Iran Lobby

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

Trita Parsi Still Pushing Same Old Falsehoods

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Trita Parsi Still Pushing Same Old Falsehoods

Trita Parsi, that undeniable cheerleader for the Iranian regime, may have traded in his president’s title for the National Iranian American Council, but he is still a busy beaver in peddling the same, tired old tropes in defending the regime, while ignoring the worst offenses and actions by the mullahs.

It’s a neat trick worthy of a Las Vegas magic act if the cost to ordinary Iranians and their neighbors wasn’t so grievously high.

His latest missive in defense of the regime is a doozy where he tries to make the case that the coalition assembled by the Trump administration to re-impose economic sanctions is somehow falling apart.

How does Parsi come to this conclusion? He simply makes the assumption that the “anti-Iran” coalition is simply comprised of a triumvirate of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel. He then goes on to dutifully explain the various internal political pressures each are facing and how that will magically let Iran off the hook.

First, Parsi points to the controversy over the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and how it will undermine the Saudi monarchy and weaken it’s resolve in opposing Iran because of political pressure that will surely be brought to bear by an outraged Congress that will cut off arms sales to the Saudi kingdom.

“Even if the Republicans end up siding with Trump on continuing relations with Saudi Arabia on the current terms, the Democrats are unlikely to simply allow the relationship to return to business-as-usual,” Parsi writes.

“This is partly because the Saudi-U.S. relationship embodies everything progressives oppose: A cozy relationship with a brutal authoritarian ruler driven by the greed of arms manufacturers, all while the U.S. is complicit in a Saudi-engineered famine in Yemen and the House of Saud’s human rights and women’s rights abuses,” he adds.

Of course, Parsi conveniently leaves out a few important details, such as the Iranian regime was responsible for instigating the conflict in Yemen by inciting Houthi rebels and supplying them with arms and then escalating the conflict by shipping missiles there used to directly attack Saudi Arabia.

It’s also laughable for Parsi to attack “human rights and women’s rights abuses” in Saudi Arabia while ignoring the horrific acts committed to this day by the Iranian regime, including the taking of foreign citizens as hostages, including British and American subjects.

Let’s also not mention the ongoing domestic protests roiling Iran ranging from Iranian women rejecting medieval morals codes and proscriptions that limit their job prospects and stifle daily freedoms like riding a bicycle.

It’s noteworthy that throughout the perceived turmoil in Saudi-U.S. relations, there has never been any mention or serious policy discussion by anyone in Congress altering the kingdom’s role in countering Iranian aggression.

But let’s not let facts stand in the way of hyperbole from Parsi. The most dubious of Parsi’s claims is that the U.S. sanctions effort is failing and he bases that silly notion on the flimsy proof of a “stabilized” rial and ongoing sales of Iranian oil.

If Parsi considers a plunge in the value of the rial to an all-time low in the history of the Iranian regime “stabilized” then he may consider another stint in college to study economics a worthwhile investment for his career.

The Iranian rial has lost a whopping 70 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar since the current Iranian fiscal year began in March.

The use of artificial price freezes by the mullahs to prevent runaway inflation has failed as the costs of consumer goods has skyrocketed and the purchasing power of Iranian savings is beginning to approach beggar status.

The ballyhooed sales of oil Parsi touts are a drop in the bucket of Iran’s exports and more worrisome for the mullahs is the plunge in the price of oil hovering barely above $50 per barrel of benchmark crude. Iran pegs its budget forecasts on anticipating oil prices at nearly $70 per barrel; the difference is crushing the regime’s ability to invest in new capital expenses.

“Today, if you’re sitting in Tehran, you’re probably more confident in the future than if you’re in Riyadh or Washington. Trump has thrown everything he has at Iran, and it hasn’t worked. And once the European “Special Purpose Vehicle” — an alternative payment system that will enable companies to defy Trump’s sanctions — is up and running next year, the Trump’s Iran strategy may face yet another crippling blow,” Parsi said.

Unfortunately for Parsi, that special purpose vehicle is sputtering on life support after France, Germany and Denmark have all denounced Iran for staging attempted bombings and assassinations on their soil against Iranian dissidents and are now calling on stiff action against Tehran.

It may be hard for Parsi to understand, but you’re not likely to get help from someone when you use their house to plan a murder.

But then again, facts were never a strong suit for Trita Parsi.

Laura Carnahan

Iranian Regime Cut Off from SWIFT Banking Network

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Iranian Regime Cut Off from SWIFT Banking Network

The global financial messaging service that moves money around the world’s banking system, known as SWIFT, acted to cut off Iran’s Central Bank and other designated Iranian financial institutions from using its system.

