NIAC – Iran Lobby

NIAC Letter on Iran Nuclear Deal Just More of the Same

December 19, 2018 by admin

NIAC Letter on Iran Nuclear Deal Just More of the Same

The National Iranian American Council, that reliable cheerleader for the mullahs in Tehran, cobbled together yet another letter signed by the usual cadre of pro-regime supporters, urging Congress to once again bail out the faltering Iranian regime.

Fortunately, this letter was vastly shorter than previous tomes but still espoused the same essential principles the Iran lobby has been harping on since then-presidential candidate Donald Trump blasted the Iran nuclear deal on the campaign trail in 2015.

In short, the letter urged Congress to continue:

Supporting the nuclear agreement and return the U.S. to comply with it;
Opposing sanctions that:
- Disrupt any other country’s efforts to stick with the nuclear deal;
- Prevent the U.S. from coming back into compliance with the deal in the future;
- Disproportionately impact Iranian civilians rather than regime officials engaged in illicit or destabilizing activities;
- Block necessary humanitarian and medical supplies from reaching the country;
Support more diplomacy toward additional agreements as the preferred basis for addressing further concerns about Iranian activity; and
Oppose starting a war of choice with Iran.

The conditions are typical for what the Iran lobby has pushed for since the Obama administration first opened talks with the mullahs and largely ignores the realities on the ground as the Iranian regime has become the most destabilizing force in the Middle East since the nuclear deal’s passage.

The Trump administration has stated from the very beginning it welcomed renewed diplomatic efforts with Tehran in an effort to achieve a more comprehensive solution to the region’s problems, including curtailing the spread of terrorism, improving human rights conditions and eliminating the delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction in the form o intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The fact Tehran has no desire to take up any of these other, but no less vital issues demonstrates the mullahs complete lack of transparency or willingness to engage in diplomacy to solve these problems.

Also, while Iranian regime leaders such as Hassan Rouhani, have made a public show of discounting the impact of U.S. economic sanctions, the reality is that they have hurt the regime in places where it is most vulnerable: financial services, oil and gas exports, and currency exchanges.

The choices made in the NIAC letter are noteworthy since they are aimed at the most effective portions of the U.S. sanctions program. The letter tries to portray the sanctions as having an impact only on ordinary Iranians and not regime officials, but the opposite is true since the regime, through its Revolutionary Guard Corps, controls much of the economy, especially its heavy industries and continually diverts badly needed capital from growing the economy and instead uses it to finance its military adventures in Syria and Yemen, while also funneling money to support terror groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq and Afghan mercenaries in an effort to extend its sphere of influence.

The proof of the debilitating impact the regime’s decisions has had on ordinary Iranians can be seen in the yearlong series of very public protests staged throughout Iran by these same ordinary Iranians the NIAC describes as being “disproportionately impacted” by the sanctions.

Starting last December and continuing through 2018, the near-daily images of women protesting hijabs and moral codes that restrict education, jobs and even the ability to ride a bicycle, are mingled with those of merchants storming through Tehran’s Grand Bazaar or truckers blocking roads and highways or farmers demanding more water for parched lands to local towns and villages decimated by poverty and a wrecked environment.

All the results of the mullahs’ decisions and nothing having to do with Washington.

The dichotomy between the claims of the NIAC’s letter and the reality in Iran is as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

Lastly, the NIAC’s false flag of warning of a war with Iran is just another red herring designed to elicit fear and send false worries into members of Congress. It’s interesting to note the only people ever mentioning the words “war” and “Iran” together are the NIAC and its fellow Iran lobby members; the same ones that comprised the infamous “echo chamber” used to bully and persuade reluctant members of Congress to support the nuclear deal in the first place.

It has always been the Iranian regime that has undertaken the provocative military action first in the region and not the U.S. or its allies.

The U.S. did not plot to assassinate Iranian leaders in a foreign country, but the Iranian regime did in Denmark, France, and Germany in efforts to kills dissidents.

The U.S. did not threaten to sink commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and halt oil shipments, but the Iranian regime did.

The U.S. did not take the U.S. and other dual-national citizens hostage on trumped-up charges and throw them in prison without trial and access to legal representation, but the regime did.

All these actions and more have been undertaken by the same regime the NIAC and the rest of the co-signers of the letter are trying hard now to get off the hook.

There is little appetite in Congress, either during this lame duck session, or when the new Congress is sworn in January to reward the mullahs for their abhorrent behavior. Even the harshest critics of the U.S. move to withdraw from the nuclear deal, such as France and Germany, had a change of heart when Iranian agents were caught trying to smuggle a bomb for the purpose of killing a few thousand Iranian dissidents meeting outside of Paris last June.

Unfortunately for the NIAC, they can’t control the mullahs, it’s the other way around.

Laura Carnahan

Iranian Hackers Targeting American Officials and Dissidents

December 14, 2018 by admin

Iranian Hackers Targeting American Officials and Dissidents

In another sign of the growing extremism and aggressiveness of the Iranian regime, the Associated Press revealed an unprecedented effort by Iranian regime hackers to break into the personal emails of American officials responsible for enforcing new economic sanctions imposed on Iran.

In addition to the cyber attacks on U.S. officials, the Iranian regime hackers also targeted high profile dissidents and detractors of the Iran nuclear deal, as well as a hodgepodge of D.C., think tank employees, Iranian civil society figures and atomic scientists.

The AP drew on data gathered by the London-based cybersecurity group Certfa to track how a hacking group often nicknamed Charming Kitten spent the past month trying to break into the private emails of more than a dozen U.S. Treasury officials.

