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PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The big question at this hour: Is the U.S. planning to invade Iraq sometime next year? While White House officials are downplaying a "New York Times" report that says the U.S. is considering a major air and ground assault for next year that could include as many as 250,000 American troops. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein celebrated his 65th birthday over the weekend with the usual well-choreographed tributes from the Iraqi people. And, in Baghdad, tens of thousands of people marched as a show of support and defiance in the face of U.S. determination to topple Hussein. Ambassador...

("an analyst told CNN." CNN, June 15, 2025 https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-iran-strikes-news-06-15-25) _______ CAMERA Special Report: The National Iranian American Council; Tehran’s Best Friend in Washington. By: Sean Durns November 24, 2015. [...] Parsi’s dissertation on Israeli-Iranian relations served as the basis for his book Treacherous Alliance (2008, Yale University Press). Parsi is a resident alien, with Swedish and Iranian passports, not an American citizen, although he runs an organization that claims to represent Iranian-Americans... Upon coming to the United States in 2001, Parsi worked as a managing director for Hooshang Amirhadmadi of the American Iranian Council (AIC) while completing graduate study. Parsi...

A trusted Obama aide who once worked for an alleged Iranian regime lobbying group is one of the individuals in charge of Iran policy planning at the State Department under Secretary Rex Tillerson. Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), has burrowed into the government under President Trump. She’s now in charge of Iran and the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department. To make matters worse, Nowrouzzadeh is a former employee of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a non-profit that is accused of being a lobbying group for...

The Department of Justice is investigating whether expensive gifts were given to New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez and his wife, including a Mercedes-Benz, a luxury D.C. apartment, money and jewelry, sources familiar with the matter said. According to sources, investigators want to know if the gifts — which would be valued in the tens of thousands of dollars — came from the owner or associates of an Edgewater, N.J., business that won a controversial exclusive contract to perform Halal meat certification with the Egyptian government — even though U.S. Department of Agriculture officials complained that the firm had no previous...

Colin Kahl opposed sanctions on IRGC, condemned killing of Iranian terror chief Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee are meeting privately on Tuesday morning to discuss their growing policy concerns about Colin Kahl, President Joe Biden's nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, according to sources close to the committee. Kahl, a former Obama State Department official, was a key architect of the Iran deal and has been at the forefront of a number of controversial moves, including, reportedly, the decision to remove a statement affirming Jerusalem as Israel's capital from the 2012 Democratic National Convention...

Hussein Mousavian headlined STRATCOM's Deterrence Symposium U.S. military leaders earlier this month hosted a former top Iranian official who came under fire last year for bragging about the hardline regime’s efforts to assassinate American leaders. U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) tapped Hussein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, to headline its 2023 Deterrence Symposium, a high-level powwow that brought the former Iranian official shoulder-to-shoulder with America’s top military brass. Mousavian’s appearance at the mid-August gathering, which came to light on Monday after STRATCOM posted...

The Biden administration has made a deal with Iran to release $6 billion in frozen funds in exchange for the release of five American prisoners. The agreement issuing a blanket waiver for international banks to transfer sanctioned Iranian money from South Korea to Qatar without fear of U.S. sanctions includes the release of five Iranian citizens held in the U.S. The Iranian-Americans include businessmen Siamak Namazi, 51, and Emad Shargi, 58, along with environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, 67. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed off on the deal late last week, but Congress was not notified of the decision until Monday,...

"Just this month Oberlin had to pay $36 million for defaming a local bakery with false accusations of racism. Oberlin has a track record of politically motivated dishonesty and can’t be trusted to give an honest assessment of Mahallati’s past. Our concerns have nothing to do with academic freedom or unorthodox views—they’re about Mahallati’s past and his apparent leading role in covering up the Iranian regime’s atrocities. I’d like to thank Ranking Member Foxx for her commitment to investigating higher education’s ties to hostile foreign regimes when Republicans retake the majority, "Republican Study Committee Chairman Banks told Fox News Digital....

A top official at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is claiming the "Israeli lobby" in the United States is waging a coordinated effort to scuttle the Biden administration’s renewed diplomacy with Iran. Joe Cirincione, a distinguished non-resident fellow at Quincy, claimed during an MSNBC interview last week that special interest groups controlled by the Israeli government are surreptitiously working to undermine the Biden administration’s efforts to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. "There’s the Israeli lobby in Washington that’s very effective that’s pressing" against a new deal, Cirincione told MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. Cirincione was likely referring to...

Former State Department envoy says conduct 'unbelievable' Iranian refugee and former Trump official Ellie Cohanim slammed John Kerry on Wednesday, calling the former secretary of state's backdoor meetings with Iran during Trump’s presidency "anti-American" and an attempt to undermine the administration’s foreign policy stances. During an appearance on "Fox and Friends," the former State Department special envoy called the Biden administration’s talks with Iran to reenter the nuclear deal "diplomatic malpractice" and urged them to stop making unilateral concessions and instead increase demands on the Iranian regime. "What exactly was it that John Kerry was telling them - just ignore...

