Iran Lobby

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

Iran Regime Roadmap in Syria Includes Highway to Mediterranean

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shiite-militiasSince the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Iranian regime has ratcheted up its military involvement in its neighbors. At first, the regime used the tried and true tactics of using terrorist groups and proxies to strike at coalition forces during the insurgency in Iraq, killing and wounding thousands of troops primarily through explosive devices its Quds Forces made and delivered to Shiite militias.

It’s a model Iranian regime used to great effect through two decades of civil war in Lebanon through its Hezbollah terror partners, which it then expanded to use in the Syrian civil war in support of the Assad regime.

Similarly, the Iranian regime used the Houthis to launch another civil war in Yemen, aimed at destabilizing Saudi Arabia, a major coalition partner opposed to the Assad regime.

But what is the master plan for the mullahs in Tehran? What are they trying to gain from all of the machinations and manipulations?

Leaders of the Iranian regime in the face of opposition among their own loyal forces due to the heavy loses they have had particularly in the Syrian invasion, have numerously said that Syria and Iraq are their battle field to keep the enemy from fighting at home. i.e. using the same tactic they have been using since the beginning of the 1979 revolution, to create and export crisis in the region in order to cover up the internal crisis and the lack of capabilities to resolve such crisis. Hence one way to legitimize repression inside Iran has always been to point to the external crisis and the outside enemy.

While some try to project the Iranian regime’s meddling in Syria, Iraq and Yemen as a sign of strength, it is in fact the same crippling situation that forced regime’s top leader, Ali Khamenei, cornered by the sanctions to put a more friendly face out to the world and as such, manipulated the next election ballot to clear the field for Hassan Rouhani, a long-time loyal servant of the regime and a genial actor. In him, Khamenei saw his opportunity to fool the West, hoping for a change in the equation with Iran.

The creation of the Iran lobby, including US-based groups such as the National Iranian American Council, helped pushed that narrative during the run up for nuclear negotiations. For the mullahs, the completion of a nuclear deal was the linchpin to their plans since it set into motion the lifting of economic sanctions and the flooding of fresh cash back into coffers depleted by war.

While the infusion of cash and lifting of sanctions has opened the door to foreign investment for the first time in decades, the support for three wars is aimed at a more practical consideration: the creation of a Shiite-sphere of influence that buffers Iran from its neighbors and allows it access vital trade routes, economic markets and the ability to move assets freely without observation or restriction, however the main issue for the regime is its fear of uprisings at home and therefore its need for continuing with its meddling in the region.

For the mullahs, they have created a house of cards, each balancing on the other precariously and should one fall, the whole house collapses. Such is the flimsy nature of the mullahs hold and yet the West fails to fully grasp the leverage it has over the regime; leverage it abdicated when it chose to approve a nuclear agreement without linking Iran’s support for terrorism or improvements in human rights to it.

Nothing illustrates the complex interconnections the Iranian regime is striving for than the battle for Mosul in Iraq and for Aleppo in Syria. In both cases, the lack of a clear and decisive US policy has allowed the mullahs to manipulate the situations where Iranian-backed Shiite militias that used to attack US forces in Iraq are now attacking Sunni insurgents under US air cover.

The manipulation of this chessboard has many layers. For example, the lifting of economic sanctions was important in order for the regime to enter into deals with Boeing and Airbus to acquire new passenger airliners to replace a decrepit fleet which has seen hard use ferrying troops and weapons via an air bridge from Iran and Lebanon into Iraq and Syria.

Of paramount importance though to the long-range plans of the Iranian regime is the consolidation of friendly territory. For Khamenei and Rouhani, they envision an unbroken land stretching from the Mediterranean with Lebanon and Syria, through Afghanistan and Iraq to Yemen and even the Gulf states on the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.

It is a grand vision, but one that can only come to fruition through war, terror, bloodshed and violence. After all this is perhaps the only way they know to come out of the deepening crisis back at home.

The Iranian resistance movement has fought this complicated game plan for decades, but the West has largely not caught on and similarly combatted it; seeing it more in terms of short term agreements. The fact that the nuclear agreement only buys less than a decade of nuclear-free time is incredibly short-sighted and indicative of why the mullahs think they can win this game by being patient.

What is handicapping Tehran though is the inability to generate much economic improvement in the lives of ordinary Iranians who chafe under the yoke of oppression. This is the area of greatest risk to the Iranian regime where the people themselves are capable of changing the regime.

If the West ever realized the true potential it holds to advance change in Iran, then the future of the Iranian people could be helped immensely.

Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long to figure out that holding Iran accountable instead of rushing forward with trade deals is the better way to block Iranian regime’s roadmap.

Michael Tomlinson

Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

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Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

Is the Iran Regime Trying to Conquer the World?

Is the Iranian regime trying to conquer the world or does it simply want to carve out its own little protected niche in the world?

That seems to be the basic question confronting the rest of the world. For the Obama administration and many of the supporters of the Iranian regime, the focus was solely on the nuclear issue and ignored virtually every other aspect of the regime’s behavior that has troubled the world for the past three decades.

Dealing only with the nuclear issue is like negotiating with a serial killer to get rid of his use of handguns, but allowing him to keep his knives, flamethrowers and lock picks. Ultimately the behavior never changes and he is free and emboldened to do whatever he pleases. Such is the state we face with the Iranian regime today.

Now the world is witnessing a regime that is literally on a binge of dangerous behaviors, like someone with an eating disorder staring at a buffet table, the mullahs in Tehran are licking their lips at the banquet table being laid out before them.

A hallmark of that new militant behavior has been the arrests of dual national citizens and their subsequent sentencing to harsh prison terms without benefit of trial or even legal counsel. Three Americans were sentenced this way over the past week, with Reza “Robin” Shahini of San Diego, California receiving an absurd 18-year prison term.

“They’re bargaining people’s lives as if they’re trading Persian carpets,” said the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Oftentimes, these almost comically harsh sentences are simply meant to increase the value of these prisoners in the event of any quid pro quo with the United States.”

