Iran Focus
London, 04 Apr – Iran’s lobby in the US are doing everything they can to smear new national security advisor John Bolton, from calling him crazy to a warmonger to an extremist.
The National Iranian American Council and its president Trita Parsi are working particularly hard to discredit Bolton and stop the US from pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.
However, the national security advisor doesn’t need Congress’s approval and will be taking over on April 9 whether Parsi and the Iran Lobby like it or not. Also Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state nominee, is reportedly set for confirmation.
All in all, it looks like the White House is more prepared than ever to target Iran with a strategic approach that targets the mullahs for the support of terrorism, abuse of human rights, and their nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
There are also many problems facing Iran right now, from a freefalling economy that will only get worse once the US pulls out of the nuclear deal to a populace that is calling out for regime change in daily widespread protests.
The Iran Lobby has stayed silent on the protests and blamed the West for economic conditions, but their attacks on Bolton show that they know that the mullahs’ time is up.
They call him a warmonger, without noting that Iran has been at war with the US since they first supplied explosive to Hezbollah to kill US troops in 1982. In fact, Bolton is the US’s best chance to avoid war with Iran, as highlighted by Ivan Sascha Sheehan, incoming executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore.
He wrote on the Hill: “Those who are concerned about the potential for war with Iran should embrace Bolton’s appointment and support the administration’s efforts to confront Tehran’s destabilizing regional influence by taking its theocratic system to task.”
The Iran Lobby is less scared of Trump pulling out of the deal altogether, than of him convincing US allies to rework the deal and include provisions Iran’s support of terrorism, ballistic missile development and human rights. They fear that this, along with the ongoing protests, will topple the Regime as the 2009 protests threatened to do.
As Michael Tomlinson wrote on Iran Lobby: “As the president’s new team take their place, it’s clear the era of appeasing the mullahs is dead.”
