Iran Lobby

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

Iran Regime Sets Sights on Canada and Cash

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Iran Regime Sets Sights on Canada and Cash

Iran Regime Sets Sights on Canada and Cash

Incoming Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had expressed the hopes of improving relations with the Iranian regime, but those hopes are quickly running into the reality of the brutal policies and actions of the mullahs in Tehran.

Trudeau and Canada are learning the lessons from the Iranian regime playbook, much as the U.S. has had to learn the hard way, including the illegal abduction of its citizens. In this case, the plight of 65-year old Homa Hoodfar has placed Canada in the gun sights of the regime.

The university anthropologist was arrested by the regime this past weekend and thrown into Evin prison without charge. It was the second time she was arrested since arriving in Iran several months ago to do research work.

The regime accused Hoodfar, who holds both Canadian and Iranian passports, of “co-operating with a foreign state against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” A generic catch-all phrase the regime uses whenever it scoops up a dual-citizen like fish in a net. More often than not, the arrest is aimed at another agenda item for the mullahs.

In the case of several Americans held by Iran, Jason Rezaian, Amir Hekmati and Saeed Abedini, it was to serve as pawns to swap in a prisoner exchange in order to gain the release of suspected and convicted Iranian regime arms smugglers.

Shortly after Hoodfar’s family went public with her arrest and expressed concerns over health, the Iranian regime officials called out the Canadian government for failing to extradite an Iranian banker who settled in Toronto for what they call was his involvement in an embezzlement scheme.

The regime’s justice minister, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, was reported in a semi-official news agency report as saying that Canada was ignoring Iranian demands to extradite Mahmmoud Reza Khavari.

The report, which appeared Wednesday from the Fars News Agency, says Pourmohammadi told reporters in Tehran that Canada “is not committed and has not rendered any co-operation” with its extradition request.

The Canadian branch of human rights group Amnesty International announced Thursday it would take up Hoodfar’s case and called on Ottawa to pressure Iran for her release.

“The arrest of respected and accomplished scholar, Dr. Homa Hoodfar, is the latest attempt by the Iranian authorities at targeting individuals, including academics, for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and association.” said Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.

“It is deeply troubling that someone whose research focuses on addressing women’s inequality can find herself arbitrarily arrested and held, possibly in solitary confinement, without access to a lawyer and her family.”

The family said it was unclear why Hoodfar had been arrested and that she had been “conducting historical and ethnographic research on women’s public role.”

Analysts say the recent arrest of Hoodfar and others seems to be part of a concentrated effort by the regime to pressure dual citizens. In recent months, the unit that arrested Hoodfar has questioned dozens of people with two nationalities and arrested several.

Among the current prisoners of the regime include:

  • Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian employee of Thomson Reuters, was separated from her young daughter in April and taken to a prison in Kerman, in southern Iran. Another British-Iranian citizen, a businessman named Kamal Foroughi, was also arrested; and
  • Nizar Zakka, Lebanese information technology expert who has legal permanent residency in the United States.

But the turbulence between Iran and Canada also extended into a contentious court case in which the regime lost a key battle when an Ontario judge ordered the regime’s non-diplomatic assets in Canada to be handed over to the victims of terrorist attacks by groups sponsored and supported by the Iranian regime.

“As Canada seeks to re-engage Iran it is critical that Iran continue to be held to account in Canadian courts for its terrorism and human rights abuses,” said Danny Eisen of the Canadian Coalition Against Terror, which represents victims and lobbied for a 2012 law allowing victims to collect damages from state sponsors of terrorism.

The only states designated sponsors of terror by Canada are Iran and Syria.

What Canada is experiencing though is par for the course for how the regime acts and intimidates nations. Just like the Iran lobby, the regime pushes out a message of moderation when in reality it is gearing up for policies of extortion, political blackmail and terrorist actions.

Policies of appeasing the regime have done little to actually effect change and only encourage the regime to be more aggressive. The classic example of that is the regime’s continued test firing of illegal ballistic missiles and the tepid response by the world community.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, Deputy Director of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, made a persuasive argument in an editorial in The Hill.

“The current U.S. policy toward Iran threatens to enable the regime’s behavior by channeling money into the hands of the individuals and institutions associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the unaccountable foundations, who still exert the greatest influence on Iranian foreign policy,” he writes.

“With U.S. presidential elections just around the corner, there is good reason to hope that this policy will come to an end. But every influential person in Washington who recognizes the danger posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program must help to make sure not only that change is guaranteed, but also that it will lead to an alternative policy that specifically constrains the power of the IRGC and similar entities,” he adds.

The experience Canada is having is another reminder that the world should not be trusting the messages of moderation coming out of Iran and its lobby, but rather should only be judged on its actions.

By Laura Carnahan

Iranian Regime Doubles Down on Missile Violations

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Ali HajizadehThe Iranian regime announced its intent to continue pursuing development of its illegal ballistic missiles despite the U.S. blacklisting of more Iranian companies linked to the program, according to multiple news sources.

The regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) test-fired several ballistic missiles this month, drawing condemnation from Western leaders who believe the tests violate a United Nations resolution.

The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted on Thursday two Iranian companies, cutting them off from international finance over their connection to the missile program. Washington had imposed similar sanctions on 11 businesses and individuals in January over a missile test carried out by the IRGC in October 2015.

“Even if they build a wall around Iran, our missile program will not stop,” Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC’s aerospace arm, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency. “They are trying to frighten our officials with sanctions and invasion. This fear is our biggest threat.”

Hassan Rouhani, the regime president touted by the Iran lobby as a pragmatic conservative, said on Sunday that boosting Iran’s defense capabilities is a “strategic policy.”

“We will pursue any measure to boost our defense might and this is a strategic policy,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by Press TV in the first cabinet meeting in the new Persian year.

The fact that the regime fought hard to separate its ballistic missile program from the nuclear agreement reached last year created the kind of yawning loophole which now allows it to develop longer range missiles without fear of jeopardizing the flood of billions in cash now streaming into the regime as a result of the deal.

Hajizadeh downplayed the recent sanctions describing them as futile efforts to curb the regime’s missile program and he is correct in large measure because the deal struck by the Obama administration essentially only allows for pinprick sanctions in response to missile violations.