For the mullahs, these hostages do have value. In the case of four Americans released last year with the nuclear agreement, they were worth $1.7 billion in cash.

Not a bad payday for Iran.

But what seems to be at work in the larger context of international affairs is the almost bipolar nature of how Iran is dealing with the world and vice versa.

On the one hand, the Iranian regime is taking hostages, ramping up its participation in three widening wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It is smuggling arms, cash and men, which ironically end up getting used against other countries.

In Yemen, that means Iranian-purchased Chinese cruise missiles fired at US Navy warships.

In Syria, that means Iranian fighters and Afghan mercenaries and Iraqi Shiite militias being ferried in via Iranian airlines to fight against US-backed rebel forces.

In Iraq, it means Iranian-backed Shiite militias leading purges in Sunni villages liberated from ISIS and broad control over Iraq’s foreign policy with its Turkish neighbors.

  1. Todd Wood in the Washington Times also explains Iranian regimes avarice to secure a land corridor from the Iranian border to the Mediterranean to be able to have access to Arab lands, North Africa, and Europe in order to expand its terrorism through Iranian proxy forces and militias in Iraq and Syria.

“The operation seems to be headed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their General Qassem Soleimani who has also visited Moscow multiple times in violation of United Nations sanctions. He is coordinating the actions of Iran proxy forces in Iraq and Syria,” he writes.

Iranian regime is feverishly working on these plans, while at the same time it is busy opening itself up to Western investment and partnerships commercially.

As Thomas Erdbrink writes in the New York Times, the disconnect between the two halves are actually part of a larger, carefully orchestrated plan; a plan that the Obama administration and sympathetic EU nations seem oblivious to.

“What would seem to be a puzzling contradiction is in fact a carefully thought-out, two-track policy being pursued by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the circle of leaders around him,” he writes.

“Iranian generals are directing the ground war in Syria. Iranian advisers are training Shiite militias fighting in Iraq and Syria. Iranian arms and other support help the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“In addition to sanctioning the country’s more aggressive military footprint in the region, Ayatollah Khamenei regularly issues broadsides against the United States, promising there will be no softening of Tehran’s stance against the Great Satan, while quietly opening the door to Western capital and expertise,” he adds.

“In Mr. Khamenei’s view, we should be like China,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, an analyst with close ties to the hard-liners. “Have economic relations with the West, but without their political influence and neo-colonization.”

Thus, visa restrictions have been eased and foreign investment policies relaxed, while Iranian diplomats are spreading a message of Iran as the last major untapped market in the world.

But unlike China, Iran’s interests are not solely commercial and economic. It is more than willing to use military force to achieve its religious goals which stands in stark difference to China; essentially an atheist state.

For Khamenei and Rouhani, improvement in the economic status of the Iranian people is paramount to keeping their hold on power. Unless they can improve their quality of life, the street protests of 2009 are going to look like a picnic compared to March of 2017; Rouhani’s re-election bid.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Inks Oil Deal Benefiting Khamenei

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Iran Regime Inks Oil Deal Benefiting Khamenei

Iran Regime Inks Oil Deal Benefiting Khamenei

The Iranian regime signed its first oil production deal under a new less restrictive model that it hopes will boost its production output in spite of a new agreement with other oil producing nations to curb production in an effort to boost sagging oil prices worldwide.

The clincher is that the Iranian oil ministry’s news agency Shana said the government had signed a $2.2 billion contract with a unit of Iranian company Tadbir Energy, which is controlled by a religious foundation overseen by top mullah Ali Khamenei, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The regime hopes its new Iran Petroleum Contracts (IPC), part of an effort to sweeten the terms it offers on oil development deals, will attract foreign investors and boost production after years of sanctions.

The National Iranian Oil Company also signed a contract with Persia Oil & Gas Industry Development Co., an Iranian firm, according to Reuters. The U.S. Treasury Department named Persia Oil & Gas in 2013 as part of Setad Ejraiye Farman-e Emam, or Setad, a secretive and powerful organization overseen by Khamenei.

With stakes in nearly every sector of Iran’s economy, Setad built its empire on the seizure of thousands of properties belonging to religious minorities, business people and Iranians living abroad, according to a 2013 Reuters investigation, which estimated the network’s holdings at about $95 billion. (reut.rs/1g1qkCg)

The U.S. Treasury in 2013 sanctioned Setad and 37 companies it said it oversees, calling it “a major network of front companies controlled by Iran’s leadership.” Those sanctions were lifted in January, as part of the historic nuclear deal reached between Iran and world powers in 2015.

The deal, the first to be clinched under new improved terms for oil companies, is aimed at increasing output from four fields located near the Iraqi border to 260,000 barrels a day, compared with 185,000 barrels a day previously.

The deals target an increase in overall output to 5.7 million barrels a day by the end of 2020, compared to only 3.6 million barrels a day reached just last August. The increase in production is being allowed under an exemption granted to the Iranian regime by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which may threaten the long-term prospects of the reduction deal.

Ali Kardor, the head of the National Iranian Oil Co., said Monday that Iran intended to return to the market share it held before international sanctions, implying a production level of over 4 million barrels a day.

The near-desperate desire by the regime to hit the increased production levels reflects the mullahs need to gain market share and sell aggressively in order to bring badly needed revenue back into the regime’s bank accounts, which have been largely drained dry through its support of the prolonged wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The United Nations special envoy for Syria previously estimated the Iranian regime’s support for the Assad regime in Syria topped a whopping $6 billion annually alone, with other analysts estimating the total Iranian support for Syria more than double that amount to $15 billion in military and economic aid in 2012 and 2013.

By signing the first deal under this new IPC structure, the regime hopes to entice foreign oil companies to return to Iran and invest in the development of these fields. Previously, foreign firms were reluctant because of buy-back contracts that only benefitted the regime and often left foreign operators with little to no profit.

