Iran Lobby

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

Human Rights in Iran Spiraling Down the Drain

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Human Rights in Iran Spiraling Down the Drain

Human Rights in Iran Spiraling Down the Drain

Reza “Robin” Shahini, 46, from San Diego, California, was visiting his ailing mother in Iran when he was snatched up by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officials and thrown into prison. He joined a growing list of dual national citizens arrested, imprisoned and sentenced by the Iranian regime without so much as a reasonable facsimile of a legitimate trial.

“It was a terrifying moment, and they blindfolded me and they took me to the custody and I did not know where I was,” Shahini said, speaking to VICE News via phone from prison. “They were interrogating me every morning, every afternoon, and I was always by myself in my cell.”

During his interrogation, he said he asked to see the evidence against him. “They don’t answer such questions,” he said. “The thing is they are all brainwashed [to think] that the U.S. is a hostile government. Even the judge.”

Shahini joins several other dual nationals from the UK, Canada and fellow Americans in Iranian prisons with each being sentenced ever more harsher prison sentences. In Shahini’s case, he received a penalty of 18 years for “collaborating with a hostile government.”

Since September 2015, Iranian authorities appear to have been targeting citizens who they believe could upset the status quo, such as human rights activists, charity workers, or foreign journalists.

But it is the arresting of Americans, Canadians, Brits and other nationalities that has sent ripples around the world as governments who naively thought the Iranian nuclear agreement would bring about a more moderate regime are now being confronted by a newly aggressive one.

In the case of two British subjects being held by the Iranian regime, their families have allied with international human rights groups to try and put more pressure on the British government to force their loved ones release.

Richard Ratcliffe and Kamran Foroughi handed over a 72,000 signature petition from Amnesty International to Downing Street and the Foreign Office on behalf of Ratcliffe’s wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and Foroughi’s father, Kamal Foroughi.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker, was sentenced to five years in prison last month after a conviction on unspecified “national security-related” offences following another sham trial before a revolutionary court in the capital Tehran.

Amnesty International UK’s Individuals At Risk campaign manager, Kathy Voss, said: “There’s been a lot of talk recently about ‘thawing relations’ between the UK and Iran, but these two cases lend the lie to that. It looks very much like Nazanin and Kamal are being treated like pawns by the Iranian authorities and we’d like to see the UK seriously raising its game over securing proper justice for these British nationals. Boris Johnson needs to make sure these two cases are right near the top of his in-tray. We can’t let this drop.”

Voss is correct that all pretense of a new moderate Iran pushed by the Iran lobby have been proven false over and over again. The sheer volume of inhumane acts and criminal steps taken by the regime over the past year leave no doubts.

Even the most persistent supporters of the regime, including the National Iranian American Council, had to concede the obvious and issued a press statement critical of the 10 year prison sentences levied on Iranian-Americans Siamak Namazi and his father.

Meanwhile the regime continues on its brisk pace of executions with three more men hanged in Iran’s southern city of Shiraz. Although the regime ostensibly executes prisoners for crimes such as murder and drug trafficking, it broadly applies the death penalty to include political dissidents and crimes against the regime which serves as a catch-all definition suitable for any offense the mullahs see fit.

But death sentences are not the only way the regime muzzles its critics. Amnesty International reported on the arrest of writer and human rights activist Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee who had recently written about the regime’s use of stoning as punishment.

Despite the fact that no official summons has been issued, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee’s home was raided this morning by officials, who violently broke through her front door before taking her to Evin Prison in Tehran. It appears that she has been taken to the women’s ward to begin serving her six-year sentence.

She has been convicted of charges including “insulting Islamic sanctities,” for writing an unpublished story about the horrific practice of stoning in Iran. Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee’s husband, Arash Sadeghi, a human rights activist and prisoner of conscience, has since started a hunger strike in protest at her imprisonment.

“Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee is the latest young writer and activist to be caught up in Iran’s relentless crackdown on artistic expression. Her imprisonment for peacefully voicing her opposition to stoning is a terrible injustice and an outrageous assault on freedom of expression. It is also a shocking and deeply disturbing display of support for the cruel and inhuman punishment of stoning,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“The Iranian authorities must break this cycle of injustice and immediately and unconditionally release Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee. We also urge them to ensure that her conviction is quashed.”

