Iran’s Pistachio Proxies
https://islamism.news/research/investigations/irans-pistachio-proxies/#post-5853-footnote-4
Excerpt:
Executive Summary
The Amin family is among the leading pistachio producers in America, controlling farms, processing plants and a variety of other businesses in both the United States and Iran. Reportedly related to the Rafsanjani clan, members of the Amin family also fund charitable causes in both the United States and Iran, to the tune of many millions of dollars.
The Amin family’s activities in Iran, however, have involved collaboration with Iranian institutions sanctioned by the U.S. government or which are linked to violent regime entities, such as the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist group under United States law.
Organizations such as the Iran Pistachio Association, with which the Amin family is closely involved and financially sponsors, appear to be particularly closely involved with the IRGC.
One Amin family member works closely with the Pistachio Authority of Iran, part of the regime’s Ministry of Interior.
A charity established and run by family members works closely with banks sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury.
Regime officials have organized multiple ceremonies honoring Amin family members, while regime websites host flattering biographies of several Amin family members.
Members of the Amin family have faced federal scrutiny in the past, including a conviction for illegally transporting $17 million from Iran to the United States. Questions are now being raised about the legality of some family members’ continued financial involvement with sanctioned institutions.
The Amins’ charitable distributions are not the result of pure benevolence. Their grant-making foundations distribute large amounts of money to radical causes in the United States, including far-Right conspiracy theorists, far-Left supporters of Tehran, Islamist charities, and organizations long accused of serving as lobbyists or proxies for the Iranian regime. Amin money, distributed through one beneficiary, even appears to have subsidized invective against a rival, Jewish-owned pistachio company loathed by supporters of the Iranian regime.
It appears that members of the Amin family, connected to Iranian leadership, today control a considerable pistachio empire, built with the help of fertile Californian soil and Iranian regime institutions. Seemingly, their wealth serves to advance Iranian soft power and propaganda in the United States.
Western efforts to contain the threat posed by the regime in Tehran and its decades of brutality and terrorism are most often found in the form of diplomatic denunciations, international treaties, and extensive programs of sanctions and other economic and political pressures. One curious battlefront has been the global pistachio industry, which is dominated by Iran and the United States.
Since 1979, the availability of Iranian pistachios in the West has shadowed, to some extent, the degree to which attempted détente with Iran has been in political fashion.[1] But, as analysts have warned, even a product as benign as the pistachio serves to benefit the most violent components of Iran’s Islamist regime.
In 2002, Michael Rubin noted in the Wall Street Journal that Iran’s former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, “controls more than 70% of Iran’s multimillion dollar pistachio trade.”[2] Indeed, it is in Rafsanjani’s home turf, Rafsanjan County in the Kerman province of central Iran, that the best and the bulk of Iran’s pistachios are grown.
In the past fiscal year, Iran claims to have exported 135,000 tons of pistachios, worth some $915 million.[3] Much of this production today is controlled by Bonyad Mostazafan, an enormous Iranian conglomerate, which the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has “designated.”[4] The U.S. government notes that Bonyad Mostazafan operates under the control of the Supreme Leader and works closely with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), controlling “key sectors [across Iran] such as energy, mining, logistics, information technology, and financial services, which collectively account for a substantial portion of Bonyad Mostazafan’s multi-billion dollar economic empire.”[5]
According to Mehdi Jahan Nejati, a senior manager at Bonyad Mostazafan, the organization “not only owns approximately 2000 hectares of pistachio orchards, but it also owns 95-96% of the pistachio collection terminals in [Iran’s] Kerman province, as well as the processing and packaging facilities.”[6]
This extensive takeover by the IRGC and the Supreme Leader of the country’s leading industrial sectors was instigated by the very same President Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to Iran expert Ali Ansari.[7]
But Bonyad Mostazafan is not the only pistachio producer with close ties to the regime. Across Kerman Province, an array of trade associations, pistachio orchards and related businesses and charities work closely with Bonyad Mostazafan and other sanctioned and designated regime entities. One such company is Amin Padidar, established and run by the Amin family. The brother of Former President Rafsanjani has referred to the Amin family as his blood relations.[8]
As with the Rafsanjanis, the Amin family is from Rafsanjan, in Iran’s Kerman Province. The family is famous in Kerman, acclaimed as businessmen and philanthropists. It started with Ali Amin, who died before the revolution. Today, his biography and picture remain displayed prominently on a regime website run by Iran’s Ministry of the Interior, which states of Ali Amin that, “everyone in the city of Rafsanjan knew him.”[9]
While members of the Amin family are still in Iran today, much of the Amin family is now based in California, where they do not just continue to manage pistachio production back in Kerman, but also have established a considerable number of orchards, a pistachio processing plant and other businesses all across America. They are also leading members of American pistachio trade associations and advocacy bodies. Indeed, the Amins are among the top pistachio processors and producers in the nation.
