Iran Terrorism – Page 4

What Happens If the Iran Nuclear Deal Stays?

October 5, 2017 by admin

President Donald Trump has been beset by a tumultuous September and now October with hurricanes battering Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, North Korean belligerence and the horrific massacre in Las Vegas. No one would question that the burdens of being president right now are great

But President Trump faces a self-imposed Oct. 15^th deadline as well to decide what he wants to do with the Iran nuclear deal, which he has previously described as a terrible deal and with that decision comes a whole new raft of challenges.

In many ways, he has options that other presidents would not have since he comes at this point with essentially a clean slate. He can take several options such as continuing to certify the Iranian regime in compliance with the deal, but continuing to hold the mullahs over a proverbial cliff edge; threatening to pull out at any time. The agreement’s renewal window gives him the opportunity to continually threaten the mullahs.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered that the president would have multiple options in addressing the Iranian conundrum.

What is clear though is that while the nuclear agreement is being widely hailed by the Iran lobby and regime supporters as a success, the issues many critics and even the president have with it is that the deal was too narrow and gave a free pass to the regime on a whole host of issues such as development of ballistic missiles that were nuclear-capable.

Much of the instability the Middle East is experiencing has its central roots planted in Iranian soil where the mullahs have sought to use their Revolutionary Guards and Quds Forces to actively initiate and carry out military conflicts on multiple fronts, including Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Those militant acts drew the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia into armed conflict and pitched the world dangerously closer to global confrontation.

The funneling of cash to the Assad regime in Syria and terrorist operations such as Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq have been a fundamental reason for why sectarian conflicts have sprouted all around the world like noxious weeds.

The mullahs have always viewed the use of funded third-parties as a legitimate tool of state-craft, which is why Iran has consistently been at the top of the U.S. State Department’s list of states that sponsor terrorism.

But not only has Iran’s foreign policy been a source of consternation for the world, but its internal domestic policies have also fueled this militancy because the nuclear deal left in place all of the mechanisms of the theocratic regime and provided no boost or reprieve from embattled democracy and dissident advocates within Iran.

If anything, the deal only emboldened Hassan Rouhani and his puppet master, Ali Khamenei, to crack down even harder on internal dissident with impunity; leaving human rights within Iran shambles and subjecting the Iranian people to enormous hardship and deprivation.

Dissident groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran have long documented the steep, downward spiral of human rights in Iran since the nuclear deal was agreed to and lack of movement within Iran.

This disconnect between the nuclear deal and lack of any inclusion of restrictions on Iran beyond the very narrow scope centrifuges and uranium explains much of what has gone terribly wrong with Iran. In many ways, its failures mirror the failures of efforts to control North Korea whose own flawed nuclear agreements served as the templates for the Iran deal.

What is clear though is that the Iran lobby is working feverishly to frame the debate of a post-deal world as being an abysmal one for the U.S.

Take for example an editorial in the Los Angeles Times by Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a Princeton University scholar and a former Iranian regime official, in which he portrayed Rouhani’s 2013 election as an act of moderation now threatened by the nuclear deal’s demise.

Mousavian neglects to note Rouhani’s re-election against the backdrop of President Trump’s widely publicized views on the nuclear deal. If “hardliners” in Iran were empowered by the president’s rhetoric, then by Mousavian’s own standards, Rouhani’s 2017 campaign should have gone down in flames.

But as a former regime official, Mousavian’s insights are pointless since they do little to illustrate any opinions contrary to the wishes of Khamenei and his mullah brethren. Indeed, it would be explosive if Mousavian voiced any criticism of the regime’s support for terrorism and its quick build-up of ballistic missiles as excuses the president is using to dump the deal.

If Mousavian was truly an agent for global peace efforts, he would have encouraged his former colleagues to abandon the most odious portions of the regime’s abuses to give the president less ammunition to derail the deal.

Mousavian’s lack of any discernible criticism in any area places him squarely in the camp of Iran loyalists.

“Because Trump has put the deal in his crosshairs, advocates of diplomatic engagement with the West in Iran are being discredited. If he goes ahead with his stated wish to undo it, a domestic consensus will form not to trust, negotiate or cooperate with the United States on any future issue,” Mousavian writes.

It’s a ludicrous statement to make since everybody knows that when it comes to Iranian regime’s policies, it’s the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei who makes all the decisions; and the rift between various rivals within the regime is due to the power struggle they have on who gets a bigger share. It’s long known that it’s the Iranian lobby’s narrative to advocate more dialogue with the regime, to strengthen the so-called moderates within the regime, whereas when it comes to the foreign policies of the regime, Iran has done more in support of terrorism during the “reformist” Rouhani’s tenure, in its meddling in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and in employing the Hezbollah and other extremist proxy forces in those countries, than his predecessor, hardliner Ahmadinejad. Likewise, human rights organizations reports show that under Rouhani, there have been a lot more executions than any of his predecessors in the past 25 years.

The reality is that the Iranian regime has squeezed everything it could get from the nuclear deal in terms of pallets of cash delivered by the Obama administration to a lifting of economic sanctions to allow foreign companies to broker deals.

Even if the president were to dump the deal, the reality is that very little would initially change except the rhetoric coming from Tehran and from supporters such as Mousavian.

President Trump UN Address Sets Stage for Iran Action

September 21, 2017 by admin

President Trump UN Address Sets Stage for Iran Action

President Donald Trump delivered his first address to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly and garnered the predictable range of reactions based on whether you support his administration or not.

For critics, especially the Iranian regime, his speech was filled with dark imagery that threatened to tear up the Iran nuclear deal, while for his supporters he offered a clear vision of American foreign policy based on conservative values he detailed on the campaign trail.

The fallout from the speech has been predictable from the media pundits to think-tank analysts to foreign leaders. From his supporters, such as former House speaker Newt Gingrich, the president’s speech echoed the themes of conservative stalwarts such as President Ronald Reagan, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and France’s Charles de Gaulle.

