Iran Lobby

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

London Bridge Attacks Puts Spotlight on Iran Extremism

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London Bridge Attacks Puts Spotlight on Iran Extremism

London Bridge Attacks Puts Spotlight on Iran Extremism

The terrorist attacks that have struck London and Manchester have reinforced the essential problem facing nations confronted with homegrown radicalization: How to stem the tide of extremism flowing from a few select terrorist actors in the world.

The core truism about extremism is that it is not something that magically springs into a young man’s mind. It is something created by example and revealed as a pathway of redemption for the disenfranchised, the unhappy, the mentally unstable.

While ISIS and before it, Al-Qaeda, spewed out hate-filled propaganda designed to energize and slightly dement these men and women around the world, the pathfinder for this process has always been the Iranian regime.

Radicalization begins with an idea. From such innocuous beginnings can spring forth great horrors. Nazism in Germany plunged the world into a cataclysmic war. The Iranian regime’s twisted perversion of Islam has created a similar tidal wave of misery around the world.

From its earliest days when the religious clerics took over the leadership of a revolution that meant to topple the Shah’s dictatorship and turned it into a referendum on dictatorial religious power, Iran has been at the epicenter of conflicts not only with the West, but its neighboring Muslim neighbors.

The ruling mullahs have always operated with a fervent belief in the expansion of their control and theocracy; partly to gain material control of funds and assets, but also to build buffer between Iran and the rest of the world.

The mullahs sought to build alliances or simply overthrow governments to create a Shiite sphere of influence in Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen; stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

It has used proxies and terrorist organizations to help fights battles, assassination political rivals, destabilize governments and provide a safe landing zone for Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force troops to jump in and consolidate its gains.

But for all its successes, Iran now faces a very basic problem: the rest of world now knows the true colors of the Iranian regime.

With each terrorist attack, the world asks a simple question: Why?

The answer is increasingly: Islamic extremism.

The equation is simple to understand; expose potential subjects to an ideology of hate and intolerance and you can turn anyone into a guided weapon.

Iran mullahs have excelled at the practice for decades through their own terrorist proxies and espousing the language of hate. It didn’t matter who the mullahs directed their vitriol at since everyone was fair game.

Death to the Great Satan.

Death to Sunni apostates.

Destroy Israel.

Overthrow the Kingdom.

The targets changed, but the message never did.

Now the mullahs are sensing the tide is changing on them around the world and they are trying to do a backstroke upstream.

That was evident when top mullah Ali Khamenei declared that the London terror attacks were a “wake-up call” for Western nations to go after the sources of terrorism.

Rarely has anyone said something so completely correct and so wildly wrong.

“Repeated blind terror attacks around the world are a wake-up call for the world community,” the official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying.

“To uproot terror, it is necessary that they (Western states) address the root causes as well as the main financial and ideological sources of extremism and violence, which are clear to everyone,” Qasemi was quoted as saying by Press TV.

Iran denies Western charges of sponsoring terrorism, and it is no coincidence that Khamenei tried to hoist blame on Saudi Arabia since the U.S. under the Trump administration has set its sights squarely on containing Iran and forming a new international coalition.

That opposition began with a renewed military commitment in Syria where U.S. forces actively targeted and engaged Iranian-backed forces for the first time.

U.S. military said on Thursday it had bolstered its “combat power” in southern Syria, warning that it viewed Iran-backed fighters in the area as a threat to nearby coalition troops fighting Islamic State.

The remarks by a Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State was the latest sign of tension in the region, where the United States has forces at the base around the Syrian town of Al Tanf supporting local fighters.

“We have increased our presence and our footprint and prepared for any threat that is presented by the pro-regime forces,” said the spokesman, U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, referring to Iran-backed forces supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Trump has begun the laborious process of building a new coalition in halting Iranian expansion.

Most recently, during his trip to Saudi Arabia, Trump called for unity against Tehran and told assembled Arab leaders that, “For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.”

Under its new director, former Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, who was a ardent foe of the Iran deal, the intelligence agency has made moves toward more aggressive spying and covert operations.

And, according to The New York Times, Pompeo has found a skilled leader for his Iran operations: Michael D’Andrea, an experienced intelligence officer known as the “Dark Prince” or “Ayatollah Mike.”

D’Andrea, a Muslim convert, has gotten much of the credit for US efforts to weaken Al Qaeda.

Robert Eatinger, a former CIA lawyer who was involved in the agency’s drone program, told The Times it would not be “the wrong read” to see D’Andrea’s appointment as step toward a more hardline policy on Iran.

The attacks in London are only a symptom of the much larger disease of Islamic extremism fueled by Tehran and it’s time to rein it in.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

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Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

Iran Election Leaves Confusion and Chaos in its Wake

The re-election of Hassan Rouhani to another term as president of the Iranian regime came as no surprise to experienced Iran watchers and the larger dissident community; particularly since the election process in Iran is essentially rigged from the start by the process of eliminating thousands of candidates who register to run for the office, but this has not stopped the Iran lobby from claiming the win was a mandate for so-called “moderate” policies.

One example of this myth-making comes from the National Iranian American Council which noted Rouhani’s win with an analysis on its website.

According to the NIAC, more than 41 million Iranians voted in Iran’s May 19th Presidential election, or nearly 75% of the electorate. The NIAC claims that figure included tens of thousands of Iranians in the diaspora with a remarkable feat given the obstacles imposed by Iran’s unelected institutions.

