Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

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Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

In what can be considered a symbolic show of disapproval, the Iran Sanctions Act reauthorization became law without President Obama’s signature. The near unanimous margins in Congress made Obama’s signature superfluous; providing a veto-proof margin.

The act was a last measure of defiance from Obama as he leaves office and the new president-elect has built a cabinet and national security team made up of critics of the nuclear agreement with the Iranian. It’s a childish and petulant act that reinforces how out of step the administration was from an American electorate unnerved by numerous terrorists attacks in the U.S., Asia, Africa and Europe motivated by Islamic extremism.

Clearly the Obama administration intends to provide as much running room for the mullahs in Tehran before it leaves office as Secretary of State John Kerry said that even though he considers it unnecessary to renew the existing waivers, he had done so anyway “to ensure maximum clarity” that the United States will meet its obligations under the deal, according to the Washington Post.

All of these efforts might be intended to reassure the Iranian regime, but they are largely meaningless actions since Trump can overturn all of the waivers granted for Iranian violations of the agreement, as well as impose economic sanctions, obliterating the nearly eight year effort to appease the mullahs in Tehran.

“President Obama doesn’t want to provide an excuse in the waning days of his administration for the Iranians to walk away from the deal,” said Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a prominent critic of the Iran deal.

“But at this point, he’s a lame-duck president, and what he does or does not do is completely irrelevant to the incoming administration and completely irrelevant to the Iranians.”

The irony of all these machinations is that the Iran lobby is left with so little leverage anymore within the U.S. government to influence any positive changes for the benefit of the regime that all it can do is whine and complain.

One example of that was a short statement put out by the National Iranian American Council, the regime’s chief lobbying force, lauding a modification to a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) issued by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC).

“We applaud OFAC for taking a significant step towards fully realizing the U.S.’s JCPOA commitments and providing guidance intended to reduce the risk for non-U.S. banks and companies interested in lawfully engaging the Iranian market. OFAC clarified that it would permit foreign companies to receive payment for goods or services rendered in the case of a U.S. sanctions snapback,” the statement said.

The FAQs do not carry the force of law and are simply administrative answers to common questions, but the fact that the NIAC is left to applaud a modest change demonstrates how low it has sunk in trying to find good news about Iran.

There is a significant irony in the NIAC’s statement since it criticized attacks on those same OFAC FAQs back in October when Iran critics attacked them for “easing” sanctions. The NIAC issued a statement saying the revised FAQs are a simple restatement and clarification of existing U.S. sanctions laws – not an “easing” of U.S. sanctions as some reports have erroneously claimed.

“There is a simple reason for this: Regulatory guidelines – like these FAQs – cannot change the operative law, but can merely explain and interpret that law,” the NIAC said.

So in one case, the FAQs should be judged as merely clarification, but in another case the FAQs are necessary as clear mandates to adhere to the nuclear agreement.

The NIAC cannot have it both ways, but the confusion from the OFAC is understandable since its officers have made steady pilgrimages to NIAC functions, including Adam Szubin, currently the acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence and former director of OFAC from 2006-2015, who recently spoke at a NIAC-sponsored conference and has often been quoted in NIAC publications and press announcements.

We can only assume how the cozy relationship between members of the OFAC and the NIAC might have produced these changes to the FAQ.

Even as the NIAC is busy flogging these tiny wins for the regime, the mullahs are moving as quickly as possible to consolidate their military advantages with final bloody battle to retake Aleppo in Syria that has resulted in the slaughter of countless men, women and children.

Freelance writer Heshmat Alavi wrote in the Daily Caller a sad recounting of the regime’s use of extremism to gain political leverage and how it must be confronted by the rest of the world.

“Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a strategic one for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate either Syria or Khuzestan [in southern Iran], our priority is to keep Syria.”

These are the words of Mehdi Taeb, former chief of Revolutionary Guards intelligence. This provides a very vivid incite of the importance of Syria, specifically, for Iran, and the necessity to continue meddling outside its borders, in general.

Being a flashpoint region of sectarian quarrels, continuously fueled by Iran’s mullahs, the Middle East has been witnessing a slow dragging into a new wave of sectarianism. Iran has been applying sectarian policies against others in the region, centralizing its efforts in provoking extremist and fundamentalist viewpoints, Alavi writes.

The mounting criticism of the Iranian regime continued to pour in as Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA, blasted the Obama administration’s handling of Iran.

“We have held our response to a whole bunch of egregious Iranian activity … hostage to the preservation of the near-term nuclear deal,” Hayden said Wednesday during the Jamestown Foundation’s tenth annual terrorism conference.

“What they’re doing in Syria, what they’re doing in Iraq, what they’re doing with Hezbollah, what they’re doing in Lebanon, what they’re doing in Yemen, what they’re doing in the Gulf,” Hayden said. “I would push back and push back hard.”

“The fear is if you did that, if you pushed back, they’d walk from the deal,” he continued. “My response is, that’s their decision.”

On a day when the regime was taking punches left and right, the NIAC was left applauding a FAQ.

Laura Carnahan

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 Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

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Iran Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

Iran Regime Rolls Out Threats of Global Destruction

Most of the public pronouncements made by leaders of the Iranian regime are meant to incite strong reactions be it threats to destroy its enemies or bury large swathes of the world under a barrage of Islamic missiles and rockets.

