Nowrouz – Iran Lobby

Nowruz Should Bring Hope to Iranian People

Nowrouz Should Bring Hope to Iranian People

The Iranian New Year is marked with the feast of Nowrouz and falls on March 21. Translated, Nowrouz means “new day” and fittingly it should be a new day for the oppressed Iranian people as the effort begins to reverse the damage caused by years of efforts by the Obama administration to appease the mullahs in Tehran.

F.H. Buckley, a professor at the Scalia Law School, wrote an editorial in the New York Post about this need to provide the Iranian people with hope during this year’s Nowrouz observances.

“It would be a good opportunity for President Trump to mark a new day in US-Iran relations — one that corrects his predecessor’s poor treatment of the Iranian people,” Buckley writes.

“Last year at this time, the regime announced that an additional 7,000 undercover officers would patrol the streets to arrest women who had too much hair showing from under a headscarf or were out walking with a boyfriend,” he added.

“That’s why change will come to Iran, if at all, from the streets, from an Iranian Spring. And the Iranians who want to rid their country of its oppressive regime must be told that America shares their goals.” Buckley offered.

Buckley took to task the Obama administration for failing to support mass protests against the Iranian regime during the disputed presidential elections in 2009; a missed opportunity for the U.S. and urged the Trump administration to demonstrate its support for the Iranian people.

“I have a suggestion for Trump. After we ignored the street protests against the Iranian dictatorship, after we cut our disastrous Iran deal, after we abandoned Israel to the threat of medium-range missiles from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, after American hostages were allowed to rot in Iranian jails, let the president welcome NowRuz with a message to the Iranian people,” Buckley said.

“Let him wish them a happy and prosperous new year, and the freedom that all men deserve from their cruel oppressors.”

It’s a noble sentiment and an important one since the Obama administration was quick to offer Iranians a traditional Nowrouz greeting, but never one directed specifically at the Iranian people’s desires for more freedom and democracy in their country. Such a message from the Trump administration would be an important symbol and one that would go a long way to putting the mullahs on notice that this administration will act in a much more conservative manner towards the regime.

Trump has already offered the political rhetoric chastising the regime and the much-maligned nuclear deal, but he needs to keep that momentum going in order to restore stability and balance in the Middle East; a process that Nathan Field, founder and former CEO of Industry Arabic, a translation company that provided services to over 300 high-profile customers throughout the Middle East, praised in a piece for The Hill.

“President Trump’s hardline but pragmatic approach to Iran is paving the way for the restoration of a semblance of order and regional stability. That’s a significant accomplishment for an administration still in its first 100 days,” Field writes.

“Effective foreign policy is not necessarily a matter of complicated treaties that take years to negotiate or opaque theories on international relations that only PhDs can understand. A simple message and tone set at the top is often all that’s needed.”

Field notes how President Trump has made Iranian adventurism throughout the Middle East an issue requiring a coordinated, but firm response, thereby correcting the errors made by the Obama administration.

The deal not only does not “guarantee that Iran will never obtain nuclear weapons, in the process of negotiating it, Iranian leaders, sensing that the U.S. wanted the deal more than they did, felt emboldened throughout the region in countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Yemen,” he said.

One telling example was the American non-response to a series of Iranian cyber-attacks on U.S. banks because, as one official noted, “If we had unleashed the fury in response to that DDoS attack, I don’t know if we would have gotten an Iran deal.”

“The Obama administration, by contrast, alienated nearly every traditional U.S. Middle East ally. Having thrown all of its prestige into a nuclear deal with Iran, opposed by most of the countries of the region, Washington had no leverage.”

The payoffs for the Trump administration’s tougher line against Iran has already yielded some benefits with Saudi Arabia’s willingness to send more troops to Syria and set up safe zones for refugees to stem the flood of a Syrian exodus from the war.

In many ways, Iran is slowly finding itself nudged back onto an island of isolation, even as the mullahs desperately reach out to Russia, China and Turkey in efforts to remain politically and diplomatically relevant.

We can only hope this Nowrouz brings a much better new year to the Iranian people; one that will eventually see them freed from the oppression of the mullahs.

