Iran Lobby

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

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Iran Regime Unveils New Missile; Iran Lobby Goes Nuts over Parchin

August 24, 2015 by admin

Iran Regime Unveils New Missile; Iran Lobby Goes Nuts over Parchin

In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian Presidency on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, left, listens to Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan after unveiling the surface-to-surface Fateh-313, or Conqueror, missile in a ceremony marking Defense Industry Day, Iran. Iran unveiled a short-range solid fuel ballistic missile Saturday, an upgraded version that the government says can more accurately pinpoint targets. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

The Iran regime unveiled a new short-range, solid fuel ballistic missile over the weekend that promises quicker launch capability, longer lifespan and accurate striking capability within its 310 mile range.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the proposed agreement with the regime on its nuclear weapons program, called on the regime not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

It also contained an arms embargo against Iran for the next eight years, but since it is not part of the deal, the regime has said it won’t abide by with it.

“We will buy weapons from anywhere we deem necessary. We won’t wait for anybody’s permission or approval and won’t look at any resolution. And we will sell weapons to anywhere we deem necessary,” Hassan Rouhani, regime president, said in comments broadcast live on state television Saturday.

“Can we be indifferent…when there are special circumstances on our eastern, western, northern and southern borders,” Rouhani said, apparently referring to fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the region. “How can a weak country unable to stand up to the military power of neighbors, rivals and enemies achieve peace?”

Of course Rouhani neglects to mention that Iran itself is responsible for the fighting going on around it with its support of the Syrian regime, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen, all of which have drawn in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Gulf states, Jordan and Egypt into a much broader series of wars all started by Iran.

But the fact that Iran unveiled this new ballistic missile and ignored the UN resolution and recently completed the sale of S-300 advance anti-aircraft missile systems from the Russians, as well as violated travel sanctions in sending Quds Force commander Ghasem Soleimani on a secret mission to Moscow to shop for more arms, gives the world a rock-solid view of what the regime’s true intentions are; which is to rearm, reload and stock up on weapons as quickly as possible.

These actions, although deeply disturbing, are not what has the Iran lobby up in arms, which is the disclosure by the Associated Press and verified by Fox News of the contents of a secret side deal between the Iran regime and the International Atomic Energy Agency which purports to allow Iran to use its own inspectors at the contested Parchin military site to collect soil samples for testing without international monitors on site.

The agreement is startling and contemptuous of all of the previous “red lines” proposed by the P5+1 group of nations that negotiated with Iran and an example of the dramatic concessions granted to the regime in an attempt to appease the mullahs. The fact that the mullahs aren’t content with these windfalls and chose to unveil a new missile during the contentious debate over the deal in Congress gives us a strong idea of just what they think of the deal.

Which is why the Iran lobby is almost apoplectic about the disclosures since it represents a damning confirmation of how bad the deal is and how the mullahs have duped the Obama administration.

Joel B. Pollak writing in Breitbart discusses how these “Parchin truthers” have concocted some pretty ridiculous claims to try and hide the obvious in these Parchin disclosures.

The “Parchin truthers” include Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a group often described as a pro-regime lobby. Parsi retweeted an accusation that the AP text may have been “personally forged by Benjamin Netanyahu,” and added his own comment,” Pollak said.

Tyler Cullis, also of the NIAC, went so far as to tweet that use of the phrase “Islamic State of Iran” had to be evidence of Netanyahu forging the statement since he’s the only one what uses that phrase. With all due respect to Cullis’ ham-handed efforts, there are plenty of us who refer to Iran as the “Islamic state”though they are really not Islamic and

The exposure of the Parchin lies of the Iran lobby have pushed the NIAC, Ploughshares Fund, J-Street and other regime supporters to attack not only the article itself, written by AP Vienna bureau chief George Jahn, but the global news organization itself in a desperate bid to deflect attention from the crippling revelations.

