the world as news came out of Iran of the mass execution of 20 prisoners over the past two days.

Amnesty International reports indicate that Iran executed at least 977 people in 2015, mainly for drug-related crimes.

The human rights activist NGO also blames Iran for continuing to execute juvenile offenders, those aged under 18 at the time of the crime, in violation of the international law.

For the mullahs, some things don’t change.

Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

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Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

Trita Parsi Predicts a Worse 2017 But for the Wrong Reasons

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council and chief apologist for the Iranian regime, penned an editorial in Middle East Eye that curiously finally recognizes the complete and utter lack of stability in the Middle East. Unfortunately, he never assigns any blame to the Iranian regime.

He does however recognize that the split between Iran and its chief rival, Saudi Arabia, is likely to fuel and deepen even wider divisions and instability in the region.

“Indeed, while some point to Tehran celebrating its victory in Aleppo, success on the battlefield is coupled with even deeper divisions between Iran and some of its Arab or Sunni neighbors, paving a path towards greater conflict rather than reconciliation,” Parsi writes. “Ultimately, as all parties involved should know, true security only stems from the ability to live in peace with one’s neighbors, not one’s ability to outgun them.”

“Thus, the celebrations of today ring very hollow, as the region as a whole is likely heading towards greater instability in the year to come,” he adds.”

Parsi is correct in that the future is bleak in 2017, but his inability to focus on the constant push by Iran of its own extremist Shiite ideology is the fuel that has burned through Syria, Iraq and Yemen fueling new rounds of bloody sectarian violence that haven’t been seen since the decade-long civil war in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Parsi blames previous U.S. administrations for following a policy that was too reliant on supporting traditional U.S. regional allies such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt and isolated regional pariahs such as Iran and Iraq.

He goes on to blame the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 the cause of the latest round of instability in the region; a curiously silly assumption since he blithely ignores Iran’s role in serving as the primary supporter, funder and guardian of the region’s most notorious terrorist groups in Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and Shiite militias.

Parsi’s ignorance of the role terrorism plays in regional instability and the rise of trans-national groups such as ISIS in instigating the kind of horrific bloodshed that plunged virtually all of the Middle East into war and subjected cities as far flung as Sydney to San Bernardino to Boston to Ottawa to Paris to Brussels and Berlin to mass terror attacks.

Sectarian terrorism is the fuel that has convulsed the world, not the Cold War-era politics of superpowers such as the U.S. and its military might. As far back as the beginning of Christianity and the rise of Islam, religious fervor has sparked millennia of conflict and still does to this day.

This simple fact is why the Iranian regime stands squarely in the middle of virtually all of the conflicts going on today because it is the only religiously-controlled nation there and as such views its foreign and military policies through the colored lens of extremist religious ideology.

Since Iran’s leadership is personified in the religious supreme leader Ali Khamenei, whose wishes are akin to the absolute reign of medieval monarchs, the odds are the bloodshed and violence we are likely to see in 2017 is going to be firmly rooted in the same religious edicts that motivated violence in 2016.

Any child can trace the lines of Shiite fanaticism connecting Tehran to Damascus, Baghdad, Sana, Kabul, Beirut and countless other cities; any child it seems except Parsi. The one truth that Parsi does speak is the prospect of a grim 2017.

“Going forward, there are few signs that stability will return to the region in 2017. Even if the battle of Aleppo signals a turning point in the war in Syria, it is unlikely to signal the end of the war,” he writes. “Russia and Iran may be celebrating their victory, but true stability will only come to the region when all of the regional powers commit themselves to a diplomatic process of brokering a new order.”

“Currently, however, there is far more commitment to military rather than diplomatic strategies. Absent a reversal of this, 2017 will be even grimmer than 2016,” he adds.

Parsi is correct that stability is only going to come when regional powers finally recognize that diplomacy is a preferable path than a military one, but that is a conclusion that the mullahs in Tehran are not even close to reaching.

