Moderate Mullahs – Iran Lobby

Bad News for Iran Swamps Iran Lobby

January 9, 2019 by admin

While 2019 may be a fresh start for most people, the new year brings more of the same from the Iranian regime as the European Union announced it was imposing new sanctions on Iran’s intelligence ministry and two Iranian nationals for their likely involvement in two assassination plots in the Netherlands.

The charges were laid out in a letter from the Dutch government to parliament indicating the regime was suspected in at least four assassination and bomb lots throughout Europe over the past three years.

The Dutch indicated that investigations of two murders led to the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from the Netherlands last June as disclosed in the letter signed by Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry cited “strong indications that Iran was involved in the assassinations of two Dutch nationals of Iranian origin,” one in 2015 in the city of Almere and another in 2017 in The Hague.

European intelligence officials have also linked the Iranian government to unsuccessful plots in Denmark and France.

“In the Dutch government’s opinion, hostile acts of this kind flagrantly violate the sovereignty of the Netherlands and are unacceptable,” the letter said.

The sanctions involve freezing assets connected to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and two Iranian officials: Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, a senior Iranian intelligence official, and Assadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat arrested in connection with a plot to bomb a rally of an Iranian opposition group in Paris last year, according to the New York Times.

The unified front by the 28-member European Union was surprising given the vocal cheerleading the Iran lobby, particularly the National Iranian American Council, had been giving to the idea of an alternative payment system being set up by the EU to sidestep U.S. sanctions.

On Tuesday, ambassadors from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands visited the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran “to convey their serious concerns” about Iran’s behavior, according to the Dutch letter.

In response, the regime’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, did not deny the allegations, but accused European countries in a Twitter post of harboring dissidents from the Mujahedeen Khalq, (MEK), the group targeted in the Paris bomb plot and a long-time thorn in the side of the regime.

The growing gap between the publicly advocated idea of adhering to the Iran nuclear deal and the growing terrorist actions under direct control of the Iranian government may prove to be too large for the Iran lobby to overcome as even the staunchest advocates for staying in the nuclear deal such as Germany are pushing hard against the regime over these latest incidents.

Security analysts have said that Iran, under domestic and international pressure, appears to be stepping up its intelligence operations around the world and perhaps even making contingency plans in case of open conflict.

The actions by the regime fly in the face of the messaging the NIAC and other Iran lobby supporters have long advocated of an Iranian government seeking new, more moderate relationships with the West.

These latest incidents and the resulting EU actions undercut virtually all of the past arguments made by NIAC officials such as Trita Parsi and Jamal Abdi, which may explain why the NIAC has gone virtually dark about the new EU sanctions and the revelations of Iranian machinations to carry out terrorist actions on European soil.

While the NIAC has been quick to leap to the defense of the Iranian regime in the past over other transgressions such as test firing of ballistic missiles or bombastic threats by regime leaders, it has become increasingly harder for the long-time regime support group to remain a vocal advocate for Iran as the regime’s actions grow more desperate under the internal pressures of domestic protests and external pressure from renewed sanctions.

What is probably most troubling for the Iran lobby is the direct sanction of an arm of the Iranian government in the form of the MOIS. In the past, the regime has resorted to more clandestine terrorist acts through proxies such as Hezbollah, the Houthi and even Shiite militias to take action against its enemies; often through its special Quds Forces arm of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

But this sanctioning of the MOIS hits directly at an official Iranian government agency and in a regime tightly controlled from top mullah Ali Khamenei on down through his puppet president Hassan Rouhani, there can be little doubt the bomb plots and assassinations were carried out either under the direct orders of Iranian leadership or with its tacit approval.

That places the Iran lobby in a difficult spot. Does it continue to defend the regime in the wake of such overwhelming evidence and risk losing what little credibility it has left or does it try to change channels and messages?

As evidenced by the NIAC website, it’s clear the latter was a more prudent choice as it sought to tackle earth-shattering issues such as the cancellation of user accounts on Slack.com of Iranian users.

What is even more problematic for the Iran lobby is that with the new incoming Congress, the appearance of an Iranian government running assassination plots of foreign soil is likely to counter any hope of persuading the new Democratic majority in the House to fight for lifting sanctions on Iran.

While the EU gives lip service to the idea that the nuclear deal and the bomb plots are separate issues, the incontrovertible truth is that they are not and that fact, more than anything else, is likely to sink any hopes by the NIAC of having any leverage on Capitol Hill.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Struggles with Chaos Engulfing Iranian Regime

August 27, 2018 by admin

The mullahs in Tehran continued to struggle with the fallout from re-imposed economic sanctions by the Trump administration with its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, as well as mounting pressure from demonstrations and protests enveloping the country as Iranians demand relief from a death spiral of an economy and national currency.

Internal dissent has festered into open chaos as the Iranian parliament acted to remove Hassan Rouhani’s beleaguered finance minister from office in a largely symbolic act to show frustrated Iranians the regime was doing something to fix their problems, although it’s doubtful any Iranian honestly believed that fiction.

The parliament backed the removal from office of Masoud Karbasian, minister of finance and economic affairs, by 137 votes to 121 against, state media said.

The sacking was the latest in a continuing shakeup of top economic personnel. In early August Iranian lawmakers voted out the minister of labor and last month Rouhani replaced the head of the central bank.

“(America’s) focus is on a psychological war against Iran and its business partners,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday, according to the Tasnim news agency.

Zarif’s statement smacks of the desperation the regime is feeling as it tries for any rhetorical volley in an effort to find anything that might stick on the Trump administration in terms of effective messaging.

The fact there has been a wholesale pullout of foreign firms from contracts in Iran such as Total, Peugeot and other leading names demonstrates just how ineffective the regime has been in the face of potential secondary economic sanctions from the U.S. that could punish anyone doing business with Iran.

