Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Ignores Continued Human Rights Violations by Iran Regime

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Iran Lobby Ignores Continued Human Rights Violations by Iran Regime

Iran Lobby Ignores Continued Human Rights Violations by Iran Regime

As the world convenes in Geneva to discuss the chaos that is the civil war in Syria, the Iranian regime continues to recruit and export thousands of undocumented Afghans to fight in Syria on behalf of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in a continuation of the unconditional support the mullahs in Tehran have given the Syrian dictator according to Human Rights Watch and the ongoing genocide.

Human Rights Watch in late 2015 interviewed more than two dozen Afghans who had lived in Iran about recruitment by Iranian officials of Afghans to fight in Syria. Some said they or their relatives had been coerced to fight in Syria and either had later fled and reached Greece, or had been deported to Afghanistan for refusing. One 17-year-old said he had been forced to fight without being given the opportunity to refuse. Others said they had volunteered to fight in Syria in Iranian-organized militias, either out of religious conviction or to regularize their residence status in Iran.

“Iran has not just offered Afghan refugees and migrants incentives to fight in Syria, but several said they were threatened with deportation back to Afghanistan unless they did,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “Faced with this bleak choice, some of these Afghan men and boys fled Iran for Europe.”

The Iranian regime hosts an estimated 3 million Afghans, most fleeing violence and persecution in Afghanistan; only 950,000 have formal legal status in Iran as refugees. The regime excludes the remainder from accessing asylum procedures, leaving many who may want to seek asylum undocumented or dependent on temporary visas and at the tender mercies of the mullahs.

HRW went on to document several instances of minor children being coerced into service and fight in Iranian-controlled and led militias in Syria. The Iranian regime, already cited by Amnesty International for executing juveniles in Iran, has adopted a similar attitude when it comes to using children as cannon fodder.

These practices by the Iranian regime have drawn broader attention in the wake of Hassan Rouhani’s European tour which was met by large demonstrations by thousands of Iranian dissidents and human rights groups in Paris.

Many Iranian expatriates and former victims of the regime participated in elaborate street performances and exhibitions to portray the human rights violations that are still running rampant in the country to this day. 2,200 people have been put to death during his tenure, most of them for non-violent offenses, and many for vague, political crimes like “insulting the Prophet” or “enmity against God”. Western diplomacy to solve this problem is missing- in what can only be called criminal negligence, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading dissident group.

Even against the backdrop of business deals being announced and praise from the Iran lobby about the “moderate” turn by the regime, the mullahs continued to crackdown in advance of upcoming parliamentary elections, but are not satisfied with just arresting Iranians as they arrested a former BBC journalist on the eve of visit by regime foreign minister Javad Zarif to London.

Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian must be feeling a case of déjà vu hearing this news.

Bahman Daroshafaei was taken to jail on Wednesday after facing a series of interrogations, according to sources in Tehran. Daroshafaei is of dual Iranian-British nationality and is a former employee of the BBC’s Persian service according to the Guardian.

Zarif is due to participate at a high-profile summit on Syria in London on Thursday, in the first visit to the UK by an Iranian foreign minister in 12 years. It comes after Britain and Iran reopened embassies in their respective capitals last August following the landmark nuclear deal.

The Iranian regime appears to have an active campaign that involves harassing BBC Persian journalists directly or indirectly by summoning their family members who live in Iran. A number of staff members at the BBC’s Persian service have been victims of false allegations of sexual misconduct, duplicated Facebook accounts, fake blogs and online identity theft designed to discredit them, this is while BBC Persian service is considered a program that mainly advocates an appeasement policy towards Iran and is actually referred to by most Iranian’s as “Ayatollah BBC” for its pro mullah’s programs.

The Guardian took the regime to task in an editorial in which it condemned the regime’s human rights violations, saying:

“Iran may have a president with a “moderate” profile – one whose smooth approach comes as a relief after the Ahmadinejad years – but that does not mean the authoritarian nature of the regime or the objectives of its foreign policy have changed. Iran still ranks as one of the most repressive states in the world, and there has been no improvement.

