Iran Lobby

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

Iran Regime Tries to Blame ISIS Attacks on Opposition

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Iran Regime Tries to Blame ISIS Attacks on Opposition

The body of a terrorist, at background left, lies on the ground while police control the scene at the shine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Several attackers stormed into Iran’s parliament and a suicide bomber targeted the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Wednesday, killing a security guard and wounding 12 other people in rare twin attacks, with the shooting at the legislature still underway. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

An attack by six assailants armed with rifles and explosives took Iranian regime security forces by surprise the other day in a series of attacks aimed at the heart of the government, including a takeover of the Parliament building and the tomb of the regime’s founder, leaving a dozen dead and 46 wounded that shook the religious theocracy ruling Iran.

The attacks lasted for hours and was claimed by ISIS, which if true, would represent the first successful attack by the terror group on Iranian soil and a significant and somewhat ironic turn of events in the growing sectarian conflict between and extremist Sunni and extremist Shiite ideologies.

Predictably, the default response from Iranian officials was to point the finger of blame at regional rival Saudi Arabia and even Iranian dissident groups such as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. As Iranian officials struggled in the wake of the attack, one could sense confusion and even a slight note of panic setting in as the prospect of Tehran joining the ranks of cities such as London, Paris and Berlin as prime terror targets began to seep.

For the Iranian regime, much of the blame for the notable rise in Islamic extremist groups lies squarely on its doorstep. The mullahs constant vitriol aimed at Israel, the U.S. and the its Sunni Arab neighbors has only made routine the kind of hate that groups like Hezbollah have acted on for decades.

The use of proxies and terrorist groups has always been a part of the statecraft toolbox for Iran as it has used Hezbollah and the Houthis to conduct open warfare in Syria and Yemen, meanwhile bolstering Shiite militias in Iraq to push Sunnis out of the coalition government there and into the waiting arms of ISIS recruiters.

According to the New York Times, tensions in the Middle East were already high following a visit by President Trump last month, in which he exalted and emboldened Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival. Saudi Arabia and several Sunni allies led a regional effort on Monday to isolate Qatar, the tiny Persian Gulf country that maintains good relations with Iran

In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards Corps said, “The public opinion of the world, especially Iran, recognizes this terrorist attack — which took place a week after a joint meeting of the U.S. president and the head of one of the region’s backward governments, which constantly supports fundamentalist terrorists — as very meaningful,” a reference to Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy.

Saudi Arabia swiftly rejected the claim and the Trump White House, while expressing sympathy for the victims, was quick to note that “states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote” in a statement.

The MEK also denied any involvement and accused regime officials of a smear attack saying “their intention is to either use this event” against the group or justify their own previous crimes” in a statement.

But that didn’t stop members of the Iran lobby from stepping up to also blame Iranian dissident groups for the attack either directly or indirectly.

Paul R. Pillar, a stalwart for the Iran lobby, wrote in Consortium News blaming the MEK for alleged terrorist attacks in Iran and claiming that prior attacks had left the regime much better prepared to counter terrorism.

We hate to tell Pillar that his measure of “preparedness” by Iranian security forces leaves much to be desired judging by the daylong standoff at the Parliament building.

Pillar even begins laying the ground work for the Iranian regime to step up its terrorist activities in the wake of the attacks saying “in the months ahead, Iran may take actions outside its borders in response to the attacks.”

“Iran may see a need to be more aggressive in places such as Iraq or Syria in the interest of fighting back against ISIS,” Pillar said.

His comments are instructive since the mullahs are likely to use the attacks as an excuse to step up their fights in Syria in to preserve the Assad regime and in Yemen to continue destabilizing the border to Saudi Arabia.

It is not inconceivable that the Iranian regime will use the attacks as a pretext to launch fresh initiatives in places such as Bahrain and Qatar to further split apart the Gulf states and weaken opposition to its regional ambitions to build a Shiite sphere of influence.