It also ignores the fact that the nuclear deal does not prevent the Iranian regime from using its new generation of missiles to use chemical or biological weapons payloads, increasing the lethality of what the mullahs can order up.

Another demonstration of the futility of patchwork sanctions was a visit to Iran by North Korean executives of the Korea Mining Development Trading Corp., which is under both UN Security Council and U.S. sanctions for exporting equipment related to ballistic missiles and other weapon systems.

The North Koreans met with the regime’s Shahid Hemat Industrial Group to sell valves, electronic components and measurement devices that are used in liquid-fueled ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles.

The continued commerce between North Korea and the Iranian regime shows how much things have not changed since the deal was signed and demonstrates the fundamental untruth pushed by regime allies such as the National Iranian American Council that the nuclear accord would dramatically alter Iran’s relationship with the world.

Nothing has changed and if anything the past few months have shown how much worse things have gotten with appalling terrorist attacks mounted by Islamic extremists in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino and a refugee crisis that shows no sign of slowing down as Iran continues to send fighters to battlefields throughout the Middle East.

Ali Safavi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading Iranian dissident group, wrote in the New York Daily News about the disconnect between the perception of reformers within the regime and the reality of their hardline practices.

“The leaders of this round’s so-called reformist faction include former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and current President Hassan Rouhani. The former was famously embraced in the early 1990s by the West as a pragmatist willing to do business, before he we went on to preside over the worst period of the Iranian regime’s terrorist attacks and assassinations of dissidents and foreign nationals abroad,” he said.

Indeed, during his “moderate” presidency, Rafsanjani’s Iran was regarded by the U.S. State Department as the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism, a dubious distinction maintained by the current president,” Safavi added. “When will Washington wake up and learn that perhaps the Iranian regime is fundamentally incapable of reform? When will it learn that it should invest in the Iranian people and the real opposition instead of the phony moderates?”

He poses the central problem with policymakers and elected officials dealing with the Iranian regime: failure to learn from past mistakes dooms us to keep repeating them.

Until the world stands firm against Iranian subterfuge, these types of sneaky acts will only continue.

By Michael Tomlinson

 Iranian Regime Presents Two Faces to World

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 Iranian Regime Presents Two Faces to World

Iranian Regime Presents Two Faces to World Iranian Regime Presents Two Faces to World

There are many descriptions throughout history of governments or leaders presenting two different sides of their personalities. Ancient Rome even created the god Janus to describe the two-faced nature of looking into the past and future, while in our modern vernacular we describe people who are “two-faced” as being duplicitous or deceitful.

In literature, the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde takes this split personality idea to the extreme in depicting a man who could possess vastly different moral character through a transformation that turned him from an ambitious physician to a demented killer.

In many ways, the Iranian regime presents a similar split personality to the world in which on one hand – aided by the Iran lobby – the mullahs seek to portray themselves as a modern nation bent on joining the international community with a leadership focused on moderation and peaceful goals. On the other hand, the regime’s actions in terms of its support of proxy wars, terrorist groups and human rights crackdowns shows a regime intent on an almost murderous path of destruction.

This “Jekyll and Hyde” nature was examined by Marc Champion in a Bloomberg View editorial in which he said:

“The Hyde part of this analogy seems clear: it’s Iran’s clerical regime. It retains power by dictating who can stand for election, repressing and censoring political and cultural opposition and executing about 1,000 people per year. Abroad, it arms terrorist groups and tests ballistic missiles emblazoned with the words ‘Israel must be wiped out.’

“The Jekyll side is less understood. This is the Iran where an American is more likely to get an enthusiastic reception than in any other country I’ve visited in the Middle East; as far back as 2002, survey data suggested that three quarters of Iranians wanted closer relations with the U.S. Iranians are better educated than citizens of other countries in the region and women make up 60 percent of the university student body (enough for the regime to try to start excluding them from certain courses). The economy, though far too oil dependent, is more diversified than others in the Persian Gulf. Above all, Iran is a stable nation state with thousands of years of history in a region of shifting sands.”

And there lies the conundrum of Iran, a nation filled with millions of people who yearn for normalcy, freedom, peace and access to the rest of the world without fear of censorship or oppression, but all of whom are under the collective thumbs of a religious theocracy dominated by mullahs and backed by the Revolutionary Guards and religious courts.

Champion interviewed Ali Kedery, the longest-serving senior U.S. official in Iraq from 2003 to 2009, after which he went to work for ExxonMobil. From there went on to set up Dragoman Partners, a consultancy based in Dubai, on his views on this split personality.

“You cannot separate Dr. Jekyll from Mr. Hyde. President Obama and his very inexperienced and ideological team have bet the farm on their ability to separate the regime from the Iranian people. But you are dealing with a real regime, one that has deep roots planted since 1979.”

Kedery went on to describe the regime’s vice-like grip on political power — proved by its crushing of pro-democracy protests in 2009 — and over Iran’s economy. As a result, he said, the idea that hardliners will allow Western capital and interaction penetrate the country to such an extent that it can erode their power and change the nature of the regime is dangerously wrong:

“They are not stupid. The model they have adopted is something like Russia’s or China’s. There will be a lot of foreign direct investment, but they will make sure it is directed towards the government.”

The grip the mullahs have over the Iranian people is almost absolute through the rigorous use of arrest, imprisonment and execution as the primary means of domestic crowd control. Often times the use of such tools rises in concert with the rise of political movements within Iran for political liberalization or even regime change.

The current regime of Hassan Rouhani has been especially brutal in meting out the ultimate punishment as human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the United Nations has noted as Iran has sought to control any dissent during the run up to the nuclear deal.

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, an Iranian-American political scientist and Harvard University scholar, is president of the International American Council and wrote about the surge in executions in Al-Arabiya.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has hit the highest rate of executing people since the year 1989. The official number indicates that Iran executed nearly two times more people in 2015 in comparison to 2010 when the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in office, as well as roughly 10 times more than the number of executions in 2005,” he wrote.

Michael G. Bochenek, senior counsel of the children’s rights division at Human Rights Watch pointed out “Iran is almost certainly the world leader in executing juvenile offenders.” Some articles in Iran’s criminal code allows girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 to receive death sentences. In addition, ethnic and religious minority communities, including the Sunni, Arabs, and Bahai continue to be systematically targeted and discriminated against, he added.