“The government was probably looking for a public relations bonus in the west when it recently released a number of journalists, but the statistics tell another story: in 2015 Iran executed at least 830 people, including juveniles, many for non-violent crimes. The security services continue to harass and detain activists, writers and journalists.

“Nor has Iran become in any way more “moderate” in its behaviour in the Middle East. In Syria, Iran’s militias and Republican Guards are direct participants in the war crimes that the Assad regime inflicts on its own population. Iran’s close ally Hezbollah played a key role in the siege of Madaya, where children died of hunger as a result, and it is part of similar operations elsewhere.”

It is encouraging to see more international media seeing past the charades offered by the Iran lobby and exposing the horrors that are still continuing in Iran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Picks and Chooses What It Wants

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Iran Regime Picks and Chooses What It Wants

Iran Regime Picks and Chooses What It Wants

There are many aspects to the collective decision-making of the mullahs in Tehran. On the one hand, they support opening up negotiations on a nuclear deal to help unlock the bank vaults to billions in frozen assets. Then on the other hand, they denounce the terms of the deal and claim it doesn’t apply to them unless all sanctions are lifted at once.

The same double standard applies to what is happening in Syria. The Iran regime has fought endlessly to keep Assad in power there to the extent it even begged the Russians for military support to save him from being overthrown as rebels made serious inroads. The mullahs sought to legitimize the idea of Assad staying in power and seemed to reach a breakthrough by finally being invited to multilateral talks on finding a political solution to the crisis.

But now the regime has threatened to walk away from talks if it found them unconstructive, specifically citing Saudi Arabia’s role in the talks as the bitter rivals escalate their growing conflicts that now stretch from Yemen to Syria.

“In the first round of talks, some countries, especially Saudi Arabia, played a negative and unconstructive role … Iran will not participate if the talks are not fruitful,” regime media cited deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying.

Delivering unusually personal criticism, regime president Hassan Rouhani appeared to reprimand Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who, on Saturday, lashed out at Tehran for what he termed its interference in regional countries.

“An inexperienced young man in a regional country will not reach anywhere by rudeness in front of elders,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA on Monday. He did not name the ‘young man’ but Jubeir was assumed to be his target according to Reuters.

It’s this kind of “I’ll take my ball and play elsewhere” response that has come to typify Iranian regime’s reactions in foreign affairs now. It pushed for a nuclear agreement and then complained about it and threatened to walk away. It pushed for a role for Assad and a seat at the table and now that it has it, it threatens to walk away.

While some psychologists might label this bipolar behavior, long-time regime watchers within the Iranian dissident community have long warned this was how the mullahs do business by pushing a false façade and then changing the rules at the last minute.

It was behavior that typified nearly two years of nuclear talks in which Iran refused to commit to the fine print in order to avoid being boxed in; resulting in a 159-page agreement that is dwarfed by the thousands of pages in similar nuclear agreements with the old Soviet Union and North Korea.

That split behavior has been most explicit in Ali Khamenei, the regime’s top mullah, who has persistently and publicly undercut Rouhani following the nuclear agreement in order to demonstrate his firm control over regime matters and relegate Rouhani to the figurehead status many have claimed he remains.

According to Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, head of the International American Council, writing in Huffington Post, Khamenei has ruled out any “snap-back” option with regards to the sanctions.

“First, he wants sanctions to be lifted at the outset, then he wants to make sure that the international community will not have any mechanism through which it can re-impose sanctions in the very likely scenario that Iran decides to pull out of the nuclear agreement and go full speed ahead on uranium enrichment,” he writes.

“But wait, that’s not all, there is another condition to be met as well. After Khamenei had his president and nuclear team add the condition of the removal of an arms embargo to the nuclear agreement in the eleventh hour, he is now adding the removal of all sanctions (including the ones linked to Iran’s terrorism and human rights violations) to the already-done nuclear deal,” he added.

Another sign of the growing tightening of control by Khamenei was discussed by Gerald F. Seib in the Wall Street Journal.

“Iran also has arrested Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese information-technology specialist who lives in Washington and has permanent-resident status in the U.S. At the same time, Iranian businessmen with ties to foreign firms are being harassed by Iran’s state-security apparatus,” Seib writes. “These detentions are likely the work of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who function as a kind of parallel government operating alongside—and apparently beyond the influence of—the official government of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, with whom the U.S. and other world powers negotiated the nuclear deal.”

