Iran Lobby

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

Obama Adviser on Iran Worked for Pro-Regime Lobby

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White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

The White House released a list of its high-ranking officials who took part in a video conference with President Obama late Tuesday. Among them appears Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who apparently has formerly worked for the National Iranian-American Council.

The White House brief, which was disclosed by The Daily Beast, listed Sahar Nowrouzzadeh as the National Security Council Director for Iran. Nowrouzzadeh appears to be a former employee of the alleged pro-Tehran regime lobbying group, NIAC (National Iranian-American Council).

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Breitbart News has found that a person with the same name has previously written severalpublications on behalf of NIAC. According to what appears to be her LinkedIn account, Nowrouzzadeh became an analyst for the Department of Defense in 2005 before moving her way up to the National Security Council in 2014.
A NIAC profile from 2007 reveals that Sahar Nowrouzzadeh appears to be the same person as the one who is currently the NSC Director for Iran. The profiles indicate that she had the same double major and attended the same university (George Washington).

 

Critics have alleged that NIAC is a lobby for the current Iranian dictatorship under Ayatollah Khamenei. A dissident journalist revealed recently that NIAC’s president and founder, Trita Parsi, has maintained a years-long relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif.

NIAC was established in 1999, when founder Trita Parsi attended a conference in Cyprus that was held under the auspices of the Iranian regime. During the conference, Parsi reportedly laid out his plan to introduce a pro-regime lobbying group to allegedly counteract the influence of America’s pro-Israel and anti-Tehran regime advocacy groups.

NIAC has been investing heavily in attempts to influence the talks in favor of an agreement with the state sponsor of terror. In recent days, its director, Trita Parsi, has been spotted having amiable conversation with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s brother.

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The revelations about the NSC Director’s apparent past with the alleged pro-regime group come as the U.S. has reportedly struck an agreement with Iran and the rest of the P5+1 world powers on Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.

White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

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White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

A just-retired White House National Security Council (NSC) director has written a defense of the Obama administration’s NSC Director for Iran, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, whom Breitbart News found has previously worked for an alleged pro-Iranian regime lobbying group, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

Dr. Philip Gordon, Nowrouzzadeh’s former boss, wrote a defense of Nowrouzzadeh–who now serves as NSC Director for Iran–in The Washington Post’s April 5 “Letters to the Editor” section (which is usually a platform for average readers, not government officials). Oddly enough, Gordon will be succeeded by Robert Malley on April 6, according to a White House statement. This means he presumably published the letter as a government official or during his first days as a private citizen.

Nowrouzzadeh was present in closed-door conferences with President Obama last week during America’s nuclear talks with the Iranian regime, which resulted in the agreement of a basic framework for further negotiations.

Gordon, a career-academic, served as special assistant to President Obama and White House coordinator for Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf region. In his position, he was a top member of the National Security Council. During his tenure, Gordon took a pro-diplomacy approach with the Iranian regime. He was also a fierce critic of Israel, arguing last summer (while Israel was in the midst of a defensive war with Palestinian terror group Hamas) that the country should withdraw to its 1949 armistice lines in exchange for hopes for peace with the Palestinians. A prominent pro-Israel figure went as far as to describe Gordon’s 2014 speech as “pro-Hamas.”

In the WaPo  “Letters to the Editor” section, Gordon defends the 31-year-old Nowrouzzadeh as a “loyal U.S. citizen.” Her qualifications are proven by the fact that she received “awards” from four different government agencies during her short stint in federal service, Gordon says in his letter to The Washington Post. 

The former White House official was clearly distraught by a Washington Post article on Breitbart’s exposé of Nowrouzzadeh, which joked that she could be a “sleeper agent” for the Iranian regime.

Gordon writes:

I was distressed to see that Al Kamen, in his April 3 In the Loop column, “But it says so right there: ‘For Iran,’” cast aspersion on a loyal U.S. public servant because of her name and background — even if in the form of a lame joke about dual loyalties. As the column noted, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh has worked for the U.S. government since 2005 at the Defense Department, the State Department and now the National Security Council. She has received awards from Defense, State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI. As her former supervisor, I’m proud of her tireless work on behalf of U.S. national security.

The former Obama assistant then downplays her role at the alleged pro-Iranian regime lobbying group. He adds, “Suggesting that she could be channeling a foreign government because of her parents’ origins and a part-time college internship she had more than a decade ago promoting political participation among Iranian Americans is deeply offensive.”

In his defense of Nowrouzzadeh, Gordon noticeably downplays the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) as a group that is “promoting political participation among Iranian Americans.” Also, Breitbart News has obtained a NIAC letter that shows Nowrouzzadeh was listed not as an intern, but as a “staff member” of the organization. The letter also showed that the alleged pro-Tehran group was lobbying against U.S. funding for Iranian opposition groups.

Top government representatives, journalists, and Iranian opposition groups have maintained for years that NIAC is working on behalf of the Iranian regime.

Senator Mark Kirk has stated that NIAC is an outfit run by “regime-sympathizers.” Former Senator Jon Kyl has made similar claims, previously demanding that the Eric Holder-led Justice Department investigate NIAC for its ties to the Iranian government.

The Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who maintains a close friendship with President Obama, has said that NIAC’s President does a lot of “leg-work” for the Iranian regime. Bloomberg’s Eli Lake has documented NIAC’s close ties with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

In an article last week on how the media is reporting on the Iran talks, Reuters referred to NIAC representatives that were present as “analysts sympathetic to the Iranian government.”

