IranLobby – Iran Lobby

Iran Starts Off Year by Banning Instagram

January 3, 2019 by admin

New Year’s Eve filled the social media airwaves around the world as millions of revelers shared pictures and videos of fireworks, champagne toasts, concerts and the inevitable cute pet pictures.

The memes, viral videos and emojis have become a global fixture as recognizable as the crystal ball dropping in Times Square.

And just as predictable, the Iranian regime kicked off 2019 by moving to ban Instagram – adding to its already considerable list of banned social media platforms – in the name of national security concerns.

The regime’s National Cyberspace Council approved steps to block the popular photo-sharing app in a move following similar crackdowns against Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Telegram with internet providers ordered to block access to these services.

Resourceful Iranians however have often been able to evade the restrictions through the use of virtual private networks which redirects to overseas internet addresses; bypassing local blocks.

The irony of the regime’s move to block Instagram comes as President Hassan Rouhani posted his own messages on his own Instagram account which has over two million followers.

Regime officials similarly use banned social media apps such as Twitter to communicate to the outside world even though ordinary Iranians may face jail time for using them. Even top mullah Ali Khamenei has an official Twitter account.

The move to block Instagram removes the last major social media account still active in Iran. Even though the regime cited “national security” concerns.

The protests swelled and were soon joined by other protests aimed at government corruption, the stagnant economy and the endless cycle of wars and terrorism plaguing the country since the mullahs opted to go all-in to support the Assad regime in Syria.

Even innocuous acts such as Iranian women riding bicycles in open defiance of the mullahs’ edicts became fodder for Instagram stories and a constant sore spot for the regime.

The regime had previously tried targeting individual Iranians with high-profile Instagram followings.

The regime TV special showed them all tearfully repenting their actions in what can only be deduced as coerced confessions.

Apparently, those strong-arm tactics didn’t work, which points up a growing problem the mullahs are having which is the widening age gap in Iranian society and the technological savvy of Iran’s young people.

Even as Twitter has been banned, it’s use has remained at center stage recently as ongoing protests over a bus crash at Tehran’s Azad University killing 10 students have been fueled and covered on Twitter.

A video on Twitter showed students at a campus in Tehran chanting slogans and demanding the resignation of the chairman of the university’s board of trustees, Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Social media had been utilized by Iranians and dissident groups to convey images and videos of protests and crackdowns within Iran, which explains the most recent efforts to expunge social media, another repressive measure to prevent the flow of information from Iran.

More than half of Iran’s 82 million people are under 35 years old with almost 40 percent under the age of 24; a staggering baby bubble that poses problems for a ruling elite well in their geriatric age.

In many ways the efforts to curb social media are likely to only fuel greater ingenuity by Iranian youth to evade the restrictions. For the Iranian regime, the knee-jerk reaction to ban social media only covers up a growing demographic disparity posing significant political problems for the mullahs.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Missile Program is Heart of Sanctions Issue

December 3, 2018 by admin

A core reason for the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal was the rapid and alarming growth and development of the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile program, which got a significant bump from the massive infusion of cash received as a result of the deal.

The origins of the Iranian missile program are well documented with missile design supplied by North Korea and then aggressively expanded through a test launch program that became almost a nightly feature on state-controlled media outlets.

That missile program escalated from testing missiles limited in range to essentially being theater weapons, to growing until they achieved intercontinental ranges capable of striking Europe and Asia.

While the Iran lobby and the regime have vigorously contested the inclusion of ballistic missiles in any existing United Nations restrictions, the plain truth from the U.S. perspective is that Iran has moved far beyond “defensive” missiles and instead sought to create “offensive” weapons with the payload capacity to lift nuclear warheads and multiple payloads.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo emphasized this point in a tweet Saturday claiming Iran had test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons. In condemning the act, Pompeo called on Iran to cease its missile testing and proliferation activities that threaten to destabilize an already unstable region.

The regime’s Foreign Ministry countered the tweet, describing the program as solely defensive, according to a statement carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The statement didn’t confirm or deny whether a test-fire had taken place.

“Iran’s missile program is defensive in nature and is designed based on the country’s needs,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted as saying.

But the regime’s continued development of longer-range missiles with heavier payload capacity can only be seen as offensive in nature and an effort to deploy its coercive influence far from its own borders.

In the history of arms control, no one would ever believe claims by the American or Russian governments that its own ballistic missiles were solely for “defensive” purposes, but the regime and Iran lobby seem intent on trying to make that silly notion fly.

Even after giving away the proverbial farm in approving a flawed nuclear deal in 2015, the Obama administration still imposed economic sanctions for Iran’s continued missile program development in a quixotic case of trying to have its cake and eat it too.

It is a reminder that the core issues with the nuclear deal went far beyond nuclear weapons and instead should have focused intensely on the regime’s actions including human rights violations and sponsorship of terrorism.

The nuclear deal’s fatal flaw was to try and rein in a specific weapon while leaving along a host of other weapons at the disposal of madmen in the mullahs.

The fact that the regime defiantly stated it would continue in its missile development, demonstrates why imposing stiff sanctions is ever more important. To relent and allow Iran unfettered freedom to develop its missile program would be place Europe under a nuclear sword of Damocles since the nuclear deal admittedly was never designed to stop Iran’s nuclear program, only slow it down.

Since the mullahs’ openly professed desire to become an Islamic nuclear power is almost inevitable, the key is to neuter their ability to drop a nuke on Paris, London or Berlin; all noteworthy since Islamic-inspired terrorism has already been visited on each of those cities since the nuclear deal was signed.

U.N. Security Council resolution 2231 enshrined Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States in which Tehran curbed its disputed uranium enrichment program in exchange for an end to international sanctions.

The resolution says Iran is “called upon” to refrain for up to eight years from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt tweeted that he was deeply concerned by “Iran’s test-firing of a medium range ballistic missile. Provocative, threatening and inconsistent with UNSCR 2231”.