It’s a silly argument to make since many election analysts who have studied Iranian elections have noted the past practice of ballot stuffing and double counting of ballots cast in presidential and city council races in order to boost overall numbers.

There is also the infamous 2009 election “victory” of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which was widely considered to be illegitimate for the same tactics.

The claim of high Iranian voter turnout would be similar to basing the election turnout for the Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump race on counting ballots cast for state races as separate and unique.

It is even more ironic for the NIAC to claim a high turnout from the Iranian diaspora when it has previously openly condemned large portions of the diaspora involved in the Iranian resistance movement, such as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran.

The NIAC also claims that the election was a 57-38% landslide for incumbent Rouhani, and a defeat for so-called hardliners – including the leadership of Iran’s judiciary and Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – which publicly mobilized for perceived conservative candidate Ebrahim Raisi

What the NIAC doesn’t admit to is that the election was precisely a victory for the hardliners because the regime government is controlled and directed by the same hardliners who claim to be moderates. All Iranian officials from the Rouhani on down to the lowliest village representative all have to swear the same oath of fealty and allegiance to the regime’s religious leadership and theocracy.

There is no distinction within the Iranian regime between moderates or hardliners since all are beholden to the same power structure.

The NIAC also claimed the election was a referendum on the nuclear deal, but what it fails to do is make the distinction of how the election was engineered to deliver a pre-determined outcome. By setting up a race between Rouhani and Raisi, the mullahs created the perception of a moderate vs. hardliner battle and all but ensured Rouhani’s election as a choice of the lesser of two evils.

The election was never about the nuclear deal since most Iranians have not received any benefits from the deal and probably won’t for many more years. For Iranians who voted for Rouhani, the election was simply a choice of choosing a less odious candidate than another, which tends to be the basic choices provided by the mullahs.

To keep that fiction up, Raisi and his supporters are now even accusing Rouhani of rigging the vote with widespread voter fraud.

“Tampering with the numbers of people’s participation is inappropriate. Not sending ballots to centers where the government’s opponent has a chance of getting votes is very inappropriate,” Raisi was quoted as saying.

“I ask the Guardian Council and the judiciary not to let the people’s rights get trampled. If this vote-tampering is not looked into, then the people’s trust will be damaged.”

The claim is humorous given the regime’s predilection for rigging elections, but Raisi’s claims might very well be genuine, but in the end irrelevant since the mullahs got the result they wanted, which was to fool the rest of the world.

The need to fool the world is necessary for the Iranian regime as it continues to implement an aggressive agenda seeking to expand its sphere of influence throughout the region, which is why recent news that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias were on the very of opening a land corridor from Iran to Assad-regime controlled territory in Syria is worrisome.

The opening of such a corridor would accelerate Iran’s ability to ship weapons and fighters to Syria without having to resort to more clandestine methods such as using commercial Iranian airliners to ferry troops and supplies.

Syrian rebel sources have warned of advances by the Syrian army and Iranian-backed militia to reach the border.

The news of Iranian involvement in other regions included reports from Afghanistan of Pakistani and Iranian nationals fighting for ISIS elements.

Afghanistan Nangarhar provincial Police Chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said that the Pakistani and Iranian detainees confessed that militants were being funded by Iran and Pakistan.

The attack against the U.S. didn’t stop either after the election as top mullah Ali Khamenei continued his customary verbal broadsides against the U.S. by marking the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by ripping Saudi Arabia, saying its Sunni rival is being pumped for money by the U.S., according to Agence France-Presse. 

Khamenei’s comments comes after President Trump brokered a $110 billion defense deal with the Saudis during his first foreign trip in office.

The defense deal between the U.S. and the Saudis will bolster Riyadh’s defense capabilities by providing more equipment and services to combat extremist terror groups and Iran.

Even as the Iran lobby claims the Iran election has resolved much, the opposite has been the truth.

Michael Tomlinson

On Memorial Day We Should Honor Everyone Who Died for Freedom

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On Memorial Day We Should Honor Everyone Who Died for Freedom

On Memorial Day We Should Honor Everyone Who Died for Freedom

Memorial Day will see families and friends gather for backyard BBQs and hit stores for shopping sprees. In other, more quiet gatherings, people will gather to honor the memory of those who gave their lives for defending freedom in wars and battles at home and abroad.

But Memorial Day should be a day for a broader and more inclusive remembrance of people who fought for freedom. It should also be a time for honoring those who did not wear a uniform, but still paid the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of a better world.

Many of those people are activists and dissidents who have fought for democracy and human rights against authoritarian regimes around the world such as Iran and North Korea. For them, active protests against their government can cause arrest, torture, imprisonment and often execution.

Their sacrifice is an ultimate demonstration of the courage it takes to stand up to tyranny and oppression. For many who make that sacrifice, the bravery shown as they are led to the gallows is no different than soldiers going over a hill to attack an enemy position or brave fire to save fellow soldiers or civilians.

In a way, Memorial Day is a celebration; a celebration of the courage it takes for one person to act, to suppress their fears and do something most normal people wouldn’t even consider doing. Memorial Day is a recognition that to be brave is a choice and a moral one at that.

Across America, we observe Memorial Day legacies from the recent past in recognizing soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines who have fought and died in the global war on terror in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and other remote locations.

We should also recognize the sacrifices made by those who have acted on similar instincts in their own way.

In places such as Iran, the Iranian regime has been ruthless and relentless in seeking out and punishing dissidents severely. The regime has a long history of murder and massacres as a tool of statecraft, going back to the mass slaughter of 30,000 Iranian dissidents back in the ‘80s and the continued arrest and execution of dissidents to this day.