Perhaps most importantly, the vast majority of the non-Islamist Iranian opposition groups see NIAC as a mover and shaker for the Iranian regime, either through their words or in practice.

Furthermore, Gordon did not reveal his own bias towards NIAC in his defense of the 31-year-old’s prominent position as National Security Council director for Iran. Just last year, Gordon was the Obama administration’s representative at NIAC’s annual Washington, D.C., conference. He became the first senior White House official to address the conference, offering NIAC a level of legitimacy that the group had never before attained.

In his speech, Gordon praised NIAC and said that the Obama White House was willing toestablish a “new relationship” with Tehran, should the murderous regime there agree to a diplomatic accord on its nuclear program.

Gordon’s NIAC address came the same year Nowrouzzadeh became a member of the National Security Council.

Breitbart News has uncovered a NIAC founding document that stresses how important it was for the burgeoning organization to recruit and groom young staffers in hopes to influence long-term U.S. relations with the Iranian regime.

The following paragraph from the document–which pushes an Iranian-American lobby that will advance the interest of Tehran’s Islamic Republic–covers how NIAC intended to pursue its youth development program:

Creating similar types of seminars and intern opportunities to Iranian-American youth may not improve Iran-US relations in the short run, but it will help integrate the Iranian-American community into the political life of America. In the long run, a strong and active Iranian-American lobby, partly established through these seminars and by the participants of these programs, may serve to ensure that the US and Iran never find themselves in violent opposition to each other again. Arguably an Iranian-American lobby (which is different from a lobby group purely pursuing the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran) is needed in order to create a balance between the competing Middle Eastern lobbies. Without it, Iran-bashing may become popular in Congress again.

Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

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Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen who helped establish a pro-Tehran lobbying group in America, has been arrested in Iran and imprisoned indefinitely.

Mr. Namazi was visiting family in Tehran when he was arrested by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) soldiers and sent to Evin Prison, according to Iranian media reports.

The detention center is infamously known for its horrific mistreatment of prisoners. The facility is noted for its routine “beatings, torture, mock executions, and brutal interrogations,” experts have said.

As the 5th American citizen now held hostage by the regime, Namazi joins the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati.

Namazi has been described as one of the “intellectual architects” of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group that has been accused of working in support of the regime in Tehran.

He and NIAC Director Trita Parsi founded the organization as a way to continuously lobby for the removal of sanctions against Iran and to promote Iran’s foreign policy, while combating the pro-Israel sentiment in America, according to documents from a Cyprus convention that featured the two men.

Both Parsi and Namazi have strong connections with the Iranian regime’s President, Hassan Rouhani, and its foreign minister, Javad Zarif. The two have continued to actively communicate with members of the regime. Recently, Parsi was seen traveling with Iran’s delegation during the final stages of the Iranian nuclear deal talks.

NIAC has not commented publicly on Namazi’s arrest, which is believed to have occurred a week or two ago.

When reached by Breitbart News, NIAC Policy Director Jamal Abdi said that the organization has no comment at this time.

An expert on Iran suggests the arrest is the result of a power struggle within the country. Hassan Dai, the editor of the Iranian American Forum, told Breitbart News that Namazi’s imprisonment shows the Ayatollah remains completely in control of his nation’s affairs, and that even Iran’s president is powerless to protect his acquaintances from imprisonment.

Dai explained that Namazi had consistently “lobbied in favor of a faction of the regime,” which upset the Mullahs because it would only be acceptable to “lobby for the whole regime.”

The fight between the factions in Iran is a fight for “the best solution to preserve the regime,” he explained, adding that groups like NIAC have never sided with true “reformists,” but with people who wish to employ a different strategy to empower the regime, such as Hassan Rouhani and former President Akbar Rafsanjani.

Because Namazi and NIAC prefer one faction over the other, “they are undermining the Supreme Leader. They are undermining the Revolutionary Guard,” Dai explained. “When you lobby U.S. policymakers to remove sanctions against Iran with the rationale that it will help reform the regime, you undermine the Supreme Leader, because he wants them to accommodate to the regime now.”

The arrest of Namazi sends a message from Iran’s rulers that “Rouhani has no power,” Dai concluded. “He can not even protect his own friend.”

Namazi’s arrest casts doubt on President Obama’s rationale for the Iran deal. The White House insisted that engaging Iran will help reform the regime, but the detention of a fifth American citizen, and Iran’s continuing aggression, shows that the administration’s reasoning for dealing with the Ayatollah has not held up to scrutiny thus far. The power structure of Iran has not changed since the nuclear deal, neither has Iran’s support for regional terrorist organizations.

Iran claims that the United States is currently holding 19 Iranian nationals under arrest. Regime officials have hinted that they would trade the American citizens for the state-side Iranians. On October 23, a U.S. court sentenced Mozaffar Khazee, an Iranian-American dual citizen, who was convicted of attempting to smuggle state-secrets to Tehran.

by JORDAN SCHACHTEL27 Oct 2015

Edwin Mora contributed to this report.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/27/iran-arrests-american-founder-pro-regime-lobby/

Iran Lobby’s Failed Attempt to Stop Sanctions on Iranian Regime

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Iran Lobby Cannot Stop Sanctions on Iranian Regime

Iran Lobby Cannot Stop Sanctions on Iranian Regime

The House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 which included several provisions aimed at monitoring and curbing some of the excesses of the Iranian regime and while these do not go far enough to actually halt some of the worst atrocities committed by the regime, they do serve as a reminder that the mullahs are under even more scrutiny.