“The chief nationalist in this administration is Donald J. Trump. And he knows what he’s trying to say,” Gingrich said. “It’s not a one-sided American nationalism, it’s a re-centering on sovereignty that’s really, really important.”

The president grounded his speech in re-statement of American principles based on the sovereign right of nations to act in their own interests, but so long as they respected the rights of their people and the other nations. He drew a sharp distinction with the few rogue nations that acted to oppress their own people and cause regional and global instability.

He singled out the Iranian regime, North Korea and Venezuela and expanded on the threats facing the world beyond terrorism and conventional warfare to include the more modern threats posed by “international criminal networks traffic drugs, weapons, people, force dislocation and mass migration, threaten our borders and new forms of aggression exploit technology to menace our citizens.”

This was an interesting focus for the president since Iran and North Korea have been at the forefront of state-backing of criminal enterprises, including smuggling arms, aiding the global narcotics trade and supporting a thriving black-market economy. Both regimes have used profits from these illicit activities to fund their respective nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The fact that North Korea licensed its missile technology to Iran and hosted Iranian military and science personnel is proof of the deep relationship between the two regimes; a fact that President Trump finally called out into the open.

While many critics have tried to make hay over the president’s emphasis on national sovereignty, they neglected to understand the context of his statements which was strong, independent nations were necessary to forming a more effective United Nations. Weak or timid nations are not going to stand as guardians for international peace and history has taught us that harsh lesson many times from the appeasement of Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s to the collapse of any opposition to a tough Iran nuclear deal.

President Trump’s call for sovereignty was also a direct challenge to the Iranian regime’s efforts to create a Shiite sphere of influence from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen. His recognition of the mullahs’ territorial appetites also set the stage for the larger debate about the Iran nuclear deal which is the fatal flaws in it in the first place.

The argument that critics of the nuclear deal have long made was that it was badly flawed in the first place. It never set restrictions on delivery systems such as ballistic missiles and it never sought to tie Iran’s human rights record or support for terrorism to the agreement.

Most glaringly, it did nothing to curb Iran’s appetite for regional conquest as exemplified by the regime’s accelerated push into Syria to support the Assad regime once it was signed. Iran’s Hassan Rouhani himself boasted that Iran’s nuclear program could be restarted in a matter of hours if the deal was torn up by the U.S.; hardly a guarantee of international security.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday the Iran nuclear deal was not enough given that Tehran had increased its influence in the region and pressed ahead with ballistic missile tests, and offered to mediate between the United States and Iran, according to Reuters.

His statements offered more validation for President Trump’s contention that supporting a flawed deal in the first place was no sure pathway to nuclear peace.

“Is this agreement enough? No. It is not, given the evolution of the regional situation and increasing pressure that Iran is exerting on the region, and given increased activity by Iran on the ballistic level since the accord,” Macron told reporters in New York.

“Let’s be honest, the tensions are on the rise, look at the activities of Hezbollah and Iran’s pressure on Syria. We need a clear framework to be able to reassure regional countries and the United States,” Macron said.

The Iranian response was predictable as Rouhani attacked President Trump’s remarks in his own address to the UN General Assembly calling it “ignorant, absurd and hateful rhetoric.”

Rouhani expanded on his attacks in an interview with NBC News claiming that “no one will trust America again” should the Trump administration walk away from the Iran nuclear deal.

It is a silly argument to make since the mullahs in Tehran have never trusted the U.S. no matter who was president. They only viewed the nuclear deal as a vehicle to gain breathing room and relief from crippling economic sanctions and gain a huge financial windfall of billions of dollars they used to fund wars in Syria and Yemen and quickly accelerate their ballistic missile program.

Rouhani speaking of “trust” is comical given the Iranian regime’s pathetic record on making grandiose promises to its own people and cruelly breaking every one of them.

In fact, Rouhani himself made bold promises of reforms in the regime and expanding the role of women in the government; yet in picking his own cabinet, he did not select a single woman for any senior leadership role and filled it with old, veteran hands of the Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence.

In many ways President Trump’s blunt assessment of the Iran, North Korea and Venezuela is bold departure from the normal flowery language of the UN and diplomacy, but the world has already seen that over the past two years diplomacy has yielded nothing from those three regimes, especially Iran.

It may be time to try a different tack and actually hold Iranian regime accountable.

Iran Tries Blackmail in Threatening Failed Nuclear Deal

August 16, 2017 by admin

Iran Tries Blackmail in Threatening Failed Nuclear Deal

One of the key provisions of the Iran nuclear deal was an agreement to not include so-called “side issues” into the agreement such as the regime’s sponsorship of terrorism or any improvement in its human rights record.

The mullahs in Tehran knew they would instantly fail any of those litmus tests and fought hard to keep them out of the agreement, but in doing so they set themselves up for failure down the road when continued abuses would force the U.S. to act in levying new sanctions for terrorism support and Iran’s burgeoning ballistic missile program.

The mullahs found themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. The nuclear agreement did not contain any language prohibiting economic sanctions on non-core nuclear issues per the mullahs’ demands so as the Trump administration and U.S. Congress imposed new sanctions the mullahs were left to cry foul without any basis to stand on.

The Iran lobby then went to work trying to stave off sanctions by pushing the message that these additional sanctions would threaten the “essence” of the agreement and cause its collapse leading to Iran building a nuclear arsenal.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council tried to blame President Donald Trump for the potential collapse of the deal and issued a statement that reeked of falsehoods commonly trotted out by the Iran lobby.

“It should now be clear that Donald Trump’s moves to violate and hold certification of the Iran nuclear deal in doubt are actively destabilizing the accord. Unfortunately, in response to Trump’s increasingly hostile rhetoric, as well as Congress’ moves to escalate sanctions, Iran is now warning that it has its own options to back out of the deal if the U.S. continues to undermine it,” Parsi said.

Let’s be clear: Iranian regime, not the U.S., is responsible for destabilizing the nuclear deal with their bloody war in Syria, efforts to sow insurrection in the Gulf states, and start launching ballistic missiles at a clip rivaling North Korea. The U.S. did nothing to inspire those acts and all those acts began actually years ago and under the Obama administration.

