Iran Lobby

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

Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

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Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

Iran Lobby Peddles False Narratives for Iran Elections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Attacks Claims of Prisoner Concessions as Regime Talks Hostages

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Iran Lobby Attacks Claims of Prisoner Concessions as Regime Talks Hostages

Iran Lobby Attacks Claims of Prisoner Concessions as Regime Talks Hostages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laura Carnahan

NIAC Busy Peddling Same Old Lies About Iran Resistance

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NIAC Busy Peddling Same Old Lies About Iran Resistance

NIAC Busy Peddling Same Old Lies About Iran Resistance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Frantically Tries to Counter Trump Administration Warnings

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Iran Lobby Frantically Tries to Counter Trump Administration Warnings

Iran Lobby Frantically Tries to Counter Trump Administration Warnings

Less than 24 hours the Iran lobby was crowing about the Trump administration’s decision to re-certify the Iranian regime in compliance for another 90 days with the nuclear agreement, it went on the offensive as it faced a barrage of explicit statements from high-ranking officials denouncing the Iranian regime including United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

All three, top foreign policy and defense officials made the same statement that the source of trouble in the Middle East today was based in Tehran and that only a policy comprehensively dealing with all aspects of the Iranian regime was going to work moving forward in returning stability to the region.

For the mullahs in Tehran and their Iran lobby supporters, the objective has always been to divide and conquer the issues the rest of the world finds objectionable towards Iran; such as its support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and dictators like Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as well as a dismal human rights record that would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

Which is why the Iran lobby’s cheering for the 90-day compliance notice had a lifespan of a gnat since it was merely a formality while the administration conducts a national security review of policy towards Iran.

But that didn’t stop the National Iranian American Council from bloviating like a water buffalo in heat.

“It’s a significant contradiction to first come out and say that the Iranians – contrary to all of their claims that Iran would be cheating – actually is living up to the deal only to come out the day after and saying, well, we hate the deal anyways and signaling that the U.S. might actually be walking away from the deal, unless of course the aim is to get rid of the deal without the U.S. having to pay the cost for it, meaning instead of the U.S. violating the deal directly by not renewing these sanctions waivers, killing the deal by escalating tensions in Yemen and elsewhere in the region and hoping that that will force the Iranians out of the deal,” said Trita Parsi, NIAC president on NPR.

Parsi is trying to have it both ways in separating the nuclear from other issues such as human rights or Iran’s meddling in wars raging in Syria and Yemen, but he deliberately skips over the most glaring consequence of the nuclear deal which is because we separated these issues, the mullahs were free to act without fear of reprisal in their ambitions for Syria or in the crushing of dissent at home.

The cold hard truth is that these are all connected issues like the strings of a spider web; the web would never succeed or exist unless all the strands were connected and working together.

The Iranian regime, for lack of a better comparison, is a legal criminal enterprise on a national scale. It concentrates power ruthlessly at the very top, uses the judicial system and religion to enforce disciple and stifle dissent while its military owns just about every industrial activity and skims off the top to line the pockets of the elites.

It’s like the Sopranos on steroids, except Ali Khamenei isn’t seeing a shrink unfortunately.

Of course other members of the Iran lobby weighed in too as Reza Marashi from the NIAC penned a ludicrous piece on TopTopic in which he claimed the European Union was galvanized and united in supporting the Iranian regime.

Unfortunately, yesterday’s terror attack on the Champs-Elysees in Paris only reinforced a growing uncertainty throughout a Europe that has been rattled by Islamic extremists attacks in Berlin, Brussels, Paris and elsewhere.

“While U.S. policy congeals, most European stakeholders remain in wait-and-see mode before making policy decisions – rather than taking steps to shape American policy,” Marashi writes.

We’re sure Marashi wishes for the good old Obama days when the NIAC could pick up the phone and call the White House and find a receptive audience, but it and Europe and finding that shaping policy in the White House now is not about lobbying, but about answering the central question the Obama administration never bothered to ask: “How do we rein in Iranian excesses across the board?”

Parsi reinforced that complete lack of understanding in an editorial in the New York Times in which he cited “a number of potential land mines on the near horizon. The first is in Congress, where a bipartisan effort is underway to introduce new sanctions on Iran that, despite the protestations of the legislation’s sponsors, would violate the terms of the nuclear agreement by adding new conditions onto the deal.”

Once again Parsi ignores the inconvenient truth for the Iran lobby which is that in their mind anything “new” in terms of sanctions levied against the Iranian regime would be considered a violation of the terms of the agreement, even though the agreement was purposely devoid of any clauses or mention of issues such as human rights.

