Thread by @GLNoronha

Hold on tight! I've uncovered more in the bungled case of Iranian influence operations:

1. According to Afrasiabi, he was arrested at gunpoint the dawn of Jan. 18 by two FBI dozen agents who repeatedly shouted "foreign agent" as they stormed his house in Watertown, MA. [Thread]

https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1366776187230502912

2. Not being the brightest of Iranian agents, he immediately waived his 5th amendment rights and started defending himself to the FBI agents questioning him. He admitted he knew about FARA laws, but claimed they didn't apply to him. He has argued to the courts that ...

since the government hadn't arrested him in the 14 years he's received payments from Iran, it must have been fine.

(Side note: It is troubling that it took the FBI so many years to go after him, since they tell Afrasiabi they've been tracking Iran's payments to him for years).

3. After spending about a week in federal detention, he was released on bail with an ankle monitor, and allowed outside for 4 hours/week to get groceries. During this time, he stupidly compiles a 350-page compilation of evidence for the USG (and Iran Twitter) in the form of...

A list of all the articles and op-eds he's written on Iran, telling us exactly who has published Iranian propaganda.

He dedicates this book (I'm not joking) to Noam Chomsky for his "decades of solidarity"! You can't make this up.

Don't worry, I'll tell you where to find it 😊

This handy list of publications whose opinion pages you should ignore (feat. LobeLog), comes with a table of contents!

And it's all yours for $9 as a paperback, or for the low price of $5 on Amazon Kindle™️! Can't wait to read mine!

#Sponsored

amazon.com/Agent-Peace-Re…

Like all Iranian-regime apologists, Afrasiabi knows how to play victim very well. In fact, he's got a 25-year history of complaints against the Boston Police alleging how his human rights have been abused (pretty bold considering he shills for the Islamic Republic).

If for some awful reason, you enjoy reading liberal professors describe how unjust the system is, you can read Afrasiabi's 4-page rant against The Man below.

Trigger Warning: he references his friends Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, and uses "Kafkaesque".
scribd.com/document/49212…

To be clear, there's no merit to his claim of being a "Freddie Gray", and his attempt to appeal to the US Supreme Court was quickly ignored. Having reviewed some of his writings, he's quick to exaggerate and lie.

Oh hey, I know some other folks who do that regularly! #IranLobby

And yes, dear readers, of course this intrepid Iranian agent is close pals with our favorite regime apologists! Naturally, NIAC has promoted his work, and vice versa.

H/T @kshahrooz and @khansarinia for these finds.

It's also worth looking at his frequent collaborators, including none other than Princeton Professor (and former Iranian Ambassador to Germany while the regime conducted assassination campaigns in Berlin) Seyed Mousavian!

There's a lot more fun stuff to share, but one last note

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist." The same is true of the Iranian regime's influence operations in the United States.

While the media constantly highlights Russian and Chinese operatives, and going on RT is a kiss of death...

Explicit connections to the Iranian regime, and their propaganda operations (NIAC/PressTV) are grounds not for censure and wariness, but for easy publication and getting quoted in the NYT, WaPo, and Foreign Policy on Iran policy.

Policymakers, Congress, and the Media need to...

treat Iranian influence operations and propaganda way more seriously. The diaspora has been trying to warn leaders of Iranian infiltration for decades, and ignored it for too long. We should not any longer. There are important policies being debated, and the answers aren't...

always as clear-cut as I tweet they are. People can reasonably disagree on questions like the JCPOA. But one thing should unite us: we need to have our discourse and debates free of secret Iranian regime influence.

Now get off Twitter and go outside, it's too nice today!