Pillar wasn’t alone in trying to drag the MEK into the mud, as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, gleefully attacked the resistance group in interviews claiming that the MEK was equipped to carry out these attacks because of its channels into the regime and its ties to Saudi Arabia.

“If the goal was to penetrate and destabilize Iran, the MEK clearly was Saudi Arabia’s best bet,” Parsi said. “Still unclear who’s behind the current attack in Iran, but the MEK (and their Saudi backers) are a main suspect. Timing is of course curious. Just last month, A Saudi Crown Prince said Riyadh is working hard to take battle to inside of Iran.”

Parsi and Pillar offered no proof, only suspicions that read like they came from a talking points memo from Ali Khamenei’s office as Iran struggles with the aftermath of the attacks and desperately seeks any scapegoat other than its own support for terrorism.

The roots for these attacks lie squarely in the Iranian regime’s long history of exporting terror as a tool and it has finally come home to bite them.

Michael Tomlinson

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

 The Iranian Regime Inability to Renounce Terrorism

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 The Iranian Regime Inability to Renounce Terrorism

The Iranian Regime Inability to Renounce Terrorism

Adel Al-Jubeir, the foreign minister for Saudi Arabia, posited a simple proposition in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, improved relations between the Iranian regime and the rest of the world can only occur if the Islamic state renounces its support for terrorism.

It is a simple idea, but one fraught with a high likelihood of failure because the mullahs in Tehran are as wedded to terrorism as a tool of statecraft as a compulsive gambler is addicted to a slot machine or craps table.

“The fact is that Iran is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, with government officials directly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks since 1979. These include suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport; the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996; attacks against more than a dozen embassies in Iran, including those of Britain, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; and the assassination of diplomats around the world, to name a few examples,” Al-Jubeir writes.

“Nor can one get around the fact that Iran uses terrorism to advance its aggressive policies. Iran cannot talk about fighting extremism while its leaders, Quds Force and Revolutionary Guard continue to fund, train, arm and facilitate acts of terrorism,” he adds.

Al-Jubeir notes, correctly, that if the Iranian regime truly wanted to change course and join the community of nations, it could have simply demonstrated that sincerity by handing over al Qaeda leaders who have enjoyed the protection of sanctuary in Iran, including Osama bin Laden’s son Saad and the terror group’s chief of operations Saif al-Adel.

The regime could have also stopped supplying arms and funding for terror groups such as its long-running support for Hezbollah, which basically serves as an adjunct military unit to the Iranian military. It has been well documented how Iran supplied the bulk of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used against US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths and maiming of thousands of service personnel.

I could halt its support for the bloody Assad regime in Syria and stop the civil war and provide a respite for the nearly four million refugees from that conflict and stop adding to the toll of over

500,000 killed so far, but none of that is going to happen because the Iranian regime’s leadership, flowing from its top mullah Ali Khamenei, through Hassan Rouhani all the way down to members of paramilitary units on the streets of Iran have an almost religious belief in the use of violence and terror to advance the goals of the regime.

Al-Jubeir describes how the regime has “set up so-called Cultural Centers of the Revolutionary Guard in many countries, including Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Comoros Islands. The aim was to spread their ideology through propaganda and violence. Iran went so far as to propagate that the Shiite Muslims living outside Iran belong to Iran and not the countries of which they are citizens. This is unacceptable interference in other countries and should be rejected by all nations.”

Since the passage of the nuclear agreement with Iran last year, the regime has grown more bold, more militant and more reckless as it seeks to expand its influence, while at the same time suppressing domestic dissent among ordinary Iranians who feel betrayed and denied any benefits from the nuclear deal.

The mullahs have focused on widening military conflicts and engaging in more aggressive and provocative behavior against the US and now Saudi Arabia in a bid to deflect attention at home and beat the drum of nationalism and fear.

The mullahs are hoping no one notices the misery at while you’re focused on gunboat cat-and-mouse games with US warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

That determination by the mullahs to expand the conflicts to include a perceived showdown with Saudi Arabia may be rooted in the kingdom’s decision to finally take the gloves off and confront the Iranian regime more directly since Iran has fomented conflict dangerously close to Saudi Arabia’s own borders with the civil war in neighboring Yemen.