Targets for the verbal histrionics typically includs the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Canada, the U.K., France, Sunnis, Christians, women, Iranian dissidents, Instagram users and just about anyone else that seems to offend the mullahs; which seems to be about everyone on the planet not aligned with them.

Often the threats are hollow and empty and indicative of the weakness inherent in a regime that has to resort to verbal threats to get its point across, but every so often the regime makes itself known and to more discerning ears, therein lays nuggets of truth.

When top mullah Ali Khamenei called a resistance economy of sacrifice and deprivation from the Iranian people in order to keep the supply pipeline filled to prop up the Assad regime in Syria, he was telling the truth.

When Hassan Rouhani said in an interview that Iran does not recognize dual national citizens and that any Iranian, regardless of their passport was fair game for arrest, he wasn’t kidding.

Now we have the latest example of regime bloviating in the form of comments made by regime defense minister Hossein Dehghan, a well-known regime blowhard, who claimed that Donald Trump’s election could lead to a “world war” if the president-elect fulfilled his promise of altering the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Dehghan promised that Israel and all of Iran’s enemies in the region, including the Gulf states, would be destroyed. He further claimed that Trump’s previous statements had caused “unease” among America’s allies in the region, according to the regime’s Mehr’s news agency.

Dehghan’s singling out of the Gulf states of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Qatar was not by coincidence. They, along with Saudi Arabia, have proven to be the biggest thorn in Iranian regime’s side, especially in the Syrian civil war and uprising in Yemen, both fomented by Iran.

Dehghan’s bluster also includes the truth that the Iranian regime is pretty concerned over what Trump and his new cabinet will do as it relates to future relations with Iran. It is unlikely Trump will seek out confrontations with Iran as the Iran lobby has maintained since the election last month.

Given Trump’s penchant for hammering out deals and extracting concessions, he is likely to view the Iranian regime as an untrustworthy partner in any deal that requires close monitoring and specific punishment for any violation.

The difficulty Trump faces are the result of the failed policies of trying to appease the Iranian regime in order to change it by the Obama administration. Fortunately for Trump, he has a history of blunders to learn from over the past two years, which makes Dehghan’s comments noteworthy—not for the bluster—but for the real anxiety that seems to be gripping a Tehran that doesn’t quite know what to expect from Trump and how to deal with him.

Consequently, the default setting for the regime is to threaten first and then threaten again.

For Tehran, the operating manual for diplomacy now seems to be consist of making threats over and over again.

In order to back up those threats, the Iranian military has launched into a series of massive war drills to showcase it supposed muscle and fend off any potential attacks against it. The fact that Iran has to hold military drills because it fears an actual attack clearly shows how the attitude of the mullahs in Tehran has shifted rapidly from smugness to fear.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s military forces enjoy supremacy over the Persian Gulf region more than any other time,” Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri, the deputy chief of staff of the regime’s armed forces, was quoted as saying over the weekend. “The military and security conditions of the Persian Gulf are in a way that the enemy’s forces and equipment are fully within the range of the Iranian military men.”

As part of these drills, the regime’s military was busy unveiling almost every piece of new hardware it claimed to have developed including a new drone in a ritual of show-and-tell designed to mollify Iranian leaders more than dissuade the U.S.

What probably concerns Tehran more is not the threat of war, as much as the possibility that Trump will use the subtle levers of power to nudge the regime back on a course of real diplomacy and meaningful reforms at home. Bloomberg editorialized that Trump has ample tools at his disposal to crack down on Iran without necessarily tearing up the nuclear agreement on day one of his administration.

“At least Trump’s job will be made easier by Congress, which just extended the Iran Sanctions Act, allowing the U.S. to punish Iranian entities involved with terrorism, illegal weapons and human-rights violations. Trump can and should also end the de facto policy of looking the other way at Iran’s early infringements of the pact, such as the recent revelation that it had exceeded the deal’s cap on how much heavy water it is allowed to stockpile,” the Bloomberg editorial board said.

“In the long term, the six nations should try to negotiate changes in both the nuclear pact itself and the related side agreements (all of which the U.S. should make public). Iran may well be willing to come to the table. It complains that it has seen very little of the estimated $100 billion of its assets that had been frozen in foreign banks, due to other U.S. sanctions and rules making it hard to “dollarize” the funds for transfer. In addition, the hoped-for rush of investment by European energy companies — and the banks that accompany them — has been slow to materialize,” Bloomberg added.

That economic hammer remains the biggest one the U.S. possesses and one Trump understands intimately. For Trump, this new “art of the Iran deal” may very well prove to be right up his alley and that has the mullahs terrified.

Michael Tomlinson

The Race is On for Iran to Close All Deals

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hourglass-running-out-1January is not only the start of the New Year and 2017, it also marks a race against the clock for the Iranian regime as it struggles to close as many business deals as it can before Donald Trump is sworn into office as the new president.

There also seems to be a fever gripping the mullahs in Tehran beyond the normal insanity of religious fervor that grips them. In this case, it is a fever for cash.

With the nuclear agreement reached with Iran and the P5+1 group of nations came a lifting of economic sanctions. The Iran lobby argued that the removal of these sanctions would empower moderate elements in the Iranian government and usher in a new period of cooperation and diplomacy.

