National Iranian American Council – Page 18

Iran Lobby Worries Gains Will Be Lost With New President

January 21, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Worries Gains Will Be Lost With New President

The Iran lobby continues to exhibit the delusional nature that has marked much of its public lobbying efforts on behalf of the Iranian regime. The newest effort was put on display in an editorial posted to the Huffington Post by Trita Parsi and Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council.

The piece offered up helpful suggestions for the next U.S. president to maintain the same policy of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran that the Obama administration has followed the past three years leading up to the fateful decision to lift economic sanctions as part of a deeply flawed nuclear agreement.

Parsi and Cullis offer the suggestions because they realize the clock is ticking down with the incoming presidential election, and the new president, be it either a Republican or Democrat, is likely to forge their own path in dealing with Iran, especially considering much of the Obama administration’s legacy towards the regime has been built largely around executive orders and not full-fledged treaties.

They do ask an important question though which is “Since this new budding relationship with Iran has not been institutionalized, what will be left of it when the Obama administration leaves office?”

Unfortunately, Parsi and Cullis seem to think that international relations is more akin to developing a teenage crush and keeping the love notes going through Snapchats and emojis.

They offer up three steps in their recipe for true love between the U.S. and a theocratic Iranian regime controlled by mullahs who fully support the use of terror as a tool of statecraft, including:

The need for the U.S. and Iran to establish a strategic dialogue thought regular meetings;
Establishing a dialogue between both countries legislatures; and
The need for increased contact and communications between the two societies.

On the surface these seem like worthy, even laudable goals, but like all the bright ideas and sunny promises made by the NIAC, they are not rooted in the reality of the here and now.

Take for example the first idea they offer which is to build a dialogue through regular meetings. It is worth noting that the U.S., even when it did not have formal diplomatic relations, never stopped meeting with Iranian representatives on a whole host of issues, most notably negotiations on the regime’s burgeoning nuclear program through both the Bush and Obama presidencies.

Parsi and Cullis neglect to mention that dialogue between the two countries has always been present, the difference though has been in the general unwillingness to give the mullahs a blank check until the last year in which the Obama administration essentially caved in nuclear talks – first by delinking support for terrorism and human rights abuses from talks – then allowing the Iranian regime to support the Assad regime in Syria even after the use of chemical weapons without repercussions.

The notion that the Middle East would be a remarkably different place if the Bush administration had capitulated earlier is ridiculous when you consider such an act would not have deterred mullahs in Iran from supporting terror groups, would not have deterred them from doing what it could to keep Assad in power and would certainly not have deterred them from continuing the practice of public hangings and mass crackdowns on journalists, dissidents, women and religious minorities.

Most important, the idea that ISIS could have been stymied is absurd since it was Iranian regime’s support of Assad in the first place that spawned ISIS, as well as offering safe haven for Al-Qaeda leaders driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S. invasion who later left to build ISIS out of the carnage of Syria.

The second idea that Parsi and Cullis offer about a dialogue between legislative bodies is even – to borrow a phrase from the Trump lexicon – more stupid than the first idea since the Iranian regime has a long practice of winnowing the field of candidates eligible to run for parliamentary seats, especially in the Assembly of Experts in order to ensure an ironclad control over the government.

Take for example parliamentary elections next month in which out of a field of 12,000 candidates who applied to run, almost two-thirds were disqualified by the Guardian Council. The 12-member council vets political candidates and all legislation passed by parliament. It is made up of six judges elected by parliament and six clerics appointed by top mullah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on virtually all important state matters.

So-called reformists—those favoring more political and economic freedom and improved relations with the outside world, who have been involved in all previous terrorist activities and domestic repression—say their camp was overwhelmingly targeted, with one saying barely 1% had been approved in a sign that the practical political realities of how the regime is run are completely at odds with the rosy picture painted by Parsi and Cullis.

Considering how the two houses of parliament in the regime are under the thumb of a single man in Khamenei, the notion of a dialogue developing between them and the U.S. Congress is a silly one and unlikely to ever develop.

This brings us to the last ridiculous idea Parsi and Cullis hoist up which is the idea of communications and contact between the Iranian and American people. Again, a nice notion if it was true, but almost impossible to succeed considering how the mullahs have imposed a cyberwall blocking internet access and use of social media platforms for the Iranian people to communicate with the outside world.

From a practical standpoint, the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which owns the virtually all of the major telecommunications companies, monitors the nation’s communications and often uses those channels to identify dissidents and suppress contrary political activities.

Considering how American culture is largely built around mass media entertainment and consumer marketing, it is highly unlikely that any of that will ever find unrestricted audiences in Iran, where mullahs already impose strict censorship rules on all foreign media content and ban many iconic American brands for fear of cultural “contamination.”

Indeed, what Parsi and Cullis are really worried about is that the broad public perception in America that Iran’s mullah leadership is focused on terror and military expansion at the cost of domestic oppression of its people is true and will become the focus on a new president’s foreign policy. For the Iranian people and the rest of the world, the best hope for a truly new relationship with the regime lies not in following the plan laid out by Parsi and Cullis, but in fact doing the exact opposite.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Attacks Saudi Arabia to Aid Iran Regime

January 8, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Attacks Saudi Arabia to Aid Iran Regime

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has ratcheted up the propaganda machine to take direct aim at Saudi Arabia in the growing escalation in tensions between it and the Iranian regime.

This was highlighted in back-to-back editorials by Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of NIAC as well as a steady parade of attack pieces by Eli Clifton and Paul Pillar on Lobelog.com, all attempting to portray the Iran regime as the picked on softie and Saudi Arabia as the menacing bully.

It’s a curious, but not unsurprising, direction for the Iran lobby since the rise in tensions with Saudi Arabia and other neighboring Arab states have brought to the forefront one unmistakable point the rest of the world cannot ignore; the Iranian regime is always at the center of the world’s most dangerous conflicts.

