Iran Lobby

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

Iran Regime Tries to Blame ISIS Attacks on Opposition

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Iran Regime Tries to Blame ISIS Attacks on Opposition

The body of a terrorist, at background left, lies on the ground while police control the scene at the shine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Several attackers stormed into Iran’s parliament and a suicide bomber targeted the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Wednesday, killing a security guard and wounding 12 other people in rare twin attacks, with the shooting at the legislature still underway. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

An attack by six assailants armed with rifles and explosives took Iranian regime security forces by surprise the other day in a series of attacks aimed at the heart of the government, including a takeover of the Parliament building and the tomb of the regime’s founder, leaving a dozen dead and 46 wounded that shook the religious theocracy ruling Iran.

The attacks lasted for hours and was claimed by ISIS, which if true, would represent the first successful attack by the terror group on Iranian soil and a significant and somewhat ironic turn of events in the growing sectarian conflict between and extremist Sunni and extremist Shiite ideologies.

Predictably, the default response from Iranian officials was to point the finger of blame at regional rival Saudi Arabia and even Iranian dissident groups such as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. As Iranian officials struggled in the wake of the attack, one could sense confusion and even a slight note of panic setting in as the prospect of Tehran joining the ranks of cities such as London, Paris and Berlin as prime terror targets began to seep.

For the Iranian regime, much of the blame for the notable rise in Islamic extremist groups lies squarely on its doorstep. The mullahs constant vitriol aimed at Israel, the U.S. and the its Sunni Arab neighbors has only made routine the kind of hate that groups like Hezbollah have acted on for decades.

The use of proxies and terrorist groups has always been a part of the statecraft toolbox for Iran as it has used Hezbollah and the Houthis to conduct open warfare in Syria and Yemen, meanwhile bolstering Shiite militias in Iraq to push Sunnis out of the coalition government there and into the waiting arms of ISIS recruiters.

According to the New York Times, tensions in the Middle East were already high following a visit by President Trump last month, in which he exalted and emboldened Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival. Saudi Arabia and several Sunni allies led a regional effort on Monday to isolate Qatar, the tiny Persian Gulf country that maintains good relations with Iran

In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards Corps said, “The public opinion of the world, especially Iran, recognizes this terrorist attack — which took place a week after a joint meeting of the U.S. president and the head of one of the region’s backward governments, which constantly supports fundamentalist terrorists — as very meaningful,” a reference to Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy.

Saudi Arabia swiftly rejected the claim and the Trump White House, while expressing sympathy for the victims, was quick to note that “states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote” in a statement.

The MEK also denied any involvement and accused regime officials of a smear attack saying “their intention is to either use this event” against the group or justify their own previous crimes” in a statement.

But that didn’t stop members of the Iran lobby from stepping up to also blame Iranian dissident groups for the attack either directly or indirectly.

Paul R. Pillar, a stalwart for the Iran lobby, wrote in Consortium News blaming the MEK for alleged terrorist attacks in Iran and claiming that prior attacks had left the regime much better prepared to counter terrorism.

We hate to tell Pillar that his measure of “preparedness” by Iranian security forces leaves much to be desired judging by the daylong standoff at the Parliament building.

Pillar even begins laying the ground work for the Iranian regime to step up its terrorist activities in the wake of the attacks saying “in the months ahead, Iran may take actions outside its borders in response to the attacks.”

“Iran may see a need to be more aggressive in places such as Iraq or Syria in the interest of fighting back against ISIS,” Pillar said.

His comments are instructive since the mullahs are likely to use the attacks as an excuse to step up their fights in Syria in to preserve the Assad regime and in Yemen to continue destabilizing the border to Saudi Arabia.

It is not inconceivable that the Iranian regime will use the attacks as a pretext to launch fresh initiatives in places such as Bahrain and Qatar to further split apart the Gulf states and weaken opposition to its regional ambitions to build a Shiite sphere of influence.

Pillar wasn’t alone in trying to drag the MEK into the mud, as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, gleefully attacked the resistance group in interviews claiming that the MEK was equipped to carry out these attacks because of its channels into the regime and its ties to Saudi Arabia.

“If the goal was to penetrate and destabilize Iran, the MEK clearly was Saudi Arabia’s best bet,” Parsi said. “Still unclear who’s behind the current attack in Iran, but the MEK (and their Saudi backers) are a main suspect. Timing is of course curious. Just last month, A Saudi Crown Prince said Riyadh is working hard to take battle to inside of Iran.”

Parsi and Pillar offered no proof, only suspicions that read like they came from a talking points memo from Ali Khamenei’s office as Iran struggles with the aftermath of the attacks and desperately seeks any scapegoat other than its own support for terrorism.

The roots for these attacks lie squarely in the Iranian regime’s long history of exporting terror as a tool and it has finally come home to bite them.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

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Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

Iran Regime Expands Its Militant Activities

With Hassan Rouhani ensconced for another four years, the mullahs in Tehran can turn their attention back to the work at hand which is continuing the expansion of the Iranian regime’s extremism and secure the gains it made during four years of an Obama administration’s failed policy of appeasement.

That expansion is on a variety of fronts. First and foremost, the regime is focused on expanding its military capabilities and has made aggressive moves to do so. It’s a vital step for the regime since the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its related units, such as the Quds Force, are the tip of the spear that also happen to control the economic purse strings of the country.

Through an elaborate network of shell companies, the IRGC control most of the major industrial sectors such as oil, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. It regularly uses the profits from these enterprises to pay for its military expenditures as well as the proxies it uses in its fighting.

The IRGC also pushed hard for the nuclear deal for one specific purpose which was to lift crippling economic sanctions that were cutting off its supplies of cash and arms. That was vital since the handwriting was on the wall since the Arab Spring democracy protests and the disputed Iranian presidential election of 2009 that the regime was under significant pressure that threatened the rule of the mullahs.

The flawed nuclear offered unjustified concessions for the regime not only because it lifted sanctions and flooded cash back into the mullahs’ coffers, but also it allowed the regime to unlink its abysmal human rights record and support for terrorism from the agreement itself.

