Dutiful Trita Parsi!!!

Trita Parsi is at it again; rearing his ugly goatee:

Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

This entity and his mentor, Brzezinski never cease to amaze me. Former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski giving a speech on "National Insecurity and Global Security," asked Israel to give up its nuclear weapons:

Brzezinski questioned Israel's need for nuclear weapons and suggested that the country abandon its nukes to create a nuclear-free Middle East, in order to keep Iran from building its own nuclear arsenal.
"If Israel's nuclear arsenal, some 200 weapons, capable of destroying Iran if Iran were to attack Israel, is not a sufficient and credible deterrent, than what is it for? Against whom is it to be used, against someone who doesn't have nuclear weapons?" he asked the crowd at a Century Foundation/Center for American Progress conference. The latter is headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton.
Brzezinski acknowledged that "one can understand that people traumatized by the Holocaust would be concerned about security," but said Israel's policies created "a collision between the legitimately felt sense of national insecurity and the security of others."
In this view, he said, Israel supported the invasion of Iraq by the United States and now "doesn't hide" its desire for US action in Iran.
Brzezinski, whose address was greeted by rousing applause, also descried the "obscene rhetoric" and "insensitivity to history" exhibited by Iran and urged the Islamic republic to prove that it was only seeking that to which it was legally entitled - civilian nuclear power - and not nuclear weapons.

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Interview: Revolutionary Guards Have Financial Interest in Keeping Iran Isolated

NY Times Interview with Karim Sadjadpour, associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

[...]

Well, I don’t know if we can say there’s one precise reason behind the crackdown. I think it certainly was in the realm of possibility that the government in Tehran is trying to send a very stern signal to the Bush administration to cease any democracy promotion effort in Iran. At the same time, the government in Tehran is trying to send a very clear signal to Iranian-Americans and all those who work on issues of civil society or internal politics in Iran that they should tread very carefully. But I’m also increasingly coming to the conclusion that there’s a small but very powerful clique within Iran, among the political elite, who actually have entrenched political and financial interests in retaining Iran’s isolation. And whenever there is the prospect of a U.S.-Iran dialogue or improved Iranian relations with the West, they do their very best to torpedo such efforts.

You say they have a “financial interest” as well. Could you elaborate?
You have hardline elements within the Revolutionary Guard, who right now have enormous financial assets, and they maintain a kind of a private mafia. And the last thing they want is Iran to open up to the rest of the world, to join the WTO. I think their logic is that right now Iran is a closed society, and the less open the merrier.

Explain a little bit about the Revolutionary Guards. Is this a very large organization?
The Revolutionary Guards comprise about 150,000 in number. They’re not a monolithic group. There’s a common perception right now that the Revolutionary Guards are very closely aligned with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But I would say it’s the opposite. President Ahmadinejad has to pander to the Revolutionary Guards to project his own power, because he doesn’t have a very strong popular base. And it’s difficult to describe them as a group of 150,000 hardliners because in 2001 three-quarters of them voted for the liberal Mohammed Khatami’s re-election as president. In some ways, the Revolutionary Guards are more reflective of the Iranian society than we think. They also want change and reform to take place. But again, when I talked about this powerful clique with entrenched political and financial interest, I don’t think that they’re large in number. I think they represent a minority, a small minority of Iran’s political elite. But they do an outstanding job of consistently playing the spoiler.

And are they involved in the ministry of intelligence which has been responsible for the arrests?
I would say about those who want to retain Iran’s isolationist status—it is not just for financial interests, but it also fits their political worldview. They’re very xenophobic, and many of them still adhere to the old adage from Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution in 1978-79, that the relationship between the United States and Iran is like that between a wolf and a sheep. They’re extremely mistrustful of U.S. intentions and they don’t believe that having a more open Iran is in their own political interests.