Saudi Arabia is accusing Iran of supplying weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen and is urging the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran for violating an arms embargo.

Saudi Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi said in a letter to the council that smuggling arms to Houthi rebels violates council resolutions and constitutes “a direct and tangible threat” to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the region and international peace and security.

Predictably the Iranian regime rejected the Saudi contention of Iran’s growing interventions, instead blaming Saudi Arabia for escalating the conflict, but of course denying its own involvement.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdulmalak Al-Makhlafi said that Iran is continuing with its interferences in his conflict-torn country, and urged Tehran to stop, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.

Also, the Yemeni Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Nasser Al-Taheri said in an interview published on Saturday by the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat that light and medium weapon shipments were seized on the borders, coming from Iran, more proof of the regime’s desire to drive neighboring countries into civil war.

Meanwhile, the Iran lobby stepped up its efforts to support the regime by trying to hold the line against Congressional action to renew sanctions against the Iranian regime for its support of terrorism as evidenced by a letter addressed to Congressional leaders signed by a who’s who of Iran lobby members, including the National Iranian American Council’s NIAC Action direct lobbying arm, J Street and MoveOn.Org.

Also, Paul R. Pillar, a former intelligence analyst and now a full-time supporter of the Iranian regime it seems, penned a rambling editorial in the National Interest in which he tried to make the absurd argument that Congressional leaders who advocate holding Iran accountable for its support of terror only aid “hardliners” in the Iranian regime’s government. His deeply flawed piece is worthy of a line by line dissection, but suffice it to say his primary goal is to try and excuse Iranian misbehavior by criticizing US concern over terror and vouching for the regime’s peaceful and delicate nature, while never mentioning the litany of death, destruction and woe being left behind by Iranian mullahs.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Echo Chamber of Iran Rings with Hardliners

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The Echo Chamber of Iran Rings with Hardliners

The Echo Chamber of Iran Rings with Hardliners

In the now-infamous article by the New York Times Magazine on how a network of Iranian regime lobbyists, activists and journalists was created to feed a false narrative about the Iran nuclear deal. National security staffer Ben Rhodes called it an “echo chamber” where so-called independent experts were in actuality actively working at the direction of the White House media operation.

The key messages, social media postings and parade of so-called “experts” was designed to put forward the story that the nuclear deal would put a stop to Iran’s nuclear development, empower moderate elements within the Iranian government and stabilize the Middle East.

Alternatively, this same echo chamber fought against any effort to link human rights, sponsorship of terrorism or strict guidelines on inspections of Iran military facilities as being destabilizing the prospects of an agreement.

Since the deal was struck last year, the world has discovered how completely wrong all those assumptions were, but worse, how the Iran lobby, directly funded with cash from groups aligned with Iran, was essentially lying.

The avalanche of disclosures now come fast and furious as we begin to see the scope, size and sophistication of the Iran lobby’s efforts, especially in swaying favorable media coverage by paying news outlets such as National Public Radio hundreds of thousands of dollars for positive coverage of the deal.

Bloomberg in a report examined the full scale of the Iran lobby’s network and operations in supporting the Iran nuclear deal based a series of leaked emails he received.

It discovered that the actual campaign for the nuclear deal did not start in 2015 with negotiations as Iran regime supporters claim, but rather launched a full four years earlier with Ploughshares Fund leading the initial organization long before Rhodes began meeting with progressive groups on shaping the Iran narrative, which may indicate that the administration itself may have been played for fools by the mullahs in Tehran all along.

Beginning in August 2011, Ploughshares and its grantees formed the Iran Strategy Group. Over time this group created a sophisticated campaign to reshape the national narrative on Iran. That campaign sought to portray skeptics of diplomacy as “pro-war,” and to play down the dangers of the Iranian nuclear program before formal negotiations started in 2013 only to emphasize those dangers after there was an agreement in 2015, Bloomberg writes.

