Thread: Obama Endorses Iranian Regime’s Fraudulent Election

Obama Endorses Iranian Regime’s Fraudulent Election

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
March 20, 2014 9:32 am

President Obama said in a Norwuz greeting released Wednesday that the Iranian regime’s selection of a new president last year was in fact an election in which “the Iranian people” were allowed to choose a new leader.
“Last year, you—the Iranian people—made your voice heard when you elected Dr. Hassan Rouhani as your new president.” Obama said Rouhani “was elected with your strong support.”

Shortly after the regime’s selection of Rouhani, the Wall Street Journal’s Sohrab Ahmari described the process for subverting democratic choice in Iranian elections:

Iran’s presidential campaign season kicked off last month when an unelected body of 12 Islamic jurists disqualified more than 600 candidates. Women were automatically out; so were Iranian Christians, Jews and even Sunni Muslims. The rest, including a former president, were purged for possessing insufficient revolutionary zeal. Eight regime loyalists made it onto the ballots. One emerged victorious on Saturday.

President Obama opened his message with the greeting of “Dorood” to “the Islamic Republic of Iran,” using the regime’s preferred honorific. Obama concluded his message with “Thank you, and Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak.” Obama did not mention the plight of dissidents languishing in Iranian prisons, nor did he call on “the Islamic Republic of Iran” to release the American citizens it is holding hostage or cease being the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

http://freebeacon.com/obama-endorses...lent-election/

Pack of crooks and thieves.

Iran Spending Medical Funds on Luxury Cars

NIAC ‘propaganda’ collapses under facts

An Iranian pharmacist/AP

BY: Adam Kredo
March 20, 2014 9:56 am

The Iranian parliament’s recent investigation into a scheme to import luxury cars instead of medicine threatens to erode the credibility of a leading pro-Iran lobbying group that has long claimed that economic sanctions are preventing access to medicine in Iran.

An investigation by Iranian lawmakers recently revealed that nearly $2 billion that had been allocated to the importation of medicine into Iran was actually spent on the purchase of luxury cars, according to Farsi and English reports.

While it had long been suspected that the Iranian government was squandering funds for medicine, pro-Tehran advocacy groups like the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) used the medicine shortage as a hook to claim that sanctions were causing the shortage.

NIAC, which has long been suspected of lobbying on behalf of Iran, continues to make the claim and has been raising money off the issue, prompting criticism from those who say the group’s “propaganda machine” is disingenuously misleading lawmakers and the media.

NIAC’s repeated claims that U.S. sanctions led to the medicine shortage have been widely picked up and repeated by the Western media, which has done little to verify these claims.

NIAC even brought up the issue during a 2012 meeting at the White House with Obama administration officials.

NIAC’s campaign also has gained traction on Capitol Hill, where Rep. Jim Moran (D., Va.) authored a letter on the issue that was then used in one of the group’s action alerts stations, “Don’t let sanctions block medicine for Iranians.”

NIAC has also sent its representative to congressional events in order to pesterlawmakers about the issue. During one such confrontation last year, Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.) chastised a NIAC official for pushing factually inaccurate “propaganda” about the medicine shortage.

This has not deterred NIAC, which has gone on to launch the “Iranian medical access project” to push the narrative that the United States is to blame for the medicine crisis.

“Why are U.S. sanctions blocking medicine for Iranians and how can we fix this?” NIAC asked in another one of its policy briefs.

The group’s continued dissemination of this narrative led to articles in CNN, theWashington Post, and several other media outlets that repeated NIAC’s talking points.

News of the luxury car scheme throws into question the factual accuracy of NIAC’s years-long campaign.

“NIAC has manufactured excuse after excuse for weakening sanctions and helping the mullahs,” said one senior official at D.C.-based pro-Israel organization.“Their talking points have been exposed as fabrications again and again. It’s no wonder that many people, including sitting members of Congress, accuse them of spreading regime propaganda.”

“The real mystery is why the White House and its allies insist on taking meetings with them,” the source said.

Other recent reports have indicated that Iranian pharmaceutical companies owned by the Iranian regime have manufactured the medicine shortage in order to drive up prices.

Profits to many of these companies soared despite economic sanctions and money is believed to have flowed directly to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

As average Iranians struggle to obtain key medications, Iran’s ruling class has enjoyed relatively unfettered access to top-notch healthcare, a fact that has not been raised in NIAC’s talking points.

When rumors of the medicine scam first emerged in 2012, then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sacked the country’s health minister in order to keep her silent.

