Iran – Page 20 – Iran Lobby

Iranian Regime Losses Mount in Syria

May 9, 2016 by admin

Iranian Regime Losses Mount in Syria

The Iranian regime’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has been well documented, including the regime’s history of supplying badly needed cash, weapons and fighters to prop up the Assad regime as it teetered on the brink of collapse.

Even though Iranian officials have long denied it, evidence is mounting of the regime’s deepening involvement in what may prove to be the Achilles heel of the mullahs in Tehran as they draw a red line in the sand to keep Bashar al-Assad in power even if it means suffering significant losses.

Already the regime has had several commanders of its Quds Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps killed while leading troops in Syria and now news comes of even more casualties for the regime.

Thirteen military advisers with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been killed in Syria in recent days and 21 others wounded, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

It was the regime’s biggest loss of forces within such a short time, based on official figures. The names of those killed and when their remains will be repatriated will be announced later, the Guards said.

Among the killed included 15 Afghan mercenaries the Iranian regime had recruited from the ranks of Afghan refugees living in Iran said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Critics of the regime have claimed that many Afghans were coerced to fight for the Assad regime under threat their families would be deported back to Afghanistan.

Estimates of the number of recruited Afghan fighters in Syria from Iran range from between 10,000 to 12,000, largely drawn from the illegal immigrant population in Iran where their options are limited for employment and their hopes of remaining often hang on the whims of the mullahs in Tehran who often regard the Afghans as cannon fodder.

Reports also added that Iran has promised citizenship to these fighters and improving the living conditions of their families in addition to these fighters being paid from $400 to $600 in monthly wages to fight in Syria.

The monitor also said at least six of the dead came from Lebanon’s Hezbollah Shi’ite movement, an Iranian proxy which has supplied the bulk of fighters to Syria and has been led by Iranian regime officers on the battlefield.

The Iranian dead were from Iran’s northern province of Mazandaran, Hossein Ali Rezayi, a Guards spokesman in the region, told the ISNA and Fars news agencies.

The deaths and injuries occurred in Khan Tuman village some six miles southwest of the battleground city of Aleppo, the official IRNA news agency reported a Guards statement as saying.

Dozens of Iranian “advisers” have been killed in Syria since late 2015, including Revolutionary Guard commanders.

Saturday’s news came as Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to top mullah Ali Khamenei, met Assad in Damascus and reassured him of Tehran’s support.

“Since the Syrian nation chose Bashar al-Assad as president two years ago, he will remain in the post until the Syrian people change him,” Velayati said in an interview with the Lebanese al-Mayadeen television channel.

Velayati rejected the idea of imposing a president on Syria who would serve the interests of Saudi Arabia or any other party.

While Tehran previously said its support was limited to advisers, it has been more open about the extent of its role since Russia intervened on Assad’s side last year.

Iran has been particularly involved in campaigns around Aleppo in northwest Syria, which was the country’s commercial and industrial center before the war and is now divided between government and rebel forces.

With the Iranian regime’s intervention, the war in Syria has only escalated resulting in more than 250,000 people killed, with tens of thousands unaccounted for, some say the death toll may be as high as 400,000, as well as the displacement of nearly half of the country’s entire population.

Syria is a classic example of the impotence of the arguments made by Iran lobby groups such as the National Iranian American Council which claimed that passage of the nuclear agreement with Iran would force moderation within the government and move it to be a more willing ally in seeking peaceful political change in Syria.

Instead Iran has dramatically escalated the violence in Syria and widened the war with the recruitment of Russia into the conflict, proving once again that arguments made by NIAC have proven meaningless.

Struan Stevenson, a former Conservative Euro MP representing Scotland and currently President of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA), summed up Iran’s responsibility for Syrian bloodshed in an editorial in The Hill:

“The Iranian regime has reached a deadly impasse in Syria with mounting casualties and little sign of progress. The original objective of defeating the Free Syrian Army and occupying its strongholds like Aleppo, with the help of Russian air strikes, has failed. Russia has begun to pull out and Khamenei is panicking. Recently, the commander of the Qods Force – General Qasem Soleimani, was sent to Moscow to plead with Putin for more Russian intervention,” Stevenson writes.

“Western appeasement of the clerical fascist regime in Iran has contributed directly to the Syrian nightmare and to the creation of ISIS. The Iranian regime’s outright support for Bashar al-Assad and his bloody reprisals against innocent civilians paved the way for the rise of ISIS. Iran’s puppet regime in neighboring Iraq, under the genocidal control of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, opened the door for ISIS to seize great swathes of Iraqi territory. As a result, Europe now faces its biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War, as the civil conflict in Syria spirals out of control,” he adds.

Stevenson is right that the only true pathway for peace in Syria lies with Assad’s ouster and the expulsion of Iranian influence. Only then can the people of Syria make their own futures.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Increases US Tensions Despite Promises by Iran Lobby

May 5, 2016 by admin

Iranian Regime Increases US Tensions Despite Promises by Iran Lobby

The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world and through it flows about 20 percent of the world’s petroleum supplies making it one of the most important trading routes in the world.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an average of 14 tankers per day transit the Strait carrying 17 million barrels of crude oil, representing a hefty 35 percent of the world’s seaborne shipments of oil. The vast majority of that oil, over 85 percent, goes to Asian markets such as Japan, China, India and South Korea.