Unfortunately none of that has come to pass as Iran’s government became even more rigidly dominated by the mullahs and their cohorts in the military and Revolutionary Guards and Iran’s military activities through its terrorist proxies have plunged it into fighting wars in three countries at once.

The drain on the regime’s coffers have been enormous and led to a stagnation of the economy that has caused the Iranian people to become restless to a point where the regime instituted a large-scale crackdown aimed at journalists, students, artists and other dissidents.

The election of Trump poses a new risk for the regime as he selects cabinet picks that have a long and critical history of U.S.-Iran relations under the Obama administration. The comprehensive nature of his cabinet choices has clearly shown the mullahs that the free ride of appeasement they have enjoyed the past several years is coming to an end.

All of which leads to an astonishing effort by the Iranian regime to close as many investment and business deals as possible before the potential re-imposition of economic sanctions since Iran has done little to conform to the spirit, let alone letter of the nuclear agreement.

Hassan Rouhani and his master, Ali Khamenei, know the necessity of securing as many business deals as possible since the regime is badly in need of cash. It is also why the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, have been fixated with preserving the commercial aspects of the agreement.

The New York Times described the race by Rouhani to close these deals, especially bolstering its oil industry in regaining its international status as a top oil producer.

Iran’s oil industry, the lifeblood of its economy, was devastated by the cumulative impact of the nuclear sanctions, which halved petroleum exports and left the country ostracized economically, the Times wrote.

The international nuclear agreement that lifted those sanctions nearly a year ago, one of the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy initiatives, has enabled Iran to partly recover. But Mr. Trump has warned that he may dismantle the deal, a threat that has injected new urgency into Iran’s push to build up its oil industry before Mr. Trump takes power next month,” the Times added.

Over the last four weeks, Tehran has negotiated agreements with the oil field services giant Schlumberger and companies from China, Norway, Thailand and Poland, including a deal just announced with Royal Dutch Shell.

“They are signing before Trump does something,” said Dragan Vuckovic, president of Mediterranean International, a Texas-based oil services company that works in North Africa and the Middle East. “The Iranians will give the Europeans favorable terms because of Trump. They want to send a message to Trump that if you try to cancel this agreement, we will just go to the Europeans.”

It’s a strategy that carries significant risk since the combative election demonstrated how the incoming president reacts to threats from opponents.

The Iranian regime also announced the completion of its $16.6 billion deal to buy 80 jetliners from Boeing. Planned aircraft sales by Boeing and European plane maker Airbus Group SE have been among the most high-profile transactions pursued by Iranian regime after Western powers in January removed sanctions in return for its agreeing to constrain its nuclear program. U.S. officials cleared the way in September for Airbus and Boeing to start contract talks.

The plane deals have been staunchly opposed by critics of the nuclear accord with Iran, which has come under fire from Trump and his emerging national-security team. Some U.S. lawmakers have also tried to block any financing for the planned sales, the Wall Street Journal reported.

What troubles the mullahs and Iran lobby is that the members of Trump’s team include ex-military officers who have been battle-tested in combat against Islamic extremist groups and terror proxies. For them, their world view has been shaped by actual experience with terror and Islamic extremism and the horrors they bring.

According to the Washington Post, the three generals making up the core of Trump’s foreign policy team have views cutting against the grain of U.S. policies seeking to empower moderates in Iran and of U.S. intelligence assessments that terrorism no longer stands alone atop the rankings of global security threats now crowded by concerns about cyberattacks and renewed aggression by China and Russia.

Their views, though far from uniform, have been heavily influenced over the past 15 years by intensely personal battlefield losses, the country’s waning attention to the wars and an up-close view of a ruthless enemy, said the Post.

“I think it’s likely there will be terrorist attacks in the coming years, and I think Trump will feel tremendous pressure to be seen as acting very decisively,” said Dan Byman, a former Middle East analyst at the CIA and a professor at Georgetown University.

Byman cited the example of the Iranian seizure of American sailors shortly before the Iran nuclear deal was signed as an example of an overseas provocation that had the potential to derail broader U.S. policy goals.

Trump’s advisers “have a lot of personal experience and might be more inclined to see Iranian hostility as deeply planned,” rather than the act of a rogue faction or a function of chaos, Byman said. “They’re more likely to read things negatively than the Obama administration would have.”

While the Iran lobby may believe that is a pathway to armed conflict, the growing consensus is that Trump’s team is more likely to avoid that option by simply finally holding the Iranian accountable diplomatically and through a rigorous sanctions process that does now reward Iranian regime for belligerent behavior.

For Tehran, the clock is running out on them.

Michael Tomlinson

Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

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Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

It is a basic principle of physics that if you heat a liquid in a confined space, it will build up pressure until the container explodes unless the material is strong enough to withstand the pressure.

In the case of the leadership of the Iranian regime, the cracks are beginning to show as they struggle to absorb the implications of a Trump presidency and a newly energized Congress determined to demonstrate to the American voter that it can get tough on a militant regime in Iran.

One clear sign of Donald Trump’s attitude towards foreign policy and national security is his emerging Cabinet selections, in which he has assembled a large number of fierce opponents to the Iranian nuclear agreement.