The broad range of actions by the regime over the last few months leaves very little doubt about the intentions of the mullahs and Khamenei in particular.

He is not interested in accommodation. He has no time for negotiations. He has no belief in moderation.

The regime has even stepped up arrests domestically, including two journalists, one a former deputy culture minister who was jailed in the 2009 crackdown that followed the disputed reelection of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The son of ex-official Issa Saharkhiz told news media his father was arrested this week at his residence in Tehran on charges that include “insulting the supreme leader” and “propaganda against the regime.” The arrests are likely to have a chilling effect on journalists and activists ahead of major elections early next year in Iran.

Meanwhile, a relative of Ehsan Mazandarani, editor in chief of the Iranian regime’s daily Farhikhtegan, said that Mazandarani was detained the same day, also in the capital by agents of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Even as these crackdowns increase – and in spite of criticism from human rights and dissident groups – in a vote held Monday, regime lawmakers opted overwhelmingly to continue pushing the “Death to America” slogan chanted across the country on Fridays, after regime ally’s Friday prayer services, and with special zeal every November 4th – the day Iranian mullahs commemorates the beginning of the 1977 siege on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Khamenei picks and chooses his fights and he clearly intends on fighting any notion of moderation.

By Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Funded Through Regime Sources as Iran Lobby Ramps Up

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Tritta Parsi paying respect to the Iranian regime delegation in Geneva

Trita Parsi paying respect to Iran delegation in Geneva Talks

With the potential announcement of an agreement between the Iran regime and the P5+1 group of nations, the scene will undoubtedly shift to Congress where both houses will have 60 days to review the agreement under legislation authored by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as part of a bipartisan compromise.

With that upcoming debate, a fierce lobbying campaign will break out between those opposed to the agreement and the lobbying machine deployed by Tehran’s mullahs to get it passed. Chief among them will be the National Iranian American Council, the leading advocacy group for the Islamic state, which has formally launched its own full-fledged lobbying arm in anticipation of the fight ahead.

The creation of the lobbying group has come under intense scrutiny given its timing just before congressional review, as well as the need to funnel and direct funds towards supporting the Iran regime. The question of financial support for the NIAC has been a persistent question and a recent story by The Daily Beast shed new light on where the chief cheerleaders for Iran’s mullahs are getting their money.

The story, written by Michael Weiss and Alex Shirazi and contributed by Jackie Kucinich, examined contributions made by Vahid Alaghband, an Iranian businessman who’s Balli Aviation Ltd., tried to sell 747 airliners to Iran despite a federal ban on such sales. His company pled guilty to two criminal counts in 2010 and under the plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, paid a $2 million criminal fine, served five years of corporate probation and paid an additional $15 million in civil penalties.

“…Alaghband stands out from the rest, because the beneficiary of his firm’s deals with Tehran was an Iranian airline accused by the U.S. government of working with the regime’s foreign intelligence operatives and shipping arms and troops to Syria,” said the article.

“Plus, if an agreement between Iran and the world’s major powers is concluded in the coming days—as is widely expected—operators like Alaghband could stand to benefit.”

The deep ties to the regime also included a conspiracy in to export 747 aircraft by first obtaining export licenses from the U.S. government and then using an Armenian subsidiary to buy the planes for Mahan Air, Iran’s largest airline, which the State Department believes is controlled by former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Mahan Air was also sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2011 for “providing financial, material and technological support to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF),” or the expeditionary arm of the Islamic Republic’s praetorian military division, now heavily active in both Syria and Iraq. At the time, the Treasury Department accused the Qods Force of “secretly ferrying operatives, weapons and funds” on Mahan flights.

In 2007, Alaghband offered to give a $900,000 donation over three years to the PARSA Foundation, intended for the Brookings Institution to support pro-Iranian rapprochement. This followed a previous donation of $50,000 he made to PARSA.

