Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Stuck in Absurd Parchin “Truther” Role

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Iran Lobby Stuck in Absurd Parchin “Truther” Role

Iran Lobby Stuck in Absurd Parchin “Truther” Role

A funny thing happened this weekend. The Associated Press reported last week the contents of a secret side deal between the Iran regime and the International Atomic Energy Agency over the issue of Iran finally allowing inspection of its Parchin military facility, long suspected of being used in research in its nuclear weapons program.

That story and side agreement set off a social media firestorm as regime supporters such as the National Iranian American Council, Ploughshares Fund and J-Street went all-in denouncing not only the story, but the very existence of the purported side deal agreement.

Tom Nichols wrote in the Daily Beast a compelling blow-by-blow review of what the mudslinging that went on as supporters of the mullahs in Tehran pulled out every tactic they could think of to contain the damage wrought by the AP story in which Iran was seemingly granted significant concessions in self-inspecting and reporting soil samples from the Parchin site without international oversight.

Nichols compared the attacks and arguments of the Parchin truthers to the much-mocked 9-11 truthers who spun up elaborate fantasy theories about the 9-11 attacks being organized by the U.S. government and Israel. Nichols wrote:

The Huffington Post made the strongest play by noting that former IAEA official Tariq Rauf said that in his view it was “not an authentic document” and represented an attempt to “hinder” the Iran Deal. Because the AP’s draft referred to Iran as the “Islamic State of Iran” – its official name is the Islamic Republic of Iran, which also appears in the draft – some seized on this as evidence of involvement of…well, You Know Who: “The only one who refers to Iran,” Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council tweeted, “as ‘Islamic State of Iran’ is [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu. And strangely, AP’s dubious ‘draft’ of the IAEA-Iran agreement…”

AP writer Matt Lee upbraided Parsi, saying: “You know better than this.” Parsi, in classic truther fashion, replied: “I am pointing out the language similarity and calling it strange. That’s it.” Max Fisher of Vox, for his part, called the AP story “troubling” and backed off when Lee also directly challenged him to take a position on the forgery charge. Lewis eventually said he thought “Islamic State” was transcription error, but he spent the rest of the day in a snarky pissing match with Lee and the AP on Twitter.

Nichols also noted how all of the charges about the forged IAEA side agreement hit Internet and social media all at the same time on Friday morning, calling the timing more than coincidental. Most interestingly though was the fact Nichols noted the new tactical change in the Iran lobby’s attacks, especially on journalists who published an unfavorable piece on the Iran regime or deal.

“The Iran Deal supporters knew there was no point in trying to rebut the substance of the claim: the story was out, people had already read it, and politicians had already reacted. A careful analysis of whether the document said what the AP headline said it did would take too long, and most people wouldn’t bother with it,” Nichols said. “Instead, the story had to be discredited and flushed, as soon as possible. There wasn’t time to explain that ‘monitor’ might mean different things to a lay reader and to an expert. Better simply to throw an array of charges at the Associated Press and its reporters and see what sticks.”

“The warning shot to other journalists is clear, however. Reporters with one of the most reputable news organizations in the world had to fight off odious charges for doing their job. This is apparently the price to be paid for reporting anything that challenges support for a deal that has reached, among its adherents, the status of a dogma that tolerates no heresy,” he added.

But these attacks by the Iran lobby point out the most significant issue surrounding these secret side deals; the fact that they are still secret.

William Tobey and Judith Miller writing in Real Clear Politics took the Obama administration to task in keeping these deals secret and outlined three compelling reasons why they should be made public:

“First, Iran’s commercial and industrial secrets—or even military secrets—are unlikely to be revealed by publishing the IAEA’s side agreements. Confidentiality regarding safeguards mainly covers proprietary and economic information, not approaches, said Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s former chief inspector.

“Second, while such side deals are normally secret, the Iran agreement is far from a normal case. Both the IAEA Board of Governors and the United Nations Security Council concluded that Tehran violated its earlier Safeguards obligations on numerous occasions over an extended period of time. Moreover, Iran, under its earlier commitments, was supposed to let the IAEA visit Parchin with 24 hours’ notice. Yet the agency has been waiting years for access, while Iran has conducted a massive cleanup at the location.

“Third, the overarching deal removing sanctions on Iran was struck by seven nations and the European Union—not just by Iran and the IAEA.”

State Department spokesman John Kirby, in his regular press briefing on Monday, did not build confidence either when he said the government believes the IAEA will give it all the “access and information” it needs in regards to inspections at Parchin.

Pete Kasperowicz of the Washington Examiner explained how Kirby’s subtle addition of the phrase “access and information” reinforced the perception that the IAEA side deals surrendered control of the testing and inspection process to the Iran regime.

New York Times correspondents David R. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon took a deeper dive in the future risks posed by the Iran deal and concluded “that after 15 years, Iran would be allowed to produce reactor-grade fuel on an industrial scale using far more advanced centrifuges. That may mean that the warning time if Iran decided to race for a bomb would shrink to weeks, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis by Robert J. Einhorn, a former member of the American negotiating team.”

“Critics say that by that time, Iran’s economy would be stronger, as would its ability to withstand economic sanctions, and its nuclear installations probably would be better protected by air defense systems, which Iran is expected to buy from Russia,” they added.

