Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Tries to Spin Continued Blacklisting of Iran Regime

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Iran Lobby Tries to Spin Continued Blacklisting of Iran Regime

Iran Lobby Tries to Spin Continued Blacklisting of Iran Regime

An international group that monitors and combats money laundering worldwide decided this weekend to keep the Iranian regime on its blacklist of high-risk countries, which included notably Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan; all countries the regime is currently engaged in proxy wars.

At a meeting of its 37 members in South Korea, the Financial Action Task Force also moved to keep North Korea on its blacklist and urged countries to be on guard against Pyongyang’s attempts to bypass sanctions to finance illicit weapons programs.

“The FATF, therefore, calls on its members and urges all jurisdictions to continue to advise their financial institutions to apply enhanced due diligence to business relationships and transactions with natural and legal persons from Iran,” read the statement FATF issued.

The FATF deferred to the potential for the Iran nuclear deal to help motivate Iran’s support of terrorism, and opted to defer further sanctions for another 12 months to see if the Iranian regime follows through on its promises.

But it is interesting to note the FATF only list 11 nations as being high-risk or non-cooperative in the areas of money laundering and support for terrorism and the Iranian regime is affiliated in its support with five of them. Almost half of the nations on the planet engaged in these activities are tied to the mullahs in Tehran.

That is a remarkable achievement for any regime to take, especially one that is constantly defended by the Iran lobby as a peaceful and moderate nation.

The absurdity of that defense reached new levels with a statement issued by the National Iranian American Council’s Tyler Cullis, which welcomed the deferred action by the FATF, but ignored the continued presence of the regime on the blacklist; choosing instead to look at the glass half-full scenario.

“FATF has suspended its call for Member-States and other jurisdictions to impose counter-measures against Iran and its financial institutions, which should send a clear signal to international banks and businesses that economic opportunities with Iran can move forward,” Cullis said.

It’s a rather willfully ignorant statement since the FATF clearly warned member countries to exercise due diligence when dealing with anyone connected to Iran. When applied to financial institutions such as commercial banks, that is a clear warning to stay away from Iranian regime, which virtually all major banks have opted to do given the uncertainty raised by the FATF.

Cullis claims that the regime has made meaningful steps to counter the financing of terrorism in what has to be the biggest obfuscation since Adolf Hitler said Czechoslovakia invited the Nazis in.

Cullis ignores the interception of several Iranian boats attempting to smuggle guns, rockets and ammunition to Houthi rebels in Yemen. Cullis ignores the arming and support Shiite militias in Iraq which are now meting out retribution against Sunni tribes in furthering sectarian bloodshed. Cullis ignores the long-term funding of Hezbollah and the use of terror in the Syrian conflict in targeting civilians and Doctors Without Borders hospitals.

There is good reason why Transparency International ranks the Iranian regime 130th out of 168 countries in the world for corruption with a score of 27 out of 100. Cullis claiming there are meaningful reforms coming from the mullahs in Tehran to combat terrorism is like claiming a butcher shop is trying to go vegan.

Sanctions experts, banking sources and Western officials say little will change regarding financial institutions’ “hands off” approach to Iran, above all due to concerns about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) omnipresence in the Iranian economy. The IRGC is still under international sanctions, according to Reuters.

“Practically speaking the FATF decision changes little since global financial institutions will continue to voluntarily implement strict counter-measures given their serious concerns over Iran’s illicit financial conduct,” said sanctions expert Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

To further illustrate how Cullis and the rest of the Iran lobby is wrong, the regime’s top mullah Ali Khamenei obliged with yet another warning of violence to a neighbor, in this case Bahrain.

He blasted as “foolishness” a decision by Bahrain’s leaders to strip a top Shi’ite Muslim cleric of his citizenship, and said it could provoke violence from Shi’ites, who make up the majority in the Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom.

The speech by Khamenei, carried by state media, came after Bahrain’s Sunni authorities stepped up measures against the island’s Shi’ites and stripped their spiritual leader, Ayatollah Isa Qassim, of his citizenship.

“This is blatant foolishness and insanity. When he still could address the Bahraini people, Sheikh Isa Qassim… would advise against radical and armed actions,” Khamenei said in remarks carried by state television on Sunday.

“Attacking Sheikh Isa Qassim means removing all obstacles blocking heroic Bahraini youths from attacking the regime,” he said.

Of course he neglected to mention that Bahrain has long maintained that Iran funnels financial material support to would-be insurgents.

Again, that pesky “funding terrorism” problem.

Aside from funding terrorism, the Iranian regime still remains a black hole for human rights and its continued arrests of foreign nationals alone should keep it in the sanctions pokey.

In the case of Montreal-based university professor, Homa Hoodfar is being held in an Iranian jail and being investigated for “dabbling in feminism and security matters,” according to her family, while in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British woman arrested by regime authorities, who claimed she was being held in solitary confinement for three months because she helped to “design a website.”

If the Iranian regime is afraid of women like these, its days in power are surely numbered.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries to Pivot to Immigration to Hide Abuses

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Iran Lobby Tries to Pivot to Immigration to Hide Abuses

A Syrian migrant family enters Hungary at the border with Serbia near Roszke, Hungary August 28, 2015. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

Political events in Europe and the U.S. have pushed immigration issues to the forefront of talk shows and government agendas, but many of the most pressing immigration have their roots not in an escape from economic poverty, but rather the specter of terrorism and war, especially as a result of the Iranian regime’s involvement in the three largest wars going on right now in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

It was not an accident that in the wake of World Refugee Day, there was broad acknowledgement that the source of most of the world’s refugee problem comes from the instability sweeping across the Middle East.

While the political discussion of immigration in the U.S. presidential election and the controversial Brexit vote has revolved around the impact mass immigration is posing to countries, the real underlying discussion is only now starting to focus on the roots causes of these mass movements of people fleeing violence in their own lands.

Also, in the wake of numerous terrorist attacks ranging from San Bernardino, California to Sydney, Australia and Paris, France to Ottawa, Canada, the infectious and noxious influence of spreading Islamic extremism is being felt; much of it flowing from the mullahs in Tehran and through their agents in the Revolutionary Guards and Quds Forces who organize, recruit, train, arm and fund extremists.