PARSA’s second-largest recipient of funding was the NIAC which received a total of $591,500 from the group, but funding is not the only link between NIAC and the Iran regime with other news organizations and Iranian dissident groups having pointed out close ties between NIAC leaders such as Trita Parsi with regime officials that came to light as a result of a failed defamation suit brought by Parsi against an investigative journalist.

All of which casts doubt on NIAC Action, the new lobbying muscle being deployed to help the mullahs. As noted in an article in Commentary Magazine, the launching of the lobbying arm was followed by an email sent by NIAC staffer Tyler Cullis (and not from the NIAC Action ironically enough) calling for the immediate lifting of the United Nations arms embargo as part of the nuclear agreement.

As Commentary Magazine writes: “What the vast majority of Iranian-Americans know, and what Congress should ask NIAC, is how lifting the arms embargo meant to repress Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism is in anyway an interest of the United States, the Iranian-American community, or regional stability and security.”

“That NIAC would advocate the lifting of the arms embargo is both curious and revealing. Rather than promote Iranian-American political activism or public diplomacy, NIAC increasingly appears to align itself squarely with the publicly declared interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the article adds.

Indeed, the mere fact that the NIAC is hard at work sending emails to congressional staffers urging the lifting of an arms embargo designed to prevent the Iran regime from exporting arms outside of Iran is hugely significant and provides proof that the mullahs are not intent on fostering peace, but instead are desperate to gets fresh supplies of arms and ammunition to their Hezbollah proxies in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen as three wars rage on.

As debate opens in Congress, it would be wise for Democratic and Republican staffers to look at the sender of these email missives and if it comes from the NIAC, they should send it straight to “Junk Mail.”

 

NIAC Leads Charge for Great Iran Giveaway

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GiveawayReza Marashi, another one of the National Iranian American Council’s regime cheerleaders, offered an editorial on the final hurdles facing nuclear negotiators in Switzerland. It is an impressive piece of fiction, worthy of a Hugo Award for fantasy writing.

His ignoring the televised rants by top mullah Ali Khamenei in denouncing any freeze on Iran’s nuclear program and opposition to any inspections of military or secret sites and demand for an immediate lifting of economic sanctions by the entire world even before ink is dry on an agreement is proof that Marashi is attempting that unique political high wire act; covering for a boss who suffers foot-in-mouth disease.

But I sympathize with Marashi. It can’t be easy to spin a line when your top guy goes on national television to basically undermine everything you’re saying. Marashi might find better luck defending the Confederate battle flag these days.

In another flight of fancy, Marashi claims that “Iran gave more than it received in the interim nuclear deal, and is looking to collect on that investment.” We certainly agree on the second part of that statement, Iran’s mullahs are certainly looking to collect – about $140 billion in frozen assets in what would be a gigantic payday, but the first part of the statement is disingenuous.

The Wall Street Journal, amongst scores of other news media, has documented the avalanche of concessions granted to the Iran regime by P5+1 negotiators without any comparable concessions from the mullahs. Those concessions began with the most important and earliest concession which was to move away from dismantling Iran’s nuclear program to complex Rube Goldberg structure of stretching out the “breakout” time for creating a nuclear weapon.

Marashi, his colleague at the NIAC Trita Parsi and other regime sympathizers, have created a new vocabulary of deceit with newly invented terms such as “snapback sanctions” and “breakout times” to replace conditions such as “dismantling centrifuges” and “eliminating fuel stockpiles.” It amounts to a shell game any tourist on the sidewalks of New York city would recognize with Iran’s mullahs hiding their nuclear program under a walnut and moving it rapidly around.

But what Iran’s mullahs truly want – and badly – is the cash. The $140 billion at the end of their nuclear rainbow is desperately needed – not by the ordinary Iranian citizen strangled by a corrupted economy – but a religious theocracy bled dry from three costly proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and crashing oil prices. The mullahs need that money to prop their floundering regime afloat and keep their extremists allies well-equipped with guns, rockets and cash to pay mercenaries recruited from Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and Nigeria.

To put it into perspective, according to the International Monetary Fund, Iran’s total foreign currency reserves amounts to only $110 billion, ranking it 21st in the world. The U.S. only has currency reserves of $121.5 billion, ranking it 19th. A $140 billion cash infusion into Iran would vault it to 11th place, ahead of Mexico, Germany, the U.K., France and Italy and just behind powerhouses Russia, Saudi Arabia, Japan and China.

