Here at NIAC, we don’t just blog. In fact, that’s a rather small part of what we do. NIAC is a grassroots organization that seeks to advance the interests of the Iranian-American community by supplying the resources, knowledge and tools to enable greater civic participation by Iranian Americans and informed decision making by lawmakers.
For the past few years, our membership has placed the highest priority on preventing a catastrophic war between the United States and Iran. Last year, we played a key role defeating a Congressional resolution that would have paved the way for a US-Iran war.
Since President Obama took office, the threat of war has receded — but not gone away — so we’ve focused a great deal on how diplomacy can be used to increase U.S. national security.
When the election crisis erupted, we advised President Obama to categorically condemn the Iranian government’s use of violence and human rights abuses. We have since argued that we should have a tactical pause before attempting to engage Iran in any diplomacy.
The role of Congress is more difficult. Congress remains fixated on imposing indiscriminate sanctions on Iran. We oppose the “crippling” economic sanctions being considered because they will hurt the people and strengthen the hardliners’ grip on civil society.
NIAC is fighting to ensure that U.S. policies work to support, not undermine, the struggle of the Iranian people for their natural rights. We are hard at work developing alternatives. We can’t share the details yet because Congress is in the middle of a five week vacation, but stay tuned…