Tehran’s all-in support for a massive war in Syria, even to the point of dragging in Russia to save the Assad regime—one of Iran’s few reliable allies—demonstrate that diplomacy is not a priority for them. Indeed any solution that involves the mullahs in Iran will have the same faith, since they are the roots of the problem.

Tehran’s support of Houthi rebels in Yemen only broadened the conflict to drag in Saudi Arabia into a shooting war and the use of Shiite militias in Iraq to punish Sunni opponents only pushed the endless cycle of sectarian violence farther down the road.

Parsi’s inability to name Iran’s extremist Islamic policies and priorities as a motivating factor for a dreadful 2016 demonstrates clearly that even now, he cannot bring himself to criticize his Iranian masters in the slightest.

All of this shouldn’t be surprising since Parsi has been a loyal soldier for the Iranian regime and as Donald Trump assumes office in January, Parsi is devoting his time to trying to shape the narrative into painting Saudi Arabia as evil and Iran as good in an effort to drive a deeper wedge into the U.S. relationship with its traditional allies.

As 2016 has demonstrated, 2017 is likely to be just as disappointing for Parsi and his colleagues, but not for the reasons he thinks.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

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Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

Iran Regime Bulks Up Military In Grab for Power

With the nuclear agreement reached almost two years ago, the Iranian regime has used the $1.7 billion cash it received from the Obama administration as part of the swap for American hostages to help solidify its precarious position in Syria, while it has used new oil revenues to pump badly needed cash back into its military operations depleted from years of war abroad.

With three conflicts going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the mullahs placed a priority in supplying the terrorist proxies doing the heavy lifting for the regime such as Hezbollah, but they have also expanded the scope of their funding to include Afghan mercenaries recruited among the multitude of refugees living in Iran, as well as transporting Shiite militias from Iraq to fight in Syria.

The expenditure of ammunition, weapons and arms has been prodigious as the Iranian regime has been the sole supplier to the Houthis in Yemen waging a protracted civil war against the elected government.

The drain in foreign currency has exacerbated the regime’s economy to the point where the rial has plunged against the U.S. dollar and ordinary Iranians still struggle with anemic wages and an economy that is not capable of meeting basic needs leading to widespread discontent.

For the mullahs though the priority is on their military, especially since the Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership controls much of the Islamic state’s economy and reaps tremendous personal wealth from the skimming and corruption running through it.

With that emphasis on the military come the needs to constantly bolster the image of the regime’s armed forces, even if most of the boasting is illusory and aimed more for propaganda effect than practical military applications.

The Iranian regime constantly boasts of new military inventions such as patrol boats, drones, and new missiles, but lately the boasts are getting more grandiose to the point where many military analysts are shaking their heads.

For example, Hassan Rouhani claimed that the regime would now focus on building nuclear-powered ships even though the technology to do so is massively expensive and would require highly enriched uranium well in excess of what the country is allowed under the nuclear agreement.

Now come the latest boasts that the regime is going to build an aircraft carrier, a ship-type that even Russia and China struggle to grasp in building successfully.

“At present, the Defense Ministry and the Navy are both after building military equipment for naval warfare but the Defense Ministry is producing different types of missiles indigenously and the Navy’s needs to missiles are met using this capacity,” Deputy Navy Commander for Coordination Admiral Peiman Jafari Tehrani said on Monday, as cited by semi-official Fars news agency.

“Building an aircraft carrier is also among the goals pursued by the Navy and we hope to attain this objective,” he added.

It’s not the first time Iran has floated the idea of building aircraft carriers, since 2011 and 2014, Iranian defense officials have claimed to be moving forward with the idea even though there has been no evidence of such a building program.

Far from being able to develop advanced weapons systems, the Iranian regime is usually relegated to holding war games exercises and parades in order to beat its chest for public consumption.

For example, Iran kicked off a five-day large scale military exercise in the country’s southern region warning that civilian and military aircraft risk being shot down if they stray into Iranian airspace occupied by the drill.

The exercises, codenamed Modafe’an-e Aseman-e Velayat 7 or Defenders of Velayat Skies 7, include air defense drills and various missile, artillery and radar equipment as well as cyber and electronic warfare exercises, according to regime media.

