Up until about 20 years ago, I was very active focusing on Iranian politics and to work on (tryied) to create a united front including all democratically minded Iranians abroad to gather around a simple platform of an alternative to the major forces of the time, the IRI, the Cult of Rajvi, the followers of the Pahlavi with their extreme right supporters and the small but vocal extreme left.
I spend countless hours setting up, maintaining and organizing the first Iranian internet group called "Democracy Network of Iran" and helped with the side project of "Iranian Human Rights Working Group".
It all started in early 90s and lasted about 8 years, during that time, we have about 5000 members (by the time the largest online community), a fully working mailing list, a large web site and many side projects with Amnestt, IHRWG and other HR groups.
My main focus for years was to document the atrocities of the regime, mainly the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988. Something that no one, except small groups in the left and the cult of Rajavi were talking about. The Iranian diaspora in UK and US would not even mention it, because in their minds, those 1000s of young women and men who were killed by the regime, were all to blame for their loss of their beloved Pahlavi dynasty, directly or indirectly and they would not even consider helping to highlight that as a major issue and would rather focus on "regime change" with the help of Americans.
So came Khatami and his reformer movement, our discussions turned hostile, many believed that the opening of the IRI was possible and Khatami could be the Gorbachev of IRI and his reform movement was the Iranian Perestroika. Many left the group and joined one of our younger members (Trita Parsi) the Zoroastrian Iranian kid living in Sweden who was hell bent on supporting the reform movement in order to prevent a possible US/Iran war. He then later moved to US, got his PhD in political science and was one of the founders of the NIAC, the group that was mainly built to promote the interest of Iranian people and to give an impartial "Iran" oriented alternative to the MEMRI that was the only source of Persian/Farsi translation in US, funded by Mossad/AIPAC, MEMRI had build a strong grip over politicians in US and was providing them with weekly newsletter with translation of the worst of the worst of countries in the ME with main focus on Iran and it's proxies in Lebanon and Iraq.
So came 9/11, and with that, Bush's famous axis of evil and putting Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the main enemies of the united states, despite the fact that Iran was the only supporter of the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban movement and went almost into war with them after a convoy of humanitarian aid and diplomats of Iranian consulate in Mazar Sharif were slaughtered by the Taliban.
No matter what Khatami did to please Americans, including letting them use Iranian airspace to attack the Taliban or send shipment from US military hubs as well as Europe to Afghanistan, changed the mindset of the Americans. The American for New Century, the group of neocons with Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton to push for targeting Iran after Afghanistan. The results were devastating for Khatami and his reform movement, the conservative forces in the country, with Ahmadinejad (the conservative mayor of Tehran by the time) criticized him for being soft of US and causing more harm than good by letting US use Iranian "resources" to invade Afghanistan and later Iraq.
So DNI died out shortly after 9/11 as many Iranian Americans were simply too scared to be part of anything "Iranians" and others used the group as a jumping start for their career in US as advisors, reporters, translators and even lobbyist for neocons who were throwing money at anyone who would sing by their music!
I stopped all my contacts, kept the group's web site and mailing archive on my homepage and quit all my involvement with any Iranian diaspora.
I was pulled into politics one more time during the 2009 riots after the election of Ahmadinejad for his second term and the sad and brutal failure of desperate young Iranians who thought the criminal Mousavi was their savior and fought and died for him as they saw Ahmadinejad as the one who lost the election, but was put in place with the direct order of Khamenei and the conservative members of the Iranian Guardian Council, with backing of both Sepah (IRGC) and Basij (Militia).
My friends in US gathered around NIAC, they focused on working on normalization of relation between Iran and US and with Obama in change, many of them got an opening in US to support their views and helped John Kerry and Obama administration during their work on the road toward JCPOA.
Ever since the signing of JCPOA, the group became a main target of AIPAC who saw them as their biggest enemy in the US, specially since most of the members in the group are prominent Iranians in top industrial, educational and political positions in the US. Most are not usually political and their goal was mainly to ease the sanctions that were hurting the Iranian people much much more than it was hurting the government, who's position was actually getting stronger and it's corrupt leaders richer since they were using their position and contact to smuggle US/EU made products into the country as well as selling oil and other products to Europe and other countries by avoiding US sanctions.
When Trump got into power, the Pahlavi and extreme right groups of Iranian diaspora, as well as the cult of Rajavi who were removed from US terror list by Obama saw and opening for them to push for regime change in Iran and receiving money from various shady NGOs involved in many operations backed by Saudi, Israeli and Americans to push for a colored revolution in Iran, like they had successfully done in many former eastern blocks. The attacks against NIAC became more severe after Trump unilaterally removed US signature from JCPOA and put much harsher sanctions against Iranians (not just the regime) including the famous Muslim ban (which was actually built on the law Obama passed long before Trump). NIAC played a strong role of being the voice of Iranians in US to fight the injustice of the Muslim Ban and managed to help many stranded Iranian university student who were caught in limbo during the early days of the ban and finally managed to push for a change (together with CodePink, Amnesty US and ACLU) to exclude Iranians green card, H1B (work) visa and student visa holders from the ban and allowing many of them to return to their homes in the US.
The Current protests in Iran became another chance for the now open Israeli American groups, the Saudi backed "Iran International" TV channel, the CIA's Farsi programs of Radio Farda and VOA Persian to get together with the extreme right groups (Iranian GOP members), Pahlavi loyalists and members and supporters of Rajavi/NCRI to start a vicious and massive attack against NIAC and specially Negar Mortazavi the prominent reporter and political analyst as "paid by the mullahs" or "Iranian regime's agents" among other things.
It makes me angry and sick to stomach to see how much money, energy and time these people are spending on destroying NIAC instead of focusing on creating a united front against the brutal regime of IRI and it's murderous thugs in and outside Iran.
I am once again, despite my strong feeling going to leave the political discussion about this subject and this is the last time I am posting something about it.
It was a long time ago I wrote anything this long, I am sure it has a lot of grammar errors, but don't have time to go back and correct it. It is just my 2c of a short history of NIAC and they reason for people attacking them for those who are not familiar with the group or who is who in this nasty and dirty "war" that is going on.
#Iran #Politics #History #IranProtests #Diaspora #IranUprising #AIPAC #MEMRI #NCRI #NIAC #TritaParsi #NegarMortazavi #GOP #Journalism #HumanRights #Personal
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