Also, the U.S. Congress and American electorate has had the luxury to see how the nuclear deal has turned out after two years and their answer has been overwhelmingly negative. While Parsi may try to affix blame on President Trump, the real culprits are in Tehran.

But Parsi didn’t stop there.

“We have repeatedly warned that President Trump’s beating of the war drum with Iran, even if confined to rhetoric, in addition to new Congressional sanctions and zero diplomatic outreach, could only produce negative consequences. Iran’s parliament has now voted to increase spending on its ballistic missile program and the IRGC in direct response to new sanctions on the country,” Parsi added.

Incredibly, Parsi tries to also blame the U.S. President for Iranian regime’s decision to ramp up its missile program; ignoring the fact the regime’s missile program was begun a decade ago with technology licensing agreements with North Korea and fully funded by illicit oil sales.

It is a blatant example of how the Iran lobby tries to rewrite history to protect the Iranian regime after it acts to toss away the international agreements it signs.

Regime president Hassan Rouhani did his part in warning the regime could quickly ramp up its nuclear program and achieve an advanced level if the U.S. continued its “threats and sanctions.”

Rouhani’s remarks to Iranian regime lawmakers were his most direct warning that the deal could fall apart and risked ratcheting up tensions with the United States.

While most media focused on Rouhani’s threats, virtually no one picked up on the key inconsistency he made which is that Iran could “quickly” build nuclear weapons. This simple declaration proves the biggest lie offered by the regime and Iran lobby supporters such as Parsi: the nuclear deal did not push back the much-debated “breakout” period for Iran to build a nuclear device.

“In an hour and a day, Iran could return to a more advanced (nuclear) level than at the beginning of the negotiations” that preceded the 2015 deal, Rouhani said.

The nuclear deal has been a complete and utter failure.

United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley issued a stern and forceful rebuke to Rouhani’s comments and accurately pointed out the problem with the arguments being made by the Iran lobby about saving the nuclear deal at all costs.

Haley said on Tuesday Iran must be held responsible for “its missile launches, support for terrorism, disregard for human rights, and violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

“Iran cannot be allowed to use the nuclear deal to hold the world hostage … The nuclear deal must not become ‘too big to fail’,” Haley said in a statement, adding that new U.S. sanctions were unrelated to the Iran nuclear deal.

What is ironic in all this debating about Iran is how North Korea is widely reviled, heavily sanctioned and appropriately feared by the rest of the world over its ballistic missile program, but in the case of Iran’s missile program, the European Union has struggled to stay mute and not offend the mullahs.

Why does North Korea’s missile program drive the world to the brink of striking back, but in the case of Iran, many American partners refuse to criticize Iran?

Part of the answer lies in the Iranian regime’s aggressive efforts to open its markets to European firms to make investment and economic hamstring themselves from taking future action against Iran. Another explanation comes from EU policy makers who naively believe in the lies of the Iran lobby and hope for the best while ignoring the evidence of Iranian regime’s extremism.

Europe’s reaction is eerily similar to the reaction their predecessors had to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

We can only hope the world doesn’t pay again for that same policy of appeasement.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Adds Funds for Missile and Terrorism Programs

August 15, 2017 by admin

In this photo taken on Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017, lawmakers attend an open session of the Iranian parliament in Tehran, Iran. Iran’s parliament voted overwhelmingly Sunday, Aug. 13, to increase spending on its ballistic missile program and the foreign operations of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, chanting “Death to America” in a direct challenge to Washington’s newest sanctions on the Islamic Republic. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

The Iranian regime parliament burnished its hardline credentials by approving an enormous boost in spending for its ballistic missile program and its Quds Forces within the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been at the heart at virtually all the proxy wars Iran is currently fighting throughout the Middle East.

The estimated $609 million boost will be divided evenly between the Quds Forces and missile effort, which the regime called the nation’s “deterrent capability,” according to regime-controlled Tasmin news agency.

Some lawmakers chanted, “death to America” as the bill was passed, according to state media.

The increase in funding comes as no surprise as the Iranian regime has steadily been funneling millions of dollars to fund its growing military commitments and support for proxies and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

If we think back to the completion of the Iranian nuclear agreement two years ago, the Obama administration shipped pallets full of cash via Iranian airliners in exchange for the release of American hostages. There were no conditions attached to the money which undoubtedly found its way to support Iran’s efforts to save the Assad regime in Syria.

Also, the Iranian regime does not report funding for its military nor for its paramilitary operations through its Quds Forces so we really don’t know how much money Iran really is spending on its missile and terror programs, but there can be little doubt the mullahs consider both high priorities.

Hassan Rouhani, the regime’s president, essentially tried to blame the Trump administration’s levying of new economic sanctions as the reason for the increase in funding, as well as the president’s public statements promising to rip up the nuclear deal.

“Anyone who harms the accord harms himself and his country,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency. If the U.S. seeks to act against the agreement “everyone will side with us and against the person who wants to weaken it” he said in reference to other signatories to the deal including Germany and France, which have expressed their support for its continuation.

The move by the regime to boost its missile program comes in the wake of fellow rogue state North Korea’s rapid push into launching ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, as well as intelligence reports that North Korea now possesses at least one nuclear device capable of being mounted on a missile.

It also follow’s North Korea’s threats to turn waters around the island of Guam and home to a sprawling U.S. naval base into a sea of fire with multiple missile strikes.

The roadmap North Korea has laid out in its missile and nuclear development is being closely followed by the Iranian regime in spite of the false promises consistently made by the Iran lobby that Iran was not pursuing nuclear capability.

North Korea’s licensing of its missile technology to Iran gave the regime a head start on missile development and provided a much-needed source of cash to the North Korean regime as it become the most isolated and sanctioned nation in the world.

In fact, North Korea’s Kim Yong Nam, the speaker of the parliament, attended Rouhani’s swearing in ceremony last week in a sign of the hermit kingdom’s close ties with the Iranian regime.