The House-passed bill includes provisions to restrict the use of commercial aircraft by Iran for military or illicit purposes, as well as reporting requirements for the Obama administration to notify Congress within 48 hours of any new ballistic missile launch and detail what steps would be taken in response.

The bill also called for closer cooperation with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the group of nations in the Persian Gulf threatened by the regime, in developing an integrated ballistic missile defense system.

Additional amendments were incorporated authorizing assistance and training to countries in the Gulf to deter and counter illicit Iranian smuggling activity, such as the regime’s shipments to Yemen, as well as various reporting requirements on Iran-Russian cooperation and activity at Iranian seaports and foreign airports, including the importation of new weapons and coordination of military activities.

The measures fall short of what Iranian dissident groups and human rights activists have called for in confronting the worst excesses of the regime, but even these modest steps help keep the ball moving in the right direction in holding the regime accountable.

Predictably the Iran lobby decried these efforts and characterized them as attempts to “kill the nuclear agreement.” Unfortunately, they fail to say that the deal is dead already since Iranian regime has consistently violated the letter and spirit of the deal in every way imaginable.

Ryan Costello of the National Iranian American Council penned his own editorial that did little to discuss in any meaningful way the fact the American public consistently puts terrorism and extremism overseas at the top of their concerns and how this has been fueling Congress to act and presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump articulate policies in how they would curb the Iranian regime.

Costello tries to put the best face on the House action, hoping for better results in the Senate’s version.

“While many of the Iran provisions may become law, they also may be stripped out as the Senate and House must agree on a final text before it is sent to the President. The Senate will take up its own version of the NDAA next week,” Costello writes.

Given the even stronger stance against the Iranian regime taken by Senators such as Tom Cotton (R-AK), Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Corker (R-TN), Costello’s hopes seem to be a bit fanciful.

The provisions placed in the House bill were not flight so fancy though. They are grounded in the facts coming out of the Iranian regime.

Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has documented numerous Mahan Air flights over the past several months using global flight trackers which show the Iranian regime-owned airline making stops in Syrian cities like Damascus and Latakia and also flying to Baghdad from the Iranian cities Tehran and Abadan, a Revolutionary Guard Corps logistical hub.

The regime is using these commercial airliners to ferry fighters and weapons to Syria, but this is nothing new for Mahan Air, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for support of terrorism. Mahan Air operates regular flights from Tehran to Dusseldorf and Munich. But now German politicians are seeking to ban the airline for its alleged ties to Iran’s regime.

With a fleet of over 50 aircraft, Mahan Air has been making secret trips to Syria since August 2015 and has been delivering weapons and fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon to support and reinforce Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s forces, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.

This explains why the House included the provisions aimed at preventing new aircraft purchased from Boeing to be used by the regime for military or illicit purposes.

The escalation of the Iranian regime’s involvement in the Syrian war, the mounting casualties it is taking amongst its forces there and the widening use of Afghan refugees as cannon fodder have forced these moves to hold the regime more accountable.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading Iranian dissident group, reported that steep losses suffered by one province in Iran, Mazandaran, in the Syrian war prompted calls to stop sending its young men to fight and die in what is increasingly an unpopular war among Iranians.

The NCRI issued a statement saying, “The ever-increasing presence and unprecedented casualties of the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and mercenary militias in Syria demonstrate well that the main issue and the source of the crisis in Syria are the criminal ruling mullahs in Iran who have tied the fate of their regime to that of Syria and despite consecutive losses and coffins arriving in various cities of Iran dispatch even more IRGC and mercenaries to Syria, which for them has become such a lethal quagmire.”

In another sign of deep discontent in Iran, Afghan refugees who have left Iran are reporting of terrible human rights violations being perpetrated against the three million Afghan refugees living in Iran; of which only an estimated 950,000 are United Nations-registered, as Iranian authorities have not provided all Afghan refugees with an opportunity to legally claim asylum.

Those born in the country are afforded UN-recognized refugee status, but they hold only a fraction of the rights granted to Iranian citizens. Many live without residency documents and are forced to exist off the grid, making their living from the black market.

These refugees are easy prey to the mullahs who seek to exploit them by sending them to fight in Syria, often times threatening their families with expulsion if they do not fight.

“For Afghans, there is no chance for a future in Iran,” said Jawad Jafari, an Afghan who fled Iran to Germany with his wife in an interview with Al-Jazeera. “For the Iranian government, it wasn’t enough that we are Muslims like them. I had to pay bribes to work, and the police were always harassing me.”

“We were both born in Iran, but neither of us has documents,” his wife Masoomi explains. “We don’t want our children to face the same problems and racist treatment.”

Even though Costello tries to spin a positive, the House bill reflects the mounting interest in putting a halt to the Iranian regime.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Scrambles to Save Nuclear Deal

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Iran Lobby Scrambles to Save Nuclear Deal

Iran Lobby Scrambles to Save Nuclear Deal

The Iran lobby is in full damage control mode as it seeks to defuse the time bomb left by the New York Times Magazine article on national security staffer Ben Rhodes who detailed how the campaign to push through the Iran nuclear deal was built on essentially lies to the American public and Congress in concert with Iranian regime supporters.