Predictably though, the Iran lobby has sought to capitalize on the immigration debate by focusing the discussion not on the root causes of these mass displacements. It’s a necessary gambit and typical of the Iran lobby to deflect attention from the real core issue of bloody sectarian conflict fueled by the mullahs.

The National Iranian American Council took the lead with several editorials and statements it has issued attempting to blame everyone else but the Iranian regime for the misery being inflicted on the millions of refugees fleeing these conflict zones.

Sarah Sakha offered up the idea on NIAC’s website that Americans opposed any bans on Muslims and refugees based on a Brookings Institute poll, but failed to address the core concern these same Americans have which is how to stop the spread of Islamic-inspired terrorism washing across the U.S. through Boston, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, San Bernardino and now Orlando.

She also fails to discuss the increase in terrorism and the harshness of the treatment of men, women and children in Iran by the regime is disingenuous and ignores the root causes of these problems. Likewise it lays bare how transparent the Iran lobby is in defending the regime from any criticism of its policies.

Similarly, the NIAC gave space to cover a recent meeting by the Atlantic Council and Iran Project with national security staffer Ben Rhodes who was famously revealed to have crafted the “echo chamber” supporting the Iran nuclear deal on a foundation of lies. The symposium was designed to defend the faltering nuclear deal from blistering criticism that it has failed to moderate Iran and instead has led to the great instability and bloodshed we see now.

Rhodes even used the examples of the openings made to Cuba and Burma as templates for why Iran should be treated in of those countries agreed to renounce terrorism h of those countries agreed to renounce terrorism and in Burma’s case actually held free elections that installed long-time dissidents in control of the government for the first time.

The Iran regime has done none of those things.

The NIAC even took on the recently unveiled the House Republican’s policy paper listing its priorities in the upcoming election including the re-imposition of sanctions on Iran for continued violations of human rights and sponsorship of terrorism, as well as its deliberate efforts to violate the nuclear agreement with ballistic missile tests and the clandestine sanitizing of sites of any evidence of prior testing of nuclear materials.

Ironically, while the NIAC attacks the idea that imposing new sanctions for continued human rights violations, it never denies that severe human rights violations are taking place in Iran. Instead, it attributes the suffering and misery being inflicted on the Iranian people with mass arrests and executions not to the actions of the mullahs, but rather the lack of U.S. currency flowing to the regime as a result of the nuclear deal.

It is the height of stupidity to equate torture in Iran to a lack of cash.

That seems to be the mantra being repeated most often by the Iran lobby these days as it pushes to get cash into the hands of the regime as quickly as possible, but not for the benefit of ordinary Iranians it seems as the regime is being rocked by protests over disclosures that high-ranking executives at state-owned businesses are being paid obscene salaries while Iranians are being exhorted by the mullahs to continue a “resistance economy” of deprivation.

The Daily Beast also disclosed that a former Clinton administration official has been on the payroll of Boeing as it strived to close a deal with Iran to sell $25 billion worth of commercial airliners.

Thomas Pickering, one of the country’s most famous diplomats and a former ambassador to Israel and the United Nations, has been quietly taking money from Boeing while vocally supporting the Iran nuclear deal—testifying before Congress, writing letters to high-level officials, and penning op-eds for outlets like The Washington Post.

Pickering confirmed via email—from his Boeing corporate email address—that he was on staff at the company from 2001 to 2006 and has been a paid consultant for them ever since.

Neil Gordon—an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington watchdog organization—said Pickering should have been upfront about his work for Boeing when testifying before Congress on the Iran nuclear deal and making the case for it in op-eds for major publications.

“In Pickering’s case, he has a direct connection to Boeing, which I think should be disclosed,” he said.

Over the past few years, Pickering has been one of the most vocal and visible advocates for the nuclear agreement with Iran. On June 19, 2014, he testified before the House Armed Services Committee about his views on the need for a comprehensive agreement with Iran. He did not mention Boeing in the disclosure form he provided to the committee prior to his testimony. Boeing also isn’t mentioned in his bio that the House kept on file.

The lack of disclosure of his work in support of the nuclear deal and his participation in Rhodes’ “echo chamber” is disturbing and shows the complicated and extraordinary efforts made by the Iran lobby to secure the nuclear deal for Iran.

Most disturbing, his bio on the NIAC website where he serves as an advisory board member, notes that he worked at Boeing until 2006 but does not note that he still consults for the company. Same for his bio at the anti-nuclear weapon group Global Zero. His bio at The Iran Project doesn’t mention Boeing at all.

The lack of disclosure and his active work with leading members of the Iran lobby while also collecting fees from Boeing which the Obama administration is doing all it can to facilitate business with the regime raises alarm bells everywhere of conflicts of interest and outright deception.

Trita Parsi of the NIAC also using the same scape goat, blamed the suffering of Iranians on the lack of business deals with Iran following the nuclear deal.

“If the Iranians end up de facto not getting sanctions relief, the deal will collapse,” he said. “That’s right now the biggest threat to the sustainability of the deal.”

He is right, but the threat isn’t coming from foreign companies, but rather the mullahs themselves as they pursue policies turning most of Europe into a massive refugee center.

By Michael Tomblinson

Why New Business Deals with Iran Should Be Tied to Human Rights

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Why New Business Deals with Iran Should Be Tied to Human Rights

Why New Business Deals with Iran Should Be Tied to Human Rights

Although the nuclear deal with the Iranian regime reached last April lifted economic sanctions related to trade and released $100 billion in frozen assets back to the control of the mullahs in Tehran, it did not lift sanctions put in place for Iran’s abysmal human rights record and sponsorship of terrorism.

These sanctions largely affect U.S. currency exchanges and the ability to transact business through financial institutions connected to U.S. exchanges where currency would need to be converted, transmitted or deposited.

The sanctions lifted as part of the nuclear accord permits Iran to sell its oil back on the open market (even though it had already been doing so illicitly for some time), allow foreign firms to invest in Iran’s oil and gas industry and other industrial sectors such as automobiles and hotels, as well as allow Iran access to the global banking system known as SWIFT.