As Adam Kredo outlines in the Washington Free Beacon, the selections include retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) as CIA director, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser, picks that have won plaudits for their vocal opposition to the nuclear deal.

“It’s no secret that Flynn considers Iran to be the linchpin of a global alliance of hostile rivals” said one source familiar with the backroom talks about future national security picks. “He was in the Middle East during the Iraq war and knows first-hand how Iranian proxies killed hundreds of American troops, and he has seen the intelligence showing that they’ve targeted Americans around the world.”

Other recent national security picks include KT McFarland, a longtime national security analyst and commentator who has vocally criticized Iranian regime and the nuclear deal, and Yleem Poblete, who served for nearly two decades as a senior staffer for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

A senior congressional aide familiar with Poblete’s work on key national security matters told the Washington Free Beacon that Trump’s picks would not back down from a showdown with Iran as it continues to fund terrorism across the Middle East.

Poblete played a key role in crafting sanctions against the Iranian regime and was the senior staffer on the Foreign Affairs Committee when they were initially signed into law.

For the mullahs in Tehran, the assembling team must be a nightmare for their future plans on counting on American appeasement. More importantly, the pressure seems to be getting to them as Iran has issued some pretty bizarre statements and actions over the past few days.

One incident involved the arrest of 12 people in the fashion industry in Iran who were jailed for “spreading prostitution” via images posted online.

The eight women and four men were handed sentences of between five months and six years by a court in Shiraz, a lawyer told the Ilna news agency.

They were also banned from working in fashion and travelling abroad for two years afterwards, Mahmoud Taravat said.

The 12 were convicted of charges including spreading prostitution and promoting corruption via the publication of obscene images online, inciting Muslims to corrupt themselves through putting on fashion shows, and spreading a “Western-style culture of nudity.”

The crackdown follows a similar crackdown earlier this year when in May, the prosecutor of Tehran’s cybercrimes court announced the arrest of eight people involved in posting photographs of women without headscarves on social media. Iranian law requires that all women cover their hair in public.

But that wasn’t the only episode of growing paranoia within the regime leadership. Al-Monitor also reported that even Iranian children born to foreign fathers are even under suspicion by the regime.

Based on Iran’s civil code, the marriage of an Iranian woman to a foreign national is dependent upon special permission from the Foreign Ministry. In practice, this means that Iranian women need to get permission to marry non-Iranian Muslims. Iran’s civil code forbids Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men. An estimated 70,000 marriages between Iranian women and Afghan men are not registered with the National Organization for Civil Registration. Meanwhile, Iran’s Interior Ministry has declared all marriages between Iranian women and Afghan men that took place after 2001 invalid.

In contrast, Iranian men may marry Muslim or non-Muslim women and Iranian or non-Iranian women without obtaining permission from the Foreign Ministry. Under Iranian law, children born to an Iranian father — whether residing in Iran or abroad — are considered Iranian. Meanwhile, children born to Iranian mothers are not granted automatic citizenship rights, creating a complicated situation for Iranian women who marry non-Iranian citizens.

The contradiction is yet another example of the misogynistic attitude of the regime’s leaders and ongoing harsh treatment of women under the regime’s religious rule. Since there is no religious basis for this different treatment of men and women, it is clear the regime’s legal provisions stem from old fashioned sexism and the devaluing of Iranian women and their children by the mullahs.

In many ways, these antiquated laws are reminiscent of racial laws that prohibited mixed race marriages or considered children of mixed races to be less than human; an apt comparison considering the Iranian regime’s eagerness to apply to death penalty broadly.

On a more practical level, the Iranian regime’s continued denial of the legal status of dual national Iranians has brought visits from abroad to a grinding halt as members of the Iranian diaspora rethink visits back to Iran in light of arrests and imprisonment of Iranians with citizenship from countries such as the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

The Los Angeles Times examined the growing fears among the largest Persian community outside of Iran in Los Angeles.

Last summer, San Diego resident Reza “Robin” Shahini became one of several U.S. citizens detained in Iran, joining dual nationals from Britain and France who had been arrested earlier this year.

His prison sentence came a week after Iranian American businessman Siamak Namazi, who was living in Dubai before his arrest, and his ailing father, Baquer Namazi, were sentenced to 10 years in prison each on similarly vague charges of spying for the United States, according to a report by Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s news service.

It is noteworthy that groups ostensibly working on behalf of Iranian-Americans, such as the National Iranian American Council, has remained largely silent as the practice of dual-nationals continues.

In August, the State Department updated its travel warning, advising that “Iranian authorities continue to unjustly detain and imprison U.S. citizens, particularly Iranian Americans, including students, journalists, business travelers, and academics on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security.”

Ultimately, the pressure on the mullahs may cause them to take even more aggressive actions and the world will need to be prepared for it.

Michael Tomlinson

Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

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Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

Since the Iran nuclear deal was agreed to last year have things gotten better or worse in the Middle East?

It isn’t just a speculative question for polite cocktail conversation. It goes to the heart of a key question facing not only the incoming Trump administration, but the entire world really since if the answer is a definitive “No” the world will have to significantly alter its approach to the Iranian regime since the policy of appeasing it over the past two years has been an abject failure.

Part of the challenge in dealing with the mullahs in Tehran is that while the nuclear agreement only dealt with the nuclear portion of Iran’s actions, it has been the Iranian regime’s actions in all other areas that have contributed to what can only be called a mess of global proportions.

