Iran Lobby

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

All Iranian Dissident Groups are Targeted by the Iran Regime

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If there is one constant about the theocracy controlling Iran, it’s the fact they cannot tolerate dissent or protest of any kind.

The legitimacy of most governments on this planet tends towards the democratic side with free and open elections. Sometimes there’s a monarchy, but it’s a constitutional one restrained by a parliament. But there are a few countries out there that still adhere to the authoritarian model where elections are rigged, competing political parties are banned and membership or active participation in dissident activities can get you tossed in jail or worse, executed.

Iran happens to be one of the latter types of state. Ever since the mullahs stole the revolution toppling the shah and turned Iran into a medieval, sectarian state, they have zealously gone after any form of dissent and sought to stamp it out.

The history of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) is one example. It stands as the longest-running opposition group among the Iranian diaspora and has worked relentlessly to oppose the mullahs by revealing the depths of human rights violations within Iran, uncovering the secret nuclear program there, and smuggling out videos and reports of oppression and protests inside the Islamic state.

For all its efforts, the mullahs have made the MEK enemy number one and have sought to attack them physically with military strikes at MEK refugee camps in Iraq and a recent attempt to bomb an annual gathering in Paris by Iranian agents.

The regime has sought to nullify the MEK’s effectiveness politically by first getting it ironically labeled as a terrorist organization by the U.S. only to finally get itself removed by the Obama administration, and then it aimed its lobbying and PR operation at trying to vilify the resistance movement with various canards such as it lacks any support within Iran.

It would be hard to label anything coming from the Iranian lobbying machine as truthful since the mullahs have tried their hardest to kill, imprison or hang every MEK member they could get their hands on.

But the MEK is not the only opposition group getting targeted as the mullahs turned their attention to the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), an armed opposition group fighting for greater autonomy for Iran’s Kurdish community, with an attack on a base in northern Iraq, killing at least 11 people and wounding scores more according to Reuters.

The PDKI tweeted pictures and video of explosions, as well as of the wounded, at its headquarters in Koya, in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

“According to initial reports, 11 people were killed and between 20 and 30 wounded,” said Major General Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for Iraq’s Kurdish Peshmerga security forces.

Yawar said the area that had been attacked included a residential complex for the families of party members.

The attack represents the same pattern used by the Iranian regime to strike at opponents anywhere outside of its borders. It showed no compunction about assassinating MEK members in Iraq and Europe and certainly has no regard in striking at PDKI members in Iraq.

It further demonstrates that for all the talk of moderation voiced by Iran lobby members such as the National Iranian American Council, the Iranian regime is steadfastly committed to using violence to achieve its goals, even if it means regularly violating the territorial sovereignty of another country.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on Sunday urged the Iranian government to respect Iraq’s sovereignty following the attack. Iraq’s Foreign Ministry labeled Iran’s bombardment of the Kurdistan Region’s town of Koya as a violation of the country’s sovereignty.

This heightened focus on flexing its military muscle was showcased by top mullah Ali Khamenei who urged Iran’s armed forces this weekend to increase their power to “scare off” the enemy; presumably the U.S. His speech came before the attack on the PDKI to a graduation ceremony for Iranian regime’s army cadets.

State television also showed Khamenei praising the Iranian regime’s naval forces in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen, while speaking to their commander via video, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy conducted exercises this month to ensure its readiness to guarantee freedom of movement through the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea waterways amid escalating threats from Iran to disrupt shipping across important choke points.

The Iranian regime has threatened to halt exports through the Straits of Hormuz, a vital channel for Middle East oil, if it’s barred from shipping its crude through it, according to Bloomberg.

The laundry list of militancy from the regime ruling Iran doesn’t stop there as it announced the completion of a new facility to build advanced centrifuges to expand its uranium-enrichment capacity.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the facility at the Natanz nuclear plant would be completed within a month.

