Iranian Liberal Democrat

NIAC

//www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1109/Kyl_presses_for_NIAC_inquiry.html

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican source says,  sent written questions to Attorney General Eric Holder following yesterday's meeting, going after the National Iranian American Council, a group drawing conservative ire because it advocates a soft(er) line on Iran and the subject of a Washington Times piece raising questions about its lobbying status.

Kyl's questions:

The November 13, 2009 Washington Times article, “Iran advocacy group said to skirt lobby rules” alleges that the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) may be operating as an undeclared lobby and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lobbying disclosure laws.

• Is DOJ investigating the allegations put forward in this article? If not, why?

• Has DOJ found the allegations in this article to be true?

• What is the proper recourse against a 501(c)(3) group that engages in lobbying activity on behalf of a foreign government without registering as a lobbyist or filing papers with DOJ indicating that the group is a local agent of a foreign government?

 1983

 1983 bombing

//www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/06/u-s-court-orders-iran-to-pay-813-million-for-1983-beirut-bombing/

Chain muderes under khatami

 //www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/reports/3153-mockery-of-justice-the-framing-of-siamak-pourzand.html?p=4

1992 bombing in Argentiana:

 //www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/how-iran-planned-the-buenos-aires-blast-1.15878

Mykonos bombing in Germany:

//www.spiegel.de/international/looking-back-at-the-mykonos-trial-the-end-of-the-dispensable-iranian-a-476369.html 

Note: Arrest warrant for Rafi (the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei; the president at the time, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; and the foreign minister, Ali Velayati -- as the masterminds of the crime. An arrest warrant had already been issued for the minister of intelligence, Ali Fallahian.)

Mousavi's crimes as prime minister

This list by no means is an all inclusive one. Please feel free to add to the crimes of reformers.

why shouldn't the reformers be on the terror list? 

All Oppression Creates a State of War--Simone De Beauvoir

Excellent job of putting

Excellent job of putting factual evidence in one place to expose the hypocrisy of the criminal regime and their lobby.

Who has more blood on their hands, the MEK or the reformers (khatami, rafsanjani faction)? Which one has stolen more of Iranian wealth and treasure for the past 30 years?

Are reformers (Rafsanjani, Khatami, Mousavi...karoubi, etc.) and their beneficiaries willing to give back all ill-begotten money they have amassed throughout their lives.

I think the reformist should be put on a terrorist list just like the MEK.

Reformers (both their leaders and their beneficiaries) crimes both inside and outside of Iran borders certainly qualify them as a terrorist both domestic and international terrorist group/organization. 

All Oppression Creates a State of War--Simone De Beauvoir

Roozbeh jaan

Roozbeh jaan,

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.  I am surprised and disappointed that JJ has not featured this blog.

I hope that people get the opportunity to see and read it. 

Best regards,

Masoud

“regime sympathizers like the NIAC”

Faramarz jaan,

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.

Trita Parsi and NIAC have an agenda. Trita Parsi has had extensive and friendly relations with the high-level officials of the terrorist regime (e.g., Javad Zarif, the terrorist regime’s ambassador to the UN). Time and again, they advocate what benefits the vf regime and Khamenei (e.g., sanctions which would provide billions and billions of dollars year after year to Khamenei). Or Trita opposing placing the IRGC on the terrorist list!!!!!!!!!!!

Trita Parsi agenda is DIFFERENT than the agenda of the democratic opposition. Our objective is regime change: to get rid of the terrorist regime and establish democracy in Iran.

In my opinion it is fair to call NIAC an "IRI friendly group."

Sen. Mark Kirk used the term "regime sympathizers like the NIAC"

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1fBPcZ3JBc

In my opinion, the senator is correct to describe NIAC as "regime sympathizer."

My 2 cents,

Masoud

شازده

شازده گرامی‌،

از لطف و محبت شما سپاسگزارم.

مسعود

Brilliant detective work Faramarz!

" He spent a good amount of time telling people like him not to do what he had done because the money is “dirty” and will bring bad luck. This, more than anything else tells me that the Regime, because of the financial hardships in Iran is afraid that the Sepah and Basij’s rank and file are susceptible to penetration by the opposition. "

The "deduction" in this paragraph is brilliant! 

A must read blog....

Thanks dear Masoud for this very well researched blog. Of course Islamist Regime and it's US/Europe based Lobby groups would blame MKO for these assasinations. It would be rather embarassing for them  to admit that MOSSAD can so easily penetrate inside Iran and kill Regime employees with such ease....

The utter failure of the regime to hit back at israel, as shown in Thailand, India and now Kenya Fiascos of Terrorist attacks on israel, shows indeed that when it comes to dealing with foreign enemies, islamist regime is just a paper tiger. Islamist regime is only good at killing defenceless unarmed political prisoners, women and children....