Do some of these Revolutionary Guards own businesses? Are they in the oil business?
Yes, they’re getting billion dollar contracts right now, and they essentially operate as contractors. They don’t have the technical know-how whether it’s in the oil industry, or in major infrastructure projects, but they get non-competitive bids, and then they outsource the project. They also have a lot of jetties, or “free-trade ports” where the average Iranian businessman who wants to import or export items is subject to heavy tariffs. The Revolutionary Guards, in turn, operate their own free-trade port, so they’re not subject to tariffs.

I didn’t realize that. And how do the Revolutionary Guards relate to the Iranian army. Revolutionary Guards suggests sort of a militant group. You’re indicating they’re not just a military outfit.

At the onset of the Revolution, there was a lot of concern that the Shah’s army couldn’t be counted on to be loyal to the newly established Islamic republic. So the Khomeinists started the Revolutionary Guards to be the protectors of the revolution. That was the original idea for their existence. But over time they’ve grown in number and they’ve grown in stature, and now there’s a lot of concern that as their economic interests have grown over the years, so have their political ambitions.

Let’s move on to another subject. There’s been a crackdown in Iran, not only on those interested in the United States and the West, but on women’s rights groups. Can you elaborate?

I think Iranian women are among the most progressive women in the Middle East. They’re very capable. We have Shrin Ebadi, the Nobel Prize winner. We have great artists, painters, and doctors and professionals. I would say that despite, not because of the Islamic Republic, Iranian women have still managed to assert themselves in a very important way in Iranian society. And I think their defiance is fairly subtle and fairly apolitical, meaning they’re not so much marching in the streets protesting, but it’s just daily acts of defiance. They are increasingly entering the workforce and going to university. Sixty percent of the universities are women, many not adhering to the strict dress code that was imposed upon them in the early days of the revolution. I would say that those who are political and out marching in the streets for women’s rights are not large in number as a percentage of the population, but they’re not negligible either. And the fact that the regime is choosing to crack down on them, shows that it is concerned about this women’s rights movement.

Talk about the university students. Now if I read the political reporting correctly, there was a major effort by young intellectuals or reformers to boycott the last presidential election in 2005. Do they now regret this? There seems to be a lot of opposition to President Ahmadinejad among the university students these days.
At the time, their rationale for not wanting to participate in the elections was this: “We went out to the polls en masse in 1997 to overwhelmingly elect Mohammed Khatami, but he wasn’t able to effect change the way we wanted him to. So over the course of the next five years, we elected a very reform-minded parliament, and when that wasn’t able to deliver change, we even went and reelected Khatami in 2001. We renewed his mandate and we turned out in Scandinavian turnout levels, 70-80 percent of the population voting, and we gave Khatami mandates of maybe 80 percent.”

But after some eight years of not being able to effect changes via the ballot box, I think it’s very natural that many people decided that voting in Iran is an exercise in futility. As one secular intellectual once put it to me, “It’s like going to the gym every day for six years and not losing one pound. Pretty soon you’re going to stop exercising.” I think the rationale for not participating in the election was at the time sound, but I think now, in retrospect, those people who used to say, “Why should we vote, it doesn’t make any difference,” now realize that actually voting does make a difference, because you can go from kind of an unpleasant situation to a very negative situation. And you can go from someone like Khatami to someone like Ahmadinejad.