All of which points out that the real truth behind the Iran lobby’s arguments is that the mullahs in Tehran cannot be trusted.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Unveils New Missile; Iran Lobby Goes Nuts over Parchin

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Iran Regime Unveils New Missile; Iran Lobby Goes Nuts over Parchin

In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian Presidency on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, left, listens to Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan after unveiling the surface-to-surface Fateh-313, or Conqueror, missile in a ceremony marking Defense Industry Day, Iran. Iran unveiled a short-range solid fuel ballistic missile Saturday, an upgraded version that the government says can more accurately pinpoint targets. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

The Iran regime unveiled a new short-range, solid fuel ballistic missile over the weekend that promises quicker launch capability, longer lifespan and accurate striking capability within its 310 mile range.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the proposed agreement with the regime on its nuclear weapons program, called on the regime not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

It also contained an arms embargo against Iran for the next eight years, but since it is not part of the deal, the regime has said it won’t abide by with it.

“We will buy weapons from anywhere we deem necessary. We won’t wait for anybody’s permission or approval and won’t look at any resolution. And we will sell weapons to anywhere we deem necessary,” Hassan Rouhani, regime president, said in comments broadcast live on state television Saturday.

“Can we be indifferent…when there are special circumstances on our eastern, western, northern and southern borders,” Rouhani said, apparently referring to fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the region. “How can a weak country unable to stand up to the military power of neighbors, rivals and enemies achieve peace?”

Of course Rouhani neglects to mention that Iran itself is responsible for the fighting going on around it with its support of the Syrian regime, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen, all of which have drawn in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Gulf states, Jordan and Egypt into a much broader series of wars all started by Iran.

But the fact that Iran unveiled this new ballistic missile and ignored the UN resolution and recently completed the sale of S-300 advance anti-aircraft missile systems from the Russians, as well as violated travel sanctions in sending Quds Force commander Ghasem Soleimani on a secret mission to Moscow to shop for more arms, gives the world a rock-solid view of what the regime’s true intentions are; which is to rearm, reload and stock up on weapons as quickly as possible.

These actions, although deeply disturbing, are not what has the Iran lobby up in arms, which is the disclosure by the Associated Press and verified by Fox News of the contents of a secret side deal between the Iran regime and the International Atomic Energy Agency which purports to allow Iran to use its own inspectors at the contested Parchin military site to collect soil samples for testing without international monitors on site.

The agreement is startling and contemptuous of all of the previous “red lines” proposed by the P5+1 group of nations that negotiated with Iran and an example of the dramatic concessions granted to the regime in an attempt to appease the mullahs. The fact that the mullahs aren’t content with these windfalls and chose to unveil a new missile during the contentious debate over the deal in Congress gives us a strong idea of just what they think of the deal.

Which is why the Iran lobby is almost apoplectic about the disclosures since it represents a damning confirmation of how bad the deal is and how the mullahs have duped the Obama administration.

Joel B. Pollak writing in Breitbart discusses how these “Parchin truthers” have concocted some pretty ridiculous claims to try and hide the obvious in these Parchin disclosures.

The “Parchin truthers” include Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a group often described as a pro-regime lobby. Parsi retweeted an accusation that the AP text may have been “personally forged by Benjamin Netanyahu,” and added his own comment,” Pollak said.

Tyler Cullis, also of the NIAC, went so far as to tweet that use of the phrase “Islamic State of Iran” had to be evidence of Netanyahu forging the statement since he’s the only one what uses that phrase. With all due respect to Cullis’ ham-handed efforts, there are plenty of us who refer to Iran as the “Islamic state”though they are really not Islamic and

The exposure of the Parchin lies of the Iran lobby have pushed the NIAC, Ploughshares Fund, J-Street and other regime supporters to attack not only the article itself, written by AP Vienna bureau chief George Jahn, but the global news organization itself in a desperate bid to deflect attention from the crippling revelations.

Joseph Cirincione, head of Ploughshares Fund which provides substantial funding for the NIAC and other Iran lobbying groups, took to the Los Angeles Times to trot out the well-worn and discredited idea that rejecting the proposed deal would inevitably lead to war.

He argues that U.S. partners would abandon the U.S. should the deal be rejected and the sanctions in place would fall apart as well. It is clear that what Cirincione is warning about has already happened because of the deal, not because of its defeat.

The mullahs are ignoring the arms embargo, acquiring weapons. They are hosting trade delegations from European nations and buying arms from the Russians, while lining up deals to sell oil to the Chinese in spite of the promise to keep sanctions in place unless and until Iranian regime demonstrates it has abided by the terms of the agreement to dismantle its nuclear program.

All of which proves how feckless the claims being made by Parsi, Cirincione and other regime sympathizers are and why the ballistic missiles Iran unveiled are only the start of a much more dangerous period in the Middle East and the world.

By Michael Tomlinson

Side Agreement with IAEA and Iran Regime Shows Deceptive Practices

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Side Agreement with IAEA and Iran Regime Shows Deceptive Practices

Side Agreement with IAEA and Iran Regime Shows Deceptive Practices

Recent disclosures by the Associated Press of the secret side deal negotiated between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Iran regime over inspection of the Parchin military complex have caused quite a stir in the debate over the proposed nuclear agreement with the regime, but what is not being discussed is the deeper meaning of the agreement which is how the regime expects to handle inspections moving forward.

