Iran Lobby

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

Why Hassan Rouhani’s Calls for Co-Existence Are Meaningless

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Why Hassan Rouhani’s Calls for Co-Existence Are Meaningless

Why Hassan Rouhani’s Calls for Co-Existence Are Meaningless

Iranian regime controlled media loudly broadcast remarks made by Hassan Rouhani at a ceremony marking National Exports Day in Tehran in which he called for peaceful co-existence with the rest of the world and Iran’s neighbors.

No, this was not an April’s Fool joke come early, nor was it an attempt at early Halloween gallows humor.

Rouhani was making his appeal because the world has not reacted well to the regime’s militant and aggressive moves since a nuclear agreement was reach over 18 months ago. There has arisen significant uncertainty among foreign companies, institutional investors and many governments over entering into business agreements at a time when new sanctions may be coming.

Rouhani was making his appeal on a strictly commercial basis in which he hoped to see Iran enter the global marketplace as a significant consumer market, as well as an eventual exporter of goods.

According to Trend News Agency, “Iran has no choice other than forming a constructive interaction with the world in order to boost its export,” he said.

He further said that constructive interaction with the world means establishing suitable ties with global community for exports, and import of capital goods and raw materials as well as employment of youth.

There is good reason for Rouhani and his fellow mullahs to be worried. Iran’s economy remains stagnant, with little benefits trickling down to ordinary Iranians as promised by Rouhani. Youth unemployment remains staggeringly high and wages have not risen significantly in over a decade leading to widespread discontent and protests throughout Iran.

Scandals involving excessive compensation for high-placed executives at regime-controlled industries have rocked Rouhani’s term, as does a high-profile crackdown against journalists, students, artists, bloggers, dissidents, and religious and ethnic minorities.

The mullahs’ “morals” police squads are working overtime arresting and abusing everyone from Iranian women riding bicycles to Iranian youth congregating in coffee shops.

But what has most foreign companies and investors worried is the regime’s rapid escalation in its involvement in three widening proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, in which US armed forces are increasingly being drawn into direct conflict with Iranian and Iranian-backed forces.

In Yemen, Iranian regime-backed Houthi rebels reportedly fired cruise missiles at US warships three times in one week; resulting a response from the US of three cruise missiles hitting radar installations in Yemen.

US Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of US forces in the Middle East, said on Wednesday that he believes Iran was behind the missile strikes on US Navy ships in Yemen.

“I do think that Iran is playing a role in some of this. They have a relationship with the Houthis, so I do suspect there is a role in that,” said Votel at the Center for American Progress, The Hill’s Kristina Wong reports.

Now news reports have surfaced detailing how the Iranian regime has stepped up weapons transfers to the Houthis threatening to widen and prolong the now 19-month-old war.

Much of the recent smuggling activity has been through Oman, which neighbors Yemen, including via overland routes that take advantage of porous borders between the two countries, the officials said.

U.S. and Western officials who spoke to Reuters about the recent trend in arms transfers said it was based on intelligence they had seen but did not elaborate on its nature. They said the frequency of transfers on known overland smuggling routes had increased notably, though the scale of the shipments was unclear.

A senior Iranian diplomat confirmed a “sharp surge in Iran’s help to the Houthis in Yemen” since May, referring to weapons, training and money.

“The nuclear deal gave Iran an upper hand in its rivalry with Saudi Arabia, but it needs to be preserved,” the diplomat said.

Ironically, the timing of the increased flow of cash and arms to the Houthis coincides with the ransom payments of $1.7 billion made to the Iranian regime by the US to free four American hostages.

Meanwhile in Syria, the growing failure of repeated cease-fires have placed US personnel dangerously close to being targeted by Russian and Syrian airstrikes, as well as facing Shiite militias imported from Iraq by Iranian airliners to fight alongside Syrian forces against US-backed rebels.

It is against this backdrop of global uncertainty that Rouhani is making one of the most absurd sales pitches anyone can recall since it is exactly because of the Iranian regime’s acts that have made many companies and investors skittish at risking billions of dollars.

That idea of co-existence draws little weight as Rouhani himself has admitted that the regime does not recognize dual national citizens and is in the midst of an unprecedented binge of hostage-taking of US, British, Canadian and other citizens.

Even more disturbing has been taunting statements made on regime-controlled websites demanding “billions in cash” as ransom payments for these new hostages.

Even Rouhani has taken a personal hand in tightening the figurative noose among his fellow Iranians by firing Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Jannati, Education Minister Ali Asghar Fani and Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Mahmoud Goudarzi all on the same day.

It’s interesting to note that all three ministers oversaw parts of Iranian society which enjoyed a bit more creative freedom during the run-up of the nuclear negotiations in an effort to present a more “open” society to the world. With the nuclear deal accomplished, their dismissals and subsequent crackdown on freedoms should not be a surprise.

Laura Caranahan

Even Iran Lobby Is Not Immune From Regime Extremism

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Even Iran Lobby Is Not Immune From Regime Extremism

Even Iran Lobby Is Not Immune From Regime Extremism

Siamak Namazi, a 45-year-old Iranian-American businessman who enjoyed close ties and access to one of the Iran lobby’s leading advocates in the National Iranian American Council, found himself on the wrong end of a 10-year prison sentence handed down by an Iranian court.

Sentenced alongside his 80-year-old father, Baquer Namazi, a former Iranian provincial governor and former UNICEF official who also has dual Iranian-American citizenship, Siamak has become another hostage pawn in the Iranian regime’s schemes to angle for more cash, more accommodation and more appeasement from the US.

Both men were sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying and cooperating with the U.S. government, said Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, according to the Fars news website, without specifying when exactly the sentences had been handed down.

The U.S. State Department’s deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, said the father and son had been “unjustly detained” in Iran, and called for their immediate release.

Babak Namazi, Siamak’s brother and Baquer’s son, called the sentences unjust.

“My father has been handed practically a death sentence,” Babak Namazi said in a statement.

Baquer Namazi has a serious heart condition and other medical issues requiring special medication, his wife wrote on Facebook in February. On Tuesday, UNICEF called for his release on “humanitarian grounds.”

