Current Events

NEWS ALERT: PDMI Responds to NIAC's Call for Help!

NIAC: Alert: House Foreign Affairs Committee Voting on Indiscriminate Sanctions Tomorrow

PDMI: About Time: House Foreign Affairs Committee voted on more targeted sanctions today

Adbdi: Under current Iran sanctions, if you send money to family in Iran, you could go to jail.

PDMI: Not really, if you send money through registered and legal means, you will not go to jail. (Only unregistered brokers who are sending millions in and out of Iran illegally and we know for waht purpose, go to jail and they should. Besides, do you know of any Iranian who uses ‘brokers’? Most Iranians send money to and from Iran via travelling friends and families. It really beats the Western Union and is free, fast and very very reliable. Your disinformation is for foreign consumption. Under the US laws there are no restrictions as to how much money you can send to and from Iran, as long as you declare it. Nice Try!

If you travel by plane in Iran, you are putting your life at risk—over 1,000 people have died in plan crashes in Iran over the past decade.

PDMI: Abdi jan, that is because, IRI thugs are too busy stealing Iranian oil money and do not spend enough money on infrastructure. True that there are sanctions imposed on plane parts. But most IRI “civilian” airplanes are leased and not purchased. So the older the plane they lease, the cheaper the cost and more the profit for the IRGC fat cats, the mullahs and their offspring. Got it? Besides IRI uses passenger “civilian” planes to smuggle arms to Syria and Lebanon. Do not deny, ask Bob Ney, your convicted congressman. They have been caught doing so!

That’s because the vast majority of sanctions in place against Iran are not targeted at Iran’s rulers but instead broad and indiscriminately aimed at ordinary Iranians and Iranian Americans.

PDMI: Not so fast, if sanctions were not targeted at IRGC (currently on terror list) and the mullahs, you (NIAC) would not bellyache. Since when NIAC has cared for ordinary Iranians? Was it not your boss who asked Congress to cut off the Democracy Funding to the opposition? Was it not Ahmadinejad who said, sanctions do not have any affect on us, bring it on? So who are you to dispute your little big man: Ahmadinejad?

But now Congress and the President are planning to make it even worse. On Wednesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will consider new, broad Iran sanctions – H.R.1905, the Iran Threat Reduction Act, that will make sanctions even more indiscriminate. If this bill is not stopped, it could pass the House before the end of the year.

PDMI: Just the opposite and about time! Finally. sanctions are going right after mullahs’ throat and where it hurts. No, no, not there….. their pocket book! However, they are not strict enough. Unlike your propaganda, sanctions are very discriminate this time, and will get more so as the mullahs continue to misbehave. Is the IRGC getting that desperate? Trying to kill a foreign diplomat on American soil, did cross the line, as much as your “Iran Experts-Dirty 3 Dozen” try to hide it. Obama can no longer extend his hand and now the mullahs have pissed off the Saudis as well. What the [....] are IRI ships doing on South American waters? Oh, I forgot carrying opium and arms from Iran and Afghanistan to comrade Hugo and Hezbollah. Got it!

H.R.1905 would make it even more difficult to send money to and from Iran. The bill would revoke the President’s humanitarian waiver for civilian aircraft parts and repairs for Iran. And the measure would make war more likely by making it illegal for U.S. officials to engage their Iranian counterparts.

PDMI: Precisely, strict and discriminate sanctions will prevent your masters from freely funding their terrorist activities and take our oil money out of Iran. As I said, do not worry about us Iranians. We have been able to manage ever since we set foot on the US soil, the land that Trita despises. Amazing how you NIAC ers twist things 180 degrees! Your PR firm has thought you well (did they write this letter or was is Trita under your name? Just curious! Abdi jan, look, the problem is not about ordinary Iranians sending money to and from Iran. You know that and know it well. Just ask Rafsanjani who has been funding you and Hadi joonet. The issue at hand, which has you concerned is the IRGC’s illegal activities and your American big oil sponsors and friends, along with filthy rich Iranian-Americans who are salivating to do lucrative business with Iran. Or, is it because filthy rich regime leaders are afraid that their criminal regime is about to collapse and want to get their money out of Iran and sanctions present a minor inconvenience to them, just a tad? Hey, tell them Canada will take them with open arms!

