The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) (of which Leftist establishment media darling Reza Aslan and Leftist “academic” Juan Cole are Board members) is quite influential in Washington, and lobbied hard for the disastrous Iranian nuclear deal. It has also been established in court as a lobbying group for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Said Michael Rubin: “Jamal Abdi, NIAC’s policy director, now appears to push aside any pretense that NIAC is something other than Iran’s lobby. Speaking at the forthcoming ‘Expose AIPAC’ conference, Abdi is featured on the ‘Training: Constituent Lobbying for Iran’ panel. Oops.” Iranian freedom activist Hassan Daioleslam “documented over a two-year period that NIAC is a front group lobbying on behalf of the Iranian regime.” NIAC had to pay him nearly $200,000 in legal fees after they sued him for defamation over his accusation that they were a front group for the mullahs, and lost.
“Protests planned against Iranian American council accused of lobbying for Tehran,” by Rebal Abdulrahim and Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English, July 16, 2019 (thanks to Lookmann):
Members of the Iranian diaspora are planning to protest against the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) in Washington DC on Friday, with the hashtag #ProtestAgainstNIAC gaining traction as protesters accuse the council of lobbying on behalf of the Iranian regime.
Despite NIAC’s claim to be a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, it has been repeatedly accused of lobbying on behalf of the Iranian regime and against the interests of the Iranian disapora in the US, whom it claims to represent.
“For too long we have stood by as NIAC has promoted to the US government harmful appeasement policies toward the Islamic Republic. NIAC protects the interests of the ruthless, corrupt regime suffocating our beloved homeland. It neither represents Iranian-Americans who aspire for an end to the repression of the Iranian people nor the hope for true peace between Iran and the US,” a statement from a press release by the protest organizers read.
“As inside Iran our courageous countrymen and women wage their struggle against tyranny, we here will broaden awareness of the true motives behind what is essentially the regime’s lobby in America,” the statement added….
NIAC has a history of attempting to raise unsuccessful lawsuits against its critics. The council and its founder, Trita Parsi, have previously sued Iranian-American bloggers and intellectuals who published pieces which challenged its status as an independent nonprofit organization.
In 2015, two circuit judges and a senior circuit judge from the US Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia forced NIAC to pay $183,480.09 in monetary sanctions to a blogger named Hassan Daioleslam. The court decided NIAC had to reimburse the blogger for the money he had spent fighting a defamation lawsuit NIAC brought against him in 2008, which was decided in his favor and dismissed in 2012.
“That Parsi occasionally made statements reflecting a balanced, shared blame approach is not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the regime,” US District Judge John D. Bates wrote in his ruling summary at the time.