Speaking Sunday, the commander of the regime’s air force Gen. Farzad Esmaili warned foreign aircraft trespassing the airspace covering the drill area would be shot down immediately, even though there were no foreign aircraft anywhere near the area, demonstrating the regime’s need to appear the bully.

The regime planned on using U.S.-made F-4 Phantom fighter jets older than the pilots flying them, as well as test firings of newly acquired Russian-built S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries.

All too often the regime’s military displays only succeed in reminding the world how grossly inadequate its military is in today’s modern battlefield. The Iranian regime excels in the kind of low-intensity, urban conflicts where proxies and terror groups can be used, but little else.

This inherent weakness in the regime’s military capability probably leads to a certain level of paranoia amongst the mullahs which is why they spend so much time, effort and energy arresting, torturing, imprisoning and executing any dissenters.

This has included mass arrests of journalists, students, artists, bloggers, social media users, fashion models and just about anyone else you can think of. It also includes a respectable number of dual-national citizens that Iran does not recognize, including Canadians, French, Brits and Americans.

The regime has expanded its efforts during this holiday season to target Christians, arresting any who preach the Gospel or attempt to convert a Muslim to Christianity. This follows the regime’s prior efforts to arrest and abuse others faiths such as Ba’hai and Kurds.

Ultimately much of the Iranian regime’s military boasting is so much hot air, but not the sincerity of the threats it makes against its neighbors. Even an old and weak animal can still cause havoc and mayhem.

Michael Tomlinson

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

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Outrage over the carnage in Aleppo has so far been directed mainly at Damascus, but activists on the ground say Tehran has a top general on the scene and has established secret camps where Iraqi mercenaries are trained to root out rebels in the Syrian city.

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

According to information provided to FoxNews.com, the forces currently controlling the city of Aleppo are under the command of the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The military outfit under its command includes foreign mercenaries such as Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and also the Shiite fighters of the Liwa Fatemiyoun from Afghanistan and the Liwa Zainebiyoun from Pakistan.

At the same time, Iran participated in a summit in Moscow with Turkey and Russia to begin discussions on dividing up the spoils of the conflict now that Aleppo had fallen under merciless bombardment.

The meeting was further evidence of Iran’s emerging role in Syria, both during the ongoing civil war and the expected aftermath.

According to reports received by the opposition to the Iranian regime, the number of IRGC forces and its hired hands in Aleppo and the surrounding area has reached 25,000, while the number of military personnel from Assad’s army is very limited.

“This report leaves no doubt that the Iranian regime is the primary obstacle to any solution in Syria,” Shahin Gobadi, spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) told FoxNews.com. “The current situation in Aleppo and the role of the Iranian regime in the atrocities committed on the ground require the immediate expulsion of the IRGC and its mercenaries from Syria. By meddling in other countries the mullahs try to cover up their vulnerability at home. The survival of the [Iranian] regime has been intertwined with maintaining the Assad dictatorship in power in Syria.”

The reports, which were obtained by the NCRI and its sister organization People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), state that the commander of the Quds Force – as IGRC units operating outside Iran are known – in Aleppo is Brigadier General Javad Ghafari, who is described as the right-hand man of the Revolutionary Guard’s commander-in-chief, Qassem Soleimani, who has been referred to as the architect of Iran’s role in Russian operations in Syria, according to FoxNews.com

The MEK has established a track record of accurately reporting misdeeds by Tehran over the past decade, including its attempts to hide nuclear weapons-related facilities from UN inspectors, according to Middle East Eye.

The NCRI has also alleged that the Revolutionary Guard has established its main headquarters around 20 miles southeast of Aleppo in a garrison called Behuth, or Fort Behuth, which used to be one of the most important centers of missile and chemical weapon production for the Assad regime.

It is now under the supervision of Ghafari, but it also contains a center operated by Lebanese Hezbollah commanders, as well as a number of Syrian army officers who are also present, according to the intel reports.