The reported campaign underscores the degree to which government-sponsored hackers still rely on tricking email users into handing over their email usernames and passwords. The alleged phishing campaign aimed to bait targets into handing over their credentials and then went further, asking victims to provide one-time codes, such as texted and app-generated codes, used as a second form of authentication.

The hit list surfaced after Charming Kitten mistakenly left one of its servers open to the internet last month. Researchers at Certfa found the server and extracted a list of 77 Gmail and Yahoo addresses targeted by the hackers that they handed to the AP for further analysis.

It’s hard to know how many of the accounts were successfully compromised or how exactly they were targeted in each case. But even though the addresses likely represent only a fraction of the hackers’ overall efforts, they still provide considerable insight into Tehran’s espionage priorities.

“Presumably, some of this is about figuring out what is going on with sanctions,” said Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written about Iranian cyberespionage and was among those targeted.

Kagan said he was alarmed by the targeting of foreign nuclear experts. “This is a little more worrisome than I would have expected,” he said.

The targeting of the email accounts of nuclear scientists raises the dark specter that the regime is going after data and critical research information that could prove useful in its ongoing nuclear weapons development.

The actions also fly in the face of one of the key arguments made by the Iran lobby during the run-up of the nuclear deal which was that the Iranian regime was only interested in civilian and peaceful nuclear development and had no interest in developing weapons of mass destruction.

In a report published Thursday, Certfa tied the hackers to the Iranian government, a judgment drawn in part on operational blunders, including a couple of cases where the hackers appeared to have accidentally revealed that they were operating from computers inside Iran.

Certfa said its investigation found the hackers used Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, to make it look like they were operating from France and the Netherlands. But the group said it uncovered strong evidence to prove that the hackers were operating from inside Iran.

The assessment was backed by others who have tracked Charming Kitten. Allison Wikoff, a researcher with Atlanta-based SecureWorks, recognized some of the digital infrastructures in Certfa’s report and said the hackers’ past operations left little doubt they were government-backed.

“It’s fairly clear-cut,” she said.

One target was Frederick Kagan, who works for the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank based in Washington. Kagan has repeatedly written about Iranian cyberespionage efforts.

“Presumably, some of this is about figuring out what is going on with sanctions,” Kagan told the AP. He was speaking about economic sanctions the U.S. has placed on Iran. The latest sanctions, on Iran’s oil and financial industry, were announced last month.

Iranian regime cyber attacks are nothing new and have become relentless and a fact of life among white hat programmers tasked with defending government and corporate networks against intrusion, but this latest effort to gain access to personal email accounts with much lower levels of security presents a different tack in the regime’s cyber tactics.

To add a look of legitimacy to their campaign, the hackers in some cases directed victims to open websites hosted on Google Sites pages before entering their usernames and passwords, Certfa said. The researchers said they notified Google of the pattern, and Google deactivated the hackers’ pages hosted on the company’s service. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The effort to target avowed dissidents and naysayers of the Iran nuclear deal indicates another disturbing trend by the mullahs in Tehran which is to go after those who dare denounce or criticize them.

This past year, Iranian intelligence agents have been identified in attempts to smuggle a bomb into an annual gathering of Iranian dissidents outside of Paris and plot an assassination attempt in Denmark against noted critics of the regime.

What is also noteworthy is the virtual silence emanating from the Iran lobby and its chief members, including the National Iranian American Council who have never voiced a criticism of the Iranian regime’s cyber terror activities, nor ever called upon the regime to lift the virtual blockade it has imposed on outside social media services within Iran.

The tight-fisted ban on transmitting information reveals the key weakness of the mullahs’ rule which is it cannot stand up to the scrutiny of daylight and transparency.

This is why the regime relies so heavily on cyber attacks to stifle dissent, gain intelligence and secrets and wage an online war against its harshest critics, such as the efforts by the regime to manipulate fake social media accounts to attack dissident groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Ultimately the regime’s efforts are likely to prove ineffective as its stealth efforts are uncovered and revealed to the world; reinforcing the growing perception that Tehran was never really serious about pursuing a new moderation with the rest of the world.

Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi Still Pushing Same Old Falsehoods

December 11, 2018 by admin

Trita Parsi, that undeniable cheerleader for the Iranian regime, may have traded in his president’s title for the National Iranian American Council, but he is still a busy beaver in peddling the same, tired old tropes in defending the regime, while ignoring the worst offenses and actions by the mullahs.

It’s a neat trick worthy of a Las Vegas magic act if the cost to ordinary Iranians and their neighbors wasn’t so grievously high.

His latest missive in defense of the regime is a doozy where he tries to make the case that the coalition assembled by the Trump administration to re-impose economic sanctions is somehow falling apart.

How does Parsi come to this conclusion? He simply makes the assumption that the “anti-Iran” coalition is simply comprised of a triumvirate of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel. He then goes on to dutifully explain the various internal political pressures each are facing and how that will magically let Iran off the hook.

First, Parsi points to the controversy over the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and how it will undermine the Saudi monarchy and weaken it’s resolve in opposing Iran because of political pressure that will surely be brought to bear by an outraged Congress that will cut off arms sales to the Saudi kingdom.

“Even if the Republicans end up siding with Trump on continuing relations with Saudi Arabia on the current terms, the Democrats are unlikely to simply allow the relationship to return to business-as-usual,” Parsi writes.

“This is partly because the Saudi-U.S. relationship embodies everything progressives oppose: A cozy relationship with a brutal authoritarian ruler driven by the greed of arms manufacturers, all while the U.S. is complicit in a Saudi-engineered famine in Yemen and the House of Saud’s human rights and women’s rights abuses,” he adds.

