Iran Lobby

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

Nowruz Should Bring Hope to Iranian People

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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

Former Iran Lobby Staffer Burrowing Deeper into State Department

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Former Iran Lobby Staffer Burrowing Deeper into State Department

Former Iran Lobby Staffer Burrowing Deeper into State Department

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), has burrowed into the government under President Trump. She’s now in charge of Iran and the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department, according to Conservative Review.

The reason why this is of concern is because of her previous employment at the National Iranian American Council, an organization with well-documented ties to the Iranian regime and a long-time supporter and advocate as part of the larger Iran lobby apparatus created to help support the loosening of sanctions on the regime.

In February, a group of over 100 prominent Iranian dissidents called for Congress to investigate NIAC’s ties to the Iranian regime.

“One of Nowrouzzadeh’s primary duties under President Obama was to promote initiatives that pushed the Iran deal. As President Obama’s NSC director for Iran, Nowrouzzadeh sat in on high-level briefings along with President Obama, former VP Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State John Kerry, as top White House staff crafted false narratives on the Iran deal to sell to the American public,” reported Jordan Schachtel.

According to the head of a state-run Iranian newspaper, Nowrouzzadeh was an essential element to pushing through the Iran deal. Editor-in-Chief Emad Abshenass said that she opened up a direct line of communication with the Iranian president’s brother. “She helped clear a number of contradictions and allowed the entire endeavor to succeed,” Abshenass said of her efforts.

Towards the end of President Obama’s tenure, Nowrouzzadeh was embedded into the State Department and for a brief time served as its Persian language spokesperson.

Breitbart News had earlier investigated Nowrouzzadeh’s prior employment with NIAC, finding that a person with the same name has previously written several publications on behalf of NIAC. According to what appears to be her LinkedIn account, Nowrouzzadeh became an analyst for the Department of Defense in 2005 before moving her way up to the National Security Council in 2014.

A NIAC profile from 2007 reveals that Sahar Nowrouzzadeh appears to be the same person as the one who is currently the NSC Director for Iran. The profiles indicate that she had the same double major and attended the same university (George Washington).

Critics have alleged that NIAC is a lobby for the current Iranian dictatorship under Ayatollah Khamenei. A dissident journalist revealed recently that NIAC’s president and founder, Trita Parsi, has maintained a years-long relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif.

The rise of this NIAC mole within the State Department is troubling since it allows a member of the Iran lobby to still maintain a position of significant influence in developing U.S. policy towards Iran.

The timing of her continued work within the State Department coincides with the upcoming Iranian election for president which is already shaping up to be another rigged cakewalk for Hassan Rouhani to continue as parliament speaker Ali Larijani publicly threw his support behind Rouhani.

Of further note, Rouhani has been selected as the only candidate of the so-called “Reformists” for the election by the Electoral Supreme Council of Reformists for Policymaking, headed by Mohammad-Reza Aref, who was the sole candidate of the Reformists in the 2013 presidential elections but in the final days ahead of that vote withdrew in favor of Rouhani.

The coronation of Rouhani comes as estimates of the Iranian regime’s military expenditures in Syria have risen a whopping $6 billion a year to $20 billion a year, including $4 billion in direct costs as well as subsidies for Hezbollah and other Iranian-controlled irregulars, according to an editorial by David P. Goldman in Asia Times.

“The Iranian regime is ready to sacrifice the most urgent needs of its internal economy in favor of its ambitions in Syria. Iran cut development spending to just one-third of the intended level as state income lagged forecasts during the three quarters ending last December, according to the country’s central bank. Iran sold $29 billion of crude during the period, up from $25 billion the comparable period last year,” Goldman added.

Goldman went on to describe Iran’s financial system as a “black hole,” and how the regime cannot refinance its arrears, recapitalize its bankrupt banks, and finance a substantial budget deficit at the same time. Its infrastructure requirements are not only urgent, but existential.  The country’s much-discussed water crisis threatens to empty whole cities and displace millions of Iranians, particularly the farmers who consume more than nine-tenths of its disappearing water supply. Despite what the Tehran Times called “a desperate call for action” by Iranian environmental scientists, the government slashed infrastructure spending by two-thirds during the last fiscal year.

This leaves American policy in a quandary. The Obama administration— as Lieutenant General Michael Flynn warned in this and numerous other statements — inadvertently stood godfather to the birth of ISIS by blundering into the milieu of Syrian Sunni rebels.

All of which places a greater emphasis on just who is developing U.S. policy moving forward and why a housecleaning of former Iran lobby associates is necessary.

Michael Tomlinson

Academy Awards Shocker Came From Iran Regime Comments Not Best Picture Gaffe

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Academy Awards Shocker Came From Iran Regime Comments Not Best Picture Gaffe

Academy Awards Shocker Came From Iran Regime Comments Not Best Picture Gaffe

Pretty much the entire planet has seen or heard about the mistaken Best Picture announcement for “La La Land” only to find out that “Moonlight” had indeed won instead in a mistake that put Steve Harvey’s mistaken Miss Universe crowning to shame.