The unpublished fictional story, for which Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee has been convicted of “insulting Islamic sanctities,” describes the emotional reaction of a young woman who watches the film The Stoning of Soraya M – which tells the true story of a young woman stoned to death for adultery – and becomes so enraged that she burns a copy of the Qur’an according to Amnesty.

In essence the regime arrested and sentenced her for writing something that wasn’t even published. If the mullahs could figure out a way to detect dissident brainwaves, they would probably start arresting anyone for thinking improperly, but such is the sad state of human rights in Iran today.

Michael Tomlinson

Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

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Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

Iran Arrests American Founder of Pro-Regime Lobby

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen who helped establish a pro-Tehran lobbying group in America, has been arrested in Iran and imprisoned indefinitely.

Mr. Namazi was visiting family in Tehran when he was arrested by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) soldiers and sent to Evin Prison, according to Iranian media reports.

The detention center is infamously known for its horrific mistreatment of prisoners. The facility is noted for its routine “beatings, torture, mock executions, and brutal interrogations,” experts have said.

As the 5th American citizen now held hostage by the regime, Namazi joins the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati.

Namazi has been described as one of the “intellectual architects” of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group that has been accused of working in support of the regime in Tehran.

He and NIAC Director Trita Parsi founded the organization as a way to continuously lobby for the removal of sanctions against Iran and to promote Iran’s foreign policy, while combating the pro-Israel sentiment in America, according to documents from a Cyprus convention that featured the two men.

Both Parsi and Namazi have strong connections with the Iranian regime’s President, Hassan Rouhani, and its foreign minister, Javad Zarif. The two have continued to actively communicate with members of the regime. Recently, Parsi was seen traveling with Iran’s delegation during the final stages of the Iranian nuclear deal talks.

NIAC has not commented publicly on Namazi’s arrest, which is believed to have occurred a week or two ago.

When reached by Breitbart News, NIAC Policy Director Jamal Abdi said that the organization has no comment at this time.

An expert on Iran suggests the arrest is the result of a power struggle within the country. Hassan Dai, the editor of the Iranian American Forum, told Breitbart News that Namazi’s imprisonment shows the Ayatollah remains completely in control of his nation’s affairs, and that even Iran’s president is powerless to protect his acquaintances from imprisonment.

Dai explained that Namazi had consistently “lobbied in favor of a faction of the regime,” which upset the Mullahs because it would only be acceptable to “lobby for the whole regime.”

The fight between the factions in Iran is a fight for “the best solution to preserve the regime,” he explained, adding that groups like NIAC have never sided with true “reformists,” but with people who wish to employ a different strategy to empower the regime, such as Hassan Rouhani and former President Akbar Rafsanjani.

Because Namazi and NIAC prefer one faction over the other, “they are undermining the Supreme Leader. They are undermining the Revolutionary Guard,” Dai explained. “When you lobby U.S. policymakers to remove sanctions against Iran with the rationale that it will help reform the regime, you undermine the Supreme Leader, because he wants them to accommodate to the regime now.”

The arrest of Namazi sends a message from Iran’s rulers that “Rouhani has no power,” Dai concluded. “He can not even protect his own friend.”

Namazi’s arrest casts doubt on President Obama’s rationale for the Iran deal. The White House insisted that engaging Iran will help reform the regime, but the detention of a fifth American citizen, and Iran’s continuing aggression, shows that the administration’s reasoning for dealing with the Ayatollah has not held up to scrutiny thus far. The power structure of Iran has not changed since the nuclear deal, neither has Iran’s support for regional terrorist organizations.

Iran claims that the United States is currently holding 19 Iranian nationals under arrest. Regime officials have hinted that they would trade the American citizens for the state-side Iranians. On October 23, a U.S. court sentenced Mozaffar Khazee, an Iranian-American dual citizen, who was convicted of attempting to smuggle state-secrets to Tehran.

by JORDAN SCHACHTEL27 Oct 2015

Edwin Mora contributed to this report.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/27/iran-arrests-american-founder-pro-regime-lobby/

Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

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Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

Iran Lobby Picks and Chooses Hostages to Support

Five Iranian-American groups sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to work for the release of an Iranian-American being held by the Iranian regime and not part of the prisoner swap that occurred last month.