This isn’t Yong Nam’s first trip to Iran. He also visited in 2012 to attend the Non-Aligned Movement’s summit in Tehran. Then as now he was in the country for about 10 days, making many official visits and appearances, signing agreements for technical and educational cooperation between Iran and North Korea, according to the Daily Beast.

The connections between North Korea and Iran extend beyond building a missile fleet together as explained by David French in the National Review. The 1994 “Framework Agreement” between North Korea and the U.S. was almost a carbon copy of the Iran nuclear deal.

Like the Iran Deal, it sought to halt the pursuit of nuclear weaponry. Like the Iran Deal, it was supposed to bring a rogue nation back into the “global community.” Like the Iran Deal, it allegedly had enough safeguards to prevent cheating, French writes.

“Unfortunately, North Korea cheated. It maintained a secret uranium-enrichment program, and the deal collapsed soon after the Bush administration confronted the North Koreans with evidence of their noncompliance,” French added.

French goes on to point out that given this history, the Iran Deal may have been the worst possible model. For example, agreement with Iran famously provides the regime up to 24 days of notice before inspectors are allowed access to some suspect cites, and a regime with a record of cheating like North Korea’s is the worst possible regime to grant any leeway or any trust.

Moreover, the same deal granted Iran enormous economic benefits, access to international arms markets, and the ability to build ballistic missiles. A similar deal with North Korea would have the potential to supercharge the DPRK threat.

Instead, the Iran deal has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Iran which the mullahs are now funneling into the IRGC. North Korea demonstrates clearly that relying on “trust” to verify a nuclear agreement fails miserably when the rogue regime in question can’t be trusted in the first place.

The bolstering of Iran’s missile fleet and Quds Forces comes at the worst possible time for hopes of regional stability as Iran is now deeply involved in full-blown war and covert subversive campaigns in Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen and now recently fired mortars and rockets along the Pakistan border.

All of the promises made by groups such as the National Iranian American Council that Iran would be a moderate force with the nuclear deal passed have been proven false and the world is now going to live under the threat of Iranian missiles because of it.

Michael Tomlinson

Hassan Rouhani Cabinet Picks Reveal Campaign Lies

August 9, 2017 by admin

Hassan Rouhani Cabinet Picks Reveal Campaign Lies

One of the hallmarks of the Iranian regime is to do whatever it takes to mollify the anger of the Iranian people and then go ahead and do what is in the best interests of the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard Corps that backs their rule.

A large dose of that is promising everything under the sun during an election and then promptly ignore every one of those promises. The repercussions of those lies largely goes unnoticed because the regime uses harsh methods to punish dissent and keep protests at a minimum.

During the most recent presidential election, Hassan Rouhani, aided by the Iran lobby abroad, touted promises to advance the cause of Iranian women by addressing extreme gender imbalances that exist between men and women in Iranian society.

The idea was to continue promoting the idea that Rouhani was some enlightened moderate fighting hardline forces and promising a more open and inclusive society. Why anyone would believe him after the past four years of brutal crackdowns on almost every sector of Iranian society is beyond normal thinking.

But when faced with unremitting cruelty, in an environment of rampant corruption, under constant threat of death and imprisonment, hope is a challenging thing to keep alive and shows why many Iranians might be willing to even believe in lies because the alternative can be soul-crushing.

So, after Rouhani was sworn in for his second term, he released a list of cabinet appointments and unsurprisingly, not a single woman was named to a senior position.

Rouhani nominated men to fill 17 of 18 ministerial slots in his new government, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency, with no one yet put forward for science minister. He appointed three women among a dozen vice presidents in his previous administration.

“Right now, many members are expressing their opposition,” Tayyebeh Siavashi, a reformist lawmaker who was among the 17 women elected last year to represent pro-Rouhani factions, said by phone to Bloomberg from inside parliament after the ministerial list was submitted. “It’s a big question for us: Why after all our efforts and hard work do we have no women at all?”

Most Western media attempted to frame the omission as an effort by Rouhani to appease hardliners within the government who oppose his “reformist” efforts, including the nuclear agreement and opening dialogue with the West.

Pardon us while we cough.

The truth of the matter is simple: This is who Rouhani is; a loyal, dedicated and faithful member of the regime going back to his earliest days.

Rouhani never had any intention of advancing a moderate agenda. He always has been a product of the regime and was constructed with a mythology that served the interests of the regime. The mullahs needed the nuclear deal to lift crippling economic sanctions to help fund their wars and keep the IRGC afloat.

Rouhani did not disappoint while he also actually stepped up the repression of the Iranian people; nearly tripling the rate of public executions from the much-reviled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tenure; no small feat.

Not all Iranians were fooled as many took to social media to express their frustration at the lack of advancement for women on this significant social issue.

“Up until the last moment, serious efforts were underway to make sure there would be names on there,” said Amene Shirafkan, a journalist who campaigns on women’s issues and stood as a candidate in Tehran’s city council elections, referring to the list. “It’s a rather conservative cabinet, much like Rouhani himself.”

In many ways, with the nuclear deal behind him and the prospect of a Trump administration seeing through the false moderate façade and taking direct action against the regime, Rouhani and his fellow mullahs have figured out there may no longer be any need to continue with the fantasy of playing at moderation.

This may explain the rapid escalation in tensions between the Iranian regime and U.S. Navy as an Iranian drone buzzed a F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter as it prepared to land on the USS Nimitz in the Persian Gulf.

“Despite repeated radio calls to stay clear of active fixed-wing flight operations within the vicinity of USS Nimitz, the QOM-1 executed unsafe and unprofessional altitude changes in the close vicinity of an F/A-18E in a holding pattern preparing to land on the aircraft carrier,” said Commander Bill Urban, a spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

The Navy F/A-18E had to execute a quick maneuver to avoid contact with the drone, which at one point was roughly 200 feet away horizontally and about 100 feet vertically, according to the Washington Examiner.

According to the U.S. Navy, this is the thirteenth time this year there has been an unsafe or unprofessional interaction between U.S. and Iranian maritime forces.

This hasn’t been the only confrontation with an Iranian drone. Last June, U.S. forces shot down two Iranian-made drones that approached U.S.-backed troops in Syria.

