{"id":233531,"date":"2021-01-22T10:36:37","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T15:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=233531"},"modified":"2023-02-01T05:18:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T04:18:25","slug":"iranian-propaganda-operates-freely-in-the-west-with-sources-both-overt-and-subtle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-resistance\/iranian-propaganda-operates-freely-in-the-west-with-sources-both-overt-and-subtle\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Propaganda Operates Freely in the West, With Sources Both Overt and Subtle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Meet
Meet some Iranian lobbies in West: (from left) Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Trita Parsi, Mohammad Javad zarif with Kaveh Afrasiabi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Tuesday, a so-called political scientist by the name of Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi made his first appearance before a US federal court<\/a> after being outed as a long-time agent of the Iranian regime. Since 2007, Afrasiabi had been quietly receiving payment from Iran\u2019s Permanent Mission to the United States, in blatant violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. His charging documents indicate that he ultimately received at least 265,000 dollars in exchange for activities that conveyed the Iranian regime\u2019s talking points to media outlets, members of Congress, and the general public.<\/p>\n

His story is not unique, and many serious critics of the regime have already seized upon it as a case study in the overall phenomenon of covert Iranian influence. In so doing, they have pointed out that while Afrasiabi, a 35-year resident of the United States, may not have been an obvious subject for scrutiny by law enforcement, the same cannot be said of other apparent members of the Iranian influence network. For many of those who have been targeted by that network, including Iranian expatriates advocating for domestic overthrow of Iran\u2019s theocratic dictatorship, Afrasiabi\u2019s arrest represents an opportunity to expose these other individuals and uproot the destructive propaganda they have sown into Western political discourse.<\/p>\n

The relevant content of allegations against the MEK<\/a> and the Iranian resistance can be traced back to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. And quite frequently, it can be found to have been conveyed through a familiar handful of pro-Iran lobbyists and supposed academics whose work is all but indistinguishable from Afrasiabi\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Chief among these is Trita Parsi<\/a>, the founder of the National Iranian-American Council\u00a0 (NIAC) whose activities outside of writing and media interviews include arranging meetings between members of Congress and Iranian officials like the current Foreign Minister Javad Zarif<\/a>. After those activities were revealed as part of discovery in a 2008 defamation lawsuit that Parsi himself filed in US court, former FBI associate deputy director Oliver Revell was quoted as saying that anyone who arranged such meetings would be required by law to register as an agent of the relevant foreign power.<\/p>\n

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Not only has such registration never been formally required of Parsi, but he has been permitted to continue his work with little noticeable scrutiny from American policymakers or journalists. Consequently, the number of articles on the NIAC website specifically targeting the MEK has grown to more than 80, and virtually identical articles have been pitched, sometimes successfully, to Western news outlets.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the further details of Iran\u2019s Western influence operations raise serious questions about how quickly Western policymakers and media figures might work in countering the effects of those operations. Parsi\u2019s obviously close and long-standing relationships with Iranian government officials should have made him an obvious target of scrutiny. But those relationships are not even the clearest warning sign that certain Americans have been willing to overlook. The pro-Iran lobby, which operates so openly throughout the US and Europe, even includes individuals who were once prominent figures in the Iranian regime and who still refuse to speak ill of its leading figures.<\/p>\n

This description applies, for instance, to Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a Princeton \u201cscholar\u201d and former member of Iran\u2019s National Security Council who was described in 2015 as \u201cIran\u2019s chief lobbyist\u201d by the Iranian American Forum. At that time, when the US and five other world powers were working toward a landmark nuclear deal with the Iranian regime, Mousavian told Germany\u2019s Die Welt that Iran already possessed the capability to make a nuclear bomb. The evident purpose of his remarks was to present the West with an ultimatum: either agree quickly to a deal or witness the rise of a nuclear Iran.<\/p>\n

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Mousavian, an Iranian terrorist turned Princeton scholar<\/div><\/div>
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