One of the central tenets of the Iran lobby’s support for the nuclear agreement was that it would foster more moderate behavior from Iran, empower moderate elements in the government and lead to a pathway for regional peace with Iran as a central broker.

None of those things have come to pass. In fact, since the agreement, things have only gotten significantly worse, which is why a debate is raging in Washington and other capitals about what to do with Iran and the nuclear agreement moving forward after the Trump administration assumes office.

For the Iranian regime and the Iran lobby, the threats have been clear and loud; revocation of the agreement would lead to “dire” consequences with intimations of a new arms race and confrontation.

It’s hard to imagine how much worse things could get as the Iranian regime has helped contribute to the deaths of 800,000 people in Syrian, turned another four million in refugees swamping nations from Germany to Hungary to Greece, to starting a conflict in Yemen that threatens to start a regional war with Saudi Arabia and potentially drawing in the U.S. and Russia into direct military conflict.

This is not hyperbole. It is a very real possibility and much of it can be blamed squarely at the policies of Ali Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani and their clerical brethren.

The response from U.S. lawmakers has become increasingly tough as Democrats and Republicans have joined in criticizing the Iranian regime as they recognized the political mood of the American voter after a historic election.

Senate Democrats are ripping Iran over threats issued by top Iranian officials to retaliate if Congress extends sanctions that the Obama administration has said are permitted under last summer’s nuclear deal, according to conversations with lawmakers conducted by The Weekly Standard.

Iranian regime officials have threatened reprisal in recent weeks if Congress extends the longstanding Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) and have called the potential 10-year extension a violation of the nuclear deal.

“Iran is making this up. These problems don’t exist,” Maryland senator Ben Cardin, ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Weekly Standard. “Congress, by extending ISA, is not taking any new steps against Iran at all.”

Fellow New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez, who also voted against the deal, said that the ISA is critical for reigning in illicit Iranian activity and should be reapplied regardless of Iranian threats.

The ISA had already been passed by the House by a near-unanimous vote and the Senate vote is expected to deliver a similar result even though Secretary of State John Kerry made a last-ditch appeal to Senate Democrats.

The Obama administration has joined the Iran lobby is trying to stoke fears of Iranian retaliation should the ISA be renewed. A remarkable position to take since the administration has not offered any retaliation for similar missteps by the regime including two clear violations of the agreement found by the UN’s watchdog agency.

Last month, seven Democrats who voted for the deal last year wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to urge him to schedule a vote on the bill, arguing that it strengthens the deal by giving the White House an “unambiguous ability to immediately snap back sanctions in the coming years.”

But none this has stopped supporters of the Iranian regime from continuing to make silly claims such as Massoumeh Torfeh in Al-Jazeera, in which she claimed that if Trump were to confront Iran, it would embolden and help “hardliners” in Iran.

This is again the same misleading argument made endlessly by the Iran lobby which tries to mask the inescapable fact of life now in Iran: the hardliners have always been in charge anyway.

“The year 2017, in which Iran would be holding presidential and provincial elections, would be dominated by a heated debate between the hardliners and the centrists on how to handle the new US presidency and the nuclear deal signed with the so-called P5+1 endorsed by the United Nations Security Council,” Torfeh writes.

It is nearly word for word the same argument made earlier this year in advance of Iran’s parliamentary elections which were supposed to deliver a larger “moderate” body, but instead became ever more hardline as Khamenei’s handpicked councils wiped away thousands of potential candidates from even appearing on the ballot.

A similar outcome is expected in 2017 regardless of what Iran sympathizers like Torfeh promise.

The reality of Iran’s bad behavior is undisputable. The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East reinforced that view this week.

Army Gen. Joseph Votel said the agreement, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits to its nuclear program, was being “implemented appropriately,” but that it has not changed Iranian behavior.

“I am concerned about continued malign activities of Iran across the region,” Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, said at a forum hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Those included Iran’s cyber activities, the use of surrogate forces, facilitation of lethal aid, buildup of missile and anti-access capabilities, and unprofessional and aggressive activities in the Persian Gulf, he said.

Michael Tomlinson

 

 

Iran Lobby Broadens Attacks Against Trump Nominees

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Iran Lobby Broadens Attacks Against Trump Nominees

Iran Lobby Broadens Attacks Against Trump Nominees

The full-scale assault against President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for key positions by the Iran lobby is underway as Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), his pick for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, became the latest target of a hit piece; this time in Huffington Post by Ryan Costello, a policy fellow at the National Iranian American Council.

Costello attacks Pompeo for his fierce opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement and attempts to portray the nominee as some wild-eye lunatic seeking to carpet bomb Tehran.

“Pompeo has been a fierce ideological opponent of the Iran nuclear accord and gone out of his way to work to roll back the multilateral agreement. Perhaps most disconcertingly, Pompeo has downplayed the costs of bombing Iran, hyped bogus ‘secret side deals’ in order to discredit the accord and engaged in public political stunts harmful to U.S. diplomatic efforts,” Costello writes.

Costello then goes on to laughably attempt to portray the Iran nuclear agreement as having delivered benefits to the U.S. intelligence community by allowing closer monitoring of Iran nuclear activities.

