Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Tries Clearing Economic Pathway for Regime

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Iran Lobby Tries Clearing Economic Pathway for Regime

Iran Lobby Tries Clearing Economic Pathway for Regime

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has been busy working to clear the economic runway for the Iran regime now that it has its nuclear deal because now that it has the opportunity to operate more freely in the world, the mullahs have opted to significantly increase the regime’s military operations in Syria, Yemen and Iraq; all of which requires cash and mountains of it.

As part of that NIAC propaganda push, Tyler Cullis and Amir Handjani, posted an editorial in The Hill arguing that the U.S. should open greater economic ties with the Islamic regime; the reason being that European and Asian nations are already quickly seeking to exploit these new markets.

Cullis and Handjani are correct that there are some companies and nations seeking to rush into this economic void. We know that China has a deep interest in securing contracts for cheap Iranian oil, while Russia has already begun selling weapons to the regime despite the fact that embargos on advanced ballistic missiles and weapons remains in effect.

They note however that the Obama administration has put the brakes on the rush to re-open economic ties with the regime. Part of delay comes from the huge groundswell of negative reaction from American voters to the nuclear deal which has forced many representatives who supported the deal to backtracked and offer up new pieces of legislation to address the perception that the Iran regime received a sweetheart deal and the U.S. got nothing in return; most notably Sen. Ben Cardin’s (D-MD) move to introduce to track compliance by the regime.

Most anti-regime critics called the effort too little, too late and still does not address the central and most critical issue surrounding the Iran regime: the delinking of human rights and sponsorship of terror from the deal and thus making no effort to reform or modify the regime’s bloodthirsty policies.

There has also been discussions and disagreements over the conflict between the nuclear deal and the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRA) which was signed into law in August 2012 by President Obama which closes the foreign subsidiary loophole that the an annex in the nuclear deal makes open.

According to Fox News, “ITRA contains language, in Section 605, requiring that the terms spelled out in Section 218 shall remain in effect until the president of the United States certifies two things to Congress: first, that Iran has been removed from the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, and second, that Iran has ceased the pursuit, acquisition, and development of weapons of mass destruction.

“Additional executive orders and statutes signed by President Obama, such as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, have reaffirmed that all prior federal statutes relating to sanctions on Iran shall remain in full effect.”

All of which drives a stake through the arguments made by Cullis and Handjani who by using the flawed tactic of supporting “moderates” against “hardliner” mullahs, argue that continued economic isolation of Iran only strengthens the “hardliners” and leaves American companies out in the cold versus their European and Asian competitors.

First of all, it is refreshing Cullis and Handjani are so interested in the economic well-being of American firms, but the reality is they recognize failure to fully open Iran to international trade and commerce will not bring in the cash and investment necessary for the regime to generate the revenue necessary to fund its expansionist policies.

The regime has spent upwards of $15 billion in direct financial aid and military support just to prop up the Assad regime in Syria alone. This doesn’t include the billions being spent to arm Houthis in Yemen and outfit Shiite militias in Iraq, not to mention the regime’s old terrorist partners in Hezbollah. With slumping oil prices, the mullahs desperately need that foreign investment to help keep them in power as ordinary Iranians have staged protests against the “war economy” top mullah Ali Khamenei has mandated for the past decade.

Oddly, Cullis and Handjani use the analogy of President Nixon opening up relations with China in the early ‘70s as an example of opening up to a closed society the U.S. was in conflict with, but what they don’t mention is the fact that coming out of the Vietnam War, China recognized the need to end its sponsorship of armed conflict and instead turn to embracing capitalism.

The fact that a deeply Communist nation that inflicted the Cultural Revolution on its people in brutal repression, recognized it needed to do a complete policy turnaround and embrace the very thing it denounced as part of its founding represents why the Nixon overtures were even possible in the first place; China’s leaders made that opening available by being receptive to change.

Iran’s mullahs have exhibited no such inclination. In fact since the nuclear deal was agreed to, Iran has partnered with Russia to step up an air and ground campaign in Syria, was caught smuggling weapons into Yemen and has turned Iraq into a virtual client state.

So while the Iran lobby may be hard at work trying to rewrite history, the Iran regime is busy trying to shape the future to its own perverted vision.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Reveals True Intentions

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Iran Regime Reveals True Intentions

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gestures as he delivers a speech during a gathering by Iranian forces, in Tehran October 7, 2015. REUTERS/leader.ir/Handout via Reuters

Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in the Iran regime, banned any further negotiations between the regime and the U.S. according to a statement released on his website, firmly putting the brakes to any idea of accommodation or moderation following the approval of a nuclear deal.

“Negotiations with the United States open gates to their economic, cultural, political and security influence. Even during the nuclear negotiations they tried to harm our national interests,” Khamenei was quoted as saying on his website.

Khamenei had previously said there would be no more talks with the U.S. last month, but this move was a step further in declaring an outright ban on any further discussions on any other topics.

The Obama administration, fed a steady stream of misrepresentations and false promises by the Iran lobby – led by the National Iranian American Council – expected a new phase of relaxed, open negotiations with the regime on a variety of issues including the ISIS, the Syrian conflict and sponsorship of terror.

Instead, now that the regime has achieved its goals in the nuclear deal – a lifting of economic and military sanctions, preservation of its nuclear infrastructure, delinking of human rights issues and release of billions in frozen cash – the regime sees no other reason to carry on the façade of moderation it has so assiduously pushed since the handpicked elevation of Hassan Rouhani as regime president.