Supporters of indiscriminate sanctions, like Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA), have said, “Critics [of the sanctions] argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”

PDMI: I am sure you would want more morons like Jim Moran who are duped by you to act as your stooge. Finally, a couple of brave and ethical politicians with some spine are seeing the real and present threat posed by the mullahs, this time in America. Don’t you wish more politicians had the backbone like the Honorable Brad Sherman, Michael McCaul, Ted Poe and Mark Kirk? We do! Tell Khamenei, you blew it this time, bad bad boy, big mistake!

Meanwhile, the President has promised to dramatically escalate indiscriminate Iran sanctions and his Administration has suggested they will seek indiscriminate sanctions against Iran’s central bank—which would punish ordinary people in Iran, spike gas prices worldwide, and cost jobs in the U.S. Central bank sanctions were implemented in the 1990s against Iraq that failed to change or displace Saddam Hussein’s regime and only contributed to humanitarian suffering until the U.S. ultimately went to war.

While these indiscriminate sanctions proposed by Congress and the President are being sold as an alternative to war, the evidence shows that it is actually these types of sanctions that bring us closer to war.

PDMI: Both banks have been illegally laundering money to support terrorism and bypassing sanctions. Remember Khavari? Have you contacted him for donations now that your sugar-daddy the PARSA Foundation has shut down its doors?

We must tell Congress and the President to stop punishing ordinary people for the actions of the Iranian regime. Iranians and Iranian Americans are being squeezed from both sides—from the repression of the regime and from the indiscriminate sanctions policies of the US. Thirty years of indiscriminate sanctions have taught us that sanctions only empower the oppressors.

PDMI: Dear Abdi, tell Trita not not worry, it is under control, we did! Not using your website though. You lnow Amazon and such! Besides, too risky! We were afraid that you might count us as your members! We just wrote them a letter right before they voted. Would you and Trita like to sign? Just kidding! Did not think so!

//pdmiran.org/2011/10/letter-to-secretary-of-state-hillary.html

Take action to tell Congress and the President: no more indiscriminate sanctions that are hurting ordinary Iranians and Iranian Americans.

PDMI: Take action: Call, email and tell your representative that NIAC does not represent us and the IRGC fat cats and extremist mullahs are clear and present danger and must be stopped and ask them to support the pro-democracy people of Iran!

Take action: stand United against NIAC PARSA Foundation is gone!

Regards,

Jamal Abdi

NIAC Policy Director

Regards,

Your Ordinary Iranian- American

PDMI-Arash Irandoost

Sounds like NIAC is a tool of mullahs in the west

Sounds like these people are bunch of the khaens who are selling our country to stinky mullahs in exchange for few bucks they receive. What a Shame.

 I like the greeting of Walt who says BA MEHR. Very Persian. I love it.

Siavash

why didn't you say something when Obama was signing the bill?

President Obama offered NIAC a seat in the room where he signed the Iran sanction bill. I remember reading Forough Yazadani's writing about being there as a NIAC rep. All she said was how appreciative she was of the President for inviting her!! that would have been an opportune moment to raise a sting...which NIAC did NOT.

//iranian.com/main/2010/jul/forough-parvizian-yazdani

The sad truth...

If you want people of Iran to free themselves you have to make it hard for them to live in Iran... There is no mentality from the 70's left anymore, what matters now is if you have money, a house, a car etc...

Let's face it, people in Iran are just as us people in the west but with less social and economic freedoms by law. Imagine what it would take in order for us people in the west to start a revolution, it had to be a alot, right? The same applies to iranians in Iran, believe it or not...

If you want iranians to start a revolution, you need to cut off the "cholo-kabab & chai shirini" supply...