One of the key requirements by the Trump administration was for the Iranian regime to rein in its support of the Assad regime and stop involving itself militarily in Syria, but the Iranian regime’s top defense official was in Damascus this weekend meeting with Bashar al-Assad and pledged to continue supporting the regime.

Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami said that Iran would help expand Syria’s military arsenal.

“The Islamic Republic has high capabilities in the area of defense and can help Syria in expanding their military equipment,” he said, according to ISNA.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said last week that Iran should remove its forces from Syria.

Senior Iranian officials have said their military presence in Syria is at the invitation of the Assad government and they have no immediate plans to withdraw.

More than 1,000 Iranians, including senior members of the Revolutionary Guards, have been killed in Syria since 2012.

The Guards initially kept quiet about their role in the Syria conflict. But in recent years, as casualties have mounted, they have been more outspoken about their engagement, framing it as an existential struggle against the Sunni Muslim fighters of Islamic State.

In reality, Iranian intervention in Syria was vital in order to preserve one of the very few allies the Iranian regime has from being deposed as part of the democracy movement protests sweeping across the Middle East in 2010.

The end result of that military intervention was over half a million men, women and children killed and nearly five million refugees flooding into Europe as well as the rise of ISIS and years of terrorist attacks on Europe, Asia, the U.S. and Canada.

While there is much speculation about Rouhani’s future, the truth is that he is largely irrelevant since top mullah Ali Khamenei remains the firm head of the regime both spiritually and practically. Rouhani’s ultimate utility will be as a scapegoat to protect Khamenei and the other mullahs from the wrath of the Iranian people.

Parliament members have also called for the impeachment of the education and interior ministers, and others have said the industry and housing ministers should be impeached if Rouhani doesn’t shake up his economic team himself, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Iran’s economic outlook has darkened in recent months. Analysts at BMI Research in London project economic growth to slow to 1.8% this year, followed by a contraction of more than 4% next year.

Of course, the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, are trying to make the argument that Rouhani’s downfall would only leave the regime in the hands of hardliners, but that message misses the entire fact that since Rouhani’s election which was manipulated by Khamenei, the hardliners have never loosened their grip on power.

The Iran nuclear deal was solely designed to get Iran desperately needed cash to save its military intervention in Syria and allow it to rearm and rebuild its depleted military. The fact that Iran’s economy has tanked is a result of that diversion of much-needed capital from the Iranian people to the military.

It’s no wonder why protesting Iranians have chanted since last December to get out of Syria and stop supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The NIAC posted a roundup of news items in an effort to try and portray how Iran is slipping into the grip of hardliners because of the new economic sanctions, but the past three years prove how silly that idea is since the regime has flexed its military muscle throughout the Middle East while cracking down harshly on dissenters at home.

These are not the actions of a “moderate” government as the NIAC would have you believe. What we may be seeing those are the desperate thrashings of a regime being crushed from all sides.

President Trump Warns Rouhani as Pompeo Assails Mullahs

July 23, 2018 by admin

President Trump Warns Rouhani as Pompeo Assails Mullahs

This weekend President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as the U.S. bluntly warned the Iranian regime against any further transgressions against the U.S.

It started with Pompeo addressing a gathering of Iranian-American leaders at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in which he launched a blistering attack aimed at Iran’s religious and military leaders; likening them to the Mafia.

“The level of corruption and wealth among regime leaders shows that Iran is run by something that resembles the Mafia more than a government,” Pompeo said.

Pompeo’s hardline speech comes just three weeks before the first round of banking sanctions suspended under the Iran nuclear deal is re-imposed after President Trump withdrew from the landmark agreement in May. Bigger sanctions coming in November are aimed at cutting off virtually all Iran’s oil market, according to the Washington Post.

Pompeo’s speech delved deeper into U.S. demands that the Iranian regime stop repressing dissidents and religious minorities, as well as halt its support of militant and terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.

He also said the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors was going to attempt and circumvent Internet censorship in Iran by creating a 24-hour Farsi channel for television, radio, digital and social media formats, “so that ordinary Iranians inside Iran and around the globe will know that America stands with them.”

Pompeo’s speech fully realizes the administration’s growing strategy for Iran in which it will make its appeals directly to the Iranian people to propel peaceful, democratic regime change; a policy long advocated by Iranian dissidents, including the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Pompeo’s speech focused on the rampant corruption within the regime’s leadership which has been the target of mass protests by Iranians across the country since last December. He attacked what he called Iranian regime’s “hypocritical holy men,” saying the ruling elites have enriched themselves through corruption and called out officials by name who he said had plundered government coffers through embezzlement or by winning lucrative contracts.

He singled out “the billionaire general,” Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli; Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, the “Sultan of Sugar”; and Sadeq Ardeshir Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, whom he said had embezzled $300 million in public money.

“Call me crazy,” Pompeo said, “but I’m a little skeptical that a thieving thug under international sanctions is the right man to be Iran’s highest-ranking judicial official.”

He also attacked Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for presiding over a $95 billion “sludge fund” for the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In delivering this speech Pompeo finally closed the loopholes created by the Obama administration during negotiations on a nuclear deal which let the Iranian regime off the hook for human rights abuses, development of ballistic missiles and sponsorship of militias and terrorist groups in waging proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Following on Pompeo’s speech, the president himself took to Twitter in response to a speech by Iranian president Hassan Rouhani who warned that the U.S. risked the “mother of all wars” in a conflict with Iran. Rouhani warned against threatening the nation’s oil exports and called for improved relations with its neighbors, including arch-rival Saudi Arabia in what can only be considered a sign of the weakness of the regime in offering an opening to its rival.

In a Twitter post late Sunday, the president said, “To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”

The president left little doubt of his intentions in the face of Rouhani’s threat and reminded the Iranian regime that even a blustering speech for domestic political consumption was going to have potentially disastrous consequences for the regime.

