Mullahs’ Supporters in the West

by Jahanshah Rashidian (Iran/Germany)

To neutralise and pervert all efforts of Iranian Diaspora in the West, the Islamic regime of Iran needs lobby groups, corporate media and NGOs of doubtful character to legitimise the regime against the will of people in and out of the country.

Mullahs’ inner supporters are the conventional army, Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), police, and especially pro military strike forces like Basijis to combat Iranian opposition and the post election popular protests in the streets. These are bearded men and voluntary veiled women bowing to the version of Islam presented by the clergy of the regime.

Supporters in the West:
Big majority of Iranian Immigrants do not belong to IRI sympathisers, but the regime arranges to form its Islamic stooges among a little minority who are the children or chosen ones of the ruling Mullahs or a crowd of opportunist businesspeople in the west.

The IRI has already formed Islamist entities like Iman Foundation (Los Angeles), Alavi Foundation (New York), Muslim Student Association (California) and Tawheed centres, etc. All of this Islamist front of the regime are organised to represent support the regime and to propagate its version of Islam in the West. They are dictated orchestrated by the IRI. They unconditionally support and justify the IRI and its inner and outer policy.

Islamist front portrays Islam and the Islamic regime as the only established facts of the Iranian society. Their propaganda materials distort the realities which are the reasons of the plight that the people of Iran are bearing since the inception of the IRI. We see here the power of guileful organistions used to cook up the pot of distorted facts. Mullahs’ televisions in the US like Aftab Television, Jam-e Jam Alavi Foundation operate in this perspective. These Islamist organisations have two political tasks as below:

The first one is a series of measures against the Iranian opposition in the West in an attempt of sabotaging opposition unity, call naming, threatening opposition activities, defaming their media, hacking their accounts in face book, all to confuse Diaspora on the reality of the country.

Their second one includes direct interests of the mafia sate of Islamic regime like operating of espionage, money laundry, illegal weapon purchases, illegal business transactions, recruiting new Muslim agents, and other pro-IRI activities.

Since millions of Muslim immigrants bear the pain of social disintegration, sporadic rise of both Islamophobia and racist discriminations in the West, IRI Islamist front attempt to mesmerise these disappointed people with the aim of recruiting them for jihadist or terrorist agenda.

“Secular” lobby groups:
Most famous pro-IRI lobby groups are the Iranian well-groomed men and women of CASMII and NIAC (National Iranian-American Council) who work as propagandist mouthpieces for the Regime in the West. These consist of sold-out intellectuals, moderate or hard-line Muslims, amnesic Marxists who now opportunistically like to forget “the religion is opiate of people!”, and some old crypto-Stalinists left from the Confederation of Iranian Student in time of before 1979 revolution.

All these lobbyist groups, accessory to the IRI’s foreign policy, are characterised by their different doses of anti-West and their ties with the different factions of the regime. Their difference with the Islamist front is the fact that the Islamist front drums up the roar of pan-Islamism to defend the regime, on the contrary, “secular” lobby groups are supposed to act as they were in the opposition by occasionally talking about human rights violations in Iran. They are set up for a bigger portion of secular Iranian Diaspora who are mostly neither against or for the Islamic regime, but prefer to maintain their personal interests by a status quo. Therefore IRI secular lobbyists demagogically roar a nationalistic hyperbole which in deed serves the continuation of the IRI regime.

The London-based CASMII (Campaign Against Sanctions and Military attacks on Iran) is a pro hardliners lobby group. It started its activities in 2005 under Ahmadinejad’s presidency and under the mantel of campaign against sanctions and military attack on Iran. By contrast, NIAC is a product of reformists under the reformist President Khatami. The idea was to create a lobbying group which could replace the lack of an Iranian embassy in Washington.

NIAC is a self-appointed representative of Iranian immigrants in the US is in fact the representative of small but influential conglomerate of Iranians and Americans who have interests in the survival of the IRI. As such, they built a Front Businesses to broker trades between U.S investors and Mullahs’ regime. Among its ranks, there are Iranian businessmen and western investors who have wind in their sails to trade with any regime in Tehran. The business networks have been mobilised under the mantel of these self-appointed “Iranian representatives” to represent horse-trading between the western business and policy-makers from one part and Mullahs from another part. Their ties to the Islamic mafia regime have been documented in a series of articles and interviews by Mr. Hassan Dai, an Iranian researcher shows how NIAC broker between sate mafia of the regime and various western partners and investors is.

