Iran Lobby

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

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

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Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Fast-Sinking Iran Currency Demonstrates Weakness of Regime

Iran’s currency, the rial, took a nosedive in hitting a record low against the U.S. dollar as financial markets returned from the Christmas holiday and doubts crept up about the impact the incoming Trump administration would have on the struggling Iranian economy under the mullahs.

More importantly, the plunge in the rial was more proof of that the mullahs in Tehran were incompetent when it came to managing their economy and that supporting three large-scale wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and had drained the regime’s foreign currency reserves dry.

The much ballyhooed promises of the Iran lobby that the nuclear deal reached last year would yield economic benefits for the Iranian people fell as fast and as flat as the Iranian currency.

The rial was quoted in the free market at 41,500 to the dollar, weakening from around 41,250 on Sunday and 35,570 in mid-September. Before this month, the record low was about 40,000, hit in late 2012, traders said.

Economists said there were several reasons for the slide, including the dollar’s strength against many currencies in the last few weeks, and uncertainty before next year’s presidential elections in Iran, according to Reuters.

But they said Trump’s election in November was a major factor. He has said he will scrap the deal between Iran and world powers that imposed curbs on Tehran’s nuclear projects and lifted sanctions on the Iranian economy in January this year.

This would hinder Tehran’s efforts to attract tens of billions of dollars of foreign funds to help modernize its economy. Inflows since January have been smaller than the government expected, partly because big international banks fear running into U.S. legal trouble if they deal with Iran; this in spite of efforts by the outgoing Obama administration to grant waivers and exemptions to the regime in an effort to spur the flow of cash to Tehran.

Iranian officials have denied any link between the U.S. election result and the rial’s slide. Samad Karimi, head of the exports department at the central bank, blamed the slide on a temporary surge in demand for dollars for travel and trade at the end of the year, state news agency IRNA reported.

Regime spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said on Monday that the rial’s drop was due to “psychological issues” and that the government hoped it would rebound within days.

Nevertheless, traders at some exchange houses in Tehran told Reuters they had not seen a sudden rise of dollar demand in recent weeks – suggesting the reasons for the rial’s tumble might be deep-seated.

That assumption of deep-seated problems within the Iranian economy are true since Iran is notoriously corrupt with virtually of the nation’s industries controlled through a myriad of shell companies by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and personal family fiefdoms of regime leaders.

This arrangement restricts Iran’s ability to operate a true free market economy, but rather is run like a gangland-style criminal enterprise where nepotism, personal favorites and enrichment and slavish devotion to exporting its extremist Islamic ideology dominate economic and fiscal decisions.

How a President Trump will deal with the Iranian regime is fast becoming the dominant policy discussion in European and Middle Eastern capitals. The initial reaction to his announced cabinet choices shows the potential for a more hardline response to Iranian militancy and extremism with such avowed critics of the regime as Rep. Mike Pompeo and Sen. Jeff Sessions set to assume office.

The potential for a sea change from the policy of appeasement followed by the Obama administration has emboldened critics of the Iranian regime to speak out including Iranian dissident groups long shut out by Obama.

A group of leading Iranian human rights activists and former political prisoners published an open letter on Friday to President-elect Donald Trump asking for a wholesale change from President Obama’s rapprochement with Iran’s clerical regime.

“Unfortunately, Iranians have been among the main victims of the detrimental policies adopted by President Obama in the Middle East. A prime example of these detrimental policies was the secret delivery of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to the Revolutionary Guards in exchange for the release of the hostages,” the dissidents’ letter said.

Fox News first published the document, the full text of which can be read on the Farsi-language website Taghato, which is run by the Iranian Liberal Students and Graduates group.

The signatories come from France, Germany, East Asia, Canada, the US and other countries.

“The ISIS and the Islamic Republic of Iran are two sides of the coin that is Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. To end this reign of terror, the Islamic caliphate (ISIS) and the Islamic regime in Iran must be replaced with elected pro-peace and prosperity governments.”

The letter called for fresh sanctions targeting “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the supreme leader’s financial empire and direct the US Treasury to strongly enforce them” and stop Iran’s pursuit of long-range missiles.

Publication of the document electrified Iran’s social media and regime-controlled news outlets. The IRGC-controlled Fars News Agency called supporters of the letter traitors, while the subject was among the top hashtags on Twitter.

BBC Persian said the letter was re-tweeted more than 10,000 times.

The dissidents’ open letter is only one of many entreaties now being aimed at the Trump team in the hopes of reasserting America’s role as watchdog of the Iranian regime and curb on the mullahs.

For the Iranian people, renewing the push for democracy and accountability can only help improve their economic condition.

Michael Tomlinson

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

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Outrage over the carnage in Aleppo has so far been directed mainly at Damascus, but activists on the ground say Tehran has a top general on the scene and has established secret camps where Iraqi mercenaries are trained to root out rebels in the Syrian city.

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

Evidence Mounts of Iran Leadership in Aleppo Atrocities

According to information provided to FoxNews.com, the forces currently controlling the city of Aleppo are under the command of the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The military outfit under its command includes foreign mercenaries such as Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and also the Shiite fighters of the Liwa Fatemiyoun from Afghanistan and the Liwa Zainebiyoun from Pakistan.

At the same time, Iran participated in a summit in Moscow with Turkey and Russia to begin discussions on dividing up the spoils of the conflict now that Aleppo had fallen under merciless bombardment.

The meeting was further evidence of Iran’s emerging role in Syria, both during the ongoing civil war and the expected aftermath.

According to reports received by the opposition to the Iranian regime, the number of IRGC forces and its hired hands in Aleppo and the surrounding area has reached 25,000, while the number of military personnel from Assad’s army is very limited.

“This report leaves no doubt that the Iranian regime is the primary obstacle to any solution in Syria,” Shahin Gobadi, spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) told FoxNews.com. “The current situation in Aleppo and the role of the Iranian regime in the atrocities committed on the ground require the immediate expulsion of the IRGC and its mercenaries from Syria. By meddling in other countries the mullahs try to cover up their vulnerability at home. The survival of the [Iranian] regime has been intertwined with maintaining the Assad dictatorship in power in Syria.”

