The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) (of which Leftist establishment media darling Reza Aslan and Leftist “academic” Juan Cole are Board members) has been established in court as a lobbying group for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Said Michael Rubin: “Jamal Abdi, NIAC’s policy director, now appears to push aside any pretense that NIAC is something other than Iran’s lobby. Speaking at the forthcoming ‘Expose AIPAC’ conference, Abdi is featured on the ‘Training: Constituent Lobbying for Iran’ panel. Oops.” Iranian freedom activist Hassan Daioleslam “documented over a two-year period that NIAC is a front group lobbying on behalf of the Iranian regime.” NIAC had to pay him nearly $200,000 in legal fees after they sued him for defamation over his accusation that they were a front group for the mullahs, and lost.
“Iran’s Spymaster Claims Pro-Regime Agents Operating in D.C., London, Canada,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, March 23, 2017:
Iran maintains a network of spies and lobbyists who clandestinely push the Islamic regime’s agenda in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, according to the head of Iran’s ministry of intelligence, who touted the pro-Iran network’s ability to spread its ideology to the West.
Mahmoud Alavi, Iran’s intelligence minister, in recent remarks independently translated by the Washington Free Beacon, bragged about the Islamic Republic’s ability to operate an unnamed “lobby group” in D.C. that helps to push the regime’s hardline agenda.
Alavi disclosed that Iranians with dual citizenship in the United States, Canada, and England, remain devoted to the “Islamic revolution” and are working to promote this agenda in their adopted homelands.
In D.C., Alavi claimed, a “lobby group for the Islamic Republic of Iran” is working to bolster the regime’s international status and help legitimize its nuclear endeavors.
“They have a lobby group for the Islamic Republic of Iran which does not cost us money,” Alavi said, without naming the specific organization. “We should not accuse them and say things that discourage them about the ancestral homeland, this is not good, and losing this capital is not good for the regime.”
Iranian dual nationals living in the West remain devoted to the Islamic Republic, he added.
“It is wrong to say that all dual nationals are traitors, spies, or foreign agents; many of dual nationals love Iran, are a capital for Iran,” Alavi said. “Many who live in Canada, London, or the United States [are devoted] to the [Islamic] revolution and the supreme leader … In those places some attend religious ceremonies. [Those people] love the [Islamic] Revolution.”
While the Iranian official did not name the lobby group in question, the Free Beacon has reported during the past several months that dissident organizations are pushing for a formal investigation into the National Iranian American Council, or NIAC, which has long fought against charges that it lobbies on the regime’s behalf.
A group of nearly 100 prominent Iranian dissidents working to undermine the regime petitioned Congress in February to investigate NIAC’s ties to the Iranian regime and determine if it is actively helping to push a pro-mullah agenda.
“We write to request a congressional hearing on the efforts of Tehran’s theocratic regime to influence U.S. policy and public diplomacy toward Iran,” the dissidents wrote to Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), the heads of Congress’ foreign affair committees, according to copies of the letter first reported by the Free Beacon.
NIAC’s actions in favor of the Iran nuclear deal and increased diplomacy with Tehran also raised concerns in January, when the Free Beacon first reported that two high-level Iranian government backers, including a former Islamic Republic official and another accused of lobbying on Tehran’s behalf, had been hosted at the Obama White House for more than 30 meetings with top officials.
The meetings came at key points in the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran and efforts to push the nuclear deal….
david says
Just like Europe we are inviting the monsters right on in……..effin’ open door policies…….
Frank says
Their hats make wonderful rice bowls.
gravenimage says
If you like picking lice out of your food, of course…
Voytek Gagalka says
Iranian mullahs: how 7th century can parasitically prosper in the 21st and all, predominantly, with the full consent of the victims.
Westman says
Western nations should disallow dual-citizenship. How can a dual-citizen be a patriot and serve two masters? If Iranians living in the US want Iranian citizenship and US citizenship then send them to Iran – along with Reza Aslan.
Wellington says
Agreed, Westman. Respecting America specifically, I would allow dual citizenship from birth, but only until 21, when such a person who wants to keep American citizenship must give up the other. No exceptions. None.
As for all others, that is to say one not born a dual citizen, the granting of American citizenship MUST insist upon giving up the “other” or, if not, then no American citizenship.