Be it in Syria by its support of the Assad regime, or in Yemen through its support of Houthis rebels or in Iraq through Shiite militias, the mullahs in Tehran have manipulated events to create disorder in order to gain footholds in neighboring nations to establish the Shiite version of the Warsaw Pact as a buffer from its adversaries.

But the delusional arguments being pedaled by the Iran lobby to cover for Iran’s aggressive expansions have ranged all over the map as it has tried anything to explain away the sectarian violence and bloodshed coming at the behest of the Iranian regime.

Take for example Parsi’s editorial appearing in Al Jazeera in which he attempts to portray Saudi Arabia as a “declining state” and Iran as a “rising state” by way of explaining why Saudi Arabia is resisting Iran so strenuously.

It’s the kind of argument a high school student reading Cliff Note’s versions of history might make. Parsi says that “history teaches us that it is not rising states that tend to be reckless, but declining powers.”

Most historians would disagree with Parsi and most political and military analysts would find his comment nonsensical since the defining parameters for nations to act “recklessly” often form around issues of resources, economy, wealth and even faith. The “decline” of a nation can be defined in a similarly wide variety of methods, none of which would apply to Parsi’s reasoning.

Empires and nations can decline through environmental degradation such as the Harappan Civilization in the 22^nd century BC in what is now called Pakistan or the Minoans centered on the island of Crete which met its demise in 1450 BC when a volcano erupted.

They can also decline through war such as the ancient Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. In all these cases, nations and empires in decline were not cited for “reckless” action as a reason for their declines. If anything, history teaches us that declining empires are often the victims of aggressive neighbors who sense weakness and an opportunity to acquire more territory, more wealth or more slaves.

Modern history has taught us that lesson especially well as in the growth of totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany or now the Iranian regime in which aggression is more often the hallmark of these nations’ leadership. Accommodation is viewed as weakness, negotiation is a tactic to hold off retaliation and military action is a tool of statecraft.

Parsi typically confuses political weakness with practical weakness. It’s a viewpoint common among dictatorships which only see the world through the lens of strength and domination. Parsi’s conceit and obsession with the strongman view of the world is illustrated when he writes:

“Their prospects of success in any confrontation will diminish the longer they wait, and second, because of the illusion that a crisis may be their last chance to change the trajectory of their regional influence and their prospects vis-à-vis rivals. When their rivals — who have the opposite relationship with time — seek to deescalate and avoid any confrontation, declining states feel they are left with no choice but to instigate a crisis.”

Parsi believes then that in the modern world the only options open for nations that feel threatened is to seek out confrontation and create crisis.

Going by that standard, the nations in the greatest decline would seem to be China, North Korea, Russia and Iran given the recent track records of confrontation in the South China Sea, Ukraine, nuclear bomb tests and – in the case of the Iranian regime – aggressive actions in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. On that basis alone, Iran would seem to be the nation in steepest decline using Parsi’s logic.

Parsi neglects to also mention the near Hail Mary-like request of the mullahs in Tehran to bring in Russian intervention in Syria to save the Assad regime.

If anything, the recent actions by the Saudis and other nations to sever relations with Iran including Bahrain, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, all reflect a newfound strength and resolve from nations that have typically come to rely on U.S. power to protect them. If anything, these nations have opted to poke the Iranian beast in the eye and finally stand up to the largest supplier of terrorist groups in the world.

These nations have sought to halt the flow of arms into their nations with crackdowns on Islamic extremists receiving weapons and explosives from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and even acted militarily to in Syria and Yemen and break from the historical patterns of only supplying cash to U.S. or European allies.

The recent acts by the Iranian regime to violate UN sanctions with ballistic missile launches and threaten to walk away from the nuclear deal it agreed to last July smack more of the desperation Parsi writes about than anything Saudi Arabia has done.

Parsi largely blames these acts and the recent burning of the Saudi embassy in Tehran as the result of a small “hardliner” segment at odds with the “moderate” leadership of Hassan Rouhani. It’s a common canard offered by the Iran lobby and one that fails to seriously discuss the true nature of the regime, which is as a theocracy, Iran is firmly and fully in the control of Ali Khamenei and the other mullahs. Any other interpretation is either naïve or deliberately obtuse.

It’s worth noting that the mullahs have a penchant for burning down foreign embassies having done so to the Americans in 1979, the British in 2011 and now the Saudis in 2016. One might wonder who’s next for an encore.

By Michael Tomlinson

NIAC List of Accomplishments Misses on Human Rights

January 5, 2016 by admin

NIAC List of Accomplishments Misses on Human Rights

The National Iranian American Council, the leading advocate and lobbyist for the Iranian regime, published its list of accomplishments for 2015. It was a revealing list giving insight into the top priorities for the NIAC.

For an organization that claims as its mission the “strengthening the voice of Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between the American and Iranian people” one would think some of its top priorities would include:

Lifting of restrictions within Iran in the use of social media and access to the internet;
Halting censorship of news media and a stop to the arrest and imprisonment of journalists;
Freeing of Iranian-Americans currently being held in Iranian prisons, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati;
Withdrawing support for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and a halt to proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen;
Releasing over 90 Christians currently imprisoned in regime prisons for practicing their faith;
Stopping all executions and imposition of punishments such as public amputations, stoning and beatings; and
Restoring basic rights to Iranian women to be free from abuse, spousal murder and misogyny laws.

On the surface, that would seem like an eminently reasonable list of goals for any organization interested in advancing humanitarians causes, but in the case of the NIAC, none of those goals are in its list of accomplishments, nor are they in its 2016 resolutions for future action.

That’s right, zero, zilch, nada.

So what exactly were the NIAC’s best accomplishments for the year? According to its website, the NIAC lays proud claim to nine achievements in its list, of which seven were related to the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime.

The single most important achievement for the NIAC in 2015 according to its own boasts was securing a nuclear deal already dead on arrival with the test firing of ballistic missiles in violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions and threats by the mullahs to walk away from the deal if there are any threats to impose new sanctions for its missile violations.

Not exactly a recipe for “promoting greater understanding.”

Unsurprisingly, among its four stated “resolutions” for 2016, half relate to the nuclear deal.

Nowhere does NIAC mention the Iranian-Americans being held in Iran.

Nowhere does NIAC mention the brutal human rights situation in Iran.

Nowhere does NIAC mention the growing sectarian rift being fueled by extremist statements being made by top mullah Ali Khamenei who has been calling for the destruction of Sunni Arab states.

Nowhere does NIAC give any mention to the need to ratchet down tensions by calling on the Iranian regime to withdrawal support for proxy wars that have turned the Middle East into a battlefield stretching from the Mediterranean to Indian Oceans.

Instead, the NIAC’s sole focus is to keep the nuclear agreement alive long enough for $100 billion in cash to be wire transferred into regime bank accounts.

Trita Parsi must be looking to buy a new house.

It is a sad situation when the NIAC spells out in its own words its top priorities and none of them address the concerns of Iranian-Americans who yearn for a return to a homeland free from religious control, free from harsh brutality and open to all forms of religious worship and freedoms.

Far from serving Iranian-Americans, the NIAC serves only the mullahs in Tehran and has no other agenda than to take its orders from them.

One would think just for the sake of appearances the NIAC would throw a bone to human rights advocates and mention or cite as a goal the release of these Iranian-American hostages as a priority. It doesn’t even have to be the top priority, maybe number five or six on its list, but the NIAC can’t even bring itself to do that.

It should be apparent to any member of Congress, to any Congressional candidate, to any presidential campaign, who looks at this list, the NIAC is nothing more than a lobbying arm of the Iranian regime and does not accurately reflect the concerns of Iranian-Americans.

In this new year of 2016, we can only hope everyone wakes up to the charade the NIAC has been playing in 2015.

By Michael Tomlinson

Looking Back at 2015: Iran Lobby Pushes Falsehoods

December 30, 2015 by admin

Looking Back at 2015: Iran Lobby Pushes Falsehoods

Our last Look Back at 2015 concerns the Iran lobby itself and the complete lack of moral fiber within them. As 2015 saw a world engulfed in violence and bloodshed borne out of Islamic extremism which sprang forth from the teachings and policies of the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby remained deafeningly silent.

Chief among the leaders of the Iran lobby has been the National Iranian American Council, which has come to symbolize all of the oddities and corruption within supporters of the mullahs.

The NIAC claims an extended mission to help promote universal human rights in Iran saying on its website:

“NIAC works to ensure that human rights are upheld in Iran and that civil rights are protected in the US. NIAC believes that the principles of universal rights – dignity, due process and freedom from violence – are the cornerstones of a civil society.”

Lofty goals, but the record of NIAC’s living up to that mission is pitiful, especially given the plight of Iranian-Americans who have languished in Iranian prisons. These Iranian-Americans seem to be outside the good graces of the NIAC and are rarely mentioned in official public statements, or even social media posts by leading NIAC staffers including Trita Parsi, Reza Marashi and Tyler Cullis.

It is on social media we often see the true nature of the Iran lobby and the allegiances these supporters of the mullahs bear; the most prolific Twitterer is Parsi himself and his political goals are often thinly veiled in his tweets.

Throughout the year, Parsi would again and again go to this basic impulse he has to ridicule American institutions and mock all things even remotely offensive to the mullahs in Tehran.

This includes his tweets through the spring and summer in support of nuclear talks between the P5+1 and the Iranian regime. Parsi often framed the debate about what the U.S. is willing to give up and not the other way around, especially as it applied to delinking contentious issues such as human rights abuses and support of terrorism.

Even after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January, the NIAC was silent. For the NIAC, there was no #jesuischarlie hashtag.

Even when Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kassasbeth was burned alive in a cage on video by ISIS, NIAC made no statement condemning the hideous. Nor did the NIAC ever bother to delve into the roots of Islamic extremism, other than to attempt to make the connection in some manner to Saudi Arabia; Iran’s longtime regional rival. Again, it’s all about politics.

But considering Parsi’s past track record in losing a libel lawsuit largely on the grounds of shoddy record-keeping, making false statements and discovery abuses, it seems to be par for the course of how Parsi conducts his public business in the same slipshod manner. It is worth noting that Parsi was ordered to pay the journalist he accused of libel $184,000 to pay for the defendant’s legal expenses.

A closer look at the judge’s ruling in that case exposes many of the falsehoods the NIAC engages in when handling reality and facts, such as:

NIAC really didn’t produce calendar records it was ordered to;
NIAC initially hid the existence of four of its computers from the court and was not honest about what they were used for;
NIAC misrepresented how its computer system was configured;
NIAC didn’t explain why it withheld 5,500 emails from its co-founder and former outreach director;
NIAC was not truthful about the nature of its record-keeping system;
NIAC took two and a half years to produce its membership lists under court order; and
NIAC did not turn over mountains of relevant documents and even altered an important document after the lawsuit was brought.

With that much effort devoted to hiding the truth of what the NIAC engages, is it any wonder the plight of imprisoned Iranian-Americans such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is often just the tools for the regime?

Parsi, in an interview with Loyola Marymount University’s Asia Pacific Media Center, claimed the charges against Rezaian were all part of a plot to undermine nuclear negotiations with Iran and the P5+1, which is an odd statement to make. One would think Iran’s provocative attempt to ship arms to Houthi rebels in Yemen via armed convoy was enough to undermine talks, or Iran’s seizure of an unarmed cargo vessel might be enough to trouble negotiators, both acts that Parsi failed to criticize.

By August, protests held in favor of the deal resulted in crowds just as small as the staged regime protests in Tehran with Los Angeles – home to over 800,000 Iranian Americans – protests yielding a paltry 200 participants, most not even of Iranian descent; while rallies in Washington, DC and San Diego were even smaller, barely cracking 100 people.

In contrast, over 10,000 rallied in New York’s Times Square against the deal and another 1,000 gathered in Los Angeles, most of them Iranian Americans demonstrating not only their opposition to the regime, but also for the various resistance movements around the world.

While NIAC staffers such as Parsi, Marashi, Cullis and Jamal Abdi shout until veins bulge out of their collective necks that the mullahs deserve a break, they continued to blatantly ignore the incalculable human suffering being inflicted by those same mullahs on women, children, Christians, Iranian-Americans, Sunnis in Iraq, moderates in Syria or refugees in Yemen. The swatch of human suffering and misery caused by the mullahs has earned neither reproach nor condemnation by the NIAC and its allies.

And those allies pop up in some unusual places as Breitbart News discovered when it looked into the hiring of Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a former NIAC staffer, as the National Security Director for Iran who sat in on several high level meetings with President Obama while discussing negotiations with the Iran regime on the nuclear deal.

The NIAC attempted to dismiss Nowrouzzadeh’s position as a mere intern, but a 2004 document uncovered by Breitbart News described her as a former “staff member” at NIAC.

But the truth about Parsi came out in a serious of journalistic pieces this year as he came under greater scrutiny, including Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic who referred to Parsi as someone who “does a lot of the leg-work for the Iranian regime.”

The crowning hypocrisy came when Parsi denounced comparisons of the Iran nuclear deal to the infamous Munich deal with Nazi Germany and labeled it “fear propaganda” when he himself has been one of the chief merchants of fear mongering by pushing the “war vs. peace” scenario for passage of the deal.

While the passage of the nuclear agreement might be making Parsi and his colleagues feeling good about themselves, the handwriting is on the wall as the presidential election cycle heats up and the rhetoric amongst virtually all of the candidates on both sides of the aisle has turned towards fighting the rise in Islamic extremism and holding the mullahs fully accountable.

In 2016, Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby might be feeling left out in the cold come November.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Glosses Over IAEA Report on Iran Nuclear Work

December 3, 2015 by admin

Iran Lobby Glosses Over IAEA Report on Iran Nuclear Work

The International Atomic Energy Agency released its long-awaited report detailing the military dimensions of the Iranian regime’s nuclear program and unveiled disturbing new details that have left the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, scrambling to cover up.

In the report, Iran was actively designing a nuclear weapon until at least 2009, far later than virtually all intelligence agencies had believed and proving the regime’s ability to conceal its design activities while under intense scrutiny and even spying from various nations.

The report, which according to the New York Times, was compiled largely based on partial answers provided by Iran after completing nuclear talks last July, concluded that the regime was “conducting computer modeling of a nuclear explosive device” before 2004 and continued those efforts right through President Obama’s first term in office.

The IAEA detailed a long list of experiments conducted by the regime “relevant to a nuclear explosive device” directly contradicting claims made by the Iran lobby and the mullahs that Iranian regime’s nuclear program was only for civilian and peaceful purposes.

We now know through Iranian regime’s own admission, it was trying to build nuclear weapons at a feverish pace.

But the IAEA concluded that substantial gaps existed because the regime refused to provide answers to several key questions, restricted the ability to interview key scientific personnel and limited sampling of sites and facilities only after they had been scrubbed.

The nuclear deal negotiated with the Iranian regime mandated limiting Iran’s ability to build a bomb for at least 15 years, but the inability to paint a complete picture and the revelation that Tehran had been conducting work unbeknownst to the rest of the world leaves significant doubt as even that goal is attainable.

According to the Times, Tehran gave no substantive answers to one quarter of the dozen specific questions or documents it was asked about, leaving open the question of how much progress it had made.

At Iran’s Parchin complex, where the agency thought there had been nuclear experimental work in 2000, “extensive activities undertaken by Iran” to alter the site “seriously undermined” the agency’s ability to come to conclusions about past activities, the report said.

The response from Capitol Hill was swift and bipartisan.

“I think we’re getting off to a very, very poor start,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters after a roughly two-hour top-secret committee hearing.

“These are exactly the things that we talked about during the hearing process that raised concerns and they’re being validated right now,” he added.

“It just sets a very bad precedent that if Iran thinks it can violate the world’s will, as expressed by Security Council resolutions, and in essence face no consequence for it,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), one of the four Democrats who voted against the deal in September.

The defense offered by the NIAC’s Trita Parsi through a press release was tepid and paper thin as he focused on the issue of complying with the terms of the agreement in releasing the report, but not in the report’s findings themselves, praising the IAEA’s “assessment of coordinated ‘activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device,’ in Iran prior to 2003, and that there have been no credible indications of such relevant activities since 2009.”

Parsi of course does not mention the fact the work conducted through 2009 was denied by Tehran and by Parsi himself and that the refusal by the mullahs to answer specific questions left the report, at best incomplete, and at worst a whitewash.

The Iran lobby is now finding it harder and harder to cover for the regime because its own promises and arguments are now all coming to be uncovered as falsehoods and outright deceptions. The fortunate thing about the internet is you can always search and look back at the statements people like Parsi have made and in the context of what is happening now, realize just how really wrong they were.

With the IAEA report, it’s just another blow to any shred of credibility the Iran lobby had.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Sympathizers Downplay Paris Attacks

November 24, 2015 by admin

Iran Regime Sympathizers Downplay Paris Attacks

In what has to be one of more astounding editorials written about the Paris attacks, Paul R. Pillar, a frequent supporter of the Iranian regime, penned a piece in the National Interest in which he actually tried to make the argument that the attacks were an example of “amateurish” tactics and that the outsized response from governments and media bordered on hysteria and ISIS did not warrant much respect.

“It is a mistake to regard the ISIS entity as a font of critical skills needed to kill people,” Pillar writes.

Let’s think about that statement for a moment. Pillar actually makes the claim that ISIS lacks the skills to kill people. That absurd statement ranks right up there with his previous editorials arguing vociferously for the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime and his claims that doing so would usher in a new and peaceful phase in Middle East tensions.

Well, we certainly know how that worked out.

Pillar’s piece was reprinted faithfully in Lobelog.com, another loyal member of the Iran lobbying effort alongside the National Iranian American Council and Ploughshares Fund just to name a few; all of whom have recently made efforts to divert attention away from the bloody carnage in Paris and now Mali, and instead try to shift the discussion onto discrimination of Syrian refugees or warning of an overreaction in cracking down on civil liberties.

All of the members of the Iran lobby neglect to mention that the center and source of all of these problems starts and ends with the Iranian regime’s fanatical support of the Assad regime in Syria which started the conflict in the first place and helped spawn ISIS in the sectarian fight that sprang up when the mullahs in Tehran sent in thousands of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, Shiite Militias from Iraq and mercenaries from Afghanistan added to milliards of dollars to help keep its proxy in power in Syria.

The fact that Pillar attempts to gloss over the planning and execution necessary for the Paris attacks is unfathomable, other than he is trying hard to minimize the import of what the attacks mean for the West. He argues:

“Some organizational aptitude was needed to put together an operation that involved simultaneous dispatch of multiple attack teams, but this did not require organizing any more people than would be needed to put together a neighborhood soccer team,” Pillar said.

Most rational people would not think their local neighborhood soccer team could build eight suicide bomb vests, acquire and equip three teams with automatic weapons, arrange timetables, scout locations, determine how to funnel panicked people fleeing a bombed sports stadium into a kill zone and communicate via text messaging on disposable cell phones while arranging the attack via encrypted communications evading virtually all national intelligence agencies.

But Pillar exhibits the singular trait that afflicts all supporters of the Iranian regime; the desire to absolve it of any responsibility for spreading and fostering the kind of extremist Islamic belief that is now shaking the world with widespread, multiple and frequent attacks.

Pillar also neglects to mention another key facet of these attacks that is significantly more disturbing than the actual loss of human life; it’s the fact these attacks are not supported with any public demands.

There are no calls to release political prisoners or comrades. No demands for ransom or payments. No negotiations over territorial claims or grievances.

These attacks are based solely on the nihilistic extremist beliefs that also power and drive the mullahs in Tehran.

“The death toll for all of the Paris attacks, as shocking as it understandably was, nonetheless was much less than a more skillfully conducted operation involving a comparable number of attackers would have inflicted,” Pillar writes. “The attack team that went after the most target-rich location—a sports arena with tens of thousands of people—managed to kill only one other person besides themselves.”

I’m sure the families of those slain would disagree with Pillar on the skill level involved in murdering their loved ones, but his comments reflect the almost callous disregard the Iran lobby has for human suffering. Very similar to the Iranian regime’s initial condemnation of the attack but its consequent show of happiness by shamefully putting the blame on the French authorities in its state wide papers and media.

At key points in the travesty that is the human rights record of the Iranian regime, Pillar and his cohorts including Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of NIAC, Jim Lobe of Lobelog.com and others have been struck deaf and mute when it comes to protesting the abhorrent human rights abuses of the mullahs in Tehran either in their comments to news media or in their own social media posts.

Americans held hostage, journalists rounded up, religious minorities imprisoned, social media administrators tossed in jail, dissidents executed, all these actions and more and warranted hardly a murmur of protest and yet Pillar deigns to call terror attacks in Paris as “amateurish.”

The only real amateurish act in this tragedy is the effort by the Iran lobby to whitewash the blood off the streets of Paris.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Prefers the World Ignores Terror Threats

November 23, 2015 by admin

Iran Lobby Prefers the World Ignores Terror Threats

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council and one of the chief supporters and defenders of the Iranian regime, retweeted a cartoon on his Twitter feed which may have been a Freudian slip on his part since, we can deduce it reflects his desperate desire to see the world’s news media and American voters focus on anything else besides the recent spate of terror attacks and the regime’s rampage of human rights violations.

In the cartoon, a man watches television as a reporter yells out “What can we do to lessen the grip of fear from terrorism?” The man hits the remote to turn the TV off with a knowing smirk on his face.

You can almost see Parsi’s face substituted in there as he wishes the world could just turn off their TVs or switch to playing Angry Birds on their smartphones instead of watching photos and videos showing the gruesome aftermath of Paris and Mali as scores of innocent people are killed and injured.

Unfortunately for Parsi and the rest of the Iran lobby, the flow of images won’t stop as terror groups such as ISIS, Boko Harem, Al-Qaeda and others step up their attacks in a sick game of upping the ante on each other. All of these attacks are a constant reminder that the world is not going to be moderate wonderland after the Iran nuclear deal and that the Iranian regime is not a force for stabilizing the Middle East.

Since last July when the agreement was signed, the mullahs in Tehran have engaged in an avalanche of misdeeds that have culminated with the announcement this weekend that the regime formally sentenced imprisoned Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian to an indeterminate sentence for spying.

“We’re aware of the reports in the Iranian media but have no further information at this time,” Washington Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl said. “Every day that Jason is in prison is an injustice. He has done nothing wrong.

“Even after keeping Jason in prison 488 days so far, Iran has produced no evidence of wrongdoing,” Jehl added. “His trial and sentence are a sham, and he should be released immediately.”

Parsi was able to break away from his normal tweeting defending the regime to comment how sad it was that Rezaian had been sentenced. Of course, Parsi could not be bothered to openly criticize Hassan Rouhani or Ali Khamenei or the mullahs running the revolutionary courts or demand for Rezaian’s release or even mention the scores of other journalists recently rounded up by the Revolutionary Guards in a widespread crackdown on dissent. No, that might have taxed his tweeting duties to criticize opposition for calling for a pause in the influx of Syrian refugees.

It is worth noting the debate over the fate of Syrian refugees is misplaced and efforts by Parsi and others in the Iran lobby to politicize the issue are disingenuous because the more fundamental question is not what to do with Syria’s four million refugees, but why are they leaving and not going back in the first place?

The answer to that is even simpler: the Iranian regime’s unquestioned support of the Assad regime has created the very crisis Parsi and his colleagues are now attacking. It’s an absurd scenario since Parsi and the NIAC have never opposed Iran’s military intervention, nor use of Hezbollah as a terrorist proxy in the bloody civil war.

The plight of Syria’s refugees will not be resolved by policy debates over verification, but rather by cutting the Assad regime from Tehran’s coffers and getting rid of the thousands of Hezbollah, Quds Force, Revolutionary Guards, afghan mercenary and Shiite militia fighters the Iranian regime has put into Syria.

There can be no solution to the dilemma of ISIS, without first resolving how we can get Iran out of Syria and create a long-term peaceful solution that allows the Syrian people to go back home, which could only be possible when Assad is put aside.

Part of that solution will come when Russia determines to what extent it wants to keep its interests aligned with the Iranian regime, especially as President Putin travels to Tehran this week for his first visit in eight years and first since Rouhani was elevated. Already there are signs that Russia’s long-term views of how to fix Syria are diverging from the Iranian regime’s plans.

Christopher Phillips, a Syria expert at Chatham House international affairs think-tank in London, describes Iran and Russia as “frenemies” in Syria, fighting in lock-step for a common short-term interest but maintaining divergent long-term goals.

“Iran was happy to say [to Moscow]: send some planes or [President Bashar al-] Assad is in trouble,” said Mr Phillips. “But longer term, Iran will naturally be uncomfortable. Syria was becoming their fiefdom. They invested a lot and now a bigger fish has come along.”

Views differ on the balance of interests between Moscow and Tehran — including over their respective fidelity to the Assad regime. But one European diplomat said the “complex, sometimes unfathomable” relationship was crucial to untying the knotty international politics over Syria’s conflict.

The very fact that the Iranian regime is a religious theocracy, guided by its devotion to an extremist and warped view of Islam makes any kind of stable relationship with the mullahs virtually impossible as the actions taken by the regime since July can attest to.

How does convicting an American journalist serve the regime’s goals? How does supplying thousands of new fighters to prolong a civil war that has spilled over onto the streets of Paris help reduce tensions? How does ignoring a nuclear agreement by test launching banned ballistic missiles help reassure jittery Arab neighbors to Iran?

In all these cases, the answer remains that Iran’s mullahs are the source of these tensions and Parsi’s vocal support for them and lack of criticism only reinforces the growing perception is nothing more than a paid mouthpiece.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Ramps Up Efforts to Influence US Presidential Campaign

November 19, 2015 by admin

Iran Lobby Ramps Up Efforts to Influence US Presidential Campaign

The silly season is upon us and we don’t mean the College Football Playoff selection process. We mean the quadrennial presidential election season and with it, what promises to be a year filled with debates, poll results, gaffes, blizzard of television advertising and a healthy barrage of social media postings.

But the stakes for this election cycle are enormous and carry with it a sense of gravity we have not seen since during the height of the Cold War when Lyndon B. Johnson famously aired the “Daisy” ad against Barry Goldwater hinting that electing the Arizona conservative would start World War III.

Even though the ad only aired once, it has become one of the most controversial political ads ever aired used in American politics, but it did show what some political candidates are willing to entertain in terms of tackling controversial topics and issues.

Every campaign season has its own rhythms and rollercoaster swings in emotions and momentum. This season has been no different starting with a Republican field of candidates that has been dominated by two total outsiders in Donald Trump and Ben Carson, while the Democratic side was stuck in relative limbo while Vice President Joe Biden was deciding if he was in or out of the race and Hillary Clinton waded through her email controversy as Sen. Bernie Sanders rallied huge numbers of supporters.

But with the recent nuclear deal with the Iranian regime and the bloody Friday the 13^th massacre in Paris, terrorism and what to do with Syria has moved front and center in the consciousness of American voters.

According to a new Reuters/lpsos poll done after the Paris attacks, showed that terrorism had moved to the front of all topics of concern to voters (20.5%), ahead of the economy (15.9%) and healthcare (8.8%) and unemployment (8.6%).

The five-day tracking showed concern over terror effectively doubled over the weekend of the Paris attacks and shows only signs of increasing as France battles additional terror cells in its suburbs while French warplanes bomb targets in Syria.

“What is almost certain is that the demands on the candidates will grow more exacting. As previous presidential campaigns jarred by outside events have demonstrated, how a candidate responds can be as important to a campaign as the event itself,” speculated Jonathan Martin in the New York Times.

What is certain has been the tepid response from the Iran lobby which has gone virtually mute and deaf over the Paris attacks. Iranian regime loyalists such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council, Jim Lobe of Lobelog, The Ploughshares Fund, just to name a few, have offered little in the way of sympathy over the victims, nor condemnation of the terrorists themselves.

If anything, their social media feeds and public statements have been largely focused on centering blame for the attacks and creation of ISIS on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia as the primary regional rival to the mullahs in Tehran.

It’s a curious stand to make since clearly sectarian violence is at the heart of most of what ails the Middle East both historically and moving forward. In fact, Iran’s all-in support for Assad in Syria help spawn ISIS in the first place as Al-Qaeda fighters pushed out of Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. surge flocked to Syria and splintered off to form their own groups, eventually coalescing into the ISIS we know today.

The fact that the Iranian regime has also served as a terror blueprint of sorts through its longtime sponsorship of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq has given ISIS a roadmap for exploiting the shock value of its attacks and dominate the news cycle; gives it the dubious honor of being a “godfather” to ISIS.

This in turn has placed a burden on the Iranian lobby to step up to the proverbial plate to try and influence the presidential elections since a new president – especially if it’s a Republican – will feel no obligation to stay the course President Obama has set with the nuclear deal with Iranian regime and the hands-off policy he has largely taken in Syria and Iraq.

To that end, NIAC Action, the official lobbying arm of NIAC, launched a petition drive directed at all presidential candidates to refrain from using rhetoric that would be deemed “hostile” at the Iranian regime.

The letter it is circulating reads in part:

“That is why we urge you and everyone running for the White House to retire the hostile rhetoric of the past. This hostile rhetoric often makes no distinction between the Iranian government and the Iranian people. It empowers hardliners, undermines those working to resolve challenges, and promotes conflict.

“Instead, we urge you to articulate how you will seize the opportunity created by the diplomatic breakthrough with Iran to build a more peaceful future.”

To say it is a shameful misdirection of the truth would be generous, because the mullahs in Iran have been very open and specific since the nuclear agreement was secured last July in venting their vitriol about the U.S., let alone keeping up the ritual “Death to America” chants at Friday prayers.

As we move deeper into the election cycle, we can be assured of increased action by the Iran lobby as it seeks to keep a lid on American voters’ concerns over terrorism and it combats any damaging news coming out of the Middle East such as more terror attacks or the Iranian regime’s complicity in some new human rights atrocity.

But from the early signs, it seems that Republican candidates have firmly chosen to not swallow the Kool-Aid on a “moderate” Iran and the Democrats will hedge their bets and set terms for Iran that only aid in ensuring a more stable and cooperative Middle East – both goals that the mullahs are opposed to.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Crackdowns Continues as Paris Weeps

November 17, 2015 by admin

Iran Regime Crackdowns Continues as Paris Weeps

The contrasts in image and tone could not be more striking. On the streets of Paris, thousands gather to mourn those killed in ISIS terror attacks that shook Europe, while on the streets of Tehran, agents for the Revolutionary Guard are busy rounding up more journalists and dissidents in one of the fiercest crackdowns since the days of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reign.

The latest victim of the Iran regime’s security crackdown was the arrest of a press cartoonist who was taken into custody while at work at The Shahrvand, a state daily newspaper in Tehran that is owned by Iran’s Red Crescent Society, or Red Cross according to New York Times.

The arrest had not been reported in the official news media as of Monday night. It came after the publication of a cartoon depicting tearful solidarity with the people of France over the attacks Friday that left at least 129 people dead. The cartoon was also posted on the Instagram.

The fact that a cartoonist is arrested by the regime for publishing a cartoon expressing sympathy for those slain by ISIS – the putative enemy of the Iranian regime – tells us all we need to know about what the mullahs in Tehran are thinking about the slaughter of French, German, American, British, Spanish and Swedish citizens.

The cartoonist’s arrest follows a nationwide crackdown in which several journalists and even two poets have been arrested as being subversive to the regime and serving as tools for Western influence as the regime seeks to stifle any voice of dissent in the wake of the nuclear deal it agreed to last July.

The “to-do” list for the mullahs have been busy lately as they have sought to win the civil war in Syria and secure the Assad regime, gone on a shopping spree for new weapon systems from the Russians, and send proxies to attack an Iranian dissident camp in Iraq in a brutal rocket barrage.

The mullahs have even instituted a new policy to impound the cars of any Iranian women caught driving a car without wearing a “proper” hijab or head covering. This follows past policies that forbade Iranian women from driving alone and allowed basij paramilitaries to beat women drivers and failed to prosecute others who threw acid at women while driving.

Senior mullahs have in recent weeks intensified their verbal attacks on “bad-hijab” women in Iran, with one likening them to “soliciting for sex.”

“The courageous decision by the commander of our police force to confront those women who defy and remove their hijab behind the wheel must be appreciated as it amounts to fighting prostitution on our streets,” said a mullah named Ahmed Alam Ulhoda in one of the more absurd comments ever published.

Another series of arrests targeted social media apps as the Revolutionary Guard also went after administrators on the popular Telegram messaging app for spreading “immoral content” according to the regime’s Fars news agency.

Telegram’s Chief Executive Pavel Durov said last month that Iranian regime authorities had demanded he hand over “spying and censorship tools”, and temporarily blocked the app when he refused.

The IRGC announced the Telegram users’ arrests last week, saying they had shared images and text “insulting to Iranian officials” as well as “satire and sexual advice”. At the time, the judiciary denied any such arrests had even occurred.

This comes after efforts by the regime to block access to popular social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, Tango and Viber.

The crackdowns, especially the widespread nature and swiftness in their enforcement, underscore just how farcical the myth was that Hassan Rouhani’s elevation to president would represent some new “moderate” breakthrough for the regime. Indeed the violations of human rights in Iran has got worse during his tenure.

The alarming rise in human rights abuses moved Human Rights Watch to issue a joint letter signed by 36 human rights groups and other organizations urging support for United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/C.3/70/L.45 which seeks to promote human rights in Iran by calling on the regime to meet its domestic and international obligations to protect human rights.

The vote is scheduled on November 19, 2015 during the 70^th session of the General Assembly.

“The Iranian authorities shouldn’t think they are getting a pass on human rights just because the nuclear accord has been signed,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch Middle East director. “Passing this resolution will send the message that the world has not forgotten about the country’s ongoing human rights abuses.”

More importantly, supporters of the regime have uttered not a word of criticism over the recent crackdowns. Groups such as the National Iranian American Council and The Ploughshares Fund and bloggers and commentators such as Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib have shifted their focus not on the tragedy suffered by the people of France, but rather in attempting to link the attacks and ISIS to Saudi Arabia in an effort to attack the Iran regime’s long-time rival.

Trita Parsi, head of the NIAC, has been busy on his social media feeds denouncing Saudi Arabia during the Paris attacks as much as he was busy denouncing Israel during the nuclear talks. In both cases, the real goal of his comments is to shift attention away from the bad acts of the Iranian regime.

Ultimately, the world is beginning to see past the facades put up by Iran lobby supporters and are recognizing that the true center of sectarian hate sits squarely in Tehran.