Do the right thing says NIAC's Internet Response Team Sepidar

Please Read comments at //www.twitlonger.com/show/dvgd1m and //huff.to/tLQ7I0

Suspicious Video

Dorood Siavash,

NIAC Internet Response Team has disabled or refuses to let anyone post on the video.  Many of us have tried.  Please see //www.twitlonger.com/show/dvgd1m  It may help explain why NIAC, Parsi and Abdi do not like us commenting.  As stooges and useful idiots for the regime in Iran, they follow the same oppressive practices and deny freedom of speech.

Ba mehr,

Walt

Suspicious video

2 times I went to you tube and asked the same question from this guy in the video. None of my comments on you tube has been displayed. I politely asked: NO war, NO sanction. So how can we get rid of these mullahs who brutalize our people.? nothing replied yet.

Seems a little fishy.  

Siavash

Re: sanctions on oil, natural gas, & IRI's Central Bank

NIAC should stop opposing and campaigning against broad sanctions against the IRI and remove this source of IRI blood money. Of course, given NIAC's history of liaisons and lobbying for IRI officials and championing of a "Grand Bargain"/"engagement" with the Islamist terrorist regime, don't hold your breath waiting for NIAC or its President-for-Life to change their fundamental approach.

Boycotting Iran's oil and oil sector…

Is the only effective way to bring great and measureable pressure to IRI.  Any sanction absent of first boycotting the oil sector is meaningless and void of any good intention.

NIAC ought to take the lead in that regard, alough the US politicians will never go for it.

'Hambastegi' is the main key to victory 

Mehrdad

Do the right thing

Reading some of the comments posted here, you draw a conclusion that there is quite an admiration for policies of Neocons, MEK, and AIPAC. Furturmore, I guess since Fareed Zakaria's, last Sunday on GPS, questioned the sanctions and suggested dialogue with Iran, he is a lobbyist for the mullahs:

"The sanctions are stifling growth, though not as much as one might imagine. So the basic effect has been to weaken civil society and strengthen the state - the opposite of what we should be trying to do in that country. By some estimates, Iran's Revolutionary Guard - the hard-line element of the armed forces, supported by the supreme leader – now controls 40% of the economy."

I agree with Fareed's analysis and I support NIAC's view. We need to be patient, do the right thing and not to rush. 1978 revolution should be a good lesson for us.

Bad for business ...

It would not take a genius to work out that the islamist regime and it's apparatus of terror and murder would become paralized if it's only source of income, it's oil export, is bycotted.

But here we have, on one hand, ahmadinezhad, his gang of thieves and murderers and their entire family, chartering an entire Iranian Air lines Passenger plane- with no shortage of spare parts!!- visiting NYC at least once a year, with US setting up "virtual Iran embassy". And on the other hand, the tripple passport holding wanabe oil dealer wheelers, crying crocodile tears for Iranian people, whilst really crying for their own lost business in face of an escalating quarrel between US Government and the Mullahs with a tight grip on iran's oil income and deals.

Yes, bad for business, it makes you so mad, that you end up calling everyone a "warmonger" on his way to a "tea party"!  

"Personal business must yield to collective interest."

Cousin Framarz: Are we missing the point willfully or ...

Your creative way which at best puts the burden on ordinary Iranians yet has little effect on the regime’s leaders is the main point that is being driven here.

  BTW, when was the last time you had to send money home in an urgent way? I hope not you or any one has to do that, especially if it is in a medical case.

'Hambastegi' is the main key to victory 

Mehrdad

The only path for

The only path for community, social activism is not through, US Congress, careerist, mainstream, corporate lobbying.

 Spot on.

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." - Louis D. Brandeis

the above resolution already passed the committee today

Now the hatemongers and warmongers among the IC members can go and celebrate:

"Washington, DC - The National Iranian American Council is deeply concerned that the “Iran Threat Reduction Act,” as passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee today, will make Americans less safe and will hurt the Iranian people – not the regime – by making sanctions even more indiscriminate.  The bill, H.R. 1905, makes it illegal for U.S. diplomats to engage their Iranian counterparts, strips the President’s authority to license the repair of Iran’s aging civilian aircraft to prevent needless civilian deaths, and imposes indiscriminate sanctions that would increase gas prices and hurt the Iranian people."