On Sunday, the official news agency IRNA quoted Salehi as saying: “(Ayatollah Khamenei) had ordered us to set up and complete a very advanced hall for the construction of modern centrifuges, and this hall has now been fully equipped and set up.”

The development represents one of the key flaws in the Iran nuclear deal which allowed Iran to develop and operate advanced centrifuges far superior to what it was using before and that with little effort could be made to operate in producing weapons grade nuclear materials.

The last indicator of just how unserious the Iran regime is about diplomacy came in remarks by Hassan Rouhani stating that the regime receives a constant stream of messages from the U.S. to restart diplomatic negotiations.

But Rouhani criticized the overtures and did not commit to starting any diplomatic dialogue; a far cry from the promises made by the NIAC that diplomacy was the only sure pathway to peace for the U.S. and Iran.

Laura Carnahan

Why Does the Iran Lobby Obsess About the MEK?

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Maryam Rajavi speaks at Free Iran Rally in Paris- july 2018

Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of Iran’s main opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran(NCRI), speaks during the Free Iran 2018 gathering in Paris-july 2018

In the scope of issues facing Iranian-Americans today related to their homeland, you would think the Iran lobby would have better things to do than publicly trash Iranian dissident and opposition groups on a near-daily basis.

The Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council and a variety of bloggers sympathetic to the Iranian regime, have recently stepped up the vitriol considering widening and near constant protests and demonstrations that have rocked the regime’s grip on power.

What is interesting is that almost all the groups making up the Iran lobby are using nearly identical language focused on trying to disprove the idea that the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq(MEK), one of the largest and oldest Iranian dissident groups, has any support within Iran.

For example, Nahal Toosi, a foreign affairs correspondent at POLITICO, writes in a piece about the Trump administration’s efforts to support regime change in Iran, that:

“One Iranian diaspora faction that has supported many Trump policies is the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a group with leftist roots that the U.S. previously listed as a terrorist outfit. But the MEK has few backers in Iran, even though it has major defenders among Trump’s aides and confidants. Among those who’ve spoken at MEK, events are Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton.”

Notably, she mentions that the NIAC is being excluded from a meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and members of the Iranian-American community at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California this weekend, but neglects to mention the NIAC’s deep ties to Iranian regime leaders.

Against the backdrop of hot national debate over the Russian government’s use of third-parties to infiltrate American organizations such as the National Rifle Association to affect U.S. policy, the lack of any investigation or focus on the NIAC’s efforts to do the same thing with the backing of the Iranian government is hypocritical to say the least.

Mahsa Rouhi, a research fellow with the nonproliferation and nuclear policy program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, similarly tries to belittle the MEK in a piece for Foreign Policy, writing “the MEK has no support base inside Iran; in fact, etc.”

But what both Toosi and Rouhi fail to mention are the significant contributions the MEK has made over the years in revealing the regime’s human rights abuses and uncovering its secret nuclear program; none of which could be accomplished without the support and help of Iranians living within Iran who smuggled out clandestine photos and video.

These are not the acts of a few lone dissenters, but rather a strong, clear and forceful expression of the willingness of Iranians to cooperate and help the MEK over the years even though the regime has worked obsessively hard at criminalizing any cooperation with the MEK punishable by imprisonment or even death.

It is hard to credit the Iran lobby with any factual data pointing to zero support within Iran for the MEK given its long history of organizing protests from large-scale mass demonstrations to small, individual acts of defiance such as hanging a banner praising dissident leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the acting president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, over a Tehran overpass to standing atop a box waving a hijab in defiance of morality codes.

Even top mullah Ali Khamenei has been forced to give several speeches recently to denounce the MEK as he recognizes the group’s growing influence on the protests rocking the country; at last count over 142 cities has experienced protests despite massive security crackdowns by the regime.

It’s noteworthy that the Iran lobby discounts the similarities between Iran and other despotic regimes such as North Korea, Cuba and even the old Soviet Union, in which compulsory voting often delivered election “mandates” for the government, but never reflected the true feelings of the population.