Their twisted pretzel logic has them boxed in where now they are forced to denounce any and all efforts to sanction Iran as a threat to the regime. If Iranian warplanes dropped sarin gas on Sunni refugees in Iraq, Parsi and his colleagues would undoubtedly argue against any sanctions as a violation of the agreement; a convenient catch-all.

It’s also hilarious Parsi raises the prospect of a “moderate” Hassan Rouhani being defeated at the ballot box in next month’s elections since he ignores Iran’s long history of rigging every election. In fact, the regime’s Guardian Council only yesterday tossed former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad off the ballot after much fanfare of him registering as a candidate.

In Iran, you don’t get on the ballot unless you are expected to get the blessing of the mullahs.

The most absurd comment Parsi makes is the assertion that if the U.S. reneges on the deal, Iran will undoubtedly move forward with its nuclear ambitions.

We hate to break it to the regime lackey, but the deal—by Parsi’s own admission—was never designed to halt Iranian nuclear work, only slow it down by a decade before the much ballyhooed “breakout period,” but even that has been whittled down by most analysts to just a few years.

All of which makes the statement issued by the NIAC in response to Secretary Tillerson’s remarks the other day even more laughable.

“There is little room to interpret this statement as anything less than a proclamation of the Trump administration’s intent to scrap the nuclear deal and reset the United States on a path to war,” said the NIAC.

Have they not been paying attention to Syria, Iraq, Yemen or Bahrain lately?

Michael Tomlinson

Over 1,600 Presidential Candidates in Iran and None Are Moderates

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The Iranian regime has over 1,600 people registered as candidates for next month’s presidential election, but like all previous elections in the mullah’s regime, the outcome is predetermined and not a single moderate or dissident will end up on the final ballot.

The logjam of registered candidates is typical of a system that offers the false veneer of inclusive democracy when it in fact is anything but. It’s emblematic of the root problems within the Iranian regime and why any idea of appeasement or rapprochement is just plain fantasy.

The Associated Press provided a nuts and bolts overview of the election process in Iran.

Under Iranian law, there’s no fee for registering. Hopefuls only must swear allegiance to Iran’s government and be Shiite Muslims. That gives gadflies and publicity seekers the chance to smile and wave to gathered journalists. It’s still a lot of candidates, though. The last similar turnout was Iran’s 2005 election, which saw more than 1,000 register, according to the AP.

All the candidates will be vetted by the Guardian Council, a 12-member panel half selected by the top mullah Ali Khamenei and half nominated by the judiciary and approved by parliament. The council controls elections and must approve all laws passed by parliament. It has never allowed a woman to run for president and routinely rejects candidates calling for dramatic reform. The panel also declared Ahmadinejad won the 2009 election despite widespread fraud allegations.

And who sits at the top of this pyramid? Khamenei of course. The supreme leader also serves as the country’s commander in chief over its military and the powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force involved in the wars in Iraq and Syria that also has vast economic holdings across Iran. An 88-member elected clerical panel called the Assembly of Experts appoints the supreme leader and can remove one as well, although that’s never going to happen.

Iran does not allow international observers to monitor its elections. Security forces answering only to the supreme leader also routinely arrest dual nationals and foreigners, using them as pawns in international negotiations, according to AP.

All of which brings us back to the central point people need to remember as these elections unfold, which is that there is no democracy in Iran. The Iranian people have very little choice and fewer real options and nothing happens without Khamenei’s direct approval.

Iran’s election system puts to a lie the arguments long made by Iran lobby members such as the National Iranian American Council which has consistently argued the fiction that real factions and splits occur between “moderate” and “hardline” elements there; when in fact the differences in Iran’s political and religious elite is basically comprised of fights over who’s snout can dig deepest into the trough of ill-gotten gains. The fact is that Iran’s government consistently ranks as one of the most corrupt on the planet and no matter who’s sit on president’s seat, the regime has continued to be the number of executor of its people per capita and the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

The fact that the Iranian people’s top choices right now are its current president, Hassan Rouhani, who promised many reforms including a liberalization of the economy and more economic benefits to the people—all of which has actually gotten worse—and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was widely reviled during his tenure.

The other choice being Ebrahim Raisi, custodian of Iran’s wealthiest charity, Astan Quds Razavi in Iran’s holiest shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, who was also tied to massacres of 30,000 Iranian dissidents in the 1988.

These are not great choices for the Iranian people, nor do they spell any kind of relaxation in the regime’s often barbaric policies in terms of human rights abuses and more foreign policy misadventures.