Joseph Cirincione, head of Ploughshares Fund which provides substantial funding for the NIAC and other Iran lobbying groups, took to the Los Angeles Times to trot out the well-worn and discredited idea that rejecting the proposed deal would inevitably lead to war.

He argues that U.S. partners would abandon the U.S. should the deal be rejected and the sanctions in place would fall apart as well. It is clear that what Cirincione is warning about has already happened because of the deal, not because of its defeat.

The mullahs are ignoring the arms embargo, acquiring weapons. They are hosting trade delegations from European nations and buying arms from the Russians, while lining up deals to sell oil to the Chinese in spite of the promise to keep sanctions in place unless and until Iranian regime demonstrates it has abided by the terms of the agreement to dismantle its nuclear program.

All of which proves how feckless the claims being made by Parsi, Cirincione and other regime sympathizers are and why the ballistic missiles Iran unveiled are only the start of a much more dangerous period in the Middle East and the world.

By Michael Tomlinson

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Iran, Iran Lobby, Iran sanctions, NIAC, NIAC Action, Tritaparsi

The Use of False Dissidents by Iran Lobby

August 17, 2015 by admin

Throughout history the use of deception has been an integral part of statecraft. Governments have used double agents, false document releases, propaganda and all sorts of other tricks to deceive enemies or even their own people. Names such as Kim Philby, Eddie Chapman, Ashraf Marwan and even Mata Hari have claimed a special place in history for their duplicitous roles during wartime.

But in the social media age, knowing what is and isn’t true can prove difficult to near impossible with the flood of blogs, columnists and self-styled journalists posting, tweeting, sharing, pinning and linking. Edward Snowden showed us a peek under the tent with what was possible in terms of monitoring electronic communications. The Iran regime has refined the art with its own version of China’s great cyber wall which shuts out the outside world from the Iranian people and allows the mullahs to monitor virtually all the electronic activity happening there.

Control of all communications also has a certain side effect as well, it gives rise to the one of the current tactics used by the regime in trying to project a more moderate image to the outside world. You see, if the Iran regime controls all forms of outbound and inbound communications, how can anyone really trust what is being said or more precisely what the mullahs are allowing to be said.

One of the regime’s favored tactics is to project the image of a divided Islamic state; a struggle between moderates and hardliners, especially as it relates to the current debate over approval of the proposed nuclear agreement. The regime’s official news agency, IRNA, and other news media churn out a steady stream of stories about “hardliners” within the regime clamoring to the kill the deal and how “moderates” such as Hassan Rouhani are struggling mightily for peace.

It all has the tinge of some bad B-movie thriller from the 1950s with a cartoonish lampooning of favored tropes, no different than Cold War-era imagery of spies going to battle between the West and Soviet Bloc.

But these “protests” are largely staged for the benefit of Western media consumption in order to help the regime’s lobbyists here in the U.S. such as the National Iranian American Council in its efforts to bolster the image, such as one reported this weekend involving 50 “hardline “students.”

These same efforts to dissemble include public statements of endorsement being made by so-called “dissident” Iranians who are in fact still connected to the regime, not unlike the double agents of past campaigns. A recent open letter in Huffington Post was signed by former members of the Islamic Parliament who claimed to support the nuclear agreement, but scrutiny of the signers would reveal for each a past not spent on changing Iran’s policies, as much as securing a political future for their return to power.

In a historical context, many of these same ex-regime officials willingly took part in brutal repressive acts of their own until they fell out of favor for various and assorted reasons be it voting for laws oppressing the Iranian people or giving their support for the mullahs’ policies. The definition of their actions would be more commonly known as “appeasers” which carries historical connotations itself with visions of Neville Chamberlain clutching a piece of paper with Adolf Hitler’s signature on it proclaiming “peace in our time.”

But there is a certain delicious irony with all of the huffing and puffing of the regime and its loyal allies such as the NIAC and that is the almost insignificant impact it’s having on the Iranian American community itself.