It is important to note that all of these actions, plus the abduction of additional American hostages occurred well before President Trump ever took office, bringing out the untruth of the Iran lobby who claim his policies in confronting the regime are responsible for the escalation in tensions.

Most worrisome are reports that North Korea is deepening its ties to the Iranian regime with Kim Yong Nam, head of the rogue regime’s parliament attending Rouhani’s swearing in ceremony.

Kim’s trip though is expected to stretch to 10 days in Tehran, permitting a more detailed series of meetings about the military alliance the two nations share, as well as Western intelligence reports that say North Korea has constructed a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on one of its ballistic missiles.

It is reasonable to think since North Korea licensed its missile technology to Iran that it is also willing to share its nuclear technology in exchange for much-needed cash which Iran has thanks to the nuclear agreement.

Michael Tomlinson

Why Does the Iran Lobby Care About the Nuke Deal?

August 1, 2017 by admin

Why Does the Iran Lobby Care About the Nuke Deal?

The Iran lobby, including the National Iranian American Council and other groups, invested heavily in supporting the Iran nuclear deal. They lobbied for it, wrote editorials, sent out loads of press releases, made appearances on news programs, held meetings with elected officials and coordinated strategy with the Obama White House through countless meetings.

The Iran lobby ostensibly was doing all this in the name of peace and in support of a whole host of promised positives coming from its passage, including:

Bolstering moderate elements within the Iranian regime and aiding their cause in upcoming elections;
Shifting Iran back towards diplomacy and serving as a moderating force in a deeply destabilized Middle East;
Empower international inspectors to keep Iran under close scrutiny and push back its development of a nuclear weapon; and
Propel Iran’s re-entry in the community of nations and become a partner economically and politically with the world once again.

It was a nice idea and attractive to many in Congress. Unfortunately, like most good intentions, it fell flat on its face when confronted by the evil nature inherent within the ruling mullahs in Tehran.

The one thing everyone seemed to forget and the Iran lobby was careful to obscure was that the Iranian regime never really cared about a nuclear deal since the mullahs knew it would never halt their nuclear program, only postpone it slightly.

What they and their Iran lobbyist allies really cared about was the lifting of crippling sanctions that, more than anything else, was and still is the true goal of the regime and its allies.

Preserving the nuclear deal is not the real concern of the regime. It is the potential for the re-imposition of economic sanctions under a skeptical Trump administration and a reset back to 2012 in which the Iranian regime was on the verge of collapse and widespread dissatisfaction among the Iranian people still simmered from the violent crackdown on the 2009 democracy protests.

This is why the deal was crafted to preserve Iranian regime’s missile program and never take up the issues of human rights and terrorism since the mullahs had always planned to use the cash it received from the nuclear deal to jumpstart their ballistic missile program and keep the Assad regime afloat in Syria.

The mullahs and by extension the Iran lobby relied on the passiveness of the U.S. under Obama. As British politician Edmund Burke once famously said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

In this, the Iran lobby sought to dissuade action against Iran by promising a changed regime, but since none of that has happened and the situation throughout the Middle East has clearly gotten worse under the expansion of several proxy wars by Iran, the Iran lobby has shifted its tone and tactics to a much darker and fear-based message.

It now relies on the banging of war fears in trying to keep the nuclear deal alive as evidenced by the mounting PR push by groups such as the NIAC which put out a policy memo outlining how the Trump administration could undermine the nuclear agreement.

It is typically long-winded and rests its logic on the notion that President Trump can kill the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement by choosing not to certify the JCPOA or implementing “snap back” sanctions.

The NIAC memo then goes on to exhaustively explain the various steps the Congress would take in reviewing either action by the president.

What the NIAC does not discuss is the fact the Congress voted to pass new sanctions on Iran by stunningly huge bipartisan majorities that made clear no one actually believes in any of the promises made by the NIAC earlier.

Iranian regime has clearly become a threat not only to the U.S., but to the entire region as its ballistic missiles can now reach targets throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.

The NIAC briefing also glaringly misses the essential point of what is happening now which is the Iranian regime’s actions on human rights violations, sponsorship of terror and accelerating a missile program that will soon surpass North Korea is what is driving the debate about Iran; not the nuclear agreement.

But the NIAC hopes that focus on the JCPOA will deflect attention on these other areas where Iranian regime is so blatantly awful on right now. It is akin to pointing at the crack den and ignoring the building on fire right next to it.

You can see how the Iran lobby is trying to push issues such as terrorism and missiles off the front pages by talking about the nuclear deal, when the nuclear deal isn’t even the issue being debated by Congress and the Trump administration.

This is the “new” grand lie of the Iran lobby and its supporters. They hope that by focusing on the JCPOA and Iranian regime’s continued “compliance” with the agreement that mullahs’ regime in Iran is somehow still a good global citizen. The lobby never addresses the ballistic missile program or the threat it poses, especially with heightened concerns over North Korea. It also never deals with the horrific human rights violations Iranian regime and its IRGC has perpetuated in the Syrian conflict.

Unfortunately for the NIAC and other Iran lobby members, everyone has pretty much caught on to the lie and ignoring what they say which explains the overwhelming bipartisan push to target Iran.

For the NIAC, it quickly finds itself alone in Washington’s Beltway with few open supporters and even less leverage in trying to boost Iranian regime’s fortunes. It’s time for the NIAC to pack it in.

Michael Tomlinson

More Sanctions Levied on Iran for Missile ProgramMore Sanctions Levied on Iran for Missile Program

July 31, 2017 by admin

More Sanctions Levied on Iran for Missile Program

Iran’s recent launch of a rocket carrying a satellite into space served more as a test for the regime’s accelerating ballistic missile program in terms of lofting heavier payloads over greater distances.

In many ways, the Iranian regime’s missile program has mirrored the development of the North Korean program which now threatens the continental U.S. with its own launch of a ballistic missile last Friday.

