CHANGE IS COMIN' TO CONGRESS:ISLAMIC IRAN
I first wrote about this nefarious, evil group infiltrating our soft democratic system here: ISLAMIC IRAN LOBBY BECOMES COZY IN CONGRESS
Can you imagine this? Our mortal enemy is up on Capital Hill running things like some mullahcracy - thugging the free press, imposing their ugly will and dogma.
Ken Timmerman went to cover their "forum." Read his disturbing and disgusting reportage which took place ina US Senate conference room (hat tip Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi)
Yesterday, a group called the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) held a forum in a U.S. Senate conference room, to urge the incoming Obama administration to launch negotiations without preconditions with Iran.
Groups of different persuasions have been debating U.S. policy toward Iran for years. But until NIAC, none have sought to quash their critics or tosilence opposing points of view.
NIAC has attempted to prevent Iranian-Americans from attending public conferences they have gotten members of Congress to sponsor in the past, perhaps fearful of a public demonstration against them.
Yesterday, they also attempted to bar entry to me as a reporter accredited with the U.S. Senate periodicals gallery to an event that was sponsored by Sen. Thomas Carper (D, DE).
To the great credit of Sen. Carper's staff, they intervened with NIAC and ultimately, after a lengthy argument, got NIAC to back down. "In my fourteen years of working up here on the Hill, I have never seen credentialed media be denied entry to an event that was open to the media," a Carper staff member said.
After I was admitted to the conference room in the Senate Hart building, NIAC staff members bent down the gooseneck microphones that had been set up for questions and turned them off.
Instead of having questioners line up at the microphones, NIAC screened unmiked questions from the floor, which were inaudible to most of the participants in the room, then paraphrased them to their own satisfaction.
NIAC understands how unpopular they are with the Iranian-American community, most of whom came to this country seeking freedom and fleeing Islamic tyranny.
But their behavior in this and other public conferences is no more than a defanged version of the thuggery we are accustomed to seeing from the Islamic Republic itself.
NIAC's agenda is transparent: they seek to end U.S. sanctions on Iran, open direct and unconditional negotiations between the U.S. and the Iranian regime, and to offer Tehran a "place at the table" in determining the future of Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Israel.
They oppose sanctions on Iran aimed at getting Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment program, and are urging the incoming administration to provide "security guarantees" to the regime and end all assistance to pro-democracy groups inside Iran.
The advisability of opening an unconditional dialogue with the Tehran regime is a serious issue, worthy of debate.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who favored such a dialogue before coming to the Pentagon, recently came out resolutely against it.
So have European Union leaders who have complained publicly about Iran's recalcitrance during five years of negotiations aimed at enticing, bribing or otherwise convincing Iran of the wisdom of halting uranium enrichment.
"We came to the conclusion that they are not interested at all in negotiating, but in buying time for their military (nuclear) program," said French nuclear affairs advisor, Therese Delpech.
Uh, John Bolton said that years ago.
I have reported on these issues at Newsmax.com and commented on them extensively in opinion columns, scholarly articles and Congressional testimony, which is undoubtedly why NIAC was so eager to prevent me from asking questions at Tuesday's event.
Timmerman's latest Newsmax article on this subject is here:
"It is deeply concerning that a discredited group within the Iranian-American community, with blatantly obvious connections with the Islamic Republic, should be allowed to freely influence Washington's political circles to the detriment of the American peoples' and ultimately, the world community's interests," the Progressive American-Iranian Committee said in an editorial published on Saturday. Iranian- Americans
"It is also shocking and difficult to explain that a group labeled by the Iranian regime as the 'Iranian lobby' could so easily penetrate the U.S. Congress," they added, referring to NIAC.
I strongly urge you to contact your Members of Congress and U.S. Senators, to warn them about NIAC and its pro-Tehran agenda.
Whatever decision the Obama adminstration makes regarding Iran, it should be based on an appreciation of U.S. national security interests, not upon the advice of groups who are spouting the prescriptions of our adversaries.
