NIAC – Page 18 – Iran Lobby

Pushback Grows Against Iran Lobby Claims of Moderate Win

March 4, 2016 by admin

Pushback Grows Against Iran Lobby Claims of Moderate Win

Basking in the afterglow of the Iranian regime’s parliamentary election results, the Iran lobby predictably boasted of the massive wins by moderate and reformist forces within Iran, but now the pushback is coming from a wide variety of the political spectrum as the results and actual winning candidates are absorbed and evaluated.

The realization is settling in that far from the moderate tsunami described by regime supporters such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council, the truth is that very little has changed within the regime leadership and the Iranian people still remain firmly in the grip and thrall of the mullahs.

The parade of cold water on the moderate landslide theory was led by the editorial board of the Washington Post, which has intimate first-hand knowledge of the extremist nature of the regime through the hostage taking and eventual prisoner swap of its reporter, Jason Rezaian. It editorialized:

“Claims of a reformist triumph, however, are overblown. Before the elections, an Iranian liberal coalition said that 99 percent of 3,000 pro-reform candidates had been disqualified by a hard-line clerical council. Most of those in Mr. Rouhani’s coalition are, like him, moderate conservatives, meaning they favor economic reforms and greater Western investment, but not liberalization of the political system or a moderation of Iran’s aspiration to become the hegemon of the Middle East. True Iranian religious and political reformers, like those who joined the 2009 Green Movement, are in jail or exile, or were banned from the ballot.

“For now, Iran can be expected to continue the course it has been pursuing in the months since the nuclear deal was struck: waging proxy wars against the United States and its allies around the Middle East, using its unfrozen reserves to buy weapons, and defying non-nuclear limits — such as by testing long-range missiles. The elections won’t make the regime more pliable, and they won’t change the need for a U.S. counter to its aggressions. They shouldn’t provide an excuse for the Obama administration to tolerate Tehran’s provocations,” the Post said.

The Post is correct in its assertions and admits to the basic problem facing those nervously praising the “moderate” wins: they are left with hoping for the best outcome even though it will most likely come to pass since the alternative is to face the difficult choices of pushing for regime change against a regime firmly entrenched.

The Atlantic’s Kathy Gilsinan noted some of the difficulties in the tea leaf reading going on post-election in discerning who actually won.

“Institutions whose members aren’t popularly elected, including the office of the supreme leader, the Guardian Council, the judiciary, and the security services, are the most powerful in Iran’s government. And they remain in the hands of hardliners,” she writes.

“Another reason it’s difficult to know the significance of these elections—aside from the dueling claims of victory from each camp, and the fact that, as Thomas Erdbink of The New York Times reported Wednesday, ‘there has been no official comment on the affiliation of the winning candidates’—is that Iran does not have strong political parties. Knowing that Republicans have a majority in the U.S. Congress, for example, gives you a rough sense of that body’s legislative priorities and how they would differ from those of a Democratic Congress. As Majlis Monitor, a website devoted to Iranian politics, notes, ‘While political parties help us see a country’s political fault-lines, their absence in Iran makes it difficult to understand how politics are actually [organized] and work there.’”

This points out the fundamental problem with the claims being made by Parsi or Jim Lobe over at Lobelog that moderates won the election: the absence of political parties stems from the mullahs aim to eliminate all dissent and organize the government around homogenous support for the Islamic revolution. True dissident parties such as the Mojahedin Khalgh (MEK or PMOI) were outlawed and membership was classified as punishable by death.

There is no doubt that the Iranian people want real reform and a true turn towards democracy. They are tired of living in an oppressive regime where their every online move is monitored and their every economic move is stymied by widespread official corruption.

The New York Times’ Erdbink also explained how results of the election may never be publicly revealed.

“The Interior Ministry, which is overseeing the voting for the 290-seat Parliament and the clerical Assembly of Experts, announced on Tuesday the names of 222 parliamentary candidates who won nationwide. It also announced that there would be a second round of voting for 68 seats in several constituencies in April,” he said. “But there has been no official comment on the affiliation of the winning candidates, and there may never be, making it difficult to determine how many seats the various factions have won.”

The Interior Ministry also oversees the internal security for the regime and already has a checkered history with the hijacking of the 2009 elections. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to see some similar shenanigans with these results to ensure the right kinds of “moderates” eventually won seats.

Former UN ambassador John R. Bolton took a similar viewpoint in writing for the American Enterprise Institute:

“Efforts to distinguish Tehran’s moderates from hard-liners have a long historical record of failure, as have similar precedents in analyzing Moscow and Beijing. Today in Iran, while there are disagreements over economic, social and religious policies among the elite, there is no disagreement over the objective of mastering the difficult science and technology required to achieve nuclear weapons deliverable on ballistic missiles. There is simply no credible evidence that the ayatollahs and other key Iranian leaders have ever diverged on that goal. Moreover, the nuclear and ballistic missile programs are firmly controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, which is about as likely to cede responsibility to the elected Majlis as to America’s Congress,” he writes.

Ultimately the real test of real reform will come if Evin Prison is emptied, ballistic missiles are shelved and support is withdrawn from Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

I wouldn’t hold your breath for that.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Spin Iran Elections

March 3, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Spin Iran Elections

With the recent parliamentary elections in Iran, the regime and its allies are working hard to project the image of a moderate landslide setting the stage for a new era of peace, prosperity and happiness. Somewhere in there are probably also promises that eating ice cream doesn’t make you fat and pots of gold lie at the end of rainbows.

At the center of that spin control exercise stands the National Iranian American Council, the chief lobbyist and public advocate for the mullahs in Tehran, which sent its leaders out to talk to virtually any journalist that would listen to them about how great things turned out in Iran.

“The stunning setback of the hardliners in the elections is precisely why they opposed the Iran nuclear deal,” said Trita Parsi, president of the NIAC. “They knew that if successful, the Rouhani faction would benefit electorally from the significant achievement of resolving the nuclear issue and reducing tensions with United States.”

Parsi’s comments are the key message for regime supporters: that approval of the nuclear deal was the key for the moderate wins. It makes for a nice fiction, but it is also as blatantly wrong.