The action by SWIFT is the latest economic blow to hit the mullahs in Tehran and is widely considered to be one of the most severe sanctions in the U.S. arsenal, next to secondary sanctions on any country or company attempting to buy Iranian oil.

It also continues the onslaught of sanctions resulting from the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal despite the best efforts by the Iran lobby to cry foul and warn this is a prelude to war between the U.S. and Iran.

Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told BBC Persian that Iran’s “leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat. They have to make a decision that they want to use their wealth to import medicine, and not use their wealth to fund” destabilizing activities in the region.”

His statement neatly encapsulates the main point of the Trump administration’s decision to re-impose economic sanctions. The choices the mullahs have made for Iran since doing the deal with the Obama administration have dictated this course of action.

Contrary to what Iran supporters such as the National Iranian American Council have continually maintained, the Iranian regime has consistently chosen to follow a path of sponsoring terrorism and initiating conflicts with its neighbors while diverting billions from its economy to bolstering its military; literally starving the Iranian people.

The mullahs’ actions – and no one else’s – have determined why sanctions were re-imposed. The Iran lobby has tried to always frame the decision as unilateral on the part of the Trump administration, but it has been Iran that has consistently been the provocateur and instigator of the worst episodes in the Middle East such as Syria’s civil war, Yemen’s insurgency and Iraq’s sectarian conflict.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) provides a network that enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and reliable environment.

SWIFT links more than 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories and without access to the system, the Iranian regime’s ability to move and transmit foreign currency is severely curtailed.

It was the cut off from SWIFT during earlier economic sanctions that were widely credited for helping bring Iran to the bargaining table in the first place.

Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the decision by SWIFT would reduce Iran’s room to maneuver around sanctions, but that it wasn’t meant to hurt the country’s people.

“The removal of Iran’s central bank from SWIFT along with other Iranian banks implicated in terrorism, nuclear and missile proliferation, as well human rights abuses will cut the regime’s access to the global financial system,” said Dubowitz. “This will reduce their options to barter trade or sanctions busting. Treasury however has left open humanitarian channels that the regime should use to deliver food, medicine and other goods to the Iranian people.”

The Iran lobby predictably discounted the effect of SWIFT removal in the past and its impact in the future.

“This will create massive problems for Iran, but I don’t think it will paralyze them,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. “I don’t think the end effect will be anywhere near the pressure Trump is talking about.”

What Parsi fails to mention is the unprecedented level of domestic discontent at home where the mullahs have been battling almost constant demonstrations, protests, strikes and other signs of disobedience from all sectors of Iranian society.

The range of protests include Iranian women objecting to moral codes that govern their dress, public conduct and access to jobs and education to truck drivers, small business owners, farmers and government workers who have decried widespread government corruption and an economy in a death spiral.

Supporters of the regime have tried to come up with all sorts of excuses and oddball theories as to why U.S. sanctions will not work.

Max Keiser, a stockbroker-turned-TV personality, told Russia Today that the move will help lessen global dependence on the U.S. dollar in favor of stockpiling gold.

“Iran needs to get smart and start hoarding Gold and Bitcoin if it wants to avoid the worst of the fallout,” Keiser told RT. “It is already, smartly, pursuing bilateral energy deals outside of the $USD, but it needs to add value to its currency with reserves of Gold and Bitcoin.”

Keiser should stick to broadcasting since his monetary theories are more appropriate for late night comedy shows.

Even as European leaders supportive of the Iranian regime have tried to cobble together an ad-hoc system of alternative payments for Iran-related business transactions, U.S. Treasury officials expressed little concern.

The U.S. expects to find other “mechanisms” with which it will work together with European countries to address Iran’s destabilizing activities, said Sigal Mandelker, a senior U.S. Treasury Department official.

When asked about the special purpose vehicle, Mandelker said that, “the bigger news in Europe is that companies are withdrawing from Iran in droves, we know that there’s been discussions about an SPV or other mechanisms to try to continue to invest in Iran, but companies themselves are getting out.”

While the Iran lobby may point to these token efforts as signs of a resistance to U.S. sanctions, the truth is that Asian and European companies are voting with their money as they pull out of Iran.

Iran Lobby Left Sputtering as US Sanctions Take Effect

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Iran Lobby Left Sputtering as US Sanctions Take Effect

The U.S. re-imposed economic sanctions on the Iranian regime on Monday targeting the money machine that fuels the mullahs’ religious dictatorship, including petroleum sales, shipping, banking, and insurance. The sanctions were carefully crafted to go at the heavy industries and financial pipelines funneling cash to the regime and funding its proxy wars and terrorist activities.

