Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Biden, Iran Connection - The Saga Continues

On Sunday I linked to a World Net Daily report concerning a fund-raiser held by Sen. Biden at the home of Sadegh Namazi-khah, a prominent lobbyist for the radical mullah regime, where Biden reportedly raked in $30,000 for his 2002 senatorial campaign.

Today, Kenneth Timmerman elaborates further on Sen. Biden's nefarious ties to pro-Tehran lobbying groups:

Excerpted from Newsmax:

Sen. Barack Obama and his newly-picked running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, may have sparred during the primaries. But on one issue they are firmly united: the need to forge closer ties to the government of Iran.

Kaveh Mohseni, a spokesman for the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, calls Biden “a great friend of the mullahs.”

He notes that Biden’s election campaigns “have been financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network,” a loosely-knit group of wealthy Iranian-American businessmen and women seeking to end the U.S. trade embargo on Iran.

“In exchange, the senator does his best to aid the mullahs,” Mohseni argues.

Biden’s ties to pro-Tehran lobbying groups are no secret. But so far, the elite media has avoided even mentioning the subject....

At a March 2002 conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the American-Iranian Council (AIC), Biden made the case for closer U.S. ties to the government of Iran. “I believe than an improved relationship with Iran is in the naked self-interest of the United States of America," Biden said....

While Biden has condemned the human rights abuses of the Iranian regime, his decision to address the American-Iranian Council and other pro-Tehran groups has angered many Iranian-Americans.

“Biden has been too cozy with the supporters of the Iranian regime, which is anti-American, anti-Iranian, and has a horrendous human rights record,” said Sardar Haddad, an Iranian pro-democracy activist based in Texas.

The American-Iranian Council was founded by Hoosang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers University professor of urban studies who tried to run for president of the Islamic Republic in 2005.
Funded in part by oil giant CONOCO, which hoped to secure lucrative oil contracts, AIC has lobbied consistently to get U.S. trade sanctions on Iran eliminated.

In a recent interview with the popular Persian-language netzine, Tabnak, run by the former head of the Revolutionary Guards, Amirahmadi complained that he wasn’t getting enough credit for lobbying Washington.

Biden hasn’t shied from asking wealthy Iranian-Americans with known sympathies for the Tehran regime for campaign cash.

When Iranian-American pro-democracy activists learned that Biden planned to attend a fundraiser organized on his behalf by an Iranian Muslim charity in California, they phoned his U.S. Senate office to warn him about the group’s pro-Tehran sympathies.

But the Delaware Democrat swept aside their concerns and attended the Feb. 19, 2002, event at the California home of Dr. Sadegh Namazi-Khah, which brought in an estimated $30,000 for his U.S. Senate re-election campaign. ..

The senator said that "Iran always wanted to be an ally of the United States and to have good relations with the U.S.," said Housang Dadgostar, a prominent lawyer who wrote Biden’s campaign a $1,000 check.

"As Iranian-Americans, we don't want anything to happen to the Iranian government or to the Iranian people as a result of this war on terrorism," said Mohsen Movaghar, a Los Angeles businessman who also attended the event and contributed $1,000 to Biden...

Namazi-Khah and other IMAN board members told me that the idea for the fundraiser came from Biden, who apparently learned about the group after attending an earlier event sponsored by the AIC.

Both Namazi-Khah and Movaghar also belong to the Board of the American-Iranian Council, the Washington, DC-based lobbying group pressing for an end to U.S. sanctions on Iran.

So does Japeh Youssefi, who traveled from Scottsdale, Ariz., with his wife to attend the 2002 fundraiser in California.

Between the two of them, the Youssefi’s gave $4,000 to Biden’s U.S. Senate campaign, the legal limit at the time. ...

Another key Biden contributor is Hassan Nemazee, a New York money-manager... Nemazee... recently set up the Iranian-American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) along with a group of Silicon Valley billionaires, many of whom have close ties to the Iranian regime.

Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his running mate “highlights the need to really investigate the web of Iranian influence in the United States,” Iranian-American political analyst Hassan Daioleslam told Newsmax.

“What you have here is a group of people who have been working together through different groups and organizations for the past ten years” to promote the interests of the Iranian regime.

“It’s deeply troubling to have a vice-presidential candidate raise funds from people whose ties to the Iranian regime raise such serious questions,” Daioleslam said.

- Read in full

Earlier today I wrote:
"I suspect there may be an avaricious motive behind Biden's pro-Iranian position - and I think it has something to do with the color green and $$$."
Indeed, it is time we start looking into Senator Biden's FEC records. Who knows what else we'll find beneath those obscure FEC files of his?

Related posts:
Is Senator Biden Sympathetic Towards the Iranian Regime and it's Nuclear Ambitions?

The Biden, Iran Connection - Morrissey and Rubin Leave Out Key Details!

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