First, Parsi’s contention of a moderate win is beguilingly false since he ignores the months-long vetting process in which the handpicked members of the Guardian Council bounced over half of the 12,000 candidates that submitted for approval to appear on the ballot. Those that survived were largely approved based on their allegiance to the Supreme leader of the mullahs and adherence to the supporting the policies of the ruling mullahs, backed by the Revolutionary Guard.

Anyone who deviated from those goals was arrested and thrown in jail during a massive crackdown across Iran that saw journalists, dissidents and potential opposition politicians rounded up. Of course, Parsi and his colleagues did not utter a word of protest during these arrests.

In another quote given in an editorial in the Washington Post, Parsi added that hardliners “knew that if successful, the Rouhani faction would benefit electorally from the significant achievement of resolving the nuclear issue and reducing tensions with United States. These benefits would not just be limited to the parliamentary elections, but could establish a new balance of power in Iran’s internal politics with significant long-term repercussions.”

It’s the second falsehood Parsi preaches in claiming there are indeed factions splitting the Iranian regime, including a bloc of moderates aligned with Hassan Rouhani.

Where Parsi is wrong is his claim that the differences separating these so-called “faction” are political, when they are in fact more about power and greed.

The Iranian regime ranks as one of the most corrupt economies in the world with the Revolutionary Guard and the families of the mullahs running the regime deeply involved and controlling of virtually all the major industries in Iran, including petroleum, aviation, telecommunications, mining, shipping and manufacturing.

With the cash infusion of $100 billion in hard currency being made available, the mullahs and military are loathe to give up control of those assets, or the billions in foreign investment that will flow as a result of the nuclear deal. The fight over parliamentary seats is less about opening up Iranian society and broadening human rights and more about securing enough seats to control how that spoils of the nuclear deal get divided up.

The mullahs have long made clear their political strategy in crafting a regime modeled after China in which the economy is liberalized while maintaining tight political control over the people. In that manner, the parliamentary elections and claims of moderation by the Iran lobby make perfect sense. As Parsi and others proclaim moderation, the government is still left firmly in the hands of those intent on enriching themselves and not improving the lot of the Iranian people.

The deception by Parsi does go to some absurd lengths as he claims in an interview on The Real News that Ali Larijani, the current head of the parliament and overseer of the judiciary, is actually in favor of moderate policies.

“Ali Larijani, who is the current head of the parliament, is a conservative. And he’s been a conservative for a very long time, belongs to a very conservative and well-established family. But he has aligned himself with Rouhani most of the time on most issues. And he’s not considered right now to be in the anti-Rouhani camp,” Parsi claims.

It’s a silly claim when you consider that the regime’s judicial and police functions are firmly in control of hardliners that enforced the vetting process in the first place and removed all the opponents to Rouhani’s slate of “moderate” allies. This is also the same judiciary that has consistently imprisoned Americans, Christians and sentences children to death, and most recently snatched up Parsi’s friend and ally, Siamak Namazi, and threw him in prison without legal representation or charge.

The fact that Parsi called these “the most consequential non-presidential elections in Iran at least for the last two decades” in an interview with the Cato Institute, is even more absurd given that many would claim that the disputed 2009 presidential elections that were stolen and protested with mass demonstrations that were brutally put down violently by the mullahs were the most consequential elections in Iran since that was the last time the Iranian people actually took a stab at real regime change.

The last false argument being put forth by the Iran lobby is the contention that real change is possible down the road with the possibility of a new supreme leader being elected following the inevitable death of the 76-year old Ali Khamenei.

“In the short term the parliamentary elections will impact Iran’s economic policies. But for the long term, this assembly could elect the next supreme leader, which has greater long-term implications for Iran and its people,” said Reza Marashi, also of the NIAC.

It is laughable to think there will be any real possibility of installing a new top mullah that would deviate from the path the Islamic revolution has taken, or loosen the control the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard have over the country. For Marashi to think there would be any change over a long, incremental pathway ignores the abject suffering and brutality being meted out against the Iranian people every day.

When the Rouhani regime has overseen a record number of executions, far exceeding the high water mark set by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the idea of a loosening of the regime is merely a smokescreen.

Already Rouhani has seen fit to keep the vast majority of the billions in released funds in overseas accounts to help pay for the new military hardware Iran is busy buying from Russia and soon China. The Iranian people are unlikely to see any of it and ultimately their hopes for an improving economy will remain only an unfilled dream so long as the mullahs are in Power.

By Michael Tomlinson

Who Are These So-Called “Moderates” in Iran Elections?

March 1, 2016 by admin

Who Are These So-Called “Moderates” in Iran Elections?

The New York Times, among other news outlets, trumpeted the election results from Iran with great fanfare announcing “strong” gains by moderates and reformists in this weekend’s parliamentary elections. Predictably, the spin revolved around the notion that this was a step in the right direction towards a more moderate future in Iran.

“Though hard-liners still control the most powerful positions and institutions of the state, two national elections last week appeared to build on the slow but unmistakable evolution toward a more moderate political landscape — now and into the future,” wrote Thomas Erdbrink in the Times. “While the hard-liners still remain firmly in control of the judiciary, the security forces and much of the economy, the success of the moderate, pragmatic and pro-government forces seemed to give Mr. Rouhani political currency to push a course of greater liberalization of the economy at home and accommodation abroad.”

What Erdbrink and most other Western journalists miss is the simple fact that the mullahs in control of the regime – virtually all of the important sectors of power as Erdbrink notes – have allowed a smattering of candidates to run that can appear “moderate” when compared to the more vocal conservatives in power, but in fact all share the same loyalty to the aims of the Islamic state.

Revolution and regime change are not coming anytime soon to Iran under these mullahs no matter what rosy picture some media wish to paint.

What is even more amusing is that all the celebration is focused on the election of a small minority dubbed “moderates” in the lower house parliament, but in the 88-member Assembly of Experts, over three-quarters of the original candidates seeking to run were swept off the ballot before voting even began, leaving only hardcore supporters of top mullah Ali Khamenei to win seats.

As to whom actually won, the Wall Street Journal editorial board took a closer look at the winners and found them less than “moderate” and downright unsavory.

Mostafa Kavakebian. The General Secretary of Iran’s Democratic Party, Mr. Kavakebian is projected to enter the Majlis as a member for Tehran. In a 2008 speech he said: “The people who currently reside in Israel aren’t humans, and this region is comprised of a group of soldiers and occupiers who openly wage war on the people.”