The strategy group, which included representatives of the Arms Control Association, the National Security Network, the National Iranian American Council, the Federation of American Scientists, the Atlantic Council and others, sought to “develop process and mechanism to implement Iran campaign strategies, tactics and narrative,” according to an agenda for the first meeting of the group on Aug. 17, 2011, Lake adds.

The fact that Ploughshares funds the NIAC, the chief lobbyist for the Iran regime, and convened these strategy sessions back in 2011 clearly shows the planning by the Iran lobby to create a false narrative and then sell it to the White House. That sales job was undoubtedly helped in no small part by the inclusion of former NIAC staffers hired into the National Security Council, with one former Iran lobby staffer now heading up the NSC’s Iran desk.

The centerpiece of those early strategy meetings was that the Iran lobby needed to change the “message” narrative, even though facts on the ground in Iran proved otherwise. While Iran was developing links to Al-Qaeda and exporting terrorism via Hezbollah and Houthi proxies, the Iran lobby needed to kill those stories in the media and substitute a more favorable one.

According to Bloomberg, in an Aug. 20, 2013, e-mail to the Iran Strategy Group, Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares, encouraged the Ploughshares grantees to “create a social media, web, expert push that carries our main points into the media and policy discussions in the first 12-24 hours.”

The rest is – as they say – history, as the Iran lobby, led by Ploughshares money and NIAC staff, began pushing alternative messages into the media and spread around cash to news media, as well as recruiting supportive journalists such as Laura Rozen of Al-Monitor to serve as mouthpieces.

The group relied on their own network of “experts” such as Paul Pillar to serve as “impartial” third-party analysts to discuss the nuclear deal on news outlets such as NPR which was receiving funding from Ploughshares.

The sad truth is that the Middle East is by far more chaotic and dangerous than at any other time in recent memory. The international community essentially has no idea what Iranian regime’s military is doing in developing ballistic missiles or nuclear warheads in fortified bunkers that no one even knew existed until the regime showed them off in videos.

Human rights in Iran are abysmal and thousands of innocent Iranian men, women and children have been hanged, had limbs amputated, acid thrown into their faces and eyes gouged out as part of the normal Iranian justice system.

And yet, the Iran lobby utters not one word of protest. Makes no harsh remark and takes no blame for essentially creating the world we have today.

Even their most basic claim of empowering moderate elements in Iran’s government was slapped hard in the face by the announcement of the appointment of Ahmad Jannati to head up the powerful Assembly of Experts.

The 89-year old hardliner is well known for being a religious radical devoutly committed to exporting the Islamic extremism and protecting the mullahs and their ill-gotten gains.

In addition to his new post, Jannati leads the influential Guardian Council, a vetting body that disqualified over 3,000 less loyal candidates for the February elections, which were held in parallel with the vote for the Assembly of Experts.

All of which just goes to show how there are really no moderates within Iranian politics and government and to make any such distinction is to play into the narrative the Iran lobby has so studiously cultivated over the last five years.

By Michael Tomlinson

 

Iran Lobby Starts Blame Game for Failed Nuclear Agreement

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Iran Lobby Starts Blame Game for Failed Nuclear Agreement

Iran Lobby Starts Blame Game for Failed Nuclear Agreement

The Iran lobby is at it once again. The various supporters, apologists and columnists that make up the spider web of support for the mullahs in Tehran is now spinning away a tale blaming the U.S. for the current failure of the nuclear deal only reached last year.

The twisted logic being espoused by faithful regime supporters such as Paul R. Pillar and Tyler Cullis is that the U.S. is not fulfilling its end of the bargain by allowing the Iranian regime unfettered access to U.S. currency markets and promising not to go after any foreign entity that moves forward to do business with Iran for violations of sanctions and restrictions on U.S. currency.

The reek of the arguments being made by these regime supporters is about as foul as the stench coming off a landfill and just as pleasant to experience.

Writing in the National Interest, Pillar tries to make the inane argument that U.S. sanctions are the chief impediment to successfully implementing the nuclear deal.