In the prior decades of the Islamic state, dissidents were primarily political and often came from opposition and resistance parties and groups such as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) and the Mujaedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK).

Now the range of dissident in Iran is as broad as the entire population itself. It has grown to include students who oppose restrictions on their education, small business owners upset with a struggling economy, women resisting moral codes that require hijabs or handcuff their ability to choose careers or even a husband, or even artists and bloggers who are imprisoned for expressing themselves or critiquing the mullahs.

The list of people executed by Iran and regimes such as Syria and North Korea is long and bloody. It is the hallmark of these regimes that wanton murder is a preferred method of eliminating opponents.

In the case of the Assad regime in Syria, using the full power of the military to drop chemical weapons and barrel bombs to wipe out entire villages or eliminate families or ethnic groups on a wholesale basis. There could be no better Memorial Day remembrance than to observe the sacrifices made by the Syrian to protest and oppose the Assad regime in the first place that sparked the civil war there.

In most of their cases though, as in the case of dissidents in Iran, there will be no parades, no festivals, no special sales at the malls and no documentaries or TV specials. For most of them, the memory of their sacrifice lives on in their families and in the dissident organizations that keep up the fight such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Now we see many of these activists and dissidents fight back in their own ways, many staging hunger strikes to bring international attention to their plight while international groups stage demonstrations and protests around the world and keep their visibility up through social media campaigns.

On this Memorial Day, it would be fitting if we took a moment to recognize their sacrifices as being no less meaningful than the soldier on the battlefield and for their sacrifice, we should all be grateful.

Laura Carnahan

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

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As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

Without much drama, Hassan Rouhani was re-elected to a second term as president of the Iranian regime. The result didn’t come as a surprise to any experienced Iran watcher since no incumbent has ever lost a bid for a second term, even if the results had to be faked to get the job done as was the case with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But what has been lost on a large part of the global media is now the mullahs manage to always stage a convenient drama to be played out for them in terms of a fateful showdown between “reformist and moderate” forces against “hardline and conservative” ones bent on rolling back the freedoms of the Iranian people.

If Nazi Germany had staged an election between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the latter probably would have looked like a moderate too.

The same was true here in which a careful choreography ensued. First thousands of candidates filing to be on the ballot had to be summarily tossed aside to clear the field.

That left only six men to move forward—no women and no active or known dissidents—and then several dropped out to throw their support to one of the two remaining choices: Rouhani and Ebrahim Raisi.

Conveniently, Raisi was portrayed as the “hardline” choice of Ali Khamenei and was portrayed by media as the man who would roll back all the “positive” achievements wrought by Rouhani over the past four years.

Given Raisi’s bloody history as a special prosecutor that oversaw the executions of tens of thousands of Iranian dissidents, it’s easy to see why he might be viewed as slightly more bloodthirsty than Rouhani who oversaw only the execution of mere thousands of dissidents.

It was a Hobson’s choice and a well-played one.

While the Iran lobby focused on Rouhani’s achievements in securing the nuclear deal and opening Iran back up to Western investment, never were there any mentions of the broad human rights crackdowns during his tenure including the largest number of public executions since the 1979 revolution.

In fact, global media were eager to eat up the narrative of a “moderate” win which is exactly what Khamenei and his fellow mullahs wanted to see portrayed.

How easily the world has forgotten the parliamentary elections only last year in which tens of thousands of candidates were knocked off ballots and faithful followers of the mullahs were re-elected.

The Iranian regime smartly chooses to fight its public battles only after the game has been rigged.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council brayed like a wild animal over the results as the NIAC quickly issued statements lauding the outcome.

“President Rouhani’s convincing win is a sharp rebuke to Iran’s unelected institutions that were a significant brake on progress during Rouhani’s first term. It is also a rebuke of Washington hawks who openly called for either a boycott of the vote or for the hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi to win in order to hasten a confrontation,” Parsi said.

“In addition to Trump’s America, there are two other countries that will continue to form an Axis of Rejection in response to Rouhani’s foreign policy. One is Saudi Arabia. Despite Tehran’s repeated outreach, Riyadh has refused to respond in kind,” said Parsi’s NIAC colleague Reza Marashi in a piece for Huffington Post.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, many countries are not hearkening to Parsi and Marashi’s messages.

During President Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia, he found common ground with the Saudis on the need to confront Iranian regime’s aggression since Rouhani has clearly followed a foreign policy of engaging in wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; coupled with a North Korea-like ramp up in ballistic missile testing.

The king said on Sunday Saudi Arabia had not witnessed terrorism until the 1979 Revolution in Iran. Instead of accepting good-faith initiatives, Iran has “pursued expansionary ambitions, and criminal practices and the meddling of other countries’ internal affairs,” he said. The kingdom, however, respects the Iranian people and won’t judge them “by the crimes of their regime,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

Trump later singled out Iran as a terror sponsor. Iran’s leaders speak “openly” of mass murder, Trump said in his keynote speech before dozens of Muslim leaders gathered in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He said the Iranian government gives terrorists “safe harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for recruitment.”

Sen. John McCain lauded President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia this weekend saying it sent a strong message to Iran that the U.S. and its allies are ready to block Iran’s efforts to destabilize the region.

“There’s no doubt that if we’re going to impede the Iranian’s continued efforts to exert, certainly, significant strength in the region that this is an important step forward,” the Arizona Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Orde Kittrie, a professor of law at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lauded the Trump administration’s approach to the Iranian regime and how—in this one area—bipartisan cooperation with Congress seems to be taking root.