Intelligence agencies have long believed that Iran’s missile program was kickstarted by a technology licensing agreement between the two rogue regimes, but Iran’s larger industrial capacity and ample financial resources due to illicit sales of its embargoed oil supplies over the years have enabled Iran to leapfrog the pace of development by North Korea.

It also explains why the mullahs were so intent on ensuring that the nuclear deal had no explicit restrictions on their missile program; an omission by the Obama administration in the false hope of fanning the flames of moderation.

All of which means a mess has been left to the Trump administration to sift through and it has done so with an admirable degree of incremental steps designed to slowly isolate the regime and target the most problematic parts of the regime’s terror industry.

For every provocation by the Iranian regime, the Trump administration has responded in direct proportion to send an unmistakable message to the Tehran.

A joint statement on Friday from the United States, France, Germany and Britain said Iran’s launch was inconsistent with a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Iran not to conduct such tests.

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed new sanctions on six Iranian firms owned or controlled by the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group. The move enables the U.S. government to block any company property under its jurisdiction and prevents U.S. citizens from doing business with the firms, according to Reuters.

“These sanctions … underscore the United States’ deep concerns with Iran’s continued development and testing of ballistic missiles and other provocative behavior,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement.

“The U.S. government will continue to aggressively counter Iran’s ballistic missile-related activity, whether it be a provocative space launch … or likely support to Yemeni Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia such as occurred this past weekend,” Mnuchin said.

The six Shahid Hemmat units targeted by the U.S. sanctions manufacture missile components, missile airframes, liquid-propellant ballistic missile engines, liquid propellant, guidance and control systems. They also do missile-related research and maintenance.

The move comes on the heels of the Congress passing by overwhelming majorities legislation to impose new sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia, as well as sanctions imposed last July 18 directed at 18 people and entities for supporting Iran’s missile program or—more importantly—the Revolutionary Guard Corps which directly supports terrorism.

The moves from the Trump administration are slowly rolling back all the moves made by the Obama administration, but smartly are being done in a manner not to give the Iranian regime an excuse to claim the U.S. is violating the nuclear deal.

That of course has not stopped Iran lobby members such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council from claiming that the U.S. was indeed trying to wreck the deal.

Parsi took to Lobelog, another well-worn Iran lobby booster blog, to bray away that President Trump was actively seeking a war with Iran in another pathetic attempt at trying to drum up war fears.

“The American public knows the Iraq playbook quite well. Trump’s own supporters remain enraged by the disastrous war with Iraq. They know how they got played. It’s difficult to imagine why they would allow themselves to get played again by a president who has left little doubt about his intent to deceive,” Parsi said.

Parsi tries to press home the point that President Trump is some crazed warmonger, but even he admits that his presidential campaign was propelled in part by America’s dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq and the pretext for it.

Parsi cannot have both sides of the argument. He either must believe the president is actively seeking a war with Iran and is thumbing his nose at the very voters who put him in office, or Parsi must acknowledge the truth; which is that President Trump isn’t seeking a war, but is repairing the damage done by the Obama administration in enabling the mullahs in Tehran to act with impunity.

The president certainly doesn’t want a war, but he must correct the course set by the previous administration by attempting to restrain the Iranian regime, begin the laborious process of rebuilding the international coalition against the regime, cut off the flow of money funding its missile program and either hold the regime strictly accountable to the nuclear deal or force a better deal to be crafted.

In essence, President Trump is trying to get a do-over from the fumble made by the Obama administration and reset the terms of engaging with Iran to place issues such as ballistic missiles, human rights and terrorism back at the top of the agenda where they belonged in the first place.

It is an argument that has been made for years now by the Iranian opposition movement which warned that Iran would take advantage of the nuclear deal to rebuild its armed forces and fund its proxy war efforts rather than invest it back into the economy for the benefit of the Iranian people.

In hindsight, opposition leaders such as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran look almost prescient now in light of how the regime has acted in the two years since the deal was crafted.

For the regime, it must seem like they are trying to hold off the inevitable with the ever-rising tide of sanctions now being imposed almost daily.

This ultimately gives the Trump administration significant leverage to force back an expansionist Iran; leverage that the Obama administration never sought to use much to the dismay of the peoples of Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Remains Top Global Sponsor of Terrorism

July 28, 2017 by admin

In this picture taken on Friday Feb. 14, 2014, Hezbollah fighters hold flags as they attend the memorial of their slain leader Sheik Abbas al-Mousawi, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 1992, in Tefahta village, south Lebanon. Hezbollah says Israel carried out an airstrike targeting its positions in Lebanon near the border with Syria earlier this week, claiming it caused damage but no casualties. Hezbollah said the attack was near the eastern Lebanese village of Janta. It vowed to retaliate but said it will “choose the appropriate time and place.” (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. State Department once again listed the Iranian regime in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism; keeping it atop a dubious list of countries involved in the sponsorship and support of terrorism.

The report based the designation on the regime’s continued support for terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah and its overall efforts to destabilize the Middle East as a whole as evidenced by its spurring of the Houthi rebellion in Yemen and its long support for the Assad regime in Syria, as well as the rapid growth of Shiite militias in Iraq involved in new rounds of sectarian warfare with Sunni tribes.

Iranian regime has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. since 1984, making it one of the longest-running state sponsors of terror in the world. Iranian regime sits alone only next to Sudan and Syria as officially designated state sponsors in the annual report.

The report cited a wide range of activities the Iranian regime has undertaken to foster the spread of terror and violence:

“Iran used the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps‑Quds Force (IRGC-QF) to implement foreign policy goals, provide cover for intelligence operations, and create instability in the Middle East. Iran has acknowledged the involvement of the IRGC-QF in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria and the IRGC-QF is Iran’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad,” the report said.

“In 2016, Iran supported various Iraqi Shia terrorist groups, including Kata’ib Hezbollah, as part of an effort to fight ISIS in Iraq and bolster the Assad regime in Syria. Iran views the Assad regime in Syria as a crucial ally and Syria and Iraq as crucial routes to supply weapons to Hezbollah, Iran’s primary terrorist partner. Iran has facilitated and coerced, through financial or residency enticements, primarily Shia fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan to participate in the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown in Syria. Iranian-supported Shia militias in Iraq have committed serious human rights abuses against primarily Sunni civilians and Iranian forces have directly backed militia operations in Syria with armored vehicles, artillery, and drones,” the State Department added.