In his address to Revolutionary Guards Navy commanders, Khamenei said talks with the U.S. brought only disadvantages to Iran.

“Through negotiations Americans seek to influence Iran”, Khamenei was quoted as saying to the IRGC commanders, who are also running much of Iran’s military involvement in Syria.

The bill of goods sold by the Iran lobby for hopes of a release of American hostages, removal of Assad and a reigning in of sectarian violence has now come due as Iranian regime’s leadership seeks to make all those promises false.

Michael Goodwin, a New York Post columnist wrote in Fox News:

“The White House deliberately downplayed the Russian buildup because it undercut central promises Obama made to Congress about the Iran nuke deal, which was then being debated.

“One of those promises was that Russia would help enforce the terms. Instead, Putin actually was making common cause with Iran, and both are now killing the Syrian rebels we supported.

“Here’s the scorecard: Obama got his Iran deal, and the world got a more aggressive Iran, an expanded Syrian war and wider Russian influence. With each passing day, the cost of stopping Putin grows more expensive.”

The yawning chasm between the promises made by the Iran lobby and the reality of what is taking place was discussed in another piece in Foreign Policy by Aaron David Miller and Jason Brodsky in which they write:

“One thing seems pretty clear: Somewhere in a parallel universe far, far away, the logic of a linear path to Iran’s moderation may be alive and well. But back here on planet earth, the odds on the health and prosperity of reform and the reformers, too, are still very long ones indeed.”

But supporters of the regime are still fighting back in trying to hold the line that a force for moderation exists in Iran and is fueled by post-nuclear deal euphoria, rather than the hangover the world is witnessing today.

One of those peddling this snake oil is Kourosh Ziabari who writes in Huffington Post:

“To the detriment of hardliners, Iran is reemerging as a regional power, and it’s easily predictable that with another four years in office plus the two intact years he has in hand – unless Ahmadinejad comes up with a new wizardry and wins the 2017 elections, President Rouhani will be able to build a strong and peace-making Iran which nobody will be able to demonize or depict as a threat to world peace and security.”

Ziabari pushes the Iran lobby message that there exists within Iran “moderate” and hard line” forces when in fact Khamenei has indelibly proven there exists only one voice on all policy matters and it is firmly his.

Even as Iran and Russia join with Hezbollah in launching a new phase in Syria, Iran’s mullahs are busy in other parts of the Middle East, including Yemen, where the Houthi rebels they support have been spotted in Iran getting support and new arms according to Al Arabiya.

The Houthi delegation “will convey to Iranian officials an urgent request by Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi to attain additional shipments of weapons after the Saudi-led coalition forces made several gains against the militia,” according to the report.

“Before visiting Tehran, the delegation had allegedly visited Beirut where it met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah,” according to al Arabiya. “During the visit, the delegation allegedly voiced Abdulmalik’s al-Houthi’s gratitude for Hezbollah’s support in sending military experts to Yemen.”

President Obama’s former national security adviser also warned that Iranian regime leaders have effectively turned Iraq into a “client state” and are bent on exploiting the regional war against ISIS to promote their own brand of Shiite extremism throughout the Middle East.

“Iran’s grand strategy entails consolidating the hold it has gained in Iraq — a grip it seeks to tighten, directly and through proxies — and by stoking the sectarian fires,” said retired Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones.

Gen. Jones testified alongside former Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent, and both men lamented the administration’s failure to provide more assistance and refuge to members of the Iranian dissident group — commonly known in Washington as the “MEK” or “PMOI” — who have been left in the lurch in Iraq since the departure of U.S. forces in 2011.

On top of all this, word comes out that cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a network of fake LinkedIn profiles, which they suspect were being used by hackers in Iran to build relationships with potential victims around the world, according to a new report to be published by security firm Dell SecureWorks Inc.

This tactic, known as “social engineering,” is one where hackers trick people to get them to cough up personal or sensitive information. “Having those trust relationships gives [hackers] a platform to do a bunch of different things,” said Tom Finney, a security researcher at Dell Secureworks.

The 25 fake profiles described in the report were connected to more than 200 legitimate LinkedIn profiles — mostly individuals based in the Middle East who worked in sectors like telecom and defense. Those individuals and their companies likely have information that would be of interest to an Iranian cyber group, Dell Secureworks said.

Yes, the post nuclear deal world has indeed brought much change, just not the kind the Iran lobby promised.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Struggles with Tide of Bad Regime News

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Sen Ben Cardin

Passage of the nuclear agreement between the Iran regime and the P5+1 group of nations was aided by a coalition of liberal Zionist groups, progressive organizations and the regime lobbying network, but in the aftermath the fault lines have cracked that coalition and broken it apart as the world struggles with the still unanswered fundamental problem with the Iran regime: How do you restrain its support for terror, proxy wars and sectarian conflict?

Philip Weiss, writing in Mondoweiss, takes note of efforts by Senate Democrats, most of whom supported the nuclear deal, to offer up legislation that the regime lobby has said contains potential “poison pills” liable to derail the agreement.

It’s understandable as many voters are appalled at the downward spiral of events in the Middle East, especially Iran’s newly formed alliance with Syria, Iraq and Russia.

Republicans have pounced on recently announced deals by the Iran regime to acquire $20 billion in new jet aircraft and satellite technology from the Russians as evidence the mullahs are more interested in upgrading their aerospace and defense capabilities than in jump starting a moribund economy driven to near bankruptcy by a corrupt government and siphoning of billions to fund three proxy wars.