This essentially gave the regime a blank check to continue to engage in militant actions without fear of reprisal.

Part of that military support has been a destructive expansion on Iran’s use of proxies such as the terrorist group Hezbollah to fight its battles, especially in the ever-widening Syrian civil war and the insurgency in Yemen with the Houthi.

News reports have pointed towards a fresh influx of support for Hezbollah and what that may mean for U.S.-backed rebel forces in Syria.

A top U.S. military official says rather than using any additional monies to invest more heavily in conventional forces, there are indications Tehran continues to focus on cultivating special operators to help lead and direct proxy forces, according to Voice of America.

“If anything, increased defense dollars in Iran are likely to go toward increasing that network, looking for ways to expand it,” U.S. Special Operation Forces Vice Commander Lieutenant General Thomas Trask told an audience in Washington late Tuesday.

“We’ve already seen evidence of them taking units and officers out of the conventional side that are working with the IRGC in Syria,” Trask added. “We’re going to stay focused on these proxies and the reach that Iran has well past Syria and Yemen but into Africa, into South America, into Europe as well.”

Yet despite Iran’s heavy involvement in Syria to help prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. military officials see no indications much of that money has been set aside for bolstering Tehran’s conventional forces.

Nor do they see that as a likely scenario, even though the latest estimates from the U.S. intelligence community warn Iran is trying to develop “a range of new military capabilities,” including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and armed drones.

Already, Iran is supplementing its own forces inside Syria by providing arms, financing and training for as many as 10,000 Shia militia fighters, including units from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Military and intelligence officials further worry about the sway Iran has over tens of thousands of additional fighters who are part of Shia militias fighting in Iraq.

Fighting involving U.S. aircraft against Iranian-backed forces in the border town of al Tanf where Syria, Jordan and Iraq meet gave a prelude to what may be a wider war as Iran continues to pour resources into Syria to consolidate gains made by the Assad regime with the backing of Russia.

But conventional warfare isn’t the only area the mullahs want to expand as Steve King, COO and CTO of Netswitch Technology Management, pointed out Tehran’s investment in cyberattacks in Lifezette.

Since 2015, Iran has been conducting a sophisticated online cyberattack campaign that uses custom-built malware to deliberately infect and gain access to sensitive industrial control systems and critical infrastructure in companies across the globe, King writes.

All of this activity during the last two years has been like spring training for the Iranians: mostly practice attacks designed to sharpen their skills, he added.

King noted that according to a 2016 Defense Department report, Iran has evolved its cybersecurity operations to become the primary pillar of its national security strategy and has been testing the limits of sanctions and repercussions associated with the nuclear deal as they might be applied to their activities in cyberspace. So far, no reaction from the West.

Cyberwarfare is now as important to Iran’s military strategy as its ballistic missile program used to be, he warns.

The broad array of threats being presented by the Iranian regime is becoming readily apparent even though the Iran lobby and its supporters continue to work to obscure all of the regime’s actions.

One example is a piece by Cornelius Adebahr in Carnegie Europe that extols the virtues of a Rouhani win and what it means for Europe. It’s a puff piece for the regime and ignores the historical record of Iranian extremism.

Sadly, Adebahr only regurgitates the same false messages offered by groups such as the National Iranian American Council. The brutal reality of Iranian policy can’t be seen in the ballot box but in the battlefields across the Middle East.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

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Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

Iran Lobby Turns Attention to Protecting Iranian Regime

The effort by President Trump to build a new international coalition to confront and contain the Iranian regime got off to a solid start with summits and meetings in Saudi Arabia and Israel. The warm welcome he received from Arab leaders must have unnerved the mullahs in Tehran since the Iran lobby has turned its attention a full-throated defense of the regime.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council took to authoring an editorial on the NIAC website that attempts to downplay Trump’s efforts.

“A key factor explaining the violence in the Middle East in the past few decades is that the region has lacked a sustainable, indigenous order. The process of establishing an order is by definition disruptive and the Middle East has almost continuously been in this state since the end of the Cold War,” Parsi writes.

“To make matters worse, the temporary equilibriums that briefly provided a resemblance of order were established and sustained by an external power – the United States – rather than by the states of the region themselves. As a result, these temporary periods of stability could only last as long as the external power was willing to sustain the order with its own blood and treasure,” he adds.

Parsi’s logic is perverse since he effectively argues for a process in which Iranian regime institutes order by eradicating everyone else that stands in its path. Of course, Parsi claims that Iran only has the best of intentions for its neighbors, but the track record does not show that as Iran is now embroiled in three wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Parsi goes on to blame Saudi Arabia for Middle East turmoil all in an effort to isolate Iran, but Parsi never admits to Iranian regime’s own culpability in setting the region ablaze in bloodshed and sectarian violence.

We have seen the profound loss of life after the Obama administration abdicated any role in fixing Syria in favor of the Iranian regime settling issues through barrel bombs and chemical gas attacks.

Parsi’s colleague, Reza Marashi, takes up the cause of whitewashing Iran in his own editorial reiterating the tired old refrain of Hassan Rouhani of being a tried and true moderate, whose real goal is only alleviating the economic malaise gripping Iran.

Unfortunately, no one told Marashi it seems that Iran’s economy will not improve so long as the mullahs continue to siphon billions for their own personal enrichment, as well as ship off more billions to prop up the Assad regime in Syria and pay to support Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in their wars.

Marashi even dubs the newly formed partnership against Iran as an “Axis of Rejection” a nifty piece of word play that reminds us of President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech.

“Rouhani’s track record demonstrates that sustained engagement can lower tensions and produce peaceful solutions to conflict,” Marashi writes.

It is a claim that is both surreal and fantasy since Rouhani has presided over a massive escalation in wars that Iranian regime is fighting with no discernible pathway to peace other than to kill off Iran’s enemies.

But the NIAC isn’t through trying to support Iran as Ryan Costello weighed in with a press release lauding tweets made by former Secretary of State John Kerry who negotiated the horrific Iran nuclear agreement in the first place opposing proposed Senate legislation to levy new sanctions on the regime.