U.S. policy toward Iran seems to have two aspects. One is this rather modest program, the equivalent of the Cold War cultural program funding broadcasts and money to help out in exchanges. And the other is this cover activity that keeps going on. A lot of the commentators have sort of blamed the U.S. for the arrests in Iran. What do you say about that?
Well, I don’t think we can blame the United States for the cruelty of the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic has been behaving in cruel fashion since 1979. For example, the punishment of stoning women to death for adultery existed before the neocons came to power in Washington. But that being said, I think the perception in Tehran, especially the perception of Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, is that the U.S. problems with Iran are not about Iran’s external behavior, but about the very character of the Iranian government. Khamenei believes deep down that Iran’s patch of real estate bordering the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, a strategic location with natural resources, is so important that he believes that the United States really wants to go back to a relationship with Iran which they had in the time of the Shah. This was essentially a patron-client relationship. So when the U.S. appropriated $75 million for civil society and democracy promotion in Iran, this simply reinforced the world view of those in Tehran who believe that the United States is out to change the character of the Iranian government.
And of course, the major foreign policy confrontation continues to be the nuclear enrichment program that Iranians continuing in the face of two series of sanctions in the Security Council, and probably another set will be coming up shortly if the Chinese and Russians agree. Is there any discomfort in the leadership over this sort of international isolation they’re getting themselves into?
There are plenty of people like Ali Larijani, the nuclear negotiator, who doesn’t appreciate Ahmadinejad’s approach. I think they appreciate the need for Iran to retain good ties, for example, with the Europeans and not solely rely on Chinese and Russian support. But I think right now the leadership in Iran is banking on the fact that China and Russia won’t sign up to any substantial sanctions. And without China and Russia on board, European resolve is going to waver. The regime believes that if Iran continues to be persistent, this entire coalition is going to unravel. So I think they’re banking on the fact that if they hold strong, eventually, they’re going to be able to win out. At the same time, many Iranians feel, especially those like Ayatollah Khamenei, that they’re still in a difficult position because they think that if they compromise as a result of the pressure, it’s not going to get them out of trouble, but it’s going to invite even more pressure, it’s going to validate this hard-line approach against them. Someone like Ayatollah Khamenei doesn’t want confrontation—and certainly doesn’t want to have military confrontation—but he’s also averse to accommodation.
I would think he’s making a mistake. I would think any sign of a compromise by Iran would be very welcome in the West.
Well, again, we go back to his worldview. He really believes that it’s not about Iran’s external behavior, that it’s about the character of the Iranian government, which the United States has a problem with, and I think he believes that if he compromises as a result of the pressure, it’s not going to strengthen the argument of those in the State Department who argue for a conciliatory approach to Iran. It’s going to strengthen the argument of people like [Vice President] Dick Cheney who say, “See, the pressure’s working, let’s turn up the heat even more.”
I would think the next presidential election in the United States would be very important for Iran. I don’t see any sign of any of the Democratic candidates wanting to have a softer view on Iran, do you?
I think if you’re a U.S. politician, you don’t win any points by saying, let’s engage Iran, especially when you have a president in Iran who has called for wiping Israel off the map and questioned that the Holocaust happened. I think in the context of domestic U.S. politics it doesn’t win you any points by saying, let’s engage with Ahmadinejad.

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Hallelujah, Praise the Lord

Trita Parsi

I woke up this morning to this wonderful expose of one of the most deceptive propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic in the West, the largest Iranian-American organization in the US, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

The true nature of this group headed by the mullah's voice, Trita Parsi, is finally exposed . The article is so juicy and I've been waiting for this for so long that I'm going to re-print the whole thing. "Iran's Oil Mafia":

Robert William (Bob) Ney is a current federal prisoner and a former Ohio Congressman from 1995 until November 3, 2006. Ney pled guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the Jack Abramoff lobbying and bribery scandal. Ney reportedly received bribes from Abramoff, other lobbyists, and two foreign businessmen - a felon and an arms dealer - in exchange for using his position to advance their interests.

Conspicuously missing from this dossier of disservice to the country was Ney’s assistance in the creation of a Washington-based lobbying enterprise for the Iranian theocratic regime, The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC). NIAC is part of an extensive US lobbying web that objectively furthers the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran.


This article will address the creation of NIAC, Tehran’s role, NIAC’s connection to Iran’s oil mafia, and NIAC attempts to penetrate US political system.Creation of NIACThe National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) was founded thanks to the efforts of four non Iranian-Americans: Roy Coffee, Dave DiStefano, Rep. Bob Ney, and *Trita Parsi.


Coffee and DiStefano, both Washington lobbyists, were investigated by the Justice Department for arranging a trip to London for Bob Ney, where he met a Syrian arms dealer and convicted felon involved in a conspiracy to circumvent sanctions to sell US-made aircraft parts to Tehran.