Long gone are the days of kowtowing to the regime under the Obama administration where every aggressive act against the U.S. from launching ballistic missiles that could strikes U.S. bases to the funneling to explosives and arms to terrorist groups that killed U.S. service personnel to even taking U.S. sailors hostage was going to be tolerated anymore.

Rouhani and his overlord, Ali Khamenei, find themselves in a pickle as President Trump prepares to re-impose sanctions on Iran’s oil industry as its economy already is reeling from gross mismanagement. A key point for halting Iranian oil exports is through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Mr Trump! We are the honest men who have throughout history guaranteed the safety of this region’s waterways,” Rouhani said in his speech. “Do not play with the lion’s tail, it will bring regret.”

Rouhani’s claims were undercut by threats by regime officials to cut off commerce through Hormuz.

Iran would halt oil shipments through the strait if the U.S. stopped it from exporting, Esmail Kowsari, deputy commander of the Sarollah Revolutionary Guards base in Tehran, said earlier this month, according to the Young Journalists Club, which is affiliated with Iran’s national broadcaster.

But then again lying seems to be a perquisite for being part of the Iranian regime.

Iran Regime Teeters on the Brink of Change

July 11, 2018 by admin

A scene of Iranian protesters near Grand Bazar Tehran

Iranian protesters gather at Mobile market in Tehran on June 25, 2018.
Protesters in Tehran shouted slogans and threw rocks in the streets on June 25, before being dispersed by anti-riot policemen. / AFP PHOTO / ATTA KENAREATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

In it, Shakespeare’s tragic villain, the ugly hunchback Richard schemes to depose his brother from the throne of England and steal it for himself after slaying the child heirs—his nephews. He eventually meets his fate, dying at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

In many ways, Shakespeare’s classic mirrors the ascension of the mullahs in Tehran who stole the revolution in 1979 that deposed the Shah of Iran only to turn it into a tyrannical Islamic theocracy that has regularly imprisoned, abused, tortured and hanged its own people including men, women and children.

It is only fitting today we may be witnessing the third and final act for the Iranian regime as it is rocked with an ever-increasing tempo of mass protests that have swamped the country and put the mullahs and military allies in the Revolutionary Guard Corps on the defensive.

The popular protests started spontaneously last winter and were rooted in economic woes being experienced by ordinary Iranians, including much of the poor in the more remote provinces outside of Tehran including farmers, coal miners, and other workers.

Unlike the protests in the wake of the disputed presidential elections of 2009 which were largely centered in Tehran and were powered by middle class and educated Iranians, these protests have swollen to include broad cross-sections of Iranian society.

The most recent protests have engulfed the Grand Bazaar in Tehran and reflect the despair and frustration of Iranian business owners and merchants over the virtual free fall in the Rial against the dollar, which hit an all-time low of 90,000 Rial for a single U.S. dollar.

The financial fallout is so bad, the mullahs have sought to halt trading in dollars and banned the import of 1,300 foreign goods such as household appliances and consumer technology products.

Additionally, the decision by the Trump administration to not re-certify the Iran nuclear deal and effectively end it brought on the reinstatement of economic sanctions that has crippled the Iranian economy that feeds its military adventures in Syria and Yemen.

The Trump administration’s focus on stiffening those sanctions have resulted in a cascade of business deals being canceled culminating in a warning from the U.S. State Department that companies currently buying Iranian crude oil must completely cut those exports by November this year or face sanctions.

The administration does not expect to grant any waivers to companies that purchase Iranian oil or invest in its energy industry, a State Department official said, putting these companies in a precarious position should they choose to continue doing business with the Iranian regime.

Things have gotten so bad that a senior Revolutionary Guard Corps commander went on television to tell all Iranians they were duty-bound to help the regime overcome its economic problems.

“It is our duty to work in coordination and synergy to help the government and other branches overcome economic woes and foil enemy plots for an economic war and psychological warfare,” said Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a military adviser to top mullah Ali Khamenei.

The regime sought to blame the economic woes on outside forces such as the U.S., even though protestors such as those taking over the Grand Bazaar, have increasingly and loudly denounced the regime’s foreign military ventures such as the Syrian civil war which has drained the Islamic state’s coffers dry.

For Hassan Rouhani, the prospects look even bleaker as Khamenei weighs whether or not to sacrifice his puppet in order to satisfy calls for reform.

For Rouhani’s part, he dutifully sent France, Germany and Britain letters with a list of demands calling it the price that needs to be paid in order for Iran to stay in the nuclear deal in a Hail Mary effort to keep an economic lifeline open.

While the contents were not made public, we can easily assume Rouhani was demanding these countries keep their commitments for EU companies to continue fulfilling business deals, as well as continue buying Iranian oil. Without these lifelines, the collapse of the regime could be counted in months.

One example of those collapsing deals was the decision by French-Italian regional aircraft manufacturer ATR to halt delivery of its turboprop passenger aircraft Iran ordered in the wake of the nuclear deal.

IranAir, the regime’s national flag carrier, contracted to buy 20 planes from ATR and eight have been delivered with the remaining dozen now in limbo.

Large commercial manufacturers Boeing and Airbus also announced halts in delivering airliners ordered by the regime which has used its commercial air fleet, such as Mahan Air, to ferry troops, ammunition and weapons to Syria to help support the Assad regime during its bloody civil war.

Things have gotten so desperate for the regime that government spokesman, Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, called on diaspora Iranians to “bring their money to Iran” and urged all Iranians to invest their cash and gold into the economy.

Of course, he neglected to mention the practice of arrested and imprisoning dual-national Iranians coming back to visit relatives which increased dramatically following the nuclear deal.