“Our support for (the Iran nuclear accord) in no way lessens our concern at Iran’s destabilizing missile program and determination that it should cease,” Hunt added.

The language of the U.N. Security Council Resolution “calls on” rather than “forbids” Iran from testing its missiles, according to Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council.

It is this inconsistently that the Iran lobby and regime have sought to exploit in aggressively pushing for a missile program free from threat of sanctions. It’s interesting that Parsi resorts to verbal semantics when he should be calling on the Iranian regime from refraining from developing these potential weapons of mass destruction in the first place!

But then again, Parsi is less concerned about stopping the proliferation of weapons than he is in protecting his mullah patrons in Tehran from any further sanctions.

Evidence Mounts of Iranian Transgressions Making Action Necessary

December 2, 2018 by admin

The reason why the U.S. pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal two years after its passage was because the track record of compliance by the Iranian regime was littered with failure and the inherent flaw in the agreement of not restraining Iranian regime’s aggression in other areas such as terrorism became problematic.

The inherent flaws in the regime lie at the heart of its style of government: a religious theocracy.

There is no checks or balance system in Iran. The ultimate authority is vested in the supreme religious leader who rules with the near-autonomy of monarchs of old. An interesting irony considering the Islamic revolution in the first place deposed the Shah.

But because of the lack of accountability within the regime to only a select elite few, the future of successful implementation of the nuclear deal was dead on signing.

When the Obama administration and rest of the European Union withdraw demands that Iran comply in areas such as sponsorship of terrorism, destabilization of its neighbors and improvements in human rights at home, all the leverage the world had on Iran evaporated.

The Iran lobby, specifically the National Iranian American Council, have contended that to include such restrictions would have doomed the deal to failure. The reverse has prophetically come true: by not including those provisions, the deal was indeed doomed to fail, and it has.

The bloody trail of Iranian extremism has been well documented, and the Iran lobby has never spoken harshly against that record, only excusing the regime with faint calls for reform and blaming every misstep by the mullahs as being provoked by the U.S. from withdrawing from the nuclear deal.

The harsh truth the Iran lobby has vigorously sought to cover up is the strategic plan the mullahs have to build its own Islamic version of the Warsaw Pact by converting or controlling its neighbors to its brand of extremism and using proxies to institute insurrections and wars.

That plan was worked to some degree with the Iranian regime using Hezbollah and Afghan mercenaries to stem the civil war in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq to control that government and Houthi rebels to overthrow Yemen and threaten regional adversary Saudi Arabia.

But those conflicts haven’t been enough for Iran, even as the mullahs direct the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force to supply more arms, weapons and cash to other militants further afield.

Evidence for these efforts was put on display when Brian Hook, special representative for Iran and senior policy advisor to the U.S. secretary of state, released information that the Iranian regime was violating the United Nations arms export ban by supplying militants across the Middle East and continuing to build out its ballistic missile program unabated.

At a military hangar in Washington, Hook showed reporters a display of seized Iranian weapons that he said is much larger than it was a year ago. He then elaborated on each weapon on display and where it was found, including a collection of guns, rockets, drones and other gear.

“We need to get serious about going after this stuff,” Hook told reporters.

Some of the weapons had been intercepted in the Strait of Hormuz en route to Shia fighters in the region while others had been seized by the Saudis in Yemen, the Pentagon said.

The centerpiece of the display was what Hook said is a Sayyad-2 surface-to-air missile system that the Saudis had intercepted in Yemen this year.

Farsi writing along the white rocket’s side helped prove it was Iranian made, Hook added.

“The conspicuous Farsi markings is Iran’s way of saying they don’t mind being caught violating UN resolutions,” Hook told reporters, adding the missile was destined to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Hook said the seized weapons are “clear and tangible evidence” that Iran is fueling instability in the Middle East.

Iran has the largest ballistic force in the region, Hook said, with 10 ballistic missile systems in its inventory or under development. Missile development and testing has increased in recent years, he added.

Last year, Iran launched a medium-range missile believed to be the Khorramshahr, he said. It can carry a payload of more than a half ton and could be used to carry nuclear warheads. Its suspected range is 1,200 miles, which puts Europe in range.

Fajr rockets intended for the Taliban were recovered by the Afghan National Army in Afghanistan’s Helmand province near Kandahar Airfield, Hook said.

Bahrain provided captured Iranian small-arms weaponry found on their territory, which were given to Shiite militant groups to carry out attacks against the government. They include sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 assault rifle variants and hand grenades, Hook said.

Since 2006, the Iranian regime has supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with thousands of precision rockets, missiles and small arms, Hook said. It now has more than 100,000 rockets or missiles in its stockpile.

The scope and size of the munitions being produced by the Iranian regime and smuggled throughout the Middle East puts to rest any concept floated by the Iran lobby of Iranian “moderation” following the nuclear deal.

In fact, it has been a year since U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was at a similar event to highlight the dangers posed by Iran’s proliferation of missiles and other weapons across the Middle East, only to see this year’s display of captured Iranian weaponry dwarf last year’s display.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Grows Desperate as Sanctions Tighten

November 27, 2018 by admin

As the full weight of new economic sanctions are imposed on the Iranian regime, an uncomfortable truth is roiling the sleep of the mullahs in Tehran; oil prices are plummeting and putting the squeeze on them.

Leading that global glut of oil is surging U.S. production that is becoming a potential hammer blow to the mullahs’ faint hopes of weathering the economic storm.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “observers expected American energy production to reach a plateau. A lack of pipeline capacity was expected to constrain output in the Permian Basin through 2020. Instead, shippers found ways to use existing pipelines more efficiently, and new pipelines were constructed faster than expected. U.S. crude-oil production is expected to average 12.1 million barrels a day in 2019, 28% higher than in 2017. Surging production has roiled world energy markets.”