“The fact is that Aleppo has been occupied by the IRGC and its mercenaries,” Gobadi said to FoxNews.com. “Mass executions, preventing the transfer of civilians including women and children, attacking the civilians – has all been done by the forces of the mullahs’ regime.

“[They] are the main source of crisis in Syria and the region,” he went on. “By abusing the inaction of the international community and being convinced of not being held accountable for its crimes, [Iran] has continuously become more emboldened.”

The U.N. puts the overall death toll in Syria’s civil war at 400,000. More than 30,000 have died in the Battle of Aleppo, a last urban rebel holdout against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit research group in Washington, has reported that Iran organized thousands of Shiite militias in Iraq not only to fight the Sunni Muslim Islamic State there, but also to deploy them to fight rebels in Aleppo.

The Washington Times recently interviewed Iranian dissidents who had escaped to Western Europe. They said Iran’s brutality at home and aboard has increased, not decreased, since the landmark nuclear deal with the U.S. that provided Tehran billions of dollars.

The MEK report provided to The Times says that Syrian government forces are scarce around Aleppo, meaning it is Iran doing the lion’s share of offensive maneuvers and killings.

“On two occasions the transfer of Aleppo residents were hindered and their buses were fired upon under the instructions of the IRGC to gain concessions on the residents [of] al-Foua and Kefraya,” said the MEK, referring to two towns north of Aleppo.

State Department spokesman John Kirby was asked Monday whether the U.S. will protest to the U.N. Security Council the fact that Gen. Soleimani has been spotted in Aleppo. The U.N. has banned him from international travel for his role in terrorism.

“We do intend to consult with our partners on the Security Council about how to address our concerns with this,” Kirby said. “We’ve long said that Iran needs to choose whether it’s going to play a positive role in helping peacefully resolve conflicts such as in Syria or whether it will choose to prolong them. And you’re absolutely right: His travel is a violation.”

Jim Phillips, a Middle East expert at The Heritage Foundation, said that Assad’s army is depleted and stretched thin protecting government-held territory.

“Without Iran’s expanding military intervention, the Assad regime would have fallen months ago,” Phillips said. “While Russia’s military intervention has dominated media coverage on Syria, Iran has been responsible for almost all of the ground offensives in recent months that clawed back territory from the rebels and encircled Aleppo. It has deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards.”

Michael Tomlinson

 

Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

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Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

Why Do Sanctions Not Apply to Qasem Soleimani?

What is the purpose of a sanction? According to the dictionary, a sanction is “a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule.” Sanctions come in all forms ranging from your mother grounding you for painting the family dog to imposing economic sanctions on your nation because you’re trying to build nuclear weapons.

In either case, the basic premise is still the same: you do something wrong, you suffer the consequences. It’s not a complex idea and one as basic as human nature, except in the case of the Iranian regime, sanctions don’t seem to apply.

Take for instance the case of Qasem Soleimani who is the commander of the regime’s Quds Force, the arm of the Iranian military often engaged in irregular operations and is the primary contact for terrorist groups and militias around the world.

If Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer, the Quds Force is the bazaar for militants, terrorists, mercenaries and rebels.

The Quds Force is unique because it directly and solely reports to the regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei. That would be like if the Navy SEALS only reported to the president and were accountable to no one else. As the Quds Force commander, Soleimani wields enormous influence which he has used in carving out a personal theater of operations ranging from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen.

Since 2007, the Quds Force has been a supporter of terrorism by the U.S. and Soleimani was singled out and sanctioned by the United Nations as well. He was also cited by the European Union in 2011 for his role in supporting the violent suppression of protests in Syria which sparked that civil war.

Since then, Soleimani has been at the heart of the Syrian conflict and the faceless man standing behind Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in a war that has claimed over 800,000 lives and turned large swathes of Syria into desolate wreckage.

Soleimani was also the principle player in flying to Moscow to plead with Russia to intervene militarily in Syria just as rebels had gained the upper hand and Assad was pushed to the brink.