The fallout from the damaging disclosures has the Iran lobby scrambling to develop a credible retort for accusations now being leveled at the nuclear deal and its lead advocate, the National Iranian American Council, has been in the forefront of throwing anything against the proverbial wall hoping something sticks or at least distracts.

The latest effort at damage control was offered by Ryan Costello from NIAC who offered up an editorial decrying the latest revelations as nothing more than partisan bickering in a contentious election year.

“Republican lawmakers focused much of their arguments on the claim that the White House only won the bruising battle over the deal because of spin from Rhodes, suggesting, for instance, that Rhodes and other White House officials had actually invented the notion that there are factional divides between moderates and hardliners in Iran. (Former George W. Bush official Michael) Doran cited NIAC as one of the administration’s allies in this effort,” Costello writes.

It’s a woeful response and short on one incredibly important fact: any denunciation that the Times piece was in error in any way.

It’s remarkable that in Costello piece he never once called what Rhodes did as wrong, nor did he say anything said by Rhodes in the article was incorrect or in error. The lack of any defense of the actual facts in the article contrasts sharply with Costello’s defense which is basically to say this is a rhetorical pie fight between Democrats and Republicans.

The article also skips over the inconvenient truth of that debate which includes the mobilization of the NIAC and other Iran lobby supporters mentioned in the article such as the hearty cooperation of so-called journalists such as Laura Rozen who served as a RSS feed for Rhodes and his team.

What is revealing in the article appearing at Huffington post about Rhodes participation in selling the deal where he “played an important role as well, answering sophisticated questions from skeptical House members in the White House situation room — detailed questions about types of centrifuges, duration of each part of the agreement, facilities at Parchin and Arak, ‘snap-back’ provisions for reinstating sanctions of Iran cheated, and every aspect of the inspection regime.”

This includes Rhodes infamous interviews in which he promised the agreement contained provisions for “anytime, anywhere” inspections of all facilities, which turned out to be untrue and which Secretary of State John Kerry had to walk back the next day.

We now know the agreement does not allow for inspections of military facilities, seals off the Parchin facility from international inspectors, only stores centrifuges instead of destroying them and permits Iranian regime to develop ballistic missile systems to deliver nuclear warheads.

This episode frames the basic problem with the Iran nuclear deal and the promises made by the Iran lobby about the regime’s future behavior: None of it turned out to be true. The facts on the ground have irrevocably refuted everything the Iran lobby promised.

The embarrassing truth of Rhodes statements in the Times article have made him radioactive for any public appearances as he declined to appear before House Oversight and Government Reform Committee; a refusal the White House characterized as being part of its “executive privilege,” but in reality is a face-saving move to prevent a scene where Rhodes is confronted with the truth of his false claims about the nuclear deal.

Rhodes himself echoed the message of the NIAC when, responding to a question Tuesday at an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security, he described the backlash to his comments as “part of what happens in Washington;” caulking it up to partisan politics.

Now that we have had one year to assess the effects of the nuclear deal, we see plainly that is a complete failure, not only for the Middle East and the world, but for the Iranian people too.

Another article in The American Enterprise Institute blog, correctly pointed out that “if there’s any silver lining to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear deal, it is that it raised the Iranian people’s expectations that financial benefits would trickle down to them.”

“This was never going to happen, however, because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) dominates the Iranian economy and monopolizes the sectors which benefit most from both assets unfrozen and new investment. Simply put, little if any of the $50 billion or more which the JCPOA enables Iran to collect will ever reach the Iranian people,” The article writes.

The mullahs in Tehran have sought to blame the U.S. and existing sanctions on Iran stemming from human rights violations and sponsorship of terrorism – separate from the nuclear deal agreement – as being the reason why the Iranian economy continues to be at a standstill in spite of the flurry of much-publicized deals Hassan Rouhani proclaimed in the wake of the deal.

The truth is that the mullahs’ inept leadership and devout support of three ongoing proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq make any turnaround for the Iranian people impossible. This also explains why Rouhani has kept cash reserves abroad to be used as collateral to buy Russian weapons and not brought back home to stimulate the domestic consumer economy.

A fact that Costello and the rest of the Iran lobby have not mentioned in their diatribes.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran, Its Missiles and the Failure of the Nuclear Deal

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Iran, Its Missiles and the Failure of the Nuclear Deal

Iran, Its Missiles and the Failure of the Nuclear Deal

Ballistic missiles by definition are any kind of missile that achieves powered launch, an arching trajectory and then comes down on a target some distance away. Intercontinental ballistic missiles are ones with the extended range to reach targets outside of the launch area, often traversing into another continental mass or even hemisphere.

They are the most destabilizing and devastating weapons in any nation’s military and have been at the heart of nuclear arsenals since the dawn of the atomic age. Ballistic missiles were at the center of the Cuban missile crisis. The mere threat of ballistic missiles placed in Europe by the U.S. was enough to force landmark reduction treaties with the Soviet Union.

The development of nuclear missiles in North Korea poses one of the most significant threats in the Pacific today and sit at the center of the current crisis with the Iranian regime.

Because ballistic missiles are the primary launch platform for any nuclear, chemical or biological warhead, their development is often part and parcel of any nuclear agreement.

The SALT treaties between the U.S. and Soviet Union dealt not only with warheads, but most importantly launch vehicles. Both sides knew if you did not address the launch systems, simply reducing nuclear warheads would do nothing. Either nation could simply build new warheads and attach them.

