Iran Cmdr: Ready for War with U.S.

‘No big deal’: Senior Iranian commander says Tehran ready for war with US

RT: A top commander warned that Iran is ready for an all-out war with US, alleging that aggression against Tehran “will mobilize the Muslim world” against it. The remarks follow Secretary of State John Kerry’s claims that military force was still an option.

Brigadier General Hossein Salami, lieutenant commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), spoke Wednesday to a state-run TV channel as Western powers readied for a new round of talks on getting the Islamic Republic to curb its nuclear ambitions ahead of a June 30 deadline.

He also stated, “War against Iran will mobilize the Muslim world against the US, an issue which is very well known by the enemy.”

Iran recently agreed on a framework deal concerning its nuclear interests with the P5+1 group in Switzerland, which would pave the way for it to be finalized. However, Israel was highly critical of the move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that it “would not block Iran’s path to the bomb. It would pave it.”

Kerry has recently appeared to try to ease tensions with the Jewish state by assuring it that war was still on the table. This and possible other similar remarks don’t sit well with Salami.

“We have prepared ourselves for the most dangerous scenarios and this is no big deal and is simple to digest for us; we welcome war with the US as we do believe that it will be the scene for our success to display the real potentials of our power,” Salami said, as cited by Iran’s FARS news agency.

The general’s rationale is that past US military victories owe themselves to their enemies’ “rotten” armies – not the case with Iran, he warned.

Addressing the officials currently at the negotiating table, Salami urged them to halt negotiations if any threat of force is issued again by a US official.

Salami echoed the words of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, who in a separate speech remarked that making simultaneous military threats while at the negotiating table will not fly. More to the story here.

The U.S. loves Iran relationship is over:

American Enterprise Institute in part: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled out the possibility of expanded negotiations with the U.S. Supreme Leader Khamenei proscribed any future negotiations with the U.S. during a meeting with IRGC Navy commanders on October 7 in Tehran. Khamenei stressed that “we now have to negotiate with the entire world,” but warned that “negotiations with America would mean paving the way for [U.S.] infiltration into the country’s economic, cultural, political and security domains.” The Supreme Leader also censured a “certain group” for attempting to “justify negotiations” between the U.S. and Iran. Khamenei also condemned the U.S. airstrike on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Special Parliamentary Commission to Review the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, Head Ali Reza Zakani responded to allegations from fellow commission members Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Mansour Haghighat Pour, Gholam Reza Tajgardun, Massoud Pezeshkian, and Abbas Ali Mansouri Arani that the commission’s report was written “outside the commission” and unfairly ignores the “very positive points” of the nuclear deal. Zakani stated that the report used “all of the [commission] subcommittees’ reports.” Zakani also criticized the National Security and Foreign Policy (NSFP) Parliamentary Commission’s review of the resolution implementing the JCPOA, arguing that it had rushed their appraisal of the resolution earlier this week. NSFP Parliamentary Commission members Mansour Haghighat Pour and Hossein Sobhani Nia both noted that Parliament’s review of the resolution is unlikely to change its contents.

TWS: Go Easy on Iran

Yeganeh Torbati of Reuters reports:

…the U.S. government has pursued far fewer violations of a long-standing arms embargo against Iran in the past year compared to recent years, according to a review of court records and interviews with two senior officials involved in sanctions enforcement.

Well, one thinks, perhaps Iran has decided to forsake its wicked ways.  But no:

The sharp fall in new prosecutions did not reflect fewer attempts by Iran to break the embargo, the officials said. Rather, uncertainty among prosecutors and agents on how the terms of the deal would affect cases made them reluctant to commit already scarce resources with the same vigor as in previous years, the officials said.

“Uncertainty” seems to be the word of choice, these days. Useful in just about any geopolitical context.  Remember how, not so long ago, President Obama was saying:

“Faced with the potential of mass atrocities, and a call from the Libyan people, the United States and our friends and allies stopped Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks … This comes at a time when we see the strength of American leadership across the world. We’ve taken out Al Qaeda leaders, and we’ve put them on the path to defeat. We’re winding down the war in Iraq, and have begun a transition in Afghanistan.”

So much certainty, back then.

Iran Deal, Complete with Rubik’s Cubes and Tired Bones

Do you ever wonder how global diplomacy really works? Back channels, unmarked aircraft, secret letters, meetings in hallways, slamming fists, exploitations of outsiders, lots of money, lies and games.

Politico:

The inside story of the Obama administration’s Iran diplomacy. (full text)

They made 69 trips across the Atlantic together and celebrated nearly everyone’s birthday at least once overseas, far from their own families. Sleep-deprived and sometimes giddy, the U.S. team negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran imagined which Hollywood star would play them if the movie were ever made: They cast Ted Danson as Secretary of State John Kerry, Javier Bardem as Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and Meryl Streep as State Department negotiator Wendy Sherman. Along the way, they suffered no shortage of casualties: Sherman broke her nose in Vienna when she crashed into a glass door late at night running to brief Kerry on a secure phone, and her pinky finger rushing from one classified briefing to another. Kerry, incensed after Iranian backtracking in May, slammed his hand on a table, sending a pen flying across the room at an Iranian deputy foreign minister, and then shattered his leg in three places after he slammed his bike into a curb the next day, frustrated and distracted.

The U.S. team was skeptical for most of the two years they were at it that they ever would close the deal. Sherman, the detail-oriented workhorse of the talks who was caricatured as a deceptive fox by an Iranian cartoonist—prompting her aides to make “Team Silver Fox” T-shirts in a nod to her wave of white hair—compared the challenge to unscrambling a Rubik’s Cube, since no issue could be solved in isolation.

On each trip, Sherman started a tradition of going around the table at a team dinner in various European cities—De Capo Pizzeria in Vienna was the crowd favorite—and asking each official what odds they placed on reaching a final accord. At almost every gathering, most guesses were below 50 percent. A veteran nonproliferation expert who had negotiated with the Soviets kept his guesses to the low single digits till the very end. Richard Nephew, a sanctions expert, was sometimes 50 points above every bet, alone in believing that economic pressure forced Iran to the table and made a final deal just a matter of time. Sherman never voted.

Last week, against long odds, the deal that even President Barack Obama doubted would come together until the final days of negotiations in Vienna cleared its final hurdle in Washington.

Despite a well-funded summer campaign by groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, opponents were unable to muster enough lawmakers to block the deal by last week’s September 17 deadline for congressional review. The accord designed to block Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon in exchange for lifting crippling economic sanctions goes forward, with adoption day expected October 18, when Iran is to begin curtailing its various nuclear activities for 10 to 25 years. The historic deal sealed between Iran and the so-called P5+1—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China and Germany—alters Iran’s relationship with the world and, for better or worse, represents the cornerstone of Obama’s foreign policy legacy.

Covering the path to that deal was the main focus of my beat at Bloomberg News for the past seven years. I traveled more than 140,000 miles and spent months at hotels in Europe, New York, the Middle East and Central Asia, reporting on talks by Kerry and U.S. nuclear negotiators. Now that the deal is done, 12 current and former Obama administration officials intimately involved in the negotiations spoke to me last week, revealing new details for the first time. This story of the behind-the-scenes calculations along a seven-year road to a deal is based upon those accounts, as well as on hundreds of hours of reporting on the talks I did as they unfolded in recent years in capitals across three continents.

Interviews with officials from the White House and the Departments of State, Energy and Treasury point to multiple inflection points along the way: the exposure of a covert Iranian nuclear facility; Iran’s rejection of a nuclear fuel-swap backed by world powers; the $54 billion Iran lost in one year of oil sanctions. Those factors precipitated two other turning points: Obama’s decision to greenlight secret talks and the election of President Hassan Rouhani, who won on a pledge to resolve the nuclear crisis and get sanctions lifted.

Over the past two years, negotiators and experts from U.S. nuclear laboratories spent countless hours sketching nuclear “break-out” scenarios on white boards that were wiped clean daily to protect intelligence. There were back-to-back all-night negotiations fueled by hundreds of espresso pods and 60 pounds of strawberry Twizzlers, string cheese and mixed nuts in the final month alone. There were near-breakdowns and eventual breakthroughs to get the deal that even Obama acknowledged was no more than 50 percent likely until the final days.

The first step toward the most significant and hard-fought diplomatic achievement of Obama’s presidency began with an uncomfortable night in a vacant house far from Washington, D.C.

In early July 2012, Obama’s senior White House adviser on Iran, Puneet Talwar, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s right-hand man, Jake Sullivan, arrived in the sleepy Arabian sultanate of Oman, 150 miles across sparkling Gulf waters from the Iranian coast. It was the first significant back-channel contact with Tehran since the disastrous Iran-Contra scandal three decades earlier, and the two trusted envoys dispatched by the president were keenly aware they couldn’t repeat that debacle. The stakes were high after years of futile diplomacy, mounting economic sanctions and warnings of military options had failed to halt Iran’s defiant nuclear progress. With deep distrust, historical grievances and toxic third-rail politics in both Washington and Tehran, the rendezvous had to be top-secret or it would be doomed before it started.

To conceal their presence, Talwar and Sullivan crashed on couches in an empty U.S. embassy residence in the Omani capital of Muscat rather than risk being spotted in a hotel. Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said promised absolute discretion, and with the mercury just shy of a 115-degree record set a few days earlier, there was little chance any reporter would be staking out the palace.

Four Americans—Talwar, Sullivan, a White House logistics specialist and a translator—sat across from four Iranians at a massive burl wood table large enough for a Cabinet meeting. With its soaring ceiling and crystal chandeliers, the immense salon was hardly an intimate setting for a delicate first encounter.

The Iranians wanted an understanding up front that the U.S. would recognize their “right” to enrich uranium. The Americans said no. They were willing to listen to the Iranians, but they had their own concerns, including the regime’s repeated violations of United Nations resolutions and International Atomic Energy Agency suspicions that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon.

More clandestine meetings followed the next year, this time in a private seaside villa of the sultan, a discreet setting that kept the negotiations secret even from Washington’s nervous and watchful allies in nearby Israel and Saudi Arabia. The talks paved the way to an interim freeze on Iran’s most sensitive nuclear activities in November 2013. That laid the groundwork for a comprehensive, long-term deal reached July 14, three years to the month after that first secret contact. But the path to get there was anything but smooth.

The Oman meeting was the first U.S.-Iranian, face-to-face contact, but the diplomatic process began in the first minutes of Obama’s presidency. On January 20, 2009, he used his inaugural address to tell Iran and other longtime foes that he was willing to “extend a hand” if they were willing “to unclench your fist.” Within days, the new president instructed advisers to undertake a strategic review of U.S. policy toward Iran, which took six weeks. The State Department brainstormed over how to restart stalled nuclear talks; the Treasury Department studied how to squeeze Iran financially; the Pentagon reviewed force posture and military options. Intelligence officers are said to have disrupted Iranian weapons flows to terrorists, accelerated cyber warfare to disable Iranian centrifuges, and increased surveillance—leading to the discovery of a covert underground Iranian nuclear facility.