President Donald Trump trolled supporters of the Iranian regime with a tweet riffing on HBO’s show “Game of Thrones” with a movie-like poster featuring the iconic font reading “Sanctions Are Coming.”

The near-hysterical response from the Iran lobby over the weekend was predictable, but also revealing in that the regime supporters such as the National Iranian American Council were left with little to talk about except blasting the president’s tweet.

“Trump, his war cabinet and regional cheerleaders in Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman do not have the Iranian or American people’s best interests at heart,” said Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council. “Instead, they are blowing up an agreement that supports U.S. interests and the aspirations of the Iranian people while planting the seeds for a disastrous war.”

The NIAC added its own tweet trolling attempt by labeling the president a “White Walker,” but while it tried to score points on cheekiness the Iran lobby cheerleader was essentially powerless to stop the imposition of sanctions and the economic hammer blow it will rain down on the mullahs.

Not even the Iranian regime’s leader of its infamous Quds Forces, General Qasem Soleimani, could resist sending his own “Game of Thrones”-inspired post saying he would “Stand Against You” in referring to the president’s tweet.

“Things are escalating and the fact that it’s Soleimani tweeting is a sign that this is moving towards a military confrontation,” NIAC founder Trita Parsi said in response. “This was not a crisis. The only reason this is a crisis is because Trump pulled out of a fully functioning deal.”

Parsi trying to claim Soleimani is gearing up for war with the U.S. through a trolling tweet renders any intelligent reader as sophomoric sophistry at best and idiot banality at worse.

The sanctions are aimed at more than 700 Iranian individuals and entities and are hoped to put a stranglehold on the regime’s economy and force the regime into a new round of negotiations.

“Our ultimate aim is to compel Iran to permanently abandon its well-documented outlaw activities and behave as a normal country,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Friday in a conference call previewing the sanctions. The U.S. penalties will hit foreign countries and companies that do business with the targeted Iranian entities, including its national oil company, its banks, and its shipping industry.

Abdi claimed though the sanctions would hurt the Iranian people, a silly argument since it virtually ignores how the mullahs have destroyed not only Iran’s economy, but sacrificed its environment and plunged large portions of the Iranian population into near poverty status all on its own.

“Impoverishing ordinary Iranians will not hurt the regime or achieve any of America’s security interests, but it will set back the Iranian people’s aspirations for years to come,” Abdi said.

The messaging by the Iran lobby that the Iranian people are helpless in the face of the powerful regime also ignores an essential truth that has steadily build since last year which is the Iranian people are finally becoming emboldened and taking to the streets, bazaars and markets to voice their collective frustration, fury and displeasure at their religious overlords.

Abdi also ignores how the U.S. is also granted waivers exempting certain countries from select sanctions in order not to overtly harm the Iranian people, including lobbying more than a dozen countries doing trade with Iran – India, Japan, Greece and Turkey – to wean themselves off from Iranian oil in exchange for waivers.

Pompeo said eight jurisdictions, which he declined to name, were cooperating with the administration on its push to move to “zero” oil imports from Iran. Those entities will earn temporary exemptions when the sanctions go into effect on Sunday night, Pompeo said.

There will also be some exemptions for food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods, Pompeo said, further diminishing the Iran lobby’s feeble arguments.

But these are essentially the only talking points left to the Iran lobby. It tries to claim the U.S. is only interested in war and sanctions will hurt the Iranian people.

Absent from any of these points is any blame directed at the regime and the mullahs in Tehran for fueling the crisis in the first place by pushing forward with a massive military build-up including the launching of advanced ballistic missiles, coupled with devastating wars in Syria and Yemen.

Supporters such as the NIAC have also been silent on more recent attempts by the Iranian regime to carry out terrorist attacks and assassinations of Iranian dissidents in Europe as seen in a foiled bombing attempt outside of Paris over the summer and murder plan disrupted by Denmark.

Both incidents led France and Denmark to demand a harsh response to the Iranian regime; neither of which was answered by the Iran lobby.

The facts are activists such as Abdi and Parsi are left with little to say, except sputtering the same inane banalities as before and their collective effectiveness in stopping the sanctions train has been virtually non-existent.

With few options left, we might advise the NIAC to stop clogging up the airwaves and discussion boards and confine their tweets to speculation on who will come out on top at the end of the “Game of Thrones.”

