Dear John,
As the pressure campaign for the U.S. to bomb Iran mounts, efforts to silence anti-war voices like NIAC are intensifying.
Yesterday, the hawkish Wall Street Journal Editorial Board published an editorial attacking NIAC and Human Rights Watch, and cited a clip that is being promoted by the the Iran war lobby – groups like FDD, UANI, and NUFDI – as evidence of the old lie that NIAC is associated with the Islamic Republic.
The so-called “evidence”? A clip [[link removed]] of a hardline academic named Foad Izadi debating students on state television, in which one of the students suggests NIAC was created to be Iran's lobby after former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani's called for an Iranian lobby in the U.S.
But here's the problem: Rouhani said this in 2013 – 11 years after NIAC was already formed. Izadi himself says in the clip that it's impossible for Iran to have a lobby in the U.S. And yet, the propagandists want you to believe that this is proof of something illicit — rather than just another attack on the only major, independent, grassroots organization mobilizing Iranian Americans against war.
The notion that the Islamic Republic could create a secret lobbying arm in the U.S. may be believable for conspiracy theorists or people with little understanding of how the law actually works. But powerful voices who know better push out this baseless propaganda in hopes of turning Iranians against one another and silencing any voices that oppose war and foreign intervention.
The clip that some are citing as a "smoking gun" says little about NIAC beyond uninformed speculation from hardline circles in Iran. Hardline elements in Iran and the U.S. have been attacking and trying to silence NIAC for decades. The Iranian hardliners hate that we consistently condemn human rights violations in Iran. The American hardliners hate that we consistently oppose war on Iran. And both hate us because we have been vocal advocates for U.S.-Iran diplomacy rather than confrontation.
While they smear us, we’re doing real work to prevent more bloodshed. Between our direct advocacy on Capitol Hill and our grassroots leaders flooding Congressional phone lines with calls to sponsor the critical War Powers Resolution, our focus is on preventing another war. And our work to prevent ICE deportations to Iran and protect civil rights here at home does not stop, even as crisis in Iran looms.
Despite years of attacks, we will continue to stand up to oppose war, oppose broad sanctions that punish civilians and fuel the instability in Iran we see today, and support the right to self determination of the Iranian people against the repression of Iran's rulers.
Our team is working tirelessly against an immensely-resourced operation to silence independent, anti-war Iranian American voices like yours and mine.
We can’t do this work without your help. I am asking you to please make a contribution today to support this work —to prevent war, to help us fight disinformation, and to ensure that anti-war voices can exist in our community no matter how much others want to silence us.
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In solidarity,
Jamal Abdi
President, NIAC
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