By Michael Tomlinson

What the Paris Attacks Tell Us About Terror Template

November 16, 2015 by admin

What the Paris Attacks Tell Us About Terror Template

The tragedy of the Paris terrorist attacks this weekend are so startling in their scope, so appalling in the loss of life and so despicable in the choice of victims, that the world has once again been moved to commemorate with demands for stern action and condemnation of the breed of Islamic extremism flowing out of the war torn streets of Syria and now making its way to the wide boulevards of Paris.

With 132 dead as of the latest reporting with scores more in critical condition, the full scope of the killed may not be known for a little while longer, but what is known is that the attack was sophisticated in planning, meticulous in its execution and devastating in its results. It was also spawned and given life from early reports by the ISIS terror network that now dominates vast swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory, while its influence and recruitment stretches from the Americas to Africa and Asia.

What is unmistakable is the “template of terror” that has come to be the calling card of terror groups such as Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and ISIS, amongst scores of others. The names might be different, ethnicities varied, even religions at odds with each other, but all share the same fundamental belief in using violence, terror and fear to state their case, sow terror and achieve their aims.

Attacking and striking at these terror groups has de-evolved into a game of “Whack-a-Mole” as militaries strike at individual terrorist leaders like “Jihadi John,” the Briton who was identified as being one of the ringleaders of ISIS who came to the world’s attention decapitating Western hostages.

More astute analysts have pointed out that to curb the threat of global terror, you have to strike at the safe havens offered by sympathetic governments such as the invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks to dislodge the Taliban’s support of Al-Qaeda. Others have pointed out the need to support unstable democracies as they struggle with the aftermath and chaos wrought by the changes from the Arab spring protests that toppled governments in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere so that they do not become safe havens for terrorists.

But the single largest supporter of terror in the world today, both financially and spiritually, has been and remains the Iranian regime.

The mullahs in Tehran have been the chief sponsors of Hezbollah and have used Hezbollah fighters in proxy wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere. They have also supported Shiite militias in Iraq with arms, including explosive devices manufactured in Iran, used to kill hundreds of U.S. service personnel in Iraq.

The Iran regime has also provided a spiritual template for ISIS and others through the brutal warped application of sharia law to mete out punishment in often ghastly ways. Before ISIS ever decapitated a captive on video, Iranian regime was hanging prisoners in public squares in front of young relatives. Before ISIS ever machine gunned children, Iranian regime was arresting and executing them. Before ISIS ever imposed harsh religious law in the villages and towns it conquered, Iranian regime was flogging women, cutting off the hands of thieves with power saws and beating demonstrators in the street. The medieval measures that are still being practiced under Rouhani.

The visceral brutality of Iranian regime’s justice has long been used as the standard for invoking a twisted form of Islam to justify violence in the name of territorial gain. The mistake most countries make in dealing with Islamic extremism is in thinking it is a religious war.

It is not.

The violence that stems from the Iran regime and flows out to groups like ISIS and Hezbollah is used as a political tool to achieve practical goals such as toppling governments in Yemen, creating safe havens for forces to operate such as in Iraq and Lebanon and building integrated networks to carry out missions around the world such as Iranian-linked terror attacks in Latin America and the U.S.

What is most telling is the response to the Paris attacks by Iran and its lobbyist allies. In the first few hours of the attacks, while the world expressed, shock, outrage and revulsion, social media linked to Iran’s lobbyists did not offer condolences or sympathy, but rather opened up a full bore attack on Iran’s chief regional rival – Saudi Arabia – in an ongoing effort to destabilize that country.

Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, offered up this insightful post on his Twitter feed as the streets of Paris ran thick with blood:

“If it turns out this horrible terror was done by ISIS or AlQaeda, will France rethink its cosy ties with Saudi and those funding Salafists?”

This is the first thing that comes to the mind of Parsi? His next seven posts sought to blame the attacks on Saudi Arabia before he got to his first tweet about Iranians expressing sympathy outside of the French embassy in Tehran.

He even managed to work in a dig at the U.S., tweeting:

“2014, U.S. intel found out that certain equipment sold to Saudi had ended up in ISIS hands. Not sure if they followed up… #ParisAttacks”

Since then, Parsi has continued the drumbeat of linking ISIS to Saudi Arabia, along with other Iran supporters who are marching to the same tune of deflecting blame away from Iranian mullahs.

The only certain thing is that the mullahs in Tehran set the tune and example for the terror industry and by their actions have long validated violence against civilians as a means to an end. It is a pathway that folks like Parsi have never apparently found objectionable judging by their social media accounts and public statements.

Parsi and his colleagues have never made human rights a centerpiece of their lobbying efforts as they have always sought to de-link the issue from any relevancy such as the nuclear talks. The hypocrisy of groups such as NIAC is easily apparent when you peruse their press releases and commentary. The lack of sympathy for the victims of Paris and the all-too-quick efforts to link them to traditional enemies of Iranian regime reveal the true purposes they have.

That true nature of the Iran regime was on front page display in regime newspapers where on its front page, Javan featured an illustration of a masked jihadist with a gun and a machete standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower, waving a mixed flag of the United States and ISIS.

“Return to home,” its headline said, quoting reports that some 200 French extremists had returned to the country after fighting with ISIS abroad.

In Kayhan – Iranian regime’s oldest and most-vocal paper — editor Hossein Shariatmadari, known as the mouth piece for regime’s supreme leader, repeated a conspiracy theory often cited in Iranian media that ISIS is a creation of the West and Israel under an operation dubbed “Hornet’s Nest”.

“Now the designers of the Hornet’s Nest must await the return of the wasps to the real nest — wasps that carry automatic rifles and grenades,” Shariatmadari wrote.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to long-time observers of the regime or to Iranian dissidents who have long warned that ignoring Iranian mullah’s conduct in supporting terrorist groups has only allowed them to flourish.

Unfortunately, unless the world acts to focus on the source of the terrorism occurring in Iran, we will inevitably be faced with more Paris attacks elsewhere.

By Michael Tomlinson