Aside from the stunned faces of the audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, the moment became an instant viral sensation as social media buzzed about the historic mistake, but the real shocker came a day later when the Iranian regime’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif lauded comments made by the cast and crew of the film “The Salesman” which won an Oscar for best foreign film critical of the Trump administration’s immigration visa moratorium.

Zarif tweeted out his own congratulations for the statement read for Iranian film director Asghar Farhadi who chose to stay away from the 89th Annual Academy Awards ceremony in protest over President Trump’s travel ban.

“Proud of cast & crew of ‘The Salesman’ for Oscar & stance against #MuslimBan. Iranians have represented culture & civilization for millennia,” said Zarif’s tweet.

Zarif’s tweet was met by a blistering series of responses from CNN anchor Jake Tapper who took Zarif to task for lauding an Iranian filmmaker while the regime regularly imprisons other dissident Iranian filmmakers.

On Monday, Tapper tweeted how Iran has treated filmmakers in the past, which included long jail sentences and not being permitted to leave the country for decades, according to the Daily Caller.

Tapper went on to list several prominent Iranian filmmakers who are languishing in regime prisons.

“2/Iran regularly jails its filmmakers. Such as Keywan Karimi guilty of ‘insulting sanctities’ in October 2015,” he tweeted.

“3/Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to make an ‘antiregime’ documentary,” he continued.

“4/Documentary filmmaker/women’s rights activist Mahnaz Mohammadi was jailed for collaborating with the BBC,” he added.

“5/ Musician Mehdi Rajabjan and filmmaker Hossein Rajabian were jailed for “insulting Islamic sanctities,” he tweeted.

“6/ So FM @JZarif? The traditions of your brilliant people are being oppressed by the tyranny of your government. Tweets notwithstanding,” Tapper concluded.

Tapper correctly points out the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime when it lauds comments that support its propaganda efforts, and yet deals harshly with anyone caught criticizing the regime of stepping outside of approved cultural or moral norms.

All of which makes comments made by top mullah Ali Khamenei earlier this month even more interesting when seen in the light of Zarif’s tweets.

In a speech in the East Azerbaijan region of Iran, Khamenei said that a war on Iran’s culture and economy is more dangerous to his Islamic regime than any military threat from the West, according to Breitbart News.

“A European official said to our officials that a war in Iran would have been inevitable if it had not been for the Bar-Jaam,” Khamenei said, referring to the nuclear agreement brokered by the Obama administration and Western allies. “That official said that if the Bar-Jaam had not been signed, the war would have been definite.”

“This is a blatant lie!” Khamenei said in the speech. “Why do they speak about war? They do so because they want to switch our minds to a military war, but the real war is something else.”

“The real war is an economic war, the real war is the war of sanctions, the real war is the arenas of work, activity, and technology inside the country,” Khamenei said. “This is the real war!”

“They draw our attention to a military war so that we ignore this war,” Khamenei said. “The real war is a cultural war.

“There are so many television and internet networks which are busy diverting the hearts and minds of our youth away from religion, our sacred beliefs, morality, modesty and the like,” Khamenei said.

In this regard Khamenei is correct since what the mullahs abhor more than anything else is free and independent thinking it seems. Free expression and divergent opinion is met with a fury from the mullahs akin to a full scale invasion; except for the ruling mullahs an invasion of ideas seems to be more dangerous than U.S. Marines landing on the beaches of Iran.

This also explains why the regime has always been especially brutal in its crackdowns of artists, journalists, bloggers and filmmakers as a means of controlling public discourse and the flow of creativity among the Iranian people.

It also explains why the regime has worked so hard at restricting access to social media platforms and web sites judged to have anti-regime materials on it.

Inevitably though, the slow creep of the arts have proven to be a strong antidote to totalitarian thinking and we can only hope that the Academy Awards will one day be celebrating the work of an Iranian filmmaker who know sits in prison.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime Continues to Ramp up Tensions with Naval War Games

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Iran Regime Continues to Ramp up Tensions with Naval War Games

Iran Regime Continues to Ramp up Tensions with Naval War Games

The Iranian regime has been busy lately playing at war games with the gusto of a 10-year-old boy with his new toys. After going on a multi-billion dollar shopping spree using cash provided courtesy of the U.S. for the release of American hostages and as a result of lifting economic sanctions with the nuclear agreement, the mullahs in Tehran have been busy showing off their new toys.

This has included test firing new ballistic missiles, launching new Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles, flying new aerial drones and sailing new ships designed to launch small ship raids against larger warships such as the U.S. Navy.

The Iranian regime has also been busy resupplying Houthi rebels in Yemen with smuggled shipments of rockets, mortar rounds, ammunition and guns. It has also been sending a steady stream of fighters culled from Afghan mercenaries, Shiite militias in Iraq and its own Quds Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps to fight in Syria.

Meanwhile its navy has been busy flitting about the Persian Gulf and Red Sea to run aggressively at U.S. Navy warships in an attempt to intimidate and possibly cause an incident on the high seas.

This sort of action continued with the launch of a series of war games both on the ground and at sea. The regime just completed three days of war games and launched another series of war games; these to be conducted in a massive area stretching 772,000 square miles from the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman, through the Indian Ocean and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

Announcing the exercise on Sunday, regime Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said: “The aim of the Velayat 95 drill is to upgrade the country’s defensive capabilities and send Iran’s message of peace and friendship to the regional countries.”

