Sitting on stage before a hundred or so students, Mr. Larijani looks taken aback and says nothing. “Let me tell you what is weighing heavily on my heart,” the student continues. “I hate three things. One, I hate [President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
We must all remember and remind ourselves that the fight for human rights is based on principle not partisanship and politics.
Since the presidential election on November 4th 2008, the pro-Iranian regime lobby groups have tightened their belts for the upcoming hunting season. With the historic changes in the White House,…
Parsi did not stop here. He decided to found his own organization in 2002 and set up the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).5&7 Here too, the success story is amazing. He inspired so much confidence that less than a month after NIAC was founded, the National Endowment for Democracy gave him a grant. Normally, it takes at least 2 month for NED just to process a grant application, but here the whole process was accomplished in record time. Over the next few years, NED granted him about 200.000$.9
For a glimpse of this setup, you don’t have to wait for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s annual rant on the U.N. General Assembly stage. All you have to do is stroll through the main visitors’ lobby of the landmark U.N. building in Manhattan. In that lobby, by far the most prominent display is a row of eight portraits, framed in gold, and showing the lineup of secretaries-general from the U.N.’s founding at the end of World War II, through the current Ban Ki-Moon
Barack Obama’s election has sparked enthusiasm in Washington about the prospects for renewed engagement between the United States and Iran.
Why not drop preconditions and engage — as the National Iranian American Council, the Islamic republic’s de facto lobby in Washington, recommends?
Trita Parsi and 20 “Iran experts” advising Obama:
There is currently no significant support within Iran for extra-constitutional regime change.
A film by Joseph Akrami. Joseph Akrami is an award-wining independent filmmaker,
Director of Photography and a human rights activist who has worked
on numerous television documentaries and dramatic short and feature films.
Therefore, American corporations will be prohibited to deal with Iran’s oil companies as well as other Iranian financial institutions already listed in the appendix.