Our money is on the Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries to Spruce Up Dismal Environmental Record

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Iran Lobby Tries to Spruce Up Dismal Environmental Record

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Shutdown of Fake Facebook Accounts Reveal Depths of Regime Deception

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In an era of fake news and the aftermath of claims that Russia tried mightily to interfere and influence the U.S. elections in 2016, news that Facebook shut down 652 fake accounts and pages – many linked to the Iranian regime – reveals the art of deception is alive and well in Tehran.

The social network said it removed 652 pages, groups and accounts for “inauthentic behavior” that originated in Iran and targeted people with news and information including political content in the U.S., U.K., Middle East and Latin America, according to Bloomberg.

The effort to manipulate social-media users also occurred on Twitter, which followed Facebook’s announcement by saying it had removed 284 accounts, including many that originated from Iran.

“Security is not something that you ever fully solve,” Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday on a call with reporters. “The shift we made from reactive to proactive detection is a big change, and it’s going to make Facebook safer for everyone over time.”

In order to find and remove the campaigns, Facebook said it acted on tips from the U.S. government and the security firm FireEye. The narratives pitched by the manipulation efforts included anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as well as support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Iran, such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, FireEye said in a blog post.

According to FireEye’s report, the misinformation campaign involved a network of news sites and accounts on Instagram, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube.

Example publications were “US Journal” and “Critics Chronicle,” which purported to be independent news sites based in California and Birmingham, England, respectively.

Anti-Trump material was also prevalent among the fake accounts which isn’t surprising given the Trump administration’s efforts to re-impose economic sanctions on the Iranian regime.

“It’s a similar order of magnitude to what we saw from the Russian troll farm, so that is a substantial operation,” Ben Nimmo, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told VICE News. “They were running websites in at least English, Spanish and Arabic, which again suggests a fairly substantial effort. Pushing out a lot of memes and a lot of content.”

The network of accounts and pages had hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook and Instagram. The Iranian-linked network also organized at least 28 events on Facebook, although company officials declined to provide any information about the events, saying they were still under investigation. Some of the accounts also engaged in more traditional cyberattacks, such as attempting to hack into users’ accounts or spread malware, according to the Globe and Mail.

Last year, FireEye analysts uncovered a campaign dubbed APT 35, or Newscaster, by Iranian hackers who created fake journalist accounts on social media.

The cyberwarfare efforts by the Iranian regime underscore how completely ridiculous the claims of the Iran lobby were about Iranian moderation in the wake of the nuclear deal with the Obama administration.

The revelations and actions taken by Facebook and Twitter are also inconvenient for the Iran lobby, especially for the National Iranian American Council as it struggles to find an audience for its pro-Iran regime messages amongst an increasingly skeptical audience in news organizations and American voters.

Faced with terrible news about brutal suppression of dissent in Iran by the mullahs and crushing economic news fueling those protests because of rampant corruption and gross mismanagement by the mullahs, the NIAC is left to try and make the silly argument that the Trump administration is gearing up for war with Iran.

Given the state of the Iranian economy and the frustration level of the Iranian people, the Trump administration doesn’t need to do much except cheerlead as it is becoming more likely that the Iranian people themselves are going to force the kinds of democratic changes that have been long overdue.

An example of the bipolar nature of the NIAC’s messaging is in two pieces by Trita Parsi, NIAC founder, in Axios and Lobelog.

In Axios, he tries to make the argument that the U.S. is seeking regime collapse in Iran, thereby making Europe nervous.

“European analysts and diplomats alike are increasingly concerned that the Trump administration might be pursuing a policy of destabilizing Iran. The administration’s abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal, new economic sanctions and explicit encouragement of continued protests in Iran have contributed to the ongoing unrest there, which has begun to seem a goal in itself,” he writes.

Then in his Lobelog piece, Parsi claims that President Trump may be a lone wolf in his administration’s foreign policy team by advocating for meeting with Iran’s Hassan Rouhani.

“Trump, who mindful of his fondness for summits and his desire to be seen as a deal maker probably does want to meet with the Iranians, appears rather alone in favoring a pivot to diplomacy,” Parsi writes.

It’s amazing verbal and mental flexibility for Parsi to make opposite claims in two separate editorials within the same 24-hour period, but it gives everyone an idea of how Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby is literally throwing any kind of fecal matter at the journalistic wall to see what might stick.

It’s no different than the Iranian regime’s social media disinformation campaign which slung just about any silly idea, meme or retweet in an effort to convince Americans that Iran deserves to sell its oil and use the profits to continue funding terrorism.

It’s unfortunate Twitter and Facebook didn’t shut down the NIAC’s accounts for fake news.