That, more than anything else, is what the mullahs are craving like heroin to an addict. They need that cash to pay for their military adventures, to support terror groups and to maintain the massive expenditures required to continue building its nuclear infrastructure including new equipment it intends to buy from Russia and North Korea.

And if that wasn’t enough, Marashi also proposes that UN sanctions be rewritten to exclude tying sanctions to non-nuclear issues “such as arms procurement and export, human rights, and terrorism.” In effect, giving Iran a free pass to acquire arms, export them to its proxies, continue hanging people at a breakneck pace and lavish terror groups with more support.

Clearly Marashi has given up all pretense of finding common ground with negotiating countries and instead is all-in with the mullahs in trying to get everything they can before the June 30th deadline. The “throw everything in the basket” approach is reminiscent of looters sweeping through a CVS store grabbing everything they can before burning it down.

The end result will leave a deeply destabilized world with a nuclear-capable and flush with cash Iran still controlled by a small cadre of extremist mullahs.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Iran Lobby vs. Congress

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Royce and EngelA veto-proof, bipartisan majority of House lawmakers signed an open letter to President Barack Obama yesterday warning him that any agreement reached with the Iranian regime on its nuclear weapons program will require congressional approval for implementation.

While the Senate has begun considering bipartisan legislation mandating review of any agreement by Congress, the House letter outlined another possible venue for halting an agreement by refusing to roll back any sanctions levied on Iran.

The letter, signed by 367 members of the House represented a large bipartisan swath of both sides of the political aisle, putting efforts by the Iranian lobby working hard to forestall any such congressional action as fruitless so far.

‘Should an agreement with the regime in Iran be reached, permanent sanctions relief from congressionally-mandated sanctions would require new legislation. In reviewing such an agreement, Congress must be convinced that its terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb, and only then will Congress be able to consider permanent sanctions relief,” members wrote in the letter which was led by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) and ranking member Eliot Engel (D-NY).

The House letter follows a letter sent by 47 Republican Senators to the Iranian regime and precedes what will likely be Senate action after the recess where Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) announced on Friday he would schedule a committee vote April 14 on a bill that would allow Congress 60 days to review any deal before its implementation.

The momentum for congressional review and approval continues to grow as the situation in the Middle East continues to deteriorate rapidly, largely because of the Iranian regime’s manipulations and involvement.

Yemen, which had been held up as a showcase in the fight against terror by the Obama administration six months ago, has collapsed with the U.S. embassy closing and all U.S. Special Forces being hastily withdrawn as Iranian-backed Houthi rebel extremists swiftly took over the government. Yemen, which shares a border with Iranian regime foe Saudi Arabia, now appears headed towards a Syria-like civil war.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Quds Force and other Revolutionary Guard Corps units have effectively taken over Iraq and are busy entrenching Shiite militias, supplanting Iraqi army units in the war with ISIS.

The situation with ISIS grows more anxious as Boko Haram and other extremist groups pledge their allegiance and enable the terror group to expand its reach into Libya, Tunisia, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Afghanistan and even into Turkey.
All of which has rightly caused Democrat and Republican lawmakers to worry about where the P5+1 negotiations are going. Not helping has been the veritable cloak of secrecy that have covered these talks and failed to win any confidence from the American public faced with growing fears of terrorism and an Iranian regime seemingly with a finger in every terror pie around the world.

In the face of all this, the Iranian lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has failed to make much of an appreciable dent. It’s only ally, and arguably its most important, seems to be an Obama administration bent on grasping onto any deal in order to trumpet a foreign policy win amidst a dearth of good news from around the world.

By Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Day of Action-Lobbying for Iran Mullahs

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NIAC Day of Action-Lobbying for Iran Mullahs

NIAC Day of Action-Lobbying for Iran Mullahs

The National Iranian American Council serves primarily as a cheerleader, public relations mouthpiece and lobbying force for the Iranian regime. It does these duties with diligence and not the least enthusiasm for its mission of portraying Islamic fanatics in a gentle and favorable light. It’s almost akin to being the PR firm for ISIS, if there ever was one, with all its attendant challenges.

