Iran Blog 01 - Why American Politics is Rotten to the Core
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
The first Iran blog about American politics? A mistake right? Well, not so much. Much has been written in the mainstream media about the infiltration of the Republican Party by the Russians. This is most likely true and I also wrote some small pieces about it. What is not so much laid out in the media is that the Democratic Party is also infiltrated by an enemy foreign power, despite the fact that this can be proven by some very simple Google search queries. I have been warning for years about the infiltration of the Democratic Party by the Mullah regime in Iran and the potential disastrous consequences this would have. We now have arrived at the moment that it becomes clear how bad the situation has become. However, first I have to explain how the U.S. got itself into this situation.
Iran and the United States are officially enemies. This all has to do with the fact that the United States for many years supported the Persian monarchy that preceded the Islamic regime and was violently overthrown by a wild coalition of communists, liberals, moderate Muslims and radical Islamists in 1979. In the chaos and confusion that followed the ouster of the monarch, the Shah, the Islamist faction took over the rule of the country and renamed Persia, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI, from now on I refer to Iran as IRI, since IRI is the state and regime of the brutal and despicable mullahs. Iran will be the name of the future country ruled by officials elected by the people). Due to its support for the Shah, the new regime hates Israel and the West and the United States in particular. This hatred accumulated in the occupation of the American embassy in Tehran by “religious” students (read: agents of IRI). 52 Americans were taken hostage. After a disastrous failed rescue attempt (Operation Eagle Claw), resulting in the deaths of 8 American soldiers and the destruction and abandonment of American helicopters in the Iranian desert, all hostages were released after 444 days. However, the United States and IRI became forever enemies and together with North-Korea, IRI is one of the few countries without an American embassy. The United States put IRI on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and remained there until this day. In addition, immediately after the Iranian revolution, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, started the first Gulf War against IRI. Saddam was backed by the United States and in 1988, this event culminated in the largest naval battle since World War II between the United States and IRI (Operation Praying Mantis), during which the U.S. navy destroyed half the Iranian navy. I bet none of you knew this.
After the end of the first
Gulf war in 1988 it appeared that the United States and IRI would remain
enemies forever. Especially since the Iranian regime also started an ambitious
nuclear weapon program specifically aimed against Israel. However, in 2009 things
started to change for the worse with the election of U.S. president Barack
Obama. Despite IRI being on the verge of revolution in 2009 after the regime
manipulated election results to exclude candidates that were actually on its
payroll, Obama refused to support the Iranian protesters and as a result, the
feared Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) brutally suppressed the
demonstrations. Instead the Obama administration chose the path of giving in to
the Islamic republic's nuclear blackmailing and started a process of
negotiations with the Iranian regime. This was called the 5+1 format (the five
permanent members of the UN security council + Germany). These negotiations
resulted on July 14th 2015 in the so-called “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”
(JPCOA or “the Nuclear deal”). In short, restrictions would be imposed on the
nuclear facilities of IRI and in exchange Western sanctions against IRI would
be lifted over a period of a couple of years. In addition, significant assets
of the regime would be unfrozen and IRI would receive Western support. How the
Obama administration executed the last part, was the first sign of the very bad
things to come. Under the cover of darkness, an American plane with 400 million
USD in cash landed in the middle of the desert in the same way you pay ransom
to kidnappers.
https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-400-million-cash/index.html
Moreover, this disastrous
appeasement emboldened IRI to the max. IRI started a massive campaign of
expanding its proxies armies across the Middle-East:
1.
Hezbollah
in Lebanon
2.
The
Houthi’s in Yemen
3.
Several
Shia factions in Syria
4.
Khatib
Hezbollah in Iraq
5.
And of
course Hamas in Gaza
While this policy of the Obama administration can be interpreted simply as weakness, I think the situation is far more serious. The Obama administration not only made a deal with the IRI regime, it’s infiltrated by it. The first indication that I had was after I read the book about the JPCOA negotiations by an individual called Trita Parsi. The book is called “Losing an Enemy”
Parsi is an Iranian with a Swedish passport and now the former chairman of an
organization called the “National Iranian American Council” (NIAC). https://www.niacouncil.org/ Officially, NIAC is a lobbying organization
to lobby for influence for Iranian Americans. In practice it’s nothing less
than IRI’s very solid foothold in the American Democratic Party. An American
judge even came to the conclusion that NIAC is lobbying on behalf of the IRI
regime.