Iran Lobby Criticisms of Iran Economic Sanctions Misses the Point

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President Trump signs the Presidential order to snap back first series of sanctions - August 6, 2018

For all of the verbose and critical language the Iran lobby has aimed at the Trump administration for de-certifying the Iran nuclear agreement and re-imposing economic sanctions this week, they miss the one essential truth they cannot defend which is this whole mess is the fault of the mullahs in Tehran, not the U.S.

The Iran lobby, most notably the National Iranian American Council, have long argued the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration was “working.” It was a misleading label from the start because the administration, under the influence of the “echo chamber” created by the Iran lobby to bolster American public opinion, literally gave away the proverbial store.

Among the most notable omissions in the agreement:

  • No restrictions on Iranian regime’s ability to develop nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to deliver payloads around the world;
  • No restrictions on Iran’s ability to funnel cash delivered as part of a payoff to free American hostages held by Iran to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah or to buy weapons from Russia and China later used by terrorists in Yemen, Iraq and Syria; and
  • No requirements for Iran to improve its human rights situation, including releasing political prisoners, halting crackdowns on journalists, students, bloggers, artists, ethnic and religious minorities, and repealing laws that oppress women such as banned jobs, morals codes and misogynistic behavior.

But what the NIAC and others in the Iran lobby fail to ever mention is Iran’s role in the Syrian civil war and the carnage it unleashed resulting in the slaughter of almost half a million men, women and children and creating over four million refugees.

It also spawned the rise of ISIS and a series of terrorist attacks that struck at almost every part of the world including London, Birmingham, Orlando, Brussels, Nice, Ottawa, Sydney, San Bernardino and the list goes on and on.

For these reasons and more, President Trump followed through on a central campaign promise in pulling out the nuclear deal. His decision wasn’t a surprise to anyone, including the Iran lobby, but that hasn’t stopped the NIAC and others from doing their best to stab at the president’s actions.

Among the sanctions being imposed include several that the Obama administration declined to enforce in the first place.

Iran will no longer be able to engage in trade using US dollars, a cornerstone of international business for the country. The country will also, according to Trump administration officials, be blocked from trade in gold and other precious metals, the import of graphite, aluminum, steel, coal, and software used for industrial purposes, and participation in the automobile market, according to BuzzFeed.

The NIAC has called for European countries to bail out Iran and commit to their business deals with the Islamic state, but already a mass exodus of companies including Peugeot and Total has streamed away from Iran.

While the sanctions are sure to be troubling to Iran, even harsher sanctions are on deck to come into effect in November. Those will target Iran’s oil exports as well as transactions between foreign banks and the Central Bank of Iran.

A senior administrative official reiterated that the US goal is to get imports of Iranian crude to zero and that the US is not looking to give exemptions or waivers when those sanctions hit.

The NIAC, in a briefing memo posted on its website, consistently characterizes the nuclear agreement as “successful” but in reality the agreement ended up being the tool by which Iranian regime replenished its cash reserves, went on a massive arms buying spree and proceeded to aid in the gassing and killing of hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East.

If the mullahs were hoping to save themselves and the Assad regime, then the nuclear deal was indeed a stunning success from that standpoint.

The harsh reality though for the mullahs and the Iran lobby is that conditions have changed significantly over the past three years, not only in Washington, DC, but also on the streets of hundreds of villages, cities and towns throughout Iran as waves of protests push the regime into a decision whether or not to crackdown on its own people again or finally entertain the notion that democracy, a real genuine democracy, needs to take root in Iran.

Thomas Erdbrink in the New York Times was one of only several journalists chronicling the protests erupting in Iran, the likes of which are rarely seen as these protests are being fueled by the poor and middle classes and focused on the poor economy, death spiral in the currency values, gross mismanagement, incompetence in the government and rampant corruption by the ruling elites.

“Some demonstrations — about the weak economy, strict Islamic rules, water shortages, religious disputes, local grievances — have turned deadly. The protesters have shouted harsh slogans against clerical leaders and their policies. The events are broadly shared on social media and on the dozens of Persian language satellite channels beaming into the Islamic republic,” he writes.

“Videos show that some protesters have gone well beyond strictly economic grievances to challenge Iran’s foreign policy and religious rules. Secular protest slogans aimed at Iran’s leadership also criticize its support for Syria and groups in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon,” he added.

Erdbrink who usually writes in a favorable manner, appeasing the mullahs in Iran, writes that predictably in-fighting among the ruling elites as to who is to blame is rising as the mullahs struggle to offer solutions to the Iranian people that don’t involve slogans or a policeman wielding a baton.