As part of its lobbying efforts, it coordinates its so-called “Day of Action” in which its volunteers gather up petitions to deliver to designated Congressional field offices in the hopes of steering the Congress towards a more favorable view towards Iran’s mullahs; namely you can trust them with a nuclear capacity in a couple of years.

That is the essence of NIAC’s national day of action today in which, according to the group’s website, 23 states will be targeted, mostly their U.S. Senators with a few Representatives. The bulk of the states targeted were blue states that President Obama carried in the last election, with the notable red state exceptions of Texas, Georgia and Kentucky.

Virtually all of the targeted Senators are Democrats and have already expressed some degree of support for the President’s diplomatic efforts with Iran, so what does this day of action tell us?

For one, it’s not very national. At what is arguably the most important point for NIAC in its years-long effort to build support for the Iranian regime, it can’t even muster support in more than half the states. In the overwhelming majority of the states they do plan to deliver petitions, the offices targeted are already in their column. It is in essence preaching to the choir at this point.

Secondly, this national lobbying effort is timed to coincide with Israeli Prime Minister’s address to a joint session of Congress. NIAC in favoring the mullahs, has noted the Democrats who have chosen not to attend; only 38 members have answered NIAC’s call to boycott.

Coming on the heels of the delivery of books to every Senator by NIAC about the life and efforts of Abdol-Hossein Sardari, an Iranian diplomat who saved the lives of Jews escaping the Nazi’s in Paris, NIAC has clearly gone all out in an effort to try every lever to enhance the brand image of Iran’s mullahs.

But, with mullahs being the role model for ISIS and other extremist groups, it certainly didn’t help NIAC’s efforts to have ISIS reveal new videos rampaging through a museum in Mosul, Iraq destroying antiquities, Iran’s military blowing up a replica of a U.S. aircraft carrier in exercises, and Iran starting commercial air service in Yemen after Houthi rebels backed by Iran overthrew the government, a key ally in the war against terror.

But at the heart of the lack of enthusiasm nationally for NIAC’s day of action can be found in recent polls which show the American people now rank ISIS and the threat of terror as their number one concern this year going into the tune up for the 2016 elections; even ahead of jobs and the economy.

NIAC and Iran’s mullahs have consistently placed their hopes in the idea that if you say “Iran is peace loving” enough times, it can overshadow videotaped beheadings and cremations of prisoners and put a fig leaf on turmoil and chaos roiling across Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Yemen, Chad, Sudan and Lebanon. It might even be enough to cover up terror in Paris, Sydney, Ottawa, Copenhagen and now Bangladesh where another American journalist was hacked to death alongside his wife by extremists.

The Iranian regime’s biggest export is terror and its extremist Islam and it is destabilizing large parts of the world right now. If the talks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure were simply about centrifuges and uranium, we might get a deal, but you cannot ignore the other party at the table and it includes people such as Ali Khamenei who are playing the long game in fulfilling an apocalyptic vision of an Islamic empire with Iran’s mullahs at the controls.

So while NIAC is busy passing out petitions today, we should be thankful the vast majority of Congress isn’t listening to them.
By Michael Tomlinso

NIAC Book Gift Embarrassing

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Hypocrisy MeterThe National Iranian American Council (NIAC) has been a dutiful spokesperson for the Iranian regime and has carried the mullahs water no matter how ridiculous the claims it had to make, but today was an epic new low in absurdity.

The NIAC delivered to all 100 members of the U.S. Senate a book entitled “In the Lion’s Shadow: The Iranian Schindler and his Homeland in the Second World War,” and autographed by its author Dr. Fariborz Mokhtari. The book details the efforts by Abdol-Hossein Sardari, an Iranian consular official in Paris in 1941 who aided Iranian and non-Iranian Jews by issuing them passports to exit during the war.

While the efforts of Sardari are rightly lauded for his efforts during the war, it is patently absurd that the NIAC would be passing these books out in an effort to portray itself and the Iranian regime in a more positive light in regards to the Jewish people.