The president initially prioritized diplomatic outreach. He needed to convince allies who felt bulldozed by President George W. Bush that the new U.S. leader would attempt diplomacy before resorting to punitive measures or military force. “President Obama was proceeding from the logic that we needed to remove Iran’s excuses and show them to be the obstacle,” says one former White House official who, like most of the others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid about delicate international diplomacy.

In March, Obama recorded a YouTube message to the Iranian people to mark the Persian New Year. In the Nowruz greeting—the brainchild of a junior State Department employee named Erica Thibault—Obama became the first U.S. president to refer to the longtime adversary as “the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the country’s official name ever since the 1979 revolution that ruptured relations with the U.S. and saw American diplomats held hostage for 444 days. European allies and reform-minded Iranians praised Obama’s video for setting a new tone after decades of enmity.

Within a month, Oman, which enjoyed friendly ties with both the U.S. and Iran, quietly offered to broker talks between the longtime foes. It was one of several offers from would-be intermediaries including Japan, Switzerland and private envoys. The White House politely declined, hopeful that the first African-American president—who had won the Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning to restore U.S. diplomacy and moral leadership—might break through decades of enmity himself.

At the same time, the so-called P5+1—the five original nuclear powers and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany—sent an April letter inviting Iran to restart nuclear talks that had gone nowhere in the previous six years, as Iran installed more centrifuges and boosted its stockpile of enriched uranium.

“The idea was if direct engagement works, great. If not, no one can claim we’re not trying, and we can use that as a cudgel to expand sanctions and pressure on Iran,” says Richard Nephew, a former senior sanctions negotiator who worked on Iran from 2004-2014 at the Department of Energy, the White House and the State Department. “The crazy idea of the Bush administration was that suspension of enrichment was a precondition for talks. We changed that because it was just upsetting our friends and partners and giving them an easy excuse to avoid sanctions.”

Iran has always insisted its atomic program is for civilian energy and medical research and that alleged evidence of work toward a nuclear weapons capability was falsified. Yet over the past 12 years, Iran had failed to address concerns of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency about potential military dimensions of its program.

Weeks before Iran’s June 2009 presidential election, Obama penned a secret letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hoping to open dialogue. Khamenei responded, but soon, Iran was in turmoil over stolen elections and a violent government crackdown on the so-called Green Revolution. “I don’t know if there was any receptiveness on Khamenei’s part to Obama’s diplomacy, but if there ever was, the Green Revolution turmoil pretty much killed that,’’ says Gary Samore, who served as Obama’s nonproliferation adviser.

Suddenly, with images beamed around the world of government-backed thugs attacking peaceful protesters, “it was a hell of a lot easier to talk about sanctions in Europe than when it was just a dry nuclear issue,” Nephew recalls.

A month later, three Americans who strayed across an unmarked border while hiking in Iraq were taken into Iranian custody and accused of espionage, complicating any U.S. outreach over the nuclear question.

By September, Western intelligence discovered Iran had secretly built a fortified nuclear facility called Fordo, dug into a mountain near the holy city of Qom. An outraged Obama stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the French and British leaders, condemning the Iranian deception to the world during a G-20 leaders’ meeting on September 25 in Pittsburgh.

Weeks later, Iran rejected an offer that it had solicited and earlier agreed to for the international community to supply nuclear fuel plates it needed for its medical research reactor. “The failure of the Tehran Research Reactor deal was a major inflection point,’’ says Nephew. Frustrated that diplomacy had come to naught, Obama was ready to switch to the pressure track, targeting Iran’s economy.

By February 2010, Iran had started to enrich uranium to nearly 20 percent in the underground bunker at Fordo. Though the enrichment was ostensibly for use in its medical reactor, Tehran had inched one step closer to making bomb-grade fuel. Obama personally appealed to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao to support a new U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Iran’s actions.

“We hit them with a Mack truck’s worth of sanctions from the 9th of June all the way through September of 2010,” Nephew recalls. “Every day, we wanted the supreme leader and [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad to wake up to a newspaper with bad economic news,” putting them under pressure to make nuclear concessions.

Amid the drumbeat of sanctions, there was one ray of hope. Sarah Shourd, one of the American hikers held for more than a year, was sent home thanks to intervention by the sultan of Oman. Obama’s closest advisers were impressed. For more than a year, Omani diplomats had been offering to broker a back channel to the Iranians over the nuclear program. But before investing in a high-risk endeavor, the president needed to be convinced Oman could deliver.

In November 2010, Dennis Ross, the White House’s Middle East coordinator, and Talwar made a secret visit to Muscat to meet Sultan Qaboos, who assured them he had a viable channel to Khamenei. Whether anything would come of it was another question.

Meanwhile, the international community’s effort to revive official talks ended in abject failure. The six powers met in Istanbul in January 2011, and the Iranian delegation insisted the world must accept their right to enrich uranium and drop all sanctions as a precondition for resuming talks. “That was the worst single meeting we had. It was shocking how ridiculous their position was,” recalls Robert Einhorn, who was then a State Department nuclear negotiator. “Everyone was outraged, including the Russians and the Chinese. It was over a year before we met with the Iranians again.”

Each passing month seemed to bring one step forward and one step back. In August, Iran convicted the two remaining U.S. hikers of espionage, before releasing them in September, again thanks to the efforts of the sultan of Oman.

In a bizarre twist in October, U.S. authorities said they foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington while he dined at Café Milano, a chic Georgetown restaurant. On November 11, the U.N.’s atomic energy agency suggested Iran was on a path to building a nuclear weapon.

Obama advisers were still hoping a direct channel to the Iranians might break the deadlock, and a new player entered the stage. John Kerry, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made two undisclosed trips to Oman starting in December 2011 and came back convinced that the sultan had a viable channel to the supreme leader. Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-National Security Adviser Tom Donilon were skeptical, according to Kerry’s notes from the time. Two dozen phone calls between Kerry and Omani officials followed. Kerry came to believe “that the supreme leader was aware of and comfortable with the conversations and the kinds of constraints on Iran’s program that the U.S. would need,” a senior State Department official recalls.

By the end of 2011, frustration was at an all-time high on Capitol Hill and heated debates were underway over how to squeeze Iran to force concessions. At a cringe-inducing Senate Foreign Relations hearing in December, an apoplectic Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, lambasted Sherman and then-Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen for seven minutes straight, denouncing the administration’s failure in the face of Iran’s march to a nuclear weapon. Menendez and Illinois Republican Mark Kirk wanted to cut off Iran’s central bank and oil payments system from the global financial system. Administration officials told senators privately that could tank the world economy: Iran was a major crude supplier to U.S. allies in Asia and the European Union.

A revised bill demanded buyers slash oil imports from Iran or be cut off from the U.S. banking system. Obama signed it into law December 31, 2011, and State Department and Treasury officials spent the next six months persuading Iran’s biggest oil buyers—especially China, India and South Korea—to significantly reduce their imports.

In January 2012, the European Union voted to impose its own oil embargo on Iran, even though the decision was costly for those hard-hit by the recession. When the ban went into effect July 1 in tandem with U.S. sanctions, the effect was dramatic. Over the next 12 months, the number of countries buying Iran’s oil dropped from 21 to five. Iran lost an estimated $54 billion—more than half its annual revenue from its leading export.

Running in parallel for the first half of the year was a concerted effort to rekindle diplomacy, with the six powers meeting in Istanbul in April, in Baghdad in May and in Moscow in June. Each round flailed as the Iranians recited the same lecture—a history of grievances and an assertion of Iran’s nuclear “rights.”

Meanwhile, Talwar and Sullivan were in Muscat in July to open the secret back channel to Iran. The Omanis advised the Americans that tone, not just substance, mattered: the Iranians “had to be treated with respect and understanding—that was a continual piece of advice,” said a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Iran sent foreign ministry diplomats, not the hard-line national security team that was running the official nuclear talks. But the Iranians kept insisting on their right to enrich uranium as a starting point.

Over the next six months, debate at the White House centered on whether to dangle an American willingness to consider limited Iranian enrichment with intrusive inspections, if Iran would accept strict curbs on its overall nuclear program.

Iran’s economy, meanwhile, was tanking as more and more sanctions on energy, banking, mining, ports, insurance and more piled on. New restrictions barred Tehran from repatriating oil earnings. Gross domestic product plummeted, inflation soared and the rial collapsed, fueling bank withdrawals, consumer panic and a black market for gold trade.

By early 2013, the nuclear program was no longer proceeding as quickly as it had over the previous two years because of a stranglehold of sanctions. But the U.S. and EU felt they were running out of viable options to tighten the screws without a boomerang impact on the world economy.

“We were getting to the point where we’d have to sanction the entire Iranian economy or pursue different pressure that would eventually lead down the military path,” Nephew recalls. “We knew the sanctions were going to stop having an effect. You can only get $54 billion away from them in a year of lost oil sales once.”

“They were having technical difficulties with their program, which was hamstrung by our sanctions. So we were facing one pressure—their nuclear clock was not being slowed enough by our sanctions clock. And they were facing another pressure— sanctions were strangling their economy, and their nuclear program wasn’t moving fast enough to give them any better leverage in the talks,” he says. Both sides, he says, “entered 2013 in a much worse place than we wanted to be.”

The result, according to several officials, was that both governments realized it was time for a change. “On their side, they were ready to accept restrictions on their nuclear program. On our side, we were willing to accept the idea of an Iranian enrichment program in the long term,” along with intrusive inspections and safeguards, Nephew says.

As those views were slowly taking shape in the White House and in Tehran, at the official negotiating table, talking points remained the same. The next round of P5+1 talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, began in February 2013.

The Americans bemoaned that Iran’s then-lead nuclear negotiator, a hard-liner named Saeed Jalili, spent the bulk of the sessions lecturing on Iran’s rights and dignity, leaving little time to discuss practical nuclear solutions. Half the day was taken up by translations. Jalili droned on about the historical wrongs against Iran, while at the same time claiming the world was doing them a favor by sanctioning their economy, forcing them to become stronger and more self-sufficient.

Meanwhile, planning for the secret channel was proceeding in tandem. Hillary Clinton had been dubious at first but had backed the involvement of her trusted deputy chief of staff, Sullivan. By now she had left office, and Sullivan became Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, staying on the Iran talks for the next two years.

On March 1, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns led a U.S. delegation to Muscat that included Sullivan, Talwar and Einhorn. They were transported on a noncommercial plane to ensure they wouldn’t be recognized, and met with the Iranians at the remote villa. They managed to agree on a two-step framework for negotiations. First, they would freeze some nuclear activities in exchange for limited sanctions relief. That would be a building block for a long-term deal.