While the Iran lobby struggles to get its message out, the truth is that Americans, are less likely to hear that same echo chamber this time around.

Trump Invite for Meeting is Trap for Mullahs They Might Not Escape

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Trump Offer to Meet Rouhani has Iran Lobby Boxed In

Trump Offer to Meet Rouhani has Iran Lobby Boxed In

President Donald Trump’s nearly off-hand comment about being open to a meeting with Iranian regime leader Hassan Rouhani “anytime” puts the Iranian regime and their Iran lobby supporters between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, if they simply denounce the invitation, they reaffirm the belief that the regime was never really interested in meaningful dialogue on topics not to their liking such as improving human rights, support for terrorism or interfering in neighboring countries.

It also calls out the Iran lobby’s persistent braying for diplomatic openings between the U.S. and Iran and once the president presents such an opportunity, critics such as the National Iranian American Council are quick to denounce it.

It seems the Iran lobby can’t have their cake and eat it too under this president.

If on the other hand, the mullahs accept the president’s offer, they might very run into a Trump version of what they have consistently done to others for decades which makes a show of diplomacy but grant nothing of substance and continue to apply pressure.

The prospect of the mullahs getting a dose of their own medicine is ironic and somewhat refreshing.

The varied responses from the regime are proof the mullahs in Tehran seem pretty confused as to what to do since it’s clear that President Trump’s offer is not really without preconditions. Rather, looming over Tehran is the precarious state of the economy, looming economic sanctions due to fall next week and mounting pressure internally from the Iranian people to change how the usual corrupt government operates.

“Unfortunately, right now there is no low-hanging fruit in U.S.-Iran relations or potential negotiations. And the primary reason is that Trump, by violating the Iran nuclear deal and withdrawing from it, he really eviscerated the Iranian trust in the United States,” said Sina Toossi, a research associate at the National Iranian American Council.

“He could potentially give that confidence to international banks and businesses, remove U.S. sanctions and allow Iran to get the benefits from the deal, and that could be used as a stepping stone for broader negotiations,” he added.

Therein lies the crux of the Iran lobby’s problem. It has in Trump a U.S. president who doesn’t care about appearances or how critics view him and is just as intent on forcing regime change as any president in the last 30 years. While the Iran lobby is pushing to recover the gains lost from the failed nuclear deal, it recognizes the awful truth of their position which is that there are no meaningful gambits left it can use on this president.

The Iran lobby and the regime have sought a bailout from Europe by trying to persuade the European Union to stay in the nuclear agreement.

Rouhani met with the new British Ambassador to Tehran Tuesday where he announced, not for the first time, the US withdrawal from the multilateral nuclear deal in May was “illegal,” adding that “the ball is in Europe’s court,” according to CNN.

But that prospect seems as likely as snow falling right now on a California beach as the president is already pressing the EU over the issue of bilateral trade tariffs that has Europe busy focusing on its own trade deals.

The poor mullahs are not at the top of the to-do list for Europe anymore and the trade they represent is a pittance compared to the whopping $690 billion in trade between the EU and U.S.

Nic Robertson at CNN offered his own analysis that the Iran regime may take a long view in responding to President Trump. He posits that Iran is willing to use a subtle approach in trying to divide the U.S. from its allies and by not ramping up extremist acts with its terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah is a sign of this approach.

He also offers that summits with Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un are different since Iran’s leaders are not in as precarious a position.

With apologies to Robertson, that is a bad misread of the regime.

The mullahs are under intense pressure not only from a rial about to be less valuable than the paper its printed on to massive protests rocking the country since last year that have not abated and have taken on a dire tone with protests aimed directly at the regime’s top leaders.

The basket case economy is so bad, that Iranian parliament members have demanded Rouhani appear before them in one month to answer questions about the economy.

It is the first time parliament has summoned Rouhani, who is under pressure from rivals to change his cabinet following a deterioration in relations with the United States and Iran’s growing economic difficulties.

Lawmakers want to question Rouhani on topics including the rial’s decline, which has lost more than half its value since April, weak economic growth and rising unemployment, according to semi-official ISNA news agency.

Rouhani’s summon coincides with further shows of public discontent. A number of protests have broken out in Iran since the beginning of the year over high prices, water shortage, power cuts, and alleged corruption in the Islamic Republic.

On Tuesday, hundreds of people rallied in cities across the country, including Isfahan, Karaj, Shiraz and Ahvaz, in protest against high inflation caused in part by the weak rial, according to Reuters.