//www.niacouncil.org/site/News2pageNewsArticle&id=7687&security=1&news_iv_ctrl=-1

well-said mashti, my

well-said mashti, my criticism of niac has been specific with no legitimate response from the niaci crowd. and then we get the ad hominem attacks that the majority of iranian americans criticizing niac on this very blog must be tea partiers.  nonetheless, i'm going to give niac free advertisement: 

if you're against removal of velayat faghih whether by military intervention or grass-root uprising by iranians within iran, then i suggest that you join niac.

if you're against sanctions against selected known criminals within iri including the irgc claiming that it will hurt ordinary iranians, then i suggest that you join niac.

if you think that u.s. policies are the reason that political dissenters are being tortured and killed in iran, than you should join niac.

if you think that the average iranian sends money to iran by western union or check-cashing stores and the targeted sanctions against iri will be an obstacle to sending money to iran, then i suggest that you join niac.

if you think that criticizing niac qualifies you as a war-mongering zionist, then by all means join niac.

if you think that palestinans should get their due justice as well as those in deplorable jails in u.s. (especially guantanamo) before iranians get their fair justice, then niac is your organization.

and on and on.... blah blah blah

Simple minded simplifications? Concerning 'tea party' @ IC

Reducing all IC readers and writers to right-wingers might give you a rhetorical advantage, but its far from the truth. Just check this thread and you'll see other posting, than yourself opposing sanctions.

Somehow you also reduce community activism to high profile, NIAC type mega events, whereas for the past thirty years there has been an incredible amount of activism done for Iranians, through other Iranians living in the US, especially concerning, sending money, and material aid to Iranian Refugees in Turkey, assisting striking workers, and incarcerated political activists.

While there's sound logic behind opposing the sanctions, there's not a single excuse for any concerned individual or group, especially if an entity works is a collective form, such as NIAC, not to have human rights as its first, foremost, and the most needed, task at the moment.

Unfortuately, NIAC always comes in short handed in relation to human rights abuse in Iran. Not to mention all those Oil deal lobbying and the rest.

The only path for community, social activism is not through, US Congress, careerist, mainstream, corporate lobbying.

What NIAC is trying to do is to incorporate and entagle Iranian-Americans into the corporate, mainstream, two party system of the US. But what  we observe in the US currently, is a move away from politics as usual through the Ocuupation movemtn and related other movements. We need our own version of the Ocuupy movement for Iranian American in the US, and inside Iran as well.

Thank You Vildemose

One of the points that this NIAC guy makes is that the average Iranian cannot send money to their families in Iran and that creates an unnecessary hardship.

Well, every Iranian-American that I know that financially supports relatives in Iran or any Iranian that wants to give money to his college student kid in the US knows how to send money back and forth. You give dollars here in the US to someone that you know and they will give Toman in Iran to your relatives, and vice versa; Very simple and has been going on for decades.

Again, this issue demonstrates that NIAC is completely clueless about the day-to-day issues of the Iranian-Americans and is pursuing its own narrow agenda under the guise of being the representative of us.

They are not.

Iranian "Tea Party"

Reasonable arguments: in this clip - that  wealthy rulers can still wire money out - but ordinary Iranians in Iran and America can't send money for regular family needs. Not to mention those who advocate human rights, but overlook the right to life, which hundreds of thousands of "humans" with right to life, will be deprived of in a war. To me, human rights go beyond political rights. 50 million Americans not having access to healthcare, is also a breech of Human Rights. And certainly, war which kills more indiscrimminately than any other measure of abuse, is a breech of "human rights." 

"Birthers": ("Obama is Kenyan"): 

I don't understand some of the Iranian.com crowd. They remind me of the far-right of the Republican party - the "birthers" - who won't do a single thing Obama asks for in Congress  because: "He's Kenyan - show me his birth certificate!"  Even if it means creating millions of jobs - they still prefer blocking the "Kenyan's" job bill. I met Darius Shahinfar - Congressinal Candidate for NY, a while back, when he told me that the Iranian community's  worst enemy are often its own people. Look at 30 years of living in the US - Iranian Americans have become wealthy individually, but aside from spreading the joys of "Chelo-Kabob" around the US - haven't achieved much else, collectively. The community has amassed private wealth and success - first female space tourist comes to mind (and Kudos to her) - but collectively - we only have a selection of chelo-kabobi's to show for, around the United Sates.

