For any who might have wondered what Trita Parsi, founder of the Iran Lobby front group, NIAC (National Iranian American Council), would do after he stepped down from leadership there last year, wonder no more.
According to a 30 June 2019 report in the Boston Globe, Parsi—perhaps the best agent of influence the Tehran regime has ever had in the U.S.—will shortly be on the receiving end of millions of dollars in largesse from the Koch brothers and George Soros. They’ve all teamed up to establish a new think tank in Washington, D.C., called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Named after America’s sixth president, the Quincy Institute heads up its website with a quote from Quincy’s 1821 Independence Day speech: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” The Quincy homepage goes on to declare that U.S. foreign policy “has become detached from any defensible conception of U.S. interests and from a decent respect for the rights and dignity of humankind” and to lambaste “much of the foreign policy community in Washington” which it says “has succumbed to intellectual lethargy and dysfunction.”
And with that opening salvo, the Quincy Institute asserts that it will “lay the foundation for a new foreign policy centered on diplomatic engagement and military restraint.” Given its NIAC connections, that probably means the new think tank will be lobbying on behalf of Iran’s mullahs and IRGC thugs for relief from the Trump administration’s tough new sanctions policy of “maximum pressure.” That and to preserve any remaining tatters of the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), from which the U.S. withdrew in May 2018. After all, it would be so much easier for the Iranian regime to continue its drive for deliverable nuclear weapons without quite so much attention.
The real shocker is that the Charles Koch Foundation would team up with George Soros and his overtly anti-American, anti-national sovereignty-of-any-kind, Open Society Foundation that reportedly pledged $500 million in 2017 to partner with Mastercard in ways that would help fund hordes of illegal border crashers assaulting the U.S. southern border and others elsewhere in the Western world. Thus far, per the Boston Globe, Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation “have each contributed half a million dollars” to get the Quincy Institute launched.
Stay tuned for a full-on assault against Trump administration policies from Afghanistan to the former Syria and the Middle East. It goes without saying that the Iranian regime, its regional aggression, nuclear weapons program, and human rights abuses at home are all likely to come in for especially fond treatment from the Iran Lobby’s new venture at the Quincy Institute.
Our sixth president is no doubt rolling over in his grave.
This column was originally published at the Center for Security Policy.
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