The International Monetary Fund reported that a record amount of capital, $27 billion, was taken out of the country last year. Khamenei, in a sermon recently celebrating the end of Ramadan, called upon Iranians to stop taking leisure trips abroad, to make sure no more foreign exchange leaves Iran, according to the New York Times.

In comments following on his boss’, Rouhani promised his government would cut spending, reduce international travel and fly economy class to ease the burden on the public. He also said his government would import raw materials at affordable prices to help domestic manufacturers and ensure supply for Iranians.

Additionally, he urged ministries to issue government bonds to give people alternatives to the dollar and the euro for investing their assets.

“If anyone thinks the government will resign or step aside, or go, they are mistaken,” Rouhani said.

The clock is ticking on the Iranian regime and the mullahs.

Michael Tomlinson

Arrest of Nasrin Sotoudeh Shows Falsehoods of Iran Lobby

June 15, 2018 by admin

Arrest of Nasrin Sotoudeh Shows Falsehoods of Iran Lobby

Nasrin Sotoudeh is one of Iran’s most prominent human rights attorneys and has been a thorn in the side of the Iranian regime’s controlling mullahs by objecting to some of their most extreme laws and representing some high-profile protestors.

In a blatant act that can only be seen as a complete disregard for international opinion, the regime went ahead and arrested her at her home in Tehran where she was transferred to the notorious Evin prison according to her husband, Reza Khandan.

In an interview earlier today with Manoto News, a Persian language news channel broadcast from outside Iran, Reza Khandan also revealed that Nasrin Sotoudeh was told she was being arrested to serve a five-year prison sentence. However, neither he nor Nasrin Sotoudeh knew anything about this sentence.

“Nasrin Sotoudeh has dedicated her life to fighting for human rights in Iran. She has won international awards but has also paid a high price for her courage, spending three years in jail. Her arrest today is the latest example of the Iranian authorities’ vindictive attempts to stop her from carrying out her important work as a lawyer,” said Philip Luther, research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at ‎Amnesty International in a statement.

Amnesty International went on to note her groundbreaking work in challenging the regime’s recent change to the criminal code which denied the right of the accused to access to an independent lawyer of their own choice during the investigation of any charges the regime claimed were related to “national security.”

The net effect of which is to allow the regime to round up anyone and toss them in prison without representation in what amounts to arrest, sentencing and imprisonment all at once.

Sotoudeh is no stranger to the regime’s cruelty, having represented Narges Hosseini, who was prosecuted for peacefully protesting against compulsory veiling in Iran earlier this year. Since December 2017, dozens of women have been violently attacked and arrested for peacefully protesting against compulsory veiling according to Amnesty International.

In September 2010, Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “spreading propaganda against the system” and “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security” for her work as a lawyer, including defending countless cases of prisoners of conscience and juvenile offenders sentenced to death.

In 2012, she received the European Union’s highest human rights award, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and continued to work as a human rights lawyer even as the regime denied her repeated requests to represent political prisoners.

Predictably, the Iran lobby sought to frame her arrest as an outgrowth of President Trump’s decision to back out of the Iran nuclear deal which helped empower “hardliners” according to Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council.

“Lost in much of the discourse over the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and announcement of new sanctions and escalatory measures has been the impact these external actions may have on the political dynamics inside of Iran,” Parsi said.

But even Parsi couldn’t find much wiggle room in such a blatant attack by the regime on a prominent human rights activist, grudgingly admitting that “the blame, of course, lies with those actors inside Iran who are seizing on this opportunity to advance an agenda that is anathema to Iran’s human rights obligations and to the wishes of the Iranian people.”

That still hasn’t stopped others from essentially excusing the regime’s act by attempting to blame President Trump as Simon Tisdall did in the Guardian:

“Trump argued his action would force Iran to change its behavior for the better. Instead, conservative hardliners appear to be extending their grip on Iranian society as part of a renewed bid to undermine the moderate forces around Rouhani. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian citizen held since 2016, is another innocent victim of this struggle,” Tisdall writes.

It’s an absurd assertion since the practice of arresting, imprisoning and even hanging political prisoners and human rights activists have been going on long before President Trump even thought about running for the White House.

Tisdall and Parsi omit how after Hassan Rouhani was elected president in Iran and was lauded as a new “moderate,” the regime went on a binge of historic proportions in rounding up and arresting everyone from journalists and bloggers to ethnic and religious minorities to Youtubers and social media users in an effort to quell internal dissent during the negotiations with the Obama administration on a nuclear idea.

How ironic there was barely a whisper about Iran’s brutal human rights suppression then, but now Iran lobby supporters blast President Trump’s recent summit with North Korea in which human rights were also not brought up.

In February, Tehran police said that 29 women had been detained for posing in public without their headscarves in the previous weeks.

In a statement sent following the arrest, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Sotoudeh “is a human rights champion who should be applauded, not jailed”.

“Iran’s judiciary again has revealed to its citizens and the international community its disdain for and fear of people who seek to protect human rights,” Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW Middle East director said.

Indeed the move to arrest Sotoudeh is recognition by the mullahs in Tehran that the jig is up and trying to pretend to be a moderate Iran was not going to work anymore. If anything, Trump’s actions have finally ripped away the lie the Iran lobby has worked hard to maintain and revealed the awful truth about the Iranian regime.

Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Tries to Diminish Iran Protests

February 14, 2018 by admin

NIAC Tries to Diminish Iran Protests

The National Iranian American Council has a problem; well it has several problems. It has lost its influential position in the “echo chamber” created by the Obama administration. It has lost its currency with many mainstream news organizations as the Iranian regime it defends has clearly shown itself to be a staunch supporter of sectarian wars and terrorism.

It finds itself having to retool on the fly and recast itself as a loyal and faithful partner to the progressive wing of American politics in the hopes of finding continued relevancy in an era of conservative politics dominating the White House, Congress, and electorate.