Millions of barrels of oil are transported daily to Europe, the US and Asia through the Bab el-Mandab and the Strait of Hormuz, waterways that run along the coasts of Yemen and Iran and has often been used by the Iranian regime as a threat to global trade.

The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based in the region and protects shipping lanes in the Gulf and nearby waters.

On top of the regime banging the war drum loudly, it announced its intentions to buy 950 tons of uranium ore from Kazakhstan over the next three years and is relying on Russia to help refining the uranium into nuclear fuel.

The deal would not technically violate the horrifically bad nuclear agreement between Iran and the U.S. and other nations because the deal did not set limits on the Iranian regime’s ability to produce supplies of uranium ore, which gives you an idea of how idiotic the deal was to begin with.

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, told the ISNA news agency that the purchase was supposed to happen “within three years.”

“650 tons will enter the country in two consignments and 300 tons will enter Iran in the third year,” he said.

Salehi said the final shipment of concentrate, known as yellow cake, would be turned into uranium hexafluoride gas and sold back to Kazakhstan — its first international sale of the compound which is used in the uranium enrichment process, according to Breitbart News.

Salehi said Iran has already received around 382 tons of yellow cake, primarily from Russia, since the nuclear deal came into force in January last year.

Under the deal, Iran is allowed to run around 5,000 “IR-1” centrifuges and has been testing more advanced models that can produce greater quantities of enriched uranium.

Taken together, the order to buy tons of uranium along with an almost constant string of military actions set an unsettling stage for the world in 2017. Couple these developments with the upcoming Iranian presidential elections in which it is assured that no dissident candidate will be allowed on the ballot by the regime’s ultraconservative Guardian Council, Iran will remain firmly in the control of mullah Ali Khamenei.

Amidst all of these provocative moves, the Iran lobby has been completely silent, never raising any objections to the escalation in Iran’s military activities, nor its desire to ramp up a civilian nuclear program that could be easily converted to military purposes.

For example, the Ploughshares Fund, which partly funds the National Iranian American Council, has been aggressive in making the claims that it works to stop nuclear proliferation, but in the case of the Iranian regime expanding its nuclear capacity, it is as deaf and dumb as a door post.

The lack of objections from the Iran lobby demonstrates its complicity in supporting these aggressive acts by the mullahs.

Michael Tomlinson

While Iran Regime Throws Roses It Denies Medical Treatment

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While Iran Regime Throws Roses It Denies Medical Treatment

While Iran Regime Throws Roses It Denies Medical Treatment

Nothing illustrates the cold, calculating nature of the Iranian regime than two incidents happening this week.

On the one hand, an American wrestling team was welcomed with open arms, red roses and a barrage of social media selfies as it arrived in Iran for a tournament that had been threatened in response to President Trump’s visa moratorium.

The two-day tournament began Thursday, when U.S. wrestlers faced off against Georgia, Russia and Azerbaijan. The Iranian regime didn’t miss the opportunity to stage photos of the Americans being surrounded by well-wishers and flooding social media with comments praising the team, but deriding the U.S. government.

“Welcome to Iran champ!!!!” one Iranian user, Saeed Mohammadi, commented on an Instagram photo.

Another, Nima Jan, said he was traveling to the stadium to cheer for the Americans,

“You proved that you are a noble man.… This is a big chance for us,”Nima Jan commented on an Instagram. “We do not pay attention to the behavior of America’s government” toward Iran, according to the Washington Post.

Widely considered a national sport, wrestling has been one venue to maintain a cultural channel between Iran and the U.S. In fact, a U.S. wrestling team became the first American sports team to visit Iran since the revolution.

In contrast to that public photo opportunity, in the dank, dark confines of Evin prison, a British-Iranian mother and an aid worker languishes, falling ill and being denied medical treatment by the regime.

According to the Times of London, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, who has been held in prison since April last year, was denied urgent medical treatment for a neck injury sustained in prison that has left her unable to lift her arms or carry her child.

Prison officials last week refused to refer the charity worker to a neurologist, despite an X-ray and MRI scan revealing that vertebrae in her neck were out of place.

She is unable to move her arms beyond a certain point or lift her two-year-old daughter Gabriella, who is also trapped in Iran after regime authorities confiscated her British passport.

The cruelty of Ratcliffe’s continued incarceration and denial of medical care has earned sharp rebukes from the British government and human rights groups, but it follows a typical pattern of abuse heaped on detained dual national citizens by the regime.

Repeated incidents like this, depict an essential truth of the Iranian regime which is that it is without compassion or mercy and utilizes innocent people to its political advantage on the world stage. It will willingly use a sports team to stage a photo opp to protest moves designed to restrict the movement of terrorists supported by the Iranian regime and it will also put the screws to an ailing mother to put pressure on a British government balking at opening up trade with the regime.

The mullahs are cruel and callous and any press releases or news interviews by Iran lobby supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council cannot hide that simple truth.