It is a chokepoint that the Iranian regime has used as a threat to the rest of the world repeatedly since 1988 when it first laid mines in the Strait contrary to all international agreements. Iranian regime has been involved in a series of confrontations there, including:

2008 with a series of stand-offs with the U.S. Navy and threats to close the Strait;
2011-12 Iranian regime again threatened to close the gulf forcing a coalition of navies to send ships to confront regime vessels;
2015 Iran seized the Maersk Tigris container ship; and
Earlier this year, Iranian vessels seized a U.S. Navy patrol boat with its 10 sailors and detained them.

The Iranian regime has used the threat of war and violence in the Strait as a form of diplomacy and regards such aggression as a tool of statecraft.

According to the New York Times, tensions between Iran and the United States, never far from the surface, showed signs of worsening on Wednesday, with the Iranians threatening to block a vital Persian Gulf access route and protesting what they called the American “meddling approach and tone.”

The Iranian regime messages, conveyed in statements by a commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and by the Foreign Ministry, came a few days after top mullah Ali Khamenei expressed exasperation with the U.S., questioning the longstanding deployment of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf.

“It is Americans who should explain why they have come here from the other side of the world and stage war games,” Khamenei said in remarks widely reported in Iran’s state news media.

Together, the messages appeared to reflect a steady buildup of anti-American sentiment in Iran recently despite the nuclear agreement that took effect in January, which, on paper at least, eased the country’s economic isolation and was hailed by the Iran lobby as a force for moderation, which seems to have been a false promise so far.

The warning from the Revolutionary Guards about blocking American access to the Persian Gulf waterway appeared to be partly a response to a congressional resolution introduced April 28 by Representative J. Randy Forbes, Republican of Virginia.

The resolution condemned what it called Iran’s illegal detention of American sailors patrolling near Iran in January and said Iran had “undermined stability in the Arabian Gulf.”

On Wednesday, Iran’s Fars News Agency, which has links to the Revolutionary Guards, said Lt. Cmdr. Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami had issued a warning to the United States to avoid escalation.

“Iran will decisively confront any menacing passage through the Strait of Hormuz,” Fars quoted him as saying. “We warn the Americans not to repeat their past mistakes, and they should learn from historical realities.”

The aggressive statements made by regime officials underscore the de facto methodology employed by the mullahs in Tehran to state their case which is always by way of threat and coercion. The siren song promises made by Iran lobby supporters

By Michael Tomlinson

Iraq Looms Large in Iranian Regime Plans for Control

May 5, 2016 by admin

Iraq Looms Large in Iranian Regime Plans for Control

It has been well documented how the Iranian regime has gone all-in supporting the Assad regime in Syria with all resources at its disposal, including cash, weapons, fighters, and even diplomacy in recruiting the Russians to fight in support as well.

For the mullahs in Tehran, Syria is a key linchpin in their grand plan to build a Shia arc of influence across the Middle East and they have fought tooth and nail to preserve the Assad regime since its collapse could lead to the type of regime change within Iran they have long feared.

But now Iraq is looming just as large for them as a prize worth defending and the mullahs see an opportunity in the turmoil that is now roiling Iraq.

Remember that under the maligned tenure of former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki the Iranian regime had literally run the Iraqi government, forcing the ouster of Sunni partners from the coalition government which then provided the ground for ISIS spreading out of Syria and into Iraq’s western provinces and setting the stage for the quick takeover of Mosul.

This weekend however saw a new threat to Iraq’s stability, as followers of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr staged a protest by storming and taking over the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad’s fortified International Zone; ostensibly over government corruption. The protesters were angry of the government’s failure to fight corruption within the institutions and particularly to oust Maliki and his men from various security and government apparatus.

But the takeover may portend a power struggle between Iraqi and Iranian Shiite factions over who controls Iraq as the Iranian regime has armed, trained and supported Shiite militias that are on par with the Iraqi army in terms of capabilities, spurring many Iraqis to resent Iranian influence over their country.

During the takeover Sadr departed for Iran in a meeting that many analysts suspected was an effort to broker a power-sharing arrangement with the mullahs in Tehran. His departure came as a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, “expressed Iran’s readiness to use all its links in line with paving the way for Iraqi talks,” according to an official statement carried by Iran’s state-controlled news agency.

Though Sadr is considered by some in Iran’s political establishment as an unpredictable partner, he is unlikely to buck the wishes of a key patron, said Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

“I can’t remember him ever going against the Iranians,” said Pollack in the Wall Street Journal. “Whatever he has done has tended to be quite consistent with Iranian interests.”

A more practical suggestion for Sadr’s actions being made is that he may simply be applying pressure on his Iranian patrons in order to elevate his own standing within Iraq and make clear his militias and followers deserve the lion’s share of political patronage within the country.

Sadr’s history of close coordination with Iran brings back memories of the bloody battles his forces fought against U.S. and coalition forces during the sectarian uprising in Iraq from 2005-06, which caused scores of American deaths, especially with explosive devices built by Iran’s Quds Forces.

Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney explained his view of how Sadr may be actually working to strengthen the Iranian hold over Iraq.

“What you’re seeing right now is that (radical Shiite cleric) Moqtada al-Sadr is responsible for creating a greater wedge when the current Iraq prime minister wanted to make Iraq more independent from Iran,” McInerney told WND and Radio America.

“You have a combination of Iranian Shiite and Iraqi Shiite competing as to who controls the government and who controls Iraq. That’s the bottom line of what’s going on over there right now,” he added.

Many critics of the Obama administration’s policies in Iraq, including the withdrawal of U.S. forces, point out the similarities of how the U.S. has created power vacuums the Iranian regime has been eager to fill and expand its influence in an effort to build a perception throughout the region that Iran was a powerful force, when in fact its holds over Iraq, Syria and Yemen have become more precarious.