Much of that more conservative view among Americans has been driven by unrelenting terrorist attacks inspired by Islamic extremism; much of it flowing from the Iranian regime. It was also helped by extensive coverage of Iran’s own appalling human rights record over the past two years in the face of a so-called moderate administration by Hassan Rouhani.

Now the NIAC is faced with the specter of a widespread series of grassroots protests ranging throughout Iran and based largely within the working classes and poor of Iran’s population. It is the type of revolt that fueled the revolution against the Shah before it was hijacked by the mullahs that turned Iran into a theocracy.

The protests in Iran have been largely fueled by deep distrust of the regime, backbreaking poor economic conditions, the perception of rampant government corruption and a rigged game that rewards the scions of the Revolutionary Guards and mullahs, but punishes everyone else with strict morality codes, ever-vigilant policing and ruthless religious courts.

So, the leaders of the NIAC, including Trita Parsi, are faced with having to defend an Iranian regime in the face of broad and deep protests from the Iranian people – many of whom communicate with American-based relatives that find the NIAC virtually silent and absent in advocating for their Iranian brethren.

What does the NIAC do then? It does what it has always done: try to confuse the public and media about the true nature of resistance to the Iranian regime.

In this case, it involved putting on a panel discussion in Washington, DC in the hopes of communicating that Iran was changing in response to the protests.

Among the panelists were notable advocates for the Iran nuclear deal and noted apologists for the Iranian regime.

“Public dialogue with the (Iranian) state occurs through protest and those protests force changes to come about,” said Sanam Anderlini, Executive Director and co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network. “Each time there are protests, the regime gives some space and the public moves along, and there is an accommodation” that pushes the country in a more progressive direction.

It is one of the more inane comments said in relation to the political reality in Iran since the Iranian regime has never responded to public protest with a push towards a “more progressive direction.”

In fact, past history clearly demonstrates the regime’s willingness to use brutal force and murder to suppress protest. It happened in the wake of the 2009 mass demonstrates over a presidential election widely considered stolen in favor of re-electing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This most recent rounds of protests around the country have been suppressed by police and IRGC plain clothes and resulted in scores of deaths and arrests of nearly 8,000 men and women, 12 of which are known to have been slain under torture, which the government claims have been cases of suicide.

By the regime’s own admission, fewer than a thousand of those arrested have so far been released weeks later.

Another panelist, a research associate at the Watson Institute at Brown University, pushed the other favorite theory of the Iran lobby which was that these protests were in fact not products of discontent by ordinary Iranians, but were instead fomented by “hardliners” opposed to Rouhani’s “moderate” policies.

She again also emphasized the lack of sanctions relief by the U.S. as a major reason why the regime’s economy has sputtered and spurred protests. She, of course, neglected to mention the diversion of billions in new funds resulting from the lifting of sanctions from the nuclear that was instead used on building a ballistic missile program and funding wars in Syria and Yemen rather than boosting the economy.

In another Iran lobby message, she squarely lays blame on President Donald Trump as if the president was personally cooking the books in Tehran.

Predictably, the NIAC’s Reza Marashi weighed in by comparing the Trump administration to the Obama administration as if he was mourning a long-lost lover.

The panelist from Brown University’s biggest lie was describing the political response in Iran to the protests as being markedly different than previous major demonstrations.

“Unlike the 2009 protests, in which the political establishment eventually decided they should be suppressed, in this protest almost all factions have said publicly ‘we should let the people protest and let the people air their grievances’ because no one wanted to be seen as suppressing their base,” she claimed.

It is a bald-faced distortion given the ample video and photographic evidence of regime police and IRGC plainclothes wading into crowds throughout Iran in running street battles as chants of death to Rouhani and top mullah Ali Khamenei rang out.

It is amazing that the NIAC can continue to deny the evidence that every Iranian-American knows now which is that Iran is not on a course to moderation, but steering straight towards a reckoning with its own people.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Budget Proposal Hides True Costs of Extremism

December 14, 2017 by admin

Iran Budget Proposal Hides True Costs of Extremism

Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani presented a $337 billion draft budget to parliament and earmarked roughly $100 billion of it for so-called “public service programs” ostensibly to create jobs, address a banking crisis and introduce a new social security program.

In his televised remarks, Rouhani said banks need to “withdraw from business dealings” and return to traditional lending services amidst a crisis in the sector drowning in bad loans and a shadow economy of money lenders forced to operate on the margins by government-controlled economy that has funneled badly needed capital away from the private sector to fund a variety of military programs and wars.

The proposed budget comes with a raft of significant tax hikes and increases in fees and duties including steeper car registration fees and departure taxes sure to hit ordinary Iranians even harder.

While Rouhani’s budget grew by six percent over last year’s budget, inflation has been running at almost 10 percent, wiping out the effects of any budget growth in terms of real services delivered to the Iranian people.

Rouhani added in his speech the customary and desultory promises to eliminate poverty, create social justice and push for full employment; all promises that have about as much chance of being fulfilled by the mullahs as the Cleveland Browns of making the Super Bowl this year.

Rouhani had promised the Iranian people significant economic relief in the wake of the Iranian nuclear deal two years ago and the lifting of economic sanctions. While the International Monetary Fund did report that Iranian gross domestic product growing a robust 12.5 percent last year, almost all of that growth was attributed to expanding oil exports with the lifting of sanctions.

The Iranian consumer economy remained stagnant and in areas such as agriculture, slid backwards. The IMF predicts growth to be a sluggish 3.5 percent this year now that oil exports have stabilized.

When coupled with Iran’s chrfgonic high unemployment (officially pegged at 12.5 percent, but likely higher), the economic outlook remains bleak for Iranian families.

Much of the blame lies squarely with Rouhani and his fellow mullahs who preside over an economy riddled with deep corruption, nepotism and cronyism. They also divert massive amounts of capital to military programs such as the crash development of ballistic missiles and foreign wars such as the Syrian civil war and Houthi uprising in Yemen.