Ironically, the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime and the P5+1 group of nations pointedly excluded launch systems from the agreement. The silence of the agreement on missile development was a key component of efforts by the Iran lobby to push through a deal.

Groups such as the National Iranian American Council and Ploughshares Fund made the argument to the Obama administration that including launch systems would unnecessarily complicate talks and drive a deeper wedge in the “moderate” factions in Iran fighting for normalization with the West.

We know now through revelations in the New York Times that that argument was false. The leadership of the Iranian regime has no moderates within it. It’s a strict religious theocracy that demands absolute dedication and devotion to the Islamic revolution it spawned and has worked hard imprisoning, torturing and executing any dissenters to that vision.

It also fought hard to keep missiles out of the agreement because of its close and ongoing ties to the North Korean regime which has provided Iran with missile designs, launch motors, guidance systems, engineers and expertise in manufacturing under license. For Iran’s mullahs, losing this valuable chain of military supplies – one of the only few available to it illicitly for sophisticated weapons – would be a strategic loss.

For top Ali Khamenei and his handpicked team of Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, preservation of missile technology was critical in maintaining the regime’s ability to project force outside of its borders. For the past three decades, Iran has had to rely on proxy terror groups such as Hezbollah, foreign fighters such as Iraqi Shiite militia and Houthis to project its power.

This is why the Iranian regime has ignored United Nations Security Council sanctions against missile development and fights against any restrictions on this technology. It serves the mullahs’ propaganda purposes to show off videos of missile test launches and underground bunkers filled with missiles; given them the appearance of a formidable military.

All of which explains why the Iranian regime continues to push messages through the Iran lobby to sow confusion in the West about the regime’s missile program.

Iran’s military recently publicized a third underground missile facility and showed the launch of a new ballistic missile through the top of a mountain.

U.S. intelligence agencies said in a recent internal report on the launch that the new underground missile facility was disclosed by Iran in March.

It was the third time since October that Tehran showed off an extensive network of underground missile facilities. The new video, however, for the first time shows a missile launch from one of the country’s underground launch facilities.

Even more startling were comments made by Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace and Missile Force, in recent remarks that the Obama administration does not want Iran to publicize its ongoing missile tests, which have raised questions about the regime’s commitment to the nuclear agreement.

“At this time, the Americans are telling [us]: ‘Don’t talk about missile affairs, and if you conduct a test or maneuver, don’t mention it,’” Hajizadeh was quoted as saying during a recent Persian-language speech that was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Ali Safavi of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading Iranian dissident group, warned against continuing to appease the Iranian regime.

“The United States and its European allies must abandon their policy of appeasement. What is needed is quite simply a policy that recognizes the facts: there are no moderates in the Tehran regime; it need not include direct military action against Iran, but it does need to be based on action, not simply harsh words, much less willful ignorance,” he said.

That fact was even more important when compared to news that Russian S-300 mobile anti-aircraft missile systems purchased by the Iranian regime have been installed at the Khatam al-Anbia base, which contains Iran’s entire air-defense system. This represents a serious commitment by the regime’s military to safeguard its missile force with its most valuable new military purchase.

This follows previous announcements that the Iranian regime was finalizing deals for another $8 billion in Russian military hardware, including the high-end Su-30 warplane, Yak-30 training aircraft, military helicopters such as the Mi-8 and Mi-17 and K-300 Bastion coastal defense systems.

Now comes news that the regime is in the midst of new negotiations with Russia to acquire advanced naval weapons and ships to improve its ability to project force into the Persian Gulf and the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, which the regime has repeatedly threatened to close the past few months.

The nuclear deal has been a failure. The world should not compound it by allowing the Iranian regime to fully deploy its missile force.

By Michael Tomlinson

US Struggles Against Helping Iranian Regime

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Human Rights Worsen in Iran and so Does Accountability

Human Rights Worsen in Iran and so Does Accountability

For anyone who has been involved in an intervention with a loved one who has battled alcoholism or some other addiction, the first thing you need to do is get them to admit they have a problem in the first place.

Only when you admit your behavior is self-destructive and puts everything you hold dear at risk can you take the first steps toward recovery. In the case of the incorrect and bad bets the Obama administration has made in making efforts to appease the Iranian regime, admitting it has a problem seems to be difficult if not impossible.

Within weeks of completing its nuclear deal with the Iranian regime, the U.S. recanted on earlier claims of “anytime, anywhere” inspections; giving the regime what amounted to a free pass in bypassing suspected military sites from international inspections.

When Iranian regime leaders such as Hassan Rouhani begged Russia to intervene in Syria and save Assad and its forces from collapse, the Obama administration demurred and hoped for a political solution even as Russian warplanes attacked Syrian rebel factions backed by the West and failed to target ISIS and other extremist targets.

As Iran began launching ballistic missiles in violation of international sanctions and bipartisan members of Congress offered legislation to punish Iran for it, the administration threatened to veto any of those bills in the belief that the entire deal would collapse.

It is debatable as to whether or not the administration pursued this policy based on the pervasive influence of the Iran lobby and its efforts to pollute the storyline or the misguided belief that a collapse of the deal would cause even worse harm.

In Syria, Iran was flailing and Assad was on the brink of being toppled until the infamous red line in the sand was crossed with chemical weapons and Assad was allowed to stay in power resulting in the deaths of a stunning 400,000 Syrians and half of the country’s population turned into refugees.