This new “Axis of Terror” has greatly unsettled a world that naïvely thought the nuclear deal would usher in a period of greater stability and moderation. Instead, the world has seen Russia – almost overnight – launch an air campaign in Syria, coupled with a large build-up of Iranian and Hezbollah forces along the Syrian border, bolstered by a fresh influx of Afghan mercenaries paid for by the Iran regime’s Quds Force.

The list of acts by the Iran regime according to the Wall Street Journal since the nuclear deal was approved has forced the Iran lobby to work overtime to cover for it:

  • Despite a string of high-level talks with Western leaders, including two bilaterals between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran has displayed little interest in cooperation with the West;
  • Iranian officials publicly backed a Russian military campaign in Syria that is aimed at propping up President Bashar al-Assad, a leader Washington wants out;
  • Saudi Arabia said it seized a large shipment of Iranian arms headed toward Houthi rebels in Yemen who overthrew an allied government this year. Yemen President Abed Rabbo Mansour used his speech to the U.N.’s General Assembly last Tuesday to accuse Iran of seeking his country’s destruction;
  • Meanwhile, Iranian officials publicly demanded that the White House release Iranian prisoners held in U.S. jails in exchange for Americans detained by Tehran—a considerable hardening of the Iranian position; and
  • Western diplomats said regime officials consistently claim Tehran is open to ideas and discussion on Syria. But they add that Iran’s bottom line, like Russia’s, is that Assad is a guarantor of stability in Syria and they will accept no threats to his rule.

In a sign of how bad things have gotten for the region, “dozens of conservative Saudi Arabian clerics have called for Arab and Muslim countries to ‘give all moral, material, political and military’ support to what they term a jihad, or holy war, against Syria’s government and its Iranian and Russian backers,” according to Vice.com

But in spite of the sharp escalation in tensions with the Iran regime, the mullahs still seem intent on keeping their economy on a war footing. Agence France-Press disclosed warnings from Iran regime ministers overseeing the economy, industry, labor and defense who warned of an economic collapse.

Mohammad Gholi Yousefi, an economics professor at Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran, said the letter had exposed tensions over the allocation of cash from Iran’s own banks.

“Almost half the banks’ resources is practically blocked by the government, special customers and banks themselves,” he told AFP, meaning it is not reaching businesses crucial to the economy and that much of the regime’s anticipated cash hoard is not accessible by middle class and poor Iranians who have seen their purchasing power plummet since 2012 and the local rial currency losing two-thirds of its value.

The recent aggressive moves by the Iran regime to acquire new military hardware and boost military forces involved in Syria has been fueled in part by the softening of sanctions even during nuclear talks as claimed by many critics of the nuclear deal.

According to  Reuters, “the U.S. government has pursued far fewer violations of a long-standing arms embargo against Iran in the past year compared to recent years, according to a review of court records and interviews with two senior officials involved in sanctions enforcement.”

“The sharp fall in new prosecutions did not reflect fewer attempts by Iran to break the embargo, the officials said. Rather, uncertainty among prosecutors and agents on how the terms of the deal would affect cases made them reluctant to commit already scarce resources with the same vigor as in previous years, the officials said.”

All of these accommodations and acts of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran in the hopes of creating a more moderate Iran regime have come home to roost and borne no fruit other than more war and chaos.

Iran Regime Actions Bolster Efforts to Halt Extremism

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Iran Regime Actions Bolster Efforts to Halt Extremism

Iran Regime Actions Bolster Efforts to Halt Extremism

Reuters reported that hundreds of fresh Iran regime troops have flooded back into Syria over the past 10 days and will soon join their Hezbollah allies in a major ground offensive backed by Russian air strikes aimed at retaking territory lost by the Assad regime to rebels; contrary to Iranian and Russian claims they would be focusing their attacks against ISIS.

It seems clear the mullahs in Tehran are focused on securing the Assad regime by eliminating Western-backed moderate rebel units, rather than tackling their Islamic State rivals. The new offensive clearly points out the false propaganda the regime has been pumping out through its lobbyist allies such as the National Iranian American Council.

Peace is certainly the end goal for the Iran regime, but a peace that eradicates any opposition to Assad and leaves Iranian mullahs in control of a swath of territory stretching from the Mediterranean through Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen and the Indian Ocean. Their territorial ambitions have come fully to light and the bill for accommodating the regime with the nuclear deal is finally coming due.

“The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria: soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisors … we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more,” said a Lebanese military source, adding that Iraqis would also take part in the operation.

Interestingly, Hassan Rouhani, the handpicked puppet leader of the Iran regime, tipped the regime’s hand in his speech before the United Nations last week in which he firmly insisted that U.S. policy should be focused on common actions to defeat ISIS before any discussion takes place on the future of Assad. Rouhani laid out the narrative in which the regime justifies the placement of boots on the ground in Syria openly and blatantly instead of relying on proxies such as Hezbollah in what is sure to be a virtual takeover of Syria by the Iranian military.

As Gareth Porter, an appeaser of the mullahs points out in Middle East Eye, “Iran’s national security strategy has had two primary objectives ever since Khamenei became Iran’s leader: to integrate the Iranian economy into the global system of finance and technology and to deter the threats from the United States and Israel. And Rouhani had primary responsibility for achieving both tasks.”

We are now witnessing what the Iran regime’s future plans are now that they have secured these twin goals and it is causing renewed efforts in Congress to stymie the regime in spite of the nuclear deal.