That is because the regime mandates fealty to the principle of obedience to Supreme Guardianship (Velayat-e faqih), meaning, the rule of the ayatollahs. It would be akin to eliminating all political parties in the U.S. and forcing every candidate to swear allegiance to one ruler who can never to drummed out of office.

In many ways the election of a president means relatively little since the real power resides within Khamenei and the position of supreme leader, which is why no matter who gets elected on May 19th, how to deal with Iran, especially its military is the real concern for Iran’s neighbors and the U.S.

Mohammad Amin, an analyst in Iranian affairs and fellow at the Paris-based Middle East Research Foundation, examined the wide-ranging reach of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and how confronting it is the biggest challenge facing the West.

“The IRGC, the Leviathan of Terror, which has the financial and military resources that exceed the wildest dreams of ISIS, now lurks in the Middle East. Its tentacles extend well beyond the geographical borders of Iran. While ISIS claimed parts of Syria and northern Iraq, the IRGC’s Shiite militias have an extensive presence in almost every country in the region,” he writes in the Daily Caller.

The main Iranian opposition the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has revealed a list of 31,690 Iraqi mercenaries of the IRGC, all of whom receive their salaries from Iran.

Last year, U.S. military officials said that as many as 100,000 Iranian-backed Shiite militia are now fighting on the ground in Iraq, “raising concerns that should the Islamic State be defeated, it may only be replaced by another anti-American force that fuels further sectarian violence in the region,” he added.

Amin adds that an essential first step in the direction of controlling the IRGC is for the Trump administration designating the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Failure to adopt this critical measure will only serve to embolden the regime while the region and the wider world continue to grapple with the menace of religious extremist and terrorism.

For any chance of democracy in Iran, the West needs to support Iranian opposition groups such as the NCRI and cut off the financial support the regime receives from the IRGC. That is surest pathway to eventual freedom for the Iranian people.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Covers for Chemical Attacks on Innocents in Syria

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Iran Lobby Covers for Chemical Attacks on Innocents in Syria

Iran Lobby Covers for Chemical Attacks on Innocents in Syria

True to form, the Iran lobby—in this case the National Iranian American Council—dutifully stepped up to the plate to defend the Assad regime’s continued existence by bashing the Trump administration decision to attack a Syrian regime airbase that flew the strikes.

Trita Parsi, the NIAC’s founder and president, offered up some gems of disingenuousness in Huffington Post claiming that the decision to finally cross the red line that President Obama balked at would have serious consequences.

“By now, it is clear that the missile strike has not impeded Assad from using his air force to strike rebel strongholds. In fact, Syrian warplanes reportedly carried out strikes yesterday against rebels near the city of Homs — taking off from the very air base hit by U.S. missiles. Trump even gave Assad advanced notice via Russian President Vladimir Putin, which enabled the Syrian dictator to move his troops and bunker his planes. Moreover, Trump left one of the airstrips at the targeted base untouched, which is why Assad could quickly use the base to launch further attacks,” Parsi said.

To be blunt, that’s a pretty stupid observation, even for someone claiming to be as learned as Parsi.

President Trump’s decision to strike was not a military one, but a strategic political one. In the old parlance of diplomacy, the Syrian chemical attack was a “Casus Belli;” an act so egregious and reprehensible to the sensibilities of international community and American values that the U.S. had no choice but to act.

In the history of U.S. diplomacy, this kind of retaliation is a no-brainer until President Obama decided he wanted to test out his quaint theory of appeasement in modern diplomacy; much to the shame of human rights history as over 500,000 people have lost their lives now and over four million have flooded out as refugees.

Parsi is quick to point out the lack of military effectiveness of the strikes since he skips over the most obvious benefit, which is to put Bashar al-Assad, and his allies on notice that the U.S. is perfectly willing and able to blow the Syrian military back into the Stone Age and outside interference would be grounds to include their forces in the fracas.

In one fell swoop, President Trump has neatly turned the tables on the Syria-Allies axis and forced them to calculate their own response without setting off another violent U.S. response.

Referring to consequent assault on the rebel’s strong hold and the civilians living in those areas, Parsi concludes: “The end result will be a more intensified civil war with more civilian casualties and even greater difficulty for diplomatic efforts to bear fruit,”.

For the people of Syria, no one will claim that the Syria and Iranian bombardments, assaults and revenge killings against Sunni Muslims can “intensify” as Parsi claims. How do you step up from massive aerial bombardments and the pervasive use of sarin and chlorine gas attacks?