"Making sense" vs. "agenda": 

If something makes sense, that's more important to me - than waiting to figure out the "agenda." The more I observe the community, the more immature and similar to the "Tea Party" and "Birthers" we seem to be. My only hope is like those parties, we are only seeing the loud-mouths, and not the majority. 

Championing "human rights", while plane loads of civilians crash and burn, seem incompatible to me: I don't care if Reza Pahlavi, George Bush, NIAC, or my Grandmother said that. But then again, I also believe Obama was born in the United States. 

 Excellent analogy dear

 Excellent analogy dear Faramarz.  NIAC's target audience is obviously not Iranian-Americans.

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." - Louis D. Brandeis

Response to NIAC's Youtube Video and latest posting regarding Ir

As long as the Theocratic Dictators in Iran use civilian POLICE helicopters to roundup Iranian citizens, so they can be tortured and raped and by using Iran Air, a civilian airline, to transport missiles, mortars, recoilless rifles, IED's, RPG's and other various arms to other terrorist organizations, the most severe sanctions possible should be placed on the murderous dictators in Iran.

continued: //tl.gd/dv0av2

Gladly signed....

Thank you NIAC for taking the lead, again, to unite Iranian-American voices and bringing issues to the politician's attention in DC.

'Hambastegi' is the main key to victory 

Mehrdad

niacis are regime apologists

dont listen to anything they say.  did you hear hillary clinton say if we could do the green movement over again we would help the people.  she said organizations outside iran told us to stay out because it would hurt the people.  that is a bunch of IRI crap.  NIAC was the group that said Obamas recation to the murder and rape of iranians was spot on.

these guys dont get that the regime goes and then Iran will have no sanctions.  easy solution.

that's right farmarz. 

that's right farmarz.  it's another verion of trickle down economics.  if u.s. sanctions iran, then the mullahs will let the ordinary iranians have it (niac, above).

another version, trickle down human rights: if the u.s. provides funding to topple the iranian regime, then the mullahs will start killing people (niac, below):

//www.iran-press-service.com/ips/articles-2008/march-2008/bush-administration-has-fueled-the-human-rights-ab.shtml

Classic Hostage Situation

The Regime is saying, "Lift the sanctions or the grandma gets it!"

And just because the Regime hasn't been toppled through the sanctions yet, it doesn't mean that you should abandon the policy. It is like telling an overweight person who is on a diet but is not losing the weight fast enough, to stop the diet and go back to bacon cheeseburgers.

To refresh this guy's memory, the alternative to sanctions is NOT no-sanctions, it is war, if we ever learned anything from the Iraq War.

کارگران تاوان تشدید تحریم های اقتصادی را می دهند

سال هاست اعضای هیئت حاکمه، وقیحانه از سر بیچارگی اعلام می کنند که تحریم ها نه تنها بر اوضاع و احوال اقتصادی مملکت هیچ تأثیری نداشته اند، بلکه موجب شکوفایی خلاقیت ها و قابلیت ها گردیده اند. تاوان این ادعا و تقابل رژیم و کشورهای غربی را کارگران و اقشار تهیدست جامعه داده اند>>>>
//www.payam.se

............

Freeze All mullah's assets in foreign banks (all over the globe)....start by Moshtaba .....to moshai....from rafsanjani....to khatami (and all their families) ....All the men having a main job in this regime should have their funds blocked !

after that we can think of removing economical sanctions !

(NIAC is not representing iranians people ! )

Sanction works.

NIAC is Islamic Republic Lobbyist in USA

Disingenuous

NIAC lobby is disingenuous in its fearmongering. On the one hand it opposes putting the Revolutionary Guard, the instrument of the Islamist regime’s internal suppression and external terrorism, on the terrorist list; on the other hand claims it cares for the welfare of ordinary Iranians.

NIAC lobby has to come clean about its documented relationship with the high officials of the Islamist Rapist Republic.