The EU, Russia and China were oblivious to the side channel, and the next round of P5+1 talks in Almaty went forward in April. A State Department official described a change in the atmosphere. Jalili and Sherman shared photos of their grandchildren, perhaps the first exchange of niceties that humanized the other side.

A month later, Kerry, who by now had succeeded Clinton as secretary of state, stopped in Muscat on an official visit to privately express his gratitude to the sultan for supporting the secret channel.

Then, in June, something happened that changed everything. Hassan Rouhani, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator, won the backing of moderates and was elected president on a promise to restore Iran’s economy and end his nation’s isolation by resolving the nuclear dispute once and for all.

A young cleric and follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei during the Islamic revolution, Rouhani had credibility among the clerical establishment and the gravitas to talk directly to the supreme leader. At the White House, Obama’s closest advisers, including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes debated what his election would mean for talks.

“We weren’t certain then if anything would change,” admits one U.S. official. Rouhani had been a nuclear negotiator, he knew the system, he was savvy and he was unlikely to be bulldozed by the apparatus. But ultimately, it was up to the supreme leader to accept a nuclear compromise. Obama sent a congratulatory letter to Rouhani calling for progress in talks, and waited to see what happened.

After Rouhani’s inauguration, the change was immediate and almost dizzying, considering the lack of progress in the previous 4½ years. He selected a cadre of Western-educated diplomats, naming as foreign minister a smooth former ambassador to the United Nations with deep contacts in the U.S., Mohammad Javad Zarif. The MIT-educated physicist Ali Akbar Salehi, who as foreign minister had favored starting secret talks with the U.S., was put atop Iran’s atomic energy establishment. Overnight, new life was breathed into the diplomatic channel.

In August, at a third round of secret talks in Muscat—the first after Rouhani’s election—Burns said for the first time that the U.S. would be willing to consider limited enrichment with proper verification, inspections and curbs on Iran’s overall work. “Offering enrichment—that was the breakthrough moment,” says a senior administration official who was involved.

Trita Parsi, an advocate for the deal and author of the forthcoming Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Legacy of Diplomacy, rejects the critique that Obama caved in by accepting enrichment, or that any president could have gotten a better deal. “That’s like saying the Catholic Church made a ‘concession’ to Galileo. … Iran was already enriching, and they were never going back. Within the P5+1, the U.S. had almost no support for its zero enrichment demand,” Parsi says.

American negotiators acknowledge that’s true. “Everybody understood that talks weren’t going to move forward” if the U.S. didn’t agree to limited enrichment, the senior negotiator says, “but there were hundreds of other details that still had to be worked out.”

Another “key moment that was a harbinger of things to come was Secretary Kerry’s first meeting with Zarif. It was meant to be just a handshake,” a senior State Department official recalls. But Kerry, who puts a lot of stock in personal relationships as a key to diplomacy, pulled the Iranian into a side room next to the U.N. Security Council chamber and spent half an hour talking. They exchanged contacts, and Sherman and her staff shared emails and phone numbers as well. It was all part of setting “the foundation for what was obviously a very technical set of negotiations, but was also very much driven by relationships between the key principals,” the State Department official said.

Eighteen months after Kerry met Zarif, Moniz, the U.S. energy secretary, a nuclear physicist who taught at MIT while Iran’s atomic chief Salehi was a graduate student, was brought into the talks. He played up that connection, reminiscing with Salehi about Cambridge in the 1970s and bringing him an MIT baby onesie and other logo gifts when Salehi’s first grandchild was born.

Without that kind of personal outreach, “it would’ve been very hard to surmount 30 years of mistrust to work constructively with the people on the other side,” the State Department official says. As the working relationship grew, Kerry and Zarif, Moniz and Salehi, and Sherman and Iran’s deputy negotiators Abbas Araghchi and Majid Takht-Ravanchi were on a first-name basis.

Meanwhile, there had been discussions at the White House about whether Obama should shake hands with the new Iranian leader when he came to address the U.N. Though Rouhani’s rhetoric was conciliatory compared with that of his predecessors, he was still a stalwart of the Islamic revolution, and with an insatiable appetite for sanctions on Capitol Hill and no nuclear deal in sight, it was politically inconceivable. Instead, Obama placed a short phone call while Rouhani was on his way back to the airport. That small step became the highest-level contact between the nations since 1979.

The secret talks that began in Oman were now continuing in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. The teams were well along in drafting an interim agreement that would buy them time. The idea was to stop Iran’s most sensitive work—the enrichment of uranium to nearly 20 percent—and dramatically increase inspections in exchange for limited sanctions relief.

The U.S. team arrived in Geneva in October for official nuclear talks that were now back on track with the Europeans, Chinese and Russians. Burns and Sullivan stayed in different hotels so they wouldn’t be spotted and used a back entrance to continue secret bilateral talks with Iranians. They now had a draft that was 75 percent done by the time they presented it to foreign ministers who were meeting in Geneva in early November. Sherman went to Israel to tell the government. The Israelis were upset the Americans had concealed the secret talks from them; U.S. officials suspect the Israelis knew by then, and they insist they were always transparent about the president’s determination to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and his diplomatic endgame.

For their part, Kerry’s counterparts among the six powers were shocked they had been kept in the dark, though some relished that so much progress had been made. Getting an accord in three months “was extraordinary, lickety-split” compared with the previous five years of circular talks, says Einhorn, who was involved in both the public and private diplomacy.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was miffed that the other powers who were toiling on the Iran nuclear file for a decade, long before the Americans joined, had been left out, and he denounced parts of the deal to the media. U.S. officials said at the time that his outburst was calculated to demonstrate France’s “relevance” and to portray France as taking a hard line. A deal couldn’t be sealed, and ministers went home, returning to Geneva three weeks later. Kerry, Zarif and Catherine Ashton, the then-EU high representative who coordinated the talks, stayed up well past midnight negotiating the details and announced the accord to an exhausted press corps in the middle of the night before jetting home.

Zarif had told his counterparts he had limited political capital in Tehran and had to deliver a final deal to end all sanctions within six months. The ministers gave themselves until late July 2014, never imagining it would take them an additional year beyond even that to seal the deal.

On January 20, 2014, the so-called Joint Plan of Action was adopted. It would hold Iran’s nuclear work in place and expand international monitoring in exchange for releasing $700 million a month from Iran’s frozen oil assets. It was a stopgap measure to give negotiators time and space to hash out the far more complicated final accord.

Before each important round of negotiations—the U.S. team made 11 trips to Vienna alone in 2014 and seven more this year—Obama would gather top negotiators to review his goals and red lines and assess progress in the talks. These sessions made the negotiators’ stance in the talks “easy,” one White House official explains, laying out the boundaries that would be acceptable back home in Washington. “The president has been insistent on his red lines from the beginning. He had a very clear concept from the start of what kind of a deal he could live with and what he couldn’t,” the official says. Obama’s goal was to ensure that for a minimum of a decade, Iran would remain at least one year away from amassing sufficient fissile material for a single bomb. “He really did trust Kerry completely on this, and would say, ‘I want you to come back to me if you have any uncertainty about meeting my red lines.’”

U.S. nuclear laboratory experts offered numerous permutations of how to achieve that goal. The formula was equal to a certain number of centrifuges plus a certain stockpile of low-enriched uranium. If one number went up, the other had to come down.

Obama insisted all of Iran’s paths to a nuclear weapon—uranium, plutonium or covert development—must be blocked. That meant coming up with solutions to modify the heavy-water reactor at Arak and to prevent enrichment at the underground Fordo facility that could be harder to detect and destroy in a military strike.

The president insisted on a “red team” of internal and external nuclear experts with security clearances to test the assumptions of a one-year breakout time against the most demanding audience. Israeli government nuclear scientists were asked for their input and judgment, and were very helpful, a senior administration official says.

Running parallel to the nuclear discussions was the sanctions negotiation—what pressure to relieve and when. The White House decided no further sanctions would be eased until a final deal was accomplished, and penalties would be waived once the U.N.’s atomic agency verified Iran had curbed its program as promised.

Ahead of every new round, the president would summon Kerry, Moniz and Sherman to remind them, “ʻYou have my guidance and my red lines and I want you to know that you are empowered to walk away, I have no problem with that,’” recounts a senior official who attended the meetings.

Given the mind-bending challenge to make all the parts match up, Sherman adopted the mantra that “nothing is agreed till everything is agreed,” and routinely compared the challenge to solving a Rubik’s Cube, when one side inevitably gets messed up, forcing the puzzle-solver to find a new solution. Energy Department scientist Kevin Veal ordered 40 colorful Rubik’s Cubes imprinted with their difficult tasks, and Susan Rice, Kerry and his chief of staff, Jon Finer—who were spending almost as much time on the Iran deal as the experts—got them too. By the end, the negotiators were virtually living in Vienna, and their one bit of freedom was a choice among a handful of approved hotels—some favored the Marriott for its gym, others preferred the Imperial or the Bristol for old world ambiance and Austrian cuisine.

Sherman traveled so often for nuclear talks that by 2013 she had already been awarded lifetime status in United Airlines’ Global Services program, an invitation-only perk for the world’s top frequent flyers. She and her team were escorted personally by a United VIP concierge at each connection (I was allowed to tag along when I was on the same flight). It was hardly a glamorous life, though; the government only pays for economy, and the hours in airports and hotels were interminable. Once, I was coincidentally assigned the seat next to Sherman on a commercial flight to Vienna. She raised her eyebrows in disbelief upon seeing me, before closing a black ring binder and joking that she now had an excuse to watch “Quartet,” a film starring Maggie Smith, instead of reading her briefing book next to a journalist.

With hundreds of technical details and the possible military dimensions of Iran’s program to address, the original six-month time frame for a final deal was unrealistic, U.S. officials say now, given that Iran was unwilling until negotiations reached the final months to accept the curbs the international community was demanding. Progress was also partly slowed down by lingering misgivings among the other foreign ministers who suspected the U.S. and Iran of trying to cut a deal without them.

“Our partners forced us to double down” on inefficient large group sessions in which no real decisions could be made, says Nephew, who believes talks “didn’t really get serious” till the first deadline was extended on July 19, 2014. By then, U.S. partners were confident in the process and glad for Kerry and Zarif and their expert teams to hold direct talks to help break through logjams to save everyone else time.

Even so, Washington got help from sometimes unexpected quarters. Diplomats describe Russia’s nuclear negotiator, Sergei Ryabkov, as a creative problem solver who was a favorite of the six powers. The Ukraine crisis and sanctions on Russia were somehow kept separate from the Iran talks, where Russia stood firm with the other powers. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a smooth, multilingual veteran diplomat, was loath to waste his time, and on several occasions in the final months, Lavrov broke stalemates by telling Zarif that Russia was united with the other powers. At a Vienna photo opportunity when talks were stubbornly dragging on and Lavrov had other places to be, Zarif politely asked how he was that morning, while smiling for the cameras. The Russian made a sour face and in front of the assembled press replied, “Angry.”