Of course, Parsi conveniently leaves out a few important details, such as the Iranian regime was responsible for instigating the conflict in Yemen by inciting Houthi rebels and supplying them with arms and then escalating the conflict by shipping missiles there used to directly attack Saudi Arabia.

It’s also laughable for Parsi to attack “human rights and women’s rights abuses” in Saudi Arabia while ignoring the horrific acts committed to this day by the Iranian regime, including the taking of foreign citizens as hostages, including British and American subjects.

Let’s also not mention the ongoing domestic protests roiling Iran ranging from Iranian women rejecting medieval morals codes and proscriptions that limit their job prospects and stifle daily freedoms like riding a bicycle.

It’s noteworthy that throughout the perceived turmoil in Saudi-U.S. relations, there has never been any mention or serious policy discussion by anyone in Congress altering the kingdom’s role in countering Iranian aggression.

But let’s not let facts stand in the way of hyperbole from Parsi. The most dubious of Parsi’s claims is that the U.S. sanctions effort is failing and he bases that silly notion on the flimsy proof of a “stabilized” rial and ongoing sales of Iranian oil.

If Parsi considers a plunge in the value of the rial to an all-time low in the history of the Iranian regime “stabilized” then he may consider another stint in college to study economics a worthwhile investment for his career.

The Iranian rial has lost a whopping 70 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar since the current Iranian fiscal year began in March.

The use of artificial price freezes by the mullahs to prevent runaway inflation has failed as the costs of consumer goods has skyrocketed and the purchasing power of Iranian savings is beginning to approach beggar status.

The ballyhooed sales of oil Parsi touts are a drop in the bucket of Iran’s exports and more worrisome for the mullahs is the plunge in the price of oil hovering barely above $50 per barrel of benchmark crude. Iran pegs its budget forecasts on anticipating oil prices at nearly $70 per barrel; the difference is crushing the regime’s ability to invest in new capital expenses.

“Today, if you’re sitting in Tehran, you’re probably more confident in the future than if you’re in Riyadh or Washington. Trump has thrown everything he has at Iran, and it hasn’t worked. And once the European “Special Purpose Vehicle” — an alternative payment system that will enable companies to defy Trump’s sanctions — is up and running next year, the Trump’s Iran strategy may face yet another crippling blow,” Parsi said.

Unfortunately for Parsi, that special purpose vehicle is sputtering on life support after France, Germany and Denmark have all denounced Iran for staging attempted bombings and assassinations on their soil against Iranian dissidents and are now calling on stiff action against Tehran.

It may be hard for Parsi to understand, but you’re not likely to get help from someone when you use their house to plan a murder.

But then again, facts were never a strong suit for Trita Parsi.

Laura Carnahan

Evidence Mounts of Iranian Transgressions Making Action Necessary

December 2, 2018 by admin

The reason why the U.S. pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal two years after its passage was because the track record of compliance by the Iranian regime was littered with failure and the inherent flaw in the agreement of not restraining Iranian regime’s aggression in other areas such as terrorism became problematic.

The inherent flaws in the regime lie at the heart of its style of government: a religious theocracy.

There is no checks or balance system in Iran. The ultimate authority is vested in the supreme religious leader who rules with the near-autonomy of monarchs of old. An interesting irony considering the Islamic revolution in the first place deposed the Shah.

But because of the lack of accountability within the regime to only a select elite few, the future of successful implementation of the nuclear deal was dead on signing.

When the Obama administration and rest of the European Union withdraw demands that Iran comply in areas such as sponsorship of terrorism, destabilization of its neighbors and improvements in human rights at home, all the leverage the world had on Iran evaporated.

The Iran lobby, specifically the National Iranian American Council, have contended that to include such restrictions would have doomed the deal to failure. The reverse has prophetically come true: by not including those provisions, the deal was indeed doomed to fail, and it has.

The bloody trail of Iranian extremism has been well documented, and the Iran lobby has never spoken harshly against that record, only excusing the regime with faint calls for reform and blaming every misstep by the mullahs as being provoked by the U.S. from withdrawing from the nuclear deal.

The harsh truth the Iran lobby has vigorously sought to cover up is the strategic plan the mullahs have to build its own Islamic version of the Warsaw Pact by converting or controlling its neighbors to its brand of extremism and using proxies to institute insurrections and wars.

That plan was worked to some degree with the Iranian regime using Hezbollah and Afghan mercenaries to stem the civil war in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq to control that government and Houthi rebels to overthrow Yemen and threaten regional adversary Saudi Arabia.

But those conflicts haven’t been enough for Iran, even as the mullahs direct the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force to supply more arms, weapons and cash to other militants further afield.

Evidence for these efforts was put on display when Brian Hook, special representative for Iran and senior policy advisor to the U.S. secretary of state, released information that the Iranian regime was violating the United Nations arms export ban by supplying militants across the Middle East and continuing to build out its ballistic missile program unabated.

At a military hangar in Washington, Hook showed reporters a display of seized Iranian weapons that he said is much larger than it was a year ago. He then elaborated on each weapon on display and where it was found, including a collection of guns, rockets, drones and other gear.

“We need to get serious about going after this stuff,” Hook told reporters.

Some of the weapons had been intercepted in the Strait of Hormuz en route to Shia fighters in the region while others had been seized by the Saudis in Yemen, the Pentagon said.

The centerpiece of the display was what Hook said is a Sayyad-2 surface-to-air missile system that the Saudis had intercepted in Yemen this year.

Farsi writing along the white rocket’s side helped prove it was Iranian made, Hook added.

