Prominent US think tank has secret ties to Iran regime - report
IPIS and the Crisis Group signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in 2016, predating much of the latter’s involvement in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
Prominent Washington think tank the International Crisis Group, influential in the negotiation of the United States’ nuclear deal with Iran, has extensive but previously undisclosed connections to the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry, according to a report from Iran International, a Persian-language news outlet frequently at odds with Iran’s government, which charges that the theocratic regime has used the experts “to lobby the US government on its behalf.”
The connections between the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Crisis Group run through the former’s in-house think tank, the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), which Western governments and organizations have largely shied away from since the group sponsored a notorious Holocaust denial conference in 2006.
IPIS and the Crisis Group signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in 2016, predating much of the latter’s involvement in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions on the regime.
“The think tank has given recommendations to the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations on Iran,” the report says, “as well as the US Congress. However, the Crisis Group never made public the agreement it had with the Iranian foreign ministry, and its analysts never mentioned their close ties with the Iranian officials.”
“In reviewing the large cache of leaked Iranian Foreign Ministry correspondence and Tehran’s interactions with Western organizations,” wrote Jay Solomon of Semafor, with which Iran International shared the documents, “I was startled, not only by its depth, but the lack of transparency involved.”
Crisis Group denies any wrongdoing, asserts that links are misrepresented
The think tank, however, denies any wrongdoing and maintains that analysts’ coordination with Iran’s Foreign Ministry was merely a component in their research and due diligence, as experts who make a point of talking to all parties involved in a given issue before weighing in on it.
In public statements and threads on X, representatives of the Crisis Group think-thank asserted that the Iran International report selectively translated correspondence between the analysts and the Iranian officials, and pointed to a pattern of criticism the think tank has received from the Iranian government and media personalities.
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| George Soros provided the organisation's seed funding and continues to support it |
What the JPost forgot to put in this article - information freely available on Wikipedia 1) George Soros provided the organisation's seed funding and continues to support it 2) Robert Malley, (seen pictured with John Kerry) who previously served in the Obama administration as a senior adviser, became president and CEO of ICG in January 2018. Malley had his ties to the Obama electoral campaign severed in May 2008, when it became public that Malley had been in discussions with the militant Palestinian group Hamas, listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation 3)The Crisis Group, and in particular its Iran Project Director, Ali Vaez, played an important role in advancing the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) the failed Obama Admin / Iran nuclear deal
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