The House voted Thursday by the hefty margin of 251 to 173 to stop the Obama administration from lifting sanctions against the Iran regime “until Tehran pays the $43.5 billion it still owes in damages to the families of terror victims in cases where responsibility can be linked back to Iran — such as the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut and Hezbollah’s 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847,” said the Washington Post.

“Should Iran receive United States sanctions relief before it pays the victims of its terrorism all of what U.S. courts say those victims are owed?” said Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), who introduced the measure. “I say no. Not one cent.”

If the survivors or victims’ relatives are not paid now, “it definitely won’t happen later,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.) said. He argued that Iran would spend the money freed up from sanctions relief on building up its military force and other nefarious activities, rather than paying the balance of restitution payments ordered by U.S. courts.

Those same voters may also be alarmed at news coming out of Tehran in which Saeed Abedini, the Iranian-American pastor serving an eight-year prison sentence on charges of undermining national security may face more trumped up charges by the regime, including links to antigovernment groups, said Naghbeh Abedini, his wife. Abedini is one of four Americans being held hostage in Iranian prisons including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and former Marine Amir Hekmati.

The move by the regime to place new charges on Abedini flies in the face of the PR move made by Rouhani at the UN in which he floated the idea of a prisoner swap for 19 Iranian agents convicted on arms trading and smuggling of nuclear components.

All of which leads us full circle back to the question of how to check the ambitions of the mullahs in Iran and in what form? One answer was provided by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of Iranian opposition groups, who wrote an editorial in the New York Daily News.

“My message to the United States and the West is that the long-term solution to the Iranian threat lies neither in foreign military intervention nor in collaboration with a regime that is so oppressive at home and so destabilizing abroad,” she said.

“With the nuclear deal, however misguided it may be, in place, the right policy going forward is to encourage and support the Iranian people’s desire for democratic change and to speak out for human rights,” she added.

Sound advice the West would be wise to follow.

By Michael Tomlinson

As Syria Chaos Spreads, Iran Lobby Works Overtime

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As Syria Chaos Spreads, Iran Lobby Works Overtime

As Syria Chaos Spreads, Iran Lobby Works Overtime

Events moved fast in Syria as Russian warplanes mounted air strikes at what they claimed were ISIS strongholds, but U.S. defense officials countered were instead Western-backed rebels opposed to the Assad regime. Coming on announcements by Russian officials of the creation of an intelligence-sharing unit with Iran regime and Iraq officials, the Russian action does not bode well for hopes to topple Assad.

The political calculation made by the Iran regime and its new Russian friends is that the U.S. lacks the political willpower and means to move forward on efforts to dislodge Assad, who has proven to be the mullahs in Tehran’s most stalwart ally and proxy.

Mohammed Alaa Ghanem of the Syrian American Council made the same analysis in Huffington Post as he looked at an editorial by Philip Gordon, the former Middle East chief in the Obama administration, in Politico.

Gordon argues that the goal of “displacing the Assad regime has proven unachievable,” and argues for a new U.S.-led contact group, different from the original one created in 2012, and instead include Russia and Iran in a new one.

Ghanem recites the failures in stemming Iranian backing of Assad at key points such as “when over 3,000 Iranian proxies first flooded into Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry provided no support to stop the assault and even strong-armed the Syrian rebels into attending peace talks. When Assad regime barrel bombs began raining down on Syrian cities, The U.S. again dragged the rebels into talks while blocking weapons transfers to stop the onslaught. U.N. Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who convened those later talks, has since blamed the regime for their failure.”

The Iran regime’s support of Assad and the unwillingness of the U.S. to halt that support – instead prioritizing approval of a nuclear agreement with Tehran – has led to an unimaginable refugees crisis of four million Syrians and civilian deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands with another 600,000 Syrians opposed to Assad under virtual siege by Syria’s military and Iran regime mercenaries and Quds Forces.

But even with the rollout of the nuclear deal, there remain defiant voices in Congress still working to place restrictions on the Iran regime and connect the dots to the mullahs’ reign of human rights abuses. The fact that incidents of atrocities are sharply on the rise with increased news coverage, which has forced the Iran lobby to step up efforts to portray the regime as being a force for change.

Trita Parsi and Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council, a leading Iran regime lobbying group, have been busy trying to convince news media that the rapid escalation in Syria is not the result of a new Russia-Iran-Iraq axis of terror, but rather the work of neocons bent on sending U.S. troops in.

Putting aside the fact that the only boots on the ground are now Russian and Iranian, the solution to Syria has always been centered in Tehran, not Washington. This point was driven home by protestors outside of the UN during Rouhani’s visit who represented a broad cross section of Iranian dissidents, Iranian-American community groups and Syrian activists opposed to the Assad regime.

Another advocate against the Iran regime is renowned author and Harvard Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz who published a new book, “The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Stop Iran from Getting Nukes?.”

Dershowitz argues that policy makers have bit into a “bill of goods” which states that “any deal is better than no deal.” Historically, the objective of Iran to eliminate the barriers between it and a nuclear arsenal, and simple common sense proves that this deal makes the US and the rest of the world decidedly less safe.

The nuclear deal promises to release the Iran regime from the sanctions that have effectively isolated it for much of the past decade and held back the tidal wave of Islamic extremism that we are now seeing being unleashed.