Rouhani has frequently bragged of a whopping 145 percent increase in Iran’s military budget; largely resulting from the billions of dollars supplied by the Obama administration in payments for Iranian assets previously frozen during sanctions, including the now-infamous visual of pallets of cash being loaded onto a jetliner in exchange for a release of American hostages.

There is a certain irony in all of this since under the previous rule of the Shah, steep increases in military spending led to wide discontent among Iranians over the perceived lack of support for the consumer economy. A similar scenario is now developing under the mullahs in Tehran.

That heavy investment in military campaigns has paid dividends for the mullahs insomuch as it has helped drive conquests in several countries to help fulfill their ambitions of building an Shiite arc of influence stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Indian Ocean in a radical Islamic version of the old Soviet Warsaw Pact.

For top mullah Ali Khamenei it fulfills a vision he has long nurtured to wipe out Iranian regime’s enemies and secure a ring of protection from any potential attacks. For Khamenei, the preservation of his extremist ideology and the power death grip he maintains seems to be his most driving passion.

Key to fulfilling those ambitions has been his conscious choice to make the Iranian people continue enduring a war economy and funnel massive hoards of cash to developing a network of proxies to fight his wars and consolidate his gains.

This includes Hezbollah terror groups in Lebanon who served as cannon fodder in Syria, as well as Shiite militias in Iraq, recruited Afghan mercenaries and the Houthis that toppled the government in Yemen and now mount raids along the Saudi Arabian border.

All of which makes Rouhani’s comments that Iran stood ready to restore ties with Saudi Arabia if it stopped bombing in Yemen all the more fanciful and mostly propaganda fodder.

This also shows the duplicity of comments made by regime’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an editorial in the New York Times in which he urged Europe to continue working with Iran. He emphasized that the regime’s military capabilities were “entirely defensive” in nature.

It’s an absurd comment when seen in the context of Iran’s military actions are all occurring outside of its own borders! Zarif would be hard-pressed to prove that diving in the Syrian civil war and contributing to the deaths of half a million men, women and children is a “defensive” act.

In another disingenuous statement, Zarif defends Iran’s missile program by claiming it has only focused on precision targeting and not range as an example of developing conventional warheads and not nuclear ones.

He of course neglects the steady progress Iranian regime has made in building and test firing larger missiles with heavier payloads and longer ranges. The most recent missile tests earlier this summer showed off ranges that placed much of Europe, Asia and Africa within striking distance of Iran.

He goes on to claim credit for ending the bloodshed in Syria, but neglects to mention that Iranian regime’s intervention in the first place is what widened the war.

Overall, his editorial is a particularly adept example of fake news publishing.

Alongside Rouhani’s budget proposal, it’s no wonder the true costs of Iranian regime’s extremism remain hidden.

Michael Tomlinson

NIAC Gets It Wrong About President Trump and Hassan Rouhani Again

October 26, 2017 by admin

NIAC Gets It Wrong About President Trump and Hassan Rouhani Again

The National Iranian American Council has become one of the most vocal and ardent purveyors of shameless cheerleading for the mullahs in Tehran and has established itself with a solid track record of making statements and promises about future behavior from the Iranian regime only to see virtually all of them proven false over time.

Yet, the NIAC’s continued churning of so-called “fake news” still finds a home in some publications and blogs—albeit a shrinking circle from the heady heydays enjoyed during the Obama administration’s policy of appeasing the regime.

The latest missive comes from Reza Marashi, NIAC’s research director, who has built an uncanny ability to publish “researched” editorials that are consistently wrong, in Al-Monitor in which he makes the claim that recent actions by President Donald Trump against Iran may have helped Hassan Rouhani.

Marashi bases his claim that President Trump’s decision not to recertify Iran in compliance with the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and sending the matter for Congressional review, has helped fortify Rouhani’s troubled administration because it has rallied Iranian stakeholders against the U.S.

Let’s be very clear on a very important point Marashi ignores: There are no factions within the Iranian regime’s government that are even remotely favorably disposed towards the U.S.

This is an Islamic theological state run by clerics that mandate weekly “Death to America” observances, openly and actively fund terrorist groups that target and kill American service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, have taken American citizens hostage and held them for ransom, and have built a ballistic missile capability designed to deliver nuclear payloads as far away as Europe and Asia.

Marashi also claims that Rouhani and top mullah Ali Khamenei are united in a strategic vision to maintain a unified policy towards the U.S. regardless of whatever the outcome of nuclear deal negotiations.

On this point, he is partially correct since Rouhani is the handpicked front man for Khamenei to offer the West a kinder, gentler face of the regime that also tweets in order to build a perception that Iran was a moderate state when in fact it was plotting to massively expand its military operations in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

“Whatever their differences, Khamenei needs Rouhani and his technocrats to repair the damage wrought by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Rouhani needs Khamenei to provide political protection while he does so,” Marashi writes.

It’s a silly statement to make, especially for someone who purports to be a “research director” since it doesn’t take much research to know that the damage Khamenei needed for Rouhani to repair was an Iranian economy crippled by sanctions aimed at its secret nuclear program and the enormous drain on its treasury by bankrolling the Assad regime’s desperate war to hold onto power in Syria.

Marashi makes it sound that Rouhani is merely trying to rebuild an economy hurt by the mismanagement of the Ahmadinejad administration, when in fact Khamenei was desperate to gain an injection of billions of dollars in fresh capital to stave off a total collapse of the economy and consequently the Islamic state.

“Since entering office four years ago, Rouhani has maintained arguably the most diverse and inclusive political coalition in the 38-year history of the Islamic Republic,” Marashi adds.

This is one of the more astounding claims he makes since the Iranian regime allows no dissident political activities, and openly and aggressively rounds up dissenting voices and tosses them into prison, as noted by the harsh crackdown of journalists, artists, students and others by the Rouhani administration prior to parliamentary elections.