Parchin is just a sneak peek into the much larger preview of how the regime acts and conducts itself in double dealing with the international community and monitoring agencies. The text of the secret deal as transcribed by the AP reveals how the Iran regime intends to maintain total control over any inspection regimen.

The most important phrase, repeated throughout the agreement, is “Iran will provide…” At no point does the agreement grant international inspectors unfettered access of their own to the facility to take photos, inspect areas or take environmental samples without it passing through regime hands.

Supporters of the mullahs in Tehran argue the inspection is a one-time only affair at a site that has been closed down for a decade, but what gets overlooked is that Parchin’s importance to the regime was not in handling radioactive material, but rather handling high explosives which are necessary in detonating a nuclear warhead. The fact that the regime has pre-determined where soil samples are to be taken and has had plenty of time to scrub the facility clean, the usefulness of any inspection is moot.

“The notion that this means it is not the IAEA but Iran who is conducting the investigation is a laughable distortion,” said Jamal Abdi of the National Iranian American Council, the regime’s chief lobbying arm.

But the importance of Parchin is not in actual inspection, but in understanding how the regime reacts to inspections in general and looks into its military program specifically. The mullahs, led by Ali Khamenei, have consistently opposed any interviews of its scientists and technicians over the military dimensions of its program by IAEA personnel. Nearly a dozen questions from the IAEA remain unanswered by the regime for over a decade.

According to the Wall Street Journal in an interview this month, Yukiya Amano, IAEA director general, acknowledged Tehran has so far refused to agree to provide access to many of the individuals believed to have been involved in the suspected testing at Parchin.

Parchin is just a small part of those questions. The fact that the regime has managed to wear down the IAEA by stonewalling it and then negotiating secret side deals it has warned the IAEA should not be revealed to the U.S. clearly show the regime’s priorities in taking advantage of the situation to basically set into stone its rights to lie to the rest of the world. It’s a blatant act of appeasement and one that has never been granted to before to any other nation subject to international monitoring such as North Korea or South Africa.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the leading Iranian dissident group, has long complained of the regime’s steadfast refusal to allow inspections not only of Parchin, but similar facilities at Fordow, Arak and Natanz, most of which were only revealed after being exposed by the NCRI and other resistance groups.

The fact that the IAEA capitulated in such dramatic fashion is worrisome because it underlines the strong move towards appeasing the mullahs as a way of currying favor with them in a mistaken belief that would somehow bring about regional stability.

But this new disclosure only reinforces the growing and pervasive belief that the regime simply cannot be trusted. A new CNN/ORC poll released this week showed 56% of Americans now think Congress should reject the deal; up from 52% just less than a month ago.

Even as public opinion mounts against the regime, the leaders of the Islamic state continue to operate in a fashion immune from any criticism from overseas as evidence by the new campaign to discredit Wall Street Journal reporter as being an intermediary for the Iranian opposition. Forget the fact that the claims are based on a misuse of the English language, but the treatment follows similar actions against media critics of the regime such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian who languishes in an Iranian prison.

This is just par for the course for a regime openly hostile to news media, contemptuous of international authority and blatantly ignorant of basic human rights.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Why the Iran Regime is Rushing for a Nuclear Deal

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Why the Iran Regime is Rushing for a Nuclear Deal

Why the Iran Regime is Rushing for a Nuclear Deal

When most of us took our first driver’s training class, we were admonished with the warning “speed kills” and for most of us, it’s a saying that has served us well. In the case of the proposed nuclear deal with the Iran regime, speed is the operative word as the regime and its lobbyists push hard to get the deal approved as quickly as possible.

The need to get the deal done quickly became self-evident when it was taken to the United Nations Security Council for a vote even before the U.S. Congress and the reward for the mullahs in Tehran were quick delegations from France and the European Union to explore trade ties even though the proposed agreement ostensibly does not allow for economic sanctions to be lifted for years.

On top of which the regime is quickly completing its deal to acquire state-of-the-art anti-aircraft missile batteries from Russia and has sent its Quds Force commander to a secret mission to Moscow to discuss the acquisition of even more weapons to replenish stores depleted from supporting three proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

All of which goes to show the true nature of the regime as it seeks to rearm, rebuild and expand its military and dominion over its neighbors, but why is the Obama administration in such a rush to complete what is becoming more evident as a bad deal?

Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Washington Post, explains that this deal is not a take it or leave it proposition and in fact the best remaining option to go back to the mullahs and re-open negotiations for a better deal.

“Doing the deal, then, is the risky proposition — by increasing violence in the region in the short term and practically ensuring major military conflict down the road (sanctions won’t be available) with a stronger and more confident Iran,” Rubin writes.

Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, echoes the same point in Foreign Policy, writing:

“There is ample precedent to amend the deal. Congress has required amendments to more than 200 treaties before receiving Senate consent, including significant bilateral Cold War arms control agreements with the Soviets like the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty, as well as multilateral agreements like the Chemical Weapons Convention negotiated with 87 participating countries, including Iran, by President Bill Clinton,” Dubowitz said.

Iran’s mullahs understand the danger posed by an amended deal or any delay in approving the deal. The mullahs need the $100 billion in unfrozen assets to jumpstart the economy they have driven into the ground and forestall the growing dissatisfaction from ordinary Iranians protesting abysmal living standards and working wages.