In another nod to the Iranian regime expanding its actions to destabilize the Gulf states, the report also detailed how “Iran has provided weapons, funding, and training to Bahraini militant Shia groups that have conducted attacks on the Bahraini security forces. On January 6, 2016, Bahraini security officials dismantled a terrorist cell, linked to IRGC-QF, planning to carry out a series of bombings throughout the country.”

And contrary to the repeated denials of regime officials and the Iran lobby, Iran has “remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa’ida (AQ) members it continued to detain and has refused to publicly identify the members in its custody. Since at least 2009, Iran has allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through the country, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria.”

The facilitation of terrorism from within its own Quds Forces and through external terror groups directly under Iran’s control such as Hezbollah, as well as others it has shielded such as Al-Qaeda and helped facilitate such as ISIS, points out the consistent lies perpetuated by the Iran lobby and regime supporters in maintaining that Iran’s government was locked in a power struggle with “moderate” elements.

There are no moderate elements within the regime’s government.

Supporting terror is a tool of statecraft for the Iranian regime and an important lever the mullahs in Tehran use frequently to advance their foreign policy goals.

This is also the reason why the Iran nuclear deal was never going to work in the first place since it did nothing to change the behavior of the mullahs. They remain as intent as ever on spreading their extremism, known as “Shia sphere” of influence and using violence to achieve it, which is why the Trump administration has moved on imposing additional sanctions even as it certifies the regime in compliance with the nuclear agreement.

The Iran lobby, especially advocates such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, have shouted to the rooftops that Iran mullahs are acting in a moderate and open manner with respect to the nuclear agreement, but refuse to acknowledge the near-homicidal behavior of mullahs regarding terrorism and war.

There can be no clear approach to Iranian regime without recognizing the linkages that exist between the regime’s behavior on terror and human rights, as well as its approach to nuclear weapons development. The great flaw in the Obama administration’s approach to Iran was to treat these issues as separate and apart.

It’s a silly notion since one can no more divorce a substance abuser from one drug than he starts using another. For the Iranian regime, violence is its narcotic of choice and it is addicted to it in all facets of its society.

This explains why the Iranian regime reacted so violently to the continued run of new sanctions by the Trump administration which led its leaders to make some outrageous boasts and demands this week.

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said on Wednesday that Iran would stand up to the U.S. and hit back with its own sanctions.

Meanwhile his foreign minister, Javad Zarif, took to CBS News to warn that the sanctions could jeopardize the nuclear deal; a curious position to take since President Trump seems intent on scrapping it in the first place.

Also on Wednesday, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, head of Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guard, warned the U.S. against imposing sanctions on the paramilitary group. He said the Guard’s missile program is not negotiable and hinted that new sanctions could put U.S. military bases in the region in danger.

“If the U.S. intends to pursue sanctions on the Guard, it should first disassemble its military bases within 1,000 kilometers, or 620 miles,” Jafari was quoted as saying by state TV, apparently referring to the range of Iranian missiles.

It was a not-too subtle threat against U.S. bases in Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain all of which ties back to the original point made in the State Department’s annual report: the Iranian regime can never be trusted.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Begins Threatening with Ballistic Missiles

July 28, 2017 by admin

Iran Regime Begins Threatening with Ballistic Missiles

Just as the world saw North Korea ramp up its production of ballistic missiles and begin launching them with greater regularity, we have seen a similar scenario begin to play out with the Iranian regime’s own missile fleet.

For the mullahs in Tehran, their ballistic missile fleet represents their ace in the hole; a weapon platform that can reach faraway enemies, threaten its neighbors and provide the ultimate leverage by carrying nuclear or chemical warheads.

You don’t build a weapon system unless you are prepared to use it and the mullahs are prepared.

What distinguishes the Iranian regime from North Korea is that Iran has fired its missiles in anger, unleashing a salvo of missiles at targets in Syria that it claimed were ISIS strongholds.

With one action, the mullahs served notice they were more than willing to push the proverbial red button; a disturbing thought when one considers the regime’s extensive list of enemies which seems to grow longer by the day.

Besides its nemesis in the U.S., the regime has added Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Pakistan to its list, not to mention anyone following the Sunni, Christian, Jewish and any other faith you can think of.

Add to that the increasing range of its missile fleet and you can see how Iran is able to drop missiles on virtually anyone it thinks is a threat to the regime.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Iran possesses the “largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East” with literally thousands of short- and medium-range missiles stockpiled on mobile launchers and underground bunkers.

Maps overlaid with the range of its missiles, shows that Iran can strike targets as far away as India, China and Russia to the east and most of Europe and North Africa to the west.

It’s Shahab-3 missile has a range of over 2,000 km with a payload capacity heavy enough to accommodate a nuclear or chemical warhead of over 2,000 lb.

The Iranian regime has used this weapon system to hint strongly at the U.S. that its military bases in the Middle East are subject to being destroyed by Iran’s missiles; a not too subtle threat that raises the level of tensions in the region despite the reassurances of the Iran lobby.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari demanded Wednesday the U.S. withdraw all its military bases within 1,000 kilometers of Iran’s borders, a distance that encompasses most of the U.S.’s operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, including massive bases in Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait.

The U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf are especially problematic for the Iranian regime since they present a direct challenge to the regime’s authority in what it considers its territorial waters and has often acted to threaten and imped international shipping through the Gulf; recently culminating in the detention of two American navy patrol boats and their crews.

Jafari made his threats because he is worried, as are all the mullahs, that the Trump administration is incrementally acting on its campaign promises to get tough on the Iranian regime and actively encourage regime change.

While the Obama administration, with the not so subtle direction and guidance of the Iran lobby, sought to keep various issues separate from the nuclear deal it negotiated including Iran’s missile fleet, the Trump administration is acting aggressively on those other fronts much to the consternation of the mullahs.