The reports, which were obtained by the NCRI and its sister organization People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), state that the commander of the Quds Force – as IGRC units operating outside Iran are known – in Aleppo is Brigadier General Javad Ghafari, who is described as the right-hand man of the Revolutionary Guard’s commander-in-chief, Qassem Soleimani, who has been referred to as the architect of Iran’s role in Russian operations in Syria, according to FoxNews.com

The MEK has established a track record of accurately reporting misdeeds by Tehran over the past decade, including its attempts to hide nuclear weapons-related facilities from UN inspectors, according to Middle East Eye.

The NCRI has also alleged that the Revolutionary Guard has established its main headquarters around 20 miles southeast of Aleppo in a garrison called Behuth, or Fort Behuth, which used to be one of the most important centers of missile and chemical weapon production for the Assad regime.

It is now under the supervision of Ghafari, but it also contains a center operated by Lebanese Hezbollah commanders, as well as a number of Syrian army officers who are also present, according to the intel reports.

“The fact is that Aleppo has been occupied by the IRGC and its mercenaries,” Gobadi said to FoxNews.com. “Mass executions, preventing the transfer of civilians including women and children, attacking the civilians – has all been done by the forces of the mullahs’ regime.

“[They] are the main source of crisis in Syria and the region,” he went on. “By abusing the inaction of the international community and being convinced of not being held accountable for its crimes, [Iran] has continuously become more emboldened.”

The U.N. puts the overall death toll in Syria’s civil war at 400,000. More than 30,000 have died in the Battle of Aleppo, a last urban rebel holdout against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit research group in Washington, has reported that Iran organized thousands of Shiite militias in Iraq not only to fight the Sunni Muslim Islamic State there, but also to deploy them to fight rebels in Aleppo.

The Washington Times recently interviewed Iranian dissidents who had escaped to Western Europe. They said Iran’s brutality at home and aboard has increased, not decreased, since the landmark nuclear deal with the U.S. that provided Tehran billions of dollars.

The MEK report provided to The Times says that Syrian government forces are scarce around Aleppo, meaning it is Iran doing the lion’s share of offensive maneuvers and killings.

“On two occasions the transfer of Aleppo residents were hindered and their buses were fired upon under the instructions of the IRGC to gain concessions on the residents [of] al-Foua and Kefraya,” said the MEK, referring to two towns north of Aleppo.

State Department spokesman John Kirby was asked Monday whether the U.S. will protest to the U.N. Security Council the fact that Gen. Soleimani has been spotted in Aleppo. The U.N. has banned him from international travel for his role in terrorism.

“We do intend to consult with our partners on the Security Council about how to address our concerns with this,” Kirby said. “We’ve long said that Iran needs to choose whether it’s going to play a positive role in helping peacefully resolve conflicts such as in Syria or whether it will choose to prolong them. And you’re absolutely right: His travel is a violation.”

Jim Phillips, a Middle East expert at The Heritage Foundation, said that Assad’s army is depleted and stretched thin protecting government-held territory.

“Without Iran’s expanding military intervention, the Assad regime would have fallen months ago,” Phillips said. “While Russia’s military intervention has dominated media coverage on Syria, Iran has been responsible for almost all of the ground offensives in recent months that clawed back territory from the rebels and encircled Aleppo. It has deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards.”

Michael Tomlinson

 

Complications and Conflicts Are Coming with Iran in 2017

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Complications and Conflicts Are Coming with Iran in 2017

Complications and Conflicts Are Coming with Iran in 2017

Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Physics states that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The same could be said for geopolitics as it relates to the Middle East where every act of terror seems to be met with a corresponding act of retribution and every scheme is met with another scheme by a competing entity or enemy.

For the Iranian regime, its actions throughout the Mideast has wrought suffering and destruction on a level not seen since World War II as the fall of Aleppo demonstrated with pictures and images reminiscent of bombed out cities such as Dresden or Tokyo.

Iran’s intervention at the start of the Syrian civil war to prop up the Assad regime set into motion a conflict that has claimed over 800,000 men, women and children and turned into refugees a whopping eight million people who have overwhelmed nations from Greece to Sweden.

Iranian regime sits at the center of most of the foreign policy challenges facing it in 2017, including:

Hezbollah

Long a loyal military proxy for the Iranian regime, the terrorist group Hezbollah has risen in prominence with its long campaign in Syria culminating in the fall of the rebel stronghold Aleppo. Iran has supplied Hezbollah with arms, cash and advanced weaponry for its campaigns, but the terror group’s bank account got a huge influx in cash coincidentally when the Obama administration secretly transferred $1.7 billion to Iran as part of the nuclear deal and hostage swap.

“While we cannot establish whether the money transferred from the U.S. went directly into the expanded defense budget, it, at a minimum, enabled the government to release an equal amount of money for defense purposes,” said Nimrod Raphaeli, a senior analyst at the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“It is noteworthy that the increase in the proposed defense budget for 2017 is approximately equal to the amount transferred by the U.S.,” he continued.

Raphaeli explained the government of Rohani “has submitted to the Majlis (parliament) a draft budget for the fiscal year March 2017-March 2018 for a total of $99.7 billion equivalent.”

That, he said, is up 13.9 percent, with a “sharp increase of 39 percent … in funds earmarked for defense, including a big increase in the budget of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards.”

The report described the IRGC as “a potent military force accountable to the supreme leader, in regional politics, and particularly in Syria and Iraq.”

“A branch of the IRGC, the Qods Force Brigade, commanded by Gen. Qasem Soleimani, is responsible for spreading Iran’s subversive and, often, terrorist activities across the Middle East and beyond.”

Soleimani was seen in eastern Aleppo this weekend surveying the remains of the city as residents, long trapped by the fighting, struggled to evacuate.