The push to boost production is also seen as an attempt by Hassan Rouhani to boast of better economic news as he prepares to run for re-election in next year’s presidential election. Iran’s economy has remained stagnant even after the completion of the nuclear deal last year in which Rouhani promised significant economic benefits that have failed to materialize.

The lack of economic improvement for ordinary Iranians have led to renewed discontent in the form of protests by large sectors of the Iranian economy; from teachers protesting low wages to small business owners chafing under poor sales and workers angry over inflated salaries for high-ranking regime officials.

The inclusion of the first oil deal with a firm under the control of Khamenei also signals that the regime’s leadership is still in primary control over Iran’s future and alongside the Revolutionary Guard Corps, virtually every sector of the Iranian economy is controlled by the regime’s leadership.

That belief in the re-opening of the oil markets to Iranian oil may also be behind the recent snub of the German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel who was in Tehran on a high profile visit, but took the opportunity to urge the Iranian regime to pursue reforms at home and act more responsibly in Syria.

He also said Iran, which provides economic and military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, should help push for a ceasefire in Syria’s civil war, adding: “I think Iran knows its responsibility there.”

His comments did not go over well with Iran’s parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, who opted to skip a meeting with the German cabinet member in a display of annoyance over the criticism.

Sadeq Larijani, brother of the parliament speaker and head of Iran’s judiciary, criticized Gabriel on Monday for his comments. “If I were in the government’s position or in the foreign minister’s shoes I would never let such a person come to Iran,” he said.

As Iran tries to re-enter the global markets, it should be ready for even more criticism as the world takes greater notice of the regime’s policies and practices.

Ultimately, Iranian mullah’s desire to regain a spot on the global stage may eventually make it once again even more vulnerable to new sanctions for its bad behavior.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Killing Environment Like Its People

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Iran Regime Killing Environment Like Its People

Iran Regime Killing Environment Like Its People

The Los Angeles Times ran a story examining the deteriorating plight of Iran’s agricultural industry and state of its environment in general; both of which are spiraling downward as dismally as human rights for the Iranian people.

The Islamic paradise promised by the mullahs when they hijacked the Iranian revolution three decades ago, has not come to pass and in its place is a land that has grown parched, where crops have died and entire communities are on the brink of collapse.

Iran’s worsening water crisis has spread desperation across this parched farm belt. Families watch sons leave the villages to hunt for scarce work in the cities. Crops are abandoned. The elderly and infirm forego medical care because they barely have enough money to survive, the Times said.

Iran’s farmers have struggled with several successive years of drought. But environmental mismanagement, water overuse, the pressures of population growth and a government more concerned with security and economic challenges have exacerbated Iran’s agricultural problems, the Times added.

In June, Iran’s Meteorological Organization said 72% the country’s 80 million people were living in “prolonged drought” conditions. Lakes are drying up and cities like Tehran have considered rationing water.

All of which points a devastating picture of how poorly the mullahs have managed the precious natural resources of the country for its people, but that insensitivity to the environment goes all the way back the founding of the Islamic Republic.

The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, once told an aide who worried about inflation that Iran’s 1979 revolution “was not about the price of watermelons” — meaning it stood for loftier goals such as economic equality and redistribution, said the Times.

Khomeini’s successors, today’s leaders such as Hassan Rouhani and Ali Khamenei, have even less regard for the environment as they pour billions of dollars into three wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and steer the billions in unlocked assets resulting from the nuclear deal to go on a military shopping spree to buy fighters, missiles, ammunition and bombs.

The situation is so dire in many of Iran’s heartlands that many Iranians don’t know what to do next and the regime has been unresponsive to all of their entreaties for help.

In Qiyasabad, residents now must dig as deep as 500 feet to find water. The Hablehrood river, which flows down dun-colored hills to the north, is too salty to use for irrigation, they say. Most farmers still flood their fields to irrigate crops, which is terribly wasteful.

“Ten years ago, I swear, our water was fresh and plenty,” said Karim Baluchi, 54. “Ten years ago I had a decent life.”

He and half a dozen co-owners asked the government this year for a $6,000 loan for a new well and water pump. No one has responded, he said.

According to the Times article, last June, a senior cleric raised eyebrows when he said the drought was caused by women failing to wear appropriate Islamic dress; a clear example of how backwards the mullahs view their nation’s problems.

That lack of concern over Iran’s crumbling environment extends to some of its greatest treasures, including the Asiatic cheetah, otherwise known as the Iranian cheetah, a subspecies of the world’s fastest mammal that exists only within Iran and is on the verge of extinction.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Bahman Jokar, head of the cheetah desk at Iran’s environmental agency, said about 50 cheetahs are believed to remain in Iran’s central deserts – a population so small that to save it requires emergency measures.

“Unfortunately our government and parliament have other top priorities and saving the Asiatic cheetah is not the top one,” Jokar said in a rare bit of candor from an Iranian official over how dire the situation is for the big cats which are deeply rooted in Persian culture and the history of the country going back more than ten centuries.

It’s worth noting that the Caspian tiger and Persian lion, two other species of big cats native to Iran have already gone extinct under the Iranian regime.

The gross mismanagement and disregard for Iran’s environment by the ruling mullahs extends to the perilous condition of Lake Urmia, the largest lake in the Middle East and sixth-largest saltwater lake in the world which has shrunk to 10 percent of its former size due to damning and overpumping of groundwater.

Even though Rouhani has made continued promises to save Lake Urmia for the cities in Iran that depend on its water, but little has been done and the damage may be irreversible according to environmentalists.

In an article in The Guardian, researcher Shirin Hakim and water management expert Kaveh Madani at the Centre for Environmental Policy of Imperial College, London, described Urmia’s surface as “an area facing a high risk of salt storms.”

The article pointed out that the shrinking of the lake has diminished a fragile ecosystem, with the gradual disappearance of native wildlife including the brine shrimp Artemia and migratory birds like flamingos and pelicans. Such degradation threatens dire economic consequences.