The use of lethal punishment as a means of statecraft and controlling a population is the Mr. Hyde nature of the regime and the face that the Iran lobby works diligently to keep covered up.

Nowhere is the dual nature of the Iranian regime on display better than in Syria, where on the one hand its direct involvement in keeping the Assad regime alive with arms, fighters and cash led to a bloody civil war that has claimed the lives of over 300,000 people and led to half of the population of Syria becoming displaced and turned into refugees.

Yet the Iranian regime has the temerity to insist any resolution of Syria’s conflict that does not include Assad could lead to “Armageddon” in one of the biggest examples of hyperbole since the Greeks claimed the Trojan Horse was a gift to Troy.

Iranian regime foreign minister Javad Zarif said that every country in the Middle East needed to think about ways to end decades of military and sectarian conflict, but that this must not include a redrawing of post-World War II borders to give groups such as the Kurds or the Islamic Alawite sect their own regions.

“Change in how we govern, change in how we interact with each other. That is what requires change,” Zarif said during a speech at the Australian National University in Canberra. “Changing borders will only make the situation worse. That will be the beginning – if you believe [in religious texts] – of Armageddon.”

Zarif also reaffirmed Iran’s view that negotiations aimed at ending Syria’s conflict shouldn’t be derailed by premature demands for the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, warning that the Syrian president’s future must not be a precondition of negotiations among the regime and opposition groups.

Given the two-faced nature of the regime, we can only assume that Zarif’s comments mean the actual opposite.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iranian Regime “Moderates” Get More Ballistic Missile Launches

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Iranian Regime “Moderates” Get More Ballistic Missile Launches

Iranian Regime “Moderates” Get More Ballistic Missile Launches

Fulfilling vows the mullahs made to continue developing its ballistic missile program despite threats of new sanctions, the Iranian regime test-fired several ballistic missiles on Tuesday aimed at showing the regime’s “deterrent power” and “all-out readiness to counter any threat,” according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The launches were carried out by the Revolutionary Guard Corps with surface-to-surface missiles fired from silos in central Iran and hit targets 435 miles away, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

These were the first tests since the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions in January on 11 Iranian entities with alleged links to Tehran’s ballistic missile program, citing the “significant threat” the weapons posed to regional and global security. Iran last tested its missiles in October and November, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Obama administration was understandably low-key in its response, taking pains to reiterate how it did not see that the test launches violated the recently approved nuclear agreement, but might be in violation of existing United Nations Security Council resolutions banning the development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.

“To be very clear, such tests are not a violation of the JCPOA,” a senior Obama administration official said. “That said, there are strong indications that the test is inconsistent with U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231. If confirmed, we intend to raise the matter in the U.N. Security Council. We will also encourage a serious review of the incident and press for an appropriate response.”

Iranian regime officials have said its recent tests don’t violate international accords, and that the weapons are merely for defense. Hassan Rouhani ordered the missiles’ development to be expedited in December, amid the prospect of new U.S. sanctions and in clear defiance of existing prohibitions.

The absurdity of the nuclear deal into stark relief when we now see the folly of unlinking various issues such as ballistic missile development, proxy wars and human rights violations from the principle agreement, in which the regime is now freed of any potential leverage that could be used against it.

In a move that eerily imitates how North Korea ignored international agreements and sanctions, the Iranian regime threatened its willingness to walk away from the nuclear deal it so desperately sought now that is has secured a lifting of economic and gained access to $150 billion in frozen assets around the world.

“If our interests are not met under the nuclear deal, there will be no reason for us to continue,” Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, warned during remarks delivered to a group of Iranian officials in Tehran.

“If other parties decide, they could easily violate the deal,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state-controlled media. “However, they know this will come with costs.”

Araqchi appeared to allude to the United States possibly leveling new economic sanctions as a result of the missile test, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The reaction from Capitol Hill was swift and urgent.

“The administration’s response to Iran’s new salvo of threatening missile tests in violation of international law cannot once again be, it’s ‘not supposed to be doing that,’” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) said in a statement. “Now is the time for new crippling sanctions against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ministry of Defense, Aerospace Industries Organization, and other related entities driving the Iranian ballistic missile program.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) warned that the nuclear agreement has done little to moderate the regime’s rogue behavior.

“Far from pushing Iran to a more moderate engagement with its neighbors, this nuclear deal is enabling Iran’s aggression and terrorist activities,” McCarthy said in a statement. “Sanctions relief is fueling Iran’s proxies from Yemen to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Khamenei and the Iranian regime are acting with impunity because they know President Obama will not hold them accountable and risk the public destruction of his nuclear deal, the cornerstone of the president’s foreign policy legacy.”

McCarthy went on to demand that the Obama administration step forward with new sanctions as punishment for the missile test.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday that lawmakers would continue to press for new sanctions against Tehran “until the regime ends its violent, provocative behavior against the U.S. and our allies.”

In another sign that the regime has no interest in real moderation in the government, in spite of how the Iran lobby characterized the election results, top mullah Ali Khamenei appointed close ally Ebrahim Raeisi, the 55-year-old national prosecutor-general, as the new chairman of Astan Quds Razavi, the foundation that manages the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad.

Raeisi is a close ally of Khamenei, and his appointment will strengthen links between the leader’s office and the shrine, whose annual turnover – based on endowments, property and companies – is many billions of dollars slated for Khamenei’s private coffers.

Raeisi, who holds the clerical rank of hojjatoleslam, is a different character, according to a story by The Guardian. At last year’s 36th anniversary of the taking of the embassy hostages, which featured criticism of the Rouhani administration as well as denunciations of the United States as the “Great Satan”, Raeisi announced that the intelligence and security forces had “identified and cracked down on a network of penetration in media and cyberspace, and detained spies and writers hired by Americans.”

Raeisi, reportedly defended the amputation of the hands of thieves, also at the time of the 1988 executions of 3,000-5,000 political prisoners and dissidents ordered by then leader Khomenei, Raeisi was deputy prosecutor in Tehran, a role he had held since 1984-5 where he played a key role in the massacre.