Roy Coffee sent a letter to the Dallas Morning News in February 2006 to justify his relationship with the two London-based felons. Part of the letter discussed the founding of NIAC:“Back in the spring or summer of 2002, a good friend of mine from law school, Darius Baghai, had just returned from visiting relatives in Iran for the first time since his family left before the revolution. He spoke with me about how the economy of Iran was humming …….From this, I took Darius in to visit with Mr. Ney. What was to be a 15 minute meeting became a 1 1/2 hour meeting as they spoke passionately about their hopes for the Iranian people.


They also spoke in Farsi a great deal - I'm sure talking smack about me. From that meeting, Darius, Dave and I began to work with Trita Parsi, another Iranian-American to try to form a political action committee of Iranian-Americans to pursue a strategy of normalization of relations between the two countries…. The 4 of us worked very hard for about 9 months to form this committee.”At the time, Trita Parsi was a Swedish-Iranian graduate student in his early twenties, best known for ties to Iran’s ambassador in Sweden. A successful self-promoter, he soon attached himself as a part-time aide to Congressman Ney before he was appointed president of NIAC.


The New LobbyNIAC’s predecessor, the American-Iranian Council (AIC), was established in the 1990s with backing from multinational oil companies. For many years, it spear-headed pro-Tehran lobbying effort in the US. AIC president Houshang Amirahmadi had been an active pro-Tehran player since early 1980s. While residing in US, he was also a presidential candidate in Iran’s elections, and officially collaborated with different Iranian institutions and notably the foreign ministry. In 1999 and 2000 Trita Parsi was helping Amirahmadi to organize lobbying events in Washington.


In 2001, the pro-Iran lobby in the United States became intensely active to prevent the renewal of the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), and to lift U.S. sanctions on Iran. Despite extraordinary pressure from the lobby, ILSA passed overwhelmingly. Prior to his imprisonment in March 2007, Bob Ney led Congressional efforts to defeat ILSA and initiate Tehran-friendly policies in concert with AIC. Disappointed and angered by the ILSA vote, Ney began to plan for the next battle of the war. “The ILSA vote doesn’t look very promising, but that doesn’t mean the struggle should stop on this entire issue.


It is a matter of education and re-education and people getting together and forming a citizen’s lobby to make sure that members of Congress and their offices are educated on this issue,” Ney told AIC in a June 2001 speech. While Ney was hard at work “forming a citizen’s lobby,” Trita Parsi claimed that the majority of lawmakers voted against their true wills. In a tone apologetic to Tehran, he expressed his hope that the Iranian regime understood that he and his colleagues had worked hard to prevent this result:“Hopefully, Tehran will recognize that an honest attempt was made to defeat or at least weaken the sanctions.


The call for a review and Speaker Hastert's pledge to insist on Congressional action based on the review must also be interpreted by Tehran as a step in the right direction” (Iran Analysis July 2001 Peyvand Iran News) This failure to block the renewal of ILSA in 2001 marked the start of a new era for the pro-Iran lobby in the United States. The lobbyists recognized that they must broadly reach out to Iranian-Americans.NIAC was created to put those plans in motion.


Trita Parsi was the regime’s trusted man within the new network. Tehran’s faith in Parsi was so profound that in 2003 when Iran decided to send a highly secret proposal for negotiations to the White House, Parsi was called on to arrange the delivery of the message through Bob Ney to Karl Rove. Parsi, moreover, was among the few chosen men (along with Mahallati, Iran’s former ambassador to UN) to present the results of a shady Tehran-friendly poll of the Iranian population which indicated the popularity of Iran’s nuclear program.


Trita Parsi and the Regime’s Inner CircleDuring the eight years of Rafsanjani’s presidency, which ended in 1997, the Iranian regime had attempted without success to attract the Iranian Diaspora to its cause. Khatami’s presidency recharged Tehran’s efforts. With the Supreme Leader’s direct involvement, the High Council for Iranian Compatriots Overseas was created in 2000. The President heads the Council, and the Foreign Minister serves as its deputy director. The Ministry of Intelligence and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance collaborate to implement the decisions of the council. The objective was to create a network of organizations to infiltrate and seemingly represent the Iranian community abroad, and promote policies favorable to the Iranian government.


Tehran anticipated that this strategy would neutralize opposition activities abroad and legitimize the new lobby. State-sanctioned Iranian newspapers started a campaign to promote Trita Parsi and NIAC. Pro-government publications outside Iran followed suit. The former head of the Iran interest in Washington, Ambassador Faramarze Fathnejad, was thrilled with the efforts of Trita Parsi and NIAC, and underlined “the importance of relation with Iranian organizations in the U.S. and specially pointed to NIAC and his young leader who is a consultant to CNN and has been very successful in his efforts.” The Iran Ambassador even claimed 20,000 strong membership for NIAC (while only 150 is claimed by NIAC itself)!But token rhetorical support would not alone turn an inexperienced graduate student and a corrupt Washington politician into a lobbying enterprise. Entities with ample financial resources and direct access to Iran’s top leaders had to enter the scene. This is where Siamak Namazi, an important figures of this new lobbying enterprise and a prominent member of the Iranian oil Mafia, enters the scene.Trita Parsi and Namazi worked closely on developing the details of a grand plan to create an Iranian-American “Citizen’s Lobby.”


They traveled to Iran together They organized joint conferences and meetings. In 1999, they co-authored a seminal paper, that provided the roadmap for the organization that later became NIAC. 24Namazi, along with his sister Pari and brother Babak, control the Atieh enterprise in Iran and its three sister companies Atieh Roshan, Atieh Bahar and Atieh Associates, as well as numerous other direct and indirect partnerships, including Azar Energy, Menas companies in England, Atieh Dadeh Pardaz, FTZ Corporate services and MES Middle East Strategies.. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that Baquer Namazi (their father) is the Chairman of Hamyaran, identified by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as a “resource center” in Tehran for Iranian non-governmental organizations (NGOs).Atieh claims to be a “fully private strategic consulting firm that assists companies better understand the Iranian market, develop business and stay ahead of [the] competition.” People familiar with the oil industry in Iran understand the coded language, After all, rulers in every country in the Middle East use outside consultants to negotiate the discrete terms of lucrative oil contracts.Atieh’s customers include the foreign corporations who wish to do business in Iran. One Atieh Bahar customer, Norway’s Statoil, has been publicly identified as a participant in a scheme to bribe Iranian government officials by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.


A number of high officials in the company were fired and the company had to pay tens of millions of dollars in penalties to the US and Norwegian governments for “payments to an Iranian official in 2002 and 2003 in order to induce him to use his influence to obtain the award to Statoil of a contract to develop phases 6, 7 and 8 of the Iranian South Pars gas field.”The most recent debacle of Atieh enterprise was in March 2007 when the CEO of the French oil company Total SA was charged with having bribed senior Iranian officials to secure contracts. Total is a major customer of the Namazi’s Atieh enterprise.Tehran’s trust in Namazi is further evidenced by the fact that his company provides the network and computer services for almost all Iranian banks, the Majles (parliament), and other important institutions. Namazi’s groups monitor nearly all Iranian economic or political activities and have access to the country’s most sensitive data. This is a clear indication of his prominent place inside the inner circle of power in Tehran.While representing Tehran, Namazi, disguised as a scholar travels to the US to seemingly pursue academic activities . He succeeded so well that the Congressionally-funded National Endowment for Democracy awarded him a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship in 2005.