One of the main factors contributing to the state of Lake Urmia is the interference in the natural flow of water into the lake by over 50 dams. The damage has been compounded by unregulated withdrawal of water, water-intensive irrigation and the unsustainable use of fertilizers.

Even as Iran’s environment is destroyed and slowly turned into a wasteland, the mullahs and Rouhani are desperately working on an oil agreement with OPEC to allow it to pump even more oil to sell on the market in order to make up the enormous costs of fighting the Syrian war and keep the Assad regime afloat.

The irony is inescapable and so is the responsibility for this environmental catastrophe which rests on the mullahs in Tehran.

By Laura Carnahan

US Presidential Election Concerns Iran Regime

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US Presidential Election Concerns Iran Regime

US Presidential Election Concerns Iran Regime

The sunset is fast approaching on the Obama administration, and with it will come significant changes in the US foreign policy approach to the Middle East and Iran in particular. The mullahs learned their lesson from the two disastrous terms of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who made it easy to caricature the regime as slightly crazy and evil.

Their manipulation of the election ballot in 2013 assured Hassan Rouhani’s election and helped assist the Iran lobby in trying to project an image of moderation to the West; even though Rouhani’s first term has actually been bloodier than Ahmadinejad’s ever was.

Rouhani has outpaced Ahmadinejad with an unprecedented wave of executions and mass hangings that is approaching 3,000, including women and children according to Amnesty International. His crackdown on religious minorities, journalists, dissidents, artists and students has rivaled the abuses of the infamous 2009 protests.

With the upcoming election of a new US administration, the mullahs are intensely interested in the election outcome, as well as preparing the ground to keep the policies of appeasement rolling in exchange for the false hope that Iran will curb its nuclear ambitions.

The deployment of the Iran lobby has been largely aimed at helping Senators and candidates deemed favorable and supportive towards the nuclear deal, as well as continue coaxing journalists to view the Iranian regime with less than suspicion.

Meanwhile in Iran itself, regime news outlets have been giving considerable space and airtime to the presidential campaign, especially with the rhetoric rising sharply about the effects of the nuclear deal and the best approach needed by a new president to restrain and control the Islamic state.

There is no doubt that Americans and Europeans are anxious about the state of the Middle East, especially the three wars being waged with deep support from the Iranian regime in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which have contributed to an unprecedented wave of refugees flooding into Europe and the US.

Javan Online, the daily newspaper close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, ran an article Sept. 27 titled “The Iranophobia race.”

Kayhan daily, whose editor is appointed by the country’s supreme leader, called the debate “a contest in Iranophobia” in which “Trump threatened to attack Iran and Clinton continued to stress the political and economic pressures against Iran.” Though it didn’t mention Mrs. Clinton’s defense of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’s diplomatic approach.

Hamid Reza Assefi, a former spokesman for the regime’s Foreign Ministry, commented in an op-ed for the Shargh Daily on the likely effect of the US election on Iran. He concluded, “Because of the special rules and the internal sensitivities surrounding the election in Iran … external issues will have no effect.”

He also wrote, “The truth is, both parties in the Unites States share the same opinion on the general aspects of the conflict with Iran.”

On that point he is correct. In spite of the round the clock efforts by the Iran lobby at trying to drive a wedge in the US electorate and attempting to peel off Democratic support, the truth is the vast majority of American voters remain deeply suspicious of the Iranian regime and both Democrats and Republicans are less inclined to accommodate Iran’s agenda after the bloody year since the nuclear deal was reached.

A senior international policy analyst for the RAND Corp., wrote in Fox News that with “the continuing climate of repression, the next Iranian presidential election, and (Ali) Khamenei’s eventual demise may provide some important opportunities for America’s next president.”

“The next U.S. president is likely to be met with multiple international crises after assuming office, and Iran may be one of the most challenging of them,” he writes. “In theory, Rouhani, often portrayed as a ‘moderate’ by the Western media, would have been strengthened by the agreement and able to pursue his agenda of liberalizing Iran both economically and politically. In reality, Rouhani’s presidency has failed to deliver on most of his promises.”

The laundry list of provocative actions by the Iranian regime over the past year has clouded any real building of support for the mullahs by the Iran lobby. The recent spate of arrests of dual national citizens and Rouhani’s reaffirmation that Iran does not recognize dual citizenship on NBC News only provides more fodder for critics of the regime.

The significance of Iran to US policy is becoming more apparent as more analysts and policymakers weigh Iran’s influence and threat level even above that of ISIS. In an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, writes that:

“US political leaders of both parties argue that destroying Islamic State is America’s top priority in the Middle East. In reality, that’s not nearly as important as confronting the challenge posed by Iran. The nuclear deal that went into effect a year ago may have postponed the danger of an Iranian nuclear bomb, but the multifaceted threat of a militaristic, messianic Iran — 80-million strong — is much more menacing to Western interests than the Sunni thugs and murderers of Raqqah and Mosul.”

“From Tehran’s perspective, it gained much more than it gave up. In exchange for postponing its military nuclear project, it achieved the lifting of many economic sanctions, an end to its political isolation and the loosening of restrictions on its ballistic missile program,” he added.

Truthfully, time is running out for the mullahs. We can only expect that the next president and administration will have a more skeptical eye towards the Iranian regime with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Hassan Rouhani Peddling Fantasies in New York

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Hassan Rouhani Peddling Fantasies in New York

Hassan Rouhani Peddling Fantasies in New York

The Iranian regime’s front man, Hassan Rouhani, was in New York for his annual propaganda address to the United Nations General Assembly session last week. During his New York stop, Rouhani availed himself of the usual media opportunities to pedal some pretty farfetched fantasies about the state of the Middle East and Iranian regime’s role in it.

One of his media stops was on NBC News in which he spun the story to Chuck Todd that the Syrian conflict must be solved politically.

Politically.

Let’s let that word sink in for a minute. The leader of the Iranian regime, which spent billions of dollars to prop up the brutal Assad regime at the brink of its collapse under protests by the Syrian people, was telling the American people that Syria required a political solution.