The mullahs calculate every move and weigh every opportunity. They are less religious leaders and more like accountants and they count up the ill-gotten gains they receive from their various black market channels, especially with the nuclear agreement which opened up additional sources of funding to them.

Heshmat Alavi, an Iranian activist, penned a piece in Forbes looking at how the regime was benefitting from the nuclear agreement.

“Now in early 2017, however, signs indicate the main winners in Iran are none other than state-owned companies. This means Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the terrorist-supporting Revolutionary Guards are enjoying JCPOA benefits,” Alavi writes.  “At least 90 of the nearly 110 agreements, totaling nearly $80 billion, involve such state-controlled companies. This includes the National Iranian Oil Company, parallel to others run by regime pension funds and massive conglomerates of semi-public nature.”

“It is a known fact that Tehran maintains a heavy hand over the economy, providing circumstances allowing state-controlled firms to acquire most business deals made possible after sanctions were lifted. The private sector makes up a mere 20% of Iran’s economy, according to official estimates,” he added. “To this end, private companies have received a dismal 17 deals, including a hotel management contract sealed most probably because of the French partner’s chief executive being the brother of Eshaq Jahangiri, Iran’s vice president.”

For the Iranian regime, decision-making is all about perception, economic benefits and exporting its extremist brand of Islam.

Unfortunately, until the world joins together again to confront the Iranian regime, innocents such as Ratcliffe will continue to pay the price.

Laura Carnahan

Campaign of Disinformation by Iran Regime Revealed

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Campaign of Disinformation by Iran Regime Revealed

Campaign of Disinformation by Iran Regime Revealed

Besides the much-discussed “echo chamber” that arose out of the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal utilizing a network of so-called experts in academia and organizations such as the National Iranian American Council to push false narratives about the benefits of the deal, the Iranian regime itself has undertaken several initiatives to push other false and misleading narratives to defame the Iranian dissident movement.

At the center of that disinformation campaign lays the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence Services. If Hitler relied on Joseph Goebbels to help spread Nazi propaganda, the mullahs in Tehran rely on the MOIS to do the same job.

To say the MOIS is a shadowy organization is like saying grease is slippery. The MOIS was created out of the former Shah of Iran’s infamous SAVAK intelligence service which had been notorious for its brutal methods.

The mullahs opted to keep much of the former intelligence services more ruthless elements in support of the founding of their religious theocracy. As part of its first missions, it sought to infiltrate many of the democracy and opposition groups in those early years and insidiously target and even assassinate many of its leaders to help secure the mullahs’ rule.

Since then the MOIS has blazed a trail that included an infamous series of assassinations of dissident writers and intellectuals and Iranian political dissidents both inside and outside Iran. Of special importance were members of resistance groups such as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran otherwise known as the Mojahedin-e Khalq.

For the MOIS and the mullahs it serves, nothing is more galling than to have fellow Iranians actively and aggressively resist their rule because as long as Iranians oppose their rule, the pathway exists for regime change and a transition to freedom and democracy.

One of the more aggressive tactics the MOIS has employed to distort the discussion about the Iranian regime’s policies has been the use of former dissident members who were either recruited or coerced into denouncing opposition movements.

Col. Wes Martin (US), former Anti-terrorism/Force Protection Officer of all Coalition forces in Iraq and a frequent news contributor, wrote about the MOIS use of disinformation in the U.S. in a piece in The Hill.

A report commissioned by the Pentagon and released by the Library of Congress provides an alarming look into the operations of Iran’s MOIS right here in the United States, he writes.

“MOIS recruited former members of the (People’s Mujahedin of Iran-PMOI, also known as MEK) in Europe and used them to launch a disinformation campaign against (PMOI),” the report reads.

Among those named in the Pentagon report are Massoud Khodabandeh and his British wife, Anne. They were recruited by the MOIS in the mid-1990s and used as assets against the opposition before launching the ‘Iran-Interlink’ website explicitly under Tehran’s orders, Martin adds.

“The MOIS resorts to character assassination against lawmakers and reporters who hold positive views of the Iranian opposition, aiming to silence their voices,” he said.

Martin cited a 2014 report by iSight Partners which uncovered a three-year espionage campaign, originating in Iran, that used an elaborate scheme involving a fabricated news agency, fake social media accounts and bogus journalist identities to deceive victims in the United States and elsewhere.

Martin went on to cite other fake news sites operated by Khodabandeh such as mesconult.com are hosted by Ravand Cybertech, an entity run by the Iranian regime directly. It is not a coincidence that postings from these sites are often cited in Iranian state-controlled media as “news sources.”

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, an Iranian-American scholar, author and U.S. foreign policy specialist and president of the International American Council, also wrote about the more direct introduction of Iranian regime lobbyists and operatives into the U.S. and Europe on the ground to push the regime’s agenda.

“Many argue that some of Iran’s lobbyists work in plain sight and had access to top officials at the White House and State Department; they lobbied for the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic Republic, top state sponsor of terrorism, and subsequently lifting of sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), while demonizing Iranian-Americans who called for firmness against Iran’s ruling clerics and ayatollahs,” he writes.