The pleas for the Namazis echoed similar pleas made by desperate family members of previous regime hostages such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former US Marine Amir Hekmati and former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who still remains unaccounted for in Iran.

One significant difference though is that Siamak Namazi has been reported to have worked alongside long-time friend Trita Parsi in launching the NIAC with the idea of forming an advocate within the US to help push the Iranian agenda in the hopes of gaining a lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

For Parsi, the creation of NIAC and its companion lobbying arm, NIAC Action, has provided him and his colleagues with a comfortable living, access to influential power brokers and a platform to extol their support for the mullahs in Tehran.

Yet, Namazi was still snatched up by regime officials along with his father and sentenced to a long prison term without much disclosure as to why.

Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s official news site, published on Sunday video images of Siamak, set to dramatic music and spliced together with images of President Barack Obama and Rezaian, who was released from an Iranian jail in January after more than 18 months in detention.

The video showed Siamak’s U.S. passport and identification card from the United Arab Emirates, where he previously lived. It then showed him standing and holding his arms outstretched, as if being searched, while being filmed by at least one other cameraman. The website said the video depicted “the first images of the moment of Siamak Namazi’s arrest.”

It is a stark and disturbing reminder to other supporters of the regime that their utility only goes so far and should be a sharp slap in the face for folks like Parsi who urged support for a more “moderate” Iran, but now find their associates as easily punished as anyone else; without any special status or immunity for their previous support for mullahs.

The arrests also expose the folly of regime president Hassan Rouhani’s much-touted visit to the United Nations in 2013 in which he famously urged Iranian ex-pats to come back to Iran and help their country; only to find virtually all dual national citizens are fair game for arrest.

In his most recent trip back to the UN last month, Rouhani remarked on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program that the Iranian regime did not even recognize dual national status.

It’s an amazing turnaround in only two years and mirrors the sharp reversal of by the regime after getting its promised nuclear deal; leaving it free to deal harshly with its enemies both foreign and domestic in a broad and harsh crackdown.

The arrest and sentencing of such a close associate of Parsi and the NIAC, finally motivated Parsi to issue a press release with unusually tough language more in line with what his staunchest critics have said about the regime in the past.

“Both Siamak and Baquer Namazi have been denied basic due process and all indications are that the Iranian government has been using them as political pawns in violation of its own laws and basic human decency,” Parsi said.

“For the United States, the sentencing is a clear signal that more political capital and attention needs to be dedicated to securing the release of the Namazis and other Americans imprisoned in Iran. The United States should leave no stone unturned in utilizing diplomatic channels to press the Iranians to secure their release.”

If you didn’t know the statement came from Parsi, you might have mistaken it from a long-time Iranian regime critic from Congress or the pages of the Washington Examiner.

The irony should not be lost on anyone.

For all of its efforts to promote the regime and boost the lifting of economic sanctions and flood the regime with billions in cash that the mullahs are now using in three proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the NIAC and other Iran lobby members are faced with the inconvenient truth that supporting Iran is no guarantee of future safety or security from the same extremists actions against others.

Michael Tomlinson

 

WikiLeaks Reveals a Much Tougher Hillary Clinton on Iran Regime

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WikiLeaks Reveals a Much Tougher Hillary Clinton on Iran Regime

WikiLeaks Reveals a Much Tougher Hillary Clinton on Iran Regime

The Iran Lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, have often publicly argued for a more moderate approach to the Iranian regime and encouraged efforts by the Obama administration to appease the mullahs in Tehran in the hopes of changing their historically extremist behavior and policies.

The past two years have shown how foolish it was to believe those promises as the Iranian regime is now the central player in three wars raging across Syria, Iraq and Yemen; all conflicts in which the world is increasingly being dragged into the crosshairs of a shooting war.

The Obama administration has called for another increase in US forces in Iraq to combat ISIS insurgents, yet now find that Iraqi militias it trained are now fighting in Syria against rebel forces the US supports.

Now in Yemen the US Navy is exchanging missile fire with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. Not exactly a recipe for “moderation.”

The NIAC and other Iran lobbyist members have gone all in with the Democratic Party in backing their candidates for House and Senate races in the hopes of overturning a Republican majority that is skeptical of Iran’s professed moderate intentions, but that hope might prove just as illusory as the idea of Iranian moderation.

WikiLeaks has been dumping thousands of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, party officials and members of the Clinton campaign, including from Hillary Clinton itself.

What they reveal is a much different picture of the candidate’s opinions on Iran that what the NIAC would have everyone believe.

According to a speech transcript made public this weekend by WikiLeaks, Clinton on October 28, 2013, told the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago: “I believe that Rouhani was allowed to be elected by the two major power sources in Iran, the supreme leader and the clerics and the Revolutionary Guard … in part because the sanctions were having a quite damaging effect on the economy.”

She continued: “I don’t think anyone should have any illusions as to the motives of the Iranian leadership. What they really want to do is get sanction relief and give as little as possible for that sanction relief.”

According to Eli Lake in Bloomberg, Clinton, in private at least, has taken a more realistic view since leaving the administration. In her Chicago speech, she called Rouhani’s outreach to the West a “charm offensive,” and argued that U.S. negotiations were important as a sign of good faith to the international community, but not as a way to influence Iranian internal politics.

In another speech sure to dismay NIAC and other Iranian supporters, Clinton even advocated privately for U.S.-led strikes against Iranian regime nuclear facilities and acknowledged regime’s ability to terrorize the United States through Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives and other proxies in Latin and North America.

Clinton expressed a willingness to bomb the Iranian regime facilities as an “option” to prevent the Shiite powerhouse from developing a nuclear weapon in a June 4, 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs and elaborated further about the threat Iranian regime, the IRGC, and its proxies pose to the United States in a separate speech on October 24, 2013.

She warned that there would be “consequences” carried out through the IRGC and Iranian regime’s other proxies if the United States took military action against it. Although she did not specifically mention Hezbollah by name, it is the most active Iranian mullah’s terror proxy across the world, including the Western Hemisphere.