This is the same Iranian regime that sent thousands of Hezbollah fighters, led by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders to fight alongside Syrian troops targeting rebel forces.

This is the same Iranian regime that gang pressed thousands of Afghan refugees into becoming mercenaries and sent them to fight in Syria.

This is the same Iranian regime that begged Russia to enter the war and save Assad from toppling as Iran’s forces were being exhausted by the years-long conflict. Russia’s entry included targeting and attacking of civilian locations and rebel military units not affiliated with ISIS or other radicalized Islamic militants.

Let’s also not forget that this is the same Iranian regime that supported Assad after he used chemical weapons to mass kill his own people.

The death toll in Syria is over 500,000 according to human rights groups with more than 11 million people displaced and becoming refugees.

“The rule of the ballot box and the rule of the Syrian people and the will of the Syrian people should be the sole determinant of the future of the country,” Rouhani said.

Rouhani also dismissed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s demand Wednesday that Syria and Russia ground all aircraft in the northern part of the country after the bombing of a humanitarian convoy threatened a precarious ceasefire. The Pentagon has blamed Russia for the attack.

It is an absurd contention by Rouhani since Syrian elections are as about as free as the ones engineered in Iran. Assad has never held a truly free and open election subject to international monitoring, much as Rouhani was elected in similar fashion as thousands of moderate candidates were kicked off election ballots in Iran.

Beyond Rouhani’s fanciful ideas of Syrian democracy, his real goal on this tour was to loosen the purse strings and gain access to US currency exchanges for Iran. These sanctions were put in place as part of the punishments for Iran’s dismal human rights record and sponsorship of terrorism and were not part of the nuclear agreement reached last year.

Rouhani and his boss, top mullah Ali Khamenei, have banged the drum loudly warning of dire consequences if the sanctions are not lifted and are pushing to get relief before the US presidential election takes place and the Obama administration, which has followed a policy of appeasing the regime, leaves office.

Even the New York Times, which has been a sympathetic supporter of the nuclear agreement, recognizes the difficulty Rouhani faces and the consequences the regime faces if these sanctions are not lifted.

“Scared off by penalties imposed by the United States Treasury Department, European banks have not provided credit for large-scale projects in Iran. In fact, because of the American regulations, it remains nearly impossible for ordinary businesses to transfer money to and from Iran — a problem that has been enormously frustrating to Mr. Rouhani, who promoted the nuclear agreement by promising a new economic era,” writes Thomas Erdbrink in the Times.

“Mr. Rouhani faces an election in five months, and his hard-line opponents are sharpening their knives. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has been hinting in speeches that he considers the nuclear deal to be a failure,” he adds.

That threat to walk away from what has proven to be an ineffective agreement anyway has been the pressure point on the Obama administration as it seeks to preserve its landmark foreign policy achievement at all costs; a pressure point that was again pushed by Tehran in getting the administration to approve licenses for the sale of new aircraft to Iran.

The U.S. government has given plane makers Boeing Co. and Airbus Group SE the all-clear to deliver jetliners to Iran Air. Iran Air announced in January it planned to buy Airbus planes, but the transaction stalled amid a lack of approvals from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control rules. OFAC had to approve the license because a portion of Airbus planes are made in the U.S.

Iran’s plan to buy western planes has run into opposition in its own country and the U.S. Some U.S. lawmakers are trying to bar the sale of Boeing planes to Iran.

Rep. Peter J. Roskam (R., Ill.), a critic of Iran plane deals, said, “There is a still a long way to go and many more hurdles to overcome before Iran can actually take delivery of these planes—and thankfully Congress is committed to making the process as difficult and expensive as possible.”

The concern over the sale lies in the fact that the Iranian regime has often used its civilian airliners for military purposes in ferrying men, weapons, cash and supplies to it many proxies such as Hezbollah in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Treasury Department has previously sanctioned IranAir in recent years for helping Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “transport military related equipment.”

With this action and others, we can only hope the US and Europe will not be able to finish caving in to the Iranian regime before it’s too late.

By Michael Tomlinson

While Rouhani Speaks at UN Relatives of Hostages Plead for Their Freedom

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While Rouhani Speaks at UN Relatives of Hostages Plead for Their Freedom

While Rouhani Speaks at UN Relatives of Hostages Plead for Their Freedom

Far from the pomp and pageantry of the United Nations General Assembly session opening and its parade of speeches from world leaders, small acts of defiance help shine a light on one leader in particular who will do his best to put a happy face of a skull and crossbones situation.

A mother and daughter have bravely filmed themselves cycling in an Iranian city in defiance of a fatwa that says it is a danger to women’s “chastity”.

The fatwa, which has been announced by Iran’s top mullah Ali Khamenei, prevents women from cycling because it “exposes society to corruption”.

The video shows two women wearing hijabs and face veils cycling on a road in what they say is Kish, an island territory belonging to Iran.

“My mum and I are from Tehran,” the woman holding the camera says.

“Bicycle riding is part of our lives. We heard Khamenei’s fatwa banning women from cycling,” the woman says. “We immediately rented two bicycles to say we’re not giving up cycling.”

“It’s our absolute right and we’re not going to give up,” she adds defiantly according to the Independent newspaper.

As protests go, this one is not likely to go down in history akin to Martin Luther King’s march in Selma or even the mass Arab Spring protests that rocked the Middle East, but in Iran, where almost any act of civil disobedience can lead to imprisonment, torture and even death, riding a bicycle if you’re a woman is a pretty brave act.

But for 30,000 Iranians in 1988, the penalty for their alleged act of disobedience—by being associated even remotely with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)—earned execution at the hands of the leaders who now hold leadership positions in Iran.

The mass killings recently re-entered the international spotlight when audio recordings of former top cleric, Hossein-Ali Montazeri came to light last month. The late ayatollah had been the heir-apparent to the founder of the Islamic Republic in the 1980s, but was ousted from his position and from the regime itself as a result of the contents of the recording, in which he condemned the mass killings, calling them a stain on the memory of Iran’s honor.