The biggest loser of this newfound energy production? Iran. As the Journal outlines, the economic windfall the mullahs hoped to reap from the nuclear deal forged by President Barack Obama were largely offset by the sharp price spiral of oil in 2016. Now rising American output is doing the same thing to Iran in 2018.

The financial profits the mullahs have traditionally carved out for themselves from black market sales of Iranian oil are unlikely to materialize as spotty sales on the bourse created by the Iranian government has already shown.

Hopes by the Iran lobby that countries opposed to the U.S. might pick up the slack by buying Iranian oil such as China are being dashed by falling oil prices. Just a few months ago oil was predicted to hit $100 per barrel, but instead the global benchmark has fallen to $50 per barrel.

Iran hasn’t been helped by record oil production by its regional opponent, Saudi Arabia, which raised production to an all-time high in November, pumping a colossal 11.3 million barrels per day.

The squeeze to the Iranian regime on all sides is fueling the domestic unrest spreading across the country as a result of deepening economic worries.

Predictions by the Iran lobby that the regime could weather this economic storm are becoming harder to make with a straight face. One such idea was the much-hoped for barter agreement system being proposed to allow Iran to sell oil in exchange for goods, thereby avoiding U.S. secondary sanctions on currency exchange.

Of course, the regime will resort to earlier sanction busting tactics including fraud, smuggling and even having Iranian tankers turn off position signals in an effort to go stealth.

The end result of all these shenanigans though is not to benefit or help the Iranian people, but rather to further enrich the ruling elites and Revolutionary Guard Corps which continues to spend prodigious amounts of cash in funding various terrorist actions abroad and proxy wars, as well as keep its loyal terror groups such as Hezbollah in the black.

The chief argument made by the Iran lobby against these sanctions is that they will be unlikely to motivate the Iranian people to rise up and demand change from their government.

“The theory behind it is, you make the population so miserable that they will rise up against the government,” said Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council.

Unfortunately for Parsi and the NIAC, the Iranian people are rising up. Merchants have taken to the markets to protests. Truckers have stopped driving. Teachers have halted classes. Throughout Iran the people are making their voices heard and predictably, the regime is resorting to violence and intimidation in an effort to suppress it.

But that hasn’t topped the NIAC from pedaling more false ideas and schemes to get relief for the mullahs, including putting out a so-called report outlining the potential of restoring the nuclear deal.

That report is nothing more than a regurgitation of past NIAC misstatements assembled in a slim few pages and passed off as scholarly research. We might call it Cliff’s Notes version of Iran lobby messaging.

Also included are opinions by Paul Pillar, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, who has become such a fixture alongside Parsi one might wonder if they’re related as they appear on any policy panel they can get on in an effort to find any kind of audience for their messaging.

The culmination of all this doesn’t alter the trajectory of the Iranian regime under these sanctions. What is different now than from past sanctions is a U.S. administration committed to pushing the regime back to the bargaining table to address not only nuclear weapons but also its destabilizing influence throughout the region and support for terrorism, as well as its dismal human rights record.

What is also different is the willingness of the Iranian people to defy their own government and unlike the previous protests after disputed presidential elections in 2009, these protests resonate more deeply because it comes from all parts of Iranian society, including the poor and working class who helped fuel the overthrow of the Shah in the first place.

The parallels to that time may be painfully uncomfortable for the mullahs now.

Attacks on Iran Resistance Movement Repeats Mullahs Disinformation

November 17, 2018 by admin

As sure as the sun rises, the mullahs controlling Iran focus daily their ire on the Iranian dissidents and naysayers around the world who constantly demand freedom and democracy and prove meddlesome by offering a compelling narrative at odds with their nihilistic worldview of stringent Islamic extremism that openly embraces violence and proxies to carry out assassinations and terrorist attacks.

In the past, the Iranian regime simply resorted to mass murder, mass executions and mass imprisonment to control its dissenters, especially targeting members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq) who have proven exceptionally resilient in the face of such efforts at surviving.

More recently, the regime has turned to the soft power of lobbyists, PR firms and social media to conduct a subtler –but no less vital role – method of character assassination aimed principally at the MEK.

It involves the same echo chamber that was carefully constructed to help pass the Iran nuclear deal by enlisting supportive academics, well-crafted editorials placed by PR firms and front groups posing as human rights or social justice organizations.

It included members drawn from various arms of the Iranian regime’s government, intelligence and academic sectors who ensconced themselves in American and European institutions including serving as government staffers and subject matter analysts who were only too willing to appear on cable news shows.

One recent example was a 6,000-word missive penned by Arron Merat in The Guardian in which he almost verbatim regurgitated the same talking points issued by the Iranian Foreign Ministry in attacking the MEK for years.

Merat cleverly seeks to couch the propaganda piece by pulling heart-felt testimonials of abuse from alleged MEK members who escaped a cult-like group worse than the People’s Temple.

Unfortunately, the truth suffers in translation when Merat virtually ignores similar comparisons to the Iranian regime itself.

Accusing the MEK of forcing its members to stay while ignoring the brutal dictates of the mullahs in Tehran in enforcing draconian morals codes that subjugate women and place their status economically and socially at the bottom of Iranian society is akin to blaming the civil rights movement of the 1960s for causing police to use water hoses and batons on them while ignoring the brutality of police.

It is also unfathomable how Merat ignored the latest effort by the Iranian regime to plan a bombing attack against the MEK and other human rights groups meeting outside of Paris following the arrest of four suspects – including an unnamed Iranian diplomat – in Belgium, Germany, and France.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, rejected claims of Iran’s involvement and described the accusations as a “sinister false flag ploy,” but the reality is that Iran – while claiming to be only interested in peace – is not-so-secretly planning attacks on foreign soil.