“The Trump administration’s different approach is very consistent with that advocated by leading members of Congress including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in their S. 722, and House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chair Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in their H.R. 1698,” he writes in the Hill.

“The Trump administration has been accused by some of acting impulsively at times. Its apparently careful, measured and thoughtful approach to Iran policy is encouraging. Tearing up the JCPOA, without a better strategy for preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb and a broader strategy for combating non-nuclear malign Iranian behavior, would make no sense,” he added.

While the world discusses the “moderate” victory in Iran, it would do well to remember how bloody the past four years have been around the Middle East under Rouhani’s term.

 

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

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Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

The Iran lobby has been posturing to depict the Iranian presidential election as a battle between “moderates” and “hardliners” as personified by Hassan Rouhani versus Ebrahim Raisi. It has also sought to downplay any role top mullah Ali Khamenei plays in determining the outcome of the election.

The National Iranian American Council has been the most vocal of these groups in pushing this narrative. Examples of this includes pieces appearing in Huffington Post.

The first one by Reza Marashi of the NIAC argues this central conceit of reformists and pragmatists fending off hardline conservatives. The way Marashi describes it, it is almost a heroic struggle. The only thing missing is a dramatic musical score.

Marashi argues that the Iranian people want moderation and reform in their president. Not an unreasonable idea and one that he argues is supported by the election history of Mohammad Khatami and Rouhani, as well as the dismal election effort of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He even portrays Rouhani as a trailblazer in opening political discourse with his election in 2013.

“While it’s true that election season in Iran traditionally allows for an expansion of otherwise taboo political discourse, Rouhani taken it to uncharted waters. First, he publicly committed to engaging in the process of lifting all non-nuclear sanctions if he wins a second term. Then he told a rally that he had not forgotten his 2013 campaign promises, openly stating: ‘Either they have been achieved, or I have been prevented from keeping them.’ And remarkably, he directly told voters: ‘I’ll need votes higher than 51% in order to do certain things,’” Marashi writes.

He goes on to portray Rouhani’s statement as threatening to the regime and a minor miracle he wasn’t hauled off to Evin Prison for daring to utter such statements.

Pardon us while we laugh hysterically at Marashi.

Rouhani has never been, nor ever will be considered a true moderate. He is a loyal member of the regime, pledging allegiance to the same radical theology that all office holders swear to. His past record in military, religious and judicial matters have provided him with bona fides as a harsh punisher of dissent.

His term over the past four years clearly demonstrates his willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to protect the Islamic revolution. During his tenure, the pace of executions rose to the highest level since the revolution, earning annual condemnations from the United Nations, Amnesty International and just about every other human rights organization on the planet.

He has also enforced a broad crackdown on free speech that Iranians access to unmonitored internet access is non-existent. Add to that mass arrests of journalists, the shutdown of blogs and newspapers, and efforts to crack the encryption of social apps such as Telegraph and WhatsApp and you start getting the picture of how bleak things are in Iran right now.

Marashi is correct on one point, which is that this election really is not about the presidency, but rather the positioning going on to succeed Khamenei at the top of the mullah pyramid.

In that regard Marashi and the Iran lobby are getting their cake and eating it too. If Rouhani is elected, they will get to trumpet the victory of moderation even though Rouhani is no moderate.

If Raisi is elected, they can blame it on a newly muscular approach by the Trump administration towards Iran and Middle East policy and never address the horrific crimes of the Iranian regime.

It is a neat solution for the Iran lobby.

Tyler Cullis of the NIAC takes up this issue in his piece in Huffington Post when he questions why Democratic members of Congress seem willing to give the Trump administration leeway in leveling additional sanctions on Iran.

“Democrats have signed up as co-sponsors for Senate and House legislation, believing their political fortunes best lie in supporting aggressive action against Iran rather than acting as a buffer against the Trump administration’s efforts to derail a nuclear accord that, by all accounts, is working as intended,” Cullis writes.

“Democrats are risking a historic mistake – an error in judgment that could end up both alienating their progressive base and costing them hoped-for electoral gains, not to mention setting the stage for a new conflict in the Middle East,” he adds.

Cullis raises the apocalyptic specter of war with Iran as the inevitable path from tightening sanctions against Iran.

It’s the same argument the NIAC has made repeatedly ever since Congress moved to get tougher with Iran as the regime fired off ballistic missiles, sent ships to aggressively confront the U.S. Navy and supported bloody conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen with men, arms and cash.

Cullis proclaims that war with Iran is the sure outcome from any effort to get tougher with Iran. Of course, that assumes that the mullahs only reaction is to go to war with the U.S by this logic.

In fact, the real story is that the mullahs purposely used the nuclear deal to buy time and get out from crushing economic sanctions that were threatening the very existence of the regime.

Now that Iran has received the benefits of billions in cash, foreign investment and the sale of its oil back on the open market, the usefulness and utility of keeping up the pretense of wanting to reach out to the global community is at an end.

Consequently, whether Rouhani or Raisi gets elected is a moot point, since the policies of the regime are not going to change no matter who gets elected. The NIAC has long acknowledged that the office of president in Iran lacks real power, which makes its impassioned arguments for “moderates” to win there even more incomprehensible.

Then again, logic was never a strong suit of the NIAC.

Cullis even makes the outrageous assumption that getting together on Iran will inevitably compel North Korea to take bolder action and not trust the word of the U.S. in any agreement.

