Jack Straw, Iran regime lobby, suspended from Labour party

 

Jack Straw, Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, with long history of working with the Iranian regime who was involved in negotiating a deal in the run-up to 2003 Iraq war for bombing Iranian opposition members in that country that killed dozens of PMOI (MEK) members, has been suspended from Labour Party in a ‘cash for access’ scandal.

Jack Straw accused of being a ‘politician for hire’ was one of the members of the British Parliament that was secretly filmed by the Daily Telegraph in a joint investigation with Channel 4's Dispatches programme apparently offering to use their influence in return for money.

Undercover reporters claiming to represent a Hong Kong-based communications agency contacted two MPs including Jack Straw to say they were seeking to hire senior British politicians to join the company's advisory board.

At one meeting, Straw is alleged to have described how he operated "under the radar" to use his influence to change EU rules for a commodity company which paid him £60,000 a year.

Jack Straw has a long history of working with the Iranian regime.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in run-up 2003 Iraq war, Jack Straw and the Britain's Ambassador to Tehran, Richard Dalton, negotiated a deal with Iran, in which coalition forces would bomb Iranian dissidents living in Iraq in return for a promise by Tehran not to interfere with the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.

On the part of Iranian regime Hassan Rouhani, the current president and then head of Supreme National Security Council, and Kamal Kharrazi, then Foreign Minister were involved.

“The coalition's bombing of non-combatant Iranian dissidents killed fifty people,” and the regime did not keep the promise, according to Gatestone Institute.

“Most recently, in September 2014, Straw wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph in which he praised the Rouhani government; advocated that Iran should be allowed to continue its research of nuclear technology, and encouraged the West to work with Iran to achieve ‘stability in Syria, northern Iraq and the Lebanon’ -- a remarkable statement, given that Iran is the source of the instability.”

Jack straw’s lobbing on the part of the Iranian regime has continued since then.

Following a trip to Iran paid by the regime in 2014 Jack Straw told Radio 4’s Today programme how he and four other MPs had been visiting Tehran to see for themselves what grounds for hope were now being opened up by the new Iranian regime under President Hassan Rouhani.

Christopher Booker, prominent British commentator, wrote in article on January 14: “Straw admitted that of course he hadn’t spoken to any “dissidents”, who might have told him about the 600 Iranians hanged this year, two-thirds of them since the “moderate reformer” Mr Rouhani took office.”

“It was Jack Straw who admitted, when he was home secretary in 2001, that it was “at the behest” of Tehran that he had proscribed the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI), part of the main Iranian dissident movement, as “terrorists” – a ruling the government only reluctantly withdrew on the orders of Chief Justice Phillips, when he ruled that it had not been able to produce a shred of evidence to support Mr Straw’s actions.”