“The conspicuous Farsi markings is Iran’s way of saying they don’t mind being caught violating UN resolutions,” Hook told reporters, adding the missile was destined to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Hook said the seized weapons are “clear and tangible evidence” that Iran is fueling instability in the Middle East.

Iran has the largest ballistic force in the region, Hook said, with 10 ballistic missile systems in its inventory or under development. Missile development and testing has increased in recent years, he added.

Last year, Iran launched a medium-range missile believed to be the Khorramshahr, he said. It can carry a payload of more than a half ton and could be used to carry nuclear warheads. Its suspected range is 1,200 miles, which puts Europe in range.

Fajr rockets intended for the Taliban were recovered by the Afghan National Army in Afghanistan’s Helmand province near Kandahar Airfield, Hook said.

Bahrain provided captured Iranian small-arms weaponry found on their territory, which were given to Shiite militant groups to carry out attacks against the government. They include sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 assault rifle variants and hand grenades, Hook said.

Since 2006, the Iranian regime has supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with thousands of precision rockets, missiles and small arms, Hook said. It now has more than 100,000 rockets or missiles in its stockpile.

The scope and size of the munitions being produced by the Iranian regime and smuggled throughout the Middle East puts to rest any concept floated by the Iran lobby of Iranian “moderation” following the nuclear deal.

In fact, it has been a year since U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was at a similar event to highlight the dangers posed by Iran’s proliferation of missiles and other weapons across the Middle East, only to see this year’s display of captured Iranian weaponry dwarf last year’s display.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Grows Desperate as Sanctions Tighten

November 27, 2018 by admin

As the full weight of new economic sanctions are imposed on the Iranian regime, an uncomfortable truth is roiling the sleep of the mullahs in Tehran; oil prices are plummeting and putting the squeeze on them.

Leading that global glut of oil is surging U.S. production that is becoming a potential hammer blow to the mullahs’ faint hopes of weathering the economic storm.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “observers expected American energy production to reach a plateau. A lack of pipeline capacity was expected to constrain output in the Permian Basin through 2020. Instead, shippers found ways to use existing pipelines more efficiently, and new pipelines were constructed faster than expected. U.S. crude-oil production is expected to average 12.1 million barrels a day in 2019, 28% higher than in 2017. Surging production has roiled world energy markets.”

The biggest loser of this newfound energy production? Iran. As the Journal outlines, the economic windfall the mullahs hoped to reap from the nuclear deal forged by President Barack Obama were largely offset by the sharp price spiral of oil in 2016. Now rising American output is doing the same thing to Iran in 2018.

The financial profits the mullahs have traditionally carved out for themselves from black market sales of Iranian oil are unlikely to materialize as spotty sales on the bourse created by the Iranian government has already shown.

Hopes by the Iran lobby that countries opposed to the U.S. might pick up the slack by buying Iranian oil such as China are being dashed by falling oil prices. Just a few months ago oil was predicted to hit $100 per barrel, but instead the global benchmark has fallen to $50 per barrel.

Iran hasn’t been helped by record oil production by its regional opponent, Saudi Arabia, which raised production to an all-time high in November, pumping a colossal 11.3 million barrels per day.

The squeeze to the Iranian regime on all sides is fueling the domestic unrest spreading across the country as a result of deepening economic worries.

Predictions by the Iran lobby that the regime could weather this economic storm are becoming harder to make with a straight face. One such idea was the much-hoped for barter agreement system being proposed to allow Iran to sell oil in exchange for goods, thereby avoiding U.S. secondary sanctions on currency exchange.

Of course, the regime will resort to earlier sanction busting tactics including fraud, smuggling and even having Iranian tankers turn off position signals in an effort to go stealth.

The end result of all these shenanigans though is not to benefit or help the Iranian people, but rather to further enrich the ruling elites and Revolutionary Guard Corps which continues to spend prodigious amounts of cash in funding various terrorist actions abroad and proxy wars, as well as keep its loyal terror groups such as Hezbollah in the black.

The chief argument made by the Iran lobby against these sanctions is that they will be unlikely to motivate the Iranian people to rise up and demand change from their government.

“The theory behind it is, you make the population so miserable that they will rise up against the government,” said Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council.

Unfortunately for Parsi and the NIAC, the Iranian people are rising up. Merchants have taken to the markets to protests. Truckers have stopped driving. Teachers have halted classes. Throughout Iran the people are making their voices heard and predictably, the regime is resorting to violence and intimidation in an effort to suppress it.

But that hasn’t topped the NIAC from pedaling more false ideas and schemes to get relief for the mullahs, including putting out a so-called report outlining the potential of restoring the nuclear deal.

That report is nothing more than a regurgitation of past NIAC misstatements assembled in a slim few pages and passed off as scholarly research. We might call it Cliff’s Notes version of Iran lobby messaging.

Also included are opinions by Paul Pillar, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, who has become such a fixture alongside Parsi one might wonder if they’re related as they appear on any policy panel they can get on in an effort to find any kind of audience for their messaging.

The culmination of all this doesn’t alter the trajectory of the Iranian regime under these sanctions. What is different now than from past sanctions is a U.S. administration committed to pushing the regime back to the bargaining table to address not only nuclear weapons but also its destabilizing influence throughout the region and support for terrorism, as well as its dismal human rights record.

What is also different is the willingness of the Iranian people to defy their own government and unlike the previous protests after disputed presidential elections in 2009, these protests resonate more deeply because it comes from all parts of Iranian society, including the poor and working class who helped fuel the overthrow of the Shah in the first place.

The parallels to that time may be painfully uncomfortable for the mullahs now.