Another moderate is Kazem Jalali, who previously served as the spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Majlis and is projected to have won a seat. In 2011 Mr. Jalali said his committee “demands the harshest punishment”—meaning the death penalty—for Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two leaders of the Green Movement that was bloodily suppressed after stolen elections in 2009. Those two leaders are still under house arrest.

According to the Journal, as for new Assembly of Experts, many of the “moderates” projected to have won seats were also listed on the hard-liners’ lists, since the ratio of candidates to seats was well below two, including:

Mohammad Reyshahry, a former Intelligence Minister believed to have helped spearhead the 1988 summary execution of thousands of leftists;
Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, another former Intelligence Minister believed to have directed the “chain murders” of the late 1990s; and
Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabainejad, a fierce opponent of women’s rights who has called Israel “a cancerous tumor.”

That seems like quite a slate of “moderate” new faces that got elected. Maybe Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi from the National Iranian American Council, can fly over and have lunch with these moderates, unless they are worried they might be arrested like their fellow Iran lobby supporter Siamak Namazi who now languishes in an regime prison.

“The political reality in Iran is that the Ayatollahs, backed by the Revolutionary Guards, remain firmly in control,” the Journal correctly points out.

The funny thing about the parade of optimistic and sunny news headlines is how they eerily echo the same notes of hope that came in the wake of the nuclear agreement only to be followed by grimmer headlines of illegal ballistic missile tests, detaining of American sailors, rocket launches at U.S. and French navy warships, recruiting Russia to fight in Syria and the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Even as regime supporters laud these “moderate” wins, shocking news came of a village in southern Iran of a heinous incident announced by Shahindokht Molaverdi, the ironically named vice president for women and family affairs.

“We have a village in Sistan and Baluchestan province where every single man has been executed,” she said, without naming the place or clarifying whether the executions took place at the same time or over a longer period. “Their children are potential drug traffickers as they would want to seek revenge and provide money for their families. There is no support for these people.”

Maya Foa, from the anti-death penalty campaigning group Reprieve, said: “The apparent hanging of every man in one Iranian village demonstrates the astonishing scale of Iran’s execution spree. These executions — often based on juvenile arrests, torture, and unfair or nonexistent trials — show total contempt for the rule of law, and it is shameful that the UN and its funders are supporting the police forces responsible.”

Amnesty is particularly concerned about Iran’s execution of juveniles. In a report published in January, the group said Iran had carried out 73 executions of juvenile offenders between 2005 and 2015.

Sistan and Baluchestan, where the unnamed village is situated, “is arguably the most underdeveloped region in Iran, with the highest poverty, infant and child mortality rates, and lowest life expectancy and literacy rates in the country,” according to Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran. “The province … experiences a high rate of executions for drug-related offences or crimes deemed to constitute ‘enmity against God’ in the absence of fair trials.”

Even as the Iran lobby celebrates these wins, an Iranian village has seen all the men in it killed indiscriminately by these same “moderates.”

By Laura Carnahan

Human Rights Remain Under Assault by Iranian Regime

February 22, 2016 by admin

Human Rights Remain Under Assault by Iranian Regime

Next week the Iranian regime will conduct parliamentary elections that most news media and analysts have already called rigged because of the customary elimination of over two-thirds of the candidates seeking seats in the lower parliament and the more powerful Assembly of Experts.

The regime’s Guardian Council, with its handpicked members by top mullah Ali Khamenei, exercised their usual due diligence in removing any candidate that even had a hint of moderation or deviation from the Islamic revolutionary principles that guide the regime.

What is left are only those candidates that pledge religious, ideological and political fealty to the mullahs that run the regime and hold sway over virtually all facets of life in Iran.

This winnowing process empowers the mullahs and allows them the freedom and discretion to continue the unabated crackdown on human rights in advance of the elections with no cause for worry or recrimination from the international community, but there are news accounts that leak out depicting the brutality being visited on ordinary Iranians – often smuggled out by members of the dissident community at great personal risk.

One of those moving accounts was published in Quartz online in a photo essay by a photographer who spent four years researching women and girls being held in Iranian prisons, many awaiting death sentences.

“My main goal in this project was to understand how young girls could end up in jail in the first place,” the prizewinning photographer tells Quartz. “I spent time talking to them, they were nice and kind.”

In Iran, the death penalty can be applied to minors, and in 2014, a United Nations report estimated that at least 160 juvenile offenders were on death row in the country.

While according to a Jan. 25 report by Amnesty International, 73 juvenile offenders were executed in Iran between 2005 and 2015.

The compelling photos paint a grim portrait of a regime willing to kill young girls, often for crimes committed by male acquaintances who escape punishment, leaving it to the girls to pay the ultimate price in their stead.

It’s a situation that the Iran lobby has been virtually silent on. A careful perusal of the websites, blogs and social media feeds for regime supporters such as Trita Parsi, Reza Marashi and Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council or Ali Gharib or Lobelog.com reveal hardly a word of criticism or protest over the heinous violations. What they have protested though has been the incarceration of Siamak Namazi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen who was detained by regime authorities and not part of the prisoner swap that occurred as part of the nuclear agreement.

It is ironic that Namazi’s case is the one that earns the attention of the Iran lobby because of the close relationship he has with Parsi and his role in helping launch the NIAC and as an outspoken advocate of the nuclear deal with the regime.

Now Namazi is experiencing the same denial of legal representation that was forced on other American hostages such as Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. We can only hope now that the shoe is on the other foot, these supporters of the regime would be more vocal in their criticisms, but we doubt it.

These elections though will provide a glimpse though of the lie that is Iranian regime democracy, which was discussed in an editorial in the New York Post who took to task the policy of appeasement exercised by the Obama administration:

“When it runs out of plausible excuses for its appeasement-plus policy on Iran, the Obama administration advances one argument as final line of defense: showing goodwill toward the Islamic Republic would help ‘moderates’ secure a greater share of power in Tehran with the hope of an eventual change of behavior by the ruling mullahs.”

“But who are the ‘moderates’ that Obama hopes to promote Tehran? A trio of mullahs consisting of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Security Minister Dorri Najafabadi and current President Hassan Rouhani forms the core of the faction that Obama hopes would sail to victory next week,” the article writes. “The triumvirate has a history of masquerading as moderates.”

He recounts how these supposed moderates have often espoused political reforms, but never offered or implemented any political reforms while holding office.

“Rafsanjani and his hand-picked successor Khatami governed for 16 years, but never offered a single political reform let alone implementing any. Their successor Rouhani has had more than two years to show that he follows the same path. During his presidency Iran has become world leader in the number of executions and political prisoners,” he adds.

Rouhani is exercising the playbook that Rafsanjani and Khatami exercised in portraying himself as a moderate when he has no intention of supporting reforms and has openly talked about his admiration for the so-called “Chinese Model” which emphasizes economic development with control of the government firmly in the Communist Party’s hands. Rouhani envisions a similar situation with the lifting of economic sanctions bolstering the flow of money to regime coffers, but no loosening of political restrictions.

The Financial Times took note of the Iranian public’s distinct lack of enthusiasm for upcoming elections against the backdrop of a sputtering economy still stifled by mass corruption and a focus on diverting funds to supporting the proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

“The subdued seasonal shopping just one month before Norouz, the Iranian new year holiday, is adding to widespread gloom about a prolonged economic stagnation that has also dimmed public enthusiasm for the crucial upcoming elections,” the Financial Times writes. “Hassan Rouhani, the country’s centrist president, is now blamed by many for failing to deliver on his election campaign promises to help improve the economy with the nuclear agreement. Although inflation has shrunk — from a peak of about 40 per cent in 2013, when Mr. Rouhani took the reins, to about 13 per cent today, according to central bank figures — economic growth is next to zero and people are unwilling to purchase goods.”

While the election results may be a forgone conclusion, the hope remains that an oppressed Iranian people will someday soon see true regime change.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Ignores Money Trail from Iranian Regime

February 18, 2016 by admin

In this Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015 photo Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, second left, and Iran’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, second right, sign an agreement to expand military ties in Tehran Iran. Sergei Shoigu, in remarks carried by Russian news agencies, said Moscow wants to develop a “long-term and multifaceted” military relationship with Iran. He said that the new agreement includes expanded counter-terrorism cooperation, exchanges of military personnel for training purposes and an understanding for each country’s navy to more frequently use the other’s ports. (AP Photo/ Vadim Savitsky, Russian Defense Ministry Press Service)

While the Iran lobby argued strenuously that a nuclear deal with the Iranian regime would facilitate a moderation in its outlook, it also suggested that the financial windfall coming from the release of sanctions would help bolster the Iranian economy, benefitting the Iranian people and helping turn the Islamic state into an economic engine in the region.

Regime advocates such as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and The Ploughshares Fund were outspoken in their conviction that ultimately the Iranian people – hurt after years of international sanctions – would be the ones lifted up by the rising tide of new capital flooding into the country.

Predictably those claims have turned out to be just another in the truckloads of false promises made by the Iran lobby. The reality has been harsh and unforgiving.

In the months following completion of the deal, the regime has turned all of its attention to just two issues: the crackdown on dissidents at home in advance of parliamentary elections and upgrading as quickly as possible its military forces.

This was evidenced on Hassan Rouhani’s recent European tour in which he signed a flurry of business deals with foreign companies aimed at rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and funnel billions of dollars toward companies controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

It is no surprise that the IRGC is the first institution in Iran to benefit from the largess. Rouhani’s government made the decision to keep the bulk of the $100 billion in their overseas accounts in order to pay for foreign military purchases in euros or dollars and they have wasted no time buying.

The first deal to be completed was the sale of S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries that are a significant upgrade to the regime’s defenses and could be used to protect any nuclear facilities the regime chose to restart.

In addition, the regime announced another round of purchases of Russian arms totaling $8 billion. According to news reports, Iran wants to purchase more sophisticated anti-aircraft missile systems and also a new cadre of warplanes. The new deals will be in addition to several outstanding arms and military contracts that have already been signed between Iran and Russia.

Iran will “seriously focus on its air force and fighter jets,” according to comments by regime defense minister Hossein Dehghan while in Moscow to sign the defense agreements. “We are moving toward a contract. We told them that we need to be involved in the production [of the fighter planes] as well.”

A Russian source who spoke to the media said Iran is also interested in the latest anti-aircraft technology.

“Iran would like to buy Russia’s latest S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft missile system, developed by Almaz-Antey. And they make no secret of it,” the source was quoted as telling the Russian press. “On the eve of his visit to Moscow, Dehghan openly said to Iranian media they want to purchase the S-400s.”

Iran also is seeking to buy and possibly license for domestic production Russia’s new Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter jet, which is used for air-to-air and air-to-surface combat.

“Iran is also interested in Russia’s Bastion mobile coastal defense missile system, equipped with supersonic Yakhont anti-ship missiles, along with Mi-8/17 helicopters and other arms,” according to the regime-controlled media.

The military purchases represent one of the largest investments in state-of-the-art military hardware anywhere in the Middle East. The addition of supersonic fighter jets, anti-ship missiles and even more sophisticated anti-aircraft systems poses a grave threat to international shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.

News reports also indicated the regime would seek to diversify its military suppliers by seeking arms purchases from China as it dips heavily into its newfound wealth. The rapid buying binge indicates the mullahs’ strong desire to rearm Iran into the region’s most powerful military.

To give the expenditures perspective, the entire publicly reported budget for the Iranian regime’s military was $10.2 billion, supporting over half a million active duty regime personnel. The Russian agreement nearly equaled the entire budget last year and more buying is on the way.

The inevitable question that needs to be asked of the Iran lobby is where is the money to help the Iranian people? Little of the money has been brought back to Iran and even less has been disbursed to help ordinary Iranians with healthcare, education, or even food. Why does the Iran lobby ignore all these actions? Probably the same reason it is ignoring the carnage in Syria being wrought by the Iranian regime as well.

In fact, the civil war in Syria is at the heart of the Iranian regime military buildup and an example of why the regime cannot be trusted.

As the Independent newspaper detailed the obvious contradiction in supporting a nuclear deal that only served to supply the regime with fresh resources to wage an even bloodier war in support of keeping Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power.