The fact that Soleimani has been able to fly to Russia and travel throughout the Mideast has been amazing considering he is under an international travel ban as part of the sanctions imposed on him and yet he travels as freely and frequently as any reputable businessman.

Now we have recent photos and social media posts of him touring the ruins of Aleppo in the wake of that city’s surrender this weekend. Soleimani tour of Aleppo was a demonstration of Iran’s waxing influence in Syria and disregard for international resolutions barring such behavior. Soleimani’s presence in Syria is a direct violation of the United Nations resolution governing the nuclear deal, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Soleimani’s visit coincided with moves by the terror group Hezbollah, which is controlled by Iran, to establish its own claim in Syria, according to regional reports and footage.

Iran’s public presence in Syria has not been met with action by the Obama administration, which has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks to explain why it is not enforcing current sanctions against Iran. Soleimani continues to direct Iranian forces in both Iraq and Syria and has long been sanctioned for the murder of U.S. citizens.

Mutliple sources who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon about the matter disclosed that the Obama administration is taking a soft approach with Iran, including not enforcing sanctions, in order to preserve the nuclear deal and diplomacy with Tehran, which has threatened repercussions for any new sanctions.

Sanctions imposed by the international community to prevent the flow of arms and foreign fighters to Syria have proven just as impotent as Soleimani has used the Quds Force to recruit Afghan mercenaries from the ranks of refugees living in Iran, as well as shipped in Shiite militias from Iraq to fight for Assad.

He has also orchestrated the dramatic escalation in the use of air power first through Syria and later through Russia resulting in the use of barrel bombs and similar weapons of mass destruction on civilian targets.

Most disturbing, the Quds Force supported Shiite militias in Iraq with IEDs that were responsible for killing hundreds of American service personnel there and Soleimani has never been called to account for those American deaths.

In 2011, Soleimani and other members of the Qods Force were implicated in the failed Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. at a popular restaurant in Washington, D.C. As part of the nuclear deal reached with Iran, the UN travel ban on Soleimani will be lifted either in October 2020 or when the International Atomic Energy Agency determines that all nuclear material in Iran is for peaceful purposes.

That lack of accountability and enforcement of sanctions points the greatest weakness in the argument made by the Iran lobby and other supporters of the nuclear which was that Iran wouldn’t be able to evade it.

Soleimani and the Quds Force are proof that Iran can not only evade international sanctions, but do so freely and without consequences.

Ultimately, the challenge for the incoming Trump administration and the rest of the world will be not in forging new agreements with Iran, but just enforcing the myriad of sanctions already in place.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Defends Iranian Regime Threats

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Iran Lobby Defends Iranian Regime Threats

Iran Lobby Defends Iranian Regime Threats

In the wake of overwhelming votes by both houses of Congress to reauthorize the Iran Sanctions Act, the Iranian regime has been vocal in its threats and bravado, but Iran upped its aggression game when Hassan Rouhani announced that Iran would start developing systems for nuclear-powered marine vessels.

According to Reuters, nuclear experts said that Rouhani’s move, if carried out, would probably require Iran to enrich uranium to a fissile purity above the maximum level set in the nuclear deal. The announcement was the first declarative statement by the regime’s leadership of an action taken in direct response to the ISA vote.

Predictably, the Obama administration downplayed the comments in the hopes of maintaining the badly flawed deal in the face of mounting criticism from the foreign policy team being assembled by incoming president Donald Trump.

“The announcement from the Iranians today does not run counter to the international agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a news briefing.

Rouhani also ordered planning for production of fuel for nuclear-powered marine vessels “in line with the development of a peaceful nuclear program of Iran.”

But under the nuclear settlement Iran reached with the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China, it is not allowed to enrich uranium above a 3.67 percent purity for 15 years, a level unlikely to be enough to run such vessels, according to Reuters.

“On the basis of international experience, were Iran to go ahead with such a (nuclear propulsion) project, it would have to increase its enrichment level,” said Mark Hibbs, nuclear expert and senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The threat to seek nuclear propulsion would give the Iranian regime a convenient way of circumventing the nuclear agreement and get back into the enrichment game quickly and still claim it was adhering to the deal.