More evidence of the spread of the Iran regime’s destabilizing influence came when Saudi-led coalition forces seized an Iranian fishing boat loaded with weapons on its way to deliver them to Iran regime-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen according to Reuters.

The announcement came a day after tribal fighters backed by the coalition won control of a strategic dam in central Yemen from Houthi forces following weeks of fighting east of the capital Sanaa.

The coalition, which also includes Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, has been battling the Iranian-backed Houthis for more than six months.

A coalition statement said 14 Iranian sailors were detained on the boat, which was carrying 18 anti-armored Concourse shells, 54 anti-tank shells, shell-battery kits, firing guidance systems, launchers and batteries for binoculars.

I’m sure Parsi and Cullis would argue that the anti-tank shells and guidance systems were actually meant for an Iranian-sponsored fireworks display for children in Yemen.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Insidious Infiltration of American Government by Iran Lobby

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Tritta Parsi paying respect to the Iranian regime delegation in Geneva

Trita Parsi paying respect to Iran delegation in Geneva Talks

Matthew RJ Brodsky, senior Middle East analyst at Wikistrat and former editor of inFOCUS Quarterly, took a deep dive in Huffington Post into the lobbying forces of the Iran regime and the progress it has made in infiltrating deep into American policy making positions under the Obama administration.

What piqued his interest and those who track the activities of the Iran lobby was the latest batch of emails released from Hillary Clinton’s email server in which the pro-regime group The Iran Project provided the administration with a 10-page plan that eventually served as the roadmap for engaging with the regime once again and led to the run up in negotiating the nuclear weapons agreement.

Brodsky includes the ground breaking investigative analysis done by Lee Smith, a senior fellow at the Hudson  Institute and senior editor of the Weekly Standard, who examined the ties Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, has with Iran regime insiders such as Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Parsi founded the NIAC in 2002 and was described by Smith as being the “tip of the spear of the Iran Lobby,” in terms of funneling a large number of former staffers into key administration positions and gaining the ear of key members of the Obama administration.

Breitbart News discovered 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.

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic referred to Parsi as someone who “does a lot of the leg-work for the Iranian regime.”

Parsi’s close ties to the regime came under greater scrutiny during the tense negotiations between the regime and P5+1 negotiators in which Parsi and his NIAC colleague Reza Marashi were often seen conferring with members of the Iranian delegation and often were quoted by news media covering the talks using the same talking points and keys messages as the official regime news agencies.

Bloomberg reporter Eli Lake wrote about Parsi’s close connection with regime foreign minister Javad Zarif uncovered in documents made public as part of a failed defamation lawsuit brought by Parsi against an Iranian American journalist who accused Parsi of working on behalf of the regime.

NIAC and Parsi have moved out of the legally shadowy world of indirect lobbying by forming an official lobbying arm called NIAC Action which made no bones about its open lobbying for positions favorable to the regime and began the solicitation of funds as it expected to make donations to political campaigns it deems supportive of the Iranian regime.

Brodsky in his Huffington Post column also examined the flow of funds to regime lobbying groups and traced how the Rockfeller Brothers Fund spent millions of dollars since 2003 towards promoting a nuclear agreement with the regime, primarily through donations given to The Iran Project. That funding has been supplemented by additional contributions made through the Ploughshares Fund which has given substantial amounts of funding to the NIAC directly.

Ironically, the policy memos written by The Iran Project proved to be key elements of the Obama administration’s outreach to the Iran regime including a call to open a direct dialogue to top regime mullah Ali Khamenei by promising to not seek regime change as a means of reassuring the mullahs which came in the form of a personal letter from Obama early in his first term.

Paramount for the Iran lobby was not only securing a favorable nuclear deal for the regime, but more importantly unlinking any agreement from conditions related to the regime’s conduct in areas such as terrorism, human rights or military interventions through proxies and terror groups.

The de-linking of all these areas may very well turn out to be the biggest win for the Iran lobby.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Cheating Already Undermines Nuclear Deal

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Iran Regime Cheating Already Undermines Nuclear Deal

Iran Regime Cheating Already Undermines Nuclear Deal

The United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, released a new report showing that the Iran regime was engaged in new construction activities at its Parchin military facility which has been at the center of the growing controversy about Iran retaining the ability to self-inspect suspected nuclear facilities.

The document states the IAEA “has continued to observe, through satellite imagery, the presence of vehicles, equipment and probable construction materials” at Parchin.

“In addition,” the report continues, “a small extension to an existing building appears to have been constructed.”

But the IAEA report comes amid renewed scrutiny with regard to the Parchin site after it was revealed that Iranian inspectors would be taking an active role in IAEA-monitored inspections there.

“Allowing the Iranians to inspect their own nuclear sites, particularly a notorious military site, is like allowing the inmates to run the jail,” Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham said of the arrangement in an interview with CNN.

The move to begin construction activities at a key military site the Iran regime has continually denied access to for inspectors is another clear sign of the regime’s efforts to cover up aspects of its nuclear program in advance of the deal being closed. The fact that the IAEA does not even know what exactly the regime is doing at Parchin demonstrates how ineffectual it will be in policing the regime’s compliance with the agreement.

And in another move demonstrating the regime’s commitment to military superiority in the region, regime presidential puppet Hassan Rouhani again took to state-run television to declare Iran’s military capability would not be affected by the nuclear deal and the regime “did not and will not accept any limitations.”

