I have often been asked why someone with my credentials joined the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) — a political institution, not “nonpartisan” as it sometimes suggests — and advanced the interests of Iran’s ruling clerics, who now lead the world in human rights violations, with a regime that ranks number one in executions per capita.

They also ask why one would work with an organization that is run by a director who is not even Iranian-American; not an American citizen, but holds Iranian and Swedish passports?

Before coming to the United States, I did not know about NIAC and no one I knew in Iran was aware of it either.

Although I wanted to contribute socially in helping Iranian-American communities in the U.S., I also did not want to join a partisan political organization that pretended to help the communities but instead was partisan and sought money, fame, and media attention.

At first, NIAC seemed fine: its mission statement says, “The National Iranian American Council is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the voice of Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between the American and Iranian people.”

But soon after joining, I discovered several issues.

First, after joining NIAC in a voluntary and unpaid capacity, I felt as if I were back in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I began receiving calls and emails from NIAC indicating that some media outlets were introducing me as “ambassador” for NIAC. Well, one does not always get to choose what title the TV media outlets or magazine use to introduce one. Further, in many instances, journalists would Google my name and find it listed as ambassador for NIAC on its website.

I was still wondering why NIAC would be opposed to the idea that media introduces me as their ambassador. Later on, I encountered an article which said:

“NIAC’s inner contradictions never cease to surprise me, but then I guess that is the nature of Politics. Trita Parsi who staunchly opposed Western intervention in Libya virtually blaming it on Sarkozy’s warmongering and conforted [sic] in his views by the ever clueless moralist Hamid Dabashi accusing the hidden agenda’s of Western ‘Imperialism’ with his Broken record rants on European ‘Neo Colonialism’ while people were being mercilessly slaughtered by Libya’s Caligula has now added to it’s [sic] new list of Ambassador’s [sic] for 2012 an Iranian academic of Syrian heritage. But One who for a change seems to speak some sense in regard to a country he seems to understand far more deeply than NIAC understands Iran…”

It seemed most likely their opposition to me being introduced as their ambassador had to do with my personal views, which differed from those of NIAC. I criticized Iran’s political establishments, strongly condemned human right violations, criticized the Syrian regime for the bloodshed, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for assisting the Syrian regime.

It soon felt as if my freedom of expression were being taken away. I started to worry that a journalist somewhere might quote an interview or text and use the title “Ambassador to the National Iranian American Council,” if he might have found my name on its website. I would then have to track down the journalist, find his or her contacts, and plead with him or her to remove the title. I was also worried that I might say something on television or write something that NIAC might not like. These fears of expressing myself freely were similar to those that I grew up with having lived and worked in Iran and Syria.

I was also wondering why, if NIAC had issues with my personal views, it kept me for some months more. Perhaps, I wondered, it might have had to do with what I had mentioned to them earlier: that I knew some philanthropists who might donate money to the institution.

I also felt that NIAC’s image was bigger than what the organization really was. Its website gave the impression that it is large, influential institution, and only works to advance the interests of all Iranian-Americans.

Many Iranian-Americans had mentioned that the NIAC did not represent them, and that it is solely a political institution pursuing its own interests. Some argued that NIAC’s policies did not seem to be aimed at improving the lives of Iranian-Americans, but were political and partisan policies more likely aimed at making more money, getting more fame, media publicity and self-promotion, satisfying those who provide funding to them, or going towards where the money is.

I also started to wonder whether the NIAC and Trita Parsi’s lawsuit against the journalist Hassan Daioleslam, which they lost, was a way to silence criticism, restrict freedom of expression and of the press, frighten people and silence journalists.

The appellate judges wrote:

“Throughout 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. Many of these documents went to the heart of Daioleslam’s defense. The Appellants’ failure to produce documents in a timely manner forced Daioleslam — whom they had hualed into court — to waste resources and time deposing multiple witnesses and subpoenaing third parties for emails the Appellants should have turned over. 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.”

…

“We have previously recognized a trial judge’s authority to punish and deter abuses of the discovery process, and we do so again today. A court without the authority to sanction conduct that so plainly abuses the judicial process cannot function. We affirm the bulk of the District Court’s sanctions as the wages of Appellants’ dilatory, dishonest, and intransigent conduct, though in a couple of minor respects, we reverse and remand for reconsideration under the proper standard.”