Predictably there has been a rush of foreign companies looking to get back into the Iranian marketplace; primarily firms that had pre-existing relationships within Iran prior to the imposition of most sanctions.

These largely comprised European, Chinese and Russian firms looking to announce deals, but most financial institutions in those same countries have been reluctant to jump in and engage in business with the regime; largely because of the regime’s unstable record on worsening human rights and the turbulence created by its involvement in proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Now comes word – premature it seems – that U.S.-based Boeing was negotiating to sell 100 commercial aircraft to the regime in one of the largest re-entries into the Iranian market by a U.S. company.

There is already significant opposition building in Congress on both sides of the aisle to the deal since Iran’s previous use of commercial airlines such as Mahan Air to ferry troops and supplies to Hezbollah in Syria makes the potential high that American-made aircraft could be used in a similar military capacity, not to mention the technology transfer involved in advanced navigation, communications and avionics systems that the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps could take and adapt to their own purposes.

All of which raises a simple question: Should any business deal with the Iranian regime be predicated on improvements in human rights or the halt of sponsoring terror?

Two former U.S. Treasury officials cast doubt Wednesday on the prospects of the deal between Iran and Boeing, claiming concerns about Iranian money laundering and terrorism financing activities are likely to scuttle the agreement.

“The risks associated with doing business with Iran haven’t changed,” said Chip Poncy, who headed Treasury’s office of strategic policy for terrorist financing and financial crimes through 2013.

Eric Lorber, a former attorney in Treasury’s office of foreign assets control, said the Boeing deal will likely face the same problem that has kept a similar deal between Tehran and Airbus, Boeing’s European rival, from getting off the ground for the past seven months.

The mullahs have complained vigorously that the nuclear deal implementation applied to the lifting of all sanctions and that any sanctions still in place or the threatened imposition of new sanctions such as those proposed for its violation of ballistic missile testing would jeopardize the nuclear agreement.

The regime’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, regularly threatens to tear up the nuclear deal each week for one reason or another. This past weekend it was because he didn’t like presidential candidate Donald Trump. The week before that it was because he thought Iran was being shortchanged by the U.S. on cash. Next week it will probably be about his inability to comprehend Snapchat.

The fact that the Obama administration inserted language in the nuclear deal specific to allowing investments in aircraft is seen as an effort to boost Boeing’s chances of doing the deal, but in the year since that deal was reached, the Iranian regime has been anything but compliant with efforts to moderate itself.

The litany of aggressive and illegal actions it has taken range from detaining American sailors on the high seas to widening the war in Syria to arresting just about any dual citizen it feels like including mothers, aid workers, journalists and businessmen without trial or charge.

The difficulty in many of these deals lies in the fact that the Revolutionary Guard Corps owns most of the economic and industrial capacity within Iran through a myriad of shell companies. In telecommunications for example, the IRGC owns the state phone company and controls virtually all internet access in Iran. The same goes for the oil and gas industry and airlines, which makes the Boeing deal problematic in many ways.

If we know the IRGC is engaged in supporting terrorism aggressively around the world and if we know its intelligence units and court system regularly sentences dissidents to death and uses torture on a mass scale on the Iranian people, then how can any U.S. entity conduct business in Iran without stepping on existing sanctions?

Jonathan S. Tobin writes in Commentary Magazine that Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies told the New York Times, despite the exception for aircraft sales in the text of the nuclear deal, much of Iran’s civilian aviation industry is run by companies linked to or run by the IRGC, which also operates the regime’s terror network.

Business with the IRGC and everything related to it is still very much against U.S. law and nothing in the Iran deal supersedes that fact. As Dubowitz notes, that makes any Boeing-Iran transaction a “due-diligence nightmare” for any U.S. companies as well as the banks that will also be involved, he added.

The conundrum is one that the Iran lobby is attempting to tackle head on with its typical subterfuge as evidenced by a piece written by Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council in Foreign Policy, in which he makes the inane argument that since the nuclear deal is in danger of collapse, the U.S. should double down on it and go even further in accommodating the regime.

Cullis makes the argument that the Obama administration must provide foreign companies essentially a “get out of jail card” in terms of setting out guidelines essentially setting a legal standard for compliance with sanctions in order to engage in activities expressly forbidden by those same sanctions!

As Cullis is loath to mention, sanctions still in place are not related to the nuclear deal! In order for those sanctions to be lifted, the mullahs need to stop butchering their own people, stop arresting American businessmen, British mothers and Canadian professors and they need to stop sending guns, rockets and ammunition to terrorists around the world.

Is that too hard? For Cullis and the rest of the Iran lobby, it apparently is.

By Michael Tomlinson

Orlando Shootings Show Dangers of Islamic Extremism

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Orlando Shootings Show Dangers of Islamic Extremism

Orlando Shootings Show Dangers of Islamic Extremism

The list of mass killings grew longer this weekend as Orlando was added to San Bernardino, Paris, Sydney, Ottawa and others. Since the tragedy of 9/11, there has been an estimated 85 attacks attributed to Islamic fundamentalism; not counting the bloody proxy wars being waged in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria and Yemen.

In what is now the largest mass shooting in American history, and the largest terrorist attack since 9/11, the U.S. is once again a target for someone who appears to have been radicalized by Islamic fundamentalism.

In the coming weeks, there will be intense investigations looking into every aspect of the killer’s life, his possible contacts with radical elements overseas and his state of mind that might have allowed him to be radicalized.

What is clear though is that the root of all of these attacks lies within the propagation of a nihilistic ideology that is not based in religion, but rather in the debased whims of cold-blooded killers and those hungry for power and control.

The discussion in Orlando, just as it was in Paris, should not be debates about whether or not the shooter was motivated by anti-gay hatred, or if gun control could have stopped him, or if he was under the direct control of ISIS or some other Islamist group.

What should be the discussion is that what motivates these mass murders is really quite simple: it’s an idea.

This idea believes in the supremacy of a chosen few and that anyone else not sharing that same ideology is better off dead, enslaved or imprisoned. It’s an idea based on the concentration of power in the hands of a select few who have the power of life or death.