“Sec. Kerry’s public intervention cautioning against new Iran sanctions legislation should be another wake-up call that this is the wrong bill at the wrong time. Sec. Kerry would not be turning to the microphones unless the bill was an Iran deal-killer and private efforts to remove poison pills had failed,” Cosello writes.

“Lawmakers must ask themselves why they would give President Trump a mandate to undermine the Iran nuclear deal, ratchet up tensions in the region and undermine Iran’s moderates on the heels of their election victory. Tens of millions of Iranians voted in favor of openness and engagement with the outside world while Trump danced with unelected Saudi monarchs and called for Iran’s isolation,” he adds.

The more appropriate question back to Costello would be “why would lawmakers ever think they could trust the Iranian regime anymore after its commitment to waging proxy wars on its neighbors.”

The NIAC wasn’t the only Iran lobby supporter busy propping up the mullahs. Hooman Majd, a former advisor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, offered up the fairy tale that Iran had opted for peaceful co-existence with Rouhani’s re-election in a piece for Foreign Policy.

“Iran’s presidential election also proved the adage that the only thing predictable about Iranian politics is its unpredictability. Which, to the consternation of the Washington foreign-policy class, puts Iran experts on the same professional level as astrologers or palm readers,” Majd writes.

Again, Iranian regime supporters like Majd show their silliness when the election outcome in Iran was far from unpredictable. In fact, no incumbent Iranian president has ever lost re-election, not even Ahmadinejad when his re-election had to be rigged with widespread ballot tampering.

Iranian elections are so predictable, they remind us of the old Soviet Union-style elections with 99 percent voter participation and zero percent uncertainty.

The more the Iran lobby tries to prop up the Iranian regime the more it reveals how weak and vulnerable the mullahs have become.

 

Iranian Regime Uniting the World…Against It

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Iranian Regime Uniting the World…Against It

U.S. President Donald Trump takes his seat before his speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The Iranian regime election has given the world another dose of Hassan Rouhani, but in and of itself, his election to another term is meaningless since the world has seen that Ali Khamenei and his close circle of mullahs set policy, backed by the muscle of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The arguments against the Iranian government have never been directed at its people. For the most part, the Iranian people have been manipulated, coerced, bullied and even brutalized into submission. It has been the conduct of the leadership of the mullahs that have brought so much misery to that part of the world.

The leadership of Iran has pursued a policy that emphasizes harsh suppression of internal dissent, while using brute force to enact a foreign policy of war and terrorism to advance its aims, which is to expand the sphere of influence for its form of radicalized Shia theology.

But in an interesting twist of irony, Iran’s very actions to unite underneath its own banner have yielded the opposite effect: countries that have previously been adversaries are now aligning to form an international coalition to halt Iranian regime’s expansion.

President Trump’s first overseas trip started off with Saudi Arabia and extended into Israel, two countries that have not only been at odds and even war, but are also under their own scrutiny. Now both they and other countries, including the Gulf states, have begun the tenuous process of working together at keeping the Iranian regime contained.

The ancient proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is finding utility now among countries that are being confronted by Iranian extremism and for President Trump, the opportunity exists to redefine a new order in the Middle East predicated at halting Iranian expansion and bring about a political realignment within the Iranian regime.

Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia was the first to a Muslim majority nation for an incoming U.S. president and set the tone for reaching out to the Muslim world in a manner his predecessor never managed to achieve.

Trump said on Monday that shared concern about Iran was driving Israel and many Arab states closer and demanded that Tehran immediately cease military and financial backing of “terrorists and militias”.

In stressing threats from Iran, Trump echoed a theme laid out during weekend meetings in Saudi Arabia with Muslim leaders from around the world, many wary of the Islamic state’s growing regional influence and financial muscle.

Trump said there were opportunities for cooperation across the Middle East: “That includes advancing prosperity, defeating the evils of terrorism and facing the threat of an Iranian regime that is threatening the region and causing so much violence and suffering.”

Worried about the movement being made in realigning against the Iranian regime, newly minted Rouhani claimed that regional stability could not happen without Iran.

He said the summit in Saudi Arabia “had no political value, and will bear no results”.

“Who can say the region will experience total stability without Iran? Who fought against the terrorists? It was Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Syria. But who funded the terrorists?”

In this one area, Rouhani is correct, but not for the reasons he claimed. Regional stability is dependent on Iran, but only if Iran stopped fueling the instability it has caused across the Middle East in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Rouhani also trotted out the time-worn claim that Saudi Arabia was in fact more dangerous because of the rise of Sunni-dominant terrorist groups such as ISIS, but ignored his own country’s role in helping spawn ISIS with the downfall of the Sunni-Shia coalition government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq.

While Rouhani tries to diminish the importance of Arab states aligning against Iran, the broader and more important strategic implications are more troubling for Rouhani and his fellow clerics. A clear alliance among fellow Muslim nations with non-Arab states such as Israel, the U.S. and Turkey would represent a sea change in relations among countries with long histories of opposing each other.

It also puts to a lie the message Rouhani and his Iran lobby supporters have long pushed which is that opposition to Iran has always been built around sectarian issues and as such lack legitimacy. The opposite is now true; a coalition of diverse nations with varying beliefs all share the same concerns over an Iran that stands at the center of virtually all the instability now wreaking havoc there.

The real proof of Iran’s intentions will not come from words but deeds. If the Iranian regime continues to fling ballistic missiles and supply its various proxies in their ongoing wars, then the regime has no intention of altering its course.

It is ironic that Rouhani pointed a finger at Saudi Arabia claiming it held no free elections when Iran’s own history of elections is more checkered, including the debacle of the 2009 disputed elections.

“Mr. Trump has come to the region at a time when 45 million Iranian people went to polling stations, and he went to a country where they don’t know what elections are about,” Rouhani said. “It’s not in their dictionary.

“Hopefully the day will come when Saudi Arabia will adopt this path.”