Kyle Orton cites the brutal battle over the Syrian city of Aleppo as the case in point, writing:

“The Geneva III peace process is the most immediate cause for this latest offensive against Aleppo, led on the ground by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxies, as well as Russian airstrikes. The regime and Russia have used it as a cover to gain ground. The US took the process seriously so sought to de-escalate, taking steps to weaken its own side. This included restricting the rebels’ access to anti-tank missiles”.

“Russia, on the other hand, enabled the IRGC-run forces that control the Bashar al-Assad regime’s security sector to cut the rebels’ final Aleppo supply line into Turkey and move to impose a starvation-siege on the city like the ones they have imposed on forty-nine other areas in Syria. The regime coalition can then either bring the city to its knees and complete the reconquest, or quarantine the rebels in the city, freeing up resources to deploy against rebels on other fronts,” he added.

The Iranian regime’s intentions in Syria are simple: 1) Keep Assad in power; and 2) Do it anyway it can.

“Assad, Iran, and Russia have worked tirelessly to eliminate the moderate opposition so that there will be nobody for the international community to interface with, and Assad’s reign will have to be accepted—and perhaps even supported to reconquer the Isis-held areas in the east,” Orton said.

The brutal evidence of that ruthless strategy can be seen in the deliberate targeting of civilians and the use of barrel bombs and now starvation as a tactic to weaken the opposition.

The mullahs are well acquainted with using death, destruction and executions as a tactic for winning its conflicts. The diplomacy the Iran lobby publicizes with great fanfare cannot be found on the battlefields of Syria, Yemen or Iraq where the Iranian regime’s policies are killing tens of thousands.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Ignores Upcoming Iran Election Shenanigans

February 18, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Ignores Upcoming Iran Election Shenanigans

On February 26, Iran will hold its parliamentary elections and similar to almost every election held since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the results will be largely a forgone conclusion since the mullahs control who goes on the ballot in the first place and in the case of the top spot – currently occupied by Ali Khamenei – that is a position that doesn’t even get voted on by the public in a process that old-line Soviets would find reminiscent of the Politburo.

Michael J. Totten, writing in World Affairs, took to task some idiotic observations made by Max Fisher in Vox magazine in which Fisher waxes rapturously about how the Iranian election could be historic. It the same kind of nonsense first advocated by the Iran lobby, most notably bloggers Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib, the National Iranian American Council and other regime advocates such as Paul Pillar.

The notion that the nuclear deal has set the stage for a historic election in which moderates and dissidents will finally get a fair shake and opportunity to put their stamp on the Islamic state moving into the 21^st century is about as realistic as Boko Haram suddenly deciding to endorse women’s rights.

The truth of the matter, as Totten rightly points out, “let’s leave aside the blatant vote-stealing in Iran’s 2009 presidential election, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in districts that opposed him as overwhelmingly as San Francisco opposes Dick Cheney. Nevermind that disgraceful episode.”

“Elections in Iran are rigged even when they aren’t rigged,” Totten said. “Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei hand-picks everybody who runs for president. Moderates are rejected routinely. Only the less-moderate of the moderates—the ones who won’t give Khamenei excessive heartburn if they win—are allowed to run at all. Liberal and leftist candidates are rejected categorically.”

In the case of the position of president of the regime, a position held by Hassan Rouhani, Totten points out that “he’s not quite a figurehead. He can tinker with a few things around the edges. But the country is run by the unelected Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is officially designated as a terrorist organization.”

NIAC hacks such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi have argued that “moderates” will be empowered in a resurgent Iran and that will be reflected in more moderates being elected to the upper legislative body, the Assembly of Experts which nominally selects the new Supreme Leader when Khamenei dies.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Guardian Council dumped thousands of potential candidates, the overwhelming majority of them more moderate than the ruling mullahs in a similar political exorcism it conducted during Rouhani’s election when it cleared the field for him to run virtually unopposed.

Let’s also consider that a “moderate” in regime politics is like calling someone a moderate who opposes hanging a political dissident, but doesn’t mind locking up a political dissident; in much the same way as Rouhani was hailed as a moderate, but since his ascension he has presided over more executions in his first term than even Ahmadinejad carried out.

In another sign that the elections are going turn out in favor of Khamenei and his cronies no matter what the actual vote is, Khamenei’s office issued a press release through regime-controlled media warning of “enemy” efforts to undermine the elections.

The statement read in part: “Their plot for the February 26 elections is to undermine the Guardian Council and question its decisions,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, “describing the Council as one of the fundamental institutions of the Islamic Establishment, which the US has been strongly opposed to since the victory of the Islamic Revolution.”

“When the Guardian Council’s decisions are called into question, the elections would be perceived to be illegal, and, consequently, the elected parliament as well as the laws it ratifies would be deemed illegal, the Leader explained.”

The regime learned its lessons from the 2009 election debacles that resulted in violent street demonstrations that had to be put down with bloody consequences and is doing all it can to pre-ordain the results and impose order such that there would be no repeat of civil disobedience.

All of which has not gone unnoticed by an American public who’s opinion of the regime’s leadership has astonishingly remained virtually unchanged since the 1980s according to a new Gallup Poll released this week.

A stunningly low 14 percent of Americans have a favorable viewpoint of the regime in a benchmark for futility that has not budged in spite of all the public relations and social media posturing conducted by the Iran lobby. It’s nice to see that no matter how many tweets Trita Parsi puts out, Americans remain skeptical and wary of a regime that has put to the hangman’s noose over 2,300 people under Rouhani.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

February 9, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

Five Iranian-American groups sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to work for the release of an Iranian-American being held by the Iranian regime and not part of the prisoner swap that occurred last month.

The signatories to the letter were the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, the Pars Equality Center, the National Iranian American Council, Iranian Alliances Across Borders, and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Most of these groups actively supported the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime and have campaigned on behalf of it; most notably the NIAC.

Siamak Namazi has been held in Iranian prison since last October and his continued imprisonment has now become something of a cause amongst groups such as NIAC who have previously not dared to voice any public disagreement with the regime on previous occasions, including the imprisonment of other more notable Iranian-Americans such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, who had been subjected to torture and released as part of the prisoner swap.

The U.S. released seven Iranian nationals held in the U.S., in return and agreed to drop international arrest warrants and charges against 14 Iranians outside of the U.S. who had been involved in the smuggling of arms and nuclear components.

