![\"trita\"](\"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/trita.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIranian American Forum, 5.31.2015<\/p>\n
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC<\/a>), a Washington based organization considered by many as the Iranian regime\u2019s\u00a0lobby\u00a0<\/a>in the US, has launched a\u00a0campaign<\/a>\u00a0against Senator Lindsey Graham accusing him of racist remarks against Iranians. In a\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0on May 22, Senator Graham allegedly called Iranians \u201cliars\u201d, according to NIAC. However, upon a closer look Graham never made such a statement, his\u00a0actual quote<\/a>\u00a0as seen on the video was \u201cI met a lot of liars, and I know the Iranians are lying.\u201d\u00a0 NIAC attempted to spin the statement as being directed towards all Iranians, however in this context it appears that Graham was in fact referring to the Iranian regime, and not Iranian people.<\/p>\n The Iranian-American Forum denounces NIAC\u2019s charade in the strongest way. This is not the first time that this pro-Tehran organization has targeted a US politician who has worked hard to neutralize the threat posed by the Iranian regime to US national security. NIAC\u2019s smear campaign had previously targeted Senator\u00a0Mark Kirk<\/a>, Senator\u00a0John McCain<\/a>\u00a0and Senator\u00a0Robert Menendez<\/a>.<\/p>\n Following its first statement against Senator Graham, NIAC initiated a\u00a0joint letter<\/a>\u00a0signed by several other groups, all of whom are affiliated with NIAC, with the exception of PAAIA.<\/p>\n The Iranian-American Forum emphasizes that NIAC\u2019s initiated campaign is in no way representative of the views held by the majority of Iranian-Americans. The combined number of members affiliated with NIAC and other groups participating in this campaign does not exceed several hundred, compared to an Iranian-American community that exceeds one million and half members. The Iranian-American Forum clarifies several element regarding NIAC campaign:<\/p>\n 1- While NIAC pretends to be outraged by Senator Graham\u2019s declarations, it remains silent regarding the Iranian leaders\u2019 systematic insults and racial declarations against the American people and American politicians. For example, the Iranian Supreme Leader made a speech on May 11, 2013 and called the European races \u201cthe barbaric and savage races\u201d. The speech was broadcast on\u00a0TV<\/a>\u00a0and posted on his\u00a0website<\/a>: \u201cThe domestic violence against women in the US and Europe is very common and it is not surprising because the people in the West and especially the European races are barbaric (savage) races. This is the reason why they (Westerners) can easily kill people, commit crimes and beat their wives.\u201d<\/p>\n 2- A genuine Iranian-American organization should be outraged by the Iranian leaders\u2019 anti-Semitic declarations and policies. The Iranian regime has turned Tehran to the capital of Holocaust denying and anti-Semitism in the world. But, NIAC has always tried to\u00a0blame Israel<\/a>\u00a0and find\u00a0genuine ways<\/a>\u00a0to justify and pale the Iranian regime\u2019s anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n 3- Not only does NIAC remain silent to the Iranian leaders\u2019 racial and degrading insults against Americans, the organization feels outraged when the Iranian rulers are criticized for their actions. For example, in 2007 during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad\u2019s speech at Columbia University in September 2007, the University\u2019s President Lee Bollinger harshly\u00a0criticized<\/a>\u00a0Ahmadinejad for violating human rights in Iran and taking anti-Semitic positions. A genuine Iranian-American organization should have thanked President Bollinger but NIAC was\u00a0outraged<\/a>by his remarks.<\/p>\n NIAC president Trita Parsi with Iranian regime nuclear negotiation delegation, Lausanne, Marcg 2015<\/p>\n 4- If on some occasions the Iranian-Americans are misjudged by their fellow Americans, it is mainly due to policies that the Iranian regime has pursued for the past thirty six years that include hostage taking, killing Americans, sponsoring terrorist activities around the globe, anti-Semitic policies and a declared strategy to eradicate Israel. Unfortunately, on some occasions, people do not distinguish between the Iranian regime and Iranians in general. Therefore, the best way to defend and preserve the dignity of Iranian-Americans is to emphasize that the Iranian regime does not represent the Iranian people and their cultural and historical values.