It is also believed that another $20 billion was diverted from Iran’s health sector to a housing project. The diversion of these funds reportedly sparked a shortage of nurses and sick beds for ICU patients.

U.S. Treasury Department officials have repeatedly confirmed that Iran’s healthcare crisis has nothing to do with economic sanctions.

“It has been the longstanding policy of the United States not to target Iranian imports of humanitarian items, such as food, medicine and medical devices,” a Treasury official was quoted as saying by Reuters. “If there is in fact a shortage of some medicines in Iran, it is due to choices made by the Iranian government, not the U.S. government.”

However, the Iranian government and its advocates in the United States have used the crisis to divert attention away from Iran’s massively corrupt political system.http://freebeacon.com/iran-spending-medical-funds-on-luxury-cars/

Now, we are paying for luzury cars in Iran. when will this madness stop?

National Iranian American Council

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) was founded in early 2002, and describes itself as "a non-partisan, non-political, non-sectarian, and non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Iranian-American participation in American civic life." [1]

"NIAC's activities will center around four separate objectives:

• "Building a database of Iranian American organizations through services and activities that support collaboration and cooperation among grassroots groups.
• "Encouraging opportunities for the Iranian-American community to represent itself in its own words and on its own terms by promoting media outlets directed at enhancing public awareness and education about the community.
• "Supporting capacity-building activities for Iranian-American organizations through information sharing, professional development, voter registration and the promotion of philanthropy among Iranian-Americans.
• "Fostering greater understanding between Iran and the United States by creating opportunities for Iranian-Americans to serve as a natural bridge between both peoples." [2]

"NIAC is launching its Public Service and Journalism Fellowship Program for Iranian-American youth next year, and will aim to award its first group of fellows in Summer 2005 with internship placements." [3]

NIAC runs the US-Iran Media Resource Project, which is funded through grants by Connect US Fund and the Ploughshares Fund.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...erican_Council

As portrayed at the Huffington Post.


Beheshteh Farshneshani
Research Associate, National Iranian American Council

A Neocon Upstart Attacks Academic Freedom and Iranian American Views



I thought it would be a typical Thursday at work last week, but as soon as I arrived to the office, an associate pulled me aside and pointed to a series of defamatory tweets against me and theNational Iranian American Council (NIAC), the organization for which I intern.
The tweets were directed at me by neoconservative upstarts Sohrab Ahmari and Peter Kohanloo in response to comments I tweeted (here and here) regarding an article written by Ahmari demonizing American academics who had recently travelled to Iran.

At the time, I was completely unaware of the author's ideological affiliation and only later was it revealed to me that Ahmari is a fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a neocon think tank in London. In a recent article, MJ Rosenberg provides a wonderful exposé revealing the agendas of Ahmari and some of his associates:

"Ahmari, the neocons' favorite Iranian, is very much in the mold of the neocons' favorite Iraqi. During the run-up to the 2003 invasion Ahmed Chalabi was their darling because, as an Iraqi émigré, he was thought to have unique credibility. Neocons loved hearing an Iraqi say that invading Iraq would not only prove successful but would be welcomed by his fellow Iraqis. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a fake, whose agenda was almost entirely personal. The war he and his friends promoted was an infamous catastrophe. And, to put it mildly, the invasion he told us that Iraqis would welcome was not welcomed."

To neoconservatives' disappointment, Iranian Americans, including myself, are unlikely to be familiar with the names of Ahmari or Kohanloo, let alone give those who argue for war on their motherland any credibility. As Rosenberg correctly observers, "Neither of these spokesmen [Ahmari and Kohanloo] have a following, either among Iranian Americans or Iranians, a fact that probably makes them deeply resentful of the Iranian-American organization that does, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC)."

It is no wonder Ahmari was so quick to take my personal tweets and turn them into a diatribe against NIAC. I simply assumed he was either an angry neo-royalist or an amateur journalist fixed on very superficial notions of liberty which, as an Iranian American, I felt compelled to confront. Therefore my comments were and proudly remain to be a reflection of my own views, not NIAC's or anyone else.

In his article, Ahmari condemns three American professors, stating that "all three should be ashamed" for participating in a conference on the Occupy Wall Street movement held at Tehran University in Iran. "The mere presence of intellectuals from the free world," Ahmari says "allows tyrants to burnish their otherwise stained reputations and overcome their sense of isolation."

The rest of the "article" is at the link below, if you can stand it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/behesh...b_1469656.html

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Kool Walk'n Charlie also known as Barry does it again