It’s an idea that wears the shroud of religion, but in fact shares no common ground with the faith it espouses to be. It is not an idea of peace. It is not an idea of equal rights. It is not an idea of democracy, or pluralism or freedom.

This idea is radical Islam and it is a cancer on the world; eating away at the hearts and minds of young men and women who are drawn to its allure and motivated to wreck death and destruction in the blind pursuit of eradicating all others who do not ascribe to this same vision.

But like any idea, it needs a safe haven to be broadcast and spread. It needs support, infrastructure and security from scrutiny. It needs a shield to protect it from eradication. In short, radical Islam needs the Iranian regime.

Like the fruit of a poisoned tree, the Iranian regime’s tree of death bears fruit that has been plucked and exported to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Yemen and throughout the Gulf states.

It takes the form of illegal shipments of arms, recruited mercenaries and terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. It thrives in the form of extremist groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram and others that watch public executions in Iran and videotape similar barbaric executions.

It learns from misogynistic laws passed by the Iranian government permitting marriage for young girls as young as 13, even by their own step fathers, which in turn leads to sexual enslavement of young Nigerian girls and Yazidi Christians by Boko Haram and ISIS.

It mimics brutal punishments in Iranian religious courts that sanction public amputations, eye gouging, acid in the face, public beatings and imprisonment without charge or trial.

Since 1979, the Iranian regime has set the bar for the world’s terrorists and killers to follow and it has set it high. It is no coincidence that during the past two years since Hassan Rouhani was handpicked by Ali Khamenei and the nuclear deal was negotiated in an abysmal act of appeasement, the size, scope and scale of violence perpetrated and inspired by radical Islamists have mushroomed around the world.

The battlefields of the Middle East have now come to the streets of Paris, the suburbs of San Bernardino, the downtown of Orlando and many other cities and the Iranian regime and its mullahs in Tehran have been the clarion call to arms for those radicalized men and women.

They have been inspired to commit these acts because nothing is more dangerous than the lure of an ideology that is not combatted by effective ideas of our own. Nothing illustrates this more than the lack of support for competing ideas that resonate and come from dissidents living in these same countries.

People that are susceptible to being radicalized are not likely to be swayed by slick commercials produced in Hollywood or a commemorative pin worn by celebrities at a gala. They are more likely to be persuaded when men and women that share their same ethnicity, culture, history, religion and even family heritages make the case against radical Islam, which is why the priority by Western governments should be on supporting the cause of human rights and dissident groups in Iran and elsewhere.

Groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran have long fought the good fight in combatting the lies of the Iranian regime and ripping off the veil that obscures the harshness and brutality of the regime. Groups such as the NCRI often smuggle the only testimonials and accounts of executions, torture, arrests and imprisonment that feed into the narrative that radicalizes these disaffected people to commit violence.

Supporters of the regime, such as the National Iranian American Council, have participated as a lobby for Iran trying to hide the truth, but they know they cannot cover up atrocities such as what has happened in Paris or Orlando. They are struck deaf and mute in the face of such open and wanton violence and bloodshed.

Predictably, these groups forming the Iran lobby will mouth the appropriate words of sympathy and express horror at the killings, but they will also be sure to make the case that none of this should be used to discredit Iran, even though Iran serves as the well spring of hatred from which these acts flow.

And if they try to portray this as an isolated incident simply of anti-gay hatred, we should remember that for the past two years, Islamists had been finding gays in areas of Syria and Iraq they control and tossing them off the roofs of high rise buildings.

Hatred is bred within radical Islam and it needs a home to nurture. The world needs to deny that haven in Iran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Pushes Human Rights to Absurd Levels

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Iran Regime Pushes Human Rights to Absurd Levels

Iran Regime Pushes Human Rights to Absurd Levels

The Iranian regime’s human rights abuses are well documented by a whole host of organizations and governments. Amnesty International regularly lists Iran as one of its worst offenders and catalogs the list of executions, arrests, sham trials and accounts of torture with mind-numbing repetition.

The United Nations has also documented the long abuses perpetrated by the mullahs in Tehran to the extent it appointed a special rapporteur for human rights just for Iran. That appointee, Ahmed Shaheed, has released extensive reports detailing those abuses ranging from public executions of juveniles to summary trials without legal representation.

The persecution of religious minorities has been an especially problematic area of concern for Shaheed who has spoken out aggressively on the plight of those of the Baha’i religious minority in Iran.

A statement issued on June 8 by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights accused the Iranian regime’s religious, judicial, and political authorities of making “verbal attacks” that show “extreme intolerance” toward the Baha’i community and that “could encourage discrimination and possibly acts of violence against the group by others.”

Shaheed, said there was an “ongoing and systematic persecution” of Baha’is by the Iranian government that violates the country’s international legal obligations.

The UN says there are currently at least 72 Baha’is in Iranian prisons “solely because of their religious beliefs and practices.”

Heiner Bieelfeldt, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion, said that “increasingly hostile rhetoric” now puts Iran’s Baha’i community at “a very dangerous precipice where its very existence may be threatened.”

Various nations such as the U.S. State Department and the European Union have regularly issued annual reports citing these abuses and levied economic sanctions to punish the Iranian regime for the worst of them.

For the Iran lobby, it has been a full time job defending the regime and trying to divert attention away whenever these reports and condemnations come out. Groups such as the National Iranian American Council make every effort to divert attention away from human rights abuses because it knows it has no defense, no argument that can obscure the horrific details of the atrocities committed on innocent Iranians.

But the extent of Iran’s human rights violations extend beyond the gross abuses that capture headlines and reach out into less sinister, but more effective ways of keeping a restive population in check and silencing its critics.

One of the chief tools the regime relies on is not making any distinction for Iranians holding passports of foreign countries. For the mullahs in Tehran, once an Iranian, always an Iranian, even if you are a citizen of the U.S., Canada or Brazil, which allows them to arrest any Iranian they wish.

It’s the extralegal tool the Iranian regime has used to pluck anyone it finds critical of the regime’s policies or a threat to the rule of the mullahs. It has been used to arrest and imprison people such as Jason Rezaian of the Washington Post and most recently a 65-year old Canadian university professor.