Syria

Syrian rebel leaders blamed Iran for halting the evacuation of civilians from Aleppo, leaving an uncertain fate for residents as Iranian forces backed Syrian government troops entering the beleaguered city.

The operation to evacuate fighters and civilians from the last opposition-held area of Aleppo was suspended on Friday, its second day, after pro-government militias demanded that wounded people also be brought out of al-Foua and Kefraya, and protesters blocked the road out of Aleppo.

Munir al Sayal, the head of the political wing of the Ahrar al Sham rebel group involved in negotiations over the deal said Iranian-backed Shi’ite fighters led by Hezbollah militia and other Iraqi Shi’ite groups were behind the detention of hundreds of people trying to leave on Friday, leading to some deaths before they were turned back, in an effort to disrupt the evacuation.

Iran Nuclear Deal

The success or failure of the Iran nuclear deal (depending on your affiliation with the Iran lobby) hinges not so much on whether or not Iranian regime adheres to the deal (since it already has broken several sections of it) but rather whether or not the U.S. finally holds Iran accountable for specific violations instead of trying to paper them over with waivers and exemptions.

The process of appeasing of the Iranian regime in order to support an illusory “moderate” movement within the Iranian government has yielded nothing of tangible worth and has only emboldened and empowered the regime and strengthened the hold the Revolutionary Guards Corp has on virtually every aspect of Iran.

In many ways, the UN’s international nuclear watchdog agency has already been compromised by politics by looking the other way with violations by Iran in heavy water limits, enrichment levels and amounts of enriched uranium. Hassan Rouhani’s recent pledges to launch a crash program to develop nuclear-power naval vessels would require fuel far in excess of the agreement’s levels; thereby putting the UN’s watchdog again on the spot.

Economic Sanctions

Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s insistence on paying $1.7 billion in cash to Iran and opening up the doors to foreign investment weakened the usefulness of future of economic sanctions by providing the Iranian regime with an economic cushion.

The mullahs recognize their vulnerability on this score and are in a mad dash to complete as many business deals as possible even threatening Trump with harsh repercussions should he interfere in the recently announced deal by Boeing to sell $16.6 billion worth of jet airliners to Iran.

For the mullahs, the airliners are vital since a nation cannot operate in a global economy without a strong and viable air network, but in Iran’s case airliners also serve as the vital air bridge to move arms, cash, supplies and fighters to their proxies in far flung battlefields. Emanuele Ottolenghi wrote in the Hill of Iran’s use of its airlines to support its wars.

“It is well known that Iranian passenger planes ferry Iranian-backed militias to Damascus from Iran’s airports such as Abadan, Yazd and Tehran. The aircraft also carry weaponry in their cargo compartment. Weapons flown to Damascus supply Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the regime forces of the Syrian army, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and their Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani Shiite militias,” Ottolenghi wrote.

“Conclusive evidence that Iran’s aircraft is the principal conduit for Tehran’s weapons and military personnel airlift in support of Assad’s war of extermination against his own people emerged recently, as Boeing representatives were in Tehran to finalize a $16.6 billion aircraft deal with Iran Air. Airbus will soon follow suit with an even larger deal,” he said.

While the outlook for the Mideast remains murky to say the least, there is no doubt that Iranian regime’s role and how it can be confronted will dominant much of 2017.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

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Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

Iran Lobby Tries Best Spin on Bad Day for Iran Regime

In what can be considered a symbolic show of disapproval, the Iran Sanctions Act reauthorization became law without President Obama’s signature. The near unanimous margins in Congress made Obama’s signature superfluous; providing a veto-proof margin.

The act was a last measure of defiance from Obama as he leaves office and the new president-elect has built a cabinet and national security team made up of critics of the nuclear agreement with the Iranian. It’s a childish and petulant act that reinforces how out of step the administration was from an American electorate unnerved by numerous terrorists attacks in the U.S., Asia, Africa and Europe motivated by Islamic extremism.

Clearly the Obama administration intends to provide as much running room for the mullahs in Tehran before it leaves office as Secretary of State John Kerry said that even though he considers it unnecessary to renew the existing waivers, he had done so anyway “to ensure maximum clarity” that the United States will meet its obligations under the deal, according to the Washington Post.

All of these efforts might be intended to reassure the Iranian regime, but they are largely meaningless actions since Trump can overturn all of the waivers granted for Iranian violations of the agreement, as well as impose economic sanctions, obliterating the nearly eight year effort to appease the mullahs in Tehran.

“President Obama doesn’t want to provide an excuse in the waning days of his administration for the Iranians to walk away from the deal,” said Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a prominent critic of the Iran deal.

“But at this point, he’s a lame-duck president, and what he does or does not do is completely irrelevant to the incoming administration and completely irrelevant to the Iranians.”

The irony of all these machinations is that the Iran lobby is left with so little leverage anymore within the U.S. government to influence any positive changes for the benefit of the regime that all it can do is whine and complain.

One example of that was a short statement put out by the National Iranian American Council, the regime’s chief lobbying force, lauding a modification to a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) issued by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC).

“We applaud OFAC for taking a significant step towards fully realizing the U.S.’s JCPOA commitments and providing guidance intended to reduce the risk for non-U.S. banks and companies interested in lawfully engaging the Iranian market. OFAC clarified that it would permit foreign companies to receive payment for goods or services rendered in the case of a U.S. sanctions snapback,” the statement said.

The FAQs do not carry the force of law and are simply administrative answers to common questions, but the fact that the NIAC is left to applaud a modest change demonstrates how low it has sunk in trying to find good news about Iran.

There is a significant irony in the NIAC’s statement since it criticized attacks on those same OFAC FAQs back in October when Iran critics attacked them for “easing” sanctions. The NIAC issued a statement saying the revised FAQs are a simple restatement and clarification of existing U.S. sanctions laws – not an “easing” of U.S. sanctions as some reports have erroneously claimed.

“There is a simple reason for this: Regulatory guidelines – like these FAQs – cannot change the operative law, but can merely explain and interpret that law,” the NIAC said.