That policy of appeasing the Iranian regime has been contrasted during the presidential campaign Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s more hawkish views on Iran, especially holding the regime accountable for its behavior in the areas of human rights and sponsorship of terrorism.

The fact that both candidates may end up being the presumptive nominees this fall has forced the Iran lobby to step up its campaign to influence the election debate, especially aiming key messages at the Clinton campaign in the hopes of convincing it to follow through on Obama administration policies that have grown lenient on the Iranian regime.

Proponents of U.S.-Iran diplomacy have voiced concern in the past over the fate of relations between the two countries if (Clinton) succeeds Obama. “I am worried about her instinct,” Trita Parsi the head of the National Iranian American Council, told The Huffington Post in January. “She is far too inclined to think that only pressure works.”

Clinton vowed in a speech in September 2015:

“I will build a coalition to counter Iran’s proxies, particularly Hezbollah. . . . Beyond Hezbollah, I’ll crack down the shipment of weapons to Hamas and push Turkey and Qatar to end their financial support. I’ll press our partners in the region to prevent aircraft and ships owned by companies linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard from entering their territories and urge our partners to block Iranian planes from entering their airspace on their way to Yemen and Syria. Across the board, I will vigorously enforce and strengthen if necessary the American sanctions on Iran and its Revolutionary Guard for its sponsorship of terrorism, its ballistic missile program, and other destabilizing activities. I’ll enforce and strengthen if necessary our restrictions on sending arms to Iran and from Iran, to bad actors like Syria. And I’ll impose these sanctions on everyone involved in these activities, whether they’re in Iran or overseas. This will be a special imperative as some of the U.N. sanctions lapse, so the U.S. and our partners have to step up. . . .”

We can hope she continues on that track and ignores the entreaties of Parsi and his ilk from the Iran lobby.

By Michael Tomlinson

Human Rights Worsen in Iran and so Does Accountability

May 5, 2016 by admin

Human Rights Worsen in Iran and so Does Accountability

What price is the Iranian regime willing to pay to achieve its goals such as keeping the Assad regime firmly in power in Syria?

It has been willing to funnel billions of dollars in hard currency to keep Assad afloat.

It has been willing to order its Hezbollah proxy to send fighters there.

It has been willing to recruit Afghan refugees to fight as mercenaries, even threaten to deport their family members back to Afghanistan if they refused to fight in Syria.

It has been willing to send in its own Quds Force members and now even its regular army soldiers to fight and die and celebrate their martyrdom.

It has even been willing to recruit Russia to fight alongside its forces to target Western-backed rebels, including the deliberate targeting of civilians and relief agencies.

Now to top it all off, the Iranian regime has released a slick music video made by the Basij militia recruiting children to fight in Syria as well in a clear demonstration of how desperate the mullahs in Tehran have become to protect their partner in crime.

The lyrics, as translated by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading dissident group, say:

“On my leader [Ayatollah Khamenei’s] orders I am ready to give my life.

The goal is not just to free Iraq and Syria;

My path is through the sacred shrine [in Syria], but my goal is to reach Jerusalem.

… I don’t regret parting from my country;

In this just path I am wearing my martyrdom shroud.”

Michael J. Totten, writing in World Affairs Journal, explained the regime’s past history of using children for war.

“Iran’s regime has done this before. During the Iran-Iraq War, which killed around a million people between 1980 and 1988, the Basij recruited thousands of children to clear minefields.

“After lengthy cult-like brainwashing sessions, the poor kids placed plastic keys around their necks, symbolizing martyrs’ permission to enter paradise, and ran ahead of Iranian ground troops and tanks to remove Iraqi mines by detonating them with their feet and blowing their small bodies to pieces,” he writes.

The Iranian government desperately needs the Assad regime in Damascus and the Abadi government in Iraq because they’re Iran’s only allies in the entire Arab world. A moderate and democratic Iran would have no trouble forging normal and friendly relations with moderate Arabs governments like Jordan’s, Tunisia’s, Morocco’s and possibly even Egypt’s, but the revolutionary state that’s been entrenched there since 1979 isn’t tolerated any better in capitals like Cairo and Riyadh than it is in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, he added.

More than 280 Iranian troops have been killed in Syria since September of last year, according to an analysis by the Levantine Group of casualties reported by Iranian media.

The willingness to sustain such a heavy rate of losses is evidence of Tehran’s commitment to the Assad regime, but also seems to show that Iran is counting on its forces to stand in for what the Levantine Group describes as a “decomposing” regime army.

“Iranian operatives are not mere military advisers spread out along regime lines,” said geopolitical and security analyst Michael Horowitz.

The use of Afghan refugees as cannon fodder in Syria highlights the plight of these refugees who sought to escape violence in Afghanistan only to experience violence in Iran as shown by the brutal and ghastly rape and murder of a six-year old Afghan girl.

Her case could have disappeared in the Iranian regime’s court system — Afghan migrants, who number about two million, often face discrimination by the mullah’s judiciary and other institutions.

Instead, her death provoked a social media storm, with an online outpouring of grief and a show of solidarity with Afghan migrants. A vigil for the murdered child was organized via Telegram, a popular messaging app in Iran, and eventually the judiciary was forced to fast-track her case; finally succumbing to intense pressure to act in this particular case where so many others had been previously ignored.

There are other small slivers of hope as another successful social media campaign is helping a detainee of the notorious Evin Prison.