Tom Ridge, the former secretary for homeland security, noted in an editorial in The Hill that Montazeri’s long-suppressed tirade specifically confirms some of the most shocking details of the proceedings sentencing these people to death, including the execution of teenage girls and pregnant women.

A large demonstration was held today in front of the UN protesting Rouhani’s scheduled appearance and the continued presence of so many regime leaders in power today who participated in those massacres.

As Ridge points out, one of the individuals heard on the 1988 recording is today the justice minister in the Rouhani administration, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who was the Intelligence Ministry’s representative on the Tehran “death commission,” which held the minutes-long trials to determine which of the local political prisoners would be put to death. On the recording, Pourmohammadi eagerly defends the activities that Montazeri described as the “worst crime of the Islamic Republic.” And today he characterizes the massacre as the enactment of “God’s commandment” regarding the MEK.

Rouhani comes to the UN session though with more baggage as news comes out of Iran of more crackdowns and human rights violations, which clearly demonstrate that under his “moderate” reign, things have gone from bad to worse; a prospect that seemed unimaginable after the brutal terms of the former president Ahmadinejad.

According to Al-Monitor, reports surfaced of the arrest of Sadra Mohaghegh, the society editor of the Reformist Shargh Daily. His sudden detention has caused an outcry among journalists, activists and Iranian netizens, who have turned Mohaghegh’s name into a hashtag — especially after Mohaghegh’s Twitter account was taken down on Tuesday for unknown reasons.

According to Basij News, Mohaghegh was arrested “during an intelligence operation by security forces,” without specifying which agency was responsible for his arrest. Media reports accuse him of having collaborated with “counter-revolutionary” foreign media. The detention comes only days after the arrest of another Iranian journalist, Yashar Soltani, who is in charge of Memari News, a website that focuses on urban news and architecture.

Rouhani’s appearance in New York is also being met with heavy pressure from the family and relatives of Western hostages being held by the regime, including Kamran Foroughi who has flown from London to New York for the past three years to beg Rouhani for the release of his ailing father, Kamal Foroughi, 76, on humanitarian grounds. The British-Iranian dual national has cataracts, spent 18 months in solitary confinement, and is barely halfway through his 5-year sentence on espionage charges.

Foroughi came to New York with Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife, Nazanin, also a British-Iranian dual national, was sentenced last month to five years in prison on espionage charges while visiting her parents. Their 2-year-old daughter, Gabriella, has had her passport confiscated.

The same judge, Abolghassem Salavati, presided over the trials of Zakka, Foroughi and Ratcliffe. He is known for handing down harsh sentences in high-profile political cases. He also sentenced Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was released along with three other Iranian-Americans in a prisoner swap in January when the nuclear deal was implemented, according to the Washington Post.

Even newly-installed British Prime Minister Theresa May was under pressure to raise the plight of Ratcliffe in her meeting with Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN session.

It is hard to imagine how any objective observer can now claim that Rouhani’s term has been a moderate one. The human rights violations have been so prevalent, so brutal and so constant that it is a wonder why the world’s representatives simply don’t walk out on his speech.

By Laura Carnahan

Rouhani UN Appearance Protested as Terror Strikes Again

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Rouhani UN Appearance Protested as Terror Strikes Again

Rouhani UN Appearance Protested as Terror Strikes Again

A coalition of Iranian dissident and human rights groups held a protest outside of the United Nations in advance of a speech by the Iranian regime’s president, Hassan Rouhani, who is currently wrapping up a tour of countries that have all been hostile to the U.S.

The anticipated speech by Rouhani comes at a precarious time in the tri-state area, which is recovering from bomb attacks in New York and New Jersey allegedly committed by Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan immigrant who was captured after being wounded in a shootout with police.

Coupled with the stabbing attack at a Minnesota shopping mall by a man who was claimed by ISIS as a “soldier of the Islamic State,” these attacks have reminded the U.S. and the world of the ever present danger of radicalized individuals, lured by the seductive siren call of Islamic extremism.

These attacks have left nearly 40 people injured, fortunately none were killed, but in light of the growing list of terror-related attacks stretching from Boston to San Bernardino to Chattanooga to Dallas and to Orlando, it is clear that the U.S. is being subjected to the kind of waves of attacks that have become commonplace in the Middle East and increasingly in Europe.

What is becomingly increasingly clear is that radicalization of these new wave of would-be terrorists is coming rapidly through the easy access of materials online and the propaganda efforts of regimes such as ISIS and Iran to make their radical messages appealing to disaffected young people.

The protest takes a stand against the long running support of terrorism by the Iranian regime and its cruel indifference for human rights both at home and abroad. According to the Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC), the demonstrators called for a halt in Tehran’s extensive funding and sponsoring of terrorism in the region and demanded a halt in the executions in Iran, and urge the prosecution of the regime’s leaders.

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iranian people have been the main domestic victims of the Iranian regime’s political violence. More than 2,500 have been hanged during Rouhani’s tenure, including dozens of dissidents, women, minors, ethnic and religious minorities.

Also new evidence implicates Rouhani’s cabinet ministers, in the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran. The demonstrators held a symbolic enactment of the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in Iran.

The Hon. Joe Lieberman, former Senator from Connecticut, Pastor Saeed Abedini, recently released from prison in Iran, and Sir Geoffrey Robertson, QC, President of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, were among the speakers alongside young Iranian-Americans.

Rouhani has been on a tour of some countries prior to his arrival in New York this week, including a meeting with Raul Castro in Havana. His stopover in Cuba came after a meeting of only a dozen heads of state of the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement on the Caribbean island of Margarita off Venezuela’s coast. The meeting was a who’s who of some of the world’s most unpopular leaders including Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Rouhani.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja’afari, used the forum to denounce U.S.-led air strikes he said had killed 83 Syrian soldiers, saying they were aimed at sinking a fragile U.S.-Russia ceasefire plan.