Similarly, Iran discounts any support for the MEK when it actively bans its participation in any elections and refuses to allow any of its members to run for elected office. It is doubtful that Toosi or Rouhi can even justify denying a group such as the MEK a chance at the polls to settle the question once and for all about who the Iranian people back to lead them into democracy and freedom.

Most disturbing and yet telling has been the recent arrests of an Iranian diplomat and other agents accused to attempting to plant a 500-gram bomb at an annual gathering of the MEK and other resistance groups outside of Paris last month.

The captured explosive was comprised of TATP, a favorite explosive for terrorists because it is easily prepared from readily available retail ingredients, such as hair bleach and nail polish remover. It is also able to evade detection because it is one of the few high explosives that do not contain nitrogen and can, therefore, pass undetected through traditional explosive detection scanners designed to detect nitrogenous explosives.

TATP has been used in bomb and suicide attacks and in improvised explosive devices, including the London bombings on 7 July 2005, where four suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured more than 700. It was one of the explosives used by the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid in his 2001 failed shoe bomb attempt and was used by the suicide bombers in the November 2015 Paris attacks, 2016 Brussels bombings, Manchester Arena bombing and June 2017 Brussels attack.

The arrest in Germany of Asadollah Assadi, a diplomat at the Iranian embassy in Vienna who – in his capacity as an operative for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) – provided the explosives, draws a clear line from the Iranian regime to efforts to destroy the MEK.

Had the terror plot been successful there is no telling what toll it would have taken on the gathering of roughly 100,000 supporters of the NCRI. In addition to Iranian expatriates and NCRI officials, the event included participation and speeches by hundreds of political dignitaries from throughout the world – including prominent American and European politicians representing multiple political parties.

It’s unfortunate the Iran lobby doesn’t talk about those potential lives lost.

 

Iranian Regime Proves Again It Cannot Accept Dissent

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Iranian Regime Proves Again It Cannot Accept Dissent

Iranian Regime Proves Again It Cannot Accept Dissent

Abraham Lincoln famously once said on the eve of the Civil War that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” His sentiment was a prophetic one that has applied not only to the U.S., but to virtually every other country on the planet.

Nation’s split along political, cultural, religious, economic or even tribal lines have always struggled to hold themselves together and in the end must find ways to reconcile their differences if they are to move forward as a nation.

In the modern era, we have seen an unprecedented number of historic conflicts resolve themselves and eventually chose a path of peace, reconciliation and partnership. Nations such as Northern Ireland bridged a religious war between Catholics and Protestants that dated back to the time of Henry the VIII.

South Africa installed Nelson Mandela as its president after confining him to prison for much of his adult life. Even Myanmar eventually ended its military dictatorship to hold free elections and install longtime dissident Aung San Suu Kyi as leader of the new democratically elected government.

Of course there are still some nations that have stubbornly refused to relinquish their grasp of power including North Korea and the Iranian regime, but if history teaches us anything, it is that these kinds of nations are not long for the future. Oppressed people rebel, governments turn to violence to keep the people in line and eventually world opinion shifts to force democratic change.

That process can decade years, even decades, but it eventually does happen, which makes the desperate acts of regimes such as Iran even more interesting as it continues to go after foes from 30 years ago like a dog that can’t let go of an old bone.

In the case of the Iranian regime, its nemesis—in the minds of the mullahs at least—has historically been the U.S. (as the Great Satan) and Iranian opposition and resistance groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

The mullahs’ distaste of the MEK runs so deep that membership or association with the organization within Iran often carries long prison terms or even a death sentence. The regime also diverts enormous resources to continually attack MEK members both in a literal sense and political one.

A large number of MEK members, refugees since the Islamic revolution in Iran, live in precarious conditions at a former U.S. military base in Iraq known as Camp Liberty. Their former home at Camp Ashraf was attacked regularly by Iranian agents and Iranian regime-backed Shiite militia and Iraqi military units, and their new location has also been subject of several deadly missile attacks.