Omid Kokabee, an Iranian physicist associated with the University of Texas, has been in the jail since being arrested on charges of espionage in 2011. He is currently suffering from kidney cancer, and Iranians blame the regime for delaying treatment two years ago that could have helped prevent its spread.

A #freeomid Twitter campaign has prompted a response from Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, a hardline spokesman of the judiciary who has denied any failure on the part of the authorities but said the prisoner’s 10-year sentence could be reconsidered depending on his medical condition.

We can only hope that more social media campaigns can lead to activism and pressure to bring about a fundamental change to the Iranian regime, which is what the mullahs ruling Iran are fearing from. An overwhelming majority of young and discontent Iranians who have lived under the iron fist and are now using every opportunity to revolt against the ruling theocracy.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries to Influence Presidential Campaign

May 2, 2016 by admin

The Iranian lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has decided to up its efforts to influence the ongoing U.S. presidential election by directing messages at the campaigns of the front runners.

The reason for this is simple: The NIAC and other Iranian regime supporters want to do whatever they can to ensure that a new incoming administration continue to toe the line in appeasing the mullahs in Tehran and support a deeply flawed nuclear agreement that has allowed the regime to continue its militant ways without serious repercussions.

In an editorial by Tyler Cullis and Ryan Costello, the NIAC laid out a presumptive roadmap for Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton on how to “woo back Iranian Americans,” but in reality it should be viewed more as a roadmap to “helping the Iranian regime.”

Cullis and Costello spell out how her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, garnered overwhelming support from an internal poll of NIAC supporters – Sanders received 62 percent vs. 19 percent for Clinton – based on a perception he was more anti-war.

“Clearly, Iranian Americans who have gravitated towards Sanders have largely done so for the same reasons as other Sanders supporters – because of a distrust of the Washington establishment, anti-war and anti-interventionist sentiments, disillusion with incrementalist political change and concerns about increased economic injustice,” Cullis and Costello write.

“But Clinton’s approach toward Iran is also a major reason why she lagged behind Sanders among Iranian Americans.”

What is amazing is how the NIAC is attempting to portray support for Sanders principally being driven by foreign policy concerns when almost every poll taken during the primary season has shown his supporters backing his domestic views on the economy, wage inequality and regulation of Wall Street as the energizing factors in his campaign.

The NIAC is taking this position largely because it can read public opinion polls and see how American opinion has shifted on the Iranian regime and the rise of Islamic extremism in the wake of a worsened Syrian situation and almost regular terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels since the deal.

Cullis and Costello have taken Clinton to task for her previous statements against normalizing relations with the Iranian regime, especially if the regime continued its support for terrorism and regional conflict.

“The dispute reflected the debate eight years ago when Clinton, along with other candidates, attacked Obama for his statement that he would sit down with hostile nations, including Iran, without preconditions,” they write.

“Clinton’s stance toward further Iran negotiations might not ultimately be that different than Sanders, but her attacks on normalization send a worrying signal that engagement would be the exception rather than the rule,” they add.

One cannot help but notice a slight hint of desperation in the NIAC and other Iranian regime supporters as they take a deeper dive into the U.S. presidential campaign as they are faced with the very real possibility of having either a Clinton or Trump administration already publicly committed to opposing Iranian extremism.

The lobby’s efforts also highlight the one significant weakness of the Iran nuclear deal in that it is an executive action by President Obama and can just as easily be undone by a new president. The tenuous nature of the deal providing the mullahs in Tehran with relief from sanctions is worrisome to supporters such as Cullis and Costello.

The fact that the NIAC is upping its game in order to try and shape the public perception of how these candidates should perceive the Iranian regime is – on the surface – pretty pathetic and indicative of how weak its position is.

It also explains why other parts of the Iran lobby are making blatant warnings that failure of the deal will lead to serious consequences; although one finds it hard to believe things could get much worse in the Middle East right now.

One of those making those statements is Seyed Hossein Mousavian, formerly of the regime’s National Security Council who wrote in Huffington Post:

“If the deal collapses, not only would there be no chance for any compromise between Iran and the U.S on any other issue, but Iran would also lose its faith in the Security Council,” he writes in the hyperbole that has become typical of the lobby’s efforts.

“Unfortunately, there are powerful forces in U.S. politics that seek to increase U.S.-Iran enmity and revert Iran and the United States back onto the path to war. These special interest groups are doing everything in their power to destroy the landmark diplomatic agreement and have strong sway over Congress, which is pushing for over a dozen new sanctions against Iran,” he added.

These efforts may end up being futile gestures as the Iranian regime seems intent on proving wrong every promise the Iran lobby makes.

For example Iran’s parliament voted to boost the country’s missile capabilities. Members approved an additional article to the next five-year development plan. The article will see Iran’s missile production grow and anti-missile capabilities enhanced even though the United Nations and U.S. considers such missile development in violation of existing sanctions banning them.

Iranian state-run news also reported that an Iranian woman was reportedly publicly flogged 100 times in the Iranian state of Isfahan for an alleged extramarital affair four years ago. The incident earned condemnation from human rights and Iranian dissident groups and continues to highlight the regime’s disregard for human rights.

No matter what the Iran lobby says about the presidential campaign, it’s almost a given the regime will act to contradict it.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries to Influence Presidential Campaign

Iranian Regime Cracks Down Harder on Journalists and Women

April 28, 2016 by admin

Iranian Regime Cracks Down Harder on Journalists and Women

The Iranian lobby cobbled together a group of advocacy groups in sending a joint letter to leading technology companies urging them to boycott sponsorship of both the Democratic and Republican national conventions on the basis of “bigoted” comments made by both parties’ candidates.