“The extensive and complicated U.S.-imposed sanctions are still the chief impediment to implementation, thus continuing to demonstrate how U.S. sanctions can actually reduce U.S. influence,” Pillar writes.

“When the complicated and cumbersome U.S. sanctions scare European banks away from making possible the kind of renewed trade with Iran that the European allies understood to be an intended consequence of the agreement, this presents a problem of U.S. credibility not only with Iran but with the Europeans. Talk among JCPOA opponents on Capitol Hill about imposing still more sanctions on Iran, in the name of whatever cause, damages U.S. credibility even further,” he adds.

What Pillar neglects to mention is that the history of U.S. sanctions on Iran has been a cumulative process, each added as Iran commits another transgression or gross violation of human rights or international law. Sanctions did not appear magically in one fell swoop, they occurred over years of Iranian provocations.

Pillar also tries to posit the theory that U.S. credibility is on the line and it is, just not the way he is proposing. Since the nuclear deal was agreed to, the Iranian regime has made a mockery of compliance by pushing the boundaries in other areas such as launching ballistic missiles, widening the wars in Syria and Yemen, detaining and parading U.S. sailors and rigging elections to eliminate virtually all other condidates.

Of course Pillar cannot cite these since it would undermine his arguments and only serve as a reminder as to why U.S. sanctions have not all fallen completely away. He also neglects to mention that many sanctions, including those related to access to U.S. currency exchanges by Iran were never part of the nuclear agreement since they were put in place after human rights violations and sponsorship of terrorism incidents.

The fact that the Iran lobby and regime argued so strenuously against linking related issues to the nuclear agreement such as development of ballistic missiles and human rights to the nuclear deal now works against them in arguing that all sanctions need to be lifted.

The credibility of the U.S. would indeed be on the line if it lifted these restrictions in order to appease an Iranian regime that sees no reason to curtail its military and terrorism activities. The rest of the civilized world would come to realize that no one would stand in the way of the militancy of the mullahs of Tehran.

Tyler Cullis if the National Iranian American Council, another long-time supporter of the regime, makes a similar irrational argument in the regime-sympathetic blog Lobelog.com and echoes the party line Pillar is pushing almost word for word.

“Iran’s ballistic missile program is not a serious threat. Without any real offensive capabilities, the program is second-rate and possesses only deterrent value. Surely, when compared to the current problems in the region, Iran’s ballistic missile program ranks low as a factor playing into the ongoing tumult,” Cullis writes.

It is shocking how plainly stupid the logic he uses here in arguing that developing a ballistic missile capable of hitting most of Europe, Asia and Africa is not a problem. An intercontinental ballistic missile doesn’t have to carry a nuclear warhead to be devastating. A simple biological or chemical warhead or even a mere 2,000 pounds of high explosives can do more than enough damage.

How does Iran’s development of a missile capable of hitting Berlin, Rome or Vienna serve to deter threats to the regime? Do the Swiss plan to assault Tehran with chocolate thereby requiring the mullahs to need a missile that can strike at Geneva?

Ballistic missiles by their very nature are first-strike weapons. They cannot be recalled after launching. They are virtually impossible to bring down. What’s next? Iranian ballistic missile submarines?

Cullis neglects to mention that the development of such missiles is already restricted by the United Nations and their launching is a violation which is separate and apart from the nuclear deal. But Cullis most strongly mimics Pillar in decrying the lack of flowing American dollars to the regime.

“Iran is not merely failing to see substantial trade and investment in Iran by foreign parties, but it is also unable to fully access much of its overseas oil revenues. These diminished expectations in Tehran could ultimately undermine the Rouhani government,” he writes.

Cullis again neglects to mention that Iran’s first moves once the deal was in place was to purchase $8 billion in Russian military hardware and take delivery of advanced anti-aircraft missile batteries. It wasn’t to shore up a crippled economy, bring Iranian citizens better healthcare or improve their shattered environment. Not even buying an iPhone or bringing in a neighborhood Starbucks was on the mullahs shopping list.