<\/p>\n Consequently, an organization such as NIAC that acts as de-facto lobby for the Iranian regime, legitimizing its policies and presenting Hassan Rouhani or a faction of this regime as the legitimate representatives of Iranian people, harms the prestige and dignity of Iranian-Americans.<\/p>\n 5- In attacking Senator Graham and other anti-Iranian regime politicians, NIAC aims to attain two goals: First, to discredit the anti-Iranian regime camp in the US and facilitate Tehran\u2019s pursuit of its nuclear ambitions and its hegemonic drive in the region,<\/p>\n Second, it seeks to gain credit as a genuine defender of the Iranian-American community, and use this credit to pursue its pro-regime lobby activities in Washington. This is exactly what NIAC president Trita Parsi outlined in a memo to his partner in 2002. This\u00a0memo<\/a>\u00a0was released during a defamation\u00a0lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0involving NIAC. In 2002, after Parsi founded NIAC, he was working with two Washington lobbyists to create a parallel organization to NIAC that would undertake lobbying while NIAC continued recruiting among Iranians. In his memo to lobbyist Roy Coffee, Parsi also explained the nature of these activities and why it is necessary to give a human face to this lobby:<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough the mission of the proposed lobby should be to improve relations between the US and Iran and open up opportunities for trade, the initial targets should be less controversial issues such as visas and racial profiling\/discrimination\u2026\u00a0Despite its predominantly business oriented constituency, it is essential that the lobby creates a \u201chuman face\u201d for its aims and goals. AIPAC successfully painted the opponents of the Iran Libya Sanctions Act as \u201cgreedy businessmen who had no scruples when it came to doing business with terrorist regimes.\u201d The oil companies failed to characterize their campaign with \u201chuman concern for the well-being of innocent Iranians stuck with a dictatorial regime\u201d or \u201csupport for the poor mid-Western family father who lost his job due the sanctions.\u00a0\u00a0The human element is essential both when it comes to attracting support among Iranian-Americans and when it comes to winning the debate and the votes on the Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n 6- A genuine Iranian-American organization should first and foremost focus on the plight of Iranians and therefore, condemn the human rights violations in Iran. As to NIAC, it NEVER criticized the human rights abuses in Iran until 2007 when its ties with the Iranian regime were exposed and forced NIAC to release sporadic and tempered human rights statements primarily aimed at whitewashing its pro-regime policies. This is precisely what the District Court judge in the NIAC defamation lawsuit wrote in his\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0to dismiss the lawsuit and punish NIAC for legal abuses:<\/p>\n \u201cThat Parsi occasionally made statements reflecting a balanced, sharedblame approach is not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the regime. Given the other evidence defendant amassed to support his views, the Court sees no \u201cactual malice\u201d in defendant\u2019s decision to disregard occasional contrary statements and assume that they were made largely to burnish Parsi and NIAC\u2019s image in the United States. After all, any moderately intelligent agent for the Iranian regime would not want to be seen as unremittingly pro-regime, given the regime\u2019s reputation in the United States.\u201d (p. 12)<\/p>\n 7- It is ironic that in a story that involves \u201clying\u201d, NIAC tries to presents itself as the guardian of Iranian-American values. The organization and its President Trita Parsi\u2019s record shows that they indeed represent duplicity and deception at its best. In 2012, NIAC lost a defamation\u00a0lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0against one of its critics and the District court judge sanctioned NIAC and its president Ttrita Parsi for repeatedly lying to court and violating the legal procedures and ordered them to pay $184000 for compensating defendant\u2019s legal expenses.