With the Iran regime already cheating at Parchin and reiterating its commitment to military expansion, it comes as no surprise the regime is beefing up its direct lobbying efforts through campaign contributions from pro-regime groups with ties to the Iranian government to at least ten Congressional members as reported in FrontPage Magazine by Daniel Greenfield.

Legislators who took contributions from the Iranian American Political Action Committee and have already announced their support for the nuclear deal included:

  • Edward Markey (D-MA)
  • Alan Franken (D-MN)
  • Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
  • Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
  • Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
  • Michael Honda (D-CA)
  • André Carson (D-IN)
  • Gerald Connolly (D-VA)
  • Donna Edwards (D-MD)
  • Jackie Speier (D-CA)

Iranian dissident Hassan Daioleslam, who won a defamation lawsuit brought by Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, a leading pro-regime lobbying group, detailed the origins of IAPAC in 2007 according to Spryridon Mitsotakis in Breitbart:

“During the eight years of Rafsanjani’s presidency, which ended in 1997, the Iranian regime had attempted without success to attract the Iranian Diaspora to its cause. Khatami’s presidency recharged Tehran’s efforts. With the Supreme Leader’s direct involvement, the High Council for Iranian Compatriots Overseas was created in 2000 under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry. The President heads the Council, and the Foreign Minister serves as its deputy director. The Ministry of Intelligence and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance collaborate to implement the decisions of the council. The objective was to create a network of organizations to infiltrate and seemingly represent the Iranian community abroad, and promote policies favorable to the Iranian government. Tehran anticipated that this strategy would neutralize opposition activities abroad and legitimize the new lobby.”

He goes on to detail Parsi’s close work with Iran regime officials in launching the Iran lobby in the U.S. modeled closely on Jewish lobbying groups and made to have the appearance of a citizen’s lobby and impede the work of Iranian dissident and opposition groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

The NIAC, IAPAC and a host of other regime front groups have worked hard to reshape and distort the truth about the mullahs’ true intentions which have come to light with this new IAEA report on Parchin. The sheer brazenness of openly working to alter the Parchin site shows the contempt and lack of fear the mullahs have in snookering the rest of the world.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Turns to Dubious List of Hate Apologists

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Iran Lobby Turns to Dubious List of Hate Apologists

Iran Lobby Turns to Dubious List of Hate Apologists

The National Iranian American Council demonstrated its full-fledged commitment to supporting the Iran regime at any cost by issuing what could only be described as anarchist’s playlist of a press release full of terror supporters, hate apologists and regime sympathizers in a letter purporting to show “prominent international relations scholars” voicing their support for the Iran nuclear deal.

The letter is a farce – to put it mildly – because it omits the one phrase that dominates everything about the Iran regime: Human Rights.

Feel free to search the text of the NIAC release. It doesn’t exist anywhere in the letter, which should come as no surprise since it is the fatal flaw in all things the NIAC is involved in. Human rights for the NIAC are an inconvenient truth. It is the Achilles heel of its arguments in portraying a new “moderate” Iran.

While NIAC staffers such as Trita Parsi, Reza Marashi, Jamal Abdi and Tyler Cullis shout until veins bulge out of their collective necks that the mullahs deserve a break, they continue 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.

The fact that this bogus letter excludes any mention of human rights is not unusual since the signers of the letter are culled from some of the most notorious corners of the academic world funded by regime sponsors and used as tools in defending terror groups, propagating hatred and applauding murder and mayhem.

Article in Breitbart delved deep into the histories and backgrounds of many of these academic frauds, noting “quite a few of the ‘prominent’ professors share radical views pertaining to issues of concern to everyday Americans. This list includes terror group sympathizers, Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers, Iranian regime apologists, Islamist supremacists, anti-Israel conspiracy theorists, overt anti-Semites, and other deplorable characters.”

“One of the most notable signatories is Noam Chomsky, who rose to fame as an MIT linguistics expert and now considers himself an international relations scholar. Chomsky, whom some believe is an anti-Semite, openly supports Iran-backed terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas,” Schahtel added.

Article published in Breitbart also reminds us that Parsi, also a signatory on the list of pro-deal “scholars,” made headlines last week when he alleged there was an Israeli conspiracy behind a report that presented the text of the “side deal” between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Additionally, several prominent Iranian dissidents have complained that Parsi’s agenda parallels that of the theocracy in Tehran.

But that has been the glaring aspect of NIAC’s fanatical devotion to the Iran regime agenda; the open unwillingness to criticize or comment on the human toll inflicted by the regime’s actions. NIAC has not argued against the retribution murders committed by Shiite militias supported by Iranian regime’s Quds Forces in Iraq as they slaughter entire Sunni villages.

NIAC has not commented on the horrific conditions in refugee camps caused by Iran regime proxy wars in Syria and Yemen. Nor has Parsi or his cohorts ever applauded efforts by groups such as Amnesty International or the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran as they have condemned and battled the over 2,000 executions conducted by the regime in less than two years; a staggering assembly line of death.

It would be a public service for those opposing the Iran nuclear deal and the policies of the regime and mullahs in Tehran to peruse the list of professors and send letters to the administrations of each of these universities – the vast majority of which are public and taxpayer funded – and ask why these academics are allowed bully pulpits to argue in favor of a regime that stifles free thinking and political discourse at home and brutally tortures students and teachers in Iran.

The sheer audacity of arguing for an accommodation of a regime that makes no accommodation for dissenters has helped persuade a majority of Americans that the mullahs cannot be trusted in spite of the efforts by NIAC, aided and abetted by groups such as J Street and MoveOn.org, to hold demonstrations that have generated small crowds.