“There is no room for hate and bigotry in our political discourse,” said Madihha Ahussain, Muslim Advocates staff attorney and lead for the Program to Counter Anti-Muslim Hate. “Here in Silicon Valley, companies take pride in standing up for what’s right and creating inclusive environments where diversity is not only respected, but also thrives. That is why it is critical for leaders like Google, Microsoft and Apple to send a powerful message by choosing not to support hateful rhetoric that has become commonplace in this election cycle.”

It is an unusual letter to send in that it targeted only technology companies and not the traditional companies and groups that often sponsor both parties such as labor unions, environmental groups, Wall Street firms and businesses with heavy regulatory issues such as manufacturing and natural resources.

A more cynical person might view the letter as a pre-emptive effort by the Iran lobby to get the attention of technology companies that are increasingly on the front lines battling terrorism and the rise of Islamic extremism.

Twitter has waged a war of whack-a-mole deleting accounts tied to ISIS as fast as ISIS is creating them;
The FBI has pressed Apple and Google to provide assistance in unlocking mobile devices associated with suspected terrorists;
Last February, the Obama administration reached out to Silicon Valley and Hollywood to enlist firms in combatting extremism and terrorism, especially in countering the online recruiting efforts of terror groups.

The National Iranian American Council was one of the organizing groups for the letter and while the letters are aimed at issues of discrimination, they neglect to point out the irony that many of the same issues these groups are pointing out in America are in fact par for the course in regimes such as Iran where women are brutally denied rights, juveniles are executed, journalists are mass arrested and dissidents are tortured and imprisoned.

It is the height of hypocrisy to attack both Democrats and Republicans, when at the same time these advocacy groups are silent on the human rights violations and injustices going on in Iran.

The most recent episodes of cruelty in Iran only highlight this disparity and misdirection going on in focusing on the American presidential campaign and not on Iran’s conduct.

Iran rejected calls for the release of political prisoner Omid Kokabee from prison after he had his right kidney removed. Kokabee, a graduate student in physics at the University of Texas at Austin who was arrested in Iran, convicted of collaboration with an enemy government and illegal earnings and sentenced to 10 years in prison, was diagnosed with renal cancer after reportedly being denied treatment for a kidney illness for years;
Tehran police chief Gen. Hossein Sajedinia recently announced his department had deployed 7,000 male and female officers for a new plainclothes division — the largest such undercover assignment in memory. The unit’s main focus will be enforcing the government-mandated Islamic dress code, which requires women be modestly covered from head to toe;
Iran is preparing to conduct a major ballistic missile test in February 2017, following the inauguration of the next U.S. president into the Oval Office, according to a timetable issued by the regime in an act designed to set a provocative tone when a new president is sworn in. Iran is continuing work on advanced ballistic missile technology and has been engaged in various tests to perfect this work;
Three journalists in Iran have been given lengthy prison sentences as the country’s hardline judiciary tightens its grip on press freedom by a revolutionary court in Tehran, which found the three Iranians guilty of charges including spreading propaganda against the ruling system, conspiring against officials and insulting authorities – charges often used against those held on political grounds;
A French-Iranian citizen who left Iran in 2009 after facing espionage charges has been sentenced to six years in jail following her return to the country to visit her critically ill mother. Several other dual-nationality citizens or expatriates have been arrested on returning to visit Iran. A spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said on Sunday that four had recently been sentenced for their connections to foreign countries;
The Iranian artist sentenced to 12 years and nine months in prison for her satirical cartoons critical of the Iranian government last year.

One would think with the litany of abuses and human rights going on in the Iranian regime just within the last few days, these so-called advocacy groups would have their hands full sending letters of protest to Iranian officials, the United Nations, World Court, global media and human rights groups.

But the Iran lobby is only vested in protecting the regime and it serves the mullahs purposes to continue trying to influence the American election as virtually all of the leading candidates have gone on record condemning the rule of the mullahs.

One also has to wonder if the other groups signing the letters and joining with the NIAC were aware of the NIAC’s leadership role as chief lobbyist for the Iranian regime. It would be worth asking the National LGBTQ Task Force, Arab American Institute, Feminist Majority Foundation, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Bend the Arc, Progressive Congress, and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement if they want to be associated with a group defending the abuses going on in Iran.

By Laura Carnahan

Ties Between Iranian Regime and ISIS Exposed Through Syria

April 27, 2016 by admin

KIRKUK, IRAQ – JUNE 11: June 11 dated picture shows the the view of petroleum pipelines in Kone district, southern Kirkuk that the burglaries steal the crude oil during the clashes in Kirkuk, Iraq on June 11, 2014. Kurdish Peshmerga forces seize the control of Kirkuk where Iraqi army forces and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had clashes, and Iraqi forces abandoned the city after these clashes, in Iraq. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

It’s no secret that top Iranian regime leader Ali Khamenei placed preserving the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as a top priority and committed the Iran’s military and financial resources to keeping him afloat and alive as various rebel groups did battle with the government following the collapse of the Arab Spring protests.

That support to Assad from Iran included billions in cash, arms, ammunition, fighters ranging from Hezbollah terrorists to Afghan mercenaries to Shiite militia from Iraq. It also included Iran’s own Quds Force, Revolutionary Guard Corps fighters and most recently soldiers from its regular army.

