Congressional leaders have petitioned the Trump administration to investigate a pro-Iran lobbying organization that has long faced accusations of acting as the Islamic Republic’s unregistered mouthpiece in America, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
A group of senators has requested that the Trump administration investigate the National Iranian American Council, or NIAC. The council, a pro-Tehran advocacy group with deep ties to the Iranian regime, played a key role in the Obama administration’s pro-Iran “echo chamber”, which misled Congress and the American people about the terms of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), Ted Cruz (R., Texas), and Mike Braun (R., Ind.) are petitioning the Justice Department to investigate NIAC for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires that lobbying groups disclose their activities on behalf of foreign nations.
NIAC, which is registered as a U.S. nonprofit, maintains close ties to senior Iranian government officials and has been the subject of public scrutiny for its efforts to broker meetings between American and Iranian officials. A network of Obama administration officials and outside organizations disseminated talking points to reporters that bolstered the case for the deal and downplayed Iran’s sponsorship of regional terror operations.
In recent weeks, NIAC has distributed information condemning the Trump administration’s killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Many of these NIAC-sponsored talking points repeated the Iranian regime’s own propaganda regarding the strike, prompting the lawmakers to seek an investigation into potential violations by NIAC of U.S. law.
“We write to urge you to review the activities of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its sister organization NIAC Action for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” the senators wrote to Attorney General William Barr, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Free Beacon.
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