Iran Resorts to More Hangings in Effort to Preserve Mullahs Rule

November 21, 2018 by admin

There are iconic images that grace many national flags. The maple leaf for Canada. The Union Jack. The Stars and Stripes are just some of the few. Every national flag bear icons telling a story about the country, its history and its people.

In the case of the Iranian regime, it may be time for it to redefine its national flag with a new symbol; one that has come to symbolize one of the most prolific acts committed by its government.

A hangman’s noose.

Iran ranks among world leaders in state-sponsored executions, especially of political, ethnic and religious prisoners. It’s preferred method of execution is hanging, often in public and often using the ubiquitous construction crane.

But as the mullahs in Tehran have experiencing an unprecedented level of domestic protest and international pressure as a result of renewed U.S. sanctions, as well as gross mismanagement of the economy and the redirection of billions in hard currency to fund several wars and insurrections, they have turned to using executions as a means of harsh crowd control.

The latest example came in the execution of a gold dealer known as the “Sultan of Coins” in a blatant warning to Iranian merchants and businesses not to do anything to undermine the regime’s policies in the face of growing economic distress.

Vahid Mazloumin was sentenced to death in October after being accused by Iranian authorities of contributing to price hikes by hoarding gold. His assistant, Mohammad Esmail Qassemi, was also hanged last week, state-run Iranian Students News Agency said.

The killings came in the wake of a national currency which has fallen into a steady death spiral of devaluation; dropping a stunning 70 percent against the dollar, fueling massive surges in prices for good and leading to a widespread underground and illegal market in trading.

Mazloumin didn’t hold a permit to trade gold and foreign currency, yet had formed the largest illegal network in that area, according to state-run Fars news agency. He instructed his team to corner the gold coin market to resell at higher prices, amassing about 2 tons of them, local media said.

Whether or not it’s true or was simply something manufactured by the regime in order to set a stiff example, the truth at the core of the hangings is the mullahs’ desperate efforts to hang onto control of a deteriorating economic situation and widespread public unrest.

In an effort to restore calm and project a sense of order, the mullahs have repeatedly threatened to take harsh measures against anyone “disrupting the economy” while promising to provide assistance to the poor, according to Bloomberg.

Last week, Tehran police instituted large scale raids in which security forces arrested about 130 illegal currency traders in recent days.

In further measures to placate the deeply distressed Iranian people and lessen the pain of rising prices, president Hassan Rouhani’s government started providing benefits for the neediest to help pay for food packages that include meat, cooking oil and dairy. Parviz Fatah, who heads the state-controlled Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, said the program will initially reach 2.7 million Iranians after its launch last Tuesday.

Top mullah Ali Khamenei said in a speech that Iran “can solve its economic problems by correctly using its domestic resources”; a not too subtle threat to any Iranian that circumvents policies to keep the regime afloat.

The executions drew harsh criticism from human rights groups that have long decried the use of “kangaroo trials” used by the regime to summarily sentence and imprison large numbers of Iranians and dual-nationals, notably British, Canadian and American citizens.

“Iran’s hanging of people who have been convicted in courts without a fair trial is a blatant violation of law,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, describing the trial venues as “kangaroo courts”.

Amnesty International called the trial “grossly unfair”.

“In Iran, unfortunately, instead of punishing the main elements of systematic corruption, they punish and execute persons who are not important,” said Mahdi Khalili, a “reformist politician” and political scientist in Tehran. “The main ones are free from any problems or punishment.”

Iran ranked 130 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2017 corruption index, demonstrating that the regime’s judicial system is anything but just.

Human rights specialists and jurists, including Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, have said the suspects were condemned to death in quick trials that were unfair and failed to measure up to Iranian law much less international standards, which include a thorough appellate review process for death sentences.

Among other irregularities, the courts apply secretive national security rules to cases of white-collar crime, restricting the ability of defendants to get a lawyer, according to the Independent.

“The prosecutions suggest Tehran is attempting to shift blame for the collapse of the country’s currency to low-level traders and grey market businessmen in an effort to deflect from the Iranian system’s own incompetence and corruption, rooted in the economic power of religious charities and ideologically fervent security branches, especially the Revolutionary Guard,” wrote the Independent.

“It also shows what many critics have described over the years as the arbitrary nature of justice under the Islamic republic, where prominent members of ethnic and religious minorities as well as the Shia Muslim majority, and dissidents as well as businessmen, can become entangled in an obscure, Kafkaesque legal system overseen by Islamic jurists under the sway of shadowy security enforcers,” he added.

What is notable with these new executions was the silence coming from the Iran lobby, especially groups such as the National Iranian American Council which ostensibly is supposed to advocate for the better treatment of Iranians.

It’s too bad that doesn’t seem to apply to those who actions undermine the regime’s efforts to stay in power.

Laura Carnahan

Iranian Regime Cut Off from SWIFT Banking Network

November 13, 2018 by admin

The global financial messaging service that moves money around the world’s banking system, known as SWIFT, acted to cut off Iran’s Central Bank and other designated Iranian financial institutions from using its system.

The action by SWIFT is the latest economic blow to hit the mullahs in Tehran and is widely considered to be one of the most severe sanctions in the U.S. arsenal, next to secondary sanctions on any country or company attempting to buy Iranian oil.

It also continues the onslaught of sanctions resulting from the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal despite the best efforts by the Iran lobby to cry foul and warn this is a prelude to war between the U.S. and Iran.

Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told BBC Persian that Iran’s “leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat. They have to make a decision that they want to use their wealth to import medicine, and not use their wealth to fund” destabilizing activities in the region.”

His statement neatly encapsulates the main point of the Trump administration’s decision to re-impose economic sanctions. The choices the mullahs have made for Iran since doing the deal with the Obama administration have dictated this course of action.