The contention Marashi makes that Rouhani was somehow in jeopardy has never been real in fact since Rouhani serves only at the pleasure of Khamenei and it is up to the supreme leader to decide when his usefulness is at an end. For as long as Khamenei perceives Rouhani can maintain the fiction of a more moderate Iran then Rouhani and his allies in the Iran lobby will continue to push their false messages.

The strategy Rouhani employs that Marashi defends in outlining support for the JCPOA had little to do with nuclear power and more with lifting economic sanctions to save the regime with a fresh infusion of capital.

The fact that the Obama administration were eager to do a deal with little consequences attached to its support for terrorism, abysmal human rights and the build out of ballistic missiles only served to reinforce the perception among the mullahs that Rouhani was useful in keeping up the perception that Iran was genuinely interested in becoming a “moderate” player when in fact it was only seeking massive piles of cash.

Marashi does not credit the Obama administration’s unsavory willingness to kowtow to the regime and even arrange for a midnight flight of pallets stuffed with cash sent to Tehran on the eve of the agreement as evidence not of Rouhani’s acumen, but rather American miscalculation that has been borne out over the last two years.

What Rouhani “sold” to Khamenei was a vision that Iran could have its cake and eat it too by negotiating a nuclear agreement that never eliminated its nuclear development—only delayed it—and freed it to move aggressively forward with its missile program to someday threaten its neighbors with ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads,

The only kernel of truth Marashi does offer is the idea that Iranians would not blame Rouhani for the nuclear agreement’s failure. The Iranian people would certainly not blame him since they live under a repressive government that punishes contrary thinking with stiff prison sentences and quick trips to the gallows mandated by clerical courts.

Marashi also failed to note how under Rouhani, Iran’s pace of public executions set a record-breaking pace pushing it far beyond almost every nation on Earth. It’s no wonder no Iranian would openly blame Rouhani since to do so almost guarantees a prison sentence.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Efforts to Control Middle East Gets Pushback

July 10, 2017 by admin

Iran Regime Efforts to Control Middle East Gets Pushback

The mullahs in Tehran have never made a secret of their lust for controlling the Middle East, especially the countries surrounding Iran. Part of the reasoning has been to create a buffer protecting the Islamic state from its perceived enemies, including regional rival Saudi Arabia, but it also was designed to provide the mullahs with a steady supply of proxies that could be used as cannon fodder for conflicts.

The Iranian regime, through its Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Forces, have historically relied on third parties to do its dirty work be it Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen or Afghan mercenaries in Syria.

The willingness of the Iranian regime to use these proxies demonstrates its callous disregard for human life and take no prisoners attitude in achieving its goals. It also ably demonstrates why any agreement reached with the mullahs is essentially worthless since they will always seek to circumvent any accord should it suit their purposes.

Which is why any effort to resolve the civil war in Syria must first and foremost force the expulsion of Iranian forces from that war-torn country. Similarly, as ISIS is defeated in Iraq with the liberation of Mosul, a similar kicking out of Iranian forces would be a positive first step to returning that beleaguered country to normality.

None of this will be easy though since the mullahs are loath to give up their hard-fought gains in securing a so-called “land bridge” linking Tehran to Damascus through Baghdad, which fulfills the long sought-after vision of Shia control from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

The strategic vision of the Iranian regime includes the establishment of permanent naval bases along the Syrian and Yemen coastlines, giving its navy unfettered access to the crowded international shipping lanes in the Mediterranean and through the Persian Gulf and Suze Canal.

The mullahs see themselves being able to keep a loaded pistol pointed at the economic lifeblood of Europe through its use of its military and navy. It also explains why Iran has invested so heavily and fought hard to protect its ballistic missile program from the threat of economic sanctions.

Just as the control of territory and sea lanes are crucial to the mullahs’ vision of maintaining control, its ballistic missile fleet is the hammer necessary to enforce that control by placing Eastern Europe, North Africa and Southeast Asia under threat of attack.

The firing of ballistic missiles for the first time at purported ISIS targets in Syria was less about actually striking at ISIS forces, as much as it was a practical demonstration and testing of its missiles by Iran.

In many ways, the opening salvos are eerily similar to Nazi Germany’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, not to support the rule of General Francisco Franco in as much the ability to test new German tactics and weapons that would later be employed in the blitzkrieg of World War II.

The civil war was also notable for the bombing of Guernica in 1937 in which Germany tested out new warplanes in killing hundreds of civilians; a prelude to the mass slaughters to follow. Famed artist Pablo Picasso immortalized the attack with his eponymous painting, but if he were alive today, he could have painted similar works memorializing places such as Mosul, Raqqa or Ramadi where Iranian-backed forces have left swathes of destruction that made Guernica look paltry by comparison.

But all of these efforts by the Iranian regime to exert its control over its neighbors may have finally forced pushback among many of these former perceived allies of Iran.

In Pakistan, tensions have sharply escalated with a serious of border conflicts that got another dose of violence in the form of rocket attacks by Iranian border guards aimed at Pakistan.

“The incident took place in the wee hours of Saturday,” Panjgur’s Deputy Commissioner Jabbar Baloch told The Nation. He confirmed no loss of life or property was caused by the Iranian shelling. The rockets exploded with powerful bang after landing in the area, prompting fear and panic among the residents.

The adjacent areas of Panjgur and Chagai close to Pak-Iran border have repeatedly witnessed rocket shells fired by the Iranian security forces followed by strong protest from the Pakistani side. The regular violation of Pakistani territory by Iranian guards and allegations of cross-border infiltration by Pakistani side has strained ties between the two neighboring countries which share a 900-km long porous border.