Of course, this is one of more idiotic assertions that could be made since U.S. intelligence largely missed Iran’s burgeoning nuclear program in the first place and even some secret nuclear facilities only came to light when revealed by Iranian dissident groups and not U.S. intelligence assets.

Costello also neglects to mention how since the deal was passed, the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has already reported several violations of the agreement by Iran and sought waivers and exemptions rather than enforcement.

His laundry list of rewriting history includes trying to portray the secret side deal given to Iranian regime and not disclosed to Congress at the time of debate over the agreement as nothing more than a business as usual action.

Even more interesting was Costello’s attempt to brush off Pompeo’s efforts to visit Iran to observe parliamentary elections last February that were widely viewed as rigged given the regime’s decision to wipe off thousands of candidates from the ballot. Costello also criticizes efforts to visit Americans being held captive in Iranian prisons as a political stunt.

It should be noted that not even Costello nor his NIAC colleagues ever expressed a desire to check on the status of their fellow Iranian-Americans being held in Iran, nor did they ever mount a grassroots or media campaign on their behalf for their release.

Hypocrisy seems to be a common thread through NIAC’s public statements versus public actions.

But the NIAC and the rest of the Iran lobby are never ones to miss an opportunity as well as it has issued a fundraising call based on the election results; putting itself squarely in the camp opposed to the Trump administration from the outset.

Elham Khatami, NIAC’s outreach director, posted a fundraising appeal on the group’s website asking for donations to combat the perceived injustices of a future Trump administration.

“Trump has selected a man with ties to the White Nationalist movement, Steve Bannon, as chief strategist, pro-war lawmaker Mike Pompeo as CIA Director, and noted Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor,” Khatami writes.

Clearly the NIAC has chosen the best course of action to oppose any initiative set for by the new administration and has raised the stakes in describing Trump’s nominees in such graphic and alarming ways.

None of this should be too surprising since the Iran lobby has already calculated the policy of appeasing Iran by the U.S. is rapidly coming to an end and as such is now reduced to essentially fighting a rear-guard action to minimize the damage to Tehran.

The mullahs in Tehran recognize this may be the end of their gravy train as well as more provocative actions by Iran’s military aimed at U.S. forces have stepped up including another incident in the Persian Gulf in which Iranian regime warships aimed their weapons at U.S. helicopters; an action that U.S. defense officials called “provocative.”

Two U.S. defense officials told Reuters on Monday that a small vessel operated by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) trained its weapon on a Navy MH-60 helicopter on Saturday as it flew within half a mile of two Iranian vessels in international waters.

Several similar incidents have occurred this year. In September, a U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship changed course after an Iranian fast-attack craft came within 295 feet of it.

This incident only reinforces the Iranian regime’s intent to advance their extremism as a mean to their survival and hence appearing in confrontation with the West  at every turn since the nuclear deal was agreed to last year, including using its forces to attack U.S.-backed forces in the Syrian civil war, in Iraq in the sectarian war begun by Iran and in Yemen where Iranian-backed Houthis now battle U.S. and Saudi-supported forces.

Ultimately, the sooner Trump’s foreign policy team can be put in place, then the sooner the business of holding the Iranian fully accountable for its actions can begin…and none too soon.

Michael Tomlinson

As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

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As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

So much for Iranian moderation.

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has long maintained that following the nuclear agreement, Iran would become a more moderate force in the Middle East and a new period of U.S.-Iranian relations would spring forth.

The unfortunate truth has been the complete opposite—much to the Iran lobby’s chagrin—but Iran’s militant actions are continually defended by their staunch advocates with nary a word of criticism ever coming out.

It did not matter if top mullah Ali Khamenei threatened destruction on the U.S. or restated continually that Iran would be on a war footing to oppose the U.S. as the “Great Satan.”

It did not matter if Iran took American citizens against their will and locked them up only to demand billions of dollars in ransom and even after negotiating a prisoner swap, the mullahs again took more Americans hostage and again stated plainly and openly its hope to garner more billions of dollars.

It did not matter what the Iranian regime did because the Iran lobby was always going to ignore the bad news and keep pushing a positive narrative.

But now with the new Trump administration assembling its national security team, which appears to be comprised of many critics of the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby finds itself trying out new tactics to protect the regime.

Part of this new effort includes trying to throw mud at potential Trump appointees in an effort to discredit them such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani who is being touted as a potential Secretary of State, or former UN ambassador John Bolton who is also being considered for a top foreign policy post.

An example of the smear campaign by the Iran lobby was a scandalous editorial that ran in Politico authored by Daniel Benjamin who attacked Giuliani ruthlessly by using information provided by Iran’s intelligence agencies in their efforts to smear Iranian opposition groups.

It is interesting to note that the information Benjamin used was taken almost word for word from similar postings made by Iranian-linked sources attacking opposition and democracy groups, but the fact that he went so aggressively after Giuliani demonstrates the level of pressure the Iran lobby must feel as Trump’s cabinet is beginning to shape up with well-known Iran skeptics.

Robert Torricelli, the former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, penned a scathing rebuke to Benjamin in Politico that correctly pointed out the attack against Giuliani had little to do with the former mayor, but rather was aimed at the broader Iranian resistance movement that has gained substantial support from both Democrats and Republicans in recent years.