These are the faces controlling Iran and it does not bode well for future prospects for peace.

By Michael Tomlinson

Being an Iranian Regime Friend Still Gets You Executed

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Being an Iranian Regime Friend Still Gets You Executed

Being an Iranian Regime Friend Still Gets You Executed

You have to say this about the mullahs’ justice system in Iran; it sure hands out the death penalty swiftly.

An Iranian court has sentenced a well-known tycoon to death for corruption linked to oil sales during the rule of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a judiciary spokesman said Sunday.

Babak Zanjani and two of his associates were sentenced to death for “money laundering,” among other charges, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi said in brief remarks broadcast on regime TV. He did not identify the two associates. Previous state media reports have said the three were charged with forgery and fraud.

“The court has recognized the three defendants as ‘corruptors on earth’ and sentenced them to death,” said Ejehi. “Corruptors on earth” is an Islamic term referring to crimes that are punishable by death because they have a major impact on society. The verdict, which came after a nearly five-month trial, can be appealed.

Zanjani is one of Iran’s wealthiest businessmen, with a fortune worth an estimated $14 billion, much of made from the illicit sale of petroleum in violation of economic sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear program, which ironically has been lifted because of the agreement reached last year.

Zanjani’s plight mirrors one of the peculiar aspects of the Iranian regime which is you are kept alive as long as you are useful to the regime and when your utility ceases, you often meet an ignominious end.

In Zanjani’s case, it was useful to the mullahs to have middlemen who could evade and skirt international sanctions to sell black market oil and steer the profits back into the regime’s coffers and the bank accounts of regime families and members of the Revolutionary Guard, but Zanjani also built a vast personal fortune from these acts and with the lifting of the economic sanctions and the opening of relations with the rest of the world, he ceased to be useful as a smuggler.

Now Zanjani and his associates can serve a more useful purpose by being examples of regime justice in combatting corruption that has been allowed to run rampant throughout all sectors of Iran’s economy and government. His sentencing permits Hassan Rouhani to project an image of justice and provides a convenient scapegoat as ordinary Iranians have chafed under severe economic hardship under mullahs.

Authorities said the death sentence could be reversed if Zanjani repays the pilfered proceeds. Zanjani’s lawyer has protested that a bank has refused to accept Zanjani’s offer of payments, according to reports from Tehran.

Zanjani has 20 days to appeal the sentence, authorities said.

Authorities here have prosecuted other instances of corruption, but death sentences in such cases are relatively rare.

The severity of the punishment suggests that the case is viewed in part as a warning to other entrepreneurs as Iran’s economy opens up in the post-sanctions era. Many investors here are anticipating a bonanza as international funds pour into the country.

Zanjani’s death sentence is stern reminder to eager entrepreneurs not to get out in front of the regime’s interests and remember the mullahs are very much still in charge.

It is also a harsh reminder that even though Western media lauded the “moderate” wins in Iran’s parliamentary elections, the apparatus of government, including the judiciary, is still firmly in control of the mullahs in dispensing medieval punishment.

“The political system in Iran’s a joke,” said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), adding that the significance of the moderates’ sweep in Tehran and other apparent wins across the country counts for “zero, zip.”

“There are no moderates in Iran,” Graham added. “That’s a fiction I don’t buy.”

“As long as the Ayatollah Khamenei is in charge, it doesn’t matter, the elections,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), another vocal opponent of the nuclear deal.

“I wouldn’t call the people who swept ‘moderates,’” added Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho). “The election shows no change.”

Iran has hardly acted like a saint since the deal was signed last July. The pact’s opponents are quick to point to recent ballistic missile tests and the detention of U.S. soldiers as part of the deal’s legacy.

“In many ways, the list of regime-approved candidates told us more about Iran’s intentions than the election results,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who called himself “deeply skeptical” that the moderates’ wins would bring about any progress.

Those views were shared in a scathing editorial by the Boston Herald, which said:

“This is a mistake. There is nothing moderate or reforming about Rouhani — or his new troops.

“These terms do not apply to a man who vigorously backs the Islamic Republic created in the 1979 revolution. He does not oppose his country’s support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, both with Iranian troops and those of its client the Hezbollah terrorist group.

“Rouhani has done nothing to reform a regime that holds hundreds of political — and religious — prisoners. The death penalty can still be given to homosexuals and adulterers. Amnesty International said last year Iran executed 694 prisoners in the six months ending last August, a startling bloodthirstiness that makes the rate of executions, in proportion to population, about 200 times what it is in the United States (where executions have been generally declining for 16 years).

“The candidates Rouhani endorsed included two former intelligence officials who murdered dissidents and another who called for the execution of leaders of the 2009 protests against a rigged election, said Jonathan Tobin of Commentary magazine.”

The Herald has joined the growing chorus of news media growing skeptical of any real reform coming out of Iran’s elections and has grown wary of the false promises offered up by Iran lobby supporters such as the National Iranian American Council in defense of election results.

We can only hope that skepticism spreads to the remaining presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle.

By Michael Tomlinson

March to Iran Moderation Paved with Human Rights Cruelty

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March to Iran Moderation Paved with Human Rights Cruelty

March to Iran Moderation Paved with Human Rights Cruelty

In a short period of time, the Obama administration has boasted of diplomatic rapprochements with Russia, Cuba and now the Iranian regime in a dizzying display of gymnastic statecraft worthy of Olympic gold. In each case, totalitarian regimes that have historically been in the diplomatic doghouse as sponsors of terrorism and human rights violators are now on the receiving end of financial largess and formalized diplomatic relations.

It is an odd reversal that has been made all-the stranger with the rapturous media coverage of the just completed parliamentary elections in Iran in which the assertion has been repeatedly made that “moderates” and “reformists” marched to victory and have set the stage for a dramatic turnaround in the regime’s future.

That is about as likely as Donald Trump mellowing out on the presidential campaign trail.