Moreover, during the

“one of the three appellate judges in the Court of Appeals, Judge Robert Wilkins reminded NIAC and Trita Parsi of their numerous false and misleading declarations to the court and told NIAC’s attorney: “I have got to tell you that your client is lucky that I was not the district judge, because you will be here appealing much more severe and higher sanctions because I think he [the district court judge] had extreme patience in dealing with lots of misleading and false representations and countless times when your client was trying to slice the baloney very thin, as far as trying to parse what their obligations were.”

The defendant, Daioleslam, stated,

“NIAC sued me in April 2008 to break me under financial burdens. I hired a lawyer and paid from my own pocket until I had no more resources. I asked for help and in September 2008 contacted the Legal Project at Middle East Forum. They contacted several law firms and finally, Sidley Austin LLP and Senior Litigation Partner and 2012 Best Lawyers’ Chicago Products Liability Lawyer of the Year Mr. Timothy Kapshandy graciously accepted to defend me pro bono.

I am grateful to the Iranian-American community, to the Middle East Forum, to Dr. Daniel Pipes, to Sidley Austin and its attorneys who defended my case, notably Mr. Timothy Kapshandy.”

It seemed that the media outlets, politicians, or some institutions that give funds or grants seem to have fallen for the image of the NIAC as being very influential in the U.S. and Iran, having very powerful connections in Iran or in the U.S., and being the representative of almost all Iranian-Americans. Those who are major decision makers in Iran — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior officials of the IRGC — keep issues within their gilded circle and those Iranians to whom we have access, are not the major decision makers in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To illustrate this issue, one possible example is the case of Siamak Namazi, a friend of the NIAC director and co-founder of NIAC. If the NIAC and Trita Parsi were really influential in Iran and had connections with the major decision makers, they would have most likely had Namazi released instead of him languishing as a political prisoner in Tehran’s Evin prison.

It seems that the White House, the mainstream media, some journalists and politicians, and some donor organizations have been totally fooled by the exaggerated influence and image of the NIAC.

Nevertheless, the “Ploughshares” group, which the White House has identified as a key surrogate in “selling” the Iran nuclear deal, gave NIAC more than $281,000.

The Associated Press’s Big Story added that,

“In The New York Times Magazine article, [Ben] Rhodes [deputy national security adviser] explained how the administration worked with nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and even friendly reporters to build support for the seven-nation accord that curtailed Iran’s nuclear activity and softened international financial penalties on Tehran.

“‘We created an echo chamber,’ said Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, adding that ‘outside groups like Ploughshares’ helped carry out the administration’s message effectively.”

The editor and publisher Robert Lifson argues, “In the wake of Ben Rhodes chortling to the New York Times over how easy it was to fool the American media to get favorable coverage of the Iran nuclear deal comes news that the media “echo chamber” (as Rhodes called it) was funded by a hard-left foundation.”

Some questions remain unanswered: Where and how did NIAC spend this money?

According to the Washington Times, “Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an acclaimed Iranian filmmaker and unofficial spokesman for Iran’s opposition Green Movement” told The Times previously that “I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic.”

Journalists, policy makers, and organizations should be careful not to exaggerate the NIAC’s influence and give it more attention than it deserves; doing so might only help the NIAC to gain publicity, funding, access to American politicians, and so on.

Two crucial issues that NIAC possibly fears are: Ignoring the NIAC or following up with what Washington Times stated about the possibility of violations of federal law, “Now a lawsuit has brought to light numerous documents that raise questions about whether the organization is using that influence to lobby for policies favorable to Iran in violation of federal law.”

The Washington Times adds that

“Much of NIAC’s less public work has come to light through e-mails, documents, board of directors meeting minutes and strategy memos that were made public as part of the discovery process during a current defamation lawsuit against a critic of the group… Law enforcement experts who reviewed some of the documents, which were made available to The Times, by way of the defendant in the suit, said that e-mails between Mr. Parsi and Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Javad Zarif – and an internal review of the Lobbying Disclosure Act – offer evidence that the group has operated as an undeclared lobby and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws…. Neither Mr. Parsi nor anyone else at NIAC has registered as a lobbyist or filed papers with the Justice Department as a local agent of the Iranian government or Iranian companies. Mr. Parsi was shown and read the documents cited in this article.”

The Washington Times asked two ex- federal law enforcement officials about this issue:

“‘Arranging meetings between members of Congress and Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations would in my opinion require that person or entity to register as an agent of a foreign power; in this case it would be Iran,’ said one of those officials, former FBI associate deputy director Oliver ‘Buck’ Revell. The other official, former FBI special agent in counterintelligence and counterterrorism Kenneth Piernick, said, ‘It appears that this may be lobbying on behalf of Iranian government interests. Were I running the counterintelligence program at the bureau now, I would have cause to look into this further.'”