“Cutting to the chase, it seems that the lobbyists and advocates for the Islamic Republic, next dismiss anyone suggesting the US should respond to this appalling conduct with firmness as a warmonger. But nobody appears to want, or ask for, armed conflict with Iran, so that is not an option,” he adds.

The disconnect between the claims of the Iranian regime’s lobbyists and supporters and the reality of the day grows larger every day. Unfortunately, those who are capable of setting a new standard for disagreeing with the regime even on a subtle level seem to cave to the Iran lobby’s arguments.

One example was a visit by a delegation from Sweden’s self-declared “first feminist government” which folded and enshrouded themselves in head coverings as they met with Hassan Rouhani in a blatant blow to Iran’s feminist movement, which has been under severe attacks by the mullahs.

UN Watch declared in a press release its concern over Sweden’s failure to promote a “gender equality perspective.”

In doing so, the Swedish female politicians ignored the recent appeal by Iranian women’s right activists who urged Europeans female politicians “to stand for [their] own dignity” and refuse to wear the hijab when visiting Iran.

“European female politicians are hypocrites,” says one activist. “Because they stand up with French Muslim women and condemn the burkini ban—because they think compulsion is bad—but when it happens to Iran, they just care about money.”

The scene in Tehran on Saturday was also a sharp contrast to Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin’s feminist stance against Trump, in a viral tweet and then in a Guardian op-ed last week, in which she wrote that “the world need strong leadership for women’s rights.”

Linde “sees no conflict” between her government’s human rights policy and signing trade deals with an oppressive dictatorship that tortures prisoners, persecutes gays, and is a leading executioner of minors, UN Watch declared.

We can only hope that world media attention is more tightly focused on the real machinations going on with the Iran lobby and its MOIS taskmasters.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Echo Chamber Going Full Bore to Support Iran Regime

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Iran Lobby Echo Chamber Going Full Bore to Support Iran Regime

Iran Lobby Echo Chamber Going Full Bore to Support Iran Regime

With the Trump White House announcing a series of new sanctions aimed at officials of the Revolutionary Guard Corps for the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile program, as well as contemplating broad new sanctions stemming from a possible designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, the Iran lobby and supporters of the regime have launched an all-out PR effort to prop up the faltering regime.

In a campaign similar to the infamous “echo chamber” of academics and advocates furiously penning editorials and giving interviews to sympathetic media outlets, the Iran lobby is trying anything to deflect attention on the regime’s militancy and instead claim anything aimed at punishing the regime is somehow racist or a prelude to armed conflict.

But the effort to come to the aid of the mullahs in Tehran isn’t just limited to the usual assorted Iran sympathizers as European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini met with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and spoke “at length” about the Iran nuclear deal according to Reuters.

Mogherini helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, along with diplomats from Iran, the United States and other major world powers. The deal curbed Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief said Reuters.

Trump has said the deal is terrible, and Flynn put Iran “on notice” last week for test-firing a ballistic missile, raising the prospect of spiking tensions between Iran and the United States.

Since the deal, Mogherini has visited Tehran while the regime commenced a series of ghastly executions of men and women; none of which were protested by the EU.

Even Russia Today weighed in as well by publishing an opinion piece by John Wright, an outspoken supporter of the Iran nuclear deal, who took the Trump administration to task for focusing on Iran instead of the world’s “number one terrorist state” in his mind—Saudi Arabia.

“The Trump administration’s consistent and ongoing demonization of Iran flies in the face of reality in which Iran has stood, alongside Syria, Russia, the Kurds, and the Iranian-backed Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, as a pillar against the very same Salafi-jihadist terrorism that poses a threat to the American people,” Wright said in a splendid example of mimicking the very same messages consistently uttered by the National Iranian American Council and other Iran lobby members.

Wright went on to hammer Saudi Arabia, while essentially excusing the vile acts of ISIS and downplaying anything the Iranian regime has done by comparison. His logic or lack thereof defies commonsense and represent the intellectual vacuum that characterizes much of the Iran lobby’s arguments.

In a more flimsy example of casting doubt on efforts to designate the IRGC a terrorist organization, the Chicago Tribune offered up a story with the dubious headline of “Warnings for White House on terror designation for Iran Revolutionary Guard” and goes on to hint at warnings from defense officials, but neglects to mention anyone specifically, nor offer a single quote against the planned designation.

It does however rehash the discredited story of the terror designation of Iranian dissident groups in a message point repeatedly endlessly by the Iran lobby as part of the smear campaign against opposition groups.

Another Iran lobby message point was trolled out by William O. Beeman, an anthropology professor and not a national security expert, who nevertheless offered up the same silly arguments that folks like Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of NIAC put forth, in an editorial.

“The tiny issue on which the US objection rests is whether the Iranian missiles are capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Iran says: no! The United States (and Israel) say ‘maybe,’ because they can’t know for sure whether this is the case. In the latest missile test, the missile blew up, so no one can say one way or the other,” he writes.

Beeman should stick to teaching about dead civilizations.

The issue of ballistic missiles is not a “tiny” one. Iran’s development of longer-range missiles based on illicitly acquired North Korean designs has produced missiles with over a 2,000-km range, giving it intercontinental reach. Tie this with the development of solid fuel boosters and you now approach the threshold weight necessary for a nuclear weapon. But put that aside, it is more than enough thrust and range for a chemical or biological weapon to be aimed at Eastern Europe, North Africa and India and China.

