“Afrasiabi allegedly sought to influence the American public and American policymakers for the benefit of his employer, the Iranian government, by disguising propaganda as objective policy analysis and expertise.”
(Seth D. DuCharme, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York)
Two days ago the news broke that the US Justice Department had filed charges against a long time Iranian agent working for the Islamic Republic of Iran as a mouthpiece for the Ayotollah since the George W Bush administration and throughout the Obama administration. (Hat tip: Cathy)
He lived in the Boston area and worked with an unnamed Congressman as he built up his ‘credibility’ and became a published writer at The New York Times.
I think we should find out how much influence he had over the likes of Former Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama give-away to Iran.
Feds arrest nuclear scholar for failing to register as Iranian foreign agent
For more than a decade on print and on TV, he looked the part of an academic expert on U.S.-Iranian relations — but Kaveh Afrasiabi was secretly on the Iranian government’s payroll, the feds said Tuesday.
See below what Afrasiabi says about his 2019 book***
Afrasiabi, 63, a longtime U.S. resident, was charged with conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent for working on behalf of Iran for the past 14 years, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said.
A writer and scholar, Afrasiabi received a Ph.D. in political science from Boston University and wrote a thesis titled “State and Populism in Iran” under the guidance of famed historian Howard Zinn, according to the bio on his website. The feds say he lives in Watertown, Mass., just outside of Boston.
Afrasiabi’s expertise helped him land TV speaking gigs, and informed his op-ed articles in The New York Times and his books. He was also a visiting professor at Harvard University and University of California-Berkeley.
All the while, say the feds, he was supported by the Iranian government.
Daily News continues….
Wouldn’t you like to know how many Dems were getting advice from the alleged Iranian spy?
As recently as 2020, Afrasiabi provided advice to the Iranian government on how to handle the fallout from the U.S. killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
He suggested the country stop providing information on its nuclear program until the UN condemned the killing, the feds said.
It would “strike fear in the heart of the enemy,” he wrote, according to prosecutors.”
Here is what theJustice Department press statementsays about that last bit, about Trump’s killing of Soleimani and how Afrasiabi was directing how the UN Security Council should act and how a gullible US media should view it.
…. in January 2020, Afrasiabi emailed Iran’s Foreign Minister and Permanent Representative to the United Nations with advice for “retaliation” for the U.S. military airstrike that killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, the external operations arm of the Iranian government’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, proposing that the Iranian government “end all inspections and end all information on Iran’s nuclear activities pending a [United Nations Security Council] condemnation of [the United States’] illegal crime.”Afrasiabi claimed that such a move would, among other things, “strike fear in the heart of [the] enemy.”
And, see what Daniel Greenfield said at Frontpage magazineabout the charges against Afrasiabi.
Who was the Congressman working with the alleged spy? Dem or Republican we should be told!
***Don’t skip this!
A summary atAmazonof Iranian agent Afrasiabi’s November 2019 book (emphasis is mine):
With the advent of the Trump Administration, relations between Iran and the United States have become increasingly conflictual to the point that a future war between the two countries is a realistic possibility. President Trump has unilaterally withdrawn the US from the historic Iran nuclear accord and has re-imposed the nuclear-related sanctions, which had been removed as a result of that accord. Reflecting a new determined US effort to curb Iran’s hegemonic behavior throughout the Middle East, Trump’s Iran policy has all the markings of a sharp discontinuity in the Iran containment strategy of the previous six US administrations. The regime change policy, spearheaded by a hawkish cabinet with a long history of antipathy toward the Iranian government, has become the most salient feature of US policy toward Iran under President Trump. This turn in US foreign policy has important consequences not just for Iran but also for Iran’s neighbors and prospects of long-term stability in the Persian Gulf and beyond. This book seeks to examine the fluid dynamic of US-Iran relations in the Trump era by providing a social scientific understanding of the pattern of hostility and antagonism between Washington and Tehran and the resulting spiraling conflict that may lead to a disastrous war in the region.
They hated President Trump!
Kind of leaves you wondering what role the Iranian government had in the Great Election Steal of 2020.
And, one last thing! So Iranian agents can teach at Harvard, but Trump aides are barred from teaching there, and a movement is afoot to strip Harvard degrees from anyone who was, or is, loyal to President Donald Trump.