The mullahs are now faced with change or doubling down on crazy and potentially pushing the Iranian people too far or accept the truth that the regime’s days are numbered.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Approaches Near Hysteria in Statements

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Iran Lobby Approaches Near Hysteria in Statements

Iran Lobby Approaches Near Hysteria in Statements

Last weekend, Hassan Rouhani after delivering a speech warning the U.S. of starting the “mother of all wars” President Trump locked his ALL CAPS key and threatened the Iranian regime with destruction if it ever attacked the U.S. And as some put it the world’s blowhards and fanatics have finally met their verbal match.

But even though the president was responding to a provocation by Rouhani, the Iran lobby predictably went hysterical claiming the president was readying for war against Iran.

Lobby members such as the National Iranian American Council were especially vocal in trying to flood news outlets with statements all blasting the Trump administration for the tough stand against the mullahs.

Jamal Abdi, the incoming head of the NIAC, issued a statement that was hard pressed to find new harsh adjectives to use against President Trump.

“The Iranian-American community was deeply disturbed by Trump’s warmongering last night. When Donald Trump threatens that Iran will suffer the consequences that few in history have ever suffered before, Iranian Americans fear that this unhinged President will follow through on his threats to bomb our friends and family,” Abdi said.

“It is past time for our elected officials to step up and ensure that Trump cannot launch a disastrous war of choice based on his deranged tweets and foolish advice of officials who have been pushing to bomb Iran for decades. The Iranian-American community will not sign up for Trump’s war push, and will push back more than ever to restrain this President,” he added.

Abdi neglected to differentiate that the president’s tweets were in response to Rouhani making threats in the first place. He also neglected to mention the wave of protests spreading across Iran since last December aimed at the mullahs and their corrupt rule.

The same Iranian-Americans Abdi claims who are fearful of the president’s policies are in fact the ones who are nervously talking to relatives in Iran who are subject to mass arrests and imprisonment for committing “crimes” such as taking part in a peaceful demonstration for not receiving their paychecks for months, for not having drinking water, and for the nationwide poverty as a result of the government’s corruption and wasting all resources to prop up Assad’s dictatorship in Syria and to support other terrorist groups such as the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

But the NIAC’s fusillade didn’t stop with Abdi, as Trita Parsi weighed in with his own diatribe on CNN in which he outlined why he believed any pivot to diplomacy similar to what President Trump did in North Korea was likely to fail with Iran.

Parsi’s arguments ring hollow as he skips over inconvenient truths and glosses over the hard reality of dealing with a religious theocracy hellbent on maintaining its grip on power no matter the cost in lives.

For example, Parsi claims that North Korea and Iran are entirely different situations because of the geopolitics of their neighbors. In this Parsi is correct to a point. While North Korea is surrounded by countries eager to use diplomacy as a tool such as China, Japan, and South Korea, Iran is surrounded by countries it has actively tried to destabilize with military action and proxies such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Gulf States.

By comparison, if North Korea sent special forces into Japan or built explosives to be used by terrorists in China, the “diplomacy” Parsi so craves would never take place.

Parsi goes to explain that economic sanctions didn’t force Iran to the negotiating table, it was only after the Obama administration caved and granted the concession for Iran to continue enriching nuclear materials. Again, Parsi mistakes the concession of proof that diplomacy works, when in fact the lesson is that the Iranian regime is only interested in getting its own way and will not bend.

It is precisely why President Trump’s hardline approach to Iran is the cold, shock of reality the mullahs are afraid of because they know they will not be able to bully him as they did with Obama.

Parsi’s claim also that North Korea is a one-man show and Iran has a complicated political situation is laughable. Iran is a one-man country, ruled by Ali Khamenei. The only complicated factor is the web of financial ties, payoffs, and graft that ties the clerics, army, and bureaucracy to Khamenei.

Iranian regime’s solution to in-fighting is as simple as North Korea’s: arrest any dissidents and hang them.

Lastly, Parsi claims that all the Trump administration wants is a war – all evidence to the contrary – and its cabinet members are working towards that goal. The narrative that the Iranian lobby keeps pressing for in order to divert the attention from the fact that it’s the malign activities of the Iranian regime that is being reciprocated with a firm response.

Parsi forgets to mention how President Trump flogged his Republican opponents in the election over the ill-fated decision to invade Iraq and how he has openly opposed U.S. military commitments abroad; even questioning the role of NATO much to the consternation of European allies.

Far from a war hawk, President Trump has openly called on the Iranian people to lead a push for democratic change.

 

How Much Suffering Will the Iranian People Endure?

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How Much Suffering Will the Iranian People Endure?