Homa Hoodfar was arrested Monday after being interrogated by authorities, according to a statement published by her family.

Her relatives say the Concordia University professor was in Iran conducting research. She was initially arrested in March, shortly before she was scheduled to leave the country, her family says, and was prohibited from leaving.

Her passport, research documents, computer and other personal belongings were confiscated by the state, the statement said. Hoodfar was then rearrested this week and placed in the notorious Evin prison without benefit of legal counsel.

“The authorities have not made clear whether Prof. Hoodfar is being charged with espionage, sedition or propaganda against the state,” her family said.

The Iranian regime has also used generic violations of law such as “spreading propaganda” to arrest anyone ranging from rappers and bloggers to journalists to students.

For example, two musicians and a film-maker have begun three-year jail sentences in Iran for the online distribution of underground music.

The three men, who have been described by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience, were summoned to serve their sentences last week after an appeals court upheld their conviction.

A three-minute trial in 2015 found brothers Mehdi and Hossein Rajabian, 26 and 31, and their friend Yousef Emadi, 35, guilty of “insulting Islamic sanctities”, “spreading propaganda against the system” and “illegal audio-visual activities” for the distribution of music unlicensed by the cultural ministry.

They did not have access to lawyers during the trial, activists said.

The mullahs in Iran don’t miss an opportunity to push the boundaries of what acceptable behavior is according to them, even go to the absurd length of banning a popular Iranian soccer player for six months for wearing yellow “SpongeBob pants” based on the cartoon character in photos on social media.

The images show Sosha Makani, a former goalkeeper for Iran’s Persepolis Football Club, wearing a blue shirt and tight yellow dotted trousers that Iranian media described as resembling the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon character.

The Iranian football federation’s morality committee cited Makani’s clothing as “inappropriate” and the cause for his suspension. However, the decision isn’t final, and Makani can appeal through an Appeals Committee.

The fact that Iran has a “morality” committee for sports demonstrates just how far afield the regime is and how it will never bend as long as the mullahs are in charge.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Why the Iran Lobby Avoids Discussing Human Rights and Terrorism

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Why the Iran Lobby Avoids Discussing Human Rights and Terrorism

Why the Iran Lobby Avoids Discussing Human Rights and Terrorism

In a world where it is common place knowledge that the Iranian regime is a state sponsor of terrorism, with a long and bloody history, it always seems that the Iran lobby operates in a different plane of existence.

For regime supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, issues such as human rights violations and terrorism are less than inconvenient truths about Iran; they are things never meant to be spoken of in public or on social media.

The Iran lobby consistently seems to operate on the premise that if you never mention either of these topics, then they must not be real.

This is obvious by simply perusing the blogs and social media feeds for these Iran support groups periodically. Reading them within the context of what is happening in real time in the Middle East and Iran provides a surreal view that is totally disconnected from reality.

It’s also pretty darn funny to read.

Take for example Trita Parsi’s Twitter feed (@tparsi) which can’t help but be viewed as comedy material or pure ignorance. More likely it resonates as part of the famed “echo chamber” that national security staffer Ben Rhodes boasted about in a recent New York Times Magazine article.

Take for example this nugget in which Parsi derides the U.S. State Department’s annual terrorism report in which it identifies Iran as a leading state sponsor of terrorism:

“Still a mystery to me why State doesnt release this on April 1,” he tweets, implying that the report is a joke better left for an April Fools prank.

Unfortunately for Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby, mockery and ridicule can’t hide the facts laid out in the report in which the State Department spells out the Iranian regime’s longstanding support for Hezbollah, a key cog in the regime’s long-running involvement in the Syrian civil war, and its support for Shiite militias in Iraq that have roamed throughout Sunni areas as death squads and Houthi rebels in Yemen that have displaced nearly half of the country’s population as part of a civil war.

Parsi’s Twitter feed is absent any mentions of those Iran-backed wars and the role the mullahs and the regime’s Quds Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps play in them. He does make mention of the plight of Syrian refugees fleeing the war and the high price they pay in trying to cross the Mediterranean, but never urges Iran to seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict or even open its borders to those refugees it is forcing out.

Parsi does however spend considerable social media time attacking Saudi Arabia, the Iranian regime’s biggest rival, accusing it of “terrorism” and acts more readily identified with the mullahs in Tehran.

He even goes to the absurd level of defending top mullah Ali Khamenei’s incendiary speech over the weekend in which he denounced the U.S. and called Great Britain “evil” and blamed his country’s continued economic woes on existing U.S. sanctions on Iran’s access to U.S. currency markets tied to human rights violations and not the nuclear deal from last year.

“Khamenei said today what Iran’s been signaling the US for a while: Anti-ISIS cooperation on hold due to sanctions relief problems,” Parsi tweets.

The implication Parsi tries to make is that continued sanctions against Iran for the mass executions of over 2,500 Iranian men, women and children, as well as its sponsorship of three major wars is somehow halting the war against ISIS.

He conveniently ignores the bulk of Khamenei speech which is filled with vitriol and hate and the usual threats to wipe Iran’s enemies off the face of the Earth.

The more appropriate evaluation to make of Parsi social media postings and those his colleagues at NIAC is that they spend more time posting about Donald Trump than they do about the misery being suffered by Iranians at the hands of their own government.

They spend more time posting about the Cannes Film Festival than they do about the threats being made by the creation of a new morality police force designed to enforce strict Islamic codes against Iranian women.

They spend more time discussing the plight of Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American arrested and imprisoned in Iran who is a long-time supporter of the NIAC, than the thousands of Iranian dissidents, journalists, artists, bloggers and activists that were rounded up, imprisoned and tortured leading up to parliamentary elections.

The priorities of the Iran lobby are always on display to anyone who wishes to scan through the social feeds of supporters such as Parsi. What is telling is what is NOT in those feeds, such as any criticism of the mullahs, any calls for a Syrian cease fire, any demands for a release of all Iranian journalists or dissidents, any urging for the end of the barbaric practice of public hangings of prisoners, or any hopes for a cessation of the practice of beating women who do not wear hijabs.

Parsi and his cohorts do not do any of these things because they are – above all else – committed to supporting the Iranian regime and keeping it safe from any threats.