The ultimate proof of the complete lack of authenticity within NIAC is the complete lack of honesty about the regime’s abuses.

By Michael Tomlinson

Well-Funded Iran Lobby Makes Trusting Regime Appealing

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Well-Funded Iran Lobby Makes Trusting Regime Appealing

Well-Funded Iran Lobby Makes Trusting Regime Appealing

The central conceit of the proposed nuclear weapons deal with the Iran regime is a simple one: Iran’s mullahs can be trusted to act moderately and peacefully. It’s an idea that is hopeful, optimistic and enticing. It’s an idea propagated by the extensive lobbying and PR machine built up to support the mullahs in Tehran. It is an idea designed to reassure nervous Americans and provide political cover for wavering congressional lawmakers.

It is an idea fatally flawed.

The concept of trust is defined as a “firm belief in the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; confidence or reliance.” In order for trust to work, it assumes that the party in question – in this case the religious theocracy ruling Iran – has either demonstrated an ability to be trusted or expressed a desire to be trusted and then lives up to it.

In the case of the mullahs, nothing could be further from the truth. In their every action, the Iran regime has demonstrated again and again that it cannot be a reliable partner in any international agreement.

On the nuclear issue alone, Iran regime signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty yet violated the terms of the treaty by engaging in nuclear weapons development prior to 2003 and through 2012, leading to the stockpiling of 20 percent enriched uranium and the development of related weapons programs such as warhead detonation and missile delivery design. The International Atomic Energy Agency has found Iran in non-compliance repeatedly over the past decade.

Putting the nuclear issue aside for a moment, Iran also signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, but moved forward in supporting the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad after he used chemical weapons on his own people. Interestingly enough, while the regime’s top mullah Ali Khamenei has issued a much-ballyhooed “fatwa” or religious edict proscribing the use of nuclear weapons, he did not rule out the development of those weapons, nor did he mention chemical or biological weapons.

For the Iran regime language and its nuances is vital to its aims which is why the proposed nuclear agreement is a paltry 159 pages and does even include two secret side deals with the IAEA. The SALT and START treaties between the U.S. and Soviet Union dwarf it with detailed provisions and requirements.

This explains why the regime has strenuously held out for a finite time limit in any further sanctions or limits on its nuclear development; the mullahs have the patience of Job and are content to outwait the rest of the world. The fact that the proposed deal has no further limitations after 10 years means Iranian regime is free to scale up to industrial capacity in enriching uranium. The fact that its centrifuges will not be destroyed – only unplugged and stored – allowing Iranian regime to keep its refining infrastructure intact.

All we have done is kick the can down the road for a decade and allow another administration and Congress to deal with the mess.

Oddly enough, those elected officials supporting the deal have basically placed their faith and re-election hopes in the hands of the mullahs. There can be no other interpretation of their support. They are betting on the mullahs which seems an inane act unless you consider the lobbying force the mullahs have deployed.

Michael Rubin in a piece for Commentary delves deeply into the financial support for the Iran lobby; looking specifically at the Ploughshares Fund which spreads its millions of dollars around to a number of regime supporters, including the National Iranian American Council. He also connects the dots of how many staffers and activists supporting the regime are funneled through groups and entities with close ties to the regime.

“Those staffing NIAC, for example, have always sought an end to sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many had worked for Atieh Bahar, a Tehran-based consultancy close to former Iranian regime President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. They are not chameleons, changing their stripes to match their funders,” Rubin said.

“When NIAC policy director Reza Marashi, an Atieh Bahar alum, worked for the State Department during the George W. Bush years, he was not pro-democracy agenda, but was understood to be sympathetic to an embrace rather than isolation of Iran. Indeed, his persistent questions about the recipients of U.S. aid inside Iran raised security concerns,” he said. “Likewise, when NIAC received a couple hundred thousand dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy, Trita channeled it to organizations close to the Iranian government.”

Rubin lists the extensive donations made by Ploughshares to benefit regime supporters, including:

  • $210,000 to the Arms Control Association for “influencing…US policy toward Iran.”
  • $80,000 to the Atlantic Council to support the Iran Task Force and another $130,000 for the South Asian Program;
  • Funded the Center for New American Security to give “boot camps” to Congressional staffers “on the nature of Iran’s nuclear program,” in other words, to lobby them;
  • Underwrote the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s efforts “to support an integrated lobbying strategy to build support for pragmatic approaches to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue;”
  • $100,000 to J Street to “educate” on behalf of an Iran deal;
  • $150,000 to the National Iranian American Council for its advocacy on behalf of the Iran deal, not including money given individually to its staff;
  • $75,000 to National Security Network to “educate media and policymakers about policy options to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon;”
  • Blogger Jeffrey Lewis criticized and downplayed the Associated Press’ revelation about a side deal between Iran and the IAEA gutting verification by allowing Iran to test itself, but did not acknowledge a $75,000 gift to his home institution from Ploughshares;
  • The Aspen Institute also received Ploughshares money to educate Congressmen and senior staffers about Iran policy options, again, effectively to lobby them; and
  • $75,000 to Gulf-2000, a listserv run by former Carter Iran hand and “October Surprise” conspiracy theorist Gary Sick, who has used Gulf-2000 to become a “Journolist”-style clearing house to feed pro-Iran talking points to journalists.