His triumphant comments neglected to mention that Iran’s elections are hardly free or fair, with candidates chosen by an unelected 12-man council, according to the Los Angeles Times, not to mention that the figure made up by the regime could not be verified, given no independent monitoring has been present, and Iran’s state media are full of facts on how both rivals have made unprecedented deceits in the ballots. The opposition to the Iranian regime has estimated the total number of participants in the fake election, to have been increased by four in order to cover, the regime’s isolation at home.

Rouhani for his part deflected questions about Trump’s calls to isolate Iran over its support for militant groups and its ballistic missile program, suggesting that the new U.S. administration had yet to “settle down” and formulate a coherent policy in the Middle East.

“We are waiting for this new U.S. government to be settled in terms of their stances, posture and future plans,” Rouhani said.

“Hopefully things will be settled down and well established in the U.S. so that we can actually pass judgments on the new administration.”

We can only assume Rouhani hopes to squeeze a few more months out of the appeasement policy pursued by the Obama administration before things go south on him and his fellow mullahs.

Michael Tomlinson

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

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As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

As If We Expected a Different Result in Iran Election?

Without much drama, Hassan Rouhani was re-elected to a second term as president of the Iranian regime. The result didn’t come as a surprise to any experienced Iran watcher since no incumbent has ever lost a bid for a second term, even if the results had to be faked to get the job done as was the case with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But what has been lost on a large part of the global media is now the mullahs manage to always stage a convenient drama to be played out for them in terms of a fateful showdown between “reformist and moderate” forces against “hardline and conservative” ones bent on rolling back the freedoms of the Iranian people.

If Nazi Germany had staged an election between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the latter probably would have looked like a moderate too.

The same was true here in which a careful choreography ensued. First thousands of candidates filing to be on the ballot had to be summarily tossed aside to clear the field.

That left only six men to move forward—no women and no active or known dissidents—and then several dropped out to throw their support to one of the two remaining choices: Rouhani and Ebrahim Raisi.

Conveniently, Raisi was portrayed as the “hardline” choice of Ali Khamenei and was portrayed by media as the man who would roll back all the “positive” achievements wrought by Rouhani over the past four years.

Given Raisi’s bloody history as a special prosecutor that oversaw the executions of tens of thousands of Iranian dissidents, it’s easy to see why he might be viewed as slightly more bloodthirsty than Rouhani who oversaw only the execution of mere thousands of dissidents.

It was a Hobson’s choice and a well-played one.

While the Iran lobby focused on Rouhani’s achievements in securing the nuclear deal and opening Iran back up to Western investment, never were there any mentions of the broad human rights crackdowns during his tenure including the largest number of public executions since the 1979 revolution.

In fact, global media were eager to eat up the narrative of a “moderate” win which is exactly what Khamenei and his fellow mullahs wanted to see portrayed.

How easily the world has forgotten the parliamentary elections only last year in which tens of thousands of candidates were knocked off ballots and faithful followers of the mullahs were re-elected.

The Iranian regime smartly chooses to fight its public battles only after the game has been rigged.

Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council brayed like a wild animal over the results as the NIAC quickly issued statements lauding the outcome.

“President Rouhani’s convincing win is a sharp rebuke to Iran’s unelected institutions that were a significant brake on progress during Rouhani’s first term. It is also a rebuke of Washington hawks who openly called for either a boycott of the vote or for the hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi to win in order to hasten a confrontation,” Parsi said.

“In addition to Trump’s America, there are two other countries that will continue to form an Axis of Rejection in response to Rouhani’s foreign policy. One is Saudi Arabia. Despite Tehran’s repeated outreach, Riyadh has refused to respond in kind,” said Parsi’s NIAC colleague Reza Marashi in a piece for Huffington Post.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, many countries are not hearkening to Parsi and Marashi’s messages.

During President Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia, he found common ground with the Saudis on the need to confront Iranian regime’s aggression since Rouhani has clearly followed a foreign policy of engaging in wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; coupled with a North Korea-like ramp up in ballistic missile testing.

The king said on Sunday Saudi Arabia had not witnessed terrorism until the 1979 Revolution in Iran. Instead of accepting good-faith initiatives, Iran has “pursued expansionary ambitions, and criminal practices and the meddling of other countries’ internal affairs,” he said. The kingdom, however, respects the Iranian people and won’t judge them “by the crimes of their regime,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

Trump later singled out Iran as a terror sponsor. Iran’s leaders speak “openly” of mass murder, Trump said in his keynote speech before dozens of Muslim leaders gathered in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He said the Iranian government gives terrorists “safe harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for recruitment.”

Sen. John McCain lauded President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia this weekend saying it sent a strong message to Iran that the U.S. and its allies are ready to block Iran’s efforts to destabilize the region.

“There’s no doubt that if we’re going to impede the Iranian’s continued efforts to exert, certainly, significant strength in the region that this is an important step forward,” the Arizona Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Orde Kittrie, a professor of law at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lauded the Trump administration’s approach to the Iranian regime and how—in this one area—bipartisan cooperation with Congress seems to be taking root.

“The Trump administration’s different approach is very consistent with that advocated by leading members of Congress including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in their S. 722, and House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chair Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in their H.R. 1698,” he writes in the Hill.

“The Trump administration has been accused by some of acting impulsively at times. Its apparently careful, measured and thoughtful approach to Iran policy is encouraging. Tearing up the JCPOA, without a better strategy for preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb and a broader strategy for combating non-nuclear malign Iranian behavior, would make no sense,” he added.

While the world discusses the “moderate” victory in Iran, it would do well to remember how bloody the past four years have been around the Middle East under Rouhani’s term.

 

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

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Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

Iran Lobby Sets Up Expectations of Moderate vs Hardliner

The Iran lobby has been posturing to depict the Iranian presidential election as a battle between “moderates” and “hardliners” as personified by Hassan Rouhani versus Ebrahim Raisi. It has also sought to downplay any role top mullah Ali Khamenei plays in determining the outcome of the election.