Most importantly, the Iranian regime gave Assad its political backing on the world stage with Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif making it clear that Iran considered Assad’s removal a red line in the sand which it would not countenance no matter how many Syrian civilians were killed or turned into refugees by the escalating conflict.

For the mullahs in Tehran, the use of barrel bombs on civilians, the recruitment of Russian forces to attack Western-backed rebel groups and the lack of any real engagement against ISIS was not a cause of concern.

New documents just released to news media have shined a disquieting light on one reason why Iran made little or no effort to target ISIS for destruction although it gave much lip service to battling the terrorist group.

On May 16, 2015, U.S. Special Forces killed Abu Sayyaf, the nom de guerre for the number two man in ISIS’s oil operations who helped turn the terror group into the world’s wealthiest terror group, in Syria’s Deir Ezzour province.

The Wall Street Journal published an exhaustive story on Sayyaf’s rise in ISIS and his prodigious organizational skills in building and managing a multi-million oil operation that at its peak provided 72 percent of the terror group’s revenue from natural resources in territory it controlled.

Documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that were taken in the raid that killed Sayyaf describe the terror group’s construction of a multinational oil operation with help from officious terror-group executives obsessed with maximizing profits. They show how the organization deals with the Syrian regime, handles corruption allegations among top officials, and, most critically, how international coalition strikes have dented but not destroyed Islamic State’s income.

The responsibilities of Abu Sayyaf extended beyond oil. In September 2014, he was given custody of Kayla Mueller, a kidnapped American aid worker. Ms. Mueller, who had been sexually abused by Mr. Baghdadi after being taken hostage in 2013, was killed about five months later, U.S. officials said.

Memo No. 156 dated Feb. 11, 2015, from Islamic State’s treasury to Abu Sayyaf’s boss requested guidance on establishing investment relationships with businessmen linked to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The document said the terror group already had agreements allowing trucks and pipeline transit from regime-controlled fields through Islamic State-controlled territory.

The ties between ISIS and the Assad regime in a complex web of illicit oil transactions and payments made in U.S. dollars to allow for international money laundering explain much of why the Assad regime and Iranian forces have not targeted ISIS. For Assad, ISIS proved to be a reliable source of hard currency and an effective buffer against more moderate rebels backed by a coalition of Western nations including the U.S.

For Iran, the illicit partnership helped alleviate the financial burden of pumping money to keep the Assad regime propped up and allowed it direct its military forces against the less formidable rebel factions rather than the larger and better armed ISIS forces.

The connections prove the uncomfortable truth about the Iranian regime, which the Iran lobby has fought hard to keep out of the news, which is that it has helped maintain ISIS’s standing as the world’s leading terrorist group and has not sought to destroy it as claimed.

To this day, ISIS-controlled oil fields in Syria and Iraq still pump and sell roughly $1 million a day of oil with a significant portion of profits going to the Assad regime.

The Assad regime’s oil ties to the Islamic State have been well documented. At least two Syrian government officials, including a Russian-Syrian businessman named George Haswani, were sanctioned by the US last year for serving as middlemen between Assad and ISIS for oil deals.

The Daily Beast reported in December, meanwhile, that ISIS delivers both oil and natural gas to the regime. The report said the resources were transported via “midstream” service providers who move the resources from ISIS territory to government territory for profit.

“In exchange for gas, the regime provides utilities like electricity, which ISIS taxes accordingly,” wrote Matthew Reed, the vice president of Foreign Reports Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm focused on oil and politics in the Middle East.

“At natural gas fields like those around Palmyra, which produce lighter liquid hydrocarbons in addition to gas, ISIS takes whatever it can turn into fuel,” he continued. “The gas goes west to Assad.”

These disclosures demonstrate the lack of honesty in claims made by the Iran lobby that the Iranian regime was intent on destroying ISIS and could prove to be a valuable ally to the U.S. the fight, when in reality the Iranian regime was an approving partner in Assad’s trade with ISIS.

The Journal only reviewed a small portion of the trove of documents captured in the raid to kill Sayyef. We can only assume even more incriminating material will still be revealed outlining the depth of cooperation between Assad and ISIS and by extension, Iran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Dictionary is not Webster’s

April 22, 2016 by admin

Iranian Regime Dictionary is not Webster’s

Noah Webster has been called the father of American English dictionaries, publishing the first edition of his dictionaries in 1828. Since then, his name has become synonymous for dictionaries and has become the bedrock for understanding and correcting the English language.

Language and its precise use have determined everything from lawsuits to love poems and most recently language has been at the heart of much of the disputes going on with the Iranian regime. For the mullahs in Tehran, language and the semantic differences it brings has been their lifeline in a sense because it allows them to argue one thing, while agreeing to something totally different.

Take for example the Iranian position in the Syrian conflict. Hassan Rouhani’s government has always maintained that no peaceful solution could happen without guarantees that Syrian leader Assad was still in power. To that end, Iran has targeted the rebel opposition and identified them as “terrorists” and tied them to ISIS and Al-Qaeda, even those moderate elements backed by the U.S. and its allies.

The mullahs have even used deceptive language in describing Iranian military units fighting in Syria, calling them “volunteers” when in fact the regime is now shipping regular army units for the first time. The regime has even recruited tens of thousands of paid mercenaries from the ranks of Afghan refugees seeking shelter in Iran from the war that rages in their country; sometimes signing up only under threat of expulsion of their families.

Iran’s army chief said on Wednesday the forces it had deployed in Syria in the first such operation abroad since the 1979 revolution were volunteers working under Revolutionary Guards supervision, and the regular army was not directly involved.