China usually took a back seat in the talks but will play a key role in implementing the deal by modifying Iran’s heavy-water reactor. Germany’s Steinmeier used dry humor to lighten the mood and was a dead ringer for Ryabkov, creating confusion among journalists staking out the negotiators.

As the months dragged on, incremental progress was made against a backdrop of growing turmoil in the Middle East. The Syrian conflict raged on, with Iran propping up Bashar Assad while the U.S. demanded he go, all while the Islamic State terrorist group, an avowed enemy of both Iran and the U.S., was on the rise.

Medical mishaps delayed progress. Zarif suffered stress-induced back pains that forced him to conduct early negotiations in a wheelchair and landed him in the hospital upon his return to Tehran. Sherman broke her nose in Vienna and her finger on her way to a briefing for Congress, bursting into tears after she took the last question.

At a particularly frustrating negotiation in Geneva where Zarif was trying to backtrack in May of this year, Kerry got uncharacteristically angry, slamming his hand on the table and sending a pen flying. Frustrated and off-center, he suited up for a bike ride the next day to refocus. Distracted by the noise of a motorcycle in his security detail, he slammed into a curb before he even left the parking lot, breaking his femur in three places and requiring surgery. One of the first get-well messages Kerry received was from Zarif. The secretary remained on crutches, propping up his foot and doing daily physical therapy through the end of the negotiations two months later.

Iran’s atomic energy chief Salehi was hospitalized and missed key meetings following a colon procedure. Talks were deadlocked in the final round until Zarif flew home and brought his convalescing colleague back.

There were several times when negotiators now acknowledge the talks were on the verge of collapse. Two weeks before a November 2014 deadline, the Iranians dug in their heels with Kerry and other foreign ministers in Oman, trying to roll back earlier agreements. The talks were a disaster, and negotiators knew they needed yet another extension.

Another near breaking point was February 21 this year, when Sherman phoned Kerry in London warning him not to board his plane to Geneva; the Iranians were demanding a much greater enrichment capacity than the U.S. could ever agree to. “This was really stuck,” a senior official recalls. Kerry told Sherman to say he was “ready to go back to the U.S. and get on with his life.” Several hours later, she called back and said talks were back on track. Kerry flew in.

By the time talks moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, in March, the deadline for a framework agreement was looming. The Americans made clear it would be impossible to fend off new congressional sanctions on Iran if the two sides couldn’t agree on the outline of a final deal that month. The task was immense: to agree on the size of Iran’s enrichment program, time limits for research and development, inspections and verification and changes to Iran’s heavy-water reactor so that it couldn’t produce plutonium that could be another path to a weapon.

The details were mind-numbing and emotions ran high as Zarif and Salehi said they couldn’t be pushed farther than their leaders in Tehran would allow. In July 2014, a week before a previous deadline, Supreme Leader Khamenei had announced Iran needed 190,000 centrifuges for an industrial-sized atomic energy program—10 times what it currently had. That public red line had thrown off talks for months.

Holed up in the Beau Rivage Palace, a grand 19th century hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, with no room left for an extension, the Iranians continued to make what the Americans saw as unreasonable demands. Kerry got so frustrated that he arranged to visit Zarif one night in his hotel suite. “If you can’t do this deal, if you’re not serious, go back to Tehran and get some instructions,” Kerry told the Iranian, according to a senior State Department official.

After two nine-hour, all-nighter sessions in a row, the diplomats “cracked the DNA of the deal,” in the words of another senior negotiator. They agreed on April 2 that for 10 years, Iran would be allowed to use only 5,000 of its centrifuges to enrich uranium and would reduce its low-enriched uranium stockpile by 98 percent. The framework included a face-saving solution to convert Iran’s Arak heavy-water reactor and underground Fordo facility so Iran could say it had kept them open, but neither would produce fissile material.

The final round of talks moved back to Vienna and would drag on for 18 days (many of them all-nighters), starting in late June. More than 600 journalists from around the world and dozens of pro- and anti-deal activists and academics descended on the media tent and lobby of the Vienna Marriott, fueled by an endless supply of Mozart Kugeln chocolate marzipan balls and Manner hazelnut wafers provided by the Austrian government. Security was tight at the neoclassical luxury Palais Coburg Hotel, nicknamed the “Asparagus Palace” for its ornate columns, where the talks took place across from the Marriott. During negotiations, no one got past a metal detector and X-ray machine without an official badge, though the hotel somehow also managed to host wealthy Austrians celebrating special family gatherings, creating some odd juxtapositions in the lobby and banquet areas.

Diplomats and journalists incurred huge laundry bills and bought new clothes in desperation when the days turned to weeks, missing birthdays, anniversaries and another Fourth of July at home. U.S. negotiators spent rare free moments on FaceTime with their families. Kerry, powered by pasta Bolognese, his go-to meal during the months on the road, was hobbling on crutches and undergoing daily physical therapy. He started to slip out a back exit to avoid press when he needed fresh air. The 10-year-old son of my Vienna-based Bloomberg colleague was feeding ducks at a city park one day when Kerry, surrounded by an intimidating security retinue, arrived on a rare break to do the same.

It was not until that final stretch in Vienna that American and Iranian delegates, who spent countless hours together over the previous two years, actually shared a meal. It was an impromptu invitation from Zarif on July 4th, the second Independence Day that many Americans had spent in Vienna rather than at a barbeque. When Kerry hosted his own Independence Day party on the Coburg terrace a few hours later for his entourage and the small press corps that travels on his plane, the negotiators were still talking about how much better the Persian banquet was than what they ate in the U.S. delegation’s dining room.

There were also far less pleasant encounters, evenings of high drama as both sides dug in on final offers, sometimes disintegrating into shouting matches. On July 5, Kerry and Moniz were arguing with Zarif and Salehi, who were backtracking on how many years the restrictions on Iran should last. The debate got so heated that a Kerry aide entered the room to tell the men they could be overheard by random guests. The next morning, Steinmeier quipped to Kerry that the talks must have been productive. “The whole hotel could hear you,” the German said, his eyes twinkling.

The joke, though, hid a darker truth: The foreign ministers of the P5+1 nations were losing their patience. Most of the nuclear elements had been agreed upon three months earlier, and the offer to lift sanctions only after nuclear curbs were verified was non-negotiable. The next night, the ministers presented Iran with a final proposal, and the EU’s Federiga Mogherini said if Zarif was trying to rewrite the terms set in Lausanne, they might as well all go home. Cornered by the world powers, Zarif lashed out angrily, “Never threaten an Iranian!”

In an effort to lighten the tense moment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov chimed in dryly, “Or a Russian.” It allowed Zarif to save face, but on the substance, the Russians were sticking with the other powers.

The talks had ground past the June 30 deadline, and both sides knew this was their last chance to negotiate their best deal or walk away. At a P5+1 foreign ministers’ dinner on July 12 at the swanky Sofitel rooftop with its stunning skyscraper view of Vienna’s imperial architecture, Kerry urged his impatient partners who were threatening to go home to stick together and see the process to the end.

The last two days were spent arguing with Iran over how to “snap back” U.N. sanctions if Iran cheated on the deal, and how to maintain an arms and missiles embargo which, under the original U.N. resolution, was meant to be lifted once Iran addressed concerns over its nuclear program. On the final evening, Kerry, Zarif, Lavrov and Mogherini stayed up till nearly 3 a.m. hashing out the final language of the U.N. resolution. Aides drafted the technical documents by dawn.

Later that morning on July 14, after a few hours of sleep and showers, the ministers met at the U.N. offices in Vienna. With only a handful of top aides as witnesses, they spoke in alphabetical order by country, trying to express in a few solemn words the significance of a long-awaited day many had thought would never come.

France’s Fabius grandly noted that the deal was finalized on Bastille Day and said he hoped the accord would have as distinguished a history as the French Republic. Zarif was righteous, saying the agreement marked the end of the unjust isolation of his country. Kerry spoke last, noting he had gone to war in Vietnam as a young man, and was forever changed. His voice broke, and he paused to collect himself. While force was sometimes necessary, he said, diplomatic means must always be exhausted first. His voice quivered, and when he finished, several diplomats, including Iranians, were seen wiping their eyes.

Kerry put down his crutches and sat backstage to watch Obama’s live remarks from the Rose Garden on an iPad. When it was over, in a distant echo of the moment they first met in a U.N. office in New York two years earlier, Zarif sought out Kerry to pat him on the back, shake his hand and tell him to keep in touch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iran Lobby Connections, Axis of Evil

White House Twitter Account promoting the Iran deal noted above

Iranian Nuclear Deal

House of Bribes: How the United States led the way to a Nuclear Iran

“I think that the American companies will be welcomed in Iran… This is not a game for junior companies, and I call juniors anything below a billion-dollar market cap. This is a big-money game.”
– An American Portfolio Manager, July 2015

 

Table of Contents

Executive Summary
Preface
Background
The Trailblazers: Namazi & Nemazee
National Iranian-American Council (NIAC)
The Open (Iranian) Society of George Soros
Valerie Jarrett – The Puppetmaster
Complicity of the GOP
Consequences/Conclusions

 

Executive Summary

The Iranian nuclear deal is a full capitulation to Iran’s terrorist mastermind Mullahs, and the latest in a series of betrayals of the American people and allies by the Obama administration.  At the highest level of the administration, Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor, the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett, prioritized rapprochement with the terror state.  Throughout the process and negotiations, she had the backing of billionaire investor (and Obama-backer) George Soros, and his multi-headed network of tax-exempt foundations.  Their efforts were driven by deep-rooted anti-Semitism and personal greed.  Meanwhile, since the mid-1990s, a small but very connected Iranian lobby (funded, in part, by George Soros) has been laying the groundwork for normalizing relations with Tehran.  Operating through a variety of non-governmental organizations and political action committees, the lobby courted Democrat and Republican politicians.  With the election of (Soros-backed) Obama in 2008, the Iranian lobby had very receptive ears in the White House.  International business interests were courted and effectively bribed with access to Iranian markets, until finally the deal was realized, approved, and sealed by a vote of the United Nations Security Council.

Preface

Thus far, the reports and exposés issued by the New Coalition of Concerned Citizens* have focused on the threat posed by Islamists to American sovereignty.  The Qatar Awareness Campaign brought to light extensive influence network of the State of Qatar and their ruling al-Thani family.  The Betrayal Papers explained the Muslim Brotherhood’s domination of the Obama administration’s agenda and policies, foreign and domestic.