The absence of any of that competing narrative information belies the troubling truth of the Iranian media blitz which is how gullible some Western media such as The Guardian are in allowing their platforms to be used in such a blatant act of Islamic propaganda.

The use of alleged former MEK members in the article is also disturbing such as the claim by the Mohammads who say their daughter, Somayeh, is being held against her will in Albania, but the MEK has provided extensive information about Mostafa Mohammadi acting as an agent of Iran’s notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), including recent media interview Somayeh exposing him as an agent and no longer considering him as her father.

The other issue Merat rehashes straight from the Iranian playbook was the designation of the MEK as a terrorist organization only to have the designation dropped by the U.S. State Department after extensive vetting and fact finding revealed little to no factual basis for the designation in the first-place, but rather demonstrating the uncomfortable reach of the Iranian lobbying effort deep inside the U.S. government.

The quote Merate uses by Daniel Benjamin, the former head of the counter-terrorism at the U.S. State Department, is illustrative of the web of sympathetic ex-officials and academics who are used to bolster the authenticity of these articles.

The most blatant example is an editorial by Paul Pillar in The National Interest, in which he extensively quotes Merat’s article in repeating the same false allegations again the MEK while ignoring any comparisons to the Iranian regime’s conduct.

Pillar for example decries the MEK’s Paris gathering as a publicity stunt, but never makes mention of the attempting bombing by the Iranian government. Is it not a notable and newsworthy fact that the Iranian government is willing to direct government officials to smuggle in explosives into an European country, transport it across national boundaries and attempt to kills scores of men, women and children; the same young people he accuses of being bussed in to fill seats at the event?

To put that in perspective, someone writes an editorial using dubious sourcing to make false claims that gets published, which is then requoted extensively by another editorial as a means of validating those same false claims.

Both are later shared, tweeted, liked and boosted on social media, including numbers of false-front profiles notable for the lack of any posts other than those criticizing U.S. policy, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iranian dissidents and praising Iran’s actions. These efforts to manipulate U.S. attitudes has resulted in extensive studies by cybersecurity firms such as FireEye which have pointed out hundreds of these false profiles needing to be eliminated.

All of this is a prime example of the “echo chamber” in action and repeated consistently. It’s a wonder why news organizations haven’t wised up to this nefarious practice and called these so-called journalists out for the lack of candor, balance and truth.

Another example is a recent television broadcast essentially making the same claims that Albanian authorities were regretting the decision to allow MEK refugees resettle there after being constantly attacked at their camp in Iraq.

However, the Albanian government has consistently been on the record in supporting the humanitarian cause of resettlement. The fabrications to the contrary smack of the same ploys to fan xenophobia resulting from the massive exodus of refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war and sectarian conflict in Iraq.

It’s a naked attempt to sow dissension where none exists and part of the longer-term strategy by the Iranian government to try and deny its most ardent opponents from having any kind of stable base from which to mount its opposition campaigns.

Merat’s article also takes to task efforts by the MEK to push its own messaging in the face of the onslaught of coordinated PR and social media attacks by the Iranian regime through social media, but ignores the regime’s own extensive troll farms that have plagued social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter and led them to shut down hundreds of false accounts linked to the Iranian regime.

The ironies abound aplenty in Merat and Pillar’s articles, but they raise nothing new and merely recycle the same talking points issued almost daily from Tehran that find their way through social media and on news organizations not wary or careful enough to do their own fact-checking.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries to Spruce Up Dismal Environmental Record

September 7, 2018 by admin

The National Iranian American Council, ever stalwart ally and apologist for the Iranian regime, posted a whopper of an editorial on its website offering a grim look at how a potential war between the U.S. and Iran would impact the environment.

“A look into America’s past wars offers disturbing insights into what the disastrous environmental impact of war with Iran could have,” wrote Arvin Hariri. “Burnings and bombings are symptomatic of modern warfare. Both release hazardous compounds in the air, and are a primary contributor to the increased frequency of wildfires in the region.”

Let’s start off with the preposterous premise of Hariri’s piece in the first place, that a war is coming between the U.S. and Iran. We would offer that from Iran’s perspective, the Islamic state has already been at war with the “Great Satan” for decades, including arming and supplying terrorist groups such as Hezbollah to strike and kill Americans in Lebanon and Iraq for years.

From the U.S. perspective, American presidents have tried mightily to decode the mystery of the mullahs and find a way to bring them into the normalcy of the international community. In President Barack Obama’s case, he tried to bow down and give them pretty much anything they wanted – billions in cash and no restrictions on terrorism or human rights violations – in a flawed nuclear deal that didn’t alter the trajectory of Iran’s intransigence.

Now President Donald Trump has opted to treat the regime as the sponsor of terror and sectarian conflict it already has been, and the Iran lobby has predictably responded with hysterical and nonsensical commentary.

While Hariri’s editorial does give short shrift to the regime’s idiotic acts in arresting and imprisoning environmental scientists, he does not give the mullahs their proper due in turning what was once considered an ecological wonderland into an environmental wasteland.

He even goes so far as to blame President Obama’s economic sanctions in 2010 as a key factor in the rise of carbon emissions because of a faltering oil industry that had to refine oil in a haphazard manner.

About the only thing Hariri didn’t blame the U.S. for was the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, but the year is still young.

Common sense tells us that if there was ever a war between Iran and the U.S., the environment is going to be the least of our problems, but since he raised the issue, let’s examine just how pathetic the mullahs have been in managing Iran’s environment.

Let’s start first with widespread and disastrous drought conditions plaguing Iran.

Rahim Hamid, a freelance journalist, writing in Global Voices, details how choices made by the regime is dooming large stretches of Iran, especially those with large Arab populations.