About the only dictators missing were North Korea’s leader and Syria’s Assad himself.

Far from burnishing his foreign policy credentials, Rouhani’s trip only highlights the isolation of the Iranian regime and inability to build any kind of legitimate diplomatic support; especially in light of worsening human rights moves by the regime and increased confrontations in the Persian Gulf.

Sadra Mohaqeq, a journalist with Iran’s reformist Sharq daily, was arrested in Tehran this week with no explanation by regime officials. Mohaqeq was also arrested in 2013 in a crackdown on media.

The semi-official Mehr news agency reported that Mohaqeq was arrested by a “security body.”

In April, four journalists arrested in November 2015 were sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison for “colluding” with foreign governments and acting against “national security”.

Media watchdogs say journalists in Iran have to work in a climate of fear and censorship.

In another example of how the regime cares little about world opinion, it also announced the sentencing of Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen and U.S. permanent resident, to 10 years in prison as part of a wide crackdown on those with any foreign ties. Zakka advocates for Internet freedom and whose nonprofit group did work for the U.S. government.

“There’s no regard for any international order, any international agreement or any international state of relations that they care about,” said David Ramadan, a former Virginia state legislator who co-founded a group called Friends of Nizar Zakka.

A statement early Tuesday from Jason Poblete, a U.S. lawyer representing Zakka, said a Revolutionary Court in Tehran handed down the sentence in a 60-page verdict that Zakka’s supporters have yet to see. Amnesty International has said Zakka had only two court hearings before the ruling and received only limited legal assistance before the court, a closed-door tribunal which handles cases involving alleged attempts to overthrow the government.

Other known to have been detained in Iran since the nuclear deal include:

— Homa Hoodfar , an Iranian-Canadian woman who is a retired professor at Montreal’s Concordia University;

— Siamak Namazi , an Iranian-American businessman who has advocated for closer ties between the two countries and whose father is also held in Tehran;

— Baquer Namazi, a former Iranian and U.N. official in his 80s who is the father of Siamak;

— Robin Shahini , an Iranian-American detained while visiting family who previously had made online comments criticizing Iran’s human rights record; and

— Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe , a British-Iranian woman sentenced to five years in prison on allegations of planning the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government while traveling with her young daughter.

Obviously it is not a priority of Rouhani’s to release any of these people, but only to hob nob with dictators. The world should listen to his speech at the UN with a critical ear.

By Michael Tomlinson

Why Remembering Massacres Matter

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Why Remembering Massacres Matter

Why Remembering Massacres Matter

Throughout history, there have been many monuments to man’s cruelty against his fellow man. In the Ancient World, the sack of Carthage, fall of the Roman Empire and countless other battlefields have yielded massacres, mass executions and enslavement of entire populations.

In the Modern Era, not much has changed as we’ve witnessed two world wars, the killings fields of Cambodia, the Nazi’s Final Solution, China’s Cultural Revolution, Stalin’s purges and today we see the eradication of Syria’s population, the concentration camps in the Balkans and hostage taking and mass murders by Islamic terrorists.

Throughout human history memorializing, recognizing and judging these horrific incidents has been a vital part of moving civilization forward. Without reconciliation, without the healing that comes from accepting blame and responsibility for these acts, peace is hard to achieve for any nation or people.

Take for example post-war Germany and wrestling with the black marks of Nazism and the Holocaust. Beyond the Nuremburg trials and other efforts by the Allies to punish the heinous acts of former Nazi leaders, Germany has been a model of confronting its past and not shying away from it. It has ensured its history is taught in schools, it combats hatred and discrimination and ultimately today has led all nations in the acceptance of Syrian refugees.

Other nations still wrestle with their pasts such as Turkey’s Ottoman Empire past and the Armenian genocide, but while can be slow and incremental, open societies continue to make progress.

It is within regimes, dictatorships and governments that stifle freedom that continue to hide their past and cover up the crimes of the present. The clearest example of that practice is the Iranian regime.

While the term “massacre” conjures up vivid imagery of near cataclysmic events, in the case of the Iranian regime, the term is appropriate, especially as it applies to a particularly grim event in 1988.

In 1988, the Iranian regime was wrestling with its war with Iraq and the failing health of its leader, Ruhollah Khomeini. It was also faced with internal dissent as the promise of the revolution faded away under the oppressive rule of the mullahs. Chief among those dissenters was the opposition group, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), and was targeted by the mullahs for elimination.

That process took place when the mullahs used the end of the Iran-Iraq as a pre-text to begin a series sham retrials of political prisoners, tagging many with affiliation with MEK and other dissidents, even if they were not, and then began the deadly process of executing them as quickly as possible.

An audio tape of an interview with Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was in line to succeed Khomeini at one point, revealed his condemnation of the massacre that eventually claimed the lives of 30,000 Iranians in one of the largest politically motivated mass murders in modern history.

He warns those gathered they’ve committed “the biggest crime in the history of the Islamic Republic,” while criticizing them for misleading a then-ailing Khomeini.

The criticisms by Montazeri, who lived for years under house arrest and died of natural causes after Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election, long ago surfaced in his own memoirs and writings. But the furor ignited by the release of the tapes by his family this month expose the lingering, unhealed wounds of the chaotic years that followed Iran’s 1979 Revolution, as well as politics now at play in the greater Middle East.

Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, apparently carried out on Khomeini’s orders, even though other regime officials were effectively in charge in the months before his 1989 death.

In the audio recording, Montazeri apparently addresses prosecutors, a judge and an intelligence official over the executions, warning they will tarnish Khomeini’s image.

“I believe that the biggest crime in the history of the Islamic Republic, which will be condemned by history, happened by your hands,” Montazeri says.

He goes on to say that “fighting against ideology with killing is totally wrong.”

Dr. Mohammad Maleki, a well-known human rights activist who was formerly chancellor of Tehran University, also strongly condemned the 1988 massacre in an interview with Al-Arabiya published by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

“From the very beginning this regime executed people in the name of drug addicts and political figures, launched the 1988 killings, and killed its dissidents abroad. I was personally prosecuted and placed behind bars for five years from 1981 to 1986,” Maleki said.