By Michael Tomlinson

While Iran Maintains Hostility, Iran Lobby Stays Silent

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While Iran Maintains Hostility, Iran Lobby Stays Silent

While Iran Maintains Hostility, Iran Lobby Stays Silent

Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, used his weekly appearance on state-run television to renew his hostility to the West and reinforce the commitment by the regime to pursuing policies that advance its own agenda of expanding the regime’s influence and control over the Middle East.

The statement by Khamenei, made in a nationally televised speech, was the latest in a series of signals that the regime’s senior leadership was not likely to allow any easing of hostility toward what he called “many small and big enemies”, referring to the U.S. and the West.

While much of the vitriol he directed at the U.S. and its allies is historically the same as he usually trowels out in these speeches, it is noteworthy to read media reports on the growing dissatisfaction within the regime about the inability to generate the significant economic benefits from the nuclear deal reached last year.

Much of that inability is attributed to the inept management of the Iranian economy by the mullahs in which corruptions runs deep and wide throughout a system rigged to benefit the ruling elites and the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Some of that also is attributed to U.S. sanctions still in place not related to the nuclear deal, but linked to the regime’s historic support for terrorism and abysmal human rights record which prevents Iran from having access to U.S. currency markets and exchanges. These restrictions have stymied efforts by the regime to broaden its foreign trade, especially with European Union and Asian financial institutions reluctant to run afoul of any future U.S. sanctions.

Predictably the mullahs in Tehran and their allies in the Iran lobby have decried these sanctions and accuse the U.S. of trying to sabotage the nuclear deal, which is an absurd argument to make since the Obama administration has done virtually everything in its power to accommodate the Iranian regime including leading Americans astray with false arguments in support of the deal to doctoring official State Department video to cover up references to the early start of negotiations with hardliners in Tehran.

“They use human rights, terrorism … as pretexts to avoid fulfilling their commitments,” Khamenei said.

“If we remain strong and united and revolutionary, those who are trying to bully Iran and are against us will not succeed,” he told a gathering to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the founder of the Velayat-e-Faqih (The mullah’s supreme leader), Rouhollah Khomeini, in 1989.

Khamenei referred to Iran’s “important” role in the Middle East’s political direction, stating that Iran is the only obstacle preventing the triumph of Washington’s strategy for the volatile Middle East region.

They were planning for a “new Middle East”, a “greater Middle East”, several years ago, but their plans for Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, have failed due to Iran’s defiance, Khamenei said.

Khamenei’s comments point out the regime’s expansionist policies to create an arc of Shia influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and have used terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah, armed militias in Iraq and rebel groups such as the Houthis in Yemen in blatant military efforts to topple governments, expel undesirables such as Christians and Sunni Muslims, and persecute dissidents.

The map of the Middle East is basically a human rights wasteland unlike anything the world has seen since the heyday of terrorism and Cold War in the 1970s, that in the absence of a firm policy towards the mullahs in Tehran, the mullahs have been eager to exploit and take advantage of.

The determination of the Iranian regime to push past the boundaries of the nuclear deal and make it a shambles was again on display as the Iranian regime announced the launch of an offshore bank on one of its Gulf islands according to a report by the regime’s IRNA news agency, as it continues to seek ways around restrictions on international payments.

The bank will be set up on Kish Island, which has been developed as a tourism destination and a free trade zone over the past few decades. The aim is to tap into rising demand for cross-border banking transactions, according to comments by Ali Jirofti, deputy head of the Kish Free Zone Organization. He told IRNA on June 5 that the new, unnamed offshore bank will be able to transfer money and facilitate domestic and foreign investment activities.

The establishment of such an offshore facility would make a mockery of sanctions on Iran for human rights and terrorism violations and if allowed, it would prove devastating in efforts to hold the regime accountable for its appalling human rights record.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department released its annual report on terrorism and again listed the Iranian regime as a chief sponsor of terrorism worldwide.

Predictably the regime rejected the damning report.

As in many previous years, the report identified Iran as the world’s “foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2015” through its financing, training and equipping of various armed groups, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as well as the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The report said that despite reaching a landmark agreement with world powers on its nuclear program, Iran continued to use the Quds Force of its Revolutionary Guard to create instability throughout the Middle East.

In addition to arming Hezbollah and the Assad government, Iran also provided weapons and other assistance to militants in Bahrain and remained active in supporting groups such as Hamas, the report said.

The report is an annual rite of summer now to point a bloody finger at the mullahs. It is a reminder never to allow wiggle room to the mullahs and reinforce the efforts of Iranian dissident groups and human rights organizations working for freedom in Iran.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Expands Reach to Save Itself

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Iran Regime Expands Reach to Save Itself

Iran Regime Expands Reach to Save Itself

One of the central themes of the Iran lobby has been the idea that a schism exists within Iranian politics, pitting moderates against hardline conservatives. The perception and mythology of that idea is what propelled the Iran nuclear agreement last year and has served as a rhetorical red line in the sand against taking any actions against the regime in response to provocations such as illegal ballistic missile tests or human rights crackdowns.

The Iran lobby even pointed at the results of the parliamentary elections as proof of this myth calling it a win for “moderates” without acknowledging that almost every candidate with a shred of dissenting opinion in their heads or dissenting acts in their past was disqualified from even showing up on the ballot.

In the year since the nuclear deal was reached, the Iranian regime has been given an effectively free hand to do whatever it wishes without fear of reprisal or reproach and the mullahs in Tehran are responding accordingly.

The so-called moderate wins in the parliament were swept aside with the elections of notorious hardline extremists to head the parliament, Guardian Council and Assembly of Experts. Ali Larijani was re-elected speaker of the parliament with a resounding 237 votes in the 290 seat parliament. We can only assume that the “moderate” bloc must only amount to 53 seats now that the votes are tallied.

Ahamd Jannati, a hardened religious zealot, took control of the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for picking the successor to top mullah Ali Khamenei. It is almost assured the next leader of the Islamic state will be as hardcore and unyielding as Khamenei.

Jannati also heads the Guardian Council, which tossed out all of the perceived “moderates” (12,000 of them) running for office; keeping Iran’s government ranks ideologically pure and committed to the Islamic extremist views.