Contrary to what Iran supporters such as the National Iranian American Council have continually maintained, the Iranian regime has consistently chosen to follow a path of sponsoring terrorism and initiating conflicts with its neighbors while diverting billions from its economy to bolstering its military; literally starving the Iranian people.

The mullahs’ actions – and no one else’s – have determined why sanctions were re-imposed. The Iran lobby has tried to always frame the decision as unilateral on the part of the Trump administration, but it has been Iran that has consistently been the provocateur and instigator of the worst episodes in the Middle East such as Syria’s civil war, Yemen’s insurgency and Iraq’s sectarian conflict.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) provides a network that enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and reliable environment.

SWIFT links more than 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories and without access to the system, the Iranian regime’s ability to move and transmit foreign currency is severely curtailed.

It was the cut off from SWIFT during earlier economic sanctions that were widely credited for helping bring Iran to the bargaining table in the first place.

Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the decision by SWIFT would reduce Iran’s room to maneuver around sanctions, but that it wasn’t meant to hurt the country’s people.

“The removal of Iran’s central bank from SWIFT along with other Iranian banks implicated in terrorism, nuclear and missile proliferation, as well human rights abuses will cut the regime’s access to the global financial system,” said Dubowitz. “This will reduce their options to barter trade or sanctions busting. Treasury however has left open humanitarian channels that the regime should use to deliver food, medicine and other goods to the Iranian people.”

The Iran lobby predictably discounted the effect of SWIFT removal in the past and its impact in the future.

“This will create massive problems for Iran, but I don’t think it will paralyze them,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. “I don’t think the end effect will be anywhere near the pressure Trump is talking about.”

What Parsi fails to mention is the unprecedented level of domestic discontent at home where the mullahs have been battling almost constant demonstrations, protests, strikes and other signs of disobedience from all sectors of Iranian society.

The range of protests include Iranian women objecting to moral codes that govern their dress, public conduct and access to jobs and education to truck drivers, small business owners, farmers and government workers who have decried widespread government corruption and an economy in a death spiral.

Supporters of the regime have tried to come up with all sorts of excuses and oddball theories as to why U.S. sanctions will not work.

Max Keiser, a stockbroker-turned-TV personality, told Russia Today that the move will help lessen global dependence on the U.S. dollar in favor of stockpiling gold.

“Iran needs to get smart and start hoarding Gold and Bitcoin if it wants to avoid the worst of the fallout,” Keiser told RT. “It is already, smartly, pursuing bilateral energy deals outside of the $USD, but it needs to add value to its currency with reserves of Gold and Bitcoin.”

Keiser should stick to broadcasting since his monetary theories are more appropriate for late night comedy shows.

Even as European leaders supportive of the Iranian regime have tried to cobble together an ad-hoc system of alternative payments for Iran-related business transactions, U.S. Treasury officials expressed little concern.

The U.S. expects to find other “mechanisms” with which it will work together with European countries to address Iran’s destabilizing activities, said Sigal Mandelker, a senior U.S. Treasury Department official.

When asked about the special purpose vehicle, Mandelker said that, “the bigger news in Europe is that companies are withdrawing from Iran in droves, we know that there’s been discussions about an SPV or other mechanisms to try to continue to invest in Iran, but companies themselves are getting out.”

While the Iran lobby may point to these token efforts as signs of a resistance to U.S. sanctions, the truth is that Asian and European companies are voting with their money as they pull out of Iran.

Midterm Elections Results Do Not Help Iran Lobby

November 11, 2018 by admin

The U.S. midterm elections saw a divided America as Republicans deepened their hold on the Senate while Democrats took over the House as many pundits predicted. Voter interest and participation were high but exit polling of top concerns amongst voters bears little fruit for the Iran lobby or the mullahs in Tehran who were hoping for signs that a blue wave might help bring down new economic sanctions.

According to most exit polls by news organizations, Americans cited healthcare and immigration as their two biggest concerns with the economy following up in third place. The plight of the mullahs was not high on anyone’s list of concerns.

The political environment is dramatically different than it was in 2014-15 when the Obama administration committed itself fully to pushing through a nuclear deal with Iran no matter the cost and that cost was high coming in the form of billions of dollars in cash, sanctions relief and removal of conditions that allowed Iran to develop long-range ballistic missiles, sponsor terrorism across Europe and start two wars in Syria and Yemen.

That deal was sold by the Obama administration and supported by the Iran lobby’s “echo chamber” on the idea that Iran was headed towards a more moderate course and was receptive to diplomacy and wanted to rejoin the community of nations.

Unfortunately for the Iran lobby, the Iranian regime’s actions since then has blown those ideas out of water. It also didn’t help advocates such as the National Iranian American Council that as recently as this summer and last month, Iranian intelligence services were foiled in attempts to bomb a gathering of Iranian dissidents outside of Paris and assassinate another in Denmark.

Any hope Iran could be perceived as a moderating force was literally blown out of the water leaving the Iran lobby to scramble for any rhetorical foothold with the U.S. media.

Since the knee-capping the Trump administration has given to the Iranian regime through the withdrawal from the nuclear deal, the re-imposition of economic sanctions and efforts to build a consensus among key allies to no longer import Iranian oil, the Iran lobby has cast about wildly to find any topic that might stick and help Tehran.

The NIAC has sought to attack the Trump administration on its immigration policies. That went nowhere and in retrospect did not earn the Iran lobby any favors amongst Americans concerned about the issue.

The NIAC sought to float the idea that the Iranian people would be hurt and not the government. That idea also didn’t fly since the suffering of the Iranian people at the hands of their own government has been well-documented over the past year with violent and widespread demonstrations by Iranians.