It is this democracy movement that causes the most panic amongst the mullahs in Tehran since it represents a homegrown opposition of fellow Iranians and makes a lie of the idea the Iranian government indeed has moderate elements within it.

Instead, the mullahs have cracked down harshly against opponents both political and otherwise with mass arrests of journalists, students and other activists and ensuring the election of a parliament securely filled with their loyal supporters.

These are all things the Iran lobby chose to ignore and with every Iranian provocation, groups such as the NIAC maintain their deafening silence.

Take for example statements made the other day by the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces where he openly called for an expansion of Iranian military bases in other countries.

“We need distant bases, and it may become possible one day to have bases on the shores of Yemen or Syria, or bases on islands or floating (bases),” said General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, quoted by the Shargh daily newspaper.

“Is having distant bases less than nuclear technology? I say it is worth dozens of times more,” added Baqeri, who was speaking at a gathering of naval commanders.

It is no accident he names Syria and Yemen, both countries that Iran has spent considerable resources in financing, weapons and fighters to hold as vassal states.

This part of the larger narrative and vision the mullahs in Tehran have openly talked about in creating a Shiite sphere of influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. It is also why Iran is engaged in sectarian wars against Sunni tribes in Iraq and Sunni-majority nations such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Even Iran’s fight against ISIS is not about combatting terrorism but trying to eliminate a Sunni rival for regional hegemony.

So long as the Iran lobby continues its efforts to provide cover for the mullahs, it is reasonable to believe that whatever groups such as the NIAC has to say about Iranian intentions will always be suspect.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

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Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

Prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, the Iran lobby launched a large PR effort aimed at trying to influence the debate starting to form as to how the incoming Trump administration should approach the problem of Iranian extremism in the Middle East, especially its support for terrorism and the escalating conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

President-elect Trump has already begun forming his national security team with the announced appointments of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as United Nations ambassador, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn as national security advisor, Fox News commentator K.T. McFarland as deputy national security advisor, and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as CIA director.

His selections signal a likely end to the previous administration’s policies of trying to appease the Iranian regime in order to secure a more accommodating stance from Tehran. Those policies—as evidenced by the aftermath of the nuclear agreement—clearly demonstrated that the mullahs in Tehran were no mood for moderation and clearly believed they could take advantage of the U.S. and other nations that brokered the agreement.

Since the election, the Iran lobby has been faced with the uncomfortable truth that its influence in Washington is going to be greatly diminished in light of the new election results and the continued skepticism of the Iran nuclear deal by leaders like Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

But the Iran lobby is doing the bidding of the mullahs by ramping up its efforts in a last-ditch effort to try and spin a new web of obfuscations to replace the failed “echo chamber” of voices urging accommodation with Iranian leaders.

The most offensive product to be produced as part of that effort was a so-called “report” issued by the National Iranian American Council and signed by 76 so-called “national security” specialists, the vast majority of whom lack any national security or military credentials or experience at all. Most were either paid staffers or consultants allied with the NIAC or academics from fields as national security related as linguistics and anthropology.

While the issuance of the report itself and accompanying NIAC statement did not garner much media attention outside of blogs such as Lobelog.com supportive of the Iranian regime, some of the individuals named in the report have taken up the cause with their own media efforts to flog the idea of support for Iran.

One of those was Stephen Kinzer, who penned an editorial in the Boston Globe urging Donald Trump to pursue a pathway of what he calls “dual conciliation” which reads more like a warmed over version of the failed policy of appeasement he previously urged.

Kinzer’s piece is interesting for several reasons, especially one thing he wrote which was that the U.S. should judge Iran not by sentiment, “but strictly according to whether their actions promote our interests. Our central interest in the Middle East is containing violent radicalism.”

It is an odd thing to say since the actions of the Iranian regime have not matched the sentiments it has publicly urged. While leaders such as Hassan Rouhani have purred lines of peace and moderation, the leadership of Ali Khamenei has directed Iranian forces to deepen the war in Syria, widen sectarian violence in Iraq and start an insurgency in Yemen that threatens a direct conflict with Saudi Arabia.

Kinzer is right, we should judge Iran on its actions and not the sentiments the Iran lobby would have us believe. It’s a path that Trump’s national security team has already publicly advocated during the course of the campaign in urging significant reforms to the nuclear deal, as well as holding Iran accountable for its actions.

Kinzer also tries to portray Iranian mullahs as a valiant enemy of Islamic extremism in the form of ISIS, but does not even attempt to distinguish the type of Islamic extremism Iranian regime itself is responsible for. It’s another attempt by Kinzer to try and portray Iran as a “good” Islamic extremist and ISIS as a “bad” Islamic extremist.

The distinction he tries to make is like trying to distinguish between Hitler’s SS and Brownshirts. To their victims, there is no difference.

Similarly, he fails to note that the Iranian regime is the central source of the instability raging through the Middle East. By trying to link the unrest to a supposed Saudi Arabia vs. Iran conflict, he ignores Iranian regime’s use of terrorist proxies in Hezbollah or insurgents such as the Houthis in Yemen or Shiite militias in Iraq to wage unrelenting war. Therefore unlike his proposal, Iranian regime is not going to be any kind of security partner for the rest of the world.