“To observers without knowledge of the situation, it may seem that this escalating catastrophe is a natural disaster resulting from climate change,” Hamid writes. “However, those familiar with these policies know that successive governments have instituted a massive program of dam-building and river diversion in the region to redirect the water from its once-bounteous rivers to other, non-Arab areas of Iran. These policies have had inevitable results – desertification and mass migration of the Ahwazis to other areas of Iran or to other nations simply to survive.”

“The Ahwazi people see this dam and river program, not as the result of incompetence but as part of a deliberate, long-term calculated policy of ethnic cleansing intended to change the demographic balance in the region, which is home to over 95 percent of the oil and gas resources claimed by Iran,” he added. “The aim, in this view, is to force out most of the Arabs and end their claim to sovereignty or ownership of their resources. In the process, natural habitats, wildlife, crops, and farm animals are suffering horrendously, with environmentalists warning of ecological catastrophe if these problems are not addressed.”

This isn’t the touchy-feely image the NIAC is trying to portray when it comes to environmental degradation, especially since it seems the Iranian regime have found a way to weaponize environmental conditions.

Another piece by Nikoo Amini in Tsarizm paints an even darker picture of regime policies impacting the environment for political gain, this one involving a deal with Chinese fishermen to operate in Iran’s southern waters using bottom trawling methods that practically vacuum everything in the water and leaves an empty oceanic wasteland.

The Marine Conservation Institute described bottom trawling as “unselective and severely damaging to seafloor ecosystems. The net indiscriminately catches every life and object it encounters. Thus, many creatures end up mistakenly caught and thrown overboard dead or dying, including endangered fish and vulnerable deep-sea corals that can live for hundreds of years or more. This collateral damage, called bycatch, can amount to 90% of a trawl’s total catch. In addition, the weight and width of a bottom trawl can destroy large areas of seafloor habitats that give marine species food and shelter. Such habitat destructions can leave the marine ecosystem permanently damaged.”

The Chinese fishing licenses were granted by the Iranian Fisheries Organization, which is linked to the Revolutionary Guards and a source of income for the military.

Besides the ecological devastation to coral sea beds and even the barbaric inclusion of an allotment of two tons of shark fins to be harvested in the licenses, the practical impact on local Iranian fishermen has been apparent in the economic ruin of their livelihoods similar to how Iranian farmers have been dispossessed by the regime’s policies.

But that’s not all as the regime has approved the bulldozing of thousands of trees in the Alborz mountain range in northern Iran to build roads right through the heart of one of the few remaining forests in Iran.

The Tehran Times reported it wasn’t even clear whether or not a permit had even been issued in another sign of the bureaucratic bumbling by the regime.

Another sign of the bitter in-fighting of the regimes comes from the arrest and detention of seven Iranian environmentalists accused of espionage, but never formally charged.

The regime’s judiciary ordered the Department of Environment (DoE) to cease its investigation into the arrest of seven environmentalists. DoE head Isa Kalantari told state-run news agency IRNA that the DoE had been warned by the judiciary that the cases of the environmentalists were none of the its concern, according to Radio Farda.

Kalantari has bitterly criticized the judiciary over the proceedings against the environmentalists, which he says are shrouded in ambiguity.

Keeping the environmentalist behind bars under the vague accusation of espionage, but without filing official charges, not only violates their rights, but has also put important environmental projects on hold, Kalantari said.

Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence agents arrested the environmentalists January 24, among them the Iranian-Canadian founder of Iran’s Wildlife Heritage, Kavous Seyyed-Emami. Two weeks later, officials announced that Seyyed-Emami had committed suicide at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, a story Seyyed-Emami’s friends and family categorically reject.

It’s too bad the NAIC doesn’t take up the case of these environmentalists, but that would an inconvenient truth for them to deal with.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Misinforms on Who is Hurt Most by Iran Sanctions

August 13, 2018 by admin

A student raises her arm in protest to the Iranian regime's repressive measures against peaceful protesters in Tehran-January 2018

The Iran lobby has scrambled to find the right kind of response to the re-imposition of economic sanctions by the Trump administration. It has tried to shield the mullahs from any culpability for leading Iran down this path with their support for terrorism and proxy wars that have devastated the region.

It has even tried to argue that sanctions will only spur a new regional arms race as the regime is sure to race towards developing a nuclear weapon now that it is freed from the nuclear agreement’s restrictions by the U.S. withdrawal.

In each case the response from news organizations and international governments has been muted because there is no argument with the facts that the regime is brutal and at fault for virtually all of the sins President Donald Trump cited in his decision to pull out of the nuclear deal.

The only feeble response from supporters of the regime has been the whining wail that the regime was in compliance with the agreement and all of the other despicable acts the regime commits, especially against its own people, are outside of the agreement’s scope.

That technicality is at the heart of what made the nuclear so problematic in the first place and why the Iran lobby is yet again shifting its message to a new tack.

Jamal Abdi, the new president of the National Iranian American Council and chief Iran lobby cheerleader, offered in an editorial in the progressive blog Lobelog.com, that the real victims of economic sanctions were the Iranian people.

“The reality is that Trump’s pressure campaign weakens those within Iran who seek more conciliatory foreign relations and a more open political and social domestic landscape. It also empowers Tehran’s most reactionary forces,” Abdi writes.

If it is impolite to call someone an outright liar, then we would have to watch our language and simply say Abdi is being disingenuous with his comments.

The stark reality is that there was never any hope of moderation within the Iranian regime with the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal since the ruling mullahs never had any intention of loosening their grip on power.

The elimination of any potential rival candidates from presidential and parliamentary election slates following the deal ensured that, as well as historically massive crackdowns on the Iranian people, including a round up and imprisonment of any dissenting viewpoint – real or imaginary – as thousands of women, students, journalists, activists, bloggers, artists and even YouTubers ended up in Iranian prisons.