Right now the West is in many fights, almost all of them to the West’s detriment. One of them is the matter of dual citizenship. I insist upon my scenario above. No exceptions (other than the extremely rare act by Congress granting honorary American citizenship, replete with an American passport, as was done in the case of Winston Churchill).
berserker says
The Saudis are doing it; so why not Iran?
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/21/11275354/saudi-arabia-gulf-washington?
EmHotep says
Correct, I’ always wondered why the US supports the biggest evil Saudi? Iran looks like much more peaceful than the Gulf countries.
Michael says
You just have to wonder sometimes what the hell is going on. Is anyone really FOR America? I mean the leaders. FOR England. FOR Canada, France, and go down the list of countries that are being invaded. My god, who is calling all this for what it is? All I can is, I’m glad we have guns in America. I hope like hell we never have to use them. But sometimes it sure all seems like a very rigged game. And it’s not in favor of ‘the people.’
mortimer says
Finally, Reza Aslan and Juan Cole have been identified as agents of influence (spies) for the Iranian dictators.
Pretty evil stuff. Dirty. Sordid. Sullied. Disreputable. Treasonous. Seditious.
Angemon says
Meaning that the opposite conclusion is true for Canada, the UK or the US – those dual citizens, who are devoted to Iran and the supreme leader, must be considered traitors, spies or foreign agents.
gravenimage says
Islamic Republic of Iran’s Intelligence Minister boasts of “lobby group” boosting its interests in DC
……………..
Let’s hope this changes under Trump.
nicholas tesdorf says
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Intelligence Minister’s “lobby group” in Washington would be normally known as the Democrat Party, wouldn’t it?
Florida Jim says
When the swamp is drained muslims will be outed and deported if they are legal and not Islamic.
SAKOVKT says
Well, here are we are, all “citizens of the world”.
How do you like it?
Fact is, Progressive foreign policy since Woodrow Wilson has been deposing regimes they consider “illegal” by standards not exactly clear.
It’s had something to do with “spreading democracy”, though.
And then ‘”nation building” : the League of Nations and then the U.N.
It was only a matter of time before the world returned the favor and Republics are actually the most vulnerable form of government to this sort of thing.
That’s why George Washington admonished to avoid foreign entanglements.
The history of Europe can be viewed as a continent of sovereign nations constantly meddling in each others affairs, the most spectacular being Napoleon and V. Lenin.
Napoleon spread national liberalism under his own imperial ambitions. Nice touch.
Lenin was injected into Tsarist Russia as an agent provocateur and was astounded at Brest-Litovsk to having been played as socialism’s first “useful idiot”. HIs Bolshevik buddies’ suspicion that he really was nothing but a German agent, at that point, was actually just being slow on the uptake. How did Lenin get into Russia, to begin with, and why would an enemy of Russia do that?
All the plenums of the 3rd International announced their plans to subvert capitalist-imperialist governments by starting communist parties within and providing aid from Moscow.
The Soviets did this sort of thing all through the Cold War and were not all that discreet about it.
Why is this Iranian front group so suspiring?
A lot of Muslims were under Soviet rule for a long time. During the Russian Civil War they were about as apolitical as any Russian peasant. It’s hard to imagine they stayed that way.
These characters understand that all they need is sufficient top cover in the representative body and they suddenly aren’t even what they say they are. They are what a Congressman or MP says they are and the courts can’t touch them.
It’s just one more aspect of a world without borders, where anyone can do anything to anyone else with the goal of making global citizens with no other identity, at all.
Sad fact is, American Progressives have been the worst for it, failing to understand that their idea is really nothing more than a ramshackle empire that doesn’t even have as much going for it as the old school, conquer and occupy type did.
I can see why Putin, the “anti-Globalist” is not only anti-American but a hero in many places.
Had the Progressive plan worked, we’d be in the cat bird seat, and there is no telling whether it was just idiotic to begin with (I think it was) or just badly managed.
Fact is, though, it’s time is over. It had it’s chance, and the whole world is moving on.
Iran is pretty touchy about its b orders and who it lets in.
Time for us to do the same.
It may a smaller world than it’s ever been, but it’s also a new world.
The Peace of 1945 might as well be the Peace of Westphalia, at this point : Both Gone!
.