The following is the English translation of an investigative report published in Arabic language daily Asharq al-Awsat on May 6 on the activities of the Iranian regime's lobby in Washington.
by: Hossein Abdol-Hossein
Since the mid-90s Tehran’s approach has been working to form lobby groups in Washington with financial backing from Iran, and with the direct supervision of Iranian Mission to the United Nations.
Iran has been establishing these lobbies, with Zoroastrian Iranian-Swedish mulattos in Washington leading the pack, hoping to defeat the mightiest lobbies in the U.S., and above all the pro-Israel lobby.
In my office in Washington I received an invitation from the prestigious ‘Woodrow Wilson Center’ asking me to take part in a seminar entitled ‘Iran, the Next Five Years: Change or More of the Same?’
The Iran topic is hot and these types of seminars often attract the attention of a crowd of concerned American officials, experts, and reporters.
I opened the invitation, I knew one of the speakers, an American journalist writing about the Middle East with some objectivity. The other speakers were not American and this prompted me to carry out research into them.
One of them is an Iranian by the name of Bijhan Khaje-Pour, who runs a consulting firm. It appears that this firm is supposedly is based in Austria, but I have been reading his name as a speaker in special seminars about Iran here in the US capital.
One of them is an Iranian by the name of Bijhan Khaje-Pour, who runs a consulting firm. It appears that this firm is supposedly is based in Austria, but I have been reading his name as a speaker in special seminars about Iran here in the US capital.
Through a quick follow up, I learned that the alleged consulting firm is called 'Atieh International', a subsidiary of the 'Atieh Group' in Tehran, presenting itself on its website as an expert in offering 'support and advice to foreign firms to enter and be successful in Iran’s markets”.
The second speaker is a French researcher named Bernard Horcard on whom my research led me to an interview with Euronews in April. In this interview he said: “We have been saying every day for 34 years that the Islamic republic is on the verge of crumbling. However, this Islamic republic remains intact. In fact it is the most stable government in the Middle East and we see this especially after the Arab Spring, and this is a country will continue to progress”.
The second speaker is a French researcher named Bernard Horcard on whom my research led me to an interview with Euronews in April. In this interview he said: “We have been saying every day for 34 years that the Islamic republic is on the verge of crumbling. However, this Islamic republic remains intact. In fact it is the most stable government in the Middle East and we see this especially after the Arab Spring, and this is a country will continue to progress”.
Horcard then goes on to ask that Iran be given a chance to enrich uranium, and that reaching a deal with will lead to sanctions being lifted and relations normalized with the West, especially the US.
The third speaker was Roberto Toscano of Italy, who was his country’s ambassador to Iran from 2003 to 2008. In an article in Huffington Post, Toscano downplayed the Iranians' ‘Down with America’ slogan and wrote that it is better for the US to not pay any attention to the regime’s anti-United States rhetoric and continue to open their arms to them, or else the only way left will be war. In this case the Iranians will unite behind their leader, and their ‘Death to America’ slogan will find a true meaning.
Toscano ends by saying: “When Iranian-Americans (I am thinking in particular of those adhering to the National Iranian-American Council -NIAC) say 'don't bomb Iran' they are not saying it because they are soft on the regime, but because they know that would give the regime a new lease on life, and at the same time would turn anti-Americanism from regime liturgy and rhetoric into an authentic and popular phenomenon.”
However, the seminar director, as stated in this invitation, is an Iranian American by the name of Hale Esfandiari. She is the director of the Middle East program at the institute and the Iranian regime detained her for four months in Evin Prison’s solitary confinement in 2007. Then they released her and from then on Esfandiari has been insisting on the necessity for the US to open up its relations with Iran, lift sanctions on Tehran and allow it to continue its nuclear program. That is why Esfandiari holds seminars in the center where she works and runs petitions to have the sanctions lifted.
http://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/terrorism-fundamentalism/16510-iranian-regime-lobby-tehran-s-men-in-washington
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