The Economist went even further claiming that Trump’s punitive actions against the Iranian regime were actually helping it.

Most incredulous of all was the opening line from the piece which claimed “the ritual chants of ‘Death to America’ had grown fainter in recent years. The feverish crowds had thinned. Some demonstrators seemed to wave Uncle Sam banners less to jeer America than to cheer it. Yet thanks to Donald Trump this year’s annual rally to commemorate Islamic Revolution Day on February 10th in Tehran looks set to be one of Iran’s biggest.”

The Economist fails to mention that the regime can ramp up attendance any time it needs to with help from the Basij paramilitaries to round up supporters under threat of beatings and the chants aimed at America have not stopped and will never stop under the mullahs.

It also makes the same mistake all media make who do not understand the dynamics of the mullahs’ hold over Iran by continuing to make a distinction between “hardliners” and “moderates” in Iran’s government.

Let’s set the record straight: There are no moderates in Iran’s government. Moderation within the regime is akin to making distinctions between the SS and Brown shirts in Hitler’s Reich. It’s only variations on the theme of extremism. One could say that compared to ISIS, Al-Qaeda looks like a Boy Scout troop.

The argument that Trump only emboldens the “hardliners” is a self-fulfilling prophecy since the hardliners have been and always will be in control of Iran.

Michael Tomlinson

The News Keeps Getting Worse for Iran Regime and Lobby

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The News Keeps Getting Worse for Iran Regime and Lobby

The News Keeps Getting Worse for Iran Regime and Lobby

To say things aren’t looking so great for the Iranian regime would be stating the obvious at the moment. Even before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the regime suffered setbacks in Syria requiring the intervention of Russia and at home where gross mismanagement of the economy and rampant corruption coupled with plunging prices for oil sank the Iranian economy further in the red.

Protests mounted at home requiring even more brutal crackdowns, sending another spiral of discontent against the mullahs spreading out like ripples in a pond with a stone tossed in it, but now the mullahs are facing the full brunt of the end of Obama’s appeasement era.

The discussion of designating the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization can be the most effective act if undertaken by the new administration so far and if true, would be a welcome boon to the Iranian dissident movement that have been fighting the IRGC for decades.

According to Reuters officials said several U.S. government agencies have been consulted about such a proposal, which if implemented would add to measures the United States has already imposed on individuals and entities linked to the IRGC.

The IRGC is by far Iran’s most powerful security entity, which also has control over large stakes in Iran’s economy and huge influence in its political system.

Reuters has not seen a copy of the proposal, which could come in the form of an executive order directing the State Department to consider designating the IRGC as a terrorist group. It is unclear whether Trump would sign such an order.

Some of Trump’s more hawkish advisors in the White House have been urging him to increase sanctions on Iran since his administration began to take shape. After tightening sanctions against Iran last week in response to a ballistic missile test, White House officials said the measures were an “initial” step.

The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the IRGC. In 2007, the U.S. Treasury designated the IRGC’s Quds Force, its elite unit in charge of its operations abroad, “for its support of terrorism,” and has said it is Iranian regime’s “primary arm for executing its policy of supporting terrorist and insurgent groups.”

A designation of the entire IRGC as a terrorist group would potentially have much broader implications, including for the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and the United States and other major world powers.

Because the IRGC controls huge swathes of the Iranian economy through a complex web of shell companies, the designation as a terrorist organization could expose almost all of the Iranian economy to potential sanctions, separate and apart from the nuclear deal. This includes industries such as petroleum, telecommunications, healthcare, aviation and agriculture.

Officials said that rather than tearing up the nuclear agreement, the White House might turn instead toward punishing Iranian regime for its support for Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and some Shiite forces in Iraq, as well as covert support for Shiites who oppose the Sunni regime in Bahrain, and cyberattacks on Saudi and other Gulf Arab targets.

Top mullahs Ali Khamenei took his turn to try and blast President Trump in remarks on Tuesday saying the U.S. leader had exposed his country’s “political, economic, ethical and social corruption.”

“We are grateful to this gentleman who has come, grateful because he made it easy for us and showed the U.S.’s real face,” Khamenei said referring to Trump.

On Tuesday White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Mr. Trump would take action “as he sees fit” and “will not take anything off the table.”

“Iran is kidding itself if they don’t realize that there’s a new president in town,” Spicer said.

Middle East security analyst Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council told VOA Persian’s NewsHour program on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s approach toward Iran was very different from that of its predecessor.

“Under the Obama administration, Iran had enormous latitude politically and economically in terms of reaping benefits from the nuclear deal,” said Berman, who serves as senior vice president of the Washington-based conservative research institute.”Under the Trump White House, it is not known whether the nuclear deal is off the table completely, but it is very clear that the new administration is going to pursue a more confrontational approach [toward implementing it].”

Berman based his assessment of the new U.S. policy on what he called the Trump national security team’s “remarkable … commonality of views” about Iran.