The reason being, their presence in close proximity to the Iranian border a constant reminder that a substantial part of the Iranian population vocally and actively oppose the rule of the mullahs.

That presence is so noxious to the mullahs that they periodically engage in propaganda efforts to discredit these dissidents on a regular basis through the Iran lobby, bloggers and social media efforts designed to blame them for everything including spying, sabotage and maybe even global warming.

The more inane claims to come from the Iranian regime included a press release issued through regime-controlled media that claimed the dissident groups were comparable in brutality to ISIS.

The release attempted to draw links between MEK and ISIS through alleged links with Saudi Arabia, which is interesting because of the geopolitical realities the Iranian regime now finds itself.

Saudi Arabia has been a historic opponent to Iran, but since the Iranian regime’s support of Houthi rebels in leading a revolt in Yemen on the Saudi border, the Kingdom has sought to aggressively confront the regime’s expansion, including joining the international coalition against the Assad regime in Syria, which is heavily supported by Iran.

The fact that the Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic at a meeting of the Iranian opposition in Paris. His remarks coupled with recent diplomatic moves signal a new tougher policy toward Iran from Saudi Arabia. Though officially retired from government, no member of the royal family had ever so publicly embraced the Iranian opposition or called for regime change in Tehran.

Turki al-Faisal’s remarks on July 9 were followed on July 30 by a meeting between the head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group of Iranian dissidents, including the MEK, and the President of the Palestine Authority Mahmoud Abbas in Paris.

Turki al-Faisal’s remarks and the meetings by the MEK with such high level leaders of the Arab world sent the Iranian regime into a mouth-frothing frenzy, which continues to this day.

Iranian regime officials went so far as to accuse Abbas as working together with the CIA, an interesting claim since Iran had previously lauded Abbas and the plight of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel. Clearly, your utility to the Iranian regime only extends so far in the eyes of the mullahs.

The irony of the attacks the Iranian regime makes against MEK is that it accuses it of being a terrorist organization; a designation that was politically motivated at one point in getting it placed on the U.S. terror list, but corrected with its later removal; a distinction that the Iranian regime has failed to correct for itself.

In fact, the Iranian regime remains the world’s largest supporter of terrorism and continues on a path of proxy wars and harsh oppression at home. The mullahs understand the path of history for regimes like theirs, but they continue to struggle against it.

Eventually history will prove that Iran must succumb to regime change and reconciliation just as surely as Lincoln predicted.

By Michael Tomlinson

Kickoff of Campaigning in Iran Hides Suppression of Human Rights

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Kickoff of Campaigning in Iran Hides Suppression of Human Rights

Kickoff of Campaigning in Iran Hides Suppression of Human Rights

The campaign season has kicked off and we’re not talking about the U.S. presidential campaign. In Iran the official campaign period for parliamentary elections for slates of candidates that passed ideological muster.

For most people living in democracies, the Iranian regime’s election system can be nothing short of baffling. It’s a system that begins and ends with a focus on ideological and religious purity and adherence to the Islamic revolutionary ideals it was founded on.

It is also a peculiar system in which the process of reviewing, vetting and examining candidates takes seven weeks to process, but the actual campaign season lasts just seven days.

Of the 12,000 candidates who were submitted for consideration to run for parliamentary seats and positions on the Assembly of Experts, nearly half of them were eliminated from the ballot by the Guardian Council, which is comprised of six mullahs and six law experts all appointed directly and indirectly by top mullah Ali Khamenei. The mere fact that the regime is empowered to eliminate any candidate it deems unfit to run virtually pre-ordains any election outcome in the regime’s favor.

In the case of the Assembly of Experts, of the 800 that applied, only 161 – all men – were approved by the Guardian Council; a miniscule 20 percent.

It’s also noteworthy that in Iran, there are over 250 registered political parties, but virtually none of them represent any true opposition groups such as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a long-time resistance group which is outlawed and the regime vigorously pursues any of its members. The last two main reform-minded political parties were officially banned after the election fiasco of 2009 which resulted in massive protests that were violently put down.