In the implementation of the nuclear deal, the U.S. had all the leverage to hold the regime accountable since it needed the deal badly to open access to foreign markets, hard cash and allow it sell oil back on the open market, but the ability to finally crack open Iran’s military facilities was lost, as was an effort to rein in its support for terrorism and halt the rise in human rights violations.

Now Secretary of State John Kerry has met with a consortium of European banks in the awkward position of trying to “sell” them on making new investments in Iran and putting potentially billions of dollars and euros at risk in the regime.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the meeting, which followed repeated complaints by Iranian officials that they aren’t getting the benefit of the bargain under the nuclear deal, was an effort by the State Department to persuade major non-U.S. banks that doing Iran-related business is not only permitted following the relaxation of Iran sanctions, but is actually encouraged.

The irony will not be lost on these financial institutions. Most of them were similarly gathered almost 10 years ago by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to discuss Iranian banking matters, but that discussion focused on protecting the integrity of the global financial system against the risk posed by Iran.

No one has claimed that Iran has ceased to engage in much of the same conduct for which it was sanctioned, including actively supporting terrorism and building and testing ballistic missiles. But the fact that Washington is pushing non-U.S. banks to do what it is still illegal for American banks to do only demonstrate the desperation of the Iran lobby as it seeks to sway the story that Iran is still acting “moderately.”

Even though Washington has warned repeatedly that the Revolutionary Guard Corps controls broad swaths of the Iranian economy and it remains sanctioned by both the U.S. and the EU because of the central role it plays in Iran’s illicit conduct, the U.S., EU, and U.N. removed sanctions from several hundred Iranian banks and companies even though there were no assurances that the conduct of those banks and companies had changed.

The fact that the vast majority of these financial institutions are still reluctant to do business in Iran is less an indictment of Secretary Kerry’s sales skills, as much as these banks are fearful the mullahs cannot be trusted not to continue engaging in activities that will force the world to re-impose aggressive sanctions since empowering “moderates” has proven to be useless. Not to mention the risks involved in investing in to a bankrupt economy.

Last week, more than 100 Iranian members of the parliament urged Iran’s Hassan Rouhani to abandon the nuclear agreement and resume past nuclear activities if the U.S. goes ahead w ith its plan to distribute the court-approved terror funds, according to Iran’s Press TV.

Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, last month accused the United States of “deception” to obstruct international trade with Iran. The U.S. agrees “on paper” to allow foreign banks to do business in Iran, “but in practice they create Iranophobia so no one does business with Iran,” Khamenei said, according to the Tehran Times.

Sen. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last Thursday the Iranian reaction is no surprise.

Under the nuclear agreement, “we are fully permitted to take independent actions with respect to” ballistic missiles, terrorism and human rights — “and we will,” Cardin told USA TODAY. “Congress is prepared to support the administration, and if it’s needed we will strengthen those tools.”

All of which goes to prove that European banks are correct in being reticent about re-entering the Iranian market and should refrain from doing business with the regime no matter what Kerry says.

It also is a clear signal of the Iran lobby’s desperation to keep the finger in the dike as pressure mounts in hold the Iranian regime accountable for the growing number of militant acts it undertakes.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Struggles to Keep Message off Bad News

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Iran Lobby Struggles to Keep Message off Bad News

Iran Lobby Struggles to Keep Message off Bad News

The week could not go much worse for the Iran lobby. Revelations about the outright fabrications concocted by national security staffer Ben Rhodes in pressing for passage of the Iran nuclear deal blew battleship-sized holes in the idea that the deal was a good one.

Political pressure ratcheted up quickly as Republicans denounced the alleged lying, while Democrats that supported the deal scrambled to distance themselves and urged tougher accountability of the Iranian regime.

The situation worsened as the State Department admitted to a “glitch” that erased over six minutes of video in which an answer to a question posed by Fox News reporter James Rosen as to whether or not the Obama administration had engaged in secret negotiations with the Iranian regime a full year before it said it did mysteriously disappeared only to reappear after scrutiny.

The Iran lobby has furiously tried to hold the line on the false narrative. Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund offered an editorial in Politico that was absurd as it was desperate in trying to denounce the New York Times piece that Rhodes interview was published in.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council was left to offering weak opinions as to why most European and Asian financial institutions have halted efforts to open up transactions with the Iranian regime.

Those same institutions were scheduled to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry this week in an apparent attempt to “save” the nuclear deal by convincing banks to do business with Iran even though they are reluctant given the tangled web of Iranian human rights violations, support for the war in Syria and violations of international sanctions against developing ballistic missiles.

Financial institutions are in the business of assessing risk. They make lending decisions solely on the basis on the risk versus the reward. For many of the world’s banks, doing business with the Iranian regime is a bad bet.

Bankers doubt Kerry will be able to change their cautious approach to Iran. They fear that even if they receive assurances from the Treasury Department, U.S. prosecutors and independent regulators might adopt a different and stricter interpretation of the rules.

They add that Iran presents multiple challenges for banks other than the prospect of breaching U.S. sanctions, including the risk of inadvertently aiding money laundering, financing terrorism and financial crime in a country that almost all the economy is run by the IRGC, and has for many years been in the financial wilderness and remains “off the grid” for most compliance systems. Also

Not helping has been a near-constant stream of dubious arrests of dual citizenship nationals by the regime which has only heightened tensions and raised even more red flags about the regime and the leadership of Hassan Rouhani.