The regime is doing everything it can to hide anything that can negatively impact the public perception of the deal, even if it means threatening the head of the nuclear agency responsible for inspecting Iran’s facilities.

As reported in the Washington Free Beacon, “Yukiya Amano, IAEA director general, purportedly remained silent about the nature of certain side deals during briefings with top U.S. officials because he feared such disclosures would lead to retaliation by Iran, according to the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI).”

“In a letter to Yukiya Amano, we underlined that if the secrets of the agreement (roadmap between Iranian regime and the IAEA) are revealed, we will lose our trust in the Agency; and despite the US Congress’s pressures, he didn’t give any information to them,” said regime’s AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi during a meeting with Iranian regime’s lawmakers, according to Tehran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

“Had he done so, he himself would have been harmed,” Kamalvandi added.

The blatant nature of the threat only reinforces the perception that the regime simply cannot be trusted, a point reinforced by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) who joined Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in announcing his opposition to the proposed agreement. Writing in the New York Post, Menendez reinforces the idea that we need to slow down.

“I believe we could still get a better deal and here’s how: We can disapprove this agreement, without rejecting the entire agreement,” Menendez said.

“We should direct the administration to re-negotiate by authorizing the continuation of negotiations and the Joint Plan of Action — including Iran’s $700 million-a-month lifeline, which to date have accrued to Iran’s benefit to the tune of $10 billion, and pausing further reductions of purchases of Iranian oil and other sanctions pursuant to the original JPOA,” he added.

He then goes on to lay out six conditions the regime must meet in order for a new deal to be acceptable; conditions the Obama administration previously declared as “red lines” in the negotiation sand, but then subsequently abandoned after being outmaneuvered by the regime.

The regime is hoping that speed does kill and in this case, kills any hopes of slowing down the regime’s plans for domination and expansion.

By Laura Carnahan

The Downside of Trusting the Iran Regime

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The Downside of Trusting the Iran Regime

The Downside of Trusting the Iran Regime

One of the consequences of doing a deal with the Iran regime is that you have to actually live with the consequences of that decision; something the U.S. is only beginning to figure out in unpleasant detail.

The New York Times recounted an incident in which a helicopter from the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt encountered an Iranian Navy frigate in the Gulf of Aden that aimed its weapons and tracked the Americans in a game of high seas chicken. The incident is similar to others in which Iranian military units have acted aggressively at U.S. forces, which is curious considering all of this comes during the sensitive debate over the recently proposed Iran nuclear agreement.

Why would the mullahs in Tehran continue to act in such a provocative manner at such a crucial time? To coin a phrase: Because a leopard can’t change its spots and the regime can’t change what it is.

The fact that the Obama administration is moving American carrier battle groups around the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Aden like so many chess pieces is a clear demonstration of the need to reassure regional allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and others suddenly nervous about an aggressive and militaristic Iran. Even as the administration tries to project reassurance about the deal forging a new path of peace with the Iran regime, the region is witnessing a rapid build of U.S. military forces in response to the same regime.

The irony would be funny if it wasn’t so deadly serious.

But the fight over the nuclear deal has cast a harsh spotlight on the regime’s tactics and political lobbying network here in the U.S. The New York Times described some of the intense lobbying going on right now and illustrated how the Ploughshares Fund has been a key player for supporters of the deal; serving as a central financier and hub for cash (upwards of $11 million so far) and support out to the broad array of groups favoring the deal, including substantial donations made to the National Iranian American Council, the regime’s chief lobby.

All that support for the regime though cannot hide those leopard spots as the regime’s top mullah Ali Khamenei announced on Monday in another one of his patented rants that the regime would continue to oppose U.S. policies and reiterated Iran’s right to still refuse the nuclear deal.

“The Americans want to gain influence in the region and reach their goals. We will not let them,” said Khamenei, who has previously said US regional policies are “180 degrees” opposed to those of the Islamic state.

The one thing Khamenei fears is the potential for the nuclear deal to open up not only the floodgates of foreign investment, but also the kind of market liberalization that American companies typically force as evidenced in places such as China and Russia, only to see those governments crack down to halt the spread of democratic principles. In many ways, such a scenario could threaten the regime itself in Iran.

Not only was Khamenei doubling down on Iranian recalcitrance, but Sayyed Abbas Araqchi, the regime’s deputy foreign minister and one of the top negotiators in talks that led to the recently inked nuclear deal, told the country’s state-controlled press that Iran’s intelligence apparatus must approve of any inspector who is issued a visa to enter Iran.

This new wrinkle shows the regime’s efforts to backtrack on the agreement and preserve its ability to maintain its nuclear program in secret.

“Then we learned that no Americans are allowed on the inspection teams and that Iran will do its own soil sampling,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon advisor and expert on rogue regimes. “Now the Iranians claim that all IAEA inspectors have to be vetted by Iranian intelligence? It really can’t get any worse than this.”

But Rubin may be wrong as outlined in a piece running in the Weekly Standard by Emanuelle Ottolenghi and Saeed Ghasseminejad from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who detailed how even seemingly harmless investments made in the Iranian economy will be directly benefitting the Revolutionary Guards Corps and the regime’s military.