This was followed by news from Iraq of threats being made by one of the largest tribes in Karbala against Iranian forces after one of its prominent leaders, Sheikh Nema Hadi al-Issawi, was killed in the Iranian city of Mashhad.

In order to calm the tribe, Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of Al- Badr militia and who is close to the Iranian regime and the commander of Al- Quds Force, asked to attend the funeral of the killed Sheikh but the al-Issa tribe refused the request and prevented Amiri from entering its houses in Karbala, according to Al-Arabiya.

This comes after massed protests in southern Afghanistan by locals denouncing Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani over disparaging comments he made in criticizing Afghan water management and dam projects, according to the Voice of America.

Hundreds of demonstrators peacefully marched through the streets of Lashkargah, capital of Helmand province near the Iranian border. They chanted, “Death to Hassan Rouhani” and “Death to enemies of Afghanistan.”

These actions don’t even include the active losses being suffered by Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Yemen at the hands of U.S. and Saudi-backed forces.

All of which points to a turning of fortune for the mullahs that may see their hopes for a Shiite sphere of influence go up like puffs of smoke.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Plays With Lives of Innocent Pawns

April 4, 2017 by admin

Iran Regime Plays With Lives of Innocent Pawns

One of the hallmarks of the Iranian regime has been its callous disregard for the value of human life. It is a characteristic that pervades much of the regime’s activities from its foreign policy to judicial process to economy.

If one examines history, totalitarian and fascist governments have often worked diligently to reduce the value of an individual life in favor of the collective good as a means of exerting greater control over the people.

Iran is no different as the mullahs figured out that the pathway to ironclad control in the wake of the revolution was to ensure that dissenters could be arrested, beaten, imprisoned, exiled and even killed with virtual impunity.

That philosophy has been at the center ever since and to this day has manifested itself in policies that have caused pain and suffering across the entire Middle East.

In foreign policy, the Iranian regime has pursued conflicts that have resulted in some of the worst humanitarian disasters since the end of World War II, namely the Syrian civil war which has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over four million people.

The mullahs’ decision to enter that war—after the Assad regime was found to be using chemical weapons on its own people—and save Assad sparked a sectarian conflict that now rages across Iraq, Yemen and has sparked now into the Gulf States.

The fact that Iranian regime is so willing to start conflicts, especially through the use of proxies such as terror groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Now come increasingly more worrisome reports over evidence that the Iranian regime may be behind terror activities in Bahrain including the operation of a secret bomb factory.

According to the Washington Post, the men who built the secret bomb factory had been clever — suspiciously so, Bahraini investigators thought, for a gang known mostly for lobbing Molotov cocktails at police. The underground complex had been hewed, foot by foot, beneath the floor of a suburban villa, with no visible traces at street level and only a single entrance, hidden behind a kitchen cabinet.

But the real surprises lay inside. In one room, police found $20,000 lathes and hydraulic presses for making armor-piercing projectiles capable of slicing through a tank. Another held box upon box of the military explosive C-4, all of foreign origin, in quantities that could sink a battleship the Post said.

“Most of these items have never been seen in Bahrain,” the country’s investigators said in a confidential technical assessment provided to U.S. and European officials this past fall that offered new detail on the arsenals seized in the villa and in similar raids that have occurred sporadically over nearly three years. In sheer firepower, the report said, the caches were both a “game-changer” and — matched against lightly armed police — “overkill.”

The report, a copy of which was shown to The Washington Post, partly explains the growing unease among some Western intelligence officials over tiny Bahrain, a stalwart U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf and home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Six years after the start of a peaceful Shiite protest movement against the country’s Sunni-led government, U.S. and European analysts now see an increasingly grave threat emerging on the margins of the uprising: heavily armed militant cells supplied and funded, officials say, by Iran.

That disturbing revelation shows that the mullahs’ decision to widen conflict in the region and continue pursuing their vision of a greater sphere of Shia influence; contrary to all the protestations and messaging of the Iran lobby, is a core cause of most of the turmoil in the Middle East.

Even the practice of snatching hostages has become a standard practice for the mullahs from the very beginning of the revolution with the American embassy takeover to the recent practice of arresting and imprisoning dual-national citizens based on the despicable principle that Iran does not recognize dual citizenship.

For the mullahs, the value of hostages has been unfortunately proven true by the rash and unwise decision by the Obama administration to effectively ransom American hostages as part of the nuclear agreement negotiations. That only emboldened the mullahs to continue the practice.

Several of their current prisoners include a British mother and charity aid worker, a missing American former FBI agent, two businessmen and an American college student who was recently released on bail.

The American of Iranian descent was arrested in Iran in July and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment on dubious charges has been released on bail after he went on a hunger strike, rights activists reported on Monday, according to the New York Times.

The American, Robin Shahini was released about two weeks ago, just before the start of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, according to news by rights groups.

It was unclear whether Shahini’s release was temporary or if he could leave the country, Shahini had been required to post bail of 2 billion rials — about $60,000 — and that he could be sent back to prison if his conviction were affirmed on appeal.

Shahini, a graduate student at San Diego State University, is one of at least four Americans of Iranian descent who have been imprisoned in Iran since the country negotiated a nuclear agreement with major powers including the United States in 2015.

Many rights activists regard the imprisonments as a warning to Americans of Iranian descent not to view the nuclear agreement as a sign of better relations between the United States and Iran.

Other Americans held in Iran include Siamak and Baquer Namazi, a father and son who were sentenced in October to 10 years’ imprisonment, as well as Karan Vafadari, an art gallery owner, and his wife, Afarin Niasari, an Iranian with permanent United States residency status. The precise nature of the charges against them are unclear.

Iranian regime considers imprisoned Iranian-Americans to be citizens of Iran and does not afford them consular privileges ordinarily granted to foreign citizens.

For the mullahs, granting any individual basic human rights seems to be out of their plans.

Michael Tomlinson