Many are starting to puncture the balloon of moderation hopes flowing from these elections, such as Victoria Coates, author of “David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art” and the senior advisor for foreign policy to Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz. Writing in the Washington Times, she said:

“As much as I hate to be a skunk at the garden party, this election was no cause for celebration. The Council of Experts purged any real reformists from the rolls of candidates in January. About half the candidates for parliament were dropped, along with three-quarters for the Council, including all women. What remained were the candidates who are, each and every one of them, acceptable to the Ayatollah Khamenei. It is barely short of delusional, for example, to suggest that the election to the Council of former President Akbar Rafsanjani, who insisted just last July that Israel should be wiped off the map, or current President Hasan Rouhani, who has presided over the most brutal spike in executions in the world during his administration, will result in any sort of meaningful reform to Iran’s foreign or domestic policy.”

“We must not let our natural—and laudable—hopes for liberalization in Iran blind us to what is really happening. Have we already forgotten that just six weeks ago ten American sailors were on their knees with Iranian guns pointed at their heads? This election was nothing more or less than another carefully choreographed and controlled exercise in perpetuating the status quo in Iran, made all the more necessary by the prospect of a high-level transition of power,” Coates adds. “History teaches us the hard lesson that political freedom neither inevitable nor imperishable. But just because democracy isn’t really springing up in Tehran doesn’t mean there is no hope for it.”

Another voice of criticism comes from Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who fled Iran and now lives in exile in London, who spoke to Mother Jones magazine on the situation within the regime, especially the vetting process for candidates:

“The people are fed up with corruption and embezzlement. They object to censorship. The first thing that the people of Iran want is free elections. The government of Iran claims that every two years there are elections. But none of them are free. The competence of the people who have been nominated first has to be approved by the Guardian Council. It is a vetting process, and only then can Iranians elect these people. Yet the members of the Guardian Council are not elected by the people. They have been appointed by the leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]. Any person who has the slightest criticism will not be approved. Over 40 percent of the people who have been nominated have not been approved,” she said.

Ebadi also took to task the regime’s policies in Syria and Yemen which have yielded two large proxy wars that have killed thousands and displaced millions of refugees.

“The role of Iran has been very destructive. As an Iranian, I apologize to the civilian people of Syria who have been killed as a result of the useless intervention of Iran in Syria. It was with the aid of government Iran that the Houthis in Yemen were able to capture Sana’a. It is totally unacceptable for a government to interfere in the internal affairs of another government and send aid, money, and weapons, to the people who are against a certain regime in another country,” she said.

Her and Coates’s words were echoed by Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, writing in a column for USA Today.

“The ranks of those ultimately selected to populate the 290 seats of the majles and the 88 seats of the Assembly of Experts are filled with more than a few radicals. They include former Intelligence Ministers Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi and Mohammad Reyshahri, both of whom are widely suspected of perpetrating murders and disappearances during their times in office, and Ali Razini, the chief prosecutor of Iran’s Revolutionary Court, which supervises all political executions in the Islamic Republic. A string of other, lesser known candidates nonetheless have similarly hardline pedigrees,” Berman writes.

“Their inclusion isn’t an accident. It is, rather, an inevitable function of the political horse-trading that took place ahead of the polls, as the various “lists” of candidates scrambled to put together a winning ticket after the mass exclusion of real progressives. As a result, many of Iran’s hardliners have just been given a new lease on political life, albeit under a different ideological moniker,” he adds.

Adam Kredo, writing in the Free Beacon, noted more of the so-called “moderates” elected who are in fact some of the worst violators of human rights in Iran, including:

  • Ali Movahedi-Kermani, a radical Iranian cleric, also received support from Iran’s moderate factions. He has threatened to “trample upon America,” as well as bombS. and Israeli interests;
  • Mohammed Emami-Kashani, another radical cleric who won a seat on the assembly with the backing of moderates, has blamed the U.S. and Israel for creating al Qaeda;
  • Other election winners backed by reformists include Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabaeenejad, a religious radical who has called on civilians to use violence in order to enforce strict dress codes for women.

Kredo noted that other so-called reformist winners also have a history of calling for the destruction of Israel and America and reportedly sponsored attacks on political dissidents; one of whom Kredo quoted from.

Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose main group is the MEK (PMOI), said that candidates were carefully screened to ensure their allegiance to Khamenei’s hardline camp.

“A glance at the list of candidates presented by the regime’s various factions leaves no doubt that the choice was merely between different factions responsible for suppression, execution, exporting terrorism, warmongering, and plundering the Iranian people’s wealth,” Rajavi said in a statement following the election.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Spin Iran Elections

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Iran Lobby Working Hard to Spin Iran Elections

Iran Lobby Working Hard to Spin Iran Elections

With the recent parliamentary elections in Iran, the regime and its allies are working hard to project the image of a moderate landslide setting the stage for a new era of peace, prosperity and happiness. Somewhere in there are probably also promises that eating ice cream doesn’t make you fat and pots of gold lie at the end of rainbows.

At the center of that spin control exercise stands the National Iranian American Council, the chief lobbyist and public advocate for the mullahs in Tehran, which sent its leaders out to talk to virtually any journalist that would listen to them about how great things turned out in Iran.

“The stunning setback of the hardliners in the elections is precisely why they opposed the Iran nuclear deal,” said Trita Parsi, president of the NIAC. “They knew that if successful, the Rouhani faction would benefit electorally from the significant achievement of resolving the nuclear issue and reducing tensions with United States.”

Parsi’s comments are the key message for regime supporters: that approval of the nuclear deal was the key for the moderate wins. It makes for a nice fiction, but it is also as blatantly wrong.

First, Parsi’s contention of a moderate win is beguilingly false since he ignores the months-long vetting process in which the handpicked members of the Guardian Council bounced over half of the 12,000 candidates that submitted for approval to appear on the ballot. Those that survived were largely approved based on their allegiance to the Supreme leader of the mullahs and adherence to the supporting the policies of the ruling mullahs, backed by the Revolutionary Guard.

Anyone who deviated from those goals was arrested and thrown in jail during a massive crackdown across Iran that saw journalists, dissidents and potential opposition politicians rounded up. Of course, Parsi and his colleagues did not utter a word of protest during these arrests.

In another quote given in an editorial in the Washington Post, Parsi added that hardliners “knew that if successful, the Rouhani faction would benefit electorally from the significant achievement of resolving the nuclear issue and reducing tensions with United States. These benefits would not just be limited to the parliamentary elections, but could establish a new balance of power in Iran’s internal politics with significant long-term repercussions.”