They write that the Obama administration is adamant that the IRGC “hates the deal,” because it supposedly opens up market previously cornered by the Guards to competition. The truth is rather different: the deal delists many companies that aided the IRGC in its proliferation efforts, its support for terrorism, and its involvement in the Syrian civil war. Though the deal keeps in place U.S. sanctions against the IRGC, it removes sectoral bans against areas of Iran’s economy that the IRGC dominates. The Guards, as Iran’s economic “gatekeeper,” will have ultimate say on how the country’s post-deal windfall will be spent.

In a final display of deception by the regime, Roy Gutman writing for McClatchy News Services explains how the regime continues to blame the U.S. for the rise of ISIS when Iran’s own policies in propping up Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria and strategic blunders in backing Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq led to the birth and rapid growth of ISIS.

The evidence is overwhelming that the price of trusting the mullahs in Tehran may eventually too high of a price for anyone to pay.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Use of False Dissidents by Iran Lobby

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Throughout history the use of deception has been an integral part of statecraft. Governments have used double agents, false document releases, propaganda and all sorts of other tricks to deceive enemies or even their own people. Names such as Kim Philby, Eddie Chapman, Ashraf Marwan and even Mata Hari have claimed a special place in history for their duplicitous roles during wartime.

But in the social media age, knowing what is and isn’t true can prove difficult to near impossible with the flood of blogs, columnists and self-styled journalists posting, tweeting, sharing, pinning and linking. Edward Snowden showed us a peek under the tent with what was possible in terms of monitoring electronic communications. The Iran regime has refined the art with its own version of China’s great cyber wall which shuts out the outside world from the Iranian people and allows the mullahs to monitor virtually all the electronic activity happening there.

Control of all communications also has a certain side effect as well, it gives rise to the one of the current tactics used by the regime in trying to project a more moderate image to the outside world. You see, if the Iran regime controls all forms of outbound and inbound communications, how can anyone really trust what is being said or more precisely what the mullahs are allowing to be said.

One of the regime’s favored tactics is to project the image of a divided Islamic state; a struggle between moderates and hardliners, especially as it relates to the current debate over approval of the proposed nuclear agreement. The regime’s official news agency, IRNA, and other news media churn out a steady stream of stories about “hardliners” within the regime clamoring to the kill the deal and how “moderates” such as Hassan Rouhani are struggling mightily for peace.

It all has the tinge of some bad B-movie thriller from the 1950s with a cartoonish lampooning of favored tropes, no different than Cold War-era imagery of spies going to battle between the West and Soviet Bloc.

But these “protests” are largely staged for the benefit of Western media consumption in order to help the regime’s lobbyists here in the U.S. such as the National Iranian American Council in its efforts to bolster the image, such as one reported this weekend involving 50 “hardline “students.”

These same efforts to dissemble include public statements of endorsement being made by so-called “dissident” Iranians who are in fact still connected to the regime, not unlike the double agents of past campaigns. A recent open letter in Huffington Post was signed by former members of the Islamic Parliament who claimed to support the nuclear agreement, but scrutiny of the signers would reveal for each a past not spent on changing Iran’s policies, as much as securing a political future for their return to power.

In a historical context, many of these same ex-regime officials willingly took part in brutal repressive acts of their own until they fell out of favor for various and assorted reasons be it voting for laws oppressing the Iranian people or giving their support for the mullahs’ policies. The definition of their actions would be more commonly known as “appeasers” which carries historical connotations itself with visions of Neville Chamberlain clutching a piece of paper with Adolf Hitler’s signature on it proclaiming “peace in our time.”

But there is a certain delicious irony with all of the huffing and puffing of the regime and its loyal allies such as the NIAC and that is the almost insignificant impact it’s having on the Iranian American community itself.

The NIAC has led the public charge to mobilize Iranian Americans to support the deal, calling on mass protests and rallies and participation at congressional town hall meetings during the summer recess. Instead their appeals have fallen on largely deaf ears.

Protests held in favor of the deal have resulted in crowds just as small as the staged regime protests in Tehran with Los Angeles – home to over 800,000 Iranian Americans – protests yielding a paltry 200 participants, most not even of Iranian descent. Weekend rallies in Washington, DC and San Diego were even smaller, barely cracking 100 people.

In contrast, over 10,000 rallied in New York’s Times Square against the deal and another 1,000 gathered in Los Angeles, most of them Iranian Americans demonstrating not only their opposition to the regime, but also for the various resistance movements around the world.

The efforts by NIAC Action, the direct lobbying arm of NIAC, had even worse results with no-shows in at least one California district and another one in New York being outnumbered by opponents to the deal.

All of which raises an interesting question: Knowing how weak the regime and its lobby are, just why is anyone even listening to them?

By Michael Tomlinson

The Use of False Dissidents by Iran Lobby

The Use of False Dissidents by Iran Lobby

The Big Lie About Human Rights and the Iran Nuclear Deal

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The Big Lie About Human Rights and the Iran Nuclear Deal

The Big Lie About Human Rights and the Iran Nuclear Deal

One of the more incredible stretches of imagination surrounding the proposed nuclear deal between the Iran regime and the rest of the world is the notion that the agreement with Tehran’s mullahs might somehow spur improvements in the regime’s bleak human rights record.

One of the strongest proponents of that lie has been the regime’s paid lobbyists, the National Iranian American Council, which put out a policy memo on its website attempting to reinforce the misconception.