It is ironic that Rouhani is citing the reauthorization of the ISA as the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back in pushing this announcement since the ISA applied largely to Iran’s ballistic missile program and its sponsorship of terror groups, as well as its nuclear program. The ISA is crucial to fulfilling the Obama administration’s promise of “snapback” sanctions should Iran be found in violation.

Also, the president maintains the authority to waive sanctions under the ISA, which Obama has done. This can only mean Rouhani and his fellow mullahs are terrified of what Trump will do when he takes office.

But one possible motivation for Rouhani may be to goad President Obama into not signing the ISA bill before the deadline expires December 31, 2016, which would ultimately prove futile since the bill easily cleared with unanimous approval—enough to override any veto—but Tehran may be hoping for a symbolic act of defiance in support of them from Obama.

Predictably, the Iran lobby led by the National Iranian American Council voiced its support for the deal and warned of dire consequences with Rouhani’s announcement as proof of impending disaster.

“For months, we warned that ISA’s renewal would have real consequences. Today, those consequences have been realized. While Iran’s move to undertake studies related to nuclear-propelled ships is not in violation of the nuclear accord, it does undermine U.S. foreign policy objectives,” the NIAC statement said. “Iran is signaling that for every negative U.S. action, there will be an Iranian reaction anathema to U.S. interests.”

The NIAC statement is the height of absurdity because the logic to it is akin to having a police officer catch a burglar, only to have the thief produce a weapon and threaten the officer and the officer is held to blame for the escalation.

Iran has already received several waivers and exemptions for violating terms of the nuclear agreement and yet when Congress reauthorizes a bill that the Obama administration has already said does not violate the nuclear agreement, the Iranian regime’s first thought is to threat the U.S.

It is a reaction that is a perfect reflection of why the nuclear deal was doomed from the start and why the Iran lobby cannot be trusted in advancing it.

Instead of urging Iran to reach out diplomatically to the incoming Trump administration, the NIAC has from the beginning sought to characterize Trump as a war monger, Muslim hater, insane person and intellectual idiot. These are not the kinds of comments that would engender a positive reaction from the new president.

While the NIAC has gone all in on supporting Iran, even in the face of outrageous statements, it delegitimizes its stated role as an advocate for Iranian-American interests. How can Iranian-Americans be helped by an organization that does not urge Iran to refrain from making outlandish and dangerous threats?

Michael Tomlinson

 

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Protect Regime Allies

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Iran Lobby Working Hard to Protect Regime Allies

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Protect Regime Allies

Trita Parsi, the founder and leader of the Iran lobby’s chief support group—The National Iranian American Council—has been busy on editorial pages variously condemning picks by President-elect Donald Trump for his national security and foreign policy team and boosting and defending the Iranian regime in light of the wave of administration appointees skeptical and critical of the regime.

The latest example was Parsi’s attacks on Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) Trump’s pick to head the CIA, on BBC, where he said “it is not the job of the CIA director to formulate policy.”

Parsi added that the criticisms made of the Iran deal by Pompeo, who is a graduate of West Point and Harvard Law School, are “a clear indication that [his] understanding of the functions of the U.S. government and the different parts of the U.S. government is somewhat limited.”

That statement itself demonstrates how desperate Parsi must be to throw dirt at anything and everything related to Trump as his selections clearly show the clock is running out on the policy of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran that have dominated U.S. foreign policy the past several years.

Saying that Pompeo doesn’t understand how the government works only shows Parsi is willing to say anything, even outrageous untruths to demean and degrade American policy makers.

In Pompeo’s case, the CIA director nominee has an extensive history as a military officer, including serving in the Gulf War, and being elected to the House in 2010, where he served on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

In spite of attacking Pompeo, Parsi was magnanimous enough to offer his own advice saying “It is going to be very, very difficult for them to be able to roll back the deal or get rid of the deal or even renegotiate the deal.”