“The repressive powers in the Islamic Republic are far more threatened by Iran’s integration into the global economy than by a tit-for-tat dispute with the United States. They worry that the lifting of sanctions will undermine the monopolies established by the well connected few who are aligned with the Revolutionary Guards and other government entities. Indeed, after the nuclear deal, the Supreme Leader issued edicts against a broader opening to the United States and hardliners repeatedly warned of ‘foreign infiltration’ in order to obstruct President Hassan Rouhani’s outreach to the West,” Abdi added.

Another fabrication from him as the reality is that virtually all of the Iranian economy is controlled by the state through the family dynasties of ruling mullahs or the Revolutionary Guard Corps which controls the largest companies in the petroleum, telecommunications, banking, manufacturing, transportation and energy industries.

Integration back into the global economy was a boon for the Iranian military, allowing it to refill its coffers, depleted by the wars in Syria and Yemen, and mobilize proxy militias in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When foreign companies such as Peugeot, Total and Airbus quickly moved in to sign deals with the regime, who was getting the benefits? Certainly not the Iranian people who’s standard of living has plummeted under the mullahs’ rule.

The much-promised economic windfall promised to the Iranian people after the nuclear deal was signed never came and in response the Iranian people have chosen to risk their lives in ongoing, massive demonstrations sweeping throughout the country since last December and into a sweltering summer of discontent.

“The real threats to repressive rule in Iran are a growing middle class, an organized civil society movement, and leaders who have the political capital to push for change against entrenched elements in the system. These trends make a democratic Iran inevitable. But outsiders, often led by the United States, have taken actions to arrest these developments. They have propped up Iran’s repressive rulers with threats of war and invasion, and bailed them out by slapping sanctions and travel bans to isolate Iranians and keep them weak,” Abdi said.

This last point is the most damning by the Iran lobby since the regime has done its level best to eradicate the Iranian middle class with manipulation of its currency and restrictions that have skyrocketed inflation and pushed the rial down to near Weimar Republic levels.

The defiance of Abdi’s claims comes in the form of the protests taking place throughout Iran by the Iranian people, including his much-vaunted middle class who have been hit hard by the regime’s deep corruption in the economy.

Couple that with the oppressive human rights situation in which women have been tossed in jail for protesting hijab requirements and the feisty mood of the Iranian people can be seen almost every day on Iranian streets and in town squares and marketplaces.

What many in the Iran lobby are terrified of is that the Iranian people will indeed be able to exert enough pressure internally to force the kinds of liberalization and democratization it promised with the nuclear deal but failed to deliver.

The Financial Times editorialized the same sentiment in but only gets it half-right:

“It would, however, be far preferable if Iran moved towards a more liberal and open regime through a process of domestic reform, rather than as a result of crushing external pressure. The history of Iran and the wider Middle East gives ample warning that sudden violent changes in government have rarely led to happy outcomes — particularly when they have had external sponsors,” the FT’s editorial board said.

Iran’s mullahs are never going to give up power as a result of gentle persuasion. Only a massive build up of outrage by the Iranian people coupled by economic sanctions aimed directly at gutting the financial pipeline to the military is the only pathway to gain the internal regime change the FT describes.

The history of the Middle East tells us that change does not come easily, nor politely. It comes only through the convergence of external pressure coupled with internal reforms.

We believe that opportunity is finally coming to Iran.

Iran Regime Does Not Know How to Respond to US Sanctions

August 8, 2018 by admin

Rouhani's speech that was broadcast live by Iran's state media on August 6, 2018

At the height of negotiations between the Iranian regime and the group of nations collectively known as the P5+1, the mullahs exercised a certain sure footedness in terms of their messaging and using the echo chamber of the Iran lobby working in concert with the Obama administration to cultivate the popular myths that the best hope for moderation in Iran was to approve the deal with major concessions for the regime.

The regime was united in its public statements with Hassan Rouhani playing the useful role of moderate leader struggling against the forces of hardliners and zealots. Even the Revolutionary Guard Corps played along by putting its terrorist operations on hold around the world lest countries got jittery.

In the aftermath of that badly flawed deal the Iranian regime reaped its benefits; namely billions in hard cash it quickly funneled to keep the Assad regime afloat in Syria, as well as rebuild and rearm its military and mobilize terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias to fight rebels there.

The mullahs also had a free hand to crack down on dissent at home with an almost ruthless glee as Rouhani oversaw a historic increase in the number of public hangings taking place in town squares and village marketplaces all over Iran. Add to that the spectacle of parliamentary and presidential elections held without any competing candidates allowed on the ballot and you have a cozy vision of what life was like post-nuclear deal.

Unfortunately for the mullahs, Donald Trump was elected president and with him came his promise to undo the nuclear deal which he fulfilled starting this week accompanied by his usual string of tweets in a blistering barrage castigating the regime and its blatant disregard for international and regional peace and stability over the last three years.

It is one of those rare times in history when a country run by a bunch of theocratic, demagogues is flummoxed.

No longer could the mullahs rely on their well-oiled Iran lobby PR machine to put its muscle into shaping U.S. policy. No longer did they enjoy easy and open access to the White House and State Department. No longer could they predict muted U.S. responses to any transgression such as taking more dual-national U.S. hostages or even seizing some U.S. Navy patrol boats.

Instead the mullahs are faced with two very inconvenient truths: This U.S. president doesn’t trust them and is perfectly happy to put the screws to them; and the U.S. economy is leading the world economy now in growth which places its economic muscle front and center in warning off European and Asian companies to rescue the moribund Iranian economy.

Even the president’s offer to meet with Rouhani “anytime, anywhere” has baffled the Iranian regime since for them, it’s a no-win situation.

But if Rouhani chooses not to meet with Trump, he’ll be blamed for not engaging in diplomacy and puts to a lie the Iran lobby’s first commandment of “engagement leads to moderation.”

This conundrum is so profound that Rouhani himself has given contradictory answers in the span of the same speech.