Cullis blames the U.S. reaction to Tehran’s launching of illegal ballistic missiles as the root cause of new tensions, but gives a pass to Iranian mullahs for launching the missiles in the first place! That’s like blaming a pedestrian for getting in the way of a drunk driver while crossing a street only to get run over.

It is even funnier when Cullis blames the situation on “hawks” within Iran’s government who are seeking to kill the deal as a perceived threat to their power. Of course, Cullis not too long ago wrote glowing pieces about the results of the parliamentary elections detailing how the “hawks” had been defeated and a new era of moderation was being ushered in.

Cullis and Pillar cannot have it both ways and their verbal gymnastics cannot hide the fact that Iranian regime is acting in bad faith and is demanding even more as it uses the threats of walking away from a nuclear deal it already has broken as a leverage point.

Washington should ignore these threats and continue to hold the regime accountable for every deceitful act it commits.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Serves as Center of Terrorism Now

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Iran Regime Serves as Center of Terrorism Now

Iran Regime Serves as Center of Terrorism Now

There are 196 countries on the planet and they all have their issues with their neighbors. They squabble, they fight, they complain, they protest, they even spy on one another and in a few cases they openly make war.

Some of those countries are vast and powerful such as the U.S., Russia or China, while others are small to the point of being insignificant on the world stage such as Monaco, Tuvalu or San Marino.

But there are only three countries that share a unique and disturbing distinction. There are only three countries remaining on the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism:

  • Syria
  • Iran
  • Sudan

It’s a pretty exclusive club, one that used to have as its members Libya, Iraq, South Yemen, Cuba and North Korea.

To be placed on this list, countries are alleged to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”

In order to get off the list, countries have to demonstrate:

  • Fundamental change in the leadership and policies of the government of the country concerned;
  • Not supporting acts of international terrorism, and
  • The government has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.

It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable set of criteria to follow, especially if a country wants to be part of the international community. But in Syria and Sudan’s cases, it’s understandable considering the civil wars they are embroiled in and inability of any central government to eliminate any safe havens for terrorist groups to operate in.

The Iranian regime stands out as the only government not undergoing any turmoil that actively and aggressively supports terrorism around the world; and does so with religious fervor.

The State Department terrorism report describes the Iranian regime polices this way:

“While its main effort focused on supporting goals in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, Iran and its proxies also continued subtle efforts at growing influence elsewhere including in Africa, Asia, and, to a lesser extent, Latin America. Iran used the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) to implement foreign policy goals, provide cover for intelligence operations, and create instability in the Middle East. The IRGC-QF is the regime’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.”

The mullahs in Tehran are using all of the available levers of state power to further their support of terrorism whether it is providing safe havens for terrorist leaders, financing of operations, supplying fighters and manpower, equipping them with arms and ammunition, providing transportation and intelligence or actively directing them in attacks.

In many ways, the Iran regime resembles the fictional Hydra organization in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as its tentacles stretch across the world seeking influence in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Unfortunately, in our universe, we don’t have Captain America or Iron Man to rely on.

That propagation of terrorism has served as a template for extremist groups such as ISIS and affiliated Al-Qaeda groups to spring up everywhere and launch attacks to the extent that the U.S. State Department issued a global travel advisory for only the fourth time in history and most ominously the alert extends through the busy holiday travel season through February 2016.

The general degeneration of global peace and stability can be traced in many ways back to the Iranian regime, including its support of the Assad regime in Syria’s civil war, the collapse of the Sunni-Shiite coalition government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq, the overthrow of the Yemen government by Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the recruitment of Hezbollah and Afghan fighters across Syria and Iraq.

All of which puts a harsh spotlight on the rosy claims made by the Iran lobby and backers of the regime by a variety of groups and analysts such as the National Iranian American Council and Paul R. Pillar and Ali Gharib that approval of a landmark nuclear deal would usher in a new era of moderation and cooperation.