Just one added comment: Inside Iran, at least, there is a strong perception amongst people, that some of the early killings of these "nuclear Scientists" were carried out by Regime itself.... 

"Personal business must yield to collective interest."

Masoud Jaan

Thanks for your blog and the link to the book excerpt.

First of all, I would not expect an apology or professional behavior for that matter from Trita and the gang. Their objectives have been quite clear. But let’s look at a few examples of how Trita and the gang reacted to the terrorism news as they were coming out.

When the news of the Iranian-American used-car salesman broke and Obama, Hilary and the Attorney General, Holder went on the national TV and spoke about the plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador to Washington and to blow up a popular restaurant in Georgetown, Trita’s reaction was that “it was too early to tell who was behind the plot and we will have to wait till more information came out”, notwithstanding the fact that three of the most powerful public figures in this country put their reputations on the line and provided a lot of details about the plot. This was shameful behavior by an organization that tries to portray itself as an advocate of Iranian-Americans, people like you and me.

After each of the assassinations of the Iranian scientists, or the explosion at Malard missile site in Karaj, NIAC was quick to point out that it was the work of foreign organizations, most likely Mossad. I guess there was no need then to wait for the truth to come out!

After the botched assassinations attacks in Georgia, India and Thailand and the immediate arrests of some of the Iranian perpetrators, Marashi of NIAC was skeptical of Sepah’s Quds involvement and stated that, “Israel is the only government that had pointed the finger at IR”, effectively dismissing the claim because of the amateurish manner in which the plots were executed which makes you wonder if they had succeeded and had killed many innocent people, would NIAC then agreed that the Regime was behind the plots!

Now, as for the assassinations inside Iran, I tend to agree with you on the kick boxer. The Regime never showed the alleged “spy” equipment that the guy confessed to have used to communicate to Mossad; the fancy belt, telephone, laptop, etc. His execution was also suspicious and was done away from the public or the victim’s family which was uncharacteristic of the Regime. The guy’s final words were also very telling. He spent a good amount of time telling people like him not to do what he had done because the money is “dirty” and will bring bad luck. This, more than anything else tells me that the Regime, because of the financial hardships in Iran is afraid that the Sepah and Basij’s rank and file are susceptible to penetration by the opposition.

Thanks again.

If you want to accept these as truth…

Then that is your propagative.  I wish you luck to convince others with your arguments.

I personally do NOT give a damn if MEK participated in the hostage taking or not.  For me the fact that they took arms against their own country in a war with Iraq, it make them traitors and traitors are the worse kind and not to be trusted.

US also sided with Saddam which also ought not to be forgotten but they are a sovereign nation and their act does not constitute as treason.

This concludes my view on the subject here.

'Hambastegi' is the main key to victory 

Mehrdad

نیاک میرقصه و آخوند ساز میزنه ... تا مجاهدین رو ببرن اوین

مسعود جان: سپاس از مقاله و توضیحات ارزشمند شما.

Truth vs, Falsehoods

Bavafa,

You are confusing several issues that are not related to each other.

1. I personally do NOT give a damn for Trita Parsi to apologize. Or the NBC to apologize. It is perfectly fine to make mistakes; journalists commit errors all the time.

In my opinion, Trita Parsi has an agenda. The POINT of this blog is that we have to have a MINIMUM of HONESTY and INTEGRITY. Therefore, in my opinion, Trita Parsi should retract his earlier assertion. He should state that he was wrong and the PMOI did not carry out the assassinations.

2. The Obama administration has been interested in negotiations with as well as appeasement of the terrorist regime. Negotiations and appeasement are not the same.

The Obama administration has been dragging its feet in de-listing the PMOI. Several court decisions have sided with the PMOI and have agreed with it. The courts have repeatedly ordered the State Department to review and de-list the PMOI.

3. If there was certain evidence that the PMOI was terrorist, then the EU, UK, and French government would have been able to keep it on their list. But in courts these governments lost to the PMOI and their own courts agreed with the PMOI. The courts in EU, UK and France have reviewed the case and they repeatedly agreed that the PMOI is NOT a terrorist group. The EU, UK, and France, very much like the U.S. had placed the PMOI on the terrorist list to appease the terrorist regime. These governments want to have lucrative trade deals with the terrorist regime. Therefore, in order to make money in their trade with the terrorist regime, they placed the PMOI on their terrorist lists. The PMOI used the courts and won its case again and again and again and again.

4. One reason that the Ministry of Intelligence manufactures LIES about the PMOI is that there does not exist solid evidence that the PMOI has committed terrorist actions.

5. The PMOI is dictatorial (like the monarchists) and cultist, but it is NOT a terrorist group. It is a guerrilla group that used armed struggle against the terrorist regime. Moreover, it does NOT meet the definition for inclusion on the State Department’s FTO list. That is precisely why the courts agreed with the PMOI and have demanded the State Department to de-list the PMOI.

6. Much of the "evidence" that the PMOI is a terrorist group is presented by the IRI’s Ministry of Intelligence. And various entities who lack in-depth knowledge have been fooled by the IRI’s Ministry of Intelligence. For example, the PMOI did NOT take the American diplomats hostage. It was the fundamentalists who took the American hostage. Almost ALL of those who took the Americans hostage belonged to the so-called left wing of the fundamentalist oligarchy, who are called the Reformists today. They were Ayatollah Khoiniha (now a Reformist). Other terrorist hostage takers are: Abbas Abdi (now a Reformist and adviser to Karrubi), Mohsen Mirdamadi (secretary general of the Islamic Iran Participation Front and Reformist and supporter of Khatami and I think Mir Hussein Mousavi), Dr. Reza Khatami (President Mohammad Khatami’s younger brother and leader of Islamic Iran Participation Front). Dr. Masomeh Ebtekar, the so-called "Sister Mary" who was President Khatami’s Deputy President for Environmental Affairs.

The PMOI did NOT take the American hostage. Those who took Americans hostage are the Reformist members of the fundamentalist faction. Helooooooooo. The PMOI merely marched outside of the U.S. Embassy and supported the terrorists (now called Reformists).

7. With one exception, all the Americans who were assassinated in the early 1970s were assassinated by the Marxist faction (which became known as Paykar) in the PMOI and NOT the Islamist faction of the PMOI (the current PMOI under Rajavi’s leadership). The same Marxist group also murdered the Islamist PMOI members such as Majid Sharif Vaghefi. The sole American that was assassinated by the Islamist PMOI was done by Reza Rezai. At that time, Masoud Rajavi was in prison and could not be in contact with Rezai. Almost all others even in that assassination became part of the Marxist Paykar and not the Islamist PMOI. But until 1979, the Marxists kept the name of the PMOI and were engaged in purges of the Islamist members of the PMOI. The Ministry of Intelligence and its supporters have succeeded in FOOLING others and spread disinformation about who actually carried out all those assassinations. Moreover, at the time Rafsanjani was part of the Islamist PMOI when the sole American killed by the PMOI was killed. The Ministry of Intelligence has been so successful with its lies, that so many useful idiots simply repeat the Ministry of Intelligence’s lies without knowing that they are false.

8. One might condemn the PMOI for siding with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war. At that time, so did the U.S. government. But siding with Saddam has NOTHING to do with being placed on the FTO list. We, Iranians, can and should condemn the PMOI. But this has NOTHING to do with terrorism and the U.S. FTO list.

9. The PMOI says that it did not kill any Kurdish and Shia Iraqi during their uprisings in 1991. In fact, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zibari, who is Kurd, testified at the court proceedings in Europe that in fact the PMOI did NOT participate in the killings of Kurds and Shia Iraqis.

10. The State Department placed the PMOI on the FTO list in 1997 in order to reward Khatami. It was about APPEASEMENT of the vf regime and had NOTHING to do with realities. The Bush administration again retained the PMOI on the FTO list because it wanted to have the IRI’s help in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In conclusion, those who oppose the terrorist regime have to counter the propaganda and activities of the terrorist regime. I strongly disagree and condemn the PMOI’s ideology, history, and politics. But we have to fight fair. We have to tell the truth. We have to be honest.

One should not fall for the Ministry of intelligence propaganda. The Ministry of Intelligence is involved in spreading lies and propaganda. The Ministry of Intelligence wants to fool the people and use them as useful idiots. The role of the responsible, democratic and progressive intellectuals (roshanfekran moteahed, democratic, va moteraghi) is to counter the lies and the propaganda of the Ministry of Intelligence.

My 2 cents,

Masoud

If the premise of your argument is that the Obama admin ….

Aim is  to appease the regime in Iran, then you will need to show [reasonably] and explain why they have been contemplating removing the MEK from their terrorist list which would certainly not be an appeasing act not to mention there has been ample and verifiably evidence that they carried out many terrorist activities in the past.

  As for your point of blog, I reckon, you would be far more persuasive if you were to treat all equally and fairly  and in this case demand an apology from NBC which again has been the source of the news.  Perhaps Dr. Parsi should apologies, once NBC has retracted their story as we cannot hold the word of these two journalist as holly, specially that they do not claim the NBC report to be false, and the apology would be that he used a source that turned out to be false.  That for me would be a fair and honorable way of doing it, even if this was a case that was done by an incompetent and criminal politician like GWB .