<\/p>\n Again, on February 10, 2015, Court of Appeals\u00a0reaffirmed<\/a>\u00a0the district court\u2019s initial opinion that NIAC and Parsi engaged in systematic abuse of discovery process and repeated false and misleading declarations to the court. The appellate judges\u00a0wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout discovery, the Appellants (NIAC and Parsi) engaged in a disturbing pattern of delay and intransigence. Seemingly at every turn, NIAC and Parsi deferred producing relevant documents, withheld them, or denied their existence altogether. Even worse, the Appellants also misrepresented to the District Court that they did not possess key documents Daioleslam sought. Most troublingly, they flouted multiple court orders.\u201d (Page 2)<\/p>\n \u201cWe have previously recognized a trial judge\u2019s authority to punish and deter abuses of the discovery process, and we do so again today. A court without the authority to sanction (NIAC\u2019s) conduct that so plainly abuses the judicial process cannot function. We affirm the bulk of the District Court\u2019s sanctions as the wages of Appellants\u2019 dilatory, dishonest, and intransigent conduct\u2026\u201d (Page 3)<\/p>\n 8- The defamation\u00a0lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0lost by NIAC showed the depth of NIAC\u2019s deception and proved that NIAC lacks integrity and credibility to pose itself as the defender of Iranian-American values. The lawsuit obliged NIAC to release some of its\u00a0internal documents<\/a>\u00a0that turned to be devastating for the organization and\u00a0Washington Times<\/a>\u00a0and many other journals published some of these documents.<\/p>\n The documents also show that NIAC\u00a0defrauded<\/a>\u00a0IRS,\u00a0defrauded<\/a>\u00a0NED Congressional funds,\u00a0coordinated<\/a>\u00a0its lobby with Iranian ambassador to the UN and\u00a0collaborated<\/a>\u00a0with two individuals named by US Congressional report as the agents of the Iranian intelligence ministry.<\/p>\n Some of these\u00a0documents<\/a>\u00a0show that Tehran-based individuals with ties to the Iranian regime helped Trita Parsi to plan and realize the creation of NIAC. After NIAC was created, Parsi continued to coordinate NIAC\u2019s lobby with them.<\/p>\n The Iranian-American Forum strongly condemns NIAC\u2019s campaign against Senator Graham, a charade designed to serve the interests of Iranian regime.<\/p>\n On November 13, 2013, when NIAC launched a similar campaign against Senator Kirk and sent email to Iranians asking them to sign the anti-Kirk petition, an Iranian-American civil society leader\u00a0had enough<\/a>\u00a0of NIAC and Parsi\u2019s slander against those who oppose Tehran\u2019s agenda. In her poignant letter to NIAC posted on her\u00a0Face book<\/a>, she wrote: \u201cHow shameful that you purport to represent the will of the Iranian-American people. This email and others like it are nothing less than a morally perverse, dishonest propaganda campaign aiming to achieve the one and only mission your so called \u201cassociation\u201d has ever had: the removal of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran and a soft, appeasing American foreign policy with regards to this regime, no matter the human rights situation. Rather than reflecting and advancing the Iranian-American dream of a free Iran, you echo the Islamic Republic\u2019s agenda in the US, working to discredit any voice, particularly among US policymakers, that stands with the people of Iran and firmly against their oppressors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a Washington based organization considered by many as the Iranian regime\u2019s lobby in the US, has launched a campaign against Senator Lindsey Graham accusing him of racist remarks against Iranians. In a speech on May 22, Senator Graham allegedly called Iranians \u201cliars\u201d, according to NIAC. However, upon a closer look Graham never made such a statement, his actual quote as seen on the video was \u201cI met a lot of liars, and I know the Iranians are lying.\u201d NIAC attempted to spin the statement as being directed towards all Iranians, however in this context it appears that Graham was in fact referring to the Iranian regime, and not Iranian people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,140,135,138,136,100,137,139],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-appeasement","tag-iran","tag-john-mccain","tag-lindsey-graham","tag-mark-kirk","tag-national-iranian-american-council","tag-niac","tag-pro-tehran-lobby","tag-robert-menendez"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n