The Trump administration is considering designating the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) a foreign terrorist organization, and Human Rights Watch is outraged.

“Designating the Muslim Brotherhood a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ would wrongly equate it with violent extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and make their otherwise lawful activities illegal,” said Human Rights Watch. The press release went on to repeat the old claim that “…the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt officially renounced violence in the 1970s and sought to promote its ideas through social and political activities”.

Adding its voice to the Muslim Brotherhood’s apologists, the New York Times wrote:

“A political and social organization with millions of followers, the Brotherhood officially renounced violence decades ago and won elections in Egypt after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Affiliated groups have joined the political systems in places like Tunisia and Turkey, and President Barack Obama long resisted pressure to declare it a terrorist organization.”

For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood has pushed a specific public narrative, intended exclusively for Western consumption. Just how extremely effective the MB has been was demonstrated in 2011, when then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, unbelievably, claimed that the MB was “… largely secular… has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam…They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt…there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence”.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al-Banna made jihadist violence a focal point of his movement. He wrote, “Death is art” and “Fighting the unbelievers involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam.” The MB inducts members into its deliberatively secretive and opaque network with the pledge that “Jihad is our way” and “Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

It is, in fact, difficult to overstate the importance of the MB in promoting and spreading jihad in the 20th century and onwards[1]. As the UK government’s expert review of the MB, published in December 2015, concluded:

“[The Muslim Brotherhood’s] public narrative — notably in the West — emphasized engagement not violence. But there have been significant differences between Muslim Brotherhood communications in English and Arabic; there is little evidence that the experience of power in Egypt has caused a rethinking in the Muslim Brotherhood of its ideology or conduct. UK official engagement with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood produced no discernible change in their thinking. Indeed even by mid-2014 statements from Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood-linked media platforms seem to have deliberately incited violence”.

The UK review goes on to say:

“The Muslim Brotherhood at all levels have repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians. The Muslim Brotherhood facilitate funding for Hamas. The leadership of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, its Jordanian counterpart and Hamas are closely connected. There are wider links with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates throughout the region and senior Muslim Brotherhood figures and associates have justified attacks against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan”.

In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood not only funds one of the most virulent terrorist groups, Hamas, but there is barely any daylight between the various leaderships of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan and Hamas. (According to article two of the Hamas Charter, “The Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas] is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times”).

The indictment could not be more damning.

Another terrorist group rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood is Egyptian terrorist group Jamaat al-Islamiyya. This group came into existence, conveniently, when it broke away from the Muslim Brotherhood, after the latter denounced the use of violence in the 1970s. Creating a new terrorist organization was a brilliant strategy, which allowed for the Muslim Brotherhood to polish its image as a peaceful organization, leaving the dirty terrorist work to so-called “offshoots” or proxies. Indeed, Jamaat al-Islamiyya used the writings of the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, as an ideological basis. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted and jailed in the United States as the perpetrator of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, was the spiritual leader of Jamaat al-Islamiyya.

The New York Times itself featured a lengthy article called “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror” about Sayyid Qutb in its magazine in March 2003, stating that he was “…the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, their Karl Marx… their guide”. Most of the terrorists who later founded al Qaeda were rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden was apparently recruited as a young man to the MB, whereas Ayman al-Zawahiri joined the MB at the age of 14 and went on to found the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, “an organization that holds many of the same beliefs as the MB but simply refuses to renounce violence inside Egypt”, according to The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). It subsequently merged with bin Laden’s organization. The lead hijacker of 9/11, Mohammed Atta, was also a member of the MB. The list goes on.

“The objective, then, is to strike terror into the hearts of God’s enemies, who are also the enemies of the advocates of Islam…” — Sayyid Qutb, chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s.

In January 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt released an official statement calling on its supporters to “prepare” for jihad:

“It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in the process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent in our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom.”

The statement also quotes at length the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, disproving the claim that the Muslim Brotherhood has broken with its violent past:

“Imam al-Bana prepared the jihad brigades that he sent to Palestine to kill the Zionist usurpers and the second [Supreme] Guide Hassan al-Hudaybi reconstructed the ‘secret apparatus’ to bleed the British occupiers.”