About the only thing the Iranians have not tried against Syrian rebels is using biological agents and we don’t put it past Tehran to go that far as the mullahs have already decided to militarize hospitals and health clinics in this fight by targeting them specifically for attack.

The key to solving the Syrian crisis has always been pushing out foreign elements and leaving the Syrian people to resolve their own dilemma and achieve a political solution. If Iran had not intervened in the first few months of the popular revolt against Assad’s rule, we would find ourselves in a very different situation.

But the fact that Iran has poured billions in cash, sent thousands of soldiers and terrorist fighters, along with planeloads of advanced weapons to keep Assad in power has been the principle reason why Syria is such a mess in the first place; a fact that Parsi never admits to.

“Helping ensure that children and civilians aren’t trapped in Syria should be the first and most obvious thing the U.S. can do to help,” Parsi said in what has to be one of his all-time inane comments.

Trying to find a way to export more Syrian refugees while allowing Syria to descend into more chaos is the recipe the mullahs in Tehran have followed and Parsi has preached. It has not been a recipe for success for the Syrian people though.

Of course, no Parsi editorial would be complete without a defense of the idiotic Iran nuclear deal.

With the revelation that the accord on Syrian chemical weapons turned out to be a complete falsehood, the obvious question everyone is asking—and Parsi never answers—is how can you expect the Iran nuclear deal to be working if the same people are guaranteeing it as guaranteed the Syrian chemical weapons deal?

David French in the National Review asks the same important question as he takes up Glenn Kessler’s fact-checking piece in the Washington Post which gave former National Security Advisor a whopping four Pinocchios for her assertion that the chemical weapons deal worked.

“Media accountability is worthwhile, but we don’t need fact-checkers to tell us that the Obama administration’s Syria policy was a miserable failure. We saw the evidence in the bodies of the children slain by sarin gas. However, we do need to remember the sorry recent track record for WMD deals with hostile countries… The Obama administration was supposed to have stripped Syria of chemical weapons. Syria gassed its citizens,” French writes.

“Vicious liars like the North Koreans, Syrians, and Iranians tend to be vicious liars no matter the documents they sign. That’s a truth worth remembering as another WMD deal collapses and further destabilizes and already-dangerous world,” he adds.

French is correct and Parsi is dead wrong—which isn’t a first for him.

Michael Tomlinson

The Double Standard of the Iran Lobby

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The Double Standard of the Iran Lobby

US Defence Minister James Mattis addresses the press during a NATO defence ministers’ meetings at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on February 15, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNAND

Consistency of thought has never been the strong suit for members of the Iran lobby such as the National Iranian American Council. Often staffers from the NIAC write editorials that passionately argue to right some perceived wrong being perpetrated by the U.S. government, while at the same time ignoring the exact same violation being committed by the Iranian regime.

Take for example the issue of detention of Iranians within the U.S. under the Trump administration’s new immigration rules versus the long-running policy of the mullahs in Tehran of snatching up and imprisoning dual-national citizens.

The NIAC issued a statement by Ryan Costello arguing against the arrest of an Iranian citizen holding a U.S. visa in Michigan. According to the statement, the “news comes amidst an uptick in government harassment of visa holders and citizens entering the U.S. We are concerned this is further evidence of a discriminatory culture being promoted by Donald Trump and his administration, particularly towards people of Middle Eastern descent.”

While the attention to this case seems to be the primary focus of the NIAC, the notorious supporters of the Iranian regime are virtually silent on the same practice by the mullahs in arresting dual-nationals such as Iranian-Americans on bogus or secret charges and held in deplorable conditions.

Consider the long-running saga of British charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was arrested at Tehran Airport on April 3 last year while visiting family with daughter Gabriella.

She was imprisoned for five years in September for allegedly plotting to topple the Iranian government and lost an appeal against her sentence in January but maintains her innocence.

On Sunday – the 365th day since the arrest – family and friends gathered at Fortune Green close to Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s home in north-west London according to the Standard.

Supporters tied yellow ribbons to a tree in the park along with quotes from inmates at Evin prison in Iran, where Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held, describing what they would do with one day of freedom.

Her painful and heartfelt wish reads: “My fondest dream has always been to arrive at our home, you ask me if I want to have a cup of tea, then make me one.”

“I just sit back and watch you two play. This is the image I had most when in solitary confinement.

“How I wish I could watch you both dance in the middle of our sitting room to the Michael Jackson music – like when Gabriella was only tiny.”

The NIAC makes no mention of her incarceration, not even a plea for humanitarian release because of her sharply declining health and denial of adequate medical care. Why the double standard?