The memo essentially consists of quotes taken from various people and groups identified with human rights issues in Iran, but notably does not include any quotes or comments from groups who have traditionally monitored regime human rights abuses, such as Amnesty International, nor does it include any comments from relatives or families of loved ones who languish in regime prisons or been subject to torture and executions.

It is also notable how many of the quotes are taken from purported human rights activists who in reality serve the regime such as Akbar Ganji, a self-described Iranian journalist who was previously a commander in the regime’s Revolutionary Guard and still has deep ties to the regime’s leadership.

The fact that NIAC also used a quote from Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in Iran is laughable considering revelations that the Iran regime launched a sophisticated smear campaign against him through the use of a fabricated WikiLeaks cable purporting to show bribes from Saudi Arabia that never existed.

“The apparently orchestrated campaign against Shaheed seems to fit into a familiar pattern of Iran smearing activists, dissidents, or even journalists by propagating misinformation about them.

Iran has repeatedly condemned Shaheed’s reports as unsubstantiated, biased and collated from anti-Iranian outlets. Shaheed has never been allowed to travel to Iran since his initial mandate was approved by the UN in 2011.

One could go through practically the entire list of quotes provided by the NIAC and simply use Google searches to reveal how factually incorrect and in error they are. It is an admirable show of deception on the NIAC’s part that rivals many of their past efforts to distort the regime’s true record.

The real record on the regime’s abysmal human rights record has been well documented not only by Shaheed and Amnesty International, but also by opposition groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, news media and through the statements and actions made by ordinary Iranians demonstrating and protesting against the regime and those imprisoned such as Americans Jason Rezaian, Saeed Abedini and Amir Hekmati who still languish despite the nuclear agreement.

But everything the NIAC says seems to be constantly undercut by their masters in Tehran. Another glaring example was the complaint filed by the regime against White House press secretary Josh Earnest who has taken to insisting the U.S. retained the right to “use military force in the long run and the use of nuclear inspections to gain intelligence about Iran’s nuclear facilities”; calling Earnest’s statements a “material breach” of the nuclear deal itself.

The outlandish complaint was lodged with the International Atomic Energy Agency which has come under heavy criticism for negotiating two secret side deals with the regime and not making either available to the public or members of Congress currently reviewing the agreement.

The irony of the Iran regime’s complaint is that it exposes both provisions as being completely false and unenforceable since the regime has already clearly considered both to be invalid, even though deal supporters such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of the NIAC have gone to great lengths to champion those same provisions of key examples of why the deal works.

One has to wonder who the American public should believe on this issue: the Iranian government or those lobbyists being paid by that same government and its allies?

By Michael Tomlinson

Khamenei Tweet Gets No Defense from Iran Lobby

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Khamenei Tweet Gets No Defense from Iran Lobby

Iranian leader tweets graphic of Obama with gun to head From: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/07/25/iranian-leader-tweets-graphic-obama-gun-head/30667081/

Iran’s top mullah Ali Khamenei sent an explosive tweet from his official English-language account at @khameneni_ir. It read:

“US president has said he could knock out Iran’s military. We welcome no war, nor do we initiate any war, but…”

The tweet appeared underneath a graphic depicting an image appearing to be President Obama holding a gun to his head. The quote in the image attributed to Khamenei said:

“If any war happens, the one who will emerge loser will be the aggressive and criminal U.S.”

Khamenei has been as regular as clockwork in his periodic rants against the U.S. generally and the proposed nuclear deal specifically, using his Twitter feed to send out his own version of “red lines” the regime would not cross in any nuclear deal, while only last week delivering a speech claiming America’s aims in the region were “180 degrees” opposite of Iran’s.

Supporters of the regime ignored the tweet and its implications. For example, Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council and the regime’s lead lobbying organization, did not even mention the offensive tweet in his own Twitter account, preferring instead taking shots at those opposing the deal.

But what could he and other regime apologists really say? Khamenei is just venting? Khamenei is just dispensing vitriol for domestic consumption?

The fact is Khamenei is Iranian regime’s supreme leader. There is no other chief executive above him. His decisions on foreign policy, going to war, executing political prisoners, issuing a new religious law affecting all of Iran’s citizens or deciding what flavor of ice cream to outlaw are absolute and undisputed.

Consequently his comments are not trivial, nor should they be taken lightly or ignored. In most ways his comments, even nuances, are as important to understanding his intentions as during the Cold War when the West tried to divine the intentions of Soviet leaders by who was standing next to whom during May Day parades of military hardware.

But aside from Khamenei’s comments and tweets, the regime took steps to ensure there was no domestic disputes over the proposed nuclear deal in order to ensure its passage so that the regime could gain access to the estimated $160 billion in frozen assets and military hardware it desperately needs after waging three proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

A top secret document sent to newspaper editors has surfaced on the internet.

Issued by the ministry in charge of the press, the two-page document faxed to media organizations relays directives from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. It says editors should praise the deal and the negotiating team.

It stresses the need “to safeguard the achievements of the talks”; avoid sowing “doubt and disappointment among the public”; and avoid giving the impression of “a rift” at the highest levels of government.