Laura Carnahan

Iranian Regime Delivers Nowruz Message of Hostility

This weekend marks the start of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which coincides with the spring equinox and includes many traditions such as a spring cleaning of one’s home, visiting with family and friends and feasting. It is regarded as the most important holiday in Iran and is always a prime opportunity for the Iranian regime to make a strategic and public point each year.

This year, top mullah Ali Khamenei did not disappoint in delivering a Nowruz message that could be considered an annual laundry list of grievances and perceived slights against the regime by the U.S. and was a reminder of just how ridiculous the Iran lobby’s contentions were of spurring a new “moderate” Iran after the nuclear deal.

Khamenei on Sunday said sanctions continue to bite the country’s economy, and again warned against trusting the U.S. — further indicating that the nuclear deal has not changed the mullah’s behavior towards West.

“They removed the sanctions in paper only,” Khamenei said in a televised address. “We don’t have any problem with the American people. What we are dealing with here is the politicians. They are the enemies.”

Khamenei’s remarks came after President Obama delivered his own Nowruz message to the Iranian people with his hopes for a more peaceful future. It obviously fell on the deaf ears of Khamenei.

“In Western countries and places which are under U.S. influence, our banking transactions and the repatriation of our funds from their banks face problems … because (banks) fear the Americans,” he said.

“The U.S. Treasury … acts in such a way that big corporations, big institutions and big banks do not dare to come and deal with Iran,” Khamenei added. The Central Bank of Iran has also said remaining U.S. sanctions have scared off European firms.

To drive the point home, the stage on which Khamenei sat carried a giant banner reading “the year of the Resistance Economy: Action and Implementation”, his chosen slogan for the Iranian year 1395 that began on Sunday. The banner was a not-too-subtle declaration of how the mullahs view the relationship the regime will have in the upcoming year with the rest of the world and it isn’t one of moderation.

“The candidates for the American presidency have competed to vilify Iran in their speeches, and this is a sign of hostility,” he added as he portrayed all of the candidates running for office as enemies of the regime.

Khamenei’s comments come also following an announcement that the regime’s Revolutionary Guard intends to build a statue commemorating the capture of ten U.S. sailors by the regime.

“There are very many photographs of the major incident of arresting US Marines in the Persian Gulf in the media and we intend to build a symbol out of them inside one of our naval monuments,” said Ali Fadavi, the head of the Guard’s naval forces in comments made to Iran’s Defense Press news agency.

It is expected the statue will built on Kharg, a small Iranian island in the Persian Gulf close to where the servicemen were captured, the Telegraph reported.

The regime never seems to miss an opportunity to publicly troll the U.S. and announce its antagonism and vitriol with almost child-like glee. It is a remarkable affirmation of how incredibly silly the Iran lobby’s positions on moderating Iran have been over the past several years.

Another example of that hypocrisy came in the form of an editorial published by the National Iranian American Council discussing Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, in which Shervin Vahedi lauded his most recent report criticizing the regime for brutal human rights abuses as somehow showing it was making clear progress towards improvements.

Vahedi bases those comments on a lone section discussing how the regime’s Supreme Court signaled it might take up the issue of executing citizens over drug-related offenses since the bulk of executions are said to be for similar offenses.

What Vahedi – and the most of the Iran lobby – ignore is how the regime uses trumped up drug offenses as a convenient means of executing and eliminating political dissidents, religious minorities and anyone else that opposes their rule.

Vahedi also reiterates much of what Shaheed has already cited in terms of the abuses and crackdowns aimed at journalists and artists, but does not make any comment condemning the abuses, nor calling for changes in Iran’s policies or in the regime’s leadership.

He only gives a limp and half-hearted endorsement from NIAC of continuing Shaheed’s mandate. You can almost imagine how difficult it was for the NIAC to utter even that small concession in the face of such overwhelming evidence.

For many languishing in the regime’s prisons, this is not a happy Nowruz for them or their families. The NIAC would do better to acknowledge their suffering and call for an end to it.

By Michael Tomlinson