After the official statement was released, Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), stated:

“Muslim Brothers have been committing violent acts for a very long time. Under [Egypt’s former president, Mohamed] Morsi, Muslim Brothers tortured protesters outside the presidential palace. After Morsi’s ouster, they have frequently attacked security forces and state property… But until now, the official line from the Brotherhood was to support this implicitly by justifying its causes, without justifying the acts themselves. So the Brotherhood’s open call to jihad doesn’t necessarily mean a tactical shift, but a rhetorical one.”

Terrorism expert and national security reporter Patrick Poole added:

“It [the call for jihad] invokes the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist past, specifically mentioning the ‘special apparatus’ that waged terror in the 1940s and 1950s until the Nasser government cracked down on the group, as well as the troops sent by founder Hassan al-Banna to fight against Israel in 1948. It concludes saying that the Brotherhood has entered a new stage, warns of a long jihad ahead, and to prepare for martyrdom… What remains to be seen is how this announcement will be received inside the Beltway, where the vast majority of the ‘experts’ have repeatedly said that the Brotherhood had abandoned its terrorist past, which it is now clearly reviving, and had renounced violence,”

There is nothing peaceful, lawful or democratic about the Muslim Brotherhood. It believes today what it has always believed and openly stated: that a caliphate, where sharia law will rule, must be established through jihad. Refusing to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization would be a grave mistake, playing straight into the strategy of the Brotherhood and, once more, revealing to the world the extreme gullibility of the West and its boundless willingness to believe anything the Muslim Brotherhood throws its way.

Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

• Human Rights Watch, an organization that is supposed to look out for victims of human rights abuses, not abusers of human rights is begging US decision makers not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood — which, if it had its way, would take away everyone’s human rights and substitute them with sharia law — a foreign terrorist organization.

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• “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope”. — Muslim Brotherhood motto.

• Conveniently, Hamas — which according to article two of its charter, is “one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine” — is, it seems, working on a new charter. The new charter would would declare that Hamas is not a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its always having been so. That way, is the Muslim Brotherhood’s “narrative” of newfound “nonviolence” suddenly supposed to become believable?

Muslim Brotherhood Front Group Seeking Removal of Listing as a “Terrorism Entity”

by Thomas Quiggin  •  March 27, 2017 at 4:00 am

• The application for judicial review made by IRFAN and Majid also attempts to distance themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood. This seems a bit difficult. Hamas itself was founded as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to Article Two of the Hamas Charter.

• This support for Hamas goes back to at least 1992.

The International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN) has been listed as a terrorism entity in Canada since 2014. It was also identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group during testimony to the Canadian Senate along with the Muslim Association of Canada, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and Islamic Relief Canada.

The listing as a terrorism entity followed the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) 2011 revocation of their charitable status after a multi-year investigation showed that IRFAN had been funding Hamas, otherwise known as the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian territories. The CRA also made it clear that IRFAN was the successor organization to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services (JFHS) which had also been funding Hamas. The CRA also observed that IRFAN was deliberately constructed to circumvent the Government of Canada so that it could fund Hamas after the Government of Canada refused to grant the JFHS charitable status.

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Canada: Bring on the Islamization!

by Judith Bergman  •  March 23, 2017 at 5:00 am

• The mayor of Brampton, Ontario, Linda Jeffrey, was also seemingly unconcerned about the calls in Toronto to murder Jews.

• The political establishment also does not seem concerned that imams are saying that the Islamic ruling allowing slaves is still in force. Meanwhile, statistics show that when it comes to hate crimes, Jews are by far the most targeted group.

• No one — neither media, nor politicians — even bothered to ask whether there is a significant connection between the virulent Jew-hatred being preached in mosques and the disproportionately high occurrence of hate crimes against Jews. Instead, the entire Canadian parliament is preoccupied with banning “Islamophobia”.

Imams in Canadian mosques have been inciting the killing of “infidels”, primarily Jews, for years. This agitation appears to have had no visible impact on Canadian parliamentarians, evidently too busy with petitions and motions banning alleged “Islamophobia”.

In 2009, for example, Toronto-area imam Said Rageah, at the Abu Huraira Centre, called on Allah to “destroy” the enemies of Islam from within and “damn” the “infidel” Jews and Christians.

“Allah protect us from the fitna [sedition, affliction] of these people; Allah protect us from the evil agenda of these people; Allah destroy them from within themselves, and do not allow them to raise their heads” prayed the imam.

In 2012, Sheikh Abdulqani Mursal, imam at Masjid Al Hikma mosque in Toronto, explained that Jews are destined to be killed by the Muslims. Citing text from a hadith, he said: