Iran Lobby

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

NIAC Tries to Defend Former Associate in State Department

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NIAC Tries to Defend Former Associate in State Department

NIAC Tries to Defend Former Associate in State Department

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a State Department official who was instrumental in directing policy for completing the much-criticized Iran nuclear deal under the Obama administration, has been reassigned to other duties in the State Department by the Trump administration which has generated a flurry of lobbying activity by the Iran lobby.

The National Iranian American Council organized an effort to denounce the move in a letter sent to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and acting Secretary of State John Sullivan even though the reassignment was made last April 2017.

The genesis for this new round of false outrage though was a Politico story that discussed email conversations between administration officials calling into question her political loyalty. In essence, the NIAC and its brethren were objecting to that age-old political practice of “cleaning house” when a new party and administration comes to power.

Where was the NIAC’s outrage when the Obama administration led its own purge of Bush-era appointees and installed its own loyalists in key civil service positions at the end of its own term to ensure policies were continued in spite of the new Trump administration’s move in?

To say the NIAC’s outrage is silly is an understatement. Every president reserves the right to pick and choose whomever he likes to serve and carry out his policies. Every president is also entitled to move or reassign any federal employee that does not wish to carry out that administration’s policies.

It is no different for someone like President John F. Kennedy taking over for Dwight D. Eisenhower or Bill Clinton taking over for George H.W. Bush.

But in the twisted logic of the NIAC, it seems even that most basic of presidential prerogatives is off-limits when it comes to keeping a trusted ally in the heart of policy-making when it concerns the Iranian regime.

In the case of Nowrouzzadeh, her involvement in policy towards Iran under the Obama administration has been well-documented.

Born in the U.S. to Iranian parents, Nowrouzzadeh has worked in various government capacities including the Defense Department in 2005 as a foreign affairs analyst and later the State Department in a similar capacity. She later joined the Obama White House in the National Security Council as a director for Iran and part of the team responsible for the Iran nuclear deal.

What raises the suspicions of many though was her prior stint working for NIAC which seems to have been purged from her bios and NIAC’s public records. Why? Obviously, association with the Iran lobby group can be fatal to a career civil servant’s future job prospects and it has been in Nowrouzzadeh’s case.

Also, her key involvement in crafting an agreement that President Trump has openly derided also has proven disadvantageous.

While the reassignment is common in new administrations, the furor is not as the NIAC has chosen to use her as a stalking horse for attacking the Trump administration yet again as ardent Iran-haters and racists.

It is sad to see the NIAC elevate her case and drag her through the public mud in order to score political points over an action that every incoming president undertakes throughout history.

What this does reveal though is NIAC’s willingness to cast any stone in wild attempts to attack the Trump administration in some blind hope of slowing down the freight train of change barreling towards the Iranian regime.

The setbacks for NIAC are numerous and significant:

  • Its attacks on the Saudi government have failed to prevent a historic realignment in the Middle East of nations united against Iran’s regime and containing its expansion;
  • Its efforts to keep alive the Iran nuclear deal are on life support as President Trump has decided to install Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and former UN ambassador John Bolton as the new National Security Advisor. Both are ardent opponents of the nuclear deal;
  • Its struggle to deny democratic protests sweeping through Iran and bolster the fraudulent regime of Hassan Rouhani have only proven to news media how out of touch NIAC is with current events.

Oddly enough, Nowrouzzadeh could have settled this entire unhappy episode herself by simply advising President Trump’s incoming foreign policy team on the best methods for improving the nuclear agreement she had just worked to implement.

If you want to show your non-partisan, unbiased credentials, then all one has to do is provide the other point of view.

In her case, and because of the effort by NIAC to leverage her reassignment, the sad truth is that policy making in the State Department became highly politicized under the Obama administration, especially towards Iran.

Her reassignment is only the tip of the iceberg since if President Trump is going to finally hold the Iranian regime accountable for its support of terrorism and unbridled human rights failures, he will most likely need to reassign many more Nowrouzzadehs and that is the future that NIAC is terrified of.

 

Obama Adviser on Iran Worked for Pro-Regime Lobby

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White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

The White House released a list of its high-ranking officials who took part in a video conference with President Obama late Tuesday. Among them appears Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who apparently has formerly worked for the National Iranian-American Council.

The White House brief, which was disclosed by The Daily Beast, listed Sahar Nowrouzzadeh as the National Security Council Director for Iran. Nowrouzzadeh appears to be a former employee of the alleged pro-Tehran regime lobbying group, NIAC (National Iranian-American Council).

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Breitbart News has found that a person with the same name has previously written severalpublications on behalf of NIAC. According to what appears to be her LinkedIn account, Nowrouzzadeh became an analyst for the Department of Defense in 2005 before moving her way up to the National Security Council in 2014.
A NIAC profile from 2007 reveals that Sahar Nowrouzzadeh appears to be the same person as the one who is currently the NSC Director for Iran. The profiles indicate that she had the same double major and attended the same university (George Washington).

 

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

NIAC was established in 1999, when founder Trita Parsi attended a conference in Cyprus that was held under the auspices of the Iranian regime. During the conference, Parsi reportedly laid out his plan to introduce a pro-regime lobbying group to allegedly counteract the influence of America’s pro-Israel and anti-Tehran regime advocacy groups.

NIAC has been investing heavily in attempts to influence the talks in favor of an agreement with the state sponsor of terror. In recent days, its director, Trita Parsi, has been spotted having amiable conversation with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s brother.