Despite that, NIAC played a
key role in the 2015 negotiations that led to the JPCOA. However, a deal was
not enough for democratic lawmakers and officials. After Joe Biden became
president in 2021, the progressive part of the party wanted to put him in the
position of senior director Middle-East Affairs in the U.S. national security
council. He ultimately failed to get the position because he likely couldn’t
get security clearance.
https://www.vox.com/2020/12/18/22188735/progressive-foreign-policy-list-100-biden
Whereas Parsi is of Iranian
descent, it’s not only Iranians who are in influential Democratic circles.
There are even U.S. officials who are openly Iranian apologists and involved in
NIAC activities. Most notably deputy national security advisor under the Obama
administration, Ben Rhodes and Democratic senator Chris Murphy. Rhodes even
stated openly that he created an “echo chamber” to voice positive opinions
about the Iran nuclear deal in Washington D.C. circles.
Below you can see Rhodes talking for an hour at a
NIAC event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBXn3OnWuqM
But NIAC’s tentacles reach
far (and as such IRI’s). FOX news is openly being characterized as a
pro-Russian news channel. It’s not so much known that the same can be said
about CNN and MSNBC when it comes to IRI. One of NIAC’s former members Negar
Mortazavi is regularly whitewashing IRI’s escapades on CNN, for example that
there “was competition” in IRI’s elections.
But remember, the main
figure Parsi, is never far away:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NaNpjSdOQ
For one thing I have to
give the IRI regime credit is that they are able to very subtly plant their
message in U.S. news channels as opposed to the direct and blunt presentation
of Russian messages on FOX. To give some context to the interview with Mortazavi:
The idea that there’s competition in IRI’s elections is ridiculous. For years
Western media outlets have been focused on the “conservatives” and
“reformists” in Iranian politics. This is all window-dressing for the outside
world. Each and every decision in IRI is being initiated and validated by the
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei. It will be food for an entire separate blog, but
the whole Iranian political system is set up to facilitate this and as such is
the most complex political system in the world. For now you will have to do it
with a graph:
https://images.gulfnews.com/embedded/polopoly_fs/1.2029354.1495112434!/image/158937105.jpg
But Mortazavi brings the
message very subtle: yes, elections in IRI are neither free nor fair, but hey,
there’s competition.
So why are the Democrats so keen on cozying up with
the IRI regime? My suspicion is that besides wanting to shine with a foreign
policy victory (to be fair, the U.S. needed one after George W. Bush’s
adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan), a lot of Democratic politicians hoped to
freeride on revenues coming from IRI after the lifting of sanctions. There was
even already a deal made to sell 80 American Boeing airliners to IRI, which was
torpedoed by the Trump administration.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/08/iran-deal-fallout-boeing-may-lose-20-billion-in-aircraft-deals.html
So did a return to
Democratic Party rule after four hard-line on IRI during the Trump years, made
the Democrats change? No, they continued their disastrous appeasement towards
IRI even after the suspension last year of the security clearance (this doesn’t
regularly happen) for Robert Malley who was one of the chief negotiators on the
U.S. side during the creation of the Iran deal
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/06/rob-malley-iran-security-clearance-investigation/
For years I warned about
this, but now it has finally reached a level that this will accelerate to a
full blown regional theatre in the Third World War. Despite having assembled an
impressive military force in the wake of the October 7th Hamas attack on
Israel, the United States let itself be attacked by the Iranian regime and its
proxies and only occasionally responded in the hope that they could still
“reason” with IRI.
I had hopes last week that finally a strong multi national task force would be created to take on one of IRI’s most powerful proxy’s, the Houthi movement in Yemen, but European allies walked out after it became clear that naval ships would only be allowed to respond defensively and that no strategic and tactical strikes would be performed on the Houthi’s
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-allies-reluctant-red-sea-task-force-2023-12-28/
At this moment there’s only one country in the entire world that still understands what effective deterrence against brutal dictatorships means and that’s Israel. Israel understands that in the current world yet another ceasefire means the continuing emboldening of the IRI regime. The elimination of Hamas is a first step, but Israel is already hinting towards the follow up step, the elimination of Hezbollah from the Israeli border. And by this, Israel is cutting off one by one the long arms of the IRI regime (and I’m using the words of a colleague here that’s very knowledgeable on the situation). Will the elimination of Hamas and Hezbollah be the end of the war? No, unfortunately Israel is only preparing the battlefield by removing the most urgent threats to its direct borders for a big regional war where it will ultimately take on directly on IRI.
نه غزه، نه لبنان، جانم فدای ایران
Niels
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