It seems that there is a relation between distributing that book and the almost vitriolic nature of near-daily attacks coming from NIAC against Israel and the pending speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before a joint session of Congress on the Iranian regime’s negotiations over its nuclear weapons development program, Iran’s policies have been anything but humane or peaceful not only against the Jewish people, but the rest of the world.

It’s no secret there are many things wrong with Israel and its policies, especially the plight of the Palestinian people and the roadmap to peace in that part of the world, but there is no doubt that Iran’s long-standing support of terrorist groups hostile and active in and around Israel such as Hezbollah run contrary to any idea of peaceful motives.

Also, the fact that Iran’s mullahs espouse an extremist view of Islam that has fueled and provides intellectual and religious fodder for many of the region’s most extreme Islamic groups such as Boko Haram, ISIS and the Houthis in Yemen, points to the dangers it poses for peace. Not to mention the global range of attacks specifically targeting Christians and Jews by these fanatic Islamic groups supported by mullah’s ideology.

The book giveaway was accompanied by a note from NIAC’s head, Trita Parsi, in which he expressed his hope the book would be a reminder of the potential for a “different reality between the Jewish and Iranian peoples.”

He alluded to the ongoing talks as the linchpin to that new reality. The truth is far from what Parsi depicts. If news reports are accurate, the P5+1 led by the U.S. is prepared to offer Iran’s mullahs a deal that lifts economic sanctions and barely touches Iran’s existing nuclear infrastructure without any commensurate change in Iran’s policies in human rights or the treatment of political and religious dissidents. Yet mullahs have a different agenda.

The reality is that Iran’s mullahs intend to carry out a vision of regional influence for their radical form of Islam across the Middle East and Africa and gain virtual control of the of governments of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Yemen.

It is also worth noting that the hero of the book, Sardari, was left penniless after the Iranian revolution in 1979 with his property seized by the mullahs, he eventually died in Nottingham, England in 1981 in penury; a tragic end for a man of conviction who did so much in the name of humanity.

It is a travesty the NIAC seeks to make hay of this man’s actions and even worse to use it as a fig leaf cover for the brutality of a regime well-known for its hatred of other religions, even of other Muslims who do not share its violent visions.

By Sheldon March

Parallel Nuclear Talks with the Iranian Regime

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Magnifying GlassWhile U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leads diplomats from the P5+1 negotiating team in meetings with his counterparts from the Iranian regime, another set of talks have been going on in parallel concerning inspections and access to the Iranian regime’s nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that have so far drawn much less media attention.

But in a secret report issued by the IAEA to its member states and obtained by some Western news agencies including the New York Times and Reuters, the IAEA declared that Iran’s mullahs have stalled for the past three years on several critical areas of concern over nuclear weapons development and have not been provided answers to questions that had been promised by the Iranian regime as late as last year.

The timing of the release of the report, coming as the third round of talks between the Iranian regime and the West gets underway in Geneva is interesting because it demonstrates the level of frustration international inspectors have reached in attempt to squeeze answers out of the Iranian regime over issues such as the use of next-generation centrifuges for enrichment of nuclear fuel and the testing of conventional high explosives which could be used in detonators for nuclear warheads.

The IAEA and the United Nations have always maintained that any accord reached with the Iranian regime be conditional on Iran’s mullahs fully answering the questions that still linger after years of stonewalling.

“We’ve been stonewalled on all those questions,” one European official involved in the talks said recently in the New York Times story. “And the question is does it make sense to lift sanctions against Iran before it satisfies the inspectors?”

In the Times article, an initial report by the IAEA in 2011 published a list of a dozen technologies, most of them necessary to build a nuclear weapon that inspectors said Iran had tried to master. That list was narrowed down to three which the IAEA wanted Iran to explain first.

More than a year later, the Iranian regime has still failed to provide information on even one single topic of concern to inspectors; that being the development of conventional explosives to create focused shock waves sufficient to compress the core of a nuclear device and start the chain reaction necessary for a nuclear blast.

The IAEA has been consistently blocked by the Iranian regime in getting even the most basic answers, which raises more concerns over the apparent shroud of secrecy that has fallen on the most current round of P5+1 talks. Many international observers critical of any agreement with Iran’s religious leaders, including opposition groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, have contended the talks need to be transparent and open in order to allay international concerns and hold Iran’s rulers accountable because of a past history of obstruction and evasion.