All of these groups work in aligning the interests of the mullahs and in pressing for a deal that releases them of any obligations to change their behavior while setting the stage for turmoil down the road.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Stuck in Absurd Parchin “Truther” Role

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Iran Lobby Stuck in Absurd Parchin “Truther” Role

Iran Lobby Stuck in Absurd Parchin “Truther” Role

A funny thing happened this weekend. The Associated Press reported last week the contents of a secret side deal between the Iran regime and the International Atomic Energy Agency over the issue of Iran finally allowing inspection of its Parchin military facility, long suspected of being used in research in its nuclear weapons program.

That story and side agreement set off a social media firestorm as regime supporters such as the National Iranian American Council, Ploughshares Fund and J-Street went all-in denouncing not only the story, but the very existence of the purported side deal agreement.

Tom Nichols wrote in the Daily Beast a compelling blow-by-blow review of what the mudslinging that went on as supporters of the mullahs in Tehran pulled out every tactic they could think of to contain the damage wrought by the AP story in which Iran was seemingly granted significant concessions in self-inspecting and reporting soil samples from the Parchin site without international oversight.

Nichols compared the attacks and arguments of the Parchin truthers to the much-mocked 9-11 truthers who spun up elaborate fantasy theories about the 9-11 attacks being organized by the U.S. government and Israel. Nichols wrote:

The Huffington Post made the strongest play by noting that former IAEA official Tariq Rauf said that in his view it was “not an authentic document” and represented an attempt to “hinder” the Iran Deal. Because the AP’s draft referred to Iran as the “Islamic State of Iran” – its official name is the Islamic Republic of Iran, which also appears in the draft – some seized on this as evidence of involvement of…well, You Know Who: “The only one who refers to Iran,” Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council tweeted, “as ‘Islamic State of Iran’ is [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu. And strangely, AP’s dubious ‘draft’ of the IAEA-Iran agreement…”

AP writer Matt Lee upbraided Parsi, saying: “You know better than this.” Parsi, in classic truther fashion, replied: “I am pointing out the language similarity and calling it strange. That’s it.” Max Fisher of Vox, for his part, called the AP story “troubling” and backed off when Lee also directly challenged him to take a position on the forgery charge. Lewis eventually said he thought “Islamic State” was transcription error, but he spent the rest of the day in a snarky pissing match with Lee and the AP on Twitter.

Nichols also noted how all of the charges about the forged IAEA side agreement hit Internet and social media all at the same time on Friday morning, calling the timing more than coincidental. Most interestingly though was the fact Nichols noted the new tactical change in the Iran lobby’s attacks, especially on journalists who published an unfavorable piece on the Iran regime or deal.

“The Iran Deal supporters knew there was no point in trying to rebut the substance of the claim: the story was out, people had already read it, and politicians had already reacted. A careful analysis of whether the document said what the AP headline said it did would take too long, and most people wouldn’t bother with it,” Nichols said. “Instead, the story had to be discredited and flushed, as soon as possible. There wasn’t time to explain that ‘monitor’ might mean different things to a lay reader and to an expert. Better simply to throw an array of charges at the Associated Press and its reporters and see what sticks.”

“The warning shot to other journalists is clear, however. Reporters with one of the most reputable news organizations in the world had to fight off odious charges for doing their job. This is apparently the price to be paid for reporting anything that challenges support for a deal that has reached, among its adherents, the status of a dogma that tolerates no heresy,” he added.

But these attacks by the Iran lobby point out the most significant issue surrounding these secret side deals; the fact that they are still secret.

William Tobey and Judith Miller writing in Real Clear Politics took the Obama administration to task in keeping these deals secret and outlined three compelling reasons why they should be made public:

“First, Iran’s commercial and industrial secrets—or even military secrets—are unlikely to be revealed by publishing the IAEA’s side agreements. Confidentiality regarding safeguards mainly covers proprietary and economic information, not approaches, said Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s former chief inspector.

“Second, while such side deals are normally secret, the Iran agreement is far from a normal case. Both the IAEA Board of Governors and the United Nations Security Council concluded that Tehran violated its earlier Safeguards obligations on numerous occasions over an extended period of time. Moreover, Iran, under its earlier commitments, was supposed to let the IAEA visit Parchin with 24 hours’ notice. Yet the agency has been waiting years for access, while Iran has conducted a massive cleanup at the location.

“Third, the overarching deal removing sanctions on Iran was struck by seven nations and the European Union—not just by Iran and the IAEA.”

State Department spokesman John Kirby, in his regular press briefing on Monday, did not build confidence either when he said the government believes the IAEA will give it all the “access and information” it needs in regards to inspections at Parchin.

Pete Kasperowicz of the Washington Examiner explained how Kirby’s subtle addition of the phrase “access and information” reinforced the perception that the IAEA side deals surrendered control of the testing and inspection process to the Iran regime.

New York Times correspondents David R. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon took a deeper dive in the future risks posed by the Iran deal and concluded “that after 15 years, Iran would be allowed to produce reactor-grade fuel on an industrial scale using far more advanced centrifuges. That may mean that the warning time if Iran decided to race for a bomb would shrink to weeks, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis by Robert J. Einhorn, a former member of the American negotiating team.”

“Critics say that by that time, Iran’s economy would be stronger, as would its ability to withstand economic sanctions, and its nuclear installations probably would be better protected by air defense systems, which Iran is expected to buy from Russia,” they added.

All of which points out that the real truth behind the Iran lobby’s arguments is that the mullahs in Tehran cannot be trusted.

By Laura Carnahan