In a bit of prescience, Clinton reiterated:  “So it’s a wicked problem, as we like to say, because Iran is not only troubling because of its nuclear program, although that’s the foremost threat, it’s the primary conductor and exporter of terrorism.”

“I mean, if you had a big map here behind us, literally from North America to Southeast Asia, there are so many thoughts, so many bombs, so many arrests that are all traced back to the Iranian regime’s revolutionary guard, and their constant efforts to sell (inaudible)….So even if a miracle were to happen and we came up with a verifiable nuclear deal, there would still be problems that Iran is projecting and causing around the world that had real consequences for our friends and ourselves.”

Her recognition of the Iranian regime’s true nature is a welcome boost to those that have opposed the entreaties of NIAC and other Iranian regime supporters. It is also understandable that her comments were private since they were at odds with her party’s leader in President Obama, but with her possible election as president, her core beliefs that the Iranian regime is not a huggable, fluffy teddy bear, but rather a central conduit for the exporting of death, destruction and terrorism is heartening to regime opponents and Iranian dissidents.

On another accout, the Iranian regime blasted comments made by Secretary of State John Kerry who blamed Iran’s provocative actions in Syria and Yemen as being the creator of uncertainty to the extent foreign banks and businesses are reluctant to invest in Iran and not US sanctions on currency exchanges.

In an interview published Friday, Kerry told Foreign Affairs magazine that Iranian regime’s support for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Yemen’s Houthi rebels made it “very difficult” to help Iran improve its banking system and business practices.

“Mr. Kerry’s comments are totally unacceptable,” Iranian regime’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told state television on Sunday night.

“We are surprised. During the nuclear negotiations, we clearly said that questions of security, defense, ballistic missiles and our regional policies were not negotiable and are not linked to the nuclear talks,” he said.

“It is unacceptable that Mr. Kerry is today talking of new conditions.”

No matter how the regime wants to spin it, these problems are problems of its own creation.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Lobby Working Feverishly to Save Nuclear Deal

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Since talks began with the Iranian regime on a potential nuclear agreement, the Obama administration has redefined generously its interpretations of “sanctions” on the regime to the point where billions of dollars have flowed to Tehran in ways unthinkable just a year ago.

The justification for the broad easing of sanctions has been the mantra that the alternative would be worse for the world; that failure to do so would empower “hardline” elements in Iran to seize the opportunity to take control and force out “moderates” and abandon the deal and start a nuclear arms race.

The administration’s position echoes the positions pushed by the Iran lobby, including prominent supporters such as the National Iranian American Council, which repeatedly claimed that the deal was helping cement support for perceived moderates such as Hassan Rouhani.

In response, the Obama administration has ignored, overlooked and even enabled a long string of accommodations for the Iranian regime that has emboldened the mullahs in Tehran. While no one disputes the intentions of the president in wanting to make a world free from nuclear weapons, we respectfully judge his efforts to have been a monumental waste of time.

The misguided belief by the US that Rouhani is a moderate that needs to be supported and whose re-election should be a priority is dumbfounding given the year of bloodshed caused by Rouhani’s policies including the massive escalation in the Syrian war, severe domestic crackdowns on human rights and the unprecedented executions of almost 3,000 Iranians, including women and children ranking Iran second in the world in state-sanctioned killing.

The latest act of appeasing the regime comes in the form of new guidance from the Treasury Department that effectively lifts the last remaining sanctions on the regime’s access to US currency exchanges.

The New York Post editorial board issued a blistering response to the action:

“The latest betrayal: The Treasury Department just lifted key restrictions on Iran’s ability to do business in US dollars and access world financial markets — breaking Team Obama’s explicit vows as it lobbied Congress not to nix the deal.

“Iran’s banks weren’t even cut off from the US financial system over the nuclear issue — but over Tehran’s funding of terrorism, its regional aggression and so on.

“Which makes another Treasury move even more squalid: It will now also let foreign firms and branches of US firms do business with Iranian groups like the Revolutionary Guard.

“The Guard is the chief conduit for Tehran’s support of terrorism, tied to numerous plots, including one in DC aimed at a Saudi envoy. And it’s also a prime force helping Syria’s Bashar al-Assad massacre civilians in his bloody bid to keep power.”

The guidance offered by the Treasury Department was designed to provide reassurance to foreign banks which have been skittish about conducting business in US dollar transactions with Iran.

According to Reuters, the guidance comes after months of complaints from Tehran, which says that remaining US sanctions have frightened away trade partners and robbed Iran of the benefits it was promised under the nuclear deal it concluded with world powers last year.

The guidelines, issued by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Friday, clarify that non-U.S. banks can do dollar trades with Iran, provided those transactions don’t pass through financial institutions in the United States.

What is even more incredible was that Michael Mosier, the associate director at the Office of Sanctions Policy & Implementation of Foreign Assets Control, and Christopher Backemeyer, deputy coordinator of Sanctions Policy, both were featured speakers at the NIAC’s Leadership Conference in an appalling act of conflict of interest.

The timing of their appearance before the leading lobbying arm of the Iranian regime shortly before the release of guidelines that effectively encourages and shows foreign banks how to avoid existing US sanctions put in place to stem the flood of cash flowing to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah is mind boggling.

Ironically, in an effort to minimize the impact of the Treasury Department’s guidance, the NIAC quickly issued a press release in an attempt to explain that this was not an evasion of existing sanctions, as well as encouraged the expansion of even more channels to accommodate the regime.

“The administration should take steps consistent with the U.S.’s stated policy that it will not stand in the way of legitimate business involving Iran.  Such measures include licensing U.S. person employees of foreign companies to engage in transactions involving Iran and licensing U.S. persons in general to facilitate transactions between foreign persons and Iran,” read the NIAC’s statement from Tyler Cullis.

Of course, the NIAC neglected to mention that any dual-national Iranian-American that traveled to Iran on business was likely to be arrested and held for ransom or a future prisoner swap.

The guidelines earned a quick rebuke from Congressional critics who warned of dire consequences in allowing the Iranian regime easier access to US dollars.

“The new guidance overturns the long-running understanding that the U.S. dollar cannot be used to facilitate international trade with any Iranian entities, let alone sanctioned entities. And by allowing foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to transact business with Iranian entities, the president is ignoring the clear text of a law passed by Congress,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said on Sunday.

Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who chairs a Senate banking committee with oversight over Iran sanctions law, said the new guidelines amounted to the White House granting Tehran new concessions.

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) said Treasury’s changes “green-light business with terrorists. The updated FAQs remove barriers for foreigners to engage with firms the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls.”

By Michael Tomlinson

Key to Syrian Solution Lies in Pushing Iran Out

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Key to Syrian Solution Lies in Pushing Iran Out

Key to Syrian Solution Lies in Pushing Iran Out

Sunday night’s presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is sure to be analyzed, dissected and poured over for days, but while both candidates traded accusations on Syria and its effect to refugees, terrorism and geopolitics, neither candidate hit the mark when it came to highlighting the real solution to the Syrian civil war.

The real solution to stopping the bloodshed in Syria lies in getting the Iranian regime out of Syria.

The Syrian civil war has been raging since 2011 and it is easy to forget its beginnings and how it grew into the global conflagration it has become, but what has been indisputable has been the influence of the Iranian regime from the very beginning.

It is useful to recall that the source of the original unrest were protests by ordinary Syrians demanding democratic reforms in March of 2011 and the release of political prisoners. In many respects, the protests taking place on the streets of Damascus were eerily similar to protests on the streets of Tehran by Iranians protesting similar issues in the wake of a presidential election widely recognized as being fraudulent.

Within a month protests had spread throughout Syria and the Assad regime responded just as the mullahs in Tehran did two years earlier; with massive crackdowns by the military that included the indiscriminate shooting of civilians in the streets.

The images of dead and dying civilians in Tehran and Damascus are not the only things that connected the two regimes.

The Iranian regime acted quickly to funnel funds to the cash-strapped Assad regime after a series of punishing international sanctions were imposed for the regime’s use of chemical weapons and mass killing weapons such as barrel bombs on civilians, including hospitals; that support was estimated by the UN to be as high as $6 billion annually, with other human rights groups doubling that amount.

Additionally, the Iranian regime sent senior commanders from its Quds Forces to plan and lead operations involving Hezbollah terrorists to help repel the gains of Syrian rebels. This level of involvement increased with the forced recruitment of thousands of Afghan refugees as mercenaries, along with the shifting of Shiite militias from Iraq to fight in Syria.

The involvement of so much Iranian military capacity led to declarations from Syrian military officials that Syria might as well become a province of Iran.

Even with all of that Iranian regime interferences, the rebels were still making gains leading up to the actual shelling of Assad regime buildings in Damascus, which led to the now not-so-secret trip to Moscow by Quds Force commanders to beg for Russian intervention in Syria.

The increasing tempo of military actions collapsed a proposed cease-fire and led to claims and counter charges between the US and Russia reminiscent of the Cold War. Nothing illustrated that confusion more than the situation in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

The New York Times examined the zany alliances at work in Aleppo where there are Iraqi Shiite militiamen cheering for clerics who liken the enemy to foes from seventh-century battles. There are Iranian Revolutionary Guards fighting on behalf of a Shiite theocracy. There are Afghan refugees hoping to gain citizenship in Iran, and Hezbollah militants whose leaders have long vowed to fight “wherever needed.”

The messy mosaic of ground fighters on both sides has challenged Washington’s tangled allegiances. The United States is effectively allied with Iraqi Shiite militias to thwart the Islamic State in Iraq, but in Syria, some of those same militias are fighting on the side of the Assad government, which the United States opposes, and against a mix of rebel groups, some of them backed by the Obama administration.

The Daily Caller discussed the vast increases in Shiite militias in Syria.

“Most estimates of the total number of Shi’a militia fighters in all of Syria now exceed 60,000,” U.S. strategic advisory firm The Soufan Group notes. The Soufan Group highlights that this number may even exceed that of the actual Syrian Arab Army under command of Assad. These Shiite militias take orders only from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Alarmingly, even though the evidence is overwhelming that the only viable solution to Syria’s war lies in containing and ultimately removing Iran’s control of the Assad regime, the Washington Post reported efforts were underway by the Obama administration to actually weaken sanctions imposed on Syria.

According to lawmakers and staffers in both parties, the White House is secretly trying to water down the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that would sanction the Assad regime for mass torture, mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The bill, guided by House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (N.Y.), would also sanction entities that aid the Syrian government in these atrocities; that includes Russia and Iran.

The bill, named after a Syrian defector who presented the world with 55,000 pictures documenting Assad’s mass torture and murder of more than 11,000 civilians in custody, has 70 co-sponsors, a majority of whom are Democrats.

Now the White House has told members and staffers that the bill’s sanctions on Iran could violate the nuclear agreement the Obama administration struck with Tehran last year and the Russia sanctions could hurt any future efforts to work with Moscow diplomatically on Syria.

It is a stunning position to take and one disturbingly similar to arguments made by Iran lobby members such as the National Iranian American Council.

It seems that the similarities between Syria and Iran be beyond just murdered civilians in the street.

By Michael Tomlinson

Hassan Rouhani Peddling Fantasies in New York

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Hassan Rouhani Peddling Fantasies in New York

Hassan Rouhani Peddling Fantasies in New York

The Iranian regime’s front man, Hassan Rouhani, was in New York for his annual propaganda address to the United Nations General Assembly session last week. During his New York stop, Rouhani availed himself of the usual media opportunities to pedal some pretty farfetched fantasies about the state of the Middle East and Iranian regime’s role in it.

One of his media stops was on NBC News in which he spun the story to Chuck Todd that the Syrian conflict must be solved politically.

Politically.

Let’s let that word sink in for a minute. The leader of the Iranian regime, which spent billions of dollars to prop up the brutal Assad regime at the brink of its collapse under protests by the Syrian people, was telling the American people that Syria required a political solution.

This is the same Iranian regime that sent thousands of Hezbollah fighters, led by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders to fight alongside Syrian troops targeting rebel forces.

This is the same Iranian regime that gang pressed thousands of Afghan refugees into becoming mercenaries and sent them to fight in Syria.

This is the same Iranian regime that begged Russia to enter the war and save Assad from toppling as Iran’s forces were being exhausted by the years-long conflict. Russia’s entry included targeting and attacking of civilian locations and rebel military units not affiliated with ISIS or other radicalized Islamic militants.

Let’s also not forget that this is the same Iranian regime that supported Assad after he used chemical weapons to mass kill his own people.

The death toll in Syria is over 500,000 according to human rights groups with more than 11 million people displaced and becoming refugees.

“The rule of the ballot box and the rule of the Syrian people and the will of the Syrian people should be the sole determinant of the future of the country,” Rouhani said.

Rouhani also dismissed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s demand Wednesday that Syria and Russia ground all aircraft in the northern part of the country after the bombing of a humanitarian convoy threatened a precarious ceasefire. The Pentagon has blamed Russia for the attack.

It is an absurd contention by Rouhani since Syrian elections are as about as free as the ones engineered in Iran. Assad has never held a truly free and open election subject to international monitoring, much as Rouhani was elected in similar fashion as thousands of moderate candidates were kicked off election ballots in Iran.

Beyond Rouhani’s fanciful ideas of Syrian democracy, his real goal on this tour was to loosen the purse strings and gain access to US currency exchanges for Iran. These sanctions were put in place as part of the punishments for Iran’s dismal human rights record and sponsorship of terrorism and were not part of the nuclear agreement reached last year.

Rouhani and his boss, top mullah Ali Khamenei, have banged the drum loudly warning of dire consequences if the sanctions are not lifted and are pushing to get relief before the US presidential election takes place and the Obama administration, which has followed a policy of appeasing the regime, leaves office.

Even the New York Times, which has been a sympathetic supporter of the nuclear agreement, recognizes the difficulty Rouhani faces and the consequences the regime faces if these sanctions are not lifted.

“Scared off by penalties imposed by the United States Treasury Department, European banks have not provided credit for large-scale projects in Iran. In fact, because of the American regulations, it remains nearly impossible for ordinary businesses to transfer money to and from Iran — a problem that has been enormously frustrating to Mr. Rouhani, who promoted the nuclear agreement by promising a new economic era,” writes Thomas Erdbrink in the Times.

“Mr. Rouhani faces an election in five months, and his hard-line opponents are sharpening their knives. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has been hinting in speeches that he considers the nuclear deal to be a failure,” he adds.

That threat to walk away from what has proven to be an ineffective agreement anyway has been the pressure point on the Obama administration as it seeks to preserve its landmark foreign policy achievement at all costs; a pressure point that was again pushed by Tehran in getting the administration to approve licenses for the sale of new aircraft to Iran.

The U.S. government has given plane makers Boeing Co. and Airbus Group SE the all-clear to deliver jetliners to Iran Air. Iran Air announced in January it planned to buy Airbus planes, but the transaction stalled amid a lack of approvals from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control rules. OFAC had to approve the license because a portion of Airbus planes are made in the U.S.

Iran’s plan to buy western planes has run into opposition in its own country and the U.S. Some U.S. lawmakers are trying to bar the sale of Boeing planes to Iran.

Rep. Peter J. Roskam (R., Ill.), a critic of Iran plane deals, said, “There is a still a long way to go and many more hurdles to overcome before Iran can actually take delivery of these planes—and thankfully Congress is committed to making the process as difficult and expensive as possible.”

The concern over the sale lies in the fact that the Iranian regime has often used its civilian airliners for military purposes in ferrying men, weapons, cash and supplies to it many proxies such as Hezbollah in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Treasury Department has previously sanctioned IranAir in recent years for helping Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “transport military related equipment.”

With this action and others, we can only hope the US and Europe will not be able to finish caving in to the Iranian regime before it’s too late.

By Michael Tomlinson

State Dept. Concedes Nuclear Deal May Have Fed Iran Regime Aggression

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State Dept. Concedes Nuclear Deal May Have Fed Iran Regime Aggression

State Dept. Concedes Nuclear Deal May Have Fed Iran Regime Aggression

Ever since the U.S. and other nations entered into negotiations with the Iranian regime over a nuclear deal and completed it more than a year ago, critics including the Iranian resistance movement have been warning that a deal that did not also address the regime’s poor human rights record, oppressive government and support of terrorism would inevitably prove fruitless and only empower and embolden the mullahs in Tehran.

The Iran lobby also argued strongly that the nuclear deal would help “moderate” the regime and open the door for more liberal elements of the government to make gains. Notable regime supporters such as Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council and Ali Gharib pushed the idea that Iran could help stabilize the volatile Middle East once a deal had been passed.

Even sympathetic editorial pages and commentators were actively encouraged by the administration to support the deal on the basis that it would bring economic benefits to the Iranian people long beleaguered by crippling sanctions and gross corruption and mismanagement by regime officials.

Over the past year, reality has set in and the world has discovered that virtually none of those promises and assurances ever came true and in fact the litany of woe heaped on the world by the rising tide of radicalized extremism flowing from Iran since the nuclear deal has all but reshaped the landscape of the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Africa and even touched Latin America.

The luxury of 20/20 hindsight has allowed the world to see the results of the nuclear deal and it is hard for even the most ardent member of the Iran lobby to put a positive spin that is remotely believable.

Things are so blatantly obvious that even the State Department has finally conceded that the nuclear deal may have in fact emboldened the Iranian regime to commit even more aggressive and militant acts; not diminish it.

Under questioning from Fox News reporter James Rosen, State Department spokesman Mark Toner could not rule out that the deal “has served as a cause for this more aggressive posture” by the regime.

Rosen noted, Iran had recently threatened to shoot down two US Navy surveillance planes in international airspace. This was just the latest in a growing list of provocations, including taking 10 US sailors hostage and abusing them in violation of international law.

The New York Post editorial board was flabbergasted by the admission since if the Obama administration had even an inkling of this aberrant behavior on the part of the mullahs, it made no sense to continue a policy of appeasing them, including bending over backwards to ship the regime $1.7 billion in hard cash in exchange for American hostages.

The Post said that of course, after citing incidents that “needlessly escalate tensions” Toner then said it all makes the deal even “more important, because the last thing anyone would want to see in the region is a nuclear-armed Iran.”

“Especially, we’d add, an Iran grown even more aggressive and hostile precisely because of that very deal.

“The logic here is just mind-boggling.

“Yes, Iran has been emboldened by a deal that gives it billions in cash now and an easy road to going nuclear in a few years — thanks to a president who won’t dare challenge Tehran’s behavior and risk undoing his dubious diplomatic legacy.

“Nice to see someone finally admitting as much,” the Post added.

The Iranian regime isn’t taking the potential for blowback lightly. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reports that the country’s foreign minister and his international counterparts will meet this month to discuss “some differences” over the implementation of the landmark nuclear deal.

The Wednesday report says they will focus on banking sanctions, which Iran complains have not been fully lifted. The meeting will take place Sep. 22, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, where the regime’s Hassan Rouhani is scheduled to speak in what we can only assume will be a verbal tongue lashing blaming the U.S. for a wide range of problems resulting from a now failed nuclear deal.

It has been clear from statements made by regime officials such as Ali Khamenei and members of the Iran lobby that the regime has shifted focus now to condemning the U.S. for the inability of the regime to participate in U.S. currency exchanges because of sanctions put in place for its support of terrorism and not related to the original nuclear deal.

The Iranian regime also recognizes that since the deal was passed, its conflict with Saudi Arabia, especially in Syria and Yemen, is stalling its plans for regional hegemony under a radicalized Shiite banner. The influence of Saudi Arabia in standing up to Iran including its active fighting in Yemen and interception of Iranian boast trying to smuggle illicit weapons through the Persian Gulf to Houthi rebels in Yemen has been effective and annoying to the mullahs in Tehran.

This helps explain why the Iranian regime has turned its attention and that of the Iran lobby into a full-blown smear campaign aimed at Saudi Arabia, and by association the U.S.

This can be seen in an editorial appearing in the New York Times penned by Mohammad Javad Zarif, the regime’s foreign minister, blaming Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia in particular for literally every terrorist act being committed around the world and chastised the Kingdom’s large lobbying efforts.

It is a preposterous piece since it blames Saudi Arabia for exactly what the Iranian regime is doing itself with its own substantial investment in PR firms, lobbyists, paid analysts, bloggers and commentators, as well as spreading cash to a large number of so-called grassroots organizations such as the Ploughshares Fund which strongly advocated for the nuclear deal.

Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, took Zarif to task and ticked off the Iranian regime’s own bloody history of support for terrorism around the world in a piece appearing on AEI’s site.

“It was the Islamic Republic that created Hezbollah and sponsored the groups that kidnapped and murdered Americans through Lebanon’s long civil war,” Pletka writes. “It is Iran that props up the murderous Assad regime — you know, the guys that have repeatedly gassed their own people. It is Iran that has assassinated its enemies the world over, and it is Iran’s own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (and its expeditionary Quds Force) that was responsible, during the Iraq war, for hundreds of US servicemen dying.”

The first step in recovery for any addict is to admit they have a problem. We can only hope this admission by the State Department will be the first step in confronting the Iranian regime forcefully, honestly and openly again.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Supporters Continue Defense of Controversies

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Iran Regime Supporters Continue Defense of Controversies

Iran Regime Supporters Continue Defense of Controversies

Supporters of the Iranian regime have lately begun a full frontal assault against the tidal wave of criticisms and bad news afflicting the regime ranging from the disclosures of the $400 million ransom payment for American hostages to a just announced crackdown against social media users in Iran.

The embarrassing revelations about the Obama administration’s use of the $400 million as “leverage” over the Americans being held hostage was the key issue causing consternation among Iran lobby supporters.

The simple correlation of money for hostages resonated with Americans and forced many of the more prominent members of the Iran lobby to go into virtual hibernation on the issue. One of the defendants of the cash swap was a policy intern and student writing in Politico.

Michael Wackenreuter made the argument that American diplomacy is often rife with venturing into “gray areas” where leaders have had to compromise core principles. He harkens back to the Reagan administration’s upholding of an asset transfer to Iran the Carter administration negotiated. The difficulty with his position is that none of his examples are applicable to this situation.

The issue is one of perception and the perception involved here is not from the U.S. viewpoint, but rather those of the mullahs in Tehran because it what they believe that has the most impact and ramifications for the future. If they believe that holding hostages yields important benefits such as concessions or cash and there are no repercussions, then why not keep doing it?

It is this perception that now dominates as the Iranian regime once again goes on a hostage-taking binge including more Americans and yet again it finds there are no consequences for their actions.

That, more than anything else, is why the Iran lobby is fighting so hard against these negative stories because if Iran was indeed held accountable for its actions, then the narrative and even the regime itself would change dramatically.

That much was on display with Ali Gharib’s post in Lobelog.com, a well-known water carrier for the Iranian regime, in which he tries to dispute the Wall Street Journal story by Jay Solomon looking back at the year since the nuclear deal was reached and how ineffective it has been in curbing Iran’s more aggressive and militant intentions.

Chief among Gharib’s contentions is the alleged victory by “moderates” in parliamentary elections in Iran, but he himself neglects to mention the eradication of thousands of candidates from the ballot by the senior clerical leadership of the regime, including virtually every moderate or dissident candidate not already in prison or on their way to the gallows.

“Then there is the hope—again, not the prime aim—of the deal’s proponents that Iran’s foreign policy might become more moderate as well. As Solomon points out in his bill of particulars, that has not been the case: the Iranian government has used the financial benefits brought by the accord to beef up its military spending, and still involves itself in nefarious ways in the Middle East, continuing its support to unsavory groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis and, especially, its robust assistance to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” Gharib said, even admitting the how the Iran regime continues to wage war throughout the region.

Even with all these efforts to defend the regime, the criticisms against how the U.S. has appeased the mullahs has mounted as the evidence grows of the ramifications of such actions.

Aaron David Miller, vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, took to the Wall Street Journal to explain how the dangerous the precedent is in bowing to Iran’s demands for the future.

“Here’s the larger and more potentially damaging perception beyond the general embarrassment: In the Middle East, strength and negotiating acumen are prized; they demonstrate power and credibility. And the region tends to consider actions and strategy in a time frame that stretches far beyond the four- and eight-year scale of U.S. politics. Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s handling of Iran in this situation plays into the narrative that the U.S. is weak and feckless and behaving as if it doesn’t know what it’s doing,” he writes.

“Some will see this as proof that the U.S. is unable or unwilling to contain Iran’s influence in the region, whether because the administration fears that pushing the Iranians too hard on Syria might jeopardize the international agreement over Tehran’s nuclear program–a seminal achievement for Mr. Obama–or because the U.S. is wary of deeper involvement in the region,” he adds.

All of which feeds into the narrative of a weakened U.S. foreign policy that lacks focus and commitment, as displayed when the ransom payment became the butt of a joke from a foreign leader.

President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte recently remarked that all it takes to extract money out of the U.S. is to insult the country and hope U.S. officials come running to make amends with funds.

“After Kerry visited the Philippines, he left us $33 million,” Duterte told an audience at Camp Lapu Lapu. “I told myself, ‘this seems cool. Let’s take a swipe at them again so they will make amends with money.’”

The perceived lack of repercussions in the face of growing Iranian human rights abuses has started a flurry of provocative actions, the latest of which was that the cyber-arm of Iran’s repressive Revolutionary Guard says it has summoned, detained and warned some 450 administrators of social media groups in recent weeks.

The announcement Tuesday, carried on a website affiliated with the Guard’s cyber arm, says those detained used social media like the messaging app Telegram, which is popular in Iran.

The announcement says those detained or summoned made posts that were considered immoral, were related to modeling, or which insulted religious beliefs. It says the Guard only took action after “judicial procedures” were completed, without elaborating.

The move augurs a new phase in a domestic crackdown in Iran, one that the Iran lobby will surely work to divert attention from.

By Laura Carnahan

When Will Iran Regime Be Held Accountable for Terrorism?

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When Will Iran Regime Be Held Accountable for Terrorism?

When Will Iran Regime Be Held Accountable for Terrorism?

One of the earliest lessons any child learns from a parent is that their actions have consequences. You scream, you’re told to be quiet. You hit your sibling; you get a time out in the corner.

These life lessons form the foundation of our behavior into adult life and help us conform to the restrictions and expectations of living in a civilized world. Even as an adult, we are constantly told our actions have consequences.

You show up drunk at work, you get fired. You rob a bank, you go to jail. You murder a person; you get sentenced to life in prison.

These are not hard lessons to follow and we all take to them fairly naturally.

Only in the arena of foreign affairs and politics do things tend to get more muddled and deviate from what we consider to be acceptable norms. In the case of the Iranian regime, those deviations tend to take on galactic-sized proportions.

Take for example Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war. It utilizes a proxy in the form of the terror group Hezbollah to fight on the side of the Assad regime. It uses its own Revolutionary Guard and Quds Forces to attack and target Syrian civilians. It recruited Russia to enter the war and used its fighters to target facilities such as Doctors Without Borders hospitals.

Throughout this bloody conflict, Iran has been selling the war to its own people like a variety show of television, using celebrities, actors and rich kids to justify its involvement.

As Varujean Avanessian writes in the National Interest, “Iranian officials rarely mention bolstering Syria’s Bashar al-Assad or maintaining access to Hezbollah in Lebanon as reasons for Iran’s intervention in Syria. Instead, defending the Shiite shrines and keeping ISIS away from Iran’s borders are the official theme vindicating Iran’s presence in Syria.”

“And a rather peculiar method is employed to peddle Iran’s message: formerly or currently banned celebrities now receive coverage from Iran’s conservative outlets, in exchange for offering favorable views on Iranian policies in Syria,” he writes.

Formerly banned TV host Reza Rashidpour—well known for his tough interviews with Iranian politicians and entertainers—was also enthusiastically covered by conservative outlets for trying to dampen the perception in the society that financial incentives are the main motive for Iranian fighters to go to Syria.

What goes unsaid is the regime’s use of financial inducements and pressure to recruit tens of thousands of Afghan refugees to fight in Syria. For the regime, the perception that paying fighters to go to Syria is the only effective tool it has to get the soldiers it needs is troublesome and worrisome to the mullahs in Tehran. It also underscores the inherent weakness of their position as the conflict drags on for years with no appreciable end in sight.

And yet the Iranian regime pays no penalty or suffers any harsh consequences from the international community for its actions in Syria.

The same can also be said with its almost daily threats to tear up an already broken nuclear agreement and restart its nuclear program—a program it historically denied ever existed.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chair of the Iranian regime parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, warned that the Islamic Republic would “resume large-scale uranium enrichment” if leaders feel the international community is not doing enough for Iran under the nuclear deal.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s response to the other side’s non-compliance with the implementation of the nuclear deal will be uranium enrichment,” Boroujerdi was quoted as saying in Iran’s state-controlled press.

His bluster follows similar statements made by top mullah Ali Khamenei last month and have come to take on a certain “boy who cried wolf” tenor as regime leaders start focusing their ire on Western nations for the inept handling of their own economy and the rampant corruption running through regime-controlled industries.

Even more alarming were statements made by Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah were he openly thanked the Iranian regime for its financial and material support over the years to his terror group.

The admission comes on the heels of Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental organization that sets global standards to combat money laundering and finance for terrorism and proliferation, once again placing Iran on its blacklist for supporting terrorism, yet granting the regime a reprieve from any additional sanctions in the hopes the nuclear deal might eventually pan out.

On what planet do you need to be from to connect the dots of Hezbollah’s own admission of support from Iran for terrorist activities and yet no consequences come from it?

Mark Dubowitz and Toby Dershowitz noted in a Forbes editorial that Tehran’s efforts to pass laws that purport to address international counter-terrorism financing standards are hollow and don’t conform to FATF standards. Iran’s definition of terrorism, for example, excludes groups “attempting to end foreign occupation, colonialism and racism,” and has other language used to justify terrorism against America and its allies. Iran’s leaders are telling the world “we will arm and bankroll whomever we want but won’t call them terrorists.”

The White House itself urged Iran on Monday to stop giving financial support to Hezbollah, warning of such continued backing won’t seep into “its interest.”

“We know that Iranian regime supports terrorism,” the White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One. “And we know that Iran supports Hezbollah. And that is why we’ve issued the most serious and most severe sanctions ever on Iran for doing so. So it’s important for them to recognize their own behavior in enabling this.”

Yet, the same administration is trying to convince foreign banks to bankroll the Iranian regime and ignore the inconvenient truth of its support for terrorism.

It is arguably the most obtuse argument ever made in foreign policy since Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich claiming “peace in our time” from Adolf Hitler.

All of which goes to show that unless the Iranian regime finally understands the consequences of its actions, nothing will ever change there.

By Michael Tomlinson

Terrorism Strikes in Turkey and Iran Regime Runs Away

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Terrorism Strikes in Turkey and Iran Regime Runs Away

Terrorism Strikes in Turkey and Iran Regime Runs Away

Terror struck another airport again, this time in Turkey, with devastating loss of life. The world was quick to label it terrorism and it brought back fresh memories of similar attacks in Paris and Brussels as suicide bombers fired assault rifles at passengers and then exploded vests.

While no terror group has claimed responsibility so far, suspicion by Turkish officials naturally fell on ISIS which operates extensively along the border with Syria and Iraq. If this attack was perpetrated by the Islamic State, it opens up a widening front in its efforts to destabilize Turkey, which has already suffered steep drops in tourism; a vital component of its economy.

What is worrisome is the larger global trend towards rising violence from radicalized Islamists, either operating directly under the control of terrorist leadership as in Paris, or being self-radicalized as in San Bernardino and Orlando.

The response from many countries to these escalating attacks has been to call for stepped up attacks on ISIS in Syria and Iraq, as witnessed by Wednesday’s attack of an ISIS column leaving Falluja in Iraq by U.S.-led aircraft, or call for a hardening of potential soft targets at home.

What none of these suggestions deal with is the source of this rise in terror from extremist Islamic groups, which is the Iranian regime. Iran and its mullahs sit at the center of the sectarian violence wracking the region.

It was Iranian regime’s intervention in Syria to save the Assad regime that helped to spawn ISIS in the first place. It was Iran that provided safe haven for many of the leaders of Al-Qaeda forced out of Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S.-led invasions, only to see them go back to fight in Iraq and Syria.

It was Iran that forced the government of former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to force his Sunni coalition partners out of the government, leading to the schism that resulted in the quick fall of Mosul and most of northeastern Iraq to ISIS, giving the terror group its big boost in territory, cash and oil wells.

Predictably, while the rest of the world expressed shock, outrage and sympathy over the attacks in Istanbul, the response by the Iranian regime was understandably muted.

Bahram Ghasemi, newly-appointed spokesperson for the regime’s foreign ministry, officially reacted to the blast when he offered condolences and sympathy to the bereaved families of the victims and Turkish government in state-run media.

“As Foreign Minister Zarif had frequently stated, there is a systematic lack of international resolve to address the vicious phenomenon; extremism and terrorism would not be limited to political and geographical borders,” he said.

There were no similar sentiments expressed by regime leaders such as Ali Khamenei or Hassan Rouhani.

The two-faced nature of the Iranian regime when it comes to condemning acts of terror was highlighted in an editorial by Tom Ridge, former secretary of homeland security, in the Washington Times, in which he took the regime to task for its expressions of sympathy following the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

“It’s hard to imagine an expression of sympathy more disingenuous. Tehran’s comments must be viewed against a backdrop of its status as the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism, its steady propaganda against the United States, and its own brand of homophobia that has its origins in Islamic extremism,” he said.

“Iran is not all talk. The rhetoric about Western ‘arrogance’ and ‘hostility’ has been backed up by the arrests of numerous people who hold both Iranian and Western citizenships. The same goes for journalists, artists and professionals who have any meaningful connections with the West, and for activists the regime deems pro-Western,” he added.

This disconnect between the lip service Iran pays to acts of terror, while fully committing itself to supporting and funding it lies at the heart of the problem with the approach the U.S. and European Union have taken to Iran since the nuclear agreement was reached last year.

You cannot hold a state sponsor of terror such as Iran accountable when you are rushing to do business deals to enrich it. It is dangerous and will eventually lead to only more acts of terror and more chaos across the world.

The rise is terror is only matched by the abhorrent level of human rights abuses being committed by the Iranian regime as well.

Perviz Khazaii, former Ambassador of Iran in Sweden and Norway and the representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Nordic countries, penned an editorial in The Diplomat highlighting these abuses.

“Violent punishments are not confined to Iran’s prisons, either. For instance, in October 2014, gangs affiliated with the regime carried out acid attacks on at least 25 Iranian women and girls who were regarded as being improperly veiled or otherwise in violation of religious norms,” he said.

“This sort of enforcement of the regime’s ruling ideology has also motivated a massive, ongoing crackdown on activists, writers, bloggers, and artists. This has helped Iran to secure its title as the largest jailer of journalists in the Middle East,” he added. “In short, the human rights situation is deteriorating at a fast pace.”

  1. Matthew McInnis, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, also examined how Iran’s involvement in these conflicts has fueled the rise in sectarian violence as the mullahs seek to solidify a Shia sphere of influence for themselves in Syria and Iraq in an editorial in the National Interest.

“Tehran’s most frequent foreign-policy blind spot remains underestimating the degree to which its aggressive regional activities spur sectarian and ethnic backlash. If it can avoid triggering further Sunni radicalization, an internal Shia civil war, and the potential breakup of the country, however, the Islamic Republic is likely in good shape to continue its ‘Iranianization’ of Iraqi security and political structures,” McInnis writes.

The world should stop enabling the regime and hold it accountable for the spread of  terrors motivated by Islamic extremism.

By Michael Tomlinson