Is the Iranian regime committed to opening up to the rest of the world or is it the same regime relying on Islamic extremism and militants? The answer so far since the nuclear deal was signed seems unequivocally the latter.

The Obama administration argues that the real issues are Iran’s poor business environment and policies that undermine investor confidence — including ballistic missile tests, arms shipments to rebels in Yemen and the imprisonment of businessmen accused of espionage.

Iranian regime officials complain that the United States has warned bankers away from deals that could run afoul of U.S. sanctions that still target the country.

The United States says that those sanctions were imposed because of Iran’s continuing human rights violations and ties to terrorist groups.

And U.S. officials said Iran needs to look to its own practices. The country routinely scores low on a number of indexes ranking countries’ business climates, including those by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Transparency International.

“The most pressing concern about doing business in Iran does not have to do with sanctions but with really grave and long-standing concerns about the risks of doing business there,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security. “Inadequate transparency, potential money laundering and garden-variety corruption have nothing to do with nuclear proliferation.”

Adding to the ever increasing levels of tension were statements made by Revolutionary Guards commanders to sink American ships if they approached Iranian waters.

The senior naval officer making the threat referenced a “secret arsenal” of weapons Iran has developed or acquired that would be effective against American naval vessels.

Most likely the Iranian regime officials are referencing anti-ship missiles acquired from China or Russia according to the Washington Times, whose navies have long pursued a “carrier killer” missile capability to deter Western power projection capabilities.

“We have informed Americans that their presence in the Persian Gulf is an absolute evil,” Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi stated to state media. “Americans are aware that Iran would destroy their warships if they take a wrong measure in the region.”

His statements follow an incident in which Iranian forces captured and detained 10 U.S. sailors before parading them for propaganda purposes on state-run media.

Obviously none of this reassures anxious bankers who prize stability more than anything else. The mullahs in Tehran have demonstrated they are far from being stable.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Truth About Working With the Iran Lobby

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The Truth About Working With the Iran Lobby

The Truth About Working With the Iran Lobby

The New York Times magazine published an in-depth examination by David Samuels of Ben Rhodes, the 38-year-old deputy national security advisor for strategic communications in the Obama administration, who detailed his strategy for passing the Iranian nuclear agreement and close coordination between the administration and various members of the Iran lobby, including several people and organizations closely tied with the regime.

The piece is a stunning admission of how the Obama administration’s policy of appeasing the mullahs in Iran was closely coordinated with the Iran lobby and how their efforts were designed to build a PR campaign designed to project a false image of the regime and cover the most extreme actions by Iran including severe human rights violations and its sponsorship of terrorism.

Since the nuclear agreement was completed, Rhodes has worked overtime to continually keep bad news about the Iranian regime from obstructing the president’s goals of fostering new relations with the regime no matter how provocative the acts.

One example was the unlawful detaining of 10 U.S. sailors by the Iranian regime and how Rhodes worked to keep the news from breaking before President Obama’s final State of the Union speech.

As the Times recounts, Rhodes found out about the Iranian action earlier that morning but was trying to keep it out of the news until after the president’s speech. “They can’t keep a secret for two hours,” Rhodes says, with a tone of mild exasperation at the break in message discipline.

Rhodes commanded a large and sophisticated network described by the Times of officials, talking heads, columnists and newspaper reporters, web jockeys and outside advocates who can tweet at critics and tweak their stories backed up by quotations from “senior White House officials” and “spokespeople.”

The defense of the Iranian regime goes out to “the three big briefing podiums — the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon — and across the Twitterverse, where it springs to life in dozens of insta-stories, which over the next five hours don formal dress for mainstream outlets. It’s a tutorial in the making of a digital news microclimate.”

These messages were also conveyed in cooperation with regime supportive groups such as the Ploughshares Fund, which helped fund the notorious National Iranian American Council which similarly carried the administration’s messages, as well as fed them through ex-staffers who were now working with Rhodes.

The story goes on to describe how the administration had been eager to do a deal with the Iranian regime going as far back as 2012 irrespective of the regime’s countless violations and aggressive acts.

The narrative Rhodes developed centered around the perception that “moderates” led by Hassan Rouhani beat “hardliners” and provided the opening to do a deal with Iran and empower these “moderates.” It was a well-worn lure the mullahs had tossed out time and time again, and in Rhodes, they found a receptive and willing audience for their lies.

“The idea that there was a new reality in Iran was politically useful to the Obama administration. By obtaining broad public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy choices that his administration was making,” the Times wrote.

An aggressive digital outreach campaign was launched in support of the nuclear deal that included using the Twitter handle @TheIranDeal to ensure no negative tweet about the deal passed without a rebuttal, as well as enlisting journalists who supported the Iranian regime such as Laura Rozen of Al-Monitor, who essentially served as an automatic retweeter for the administration and Iran lobby on the subject.

The White House point person during the later stage of the negotiations was Rob Malley, a favored troubleshooter who is currently running negotiations that could keep the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power, another high priority item for the Iranian regime.

At one point Rhodes even acknowledges that regime leader Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, the regime foreign minister, are in fact not “real reformers,” which makes his work to sell the deal to the American public one of the greatest deceptions ever played on them.

The condemnation and reaction was swift and unequivocal as John Podhoretz took the administration to task in the New York Post:

The Iran deal, you may recall, was wildly unpopular with the American people. To ensure senators didn’t cast a two-thirds vote against it and kill it, the White House set up a digital response “war room” whose purpose was relentlessly to make the case that a vote against the deal was a vote for war, he writes.