On Monday, Rouhani made remarks in a televised address in which he declared Iran could not enter talks with President Trump because he was “untrustworthy.”

“You cannot expect to talk to a person after you stab him and leave the knife in his body,” Rouhani, speaking in Persian, told IRIB state television.

Rouhani goes on to characterize the president’s meeting offer as a form of “psychological warfare aimed at his regime.

Then in the same speech, Rouhani goes on to say he welcomed talks with the U.S. “right now.”

“I don’t have preconditions. If the US government is willing, let’s start right now,” Rouhani said.

Under normal circumstances one could write off Rouhani’s remarks as simple hyperbole, but the truth is that his bipolar remarks highlight the squeeze he and the rest of the theocracy are in as a wearying population is enraged by government corruption, endless wars and deep distrust of its leadership.

President Trump made the sanctions more impactful by warning that any companies doing business in Iran would be barred from doing business with the U.S.

And it seems to be working as German carmaker Daimler AG froze a plan to make Mercedes Benz trucks in Iran. That’s even after the European Union tried to salvage the Iran nuclear deal by pledging to protect firms from Trump’s assault.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if more companies were to follow Daimler out of Iran,” said Frank Biller, an automobile analyst based in Stuttgart, Germany for Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg. “With the political situation right now, I’m sure a lot of companies are at least thinking about suspending their activities.”

All of which makes Rouhani’s efforts to praise European nations in resisting the U.S. sanctions ring all the more hollow and desperate sounding.

The Iranian regime, and more importantly the ruling mullahs, are finding themselves quickly being isolated not only from global commerce but even their own people, setting the stage for what has been a longed—for goal among Iranian dissidents and opposition groups: the opportunity for real democratic reform and regime change.

The Iranian Regime Inability to Renounce Terrorism

September 20, 2016 by admin

The Iranian Regime Inability to Renounce Terrorism

Adel Al-Jubeir, the foreign minister for Saudi Arabia, posited a simple proposition in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, improved relations between the Iranian regime and the rest of the world can only occur if the Islamic state renounces its support for terrorism.

It is a simple idea, but one fraught with a high likelihood of failure because the mullahs in Tehran are as wedded to terrorism as a tool of statecraft as a compulsive gambler is addicted to a slot machine or craps table.

“The fact is that Iran is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, with government officials directly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks since 1979. These include suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport; the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996; attacks against more than a dozen embassies in Iran, including those of Britain, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; and the assassination of diplomats around the world, to name a few examples,” Al-Jubeir writes.

“Nor can one get around the fact that Iran uses terrorism to advance its aggressive policies. Iran cannot talk about fighting extremism while its leaders, Quds Force and Revolutionary Guard continue to fund, train, arm and facilitate acts of terrorism,” he adds.

Al-Jubeir notes, correctly, that if the Iranian regime truly wanted to change course and join the community of nations, it could have simply demonstrated that sincerity by handing over al Qaeda leaders who have enjoyed the protection of sanctuary in Iran, including Osama bin Laden’s son Saad and the terror group’s chief of operations Saif al-Adel.

The regime could have also stopped supplying arms and funding for terror groups such as its long-running support for Hezbollah, which basically serves as an adjunct military unit to the Iranian military. It has been well documented how Iran supplied the bulk of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used against US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths and maiming of thousands of service personnel.

I could halt its support for the bloody Assad regime in Syria and stop the civil war and provide a respite for the nearly four million refugees from that conflict and stop adding to the toll of over

500,000 killed so far, but none of that is going to happen because the Iranian regime’s leadership, flowing from its top mullah Ali Khamenei, through Hassan Rouhani all the way down to members of paramilitary units on the streets of Iran have an almost religious belief in the use of violence and terror to advance the goals of the regime.

Al-Jubeir describes how the regime has “set up so-called Cultural Centers of the Revolutionary Guard in many countries, including Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Comoros Islands. The aim was to spread their ideology through propaganda and violence. Iran went so far as to propagate that the Shiite Muslims living outside Iran belong to Iran and not the countries of which they are citizens. This is unacceptable interference in other countries and should be rejected by all nations.”

Since the passage of the nuclear agreement with Iran last year, the regime has grown more bold, more militant and more reckless as it seeks to expand its influence, while at the same time suppressing domestic dissent among ordinary Iranians who feel betrayed and denied any benefits from the nuclear deal.

The mullahs have focused on widening military conflicts and engaging in more aggressive and provocative behavior against the US and now Saudi Arabia in a bid to deflect attention at home and beat the drum of nationalism and fear.

The mullahs are hoping no one notices the misery at while you’re focused on gunboat cat-and-mouse games with US warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

That determination by the mullahs to expand the conflicts to include a perceived showdown with Saudi Arabia may be rooted in the kingdom’s decision to finally take the gloves off and confront the Iranian regime more directly since Iran has fomented conflict dangerously close to Saudi Arabia’s own borders with the civil war in neighboring Yemen.

Saudi Arabia is accusing Iran of supplying weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen and is urging the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran for violating an arms embargo.

Saudi Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi said in a letter to the council that smuggling arms to Houthi rebels violates council resolutions and constitutes “a direct and tangible threat” to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the region and international peace and security.

Predictably the Iranian regime rejected the Saudi contention of Iran’s growing interventions, instead blaming Saudi Arabia for escalating the conflict, but of course denying its own involvement.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdulmalak Al-Makhlafi said that Iran is continuing with its interferences in his conflict-torn country, and urged Tehran to stop, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.

Also, the Yemeni Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Nasser Al-Taheri said in an interview published on Saturday by the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat that light and medium weapon shipments were seized on the borders, coming from Iran, more proof of the regime’s desire to drive neighboring countries into civil war.

Meanwhile, the Iran lobby stepped up its efforts to support the regime by trying to hold the line against Congressional action to renew sanctions against the Iranian regime for its support of terrorism as evidenced by a letter addressed to Congressional leaders signed by a who’s who of Iran lobby members, including the National Iranian American Council’s NIAC Action direct lobbying arm, J Street and MoveOn.Org.