The irony is unmistakable as it clamps down on any domestic dissent, while the regime’s leadership is allowed to freely express its disdain for the U.S. and the conditions laid out in the agreement such as inspection of Iranian military facilities.

Interestingly, the regime directive asked Iranian news media to “note the big achievements in our nuclear program as a result of the agreement”; a candid reassurance of the wins for the regime under the deal.

In contrast the criticism of the deal in the U.S. continued to grow as former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton issued a scathing critique in the Los Angeles Times, declaring:

“Assuming Iran scrupulously complies with every provision agreed to in Vienna — an absurdly unlikely scenario given the ayatollahs’ objectives and history — its ambitions for nuclear weapons will simply have been delayed eight to 10 years.

“In all likelihood, the ayatollahs are already at work violating the accords. After all, Iran has systematically breached its voluntarily-assumed obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for more than 30 years,” Bolton writes.

“Moreover, Iran’s ballistic missile efforts — its development of the means to deliver nuclear weapons all over the world — will barely be touched. Nor does the deal in any way address Iran’s clandestine weaponization efforts, which it has denied and hidden from the International Atomic Energy Agency with great skill,” he added.

Also, a previously undisclosed report by the Obama administration led several lawmakers in Congress to conclude world powers will never be able to get to the bottom of Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon and that the regime would never be fully pressed to explain its past nuclear program efforts.

“Details of the report, which haven’t been previously disclosed, indicate the deal reached this month could go ahead even if United Nations inspectors never ascertain conclusively whether Iran pursued a nuclear weapons program—something Tehran has repeatedly denied,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Some senators complained last week that they were told by administration officials that Iran would be allowed to manage some of the IAEA’s investigation. They said they were told Tehran would conduct its own soil sampling at a military site called Parchin, where, allegedly, explosive devices were tested,” the Journal reported.

The entire process is rightly ridiculed by lawmakers and critics of the deal. It is akin to asking a suspected criminal to gather evidence at his own crime scene and hand it over to investigators.

It is provisions such as this and many others in the 159 page agreement, as well as in two secret side deals made with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the regime which has yet to be made public that has made many in Congress highly skeptical.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Public Opinion not trusting Iran Regime Nuclear Deal

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Public Opinion not trusting Iran Regime Nuclear Deal

Public Opinion not trusting Iran Regime Nuclear Deal

As news media begin to digest the 159 pages of the proposed nuclear agreement between the Iran regime and the P5+1 group of nations, a consensus is beginning to form on many editorial pages and within the public consciousness that the deal may indeed be a bad one.

The remarkable thing about social media, Google searches and blogs is that every citizen has the ability to read the same documents, examine the same talking points and debate the same conclusions as the diplomats who sat at the bargaining table over the past three years and what they are finding is beginning to disturb them.

The latest national survey from the Pew Research Center conducted from July 14-20, found more Americans disapprove than approve of the deal. Among the findings, of the 79 percent of Americans who have heard about the deal, just 38 percent approve, while 48 percent disapprove of it with only 14 percent offering no opinion.

Unsurprisingly, among those familiar with the agreement, 35 percent had not too much confidence and 38 percent had no confidence that Iran’s mullahs would uphold their side of the bargain for a whopping 73 percent of Americans not trusting the regime to keep its word.

That kind of decisive margin ranks up there with beliefs about death and taxes and is problematic for supporters of the deal, including regime lobbyists such as the National Iranian American Council.

Also a majority of Americans (54 percent) do not have much or any confidence in the ability of international monitors to keep track of Iran’s compliance or of any cheating by the regime.

The split along partisan lines was even deeper, but in a troubling sign for regime supporters, the margin of support amongst conservative or moderate Democrats was considerably narrower at 48 percent approve and 33 percent disapprove; combined with the overwhelming Republican and independent disapproval and it adds up for a bad demographic mix for House and Senate Democrats weighing whether or not to back the deal.

In another blow to claims being made by Trita Parsi, Reza Marashi and Tyler Cullis of the NIAC, 42 percent of Americans expect little change in U.S.-Iran relations as a result of the deal and another 28 percent expect relations to actually worsen. Americans don’t buy what the NIAC has been trying to sell about this deal being “transformational.”

Strikingly, how the deal is described to Americans was found to be an important factor in how they perceived and rated the deal as the Pew survey and a Washington Post/ABC News survey done at the same time reflected differing results, largely because of how the deal was described in the first place, which means as debate heats up in Congress, precise language will have a significant impact.

But in more troubling signs for Iran regime supporters, even Secretary of State John Kerry weighed in on statements from regime leader Ali Khamenei “vowing to defy American policies in the region,” commenting he found those remarks “very disturbing” and “very troubling.”

That seems like quite an understatement.

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post’s Right Turn blog goes on to detail flaws coming to light now that the deal is being dissected including warnings from Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency that the proposed 24-day inspection delay is a recipe for cheating.

She also writes that translations of statements made by regime foreign minister Javad Zarif from inside Iran trumpeted the regime’s win in denying access to any of its military facilities to outside inspection, in direct contradiction to what supporters of the deal have promised.

Rubin also cites Max Boot’s editorial in which he details the similar nature of the Iran deal with the one negotiated with North Korea that eventually was evaded easily by the rogue nation, allowing it to construct a nuclear arsenal and ballistic missile capability that now threatens South Korea, Japan, Canada and the western United States.