 

The signatories to the letter were the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, the Pars Equality Center, the National Iranian American Council, Iranian Alliances Across Borders, and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Most of these groups actively supported the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime and have campaigned on behalf of it; most notably the NIAC.

Siamak Namazi has been held in Iranian prison since last October and his continued imprisonment has now become something of a cause amongst groups such as NIAC who have previously not dared to voice any public disagreement with the regime on previous occasions, including the imprisonment of other more notable Iranian-Americans such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, who had been subjected to torture and released as part of the prisoner swap.

The U.S. released seven Iranian nationals held in the U.S., in return and agreed to drop international arrest warrants and charges against 14 Iranians outside of the U.S. who had been involved in the smuggling of arms and nuclear components.

Other Iranian-Americans, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to the New York Times, said they were postponing or scrapping planned trips to Iran until Namazi was released, or at least until the circumstances surrounding his case were clearer since his arrest has stirred anxiety among those who thought the nuclear deal portended a new era.

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd. At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government. In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd.
At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government.
In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

The ties between Namazi and Trita Parsi of the NIAC previously exposed by Iranlobby.net were also revealed in a Daily Beast expose that detailed how in 1999, Namazi got together with Parsi at a conference in Cyprus. The conference, titled, “Dialogue and Action Between the People of Iran and America,” was convened to help ameliorate U.S.-Iranian relations in advance of reconciliation by forming an aggressive public relations and lobbying response to any anti-Iranian regime policies and legislation.

Two years later Parsi founded the NIAC, which long advocated opening up commercial and financial lines back to Iran with Namazi’s family companies offering to provide foreign companies and investors with connections and access to regime officials in a cozy relationship that no longer appears that cozy.

This is especially ironic since in March 2006 (at the height of the covert Iranian war with the U.S. in Iraq), Parsi told a colleague not to worry about a trip to Tehran, “NIAC has a good name in Iran and your association with it will not harm you.” When the colleague was briefly questioned by the regime, then released, he reported back (PDF) to Parsi that he’d been told the reason he was let go was “that they knew NIAC had never done anything seriously bad against the Islamic Republic.”

The shifting political winds within the Iranian regime have been reflected in the mass dismissals of thousands of proposed candidates for parliamentary election seats, but of more immediate concern is the prospect of mass demonstrations by ordinary Iranians – not over election issues, but because a large number of Iranians who receive public payments have not been paid by the regime. This also shows that as far as the ordinary Iranians are concerned, they have no illusion about the existence of a moderate or any moderation within the mullah’s regime.

An extraordinary directive from the Herasat Office, the regime’s domestic intelligence and security forces, entitled: “Issue: Paying workers’ wages in the final days of the year”:

“With greeting and respect, you are hereby informed that given that the end of the [Persian calendar] year is approaching and taking note of the instructions handed down by the minister and competent authorities regarding timely payment of workers’ wages and back pay, you must instruct that all wages, bonuses, back pay and overtime pay be paid no later than February 24, 2016 in order to prevent any possible gatherings or sit-ins and their related negative consequences.

“You are reminded that given the upcoming elections of the Assembly of Experts and Islamic Assembly (Parliament), this issue must be treated with especial importance and sensitivity in order to prevent any misuse of this matter for publicity in particular in the realm of workers’ protests.”

In other words, a lot of Iranians haven’t been paid their salaries, and the Khamenei regime is ordering that they be paid the money they’re owed by February 24, two days before the election, in the hope of defusing any potential mass protests.

The prospect of election protests is worrisome to regime leaders, especially since these elections will be held at the same time International Women’s Day is observed, which is all the more problematic for the regime when one considers the abysmal state of women’s rights in the regime today.

Nothing exemplifies this more than reports that Press TV, the regime’s state-run, English language news channel, suspended two executives on Monday after a prominent newscaster exposed that she had endured years of sexual harassment from them.

The newscaster, Sheena Shirani, has fled the country according to the New York Times.

Press TV is a part of the Voice and Vision organization of Iran, a powerful state media organization that is widely seen as a tool of the country’s hardline factions. One expatriate journalist who previously worked for Newsweek said that Emadi doubled as an interrogator in the Evin prison and once interrogated him. Emadi was later placed on a European blacklist of human rights violators.

The incident has also led to debate on social media. Several women have said such forms of harassment are commonplace in Iran under the mullahs rule, where unemployment is high and laws overwhelmingly favor men.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Turns on Its Own

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Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd. At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government. In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd.
At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government.
In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen, has been credited with helping found the Iran lobby including the creation of the National Iranian American Council alongside Trita Parsi as the primary vehicle for advocating for a nuclear agreement lifting economic sanctions on the regime.

The Daily Beast chronicled his family’s involvement as an “intellectual architect” for the NIAC as a pathway for empowering those within the regime whom he had a close relationship with and believed by helping secure an agreement it would boost his fortunes within the regime.

In the immortal words of Kevin Spacey who plays the scheming Frank Underwood on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” “We’re all victims of our own hubris at times.”

Truer words were never spoken about the Iran lobby because on the verge of reaping their perceived successes, they discover all they really are, are puppets for a regime of mullahs whose intent is only focused on preserving their own power.

That is because according to regime media reports, while visiting family in Tehran, Namazi was arrested by Revolutionary Guards Corp soldiers and tossed into the notorious Evin Prison.

There is an irony here on par with Alfred Nobel inventing dynamite and then creating the Nobel Peace Prize after his invention was used in war.

Namazi joins four other Americans who are being held hostage by the regime, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former Marine Amir Hekmati and the former FBI agent Robert Levinson.

According to a piece in American Thinker, Parsi and Namazi founded NIAC as a way to lobby for the removal of sanctions against the regime and promote its foreign policy while combatting anti-regime forces in the U.S.

Both Parsi and Namazi reportedly enjoyed close ties and access to Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, the regime’s president and foreign minister, with Parsi being seen traveling with and in close discussions with the regime delegation during nuclear talks.

Conspicuously, the NIAC have been silent on the issue, declining comment and social media feeds for Parsi and other NIAC staff is devoid of any mention of the arrest.

But Hassan Dai, editor of the Iranian American Forum who won a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Parsi, speculated that the arrest suggests a power struggle of sorts within the regime’s leadership.

Dai explained in an interview with Breitbart News that Namazi had consistently “lobbied in favor of a faction of the regime,” which upset the mullahs because it would only be acceptable to “lobby for the whole regime.”

The fight between the factions in Iran is a fight for “the best solution to preserve the regime,” he explained, adding that groups like NIAC have never sided with true “reformists,” but with people who wish to employ a different strategy to empower the regime, such as Rouhani and former President Akbar Rafsanjani.

Because Namazi and NIAC prefer one faction over the other, “they are undermining the Supreme Leader. They are undermining the Revolutionary Guard,” Dai explained. “When you lobby U.S. policymakers to remove sanctions against Iran with the rationale that it will help reform the regime, you undermine the Supreme Leader, because he wants them to accommodate to the regime now.”

The arrest of Namazi sends a message from Iran’s rulers that “Rouhani has no power,” Dai concluded. “He cannot even protect his own friend.”

Breitbart News further speculates – and rightly so – that the arrest pours cold water on the notion that securing the nuclear deal would empower “moderates” within the regime and help reform it. Evidence since agreeing to the nuclear contradicts that idea completely with the conviction of Rezaian, the test launch of an illegal ballistic missile and the launching of a new offensive in Syria alongside Russian forces.

The arrest of Namazi demonstrates that the leadership of the Iran regime is of one mind and firmly in the control of Ali Khamenei and his religious cohorts and that any idea of moderation within the regime is a pipe dream; which may go to explain why coming off of the NIAC’s recent leadership conference to celebrate the nuclear deal, Parsi’s Twitter feed was filled with posts condemning Saudi Arabia, a bitter enemy of Iran and locked in fighting in Yemen.

If Parsi doesn’t tow the mullahs’ line, he might find a different kind of reception party the next time he travels to Tehran and end up sitting next to his buddy Namazi.

By Michael Tomlinson