One of the more stunning double standards was an editorial in the Atlantic Council by NIAC’s Adam Weinstein which argued why Iran views its ballistic missile program as a “red line” that warrants full protection by the mullahs.

He predictably recounts the same old arguments from Iran’s experiences in the Iran-Iraq War in which Saddam Hussein showered Iranian troops with missile barrages and how the mullahs in Tehran vowed to develop their own missile capability to defend themselves in the future, especially as a deterrent from perceived enemies such as the U.S. and Saudis.

Weinstein argues—incredibly—that alleviating Iran’s sense of vulnerability might be a better way to approach Iran.

Using his logic, if your neighbor has decided to arm himself and occasionally takes shots at you, Weinstein argues that you should be the one of reassure your violent neighbor, not the other way around?!

Weinstein even stretches his bizarre logic by trying to tie into a historically revisionist view of Shi’ism portraying it as choosing pragmatism over ideology.

Not many Syrians or Yemen civilians being subjected to Iranian bombs, mortars, rockets, drones and militia would find any proof of that sentiment.

What Weinstein never discusses though is the rapid development of Iran’s missile program in creating and testing ever more powerful boosters designed to reach intercontinental distances and lift capability approaching via nuclear payload capabilities.

Why Iran needs a ballistic missile with the range to reach into New Delhi or Rome is never mentioned by Weinstein because there is no reason other than to hold a dagger over Europe, Asia and the rest of the Middle East like the sword of Damocles.

But that double standard is nothing new to the Iranian regime as Iran’s Foreign Ministry called on the United States to pressure its regional allies into abandoning their support for terrorism and not level “malicious” allegations against the Islamic state.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi made the statement on Saturday, reacting to earlier comments by US Defense Secretary James Mattis claiming that Iran continued to sponsor terror, Press TV reported.

Asked about comments Mattis made in 2012 that the three primary threats the United States faced were “Iran, Iran, Iran,” Mattis told reporters in London on Friday that Iranian regime’s behavior had not changed in the years since.

“At the time when I spoke about Iran I was a commander of US central command and that (Iran) was the primary exporter of terrorism, frankly, it was the primary state sponsor of terrorism and it continues that kind of behavior today,” Mattis said.

Laura Carnahan

 

Bipartisan Consensus Forming on Dealing with Iran Regime

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Bipartisan Consensus Forming on Dealing with Iran Regime

Bipartisan Consensus Forming on Dealing with Iran Regime

In today’s turbulent political environment there is not much anyone agrees on, except that maybe the New England Patriot comeback in the Super Bowl was astounding or that the Chicago Cubs win of the World Series was historic.

Other than that, most politicians can’t even seem to agree on the weather and what causes a shift in temperature day to day.

On one topic though there seems to be a growing bipartisan consensus, not just in the U.S. but around the world and that is more needs to be done to rein in the intransigence of the Iranian regime and the threat posed by its burgeoning military and ballistic missile program.

Monday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iran was an example of a political environment with a rare and welcomed unanimity. Ranking member Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) remarked that although he voted against the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran, he doesn’t think it would be wise to withdraw, saying:

“Iran’s activities today are as bad as they have ever been and probably worse. They are certainly increasing their terrorist sponsorship in the Middle East as we see in so many different countries in that region. Their record on violating the ballistic missile obligations are well known and well understood. Their human rights violations against their own citizens are horrible, one of the worst countries in the world. They violate the arms embargo and the list goes on and on. So, it is appropriate to get this Committee to look at what we can do to make sure that first, the Iran nuclear agreement is honored so that Iran does not become a nuclear weapons state, but then secondly, look at those activities that were not covered under the JCPOA as to how we can play a stronger role.”

He was joined by his Republican colleague, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the committee who said:

“One of my criticisms of the JCPOA was that it would become our de facto Middle East policy and Iran would expand their destabilizing activities. I think we are seeing a lot of that today. Regionally, we’ve seen an escalation in Iranian intervention. Iran, along with its allies in Russia, has continued to prop up Assad at the cost of countless lives in Syria. Iran’s support to the Shia militias in Iraq threatens the interests of Sunnis and Kurds alike, not to mention the Shia in Iraq that don’t subscribe to the anti-American, zero-sum politics of the militias that are there.”

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post’s Right Turn blog opined that “given this shared assessment of Iran — the JCPOA is not going away but the United States needs to confront Iran in other arenas — it’s not surprising that a bipartisan bill, the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017, with seven co-sponsors from each party, was introduced last week.”