The NIAC has led the public charge to mobilize Iranian Americans to support the deal, calling on mass protests and rallies and participation at congressional town hall meetings during the summer recess. Instead their appeals have fallen on largely deaf ears.

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

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

The efforts by NIAC Action, the direct lobbying arm of NIAC, had even worse results with no-shows in at least one California district and another one in New York being outnumbered by opponents to the deal.

All of which raises an interesting question: Knowing how weak the regime and its lobby are, just why is anyone even listening to them?

By Michael Tomlinson

The Use of False Dissidents by Iran Lobby

The Use of False Dissidents by Iran Lobby

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Iran, Iran deal, Iran Lobby, Iranian- American, NIAC, NIAC Action

The Iran Lobby’s Guide to Distorting the Truth

August 14, 2015 by admin

The Iran Lobby’s Guide to Distorting the Truth

The Iran Lobby’s Guide to Distorting the Truth

The Iran regime’s leading lobby, the National Iranian American Council, launched an official lobbying arm in the form of NIAC Action since it was coming under greater scrutiny for engaging in lobbying activities in violation of federal law. Also, Trita Parsi, the head of the NIAC, recently lost a defamation lawsuit he brought against an Iranian American journalist who wrote on the same topic.

NIAC Action was launched ostensibly to help advocate for Iranian American issues, but anyone looking at its site will quickly realize its sole purpose for existence is to push for the proposed nuclear deal and enable the mullahs in Tehran to get their hands on $100 billion in frozen assets and relief from economic sanctions that had threatened their hold over the Iranian people.

Interestingly enough, NIAC Action provides its followers a tool kit to help them at local town hall meetings being held by members of Congress over the summer recess who will hear from their constituents about their feelings on the nuclear deal. The tool kit is classic tactical programming to help feed and stoke the narrative the Iran lobby has been pushing from day one; namely that the deal is a choice between war and peace.

NIAC Action has taken that absurd one step further by trying to align a vote on the nuclear deal to the vote on going to war in Iraq. One of their talking points to supporters reads:

“The President has said that Congress’ vote on the Iran deal is the most important foreign policy vote lawmakers will take since the vote to authorize the war with Iraq. Many lawmakers have come to regret that they did not stand up to vote against the war with Iraq. Will you stand up and vote in support of the nuclear deal to prevent a war with Iran?”

The message point is an excellent example of the desperation regime supporters must feel and their willingness to troll the depths of fear mongering to get their point across. In many ways, the NIAC Action talking points are revealing for what they don’t say.

They make no mention of the need to carefully watch the behavior of Iran’s mullahs going forward. They make no mention of the need to reassure Americans that the mullahs can be trusted. They make no mention of how the mullahs will use the $100 billion windfall they are about to receive. They make no mention of the mullahs’ commitment to improve human rights and release Iranian American hostages being held in Iranian prisons.

Why? Simply put, they know it would be lying.

So absent the ability to tell the truth in order to reassure highly skeptical Americans as evidenced by a string of recent public opinion polls, NIAC Action has chosen to double down on fear tactics in an effort to cow the American people. It’s a tactic being shared in recent comments by Secretary of State John Kerry who warned that the value of America’s currency would take a hit on the global market should the deal fail to pass.

He warned of the potential for “the American dollar to cease to be the reserve currency of the world, which is already bubbling out there.”

If we give them another week, I’m sure the administration and Trita Parsi will also tell us global warming will increase and polar bears will become extinct if the nuclear deal is not approved.

The histrionics coming from NIAC Action are the strongest indication yet of how weak its position is and how blatant a tool for the mullahs it has become.

Rest assured the inventive and fanciful minds at the NIAC will probably include the eventual downfall of Western civilization as a result of a failed nuclear deal next.