So in one case, the FAQs should be judged as merely clarification, but in another case the FAQs are necessary as clear mandates to adhere to the nuclear agreement.

The NIAC cannot have it both ways, but the confusion from the OFAC is understandable since its officers have made steady pilgrimages to NIAC functions, including Adam Szubin, currently the acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence and former director of OFAC from 2006-2015, who recently spoke at a NIAC-sponsored conference and has often been quoted in NIAC publications and press announcements.

We can only assume how the cozy relationship between members of the OFAC and the NIAC might have produced these changes to the FAQ.

Even as the NIAC is busy flogging these tiny wins for the regime, the mullahs are moving as quickly as possible to consolidate their military advantages with final bloody battle to retake Aleppo in Syria that has resulted in the slaughter of countless men, women and children.

Freelance writer Heshmat Alavi wrote in the Daily Caller a sad recounting of the regime’s use of extremism to gain political leverage and how it must be confronted by the rest of the world.

“Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a strategic one for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate either Syria or Khuzestan [in southern Iran], our priority is to keep Syria.”

These are the words of Mehdi Taeb, former chief of Revolutionary Guards intelligence. This provides a very vivid incite of the importance of Syria, specifically, for Iran, and the necessity to continue meddling outside its borders, in general.

Being a flashpoint region of sectarian quarrels, continuously fueled by Iran’s mullahs, the Middle East has been witnessing a slow dragging into a new wave of sectarianism. Iran has been applying sectarian policies against others in the region, centralizing its efforts in provoking extremist and fundamentalist viewpoints, Alavi writes.

The mounting criticism of the Iranian regime continued to pour in as Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA, blasted the Obama administration’s handling of Iran.

“We have held our response to a whole bunch of egregious Iranian activity … hostage to the preservation of the near-term nuclear deal,” Hayden said Wednesday during the Jamestown Foundation’s tenth annual terrorism conference.

“What they’re doing in Syria, what they’re doing in Iraq, what they’re doing with Hezbollah, what they’re doing in Lebanon, what they’re doing in Yemen, what they’re doing in the Gulf,” Hayden said. “I would push back and push back hard.”

“The fear is if you did that, if you pushed back, they’d walk from the deal,” he continued. “My response is, that’s their decision.”

On a day when the regime was taking punches left and right, the NIAC was left applauding a FAQ.

Laura Carnahan

Iran Lobby Launches Media Blitz to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

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Iran Lobby Launches Media Blitz to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

Iran Lobby Launches Media Blitz to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

We’ve already chronicled recent efforts by the National Iranian American Council to try and save the flawed Iran nuclear agreement with a flurry of press releases, editorials and social media posts in an attempt to attack everything from President-elect Donald Trump’s tweets to his Cabinet selections.

Not to be outdone, the other leader in the Iran lobby stepped up the plate with another media blitz by the Ploughshares Fund, which sent out its own editorials in an effort to dredge up the same old arguments similar to the arguments used by the Iran lobby during the run up to the nuclear agreement last year in which groups such as Ploughshares and NIAC tried to portray anyone opposed to the deal as a militaristic hawk hell bent on carpet bombing Iran.

In the year since the deal was approved, it is ironic to see the Iranian regime being the one to carpet bomb cities in Syria and funnel arms to terrorist proxies and militias in Iraq and Yemen. Of course Ploughshares offers no editorials condemning the cycle of war and violence the Iranian regime feeds and nurtures.

Paul Pillar, a former intelligence officer that has been penning on behalf of the Iranian mullahs in various occasions, joined at the hip to the Ploughshares Fund, offered up one such editorial in the National Interest in which he pedaled the same old idea that anyone critical of the Iran nuclear deal was a neo-con war hawk.

Pillar again raises the specter of the Iraq war as a harbinger of war with Iran in order to try and scare readers as he bangs the drum against President-elect Trump.

“None of this is a prediction that there will be such a war.  But the danger of one is greater now than it was before November 8th and the appointments that followed.  Vigilance is required to avoid further steps that would increase the chance of a war,” Pillar adds. “Also to be watched for are any moves, such as aggressive U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf, that could become steps down a slippery slope to conflagration.”

That last statement by Pillar really demonstrates how bought in he is for Iranian regime, when he makes no mention of the devastation Iranian regime’s military actions in the region have caused.

Unlike what Pillar says, the aggression is coming from Iran.

But Pillar wasn’t the only Iran lobbying ally to get in on the act, Tytti Erästo, a fellow at Ploughshares, also offered up her own editorial at the National Interest as well trying to sell the idea that Trump needs the Iran nuclear deal to engage with Russia and North Korea.

She tries to make the case that North Korea would somehow view an intact nuclear deal as the appropriate pathway since it would demonstrate the benefits of diplomacy.

Let’s think about that idea carefully for a moment:

  • North Korea supplied Iranian regime with information and designs for its nuclear program, as well as licensed its ballistic missile designs to jumpstart the regime’s missile program;
  • North Korea has consistently been the most sanctioned nation on the planet over its nuclear program as it developed the capability, actually built warheads and then exploded them in tests; and
  • North Korea is widely regarded as the world’s most notorious rogue state after it consistently broke every international agreement negotiated with it.

Yes, that sounds like a wonderful template of how Iran can positively influence North Korea!

And how could nuclear deal influence anyone, particularly since we are talking about a flowed agreement with no teeth that provides ample exemptions and waivers for violations and lift all economic sanctions without the need for compliance monitoring?

In fact, her statement reflects a key component of all the Iran lobby’s positions which is that the International community bears the burden for compliance and any failure in the agreement must stem from the U.S. and others not from anything the Iranian regime did.

It is the same frivolous thinking that paved the way for a badly flawed deal which led us to the crises the world currently faces.