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The revelations about the NSC Director’s apparent past with the alleged pro-regime group come as the U.S. has reportedly struck an agreement with Iran and the rest of the P5+1 world powers on Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.

White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

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White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

White House Doubles Down in Defense of Obama Adviser with Pro-Tehran Ties

A just-retired White House National Security Council (NSC) director has written a defense of the Obama administration’s NSC Director for Iran, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, whom Breitbart News found has previously worked for an alleged pro-Iranian regime lobbying group, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

Dr. Philip Gordon, Nowrouzzadeh’s former boss, wrote a defense of Nowrouzzadeh–who now serves as NSC Director for Iran–in The Washington Post’s April 5 “Letters to the Editor” section (which is usually a platform for average readers, not government officials). Oddly enough, Gordon will be succeeded by Robert Malley on April 6, according to a White House statement. This means he presumably published the letter as a government official or during his first days as a private citizen.

Nowrouzzadeh was present in closed-door conferences with President Obama last week during America’s nuclear talks with the Iranian regime, which resulted in the agreement of a basic framework for further negotiations.

Gordon, a career-academic, served as special assistant to President Obama and White House coordinator for Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf region. In his position, he was a top member of the National Security Council. During his tenure, Gordon took a pro-diplomacy approach with the Iranian regime. He was also a fierce critic of Israel, arguing last summer (while Israel was in the midst of a defensive war with Palestinian terror group Hamas) that the country should withdraw to its 1949 armistice lines in exchange for hopes for peace with the Palestinians. A prominent pro-Israel figure went as far as to describe Gordon’s 2014 speech as “pro-Hamas.”

In the WaPo  “Letters to the Editor” section, Gordon defends the 31-year-old Nowrouzzadeh as a “loyal U.S. citizen.” Her qualifications are proven by the fact that she received “awards” from four different government agencies during her short stint in federal service, Gordon says in his letter to The Washington Post. 

The former White House official was clearly distraught by a Washington Post article on Breitbart’s exposé of Nowrouzzadeh, which joked that she could be a “sleeper agent” for the Iranian regime.

Gordon writes:

I was distressed to see that Al Kamen, in his April 3 In the Loop column, “But it says so right there: ‘For Iran,’” cast aspersion on a loyal U.S. public servant because of her name and background — even if in the form of a lame joke about dual loyalties. As the column noted, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh has worked for the U.S. government since 2005 at the Defense Department, the State Department and now the National Security Council. She has received awards from Defense, State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI. As her former supervisor, I’m proud of her tireless work on behalf of U.S. national security.

The former Obama assistant then downplays her role at the alleged pro-Iranian regime lobbying group. He adds, “Suggesting that she could be channeling a foreign government because of her parents’ origins and a part-time college internship she had more than a decade ago promoting political participation among Iranian Americans is deeply offensive.”

In his defense of Nowrouzzadeh, Gordon noticeably downplays the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) as a group that is “promoting political participation among Iranian Americans.” Also, Breitbart News has obtained a NIAC letter that shows Nowrouzzadeh was listed not as an intern, but as a “staff member” of the organization. The letter also showed that the alleged pro-Tehran group was lobbying against U.S. funding for Iranian opposition groups.

Top government representatives, journalists, and Iranian opposition groups have maintained for years that NIAC is working on behalf of the Iranian regime.

Senator Mark Kirk has stated that NIAC is an outfit run by “regime-sympathizers.” Former Senator Jon Kyl has made similar claims, previously demanding that the Eric Holder-led Justice Department investigate NIAC for its ties to the Iranian government.

The Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who maintains a close friendship with President Obama, has said that NIAC’s President does a lot of “leg-work” for the Iranian regime. Bloomberg’s Eli Lake has documented NIAC’s close ties with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

In an article last week on how the media is reporting on the Iran talks, Reuters referred to NIAC representatives that were present as “analysts sympathetic to the Iranian government.”

Perhaps most importantly, the vast majority of the non-Islamist Iranian opposition groups see NIAC as a mover and shaker for the Iranian regime, either through their words or in practice.

Furthermore, Gordon did not reveal his own bias towards NIAC in his defense of the 31-year-old’s prominent position as National Security Council director for Iran. Just last year, Gordon was the Obama administration’s representative at NIAC’s annual Washington, D.C., conference. He became the first senior White House official to address the conference, offering NIAC a level of legitimacy that the group had never before attained.

In his speech, Gordon praised NIAC and said that the Obama White House was willing toestablish a “new relationship” with Tehran, should the murderous regime there agree to a diplomatic accord on its nuclear program.

Gordon’s NIAC address came the same year Nowrouzzadeh became a member of the National Security Council.

Breitbart News has uncovered a NIAC founding document that stresses how important it was for the burgeoning organization to recruit and groom young staffers in hopes to influence long-term U.S. relations with the Iranian regime.

The following paragraph from the document–which pushes an Iranian-American lobby that will advance the interest of Tehran’s Islamic Republic–covers how NIAC intended to pursue its youth development program:

Creating similar types of seminars and intern opportunities to Iranian-American youth may not improve Iran-US relations in the short run, but it will help integrate the Iranian-American community into the political life of America. In the long run, a strong and active Iranian-American lobby, partly established through these seminars and by the participants of these programs, may serve to ensure that the US and Iran never find themselves in violent opposition to each other again. Arguably an Iranian-American lobby (which is different from a lobby group purely pursuing the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran) is needed in order to create a balance between the competing Middle Eastern lobbies. Without it, Iran-bashing may become popular in Congress again.