By Michael Tomlinson

Filed Under: Blog, National Iranian-American Council Tagged With: Iran deal, NIAC, NIAC Action, Trita Parsi

Myths from Iran Lobby about Support for Nuclear Deal

August 13, 2015 by admin

Myths from Iran Lobby about Support for Nuclear Deal

Myths from Iran Lobby about Support for Nuclear Deal

According to Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council and chief cheerleader and lobbyist for the Iran regime, in an editorial on Huffington Post proposed that an overwhelming majority of Iranian Americans support the proposed nuclear agreement with the mullahs in Tehran.

Is there a scientific, statistically valid poll he cites as evidence? No. Is there some comprehensive survey or focus group sampling he discusses? No. Does he quote any academic, independent think tank, researcher or university for his assertion? No. Does he name any study, poll, survey or report supporting his claim? No.

All we have to go with is Parsi’s words and imagination, but that is not unusual and par for the course for this man who claims the mantle of Iranian American leadership, but does nothing by shill for the Iranian government.

Parsi has made no efforts to bridge the divides within the Iranian American community, routinely denouncing opponents and dissidents to the regime and praising the mullahs even when they commit gross violations of human rights perpetrated against Iranian Americans such as Saeed Abedini, Jason Rezaian and Amir Hekmati who all languish in Iranian prisons.

Parsi’s extensive social media postings on Twitter for example hardly mention the plight of these Iranian American men and he has never directed a single tweet at official Twitter accounts for high-ranking regime officials such as Hassan Rouhani or Ali Khamenei asking for mercy on behalf of these men unjustly imprisoned and tortured.

But that is the heart of Parsi’s lobbying tactics; to claim leadership and yet do nothing on behalf of the very people you claim to represent. Oddly enough, NIAC has spent almost all of its public pronouncements on issues directly related to the Iran regime and its citizens (to the extent it benefits the government’s policies) and nothing to the plight of Iranian Americans.

For example, Parsi has lobbied on behalf of Iranian students studying here from Iran who are subject to greater scrutiny when they study fields related to nuclear weapons development, but does not address broad social topics afflicting and dividing the Iranian American community such as addressing the generational gap in ex-pats who fled Iran during the Islamic revolution and younger Iranian Americans struggling to come to terms with the bloody legacy of their nation’s heritage.

Heck, he might help the cause of Iranian Americans and their image by even devoting himself to trying to correct stereotypes arising from the “Shahs of Sunset” reality show, but then again that doesn’t help further the cause of the mullahs does it?

It’s also unfortunate that Parsi in his editorial has to fall back on using the old “silent majority” phrase to justify his position. He probably forgot that the term originated with President Richard Nixon who coined the phrase in a televised address to talk about those Americans who did not join mass protests against the Vietnam War in 1969. An oversight, but all-too appropriate one for a guy who seems to have a penchant for dissembling the truth to suit his political needs.

Who knew Parsi was such as Nixon fan?

But more importantly, the central premise of Parsi’s piece – that popular support for the nuclear deal is growing – has been thoroughly blown out of the water with the release of several national and reputable polls which show steep and increasing declines in support for the deal, trust in the Iran regime to comply with the deal, lack of belief the U.S. got what it wanted, strong belief the U.S. gave away too much to the mullahs, and strong sentiment Iran is going to cheat anyway.

Those polls have come from places such as the Pew Research Center, Monmouth University, Quinnipiac University, WSJ, NBC, CNN, Washington Post etc.

As much as Parsi would have everyone believe him on his word, he has yet to offer up any proof of his assertions.

By Michael Tomlinson

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Iran deal, NIAC, NIAC Action, Trita Parsi

Why Congress Will Not Listen to the NIAC

July 14, 2015 by admin

The end of talks in Vienna

The end of talks in Vienna

The National Iranian American Council lobbies on behalf of the Iranian regime. That much has been well documented through financial records, emails, court judgements, interviews, public statements and investigative stories by journalists.  The NIAC has even formalized that lobbying in launching an official lobbying arm in the form of NIAC Action.

The question remains though, will anyone on Capitol Hill listen to them?