At the end of the day, preserving the Iran nuclear agreement has quickly become Parsi’s mission as he seeks to stave off efforts by Trump to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its militant actions in the year following passage of the deal.

Parsi has been busy trying out an almost daily message against Trump in an effort to find any excuse to keep the nuclear deal intact. This includes Parsi’s latest whine, which is that should the deal fall through, there would be no way Trump could reassemble the coalition of sanctions against the regime.

This line of reasoning is even dumber than Parsi’s claim that Pompeo doesn’t know anything about government since deep cracks are already appearing in the countries that agreed to the nuclear deal.

Most of Europe has reeled from the exodus of millions of refugees from conflicts in Syria and Iraq and the wave of terrorist attacks that have rattled Paris and Brussels. Recent votes in the U.K. and decisions by current leaders in France and Italy to decline re-election all point towards electorate that have been badly rattled over the rise of Islamic extremism and the growing proxy wars in the Middle East fomented by Iranian regime.

Even allies of Parsi are starting to get the microscopic once-over that Parsi is trying to give opponents of the Iranian regime.

One example is a piece by Armin Rosen, a New York-based writer who has written for The Atlantic, City Journal and World Affairs Journal, who wrote a piece in Tablet Magazine detailing the close relationship Parsi has with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) who has announced his candidacy as chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Rosen points out that in 2009, then freshman Ellison urged a radically different approach to U.S.-Iran relations when he echoed positions offered by Parsi as he launched the NIAC. In fact, Ellison submitted an editorial into the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing record on Iran sanctions by Parsi opposing sanctions.

Ellison went on to deliver a speech in 2011 at a NIAC event in which he thanked Parsi for being an “an indispensable partner” in helping to develop a 2009 bill that would have sanctioned individual human abusers in Iran while lifting U.S. restrictions on NGO work in the country, and refers to the NIAC founder as a “friend.”

Ellison’s selection as DNC chair might prove to be a political albatross on Democrats moving forward, especially in the 2018 midterm elections in which the bulk of Senate seats up for election then would be occupied by Democrats.

Extensive exit polling in the presidential election showed that American voters cited terrorism as their chief concern only after the state of the economy. Any office holder who had a previous association with Parsi and the NIAC might be well served to begin distancing themselves from the Iran lobby since the political price to be paid might be severe.

Those ties to Parsi and the detrimental effects of being seen to support the Iranian regime can only grow as the regime engages in more and more radical and frankly bizarre behavior.

One example of that comes from the woman who leads female volunteers in Iran’s hardline conservative militia, the Basij, who has identified a new foe.

Minu Aslani has reportedly called the promotion of gender equality illegal and demanded that the country’s powerful judiciary take action against people who speak out against such state-sponsored discrimination.

“These activities are in fact against our laws and the judiciary should take action,” the semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Aslani as telling reporters on December 2.

In the past, Aslani has condemned efforts to increase the number of women in parliament and opposed campaigns to curb domestic violence as perceived assaults on Iranian society and traditional family values. Pushing for greater female participation threatens to “distort” the identity of Iran’s women, she has said.

Aslani also criticized United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s eight-year-old UNiTE To End Violence Against Women campaign, which is aimed at raising awareness about violence against women and girls.

Also, the Congress began to take a new look at the Iranian regime’s extensive use of proxies to wage war and commit acts of terror as both Democratic and Republican senators took aim at the regime.

“Iranian proxies remain a direct threat to the United States and our allies today,” said the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee, pointing to Lebanese Hezbollah, Shia militias in Iraq, and Houthi insurgents operating from Yemen, as well as Tehran’s influence in Syria.

“American citizens, uniformed and civilian, have been victims of Iranian terror. Iranian regime-sponsored [entities], directed, trained and equipped are a threat to U.S. forces and American citizens today,” said the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland.

At the committee hearing, experts warned that unless there were ideological changes to the Iranian regime, the mullahs’ basis for supporting these proxies would not change.

