A Willfully Misguided Plan for Conciliation with Iran

T rita Parsi, the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), recently attempted to explain how a future president Donald Trump should “deal” with the problem of the Shiite jihadist regime of Iran. After complaining about the policy of the first Trump term, and the implementation of the “maximum pressure” campaign that Trump frequently expresses pride in, Parsi got to the point:

Beyond a nuclear deal, Trump’s diplomacy can arguably advance an even more important U.S. strategic interest: Reduced U.S.-Iran tensions can not only bring attacks on U.S. troops and bases to an end, they will also help pave the way for an American exit from Iraq and Syria, while also helping to reduce the U.S.’s broader military presence in the Middle East. An understanding with Iran is not a prerequisite for leaving Iraq and Syria—Trump should bring the troops home regardless—but reduced tensions with Tehran make an American withdrawal easier and less risky.

That is, Parsi, who was an instrumental player in lobbying the Obama administration and Congress in 2015 to create and pass the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA; the Iran nuclear deal), now wants a future President Trump to continue making nice with the mullahs and persuade them to, pretty please, lay off the nuclear-weapons development and the terror sponsorship.

It is hard to believe that any thinking person would take this advice seriously.

Further consideration makes it even harder. First, Parsi’s work as the head of the Islamic Republic’s lobby in the U.S is well known. When an Iranian democracy activist, Hassan Dai, labeled Parsi and NIAC the Islamic regime’s lobby, NIAC sued Dai for defamation. The lawsuit failed, and NIAC was forced to pay damages to Dai. The court’s decision, Business Insider reported, cast “an unsavory light on the organization and its activities,” as the judge “found it was conceivable that NIAC could reasonably be accused of lobbying on behalf of Iran, so [Dai’s] blog posts weren’t defamatory.” Discovery in the case showed that Parsi had “arranged meetings” between Javad Zarif — who at the time was Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations and later negotiated the JCPOA as Iran’s foreign minister — and members of Congress. In response to this information, the FBI’s former associate deputy director Oliver Revell commented that “arranging meetings between members of Congress and Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations would in my opinion require that person or entity to register as an agent of a foreign power; in this case it would be Iran.”

Furthermore, emails sent by Parsi, Dai wrote, indicated that NIAC functioned as “at least an advocate for the Iranian regime.” Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the unofficial spokesman for Iran’s Green Movement (which sought democracy in 2009) said, “I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic.”

According to NIAC’s own documents, which also surfaced during discovery for its lawsuit against Dai, one of the organization’s employees conceded that “I find it hard to believe Emily [Blout; NIAC’s legislative director at the time], and I devote less than 20 percent of our time to lobbying activity,” referring to the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, a law that defines the types and level of legislative activity that must be publicly disclosed. “I believe we fall under this definition of ‘lobbyist.’” The discovery process further revealed that NIAC had “flouted multiple court orders” and improperly delayed its delivery of documents to [Dai] during the discovery portion of the lawsuit and even withheld certain documents.” Four U.S. senators — Mike Braun, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Jon Kyl — expressed great concern regarding Parsi’s and NIAC’s lobbying for the Iranian regime.

All of this is enough reason to reject the idea that Parsi’s policy prescriptions are unbiased and should be taken seriously by anyone interested in stopping the Iranian threats against the U.S. or the world.

Moreover, Parsi’s advice ignores the fact that the lobbying he and NIAC have done already amounted to what they claimed was the correct way to deal with the Iranian regime: the JCPOA. The JCPOA was negotiated by the Obama administration and agreed to by several other Western powers. It deployed four “tools” that would, ostensibly, result in Iran’s ceasing its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its regional aggression, and its support for anti-American (and anti-Israel, anti–Sunni Muslim, and anti-Western) terrorism. These were:

(1) Diplomacy, which Parsi is calling for again.

(2) Money, in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief that was given to the Iranian regime. The total is estimated to be at least $150 billion, according to former president Obama (but was likely more). Keep in mind that the official Iranian national budget at the time of the deal was only around $47 billion, and its estimated military/terror budget was at least $15 billion.

(3) Western tolerance and appeasement: The West consistently praised Iranian actions and excused Iranian-backed terrorism and aggression around the world.

(4) Western acceptance of illusory Iranian promises: The West consistently pretended that Iran had agreed to real restrictions on its development of nuclear weapons, despite, for example, the fact that the Iranian regime consistently denied international inspectors access to Iranian military facilities and likely nuclear sites.

The JCPOA never led to a peaceful Iran, which had ceased its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its aggression, its terrorism, and its anti-Americanism. The problem with the Iran deal was not, as Parsi claimed, that the “TV reality star turned President whose agenda appears to consist largely of trying to undo the achievements of his predecessor,” Donald Trump, unwisely and incompetently chose to undo it. The problem is that appeasing bad actors simply doesn’t work.

I’ve previously detailed my advice about what a future President Trump should do to “deal” with Iran, specifically considering the perils of diplomacy:

Negotiations are of questionable value in the absence of a threat. “Iranians negotiate only after defeating their enemies,” explains noted authority on the region Harold Rhode. “Signaling a desire to talk before being victorious is, in Iranian eyes, a sign of weakness or lack of will to win.”

Parsi’s suggestions, by contrast, would not rein in the dangerous Iranian regime. It’s enough to make one wonder why he, a clearly biased former chief lobbyist for that regime, is proposing it.