Other Iranian-Americans, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to the New York Times, said they were postponing or scrapping planned trips to Iran until Namazi was released, or at least until the circumstances surrounding his case were clearer since his arrest has stirred anxiety among those who thought the nuclear deal portended a new era.

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd.
At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government.
In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

The ties between Namazi and Trita Parsi of the NIAC previously exposed by Iranlobby.net were also revealed in a Daily Beast expose that detailed how in 1999, Namazi got together with Parsi at a conference in Cyprus. The conference, titled, “Dialogue and Action Between the People of Iran and America,” was convened to help ameliorate U.S.-Iranian relations in advance of reconciliation by forming an aggressive public relations and lobbying response to any anti-Iranian regime policies and legislation.

Two years later Parsi founded the NIAC, which long advocated opening up commercial and financial lines back to Iran with Namazi’s family companies offering to provide foreign companies and investors with connections and access to regime officials in a cozy relationship that no longer appears that cozy.

This is especially ironic since in March 2006 (at the height of the covert Iranian war with the U.S. in Iraq), Parsi told a colleague not to worry about a trip to Tehran, “NIAC has a good name in Iran and your association with it will not harm you.” When the colleague was briefly questioned by the regime, then released, he reported back (PDF) to Parsi that he’d been told the reason he was let go was “that they knew NIAC had never done anything seriously bad against the Islamic Republic.”

The shifting political winds within the Iranian regime have been reflected in the mass dismissals of thousands of proposed candidates for parliamentary election seats, but of more immediate concern is the prospect of mass demonstrations by ordinary Iranians – not over election issues, but because a large number of Iranians who receive public payments have not been paid by the regime. This also shows that as far as the ordinary Iranians are concerned, they have no illusion about the existence of a moderate or any moderation within the mullah’s regime.

An extraordinary directive from the Herasat Office, the regime’s domestic intelligence and security forces, entitled: “Issue: Paying workers’ wages in the final days of the year”:

“With greeting and respect, you are hereby informed that given that the end of the [Persian calendar] year is approaching and taking note of the instructions handed down by the minister and competent authorities regarding timely payment of workers’ wages and back pay, you must instruct that all wages, bonuses, back pay and overtime pay be paid no later than February 24, 2016 in order to prevent any possible gatherings or sit-ins and their related negative consequences.

“You are reminded that given the upcoming elections of the Assembly of Experts and Islamic Assembly (Parliament), this issue must be treated with especial importance and sensitivity in order to prevent any misuse of this matter for publicity in particular in the realm of workers’ protests.”

In other words, a lot of Iranians haven’t been paid their salaries, and the Khamenei regime is ordering that they be paid the money they’re owed by February 24, two days before the election, in the hope of defusing any potential mass protests.

The prospect of election protests is worrisome to regime leaders, especially since these elections will be held at the same time International Women’s Day is observed, which is all the more problematic for the regime when one considers the abysmal state of women’s rights in the regime today.

Nothing exemplifies this more than reports that Press TV, the regime’s state-run, English language news channel, suspended two executives on Monday after a prominent newscaster exposed that she had endured years of sexual harassment from them.

The newscaster, Sheena Shirani, has fled the country according to the New York Times.

Press TV is a part of the Voice and Vision organization of Iran, a powerful state media organization that is widely seen as a tool of the country’s hardline factions. One expatriate journalist who previously worked for Newsweek said that Emadi doubled as an interrogator in the Evin prison and once interrogated him. Emadi was later placed on a European blacklist of human rights violators.

The incident has also led to debate on social media. Several women have said such forms of harassment are commonplace in Iran under the mullahs rule, where unemployment is high and laws overwhelmingly favor men.

By Michael Tomlinson

What the Iran Lobby Will Not Talk About

February 8, 2016 by admin

What the Iran Lobby Will Not Talk About

While most of the U.S. and a good chunk of the global sports audience watched the Denver Broncos defeat the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, the rest of the world continued to struggle with the daily hardships that have come with the rise of Islamic extremism flowing out of the Iranian regime.

That extremism has come to take many forms including the world’s largest refugee crisis since World War II as Syrians flee the civil war that Iranian forces have exacerbated. It has also resulted in rising tensions with the Iranian regime since the completion of a nuclear deal that was sold as being an instrument for moderation by the Iran lobby – most notably the National Iranian American Council.

Those tensions have included the blatant violation of existing United Nations Security Council sanctions banning the development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and the continued crackdown on Iranians in advance of upcoming parliamentary elections, including the imprisonment of Iranian-Americans, Christians, dissidents, journalists, artists, bloggers and scores of others deemed a danger to the ruling mullahs.

Even after a prisoner swap that allowed for the release of long-time American prisoners Jason Rezaian, Saeed Abedini and Amir Hekmati, the specter of other Americans becoming prisoners in Iran has loomed to such an extent that the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning for Iran recently “to reiterate and highlight the risk of arrest and detention of U.S. citizens, particularly dual national Iranian Americans, in Iran.”

“Various elements in Iran remain hostile to the United States. Since the United States and Iran reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to address the international community’s concerns over Iran’s nuclear program on July 14, 2015, Iran has continued to harass, arrest, and detain U.S. citizens, in particular dual national,” read the State Department warning.

“The Iranian government continues to repress some minority religious and ethnic groups, including Christians, Baha’i, Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, and others. Consequently, some areas within the country where these minorities reside, including the Baluchistan border area near Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Kurdish northwest of the country, and areas near the Iraqi border, remain unsafe. Iranian authorities have detained and harassed U.S. citizens, particularly those of Iranian origin. Former Muslims who have converted to other religions, religious activists, and persons who encourage Muslims to convert are subject to arrest and prosecution,” added the statement.

Naturally the Iran lobby is completely silent on this issue since there is really nothing it can say to defend the Iranian regime, unless of course it did a public service by reprinting the State Department warning on their own websites to provide a heads up to Iranian-Americans.

The only public pronouncements the Iran lobby has made on travel is to condemn the notion of requiring background checks on those wishing to secure a visa to travel to the U.S. from nations such as Iran.

The plight of those with dual citizenship being detained and imprisoned in Iran was made more public when Reuters confirmed that a number of these dual citizens were being charged with espionage similar to what Washington Post reporter Rezaian was charged.