There are a plethora of reasons why very few Senators or Representatives and their staffers will listen to them, especially in the wake of the current agreement between the regime and the P5+1 group of nations that the Congress will begin a 60 day review period.

First and foremost, any lobby’s power on Capitol Hill is derived from a few simple levers of influence such as: financial muscle to make campaign contributions, grassroots muscle to deliver workers in the field to walk precincts or man phone banks or direct influence through relationships and knowledge.

There are abundant examples of this every day. The National Rifle Association has been effective in holding off gun control legislation because it has over four million members shelling out over $200 million to support largely conservative candidates in favor of its position, while the AFL-CIO labor unions boast over 11 million members and spent over $46 million in direct lobbying alone to influence largely liberal candidates.

Every industry and cause in America has a powerful lobby, as well as foreign governments, including ones like the Iranian regime, but federal law prohibits Iran from directly contributing to candidates or even speaking to them directly on legislation; hence the need to create the NIAC to carry the mullahs’ water.

NIAC has an annual budget of less than $2 million with expenses around $1 million, which puts its financial clout somewhere around spotted owl society. The NIAC has recently posted a job for a development director since its leader, Trita Parsi, has quickly deduced he needs more cash quickly in order to get on the radar screen of Congress.

Consequently, if its political action committee were to even make a donation to a candidate, it is reasonable to assume that candidate might decline such as gift since it would be inviting intense scrutiny and attack from anti-regime opponents who would be more than happy to point out the error of a candidate’s ways in taking money from a group directly associated with Tehran.

It would be akin to taking money from BP right after the Gulf oil spill or donations from Monsanto while you’re reviewing regulations on GMOs.

Then there is the question of NIAC’s grassroots muscle, which has proven to be spotty at best and non-existent otherwise. Several “Days of Action” legislative outreach days have yielded pitiful results with small numbers of petitions being delivered primarily to already supportive members’ offices. NIAC is staffed with only a small number of people who attempt to demonstrate their outsized significance largely through social media that speaks to their own sphere of supporters.

Even media coverage of NIAC has seen a steep decline where their comments have moved lower and lower in news stories and been largely relegated to cheerleading quotes for the Iranian regime, much like a parrot would copy a master’s remarks. Absent articles about ongoing nuclear talks and their media presence shrinks to the size of a thimble.

As for their influence with their expertise, even that has come under harsh criticism as news media disclosures about former staffers and interns for NIAC moving into critical policy making roles within the Obama administration while reviewing policy on current nuclear talks have forced legislative staff to keep them at arm’s length lest their bosses be tagged with the same accusations.

In fact, Tyler Cullis of NIAC recently sent an email blast to congressional offices arguing for the lifting of the United Nations embargo on conventional weapons trade with Iran in order to facilitate the agreement; particularly since this has become one of the loopholes of the agreement. Since everyone knows that if the world gives them unrestricted access to arms they can buy and export to their proxies waging war in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The fact that Cullis is not even a staffer for the new lobbying arm, but engaging in direct lobbying of congressional staffers, caused many eyebrows to be raised, but the desperate gambit by NIAC was necessary because Iran was demanding the action at the 11th hour.

To give you an idea of how desperate NIAC staffers are to help the mullahs, Reza Marashi claimed on CBS This Morning that the deal was “too big to fail” and thus had to be approved.

The last time we had something given to the American people as too big to fail, it was our nation’s banks as they gorged on bad debt and collapsed sending the nation spiraling into recession.

This Iranian “too big to fail moment” might end up sending the rest of the world into a new nuclear arms race and prolonged sectarian wars for years to come at the hands of the mullahs.

All of which is why at the end of the day, it would be wise for Democrats and Republicans to just ignore the NIAC.

By Michael Tomlinson

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Iran, Iran deal, Iran Lobby, NIAC, NIAC Action

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National Iranian-American Council (NIAC)

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  • Namazi, NIAC Ringleader
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