While such efforts by the Iran lobby reveals the weak position and the fear the mullahs have, it also proves that the right policy towards Iran is and has always been a firm policy that should hold the Iranian regime finally accountable for its actions and not the other way around.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Protect Regime Allies

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Iran Lobby Working Hard to Protect Regime Allies

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Protect Regime Allies

Trita Parsi, the founder and leader of the Iran lobby’s chief support group—The National Iranian American Council—has been busy on editorial pages variously condemning picks by President-elect Donald Trump for his national security and foreign policy team and boosting and defending the Iranian regime in light of the wave of administration appointees skeptical and critical of the regime.

The latest example was Parsi’s attacks on Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) Trump’s pick to head the CIA, on BBC, where he said “it is not the job of the CIA director to formulate policy.”

Parsi added that the criticisms made of the Iran deal by Pompeo, who is a graduate of West Point and Harvard Law School, are “a clear indication that [his] understanding of the functions of the U.S. government and the different parts of the U.S. government is somewhat limited.”

That statement itself demonstrates how desperate Parsi must be to throw dirt at anything and everything related to Trump as his selections clearly show the clock is running out on the policy of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran that have dominated U.S. foreign policy the past several years.

Saying that Pompeo doesn’t understand how the government works only shows Parsi is willing to say anything, even outrageous untruths to demean and degrade American policy makers.

In Pompeo’s case, the CIA director nominee has an extensive history as a military officer, including serving in the Gulf War, and being elected to the House in 2010, where he served on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

In spite of attacking Pompeo, Parsi was magnanimous enough to offer his own advice saying “It is going to be very, very difficult for them to be able to roll back the deal or get rid of the deal or even renegotiate the deal.”

At the end of the day, preserving the Iran nuclear agreement has quickly become Parsi’s mission as he seeks to stave off efforts by Trump to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its militant actions in the year following passage of the deal.

Parsi has been busy trying out an almost daily message against Trump in an effort to find any excuse to keep the nuclear deal intact. This includes Parsi’s latest whine, which is that should the deal fall through, there would be no way Trump could reassemble the coalition of sanctions against the regime.

This line of reasoning is even dumber than Parsi’s claim that Pompeo doesn’t know anything about government since deep cracks are already appearing in the countries that agreed to the nuclear deal.

Most of Europe has reeled from the exodus of millions of refugees from conflicts in Syria and Iraq and the wave of terrorist attacks that have rattled Paris and Brussels. Recent votes in the U.K. and decisions by current leaders in France and Italy to decline re-election all point towards electorate that have been badly rattled over the rise of Islamic extremism and the growing proxy wars in the Middle East fomented by Iranian regime.

Even allies of Parsi are starting to get the microscopic once-over that Parsi is trying to give opponents of the Iranian regime.

One example is a piece by Armin Rosen, a New York-based writer who has written for The Atlantic, City Journal and World Affairs Journal, who wrote a piece in Tablet Magazine detailing the close relationship Parsi has with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) who has announced his candidacy as chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Rosen points out that in 2009, then freshman Ellison urged a radically different approach to U.S.-Iran relations when he echoed positions offered by Parsi as he launched the NIAC. In fact, Ellison submitted an editorial into the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing record on Iran sanctions by Parsi opposing sanctions.

Ellison went on to deliver a speech in 2011 at a NIAC event in which he thanked Parsi for being an “an indispensable partner” in helping to develop a 2009 bill that would have sanctioned individual human abusers in Iran while lifting U.S. restrictions on NGO work in the country, and refers to the NIAC founder as a “friend.”

Ellison’s selection as DNC chair might prove to be a political albatross on Democrats moving forward, especially in the 2018 midterm elections in which the bulk of Senate seats up for election then would be occupied by Democrats.

Extensive exit polling in the presidential election showed that American voters cited terrorism as their chief concern only after the state of the economy. Any office holder who had a previous association with Parsi and the NIAC might be well served to begin distancing themselves from the Iran lobby since the political price to be paid might be severe.

Those ties to Parsi and the detrimental effects of being seen to support the Iranian regime can only grow as the regime engages in more and more radical and frankly bizarre behavior.

One example of that comes from the woman who leads female volunteers in Iran’s hardline conservative militia, the Basij, who has identified a new foe.

Minu Aslani has reportedly called the promotion of gender equality illegal and demanded that the country’s powerful judiciary take action against people who speak out against such state-sponsored discrimination.

“These activities are in fact against our laws and the judiciary should take action,” the semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Aslani as telling reporters on December 2.

In the past, Aslani has condemned efforts to increase the number of women in parliament and opposed campaigns to curb domestic violence as perceived assaults on Iranian society and traditional family values. Pushing for greater female participation threatens to “distort” the identity of Iran’s women, she has said.

Aslani also criticized United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s eight-year-old UNiTE To End Violence Against Women campaign, which is aimed at raising awareness about violence against women and girls.

Also, the Congress began to take a new look at the Iranian regime’s extensive use of proxies to wage war and commit acts of terror as both Democratic and Republican senators took aim at the regime.

“Iranian proxies remain a direct threat to the United States and our allies today,” said the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee, pointing to Lebanese Hezbollah, Shia militias in Iraq, and Houthi insurgents operating from Yemen, as well as Tehran’s influence in Syria.

“American citizens, uniformed and civilian, have been victims of Iranian terror. Iranian regime-sponsored [entities], directed, trained and equipped are a threat to U.S. forces and American citizens today,” said the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland.

At the committee hearing, experts warned that unless there were ideological changes to the Iranian regime, the mullahs’ basis for supporting these proxies would not change.

Michael Tomlinson

Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

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Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

Pressure on Iran Shows Cracks in the Regime

It is a basic principle of physics that if you heat a liquid in a confined space, it will build up pressure until the container explodes unless the material is strong enough to withstand the pressure.

In the case of the leadership of the Iranian regime, the cracks are beginning to show as they struggle to absorb the implications of a Trump presidency and a newly energized Congress determined to demonstrate to the American voter that it can get tough on a militant regime in Iran.