“We have several dual citizens in jail. Their charges are mostly the same (as Rezaian’s),” the judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. “It is still important to know what he and those related to him were doing in Iran. So their case is still open.”

The fact that the mullahs still view the holding of dual citizens as a form of political gamesmanship and bartering leaves little room for the Iran lobby to make any case for a new wave of “moderation” sweeping over the Iranian regime.

In an odd twist, Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American with strong ties to the Iran lobby and others supportive of the regime and the nuclear deal, was arrested and is still being held in Iran. Namazi’s friends and supporters, including the NIAC, have attempted to portray his plight as being a pawn in the political power struggle between so-called “moderate” and “hardline” factions within the Iranian regime, but the simple truth may be he is just another bargaining chip the regime may want to use in the future.

But his arrest does send a clear signal to the Iran lobby that their utility to the regime is only as worthwhile as the mullahs deem fit and they – like any other Iranian – could just as quickly and easily find themselves in Evin Prison even after being a loyal supporter of the regime.

That nefarious nature of the regime was reinforced by disclosures that even as the Iranian regime was working to negotiate a nuclear deal, it was working to hide its atomic work at its Parchin military complex which has been used to test high explosives necessary for ignitors for nuclear warheads according to various intelligence agencies and Iranian dissident groups.

Forecasting site Stratfor.com says the images published Monday show Iran building a tunnel into a heavily guarded mountain complex inside the Parchin facility, some 20 miles southeast of Tehran, while also working to erase signs of alleged high-explosive testing at another area on the site.

“We’re not saying they’re cheating on the nuclear deal,” Stratfor analyst Sim Tack told The Daily Beast. “The images show Iran was going through the motions to hide what it’s done before, and it is still…developing facilities that the IAEA may or may not have access to,” Tack said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The progression of satellite images tracking construction at Parchin from 2012 to 2015 show how Iran’s leaders apparently worked to keep regime hardliners happy by moving forward with weapons programs, even as the leadership worked to erase signs of an illegal nuclear weapons program, Tack said.

The imagery reveals new paving around a building alleged to be used for high-explosive testing, while another shows plants and trees removed and soil scraped and hauled away as possible evidence of radioactive contamination was removed in advance of inspections.

The simultaneous construction of a tunnel entrance into the mountain complex is also worrisome since the regime has since released new photos showing its inventory of ballistic missiles stored in new underground bunkers.

Yet even with all of these acts and revelations, the Iran lobby remains silent. We can only assume it has been waiting for the Super Bowl so they can relax while their fellow Iranian citizens undergo more torture.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Continues to Ignore Human Rights Violations

February 2, 2016 by admin

Iran Lobby Continues to Ignore Human Rights Violations

The Iran lobby’s leading cheerleaders seem to have a problem with selective memory recall as evidenced by the latest editorial by Reza Marashi from the National Iranian American Council in the National Interest in which he praised Hassan Rouhani’s European tour and boasted of the Iranian regime’s plans for its newfound wealth as a result of the nuclear deal.

“Iran is pursuing this agenda in an effort to increase government legitimacy and security among Iranian society through improved economic conditions,” Marashi says in of the more inane comments he makes.

“Alliances and enmities shift regularly in Iranian politics, but survival of the system is the shared goal of all stakeholders. Thus far, Rouhani’s political coalition has won Iran’s internal political debate by arguing that survival is better guaranteed through flexibility than intransigence,” he adds in typical think tank-speak.

What Marashi is missing from his less than eloquent dissertation is the reality that is going on within Iran now which is the swift action by the Guardian Council to remove from parliamentary election ballots upwards of 90 percent of all candidates perceived to be moderate or opposed to the current mullah leadership. Even the grandson of the regime’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, was tossed off the ballot for being too moderate!

Marashi’s piece is titled “Can Iran Get Out of Its Own Way?” That much he got right, since it is clear the mullahs in Tehran have absolutely no desire to halt their steady stream of militant and aggressive actions in solidifying their hold on power, continue their crackdown on human rights and internal dissent and utilize its newfound wealth to rebuild its infrastructure and enrich themselves at the same time.

The upcoming parliamentary elections are now set to deliver a hand-picked slate of loyalists beholden to the mullahs and Ali Khamenei and Rouhani – far from being the moderate struggling to preserve the future of democracy in Iran – has ably served in his capacity as the puppet face for Khamenei.

It’s also worth noting that Marashi’s claim of the regime realigning to provide an economic boon to ordinary Iranians is also a farce since the deals being signed are lined up to funnel billions back into the coffers of the Revolutionary Guard which controls the heavy industries such as petroleum, aviation and manufacturing.

Marashi also doesn’t address the unseen corruption so deeply rooted in the regime economy that any foreign investor is likely to face barriers. He also does not dare mention the sophisticated cyberwall cutting Iran off from the rest of the world and the high degree of surveillance conducted by the regime’s intelligence agencies that monitor virtually all traffic in and out of the country and often leads them to dissidents and other activists.

Despite the deals and the desire of European governments to begin trading with Iran, financing remains a big issue as major European banks remain reluctant to handle Iranian payments, deterred by previous huge fines from the US treasury. Nuclear-related sanctions have been lifted but other US measures relating to terrorism and human rights are still in place, according to The Guardian.

In typical regime fashion indicative of the corruption within it, far from being a political fight between “hard line” and “moderate” factions, the fight within the regime can be viewed as a fight over the spoils of getting the nuclear deal since the vast majorities of Iranian industries are controlled in whole or part through shell companies belonging to the Revolutionary Guard, which in turn has provided a steady source of illicit income to regime officials for the past two decades.

Even as Khamenei has still called for a “resistance economy,” his intent and those of the mullahs is not to resist any American threat, but instead keep the Iranian people under the boot of oppression and not allow the full benefits of a reopened economy to flow to them.

Evidence of this schism was shown as the regime cancelled plans for a conference set for London where new contracts for foreign oil companies to drill in Iran. Regime officials ostensibly claimed the cancellation was due to British visa requirements, but in fact political turmoil domestically was to blame as various regime groups jockeyed for their share of the corrupt spoils.