“North Korea will view the U.S.’s abrogation of the Iran nuclear accord as clear evidence that the U.S. cannot be trusted to keep to its commitments and will refuse to deal with the Trump administration. In this case, peace will be impossible and war inevitable. Congress’s failings on Iran will spill over and deter peaceful settlement in other areas of conflict such as the Korean peninsula. Democrats will be on the hook once again,”

Really? Are we to assume that a North Korean regime that has broken every agreement it entered into, detonated nuclear devices and openly launches missiles with increasing range is going to be dissuaded by the U.S. commitment to Iran?

The lack of logic from the NIAC never ceases to amaze.

What If Iran Held an Election and No One Voted?

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What If Iran Held an Election and No One Voted?

Iranian clergymen vote in the parliamentary and Experts Assembly elections at a polling station in Qom, 125 kilometers (78 miles) south of the capital Tehran, Iran, Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. Iranians across the Islamic Republic voted Friday in the country’s first election since its landmark nuclear deal with world powers, deciding whether to further empower its moderate president or side with hard-liners long suspicious of the West. The election for Iran’s parliament and a clerical body known as the Assembly of Experts hinges on both the policies of President Hassan Rouhani, as well as Iranians worries about the country’s economy, long battered by international sanctions. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The Iranian regime’s presidential election is fast approaching on May 19th and with it comes expectations around the world of what the election will mean.

For the mullahs in Tehran and their overlord, Ali Khamenei, it has meant staging an election that gives the world the appearance of being fair and free, but in fact is anything but. They have even sought to create the aura of tension and debate by offering up “hardliners” to run against “moderate Hassan Rouhani.

In reality, this election—like so many others before it—has already been pre-ordained. The difference is that the mullahs learned their lesson from the disastrous 2009 re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which convulsed Iran in massive street protests that had to be put down ruthlessly and aired live on then-novel fledgling social media networks around the world.

Since then the mullahs offered up a less contentious election in 2013 with Rouhani being foisted on the world as a paragon of moderation and friendly attitudes through the removal and disqualification of any other threatening candidates to make the ballot.

The parliamentary elections last year saw a massive crackdown against journalists, dissidents, artists, students, and just about anyone else that might have Twitter on their cellphone.

Now the mullahs are staging an election where the outcome has already been pre-determined and the rest of the world just has not been clued in yet.

Slater Bakhtavar, an attorney, foreign policy analyst and political commentator, described the election farce in a piece for Forbes.

Western media are bafflingly enamored of extolling the virtues of Iran’s “free” and “democratic” electoral process, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it is neither. Anyone holding naive notions of any and all Iranians having some unalienable right to submit their name for election, then have a fair and equal chance to earn votes through rigorous campaigning and the debate of ideas, would do well to abandon such lofty fantasies, he writes.

“The actual voting process is riddled with fraud, too. The government meticulously plans initiatives to transport poor people (whose political leanings are known beforehand) to the polling stations, and official government employees are essentially ordered to vote. Tactics such as these allow officials to report enormous voter turnout numbers, pleasing journalists and maintaining the facade of Iran’s democratic international image,” Bakhtavar adds.

Bakhtavar notes how the Obama administration fell for the façade or the mullahs in supporting a flawed nuclear deal that did not reform the regime’s government and shockingly enabled the mullahs by paying cash ransoms for American hostages, thereby convincing the mullahs their path of squashing human rights was the correct one and carried no repercussions.

He does note however that the election of President Trump provides an opportunity to reset the scales with Iran and empower an Iranian dissident movement that has been under constant assault by the mullahs for three decades.

“President Trump is correct in his backing of the Iranian people, both morally and pragmatically. It has always been the right thing to do to support these oppressed people as they increasingly seek reform and the formation of a freer society, but now, in the early 21st century, the timing is perfect,” Bakhtavar said.

“New technologies exist now that allow communications on a wider scale than ever before, enabling the proliferation and exchange of new ideas and ways of thinking. Free thought is a danger to Iran’s theocratic regime, as it is to all dictatorships. These technologies are to be encouraged among the people of Iran, and those people should be afforded the dignity and respect of being addressed directly – not through their tyrannical rulers,” he added.

This explains why the mullahs spend such an inordinate amount of the regime’s time and resources to confiscating satellite dishes, blocking access to social media apps, tracking illegal online activity and trying to break the encryption of communications platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp.

The mullahs live with the very real fear that if the Iranian people were ever able to organize and communicate effectively, especially with the outside world and dissident and human rights groups, their tenuous hold on power would slip away.

Mohammad Mohaddessin, chair of Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), one of the largest Iranian dissident groups, answered this very real concern of the mullahs.

“Over the past 38 years the clerical regime has entirely relied on execution and prison to stay in power and all regime’s officials, including Rouhani who has been one of the decision makers in the regime during this period, are directly responsible for the crimes committed,” Mohaddessin said.

To that end, the Iranian resistance movement has offered an alternative to the Iranian people dissatisfied with their choices in the election: Simply boycott the vote.

An online campaign has been picking up steam with photos of demonstrations in Iran beginning to leak out on social media of Iranians calling for a boycott of the elections.

While it’s doubtful the mullahs would even reveal the effects of any boycott since returns are usually suspected of being falsified in the first place, any boycott is a sign of growing resistance, especially in a regime where any overt act of defiance often lands one in prison or worse yet at the end of the hangman’s noose.

But some intrepid Iranians are talking to Western media about participating in such a boycott over their disgust with their choices.

“I will not vote,” said Hossein Ghasemi, a 35-year-old taxi driver who voted for Rouhani in 2013 told Bloomberg. “None of them care about our demands and difficulties linked to daily increasing prices.”