That naïve sentiment was again proven wrong as news reports came out revealing a surge in sophisticated computer espionage by the Iran regime resulting in serious cyberattacks against State Department officials over the past month.

According to the New York Times, “over the past month, Iranian hackers identified individual State Department officials who focus on Iran and the Middle East, and broke into their email and social media accounts, according to diplomatic and law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation. The State Department became aware of the compromises only after Facebook told the victims that state-sponsored hackers had compromised their accounts.”

“It was very carefully designed and showed the degree to which they understood which of our staff was working on Iran issues now that the nuclear deal is done,” said one senior American official who oversees much of that operation and who requested anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. “It was subtle.”

It is clear now that the Iranian regime is not only the center of state-sponsored terrorism in the world, it is its living heart.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Sympathizers Downplay Paris Attacks

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Iran Regime Sympathizers Downplay Paris Attacks

Iran Regime Sympathizers Downplay Paris Attacks

In what has to be one of more astounding editorials written about the Paris attacks, Paul R. Pillar, a frequent supporter of the Iranian regime, penned a piece in the National Interest in which he actually tried to make the argument that the attacks were an example of “amateurish” tactics and that the outsized response from governments and media bordered on hysteria and ISIS did not warrant much respect.

“It is a mistake to regard the ISIS entity as a font of critical skills needed to kill people,” Pillar writes.

Let’s think about that statement for a moment. Pillar actually makes the claim that ISIS lacks the skills to kill people. That absurd statement ranks right up there with his previous editorials arguing vociferously for the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime and his claims that doing so would usher in a new and peaceful phase in Middle East tensions.

Well, we certainly know how that worked out.

Pillar’s piece was reprinted faithfully in Lobelog.com, another loyal member of the Iran lobbying effort alongside the National Iranian American Council and Ploughshares Fund just to name a few; all of whom have recently made efforts to divert attention away from the bloody carnage in Paris and now Mali, and instead try to shift the discussion onto discrimination of Syrian refugees or warning of an overreaction in cracking down on civil liberties.

All of the members of the Iran lobby neglect to mention that the center and source of all of these problems starts and ends with the Iranian regime’s fanatical support of the Assad regime in Syria which started the conflict in the first place and helped spawn ISIS in the sectarian fight that sprang up when the mullahs in Tehran sent in thousands of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, Shiite Militias from Iraq and mercenaries from Afghanistan added to milliards of dollars to help keep its proxy in power in Syria.

The fact that Pillar attempts to gloss over the planning and execution necessary for the Paris attacks is unfathomable, other than he is trying hard to minimize the import of what the attacks mean for the West. He argues:

“Some organizational aptitude was needed to put together an operation that involved simultaneous dispatch of multiple attack teams, but this did not require organizing any more people than would be needed to put together a neighborhood soccer team,” Pillar said.

Most rational people would not think their local neighborhood soccer team could build eight suicide bomb vests, acquire and equip three teams with automatic weapons, arrange timetables, scout locations, determine how to funnel panicked people fleeing a bombed sports stadium into a kill zone and communicate via text messaging on disposable cell phones while arranging the attack via encrypted communications evading virtually all national intelligence agencies.

But Pillar exhibits the singular trait that afflicts all supporters of the Iranian regime; the desire to absolve it of any responsibility for spreading and fostering the kind of extremist Islamic belief that is now shaking the world with widespread, multiple and frequent attacks.

Pillar also neglects to mention another key facet of these attacks that is significantly more disturbing than the actual loss of human life; it’s the fact these attacks are not supported with any public demands.

There are no calls to release political prisoners or comrades. No demands for ransom or payments. No negotiations over territorial claims or grievances.

These attacks are based solely on the nihilistic extremist beliefs that also power and drive the mullahs in Tehran.

“The death toll for all of the Paris attacks, as shocking as it understandably was, nonetheless was much less than a more skillfully conducted operation involving a comparable number of attackers would have inflicted,” Pillar writes. “The attack team that went after the most target-rich location—a sports arena with tens of thousands of people—managed to kill only one other person besides themselves.”