“The act establishes new sanctions targeting Iran’s testing of ballistic missiles and its backing for terrorism, and also seeks to block the property of any entity involved in the sale of arms to or from Iran. It does not reintroduce sanctions lifted from Iran as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.”) In a summary released last week, senators described potentially far-reaching measures including mandatory sanctions on those involved with Iran’s ballistic missile program, new sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a requirement for the president “to block the property of any person or entity involved in specific activities related to the supply, sale, or transfer of prohibited arms and related material to or from Iran,” Rubin added.

But it wasn’t just on Capitol Hill where there was unanimous consent as all 15 resolutions passed by the Arab summit which took place in Jordan Wednesday were devoted to an indictment of Iran, its Revolutionary Guards Corps and Lebanese surrogate, Hezbollah. They were a testament to the depth of Arab-Iranian animosity and exposed the extent of the rift between the Sunni and Shiite Muslim worlds.

Iran was accused of meddling in the internal affairs of Arab nations, inciting Shiites against Sunnis, and arming and training Shiite terrorist groups for operations against legitimate Arab governments. The Arab rulers combined to put Tehran in the dock for its interference in the Syrian civil war and assault on its sovereignty.

It was notable that at an Arab summit that has in the past concerned itself with issues related to Israel and the plight of the Palestinian people, the entire focus of the summit was on the Iranian regime; demonstrating how important the issue of confronting Tehran has become to the wider Arab world.

In the annual AIPAC conference a clearer united vision of the importance to oppose the Iranian regime was surfaced. American authorities and law makers used the opportunity to show their unanimous visions on the threat they feel from the Iranian regime and the need to take action to contain the growing destabilizing activities of the mullahs in the region.

The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, called to designate the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group, describing it as a “terrorist army.” He said “Iran supports the terrorist dictator of Damascus and the militias in Yemen, Baghdad and Beirut.”

Furthermore, Nikki Hailey, the US ambassador to the United Nations asserted at the conference that “Iran’s nuclear deal is worrisome because it empowered Russian and Iran and encouraged the latter to act freely without fear of accountability.”

Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader in the Senate added: “Today we must adopt a different approach. We must combat Iran’s ability to finance, arm and train terrorists, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and its proxies in Syria.”

McConnell criticized Iranian regime’s nuclear deal, saying that it disabled the United States from taking more aggressive steps against Iran.

Meanwhile the Iran lobby was once again beating the war drum in an editorial in Huffington Post by Jamal Abdi of NIAC Action and Adam Weinstein of the National Iranian American Council, in which they claimed that this bipartisan consensus would only provide incentives for the U.S. to be plunged into a war with Iran at the behest of President Trump.

They go on to argue that if the proposed sanctions bill passes, Tehran would respond negatively and all the positive gains made by the nuclear deal would evaporate. What positive gains?

Since the deal was agreed to, the Iranian regime has broken every promise of moderation, stability, peace and partnership made by the NIAC and other Iran lobby supporters.

The harsh proof of Iranian regime’s track record over the past years has been so convincing that a bipartisan consensus is seen among both houses of congress to try to oppose the mullahs in Tehran.

All we can say is that it’s about time.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Steps Up Global Spy and Lobbying Efforts

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Iran Regime Steps Up Global Spy and Lobbying Efforts

Iran Regime Steps Up Global Spy and Lobbying Efforts

The Iranian regime is sensing an opportunity to expand its influence through its use of its operatives and proxies in the Ministry of Intelligence and its lobbying and public relations efforts that were used during the run up to the nuclear agreement reached with the U.S. and five other nations.

The regime’s own intelligence minister has been busy boasting about the regime’s ability to run a lobbying group in the very heart of the “Great Satan” in Washington, DC.

Amir Basiri, a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and an Iranian human rights activist, detailed these claims in an editorial.

“Mahmoud Alavi, Iran’s spy chief, bragged about the regime’s capability to run a lobby group in Washington with the aim of promoting Tehran’s hardline agenda,” Basiri wrote.

According to Alavi, Iranian dual citizens in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have maintained their loyalty to the “Islamic revolution,” the mullahs’ hallmark motto ever since 1979, through which they have wreaked havoc across the region and beyond, he said.

A “lobby group for the Islamic Republic of Iran” is actively bolstering Tehran’s status in the international stage and helping to sell and legitimize its nuclear ambitions as just causes to the globe, Alavi claimed.

“The head of Iran’s intelligence apparatus did not bother to name the specific lobby entity. One certain group, however, the National Iranian American Council, has been the target of major criticism in the past several months, with accusations of the group lobbying on Tehran’s behalf. Various dissident organizations are demanding the Trump administration to launch an official probe digging into NIAC’s history and nature of its current events,” Basiri added.