Ahmad Khatami, a firebrand cleric and member of the Assembly of Experts, celebrated Jannati’s victory in a sermon last week, saying that “arrogant, powerful media in England and America did everything they could do against Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati” but “their analysis has not come true.”

The Iran lobby made much of the so-called “List of Hope” purporting to represent moderate candidates vying for seats. Well last Sunday, in an initial vote for parliamentary speaker, 50 of the nearly 100 regime lawmakers on the “List of Hope” sided with hard-liners. So much for that hope and “moderation”.

The Iranian regime is solidly in the grip of hardliners and its every action reinforces that reality, but those same hardliners are facing an equally harsh truth which is their reign is troubled and struggling to hang onto power as it is drained by reversals abroad.

The mullahs were forced to corral Russian military support in Syria to stave off disaster there. They were forced to rig elections because they knew they would lose if there was an open and free election. They are supplying proxy forces in Iraq and Yemen in a bid to maintain their tenuous control over both of their neighbors.

Now reports are coming out questioning why Taliban chief Mullah Mansoor was in Iran and what he was up to. In a bag near his burned out taxi was his Pakistani passport (in the name of Wali Muhammad) with immigration stamps suggesting he had been in Iran for almost two months, according to The Guardian.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the chair and editor-in-chief of U.S. News, blasted U.S. policy towards Iran and the actions of national security staffer Ben Rhodes who spearheaded the effort alongside the Iran lobby to sell the “moderates vs. hardliners” message.

“Whatever the case for impeding Iran’s advance to nuclear status, we are letting a tiger out of the cage by releasing more than $100 billion in frozen assets without a commitment on how it will be spent. Some of this money may be spent wisely, but Iran remains a central banker for Murder Inc. Millions of dollars will go to sustain the vision of restoring a Persian empire,” he writes.

“Of course the language of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is that they seek more closeness, unity, brotherhood and better relations. Tell that to the families of more than 200,000 Syrians killed during that country’s civil war, courtesy of Iran’s lethal investment. Tell it to the nearly 5 million Syrian refugees begging for sanctuary in Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon. Tell it to the people of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen coping with subversion financed by Iran. Tell it to the relatives and colleagues of officials murdered in Lebanon,” he added.

Zuckerman’s point is well served considering reports of how the Iranian regime is stepping up its presence in neighboring Iraq now that the U.S. has essentially walked away creating a power vacuum the mullahs are eager to fill.

Iraq’s elite forces who are leading the fight to retake Falluja from ISIS, have been trained by U.S. advisers, but many others on the battlefield were trained or supplied by Iran. It’s the latest example of how Washington has looked the other way as Iran deepened its military involvement in Iraq over the past two years.

In recent weeks, thousands of Iraqi soldiers and Shi’ite militia members supported by Iran assembled on the outskirts of Falluja for the expected attack on the Sunni city. In the lead-up to the assault, General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the special operations branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, met with leaders of the Iraqi coalition of Shi’ite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The Iranian regime has several interests in its neighbor: Iraq provides strategic depth and a buffer against Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states that are competing with Iran for dominance over the Persian Gulf.

The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has also become caught up in the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia that is churning in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran has recruited thousands of Afghan and Pakistani Shiites to fight alongside the Revolutionary Guard Corps and members of Hezbollah in support of the government in Syria against Saudi-backed Sunni militants. Hundreds of members of the so-called Zaynabiyun Brigade have died in the Syrian war.

The Iranian regime’s pervasive influence was uncovered in Bahrain as that nation charged 18 people with contacting the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah with the aim of stirring up unrest in the kingdom, state news agency BNA reported on Wednesday.

BNA said the prosecution had established after the investigation that the group had formed a “secret cell” to incite Bahrainis against the ruling system and to propagate information calling for changing the government by force.

Far from acting “moderately” the regime is in a struggle to stay alive amidst a world in turmoil.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Demands Social Media Sites Store Data Only In Iran

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Iran Demands Social Media Sites Store Data Only In Iran

Iran Demands Social Media Sites Store Data Only In Iran

The Iranian regime issues ultimatums with the regularity of a cuckoo clock. Whether it’s an indictment of perceived transgressions by human rights groups to blustery pronouncements threatening devastation on its enemies, the mullahs in Tehran are frequently making demands, threats and promises.

The latest demand came this weekend courtesy of the regime’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, which said:

“Foreign messaging companies active in the country are required to transfer all data and activity linked to Iranian citizens into the country in order to ensure their continued activity,” in new regulations carried by state news agency IRNA on Sunday.

Putting aside the fact that the regime has a group dedicated to cyberspace with a name straight out of bad James Bond villain list, the regime has put a public face to one of the more sinister efforts it pushes in using the internet to track down dissenters, activists and others that oppose the rule of the mullahs.

Iran has some of the strictest controls on internet access in the world and blocks access to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, although many users are able to access them through widely available software; notably the regime’s leadership has free access to those same platforms to push out its propaganda such as social feeds for Hassan Rouhani and even Ali Khamenei.

The council, whose members are selected by Khamenei, gave social media companies a year to comply, IRNA said, adding that the measures were based on the “guidelines and concerns of the supreme leader.”

The new requirements could affect messaging app Telegram in particular. The cloud-based instant messaging service has gained popularity because of its high level of security and is estimated to have about 20 million users in Iran, which has a total population of about 80 million, placing it at the forefront of most of the digital communications taking place among ordinary Iranians the regime cannot spy on.

Iranians have proven adept at using technology to circumvent strict government rules in the past. The Gershad app, launched in February, helps Iranian women track the morality police in large cities, so they can avoid being stopped for dress code violations.

The technology community, especially social media companies based in Silicon Valley such as Facebook and Twitter and in Silicon Beach such as Snapchat, reacted negatively to the mullahs’ demands.

The tech blog TechCrunch noted how the “Iranian government wants to be able to track private and semi-private conversations on messaging apps. Many social networks are already blocked in Iran, but it looks like the government wants even more control.”