One clear sign of Donald Trump’s attitude towards foreign policy and national security is his emerging Cabinet selections, in which he has assembled a large number of fierce opponents to the Iranian nuclear agreement.

As Adam Kredo outlines in the Washington Free Beacon, the selections include retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) as CIA director, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser, picks that have won plaudits for their vocal opposition to the nuclear deal.

“It’s no secret that Flynn considers Iran to be the linchpin of a global alliance of hostile rivals” said one source familiar with the backroom talks about future national security picks. “He was in the Middle East during the Iraq war and knows first-hand how Iranian proxies killed hundreds of American troops, and he has seen the intelligence showing that they’ve targeted Americans around the world.”

Other recent national security picks include KT McFarland, a longtime national security analyst and commentator who has vocally criticized Iranian regime and the nuclear deal, and Yleem Poblete, who served for nearly two decades as a senior staffer for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

A senior congressional aide familiar with Poblete’s work on key national security matters told the Washington Free Beacon that Trump’s picks would not back down from a showdown with Iran as it continues to fund terrorism across the Middle East.

Poblete played a key role in crafting sanctions against the Iranian regime and was the senior staffer on the Foreign Affairs Committee when they were initially signed into law.

For the mullahs in Tehran, the assembling team must be a nightmare for their future plans on counting on American appeasement. More importantly, the pressure seems to be getting to them as Iran has issued some pretty bizarre statements and actions over the past few days.

One incident involved the arrest of 12 people in the fashion industry in Iran who were jailed for “spreading prostitution” via images posted online.

The eight women and four men were handed sentences of between five months and six years by a court in Shiraz, a lawyer told the Ilna news agency.

They were also banned from working in fashion and travelling abroad for two years afterwards, Mahmoud Taravat said.

The 12 were convicted of charges including spreading prostitution and promoting corruption via the publication of obscene images online, inciting Muslims to corrupt themselves through putting on fashion shows, and spreading a “Western-style culture of nudity.”

The crackdown follows a similar crackdown earlier this year when in May, the prosecutor of Tehran’s cybercrimes court announced the arrest of eight people involved in posting photographs of women without headscarves on social media. Iranian law requires that all women cover their hair in public.

But that wasn’t the only episode of growing paranoia within the regime leadership. Al-Monitor also reported that even Iranian children born to foreign fathers are even under suspicion by the regime.

Based on Iran’s civil code, the marriage of an Iranian woman to a foreign national is dependent upon special permission from the Foreign Ministry. In practice, this means that Iranian women need to get permission to marry non-Iranian Muslims. Iran’s civil code forbids Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men. An estimated 70,000 marriages between Iranian women and Afghan men are not registered with the National Organization for Civil Registration. Meanwhile, Iran’s Interior Ministry has declared all marriages between Iranian women and Afghan men that took place after 2001 invalid.

In contrast, Iranian men may marry Muslim or non-Muslim women and Iranian or non-Iranian women without obtaining permission from the Foreign Ministry. Under Iranian law, children born to an Iranian father — whether residing in Iran or abroad — are considered Iranian. Meanwhile, children born to Iranian mothers are not granted automatic citizenship rights, creating a complicated situation for Iranian women who marry non-Iranian citizens.

The contradiction is yet another example of the misogynistic attitude of the regime’s leaders and ongoing harsh treatment of women under the regime’s religious rule. Since there is no religious basis for this different treatment of men and women, it is clear the regime’s legal provisions stem from old fashioned sexism and the devaluing of Iranian women and their children by the mullahs.

In many ways, these antiquated laws are reminiscent of racial laws that prohibited mixed race marriages or considered children of mixed races to be less than human; an apt comparison considering the Iranian regime’s eagerness to apply to death penalty broadly.

On a more practical level, the Iranian regime’s continued denial of the legal status of dual national Iranians has brought visits from abroad to a grinding halt as members of the Iranian diaspora rethink visits back to Iran in light of arrests and imprisonment of Iranians with citizenship from countries such as the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

The Los Angeles Times examined the growing fears among the largest Persian community outside of Iran in Los Angeles.

Last summer, San Diego resident Reza “Robin” Shahini became one of several U.S. citizens detained in Iran, joining dual nationals from Britain and France who had been arrested earlier this year.

His prison sentence came a week after Iranian American businessman Siamak Namazi, who was living in Dubai before his arrest, and his ailing father, Baquer Namazi, were sentenced to 10 years in prison each on similarly vague charges of spying for the United States, according to a report by Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s news service.

It is noteworthy that groups ostensibly working on behalf of Iranian-Americans, such as the National Iranian American Council, has remained largely silent as the practice of dual-nationals continues.

In August, the State Department updated its travel warning, advising that “Iranian authorities continue to unjustly detain and imprison U.S. citizens, particularly Iranian Americans, including students, journalists, business travelers, and academics on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security.”

Ultimately, the pressure on the mullahs may cause them to take even more aggressive actions and the world will need to be prepared for it.

Michael Tomlinson

Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

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Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

Pressure Mounts on Iran Lobby as Consensus Builds Against Iran Regime

Since the Iran nuclear deal was agreed to last year have things gotten better or worse in the Middle East?

It isn’t just a speculative question for polite cocktail conversation. It goes to the heart of a key question facing not only the incoming Trump administration, but the entire world really since if the answer is a definitive “No” the world will have to significantly alter its approach to the Iranian regime since the policy of appeasing it over the past two years has been an abject failure.

Part of the challenge in dealing with the mullahs in Tehran is that while the nuclear agreement only dealt with the nuclear portion of Iran’s actions, it has been the Iranian regime’s actions in all other areas that have contributed to what can only be called a mess of global proportions.

One of the central tenets of the Iran lobby’s support for the nuclear agreement was that it would foster more moderate behavior from Iran, empower moderate elements in the government and lead to a pathway for regional peace with Iran as a central broker.

None of those things have come to pass. In fact, since the agreement, things have only gotten significantly worse, which is why a debate is raging in Washington and other capitals about what to do with Iran and the nuclear agreement moving forward after the Trump administration assumes office.