This report will detail the sinister influence of the small, yet well-connected and very powerful, Iran lobby.  Though the Iran lobby’s highest level contacts are prominent Democrats, their reach spans both major political parties.  Like previous exposés, this investigation will mention familiar names, including George Soros, Valerie Jarrett, and the United Nations.

Iran is widely regarded by counterterrorism experts as the heart of Islamic radicalism, and the point of origin for terrorism with a specific geopolitical agenda (i.e., the creation of an Islamic Caliphate, much like the Islamic State, but dominated by Shiites, not Sunnis).  With the eager embrace of a legacy-hungry Obama administration, the Iran lobby managed to achieve a deal which makes the United States the de facto most powerful backer of Islamic terrorism in the world.

How did this happen?

Background

Since its 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has been the epicenter of Islamic terrorism throughout the region and the world.  Immediately following Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Tehran from France and ascension to power, Iran took American hostages at the embassy in Tehran.  In 1983, Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 307, including 241 American servicemen.  In 1994, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah bombed a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 and wounding more than 300.  Sponsors of both Hamas and Hezbollah, a New York court found that Iran materially supported and directed Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.

In the decades since the Islamic Republic came into existence, Tehran has proved eager to embrace terror, partnering with various factions around the world.  Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, translated the work of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading author and theorist, Sayyid Qutb, into Persian, proving that Sunnis (Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Al Qaeda, etc.) and Shiites (Iran, Hezbollah) will gladly cooperate in terrorizing the West.

Today, Iran’s presence in Latin America is also strong.  In countries such as Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina, Iranian-backed Islamic terror cells work hand-in-hand with drug cartels.  The tri-border region between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil is Hezbollah’s main hub in South America.  Terrorists, cartels, and organized crime “move liquor electronic goods, cocaine, refugees, even babies” across the region’s three frontiers.  Following the 1992 and 1994 bombings in Buenos Aires, western intelligence tracked Islamic terrorist activity to the tri-border region.  Today, although intelligence continues to operate in the area, the criminal activity is so rampant that local authorities rarely interfere.

Partnering with South American cartels and organized crime provides a revenue source for terror, while increasing Iran’s strategic footprint in our southern hemisphere.  It also highlights a unique problem related to the non-enforcement of security on America’s southern border.

The Trailblazers: Namazi & Nemazee

The Iran lobby of today appears to have its origins in the work of two individuals.  One of those individuals is Baquer Namazi, who heads a central and critical Iranian non-governmental organization (NGO).  Namazi’s son, Siamak, co-founded the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) with Trita Parsi, who was a consultant to Republican Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio.

The other individual is Hassan Namazee, who was a major political fundraiser, especially (but not exclusively) for Democrats.  He is now serving a prison sentence after admitting guilt in committing bank fraud.

Baquer Namazi and Hamyaran – Corruption and Influence through NGOs and the United Nations

In 1998, elements within the Iranian government, Iranian NGO community, and international organizations (including the United Nations) formed the NGO Hamyaran.  It was conceived as, and operates as, an “umbrella” NGO for all other Iranian state-connected NGOs.

As one source explains:

“In addition to monitoring and controlling the Iran’s NGOs, Hamyaran is charged with channeling all contacts and relations of the NGOs with the international organizations and the UN. Under the supervision of the government, Hamyaran is also charged with creating communication channels with the Iranians living in the US.”

In a word, Hamyaran is Tehran’s organization to police and propagate the pro-Iranian (and thus pro-Mullah) message within the United States, and more broadly to the West.  It does this under the auspices of the United Nations.

Since Hamyaran’s founding in 1998 by Dr. Hossein Malek-Afzali, a high ranking Iranian government official who at one time served in President Ahmadinejad’s cabinet, the NGO has been co-led by Malek Afzali and Baquer Namazi.

  • Like Malek-Afzali, Baquer Namazi is closely tied to the government in Tehran. Baquer was previously the governor of the province of Khuzestan, in addition to holding multiple other high level positions in the government.  He has also held positions with the United Nations, including being a Member of the Advisory Panel of U.N. Center for Regional Development, Nagoya.
  • Namazi’s son, Siamak, founded the International Association of Iranian Managers (I-AIM). The organization is dedicated to recruiting high-powered “Iranian elites” in the United States.
  • Siamak’s partner in I-AIM, Ali Mostashari, was a strategic advisor to the Assistant Secretary General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa at the United Nations Development Program. He has been accused by reporters of directing U.N. funds into Iran for his own benefit and the benefit of the ruling Mullahs.
  • Siamak Namazi, with Republican consultant Trita Parsi, founded the National Iranian-American Council. It is arguably the primary lobbying arm of Tehran in Washington, D.C.

Like many of the Obama administration’s other scandals, it is clear from the facts above that the United Nations was used to supersede American law and sovereignty.  Furthermore, in keeping with the trends of Obama scandals, several tax-exempt NGOs were central to the plan.  This points to an inept, if not complicit, I.R.S.

Hassan Nemazee & Iranian- American PAC (IAPAC): Democrat Fundraiser Extraordinaire

If Baquer Namazi, his son Siamak, and their associates cemented the relationship between the Iran lobby and United Nations, Hassan Nemazee[i] was the Iran lobby’s man in the Democrat Party.  Before admitting to bank fraud in 2010, Nemazee was a star fundraiser for top Democrats.

  • In 2008, Nemazee served as one of Hillary Clinton’s national fundraising chairmen when she was running against Barack Obama in the Democrat primary.
  • Nemazee was eventually credited by the Obama campaign with helping raise $500,000, following Clinton’s defeat in the primary. He donated an additional $50,000 to Obama’s inauguration committee.
  • Also in 2008, Nemazee donated $9,200 to Biden for President Inc.
  • In 2007, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was the featured guest speaker at IAPAC’s annual New York City reception.
  • In 2006, Senator Chuck Schumer asked Nemazee to serve as finance chairman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Nemazee raised $119 million, helping to retake the Senate for Democrats and installing Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.
  • In 2004, Nemazee raised $500,000 for Democrat nominee (and current Secretary of State) John Kerry. Kerry, of course, was the lynchpin in securing the Iranian nuclear deal.
  • In 2000, Nemazee donated $50,000 to the Gore-Lieberman Recount Committee.

 

Hassan Nemazee (right) with Terry McAuliffe

Yet Nemazee’s influence was not limited exclusively to the Democrat Party, and neither is the Iran lobby’s influence in general.   He and his partner, Alan Quasha had a history of giving to Republicans, too.

  • Before joining with the Clintons, Nemazee gave to Republican senators, including: Jesse Helms (R-NC), Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY).
  • Nemazee was represented in his fraud case by attorney Marc Mukasey, son of former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007.
  • In the 1980s, Namazee’s business partner, Alan Quasha, provided George W. Bush a spot on the board of his oil company, Harken Energy.
  • Quasha is a decidedly bipartisan donor: he gave to Bush and Gore in 2000, to Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, and Barack Obama and Chris Dodd in 2008.

Hassan Nemazee was on the board of the Iranian-American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) until 2009.   Public disclosures of IAPAC highlight the bi-partisan nature of their enterprise; from 2008-2014, it gave significantly to Republicans and Democrats.

  • 2014 Total Spent: $87,668       Democrats: 63%               Republicans: 37%
  • 2012 Total Spent: $88,264       Democrats: 59%               Republicans: 41%
  • 2010 Total Spent: $67,609       Democrats: 46%               Republicans: 38%
  • 2008 Total Spent: $395,852     Democrats: 52%               Republicans: 48%
  • 2006 Total Spent: $263,579     Democrats: 58%               Republicans: 42%
  • 2004 Total Spent: $224,871     Democrats: 42%               Republicans: 58%

Source: OpenSecrets.org

(See here for more information related to IAPAC campaign contributions; also available on a per-candidate basis.  A full list of IAPAC endorsed candidates can be found on their website, here.)

Note that the greatest sum of money was spent by IAPAC in 2008, the year that Barack Hussein Obama was elected to the Presidency.  He brought with him his Iranian-born advisor, Valerie Jarrett.

National Iranian-American Council (NIAC)

The Iranian lobby that convinced Washington to thaw relations with the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terror evolved out of the work of Baquer Namazi and Hassan Nemazee, as well as the guiding hand and money of George Soros.

The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) is the primary conduit for Tehran’s lobby efforts in Washington, D.C.  NIAC managed to pressure the U.S. government to subordinate international security and stability to narrow corporate interests, access Iranian markets, and the revenues that it can potentially provide.

Let’s take a closer look at one of NIAC’s co-founders, Siamak Namazi.

Siamak Namazi – Background Information

  • Son of Baquer Namazi. Family is close to Iranian regime; in particular, they are a core part of the (former president) Rafsanjani faction within Iran.
  • Co-founder of NIAC with Trita Parsi.
  • Works for family company, the Iranian-based consultancy called Atieh Bahar Consulting (AB). The consultancy serves as a facilitator for outside business interests looking to enter the Iranian market.  It does so by brokering relationships with key officials and Iranian powerbrokers.
  • Currently the Head of Strategic Planning at the United Arab Emirates Crescent Petroleum. Gulftainer, which, like Crescent Petroleum, is owned by the Crescent Group, recently acquired a long-term lease of Port Canaveral for container operations.  It is in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear sub pen, a USAF base, and NASA.

The Namazi family business, Atieh Bahar Consulting, depends on foreign business interest in Iran to generate revenues.  Their work is done with the blessing of Tehran, and thus they are in good graces with the Islamic Republic and its ruling Mullahs.

Following first President Clinton’s sanctions on Iran, and then the nuclear issue, American business was blocked from entering the Iranian market.   Siamak needed a way to circumvent Clinton’s sanctions.  He found an academic partner in Trita Parsi, who also brought his critical experience as a Washington-based political consultant.

Siamak Namazi

In 2002, Siamak Namazi, son of Baquer, co-founded the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC).
His partner in this new enterprise was Trita Parsi, an Iranian Swede, then employed as a political consultant to Congressman Robert Ney (R-OH).  (Note: In 2006, Ney pled guilty to corruption charges related to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and served 17 months in prison.)

Beginning in 1997, Parsi systematically convinced Ney to lobby for the normalization of Iranian diplomatic and economic relations.  He did this through his original organization, Iranians for International Cooperation (IIC).

In the words taken from a document prepared by Parsi himself:

“The first achievement of IIC can be traced back to the summer of 1997 when Trita Parsi worked as a political consultant for Congressman Robert Ney of Ohio. Congressman Ney was at the time a proponent of the US’s isolation policy of Iran and had contacts with the Mujahedine Khalq terrorist organization. Mr. Parsi was hired to consult the Ohio Congressman on his policy vis-à-vis Iran, and persuade him to reconsider his position in favor of a pro-dialogue, pro-engagement policy.”