Also, Paul R. Pillar, a former intelligence analyst and now a full-time supporter of the Iranian regime it seems, penned a rambling editorial in the National Interest in which he tried to make the absurd argument that Congressional leaders who advocate holding Iran accountable for its support of terror only aid “hardliners” in the Iranian regime’s government. His deeply flawed piece is worthy of a line by line dissection, but suffice it to say his primary goal is to try and excuse Iranian misbehavior by criticizing US concern over terror and vouching for the regime’s peaceful and delicate nature, while never mentioning the litany of death, destruction and woe being left behind by Iranian mullahs.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Worries Gains Will Be Lost With New President

January 21, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Worries Gains Will Be Lost With New President

The Iran lobby continues to exhibit the delusional nature that has marked much of its public lobbying efforts on behalf of the Iranian regime. The newest effort was put on display in an editorial posted to the Huffington Post by Trita Parsi and Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council.

The piece offered up helpful suggestions for the next U.S. president to maintain the same policy of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran that the Obama administration has followed the past three years leading up to the fateful decision to lift economic sanctions as part of a deeply flawed nuclear agreement.

Parsi and Cullis offer the suggestions because they realize the clock is ticking down with the incoming presidential election, and the new president, be it either a Republican or Democrat, is likely to forge their own path in dealing with Iran, especially considering much of the Obama administration’s legacy towards the regime has been built largely around executive orders and not full-fledged treaties.

They do ask an important question though which is “Since this new budding relationship with Iran has not been institutionalized, what will be left of it when the Obama administration leaves office?”

Unfortunately, Parsi and Cullis seem to think that international relations is more akin to developing a teenage crush and keeping the love notes going through Snapchats and emojis.

They offer up three steps in their recipe for true love between the U.S. and a theocratic Iranian regime controlled by mullahs who fully support the use of terror as a tool of statecraft, including:

The need for the U.S. and Iran to establish a strategic dialogue thought regular meetings;
Establishing a dialogue between both countries legislatures; and
The need for increased contact and communications between the two societies.

On the surface these seem like worthy, even laudable goals, but like all the bright ideas and sunny promises made by the NIAC, they are not rooted in the reality of the here and now.

Take for example the first idea they offer which is to build a dialogue through regular meetings. It is worth noting that the U.S., even when it did not have formal diplomatic relations, never stopped meeting with Iranian representatives on a whole host of issues, most notably negotiations on the regime’s burgeoning nuclear program through both the Bush and Obama presidencies.

Parsi and Cullis neglect to mention that dialogue between the two countries has always been present, the difference though has been in the general unwillingness to give the mullahs a blank check until the last year in which the Obama administration essentially caved in nuclear talks – first by delinking support for terrorism and human rights abuses from talks – then allowing the Iranian regime to support the Assad regime in Syria even after the use of chemical weapons without repercussions.

The notion that the Middle East would be a remarkably different place if the Bush administration had capitulated earlier is ridiculous when you consider such an act would not have deterred mullahs in Iran from supporting terror groups, would not have deterred them from doing what it could to keep Assad in power and would certainly not have deterred them from continuing the practice of public hangings and mass crackdowns on journalists, dissidents, women and religious minorities.

Most important, the idea that ISIS could have been stymied is absurd since it was Iranian regime’s support of Assad in the first place that spawned ISIS, as well as offering safe haven for Al-Qaeda leaders driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S. invasion who later left to build ISIS out of the carnage of Syria.

The second idea that Parsi and Cullis offer about a dialogue between legislative bodies is even – to borrow a phrase from the Trump lexicon – more stupid than the first idea since the Iranian regime has a long practice of winnowing the field of candidates eligible to run for parliamentary seats, especially in the Assembly of Experts in order to ensure an ironclad control over the government.

Take for example parliamentary elections next month in which out of a field of 12,000 candidates who applied to run, almost two-thirds were disqualified by the Guardian Council. The 12-member council vets political candidates and all legislation passed by parliament. It is made up of six judges elected by parliament and six clerics appointed by top mullah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on virtually all important state matters.

So-called reformists—those favoring more political and economic freedom and improved relations with the outside world, who have been involved in all previous terrorist activities and domestic repression—say their camp was overwhelmingly targeted, with one saying barely 1% had been approved in a sign that the practical political realities of how the regime is run are completely at odds with the rosy picture painted by Parsi and Cullis.

Considering how the two houses of parliament in the regime are under the thumb of a single man in Khamenei, the notion of a dialogue developing between them and the U.S. Congress is a silly one and unlikely to ever develop.

This brings us to the last ridiculous idea Parsi and Cullis hoist up which is the idea of communications and contact between the Iranian and American people. Again, a nice notion if it was true, but almost impossible to succeed considering how the mullahs have imposed a cyberwall blocking internet access and use of social media platforms for the Iranian people to communicate with the outside world.

From a practical standpoint, the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which owns the virtually all of the major telecommunications companies, monitors the nation’s communications and often uses those channels to identify dissidents and suppress contrary political activities.

Considering how American culture is largely built around mass media entertainment and consumer marketing, it is highly unlikely that any of that will ever find unrestricted audiences in Iran, where mullahs already impose strict censorship rules on all foreign media content and ban many iconic American brands for fear of cultural “contamination.”

Indeed, what Parsi and Cullis are really worried about is that the broad public perception in America that Iran’s mullah leadership is focused on terror and military expansion at the cost of domestic oppression of its people is true and will become the focus on a new president’s foreign policy. For the Iranian people and the rest of the world, the best hope for a truly new relationship with the regime lies not in following the plan laid out by Parsi and Cullis, but in fact doing the exact opposite.

By Michael Tomlinson