There are already warning signs on the horizon for Rouhani. A report Monday by the state-run IRNA news agency said a survey of over 6,000 eligible voters found over a third saying they would not be voting, while another 46 percent said they would pick their candidate later. It offered no margin of error on the nationwide random survey, according to Bloomberg.

We can only hope that on May 20th the full extent of the dissatisfaction of the Iranian people is heard.

Michael Tomlinson

Will Pakistan Become the Next Yemen?

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Will Pakistan Become the Next Yemen?

Will Pakistan Become the Next Yemen?

The Iranian regime has turned inciting civil wars into an art form. It got its start early with the bloody sectarian conflict in Lebanon that saw Iran fund and nurture Hezbollah as it grew from a ragtag militia into a globe-spanning proxy for Iran to fight its wars.

Within the last decade, the Iranian regime has refined its mischief-making to new highs in starting the Houthi insurrection in Yemen and drawing Saudi Arabia perilously close to an all-out war with Iran, while in Syria the regime went all-in for the Assad regime.

The mullahs in Tehran used Afghan mercenaries, Shiite militias from Iraq, Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and its own Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force troops to cut a swath of blood and death across most of Syria.

At the same time, Iran manipulated the government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq to collapse the government, launch a sectarian conflict against Sunni tribes and indirectly fuel the rise of ISIS through the swift fall of Mosul.

Now comes worrisome signs that Iran may be turning its sights on neighboring Pakistan in a formula that has worked so well before.

A senior Iranian military commander said the country reserves the right to destroy suspected havens for terrorists in Pakistan following a recent alleged terrorist attack against Iranian border guards serving on the country’s southeastern frontier, according to regime-controlled news services.

“The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran condemn such measures and if the Pakistani government does not take serious measures, they (Iranian forces) reserve the absolute and legal right to resolutely counter and destroy the lairs of terrorists however deep inside the neighboring country’s soil,” Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said on Tuesday.

He added that Iranian Armed Forces would spare no efforts to safeguard the country’s security.

For Pakistan, the comments are no mere idle threat as the mullahs have acted on past warnings to its neighbors. The turmoil in Iraq and Yemen are prime examples.

A shocked Pakistan foreign office summoned the Iranian ambassador to record a formal protest over the provocative comments.

Relations between Islamabad and Tehran have been complex and full of mistrust for a while now. The two countries, however, have avoided aggressive posturing through public statements in the past, which makes these Iranian comments even more disturbing to Pakistani officials.

At least 10 Iranian border guards were killed in an ambush near the town of Mirjaveh in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan Balochistan last month. Following the assault, an anti-Iran Sunni Muslim militant group called Jaish al Adl, or the Army of Justice, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan’s recent decision to join a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition of 41 predominantly Sunni Muslim nations also has upset Iran. Tehran sees the military alliance as an anti-Iran group and an attempt to expand Saudi influence in the region. Saudi and Pakistani officials reject the assertions as unfounded.

The tensions the Iranian regime are creating amongst its neighbors stands as the primary driver of instability throughout the Middle East, contrary to the promises made repeatedly by the Iran lobby which only promised Iranian cooperation and moderation in the wake of the nuclear agreement reached in April 2015.

But the instability outside its borders are only a mirror of the tensions within Iran, especially in the run up to presidential elections on May 19th, but another significant event is going to take place beforehand on May 14th.

May 14 will mark the ninth anniversary of the arrests of the Iranian Baha’i leadership, known as the Yaran. These seven men and women managed the religious and worldly needs of Iran’s Baha’i, who make up the country’s largest non-Muslim minority. Iranian authorities condemned them to 20-year prison terms for their alleged misdeeds—charges that included “corruption on earth,” “insulting religious sanctities,” “espionage for Israel,” and “propaganda against the system.” The group’s secretary was arrested on March 5, 2008, and was also sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Elliott Abrams detailed the plight of the Baha’i in a piece for Foreign Affairs.

From the Iranian revolution in 1979 to this day, the regime has shown the Baha’i no mercy. The Iranian Baha’i community has faced continued oppression on the economic front and in the denial of educational opportunities.

Last November, Iranian authorities shut down more than 100 Baha’i-owned businesses throughout Iran after those businesses were briefly shuttered by their owners to observe the Baha’i holidays.

In December and January alone, more than a dozen Baha’i students were kicked out of Iranian universities because of their faith. As one student put it, “This has been going on for 37 years [since the Iranian revolution].

Every year, university security officials identify new Baha’i students and find excuses to throw them out.” Meanwhile, hundreds of students took the national entrance exam for universities, passed, and were denied entry into any university.

The unjust imprisonment of Baha’i continues, with new arrests by the Intelligence Ministry as recently as April. It is estimated that 80 to 90 Baha’is remain imprisoned in Iran solely due to their religious beliefs. The effort to smear the Baha’i and their religion continues as well, with thousands of anti-Baha’i articles running in Iranian media in the last 12 months.

The plight of these people, coupled with the opening up of a new front against Pakistan shows the willingness of the Iranian regime to disregard world opinion and act according to its own twisted agenda.

Laura Carnahan

Ali Khamenei Reinforces Why Things Will Not Change After Elections

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Ali Khamenei Reinforces Why Things Will Not Change After Elections

Ali Khamenei Reinforces Why Things Will Not Change After Elections

Ali Khamenei, the mullah at the top of the power pyramid in Iran, gave another of his vitriolic speeches in which he reinforced exactly why things won’t change much in the Iranian regime after presidential elections May 19th no matter who gets elected.