It’s the second falsehood Parsi preaches in claiming there are indeed factions splitting the Iranian regime, including a bloc of moderates aligned with Hassan Rouhani.

Where Parsi is wrong is his claim that the differences separating these so-called “faction” are political, when they are in fact more about power and greed.

The Iranian regime ranks as one of the most corrupt economies in the world with the Revolutionary Guard and the families of the mullahs running the regime deeply involved and controlling of virtually all the major industries in Iran, including petroleum, aviation, telecommunications, mining, shipping and manufacturing.

With the cash infusion of $100 billion in hard currency being made available, the mullahs and military are loathe to give up control of those assets, or the billions in foreign investment that will flow as a result of the nuclear deal. The fight over parliamentary seats is less about opening up Iranian society and broadening human rights and more about securing enough seats to control how that spoils of the nuclear deal get divided up.

The mullahs have long made clear their political strategy in crafting a regime modeled after China in which the economy is liberalized while maintaining tight political control over the people. In that manner, the parliamentary elections and claims of moderation by the Iran lobby make perfect sense. As Parsi and others proclaim moderation, the government is still left firmly in the hands of those intent on enriching themselves and not improving the lot of the Iranian people.

The deception by Parsi does go to some absurd lengths as he claims in an interview on The Real News that Ali Larijani, the current head of the parliament and overseer of the judiciary, is actually in favor of moderate policies.

“Ali Larijani, who is the current head of the parliament, is a conservative. And he’s been a conservative for a very long time, belongs to a very conservative and well-established family. But he has aligned himself with Rouhani most of the time on most issues. And he’s not considered right now to be in the anti-Rouhani camp,” Parsi claims.

It’s a silly claim when you consider that the regime’s judicial and police functions are firmly in control of hardliners that enforced the vetting process in the first place and removed all the opponents to Rouhani’s slate of “moderate” allies. This is also the same judiciary that has consistently imprisoned Americans, Christians and sentences children to death, and most recently snatched up Parsi’s friend and ally, Siamak Namazi, and threw him in prison without legal representation or charge.

The fact that Parsi called these “the most consequential non-presidential elections in Iran at least for the last two decades” in an interview with the Cato Institute, is even more absurd given that many would claim that the disputed 2009 presidential elections that were stolen and protested with mass demonstrations that were brutally put down violently by the mullahs were the most consequential elections in Iran since that was the last time the Iranian people actually took a stab at real regime change.

The last false argument being put forth by the Iran lobby is the contention that real change is possible down the road with the possibility of a new supreme leader being elected following the inevitable death of the 76-year old Ali Khamenei.

“In the short term the parliamentary elections will impact Iran’s economic policies. But for the long term, this assembly could elect the next supreme leader, which has greater long-term implications for Iran and its people,” said Reza Marashi, also of the NIAC.

It is laughable to think there will be any real possibility of installing a new top mullah that would deviate from the path the Islamic revolution has taken, or loosen the control the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard have over the country. For Marashi to think there would be any change over a long, incremental pathway ignores the abject suffering and brutality being meted out against the Iranian people every day.

When the Rouhani regime has overseen a record number of executions, far exceeding the high water mark set by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the idea of a loosening of the regime is merely a smokescreen.

Already Rouhani has seen fit to keep the vast majority of the billions in released funds in overseas accounts to help pay for the new military hardware Iran is busy buying from Russia and soon China. The Iranian people are unlikely to see any of it and ultimately their hopes for an improving economy will remain only an unfilled dream so long as the mullahs are in Power.

By Michael Tomlinson

Who Are These So-Called “Moderates” in Iran Elections?

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Who Are These So-Called “Moderates” in Iran Elections?

Who Are These So-Called “Moderates” in Iran Elections?

The New York Times, among other news outlets, trumpeted the election results from Iran with great fanfare announcing “strong” gains by moderates and reformists in this weekend’s parliamentary elections. Predictably, the spin revolved around the notion that this was a step in the right direction towards a more moderate future in Iran.

“Though hard-liners still control the most powerful positions and institutions of the state, two national elections last week appeared to build on the slow but unmistakable evolution toward a more moderate political landscape — now and into the future,” wrote Thomas Erdbrink in the Times. “While the hard-liners still remain firmly in control of the judiciary, the security forces and much of the economy, the success of the moderate, pragmatic and pro-government forces seemed to give Mr. Rouhani political currency to push a course of greater liberalization of the economy at home and accommodation abroad.”

What Erdbrink and most other Western journalists miss is the simple fact that the mullahs in control of the regime – virtually all of the important sectors of power as Erdbrink notes – have allowed a smattering of candidates to run that can appear “moderate” when compared to the more vocal conservatives in power, but in fact all share the same loyalty to the aims of the Islamic state.

Revolution and regime change are not coming anytime soon to Iran under these mullahs no matter what rosy picture some media wish to paint.

What is even more amusing is that all the celebration is focused on the election of a small minority dubbed “moderates” in the lower house parliament, but in the 88-member Assembly of Experts, over three-quarters of the original candidates seeking to run were swept off the ballot before voting even began, leaving only hardcore supporters of top mullah Ali Khamenei to win seats.

As to whom actually won, the Wall Street Journal editorial board took a closer look at the winners and found them less than “moderate” and downright unsavory.

  • Mostafa Kavakebian. The General Secretary of Iran’s Democratic Party, Mr. Kavakebian is projected to enter the Majlis as a member for Tehran. In a 2008 speech he said: “The people who currently reside in Israel aren’t humans, and this region is comprised of a group of soldiers and occupiers who openly wage war on the people.”
  • Another moderate is Kazem Jalali, who previously served as the spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Majlis and is projected to have won a seat. In 2011 Mr. Jalali said his committee “demands the harshest punishment”—meaning the death penalty—for Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two leaders of the Green Movement that was bloodily suppressed after stolen elections in 2009. Those two leaders are still under house arrest.

According to the Journal, as for new Assembly of Experts, many of the “moderates” projected to have won seats were also listed on the hard-liners’ lists, since the ratio of candidates to seats was well below two, including:

  • Mohammad Reyshahry, a former Intelligence Minister believed to have helped spearhead the 1988 summary execution of thousands of leftists;
  • Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, another former Intelligence Minister believed to have directed the “chain murders” of the late 1990s; and
  • Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabainejad, a fierce opponent of women’s rights who has called Israel “a cancerous tumor.”