The National Iranian American Council has been the most vocal of these groups in pushing this narrative. Examples of this includes pieces appearing in Huffington Post.

The first one by Reza Marashi of the NIAC argues this central conceit of reformists and pragmatists fending off hardline conservatives. The way Marashi describes it, it is almost a heroic struggle. The only thing missing is a dramatic musical score.

Marashi argues that the Iranian people want moderation and reform in their president. Not an unreasonable idea and one that he argues is supported by the election history of Mohammad Khatami and Rouhani, as well as the dismal election effort of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He even portrays Rouhani as a trailblazer in opening political discourse with his election in 2013.

“While it’s true that election season in Iran traditionally allows for an expansion of otherwise taboo political discourse, Rouhani taken it to uncharted waters. First, he publicly committed to engaging in the process of lifting all non-nuclear sanctions if he wins a second term. Then he told a rally that he had not forgotten his 2013 campaign promises, openly stating: ‘Either they have been achieved, or I have been prevented from keeping them.’ And remarkably, he directly told voters: ‘I’ll need votes higher than 51% in order to do certain things,’” Marashi writes.

He goes on to portray Rouhani’s statement as threatening to the regime and a minor miracle he wasn’t hauled off to Evin Prison for daring to utter such statements.

Pardon us while we laugh hysterically at Marashi.

Rouhani has never been, nor ever will be considered a true moderate. He is a loyal member of the regime, pledging allegiance to the same radical theology that all office holders swear to. His past record in military, religious and judicial matters have provided him with bona fides as a harsh punisher of dissent.

His term over the past four years clearly demonstrates his willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to protect the Islamic revolution. During his tenure, the pace of executions rose to the highest level since the revolution, earning annual condemnations from the United Nations, Amnesty International and just about every other human rights organization on the planet.

He has also enforced a broad crackdown on free speech that Iranians access to unmonitored internet access is non-existent. Add to that mass arrests of journalists, the shutdown of blogs and newspapers, and efforts to crack the encryption of social apps such as Telegraph and WhatsApp and you start getting the picture of how bleak things are in Iran right now.

Marashi is correct on one point, which is that this election really is not about the presidency, but rather the positioning going on to succeed Khamenei at the top of the mullah pyramid.

In that regard Marashi and the Iran lobby are getting their cake and eating it too. If Rouhani is elected, they will get to trumpet the victory of moderation even though Rouhani is no moderate.

If Raisi is elected, they can blame it on a newly muscular approach by the Trump administration towards Iran and Middle East policy and never address the horrific crimes of the Iranian regime.

It is a neat solution for the Iran lobby.

Tyler Cullis of the NIAC takes up this issue in his piece in Huffington Post when he questions why Democratic members of Congress seem willing to give the Trump administration leeway in leveling additional sanctions on Iran.

“Democrats have signed up as co-sponsors for Senate and House legislation, believing their political fortunes best lie in supporting aggressive action against Iran rather than acting as a buffer against the Trump administration’s efforts to derail a nuclear accord that, by all accounts, is working as intended,” Cullis writes.

“Democrats are risking a historic mistake – an error in judgment that could end up both alienating their progressive base and costing them hoped-for electoral gains, not to mention setting the stage for a new conflict in the Middle East,” he adds.

Cullis raises the apocalyptic specter of war with Iran as the inevitable path from tightening sanctions against Iran.

It’s the same argument the NIAC has made repeatedly ever since Congress moved to get tougher with Iran as the regime fired off ballistic missiles, sent ships to aggressively confront the U.S. Navy and supported bloody conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen with men, arms and cash.

Cullis proclaims that war with Iran is the sure outcome from any effort to get tougher with Iran. Of course, that assumes that the mullahs only reaction is to go to war with the U.S by this logic.

In fact, the real story is that the mullahs purposely used the nuclear deal to buy time and get out from crushing economic sanctions that were threatening the very existence of the regime.

Now that Iran has received the benefits of billions in cash, foreign investment and the sale of its oil back on the open market, the usefulness and utility of keeping up the pretense of wanting to reach out to the global community is at an end.

Consequently, whether Rouhani or Raisi gets elected is a moot point, since the policies of the regime are not going to change no matter who gets elected. The NIAC has long acknowledged that the office of president in Iran lacks real power, which makes its impassioned arguments for “moderates” to win there even more incomprehensible.

Then again, logic was never a strong suit of the NIAC.

Cullis even makes the outrageous assumption that getting together on Iran will inevitably compel North Korea to take bolder action and not trust the word of the U.S. in any agreement.

“North Korea will view the U.S.’s abrogation of the Iran nuclear accord as clear evidence that the U.S. cannot be trusted to keep to its commitments and will refuse to deal with the Trump administration. In this case, peace will be impossible and war inevitable. Congress’s failings on Iran will spill over and deter peaceful settlement in other areas of conflict such as the Korean peninsula. Democrats will be on the hook once again,”

Really? Are we to assume that a North Korean regime that has broken every agreement it entered into, detonated nuclear devices and openly launches missiles with increasing range is going to be dissuaded by the U.S. commitment to Iran?

The lack of logic from the NIAC never ceases to amaze.

Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

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Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

With only scant days before the Iran presidential election, the Iran lobby’s most ardent supporters weighed in on the race with typical obsequiousness. The best example was an editorial by Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, in Foreign Affairs.

Predictably he offered up one of the more ridiculous spin lines in the history of disinformation on behalf of the Iranian regime. Parsi actually tried to push the idea that top mullah Ali Khamenei had no influence on the outcome of the election and that “reformist” former president Mohammad Khatami was the real power in this election.

Parsi bases that silly idea on the concept that Khamenei represents the “establishment” and as such his perceived candidates are constantly defeated at the polls by the Iranian people.

To say Parsi’s reasoning is flawed is like saying President Trump likes to tweet.

First of all is the idiotic idea that Khamenei has no influence on the election.

The Supreme Council has the final say in terms of vetting candidates to appear on the ballot for any election right down to a lowly provincial seat. Khamenei has the right to directly select half of the Council’s members. The others are appointed indirectly by him as well.