Maedeh Hojabri, the 19-year-old girl arrested for posting her dancing videos on Instagram 

News agencies around the world profiled the plight of Maedeh Hojabri, a 19-year-old girl who does what comes naturally for most teenagers around the world.

She likes to dance and often posts clips of her moves to Instagram, drawing a following of 600,000 followers. In the U.S., she would probably be hit up by companies wanting her to endorse her products online and maybe even start up a YouTube channel.

Unfortunately for Maedeh, she lives in Iran where the mullahs seem to be obsessed with tossing anyone in prison who exhibits any form of creative or artistic freedom, especially if they are female.

She had been quietly arrested by regime officials last May, but her whereabouts only recently became known to her followers when fans recognized a blurry image of her on a regime-supported television show that showed her crying and admitting that dancing was a crime.

We’re sure the mullahs thought public shaming of a teenager was a recipe for success in their small, twisted, warped minds, but instead the incident had the opposite effect as it galvanized the Iranian people into more of a frenzy of protest over the regime’s ongoing corruption, unemployment, and faltering economy.

Predictably, none of that seems to make a difference to the mullahs who seem to be hellbent on alienating almost the entire population of Iran with even more strong-arm, militant tactics, including the announcement that Shaparak Shajarizadeh, the woman who removed her headscarf in protest last February was sentenced to two-years in prison and 18 years of probation.

With all of the new inflamed reaction being spread across Instagram, the regime now is contemplating banning Instagram the same as it banned Telegram, the instant-messaging app that the overwhelming majority of Iranians use to communicate.

The mullahs blamed Telegram for being used as a tool of dissidents to organize protests, as well as the launch of its own cyber currency which threatened to derail an already floundering rial.

The reaction from Iranians to Maedeh’s forced confession on Twitter ranged from indignant to outraged as reported by the New York Times.

“Really what is the result of broadcasting such confessions?” one Twitter a user, using special software to gain access to Twitter, which is also banned in Iran. “What kind of audience would be satisfied? For whom would it serve as a lesson, seriously?”

The criticism was sharp and bold. “In this land corruption, rape or being a big thief, animal or child abuser, not having any dignity, is not a crime,” Roya Mirelmi, an actress, wrote under a picture she posted of Maedeh that got 14,133 likes. “But in my motherland, having a beautiful smile, being happy and feeling good is not only a crime but a cardinal sin.”

All of which raises the question of just how much suffering is the Iranian people to take before they force regime change on their own?

The question is not so far-fetched now in the wake of widespread, deep-rooted and pervasive dissent that has manifested itself in protests all over Iran, including the virtual shutdown of the famed Grand Bazaar marketplace in Tehran. Those series of protests were so concerning that the Iran lobby pitched in to discount the symbolic importance of the bazaar with an editorial by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a University of London professor, in the Conversation and later in The Independent.

“Once again, Iranians are articulating very specific demands related to the economy. But this is a part of the reform process in the country and not a revolutionary movement. The strike of the bazaari is the latest manifestation of the political prowess of an immensely potent civil society in Iran. And it is exactly because of this ability to organize and articulate their specific demands that Iranians have repeatedly managed to garner concessions from successive governments in their country – in many ways against all odds,” he writes in one of the more idiotic statements we’ve seen.

To claim that the Iranian people are able to wring concessions from successive regime governments is ludicrous in light of the crackdown on civil liberties such as the arrest of dancing teenagers and banning of social media. If anything, the opposite is happening in Iran as the mullahs seem to grow more and more desperate to stamp out any sign of dissent, even possibly sanctioning a terrorist plot to bomb a gathering of Iranian dissidents in Paris that was foiled by authorities.

The scope of the regime’s punishment of its own people reached new heights when Amnesty International revealed in a report that said: “more than half (51%) of all recorded executions in 2017 were carried out in Iran.”

According to Amnesty International, “Iran executed at least 507 people, accounting for 60% of all confirmed executions in the region.”

Out of the 507 individuals executed in Iran last year, “501 were men and six were women. At least five juvenile offenders were executed and 31 executions were carried out publicly.

It’s stunning to think the Iranian regime is literally a world leader in executing its own citizens and yet those same citizens are taking to the streets, sharing on banned social media and voicing their dissent in a myriad of ways knowing that such expressions of discontent could punch their ticket to Evin prison and the gallows.

It is against all of this that the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, remains stonily silent even though it purportedly speaks on behalf of civil liberties.

Michael Tomlinson

Arrest of Nasrin Sotoudeh Shows Falsehoods of Iran Lobby

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Arrest of Nasrin Sotoudeh Shows Falsehoods of Iran Lobby

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