'Hambastegi' is the main key to victory 

Mehrdad

Trita Parsi and the Assassination of VF Regime Nuke Scientists

1. The credible report which discusses the whole program does NOT make a single mention of the PMOI.

2. The report explicitly states that the bomb and the methods were so innovative that the Mossad would ONLY use Israelis to carry the assassinations.

3. The report explicitly states that the Mossad would NOT use non-Israelis to carry out these.

4. The report states that the Mossad agents entered Iran, carried out the assassinations, and left Iran, and went back to their home.

The NBC report is based on anonymous U.S. government officials. At that moment, the Obama administration was worried that the vf regime would retaliate against the U.S. and at a minimum would undermine the negotiations between the P5+1 and the vf regime. Known officials of the U.S. did NOT say anything. The Americans KNOW that the vf regime is allergic of the PMOI. Heck when the vf regime diplomat was arrested for alleged child molestation attempt, the vf regime officially said that the whole thing was orchestrated by the PMOI!!!!!!!! The U.S. government is aware that the Ministry of Intelligence has itself murdered people such as the bombing of the Imam Reza Shrine which killed almost 2 dozen innocent worshipers to blame it on the PMOI. The U.S. government knows that the Ministry of Intelligence had murdered Mehdi Dibaj (a Shia who had converted to Christianity) and blamed the PMOI for it. So, in order to appease the terrorist regime, the U.S. government threw the name of the PMOI (as sacrificial lamp) in order to advance its own interests.

The POINT is we have to have a minimum of HONESTY and INTEGRITY. Dr. Trita Parsi JUMPED at that story and wrote article and blamed the PMOI for his own agenda.

The POINT of this blog is whether or not, Dr. Trita Parsi is willing to come and admit that he was wrong and retract his earlier assertion.

A terrorist act is a terrorist act, no matter who carries it out

While this report by the journalist confirm this killing has been carried out by the Israeli agents, it does not conclusively say that no other group had been involved in it either directly or indirectly.  This is also somewhat in contrast to the NBC report which certainly is a very reputable news organization and one cannot dismiss it simply because another journalist are claiming a slightly different version while not rejecting this report.

It is hard to imagine that some elite Mossad agents work and carry out such operations in Iran without any supporting team that are of Iranian origin.  Now if those supporting agents are tied to PMOI or not, that will remain to be found out.  We also need to note that Dr. Parsi cited this report by NBC which was also cited by many other people, so if there is any apology to be given, it ought to be by NBC as a starting point which was the source of the news.

  Having said that and knowing that IRI just like other regimes lie thru their teeth to protect themselves and/or project a different image than reality,  we may not know the full truth for many years to come but so far all the reports point to the Israeli’s as the prime responsible entity for these terrorist act and these terrorist acts  must be condemned by all who truly are against terrorism. 

'Hambastegi' is the main key to victory 

Mehrdad

On Fashi's Execution

Dear Yolanda,

We do not know whether Fashi was executed or the photo of his execution was a fake one. It is possible that he was actually executed. The photo the regime provided was from a distance. It is weird because the regime usually published close ups of the those being executed.

My own guess is that he was actually executed. The possibility that one day he would show up would be very harmful for the vf regime.

My 2 cents,

Masoud

.........

Wow! Majid Jamali Fashi is still alive?

I saw a photo of the guy hanging from Evin's ceiling. Photoshopped?

Thank you for sharing!

On the Ministry of Intelligence

Dear Yolanda,

From what is publicly known, we do not know all the facts. However, one things is certain and that is he did NOT carry out the assassinations. I see the following possibilities:

1. Fashi met with Israeli officials. They did not fully trust him. But they gave him a little money and asked him to spy for them. He agreed. The Wikileaks released some documents one of which indicated that a person who was in Azerbaijan and was in marshal arts had met with the Israelis. The vf regime used the info from the Wikileaks and found out it was Fashi who was in Azerbaijan at that time. Fashi dude was thus guilty of very minor stuff. He did NOT know anything valuable. He was out of work and poor. The vf regime promised him amnesty if he read the lies that they put in front of him. So, Fashi said what MOI asked him to say. And the MOI went ahead anyway and executed the dude.

2. The whole story of Fashi was false. The dude was not executed.

Or a combination of the above. My own opinion is that the first possibility is the case.

The regime simply makes things up to show that the Ministry of Intelligence KNOWS what is going on. This is for domestic consumption. The vf regime and the MOI wants the people to think that the regime is able to monitor all their activities and thus intimidate them into submission. The vf regime assumes that the Israelis and Americans carry out the assassinations. But it does not have any evidence of exactly how they do it.

My 2 cents,

Masoud

.........

So Mr. Majid Jamali Fashi got hanged for nothing!

IRI said he confessed!