I’m sure the families of those slain would disagree with Pillar on the skill level involved in murdering their loved ones, but his comments reflect the almost callous disregard the Iran lobby has for human suffering. Very similar to the Iranian regime’s initial condemnation of the attack but its consequent show of happiness by shamefully putting the blame on the French authorities in its state wide papers and media.

At key points in the travesty that is the human rights record of the Iranian regime, Pillar and his cohorts including Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of NIAC, Jim Lobe of Lobelog.com and others have been struck deaf and mute when it comes to protesting the abhorrent human rights abuses of the mullahs in Tehran either in their comments to news media or in their own social media posts.

Americans held hostage, journalists rounded up, religious minorities imprisoned, social media administrators tossed in jail, dissidents executed, all these actions and more and warranted hardly a murmur of protest and yet Pillar deigns to call terror attacks in Paris as “amateurish.”

The only real amateurish act in this tragedy is the effort by the Iran lobby to whitewash the blood off the streets of Paris.

By Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi and Paul Pillar Outdo Themselves

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Untitled-1Trita Parsi, head of the Iran regime’s top cheerleader, the National Iranian American Council, and Paul Pillar, a former assistant at the Central Intelligence Agency, authored an editorial in Huffington Post in which they attempted to make the argument that Israel was preparing to attack its adversary Hezbollah in an effort to derail nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations.

It’s an odd editorial since it reinforces the Iran lobby’s belief that in order to save a faltering nuclear deal it needs to raise the boogeyman of Israel. For the Iran lobby, Israel serves the same purpose as neo-cons, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) or Fox News, it gives people like Parsi and Pillar the opportunity to run hysterical promising war, apocalypse and mayhem should a nuclear deal not be achieved with Iran’s mullahs.

It’s a typical effort to cajole a reaction from American voters by promising war. A curious tactic considering NIAC has consistently promised a pathway to peace, but logic has never been a NIAC strong suit.

In fact, Parsi and Pillar are scraping the bottom of the barrel when they cite a NPR poll as evidence of shifting momentum for a nuclear deal among Americans. A closer reading of the article they cite reveals points quite unfavorable to them. Among those include:

  • An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month found more than 7-in-10 said they thought a deal would “not make a real difference in preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons.”
  • A Pew survey found that 73 percent said they either knew “a little” or “nothing at all” about nuclear talks. That same poll also found that a strong majority (62 percent) wants Congress to “have the final authority for approving any deal” not President Obama.

The funny thing is that the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t mind talks with Iran on a nuclear deal. Where they disagree with Parsi and Pillar is that the majority of Americans don’t believe Iranian regime will adhere to any deal and that mullahs in Iran simply can’t be trusted.

Americans are an optimistic people. They want to believe negotiations can yield peaceful fruit, but Americans are not stupid – much to the dismay of Parsi and Pillar – they recognize that trust for a regime run by mullahs that has launched and supported three major proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq can’t be trusted.

Americans also know all too well the brutal human rights situation in Iran and are acutely aware of the inhumane treatment being perpetrated in Iran on these same people.

Anyone typing in the words “Iran” and “hanging” in Google under an image search can see the ample proof on display of how Iranian regime’s judicial system dispenses justice. Americans also see Iran’s mullahs playing games with the lives of four Americans being held in Iranian prisons as pawns in the hopes of bartering concessions in nuclear talks.

It’s also even more galling to see that while Parsi and Pillar produce so much editorial copy aimed at warning of a war, they have never condemned the wars that Iran is already waging:

  • Wars against women, children and anyone who cannot exercise their basic human rights without fear of arrest or public beating;
  • Wars against Christians, Jews, Hindus, Yazadis, Sunni Muslims, or anyone else that doesn’t share their brand of extremist Islam; and
  • Wars against bloggers, journalists, pastors, businessmen, tourists, YouTubers and anyone else that dares shine a light on what is happening within Iran.

These are the wars Parsi and Pillar are not prepared to talk about and the real wars happening now that matter.

By Michael Tomlinson