NIAC is designed to entice members of Congress and influential policy makers to advocate conciliation with the Mullahs’ regime. Political reasons aside and like all capitalist or dictatorial systems, USA financial milieus are corrupt and buyable. Furthermore management and boards of almost all major multinationals, oil companies, and financial institutions are located in the U.S. No wonder corrupt Mullahs, Sheiks, and any Mafioso activities are eager to have lobby groups among these milieus.

Other less notorious organisation is PAAIA, (Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans). They have a political branch called IAPAC which among other tasks, it encourages Iranian Americans to participate in both the U.S and Iranian political life and elections. This organization is believed to belong to the rich clan of Namazi who are tied with the state mafia of Islamic regime.

The IRI political and business front operate through both religious and secular organisations and lobbying groups of a totalitarian regime which tortures, rapes, and oppress its people on a daily basis. However, the aims of these lobbyists or in fact the stooges of the IRI are not unrevealed but tolerated by the West. Only the very notorious Alavi foundation was prosecuted by the US justice in May 2010.

According to multiple sources, in May 2010, the New York-based Alavi Foundation was accused by U.S of acting as a front to provide money and services to the IRI. It donated $3.1 million to U.S. universities, including Columbia University and Harvard, and other schools in North America from 2000 to 2008, to buy support for the regime and its exported ex-seniors as new PhD students or researchers of these establishments. The in the 1970s (Pahlavi then Alavi) foundation “funnelled money to Iran’s Bank Melli which is accused of supporting the country’s nuclear and ballistic missiles program”, the media reported.

From the hardliners supporters to the reformist supporters of the Islamic regime, they all have one main goal and it is the survival of the IRI in any costs. In this light, the IRI has a number of Media mouthpieces including newspapers, magazines, and websites and Satellite televisions in the West, especially in the US. A number of sold-out intellectuals, exported journalists, ex-collaborators of the regime who fear a regime change, and a number of outsiders and Islamist factions of the regime are on this field.

Their common aim is to prolong the life of the regime with or without personal changes or reforms within the regime. All sectors of this IRI front have tightened linkages and objectives to the strategic alliance between anti western and Islamic organisations in the West. In the U.S, CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) is a partner of IRI front in their attempt of lurking their co-opting American policy makers to guarantee immoral interests of Mullahs.

Reformist media is affiliated with IRI reformist factions in Iran. There is no unbiased report analysis in their coverage of political image of Iran. Networks like Gooya and Baztab become financial supports from corrupt Mullahs close to reformists.

Most journalists with an Islamist background, foreign broadcasting, biased BBC and American Voice, are listed on these networks. Websites on these networks either defend the most reactionary Mullahs and their anti human behaviours or put forward reforms within the regime. A number of Toudhi-spectrum sites like PeykIran, Peiknet, Mihan support Green Mouvement under Moussavi and Karrubi.

On these networks, most critics of the hardliners, Ahmadinejad’s gouvernemt and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, support however the survival of the regime. They prostitute themselves by remaining royal to the IRI constitution and its founder, Khomeini, they highlight a coverage to reformists like Mousavi, Karrubi, Khatami, Rafsanjani (the likely sponsor).

Materials of the opposition media opposing to the whole Islamic regime have rarely access to these networks.

Lobby groups in general do not belong only to the IRI, most countries or financial empires set up their lobbyists to influence political and economical decision makers in behalf of certain policies or interests. Lobby groups set up by totalitarian regimes like Iran or aggressive sates like Israel have immoral tasks to achieve in a big super power like the U.S. The Israeli lobby group AIPAC is regarded a very influential organisation in the U.S. Its job is to skew U.S foreign policy in the interests of aggressive policy of Israel in occupying lands of neighboring nations.

The lobbyists defending totalitarian or aggressive regimes, whatever the name or agenda, are criminal organizations of such regimes to defend the regime’s agenda while diverting the brutal reality that their regimes commit. They do all possible maneuvers and dirty jobs to convince both native immigrants and international community that they have common interests to support such regimes.