So right off the bat, Khamenei exercises a monopoly on who even goes on the ballot before the first vote is cast.

Secondly, the regime’s constitution itself ensures that only candidates meeting specific loyalty tests to the regime and its theocracy are allowed to run for office, thus ensuring adherence to preserving the mullah’s rule in Iran.

Control of who appears on the ballot allows Khamenei to control the narrative as to which candidates are perceived to be “moderate.” By stacking the ballot with four candidates who essentially have no chance at all, Khamenei can create the perception of a clear choice between a “moderate” Hassan Rouhani or a “hardline” Ebrahim Raisi.

Over 1,636 people registered to appear on the ballot for president. Only six were approved by Khamenei’s council.

Both of these men are dyed-in-the-wool insiders who are dedicated to serving the religious theocracy and Khamenei’s wishes, but Iran, with the help of the Iran lobby, creates a false perception of a real “choice” in the election.

“Another unknown candidate by the name of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated the presumed favorite, the late Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered one of the pillars of the revolutionary regime. But precisely because Rafsanjani was perceived as an embodiment of the establishment, the antiestablishment vote went to Ahmadinejad,” Parsi writes.

Of course, Parsi tries to posit that the 2009 race, which was widely considered rigged for Ahmadinejad causing widespread mass protests, was in fact actually a portrayal of the former “outsider” to be an “insider” now which caused the vote discrepancy.

Far from being honest with the reader, Parsi tries yet again to pull the wool over everyone by slicing Iran’s politicians into neat little camps opposed to each other and representing widely divergent viewpoints.

The reality is that there is very little difference between these candidates since are all loyal members of the regime.

Take Rouhani for instance. He was elected on the platform of being a moderate vowing reforms, but during his tenure, Iran has taken a huge step backward in human rights and now is involved in three wars sending thousands of young Iranians to fight and die, while the mullahs and elites skim huge personal fortunes through a massive network of corrupt shell companies.

These are not the facts that Parsi wants people to know about since it would ruin his carefully constructed fantasy.

Benny Avni writes in the New York Post how this election may be one where Khamenei decides the pretense of a moderate face for the regime is no longer necessary since Iran gained concessions from the nuclear deal already.

“Just as Americans and others are reorienting themselves for the age of President Trump, so are the mullahs. In their calculation, they now need to replace the friendly sounding voices, like those of Rouhani and his sidekick, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, with angrier men,” Avni writes.

“Raisi is an insider who has climbed the political ladder. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is said to favor him as successor, when the time comes,” he adds.

“But before Raisi follows Khamenei and his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, at the top of the mullahs’ greasy poll, Raisi first needs a bit of public exposure. He could also use some governing experience, which he currently lacks. The position of president, which doesn’t have nearly as much power as Supreme Leader, is a perfect stepping stone.”

More evidence in the manipulation of the outcome was on display when Raisi’s path to the presidency became easier Monday, when a fellow hardliner, Tehran’s Mayor Mohammad-Baghar Ghalibaf, dropped out of the race.

Analysts believe Ghalibaf won the TV debates and is clearly more qualified, but, under pressure, he’s now calling on supporters to vote for Raisi.

What is clear from all this is that Parsi makes no mention of Raisi in his editorial which only demonstrates how close Raisi is to becoming elected and returning a public hardliner back into power to confront a U.S. administration no longer committed to a policy of appeasing Tehran.

We can be assured that if Raisi is elected, Parsi will no doubt ascribe his election as resulting from being a “outsider.”

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Military Buildup Continues Obscured by Election

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Iran Military Buildup Continues Obscured by Election

Iran Military Buildup Continues Obscured by Election

It’s no secret that while the Iran lobby was busy promising more moderation and accommodation from the Iranian regime during nuclear talks two years ago, the mullahs in Tehran were busy working over their calculators figuring out what they were going to buy with their newfound cash coming from relief from economic sanctions and the bonus of billions coming from a prisoner swap with the U.S.

Since the completion of the deal, the Iranian regime has been busy replenishing its military which was drained from years of fighting in Syria and Yemen, as well as supplying its proxies with weapons and ammunition including Hezbollah, Shiite militias and the Houthis.

More worrisome though is analysis indicating that Iran has sought to not only rebuild its military, but transform it primarily from tactical, regional actions to a more strategic, offensive posture posing a menacing threat to its neighbors, especially long-time rivals Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

Iranian officials announced late last month that Iran’s defense budget had increased by 145 percent under President Hassan Rouhani and that the military is moving forward with a massive restructuring effort aimed at making it “a forward moving force,” according to regional reports.

Regime leaders have stated since the Iran deal was enacted that they are using the massive amounts of cash released under the agreement to fund the purchase of new military equipment and other armaments. Iran also has pursued multi-million dollar arms deals with Russia since economic sanctions were nixed as part of the deal, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Leading members of Congress and U.S. officials working on the Iran portfolio suspect that at least a portion of the Obama administration’s $1.7 billion cash payment to Iran  has been used to fund and support terrorists in the Middle East.

The latest disclosure about Iran’s military buildup is further fueling concerns that U.S. cash assets returned to the country—which were released with no strings attached by the Obama administration—are helping Iran pursue a more aggressive military stance against U.S. forces in the region.

Iranian Brigadier General Kiumars Heidari announced the military buildup during Iran’s annual Army Day. While the announcement did not grab many headlines in the Western media, national security insiders have been discussing the announcement for weeks, according to conversations with multiple sources.

Iran’s goal is to turn its army into an “offensive” force, a major shift from its historic role as a support agent for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC, Iran’s extremely well funded primary fighting force.

Iran hopes to revamp its army from top to bottom, including improving logistical capabilities, weaponry, and other armaments.

The regime has also escalated its attempts to demonstrate additional military capabilities including the launching of ballistic missiles.

Another sign was an Iranian Yono-class “midget” submarine attempted to launch a cruise missile from the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, according to U.S. officials.  The only two countries in the world that operate this type of submarine are Iran and North Korea. The test launch was not successful, reported Fox News.  Iran had previously announced it had successfully tested a sea-launched missile and it is not known if this was the first actual submarine launch of the weapon.

The increase in military activity and emphasis on first-strike weapons and tactics is leading many to speculate what path the Trump administration will pursue to stymie the mullahs.

Much crystal-ball gazing has been going on lately, not the least of which coming from Iran lobby members such as the National Iranian American Council who hope to shape the narrative much as it did during the nuclear negotiations.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last month that Iran is complying with the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement. The positive finding of the State Department’s routine periodic review of the nuclear agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was surprising given President Trump’s assessment that it was “the worst deal ever negotiated.” Some analysts believed Tillerson was signaling that the Trump administration would let the agreement stand rather than “rip it up” as the president had promised.

But according to James S. Robbins, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, who served as a special assistant to the secretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration, there is something deeper going on. The key language in Tillerson’s statement dealt with the National Security Council’s inter-agency review to determine whether continued suspension of the sanctions is “vital to the national security interests of the United States.” This phrasing points to the key weakness in the structure of the deal, said Robbins.

“In addition, previously secret aspects of the deal have begun to be revealed, such as the Obama administration freeing Iranian prisoners accused of major crimes related to the nuclear and missile programs. These shady aspects of the bargain make it easier for the Trump administration to make the political case against it, which Americans opposed by wide margins to begin with,” he added.

If the National Security Council determines that Iran’s activities are not in U.S. national security interests, the president can lift the sanctions waivers. This puts Iran in a bind. Tehran has threatened it could restart its nuclear program “in a new manner that would shock Washington.” But if Iran chooses openly to violate the terms of the deal, this would activate the agreement’s Article 37 “snap back” mechanism which restores all the pre-JCPOA international sanctions. The only way the “snap back” would not happen is if the UN Security Council votes otherwise, but the United States could veto any resolution that keeps the deal alive, according to Robbins.

This puts Iran in a lose/lose position: accept renewed and potentially tougher U.S. sanctions while staying within the framework of the JCPOA; or breach the deal and suffer the “snap back” consequences. Of course, Iran could just attempt to go full-bore to develop nuclear-armed missiles as quickly as possible and hope for the best. But the developing crisis with North Korea should be instructive to Tehran. The Trump administration is less willing than its predecessors to accommodate or ignore the nuclear ambitions of rogue states.

All of which places the Iranian regime squarely in the sights of the international community for the first time in nearly four years when Iran was dragged unwillingly to the bargaining table because of the effectiveness of previous sanctions.

We shouldn’t let this opportunity slip away like the last one.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Attacks Claims of Prisoner Concessions as Regime Talks Hostages

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Iran Lobby Attacks Claims of Prisoner Concessions as Regime Talks Hostages

Iran Lobby Attacks Claims of Prisoner Concessions as Regime Talks Hostages

Josh Meyer wrote a story in Politico that exposed a series of concessions granted by the Obama administration to the Iranian regime as part of its ill-fated nuclear talks that have caused an uproar in Congress and in the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

Predictably, the Iran lobby—led by Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council—attacked the story and attempted to discredit the idea of concessions being granted to the Iran regime.

Writing in Huffington Post, Parsi makes the argument that not all “concessions” are alike and those tied to the release of Iranian agents were not linked to the nuclear agreement.

“From the outset, Meyer commits a critical error: He insinuates that any concessions in terms of dropping charges against potential Iranian smugglers were made as part of the nuclear deal. In reality, to the extent any concessions were made, they were made to win the release of Americans held in Iranian jails,” Parsi writes.

Parsi attempts to do what the mullahs in Tehran insisted on from the start of negotiations, which is that the issues of its nuclear program and hostages should be separate and apart from the agreement, but in fact the two were intimately related from the regime’s perspective.

The mullahs were especially keen to keep thorny issues apart from the deal because they did not want to grant the U.S. and other nations any leverage to influence issues such as Iran’s support for terrorism, human rights abuses or the lack of any political reforms within Iran.

Allowing Iran to get off the hook for those items relieved the regime of a substantial obstacle to completing the nuclear deal while preserving the mullahs power over the Iranian people.

Parsi even uses the detention of American sailors as an example of quick resolution when in fact Iranian regime squeezed them for all their propaganda value with videotaped interviews and admissions of wrongdoing. Iran mullahs even built a monument to the humiliation of the “Great Satan.”

Parsi characterizes the Iranians who were released as just a “few alleged Iranian smugglers” and ignores the nearly decades-long investigative work done by FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys who meticulously built cases involving large networks of Iranian operatives attempting to smuggle everything from nuclear weapon components to computers and weapons.

He discounts the allegations made by the Politico article as coming from “mid-level operatives in the Justice Department” as if law enforcement agents, investigators and U.S. attorneys were simply mindless drones.

But Parsi’s attempts to deflect and cover up the facts are nothing new to the Iran lobby when the mullahs get into trouble.

For the mullahs in Tehran though, the deal served its purposes in gaining billions in cash and allowing Iranian oil to flow back on the open market. It also gave Iranian regime a free pass to create havoc and shed the blood of tens of thousands in Syria and Yemen.

Now the stage is set for the Iran presidential election which some analysts have speculated could be the end of the road for Hassan Rouhani since he has served his purpose in portraying Iran as a friendly, moderate country during nuclear talks, but now that the façade is off Iran has no reason to be so “moderate” anymore.

This may explain why Ebrahim Raisi, a mullah with a long and sordid history of leading commissions that ordered the execution of over 30,000 Iranian dissidents in the 1980s may be poised to win the election should top mullah Ali Khamenei wish it.

Of course, Parsi authored yet another editorial in Al-Monitor contending that Khamenei has no influence on the election. He even laughably argues that Raisi is not a true contender nor supported by Khamenei.

What Parsi does not mention is the fact that the Iranian regime in addition to manipulating the votes, primarily opts to simply eliminate thousands of candidates from the very beginning to cull down the ballot to a select handful in order to ensure a preferred candidate’s “election”.