Like Hamyaran, which is at the center of the Iranian NGO web, NIAC is at the center of the Iran lobby’s web.  It serves as a magnet for Iranian Americans who are sympathetic to Tehran, and in many cases have a financial interest in normalizing relations.

NIAC’s Influence in the United States

NIAC has approximately 5,000 dues paying members, and access to tens of thousands of additional fellow travelers.   The below profiles some of NIAC’s most accomplished associates.

  • Trita Parsi – In addition to the information above, Trita Parsi has courted the leading presidential advisors, Republican and Democrat, including those to George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama. In 2003, Trita had Congressman Ney present a “grand bargain” to Karl Rove from the Iranian government.  Parsi is a practical VIP in the Obama White House, reportedly consulting with Valerie Jarrett and advising both the State Department and the CIA.
  • Reza Marashi – A former employee of AB Consulting, Marashi found employment with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, which functions as a think tank for the Pentagon. Later he worked for the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State “as a desk officer overseeing Iran democracy and human-rights programs.”
  • Sahar Nowrouzzadeh – A top advisor to Obama on Iran policy, Nowrouzzadeh is National Security Council director for Iran at the White House. Prior to this position, she worked at the State Department and Department of Defense.

Of course, NIAC propagandists like Marashi and Nowrouzzadeh had a more than friendly audience in the Obama administration: they had a White House willing to finish their work for them.  The whole history of the administration showcases Obama’s and Valerie Jarrett’s infatuation with Iran.

  • Prior to the 2008 election, the Obama team dispatched former ambassador William G. Miller to Iran, informing the Mullahs that they would get a better deal once Obama was in office.
  • Obama ignored the revolutionary Green Movement in 2009, and let the Iranian government kill and imprison the reform-minded protestors.
  • Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State at the time of the Green Movement’s uprising, was advised by Trita Parsi not to support the protesters.
  • John Kerry’s son-in-law’s best man at his daughter’s wedding is the son of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the Iranian’s main negotiator in nuclear talks.

Minutes from a 2007 NIAC Board of Directors meeting make it clear that NIAC was in contact with and supportive of Hassan Nemazee’s lobbying efforts.  From the minutes:

“Goli Ameri initiative and the creation of PAAIA with Hassan Nemazee and others… Trita mentioned key Silicon Valley’s IA’s as having contributed… and expressed admiration for Goli Ameri’s fundraising ability… Kami wondered whether we could ask PAAIA to join us in the ‘stop the war’ cause.”

Finally, as if it was written in the stars that the Obama administration would usher in an Iranian nuclear regime, Valerie Jarret was born in Shiraz, Iran, in a hospital named after Hassan Nemazee’s father.

Trita Parsi

NIAC Action – NIAC’s New Political Action Committee

In the opening weeks of the controversy over the Iranian nuclear deal this year, NIAC launched its own political action committee.  A 501(c)(4) organization (i.e., tax exempt), NIAC Action “aims to direct money from the Iranian-American community, which is relatively well-off compared to other immigrant groups, toward more concerted political activism.”

From his earliest days as a pro-Iranian activist, Trita Parsi was deeply impressed by the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC).  Perhaps the clearest indication of the pro-Iranian lobbyists’ awe of the Israeli lobby was the name chosen to be AIPAC’s Iranian counterpart – IAPAC (mentioned above).

NIAC Action is “explicitly meant to counter the influence of AIPAC.”  Minutes from the 2007 NIAC Board of Directors meeting convey NIAC’s near obsession with the Israeli lobby:

“Trita clarified the fact that AIPAC does not debate – they are all-action and only move forward with their clear agenda.  Alex raised the fact that AIPAC is successful in some measure because they operate ‘under the radar’ and employ the axiom ‘don’t do it publicly.’  ‘A lobby is a night flower’ quote was mentioned by Trita as another example of how to lobby effectively.”

Indeed, the origins and thinking of the Iran lobby have been anti-Israel, and anti-American, from the outset.

The Open (Iranian) Society of George Soros

Billionaire investor and political manipulator George Soros played a significant role in shaping and funding the Iranian lobby.  As in the Arab Spring, Soros deliberately sided with the most extreme elements in Iran, who, like the Muslim Brotherhood, also happen to be the most anti-Semitic.

Soros, whose wealth from investing and hedge fund management exceeds $20 billion, has used his political influence to affect political “change” in multiple countries.  For example, in Ukraine, he has funded NGOs going back to the Cold War.  In Egypt, he was instrumental in ousting long-time American ally Hosni Mubarak, and beginning the so-called Arab Spring.

Likewise, Soros has funded, and supported otherwise, various organizations that have been influential in opening Iran to the West.

  • In 2006, the National-Iranian American Council (NIAC), led by Trita Parsi, received $50,000 from Soros’s Open Society Institute.
  • In 2009, NIAC received $125,000 from the Open Society Institute, and an additional $25,000 from its foundation, the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
  • Minutes from a 2007 NIAC Board of Directors meeting indicate that Parsi spent a weekend strategizing with Steve Clemons (spelled “Clemence” in linked document) of the Soros-funded New America Foundation. They discussed how to counter the $75 million that the U.S. government had allocated to support regime change in Iran.
  • NIAC hosted Ambassador Thomas Pickering to lead a panel discussion on “finding the nuclear fix,” a reference to Iran’s standoff with the West. Not only is Pickering a trustee at Soros’ International Crisis Group, but he helped cover up the Benghazi scandal, and has ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (a Muslim Brotherhood front organization).
  • In June 2015, Pickering argued on NPR that the Iranian nuclear deal was good policy.

Soros and the National Endowment for Democracy

Moreover, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is known to be closely associated with George Soros.  It also funded NIAC.

In 2012, documents released by a Malaysian press outfit detailed receiving grants from the National Endowment for Democracy.  Evidencing the corruption that Soros money brings to media, a former news editor of the outfit had resigned a decade earlier because of the NED’s relationship with Soros.

Similarly, NED’s connection to Soros and various “color revolutions,” which have occurred since 2000 (e.g., Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution and Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution), caused Russia to ban the NED this summer.

  • NED is technically a private institution that receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress through the State Department. Many speculate it is also funded privately by Soros.
  • In 2002, shortly after NIAC was formed by Trita Parsi and Siamak Namazi, the National Endowment for Democracy expedited an application for grant money to NIAC.
  • NIAC is estimated to have received approximately $200,000 in grants from the NED.
  • NIAC’s spent the NED grant money on sending two NIAC members to work with Baquer Namazi’s Hamyaran, the Iranian government’s umbrella NGO. Allegedly NIAC was teaching Hamyaran to use “computer based digital media.”

The Ploughshares Fund

The Ploughshares Fund, an international charity, characterizes itself as “a global security foundation.  [Ploughshares] support[s] experts and advocates who implement smart strategies to secure a more peaceful world, including one free of nuclear weapons.”

The Ploughshares Fund describes the Iranian nuclear deal as “a major advance for global security.”  Joe Cirincione, its president, is quoted as saying on July 14, 2015:

“This is a very good deal. It is a major victory for American national security. We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb, without putting a single U.S. soldier in harm’s way.”

The Ploughshares Fund, besides being a strong proponent of the Iranian nuclear deal, is a Soros-funded operation, with several key connections to American policy makers, and NIAC.

  • Former Secretary of Defense under Obama, Chuck Hagel (a Republican), was on the Board of the Ploughshares Fund when nominated by Obama. (He joined Ploughshares in 2009.)  Ploughshares applauded his nomination to Secretary of Defense.
  • One of the primary advocates of the Iranian nuclear deal for the Obama administration is Robert Creamer. The Wall Street Journal reviewed a transcript of a conference call hosted by Ploughshares, which quoted Creamer as saying: “The other side will go crazy. We have to be really clear that it’s a good deal.”
  • According to Aaron Klein at WND, “a primary Ploughshares donor is the Tides Foundation, a money tunnel in which leftist donors provide funds to finance other radical groups. Tides is itself funded by Soros.”
  • One of Ploughshares other benefactors is Soros’s Open Society Institute.
  • The Ploughshares Fund has partnered with other Soros-funded and anti-Israel groups including Code Pink, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
  • Former CIA covert officer Valerie Plame, who accused President George W. Bush of outing her in an attempt to intimidate, was hired by Ploughshares Fund in September 2015. In fact, it was Undersecretary of State, Richard Armitage, who, while serving under Colin Powell, “outed” Plame.  The manufactured scandal was used to smear and discredit President Bush, who, at the time, was trying to counter Iran’s influence in Iraq.
  • Powell has come out in support of the Iranian nuclear deal: his support is touted by Ploughshares.
  • Finally, a recent attack piece on one of the deal’s critics provides additional evidence of Soros’s determination to seal the deal. Media Matters, a Soros-funded operation, published a weak retort to an exposé in The Daily Beast.   Among other claims, it attempts to dismiss the overwhelmingly obvious connection between the Namazis and NIAC.

On more than one occasion (see here and here), Soros has used his relationship with the American government for his own financial benefit.  Opening Iran, with the world’s second largest natural gas reserves and fourth largest oil reserves, could prove a windfall for businesses with the right political connections.

Is it Soros’s greed that caused him to support this deal?  Is it his anti-Semitism?  Perhaps, most likely, it is the twisted intersection of both.

Martin Indyk: The Soros-linked, Foreign-funded Salesman for the Iranian Deal

Ambassador Martin Indyk has served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel twice (April 1995 to September 1997 and January 2000 to July 2001), appointed both times by President Bill Clinton.  In July 2013, when Indyk was at the Brookings Institution, Obama appointed Indyk to be Washington’s special Middle East envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.  Indyk has been a vocal critic of Israel – to the point of being insulting – and one of the strongest voices in favor of the Iranian nuclear deal.

  • Indyk is the Executive Vice President at the Brookings Institution and a founding director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings (located in Doha, Qatar).
  • The President of the Brookings Institution is Strobe Talbott, a friend and advisor of George Soros who has interviewed him on the War on Terror.
  • In September 2014, The New York Times ran a story about the influence of foreign governments on American think tanks. The Brookings Institution was one of their focuses.
  • In March 2013, Indyk was a panelist at the Soros-funded Center for American Progress. The topic of the discussion was U.S. policy in the Middle East.
  • In 2013, while Indyk was serving as Obama’s special envoy, the Brookings Institution accepted a $14.8 million check from the State of Qatar, a known backer of Hamas in Gaza.
  • Indyk has a history of degrading and insulting comments directed at Israel. He has used the analogy of the United States as a “circus master” who “crack[s] the whip” and gets Israel and other countries in the Middle East to “move around in an orderly fashion.”
  • He has also justified terrorist violence against Israelis, calling it “a plausible safety valve” through which Palestinians can “vent their anger.”