For the Iranian regime and the Iran lobby, the threats have been clear and loud; revocation of the agreement would lead to “dire” consequences with intimations of a new arms race and confrontation.

It’s hard to imagine how much worse things could get as the Iranian regime has helped contribute to the deaths of 800,000 people in Syrian, turned another four million in refugees swamping nations from Germany to Hungary to Greece, to starting a conflict in Yemen that threatens to start a regional war with Saudi Arabia and potentially drawing in the U.S. and Russia into direct military conflict.

This is not hyperbole. It is a very real possibility and much of it can be blamed squarely at the policies of Ali Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani and their clerical brethren.

The response from U.S. lawmakers has become increasingly tough as Democrats and Republicans have joined in criticizing the Iranian regime as they recognized the political mood of the American voter after a historic election.

Senate Democrats are ripping Iran over threats issued by top Iranian officials to retaliate if Congress extends sanctions that the Obama administration has said are permitted under last summer’s nuclear deal, according to conversations with lawmakers conducted by The Weekly Standard.

Iranian regime officials have threatened reprisal in recent weeks if Congress extends the longstanding Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) and have called the potential 10-year extension a violation of the nuclear deal.

“Iran is making this up. These problems don’t exist,” Maryland senator Ben Cardin, ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Weekly Standard. “Congress, by extending ISA, is not taking any new steps against Iran at all.”

Fellow New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez, who also voted against the deal, said that the ISA is critical for reigning in illicit Iranian activity and should be reapplied regardless of Iranian threats.

The ISA had already been passed by the House by a near-unanimous vote and the Senate vote is expected to deliver a similar result even though Secretary of State John Kerry made a last-ditch appeal to Senate Democrats.

The Obama administration has joined the Iran lobby is trying to stoke fears of Iranian retaliation should the ISA be renewed. A remarkable position to take since the administration has not offered any retaliation for similar missteps by the regime including two clear violations of the agreement found by the UN’s watchdog agency.

Last month, seven Democrats who voted for the deal last year wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to urge him to schedule a vote on the bill, arguing that it strengthens the deal by giving the White House an “unambiguous ability to immediately snap back sanctions in the coming years.”

But none this has stopped supporters of the Iranian regime from continuing to make silly claims such as Massoumeh Torfeh in Al-Jazeera, in which she claimed that if Trump were to confront Iran, it would embolden and help “hardliners” in Iran.

This is again the same misleading argument made endlessly by the Iran lobby which tries to mask the inescapable fact of life now in Iran: the hardliners have always been in charge anyway.

“The year 2017, in which Iran would be holding presidential and provincial elections, would be dominated by a heated debate between the hardliners and the centrists on how to handle the new US presidency and the nuclear deal signed with the so-called P5+1 endorsed by the United Nations Security Council,” Torfeh writes.

It is nearly word for word the same argument made earlier this year in advance of Iran’s parliamentary elections which were supposed to deliver a larger “moderate” body, but instead became ever more hardline as Khamenei’s handpicked councils wiped away thousands of potential candidates from even appearing on the ballot.

A similar outcome is expected in 2017 regardless of what Iran sympathizers like Torfeh promise.

The reality of Iran’s bad behavior is undisputable. The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East reinforced that view this week.

Army Gen. Joseph Votel said the agreement, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits to its nuclear program, was being “implemented appropriately,” but that it has not changed Iranian behavior.

“I am concerned about continued malign activities of Iran across the region,” Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, said at a forum hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Those included Iran’s cyber activities, the use of surrogate forces, facilitation of lethal aid, buildup of missile and anti-access capabilities, and unprofessional and aggressive activities in the Persian Gulf, he said.

Michael Tomlinson

 

 

As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

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As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

As Iran Lobby Covers for Iran, the Regime Acts Worse

So much for Iranian moderation.

The Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, has long maintained that following the nuclear agreement, Iran would become a more moderate force in the Middle East and a new period of U.S.-Iranian relations would spring forth.

The unfortunate truth has been the complete opposite—much to the Iran lobby’s chagrin—but Iran’s militant actions are continually defended by their staunch advocates with nary a word of criticism ever coming out.

It did not matter if top mullah Ali Khamenei threatened destruction on the U.S. or restated continually that Iran would be on a war footing to oppose the U.S. as the “Great Satan.”

It did not matter if Iran took American citizens against their will and locked them up only to demand billions of dollars in ransom and even after negotiating a prisoner swap, the mullahs again took more Americans hostage and again stated plainly and openly its hope to garner more billions of dollars.

It did not matter what the Iranian regime did because the Iran lobby was always going to ignore the bad news and keep pushing a positive narrative.

But now with the new Trump administration assembling its national security team, which appears to be comprised of many critics of the Iranian regime, the Iran lobby finds itself trying out new tactics to protect the regime.

Part of this new effort includes trying to throw mud at potential Trump appointees in an effort to discredit them such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani who is being touted as a potential Secretary of State, or former UN ambassador John Bolton who is also being considered for a top foreign policy post.

An example of the smear campaign by the Iran lobby was a scandalous editorial that ran in Politico authored by Daniel Benjamin who attacked Giuliani ruthlessly by using information provided by Iran’s intelligence agencies in their efforts to smear Iranian opposition groups.

It is interesting to note that the information Benjamin used was taken almost word for word from similar postings made by Iranian-linked sources attacking opposition and democracy groups, but the fact that he went so aggressively after Giuliani demonstrates the level of pressure the Iran lobby must feel as Trump’s cabinet is beginning to shape up with well-known Iran skeptics.

Robert Torricelli, the former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, penned a scathing rebuke to Benjamin in Politico that correctly pointed out the attack against Giuliani had little to do with the former mayor, but rather was aimed at the broader Iranian resistance movement that has gained substantial support from both Democrats and Republicans in recent years.

It is this democracy movement that causes the most panic amongst the mullahs in Tehran since it represents a homegrown opposition of fellow Iranians and makes a lie of the idea the Iranian government indeed has moderate elements within it.