A lengthy investigation by the Middle East Forum, in collaboration with researchers in Iran and elsewhere – scraping, translating and searching through thousands of Iranian and U.S. public records, including court documents, websites, social media and financial statements – has uncovered alarming findings. Members of this powerful wealthy family, which has an active presence in both Iran and the United States, have collaborated with the Iranian regime and IRGC entities, illegally transported millions of dollars into the United States, and are helping to finance an assortment of pro-Tehran proxies and other radical forces all across America.
.....The Office of Foreign Asset Controls (OFAC) enforces economic and trade sanctions against targeted foreign entities. In the case of Iran, OFAC requires that any transaction or provision of a service by a U.S. citizen or someone physically present in the United States must be carried out under the prescriptions of a “General License,” which defines certain permitted activities, or a “Specific License,” under which express permission for specific activities must be obtained.
In January 2023, a Virginia man pled guilty to “engaging in business activities on behalf of Iranian entities without first obtaining the required licenses from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). … as a U.S. citizen, he was prohibited from engaging in business with or providing services to Iranian entities without first obtaining a license or permission from OFAC to do so.”[138]
Based on the above evidence, we believe members of the Amin family appear to do all this and more. As we have shown in some detail, Amin family members operate multiple business and charitable ventures inside Iran. To recapitulate, some of their activities uncovered by the Middle East Forum’s investigation include:
Ownership of Amin Padidar, an Iranian company, by multiple U.S-based members of the family. Amin Padidar is jointly owned by the Amins with parent organizations that are closely and overtly involved with the IRGC, a designated terrorist organization.
Financial sponsorship of the Iran Pistachio Association (IPA), an organization closely involved with members of the Iranian regime and the IRGC.
Reports produced by Primex, a U.S. company owned by multiple members of the Amin family, which are then seemingly provided to the Iran Pistachio Association for use in their reports.
Analysis provided by Ali Amin to the Iran Pistachio Association.
Pictures and video seemingly provided by Ali Amin to the Telegram social media channel of the Pistachio Authority of Iran, an entity that claims to operate under the Iranian regime’s Interior Ministry.
Control and management of the Arasteh Charity in Iran, which operates formal partnerships with sanctioned entities.
Collaboration by family members including Parvin Kermani, Nusrat and Fatemeh Amin with regime officials to fund the development of cultural associations and educational institutions.
All these activities appear subject to OFAC’s rules. While OFAC’s general licenses permit some specific charitable work in the form of humanitarian aid and the promotion of human rights and democracy,[139] collaboration with regime institutions and officials to help develop regime-controlled educational institutions is certainly not permitted. The financing and ownership of Iranian companies must without doubt be explicitly approved by OFAC. And the provisions of reports and briefings to regime-linked institutions such as the Iran Pistachio Association and the Pistachio Authority of Iran appears to go far beyond the “personal communications” allowed by OFAC and looks more akin to the provision of services.
It is possible, perhaps, that the Amin family has acquired specific licenses from OFAC for all of these activities. Such licenses are not made publicly available, without a lengthy FOIA application or high-level congressional pressure. But on the off-chance that the Amin family – which has been the target of multiple federal convictions, including the illegal transportation of millions of dollars between Iran and the United States – has not in fact followed the law while engaging with the regime and IRGC-linked entities, then the Middle East Forum urges OFAC to investigate.
Penultimately, it is worth noting that, in the course of this investigation, we uncovered instances of various other Amin family members who have publicly voiced criticism of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It seems not every member of the Amin family is willing to work with this brutal Islamist regime. We have endeavored not to name those explicitly anti-regime family members in this investigative report.
Before publication, we contacted multiple members of the Amin family, requesting a response to our findings. We did not hear back.
Finally, there are additional unexplored areas of investigation worth pursuing, including: the wealthy scholarship programs operated in both the United States and Iran by members of the Amin family; the full extent of the Amin family’s real estate businesses and land; additional foreign entities owned by the Amins in Iran and elsewhere around the world; the links between the Amin family and the Rafsanjani family; and, finally, the historical involvement of Amin family members with regime activists and proxies in the United States.
We leave much of the remaining investigative work to Congress, OFAC and the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) unit.
The Amin family, its businesses and charitable institutions constitute just one financing network of almost a dozen in the United States that the Middle East Forum is currently investigating for ties to dangerous foreign Islamist regimes. As the tumultuous domestic politics and global dramas of the last decade have taught us, malign influences and monies, imposed or encouraged by violent foreign regimes, should never be ignored.
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Don’t expect anything from FJB. He’s reestablishing the Iran nuke deal. Much more detail about Amin family ties to the mullahs at the link.
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