On the topic of the Iran nuclear deal, Indyk has written a pro-deal position paper for Brookings, the most influential think tank in Washington, D.C., (Parts One and Two).  Calling for collaboration with the terror state as a means to avoid war, Indyk writes, “Without an agreement, it is impossible to imagine cooperation with Iran on regional issues… With an agreement, collaboration . . . becomes possible.”

martin indyk

The folly of engaging a soon-to-be nuclear terror state notwithstanding, Indyk proved that he was completely uninterested in the Israeli perspective (which is driven by self-preservation) through an interchange with the former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.  Following the release of Oren’s book, in which he criticized the Obama administration, Indyk penned a critical review for Foreign Affairs.  He then verbally sparred with Oren on CNN.  Throughout, there is little indication that Israeli and regional (e.g., Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian) security concerns figure into Ambassador Indyk’s thinking.

Valerie Jarrett – The Puppetmaster

President Obama’s Senior Advisor is the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett.  It was Jarrett who, when working for Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago, first introduced a young Michelle Robinson to Barack Obama.  Ever since then, her influence over the first couple is legendary.  Likely as a result of this domineering influence, other Presidential advisors do not trust Jarrett, nor appreciate her voice in Obama’s ear.  In the words of one former administration official, other presidential advisors “think she’s a spy.”

Reinforcing this view of Jarrett, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), says in regard to Jarrett “She seems to have her tentacles into every issue and every topic… Her name ultimately always comes up.”

The Iranian deal is no exception to the rule:

  • In 2012, news broke that Valerie Jarrett had been acting personally as an emissary to Iran. According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Jarrett held meetings with Iranian officials in Bahrain over a period of several months.
  • A month prior to the report in Yediot Ahronot, an unnamed source reported that negotiations between Iran and the United States had occurred in Doha, Qatar. (Note: Doha is the home of the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yusuf al-Qaradawi.  It is also where the Taliban opened an embassy in 2013.)  In hindsight, it is very likely Jarrett was the American representative at these talks.
  • Former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, wrote in his memoir that Jarrett (as well as other advisors such as David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs) “[has] a role in national security decision making that I had not previously experienced.”
  • Jarrett has earned the menacing nickname “Night Stalker” because of her exclusive, regular visits to the White House’s private residence after dark.
  • Gen. Paul E. Vallely (Ret.) believes that Valerie Jarrett is responsible for the purge of top-level military commanders over the last several years.
  • Jarrett comes from a family of spies, subversives, and aspirational totalitarians. The FBI had a lengthy file on Jarrett’s father, James Bowman, because he was a Big “C”  Bowman, for example, was in communication with the paid Soviet agent, Alfred Stern.
  • Jarrett’s grandmother, Dorothy Taylor, was an early activist with Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood’s founder was eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who published in her magazine Birth Control an article submitted by Ernst Rüdin, founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene.  The pseudo-science of “racial hygiene” was the Third Reich’s way of justifying their policy of exterminating “undesirables” – the Holocaust – including Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc.  (More on Jarrett’s family available here.)

Who is really pulling the strings?

The elusive and mysterious Jarrett, dubbed by The New Republic as “The Obama Whisperer,” undoubtedly found a willing partner in George Soros to help realize her dream of normalizing relations with Iran, thus paving the way for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.  Soros has provided the financial and organizational means to Jarrett, who controls the President of the United States of America.  Together, the two of them leveraged the Iranian lobby as a counterweight against Israel.  Throughout the ordeal, Jarrett’s puppet responded expertly as his strings were pulled.

In the haunting words of Jarrett herself, regarding Obama, “We have kind of a mind meld… And chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.

Or else….?

Complicity of the GOP

Although the preponderance of the responsibility for the Iranian nuclear deal rests with the progressive left, especially with Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and George Soros, it behooves recounting the key ways in which Republicans have helped make this disastrous deal a reality.

  • Disgraced Republican Representative Robert Ney helped Trita Parsi to establish the National-Iranian-American Council. Indeed, without Ney and his connections to the establishment (including Karl Rove), it is difficult to conceive how Parsi would have been able to succeed in founding NIAC.
  • Several Republican members of Congress have accepted campaign donations from the Hassan Namazee-connected IAPAC (see above).
  • Obama-appointed Secretary of Defense, Republican Chuck Hagel, was a board member of the Ploughshares Fund, and thus connected to George Soros and various pro-Islamic organizations.
  • Finally, as Andrew McCarthy points out, The Boeing Company is one potential big winner in the deal. They’re also a big GOP donor.  Updating even a fraction of Iran’s commercial airline fleet would be a huge contract.  Specific language was included in the final deal to allow U.S. aircraft manufacturers to sell to Iran, likely to benefit Boeing.  (It is worth noting here Boeing’s massive contracts with the terror-finance center of Qatar.)

Mitch McConnell and John Boehner control Congress, and therefore the power of the purse.  This gives them far more than the ability to merely throw sand in Obama’s gears.  If they had the will, the Iranian deal could have been stopped by threatening to defund Obama’s agenda, period.

Instead, McConnell lamely surrendered and Boehner passed a series of useless resolutions designed to make the Republican base feel good.  Symbolic votes, however, will not stop Iran.

The Republican-controlled Congress put on a decent show for voters, but has done nothing, and apparently has no intention, to stop this disastrous agreement from becoming accepted American policy.

Sellout of Sovereignty to International Business Interests

A few words should be included here on the legal and commercial nature of the Iranian nuclear deal.  The deal’s highly abnormal formulation (not technically a treaty, not strictly a U.N. agreement) creates a number of new paradigms that suggest American sovereignty was not even a thought among the negotiators.  Indeed, it is not even clear that American companies stand to gain much from the deal, in comparison to their European, Russian, and Chinese counterparts.

  • Instead of a traditional treaty, which requires ratification by the U.S. Senate, this deal is a complex of U.N.-centered agreements, overlapping with bi-lateral agreements.
  • Due to the deal’s unusual structure, the Senate was basically powerless to stop it. (To defeat it, Congressional Republicans could have used political guerilla tactics, such as defunding Obama’s agenda.)  This impotence was reinforced once the U.N. Security Council blessed the deal shortly after it was agreed upon by the negotiating parties.
  • The agreement included secret “side deals” that were not presented to the Senate. Included in the deal’s provisions are guarantees for business that, regardless of Iran’s compliance with the agreement, companies would be allowed to continue to do business with Iran.  The agreement also severely limits Congress’s ability to re-impose sanctions on Iran.
  • Almost immediately after the deal was complete, Russia announced that it lifted a ban on the sale of a sophisticated missile system used for air-defense.
  • Likewise, China announced that they would sell Iran 24 J-10 fighter jets. The value of the deal is estimated at $1 billion.
  • Europe is eager to embrace the newly legitimated Iran. Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Austria, Spain, Poland, and Sweden all have plans for Iranian business.

According to one U.S.-based portfolio manager: “I think that the American companies will be welcomed in Iran… This is not a game for junior companies, and I call juniors anything below a billion-dollar market cap. This is a big-money game.”

Yet, strangely, U.S. sanctions on the Iranian regime will remain in force:

“After years of painstaking negotiations and at great political cost, the Obama administration has created a means for foreign businesses to re-enter Iran—but U.S. law still sidelines all but the biggest American multinationals.

Even in the case of big U.S. corporations with foreign subsidiaries, any U.S. citizen employed by an overseas unit would likely be prohibited from participating in transactions with Iran unless granted permission by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Controls, experts said.”

In effect, the deal secures Iranian markets for foreign companies, while American firms still face complex legal and regulatory hurdles should they choose to engage the Iranian market.

Consequences/Conclusions

The information presented above demands that certain observations are called out, and conclusions drawn.

  • Valerie Jarrett, John Kerry, and George Soros have used Barack Hussein Obama and the Presidency to legitimize Islamic terror. Their plans were helped along by a patient and methodical domestic Iranian lobby.
  • The United States government, in particular the White House and Congress, are deeply corrupt. The representatives of the American people put a higher value on personal profit and reelection than they do on national security and the security of America’s allies.  According to a recent Gallup poll, a full 75% of Americans see “widespread corruption” in their government.
  • The sovereignty of the United States has been sold to the international highest bidder. Congress no longer serves as an effective check on treaty-making. The U.S.A.’s foreign policy is now largely directed by the United Nations, which is, in turn, dominated by the 57-state Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
  • The Obama administration seems to be more interested in the profitability of foreign companies as opposed to domestic companies. Indeed, a reasonable reading of events indicates that Obama viewed foreign business interests as his best allies in securing the Iran nuclear deal.
  • IAPAC (Iranian-American Political Action Committee) donated the most money to political candidates in 2008. This was certainly to ensure the election of Barack Hussein Obama.
  • From the beginning, the bi-partisan Iranian lobby was tied to Tehran, the United Nations, and George Soros.
  • The United States’ reputation is now tied to that of Iran, the most prolific state sponsor of Islamic terror. Unless a military strike cripples the Iranian nuclear facilities, the terror regime will very soon have nuclear weapons with which to strike Israel, the Gulf region, Europe, and any other enemy within range.

Finally, while it is impossible to predict the future, a few outcomes appear almost certain as a result of the deal.

  • War is more, not less, likely – the arms race has already begun in the region, beginning with a $1 billion deal agreed upon in September between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
  • The United States has lost the trust of Israel. Russia is filling the American vacuum in the Middle East and Africa (i.e. Egypt, Libya, etc.).
  • America’s traditional Gulf allies, who view Iran and their designs for regional hegemony with great trepidation, are rethinking their alliance with Washington. The ice is melting fast, and previously unthinkable alliances and/or cooperation at various levels are taking place.
  • Political Islam is fully legitimized, rather than reformed to be peaceful. Obama’s acquiescence of Tehran is in direct contrast to his harsh treatment of Cairo, and the reform-minded Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Regardless of who the next American President may be, what will he or she do to rectify this world class nuclear debacle?

 

House of Bribes: How the United States led the way to a Nuclear Iran is a product of the New Coalition of Concerned Citizens:

Adina Kutnicki, Andrea Shea King, Dr. Ashraf Ramelah, Benjamin Smith, Brent Parrish, Charles Ortel, Denise Simon, Dick Manasseri, Gary Kubiak, Hannah Szenes, Right Side News, Marcus Kohan, General Paul E. Vallely, Regina Thomson, Scott Smith, Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, Colonel Thomas Snodgrass, Trevor Loudon, Wallace Bruschweiler, and William Palumbo.

 

[i] Namazi and Nemazee: A Note on Names. It may be that Namazi and Nemazee are different transliterations of the same Persian name.   One internet source suggests that ‘Nemazee’ was the spelling of the name for branch of the family residing in Hong Kong.  Indeed, the Nemazee family was in China and involved with the opium trade.  Though the authors make no claim at a relationship, the possibility seems plausible given the same phonetics and overlapping relationships, interests, and objectives regarding Iran’s relationship with the United States.