This link between the Iranian oil Mafia and “scholarly” pursuits in the US is hardly isolated. Three former Iranian deputy foreign ministers currently live in Boston posing as “scholars”: Mohammad Mahallati who was also the Iranian ambassador to the UN in the late 1980s, Farhad Atai and, Abbas Maleki. In addition to his diplomatic past, Maleki has been one of the most important figures within the Iranian oil Mafia.The Roadmap In 1999, Parsi and Namazi presented a joint paper titled “Iranian-Americans: The bridge between two nations” at a conference organized by the Iranian government in Cypress. This report contains the manifesto and the roadmap for the new Iranian lobby in the US. The authors argue that “an Iranian-American lobby is needed in order to create a balance between the competing Middle Eastern lobbies. Without it, Iran-bashing may become popular in Congress again.”The “competing lobby” was AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee).


The pillars of the road map were: To have the appearance of a citizen’s lobbyTo mimic the Jewish lobby in the USTo impede Iranian opposition activitiesTo infiltrate the US political systemTo break the taboo of working with the Iran’s cleric rulers for the Iranian DiasporaTo improve the image of the Iran’s government abroad24. In their report, Namazi and Parsi acknowledged that problems of organizing a pro-regime lobby within the Iranian-American community:“This group’s role has not been utilized any where close to its potential, however, for several reasons: A good portion of them were against the IRI [Islamic Republic of Iran], therefore would not do anything to help.”“The point is, [Iranian Americans] were not about to form a lobby group that would benefit the establishment in Tehran, or benefit the Iranian-Americans themselves as a community, nor was it for the most part interested in forming a pressure group against the Islamic Republic.”This was also underlined by Roy Coffee, one of the NIAC’s founders:“We [NIAC’s founders] found that most Iranians do not want to get involved in politics because of their experiences in Iran during and after the revolution. They have come to this country to make a better life for themselves and their children and don't want to get involved.” The lack of participation by the Iranian American community in this lobby has been overcome with a sophisticated machine of professional lobbyists and “friendly” circles who favor a rapprochement with the Iranian regime.Tehran’s Advice: Mimic Jewish Lobby in WashingtonOne of the hallmarks of the new lobby was its desire to rival the “Israeli Lobby” in the United States. This aspiration led to the creation of the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC), loosely modeled after similar organizations created by AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee).


Three of IAPAC’s board members came from the AIC’s leadership.In their 1999 paper, Parsi and Namazi analyzed at length the techniques used by AIPAC, and suggested that the same approach should be taken to create an Iranian lobby in Washington:“Creating similar types of seminars and intern opportunities to Iranian-American youth may not improve Iran-US relations in the short run, but it will help integrate the Iranian-American community into the political life of America. In the long run, a strong and active Iranian- American lobby, partly established through these seminars and by the participants of these programs, may serve to ensure that the US and Iran never find themselves in violent opposition to each other again.”Trita Parsi has been reciting this comparison to the Israeli lobby since the late 1990’s, about the time that the High Council was formed in Tehran. At the beginning his tone was more contentious and resembled the mullah’s usual rhetoric, but more recently he has toned down his anti-Israeli remarks, at least in English.The government-owned newspaper Aftab published an interview with Trita Parsi on December 28, 2006 that underscores Parsi’s efforts on behalf of the Iranian regime.. Translation: “The conflict between Iran and the West on Iran’s nuclear file has entered a critical state. The government must now utilize all the possible resources to defend the national interest. In this, we have not paid enough attention to the potentially significant influence of the Iranian American society in moderating the extremist policies of the White House.


In comparison of this untouched potential to the influence of the Jewish lobby in directing the policies of Washington in supporting Israel, we see the difference between what is and what could be.” Siamak Namazi began sounding similar themes.:“I propose that we should start showing up to the leadership training seminars and other events organized by the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) for their youth. Not only will this create an opportunity to learn the fine skills of community organization and grassroots lobbying, but it also takes away from AIPAC's ability to spread misinformation about Iran through a deliberate campaign to further its own political agenda.” Not Lobbyists?


