In January, three senators sent a formal letter to the Department of Justice exhorting it to investigate the National Iranian American Council (NIAC)—a lobbying group in favor of improved relations between Washington and Tehran, and a reliable source of anti-Israel propaganda—for violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Michael Johns, Jr. lays out the case:
Since its 2002 founding, NIAC’s vision for getting Washington to remove sanctions against the Iranian regime and to reduce or even end its military engagement in the region, including strategic ties with Israel and Saudi Arabia, has drawn the attention and support of a variety of predominantly left-of-center philanthropic foundations. . . . In 2015, NIAC also launched NIAC Action, a lobbying arm that expanded its reach directly into American electoral politics.
A review of NIAC policy stances reveals that the organization frequently echoes Tehran’s rhetoric in redirecting blame at the U.S., not the regime, for Iranian aggression and malfeasance. Its messaging this month, for example, is that U.S. sanctions—not the Iranian regime currently spending nearly $7 billion on its terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and billions more on corruption, foreign-arms export ,and nuclear-weapons development—is to blame for Iranian poverty and suffering.
In 2019, NIAC’s president, Jamal Abdim echoed an Iranian-regime conspiracy theory that Iranian attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman—allegations that were corroborated by the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany, and regional allies—were false-flag operations “orchestrated” by the Trump administration to provide a pretext for war with Iran. The list of similar regime-sympathetic positions held by NIAC goes all the way back to its founding.
Read more on National Review: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/an-iran-lobby-in-america/