Rise of the ‘Iran Lobby’

Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran

Yet another new entrant in the Iran Lobby’s efforts is the Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran CNAPI bills itself as:

a transpartisan coalition of diverse groups which share the objective of promoting responsible and effective U.S. diplomacy and leadership in resolving long-standing tensions between the U.S. and Iran.  Campaign supporters share the basic core beliefs outlined in the mission statement and urge direct, sustained, and comprehensive talks without preconditions between the governments of the United States and Iran as a realistic way to resolve all outstanding issues…Supporters of CNAPI believe sustained, direct, bilateral, and comprehensive talks without preconditions between the governments of the United States and Iran represent a realistic way to resolve long-standing conflicts that destabilize the Middle East and by extension, threaten the global economy.⁷⁸

CNAPI’s official partners include more than three dozen organizations, among them CASMII, CAIR, the Episcopal Church, NIAC, and the Open Society Policy Center. The list of CNAPI “Experts” is likewise an interesting one that includes: Amb. James Dobbins, Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation and a retired career State Department diplomat; Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, the Senior Military Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; Phil Giraldi, former CIA counterterrorism specialist; the writer Stephen Kinzer; Amb. William Miller, Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Amb. Thomas Pickering and, of course, the ubiquitous Trita Parsi.

CNAPI launched its pro-Iran activities in February and March of 2008 with a cross-country event called “The Folly of Attacking Iran Tour” which crisscrossed the United States. NIAC was among the Tour’s “Partner Organizations”, while its “Endorsers” included: Code Pink; Common Cause; Payvand Iran News (a pro-Khatami news organization operated by Iranian expatriates out of the San Francisco Bay area); the American Iranian Friendship Council in Portland (whose online website suggests its affinity with NIAC and Payvand Iran News); Congressman Earl Blumenauer’s District Office; the Middle East Institute at Columbia University; and many others. The featured speaker at each stop along the way was Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times foreign correspondent and author of Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.

The not-so-subtle message of the “Folly” tour was: “Together, we can push our elected leaders to support real talks with Iran without pre-conditions – and to oppose a military attack. Join the effort by asking your congressional representatives to support diplomacy, not confrontation, with Iran.”⁷⁹

Other tour speakers included such familiar figures associated with the Iran Lobby as: Barbara Slavin, now an editor with the Washington Times; retired Brig. Gen. John Johns; Rep. Earl Blumenauer; NIAC’s Trita Parsi; and retired Lt. Gen. Robert Gard.  Among the other participants were author Dr. Reza Aslan, William A. Nitze, an energy and environmental policy expert, and Dr. Ervand Abrahamian, an Iranian-born Armenian scholar and author.

As an example of the Coalition for a New American Policy on Iran’s pro-Tehran stance, a snapshot of the busy schedule of Stephen Kinzer will serve. “CNAPI Expert” Kinzer, the former New York Times reporter who now teaches journalism and political science at Northwestern University, is an outspoken advocate of a U.S. foreign policy of rapprochement with Iran. Writing in the Chicago Tribune in May 2008, he beats the familiar drums for “direct, bilateral, comprehensive and unconditional negotiations” with Iran and speculates that were such talks to occur, “the U.S. might soon discover that these two countries share many security interests.”⁸⁰

Kinzer may or may not be aware of the Tehran regime links and agenda among his CNAPI colleagues – or know that CNAPI official partner CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate and unindicted co-conspirator in a federal terror funding case. Since he is a veteran foreign affairs correspondent for a paper like the New York Times, however, it strains credulity to suppose that he would not be knowledgeable about these facts.  For instance, a simple online check shows that at the same time the Payvand Iran News website carried approving accounts of Kinzer’s pro-Iran activism on Capitol Hill, including his meetings with congressmen and support for a 2008 Congressional Resolution (Con Res 321) that called for direct diplomatic engagement between the U.S. and Iran,⁸¹ Payvand’s homepage also carried links to Tehran regime media outlets such as Baztab, Ettela’at, Jomhouri Eslami, Quds, Kayhan, and IRNA.⁸²

As with other Iran Lobby initiatives, CNAPI and its fellow advocates for direct talks with Iran’s mullahs have made inroads onto Capitol Hill. As described above, one key ally there is Minneapolis’ Muslim Democratic congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison, who hosted a “Public Forum on U.S. Foreign Affairs with Iran” in Minneapolis in May 2008.  Ellison’s co-panelist was NIAC’s Trita Parsi.

Then on June 10, 2008, CNAPI co-sponsored a “National Call-in Day for Diplomacy with Iran” together with CAIR. The event and press conference, called “Time to Talk with Iran,”was held on Capitol Hill on the terrace outside the Cannon House Office Building. The idea of this stunt was to make live calls “to ordinary Iranians in Tehran” using a “row of 60’s-era red ‘hotline’ telephones” set up especially for the event. CAIR’s National Director Tahra Goraya plugged the call-in, saying, “Increasing understanding through dialogue is a critical step in preventing a potential U.S.-Iran conflict.”⁸³  CNAPI speakers called for direct, bilateral and comprehensive talks without preconditions between the governments of the United States and Iran.