“I have seen how these people were executed, and how the regime launched 2-minute court trials. Around 30,000 people were executed [in 1988], they were all prosecuted and in the initial courts they were sentenced to prison terms, not to be executed. They were all prisoners and were serving their time, and some had even served their entire sentences. Therefore, all the massacres from day one to this day, and to this moment, are all legally void, illegal, can be subject to prosecution and are considered a crime against humanity,” he added.

In response to the Montazeri audio tape and the recent anniversary of the massacre which has been marked with protests and demonstrations around the world, regime officials have steadfastly defended the massacre and the decisions made to execute it.

No one has more vociferously defended their actions from that time than Justice Minister of the current “moderate” regime, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who was the Intelligence Ministry’s representative at Evin Prison when the executions took place. Pourmohammadi and three other individuals were in charge of the committee that oversaw the executions.

The regime’s hatred and fear of the MEK and other dissident groups is such that they have made every effort to denounce the massacre and efforts to hold the regime accountable for that piece of bloody history.

As history has shown us though, unless and until a nation accepts the worst parts of its history, it will have no hope of ever changing. Only when the mullahs stop denying the 1988 massacre, can they ever hope to truly reform themselves.

By Michael Tomlinson

US Warns of Travel to Iran as Regime Shows off Military Might

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US Warns of Travel to Iran as Regime Shows off Military Might

US Warns of Travel to Iran as Regime Shows off Military Might

In what is becoming annual rite of summer, the U.S. State Department on Monday issued a warning urging U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to Iran. This latest advisory, which emphasizes Iran’s desire to capture U.S. citizens, comes on the heels of a growing scandal over the Obama administration’s decision to pay Iran $400 million in cash on the same day that it freed several U.S. hostages, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The new warning replaces an existing one the department issued on March 14, 2016 and reiterates and highlights the risk of arrest and detention of Americans, particularly dual national Iranian-Americans, which the Iranian regime does not recognize.

“Iranian authorities continue to unjustly detain and imprison U.S. citizens, particularly Iranian-Americans, including students, journalists, business travelers, and academics, on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security,” the advisory said.

“Iranian authorities have also prevented the departure, in some cases for months, of a number of Iranian-American citizens who traveled to Iran for personal or professional reasons. U.S. citizens traveling to Iran should very carefully weigh the risks of travel and consider postponing their travel. U.S. citizens residing in Iran should closely follow media reports, monitor local conditions, and evaluate the risks of remaining in the country,” the advisory added.

The advisory goes on to warn of the threats posed to religious minorities and a wide range of other classifications of individual at risk of arrest, harassment and detention by regime authorities.

“The Iranian government continues to repress some minority religious and ethnic groups, including Christians, Baha’i, Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, and others.  Consequently, some areas within the country where these minorities reside, including the Baluchistan border area near Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Kurdish northwest of the country, and areas near the Iraqi border, remain unsafe.

“Iranian authorities have detained and harassed U.S. citizens, particularly those of Iranian origin. Former Muslims who have converted to other religions, religious activists, and persons who encourage Muslims to convert are subject to arrest and prosecution,” the advisory said.

Despite the warning, Iran remains a tourism destination for some with The New York Times offering two-week trips to Iran several times a year. It is noteworthy that the Times has long been an editorial supporter of accommodating the Iranian regime as part of the Obama administration’s echo chamber of support.

The warning flies in the face of the all of the claims made by the Iran lobby during the nuclear talks last year when prominent advocates for the regime such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, bloggers Ali Gharib and Jim Lobe, all promised a more moderate and stabilizing Iranian regime.

Clearly the opposite has happened if the U.S. government has to update warnings about its citizens being kidnapped by the Iranian government and then warning that it can do little to help you out if you are taken hostage.

Top that level of aggressive militancy with new announcements by the Iranian regime of is newly grown military muscle which it puts on display with the glee of a child showing off a new bicycle.

The regime released images of its first domestically built long-range missile defense system on Sunday, a project started when the country was under international sanctions.

Images on multiple state news agencies showed President Hassan Rouhani and Minister of Defense Hossein Dehghan standing in front of the new Bavar 373 missile defense system, according to France 24 News.

The system was designed to intercept cruise missiles, drones, combat aircraft and ballistic missiles, according to earlier statements by Dehghan. He claimed that Iran’s missile range capabilities have been expanded by two to three times across its arsenal. The upgrades now give Iran’s current stock of cruise missiles the ability to hit targets 62 miles off its coast, easily putting ships traveling through the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz at risk.

Rouhani said in a televised speech on Sunday that Iran’s military budget had more than doubled compared with last year.

“If we are able to discuss with world powers around the negotiating table, it is because of our national strength” he said.

Rouhani also unveiled the first Iranian-made turbo-jet engine on Sunday, saying it was capable of flight at 50,000 feet.

“The Islamic republic is one of eight countries in the world who have mastered the technology to build these engines,” Rouhani said.

Dehghan added that Iran was now looking to develop seaborne cruise missiles capable of supersonic speed.

The new missile was developed as a response to the suspension of delivery of a Russian-made S-300 missile system because of earlier sanctions, but with those sanctions lifted because of the nuclear agreement, Russia completed delivery of the advanced weapons system this year.

Dehghan also boasted on regime television that the regime would also negotiate with Russia to acquire its sophisticated Sukhoi fighter and attack aircraft to bring its air force capability for long-range force projection and air combat against the more sophisticated air forces of regional rivals such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

Iran has also discussed with Russia the production licensing of the Russian T-90 tank inside Iran. The focus of the Iranian regime is on acquiring the capability and technology to produce the systems in-country rather than depending on the mood of the Kremlin to sell Iran weapons.

The world should be aware now that the Iranian regime’s intentions are anything but peaceful and moderate.

By Michael Tomlinson