Because of the complete control the regime has over political parties and the ballot, one would think that would be enough to guarantee any election, but in Iran, all ballots are also counted manually and subject to all kinds of shenanigans just in case any candidate who won a seat had a sudden change of heart and wished to oppose the mullahs.

The parliament often serves simply as a rubber stamp for Khamenei’s policies since it lacks the constitutional power to oppose foreign policy, military or other matters of state security. The approval of the nuclear deal is an example of that kind of blank check for Khamenei and his puppet, Hassan Rouhani.

According to Agence France-Presse, “the nuclear deal has partly ended Iran’s isolation but it has been followed by warnings from Khamenei that the military must guard against economic and cultural ‘infiltration’ by foreign actors who aim to damage the Islamic republic’s revolutionary principles.”

“Although parliamentarians backed Rouhani on the nuclear deal they did so less out of a sense of support for the president than because Khamenei made it clear he wanted sanctions lifted,” said AFP.

The closed nature of the regime electoral process allows the Iran lobby a certain flexibility to portray it in a more flattering light; not in the sense that’s at all fair, but rather in portraying certain candidates as “moderates” when in fact very few who pass vetting would be considered a true moderate, let alone a dissident reformist.

An example of that kind of PR spin control comes from the Iran lobby supporters such as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) which has consistently pushed the idea that the elections would shine a light on growing moderate forces as a result of the nuclear deal.

But the crackdown on dissidents in advance of the elections, wiping off the ballot any conceivable opposition candidates, including the elimination of virtually all women candidates have forced even reliably supportive blogs such as Lobelog.com to print some guest columns describing the elections as “fixed.”

“In order to pass through the punishing vetting process and stand for election, Iranian citizens must comply with a huge set of restrictive criteria, including holding a masters’ degree, adhering to Islam, showing loyalty to the Constitution and the Supreme Leader, and having a spotless political (and mostly spotless criminal) record,” wrote Small Media, a London-based digital advocacy group, in a guest column.

“As evidenced by all the available data, these upcoming elections have been very tightly managed by Iran’s conservative establishment, with the Guardian Council weeding out more than half of the country’s hopeful parliamentary candidates during the vetting process,” Small Media added in what was the closest thing to a criticism of the Iranian regime Lobelog.com has published in a long time.

The fact that there is no real opposition to the mullahs allowed and the discussion of moderate elements within regime politics is mainly for international media consumption, it’s pretty obvious why there is so much concern in various capitals over what the mullahs plan on doing after elections when they will wave a so-called “election mandate” to continue their extremist policies.

This is why the results of the upcoming U.S. elections will likely have far more impact on what happens to the regime since the Obama administration has made clear its desire to appease the mullahs at every turn.

The latest example was the recent announcement of an $8 billion agreement by the Iranian regime to buy advanced military hardware from Russia, including the co-production of Su-30 fighter jets which now appear to be in violation of United Nations sanctions imposed as part of the nuclear deal banning the developing of nuclear-capable delivery systems such as bombers and missiles.

“The U.N. resolution to endorse the flawed Iran nuclear deal actually gives the United States and other members of the Security Council the power to review and legally block arms sales by Russia or other actors to Iran,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), a critic of the nuclear accord, told the Washington Free Beacon. “But as Russia and Iran further escalate their use of indiscriminate military force in the Middle East, the administration appears wholly unwilling to use this power.”

According to the terms of the U.N. resolution governing the nuclear agreement, the U.S. and other Security Council members are provided with the power to approve “in advance on a case-by-case basis” most conventional arms sales to Iran.

The statute specifically applies to the “supply, sale, or transfer” to Iran of many conventional arms, including “battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles, or missile systems,” according to the resolution.

It seems that not only are regime elections fixed, but it seems UN sanctions are rigged as well.

By Michael Tomlinson