By levying new sanctions on Iran this week, as well as openly contemplating designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, President Trump is setting up a slow, methodical and thorough constricting of the regime’s finances and ability to export its brand of terrorism.

Trump is resetting the playing board to the conditions prior to the nuclear deal negotiations in which sanctions had crippled Iran and threatened to topple its regime leadership. The president is undoubtedly taking a course of action that can only lead to one goal which is regime change.

It is logical to assume that the U.S. would react violently and unilaterally should the Iranian regime use any of its missiles against U.S. personnel directly, which makes much of the threats by Jafari and other regime leaders empty and hollow.

On the border between Syria and Iraq, the U.S. already flexed its muscle when Navy jets attacked a convoy of Iranian-backed Shiite militia that were approaching a Syrian rebel base occupied with U.S. advisors. We can only imagine what would happen if Jafari were to lob a Shahab missile at a U.S. base in Afghanistan for example.

The mullahs in Tehran are reactionary, bellicose and even blood thirsty, but they are not crazy. They understand that their options are shrinking and Trump is only a few steps away from not certifying Iran in compliance with the nuclear agreement and triggering the 60-day review period for open debate in a Congress that has already shown bipartisan hostility to the regime.

From that point, it’s only a proforma matter before President Trump nullifies the Boeing deal, cuts off Iran’s access to U.S. currency markets and begins to penalize foreign businesses for investing in Iran.

In short order, the mullahs could find themselves back in 2009 where the economy was in shambles and an unpopular president was being met with massive street protests that rocked Tehran for days.

The recipe for regime change is well known and the mullahs are doing everything they can to avoid a repeat which is why they are so eager—or desperate—to threaten everyone with a rain of ballistic missiles.

Michael Tomlinson

Two Years of Appeasing Iran Regime Officially Ends

July 28, 2017 by admin

Two Years of Appeasing Iran Regime Officially Ends

Two years have passed since the Iran nuclear deal was agreed to by the U.S. and other nations and during that time virtually every promise made by the Iran lobby and the Obama administration about moderating the Iranian regime and improving the stability of the Middle East have fallen faster than Twitter’s stock price lately.

The practice of trying to appease the Iranian regime by conceding just about anything the mullahs wanted bought neither stability nor moderation. In fact, the opposite has occurred and places the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as it is more formally known, on par with the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler or the Treaty of Versailles in terms of effectiveness.

History has demonstrated over again that rewarding tyranny only invites more tyranny and in the case of the Iranian regime, it has been a textbook case of that lesson.

Thankfully that period of appeasement is finally at an end with passage of a sanctions bill approved by a 97-2 margin targeting Iran, North Korea and Russia and headed to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature.

The U.S. House passed the sanctions package Tuesday in a 419-3 vote, sending the legislation to the Senate. The White House has not definitively said that President Trump will sign the bill, but the measure won a veto-proof majority in both the House and Senate, which makes his approval moot.

At its core is the imposition of economic sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program which violates a United Nations Security Council resolution, as well as the JCPOA which prohibited Iran’s development of a ballistic launch system with intercontinental range.

That fact was put on display with the announcement by the Iranian regime of its launching of a satellite into orbit on a ballistic missile.

Iranian state media confirmed the launch of a Simorgh rocket which the Trump administration considers a violation of the JCPOA.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the launch appeared to be related to Iran’s attempts to develop ballistic missiles, which is not covered under the nuclear deal but is a subject of protest and sanctioning by the U.S.

“We would consider that a violation of UNSCR 2231,” Nauert said at a briefing with reporters when asked about the launch. “We consider that to be continued ballistic missile development. … We believe that what happened overnight, in the early morning hours here in Washington, is inconsistent with the Security Council resolutions.”

The Simorgh is a two-stage rocket first revealed in 2010. It is larger than an earlier model known as the Safir that Iran has used to launch satellites on previous occasions.

The U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center said in a report released last month that the Simorgh could act as a test bed for developing the technologies needed to produce an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM.

“Tehran’s desire to have a strategic counter to the United States could drive it to field an ICBM. Progress in Iran’s space program could shorten a pathway to an ICBM because space launch vehicles (SLV) use inherently similar technologies,” the report said.

Iran’s satellite-launch program falls under the responsibility of the defense ministry, which has denied that the space program is a cover for weapons development, but such denials are silly on its surface since Iran has no civilian space agency.

Clearly the regime is using the guise of “scientific development” to advance its ballistic missile capability, especially now that the mullahs see their advantages disappear under an energized Congress and president intent on rolling back gains made by Iran.

For the mullahs, it is clearly a race now for the regime to develop additional technologies necessary to complete a nuclear delivery system such as heat shields and targeting systems designed to allow a payload to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere to strike at targets thousands of miles away.

The table is now set for President Trump to walk away from the nuclear deal and news media have reported that he has instructed aides to closely re-examine the deal and evaluate against the regime’s actions over the past two years.

While the Iran lobby was nearly apoplectic over the news, it could not ignore the real possibility that all its hard work in securing the deal is about to be erased like tracks across sand dunes swept away by wind.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council issued a typically hysterical statement claiming that the president’s call for expanded inspections of Iran’s military installations for nuclear violations was a pretext to war.

“Clearly, facts don’t matter to the Trump administration – their desire to start a war trumps everything. Now, his team appears to be putting his desires into action,” Parsi said.

We advise Parsi to take a Xanax and calm down since his protestations have always been proven false in the past and this latest one is no different.

The fact that the JCPOA excluded large segments of Iran’s military-industrial complex allowed the regime ample room to hide its nuclear activities and the fact that international inspectors are restricted from accessing sites and many sites they were allowed to visit were scrubbed clean of any evidence months in advance shows how wrong Parsi is and how correct the president is in seeking additional inspections.

The Iranian regime predictably reacted with false anger and vitriol at the developments, but could not ignore the fact that the JCPOA is not a treaty and President Trump has wide latitude to simply walk away from the agreement.

Laura Carnahan