I have to admit that until his now infamous tweet on Friday evening in the wake of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg, the name Reza Aslan was not in the forefront of my mind.
It should have been because he is also the author of another infamous tweet (I think we have all heard these words): “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”referring to teenager Nick Sandmann.
Iranian ‘refugee’ Reza Aslan has now topped that with a tweet demonstrating that his Islam-is-peaceful shtick is just that—a pathetic performance.
Bruce Bawer writing at American Greatnesstells us all we need to know about a man America saved from possible death in Iran who now spews his hatefulness toward the President, indeed toward America because we presume he means what he says—burn it all down.
He might as well be saying ‘death to America.’ (I wonder if the FBI stopped by his home to ask him what exactly he means by that?)
No one who was familiar with Aslan’s writings should have been terribly surprised by his Friday night tweet, which some would justifiably describe as an explicit threat of physical violence.
Apparently, it was the author’s most attention-getting tweet since January 19, 2019, when—in the wake of the instantly famous encounter at the Lincoln Memorial involving a group of polite MAGA cap-wearing boys from Covington High School in Kentucky, a drum-banging Native American provocateur named Nathan Phillips, and a trash-talking gang of Black Hebrew Israelites—the selfsame author posted the now-iconic picture of one of the boys, Nick Sandmann, standing calmly in the face of Phillips’ provocation, and wrote:
“Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”
The author in question was Reza Aslan, who, when he himself was a kid, fled the Iranian Revolution with his parents for the United States, where he grew up in the Bay Area. He went on to collect a B.A. in religious studies from Santa Clara University, an M.A. in theological studies from Harvard, an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in sociology from UC Santa Barbara. His first book, No god but God (2005), whitewashed Islam and blamed Islamic terror on Western imperialism; the predictable plaudits in such left-wing organs as the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and Financial Times made it a “worldwide success” (The Guardian) and launched his career as a “multimedia force” (L.A. Review of Books).
“We are one 911-style terror attack from the end of America!”
In addition to his books, Aslan has served as a consultant on Islam for various media projects. He hosted a short-lived CNN religion series, “Believer,” on which, in one memorable episode, he ate part of a human brain. He’s sat on the board of the National Iranian American Council, which lobbies for the Mullahs in Iran, and he’s given talks under the auspices of groups linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In several articles over the years, the indispensable Robert Spencer has documented Aslan’s chronic dishonesty about a wide range of topics, from Islam and Christianity to his own academic credentials.
[….]
Presentable in appearance, measured in tone, he packaged himself at once as a standard-issue left-winger and as an authentic believer in an orthodox yet somehow “modern” Islam. Like the now-disgraced Tariq Ramadan, he was a “bridge-builder,” thoroughly assimilated into Western civilization, who sought nothing more than to educate Westerners about the beautiful beliefs and traditions of his faith—and thereby dispel the ugly suspicions that flow from ignorance.
What repeatedly has gotten in the way of Aslan’s own attempt to maintain this image of serenity and equanimity, however, is his own poisonous hatefulness, which frequently gets the better of him. This phenomenon is not unique to Aslan. It can be observed in the cases of many Muslim public figures in North America and Europe who try to project a calming, moderate profile but who, in certain circumstances—for example, when strongly contradicted—can let the mask slip and sound, suddenly, like nothing so much as a firebrand imam calling for someone’s head.
Continue readingbecause you all need to know about Reza Aslan and his fellow ‘new American’ travelers.
Last night I had a look at CAIR’s twitter feed (you should all do that from time to time). It was very illuminating. They have been hollering for days about a slowdown in movement across the Washington State/Canada border due to Border Patrol doing a little extra checking of those who might pose harm to America.
By the way, in case CAIR and you have forgotten, the President’s travel ban is still in place and Iran is on the list, so checking Iranians right now is doubly important.
(I’ll have more to say about the travel ban at RRWin light of John Binder’sBreitbart postyesterday about how we are still taking refugees from banned countries.)
Here is one of CAIR’s featured outrage stories by their pals at Vox:
Nearly 200 Iranian Americans were detained at the US-Canada border
In recent days, as many as 200 people of Iranian descent, some of them US citizens, have been detained at the US-Canada border and questioned about their political views, family members, and work histories.