Iranian regime has attempted to build a Shiite extremist dominant empire with wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen to wrest those controls under its control alongside Lebanon and possible Egypt.

None of this should be unexpected since Kinzer is widely known to be a left leaning and a strong critic of the correct policies, especially as it relates to in confronting Latin American and Middle Eastern dictatorships, authoring books on the subject, which we assume makes him a “national security” expert.

Kinzer has long advocated policies of non-intervention which makes him an adequate tool for the NIAC in trying to protect Iranian regime from any repercussions for its actions.

Like his fellow Iran lobby advocates such as Trita Parsi of the NIAC, they are finding a shrinking audience for their message of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran in light of the evidence of a year of Iranian human rights crackdowns and several violations of the nuclear agreement.

We can only hope the Trump administration maintains its skeptical eye to future promises of Iranian moderation.

Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Tries to Fool the Public on Iran Again

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NIAC Tries to Fool the Public on Iran Again

NIAC Tries to Fool the Public on Iran Again

The National Iranian American Council is in overdrive using the proverbial firehouse to blanket websites, blogs and comment forums in the hope that the incoming Trump administration doesn’t undo the past three years of achievements on behalf of the Iranian regime.

It’s latest contribution was a piece appearing on CNN authored by Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi who again attempt to portray the choices facing the new administration in regards to the nuclear agreement reached with Iran as an either or proposition of leaving it alone or ripping it up and risking grave consequences.

It’s a Hobson’s choice that the NIAC has become adept at: Follow our suggestion and everything will be fine, but dare threaten Iran and risk cataclysm.

The 800,000 people killed in the Syrian conflict so far at the hands of the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Iranian fighters would be hard pressed to agree with those choices.

The Iranian regime has established itself clearly as uninterested in peaceful conflict resolution and instead has doubled down and gone all in using military force and violence in an effort to impose its religious will on its neighbors in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Parsi and Marashi argue that Trump should take the “political risk necessary to broaden the opening to Iran precisely to avoid replicating recent US policy failures in the Middle East.”

This may be the stupidest statement made yet by Parsi and Marashi.

Why on Earth would Donald Trump want to take a political risk on behalf of Iran, especially as he is already being assailed by the mainstream press and the political elites that turned their noses up at his candidacy (Parsi and Marashi included)?

Parsi and Marashi attempt to force the focus on the survival of the nuclear agreement with Iran when the issue has never been the agreement itself, but rather the behavior of the mullahs in Tehran.

No agreement is worth the paper it’s printed on if one of the participants in the agreement willfully ignores it right from the beginning. The fact that the Obama administration and European Union granted several waivers and exemptions right at the start made the agreement ineffectual and impotent.

During the campaign, Trump correctly focused not on the agreement itself, but the conduct of the mullahs after the agreement was reached. His criticism of the billions of dollars in cash released to Iran and its use in funding conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen demonstrates he looked at the optics correctly, optics that Parsi and Marashi are trying hard to change now with their desperate lobbying campaign.

Parsi and Marashi attempt to frame the discussion around one of Trump’s biggest pledges which was to destroy ISIS and argue that “he cannot walk away or renegotiate the nuclear deal without undermining the coalition against the terror group.”

Unfortunately, Parsi and Marashi never acknowledge that Iranian regime itself is part of the axis of terrorist sponsors with its long-running support for Hezbollah and its sheltering of Al-Qaeda leaders in Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan drove them out.

They also incorrectly state that the Iran nuclear deal cannot be re-negotiated when in fact any agreement can be re-negotiated; a simple fact that the businessman in Trump knows full well. When you have a rotten deal on the table, it’s the idiot that accepts it as gospel. Trump is no idiot, much as Parsi and Marashi have claimed in the past.

Parsi and Marashi are correct when they characterize Iran as having “substantial latent power – population size and potential for wealth generation,” but miss the most crucial aspect of that power, which is “how will Iran’s leaders choose to apply it?”

Will clerical leaders such as Ali Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani seek to use that potential to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians? Of course not.

Iran’s economy has spiraled downward generating massive protests from small businessmen to school teachers, only to engender a broad and punishing crackdown on dissenters that have filled Iran’s prisons to capacity.

Will the Iranian regime seek to stabilize the Middle East and seek to reduce tensions and conflict? Absolutely not.

Iranian regime deepened the Syrian conflict and broadened it, while bringing Russia into the fight and setting the stage for a return to Cold War confrontations between the U.S. and Russian armed forces. Iran mullahs ignited the Yemen civil war with its clandestine military support for Houthi rebels and plunged Iraq back into sectarian conflict by raising Shiite militias in fighting Sunni insurgents tossed out of the power-sharing government of former president Nouri al-Maliki.

What is even more astonishing is Parsi and Marashi’s suggestion that the solution to the Middle East’s problems is to solve the “Saudi-Iran cold war”; an observation that is ludicrous given the fact that any solution to the current crop of problems in the Middle East starts and stops in Tehran.

Until Parsi and Marashi actually admit that Iran needs to curb its military adventures and support for insurgency and terrorism in order to advance the prospects for peace, nothing they say or write should be considered legitimate policy discussions and instead simply be viewed as propaganda for the mullahs in Tehran.

The quest for peace begins only when Tehran stops trying to rule its neighbors.

Laura Carnahan