That seems like quite a slate of “moderate” new faces that got elected. Maybe Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi from the National Iranian American Council, can fly over and have lunch with these moderates, unless they are worried they might be arrested like their fellow Iran lobby supporter Siamak Namazi who now languishes in an regime prison.

“The political reality in Iran is that the Ayatollahs, backed by the Revolutionary Guards, remain firmly in control,” the Journal correctly points out.

The funny thing about the parade of optimistic and sunny news headlines is how they eerily echo the same notes of hope that came in the wake of the nuclear agreement only to be followed by grimmer headlines of illegal ballistic missile tests, detaining of American sailors, rocket launches at U.S. and French navy warships, recruiting Russia to fight in Syria and the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Even as regime supporters laud these “moderate” wins, shocking news came of a village in southern Iran of a heinous incident announced by Shahindokht Molaverdi, the ironically named vice president for women and family affairs.

“We have a village in Sistan and Baluchestan province where every single man has been executed,” she said, without naming the place or clarifying whether the executions took place at the same time or over a longer period. “Their children are potential drug traffickers as they would want to seek revenge and provide money for their families. There is no support for these people.”

Maya Foa, from the anti-death penalty campaigning group Reprieve, said: “The apparent hanging of every man in one Iranian village demonstrates the astonishing scale of Iran’s execution spree. These executions — often based on juvenile arrests, torture, and unfair or nonexistent trials — show total contempt for the rule of law, and it is shameful that the UN and its funders are supporting the police forces responsible.”

Amnesty is particularly concerned about Iran’s execution of juveniles. In a report published in January, the group said Iran had carried out 73 executions of juvenile offenders between 2005 and 2015.

Sistan and Baluchestan, where the unnamed village is situated, “is arguably the most underdeveloped region in Iran, with the highest poverty, infant and child mortality rates, and lowest life expectancy and literacy rates in the country,” according to Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran. “The province … experiences a high rate of executions for drug-related offences or crimes deemed to constitute ‘enmity against God’ in the absence of fair trials.”

Even as the Iran lobby celebrates these wins, an Iranian village has seen all the men in it killed indiscriminately by these same “moderates.”

By Laura Carnahan

Iranian Regime Use Boogeyman of Great Satan to Control Elections

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Iranian Regime Use Boogeyman of Great Satan to Control Elections

Iranian Regime Use Boogeyman of Great Satan to Control Elections

As parliamentary elections for the Iranian regime approaches, the regime continue their verbal drumbeat blaming the U.S., Great Britain and anyone else not named “Iran” for meddling in the elections. The latest verbal volley came from Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of staff of the regime’s armed forces, who accused the U.S. and Great Britain of meddling by campaign for and against certain candidates.

“Such interference is [part of] aggressive strategies adopted by the US and Britain toward the Iranian nation, and the country’s officials should not underestimate it,” Firouzabadi said on Saturday.

He added that the “impudent” move by arrogant powers, including the U.S. and Britain, would provoke the wrath of the “revolutionary” Iranian nation.

Of course the good general neglected to mention any specific examples of meddling in his diatribe, but that is par for the course for the regime to hurl invective without any evidence, proof or backing. The truth is that there is no meddling going on or intrusive acts, especially from an Obama administration which seems intent on appeasing the mullahs in any way imaginable.

A compliant and friendly U.S. government though doesn’t fit the Islamic revolutionary beliefs held near and dear to the mullahs as their means of oppressing the Iranian people in what top mullah Ali Khamenei affectionately calls the “resistance economy;” an economy designed to keep Iranians struggling, impoverished and dependent on the regime for subsidized fuel, food and medicine.

It serves the regime’s purposes to keep blaming the U.S. and rest of the West for all the ills that have befallen Iran, especially during the time of economic sanctions, but since those have been lifted as part of the nuclear deal negotiated last summer, the mullahs are caught in the bind of having to explain to the Iranian people why things – like the economy – remain so bad under their stewardship.

For the mullahs, continued scapegoating of the U.S. is about the only excuse they have left to divert blame away from their own corruption, incompetence and mismanagement. It is also the strategy the Iran lobby follows in turning every issue into a blame game against the poor mullahs of Tehran.

All of which is a behavior that is only reinforced when the Obama administration fails to stand up aggressively to the regime’s misbehavior, thereby engendering even more egregious acts by the Iranian regime.

Case in point is the letter sent from Iranian general Mohsen Rezaei to Hassan Rouhani in which he detailed how to force even more concessions from the U.S. by aggressively building longer-range ballistic missiles.

The letter follows the capturing of U.S. sailors, the firing rockets near a U.S. carrier, and the flying of drones over U.S. and French carriers and it claims the U.S. only was willing to make a nuclear deal because Tehran aggressively pursued a renegade nuclear bomb program that violated UN sanctions.

“Just as Iran’s success in developing 20,000 centrifuges was a slap in the face of the United States and forced the Americans to come to the negotiating table and recognize our right to enrich uranium, I am hoping that with your support, the range of Iran’s missiles will exceed 5,000 kilometers [3,106 miles],” Rezaei wrote Rouhani.

The expanded reach of the missiles would threaten the U.S. and its allies by putting American military installations and Europe within range of an Iranian missile, which currently can only travel 2,000 kilometers.

If the regime were to develop a longer-range missile, no doubt using technology already developed and tested by North Korea, it would pose a significant threat to most of Europe and Asia. Not surprisingly, the Obama administration has been largely silent and the Iran lobby has been deaf and mute on these latest provocations.

North Korea is an interesting case study, since the efforts to rein in that rogue nation’s nuclear program through international monitoring – similar to the deal reached with the Iranian regime – has been an utter failure and has only allowed the North Koreans to assemble a small arsenal of nuclear warheads, but also develop intercontinental ballistic missile capability which it has been eager to sell to Iran for hard currency; of which the mullahs are swimming in $100 billion of it courtesy of the nuclear deal.