About 60 individuals, including American and Canadian citizens, were held for questioning about their “political views and allegiances” at the Canadian border in Blaine, Washington, on Saturday, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of Muslims in the US.
CAIR has been on twitter for ten years and has 51K followers. This tweet has been up for 22 hours with only 6 retweets. Apparently few care what CAIR is saying.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confiscated their passports and held some of them waiting rooms for as long as 10 hours, refusing to grant them entry to the US, according to CAIR.
By Monday, as many as 140 more people of Iranian descent had been detained at the border. They were repeatedly asked about their birthplaces, family members, schooling, and work histories.
But CBP also told Vox it’s operating with an “enhanced posture at its ports of entry to safeguard our national security” based on current threats to the US — which, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), could include an Iran-backed terrorist attack.
CBP agents have broad legal authority to detain and question individuals at ports of entry, but not to conduct interrogations for hours without cause.
[….]
Though Saturday’s detentions appeared to be a reaction to the recent escalation of tensions between the US and Iran, the administration had already made it difficult for Iranians to enter the US under President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which also affects nationals of six other countries deemed to be security threats.
[….]
In a statement, CAIR said that according to one of its sources at CBP, DHS had directed CBP officials to report and detain anyone of Iranian heritage attempting to enter the US if they were found to be “suspicious or adversarial, regardless of citizenship status.”
“These reports are extremely troubling and potentially constitute illegal detentions of United States citizens,” Masih Fouladi, executive director of CAIR’s Washington chapter, said.
Washington’s Democrat Governor Inslee joined CAIR in its criticism. He apparently is fine and dandy with unhindered traffic in and out of his state.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee called CBP’s denial of the detentions “simply not credible.”
“These were detentions, and that is unacceptable,” Inslee said in a statement. “By all accounts, this is detention, regardless of whether the waiting area has bars on the windows.”
We should all breath a sigh of relief to know that extra scrutiny is happening at our borderin light of recent fears that Iranians would exact revenge on us.
Former Secret Service, CIA agent issues warning: Prepare for Iran sleeper cells to strike rural America
IRAN TENSIONS COME TO A BOILING POINT: IS MAIN STREET READY?
In the wake of growing tensions in the Middle East, the United States has made a deliberate strike against the most prolific state sponsor of terrorism.
The killing of Iran’s Quds Force General, Qassem Soleimani, has sparked much debate across the aisle of whether or not this action is an act of war by President Trump.
Regardless of where you stand, the act of terrorism has increased for months before the US response. The question is, is America ready for attacks in the homeland?
As a country, we have been blinded by the possibility of a concentrated attack on US soil and many Americans, including our politicians, have forgotten the grim reality of 9/11 and not given our adversaries the respect they deserve.
We have allowed our guard to be lowered with debates of human rights for open borders, disregarding threats on social media and handcuffing the hands of our law enforcement officers to protect and serve.
Art Del Cueto, the Vice President of the National Border Patrol Union and President of the Arizona Border Patrol Union, touched on it this week:
“We need to take securing our nation’s borders very serious. With the huge rise in individuals claiming asylum, we truthfully don’t know enough about those individuals past, much less their true intentions. Drug cartels are the ones that control our southern borders and they do not care about human lives, it’s all about the money,” he said.
Del Cueto rightfully pointed out that the border opens us up to terrorists walking right into America.
Better safe than sorry, it’s important that you pay attention to your surroundings in the days, weeks and months ahead. And, report to local authorities anything that causes you concern as you go about your daily lives.
P.S. We are still bringing in Muslim refugees (in case you thought that had been stopped). And, in what can only be described as insane, we bring almost equal numbers of Shiites and Sunnis, I guess so they can continue their centuries-old wars right here on American soil. See my post today at RRW.
‘New American’ Sina Mousavi
After reading my story yesterdayabout the Canadian doctor who murdered his wife when she wanted a divorce, a reader from Tennessee sent me news from just this week about how domestic violence is part and parcel of Islamic law.
This story is not from the Middle East or even from Muslim centers in states like Minnesota and Michigan. It happened in Nashville.
The abused wife escaped and went to the police. (Hope she is now in a safe place!) Continue reading “Violence Against Women Sanctioned under Sharia Law”→