It is a formula that worked in 2013 and being used in this year’s election. Nothing unforeseen ever happens under the watchful gaze of the mullahs.

In another development that shows more promise, the Iranian regime admitted for the first time that the topic of dual national hostages was taken up at the first face-to-face meeting between regime representatives and those of the Trump administration in Vienna during meetings of the joint commission monitoring the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal.

The comments by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi mark the first official government confirmation it discussed prisoners with the U.S. at a recent meeting in Vienna over the nuclear deal.

While falling far short of signaling any sort of movement on freeing those with Western ties held in Iran, Ghasemi’s acknowledgement fits the pattern of past prisoner negotiations with the Islamic Republic. It signals more behind-the-scene negotiations could be possible if the Trump administration, already skeptical of Iranian intentions, is willing to deal.

Speaking to journalists, Ghasemi mentioned no specific names of the inmates brought up by the Americans.

“In the past … we had talks for humanitarian reasons with Americans over (swapping) some (American) prisoners with Iranian prisoners jailed in the U.S. and it had positive results too,” he said.

Last week, State Department spokesman Mark Toner had said American officials at the meeting had “called on Iran to immediately release these U.S. citizens so they can be reunited with their families.”

Dual nationals in detention have been used as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West. Under Iranian law, they are not entitled to consular support.

We can only hope the Trump administration can force their release without having to pay Iran billions in cash or release terrorists in exchange, since past concessions have only emboldened the mullahs to do more.

Laura Carnahan

NIAC Busy Peddling Same Old Lies About Iran Resistance

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NIAC Busy Peddling Same Old Lies About Iran Resistance

NIAC Busy Peddling Same Old Lies About Iran Resistance

That old reliable warhorse for the Iranian regime—the National Iranian American Council—served up a tired old, disproven platter of lies about the Iranian resistance movement in an opinion piece published on its website this time by the name Pouya Parsian.

But first it’s important to remember that the NIAC has been a consistent cheerleader and arch-defender of the mullahs in Tehran, especially in the face of withering revelations about its founder, Trita Parsi, and his close ties to Iranian regime officials and its abysmal track record of not criticizing the regime for its abundant human rights violations.

Even though it purports to work on behalf of Iranian-Americans, it barely bothered to issue a press release objecting to the string of Iranian-Americans that have been arrested, imprisoned and tortured by Iran.

During the run up to negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal, the NIAC had consistently urged the removal of any non-core issues such as support for terrorism, human rights abuses and involvement in foreign wars from any deal; thereby removing any and all leverage the rest of the world had over the Iranian regime due to effective sanctions that crippled Iran’s economy.

Now the NIAC has put out a pithy little missive criticizing revelations by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the largest Iranian resistance group in the world today, that the Iranian regime had taken steps to weaponize its purportedly civilian nuclear program.

Parsian’s piece was rife with errors and fabrications. First off were errors in who was actually revealing these facts. The piece attacked the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) even though the disclosures were being made by the NCRI which is an umbrella group representing a large number of Iranian dissident groups, as well as international human rights and special interest groups such as those advocating for women’s rights and religious and ethnic minorities.

The piece attempts to discredit the NCRI’s findings—not by disputing the truth of the revelations—but instead dredging up old claims of the MEK being listed by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization; all of which was proven in error and politically motivated and eventually rescinded by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Parsian never disputes past disclosures by the NCRI of Iran’s nuclear program and investigations into the regime’s use of military forces in the Syrian conflict; all proven to be true by independent news sources and national intelligence agencies.

The NIAC is even more inane in criticizing Camp Ashraf, one of two main relocation centers used by Iranian refugees and political dissidents seeking asylum from persecution by the regime, as treating its members inhumanely.

It’s an absurd point when Parsian never mentions the targeting of those same members in Camps Liberty and Ashraf by Iranian and Iraqi security forces resulting in bloody massacres of unarmed men and women and drew universal condemnation by the United Nations, Amnesty International and other human rights groups.

If anything, the NIAC should be thanking countries such as Albania who graciously agreed to resettle these oppressed Iranians and remove them from the threat of murder by Iranian intelligence services.

The irony of the NIAC passionately arguing for Iranians to be allowed to travel to the U.S. over the visa restrictions ordered by the Trump administration and in the same breath trashing these Iranian refugees is not only disingenuous, but fully reveals the NIAC’s bias as a staunch and blind supporter of the Iranian regime’s policies.

Parsian tries to frame the press conference outlining claims about the regime’s efforts to conduct military applications work at its Parchin nuclear facility as “discredited attempts,” but neglects to mention in any detail Parchin’s central role in Iran’s nuclear program.

Parchin served as a primary facility for Iran’s military to test conventional explosives designed as primary initiators for nuclear warheads. Parsian also fails to mention the regime’s blocking of international inspectors on numerous occasions at Parchin.

Parsian doesn’t mention how the Iranian regime conducted extensive earthmoving and destruction of facilities prior to opening Parchin to international inspection again to remove traces of its prior military nuclear work.

Parsian fails to discuss the fact that international inspectors were prohibited by the regime from collecting its own soil samples and instead had to “observe” hand-picked regime teams and then look at their results, which even then still showed trace amounts of radioactive elements even after sanitizing by the regime.

All of these revelations were confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and other nuclear watchdog groups that were highly critical of the Iranian regime’s handling of Parchin and its inspection.

Of course, Parsian mentions none of these damning pieces of history because the truth would only diminish the NIAC’s attacks on the Iranian dissident movement.

The real question that needs to be asked though is “why?”

Why does the NIAC feel so compelled to attack the NCRI and yet ignore the past history of Parchin?

Why does the NIAC feel the urge to belittle the NCRI, but ignore the proven track record of lying by the Iranian regime?

All of this only reinforces the real truth about the NIAC, which is that it is first and foremost a loyal member of the Iran lobby and will defend the mullahs at all costs without any regard for the truth.

Laura Carnahan