But TechCrunch explained the devil was in the details since moving servers to Iran might not be enough, as WhatsApp recently completed its rollout of end-to-end encryption. With end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp can’t even read the content of communications, as they are encrypted, and only WhatsApp users involved in these conversations can decrypt them.

Apple’s iMessage is another example of an encrypted messaging protocol. Apple isn’t able to hand out messages to a government.

Earlier this month Iranian authorities placed eight women under arrest for posting Instagram photos of themselves without a headscarf on as part of a larger crackdown on social media usage that began before the most recent parliamentary elections.

The regime had previously arrested the entire staff of an Iranian tech blog and actively seeks out Iranian citizens posting on social media anything that could be construed as defying the Iranian regime’s extremist rule and authority or posing a threat to the regime leaders.

Even in the face of tough web censorship, Iranians are still using the internet in droves. A government report last year showed that 67.4 per cent of the country’s youth are online, with 19.1 percent claiming that they use messaging apps, and 15.3 per cent on social media. It is also widely believed that Iran’s tech-savvy citizens are utilizing VPNs to access sites blocked by the government.

This poses a significant problem for the regime since news often is smuggled out electronically of the atrocities and human rights abuses within Iran by dissident and human rights activists, including shocking photos and videos of public executions, amputations and other medieval punishments enforced by the regime.

Unsurprisingly, the Iran lobby has remained silent on this issue and the threat to free speech and freedom it poses. For groups such as the National Iranian American Council, whose members such as Trita Parsi, Ryan Costello and Tyler Cullis make ample and aggressive use of social media, the attempt to electronically spy on and muzzle Iranians, including those living in places such as the U.S. with relatives in Iran, have been met with silence.

This move by the Iranian regime only adds to the mountains of evidence proving the mullahs are neither moderate, nor peaceful.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Continues on Path of Extremism

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Iran Regime Continues on Path of Extremism

Iran Regime Continues on Path of Extremism

Recent revelations of the fraudulent nature of the debate about the Iran nuclear deal have forced news media outlets to rethink coverage of the Iranian regime and members of Congress from both sides of the political aisle to crackdown on ever rising acts of extremism coming from Iran.

Conventional wisdom would dictate that once the Iran lobby’s efforts to buy favorable media coverage, push false messages about moderation in Iran and hopeful scenarios of a more stable Middle East, were discovered that the lobby and mullahs in Tehran would retreat to preserve their ill-gotten gains.

Instead, the opposite has happened as the Iranian regime has widened the conflict in neighboring countries, cracked down at dissent at home, and is seeking to forge more military sales to bolster its weakened military.

The regime’s top leader, Ali Khamenei, has spent considerable television time reiterating the policy of opposing the West, warning of infiltration and corruption of its clerical tyranny through American pop culture and social media, and maintained the need to keep up a “resistance economy” to meet the demands for continued proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as major parts of countries resources are spent on these wars.

Khamenei expanded on that militancy by calling for vigilance against what he described as a “soft war” mounted by the West and aimed at weakening the clerical establishment, state television reported on Thursday.

“Our officials and all parts of the establishment should be vigilant about the West’s continued soft war against Iran…the enemies want to weaken the system from inside,” Khamenei said.

In a meeting with members of the Assembly of Experts, with authority to appoint and dismiss the supreme Leader, Khamenei told Iranian officials:

“By impairing centers of powers in Iran, it will be easy to harm the establishment from inside.”

The 88-member assembly, consisting mostly of elderly clerics, is expected to choose any successor to Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters.

“The only way to materialize the (1979) revolution’s goals is national unity and not to obey the enemy,” he said.

The fact that Khamenei continues to describe the U.S. as the “enemy” demonstrates clearly his views on the relationship between the two countries and undermines the narrative put forward by groups such as the National Iranian American Council of an improvement in relations with Iran.

That desire to continue ruling Iran with an iron fist has led to such a widespread crackdown on human rights that the only avenues of informal protest left to ordinary Iranians are becoming few and far between as the regime deploys new morality police squads and arrests women, journalists, artists, bloggers and pretty much anyone else expressing a divergent opinion.

For example, last Saturday, the Independent reported how a number of women living in Iran chose to cut their hair short and dress as men in a bid to bypass morality police and evade hijabs which are a legal requirement in all public places and strictly enforced, often with public beatings.

But in recent weeks, women have started sharing photos of themselves with their hair short in some images and dressed in clothes more typically associated with men in others, which campaigns against compulsory hijab, in order to move freely in public.

Enforced hijab is just one of a number of laws in Iran which discriminate against women, who need permission from male relatives to study after marrying and leave the country in some cases. Single mothers are left equally disempowered as Iranian law gives all legal rights to the father after children turn seven.

On the foreign policy front, new revelations came out in the wake of the death of mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the Taliban leader who was recently killed in a U.S. drone strike along the Iran-Afghanistan border, showing he had several trips to Iran as part of efforts to raise funds for the terrorist organization.

Mansour’s death is a major blow to Pakistan and possibly also Iran, which may have forged links with the Taliban to spread extremism in the region, according to Waheed Muzhda, a former Foreign Ministry official in the Taliban regime who is now a political analyst in Kabul.

“Iran may also have been behind the curtain to stab the U.S. in the back using Taliban militants.” Muzhda said.

Although it is Pakistan that has traditionally been condemned for secretly supporting Afghan insurgents, analysts say Iranian regime also provides weapons, cash and sanctuary to the Taliban. Despite the deep ideological antipathy between a hardline Sunni group and cleric-run Shia state the two sides have proved themselves quite willing to cooperate where necessary against mutual enemies and in the pursuit of shared interests.

Mansoor first entered Iran almost two months ago, according to immigration stamps in a Pakistani passport found in a bag near the wreckage of the taxi he was travelling in when he was killed by a US drone strike.

The potential of close coordination between the Taliban and the Iranian regime would offer more proof of the regime’s chief role in supporting virtually all of the major Middle Eastern terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Houthis, Shiite militias and now the Taliban.

Nonetheless police and intelligence officials in western Afghanistan often complain the local insurgency is being managed and supplied with weapons and training from Iran.

We can only hope more truth emerges from the wreckage of the Iran nuclear deal’s “echo chamber” revelations.

By Michael Tomlinson