NIAC Is The Propaganda Arm of Iran, Not a Human Rights Organization’

https://en.dailymail24.com/2017/12/06/niac-is-the-propaganda-arm-of/

They wine and dine members of Congress at monthly dinners. Their members serve on the boards of successful, well-respected organizations run by Iranian-Americans. They claim to be the voice of moderation and friendship.

In reality, NIAC is the propaganda arm of Iran, strengthening its position inside the United States through outreach, propaganda, disinformation articles, character assassination attacks against critics, and intimidation of dissenters through lawsuits.

The Department of Justice should investigation this lobby group for its failure to register under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), expose their frauds and destructive role in the US, and inform Congress and the administration about their destructive roles as agents of influence for Iran's intelligence.

Challenge

NIAC claims to be dedicated to strengthening the voice of the Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between Americans and Iranian people. In fact, NIAC has been acting as a de facto lobbyist for the Islamic Republic of Iran, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act ((22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq.)  This law requires agents representing interests of foreign powers in a political or semi-political capacity to disclose their relationship with the foreign government, as well as related activities and finances. NIAC, led by the Swedish-born activist Trita Parsi, is likely in violation of the relevant provision. As a key and overtly pro-Iranian voice advising the Obama administration on the nuclear deal  with the Islamic Republic, NIAC consistently voiced the interests and point of view of the "Reformist" faction of the regime, represented, in part, by the current president Hassan Rouhani.   

While in Lausanne during the JCPOA negotiations, Trita Parsi put himself forward as a member of the Iranian negotiating team, and repeatedly boasts of his access to Iranian regime leaders. He has dined with Iran's former hardliner president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, met with the brother of the current president Hassan Rouhani, corresponded and maintained close ties with  Foreign Minister Zarif, dating from Zarif's previous position as Iran's Permanent Representative to the United States in New York. That level of access suggests trust on the part of the normally suspicious regime. Furthermore, a shady family that had financed NIAC,  started by Parsi in 2002, stood to gain financially from the sanctions relief, as they openly backed the deal.  The Namazis, who peddled influence between the White House and Teheran, ultimately overstepped the boundaries and have been arrested by the regime.  Parsi continued pro-regime fabrications through the years since NIAC's inception.  Most recently, Trita Parsi fabricated (in allegation) that green card holders from the seven countries designated by the most recent immigration suspension were being asked about their views on President Trump upon entering the airport.  He then doubled down on this mendacious claim.  

Contrary to the popular view, the Reformists are no more moderate than the hard-liners such as the previous president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and are yet another group of people played by the ayatollah-led regime. NIAC was consistently deceptive in advocating the potential consequences of the nuclear deal, and attacked critics of the deal, such as the well-known dissident and journalist Ahmad Batebi, for their public concern. NIAC-affiliated public figures, such as Muhammad Sahimi, had attacked critics of the deal as right-wing pawns and pillars of the Israel lobby in the U.S., an argument that directly reflected the rhetoric of the regime itself and furthered its interests through a character assassination campaign. Trita Parsi himself had visited President Obama at least 33 times, and remained his leading adviser.

There is evidence to believe than rather than being an organization and an individual sympathetic to the Regime, NIAC and Parsi actively aided Iranian intelligence. For instance, a report from Iranian American Forum, based in London, claims that a secret message delivered by Trita Parsi to their office in September 2011 was identical to a secret message delivered to Washington in 2007 by the regime's envoy Salman Savafi. Both messages warned against designating the IRGC (The Iranian Revolutionary Guards) as a terrorist organization because it would wreak havoc in Iraq, and also jeopardize the possibility of improving relations with Iran.  Separately, an unclassified Pentagon report described NIAC's collaboration with two Iranian intelligence agents, who were invited to give a Congressional briefing (links to report included). Meanwhile, most recently, a number of senior defense and intelligence officials have come forward  against designating IRGC as a terrorist organization, in a language similar to the two messages cited above, particularly warning that such designation could endanger US troops in Iraq and endanger the fight against ISIS. Given the close connection between NIAC and the previous administration, one can easily surmise NIAC's role in making that impression and continuing to play the role of the regime's lobbyist in preventing unfavorable policies.

Above-mentioned Trita Parsi unsuccessfully sued a noted Iranian American journalist Hassan Daioleslam for defamation, where Mr. Daioleslam argued in his articles that NIAC is an unregistered lobby group. A treasure trove of documents on Mr. Daioleslam's website unveil the intricate web of deeply rooted and personal relationships between NIAC members and regime families. More recently, they demonstrate how NIAC is deceitfully trying to divorce the West's view of Iran from its obvious connections with North Korea.  Furthermore, NIAC appears to be the only widely known group representing interests of Iranian-Americans, and has gained renowned in the US educational and cultural institutions. For that reason, perhaps, only Reformists in Iranian prisons are promoted in the NIAC-sponsored English language press, and for the same reason the voices of the NIAC-sponsored “dissidents” drown out and shut down the voices of legitimate anti-regime critics throughout the United States.  

. Prior to the lawsuit, NIAC was registered as a (501) ( c) (3). Despite the fact that NIAC spent only about 5% of their activity on human rights advocacy and the remainder on lobbying activities in violation of their status, the State Department did not require them to register as foreign agency and did not refer them to the Department of Justice.  In court, NIAC and Trita Parsi were both sanctioned for systematic abuse of discovery process and repeated false and misleading declarations to court. Interestingly, this abuse of process included the altering of 1400 emails referencing the word "lobby".  In fact, Parsi himself used the word "lobby" to describe NIAC in documents obtained by Eli Lake. Additionally, NIAC and Parsi withheld vital documents on numerous occasions and made false comments before the court.

The sanctions were upheld on appeal.  Many Iranian Americans, as well as the governmental press in Iran, consider NIAC to be the"Iran lobby".  This organization, and its director Trita Parsi, pretend to be the leading voice of the Iranian Americans in the United States, in reality representing the interests of a state that promotes terrorism, ignores sanctions, engages in systematic and widespread human rights abuses, and has utilized the money released by the Obama administration towards developing its illegal ballistic missile program.  NIAC-affiliated entities have engaged in a pattern of shutting down the dissent by Iranian dissidents and other critics who have come out against the regime and who have criticized the Reformists.  NIAC and its individual members release deceptive missives, which paint a distorted portrait of the Islamic Republic's regime and excuse away its anti-Western, anti-Israel rhetoric.

Suggested Response

NIAC, rather than representing the interests of Iranian Americans, promotes the interests of an openly adversarial and threatening regime, all tax-free. Its duplicity and intentions should be unmasked and exposed.

In fact, after the oral argument in the above-cited case,  Judge Wilkins states:

“I got to tell you that your client is lucky that I was not the District Judge, because you will be here appealing much more severe and higher sanctions, because I think he (the District Court judge) had extreme patience in dealing with lots of misleading and false representations and countless times when your client was trying to slice the baloney very thin, as far as trying to parse what their obligations were.”

Given the strong signal from the judiciary, the Department of Justice and Congress should launch an investigation into NIAC's and Trita Parsi's deceptive and insidious activities in violation of the United States law, and contrary to U.S. interests.  A hearing examining its pattern of duplicity, character assassination attacks on critics, and self-serving agendas that in no way help the interests of the Iranian American community will bring to light its many instances of violations, and likely, tax evasion. It may reveal the illicit funding of its pro-Iran agendas by figures within the regime itself. Finally, it may give grounds for a recommendation that the State Department should require NIAC be designated as a foreign agent, and that the Department of Justice should investigate NIAC, Trita Parsi, and other relevant subsidiary groups and individuals for fraudulent activities, tax evasion, and other violations.

The Department of Justice should investigate NIAC's and Tria Parsi's failure to register under FARA and require them to do so immediately, while strictly enforcing the periodic reporting requirement in the interests of national security. Likewise both NIAC and Trita Parsi should be charged with perjury and obstruction of justice and investigated for their lies under oath and tempering with evidence during the course of the trial.  

Anticipated Outcome

The Islamic Republic's aggression against the Western, and particularly U.S. interests, takes many forms, but not the least of them is "lawfare" against critics, information warfare, the shutdown of popular dissent at home and abroad, institutionalized espionage, and high-positioned agents of influence. Not-for-profit cultural organizations purporting to represent intercultural understanding and the interests of particular communities are an excellent vehicle to promote these active measures of swaying public opinion, influencing decisionmakers, and dictating pro-Iran policy to the U.S. government and institutions. Exposing these instruments of the Islamic Republic for what they are will shred their credibility, and give opportunity to pro-freedom, pro-Western institutions to arise among Iranian-Americans, and will give voice to the Iranians that are looking to defend the interests of the United States, rather than its adversary.

How Rogue Regimes Use Double Standards to Impose Their Will At Home and Abroad

What is striking about Turkey's demand for ransom to free an American pastor which eventually sparked the current reciprocal visa freeze between Turkey and the United States is Turkey's unironic expectation that that US (and international community) should grant equal degree of legitimacy to the US process and Turkey's clearly arbitrary way of going after anyone who is convenient at the time. Turkey unjustly imprisoned an American evangelical Andrew Brunson under trumped up charges in horrendous conditions that have cost him his health. In exchange, it demands US return clergy associated with Fetullah Gullen, Erdogan's political nemesis. Aside from expecting US to violate international agreements related to the return of political asylees who would likely face unjust imprisonment, torture, or execution in their home countries, Erdogan thinks nothing of arresting a  US citizen, fabricating charges against him, and mistreating him as a way to force a political solution to its witch hunt against other political factions.