It could only work if water-carriers did the White House’s job for it, and nonprofit water-carriers did their faithful duty. “We created an echo chamber,” Rhodes tells Samuels about the journalists and think-tankers who were discussing the Iran deal based almost entirely on information given to them by the White House. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say,” Podhoretz adds.

The reality of the Times piece is to shine a bright light on how disingenuous the entire debate was around the Iran nuclear deal; a deal that has empowered a weakened, unstable Iranian regime and allowed it to continue during a time following the Arab Spring and protests over the 2009 uprisings in which it teetered on the brink of collapse.

By Michael Tomlinson

So Many Things Going Wrong for Iranian Regime

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So Many Things Going Wrong for Iranian Regime

So Many Things Going Wrong for Iranian Regime

This past weekend The New York Times Magazine published an in-depth look at Ben Rhodes, the national security advisor staffer who spearheaded the communications effort to pass the Iranian nuclear deal.

The fallout from that article has been dramatic as critics of the deal claim validation of the falsehoods perpetuated by Rhodes and his close working relationship with the Iran lobby and regime supporters, including the very leadership in Iran that was characterized as “hardline.”

Meanwhile the Iran lobby has been working furiously to change the narrative and denounce the New Times piece and condemn Samuels, even though the piece appeared to be written as a glorified puff piece in which Rhodes took a boastful pride in his accomplishments in pulling the collective wool over everyone’s eyes.

Actor Kevin Spacey who plays President Frank Underwood in the Netflix series “House of Cards” has a memorable line about hubris: “We’re all victims of our own hubris at times.”

Rhodes seems to be living that truth right now as he frantically back peddles from his statements.

“Every press corps that I interacted with vetted that deal as extensively as any other foreign policy initiative of the presidency,” Rhodes wrote on Medium.

“A review of the press from that period will find plenty of tough journalism and scrutiny. We had to answer countless questions about every element of the deal and our broader Iran policy from reporters.”

Rhodes’ Medium post was a far cry from his gleeful, football-spiking words about vanquishing the press.

The defense of Rhodes and the nuclear deal was on display with a hastily placed editorial by Joe Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, in Politico, in which he sought to validate the nuclear deal with the same “echo chamber” of false experts Rhodes described in the Times article.

The fact that Cirincione led the defense should come as no surprise since Ploughshares Fund was a heavy participant in the Iran lobby and even gave money to the National Iranian American Council, the central lobbying group for the Iranian regime’s policies.

Like the proverbial kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Rhodes is out there now trying to walk back his comments, but the damage has already been done. The truth is out. The Iran nuclear deal was a fraud and for the critics of the deal who warned of empowering the mullahs in Tehran, the past few months have been of that concern.

Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned in a recent Persian-language interview that the Islamic state would not hesitate to block U.S. entry to the Strait of Hormuz, which is the only passage from the Persian Gulf to the open seas.

Salami claimed that the U.S. military fears Iran’s navy, which recently has bolstered forces to directly combat American forces in the region.

“The [Americans] believe that our navy is dangerous. Indeed, that is true,” Salami was quoted as saying in a Farsi-language interview with Iranian state-controlled television that was subsequently translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors regional reports.

Additionally, the regime to cover up yet another missile test of an illegal ballistic missile in violation of United Nations sanctions. Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi, the Iranian military’s deputy chief of staff, told Iran’s Tasnim news agency that Iran fired the test missile two weeks ago and that it was accurate to within 25 feet, which he described as zero error.

“We can guide this ballistic missile,” he told Tasnim. Iran has previously asserted it has such missile capability. Its 1,250 mile range puts most of the Middle East and parts of southern Europe within its sights.

Obama administration critics blamed the White House for what one, Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), called “Iran’s growing belligerence in the aftermath of the reckless Iran nuclear deal.”

Mr. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also said the Obama administration has overlooked other acts of Iranian aggression, including previous launches and the detention of U.S. sailors by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier this year. The U.S. said later that its sailors had crossed into Iranian waters by mistake.

In Syria, the Iranian regime continued to face mounting losses of soldiers as Syrian rebels make gains against Iranian backed forces, including the reported capture of half a dozen Iranian soldiers.

According to the latest numbers, 13 defenders of the shrine were killed, 18 were wounded and five to six were captured,” Esmail Kosari, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s defense committee, was quoted as saying by the Mizan Online news agency.

The reversals on the battlefield, the admission of the untruths around the nuclear deal and the stalled Iranian economy have eaten away at the support for mullahs such as the top leader Ali Khamenei who finds it necessary to crackdown harder on internal dissent in order to snuff out resistance to his rule.

That toughened approach was echoed by Sayyed Yousef Tabatabaeinejad, who claimed in an interview with AhlulBayt News Agency that Muslims the world over should be emulating the events that brought about Iran’s own revolution in 1979 and called for more violence in pursuit of a revolutionary form of Islam.

Tabatabaeinejad currently serves as Khamenei’s representative in a province of Iran called Esfahan. He lashed out at the false idea that Muslims should accept oppression as a survival strategy without using violence in response.

For Tabatabaeinejad, this extremist view on Islam is baked into the Iranian constitution and is  not just about praying and fasting. The warrior spirit also mandates fighting against “Islam”’s enemies.

By Michael Tomlinson