As Ney’s criminal bribery and lobbying fiasco became more public, NIAC’s president Trita Parsi began to downplay NIAC’s lobbying activities. (NIAC is registered as a 501 c3, to which certain legal restrictions apply.) Furthermore, being lobbied by a former aid would have added to Ney’s already complicated situation. Asked in 2005 whether his group lobbied the US Congress, Trita Parsi told an interviewer:“Our group does not do any lobbying at all. We do not contact the Congressmen to support or oppose a bill.”Since its creation, however, NIAC has strived to penetrate the US political system in accordance with the roadmap Namazi and Parsi established in 1999. As the Washington Post reported on June 25, 2006: “The NIAC helped persuade a dozen conservative House members to sign a letter to President Bush earlier this month calling for unconditional negotiations with Iran's regime.” The external communications of Parsi and other NIAC leaders shed further light on NIAC’s lobbying activities.“The NIAC members have educational and experimental knowledge on the lobbying process and politics in America.”“.. we must establish connections on Capitol Hill to establish early-warning systems about proposed votes or bills that may oppose the best interests of Iranian-Americans.” Bob Ney, Roy Coffee, and Dave DiStefano arranged numerous workshops, training classes, seminars and speeches in which they themselves and others with experience prepared members and affiliates of NIAC to lobby and influence Congress. Parsi, Namazi and Ney organized public gatherings and discrete and exclusive $1,000 per plate fundraiser events.


They even developed a training manual for lobbyists, a copy of which was sent to this writer by a former NIAC member. NIAC itself admits that “In 2002, Congressman Ney benefited from letters sent by Iranian-Americans through NIAC's Legislative Action Center in support of his resolution on US-Iran relations.”Infiltrating CongressTrita Parsi, Namazi and their backers fully intended to infiltrate the US Congress. One of the methods they boast of involves recruiting young Iranian Americans to serve as Congressional interns or pages by offering room, board and financial incentives. NIAC’s website brags of success stories in this venture. NIAC claims to have drafted the young Iranian American Press Secretary for Rep. Marcy Kaptur to help in improving the lobbying skills of NIAC members and affiliates. Similarly, an Iranian American student in the University of Minnesota received a financial scholarship in his senior year and becomes an intern in Senator Norm Coleman’s (R-MN) Washington office. Another intern, a graduate of University of South Florida, was placed in Congressman Jim Davis’ (D-FL) Washington, D.C. office. Expanding the operation to penetrate the US political system, NIAC has now formally implemented a paid trainee program and is actively in search for unwary Iranian American youth.

Conclusion Since the early 1990’s, Tehran has embarked on developing a sophisticated lobbying enterprise in the United States.


Iran’s government has devoted significant manpower and financial resources to this cause. This lobbying enterprise consists of a complex, intermingled web of entities and organizations with significant overlap of leadership, and heavy involvement of the notoriously mafia-like inner circles of the Iranian regime. Disguised as scholars, many of the former Iranian government officials reside in the US and constitute an important piece of the lobby machine. NIAC and its major figures, such as Bob Ney and Trita Parsi are effective nodes of Tehran’s efforts to manipulate US policy toward self-serving ends.

Furthermore, I might add, Trita Parsi plus being paraded around by CNN, PBS and NPR as a "Middle East" expert, he has also become the darling of the rabid left who often cite his propaganda to back up their assertions in anything that supports the murderous mullahs' agenda. Trita Parsi et al are extremly dangerous because they have an uncanny talent to torture logic, facts and reason to mind-bending extremes in order to have clueless politicians (Baker, pelosi et al) to believe monumentally ridiculous “explanations for terrorist acts committed by the IR” … justifications drawn from finanaical need so warped and debased that you are catapulted beyond anger and disbelief directly into rage and the desire to call your doctor before you lose your mind.

Trita Parsi is no small fish. He has been mentored by very influential American policy makers such as Professor Francis Fukuyama, and Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. Are US policy-makers going to rely on expert advice of these dubious characters masquarading as Middle East experts while they are unofficial operative of our enemies? If they are then we are doomed to repeat the lessons of Iran in 1979, which spawned satanic militant Islam under the auspieces of Carter's beloved saint, Khomeini.

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