What was interesting was that the NIAC, did not deny Alavi’s claims.

Basiri pointed out that Congress has also been petitioned to investigate ties between Iran and the NIAC, and the latter’s active drive to promote a pro-Tehran agenda in Washington. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., who chair the foreign affairs committees in each chamber of Congress, have received specific letters signaling the importance of urgent action in this regard.

NIAC was once again under the spotlight this January for its actions of presenting a positive image of the Iran nuclear deal and advocating a pro-diplomatic approach with Tehran. The media reported extensively on how two senior Iranian regime supporters, former Iranian nuclear diplomat Hossein Mousavian and NIAC founder and president Trita Parsi, enjoyed access to the Obama White House on more than 30 occasions, conducting meetings with senior administration officials, while a former NIAC staffer now directs Iran policy at the State Department.

Alavi’s recent remarks are source for serious concern as entities advocating Iran’s agenda in the American capital are obliged by the Foreign Agents Registration Act to disclose the nature of their work. This even includes conditions where the relationship does not involve money exchanges, at least not through legal and opaque channels.

For years Iran has been known to forward an official plot of boosting relations with groups promoting anti-war and pro-regime policies in the West. Improving contacts with Iranian dual nationals living in the West has been high on Tehran’s agenda on this matter.

One major task of this network has been discrediting those opposing the regime in Tehran and taking measures against any efforts voicing support for Iran regime change. The main Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and its most important member, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), have been the constant target of smear campaigns launched and orchestrated by the Iranian regime and NIAC, according to Basiri.

Not only has the Iranian regime worked hard to develop its lobbying resources, but it has continued to expand on its efforts to spy and conduct terror operations on its neighbors as the government of Bahrain announced Sunday that it had arrested over a dozen individuals believed to have planted a bomb on a police bus and received training from Hezbollah and the government of Iran.

Bahrain’s interior ministry issued a statement Sunday confirming the arrests of 14 individuals who “are suspected of receiving overseas military training under the supervision of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah in Iraq,” according to the Associated Press. The men were arrested as part of a larger raid on a property that authorities claimed was stocked with weapons; police say the terror cell was planning assassinations, though they did not specify if they believed the men were targeting any officials in particular.

Al-Arabiya adds that authorities believe the alleged terrorists arrested were working under the supervision of Mortadha Majeed al-Sindi and Qassim Abdullah Ali, the latter of which has received a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” label from the U.S. State Department. Reuters identifies both men as “exiled Bahrainis living in Iran.” In addition to being led by individuals living in Iran, the terror cell boasted a number of individuals with ties to Iranian terror groups. Voice of America cites local outlets who reported that official identified five alleged terrorists as having received training from Hezbollah, and another six who had been trained by IRGC leaders.

In another case, a Pakistani man was convicted in Germany on Monday of spying for Iran to search out potential attack targets for the Revolutionary Guards.

The defendant, 31-year-old Mustufa Haidar Syed-Naqfi, was sentenced to four years and three months in prison “for working for a foreign intelligence service”, a spokeswoman for Berlin’s superior court said.

The court found he spied “against Germany and another NATO member”, France, for the Quds Force, the foreign operations wing of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

Syed-Naqfi compiled dossiers on possible attack targets – a German lawmaker who is the former head of a German-Israeli organisation, and a French-Israeli economics professor.

Investigators found detailed dossiers on the men and their daily routines, with hundreds of photos and video clips.

A representative of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, which handles counterespionage, said it was alerted to the defendant by a “reliable” source.

The service suspected the Quds Force was preparing for a possible future conflict with the United States and Israel, when it could hit targets in Europe in a form of “asymmetrical warfare”.

Laura Caranahan

Khamenei Promises More Crackdowns on Election Protests

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Khamenei Promises More Crackdowns on Election Protests

Khamenei Promises More Crackdowns on Election Protests

Back in 2009, the Middle East was being rocked by the Arab Spring, a pro-democracy movement that toppled governments throughout the region and put despotic regimes on the defensive.

At the time, the Iranian regime’s much despised president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was running for “re-election” in a contest widely viewed as unlikely for him given the historic disapproval of the Iranian people and their deep desire for democratic change.

But as with all things under the careful watch of the mullahs, his election was essentially guaranteed in what the international community dubbed a rigged election.

In response, Iran was rocked with mass protests and demonstrations the likes of which the Iranian regime had not seen before in the most serious threat to the iron rule of the religious establishment. Alarmed and in response to keep their hold on power, the top mullah Ali Khamenei ordered a widespread crackdown that set human rights back in Iran decades in resulted in scores killed and thousands beaten, arrested and imprisoned.