Some oil officials are worried the contracts won’t be attractive enough to offset the majors’ reluctance to invest globally due to low oil prices. Others fear mounting criticism by hard-liners who say the deals would give too much away of the country’s natural wealth, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The new deals have been criticized by the Basij, the paramilitary oppressive forces, formed to uphold the principles of the mullah’s rule. On Saturday, members of Basij’s student wing were arrested after protesting against the contracts, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported.

Political crackdowns in Iran are so commonplace and for so many trivial acts, that some Iranians who have been repeatedly arrested have developed handbook to help those who might face arrest in the regime.

One of the student activists jailed three times and tortured, believes there are steps activists in Iran can take to better protect themselves, both inside and outside prison walls. He belongs to a group of over a dozen activists who used their hard-earned personal experiences to create a 19-chapter booklet in Farsi and English titled “Safe Activism: Reducing the Risks and Impact of Arrest,” according to the Guardian.

Designed to teach activists and journalists how to avoid careless behaviors that could endanger them and those around them, the booklet, now online, also offers guidelines on what to do in case of arrest and how to mitigate the consequences of incarceration,” the Guardian added.

Basic safety measures are highlighted in the first chapters of the ‘Safe Activism’ booklet. Readers are reminded to take precautions before meeting with other activists and not communicate important information over the phone. They are advised to keep sensitive documents as well as identification papers and travel documents at a safe place outside their residence, and to clear their homes of illegal items like drugs, alcohol and banned media.

The fact that ordinary Iranians would need a handbook like these speaks volumes about conditions in Iran and is damning proof that Marashi’s optimistic views are really flights of fantasy.

It would be more of a service if the NIAC published the handbook on its website so future Iranian-Americans visiting Iran are not imprisoned like so many others have been.

By Michael Tomlinson

With Sanctions Lifted and New Ones Imposed, Chaos Reigns for Businesses

January 23, 2016 by admin

With Sanctions Lifted and New Ones Imposed, Chaos Reigns for Businesses

In a sign of what could be called political schizophrenia, as sanctions on the Iranian regime were being lifted by the Obama administration amidst a prisoner swap, the U.S. levied a new round of sanctions in response to the testing of illegal ballistic missiles by the regime last October.

The Obama administration had previously announced the imminent imposition of these new sanctions, but the press conference was cancelled at the last minute as the prisoner swap was taking shape the mullahs threatened to pull the plug on the deal.

The new sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department were levied against “11 entities and individuals involved in the procurement on behalf of Iran’s ballistic missile program.”

“Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat to regional and global security, and it will continue to be subject to international sanctions,” said Adam J. Szubin, acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. “We have consistently made clear that the United States will vigorously press sanctions against Iranian activities outside of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – including those related to Iran’s support for terrorism, regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile program.”

It’s noteworthy that the companies and individuals named as targets are not significant in size or scope to the extent European, Asian or U.S. businesses interested in doing business with Iran would be deterred, and the sanctions lifted by President Obama were only “secondary sanctions” meaning American citizens are still banned from trading with Iran with some 400 Iranian companies and individuals removed from the blacklist with 200 others remaining on it, but Szubin’s comment does raise an interesting issue.

Since the P5+1 sought to delink nuclear talks with other aspects of the regime’s bad behavior such as terrorism, Syria and human rights abuses, does that portend a more period where piecemeal action against the regime will take place by individual countries and not in concert as in the nuclear agreement?

These new sanctions do very little by themselves, says Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But there is symbolic value to them, he adds.

“First of all, there’s a naming and shaming element here,” he says. “Second of all, [the 11 Iranian entities and individuals targeted] can’t do business with the United States. But most importantly, the secondary sanctions remain. And that means that foreigners, say European banks, Asian banks, cannot do business with these entities if they want to continue to do business with the Unites States … Even though this is really a unilateral action, it gives it a kind of multilateral or international effect.”

The European Union will consider this week whether or not to follow Washington’s lead in imposing additional sanctions because of the missile violations. Speaking during a visit to Abu Dhabi, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said the EU would consider the matter this week. “We have to compare the American system and European system to see if there are new sanctions to take or not . . . This exercise will be implemented this week.”

If the EU moves forward and its sanctions differ from those imposed by the U.S., companies looking to enter the Iranian marketplace may find themselves caught in a quagmire of independent sanctions levied from here on out and the mullahs would find themselves engaging in issue-by-issue horse trading such as the prisoner swap.

The mullahs made clear what they think of new sanctions, vowing to move forward with its illegal missile program in spite of the sanctions.

The U.S. move was “devoid of any legal or ethical legitimacy,” the Iranian regime Foreign Ministry said in a statement reported by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. Iran will pursue its “legal missile program and upgrade its defense capabilities” with “more seriousness,” according to the statement.

The new belligerence from Iran comes on the eve of Hassan Rouhani’s first state trip to Europe since the lifting of sanctions where he plans stops in Italy and France with a meeting with Pope Francis on January 27^th.

This trip takes the place of a prior trip planned to France that was cancelled in the wake of the Paris terror attacks that left 130 people dead and 352 others injured.

Rouhani’s trip is no mere exercise in celebration of the end to economic sanctions. It has the very real and urgent purpose of trying to sell European companies on investing in the regime, especially in state industries owned and controlled by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and other regime leaders such as telecommunications and transportation.

The regime’s top priority is not to infuse the Iranian economy to the benefit of ordinary Iranians, but rather rebuild aging infrastructure and the military’s capabilities, including recent deals to purchase 114 new airplanes from Airbus and German auto manufacturers to re-enter the market.

An analysis by The Guardian newspaper using game theory also reinforced the idea that the regime leadership would not be using its economic windfall to the benefit of the Iranian people.

“The road to economic development remains rocky due to highly inefficient state-controlled enterprises and the lack of transparency resulting in high levels of corruption, as evidenced by Transparency International placing the country as low as 136 out of 175 countries on its Corruption Perceptions Index based on ‘how corrupt a country’s public sector is perceived to be,’ The Guardian writes. “These factors make the business environment unfriendly to foreign investment.”

“The lack of economic reform will continue to place a heavy toll on the middle class and particularly its underemployed youth. Rising expectations will have to be met…” and this is what fears the mullahs most, particularly with a society on the fringe of explosion with so many people living below the poverty line and with such high level of corruption within the mullah’s hierarchy.

By Laura Carnahan