“From Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to national security adviser Michael Flynn, there is very deep skepticism about Iranian intentions and whether or not it’s a good idea to continue the nuclear deal, and there’s very deep apprehension about the destabilizing role that Iran can play in the Persian Gulf region,” Berman said. “So I think you see a much more realistic view of Iran beginning to take shape.”

The unpredictability of the new U.S. administration’s future plans may be the motivating factor in the decision by the Iranian regime to hastily scrap a planned missile launch of a longer-range ballistic missile.

The New York Post editorial board attributed the last-minute change to the regime blinking in the face of the tough talk coming from the White House.

“Fox News reports that new satellite imagery, verified by US officials, shows Iran has abruptly removed a new missile that was being prepared for launch as recently as Friday.

“It was a long-range Safir missile — a class that Tehran last launched into space two years ago, and that uses the same components as those needed for an intercontinental ballistic missile.

“The images showed a flurry of activity, including a host of visitors, on the launchpad Feb. 3, the day the missile was first spotted.

“Then, on Tuesday, the missile was gone,” the Post said.

The tough response from Trump was “unlike anything Tehran saw in eight years under President Barack Obama — whose State Department routinely issued reports critical of Iran, but turned a blind eye to the Islamic Republic’s nefarious behavior, not to mention its repeated violations of the sweetheart nuclear deal.”

“It’s a sign that for Iran, the days of wine and roses — and blind-eye treatment — are over. And perhaps an even more welcome sign that tough talk, combined with tough action, really does work,” the Post added.

We couldn’t agree more.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries to Deflect from More Sanctions With Smear Campaign

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Iran Lobby Tries to Deflect from More Sanctions With Smear Campaign

Iran Lobby Tries to Deflect from More Sanctions With Smear Campaign

The mullahs in Tehran are probably wondering how things went so bad, so fast for them as the Trump administration followed up it’s tough talk of putting the Iranian regime “on notice” with new sanctions aimed at its ballistic missile program.

The difference from the accommodating Obama administration to the Trump approach to Iran has been night and day and one that must be causing consternation in Tehran. It has also spurred the Iran lobby into action to try and defuse the rising tide of momentum against the Iranian regime.

For the Iran lobby, it is taking a page out of their old playbook to attack and smear anyone even remotely associated with the Iranian resistance movement. The latest example has been the effort to try and smear one of President Trump’s cabinet secretaries and his circle of advisories. In this case, Elaine Chao, confirmed last week as transportation secretary, and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The Associated Press’ Jon Gambrell ran a story saying that Chao, while as a private citizen, was paid a speaking fee from a human rights group associated with an Iranian dissident group that had at one time been placed on the U.S. State Department’s terrorism watch list only to be removed after the facts in question were proven untrue.

Chao herself confirmed she received $50,000 in 2015 for delivering a speech to a rally held in support of human rights in Iran sponsored by a coalition of human rights and dissident groups under the umbrella of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

One of the groups belonging to the coalition is the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), otherwise known as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran. Giuliani was also a featured speaker and paid an honorarium.

The list of supporters of the Iranian dissident movement though is much broader and bipartisan than the AP intimates, including prominent Republicans such as former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Democrats such as former Sen. Robert Torricelli.

From these loose “facts” the Iran lobby has consistently attempted to peddle a “guilt-by-association” theory, which might work if there was anything to be guilty about. The true facts are that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s own State Department made the decision to remove these Iranian dissident groups from any watch or terror lists and since then, these groups have worked tirelessly on behalf of the Iranian people.

Moreover, these Iranian dissident groups have proven instrumental in revelations about the Iranian regime’s secret practices, including the first leaks made to the public about Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program and its horrific human rights abuses.

All of which makes Gambrell’s story even more ludicrous since he writes himself that the “nothing was prohibited” about the paid speeches both Chao and Giuliani made. He also neglects to make any comparisons on the other side.

For example, even though the Iranian regime and its functionaries such as the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force remain on the U.S. list of designated sponsors of terrorism and that these groups supplied the IEDs to Shiite militias in Iraq that killed and wounded thousands of U.S. men and women service personnel, the Obama administration felt it okay to engage in active diplomacy and agree to a nuclear deal.

The difference is appalling.

What is even more curious about Gambrell’s article is how he takes the Iranian dissident groups to task for cheerleading against the Iranian regime and recruiting American political leaders to the cause.

Last time we checked, we didn’t see any problems in opposing the public execution of women and children in Iran or the arrest and imprisonment of dual national citizens, including Americans or the use of terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah to eradicate entire Syrian villages of men, women and children.

Gambrell even goes to the deepest, darkest well of lies promoted by the Iran lobby in trying to link these dissident groups to attacks on Americans in 1975 (which he admits, has been rejected by the organization, as all its leaders were in Shah’s SAVAK prisons), but fails to mention the Americans killed by Iranian agents in Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq. At some point, any reasonable journalist would ask the question why is it okay to excuse Iranian regime-sponsored killing of Americans, yet try to appease and accommodate that same regime.

Gambrell’s biggest complaint about the Iranian dissident movement seems to be its effectiveness in fundraising and communicating its message to global media. In that regard, these groups are no different than environmental activists or free trade protestors.