Michael Tomlinson

Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

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Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

Unanimous Passage of Iran Sanctions Act Signals End of Appeasement

The experiment to see if the Iranian regime could be moved to join the community of nations and act in a moderate manner is officially over with the unanimous passage of the extension for renewal of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA).

The U.S. Senate passed a 10-year extension of sanctions against the Iranian regime, following a similar vote in the House, sending the bill to President Obama’s desk where he is expected to sign it.

The measure passed by a 99-0 vote after passing the House with only one dissenting vote in a bipartisan display of unity among Democrats and Republicans rarely seen in Washington.

Without the votes, the ISA was due to expire on December 31st. Leaders of both parties and the U.S. State Department have said passage of the extension would not violate the terms of the current nuclear agreement with Iran, even though the Iranian regime has threatened harsh retaliation in response.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) said the renewal ensures Trump can re-impose sanctions Obama lifted under the deal, in which Iran curbed its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

“Extending the Iran Sanctions Act … ensures President-elect Trump and his administration have the tools necessary to push back against the regime’s hostile actions,” Corker said in a statement.

“Given Iran’s continued pattern of aggression and the country’s persistent efforts to expand its sphere of influence across the region, preserving these sanctions is critical,” the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on Thursday. He said he expected the Trump administration and the new Congress to “undertake a total review of our overall Iran policy.”

As the U.S. legislation advanced, Iranian regime officials said that the country may increase its stockpile of enriched uranium, a move that could spark a new international crisis in the weeks before Donald Trump takes office.

“Iran has made necessary preparations for potential U.S. decisions about the extension of sanctions,” the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Monday, according to Iranian state media.

The threats are not surprising since top mullah Ali Khamenei has been making regular threats about tearing up the agreement even during negotiations last year.

What has changed though is that the gravy train of appeasement policies coming from the Obama administration in the hopes of moderating Iranian behavior probably has come to an end. The stunning majorities in passing the renewal demonstrate both political parties desire to taker tougher stand against Iran especially as yet another potential terror-related attack occurred on the campus of Ohio State University.

“The practical effect is the Iran nuclear agreement depends on our resolve, on our commitment to… stop a nuclear-armed Iran by using sanctions and other means if necessary,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who supported the Iran deal.

The passage marks just how far American opinion has swung over the past year in which the Iran lobby trumpeted the nuclear agreement as a landmark effort to bring the U.S. and Iran closer together only to see the Iranian regime launch three wars, arrest American citizens and threaten the U.S. with military confrontations almost everywhere throughout the Middle East.

Iranian regime’s actions have only grown worse under the nuclear agreement and the 99-0 vote is a recognition that more needs to be done to confront Iranian extremism and push back on it even as the mullahs devise new ways to sow chaos and confrontation.

One example of those methods came in the form of a new report issued by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an independent research group, which tied markings on munitions used by Houthi rebels in Yemen to arms shipments from Iran.

The markings found on rifles, rocket launchers, anti-tank guided missiles and munitions provided some of the more concrete evidence to date of Iranian regime’s logistical support to Houthis fighting in Yemen’s nearly two-year-old civil war, according to the Washington Post.

Vice Admiral Kevin M. Donegan, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the region, told reporters that the first of the five weapons shipments were seized in April 2015. CAR’s report focuses on three weapon caches recovered in early 2016.

“CAR’s analysis of the seized materiel … suggests the existence of a weapon pipeline extending from Iran to Somalia and Yemen, which involves the transfer, by dhow, of significant quantities of Iranian-manufactured weapons and weapons that plausibly derive from Iranian stockpiles,” the report says.

A Somalia-bound dhow was stopped with 2,197 weapons onboard. Aside from a smattering of small arms including Kalashnikovs and medium machine guns, the vessel was laden with roughly 100 Iranian-made RPG-7-style rocket launchers.

While the Iran lobby continues to try and discount the votes on ISA, they ignore the unanimous majorities it garnered for its passage. Most disturbing for Iranian regime sympathizers such as the National Iranian American Council is how far the pendulum has swung away from appeasing the regime to finding ways to hold it accountable.

Laura Carnahan