He warned that any disrupters of the election would receive a “slap in the face” which is a not so-veiled warning to anyone planning protests over the election results.

The warning came in remarks he made to graduating cadets of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, in which he stressed the importance of security as the dominant issue in the election. An emphasis that is at odds with protests around Iran by ordinary Iranians demanding better jobs wages and economic growth.

The tensions are so bad that Hassan Rouhani’s recent appearance at the scene of a mine collapse trapping and killing scores of miners was met with derision and protesting miners kicking and banging on his car.

Those underlying tensions are a clear signal to Khamenei and the other mullahs of the precarious nature of their hold on power, which is why Khamenei chose to deliver his comments before the regime’s military.

It is also why controls on this year’s elections are much stricter with street rallies banned and restrictions on televised debates.

The elections have also done nothing to alter the trajectory of the regime’s military build-up, which if anything has stepped up in tempo as evidenced by Iran’s communications minister recently announced plans to put two satellites into space, but the impending launch may be cover for ballistic missile research.

Mahmoud Vaezi announced on Monday that the two supposedly home-made satellites will be launched into orbit in the coming months. The launches may seem innocuous, but such space technology could be used to help advance Iran’s missile technology.

“Iran is certainly using its satellite program to shield the ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile) program. The technology and challenges in the two programs are similar in many aspects and one can move from one to another,” Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iran research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Iran needs to disguise its ICBM program, he added, and satellite launches are an ideal method. The Islamic Republic has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its missile tests in the past, even since the signing of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement in 2015. Iran’s military has engaged in at least eight missile launches since the deal was inked.

Iran’s missile arsenal forms the backbone of its national defense. The Islamic Republic was cut off from Western military support after its revolution in 1979, diminishing the capabilities of its air force. The country instead focused on advancing its missile program, which was easier to maintain thanks to the help of North Korea. An Iranian missile tested in January had North Korean origins, according to the Pentagon.

That commitment to Iran’s missile capability was reinforced by Khamenei in the same remarks to the Revolutionary Guard Corps cadets.

“The hype over Iran’s missile capability is because of their (enemies) spite and anger about this element of power in Iran,” Khamenei said.

“We possess missiles which are very precise and can hit the targets with high precision from thousands of kilometres away,” he said, adding that “We will preserve this capability with all in power and will increase it powerfully.”

He said that Iran’s military power serves as a tool for “deterring purposes” and relies on domestic potentials.

Also, the regime test-fired a high speed torpedo, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News, marking the latest provocative action from the Islamic Republic.

The Hoot torpedo, which has a range of six miles, was fired in the Strait of Hormuz, where much of the world’s oil passes each day.

It’s unclear if the torpedo test was successful.

It is not the first time Iran has tried to test this torpedo. The last time it did so was in February 2015. It also follows a cruise missile test from a midget submarine also based on North Korean designs.

Iranian officials announced in April that the regime’s defense budget increased 145 percent under Rouhani, hardly the sign of a government intent on becoming a “moderating” influence in the region as promised by the Iran lobby.

In the end, very little has changed in Iran and will remain so no matter who gets elected. The only real hope for democratic reforms and change remains empowering the global Iranian resistance movement and give it the international backing it needs to become a force within Iranian politics again.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Ties With North Korea Requires a Marriage License

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Iran Regime Ties With North Korea Requires a Marriage License

Iran Regime Ties With North Korea Requires a Marriage License

Iran’s recent failed ballistic missile  launch from a submerged “midget” submarine has once again bought up the specter of Iran’s military ties with North Korea.

The two rogue regimes are so joined at the hip, their relationship would require a marriage license to be this close.

To say the mullahs in Tehran share a lot of the same values with Kim Jong-un would be an understatement of historic proportions. Both regimes have engaged in overseas assassinations and terrorist operations, especially killing dissidents and political opponents—and in the case of Kim, even family members.

Both have invested heavily in developing illicit nuclear programs, including extensive development of ballistic missile designs. The level of cooperation and sharing is akin to Intel designing microprocessors for Dell computers.

In the latest incident, the launch of what is being portrayed as Iran’s first with the Jask-2 underwater cruise missile, uses a missile design intelligence experts believe to be a copy of previous missiles tested in North Korea.

This revelation would hardly be a surprise, as the Ghadir class electric submarine used as a platform to launch the cruise missile is also a direct copy of the North Korean Yono class sub.

Both Iran and North Korea were part of the notorious A.Q. Kahn nuclear proliferation network, and bilateral trade in oil and weapons has continued despite UN resolutions designed to stop it. Ballistic missile cooperation is documented, and nuclear cooperation has been an unspoken theme in Washington.

According to Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, the evidence of collaboration between North Korea and Iran is ample and of long standing.

“The very first missiles we saw in Iran were simply copies of North Korean missiles,” he told Fox News “Over the years, we’ve seen photographs of North Korean and Iranian officials in each other’s countries, and we’ve seen all kinds of common hardware.”

With decades of previous cooperation between the two countries raises the concern that Iran —after its economic windfall from the nuclear agreement, including the $1.7 billion in cash it received from the U.S. for the swap of hostages. — could offer financial assistance to the cash-strapped hermit kingdom in exchange for missile technology.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of collusion between these two rouge nations the Iran lobby and its appeasers still make the false claim of moderation while Iran continues its aggressive behavior in the Persian Gulf and its meddling in the Middle East, as well as its continued efforts to develop missiles.