The NIAC then tried to mock the president for his recent “Game of Thrones” meme and outside of social media didn’t move the needle in the midst of the midterm elections.

In short, few Americans give a hoot about anything the NIAC has to say. It’s a mighty fall from the heady days of unobstructed access to the White House and State Department previously enjoyed by NIAC officials during the Obama years.

The NIAC is now finding itself playing a game of political “Survivor” as it stands outside the flow of American politics on a lonely island waving its arms and calling desperately for any journalist to pay attention to itself.

All of which raises an interesting question: Is the Iran lobby even worth keeping around anymore by the mullahs?

If the NIAC has outlived its usefulness to Tehran and has never been fully engaged on issues of real concern to the Iranian-American community then where does it go from here?

This may explain why its founder, Trita Parsi, got out of Dodge and quit the NIAC to pursue a more independent path and Jamal Abdi has been left to try and figure out how to keep the increasingly irrelevant movement afloat.

Abdi has tried to take credit for the midterm election results by issuing a statement denouncing Republicans who lost their seats and trumpet it as a movement back towards Iranian engagement.

“Across the country, candidates dedicated to overturning Trump’s outrageous and discriminatory Muslim ban and stopping war with Iran won big. To have a check on Trump is a huge victory for the Iranian-American community, our country and the global community,” Abdi said.

It’s worth noting that Abdi focused on opposition to the administration’s immigration policies and opposing war with Iran, but made no mention of Iran’s horrific human rights record, its abuse of Iranian women or the sponsorship of terrorism in France and Denmark.

He goes on to mention the backing of several candidates, but it remains to be seen if any of them are going to heed the NIAC’s call to place Iran back at the top of the foreign policy agenda in terms of moving diplomacy forward when the mullahs seem only intent on killing as many Iranian dissidents as possible both inside and outside of Iran.

There may come a time in 2020 when endorsement by the NIAC will become as desirable as an endorsement by the KKK.

Iran Lobby Left Sputtering as US Sanctions Take Effect

November 6, 2018 by admin

The U.S. re-imposed economic sanctions on the Iranian regime on Monday targeting the money machine that fuels the mullahs’ religious dictatorship, including petroleum sales, shipping, banking, and insurance. The sanctions were carefully crafted to go at the heavy industries and financial pipelines funneling cash to the regime and funding its proxy wars and terrorist activities.

President Donald Trump trolled supporters of the Iranian regime with a tweet riffing on HBO’s show “Game of Thrones” with a movie-like poster featuring the iconic font reading “Sanctions Are Coming.”

The near-hysterical response from the Iran lobby over the weekend was predictable, but also revealing in that the regime supporters such as the National Iranian American Council were left with little to talk about except blasting the president’s tweet.

“Trump, his war cabinet and regional cheerleaders in Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman do not have the Iranian or American people’s best interests at heart,” said Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council. “Instead, they are blowing up an agreement that supports U.S. interests and the aspirations of the Iranian people while planting the seeds for a disastrous war.”

The NIAC added its own tweet trolling attempt by labeling the president a “White Walker,” but while it tried to score points on cheekiness the Iran lobby cheerleader was essentially powerless to stop the imposition of sanctions and the economic hammer blow it will rain down on the mullahs.

Not even the Iranian regime’s leader of its infamous Quds Forces, General Qasem Soleimani, could resist sending his own “Game of Thrones”-inspired post saying he would “Stand Against You” in referring to the president’s tweet.

“Things are escalating and the fact that it’s Soleimani tweeting is a sign that this is moving towards a military confrontation,” NIAC founder Trita Parsi said in response. “This was not a crisis. The only reason this is a crisis is because Trump pulled out of a fully functioning deal.”

Parsi trying to claim Soleimani is gearing up for war with the U.S. through a trolling tweet renders any intelligent reader as sophomoric sophistry at best and idiot banality at worse.

The sanctions are aimed at more than 700 Iranian individuals and entities and are hoped to put a stranglehold on the regime’s economy and force the regime into a new round of negotiations.

“Our ultimate aim is to compel Iran to permanently abandon its well-documented outlaw activities and behave as a normal country,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Friday in a conference call previewing the sanctions. The U.S. penalties will hit foreign countries and companies that do business with the targeted Iranian entities, including its national oil company, its banks, and its shipping industry.

Abdi claimed though the sanctions would hurt the Iranian people, a silly argument since it virtually ignores how the mullahs have destroyed not only Iran’s economy, but sacrificed its environment and plunged large portions of the Iranian population into near poverty status all on its own.

“Impoverishing ordinary Iranians will not hurt the regime or achieve any of America’s security interests, but it will set back the Iranian people’s aspirations for years to come,” Abdi said.

The messaging by the Iran lobby that the Iranian people are helpless in the face of the powerful regime also ignores an essential truth that has steadily build since last year which is the Iranian people are finally becoming emboldened and taking to the streets, bazaars and markets to voice their collective frustration, fury and displeasure at their religious overlords.

Abdi also ignores how the U.S. is also granted waivers exempting certain countries from select sanctions in order not to overtly harm the Iranian people, including lobbying more than a dozen countries doing trade with Iran – India, Japan, Greece and Turkey – to wean themselves off from Iranian oil in exchange for waivers.

Pompeo said eight jurisdictions, which he declined to name, were cooperating with the administration on its push to move to “zero” oil imports from Iran. Those entities will earn temporary exemptions when the sanctions go into effect on Sunday night, Pompeo said.

There will also be some exemptions for food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods, Pompeo said, further diminishing the Iran lobby’s feeble arguments.