Netanyahu Exposes the United Nations and Iran’s Silence

Netanyahu in Fiery Speech, Blasts UN Silence on Iran Threats

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took the podium on Thursday at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York, speaking at the UN headquarters just a day after Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced he was no longer bound by the 1994 Oslo Accords from the same platform.

He began his speech by saying: “After three days of listening to world leaders praising the deal with Iran, I begin my speech by saying, ladies and gentlemen, check your enthusiasm at the door. This deal doesn’t make peace more likely. By fueling Iran’s aggressions by billions of dollars in sanctions relief it makes war more likely.

“In the last six months alone, since the nuclear deal’s framework was announced in Lausanne, Iran has boosted supplies of devastating weapons to Syria; sent more soldiers into Syria to prop up Assad’s brutal regime; shipped weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen, including another shipment just a few days ago. Hezbollah smuggled in SA-22 missiles to down our planes.”

“Iran smuggled to Hezbollah missiles to accurately hit any target in Israel; aided Hamas and Islamic Jihad with armed drones in Gaza and the West Bank. In the Golan Heights, Iranian operatives recently fired rockets on Israel. Israel will continue to respond forcefully to any attacks to it from Syria, and will block transfer of weapons to Hezbollah through Syria.”

“The days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies… those days are over!” he asserted.

‘Am Yisrael Chai!’

“I know that preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons remains the official policy of the international community,” he added. “But no one should question Israel’s determination to defend itself against those who seek our destruction. For in every generation there were those who rose up to destroy our people. Babylonia and Rome; Inquisition and expulsion; in modern times – pogroms and Holocaust. Yet the Jewish people persevered.

“And now another regime has arisen, swearing to destroy Israel. That regime would be wise to consider this: I stand here today representing Israel, a country 67 years young, but the nation state of a people nearly 4,000 years old. Yet the empires of Babylonia and Rome are not represented in this hall of nations. Neither is the “Thousand year Reich.” Those seemingly invincible empires are gone, but the people of Israel lives.”

He thundered: “Am Yisrael Chai!”

“I wish I could take comfort in the claim that this deal blocks Iran’s path to nuclear weapons, but I can’t, because it doesn’t,” Netanyahu continued. “This deal does place several constraints on Iran’s nuclear program, and rightly so. Because the international community recognizes that Iran is so dangerous. But here’s the catch: under the deal, if Iran becomes more dangerous, the most important constraints will still be lifted by year 10 and by year 15. That will place a militant Islamic terror regime weeks away from having enough fissile material for an entire arsenal of bombs. That just doesn’t make any sense.”

“The vast majority of Israelis believe that this nuclear deal with Iran is a very bad deal,” he told the Assembly. “And what makes matters even worse is that we see a world celebrating this bad deal; rushing to embrace and do business with a regime openly comitted to our destruction. Last week, Major General Salehi, Commander of Iran’s army, proclaimed this: ‘We will annihilate Israel for sure, we are glad that we are in the forefront of executing the Supreme Leader’s order to destroy Israel.’

30 seconds of silence

And as for the Supreme Leader himself – a few days after the nuclear deal was announced, he released his latest book. Here it is,” said the Israeli leader, holding up a copy of the orange and yellow book. “It’s a 400 page screed detailing his plan to destroy the state of Israel. Last month, Khamenei once again made his genocidal intentions clear before Iran’s top clerical body, the Assembly of Experts. He spoke about Israel, home to over 6 million Jews. He pledged, ‘There will be no Israel in 25 years.’

An angry Netanyahu intoned: “Seventy years after the murder of 6 million Jews, Iran’s rulers promised to destroy my country, murder my people! And the response from this body; the response from nearly every one of the governments represented here, has been absolutely nothing. Utter silence. Deafening silence.”

At this point, Netanyahu employed a creative oratory device and remained silent for a full 30 seconds.

“The dreams of our people, enshrined for eternity by the great prophets of the Bible – those dreams will be fully realized only when there is peace. As the Middle East descends into chaos, Israel’s peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan are two cornerstones of stability.

“Israel remains committed to achieving peace with the Palestinians as well,” he said. “Israelis know the price of war. I know the price of war. I was nearly killed in battle. I lost many friends. I lost my beloved brother Yoni. Those who know the price of war can best appreciate what the blessings of peace would mean for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren.

Palestinians continue rejectionism

“I am prepared to immediately, immediately, resume direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority without any preconditions whatsoever.

Unfortunately, President Abbas said yesterday that he is not prepared to do this. Well, I hope he changes his mind. Because I remain committed to a vision of two states for two peoples in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state.

“The peace process began over two decades ago, yet despite the best efforts of six Israeli prime ministers, Rabin, Peres, Barak, Sharon, Olmert and myself, the Palestinians continually refuse to make a final peace with Israel. You heard that rejectionism yet again only yesterday from President Abbas. How can Israel make peace with a Palestinian partner who refuses to even sit at the negotiating table?”

“The UN won’t help peace by trying to impose solutions or by encouraging Palestinian rejectionism,” he stated. “And the UN should do one more thing: the UN should finally rid itself of the obsessive bashing of Israel. Here’s just one absurd example of this obsession: in four years of horrific violence in Syria, more than a quarter of a million people have lost their lives. That’s more than 10 times the number of Israelis and Palestinians combined who have lost their lives in a century of conflict between us. Yet last year this assembly adopted 20 resolutions against Israel. Count them: twenty! Talk about disproportion.”

‘Decisive rebuttal’

Sources close to Netanyahu had said prior to Wednesday night’s speech that his address was to be a decisive rebuttal to Abbas’s lies, in which the PLO chairman accused Israel of breaking international law and agreements, and announced the PA no longer is committed to the very accords that incidentally created the PA.

Just after Abbas’s “bombshell” UN speech on Wednesday, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flag was raised at the UN headquarters for the first time ever.

Ironically, the PLO had its status as an internationally recognized terrorist organization removed in the Oslo Accords – the same Accords that Abbas had just minutes earlier renounced.

Twisted: Arab Countries More Right than Kerry and Europe

Remember when the United States led the world for a better world and was successful?

As the Kurds were once on the side of the United States in Iraq and as up to 400 veterans went back to the fight in Iraq to stand with the Kurds, matters just got exponentially  worse due to Barack Obama betraying the Kurds.

Syria Kurds ask Russia for arms, coordination

YPG chief Sipan Hemo told Sputnik Türkiye that his fighting force wants Russian assistance.

YPG chief Sipan Hemo told Sputnik Türkiye—which is owned by Moscow—that his fighting force requested arms from Russia as well as general military coordination, according to a translation of the interview prepared by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.

 

“He also called on Moscow to bomb Al-Nusra Front’s positions,” Anadolu added a day after Russia began its airstrikes in Syria on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

 

In turn, the report added that a foreign relations official for the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party—which controls the YPG—said his party was “ready to cooperate with any actor fighting ISIS.”

 

“We are currently receiving support from the US and the [Iraqi Kurdish] Peshmerga,” Idris Naasan added.

 

Syrian Kurds have been rolling back ISIS across large swathes of territory in northern Syria with the assistance of US airstrikes, while also fighting Nusra in the Kurdish-populated Afrin region northwest of Aleppo.

 

The YPG commander’s comments come after a pro-Hezbollah Lebanese daily reported in late September that Russia had set up a coordination process with Kurdish forces and parties in northern Syria.

 

“A Russian military delegate paid a secret visit to a number of Kurdish military commanders in Hasakeh and inspected areas of confrontation between the YPG and the armed groups,” the Al-Akhbar article said.

 

Moscow announced Wednesday that it had begun its air strikes in Syria, insisting it hit “eight ISIS terror group targets,” while rebel groups, the US and France all said Russia had not bombed the extremist group.

 

On Wednesday morning, activists and rebels said that state-of-the-art Russian fighter jets had conducted bombing runs on Lataminah, a town northwest of Hama, as well as a region north of Homs, neither of which are ISIS strongholds.

 

Syrian state TV, for its part, reported that Russian jets hit ISIS targets near Homs’ Rastan and Talbisah—where ISIS does not have a presence—as well as areas near Hama’s Salamiyah, where the group does maintain frontlines with regime troops as well the Nusra Front.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Nine nations or five? In speeches at this year’s U.N. gathering of world leaders, major powers are increasing calls for multilateral negotiations to end the war in Syria. But Europe and the United States are split on who should be at the table.

The Europeans invoke the success of the Iran nuclear talks in arguing for a similar format — with key additions.

Iran negotiated with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to reach their July 14 agreement. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Wednesday called for a similar arrangement “enlarged with regional partners.”

The Americans, in contrast, want a tighter group, without the Europeans.

Fabius did not elaborate on his vision. But two diplomats told The Associated Press that this time, instead of making demands on Iran, as was the case at the nuclear talks, the Europeans want Tehran to work with them, the Americans, Russians and Chinese on finding a peace formula. Saudi Arabia and Turkey also would be included.

The diplomats — one European the other from the Middle East — said that Britain, France and Germany all spoke up in favor of that format on the sidelines of the U.N summit earlier this week during the first meeting of Iran and the six world powers since the nuclear deal was struck.

But the Americans want any negotiations restricted to themselves, the Russians, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Washington accepted being one of six nations at the nuclear negotiations because they came late. After initially refusing to sit at the same table with Tehran the United States joined in 2006, three years after Britain France and Germany reached out to the Islamic Republic.

A U.S. official familiar with the issue said that in the case of Syria, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry preferred to keep the focus on countries that are directly involved.

He and the diplomats demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the dispute.

Russia, in turn, appears to favor others being kept in the loop, even if they aren’t sitting at the negotiating table.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Security Council on Thursday that Moscow wants “standing channels of communication to ensure a maximally effective fight.” He listed Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the U.S. and China as nations with a role in Syria talks.

Kerry met Lavrov for a third time on the sidelines of the U.N. summit on Wednesday. On Thursday, he huddled with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

The two told reporters that they swapped ideas about potential options for moving ahead with a political transition in the country and would be examining them in the coming days.

Still, Russia’s launch of airstrikes on Syria on Wednesday appeared to leave serious discussions on who should participate in limbo, with Washington and its allies expressing concern that Moscow might have targeted forces opposed to President Bashar Assad instead of Islamic extremists.

Iran-Saudi rivalries further complicate matters, even if that issue is resolved. The diplomats said that Riyadh is reluctant to sit at any table on the same side as Tehran.

The Saudis want to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, while the Iranians support him. Traditional rivalries have been compounded since last week, with Shiite Iran accusing Sunni Saudi Arabia of gross negligence in the mass deaths of pilgrims in a stampede near Mecca.