In the Reuters story, Western diplomats have viewed such stalling as an indicator of the Iranian regimes unwillingness to cooperate fully until punitive sanctions are lifted in talks with the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain. This intent to have Iran’s mullahs be rewarded for simply sitting at the table is at the heart of the regime’s negotiating position and the reason why two earlier rounds of talks had failed.

Pressure to craft a framework of a deal by a March 24th deadline has placed both sides on a path towards a complex game of chicken to see who will blink first. Given the Iranian regime’s past willingness to tank previous talks, Western negotiators should be wary of giving in to regime demands simply to satisfy the appearance of progress.

No doubt the regime’s lobbying machine in the U.S. including the National Iranian American Council, that recently published a $200K ad in New York Times in favor of the mullahs, will press for a deal that hides most of the key components from public or Congressional scrutiny, but as the IAEA report has demonstrated, the Iranian regime has and continues to flaunt international concerns even after concessions and shows no interest in changing its ways.

By Michael Tomlinson

Khamenei Shows True Colors

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Angry KhameneiBenjamin Franklin famously said “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” If Franklin were alive today, he might add mullah’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the list of certainties.

Yesterday in a public speech in Tehran carried by the official IRNA news agency, Khamenei once again vowed Iran would resist global sanctions in its pursuit of nuclear capability and threatened to cut off natural gas exports in retaliation to any continued sanctions.

“Serious work must take place. We can withstand the sanctions and neutralize and foil the enemy’s goals. If we don’t, the enemy would proceed and place conditions on our nuclear program and impose sanctions,” Khamenei said.

“If sanctions are to be the way, the Iranian nation can also do it. A big collection of the world’s oil and gas is in Iran so Iran if necessary can hold back on the gas that Europe and the world is so dependent on,” he added.

It is noteworthy Khamenei still refers to the West and especially the U.S. as the “enemy.” His worldview is clouded by the long-simmering extremist view he has nurtured for the past several decades and seems unable to move forward into a new era of peace and prosperity. He clings to the notion Iran must resist all attempts at compromise and maintain a virtual war footing.

But Khamenei’s threats ring hollow when you consider Iran’s total oil production is estimated at 2.7 million barrels per day, mostly for domestic use. It also produces 600 million cubic meters of natural gas, of which 500 million cubic meters is used at home, meaning Iranian regime’s ability to “punish” Europe with a natural gas embargo is about as real as finding a unicorn.

But Khamenei didn’t stop there. He went on to accuse the U.S. of secretly supporting ISIS and criticized the European Union for placing sanctions on the National Iranian Tanker Company, the regime’s largest tanker company for carrying its petroleum overseas.

All of which flies in the face of recent frantic efforts by the Iranian regime’s lobbying and PR machine to convince the American public Iran does indeed want a compromise in current nuclear talks, even after two previous rounds of talks failed largely because of Khamenei’s hardline position and refusal to accept any deal compromising Iranian regime’s ability to generate large quantities of enriched uranium for use in nuclear warheads.

One might even feel slightly sorry for Iranian regime loyalists such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council who wax poetic about Iran’s desire for compromise only to be torpedoed on a regular basis by a new rant by Khamenei that reinforces and reminds Americans how mad the guy really is.

But any sympathy evaporates when we realize the stakes involved in this tense game of chicken Khamenei is playing. For all his bluster, he acts like he has virtually no interest in a deal. He regularly dumps on the U.S. He pushes for harder crackdowns at home in gross human rights violations. He has directed a foreign policy and controls a military and intelligence service involved in conflicts in almost a dozen countries now.

Just as ISIS has designs on a new fanatic Islamic caliphate, Khamenei shares the same vision for an Iranian-controlled sphere of influence. It is a dream born out of his virulent hatred of all things from the West including gender equality, free speech, an uncensored media and an unfettered internet.

As negotiators continue talks, they should not ignore the latest outburst by Khamenei because in most people’s minds, three strikes is usually enough to call someone out.

By Michael Tomlinson