It announced this month that it had sent commandos from the army’s Brigade 65 to Syria as advisers, suggesting it was using its regular army as well as forces from the Revolutionary Guards to help Assad’s forces in the country’s civil war.

“Some volunteers have been sent to Syria, under the supervision of the related organization, and among them there might be some of the Brigade 65 forces,” armed forces chief Ataollah Salehi was quoted by the Tasnim news agency as saying.

“The army has no responsibility in the military advice given to Syria,” Salehi added.

The talking points are a clear example of how the Iranian regime obscures its real intentions with nuanced language. It’s a tactic adopted by the Iran lobby and its supporters as well in trying to divert attention through misnomers such as the use of the term “moderate” in describing certain elements within the Iranian government.

Moderation does not exist within the Iranian government. It is like making a distinction between the SS and Brown shirts of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and calling one more moderate than the other.

Nowhere is that tactic more apparent than during the recent parliamentary elections in which thousands of “moderates” were kicked off ballots and in their place, candidates loyal to the regime’s leadership were left to run virtually unchallenged, yet they were hailed as “moderates.”

The Iran lobby uses those distinctions in its efforts to distort the truth in Iran. Groups such as the National Iranian American Council have long sought to portray a clear distinction within Iran of an active moderate faction seeking change, but it has gone out of its way to attack all dissident groups not aligned with the regime in some manner.

Entities such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran which is one of the largest Iranian dissident groups in the world has long been vilified by the Iran lobby and portrayed in various nefarious ways in order to denigrate their claims and protests.

The Iranian regime continues this practice in how it makes threats all the time, including warnings by Rouhani of a “serious reaction” should the U.S. not make good on what it perceives as promises to grant Iran expanded sanctions relief under the nuclear agreement such as access to U.S. currency exchanges, while the U.S. steadfastly maintains that no such conditions existed.

Should the rest of the world be worried about these linguistic differences? Yes, to the extent they provide the Iranian regime the excuses necessary to engage in its aggressive behavior.

Iran, much like regimes such as North Korea, use language as a first-line of excuses in justifying any sort of bad behavior.

Test fire ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in violation of international sanctions?

Call it “defensive testing.”

Round up journalists, ethnic and religious minorities and toss them in prison?

Call it “protecting the faith.”

Hang a 13-year-old girl?

Call it “protecting virtue and purity.”

The absurdity of it all makes a mockery of language. We can only assume that Noah Webster is turning in his grave.

By Michael Tomlinson

Mullahs in Tehran Only Have Themselves to Blame

April 21, 2016 by admin

Mullahs in Tehran Only Have Themselves to Blame

Iran’s economy still struggles along anemically. The Iranian people find commodities in short supply with high prices and poor job prospects. Thousands of young Iranian men are being shipped off to fight in the deepening Syrian war, while at home Iranian women continue to be oppressed and denied job opportunities and any freedom to decide their own lives.

The mullahs in Tehran and the regime leaders such as Ali Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani have sought to blame at various times: the U.S., the U.S. Congress, Hollywood movies, decadent American culture, Starbucks, American consumerism, Christians, Jews, Sunnis, Donald Trump and even each other for the ills that plague Iran.

What they have failed to do is look themselves in the mirror and focus blame squarely where it belongs: themselves.

The New York Times editorial board published a piece that questions the deep level of corruption that still pervades the regime government and economy, as well as the regime’s commitment to support terrorism and human rights abuses that remain rampant.

“One impediment is that most American sanctions remain in place because of Iran’s involvement in terrorism and human rights abuses and its testing of ballistic missiles. Iran knew that lifting all American sanctions was never part of the nuclear deal,” the Times wrote.

“Experts say Iranian banks are badly run, politicized and lack transparency — warning signs for risk-averse foreign banks. Iran’s warlike behavior in the region — supporting President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, arming Hezbollah and testing missiles — further discourages investment.”

As President Obama said recently, “Businesses want to go where they feel safe, where they don’t see massive controversy, where they can be confident that transactions are going to operate normally.”

The Times is correct in that Iran’s behavior is the source of most of the problems it encounters, but it only scratches the surface of the true problems plaguing Iran since the Times diagnoses the symptom, but not the cause.

That cause lies in the foundation of the velayat-e-Faqih system in the first place as a religious theocracy dominated by a strict interpretation of Islam that allows no compromise or quarter. It regards even other Muslim faiths as blasphemous and generally seeks to solve its problems through the use of terror, war and violence.

The collision of religious rule and commerce do not produce good results on the whole and while the Times correctly points the obstacles to foreign companies and banks face in trying to restart business in Iran, it misses the correct prescription to fix it, which is regime change and the implementation of a true, non-secular democratic government in which religion plays no part in its governance.

As many Iranian dissident groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran have long pointed out, the transition of Iran from a theocracy to a true democracy is the only viable pathway for regional stability and peace.

The fact that Iran’s extremist rulers have sought to shift blame for the nation’s woes onto anyone they can blame hides the fact that corruption and violence have become so ingrained within the policies and practices of the Iranian regime, the rest of world has come to accept it as a status quo; much in the same way we’ve become accustomed to the paranoid vitriol that often flows from North Korea.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the United Nations human rights monitors have long documented the cruelty and barbarism that occurs within Iran, but over time even the most despicable acts such as the execution of juveniles have become commonplace and no longer merit worldwide media scrutiny.

Maybe that is the regime’s game plan, to play the long game and bore the rest of the world with endless streams of violence and inhumanity we take it as common practice and no longer react with revulsion?

