The Iranian-American community in the United States numbers well over a million. It is one of the best educated minority groups, and consists of academics and researchers at some of most prestigious American universities, medical doctors, engineers, attorneys, journalists, and successful business owners and entrepreneurs. Its net worth is estimated to be close to $1 trillion. It has made tremendous contributions to the well-being of the United States.

For years the neoconservatives and their allies in the Israel lobby have been trying to provoke a war with Iran, or at the very least persuade the United States and the international community to impose crippling sanctions on it. An extremely small, but vocal, minority of Iranians who represent groups that are relics of the past with no significant base of support in Iran has been aiding the warmongers.

The vast majority of the Iranian-American community is against imposing crippling sanctions on Iran, which would only harm the ordinary citizens, not those in power. As the experience with Iraq also demonstrated, such sanctions may eventually lead to a war that would be devastating, not only to Iran, but also to the Middle East and the entire world. The majority prefers and advocates diplomacy. Better relations between the two nations would greatly help the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people, because the hardliners in Tehran will no longer be able to invoke the bad state of relations between the two nations as a threat to Iran's national security, and label the opposition as agents of the West, in order to repress and oppress the population. They would have to either respond positively to the aspirations of Iranian people, or will be removed from power by the people, if there is no foreign threat to Iran.

For years such an enlightened and highly educated community did not have a strong voice to express its views and sentiments to the administrations in Washington. That changed in 2002 when the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) was created to promote Iranian-American civic participation, and later it adopted the mandate to prevent war. NIAC has been presenting the public with the true image of Iran as a dynamic country, and the Iranian-American community as an enlightened, highly educated immigrant group. Over the past 7 years the NIAC has emerged as a powerful force and voice of moderation for better relations between Iran and the United States. For the first time, the Iranian-American community has a strong voice in Washington that the administration as well as the Congress listens to.

The emergence of the NIAC as a force of reason, moderation, and peace has naturally worried the neoconservatives, the Israel lobby, and their Iranian minions. They wish to suppress any voice of dissent in the Iranian-American community against war and sanction. They would like the Iranian-American community to be monolithic and support only their plans for Iran's destruction. As always, they are aided by the few in the Iranian community that also advocate war and destruction, with the hope that they can rule over our destroyed motherland.

We condemn, in the strongest possible way, the unfair, baseless, and orchestrated attacks on the NIAC and its president, Dr. Trita Parsi. The most ironic aspect of the unprincipled and baseless attacks is that, the people who accuse the NIAC and Dr. Parsi of being a lobby for the Islamic Republic of Iran - the neoconservatives and their allies - are, in fact, the same people whose loyalties are first and foremost to a foreign country, not the United States. They are the same people who provoked an unjust and illegal war with Iraq, pushed for escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and now want crippling sanctions imposed on Iran that would only hurt the ordinary Iranians and may eventually lead to a third war in the Middle East. And, their minions in the Iranian community are either members of the terrorist cult that worked with the regime of Saddam Hussein in its war of aggression against Iran, or represent a relic of the past.

Farzaneh Naeim
Khosrow Sedigh
Shahla Zand
Mohammad Yousefi
Babak Movahhedi
Bahman Mahdavi
Ali Behnejad, Ph.D.
Hossein Faridabadi
Raymond Rakhshani, Ph.D.
Soraya Sepahpour, M.S.
Farhad Mo'tazedi
Nader Bagherzadeh, Ph.D.
Mazdak Farhat, Ph.D.
Muhammad Sahimi, Ph.D.
Mojgan Ghaemmaghami, B.S.
Medi Malek-Madani, M.S.
Nima Taradji, Esq.
Dariush Vosooghi, Ph.D.
Hossein Moshfegh
Arash Mozaffari, M.S.
Afsaneh Sedghi, M.S.
Pedram Moallemian
Desiree Hensley
Mohammad Navab, Ph.D.
Dr. Fazlollah Rowhani
Dr. Hamis Borazjani
Dr. Mahnaz Moshfegh
Ali Mizani
Hamid Rahmanpour
Javad Rais Dana
Dr. Ali Aliabadi
Mahmoud Zarekeyvan
Ali Moayedian
Masoud Soroush, Ph.D.
 

... Payvand News - 01/21/10 ... --