In early January the United States killed General Qassim Soleimani, a top commander of Iran’s al-Quds Force, in an airstrike at Baghdad’s International Airport. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Seven people were reportedly killed in the airstrike. Following the death of Commander Soleimani Democrat Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) lashed out at President Trump for assassinating the Iranian al-Quds terrorist leader who was responsible for the deaths and maiming of HUNDREDS of US soldiers. It soon became apparent why Murphy was sooo upset with Soleimani’s death. Senator...

Earlier this month, House Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, urging sanctions relief for Iran. Among other things, they criticized "the designation of Iran's Central Bank under terror authorities," arguing that "the efficacy of sanctions is questionable." An organization long described as a front group for the Iran regime sponsored the letter and has embedded staffers with many of the letter's supporters in Congress, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). “Is Iran’s regime quietly infiltrating Congress?” M. Hanif Jazayeri, news editor at Free Iran, asked on Twitter. He pointed out that...

BESIDES BEING BILLIONAIRES and spending much of their fortunes to promote pet causes, the leftist financier George Soros and the right-wing Koch brothers have little in common. They could be seen as polar opposites. Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government. Now they have found something to agree on: the United States must end its “forever war” and adopt an entirely new foreign policy. In one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history, Soros and Charles Koch, the more active of the two...

A holdover from the Obama administration who helped broker the Iran nuclear deal continues to work in the Trump State Department as a member of the “policy planning staff,” according to her biography on the agency website. “Prior to joining the Policy Planning Staff, she served as a Director for Iran and Iran Nuclear Implementation on the National Security Council Staff from 2014-2016,” Sahar Nowrouzzadeh’s bio states. “Sahar also previously served as a Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of State and a Team Chief and Senior Analyst at the Department of Defense.” In an October 2016, Nowrouzzadeh was...

Two high-level Iranian government backers, including a former Islamic Republic official and another accused of lobbying on Tehran’s behalf, were hosted at the Obama White House for more than 30 meetings with top officials at key junctures in the former administration’s contested diplomacy with Iran, according to White House visitor logs that provide a window into the former administration’s outreach to leading pro-Iran advocates. Seyed Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat and head of its national security council, was hosted at the White House at least three times, while Trita Parsi, a pro-Iran advocate long accused of hiding his ties to...

The State Department’s top security officer is coming under scrutiny for playing a role in creating a special board that is investigating last month’s fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. One of the State Department’s accountability review board’s key tasks will be to probe why the office of Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, rejected requests for more diplomatic security in Libya in the weeks leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Mr. Kennedy, a career diplomat whose portfolio includes being the top security officer, signed the memo Oct. 1 that set up the review...

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen who helped establish a pro-Tehran lobbying group in America, has been arrested in Iran and imprisoned indefinitely. -excerpt- Namazi has been described as one of the “intellectual architects” of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group that has been accused of working in support of the regime in Tehran. He and NIAC Director Trita Parsi founded the organization as a way to continuously lobby for the removal of sanctions against Iran and to promote Iran’s foreign policy, while combating the pro-Israel sentiment in America, according to documents from a Cyprus convention...

A Dubai-based businessman has become the fourth Iranian-American to be arrested by Iran’s security forces and imprisoned in Tehran, several newspapers reported Thursday. Siamak Namazi, believed to be in his early 40s, was arrested earlier this month while visiting a friend in Tehran, a family friend told The Washington Post. It was not immediately clear whether any charges have been brought against Namazi. The friend asked not to be identified. The U.S. State Department declined to confirm Namazi’s arrest. …

Executive Summary The Iranian nuclear deal is a full capitulation to Iran’s terrorist mastermind Mullahs, and the latest in a series of betrayals of the American people and allies by the Obama administration. At the highest level of the administration, Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor, the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett, prioritized rapprochement with the terror state. Throughout the process and negotiations, she had the backing of billionaire investor (and Obama-backer) George Soros, and his multi-headed network of tax-exempt foundations. Their efforts were driven by deep-rooted anti-Semitism and personal greed. Meanwhile, since the mid-1990s, a small but very connected Iranian lobby (funded, in...

When the world’s major powers struck a deal over Iran’s nuclear program in Vienna in July, it represented a victory not just for the Islamic Republic, which has now been granted international legitimacy as a nuclear threshold state, but also for a small but increasingly influential lobby in America, one which has long sought rapprochement between Washington and Tehran and now seeks to leverage a successfully concluded nuclear deal as a means to that end. This Iran lobby, publicly represented by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), has become a staunch institutional ally of the White House selling the Joint...