Recently, some news media reported on an Iranian teenager who was told to “retain her chastity,” but instead bravely shared her account of being stopped by morality police for having the wrong hairstyle, amid a crackdown on women veiling incorrectly.

The 15-year-old and her 12-year-old friend from school reported seeing the morality police and hiding while they attempted to tuck their hair under their veils, but were stopped for having hair too close to their faces and wearing make-up.

After the ordeal, described by the 15-year-old as “humiliating and harrowing,” she decided to share a video account of what happened on social media.

Anywhere else in the world, viral social media such as this would generate firestorms of attention, but in Iran where a great cyber wall keeps social media in check, incidents large and small like this are only intermittingly revealed.

It is also through the diligent work of the Iran lobby network of columnists, bloggers, lobbyists and PR spinners that continually fight to keep a lid on such incidents and discount them as isolated ones and not representative of the regime as a whole.

But such actions are par for the course with the Iranian regime, which uses threats to try and force agreements.

The governor of Iran’s central bank, Valiollah Seif, threatened to walk away from the nuclear deal if the United States did not give Iran access to the American financial system during a 90-minute speech in Washington last week.

In response, Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department official and who now works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that “Iran seems to expect the Obama administration to provide benefits beyond those in the nuclear deal.” Levitt noted that Seif admitted that Iran has not changed how it does business, and added “that Iran has not changed is at the core of its problem.”

As the New York Times notes, the problem is not with the rest of the world, but with the mullahs themselves.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Begging for US Dollars

April 19, 2016 by admin

The famous physicist Albert Einstein once said “Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.”

The sentiment still applies today to the extent that many people around the world assume Americans are infatuated with money and its pursuit and have built into a kind of urban legend and mythology that has come to dominate the perceptions of Americans around the world.

The mullahs in Tehran have used the same verbiage to draw a portrait of America as a nation bereft of morality, filled with infidels more intent on opening McDonalds and Starbucks locations than pursuing a “moral” life.

It is an image the mullahs wish to grow since it allows them to convey a perception of moral and ethical superiority and re-invests the Iranian people in the mythology of the religious theocracy; one founded on a single vision and interpretation of Islam.

It also happens to be a hypocritical view since the mullahs are just as obsessed about the almighty dollar as hedge fund managers and bond traders on Wall Street. That obsessing drives the mullahs as they use all of their PR and lobbying tools to press the Obama administration to lift sanctions restricting Iran’s access to U.S. currency exchanges as part of the nuclear agreement reached last year.

According to news reports, “Iranian and European officials say they are pushing the United States to grant the Islamic Republic unprecedented access to American financial markets and the U.S. dollar, working against promises by top Obama administration officials who had claimed Iran would never be granted such access, according to recent remarks.”

Regime foreign minister Javad Zarif, speaking at a joint press conference this weekend with European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, said that officials are pressuring the U.S. to grant Iran access to American markets.

“Iran and the EU will put pressure on the United States to facilitate the cooperation of non-American banks with Iran,” Zarif was quoted as saying at a briefing with reporters and Mogherini.

Both Iran and the EU said in a joint statement later in the day that the United States must work hard to uphold its obligations under the recent nuclear deal. The White House has argued that it is not mandated to provide dollar access under the agreement.
It is one of the rare occasions where the vagaries of the nuclear agreement, which the Iranian regime fought so hard to secure is now working against it.

In Foreign Policy, Eric Lorber and Peter Feaver pointed out the problems with the imprecise language in the nuclear agreement.

“In order to get a deal that had a chance of constraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the United States had to make significant concessions on nuclear-related sanctions. At the time, the Obama administration sold the deal with the assurance that the United States would retain enough coercive leverage on Iran to keep the regime in check on these other issues, including the Islamic Republic’s support for international terrorism, human rights abuses, and the development of its ballistic missile programs. And administration spokespeople emphasized again and again that they would be vigilant and vigorous in wielding this coercive leverage,” they write.

“In the past few weeks, however, the administration has signaled that it is on the cusp of making an additional and unexpected concession to Iran that significantly weakens remaining U.S. leverage: giving Iran backdoor access to financial transactions in dollars. The administration reportedly believes it needs to make this additional concession to honor the spirit of the agreement. Congress is crying foul, asserting that such dollar access was not included in the letter of the original deal and constitutes a gift to Iran that should not be given without additional Iranian concessions. As President Obama himself asked recently: Why should the United States offer additional concessions to honor the spirit of the deal if Iran is not also making additional concessions?” they added.

The inability of the Iranian regime to lift the restrictions on accessing U.S. currency has put a halt to their flood of deal making with European and Asian banks and companies leery of running afoul of U.S. regulators, especially with a pending election that could bring a new administration less favorable of the deal.

Members of Congress have been outraged. Many members on both sides of the aisle felt they had been misled by the administration, and that if the administration had been considering granting Iran access to U.S. dollars, it should been more forthcoming with this plan in the summer of 2015 and afterwards, rather than making statements that indicated that Iran would not have access to the benefits of the U.S. financial system.

All of which points towards the mullahs obsession about money: It is the grease that fuels its proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. It arms terrorist groups like Hezbollah. It buys weapons that kill civilians and it helps oppress the Iranian people and lines the pockets of family members of the mullahs and other regime elites.

As the U.S. considers continuing the currency ban, it should remember what the regime will use those dollars for and it is not for buying every Iranian an air conditioner or Playstation.

By Michael Tomlinson