All of which is fueling a wild new arms race throughout the Middle East as the Iranian regime’s neighbors worry – and rightly so – about the mullahs intentions. Support of proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq has not bred much confidence in Iran’s neighbors, nor has an $8 billion shopping spree in Moscow for advanced weapons.

Escalating conflicts driving Middle Eastern nations to buy more weapons include conflicts in Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq, along with violence in Egypt and Turkey, says Ken Pollack, a senior fellow researching the Middle East at the Brookings Institution.

“We are seeing a region on fire,” Pollack says. “A lot of countries feel the need to increase their military capabilities to intervene in those conflicts or to fend off rivals.”

Pollack says the top rivalry in the region “consuming ammunition” is between Iran and Saudi Arabia and their allies, especially in Yemen where Tehran is backing the Houthi opposition to the Saudi-supported government. Iran is also supporting embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad while Saudi Arabia is sending weapons to groups opposing his government, but Pollack says the two nations appear to be vying for influence through other proxy wars in the region.

As long as the Iranian regime is allowed to continue the fantasy of blaming its ills on others such as the U.S., the longer the mullahs will feel safe in continuing on their path of destruction and oppression.

By Michael Tomlinson

Human Rights Remain Under Assault by Iranian Regime

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Human Rights Remain Under Assault by Iranian Regime

Human Rights Remain Under Assault by Iranian Regime

Next week the Iranian regime will conduct parliamentary elections that most news media and analysts have already called rigged because of the customary elimination of over two-thirds of the candidates seeking seats in the lower parliament and the more powerful Assembly of Experts.

The regime’s Guardian Council, with its handpicked members by top mullah Ali Khamenei, exercised their usual due diligence in removing any candidate that even had a hint of moderation or deviation from the Islamic revolutionary principles that guide the regime.

What is left are only those candidates that pledge religious, ideological and political fealty to the mullahs that run the regime and hold sway over virtually all facets of life in Iran.

This winnowing process empowers the mullahs and allows them the freedom and discretion to continue the unabated crackdown on human rights in advance of the elections with no cause for worry or recrimination from the international community, but there are news accounts that leak out depicting the brutality being visited on ordinary Iranians – often smuggled out by members of the dissident community at great personal risk.

One of those moving accounts was published in Quartz online in a photo essay by a photographer who spent four years researching women and girls being held in Iranian prisons, many awaiting death sentences.

“My main goal in this project was to understand how young girls could end up in jail in the first place,” the prizewinning photographer tells Quartz. “I spent time talking to them, they were nice and kind.”

In Iran, the death penalty can be applied to minors, and in 2014, a United Nations report estimated that at least 160 juvenile offenders were on death row in the country.

While according to a Jan. 25 report by Amnesty International, 73 juvenile offenders were executed in Iran between 2005 and 2015.

The compelling photos paint a grim portrait of a regime willing to kill young girls, often for crimes committed by male acquaintances who escape punishment, leaving it to the girls to pay the ultimate price in their stead.

It’s a situation that the Iran lobby has been virtually silent on. A careful perusal of the websites, blogs and social media feeds for regime supporters such as Trita Parsi, Reza Marashi and Tyler Cullis of the National Iranian American Council or Ali Gharib or Lobelog.com reveal hardly a word of criticism or protest over the heinous violations. What they have protested though has been the incarceration of Siamak Namazi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen who was detained by regime authorities and not part of the prisoner swap that occurred as part of the nuclear agreement.

It is ironic that Namazi’s case is the one that earns the attention of the Iran lobby because of the close relationship he has with Parsi and his role in helping launch the NIAC and as an outspoken advocate of the nuclear deal with the regime.

Now Namazi is experiencing the same denial of legal representation that was forced on other American hostages such as Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. We can only hope now that the shoe is on the other foot, these supporters of the regime would be more vocal in their criticisms, but we doubt it.

These elections though will provide a glimpse though of the lie that is Iranian regime democracy, which was discussed in an editorial in the New York Post who took to task the policy of appeasement exercised by the Obama administration:

“When it runs out of plausible excuses for its appeasement-plus policy on Iran, the Obama administration advances one argument as final line of defense: showing goodwill toward the Islamic Republic would help ‘moderates’ secure a greater share of power in Tehran with the hope of an eventual change of behavior by the ruling mullahs.”

“But who are the ‘moderates’ that Obama hopes to promote Tehran? A trio of mullahs consisting of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Security Minister Dorri Najafabadi and current President Hassan Rouhani forms the core of the faction that Obama hopes would sail to victory next week,” the article writes. “The triumvirate has a history of masquerading as moderates.”

He recounts how these supposed moderates have often espoused political reforms, but never offered or implemented any political reforms while holding office.

“Rafsanjani and his hand-picked successor Khatami governed for 16 years, but never offered a single political reform let alone implementing any. Their successor Rouhani has had more than two years to show that he follows the same path. During his presidency Iran has become world leader in the number of executions and political prisoners,” he adds.

Rouhani is exercising the playbook that Rafsanjani and Khatami exercised in portraying himself as a moderate when he has no intention of supporting reforms and has openly talked about his admiration for the so-called “Chinese Model” which emphasizes economic development with control of the government firmly in the Communist Party’s hands. Rouhani envisions a similar situation with the lifting of economic sanctions bolstering the flow of money to regime coffers, but no loosening of political restrictions.

The Financial Times took note of the Iranian public’s distinct lack of enthusiasm for upcoming elections against the backdrop of a sputtering economy still stifled by mass corruption and a focus on diverting funds to supporting the proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

“The subdued seasonal shopping just one month before Norouz, the Iranian new year holiday, is adding to widespread gloom about a prolonged economic stagnation that has also dimmed public enthusiasm for the crucial upcoming elections,” the Financial Times writes. “Hassan Rouhani, the country’s centrist president, is now blamed by many for failing to deliver on his election campaign promises to help improve the economy with the nuclear agreement. Although inflation has shrunk — from a peak of about 40 per cent in 2013, when Mr. Rouhani took the reins, to about 13 per cent today, according to central bank figures — economic growth is next to zero and people are unwilling to purchase goods.”

While the election results may be a forgone conclusion, the hope remains that an oppressed Iranian people will someday soon see true regime change.

By Michael Tomlinson