“The larger problem is that, like North Korea, Iran is a big country: If the government wants to hide something, it will likely succeed. Compliance depends on voluntary cooperation. Perhaps Iran will cooperate, but so far, it has not come clean with the IAEA about 12 existing ‘areas of concern’ regarding the ‘possible military dimensions’ of its nuclear program,” Boots writes.

“That is not a good sign. It suggests that Iran, like North Korea (or, for that matter, Iraq during the 1990s), is likely to play a game of cat-and-mouse with inspectors — and that if it does cheat, as North Korea did, the world will again discover it is too late to do anything about it,” he added.

Also, the Obama administration found itself on the defensive after letting the United Nations Security Council vote on the deal even before submitting it to Congress for approval, angering many members of the president’s own party, including Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY), the top Democrat of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who joined the Republican chair, Ed Royce (R-CA) expressing “disappointment” in the move.

All of which augers a difficult two months for regime supporters who need to keep 13 Democratic Senators from supporting a certain veto override by the president. Most head counts have shown anywhere from 12-14 Democrats expressing dissatisfaction with aspects of the deal which means the race will come down to the wire just as the presidential campaign heats up.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobbies Falsififying of Choices on Iran Deal as War or Peace

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Containment Is the Third Choice In Dealing With Iran Regime

Containment Is the Third Choice In Dealing With Iran Regime

Yesterday we examined the histrionics of Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council and lobbyist-in-chief for the Iran regime’s policies, including his principle argument that the only two choices facing us when it comes to Iran is peace through a nuclear deal or war through attacking Iran.

While Parsi harps on semantics of discussions being the basis of a change in Iran’s approach to the world, the track record of the mullahs hardly merits that. In fact, it’s worthwhile remembering why sanctions were imposed in the first place:

  • In 1995, President Clinton imposes an executive order banning all trade with Iran in response to the conduct of regime leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the bloody Iran-Iraq war. Congress soon follows with the Iran=Libya Sanctions Act denying Iran access to loans and financial assistance for its oil industry;
  • In 2005, Iran begins enriching uranium in violation of international agreements with the UN Security Council. This starts a string of sanctions from the UN and U.S. under President George W. Bush freezing assets of those regime individuals connected to the nuclear program;
  • In 2010, Congress passes and President Obama signs into law the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act which greatly enhanced sanctions on the regime in response to brutal crackdowns of protests over fixed elections;
  • In 2012, the European Union imposes a ban on sales of Iranian oil and blocks to financial markets and transactions in response to the growth of the regime’s nuclear program.

These sanctions did not come out of the blue or on a whim. They came as a direct response to provocative regime behavior and actions. Iran’s mullahs were the ones that brought these responses onto themselves and contrary to what Parsi would have people believe those sanctions were self-inflicted by Iran.

Nowhere is that more evident than in how Iran sought to keep its nuclear program secret and only with Iranian dissident and resistance groups and the work of International Agencies were many of Iran’s secret nuclear sites revealed, including:

  • Arak: Site of a heavy water production plant, nuclear reactor and high-explosive test chamber uncovered by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran resistance group;
  • Ardakan: First reported in 2003 by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, this site was an acknowledged uranium mill capable of producing 50 metric tons of uranium annually;
  • Fordow: Secret facility uncovered by intelligence agencies in 2009 containing 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium;
  • Natanz: Hardened fuel enrichment plant built deep underground and reinforced with barriers to withstand direct bombing and home to 7,000 centrifuges enriching uranium, revealed in 2002 by Alireza Jafarzadeh, noted author and dissident figure now working with the National Council of Resistance of Iran;
  • Parchin: Revealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency as having been used for implosion testing necessary for modeling nuclear warhead detonation.

Again, Parsi never explains why Iran has maintained secret nuclear facilities. He has never explained why Iran needs to test implosion devices and highly enriched processing facilities for medical isotopes. Parsi has never explained why each U.S., UN and EU sanction was placed in direct response to a regime action.

The facts are that containment of the Iran regime had been working. The regime was cut off from financing and was bleeding mountains of cash because of its expenditure of arms and men in supporting religious wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Discontentment ran deep within the Iranian people who rose up in protests over presidential elections in 2009 and most recently in mass demonstrations by teachers, ethnic minorities and young people over a plummeting economy and harsh human rights repression.

The time was ripe for regime change and under the pressure an effective containment strategy brought to bear on the mullahs, real change was within the grasp of the P5+1 group of nations and they let it slip away.

As Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said in response to the lost opportunity:

“Had the P5+1 been more decisive, the Iranian regime would have had no choice but to fully retreat from and permanently abandon its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Specifically, it would have been compelled to halt all uranium enrichment and completely shut down its bomb-making projects,” Mrs. Rajavi said.

But nothing better illustrates Parsi’s snarky view of the concerns over Iran’s brutal suppression of women, young people, Christians, Kurds and many others than this tweet he sent out:

“1/2 If America ends up getting delicious Iranian pistachios, and Iran ends up getting shitty McDonalds, then yes, US won #NoWinWin #IranDeal”

While Iranians languish in prison, Americans are held without trial, Iranian militia fight in three wars and millions of refugees are displaced by them, Parsi tweets about pistachios. It is ample proof of the fool he has become and the lackey he is.

By Michael Tomlinson