To say these claims have been discredited over and over again would be redundant and eventually pointless since Chao, as transportation secretary, has no influence over foreign policy, unless the U.S. plans on building a new subway in Tehran, but it seems this is the best the Iran lobby can come up with these days as it sees the Trump administration take its first firm steps in finally holding Iran accountable once again.

While the initial sanctions announced by the Trump administration seem relatively minor in scope and effect by targeting Iranian officers and executives tied to the IRGC, it also included related Chinese, Emirati and Iranian business executives for their role as well.

The expansion is important since it broadens the scope of what the U.S. is looking for in terms of suppliers to the regime, but it also signals that the administration is open to widening the net in the future.

U.S. lawmakers are drafting legislation that would require the White House to designate Iran’s elite military unit, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, as a terrorist organization. Companies owned by the IRGC control large sectors of the Iranian economy, according to the Wall Street Journal.

This is a significant step since a broad terror designation for the IRGC, linked to its web of companies in support of an illicit ballistic missile program could make wide sectors of the Iranian regime’s economy open to new sanctions separate and apart from the nuclear deal.

Hence it would be able to sanction Iran’s most corrupt organizations without having to scrap the nuclear deal as the Iran lobby has warned the new U.S. administration would.

All of which is sure to worry the Iran lobby even more and spur even more scandalous lies and falsehoods.

Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime Keeps Pushing Extremism In Spite of Controversy

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Iranian Regime Keeps Pushing Extremism In Spite of Controversy

Iranian Regime Keeps Pushing Extremism In Spite of Controversy

While fierce debate rages over President Trump’s executive orders on immigration from seven nations with ties to terrorism, including Iran and Syria, the Iranian regime is using this as a distraction while it continues its efforts to keep pushing its extremist actions across the region.

Chief among them was a resumption of ballistic missile test launches in violation of existing restrictions by the U.S. and United Nations. The launch, which took place at a site more than 130 miles east of Tehran, is Iran’s first real test of the Trump administration.

The missile was tracked flying southward 650 miles before exploding when its reentry vehicle failed, according to officials who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on intelligence.

The missile has been tested before, officials said, most recently in July 2016, according to the Los Angeles Times.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Monday that the administration was aware the test took place, but wouldn’t provide additional information.

“We’re looking into that,” he said. “We’re aware that Iran fired that missile. We’re looking into the exact nature of it, and I’ll try to have more for you later.”

Christopher Harmer, a military analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a nonpartisan public policy group in Washington, said that it’s impossible to know if Tehran conducted the test as a response to the president’s action, but that the test also serves as propaganda.

“Iran is always working on every aspect of its missile program: better guidance, more payload capacity, and better reliability,” he said. “They test often so it’s difficult to say for sure whether this is a response to the travel ban, but the timing is suspect.”

Trump, as a presidential candidate, was deeply critical of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “the worst deal ever negotiated.”

U.N. Resolution 2231, passed shortly after the nuclear deal was signed, calls on Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

The U.N. will now determine whether the launch was a violation at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to be held Tuesday.

Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned Iran for the missile test.

“No longer will Iran be given a pass for its repeated ballistic missile violations, continued support of terrorism, human rights abuses and other hostile activities that threaten international peace and security,” Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, said in a written statement.

President Trump on Sunday spoke with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, a conversation in which the two “agreed on the importance of rigorously enforcing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran and of addressing Iran’s destabilizing regional activities,” the White House said in a statement.

A ballistic missile launch could potentially fall under “destabilizing regional activities.”

The launch also came a day before Jordan’s King Abdullah arrived in Washington for meetings with Vice President Pence and Defense Secretary Mattis as the administration ramped up meetings with Iran’s neighbors to forge a consensus on dealing with the Iranian regime.

The ballistic missile launch wasn’t the end of Iran’s aggressions as Iran-backed Houthi rebels attacked a Saudi warship in the Red Sea Monday killing two sailors and wounding two others according to Fox News.

The Saudi frigate, Al Madinah, was conducting routine operations in the southern Red Sea when the attack occurred.

In October, U.S. Navy warships came under missile attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the same area of the southern Red Sea just north of the Bab al Mandab Strait.

For the first time in history, a U.S. destroyer successfully shot down incoming enemy missiles using SM-2 missiles in the October attack.

Days later Tomahawk cruise missile launched from the USS Nitze destroyed the Houthi radar installations responsible for firing on the U.S. warships.

The Iranian kept up its loud propaganda efforts by issuing official statements saying it would stop using the U.S. dollar in its official statements; an and ultimately futile gesture.

The decision was announced by Central Bank of Iran governor Valiollah Seif during a television interview on the evening of January 29 and, according to the paper, is due to take effect from the start of the new fiscal year on 21 March. It will affect all official financial and foreign exchange reports.

No doubt the move was aimed at making a response to the visa controversy, but if this was the extent of the Iranian regime’s response, it clearly demonstrates how feeble and weak it is in protesting the decision.

It also underscores the fact that the Iranian regime is already excluded from accessing U.S. currency exchanges as part of existing sanctions placed for the regime’s role in supporting terrorism.

Michael Tomlinson