And North Korea has solidified its nuclear forces and is working on designing solid-fuel missiles that are much more easily concealed and dangerous than its current, liquid-fueled missile arsenal, as well as nuclear warheads that are small enough for missile delivery.

It is ironic that while Iran and North Korea share so much, they also share in the lack of condemnation or criticism from the Iran lobby. Supporters such as the National Iranian American Council can’t even be bothered to issue a press release condemning North Korea’s underground nuclear tests.

If the evidence cited in the  Fox News report is true, then the Trump administration will have to face the need to deal with two problems at once: North Korea’s active development of nuclear weapons and missiles and Iran’s use of North Korean technology to improve its own military might.

Therein lies the danger of one rogue nuclear armed state that has already been threatening nuclear war is now working with an aspirant nuclear armed state that is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The risk to U.S. and international security is greatly at risk unless steps can be taken to stop the collaboration in its tracks.

But the solution for both regimes long term lies in prying open the opportunity for domestic political reforms and enabling dissident groups to finally come in from exile. In the case of North Korea that means gaining support from China and for Iran it means empowering Iranian dissident groups to participate in Iranian society openly and freely again.

Laura Carnahan

Announcement of “De-Escalation Zones” in Syria Just More Hot Air from Iran

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Announcement of “De-Escalation Zones” in Syria Just More Hot Air from Iran

Announcement of “De-Escalation Zones” in Syria Just More Hot Air from Iran

Russia, Turkey and the Iranian regime jointly announced the establishment of so-called “de-escalation zones” in Syria in which the Assad regime would allegedly halt military flights over designated areas according to the Washington Post.

As officials from the three countries — Russia, Iran and Turkey — that back rival sides in the conflict signed the agreement at Syria talks in Kazakhstan on Thursday, some members of the Syrian opposition delegation shouted in protest and walked out of the conference room in Astana, the Kazakh capital.

The opposition is protesting Iranian regime’s participation at the conference and role as a guarantor of the agreement, accusing it of fueling the sectarian nature of the conflict that has killed some 400,000 people and displaced half the country’s population.

“Iran is a country that is killing the Syrian people and the killer cannot be the rescuer,” said Abu Osama Golani, a rebel commander who attended the gathering in Astana.

The Iranian regime’s role in the carnage and escalation in Syria makes it a dubious guarantor of safety and security, especially since it was Iran that begged Russia into intervening in the war in a last-ditch effort to save the Assad regime from being toppled by opposition forces.

The Syrian government has said that although it will abide by the agreement, it would continue fighting “terrorism” wherever it exists, code for most armed rebel groups fighting government troops.

It’s the reason why a previous cease-fire agreement signed in Astana on Dec. 30 eventually collapsed. Other attempts at a cease-fire in Syria have all ended in failure largely because of Iran and Syria’s willingness to continue attacking rebel-controlled areas, including those with large civilian populations.

Past efforts at protecting “safe zones” have had a pretty dismal record, largely because combatants are still allowed to engage in attacks without serious repercussions.

“Iran’s activities in Syria have only contributed to the violence, not stopped it, and Iran’s unquestioning support for the Assad regime has perpetuated the misery of ordinary Syrians,” said U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

The problems in Syria are only one aspect of the larger difficulties of Iranian influence and activities throughout the region and as such requires a more comprehensive solution attacking the instability at its source: Iranian regime itself.

When Iran attempted to launch a cruise missile from a “midget” submarine earlier this week, Pentagon officials saw more evidence of North Korean influence in the Islamic Republic – with intelligence reports saying the submarine was based on a Pyongyang design, the same type that sank a South Korean warship in 2010, according to Fox News.

According to U.S. defense officials, Iran was attempting to launch a Jask-2 cruise missile underwater for the first time, but the launch failed. Nonproliferation experts have long suspected North Korea and Iran are sharing expertise when it comes to their rogue missile programs.

Only two countries in the world deploy the Yono-class submarine – North Korea and Iran. Midget subs operate in shallow waters where they can hide.

“When those midget subs are operating underwater, they are running on battery power—making themselves very quiet and hard to detect,” said a U.S. defense official who declined to be identified.

Perhaps most worrisome for the United States is that Iran attempted this latest missile launch from a midget sub Tuesday in the narrow and crowded Strait of Hormuz, where much of the world’s oil passes each day, Fox News said.

Over a year ago, Iran fired off a number of unguided rockets near the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier as she passed through the Strait of Hormuz in late December 2015. The U.S. Navy called the incident “highly provocative” at the time and said the American aircraft carrier was only 1,500 yards away from the Iranian rockets.

In July 2016, two days before the anniversary of the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, the Islamic Republic attempted to launch a new type of ballistic missile using North Korean technology, according to multiple intelligence officials.

Even with this overwhelming evidence of collusion between the two rogue nations, some Iran lobby apologists continue to make the case of appeasement. In this case, Robert S. Litwak, the vice president for scholars and the director of international security studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., argued that an “Iran-style nuclear deal” with North Korea was a viable solution.

Buying into the false narrative of moderation within the Iranian regime, Litwak argues that making a diplomatic effort to cap North Korea’s nuclear capability—similar to the Iran nuclear deal—is the “least bad” option.

Unfortunately for Litwak, history demonstrates that this least bad option stinks to high heaven and has done nothing to curb Iran’s regional ambitions, thirst for bloodshed or improved its dismal human rights record.

A repeat of the Iran deal for North Korea would no doubt similar disastrous results.

Michael Tomlinson