A dictatorship's grotesquely distorted idea of national sovereignty thus extends far beyond its own borders. It is willing to violate all international norms of civil behavior to make a political point, imposing its will abroad, even if it means risking a serious deterioration in relationship with an important ally. To an authoritarian dictator, who thinks nothing of torturing and murdering his opposition, be they military, political rivals, or Kurdish citizens asserting their rights to distinct cultural heritage, human life has no value except as a bargaining chip in negotiations. The only lives that matter are those of the authoritarian leader and his equally corrupt cronies, who may be in favor today, and exiled or assassinated tomorrow if they grow too powerful or somehow cross Erdogan.

Erdogan's Turkey is not unique in this manner. Iran, North Korea, and other countries engage in this perverse strategy on a regular basis. Cuba has done the same with Alan Gross.  These countries expect to be treated as equals among nations despite having no respect for any other state or anyone else's interests but their own.  Despite the claim that these societies are obsessed with security and are thus safer and less prone to crime and espionage than more open societies, these states are inherently lawless and illegitimate, with one person or a small coterie of kleptocrats controlling all the means of governance at the time, and the rest of the society largely defanged, divided, brainwashed, and hopeless. Iran has an Orwellian strategy of making public enemies out of human rights defenders.

As per Kaveh Taheri, an investigative reporter focused on human rights, Iran frequently uses national security and blasphemy laws as an absurd way of shutting down dissent or simply arbitrarily grabbing anyone who needs to be detained, be that a regular person, caught drinking alcohol, a minority member demanding cultural rights, a political dissident or human rights activist, a member of a faction that has fallen into disfavor, a dual national, or a Westerner that appears to be good bait, or an errant artist, whose work is deemed threatening to the regime despite a lack of obviously disruptive agenda. Any freedom of thought that is not granted by the regime explicitly and strategically to select individuals resides in the shadows.

Kaveh states:

"Acting against national security" is one of the punishable crimes under Iran's Islamic Penal Code. The article 279 describes that the crimes including armed robbery, armed fighting, disturbing public orders through armed acting could be recognized as Moharebeh (Enmity against God) as well as judge can issues death penalty or long-term imprisonment, and life-time imprisonment for the criminals. 

Further, the articles 286-288 describe that those people act against national security through disturbing economy, spreading false news against the regime of Iran, spreading false news to disturb public order, ignite and destruction public or state properties, outbreaking of toxic and dangerous microbial substances, establishing of corruption centers for gambling or sex, high drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and those armed opposition groups who fight the regime of Iran could be recognized as Ifsad-e fil arz (corruption on the earth) [the member of the groups is identified as Mofsed-E-Filarz], whereupon, judge issues heavy sentences as long-term imprisonment, life-time imprisonment or death penalty.

Iran Islamic Penal Code is a complicated context that the IRI's Law Enforcement officials (judges, Prosecutors, attorney general, …) can have their own interpretation of the law which may lead them to issue death penalty or prison term for the detainees.

But, especially about your question, the officials (Judicial Department officials, Intelligence Service officials, and IRGC's Intelligence Service officials) use the ambiguity in the law to put pressure upon dissidents. The IRI officials convict the Iranian dissidents to death or heavy sentences for the ambiguous charges as "acting against national security", "propaganda against the regime of Iran", "spreading false news against IRI", "disturbing public order", "Moharebeh through membership of the opposition groups", "Ifsad-e fil arz through membership of the opposition groups", "insulting the Supreme Leader of IRI of the other state officials", … .

In instance, the imprisoned student activist Arash Sadeghi was sentenced to 19 years in prison. His wife Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee was sentenced to 6 years in prison. The human rights activist Atena Daemi was initially sentenced to 14 years in prison, which was commuted to 7 years imprisonment. And, many civil and human rights activists who have been jailed for their peaceful activism.  

In this manner, the Islamic Republic actually acts in a completely arbitrary and lawless manner, cynically manipulating both Islamic concepts and security jargon to go after its enemies, real and imaginary, sometimes simply for the sake of dividing or scaring any potential opposition that may emerge. In fact, randomness in enforcement, and periodic clamp downs, are part of a deliberate strategy to illustrate the absolute power of the state. By that token, the Islamic Republic is also ultimately a godless society, because arbitrary arrests and punishments serve to show that ultimately, the power lies not with Allah, but with the ayatollahs, who alone determine which sinners can be overlooked, and which will be penalized. 

They alone, human beings, not a deity, decide who is a danger, and who, though engaged in very similar action, is a good citizen and a good Muslim.  A society in which vast corruption permeates the higher circles, but only the danger to the regime that is a violation serious enough to warrant the kind of torturous ordeal that easily strikes a regular average Iranian who ate in public during Ramadan, who went out to demonstrate against oppression, or who was merely a dual citizen on a visit with his family - is not a society that promotes awe of some omnipotent being. It's a society that emphasizes state control, human power, above all else.

The dual standards that permeate these authoritarian states extend beyond their borders. Obsessed with spies and foreign agents, these states, nevertheless, maintain extensive intelligence networks all over the world, which consider espionage, active measures, psy-ops,  and even assassinations par for the course and think nothing of other countries' national sovereignty, international norms, or even potential repercussions of going too far too often. And it works. More open societies think it beyond their virtue to engage in disruptive activities concerning even their adversaries, much less of cynical abductions, overwhelming propaganda, or other actions that are supposed to intimidate and oppress the enemy. And open societies are generally open to infiltration, to the point of self-preservation becoming a secondary concern to the preservation of accepted civil norms.

For that reasons, we will find Erdogan's jaundiced view of the West's unwillingness to simply give up Gullenists in exchange for one of their own shocking, but to Erdogan, the only shocking part is how staunchly the West adheres to the norms of diplomatic proportionality and how it continues to treat violators of its own standards and laws with civil reciprocity, rather than crushing, overwhelming force.

What would that entail? Having a threat of reprisals against particular individuals in those regimes for the mere fact of violating national sovereignty, and certainly for the mere act of detaining, much less torturing, US citizens and permanent residents, under these bogus charges. Passing legislation, similar to Magnitsky Act, that would empower the US government to freeze the assets of corrupt and evil regime officials, and to deny them and their families entry to the US, would make compliance more likely, give us leverage during the negotiation, since the mere threat of such measures would make these officials less likely to engage in extortion, and prevent the US from having to restrict its own nationals' freedom to travel by having to institute travel bans for their own security. Indeed, holding specific individuals accountable for the harm done to the US nationals, even before any such harm is done to anyone, would go along way in preempting them from ever engaging in such behavior in the first place, and would contribute decisively towards making the world both a more free and more secure place for everyone.

  

Decertification is Not Enough; We Must Declaw and Defang Iran to Prevent Greater Bloodshed

Let me spell it out: whether you recertify or decertify, stay or go, unless Iran is completely and utterly isolated, all this running commentary are merely pinpricks and distractions.

Iran has ALREADY secured major investments from European firms and has strong commitments from China, its top trading partner.

Russia is providing Iran with weapons.

North Korea is likewise cooperating on ballistic missiles.

Unless US ALSO gets China on board, our own sanctions will have very limited effect.

The reasons any sanctions were working against Iran before the nuclear deal was precisely because Iran was basically brought to its knees and treated as an international pariah.

Going after IRGC would, in this context, have to mean more than just shallow designations and rhetoric. It would mean: "shoot on sight". IRGC and ALL OTHER militant Iranian entities and proxies would have to be regarded as adversaries, not just annoyances.

Our entire strategy would have to be reoriented not merely towards fighting Hezbullah and other Shi'a groups in the battlefields in Syria but going after them everywhere with the goal of obliterating them entirely.

Nothing in what Trump or any of his associates are saying shows any such determination.

Throwing the issue back to Congress means that MAYBE the administration would be willing to sign off on some of the sanctions bills (provided they are not lost among unrelated pork and watered down by leftist interests - which they are likely to be).

Congress can fund and defund programs related to our mechanisms of war or impose sanctions and recommend entities for blacklisting. Congress cannot by itself redirect all of foreign policy.

Unlike many who are giddy with excitement about the upcoming and belated decertification, I view this discussion as a waste of time along the lines of the 'too little-too late" department.

If we are serious about this, we are going to have to do A LOT MORE than pat ourselves on the back for largely symbolic gestures. We are going to have to drag our allies on board; we are going to have to push the president's national security team towards reorganizing against all things Iran, we are going to have to view what's coming as a non-lethal total war.

Iran Decertification Farce

Does anyone here seriously think that the same group of people who wish to keep the Iran deal in place because their financial interests are heavily invested in Iran and because their ideological proclivities dictate that course of action would actually let the President take any truly tough action against Iranian proxies, particularly the official Iran body, IRGC, since any such measure would inevitably be interpreted by Iran to be a violation of the deal? I see decertification without also backing away from JCPOA as a symbolic measure, and whatever action is taken afterwards will be largely cosmetic.

Now if the President decided to freeze all assets by all relevant officials, cut off the flow of Iranians traveling into the US for pleasure, and made Iranians into international pariahs instead of "partners" for financial investments, that might have had some effect. But that won't happen, because it's pretty clear that the new plan is there just to shut down the critics and make Congress feel useful