Instead, the mullahs have cracked down harshly against opponents both political and otherwise with mass arrests of journalists, students and other activists and ensuring the election of a parliament securely filled with their loyal supporters.

These are all things the Iran lobby chose to ignore and with every Iranian provocation, groups such as the NIAC maintain their deafening silence.

Take for example statements made the other day by the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces where he openly called for an expansion of Iranian military bases in other countries.

“We need distant bases, and it may become possible one day to have bases on the shores of Yemen or Syria, or bases on islands or floating (bases),” said General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, quoted by the Shargh daily newspaper.

“Is having distant bases less than nuclear technology? I say it is worth dozens of times more,” added Baqeri, who was speaking at a gathering of naval commanders.

It is no accident he names Syria and Yemen, both countries that Iran has spent considerable resources in financing, weapons and fighters to hold as vassal states.

This part of the larger narrative and vision the mullahs in Tehran have openly talked about in creating a Shiite sphere of influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. It is also why Iran is engaged in sectarian wars against Sunni tribes in Iraq and Sunni-majority nations such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Even Iran’s fight against ISIS is not about combatting terrorism but trying to eliminate a Sunni rival for regional hegemony.

So long as the Iran lobby continues its efforts to provide cover for the mullahs, it is reasonable to believe that whatever groups such as the NIAC has to say about Iranian intentions will always be suspect.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

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Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

Iran Lobby Members Step Up Their Own PR Efforts

Prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, the Iran lobby launched a large PR effort aimed at trying to influence the debate starting to form as to how the incoming Trump administration should approach the problem of Iranian extremism in the Middle East, especially its support for terrorism and the escalating conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

President-elect Trump has already begun forming his national security team with the announced appointments of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as United Nations ambassador, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn as national security advisor, Fox News commentator K.T. McFarland as deputy national security advisor, and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as CIA director.

His selections signal a likely end to the previous administration’s policies of trying to appease the Iranian regime in order to secure a more accommodating stance from Tehran. Those policies—as evidenced by the aftermath of the nuclear agreement—clearly demonstrated that the mullahs in Tehran were no mood for moderation and clearly believed they could take advantage of the U.S. and other nations that brokered the agreement.

Since the election, the Iran lobby has been faced with the uncomfortable truth that its influence in Washington is going to be greatly diminished in light of the new election results and the continued skepticism of the Iran nuclear deal by leaders like Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

But the Iran lobby is doing the bidding of the mullahs by ramping up its efforts in a last-ditch effort to try and spin a new web of obfuscations to replace the failed “echo chamber” of voices urging accommodation with Iranian leaders.

The most offensive product to be produced as part of that effort was a so-called “report” issued by the National Iranian American Council and signed by 76 so-called “national security” specialists, the vast majority of whom lack any national security or military credentials or experience at all. Most were either paid staffers or consultants allied with the NIAC or academics from fields as national security related as linguistics and anthropology.

While the issuance of the report itself and accompanying NIAC statement did not garner much media attention outside of blogs such as Lobelog.com supportive of the Iranian regime, some of the individuals named in the report have taken up the cause with their own media efforts to flog the idea of support for Iran.

One of those was Stephen Kinzer, who penned an editorial in the Boston Globe urging Donald Trump to pursue a pathway of what he calls “dual conciliation” which reads more like a warmed over version of the failed policy of appeasement he previously urged.

Kinzer’s piece is interesting for several reasons, especially one thing he wrote which was that the U.S. should judge Iran not by sentiment, “but strictly according to whether their actions promote our interests. Our central interest in the Middle East is containing violent radicalism.”

It is an odd thing to say since the actions of the Iranian regime have not matched the sentiments it has publicly urged. While leaders such as Hassan Rouhani have purred lines of peace and moderation, the leadership of Ali Khamenei has directed Iranian forces to deepen the war in Syria, widen sectarian violence in Iraq and start an insurgency in Yemen that threatens a direct conflict with Saudi Arabia.

Kinzer is right, we should judge Iran on its actions and not the sentiments the Iran lobby would have us believe. It’s a path that Trump’s national security team has already publicly advocated during the course of the campaign in urging significant reforms to the nuclear deal, as well as holding Iran accountable for its actions.

Kinzer also tries to portray Iranian mullahs as a valiant enemy of Islamic extremism in the form of ISIS, but does not even attempt to distinguish the type of Islamic extremism Iranian regime itself is responsible for. It’s another attempt by Kinzer to try and portray Iran as a “good” Islamic extremist and ISIS as a “bad” Islamic extremist.

The distinction he tries to make is like trying to distinguish between Hitler’s SS and Brownshirts. To their victims, there is no difference.

Similarly, he fails to note that the Iranian regime is the central source of the instability raging through the Middle East. By trying to link the unrest to a supposed Saudi Arabia vs. Iran conflict, he ignores Iranian regime’s use of terrorist proxies in Hezbollah or insurgents such as the Houthis in Yemen or Shiite militias in Iraq to wage unrelenting war. Therefore unlike his proposal, Iranian regime is not going to be any kind of security partner for the rest of the world.

Iranian regime has attempted to build a Shiite extremist dominant empire with wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen to wrest those controls under its control alongside Lebanon and possible Egypt.

None of this should be unexpected since Kinzer is widely known to be a left leaning and a strong critic of the correct policies, especially as it relates to in confronting Latin American and Middle Eastern dictatorships, authoring books on the subject, which we assume makes him a “national security” expert.

Kinzer has long advocated policies of non-intervention which makes him an adequate tool for the NIAC in trying to protect Iranian regime from any repercussions for its actions.

Like his fellow Iran lobby advocates such as Trita Parsi of the NIAC, they are finding a shrinking audience for their message of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran in light of the evidence of a year of Iranian human rights crackdowns and several violations of the nuclear agreement.

We can only hope the Trump administration maintains its skeptical eye to future promises of Iranian moderation.

Michael Tomlinson