One could theoretically, physically, and literally say “Thanks to NIAC, Iran got more sanctions.”
Of course that would be a generalization. And nothing more than aligning specific keywords together on a website for Google to peruse and display in a Ranked Search Result.
However, one cannot help but wonder if NIAC and other self appointed pseudo lobbyist organizations living on the fumes of their crudely defined missions, were to focus their efforts on getting Iran to tone down it’s nuclear and other regional ambitions, or rather to focus less on the US political process and more on Iran’s, the road to less sanctions would be more easily traveled.
Assuming of course that seeing Iran tone it down from the cheap seats, would result in the US rewarding “Good Behavior” with less or no sanctions. And I am pretty sure that’s the way it works around here.
So, according to the statistics, the more NIAC has tried to sway US politicians away from sanctions on Iran, the more sanctions US politicians have piled onto Iran.
The cry of “Hey NIAC! Stop helping us so much!” is making more and more sense.
Pound for pound NIAC’s efforts have only backfired. Statistically. I don’t even think the Idiot-Cowboy bar in Texas has removed the poster of an Iranian being hilariously lynched.
(Note: Seriously, can someone in Houston please go there and apologize for the hiker hostage taking already, then buy everyone in the bar a round, in return for taking down the poster? Because that’s all it takes. You don’t need an Engineering student to put up a petition.)
The lack of NIAC’s real effectiveness (Real as in all that Iranian-Americans really want is for Iran to be free and less of a world media embarrassment) has been my only point of objection to NIAC from the very start. I love everything else about them. No really!
They’re just pointed in the wrong direction, is all.
The naive assumption that Iranian politicians and the key players in the Iranian government are immune to the kind of lobbying that NIAC has perfected here, won’t work because Iran is a dictatorship, is OK, justified, but still naive and worse, an entirely untried option! No one to date, in 30+ years, has EVER tried to organize a peaceful-intentioned, polite, logic-bound resistance movement, or a reform-minded opposition to this (or any) Iranian government.
NEVER!
RPII is only dreaming and wishing of one more White Christmas in Tehran, Saadabad to be exact. If he were anything more than that, he’d have been on a plane to Iran to work from the inside long ago. So as mesmerizing as he appears to some, he’s not actually real. Trust me, I had a fantasy dinner with him once.
The MEK, well let’s just say that if the MEK were serious about change, they would put down the weapons and stop making really bad deals with the devil over and over and over again and again and again. How stupid do we have to be to think the MEK supports democracy when their own organizational hierarchy is based entirely on marital status?
Also, I have come to the conclusion that you can NEVER trust any woman who insists on wearing a hejab when she doesn’t legally have to. Even more so if she’s not hot.
A lot of commentary on this site is devoted to identifying and answering the ongoing question, “What kind of a People are we, Iranians?”
A simple objective unemotional analysis of this is:
“Iranians are a freedom loving and freedom yearning people, who out of a real justified fear of ruthless and violent reprisal by their oppressors, have not (yet) learned that the legitimate power and will of the many, can outwit the illegitimate and ill-gotten power, and lesser will of the few.”
The simpler explanation of how to overcome our fear of standing up together, is:
“Organization, Planning, Preparation, Determination, and an overwhelming optimism to drive the pragmatic, self-evident belief that you are right, and right can never succumb to wrong.”
(Wow! It sure is arrogant to put yourself in quotes! My apologies post-quote.)
This combined with the numerous examples in history that other oppressed people living in exile, who ultimately decide and intend to take their country back from oppression. They have always done so by creating an organized resistance movement or opposition group, and have used the sanctuary of other free nations to launch pressure and drive the oppressors out and regain (or in our case Gain) their freedom. We have all of this AND the internet.
None of this means putting up a single Mollah against the firing squad wall.
None of this means violently overthrowing the existing government starting with a Green march on Qom.
None of this means harming a single hair on the fast thinning head of a single Quds force or IRGC commander.
All of this could (and should) be done through negotiation, patient prodding, and perseverant probing for cracks in the thin veneer of the IRI. Just as it stands today. For especially today there are so many cracks in the IRI to exploit. Solely on the singular issue of women’s inalienable rights, never mind the rest of the heretically hilarious hadiths in this absurd version of an otherwise innocuous and altogether useful Qoran.
Supreme leader? Are you fucking serious? Is this “Star Wars Episode 13: The Phantom Old Fart”? There are only 2 things that ever deserve to be called Supreme. The mid-sixties Diana Ross, and Pizza.
Back to reforming Iran from this side of Evin Prison.
This is the kind of patient form filling, polite inquiry, and getting the rules of engagement straight that NIAC has shown over and over again, that it has the talent and desire for, and above all the proven ability to excel at.
So Trita jan, please, jooneh man, stop swimming in circles around the “beltway”. You’re done, you’re ready, we’re ready. Take her out on the highway, open her up full speed, and steer this ship over towards this way, point her bow away from DC and to a Middle East heading. The wind is at your back. I think you will enjoy the journey much more and find this is where your true destiny lies.
Everyone will thank you. More than that all of us will support you.