The mass protests were aided in large part by the emergence of social media which helped rally young and old Iranians alike to dispute the election and served as a splash of cold water in the regime’s face that it would have to change as well, but not in terms of granting more freedoms.

By the time 2013 rolled around, the mullahs had gotten wise to international opinion and instead staged an election by removing anyone from the ballot that could even be considered a dissident and instead offered up an old loyalist in Hassan Rouhani repackaged as a smiling, tweeting, kindly “moderate.”

The end result was another sham election and in comparison to 2009 with favorable media attention abroad. It was also aided by the creation of an Iran lobby apparatus designed to push forward more positive narratives about the regime in news media and among elected officials, especially the National Iranian American Council.

Since then, while Rouhani has paraded himself as ca champion of the oppressed, Iran has plunged even further into disrepair.

It is involved now in two full-blown wars in Syria and Yemen, while spending billions of dollars in cash to support the Assad regime, Shiite militias in Iraq, its long-time Hezbollah proxy, and a rebuilding of its vast military.

It has also cracked down viciously at home, oppressing women, religious and ethnic minorities and even going on a binge of hostage taking amongst dual-national citizens including Americans, Canadians and Brits.

Now the stage is set for another election this May and once Khamenei has set the table by declaring that the regime would not tolerate any interference; meaning only the regime’s candidate will be elected and everyone should stay off the streets.

“I will confront anyone who wants to tamper with the results of the people’s vote. In previous years and previous elections …, it was the same. Some of it was in front of people’s eyes and they became aware of it. And some of it they were not aware of but I was informed about it,” he said in Iranian New Year remarks carried live on state television, according to Reuters.

“It was revealed in 2009 – they came out and drew battle lines. And in other years in other ways, but in all these years I stood against them and said whatever the results of the election are, they must be carried out.”

Two of the candidates from the 2009 presidential election, which put hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into office for a second term despite large protests over alleged vote fraud that shook the Islamic Republic, have been under house arrest since 2011. Although part of the regime apparatus, they were detained for calling for street protests at the same time that pro-democracy uprisings were convulsing Tunisia and Egypt.

This year’s election will never be in doubt. Whoever Khamenei wants is going to win, this is a matter of course since he controls the policy making body that will have final say on whoever gets on the ballot in the first place.

Imagine if the Democratic or Republican parties had final say on who got on a presidential ballot without having to suffer through the rigors of a primary contest? In essence, that is what the Iranian regime does on a regular basis; it’s a rigged game.

But the Iranian regime is becoming more sophisticated in the ways of politics. Just as it adjusted to the brutal crackdowns following the 2009 elections, it is following up on the initial creation of the Iran lobby with a broader call for more Iranians in the West to become active lobbyists for the regime’s causes as outlined in an editorial by Michael Rubin in Commentary.

“An Iran watcher and Iranian citizen recently alerted me to this clip showing Mahmoud Alavi, Iran’s intelligence minister, on Iranian national television suggesting there are Iranians in the West who have a lobby for the regime,” Rubin said.

“Alavi does not mention NIAC, but the number of politically active groups that focus on issues of sanctions, defending Iran’s ballistic missile program, and Iran’s nuclear program can like be counted not only on one hand but rather on one finger. If Iran’s intelligence minister believes that Tehran can leverage a specific lobby in the West on behalf not of Iranians but rather of the Islamic Republic, perhaps it is time for American counterintelligence authorities to take a far harder look at whatever lobby to which Alavi might be referring,” he added.

Rouhani’s election will be critical as the regime enters a new phase of expansion and aggression as it puts its newfound billions in cash it received as part of the nuclear deal to good use in furthering the war in Yemen and securing Syria as part of its Shiite sphere of influence.

According to Reuters, Iran is sending advanced weapons and military advisers to Yemen’s rebel Houthi movement, stepping up support for its Shiite ally in a civil war whose outcome could sway the balance of power in the Middle East, regional and Western sources say.

Sources with knowledge of the military movements, who declined to be identified, say that in recent months Iran has taken a greater role in the two-year-old conflict by stepping up arms supplies and other support. This mirrors the strategy it has used to support its Lebanese ally Hezbollah in Syria.

A senior Iranian official said Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force – the external arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – met top IRGC officials in Tehran last month to look at ways to “empower” the Houthis.

We may very soon see the Arabian Peninsula erupt in a war not unlike what has convulsed Syria if the mullahs have their way.

Michael Tomlinson