But these are essentially the only talking points left to the Iran lobby. It tries to claim the U.S. is only interested in war and sanctions will hurt the Iranian people.

Absent from any of these points is any blame directed at the regime and the mullahs in Tehran for fueling the crisis in the first place by pushing forward with a massive military build-up including the launching of advanced ballistic missiles, coupled with devastating wars in Syria and Yemen.

Supporters such as the NIAC have also been silent on more recent attempts by the Iranian regime to carry out terrorist attacks and assassinations of Iranian dissidents in Europe as seen in a foiled bombing attempt outside of Paris over the summer and murder plan disrupted by Denmark.

Both incidents led France and Denmark to demand a harsh response to the Iranian regime; neither of which was answered by the Iran lobby.

The facts are activists such as Abdi and Parsi are left with little to say, except sputtering the same inane banalities as before and their collective effectiveness in stopping the sanctions train has been virtually non-existent.

With few options left, we might advise the NIAC to stop clogging up the airwaves and discussion boards and confine their tweets to speculation on who will come out on top at the end of the “Game of Thrones.”

Our money is on the Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons.

Michael Tomlinson

Will Oil Sanctions Crumble the Iranian Regime?

October 31, 2018 by admin

There is no doubt petroleum is the lifeblood of the Iranian regime’s economy. It’s one of the few natural resources the mullahs have left that has not been over-exploited or driven to ruin. During the time economic sanctions were lifted because of the Iran nuclear deal, the windfall of selling its oil on the open market once again pumped badly needed hard currency into the floundering Iranian economy and fueled its wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

But even during the decade in which sanctions were in place, the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard Corps personally profited from the illicit sale of oil on the black market and pocketed hefty commissions for family members through a shadowy network of middlemen.

Now the re-imposition of economic sanctions by the U.S. after pulling out from the nuclear deal is looming with the ban on sales of Iranian oil to commence next week. The sanctions beginning November 4^th are geared to specifically hit the regime where it hurts, including:

Sanctions on Iran’s port operators and shipping and shipbuilding sectors, including on the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), South Shipping Line Iran, or their affiliates;
Sanctions on petroleum-related transactions with, among others, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO), and National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), including the purchase of petroleum, petroleum products, or petrochemical products from Iran;
Sanctions on transactions by foreign financial institutions with the Central Bank of Iran and designated Iranian financial institutions;
Sanctions on the provision of underwriting services, insurance, or reinsurance; and
Sanctions on Iran’s energy sector.

The sanctions on shipping, petroleum, banking and insurance are aimed squarely at the financial engine that powers the Iranian regime’s corrupt empire. Since virtually all of the major industries in Iran are controlled directly by the government or the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the direct financial impacts of these sanctions hit the theocratic regime and are not aimed at the Iranian people.

It’s an important distinction since the Iran lobby, especially the National Iranian American Council, has long pounded on the messaging that the Iranian people are the ones being hurt the most by these sanctions.

Using today’s favorite hashtag, that’s just #fakenews.

The truth is that the regime’s own gross mismanagement, incompetence and deep corruption has been more than sufficient to run the Iranian economy into the ground. The fact that the country’s currency has steadily declined in value under the mullahs’ control is just one of many indicators of how they have managed to muck everything up.

The reason the U.S. sanctions are aimed at these particulars sectors is to deny the regime’s ability to finance terrorism and support the proxy wars it has waged on its neighbors. The sanctions are not aimed at stopping the flow of food, medicine or consumer products to the Iranian people.

The regime for example has been the one to block communications to the outside world, ban access to social media, artificially regulate the consumer market with heavy-handed regulations designed to keep the pipeline of luxury goods flowing to the entitled and privileged, but provide none of the support for the staples the Iranian people need to survive.

In a desperate effort to keep the flow of cash coming in, the regime offered up one million barrels of oil through the regime’s domestic bourse so its private sector could buy oil to resell to the international market.

The response from the global marketplace was tepid at best with only 280,000 barrels of crude oil being sold according to oil ministry news service Shana.

Saeed Khoshroo, NIOC’s director for international affairs, had said Sunday that the eased restrictions would cause the crude offered on the bourse to get snapped up immediately.

The fact that so little crude was bought highlights the growing impotence of the regime in trying to navigate a path out of the economic fallout coming next week.

Of special concern to the regime was the price paid on the bourse which was only $74.85/b in 35,000-barrel consignments. The steady decline in price demonstrates the belief in the global marketplace that shortfalls from Iranian supplies cut off by sanctions can be made up from other sources, as well as a projected global drop in demand, which has increased U.S. crude inventories and further drove the price down.

Iran’s last use of the bourse was in early April 2014, when US and EU sanctions on Iran were in force. Just 2,920 barrels were sold on the first day that the crude was offered, and a second offer a day later failed to find any buyers.

Hopes by the regime that things would be different this time around were dashed and raise an ugly prospect for the mullahs: “What happens when the cash stops flowing?”

For the regime, the cut-off of money raises the specter that the Iranian people may now have the best opportunity ever to force regime change in demanding concessions from the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard Corps to loosen their iron-grip on the country and clear a pathway for greater democracy; especially the introduction of legitimate opposition parties.

The loss of oil revenue is likely to keep driving the value of the rial down and fuel more inflation – both have been drivers of popular uprisings and protests throughout Iran – thereby adding to the volatile and combustible mix of anger aimed at the ruling mullahs.

On Saturday, Iran’s parliament approved a government economic reshuffle, according to a Reuters report in an effort to try and convince the population the regime was trying to address its concerns, but will reshuffling of regime leaders be enough to stave off regime change this time?

We don’t think so.

Michael Tomlinson